Tampa Calling

Screeching guitars over a rapid backbeat pierce 50 ears trying to hear 25 stilted conversations. A foot-long needle shoots directly through the beckoning orifices, winds around the ear canals and connects directly with the center of each half of the brain. A throbbing begins at the base of the skull as imaginary brain fluid leaks out of each ear. Each face contorts into wrinkled disgust and the faces move closer together.

“Music is my life!” screams one bearded-with-glasses 20-something into the ear of a young girl with hair framing her face, brown tank top, cut-off jean shorts and several colored tattoos spattered across each arm. Clouds of cigarette smoke linger between them and slowly rise to the tar-stained ceiling. From the other end of the bar, the shapes and cartoons on her arms aren’t distinguishable, but I’m convinced they’re more than just blobs of ink. ”Have you ever heard the first Bad Brains album?” he continues to yell, ”It’s so raw, I can’t get enough of it!”

The band falls into a repetitive pattern of chunky chords, fast, pounding, tribal drums and hollering vocals. A few words sneak out of the mix, “MAKE…APPOINTMENT…TIME…MIND…EXCUSE!” Fuzzed mumbling fills the spaces between the recognizable words.

“I’m so glad you like them, too! Did you go see them at State a few months ago? They were great. I was there for Propaghandi, though!” the girl hollers back.

“What!? I can’t hear a fucking thing with this shit music!” Read the rest of this entry »

New from No Clear Records: a schizophrenic compilation colliding different genres of the underground and crapping them together in one easy to swallow CD-R. No Clear, No Eyes Volume 2 spirals around themes of frustration, loneliness and salvation through the lenses of punk, no wave, garage, folk, experimental, noise, comedy, avant garde, rock ‘n’ roll and more without batting an eye. All thought up, recorded and executed right here in Florida (mostly Tampa Bay, though other acts hail from Gainesville and Melbourne), this compilation accurately depicts the underbelly of Florida culture that more and more people are seeking out as mainstream alternatives to their cultural intake.

Tonight, Friday, May 22, 2009, Cafe Bohemia hosts a compilation release show for this seminal Florida mix featuring live music from some of Tampa Bay’s most exciting weirdos. 937 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, 6 or 7 p.m. start time (it’ll go all night). (Follow the jump for track listing.)

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Sunday night rock ‘n’ roll shows: difficult to book, annoying to promote and hard to get people to leave their comfortable homes and come out for bands they may not have heard about. My band Blast and the Detergents last played a Sunday night show a couple months ago at Crowbar opening for amazing touring band, Pontiak, and “gets more Tampa shows than I do” Orlando band Kingsbury.

(Another band played and I can’t remember their name — kind of Hootie and the Blowfish-sounding singer songwritery stuff… not my bag).  Anyway, the show turned out great because the DJ played some really great classic punk and rock ‘n’ roll junk, Pontiak owned and I got to play, which I always enjoy regardless of crowd size or reception.

However, I always feel bad when I fail to deliver the promise of beer drinkers for these dive bars that put up with my crazy sound. Sundays, this memorable Crowbar night included, challenge the notion of profit for these beer holes.

On the other hand, touring band always need a place to play on Sundays, and with the notorious Atlanta tour cutoff we usually cry about down here, I am satisfied when a band I like plays any night of the week down this way in our chatty little twin cities.

Chapel Hill underground rockers Americans in France destroyed the Emerald last year (I think it was a Thursday) with one-man garage-rock  band Pinche Gringo (he covered The Gories, for Christ’s sake) and now they are returning to our fair sprawl. I am bringing them into bombed-out downtown Tampa’s little bar/venue Kelly’s Pub this Sunday, May 17 around 8 or 9 p.m.  (you know how these things go).

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The Cramps crapped the punk of The Sonics/Ramones continuum and Hasil Adkins/Link Wray rockabilly together in the late ’70s, extolling the virtues of simple, high-velocity distorted music and inescapable, in-your-face attitude, and naming their new subgenre “psychobilly.” Best described as a psychotic crooner, Lux Interior sang and contorted for The Cramps for the last 30-something years. Poetry about death, alienation, revenge and caustic self-affirmation littered their first EP, Gravest Hits, and LP, Songs the Lord Taught Us, (my two favorites), and rang true for me and countless others across the world over the years. “The way I walk is just the way I walk” and other such declarations paired with science fiction/horror references defined their early records. Early live shows were characterized by Lux literally going crazy and falling apart onstage, including vomiting all over himself and other antics. Here’s some footage of The Cramps playing a mental hospital in 1978:

Delayed, choking/massively stuttering vocals filled spaces between two or three chords heavily drenched in reverb and distortion punk. Mesmerizing, inspiring simplicity speaks toward the minimalism of the amateur (doing something for the love of it).

Rest in peace, Lux, and thanks for the music/inspiration/thoughts and references to an underground culture of rollicking rock ‘n’ roll fun.

On Feb. 3, 1959, a four-seat airplane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson) crashed into a cornfield eight miles north of Clear Lake, Iowa.

The term “rock ‘n’ roll” had only come into widespread use about three years before.

The seeds planted between 1958-1964, between Elvis and the Beatles, go often unheralded in rock history. Motown got its start; it was Roy Orbison’s peak — same for the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons, not to mention Phil Spector, Stax and Muscle Shoals, the Shirelles, Del Shannon and James Brown.

Here are some Buddy Holly tunes for your listening enjoyment, below the jump:

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