Total Fest VIII Submissions: Open
Total Fest VIII (yes, vee-eye-eye-eye, ocho, vosim) will bust-free on August 20-22, 2009 in scenic Missoula, Montana. We've officially opened the submission floodgates. Commence flooding.

To submit, we need a few things from you:
1) A good recording, CDRs are fine, of three or four songs that best represent your band. One CD is fine. Electronic submissions are a hassle for us, so don't email us saying "just go to our myspace, dude. It's all there." We are old, traditional, luddites who like the U.S. Mail, CD players and tactile experiences.
2) Some type of one sheet explaining your deal. Who you are, where you live, whether or not you like Queen. We don't need a long list of the bands you've played with, but if a decent writer has written about your band, that's a helpful thing for us to have.
3) Good contact information for you (i.e. a phone and email address).
4) Your patience. We will listen to everything we get, discuss it, give it a fair shake and decide upon the bands and artists that most help us with our mission of Totality. Totally. Thank you.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: APRIL 4, 2009.
Send to:
Wantage USA Attn. Total Fest VIII Submissions
P.O. Box 8681
Missoula, MT 59807

VIVA KBGA!
KBGA 89.9 FM is Missoula, Montana's only place to hear a wide variety of local music, weirdo music, punk music, noise, and 80's synth-funk (H-Rap), live Dead sets (Aaron Barill), the Vintage Vinyl Revival (Day Cobb), the Mermaid (Adelaide), Ink Mathematics (Colin Pruit), the Magic Mountain Morning Show (Niki) and a ton more. This week, February 2nd through 8th, 2009 is KBGA's annual Radiothon fundraiser. KBGA may not always have what you want on the air, but personally I'd much rather be annoyed by a bad Steve Malkmus song than hear More Than a Feelin' for the 3400th time. Here in Western Montana it's our noncommercial station, and for people that care about independent music it's an important institution.

KBGA is volunteer-run and has a small student staff that keep things happening. As both a volunteer and beneficiary of KBGA's support, I feel like I can say honestly that it's a great thing for a lot of people. KBGA plays a big part in making independent music in Missoula as vibrant as it's been in the past 13 years. I think there was rarely an hour of the day that went by in all of 2000 that you didn't hear Radio Station or Miniature Action Jesus by Volumen!

More recently, KBGA provided underwriting to Total Fest VII and has helped promote all sorts of independent shows. On the local music front Secret Powers and Tyson Balew have recently gotten a lot of air and chart time, Poor School and Ex-Cocaine regularly get played, Birds Mile Home are on the playlist, Bridgebuilder have charted, there's a huge local music shelf and the station, and it's well worn. etc. etc. etc.

KBGA has just started its annual fundraiser. Please do what you can whether it's $25 or $30, or $50 or $100. The money's put to work, and the goal this year is just $10,000.

It seems that perhaps a disgruntled former employee may have shut down some of KBGA's social networking sites, right in the moment when we needed to call upon social networks the most. So: if you were KBGA's myspace friend, re-friend us (http://www.myspace.com/kbga), and if you were connected via facebook, your can figure that out too. More importantly, in the non-cyber world, please get out your checkbook and make a donation by calling 406-243-KBGA and tune in!

Thank you--

Josh

Laissez Le Bon Temps Roulez, Mes Amis: A Semi-Total Look at Total Groups' 2008 Output
For lack of a ton of Total activity currently going down, we're going to take a look back at 2008, and specifically some of the best releases of 2008 from a Total Fest perspective.

Akimbo (Seattle, WA) Jersey Shores on Neurot may be the first widely-noticed concept record by a self-proclaimed "Seattle hair band" since Queensryche put out Operation Mindcrime. And there's no contest. I can think of no better group to provide the sounds to vocabularize the summer of fear, caused by a shark that chose to eat New Jersey swimmers one summer in the 30's. Akimbo win.

Bad Dudes (LA, CA) Released an LP/CD called Eat Drugs on an excellent label called Kill Shaman. Bad Dudes are like Tubeway Army's ideas with K.K. Downing's approach. Futuro-music.

Black Elk (Portland, OR) Released a record called Always a Six, Never a Nine on Crucial Blast from Maryland. Shreds like a Hobart, set to "shred." Heavy, spacy, spooky and w. Glose's wildman croons over the top.

Black Eyes and Neckties (Bellingham, WA) Released an excellent record called Apparition on Click Pop from Bellingham. It finally broke the band out of its Murder City Devils worship and into excellent, frenetic spook-punk territory.

Black Ladies (Chicago, IL) Part of the "having the word "black" in your band's name was the unspoken criterion for playing Total Fest VII" crew, Chicago's Black Ladies released a 7" called Naked Caveman on a label called Stationary Heart. Sounds like the best '90s aggro midwestern noise-rock. They've added a guitarrist!

Bridgebuilder (Missoula, MT) Self-released a CDR called Lay Waste the Siege Perilous, which captured 19 minutes of the power and fury of Bridgebuilder.

Ex-Cocaine (Missoula/Minneapolis, MT/MN) Released an awesome 12" split with Yellow Swans on Not Not Fun. Features a rad Meat Puppets cover. Bryan from Ex-Cocaine runs Killertree records which put out a beautiful splity between Poor School and Wiggwaum in 2008. This is a must-have LP.

Miss Lana Rebel (Portland, OR) Wantage released Lana's newest, and for our money, best music to date. Pall Jenkins from Blackheart Procession recorded this, and it sounds utterly timeless, beautiful and great. Add excellent engineering to excellent songs and you have a record that will stand the test of time.\

Nudity (Olympia, WA) Released a 12" of their Nightfeeders song on the Discourage (named for the Portland record store home). Featured a somewhat unnecessary remix. Wish this had more songs! Or Just the awesome tunes from their Winter In Red CDR.

Pierced Arrows (Portland, OR) Released a CD/12" called Straight To the Heart. Went straight to many of our hearts. A lot like Dead Moon, but with a Neil Young cover. Inspirational, as always.

The Saviours (Oakland, CA) Into Abaddon came out on Kemado early in the year, and was a whirlwind of whipping hair-windmills. Proof that riffs are still king in the East Bay and that well-executed metal still has the power to bring smiles to many, many faces.

Secret Powers (Missoula, Montana) Recorded and self-released a CD called Explorers of the Polar Eclipse. Sounds a lot like Arlo, backed by the Oblio Joes!

The Sherlocks (Missoula, MT) Self-Released an excellent CDR called La Forest Che Vaga. Sounded like the Byrds, Jonestown Massacre and Velvet Underground. Awesome.

This Runs On Blood (Flagstaff, AZ) Self-released a beautiful 7" called Youngre Strangre. Features the excellent artwork of their singer, Josh, and more devian wildman noise-hardcore blowout than should be legal.

Triclops! (Oakland, CA) Released a very, very, very dense and excellent psychadelic punk record called Out Of Africa on Alternative Tentacles. Not sure if it was about Dinesen's book or what, but in terms of content, it seems to certainly be about Africa.

Titan (Brooklyn, NY) Put out a self-titled, I think, record on Tee Pee. It's like Yes on overdrive. Swirling, progressive and dense as Haagen Dazs.

Total Fest VIII: Just 9 Months Away!
It's hardly newsworthy, but somehow, 3/4 of a year makes me excited. So mark your calendars for August 20-22, 2009. Dmitri (pictured left) has got his passes already.

In other, perhaps more interesting news, we've launched a mailing list which you can join here . We'll do Total Fest updates (i.e. when we're taking submissions, when we've got a line-up, when we add bands, where the barbecues will be) as well as Wantage USA label release information. The first 100 people to join will get entered into a drawing to win a handful of ultra-rare test pressings, so you know, like, do what you feel, man.

Other notable things: Diane Kamikaze, one of our favorite DJs on WFMU recently had (one of TFVII's sleepers) Triclops! on her show . It's conveniently archived here, and is well worth the admission price. TF alums Black Elk have got a new record on Crucial Blast, it's called Always a Six, Never A Nine and we're sure it rules. KBGA should have it soon, and stores ought to as well! The wildmen of Akimbo have a new record out called Jersey Shores. Neurot, who're based just down the road from us in Idaho, put it out. It's a concept record about a shark-filled summer on, yes, the Jersey Shore. Not since Queensryche has a self-proclaimed Seattle Hair Band had the gumption to release a concept record, and we're STOKED. Chris Fuller just got us a couple CDRs worth of Total Fest VII photos, and those'll be going somewhere, soon. Probably our myspace, maybe our photobucket, etc. etc.

In the spirit of entering into the Best Of list time of year, we'd be interested in seeing your best of lists for 2008! Throw them up as comments, if you would, and we'll post them on the blog. Here's what mine, kind of truncated looks like: Bridgebuilder: LIVE!, USAISMONNSTER: Space Programs CD, Group Inerane: Guitars of Agadez, V/A Top Notch: Hits from the Hive LP, Poor School/Wiggwaum Split LP, Harvey Milk: Life.. the Best Game In Town CD, Miss Lana Rebel: All I Need LP.

Go about your business.

Harvey Milk: Loud Band For the Ages
From the Where Has This Music Been All My Life file, comes Harvey Milk. They're an Athens, Georgia-based group who've been largely ignored since they began, back in the 1990's. Sort of the perfect antithesis to the crushing metal that takes itself too seriously, theirs are essentially love songs, Leonard Cohen covers, and other, less-than-manly fare played with more ooomph than handfuls of black-clad, neck-tattooed, and corpse painted heshers trying desperately to be heavy.

There's poetry in this stuff too, and from a guy with a general disdain for most poetic things, I've come to appreciate it, especially when set to music that's got the bombast, restraint and tonal excellence that this stuff does. Where heavy music can generally go one of two ways, total stoner riff repetition, without much to set one song apart from another, or dull dronery ala Sunn, Harvey Milk just play slow, tight, sad/triumphant shit, and it's pretty excellent.

Chunklet recently re-released their My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be on beautiful double LP. More to come in the re-issue dept. from them, sounds like. Hydrahead's responsible for their newest piece of work, entitled Life... The Best Game In Town, which is thoroughly a winner, on par with their best work.

Oregonian and Total Fest alumnus Joe Preston, whose Thrones is one of the best "bands" to ever rock, is currently the bassist for this outfit.

Not sure what the connection their gay California politician namesake is. NPR's doing a special on him soon.

Across Endless Grassy Plains High Up In the Desert Mountains.
I can't stop listening to this new USAISAMONSTER record. It's called Space Programs and is predictably about American Indians, utopian futures, Nordic explorers and other stuff of that nature. Unpredictably, this record is their most cohesive yet. I'm a fan of this band and have been for the past 6 years. "Cohesive" might not be the word I'm looking for, they've never wanted for cohesion, but this thing has a nonlinear, damn near Malian sort of flow to it that is totally mesmerizing and classic. It's got synthesizer, beautiful vocal harmonies, and their patented octavey, hammering and triumphantly weaving deal. It also has a song called Cocaine Wedding.

They are on tour now, and the record is available from their label, Load.

Other things on the recent playlist: Miss Lana Rebel, Japanther, Harvey Milk, Gauze, Filth Matress, Group Inerane, Bridgebuilder.

Japanther's Tut Tut, Now Shake Ya Butt Blue Vinyl 12"
Yelp, friend, we have a few very limited copies of the new Japanther LP on opaque blue vinyl. The lads will have some copies along with them on their tour but the only way you'll get one of thes is if you're among the first 60 or so mailorder fiends who place an order. Kevin Bouton-Scott designed the cover artwork for Tut Tut, and the record features Penny from Crass doing awesome, serpentine poetry.

The record's available in the catalog section of the Wantage website.

Japanther's always been a band of contrasts. They exist halfway in the world of performance art, and halfway in that of DIY punk. They get called to compose and perform soundtracks to puppet rock operas and then do a tour comprising largely house shows. They curate huge video/dance/music shows for major New York museums, and then release their music only via DIY/independent labels.

Keeping that tradition of contrast alive the lads have teamed up with (Crass co-founder) Penny Rimbaud and released a record of punk songs and poetry. On the surface, that may sound like an odd combination, but this thing is truly a wild romp 'round Africa, the Bronx, San Pedro and Brooklyn, complete with faeries, bicycles and a few cans of spray paint. Japanther's infectious, free spirited trash hasn't let up a teeny bit, it's just gotten more focused and rad somehow. Rimbaud's churning, clever, degenerate cadence is an oddly fitting balance for Japanther's two-minute blasts.

These songs are consistent with the level of songwriting on their last "Skuffed Up My Huffy" LP. "Tut Tut, Now Shake Ya Butt" was recorded in late 2007, as the (band-curated and organized) Dino Deth Dans performance ran for three (sold out) nights at New York's PS122. On a special note, this record features a sleeper cover of Portland's New Bad Things' The Dirge! Holy Smokes.

RIYL: Screamers, Ramones, Beach Boys, garage sales, Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure
NOTES: NEW RELEASE DATE: 10/21/2008, VINYL COMES WITH DIGITAL DOWNLOAD. STREET DATE: 10/28/2008
ACCEPTING PRE-ORDERS IMMEDIATELY. FIRST 50 ONLINE MAILORDERS GET BLUE VINYL.