Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players
The Trachtenburg Family
Background information
Genre(s)	Rock
Years active	2000—present
Label(s)	Bar-None Records, Tired and Lonesome Records, Cass Records, Sarathan Records
Website	slideshowplayers.com
Members
Jason Trachtenburg Tina Piña Trachtenburg Rachel Piña Trachtenburg

The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players are an American, self-described "indie-vaudeville conceptual art-rock pop band" originally from Seattle, WA, and currently based out of New York, NY. The line up consists of the Trachtenburg family itself: father Jason Trachtenburg plays guitar, piano, and sings; mother Tina Piña runs the slide projector and provides as a backup singer; and daughter Rachel plays the drums and sings. Born on December 10, 1993, Rachel was only six years old when she began performing publicly.

Their trademark is the slideshow itself: slides collected from "estate sales, garage sales, thrift stores, etc.", are constantly shown in order to "turn the lives of annonymous (sic) strangers into pop-rock musical exposes based on the contents of these slide collections". The band sings about such things that occurred in the places shown in the slides, such as public execution (Mountain Trip To Japan, 1959) or McDonald's' competitors "using network television to take advantage of efficiency." (Wendy's, Sambo's and Long John Silver's)

Tina also designs the outfits for the group to wear along with creating the famous Rachel dolls, which are based on her daughter. All three are vegetarians. As of 2006, the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players are part of USA Network's "Characters Welcome" campaign. Tina is currently writing a book about a day in the life of Rachel.

Jason Trachtenburg is also a solo artist. In 2000, he released his debut album, Revolutions Per Minute on Orange Recordings. His second album, Together, was released in 2006.

They have recorded on Bar None Records, Tired and Lonesome Records, Cass Records and Sarathan Records. They also performed at the first Gel conference in 2003.

The Trachtenburgs made a brief appearance in Moby's music video for "New York New York". The music video was directed by Reverend Jen, a friend of both Moby and the Trachtenburgs. The family were seen seated next to Reverend Jen and her dog, Reverend Jen, Jr in an open-air restaurant, playing Rock, Paper, Scissors.

As of December 2006, a group of New York University film students are shooting a feature-length documentary following the Trachtenburgs on their most recent tour.

1 Beginning
2 Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players discography
3 Jason Trachtenburg discography
4 DVD releases
5 Unreleased songs
6 External links and references

[edit] Beginning

Jason first met Tina at a Greenwich Village open-mic in New York City around 1989. They soon moved to Seattle, Washington, where their daughter, Rachel, was born in 1993. The family ran a dog-walking business called The Dog Squad by day while Jason was an open-mic performer by night. However, his music act was failing to find audiences.

While dog-walking with Rachel, Tina found an old slide projector and a box of slides at an estate sale from a family trip in Japan during the year of 1959. When Tina suggested to Jason that he use the slides in his music, Jason then wrote a song to accompany the slides. The song was titled "Mountain Trip To Japan, 1959" (The song was later released on the debut album Vintage Slide Collections From Seattle, Vol 1). Eventually, the Trachtenburgs formed together; Jason playing keyboards and guitar and providing vocals, Tina operating the slide projector and Rachel playing harmonica (later playing drums). The trio performed their act at a local talent show and won first place along with $500 as their prize. They continued their act and later moved to New York City.