TF PRE-BLAST: SHANNON & THE CLAMS, IS OKAY, SHAHS, MIDNIGHT HOTDOG 7-19-15

Excited for Total Fest but wait to start having fun with us? Don't worry, we like throwing pre-parties or "pre-blasts" a few times a summer, and we're extra-special stoked to tell you about this one. The Ole Beck VFW Post #209 (a Total Fest venue) is hosting California's Shannon & The Clams (themselves Total Fest alumni) this upcoming Sunday, July 19th. If you're unawares as to the kind of music these Clams make, well, it's somewhere between doo-wop, garage, psych, surf, etc. etc. They've got a ton of killer tunes and we just love it when they visit. So so so much fun.

We're feeling pretty special that Shannon & The Clams included Missoula on their summer mini-tour. They're releasing a new LP in September and will be traveling full-on about that time but yeah, it's pretty sweet they wanna stop in in July. Missoula seems to go ape for these Clams and we're right there with you.

Joining Shannon & The Clams are locals Is Okay, Shahs (playing Total Fest this year), and Midnight Hotdog (the first show from Total Fest alumni Adelaide and Mikki of Needlecraft as well as Max Bauerly from Slut River). We're hoping this blast will get you folks in the mood to totally party with us in August.



PERTINENT INFO: Shannon & The Clams, Is Okay, Shahs, and Midnight Hotdog play the Ole Beck VFW Post #209 on Sunday, July 19th at 9pm. Advance tickets are $8 from Ear Candy Music or $9 from Total Fest (there's some fees related to online sales). Tickets on the day of the show are $10 for those 21+ or $15 for those 18-20.

BORN YESTERDAY: TOTAL BABIES.

Born Yesterday is Hana Montana’s (the real one) new band. Hana is a Missoulian who recently set sail for coastal America with a crew of awesome Missoulians in tow. It’s the kind of thing that happens when you live in a place like Missoula. About every 4-6 years you have a near complete change-up of almost all the super creative weirdos. Or, maybe about 80%. Turns out that people want Korean food, jobs that pay a living wage, to see some ethnic diversity, run into Ty Segall at a record store and that kind of thing, I guess.

Anyway, back to Hana. She was in a handful of great bands with Total Fest pasts: first one, I think was 10 Year Old Girlfriend, which was a kind of trashy, excellent and bratty punk deal. 10YOGF started as a bedroom songwriting project, and morphed into a great, unfortunately short-lived band with Matt Cote and Tom Shahs. Keyboards, bass and drums. Then, after they broke up, Hana and Mikki started Needlecraft, which is still a functioning group (here and there) with a tour coming up in June. We make no bones about loving Needlecraft completely. They’ve got everything from killer doo-woppy girl group melodies, awesome lyrics, a totally believable diva schtick and moreover, a fucking phenomenal live show. They ruled the roost here for about a year or so. And they’ve got a new record coming out on Marty’s Minor Bird label.

So, all of that gets to what Hana’s currently doing musically. It’s a group called Born Yesterday, and it’s a spacey, reverby garage band. Their cover of “The First Cut is the Deepest” is so excellent, we also love the trash of this “State of Desire” jam. Long story short, there’s been something missing in Missoula this year with Hana gone, and we’re excited to have her back for Total Fest! It’s just that simple. 

ZACC HOSTS EXCELENT BLOCK PARTY WITH A TOTAL (YARD) SALE.

Da ZACC, pre-Block Party

Unless you live under the proverbial errr, inanimate thing, you know about the ZACC. It's an all-ages show space (show this Friday, July 19th with some great bands), it's affordable artist studios, it's art classes, gallery space and so much more lodged deep in the heart of Missoula, on our North Side.

The North Side West Side Block Party's the ZACC's annual summer fandango and it's as solidly a fun time as you'll find in Missoula. Skin Flowers play, food is eaten, beer drunk, friends caught up with, art projects done, etc. etc. etc. It's a great time, and we're not just saying that because our friends work there. It really is Missoula at its best. This Saturday, July 20th. Right in front of the place. Get there.

T-Fest happens to have branched into the most shall we say, noble of lines of fundraising activities this year, that is the hawking of old junk used treasures from the organizers and pals that support Total Fest. We hope to have Colin Johnson's old gym socks and Faith No More T-shirts from high school. We hope to have Josh Harteis's prize copy of Frampton Comes Alive (with a white-out corpse-painted Frampton), we expect to have Bryan Ramirez's "rare" Poor School test pressings and Julie Tompkins' doubles of books on the Mansons. We're not sure if we'll have any of those things, but we'll definitely have a booth and it will have some weird stuff you can buy. Mikki and Adelaide Needlecraft will be taking stuff donations between 10AM and noon on N. 1st street at the ZACC, on Saturday the 20th. Feel free to stop by with your carefully-selected, someone-might-actually-want-it, stuff to drop off.

See you there!

OLL BREDS: BRED FOR OLL YOUR TOTAL NEEDZ.

Do you know about Buzludza in Bulgaria? It's a worth looking up thing, if you're at all into Hothian

architecture, abandoned soviet era stuff, and massive public works projects that seem to serve exactly no current purpose. Also, it's kind of nice to say the word "Buzludza."

Missoula's Oll Breds are band that came onto my radar only pretty recently when their kind of outsider pop/garage two-piece whatever rock and roll just started to take over my mind. I saw them first only in the late spring of this year, and I think they'd been playing for at least the previous year. Something about the sound of "bread" in a band name really can apparently hit a nerve with me. Can't help but think of the multi-platinum selling, dollar bin cluttering 70s soft (not-quite) rock dentist office hitmakers in the band Bread. You know how there are certain smells you associate with things and they're totally powerful? Like, you associate the smell of weakly made Maxwell House with uh, having to go to church maybe. Well, seeing  a Best of Bread LP at a thrift store is one of those things that happens at least twice a year, and it always has that subconscious-triggering bummer effect on me. I know it's not really logical, but who said being a music fan had anything to do with logic? And, the fact that I associate Bread with the nitrusy smell of dentist's offices, and by default don't like any music with the sound of "bread" anywhere near it isn't wholly illogical. So what's actually the deal with these Oll Breds?

I don't actually know a ton of the back story, man, but I saw them play a riveting kind-of-Modern-Loversy with kind of a little-bit-Richard-Helly-vocals set that stuck with me hard a couple months ago. Nice simple chord progressions, good tones and  that's about all I need to be stoked about a band, I guess. This (below) live recording of Leave Across America (song starts after about a minute) kind of captures it best, I think. And it has some nice Osprey baseball footage. Their internet presence (and that of their members) consists of about six kind of random, impenetrable things, which tells me they don't give a damn about making music for anybody but themselves, which is nice.

SCRAMBLED POP MUSINGS: NUCULAR AMINALS

Portland's Nucular Aminals came through Missoula a few times in the past couple of years (Spruce street house in 2011, and with Slut River in 2012 -- supported by local darlings 10yoGF and Needlecraft, respectively). Admittedly, I missed them at the house show (it's summer and sometimes you could be at the house without ever entering the house. It was a nice yard), but the set at the Badlander was very impressive. Perhaps it was the fact that I hadn't seen a punk show at the Badlander for a few months or that the line-up was awesomely curated for a late summer show, but the melancholic pop of Nucular Aminals fit perfectly with the hunktastic fun of Needlecraft and the rawness of Slut River.

Much is made of the deliberate misspelling of their name, and, I occasionally have to fight my spell check and the damnit-they-made-me-sound-like-Bush feeling I get when I speak their name, but moving beyond that is really quite easy. With seven recordings under their belt (including a 2011 release on K Records) and fresh off a European tour, Nucular Aminals have steadily tweaked their petulant, minimalist, echoed melodies into a jubilant nihilism. The organ ties it all together, adding an odd moodiness to the reconfigured psych-grunge elements that are deeply rooted in their music. There's also a fair bit of silliness that infuses the songs -- like hanging out at a rainy beach party.

Their most recent releases, Start from an End (Self Released 2012) and Alice Day (Hovercraft 2012), push the laid-back grooves, allowing the haunting vocals to seamlessly flow along with the airy beats. In a way their songs remind me of odd eulogies, but the brattiness makes me think they're hanging hammocks over the graves.

OH, SEE. IT'S WATT YOU THOUGHT IT WOULD BE.
Thunderbroom spiel Mascis Iggy Stooge Asheton Dwyer. California. Uber alles. Double Nickels. The Master's Bedroom.

This is what's happening in Missoula next week. If you're a punk/psych fan, it's fuckin' Christmas. Mike Watt and the Missing Men are rad. And they play Monday October 1st at Zoo City Apparel. Their most recent work is a short-songed ode to a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Seriously. And it's good. Not ponderous or noodling. Succinct and on. Gonna rule. And this week, the guys playing bass for the Stooges in Florence, Italy this week. Mike Watt of course played bass for the Minutemen, a band whose The Punchline record I only continue to grow an appreciation for. They fuckin' Jammed Econo, and wrote the book on being friends, and a band in that order.

Then, on October 2nd thee Oh Sees play with Sic Alps also at Zoo City. Both are good bands. Sic Alps are a washed out blast of who-cares-what-audiences-think psychedelia, with a kind of self-containedness and vibe you don't experience this far out of the '90s, man. The Oh Sees are great. You know 'em. Mostly because of Brigid. Who's Yin gives the band it's yang, or less hippier, whose melodies basically make the stuff sublime. Sorry to be gushy. it's just true. Radical Missoula groups Shahs, back to a two-piece. and Needlecraft, now with a bassist! open.

Tickets for both shows are at Ear Candy and Zoo City Apparel. Both are all-ages. Ye' of fewer years, get out in force, please.

TOTAL FEST 2012: INSTALLMENT 3

That's right, Total Folks. We're posting the final batch announcement of this year's Total Fest line-up. Not that we've saved the best for last, but this batch is a gut punch combo: old heads, well worn travelers, noisy weirdness, hefty stoner, playful pop, psych fix, and riff ration. A few strands are still lingering, but we'll have you caught up by the week's end. As with the last two announcements, we'll expand on each of the bands in the following days. Stay tuned.

Cousins Milwaukee, WI

Harkonen Seattle, WA / San Fran, CA 

InternationalPlayboys Missoula, MT 

KingElephant Missoula, MT

Magpies Missoula, MT

MjolniirDXP Denver, CO

Needlecraft Missoula, MT 

ThePharmacy Seattle, WA

Sedan Portland, Or

Shane Hickey and his Magical Ukulele.... and Jerry! Missoula, MT

Tacocat Seattle, WA

Tenement Appleton, WI 

Torche Miami, FL

Unnatural Helpers Seattle, WA

VTO Missoula, MT

Wizard Rifle Portland, OR