"When I see a record now with interesting artwork, it immediately draws me in ..." Today's installment: Pat Noecker from These Are Powers. Pat's a Brooklynite who's orignally from a small hamlet in Nebraska, and his life has taken an interesting bunch of turns; he's a founding member of Opium Taylor (which you can read about here) and the infamous neo-no-wave pinups Liars, after which he went on to form the short-lived n0 things and then T.A.P. with Anna Barie in 2006. All their stuff, from the cassettes onward, are pretty great, and their LP "Terrific Seasons" was played nearly constantly at Chez Grier for months on end after it came out in 2008. Back then, they seemed to me to referencing the sounds and vibe of early 80s downtown NYC (Sonic Youth/Swans/no-waveish stuff &c) and some Metal Box-era PiL, but somehow with even more spookiness and mystery thrown in. I loved it. And last week? Pat flowed me a track they're working on which takes things on a different path entirely - it's aggressively friendly, in a way, and utilizes sonic events that could have all come from drum machines and synths circa 1985, but which have nonetheless been arranged in a way that creates something more or less totally hyper-modern. It's witty, knowing, cool, and - for those of you who like to dance - extremely, extremely danceable. Which, to me, makes them even weirder, in a good way. "This is not one for the streets," he told me. "(It's) one for the club."I interviewed Pat over Americanos at a coffee shop in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It's Ground Zero for the Maclaren stroller crowd, so I apologize for the screaming kids, etc., you'll hear at several points. Hey, it was either interview him outside, or do it inside the coffee shop and risk earning the almost certain annoyance of the 250-pound barista and the layabouts pretending to blog on their Mac Airbooks. Topics and themes: African music, Pat's favorite record stores in New York City, future/primitives, Rush, dubstep, dancehall and other London musical genres, crazy album covers, and divesting oneself of vinyl one no longer needs.
++cg
Chris Grier Interviews Pat Noecker | Part 1 - The Vinyl District Podcast (Mp3)Chris Grier Interviews Pat Noecker | Part 2 - The Vinyl District Podcast (Mp3)
Saturday, April 17, 2010 is Record Store Day as any reader of this blog knows. It's a day set aside to promote the history and longevity of DC's—and the nation's—indie record stores.In conjunction with Record Store Day this year, Olivia Mancini, Paul Michel, Tone, and New Rock Church of Fire are playing in support of another DC landmark, the outdoor summer concert institution, Fort Reno. The event runs from 8:00PM - 10:30PM at St. Stephen's Church which is located at 1525 Newton Street, NW, in DC.Tickets are just $10.00 with all proceeds going toward the overhead for Fort Reno's Summer 2010 Season.
Those of you who patronize one of our local independent record stores on Record Store Day will receive half off the price of admission with the presentation of a store receipt dated Saturday, April 17, 2010.As a lead up to Saturday night, we asked Olivia Mancini to give us one of her favorite Fort Reno memories:"The summer of 1992 was boring. Probably no more or less boring than any other pre-driving summer, but boring nevertheless. By August, I’d finished being a CIT. Summer Musical Theater Workshop was done. I’d probably even read the books on my summer reading list, and when a boy who lived down the street who I didn’t really like called to see what I was doing that night, I was just bored enough to say, “Why? What’s up? “Fugazi’s playing. At Fort Reno,” he said. And even though I hadn’t really heard too much about either of those things, I said, “Oh. Cool.” So I met him on the corner of 39th and Morrison and we walked up the hill toward Deal Junior High, making stilted 13-year-old chit chat about our summers and our dogs and our brothers and sisters. We could hear the music as we approached the Fessenden St. side of the park. 
When we got there, it was already pretty dark. The music had stopped and a band was on the rickety-looking wooden platform stage, adjusting drum sets and moving around with guitars and lots of wires. We picked our way through the outskirts of families and picnic blankets to the big crowd in front of the stage. When the music started, I had never heard anything like it. It didn’t even really sound like music to my ears, gently raised, as revealed in a previous TVD post, on pop gems of the 1950s and ‘60s–and showtunes. It was loud and scratchy and fierce and the people around me loved it. They started to move and jump and bang around and, carried away in the moment, I forgot that I was 13 and awkward and at a concert with a boy with whom I had nothing to talk about. And I jumped around too and let the bass rumble in my chest and the kick drum pound in my ears and thought about how if my short life ended right then, I’d be going out pretty darn happy."
On Facebook? RSVP here.
