Weekend Video Fix: Up Up Down Down, Drop Nineteens, Film School

>> Few things are more inspiring than the video recently posted to wildly under-rated indie rock outfit Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start's MySpace page. The track is called "Please Come To Me" and it is from the band's 2005 effort Perris, CA. Check the video out here [FYI the screen shot above is to the Quicksand video described at the bottom of this item]. The band has three dates lined up in April. We are currently wondering how unrealistic it is to think we'd drive all the way from Boston to Hartford for the show April 6, since we often lack the motivation to walk the 10 blocks to the popular rock clubs here in our town. But that is just how inspiring Up Up Down Down is. The band has a whole mess of music posted online, do yourself a favor and find some of it.

>> This afternoon, while inexplicably binging on Drop Nineteens singles, we stumbled onto the site for Paula Kelley, she formerly of the aforementioned and formerly amazing act. The band, for those not familiar, released a stellar shoegaze record on Caroline in 1992 called Delaware. The record was so good that we and WPRS and KFB drove directly to WXVU and got buzzed into the studio just to ask what the record was. Anyway, Kelley's site here has a couple videos and MP3s from Delaware, including a neat little clip for "Winona." The sound quality is pretty iffy, but it's nice to see a clip for the song all the same. And yes, the '90s really were all day-glo like that. Incidentally, Kelley has had a busy post-Drop Nineteens career, and she releases Some Sucker's Life, a collection of demos and so-called lost recordings, April 4.

>> Here's the video for the latest single from California shoegazers Film School. The track is called "11:11," and here's a link to the video. We're just turning onto this band and we like what we've heard from our first several listens to the band's self-titled set.

>> And finally few more videos culled from YouTube: Here's the dizzying and kinda sophomoric video for The Swirlies' very solid track "Bell," which was released on the classic 1993 record Blonder Tongue Audio Baton. The video looks very "Boston" to us. Archers of Loaf's "Web In Front" may be the best single ever released in the 1990s. The video is almost as inscrutable as that Swirlies joint. Finally, here's a video of New York hardcore dynamo Quicksand performing its signature cover of The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now." It takes a while to kick in as Walter fakes the crowd out with the verse of a different track at first, and generally it's not the best performance, but one well worth watching if only to remember what "the scene" was like back in "the day." It actually gives us goose bumps.