Live From the Percolator, Vol. II

With his appearance at "Mothers, Madonnas, and Queens" last night, Richard is 2 for 2 on his New Year's resolution to attend all Percolator art openings this year. Sure, art may be struggling in some parts of Larryville--with KU dismantling the School of Fine Arts and farming out its members to other departments--but the scene is vibrant downtown. While last night's opening may have lacked the gonzo mayhem of the "Apocalypse" event and the cozy, communal "snuggling" of the recent "Storytelling Experiment," it redeemed itself by featuring what is surely one of the largest collections of stencils about breast milk ever gathered in one place. While we hipsters mixed and mingled, a motley collection of local folkies "jammed" in one corner before taking an hour-long break to discuss the latest Animal Collective record: "I think we can all agree that Panda Bear is our favorite." Richard gives the opening 2.5 out of 5 PBR's and looks ahead to the "Trees I Have Known" exhibition next month, which is currently accepting contributions from the public. Will his own work be included?


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On a cold winter's night in Larryville, nothing can warm you up like a little "lo-fi bedroom pop." At the Replay tonight, Darren Keen will give you what you need. Lawrence.com says that Keen "composes ramshackle bedroom pop with whatever he can find under his pillow (mostly drum machines, guitars and cheap keyboards)."

The Pitch, on the other hand, reminisces about Keen's former project, The Show is the Rainbow, which "has rather Ssion-like cartoon and live action videos for every song...while he sings or crowd surfs (with or without his big belly exposed)."

Richard: "Myself, I prefer the lo-fi incarnation. With bands like Of Montreal, who are prone to on-stage nudity, there's really too much hipster flesh on display these days, along with major live-show, dance-party spectacles. Whatever happened to just standing quietly in the back of a show, fully dressed, non-dancing, with our PBR's, and sometimes maybe writing some notes so we can blog about the shows later. The good thing about Of Montreal, however, is that the pretension remains high despite the fun being had, as we can see from Sasha Frere-Jones recent New Yorker profile of the band: "On 'Hissing Fauna,' [Barnes, lead singer] recounts bonding with a girl over Georges Bataille's 'Story of the Eye.'"