Teddybears @ Fat Baby & The Annex | pics & review PLUS words by "The Industry Insider"
TEDDYBEARS @ THE ANNEX | AUG 4, 2006
Teddybears “played” two shows in NYC last week. I managed to catch their 2am “performance” at The Annex on Friday night (Aug 4, 2006). By “performance”, I mean two guys standing behind a DJ booth pumping their fists in the air. Sometimes one of them moved a knob while the other one aimed a spotlight at the crowd. To their left was a dude in a bear mask strumming a guitar. At first I thought it wasn’t even plugged in, but then decided the bear WAS really playing, though barely. The Teddybears might have some fancy friends and work some magic in the studio, but at The Annex on Friday night I couldn’t help but feel like a participant in some major-label marketing scheme injected right into the middle of one of NYC’s latest hip Misshapesesque parties (I know, what else is new). Oh yeah, there was a video screen in the background, but I could barely see it through all the smoke.
At least the Fat Baby show the night before (Aug 3, 2006) was billed as a listening party (well sort of — an industry-only “DJ & Multimedia performance”). I wasn’t there, but one anonymous “industry insider” was, and they actually liked it. Here’s their story….
TEDDYBEARS “LISTENING PARTY” by THE INDUSTRY INSIDER
Listening parties: an industry standard in which labels attempt to get writers, tastemakers and influencers out to hear their newest bands.
In the best case scenario, you get to leave work early to see the band perform live, or they come play a special show in your office. The worst case scenario is a dj playing the cd on repeat for three hours while you suck down free beer and lazily network. More often then not, it’s the latter, and you leave questioning why you rushed over from work to see the same people you always do, to listen to a record you have had for two months.
Last night (Aug 3, 2006) was the Teddybears listening party at FatBaby. This upwards of 8 piece band from Sweden has been making their rounds on the blogosphere in the past few weeks with their track Punkrocker, featuring Iggy Pop.
The details of the party were sketchy at best. The main members of the band were there, they were going to be doing some performance, but to what capacity remained elusive. When I arrived, I saw a fog machine, vocoders and massive cdjs being set up, I knew we were all in for something special.
The members of the band have been in the states the last two weeks promoting the record. As their manager explained to me, they were unable to bring the entire band over, so they decided to innovate.
Patrick Teddybear manned the wheels of steel and played the record straight through. As an extra flourish he laid over a Hot Chip worthy amount of fx, vocoder and other delicious beeps and bloops. Jocke Teddybear, who is also in The Ceasers, danced with manic glee to every track, while banging along with a tambourine and manning the fog machine. While all this was happening upstairs, Klas Teddybear wandered around downstairs with a huge Teddybear’s mask, drinking white wine with a very long straw.
While this was entertaining, what put it over the top were the visuals. Not content with just being a band, the boys from the Teddybears are also visual artists and have created a visual loop that takes classic movies (Spinal Tap, Aliens, Scarface, etc) and placed their iconic Teddybear head on the main characters. It could have been the whiskey and gingers, but seeing the Queen Alien battle a Teddybear, or a Teddybear gundown wannabe drug lords, made the entire night incredibly enjoyable. It was great to look around the room and see the usually apathetic industry crowd craning their neck to see a giant Teddybear pull a tin foil wrapped cucumber our of its pants.
Overall, the night was great. The new record is fantastic and if every band could promote and get into these potentially boring events as much as The Teddybears did, then listening parties could take on a whole new attitude.
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Previously
Teddybears & Goldfrapp playing NYC | remixes & MP3s
