Website Shout Out: DatPiff

DatPiff is a website that calls itself “The Authority in Free Mixtapes” – and they’re not lying.  I first stumbled onto this little gem of a site looking for Yelawolf’s “Trunk Muzik” mixtape, and it’s become a frequent online music stop ever since.  They’ve got everything from that new hot mixtape folks are chatting about like Pusha T’s “Fear Of God” to my cousin Mike Schpitz’s “Mike Murder” release.

The site is easy to use, just register and you get five free mixtape downloads a day. If you don’t feel like registering, or if you want to give something a listen, you can stream the mixtapes instead of downloading. There are also “sponsored” releases, which basically means they can be downloaded by folks who have not registered, and don’t count toward your five album per day download limit. The designated “Official” mixtapes are releases straight from the artist and/or their record companies, but there are people out there remixing and mixing stuff up all over the place as well.  The site has a fairly handy search system that will get you the specific artist you want. And you can also search by words, for instance my search for “Club Bangers” brought up around 20 different albums, all of them free. Sure, there’s some crap on here, but they’ve got a pretty handy rating and comments system, so you don’t get bad stuff unless you want it – and admit it, sometimes you want it – Gucci Mane chopped and screwed anyone?!

Live Recap: Thee Oh Sees and The Fresh and Onlys

Lots of shows come through our fair city of Lawrence – most are good, some are bad, and a select few are so completely amazing they go straight to the concert spank bank to be remembered forevermore.  Last Wednesday night, when The Fresh & Onlys came to town along with Thee Oh Sees for instance, that show will be safely tucked away, somewhere between that one Gogogo Airheart show at the Replay and the time the Dirtbombs played the Bottleneck. A hot, sticky wad of rock and roll goodness, even ‘ye old 9 to 5′ers were out in full force, already discussing several completely believable excuses for Thursday morning’s call-in.

The musical orgy opened with some local flavor from Bandit Teeth and Ad Astra Arkestra – the latter of whom positively filled every inch of stage with band members making joyous sounds on a dazzling display of instruments. The opening acts did their job with aplomb befitting their usual praise, and the crowd was well warmed up and ready for a little grinding and heavy aural petting by the very willing lads of The Fresh & Onlys. This band came on stage and let it rip all over the delighted, hungry faces of the audience, playing tune after tune in such rapid succession the lead singer had nary a chance to remove his sunglasses until the show was over. The Fresh & Only’s live show was every bit as raw and glorious as their new CD Grey-Eyed Girls and hopes were flying just as high for Thee Oh Sees.

Shunning the Jackpot stage, Thee Oh Sees instead set up their instruments on the floor, letting folks surround them on all sides and inviting up close and personal interaction between band and crowd throughout the set. There’s really nothing like letting it all go while watching somebody else let it all go on an instrument performing inches away. And perform Thee Oh Sees did – positively ripping through songs with heat and heavy riffs to spare, leaving the crowd panting, glowing and ready to keep going – don’t stop -  even as the lights went down and the last notes rang from the instruments.

It was just how you always remembered shows being, it was just how shows should always be, this show was one to remember.

New Music Review: The Fresh & Onlys’ “Grey-Eyed Girls”

It takes a special kind of album to open with a long-juicy pick slide. Like a stripper working the pole, you can practically see the porno shot, the hand sliding down the guitar neck, by the time it’s done you’re practically begging for the rock to begin.

And then it does, and what you’re listening to is the amazing, jangly, golden yet grimy, dug straight from the fertile musical fount of psychedelic rock/pop/punk goodness of The Fresh & Onlys new album Grey Eyed Girls.

Of course, there are few better cities to live in right now than San Francisco for the fostering of musical creativity – The Fresh & Onlys are only one of the many amazing bands like The Oh Sees, Sic Alps, and The Nodzzz, that have been mixing some killer melodies with crazy sounds.

But while The Fresh & Onlys are a fairly new band, the idea of the band has been around for longer than the recent past. The founding members of The Fresh & Onlys, Tim Cohen (Black Fiction) and bassist Shayde Sartin, started playing together back in 2004 but only started to record in 2008, giving the band’s sound and songwriting a little time to come together naturally, organically if you will – like a musical compost heap beginning to fuse together, gassy and creating heat.

And now that the musical compost has coalesced, when the settings were right, The Fresh & Onlys (which now includes drummer Kyle Gibson, Wymond Miles, and Heidi Alexander) have practically exploded onto the scene – releasing their first full-length, a couple 7” singles, and recently their newest album Grey Eyed Girls, all in the space of a year or so. And they’ve even got songs to spare for their next project – the band’s first full studio album.

What’s more amazing, the folks in The Fresh & Onlys sound perfectly comfortable mixing the best of cute, fanciful melodic pop, grimy fuzzed-out garage rock, and angular, driven punk – think Jarvis Cocker fronting the Buzzcocks or the 13th Floor Elevators mixed with Joy Division, all done effortlessly and in an amazingly loose yet concise way.

Grey Eyed Girls sounds as if it’s been lying forgotten in a dusty garage for 30 years, waiting, lurking, hibernating until the time comes where it springs up, fully realized like Athena from the skull of Zeus, and saves humanity from the legions of annoying, whining, soulless, auto-tuned, blather bands that continue to pass tired, regurgitated sounds off as music to a sad majority of folks today.

Every time Grey Eyed Girls ends, it feels like a song too soon, leaving your ears hungry for that nasty pick slide to start the sound of sonic joy all over again. Give these guys a listen and you’ll be hooked.

The Fresh & Onlys are currently on tour with The Oh Sees, and the whole show is coming through Lawrence on September 23rd at the Jackpot Music Hall (943 Massachusetts). Get there early, get your dancing shoes on, and get ready for some good times.

Listen to “Invisible Forces” by The Fresh and Onlys here
Learn more about the band here

Shut Up And Do It: Make Chocolate Mice!

So there you are at the party with the same old boring cupcakes when some domestic wonder waltzes in with a tray of confectionery goodies practically oozing with creativity and whimsy. Well, now you can be that whiz-kid of the party circuit by making these almost-too-cute-to-eat chocolate mice. We made ours around the Christmas holiday season, but you can really have them any time of the year. And guess what? Though these little guys may look like they’ve been flown in from a big-city sweet shop, they are easy to make and won’t cost you very much cheese.

Here’s what you need:

For the Mice Bodies:

• milk chocolate bark or candy makers melting chocolate
• maraschino cherries with stems
• Hershey’s Kisses
• finely sliced almonds

Frosting (for eyes and ears):

• 1/2 cup butter
• 5 cups confectioner’s sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 – 5 tablespoons milk (less makes the frosting stiffer and less runny)
• red food coloring or decorators icing colors if you want different eye or nose colors

Here’s what you do:

1.) Put your chocolate in a double boiler to start melting. If you don’t have a double boiler, make one by clipping a metal bowl onto the side of pan full of water (see photo). Don’t blow your load and melt all the chocolate at once, working with little batches is easier!

2.) While the chocolate is melting, get out your maraschino cherries and pat them dry, but don’t remove the stems. The cherries don’t need to be bone dry, but too much moisture will make the chocolate weird and hard to work with.

3.) Once your cherries are dry and your chocolate is melted you can get to work covering the cherries with chocolate. A spoon helps with this task. Put the chocolate covered cherries into either candy-making cups or on wax paper keeping the stems pointing up. Let dry for at least 10 minutes.

4.) Next, dip one end of an almond slice into the melted chocolate and hold it against the cherry. This chocolate should melt into the chocolate covering the cherry and stick the almond sliver into place. Repeat process, making sort of a “V” shape with the almonds on the front part of your chocolate-covered cherry. These are the ears of the mouse.

5.) Now dip the flat part of a Hershey’s Kiss (any variety will do) into the chocolate and press it on to the cherry, covering the bottom part of the almond “V” making the ears. Be sure to let some of the ear peek out from behind the Kiss.

6.) Finally, use little dots of colored icing to make the eyes and noses of the mice. If you don’t have a fancy pasty bag, put the frosting into little plastic bags, close tightly, and cut off a corner of the bag to create a perfect (and cheap) frosting gun. Whatever you do, it’ll be cute! Even the “messed up” mice have an off-kilter charm, so this is perfect for those of us who are not quite ready for our own show on the Food Network!

Store your mice in Tupperware or cover in plastic. Refrigerate if you’re gonna sit on them for a bit, but really these little mice age very well. They can be anything from a simple present to the center of a party spread. They look especially great arranged on a tray scattered with Kisses or in a cute little gift box, and would probably blow minds if spread around a cheesecake – if any manage to make if out of the kitchen!

Enjoy…

by: Meghan Bainum and Kitty Reese

Running into Walls

One morning, for some unknown reason, one of the birds that had been living happily in one of the biggest trees by our house began some sort of macabre attack on the picture window nearest to his home. This particular bird was a bright red Cardinal, and charging at full speed, the bird would ram into the window – THWACK – with his (surprisingly large) red birdie head. Then back he would flap to his tree; gathering up whatever courage, battle plans, or whatever was necessary, before flying another kamikaze-like headlong trip into the thick glass of our picture window.

We tried everything to get that bird to stop attacking that window, but every 10 minutes or so, as long as there was daylight to see, that bird would fly headlong into that window. Day in, and day out – over and over again. After a little while of this action, the bird had made no progress other than to dramatically flatten the front of his little head, giving him a decidedly rough and tumble, almost cave-man-like appearance. You could hear the sound of his skull hitting the glass echo through the living room, dining room, kitchen and into the hall – nobody knew why or how the thing continued to do this day after day – until the fevered attacks suddenly stopped. We figured the bird had finally succumbed to his massive brain injuries, but could never find the bedraggled, flat-skulled little body to prove it. Still, it seemed impossible the bird was alive, and he was forgotten about over the winter.

THWACK. Next spring he was back, and was still going at that window as fast and furious as he ever had before, head still flattened from last summer’s furious assault. Something…what was it…something he thought was right on the other side of that glass day in and day out was driving him. Or maybe it was something he saw. Who knows? I still don’t. He was with us, THWACK, as loud and persistent as ever until the end of the summer. Then, again, he was gone. The next summer, I looked for his flattened-red head in our trees, and was almost disappointed when he didn’t show up to resume his fight. Then I forgot all about him and his war with whatever it was that was just beyond his reach, behind the picture-window glass in our living room.

Until, that is, I sit here staring at my computer monitor attempting to write again for the first time in years. Every time I think I have the words to say anything – THWACK – I hit the fucking glass, just like that little bird. Finally, I can understand his frantic attack: I can see the words, they’re right there in my own skull, I just can’t get through that fucking glass and physically get them, wrestle them into submission, anything – no matter what I seem to try. No matter how hard I hit, the only thing I get is a hollow sound, an aching head, and the knowledge that the most futile fights are usually the hardest fought by all of us hapless creatures.

Whether that bird gave up, or died, or found what he was looking for somewhere else had not mattered to me for years – and it’s way too late to ever find out now. There is nothing, no mark on the window, to say his assault ever really happened. Still, I remember the sound of bird bone hitting glass, and am amazed it sounds so much like the sound of my fingers typing.

by: Meghan Bainum – editor/contributor