Remember on Wednesday when I mentioned that Warren Dunes was having a show tonight (Friday), but I wasn’t going to go to it because I was going to a different musics show? No? Oh, well, this is the show that I’m a-gonna go to instead:
Details:
Gentlemen of Leisure, Christa Says Yay, The Harper Conspiracy
Friday, May 4th 9:00 PM
@ Blue Moon Tavern
712 NE 45th St, Seattle, Washington 98105 (map)
$8, 21+
So if’n you’re a-gonna go to this show tonight, then I’m a-gonna see you there!
If’n ye didn’t know, NPR has what they call their “Tiny Desk Concert” series, wherein they invite musicians to come in and perform at a very confined space in their office. Open Mike Eagle did one back in December!
Well, apparently they’re having some sort of contest to get in on that tiny desk action, as evidenced by this official-looking piece of graphic design:
See? Proof of contest!
My good friends The Gentlemen of Leisure (aka GOL) have entered the contest with their excellent song “Blessed and Highly Favored,” which you can listen to in its entirety!
I know Thursday is a school night ‘n’ all, but it’s also a fantastic opportunity to see a fantastic live performance by the Gentelmen of Leisure!
Details:
The Harper Conspiracy, Gentlemen of Leisure, Whitney Mongé (Faced Book Event)
Thursday, August 10th, 9:00 PM
@ The Sunset Tavern
5433 Ballard Ave NW, Seattle 98107 (map)
21+, $8.00
And guess what: despite the fact that it is a school night, Carrie & I plan on being in the audience! Wut-wut?
C’est vrai! But the only reason we can pull that off is because we have Friday off from work. Otherwise we might just be too old to go gallivanting around town listening to those crazy kids and their jungle music. Where are my ear plugs and my walker?
Album of the Month: Great and Powerful by The Gentlemen of Leisure.
A wonderfully eclectic EP, featuring influences from soul, smooth R&B, hip-hop, and even surf rock, Great and Powerful is the debut release of a group that just so happens to include some very close, personal friends of mine. I’ve posted about them a few times before; now get off yer duff and get this album. My two favorite songs are the lovely “Please Know” and the frikkin’ hilarous “Don’t,” the latter of which includes one of my favorite lyrics in recent memory:
Y’all gonna make me go off and smack somebody
These hands right here are rated “E” for “Everybody”
Take a listen:
Show of the Month:
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return
It’s back! One in a long, seemingly endless line of shows and movies from the past that are being revived in some form or another, MST3K is back with a whole new cast (though some of the same characters) but the exact same format, one that worked so well for the original series. So why change it? Did you like the original MST3K? Then you’ll like this new version. Jonah is an engaging host, Felicia Day and Patton Oswalt are inspired choices to play the mads. Sometimes during the screenings the bots’ and Jonah’s voices are just a bit too similar and it’s difficult to tell which of them is saying what, but it’s all really funny stuffs.
Tabletop Game of the Month:
5-Minute Dungeon
A harrowing and hilarious cooperative card game in which your team has to play cards from your hands to match symbols on the dungeon cards in order to defeat them. If you defeat all the dungeon cards, you then have to defeat the boss of the dungeon in order to emerge victorious. The cats (as the name of game spoils) is that you only have 5 minutes to defeat the whole dungeon and the boss. And there are a LOT of dungeon cards to get through. The result is some of the most hectic and frenetic card-playing I’ve ever seen. It’s a lot of fun, but it can get harrowing as you watch just how slowly the dungeon deck seems to deplete while the timer (a phone app you can download that includes dramatic music and a narrator marking your progress) counts ever further downwards. It’s not unusual to win with only a couple of seconds on the time… or not to win at all. But since each game is only 5 minutes long, you can just play again!
Last Friday, Carrie & I were honored to be on a very short guest list of a very private show in Seattle: the debut of the brand-new supergroup Warren Dunes.
Warren Dunes is the smooshing together of Seattle stalwart bands Julia Massey and the Five Finger Discount and Electric NoNo. This turns out not to be too difficult of a feat, since Electric NoNo is only a two-man band, and drummer Dom Cortese is also the drummer for JM+FFD. So, basically, you take JM+FFD and add Electric NoNo guitarist Jared Cortese to it and voila you’ve got yourself a Warren Dunes.
First things first, though. This invite-only concert was held at Earwig Studios, the locale where the likes of Julia Massey, Electric NoNo, and Gentlemen of Leisure have laid down tracks. It also just happens to have an antechamber that is decorated to look exactly like the black lodge from Twin Peaks.
Opening act was the sweet acoustic stylings of Reggie Garrett:
Second act was the first-ever Seattle performance of my pals the Gentlemen of Leisure!
“If you are not a gentleman, then why are you alive?”
It was great to see them live for the first time. I was able to make an animated .GIF of ’em!
Gentlemen of Animation
The headliners were, of course, Warren Dunes. Here’s their first-ever animated .GIF!
Warranimated Dunes. Wut.
I honestly expected the Warren Dunes sound to be more of a direct result of smooshing the Five Finger Discount and Electric NoNo together, but it was very heavily weighted towards Julia’s sound. Jared doesn’t even provide any vocals, which was very surprising. It sounded much like the Five Finger Discount plus an electric guitar.
Which is to say it sounded frikkin’ great. Just not at all what I was expecting.
You can hear the Warren Dunes sound in this video of them performing their song “War Cry” (recorded earlier, not at this show):
I’m excited to hear more of them! I just don’t wanna hafta wait for an album to come out! I = impatient for good musics!
My pals in the Gentlemen of Leisure recently appeared on the Spud Goodman show and performed some songs. You can watch a very expertly-shot video of their performance of “So Far” on the YouTubes right now! Here it is:
This is kinda exciting because “So Far” is not on their most recent EP release, so it’s a brand-new one for me. Neat!
They also performed a couple other songs during the episode! You can listen to the whole thing (which also features Tom Arnold, Stephen Tobolowsky, and Eugene Simon) right here.
The first release by Gentlemen of Leisure (or GoL.Life as they often call themselves—and which is coincidentally their website address) is a delightfully eclectic fare. There’s electronic hip-hop, there’s a latin-tinged soulful ballad, there’s a surf-rock zombie song. And then there’s today’s song, which is a decidedly different affair altogether. Vocals and cello by my very good friend Jen Hasson (the “gorgeous redhead cellist” I mentioned in my post about the album release), and the guitar work is by another very good friend, “Neighbor” Gary Lappier (of Terrapin Productions and NMVGPTS). It’s just lovely. Take a listen:
In case you wanna see GoL.Life in action, a small snippet of their SXSW set was recorded (by Electric NoNo, no less) and instagrammed here:
