Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
Madman Moon have been playing shows at local joints such as Detroit Bar and La Cave for months- maybe even years- now, but I'd always held off on seeing them. With a name like that, I assumed they would either be a group of too-serious, depressed folkies or a family-friendly nursery-rhyme group that, for whatever reason, elected to play in bars. But after taking a spin on their web-site-and immediately afterward, catching the first gig of their month-long residency at Detroit Bar- I realized all that I'd been missing. And then I cried.
Cried because Madman Moon blend the very best in retro pop with a just-short-of-vaudevillian theatricality, sounding at some points like middle-era Supergrass and at others like the Scissor Sisters- when Jake Shears aims more for Pink Floyd, not the Bee Gees. Especially fantastic is "Around the Crowd" which features a bass line lifted from Argent's "Hold Your Head Up" -a great fucking thing, in my book- and a stellar, catchy chorus thats reminiscent of Steve Miller, or maybe- hold on, had to press "repeat" again- well, you get the picture.
Madman Moon are all funky keyboards, backwater bass hooks, triumphant guitar solos and smoky harmonies. Best of all, they're playing Detroit Bar- for free!- every Monday night in April and have a cast of strong support acts lined up, including LA's lovable twee group Lets Go Sailing on April 11th and local alt-country/rock & rollers Dusty Rhodes and the River Band on April 18th.
Seriously? Learn from my mistakes. See this band in your own backyard- for free!- while you can.
Madman Moon play at Detroit Bar, 843 W. 19th Street, Costa Mesa, 949) 642-0600. Every Monday in April. 10p. Free. 21 and up.
- Ellen Griley
Discography
We released a 4 song demo at the end of 2004 and are in the studio mixing our 11 song LP due out the end of summer.
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
It began on a Sunday morning on the coast of California. After a night of intense drinking and Caligulan debauchery, a severely congested Keith Moon (legendary rock and roll drum smasher, nicknamed "madman") tossed his dirty hanky out the window of his Aston-Martin DB-5 as he barreled down Pacific Coast Highway. Legend has it that Moon's handkerchief landed on the sidewalk in a puddle of piss-warm beer and began to grow a gigantic green mold. Within hours the mighty fungus had grown nearly five feet tall and developed into the form of a walking, talking, human dude with an ironic moustache. Passers by named it Jayson, and quickly gave it a shave and a drum kit to shred on. Soon Jayson was the most percussive little mold in five counties, but he still needed a band of humans to help him make epic sounds and get laid...
Meanwhile, in the cottonwood outskirts of Tunica, Mississippi, Tyrone Sanders was born a poor black child. Although Tyrone was blind at birth, his father, Jellyroll Sanders, taught him to play the piano by touch, and the boy soon became a ragtime virtuoso. On his twelfth birthday, young Tyrone suddenly hit puberty, inexplicably gaining his sight and thereby realizing that he was actually a Japanese man. He dusted off his walking shoes and set out west to find his real parents, with nothing but a song in his heart and a piano tied to his back...
Halfway around the globe, Bootsy Collins, the extraterrestrial bass guitar slapper of P-Funk fame, was winding his way through Marrakech on the ill-fated "Aqua Boogie with Islam" tour when he fell in lust with a curvaceous belly-dancer. Soon enough Bootsy was throwing the super heavy-duty funk all up in the silk-veiled beauty, until nine months later a little white boy with a rat-tail rolled right out of her. They gave him a silly French name: Jean-Louis, and swiftly booted him across the Atlantic, where he learned how to talk shit and play bass really well.
The fates of these three strange lads became inextricably linked with the help of a wandering minstrel from 16th century Florence named Jacoppo (Jacob) Sehagenni. In 1592, the Medici family commissioned young Jacoppo to travel to the new world and mesmerize the natives with his righteous ballads. Late one night while at sea, while taking a piss Jacoppo fell overboard into the Straights of Gibraltar and was quickly swallowed whole by a monstrous white whale. He spent the next 500 years living in the whale's belly playing a guitar made out of seaweed and munching on cold anchovies. Until one day, when with a mighty force Jacoppo was shot straight out of the beast's blow-hole. He landed smack dab on a bar stool in sunny California seated right next to Jean-Louis, Jayson, and Ty. After a few drinks the four merry pranksters agreed to join forces to form the most epic band this side of the moon . To this day their sonic assault is heard in jam boxes and night clubs from Orange County all the way to LA.
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