For the letter D, I have written songs called “Charles Darwin” and “Dog.” Let me take this opportunity to remind armchair travelers of an interesting voyage from almost 200 years ago:

On December 27, 1831, a very young (and some might say foolish) Charles Darwin clambered atop a large dog, which the English called simply “the Beagle.” Darwin and a few dozen other men hung on for dear life as the enthusiastic fellow swam out to sea. The Beagle carried these reckless parasites around the world, first to South America, where Darwin observed many new species of plants and animals. Birds such as the blue-footed booby had never seen giant seafaring dogs before, or humans for that matter, and they showed a complete lack of fear when Darwin and the enthusiastic Beagle approached them. After continuing on past New Zealand, the Beagle realized he was getting a bit hungry. He swam back to England, arriving at Cornwall on October 2, 1836. Darwin grabbed his scientific notes and drawings and — along with the rest of the dog-smelling crew — leaped from the back of the Beagle that had been their home for nearly five years. The great shaggy beast shook the saltwater from his body, barked a friendly farewell, and ran off in search of something good to eat.

Thanks for stopping by. Next up: “Elephant” and “Einstein.”

Today, we present the letter C:

In the category of tragic scientist biographies, none is better known than the story of Marie and Pierre Curie. And their story is indeed tragic — young husband Pierre killed by a horse-drawn wagon as he stumbled, radiation-poisoned, across a busy street; Marie killed much later by the same invisible magic after a life of underfunded toil and hard-won success.

I wrote and recorded “Marie Curie” back when we were renting space in downtown LA. I was messing around with with an agonizingly slow 3/4 tempo and a very loud distorted guitar. Later when we played the song live, Steve brought a little glowing test tube theatricality to our stage show. An actual scientist in your band can be a handy thing.

“Cat” is a catchy little melody over a swing beat that I like to use because it’s easy to sing over. My 3-year-old niece Rosemary acted out the lyrics of this song the very first time I played it for her!

I guess that’s it for C. I should also mention that Artichoke will be performing at the Eagle Rock Music Festival on October 3rd at 10:00. See ya next time for “Dog” and “Charles Darwin.”

Timothy
Artichoke

hey there! steve, chris and i had a fun show at the highland park farmer’s market yesterday. thanks to all who came out to say hello. and happy birthday to chris!

now — it’s back to the alphabet. today’s letter is the letter B:

“26 scientists”:
luther burbank was a self-made man from massachusetts. he came out to california looking for “the perfect place” to grow plants of many kinds. apparently he was so busy working in the greenhouses up in santa rosa that he kept very scanty records of how he actually developed hundreds of new wonderful strains of fruit and flower. luther burbank became something of a botanical thomas edison in american culture. many schools were named for him, including burbank middle school here in highland park. arlo, our friend and legendary sound man at mr. t’s bowl, attended that school. there is a mosaic facing figueroa street that reads “fruit and flower show the magic of his mind.” i wonder what the kids make of it? anyway, luther burbank was an excellent subject for a song. and yes, burbank, california is named for another guy — a sheepranching dentist.

“26 animals”:
beavers are a lynchpin species. their water management allows entire ecosystems to thrive around the wetlands they create by building dams and ponds. they once numbered in the hundreds of millions — and that’s just in north america. then we killed nearly all of them for hats. they are gone from europe and asia, but luckily a few tens of millions survive in north america. decimating the beavers has contributed to the desertification of out planet in a big way. i could go on, but it’s a bit depressing…

anyway, some beavers do still survive and work their magic on the environment. where i grew up in new york state, there was a family of beavers living in our pond. i got the idea for the song “beaver” when juli crockett was putting together a play called “the history of water.” one writer mentioned that beavers would make excellent pets. they are friendly and good-natured. the only problem would be their incessant nocturnal building. they would chew up anything made of wood and presumably build with it. so that’s what my song is about. now that we’ve destroyed most beavers outdoors, it’s time to be nice. invite them inside and let them set things up the way they like it!

these songs can be heard at http://www.myspace.com/artichoketheband and purchased at http://artichoketheband.com/

up next: “marie curie” and “cat.” thanks for listening!

timothy
artichoke

Howdy! This year, Artichoke completed two alphabets of music, one of scientists in two volumes, and one of animals for kids. So over the next few weeks, I’m going to post songs for each letter from both projects from A to Z on myspace. http://www.myspace.com/artichoketheband

“Mary Anning” and “Aardvark” kick things off. The song about Mary Anning is a fairly complete biography. She was a skilled artist with a keen eye for fossils. Mary Anning managed to overcome many prejudices of the time against her gender and social status in 19th century England.

I wrote this song back when we rented a rehearsal space down on 7th street in LA. I made it fairly catchy by dividing every 8 beats into 5 and 3 on the bass and drums. As an early lineup of Artichoke was breaking up, this was one of the first songs where I played everything: lead guitar, bass and such. I learned a lot. And when a new live Artichoke arose, the band really rocked this song!

“Aardvark” is the first song on the kids record. Apparently aardvarks are pretty tough animals, with thick ant-proof skin and some serious claws for digging. They are sort of living fossils, relatively unchanged genetically over the last many million years. This is a fun song to start the live kids show with.

Well, that’s the letter “A.” See ya next time for “Beaver” and “Luther Burbank.”

the number of songs on myspace has increased sorta like razor blades in the 90s. at first you could have TWO blades / songs on your shaver / site. it was quite pleasant. a smooth comofortable shave, a little sharing of songs. then there was something of a thrill when we went up to THREE. holy shit — that’s 50% more shaving / listening pleasure! and i hardly cut myself at all, even when taking out those 5 hairs between my eyebrows. then another little bump up to FOUR songs. 33% more shaving / listening blah blah blah. you get it. i think next was SIX. now we’re getting somewhere. that’s a solid EP of songs, a sort of tree of razor blades to wave around. i shave every three days or so, in case you are wondering. a lot of indie musicians pretend not to shave at all, but most of them must or we’d see many more full biblical beards around here. and that might lead to an explosion of ferrets as pets, their little heads darting in and out of big bushy biblical beards. ha ha ha. the bible.

and then came the really big news. last night, at like 1:20 am, myspace tom emailed me personally. i guess he couldn’t sleep or something. tom said “this is it: we’re going to TEN!”

well, that’s just plain dangerous to your face, if you ask me. keep that forest of jagged steel away from my head! i’m trying to preserve what might be left of my boyish good looks. but then i remembered that tom was talking about SONGS — not razors — and so i relaxed a bit and added 80% more songs than we had up yesterday.

you are invited to swing by www.myspace.com/artichoketheband and groove a little. we have 5 songs from “historic highland park” and 5 songs from “26 animals.”

you can buy either cd at www.artichoketheband.com. compared to ferrets, they make pretty nice gifts.

also, on sunday we’re playing in the woods. we’re meeting at the eaton canyon trailhead at 3:00. it’s a short little hike, but bring comfy shoes. we’ll play a bunch o’ songs at a shady spot designated by our hosts.

thanks to sara for inviting us! for details about our show in the woods, please visit:

http://thenaturalstageproject.wordpress.com/

http://www.myspace.com/thenaturalstageproject

i believe this show will be,

timothy chris antonia, and anna
artichoke

dear fanz,
tomorrow we play all the “26 animals” songs at kevin and amy’s house here in the hp. i think we’ll set up in the back yard under their big pine tree. it’s daylight savings — so don’t miss our 3:00 pm show! arielle can’t make this one, so fredo ortiz (who was on some songs on “26 scientists volume one: anning-malthus” before he was taken away from us by the beastie boys touring schedule) will play drums with us. needless to say, he rocks.

and we’ve got cds of “26 animals” available! the record will be “officially” released when we have the accompanying songbook all printed up — in about two months. it’ll be a fully-illustrated hardcover 8″ square book, with tablature and lyrics for all 26 songs! i painted watercolor animals for each song. allison and i photographed the paintings, and then worked on the layout of lyrics and chords over the images for a few evenings. amy inouye from the future studio (on figueroa street underneath chicken boy and next to foliero’s pizza) hooked us up with a quality printer in hong kong, where i am told the books are being printed even now. in the meantime, please dig the no-frills unadorned “26 animals” cd with 57 minutes of kids music. i should mention that some adults seem to enjoy the cd too. which is fine with me, since i think the best kids records were probably made by the beatles. “mean mr. mustard” and “polythene pam” made a big impression on me, anyway. illiterative characters zap straight into the young hard drive. but i don’t actually know any current “kids” music, come to think of it. or maybe i don’t know any adults’ music? you know, i recently heard that kids were sort of like human beings in many ways — so we may not have to worry about keeping their music separate from ours. we’ve got a few more earth orbits under our adult belts, but groovy is groovy no matter how many bowls of cereal you’ve munched. what was i talking about?

as some of you know, i’m a big fan of robyn hitchcock http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robyn_Hitchcock.  the wife and i have seen him a half dozen times over the decades.  but sadly for me, his last 2 los angeles shows coincided EXACTLY with artichoke shows, so i couldn’t see him.  for example, 2 saturdays ago, artichoke was playing at mr. t’s bowl when he was at largo.  then i caught some of his live set on kcrw the subsequent wednesday morning.  an hour later, chris called me and said “i just met robyn hitchcock!”  so i raced over to where he was (in the valley for some reason?) with a copy of “26 animals” in my hand.  chris and i shambled up to robyn’s lunch table, confessed our serious fanhood, and sheepishly gave the nice man a cd.  out on the street aftewards, 2 women who had witnessed our behavior asked “who was that?  was that morrissey?”

hi people,

(sometimes i forget to write new blogs, so tonight i’ll cheat and use my rambling announcement for our show this saturday.  i’ll do a “real” blog entry soon.)

i know you lead fast-paced, email-scanning lives.

no time for the past.  or for proust — or even to type out implied verbs, for that matter.

but let’s make time for the future.

to facilitate, i’m spacing things out a little in this email.

don’t worry, there is nothing to read between the lines.

but if you read the lines themselves — or what’s in between what’s in between the lines –  i’m here to tell you that:

artichoke is playing mr. t’s bowl this saturday!  it’s the “26 animals” set, with steve, chris, and arielle.

mr. t’s bowl
5621 1/2 figueroa street
los angeles, ca 90042
$5   21+

Photons 900-945
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=321232449

Artichoke 945- 1030
http://artichoketheband.com
http://www.myspace.com/artichoketheband

The French Semester 1030-1115    (thanks for inviting us!!!)
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=181464044

The Flower Machine 1115-1200
www.myspace.com/theflowermachine

Leisure Pills 1200-1245
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=54648593

that’s the scoop.  say hi if you come out!

timothy steve chris arielle
artichoke

ps  the “26 animals” songbooks and cds are being printed and pressed even now!  somewhere in hong kong the printers are getting to work.  somewhere in woodland hills the duplicators are at it.  and it is still very helpful to us if you pre-order your copy of “26 animals.”  we’ll bring our little order book to the mr. t’s show.  and thanks a ton to everyone who has already done so!

Title: nocturnal bar
Location: nocturnal bar
Description: artichoke
the evangenitals
the eternal triangle
Start Time: 21:00
Date: 2008-07-17

Title: mr. t\’s bowl
Location: mr. t\’s bowl
Description: artichoke
evangenitals
eternal triangle
Start Time: 21:00
Date: 2008-07-19