Superbus

I want to tell you about Superbus, a musical group that I recently discovered via their Superbus Music MySpace page.

They're a French five piece group centered around female vocals. They initially formed in 1999 as a three piece group, Jennifer Ayache, Michel Giovannetti, and François Even. Two other members joined and then left and were replaced by Guillaume Roussé and Patrice Focone. In 2005, Guillaume Roussé was replaced by Greg Jacks.

They are often described on the Internet as a French POP band or French version of No Doubt, but their music actually spans a much broader range. They list No Doubt, Blink 182, Sum 41, Sublime, and Weezer as influences.

Some of their music is very popish but even there it shines for it's outstanding lyrics, very tight instrumentation, and very intricate melodies. Some of their music isn't pop at all, some of their music is the type that goes right to the soul and sinks in. Admittedly, they also do some music I don't like, some more industrial type that just repeats over and over. But on the whole I'd say I love about 80% of their music that I've heard.

They are a type of group you can't say you don't like until you've heard everything they do because they don't have just one genre or a few genre's, they are fairly versatile and hit some spots I wouldn't even know how to classify because I've never heard anything like it before.

Toots and the Maytals - Showbox April 22nd.

I just discovered Toots and the Maytals have a MySpace page. I've like a broad swath of music but they are high on my "I really like" list. I first heard "Bam Bam" on one of the local college stations, KGRG I think but I'm not 100% sure.

I wish I could find a link where I could link to it so you could hear but all I can find is the version with Shaggy singing it. While Shaggy is okay the version with Toots singing is just superb, he really does things with his voice that are un-matched.

Check out their page on MySpace. Good stuff. They will be at the Showbox on April 22nd!

Naturally 7 Subway Concert - This Is Cool!

Concert sauvage dans le métro !
Uploaded by lapapsprod

Plane Site

Plane Site played again at Mr. Spots Chai House. This will be the last time for a while as they are heading for Hawaii now. It was very crowded this time, probably due in part to the fact that everyone knew they were leaving. In spite of the heavy crowd I did manage to get a few more photographs.



The lady in the red dress dancing is Elke, the person who invited me to the first music making session and introduced me to this group of talented and interesting musicians.



Jeff Kimes playing didgeridoo and drumming. He is quite an amazing musician really. You can see he isn't a real large person yet the didgeridoo takes a lot of wind to play, you can watch his chest and shoulders heaving and yet he goes for quite a long stretch and while doing that drums a rhythm at the same time.

To his left is Mariah Reeves singing and I don't know who the red shirted guitarist is, nor the name of the person that is playing the digital drums and the Mac MIDI setup.



This is an less than good photograph of Liam. I attempted a number of better photos but was unsuccessful at getting a clear shot that didn't suffer from motion blur. Liam sings with Plane Site. He knows how to throat sing in addition to having quite a powerful and versatile voice. When he's not singing he's playing drums or dancing or running from one person to another. It is rare to see him in one position for longer than a small fraction of a second. I did use flash a few times this night but I wanted to keep it to a minimum to avoid spoiling the atmosphere for others.



Joe Gamble playing seven string electric violin, Jeff Kimes tamborine, and Mariah Reeves acoustic guitar. I'm afraid I didn't get any good shots of Mariah on Sitar this time around.

For more photos of this event, go take a look at my photo gallery album for this event.

Plane Site Mr. Spots Chai House 3/9 10:30 PM

Plane Site will be playing at Mr. Spots Chai House March 9th 2007 at 10:30pm.



I got to experience them on February 24th and highly recommend going. Before hearing Plane Site play, I was hard pressed to imagine how a sitar and didgeridoo could possibly work together but actually they worked together rather well. Mariah provided the majority of the vocals but Jeff also contributed as did Liam (not pictured here) though he suffered a sore throat that night.

They are asking for a $2 per person donation.

Mr. Spots Chai House is located in Ballard on Leary Way just south of Market St. To get there from I-5 take the 50th St NE exit and head west through the Wallingford neighborhood and down over the hill towards Green Lake. When you get down to Green Lake Way take the gentle left up the hill towards Aurora not a hard left. Stay in the right most lane and follow it under Aurora and down the hill where it angles off to the right. At the bottom of the hill it will become Market St. Keep following it west past 15th Ave NW. Two blocks past 22nd Ave NW Leary intersects with Market (near the Ballard Bay theater), make a hard left and find a parking place. Mr. Spots Chai House is on the west side of Leary just south of Market St.

Red Elvises

If you've never seen the movie Six String Samurai, do so! Even if you're not a general fan of post-apocalyptic films, this one's worth seeing. This was my first introduction to the musical group, The Red Elvises, where they both act some of the parts and do all of the music for the soundtrack to this film.

These guys combine great music with an incredible sense of humor. As musicians go they are incredibly talented but the music is often very tongue and cheek. I have not yet had the pleasure of seeing them perform live but I've been told by others that have that they are a riot.

Check out their website above, they've got a "radio" on it that you can listen to a number of their pieces and they are actually not chopped and fairly high quality not crappy samples.

They will be playing in Seattle at the Tractor Tavern 5213 Ballard Ave NW (206) 789-3599 on April 14th and in Tacoma at The Swiss 1904 S. Jefferson Ave (253) 572-2821. For other tour dates see the Red Elvises website.