CAT JAMS LABEL

making the best vs. making the most

2008-03-29T23:30:00.000-07:00

So Cat Jams is now officially over. The final show was held at Ragtag Cinemacafe in Columbia, Missouri, on Sunday, January 20 2008; it featured a reunion performance by the Pows (Zach and Rex playing as the Pows for the first time since 2005, with Terry, who played with the group at their inception in 2002), and a farewell performance by OBELISK & MC Cat Genius, as well as a retrospective of Cat Jams family video works, and the release of the final Cat Jams catalog item. Four days later, I began a week-long cross-country trip with my nine-years-no-see father and six-months-no-see girlfriend, which ended with me and Emily living in San Francisco, where I'm attending a four-month six-day-a-week digital video production workshop at San Francisco State University. For me, it means saying goodbye to Columbia, the only town I've ever loved, after six years; it's also the first time I've left Missouri, with no plans to return, since my family moved here in 1993. Missouri, the only state I've ever hated. Aw, it's not that bad.

This is a partial post while I continue preparing the official Cat Jams obituary. Yeah, I know Cat Jams shut down more than two months ago.

• SOME FINAL PRESS AND PHOTOS

Tribune article (pre-show)
badly archived version of the Move article (post-show)
Jeff Lautenberger's photos of the show, for Move / The Maneater ***LOOK AT THESE***

The Move article has several blatant factual inaccuracies (natch) but overall does a good job of conveying what went down at the last show. The photos are absolutely fantastic; you should definitely look at those. And the Tribune article is the last thing Mary Nguyen ever wrote for the Tribune; Chris Boeckmann took over her position because they can pay him less (and he's also a very talented writer). Mary is one of the only journalists I have actually looked forward to working with, because she has excellent taste in restaurants.

• JASON REAMER HAS AN ART SITE

Jason Reamer who did the artwork for the OBECat EP. Dante's Wharf is what it's called *** LOOK AT THIS """

• Emily Foster has been showing her films, including a new one, in a shit-ton of places. San Francisco, Columbia, Chicago, Italy, fuck y'all.

• James Harvey has been doing too much great stuff to enumerate.

• LAST RELEASE ARTWORK & LINER NOTES

The final Cat Jams catalog item,

JAM-∞ DATA DVD-R
v/a
RIP Cat Jams Label 2002-2008,
January 20 2008,
519 tracks 4.3 gigabytes,
limited run of 60,

is now unavailable. If you had any interest in this, you probably already have one, or one is in the mail to you. If those two categories do not include you, email me and I'll send you a burn with no packaging.

This release includes, as an mp3 data DVD-R, everything that I never got around to releasing with Cat Jams, as well as some Cat Jams-related releases and recordings. Here, more or less, is the tracklist, in PDF form (your tracklist may vary).

The final release is packaged in the 60ish jewel cases I had left in my closet, and burned on the 60ish DVD-Rs I had left on a spindle. The artwork is themed around the death of label owner Blanche Braden, my cat (in spirit if not realty), who is not dead, but who is going to be if she doesn't stop pooping in the house. The discs are beautifully silkscreened in four alternate two-color schemes, designed and printed by Matt Verges (1, 2). The white one glows in the dark. The back artwork is by Brian Blomerth. The front cover artwork was done by sixteen different artists, with a range of Cat Jams pedigrees. Here is a Flickr set with all of the artwork from the release.

The liner notes, which you may scroll down to read, were provided by like nine different dudes. The paper was folded and stuffed behind the front cover. The liners included a space to write one's own reminiscences.

For the unveiling, the individual pieces of the packaging were laid out on a table, so that a person could pick and choose a cover design and CD color. The final touch to the release was a massive pile of photographs of past events / candid shots / Facebook profile pics / dumb gifs / etc., culled from my incorrigibly sentimental iPhoto library; assemblers were instructed to hide 1-3 prints under the tray of their jewel case.

As with most Cat Jams releases, this release included (at least) one secret compromise, which is:
I only got like 16 discs burned in time for the show. I was busy. I brought the spindle of printed but unburned DVDs to the show and set them on the table next to the burned ones (already clicked into their trays). If you pulled a disc off the spindle... it's blank. I figured most people wouldn't know what to do with a data DVD-R in the first place. Fuck you. Nah, just playing. If you want a real disc to copy on to your blank disc, just let me know. But seriously, you probably didn't pay me anyway, punk.

Along with the discs, Matt Verges also silkscreened 25 shirts (collected from the sale rack at Maude) with the disc print, which were distributed to the artists and writers who contributed to the final release. If you see somebody wearing a shirt like that, be well aware that you are in the presence of a badass. Speaking of which: Takashi and Julia, give me your addresses so I can send you your shirts. UPDATE: I don't have enough money to mail them.

Here is the artwork, in all its variations, from the last release. &&& LOOK AT THESE &&&

And here are the liner notes. %%%% LOOK AT THIS &&&&
I realized a month later that I fucked up the column layout. Ha ha

Concerning the last show:

• LAST SHOW IMPRESSIONS

Not to be confused with overall last label impressions. I felt that the final Cat Jams show was a big success because it presented in microcosm the major themes of Cat Jams.

Like the article said, the event was falsely billed as my 30th birthday party; there were anagrammatical cupcakes to this effect, courtesy of the incomparable Leah, with a sheet for anagrams so dorks would have something to do. (Instead people just wrote some palindromes, IDIOTS) This was inspired by a party recently attended by myself and Gregg and Nick Lambeth and Rotten Milk, at which we rearranged some 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATIE' cupcakes to say 'HAPPY FARTY DIK-BATH' and how excited we were about it, since we didn't know too many people at that party, especially not Katie. The kindly journalist who showed up from Move got had a little bit, because I made her buy me a sandwich and then forgot to pay her back for it. Try it! Thanks, Lindsey, btw. Plus one time I took her pad from her and started writing stuff.

When we tested the video setup, everything was fine, which was good since the evening focused around video. Needless to say, as soon as things got started, the video feed fucked up. Suddenly we could only project in grayscale. Gregg had agreed to host the opening video retrospective under the condition that he get to wear a ridiculous outfit; however, his fake mustache got lost at the last moment.

Also, the video retrospective went on for too long. Sean later pointed out, rightly, that some of the videos I played were basically just in-jokes from a couple years past, and Gregg's intentionally indiscernible random narration did little to relieve the monotony of an hour of jokes about people you don't know. In my defense: When I talked to people (Ben Cianciosi) about the video retrospective, they (he) said 'Oh great, you can play the Miami Dragons memorial video!' And I thought 'Oh... oh yeah, I could do that. It seems sort of like an in-joke now, but all those cool kids who were implicated in it will be in the audience.' When the video was actually being played, guess where said cool kids were? Skipping out on the screening at the bar area! because they're cool! So everyone who saw it was categorically too uncool to know why it's funny to see a naked photo of Tim Kaiser. Sorry. I should have seen that one coming. Still, the Tape Store Whisper Slide killed, because hot moves don't know color (from grayscale).

The Pows played a great set, as you can tell from the audio recording of the show that you're currently listening to. Since Ryan and Adam were unavailable, Terry (of Flowers and the Starbaskets) played bass; I've only ever seen Terry play bass with the Pows once, at the first show of theirs I ever saw, in the basement of Maude, when they were all fifteen and they were on the bill for the last-ever show by the Eatting C.H.i.P.S. w/ Süëzën, Punk Rock Ian's beautiful tribute to youth, and Corey the Emo Stand-Up Comedian. I really wish I had put out an album by the C.H.i.P.S. but what are you going to do, magic is where you find it when you find it. The Pows did an old-fashioned fifteen-minute set, screaming through a bunch of old faves from Neoon Winteer, and a couple of non-album jams. I think Zach is even more shy on stage now than he used to be; he's gotten soft in that department following so many post-Pows shows in a mask and a robe and at the back of the stage and with eight other guys up there. I hugged everybody afterwards and it was totally gay. Then I forgot to say "Stick around for OBELISK & MC Cat Genius," or maybe I didn't forget -- most of the crowd left, is what I'm saying.

Before the Pows set, I changed into most of my Cat Genius costume for the night, for which I'd chosen a black wool tux with two cummerbunds. During the Pows' set, I became acutely aware that said outfit was astonishingly uncomfortably hot. At the end of their set, I figured: last show ever, what the fuck, might as well make it count. So I stripped down to my underwear. Well, I was also wearing socks on my hands, gray spats over white shoes with cat toes drawn on them, one gold cummerbund with large black tail attached, white fur chestpiece, gold bowtie, and (of course) my Piccolo mask sans hood. Most of which I was still putting on as the first song, 'Save It For Hat Day' over the backing track from 'You Don't Know My Name', was rapidly getting over; I made OBELISK hold the microphone up to my face so I could have my hands free to put my stuff on. During the phone call skit (during which I called Blanche to say that I found out the label was breaking up), I squeezed out a new joke after inviting everyone in the audience out to karaoke: "The room only seats 24, so some of you might have to sit on my face." I knew we had become tight as a band because I no longer became too nervous to remember the great jokes I'd thought up while rehearsing in the shower the previous week.

The audience had thinned out considerably, but that really only meant that we were down to the hardcore fans who were down to have a Time. So when we brought on the Garfield & Friends theme ("Come on in, come to the place where fun never ends / A giant anthropomorphic cat-man and his friend"), a new version of My Nuts (with Paul Simon layered in, and the video and lyrics changed to be about NBA star Manute Bol), and a bunch of cans of silly string and giant balloons, the audience stepped up to the plate by brutally fucking assaulting us with silly string. And they also stuck with us through the technical problems,

O! the technical problems. Not only was our labored-over backing video still inexplicably grayscale, but the backing audio was now wantonly dropping out, usually when I had something really dirty to say and Isabel was right in front of me and Isabel's mom was right behind her. I dunno if you know much about rap shows, but the backing track is a fairly integral part of the sum audio output. The staff was stumped. So -- and this is what I mean when I say 'microcosm of Cat Jams' -- we worked within these new boundaries. The first time the audio cut out (I believe during Lettuce Dance right before the altered line 'Let's make a date, I can't wait / How 'bout the night before I leave town forever?' which I shrugged out on), we paused for a moment, and then...

We got the audience to form a human pyramid.

Yeah. Fuck you. How many times did you ever get your audience to form a human pyramid while you waited for your sound to come back on so you could rap again? Not very many I bet. The sound went out again a couple songs later and I declared Spoken Word Night and recited the opening verse from Much Ado About Nothing. The third time the audio went out, um I think we tried to beatbox, we were sorta out of ideas by then. Stephen did say 'Unless otherwise noted, all of our songs have sound,' which I thought was pretty good. Oh yeah, another secret to get the audience to be on your side is to bring ten large cans of black Sparks to the show and give them out, one per song, to the most enthusiastic dancer. Don't give one to Isabel, she's like 14.

Other show notes: we had a shadow puppet contest during Cash, and Stephen chose a winner based on merit (Wynde Noel); I covered Stephen's cover of Real Big and altered a line to 'Hey yo peep my outfit / This is wool and this must be felt' and palmed Jessica's boob (get it?); at the end of Lettuce Dance Stephen turned his microphone over to Zach who just started chanting 'LETTUCE DAANCE. CABBAGE PAAATCH.' from over in the corner and I couldn't stop laughing; we did This Song Is Really Good with lyrics for the first time and it really was really good, especially Stephen's verse -- he's so much better at punchlines than I'll ever be. He took his pants off for that song, but then in the photos you can see him putting them back on again during the pyramid. I wanted to change our Myspace profile picture to both of us in our underwear, but our packages were never photographed together, implying that our packages are the same person.

The last song of the night was Aviators, a new mashup against Creed's 'Higher'; we got people to dance to Creed! That was the last Cat Jams song that will ever be performed. At the end we tore off our costumes and tossed them into the crowd (I kept my underwear on thx). I tore up my three-year-old, only recently functional mask into little bits, like at the end of Mean Girls, and I tried to tear up my tail but discovered that I wasn't physiologically capable of it (and neither was Ben Klasner). I spun it around until some of the stuffing came out, and then threw it and it landed on Bob. When everything calmed down a bit, I called up everyone in the audience who had been on Cat Jams (who would admit it), and we all took a scene-closing bow. I tried to give a little speech but got choked up; then Zach handed me some artificial flowers that we had brought to have handed to us, and then Zach and Erik carried me on their shoulders out into the lobby and the sidewalk, where it was revealed to be cold.

On the one hand, it was boring to have a band that neither of us had the time or skill for and that thus had been playing the same songs for three years. But, according to Cat Jams philosophy of work, we made the most of it and put our energy into presenting those songs in a new way each show, with new terrible mashups and new outfits and new audience involvement tactics, and we were becoming a really great live act, fuck the studio, our concept sells itself. In a lot of ways it was our best show and it sucks that we aren't doing any more anytime soon.

Phil Chiles stayed late and helped clean up the silly string. Thanks, Phil.

-----------------

Here is a special mix I made of my favorite Cat Jams tracks. This file is huge. You have that Jay Chou / Savage Garden mashup memorized, you can delete it to make room.

Cat Jams Best Gems by CK
80 minutes 130 megs

I'll upload the audio from the show for next post.

I started a new blog and a new Flickr page. The blog is empty still but the Flickr page has lots of sweet cell phone camerage. Oh, and Stephen and I have separate myspace pages now.

Later: last label impressions, individual release memories, stuff I forgot.

the last event

2008-01-08T20:33:00.000-08:00

The last-ever Cat Jams event will take place at Ragtag Cinemacafé (23 N. 10th St., Columbia, MO 65201, ragtagfilm.com) at 10:00 PM on Sunday, January 20, the day before classes resume at Mizzou. The show will consist of a retrospective of video works by the Cat Jams family, followed by the last-ever performance by OBELISK & MC Cat Genius (myspace.com/obeliskandmccatgenius), and a special reunion show by the Pows, the first-ever real Cat Jams band whose members went on to be in Sabertooth and Cave and Flowers and all that jazz. Sliding scale.

Also, you can see my Top 14 Favorited YouTube Videos over at Dritt Drittel's site. Also note that OBELISK & MC Cat Genius' "...Undeniable" EP appears on Dritt Drittel's own top albums list. The Japanese, translated, says something like, this was mailed to me, this is the only item on my list that was released in 2007, this release has the best packaging of all the items on this list.

RIP Cat Jams Label 2002-2008

2007-12-01T11:38:00.000-08:00

Let's do this bullet-point style again. Stay tuned until the end for a surprising announcement! (or just read the subject)

• First off, there's a show at Sparky's Ice Cream on Sunday, December 9th (yes, Sparky's is closed, but I have a key). It'll be an early show, like at 7, and the lineup includes Daniel Lutz (performing as Backyard), Me So RAVVEO))) vs. Gungan2Gungan (Gregg and I), and two other touring folk acts. It should be really good, except for Gregg and my set, which should be fantastic. $4 sugdon.

• Cat Jams is proud to announce the release of JAM-038, Brian Blomerth presents OBELISK & MC Cat Genius Live on CAT3. This is Cat Jams' first official DVD release (though I have put out VHSes and VCDs, you're welcome). It represents a crystallization of the OBECAT live show as of summer 2007, as encapsulated in a half-hour single-take performance in the 'gray-screen' studio of Columbia Access Television, filmed and produced by the inimitable volunteer staff; then I itched all the skin off my forearms teaching myself Final Cut so I could layer us on top of our backing video splice track. Guest dancing by Tape Store. DVD also includes bonus features focusing on fashion and kosher food preparation, as well as hidden unreleased instrumentals. Packaging includes a giant assemblable poster-as-liner, designed by Brian Blomerth of Narwhalz of Sound, and a mini-CD with instrumentals of the entire set, so you can practice your parody versions of our songs.

cover art, click for larger:

the actual cover of the DVD, when assembled, is the top right corner (the Miami Dolphin cheerleaders visiting the girl in the hospital, and the guy from Crazy Town), and the back is OBELISK eating a baby carrot above Marilyn Manson and a plan that says 'AIR OBELISK' in purple hieroglyphics.

Very limited run of less than 50; if I haven't decided that I'm going to give you one already, you probably aren't getting one. Sorry. I'll have it uploaded to archive.org soon, but it's already on Youtube.

I met Richmond, VA-based Brian Blomerth in person, and totally by coincidence, a few weeks ago at Lumpen's Select Media Festival in Chicago. Emily and I decided to go check out the space, and then it turned out that he was playing there. Weird!

His set began with him laying out a blanket he made with big pomeranian ('pom') faces and the words 'POM POETRY CORNER' on it; he then set out a stuffed pomeranian and an electric candle, and proceeded to sit on the blanket and recite poems he had written about McDonald's to the pomeranian.

Then he jumped up, plugged in his Game Boy Color's audio jack, and began mashing buttons on the Game Boy (his only instrument; I assume he was running Nanoloop or something) and yelling incoherently into a microphone and thrashing around. A few times, he thrashed when he should have threshed and unplugged his Game Boy and had to look around for the cable. He threw the blanket into the small but enthusiastic crowd, who surfed it. The whole set lasted like ten minutes. It was fucking awesome. I know how to call 'em. Brian also revealed to me that the picture of the bulldog wearing a towel is from an ongoing project in which he and a friend set up bogus MySpace accounts as English Bulldogs at keyboards, then attempt (and sometimes succeed) to seduce American Apparel models via Myspace-messaged poetry. Also, Brian talks just like the impression of him that I've been doing for months.

New Friends!

Anyway, here's the DVD (main feature and extras), in the form of a Youtube playlist.

• AND SPEAKING OF YOUTUBE YOU GUYS:
So a few days ago I uploaded all the DVD scenes to Youtube as separate tracks. They all sat around, like every video I've uploaded, gradually collecting residual hits from my mom and Chris Boeckmann. Then, for some reason (no, not some reason, the very specific reason of the keyword 'nuts'), the video for 'My Nuts' got picked up by Fark.com and I-am-bored.com, two sites that basically just find dumb stuff and post it and are generally visited between checking hockey news and looking at photos of American Apparel models. In twelve hours, 'My Nuts' went from 15 views to 4000, and earned the first Youtube Honor auto-awarded to a Cat Jams account video, "#69 - Most Linked (This Week) - Comedy" (actually now it's up to 64, but I liked it better when I checked it and it was 69).

It should go without saying that everyone on the messageboards of the two major referring sites had a lot of hilarious commentary to add.

Fark.com: "I hereby hate the internet."

I-am-bored.com: "Anyone know what city this is hosted in? I'd like to give the terrorists their next target."

I'm not kidding when I say that I feel my entire professional career has been leading up to this. And now, of course, our video has been pushed down off the front page of these fine sites, and the world has forgotten us again. Maybe 'Lettuce Dance' will get picked up at some point, since that one's actually good. That's how the internet works, right?

• Speaking of stuff that sucks, Chris Boeckmann (ha ha burn) aka Tape Store got cited on Wikipedia. Inscrutably honorific! Indubitably awesome.

• Happening simultaneously across Chicago from Select Media Festival was Heaven Gallery's premiere of Zach McLuckie's (of the Pows, Sabertooth, CAVE) 'Hercrotchules' zine (here writ large into a full group art show). The show included works by, well, just about everyone in our circle of associates, such as Emily Foster, Gregg Lewis, Jason Reamer, Brian Blomerth, Rex McMurry, Gabe Viles, etc. etc. I want you to know that it was the best art gallery show I've ever seen. The fact that it was by my friends didn't hurt; but, in the same sense that I like a piece because it was made by my friend, I like a person because they made a great piece. Everything was attached to the walls with tape, and ran the gamut from carefully composed and constructed large-form classical art pieces to half-finished funny scribbles to printouts seemingly random TV screencaps to found trash and advertisements. And every piece that I saw, I thought to myself, 'Awesome!' And I've thought about them since. What more can a person ask for from an art show? And to see Zach, who used to be a painfully shy chubby fifteen-year-old who screamed in a punk band, at the opening of his first curated gallery show... I'm not kidding when I say that I feel my entire professional career has been leading up to this.

Pooper aka Elisa posted photos from the show, starting here and ending here. And here's a video piece made by Jill Wait, which premiered at the gallery, on a tiny TV by the bathroom, on a loop.

• In related film news, Emily Foster's short stopmotion film "Snowfakes" has been accepted into San Francisco's GROUNDED? Film Festival. Learnin' lessons

• And the surprising announcement:

I'm shutting down Cat Jams Label! Hooray!

As I've mentioned, I'm moving to San Francisco to take a digital film certificate course, which means that I'm leaving Columbia in the last week of January 2008. I thought about it, and I decided that Cat Jams has always been about Columbia -- I started it to illustrate that the creative communities of small towns can use their artists' nonexistent chance of getting 'discovered' to weed out assholes and to create daring, unencumbered art that would never be allowed in an environment where 'success' would be at risk. And I feel like I've succeeded. I've released nearly 40 weird-ass , challenging, engaging, hilarious magnum opi by 'unacceptable' artists (kids, non-musicians, animals), and I've ensured that every disc / tape / VHS / diskette / .zip file was conceived and executed with a kind of care more often seen in a performance piece or a practical joke than a shrink-wrapped jewelcase. I've made countless new friends and collaborators, and a few messageboard enemies, and I've proudly lost literally thousands of dollars. And I can look back on a body of work, curated or otherwise, that I will be proud of until the day I die, or at least that I can impress my kids with (unless they're assholes, fingers crossed).

In other words, I've proved my point, as far as I care to prove it. And even if I did care to prove it more, I don't think San Francisco would be the place to do it from. I'm looking forward to having new 'deep' subjects to bore people with at parties, and losing my money on new, unforeseen things.

Blanche and I are in the process of organizing a deeply hubristic farewell event and release for the label, slated for somewhere in the middle of January 2008. More info as I make it up.

I think 'Chinese Detoxracy' is a good name for an album

2007-10-10T17:42:00.000-07:00

• Tape Store had a birthday recently -- he's now 18, and now has to say that he's 'still in high school' when casting himself as a misunderstood prodigy, as opposed to a guy old enough to be responsible for his own actions, who can't be bothered to learn an instrument or write a song, but who still wants to complain about American Idol on ILX. Happy birthday, Chris! Anyhoo, I made him this mix, which I was going to put on this cassette I found that's just labeled 'WHAT WOMEN WANT' but then I listened to it and the first song is k.d. lang's 'Constant Craving' and I couldn't bear to tape over it. So I just uploaded it. It's easy with mixtapes/cds/mp3s, especially when a younger person is in mind, to burden the track selection down with Importance. I decided not to do that and just put together some tracks that have been on my mind/iPod lately. I think it turned out really good! Because every track that comes on makes me think 'This track is really good!'

Channing Kennedy presents My Greatest Christape
47 minutes 80 megabytes
maudevintage.com/catjams/christape2007.mp3

"tired of the perculator" d fly, Baltimore, year unknown, maddecent.com/blog
"Elastic Girl" Kahimi Karie, early/mid '90s, Japan, written by Momus / produced by Cornelius
"Fighting Cock" Black Oak Arkansas, late '70s, Arkansas
"Mr. Cool" Rasputin's Stash, 1970s, USA
"Mona Lisa" Slick Rick, 1988, USA
"Sayonara" Takahashi Yukihiro (of Yellow Magic Orchestra), mid-'80s, Japan
"Regulate" Cuizinier & Saphir (produced by DJ Raze), 2007, France
"Prefecta" Miranda feat. Julieta Venegas (El Remolon Reaggeton Glitch Mix), 2007, Argentina?
"Yellow Brick Road" Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, 1967, USA
"Our Blood And Veins From The McGovern Regiment" Proscriptor, 2005, USA
"Sentupower" Dog Murras, 2007, Angola
"Red Stripe Genie Wine" Mr Vegas vs. Skream, 2007ish, wordthecat.com/goku
"My Darling's Love Arrow" Ni Ni Win Shwe, year unknown, Myanmar (Sublime Frequencies)
"Sometimes" Les Rythmes Digitales, 2001, France

• My mother also had a birthday recently, and for it, I scanned a (I don't think they called them this back then) zine she and her friends made in 1974 -- when she was 26, the age that I just was. It's here (21-megabyte PDF). I'm glad she put it in that time capsule.

• OBELISK & MC Cat Genius played a couple of shows in Chicago recently (thanks Mucca Pazza and Permanent Records!) and OBELISK got himself on somebody's 'worst-dressed' list. Nice. He got those prescription glasses made that weekend, then lost them the next week, when he woke up in someone's yard.

• The OBELISK & MC Cat Genius Live On CAT3 DVD is still in the works. Narwhalz of Sound has been comissioned to create the artwork. I cannot express enough how excited I am to work with these Narwhalz.

• OBELISK & MC Cat Genius will be playing at Lumpen's Select Media Fest on November 10th, the day after Zebulon McLuckie's Hercrotchules art show at Heaven.

new site

2007-07-26T18:46:00.000-07:00

emilyaldenfoster.com is live

I'm leaving civilization for like two weeks, bye
get ready for OBELISK & MC Cat Genius on CAT3 when I return

crying amazacrazy

2007-07-25T15:01:00.000-07:00

So, what's the Cat Jams roster been up to over the last few months? WELL

OBELISK & MC CAT GENIUS blogged meticulously about their 4/20 excursion to Chicago to play Version07 and the Twenty is the New Ten fashion show. Read all about the Shaq-O-Lantern, the Dungeon Majesty babes and babette, and me getting my mask ripped off by a bitch. Channing is still working on blogging about the rest of the March tour. We drove to the Apop grand opening but got there two hours after the other bands finished, so we just ate some grilled sausages and then went to Hooters, and then we bought the world's lamest 'Shocking' erotic photo from a dispenser in a gas station bathroom. So, it was a good show.
• You can also watch some videos of our Version07 set.
• Channing finally got "...Undeniable", OBELISK & MC Cat Genius' first equal-billing recorded collaboration, uploaded to archive.org. He didn't write the description yet, but the artwork is by Jason Reamer (because I'm not stupid) and Castro Catastrophe's Marcus Miller produced the cover of El Chombo feat. Andy's Val Gourmet' 'Macarron Chacarron'. Digiki and Dritt Drittel have breakdowns of the packaging.
• Back in March, some weird guy apparently got to our Iowa City set as soon as it ended and thought that the Eddie Murphy song that the bar's iTunes had just put on was our set. He liked it, though, so maybe I shouldn't say anything. He took some photos of us, is why I mention it.
• MC Cat Genius' contribution to the Toog-curated Cagesan birdsong remix album is being offered free here (and of course here), because it was (preventatively) taken off the most recent pressings of the CD, because it was incredibly illegal, because it was an entire Nina Hagen song with cursing and bad puns over the top of it. Good decision, I think.

BOB DYNAMITE wrote to Michael Alig and he wrote back! His response read like a text message, except two pages long and handwritten.

AARON ARNOLDY, former Cat Jams unpaid intern, continues to make the rest of us look bad by existing. Check out these photos (2) of his Peace Corps project teaching marketing skills to young Dominican artisans (not to be confused with Young Japanese Macaque). And weep.

JAMES HARVEY has done this amazing, amazing thing (Serge Gainsbourg karaoke track created by Tape Store). Read every single other post on his lj too because each one is a gem.

TRIP MAKER will host the last episode of Holy Victrola ever, Thursday July 26 at 3 PM Central time, on KOPN 89.5 FM (streaming).

GREGG (here he is on DeviantArt) drew these comics:

If you don't think these are amazing then you are probably not looking at them.

EMILY FOSTER, Channing's hotass girlfriend, was recently featured in the Columbia Tribune relating to the premiere of her first animated short, 'Snowfakes'.

The premiere ceremonies included an opening screening of a children's cartoon, 'Kippy and Krikey's Space Adventure':

as well as performances by Electric Pizza, Flowers, and the handsomely mysterious The Captain & The Captain.

(photo enhanced to show muskrat)
• Emily is moving to San Francisco in a few days, for adventure. Not because of anything The Captain & The Captain said, since they don't talk.
• Also, Gregg and Emily and Erik went to Branson for no reason.

CHANNING is moving to San Francisco also, but in March 2008, to attend San Francisco State University's four-month Digital Video Intensive certificate program. Fuck you, Columbia!
• Channing also open-djed at the July 17 Café Berlin show featuring
Jerusalem and the Starbaskets
Yellow Crystal Star (FL)
The Ear is the Brain (FL)
Total Amateurs
and this flyer

then Channing hung out with the Florida noise bands pretty much the whole next day, during which they played an impromptu live set on Kevin Walsh's show on KOPN. Come back soon, Florida noise bands!
• Channing recently contributed this guest column to Move Magazine, which he, ironically enough, is somewhat embarrassed by.

• Did you guys ever see this obscene Santa thing I did back in November?

TAPE STORE has started writing for the grossly named Stypod.
• He has also re formed Castro Catastrophe and some new release is expected eventually.
• Hey check this out

HIROAKI KOSHIBA did a live painting performance at ai Gallery in Niigata, Japan on 07/07/07, accompanied by music by Jeremy Freeze and Channing Kennedy (dig around in that folder for the Starbaskets/Flowers tracks from Hiro's NYC show in October 2006).

DIGIKI's and Chimidoro's albums can now be purchased from the Tokyo Fun Party Paypal store in case you're like me and want to give them as large a cut of your payment as possible. Buy them right now and risk looking this cool:

lenses ground by Coyote DG

PICCOLO AKA MC CAT GENIUS loves holding hands, probably.

YOU should join us for karaoke in the party room of Osaka Japanese Restaurant tonight.

OBELISK & MC Cat Genius will be playing on 4/20 at

2007-04-17T13:53:00.000-07:00

we're also playing on 4/19 at the Compound (Walnut & Wolcott, Chicago; Version07 kickoff), and on 4/28 at Apop Records (2831 Cherokee, Saint Louis; grand opening), but those dates aren't hilarious drug offenses.

tour diary

2007-03-24T02:48:00.000-07:00

Go to the OB&MCCG MySpace blog and check out the tour diary. The (real) tour dates are up there, and I just posted a brand new track, 'Lettuce Dance', from our brand new EP. So. Go there.

upcoming shows!

2007-02-14T11:11:00.000-08:00

Channing will be DJing at the KCOU formal at Eastside Tavern tonight, alongside the Wuuj, Meredith No Coast, Bunny Chinnychow, and DJ Sticky Icky Ricky Rick. It's free and formal.

OBELISK & MC Cat Genius, Tape Store, Castro Catastrophe, and the Consummate Professionals will be playing an early show (8:30 PM) at Cafe Berlin on Saturday, February 17.

Dates for the OBELISK & MC Cat Genius / Umbros Spring Break Tour are being filled in on the
OBELISK & MC Cat Genius MySpace page.

tour dates!

2007-01-15T10:51:00.000-08:00

from No-sword:

2007-01-15

Those who study the past too closely are doomed to repeat it

T. and I went down to Mishima this weekend, to eat eels and immerse ourselves in hot water. We also dropped by the Sano Museum to see their exhibit about the new Genji Monogatari picture scroll recreation -- re-enactment, really, given the focus on original methods, tints and tools.

You can get a general idea of the principle by comparing OKADA Motoshi's recreation of the second Suzumushi picture to the original (via Arthur Choi's handy page). Obviously a lot depends on how the images are lit, digitized, and stored, but you can see that Okada's has already lost that shibui, atmospheric feeling that is the very foundation of the appeal of these images to us today.

And Okada's is apparently one of the recreation industry's more subdued styles. The "Heisei recreation", of which no individual piece dates from before the late 1990s, and which is based on the very latest scholarship and investigation, is garish beyond belief. I found the greens especially jarring and ugly. If you saw this stuff in a gift shop, you would assume it was an ultra-cheap knock-off, unfit even to shine the metaphorical boots of the browned, crumbly original -- and yet, the people who commissioned that original, who thought it so appealing and cared for it so well that it survives to this day, delighted in precisely that repulsive shade of aqua.

Lesson: if you revere ancient art to the extent that you come to attach as much importance to the accidents of time and wear as you do to its actual content, do not ever attempt to recreate the original as the ancients themselves saw it. You will only be disappointed.

§ | comments: 1

from Toog:

lundi, janvier 15, 2007

In the past you had mainstream culture, indie culture (which was an ironic position for auteurs), underground culture. I see the future of western culture with no indie culture. You only have industrial culture and a new genre of underground, which has nothing to do with contestation anymore, contestation meaning 'dialog'. There is no dialog possible between these two remaining categories. This future underground is a new word for art. A place where the art is very pure, poor and detached. So if you're not strong enough for art nor commercial oriented, there is no indie rubber ring anymore. Art or industry: you decide. (Be careful: sometimes industry is picking the abandonned indie outfits, wears it and pretends that it's still alive.)

from me:

tour dates for OBELISK & MC Cat Genius / Umbros Midwest Spring Break TourK7, as they currently stand:

Thursday, March 22 -- Columbia MO
Friday, March 23 -- Madison WI
Saturday, March 24 -- Milwaukee WI
Sunday, March 25 -- Chicago IL
Monday, March 26 -- Chicago IL -- Permanent Records instore
Tuesday, March 27 -- Chicago IL -- at the Red-I Lounge w/ DJ Rotten Milk
Wednesday, March 28 -– Minneapolis MN
Thursday, March 29 -– Iowa City IA
Friday, March 30 -- Kansas City MO or Lawrence, KS
Saturday, March 31 -- Lawrence KS -- instore at Wild Man Vintage
Sunday, April 1 -– Columbia MO

venues tba

helpful map

You'll never wiez in this town again :(

2007-01-12T16:54:00.000-08:00

Let me try to think about what's been happening. Um...

Okay, OBELISK & MC Cat Genius have a MurdochSpace (ha ha) page now. It features a full discography, a breakdown of the duo's approach to music and performance, and lots of cute cat photos and cute pilot photos.
This is to facilitate their upcoming Spring Break tour with sister band Umbros, which is coming up during the last week and two weekends of March (22-31 or so).
This will be OBELISK & MC Cat Genius' first tour!
Cities to hit include, but are not limited to, and may not include: STL, Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis, Miowa no Iowa City, Kirksville (my alma dropouter!), Lawrence, maybe KC, all that jazz. I'm trying to convince the other guys that we won't make any money anyway, so we should just play really stupid terrible non-venues, like the KCI airport luggage carousel.

There's lots of new stuff on the Cat Jams YouTube page and more new stuff on the way. Just go look at it, it's hilarious and moving!

Here's Tape Store's
Jackin' Pop year-end music critic page, case u were wondering

Toog is keeping tabs on reviews of the Cagesan album.

how it went down, 12/11/06

2006-12-18T15:48:00.000-08:00

As you may know, on Monday the 11th, I performed at Eastside Tavern as DJ RAVVEO))), opening for my psych-metal friends Warhammer 48K and Champagne. My friend Emily (you might be familiar with her Dreamboat video) agreed to be my stage assistant. My method of DJing has basically cemented itself into making a mix at home the day before, then spending the set dancing and doing theatrics. This set was no exception. I dressed as Marie Antoinette, with giant hoop skirt, white opera gloves, and curly white bouffant, with my usual kabuki ghost makeup and my new superstar wireless headset microphone. Emily dressed like a Revolutionary War minuteman, with lots of gold lamé, so maybe sort of like a Spanish Armada soldier. I ran the microphone output into my laptop and added lots of delay, which synced up and down with the shifting mix BPM. I only spoke in a piercing falsetto voice, giving commentary on the songs as they were playing or making lame one-liners, and the echo made everything all but unintelligible anyway. I did lots of thrusting dances and wandered around and outside the bar, talking to people. Lots of people (as many as 12 at one point, with is pretty good for Eastside on an early Monday night) got out on the dance floor and shook it with Emily and me. Other people were deeply disturbed by my presence, appearance, attitude, and/or song selections. At one point I pulled a barstool onto the dancefloor and under my giant skirt and did some hovering-feet dance moves, then pulled it back out and said "There's something wrong with my stool!" That was probably the best joke I made. It probably sounded like "ZzzSomthingSomethingSOMETHINGSOMETHINGZZZZZ" but that's what I was saying.

About a half-hour into the 45-minute set, the Ray Baretto song "Soul Drummers" came on. I got up on stage and stood behind Sabrina's small synth-drum kit, which was not plugged in. I pretended to play drums along with the song during the first breakdown, and made a lot of surprised faces and pointed to myself with the sticks and shrugged. Emily took over fake drumming duties for the second breakdown. The next song was Orgy's cover of New Order's "Blue Monday", which I sang along with in an Orgy-type voice. The song after that was a mashup between an excerpt of that new 45-minute DFA/Nike track and ZZ Top's "Legs". I sang along with that in a samurai voice in phonetically-transferred English Japanese ('legs' = 'reguzu') and pretended to play my unplugged synth guitar during the guitar solo. As this track ended, with Emily's assistance, I stood in the middle of the dancefloor, took off my top, and sank down inside my giant hoop skirt. Emily then dropped in some key costume items, and after several seconds, I emerged out the bottom dressed as Elton John, in a two-piece black tuxedo (sans shirt), red cummerbund, suspenders, black dress shoes, white top hat, white gloves, black cane, and giant round sunglasses. I then called my friend Taylor out of the audience and lip-synced a late-period Elton John song ("This Train Don't Stop") to her while we went on a mini-date around the bar, ordering drinks and laughing; I mouthed the bridge to myself in a mirror, whipping off my sunglasses and looking myself right in the eyes before collapsing, and having Taylor help me up. I then told Taylor that there was someone in the audience that I wanted her to meet, and it was Emily, back at the front of the dancefloor, who put a tiara on Taylor's head. Then the Cuiziner mixtape verson of "Take My Breath Away" began and the two of them led everyone (like eight couples) in a slowdance, without me having to say anything. (though I think I said "This is the last song of the evening, folks, so why not spend it with someone specSPECZZZZZZZZZZ") I slowdanced around a bit and found out that SLAG likes to give hickies.

In other words, it was totally amazing and great; concept, execution, and reception all came together for what was definitely one of the greatest performances of my young life, imho. Thanks be to Emily, without whom it probably would have been a weird guy half-assedly forgetting things on stage for most of an hour. Here is the YouTube video of the first three minutes of the set -- not great but you can see my and Emily's outfits. There would have been more but Gregg cannot be expected to choose filming over dancing when the jams are that blow'd up. The second half documents the entirety of the rehearsal Champagne did for their set.

Nick King from the Columbia Tribune took the following pictures to accompany this article about YouTube.

That's Katie Larceny dancing behind Gregg, and that's me during the latin drum demo. And that's all the documentation I have of our set. If you are reading this and have any photos, or know someone who does, plz I'd like to have a copy? for xmas?

After the set, I smeared off most of my makeup but left on my tux pants, cummerbund, and suspenders (since they're all stitched together), and white top hat, so I ended up looking like a tapdancing mime or a sexy cabaret Huckleberry Finn. Champagne played their set, and it was the best Champagne set I've seen to date imho. More info on the YouTube page:

Then Warhammer 48K brought it. As Old Man Hammons would say, they were tour-tight. I took over filming duties from Gregg at this point, as you can tell by the focus moving off of armpits and onto me making faces in mirrors.

After the show, I kept filming, despite being well on my way toward a new personal record of Sparkses (Sparks is like a Red Bull crossed with two beers) consumed in an evening (4). This is a lot like climbing a mountain, because it's impressive in concept, stupid in execution, and involves symptoms similar to oxygen deprivation. In addition to harassing my friends while shirtless, I also managed to blow it completely with a very attractive young female acquaintance whom I really liked. In my ... defense?, she had missed my set and its excellence and thus had no idea why I was appearing or acting in said manner, and the next morning and unrelatedly, she left forever (because she was an exchange student). Anyway, it turns out I filmed it. (Somehow, the girl's face is never in the shot.) Sparks, it's been fun, but I think we should spend some time apart.

Anyhoo, here's the mix that I played as DJ RAVVEO))), in case you want to have your own great party.

DJ RAVVEO))) live at Eastside, 12/11/06 (47:03, 79.3M)
King Coleman, "The Boo Boo Song"
Ludacris, "Southern Hospitality"
Kelis, "Caught Out There"
Ciara, "Promise (Kyaal remix)"
Almodóvar y McNamara, "Suck It to Me"
Boys from the Bottom, "Boom! I Got Your Girlfriend"
Marilyn Manson, "Wrapped in Plastic"
Gucci Crew II, "Sally (That Girl)"
Nirvana, "Half the Man I Used To Be"
Boys from the Bottom, "Lick My Ass (Remix)"
Ciara, "Oh (instrumental)"
Cuizinier, "Oh"
Ginuwine, "Pony"
Cam'ron, "U Ought to Know (instrumental)"
MC Miker G and DJ Sven, "Holiday Rap"
Edison Chen, "This Is How We Do"
Doobie Brothers, "What a Fool Believes (screwed by 893, unscrewed by Wayne&Wax)"
Pipo's, "Volt Mix Beat"
Will Smith, "Men In Black (a cappella)"
Vanilla Ice, "Ice Ice Baby (chopped and screwed by Swisha House, unscrewed by Wayne&Wax)"
Beyonce, "Check Up On It (instrumental)"
Cuiziner, "Check On It"
Ray Baretto, "Soul Drummers"
Warhammer 48K, "An Ethereal Oracle 6"
James Harvey vs. SoccerBoy, "DEMO 2006 (excerpt)"
Orgy, "Blue Monday"
LCD Soundsystem, "45:33"
ZZ Top, "Legs"
Elton John "This Train Don't Stop (live)"
Cuiziner, "Take My Breath Away"

Okay, so seriously, send me any photos you have.

Channing

P.S.: A very special thanks to Jason R., who made the most excellent show flyer despite living in Olympia, Washington.

Friday Night

2006-11-27T19:15:00.000-08:00

MC Cat Genius and OBELISK will perform this Friday, 12/1, at Mojo's for Videology. The show starts at 8:30, and cost is...oh, wait; it's FREE. I bet that donations are appreciated, though (i'm just guessing). For more information about Videology, read this.

Also, on December 11, Warhammer 48k will come back from a long and presumably trippy tour to play a homecoming show at Eastside Tavern. DJ RAVVEO))) (featuring members of MC Cat Genius and Animal Family) and Champagne (aka ABDI PG TBCFSUPPUI, fud. - Figure that one out!) will open. Tickets are $5, I think.

In other news, famed bird Cagesan is releasing his debut album "I Love Machine" on Dec. 7. But you can already buy it here. In case you already forgot, this is the album with amazing remixes from MC Cat Genius, James Harvey, Digiki, Toog, Momus and many other cool artists. Check out a few tracks at MySpace.

youtube uploading techniques

2006-11-06T21:31:00.000-08:00

I sent this to someone on MySpace and figured other people might benefit from it too. As far as I know, this is how to most effectively maximize your YouTube archiving experience.

Hey Jerserf,

As someone who's embarked on a few massive YouTube projects in his day, I thought I could offer you some pointers I've learned th ahrd way about maximizing the quality and upload speed of your YouTubeage.

1. Get registered as a 'director' account. You basically just have to email them and say "I'm a real person, not a spambot" and they'll OK you. (there's a form somewhere on the site, a quick search will bring it up.) As a director, you can upload videos of any length (so you don't have to cut a 20 minute show into three 7-minute segments and upload each one separately). However, there's still a size limitation: you can still only upload video files smaller than 100 megs. Larger ones will stay uploading all night then result in an uniformative error message.

2. But that's not really a problem with a great program like Handbrake (you can find it at Versiontracker.com or wherever). Handbrake is all but designed for YouTube: it rips video DVDs into mp4 files in one easy step.

What format is your video in now? If it's not in DVD, this whole speil might not be much help, but it's really easy and looks great. If the format you're working on now is VHS, my professional advice is to buy an integrated DVDR/VHS recorder at Best Buy for a few hundred dollars on a credit card, dupe all or as much as possible of your media onto DVDR, then return the recorder to the store and get your money back. Repeat until finished. Nobody at Best Buy gets paid enough to care, and these DVDRs generally look quite good (or at least good enough for YouTube).

(By the way, Handbrake is Mac only, I believe.)

Anyhoo. Now that your media's all on DVD, open up Handbrake. Handbrake only lets you choose sections to convert by chapter marker, not timecode (an unfortunate oversight), so get that straightened out beforehand (just put discrete programs on their own discs, or put a chapter marker between them while you're duping on the recorder). Set the Maximum File Size to 99 megs -- Handbrake will automatically scale down the quality to match it. Set your encoding codec to H264 (It looks a lot better than standard mp4). And click the Image Options button at the button to change the aspect ratio to 320 x 240 -- you can even remove the black margins and gain a few pixels of image.

Handbrake has a queue, so you can repeat the process and get a few videos lined up before you go to bed. Just make sure you give them different file names! If you're ripping from two DVDs at once (one in an external drive, one on the internal drive, and a few as disc images copied onto the hard drive and mounted, say), Handbrake has a weird bug that requires you to be quick on the draw when selecting other discs, but it can be done.

And of course, after the ripping's all done, you can upload multiple videos simultaneously to Youtube with the magic of multiple browser windows. It'll take all night again... but as long as your files are less than 100 megs, they WILL got up eventually (barring connection errors, goblins, etc.).

Well, I hope this unrequested advice helps out in some way. I've slogged through enough codec bullshit in my day that I wouldn't wish it on anyone else. I've got plenty of 40+minute videos I've ripped with this method on my Youtube page, so you can check those out and see the quality and loading speed.

You're archiving some really wonderful stuff here, and I can't wait to see more of it!

Channing

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: Jerserf Wheet
Date: Nov 5 2006 9:54 PM

For the last several weeks, I have been helping Kelly Kuvo digitize and upload her massive library of underground art videos to YouTube. As you may remember from previous blog entries, Kelly serenaded Alton and I inside a recording studio in the Capitol Records Building earlier this year with a song called "Go Away, Thank You." But, she’s most famously known for her involvement in two of the most righteous punk bands EVER - The Scissor Girls and Sweet Thunder - and her jaw-droppingly surreal interventions on Chicago’s public access TV station in the 90's. I don’t know how to begin to describe her video work other than to say click here. A world of absolute artistic hope, shambling beauty and d.i.y. situationist ethos awaits!

Kelly explains: "What you are about to see are zero dollar budget Cable TV shows intended to force a couch potato fat ass average Chicagoland non-artist type of person to flip the channel after watching them for 5 minutes. I imagined that they’d surf through 100 other channels of million dollar budget productions and then wind up watching another 10 minutes of my production and ultimately wonder what the fuck is up with this show that doesn’t make any sense or lead anywhere!"

The fact that you’ll be watching as a captive internet audience sort of undermines the righteousness of the original site-specificity of these pieces. But whatever! Enjoy out of context... and watch this blog in the coming months for a special surprise, related in a way that I can’t divulge yet, alignments of stars pending.

http://peripherus-max.livejournal.com/

bloggy

2006-11-01T21:32:00.000-08:00

1. flickr

I set up a new Flickr photo-sharing account. Flickr free accounts hold up to 200 photos. This is another way of saying that Flickr holds 200 x (the number of email addresses you have access to) photos, for free. The new account has more dumb found images than the old one.
old account
new account

2. nyc

So I went to NYC for a weekend at the beginning of October, to hang out with my bro Hiroaki Koshiba, the performance painter. We did a performance at Monkdogz Urban Art in Chelsea, which involved me pressing play on a CD of specially prepared tracks by Jerusalem & the Starbaskets and Flowers, and Hiro painting an original composition informed by it while it played. Speaking of Flickr:

Seeing my friends in New York -- Hiro, Eli (whom I haven't seen in 14 years!), Olivia, and, via phone tag, Aaron and Lilo -- was absolutely fantastic. and fully reimbursed me for the trip in fond deathbed memory dollars. But being in New York was strange, strange, strange in its lack of strangeness. NYC reminded me a lot of my trip to Tokyo in that I didn't speak the language, except in this case the medium of communication was astonishingly boring expensive clothes. WTF NYC. Why was I the only stupid-looking person everywhere I went. I couldn't tell how old anyone was, but even the people who looked too young to have grown-up dress-up jobs were all wearing black and skulls, which was also really boring since everyone was doing it. Part of me really hates fashion. It's the same part of me that hates music and art and people. Which is why I'm involved in them, I guess -- if I didn't think there was room for improvement, I wouldn't have any passion to be involved in it.
Another thing -- in Columbia, if you see a weird guy or a hot lady, chances are good you'll run into them again often enough to find out what their deal is. Columbia's not a big town. In NYC, once a person walks past you, they're gone, snatched up by the laws of probability. So did they ever exist in the first place?
Trip highlights:
- stepping outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art just in time to see an Italian parade beach itself, complete with a massive man in the back of a pickup full of amps speaking into a microphone in Italian for a very long time about something, while the truck parked.
- realizing that I like going to galleries -- thanks Hiro!
- Hiro falling asleep during The Science of Sleep
- A Chinese girl hawking DVDs in the street in Little Italy by holding them out and saying "DVDDVDDVDDVDDVDDVDDVDDVDDVDDVDDVDDVD... (accidental eye contact) DVD? DVDDVDDVDDVD"
- The awesome lame dude at the bar Olivia took us to, who kept saying things like "Dancing is so great! I love soul music! So you guys are all Japanese?" while dancing with his arms over his head. The bar did not have a dance floor. A different guy got me high in the street in front of the bar and a few hours later I fell asleep in the subway terminal. Thanks for getting me on the train, Hiro. And thanks to Olivia for calling all the babes in her phone, even though only two babes showed up.
- The armor exhibit at the Metropolitan
- Getting on the wrong bus, several times, and not being able to do a damn thing about it until it stopped
- grafitti
- the gaggle of white kids banging on a subway column with cardboard tubes and quietly busting call-and-response raps to each other
- the panflutist subway performer and the African singer subway performer
- being too embarassed to poop in the sound-amplifying bathroom of the multi-person tiny Japanese hostel suite, and surreptiously seeking out suitably secure-seeming loos everywhere we went (the last one was in a Baskin Robbins in Bedford, thanks Baskin Robbins)
- stopping in a closet-sized dimly lit Korean internet closet in a Ukrainian village and printing out my e-ticket and listening to dorky Korean male teens calling each other 'faggot' while playing WoW with each other in adjacent PC stalls for an hourly fee
- $7 Heineken bottles at the NYC airport Sbarros
- two 150-minutes layovers at the Minneapolis airport, which has a massage booth and a hair salon that does extensions
- wondering how to locate the Chinese modern artist exhibiting on the roof of the Metropolitan (two giant resin alligators totally stabbed with pointy objects confiscated at airport checkstations, a giant clear monolith with smacked-dead birds at its base, a daily stormcloud) with the intent of introducing him to my mom
- walking indefinitely everywhere in the middle of the night
- realizing for the millionth times that record stores are record stores, restaurants are restaurants, iPods are iPods, no matter what city you visit them in
- totally failing to go to the Statue of Liberty.
- my Americorps money getting dissed by the NYFA -- hello Mizzou!
- getting rained on so much that I felt like I'd been hit in the back of the head
- everything Eli took us out to -- the hotel elevator, the Toys 'R' Us indoor ferris wheel (I wish I'd saved the photo), the empty gourmet beer bar.
- Confirming that both Eli and I and the other good guys turned out just fine.
- Realizing that I unintentionally look pretty much exactly how I did when I was 11.
- the crowd at Hiro's performance being comprised entirely of people there coincidentally, when the gallery had been totally empty ten minutes before, and the two Jewish ladies saying how pretty the music had been
- drinking a great deal of free champagne at the gallery
- getting too caught up in reading On Stranger Tides
- the TV in our room having an option where a woman's voice described everything that was happening, like the inverse of closed captions
- getting Eli to say that if I mailed him some of the protein gel I make at home, that he'd eat it, before revealing that I was no longer talking about the protein gel on sale at the Japanese foods store were at, BURN

I'll probably think of some more things later. Feel free to add any.

3. archive / youtube

There's lots of new additions to both the Cat Jams Youtube page and the Cat Jams Archive.org page. Check them both out and report back when you're all up to date.

4. mixes

I've made some mixes recently that you might enjoy. You might!

Bummer summer 2k6mix, 8/18/06, 47:23, 83.2m
Autumn of Horrifying Repercussions 2k6mix, 10/03/06, 47:26, 79.7m
Cam'ron and Dipset sentimentimix2k6, 11/02/06, 67:59, 121.5m

5. halloween

This was Friday night, aka Halloween Day 1/5. If Gregg and I ever do a Swamp Fuck reunion tour, these would be good outfits (onstage and off). On Halloween Day 5/5, I dressed as Austin Powers because it was lame, and it was so lame that even I couldn't do it the whole night and assembled an "Eddie Murphy in the 'Wazupwitu' video" costume instead, except for the face, so, Lorenzo Lamas. Five days of Halloween is enough, by the way.

6. jh drawings

James Harvey has taken a short break from the revitalization of big beat to draw a bunch of pirates. Some of them look especially fantastic and handsome because they're based on my mom and I, respectively. I think the Mizzou tiger is a mind-shattering coincidence, or else my whole life is, either way.

7. hiro myspace

Hiro(aki Koshiba) is on Myspace now.

8. article

This article is good but it totally got its thunder stolen by the preternaturally apropos mullet feature at the bottom of the page.

9. cagesan

Toog finally broke his silence about this project so I'm-a talk about it too. Several months ago, I was approached by the Parisian musician/artist/poet/shirtless guy Gilles Weinzaepflen, aka Toog, to do a remix of a song composed and performed by his pet bird Cagesan (né John Cage, ha ha), for a remix compilation called I Love Machine. I was honored, because I really like Toog's blog and abs. Then he clarified that he wanted MC Cat Genius to do it. Well, whatever.

Piccolo's remix is a Weird Al-ification of an early and obscene Nina Hagen song about the value of her right to have an abortion in terms of her role as a woman in modern society. So, the new track is meant to explore male-type behaviors inherent in the remix establishment. It does this by featuring a rapping cat who says 'butt' at a funny point. You can hear a snippet of the track on the Cagesan website. I haven't heard the album yet but who wants to bet that this track is the dumbest. The other remixers are all like avant-Hadid bioarchitects from Luxembourg, and James Harvey, and so forth. So this is hella exciting for me and hella relaxing for Piccolo, who is asleep.

lumpen review

2006-10-18T21:05:00.001-07:00

I tried to post this all last night. Blogger.

It's the typical Rotten Milk-style review (i.e. full of factual errors, misspelled album titles, needless asides, and undeniable sincerity). I blushed a lot when I read it. (Click on the image for larger sizes, Mom.)

Both these albums are available for free download from the Cat Jams Archive.org page, with artwork 'n all.

Cuntrymyxz
Polyvinyl Chloride
the rest of the Cat Jams catalog

enycee

2006-09-14T23:27:00.000-07:00

Beloved,

Channing Kennedy (that's me) will be in New York City from October 8 to October 12. I'll be visiting my friend Hiroaki Koshiba, the Yokohama-based performance painter who did a series of live collaborations with Jerusalem & the Starbaskets here in Columbia at the beginning of this year; Hiro will be in NYC for most of the month because he has a gallery showing at Monkdogz Urban Art (monkdogz.com) from the 5th to the 28th.

So basically we're two out-of-towners visiting New York City, with very little prior experience in the city and an unenviable wield of the English language between us. Of the people who are reading this, I ask: what is there to do in New York? (that's cheap or free) Do you live there? Would you like to hang out/meet/get reacquainted/jump on a bed? We're both markedly handsome, with dazzling conversation skills, and one of us showers regularly (it's Hiro). Can you tip us off to any cool shows, parties, shops, cafes, galleries, bookstores, museums, hot babes, etc? Can you suggest places to avoid? Any input, however scant and self-contradicting, is appreciated.

Also, Hiro is looking for a space and a musician for a live painting performance. Any help on that front is also greatly appreciated.

- Channing
catjams@catjams.com

I am 26 years old now

2006-09-02T19:03:00.000-07:00

end of 1996 by Barbara Walsh

end of 2005 by Hiroaki Koshiba

upday cake

2006-08-25T22:29:00.000-07:00

1. I set up a new Flickr account because the old one was full and I have a million email addresses. So click that link if you're jonesing for photos of Hiroaki Koshiba's paintings from the Illusion Christmas Overdrive series, or Blanche talking to a giant praying mantis.

2. To celebrate the two-month iversary of the dANCxpERIENx, I'm finally printing the review Luke wrote of it.

Probably the worst review ever written. AkA a Review of a Catjams show
By: Luke Volkmann

So before the show even started the catjams folk ran into a couple problems. It took them a while to find an S-Video cable. Ok, when the show started the first thing was a very clever video by Dude, Magnus would hate you vs. Gungan2Gungan. The video was made up of a series of unexpected morphs. Each morph lasted about 2 or 3 minutes and included a taco salad, artifacts from ancient egypt, and a lot of other things. Overall it was a very captivating and engrossing (I need to add some big words) video which I liked.
Next Entei (y'all know him best from Christmas Illusion II) played some blackmetal. Along with the music there was also a video with skeletons, archers, and all that other kind of stuff I don't know anything about. The whole presentation was well received by the audience (at least the people sitting next to me) as well as me.
After that Bob Dynamite vs. Tape Store played, but two things happened before that. First, the french musician Toog was kind enough to donate a video (which can be watched on the catjams youtube page) which was pretty cool. Second, since Bob Dynamite and Tape Store were doing something like the gong show they needed to pick a gong hitter, and to do this they had a dance off. Channing and Duncan went up, but then Channing made a very bad mistake; he made Luke Volkmann go up. After a grueling 3 minutes of dancing the audience picked Luke to be the gong person.
As Bob Dynamite and Tape Store began to play they quickly learned that Luke was probably the worst person they could have picked. Even though the two teenagers were doing a very good job the cold hearted Luke summoned his power of cruelty and injustice and beat the gong with a malice of pure revulsion for talent. Finally Tape Store got mad and thew Luke's Paddle to the floor. In the end, Luke decided to stop hitting the gong and our heros got to play.
The finale came when OBELISK and MC Cat Genius rapped. Even though OBELISK was to lazy to show up (yeah, we all know that alibi of touring with Umbros). The duo did such classics as Pancaked and Drop it like a hawk. So even though it was kind of hectic getting started the show (in my opinion) turned out to be a success.

3. Recently, I for the first time saw photos of my email friends and collaborators DJ Chienloup (aka Aurelien Estager) and James Harvey (aka James "The Jams" Harvey). Which is weird since I've known each of these guys for about three years and count them both as close friends of mine. James is especially weird when taking into account his massive web presence and commitment to visual arts. Actually I have seen this picture of James before, but he just now pointed out that it's of him, not some random douche from Google Image. It was like finding out that the key to the castle is hidden on the painting above the mantle.

James:

Aurelien:

4. My 26th birthday is September 3. I feel that karaoke at Osaka's will happen.

5. The original Cat Jams intern, Aaron Arnoldy, is leaving for his 27-month term of service with Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic. To celebrate, we watched Drawing Restraint 9. It was gross! Don't get any fungal infections, Aaron.

6. So who's reading this, anyway?

Rythm of the Composition wrapup

2006-08-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

photos

dancxperienz partial wrapup

2006-08-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

Jean Snow's all right

2006-07-17T18:54:00.000-07:00

Jean Snow has a nice mention of Hiro's upcoming performance at Café Pause and his Cat Jams EP, here

archive dot borg

2006-07-06T23:50:00.000-07:00

Several new Cat Jams releases have been ass-immillllated. Start with http://www.archive.org/details/JAM-025 and make the number get bigger until ou get to 034. It skips a few, and I haven't typed in any info yet, but I think we all know that at Cat Jams, the music speaks for itself.

he can be your hiro baby

2006-06-30T22:06:00.000-07:00

I'm doing a video work for an upcoming Hiroaki Koshiba live painting show. I don't know what it will be yet. Suggestions are welcome.

2006-06-29T23:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,,1803488,00.html

Mike Collins

2006-06-29T23:04:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, our friend Mike Collins committed suicide at his home in New Orleans. I feel I've disrespected Mike a bit by not mentioning it until it was convenient, but better late than never.

I can't say Mike was a close friend -- I don't know what his middle name was and we didn't hang out every time he was in town. But in 2001, he was one of the first friends I made when I began my life in Columbia. We called him Bike Mike, because his name was Mike and he rode a bike, for which he had very strong feelings. The feelings of friendship that I had for him sprang less from familiarity than respect. Mike was one of those guys who seemed to have life fairly figured out. He saved his negativity for causes that couldactually be impacted by it, and he had an innate sense of physical comedy. Mike just always seemed like he had carved himself a purpose, and it was to enjoy life and to help other people, near and far, be free to enjoy theirs.

I feel safe in saying that Earth's people will feel Mike's absence for the next 50 years. He was an individual who inspired me and others to step up to the responsibility of being a citizen of the world, without being a dick about it. I don't know why he did what he did. I can't say I don't understand it. But that doesn't make it any less of a huge fucking loss.

Leo tells me that Mike didn't like having his picture taken, as evidenced by his Myspace page which is modeled after a Trailer Park Boys character. Back in summer 2002, when I was doing my very first big installation/performance, I had the good fortune to count Mike among the ranks of my ready 'n willing friends. The performance was titled "In Memoriam: the Works and Life of Channing Kennedy", and was an absurdist comedy wake for myself (I'm not reading too much into that). Mike's role was as the MC who started to tell stories about me but which all ended up being about himself and how great he was. At the end, when the players and audience members were hawking prints of my works to each other, Mike would have autographed 8"x10"s of himself in provocative poses.

Well, the self-centered MC bit didn't entirely manifest in the improv, though what did happen was just as good. And the glossies bit didn't manifest at all, as evidenced by the fact that I found the undeveloped unidentifiable roll of film in my desk a couple of months ago and was astonished when they came back. Jacqui Ruoff, who took the photos, must have known how to work her model.

Here's the video of the performance, in two parts. After Mike's MC bit, he reappears as one of the moon-dwelling veal calves, and makes up a story for the Prozac collage.

And here's the photos Jacqui took.

So what am I doing to honor Mike's memory? What should any of us do? Well, I'm doing what I'm doing. I'm living my life in a way I feel is just and which brings joy and thoughtfulness to the world. I'm composting. I'm trying my best not to be a sheep or a dumbass. Speaking for the Mike that I knew, which is all I can do: the things he asked of people weren't unreasonable. And that's it. So do it.

If anyone else has less greeting-cardy thoughts about Mike, please share.

post show part million

2006-06-29T22:48:00.000-07:00

Tape Store says:

Cat Jams would like to thank the following for their help with our June 25th show, dANCxpERIENz: Gregg and Kyle (aka Dude, Magnus would hate you vs. Gungan2Gungan) for their wonderful cuntry 'de'-myxs and cool backing video; Gregg for an inspiring performance as Entei; Channing and other person for videotaping; Toog for creating the entertaining video; the Boeckmanns and Dynamites and Millers for letting their children perform; Marcus for performing with me; Bob for playing along with my outrageous ideas; Luke, Duncan and Channing for participating in the Jordan Knight dance competition; Luke for being host of the Gong Show/hitting me after I threw his gong; Bob for drumming; Bob's mom for bringing drums; my parents for bringing my keyboard; Stephen for the mesmerizing video performance; Channing for spending hours and hours editing/creating said video and also for his amazing MC Cat Genius performance; audience for coming; Channing for spending at least $250 (that he knows he probably won't get back) on the releases; Ragtag for so generously letting us perform in your theater; Ragtag staff for staying/helping; the entire comomusic.com community for caring; Pete Bland for your blog mention; myself for writing the press release; everybody who designed a poster; Channing for putting up posters; me for putting up one poster.

Channing says:

I definitely won't get the $250 back. Also, it should be pointed out that Chris is being sarcastic about comomusic.com (the local music website community notorious for its consistent failure to be aware of anything arty) and also Pete Bland (the local music columnist who didn't get time to squeeze in a mention of our event -- give him a break, Chris, we got him the press release like an hour before printing/blogging).

I'm getting Luke to write a comprehensive show review. Whatever he doesn't mention that I feel he should, I'll add in upon receipt.

One thing I can tell you, though: the day of the show, I got mad and decided it would be a good idea to kick a (non-empty) box. Genius that I am, I carried this plan out while wearing my Crocs (basically foam rubber shoes if you don't know). Unlike regular shoes, which protect the foot, the Crocs amplified the impact tenfold. So no my right big toe is a lovely shade of plum, and has been so since Sunday. Well at least it matches my eyeshadow.

James Harvey (aka Harvey James) got mentioned.

Tape Store's first press release

2006-06-21T08:28:00.000-07:00

Hello Columbia honchos, I'm writing you to let you know of an upcoming Cat Jams release show/dance party at Ragtag Cinema. Starting at 8:45 sharp on Sunday, June 25, we'll be throwing Cat Jams dANCxpERIENz, a celebration of three new releases and a few re-releases. Attendees should bring dancing shoes and be prepared to cut it up. The cost? Sliding scale: $1-$5

Playing at the show will be:

- Dude, Magnus would hate you vs. Gungan2Gungan (noise remixes of early '90s country music jams)

- Entei (Radish Wizard follows up his all-MIDI debut with this airy blackmetal sludge slab)

- Bob Dynamite vs. Tape Store (Tape Store's 'indescribable crap' music meets its match with Bob Dynamite's gorgeous Casio compositions)

- OBELISK & MC Cat Genius (two rappers of different species join together to ignite a show-closing dance fever more passionate than the new Dixie Chicks single. Since OBELISK will be out of town touring with his side project Umbros, he'll be rapping via satellite on the Ragtag screen.)

The Tape Store / Bob Dynamite set will be introduced a special video message from Toog, a French musician with albums on Le Grand Magistery and Karaoke Kalk. Toog worked with Italian film royalty Asia Argento on his album Lou Etendue.

about the three new releases:

JAM-033, Entei (self-titled) -Craving some blackmetal that tastes like burnt waffles? Then get your hands on this debut from Entei aka Gregg Lewis aka midi-artist Radish Wizard aka remixer Gungan2Gungan. Think Burzum, but without any bandmates to murder. Fresh from the toaster, this release is packaged in silkscreened felt cases that double as wall scrolls. Pick one up, and before you know it, you'll be shouting 'L'eggo my Eggo!' at the top of your lungs, really slowly, while laying on your bedroom floor with your eyes wide open.

JAM-034, Dude, Magnus would hate you vs. Gungan2Gungan - Cuntrymyxys -DMWHY is Kyle Tolson, a co-worker and friend of Gungan2Gungan (Gregg/Entei). Together, these two taco-loving noise chefs conjure up some odd, loud remixes of country tunes; no friend, we're not talking about some lame-ass Loretta Lynn songs. We're talking about those rocking country jams that you'd hear in a mid-Missouri mall parking lot circa 1992 (i.e. "Baby Likes To Rock It"; "Hillbilly Rock"). Y'all excited? This release is going to be laminated onto unfolded tape liner; bring your own case. YeeeehRAWRRR!

JAM-035, Bob Dynamite vs. Tape Store - Polyvinyl Chloride - So picture this, bad analogy lovers: two teenage aliens from different planets are flying on spaceships when all of a sudden, they crash. The two swap insurance cards and create an album together while their ships are in the repair shop. This album, "Polvinyl Chloride," is what that album would probably sound like. On this 80-minute 99-track single audio CD, 49 of the tracks are original Casio compositions by 14-year-old 'postgender' graphic artist Bob Dynamite, and 49 tracks are remixes of said compositions by 16-year-old 'postcool' tape screwer-upper Tape Store (Chris Boeckmann), using various tools that were at his disposal (i.e. pianos, tape players and D4L). The last song on the album is a remix from a wonderful L.A. outfit called the Mae Shi. This release will be packaged with a folded-up note handwritten/stolen by either Bob orTape Store (they're all different). Named after the chemical that raver pants are made of, "Polyvinyl Chloride" is a Cat Jams 2K6.5 release in the truest sense.

about the re-releases:

OBELISK - Now I OBELIXTape my nuts to ev'ry ho - Some homeless man stole almost every copy of this mixtape out of Channing's bag when he played a show at Lumpen's Version06 Festival in Chicago... While some would report this crime to the police, Channing looked at the bright side of things; there's no doubt that now OBELISK's hot rhymes and beats are the talk of Chicago's bums. Each CD comes in a sewn-shut pillow stuffed with a surprise substance.

Tape Store VCD is a video cd of Tape Store's various video projects (i.e. rejected True/False film entries, astonishingly fake documentaries and other inspired weirdo films) and live shows (including his brilliant last place performance at the Jefferson Junior High School Battle of the Bands).

Neighborhood Cats - These free samplers consist of unreleased tracks by Cat Jams artists and friends, ranging from Soccerboy's fast and fun remixes to a beautiful Hiroaki Koshiba ballad.

As with all Cat Jams releases, these will be available for free download on http://archive.org/details/catjams sometime after the show, along with album art and background stories.

Thanks!

Helpful links

Cat Jams: here
Cat Jams MySpace: here
Dude, Magnus Would Hate You vs. Gungan2Gungan MySpace: here
Bob Dynamite vs. Tape Store MySpace: here
The Mae Shi: here
Toog's Blog: there
Ragtag: here

2006-06-05T14:23:00.000-07:00

"[Chinua Achebe] said the “emperor” prefers that artists and writers and musicians relegate themselves to making beautiful things. The “emperor” says that the arts and politics should not mix, that political decisions should be left to the politicians. But Achebe implies that all art is political — even if, like the emperor approved work, it denies being anything but beautiful. That too is a political statement and a decision. To not act, not to not include part of life in one’s work is to leave it to the politicians.

That, to me, does not mean that I should write a bunch of rabble rousing songs — though I might if I thought I could — but rather that every creation implies a worldview, a social context and resonates meanings beyond what it objectively is."

it's After the Flood's ten-year anniversary!

2006-06-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

there's more info on the video's page..

There's lots and lots more videos on the Cat Jams YouTube page that I've uploaded in the last coupla days. You need to go look at them!

As stated in the RagTag calendar, there is a Cat Jams show on Sunday the 25th of June at Ragtag. It will feature acts such as

Gungan2Gungan / Dude, Magnus Would Hate You (noise remixes of country songs)
Entei (solo blackmetal from the Wizard of Radishes)
Bob Dynamite vs. Tape Store (15-year-old Casio/tape battle)
OBELISK & MC Cat Genius (cures for many diseases)

There will also be at least three new Cat Jams releases on hand, and maybe some reissues too. You should come!

and I started a YouTube account

2006-05-18T20:53:00.000-07:00

00480006

2006-05-18T19:59:00.000-07:00

00480006
Originally uploaded by catjams.

I got some photos from Version06 developed.

some albums I've been listening to

2006-05-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

this one

this one too

cat jams team

2006-05-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

cat jams team
Originally uploaded by version festival.

So I guess OBELISK wasn't wearing a sweatervest. I couldn't remember everything. The two guys in the middle are the winners of the coloring contest. They are currently receiving their prize (the personal receipt of the rap from OBELISK's remix of Darsh's "Cash", with OBELISK rapping in first person while I simultaneously rap in third person). It's a little hard to see my tail but it's there. I wanted the one guy to sit on the other guy's lap but it was difficult to communicate.

The coloring pages Stephen found were a picture of a cat who couldn't read and an Eqyptian man with lice. Thanks to whoever took this photo. Also in this set, there's also photos of Cave, the bleeding teabagger, and Juiceboxxx in a crowd.

here I am at last.

2006-05-10T21:52:00.000-07:00

Cave, OBELISK & MC Cat Genius, and a girl named Miera drove to Chicago for Lumpen Magazine's Version06 Festival
also happening on this same weekend:
a fashion show (Columbia)
a roller derby (Columbia)
Three 6 Mafia (Columbia)
WTF Too: Party Retarty (Kansas City), curated by Alex Schubert aka ULTAMAX, featuring a mural by Sabrina and I, Shmooze drawings by Gregg, and a new video by Tape Store

We were going to go on Thursday at 5:00 PM, as soon as Stephen (OBELISK) got done with class. But then Cooper, whose van it was and who was driving, couldn't get a guy to work for him or something. So 3:00 PM, we found out we weren't leaving until 2:00 PM the next day. Which gave me more time to pack, which I needed. But it sucked because it meant we lost a whole day in Chicago. Remember, I've never been there before! Plus I had to email the NFO XPO people and tell them I wasn't going to be able to set up during the requested setup times. But since they didn't email me back, I gathered it wasn't a big deal.

And then Friday, Cooper called at 10:00 AM to say he called in to work at we could leave at noon. So why didn't he call in to work from Chicago. Oh well. I couldn't locate OBELISK for a while but then he showed up at noon on his own volition and we headed out. Cooper's van looks like the burnt-out stepdad of a DHL van, a gigantic yellow van with the driver's side window duct-taped into place. Rex, Cooper, Trip, Miera, T. Nice, OBELISK, and I spent eight hours (I guess it was more like seven) taking turns sleeping on the Cooper-smelling sleeping bag on the floor or sitting on the actual bench seat, eating beef jerky and listening to Trip's CD collection and playing Hangman. Cooper said that at some point, he had lost a game of Hangman when the subject was his name. Cooper looks kind of like a car dealership owner dressed him like a Hippie: polyester patchwork bellbottoms, oversize tiedye shirt, yellow macrame vest, mustache and several days of five o'clock shadow, back and sides of his hair buzzed and the rest sticking in all directions. On stage he generally wears sunglasses and a long wig with bangs.

We ate at Culver's, somewhere in Illinois (?), home of the Butterburger. Which is a burger fried in butter. Didn't blow me away. The tray liners had fake vanity license plates from every state that Culver's was in, though, and those were good. Missouri's was "O RINGS", and some other ones were "I LUV PORK", "BTTR BRGR", and my favorite, "FRYZ 4 ME". I told OBELISK that we should name the next CD "EM4ZYRF".

We got to Josh Brohanpeter's around 9:00 PM, which would have been enough time to go by the exhibition center before setup time stopped at 10:00, but it was on the other side of town and why. Josh, a Jeff City native who drums for Mahjongg and Bobby Conn, lives on the edge of the Ukrainian community with his roommate in what looks like a converted 1930s auto body shop -- a long rectangle with high ceilings and brick walls, a sort of square officey space at one end that houses a kitchen, dining room, living room, and sheetrock bedroom, and the rest of the rectangle is all recording studio and equipment. AWESOME Josh jammed with the Cave brahs while his roommate recorded, and OBELISK and Miera and I watched a sci-fi horror movie, about a body that ripped off people's heads and put them on its neck stump and who was generally unpleasant, starring Rae Dawn Chong, on the Spanish channel (because it was too loud to bother watching anything in a language we spoke) and then an astonishingly terrible talk show hosted by a 150-year-old ho who interviewed what appeared to be her best friend (who had a neck tattoo) and pointed at her boobs, while two co-hosts nodded earnestly because they were not allowed to speak. There were also fly girls dancing to Mexican restaurant music. We also read some stray Lumpens, The Trouble WIth Normals, Hercrotchuleses, and a Playboy from 1979 that had a review of the Wicker Man in it.

We ate at Feed, a tiny soul-food restaurant in the ghetto-ish area. It was full of hipsters, and it was nice to see hipsters in the ghetto. There was a large amount of chicken-related memorabilia on the walls, and a clucking-chicken egg-prize dispenser where you could win gift certificates. I got a delicious pork brisket sandwich and some corn pudding. Everything came with coleslaw, which I normally hate but not this time.

Rotten Milk and Gabe showed up and jammed and left, and then we settled down for the evening. And then I couldn't find my bag with all my living accessories (clothes, sleeping bag, electric razor and toiletries, 70 copies of Pancaked and 7 copies of OBELIXTape). And then Miera couldn't find her bag. I freaked out a little bit. Where could I have put a my bag? How stupid am I? Josh let me borrow his sleeping bag, and I had happy/tragic dreams all night of finding my bag in some unexplored corner of the apartment, which I then woke out of. In the morning we realized that the clear TV that I had brought from Maude was also missing from the van, and we realized pretty conclusively that a door must have been unlocked at some point and someone did a walk-by-and-grab. I was able to relax then, and stop looking for my bag in the fridge. So I was stuck wearing one outfit for the entire weekend -- gone were my couture Chinese low-crotch pinstripe tightleg jeans, my one good white oxford, my fake bulletproof vest, my orange aging-raver fleece pullover. Here to stay were my most boring jeans and my oversized "oh no! it's TOKYO FUN PARTY" tshirt and my gray blazer (and one pair of socks and underwear). No offense to Takashi, who runs TFP and gave me the tshirt, but this outfit is like Iron Chef Sakai showing up at a potluck with mac 'n cheese; even if it has ham chunks in it, people who don't know him will think he's senile. At least my hair looked cool, because Sabrina had just cut and highlighted it to look like Jay Chou's. And at least my blazer has a million pockets, which were all totally full at all times of all my possessions. It thus made a very uncomfortable pillow, even when wrapped in my Starfox Weekend satin bomber jacket.

It was also nice to think of that City of Columbia recycle bag full of 60 copies of Pancaked (30+ remixes from around the world of one song by Digiki/MC Cat Genius/Sarbochron, original run of 100, two black-bottomed black-topped silkscreened CDs in a spatula-fried clamshell case inside a ziploc bag with a floppy disc, condiment packet, and activity placemat), liberated into the world after sitting in my closet for nearly a year. I had brought them to Chicago with the express intent of getting rid of them at last (though not through van theft). Pancaked remains the flagship Cat Jams release, with all that that title entails, and it is my greatest hope that it will become a big hit with Chicago's homeless.

Cooper and Miera slept in the van and reported that a guy with a shopping cart had tried the doors at some point, but hightailed it out of there at the sight of a mostly-asleep, knife-wielding Cooper. We showed up at Iron Studios, home of Version06, at around 12:30 PM on Saturday. Iron Studios (on Iron Street) is a five-story giant warehouse that houses small-timey offices for small-timey, mostly socially conscious businesses. So the fact that exists at all is great. Don't ask me what part of the city it's in. I have no clue, I was on the floor of the van and even if I could have seen it wouldn't help. It was drizzling, and would continue to do so until we left. We saw Edmar and Rotten Milk, two of the organizers; Edmar is a tallish East Asian guy with Buddy Holly glasses and a DIY camo jacket, and Rotten Milk is a large sphere of red hair with eyes and a nose who is generally wearing the entire women's section of a Salvation Army simultaneously. Together they are the nicest guys in the world.

VERSION06:

Existed on the fourth and first floors, with a staircase and a freight elevator connecting the two. The fourth floor, with normal-height ceilings, was populated by the NFO XPO (which is where the Cat Jams Label table was) and a very large photography/street art/sculpture/etc exhibition. The bathrooms were on the third floor, among all the quietly marked office doors, and were always short on TP. I didn't make it down to the first floor for a while because the fourth floor had so much STUFF to look at.

There was the huge photo exhibit, which took up two huge rooms and included bonuses like: videos of guys blocking office doors with tree branches, the Urban Swing project, giant inflated sculptures of a rock-sign hand and a snake made from sewed-together chips bags, free doormats that was "WELCOME -- THIS IS YOURS" to be placed in front of libraries etc, urban bird feeders (two cans filled with birdseed that were to be flung around telephone lines, to attract songbirds), and giant carved-wood sculptures of a NASA control panel, a full live rock band setup with amps and mics, a machine gun, and a boating accident.

Back at the NFO XPO space, there were booths for: a free bike escort service that would come ride with you if you were scared or didn't know where you were going, a sensory-deprivation strobelight booth that triggered visual hallucinations which you were then asked to document with markers on the back of your signed seizure waiver (the guy was trying to get 1000 and display them all at once, to demonstrate recurring patterns), a few different video projects, the Chicago Tapes Project (a decentralized anonymous mixtape exchange project -- they were giving away blank tapes to get people inspired), some artists from Oakland who inhabited charmingly halfassed artspaces and outfits themed after certain animals (I traded a lock of hair to the bird girl in exchange for a feather -- needless to say, all us animal-people got on quite well), and about forty other exhibits. I was there for about 14 solid hours and I still didn't see everything. And all the booths were manned by just the coolest and friendliest socially-minded kids of all ages you'd ever care to meet. At no point during the entire festival did I hear a single ill-willed syllable spoken. Everyone knew that everyone was on the same team.

Well, the guy from the strobe booth did mention being a bit less than enthused about a heightened late-evening occurrence of yuppies who didn't want to draw anything and who didn't want to stay in the booth for the full five minutes. But I would say that that is a perfectly valid complaint on his part.

The Cat Jams booth was a small table on the edge of the major table island. On it I put all the copies of the five new releases I'd made to have at the XPO: the Cat Jams VHS Sampler, the second unreleased tracks sampler, the Tape Store VCD, the OBELISK mixtape CD, and the promo run of Darsh's Concrete. Also on the table, I put a large amount of things from my house that I didn't particularly need to keep around; tiny jars of Play-Doh, an extremely scratched-up Nashville Pussy CD, some old tapes, Left Behind: The Movie: The Board Game (thanks Mom), a bunch of pipe cleaners, etc. Then Stephen and I hung a very long/tall sign explaining what was up with Cat Jams / the table, and a few smaller signs saying "Take whatever you like, and contribute something of equal value", and a signup sheet with blanks for NAME, WHAT I TOOK, WHAT I LEFT, and NOTES. So in other words, it was a trade table. This was the setup I had decided on after a few week's debate about how to have releases available at a post-financial gathering without shortchanging myself and without being boring. Once we had it all set up, we promptly left the table, to allow scrutiny-free item examination.

The Cave brahs and Stephen and I headed to eat chicken shwarmas at Sultan's, which I was unimpressed with (kinda bland, probably better as late-night drunk food), and then we saw our friend Evan, who invited us back to his place to indulge in a keg that he and his friends had stolen. When we got to their apartment, the door was locked from the inside, so one of the roommates got some of our group to follow him around back to distract the vicious dogs so he could run to the fire escape, climb up a few stories, break their window, and unlock the door. It should be pointed out that Evan and his friends were all pretty sloshed, and appeared to have been so for several months. I leaned against a wall in the stairwell and it made a sound like a tortilla chip being stepped on. Evan's apartment looked like it housed some arty punks who had been drunk for several consecutive months, there were piles of Futurama DVDs and beer boxes everywhere, scrawled handwriting and catsup drips on the walls, and a lingering odor/texture of little-kid germs. The space itself had high ceilings, Chicago 1930s architecture, and a beautiful giant angled window that looked out on the plain brick wall of the next building, a few centimeters away. A guy put on a record by an unknown late '90s college favorite, I got a cup of beer (I figured it would help), and then asked Evan for directions to downtown so I could find a copy of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which Evan very courteously and accurately gave. Stephen and I trekked out there in the drizzle and left the Cave brahs to whatever. I dropped out of Truman for a reason.

Once we were downtown, we met a self-proclaimed underground MC who was selling his three-song CD, made with Pro Tools and Recycle (which means he probably has the exact same setup I do) and wrapped in a piece of notebook paper. We bought one and I gave him one of Blanche's business cards that I had made for the trip. He told us that he was open for collaborations and that he had gotten his free ASCAP license, so he was OK'ed for radio play. We found Myopic Books, and they were able to immediately look up and find More Scary Stories, much to my delight. They then directed us to Earwax, a café/video rental store, where we got four lame VHSes for ten dollars (three kung-fu movies and one BMX video to play at the show -- I saw an art-student movie that I thought would be better for the show, but Stephen vetoed me). We went to the American Apparel store out of curiosity, and as soon as we walked in, a Portishead song from 1998 started playing. It was the gayest thing ever. The clerks were just wearing regular clothes, too, instead of briefs and pulled-up tube socks. Screw that. We relocated the Cave brahs and Cooper reluctantly gave us a ride back across town to Iron Studios. We listened to the first track of the underground MC's demo before Cooper quietly ejected it. It wasn't that bad. (or good) The Cave brahs dropped us off and headed back to Josh's to rehearse some more, and we got to the important business of idly drinking free beers and hanging out with ex-Columbian Tim Kaiser, who was "working the elevator" (he actually was working the elevator, it was a big freight elevator).

This is probably when we finally saw the first floor, where all the really awesome installations were. The first floor had a twenty-foot ceiling, and most of the installations made full use of the space. There was a gigantic sort of inflated Tyvek stylized elephant head with ears and a trunk; you crawled in through the ten-foot trunk, blindly pushing your way through into... the unknown. Which usually turned out to be a rotating cast of other slightly drunk dudes who had crawled in also, and who rewarded your efforts with a beer. There was also a couch and some markers to write on the dome's walls (the graffiti became progressively less art-studenty and more naked-lady-y as the night progressed). Also on the first floor were a pair of fishing shanties (made of corrugated green plastic and five-gallon paint buckets, like ice-fishing shacks); in one of them, you could write a fish story on a small form in exchange for a cookie, and in the other one, you could sing karaoke. The karaoke shanty was manned by a polite if somewhat bored guy (all the guys who were chained to their exhibits had a kind of stoic boredom to them) who would sing with you if invited. He was gradually covering the inner walls of the shanty with small karaoke request forms. Stephen and I sang "Are You That Somebody?" by Aaliyah feat Timbaland, and "Saturday in the Park" by Chicago because we were in Chicago.

There was also a large wooden wall with knives thrown into it, and a bunch of knives on the floor. "Dude, there's this wall where you can totally just fuckin' wing knives at it!" said Stephen to me. So Stephen and I threw knives at it. Mine went in! Then a guy came over and yelled at us. It turned out it was (non-interactive) art. I made a sign saying as much and posted it near it, so nobody else would have to feel dumb. But I saw other people winging knives at it all night anyway.

Around 6:00, the best Thai food I have ever eaten was catered in by a cute old Thai man. Edmar gave us free meal tickets, so it was even more delicious. Rotten Milk found us and asked how we felt about having our time slot changed from fourth in line (at 9:00) to first in line (at 7:30). We told him that that would be totally lame, which he realized, but we understood that there were fourteen-plus bands playing and we were not especially high-ranking among them and that were were already at the venue, and that we were team players. So we changed into our dumb outfits and told the friends that we had made that we were playing at 7:30. (Stephen's OBELISK outfit is a purple Soul Plane pilot hat and a sweatervest, and my MC Cat Genius outfit at this point is my foamcore Piccolo mask, women's '80s black fringe jumpsuit, sock-mitts, tail, fannypack, and white shoes with toes drawn on.) And then we managed to delay the start of our set until 8:30, allowing the sound tech guy who was playing impressively lame old-timey records at inappropriate speeds to play even longer.

By the time we reluctantly started, a crowd of literally fives of people had gathered in the first-floor loading dock-cum-concert hall (by 'gathered' I mean 'were already there' because it was pretty much all just the sound guys and Tim Kaiser -- the Cave brahs were still practicing at Josh's). The show was really good, technically; we remembered all the words; we did the coloring contest thing; I read a scary story during our cover of Eminem's 'Stan' and ended it with 'it was you! Damn.' which didn't make any sense in the context of the story; I crawled under the stage with my but hanging out during one of Obelisk's songs and ran away altogether during another. Originally we were going to let the audience choose which dumb VHS they wanted to watch during each song, but since all our dumb VHSes got stolen (including some of Stephen's home videos), the audience got to watch just the BMX video. It would have made the show even more confusing anyway. There were a couple of parts where I felt like I should have been more high-energy; I need to work on being hyped up even when the audience isn't. But all in all it was our tightest set to date. I got halfway through the Weird Al "All About The Pentiums" / Rage Against The Machine "Bulls On Parade" combo cover before someone cut the audio off. (It was Stephen. There were 13 other bands waiting to play.)

Afterwards, Stephen watched This Is My Condition, who came on after us, and talked to them about setting up a show with Umbros (his 'real' band). Then we wandered around in our dumb outfits some more. Stephen got a gold tiger silkscreened onto the hood of his white KCOU hoodie, which had been immaculate on the ride up to Chicago and was getting progressively dirtier and more decorated. Then Stephen, who had had about nine beers in the space of an hour and who was getting progressively wackier, disappeared for a while. I later found him in the VIP lounge (a curtained-off area on the first floor with couches and the letters "V" "I" and "P" rendered large in cardboard), fast asleep with his little hat still on. He seemed safe enough, so I left him there. I also saw Juiceboxxx in the VIP lounge and told him he was a dickweed for talking through our entire set at Apop in January (when he opened for us). He was all, "Dude but I was so wasted!" Whatever, dickweed. Then Juiceboxxx was very near one a glass coffee table when it broke. That's not a euphemism for anything, it was just a weird coincidence and it figures in later.

I dropped in and out of the other bands' sets; it was a lot of noise bands and DJs and one-off projects. There was a good avant-comedy duo that was two of the Version06 setup guys in white sweatsuits and gold necklaces, lamely insulting the audience through a massive delay filter -- a sort of standup RAVVEO))). And, um... actually I think that's the only act that made an impression on me. A few feet away in the exhibits was a harlequin-makeupped performance artist who silently indicated for me to let people know that she was about to perform. I told the karaoke shanty, which was pretty full and loud, and they said "oh, okay," and got quiet. Then as soon as I turned around, a midi version of "Hard Knock Life" started booming out. Awesome

The Cave brahs finally showed up, and Stephen finally woke up, because some be-jockeyed performance artists were doing a set in the VIP lounge, a central theme of which was teabagging Stephen. Stephen attempted to pee in a trash can behind the karaoke shack, then went outside and peed for about four solid minutes, then disappeared again. I looked for him everywhere with no luck -- asking various people if they had seen a drunk commercial airline pilot, and finding his Soul Plane hat on the now-closed-off fourth floor hanging on a pole, with no accompanying answers. One of the Cave guys said that they heard he had been passed out on the ladies' room floor at some point. I saw one of the teabagging performance artists outside, his elbow ripped open from rolling around in the VIP lounge floor on the broken glass. Apparently he went to the hospital and got six stitches and came back to the venue.

Eventually I just determined to watch Cave's set. This was 3:00 AM. Cave was, on this evening, Sean, Rex, Cooper, Terry, Josh, Gabe, Hunter, and Rotten Milk. They did a solid 40 minute set of mind-altering thump-based psychedelic jam. Gabe did vocals straight out of a Native American Pure Moods compilation extract. Some girl appeared on stage with no shirt and danced around for quite a while before making out with her boyfriend in a very gross way. Man, there were like four make-out-ing couples on the dancefloor. I didn't not pay to get in to see that.

After Cave's set, I started digging around for Stephen some more, since I figured we were leaving soon, even though there were still three bands left to play (it was now 4:00 AMish). I was getting a little desperate, and then Rex said "Hey, I found Obelisk," and led me past the knife wall, around a corner, to some mysterious undisplayed installation involving a giant brass Buddha head and two large flat planks. Stephen was sound asleep, arms on chest, on one of the planks. I had Rex take my picture next to him and we left him there, to be retrieved later. He woke up on his own pretty soon, apologized for missing Cave's (and every other band's) set, and failed to explain the large Shroud of Harlequin white facepaint smudge on one half of his face and jacket. We went home to sleep, at long last.

The next morning, Josh led us into the Ukrainian neighborhood that his apartment borders. It was full of people who looked like they'd been born old, and there were fashion boutiques with fashion-forward old-peasant-lady dresses in the windows. There was a sad little building that said "CHICAGO LIBRARY". We went to Ann's, a Polish bakery. ("What's a Polish bakery?" we asked Josh. "Ah, it's, the dough's all uncooked," he said.) The bakery contained a bunch of boring sodas with Cyrillic letters (I got a cream soda with Pinnochio on it), some danishes, some snobby Eastern European girls, and some snobby Eastern European guys with short hair and track pants and sweaters. Terry and I went in on some lunchmeat and beat and made ourselves sandwiches (there were no premade ones). While I was in line forever, an old woman brought up three different large bottles, one at a time, and asked a question about each one: some vitamin water, some Fiji rum, and finally some 7Up, which she bought. We saw Gabe, who was returning a tape to the library. He ate some paté with Josh.

We went to Iron Studios one last time before leaving town; I ran in to check on my trade table one last time. I organized what was there, and took what I wanted and left the rest, changing the posted rules to "TAKE EVERYTHING and LIVE A FULL LIFE". I took: Hunter's sunglasses, an RC Cola can, two dollars in change, a pin with a pornographic photo on it, a copy of Treasure Island, several of the other showers' DVDs and CD-Rs, some patches and silkscreens, and a military field training manual And some other stuff. Most of the CDs and VHSes were gone; I thought about taking what was left but opted not to. A guy came up to me to show me the cool thing he'd traded for at my table, and it was a DVD I'd never seen before (someone else must have traded it for something else). But this guy had traded to me his DVD of his photo essay of homeless rubber bands around Chicago, which I was pretty intrigued by.

I went back down to the van and Rotten Milk was hanging out. Or maybe it was just an old cat living in a pile of discarded clothes (psych!). Edmar happened to wander down and bid us happy trails, which we certainly appreciated. The hospitality and enthusiasm that we'd been shown by everyone involved in Version and Lumpen was unparalleled by ... I dunno, I've never really been to anything like Version before. Maybe Version-type events are always chock-full of great guys and gals. I certainly hope so.

The drive home was pretty uneventful, except that I got some teriyaki jerky chunks, which were much worse than teriyaki jerky strips, and I compared hanging out with Sean to being at Big Mama's House, which Sean didn't appreciate. Stephen drove the last leg of the way home, and afterwards, Cooper said "Obelisk did a good job driving" or something. On the way up, the Cave and the Obelisk had seemed somewhat uncertain around each other, but now Stephen, KCOU hoodie soiled irreparably, white makeup on face still, being referred to solely as Obelisk, was like a freshman frat rushee who had eaten the limp biscuit and had paid some dues.

After surviving Version06 and Chicago, my problems in Columbia and in my life seemed not-so-bad. It was the most fun weekend I can remember having in years, and I owe a debt to all the friends and professionals, new and old, who made it happen.

--------------------------------------------

So that's what happened to me.

Hopefully before too long, I'll get the new releases put up on the archive.org pages. Cat Jams is looking at a possible show in early June to release a few more projects; more details as details are.

In the ten days it took me to type this, Toog made a video to introduce an upcoming Tape Store show. Here it is: (you need a Myspace membership to watch it; I'll try to get him to put it up somewhere else) >http://toog.blogspot.com/2006/05/i-am-sure-that-you-would-prefer-to-see.html

I got some pictures of the final Illusion Christmas event, taken by the inimitable Erica Thum. Hiro, I'll send them to you soon! Also, Chase Cogneato finally edited together the video from that same show. Synchronicity yo Also I have some pictures from Version, but who knows if they are all of my thumb or not.

James Harvey put up some old/new tossoff tracks that I thought were dope: http://www.maudevintage.com/jamesharvey/music/hdclearout/

Here are some interesting links:
http://www.maggietron.com/ratemybinturong/index.php
http://umeancompetitor.blogspot.com
http://justalittleguy.blogspot.com
http://takeshikaga.ytmnd.com/
http://www.drakemusicproject.org

I put together a Grandpa Cat vocal with a DJ Chienloup instrumental and it turned out dope.

Tape Store is cool, you should hire him.

version!

2006-04-18T07:56:00.000-07:00

Lumpen Magazine's Version06 site is up and running; Cat Jams has most of its interest vested in Saturday April 29, since that's the day that we'll be participating in the NFO XPO and that's the night that Obelisk & MC Cat Genius will be performing (simultaneously).
It should be noted that Cave and Skarekrau Radio will also be playing on that selfsame stage that same night; and that Warhammer 48K and Jerusalem & the Star Baskets will be playing the previous week. And that every single other event happening there is gonna be just fantastic.
I'm going to try to get together a few new releases to have at the NFO XPO booth and the show; an Obelisk mixtape, a Tape Store VCD, a VHS sampler, another unreleased tracks comp, and a promo version of Darsh's Concrete. So wish me luck on that.

I've never been to Chicago before. Bigups to Rotten Milk and Edmar for hooking it up.

A loss in the family

2006-03-29T18:20:00.000-08:00

Rasta
1997-2006

friend of Antonin Gaultier

Who can explain what it's like to lose a cat?

actual events!

2006-03-23T10:17:00.000-08:00

1. Sunday, March 26, 2006, 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM, the basement Maude Vintage (810 E Broadway underground), free --
release listening party for the two new Trip Maker Presents mixtapes, "Motorcycledelia" and "Hard Acid Funk and Soul". Trip Maker of "8 Miles High" and "Holy Victrola" radio shows fame. Bring a lunch if you won't spill it.

2. Saturday, April 1, 2006, 9:30 PM, Eastside Tavern, cheap --
celebrate April Fools Day with avant comedy rap artists Black$mith, OBELISK & MC Cat Genius, and Tittyfuck Jubilee. Pranks to presumably abound! Perhaps we will capture you inside a jungle gym.

Here are some flyers that James "The Jams" Harvey made for it. Examples:

3. OBELISK & MC Cat Genius are also playing in Chicago on the 29th of April, as part of Lumpen's Version06 festival. Yeah!!! More details as details are more.

4. Here's this review of the original Entei & Whitesnake with Hiroaki Koshiba VHS, from The Trouble With Normal.

Hey Chris, please add these events to the events page, I'm lazy. And do that head-affixing thing that James was talking about with the murderous fingers flyer. You're a champ.

It's hard out here for a trans-global psych-folk live painting collaboration series curator

2006-03-06T08:54:00.000-08:00

One of the two Hiroaki Koshiba / Jerusalem & the Star Baskets events won the Ragtag Corky Award for Best Live Event 2006. It's unclear which one of the two events won, since it just says 'Hiroaki Koshiba w/ Jersusalem & the Starbaskets [sic]'. So they both won. Second place went to the Cat Jams Showcase (the one with Tape Store and the Marriage and OBELISK and MC Cat Genius). And then there were some events that didn't incolve Cat Jams.

In related news, Three 6 Mafia won an Oscar! If you can find a video of their acceptance speech, it's really adorable. And as Spliff Huxtable put it: "That’s right. Crunchy Black has an Oscar….think about this one…DJ Paul gets to vote for best picture FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE."

sno-cone scans

2006-03-02T20:04:00.000-08:00

Cultural Hangover

2006-02-27T13:48:00.000-08:00

Well, it's too late, but Cat Jams had a booth in the Blue Note for the Lumpen exhibit (part of the True/False Film Festival)

Speaking of True/False, the festival went well (more than 10,600 tickets sold). "The Untitled Camp Film" and "Heart of the Game" were highlights of the festival for me. Also, The Dandelion Junk Queens were amazing; how were other films/bands? Feel free to comment on True/False or on your favorite Pop-Tart flavor...

Tonight (2/27), Noam Chomsky is talking at the Missouri Theatre at 7:00 PM. It is sold out, but you can listen on KOPN 89.5.

Lastly, Sno-Cone Magazine came out... There are many Cat Jams related articles/reviews/pictures. Pick one up somewhere around town; they look beautiful and are well written. (editor's note: the Sno-Cone website hasn't been updated in four years, but the new print issue is days old and deliciously fresh!)

Cierto/Falso y Corkies

2006-02-14T14:54:00.000-08:00

We're up at the Corkies! Thanks to those who nominated us; the Cat Jams multirelease party is up for best event (along with Miami Dragons/friends (and others)).

Update: Hiroaki Koshiba with Jerusalem and the Starbaskets suddenly appeared on the nominations list...It doesn't specify which HK/JATSB show.

And if you're bored in the middle of World Studies class, then I recommend clicking on the MP3s link (which is now working).

Also, some of our friends are playing between films at the True/False Film Festival (Feb. 23-26)...Here's the list:
Baby Dee
Cave (!)
Celandine
Curtis Eller
Dandelion Junk Queens
Ellie Come Home (!)
Flowers (!)
Girl Talk
Howard Marshall & Friends
Jerusalem and the Starbaskets (!)
Leah Quinelle All Stars Featuring Happy (!)
Peter Stampfel
Spot
Strawfoot

rchived!@

2006-02-12T11:01:00.000-08:00

Here is the Cat Jams Label homepage on archive.org.

It's kinda plain now but all the releases are there. Archive.org is also where I'll start uploading the audio from live shows I've taped, the video from various video projects, entries in the Cat Jams podcassette series (mixes and shows made on cassette by various people and then ripped into digital form), etc etc etc. I'll tag everything with "cat jams" in case it doesn't come up under the main grouping for whatever reason.

So anyway, all of the Cat Jams media has a permanent home now, regardless of how much I move the website around. Booyaka!

scans

2006-02-09T10:39:00.000-08:00

the latter one is from Lumpen volume 14 issue 4, December 2005

check it out check it out check it out check it out

2006-02-06T20:46:00.000-08:00

check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out
check it out!

there's still some bugs but those bitches are archived!

also, look out for a psychrock podcassette/mixtape series from Sean Witzman courtesy of Cat Jams coming soon at you!

I Like Your Nod(s)

2006-01-31T18:01:00.000-08:00

A few updates...
First, the Umbros have a few shows coming up at Mojo's on February 6 and February 10. Check out the shows page for more details.

Second, cast your nominations for Ragtag's Corky Awards here. Among the possible nominations for Best Live Event are several Cat Jams shows. Also, Aron Cho's GOOD MOVIE can be nominated for several awards.

Lastly, congratulations to Mahjongg for making the top 300 in the Village Voice's Pazz and Jop Awards. They placed higher than a plethora of artists, including Sheryl Crow. I hope it makes them happy...so they can leave Las Vegas...and soak up the sun.

golden qu'ral

2006-01-25T19:05:00.000-08:00

Okay so:

Illusion Christmas Overdrive was a huge success. Five shows, five days, five jamlaborators, five original paintings! One gallery showing, one Yokohaman dude, one city visited in the entirety of the Americas, two new CDs (one of Hiro's acoustic jams, and the one live-burned-and-painted mystery CD). Eventually I'll get the audio from all the shows up for public consumption, but for the time being, here's a nice article about the shows. We had a fantastic turnout for the final show at Ragtag; thanks for everyone who came out, who helped (Apop Records, Ian Cogneato), who performed (J&tSBs!), who did audio (Chris Keener), who lent a computer (Sarb). And thanks to Trypmaker, Gia, Umbros, Flowers, & Cave for making the previous nights come alive. It will be difficult to top Illusion Christmas Overdrive in ambition alone, and I may do the smart thing and retire at the top of my game. I'm working on getting a DVD together of the video from all the shows. If you are a Chicagoan film student named Nathan who did some impromptu videowork at the fourth show, get in touch with me already.

Other events: Obelisk performed at Apop Records on the 16th with Squidbotz and Juiceboxxx. I have video from the show. MC Cat Genius made a surprise appearance and screwed up only several times.

The new Cat Jams intern has been named, and I named him: Chris Boeckmann AKA Tape Store AKA the Columbia Tribune's youngest columnist! Look for him to be doing things like making the Cat Jams site actually work. Wow.

James Harvey's site is back up and running thanks to me. viola!

A new album is in the works -- a 99-track, single-CD collaboration between Bob Dynamite and Tape Store, whose sum age is 30. And will hopefully not increase integerally before the CD is actually released.
MC Cat Genius is contributing a track to a secret project by Toog. Momus mentioned it so I guess I can too.
Channing is working on an Obelisk street tape.
Umbros has some shows coming up.
Maybe that's it for now? Hopefully now that Chris is on board, updates will happen more than once every space year.

CK

new event! and post!

2005-12-23T02:01:00.000-08:00

edit 12/29: I updated the schedule.

PRESS RELEASE
December 22, 2005
Cat Jams Label
http://www.catjams.com/

For Immediate Release

Japanese painter Hiroaki Koshiba to visit Columbia, perform series of live collaborations with local musicians

On December 24, 2005, 26-year-old Japanese painter Hiroaki Koshiba will begin a two-week, self-financed visit to Columbia from his home city of Yokohama. This will be Hiro's first time to the United States, and Columbia is the only stop on his trip. Hiro, a Kandinsky-influenced painter who specializes in what he calls 'sound images', is coming to town to perform a series of live collaborations with local psych-folk group Jerusalem and the Star Baskets. Over the course of five shows, Jerusalem and the Star Baskets and their musical guests will provide the sounds, and Hiro will interpret them onto a canvas. The fruits of their labor will be on display at the gallery of Ragtag Cinemacafé for one month. The series of shows is being curated by Columbia experimental CD-R label Cat Jams Label.

Hiro first became involved in the Columbia music scene when he and Cat Jams head Channing Kennedy struck up a friendship on the internet messageboard of Japanese avant-pop musician Cornelius. Both Hiro and Channing are big fans, and Channing and his cat Piccolo, aka MC Cat Genius, were chosen to appear on Cornelius' 2003 listener-remix album PM by Humans. In late 2004, Channing asked Hiro to provide packaging for an album he and his friend Gregg Lewis were creating, Entei & Whitesnake's Christmas Illusion 2, a collection of drone-glitch deconstructions of loosely holiday-themed songs. Hiro ended up painting a new work based on each of the five tracks, and seven months later, Cat Jams Label released the collaboration as the label's first VHS. Released in a limited run of 40, the paintings become a sort of non-dynamic music video, hanging still on the screen for the duration of their track -- the longest of which is over twenty minutes -- followed at the end by Hiro's notes in English and Japanese.

For Christmas Illusion 2's July 28 2005 release, Channing and Gregg chose not to perform the music themselves, instead asking their friends Jerusalem and the Star Baskets -- aka Jeremy Freeze and Kim Sherman -- to reinterpret the entire work live. And the (other) catch? A live two-way video feed connecting Columbia to Tokyo, using Apple's free iChat software. Simultaneous to the band playing at Ragtag near midnight Central Time, Hiro was kicking off a showing of the Christmas Illusion 2 series in Harajuku with an early-afternoon in-gallery live painting session. While Jeremy and Kim piped through a computer setup into a gallery space they might never visit, Hiro loomed large on the Ragtag screen, and the painter and the musicians riffed off of each other like old jam buddies, latency notwithstanding. A brief and entertaining Q&A session followed. So in this sense, Hiro's coming trip will be his second appearance in Columbia.

For the first week of Hiro's trip, he'll be sightseeing and making field recordings of his impressions of Columbia. Then, after the new year, the shows begin. On January 2, 3, 4, and 5, Hiro and J&tSB will be performing at Maude Vintage (the old basement shop at 810 E Broadway, not the new street-level location at 818 E Broadway, though they may switch shops from day to day) from 5:30 to 7:00 PM, i.e. within the shop's regular business hours. The band will invite different Columbia musicians to perform with them each day, to make each show a unique experience. These shows will be mostly acoustic psych-folky jams, but the unexpected is to be expected. These shows are all free, and are obviously no-smoking no-drinking. Guests tapped so far include Rex McMurry, drumming wunderkind of the Pows / Sabertooth / Miami Dragons; multi-instrumentalist folker Terry Rice, of Flowers; and Umbros, Stephen Howard and Erik Moore's instrumental slowcore-with-dope-beats project.

The climactic show will take place at Ragtag on Friday, January 6, at 10:30PM. At this show, the audience will be treated to an opening performance by Hiro of his own original guitar folk songs (and a Beatles cover or two), accompanied by a prerecorded video of his brother and frequent collaborator Takaaki Koshiba. Then, Hiro and J&tSB will begin their last collaboration of the series. Hiro will be accompanied by a very large canvas, and J&tSB, plugged in this time, will be accompanied by Hiro's original collaborators Entei & Whitesnake. E&WS, aka Gregg and Channing, will fill out the evening's soundscape with played-back pieces of Hiro's field recordings from Yokohama and Columbia, recordings of the previous weeks' Maude collaborations, and other apropos found sounds.

The Ragtag show, in addition to kicking off Hiro's gallery showing, will also mark the release of the first Cat Jams work since Christmas Illusion 2. Titled Illusion Christmas Overdrive: Hard and Hot Windy (a name shared with the Ragtag event as a whole), the new item will be a CD-R release, but its exact contents will be even more inscrutable than its title. Of a limited total run of 50, any given CD could be a recording of one of the Maude shows, or of July's collaboration, or of Hiro's field recordings. Best of all, and with many thanks to Apop Records and their CD duplicating tower, some CDs will actually contain the full music session performed at evening at Ragtag, burned and ready just minutes after the show ends. Distribution of the several possible CDs will most likely be entirely random, and the CDs themselves may well bear no external markings belying their contents.

Packaging will also be created live; homemade canvas CD sleeves, made by Jeremy and Kim, will border Hiro's canvas at the show and be randomly struck by stray and intentional paint spatters. At the end of the show, the sleeves will be taken down, stuffed with one of the many possible CDs, and handed out to the audience gratis, as thanks for participating in this one-time event. The CDs will not be for sale anywhere after the show, but all the recorded audio will be posted online for free download at the catjams.com site.

The Ragtag show is free, but a small donation to support the artists is greatly appreciated. Like all Ragtag events, food and drinks are available at the theater bar, and smoking can be done outside. The Ragtag show, along with all the others, will be videotaped for inclusion in a video presentation to be made by Hiro upon his return to Japan. The video will also air on the public access channel CAT3, possibly live.

Friday night will also be Hiro's last night in the United States; Saturday morning sees him boarding a plane to Yokohama, while the paint still dries on his last canvas.

A special thanks to local filmmaker Aron Cho, for agreeing to document Hiro's trip, and to local painter Joel Sager, for being Hiro's crafts liaison.

Channing Kennedy
Cat Jams Label

photos from July's Christmas Illusion 2 release event
press release and post-show roundup for Christmas Illusion 2
Hiroaki Koshiba
Maude Vintage
Ragtag Cinemacafé

suggested press photo:

photo credit belongs to Takaaki Koshiba

schedule of events

Monday, January 2, 5:30 - 7:00, @ basement Maude Vintage, free: Hiroaki Koshiba and Jerusalem & the Star Baskets with special intra-jam guests Trypmaker and maybe Giavanna Accurso

Tuesday, January 3, 5:30 - 7:00, @ basement Maude Vintage, free: Hiroaki Koshiba and Jerusalem & the Star Baskets with special intra-jam guests Umbros (Stephen Howard and Erik Moore; slowcore guitar / bass / prerecorded phat beats)

Wednesday, January 4, 5:30 - 7:00, @ basement Maude Vintage, free: Hiroaki Koshiba and Jerusalem & the Star Baskets with special intra-jam guests Flowers

Thursday, January 5, 5:30 - 7:00, @ street level Maude Vintage, free: Hiroaki Koshiba and Jerusalem & the Star Baskets with special intra-jam guests Cave

Friday, January 6, 10:30, @ Ragtag, free (donation appreciated): Illusion Christmas Overdrive: Hard and Hot Windy -- Hiroaki Koshiba and Jerusalem & the Star Baskets with special guests Entei & Whitesnake; opening act Hiroaki Koshiba and prevideo'd Takaaki Koshiba

See you at the shows!

2 novels 2 furious

2005-12-01T18:41:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to my mom for completing National Novel Writing Month two years in a row. Read 'em n weep

it worked!

2005-11-30T23:05:00.000-08:00

it basically worked. There's a lot of dead links, I'm sure, and a lot of images and such that I'm still hotlinking from the catjams.com server, so I'm not 100% independent yet. Also, the search engine isn't working now -- myabe it'll reindex through the night or something. I think I'm gonna put some ads on the site too and make it looks extra ugly while generating no income. Chris left a comment on one of the test posts and it got deleted. Please update your site feed info (ha ha) -- the new xml feed is http://catjams.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

Re: Chris's deleted question: I could really use an Applescript or something that removes the spaces and other non-alphanumeric characters from the filenames of mp3s. The Archive.org servers don't like non-alphanumeric characters, save the old standards like _ and -. I'd like to find something that replaces all the non-alphanumeric characters with _ and truncates them. Or I guess I could make Chris do it. (Not really)

seeya soon

2005-11-30T12:24:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I'm about to try to transition the site from the catjams.com server to the blogspot.com server. So it'll probably look weird for several hours. After a while, check http://catjams.blogspot.com to see how it went.

hi Erik, hi Stephen, hi Antonin

2005-11-27T17:10:00.000-08:00

Thanks for the Gmail invites, everybody. When I sign up I'll let you know the new address so it can start getting spam.

Gregg's birthday party will NOT be at Osaka tonight. It may very well be at Chuck E. Cheese's on Monday, though.

Okay, here's the plan for Cat Jams.

- All the discrete albums, physically released or otherwise (but not the album Discrete) will be hosted on Archive.org, the free non-profit internet library. This will also be where the videos and live show recordings end up. This will make them much easier to find, and they'll in theory be around forever, with or without me around to be their custodian. Any leftover audio or other tidbits will be hosted on the maudevintage.com server space. All the links may or may not be updated eventually.

- Since Cat Jams is powered by Blogger, I believe I can just click a button and all the posts and archives will be instantly moved over to a free Blogger account, i.e. "catjams.blogspot.com". I might lose the template I worked so hard on but whatever. Any parts of the website that aren't posts already (there aren't many) can be posted and thus archived. Even the Paypal store can be turned into a post, since the buttons are all prescripted, or it can be hosted on the Maude space. All a Paypal store really is is long button scripts, which can go anywhere.

- I also believe that I can use godaddy.com's $7 deal to make "http://www.catjams.com/" redirect to the free Blogger page -- which would be the entire website, stay with me here -- and I can even save a few of the catjams.com email addresses, either making them into POP accounts or having them redirect elsewhere, like a Gmail account.

- I still intend to release releases, and promote them, but I really hate trying to satisfy other, unknown people, like CD reviewers and local music fans -- I think it makes my work very bland and middling -- so I'm stopping. Look for a significant drop in guitar music and a significant return to terrible music.

There are other outlets in Columbia and the world for ideas that are good. My heart, and the heart of Cat Jams, lies elsewhere.

Hi Chris, hi Mom

2005-11-24T23:22:00.000-08:00

Hi. I'm busy. And I find myself wondering why I'm paying $160/year for people on Norwegian XBox messageboards to hotlink to that one photo of my beard (see below). If you want an update so bad, perhaps you'd like to put some links or other mentions of Cat Jams-collective-related news in the comments of this post. Here, I'll start you off.

the Move article about Sabertooth (link). the Comomusic comp review (link). Warhammer 48K featured at Aquarius Records (link). I've been commissioned by Toog for a secret project (link to Toog's LiveJournal). Gregg Lewis of Radish Wizard / RAVVEO))) / Swamp Fuck / Entei & Whitesnake is turning 27 on the 28th of this month, and we hope to celebrate at Osaka's in the karaoke room on perhaps that Sunday since I believe they are closed on Mondays (link to something).

Hiroaki Koshiba, the Japanese painter from the Entei & Whitesnake VHS, will be in Columbia for two weeks starting Christmas Eve; he'll have a gallery showing at Ragtag for the month of January, and on January 6 at Ragtag, he and Jerusalem & the Star Baskets will do another live collaboration, this time in person instead of through a live internet video connection. Hiro will also play music before the show (link to Hiro's website, Entei & Whitesnake post-show post and store listing) I hope to release a new J&tSB/HK release at this show too. I also hope that more than twelve people will show up despite the absence from the bill of a hilarious cat who says 'shit'.

Jerusalem & the Star Baskets have an interview up at Whiskey & Apples (link). I cancelled a Miami Dragons superstar DJ mix project I had planned, because do it your damn self (link). Former journalists Austin Ray and Jay Kirby have blogs (link). The Umbros exist (link to Stephen's Comomusic show review, or a Google-archived version). Dritt Drittel, can I say anything about that thing yet (link). The Marriage played a show (link). Digiki has three Polypunks out now and his new album is almost done, and he's eventually putting out a Darsh remix album featuring Jon Sheffield, James Harvey, Miami Dragons, AA, and OBELISK, unless I've thus jinxed it (linkxz). In case it isn't obvious, Cat Jams still has that opening for an intern (link). Tape Store is doing a Cat Jams podcassette series and he got the first one done but I have to get around to posting it, and he also did a video or my birthday that I never got to show anywhere, and he's also working on a new animated documentary type thing that I don't know if it's a secret or not (link to something). He also did some other new tracks that I thought were really good, and the footage someone shot of the Battle of the Bands is on CAT3 now (link). 14-year-old primitive techno artist Bob Dynamite is signed to Cat Jams and has music up in her directory (link); she also completed the four alternate packaging designed for the Rodenburg 2CD reissue (link to her deviantart account), and since I'm out of money and energy maybe Cooper and Dustin will take over releasing that and promoting it (link). If not I'll just not release the stupid thing and scan the artwork and post it because it's really good. DJ Chienloup is doing a secret project or two for me (link to squelette). I'm doing something with Dzima (link to Dzima something). I gave away (happily) $40 worth of DVD-Rs of the Cave / Miami Dragons thing I threw together, and everyone liked the preset iDVD menu that I checked a box for, more so than the Miami Dragons memorial video collage that I spent a month on (link to the folly of man). At least two people used the exact phrase "You've really outdone yourself on this one!" in reference to the preset menu screen. The RAVVEO))) directory has been getting a lot of hits because people think that it's real songs (see: 'Carnival'). A couple of Xanga people have been using Pows songs for site background music, but they seem to be doing this because they like the Pows, so I really don't mind (link to not minding). Luke has excellent taste in shoes and jackets (link). The /jamesharvey folder has disappeared and I don't know why and I hope to replace it very soon because I like James Harvey's music more than most; plus his website is down. I tried somewhat hard to get Sabertooth reviewed in places, and all that resulted was an awesome bad review on Funprox (link), the first review of any Cat Jams release not by someone I know personally. I guess there was the Sabertooth review in the Maneater, but I probably actually know that guy without realizing it. Sabertooth also got a good review in Lumpen, by my friend Rotten Milk (link to that folly of man site you found). I am hence convinced of the futility of A. selling new releases with no promotion (like before), but also now B. promoting said new releases, C. ever even trying to not totally lose money on anything Cat Jams does ever, and D. Cat Jams. Let me know if you want DVD-Rs of any local live shows that I filmed and I'll hand them to you at Maude (link) and if you want to give me a buck then that is OK. The light of my life is several states away to see her mum for a while, and Piccolo and Blanche and Doom and I miss her very much.

RAVVEO)))
OBELISK
Sabertooth
Bob Dynamite
MC Cat Genius
Jerusalem & the Star Baskets with Hiroaki Koshiba

Here are some pictures I received for my 25th birthday, back on September 3.

from Hiroaki Koshiba (link)

from Takashi Otagiri (link)

from Aurelien Estager (link)

from Chris Boeckmann (link) ("This is what life is like at Grove City College according to their website...")

Okay, get to work on those links, and add anything I forgot. Don't forget to also promote your Seven Mary Three cover band's upcoming show at the Blue Fugue with a link to your MySpace Bands page. I'll just be over here overdrafting my bank account by a hundred dollars so white supremacist haxorz can continue being disappointed that it's not the real version of "Another Day In Paradise". MAYBE I SHOULD MOVE ALL THE MUSIC OVER TO ARCHIVE.ORG, TURN THE SITE INTO A FREE .BLOGSPOT ACCOUNT, AND FIND THE CHEAPEST POSSIBLE DOMAIN REGISTRATION-REDIRECTION SERVICE AND ALSO SOMEHOW KEEP THE EMAIL ADDRESSES. COULD ANYBODY OFFER ME ANY ADVICE ON THE LAST TWO THINGS THERE. I GUESS IT'S REALLY THE EMAIL ADDRESS THING THAT STOPS ME FROM DITCHIN' IT ALL.

OR I COULD JUST GET A GMAIL ACCOUNT AND TELL EVERYONE TO UPDATE THEIR ADDRESSES AND LET THE WHOLE WEBSITE EXPIRE. HMM. I HAVE TO PAY BY THE 5TH. HMM. DID YOU KNOW THAT THE CAT JAMS WEBSTORE HAS ONLY EVER SOLD TWO THINGS? THEY WERE BOTH THE DATA DVD.

That list of bands up there is ones that have new Cat Jams releases on the semi-immediate horizon. But I'd be fine with NOT releasing them too. I don't think it would really make a difference to anybody in the entire world. Maybe I'd get them together and just listen to them myself. You know, just cut to the chase and skip all the 'releasing' and 'talking' rigamarole and admit who my target audience is really comprised solely of (me).

New questions:
1. is there anything on the Cat Jams site that you'd miss?
2. can someone give me a Gmail invite?
3. What's the cheapest way that I can have the catjams.com domain name just redirect to a free .Blogspot account? Could I even do it for free somehow with a bunch of terrible ads? That would be fine.

mo' music

2005-10-21T08:47:00.000-07:00

The Maimi Dragons demos mysteriously disappeared, so I replaced them with Rex's superior remasters and some other bonuses. Check them out again, they are good and here they are

also, I added my recording of the Warhammer 48K CD release show to the /liveshows directory. Touch the sky

happy birthday mom

2005-10-08T22:39:00.000-07:00

see you soon!

momremixz

I need a new intern.

2005-10-01T07:09:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I got an email from former Cat Jams Unpaid Intern Aaron Arnoldy, blithely proffering that I couldn't do it without him (the site outages are Dreamhost's fault dude!). Though his evidence was grossly mispresented and I haven't had time to respond to him, his conclusion was basically right. I'm just one dude, and the day job is taking so much of my time these days that I barely am able to throw money away via Cat Jams.

So. Cat Jams Label is hereby accepting resumes for the position of unpaid intern. I have too many things I want to do, and there just isn't enough time in my schedule for one person to lose money on them all.

Looking for: enthusiastic young person (or whatever) with spare time; access to free photocopying a plus; must know HTML, have a basic sense of graphics and language; must be willing to enact the astonishingly unprofitable plans of a ridiculous guy; music industry knowledge appreciated but not required; must like Cat Jams music (even the terrible parts) and be able to talk about it. Also: video editing! !!! Should probably live in Columbia, but telecommunicating could be fun too.

Benefits: Get into shows (CJ or otherwise) for free sometimes; impress dumb people at parties; get a professional-looking recommendation for your future endeavors; free CDs, eh?; hone your computer and patience skills; be a part of something life-affirming; boost Columbia, get no money.

Bring in a resume (paper or otherwise) and a picture of yourself in a zebra outfit to Maude Vintage, or email me ( catjams attt catjams daht com ).

I have about 10 new releases that I want to get together, along with a CAT3 TV show or two, and I still want to get the website finished up. And More, always more! I could stand to have like three interns, specializing in CD Production, Promotions, Website, and Video Production (then not everyone would have to live in the US), but let's see what we get first.

And since I'm just posting this here, the other requirement is that you have to visit the Cat Jams site occasionally. Or at least know someone who does and reposts this somewhere else.

I thank you for your time.
-- Channing

2005-09-10T20:34:00.000-07:00

Cat Jams Label has donated $100 to the Hurricane Katrina relief fund. I chose to donate to Mississippi's state recovery fund. The Guardian has links to lists of charitable organizations; most of them have a minimum donation of just $5. MoveOn.org is pushing for an independent Katrina committee investigation rather than a Republican-headed one. I wouldn't bother signing the internet petition; a very brief letter to the editor takes only a little more work to type and actually does something.

hippo birdies two me

2005-09-02T22:28:00.000-07:00

It's my birthday fool! Send me an image!

And if you're in town, my birthday celebration will be at Ragtag on Sunday (tomorrow) at 10:30 PM. It will be a free movie screening, but due to legal reason, I cannot tell you what the movie is. Please email me for more info if you'd like it. But I can tell you that it is free, will last about 3 hours, will be hilarious (aspecially late at night), and will feature a prerecorded split video/audio performance by Tape Store. Please do come and invite your friends. I will try to have cake.

Here's my present to you: the audio from my performance at Ragtag several months ago, doing a (three times) live recording of Toshi's 'Breaking Through'. It's funny, but also sad because I thought I was gonna sing good.

Also, goodbye to the Cat Jams Unpaid Intern. May he have a good experience in Americorps*NCCC Southeast Campus as I did. Thanks for everything you've done for Cat Jams, Aaron!

(also, goodbye Zach McLuckie Sabertoothpows (Chicago art school), Tim Kaiser Miamidragons (chicago something), Ben Cianciosi Miamidragonsnotinlovewithyous (Oakland, randomly), John Gilbreth Ohyeahhedwigarthur (Brazil), Giavanna Accurso (also Brazil), Olivia Wyatt (New York photo internship), Chris Keener Ohyeah (Japan, eventually), probably others too. It feels like half of Columbia is gone or going! At least none of the cool people left. Ha ha. Good luck to all of you in your many endeavors, and don't forget to write.

at least someone complained that I haven't updated the site

2005-08-29T09:45:00.000-07:00

new directory

September 3 is my birthday, I think we'll be doing something at Ragtag involving Tape Store and Harry Potter

why

2005-08-02T18:42:00.000-07:00

has the Pows' "Pose" been getting downloaded literally ten times more than any other mp3 on the site for the past week? I don't see any corresponding search terms or referring links. Is some Myspace account hotlinking it? It is a big bot fave? Was a rumor started that it's by a real band? Is it a great song? I suspect that whoever is listening to it is utterly without knowledge of another page or note of Cat Jams.

Incidentally, the most popular mp3 for all the rest of history has always been the I Love You But I'm Not In Love With You's cover of Bikini Kill's "Carnival", presumably because people find it with a music search engine and think it's a real Bikini Kill song. But instead it's even greater.

miami dragons!

2005-08-02T07:09:00.000-07:00

To celebrate Miami Dragons only having two shows left (hooray!), here's a recording of their first-ever show, at the Bull Pen Café back in March. 27:27 19.4m

And here's some demos they recorded at home a few months ago.

Oh yeah, here's a review I wrote of that show back when it happened so you can follow along.

tiny pants!

2005-08-02T07:05:00.000-07:00

to celebrate Tiny Pants! taking state, here's a recording of their live show at Sparky's Homemade Ice Cream back in March. 33:28 47.5m

A simply massive update.

2005-07-31T14:30:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone who came out to and who sent good vibes to the Christmas Illusion 2 event and VHS release party on Thursday (Friday in Japan). Witnessing the collaboration firsthand was astonishing and novel, and it's a shame more people didn't come out for it, but we were definitely encouraged to do it again.

Here's some photos and stills from the two simultaneous videolinked shows.

And here's the jam created by Jerusalem and the Starbaskets at the show:
Jerusalem and the Starbaskets, "Christmas Illusion 2 live reinterpretation, Ragtag 28 July 2005" 67:43 47.8m

Kim played drums with sticks, brushes, and maraccas, and Jeremy played guitar and eked out snippets of the original Pokemon and LOOM tracks from a reel-to-reel, running all of it through several sampler and effects pedals.

Thanks a lot to Yuko for coming out and translating for us; she definitely made the evening go a lot smoother, and enabled a greater depth in the interaction. And a very special thanks to Japanese culture magnate Jean Snow for giving the show so much hype. Fun fact: he is not a girl

------------

Congratulations to Dzima for being the Cat Jams webstore's first customer. He lives in Australia and bought the All-Inclusive DVD.

OBELISK is up to #14 on the KCOU Top 30, and the NEKOZE comp is on there too, but we both got smooshed by Tiny Pants!, who have just joined the exclusive pantheon of local artists to get to #1, without even calling in and requesting themselves or playing their own CD on the air all the time (presumably).

I'm hosting some mp3s of the 'Clash of the Titans' band-battle finals held at Eastside Tavern on 16 July 2005; Bald Eagle, Witch's Hat, and Warhammer 48K, as recorded by Alex on minidisc. Here they are.

I also ripped two songs from tapes given to me by Timothy Linn, currently attending my alma dropouter (Truman State in Kirksville). They're good! Bogus Men

I also ripped a new Tape Store EP, handed to me by Chris the other day.
Tape Store, I used to be a tool... but now I'm a Super Tool 7/26/05
side a 15:00 21.7m
side b 10:57 16m
bonus track 0:48 1.2m

Also, there's a photo portait booth up at the Columbia Mall. I forget which wing it's in, but you can see Rex (drummer for the Pows/Sabertooth/Miami Dragons/Cat Jams High School Jazz Ensemble)'s senior portrait. He looks pretty intense!

Also, congratulations to Sabrina for defeating all comers at the All-Girl Armwrestling Contest at the Sapphire Lounge the other night. It was bad ass sss.

Also, Digiki (recently arrived in Tokyo from Paris) has started a new podcasting project, and it is excellent (of course). It's Polypunk, dummy. Contributing to the awesomeness is the Kawatorized Punkcaked MC Cat Genius remix following Nirvana at the halfway point.

This Shobus thing is great. Boy have I wasted my summer in comparison.

Do you know about Wizard People, Dear Reader by Brad Neely? I felt it to be remarkable. I uploaded to to the secret directory if you don't want to mess around with BitTorrent. I also burned a copy for 9th Street Video to rent out with the movie, if they didn't just keep it for themselves.

Here's all the studio-recorded output of Miami Dragons. They only have two more shows (one at Eastside and one at Ragtag) and then they're poofin'. Check the comments on this post for dates.

I found these unattended isolated instrument files on the old Mahjongg site. Poke around, there's some good stuff on there.

I established an iTunes-specific RSS feed for this site. So, if you have iTunes 4.9, you can go to "Advanced", select "Subscribe to Podcast..." and paste in "http://feeds.feedburner.com/CatJamsLabel" (without the quotes), and iTunes will automatically download the mp3s I link to in these here posts. Actually it only downloads the first mp3 in the post, but whatever.

Entei & Whitesnake with Hiroaki Koshiba

2005-07-16T17:36:00.000-07:00

press release -- scroll down for liner notes and show media

Please add this item to your promotions and events calendars, and pass on as you see fit.

Cat Jams Label release JAM-013 VHS
Entei & Whitesnake with Hiroaki Koshiba / Jerusalem and the Starbaskets
Christmas Illusion 2 - an event/work for band, painting, video, performance, and internet
Thursday July 28th, 10:00 PM, Ragtag Cinemacafé, Columbia, Missouri, USA
Friday July 29th, 13:00, Design Festa Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
(these events are simultaneous)

Entei & Whitesnake is Gregg Lewis and Channing Kennedy respectively, a two-piece post-dronemetal project which came together around the 2004 holidays to record a one-off album, Christmas Illusion 2. Channing (me) runs Cat Jams Label, a ridiculous experimental CD-R label based in Columbia, Missouri, USA; and Gregg and Channing's other music projects -- Swamp Fuck, Animal Family, MC Cat Genius, RAVVEO))), the Diet Soda Supertsars, Sudden Impact 2.0 -- have all used the politics of originality, technical prowess, and popularity as touchstones. Christmas Illusion 2, following suit, takes five loosely holiday-themed songs and audio tracks from cartoon soundtracks, video games, and John Cage, and 'covers' them, liberally using elements of the original songs, transforming and fleshing them out with drone guitar, prepared synth guitar, real and synth drums, and iBook.

Channing's friend KOSHIBA Hiroaki, a Japan-based painter who draws influence from Kandinsky and music, agreed to create artwork for the album. Originally slated to come up with packaging, Hiro instead interpreted each of the five songs into an original painting. The group decided that the best way to pair the paintings and the music was to present them as a video; each painting would remain still on the screen while its corresponding track played in its entirety, one after the other, without breaks. The result is akin to listening to a record and staring at the album cover; as the music slowly unfolds, the eye wanders and new facets and details of the painting are noticed, and they in turn bring new connotations to the music. The album's concrete sounds and remaining vocal samples and pop-structure artifacts also serve in turn to ground the abstract paintings. The end credits include Hiro's production notes in English and Japanese, and his photos of the paintings taken before the paint had fully dried; after the long staring session, it's a thrill to steal a glance at the art's life cycle, to be reminded that the paintings are real and physical.

Also on the subject of media, Christmas Illusion 2 is being released as a numbered run of 40 VHS cassettes, with case artwork by Hiroaki Koshiba (a photo he took of his original CD case design, with his thumb and the ground visible on the edges); unlike DVD, VHS can't be easily skipped through, reproduced, preserved, or surveyed. An element of uncertainty and limitation is thus present to clear the work of any remaining charges of triteness. The VHS packaging also includes Hiro's production notes and biography, hidden on the other side of the liner. The show program (for the show I'm about to get to) is designed to slide into the case behind the existing liner, and to complement Hiro's comments with new thoughts by Gregg and Channing.

On Thursday, July 28th, 10:00 PM U.S. Central Time, Ragtag Cinemacafé will host the release show for Christmas Illusion 2. First, the fifty-minute video will be screened; then local space-folk veterans Jerusalem and the Starbaskets will take the stage and perform live reinterpretations of the songs. At the same time (Friday July 29th, 1:00 PM) in Tokyo, Design Festa Gallery will be hosting Hiro's 'Sound Images' show, featuring the five paintings from Christmas Illusion 2. Before Jerusalem and the Starbaskets begin playing, a two-way video link (using Apple's iChat AV software) will be opened between the two galleries. Patrons at Design Festa will be able to see and hear the live band playing new interpretations of the music, and patrons at Ragtag will be able to see Hiro, live at the gallery, painting new works inspired by the new music. After the show, the connection will be left open for audience members wanting to mingle across the ocean; Japanese translators will be on hand at Ragtag to assist the process.

And, of course, any remaining VHSes not already spoken for will be for sale for US$5.00 each. All facets of the performance will be recorded, ostensibly for a future release. This is arguably the most ambitious event yet for Cat Jams, and while I can't say for certain how much of it will work, I'm grateful for all the support it's received thus far from both communities.

To my friends in Japan, most of whom I've never met or talked to: I hope to see you there! (And please consider bringing along your iChat AV-equipped iBook/TiBook and/or a firewire DV camera and/or English-Japanese skills, just in case!)

the music and paintings: (click here to hear and view all)

I Keep My Home In My Heart (from Pokémon Christmas Bash!, a US-released Pokémon holiday album) 5:24
Eyes On Me (from the PlayStation game Final Fantasy VIII's soundtrack) 22:52
PART TWO (from the audio drama cassette that originally accompanied the LucasArts PC game LOOM) 12:55
Utaou Bokura no Merry Christmas (from the Japanese Digimon holiday album Christmas Illusion -- this is generally regarded as anime crooner Wada Kouji's weakest track) 5:35
4'33" (John Cage's silent composition) 4:33

related links

Hiroaki Koshiba site
Ragtag Cinemacafé
Design Festa
a few Jerusalem and the Starbaskets tracks

Thanks for reading,

Channing Kennedy
CEO, Cat Jams Label
"Cat-owned ruled-based music"
http://www.catjams.com/

AIM / iChat: buffaloblanche

-----------------

-----------------

Text for Christmas illusion2
by HIROAKI KOSHIBA
テクスト・絵画　小柴　博昭
February 6, 2005

1. I Keep My Home In My Heart (Brock and Misty) 5:24 
All through this song, something strong energy is flowing.
Guitar sound is very tough like a magma in volcano.
It’s corresponding with human fundamental power. I painted blue and red and black three wave, which is acting and dancing, splashing out.
As the result of splashing, some area is broken and divided to dots.

1.I keep my home in my heart
何とも表現しがたい巨大なエネルギーが渦巻いている。
冒頭から入ってくるギターが太く、溶岩のように力強い。
それは人間の極めて根本的な魂の力に一致しているようだ。
私は、青・赤・黒の３本の波を描いた。
それぞれが画面の中で暴れ、踊り狂い、エネルギーを拡散し撒き散らしている。
その結果、ある部分で、線が砕け散り、点となっている。

2. Eyes On Me (Nobuo Uematsu) 22:52 
At first, peaceful sound is dominating.
as the music go through, the comlicated sound has been contained.
This is sound in the universe, outer space, misterious fantasy.
I painted black line in the center, and some colorful bubble is uping beyond it.
Some cool enrgy is running very rapidly. The red fire is trying not to be vanished by something.

２．EYES　ON　ME
冒頭では、平穏な音が流れているが、
曲が進むにつれて、より複雑な世界が表現されている。
それは、あたかも宇宙空間の音のようで、神秘的なファンタジーである。
私は中央に黒い線を描き、その上に、いくつかの泡を弾ませた。
冷静なエネルギーが素早く走り去り、赤い炎は消されないように、疾走している。

3. PART TWO (LOOM) 12:55 
The drum sound is like a continuous line.
And human voice and guitar sound is put on that line, which came to be a big composition.
In the latter of music, tough sound is beginning and entering in.
So the sound is contained various factors in the end, however, the sound of the drum is continuous like human breath.

３．Loom Audio Drama Part Two
ドラムが永遠に続く線のようだ。
人間の声とギターの音がその線上に、アレンジされ、一つのコンポジションとなっている。
後半では、太い音が挿入され、より複雑な世界となっている。
その複雑性の中でも、ドラムが人間の呼吸音のように続き、その世界を維持している。

4. Utaou Bokura no Merry Christmas (Wada Kouji) 5:35 
It’s an urban image, very tokyo taste in a sense.
Below line is building line in my mind.
Also in this music, strong guitar is in, doubled with the Pop music,
and likea urban anonymousity.

４．Utaou bokura no Merry Christmas
都会的な音が表現されている。ある意味、とても東京的である。
画面下部の線はビルの線である。この曲においても、強力なギター音が挿入され、ポップミュージックと重なり、
都会的な匿名性を表現しているようだ。

5. 4'33" (John Cage) 4:33 
At first, I felt the image of blue water running ,
gradually I noticed the another bright pink point, added it.

5. 4:33
最初、青い水が弾け飛ぶように聴こえたが、
しだいに、別の明るいピンクの点が浮かび、画面に加えた。

 
BIOGRAPHY / HIROAKI KOSHIBA

1979.4 Born in Yokohama(Japan)
1998.4 Began to painting
2001.4 First group exhibition (at Artist in/Tokyo)
2001.7 Live painting with Kenichirou Nishihara(musician) (at Loop /Tokyo)
2001.10 Second group exhibition (at Artist in/Tokyo)
2002.1 ‘ FLASHBACK ‘ Exhibition with Yoichi Sugiura(photographer)
(at Design Festa Gallerly / Tokyo)
2002.3 ‘ Untitled ’Collaboration with Kenichirou Nishihara(musician)
produced by Junko Yazaki (at Artist in/Tokyo)
2002.3 Graduated from Keio university( art history and aesthetics faculty)
2003.1 First solo exhibition(at Artist in/Tokyo)
2003.10 Collaboration with Miaki Kudoh(shoes designer) (at Artist in/Tokyo)
2004.2 Third group exhibition ‘ drawing chapeaux ’ (at Artist in/Tokyo)
2004.7 ‘ FLASHBACK 2 ‘ Exhibition with Yoichi Sugiura(photographer)
(at Design Festa Gallerly / Tokyo)
2004.12 CD cover design of ‘ Team Asakusabashi ‘ ( Male Choir)
2005.1 Collaboration and CD cover design of
‘ Christmas Illusion 2 ‘ by Channing Kennedy( Entei and Whitesnake)
2005.7/24-30
-SOUND　IMAGES- solo exhibition at Design festa gallery, featuring works from ' Christmas Illusion 2 ' collaboration

-----------------

-----------------

NOTES BY CHANNING KENNEDY

Gregg and I originally intended to record an inauthentic dronemetal holiday album in December 2004, despite or because of our complete lack of musical performing experience in the genre, to give to our friends. We didn't get it done until after Christmas, and all the songs we covered ended up being from video games and cartoons (and John Cage) because we're huge nerds. But we made an album! Entei is the name of Gregg's one-man drone/metal project, taken from the mythical Pokémon at the center of the third and proggiest Pokémon movie; and Whitesnake is the name I used for the one track I did, a public-domain folk song recorded on cassette in one take for the second Rodenburg compilation, with the prepared synth guitar revamped for me by Dustin at Apop. I figured Whitesnake wasn't doing anything with it.

Hiroaki Koshiba and I met on the old official Cornelius messageboard. He introduced himself as a Kandinsky-influenced painter, and asked if we could collaborate. I said he should design the CD case for our album, but he ended up painting a new work for each of the five songs. We were stumped for a while on how to package it all, but we decided to make the video you see here, in VHS form.

We asked Jerusalem and the Starbaskets to perform the music at the show, not knowing if they'd say yes. But they did! Jeremy and Kim seem to generate their space-folk using a series of deducible but obfuscated rules; the resulting music is wholly rational, but is thick with dark matter, so to speak. I think they're one of the few Columbia groups really using experimentation and application as instruments, and their involvement makes the show much more exciting for me. As I write this, the show is still a few hours away, and I don't know what to expect -- if they'll draw inspiration from our songs, or the originals, or the paintings, or Hiro's live painting, or all of it or none of it, but I have faith in their judgment.

I read something Matthew Barney wrote about his Cremaster films, to the effect that they 'move at the speed of art, which I would say is pretty slow.'

I cannot thank everyone enough.

111 Hubbell Dr
Columbia, Missouri
July 28th, 2005.

I Keep My Home In My Heart

This is from the Pokémon English-language holiday album, Pokémon Christmas Bash!. Gregg bought this album in November 2004, but managed to save it until our night drive home from Thanksgiving. The songs on this album are sung and rapped entirely by the Pokémon characters, a departure from the other albums, which mostly use studio singers singing in third-person. This track is a sad but brave one, sung by Brock and Misty, starting with a dialogue outside a party and over a wicked synth-slap-bass riff. Brock and Misty share with each other how much the holidays make them miss their hometowns, but they reassure each other and the listener that, though they may be apart (from their families), they keep their homes in their hearts.

For this track, I let Recycle auto-cut the track into 92 'slices' (chunks with divisions at key points in the audio) -- this function is usually used for changing the tempo of short beat snippets without repitching or 'stretching'. I then loaded the sliced file into Reason's NN19 sampler module and reduced the tempo by 33%. Since some of the slices were quite long, long periods of silence were created between one slice ending and the next waiting to be triggered (1.5 times after its usual starting point). I then slightly randomized the order of slices and added some automated panning and pitching effects. I also played some prepared synth guitar.

Eyes On Me

This is the main theme from the PlayStation game Final Fantasy VIII, by Squaresoft. Nobuo Uematsu has made all the music for the Final Fantasy Games since the first one, but this might be the first FF song with vocals. I could be wrong. FFVIII received mixed reviews from gamers, many of whom held it up against FFVII and found it wanting. I never clicked with FFVII (the characters' big cartoony heads were hard to get around), but FFVIII was one of the few games I really got into in recent years; I played through it three times at various difficult points in my life, giving the characters a variety of themed dumb names. This song plays when the male and female leads realize their feelings for each other while in a futuristic spaceship. It's Christmassy because it's sentimental.

We slowed the track down twice, once to 25% and once to 50%, and let the 50% one repeat twice. I play prepared synth guitar with a serrated butter knife. Gregg tone-deafly played a snow-area song from FFVII on his pan flutes and we arranged it into a fugue.

PART TWO

This is from a 1990 LucasArts PC game, LOOM ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOOM ). LOOM was a graphical adventure, similar to the King's Quest games, but there was no point system, and no risk of dying. The story revolved around an ancient futureworld society in which all of time was rendered into an eternally knitting fabric. When hardship struck the land and the Weavers Council of Elders would do nothing, one woman, Lady Cygna, snuck to the Loom and integrated a new gray thread, not knowing what would happen. A baby was created from nothing and the Fabric was thrown into chaos, and Lady Cygna was transformed by the Council into a cursed swan for her transgressions, allowed to pause her ceaseless flight once a year to see the child. You play as the child, Bobbin Threadbare, a gray-cowled figure whose eyes glow from within the depths of his hood, who is told of his true nature on his seventeenth birthday, the last time Lady Cygna is allowed to visit. You cast spells by learning and playing simple melodies on your 'distaff,' and seek to restore order to the world. LOOM came with a half-hour audio drama cassette that laid out this background story. This track is Part Two of three of that tape, found salvaged on a sympathetic website.

In fifth through seventh grade, I attended a very small, well-funded school in rural Maine (there were twelve kids in my grade) which had an excellent Apple computer lab. Color Macs were a new thing, and the lab had three. At some point, the somewhat eccentric principal, Mr. Buckingham, announced that the computer lab had a new game, but anyone wanting to play had to attend a special session to listen to an introductory audio tape. About a grade's worth of boys showed up that afternoon, and Mr. Buckingham closed the new venetian blinds and turned off the lights, and we all sat in the dark in the deactivated computer lab, listening to the mysterious tape for an unquestioned reason. Mr. Buckingham sat silently by the tape player, eyes to space. The memory formed deep inside me as I sat there with my puffy hair and giant plastic glasses and stained sweatsuit, and I remember LOOM as being indescribably in color.

On this track, I time-stretched the base audio a bit and added a synced-up delay to Gregg's guitar riff. I played keyboard drums, and Sabrina joined us on Boris-esque real drums. Note Gregg's blues jam at the end.

Utaou Bokura no Merry Christmas

The complement to 'I Keep My Home in My Heart'. Japanese anime soundtrack songs are different from American ones because they are more likely have nothing to do with the series, and are instead generally about following one's dreams -- also, the Japanese anime soundtrack market seems much larger, with a healthy show releasing a few mini-CDs a year. Wada Kouji, this vocalist, has sung on more than a few Digimon tracks, our favorite being 'Biggest Dreamer'. 'Biggest Dreamer' and its long shadow are probably why 'Utaou Bokura no Merry Christmas' has gotten dissed on the websites of various US fanboys and fangirls who know about this sort of thing -- naturally this endeared it to us. Wada croons a line about how it would be cool if Santa left a Digimon under the tree this year. And it came on the Digimon holiday-themed Japanese mini-CD titled Christmas Illusion, the title of which inspired this entire project.

I loaded the entire track into Recycle again, and created two versions, one pitched slightly up, creating awkward pauses at crucial points. I also used the slice map as a skeleton for a slightly randomized rising tone series, and added some 'um, hello and welcome to the Holiday Inn Express Expo Center'-style reverb. I also brought the bells back in at the end. Gregg plays El-bow.

4'33"

John Cage, the American dodecaphonic-turned-postphonic composer and patron saint of Cat Jams premiered this compsition in 1952; for it, the performer sits silently on stage for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Cage was inspired by a visit to a university lab's 'silence chamber,' in which he found himself nearly deafened by the sounds of his body and ears, and came to the conclusion that true absolute silence is a myth. He later composed 0'00", which is constantly performed by every living being.

We first performed this track by not playing our plugged-in instruments, but I later scrapped it in favor of an open-air mic recording of my living room on a rainy Friday morning. Gregg can be heard in the basement as he leaves for work. For whatever reason, I threw the cats outside before recording.

NOTES BY KIM SHERMAN of JERUSALEM AND THE STARBASKETS

We watched the video, then listened to the CD of the Christmas songs, then recorded the video’s audio onto reel-to-reel tape to play along with us as we play over it. Mostly what helped was reading about how the watercolors were developed. It was sweet and unifying. It was hard to come up with Christmas accompaniment in July…

----------------------

post show notes by Channing

Thank you to everyone who came out to and who sent good vibes to the Christmas Illusion 2 event and release party on Thursday (Friday in Japan). Witnessing the collaboration firsthand was astonishing and novel, and it's a shame more people didn't come out for it, but we were definitely encouraged to do it again.

Here's some photos and stills from the two simultaneous videolinked shows.
And here's the jam created by Jerusalem and the Starbaskets at the show.
Jerusalem and the Starbaskets, "Christmas Illusion 2 live reinterpretation, Ragtag 28 July 2005" 67:43 47.8m
Kim played drums with sticks, brushes, and maraccas, and Jeremy played guitar and played back snippets of the original Pokemon and LOOM tracks from a reel-to-reel, running all of it through several sampler and effects pedals.
Thanks a lot to Yuko for coming out and translating for us; she definitely made the evening go a lot smoother, and enabled a greater depth in the interaction. A very special thanks to Jean Snow for giving the show so much hype.

The VHS is now available for sale in the Cat Jams webstore, Maude Vintage, Apop, and Slackers. And I gave a copy to the Columbia Public Library and 9th Street Video.

he's killing them

2005-07-11T22:09:00.000-07:00

OBELISK cracks the KCOU Top 30. FUCK YOU #31

I'm-a answer your question in the form of a thanks

2005-07-02T11:59:00.000-07:00

JAM-016 TAPE, James Harvey feat. The Catmaster Squad and the Rude Boy of Cats, Cat Jam Nation
JAM-017 TAPE, VA, Muy Neko - a D!G!K! Cat Jams records megamix
JAM-018 TAPE, Thee Pepsies, Thee Pepsies Want To Kill Your Mama: A Cat Jams Remix EP

The Celebrity Mixtape series -- friends of Cat Jams (specifically James Harvey (Wales), Digiki (France), and Thee Pepsies (aka Jason Cafer, Columbia MO) ) were all asked to create promotional mixes from the Cat Jams catalog, and to adhere to their own rules. The result is three very different experiences, ranging from Digiki's straight-up mix set to Cafer's classic-rock mashups to James Harvey's radical remixes and non sequiturs. Released on duped-over cassettes in numbered runs of 33 each, and featuring original artwork by 13-year-old Columbia female digital/ink graphic artist Bob Dynamite. Free.

JAM-019 TAPE, Tape Store, Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis Your Mom

New signee and rumored fifteen-year-old Chris Boeckmann's debut, showcasing a reappraisal and revitalization of music recording and structure. Soundscapes dubbed together from piano, synthesizers, rewinding CDs, found tapes, and spoken dialogue stare down 'pop' music and the politics of low-fi in this precocious ambient comedy palimpsest. Numbered run of 30 duped-over commercial cassettes with a tasteful amount of audio bleedthrough. original individual duct-tape packaging by Chris. $4.

JAM-020 OBELISK, Hot Beats / Cool Treats

new Shake 'Em On Down DJ Stephen Howard using Hiphop E-Jay 2, a $10 CD-ROM from Circuit City that functions as a prerecorded sample-driven instrument arranger for hiphop musicians. While the album is mostly ridIculous hiphop instrumentals, original vocals ice out 'Aviators' (written and recorded by Stephen, arranged by France's DJ Chienloup) and 'My Nuts!' (a Fat Boys cover, featuring MC Cat Genius). Each CD in the run of 50 Hot Beats / Cool Treatses comes in a popout case hot-glued into a defaced and rearranged secondhand book (defaced and rearranged by OBELISK & friends), to continue the theme of reappropriation of existing media. Featuring remixes by James Harvey, Tape Store, Digiki, the Diet Soda Supertsars, and the Marriage, on a separate minidisc sealed between pages somewhere in each book -- inaccessible without tearing. Numbered run of 50. $6.

JAM-021, Cat Picabians, NEKOZE

The results of Cat Jams artist's entries in a remix contest held by Digiki last year. Some entries were accepted and some were not, but they all deserved to be heard and stand up on their own. Featuring Cat Jammers from Scotland, England, and Columbia, and with original artwork by Japanese graphic artist Tsune. Featuring a fake Cornelius remix and a suprise MC Cat Genius appearance. Numbered run of 50. $5.

JAM-022 2CD, Digiki feat MC Cat Genius & Sarbochron, Pancaked

Arguably the greatest Cat Jams packaging feat yet. This is the long-awaited single for the collaborative track between Digiki, MC Cat Genius, and Maude Vintage owner Sabrina Braden, and features 30 remixes of the track across two CDs, by professional and first-time remixers from Japan, France, Britain, Florida, and Kansas City (and of course Columbia), ranging in age from 2 to 54. Disc Two has a bonus music video by Ted CIanciosi. Each ziploc bag includes the two black-on-both-sides CDs screenprinted by James Cary inside a clamshell case fried by Aaron Arnoldy (accent on second syllable), as well as an activity placemat designed by Gregg Lewis, a crayon, a single-serving condiment, and a floppy disc containing one of fifty bonus tracks. Numbered run of 100. $6

JAM-023 MINI Blue Ribbon vs. Digiki, Pancaked: Breakfast Bonus Disc

A complementary mini-CD release to Pancaked. Packaging by Kansas City artisan Alex Schubert and music by French guy Digiki, featuring an all-star reversion of Pancaked and an instrumental mega, no, gigamix. Numbered run of 50. $5.

-------------------------

Thanks to all the artists and artisans who helped will these remixes into existence -- Bob Dynamite, Gregg Lewis, Alex Schubert, James Cary, Aaron Arnoldy, Stephen Howard, Tsune, the people who showed up to customize OBELISK books at the Maude Vintage grand opening. Thanks to Chris for making the flyer. Extra thanks to Aaron Arnoldy for walking around in 95° weather putting up the flyer and getting liners made, as dubiously implied in his unpaid intern duties. Thanks to the Pancaked remixers across the world, to Digiki, to Darsh, to Tanuki and James Harvey, to Jason Cafer for making a mix tape and interviewing Erik and Alex on KOPN. Thanks to Apop Records for selflessly donating about 150 cassettes to Cat Jams for our cassette releases, and thanks again to Apop for not getting too mad when the show that I said would be over by 11:30 ran until 12:30, completely negating my intentions not to compete with their fine show happening at the same time across downtown. Thanks to Christy Lemaster for telling everyone to shut up before the show, and thanks to the audience for actually shutting up and for showing up in such massive numbers -- even for a free show, I've never seen Ragtag that packed since maybe the ILYs release two years ago. Thanks to Pete Bland, Justin Glow, Vox Magazine, and everyone else for promoting the show. Thanks to Chris Keener for doing sound so coolly and diligently. Thanks to Duncan Bindbeutel for letting himself be suckered into working the merch booth, and without change. Thanks to Erik Moore aka The Marriage aka MC Impossible Dick versus DJ Dick Inspector for playing such a wonderful opening set and granting such an air of import to the proceedings with his hypnotic single bass lines and claims to bore-action, and thanks to Tape Store, both Chris and Marcus, for playing such a wonderul second set and delighting all the ladies with their charming fifteen-year-old ways and your homemade Nintendo 64 VHS backdrops and unsingalongable singalongs and otherwise faith-restorative measures in Columbia's art youth, and thanks to Chris' parents for letting Chris stay long enough to complete his set. Thanks to Stephen Howard for nailing the hiphop thing with charisma and panache, and for not sounding like a dick while doing it, and for getting all our background video together except for the parts I did. Thanks to Sam D'Agostino for playing sax in the OBELISK/MC Cat Genius touring Band, and thanks to Rex McMurry for playing synth drums and triggering Charles Kuralt samples in the same. Thanks to Gregg Lewis for wearing a dumb outfit and playing simultrumpet. Thanks to the people who got up and rapped at the end. Thanks to me for saving the video, organizing the show and releases, working out a setlist, and generally doing all the stuff I do. No thanks to me for forgetting my tail at home twice and having to run back and get it, breaking Chris Keener's favorite glass while cat-rushing the audience, not getting everyone to rehearse more, forgetting most of the lyrics, not getting someone to videotape the second half of the show, and generally doing all the stuff I do.

I think that's everyone. I'll see if I can post some videos of the show.

except: thanks Ted Cianciosi for conceiving/executing the Pancaked video; DJ Chienloup for rearranging OBELISK vocals; thanks Aaron Arnoldy again just for being invaluable.

It seems like not long ago I was wondering what would become of Cat Jams once there were no functioning bands on it. But now I feel that the Cat Jams roster is a more direct expression of my innermost being than ever before. For real. It's been said that Cat Jams is an army, and perhaps that's true.

phew

2005-06-28T09:29:00.000-07:00

Please give me a day to recuperate from last night's show and then I will tell you all about it. We had an amazing turnout.

some pleasant press today

2005-06-23T19:08:00.000-07:00

about the free show on Mondayat 10:00 at Ragtag with the eight new releases and performances by the Marriage, Tape Store, OBELISK, and MC Cat Genius.

Pete Bland, "Next big thing’s story familiar but proven" Columbia Tribune

Angie Vo, "Radio’s comment card" Vox Magazine

coming alive yeah

2005-06-17T10:08:00.000-07:00

from the KCOU Live Hour, hosted by Erik Moore (aka The Marriage), Monday June 13 2005

Tape Store 21:23 30.4m

OBELISK (w/ special guest) 38:46 55.1m

see the Marriage, Tape Store, OBELISK, and Special Guest live! at Ragtag on June 27th at 10:00 SHARP AND BUY ALL EIGHT NEW RELEASES

assemblage

2005-06-13T07:18:00.000-07:00

tonight! on the KCOU 88.1 Live Hour, 9:00-10:00 -- Tape Store and OBELISK.

Piccolo is on the cover of Vox this week.

Some of our friends were mistreated by the local police (Missourian, Tribune).

Darsh's Concrete is finished. I feel that it is a great work.

Cave (Zach and Rex et al) played in the parking lot near Ragtag yesterday afternoon. Sorry I didn't tell you.

I found this; if it ever works, please tell me

brand new MC Cat Genius track!

2005-06-08T20:57:00.000-07:00

Darsh with MC Cat Genius - 'Claque un Ollie' from the forthcoming Digiki-produced Darsh fulllength Concrete

more to say, but everything but this can wait:
Best Movie of 2005 goes to BAPS

two and a half years later

2005-05-25T20:50:00.000-07:00

the store is up

thanks Aaron

who wants the rest of my paid ad-rag.com membership

2005-05-20T06:23:00.000-07:00

I paid 2 euros to this site so I could download and sample a certain Flonase commercial (for this Fat Boys cover in a part where we couldn't understand the words). The membership is good until June 9th, so if anyone or everyone wants to download any Burger King commercials to round out their collection, it's:

ad-rag.com
user: catjams
pass: oohusher

enjoy!

who wants the last pancaked

2005-05-20T04:45:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Freeze of Jerusalem and the Starbaskets does.

Old Freeze "Pancaked Remix" 0:59 1.5m

NEW SHOW

2005-05-18T12:42:00.000-07:00

MONDAY, JUNE 27TH
9:30 PM
RAGTAG CINEMACAFE

CAT JAMS LABEL MULTI-RELEASE SHOW

music by

MC CAT GENIUS
OBELISK
TAPE STORE
THE MARRIAGE

releases of

DIGIKI feat MC CAT GENIUS & SARBOCHRON Pancaked 2CDr SINGLE
OBELISK Hot Beats / Cool Treats
TAPE STORE debut cassette
CAT JAMS vs. KITCHEN
FREE CELEBRITY CASSETTE LABEL SAMPLERS
& morE!

hiro vs. channing

2005-05-18T11:36:00.000-07:00

Channing Kennedy, coolsong.mp3 1:36 2.4m

HIROさんの日記

2005年05月06日
12:57 Jam session with Mr.Channing Kennedy

I painted one picture influenced from Channing Kennedy's latest music.
I think this is the new style of session between music and painting.

The sound is splashing like a hard rain.
However,this is so pop, so comlicated and colorful composition.

Line is living,and black is so tight in the sheet.
It's the same what tie is to the jacket.

Anyway,thank you for the music !
HK

コメントコメントを書く

2005年05月06日
16:21
kana
おもしろい作品ですね！かなり好きです
見せ方もうまい！
2005年05月06日
16:23
HIRO
kanaさん、
ありがとうございます。
COPAN、楽しみにしております！
HK
2005年05月06日
19:33
bavard
はじめまして。足あとたどって、お邪魔しました。
英語でコメントした方がいいのでしょうか？？
とりあえず、日本語で。
アートのことは門外漢で分からないのですが、なんかハッピーな感じがします。
（もし意図してることと違っていても、素人のコメントなので、お許し下さいね。）
またお邪魔させていただきますね。
2005年05月06日
19:42
HIRO
bavardさん、
ありがとうございます。
嬉しいです。また展覧会なども開催しますので、
よろしければ是非おいでください。
http://members2.tsukaeru.net/koshiba/index.htm
今後とも、よろしくお願いします。
HK

steady claquin'

2005-05-18T09:11:00.000-07:00

a new track MC Cat Genius

MC Cat Genius has contributed a guest rap to the upcoming Darsh album Concrete. The album is being produced by terrible Franch producer Digiki, who previously collaborated with Piccolo (that's MC Cat Genius) on the smash summer hit Pancaked and who tapped Piccolo for this project.

Concrete's overall mission statement is 'fake futurism, avant gangsta', and this track in particular, 'Claque un Ollie' (score an ollie), is ostensibly a tribute to skateboarding in general and Tony Hawk Pro Skater in specific. Piccolo takes the act of contributing a guest rap and turns it around, handing in a series of searing disses against Darsh for his poor roommate etiquette. The rhymes are rife with Kool Keith references, but they also act within Concrete's preexisting internal mythology (Darsh's claim to have paid for a dolphin in cash in 'CASH'), as well as outlining Piccolo's usual misunderstanding/superunderstanding of the world around him, this time concentrating on French music, culture, and stereotypes.

In keeping with the previous Darsh singles from this album, Digiki is first offering the raw materials for the track on his blog for open third-party 'premixing,' to be followed in a week or two by the real track and a couple of bonuses.

'Claque un Ollie' premix post

And here are Piccolo's lyrics. I may install hyperlinks at some point.

'CLAQUE UN OLLIE" LYRICS by MC CAT GENIUS

I'm a cat with his own crib - in isolation
I used to have a roommate but it was too much of a fucking sticky wictuation
when I used to have one
a total asswipe signing Monsieur Darsh on his bouncing checks
what's next
do you even know your real name Erik? Ereek?
How about my pair of Brazilian counterfeit Playaz carpenter shorts did you wear it? it reeks
sitting on my god damn kitchen floor for six weeks and more what a bore
playing me your one mp3 'Le Freak C'est Chic' as performed by Korn ad infinitum ad astra ad nauseum
implausibly wearing striped shirts and berets and stretch pants and cigarette holders
it's just for show you don't even light 'em
being a real baguette master.
with a new loaf of stupid bread every day
Leaving my dopeass limited edition Criterion Collection Miss Congeniality 2 DVD disc 4 fabulous side down in the kitchen
if your fucking used snail shells scratched it I'll be mad bitchin.
I'm fixing a real fancy feast for dinner, mixing two different home P'Zone mixes with added yeast and pizzaz
you already ate you're a beast.
You best release my complementary Pizza Hut Playstation demo disc from your butt cheeks' weak clench and pee stench
so I can play some Torny Hawk Pro Skater after a long day of teaching graduate courses at Lasagna Institute
Yes I said Torny Hawk suck my thorny jockchirac
you grok me webmaster?
go roll a yahtzee and other wack follies while I claque ollies,
falling down in the warehouse watching the blood spew,
pretending it's you and laughing
bad things happen in my highlight reel
so how does it make you feel?
to be at the paws of a true pain bringer
while I check a phat track by Goldfinger.
Here I am, growing older all the time Eric Ker, I'm wearing fur as you're sweating
is the heat too high? I'm growing boners in my mind as I think of you jetting.
You're just another fake futurist playing Pro Skater 'cause they don't make amateur ones
I'm-a damage your buns like when they said I set a bunch of people in a patisserie on fire
my shit needs to be admired
yeah... That's very unfortunate... how about that
making a wack payment out to 'Hey Man'
do you even know my name man?
do you recall reminiscingly when your mom was introdissing me,
warning me about your allergy to bacon
and other ham-based products such as Canadian bacon?
you may be mistaken
all the France equivalent of bacobits you be taking be makin your brain as crazy as a craisin
Hey is he insasin'
like Rayman's left shoe zoomin' through a giant messy placin'
I'm unimpressed with your grooming
you made a mess with my cumin I mean c'mon dieude
fifty-five percent of France said non to EU
the hog fruit got your constitution quakin
do you need a rumen?
you're like a metaphorical baby I'm shakin'
Like my dog Morimoto, I get real raw in your face
Restauranteur Artist Warrior in your face
Best avant de whatever is is you said you are face
assface
Digiki assured me you had read the dolphin care manual I helped you pick out at Dolphin Depot
I should have known never to listen to such a boring-ass horsemeat eater though
now I been looking at Gerard Depardolphin floating upside down, fucking up my indoor-outdoor saltwater aquarium for a whole goddamn weekend
his cyborg parts still speakin post mortem, translating escaped gasses into cat languages
freaking me out in my signature bathrobe
Fuck both your wack asses
my day begins
listening to you make lame passes at my ladyfriends
let them enjoy their nutritionally customized kibble in peace
nobody gives a fuck about your trivial feats, leaving totally fake posts on Momus' guestbook
I'm about to make my own gravy all over your wack flipflop collection
listening to you in the bathroom dribblin' pee on my fly burgundy seat
paid for by my hot cassingle
I don't know why you cant just use the human-size toilet
I can't even believe how unresponsible you are, it is insane
feel the pain Romain
I got your name wrong earlier
sorry about that
your mom
gave you bacon 'cause you lied saying I had okayed it
Then you ate half a side and your eyes went all vacant
Now you're back on medication cause your ass couldn't take it
You're intolerant to ham, be a man and just face it
I made a pot pie from the rest your bacon
Oh you mad? I thought that you'd be happy I made it
The pie was okay, but the potness degraded
when you left the oven on and it melted my ladle an irreplaceable
Wolfgang Puck edition
that he customized for my style of kitchen
you're bitching about your condition,
saying you need a ramp
fuck a ramp
fuck your fake futurism
why don't you travel into a fake avant gangsta future
and bring me back a replacement deodorant stone.
ca fait vingt mille ans que tu rappes et t'as toujours pas de contrat
je suis la, ass
your activities are so poorly conveyed
why don't you know how to budget?
let's do this!

OBELISK tracklisting

2005-05-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

artist: OBELISK
album: Hot Beats / Cool Treats
projected release date: Monday, June 27 2005 @ Ragtag
notes: Stephen Howard, new host of KCOU's Shake 'Em On Down, + Hiphop E-Jay 2, $10 at Circuit City

intro 0:57 1.4m
Tonite 2:42 4.1m
Aviators 2:05 3.1m
Hot Beats, Cool Treats 1:35 2.5m
Clap Your Things 3:06 4.7m
Musical Abuse 3:54 5.9m
obefiller 2 1:40 2.6m
Persuade a lady to leap upon your member from above 3:49 5.6m
obefiller 3 0:25 0.6m
Tomato Sabre 3:17 5.0m
obefiller 1 1:00 1.6m
Static Guard 2:43 4.2m
My Nuts! feat. MC Cat Genius (Fat Boys cover) 2:55 4.5m
Pimp My Chinese Dragon Train 3:54 5.8m
outro 1:45 2.7m

Static Guard (James Harvey's Cold Static mix) 5:20 5.9m
excerpt of Castro Catastrophe's last-place performance at Jefferson Junior High's 2005 Battle of the Bands 2:46 4.1m

root directory

pancaked closed!

2005-05-18T08:40:00.000-07:00

Cat Jams is no longer officially accepting Pancaked remixes. The track order has been determined and will be posted eventually. Any Pancaked remixes after this point will be deemed 'bootlegs' and I still want to hear them.

comments

2005-05-18T08:38:00.000-07:00

I've switched over to Blogger in-house comments. They should be searchable with the rest of Cat Jams with the search bar <--- before too long. I cut and pasted all your previous comments for posterity.

Sabertooth & Pows reviews... graphically, because these publications aren't online

2005-05-17T19:11:00.000-07:00

from the Truman Monitor, the unofficial student newspaper from my alma dropouter in Kirksville, MO:

from The Trouble With Normal, the only local Columbia music zine, now in its 12th year of Stigallship:

arthur was awesome

2005-05-13T17:40:00.000-07:00

that is to say, the Kinks concept album Arthur, or the decline and fall of the British empire adapted into a rock opera and brought to life by Christy Lemaster, John Gilbreth, and a truly fearsome committee of the brightest minds of Columbia's extremely bright-minded music community. I am still recovering. Plus the costumer is hot.

assorted news:

thanks to Large Hearted Boy for the linkage out of nowhere! I wish the mp3s page had been updated in the eighteen months.

I'm adding a 'Play Current Page' link to the sidebar. Webjay is amazing!

the OBELISK and Pancaked tracklistings have been finalized (but how would you disprove me). Look for them and more to be released at Ragtag on Monday, June 13, very probably. The OBELISK book-albums will be available for public customization at the Maude Vintage Grand Opening on Friday, May 20.

I do believe a new MC Cat Genius guest rap will drop over on Digiki's blog very soon.

There's more but I'll wait.

rock rock on

2005-05-08T23:29:00.000-07:00

Here is James Harvey's OBELISK remix.

OBELISK "Static Guard (James Harvey's Cold Static mix)" 5:20 5.9M

Upcoming simultaneous releases for early June:

Obelisk (full-length w/ remixes and celebrity cameos, packaged in carved-out random books)
MC Cat Genius Pancaked megasingle (2 black cd-rs with themed packaging & bonus floppy)
Tape Store (full-length cassette release by Mr. E ous new aural collage signee)
Cat Jams vs. Kitchen (unused Cat Jams entires in Digiki's Kitchen remix contest)
Cat Jams label samplers at long last (cassette, by Digiki, James Harvey, Thee Pepsies)
Tanuki (retrospective)
& more, lets clear the buffer! ah man I turned into Digiki, watch me put a space before my exclamation point ! ah ah umm no

at least that's the plan!

reviews of Sabertooth came out in the Truman Monitor (kirksville) and The Trouble WIth Normal, but they're both print only. My neighbor's scanner is mysterious or I would have posted them already.

happy mother's day, Mom HA GOT YOU
And if the opposite of progress is Congress (see: Gallagher), then the opposite of conspiracy is prospiracy, not to be confused with a perspiracy (everything came about through hard work) or prosperacy (everything worked out great). 'Nobody was involved' would be an aspiracy -- or maybe that's what one hopes will happen -- or an anspiracy? Yeah. Antispiracy would mean that whatever came about, it was through the efforts of everyone working against it happening.

I don't know what 'prospiracy' means; I kind of painted myself into a corner with that one.

Sabertooth review in Joplin Globe

2005-04-30T17:15:00.000-07:00

Sabertooth offers sound of unbridled youth that oldsters can't make

harpenstance

2005-04-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

confirmed: Miami Dragons playing at the grand opening of the new Maude Vintage (818 E Broadway, street level, next to Tellers) on Friday, May 20th. Early show. Free.

go arron

2005-04-24T12:11:00.000-07:00

Check out the Press page! It's looking fine, due to the hard and unpaid work of our own Aaron Arnoldy, who has recently been accepted into the Americorps program. I'll try to squeeze as much more life-force out of him as I can before he leaves.

oh yeah (get it)

2005-04-21T15:19:00.000-07:00

Chris Keener from Oh*Yeah done turned in his mix. Get your bzIImn on

"pancakes?itsaprettymorninthinkifeelaheadachecominslice." christopherkurtkeener 2:33 3.8m

James Harvey's "Caveman Fred" #3

2005-04-21T10:19:00.000-07:00

Swamp Fuck gains in notoriety, but Jason Cafer's remix goes with praises unsung.

Sabertooth broke up a few weeks ago. One show, one album, one college-bound Zach McLuckie accepted into the Chicago Art Institute on the strength of his portfolio (aka Cadillac Soldier).

Sabertooth review in the Maneater

2005-04-17T14:46:00.000-07:00

here
I believe the rating was 4.5 out of 5 Ms.

also, congratulations to Miami Dragons on being named Best Local Band, Editors' Pick by Move Magazine. And to Maude Vintage for being named Best Vintage Store, Editors' and Readers' Pick, for the second year in a row. here

big Maude news!

2005-04-13T14:56:00.000-07:00

Maude is moving! from the Maude Vintage site:

"It's true! On Friday, April 15th, we will open our brand new shop space!

"The new store is located at 818 E. Broadway, in the old Mud Room space next to Teller's, just down the block from us and closer to 9th Street. It's on street level (a first for Maude!), and features tall ceilings, a large basement space, a brand-new boomin' stereo, windows (!), and just as much square footage on the main floor as in our entire current space. We'll have more and better displays for our local designers, and a room in the back will be perfect for our hot rental items, while the basement will make this our best Halloween yet.

"We'll have an official grand opening in a couple of weekends, but we hope you'll come check out our new home before then! Oh, and our current space will be around for at least a couple of months while we look for a subletter for it. If you're interested in some prime shop space in the District, email Sabrina at sabrina at maudevintage.com."

hooray!

a long time ago I thought this was a bit trite, but now I understand like I never could before.

DJ Chienloup "pancaked (procastination makes the world go round mix)" 4:31 4.2m

Sabertooth in Playback STL Online

2005-04-05T22:28:00.000-07:00

On April 5th, 2005, Aaron Richter said:

Sabertooth: Cadillac Soldier (Cat Jams)

Sabertooth is not background music. It’s in-your-face, fingers-plugging-ears rock music (only the best kind of rock, mind you) that refuses to give its listeners a break. The vocals will peel the skin off your face, and the rhythm section grooves will provide an anchor for the mounds of electronic squeals that would otherwise batter your brain into insanity. In other words, Sabertooth demands attention.

It’s obviously not background music, but for some reason I found myself listening to the band’s debut, Cadillac Soldier, in such fashion. While making dinner, reading a book, or drinking with friends, I caught myself playing Sabertooth’s album with the volume low, letting it rest in the background—the exact place it shouldn’t be.

Every now and then something would snap my ears to attention. Whether it be the obvious interlude chanting the words “We need attention” or the super-speed drum spasm, “Hubba Hubba,” Cadillac Soldier is so unrelenting that every time I found myself only half listening, I felt sorry for not giving the album proper interest.

Sabertooth is a trio out of Columbia, Mo., that layers hard guitar, furious drumming, plastic electronics, random vocal snippets, and monotonous drone in a wildly unusual manner. Some songs evoke the random funkiness of Need New Body (“Body People”) or the tribal rhythms of Liars (the untitled track 13), but other than that, Sabertooth’s sound is tough to pin down, which is exactly what makes it so fascinating. It has the ability to sound like something familiar, but it never parades its influences.

For a home recording, the tracks sound fantastic and cohesive. The guitar riffs and bass grooves ring clear when they deserve the spotlight, and the vocals are typically distorted to a point of incomprehension. Vocalist Zach McLuckie has an inhuman shriek of a voice that jumps from a lackadaisical grumble to a high-pitched faux-accent. It’s totally punk—annoying, but in a good way.

“Rich Man” begins the album with a bit of blues that unleashes brief spouts of noise segueing into “Piper,” which rides along grinding bass that breaks occasionally into an accelerated drone that conceals the yelping beneath. “Snob” relaxes in a groove, allowing several different vocal layers to spit nonsense, and “The Cyclone” is fairly simple, accelerating full-throttle from its start. By the albums final tracks, however, the noise layers and less-structured songs become a bit overbearing but only to the extent that it’ll make you want to listen again to everything that came before it.

The need to sift through Sabertooth’s density is part of the reason listening to the album as background music is a huge mistake. Cadillac Soldier is an interesting enough release that it deserves to become part of your daily activities. Call it “ear therapy,” and pencil it in between work and dinner.

For further information on purchasing this album contact catjams atttt catjams.com.

—Aaron Richter

Channing says: Don't forget Sabertooth has a live show video up in the Videos section, and a demo track here. I'll post the whole album for download once I have the webstore functioning (soon!). If you can't wait to buy it, it's available at fine stores (the ones listed at the bottom of this page) throughout Columbia, or email me and I'll hunt around for a padded envelope.

edit 5/26/05: here it is!

great winds

2005-04-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

The Pancaked remix contest has officially ended. Off the record, please keep sending in remixes (completed or not) until the CDs come out. I have homes for them all.

Here a couple remixes.

DJ Mr. E "Almost Waking up da Neighborhood at 10:32 PM (Cornelius remix)" 3:30 5.2m
(of the Rico Suave Revolution) AKA 16 year old Chris Boeckmann aka CEO, The Tape Store

Erik Moore "remix03" 2:14 3.2m
Erik Moore did that Marriage shit, same dude

Hiroaki Koshiba "BLUES WITH TAKAKI" 1:03 1.6
HIROAKI KOSHIBA (ENTEI & WHITESNAKE graphichalf)

ULTAMAX "ULTAMIX" 0:19 0.5m
Al(tam)ex is the guy Erik references in his remix, he is a big drug-dealer

KoDream "PhaseNoiseProject-eggs,oil,flour,powder,milk(sore wanker mix)" 2:55 2.7m
KoDream makes music with little letters. Recently he had to buy one of each silverware item.

Label owner Blanche will be DJing some Cat Jams beats at Club Shattered on Saturday, April 9th, at 7:00 sharp, as part of 'Cardiopulminary Resuscitation,' an art/video installation involving Emi Hemeyer and Sandra Keeney et al.

I added an XML Atom feed.

I like this track by James Harvey. Also by james harvey is

7/6 James Harvey "Caveman Fred"

hey, remix OBELISK

2005-04-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

I would like someone to do a remix of an OBELISK track to put at the end of his forthcoming album. I don't want to make this into a whole new remix contest, I just need a dope re-fix from somewhere in the world. You can take your pick of the tracks (except the Pancaked remixes, unless you really want to) and do whatever you want with 'em. Deadline is a month or less. Let me know ( catjams at catjamsdotcom ) or just comment on this post if you're interested.

Re: OBELISK's comment, I'll get his intro and outro pieces up for you too. They feature mo' clappin' (with style)

Now they are also in the directory, plus another track, chxit

PM BROTHERS GONNA WORK OUT THE DAY AFTER NEW YEAR'S

2005-03-28T11:02:00.000-08:00

would it be better if I split these into lots of little posts?

1/6 NEW PANCAKED REMIXES
Bitburger murders "midwestern hurricane" 3:21 1.6m
"bitburger murders contains x-members of fat cactus, kingdom flying club, and failing english" tho I don't know which ones. Feat. Ron Popeil.
Kawatory "Kawatorized Punkcaked" 4:22 6.1m
Kawatory puts the PM in PIMP
DRITT DRITTEL "Pancaked2(5MCs&1GUITARHYTHMIX)" 2:38 4.1m
DRITT DRITTEL puts the PM in Pemmican Carob Meal Pack... no wait, I do!

2/6 NEW OBELISK TRRAXZ
"Tomato Sabre" 3:17 5.0m
"Static Guard" 2:43 4.2m

3/6 LISTEN TO THIS FLY_ASS MUSIC BY HIROAKI KOSHIBA (ENTEI & WHITESNAKE graphichalf)

4/6 ROBERT DUCKWORTH = COMELY

5/6 SABERTOOTH IS #3 ON THE KCOU TOP 30, ALSO THE POWS ARE #9

6/6 Print out and hang this cool flyer by Bob Dynamite atonce

7/6 James Harvey "Caveman Fred"

Sparky's part XXXIV

2005-03-23T17:01:00.000-08:00

Tiny Pants! will be playing the Welcome Back For The First Time, Replacement Sparky The Dog Statue event at Sparky's Homemade Ice Cream (21 S 9th, 443-7400) on Monday, March 28. Music begins at 9:00 or earlier. There will also be an inaugural art opening of photographs by Maria Hitt. Suggested donation is $2. $2 = WORTH IT

unrelated: my PM bro DRITT DRITTEL has nearly completed his Pancaked remix

my mom vs. web-based text processing programs

2005-03-23T08:49:00.000-08:00

Channing's Mom "Pancaked Remix Anagrams" 5:48 5.4m

and I uploaded a really huge .mp4 version of the Video Postcard.

http://www.catjams.com/secret/PM-05_AnimalFamily_feat._MCCatGenius.mp4 (right-click to save), 19 minutes, 241 megs (!)

and a review of the Sabertooth album by Jason Cafer: http://www.comomusic.com/displayalbumreviews.php?albumreviewid=169

p.s.
http://cover6.cduniverse.com/CDUCoverArt/Music/Large/6821777.jpg
http://www.arc6ery.com/mj.jpg

alive at last

2005-03-17T17:29:00.000-08:00

Sabertooth (first show) @ Mojo's, March 5 2005, RealVideo, 21:28

Pows "Hits!" press!

2005-03-16T15:52:00.000-08:00

The Maneater - Pows leave nothing off Hits! compilation

claw-zet

2005-03-15T07:51:00.000-08:00

A review I wrote of Sunday's Mahjongg - Bobby Conn - Miami Dragons show. Also thanks to Comomusic for giving the Pancaked remix project some publicity (because I submitted a story about it).

Sabertooth's Cadillac Soldier and the Pows' Hits! are now stocked at Maude Vintage, the Peace Nook, Slackers CDs and Games, Whizz Records, and Apop Records. They should be $6ish everywhere. If you'd like to write a review for either of these albums, you can have a free copy.

On a related note, Zach, Rex, and Adam are on three of the top 20 albums on the KCOU charts this week! #3 for the Pows / Nightmare Sisters tracks (along with three other Cat Jams tracks) on the Comomusic Painfully Midwestern compilation, #14 with Sabertooth, and #15 with the Pows! ULTAMAX drops to #25 with a mysterious question mark, and Pancaked must have been stolen.

more links:
(Hits! art director) Nick Lambeth's roommate Toshi (his blog has some Cat Jams karaoke pictures)
Bob Dynamite, Maude Vintage's 13-year-old female volunteer mannequin director

and a new video, since I'm realizing I have all this server space!
Animal Family feat. MC Cat Genius, Video Postcard, for Tokyo Fun Party's January 2004 "PM Sessions" then-unpaid Cornelius remixer showcase; video by Channing, editing and inappropriate Japanese subtitling by Takashi Otagiri; 20 minutes, RealMedia

a really giant (241 megabyte) .mp4 of the above file; right-click to save: http://www.catjams.com/secret/PM-05_AnimalFamily_feat._MCCatGenius.mp4

flavor roundup

2005-03-08T07:46:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone who came out to the recent shows: Channing Kennedy at Ragtag, Sabrina-and-Channing-hosted True/False events, MC Cat Genius on the KCOU Live Hour, MC Cat Genius and Obelisk at the Sparky's Ice Cream statue wake (we raised $50!), and Sabertooth at Mojo's for the Pows best-of/Sabertooth CD release show. I'll get photos and audio up from these various events as soon as I'm able, and I'll be out-n-about today stocking the new Sabertooth album and the new Pows best-of album at Maude Vintage, Apop Records, Slackers CDs & Games, Peace Nook, and Whizz Records. I'm very proud of how both of these CDs turned out, and I must say Sabertooth had an absolutely extraordinary show, first or not. We got some video, hopefully the audio will be suitable for rippin'.

In other news, I'm actually naming a deadline for the Pancaked call for remixes. The Pancaked remix deadline is April 1. If you need a little more time, or help getting it onto a computer, just let me know (catjams at catjams dot com). I also updated the release plans on the Pancaked informational post. I also also added the hot new remix I got from Tiny Pants!, hot-ass local two-piece and sometime Pows impersonators! Actually, I got four remixes from them, and chose to put this one up somewhat arbitrarily.

Tiny Pants!, "Liz's mix" 2:31 4.0m

Also, I would like to furnish you with some delightful links to cool guys.

Kawatory, my PM bro!
Hiroaki Koshiba, our Entei & Whitesnake graphic collaborator!

And here, at long last, is the video I made about the Pows for their breakup show at which Tiny Pants! was them. IT'S REALMEDIA DEAL WITH IT

the Pows Memorial Video, 7:21