Posted by Leilani Polk on Jul. 30, 2009, at 10:40 am
A quick breakdown of this weekend’s most worthy concerts beginning with Thursday, ’cause that’s when the weekend really starts, right? For a more comprehensive schedule of concerts, check out our Upcoming Events page.
Thursday, July 30 Jeffree Starw/Artist VS Poet/Watch Out! Theres Ghosts/Lets Get It Jeffree Star is conversely ambiguous and flamboyant — he could be a woman or a man with his long, bright pink hair, dragtastic make-up and swaths of rock star tattoos. The LA-based self-proclaimed “Queen of the Internet” is a dance music recording artist and Internet phenom who has more than a million MySpace friends and more than 12 million hits on his most played song, “Eyelashes Curlers & Butcher Knives.” Thurs., July 30, 8 p.m., Orpheum, Ybor City, $10, all ages.
Maxwellw/Chrisette Michele Neo-soul singer Maxwell — the Grammy-nominated artist who hits the high notes in his seductive, made-for-making-looove serenades — is currently touring in support of his fourth studio album and first new effort in eight years, BLACKsummers’night. The Brookyn native’s latest features a 10-piece band that brings a lush feel to the album’s supple grooves. Soul support act Chrisette Michele actually won a Grammy for “Best Urban/Alternative Performance” in 2009 for her up-tempo “I Will Survive”-style single, “Be OK.” Thurs., July 30, Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater; last time I looked this show was SOLD OUT, although I’m sure you can find tickets floating around outside.Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Leilani Polk on Jul. 27, 2009, at 2:11 pm
Lots of new concert announcements arrived in my email box over the past three days. I’ve paired the new with a few that slipped through the cracks for your concert planning convenience. For a complete breakdown of area shows, visit our Upcoming Concerts page.
Posted by Eric Snider on Jul. 16, 2009, at 12:39 pm
For years, the annual Warped Tour has been more or less a knucklehead boys club on wheels — with music in between — but in recent years more female-dominated bands have been cracking the lineup. Count among them Meg & Dia, the two easy-on-the-eyes, Utah-bred sisters Frampton (no relation to Peter) — Meg, 23, and Dia, 21 — and their three male bandmates.
The group has been on three Warped jaunts, including this year’s.
Meg & Dia is supporting its first major label release, Here, Here and Here (released April 21 on Sire), an accomplished collection of confessional and sometimes confrontational (and irrepressibly catchy) modern rock that takes more stylistic liberties than most bands in the pop-punk/emo realm.
Dia (foreground in photo), who sings lead and splits songwriting duties with Meg and the other band members, called from the tour bus and proved to be a lively, open interviewee. Here’s an edited version of our conversation.
What are the good parts and the bad parts about Warped?
(Coughs) Well one of the bad parts is getting sick and not being able to get better. We don’t have a hotel, a place to take a hot bath. I’ve been cleaning out my nose with a netti pot. I’d give anything for a hotel right now, a quiet room. Yesterday I had a crazy fever.
As I said with my last post about Nerdapalooza, I wasn’t really familiar with the whole genre (or its fan base) until mere weeks before attending the festival, but I had a short list of people I wanted to see as Trevor and I shoved off from St. Petersburg last Saturday morning.
Now, I’m typing this a little under 24 hours after getting home from the festival. Showered, rested, and fed, I’m still not sure how I want to cover it. There were plenty of disappointments, such as Kabuto The Python (the #1 thing I wanted to see) not thinking to try the rapping with a mask thing out before stepping out onto a stage, which resulted in Kabuto the Mime. There was The Protomen’s set so mired in feedback that you would have thought they brought it along as a special guest. Then there was the most frustrating part of all, the festival’s complete and utter inability to stay anywhere close to the schedule (more on that later).
But this isn’t meant to be a diatribe from some outsider coming in to point at the nerds and talk about how shitty their convention was. And as I drove home, I reflected on some of the cool shit we saw. The first band we caught, Captain Dan & the Scurvy Crew, were quite entertaining both sonically and visually as they took the stage in complete pirate garb. Kabuto aside, the rest of the Scrub Club showcase was phenomenal. As a “crew” they seem to embrace a “hiphop first, nerd second” approach to their music and stage show that really appealed to me.
Then there was the out of left field “holy shit I am gonna talk about that for months” set by Schaffer The Darklord. I’d listened to his material on Myspace in preparation for the festival and was lukewarm to it at best. However, live … live is where it was at. Those lazy beats and rhyme delivery were pushed aside for an uptempo, high energy tight stage show that captivated the entire room. Watching him on stage I kept thinking, this dude is like nerdcore’s version of Col. J.D. Wilkes (for those who don’t know, read about JD here). I don’t think there is any doubt that Schaffer stole the entire festival with his shortened performance. Read the rest of this entry »
To begin by beating a dead horse: Modern Radio sucks! We’re lucky in the Tampa Bay area with WMNF, but even this leftist station leans toward mainstream boomer culture rather than underground or avant garde sounds. And who can blame them? Fiscal feasability dictates the output of modern media (d’uh).
In a pinch, I tend to listen to right wing radio for a good, healthy gut laugh, because it’s better than being depressed by cheesy mediocrity! Bottom line: Radio is for the masses. Lowest common denominator pandering pervades every aspect of post-modern living. From the huge conglomerates to the indies, companies and not-for-profits don’t have faith in our ability to think, contemplate and make our own decisions. This is not special knowledge that I’ve tapped into / I do not have any extra intelligence not available to the rest of you. You are all well aware of the hoodwink that modern media attempts to pull over on us every day. It/s like that “Everybody Knows” song by Leonard Cohen (he supercedes boomer culture, right?). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Kate Cillian on Jul. 9, 2009, at 12:34 pm
Don’t let her goofy personality and head full of dreads fool you. Emily Turnage is a young musician with huge potential. “I think I’ve been playing since I was about 14,” she told me in a recent conversation. A Saint Petersburg native, this flower child finds her peace through the strings of her guitar.
Her love of guitar paved her way to joining band after band, never giving up on her dream. “I want to have 30,000 people sing my songs with me.”
Raw talent flows through her veins. She has never taken a guitar lesson in her life. “I taught me-self!” she exclaimed with a laugh.
Emily took inspiration from the music around her. “My best friend Jacob is an excellent musician and whenever he played I just fell in love with it. Hayley Williams [Paramore] influences me as well.”
Posted by Eric Snider on Jun. 23, 2009, at 12:53 pm
The crowd cheers as a tattooed man with shaggy hair and a British accent belts out Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath tunes. An hour later, a blonde singer tears through a set of Motley Crue classics while his bandmates pound their instruments into submission. An hour after that, a grown man in a schoolboy outfit duck-walks across the stage and his cohort growls from under his cap while AC/DC riffs blast through the speakers.
Is this a dream team concert lineup of rock ‘n’ roll legends? Not quite, but the crowd is enthusiastic and it sounds pretty close to the real thing. In fact, the only part that’s completely unrealistic is the price, since admission to see all the bands ($10) cost less than parking at major rock concerts.
On June 30, three tribute acts performed at Jannus Landing at the Monsters of Mock show while fans sang along to the familiar sights and sounds. It’s not the real thing, but according to Martyn Jenkins, frontman for AC/DC tribute act Highway to Hell (and the evening’s headliners), the next best thing is pretty satisfying in its own right.
Posted by Leilani Polk on Jun. 9, 2009, at 12:58 pm
Let me preface this by saying I’m a huge fan of Animal Collective. I’ve followed them since 2005’s Feels, which mystified, intrigued and ultimately turned me onto the the experimental trio, and I think the new album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, is among this year’s best. Where other people find their experimental music abrasive and hard to understand, I dig the collages of chaotic electronics, the repetition, the fickle melodies, the whooped-chanted-sung lyrics. But while last night’s show had some pretty great moments, the overall performance wasn’t quite as dynamic as I’d expected, the subtleties didn’t translate very well in State Theatre’s high frequency-swallowing room, and the repetition that I normally enjoy was almost exhausting in a live setting. (Photos by Phil Bardi.)
The band had a pretty visually appealing stage set-up: two tall towers of speakers on either side of the stage covered in white sheets, a huge white ball hanging in the center over the stage, with animated projections and electro-lights playing against it (did these guys see Phish’s Hampton set up or what?), a huge backdrop featuring Merriweather’s dizzying optical illusion cover art, soundboard tables covered with white sheets that lit up in a rainbow of neon colors at various musical cues. (MORE PICS AFTER THE BREAK) Read the rest of this entry »
It’s free. It’s for & about musicians and the business of making of music. It’s all happening next weekend. Here’s the full schedule for Homemade Music Symposium.
This second annual FREE symposium for Tampa Bay musicians & the music-loving general public offers seminars and workshops on the business of music-making to explore how to nurture and develop careers in the modern commercial environment. Wade through to see what floats your boat. And please, come check it out. Event info @ www.artistsandwritersgroup.com
Homemade Music Symposium: Preview Event June 10 FREE (details below)
Homemade Music Symposium Weekend: June 13 & 14 FREE starting at noon until 7pm (details below)
A cloud hangs over Jannus Landing. The man who runs the concert courtyard,Jack Bodziak, was arrested last week on charges that he failed to pay to the state more than $200,000 in sales tax he collected from customers.
Since that bombshell dropped, three concerts have been pulled from the Jannus Landing docket: The Hold Steady, Gogol Bordello and Taking Back Sunday.
The question on everyone’s mind: What will become of downtown St. Petersburg’s beloved concert venue? Very few people want to talk about the situation on the record — Bodziak didn’t return phone calls or an e-mail — but I interviewed a few insiders and pieced together an overview of the venue’s plight and possible scenarios for its future.
Bob Log came. Bob Log saw. Bob Log asked us to shit down his leg.
To say that Bob Log kicked ass this past Sunday, May 24, is an illustration of words not doing a show justice.
To say you missed a fantastic show is less a declaration and more of me pointing and laughing at you, the lazy masses of the Tampa/St. Pete music scene.
So yeah, Bob Log came and, in typical fashion, Tampa/St. Pete didn’t.
You Suck.
Bob Log fucking ruled.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’m gonna let James’ photos do the rest of the talking since all I wanna talk about is how shitty the Bay area’s music scene is and how sick I am of making excuses for it … It rained. Gasparilla is 278 days away, etc. etc. etc. But before I go, lemme ask you, Tampa, lemme ask you St. Pete: Why is it Orlando’s music scene can be so damned good and ours so freaking shitty? Read the rest of this entry »
BOB LOG III PLAYS THE GARAGE IN DOWNTOWN ST. PETERSBURG ON SUNDAY, MAY 24.
A lot of people don’t know who Bob Log III is. Those that have seen him will never forget him.
My first Bob Log III experience came at the Deep Blues Festival ‘08. He played with Possessed By Paul James and Scott H. Biram at a few night shows, so I managed to catch him a few times outside the festival and once actually at the festival. The first time I saw him, I was convinced it was Scott H. Biram in disguise, but then I walked up to the bar for a drink and Biram was sitting there. Suddenly I wondered, Who the fuck was this man on the stage in a full-faced helmet and full-body cannonball man suit? As the show wore on, he had women sitting on his lap, women with their tits in his drinks and by the end of the weekend, he had a devoted fan in myself.
(MORE OF THE BOB LOG-APALOOZA AND MP3s AFTER THE JUMP)
Posted by Eric Snider on May. 15, 2009, at 9:04 am
My sleeper concert of the weekend is War, the Southern California band, formed in the late 1960s that blends flowing funk, Latin, Afrobeat and rock into a sound that has held up extremely well over the years. Case in point: Who doesn’t get a little kick in their step when they hear “Low Rider.”
Posted by Leilani Polk on May. 7, 2009, at 11:12 am
CL’s choice picks for this weekend in music.
Friday, May 08 What was it that Deiter said on Sprockets? Oh yeah … “Your story has grown tiresome.” I can see this gimmicky show — Unwigged & Unplugged: An evening with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, which features the three now-silver-haired comedians who made up Spinal Tap performing acoustic — as getting real old real fast. Let’s hope the trio doesn’t think that just the songs can carry the day; they’d better have some funny shtick in there, or I could see this thing being a waste of time. Then again, I could be wrong. Still, one wonders: What happens when you run an acoustic guitar through an amp and turn the amp up to 11? Fri., May 8, 8 p.m., Mahaffey Theater, St. Petersburg, $36.50-$49.50. —ES
Post rock meets experimental electronica by instrumental Los Angeles duo El Ten Eleven (pictured). Made up of Kristian Dunn (fretless bass, guitar/bass doubleneck) and Tim Fogarty (electric drums, acoustic drums, synthesizers), El Ten Eleven employs heavy looping and much effects pedal-pushing to create its fuzzified, lively brand of dance music. Also performing: Surly, The Tape Delay and Ghost of Gloria. Fri., May 8, 8 p.m., Orpheum, Ybor City, $8 in advance/$10 DOS. —LP
It’s only fitting that Nashville’s Kings of Leon have graduated to playing arenas — although the Sun Dome is pretty small in that regard — because their sound has morphed from a garage-y immediacy to, yup, more of an arena-style bombast. “Sex on Fire,” the first single from KoL’s current album, Only by the Night, casts a U2-ish hue. The shift must be working: Only by the Night ascended to No. 5 on the Billboard 200, besting 2007’s Because of the Times by 20 slots. For more, read CL’s interview with guitarist Matthew Followill here. Fri., May 8, 8 p.m., USF Sun Dome, Tampa, $35.50 and $43. —ESRead the rest of this entry »
She is a singer/songwriter whose band is also named Geri X. They’re based in St. Petersburg. Why am I asking her nine questions? Well, primarily because I’ve had her CD playing in my car for a couple of months now and I think you should know more about her & it. This is a local group that doesn’t sound local, they sound beyond this place, and beyond all the places of their past. Their latest album is called “Anthems of a Mended Heart.”
I imagine that for Geri, this album is something of a destination. The exhalation of a breath held too long, the sigh of relief at the end of a storm. It seems like she has landed in a place both personally and musically where she has made some decisions and settled herself into a more peaceful bed.
I’m not saying it’s entirely angst-free, but those of you who search out singer/songwriter types to get your angst on will not be disappointed. I guess I could try to compare her to another artist that you’ve already heard of, but I won’t. First of all, I personally find that to be bad music manners. (Stop asking musicians who they sound like — stop today!)
Posted by Eric Snider on Apr. 25, 2009, at 10:17 am
This just in:
New York Dolls Announce May US Tour Dates!
Play the State Theatre on Tues., June 9
Legendary NYC proto-punk glam rockers the NEW YORK DOLLS announce the first dates of the US tour starting in May. The band that kick-started the NYC rock scene with their self-titled debut back in 1973 reunited with producer Todd Rundgren for their May 5 release, Cause I Sez So, on the newly revived Atco imprint.
The album comes roaring out of the gate with a classic Dolls riff on the title track and ends 12 tracks later with “Exorcism of Despair,” an anarchic rocker that’s vintage Dolls. The quintessential NYC band performs a private show on Tuesday, May 5 at the John Varvatos store on Bowery, the site of landmark punk club CBGBs.
Posted by Eric Snider on Apr. 20, 2009, at 11:01 am
The house lights went down, synthesizers swelled and the stage oozed dry-ice smoke. This went on for so long that it seemed Seal and his band had experienced a Spinal Tap moment and taken a wrong turn backstage. But the extended buildup was just indicative of a show last night at Mahaffey Theater that was long on pomp and drama and crescendo — and pretty darn good because of it.
I’m pretty sure it was Seal’s first Tampa Bay show, and an adoring sell-out audience turned out to hang on his every note, every pose, every sly reference to his family (he mentioned his three kids but never wife Heidi Klum). An interesting crowd: Lots of MILFs all done up, fashionista fellas in vests, white trash, even an elderly lady wearing plastic wrap-around sunglasses who insisted on dancing directly in my sight line, if you want to call it dancing.
Seal flexed his star power, even though showmanship doesn’t come naturally to him. He’s not a graceful dancer, yet he moved around the best he could.
People came to hear him sing, and that he did very well, more convincingly and soulfully than on his recordings. Whether it was the early dance single “Killer” with Adamski, the big hits, or any of several songs from his current Soul album of R&B covers (“A Change is Gonna Come,” “It’s a Man’s Man’s World” among them), Seal commanded the material, hewing closely to the recorded versions but breaking out from time to time for Big Moments (like a serpentine a cappella line during “Love’s Divine”).
Backed by a three-piece band (guitar, bass, drums and mountains of computer-triggered synths), Seal paced the show beautifully; “Kiss from a Rose” and “Crazy” came back to back just before encore.
At home before the show, I was hit by a wave of Sunday night lethargy and thought it might be a better idea to stay home and watch the NBA playoffs. I’m glad I got my ass off the couch.
Posted by Eric Snider on Apr. 10, 2009, at 10:53 am
My men’s league basketball game ran into overtime, so I arrived at the Palladium’s Side Door club just in time for boogie-woogie piano master Bob Seeley to go on break. I was surprised, and pleased, to see a sell-out audience of 150 lingering around the tables, the crowd made up mostly of retirees.
Seeley, based in Detroit, is 80, but doesn’t look it — and he certainly doesn’t play like you might expect an 80-year-old to play. He’s a firebrand with remarkable technique. After doing brisk CD sales at the merch table, and a set by locals Liz Pennock & Dr. Blues, Seeley took to the baby grand and wowed the joint.
Whereas most jazz piano features the player’s right hand, with the left hand laying out chordal accents, boogie-woogie highlights the left hand, which pounds out a steady stream of eighth notes.
Not to say that Seeley’s other paw was sub-bar; he used it to execute some marvelous runs.
Boogie-woogie, played on solo piano like last night, is one of the most exuberant, joyous sounds to emanate from the annals of American music. Seeley sure proved that.
His show-stopper piece was “Mama Don’t Allow,” an old-time number that Seeley used to strut his skills in boogie, ragtime, stride, Charleston, Ellingtonia (”Take the A Train”), Gershwin (”I Got Rhythm”) and more. He blasted through the piece with supreme confidence and good humor.
Posted by Leilani Polk on Mar. 23, 2009, at 1:40 pm
As part of our upcoming Urban Explorer’s Handbook, we mapped out the Bay area’s own Internet community and spotlighted a variety of blogs and websites that cover local arts, news, politics, film, music and food. Here is a profile I wrote about Bryan Childs, a Tampa Calling contributor and the man behind ninebullets.net.
Bryan Childs, aka Autopsy IV, isn’t trying to be a music writer or a critic or even a go-to source for music news and information. But the 35-year-old electrical designer has single-handedly become all three. The St. Petersburg-based owner and operator of ninebullets.net brings so much knowledge and raw talent to the table that Creative Loafing recruited him as a contributor to our own music blog, Tampa Calling, last year.
Via ninebullets.net, Childs shines a light on Americana, bluegrass, newgrass, psychobilly, alt-country, folk, deep blues and any other genre with a downhome, rootsy feel, though you’re as likely to find posts about Tori Amos or Slayer as you will Old Crow Medicine Show and The Black Keys. His site includes interviews, MP3s, live show previews and reviews, commentary on CDs and DVDs, music news, and posts about Childs’ own whisky-soaked adventures. He also has a few guest bloggers to help spread the flavor.
Childs has no professional experience writing or playing music, though he dabbled in both while growing up in Plant City. His formative years were spent exploring the Bay area’s goth industrial music scene, where he became a regular at The Castle and joined its online community message board, Underground Tampa.
Then he discovered the Drive-By Truckers. “I heard them and I was done,” Childs says of his love-at-first-listen awakening. Soon enough, he was digging up more alterna-twang artists and contacting local radio DJs for recommendations. Read the rest of this entry »
Where to begin? Last Thursday seems like so long ago, the start of a very long weekend of incredible music. With the Harvest Of Hope festival bringing bands by the boatload to Florida, many of them played shows throughout the state before and after the weekend. I (with my girlfriend and a few other friends) went to four shows in six days across the state. I did my best to document all of this with pictures and video; and even managed to score a short video interview with Bryce Dessner of The National. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Eric Snider on Mar. 13, 2009, at 3:50 am
Irma Thomas headlines the Sunday (March 22) portion of the Tampa Bay Blues Fest. Here’s my feature/interview with the Soul Queen of New Orleans Look for it in Wednesday’s CL print edition.(By the way, Irma Thomas is awesome.)
Let’s see, Irma Thomas. Lots of stuff to ask her. The music biz kicked her around but good in her early days, but she forged on to become known as the Soul Queen of New Orleans. At 19, she’d already been married twice and had four children; now, at 68, she has nine great-grandchildren.
So where to start this interview? How about … her funeral.
The Crescent City is big on funerals. We’ve all seen images of raggedy brass bands parading next to the casket while people on the periphery dance, celebrate the fallen and just dig the music. Those folks are called the “second line” and such processions have come to be known as second line funerals.
So I wondered: Does the Soul Queen of New Orleans want a second line funeral?
“Not really,” Irma Thomas says. “If I tell my kids I don’t want it, they’ll make sure it doesn’t happen. I’m not a big second line person.”
Posted by Eric Snider on Mar. 10, 2009, at 10:12 am
The 15th annual Tampa Bay Blues Fest is around the corner — Fri., March 20 through Sun. March 22 at Vinoy Park on the downtown St. Pete waterfront. Needless to say, it’s a good time. Sunny days, cool evenings, free-blowing beer and hour after hour of hot, quintessentially American music.
Here’s a primer for the event, some quick blurbs about the acts to whet the appetite. Ticket prices range from $30 for a single-day ticket to $350 for a three-day backstage pass. This year also introduces organized after-party jams on Friday and Saturday nights, to be held at Nova 535 in St. Pete. Here are details.
Friday, March 20
12:30 p.m. Robin Rogers The blonde, blue-eyed songstress out of Charlotte, N.C. has quite a bit of that Koko Taylor roar in her.
2:30 p.m. Lurrie Bell The 49-year-old son of the late, legendary Chicago harp player Carey Bell wields a Stratocaster and has a lusty voice somewhat reminiscent of B.B. King.
4:30 p.m. Coco Montoya A one-time protégé of Albert “Iceman” Collins, L.A.-based singer/guitarist Montoya is a familiar figure on the blues festival circuit.
Coco Montoya
6:30 p.m. Curtis Salgado The 55-year-old veteran of the Northwest blues scene has played for a few years in Robert Cray’s band and in 1995 did a short stint as lead singer in Carlos Santana’s band. He sings and plays harmonica.
8:30 p.m. The Fabulous Thunderbirds Singer/harp man Kim Wilson has been the constant over the band’s 35-year history (which has included since-departed guitarists Jimmie Vaughan and Duke Robillard). Having scored a handful of hits in the mid 1980s (“Tuff Enuff,” “Wrap it Up”), the Austin-based quintet soldiers on as a more-than-dependable juke-joint R&B band.
Sat., March 21
11:30 a.m. Teresa James and the Rhythm Tramps Houston-bred, L.A.-based Teresa James brings a kind of Bonnie Raitt/Susan Tedeschi feel to her singing — gritty but feminine. Sexy.
In the hip-hop community, no one really wants to be labeled a hater. While I don’t hate Lil Wayne, I am far from a fan. I respect the fact that he has put out more music than any other major hip-hop artist in the last five years and probably has the best work ethic of any rapper not named Tupac Shakur. But is doing your job really worth the iconic status he seems to have achieved? I’m going to have to say no. So at the risk of earning the not-so-superlative hater label, I present to you my Top 3 reasons why a dead Biggie Smalls is better than a living Lil Wayne.
Lil Wayne has been successful but is he really a worthy successor?
Coattails
Sean Combs might be the owner, but Christopher “Biggie Smalls” Wallace, better known as the Notorious B.I.G., is responsible for the Bad Boy Entertainment empire. The considerable wealth Combs amassed thanks to Mr. Wallace’s efforts funded his Sean John clothing line and propelled Puff Daddy to stardom. Diddy got a Grammy for his No Way Out album that featured Biggie on five songs. He also gave Lil Kim, the most popular female rapper of her time, her start.
Version 1.1 – WITH MORE BASSISTS! – I’ve always wanted to write a post like this. I have been a student of the Bass Guitar for around 15 years and have always fought the “apparent unimportance” of bass players in contemporary music. Through this post I hope to once and for all assert the position of bassists everywhere in the highest echelons of cool.
Bad Brains was originally a jazz-fusion band called Mind Power formed in 1975 in Washington D.C. They soon became enamored with punk rock and changed their name, taking it from a Ramones song. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Eric Snider on Jan. 18, 2009, at 1:42 pm
It looked like a real rock concert.
Geri X held a CD release party for her new Anthems of a Mended Heart (24 Hour Service Station) last night at the State Theatre and people showed up. A decent amount of them (depending on your point of view). She and three other acts — Will Quinlan and the Diviners, The Beauvilles and Have Gun, Will Travel — put on tight, committed sets that provided an evening of strong entertainment. But the night’s real issue was not how the bands would perform, but how well the show would draw with a major local media blitz supporting it.
Two hundred and twenty-five paid ($8). Another 50-75 in comps. Total: An attendance hovering close to 300. That’s according to CL marketing director Joran Oppelt, a tireless booster of the local scene. He wasn’t devastated, but he wasn’t thrilled either. “It just seems impossible to get into the 300s and above,” he said this morning. “With all the media, I had expected more of a turnout.”
Imagine if you took the Tasmanian devil and put him in a chair with a couple of guitars, a slide, and some weird snare drum connected to a foot pedal contraption, and then demanded “MAKE MUSIC.” This explains the frenzy that is Smokestack and the Foothill Fury (which is actually only one person). Here’s what mountainfreak.net had to say about him:
“I wandered a little south of my normal coverage area this month to Loco’s in Gainesville for some music by a fellow whose sound I had heard labeled “Punk-Country-Blues.” Hard for me to miss something with a handle like that. “Smokestack” is a one man band with enough energy for a quartet. Armed with a small arsenal of guitars, his foot driven rhythm section, and a knack for telling a story..he puts on a good show that is a little different but highly entertaining.
So, I hope to see some of y’all out tonight. Catch me early and we can share a drink and tell some lies.
Little Fyodor returns to Tampa Bay Friday night to downtown St. Petersburg’s Cafe Bohemia. After blowing the roof off of Transitions Art Gallery and then the whole town of Gainesville one year ago with his cohort Babushka, Fyodor returned to his home in Colorado, kept in touch with some Floridians, and played some Florida music on his radio show, “Under the Floorboards.”
Locals in attendance at Transitions for Fyodor’s performance have been waiting with bated breath and salty skin for the return of an underground legend. A combination of weird, angular and hilarious, the music of Little Fyodor represents an underground barely covered in any medium. His 80s band Walls of Genius got one line of text in the Richie Unterberger classic book, Unknown Legends of Rock n Roll.
Extremely entertaining, spastic and poignant in combating our current boredom/mediocrity based culture, Little Fyodor promises to put on a great show this Friday, January 16.
A Reason to Rock 2
A benefit concert for Parkinson’s reasearch
Jannus Landing, St. Petersburg, FL
Saturday January 10, 2009
Bands: Chris McCarty Band, Radio Reset, Soulfound, The Prospect
All Ages | $20 at Door | Meet and greet at 6:00p | Doors at 7:00p
The concert at the Hall with Obie Trice never happened. Mr. Trice canceled on the morning of the show because supposedly his house was raided by law enforcement and he was being detained for questioning. If that smells like Motown manure to you too then congratulations! You’re not gullible either.
He didn’t get arrested. I’d love to ask him face to face the real reason why Mr. Real Name No Gimmicks decided to pull this last minute missed appearance act, but my wish to maintain a clean criminal record will probably keep me from pursuing that.
I was initially informed of the cancellation around 11am the day of the show via Myspace. I called The Mind Syndicate to find out if this was true. They assured me the show was still going on as they had heard nothing about a cancellation, but said they’d call me back after making sure. That return call came around 2PM while I was in the mall with F.a.T and Milo. That’s when I got the original excuse Obie gave them of getting arrested… Read the rest of this entry »
So you think you want to be a rapper, eh? It’s more hard work and hustle than Hennessy and hoes. Gone is the time where you create a little buzz and then sit back and wait for a label/lottery ticket to come and rescue you from your day job. In fact, these days you might want to keep that 9 to 5 even if the majors do come calling. In order to survive, let alone thrive, as an emcee these days, you have to be more and do more than just move the crowd…
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Thursday, July 30
To begin by beating a dead horse: Modern Radio sucks! We’re lucky in the Tampa Bay area with WMNF, but even this leftist station leans toward mainstream boomer culture rather than underground or avant garde sounds. And who can blame them? Fiscal feasability dictates the output of modern media (d’uh).
Version 1.1 – WITH MORE BASSISTS! – I’ve always wanted to write a post like this. I have been a student of the Bass Guitar for around 15 years and have always fought the “apparent unimportance” of bass players in contemporary music. Through this post I hope to once and for all assert the position of bassists everywhere in the highest echelons of cool.
The concert at the Hall with 
