Feed the Monster
My friend, Stephanie Ehrlich, is debuting her one-woman show titled ‘Feed the Monster’ this Saturday at LA MAMA. It promises to be a rousing affair. Here’s some additional details:
What if Grace Slick grew up an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn? She’d hit the road and morph into mock-rock-goddess Rita Emerson! Sing along on Rita’s journey to stardom and back. It’s a musical tale of sex, jugs and rock-n-roll.
Even better is that after the show, The Flying Change is hosting the official after-party at Rockwood Music Hall Stage 1. I’ll be playing some new tunes with Rob DiPietro on drums, Rob Jost on bass, and Matt Ray on piano. Our show starts late so get there around 1AM after you’ve seen Stephanie debut Feed the Monster.
Click here to buy tickets from Ticketweb
Slimming Down
We played a late show last night at Rockwood. 11pm on a Sunday. You’re not going to get a lot of working stiffs out at that time. Which was sort of the point. I wanted to try some new songs, play with a different arrangement and see what happened, all without the pressure of having to deliver 80 people on a packed Thursday night.
Singer/Songwriter Reviews
The new EP Singer/Songwriter is at press right now and reviews are coming in. My two favorites come from Magnet and Fensepost. Magnet posted the first track, Singer, on their website and had this little gem of wisdom to impart:
Jacobs shuns the acoustic strumming and anguish-laden lyrics in favor of a more upbeat change of pace with funky, electronic beats a la LCD Soundsystem and the repeated line “I quit my job” on “Singer,” which you can download below. Last year, our hearts were aching; this year, we just wanna dance.
And then Ron Tremblath from Fensepost came in with some great words today.
But, let’s call it as it is folks: A poet, a true artist at that, is in love with defiance, dancing, and pop culture. And he found an absolutely splendid way to make this happen. The songs rock, and can be enjoyed by a wide audience. That is all that really matters here. You just can’t find originality like Jacob’s The Flying Change anymore.
Good vibrations abound.
Today’s Running Mix: The Three Bridges
I ran 12 miles this morning in some brutal heat. Here’s the route. I call it the three bridges. Over the Brooklyn. Back over the Manhattan. Up to Billyburg, back to Manhattan, then home over the Brooklyn. Here’s the mix I made. A mixture of guilty pleasures. And more guilty pleasures. Listen, if you don’t like Kelly Clarkson, you’re a commie. A red. A fellow traveler.
1. Drunk Girls (Holy Ghost! Remix) – LCD Soundsystem
2. All My Friends – Franz Ferdinand covering LCD
3. Boy From School (Live) – Hot Chip
4. On Melancholy Hill – Gorillaz
5. Boomerang (Original Mix) – Dune
6. In My Arms – Mylo
7. My Girls – Animal Collective
8. Make Light – Passion Pit
9. Kids – MGMT
10. Hot N Cold – Katy Perry
11. Mr. Brightside – Killers
12. Otto’s Journey – Mylo
13. Rise – Soul Providers
14. Song 2 – Blur
15. Dancing in the Dark – Bruce
16. Goin Against Your Mind – Built To Spill
17. Under the Influence – Chemical Brothers
18. Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
19. Da Funk – Daft Punk
20. Since U Been Gone – Kelly Clarkson
21. Television Rules the Nation / Crescendolls – Daft Punk
22. Disturbia – Rihanna
23. (When You Gonna) Give It Up To Me – Sean Paul featuring Keyshia Cole
24. Beautiful Girls – Sean Kingston
25. Nowhere Again – Secret Machines
26. Crayon – Manitoba (I guess it’s Caribou now)
27. I Stand Corrected – Vampire Weekend
I put it on shuffle so all the cheesy songs at the end really popped up all over the place. I will say that exercising to that Katy Perry song is invigorating. The chorus is like a musical orgasm.
Mercury Lounge Show Diary
So we played our first show at the legendary Mercury Lounge last Tuesday. The show went pretty well. The gig was set for 7pm on a Tuesday night and the club was looking for at least 40 paid guests for them to ‘feel good’ about the evening. We drew 60 paid. The cold hard facts of the club scene in New York is that the sound is somewhat irrelevant to the draw. You can be farting into the microphone but if you bring the crowds, they’ll likely have you back.
So we brought the people. A lot of great friends came out of the woodwork and people that I hadn’t expected to show up. That was a great feeling.
The club itself was great too. After playing the last couple shows at Rockwood, the change of scenery was nice. Whereas at Rockwood, the stage is tiny and mostly dominated by a grand piano, the stage at Mercury is spacious. Cavernous even. There was room for all 13 people in the band and we didn’t feel squeezed. That was great.
We also got a soundcheck and people later commented that it was the best sounding show of any that we’ve had. Also great.
The only weird thing was that the room is so big that even though we had about 60-70 people in there, from the stage it felt strangely empty. There was a big pocket of emptiness right in front and that hampered the transmission of the vibe back to the stage. So it felt kind of lonely and isolated up there. I’m used to being right on top of everyone – the band, the crowd, and having that energy be contagious. It was harder to capture it from a distance. I guess something I’ll have to get used to.
The set itself was good. I think we’ve played better and been tighter. But there was some definite highlights.
Setlist was
1. Broken Bow
2. Colorado Drugs
3. Don’t Look Away
4. Everyone Is From Somewhere
5. Life Is Hard
6. Hold My Heartache
7. Someone Great
8. Vicodin
9. Dirty White Coats
10. If You See Something
11. Valentine’s Day
My personal favorites were Vicodin and Valentine’s Day. Vicodin was loud and raucous as usual but we have a nice change of pace in the second chorus that Benji, our new second guitarist, and Matt on piano take the lead on. It sounded great. And then we ended the song and I was ad-libbing some lyrics and a bit of a new melody and it kind of died out but still had a sparkle to it. I was digging it.
Valentine’s Day is just energy and swells. Tension and release. Waves. Waves of different sizes depending on the point in the song, depending on how I was feeling, depending on how the different players are playing together. It’s nice to have that possibility in the songs. I like stretching out these songs live and letting them breathe and finding some musical moments and emotion in them and letting it all hang out. Felt good and felt real.
The trick with having so many people in the band, and something I’ll be working on, is points of emphasis. Everyone can’t play on every song and I think we need to keep working on moments in each song where different people can shine and kind of step up and take the lead and be willing to share that spotlight. The wall of sound that is happening right now has its place but it can also be overwhelming.
So the show was good. More than any other show I’ve played recently, I guess it felt somewhat workmanlike. Felt like we needed to get some things done and we mostly accomplished them and there will be other shows where we’ll look to evolve and incorporate some new songs.
But for now we played a good show and it’s on to the next.
It’s Out There
Yesterday, Team Clermont and gang sent out the first press release announcing the new EP, Singer/Songwriter. For the first time, these two little songs that I’ve been listening to a lot, and going back and forth on with a few people, but which actually many people haven’t heard, are now out there in the ionosphere, floating through the internet.
That’s a strange feeling. The limits begin to impose themselves once that happens. Before it’s out there, when you’ve just finished recording something, you can be in love with it and imagine that somehow these little melodies will sweep through the nation and light the world on fire and we’ll all be bobbing our heads along and singing “I quit my job” over and over and things will become like a phenomenon like beanie babies or the iPad or something.
There is so much limitless possibility in that universe that you can create.
And now, after the songs start to slip out there, and people start to hear them, things become a bit different. Now the songs, your children, are out there competing in the real world. And they’ll have some successes. And they’ll have some failures. And reality will begin to impose itself in its way. Coldly and dispassionately with a few little surprises here and there to keep you guessing and keep you interested.
I imagine it’s the way that people may feel when their little children are very young and so adorable and cute and there’s all this possibility about what they might be when they grow up. And, of course, they’ll be beautiful and wonderful regardless. But somehow, as they age, and as we all become adults, reality begins to assert itself. Problems, successes, all those things. [Ed. note: jesus f-ing christ dude. will you stop with the bumming me out all the time. go for a walk or something.]
Okay, I’ll stop. Point is, I think these songs are good. I hope the rest of the universe thinks so too. We’re building a special page that will have tons of good things on it including remix kits for anyone that wants them, an ability to make your own cover, lyrics, about the song stuff, all kinds of crap. So stay tuned.
Good luck, kids. May you make something of this world.
