Digging through the stacks on this Thanksgiving eve and finding lots of old gems I haven’t posted. Here are some photos of my pals PURE JUNK from last year, playing a show at the Ottobar. Perhaps opening for Fred & Toody of Dead Moon? This was a fun night. Look for more posts soon (I always say that, but for real this time).
Always amazing – one of my favorite bands of all time. So stoked to get to see them in my city. If you ever get the chance, don’t sleep. I almost skipped their Philly show in 2013 and it ended up being one of the best shows I have ever seen, and I see ALOT of shows. Classic band.
Big Mouth (bigmouthsound.bandcamp.com)
Whore Paint (whorepaint.bandcamp.com)
Coup Sauvage & the Snips (coupsauvage.bandcamp.com)
War On Women (waronwomen.bandcamp.com)
Lizz King (www.ehserecords.com/lizzking)
Dasher (dasher2.bandcamp.com)
Curse (cursebaltimore.bandcamp.com)
Trophy Wife (trophywifetheband.bandcamp.com)
Crimson Wave (crimsonwave.bandcamp.com)
Nervosas (nervosas.bandcamp.com)
This was such a great event. Two days of bands, workshops and community in Station North. Got to see some of Baltimore’s best bands and discover quite a few out of town acts that I had never heard of – Coup Sauvage and Whore Paint in particular impressed me. Baltimore rules.
Every year local neer-do-well Dustin Diamond has a cover band show at the Talking Head… well, next year it will have to be somewhere else, sadly, but it’s historically a great time. Different Baltimore bands or mixtures of Baltimore bands get together and do cover sets. This year among the bands were Fairies Wear Beards, which featured most of The Pilgrim doing Black Sabbath songs, and PISS, which featured most of Murder + Josh Seipp (formerly of Triac and Maudlin of the Well) and Matt Gabs from the Biters doing KISS covers… in full make-up! Continue reading
This was a lot of fun – an annual pop-punk/punk fest from local punk label Insubordination records, I was sent out by the Baltimore Sun to cover this, but was excited to see the Mean Jeans, who I have covered before, as well as Night Birds & the Dopamines (who were playing with Mikey from the Ergs), both of whom I have always managed to miss. House Boat, who I’d never heard of before, was a good discovery – they played until they literally fell down from exhaustion. What a fun show and crowd… crazy crowd-surfing and dancing, lots of fun bands. And the organizers, including the legendary Larry Livermore, were very easy to talk to and chill. Read on for more photos or click here for the whole Flickr set from Insub fest… Continue reading
Another fun Unregistered Nurse show at the Golden West! i didn’t take too many of Quintron though, it was too crazy during his set… him and Miss Pussycat are always so fun to see!
This was a great show… to celebrate the release of Ed Schrader’s Music Beat’s new album JAZZ MIND, out now on Load Records (it is great, you should get it!).
Black Pus is Brian Chippendale (Lightning Bolt, Mindflayer, drawing comic books)’s one man drums+electronics band, and it was really fun… the crowd went crazy for him and his wall of sound, constantly stage-diving and dancing. One girl next to me went up easily 12 times in a row… pretty fun. Even Chester got into the action!
Ed and Devin’s set was energetic and awesome… everyone singing along, dancing, the crowd spill forward onto the stage over and over… there was an amazing moment when the power died and Ed led the crowd in a capella version of Air Show, which was just awesome to have happen.
See all the Black Pus & Ed Schrader photos from Floristree here!
See many more photos from this show HERE.
This was fucking awesome. One of the few things I said going into this SXSW that I had to be there for and, I think, the only one of those things I made it to (besides the always-amazing bridge party, which was shut down by the cops). Sleepytime Trio was a band I loved in my younger years, but never got to see, not sure if they ever even played Baton Rouge or not.
The show was great, completly chaotic and spastic… in the backyard of a dingy blues bar on the eastside of Austin. So fun. Jason Hamacher threw people around and did wrestling moves, so it felt like old times. Brian Lowit even got on the mic…. One of the most fun times I had this year at SXSW.
See all my Dope Body at SXSW shots here.
I woke up early on my second day to catch Dope Body play at Scoot Inn, at the Thrasher/Converse stage. So many sponsored stages this year. They were great and still full of energy, even bright & early, as you can see here: Continue reading
The Mean Jeans
The Night Beats
White Mystery
See more photos of these bands and more here!
Three fun bands at one of my favorite places to see shows in Austin, Trailer Space Records. Trailer Space is my FAVORITE place to see shows at SXSW – always unofficial, always cool bands, always a chill/fun vibe, always no bullshit. This year I was there for the Burger Records Fest on Wednesday and it was great – flying beer (at one point a store worker/owner/person came up to the mic to declare “we sell records, so do not pour beer on the records”), fireworks, a dancing dog, tons of kids having fun and great music. So awesome.
A sad note is that I spoke to someone from Trailer Space over email and it seems as though they are in some hard times… so buy records there if you are in Austin! I asked if maybe they would have shirts for sale on their site again and they said they would let me know, I’ll post about it if they do… great place, I hope I can go again next year!
Saturday was something I thought I would never see… the reunion of Baltimore band Daybreak. They were a late 90s/early 2000s power violence band who put out records on Reptilian Records and Robodog Records (now Robotic Empire). I never saw them, but their records made their way to Baton Rouge by way of Page 99’s distro table and the Robodog’s Geocities-era website. Me and my friends appreciated the music, extreme but approachable and with musicianship, and even more, we appreciated the humorous piss-takes at “the scene” and the feeling of a crew of punks that we got from their record art and inserts… I thought it was cool that there was enough people who liked this music there to even HAVE a crew!
Anyway, somehow, someway, 10+ years later and I am friends with alot of the people involved with the making of these records, and they are all great and I am thankful they decided to do this reunion show so me and others had the chance to finally see this band! It was a fun night, and for a good cause – to help pay for a friend of the band’s cancer-related medical bills.
Great show the other day at Sonar, courtesy of Unregistered Nurse. Australia’s Total Control (featuring at least one member of Eddy Current Suppression Ring) and California’s Thee Oh Sees.
Caught one of my favorite metal bands, Thou, the other day at the Talking Head Club. They played later than I thought, but always great and they ended with a cover of Black Sabbath’s Sabotage Into The Void, which was really, really awesome. Great to see some old friends too.
I got out of there as fast as possible and made my way to the Unregistered Nurse show at the Golden West, just in time to catch the last couple of songs by new baltimore band Tremors 2. Amazingly bad/good/bad/unsure name, but they were really good and lively to watch. I managed to get a few snaps. Then Natural Child played, who are a slowed down southern garage/punk band who are really catchy and fun, most of their songs have more than a hint of humor about them and the dudes in the band are really chill as well. Go check them out, they seem to always be on tour.
Unregistered Nurse brought Puerto Rican band Davila 666 to the Golden West on Halloween weekend… I am not sure if I had seen them before, but they were really fun live, full of energy, multi-person singing/yelling parts… they put on a good show!
Tonight Baton Rouge doom metal band THOU is playing at Sonar/the Talking Head, along with Black Tusk and (members of Torche) Monstro. You should go, if you even have a passing interest in metal. Thou is one of the most interesting underground metal bands right now – their music is really dark yet not theatrically so, and they are very accomplished musicians that manage to make doom metal seem very fresh without adding disparate elements into it… they have consistently toured (at generally very affordable prices), made most (all?) of their music available for free on their web site, and strive to make sure all of their physical media is up to high standards of audio quality and visual fidelity. They have released albums both diy and on larger labels like Southern Lord. And tonight, they are in Baltimore! Come out!
I have been a fan for some time, above are some photos I have taken of them over the years…
