Baltimore’s Human Bell—seen here performing at the Adams Morgan record store Crooked Beat—just announced a national tour with Japan’s Boredoms, a band that Washington City Paper’s Aaron Leitko described as the most bizarre “ever to have graced the roster of a major label.”

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band might dispute that claim, but I can say for certain that the Boredoms are one of the top-five best live acts I’ve ever seen (Brown’s Island, in 1994, with Sonic Youth and Superchunk).

Human Bell is Dave Heumann, frontman of Arbouretum, and Nathan Bell, best known as bassist for Lungfish. According to both bands’ label, Thrill Jockey, the Boredoms “handpicked” them for this tour.

Here are the dates. Alas, no DC:

Mon Mar 10 Lousiville, KY Ear X-Tacy (in-store)
Wed Mar 12 Dallas, TX Good Records (in-store) w/ Kid Dakota
Thur Mar 13 Marfa, TX TBA
Sat Mar 15 San Diego, CA Canes w/Boredoms
Sun Mar 16 Los Angeles, CA Family (in-store)
Sun Mar 16 Los Angeles, CA Henry Fonda Theater w/Boredoms
Mon Mar 17 San Luis Obispo, CA Boo Boo Records (in-store)
Tue Mar 18 San Francisco, CA The Fillmore Auditorium w/Boredoms
Thu Mar 20 Portland, OR Crystal Ballroom w/Boredoms
Fri Mar 21 Seattle, WA Neumos w/Boredoms
Sat Mar 22 Anacortes, WA Department of Safety w/ Mt. Eerie, Photosynthesis
Mon Mar 23 Missoula, MT The Palace (Badlander downstairs, free show)
Tue Mar 25 Minneapolis, MN First Avenue w/Boredoms
Wed Mar 26 Chicago, IL Congress Theater w/Boredoms, Soft Circle
Thu Mar 27 Chicago, IL AV-Erie

The Boredoms will be at the 9:30 Club on April 3rd

Just brought to my attention by Austin American-Statesman’s Joe Gross:

Awesome Tapes From Africa

It is what it says. Enjoy.

D.C. rhymer Kokayi (profiled in City Paper last December) just inked a deal with French label Just Like Vibes, which will distribute his album Mass Instructions in France and sell song downloads internationally. Kokayi explained it this way via e-mail:

… the Just like Vibes thing happened by sending out the music as often and as far as i could send it. Given the far [and] inexpensive reach of the internet, i zipped up the record and sent a yousendit file out to everyone i knew from as far as Perth, Australia to right around the corner. … One of the people i sent the record to is a French rapper named Asco, he’s from a group called Bunzen and we have stayed in contact since we met in Paris when i had a deal on BMG. He works with just like Vibes and let his folks hear it, they liked what they heard, we spoke about some terms and i signed the deal last Sunday when i went to perform at Sons d’hiver.

Sons d’hiver is a music festival held every year southeast of Paris. Kokayi also has launched a new Web site with a page of music, and he’ll be playing a show Friday night at the new Artmosphere Cafe in Mt. Rainier, Md. A portion of the proceeds will go to the E.L. Haynes Public Charter School.

The D.C.-based nonprofit Middle East Media Research Institute has published a guide to Pakistani rock bands.

More bad news from Kenya: three of the members of the DC/Nairobi afro-pop band Extra Golden are among those affected by the country’s post-election unrest.

Here are a couple of Washington City Paper pieces on the band: mine and Christopher Porter’s.

And here’s January 11, 2008 radio piece from NPR’s All Things Considered that addresses the band’s current misfortune:

Extra Golden Members Stranded in Kenya
By Joel Rose

The group’s American members are soliciting donations to help their Kenyan bandmates. Here’s the spiel from Pitchfork:

“We are asking for donations of $5. Of course we will accept any amount you can muster, but we believe that with enough contributions of $5 we can make a huge difference in our friends’ lives.

“To make a donation, please go to www.paypal.com and choose ’send money’. When asked for the email address of the recipient, enter ’service(at)kanyokanyo.com’. Please feel free to forward this message. We thank you in advance for your compassion and we hope that your help will enable us to compose a song of thanks for our next album.”

Ian Nagoski, owner of the True Vine Record Shop in Baltimore, will hold a lecture and sound presentation at GW University next Monday (11/19) titled “The Black Mirror: Ethnic Music on 78 rpm recordings, 1918-1955.”

Nagoski is releasing a compilation, The Black Mirror, the following day on the Dust to Digital label; his presentation (jointly sponsored by the Electric Possible and the Washington D.C. chapter of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections) will include the playing and discussion of many of the songs from the collection. It will include music recorded between 1918 and 1955 in Bali, Burma, Cameroon, China, Germany, Greece, India, Japan, Java, Laos, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia. Something for everybody!

The lecture takes place at 7:00 pm on Monday, November 19, at the Marvin Center (800 21st Street NW), Room 206. $5 admission.

Lisner Auditorium may not resemble the Sahara, but Thursday night’s “Festival in the Desert” concert featuring Tinariwen and Vieux Farka Toure may at least conjure up some images of that annual event 65 miles north of Timbuktu. A year and a half after his father, guitarist Ali Farka Toure, passed away from cancer, guitarist Vieux Farka Toure has released his self-titled debut, recorded shortly before his dad’s death. Vieux not only attempts to capture his pop’s unique high-pitched Malian-meets-John Lee Hooker technique, he is joined on several cuts by him. Toure responded via a translator to some e-mailed questions that I sent his way:

1. Did your father teach you to play guitar at a young age?

WELL, I USED TO LISTEN TO MY FATHER AND HIS RECORDINGS ALL THE TIME SO I JUST ABSORBED HIS TECHNIQUE OVER THE YEARS. MOSTLY I PLAYED PRECUSSION THOUGH (CALABASH) DURING MY EARLY YEARS, I REALLY ONLY STARTED STUDYING GUITAR SERIOUSLY WHEN I ENTERED THE CONSERVATORY IN 2001.

2. Did you and your father record the songs you played together on, live in the studio, or separately with overdubs?

EVERYTHING WAS RECORDED LIVE, MOST OF IT IN ONE TAKE.

3. Do you listen to rap? Do you ever think you might want to incorporate newer genres into your own?

I LISTEN TO RAP, I LIKE ALL KINDS OF MUSIC …IN SPITE OF MY NICKNAME “VIEUX” (WHICH MEANS OLD IN FRENCH) I AM YOUNG SO I LISTEN TO JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT IS OUT THERE: REGGAE, RAP, ROCK, SALSA,.MY MUSIC IS FIRMLY ROOTED IN TRADITIONAL MALIAN MUSIC BUT I FEEL THAT I HAVE TO ESTABLISH MY OWN STYLE SO I BUILD IN LOTS OF ELEMENTS OF WHAT I AM HEARING ALL THE TIME.

4. Do you feel pressure because of your father’s accomplishments to try to keep up with what he did and to be compared to him?

NOBODY CAN EVER WALK IN ALI’S FOOTSTEPS, MY FATHER WAS A GENIUS.ALL I CAN HOPE TO DO IS SOMEHTING DIFFERENT, HOPEFULLY BETTER . HE WAS ALI, I AM VIEUX…

Maybe I’m setting up a double-standard, but I don’t care: When indie rockers go ethnic and Mediterranean (that means you, Beirut), my gut reaction tends to be skepticism. (I guess I’m slightly more tolerant of Gogol Bordello, because Eugene Hutz is actually, y’know, from another country.) So why am I willing to give hip-hop producer Oh No a total pass for testing out the bouzouki tip? Maybe it’s because Dr. No’s Oxperiment, his “audio tour of Turkish, Lebanese, Greek & Italian psyche funk,” doesn’t purport to be a broad statement about cross-cultural unity (or emotional authenticity, for that matter). He’s merely sticking to a theme and indulging an urge, while managing that urge very closely. The results are unencumbered by over-arching identity issues, and yet the disc still seems to respect its source material deeply. Hip-hop can be good like that.

Former Silver Spring resident and University of Maryland grad Erez Safar, aka DJ Handler, has launched Shemspeed, which he calls “the largest and most diverse Jewish music site.” Safar–who also plays in “breakbeat klezmer jazz” band Juez, runs the Modular Moods label, and oversees the Sephardic Music Festival–says he built Shemspeed as an alternative to the narrowcasting that limits most Jewish-culture sites. “I always wanted a one-stop shop for all sorts of Jewish music, from Orthodox to very unorthodox,” he says.

I’ll admit, there are a few bands that I wouldn’t mind sending to jail. But while our country may not be able to provide the majority of its musicians with health care, a decent living, or an audience, at least bands don’t have to do time in the gulag–unless it’s gulag of their own creation built under the recommendation of a PR firm for promotional purposes.

This was not the case for the Czech Republic’s Plastic People of the Universe. Throughout its career (1968-1989) the band suffered at the hands of the Communist regime, which imprisoned or deported numerous members of the band after their Zappa-influenced jams were found to be an “Organized Disturbance of the Peace.” In Soviet Russia Hot Rats plays you…in prison.

The surviving original members reunited the band in 1997 and have performed slightly jazzier mellower post-Velvet Revolution material ever since that is well loved by the current Czech government.

The last time they played in D.C. (in 2003?) a band that I was in somehow got to open for them–which put us in the surreal situation of performing on the Black Cat’s main stage in front of Madeleine Albright and Vaclav Havel. I can’t promise they’ll be there this time. I only mention it because I’m no doubt the only person who remembers…

Anyway, The Plastic People of The Universe return to Black Cat:

Tue Sept 25- THE PLASTIC PEOPLE OF THE UNIVERSE $15 Mainstage 8:00

Birchmere offers two interesting performances:
Mon. Sept. 17: NICK LOWE $25.00
Mon/Tue. Oct. 1&2: HENRY ROLLINS $25.00

The 9:30 welcomes ex-Weezer-bassist-4-life Matt Sharp’s band The Rentals as they return from the grave with a new EP. “Friends of P” was pretty catchy–but $25!?
Sun., Aug. 26: The Rentals $25

Finally, the Cure will perform at the Patriot Center, Wed., Sept. 14, The Cure $57.50. Tickets go on sale tomorrow at 10 a.m.