She Mob Plays Live at The Octopus Literary Salon

She Mob opens for The Rabbles and poet Julien Poirier at Oakland's Octopus Literary Salon on Saturday, October 20th. Show starts at 7 p.m. -- a very humane time for a live-music/poetry show. Rock out, poets!

She Mob LIVE at Up the Creek Records

She Mob is playing a dinner show, 6 - 7:30 PM! There will be no dinner, but plenty of records and art and tchockes for sale at Up the Creek in Walnut Creek (California).

Note: there's an actual Walnut Creek in Walnut Creek, so quit making fun of its bucolic-suburb fake-sounding name! It's a former orcharding enclave with a hundred-year-old downtown that used to be a railway stop during the ranching era of Northern California land-use and settlement! That railway is now the Ironhorse Trail—a fine bike and walking trail, so be proud, Walnut Creek. Bicyclists know the score.

Up the Creek Records is in a split-level strip mall—the best kind of strip mall. 1840 Tice Valley Boulevard in BADASS Walnut Creek, California. 6 - 7:30 PM. It's a fun little shop and there's lots of live music there weekly, so check the calendar for future events.

Update: Our friend Debi took these shots of our show—thank you Debi! Great fun was had. We'll play again. Hopefully before we turn 60.

She Mob LIVES

She Mob is the house band for the art opening of Bride of Monster at Creativity Explored Gallery tomorrow night, October 5th. It's not a typical She Mob eardrum blowout, but a more ambient weird-ass affair. Come see some magnificent monster-inspired artworks while we sit on the floor nearby, making bizarre noises. It's a happening.

She Mob - Mas o Menos

I'm working on some GOP karaoke—a sort of panicked sing-along project. What better way to absorb complete chaos-in-the-making but with a song?

Meanwhile, here's some She Mob from the last album, "Right in the Head." Mas o Menos is about a real person who had real impact on my real feelings. It's keeping it really real.

I wrote some stuff - other people worked on stuff too - links

Hi Internet—I've been writing a lot (and rewriting even more). Here's something about writing I never realized before: it gives you a fat ass. I have to go work on that, but first here's a few links of my work and the works of others as well. If you're so inclined:

Bad Movies - Issue 2 (the cult issue) - one of those labors of love. Cass Wall, editor in chief compiles the work that the world throws his way. This issue has my "Meditations for the Modern World" (pg. 44)—a helpful and very short guide to navigating your brain within the confines of our narcissistic reality-TV pop app landscape—newly photo-illustrated by moi. You can read the digital copy free, and/or purchase a very affordable paper publication here. A digital copy for viewing is also available here. Lots of cool essays, humor, comics, coloring pages and a Freudian Film Theory word search puzzle. That's a winning combination.

Here's the Bad Movies Tumblr.

Hey, I have a Tumblr dumping ground too - Dancing Bugs


And for Bright Wall/Dark Room I wrote an essay on Martin Scorsese's Casino, a dark film that I did a little work on, back in the day. I never got to work directly with Marty (maybe someday), but I helped out Matte World Digital while they made some amaze-o 70s-era Las Vegas strip casino shots. The thing is, you have to buy the issue for $1.99 (a steal!), or subscribe to the magazine for a year (twenty dollars—you won't be sorry!), but it's probably worth it, given the width and breadth of content you'll receive. Thoughtful essays, tons of themes, lots of movies. Teaser is here: "Watching Casino, Twenty Years Later." 

Here's the Bright Wall/Dark Room site.


I was just now wondering, whatever happened to Santigold, and I see she released a single yesterday, and record-release news. That's good timing. Wow, her site is A TRIP.


Did you ever get around to purchasing She Mob's latest, Right in the Head ? Still time. I have some footage around here somewhere from our recent Halloween show at a Berkeley preschool. That's one for the ages. They're all one for the ages.


Follow me on twitter. (I read this tech article that said the best way to encourage people to follow you on twitter is to use a directive, so follow me on twitter, dammit. Dammit, you better follow me. On twitter. Do it. The article said this would work.)

She Mob - Bloody Valentine video

I haven't taken a survey but I assume no one in She Mob particularly likes Valentine's Day. It's just a hunch. From our third album, "Not in my World," released in 2005, this is about as close She Mob gets to composing a love song, so clap your hands say yeah.

A combination music video/science experiment that demonstrates the properties of surface tension.


She Mob's music is available at CDBaby.

She Mob video - "Snow Smoked"

Another procrastination project wherein I create a wee slice of art instead of tending to my responsibilities. Which you don't even want to hear about—they're that mundane.

Here's Suki O'Kane singing lead on a composition she wrote in collaboration with Allen Whitman and Jonathan Segel, with lyrics by Erik Ehn. She Mob plays the tune and we enjoyed doing so. The Prelinger Archives supplied the footage. I placed the footage just so, and now—mundane duty calls.




Snow Smoked is available on She Mob's fourth album, "Right in the Head."

She Mob - Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy

Something special for Earth Day—She Mob's one and only 2001 foray into metal territory. Although not known for its metal proclivities (when I told Alan to make his guitar riff sound like Metallica, he confessed to never having heard Metallica, even though Metallica lived 30 miles north of our San Francisco rehearsal space and had been together in the Bay Area for 20 years at that point), She Mob has always had a secret heavy-metal heart—that would be me behind the drums.

I was born in San Francisco and lived through the Summer of Love before living for a couple years in North Hollywood. I would say my formative upbringing has been Californian in scope. But nothing prepared me for teenagerhood in Concord, California, where we had moved when I was in first grade. This bucolic, countrified exurb, where sheep grazed on a hill at the end of our street, 40 miles yet worlds away of San Francisco, turned into a completely alienated landscape during my high school years.

Drugs were openly bought and sold in the "smoker's field" behind my school, which was literally a field full of smoking peers, watched over at a great distance by middle-aged hired goons in big sunglasses, vinyl raincoats and beehive hairdos. These hapless "narcs" didn't bother narcing on anyone, except for escapees from our closed campus. Meanwhile, long-haired stoners in lumberjack shirts and Levi's dealt their wares at lunch-time out of Sucrets boxes. Marijuana, crank, coke—all for sale during school hours. One-stop convenience shopping. If the field went "dry," there were plenty of drug houses to check out—strip malls of the mind. Contra Costa County was and is a total drug wasteland and it's no surprise that its drug task force has been a source of corruption and scandal, probably only recently busted due to years of stupidity and hubris.

Where was I? Oh yes, in this setting, there was a sort of oasis at my school, a heavy-metal radio station that still broadcasts across a vast amount of territory in the hinterlands of suburban sprawl. KVHS—still playing the heaviest metal, 24 hours a day (unless someone doesn't show up for their volunteer shift). KVHS was run like a real radio station. Mr. Evans, our broadcasting teacher, made sure we had weeks of training before we got an air shift. We had to apply for an FCC license, and the news was read from a ticker-tape AP feed that we edited and formatted for specific time slots (more fun to get your news from a ticking strip-let of paper than digitally—take my word for it). It was a good experience.

And it wasn't officially "heavy metal"—it's just that all its DJ's and listeners were into metal, so it was a default format. The only exceptions were my fellow female broadcaster, Wendy Chavez, and me. She played a lot of then just-coming-into-its-own new wave, and I played a mix of new wave, pop and metal, as I saw fit. Once when I was training a new recruit, a nice guy in a Hawaiian shirt who resembled Dick Van Dyke, we got a phone-call death threat during an Oingo Boingo song. My trainee talked him down by invoking the universal creed of compassion for the rights of others. I believe his words were, "There's enough room in this world for all kinds of music." Our would-be assassin agreed and backed off, apologizing for saying he was going to come down to the station and kill us if we didn't stop playing that fag music. And that's today's beautiful moment remembrance.

That's the back-story. In truth, I just wanted to write a metal song entitled Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy because it makes a great heavy-metal title. Footage is from the Prelinger Archives.




From She Mob's second album, "Turn to Chocolate," available at CDBaby.

She Mob - "Tear Me Down" "Arnica" videos - a 2-fer

I've been beavering away on my fictional writing project, where I basically teach myself to write fiction AS I DO IT. It's a real-time learning experience and a longtime one as well. MEANWHILE, the She Mob videos are a side project that help keep me sane while promoting music in a fun, nonprofit (but oh-so-satisfying) way. I am completely sincere. Putting little films together is the best hobby ever, especially when it's your own musical endeavors.

Today's a 2-fer. Shall we go from older to newer? Why not! Here's Tear Me Down from She Mob's sophomore effort, "Turn to Chocolate." It's great to have been in a band long enough and somewhat together enough to actually have a sophomore effort. It's such a indie-rock trope and although it's a pretentious and ridiculous term for "second album," I'm going to indulge myself: SOPHOMORE EFFORT. That's a description that's probably been retired longer than I realize.

Friend and bandmate Joy was once talking to me about this one, years after the fact (it came out in 2001, that magical year), and her general consensus was, (paraphrase) "I dunno—there's all these extra ingredients, like horns, keyboards, guest musicians, and I listen to it now and I think—what was I thinking?"

But here's my take on it—this album is just fine and all the extras give it some oomph. If our first album, "Cancel the Wedding," tipped its hat to sloppy punk, "Turn to Chocolate" gave a mostly unconscious and accidental nod to melodic new wave. There's strong material throughout and a wide range of genre-play. Everything from big-pharma sing-alongs (Viagra), to mental-illness death metal (Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy), to dot-com bubble lament, Tear Me Down. I apologize for writing a record review of my own record—how gauche. But I'm fifty now and I don't give a shit. I do what I want, when I want. That's the age-fifty-and-up way.

Tear Me Down, composed and sung by Diane Wallis during San Francisco's first dot-com boom-and-bust in the late 90s, is prescient all over again fifteen years later. Evictions, tear-downs, and ship-loads of money—that's a legacy for San Francisco. The online technology angle just hurried the phenomena along a little faster than usual. For now, San Francisco friends are going through shady rent hikes and underhanded evictions so millionaires can move in and enjoy fine dining experiences. It's not the bohemian enclave you remember, but let's enjoy The City's eternal beauty in the CinemaScope footage shot by Tullio Pelligrini (great inventor name) in 1955. I did no editing for this, simply placed the music at the top of the film. It didn't need any editing.





Onward to Arnica from the new album, "Right in the Head" (our album titles are directives because we're kind of bossy). This is a Joy Hutchinson composition, an ode to medicinal plants, with Alan Korn and Suki O'Kane doing their thangs. This song is especially special because Alan sings a lovely falsetto background chorus—a wonder to behold. Footage is from A/V Geeks and the Prelinger Archives—my found footage godsends.



Apologies for the, uh, looseness of my writing for this post. We're all working under a severe sleep deficit here due to a family illness that will hopefully get better with the help of big-pharma antibiotics. When there's walking pneumonia to contend with, big-pharma is usually the answer. Cheers.

She Mob - "Teacher" (1999)

Punk as hell—because teaching in our public-school system is about as punk rock as you can get in the work force. Low pay, little prestige, exhausting, often thankless, and yet educating the populace should be revered and appreciated by all. I think I'll bring some muffins to my kid's school on Monday. This is Diane telling it like it is. From She Mob's first album, "Cancel the Wedding."

She Mob - Expired Cough Syrup (Don't Drink It) - with fabulous found footage

Ooh, I lucked out today and stumbled upon a beautiful educational film from the A/V Geeks Archive: Hidden Treasures from 1951. If you like closeup (in this case, microscopic) photography, this is the educational science film for you! Great found footage practically edits itself to the song—I'm here to testify to this.

Expired Cough Syrup (Don't Drink It) is a true story about Joy's bad trip from bad cough syrup that she innocently ingested while trying to treat a bad cough. She had a rough time of it, chemically, but she lived to write and compose the song and it's on She Mob's third album, "Not In My World" from 2005. (Available here)

"Not In My World" is an interesting one. She Mob was in flux at the time. I had just had a baby and couldn't partake much in musical endeavors. I sang backup on a few songs on this one and that's it. Before I left for motherhood hiatus, the band had experienced "creative differences" (fighting) between founding members, Joy, Diane and me. It wasn't much of a fight—more like tense psychological warfare involving a battle of wills and a coronet player from El Cerrito.

Band fights are the stuff of legend but no one outside the situation can ever comprehend them fully because they involve personal histories, old and new grudges, and inexplicable mental states that are of the moment, never to be fully understood. Suffice to say, "Not In My World" has some anger issues. But it also has a soft side. In fact, if it were on vinyl, Side A would be super-pissed and side B would help you relax and be in the moment.

Joy, Suki and Alan play on this song and as a special treat, Suki worked her sampler magic. The footage is really quite spectacular—I just cobbled it together.




If you're looking for excellent found-footage gold, consider purchasing an affordable DVD sampler from A/V Geeks.

She Mob - Mrs. Idey, the video

Say, Captive Wild Woman, what's your process when making a no-budget music video?

I'm so glad you asked! (Yes, I'm talking to myself in my head; that's what blogging for ten years does to a mind.)

Here's my process:

• Pick a song, any song, from one of She Mob's four albums (or sometimes from another album—that's for another post)
• Look for a film on the Prelinger Archives to re-edit and repurpose
• Place them together on Windows Movie Maker—the free and very basic editing software that works like making a collage from old magazines with digital paste
• Repurpose the film to the song
• Sit back and enjoy the accolades! (I'm waiting for this part to kick in—any day now.)
• Really appreciate that MFA in Cinema degree and all it's wrought

Admittedly it's not entirely free when factoring in the costs of making an album, paying the bills for Internet access and a roomy-enough hard drive for all these downloadable public-domain film clips, but once that's squared away—you're ready for music-video magic-making.

Yesterday I was looking for clips to use for one song, but ended up using another song entirely, because I didn't feel like getting up from my desk to make an MP3 of the originally intended song. You might call that laziness. Generally, I would agree. But in a happy accident, the MP3 I already had on the computer worked better with the footage I settled upon.

And now, too much analysis: happenstance, serendipity, coincidence—be on the lookout for these things when working on a creative project. It's fine to be tightly controlled too. Sometimes that's in keeping with the project. But in this case, a loosey-goosey approach seems to work best for me. Because I have to tap into the unconscious with these little films. They don't take long to make and are set to music; that's a dream-like realm of our brain. I hope I haven't made myself perfectly clear. I would never try to do that.

And now, from She Mob's 1999 album, "Cancel the Wedding" (a favorite of old rock critics and little kids), Mrs. Idey.

She Mob video - Was Ist Das?

Hey, it's another She Mob video. This one's from our second album, "Turn to Chocolate," released way back in 2001. I haven't made any videos from this album—UNTIL NOW. So enjoy this exclusive outing into the quagmire that is my musical mind.

Was Ist Das? is the story of a love affair going sour. Maybe. It could go either way, but it's probably not going so good. You know the feeling. And it may be referring to writer David Talbot, although it's pronounced "Daveed" in the song. And it's not autobiographical. And that's all I'm going to say.

Except to mention Myles Boisen's awesome special-guest guitar solo, and Alan Korn on lovely pedal steel. Joy (Sue) Hutchinson's playing rhythm guitar and singing excellent background vocals in German alongside Diane Wallis, who's fiddling so nicely. I'm singing lead and tippy-tapping on the drums. This is one of the few She Mob songs that contains a bridge—something we're proud of.

Now, the film—I hope it doesn't hurt your eyes, but this footage, shot in the late 60s and found in a basement of a closing-down business in Rochester, New York (coincidentally around the time the song was released), is naturally deteriorated. No art students have had a hand in the chemically distressed nature of this look backwards at amusement-park fun. It's available for viewing in its entirety under the title, "Decomposed Carnival," on the Home Movies collection of the Internet Archive.

New She Mob Video for (My Baby) Done (Me Wrong) Declared "Creepy"

My friend Sher rates this as "creepy." My work here is done. From the fourth She Mob album, "Right in the Head," available at CDBaby, along with other fine She Mob musical products. Footage from the always appreciated Prelinger Archive.

(My Baby) Done (Me Wrong)

Murder Ballads Bash in Berkeley Tonight for Halloween

Joy and I are playing as The Rotten Logs in tonight's Murder Ballads Bash at the Starry Plough in Berkeley. This is the 13th annual Murder Ballads show and it's always fun. I don't say that lightly. It really is always fun. In fact, every time I've played at the Starry Plough, or viewed others playing there, it's always been a good time all the time.

We go on at around 9:30-ish. Each act is only 15 minutes so it's fast and furious. Hey, Penelope Houston will be there. Happy Halloween to one and all. I'll be dressed as a rotten log.

She Mob - Bend Down Low (another music video)

I just keep traveling and then making music videos. These are bristlecone pines that live in the White Mountains in the Eastern Sierras. Their pine cones have actual bristles, so that's a good name for these trees. But what the name doesn't tell you is that bristlecone pines, if the conditions are right, can live thousands of years. THOUSANDS OF YEARS. There's a tree in this forest that's more than 4,000 years old. Another one, further up the trail, has recently been clocked at 5,000+ years. The National Park Service won't tell you which ones, so don't ask. Just ponder the significance of living things that are THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD.

Bend Down Low was penned by Suki O'Kane and was recorded for She Mob's third album, "Not In My World." Suki's singing lead and playing accordion. Joy Hutchinson's playing guitar and she and I are singing backup. Jeff Hobbs has an alto clarinet solo. And the bristlecone pines are THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD.

She Mob - Bloodbath (new video)

Suki (co-drummer in She Mob) suggested we make a video of every song on the new album Right in the Head. With our video budget of $0, that's actually a possibility. And it's a fun challenge. This one, of Joy's composition, "Bloodbath," was made from vacation footage at Burney Falls, California and Lassen Volcanic National Park. As I was filming the boiling fumaroles of Lassen's Bumpass Hell hike, I had this song going in my head. Those kinds of videos make themselves. I just aim the camera.

She Mob album release! - "Right in the Head"

Hey, it's been 25 years—time for She Mob to release our fourth album, Right in the Head. For now it's a digital download and you can get it on CDBaby. We're working on a more tangible item for you to hug and gaze upon. We're thinking vinyl. We'll let you know.

Enjoy the She Mobness of the moment. She Mob is me, Joy Hutchinson, Suki O'Kane and Karry Walker. Also Alan Korn is featured, and Myles Boisen, who engineered and mastered it. It rocks. It's weird. It's mysterious and in your face. Enjoy.

Our site

 
 Underworld

She Mob - Luge

From She Mob's album, "Cancel the Wedding," comes Luge. The 1998 Winter Olympics were happening, Joy had a riff, and I suggested we sing a chorus of "LUGE!" and not much else. Joy came up with the nonsensical words for the verses. I told her to try and make them sound Norwegian. I was really into the Winter Olympics. She did that. I backed her up with a bunch of Yeah Yeah Yeah's, and here it is. It's one minute long: Luge.



Footage from the Prelinger Archives.

She Mob - Underworld

Another She Mob tune from the forthcoming album, Right in the Head—the slowest album-release of all time. Jackson helped me on this one. He's self-taught, you know.