Cassie Lewis took some photos of Saturday’s Parking Lot Blowout. Click here to see them all. Great shots of Times New Viking, Brainbow, El Jesus de Magico, Great Plains, and more.
Tag Archives: Brainbow
Photos from the Parking Lot Blowout
Notes on the Donewaiting.com 5 Year Anniversary
Some thoughts on the two record breaking events we had this weekend to celebrate the 5 year.
Saturday
MIKE SHIFLET – really interesting stuff. loved the band. he mentioned in our interview with him that he’s hoping to do more shows with a band and i hope he follows up. it’s the making of something really cool.
MIRANDA SOUND – love the new stuff. i like when they play it a little heavier, something they don’t always do…. i think it adds a great extra layer to their music.
EL JESUS DE MAGICO – four years ago if you would have told me that i would have El Jesus play my 5 year party I would have laughed in your face. Things change, and I’m really happy that they did. Set was fucking FIERCE. can’t wait to hear their new album.
BRAINBOW/BLUEPRINT – I had intentionally stayed away from the rehersals because I wanted to experience the show for the first time with the crowd. And put it quite simply, I was stunned. Look, I love music, but this was seriously mind blowing. I felt something that I haven’t felt in a long time.
Instead of Brainbow trying to recreate the music of Blueprint, they approached it from their own point of view. It was Blueprint. It was Brainbow. Neither band sacrificed their integrity or created some sort of Frankenstein rock/rap thing that was only a novelty. I say this with all seriousness, it was epic! When Print said it was their last song, I was heartbroken! I could have used 5 more songs. I didn’t want it to end, and that’s a sign of a good set. Leave us wanting more….
I know it took a lot of time for Print and Brainbow to practice for this event, and I am really thankful that they did. It means so much that they took on this experiment for the 5 year anniversary of the site, and I can’t show my appreciation enough.
PS: Bob Ray Starker and Leslie Jankowski (from Church of the Red Museum) added a horn section in two of the songs. What a nice touch! Oh man. So good.
We did bill this as a one time only thing, and I hope they consider maybe doing it again in the future. Or maybe not. Maybe in this internet age when everything is recorded, Youtubed, and distributed to the world, it’s nice to have a “YOU HAD TO BE THERE” thing. I’d be happy either way.
This was the biggest crowd we’ve ever had for a single donewaiting.com event. It was great.
Update: Youtubed! This is Brainbow/Blueprint performing “Liberated”. Picture quality is dark but it’s the music that matters.
Friday
GRAVE BLANKETS – first time seeing them, won’t be my last. Really good sound. The recorded material they’ve put out there doesn’t do them justice…. they are a great live band.
SINKANE – Ahmed has always been one of my favorite musicians in Columbus and it looks like he’s finally firmed up his vision of Sinkane. Their set was hypnotic. Really cool. And with a solid indie label putting their album out later this year, things are gonna explode! Can’t wait! AHMED I WANT A PICTURE DISC RECORD.
THIS MOMENT IN BLACK HISTORY – haven’t seen them since they opened up for YEah Yeah Yeahs in Cleveland a few years back. Good set, liked the energy. First mosh pit ever at a donewaiting event.
DEATHLY FIGHTER – I am a believer.
This Moment in Black History Video from the Show
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Tagged blueprint, Brainbow, Deathly FIghter, El Jesus De Magico, Grave Blankets, Mike Shiflet, Miranda Sound, Sinkane, This Moment in Black History
Donewaiting Five Year Saturday Preview: Blueprint
Y’know the Blueprint/Brainbow combination is fierce because it’s the first time an upper echelon rapper and an artistic-minded band from Columbus have gone the collab route that worked for De La Soul & Teenage Fanclub, The Roots, and pretty much no one else. Who remembers Sir Mixalot’s corny line on the Judgement Night Sountrack, “I Want to Put You In the Mud-honey?” We don’t need to even get into Limp Bisquit and all that other stuff that is the worst of the terrible.
So given that the locals in Columbus love to tell the story again and again about how diverse the music scene is. And how it’s prolly the only place in country where pretty much the most talented and successful in the city in all music forms from Noise to Hip Hop hang out in the same places, and support each other. It’s interesting that this is the first time this has happened.
We love to ride for how Daymon Dodson, 3cbsa, Thought Set, Weightless, CDR, Print/Black Keys at the Newport, Scotty, The Apes/Meta4ce, Killed In Action and Przm/Fonosluts changed the game forever with next ups like Triceratops, IGLU, PBJ, DJ Detox and Milk Bar’s DCKareem watching in the crowd . Who can forget the famous El Jesus Alive cover that solidified Daymon as the Mac Dre of this movement? I could site examples forever. Sweetheart’s crowd. Skylab. Carabar. Beat Lounge. Most Weightless bills. TNV’s support of a mourning Hip Hop scene. It’s embedded.
If you are in Columbus, you prolly already know what I am talking about.
Point being, cats shared spaces and bills for long enough that you can call it culture. But this show is a first. No one was dumb ever enough to do a wack some rap/rock jump-off just because people were friends. So you know this Bluebow thing is supposed to happen. And it will be epic. I caught up with Print and spoke to him about the perils of the live band/Hip Hop problem. He explained to me how Brainbow, and himself were able to prepare something that is locally historic and musically sound.
Hip Hop with a live band is always a very thorny endeavor. What common mistakes do people make?
Blueprint: The main mistake I think people make when they pair up with a band is to base it completely around what they’ve already heard so it comes out sounding like terrible imitations of what’s already out there. Or they just get a bunch of random musicians who love the edge of hip-hop but just want to jam out, so the results sound like a hip-hop jam band; the music goes on and on for 10-minutes at a time and the end up freestyling or rapping about complete nonsense.
What have Brainbow and yourself done to avoid these errors?
Blueprint: The most important thing to both of us is to avoid compromising the integrity of what we’ve done already. And I think the best way to do that is to make it about the songs. The arrangements and the spirit of the songs should be the first thing that determines how you present that music. Some hip-hop songs work perfectly as chopped-up samples, but they lose their effectiveness when they’re played out by musicians. At the same time, there are some hip-hop arrangements that translate extremely well live, and those are the arrangements you want to focus on. For example, the production work I’ve done that’s more layered, and spacey tends to translate better than sparse minimalistic stuff. Nobody in a band wants to be playing the exact same riff for 5 minutes straight anymore than i want to hear them play the same riff for 5-minutes straight. So before we ever met up to rehearse i sat down and brainstormed about what songs I had in my catalog that could translate well in terms of arrangement; songs with intros, verses, choruses, and outros, etc.. Then i sent them to Brainbow to see what they felt could work. Just by approaching it like that i think we eliminated a lot of the problems other people may have when they try to do this. Now, I’m not saying that we’re any better than anybody else because we have yet to play the show yet, but I do feel confident that nobody will leave the show saying that we sounded exactly like they expected us to sound, and I also think we sound like something brand new.
Brainbow and Blueprint will be playing with Miranda Sound, Mike Shiflet, and El Jesus de Magico Saturday at Skully’s. For more information, click here.
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Posted in 5 Year, Interviews, Wes Flexner
Donewaiting Year Five Saturday Preview: Brainbow
When I was assembling the five year anniversary events, I I wanted to have some sort of special centerpiece to it all. Something a little extraordinary, something that we might not see anywhere else or ever again.
This was right after the time Brainbow decided to cover a whole bunch of Lord of the Rings music for a Halloween show. I figured if a band could dedicate themselves to doing something like that, maybe they’d be up for doing something for the five year. I knew the band was good friends with Blueprint, and thought that maybe combining the music of Brainbow with the lyrics and rapping of Blueprint could create something truly unique. You’ll be able to find out Saturday night!
I asked Will Fugman about the collaboration, and here’s what he said.
What can people expect from the Blueprint/Brainbow collaboration Saturday?
Will: Well, there’s kinda going to be a little bit of everything. First, as some people have been asking, there won’t be a bunch of Brainbow songs with Blueprint rapping over top of them. We have been approaching this as a collaboration, so we wanted it to be as much of that as possible, with the time constraints we had to work under. We (Brainbow) just started trying to play like we normally would, but with more emphasis on beats, or beats that lend themselves to hip-hop specifically. This was before Al (Blueprint) even came over, and we were just sort of trying to get into that mindset, and see if we could find some sort of compromise that could take both of our sounds, which are pretty different, and put them together.
That’s kinda what we’re going for, but the most important part of the mix, in our opinion, is the vocal element, which is something we’ve never dealt with before. Pretty much everything we’ve done was to work around the framework of Blueprint’s words, verses, choruses, etc. With the exception of one instrumental, which was written by Print, and then brainbowtized by us, you can expect to hear some mellow, some heavy, some funkier stuff (though that sounds a lot scarier than it actually is), some more psyche oriented stuff, as well as a few things that are more aligned with what you might think of when you think of Blueprint.
How has the process been working with Blueprint, an outsider to the band?
Sweet. It’s always a little horrifying to work with new people… We have our own way of working on things, which could be pretty annoying to an outside person. I would imagine it’s even more annoying to a vocalist, but Print knows what’s up with writing music so it wasn’t too bad. He started sending me some stuff over email, some things he thought would lend themselves well to what we’re doing, and we started with those as a skeleton. We took the overall feel of what he had, with the beats and the lyrics, and tried to throw a little of ourselves into it and see what happened. Al’s been really cool about us trying things out, or changing things around a little, which was great.
That’s usually a tricky subject, you know, someone gives you a recording and then you go and try to put your grubby hands all over it, and you’re worried that they won’t like it, or they’ll be offended, or whatever. Al’s been great about being there, being constructive, and being a really big part of the whole thing…which is all everyone could have hoped for. It’s cool, because we’ve shot the shit about doing something like this in the past, so it’s great to actually see what the hell it is we can do together, and it’s been a pretty positive, as well as difficult, experience.
EVENT TRAILER:
Poster for Second Night of Donewaiting.com 5 Year Anniversary
Hand printed by Clint Reno.
This show is awesome 500 different ways, but the thing that you will probably never see again is Rhymesayers/Weightless/Soul Position rapper Blueprint performing his music in collaboration with music by Brainbow.
Details on both shows here.
Advance Warning: Donewaiting.com 5 Year Anniversary Weekend Events in Columbus
Friends, we’re putting together two great shows in February to celebrate our five year anniversary. Get them on your calendars pronto:
On Saturday, February 16 at Skully’s, we have a really special one-time collaboration between Columbus’ favorite hip hop MC Blueprint (Rhymesayers/Weightless/Soul Position) and instrumental rising stars Brainbow. This is going to be something really amazing, and I can’t wait to see this go down.
Joining Blueprint + Brainbow in the bill will be El Jesus de Magico, Miranda Sound, and Mike Shiflet (Ecstatic Peace). Mike’s going to be putting together a great band of all-stars.
On Friday, February 15 at Carabar, we’ve got another great show assembled by Doug Elliott. This Moment in Black History, Grave Blankets, Deathly Fighter, and Sinkane. This show will be free as hell.
We’ll keep you posted on additions, etc.
Audio Eagle Presents: A Compilation of Bands from Ohio
MP3: Secret Histories by Brainbow
MP3: It’s a Bubble Bath of Sharks!!! by Beaten Awake
Akron label Audio Eagle (launched by Pat Carney of The Black Keys) has released a new compilation of songs from bands all across Ohio. Featuring such donewaiting.com favorites as Doug Gillard, Deathly Fighter, Six Parts Seven, Brainbow, and Gil Mantera’s Party Dream, it really is a nice artifact showcasing what’s going on here.
You can pick up the record in various independent record stores throughout Ohio or directly from the label.
1. Doug Gillard – For What I’ve Done (North Carolina/Cleveland)
2. Goodbye Ohio – Gabrial (Akron)
3. Coffinberry – Earthworms In the Sun (Cleveland)
4. Machine Go Boom – Gentleman’s Reply (Cleveland)
5. The Strange Division – New Way of Thinking (Akron)
6. JJ Magazine – Dinner (Cleveland)
7. Beaten Awake – It’s a Bubble Bath of Sharks!!! (Kent)
8. Clouds Forming Crowns – Let It Take Hold (Cleveland)
9. Buffalo Killers – The Path Before Me (Cincinnati)
10. The Black Keys – Nobody But You(Akron)
11. Hell’s Information – Song Six (Akron)
12. Deathly Fighter – New Variations on Themes (Columbus)
13. Six Parts Seven – Stolen Moments (Kent)
14. Brainbow – Secret Histories (Columbus)
15. Southest Engine – We Have You Surrounded (Athens)
16. The Same Things – Red Carpet (Akron)
17. Goodmorning Valentine – City Lights (Akron)
18. Heartless Bastards – All This Time (Cincinnati)
19. Houseguest – King of Crystal Skies (Akron)
20. Celebrity Pilots – Let the Shade Shine In (Cleveland)
21. Gil Mantera’s Party Dream – Chalklit Pyhe II (Youngstown)
(tracklisting links lovingly jacked right from the code of I Rock Cleveland, where they’re running a contest to win copies of the album)
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Tagged Audio Eagle, Brainbow, Doug Gillard, Southeast Engine, The Black Keys, The Celebrity Pilots
Brainbow as Helm’s Deep on Halloween, in Pictures
DW message board user starchild has posted an excellent flickr set of Brainbow performing as Helm’s Deep, a LOTR-themed supergroup performing music from the films, at Ruby Tuesday’s last Saturday. The costumes and set look ridiculously good. If you are kicking youself, like I am, for missing the show, these photos are the next best thing, though there’s talk of a video to be posted in the future. Great shots!