Full Flickr Set. (lots of good crowd shots. See if you’re there)

It must have been 1991. I can’t think of any other time it could be. Bush, the first one, was still president, only nerds had heard of the internet and Nirvana had changed just changed everything.

I was in high school at the time and “for my own good” I had been shipped off to military school in South Texas. So far south that whites were the minority and winter was something you had heard about, but shorts in December weren’t out of place. Miserable doesn’t really begin to sum up my life at the time. I was young, intelligent and antagonistic. I had little in common with the people who wanted to be there, who were the sons of the rich with proud military traditions. I had more in common with the people who were sent there, given the opportunity to attend military school to stay out of jail or juvenile hall. But I didn’t have much in common with them either.

My only escapes were nerd culture; video games, Role Playing Games, comics, science fiction and music. Sweet, sweet music. Each week, we were given twenty dollars and set loose on the local populace. We behaved much like you’d imagine teenagers stuck in small towns with a little money and a lot of boredom. There were shuttles that ran and would deliver us to the local malls and movie theaters, safe places.

There was one record store, a Sam Goody or some other chain that wishes the internet had never been created. Grunge had exploded and tucked in the back between Rock and Gospel was an Alternative section. That’s where my money went. I wasn’t listening to country or metal like everyone else, I was out there taking chances. No communication with the outside world, just me, Andrew Jackson and some faceless, anonymous music buyer that’s noticed that we have stopped buying Scorpions albums and have started to buy weird shit.

There was something about that cover. Two guys (?) playing guitar, well one guy playing guitar the other thrown or stumbling. And the name. Superfuzz Big Muff plus Early Singles. What the hell is a superfuzz? Is Big Muff a reference to pussy? It has to be. I was already attracted to the weird end of music and my buying decisions were based solely on covers, but even then, I knew I had something special.

Well probably not, but you’ll forgive a bit of self-mythologizing. It’s my blog.
Continue reading Mudhoney, Pissed Jeans, White Hills @ Bowery Ballroom 9/4/10

In every city where there is a sizable population of young people, there will be music unknown to the world at large. This music will be unique, influenced by what came before in that city and in the world at large with personal flourishes added into the whirls of sound to try and make real the sounds locked into the artist’s heads. These bands sound similar enough to one another but can then be cut down further. Cities and influence as genres. Washington, DC sounds like one thing while Detroit sounds like something else while Miami sounds like none of the above.

But like every white, middle class, over exposed, blogged to death scene, you have to figure that there are kids making music for themselves and their friends. Their own “folk” music.

Hip Hop isn’t the last thing black youth created but each time something else comes along or is “discovered,” it’s like a whole new revelation to the mainstream. As though Hip Hop in its myriad forms is the final word that speaks to the whole black experience.

Baltimore Club, DC Go-Go, and the music established to aid in dancing; Chicago Juke and Detroit Jit. But now (“now”) it’s Bounce from New Orleans. I say “now” because I went to go see Big Freedia at Coco 66 on Saturday, August 29th and she was already old news to most people the people in the audience. I’m not going to act like I’m some Bounce authority because my own experience is limited to a handful of YouTube videos, some short and sloppy mixes and now two live performances by the same artist. So let me give it a shot.
Continue reading Big Freedia @ Coco 66 8/28/10

Full Flickr Set

As I write this, there’s a disgusting amount of humidity creeping up. It rained earlier and it’s making an already sticky summer more unbearable. Clothes stick to your back, water doesn’t sate thirst and you just want to fight to get indoors to some kind of controllable temperature right away. You want to be…not here.

Where I want to be, is Friday night at Glasslands Gallery, I want to be basking in some amazing dance music with hints of hip-hop and amazing hip hop with hints of dance as bass, bonhomie, and beer flow through me incrementally replacing blood with alcohol and euphoria and adrenaline. The performers moving the crowd, moving the dispassionate bystanders the hell out of the way because there are far more people in IT than there are the ones too cool for all of this. This dark joy in this dark club.

But it all threatens to get away from me here.
Continue reading BBU, Das Racist, Lionshare, Tayisha Busay, Zebra Baby @ Glasslands 8/20/10

Full Flickr Set Here

My experience with Ty Segall began, pleasantly enough, by accident. I had recently heard of Bark Bark Bark and bought that album from Retard Disco. As the label had a ton of music with which I wasn’t familiar, I went ahead and picked up some additional acts by random. It was there that I grabbed The Elipsons’ Killed Em Deader ‘N A Six Card Poker Hand, fourteen tracks of teenage garage rock replacing angst with swagger and replacing swagger with angst. It seems contradictory until you listen to “I Hate (Your Face)”, “Teeny Boppers” and “Stronger than Dirt” which carry forth a great shotgun marriage of teenage folk and teenage hormones. It’s not amazing, but it is fun and it was great to find young punk music that catered to this sound rather than three chords of fury. I didn’t follow up on this release or really pay attention to the band enough to even know that they broke up. Then I heard that the lead singer/songwriter, Ty Segall had struck out on his own after the demise of The Epsilons.

The music that Ty made on his own wasn’t really the same straight-ahead garage rock of his previous band. It was still captured in the same intentionally low quality manner but it was more opaque, more intentionally artistic. Time spent in the company of John Dwyer (of Thee Oh Sees) shows in a kind of softening of hewn edges.

I enjoyed it, but didn’t find it to be music for rocking out. Still, I wanted to catch Ty Segall live and this past Friday, Death By Audio gave me that opportunity.
Continue reading Ty Segall, The Babies, Moonhearts, Zulus @ DBA 8/13/10

Full FlickR Set

Saturday night’s Pregnant record release party is the best show I’ve been to since I moved to New York in 2008. Period.

Its intimacy, energy and vibe reminded me of the best house shows of my youth while the technical excellence of the bands remind even the most jaded of attendees can still be drawn into the thrashing twister of a perfectly punk storm.
Continue reading Pregnant Record Release Party 8/7/10

FULL FLICKR SET

In the litany of bands I never thought I’d see perform, The Gories were probably at the top of the list. All music lovers have those bands, the ones we missed out on because we were too young, or in the wrong part of the country or we discovered them after the band had broken up and formed new bands or gone to get the dreaded “real jobs.”

The Gories were three kids who formed on a lark while drinking a six-pack and listening to a garage rock compilation. Back in 1986, only guitarist Mick Collins knew what he was doing; Dan Kroha had to learn guitar and Peggy O’Neill picked up the drums as they went along. They were a bit of a joke, having decided that they wanted to just make noise and scare everyone out of the bars they played. They lasted until 1993 putting out a handful of albums and a handful of singles before calling it quits.

I didn’t find The Gories until years later when their reputation solidified them into that mythical pantheon of Important Bands. Naïve charm is what I found mostly in the music, which was appropriate. The band’s configuration of two guitars and a drummer helped them capture the sound of old horrible recordings of horrible bands. All treble and snot on a slab of wax with the microphones levels holding onto dear life. They kept that blues tradition but also pushed forward covering bands like New York City’s Suicide. It wasn’t mind-blowing music, but it was a hell of a lot of fun.
Continue reading The Detroit Breakdown @ The Lincoln Center 7/31/10

Full Flickr Set Here

Last night was another in a hopefully long line of Vice / Scion AV Club Garage parties at The Knitting Factory in Brooklyn, featuring the garage barrage of Hunx and His Punx opening for the legendary Kid Congo Powers who was backed by The Pink Monkey Birds. This wasn’t any ordinary four to the floor swamp stomp, this was an all around gay panic edition as Hunx thrust his sexuality into the audience, including yours truly, on more than one occasion. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Nor, really is there anything wrong with a band playing one of these events. From what I’ve read they’re treated and paid well, and get to perform before an adoring audience. There’s still the usual talk of artists playing these events “selling underground culture” but while the issue may be a complex one, it’s difficult to fault a band whose entire back catalog is available for free to want to play one of these events. Continue reading Kid Congo Powers & His Pink Monkey Birds @ The Knitting Factory 7/28/10