The live Artichoke had a great time playing “26 Animals” at the Future Studio. Chris Gonzalez on bass, Steve Collins playing theremin and acting like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and guest drummer Joe Babiak sitting in. Small people and big people filled the gallery with animal drawings, and there was some inspired dancing. I invited folks to dance like various animals, but I have since heard Oliver Sacks say that animals can’t dance. Sacks maintains dancing is a distinctly human ability, and that you shouldn’t waste money on lessons for your pets.

Artichoke recently played the “Bees” set at Steve’s big birthday bash up in Altadena. The night was misty, and the disco ball in the olive tree bobbed and sparkled over our heads. Steve’s friends and family were all there. It was great to be part of the celebration, and songs performed outside at night always seem a little mysterious.

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

I’ve written about the lives of scientists for two records, sung from the perspective of bees on one, described people as a form of weather in “Evaporation,” added melodies to Sex Pistols songs, and recently gone in a zoological direction with “26 Animals.” Most of the time I prefer to write songs by taking some sort of leap — to sing as a frog, a bumblebee, or Albert Einstein. But on “Historic Highland Park” I stayed closer to home. I looked at my neighborhood, my experience living here, and a little of its history. Here’s what’s on the record:
“Trash Day” was written on a shiny spring Tuesday, which is trash day in Highland Park. When we play the song live, Steve performs his infectious trash can dance. “Highland Park” is the title song. The street I live on, “Figueroa Street,” was once the longest street in Los Angeles. “Old Man Brunk” is about the first white dude living in the Arroyo Seco. Not much is known about him, but I like that he left San Francisco “because the town was good.” Next: “Arroyo Seco.” Behold the concrete trough! But touch not the waters, especially in August. “Here Come The Hipsters” is a paranoid fantasy of Sunset Strip creep creepage. I hope it’s paranoid, anyway. “Our Back Yard Is Full of Cats” was written on a day when our back yard was indeed full of cats. “A Country Boy In Highland Park” features Steve’s theremin in its full glory. Yes, I grew up with a composting toilet of my father’s invention. And I used to sing to cows while waiting for the school bus. Cows took a real interest in my early vocal work. Those Holsteins would hear me and amble over across the fields to stand nice and close, chewing and looking and paying mysterious and profound brown-eyed attention to my every syllable. Which does not remind me of “Mr. T’s Bowl,” our favorite indie rock bar in these parts. “El Dorado” is Artichoke’s first song longer than seven minutes, and includes a short history of California and our place in the grand scheme. Finally, I went out on the porch and played “Charles Lummis,” a biography of Highland Park’s own corduroy-clad humanitarian booster of the Southwestern United States, its people and history.

Big thanks go to Daniel Leyson for playing guitar on “Trash Day” and “Highland Park,” to Steve Collins for his theremin on “A Country Boy In Highland Park,” and to David Hurlin for playing drums all over the record. Also thanks to the organizers of “Lummis Day” for having Artichoke play in 2008.

Want a copy? “Historic Highland Park” is available at shows, cdbaby, or on this very website. Itunes, Amazon.com, and other digital vendors will offer it in a few weeks.

in the meantime — TONIGHT in fact — another artichoke Venn diagram loop will play the “bees” set at mr. t’s at 9:00. that’s at 5621 1/2 north figueroa street.

tonight artichoke will sound and look like: chris on the acoustic bass, steve on theremin and tambourines, me on geetar and singing from the bee’s perspective. and also joining artichoke is antonia romeo, a wonderful singer and musician who performs “bees” and also sings on the (not-yet-heard-by-anyone-outside-of-yet-another-Venn-diagram-loop) “is this feeding back?” song cycle / rock record of hope and despair for the near future. but more on the later later! let’s summarize the right now right now:

artichoke presents “bees” tonight at t’s in the hp fer free @ 9:00

see ya soon,

timothy chris steve antonia
4/5 of the “bees” artichoke (dan’s busy moving but he’ll be back in the hive soon)

ps kevin’s photographs http://kevinsea.zenfolio.com/p468759573
pps the “bees” cover paintings are done. official cd soonish?

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?

(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!

gardening at dusk. i love it. (i love rem’s “gardening at night” song too, but dusk is honestly a better time because you can see what the hell you are doing.)

let’s see, what have i got growing back there?

the fruit trees are finally putting on some size. i planted most of them about 6 years ago. i haven’t watered them as much as a nursery or an orchard would. but without “vitamin w” things stay fairly dormant; the tree doesn’t overextend if it feels the lack of water. so i’ve started watering a bit more. a bunch of citrus — lemons, limes, a blood orange, naval, valencia, mandarin, a few kumquats. 4 plum trees. i like those dark sweet ones so i planted a bunch. 3 pomegranates. a persimmon. 2 fig trees, one mission and one brown turkey. an apple tree. apples aren’t well-suited to this hot place, but some varieties can sort of cope. the fruit of los angeles apple trees is pretty shabby compared to the ones from the catskills. but it’s probably better than the fruit of orange trees in the catskills. my persian mulberry kicked arse this year. a torrent of huge, 3″ and even 4″ berries. for some reason the parrots and squirrels gave me a break and we humans got to eat the mulberries. i have a blueberry bush, but i may have planted it in too hot a spot, based on the fact that its sibling in the same spot sort of fried and died last year.

one tree i didn’t have to plant is the excellent avocado that was here when we moved in. the drug and alcohol recovery program people that lived here before us had sort of attacked the avocado tree. there were deep saw cuts and hatchet wounds in the trunk. a lacerating chain hung from one of the 3 main branches to hold a heavy boxing bag. it made me angry to see this abuse, but avocados are very resilient. i took that bag down, started watering and fertilizing, and we’ve had as many avocados as we could stand to eat for about 4 months of every year. nobody can really identify the variety of this tree. we’ve studied up, and it appears to be something of an avocado mutt.

this year i’m growing giant pumpkins. you can almost see them growing. the leaves are about 2 feet in diameter, and the vines are stretching out pretty fast. the packet says the fruit may reach several hundred pounds. but that’s only if you make sure each vine only has one pumpkin. i’m thinking of making a big ol’ “pumpkin man” if this all works out.

i’ve got more gardening babble i could share, but let’s see how this first envoy is received before telling you all about my magic compost heap.

oh yeah, we rocked a few shows with the eternal triangle and the evangenitals. it was fun, as those of you who were there know!!