Tampa Calling

I expanded and altered this post for my latest Bar Tab, titled “Wild Turkey” in the print edition. Here’s the opening:

Holy shit. It’s the holidays already. Which means most of us will be drinking even more than normal. Most likely in a fortified, well-stocked bedroom where those obnoxious relatives can’t find us — or a dingy neighborhood bar. Here are some tunes to help with the process. Cheers.

Continue reading: “The greatest drinking songs for coping with the holidays.”

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I’ve been called a lot of different names thus far in my life: jock, nerd, fat boy, lightweight, goofball, transplant, outsider, new guy, frat boy, weirdo, and cool kid. Those were all while I was in school.

Nowadays, I pretty much just go by Infinite Skillz or Infinite for short. My mother just calls me loud. As the middle child, I’ve kind of always needed to be that way. I’d speak early and often, flexing my vocal cords to get noticed. After every loving admonishment, I’d always tell her that one day I’m going to get paid to make noise.

Officially, N.O.I.S.E. stands for the Nation of Infinite Skillz Entertainment, which is my official fan club. Making N.O.I.S.E. is the name of this blog, but it is also my motto. When asked about Hip Hop, President-Elect Barack Obama said that one of the things he admired most about rap artists is their entrepreneurial spirit. He liked the fact that many of my colleagues have started their own record labels becoming moguls instead of commodities. That’s Making N.O.I.S.E.

I too respect hustle and hard work but there is a limit to that. Are you really doing big things if your label roster consists of your hype man and your roommate? That is not Making N.O.I.S.E. That’s you and your homeys playing House: The Hip Hop Edition. (more…)

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This just in from Touch and Go Records:The Jesus Lizard will reunite for “a very limited series of live dates in 2009.” The original line-up will first play the All Tomorrow’s Parties fest in England in May 2009 and will then head back to the states for shows which have yet to be announced. If you saw The Jesus Lizard at any point between 1989 and 1999, then I do not to explain the insanity and intensity of their live show. If you have not seen them, please read on (I’ll try to keep it clean, for the kids…).

The band’s rhythm section redefined “tight”. The thundering bass punctuated with dizzying runs in perfect lock-step with the uber-methodical and driving drums laid the ground work. The guitar cut through you like a rusty knife, blending punk and jazz like no one else had (or ever will, for that matter). The music, though, was merely a canvass for singer David Yow to lay waste to the audience with. He prowled the stage, antagonizing the crowd. He spit in their mouths. He dry humped the faces of those against the stage. He got naked, a lot. I won’t even explain what the “tight and shiny” is, but you can probably figure it out. He would leap out into the crowd with an extra long mic cable and sing from the floor while rolling around doing god knows what to some poor dude who thought he was far enough back to avoid the mayhem. I have personally held David Yow in my arms while he was fully naked, covered in sweat, still singing. I had a girlfriend break up with me because I took her to a Jesus Lizard show. She got kicked in the head by Yow.

I probably haven’t sold everyone on this band as they aren’t for everyone (ask the aforementioned ex-girlfriend). I do ask that if you are a bit curious, please check them out. If you are so inclined to see what will be one of the most intense shows of your life, I implore you to try and catch them next year.

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The Encyclopedia of Punk ($19. 56 at Amazon) lives up to its name with A-Z coverage of approximately 500 bands, zines, clubs, labels, subgenres and scenesters.

The text is peppered with hundreds of pages that capture the movement in all its sweaty, ripped denim and tattooed glory.

With a cover the size of a vinyl jacket and 400 glossy pages that make the tome thicker and heavier than your first laptop, it should make for an impressive presence on any self-respecting punk enthusiasts’ coffee table — or that old speaker box doubling as one.

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Check out my cover story. Yeah, we’re milking Chinese Democracy — big time with the art — but, I promise, the actual article barely mentions the (over?) hyped Axl offering. Here’s my lede:

The economy is a rollercoaster of woe leaving many of us worrying about unemployment and the growing possibility of a crippling substance abuse problem or mental breakdown. But it’s Thanksgiving, the day of gratitude. Rather than drown in self-pity, I’ve decided to focus on the positive. Because for all the shitty news this year has offered — and, yes, it’s been a formidable shit-storm — 2008 has provided its fair share of rewards, especially for music fans.

Continue reading.

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Tampa singer/songwriter and CL Best of the Bay winner Will Quinlan’s album Navasota is at No. 2 on The Americana Music Associations‘ Most Added chart. Here’s the profile piece I did on Quinlan back in June, a week before the CD dropped. We are very proud of him! And so is WMNF:

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The most striking part of Chuck Klosterman’s Chinese Democracy review — he gave it an A- in The Onion, about the same as my 3.5, reduced to 3 star, review — is his argument that the disc will be remembered as the last physical record that anyone gave a shit about.

For one thing, Chinese Democracy is (pretty much) the last Old Media album we’ll ever contemplate in this context—it’s the last album that will be marketed as a collection of autonomous-but-connected songs, the last album that will be absorbed as a static manifestation of who the band supposedly is, and the last album that will matter more as a physical object than as an Internet sound file. This is the end of that.

It’s a smart statement. But I’m not sure I’m buying it. The new Eminem album, for instance, will likely move a million units and so should Dre’s. I’m betting the next Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus discs will as well. Acts that truly grab people — yes tweens count as people — have fans still interested in owning a physical copy. Look at Radiohead, the British alternarockers gave away In Rainbows sound files and still topped the pop charts when they released the actual CD. The disc isn’t dead yet. Or is it????

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In 2007’s masterful Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer, of Montreal frontman/visionary/songwriter Kevin Barnes got up close and personal, expressing his fears, frustrations and failures against rainbow-hued synth-pop with a funky, disco-fied swagger.

Skeletal Lamping finds Barnes in much better spirits and back to mining his psyche for material, the album playing much like you’d imagine his psyche actually works — jumping from one memory to another, lingering on sexual fantasies and depravities, stopping to muse and ruminate on this incident or that person, mood-shifting from confident to downtrodden, from high and happy to contemplative to spazzed-out, thoughts and ideas spurting forth lucid and witty, or as disorienting streams-of-consciousness. Soulful ditties and synth-pop dance numbers mingle amid songs-within-songs that are made up of a few or more wildly divergent electro-symphonic movements, each with its own rhythm and sound and feel that either fits comfortably or crashes inelegantly into the movement before or after it to create an interesting and truly exceptional, if sometimes chaotic and sonically challenging, whole.

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Singer/songwriter extraordinaire Geri X is freezing her ass off in Wisconsin and has decided to return to Tampa Bay— permanently.

Which makes us very happy.

“So, we are coming home for good in December,” she says via email. ” 24HR Service Station records signed us and we are doing some work with John Wesley at Red Room Recorders working on the next CD. We’ll be releasing it Jan. 16 at State Theater.”

Have Gun, Will Travel, The Beauvilles and Vega Star, of Wisconsin, are also scheduled to be on the Jan. 16 roster.

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