Former La Casan Andrew Heathwaite still has blog edit privileges. Therefore, hi!
And also, he just made an album in the month of February! What excitement!
There are some first steps here into a new style, exploring tuning, time and form in an electronic-pop medium. Free to stream and download online:
Maybe good music to listen to while perusing the La Casa chicken picture archives?
As many of you know, Jacob and Andrew have a project going at the IMC called Oddmusic Urbana-Champaign:
Oddmusic U-C is building a library of unusual and usual musical instruments at the UC-IMC and facilitates events to connect experimental composition, microtonality, & instrument-building with non-sectarian radical social change. We insist upon “music” as a type of “odd,” desirable when it avoids the same old society telling itself what it already knows.
Last month, we had a grand(e) opening, and this month an opportunity has come up to relocate our collection to a brand new space that’s cheaper, more commodious, brighter, and by at least one guest’s account, friendlier! Last Sunday, with help from our friends Mary Ann(e), Don, Snow Leopard, and Mary Margaret, we successfully moved into our great new space. We’re continuing to host office hours every Sunday evening from 7pm to 9:30, so feel free to come by this weekend and see what we’re about. We’re now in the basement of the Independent Media Center (at Elm and Broadway in Urbana), room 21A, just down the hall from the Bike Project.
For more, see our blog and (or) sign up to be on the Oddmusic listserv.
(Rob wrote this song in the direction of the health care debate. It is the product of less than 24 hours of work.)
Jacob, “MC Utterbot” and udderbot
Andrew, “Professor Heathwaite” and 23-tone electric
Rob, “Hello” and drums
Lyrics:
I need a lever, cause yo, I’ve got a fever
Need some accessibility to the health care facility
What’s the public option when the option ain’t publicized
I’m still waiting in line you better recognize
your health is mine, to deny it’s a crime
50 million in urgency so check the emergency… **CRASH**All the other wealthy industrialized countries have universal health care systems — that means, every citizen has access to health care. Except in the United States. Yo! MC Utterbot, I think they need some contents to make some sense out of this nonsense…
The clock ticks… I’m talkin’ ’bout one-in-six
Only hard to understand with insurance in hand
When y’read they propaganda, s’hard to understand-a
They take our activism and they call it socialism
Or portray the U.K. as a place with no x-rays
where you wait in line for days but it’s worse here I dare say…Excuse me sir, we only assist robots in this emergency room — WILL SOMEONE TURN OFF THAT CAR ALARM. What’s that? You are a robot. Oh. I’m sorry but your insurance doesn’t cover that procedure. Please see the secretary down the hall and fill out more paperwork…
My pre-existing condition was no health care access
I had to treat myself based on my best guess
While corporations are playing me like a game of chess
Still I’ve got to say, nevertheless
I want health care parity and solidarity
A social contract yo this ain’t no frickin charity
The blue dogs know they’re gonna have to go
and when I get to the do’ I wanna hear something just likeHello…
Hello…
Hello…
Hello…
Hello…
Hello…
Hello…
Hello…
Hello…
Hello…
Some of you have already heard about the weirdwonderfulness going on at the Independent Media Center these days. Jacob & Andrew have started renting a space & lovingly devoting it to ODDMUSIC. We are presently collecting musical oddities (such as microtonal midi controllers with hundreds of buttons, defretted guitars, and musical saws) to make available for public use. We envision, among many things, an instrument library, developing right here in Urbana.
I mention this now because a.) we just started a fancy new blog, & b.) we are hosting office hours every Sunday night this week from 7pm to whenever. Folks have come by to play on our strange instruments, talk oddmusic, & scheme for future musical provocations.
Do consider yourself invited! We plan to be there next Sunday (& times in between, of course, at odd hours), so please stop by & see what the heck. Oddmusic is located on the second floor of the IMC. We’ll leave the back door open for you – not the Bike Co-op door, but the next one over on the left. Walk up the stairs & follow the wafting tunes.
Last Wednesday, May 13, we put on House Concert VII (seventh in “recent memory”), the final act of which was all of us La Casans covering the Talking Heads, This Must Be The Place. Heather got the whole thing on her point-and-shoot; thanks Heather!
More videos from Heather’s youtube:
A New Inspired Poem, by Snow Leopard.
This is the Title of the Story, read by Michael Phelps.
Hoprock, by Jacob Barton.
5 songs of fish (but in this instance, four), by Nodal Nim.
The JAR band opened a show at the Independent Media Center yesterday.
My poor excuse for a camera was there to insufficiently document the moment.
I spent the evening reading Lawrence Lessig and learning new songs with my string band. We’ve been having practice sessions where we take turns introducing new songs to the group. For the sake of confusion I’m going to share two songs in different file 
formats so there’s a good chance you can’t listen to one of them. Charlie showed us how to play Joshua Fit De Battle Ob Jericho (WMA) and Pig Ankle Rag (mp3) is a song that Erin and Charlie taught to Kendra and I tonight. All the files hosted on the internet archive CC.
Yo! March 14 be “Pi Day” – 3/14! Enjoy this music video from my friends “back home” in Upstate New York – the Mathematicians!
(1) Braden Eliot plays guitar at a concert in the garden.
(2) It was a cool and wet spring, here is an image of the swale full of cold water, with the willow trees still dormant.
La Casa Grande Colectiva 