please read while listening to Emmett’s mix featured right here.

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest–a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
- Einstein

Red Dress Press is practicing downstairs and it’s been threatening to rain all day. Yesterday, a hail storm started suddenly and ten minutes later the street in front of my house was a grand rapids.The weather, that’s a good place to start. Good, keep going. Okay, moving on: Kendrick house just had their last show recently (as can already seen on this website) and it was everything one would expect. There was a keg that lasted longer than it should have and there were extended sets by just about every band that played. Everyone kept talking about how it was sad. But it’s only sad if nothing else pops up. C’mon, this is Flagstaff. The rock goes on, man. The real heroes of the evening were Nick and Craig playing two sets in that sauna of a garage. Someone should’ve given these guys a medal. Throughout the night, the crowd maintained a homoerotic sweaty spiritual lunacy. That’s a big cheesy dungheap of phrase, but that’s the best I can do. That’s as accurate as I can put it. All I can say is that it was fuckin hot in there. It wouldn’t have been so gnarly if there weren’t weirdoes making it worse. During Creosote, there was a big guy in a Ramones shirt acting like he was 200 pounds lighter and half his size. During Erik Petersen, there was some girl doing interpretive dance in the back. That was odd, but not all that surprising. That’s just in the garage.The weird thing about Kendrick shows is it seemed like half the people there just seemed to think it was a party. Which is cool, but whenever I had to ask folks for money, when I put on a show there, they’d always look at me like I was some sparechanger. Whatever. I suppose I am, but if a sparechanger ever came up to me, sang a sweet ass song about how he doesn’t have his IWW card and his lack of luck, I’d probably give him a couple bucks. Even if he had a middle man. I mean c’mon. It’s 2006. Punk and hardcore shows have been 5 bucks since 1983. Everything else has inflated at least 100%. I’m going off on one hell of a tangent. It’s not the last.So the garage is pretty full, (hey, scope the snaps) and the kitchen is pretty full, and the area where the foosball table is, all pretty full of bodies. The living room is pretty full. Out front is very full. Don’t these people know they’re missing Adam Frumhoff?All in all, Kendrick shows always tended to rule hard and I hope this ‘last show’ thing is simply a well-engineered ruse to make the enthusiasm level break through the roof and up into the rafters. I did recently see the property listed for sale on such a website. $320, I think the asking price was, if you’ve got the money. Sold as is.Not that they’ve had the monopoly on loud sweaty fun. Pedro’s Casa now dubbed Transylvania, has shared the silly party vibe, but with a Girls Gone Wild Studio 54 Old School kind of thing going on with the cameras and lack of space and all that Sparks mystery in the bowl punch. Either Pedro’s neighbors all deal drugs, or there’s a tragic/comic beauty in what people say about the South Side. Anything goes. Whatever it is, I hope it lasts forever. Ray says rapid gentrification awaits. Reminds me of Cuba right now. (like here…)If one has the memory for it, you might remember Phil and Ash’s incredible set as some band whose name I can’t remember because it’s too long but has the word ‘zombies’ and ‘osirus’ in it. The band name might be too long for me to grab but their song “Urban Sprawl Pyramids” about the cancer of Anthem, Arizona has got to be the hit of the goddamn best summer ever. (Always go with the hyperbole. It’ll make the voice sound amped. Because that’s what’s trying to be conveyed.) Someone needs to bust out a four track, get it mastered and put out the hot single of the summer on seven inch vinyl. I’m serious.JEToMI, in the little graffiti room at Pete’s was triumphant and colossal and ear drum blood letting. Some reporters said they could hear the sonic thud at Conico. Not surprising. For a minute, there were those spreading rumors of break-up. Be damned. These dudes are just getting started. That band has really come together and evolved and developed in a really epic way.And it’s not like that’s all. Not at all. It’s been like at least two shows a week, pretty much all summer. How does one keep up? Jesus fucking Christ, did you see Mt. Gigantic at Cottage? Those kids can write some songs. I mean Ooga Booga was good, with their shtick, but for me Mt. Gigantic just tore the roof off. The closest I can come to describing it was maybe Deerhoof or something. (I don’t know if that conveys how mind-blowing they were or not, but whatever, sometimes hyperbole just falls short, and gets a bit old. I’m running out of sound descriptions. You know the quote: writing about music is like dancing about architecture, it doesn’t translate. Which is why, I guess, you should just go to the fuckin show.) Fantastic songwriting.And Atomic Skagicide finished the Monday evening. Singer Travis had taken to explaining the song content with little speeches in between the songs since the words just sound like “BRAWWWWR! GARRRF OOOFA OOFA” most of the time. The songs are sick, of course. Like deconstructed thirty second pastiches of the best moments of the thirty year history of hardcore music. And despite, Travis’ rather silly condemning of folks like myself telling you what’s cool, I’m gonna have to do it anyway. Anomic Suicide: too cool for school. And it wasn’t until their one song encore that the lemmings felt they had to run into everybody and be morons, which was great. Or actually not great, it was totally dumb; but what is great is the fact that Anomic Suicide are on tour right now. Crazy. And with a tape demo you should get your hands on when they get back. (Ideally, you’ll be able to order it from this very website, very soon. More info to come.) The demo is a bit too lo-fi for it’s own good, in this reviewers opinion, but of course the Dystopia fetishizing comes through loud and clear with anti-Christian samples before every song, except for one Bowie sample from “Changes” which would’ve made more sense if it was Bowie singing, “look at all the cavemen go,” which is what I think of every time I hear about bans on stem cell research or whatever else. Or whatever.So back to the show: I recall a fantastic moment when two guys in identical spiked leather jackets were arguing about some band represented by one of their numerous black patches. One did not like the band, and told the other kid that he had spit on them when he saw them, and the other liked them and was bummed that the other dude didn’t like them. I butted in, the pretentious ass that I am, and said, “You guys should fight.” They turned and looked at me, like they wanted to fight me, and I said, “You wouldn’t even have to do anything. You could just run into each other and see who got poked in the eye first.”Well, I thought it was funny, anyway.(Oh, yet another sidenote: If you ever don’t like my band, ((like that’s going to happen!)) it’s totally cool. Feel free to split, or if you’d like, if you’ve got something interesting to say, by all means, heckle, but please don’t expectorate on me. Despite my pacifist leanings, I might just take off my instrument and hit you with it for being such a tired cliché. As Mark Gonzales says, be an indivishule.)Moving on, (finally,) in breaking news: if you thought the desecration of the Peaks with piss water was bad, the landlords of 102 E Elm have decided to destroy the historic landmark that is Guy Ecklund’s house. It’s time to get active, people. Bulldozing is scheduled for October and it’s time to organize. We have to stop the death of the birthplace of all Ponies, On Seduction, Conversation and Can Opener songs. Write a Myspace bulletin, write your congressperson, and/or take direct action. Will a human barricade around the property work? I don’t know. But something must be done. If just a plaque denoting the site’s former significance. Gentrification, people. Sound’s like Ray is right. It’s the real deal.And on to other disappointments: Mika Miko got a flat tire and missed their show last Monday, resulting in me getting to bed on time but being thoroughly bummed for a bit. Well, at least until I saw Madeline on Thursday night at the Monte Vista Hotel. Mika Miko pulled up to my house at around 9:45, about fifteen minutes after everyone was sent home from Cottage House. I’d be more bummed but they’re not just some podunk band starving for a show. If you’re smart, you’ll just go see them in Tucson in a few months with the Gossip and Swan Island on September 26^th. Or maybe they’ll be back soon enough. By then they’ll probably be selling out the Orpheum. Seriously.As mentioned, Madeline at the Monte Vista was a fantastic time. Which is nothing short of a Twilight Zone type of a phrase. Even stranger, there’s been about one or two decent shows there every month all summer which is about one or two more than what usually goes on there. While all the management can do is complain about how the turnouts have been poor, I’m simply amazed at the amazingness of the amazingness there. I mean this is the Monte V, the lessest of all the bar evils in town, but still… I mean, did you see Parenthetical Girls? Not only were they fucking incredible, but there wasn’t even one dipshit in a goatee and backwards baseball cap with flame tattoos yelling “Fag!” over the rather odd arrangement and refreshingly unmasculine delivery. Double amazing. Perhaps, I’m overly misanthropic (or elitist, right?) I just never expect what I’m amped on to go over well with the mainstream type of drunk that’ll hit the Monte Vista Lounge. But whaddoo I know? Maybe music is the universalist of languages. Or maybe we’re witnessing a cultural shift in hegemony at this particular bar that hasn’t been seen since the early nineties. (Say what?) That’s bullshit of course, or it’s not, but the other shoe will certainly drop as it did in the mid-nineties and the Monte V will once again be wasteland, population zero. But hopefully not before The Liars Handshake do their drunken Pogues/Americana thing a couple more times, and I’m allowed a seriously huge tab, like Norm at Cheers, of which I’m not expected to pay back at all.Only in the Twilight Zone.God, so much more news/propaganda to spread. I haven’t even mentioned the Hive yet. Or Sisterpants. Or Josh Willliams. Or ragged on the Noise yet, (nevermind the Flagstaff DEAD.) Or all the buddies up and leaving town. (Fuck that shit.) So much to do. At any rate, keep your eye out. And stay out of the rain.
-Carlos the Dwarf 8/5/06