culled from the forthcoming ‘Just Farr A Laugh, Vol. I & II’ double CD.

See live footage from the DVDs, package shots, a compressed version of the mastering videos, more.

Mission Of Burma EPK (QuickTime movie)

This will take a minute or two to load in your browser. If you prefer a faster load and lower quality, then Youtube it:

Mission Of Burma – “Eyes Of Men”, puled from the vaults by Kino Video. Note the proliferation of pokla dots amongst the suave audience members .

Though I can’t personally vouch for a venue called The Big Chill House (like we really need another nightspot with a bunch of guys who look like Tom Berenger), this is most certainly an event I wish I could attend.

(Jicks, minutes before taking the Satyricon stage, snapshot by Miwa Okumua)

(Jicks, letting the MySpace Secret Show out of the bag)

I’m lying here flattened by a cold, so decided it was time to catch up on my food posts. Last weekend (and I mean all weekend) I tried my first Thai curry. This time I used David Thompson’s Thai Cuisine, which Helen lent me. It’s an Australian cookbook that unnervingly uses American-sounding cups, tablespoons and teaspoons… except I’m convinced these are not identical to our measures. So I used Su-mei Yu as a corrective comparison.

Thai curries are essentially pastes fried in coconut cream. I cracked a few coconuts, extracted the flesh, ground it up in food processor with some water, and then strained the results through cheesecloth. After refrigeration, it separates into a thin liquid (coconut milk) and a thick one (coconut cream). You take this cream and then “crack” it again by simmering it until the water boils off, at which point it separates into coconut solids and coconut oil. The oil is the frying medium for the curry paste.

Since, as usual, I was pursuing purism, I created the curry paste from scrach as well. This involves pounding 20 separate ingredients in a Thai mortar and pestle. It’s an up-and-down pound, not a rotating grind (the latter produces a coarse paste). You pound the first ingredient until it becomes pulp, then add the next one, and so on. The most recalcitrant were the kaffir lime zest and the shallots – I thought they’d never subsume into the paste.

from left to right, bottom row (the order in which they were added): garlic, salt, coriander root, roasted and ground cumin and coriander seeds, turmeric; then from left to right, top row: green chilis, galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime zest, red shallots, white peppercorns, and shrimp paste

Once you’ve performed the twin, and mighty, tasks, of extracting sufficient coconut cream and preparing the paste, the rest is child’s play. You fry the paste in the cream, then add the chicken (and in this case, red bell pepper) and the coconut millk extracted earlier, simmer till done, then scatter Thai basil, some freshly chopped chilis and torn kaffir lime leaves on top. I’m going to try red curry next – it’s got more ingredients in the paste.

Stonehenge is one of the earliest examples of man independently creating something to contribute to their culture. Some of the stones carved out by hand measured 8ft wide, 5ft thick and 25ft long weighing between 20/30 tones each and were transported 20 miles north of Stonehenge by foot. The remaining pieces came from Wales called Bluestones which weighed 4 tones each, sixty were carved out and carried approximately 150 miles to Wiltshire where they were erected, which is a testament to the limitless hard work that goes into something you care about. The landmark is something people have enjoyed mentally and physically exploring for centuries, and on a personal note is something I always looked forward to seeing on my bus ride to Glastonbury Festival every year! Now Stonehenge is being forced to take a back seat to the surplus population of supermarkets. This brilliantly written article I found in The Guardian goes into the matter far more, if you get a chance it’s worth a read! Thanks!

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/heritage/story/0,,2262215,00.html

The three-night free-for-all ends tonight with an Amoeba San Francisco in-store!

Tonight! FREE! All-Ages!
Wednesday, March 5th at 7:00pm

Amoeba Music San Francisco

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p.s. did anyone else notice the magazine cover above Stephen’s shoulder and the resemblance between the two? I only noticed because I was zooming in to get a better look at Stephen’s bad-ass glasses.

(photo by Miwa Okumura, shitty crop job by me)

Painstakingly fished from the Live at The Bradford Ballroom, March 12, 1983 DVD that accompanies Vs.

(Beth and Adam from Times New Viking, using the Bowery Ballroom stage as a mere tune up for Austin’s super swank Soho Lounge. Pic swiped from Rafe Baron’s Flickr page)

I won’t be wearing a “Welcome To Austin : Now Fuck Off” tee next week, mostly because a) I hate slogans and b) there’s too much ketchup on the shirt to wear it in public (again). However, in the interests of keeping you, our close friends, fully informed, we’ve assembled as complete a list as possible of all the events various Matador recording artists are playing next week during the South By Southwest Clusterfuck ™. Please be advised that we’re gonna list the officially sanctioned SXSW events separately from the day parties, after hours bashes, gigs in non-participating clubs, etc., because we don’t wanna mislead anyone. Much like everything good in this world, the below gigs are subject to change. If you can’t get in, there’s undoubtedly something else going that’s not nearly as crowded a few feet away.

OFFICIAL SXSW “Showcases” (like plastic lucite!)

Wednesday, March 13 – Shearwater, Club DeVille, 1am (Brooklyn Vegan party)

Thursday, March 14 – Yo La Tengo, Austin Music Hall, 9:30pm (with My Morning Jacket)
Thursday, March 14 – Jay Reatard, Vice, 302 E. 6th Street 10:30pm
Thursday, March 14 – Times New Viking, Soho Lounge, 217 E. 6th St., 12:30am (Siltbreeze showcase)

Friday, March 15 – Earles & Jensen Present The History Of The Prank Call, Esther’s, 525 E. 6th St., 10:30pm (Super Deluxe showcase)

UNOFFICIAL, NOT CONNECTED TO SXSW-AT-ALL (OTHER THAN TAKING ADVANTAGE) SHOWS :

Wednesday, March 12 – Shearwater, The Mohawk, 4pm (Austinist/Gothamist party)
Wednesday, March 12 – Times New Viking, La Zona Rosa, 10pm (Free Yr Radio/Urban Outfitter party)

Thursday, March 13 – Jay Reatard, French Legation Museum, 5pm (Other Music party)
Thursday, March 13 – Times New Viking, French Legation Museum, 6pm (Other Music party)

Friday, March 14 – Jay Reatard, Emo’s Main Room, 1:30pm (Pitchfork/Windish Booking party)
Friday, March 14 – Yo La Tengo, French Legation Museum, 4pm (Other Music party)
Friday, March 14 – Times New Viking, Emo’s, 4pm (Pitchfork/Windish Booking party)
Friday, March 14 – Jay Reatard, Vice Day Stage, 1106 E. 11th Street, 4pm
Friday, March 14 – Shearwater, French Legation Museum (Other Music party)

Saturday, March 15 – Shearwater, Mess With Texas 2, Waterloo Park, 1:30pm
Saturday, March 15 – Earles & Jensen, Mess With Texas 2, Waterloo Park, 2:30pm
Saturday, March 15 – Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater, Spiderhouse Cafe, 2908 Fruth Street, 3pm
Saturday, Match 15 – Jay Reatard, Mess With Texas 2, Waterloo Park, 5:15pm
Saturday, Match 15 – Times New Viking, Waterloo Records instore, 3pm

(a full list of the official SXSW gigs)

(a nearly full collection of unofficial gigs, parties, etc.)

As you might’ve read via Pitchfork or Idolator,  Michael Kaminski of Akron, OH was arrested last weekend for trying to hold up a video store with a cologne bottle shaped like a gun. Why might PF  give a hoot about the Akron police blotter?  Well, as it turns out, Kaminski is a former member of NYC avant combo Cop Shoot Cop.

Or so I’m told. When I saw the PF headline, “Ex-Cop Shoot Cop Dude Attempts Boneheaded Robbery“, I thought, “no, not sweet globe-trotting Tod A.  Please don’t let it be the dashing David Quimet.  If Jack Natz or Phil Puleo are facing jail time, where can I send the cake with the file inside?”

But it wasn’t any of those guys. It was Michael Kaminski, who by virtue of being a replacement guitarist during the group’s 7th and final year of existance (please note that Kaminski is featured on none of CSC’s commercially available recordings)  has given rock bloggers around the globe a chance to sneeringly drop a band name they might not otherwise bother with.

While I’m sure some of you would just as soon file this story under “who gives a fuck?”, the PF thing bugs me. If Willie Alexander got pinched for failing to pay his parking tickets, I doubt the Boston papers would run a headline claiming “VELVET UNDERGROUND ROCKER JAILED”.

Granted, there’s something irresistable about a dude from a band called Cop Shoot Cop being nabbed with a faux firearm. Except the guy in question was barely a member and the fellows responsible for CSC’s surviving works, have not, to my knowledge, been charged with any felonies in the past 7 days.

The second of our ongoing series of videos of the Burma vinyl mastering process. See George Marino, Ray Janos and Rick Harte hold forth on lacquer formulations and the Neumann VMS-70 lathe (not VMS-72 as the subtitle has it).

SM, having a quiet moment at Seattle’s Sonic Boom last night prior to performing before a loud & loyal throng (pic by Miwa Okumura). ‘Real Emotional Trash’ is in stores and available on-line today, and the Jicks will be playing their no-longer secret MySpace show later tonight.

You may or may not have seen an item from last week in which Senator Barack Obama cited Matador TV obsession “The Wire” as his favorite programme (aspiring First Lady Michelle, however, prefers “The Dick Van Dyke Show”). And while that’s all well and good, in the interests of being totally fair about this specious pop culture stuff that has nothing to done with anyone’s ability to govern, I’d like to throw some much-needed street cred in the direction of Sen. Hillary Clinton.

As some of you might know, several years back when I was down on my luck, I resorted to eBay’ing some of my most prized possessions in the hopes of raising rent dough. My DVD copies of “Bring It On” and the not-nearly as successful sequel, “Bring It On Again”? Sold for a mere pittance. Autographed copies of the 2-issue print run of Patrick Amory’s Too Fun, Too Huge? The winning bid was $175 from a man in Vancouver (who sent a bad check.)

But one of the toughest items to part with was The Mentally Ill’s “Gacy’s Place” 7″, an Illinois scuzz classic that fetched $130 when eBayer “chelsea1980″ swooped in at the last minute. She claimed the single was a birthday gift for her mother, who supposedly considered herself something of a Chicago punk aficionado (the buyer insisted her Mom had once dated Naked Raygun’s Marco Pezzati), and had a particularly obsession for “rare records featuring Presidential wives on the front cover”.

Anyhow, I shipped the single to an address in Palo Alto and never thought much about it until now. But I’m not telling you who to vote for.

“Gacy’s Place” (mp3 courtesy Killed By Death)

Currently spending a lot of time in a blue Transit van trailing Band of Horses around the good and bad parts of Europe, The Cave Singers stopped off in London for a couple of shows and also what can only be described as a 48-hour gastronomic binge. Seriously, those guys are now several kilos heavier. Any longer with us and they might have had to be craned out of the Beggars flat.

Lucky crowds witnessed greatness at Oxford Street’s Metro and West London’s Bush Hall where Pete, Derek and Marty saw fit to air some new tunes along with the favourites from Invitation Songs to a grateful audience.

The band continue their European jaunt with Band of Horses. If you’re in the area, I heartily recommend you go check them out.

All dates with Band of Horses:

04-Mar – Main Vega, Copenhagen (Denmark)
05-Mar – Sticky Fingers, Gothenberg (Sweden)
06-Mar – Debaser Medis, Stockholm (Sweden)
07-Mar – Rockefeller, Oslo (Norway)
08-Mar – Folken, Stavenger (Norway)
10-Mar – Columbia Club, Berlin (Germany)
11-Mar – Mousouturn, Frankfurt (Germany)
12-Mar – Garage, Milan (Italy)
13-Mar – Abart, Zurich (Switzerland)
14-Mar – Le Romandie, Lausanne (Switzerland)
15-Mar – Botanique Orangerie, Brussels (Belgium)

Photo 1: Birthday boy Derek clearly delighted with his Soy-free cake. Taken from The Cave Singers blog.
Photo 2: The band rocking out at Bush Hall. Taken by me after one too many Long Island Ice Teas.

Tonight, Monday, March 3rd, at 11:00pm Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks will play an in-store at Sonic Boom Records in Seattle!

Its a Free, all-ages event, and the sweetest part is that you can pick up your copy of “Real Emotional Trash” immediately following the in-store…the minute it is released!

Monday, March 3rd at 11:00pm

Sonic Boom Records – Ballard location – 2209 NW Market St

(Mother Mercy, above, include no members, original or otherwise, from LA Guns, Faster Pussycat, Odin, D’Molls, Pretty Boy Floyd, Foxx or Reinkus Tide.)

The LA Times’ Neal Shah on the sort of legal wrangling that sounds terribly familiar to anyone who ever purchased a Dead Kennedys ticket and ended up watching Brandon Cruz.

Steve Riley is a survivor. At 51, he still plays the drums for L.A. Guns, a biker-themed hair-metal band famous mostly for once featuring Guns N’ Roses singer Axl Rose. Riley and first mate Phil Lewis, who sang L.A. Guns’ only Top 40 hit, “The Ballad of Jayne,” toured Australia last fall before joining Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil for a show in St. Paul, Minn.

Downe, 43, says he rejected an overture from Muscat to share the band’s name. “It’s my company. Someone from Starbucks is not going to go out and form another company called Starbucks.”

For perhaps the first and last time in his career, Downe has made a salient point. Perhaps Muscat should start a band called LA’s Best Guns?

1. Remove all sidewalk sheds. The aesthetic cost outweighs the alleged improvement in safety. The near-permanence of these fixtures (one per block at any given moment) is really due to fears of liability.

2. Restore conforming street signs in business-improvement districts.

3. Replace the ungainly green lamp posts in the Grand Central business-improvement district and replace them with cobras.

4. Remove all advertising and American flags from Grand Central Terminal. (The Beyer Blinder & Belle ‘restoration’ was much trumpeted for removing billboards – now there are more than ever. The old Kodak sign was much cooler.)

5. Make Vanderbilt Hall into a waiting area again – nobody wants to push through those stupid crafts fairs.

6. Remove concrete bollards around Grand Central on the viaduct; reopen Depew Place; reopen the taxi waiting area and remove the outdoor cafe.

7. Remove corporate and institutional banners festooning every block; forbid civic boosterism trumpeting NYC as ‘capital of the world’ or ‘the greatest city on earth’ – a great city doesn’t need to constantly remind people of its greatness.

8. Restore Amtrak service to Grand Central.

9. Reopen all secondary subway entrances and exits, as well as underground transfers between uptown and downtown trains.

10. Replace all compact fluourescent lamps in public places with incandescents.

Looks like the DeRogatis Backlashy Bandwagon cannot-drive-55. Video link swiped from Radosh. 

More and more I find myself captivated by the cuisine of the southwestern Indian state of Kerala. It is less sweet and meaty than the cuisines of northern India, and focuses instead on fish, green chilis, coconut, mustard seeds, and oddly, rice used as a seasoning. The tastes are fresh, nutty and crisp, like a breath of cool air. Another ingredient found in most dishes are curry or kari leaves, which have nothing to do with curry but are highly aromatic.

The plate above holds shrimp cooked in coconut milk, a Madhur Jaffrey recipe; I used canned milk (but a reputable brand recommended by Su-mei Yu); it is offset by an ingredient called kodampoli or fish tamarind, which is smoky and sour. Kodampoli is not tamarind at all and is hard to find – I used lemon juice.

The other dish is another Keralan favorite that I’ve written about here before, okra with yogurt. I could eat buckets of it.