somehow i'm not impressed

Actually I was pretty damn impressed by the former Mr. Wheeler's band when I saw them play at Revolution in Fort Lauderdale the other night. Crowd was nuts and the band was spot-on, though typically uncommunicative; highlights (for me, anyway) included "Obstacle 1," "Roland" (which they ended with) and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" ... oops, I mean "Evil." I wore my Pee Shy "Don't Get Too Comfortable" t-shirt, the one that if I recall correctly Mary designed (is she still with Peter, who recorded Bright Lights and Antics, by the way? I'm behind on my Guideran trivia), and briefly considered shouting out "Cindy Wheeler" during one of the quiet moments. So far, that's the closest I've gotten to seeing the Sisters live.

Here's more about that show if anyone's interested.

Much, tragic and otherwise, has occurred since my last post. For the moment, I'll trouble you only with Caulfields-related developments -- in which, astonishingly enough, the band seems to have become Brooklyn's hottest cultural export since "Welcome Back, Kotter."

To sum up:

• American Laundromat reports that "Say It With Fire" is its second highest seller.


• The label's set up a Caulfields Sisters message board, in which fans far and wide are raving about the splendors of the Trinity. Cindy posts occasionally too.


• Seattle community radio station KEXP will be streaming the Sisters live at noon on Tuesday, April 5, from the Museum of Television & Radio in New York. I'm there! Virtually at least. (This is somewhat karmic, since Pee Shy did the first concert that I ever listened to via webcast, back in Brooklyn in '96. I even bought a 28.8 modem solely for the occasion and taped the show on a shitty analog recorder. It was worth it for that night's version of the never-properly-recorded, oops-a-guitar-string-broke ditty "Satan loves you/oh yes she does/we are Pee Shy/showering you with Satan's love," plus Jenny's drunken description of Home as "detuned motherfuckers with two-ass strings like the fucking Presidents of the United fucking States," not to mention Cindy's cryptic exclamation "Double Pilgrim" when the topic of her shoes came up. Ah, good times.)


• Someone's taken to describing the band as "The Brooklyn Breeders." Admittedly, that's a more accurate and flattering nickname than, say, "The Bush Daughters."

The Sisters deserve all this attention and more. Rock on, Caulfieldom!


P.S. Didja notice that American Laundromat says they even got an order for the EP from Iraq? It's good to see that some of that Halliburton money is going to a good cause. Or maybe Ayatollah Sistani is even cooler than we all suspected.