By day (the word day being used only figuratively in this case) Marisa Demarco is the news editor here at the Weekly Alibi . By night, and by any other free time, she’s a prolific musician around Albuquerque and the creator of Gatas y Vatas. Now in its second year, the solo weirdo woman music festival features more than two dozen performers from Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Denver and Portland. Music happens on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 4 and 5, beginning at 7 p.m. sharp at The Kosmos (1715 Fifth Street NW). Tickets for each day are $7 at the door. In honor of these festivities, I asked Marisa to do a Song Roulette.
Song Roulette
1) "Yes, I’m a Witch" • Yoko Ono & The Brother Brothers • Yes, I’m a Witch “If you were in some grimy wood-paneled bar in the South with a bunch of bikers, your compatriots would love the rockin’ riffage coming out of The Brother Brothers. The hefty leather-vest wearing bears would be nodding their heads and wiping the beer foam out of their mustaches. Then Yoko Ono would get up there with her big old black hat and sing things like, ‘Each time we don’t say what we wanna say, we’re dying’ and, ‘Don’t try to make cock-pecked people out of us.’ Then she’ll call the audience ‘sweetie legs’ and do that crazy wiggly thing with her voice. God, I love her so much.”
Song Roulette
2) "Look at the Yam Ladened Ocelots" • The Fertile Crescent • The Fertile Crescent “This is a local band. These guys sent their first album to the Alibi in 2007, and I liked it a lot, so I interviewed them. Maybe they were a little ahead of the curve, because I feel like in 2011, all kinds of guys are doing this delicate, falsetto singing atop old-school synthesizer abuse. Still, this album has a great freshness to it. It doesn’t seem overworked, and in some places it’s a little off because it’s out of control. But that’s awesome. I wonder what the band thinks of this one now?”
Song Roulette
3) "Behind My Camel" • Primus • Rhinoplasty “I don’t like this at all. I don’t know why it’s on my Handheld Aural Device. It’s a cover a song performed originally by The Police and written by Police guitarist Andy Summers. The main pseudo-Arabic reverby lick is awful, and the bass part is really dull. Just the worst. It goes on and on. Even the drums can’t save it. It’s like an intro to a song that never happens. I like minimalist stuff, but this has too much going on to really be minimalist. Now I want to know: Why cover, of all jenky Police songs, this mega-jenky one? Primus sucks!”
Song Roulette
4) "Makeba" • Aceyalone • All Balls Don’t Bounce “There was a time when I loved this album with all my whole self. But I’ve listened to it so much, I almost can’t hear it anymore. Still, the production on this track is DOPE. Stand-up bass, laid-back beats, keyboards in shades of evening. But even Ace, lyricist extraordinaire, can miss the mark when talking about the laaaaaaaaydeeeeez. It’s sad when your hip-hop hero-brain comes off like he could be anybody’s ex- boyfriend. He does that for a verse or two on this track, but the poet that lives in his subconscious knows better, too, and he spits some real beauty. Or maybe both things are beautiful—regular ex-BF garbage and smart heartfelt garbage.”
Song Roulette
5) "Scrubber" • Melt-Banana • Speak Squeak Creak “This song is 17 seconds long. A lot of the tracks on this album are super short—like 10 seconds or a minute. The longest is 2:35. The first second of ‘Scrubber’ is blown-out guitar noise. Then other instruments join in: drums, seizure bass and percussive, less-FX guitar. Singer Yasuko O. shouts some high-pitched syllables that I can’t quite make out. But they seem adamant. As a middle-phrase punctuation I think she says ‘so I win!’ between pauses, but I’m probably wrong about the words. The band clamps down on O. for a quick, rhythmic replication of her first lyric. Then, five seconds of silence. I want to hear it 10 more times and think about it even harder.”
