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| Thursday, September 16, 2010 at Crystal Ballroom |
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(click for full-page printable poster)
GENRES
Electronica
Indie Rock
Pop
Rock
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Ratatat
Dom
Bobby Birdman
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Crystal Ballroom 503-225-0047
1332 W Burnside St, Portland, OR (MapQuest)
9pm (doors open at 8pm). All Ages.
$25.00 advance tix from Ticketmaster.
$28.00 at the door.
I wonder if anyone else has secretly taken a RATATAT song and recorded
their own vocal track over it. I did. In 2004 I had just returned
from a literal mind-blowing journey in Peru and I was oddly placed in
the basement of my ex-neighbors house in the suburbs of Nowhere,
Kansas. I laced that track. I laced it real nice with a shure 57
microphone. But I never sent the song to RATATAT. I've only listened
to the song a handful of times and I played it for two of my brothers.
It's one of those songs for the vault. It's my little secret.
So those gentlemen from RATATAT just sent me LP3. And they asked me to
write their thingy-thang. Already I've found another sizzling track
on this new one that I am POSITIVELY going to lace with voices, and
WITHOUT their permission. Which makes me wonder why I'm busy typing
away here when I could be lacing that track. But this is a favor for
RATATAT.
I suppose I'm returning the favor that they did for me in the Summer of
Sunshine, 2007. I was fresh off of Panther Mountain, wearing hot pink
soccer shorts and LOTS of coconut oil, and those guys from RATATAT came
over to the studio I was at in Catskill, NY. It was actually just a
big old house full of organs and amplifiers and all the other crazy
sound makers you could possibly want to make a happening happen. Called
"Old Soul", the mansion was haunted. A really ancient president of the
United States had lived and died in there. That dude Uncle Sam, like
the real guy from the posters, he grew up next door. It's the sort of
place you definitely want to make some smoke, burn some sage and stay
up all night. Every night if possible.
So the two boys from RATATAT, Evan (beat maker) and Mike (melody
keeper) shows up and I make a big salad with cashews on top and they
decline my offer for coconuts. In this time I'm eating like a little
bird. I was feeding them their meals for the whole weekend, but not
serving enough food. Those guys are so polite that they would just
sneak away from the studio and find a quick bite around town instead of
simply asking me for more to eat.
I showed them the ethereal pyramid I had set up around the studio using
quartz crystal capstones. They didn't roll their eyes and they
actually looked curious during my ramblings about the pyramids. I told
them what I know.
So we got right to work. They laced some of my tracks, supplied me
with beats, and helped arrange some things for my new album WHITE ARK.
It was thrilling to watch the two of them at work in the studio. What
stood out the most to me was their silent intelligence, their
telepathic capacities. I observed again and again how Evan and Mike
would download the contents of my mind perfectly, and then communicate
in between themselves with minimal cues like eye gestures or crotch
clenches, and soon enough they were filling the room with swirling
guitar and organ parts, giving my song skeletons a brand new nervous
system and all their soft tissues. We would have long improv sessions
in the night, pulsing emerald lights from the corners of the crystal
pyramid.
The energy flowed perfectly and the boys were digging Old Soul so much
they decided to record what would become LP3 there. They booked 40
days and 40 nights, and while they weren't quite fasting in the desert,
due to their auspicious encounter with the Egyptian rug dealer Mumtaz
Khan (see track 11 of LP3) in downtown Catskill, they laced the joint
with even more crystal pyramids.
**************
RATATAT and I had been talking about collaboration for many years. I
first met Mike in the summer of 2001. He was a 20-year-old hired-gun
guitar phenom, his first time out on the road. We recognized each
other as confidants and co-conspirators immediately. In this time Mike
played me the first ever RATATAT home recordings, only then they were
calling themselves "Cherry". It was some old-skool 4-track fuzzyguitar-
shit. The sound quality was low but the spirit was spilling out
the glass. I couldn't believe the nerve of these guys, making my
little brain grasp for familiar territory, all I could think was how
they had somehow mixed Beethoven with Wu-tang with Megadeth. Damn. I
was actually a little jealous. Why didn't I think of that??
So now that we've grown up a bit and now that we're collaborating out
in the open, all the jealousy has melted. I mean, those guys are just
so innocent and cute in the first place, and I totally have forgiven
them for remixing those Missy Elliot tracks. I've listened to LP3 about
7 times now. This record is the first one RATATAT has made that is
truly for the Whole Planet. They're Graduating Galactic. I can
already smell the toasted cardamom and envision LP3 crackling from the
tiny speakers of a crazy-ass curry cafe in Bombay. Or the deep bass
throbs floating out over the sea during one of those full moon beach
parties in Maui. Or blasting along with the laser light show each
night at the Giza Complex, the beats penetrating into the hidden
chambers located under the paws of the Great Sphinx. Or the
synthesizers cutting through the cool air over the highlands of
Columbia, the sounds landing in the wide open hearts of the indigenous
tribal leaders, the women smiling with that reassurance that comes only
after having so deeply seen into the future, the men are dancing
fiercely in their all white tunics with cactus-woven shoulder bags.
With their telepathy still fully intact, the Indians see visions of two
skinny white boys from Brooklyn delivering the sonic fire flowers.
Then they see with their inner-vision the badboy heavy metal-style
"RATATAT" font on the back of the record and exclaim to themselves,
"Wow...that translates as "Dream Cream" in our native tongue!!"
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