Brothers Brent and Darren Rademaker will team up with Steve “Fish” Fisher to reunite their 80’s New Wave band A New Personality for a gig at the 27th annual Tropical Heatwave festival in Tampa, FL on May 17.
The festival is hosted by radio station WMNF and was first held in 1982 with A New Personality as one of the featured bands.
For more information check out our brand new ANP page, the band’s official MySpace profile or the Tropical Heatwave website.

Alright, we haven’t posted any news in a while, but here’s something: If you live in the LA area (man, how I wish I did…) you should prepare yourself for some sweet Beachwood Sparks related action this weekend! The great Lilys (with former BWS drummers Aaron Sperkse and Jimi Hey in the line up) will play Spaceland tonight and tomorrow night! And on Saturday Darren Rademaker (The Tyde) are gonna play an acoustic solo set as a part of the Madonna Tribute in the Desert concert that will be held at Pappy & Harriet’s in Pioneertown. More info on these events can be found here and here, respectively.

Finally we’d like to wish you all a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Bomp! Records was the label which released the first single of Beachwood Sparks. They have also, at different points, been the home of other great bands such as The Barracudas, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Dead Boys/Stiv Bators, The Last, The Warlocks, etc, etc. Now there is a book, Bomp! Saving the World One Record At a Time, in which you can read the story and find out about the legacy of this great label and its even greater founder - rock’n'roll angel Greg Shaw.
Check out more at: http://bomp.com/book.html and http://www.myspace.com/bompbook

In an interview with The District Weekly Darren Rademaker from The Tyde talks some about Dennis Wilson, songwriting and his bands yet to released (or named) 4th album. Check out the interview here!
We can also inform you that drummer Ric Menck is back in the group and that Josh Schwartz has reunited with his old Further colleague to play third guitar.

As we’ve reported earlier, The Tyde are going to appear on the upcoming Madonna tribute album, Through the Wilderness, that’s gonna be out on Manimal Vinyl on November 20th. A few of the songs can now be heard here, and among them are The Tyde’s take on Hung Up from Madonna’s 2005 album Confessions on a Dance Floor.

Josh Schwartz, one of the founding members of Beachwood Sparks, has started a new musical project which is called Bolero. The band lists Neil Young and John Lennon as musical influences and recently played a show together with The Tyde.

Check them out at http://www.myspace.com/bolerobolero

We’re very excited to bring to you two new and exclusive Beachwood Sparks live video clips. Click here to watch them!

This wonderful footage of the band circa ‘98 was brought to us from The Pete Kinne Page by Cloyce on Myspace. We would like to send our big thanks to Jackie Hager for letting us distribute these videos and by that making them available to the Beachwood Sparks fan community. That’s you guys.

The first clip is a performance of Midsummer Daydream and Watery Moonlight (a song that was recorded for the band’s unreleased debut album) from Old Town Pub in Pasadena in March 1998. The second clip shows Beachwood Sparks live at Spaceland in August 1998 performing (the 7″ version of) Desert Skies.

We are also very happy to be able to present a clip with Beachwood Sparks percussionist Pete “Sleigher” Kinne and his friends (playing as Gold Winter People) performing one of Pete’s songs at The Chorus Club in September 1998. Watch it here!

If anyone has any other information about the videos or something visible in them, don’t hesitate to speak up in the forums and we’ll post the info so everyone interested will be able to get to it.

Beachwood Sparks drummer Jimi Hey has recently been in the studio with Mark Olson (The Jayhawks) and Gary Louris (The Jayhawks, Golden Smog) to play drums on a yet to be titled album. The record was produced by Chris Robinson (The Black Crowes) and will be out on Hacktone Records later this year.

Also keep your eyes open for a new project from Jimi called Giggi Bix.

The Tyde is going to appear on a tribute album to Madonna, that will be released in the fall on Manimal Vinyl Records. Other artist to be featured on the album, titled Through the Wilderness, are Devendra Banhart, Ariel Pink and Vietnam.

The Mystic Chords just finished recording a song with DNTEL (a/k/a Jimmy Tamborello) for his next album. The song is called Dreams and the album (titled Dumb Luck) will be out on Sub Pop in the near future.

TheCalmingSeas.com wishes you all a happy new year!