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

The band had slowly been growing in size.  We added a violin player, a percussionist, even a second guitarist for the last show at the Mercury Lounge.  14 people.  It’s a big production.  It’s expensive to do.  But, also, with so many people, it was feeling a little less magical and a little less organic.  After doing a much smaller show for Paul’s birthday, featuring just me, Matt Ray and Noah on guitar, I wanted to try something where there wasn’t as much pageantry and where we could really focus on organically making music.

The experiment was a success.

The band was me, Noah, Matt, Marc Dalio on drums and Paul singing backup.  That still sounds like a big band but it was small by our standards.  Felt much more like a band.  A bunch of like minded individuals.  It was easier to find a cohesion. A harmony.  A stomping and a rollicking and a good thing going.  I’d say the only drawback was that we played a bunch of new songs and those songs required me to play a lot of guitar and I’ve grown to not really love playing the guitar so much while I sing.  It’s better and I can really concentrate and I don’t screw up the rhythms. 

We played a bunch of new songs that have become finalists for the final tracklisting on Living at the Movies, whenever it finally gets recorded.  They’ll get tighter as we go but the energy was definitely there.  Some notes for those at home and the setlist:

1. Anywhere At All
One way I write is by turning down a song really low by another artist and then singing over it.  It’s strange.  At very low volumes the song shifts and my ears pick up different things and construct their own melody.  It’s not even the same chord changes necessarily. My brain just assembles something into something else and it becomes original. So this song was inspired by a Deerhunter song “Twilight at Carbon Lake”.   One of my favorite new songs.  Just a very natural flowing rolling chorus. 

2. A Difficult Equation
This is one of about three songs I wrote all in a row one afternoon at the old sublet.  The highlight of this tune is two-fold. The verse where Matt Ray wrote this very beautiful part originally on the glockenspiel.  Sounds like a Wilco song I think.  Forget which one.  Maybe Ashes of American Flags.  Then the bridge.  It’s weird.  Bridges are so obviously forced mechanisms.  But you realize why you need them when you’re building a song.  They’re necessary.  They’re an other that brings it back to the home.  Anyway, this bridge is very emotional and pure and real and I like it.

3. Sorry Ghost
A slow waltz about apologizing.  Started with the phrase “The best part of hell … is being dead”.  That’s dark I guess.  But it’s also kind of funny.  A touch of humor. 

4.  Missanthropy
Where we steal the refrain from the Digital Underground.  “Hey yo stop what you’re doin cuz I’m about to ruin” and we turn that into the chorus.  Some people like.  Others don’t.  But it gets us going. 

5. Dirty White Coats
We brought Katie up to play some parts.  Worked really well.  Emphasis on oboe for a moment without having the full-on shebang that we normally have.  We sped up the tempo into the tempo that I had originally written for it.  Always fun to play.  New life into the song.

6. There Is A Light
I wrote this song last year when my grandfather passed away.  A lot of people dig it.  Then on the other hand much of the imagery is pretty religious which surprises me because I’m not really that religious.  It could almost pass for a Christian song.  Given that I’m a Jew, it’s sort of strange.  But regardless it’s real to me.  I miss that man every day.  The line I like is thus: “There is a book etched in the age when all things are written.  And everything good goes on for long.”  Even if someone wasn’t rich or famous there is a catalogue of the kharma they created somewhere.  It counts to be a great person and a loving father and husband, no matter what else happens in this world.

7. Colorado Drugs (Slow)
No matter how much we tried to slow this down, the song comes out rocking and huge.  It was fun.  Noah did a great job on this tune.

8. Broken Bow
Old reliable.  Still best song I’ve ever written.  I’m starting to feel washed up I guess.

9. Vicodin
We were going to play something else but then I got embarrassed and then we ripped into Vicodin and it was great.

10. Oh My God
But then we ended up playing the other thing anyway.  This song may not ever be recorded but my guess is that it’s going to be a crowd pleaser for awhile.  Good times USA.

Bottom line is that we pulled a good one.  The band felt cohesive and tight and the whole thing came off as I’d hoped.  Those are the kinds of shows you want to do more of.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We have been having a lot of great musicians and artists do remixes for the album, Pain Is A Reliable Signal.  The list to date includes Alex Lauterstein (Burning a Horse), John P Hastings (The Mayo Clinic), Nancy Hess (Dirty White Coats) and now Ezekiel Honig.

Zeke is an incredibly accomplished producer, composer, and artist who runs two record labels (Anticipate Recordings and Microcosm Recording), plays all over  the world and is a general bad ass.  His most recent full length is Surfaces of  Broken Marching Band, released on Anticipate in October 2008.

His take on “If You See Something” is playful, languid and beautiful.  More on that in a bit.  Here’s the interview with Zeke that we did to get some additional insights on the remix which he actually calls a “rework” and which feels nicer, actually.

1. Describe your background and how you came to be working in music

My activity in music began with DJing when I was 20, playing predominantly drum’n’ bass records for a few years, and then slowly moving more into house and techno of the minimal and deep variety.  My production began really as an extension of DJing, of wanting to make tracks that I might play at a gig.  That changed over a couple years as I realized the music I was making gravitated towards the minimal, melodic, sound design-heavy and less functional end of the spectrum from a DJ perspective, so I embraced that quietness without losing  the influence of the 4/4 dark club vibe, keeping it muted and low to varying degrees across time and releases.  I think things have kept moving in a musique concrete, field recording inspired direction but the initial push came from early-mid 90’s electronic dance music culture in NYC.  There have been some shifts along that continuum.

2. Who are your primary influences?

My process is influenced equally by John Cage, Pierre Schaefer, Matthew Herbert, the Perlon label (particularly Dimbiman), Paradox, deep house music in whatever definition you’d like to use, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, Charlie Kaufman, Andrei Tarkovsky and the act of listening to sound that happens randomly around me, towards the end of doing something with that material.

I think everything influences you in your work if you let it, and I think you should let it, while tempering its influence with your own.  I often think about how something can still affect one over the course of time even if the connection is loose and needs to be carefully traced back to its origins.  It’s still there, but it has become so translated and mutated and developed into something else, hopefully, which allows it to have a more nuanced effect, perhaps even one where the connection is only heard by the person making it.

3. What ideas were you working with on this remix?  What story or stories or images were you evoking or conjuring?

I wanted to make sure I only worked with the sounds from the song (though I added some kick drum) and pull out the latent material in there.  I’m interested in the stuff that’s hiding underneath, the potential to see what different directions they can take without necessarily altering their inherent character.   I’ve been excited about working with horn sounds since my last album (Surfaces of a Broken Marching Band) and I was happy that there were all these great pieces to utilize here.  There was something majestic about some of the phrases and I like the juxtaposition of that with chunky, muted rhythms and truncated sounds.  The contrast interests me.

4. What artists or albums have you been listening to recently?

The last things I purchased are older albums by Polmo Polpo, Tarentel and Radian.  That is maybe a decent cross section of music I like.  I’ve been rotating the last couple albums from Do Make Say Think lately and Tape is a band I have on heavy rotation, but I tend to listen to music less often these days than I used to.  It comes and goes in phases.  Sometimes any music can be too much and I need to listen to the sounds around me instead.

5. What’s next and upcoming for Ezekiel Honig?

Just finished sound design for a short film, slowly working on my next album, and lining up some possibilities for exhibitions and shows in the next year or so.  I have some new audiovisual projects I want to give a try and this might be the time for it.

So please put it on your calendar.  And expect big things from the show.  I’ll be thinking of how to make it as great as possible.

The Flying Change
The Mercury Lounge
Tuesday, May 25th, 7pm
237 Houston Street
New York, NY

Yes, we hope to see you there, my friends.

I often wonder whether this increasingly public existence will mean that we are tearing ourselves down more and more often, as embarrassing facts about our personal lives inevitably surface, or whether our standards, in particular our professional standards, will evolve and perhaps become more accommodating.

Because, as more and more behavior becomes public, we, as a society are faced with two choices.  We can either try to reach new levels of shock, dismay and disappointment as we learn that so-and-so has some skeletons in their cupboard — and take appropriate action — or we can learn to live and let live.

To the point, should a kid graduating from college hide all their Facebook photos that involve them going to a party or drinking alcohol in excessive quantities or doing something lewd and lascivious?  I guess it depends how lewd.  Should an employer do a full background search and discover that that kid’s Twitter feed once made a joke that was mildly off-color?  What if their profile picture on their IM handle is something strange or funny?

We’re in the midst of a changing of the guard on these issues.  But my hope and preference is that we become slightly more human about our humanity and that, as we do more and more things in public, rather than expecting people to walk every line perfectly, or to calculate every action so that there are never any mistakes, we become more accepting and tolerant and aware that people are people.  They’re going to have outside interests.  And senses of humor.  And pasts.  And they probably won’t have lived in a monastery their whole lives.

Convergence.  It can’t just be that we use privacy settings to keep all the important people away from the less than perfect things we’ve done in life.  It seems that it must require that the expectations important people have need to adjust to the world as it is today.

And no, this isn’t coming particularly from any personal grievance or experience.  Just, you know, one of those terribly fascinating (and perhaps frivolous) thoughts that percolate in my brain from time to time.