Saturday, December 20, 2008

The Hot IQs Throw a Christmas Party!

It's so special to have a nice Jewish boy like Eli Mishkin throw the best durned Christmas party in town. The Hot IQs were celebrating the release of their "Houndstooth" video and seven-inch single on Dec. 19, and threw a hellacious party at the Bluebird Theater, complete with dancing elves doing a choreograph thingie they called Team Firefox. The lighting was too dark to catch the amazing Elaine Acosta on drums, but below is the video for "Firecracker," and I also took some quick Flips of "Retromuff," "Duck and Cover," and a song I didn't know with a chorus of "Wait for Me." I didn't get a video, but the last encore was a wonderful cover of The Magnetic Fields' song, "I Think I Need a New Heart." Eli also did a hilarious holiday Q&A for the Denver Post.

One of the openers was an absolutely maniacal hip-hop-primitivo-techno-disco duo that called themselves the Chaingang of 1974. Here's a drum excerpt of their performance.

Merry Christmas and belated Happy Chanukkah!

3 comments:

Sharon said...

I like imagining you out there embracing life like that. Sounded like a great way to celebrate the holidays. Also really enjoyed The Magnetic Fields' "I Think I need a New Heart" & The Hot IQ's interview:

"Holiday lights are sparkly and shiny things. We like shiny things." :)

Ruth said...

I hope you're still going to mad Christmas parties 50 years from now.

Loring Wirbel said...

Sharon, the Magnetic Fields song is from the sprawling, opulent box set 69 Love Songs, which has 68 other songs as good as that. It came out in late 1999, and I always told people it was the best studio release of the second half of the 20th century (basically, since the launch of the LP record). They'd look at me and say, "C'mon, Sgt. Pepper? Let It Bleed? Dark Side of the Moon?" "Nah. 69 Love Songs."

Ruth, what with bones a-creakin' and shingles a-flarin' already, the century mark seems a long way away. Maybe they'll roll me into some performance-art venue in 2057 and I'll holler in an annoying croak, "Why did she throw that paint on the wall? What did he say to her? And what's with that talking saxophone? I don't get it."