Baby Seal Club

The results of our latest Facebook poll are in and once again the ballot-stuffers…uh, I mean voters have spoken. By a wide margin, Baby Seal Club beat out Charles Manson and two bands you probably never heard of to become our latest Weird Band of the Week. Congrats on beating my namesake cult leader, guys. That’s no small feat in these parts, especially since this video surfaced.

We first heard about BSC when their singer-guitarist, Fudo, wrote to us and shared the band’s video for “Zeroes and Ones,” which you can see below. Fudo admitted he was “hard-pressed” to claim his band’s music was weirder than most of what we blog about around here. But any band that does a video about a marauding band of chickens trashing an Apple Store gets our attention.

Baby Seal Club hail from a podunk town in Northern California called Sebastopol (come for the wineries, stay because you’re too drunk to drive back to San Francisco). They dress in carnival/steam-punk/Burning Man chic and play a style of music I’m gonna call quirky outlaw power-pop. I’m not even sure what that means, but it sounds about right. You can check out samples of their 10-track debut album on their official website. I’m partial to “Mama Delphi,” which starts out with the line, “She didn’t know she was made of Play-Doh.” Man, if I had nickel for every time I’ve dated that chick.

Since writing to us, Fudo and his bandmates (Choklit Chanteuse, Wizzbang Mahnkae, Nashish, Nectar and occasionally a guy called Uncle Stabby, which is now officially my favorite band alias ever) have been on a roll. They’ve opened for The B-52's (bet Fred Schneider loooooved them) and were voted Best Rock Band at the North Bay Music Awards. We like to think being named Weird Band of the Week is just as prestigious, but who are we kidding? They’ve probably forgotten about us little people already.

Fun bonus fact: Their fans are called “FlipperTrippers.” We’re sure that’s just because seals have flippers and is not in any way a drug reference.

Anyway, here’s “Zeroes and Ones.” Insert your favorite “cluck” joke here. - Weirdest Band in the World

The results of our latest Facebook poll are in and once again the ballot-stuffers…uh, I mean voters have spoken. By a wide margin, Baby Seal Club beat out Charles Manson and two bands you probably never heard of to become our latest Weird Band of the Week. Congrats on beating my namesake cult leader, guys. That’s no small feat in these parts, especially since this video surfaced.

We first heard about BSC when their singer-guitarist, Fudo, wrote to us and shared the band’s video for “Zeroes and Ones,” which you can see below. Fudo admitted he was “hard-pressed” to claim his band’s music was weirder than most of what we blog about around here. But any band that does a video about a marauding band of chickens trashing an Apple Store gets our attention.

Baby Seal Club hail from a podunk town in Northern California called Sebastopol (come for the wineries, stay because you’re too drunk to drive back to San Francisco). They dress in carnival/steam-punk/Burning Man chic and play a style of music I’m gonna call quirky outlaw power-pop. I’m not even sure what that means, but it sounds about right. You can check out samples of their 10-track debut album on their official website. I’m partial to “Mama Delphi,” which starts out with the line, “She didn’t know she was made of Play-Doh.” Man, if I had nickel for every time I’ve dated that chick.

Since writing to us, Fudo and his bandmates (Choklit Chanteuse, Wizzbang Mahnkae, Nashish, Nectar and occasionally a guy called Uncle Stabby, which is now officially my favorite band alias ever) have been on a roll. They’ve opened for The B-52's (bet Fred Schneider loooooved them) and were voted Best Rock Band at the North Bay Music Awards. We like to think being named Weird Band of the Week is just as prestigious, but who are we kidding? They’ve probably forgotten about us little people already.

Fun bonus fact: Their fans are called “FlipperTrippers.” We’re sure that’s just because seals have flippers and is not in any way a drug reference.

Anyway, here’s “Zeroes and Ones.” Insert your favorite “cluck” joke here. - Weirdest Band in the World

Here’s how not to put on a show:

Set up instruments. Stand there. Play.

Here’s how to put on a show:

Get there early and cover the venue in decór. Bring in hay bales, chicken-wire fences, chicken coops. Get a huge illuminated chicken to watch the front door. Place giant Easter Island-like chicken statues on the stage, with more chicken wire, chicken ladders and hay on stage.

During the set, have two go-go dancers gyrating in a cage. Have a girl dressed as a sheep, in a painter’s mask, making toasted sandwiches and handing them out to the crowd. Make sure to remind everyone about the Chicken Shit Bingo game going on outside. And right on the last downbeat of the last song of the night—a chicken-modified version of “Safety Dance”—hit the trigger that blows hundreds of white feathers all over the audience.

That was Baby Seal Club last night at Hopmonk, living up to their reputation for reimagining what a show should be. If you weren’t at the “Hopmonk Henhouse,” it may be a little hard to describe. - North Bay Bohemian

by Gabe Meline

It's easy to forget that there's music even happening at this weekend's Ice Flo event, what with all the painstaking detail to which the organizers have gone to ensure that the night is as beautifully bizarre as an evening at Burning Man. Along with an outdoor cabaret stage showcasing circus acts and a tribal fire collective, there's the promise of wandering Burleskimos, old-fashioned cigarette girls dressed in "furkinis." Add to the mix art displays, massage tables and the Amrita Bollywood Dancers, and you're looking at a night to remember any way you slice it.

But wait! There's also the seductive ukelele undulations of soul singer Rose Harting, the deconstructive consciousness-marauding of Pumps:Fire and the organizers of the event, Baby Seal Club. If Belle and Sebastian had hung out in more graveyards, they'd be writing songs like "Tethered to My Wrist," a wryly pensive folk lamentation with shared harmonies by Baby Seal Club's El Fudo and Choklit Chanteuse, and it's fitting that the band close the show; last year, says BSC's cocktail drummer Stache, Baby Seal Club were one of only a handful of live bands at Burning Man. To properly compete with the overabundance of DJs, the band had to perform on top of a pirate bus, driving around the Playa, until a sandstorm ultimately ruined their equipment.

This year, the band aim to build a large traveling blue ice stage--more securely shielded by the elements--on the back of a flatbed truck, and all funds raised by Ice Flo go toward this grand aim. Whether you care about Burning Man or not, it's sure to be a night you can regale your dad with the next morning when you groggily take him out to Father's Day breakfast.

Ice Flo goes down on Saturday, June 16, at the Sebastopol Brewing Company. Arctic attire recommended.
- North Bay Bohemian

by Gabe Meline

It's easy to forget that there's music even happening at this weekend's Ice Flo event, what with all the painstaking detail to which the organizers have gone to ensure that the night is as beautifully bizarre as an evening at Burning Man. Along with an outdoor cabaret stage showcasing circus acts and a tribal fire collective, there's the promise of wandering Burleskimos, old-fashioned cigarette girls dressed in "furkinis." Add to the mix art displays, massage tables and the Amrita Bollywood Dancers, and you're looking at a night to remember any way you slice it.

But wait! There's also the seductive ukelele undulations of soul singer Rose Harting, the deconstructive consciousness-marauding of Pumps:Fire and the organizers of the event, Baby Seal Club. If Belle and Sebastian had hung out in more graveyards, they'd be writing songs like "Tethered to My Wrist," a wryly pensive folk lamentation with shared harmonies by Baby Seal Club's El Fudo and Choklit Chanteuse, and it's fitting that the band close the show; last year, says BSC's cocktail drummer Stache, Baby Seal Club were one of only a handful of live bands at Burning Man. To properly compete with the overabundance of DJs, the band had to perform on top of a pirate bus, driving around the Playa, until a sandstorm ultimately ruined their equipment.

This year, the band aim to build a large traveling blue ice stage--more securely shielded by the elements--on the back of a flatbed truck, and all funds raised by Ice Flo go toward this grand aim. Whether you care about Burning Man or not, it's sure to be a night you can regale your dad with the next morning when you groggily take him out to Father's Day breakfast.

Ice Flo goes down on Saturday, June 16, at the Sebastopol Brewing Company. Arctic attire recommended.
- North Bay Bohemian