Marina Lazzara
poet/guitarist/singer-songwriter

Lives and works in San Francisco USA
Marina Lazzara was born and raised in Easton, Pennsylvania where the Lehigh River falls into the Delaware. After attending college, bartending and lying around the Atlantic shoreline for five years in Virginia, she moved to San Francisco and graduated from the New College of California with a Masters of Arts in Poetics and published a book of poems entitled The Backdrop Line. Her appreciation for music began as a toddler when her mother encouraged her and her sisters to sing in bed before falling asleep, and her two older sisters & cousins taught her guitar, drumming and songwriting. From there on, she spent most of her teenage years playing guitar and drums in a neighbor's garage, talking about consciousness expansion and worshipping 70's rock posters. She avoided structured ideas of "a band" in her twenties, seeing it as a great example of capitalistic personality exploitation. Instead, she opted to jam with friends and a bottle of whiskey in obscure practice places like a squatted converted boy's bathroom. It wasnąt until her early thirties that she accepted "the band" as a true artistic experience, giving up the artsy poetry scene contaminated by narcissism and the creative activist scene contaminated with dogma. Although the indie-rock scene is diseased with trust fund brats, she found solace with some of her favorite working class musicians and joined, created, moved into her obsession with songwriting, head banging, and singing with angels.

Besides ambitious endeavors toward a life of creativity, selfish social activism to enhance the urban imagination and endless schemes to dodge student loan payments, Marina now works with the homeless and studies Botany & Herbalism. She has been in various bands including the rotating idie-rock trio, Blue Gum Art as well as Liesl's Wet Dress, the Abstractions, Smile God Loves You, This and Poetiks (www.poetiks.com). Currently, she plays rhythm guitar with the SF band, the Rabbles (www.therabbles.com), who will release a CD this summer on Aboriginal Records entitled RabbleRabble.

Marina is finishing up a manuscript for a second book of poems and currently working on songs for a second solo project to be released this fall.

mp3 samples:
Message (from Gypsy Thrift)
Baron (from Gypsy Thrift)
Gypsy (from Gypsy Thrift)
Intraoffice Psychologies (from Voices In The Wilderness)
Sun On the Moon (from Wind On the Firecracker...)

  
Poetiks - Gypsy Thrift - PR90278
Based in San Francisco, Poetiks music is dark-pop with roots in folk songwriting. Moments of psychedelic display and simple rock motifs surround sing-songy lyrics with undertones of critical social dismay that's coated with lyrical idealism. They are: Marina Lazzara (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Claudia Lehan (drums, vocals), Roberto Zimmerman (bass vocals), & Raven (viola, vocals). Check out the Poetiks website & audio clips. press/airplay:

  
VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS:
Dissenting Soundscapes and Songs of G.W.'s America - PR90276
Voices In The Wilderness was created out of the anxiety and disillusionment of Bush's reelection on November 3, 2004. This composition of twenty-six artists transcends music genres and ideologies with the common purpose of dissent towards the havoc and bloodshed cause by Bush and the U.S. military's dominance. This collection of political protest music spans experimental, rock, free-improv, electronic, folk, field recordings, and spoken word. This CD is ultimately a reminder and wake-up call that we can not be silent during these times. Contributions from Marina Lazzara, mJane, Marcos Fernandes, Bonnie Kane, Ray Sage & Mambo Mantis, The Slow Poisoners, Neshama Alma Band, 99 Hooker, Cornelius Cardew Choir, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Blaise Siwula, many more. more info. press/airplay: Centre for Political Song, Jazz e Arredores, The Belly of the Beast with Stefan on WFMU, The No Show on KDHX, 2, Improvijazzation Nation #71, The Brian Turner Show on WFMU, The New Edge on WMBR, Drool Trough (show #29) on Aural Innovations Radio

  
The Abstractions - novo navigatio - PR90275/EDT4027
From West Coast subtle, psychedelia-improv to experimental songs. Mellow & tense, noise & songs, dark & light. "Vision music" that consists of a colorful orchestration...plus, sinking commentary on the disillusioned atmosphere of George W. Bush's America. Limited edition almost gone! "Sounds like Leonard Cohen deconstructed to some really nice abstract noise." --Dolf Mulder, Vital Weekly more info: press: more info. press: Jazz e Arredores, The Jazz Trip, Jackal Blaster Zine, Vital Weekly, Touching Extremes, Aiding & Abetting, Liability Webzine, Bad Alchemy, Opposition De Phase, Kathodik, Music Extreme The Wire

  
MARINA LAZZARA - wind on the firecracker... - PR90265
Wind On The Firecracker Of The Building Next Door is Marina's first solo collection of songs. Wind... attempts to re-envision the symbolic plasticity of the pop-folk ballad and to dig into the spontaneous expression of song as nature. Noise folk... where the "experimental" meets the "song". Individually, they are exercises in the reestablishing of personal ideals about love, ancestry and politics. These songs are Marina's emotions. These songs are her blues. press: All Music Guide, Collected Sounds Musikkguiden groove.no, Aural Innovations


Wind On The Firecracker Of The Building Next Door is Marina's first solo collection of songs. Soon to be published is its companion book of poems that shares the same name. Wind... was inspired by the breakup of a ten-year obsession with love when Marina was left saddened, maddened and completely alone with the hollowness of an unexpected fate. At almost the same time, large planes flew into tall buildings and the roar of corporate America lifted the veil from off its writhing grin.

Wind On the Firecracker Of The Building Next Door, the songs was recorded in Ernesto's & Marjorie's living room with Ernesto at the four-track sculpting silently under headphones like a Buddhist welder. Marjorie edited films in the next room incubating the baby piper. Recorded in an afternoon, half of the compositions were preconceived while others were on-the-spot brain splurts inspired by glimpses of words, phrases and mediocre doodles in Marina's journal. Ernesto Diaz-Infante welds them together with sonic interludes. Lance Grabmiller mixes them with caramel ease.

The songs on Wind... attempt to re-envision the symbolic plasticity of the pop-folk ballad and to dig into the spontaneous expression of song as nature. Individually, they are exercises in the reestablishing of personal ideals about love, ancestry and politics. These songs are emotions. These songs are my blues.

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