The name of this band is damned near perfect:
No, not the Shut-Ups (although that’s a pretty cool band name, too). Anyone who reads this blog would know that I’m referring to Down With The Woo.
I wonder if their music is any good. If so, they could become the blog band of Respectful Insolenceâ¢. (or at least of Your Friday Dose of Woo, although most people seem to actually like Friday Woo). Fortunately, in that interest, I was informed of their MySpace page, which says:
Up from the ashes of cult heroes, Heros Severum. Powered by Macintosh. DWTW is a live production experiment. Every show is a new recording, captured by a machine onto a spinning plastic disc. The sound is in front of you, now it’s behind you, now it is gone. Until the next song starts. We have soul, but not a rubber belly. We’ll catch you like an infection and then you’ll be stuck in our heads.
Their influences:
Sounds like: nothing you’ve ever heard.
Bands we like to listen to: An Epic At Best, Archers of Loaf, Nick Cave, Elvis Costello, Dark Meat, Fatales, Fugazi, MC5, Billie Holiday, Husker Du, Pendletons, Pink Floyd, Paul Simon, Sly and the Family Stone, Television, Tom Waits, this list will grow when I’m not tired of typing….
The band is unsigned, but the songs in the demos are pretty good. A little poppier than my usual musical tastes, but quite catchy and hummable. Too bad the lyrics of “Down With the Woo” don’t appear to have anything to do with alternative medicine. On the other hand, they do have a song called “MMBrain,” which is more up my alley. (Visions of a new theme song for the Hitler Zombie briefly danced through my head, but it would be hard to beat his current theme.)
Here’s more:
Down With the Woo’s MySpace page calls the band “a live production experiment,” suggesting an exploration of the studio strategies of Downtown Athens Recording Company engineer Friar into a live setting. “Our show is powered by a Mac G4 running ProTools. A lot of the effects are automated,” says Friar. “We have a few classic old drum machines combined with real percussion. We have submixes running out to different speakers in the audience with percussion and synths. Most important, we record every performance with the idea being to build an archive with every show the band has ever played. Eventually the best parts of the performances will be culled for release as an album. We’re kicking around the idea of burning copies of the show for sale as you leave the venue, but we’re still working out the logistics of that.”
Maybe I’ll keep an eye on these guys. So far I like what I hear.
