Music: January 2011 Archives

Eastern Conference Champions are returning with their first album of new material in four years. Speak-ahh will be released on April 26th on RockHampton Records.

The trio, which consists of Josh Ostrander, Greg Lyons and Melissa Dougherty, has kept quite busy since the release of their debut album (Ameritown) in 2007, releasing two critically acclaimed EP's (Santa Fe & Akustiks).

Lead singer Josh Ostrander explains why it took four years to finish their second album: "We knew this was going be a very important record for us when we started demoing and collecting songs. Every record and EP we released up until this point was truly a stepping-stone to this record. We wanted Speak-ahh to hit on every level. For the most part the band has adapted itself to getting things on their first or second takes whilst recording. I cant for the life of me tell you why this is our darkest record to date, it's not something we planned, we didn't even realize it until we looked at what we had finished."

Recorded in downtown Los Angeles, The ten-track album is a departure from the sound of their debut album. "After we recorded Ameritown with Owen Morris, we had a hell of a time pulling off some of the songs live, it just got away from us in the studio," Josh reflected. "Since we began recording on our own, we always go into recording a song with a 'are we gonna be able to pull this off live' mentality. We never put two guitars down when one will do the job. We prefer the bones of it to an orchestra. We love the rawness."

Eastern Conference Champions made waves last year when they were tapped to contribute an exclusive song "for the third installment of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. The unsigned act was chosen from more than 400 bands competing for the coveted soundtrack slot, and the resulting song, "A Million Miles An Hour," received rave reviews and raised the band's profile considerably.

"Twilight was ridiculously good for us," Josh commented. "If anything it showed a million kids out there that you don't need a label or even proper representation to get a foot in the door. We had two songs in the running for the movie, but they just weren't right. The band was taking me to Vegas for my birthday when we got the call that wanted something else. It was the night before we were leaving, nobody wanted to go in, but we did, we powered through, wrote, recorded, and mixed the song in about six hours, then left for Vegas. We would find out a week later that we got it."

Eastern Conference Champions are planning to tour around the release of Speak-ahh. Dates will be announced shortly.

The Grammy Museum downtown will host 'S'Talking Zappa' the special event honoring the life and legacy of musician Frank Zappa.

The presentation will be a musical examination and discussion of the details of Zappa's statement 'Music is the Best!" which will include audio and visual elements, electronica and live music presented by Gail Zappa with Todd Yvega and Joe Travers (drummer with Dweezil Zappa for over 18 years and archivist of the Zappa Family and Frank Zappa material).

The Grammy Museum's Scott Goldman will be the moderator of the event that starts at 7:30

The museum is located at 800 W Olympic Boulevard, downtown in the LA Live complex.

You can view more about Zappa here and more about the Grammy Museum here.

Dweezil Zappa - one of Frank's sons - is currently touring with the band Zappa Plays Zappa, which plays re-arranged Zappa tunes with a bigger band. For more on ZPZ, go here.