May 2005:
Tweek City sold out its opening at the Dances With Films festival in Los Angeles this weekend -- and we've got a couple of songs in it! It's getting great reviews... check it out here:
**Update, September 2004: **
Yep, still working on the new record, with more news very soon on its upcoming release... the humble working title right now is Third Grade Teacher Reveals the Secrets of the Universe...
Meanwhile, Sabrina's "Flower Murderer" (read more about her one-woman show below) hits the Exit Theatre (156 Eddy & 277 Taylor, 415.673.3847) as part of the 13th Annual San Francisco Fringe Festival! Click the flyer to enlarge it to human-readable size...
Sabrina Stevenson's "Flower Murderer," at the same venue, is another collection of tales -- 14 vignettes, each as sharply performed as it is crisply written. Some are character studies: A lovely pretentious poet, a woman obsessed to the point of stalking, a hilarious response to a bothersome roommate. Most are concerned with male-female relationships, from comic looks at men who can't deal with female sexuality to tough depictions of spousal and child abuse. Stevenson, lead singer-songwriter with the Los Angeles art punk band Third Grade Teacher, is a mesmerizing performer, nicely showcased by director Karen Aschenbach.And the SF Bay Guardian says:
Meanwhile, in Flower Murderer, writer-performer Sabrina Stevenson and director Karen Aschenbach gather a set of delicate character sketches, plucking at the petals of intimacy to reveal the slim but resilient stem of self. With insight and good humor, as well as a captivating intensity, Stevenson's alternately comic and dramatic characters negotiate their identities and desires on the parched ground of human relationships. Covering the mundane to the eccentric -- a transvestite recalling his flirtation with the Baha'i faith while his wife quietly expounds the virtues of a man who wears pantyhose to bed, for instance; or a young woman's scathing reply to her maid's intrusive notes, which suggests Jean Genet by way of the San Fernando Valley -- these vignettes are not equally worthy or always subtle, but they do contain an intriguingly mordant thread, fatalistic and defiant, that nicely complements Stevenson's mischievous, vaguely disquieting performance.
Spring 2004:
OK... does anyone here go to a band's news page
expecting to actually read current news? Oh sure,
click away hopefully, but it's usually six or more
months old... you know, the band's busy doing stuff
and didn't have time to write about it in the meantime
-- that sort of thing. (Either that, or you see that it's
compulsively updated several times a day with "Hey!
We just finished yet another new remix of our new
demo, download all 8 versions & vote for your
favorite! & join our street team! & help us get to
500 friends on Friendster by the end of this week..."
These are usually the same bands you've never heard,
never seen, but whose e-mail lists you somehow end up
on even though you never signed up because they
harvested your address from the last guy who didn't
"bcc"... and they send out huge 500k attachments with
every announcement, plus a mailbox-clogging duplicate "reminder" 2 days later...) But we do digress...
Well, you've probably sussed out which camp we fall
into. Not only can it *not* be said that we're known
to get our e-mail out TOO often or early (yeah, we know
it's good to send it more than 2 or 3 days beforehand,
but c'mon, you're a spontaneous, fun-loving,
born-ready bunch, aren't ya?) but we're not exactly
guilty of keeping the news page up constantly, either.
Not that there isn't news to tell you about:
- We're in the middle of recording the next album!
Planning for a summer release -- and maybe we *will* put up some previews once they're
ready, after all; you just never know. Artwork ideas
and titles are already being bandied about, but we'll
save all that for the next installment.
- Sabrina's one-woman show, Flower Murderer, enjoyed
positive reviews during its (extended!) run at Two Lights Studio
-- check out what the LA Weekly said:
FLOWER MURDERER
Sabrina Stevenson's semi-autobiographical solo show resembles a series of snapshots capturing a wide array of mostly eccentric characters - a couple of religious fanatics, a bag lady, health nut, sex addict, transvestite, poet, alien, and so on. Neurotic young women, desperate for love and male approval, also figure large, and in her final vignette, for which she named her show, Stevenson equates the act of giving flowers with men putting beautiful women on display, then tossing them away once they've faded. The versatile Stevenson swings from haunting confessions of abusive relationships and hilarious revenge fantasies to an almost childlike wonder of the natural world and a genuine appreciation for people. She's most dazzling when she lets her wicked humor shine through, such as in the Odd Couple-esque "Trini and Ruth," in which the Oscar-like Stevenson, annoyed at the notes left by a neatnik roommate, writes one long, threatening reply to put the persnickety girl in her place once and for all. In the middle of the piece, several of the religious/alien/astronomy skits begin to blur together; some judicious editing by director Judith Weston would solve this and serve to better highlight Stevenson's considerable strengths as both performer and writer. Two Lights Studio, 3402 Motor Dr., W.L.A.; Sun., 7 p.m.; thru Oct. 26. (310) 392-2444. (Miriam Jacobson)
- More great press mentions of 3GT lately; much of it
lurks on the "About Us" page, but here are a couple of
interviews with Sabrina and Laura that appeared
recently:
Audio interview http://musicsojourn.com/AR/Alt/page/s/StevensonSabrina.htm, also linked at http://www.womanrock.com/reviews/reviews_1003.html
Live review & interview in Score! Music Magazine
- We've been playing yet more out-of-town shows (LAUSD curriculum permitting), plus the occasional suitable-for-all-ages acoustic show -- with more in the works even right now. Watch out.
- Um, you don't really want ALL the dull real-life news about our site switching servers (another reason why we were slow to
update here) and ailing parents, but there you have
it, after all.
- And actually, we're not immune to Friendster and MySpace either, so feel free to look us up there if ya want -- you know our address!
More news soon, but we've got some show spam to send out right now...
You can read past updates by clicking here... Love, 3GT