For fans of: Joy Division, Toby Keith, Olympia and Brazilian twee,
especially Beat Happening, train wrecks, rubbernecking automobile
accidents, chasing fire trucks!
*****
To my dear friends, all over the world:
Some of you may be aware that my daughter and I had been alienated for
six years. Some of you may not have even been aware that I am a
parent, so profound was my shame and grief at the role my failures as
a human being and a parent played in the breakdown of this most
important relationship, I may have overlooked mentioning that little
fact to you.
Well, no more! Today I am here full of piss and vinegar to announce
that she and I are back in email contact, and will soon see each other
face-to-face. In fact, I couldn't think of a better way to come back
together than to do a live radio show in Portland, after a single
rehearsal with most (but not all) of a band of musical specialists who
have never played as a unit before, including some of the old songs we
haven't done in a decade or so, and some new songs that have never
been performed live.
Does this sound like a recipe for disaster to you, too? The beginning
of another six years of cold war, maybe? If you like that sort of
thing (and it's a known fact that many homo sapien do like that sort
of thing, a great deal; consider the success of the movies The
Towering Inferno and Titanic, for example), at noon Saturday Pacific
Time - that's 4:00 pm Sao Paulo time, 9:00 PM in Paris, 10:00 PM
Athens (Greece) and 3:00 PM in Athens (Georgia) go to
http://kpsu.org/listen and listen live! (Give or take an hour on
those times, I tried to factor in daylight savings time, but it hurts
my feelings).
For a second opinion on this show, here's unindicted (as yet) musical
co-conspirator Jim McAdams take on the show:
Here's the basic run-down on the Olympia band That Stupid Love
Experience having their reunion on 5/24/08 on What's This Called? with
guest DJ Ferris manning the booth:
That Stupid Love Experience was an experimental indie folk pop group
formed in the late '90s from members of two Olympia bands - That
Stupid Club (an experimental grunge/noise rock group) and The Kelsie
Love Experience (a folk pop group centered around pre-teen and then
teenage prodigy vocalist Kelsie Love). The group name, just like it's
members, came from half of each separate band. While certainly an
all-in-fun agenda prevailed, this was Kelsie's first real "rock" band,
and later she would go on to change her name to Olivia and become
vocalist for the popular NW all-female Black Sabbath tribute group
Pink Sabbath.
It's been ten years since That Stupid Love Experience has played
together and in recent years any sort of reunion seemed completely
impossible as band members Kelsie (now Olivia) and her father Matt
Love had a falling out. Time thankfully is a wonderful healer, and
recently when former vocalist/moog player Ricardo Wang had made plans
to book Matt for a solo set on his KPSU show it came out that Olivia
might sit in. Soon Ricardo was dusty off his trusty moog, and making
calls with the new invention of cellular phones to other former band
members. To avoid a conflict of interest, Ricardo enlisted the help
of KPSU's most noted interviewer DJ Ferris to take over the radio host
duties.
Times (and names) have changed, and three quarters of this particular
line-up is now married to new people, with weird things happening in
their lives like careers and children. The group still knows how to
mix covers from the likes of Beat Happening and Joy Division with
originals about schizophrenics and creepy deadhead misogynists,
however. This set is dedicated to Matt Loves good friend and musical
cohort Joe Sibley who took his own life a year ago.
***
