The Bowery Presents

The Bowery Ballroom upcoming shows

Margot & The Nuclear So and So's

The Lonely Forest / Cameron McGill & What Army

Venue:
The Bowery Ballroom
Date:
Sun 9/26
Notes:
18+
Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 8:00 PM
$13 advance / $15 day of show
Tickets
Margot & the Nuclear So and So\'s
official website
myspace
As with most good stories, the tale of Margot & the nuclear so and so's begins in the depths of poverty and despair, far from the bright lights of Hollywood, tucked away in a decaying neighborhood somewhere in the midwest. The kind of neighborhood where it's often cold and grey. The kind of neighborhood where you might expect a gang of hoodlums like the so and so's to take solace in recording pop songs and causing general mayhem.

So, in the winter of 2004, in this decaying midwestern neighborhood, Richard Edwards and Andy Fry happened to meet at a pet store. Both in the market for a companion of the cuddly variety, they struck up a conversation and soon realized that they were becoming fast friends. After discussing Paul Simon and the Cardigans for awhile, Richard confessed that he had written a bunch of songs and offered to play them for his new friend. Once the cassette tape ended, Andy's eyes lit up! He liked those songs. They made him happy and sad at the same time. The two would start a band! Richard informed Andy that in a week's time, he would come up with a name, and that within 24 hours, he would be moving into Andy's house, as would a few other homeless musicians, who would now be playing in this collective.

Over the next few months, the band set up a sort of socialist commune in their midwestern neighborhood and started recording their debut album, 'The dust of retreat.' This went on during some very cold months, and the so & so's nearly froze on several occasions. They drank hot chocolate and took vows of everlasting friendship. When the record was finally finished, the so and so's rejoiced. They drank wine and patted each other on the back, then they climbed into a van and started driving. They drove all over the country with their new record and played songs for anyone who wanted to listen. People called their music sex-folk, or even urban folk, if they didn't like to say the word, 'sex.' It was a cacophony of electric and acoustic instruments that sat on top of rock-type rhythms.
The Lonley Forest
myspace
The Lonely Forest is an indie rock band from the lovely Anacortes, Washington.
Cameron McGill & What Army
myspace
Born in 1877 in Calw, on the edge of the Black Forest, Cameron McGill was brought up in a missionary household where it was assumed that he would study for the ministry. McGill's religious crisis led to his fleeing from the Maulbronn seminary in 1891, an unsuccessful cure by a well-known theologian and faith healer, and an attempted suicide. After being expelled from high school, he worked in bookshops for several years. His first collection, 'Stories of The Knife and The Back', describes a youth who leaves his mountain village to become a poet. The lush instrumentation and beautifully crafted melodies, belie the darker nature of the song content. Mostly focusing on personal admissions of guilt and failure, the album's characters struggle in coming to terms with their mortality. All throughout, they simply try to find a friend and fall in love. This was followed by 'Street Ballads & Murderesques', the tale of a schoolboy totally out of touch with his contemporaries, who flees through different cities after his escape from home. The collection of material on Streets...takes pop musick to the dark libraries of your old house, inhabits a stark and desperate corner of the mind, and simply tells a good story. The wildly vibrant characters offer their most honest interpretations of the dishonest life. They travel time, fall in and out of love, miss and are missed. These are songs of imminent regret, class IV rapids, European gypsies, pre-renaissance Germany, cities with chips on their shoulder, veterans of domestic war, handwritten letters and handmade harmony, foreign wines and local girls, break-ups and breakdowns, and post-war divorcees. World War I came as a terrific shock, and McGill joined the pacifist Romain Rolland in antiwar activities--not only writing antiwar songs, but editing two newspapers for prisoners of war. During this period, McGill's first marriage broke up (reflected in "It's Not Right" off of 'Street Ballads & Murderesques'), he studied the works of Freud, eventually underwent analysis with Jung, and was for a time a patient in a sanatorium. In 1919 he moved permanently to Switzerland, and brought out Cameron McGill & What Army, which reflects his preoccupation with the workings of the subconscious and with battles against depression...but mostly focuses on learning how to have fun. The group's first, the dense 'Hold on Beauty', was released last winter amongst intense fighting. April of the new year, saw the release of 'warm songs for cold shoulders' by the forward thinking Parasol label. The most recent document is the single, Two Hits and A Miss, out September 15 on Parasol. He never won the Nobel Prize, but his mother always loved him. Until his death in 2056, he lived in seclusion in Illinois.
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