Courtesy of Left Out Counties

The talk of the town after The Maldives Christmas show on Friday night was Hey Marseilles 10 minute holiday song medley/orgy featuring a seriously sick flow by Sir Thomas Gray from Champagne Champagne and stage-full of randy Christmas elves.  Sound on the Sound was lucky enough to hear the medley twice that night as the band warmed up downstairs in the Neumos’ green room and then again on stage. This is a video of the festive warm up, it’s missing the naughty elves but none of the holiday spirit. Special thanks to Philip Kobernik of Hey Marseilles for letting us post the backstage video.

And happy holidays to you and yours from Sound on the Sound. Thanks for celebrating another great year of local music with us! We can’t wait to discover and share more with you in the coming new year.

Unless this happens to be the only music blog you read, I’m sure you’ve heard that The Thermals took time out of their Pitchfork Festival set last weekend to cover four 90’s rock songs. Truthfully, because I am a huge dork and a total child of 90’s ‘alternative rock’, this excited me more than any other report out of what sounded like an amazing Pitchfork festival. If someone’s going to cover 90’s alt rock, The Thermals seem just the band to do it. It’s the kind of on-stage Merry Prankster move that has me convinced that no band is having more fun than The Thermals right now. Because it certainly takes some sort of perverse levity to play Green Day’s “Basket Case” in front of a Pitchfork crowd.

Seeing that these lovable PDX pop-punks are playing the Main Stage of the Capitol Hill Block Party (Saturday 7:30pm) I’m hoping  that we get treated to our own set of 90’s covers….perhaps even Seattle themed? They’ve already got one cover down, the band also played Nirvana’s “Sappy” at the Pitchfork Fest.

Since we’re already choosing Built to Spill’s set list, one can dream of doing the same with The Thermals. So, what 90’s covers, especially Seattle 90’s covers, would you like to hear The Thermals play at this weekend’s Capitol Hill Block Party? I’d love to hear them take on Murder City Devil’s “Dance Hall Music”, play anything off Bleach, and for hilarities sake, Candlebox’s “You.”

The Staredown ::: Photos by Josh

What do you get when you throw a bunch of cigarette-smoking, beer-guzzling, rock-n’-roll barflies out on a field for a Super Bowl Sunday game of backyard two-hand-touch? A whole lot of sucking wind. Thanks to a tip off by Don Slack, yesterday we headed into the cold in the hours leading up to the Super Bowl where the Moondoggies and the Maldives had convened for such a game.

While we didn’t hang around to the end (we needed to make a whiskey run ourselves before the liquor store shut down), after some half-time imbibing it looked like Maldives were finally starting to throw a wrench in the Moondoggies’ strategy of using drummer Carl’s big arm for long yard plays. I doubt the Moondoggies, who showed up two hours early to shine their game and were calling plays (”Diamond! Diamond!”), were going to go down too easily though.

Flickr: Whiskey Bowl II - The Maldives vs. Moondoggies

We were thrilled to wake this morning to a letter/declaration from Stu Ridesworthy about our very own Birthday Bash, and had to share it with you.

Greetings Seattle rock n roll types,

I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on 2008. Ah, 2008. The year that Vindaloo, Seattle’s “Loudest rock band” did not play one single show in Seattle.

I’ll tell you, I wept every day from my vacation Chateau in the South of France, and cried for months in my bottles of Dom Perignon from my endless wine cellar (while doing my super-model girlfriend).

By mid July, it was all I could do to muster up my dignity and take Eva Mendes out for a night on the town in Athens Greece via the private Concord.

I fear I may have been a bit of a downer on that little outting, as all I could talk about was our dearly departed rock n roll damnation trio over our Beluga caviar and bottle of 52 Chateau Lafite.

In August, Ben wrote to me to tell me that Iceage Cobra was having a swell time on the road and that they had scheduled their final show for King Cobra in late September.

The same month Matt contacted me in regards to the final tuition payment to Harvard, as he was finishing up his doctorate in advanced applied rocket mechanics, and their application to the guitar amplifier. I was glad to hear from him and promptly wired him the 650 thousand dollars from Vindaloo’s Guatamalan offshore account.

It was in December, of 2008 that I was contacted by a Ms. Abbey of Sound on The Sound and asked if Vindaloo, per chance would be interested in doing a birthday bash show for her well known Blog.

I wired Ben the information, who was, at the time,  on tour playing back-up-lead guitar with Ozzy Osbourne and Zack Wild.

46 seconds, there was a knock at my door. It was ben.

He had taken the first flight from Las Vegas, after recieving my message and promptly confirmed in these exact words:

“Hell yes, I’m gonna throw down like a tornado full of semi’s for the SOTS b-day bash!”

Jeff and Matt soon confirmed afterwards with similar tornado/semi after-comments, ( I believe Matt said something about a intergalactic death ray mounted to a semi,… in a tornado of lazers…but I digress)…

I made my official confirmation to Ms. Abbey after returning from my retreat in Holland.

With all that said, myself and the entire staff over here at Mustache Ride LLC, in beautiful New York City’s 5th Avenue Mustache Ride Pavillion, would like to extend our warmest regards to all attending the show.

And I hope to see all of you; January 16th, 2009 at the Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle

-Rock On Seattle,

Stu Ridesworthy

Owner and CEO Mustache Ride Records, LLC.

Hey friends, family, and devoted readers — since we know you are all super duper busy we wanted to remind you now, when it is a month away, to save the following dates to get your face rocked off with and by Sound on the Sound.

January 14th: A SOTS Birthday Show w/A Gun That Shoots Knives at Neumo’s

January 16th: The 2nd Annual Sound on the Sound Blue Moon Birthday Bash

A few of our favorites, old and brand new will be taking to the stage to celebrate Josh and my big 28th Birthday. We’ll get to announcing the full line-ups in the next week or so, when everything is ironed out but I can promise you this…these shows are going to be BAD-ASS and a huge party you’d be foolish to even think of missing.

So…put the dates on your calendar now and started doing what we’re doing…counting down the days!!

Ballard has never looked better.

photo by Josh

More from the completely mad Monotonix Matinee later today …!

Monotonix ::: Photos by Josh

Prior to Monday we hadn’t been down to the Exhibition Hall stage, but we’d heard a few pretty rowdy shows had gone down. Typically it’s the venue where they put the rock and hard rock acts with a large youth appeal, and this year was no exception with bands like These Arms are Snakes, Flobots, Dan Deacon, Fall of Troy and Anti-Flag among the most popular on the stage’s lineup. It’s an enclosed space with a stage set far back from the crowd and some of the most professional looking crowd management people around, so it’s an ideal place for controlling (and corralling) the pre-shaving masses.

Before arriving I had a gentleman’s bet going with Abbey about whether the festival would allow the Monotonix to set their kit and amps up in the crowd, me thinking that they had to allow it since that was a huge part of their shtick. Entering the venue we were greeted by a docile and young crowd, lounging around the drum kit, idly awaiting their slaughter. Security was trying to keep an area open behind the band that no one could enter, with the space being eagerly defended by two royal blue shirts. As new people entered they asked them over the PA to find a place to sit on the floor until the start.

Since I had a photo pass on, the crowd management lead for that stage, a hulk of a man in a dark blue shirt, came over and informed me of the agreed up situation for the show: Don’t go in the area behind the drums, they won’t be lighting anything on fire due to fire marshal rules, and there won’t be any crowd surfing until the last two songs. I chuckled to myself as all I could think was it will be a miracle if they can control this crowd around the band, much less the band themselves once things got started. The trio arrived promptly on time, everyone rose to their feet, the introduction was given from the stage, and the music began.

If I said I was coming to see Monotonix for the music, I would be lying. It’s not clear to me how much of their lyrics are Hebrew and how much are English, but I hardly care. The single guitar player offers a high energy style, but when you’re in the thick of it, that’s all in the background. Everyone is riveted on what lead mischief maker Ami Shalev will do next. This day, for the first couple songs, he seemed happy to play with a 40 gallon garbage can.

I personally was one of the first objects of his wrath as Shalev made a circuit of his open space, staring down the crowd. As he reached the end of the line, he came up into my face and wrapped the cord around my neck for about five seconds, and I mugged him right back, no smile and no backing down. I’d thought before about what I’d do should such a situation occur, and I’m glad I didn’t crumble (see this guy). SPIN photographer Alex caught it, so look for the photo of me in SPIN next month (maybe).

By the end of the second song, order had degenerated and the crowd had closed in on the hopelessly outnumbered royal blue shirts. A random young girl suddenly sprouted atop the chaos, hovering in surprise as she scooted along a flurry of outstretched hands for about 20 seconds before being swallowed up again. Shalev would disappear in the crowd for a minute only to reappear suddenly standing atop the bass drum or sitting atop the drummer’s shoulders. The one time he did actually venture up onto to stage was pull things from his pants and moon the entire audience in hilarious fashion.

As the set moved into it’s fifth song and around it’s 12th minute, the crowd surfing had started. Both singer and guitarist were lifted into the air. About halfway through the song, an announcement came over the loudspeaker that the show was being ended, the lights came up, and the sound was cut. The band defiantly finished the song as a hail of middle fingers shot into the air and the crowd loudly refused to leave. Only after Shalev came up on stage and implored us all to depart in peace did the everyone concede it was over, a short 15 minutes after it had started.

Twice now I’ve been to a Monotonix show, and twice now they’ve been shut down early. When they return to the Comet Tavern for their just announced show on the 27th, I fully expect it to happen again.

Flickr: Monotonix at Bumbershoot 2008

Hot Lixx Hulahan ::: Photo by Josh

Hot Lixx Hulahan is your new Cuervo Black U.S. Air Guitar Champion. With just the right balance of showmanship, song selection and air guitar skillz, last week in San Fransisco Hot Lixx earned himself the spot at the U.S. representative at the Air Guitar championships held yearly in Finland. This is Hot Lixx’ second time representing the U.S. (his first was in 2006).

Witness what a winner looks like:

Flickr: 2008 Seattle Regional Final for the U.S. Air Guitar Championships

I spotted this amazing record yesterday at Sonic Boom while waiting for The Dutchess and The Duke. 

It really was too good/silly to not share with the rest of you. What makes me love it even more, is if you look closely, this is “The Wrestling Album II” — meaning this is a sequel or the second part in a series, which makes it EVEN MORE AMAZING. I may have to go back and start trying to build a complete collection.

So far, declaring AGTSK one of our favoritest bands has not cursed the band. In fact, they’ve continued their prolific song writing, releasing, and performing schedule since the night we first laid eyes on their costumed glory.

A Gun That Shoots Knives is preparing to unleash another great EP on Seattle in September, “The Future of Love.” However, you can get a delicious taste of the goofy greatness to come on the band’s Myspace Page. They uploaded four new songs to the page today, which if you catch as many AGTSK shows as I do, will be old favorites by now.

I was especially excited to see a proper metal version of “Drunk as Hell” make the cut for this album. Stubby can growl with the best of them and I love it–plus props to AGTSK for realizing the riff in that song–if only made a little heavier is a sick metal riff.

The band will be hosting a number of shows in the coming months to celebrate the release of the record. Of course, as with all A Gun That Shoots Knives news, we’ll let you know all about it.