Thinking about Dan Joseph this weekend got me also thinking about Tom Smith, who was in another DC art-punk band, Peach of Immortality and is now in To Live and Shave in LA. I wrote about Tom somewhere in the distant past but thought I'd go check out his blog. Peach was a band whose advertisements, band fliers and Tom's writings (in Forced Exposure among others) were better than the band.
Lots of news there - his band To Live and Shave in L.A. got a recent recording assist from Thurston Moore and Andrew W.K. and were featured in Spin.com's 29 Feb article. His most recent post has a link to the track included with the Spin article which he says was mis-named by Spin. Industrial improv that crawls all over your ears and leave all sorts of slimey verbs and bodily fluids in its wake. Anyway.
He also says he's doing a remix for Xiu Xiu and that his son, Evan, is a soldier presumably heading to Iraq. As Tom says,
"Reckon he's either in Kuwait or on the Iraq/Syrian border. Such an incalculable bummer... Cruel ironies are stacked to the ceiling."I didn't know Tom that well, I could pick him out in a room (usually seen at the old 930 club) but all my best to him. I've put his blog in my Google Reader to keep up with any future news.
(photo via Tom's blogger home page)
3 comments:
Dude is very strange. I thought Peach of Immortality was a Georgia band.
Smith's first band Boat Of... which included Don Fleming, Mikey Stipe and many more was an Athens-based band. Not well-liked. Boat of's last gig was in DC if I remember and Tom and Don stayed in DC. Peach was formed around Tom, poet/bouncer Jared Hendrickson and cellist Rogelio (can't remember the last name).
Disagree with your view of Peach of Immortality. Saw them many times at 9:30 and dc space. I thought they were one of the best DC units, very conceptual, wildly egotistical, crushingly loud. Their two vinyl albums are worth a small fortune!
Haven't heard much of To Live and Shave in LA, although I've recently downloaded three of their albums from Soulseek. Not really industrial, but not pure noise music either. A hellish purgatory, perhaps, with a lot of bleed-through. The dude always seemed kinda cool, but the music is seriously strange.
Rogelio Maxwell was the cellist - he's a teacher with three grown kids.
JD
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