If you're the kind of person who slows down to gawk at car accidents, enjoys telling Michael Jackson jokes a little too much, or owns more than three books about Charles Manson, you might find space in your heart for Sky Burial's straightforwardly titled and instantly catchy Freak at the End of the Rainbow - it's about freaks and how we can't help but stare at them. For their first studio album, Sky Burial summons up a rowdy punked out flavor of hard rock infused with a country twang here, a prog rock riff there, to treat subjects normally reserved for Rob Zombie songs or the psychobilly genre.
The album - which was mastered by Matt Howe, who won a Grammy for The Miseducation of Lauren Hill - has been ready for a while, but for sentimental reasons the group is holding their release party tomorrow night at the Living Room, where entrance fees get you a copy of the new CD and the privilege of seeing a band that puts great stock in showmanship and is as tight live as it is in its recordings. With a repertoire of 30 original songs and several covers, they plan to play two-and-a-half sets, for at least two hours or until they're asked to leave.
Sky Burial is so named because lead singer Lance Gura, stage name Jimmy Vulture, witnessed one while traveling through a Tibetan village in Sichuan, China. He says the ritual blew him away because it combined the gritty violence of vultures descending on a corpse like piranhas with the deep spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism, an image that basically sums up the band's philosophy. Not that they take themselves too seriously. Like Gura, the other musicians adopt bird-of-prey nicknames: There's guitarist Brian Kleinsmith, aka Chuck Buzzard, drummer Paul Routledge, aka Alfie Kite, and bass player John Ring, aka Jack Hawk. Their influences are diverse but complimentary: Gura likes Iggy Pop, Nick Cave and rockabilly, Kleinsmith is more into the virtuosity of Rush and early prog rock, Ring likes the Grateful Dead, and Routledge is a David Bowie fan.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF SKY BURIAL
The band started as a goof with Kleinsmith and Gura recording several albums for fun in Gura's bathroom (the acoustics were better there). Then they got serious about the project and after a few changes the lineup has remained stable for two years. They play about one or two shows per month, mostly in Taipei clubs like Bliss, The Living Room, Sappho and Velvet Underground. Freak at the End of the Raindbow was recorded at RMS studios in Taipei County, with the final adjustments done by Howe in England, who is a friend of a friend.
One entertaining aspect of a Sky Burial show is that half of the audience probably doesn't get the lyrics. At the Daniel Pearl Day music festival in Treasure Hill, for example, Gura, who paints his face white and applies mascara (for performances only, of course) was singing a song called Filthy Sanchez. Gura uses a long mic chord so he can move into the audience, which on this day included families with young children, some of whom were grabbing hold of Gura's legs as he sang We go sailing every Sunday on our glass-bottom boat ... You know my baby likes the Filthy Sanchez. "I had people coming up to me weeks later" who obviously did not understand that the lyrics were a long string of names for sexual positions "saying my children really enjoyed your show," says Gura.
Songs on the new album include Tales of a Midwestern Meth Chef, whose woman is a real stinky-mouth ho/ No more than 68 pounds soakin' wet, Jesus Juice, about erstwhile King of Pop Michael Jackson's alleged practice of giving children Coke cans filled with white wine, Something Witchy, about Charles Manson, and two songs about serial killers.
They do have one love song, though it's not on the new album - and it's about a prostitute.
For your information:
Sky Burial’s album release party and concert is at 10pm tomorrow night at The Living Room, 3F, 8 Nanjing E Rd Sec 5, Taipei (台北市南京東路五段8號3樓). For more information call (02) 8787-4154 or visit www.livingroomtaipei.com. Cover is NT$200 and includes a copy of Freak at the End of the Rainbow. There is an additional two-drink minimum. Sky Burial also performs at Sappho on July 21 at 10pm, 1, Ln 102 Anhe Rd Sec 2, Taipei (台北市安和路二段102巷1號). There is no cover for the Sappho show. Additional performances are scheduled for August. For more information about upcoming gigs, to hear their music or purchase a CD, go to www.sky-burial.com
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and