The crowd was sweaty, the beers were cold, and the mood was ripe for some nasty down home rock and roll the night The Strange Boys played the Jackpot Saloon in Lawrence, KS. There’s just something about a summer night and good music that merge into the most heady brew possible, and from the opening raw guitar snarl of The Strange Boys’ set everybody in listening range knew they were ready for one hell of a show.

The lads of The Strange Boys – singer/guitarist Ryan Sambol, bassist Philip Sambol, drummer Matt Hammer, and guitarist Greg Enlow – barely took time to sound check before launching into a set that included songs from the “..And Girls Club” LP like “To Turn A Tune Or Two” and “Woe Is You And Me,” a new song and even a decent CCR cover. They played it punk, barely stopping between songs to chat or tune, instead choosing to blast the ass-shaking crowd with 30 minutes of nonstop musical goodness. What The Strange Boys gave Lawrence was pretty much the musical equivalent of eating a giant slab of baby-back ribs smothered in the tangiest sauce from a tiny no-name BBQ joint on the wrong side of the tracks.

There’s nothing fancy or flashy about The Strange Boys’ music. There are no synthesizers, no vocal effects (besides the unholy half Bob Dylan, half Daniel Smith wail by singer Ryan Sambol), no string section or laptop in sight. Just two guitars, a bass, drums, occasionally a harmonica and some cold domestic beer to get a bit of pure, sweaty, delicious rock and roll straight from The Strange Boys to the lucky ones at the Jackpot that night. Check out the live footage of “This Girl Taught Me A Dance” to experience some of the magic for yourself. It’s finger lickin’ good!

words by: Meghan Bainum
video by: Scott Stewart
photo by: Brent Carter

Since 2008 Parisian duo Leo & Pipo have been wheat pasting nameless characters from bygone eras all over their home town. District by district, rue by rue, Leo & Pipo inject a sense of charm, humor and some historical remembrance to dreary concrete facades; hopefully transporting the viewer to another Paris through a visual time machine.

To see more of Leo & Pipo’s work click here

posted by: Harold Johns III

We witnessed the birth of the world wide web, and since its inception we’ve seen Moore’s law of exponential growth take hold of the technology, manifesting itself into the high speed information exchange that exists today. For many of us the easily accessible information might as well be an enormous playground, but some see it simply as a threat to the status quo.

At the forefront of the anti-internet fear mongering we find pundits, journalists, and newspaper companies doing everything from condemning the blogosphere to flat out admitting their fear of extinction. These reactions aren’t shocking, they’re akin to telegraph operator’s distaste for the telephone and the 35 mm purist’s cries of blasphemy when digital photography was introduced. Canon and Nikon couldn’t afford to head those cries, and now polaroid has ceased production of its famous film. Although unfortunately technological paradigm shifts can result in layoffs and bankruptcies, it’s impossible to imagine the world today had the machine-breaking Luddites prevented mechanized looms from revolutionizing the garment industry.

The New York Times on the other hand is heading in the right direction. Rather than condemning the internet’s accessibility, the Times is accessing its site to mine data for its own benefit. Nieman Journalism Lab obtained a memo sent out to NY Times reporters and we now have access to a list of the 50 most frequently looked up words by NY Times readers online. At the top of the list is the Latin word su generis, roughly meaning “one of a kind.” The site has an application (query.nytimes.com) that allows readers to highlight a word and obtain the definition. Some of the words are relative to current events like swine and pandemic, while there are also words that every American should know like glut, and others like neologism that are all too appropriate.

As far as we know the New York Times didn’t intend for its audience to know about this memo, it was created to give reporters insight into their reader’s vocabulary based quandaries, but it may in fact have a different effect. This could be the perfect campaign for transitioning into the inevitable mass media makeover. The memo going viral not only informs those of us not aware of the query.nytimes.com application, but it also gives NY Times readers confidence in the paper’s ability to harness access to online information. Along with being easily accessible, up-to-date, and multi-media capable, it looks as though the digital news media has found another leg up in the information industry. However, on the plus side for newsprint editions, I tried smearing Silly Putty all over my computer screen and when I pulled it up all I got was some dust and a few finerprints.

You can see the full New York Times 50 most inquired about words here.

by: Scott Starrett

Many of you will listen to Austin, TX’s The Strange Boys for the first time and think, they’re just a Black Lips ripoff. True the similarities between the bands can’t be denied, both play rough and tumble blues-based garage rock with a punky twist, but really this would be an oversimplification. By definition every artistic movement – be it visual, musical or otherwise – requires the input of many to create something special. What would first-wave punk rock be without The Clash, the Sex Pistols, Richard Hell, The Dead Boys, Suicide and The Ramones? Around 1977 all six shared the same basic philosophy of stripping it down, speeding it up and banging it out, yet each was able to retain a singular musical identity.

The same applies to The Strange Boys and other bands like the Black Lips lumped into the neo-psychedelic garage rock revival scene that is so prevalent right now (ie the Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls, King Khan & BBQ Show, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, etc). Only none of this justification or explanation matters unless the bands in the scene actually write quality tunes.

And that’s the key, The Strange Boys write damn fine songs. The tracks on their first full-length LP “…And Girls Club” fit into that garage rock paradigm – full of fuzzy licks, slightly off-key growls, and a simple, gritty rhythm section – but also include a late 1950′s Buddy Holly-style innocence that sets them apart from their other contemporaries. The stand out track “This Girl Taught Me to Dance”  is a sock-hop jam for the anti-social crowd where singer/guitarist Ryan Sambol writes from the perspective of a caustic observer with a sensitive soul. An almost sweet sentiment The Strange Boys repeat on other quality tracks like “No Way For a Slave To Behave” and “Heard You Wanna Beat Me Up.”

“…And Girls Club” is still far from a perfect album. At 16 tracks The Strange Boys may have spread themselves a little too thin and although “Death And All The Rest” is fine folk song it seems out of place with the rest of the collection. If the album was shorter, say 12 tracks instead of 16, “…And Girls Club” might be considered an instant classic. But that’s The Strange Boys for you: raw, unpolished and unapologetically themselves. Further proof that a genre always has room for one more band capable of writing good songs their way.

Lawrencians can catch The Strange Boys with Mika Miko, Boo and Boo Too, and Weird Wounds at The Jackpot (943 Massachusetts) this Thursday, June 25th at 10pm. And for the rest of you, more shows can be found on The Strange Boys’ MySpace.

by: Harold Johns III

For those of us blessed with short attention spans, instrumental noise experimentation usually isn’t the best musical choice. Most often bored by the second minute, listlessly jiggling our legs, we’re stuck wondering when the intro will end and the song begin.

There are exceptions, of course, and I’ve found that most of these – like the Rachels, Suicide, or Godspeed You Black Emperor…or for that matter Eric Satie or freaking Chopin – use their instruments, whatever those may be, to create a sort of aural movie. Too often instrumentally based noise bands seem to have forgotten this little craft and become lost in hot riffs, obscure sound clips, or wandering freak-outs.

Thankfully The Present, a three piece from NYC, have created with their new album “The Way We Are” a genuine aural masterpiece. As a card carrying member of the ADD club I usually approach music like this with trepidation, but The Present’s music inspires such stories in my mind it’s almost difficult to write this review. And to top it off, I wasn’t bored once. I don’t know the length of “The Way We Are”  or the song titles, but I can tell you about listening to the musical, whispered songs and visualizing beautiful kayries in the sacred grottoes of the eternal emerald sea while I struggled to avoid the rampaging malisik. Then there was the thrumming, crashing, grinding throb of the great marchaline obsolisks as they continued on their never-ending trip downward toward oblivion…..but I digress.

The true beauty of The Present’s music is that it can’t be described in a couple of jauntily worded paragraphs. It’s just too vast, it covers too much ground. They’re more of a twisted orchestra choir than your standard three piece band and The Present’s blending of the organic with the mechanical makes “The Way We Are” a truly enjoyable journey through sounds both incredibly beautiful and acidly caustic.

Definitely worth a listen and a buy, the album is out now on CD and LP. If you’re near a city, The Present is currently on tour. Check out their MySpace page for dates and cities, and to take a listen.

Studio Synopsis:
HERB & DOROTHY tells the extraordinary story of Herbert Vogel, a postal clerk, and Dorothy Vogel, a librarian, who managed to build one of the most important contemporary art collections in history with very modest means.

In the early 1960s, when very little attention was paid to Minimalist and Conceptual Art, Herb and Dorothy Vogel quietly began purchasing the works of unknown artists. Devoting all of Herb’s salary to purchase art they liked, and living on Dorothy’s paycheck alone, they continued collecting artworks guided by two rules: the piece had to be affordable, and it had to be small enough to fit in their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment. Within these limitations, they proved themselves curatorial visionaries; most of those they supported and befriended went on to become world-renowned artists including Sol LeWitt, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Richard Tuttle, Chuck Close, Robert Mangold, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Lynda Benglis, Pat Steir, Robert Barry, Lucio Pozzi, and Lawrence Weiner.

After thirty years of meticulous collecting and buying, the Vogels managed to accumulate over 2,000 pieces, filling every corner of their tiny one bedroom apartment. “Not even a toothpick could be squeezed into the apartment,” recalls Dorothy. In 1992, the Vogels decided to move their entire collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The vast majority of their collection was given as a gift to the institution. Many of the works they acquired appreciated so significantly over the years that their collection today is worth millions of dollars. Still, the Vogels never sold a single piece.

Today Herb and Dorothy still live in the same apartment in New York with 19 turtles, lots of fish, and one cat. They’ve refilled it with piles of new art they’ve acquired.

To learn more about Herb & Dorothy or to find a screening near you click here

posted by: Harold Johns III