by Bill Pearis

The Jay Reatard documentary Better Than Something shows tonight (11/8) at the IFC Center at 8:30 PM. (It also showed this past Friday.) The film began as a short film to help promote Jay's final album, Watch Me Fall, but directors Ian Markiewicz and Alex Hammond decided to expand it to a feature film before his untimely death last year. IFC.com interviewed Markiewicz and Hammond about the film:

IFC: Your film started out as a short called "Waiting For Something." At what point did you realize that you had enough for a feature?

AH: At first they were like, "This is going to be like an EPK," but Jay didn't want a typical EPK. It started out as an eight to 10 minute piece, and then when we came back we said, "Holy shit, we don't have a 10-minute short, we have a film here."

IM: He kept bringing up this "warts and all" idea. He was like, "This has to be raw and rough." He kept saying things like that, and it turned out like that because he wanted to unload his whole story. He just really unleashed. That's the only word for it.

IFC: Obviously the nature of the project changed after Jay passed away. Did you begin seeking out his friends and family members immediately afterward?

AH: The moment we heard about his death, we weren't thinking about the film. Two months later, his friends were doing a big tribute show for him at South By Southwest.

IM: To be honest, I felt like, I don't know if I can handle looking at that stuff right now. It felt very dark at that point. And people were saying, you guys really have to be down here for this show. It kind of snuck up on us, like, "Okay, I guess we're doing this now." When we started doing it, you could just feel how palpable the emotion was coming off everybody. The wrong thing to do would be to wait a bunch of years, and then do something, when everybody's feelings weren't as strong. It seemed more in the spirit of what Jay did, being in the heat of the moment.

Before tonight's screening there's a pre-show party at Other Music starting at 6:30. Golden Triangle's Alix Brown DJs and there's complimentary PBR. No word on a DVD release date yet. Trailer for Better Than Something is below...

Continue reading "Jay Reatard documentary screens tonight at IFC Center; pre-show party at Other Music"

by BBG

Alix of Golden Triangle (left) needs your attention... and for a good cause!

The Rock Lottery began in Denton, TX in 1997 (and in Seattle in 2006). This will be Brooklyn's inaugural Rock Lottery. The premise is simple, but effective. Twenty-five hand picked musicians meet at 10:00AM at the evening's performance venue. These volunteers are organized into five groups through a lottery-based chance selection. The five separate groups are then released to practice at different locations. The musicians have twelve hours to create a band name and three to five songs (with a one cover-song limit). The groups will then perform what they have created that evening in front of a waiting audience.

The Rock Lottery compiles those 25 musicians from varying backgrounds in an attempt to move each out of their comfort zones and into musical exploration. The participants, which include members of Liturgy, Oberhofer, King Missile III, Death Set, Bear In Heaven, Family Band, Les Savy Fav, White Rabbits, and many others, will perform their new pieces at Knitting Factory on Saturday (12/18). Tickets are on sale, and proceeds from the show will go to World Savvy, a local charity focused on teaching the "next generation of leaders to learn, work and live as responsible global citizens in the 21st century."

So what do the two ladies in the above picture have to do with The Rock Lottery? The one on the left is bassist Alix Brown of Golden Triangle, who is a participant in the show. The lady on the right is Carlie Rabalais (also Golden Triangle) and the picture is a production still taken from the video shoot for "Crystal" by Carlie's other band X-Ray Eyeballs who will release heir debut album, Not Nothing, via Kanine Records on April 19th, 2011. No word on when "Crystal" will hit the rounds, but you can catch the band at a pair of shows in the near future, including supporting Tyvek and Fergus & Geronimo at Mercury Lounge on 1/16 (tickets are still on sale) and Bruar Falls this Wednesday (12/15) with Food Stamps + My Teenage Stride.

Full participant list in The Rock Lottery, some recent video of X-Ray Eyeballs at Shea Stadium, and tour dates below.

Continue reading "Brooklyn musicians getting together for a 'Rock Lottery', X-Ray Eyeballs getting together for shows (and a bath)"