Stripping in the Funhouse

After spending the afternoon and early evening with my folks this past Father's Day I managed to excuse myself and slip down to The Space for a rare Sunday evening show. Well, maybe they're not that rare, but I don't usually make it down on Sundays. I made an exception because I'd been hoping for a chance to see The Funhouse Strippers again and get some video for the site.

The Strippers play a kind of raw, throwback punk music, fast songs with sharp hooks. They also usually feature a couple of female dancer/backup singers, though Sunday it was just the one (and I've seen them without at times). So far they've released an EP, a full length CD and one of their songs is featured on the "Stereo Salem" compilation that just came out (more on that soon).

Here's a music video they produced last year:


And here's a video from the show Sunday:



Recently the Strippers have also had one of their songs acquired by Nike for use in an internet video on Kobe Bryant's website featuring some of the Jack Ass guys and a monster dunk. It's pretty cool and it's awesome to see some local musicians garnering that kind of interest.

The Strippers are playing again tonight with The Falcon at Copperjohns downtown. That's a pretty sweet bill so get down there if you can.

Ghosties and Doubledutch on the radio

KPSU, a community radio station in Portland associated with Portland State University, has long been one of the go to places to hear interesting, if little known, music. They are also long time supporters of the various Boy Gorilla bands, many of which have been invited to the station for live in studio performances and interviews.

Most recently Ghosties and Doubledutch made the trek down to play a couple live sets. Luckily for those of us not within reach of KPSU's broadcast signal (that is to say most anyone not close to the PSU campus) they post mp3s of every show on their website. For your convenience:

Ghosties on Live Friday
Doubledutch on the Hour Long Hour

The interview with Devin during the Live Friday show was really interesting. The music for both is, of course, really beautiful.

The Secret History of Eskimo and Sons

Eskimo and Sons first came to our attention through their association with Typhoon and the Boy Gorilla cabal. In accordance with agency policy all persons who come into contact with the members of Typhoon are subjected to a thorough background check. When this check was executed for the individuals in Eskimo and Sons, however, something very strange became clear. There is no record of any of their existence prior to 2005.

The discovery was troubling, and the initial fear was that they were a sleeper cell under the control of some foreign power. Resources were immediately diverted to perform a more in depth investigation.

After some weeks of careful research, surveillance and clandestine evidence gathering, our first clue came as our facial recognition software matched band member Dhani to a 19^th Century mimeograph on a public database. The picture showed an artillery regiment in the British army during the Crimean War. Dhani was standing in the center of the image, one hand resting on the breech of the smooth bore cannon. According to the accompanying inscription, “Daniel Rosen” went missing shortly after the picture was taken and presumed dead.

This discovery sparked a huge argument within the agency. Most insisted that this was simply the image of a distant relative of Dhani’s. A small minority refused to accept this interpretation and maintained that the resemblance could not be explained by a familial connection.

The situation was further complicated by the discovery of a second image, this time of a flapper from 1922 who bore an uncanny resemblance to Danielle Sullivan. This created a sensation among the involved analysts who generated many more questions, but few answers. A new working group was established with a huge budget tasked with unraveling the mystery of Eskimo and Sons.

Six months of intensive investigation and budget overruns followed. At a meeting in DC with the director of operations the task force presented their findings. The prevailing theory suggested that every member of Eskimo and Sons was, in fact, a time traveler. Stranger still was the conclusion that none of them had the resources to build or operate such a device. There must, then, be an unknown individual who had traveled through time, essentially collecting these people before depositing them together in Portland, Oregon sometime in 2005.

The evidence to support this claim came in the form of a safe house discovered in southeast Portland. A forensic evaluation showed that each member of the band had spent at least several months living in the home. There was also one room for which the inhabitant was unaccounted. Where Dhani and Danielle’s rooms contained particulate evidence linking each to the 19^th Century and the 1920s, respectively, the extra room contained fibers dated by most to the 17^th Century. Before the results of that analysis were known it was believed by most that the room must belong to the mysterious time traveler. This interpretation was cast into doubt until the investigation of the basement confirmed it.

The basement was essentially empty and typical of those from the area built between 1950 and 1974. The lower floor had not been used as a living space. The plumbing and writing were all exposed between the floorboards that made up the ceiling. The floor was bare cement and unremarkable, but for the scorch marks in the center of the large room. They were arranged in an overlapping pattern suggesting multiple events. Each set features a pair of parallel scorch marks several inches wide, two meters long and one meter apart.

An assortment of trace evidence could be found in the immediate area, but the most notable feature was the local disruption of causality. The site has since been turned over to the Department of Defense’s Contra-Physics Division for additional research.

Educational materials found in the house and interviews with neighbors suggest it acting as something of a halfway house for the occupants as they grew accustom to life in the modern era. Presumably, the time traveler skipped back and forth from the past, depositing his human acquisitions in the present where, for a period of months, they were instructed in all relevant social, political and technological trends.

To what end they have been brought here remains a mystery, as does the true identity of the individual responsible. Where he or she is now (evidence strongly indicates a man) is also unknown. To date, no era of origin has been established for the remaining three members of the band, Thomas, Clayton and Dylan. Evidence from the house was inconclusive suggesting only that they came from a time prior to easily dated manufactured goods.

So far we have no indication of any ill intent from either the band or their patron. Still, time travel is a great power and one we must be vigilant in our efforts to safeguard not only this nation, but the world. We will continue to monitor the situation in hopes of learning more. It has been determined that a direct confrontation of Eskimo and Sons would be ill advised, but surveillance will continue.

The Secret History of...

If you're familiar with my work at thewidgets.com, you may have already read The Secret History of The Widgets. I wrote that quite a while ago out of desperation as much as anything else. I had built the site to include a page about the history of the band with the expectation that they would write up some kind of biography for me to post there. That never happened and since the button was already made I decided to write something myself. Now, I'd know the band for a long time so it would have been possible for me to slap together a passable account of the actual history, but that didn't sound like much fun. Instead I wrote a fictional account of the bands formation and posted it.

After it was up I didn't really think about it for a long time. It probably wasn't until a year later that someone actually mentioned to me how much they liked it. Looking back now, it's not my best writing, but it's full of a bunch of inside jokes about the band and stuff I was into at the time. I didn't think much about other people reading it, but from what I understand it was pretty popular in some sects, particularly with parents of band members. I was glad to hear people had actually read and enjoyed it and I eventually followed up that piece with a short story I called The Continuing Adventures of The Widgets which cast the band as super heroes. At one time I actually had the idea of serializing the band's exploits, each time choosing a new genre to place them in. That never came to pass.

Since that time I became acquainted with Typhoon. I knew them to be Widget fans from way back so when they asked people to submit a fake bio about them, not unlike the one I've been known to write, I decided to take a stab at it. The result was The Secret History of Typhoon. I was really pleased with how it turned out, and so were they. A fast friendship was formed and I've become something of a official biographer for Boy Gorilla Records.

So far I've also written a Secret History of the Black Black Black and I am currently finishing a Secret History of Eskimo and Sons. I have a lot of fun doing it but I usually wait until I have a good idea to pair up with a specific band. I've also written a Secret History of Evolver's Remorse, unaffiliated with Boy Gorilla. That one's actually just about a musically inclined friends from school who now lives in Seattle.

Right now my plan is to start posting any future secret histories here first, starting in the next day or two with the final version of the Eskimo and Sons bio. Until then I encourage you to read the other histories. They aren't long, I think they're pretty cool and I imagine all the histories take place within a single continuity.