Looks like all the press paid off. There were more than 100 people at last Friday night’s Fromanhole CD release show at Slowdown Jr., enough that every table and booth was filled, with a sizable crowd standing in front of the stage. Fromanhole picked the right time to bring it — they never sounded better, despite the fact that bassist/vocalist Doug Kiser sliced off a good chuck of his pointer finger on his left hand earlier in the day. This is the second time I’ve seen Doug play injured (the other was an O’Leaver’s show where he again had injured one of his fingers). Maybe he should mutilate himself more often if it’s going to result in this kind of bad-ass performance.

The evening’s pleasant surprise (for me, anyway) was The Life and Times, a KC band fronted by Shiner’s Allen Epley. Prior to the show I had heard nary a note of the LNT’s music, though right before they went on one of the local music scholars said, “You’re gonna love ’em. They’re heavily influenced by Swervedriver.” Did they sound like Swervedriver? I don’t know since I’ve never really followed Swervedriver. What we got was a gnashing set of trippy, melodic noise-core that reminded me of My Bloody Valentine — just grinding, heavy rock that had moments of soaring beauty. Epley’s voice is unique in a Cobain sort of way (though he sounds nothing like Cobain), one of those voices that makes you nod your head and think, “This guy is good.” For a trio, LNT had an enormous, dense sound. With some luck, they could be the next big thing. They should be.

Little Brazil unveiled a bunch of new material during their headlining set. I initially thought, “These guys really sound poppy these days,” but then I listened to Tighten the Noose again over the weekend and rethought it. Drummer Oliver Morgan said after the set, “More poppy? We though we sounded more punky.” I don’t think I’d use the term “punk” to describe their sound, however. To me, the new stuff is more melody-focused, with fewer tangents getting in the way. Landon Hedges’ voice is amazing, just an amazing range. He’s the Freddy Mercury of indie rock. I don’t know how he’s going to pull off those high notes after a few days on the road. Lots of warming up? Hot toddies? I thought Tighten the Noose was going to be the one to push them to that next level of national indie exposure. But it wasn’t to be. If their next album captures the sound I heard Friday night — and they tour as hard as they have in the past — there’s no reason for them not to emerge at the top of the CMJ charts.

* * *

Well, in last Saturday’s edition, the Omaha World-Herald replied to my column from a couple weeks ago where I took them to task for taking The Good Life to task for voicing their support for the Democratic party (read my column here). My point was that the OWH should be encouraging freedom of speech and the First Amendment, not dreaming up ways (including financial penalties) to keep people from voicing a viewpoint that differs from theirs. In their 87-word response that appeared under the “Furthermore…” section of the Editorials page, the OWH said it “understood and contemplated the band’s right to say what it wanted. That is free speech.” It then went on to say that “critics” misunderstood the difference between free speech and speech free of consequences. “…The city and this newspaper have a right to criticize crudeness and contemplate incentives for better behavior.” Incentives? I always thought incentives were benefits beyond basic compensation (a bonus, for example). In the OWH‘s eyes, compensation for work performed isn’t part of an agreement or contract, it’s an incentive. Odd way of doing business. Ah well, I have no interest in getting in a pissing war with the OWH. It’s surprising that they even read the column in the first place. As is their policy, they didn’t reference the source of the criticism (The Reader) or name the band involved. At least they didn’t refer to me as a “local blogger ” this time.

* * *

New Jersey punkers The Ergs play at O’Leaver’s tonight with Hunchback and No Action. $5, 9:30 p.m. Over at The Waiting Room it’s The A.K.A.’s with The Frantic. $8, 9 p.m. While over at Slowdown Jr. it’s Wild Sweet Orchard with Skypiper and It’s True. $8, 9 p.m.

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The boys from Fromanhole scored the triple crown of publicity for their CD release show tonight at Slowdown Jr.: They got a Niz feature in the OWH‘s Go! section (here), a “meet-the-band” interview conducted by former intern Brendan Walsh in the Omaha City Weekly (here) and, of course, a profile by yours truly in The Reader and Lazy-i.com (here). What more could they do to get people to come to this show? And then, in the end, Fromanhole isn’t headlining — in fact, they’re not even playing third. Doug, Daryl and Roach will be playing second, which means they’ll be on stage at around 10 p.m. So get down to Slowdown early and see the results of this media frenzy. Also on the bill are Nueva Vulcano (playing first), The Life and Times (Allen Epley of Shiner) and headliner Little Brazil. $7, 9 p.m.

What else is going on this weekend? You tell me on the webboard…

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Now online, a massive feature/interview with Tilly and the Wall. The Tilly crew talks about where they’ve been and where they’re going, as well as their new album and their new musical direction (though they say there’s nothing really different about O; I say otherwise). Read it here, or pick up a copy of this week’s Reader, where it’s the cover story. The piece was written in support of Tilly’s official CD release show, which is happening at Sokol Auditorium Thursday Aug. 7. Tix are $13, get them now. Opening are New Zealand Sub Pop band The Ruby Suns and our very own Go Motion.

* * *

Tonight at The Waiting Room, legendary Omaha hardcore band Hercules is playing with Alphabet and Capgun Coup. I have heard from, well, a ton of people how amazing Hercules is. I’m told they prefer playing all-ages shows, which is why they haven’t played a lot of gigs at the usual places around town. Here’s a chance to check them out. $6, 9 p.m.

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Just placed online, a feature/interview with the guys from Fromanhole (read it here). Daryl, Doug and Roach tell us who they are and what they’re trying to accomplish playing in one of the most intense bands in the Midwest. The story is a lead-up to Friday night’s Fromanhole CD release show at Slowdown Jr. that also features Little Brazil, The Life and Times and Nueva Vulcano. Go read the story, then buy a ticket to the show (it’s only $7).

* * *

There’s a few interesting things going on tonight. Down at Slowdown Jr. it’s cutesy indie rock four-piece Harry and the Potters, renowned for such hits as “Wrath of Hermoine” and “Voldemort Can’t Stop the Rock.” They fancy themselves practitioners of “Wizard Rock,” or WRock, a musical movement (according to their Wiki entry) that consists of at least 450 bands that play songs about Harry Potter. Right. Laugh all you want, but the joke’s been going on since 2002 when the band first formed. Musically, it’s run-of-the-mill slacker indie rock with whiney vocals about giant spiders and Malfoy. Opening are Math The Band and Uncle Monsterface. $12, 7 p.m.

Meanwhile, over at The Waiting Room, singer-songwriter Kevin Devine opens for a couple fellow singer-songwriters I’ve never heard of: Jesse Lacey and Brian Bonz. Devine is a first-class Brooklyn-area musician and singer who’s come through Omaha a number of times, supporting his last album, Put Your Ghost to Rest, which was originally released on Capitol in ’06 before being re-released on indie label Procrastinate! Music Traitors. $15 (SOLD OUT), 9 p.m.

Down the road at The Barley Street, Tomato a Day is playing with Reagan Roeder and Ben Sieff. It’s a free show that starts at 9. Word got around yesterday that Barley St. got busted by an ASCAP representative for playing records in the bar — a no-no for any commercial, public establishment that hasn’t paid the licensing fee to the ASCAP organization/mafia. As a result, Brad Hoshaw’s Tuesday night Viva La Vinyl showcase — where anyone could in and play their albums — is no more. Here’s hoping Brad finds a new home for the vinyl showcase.

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I got very little bar time in this past weekend. I did manage to catch the Malpais CD release show at The Waiting Room — but only Malpais thanks to the 2 1/2-hour Batman film. It was very well-attended (I’m guessing around 200?), all there to see Greg Loftis and his crew perform songs off a CD that I’m told has received a 4-star rating from Alternative Press — a rarity for a self-released album. From what I heard on stage (I still don’t have a copy of the disc) AP got it right. The band knows its way around a solid indie rock melody. My quibbles are with the house sound — very muddy, and Loftis’ vocals were lost in the mix. One of the bar’s regulars told me that it wasn’t the sound-guy’s fault — Loftis just doesn’t sing very loudly. Maybe so, but I’ve heard him do a fine job belting out a tune at O’Leaver’s before. As much as I enjoyed the gig, I think Loftis is the kind of guy who could do even better in an acoustic singer-songwriter setting. The title track of the new CD — “Luke Is Leaving New York,” which I’ve heard on Myspace — is a sweet little acoustic guitar-fueled ballad. The live rendition — performed by the full band — paled in comparison. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for a simple melody…

Lots of content this week on Lazy-i. Tomorrow, instead of the usual column (no column this week!) look for a feature on everyone’s favorite noise-punk band, Fromanhole, who are having a CD release show of their own this Firday night at Slowdown Jr. And then Thursday look for a gi-normous interview with Tilly and the Wall (which also will be the cover story for this week’s issue of The Reader).

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Here’s what I see for the weekend:

Tonight at The Waiting Room it’s the CD release show for Malpais’ new disc, Luke Is Leaving New York. I’m listening to the title track now — a pretty little acoustic ballad reminiscent of Bookends-era S&G. I’m told that the rest of the CD is much more raucous in an indie sort of way — we’ll find out tonight. Opening is Sleep Said the Monster, The Beatseekers and The Paper Airplanes. $7, 9 p.m.

Tomorrow night, O’Leaver’s is hosting a benefit for the Omaha Bike Co-op (also known as the Community Bicycle Shop). Participants in their program earn a bike by refurbishing and repairing one from the shop’s donated inventory while completing nine volunteer hours and a basic bike safety course. The shop is located at 525 North 33rd Street. It’s a program worthy of a benefit show featuring Now Archimedes!, Ideal Cleaners and the amazing Stay Awake. It’ll probably cost $5, but why not double your donation for this worthy cause? 9:30 p.m.

Finally, on Sunday night, it’s the return of Afrobeat sensations NOMO at The Waiting Room. I’ve seen them at O’Leaver’s a couple years ago and they blew me away. Then they played at The Waiting Room in June 2007 and while it was still a fun show, it lacked the gritty energy of that O’Leaver’s night. Will they be able to match the intensity of their debut performance? Opening is Satchel Grande. Get your booty shaking. $10, 9 p.m.

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I tried to get an interview with Neil Diamond in support of tonight’s show at the Qwest Center. Omaha being a songwriters’ town, and Diamond now releasing two albums of stripped-down singer/songwriter fare produced by Rick Rubin, the interview would have been a natural. It would have been a chance for Diamond to talk about the thought-process behind his new album and why he’s decided to go in a more subtle, less bombastic direction. But there was no convincing his publicist. Neil isn’t doing interviews, he said. And think about it, why should he? He certainly doesn’t need a story in an Omaha alt-weekly (or one of indie music’s most-read online resources) to sell tickets to the great unwashed masses, who could give two shits about how he and Rick worked through the arrangements on, say, acoustic waltz “Act Like a Man” off the new album. In fact, those ticket buyers don’t even want to hear “Act Like a Man” or any of the new material. No, they want the Big Stuff. They want “Cherry Cherry” and “Forever in Blue Jeans” and, by God, “Sweet friggin’ Caroline.” And something tells me that’s exactly what they’re going to get. But they’re going to have to sit through some of the new stuff whether they like it or not, or at least wait until the new stuff comes on before they grab a smoke or a hot dog or return that phone call. Once you’ve gone Vegas, Neil, there’s no turning back. Still, Home Before Dark did chart at No. 1 on Billboard…

I’m not going to Neil. Instead, I’ve got an interview tonight at eight. And maybe afterward, I might drop by O’Leaver’s, where The Copyrights, The Fonzarellies and The Killigans will be kickin’ it for just $5 (starting at 9:30 p.m.). Also tonight, Chairlift and Talkin’ Mountain are opening for Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti at Slowdown Jr. $8, 9 p.m.

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I’m back from Breckenridge. Nothing to report musicwise. I think I said the last time I went up there — you don’t go to Colorado for the music unless you’re “into” that sort of lifestyle. All of the radio stations have the same play list — Jack Johnson, Dave Matthews, Widespread, Blues Traveller, Dead, then repeat continuously until your brain falls out or you’re properly stoned. Since I don’t smoke the hippie lettuce, that only leaves the music. I listened to the ol’ iPod a lot and to the new Silver Jews record, which I highly recommend (along with the new Does It Offend You, Yeah? disc). Nightlife in Breck is the same sitch — bad local jam bands and/or white-guy blues acts. There is no original music to be found anywhere. It all goes back to the origins of the Omaha music scene — the founding fathers (Baechle, Kasher, Oberst, etc.) have always said that their music grew out of Midwestern boredom. Conversely, in Breck, with 14k mountains, roaring rivers, skiing, i.e. outdoor entertainment year-round, who has time to write a song? Better to learn how to play the latest Dave Matthews/Jack Johnson bong hit. There is no real culture in the Rockies, but they don’t miss it. You want culture? Move to NYC or Chicago or some other urban dirthole. You want a back-to-nature brain-dead paradise? Move to the coast and become a surfer. Or move to the Rockies and get lost in the ski/mountain culture. It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Which brings us to this week’s column…

Column 183: Help Wanted, Rights
OWH Gags on 1st Amendment

I write this from Colorado, where the trees are dying in the mountains. You can thank the Mountain Pine Beetle, an industrious insect whose entire life is dedicated to boring under the bark of ancient lodge-pole timbers that, in their effort to fight off the attack, starve themselves by cutting off the food supply to their limbs. They turn brown; they die and the beetle moves on, to the next tree. The beetles are winning. From a distance, the forests in and around Breckenridge, Colorado, look like a middle-aged man’s salt-and-pepper hair, the gray slowly defeating the color of its youth, until there’s nothing but white, and then nothing at all.

It is from the balcony of a Breckenridge condo while on vacation that I received an e-mail from a member of the band The Good Life with an attached PDF file. It was an article — an editorial — that appeared in the July 15 issue of The Omaha World-Herald, a parting shot taken at the band a few days after they opened for Feist in Memorial Park.

Flavorlessly titled “Saturday, in the Park,” the editorial is a tsk-tsk indictment of the band’s behavior from the Memorial Park stage on the early evening of Saturday, July 12. The writer (who, like all OWH editorial writers, shall remain anonymous as s/he presumably speaks for the entire newspaper staff) was aghast that Good Life frontman Tim Kasher had the audacity — the utter contempt — to say what was on his mind concerning the upcoming presidential election.

Says the OWH: “…early arrivals got more than they bargained for when a local band, The Good Life, started its opening set with a two-minute diatribe about being embarrassed by red-state Nebraska and how the crowd should buck their parents and vote for Democratic U.S. Sen. Barack Obama for president.”

The editorial went on to say how embarrassed we should feel for Mayor Fahey — by God, his name is on the marquee as a sponsor for an event that cost private sponsors $70k, not to mention your tax dollars to pay police to patrol the park. But that’s not all. Kasher, the OWH said, “proceeded to scream a song with the F-word so prominently that children in Dundee and Elmwood Park probably heard it. What a shame!”

I’m not making this up.

The Omaha World-Herald — our local bastion of free speech — actually published an editorial that attacked Kasher for exercising his First Amendment rights, asking in the editorial, “Does (the city) need to specify that on-stage political statements are unwelcome, to the point of voiding pay?”

Would Omaha’s great gray lady have been as upset if Kasher had expressed, say, his devotion to Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior? What if Kasher had gone on for two minutes extolling his pride in the good work of our Armed Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan? Would there have been an editorial printed a few days later criticizing those points of view? One wonders, despite the fact that both comments are very much political statements.

It’s embarrassing — if not bizarre — that any newspaper would be concerned about someone exercising their First Amendment rights, whether it be spoken to the person next to them or from a stage. God forbid that the minds of our area youth be polluted by thoughts and ideas that differ from their parents’ — or from the Omaha World Herald’s — thoughts and ideas.

The Omaha World Herald has a right to disagree with Kasher in their editorial, but to ask that he and future artists be gagged on stage with threats of voiding their pay should they voice a view that differs from theirs is regretful and sad and very, very small town. Now I know one of the reasons why Kasher moved to Los Angeles.

As for the concerns about use of the “F-word” (How childish does that term sound when read in print?) in a song — I have to think that someone involved in putting this concert together had to have at least a modicum of knowledge about the artists they were booking. The “F-word” appears in many a Good Life song because that’s the language the artist uses to express his art, his ideas. It would be like asking to display Tom Wesselmann’s “American Bedroom Painting #25” — a modern still life in the Joslyn Art Museum collection that depicts a piece of fruit, a telephone and a woman’s breast — but asking to have that boob covered up or removed from the painting. We can’t have our kids seeing that. Here’s a little news flash to the OWH: Kids use the “F-word” all the time, every day, and you and their parents aren’t going to stop it. Certainly curbing Kasher from singing “fuck fuck fuck” isn’t going to stop it either.

It’s called the free flow of ideas. It’s what keeps a culture alive and thriving and moving forward. You may not agree with something someone says, but he or she has to be allowed to say it — in public, from a stage, to your children, to you. The OWH should be encouraging this type of discourse, not trying to prevent it.

Because once you start cutting off ideas or blocking them from being spoken and being heard, you cut off your culture’s food supply. And slowly, the green turns brown, the gray turns white, and eventually there’s nothing left.

Stephen Colbert’s favorite band, Apples in Stereo, hit the Waiting Room stage tonight with those lovable spazzes from Poison Control Center and Big Fresh. $12, 9 p.m. It’s good to be home.

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On the side of a mountain, checking to see if I have signal, I got an e-mail from Jason Kulbel saying Saddle Creek just signed yet another Canadian band — Land of Talk. I’ve never heard of the band. Their last album, a 7-song EP released in April 2006 on Dependent Records called Applause Cheer Boo Hiss, got a 4-star rating by AMG. A trio, lead singer Elizabeth Powell’s voice has been compared to Chan Marshall’s and Sarah Blasko’s. I’ve listened to a couple songs on their myspace page and thought she sounded like neither, more like Emily Haines (of Metric). It’s pure, upbeat indie, and I could see these folks touring with fellow Canucks and labelmates Tokyo Police Club. Says Kulbel, their debut full-length, Some Are Lakes, comes out on Saddle Creek October 7. The album was recorded in Montreal with Justin Vernon (Bon Iver). The band spent the better part of 2006 and early 2007 on the road, touring throughout North America and Europe with such acts as The Decemberists , Tapes n’ Tapes and The Rosebuds. I’ll see what more I can find out about why/how Creek signed them when I get off this mountain…

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Interesting fact about David Matysiak: He works as a producer at KETV Channel 7, which requires that he get up at 3 a.m. every morning. It just so happens that I watch Channel 7 for about five minutes every morning when I’m fetching my coffee — if only to see what Doppler Storm Team Member Andrea Bredow is wearing. It amazes me that Matysiak is able to pull off Telephono, Coyote Bones and maintain a serious, career-style full-time job with demanding hours. You’ll never hear me complain about getting up at 5 a.m. again…

Column 182: One Ringy Dingy
David Matysiak goes from Bones to phones.

I know that The Reader just ran a story last week on David Matysiak’s Telephono project (in the Arts section), but I still didn’t quite understand how the whole thing worked.

Matysiak, the frontman for local indie band Coyote Bones, created Telephono as part of his residency at The Bemis. It’s described as being based on the ol’ telephone game, where one person whispers a secret into another person’s ear, who in turn, tells another person, and so on. What comes out the other end is totally different than what went in.

Telephono worked off that same principle. Matysiak created an audio track, then sent it off to someone who could either add to it, edit it, or record over it entirely. For me, that’s where the confusion came in.

To archive the effort, Matysiak is releasing a limited-edition (of 200) 5-record box set of 10 Telephono tracks on 7-inch vinyl. One track, “Ferret Escapes the Wheel,” is credited on the test pressing to Darin Coelho of Placerville California band Loomfixer. But in fact, musicians in the song chain included Matysiak, Alessi Laurent-Marke and Adrienne Beatty of band Coal Beautiere. So why just Coelho in the record’s credits? Because, Matysiak said, Coelho scrapped everything that came before him and did his own thing. If you go online to telephono.org, you can hear the Alessi version, titled “Little Ferret’s Fork” as well as everyone else’s. (Matysiak wrote me after the interview to say that the final version of the record will, in fact, credit everyone even though you won’t hear much of Alessi and Beatty).

Losing a musician’s contribution along the way is part of how Telephono works — collaborative art can be a brutal game. But even if the tracks are wiped, just having heard the previous version influenced the final product. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work.

The best results came when musicians truly built on each other’s contributions. The track “No Souls,” for example, started with Matysiak and includes contributions by Dayve Hawk of Philadelphia band Hail Social and Cursive’s Tim Kasher. The final version is a trippy rock song with Kasher singing breathlessly into a distorted microphone. “Banning Gold in Suits” is Matysiak, The Faint’s Clark Baechle, UUVVWWZ’s Teal Gardner and Anderson Reinkordt of Lincoln band Man’s Last Great Invention. The record sounds like an urban industrial dance track that evolves into static-noise space sounds.

For every melody-friendly song on Telephono, there’s a weird noise-art experiment. And as interesting as the vinyl sounds, it’s even more interesting to go to telephono.org and hear how each track evolved, paying close attention to every nuisance along the way.

Telephono truly is a “labor of love.” Matysiak not only coordinated the project, but it was his idea to put out the box set, which he paid for out of his own pocket. “I haven’t been out to a show in months because I’ve put every dollar into it,” he said. “It’s expensive when you do all the hand-screened stuff and then print a limited run of seven inches. In 10 years, I won’t remember that money, but I’ll remember the box set.”

He’s celebrating the box’s release Thursday night, July 17, at a free special listening party at The Bemis Underground (Studio C) starting at 8 p.m. Artist Jadon Ulrich (of Saddle Creek Records) will provide visual interpretations of each song. The box will be available for $29, and also can be purchased at The Antiquarium Record Store.

One by-product of Telephono, Matysiak said, was the way it changed how some collaborators approach song writing. “The people who benefited the most are the ones who told me that it broke them out of a writer’s block or made them think differently about their own song writing,” he said. That includes Matysiak, who said that he and the rest of his band had become “burned out” playing Coyote Bones songs from their album Gentleman on the Rocks.

“I feel disconnected from that album now,” Matysiak said, adding that playing the album over and over “took a toll on us. And personally, I feel like if you’re not 100 percent feeling it (on stage), you shouldn’t be up there. Times are tough. People who are shelling out $8 to $10 to see a show expect it to be great. We had to take a step back and analyze what we were doing as a band.”

New Coyote Bones material, which he hopes to record later this year and release early next year, is a reflection of Telephono, Matysiak said, though it builds on the success of Gentleman on the Rocks, which sold close to 500 copies — not bad for a self-released CD with no distribution. “It was all touring and Internet,” Matysiak said. It also was a lot of press. Few Omaha artists have received the amount of attention from publications like Pitchfork, indie music’s online authority, as Coyote Bones, which has left a few local musicians burning with envy.

“I spent 10 years not getting press,” Matysiak said. “I shoveled every dollar I had into (former band) Jet by Day and touring all the time and nothing happened for us. We worked with (record labels) Kindercore and Future Farmers and it all got f***ed up. People can say what they want, but press is a game. I guess the hang-up for a lot of people is in how you approach it: Do you seek it or do you let them come to you? I sat for 10 years waiting for it to come to me and it never did.”

They’re coming now. In the past few weeks, Telephono has been featured in USA Today, Paste, The Atlanta Journal Constitution and National Public Radio. And now twice in The Reader.

After all of that, I’m going to miss the Telephono listening show because, as you read this, I’m driving across Nebraska, headed to the Rocky Mountains for some R & R.

That means I’m also going to miss Black Diamond Heavies and Bazooka Shootout at O’Leaver’s tonight ($5, 9:30 p.m.), as well as Talkin’ Mountain and the rest of the I’m Drinkin’ This Records roster performing at Slowdown Jr. ($5, 9 p.m.).

It’ll mean I’ll miss the OEA Summer Showcase Friday night at music venues throughout Benson. Details and a schedule are at the OEA website. This was a lot of fun last winter and well worth the $10 wristband.

It also means I’ll miss two great shows Saturday night: Ladyfinger and Fromanhole at The Barley St. Tavern ($4, 9 p.m.) and Back When, Art in Manila, Paria and Orphan Choir at Slowdown ($8, 9 p.m.).

And let’s not forget Ween at the Stir Cove ($25, 8 p.m.), though I’ve never been a Ween fan.

There may be updates in my absence, though I highly doubt it.

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