photos from sidewalk cafe

so, i'm in israel now. i've been here since thursday, i've done nothing but eat and play with babies. the food is good, the babies are cute, but not much more to say, so instead here are some photos from last monday's sidewalk cafe gig. the first photo is me making a lot of noise on Aaron's beuatiful vintage Gibson Hummingbird, and the other guy is Lach, the host of Sidewalk Cafe Antihootenanny.

moving up the charts

te he, Jet Pack has hit number 6 on the www.mp3.com.au lo-fi charts. if you get a chance, please click here and download or listen to the song, and maybe it will go even higher. Jet Pack is from my new cd, and i'm really excited with how it turned out. yay for steve gallagher's production, and ant and pet's drumming and bassing.

i'm the AFNZ guy

so, last night i went to the sidewalk cafe antihootenanny, an antifolk open mic night. "what the hell is antifolk?" i hear you scream at me, and not for the first time. i give different answers at different times, but i was looking forward to going to the place where it all began to get a clearer answer. but it didn't help. what i heard at the open mic was a very anything goes policy, which meant the evening ranged from acoustic punk, weird noises, and very bad stand-up all the way to standard pretty stuff you'd hear at any open mic and a 13 year old singing mournfully about all the heartache and loss he's suffered. in my mind antifolk is music that you play with an acoustic guitar that would still be more comfortable in a rock venue than a folk venue, and a good sense of humour is required too - moldy peaches, jeffrey lewis, hamell on trial, dead blonde girlfriend, and of course, lach (the host of the antihootenanny and coiner of the term 'antifolk'). and i'm now clear that my own perculiar brand of acoustic stonk fits into the antifolk category, i'm just not sure if everything else i heard last night does.

and i ripped up a storm, i played Jet Pack and NYC, and made the most noise i've ever made. the punters seemed to really like it, and i think lach was quite excited to have a fan from nz, because he gave me a whole pile of cds and tapes of other antifolk musicians he wanted me to hear. lach is playing a full gig in london while i'm there, so i might go and hear him, and maybe i'll even play the london antihootenanny if i have time. sidewalk cafe is dark and dirty and the only venue in new york which regularly features antifolk and acoustic punk, and if i lived here, i would be at that bar every week.

unfortunately, lach didn't really know where New Zealand was, and instead decided that 'Z-Land' sounds like a place where Flash Gordon baddies might come from. even really cool new yorkers aren't so informed about the rest of the world (although it would be fun to be a baddie from flash gordon...)

i made a recording of the gig, but the quality is too crap to put online, but photos will come soon.

today we went to the natural history museum and saw dinosaurs (but not ross gellar). dinosaurs are cool (but they've got different names now from when i was a kid.

even the sandwiches make good conversation

so sunday, steve chong, G and i met up with terence and catherine and we went on the ferry to see the statue of liberty, and then we wondered back up manhattan looking at 2nd hand record shops and generally feeling exhausted (we're up to day 5 of constant walking). all my plans of buying lots of things haven't gone so well, i've bought no clothes, and only 2 cds and 2 dvds, plus a lichtenstein print from MOMA.

we also had a coffee at Paul's Boutique, which was notable not only for being a beastie boys album, but also for having real coffee and a nice bathroom without a queue (the rest of new york seems to be across the road at starbucks). then we met naomi and went to see NZ comedians, flight of the conchords. while i do feel like i've heard some of their songs enough times recently, they still are the funniest comedians in the world, and this has been recognised over here - Time Out ran a full page article raving about them, they're playing 5 nights in a row, and their first night was packed beyond capacity and the crowd cheered for encores and gave them a standing ovation. nice work brett and jemaine. i'm sure the show was better the chassidic reggae i had wanted to go to (but it was sold out).

monday, g and i went to MOMA and saw lots of warhol, lichtenstein, van gough, dali and the rest. its all good stuff, but my lack of knowledge of art limits the amount i get out of art galleries, and soon we were worn out and ready to wonder. had a lte lunch in a kosher deli, i finally got my chicken soup i need to combat my cold, and i also got a cornbeef sandwhich which was 2 cows squashed between some bread. the sandwhich was pretty good, but as a general observation - in america, the emphasis seems to be on bigger and cheaper, not better. which means its easy to get HUGE cups of coffee, but damn hard to find a decent espresso ( i had my first this morning at MOMA).

(btw, there will be more photos coming soon, i'm loving my digital camera).

b

dreamage

so last night i had this dream that i was at university and i had assignments to hand in, and then i woke up and i was on holiday in new york. that's pretty cool. to paraphrase peter griffin from the family guy, i feel like i've died and gone to heaven and then they realised that there was a mix-up and i wasn't supposed to be dead yet, so they sent me back to earth, only they sent me back to new york instead.

ok, saturday night's gig. pete's candy store is such a cute little place in williamsburg. the back half where bands play is so narrow, but the stage has so many lights, its kind of like the muppet show set. the grumpy bartender made me start playing before many people had arrived and so the audience for the first half of my set were 5 kiwi friends, but by the end some others had come to listen. the emptier a venue the louder i tend to play, so it was quite a good set. the last song was jane's a mean girl, a song by Mike Epstein (Boys Suck / the motion sick) about a friend of his called Jane. so his friend Jane came and sang it with me. it was hard because we hadn't rehearsed and i had hardly met this woman standing next to me, yet i was singing about what a fkn jerk she is. but it was certainly fun to do. although i think i actually prefer the way kali sings it.

to hear das ben and kali sing jane's a mean girl click here

to hear boys suck sing jane's a mean girl click here

after i played, mike played a whole bunch of his boys suck songs which i love and it was cool to hear them live. in the middle of the last song he forgot the lyric so he stopped the song to explain what he meant and what sirens were in greek mythology and then returned to the last line of the verse cause he remembered that one.

blitzkrieg bliss were too loud for the tiny venue so we left and went to Barcade, a bar filled with 80s spacey games - we played pacman, donkey kong, frogger, moon patrol, phoenix. it was all good fun.

b

das ben live at Pete's Candy Store 16 Apr 05

Jane's a mean girl

friday in the city

well my gig is in 2 hours, and i've still got a bad cold. i've taken lots of cold drugs and i've got some more to take before i play, but its certainly less than ideal.

friday was another slow starter of a day. we met terence for breakfast at 3pm. my cold was bad so i really wanted to get some kosher chicken soup, but friday afternoon isn't a good time to go for kosher soup, so we just went to a deli near columbia. then we had a big walk around central park. central park is huge and quite pretty, and certainly a life saver in a city that otherwise contains no grass whatsoever. terence says he goes jogging there regularly, but only recently discovered that there are laws about which direction you have to run in (he wondered why everyone was running the opposite way from him).

after hours of walking we then found, and only some getting lost, G and i found the whitney art museum and listened to aaron perform in skoby's band. they performed an hour set that told the story of some mountain climbing and there were some yaks there too. it was really good (even if my description doesn't sell it very well). we also saw some art by tim hawkinson, which was cool and gross and inventive and out-of-it. highlights included sculptings made of his nail clippings and a machine that repeatedly wrote tim's signature (are these really highlights or just pieces that are easier to explain?) check it out yourself here

steve chong joined us at the whitney and we all went down to the canal room to hear naomi's band less nessman play. the canal room is a posh bar, along the lines of vespa or amba with v expensive drinks. naomi's band suited the venue, not my cup of tea, but they do what they do well, and naomi has an amazing voice. steve described them as Alanis Morissette in a good mood.

today we returned to central park for a picnic. museums schmuseums, this trip is about seeing my friends. and now its time to get ready to rock in my own perculiar acoustic stonk way.

b

attack of the snotmonster

eek, its friday, my cold has come out with a vengance, i am a snotmonster, and somehow i have to try and perform in public tomorrow night. i need chicken soup.

had a good day yesterday. we met up with terence, who showed us around Columbia University. Columbia is big and old pretty, lots of old pillars and engraved sayings about education isn't a bad thing (or something like that). we then went down and met Catherine for lunch. it is great to see Terence and Catherine again. they're doing well over here, particularly Catherine, who has a great job with other fun design people and she gets to bike 40 minutes to work each day, so she's happy. Terence, G and i wondered up big streets for most of the day, and i bought my digital camera and some cds and dcds (whoops). but the shopping didn't really excite me. i guess main street shopping in giant shops doesn't excite me anywhere. we need to find the interesting shops.

last night we went to see Aaron play guitar with Derek James. it was a pretty crappy bar with flat beer in plastic cups, and the music was more pretty than what i normally listen to, but the band looked like they were having fun, and its great seeing aaron pay jazz again.i've got a good photo of him playing guitar and i'll add that to this entry if i ever work out how. G and i then went out with Jason Wald, another ex-aucklander.jace showed us around st. marks area - 2nd hand record stores and other funky shops (luckily for my visa card they were all closed), then we went to a japanese restaurant for very cheap beer, it was all very jap punk and quite different from the civilised japanese restaurants back home.

and although new york is a grid and impossible to get lost in, we managed to find a cab driver that didn't speak english, didn't know where he was going, and called a friend who also had never heard of Flushing Ave (this street is not small). all part of the new york experience.

jet pack's a winner

and jet pack has now received 20 reviews on garageband.com and got rated #253 of 491 in Indie Rock active competition, which places it at #1,939 of 3,698 in the all time garageband Indie Rock charts. yay, i always wanted a song in the charts. and it won a listener's pick award too. yep, jet pack was rated 'Feel Good Track in Indie Rock, week of 11Apr2005'

and here's my favourite review from the garageband process:

"Recharge my wheelchair, i've gotta gig later: Great Ramones-ish vibe going on here,you kinda sound like your like 60 or something i dig that though...not too many cats doing that thing. the production is very classic to the classic genre you are very much in debt to here.i hope this band is all of your other middle aged drinking buddies...no one is doing that these days...and they think they struck Gold with jeff tweedy's kids band..Fuck that this is GOLD!!i would go fly with your geriatric asses any day!"


now that does feel good...

can't sleep in new york city

its 7am, and i've been awake for hours. my brain tells me i should be asleep, but my body has decided that it would be more fun to be wide awake now and fast asleep later in the day when i've got stuff to do. oh well, who needs sleep anyway.

and since i arrived in new york, i've developed a cold, just sniffing at the moment, but i hope i'll be able to "sing" at my gig on saturday night (let's face it my singing always requires speech marks to differentiate it from traditional singing, you know the kind where you sing all the correct notes at the correct times). oh well, who needs to breathe anyway.

i arrived at mignight on tuesday and spent 2 hours on the subway to get to aaron's place. so all up it was a mere 28 hours from wellington to new york. it was great to see aaron and i was wide awake and ready to talk, but for some strange reason aaron didn't feel like hanging out at 2.30am. weird.

spent most of yesterday waiting for G to arrive. poor wee thing had the trip from hell from Maryland to here, unexpected bills, extra charges, trains that weren't running, planes and buses that were late. but she made it and its great to see her.

G and i went for a walk around Aaron's neighbourhood, Williamsburg, which is full of hasidim speaking into their cellphones in yiddish. then we went to chinatown for dinner, we ate at an amazing vegetarian chinese restaurant. we had mock beef and mock chicken, and the beef in particular was so realistic, i wondered if they meant that it came from a vegetarian cow. still wasn't brave enough to try the mock pork. then we went to a bar in lower east side, and were joined by my friend naomi. naomi and i were leaders together in israel, back in 97. she hasn't changed at all, still over the top and so so funny. it was great catching up.

today we're off to meet terence at columbia university, then meet catherine for lunch (she's got a real job), and we aim to do lots of shopping. at 11 tonight aaron is playing guitar for a songwriter called Derek James http://www.derekjamesmusic.com/ . tomorrow night we're going to see aaron play in an electroacoustic band at the whitney art museum, a band called Skooby Laposky and Oratai Ensemble ( http://www.oratai.com/ ) who did themtatic pieces about mountain climbing and yetis. then we go onto see less nessman ( http://www.lessnessman.com ), naomi's band. saturday i play, and i'll play again on monday. sunday we're keen to go see a gig by a hassidic reggae band called matisyahu ( http://www.hasidicreggae.com/ ), but the gig may be sold out already (and they're playing a venue that holds a few thousand). i've managed to fill virtually my whole week with gigs without even buying a time out.

almost time to wake up and do stuff.

b

dinosaurs warning

oh, and i think i saw j. mascis at la airport, but i wasn't brave enough to go talk to him, because he looked so grumpy when he played last year in wellington.

twister

i'm in LA airport/ i've got 6 minutes to write before my time runs out and the comma doesn't work. i'm discovering how much i use commas normally.

i made it out of wellington on what seems like the last flight out of the city - the fog starte comingin as my plane took off. it was such a nice day til then - what a fickle town (note use of dashes to make up for no commas)

flight to LA was long and sleep-depriving but we got here an that's a plus. la is the ugliest city i've ever seen - lucky large parts are obscured by smog. why would anyone ever live in a flat city. especially one built in a desert (no offence people from christchurch or beer-sheva - but then i wouldn't live in those town either.

on the plane i saw Lemony Snickett which is really good - and jim carrey is very jim carrey - but it works. also loving my book vernon god little.

(the subject heading in this post is twister as a reference to the castle 'what film did you see...'

time running out - so i'll go board my plane to new york. byeeee.

so much additude

te he, tomorrow i fly to new york, but today i've been reading reviews of Jet Pack on http://www.garageband.com/dasben its a site where people review each other's songs, before you can put your own songs on the site you have to review enough other songs. that means that people don't really listen to the song in much detail, they just skim them so they can get through reviews quickly (well, that's how i reviewed songs anyway).

this is the site that voted ghost 'stupidest song in folk rock' two weeks in a row!! the first and only time my music has won a reward.

reviews for jet pack are mixed, the one i'm most excited about is this one:

"I want my jet packThis acoustic three piece band sounds a bit like a combination of Billy Bragg and Elvis Costello. The song is the story of how we never get what we want. Like Buck Rogers the future we live in now doesn't quite live up to the expectations we had in the past. Vocals sound real good, but the instraments could use a little better production. The upright bass gets lost in the mix as all upright basses do. I would like to actually hear an electric version of this song, I think it has a lot of possabilities.
Extra Credit: Lyrics, Originality."

i'm so excited that someone thought the bass on the track was upright, i wish i could have used an upright bass, but luckily i had pet, which is the next best thing.

other reviews are less complimentary, but for some twisted reason they still please me. e.g:

"What is this, 60's do bop? I dont know man this soundslike somthing thats about 40 years behind the times, with a slight punk additude. the sound is really bad. The singer has a really mediocre voice. the lyrics are kinda dumb. I guess youd have to like that type of music"

(but maybe i just like the way the guy spelt 'additude')

btw if you haven't heard jet pack yet, check it out on www.mp3.com.au/dasben

Doh!

Oh yeah - the website - here's the address:
www.dasben.com

Website up!!

It's April 9th and my website is up! Thanks Jayne and Steve - you guys completely rule. NYC here I come!!

Gagging for it

last night i went to Ghost Club at indigo. Ghost Club played a wonderful set full of swirling and squealing guitar tones. Dave Mitchell really is a guitar god (i'm not sure if God does play the guitar, but...) and he has the coolest hair in rock and roll. unfortunately the gig was cut short early due to dave getting in a grump with his equipment and storming off. oh well.as for the opening bands. Marineville played one of the best sets i've seen them do recently, they made lots of angry guitar noises in the best kind of way, and 'lets build a house' is such a catchy rock tune. and i reckon mark's hair could rival dave mitchell's in a few years. then the yokel onos played and proved yet again the 2 is the new 3 - as a bassist i should probably resent 2 piece bands, but these guys do it so well, as do white stripes, yeah yeah yeahs (2 plus singer), and some would even argue that the sex pistols were really a 2-piece band (with singer and sid).i also popped into blue note and watched the open mic night reach a new low when some old drunk guy decided to sing a song about the blue note bar which he'd written 5 minutes earlier, and poor pete (blue note open mic host) had to accompany him. sometimes pete really earns his money.

Don't stare at me like you don't know me...

my head hurts, last night i went out and got stonkered and a good time was had by all. first i went to see the bridge of sighs (kali and mark) play at indigo, and they sounded great! really the best thing i've ever heard at the acoustic lounge (and that may have been because mark played electric guitar - maybe i'm sick of acoustic lounge). kali's singing was great, particularly by about the third song when her confidence was growing and her singing got louder. and they just looked like they were having fun, which is the main thing. and they played all the hits - Play, Don't stare at me. and they played a whole bunch of new cool songs, including one they'd written 3 hours earlier. there's an minidisc recording of the gig, which hopefully i'll be able to get a copy of, but i'm also hoping they put more songs on http://www.soundclick.com/thebridgeofsighsthen i went to havana for andi's drinks. andi and geoff are off to live in the hawkes bay to grow olives (http://www.telegraphhill.co.nz ) and we'll all going to miss them. but then they left and havana got too noisy so kali and john white ( http://www.mestar.co.nz/ ) and i went to zebos - and we got ID-d!!! first time in about 10 years, i was so flattered. it was all quite bizarre, we arrived and the bar was empty, but the bouncer still made us queue up (there was no one else in the queue) and then wait and then he asked to see ID. funny. by the time we left the bar was full of kiddies and there was a huge line of kids lined up outside - why would anyone line up on a cold night to get into Zebos?

Million Miles Away gets closer

wow, yesterday i received the(almost) finished copy of my debut cd Million Miles Away. i still need to get it mastered, pressed, and covers made, but that stuff won't happen til june when i get back from overseas.in the meantime, overseas people are going to be able to get advance copies, they'll be un-mastered CD-Rs, but they still sound good, i'm particularly excited about Jet Pack, so i'm sticking it online for you to download now - it'll be on www.garageband.com/dasben and on www.mp3.com.au/dasben (soon).btw, did i even say on this journal that i'm going overseas next week!! yep, on tuesday i fly to new york to meet Geraldine and catch up with all my new york peeps - aaron, naomi, steve, terence and catherine. it'll be great. following that i'm heading onto Israel, London, and Budapest. hopefully i'll buy a digital camera in new york, so you'll be able to see some pics.woohoo!!!