The tambourine! A Salute.
Written by Angora Holly Polo // May 15, 2007 // Popular Culture and Internet Fancies, The Dormitory // No comments
Today, EHS salutes the tambourine: Hipster instrument of the day – maybe even month!
If you haven’t seen our generation’s indie rock, true-to-life twisted version of Spinal Tap, then you should be ashamed of yourself.
I don’t know about you guys, but at the end of Dig!, I was really worrying about my boy Joel Gion. Brian Jonestown Massacre had kicked the shit out of each other and consumed too much of what he called in a SF Gate article "the pinkest biker crank you can get." BJM imploded, and each band member had his own way to go. But tell me, dear readers, where does the tambourine player go? What will the tambourine player do?
He appears on Gilmore Girls!!
Here’s what I found in Wikipedia:
"Joel Gion (b. 1971) is an American indie rock percussionist. He is a member of San Francisco based band, The Dilettantes. He is also a member of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, where he played tambourine and occasionally sings backing vocals. He appears in the 2004 documentary DiG!, and is featured prominently on the cover of the DVD of the same film. His image is also on the cover of the Brian Jonestown Massacre album, Thank God For Mental Illness. (Incidentally, a very distended image of himself can be seen on Give It Back!). He stayed with the Brian Jonestown Massacre the longest of any its members, save band leader Anton Newcombe.
He was a guest star on the U.S. television show Gilmore Girls, where he played the tambourine in the fictitious band Hep Alien. He recently rejoined The Brian Jonestown Massacre on their 2006 tour. Besides the tambourine, he notably plays the maracas and, as he once said, contributes many "musical ideas". He currently works for Amoeba Music in San Francisco."
