Newsy Bits: @T_R0Y, @LilHurry, @WavvesWavves, @gopband, @JoshDamigo & more

Today is an email cleanout day, so I'm gonna post some random stuff. Some of it is old news, some of it really old news, but in case you hadn't heard....

Troy Johnson has a new TV show! His Food Network series, Crave, makes its debut tonight at 8:30 pm. David Moye wrote about it for HuffPo here and you can see Troy's first blog for the network here. Check out the video that landed Troy the gig.

After playing SXSW and Lollapalooza and winning Album of The Year and Best Alternative Album at the San Diego Music Awards, Little Hurricane will be playing at this year's Austin City Limits, return to San Diego for the San Diego Music Thing, and then hit the road as tour support for Manchester Orchestra. The duo is playing a not-so-secret free show on Tuesday night (21+) in San Diego. I'm not supposed to tell you until tomorrow, so check back in the morning.

Last week (and as already reported in CityBeat), San Diego's Grand Ole Party announced they would be releasing their sophomore album, Under Our Skin. According to the press release, "In early 2009, the band went in the studio with producer Ben H. Allen (Animal Collective, Deerhunter, Gnarls Barkley) and recorded a new record - finished in July 2009." By August of that year they broke up, JP was off working on stuff with The Hot Moon and later with releasing solo work as Vegetarian Werewolf and Kristin, as Dee Dee, blew up all over the blogosphere with the Dum Dum Girls. The band is still broken up, but the full record comes out tomorrow. Grab a free download of the single, 'All Night' below.

And, not to be outdone, Wavves was chosen by MTV to serve as guest composer for their new scripted series, "I Just Want My Pants Back" under the music supervision of Nic Harcourt. The show premiered last night after the Video Music Awards and featured Wavves' "I Want To Meet Dave Grohl". Music from the episode, which also featured Pepper Rabbit, Saint Motel and more, can be downloaded here.

Last week, my friend Sal Filipelli's home was burglarized and all of his gear was stolen, including 3 guitars, a bass, two computers, two recording microphones, a car stereo, piano tuning tools, and an ipod. You can see photos of all of the equipment here if you have any information or see anything shady while you're perusing craig's list, hit him up on Facebook.

And while I'm speaking of burglary, Josh Damigo was hit for the 4th time. His San Diego apartment was broken into twice before he relocated to LA, and now his car has been hit for the second time (while parked in secured parking). People suck. But forget the burglaries, why don't you just prove that most people don't suck, and help with his next record and donate generously to his Kickstarter campaign?

Back to the inbox. It seriously feels like it never ends...

ABC Amplifies Wavves

I hate reposting something I've seen on Hipster Runoff, especially two days after the fact, but since I've been talking so much about the Shepard Fairey art pieces, and since Wavves is going to be the featured band at next month's TNT that celebrates the Viva La Revolucion show, I thought I'd share this video clip.

Crocodiles Are Spin's "Band To Watch" & Wavves Speaks

Crocodiles are Spin's "band to watch". Read the article here. Or don't.

"If you live there, then you slowly die." That's how Brandon Welchez,
frontman and beat programmer for drone-pop duo Crocodiles, describes his band's
hometown of San Diego. "A lot of the nastiness in our music comes from reacting
to the boring culture there, and the sunshine," adds guitarist Charles Rowell.
"The sunshine can be oppressive."

Obviously I disagree.

In other 'get over yourself' news, Wavves finally spoke about the meltdown in Barcelona on Pitchfork.

Even before Barcelona, there were shows just like that, where it was just a mess and it fucking sucked. But it was to like 25 people in Little Rock, Arkansas or something. I don't really know what to say, but the fact of the matter is that I'm not really that good. I wouldn't say that I'm really like a guitar guy or anything like that. I can get by on the stuff that I play. I like writing and playing the songs. If people think that I'm not going to fuck up, then they're wrong. And if they think this is like the last time I'm going to fuck up, they're wrong too. Because I'm young. I'm kinda stupid. I'm human.

YouTube: Wavves At Primavera

So far this appears to be the only video of Wavves at the Primavera Sound Festival. I imagine there weren't a ton of cameras rolling because people were already bored with waiting for the band to begin, but if I find more I'll post them.


Update: Wavves have cancelled their European tour according to Pitchfork.

San Diego Has A Music Scene?

I was just going to kinda let the whole Rolling Stone article about San Diego pass by without a mention, however a few things happened and I guess I would tie them all together. I'll start off by saying if you haven't heard about the article, you can find a scan of it on the CityBeat blog here, along with Seth Combs' take on the article.

I heard about the article being written via a publicist who asked me if I knew bands in San Diego "that sound like Wavves and Crocodiles". I told her some bands and she responded by saying she forwarded my list to her friend at Rolling Stone who was writing an article about San Diego. To be honest, I kinda cringed. To put our entire music scene in this little pigeonhole seemed pretty lame to me. This entire site exists because of the vibrant music scene that exists in San Diego and one little article could never cover what is going on in this town.

That said, I decided to mention it because while in San Francisco I was being entertained by @PitchforkMedia and their coverage of Wavves at the Primavera Festival in Spain and because the Street Scene lineup was announced today, including performances by Crocodiles and Wavves and Grand Ole Party. If you haven't been paying attention, Wavves is the project of Nathan Williams that blew up in the blogosphere thanks to an 8.1 rating on the coveted/despised Pitchfork site. Subsequently Wavves have been all over the place, including a full US tour, SXSW, and were starting a behemoth tour of Europe when there was a total breakdown.

Here's the Twitter feed from @PitchforkMedia at the Primavera Festival:

5:42 PM May 28th: Wavves' Nathan giving ultra pissy performance, drummer Ryan pours a beer on his head. And someone throws a shoe. Well deserved.

5:57 PM May 28th: Holy shit, Wavves! Ryan runs off stage, throws drumstick at Nathan who shouts, "No! Come back here MF we're not done yet!" He doesn't.

6:00 PM May 28th: Crew comes up and breaks down drumset. Nathan tells them to stop, they don't. He tries to continue on... They cut his mic. Disaster city.

6:01 PM May 28th: Bottles thrown. Verdict: Spain hates Wavves. Spectacular.

The thing about the whole fiasco is that Pitchfork curated the stage, so they kinda have to do damage control. I don't personally know Nathan and I've not seen Wavves perform live, so I can't speak to his behavior, but it just sounds like he was launched into a world that he wasn't mature enough or mentally prepared to handle. The internet will shoot you down just as quickly as it can launch you into (relative) stardom.

Anyway, if you wanna follow along, here's the complete story of the breakdown, the subsequent cancellation of their next show, some coverage and comments on Stereogum, and a cached apology from Nathan's blog which has been removed. I hope that if Nathan is having drug/alcohol issues that he deals with them and I hope that his story isn't over because he does some interesting music, but I'm here to say that the San Diego music scene is alive and kicking with or without Wavves, and we don't need Pitchfork, Fader, Spin, or Rolling Stone telling us so.

Writer Tour: SXSW Day 1 Part 2

So after playing the Singing Serpent show and watching Henry Clay People rock out in a crowded bar on 6th St. We heard that the Cold War Kids were playing somewhere by 1st St. across the river. I thought this will be great, I saw them when they played the Casbah, and a crowded bar is definitely a great way to see them, unfortunately after trekking across downtown Austin for what seemed like ages, we stumbled upon the large outdoor venue which was more like seeing them at Street Scene. We stayed through some of their set as we got lost in the sea of people, but we wanted to be at the bars, not a corporate-fest stage.
Trying to leave huge outdoor area was confusing and we almost ended up backstage, you could hear the security guard stutter his words as he asked us "Are you guys supposed to be back here?" We were definitely grungy enough to be in the Cold War Kids, but we left anyways to go see Rob Crow at the Singing Serpent showcase.
About 40 blocks later, we were back where we started at the Iron Gate, unfortunately Rob Crow was packing up, so we just chilled for a while drinking beers with my friend Riyadh and some of the SD crew there.

Eventually the bar turned into a Mexican dance hall with an age limit of 40 and up, so we headed over the Ms. Beas across the street for Indian Jewelry. There were so many kids there, you couldn't see the band (no stage). So we snuck around back, since there was opening in the gate. Indian Jewelry were really great, and had a lot of energy created by this rhythmic droning and some cool electronic grit to it.

Click on Keep On Reading to get the whole story.

Next was Best Friends Forever on gazebo style stage. A three piece fronted by two females singing songs that are cleverly sarcastic, light-hearted, and empowering enough to make me feel that Adam was created from Eve's rib bone. Loved it, and a flute solo when you thought it couldn't get any better.

After Best Friends Forever finished, we decided to keep cruising. We really just started roaming randomly, no plan. Eventually we heard some rockin music going on and lights and people and free, so we stopped by. Just so happened to be the Obscure Magpie showcase, which Transfer was playing as we walked in. It was an medium sized outdoor venue with great stage backdrops. Transfer played on the main stage, with amazing lights in front and behind the stage. They rocked really hard and it was good seeing San Diego representing.

After Transfer was Apes of Wrath playing on the smaller stage which also had cool lighting, and these guys were going off as usual. I have a couple friends who ever time they see Apes they tell me "This is my new favorite band from San Diego."

After supporting the San Diego bands at Obscure Magpie, we made our way back to Ms. Beas, mostly because that is where are car was parked and it was almost 2AM. This is when the coolest show happened. An acoustic showcase under a tree, featuring a bunch of the bands playing Ms. Beas. This was a truly communal and happy event, each artist got to play two songs and everyone was just hanging out like campfire style. The notable performances were Wavves, Best Friends Forever, Still Flyin, The Homosexuals, and Jana Hunter. I was lucky enough to get some footage of Wavves, who seems to be the new young star from San Diego, signed to Fat Possum Records. I wondered what it was going to sound like without all the fuzz. They were some cool songs.
The show ended at 4AM with a ceremonial burning of some random stuff and we had nowhere to stay. So like true bohemians, we set in for the night in Andy's Honda Element. Day 1 of SXSW was amazing to say the least and we couldn't wait for what was in store for day 2. More story to come later...