Lykke Li, "Little Bit"

Videoblog 12/6/2007

World Racketeering Squad latest live music videos: Trophy's 11/27, Green Muse 11/29

Here are the last of the videos from November's open mic live sets!  Our show at Conan's Pizza on Monday 11/26 had some sync issues we're still working out, but here are Tuesday's and Thursday's shows:

Trophy's 11/27/07

Green Muse 11/29/07

Enjoy!

If you want to be alerted to when we're playing next and any other band news, you can subscribe to our mailing list!

Isaac

World Racketeering Squad at Carousel Lounge

Here's the full video of our gig at Carousel Lounge. Enjoy!

Isaac

Gig report: Carousel Lounge, 11/21/07

Terrific show at the Carousel Lounge last night opening up for Blue Squeezbox.

It was fun and inspiring, lots of our friends showed up, and the guys in Blue Squeezebox were enthusiastic and very cool. 

Both Reed's folks and my Mom showed up, which was nice!  Reed's folks came to his Halloween party but my Mom hadn't seen us play, she had only heard a few recordings.  The crowd that had showed up by the time we started filled the Carousel Lounge on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, so we consider that to be decidedly awesome.  Lots of our personal friends showed up, and people we haven't seen in a while, who heard about it through other friends or through our mailing list.  Blue Squeezebox had a decent contingent, but we'd been promoting the show like mad since we found out, so I think that helped our turnout.

As for the show itself, our strong points are our energy and our sense of fun.  We're doing stuff that nobody else seems to do on stage, a variety of styles and attitudes that combines to create a pretty unique and entertaining show. 

Musically, we have a ways to go.  My main bugbear right now is playing too fast.  We're looking for a rhythm section, but right now it's just my electric guitar and Reed's voice.  Watching the video, pretty much every one of the songs we played was too fast, and in some cases it really hurt the song musically.  I get so amped up with energy that I rush through the songs like it's a race.  I've been working on it, but it's really a huge priority for me right now, I just cannot continue playing like that.  Must be smoother, tighter, and combine being more relaxed on stage with projecting an infectious energy.

After the show, Reed took our mailing list around to find that one of our fans had already sent it around the room and we had a page and a half of new entries!  Reed picked up some stragglers that came in late, and we got a sizeable addition to the list out of it.  He also travelled the tip jar, which returned considerably fuller than it started, marking the first time we've ever made money from playing music!   

Blue Squeezebox played two terrific sets afterward, we hung out and enjoyed the evening.   After the show we posted a short videoblog about it and some of the videos of the songs.  The rest will be up soon.

We'll be at Conan's Pizza and Trophy's this coming Monday and Tuesday, and back at the Green Muse on Thursday.  Things are going great!

Isaac

Video: World Racketeering Squad at Conan’s Pizza 11/12/07

We had a terrific show at Trophy's last night. Video will be up this weekend. Meanwhile, here's our set from Conan's Pizza on Monday. Enjoy!

Jeff

World Racketeering Squad live at Trophy's, Green Muse Cafe

Fellow Racketeers!

World Racketeering Squad rocked the house late in the night at Trophy's on Tuesday, and here is the video:

We'll be back at Trophy's next Tuesday, November 13. We're going to make our very best effort to go on between 10pm and 11pm, the gods and the signup sheet willing.

We'll also be at Conan's Pizza at S 1st and Stassney on Monday night, where we will assuredly be playing between 10 and 11, doing a nice long, rocking set.

World Racketeering Squad also played live, as usual, at the Green Muse on Thursday, and we have the video of that. This show marks our first time ever appearing with a live bass player, which was exciting for us!  And a little unnerving in places.

Those are all the shows from this week, we'll be posting more next week as we continue our schedule of playing out 3 nights a week:

Monday night: Conan's Pizza, S 1st and Stassney
Tuesday night: Trophy's
Thursday night: Green Muse Cafe, S 1st and Oltorf

We may have some other exciting secret news to announce next week, so stay tuned for more announcements!

Jeff

New rock opera demo, "Omega and the Just-In-Times"

This week we started working on a new crazy idea for a set of songs about Omega and the Just-In-Times, a "quantum band" who appear whenever there is enough demand. We've got two songs about them in progress so far:

"Omega and the Just-In-Times"

And "Omega in Love versus the Supermonsters":

These and any other new demos we create will be included in our "Demonstrations" video playlist on YouTube.

Link

World Racketeering Squad live at Green Muse 10/11/07

Here's the video of one of our first sets at the Green Muse Cafe here in Austin, TX. This was the first performance we've recorded on video, and also the first time we took the keyboard to an open mic.

World Racketeering Squad live at Haunted Housewarming X

World Racketeering Squad live at Haunted Housewarming X in Austin, TX, on October 27, 2007. Founding Racketeer Reed Oliver was celebrating the tenth anniversary of his traditional Halloween bash, so the band played our first long set of songs--13 songs, a little over an hour. We've decided since that a 30-minute set probably would've suited the party atmosphere better, but we wouldn't have known that if we hadn't done it! It was a lot of fun and we both learned a lot.

World Racketeering Squad live at Green Muse, 11/1/07

New short video from World Racketeering Squad, "The World Revolves Around Me"

Reed's Halloween party was this weekend, and we played our longest set to date--13 songs, over an hour, with guitar and keyboard, a drummer and a backing singer.

More about that later.Here's a quick short video we made of a new little song fragment called "The World Revolves Around Me":

Link

World Racketeering Squad videos--Green Muse Cafe Oct 11, 2007

On Thursday, October 11, the World Racketeering Squad played another open mic gig at the Green Muse Cafe here in Austin. We've been doing that regularly for a few weeks now, and it's a great time. Jules and John who run it are super cool, and they play great music when they get up on stage. It's a friendly atmosphere of cool people.

There were two major differences in our show this week. We used keyboard instead of guitar, and we videotaped the performance in iMovie on Reed's laptop!

I've been playing keyboard for a long time but we haven't done many recordings with it. We've decided to add the keyboard to our performance at Reed's Halloween party on October 27, so we wanted to take it out and give it a test run in front of an audience.

Overall, it went great! I'm a little rusty playing on some of these tunes, but felt excellent and the audience seemed to really enjoy it.

During our soundcheck I was doodling around with Carole King's "Natural Woman":

"Natural Woman" soundcheck

Note John waving his arms and singing along! Then our first song was "Esoteric", our ode to They Might Be Giants:

Esoteric

The crowd seemed to dig the false ending. We noticed at the end they waited a beat before clapping--"We're not getting fooled again!" The next song is our extended science fiction opus, "5017". This time we introduced its new opening section, inspired by old-time radio shows and their sponsors.

5017 (David's theme)

That one's a little weirder, especially without drums! Next up was "Professor Popinjay", our cute bouncy 1960s/Donovan-style song about an imaginary friend. Reed's been working on the tin flute for this song, and he played it here for the first time on stage!

Professor Popinjay

And we rounded out the show with "Perfectly Disposable", a sort of dance ballad. Not so dancy here, without drums, but still very fun.

Perfectly Disposable

It was an awesome show and great practice for the Halloween party. Hope you enjoy the videos!

Jeff

New Kylie Minogue: "2 Hearts"

I don't mean to keep posting videos, but super sexy Kylie Minogue's new single, "2 Hearts" is out and has a video:

Link

Joan Jett Replacements cover, "Androgynous"

(h/t PowerPop)

Link

"Natural Woman", Aretha Franklin at Montreux

I would've liked to find one of her playing piano, but I don't know if she did that much live.

Notorious B.I.G. freestyling at age 17

Biggie freestyling in front of a deli in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

(h/t Rolling Stone and WFMU)

Link

Just saying it could even make it happen

Kate Bush's Cloudbusting, based on A Book of Dreams by Peter Reich, about his father Wilhelm Reich. (According to Wikipedia, the video was conceived by Terry Gilliam.)

A little disco

This is the most awesome song in my world right now.

Jeff

"Heartbreaker" live video!

Special thanks for the video to Mocha Latte

Jeff