The Librarians video
2:14
The Librarians video of "You and this Bottle" a song from their album "The Pathetic Aesthetic" released on Pandacide Records. Produced and directed by Francis Choung. More info about the band can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ The_Librarians
Tags: librarians rock indie punk emo band
Added: 6 years ago
From: Frenetic
Views: 2,221
The Librarians
"You (And This Bottle)"
TheLibrariansRock.Com
Dir. Francis Choung
Crazy baby's drunk every single night
Me, I'm not the type to put up a fight
Try to find a chance, which is every night
No, you're not above anything that you might
Suggest we do
(Girl, we ain't got the time)
Girl, I'm in love with you
('Til this building goes down)
Although we've got no clue
(What the hell's going on! Go!)
Crazy baby's drunk every single night
Me, I'm not the type to put up a fight
Try to find a chance, which is every night
No, you're not above anything that I might
Suggest we do
(Girl, we ain't got the time)
Girl, I'm in love with you
('Til this building goes down)
Although we've got no clue
(What the hell's going on! Go!)
You and this bottle have a hold on my heart
You and this bottle have a hold on my heart
You and this bottle have a hold on my heart
You and this bottle have a hold on my heart
You and this bottle have a hold on my heart
You and this bottle have a hold on my heart
You and this bottle have a hold on my heart
You and this bottle have a hold on my heart
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From wikipedia.org:
The Librarians were a power pop band from Berkeley, California who formed in 1999 by Damon Larson and Ryan Gan. They released one album, The Pathetic Aesthetic, in 2002, on Pandacide Records.
Ryan Gan received his Master's in Library and Information Science in 2006 and is now employed as a librarian in Orange, California. Prior to this and the formation of the band, Gan played the euphonium at Magnolia High School in Anaheim, California between 1990 and 1994. Gan has since picked up the euphonium again and is playing in a band. Since leaving the Librarians, Damon Larson has continued his musical career. His newest band, the Paranoids, is a fixture on the San Francisco music scene.
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From thelibrariansrock.com:
Sometimes it's hard to tell if the Librarians are joking. A black-clad, leather-gloved, shaggy-haired rocker jumps off the stage and into the crowd. The ascotted guitarist takes center, affecting an exaggerated Elvis Costello tremolo over the lyric "cer-a-mic lawn or-na-ments," while the shaggy front man holds the harmony even as he struts around the audience like a renegade male model, striking ridiculous Mick Jagger poses and lasciviously rubbing his thigh. He points his tambo stick at the crowd provokingly: YOU GONNA DANCE, SCENESTERS, OR WHAT? And what's the crowd to do but drop all lingering inhibitions? This rock music is serious business, and rock is exactly what the Librarians play.
The Librarians began as most good rock acts do, with Damon Larson and Ryan Gan looking for a hobby and looking to get laid. In 1999, they started riling up Berkeley co-ops with fire-breathing stage antics and goofy pop odes to raver girls; by 2001 they were a full band, adding Lucas White on bass and Ben Adrian on drums. Songwriter Larson kept lead vocals and guitar, and Gan remained front man: part backing vocalist, part lunatic evangelist, and 100-percent solid-gold ROCKSTAR, gyrating and showboating to audiences' bewilderment and glee.
In May they released their debut full-length record, The Pathetic Aesthetic, on Bay Area–based Pandacide Records, recorded over the past year at Feedback Loop Industries, Adrian's home studio. Evocative of trashy freakbeat and early punk layered with contemporary power pop, The Pathetic Aesthetic both pokes fun at and revels in sloppy college parties where horny losers try their damnedest to pick up drunk art school girls. The Librarians' entire repertoire resounds with this snide irony. Glam-ish guitar licks are slammed up against sugary nerd-pop choruses; lyrics oscillate constantly between brash self-aggrandizement and pathetic self-defeat. Both the recorded music and the onstage performance reflect the Librarians' gleeful, maniacal determination to mock the overblown rock cannon ... and establish themselves gods within it.
And so far, they're not doing too bad a job. The Librarians placed first in UC Berkeley's 2001 Battle of the Bands, they've been receiving substantial radio play on Live 105's Local Lounge and Berkeley's KALX, and they've been winning themselves a growing following through playing a blue streak of shows up and down California. Audiences have been receptive at all-ages and 21+ venues alike, surprised and excited to get in on such a high-energy, interactive show. "We're versatile, and we'll rock just about anywhere," says Gan. "We've played raves. We've played the emo shows. Last year we opened for the Violent Femmes at the Greek Theater, in front of like 2,000 kids ... " So how the hell's a librarian supposed to be a rockstar, you're asking yourself? The Librarians will show you how.
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From sfbg.com:
Book 'em
The Librarians rock the stacks.
By Phil Herrick
THE STAGE AT 924 Gilman is cramped, and judging from the way Ryan Gan is dancing, I'm pretty sure he's going to knock something over.
I'm right – it's a microphone.
But Gan, the anti-frontperson frontperson of the Librarians, isn't even fazed. Though on the record, Gan's job is limited to backup vocals and tambourine for vocalist-guitarist Damon Larson, he explodes into his full potential onstage with spastic tambourine beating and poster-worthy one-hand-on-the-hip-the-other-thrust-skyward poses. His performance is truly horrifying in its cheesiness, and yet it's unnervingly mesmerizing. It's a kind of innocence-lost scenario: everyone reaches the same guilty conclusion, "Christ, why don't more bands do this?"
Listening to the Librarians' recent debut, The Pathetic Aesthetic (Pandacide Records), I'd say the last thing that comes to mind is a late-20s Asian American dude in biker gloves doing what appears to be an intensely personal tribute to glam rock. No, you'd think the recording was the product of a bunch of high school boys who see their punk-laced power pop as a way to get laid. Or, more to the Librarians' credit, you might think of the Replacements or a younger Elvis Costello. It's true, The Pathetic Aesthetic supplies enough catchy hooks and vocal harmonies to haunt you day and night, but at no point does it prepare you for their live show.
Reading, writing, rocking
Gan's stage persona has always been at the core of the Librarians' mission. Larson and Gan formed the band back in 1999 when they were both at UC Berkeley. "It was hard to start a band in college, with all the school, drinking, irresponsibility," Larson says later in an interview at a Berkeley cafe. Sitting amid a slew of Cal students, he lays off the caffeine and rolls his own cigarettes instead – though the women around him hassle him for smoking outside.
In the beginning they played co-op parties, winning fans with Gan's unhinged performances and their poppy odes to raver girls. By 2001 they had added Lucas White on bass and Ben Adrian on drums, and the Librarians were beginning to look like a "real band." In February the group placed first at Cal's Battle of the Bands, giving them the shove they needed to get into the studio.
Soon after, Petaluma's Pandacide Records hooked the guys up with Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. But sadly, the recording sessions didn't bear fruit. "It sounded like shit, and we scrapped it all," Larson says. So the band opted to record at Feedback Loop Industries, a.k.a. Adrian's bedroom.
Snotty punk pop
The standout feature of the 12-track debut is Larson's vocals. They shine. Or maybe better: they crater the side of a mountain. Larson croons his verses in a snotty Britpop kind of way that is at once playful, funny, and unabashedly naive. Choruses like "She'll be my lover if I rock like Sammy Hagar tonight" make you laugh even as they make you shake your head with embarrassment. "I have an adolescent mind," Larson confesses.
But it's more than that. Larson's oscillating arrogance and self-consciousness swing a little too close for comfort for anyone over the age of 13. These guys have matured since high school, and they cut the self-aggrandizement with a measure of irony. Would some punk rocker who can only play power cords sing, "Why do you dress like a rockstar when you can't even play the guitar?" That'd be like the emperor admitting he has no bondage pants.
Larson says the songs dis other dopes' silly shenanigans – but he's far from exempt. "I should know. I participated in the same thing," he quips. Still, his odes to one-night stands and slutty girls can't be written off as simply pent-up bitterness. Larson's lyrics parody adolescent love songs, yet they are love songs.
To their credit, and like many other indie bands before them, everything about the Librarians is double-coded. The nuanced commentary Larson accomplishes lyrically is carried on in a not so nuanced manner onstage. And their live shows are in response to the visually stagnant indie rock concerts that bore them. "There's a certain self-righteousness in punk rock and indie that I don't like," Larson complains. "I'd go see these indie rock bands and be like, 'Why are you playing live in the first place?' "
Dance fever
Enter Gan, the frontperson-go-go boy who doesn't really do much singing. As he sees it, that's not a problem. "The frontman should be the one who says, 'You should be like me,' " Gan explains. Translation: shake your ass like you're having a seizure. "The next evolution is less singing and more posturing," he adds.
Gan's dancing stands out among musicians who try to maintain some veneer of cool. Even in the Bay Area, he explains, the trend is to neglect stage shenanigans in order to remain inaccessible. Both Gan and Larson agree this preoccupation with aloofness is a shame – everyone has less fun. "I'm always excited to see a live show," Larson says, "but usually it's mopey."
But the Librarians are optimistic. The scene is starting to change. Indie rockers are getting into hip-hop, and that's adding a new groove to the music. "Now it's – bam – in your face with this weird-ass shit," Larson says, explaining the appeal of Oakland's Gravy Train!!!! "That's what it was supposed to be like in the beginning."
And ultimately, it's the weird-ass shit that the Librarians aspire to: taking their crazed antics and fusing them with their catchy pop. Gan calls it "something new with respect for the old," and references Sonic Youth as a model. A pretty tall order, don't you think? Yeah, but the Librarians also call themselves the future of rock, as Gan says, "like it or not."
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From metroactive.com:
Storming the Stacks
When was the last time you saw a Librarian shake his ass?
By Sara Bir
Sometimes it's tough to tell if the Librarians are joking. When you see a man dressed all in black down to the leather gloves, flailing around the stage with a tambourine, belting out backing vocals while the guitarist is dressed in a bad suit and applying an exaggerated Elvis Costello tremolo to the lyric "Ce-ramic lawn orn-a-ments," it takes just a wee bit of adjustment to figure out what's going on--particularly if you're acclimated to stoic bands that take themselves too seriously. This is, after all, only rock and roll, and that is exactly what the Librarians play.
The Librarians began inauspiciously enough with Damon Larson and Ryan Gan screwing around as a two-piece at parties and co-ops around Berkeley in 1999. By 2001 they were a full band, adding Lucas White on bass and Ben Adrian on drums, with Larson tackling guitar and lead vocal duties and Gan becoming part hype man, part "dancing monkey," as Adrian puts it. Gan plays the solid gold Rock Star, strutting all over the stage striking Mick Jagger poses, rubbing his ass, and pointing at the audience provokingly with his tambo stick. "The tambo stick is my scepter of power, so to say. I point at people with it, I shake it, it's really an extension of . . . yeah," theorizes Ryan.
It is refreshing to see a band provoking the audience, especially because the Librarians' approach is more tongue-in-cheek than, say, Madonna's when she's grabbing her boobies. They just want you to enjoy yourself, even if it means--God forbid--dancing! "You see these kids standing around, thinking, 'Oh, maybe I should go ahead and move,'" Gan says of an audience's typical initial reaction.
Not that they haven't been doing well for themselves. The Librarians placed first in UC Berkeley's 2001 Battle of the Bands and have since been winning themselves a growing following of fans by playing a blue streak of shows up and down the Bay Area, as well as getting radio play on Berkeley's KALX and Live 105's Local Lounge.
Recently they released their debut full-length CD, The Pathetic Aesthetic, on Petaluma-based Pandacide Records, which was recorded over the past year at Adrian's own studio, Feedback Loop Industries. "Do we want to say we recorded it in your studio, or do we want to say we recorded it in your bedroom?" Larson asks Adrian. "Both of which are true."
If that technicality qualifies the songs on The Pathetic Aesthetic as high-energy bedroom music, fine. Tracks like "Too Fat to Frug" and "Pissing on Your Party" are rife with a savvy teenage innocence that both mocks and celebrates sloppy parties where horny guys talk shit to pick up drunk art-school girls (and no, the Librarians are not teenagers). Last time I checked, that's what rock and roll was all about--having fun, trying to getting laid, and not caring that you're a dork.
In the meantime, North Bay crowds have been receptive, happy to have the chance to get in on a spirited show. "When we've played the Phoenix, kids know what to do," Larson says.
"It's become North Bay Dance Party," says Adrian.
"There's Nu Metal and hippy dance-jam crap, but kids just want to shake their ass," adds White.
And where do ass-shaking power-pop bands fit in the scheme of things? "We're very versatile. We've played raves--it's funny to see a bunch of rave kids moshing in front. We've played with the emo kids, we've played with the Velvet Teen," says Gan. "I like to call that the speedball show--we're the cocaine, Velvet Teen's like the heroin." You can try a speedball yourself at the Librarian's North Bay CD release on Saturday at the Phoenix, and you won't even get arrested for it.
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From ocregister.com:
Published: Oct. 16, 2010 11:22 a.m.
Teens encourage to get with the beat – and read
The Young Adult Library Services Association's Teen Read Week is Oct. 17-23, and with the theme of "Books With Beat," libraries across the world are doing their best to get teenagers involved at their local libraries and get them reading.
The Orange Public Library and History Center was one of the many libraries across the world to step up to the challenge by hosting a Teen Read Week kickoff party Thursday to get teenagers excited about reading.
The "Books with Beat" campaign is about encouraging teens to read poetry and books about music and to listen to audio books.
"We're trying to tap into what teens are interested in today," said Ryan Gan, the young-adult librarian at the Orange Public Library. "Kids today have really busy schedules compared to kids in the past, so we just want to let them know the library is here for them."
At the after-school kickoff party, teenagers played the video game Rock Band, decorated paper guitars at the arts-and-crafts table, and browsed through some books Gan laid out on tables labeled "All About Music" and "Teen Poetry".
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