Reports from the scene
Maren Parusel splits Wild Weekend, Pinback finds a new label and Enrique experiences Leslie Hall
Locals Only
Punk quartet Wild Weekend has broken up. Singer-guitarist Maren Parusel told CityBeat that she initiated the breakup to focus on her solo career. “It was great, but I feel the last months I’ve changed musically,” she said in an interview published last week at CityBeat’s blog (Lastblgonearth.com). “I just didn’t feel like when I was on stage and I was playing Wild Weekend songs, I just didn’t feel 100 percent anymore. I just felt like it wasn’t fair to do something half-hearted. I have to feel it.” WW guitarist-singer Kelly Alvarez says the rest of the band will move on without Parusel. “This came as a big surprise to all of us. I’m heartbroken, but I’ve dusted myself off, and I’m not going to quit doing what I love to do,” she said in an e-mail. “Cara, Cody and I will be starting our own band, and I want to work on some solo stuff and put out my own 7-inch.”
As CityBeat previously reported, the demise of Chicago-based Touch and Go Records left bands Pinback, Three Mile Pilot and The Black Heart Procession without a label. Pinback is the first to find a new home—on New York-based Temporary Residence Limited, whose roster includes names like Explosions in the Sky, Mono and Pinback’s Rob Crow. Fans should expect a new album from the band in 2010, according to the label.
In other signing news, BoomSnake, the current project of Gabriel Rodriguez (Say Anything, Weatherbox), is scheduled to release a new record in late 2009 on New York-based ECA Records. ECA will also re-release BoomSnake’s 2008 album, Give & Take, which was originally released digitally and on vinyl. BoomSnake will also release an EP, Vitamins, on cassette tape via Kraken Records that can be ordered on the band’s website (www.myspace.com/boomsnake).
It was announced on Snoop Dogg’s MTV show, Dogg After Dark, that the rapper had picked local stoner-rockers Slightly Stoopid to open this summer on his cross-country tour. No San Diego date had been scheduled as of press time.
Troubadour Zachary Goode will debut his new band, The Secret Seven, on Friday, April 10, at the Whistle Stop, with Black Mamba opening.
Indie-pop rockers The Fascination will celebrate the release of a new EP, We Take Care of our Own, at The Casbah on Tuesday, April 14. Northern Towns and Crescendo will open.
The Enrique Experience
Palm Sunday found me at The Casbah for a heavenly show by Iowa’s own Leslie Hall, the blue-eye-shadow-wearin’, gem-sweater-lovin’ cewebrity who cast forth a musical sparkle not seen since Liberace’s heyday.
Cloaked in a gold-lamé cape, the self-proclaimed “Midwest diva” renamed our town “San Di-dance-O” as she took the stage dressed in a shimmery ringleader uni-tard with plush white tigers serving as shoulder pads. It wasn’t an homage to Siegfried & Roy and their inbred mutants but, rather, one to everybody’s favorite Cheetoes-munching mother of two.
“It’s a tribute to the Britney Spears’ Circus album. I’m a big fan, and I literally wanna be a mini version of her, so I’m tapping into her high-power-pop-woman-diva slice,” the BeDazzler maven told CityBeat, moments after finishing a set that included favorites such as the Val Kilmer-inspired Willow Don’t Cry, the “downright dirty” Blame the Booty (“On my giant trampoline I go bounce bounce / You fall in love with every ounce ounce”) and, of course, her signature acrylic-pullover ode, which made the knit-jumper-donning crowd go berserk, giving the evening the joyous mood of a Judaic Bris.
“It’s a worship of the gems, the jams and the beautiful gifts all combined. We’re gonna cause some religious believing, passing out and gibberish talking, all coming out at once,” she said.
The performance, which served as a debut of a new dance move dubbed “ninja arms” saw Hall playing a guitar she decoupaged in high school with the images of Prince Charles and Lady Di and spinning it around, ZZ Top-style.
“Even my repeat customers had no idea I could touch a guitar and make it sound so plucking beautiful,” she said. Before heading out, the Heartland honey gave some words of advice to the Vatican itself: “The Pope clearly BeDazzles.
If I had my way, I would sprinkle gems all over that place and glitter it up with sweaty, dirty, used glitter, and they’d love it. Trust me, people would flock to that site.”
I know I would.
