Just 3 weeks til our new album is released in the U.S., and some exciting things are happening over here in Gato Loco land.
How Low Can You Go? Gato Loco De Bajo is getting some low-end love on a New York City institution. Jon Schaeffer’s “New Sounds” radio show, on WNYC, will be featuring some of our music. You can check it out HERE. We will now also be streaming the entire 2008 album, “Malditos Besos” for a limited time. We’ll be playing this saturday, May 28th, at our favorite spot in town, Barbes.
Farewell To Normal Scene — It’s official, our US album release party is being held on June 18th, at Littlefield. Joining us will be some of our favorite bands, New Beard, Yula & The Extended Family, plus many special guests, free food, the works. Check it out HERE.
Other festivals — we’ll be playing at 2 other great festivals in the New York region. The Music Frees All Festival, on June 2nd, and then a trip up-state for the 2nd annual Beacon Riverfest on June 25th. Join us for a day in the sun along the historic and beautiful Hudson River!!!
There are a few other special announcements, which we’ll be unveiling over the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned!
5-weeks to go to the album is officially out in the US. What a great week it’s been here in NYC. The spring weather is finally here after what’s seemed like the longest winter in recent memory.
We found a review of our show in Paris 2 months ago, that somehow we had skipped over. Getting unsolicited reviews and articles is an interesting experience — it’s always fascinating to see what other folks get out of our music, and this review was more of a surprise than usual! Extremely positive though it was, it went into depth about the relationship with Krazy Kat, the cartoon strip. Though it’s something of a distant inspiration, and a convoluted mascot at best, George Herriman’s art shares some rather deep similarities to our music and our ethos. I won’t get into those details right now, but perhaps soon I’ll share my extended thoughts on that.
On a similar note, our friend Daniel Gerstle over at HELO magazine is working on a full-on documentary on the band. It’s almost done, and Clifton, Joe & Stefan finished up one last round of interviews this morning. Very excited!
One of the real pleasures of living in New York is that pretty much every group throughout the world at some point comes through the city to perform/make a pilgrimage to what seems like the live capital of the world. This week was no exception, with Los Muñequitos de Matanzas performing 3 sold-out nights at Symphony Space. It had been a decade since this legendary cuban flame-bearing group of traditional rumbas and afro-cuban music had been here, and they brought every bit of deep, thick, complex afro-cuban performance that I was expecting. With only drums, vocals, and dancers, the performance was BIG — overwhelming the senses for a packed room of New Yorkers? WOW! The rhythms and vocal parts were miles deep, and combined with an almost 3-ring circus of graceful, forceful, and agressively beautiful dancing, was truly transcendental.
A few other notes — I recently discovered an incredible composer/arranger/clarinetist, Lucho Bermudez. Very interesting and beautiful arrangements and compositions. Definitely worth checking out. Also, Rich clued me in to a posting from one of the band’s favorite composers here in NYC, JG Thirlwell. Known for his compositions for the cartoon The Venture Brothers, as well as his long standing bands Foetus and Steroid Maximus, here is a GREAT collection of videos from his live show in Prospect Park last year. This was happening while we were in Bordeaux — otherwise we would have all been there at the show checking out this madness!
We’re doin’ a little countdown — I’ll be posting every tuesday, leading up to the US release of our new album, on Winter & Winter Records — June 14th. It’s being distributed by the lovely people at Allegro Music, out of Portland, OR. They’ve been very nice to deal with so far, and hopefully we can get some more thorough US touring underway this summer!
We’ve posted more links more concise links to videos from our recent show in Paris this last March.
This last week has been a busy one for the Gatos, in many contrasting and complimentary forms. Last friday, Jackie Coleman & Ric Becker premiered an excellent new group that they are co-leading. Playing all new compositions of theirs, the music was a cross-section of grooves, with strong horn melodies and stabs overtop and throughout. They’re still looking for a name for the band, so if you have any suggestions, let us know! Meanwhile, across town Joe Exley was playing at the 10-year anniversary for Anti-Social Music, a great new-music group that many of us Gatos have been involved with at various points in time. They fuse new-music classical styles with a sorta rough-and-tumble punk vibe. Always fun, and great folks.
The following night (saturday), Tin Pan played at a lovely new spot, The Way Station, out in the increasingly gentrified Prospect Heights. It’s a very nice new spot, loosely based on the Barbes aesthetic, and I look forward to playing there again. After the gig, Jesse and I raced back to manhattan to play a late-night set with Benjamin Ickies’ Ambitious Orchestra, an orchestra that plays rock music….. or a rock band that plays classical instruments? anyway, Stefan was playing English Horn, Clifton was playing French Horn, Joe was on tuba, and Kevin Garcia was on the drums….. it was a fun and DIFFERENT set of music, albeit even more crowded on the stage than usual.
And thanks to all the friends and fans that came out to our show Sunday night! After such a busy week for the band, it was refreshing and relaxing to play our music…. everyone was extremely comfortable and having a great time. a very special night! Thanks to Daniel Gerstle, of Helo Magazine, who videotaped the whole performance, so we look forward to seeing pieces of that online in the coming weeks. And of course, Jackie’s incredible band, The Chase Experiment, for opening up the evening. Always great to hear them!!!
One more great piece of news — if you’re in New York City, go to the Strand bookstore (on 13th street & Broadway). Back about 20 feet, next to the “sell your books” table, there is a beautiful set of Krazy Kat cartoons, that have recently been released. 4 books in the set, at a mere $8 a piece!!!!!! They comprise the complete full-color sunday supplements of the legendary cartoon, spanning from 1933-1944 (when Herriman passed away, and thus the strip ended). This is the first time that these beautiful strips have been made available in such a collection — the breath-takingly gorgeous coloring of Herriman was, alas, only awarded the full glory in 2 magazines (1 in Chicago, and 1 in NYC), and many of the original prints had been lost. Fortunately, an animation collector had painstakingly saved ALL of these cartoons in his collection, and they were able to compile them into this beautiful series. This is worth every penny. Highly recommended from all of us here at Gato Loco central.
