Deli Readers,

The Year End Polls are bringing in a lot of traffic and our server provider doesn't like that - they suspended our account for a few hours because of eccessive load on their server's CPU. We tweaked the site's settings on our end and hopefully we won't have this problem again.

Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience!

Paolo
www.thedelimagazine.com

Up until early 2009, singer/songwriter Joe Firstman played bandleader for NBC's Last Call With Carson Daly before the program's restructuring. Since then, the soulful Firstman has been putting together El Porto, his latest LP and fifth overall release documenting life between the El Porto coast and Venice Beach. Luckily, his neighbors never called the cops: "For three months, my neighbors were tortured with the slow, often painful incarnations of the music blasting out of the windows of my house/studio," Firstman said. "And they never complained, even when we recorded a full horn section in my living room." When it's worth hearing, it'd be a crime to call the cops.

Joe Firstman plays the Hotel Cafe on Jan. 21 | 21+ -- El Porto releases Jan. 26

Everest | "Reloader"
Dir. by Anthony Crawford

After touring alongside Neil Young last year, Americana outfit Everest hid out in a northern California chicken farm to record their yet-to-be-titled sophomore album. Now completed, the guys are laying low until release with a coinciding tour and reflecting on the process: “Although we were in a beautiful space, the work became more challenging and it was really one of the toughest experiences for the band thus far," said lead vocalist Russell Pollard. In the meantime, check out their video for "Reloader" which includes footage from their infamous journey with the legendary singer/songwriter.

Happy New Year! After a few days off to plan our Best Artists of 2009 polling extravaganza and other holiday shenanigans, The Deli LA is back!  We would have participated in the indie music blogosphere's annual tradition of creating arbitrary and self-congratulatory best-of/worst-of lists, but we were too busy putting that power into your hands. Details on that to follow later today. 

To ring in the new year, our friends at FMLY and Lots O' Crap Magazine are traveling a small California tour with a slew of the avant-garde in the mix. The 6-city tour kicks off Tuesday night at The Smell and hosts Former Ghosts, Railcars, Professor Calculus, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jules Verne, and Mother Mackenzie. Tuesday | The Smell | All Ages | $5

Other dates on the bill below (we are not responsible for the epilepsy that this epic flier may induce):

Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweethearts in Bands,

As usual, The Deli's Year End Poll (for emerging artists) will assign the cover of our Spring Issue 2010. The polling process is as complex as rocket science (if you want to try and get your head around it be our guest and go here).

The submissions for the open contest that will select minimum 3 artists for the next phase is now closed. We are currently receiving the jurors' votes. The next phase will be the readers' vote, which will start on January 3.

All the bands that submitted to our open contest were also added to our chart system - which will get them some exposure in the future. 

Here we are taking a little bit of a holiday break - we'll still have some content up in the next few days, but not as much. We will see you back in early January - in the meantime Happy Holidays to you all!!


The Deli's Staff
www.thedelimagazine.com