 |
Current mood:  amused Category: Music
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Portland, OR glitch-soul band is chosen by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the Top 25 Bands on Myspace
Rolling Stone magazine, in an effort to draw attention to the musical talent represented on the ever-expanding, internet super-giant, Myspace.com, announced a contest last week with the goal to find the Top 25 Bands on Myspace.com. For a week, they invited ANY and EVERY band to submit one song to be listened to by employees of the magazine. During that time, 1700 songs were listened to, and they made their final picks yesterday, which included local R&B innovators, THE BEAUTY. As the band understands, the honor of being chosen means that the song they submitted will be featured on Rollingstone.com, and will recieve a mention in the print magazine.
The Beauty is made up of two Oregon natives who have been active in the Portland music community for over 15 years. Matt Zimmerman (Automattic) joined a band out of highschool in 1993 that played many well-known underground Portland venues, including La Luna, Satyricon and Roseland . He went on to tour nationally with the band, which gained much local support, with a regular 350-400 fans in attendance at every show. A few other collaborations landed him playing with a band at McMeniman's Crystal Ballroom. Todd Fadel (Falsetto) was taken to shows at the legendary all-ages venue, X-Ray Cafe, by Matt in 1991. There they saw the R&B singer JR Pella-fronted funk-rock band, Drunk at Abi's, and were inspired by the combination of soulful vocals and hardhitting guitar, bass and drums. Todd became a show promoter shortly thereafter, as well as fronting a locally-famous Star Wars tribute band that Zimmerman played bass for, where the members dressed up and wrote lyrics from the first-person perspective of the characters. Todd went on to start well-respected local all-ages venue, MEOW MEOW, in 2000, and became a father that same year. Zimmerman became a father two years later, and the bond of shared experience brought them together again. They decided to take the history they had shared together to start a wonderful collaboration for the future.
The Beauty is a result of the sacrifice of their Monday nights for the last 4 1/2 years, where they've developed their sound and recorded it, in the spare bedrooms of Zimmerman's humble North Portland home. Many memorable shows have marked The Beauty's four-year history: an opening slot for arab-jewish-dance-pop duo, Chromeo, an opening slot for UK soul wonder, Jamie Lidell, many concerts on the 9ft-tall bathroom-ceiling stage @ the world-famous Voodoo Doughnut, and many, many fun basements, coffee shops and backyards of babysitters.
The song they chose to share with Rolling Stone is a song they wrote their most devoted fan and most reliable babysitter, Abbi. They unveiled the song at her 16th birthday party in the cluttered backyard of her parent's house, complete with vegetable garden and porclain birdbath. The song places her in a near-mythic light : "here she comes in glory/wearing her life story/let me bear witness to her lovingkindness", but also carries words of brotherly advice: "when your lips get dry and chappy/just find a friend with lipbalm/and just stay calm". The song aptly conveys the musical style of the band, with signature blips and fuzz for the backbeat, and the cracked croons of duo piercing their way through the analog fog. The band shows the signs of maturity in the development of their sound, and the world seems to be ready for what they could offer.
With the consistent public support of interesting soul/r&b act such as Outkast and Gnarls Barkley, The Beauty feels that the time is right for their material to take a larger stage, but they intend to share the spotlight with their other Portland soul brethren. In 2007, they will be hosting many spotlights on local soul/rhythm/dance acts entitled "What's going ON Wednesdays" at recently-reopened ALL-AGES Satyricon and cozy pub-crawler favorite, Towne Lounge. As they put it in their song "Beautiful Music": "Don't you go hoarding all the sound/you know there's plenty of beautiful music to go around".
11:28 PM
Powered by  | | English | | Albanian | | Arabic | | Bulgarian | | Catalan | | Chinese | | Croatian | | Czech | | Danish | | Dutch | | Estonian | | Filipino | | Finnish | | French | | Galician | | German | | Greek | | Hebrew | | Hindi | | Hungarian | | Indonesian | | Italian | | Japanese | | Korean | | Latvian | | Lithuanian | | Maltese | | Norwegian | | Polish | | Portuguese | | Romanian | | Russian | | Serbian | | Slovak | | Slovenian | | Spanish | | Swedish | | Thai | | Turkish | | Ukrainian | | Vietnamese |
|