Category: Uncategorized

Why Not? So says the neon sign in front of Dick’s Den. I will try to answer that question.

Dick’s architecture and atmosphere is almost perfect – a big dive bar with cool stuff everywhere to look at and a large enough and diverse enough crowd to make people watching fun. A lot of good choices for bottled beer. A pool table. When I was much younger, I would go to Dick’s to buy 12 pack cans of Black Label if I missed the 1 am cutoff. They sold 12 packs of Black Label for $6 bucks. Anywhere else it would have been 12 dollars.

Anyway,

Bleugrass night is full of great music; even if you don’t like bluegrass, or think you don’t like bluegrass, you should check it out. It’s free, and like the neon sign says…

One issue with Bluegrass night is it’s meteoric rise in popularity. It’s long been a popular destination on Tuesdays, but lately it seems to be a monster. People have to stand and wait outside in a line because the doorguy can’t let anyone in until people inside leave. That’s how crowded it’s become. I almost expect a velvet rope to appear in the coming weeks.

Another issue is that a lot of the people aren’t there for the music. They’re there to be seen and to socialize. Whether that’s good or bad is debateable. For me, I think it’s both. Good, because more people are exposed to the music. Maybe they’ll catch something they like, download some bluegrass, and see a local show just to see the band. Bad, because it means people who do want to go for the music aren’t able to either get inside or can’t hear the pickin’ and strummin’ because of all the scene kids chattering away about financial aid, graduate school, and who has the coolest non-prescription glasses.

There is another issue though, the staff kept a friend of mine, who was so drunk she could barely stand, from leaving with her friends. In fact, they locked her inside and closed the blinds, so that her friends outside who were banging on the window, trying to get their friend out, couldn’t see in.
That right there means Dick’s Den will never get my business again.

Paul Collins Beat is the name of Paul Collins and his backing band – in the case of his show last night at Ace of Cups, three Australian dudes.

I had never heard of Paul Collins, nor did I know his influence on modern music. This dude has been around the block a few times, and you can tell he’s a pro and takes his music seriously (while having a good time playing it). His stage demeanor is humble and modest born out of seeing it all before.

I can’t name any specific songs, as I said, prior to last night, I knew nothing about the man or his music. But I’m certainly going to investigate his extensive catalogue after witnessing his performance.

His musical style at this show was mostly pop-punk/power pop – catchy chorus’, fast guitars, rhythm guitarist and bassist providing back-up vocals on the chorus’. Songs about girls and good times.

Middle band was The Girls, which has 5 members and only two of which are women. They were excellent as well. I saw them play at Carabar a few weeks ago, where I wasn’t impressed, but they brought a lot more energy to this show.

My date and I couldn’t help but laugh at the make-up of the band. Like I said, the music was excellent, but band seems to be made up of an irregular cast of misfits; from left to right…

• The bassist seemed to take playing the bass VERY seriously. Even when his strap fell off and a roadie/fan was trying to help put it back on, he didn’t miss a note. 
• Jessica Wabbit (or Rabbit, she played in another band that I reviewed here) is the pixie-sized singer/guitarist who has an incredible voice. Her between song banter consisted of one-line zingers and taking her shirt off, and telling The Angriest Tambourine Player to take her shirt off as well.
• The Drummer was an ogre and really kicked ass on the drums. 
• The Angriest Tambourine Player was just that – an angry tambourine player. She also sang some back-up and danced; all while scowling. Which was kind of impressive considering how energetic she was.
• Lastly, the second guitarist was Metal Dude who looked like he was in the wrong band. He was super into the music, though, and looked like he was having a blast. 

One of the best things about where I live (and there are a lot of cool things) is that I can walk to Carabar in approximately 7 minutes.

So when I heard that Sleep Fleet not only relocated from Dayton to Columbus, but is also playing a show at Carabar, I made it a point to attend. The bassist for Sleep Fleet, Nick, is a former co-worker of mine, has one of the best mustaches in the city, and knows more about cars than I ever will. Seriously, the dude is a mechanic. I used to ask him questions all the time.

This Is My Suitcase opened and I assume they performed well, as I missed all but the end of their last song.

Sleep Fleet was the wiener between the buns (so to speak), and performed… I don’t even know… noise punk? Nah, that’s stupid. No point being that specific to label anything. I hate labels. Sleep Fleet blasted out some loud, obnoxious, feedback filled, sonic destruction.

I loved it.

Sleep Fleet killed it.

See these dudes every time they play. Also, Nick has an awesome mustache and loves talking about mustache upkeep and styling. He even told me his secret to his up-twirled mustache. I won’t reveal it, simply because it is THAT awesome.

He also convinced me to regrow my beard.

I was hanging with Michelle at Ravari Room a few weeks ago and met two of the guys from Sundown. One of them asked me if I knew of the band and I replied that I had heard of them, but hadn’t listened to them yet.

He looked visibly disappointed upon hearing this.

Look, in this town, where you can throw a rock in any direction and have a 50% chance of hitting someone who is either in a band or doesn’t care about local music at all, meeting someone who has at least heard of your band shouldn’t be cause for disappointment.

That’s called buzz, son, and a lot of bands would kill for it.

I don’t know if Sundown has even put out any albums, EPs, singles, or splits. I don’t know anything about them other than what I gathered from meeting these two dudes.

But I’ve heard of them. Their name is in my head. Which means I will, at some point, go to a show they are playing or look them up on bandcamp or something.

Actually, they are playing tonight, and Michelle and I are already planning to go. She’s friends with the dudes in Psychic Wheels, who are also playing.

You know what grinds my gears?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/08/21/159559500/taylor-swift-princess-of-punk?utm_source=npr&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20120821

This article states that a song by Taylor Swift is “punk.”

The article itself states that it could have been an Avril Lavigne (hereby called “Anal Ravine”) song, as they both have the same song writer, and this song sounds exactly like an Anal Ravine song. There is absolutely nothing punk about this. Punk isn’t about angry rich girls who are sad about a made-up boyfriend breaking up with them. It’s about social, political, and cultural values. Usually, about how those values need to change in a violent way. It’s about anger at the system. How many Black Flag, Clash, Sex Pistols, Subhumans, Total Chaos, Rancid, NOFX, Agent Orange, Sloppy Seconds, GG Allin, or Pennywise songs were about a breakup?

Check out the link. Write Ann Powers, and tell her that she doesn’t speak for punk music. She has no fucking clue what punk music is. She’s a fool, a charlatan, and an idiot who wrote a steaming pile of shit in order to try to equate corporate mainstream crap with a sub-genre she doesn’t understand.

Here is what Ann Powers thinks punk music sounds like.

I gotta admit, I’m a big Sam Brown fan. He’s the sole reason I was excited about this band and this show. First with the New Bomb Turks, then later I got into Gaunt (which is kinda backwards, since he was in Gaunt before the Turks; but hey, these things happen) and I just got The Sun’s DVD on Friday, but have yet to check it out. I actually didn’t know Brown was in The Sun when I purchased it. Funny how things work out sometimes.

Lets be clear; there is a lot of buzz about this band. Pitchfork and Rolling Stone both have hard-ons for the Divine Fits… and they haven’t even released an album yet. They’re being called a “super group,” which I find amusing because the vast majority of people haven’t heard of any of the band the members have been in. Expectations among the elitists are high, so how were those expectations met?

Opening band was Connections. They played indie-pop, have 4-6 members, and that’s about all I can tell you. I didn’t pay them enough attention to give an accurate assessment. Perhaps in the future.

The Divine Fits…

The lads (calling a band, “the lads,” is a music writer cliche) looked like they had a lot of fun on stage. Which is always nice, because music is emotional and the emotions of a band come out in their performance.

Dan Boekner (of Wolf Parade and Handsome Furs) did most of the singing and interplay with the audience. After the first song, he named dropped Brown and the crowd cheered (as they damn well should). After that, there wasn’t a whole lot of talking other than Boekner happily exclaiming that this was the band’s fifth show ever.

Speaking of Boekner; the best word to physically describe him is “spindly.” After the Divine Fits finished, they left the stage and walked past me; Boekner happily slapped me on the back as he passed and I was slightly worried his arm might break off.

I’m not knocking the guy; he seemed genuinely happy to be there, playing in this little club for 150 people. That’s really cool.

Divine Fits played around 12 songs; which is short considering the longest song they played was a cover of Tom Petty’s “You Got Lucky.” Or maybe it just seemed short because I was having a good time?

Musically, the songs reminded me a lot of Spoon, which is Britt Daniel’s regular gig. This surprised me because the two singles that have been released don’t sound anything like Spoon. 

Okay, so here’s the skinny; The band enjoyed themselves. The audience enjoyed themselves.

For 15 bucks, I believe I got my money’s worth.

“Children should not be allowed to create music, their pathetic feeble inexperienced minds can do nothing but cling to dull dimwitted jams of verse chorus verse pastiche conjured with the artistic equivalent of a McDonald’s fry cook… blind do their voices relentlessly call out, drowning the sublime with their mediocrity. And so entails the horrors of modern day musical society… LMFAO’s and Arcade Fires, Lady Gagas and Flo Ridas, Kurt Cobain’s and Radioheads, white panics and Jucifers…et cetera et cetera.


And to think, these pretentious children categorize themselves into generic little clubs waving their subgenre flags to proclaim unity, calling themselves rappers and punk rockers, indie rockers, emo metal heads, experimental blah blah blahs


Ha! I have had enough…Come Vivaldi, let us make haste and spin the world round with beauty” – Ben Whitney

Tonight I went to Carabar to buy cigarettes and a beer. I didn’t realize it would be crowded, since Carabar doesn’t promote any shows ever, and I hadn’t heard of any of the bands playing before I got there. Couple things…

Carabar is pretty awesome for 3 reasons. The first is that it is two blocks from my apartment. The second is that Carabar’s food is ridiculously good. The Helen Killer Cafe kills it. Taco Tuesday is possibly the best kept secret in Columbus. The Black and Blue burger is unlike anything you’ve ever had, and is delicious. It’s vegan friendly with seperate fryers and cooking area for the vegan options. The third is that, when you actually, finally, get the attention of a bartender (not their fault, the bar is always crowded with “it’s my first time at a bar” fuckbags that don’t know to exit the area after they get their draft), they’re friendly and nice and pour damn good drinks.

Tonight’s band line-up was a series of rock bands. Unfortunately, at least one of these bands want to label themselves as “post-rock,” a completely meaningless label that is used by hipster musicians and hipster non-musicians to describe progressive rock music. Oh! Your band plays melodic rock instrumentals? No “rock” band has ever done that before, so it MUST be, “post-rock,” right?

 No… no band has done that before; Rush, Pink Floyd, Metallica, Joe Satriani, The Grateful Dead, or a hundred other bands that don’t give themselves the pretentious and idiotic label of “post-rock,” have ever done that before. No. Fucking. Way.

But anger at the semantics used by fools aside, I got there in time to catch a band called, “If Trees Could Talk.” As my brotha J-fi said, if trees could talk, they would tell us to stop killing them; but that’s not important right now. If Trees Could Talk the band was pretty damn good. They played tight (a couple mistakes but nothing to write home about) and heavy, and had a strong crowd that dug their music. I liked them… a lot.

The next, and headliner (I assume) was The End of the Ocean. The End of the Ocean was also pretty good, but they are the ones I point my “post-rock” ire at. I’m pretty sure it isn’t “post-rock,” to have two pretty girls in your band. Because other than that, there was nothing remotely close to “post-rock,” about them. They played hard rock instrumentals; using two guitars, a drum, a bass, and a keyboard. Does that really sound like something that hasn’t been heard a thousand times before in rock music? Does that sound unique? Perhaps if you’ve never listened to rock music. If that’s the case, I can’t really say. I can only speak for myself and the majority of people in the entire fucking world.

The End of the Ocean is a good live band; I have nothing negative to say about their music at all. They had good energy that translated to the crowd; a lot to say of a band that plays only instrumentals. I enjoyed it, if only slightly less than I enjoyed If Trees Could Talk. But Christ Jesus on a pogo stick; no band should ever, EVER, EVER, call themselves “post”-anything. It is the mark of… well, of a mark; a sucker, a fool, a nincompoop.

It’s a term that makes no sense. Post-Rock. Think about it for a minute. But not too long, I don’t want anyone to have an aneurism while trying to understand the implications of Rock music that isn’t actually Rock music, but is supposedly something AFTER Rock music.

Labeling yourself as “post-rock,” is like tying a pretentious noose around your own neck. Let other, small-minded people put labels on you. That’s what small-minded people do. But once you start labeling yourself and your own art, you’ve willfully put a cap on your own creativity.

All that being said, this show was the kick-off of a CD release and a national tour; I wish all of you the absolute best. Like I said, talented musicians playing good music.

I don’t have links as my internet connection at this time is all kinds of awful, but I do know that you can hear them on both Spotify and Bandcamp and they have a Facebook page as well. I recommend giving them a listen, and buying their stuff.