Petition to Overturn Eclectic Hosting Ban

An online petition to lift the ban on social events at Eclectic is up. Here's what you're signing for:

The Eclectic Society has recently been informed by Scott Backer and the Student Judicial Board that all events, lectures, gatherings, and shows taking place at 200 High St. this semester – including those already scheduled – must be canceled due to a “House Hosting Restriction.” Backer and the SJB have made one exception: WesFest weekend. We feel that in eliminating Eclectic as a campus-wide venue, these restrictions threaten to eliminate an integral campus space necessary to foster the creative and intellectual energy upon which Wesleyan prides itself. We will be appealing this mandate this week and hope that wide student support will help the case.

In signing this petition I declare my support for the Eclectic Society’s efforts to overturn the House Hosting Restriction in order to maintain all previously-scheduled events for the duration of the semester.

If you're somehow resentful of Eclectic, be clear about the distinction between your sense of schadenfreude and the seriously negative impact this ban will have on life at Wesleyan. Shutting down all events taking place at Eclectic for the rest of the semester doesn't just punish Eclectic members, it punishes the campus as a whole.

Eclectic is unmatched as a consistent venue for events at Wesleyan, and you've got to understand the benefits of having it available as a public space for students even if you don't personally attend these events .

And if you do appreciate live music, just look at this sad, sad list of events from Aural Wes and note how many are potentially no longer happening:

UPCOMING EVENTS

march 4: buru style & special guest (public)

march 5: noms, decora, sewing machines, tall tales (eclectic) CANCELLED

march 5: chris white, stephanie nilles, captain coconut (earth house)

march 25: cassorla, dear lamp (earth house)

march 26: pink reason, hue blanc's joyless ones (eclectic)CANCELLED

march 26: dar williams

march 27: ryan leslie (eclectic)CANCELLED

march 28: kentucky fried doom, sourvein, ehnahre, relics (eclectic)CANCELLED

march 28: raina rose, rebecca loebe (earth house)

april 3: buru style, barefoot junction, banish the rabbit (psi u)

april 3: big tree, shai erlichman, tall tales (eclectic)CANCELLED

april 4: pissed jeans, drunkdriver (eclectic)CANCELLED

april 10: previously on lost (eclectic)CANCELLED

april 11: art show with musical guests adam gunther, zully adler, celia hollander (eclectic)CANCELLED

april 16: das racist, francis & the lights, acrylics, tall tales (eclectic)CANCELLED - oops, this one will still happen!

april 23: battle of the bands (eclectic)CANCELLED

april 24: ponytail, miracles of modern science (eclectic)CANCELLED

april 30: mice parade (eclectic)CANCELLED

may 1: japanther, ninjasonik, grocery thief, michael jordan (eclectic)

& more! (send us your shows)

The SJB should really consider other ways of sanctioning those students responsible for the infractions that led to this restriction, which aren't detrimental to the greater student body.

Read Aural Wes editor Anna Wiener '09's impassioned plea to students here. Paper petitions will be distributed all week during meal times at Usdan, but be sure to sign the online one as well.

Judging by the interest expressed by readers in the previous post, we will easily get 1,000 signatures over the next few days.

Online petition to lift the ban on social events at Eclectic.

Failures, Total Abuse, Ripshit at WestCo Cafe

Hardcore/punk show tonight at WestCo Cafe, with Failures, Total Abuse, and Ripshit. From Aural Wes:

• Failures: Breakneck 3-chord progressions recall a gaggle of coked-out lemmings, hurdling and collapsing over each other in an all-out sprint to who-the-fuck-knows-where, but without sacrificing what can't be mistaken for anything other than high-level musicianship and tight-knit song structures, even as they make you bleed out the ears.
• Total Abuse: listening to Total Abuse its impossible not to notice the constant collision of meat n' taters American hardcore punk with a stagnant, tense, indeed abusive quality that recalls the more facemelting extremes of no wave and noise rock. Punx and pedal-pushers, together at long last.
• Ripshit: Ripshit fucking rules. Hard. If you like punk rock, you'll probably like this band; and if you don't, to borrow from one of Ripshit's own song titles, "You're not punk and I'm telling everyone." Short, fast, loud, and unmistakably demanding a circle pit, these paragons of the Ct diy hardcore scene are not to be missed.
  

Date: Thursday, February 12
Time: 9 pm
Place: WestCo Cafe
Free w/ WesID

Passion Pit, Japanther, Dirty Projectors Concerts Postponed

According to Aural Wes, Passion Pit will not be playing at Psi U this weekend. Rumor has it that their manager double booked the band and was consequently fired. Japanther also had to cancel their gig due to lack of funding and the Dirty Projectors's show is now put off until April.

Aural Wes On Fader: Wesleyan's Breakout Bands

Last week Fader posted a condensed conversation between Wes alum editor Eric Ducker '00 and Aural Wes editor Anna Wiener '09 in the online column "A Rational Conversation Between Two Adults", about campus reactions to the off-campus success of Wes-affiliated music acts.

Topics discussed: the MGMT/Management generational divide; more MGMT lore; Santogold's apparent ambivalence towards Wesleyan; the Brooklyn/Wes connection; and the status of up-and-coming acts like Amazing Baby, Bear Hands, Boy Crisis, Francis & the Lights, and Das Racist.

The transcript follows:

Eric Ducker: How aware are Wesleyan students that two of the biggest success stories in emerging music this year went to Wesleyan?

Anna Wiener: I think students here are very aware of it. There's a funny divide between older students who have ties to some of the people in these bands, and the younger kids, who probably listened to MGMT and Santogold at their high school proms and thought it was really rad that their future school was tied to these artists.

ED: When did MGMT graduate?

AW: 2005. They were still something of a presence when I arrived in 2006, playing a couple shows on campus before they got signed. 2008 (last year's seniors) was the last class to overlap with them. So for some people, they're part of Wesleyan lore, and for others, they're Andrew and Ben, those friends who wore shoelaces around their heads and danced in snowsuits to their iPod.

ED: They were called The Management when they were still in school, right?

AW: Yup. I think some people saw The Management to MGMT transition as a turning point, indicating their success (or their "selling out," depending on who you talk to).

ED: How do most people regard their success now?

AW: There are definitely mixed reactions. I think the most telling is that the kids who used to listen to The Management—the alternative kids, the Eclectic kids, the boys who wore girl pants because they weren't selling skinny jeans yet—no longer play MGMT songs at parties, and suddenly kids who you would never have expected to be into psychedelic synth pop are blasting "Time to Pretend" at keg parties. MGMT played a show last year right around the time that "Kids" was hugely popular, and it was a huge deal. It was in the largest venue on campus, tickets sold out very quickly and a lot of the audience were freshmen, class of 2011. There are equal parts pride and resentment, I guess you could say.

ED: That makes sense. When the Vampire Weekend album came out in the beginning of this year we did a story on the reaction from the people who ran Columbia University's radio station. It was a mix of bemusement, happiness and mild putdowns. I imagine as the year has gone on the putdowns have become less mild.

AW: I think that's to be expected. And it's especially accurate at Wesleyan, This is a place with a lot of musicians and a lot of people who really care about music, who are really paying attention. Even here, there's a similar reaction to Vampire Weekend—they played Wesleyan in 2007 and it was a really fun, small show in the dining room of Eclectic. Then they blew up, were playing Summerstage in New York, etc, and people were like, Enough already, let's move on.

ED: When it was The Management, were they a real band or was it a silly project of theirs?

AW: The Management were a real band. Apparently they played some festivals in Connecticut, at NYU, and in Memphis and South Carolina. Also they played Battle of the Bands, and performed at our annual Spring Fling with GZA. It definitely wasn't just a silly project. They had an EP by 2003/4, I'm pretty sure, and there was a performance in 2005 called "The Management vs. God" that was held in the Wesleyan chapel during prospective students weekend that I believe was part of either Andrew or Ben's senior thesis. It was a whole theatrical debacle, from what I've heard.

ED: Details?

AW: Debacle might be the wrong word. Maybe "explosion," in the positive sense. Lots of costumed monsters (?) crawling around the chapel, over the audience, hanging from the balcony. They also had a scoreboard at the front of the chapel, GOD vs. The Home Team.

ED: Who won?

AW: I think the Management won the battle, but not the war.

ED: Sounds about right. Are the feelings towards Santogold different, since there is so much more distance in terms of time?

AW: I think so, actually. Although there is some negativity there, especially amongst people who book shows on campus. She's turned down several offers to play here, including an offer to play Spring Fling, which tends to draw fairly big names. There is also a difference between MGMT and Santogold in that MGMT were launched right out of Wesleyan, whereas with Santogold the connection seems much thinner.

ED: What are the current feelings on Amazing Baby, who are even more recent graduates?

AW: You know, Amazing Baby doesn't have a lot of buzz on campus yet. We're trying to bring them to play a show here next semester, so maybe then. People are following two other bands a lot more closely, Bear Hands and Boy Crisis. I think Amazing Baby still have that feeling of being our best kept secret.

ED: They already have a pretty respected publicity company and are getting more press, I’m not sure how longer that secret is going to be around.

AW: Right. It's funny, actually—they're all over the place in Brooklyn (my hometown), but not so much at Wesleyan, although it is spreading here. I would have thought that trajectory would be reversed.

ED: Did they exist at Wesleyan? Or did they come about post-graduation?

AW: I'm not sure. Their members are before my time, but I'm pretty sure they did not exist as Amazing Baby here. Simon O'Connor and Will Berman (of Amazing Baby and MGMT, respectively) were in a band together called Monsters of Rock, but I don't think Will Roan (now of Amazing Baby) was involved. It's possible they played in different combinations and under different monikers.

ED: It would seem to me that now would feel like an exciting time to be an aspiring musician at Wesleyan. It must feel like success, in some form, is a possibility. Aside from the bands we discussed there's more—Shy Child, Amanda Palmer of Dresden Dolls, The Mobius Band, etc. When I was there, all people could really look to were the bassist of Girls vs. Boys, Atom & His Package and Dar Williams.

AW: Definitely. And there does seem to be some camaraderie amongst emerging Wesleyan groups. MGMT and Boy Crisis have played shows together in New York, and it sort of feels like they're pulling their friends—who, don't get me wrong, are fully deserving of success themselves —into the fold. When MGMT played that big show here last year, they had Bear Hands open for them. And Bear Hands had played a bunch of very successful shows on campus already, but their opening for MGMT was a great way to get exposure amongst social groups that may or may not be showing up regularly to concerts on campus. Not to mention that Wesleyan somewhat notoriously feeds straight into Brooklyn. So some of it is just being in the right place at the right cultural moment.

ED: Who's your favorite Wesleyan alum group?

AW: This is hard. It's maybe a draw between Bear Hands and Francis & the Lights. But I have my fingers crossed for Das Racist, I think they're the next breakthrough artists from Wesleyan.

ED: Do you still listen to Oracular Spectacular?

AW: Only in the privacy of my bedroom, shades drawn, lights off, headphones on. That being said, if "Electric Feel" comes on at a party, everybody is going to dance. And if "Kids" comes on, the floor might cave. Haters here really only talk the talk, but when the opportunity presents itself, they're going to get down like anyone else.

ED: It's true. I talk a lot of shit about Michael Bay [Class of 1986], but I saw the shit out of Transformers. And I saw both of the National Treasure movies from Jon Turtletaub [Class of 1985], which I liked better than Transformers.

Aural Wes: meta
Fader: Reaction to Wesleyan's Breakout Bands

Party on Fountain VIDEO

Aural Wes posted a video of "Party on Fountain" today. I was feeling so-so about the song when I first heard it, but this video is seriously excellent. Check it out:

thursday night: benefit concert for america

THE FRENCH KICKS

CHAIRLIFT
ROMANS

a benefit concert for america
thursday, october 16
8 pm doors/9 pm music
more information here.

this is a fundraiser. bring money to donate to your future president.

AURAL WES

AURAL WES is back in action after a long, slow summer, and we're ready to start posting about bands other than boy crisis and bear hands.

exciting things:

- the fall calendar is starting to fill up, with bands like au, double dragons, and the mathematicians slated to come to campus in october and november.

- we're getting gossipy this year, because we want to be more popular.

- we're looking (always) for new writers and contributors. if you're interested, shoot us an email at auralwes [at] gmail.

- if you're organizing an on-campus show, house party, festival, or jam sesh, let us know. if you want to start a band and need a drummer, or if you just recorded an EP on garage band (use your better judgement on this one), or if you run a charmingly obscure tape label out of your backpack, you can let us know about those things, too, and we'll do our best to cover them.

show tonight at westco cafe

THE RUINED FRAME
ZULLY ADLER
TOTAL BOLSHEVIKS
TEENAGE NIGHT HAWKS
westco cafe, 9 pm. free.

more information here.

dance party tonight at eclectic

TONIGHT at ECLECTIC

blood, sweat and prefrosh.
romans will start around 10:30.
djs will play all night.



more information here.

great show tonight at eclectic

TONIGHT, APRIL 16
Dolphins into the Future
The Skaters
Monopoly Child Star Searchers
Pacific Rat Temple Band
Eclectic, 8:30-12:00, free

"Just take this live opportunity to witness the coolest in delphine worship..."

More information here.

show tonight at eclectic

Tonight:

MIXEL PIXEL

BOY CRISIS

FRANCIS & THE LIGHTS

Eclectic, 9 pm, free

more information here.

Aural Wes looking for new writers

For more information, visit auralwes.blogspot.com or email auralwes@gmail.com. Lindsay Lohan sold separately.