Felix Obelix

I (that is, Wendy Spitzer) am having a visual art show at ROOM 100 Gallery in Golden Belt, Durham, NC from April 16-May 16.  The opening was from 6-9pm on April 16, and featured a Felix Obelix listening party, and audience/patron participation.  Thanks to everyone who came out.  For more information on the show, which features a lot of the themes I explore lyrically in Felix Obelix, visit here: http://www.goldenbeltarts.com/newsEvents_Details.php?event_id=87

Thanks for everyone who came to the CD release show!  It was said the Nightlight had never been so packed. Thank you thank you thank you.  Now here’s some press for the album:

A really nice write-up in The Independent Weekly.

Interview with the Daily Tar Heel.

Blog writer that gets it! http://cholling.org/hplm/?p=55 “this album shows that actually knowing some music theory can do wonders for your songwriting abilities.”

Americana UK – blog from across the pond that gets it!

Shuffle Magazine –  ”Twenty-Ten has just begun, but this is my favorite 35 minutes of the new decade thus far.” (!)

Dusted Magazine – “interested in being confrontationally quirky, if that’s possible”

Read the Beat Magazine – “ambitious…well-thought out and defies categorizing”

Airplay on WXDU (Durham, NC), KSCL (Shreveport, LA), WUOG (Athens, GA), KXLU (Los Angeles, CA), WPRK (Winter Park, FL), CIUT (Toronto, Ontario), KDVS (Davis, CA), CFRU (Guelph, Ontario), CFBX (Kamloops, British Columbia), Sandboxradio.com

Radio interview with Adam Kincaid on WKNC (Raleigh)

Visit the Pox World Empire Store to get a copy of Felix Obelix’s full-length album, The Tick of the Clock, the Beat in the Chest.  Set to release in February 2010, you can get a copy early in the mail, along with a free ticket to the CD release show, February 27, 2010 at the Nightlight in Chapel Hill. It’s $10 including shipping!

Yes indeed.  Durham, NC’s great label Pox World Empire is putting out the Felix Obelix debut CD!  The CD release show is set for February 27, 2010, at the Nightlight in Chapel Hill.  The full-length album, The Tick of the Clock, the Beat in the Chest will be available for sale online at http://www.poxworldempire.org/ and in NC record stores.

Opening will be The Strugglers, in an unusual version of just Randy Bickford backed up by a string section, playing the Chris Eubank string arrangements from his new record.

$8 gets you in the show AND a copy of the CD AND a letter to your future self:

Yes, there will be an interactive project called “Letters to Your Future Self”. All attendees of the night will get, with admission, some stationery and a self-addressed stamped envelope. Attendees are invited to write a letter to him or herself, put it in the envelope and seal it up. I will hold onto the letters for 8 months and mail them in October 2010. So if you come to this show, in addition to the Felix Obelix record, you’ll get a letter from your past self, eight months from now.

 Here’s what the CD cover looks like:

The Tick of the Clock, the Beat in the Chest

For those who saw Felix Obelix on its southwesternly journey in March 2009, you may already be familiar with an interactive project I created called Best Decision/Biggest Regret. For those who didn’t see it, or didn’t understand it at the time, or have forgotten about it, the scoop is this:

I made a simple box and sign, and invited audience members in every city we toured to (Durham, Knoxville, Nashville, Hot Springs, Dallas and Austin), to ponder two questions: what is the best decision you ever made in your life? & what is your biggest regret? Willing audience members – and there were many! – wrote each their decisions and regrets on small pieces of paper and put them in the box.  It was then/is now my intent to write a song (or maybe multiple, since there was so much source material) using only the words on the pieces of paper as the song lyrics.

We ripped open the box on the last leg of the tour home, somewhere in Georgia, and read all the decisions and regrets aloud, while the trees and fields and highway blurred past us.  Some thoughts, in no particular order:

• I had always suspected, and this project confirmed, something fundamental about the notion of regret: that more of us regret the things we DIDN’T do, rather than the things we DID do.  Many, if not most of the regrets had some version of a negative in it, like: ”I didn’t tell So-and-So sooner that I loved her…” or “I never did such and such activity…”  The one big exception to this rule is having ill-begotten sex of some kind: “I slept with someone I really shouldn’t have slept with…” or “I slept with my best friend.”  So here’s my big advice, culled from this project and from all the fine folks who helped us come to this truth: if you want to do something, do it.  You’ll regret it if you don’t.  If you want to do someone, don’t.  You’ll regret that even more.
• I was struck that some of the regrets didn’t have to be regrets at all.  “I never played soccer” or “I threw away a portfolio of my designs…”  I say this with great gentleness to those of you who wrote these, because I know dreams are touchy things, and deferred or dead dreams even touchier: it’s not too late to play soccer.  Go get a soccer ball.  I know it won’t be playing soccer in the big leagues, I know that dream might be gone, but everywhere in America people are playing soccer.  You must have loved the sport at some point, enough for it to eat at you that you never got to play it how you wanted to.  But you can still play.  If your regret involved something you didn’t do that you still have the power to do, then you have the power to eradicate your biggest regret.  What bigger power do you want in life?
• Regrets and decisions generally could be classified in categories: love & sex; education; career; finding a sense of place and home; family life; religion; self-improvement or self-awareness; goofy fake childish ones that I’m not going to take seriously.  What does this tell me?  That we’re all basically concerned with the same set of life materials.  It’s how we manipulate those materials that makes our lives unique.

I may make a piece of visual art with these scribbled-down confessions, but for now, feast on these as a teaser:

Come see the madness that is Felix Obelix, in a town near you! We’re touring to SXSW with The Physics of Meaning!

Friday, March 13 – the Pinhook in Durham, with Lemming Malloy, Oyster Destroyster and The Physics of Meaning

Saturday, March 14 – Knoxville, TN with The Physics of Meaning and Senryu

Sunday, March 15 – Nashville, TN at the 5 Spot with Heypenny, The Physics of Meaning

Monday, March 16 – Hot Springs, AK with The Physics of Meaning

Tuesday, March 17 – Dallas, TX Ariel’s house show

Wednesday, March 18-Saturday, March 21 – Austin, TX SXSW

Sunday, March 22 – Dallas, TX Evan and Mountain House house show

over and out, Wendy

From The Independent Weekly (1/21/09) “{Felix Obelix mixes} the repetitive diatonic pulses of early Philip Glass with the spirited sense of adventure heard in Deerhoof. The band’s first EP—all about memory, death, life and the way they skate into one another—sees limited-edition release tonight, too.” http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A273852

From trianglerock.com: Show of the week, hands down. Felix Obelix is the songwriting vehicle of longtime local musician Wendy Spitzer (Eyes to Space, Gates of Beauty,
Lemming Malloy), and between her at-times-elaborate arrangements and her remarkably high voice, it’s some of the most unnerving yet compelling music I’ve heard in ages.”

From theknowbodies.com: “Felix Obelix is a coast line of ever moving sound waves. This music is wonderful because of it’s conception and creation. Just when you think the band can’t take the music to another level, BAM, they do. Make sure you listen not only to the music, but the lyrics because they are powerful as well. “

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