SF Sorrow
WZBC, Boston Colleges radio station, has a time slot Friday evenings they call Test Pattern. Designed to be an hour long examination of a particular theme. Generally it is the last radio show I listen to at work before packing it in for the week end. John Straub, did one of these last Friday, the second in the last month or so, Test Pattern: New noise from San Francisco. He featured a number of local bands from the Sanfrancisco area like the Sic Alps, the Hospitals, the Oh Sees or OCs they have seem to have existed under both, and the Gowns. I gotta say - I enjoyed this a great deal. I like Bands that are about something. In the first place I ain't adverse to noise. even arty garage grind noise. What I like in a rock band is for a band to exude a sense that they're up to something. A pop band can have that, of course, as much as an indie or underground band (as they used to call them). As well all these kinds of bands can be afflicted by a wan me-too-ism where the controlling motavation is simply to be in a band and the prevailing mode is imitation. The bands featured in this special did not leave me with this latter feeling. They are all listening intently to deeply personal muses. I already knew the Sic Alps and liked hearing their stuff again - which doesn't get played that often. John Straub the Dj came back and played a great song off their forthcoming release on his regular show today [16Jul07]. I seem to have left the piece of paper I wrote the name down on at work. The other standout song from that set was "White like Heaven" by the band Gown. The falling tooled apparatus that is the recording industry and their flailing attempts at capturing revenue streams has very little to do with DIY endeavors like this San Francisco noise scene. As Jeffery Lee Pierce once sang: "invention was betrayed by the machine..."
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