Latest Review: Magic Lantern – High Beams

Long Beach’s Magic Lantern have finally gone and released a new sonic document after what seemed like an eternity of waiting. Eagerly anticipated by those who have been biding their time waiting for the band to get on with their uber limited cassette only and CD-R releases (their Self-Titled CD-R was limited to 30), “High Beams”, the band’s latest opus [...]

Am, Fuck Yeah so much right now!

Photo by thedamnblue, with a couple more here and here

I have had this post sort of semi assembled for a couple weeks now but never posted it cause it a) I wasn’t there and b) too much time passed since this thing took place, but today as I was doing a little house cleaning behind the scenes at inflight, I decided to pull this post out. Not so much for what occured, but more because, fuck I totally love this band right now.

If you were at Fuck Yeah Fest a couple weeks ago or regularly read Buzz Bands, then you probably saw read this, but if not, here is a link to the entire article recounting the author’s (not Bronson) first night at FYF4 and pasted below is the specific part of the article that I want to point out.

Leaving the Echo behind in a race to see Greg Ashley — he of the giant pop obfuscation that is “Medicine F* Dream” — I was waylaid by an iconic act of guerilla rock ‘n’ roll that goes back as least as far as the Beatles’ “Let It Be”: A sloppy, scrappy little quartet from Garden Grove called AM, which had neither applied for nor been invited to play the festival, set up on the sidewalk two doors down from the Echo and began to play an impromptu set of good-times garage-rock. Explaining the tactic, co-lead singer Fonzie said, “[Heck with] venues, [heck with] shows. We’ve got a portable generator!”

But what should have been a nice little diversion became an ugly little incident when two bouncers from the Echo decided that the foursome posed a clear and present danger to the festival and attempted to shut it down. Taking a cue from Ringo, the kids kept playing despite some unnecessarily aggressive alpha-male posturing. Instead of waiting for the end of the song to issue his decree, however, one of the muscle-bound bouncers actually tackled singer-guitarist Felipe mid-riff, railroading the skinny non-threat against the iron security gates along Sunset, knocking his guitar — and probably his spine — right out of tune. That was the end of that.

Like I said before I wasn’t even going to post this because I wasn’t there, but what changed my mind was watching American Hardcore this evening and just being pumped on A.M. (fyi, they are not hardcore, the movie just got my blood flowing) for doing what they do – just days after the Fest, A.M. went up and busked around San Francsico.

Anyways, this isn’t meant to stir up shit, just check out A.M., they just put out a brand new cassette. Yes, I wrote cassette.

Download “Tired” (mp3)

[audio:am_tired.mp3]

and “Message To Here” (mp3) from their album 1998 on Paper Made.

[audio:am_messagetoher.mp3]