Silver Apples, The Moon Upstairs September 12, 2007

SHOW 7:00 PM // ADV $10// DOS $12

Silver Apples
Decades after their brief yet influential career first ground to a sudden and mysterious halt, the Silver Apples remain one of pop music's true enigmas: a surreal, almost unprecedented duo, their music explored interstellar drones and hums, pulsing rhythms and electronically-generated melodies years before similar ideas were adopted in the work of acolytes ranging from Suicide to Spacemen 3 to Laika. The Silver Apples formed in New York in 1967 and comprised percussionist Danny Taylor and lead vocalist Simeon, a bizarre figure who played an instrument also dubbed the Simeon, which (according to notes on the duo's self-titled 1968 debut LP) consisted of "nine audio oscillators and eighty-six manual manual controls...The lead and rhythm oscillators are played with the hands, elbows and knees and the bass oscillators are played with the feet." Although the utterly uncommercial record ¡½ an ingenious cacophony of beeps, buzzes and beats ¡½ sold poorly, the Silver Apples resurfaced a year later with their sophomore effort, Contact, another far-flung outing which fared no better than its predecessor. After the record's release, the duo seemingly vanished into thin air, perhaps returning to the alien world from whence they purportedly came; however, in 1996 the Silver Apples mysteriously resurfaced, as Simeon and new partner Xian Hawkins released the single "Fractal Flow." American and European tours followed, and a year later a new LP, Beacon, was released to wide acclaim. The follow-up Decatur appeared in 1998, and was soon joined by A Lake of Teardrops (a collaboration with avowed fans Spectrum) as well as The Garden, the long-unreleased third and final effort from the original Simeon/Taylor partnership. However, on November 1, 1998, the Silver Apples' van crashed while returning from a New York gig; the accident left Simeon with a broken neck and spinal injuries, casting his continued musical career in grave doubt. Danny Taylor passed away recently (March 10 2005) of a heart attack in Kingston, New York at the age of 56.

The Moon Upstairs
THE MOON UPSTAIRS are touring to promote their debut album, "Guarding The Golden Apple" and have been hailed as "the answer to today" current current state of cookie-cutter bandwagon indie rock." "Epic" "Beautiful" and "Timeless" are the words most used when describing this five-piece. Don Bolles of The Germs had this to say after seeing them live: "Seeing The Moon Upstairs perform live is what it would have been like watching THE BEATLES record the Abbey Road LP live, which perhaps could have happened, if they had all even been in the same room at the same time…