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SAN FRANCISCO -- The Cubby Creatures have completed "Who Remembers Kathy Barra?," a new 5-song EP, to be released
at San Francisco nightclub Bottom of the Hill on Monday, November 19. The recording - which follows last
year's self-produced, full-length release The Blessed Invention - is the first Cubby collaboration with
a label, San Francisco's Rodent Records. Elton Ridge, who produced the record for Rodent, plays with
The Chantigs, who are on the bill with the Cubby Creatures for the release party. The opening band
that night will be The Shimmer Kids. The EP's title cut, "Kathy Barra," is a tribute to a childhood classmate, taunted by her peers because her name sounds like "capybara," the world's largest rodent. Other songs celebrate knitting, diseases, supernatural Cubby kitty, Bean, and Samy, the guy on 24th Street who sells the Cubby Creatures beer. The band's line-up includes bass player/vocalist Brian Weaver, producer of the recently released Embryo Compilation:03, which features the music of twenty Bay Area bands and is currently in KALX's top ten rotation; Bill Fisher, on keyboards, guitar and vocals; Jason Gonzales on percussion; Emily Davis on violin; and Karl Soehnlein, a writer whose novel, The World of Normal Boys, won the Lambda Literary Award for fiction, on clarinet. The mix of traditional rock elements with violin and clarinet gives the Cubbies a unique sound that has been described as everything from "post-modern" to "baroque." Comparisons have been made to the early Kinks, the mid-period Beatles, Camper van Beethoven and Elephant Six bands such as Olivia Tremor Control. The Cubbies have grown fond of a label slapped on them, perhaps derogatorily, which they now claim as their own genre: Tinker Pop. The Cubby Creatures are the musical arm of a San Francisco art collective, The Cubby, which includes such projects as a 'zine, The Cubby Missalette; a monthly cable-access show, CubbyVision (third Saturday of the month, 9 p.m., Channel 29); and a website, www.cubby.net, where Cubby Creatures music can be downloaded. Started four years ago in the Mission district, The Cubby is organized around the idea that creativity is divine and that a life not lived for Big Fun is no life at all. "Revolution through Inspired Living," reads one piece of Cubby propaganda. |