ShIt loRd qUesT: An Oakland Pilgrimage After Casy & Brian

The first time I saw the Religious Girls was on Halloween in Oakland and I wasn't drunk enough to have done anything I would regret. I was standing outside with an acquaintance working out how we would be heading back to San Francisco. “Fuck no, not yet...” my friend replied, and then “they haven't played yet.”

Then a naked man came running out of the apartment where the show was meant to happen.He was one of the keyboardist in the Religious Girls. I asked him about it later and he said it was the drunkest he'd ever been while playing. I hadn't seen very many naked people in Oakland that week, weather and all, so I was surprised when three more guys ran out behind him with their knobs out for an autumn evening. When I finally went inside the apartments where the bands were playing; converted stockyard storage structures passing as cheap studios, the stage was in the kitchen, a drum-set pressed up against a wall next to the fridge, the kitchen floor was a stringy mess of wires and chords and there were keyboards mounted on racks near the dining room, where people were looking for places to stand.
Their rhythms were like war drums from space and there was day-glo orange bright green war paint everywhere, by the end of the set folks in the pit bounced like walking super balls speckled like cosmic Easter eggs, grinning like a unicorn had licked their faces, bobbing up and down with their mouths open, in what used be called awe before the words mind and fucked were united in one grand descriptive verb. The show was all over too soon. I wandered out into the parking lot and found them packing a van. I started helping them pack up and leave, trying to hide my band crush. Someone said they were going to be playing in Temescal; the hipster district in the middle of Oakland where the CCA art studenst paid too for decrepit Victorians and had fuck rad parties. The second time the Religious Girls played they had mutated the living room into a fully wired stage; dozens of peddles, gaggles mics and suddenly Nick Cowman,Dylan Reznick, Guy Culver, and Chris Danko were up again sending primal vocalizations through their amps the drums, sounding like something between the Battles and Amon Tobin, sending paint through the air. On April 17 I saw them play again after getting an invite from Guy Culver I saw them play in their garage at DeepSpace, the bands home and current venue. They played after Casy & Brian who killed so hard there were kids hanging form the rafters. After they played sat around afire and tried to roast hot dogs.

James / Cordas/ Long / Over/ Due: Do Over

James likes to reinvent his previous work. There were experiments in medium, and content. Alterations on older pieces on exhibition that night. Clipping, snipping, and painting over them so nothing is wasted but everything is in a constant state of self-perpetuating innovation of his work. 

Tits performed a rushed set like grenade going off in a cathedral. Maj, James, and Nick's atmospheric cacophonies and flitting vocals emanated from behind glass masks. Sounds circling a crowd of people thirty deep while James murdered his drums as Marguerite soldered her voice to Nick's keyboard melodies.
After knowing James Cordas for two years; waking up on his floor after nights of composition and decomposition, chatting back and forth about modernist reality, beer, and seeing sound, and experimental drummers, I've learned that he's worth following around.

Horrorfest III: The Broken: Long Cracked and Bloody

Has anyone told you they've seen someone who looked like you walking down the street, or that you look like the parking attendant or someone famous? Well congratulations you're fucking doomed! The Doppelganger concept is nothing new. Two weeks before he was shot Abraham Lincoln was rumored to have seen his own shifty shadow riding a horse past his home. It was reported that John Donne saw his wife double in Paris on the night of his daughter's stillbirth. Then there was the creepy, but under appreciated Keifer Sutherland film Mirrors. The Broken tries to explain the idea of a ominous double without explain anything at all. This Stephen Ellis film is as sneaky as the innocuous back rub which morphs into accidental groping then into a full blown tongue knotting, that mutates into the awkward buddy hump; this movie has its hand down your pants before you realize that you've had too much to drink. Only problem is it's just too long. The climax, while explosive and messy, just doesn't measure up. If you want blood look to the rest of the the movies in the Horrorfest III collection. The movie is a tease at first, with heavy shadowed black and blues for ominous hallway scenes and black and burnished brown-reds to highlight the feeling of home and hearth during the pivotal birthday scene; a scene filled with the kind of chit chat that leaves you hoping the pay off will be immediate and gruesome. There are tons of moments like this but the ambiguity works...sort of. The inclusion of The Broken in Horrorfest is like hiring Uma Thurman to work at a meat packing plant: she comes in with really good intentions but eventually she'll just look like a model covered in entrails. The plot revolves around the events that occur after a car crash where the main character finds herself unable to remember the specifics but recalls seeing herself walking down the street when the crash occurs. What follows is a good story that's convoluted but and murky. The murk helps the suspense for a while but then it just gets on your nerves. The car crash is shown about three times i n s l o w m o t i o n. There are a lot of moments of dead space and "Why the fucks" but there is a really well developed story that could work well if the idea premise was handle a little better.