where is my tomato

Lovely evening with Ben Ottewell of Gomez last night at the Mercury Lounge. I could listen to him all day and night. In fact, sometimes I wish he could follow me around all day just singing in the background. He is also a fucking amazing guitarist, so he doesn’t have to strictly be singing all the time, he may play as well. Actually, he has a beautiful English accent, so he can just talk, too. The U.S. folks are still waiting for his solo album, Shapes and Shadows, to be released next week (though he had it on sale at the show, I’d already pre-ordered it, d’oh). Even more exciting, Gomez’s next album is nearly complete, according to their Facebook and Twitter updates. Hurrah!! Go have a listen on their website, all their songs are posted in full because they are good to their fans.

I have no videos for you, but here are two grainy photos of his lovely visage.

The Lady Danville boys are back and better than ever! They are currently on tour with freaking Ben Folds!! Tour dates can be found on their MySpace.

I wrote about Lady Danville a while back, so you can read some background there.

As ridiculously exciting as it is for my favorite band to be on such an awesome tour, I’m even more excited that people are buying the tour EP that I designed for them:

I haven’t had a chance to see the actual CD yet, but hopefully will when they’re in New York for their show at the Beacon Theatre on December 14.

Here are some newer songs to tickle your ears:

Cars

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Bed 42

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‘Cars’ and ‘Bed 42′ can be found on the tour EP, but you can get their first EP on iTunes.

One of my favorite songs, ‘End of the World,’ has not been recorded, so I am proud to say that one morning I figured out how to grab the audio from the video I took at their Rockwood Music Hall show in April. And then I went a little crazy and started doing it to a bunch of videos, including their cover of Guster’s ‘Demons.’ Below are the original videos and links to download the mp3s I created. Enjoy!

Downloads
End of the World (live) mp3
Demons (cover) mp3

Hello, my brain is fried, so I shall take a quick break and write a bit about the Lady Danville show that happened on Monday at Rockwood Music Hall.

As usual, the boys delivered an amazing show! I caught all songs except for two on my camera, which you can see on my newly created YouTube channel. My favorites are posted just below. (Songs I missed recording were the Lily Allen cover and ‘Tired Magician,’ toward the beginning of the set. Which is too bad, because they had such great energy during the cover. I didn’t know I would end up taking that many, but once I started, I didn’t want to stop!)

This is a new song called ‘Better Side,’ which I had never heard before. They said it was inspired by their new tour van, Brenda.

Another new song called ‘End of the World.’ I love the story this one tells.

A song called ‘Cars,’ which has been a favorite of mine for the past few weeks.

And some photos:

In case you are unfamiliar, that’s Dan on the guitar, Matthew on the cajon, and Michael on the keys.

Gotta love Dan’s bowtie!

Alrighty, back to work I go. If you want to find out more info about the remaining East Coast Tour dates, check out their MySpace and send them some love via Twitter.

I wish that I could say that I didn’t care
I wish that I could say that I don’t believe
Talking to myself in my underwear
But I could never leave

Scoring up the points for sleepless nights doing school work, but listening to this song on repeat puts a pretty big smile on my face. What puts an even bigger smile on my face is the fact that Lady Danville is coming to New York and various other towns for their first ever East Coast Tour.

Complete tour dates and locations found here.

Of course, I emailed them for details on the private showcase happening on Monday the 19th, and here it is:

Monday, April 19
Record Label Showcase
Rockwood Music Hall
196 Allen Street at Houston
New York, NY
8-8:45 p.m.
Age 21+

Then there’s their regular Tuesday night show:

Tuesday, April 20
Pianos
(w/ Standard of Living)
158 Ludlow at Stanton
New York, NY
8:30 p.m.
Age 21+

Come support our boys from Los Angeles!

Went to a little musical/theatrical event last night at Soho Rep‘s Walker Space, which was marvelously free of charge. It was held by a group called the Centrifuge, which I gather to be a sort of theater group, and was part of their series Fresh Ground Pepper, which is held on the first Friday of every month.

The music was performed by my friend’s friends’ band, Koho, and it was a nice little acoustic set that included covers of John Mayer’s ‘My Stupid Mouth’ and Tom Petty’s ‘Free Fallin,’ ‘ which are two very lovely songs. The original songs were also very lovely, though verging on the depressing side … but we all love our sad songs now and then.

I was most impressed, however, by the Centrifuge’s reading of A New Asylum, a short play written by Pete Forester and directed by Jenny Beth Snyder. Featuring seven talented young actors and actresses, it told the story of a girl whose mother had just committed suicide, and her means of coming to terms with her relationships with her mother, father, lover and best friend. Driven by some pretty intense emotion and philosophical ponderings, there were many hilarious moments as well. One of my favorite parts was when the main character, Myra, would say to her boyfriend Richard, ‘Where did you come from?’ and he would reply, ‘The future,’ to which she would respond, ‘You’re awesome!’ and he would echo, ‘YOU’RE awesome!’ They did such a great job of capturing those moments of pure joy like when you’re a child, but also painfully juxtaposed it to the pain of life, death and denial.

On a side note, seeing the actors use music stands to hold their script binders reminded me of high school band at 7 a.m.

We missed ‘world-renowned designer of fun, Svelte’ because of the extreme stuffiness of the space, though I’m not entirely sure what one who is a designer of fun does.