Anyway, the Schumann PLL, that great white whale among guitar pedal enthusiasts is sold. And to Jack Black, no less....
You play guitar for three-plus decades, you tend to accumulate a few pedals along the way, maybe enough to earn the dumb infantile nickname ‘pedalboy’.
I've been putting off cleaning musical-equipment house for maybe oh...two-and-a-half of those three decades now. But finally starting with this, for some tiny sub-strata of musicianly geeks, the jewel in the crown that is my collection - the Schumann PLL, now for sale. If you have to ask what it is, probably no reason to read on. And definitely no reason to ask how much, since that’ll make us both feel weird. Trust me...
Feeling the CMJ burn yet? Tired of indie rock pushing you around? I actually am and I haven’t left the house in years.
Well, if you’ve ever seen us (wrens) play and thought, “wow, I wish the one on the right would just put aside those cloying songs of heartbreak and loss so that I could really take in the guitar work” – ok, the odds you’ve said that without actually being me, are probably slim - then friend, I’ve got a show for you...
fashionably late to our own unfashionable…
…party, here’s a link for one of the list pieces that Pitchfork ran a week or so back celebrating their 15-year anniversary...
..the Wrens' van's for sale.
Here we are now, Entertain us.
Really nothing pressing here, just pointing, mockingly, to Kev & Charles in Spin, sharing their brief old-man reminiscences of the first time they heard Nirvana's Nevermind, which came out 20 years ago now. Which is pretty bonkers. Almost as bonkers as us in Spin...
Directly from our Betterlatethannever Dept., which is to say, directly from our Everythingwedo Dept., here’s a link to a piece we wrote that recently ran in MAGNET extolling the virtues of a song by Steve Koester (now Two Dark Birds) and a band you never heard of unless you grew up in the same 1980s south Jersey we did, the Magnets...
Charles will be playing a little differently solo (than the usual loop-happy set, hidden behind a veil of electronics and studio trickery), as part of the wonderful Jennifer O’Connor’s new monthly “Tower of Song” series at the Rock Shop in Brooklyn on Tues. Feb. 8th. Also on this one are the equally estimable Richard Baluyut (of Versus) and Kendall Meade (of Mascott).
It’s sort of a round-robin affair with all four onstage, each playing their songs in a row, maybe talking a bit about them etc…
With this, the coldest day in August that I can remember, another sign of the End of Days is made manifest in our webby store – Meadowlands, in vinyl, the record, the actual album…is back in stock! ..
The more personal backstory goes something like this, at least as well as I can remember it…a few years back, Oct. of ’06 to be exact, we got a super nice email from someone named Ben who wrote because his band, Green Arrows, and a friend’s band, Joseph Ferocious, had combined to cover our song Happy at a co-headlining show at the Stone Pony and he wanted to share along a link for us to - you can see it here...
Finding ourselves with a few spare hours, a bag of nails, and some lumber that was in the yard, we’ve hammered together a new web store. And to commemorate so auspicious an occasion, we’ve got a lovely new shirt to hang in the window as well, all very coincidentally in time for some ritual holiday consumer action...
May come as a surprise, may probably not, but I, charles, am not only not the coolest person in the band, I’m not even the coolest person in our house. In fact, the arrival of children has now cemented my ‘not even by a long shot’ status.
Don’t usually make too big a deal of it, but I love indie rock enough in general, and the band Palomar in particular, that I married into it. Hence the move to Brooklyn a few years back, starting me on my own personal cool-makeover...
On Wed October 06, 2010 Charles will be playing in Brooklyn, NY at the Rock Shop.
More about the show...
Howdy,
charles will be playing a solo show at the Rock Shop in Brooklyn, next Wed., Oct. 6th opening up for our dear pal Tim Kasher, who’s usually fronting a little band called Cursive, but currently hitting the highway supporting his new solo album, the Game of Monogamy (which is wonderful, by the way).
Charles will be hacking his way through some new songs demo’d or on the drawing board for the next Wrens album as well as his usual Sultan’s variety of bad effects pedal choices and looping and studio trickery. Maybe a cover song too…possibly a new shirt…
Believe it or not
have written & demo’d about a dozen new songs in the last month (one of them nearly above average) and that’s just me (me being Charles). And that's even working around the arrival of Heir #2, who frankly, even for a minus-two-week-old, hasn't lifted a finger to help with the band [edit.: Press photo not avail. Older brother pictured w/ relevant record-o headgear]...
...Dear New Orleans benefit comp released today...
Just a little reminder that the Dear New Orleans benefit album is released today via your preferred places of musical e-commerce (iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody and eMusic) and includes our song Crescent from our own forthcoming album. You can read tons about it here (or just hit the “page down” button).
...& debut performance of Crescent w/ Bird of Youth tonight
It’s been five years
To mark the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina - and in response to the Gulf Oil Disaster also deeply affecting the region – the folks at Air Traffic Control have produced “Dear New Orleans”, a digital-only benefit compilation, the proceeds of which will be granted to a range of New Orleans-based nonprofit organizations including Sweet Home New Orleans and Gulf Restoration Network.
To do our tiny part, we have a new song, “Crescent”, included on “Dear New Orleans” which will be released & available for download on Tuesday, August 24th..
Long Live the King!
About halfway through the four-year Gallipoli that was making the Meadowlands, we moved from Ft. Lee, NJ back to yet another house in Secaucus, our third there. On the first full weekend in the new place, I was home by myself cleaning up in the yard, trying to hide from neighbors that a band had moved in next door, the kiss of suburban death.
One of those neighbors, the one directly next door, came over from his yard, introduced himself as Dan and asked the general niceties you do when you meet someone who’s renting (us) the house next to the house that you own (him), raised children in, have a real stake in etc. and need to take a measure of the person the fates have cast in the role of new neighbor and adjust the new threat-to-peace-of-mind level accordingly.
Now I admit...
Oh yeah, oh yeah...
..forgot to mention, the working title of the next record is "funeral".
Actually not kidding. Or if so, more in an Erased DeKooning sorta way...