Thursday 23 May
 
 

IndianGiver — Plafond EP

If you were to peruse the “About” section of IndianGiver’s Facebook page, you’ll notice how the instruments attributed to each of the Oklahoma City band’s five members are described with downright flippancy: Dylan Jordan plays “sticks & animal skins,” while Jazzton Rodriguez earns his keep with “shanties & loud noises,” and so on.
05/22/2013 | Comments 0

Various artists — Never Give Up: Celebrating 10 Years of The Postal Service

Few indie bands have had the impact on current music that The Postal Service has. Even fewer have done so with only one album.
05/15/2013 | Comments 0

Big Worm — Bench All-Stars

Fans of the comedy classic Friday may recognize the name Big Worm, but the Big Worm behind Bench All-Stars is rooted not in South Central L.A., but on the streets of Oklahoma City.
05/08/2013 | Comments 0

Code 22 — Going Soft: The Acoustic Album!

The guys of Oklahoma City’s Code 22 seem like a likable group of fellas. Their latest release, Going Soft: The Acoustic Album!, is likable enough as well — so likable that on first listen, I took its clean, acoustic sound and clear, unstressed vocals as an alternative praise-and-worship band.
05/08/2013 | Comments 0

Eureeka — Polysynthetic Fields

It’s always refreshing to hear music that embraces its own eccentricity, yet presents it in an accessible and meek fashion. Eureeka — the Norman-based duo of Jordan Vargas and Devin Wahl — has tapped into this rarified air on its self-released EP, Polysynthetic Fields.
05/08/2013 | Comments 0
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Music

Vending machines


What’s your poison: rock, funk, metal? Oklahoma City’s The Venditos offer ’em all.

Joshua Boydston August 10th, 2011  

The Venditos with The Chloes and Em and the MotherBitches
8 p.m. Friday
VZD’s Restaurant & Club
4200 N. Western
vzds.com
524-4203
$5

When The Venditos roll into a venue, they do it big.

The humble rock band hailing from Oklahoma City doesn’t have a record deal or any sort of other financial backing, but it does enjoy a full-on tour bus, an old Greyhound that looks like the full shebang from the outside.

Inside? Well, that’s a different story. “It’s a crack house on wheels,” bassist Gabe Barham said.

Added lead singer Chris Sanders, “It’s not real nice, but it’s not that bad. We just roll with it.”

The Venditos put 60,000 miles on their old school bus — purchased for $500 — before the upgrade. They loaded cots into the new vehicle to make runs across the region and form lasting memories involving naked skateboarding, covers of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and lots of Braum’s bacon cheeseburgers.

It’s certainly made for some of the guys’ fondest moments in their respective lives, which is funny, because touring — even concerts, period — wasn’t in the cards in the beginning. Sanders — the lone original member — intended nothing of the sort when he founded the group seven years ago.

“We were going to be a band that only recorded and never played live,” he said. “That pretty much flopped.”

Much of the rest of the tenets of a project band, however, remain. Up until six months ago, The Venditos’ lineup was a revolving door with almost too many drummers to name — “We’ve got that Spinal Tap luck,” Barham said. The musical style had been similarly irregular, with music that can potentially recall anything from Queens of the Stone Age to Primus to NOFX.

“We’re not a punk band. We’re not a rock band,” Sanders said. “It’s whatever the hell we want to do.”

The shifty songs creates an odd dynamic at shows with metalheads, funk fans and mosh-pitters engaging in a strange tango to the front of the stage as each of their respective favorite songs starts to crank over the speakers. That admit tedly disjointed nature made its way onto the band’s first album, “Version 4.0.”

A yearning for consistency guided its new EP, “Secrets,” resulting in the most cohesive set of material the band has produced so far. The guys described the vibe as Sonic Youth meets Meat Puppets. Apparently, they do it well, because former Chainsaw Kitten Trent Bell — who recorded and produced the effort — was convinced this was the sound for them. The Venditos seem less so.

“Trent was kind of nudging us to keep doing this sort stuff all the time ... but we can’t get stuck in it,” Sanders said. “It was a totally different direction on this, and the next one, we’ll probably take a totally different direction again. We are trying to build a sound, but at the same time, we don’t want to be cornered.”

 
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