Apart from housing a shithead college for shithead students and Sierra Nevada Brewery, Chico, California, boasts a thriving (if not nationally recognized) music scene. Many of the players in this scene contribute to a summer School of Rock-style band camp named The Collective Sound. last year they decided to start putting together a documentary of the goings-on of the staff and the campers, aged 12-18. Watching it will give you that warm on the insides feeling.

Your new party trick:

Nestled in Northern California is a little college town with a lot of flavor. Home to Sierra Nevada Brewery, the largest Costco in the world, Synthesis, and for 70 happy years, the best ice cream ever. Chico’s favorite ice cream and candy parlor, Shubert’s, is making big waves as one of Good Morning America’s four finalists for “The Best Scoop in America”. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of licking a cone-full of Chico Mint, vote for Shubert’s right the heck now!

Other finalists are Moomer’s Ice Cream in Traverse City, Michigan, Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor in Dania, Florida, and Ron’s Gourmet Ice Cream in Hyde Park, Massachusettes. All lame names, all not as good.

I found out about the instrumental fucking badassness that is Russian Circles the old fashioned way, at least for me. I hadn’t even ever heard their name when I got their CD submitted for review by their publicist. The sad fact about review copies is that, being that we get about A HUNDERD a day around here, very few of them actually get listened to by yours truly, rather they get farmed out to our stable of review studs, or fucked directly off into the shit pile. But Russian Circles had that certain air about their CD, it just looked like the band responsible for it didn’t give a fuck. I mean, check it out:

Plus, it was on Suicide Squeeze, a label responsible for many similar such surprise bands-that-rule scenarios in the past (including one of my fav bands EVAR, The Six Parts Seven). Sweetening the pot even further was the fact that Station was produced by Matt Bayles, who is responsible for both some of the heaviest (Mastodon, Norma Jean) and some of the most epic sounding (Isis, Minus the Bear) records around. Not coincidentally, epic and heavy would be the two adjectives I would be most likely to use when describing Russian Circles. Less stoned than Isis, but more ballsy than Mogwai, the six jams on Station are long, but not drawn out, combing molten riffs with gently tapped melodic passages to create a musical backdrop for all sorts of gangster ass shit. Seriously, this record kicks fucking ass. Period.

Even more badass is the fact that the band’s current tour with Daughters is actually coming through Chico next month, so I get to jack them off not only in print, but in person too! Dates after tha jumppPppPppP: (more…)

Those wily Alaskans, Portugal. The Man stopped by Synthesis Weekly Managing Editor Ryan Prado’s apartment above the Senator Theater in Chico,CA a few days back during their tour with Minus the Bear to chop it up and perform a few of their amazing songs acoustic as part of our Live @ Ryan’s video series. Check out the band belting out “Church Mouth” above and stay tuned to our YouTube channel for more songs and an interview with the guys.

[The following column, printed in the Monday, May 5th edition of Synthesis Weekly, is an installment from our literature columnist, Emilie Clark.]

Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me
Edited by Ben Karlin
Grand Central Publishing

In an interesting turn on the book cover theme: Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me, an anthology of essays penned exclusively by men, has a very blue cover. I think it is cornflower blue, but not being an interior design major, I might be wrong about that. Anyway, it seems that sometimes men also get stereotyped and gendered through the use of infantilizing color schemes. But I will say that this blue is a much nicer color than the pink of last week, and I was not embarrassed at all to be seen reading this book. My manly boyfriend says the color wouldn’t embarrass him either. So there you have it.
The premise of this book is pretty obvious. A number of famous and semi-famous male authors and comedians tackle some break-ups and the lessons learned from them. Andy Richter talks about how hard it was for a teenager of his girth to find a girlfriend; Stephen Colbert writes about an old girlfriend, but lets his wife redact the naughty bits; and Neal Pollack tells an especially hilarious cautionary tale about midnight emissions and pets.
Most of the stories are pretty funny, some of the laugh out loud variety, and some of them even have a bit of heart. But I was surprisingly underwhelmed. As I read the list of contributors, my anticipation grew strong, but a lot of the big names seem to have just phoned it in. Standouts include “A Dog is No Reason to Say Together” by Damian Kulash Jr., singer of OK Go, who tells an intriguingly honest story about a relationship that could have been mine or anyone else I know. It’s about that kind of pre-marriage long-term relationship where the terms and contracts are really hard to define and you’re not sure how or when it should end. Another standout is Barbara Karlin’s forward, “I Think My Son is a Catch.” I’m sure you can guess what it’s about.
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