My fucking guitar player broke his fucking finger in two fucking places and now he needs to get fucking surgery and it’s going to take him fucking two months to fucking heal and we won’t be able to play any fucking shows or even fucking practice for the fucking duration.

We had this whole goddamn U.K. takeover planned and now the goddamn thing is on hold and all our goddamn U.K. contacts are busy goddamn forgetting they ever goddamn gave a fuck.

Everything was going really great up to now. We got this really big feature in the U.K.’s really biggest music magazine NME and our trip to London was really fun and we met some really nice amazing people who could really do something for our careers and, really, our livelihood, too.
So now it’s like when we like play this Wednesday night at Spaceland with Film School, the whole like concept is going to be different and like members of The Deadly Syndrome and Eskimohunter and The Human Value are like going to like fill in for M., and, maybe, like, M. will contribute like tambourine or like vicodin-induced mumbling or, like, something like that and, like, it’ll be weird.

At least the guys who are taking on guitar duties are totally hot and come totally prepared to practices and are being totally amazing and we’ve totally bonded and I’m totally inspired to play with more totally rad hotties like totally all the total time.

Naturally, I will power on and be strong because when shit happens in life, naturally it’s far preferable to view it as a challenge that can be naturally overcome by one’s wits, or that life is, naturally, offering up a test that, if you pass it, you are naturally a shoe-in for greatness, naturally.

But that fucker fell off his goddamn bike and it’s really thrown like a wrench in the gears of Pity Party Progress, totally forcing us to get the fuck over it real fast, naturally.

Or something like that. Again, Reader, I’m shocked and fearful that you’ve made it this far.

The Pity Party w/ Film School & The Meeting Places @ Spaceland (Pity Party @ 10 pm)

Benefit Rock Shows. What more can be said, really? You get the r.a.w.k, you get the strange dirty-antispetic smell of the r.a.w.k. club, you get the self-satisfaction of having spent a millisecond or two maybe thinking about someone else, and you can have fries with your Dewar’s (cuz specifically I’m talking about The Echo here, sirs).

In Brief: this coming Wednesday, the 16th of April, come have your face melted by Afternoons, The Pity Party (that’s MY band), Karin Tatoyan, and The Franks at The Echo WHILE giving back to the community. Don’t you just love phrases like “giving back to the community”? I mean, what did the community ever give you that you owe it something back, exactly, except a hard time finding parking and disgruntledment at the post office?

But seriously, Reader, Sweet Relief (the cause to be benefitted by said r.a.w.k. show) is an awesome organization that offers financial assistance to musicians who can no longer play music. I mean, I’d rather be dead than not be able to play music, but that’s just me. Was that out of line? I was gonna write something like, “And at the rate with which musicians party, most of them end up needing this service.” (Weak.) And I was even thinking of typing the following: “Sweet Relief is an awesome organization that offers financial assistance to musicians who can no longer play music due to illness, disability, or plain fucking laziness.” See? Very off-color. Almost completely innappropriate. I shouldn’t be allowed to do this, LosAnjealous. These words will one day come back to haunt me. But I’ll have really good lawyers then, so bring it.

I gotta wrap up this uninspired promotional blog posthaste, alright?So below is the bottom line. See you Wednesday, anyway, Lovers.

xxx
Heisenflei

Wednesday, April 16th
Filter Presents: Rock Show to Benefit Sweet Relief
Feat. Afternoons, The Pity Party (that’s MY band), Karin Tatoyan, The Franks
With art gang collective Bagavagabonds silkscreening tees, The Good Neighbor Comedy Troop Mc-ing, and DJ Hatbox spinning all through the night.
$7, Doors at 8
F.Y.I. The Sweet Relief Musicians Fund aims to financially assist career musicians who are facing illness or disability (…or plain fucking laziness).

MORE PITY
» SXSW ‘08: Pity Party, Mezzanine Owls @ Lucky Lounge, March 13
» Residencies Are My Reason To Live
» We Played Some Festivals Recently
» Sunset Junction 2007: The Pity Party

Tonight is the last night of The Pity Party’s Spaceland monday night residency. Where are my pills? I need them. I don’t know how I am going to get through this. My whole life has revolved around this residency since at least November of 07. And after tonight it will all be over. All the adoring fans who got in for free. All the reluctant merch people who kept shoddy track of our moving units. All the middle-aged men handing out business cards promoting their home studios– all that will be over!

And yet something will also be beginning: the future of a band who has already played its Spaceland residency. What can such a future hold? Air conditioned tour buses? Millions of dollars? Relatives coming out of the woodwork? Isolation and token attachment to trendy social causes? The Pity Party is SO ready for all that.

Where are my goddamn pills– I told you I need them NOW! No, these aren’t the fucking pills I asked you for! You think that hurt?! Wait till you feel my shoe against your fucking face, you useless fucking troglodyte! No, only ONE tea bag, not two! God, where do you people come from? (Please excuse my assistant. He doesn’t get paid nor does he exist, so it can get a little ugly sometimes.)

&As the daylight wanes on this 25th day of february, I reflect on all the really great RESIDENCY memories that fill me with simple human joy. Like the time– uh– the time we— hmmm. Maybe I should start drinking less at shows… Oh, there was that one time that I got sick and lost my voice. But that’s not really a happy memory. Or when that weird guy asked me if I learned my moves from stripping. Not that that’s such an off-base question: everyone knows the first thing they teach you at stripper school is how to play drums and keys simultaneously.

I want to take this moment to thank all the Hotties I picked up around town this month who showed up to see me play. You were rewarded. Those of you who didn’t bother (you know who you are) will burn in Hell. I want to thank Jennifer Tefft, Spaceland booker extraordinaire, for giving us the Month of Love. I want to thank America for freedom, and Sylvia for free drinks. I want to thank David Bowie for good ideas, and the state of the modern music industry for bad ideas. I want to thank all the really successful musicians I know for their Inspiring Misery. I’ll do it better than any of them. Fact. Oh, and I would like to thank LosAnjealous for letting me waste this precious space and your precious time, Reader.

But mostly I want to thank myself for my personal strength, fearlessness, ingenuity, and of course, profound humility.

Tonight at Spaceland we are joined by The Rolling Blackouts, the Secret Six, and Meho Plaza. Last chance to see The Pity Party free, suckas. After this, it’s gonna cost ya.

xxx
heisenflei

THE PITY PARTY play their final free Monday at Spaceland this evening. No excuses!
Heisenflei at Sunset Junction by Shane.

MORE PITY PARTY
» We Played Some Festivals Recently
» Sunset Junction 2007: The Pity Party
» Detour Fest, Downtown, 10/6/07

We, The Pity Party, do hereby declare that We Played Some Festivals Recently. And for the benefit of LosAnjealous readers and the LosAnjealous Corporate Powers that Be, we will herein compare and contrast these festivals, which are, in historical order: Sunset Junction Street Fair in Silverlake, LA Weekly’s Detour Fest downtown, and the Eagle Rock Music Festival in, you guessed it, Eagle Rock, Califor-nigh-ay.

Festivals will be analyzed on three different fronts:

1) our backstage experience,
2) audience attendance/reaction, and
3) our performance in general.

BACKSTAGE TREATMENT

LA Weekly’s Detour Fest takes the Blue Ribbon for Absolute Rock Star treatement of The Pity Party. Upon arrival, we found an air-conditioned trailer with OUR NAME ON IT stocked with beer, VITAMIN WATER, regular water, MONSTER ENERGY DRINK, cookies, chips’n’salsa, and chocolate. We hastily squirrelled the cases of Vitamin, Reg water, energy drinks, and chocolates into my Honda Element. The Pity Party rarely finds itself surrounded by such bounty! The energy drinks were post-hastily donated to our friends in ESKIMOHUNTER and the chocolates were put out in a dish at my knitting shop for ladies to gnaw on. The Vitamin Waters currently live in my fridge. And the beer was guzzled by TK, Darren Ravel, and Mark Sovel of Indie 103.1. Ah, the various fates of backstage swag. Detour also provided dinner, which we could not stick around for as we had to high-tail it north-easterly to Eagle Rock that very day.

Eagle Rock takes second place in the awesomeness-of-backstage-spread category, though M can testify more accurately to this, as, by the time we got to Eagle Rock, I was too drunk and surly to take advantage of the fresh turkey sandwiches and JAMBA JUICE smoothies provided for the talent. Yes, Jamba Juice smoothies. Now THAT is class. And did I not live by the creed “FOOD plus ROCK equals VOMIT” I would have inhaled several of them, as Jamba Juice is my weakness.

Um… Sunset Junction had a cooler full of water bottles that were hard to get to.

AUDIENCE

The best turn out we had of all three festivals was definitely Eagle Rock. Were I forced to find causality, I would say the free ticket price combined with our juicy set time (8 o’clock in the p.m.) contributed heavily to this. The audience was young and psyched except for one guy who hated me personally, as evidenced by his spewing “You fucking suck” several times before one of our songs. I am ashamed to say that I responded in kind with, “YOU fucking suck,” etc. I am not proud of this behaviour and neither is my father.

The Detour audience was great – pretty well filled out for the starting time slot of the day (2 p.m.). I think they were supportive, but I was so distracted by the walking bridge between two of the City Hall buildings right in front of me, that I was hardly aware of an audience. Post-set we drifted into the anonymity of the festival and a middle-aged lady came up to me and told me how great I was and had this advice: “Never give up!” Now, I fear the implication in “Never give up” is “I can tell you’re thinking of giving up, because, honestly, you probably should, but I want to cheer you on anyway.” Or maybe what she was really saying was, “I know you’re getting a little old and you’ve been at this for a while, but still, you shouldn’t give it up.” Or maybe “No one else supports you really at all, and no one else hardly even cares, but I, Middle-Aged Lady at Detour Fest care enough to tell you not to give up.” Either way, I don’t know how to take a compliment. Thanks, lady.

The crowd at Sunset Junction was supportive in spite of M’s technological problems. They handled the interactive Conversation-With-Heisenflei that resulted with aplomb. Thanks to them. Honestly, and I probably shouldn’t say this, but I think we knew every single person there. You’re all great. Let’s go hiking. Call me later.

PERFORMANCE

Well, unfortunately due to the aformentioned technological problems, Sunset Junction hardly qualifies to be considered in this category. At the end of the day, we played only four songs, and begrudgingly. I was just waiting for the moment our set was over so I could throw a proper tantrum and then feel bad about myself. I kept thinking the whole time, “I can’t believe this is our set at Sunset Junction.” I’d been training for that one, harnessing all my kick-ass, world-dominating powers for that show. And this was it. Thank god for the Mojitos at MALO and pleasant conversation with the members of DIVISION DAY that followed.

Two, two, TWO shows in one day: Our performance at Detour went off without a hitch. The sounds system was supreme, everybody so professional, and we even got to add a song onto our set because we actually had time. I had a great time performing at Detour. It was so early in the day, and I was so effectively using mind over matter to defeat a hangover from activities the night before, that I felt IN CHARGE.

By the time we got to Eagle Rock, I felt tired, but optimistic. However, halfway through our set (predating the Evil Heckler) I developed a splitting headache on the left side of my head, and tried to push my thoughts away from potential brain tumor and towards Rawk Ruling For The Sake Of The People. M thought the performance was great, but had screamed most of his voice out at Detour and was feeling vocally inferior. All told, however, M believes firmly that we 3/4 killed it at Eagle Rock. And I’ll settle for that.

In summation, Eagle Rock is the girl you marry who is perfect for you and keeps you in line and makes you happy and fills you up, Detour is the total knock-out all your friends want to fuck that you secretly don’t think you’re good enough for, and Sunset Junction is the girl next door; when you move houses you don’t really talk to her anymore much, but she was nice to have around at the time.

The End,
Heisenflei of The Pity Party

Top photo: Heisenflei at Sunset Junction by Shane.
Bottom photos: The Pity Party @ Detour Festival by Jeannette.
The Pity Party play the Detroit Bar with Gram Rabbit October 25, and are at the Viper November 5 [Check One Two Mondays from Indie 103.1 and Losanjealous]. Check back closer to date of show for RSVP info.