Psst, PDP'ers, here's a scoop for you! Announcing the launch of Ruined Music, a concept that arose EIGHT HOURS AGO here in Brooklyn over bowls of Thai noodle soup! And is already on the internet! (Kinda.)

Ruined Music is (or will be) an online collection of stories about songs, bands, and albums that have been ruined by exes. You know: that band you went to see the week before the breakup, that song that was on That Mix, the record s/he gave you for Valentine's Day, the song that was playing at your candlelight anniversary dinner... the song you can't stand to hear ever, ever again.

We're looking for short (under 1,000 words-ish) stories about ruined music, and I emailed Liz about this today, but we're hoping to get the site up and running in a few weeks, and we'd like to have a good handful of stories from the get-go. Please email your story to ruinedmusic@gmail.com, oh PDP readers (for I trust you as I trust Liz, in terms of your intelligence and music appreciation skillz)! You may type the text into the body of the email or attach as a Word document; please, please, be sure to put at the top your name, your email and phone number, and the name of the specific song/artist/album you're writing about.

Let us know if you have any questions. Meanwhile, send in those stories. We figure this catharsis might help some people reclaim music they thought they'd lost forever.

(Ruined Music is a project of the Mayan Empire Media Empire, aka Mary and Bryan.)

Gram Rabbit says that it makes music to join a cult to. Last night, I think I was initiated into the cult.
Megan the Water Moccasin and I headed down to the Echo last night to see Gram Rabbit. That in itself says something, as I try to avoid clubs in the Silverlake/Echo Park area. Megan has been a bit more successful at avoiding hipster hell as last night marked her first experience at the Echo.
"Hey, Liz," she said to me over the phone. "I think I'm driving in front of the club, but there is no sign."
"Oh, yeah," I answered. "There is no sign. It's cooler that way."
I got the doorgirl to let me out of the club for a minute so that I could flag down Megan on Sunset, hop into her car and look for a parking spot. By the time we got back to the club, the line was almost all the way down the block, indicating that the show had already sold out. However, we already had our tickets, so we got to bypass the hours of watching cars speed around the bend of Sunset.
Inside, the club was packed with an odd mix of a crowd. Gram Rabbit is from Joshua Tree, which I think automatically makes for a large stoner following. However, the group's last two albums were championed by KCRW, the latest single is now being played on Indie 103.1 and they won the Best New Artist award from the LA Weekly last year. That said, amidst the stoners were assorted hipsters and NPR subscribers.
Gram Rabbit is definitely not a hipster band, though. My best guess is that you probably won't see this band listed next to Giant Drag and Moving Units on every LA My Space profile featuring a ridiculous, angular shag haircut. Gram Rabbit just is what it is and it's pretty damn near impossible to compare the band to anyone else. At times, the band leans towards electronic pop "Bloody Bunnies" and sometimes get a little acid-house sounding. Then the band will pull together something like "Angel Song," which is heavy on the California psyche sound and is reminiscent of that feeling lifelong LA residents get when driving around the desert at night for the first time (Q: What are those things in the sky? A: Stars). The band can do this, though, without missing a step. Even when they closed the set with a ho-down number, it still sounds like Gram Rabbit.
The fans, otherwise known as the Royal Order of Rabbits, are intense. Many showed up sporting rabbit ears. Most who didn't ended up with a pair by the end of the night, as the go-go dancers (dressed like scary, Donnie Darko bunnies) tossed handfuls out into the crowd. For the duration of the set, people were hopping around while staring all rabid rabbit-like at the stage. After the show ended, folks either stood around or paced, like they couldn't figure out what to do with themselves now that the show was over. In all honesty, I actually wished the set was a little longer. The band has such a diverse range of songs and is so entertaining onstage that the 45-minute (rough estimate of time) set seemed to pass by too quickly.

For those who think all My Space bands are crap, here are two that will change your mind.

Girl in a Coma
D. at Soft Communication was the first person I heard speak of this band's goodness. Consisting of three girls from San Antonio, Girl in a Coma's Smiths-fascination is evident in both its band name and sound. They are working on a record through Blackheart Records and hope to tour the west later this year.

Tim tipped me off to The Visions a month or so ago and I've been hooked ever since. The band actually reminds me more of The Divine Comedy than the Smiths, but they have a song called "Morrissey's Tongue." Hooking up with Morrissey is always good subject matter for songs.

Now, while you are perusing My Space, I suggest also checking out this profile. It's been a long time coming.

My favorite section of the LA Times is Opinion and that's primarily because the letters, on the whole, make me double over with laughter and cause hot coffee to rise from the back of my throat to my nose. Mmmm, smells like burning.
Anyhow, I wanted to point out this letter, which suggests cutting "ridiculous" subjects, like algebra, for students with no college intentions.
Although many kids (myself included) laughed when our teachers told us that we would have to use algebra in daily life, there is so much truth to this statement that I cringe at the thought of an adult making the claim for its uselessness. I was always terrible at math and a few weeks into Algebra II, my mother was called into a conference with my teacher, a stern football fan named Brother Paul, wherein it was decided that I would spend two afternoons a week writing equations on the blackboard until I could solve them. I hated every second of it, but now I'm really grateful that Brother Paul took the time to drill what I thought was crap into my head as I rely on algebra almost daily.
Algebra Liz-style Sample #1: If Record A plays at 128 beats per minute and Record B plays at 125 beats per minute, by what percentage must the pitch be adjusted so that Record B also plays at 128 BPM?
Algebra Liz-style Sample #2 : If one is to say that Editors sound like Interpol and Interpol sounds like Joy Division, then Editors sound like Joy Division (if a=c and b=c, then a=b).
Algebra Liz-style Sample #3: If my total trade-in credit is $100 I had to pay $25 to cover the difference between credit and purchase, how much was the sales tax?
I won't even get into the importance of science and world history. (Although, seriously, don't you have a greater appreciation of Franz Ferdinand the band when you know who Franz Ferdinand the person was?) Personally, I think schools should teach more algebra. They should also teach more science and history classes. Maybe then people will stop writing such asinine letters into the Times.

There are these two guys, Paulie and Leo, who used to live in LA but then picked up and moved to your city. They are cool. Out here, Paulie did a club called L Train and DJed at a bunch of other events around town. Leo was in a band called Cougar that was out of this world but, unfortunately, split a year or two ago. He also DJed and once made everyone go crazy with a Lime record he placed on the old Parlour turntables. Now, Leo has a project he describes as "ELO meets Bobby O." (I really have to hear this, Leo, hint hint) and they do a party called Rotten Apple. Said party is tonight. You should go.
ROTTEN APPLE @ FAT BABY
(upstairs & downstairs after bands)
THURSDAY, APRIL 20TH

$2 WELL DRINKS (1am-2am)
** TYLER (LCD Soundsystem & !!!) **
** JUSTIN (!!! & Out Hud) **
GERALD (Burnside Project / Crashin' In / Other Music)
DJ PAULIE (Rotten Apple / Crashin' In)
LEO (Rotten Apple / Capitan)
Downstairs: $6
8p Brown Belt (http://www.brownbelt.info)
9p Faces On Film (http://facesonfilm.com/)
10p A Brief Smile (http://abriefsmile.com/)
11p The Armyorwhatever (http://thearmyorwhatever.com)
Fat Baby
112 Rivington St.
(between Ludlow & Essex)
Lower East Side, NYC

Daft Punk has been on my mind a lot lately, not because of Coachella (I can't go, if you are there, email me pics) but because I keep hearing the tiniest snips of mid-1990s filtered house madness in rock songs as of late. It makes sense. "Da Funk" broke ten years ago, making the duo perhaps the best known of the French electronic artists of the time, and never really left the dancefloor since (sort of like New Order's "Blue Monday"). In the meantime, Daft Punk produced more hits of its own, including the side-project Stardust ("Music Sounds Better With You"), and was almost immediately influential on artists with both commercial (Madonna) and underground (VHS or Beta) sensibilities. Human After All was released to groans from the music press last year, but I personally think that had more to do with lofty expectations rather than the album's actual quality. Regardless, even if Human After All was absolute cow dung, which it certainly was not (I actually really liked it), it wouldn't matter because the band had already reached perfection with both Homework and Discovery. So, these Daft Punkisms are starting to creep through my speakers in the least expected forms and it has led me to make a prediction-- within the next few years (let's say 1-3), there will be as many flat-out obvious references to Daft Punk in rock music as there are to New Order and the Cure right now, a cleaner, more chic version of the dance punk stuff that has been floating around for the past few years. In the meantime, though, people will be tastefully appropriating elements of this sound. If Franz Ferdinand incorporates more pieces like "The Outsiders" on its next album or if VHS or Beta were to return to the sound of Le Funk, they could be at the forefront of this development. Right now, though, there are two Daft Punkisms that have been burning my mind recently.
"Midnight" from Rock Kills Kid (listen to it on the band's My Space page), starts off like some song that you swear you know but just can't place. It's that strange French way of tinkering with bar room rock and making it sound less like a Budweiser commercial and more like a young, hip car ad as adopted by a bunch of guys from Los Angeles. If this song is released as a single, I bet that the remixes will be filtered out like dissipating clouds of Gaulois smoke.
Hard-Fi is probably no new name for you. "Cash Machine" and "Tied Up To Tight" are regulars on the LA alternative stations and, from what I hear, "Hard to Beat," is massive in the UK. Chances are, you have the album (if not, GET IT). Now listen to "Hard to Beat." Get past that "PDA"-style guitar riff that opens the first verse and into the chorus. Listen to those synths and the disco bass intertwine. Now move a bit further into the song, to the 2 minute mark. Listen to the keyboards swell as Richard Archer sings "Can you feel it/Rock in the city." Now close your eyes and think of the nights you spent in the clubs that summer before the world went to hell. You were dancing in the middle of the floor with your friends to that song that had been THE hit for the bulk of the year, or so you thought. You heard those keyboards swell and you raised your hands in the air because even though you had heard this song no fewer than 500 times, you still loved it. The song move towards its crescendo and you and your friends were practically jumping on each other singing "One more time/We're gonna celebrate." That same feeling is in "Hard to Beat."
There will only be more daft madness to come.

Estelle and I went to Il Corral tonight to see Dahlia play alongside our friends Explogasm. There is something very odd about being inside a performance space with a huge rope hanging in the middle of the floor. This becomes more bizarre when, after you spend roughly ten minutes dodging Tarzan wannabes, you see a guy freak the girl who is hanging upside-down from the rope like some bizarre Cirque de Soleil porno.
Anyhow, we ran into Bret from Anavan. The good news is that Anavan has a record set for release on GSL within the next few months. In the meantime, go check out the MP3s on Bret's blog. By the way, I covet his homemade Ultravox t-shirt.

Totally Rad!!! opened its set with a handful of Anavan covers. At least, that's what we were told. Mostly, there were a bunch of starts and stops filled with chaos.
"The drummer is really good," said Estelle. "I think he's the only one playing."
Although I think the sound at Sugar Shack was better, Il Corral hosted a larger crowd and I think that made for an even more energetic performance on Dahlia's part. She really worked with the audience, dragging her microphone into the small sea of scruffy music fans to dance and sing with them. She got Ned Lerner to join her in a few rounds of chorus on several song. Then, she roped McAllister, host of She Rocks on KXLU, who has been paying Dahlia's stuff for a few years now, into joining her for a cover of "Burning Up." The KXLU kids really dig Dahlia. In fact, Joey, who has also been a Dahlia champion for a few years now, is bringing her up to the station for a live performance sometime on Wednesday in the early afternoon. Here's another pic of Dahlia in action.

We only got to stay for part of Explogasm's set, on account of work and needing to get up early in the morning, but, in those few minutes, they raised hell on the dancefloor. They even played the-song-that-totally-crosses-the-line (I can't even talk about it because it makes me feel dirty). Before the show, I snapped pics of two of my buddies from the, um, is it a band or a dance troupe?

Westside Killa

MC 900 Foot Penis

The latest issue of The Rockit is now available at LA record stores and online at the afore-linked website.

Here are my contributions:

The Subways
Rock Kills Kid
Invisible Children
The Playwrights

Tommy (upon seeing Randy as an usher at the movie theater with 3D Glasses on): Bitchin', is this movie in 3D?
Randy: No, but your face is.

-- Valley Girl (1983)

When I was a kid and I saw Valley Girl, I thought everyone's prom had some supercool band playing in the background. As I got older, I realized prom was really all about DJs busting out every sappy R&B single on the Top 40. Boring! I wanted to dance to "Johnny Are You Queer." Now, I just want to know what Josie Cotton is up to these days. Unfortunately, I can't read bios written in Japanese.

I hate going to the movies and try to avoid it at all costs. Living in LA, this means that I'm sort of a freak of nature, the kind of person who just sits there and stares as everyone gushes about Brokeback Mountain because I a) have no idea what they are talking about and b) don't care. At one point, I actually was something of a movie buff, but that changed when I realized that movie theaters were not only a waste of money I could be spending on concert tickets, but a waste of my time.
That said, every few months, I do make it out to a theater. Sometimes I leave with a bit of faith in the future of storytelling (documentaries, foreign films, rare Hollywood picture) but, more often, I leave engulfed in the stink-cloud of self-disgust. Why did I spend $8.50 (with a student discount) to sit through twenty minutes of commercials and watch a piece of crap that tries with little subtlety to sell me Starbucks and Cingular wireless plans? (Note to Hollywood: I know you're trying desperately to get people to return to the theaters in droves. Please take my advice and start making some movies that don't suck.)
Last night, Reagan and I decided that we were going to the movies. We sat on the phone trying to figure out what we were going to see. I suggested the new Bettie Page biopic, she suggested Take the Lead. Since I picked out the last movie we saw (Bride and Prejudice, about a year ago), we went with the latter.
Fortunately, we got so wrapped up in discussing Tom Jones and how our lives will not be complete unless we actually see him in Vegas someday, that we showed up at the theater late enough to miss the commercials. We did sit through a host of previews, including one for a new Adam Sandler film revolving around a remote control purchased from Bed, Bath and Beyond (talk about product placement). Take the Lead has some great dance scenes and I'm a sucker big dance numbers. But, when the film ended and Reagan said, "Well, that was cute" and we spent the rest of the ride back to my place discussing everything other than the movie (and, by everything other, I mean Tom Jones), I understood that dance scenes don't necessarily make for great movies.
Now, I'm under the impression that this movie was supposed to send a message about finding hope in the inner city. All it really did was play into a bunch of stereotypes about kids from low-income areas. I watched the movie and immediately imagined the pitch, "It's like Dangerous Minds meets Strictly Ballroom meets Bring it On." Then I imagined the powers-that-be figuring they could add more urban realism by including a romance story between the prostitute's daughter and the drunk's son who previously hated each other because their brothers are both dead as the result of some vaguely explained gang rivalry or drug deal gone awry or something like that. Then there is the naive white girl from the wealthier part of town who starts to hang out with them because she feels out-of-place in her own neighborhood. The inner city kids come to accept her, even though they resent her at first. Back to the girl, though. She actually walks into the detention room at a public high school wearing her school uniform. Apparently nobody working on this film ever wore a uniform to school because, if they had, they would know that this would never, ever happen. I spent twelve years in uniform and learned that the first rule of private school is that the minute the final bell rings, that uniform comes off. If you are smart, you wear a t-shirt under your blouse and carry a pair of jeans in your bag to make the quick switch. There are three very important reasons for this: 1) if you misbehave in a public place in uniform, someone will know which school you are from and will proceed to call the deans; 2) wearing a uniform skirt in public is the best way to get unwanted attention from sleazy old men who like to whistle and shout things like "I love them Catholic school girls;" 3) you are basically asking to get your ass kicked (my friends and I learned this the hard way at the Northridge Public Library in seventh grade). The best part (and I mean best at making one cringe) is the end, when there is a notation that the film is "inspired" by actual events. We probably should have rented Mad Hot Ballroom instead.