KEEF. Keef is a great guy. Witness: http://www.keef.org/

From geeky sci-fi opening nights, to video game afternoons, to driving around rapping about “doody walls” before grubbing on soul food…hanging out with Keef was always good times. Unfortunately these days were short-lived because holmes moved to Austin for grad school. Bad for Houston. Good for Austin. Now Keef is running things as one of the music directors for Austin’s 91.7 KRVX, one of the pinnacles of Austin’s insanely deep radio offerings.

Well Keef was nice enough to check out the BMOL album and has been playing it on KVRX ever since. Recently, I think keef is trying to give us some more radio play to help our chances of getting on SXSW. Regardless of the outcome, Keef is playing us a lot and that’s a real swell thing to do. Anyways, as a result, BMOL is on KVRX’s Topless39 for Fri 1/12/07 – 1/19/07. We’re at 27.

http://www.kvrx.org/index.php?p=meetthedjs&id=309

I want to make sure ADR’s humorous description of our Saturday show is not lost forever when his post disappears from the flat earth horizon that is the HandsUp Houston message board. Dude is spinning records at the show, and is therefore a bit biased, but he believes the show will be a great deal of fun:

So like – remember when you pledged to see more live bands in ’07? Have you done that yet? Neither have I, but I am starting on Saturday by seeing Paris Falls, Program and and Bright Men of Learning at the Proletariat.

Many people on this board are familiar with BMOL (http://www.wearebright.com/), especially Marshall, c:\ and bdm, who are actually in it. People with more music-writing experience than me call them indie country pop, but I find them more akin to the exact opposite experience of being stuck in an elevator with Stevie Nicks, Toby Keith and the audience at a Mucky Duck show all doing blow.

Paris Falls is a pretty new group by some of the kids that were in Meowcifer, including WTFing good drummer Mike Deleon, whose claim to fame also includes current ownership of the storried J. Relli MMT-8 midi recorder. The tracks on their myspace (http://www.myspace.com/parisfalls) obviate a welcome embrace of non-guitar primacy in their song’s melodies (which is how a bored douchebag might choose to otherwise say “organs? fck yeah!”). I’m pretty stoked at seing these kids live.

Also set to take the stage is Program. I don’t know anything about this stuff other than they are alleged to have 8 members, one of whom is Pete Tijerina. I checked out a track of theirs (at http://www.program-music.net/) and that kinda sealed the deal on going to this show rather than spending the night at Catbirds paying half attention to the trivia screen and some girl who is sad about her cat.

BUT – thanks to my near Chris Ryanesque command of the scene, I was able to fool the proletariat into letting me play records (and prolly some MP3s) between the bands. It’ll be pretty chill and Montreal sounding, but I can’t really help myself if I throw in the occasional banger, slammer, or Kelis remix (word is bomb!).

Just a brief note to let you know we’re playing on Saturday (TOMORROW!) with Paris Falls and Program. This is the rarest of local indie rock shows in Houston, in that all three bands play a catchy, melodic brand of rock n’ roll. In a scene dominated by noisy, experimental acts and ironic metal bands, this is kind of a welcome change-up. Not to say I don’t dig noise and metal. But occasionally, it can be fun to hang with bands that take their pop music seriously.

I specifically want to recommend Paris Falls. I caught their last show at the Proletariat and was thoroughly impressed. Like Spain Colored Orange, many of their songs are based on piano/organ rather than guitar. But the songs are simultaneously a bit more upbeat and somewhat darker. I dig the hell out of this new band. You may be interested to know that multi-instrumentalist Jenn Brown (ex. de Schmog, MeoWcifer) is playing a lot of guitar for this band. Oh, and DJ Under Warranty is going to be spinning records between sets.

It’s gonna be awesome. I hope to see you there.

Details:

The Proletariat (903 Richmond)
21+
$5.00
Music starts at 10 pm

As necessity would have it, I was reading a good deal of eighteenth-century British literature over the past couple of months and I was coming across many instances where I would read about “Men of Learning”, or “Men of Industry”, or “…of Science”, or “…of Pleasure”. Anyways, sometimes words or phrases poke out at me and I’ll highlight them like a madman. When the BMOL name came about, naturally I went to the internet to see what was already there. I discovered that “men of learning” had much to do with Buddhism. We are not secretly a spiritual band, nor are we secretly a band of Restoration nuts either! What I am sauntering towards is that this weekend’s Racket by John Nova Lomax gave the rundown on where to be for the NYE weekend and one act was the “Black Men of Labor”. He was also nice enough give good mention to our show with de Schmog and Jug of Lightning (both of which completely made my weekend before anything even got started Sunday night, but that’s a whole ‘nother story). So then…reading “bright men of learning” in bold print shortly followed by “Black Men of Labor” had me wonder how this peculiarity came to pass.

Black Men of Labor is a social aid and pleasure club. They have a step team that does a marching routine with umbrellas in parades such as the Mardi Gras parade in NOLA. So perhaps they are Men of Pleasure, but aren’t we all in some way? Really though, this club does a lot for the community. They were at the forefront of evacuation during Katrina. Read this great article that interviews Fred Johnson, co-founder of the Black Men of Labor: http://www.csindy.com/csindy/2005-10-13/webextra.html

And in the picture below, Fred Johnson is the gentleman to the far right and to the far left is co-founder Greg Stafford.