As I said before we were in Australia for a couple of weeks playing a festival called Parklife. We got into Australia the day after some apocalyptic sandstorms that made Sydney look like Mars. Our first show was in Bisbaine in a botanical garden where I almost stepped on a really big lizard walking to our stage and apparently there was also a python somewhere under our stage too. While we played there was a little version of the the sandstorm from the day before and afterwards everything was covered with a fine layer of sand. The next day we played Perth which was a really fun show and I posted a fan video from the front row of it above. After that we were off to Sydney for some days off where we climbed the Sydney Harbor Bridge, went fishing, went to the wildlife park and hung out with the other artists on the tour. The following Saturday we were back to playing shows again. We played in Melbourne which was a really awesome show. Right when we were walking out on stage fireworks started exlpoding in the sky behind us which always helps with an entrance. The next day was back to Sydney, the show was in front of one of the largest crowds we’ve ever played and was pretty epic. The last day was Adelaide in a really beautiful park and was a great way to end the festival. It was an awesome time all around. We got to catch up with a lot of old friends and make some new ones. Got to see a lot of good performances and play in front of some awesome crowds.

So we’re back from playing the Parklife festival in Australia. It was awesome! I’ve been meaning to write all about it but I’ve got some serious jet lag and feeling generally pretty lazy. Check this video out in the meantime. This dog and chimp crack me up.

So we played a few shows over the weekend. We hadn’t played shows for a long time and it felt GREAT! We really wanna thank everyone that came out. Here is a clip of House of Jealous Lovers at the Prada Store from last Thursday.

On our way down to Jersey and Baltimore we had a lot of great music to listen to. One of the albums was The Idiot by Iggy Pop. I hadn’t listened to this album for quite a while and I forgot how amazing it is. It was his first solo album and was produced by David Bowie, along with his second solo album, Lust for Life. It got us all talking in the van about what a cool motherfucker Iggy Pop is and what an amazing career he’s had (actually that part was mainly me ranting in the van and everyone else kinda listening) We were talking about some of the amazing bands that he played with and videos of different performances over the years. Harris who is playing bass with us mentioned a video I’d never seen that was Iggy playing on the Dinah Shore Show in 1977 (which was the roughly the equivalent of todays Martha Stewart Show). It features David Bowie and one of my all time favorite rhythm sections, the Sales Brothers. Below is the video, enjoy!

So I’m Djing at Blow Up in SF tomorrow. It’s one of my favorite clubs to DJ. Luke and I used to be in a band with the promoter Jeffrey Paradise called the Calculators. Above is a video of previous DJ Gig at the club. Boom!

I was just cruising around the internet this morning when I stumbled up a live video of The Jesus Lizard at the Pitchfork Fest from this year. The Jesus Lizard are one of my favorite all time live bands. The first time I saw them was 2 days before my 21st birthday and they were playing a 21+ show so I couldn’t get in but I went down anyhow to try. Long story short, they wouldn’t let me in the club and I was really bummed but I went around back and hung out by the backstage door so at least I could listen to the show. As I was hanging out in back the guys from the band showed up (except for David Yow who had been at the bar drinking since before the show started). I started talking to them and explained my situation and they let me stand on the side of the stage for the whole show. I couldn’t believe it. San Diego legends Clickatat Ikatowi opened the show and ruled, then The Jesus Lizard went on and completely destroyed. To this day it is one of the top 5 shows I’ve ever seen. It was one of the best Birthday presents I ever got. After that show I probably saw 4 or 5 more Jesus Lizard shows on the west coast. Above is a video of them playing Wheelchair Epidemic which is a cover of a song by another great band called The Dicks.

We djed in Omaha at a party called Goo which is thrown by the guys from the Faint. We’ve known them for about 10 years and it was great to hang again. The gang throwing the party did a bang up job, the other DJs where great, and to top it off the theme was the Apocalypse. Think Apocalypto meets Holy Mountain. A really solid party with folks dancing on stage shaking the turntables and a lovely bartender who filled Gabe’s glass to the brim with whiskey. We also did a Q & A session for Red Bull MusIc Academy Radio and they recorded our set from that night which is on the player above.

I used to work at a great record store called Rocks in Your Head. It was in Soho and had been there since the 70’s but unfortunately like many record stores it is no longer around. It was a pretty amazing place to work and I got turned on to a ton of new music there. This little basement store was literally so packed full of music records, tapes, cds, books, movies, posters, stickers, magazines etc, that if they ever took all of the stuff out it seemed like the building would collapse. There were some real musical treasures to be found in Rocks, a lot of which, were behind the counter and not even available to the public. One of my greatest finds there was a bunch of old VHS tapes stuffed in a cubby hole behind the counter. I started watching the tapes and found out that they were bootlegs of some amazing concerts. My favorite one out of the bunch was a James Brown concert. I must have watched this concert 30 or 40 times, it was the best live show I had ever seen. I never knew the context of the concert other than what I was able to discern from watching it so many times. Last year a documentary came out called The Night James Brown Saved Boston and I realized magnitude of this concert I had watched dozens of times. Here is a brief description of the DVD, “The night after Martin Luther King was assassinated in April 1968, James Brown, self-proclaimed Godfather of Soul, performed a legendary concert in Boston. While more than a hundred other cities around America burned, in a nationwide outpouring of rage among the black community, Boston was spared a similar fate, thanks to Brown’s performance, a symbolic ambassadorship for calm.” Above is a video of the whole concert.

I can’t stop listening to this song! You can get it here.