Briefly: The Wild Fictions Are Truly Great

Two friends from school are in a band called Wild Fictions. It’s not unusual for college kids to be in bands, or even for them to be good, but a fantastic indie/powerpop duo is unlikely on the college circuit these days. Chris DeWitt and his sister Kelly DeWitt are Wild Fictions. If you live in DC, perhaps you’ve seen them around town over the last few months. Lord knows I haven’t, but I recently caught them at their July 4th weekend show at the DC9 where they opened for the Black & White Jacksons. Recently I’ve had their extremely poppy “Secret Society” stuck in my head. It’s pretty great live and it occurs to me that they might not performing any time soon, so I might have to get used to listening to it on my computer. On their new EP, the recording of this track is much higher quality than the live version on their myspace and to celebrate I’ve got it available here for about a week, so download it while you can. THESE GUYS ARE GREAT!

Photo courtesy of their myspace/Charlotte Kesl I believe.

In Defense of References and Casanova Quinn

To me, one of the greatest pleasures in reading a book, watching a movie/television show, or listening to a song is realizing that there is a hidden allusion. Often, this is no more than a reference to another work, but it can even be a larger thematic or stylistic reference. You know what I mean. This is what makes “Family Guy” funny, (well, as funny as it can be) “Ulysses” daunting, and Quentin Tarantino, well, a director. So imagine my sheer delight when I saw this picture in a comics review over on Pretty Fakes:

Squint if you can’t see it: someone is saying “Be ready and be brave,” a line from the Mountain Goats’ “Magpie,” from inside a robot! And there are crows (Magpies and crows are both in the corvidae family) circling outside! Why “Casanova” might possibly be the best comic ever, a paper I wrote in high school, and the reason I’m linking a lot of punctuation after the jump.

Art Brut in Rome

So, my ears are still ringing from the Art Brut show I saw last night. I’d seen them before once in DC, and was very pleased when I first saw the posters advertising this performance. In their two hour set, they played almost every song from their two albums. Art Brut is very much a band where what they play live is easily heard and sung along to. Their onstage shtick is hillarious, and frontman Eddie Argos keeps it interesting by tweaking well known lyrics. In “Moving to L.A.”, instead of saying he was going to drink “Hennessy with Morrissey,” he subbed in “a Long-Island Iced Tea with Jay-Z.” Drummer Mikey Breyer didn’t even sit throughout the set, probably subscribing to the logic of “well if they can’t sit, why should I?” Especially enjoyable was a new song, probably called “Art Brut against Satan” because part of the chorus was “don’t worry we can take him/this is Art Brut against Satan!”

The Roman audience was pretty rowdy. I received several bruises from their incessant moshing, but at least they were excited by the English band. Two songs from the first album address Italy, including “18,000 Lira”, which ends with the line “sounds like a lot of money.” At one point, Argos asked the audience, “I heard there was football tonight. Who won, Rome (Roma) or Milan (Inter)?” The audience members, many of who had been watching the game on a large projection screen outside before the show, answered that it was a draw. “Well,” said Argos, “at least Rome doesn’t have a song about erectile dysfunction named after it.” And then he started the band in to the other Italy-based song, “Rusted Guns of Milan.” Check out some pictures here. (I couldn’t resist.)

Illustration Alive and Well on Threadless

As I’ve written about before, illustration is no longer incontrovertibly linked to design. In this world of stock photos and cheap digital cameras, being able to draw is no longer a requirement. But is illustration going down the crapper? In some arenas, illustration is not only the best format, it is essential to design.

Take for instance Threadless. This post-internet-bubble startup t-shirt company sells only t-shirts that online participants vote for and choose. What ends up for sale ranges from the stereotypically emo, to the visually punny, to the ambiguous and perhaps deep. And believe me, it’s not a piece of cake to the approval of your peers; take a look at one of my high school attempts. People can be pretty harsh. But what do all of the t-shirts being sold have in common? They are excellent illustrations! The design is meticulous and often very aesthetically pleasing. As the website continues to grow, they do more (such as interviews) to emphasize the role design and illustration plays in their products. I just wish they would do more $10 sales.

Andrew W. K.!

Get your ticket now! It’s not like I haven’t been excited about this all summer, but I’m so psyched for it now.  He’s also doing a DJ set?!>!!!1!

What Next For Harry and the Potters?

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing Harry and the Potters, perhaps you’ve wondered what I wondered recently: Now that the book series is done, what will happen to this band? If you’re not familiar, perhaps you deserve a little explanation. Harry and the Potters is a band made up of brothers Paul and Joe DeGeorge who tour around the country with an entourage of friends performing awesome rock songs they’ve written about the books. They’re really awesome and incredibly sincere. I had an amazing night with them when they played AU and stayed overnight in my house. We went to Ben’s Chili because it’s Paul’s favorite Chilidog (he would know, he has a hotdog blog) and I was struck at how much everyone in the group was just all about having good clean rockin’ fun.

But what now? The books are done. Probably, and hopefully, there won’t be any more in the series. Paul has this to say:

I even had the honor of serving as a keynote speaker on a panel of experts discussing the future of the Harry Potter fandom and it’s creative output now that the series has concluded. I’m happy to report that everyone had a really positive outlook on the future. From now on, Harry Potter is what we make of it. We’re free to continue to make awesome music and art, to throw killer parties, to maintain our incredible friendships, to do cool things in our communities, and to continue fighting in real-world Dumbledore’s Armies like the Harry Potter Alliance. As we go forth, we pledge to make the world a better place, to never fail our friends, and to do our best to make JK Rowling proud. She’s given us so much joy and happiness, and it is our responsibility to continue to spread that throughout our world. If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything. Let’s do this!

Pretty inspiring. I hope that they make it to DC again soon.

photo courtesy of Emily Barnett via facebook