Click the picture to

download the new single January 4th

Schubas

Innkeepers

Shiloh

Tickets



January 24th

Cole's

Jacob Horn Trio

Big Dammit

Info



Click Ryan to buy, buy, buy! Bandcamp moonerband.com Facebook Twitter Email YouTube Mooner sub-Reddit JANUARY 2013 Hello from Mooner HQ,



I hope your holidays were okay. Mooner went to different places during the Christmas season. Adam went to Michigan, Steve to Missouri, John to Oak Park, Taylor to Rochester and me to my apartment in Chicago where my wife and I watched: Batman Forever

Batman and Robin

Deck the Halls (half of it)

Love at the Christmas Table (Lifetime special)

You've Got Mail

Sleepless in Seattle

The Money Pit That's a lot of movies. I hadn't seen the Joel Schumacher Batman films since I was ten or eleven and, man, are they bad. Due to the odious stench coming from our laptop screen, we couldn't finish the 2006 Matthew Broderick/Danny DeVito holiday movie Deck The Halls. The Money Pit was hilarious and kind of DIY with the visual effects. Tom Hanks is really good at yelling and screaming in comedic situations.



Before you read on, check out a written interview I did with local blog The Total Scene. It's all about the origin of our name, favorite bands and other stuff:

http://thetotalscene.blogspot.com/2013/12/chicago-band-mooner-bringing-melodic.html



Anyway, on to some shows: SHILOH

INNKEEPERS

MOONER



Saturday, Jan. 4th

Schubas

9PM | $8

TICKETS



I'm very excited about this one. The guys in Shiloh really know how to write a song. I read through some of the lyrics on their Bandcamp and I think their songs about lost love and drugs are abstract, weird and rockin'. Innkeepers play these straight ahead kind of proto-punk songs that take left turns into excellent guitar epics. Again, very much looking forward to it. BIG DAMMIT

MOOOOOOONER

JACOB HORN TRIO



Friday, Jan. 24th

Cole's

10PM | FREE

We're opening for an indie rock band that has a horn section and writes anthemic rock. No, it isn't Polyphonic Spree, it's

We're opening for an indie rock band that has a horn section and writes anthemic rock. No, it isn't Polyphonic Spree, it's Big Dammit ! I think the Big Dammit horn section is opening the show, too. We have no horns but we have some new songs to play. Also, we have no shows booked after this, so... "Could this be love I'm going through?" It's Mooner Record Club Vol. 7 featuring Rick James' Garden of Love. Let me start by saying that before Monday of this week I knew nothing about Rick James. I couldn't name many songs or an album by him nor could I identify his voice if I heard it. I didn't know that Street Songs is a massively important album. I unfairly assumed--based on that Chappelle skit, I guess--that Rick James was a dated, overblown, indulgent hack whose sole success was "Superfreak." I was right about the overblown indulgence but Rick is anything but a one-hit hack. Garden of Love has only been in my library for two days but I think it's brilliant, revelatory and weird, weird, weird. What's In My Bag? - Questlove I found this record by watching a video of Questlove on Amoeba Records' awesome web-series, "What's In My Bag?" They are little five minute videos featuring famous musicians talking about stuff they bought at the record store in Hollywood. They range from the illuminating (Greg Saunier of Deerhoof) to the uncomfortable (Ace Frehley) to the unintelligible (J Mascis). It's one of my favorite new music discovery devices and Questlove's video was all new territory for me. He starts talking about Garden of Love at around 1:27 saying "it's supposed to be his 'art record.'" Anytime anyone mentions an established pop artist's "art record" or "art period" I am so there. Gene Simmons' solo record, Neil Young's On The Beach, Skip Spence's Oar, I love them all. I am all about artists taking risks or pissing off audiences to ether fantastical or disastrous results. The one benefit I don't have in listening to Garden of Love is being familiar with Rick's larger body of work. I decided to enter his career at his most uncharacteristic record. It's not necessarily a wrong move but I do miss the shock and novelty of jumping from, for example, Lou Reed's pop record New Sensations to his later avant-garde B.S. Metal Machine Music. Rick James - Summer Love

(Featuring a guitarist playing one of my guitars, an Ovation Preacher, albeit a 12-string model.) Okay, so Garden of Love isn't as unlistenable as Metal Machine Music. It's not a concept record nor was it recorded under a pseudonym and it doesn't feature musique concrete or field recordings, though there are a fair amount of orgasm backing vocals. It's definitely a funk/R&B record of the highest order but with enough weirdness to warrant repeat listenings.



"Summer Love" is my favorite song. It's got an unpredictable verse melody, a pretty chorus and one of the most emotional bridges/vamp sections I've ever heard. Rick James gets practically James Brown all over the middle of this song with his guttural "HEY BABY" contrasted by his surprisingly feminine falsetto. The piano sound is totally New Jack Swing but ten years before that production came into style. By the way, I thought that Rick was just a singer with some good taste in songs. Not the case. This dude arranged and played nearly every instrument on the record. Listen to the backing vocal arrangements on "Summer Love." Holy shit, they're so legendary. Rick James - Gettin' It On (In The Sunshine) [Reprise] Then there's the intimate weirdness of "Gettin' It On (In the Sunshine)", a song Rick thought so highly of that he put it on the record and then two songs later put it on the record again. What starts as a lush, soaring ballad is reprised as a kumbaya moment unassumingly recorded during what I suppose is a low-key Rick James house party. I would say it is the one song that most explicitly states the theme of the record: having sex outside is awesome. Rick is not without consistency.



I am excited to start his breakout record Street Songs. I imagine it will not at all be about sex and/or "hearing our love sounds"!



-Lee



P.S. If you're looking for a companion record, I highly recommend listening to Boz Scagg's Silk Degrees next. I heard a lot of similarities in the production, especially the drums and melodies.