Tangent: ‘Sally’ the band

Chicago’s Sally turns anxiety into art
BY MARK GUARINO DAILY HERALD MUSIC CRITIC

Raw nerves ignite the most compelling rock music. In the most familiar case, Pink Floyd would never have become what it did without Syd Barrett. It usually takes one person to instigate a mood, a chemistry to gel, and, from there, creativity flows and the music takes shape.
So it is with Sally, a relatively recent addition to Chicago’s rock scene. This week the four-member band is celebrating the release of “Long Live the New Flesh” (Paribus), a debut album they’ll perform Thursday at the Empty Bottle. It is the result of a band that took its sweet time to commit to recording. The music is not as skittish - the songs translate their complex emotions through bold guitar moves, unpredictable time shifts and volume that always aims for the red side of the dial.
Just like the ingredients that went into forming Sally - a history that includes a battle with tranquilizers, a relationship that hit its stride long after it dissolved, a flirtation with Los Angeles, a frustrating rotation of drummers and a shared sense of anxiety - the album never smoothes out its rough edges but instead crests through them.
Lead singer and guitarist Charlie Deets, 28, admits that despite thinking of himself as the band’s primary songwriter in the beginning, the band eventually took over that role combined. Now, song ideas that start “soft and calm” in his demo stage, scale epic heights after the band joins in the process.
“Everyone else in the band is pretty anxious, too. When we get together, everyone gets excited so the songs become excited,” he said. “Our music is from the city. It is changing constantly and spastic. It feels like where we live.”
“Long Live the New Flesh” is a refreshing alternative to the garage rock, roots music and chamber pop that dominates current Chicago music. Harkening back to the shoegazer era of the late 1980s and early 1990s when bands like the Verve, My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. demonstrated how volume, distortion and walls of guitars create a hypnotic effect on the listener, Sally’s music is just as visceral, if not unsettling. The songs have a strong emotional drive, explaining the mood-enhancing corners they take, including grinding guitar breakouts, squalls of noise and playful guitar interplay between Deets and fellow guitarist Mark Berlin. Not since the Smashing Pumpkins debut “Gish” has a Chicago band had the imagination to think on such large-scale terms, taking a child’s sense of wonder and building it to psychedelic heights.
Sally originated at Illinois Wesleyan University where Deets, who grew up in LaGrange, met Missy Neis, an aspiring visual artist from Crystal Lake. They dated, but after a year, Deets quit school and moved to Los Angeles where he enrolled in recording engineering classes and earning an internship at a recording studio frequented by a rotating door of wannabe rap moguls, including gangsta Grammy winner Krayzie Bone. After a series of bizarre experiences that included a police raid and the frequency of guns, Deets bee-lined back to Chicago feeling “pretty hopeless.”
He returned having to face an addiction to Xanax, the tranquilizer a L.A. doctor had prescribed him for a childhood history of extreme anxiety. “He kept increasing it, and it wasn’t helping. I was getting more and more out of it. I figured out there was something weird about the whole situation … I was like, ‘Oh my god, this guy is a pusher’,” he said. Deets remembers at the time carrying 20 to 30 pills in his pocket over the course of a day, waiting 30 minutes before his next dose.
“It kind of took over his life where other things weren’t that important,” said Neis, 26. “I was happy he came back, but couldn’t predict anything he did. One day he would be my boyfriend and the next day he hated me and didn’t want to talk with me. I didn’t know what was going on with him.”
They stopped talking. It took almost three years and behavioral therapy for Deets to escape the habit and function normally. He was writing songs in the meantime, imagining having a band to back him up. After agreeing to learn bass, Neis stepped in.
“I’ve never met anybody like Charlie in my life. He can be really intense sometimes, but it’s a beautiful thing and he forces you to be honest with yourself in a way maybe you’re not comfortable with,” she said. “As friends and as bandmates, we definitely communicate without conflict.”
After inviting Berlin to join and undergoing a series of drummers (a position now occupied by Nick Smalkowski), Sally (the name chosen because, as a verb, it means a cunning attack) recorded two EPs before heading into Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio to record the new album. Up to that point, it took a busy touring schedule for the band to realize their focal point was volume. “In general bands are too afraid to make bold music. Our thing has always been we like guitars, we like them really loud in the mix,” said Deets. “It comes from me and Missy liking the Verve’s early stuff a lot.”
Under headphones, “Long Live the New Flesh” surfaces as one long stretch of music, rather than individual songs, a feat most bands have forgotten about in the iPod era. Yet the same album is receiving a non-traditional release: Under Paribus, Deets’ label that includes eight other bands, it can be purchased either digitally or through mail order.
If Sally’s music sounds like anything specific, it’s the ebb and flow between panic attacks, the revolving process of fear, danger and eventually release that accompanies the entire experience. Deets plans to return to his medical history next year when he pursues an MFA in art photography at UIC through projects that interweave text and images.
“It’s something I’m always going to have all my life. Before a show I feel like I’m going to get sick and die,” he said before laughing: “At the same time, I feel that way most of the day.”
Sally with LMNOP
Where: Empty Bottle,1035 N. Western Ave., Chicago
When: 9:30 p.m.Thursday
Tickets: $7. (773) 276-3600

Daily Herald | Time out!

I have an uber talented sister.  They’re a great band with a great following (especially late teens– anxiety, makes sense right?). Check out their website: www.sallymusic.com

technorati tags:music, entertainment, sister, family, Sally, band, chicago

This week in Harry Potter Awesomeness:

Our favorite author sure has been busy these past few days! As we reported earlier, Jo is going on tour here in the US in October, and has also opened the door to her study on her website, where you can now take the third and final WOMBAT. Jo has also now made available a special widget or a “Gadget” found on her website for Windows Vista users. Thanks to TLC moderator Dreamteam, you can see some photos of what this widget looks like, here in our galleries. This widget lets you know the progress of your WOMBAT results, as well as features a countdown to the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The Leaky Cauldron: J.K.Rowling Adds “Gadget” for Vista Users

Curses and drat for Vista! Would have been loverly to have that for mac. Grumble. Anyway, off to take my Wombat. Fingers crossed.

technorati tags:widget, harrypotter, harry, potter, jkrowling

In case you missed it

Here’s what Anastasia from ypulse:

Also, Izzy asked what I thought about user generated content in squeeky clean branded communities. I think if you are building a branded community for kids under 13, you obviously have to have a heavy hand in what gets posted and make sure it is 100 percent brand and parent friendly. With older teens and young adults, you risk alienating them (like Wal-Mart did) by requiring parent approvals and lag time between when they post and something appears for screening. Especially when they’re used to posting and having stuff appear instantly on MySpace and YouTube. I think you can be careful about where stuff shows up (manually program all top level pages), be clear about your community standards from the beginning and take down stuff that is hugely inappropriate when you find it.

Ypulse: Media for the Next Generation

I think I mentioned it on ypulse… but AMEN, AMEN, SISTA FRIEND!

Messing with your VIRTUAL Mind…

Virtual Lower East Side (VLES)is an online community that has created some interesting replicas of various locations from New York. Create an avatar to participate in the virtual world, and network with others.With the success and allure of games such as the SIMS, Sony Home and Second Life, it’s easy to see why more niche avatar communities are expected to pop up. The quality of VLES is good for a web-based, free application, and the options are enough so that users will be happy. Think of it as an interactive, better-animated Meez that can operate within a community. You can chat with other avatars you encounter while roaming the streets, ignore them, and even report them for bad behavior.What’s great about VLES is the potential for harnessing the buying power of teens and young adults, as VLES could take after Second Life with its ecosystem and the success of its flourishing marketplace. You’ll notice that VLES already has an American Apparel store replica, and I can only imagine the potential for companies to really latch onto the idea of having an online presence within VLES. Having an open source format for the continued development of VLES means that exact
replicas of cities around the world could be better maintained, and the commercial potential for brands and indie artists alike could be great.

Avatars Roam a Virtual Replica of the Lower East Side

Okay… so I was just trying to explain the craziness of this idea to Marie and realized how warped my Virtual Brain has gotten.

So I was saying to Marie, “Yeah, and VLES would have virtual real estate… replica stores in the EXACT place you might find it on the
Lower East Side if you were phycially shopping. So, while I’m tooling around the VLES, I could stop on by my favorite shop and pick something up before heading on to other places in VLES.” And Marie replied, “Would you be buying real stuff or stuff for your avatar?” I paused, finger to the chin in thought, and replied, “Ya know, perhaps both? How great would that be? A heck of a lot easier than stepping out my front door to shop down the street.”

…And then I stopped and looked at Marie cross-eyed. Why would I go to a virtual world to go to a shop to buy myself something real (not just stuff for my virtual world) when I could (old school?) surf on over to the store’s actual non-VW website (is that like web 1.0 now?). So yeah, silly me… so wrapped up in the future of online communities I forgot all about the fundamental online shopping route of today. How tendy and ahead of the curve am I? Scary scary scary.

So, as I think about the future of the web, I realize that surfing directly into online website/shops seems so dated. It’s all about brands existing in the virtual WORLDS (not just web)– and those Virtual Worlds are starting to dress up a lot like our real one.

As my excitement increased for VLES, I was conned into thinking about how EASY it would be to shop in a virtual world– you know, it’s a bright day and I’m visiting my favorite street… except my avatar is doing the work for me as she virtually skips down the virtual sidewalk into the virtual replica of my favorite store, picking out virtual representations of sweaters that I virtually want, except not virtual… confused yet? You should be. We’re blending worlds now baby. BLENDING WORLDS. Virtual, meet, IRL. IRL, meet Virtual. Look how much we’re making in common for you both. Doppleganger. Bizarro Superman. Single White Female? Let’s hope not.
Perhaps its what they want to do with Google maps– use every day life as their muse in an ultimate virtual world that will be just as accurate as real life… 3D online experience of what you could get by just walking out your door. It’s very Second life… except Second Life isn’t a direct copy of an actual street in an actual city with actual replicas of stores.

Perhaps the Matrix isn’t so far off after all? We’ll all just plug ourselves into the web and our avatars can live life for us. Zoinks. Or maybe I’m just getting ahead of myself. Hmm.

This is why I like the U13 approach to Virtual worlds and not MTV’s replica world approach. The U13 VWs are incredibly imaginative and bonkers and based in fantasy. MTV’s is based on replica of the aestheticly pleasing society (look just like the girls from Laguna Beach and hit on guys at the local club!! Uck.) Kids are encouraged to enjoy a world that could NEVER be like their own, while still learning from social situations. Teens in these MTV-esque worlds are conned into wishing they were someone else in a real life experience, and disliking themselves even more when they disconnect from their virtual paradise back into their ugly real world.

Anyway… just thought it was worth noting the quick movement to virtual mentality. Has anyone else fallen into the trap yet?

technorati tags:virtualworld, virtual, world, googlemaps, onlineshopping

Hints at the Future of Virtual Worlds

IBM hosted an event at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab on Friday, where experts offered insights into how virtual worlds can be applied to make businesses more effective and address societal problems.The day-long event brought together IBMers, academics, media and representatives from businesses exploring virtual worlds, including those from entertainment, retail and the hotel industry.

Although some of the attendees expressed concern that virtual worlds are now over-hyped and insecure, IBM’s Colin Parris vice president of digital convergence said the combination of today’s virtual world with
existing Web services, such as commerce and search, will lead to “profound transformations” to societies and enterprises.

“We are now at the threshold of newly emerging (Web) platforms focused on participation and collaboration,” he said. “The power of collaboration and community are one of the major drivers of innovation as companies figure out the capabilities to accelerate collaborative innovation.”

Parris described some of IBM’s initial uses of virtual worlds in a business context, including enhanced training, immersive social shopping experiences, simulations for learning and rehearsing business processes, and for hosting events.

MIT Media Lab director Frank Moss, who also spoke Friday morning, said that society is in the very early days–”the first minutes, perhaps seconds of the 3-D Internet”–of virtual worlds. Several students are working on projects involving virtual worlds, such as finding easier ways to construct buildings and socialize.

Virtual worlds will be combined with advancements in understanding human behavior and pervasive computing, he said.

…

“We will be blurring the distinction between human abilities and human disabilities,” he said. “We’re talking about autistic people becoming authors and amputees becoming athletes and normal people doing
extraordinary things.”

Despite the potential laid out by Parris and Moss, they both cautioned that virtual worlds need significant improvements. Attendees during a question and answer session also raised concerns over the poor state of security now in virtual worlds.

Parris and Moss also said security and privacy needs to be better addressed in virtual worlds. Other needed improvements include scalability of technical systems and more appropriate content.

Moss said that virtual worlds still lack the application that leads to wide-scale use, as the transition to the PC and the Web did in the past.

IBM: like the Web, virtual worlds will be become business friendly | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Needless to say, I’m excited about the future for virtual worlds & social networking. None of this stuff is directly related to kids, but in the worlds progressive chart… sooner or later it will be.

technorati tags:virtualworlds, virtual, worlds