Brooklyn music scene

I've been trying to check out as many bands as I can either online or live when they play here. Actually, I've been too broke to check out many of them live, but there are a couple of good weekly free shows I've been checking out, and a few are bands we've played with somewhere. Anyway, it's a complete pain in the ass to find the good bands here because there are so many shitty ones. It's kind of like the time your great dane swallowed your girlfriend's favorite earrings: you know there's something good in there somewhere, but you have to dig through a load of crap.

So with that in mind, here are 40 of the good ones that I've found. Mostly local stuff, but also some out-of-town bands that have played here. Of course, if your musical taste isn't ballpark of what mine is, you may think they all suck, but there's probably at least a few you will like. I always like hearing good new music, so hopefully you'll enjoy these. Maybe you peeps can keep me informed as to some of the good bands wherever you're at.

Anabolics: myspace (Brooklyn)
Angry Angles: myspace (Memphis)
The Assault: website, myspace (Brooklyn)
Awesome Color: myspace (Brooklyn)
The Black Hollies: myspace (Jersey City)
Blue Rider: myspace (Brooklyn)
Broadband: website, myspace (Brooklyn)
Buzz Buzz Tabernacle: website, myspace (Brooklyn)
Call Me Lightning: website, myspace (Milwaukee)
Dansettes: website, myspace (NYC)
The Dead Betties: website, myspace (Brooklyn)
The Demands: website, myspace (NYC)
Department of Buildings: myspace (Brooklyn)
The Donkeys: myspace (San Diego)
El Jezel: website, myspace (Queens)
Federation X: website, myspace (Portland)
Fire in the Kitchen: website (NYC)
The Fools: myspace (NYC)
Fresh Kills: myspace (Brooklyn)
Goodnight Gunfight: myspace (Brooklyn)
Hundred Eyes: myspace (Brooklyn)
Edison Rocket Train: website (NYC)
Japanther: myspace (Brooklyn)
The King Khan BBQ Show: myspace (Montreal)
Leather Uppers: myspace (Toronto)
Life Partners: myspace (Boston)
Little Killers: myspace (Brooklyn) (that bass player could not be any more HOTTT, yes three T's)
Live Girls: website, myspace (NYC)
Lungs of a Giant: website, myspace (Brooklyn)
Matt and Kim: myspace (Brooklyn)
Motico: website, myspace (Brooklyn)
Oneida: myspace (Brooklyn)
Peelander-Z: myspace (NYC)
Pink Steel: website, myspace (Brooklyn)
Purple Organ: website (NYC)
Shellshag: myspace (NYC)
Sir Richard Bishop: mp3 (Chicago?)
Telenovela Star: myspace (NYC)
Trachtenberg Family Slideshow: myspace (NYC)
Velvet: myspace (Chapel Hill)

Pink Panther skatepark

I found this Pigmy Skates page with some nice photos from the abandoned (and now destroyed) Pink Panther skatepark outside of Slidell. The Pink Panther was a 1970's era concrete skatepark located off of I-12 at the Pink Panther trailer park. I was lucky enough to go skate it once with Mike Smiley in the mid 90's. It was abandoned then, and we eventually got chased off by a sheriff. It has since been bulldozed. Anyway, it featured lots of banks, a snakerun that emptied into a bowl (that was full of water), a snakerun with a huge transitional wall, and some volcano / hip type things. Check out the Pigmy Skates page for a lot more photos of the park.



Here are a few shots of Mr. Smiling Michael at the Pink Panther. Hopefully, someday photos of the park when it was actually open in the 70's will surface.




Pigmy Skates also has a page on Houma's Paisley Fart Ditch, which was apparently the equivalent of Lafayette's Greenbriar Ditch. That is, a ditch that was fairly lame, but since it was the only one around, everyone still went there to skate it all the time.



I remember when we used to skate that little stupid Hub City Ford ditch or that one in between the two sides of the Thruway... then I took a roadtrip out to Albuquerque and skated the ditches out there. They were like works of art, perfectly transitional, hips, spines, roll-ins, you name it. Lafayette ditches were never the same again. Speaking of Greenbriar, here's a photo that I got from Beth Blackburn of Jerry Guillory standing in the middle of Greenbriar Ditch.



Also, here's one of somebody skating the Catfish Banks in Baton Rouge that I found somewhere. Damn, I miss that place.

Celebrity artists

Ok, what the hell is up with celebrity artists. Although there were a few I looked at that were surprisingly good, the rest need to stick to whatever made them a celeb. Click the following artworks to see who was responsible.

Bobbo

I found a couple of references to a Baton Rouge band called Bobbo. Apparently they were circa 1984ish. Anybody ever heard of them? One of the members was Tim Prudhomme, who is now on Smells Like Records, which is Steve Shelley's label (Sonic Youth's drummer.) Anyway, there's a brief mention in this interview and quite a bit of info in this Gambit article. They sound like they're worth checking out. I would have thought being from B.R. they would have mentioned The Zoomers, Shitdogs, US Times, etc. They sound like they were more new wave than punk maybe. I did find the reference about The Replacements playing in Lafayette interesting. Where and when was that? Jenkins, Chris, Mcbane, school me please.

There is also mention of several other B.R. bands on this Cap'n Ken post about Dash Rip Rock, namely The Times, Harry Dog and The Fleas, The Shitdogs, Bobbo, Scooter and The Mopeds, and The Human Rayz. Anybody ever heard of Scooter and the Mopeds or Harry Dog and the Fleas? I need to be more proactive trying to find this stuff out.

Andrew Duplantis and Scott Olivier

Jon found this: andrewduplantis.com . Not much to the site, except for this order page which has some info and two sample tracks. Andrew Duplantis is from Lafayette and was in Stan Brundy Function, and I think maybe One Hand Clapping? He moved to Austin and ended up playing with a ton of big name musicians like Bob Mould, the Meat Puppets, Alejandro Escovedo, Richard Buckner, and Son Volt. Alas, if only he had stayed in town, he would be Lafayette's greatest band heaux. He's definitely Lafayette's most successful band heaux. I like both of the tracks.

I found this: casadistortion.com . It's Scott Olivier's site. He was in One Hand Clapping and Blind Cavefish. I guess he's recording and mastering these days. Again not much to the site, but he's apparently got an impressive collection of gear. He's also got this movie of all of his stuff. Yes, I realize that's pretty nerdy, but as a fellow amp aficianado, it looks like something dumb I would do. My favorite memory of Scott was when he sawed out the wall at his mom's house so he could put a plexiglass window between his bedroom and the closet, which was then made into the "control room."

I also remember him running with a guy we called "Shirtless." He was a fairly big dude with a mullet and a moustache who every day after school would pull off his shirt as soon as he got in the parking lot, get in his old Mustang and peel out. Anybody remember his name? I thought it was Scott Bordelon, but I just looked in the yearbook and I don't see him. I wonder what he's doing now. I'll have to ask Colby.

All this talk of Stan Brundy Function calls for bringing out the old trusty photo of fellow Brundian Andre Bienvenue. Huzzah!

Andre Bienvenipple.

Civil rights photos, and stuff from Lafayette's racist past

I recently saw these newly unearthed civil rights era photos, and they are amazing. They're all from the Birmingham, AL area from the late 50's to about 1965.

This is Rev. Fred Shuttleworth being blocked from entering the whites-only room at the bus station. That dude is such a badass! They bombed his house, they bombed the bus he was on, beat him, arrested him, yet he never backed off.


Talk about not having the law on your side. This is the Alabama State Police in 1965. The white mobs in the photos look absolutely EVIL.

You should check out the rest of the photos on that site. They will make you realize how different things were back then and how little we, as young'uns born later, really understand the magnitude of the changes. They got me thinking about what Lafayette would have been like back then. I mean, I know it would have been segregated, but was this kind of crazy stuff going on in Lafayette back then too? It would be very interesting to see photos from then.

Anyway, here are a couple of things that I've been meaning to scan and post for a while. They're interesting for their racism. Nothing as crazy as those Birmingham photos, but still interesting because of the Lafayette connection.

This is a receipt from Buquor's Cleaners from 1943. At first glance, not too much out of the ordinary, except that the prices are really cheap. However, look closely at the bottom. I won't spoil it, just click on the photo to enlarge and check it out. What the fuck, we were in the middle of the largest war in history and black people were fighting for America just like white people. And the owners apparently felt it was important enough to print shit like this on their receipts. Fuck Buquor's. I wonder how many freshly cleaned white robes they had hanging up behind the counter.



I found this in my old house. It's a Valentine's card. It's crazy to think that this kind of bullshit was at one time considered perfectly acceptable.




These are from an old map of Lafayette. I can't find a date on it, but judging from the cars in the cover photo, I'm guessing either late 50's or early 60's. It's weird seeing all of these sites marked as "colored" on the map. Holy Rosary is on Carmel Ave. and is now abandoned. It's a cool place to explore if you're into that sort of thing. The colored park is Heymann Park off of Surrey by the airport.



I found it interesting that even the housing projects were segregated. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it seems strange. The colored project is the one that's on Simcoe between Louisiana and Pinhook. It's a real shithole these days. (If you ever need some ghetto drugs though, just drive down Simcoe past the entrance, go about a block, turn around in a driveway so the local dealers can see you, and head back to the entrance. Found that out while looking for my dog.) The white project is the one that's across from the post office on Moss Street by the tracks and the golf course.

Well, I think that's enough racism for today.