I CAN'T BELIEVE WE INTERVIEWED GRASS WIDOW
August 11, 2009
by ERICA BRAINERD
Practice Space Season 2
Do you know who my favorite ladyband is? All right, it’s the Runaways. But do you know who my favorite ladyband from the last tennish years is? It’s Grass Widow! The first time I heard them on a Yeti sampler I was like, “Wow, when did the Vivian Girls stop boring me to tears?” Then I realized I’d lost the magazine with the tracklisting and could only refer to them as Vivian Girls Who Aren’t Boring, but then they had a really boring interview in MRR (interviewer’s fault) and the name finally clicked and a love affair was born anew. I even stuck it out after discovering that they weren’t singing “He’s got a tumor” in this song, though it was understandably an emotional struggle. Anyways, you can guess the surprisyness of my delight when I found out that someone in England had not only interviewed these feisty ’Franciscans for Vice, but did an excellent job involving sample tracks and plenty of pictures. Good work, team!
I SAW A UNICORN
August 10, 2009
by BABY BALLS
Practice Space Season 2
There is a moment in this week’s Practice Space with Obits that, tragically, you will never fully enjoy. Right before the beginning of the interview portion where he’s cleaning off his chin in the sink, Rick Froberg accidentally hit the button on the hand dryer of the women’s bathroom we decided to talk to the band in (reason moved below to preserve “flow”), spraying a foamy plume of beer all over him and his bandmates. It was like in Decline of Western Civilization II when the guys from WASP or Odin or whoever would whip champagne all over each other, only less advertent and involving far better musicians/human beings.
A SHOW YOU SHOULD GO TO TONIGHT
August 04, 2009
by VBS Staff
Practice Space Season 2
We know your Tuesday night is probably already jam-packed- what with all the pot smoking and nothing-doing you’ve gotta get done, but just in case something opens up in your schedule, you should check out this show at the Cake Shop with “Gary Panter”: http://www.vbs.tv/watch/art-talk/gary-panter, our vote for “best artist” of the past 30 years and in the running for “guy,” and R. Stevie Moore, home-recorder of over 400 smash records and chief inspirador of this week’s Practice Space subject Ariel Pink.
But as said, no pressure. Staying inside and rotting away sounds fun too. Poster below.
ARIEL PINK HAS NOT DIED
August 03, 2009
by NATE HARRINGTON
Practice Space Season 2
By the time I heard Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti in 2004 I felt like I had already missed out on the most important part of their musical career, aka the 30-odd tapes and records they’d put out over the past 8 years. Luckily, looking back now I can see that I was wrong and it was only the beginning in many ways. As you’ll see in this week’s episode of Practice Space, the band are still very much “out there,” but they’ve never sounded tighter or more determined than they do now and I think we should all be thankful and excited for/by that.
Here’s a little tune from the ‘old days’ to compare and contrast.
And here’s that one everyone likes.
CLOCKCLEANER WE HARDLY KNEW YE
July 20, 2009
by VBS Staff
Practice Space Season 2
Tomorrow on Practice Space you’ll learn everything you need to know about our favorite pair of Queensian music experimenters Blues Control. So instead of teasing you with a bunch of pics and innuendo about them two, we’ve decided to give you a little extracurricular treat. From our very first meeting with them way back in the tender days of 2006, Clockcleaner have been one of the heaviest, most spiteful, tirelessly hateful bands we’ve had the pleasure of watching go on hiatus while their cruel, vituperative asshole of a lead singer eloped with some poor, put-upon young Australian lady and got hired by the Vice Melbourne office to write about how weird their country’s most popular cheese is (it’s called “Tasty Coon”). Actually, seeing him burn all his bridges on the way out of that continent was arguably even better.
HAIR TIPS FROM AMEBIX
July 12, 2009
by VBS Staff
Practice Space Season 2
This week Practice Space hops through the office timehole for a trip back to the halcyon days of January 2009. America was swearing in its first black president, oddly named pilots were winning praise for crashing their jets into the Hudson River, and a little legendary crust band called Amebix had just decided to get back together and tour the States with Roy Mayorga on drums. To warm you up for our meeting with Bristol’s proudest sons, here’s Rob’s section from the old UK/DK documentary.
BRUNO S. IS PROBABLY NOT WHO YOU THINK HE IS
July 07, 2009
by TOM LITTLEWOOD
Practice Space Season 2
When I first heard Bruno S. play in the Stadtklause, a tiny bar filled with hardened beer lovers and Berlin oddballs, it wasn’t really what I was expecting. I guess I didn’t really know what to expect from a guy who was disowned by his bastard family, grew up on the streets, and was finally plucked from nowhere by Werner Herzog to star in two of his most important films before being discarded just as quickly. To be honest, I felt really distressed by the performance of a man who has been through more in his life than your average tragic hero.
AT HOME WITH STROSZEK
July 06, 2009
by VBS Staff
Practice Space Season 2
While Klaus Kinski is still sopping up the film-student splooge 25 years after his death for that one picture where he’s choking out Werner Herzog, Herzog’s original unhinged actor-antagonist is tooling around Berlin, singing the same toothless street chanteys that paid his bills before Germany’s greatest director decided to make him one of the world’s most depressing stars. The proverbial son of a whore, Bruno S. spent his childhood being handed off between various orphanages and mental institutions before taking up the accordion and venturing out into the exciting career field of courtyard busking. Bear in mind, this was all happening in the middle of the Nazis’ height of power, when things like mental illness and being the illegitimate child of a prostitute weren’t widely considered bankable traits. By the time Herzog discovered him in the early 70s, Bruno had been tramping for nearly 30 years straight and just featured in a small local documentary called Bruno der Schwarze (“Bruno the Black”). Without bothering to check whether or not he could act, Herzog cast him as the titular abandoned mute of The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and then specifically wrote him the lead role in Stroszek, the movie that put Cherokee, NC, and Ian Curtis’s suicide on the map.
In tomorrow’s episode of Practice Space Herr Bruno invites us over to his flat (which, provided you’ve seen the movie, you may recognize as the same place that gets invaded at the beginning of Stroszek ) to play us a couple of cheerful accordion ditties. Here’s a little gallery of some of Bruno’s painted work to tide you over until then. And if you’re one of those people who can stomach watching movies on a 10-inch screen with ichat bouncing up every three minutes, here’s the entirety of Kaspar Hauser.
B the dubs, we know this is about Bruno here, but if you’ve got a jones for a little mid-Monday Herzog break, check out this excerpt from his forthcoming Fitzcarraldo production diary in the current issue of Vice.
