Sound Stories & Interviews

Yes, this is the same Cake you're thinking of – the one that scored a handful of hits in the mid-to-late 1990s and has survived on our conscience by way of inclusion in movies and television shows. Somewhat unexpectedly, Cake has returned with what might be one of the Sacramento-based acts strongest offerings in Showroom of Compassion.

Pearl Dragon has some time to talk, but not a ton of time. He's taking a lunch break from his job at a pawnshop in south Seattle, so he calls in and I answer. But I have no idea who he is at first, mostly because his tone is that of an old friend calling to see if I can meet up for a beer or watch his dog or something.

My Top Ten Albums of 2010
BY KRIS, AFTERNOON DJ AT 92/9
1. Band of Horses – Infinite Arms
2. Broken Social Scene –
Forgiveness Rock Record
3. Menomena – Friend Or Foe
4. Against Me – White Crosses
5. The Black Angels –
Phosphene Dream
6. Delorean – Subiza
7. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
8. The New Pornographers – Together
9. Fitz & The Tantrums – Pickin' Up The Pieces
10. Sleigh Bells – Treats

1. Larry and His Flask behind Ranch Records:
It was Record Store Day, so Ranch invited customers to join them behind the store for a show, headlined by Larry and His Flask.

The Reverend Horton Heat should, and probably is, best known for essentially creating a genre of their own by taking rockabilly sounds and layering them on top of an aggressive punk rock foundation. Some have called this “psychobilly,” which is about as ridiculous (albeit hilariously so) a genre classification as there is in popular music, but whatever you want to call it, it's hard to look past this band when inspecting the best live acts of the past three decades. These guys didn't invent the rockabilly sound, but they sure as hell made it more interesting.

My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, the first record in more than a decade from Swans, is polished, driving, contemplative and bizarre.

The first thing I learned about Dick Dale came to me around the age of 12 on a school bus by way of a pair of headphones, the cord of which led to a since-forgotten contraption known as a Discman, which my friend kept on his person at all times. The sound coming through the wire was something like a laser beam shooting through the side of the Beach Boys station wagon. It was surf music, but there was no corniness or goofy hooks – it was all about pure, direct and astounding musicianship that sometimes didn't even sound like a guitar. By the time the bus got to school, I'd discovered a new guitar idol – one not named Hendrix.

Somewhere Linda, Karen, Mary and Lisa are wishing they never met Gary Wilson. The unbelievably strange cult singer is haunted by the same girl-ghosts on Electric Endicott who have stalked his psyche and dominated his songwriting on his past three records. Wilson is still obsessed with those ex-girlfriends. But on Electric Endicott, the freakish experimentation and stalker-talk that hooked avant-garde fans in the past is lost in between plinking keyboard lines and tinny drum machines.

Existential and profound may not be two qualities that come to mind when most people think of hip-hop, but they probably haven't heard of Brother Ali, who once proclaimed himself in a rap the “cross between John Gotti and Mahatma Gandhi.”
While Ali's no stranger to the rap game, he owes allegiance to the indie label Rhymesayers where he's among a tight-knit family of other Minnesota-based rappers like Atmosphere and Evidence.