We have in our possession a very limited number of tickets which can be acquired by writing the VBs at vanburenmusic@gmail.com, or comment on our FB or this site. Tix can also be got at the Middle East website or at the door.

Bite his shiny, emotionful ass

P.S. If you’d like to prove your own ability for emotion and intelligence you can come see the VB’s at the United Church in central square of Keene, NH today at 3:30 and then at the Salt Hill Pub in Newport, NH tonight.

Shackleton summoned his crew for such an adventure through an advert in a London newspaper that read as follows:

That’s not too far from the ad we all responded to when we joined this band.

On Sunday I had the pleasure of taking in The Phantom Limb Company’s 69° South, a one act staged interpretation of Shackleton’s wild adventure south. Despite what the title would suggest, sexy rock and roll times were not abound for Shackleton and his crew. The Endurance Expedition is the focus of this wordless play that features six incredibly gifted dancers/marionette puppeteers depicting the incredible hardship Shackleton endured (he will never live down that pun).

The 75 minute performance featured a pre-recorded score composed by Erik Sanko and performed by The Kronos Quartet. In addition to the prerecorded strings and ambient noise was the live accompaniment from the band Skeleton Key. The piece was broken into 9 tableaux(a fancy word for scene) which were the critical points of the Endurance Expedition. The work was slow, evoking the misery and destitution of the 6 explorers, and extremely haunting. Particularly moving was the tableuax entitled The Break-Up in which Shackleton’s ship sinks and the men are truly left without any hope. In this moment, the music builds to a bombastic crescendo with all members of Skeleton Key singing an almost inaudible folk song underneath.

The performance begins and ends with the six dancers dressed in tight red jumpsuits. As the program explains, the actors at this moment are humans returning to earth after the ice age. The work is depicting the impermanence of Shackleton and other explorers’ time on Antarctica and by extension the impermanence of our time on this earth. The piece is thought provoking and incredibly moving. Although it is no longer at the Paramount Theatre in Boston, I’d be surprised if it weren’t given another run elsewhere.

Skeleton Key was the biggest surprise and a group that deserves your attention.

Fantastic

A couple love songs for ye, Slainte!

"My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them."

Thanks again to Sullivan Hall, the Indobox, and all the awesome people who came out Friday night in NYC to make a very special evening. We had a great time and were excited to see so many faces, new and old, rocking out to VB tunes. Thanks again and we’ll be back for NedFest on April 21st.

Boston and New Hampshire fans, however, get to catch us this week as we make our debut at the Cantab in Cambridge on Thursday (2.16) and return to Salt Hill Pub Newport, NH on Saturday (2.18). The Cantab is a cool lounge/bar/grill and we’ll be playing with our pals Enter Autumn, a supremely talented jazz/funk quartet who wowed us at Tommy Doyle’s in December. Show starts at 7:30, with Enter Autumn at 8:45 and the VB going on at 10:30. Click the pic for FB event and info. New Hampshirites, click the ‘Shows’ tab up above for more info about our Newport Salt Hill show.

Sullivan Hall. NYC. 2.10.12
One Set: Tranceformers, Stinkoff, The New One, Pinchback, Bledsoe, Shots in L.A. > Lee Harvey Oswald, Gary Don’t, Taft Punk

Spend any time traveling with the Van Burens and, so long as you don’t breathe in too much van air, you’ll stay conscious long enough to realize that on long car rides, and anytime they’re together for an extended time, the Van Burens fall into a highly sophisticated verbal chatter – consisting of television and movie quotes, song lyrics, inside jokes, sounds (both musical and Michael Winslow-style), and impressions of all the characters they’ve met – strung together with a conversational logic that few can interpret.  Were a band car ride t0 be transcribed transcribed, the words would appear entirely meaningless while their collective understanding of gibberish and frequent laughter at nonsense would flummox the reader.

Everybody has in-jokes with their friends, but the sheer volume of the VBs shared references (which often make their way into the group’s song lyrics) is titanic.  Mastercheese Theater attempts to pay homage to those works which hold a dear place in the VB library (don’t worry, there will be very few books.)

Starring Ethan Embry, the unfathomably Jeff King-like Steve Zahn, Hanks Himself, Jonathan Scaech, Liv Tyler, and Tom Everett Scott

That Thing You Do!  is a 1996 Tom Hanks – directed comedy about a band from Erie, PA rising from mediocrity to stardom on the strength of their hit single…..That Thing You Do!.  The band eventually crumbles under the weight of too-famous-too-fast; their wild ride that of a one hit wonder.  The VBs not only identify with the broader aspirations of the characters (we quote characters in band movies like Tony Soprano quotes Vito Corleone), but we also much like the dry, self-deprecating sense of humor the movie brings to situations we’ve found ourselves in, such as trying to come up with a band name (just as the VBs struggled, the band in the movie considers “The Chordvettes” before the trying-too-hard-to-be-a-pun “The Oneders” before landing on “The Wonders.”)

That Thing You Do!  gets other little things right about the band biz, from the eagerness to succeed (“A man in a really nice camper wants to put our song on the radio.  I’m signing.  You’re signing.  We’re all signing.”) to nights playing empty rooms (“hey, wasn’t that our fan?”); from the conflict between art and entertainment (“there he goes, off to his room to write the hit song ‘Alone in My Principles’.”) to drummers wearing sunglasses (“Well, I am the drummer.”)   Aside from the quirky real life charm and chuckles, and a fun cast (also: much of the cast learned to play music so their miming looks like a real band and not Milli Vanilli) the movie works because the songs are great and you can actually believe a band becoming famous for them.  Adam Schlessinger of Fountains of Wayne (“Stacey’s Mom”) wrote most of the tunes, and they get stuck in your ears like when you fall asleep eating taffy.

Here’s the band with the title track on the night their hubris becomes inevitable.

the Books – A Cold Freezin’ Night from Paul de Jong / Nick Zammuto on Vimeo.

The song A Cold Freezin’ Night is an example of the use of such a found sound source sample. de Jong and Zammuto actually purchased an old talkboy tape recorder at a flea market and used the ramblings of a little girl as the main material for the piece.

Books fans delighted last year when the duo added multi-instrumentalist Gene Back to their live show. Previous criticisms of the band had mainly been born out of the fact that they always played along to a recorded rhythm track in concert. When Nick Zammuto announced his plan to tour with a live band, I was greatly excited to hear what he’d come up with. Monday night at Brighton Music Hall was one of three shows Zammuto performed in preparation for the release of their album this spring.

The highlight of the short concert was drummer Sean Dixon. Nick’s songs and his style of music, which rely heavily on complicated percussion tracks, sound vibrant and dynamic when performed live. Perhaps the highlight of the show was the performance of Books tune Smells Like Content. Seeing Back and Zammuto adroitly navigate a very neat guitar line was very exciting. Mike Zammuto (Nick’s brother) was solid on the bass as well. Zammuto also performed Books song All You Need is a Wall from 2010′s A Way Out.

A mixture of humor and melancholy is integral to Zammuto’s style. He’ll often title songs using puns and word play (“Too Late to Topologize” is a new Zammuto song), despite the fact that the content is reaching something deeper. A signature of the Books was their use of vocal processors to create different effects and pair well with audio samples. I especially appreciate their use of tremolo to create a rhythmic pulse for held harmonies. I confess that I was looking forward to hearing Nick’s bare voice in the context of a live band and was therefore a bit disappointed to hear his use of autotune and other processors at moments in the concert. Zammuto’s sense of humor is important to his overall thematic development, and much of the vocal processing did bring a sense of levity to his music, but I would have liked to hear more of his true voice, and perhaps a more serious telling of some of the issues he’s working out in his new music. I don’t expect him to draw back the processor for songs like F U C-3P0 for example, but found it less necessary in other more serious pieces. Jeff and I did marvel at many moments at the cool things Zammuto was able to accomplish with his vocal processors, so my disappointment was not in his mastery of the tool, just his overall choice to use it. That said, the band was excellent and will only get better as it continues to play and record. I’m looking forward to the new album. Check out Zammuto and stay tuned for big things from them.

We had a great time hanging with you at the Rosebud in Somerville, MA a couple weeks ago bringing a raucous close to Month 1 of 2012…the beginning of the end.  Hence, we wore costumes.  If this is going to be the last year on earth, the VBs sure ain’t waiting around for Halloween, or casual Fridays for those of you in the working world.

Gal!

Emilie Bogrand on vox and The Flavour on tenor sax

Holy Bogie

Thursday we are headed to Dartmouth College to play a Champagne Party, and then we head deep into enemy territory Friday night to perform with The Indobox at Sullivan Hall NYC.  We will hold our heads high and groove the grooviest groove while proudly singing our anthem honoring Bob Kraft’s main sqeeze: Drew Bledsoe.

Click the pictures to check out more details!