Sat. June 26

 It's a different world we live it today, certainly in the music business. One of our favorite dark art/noise bands from Boston is Black Helicopter. The group is celebrating a new disc, their third full-length effort, "Don't Fuck with the Apocalypse," with a gig Saturday June 26 at P.A.'s Lounge. The band's description, of which we concur: A sound "between mechanical, grinding, cyclical rhythms, sparse yet intricate airy psych-outs, and addicting pop melodies." Some gnarly subject matter, too. Reference points: Sonic Youth, Shellac, Mission of Burma. The album was going to come out on Fontana/Universal (a major label), but instead has been released via Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label. "We dropped our connection with Fontana/Universal over an artwort dispute on this record," says BH's Zack Lazar. "Go figure, a band voluntarily dropping their label." Naturally, we asked, please explain.
Zack got back to us. It's quite a back story. "As for the whole artwork debacle, " he e-mailed, "basically we went through a lot of effort to get punk rock-turned-blue chip artist Raymond Pettibon to allow us to use one of his prints and we actually named the record after it. It took us forever to record this thing and it was a very frustrating process to get all the clearances together to get the art done. We decided early on that this is what we wanted and we would take extra time to make it happen. Dealing with Raymond was like dealing with Rain Man, and once we got the approval from him it was kind of a huge deal for us as fans of his art.

"We submitted the artwork and it was in the system for months while we planned SXSW and other shows to promote the frigging thing on our very limited time to do trips like that. Then the release date comes around and Universal's lawyers crawl up our ass due to the language on the cover (fuck) and the song title on the back (king shit). So I point out that other "major" indie labels are also using this type of language (Mission of Burma song titles, Fucked Up, Holy Fuck, etc.) and then they came back with an offer to alter the artwork and whatnot. That was not acceptable to us. Basically we passed and Ecstatic Peace's non-universal wing (two guys in a stinky office) still agreed to put out the original thing on Ecsatic Peace "proper".
Since Universal and Fontana did absolutely nothing to help us market 'Invisible Jet' and really put the onus on Ecstatic and ourselves to do it, I can't say that this will change anything for the worse or better, but it sure is better than being pussies and changing the album name or artwork. I mean we're all in our 40s at this point, and now is not the time to eat lawyer shit. They were about to put this in a plain white case and make it like a Spinal Tap surprise for us. We were clearly not into that. So we're happily back on the indie. Frankly we had no choice last time around because EP got swallowed up by Universal right when we signed. That was all kind of a weird surprise for us. Opening: Velvet Elvis. Tix: $10. Starts at 9.

      
345 Somerville Ave.,Somerville, 617-776-1557 www.paslounge.com