WE ARE NOT STOKED: BLACK MATH EXPERIMENT GOES ON "INDEFINITE HIATUS"

HORSEHOCKEY! Love them or malign them, there aren't any other purveyors of pop that come to mind when we think "unpretentious goof-rockers whose approachable take on music is refreshing in a world where 'different' and 'new' are sometimes thrown together into a blender to make 'crap;' also, have shared the stage with The Misfits and David Arquette." So, we were bummer like an Oilers Coach when we got an email this morning from Black Math Experiment member Jef (with one F) that contained not information about a new CD nor his latest Chuckle Me Badd opinion on this or that, but rather the sad news that the band was going on hiatus. Guh.

Citing a host of personal commitments and not even making a single joke, Jef let us know that the act's final Act will be June 14th at The Mink, and that they'll be filming for a DVD that night - so atleast there's something to look forward to. On the positive side, we were always a little terrified that BME would end up on a bill with The Mathletes and the combined power of their Greyskulls would unleash a tidal wave of malevolent nerdiness onto the world, shifting paradigms with some sort of Ghostbusters 2 wave effect. We wish all of the band our best and hope that "indefinite" is shorter lived than the average Will Freed band.

Review: The Black Math Experiment - All You Need is Blood

WE HAVE TO SHARE: Jef with one F (Black Math Experiment) has posted a manifesto titled The Ten Commandments of MySpace Musicians. It has us in stitches. Here's an example:

6. I am thy cursor. Thou shall have no other cursors other than I. Do not give your page the unholy power to turn my perfectly serviceable arrow into a joker card, flaming skull, or the oh-so-original pot leaf. Both Apple and Microsoft have agreed on the basic cursor, which is like Jesus and Buddha endorsing a soft drink. Who are you to change the fabric of sanity?

Bwahahaha. Go read the entire thing here and then go get an Everyone is Gay MP3 'cause you're going to need it for upcoming summer mix CDs (no rickroll).

THE SKYLINE 50: PART TWO

Part two of our all week series of the best tracks to come out this year

Eight For Eight - The Dimes
Wires and Buttons (Grey Ghost #47)
We love the Dimes. We love this song. We love the man who recorded it. But treading as gently as possible on the feelings of all those involved, a much tighter version of it is begging to exist. The springing and sprightlyness of the guitar lead, which screams, “we may have developed a new form of cowboy rock” plays along like saddle soap with the souza march of the snare, both flowing well into the sort of SEND UP THE ROCK breakdowns we’ve come to expect from this soon to be differently-named foursome. But secrets – re-record soon.


Everyone is Gay – Black Math Experiment
All You Need is Blood
We hope that you never find yourself wandering aimlessly through the falling snow on the grounds of an empty ski resort in the Utah mountains, asking yourself if you have made the right relationship decisions and if maybe burying things in the snow to try and find later was a good idea. Never question yourself like that. You made the right decision. Put this song on repeat, go wander around in the woods for awhile and feel better. It’s so catchy and fun you’ll completely overlook the fact that it’s bemoaning how much other people do not rule, but you rule even less. But isn’t that the job of a good pop song? To confront you with temporary truths of your life and make you feel better about them?


Exist – Papermoons
Papermoons 7”
This is such a delicately beautiful song on such a delicately beautiful ep. Timid little guitar strokes and drums low in the mix, with vocals telephoned and dialed down to being barely audible during the breaks. On record, this perfect little warbler is a bird in the nest, asking why we can’t just live. On the stage, Papermoons are a rockier and a rollier, and this song tells you unequivocally that you are living, and that this is one of the best expressions of it you’ve heard all year.


Fire For Wings – Gretchen Schmaltz
Laced Up Tightly
Sometimes we wonder if the brushes in the opening verses of this song are on a drum, or maybe a little bit of percussive time-keeping a loathed step-daughter makes as she sweeps the cold and foot-worn wood floors; wanting release, wanting to let go, wanting to go to the ball. Making an afternoon of mope and the way the light filters through the blinds and dust into her own private waltz, Gretchen’s voice Huck Fins you into her chores with equal parts husk, soult and unknowing.


Goodnight, Goodluck, Godspeed and Goodbye – Listen Listen
Listen Listen
The Listen Listen formula for (whips!) songwriting is to start with an instrument raid on the store-room of the Grande Old Oprey. Make a getawy in an olde time medicine huckster’s covered wagon/traveling stage horse-drawn contraption. Trot lazily through the night, drinking every brown bottle of snake oil rattling on the shelves until you fall asleep. Pick up an extra few wandering musicians by the side of the road. Stop at a revival tent near dawn. Be forgiven. Sleep through the day in the light of the Lord.


Goons, Hired Goons – Blades
Who’s the Creampuff Now
Quick! Make for the exits! Lock the doors! Watch out for snakes! Beware the CBS Saturday Murder Mystery! This empire is not Holy, or Roman, or even an empire! Who’s the center square! Stay out of Wollworths! This song has a way of running its riffs through your memory bands, connecting one thought to another in ways unaccustomed. It’s a hard one to concentrate on any one thread throughout it. Presumably, it’s about goons – but there’s nothing particularly menacing about it. Neither does it lumber and disappoint like so many Homers. BEHOLD, THE FACE OF HELEN!


Granny Clampet’s Pure Grain Know-it-All – Dizzy Pilot
**** Out the Bones
ROCK YEAH! Lest the last few tracks make you think otherwise, we are into things that get the heart a pumping and fist a shakin’. We can’t make word-one out of the vocals on this banger, but we’re totally content with any song where the don’t put down the phone and spell things out to us. The perfect soundtrack for sketchy 80 mph cab rides down the back-streets of Lafayette, Louisiana in a car whose head-liner is being ripped away by the pummeling gust-stink from the open windows and which hasn’t been washed since the meter stopped working four years ago.


The Grey Call – benjamindavismurphy
Grey Ghost #43
One of the best things about the Grey Ghost series (there could be no one best thing, cause it’s about as whips an idea as soup in a breadbowl) is all the old tracks clamoring around on people’s four-track tapes that wouldn’t otherwise see the light of day. Like this minute and a half jangler from friend of the Skyline Ben Murphy, for example. It’s a reminder that the best chicken is nuggets, and that it’s generally pretty chell to go ahead and put your stuff out there.


The Guards – Gretchen Schmaltz
Laced Up Tightly
Were it not for this track (and, in fairness Elaine Greer as of late), you wouldn’t be able to ever convince us that there are any solo-flying songstresses out there that weren’t on the sad train to bummersville. Not that this sort of expression doesn’t have it’s place, but just like every rose has it’s thorn, so too must it want nuthin but a good time (and it don’t get better than this).


He’s Home With Bones that Grow the Way They’re Supposed to – By The End of Tonight
He’s Home With Bones that Grow the Way They’re Supposed To
To paraphrase our own review, it’s like a bunch of miscreant school-yard jump-ropers from planet Angry Purple Sun got together and tried to tell the story of the Bayeux Tapestry through a combination of freaking you out and stealing your lunch money to buy you pomegranates they later hide under your pillow. If this song was accidentally swapped out with whatever was on the phonograph record they put on the Voyager spacecrafts, an entire terrified universe is going to preemptively invade us just so their children can sleep at night.

BLACK MATH EXPERIMENT PEN THEIR WAY TO MISFITS OPENING SLOT

HA! Leave it to Black Math Experiment to pull this one out. We just got word from Jef (with one F) that the trusty old mare of White Oak, Fitzgerald's, held an essay contest to determine who among you would be the opening act for The Misfits when they swing through town later this month. Among the hundred or so entries, BME, The Hates and Snowplow ended up in the top three; when announced, an avalanche of emails to the club from fans put our blood-needing buddies up on top. Here it is, guitarist Bill Curtner's essay in it's entirety :

Why The Black Math Experiment Should Open for The Misfits on November 20.
By Bill Curtner

I have been a hardcore, registered fan and fanatic of The Misfits since 1982. Throughout all their member changes and incarnations, I have never lost faith in their ability to push the envelope and deliver a performance worthy of their legend. If I had a time machine, I would not stop JFK’s assassination. I would not warn the Titanic of impending danger. I would not give Hitler a wedgie. I would, instead, travel to New York in 1980 on Halloween to watch The Misfits play.

In many ways, I have based The Black Math Experiment on The Misfits. I feel they embody the true meaning of punk and DIY ethos, something that has been a cornerstone of The Black Math Experiment since its inception. Like the Misfits, we believe in unification through a uniform and defining look, and in high-energy performances that scream towards shocking conclusion with little or no pause. We long ago decided, as The Misfits did, that giving the audience a show unlike any other entertainment option available was a higher priority than attempting to win them over with “musicianship”. And that is the primary reason that we should open for them. The show will be a circus, a carnival, and a freak show. There is no other band in Houston capable of bringing The Misfits level of showmanship and insanity to the stage. We refuse to hide ourselves in the safe boundaries of the punk genre like so many other acts in Houston. Should Houston honor the Misfits by providing them an opening act that timidly treads water in the genre that they helped define, or should we show them that the spirit of punk is alive and well, kicking and screaming its way through the world of music with no regard to what has been done before. They deserve it. They deserve The Black Math Experiment.

Nice. And Congratz. As for The Misfits, this isn't necessarily like Beach-Boys-With-John-Stamos-On-Drums incarnations of the band that we've heard about in the past. On this outing, they're sporting original members Jerry Only and Robo, plus Dez Cadena from Black Flag. Sadly, Danzig tested positive for performance enhancing steroids and will not be joining them on this tour.

Catch the Black Math Experiment with The Misfits @ Fitzgeralds November 20th, and while you're at it, read our review of their recent All You Need is Blood ep.

Stream: Black Math Experiment - Various Tracks

REVIEW: BLACK MATH EXPERIMENT - ALL YOU NEED IS BLOOD

When Jef of the Black Math Experiment sent us an email a while back with a copy of their new ep, it contained the disclaimer “this is the most emotional disc we’ve ever done, dealing mostly with loss and relationships.” We have to admit that we were intrigued, given that BME is a band that we mostly associate with a live performance centered around mirth, goof and high-energy shenanigans. That this jocular quintet has embarked on a path of ungleeful introspection is obvious throughout the disc, and it was almost enough to get us to weasel out of reviewing it because, well, we need bands like Black Math Experiment to be a consistent pinion of bulletproof fun. No one likes to hear about the sad clown, we want them to arrive in their tiny ass car and make you drop your cotton candy with their shtick.

But after more than one morning of waking up with the song "Everyone is Gay" pumping out its various parts into our various synapses, we thought – what the hell, let’s drag out the thesaurus and tell people about it. This song is really a gem and the stand out track on the ep (which is a statement, considering that hidden among the six tracks is a country-couch shuffle take on Nine Inch Nails’ "Animal"). If BME was hoping for a song that would get them out from under "You Can Not Kill David Arquette" and under the shade of another elm, this would be it. Even after repeated listens we can’t quite nail down if vocalist Christi Lain is bemoaning that a potential paramour is more interested in Outsmart magazine than her own classified ads, or if she simply feels left out because she’s stuck watching the parade rather than marching in it. If nothing, the song opens up those universal old wounds of waiting around to be included, of not knowing why you’re not cool enough to be in on the game or get the girl/guy. It sucks. They must be gay.

Built around an annoyed guitar riff and a Devo-esqe call and response bass repose, the song is stage, radio and car-ride friendly and counterweights the angrier and darker moments of the release, like the pissed off “Dirty” the drowning “Girl of My Dreams,” and the bemoaning ballad “Suit of Lights”. The signature BME sound is still there on these tracks: drums that sound just a bit too digital, keyboards that don’t really wanna chill on the back burner, guitar and bass that would like to be very much in your face, thank you very much. It’s doubtful that this new direction, thematically, will radically alter the group’s fan base, though "Everyone is Gay" has the potential to pick-up and run like Nerf Herder. We’re pretty aware that most people who read this site won’t quite get this record, or certainly won’t get into it. Indeed, if you’re annoyed that we’ve once again put off reviewing the Rustler debut, you prolly won’t want to pick All You Need is Blood up. But whatevz, we’re goofball nerds too.

The CD release party for All You Need is Blood is Saturday night at Rudyards, with a bill that includes Le Sed (who once opened for Twisted Sister) and MK Ultra, a political punk band that is apparently unaware of the Bay area band with the same name.

Stream: Black Math Experiment - Everyone is Gay

SPECTACLE SPECTACULAR

A few scenes from last night's brouhaha at the Proletariat. More pictures here. You can also read more coverage on Handstamp, which also has a video.


David Arquette sings 'You Cannot Kill David Arquette' with the Black Math Experiment


Brandon from Co-Pilot shows off the wrestling belt that Mr. Arquette signed. The two would later arm-wrestle on a pool table.


Ben Murphy (Bright Men of Learning) dons the Reagan mask.


Mr Arquette on Mr. Murphy's scooter, now sporting the promotional Reagan sticker from The Tripper (thanks to Carrie Murphy for the pic).

CONFIRMED: SLASH AND RIFF TONITE @ PROLO

Well, the rumor that you read here first was out and out confirmed over the weekend. In case you missed the gory details from us or Donewaiting, Handstamp or Hands Up, here’s the beef: David Arquette will be at The Proletariat around nine tonight showing clips from his directorial debut, the upcoming slasher pic The Tripper. The plot? SO SAYETH THE ORACLE: “A Ronald Reagan-obsessed serial killer targets a bunch of hippies who are heading to a weekend-long concert.” Yuss.

Performing as part of the Hollywoodness will be locals Black Math Experiment, who will presumably take an axe to yr skull in their most important performance ever of the song “You Cannot Kill David Arquette.”

After the blood is squeegeed from the floor, find your buddy (NOT the blonde bimbo or the only non-white person) and stick around for the haunted house of acts that includes Greg Ashely (Gris Gris), Brian Glaze (Brian Jonestown Massacre), Jenny Westbury, Josh White (Dizzy Pilot, Drillbox Ignition) and Erin Dance (Southern Bellegosi) This is all free, btw. GET KNIFED IN THE EYE!