Monday, July 31, 2006

A blog post about Welcome to Comboland



Thanks to my co-worker Stephen King, who played in The Othermothers, I'm recording this for an upcoming podcast. I actually bought it when it came out, but for the life of me can't find it. Anyway, I decide to google it, and found a couple of cool blog posts.

Some are local:
North Carolina Travels

Half-Life and Times

N.C. Music History



And some aren't
Little Elpees

Filter Tracks

And then there's the article by movie/music critic Godfrey Cheshire, who actually compiled the record.

Roman Candle coming back to N.C.


Got word today of a few new Roman Candle shows, including one at Cat's Cradle. Here's tour sched, which included a couple of audio links.


8/4 Knoxville, TN Corner Lounge w/ The Old Ceremony

8/5 Atlanta, GA The Loft w/ The Old Ceremony

8/18 Columbus, GA SOHO w/ The Whigs

8/23 Knoxville, TN Corner Lounge w/ The Whigs

8/25 Carrboro, NC Cat’s Cradle

9/9 Greensboro, NC Go Downtown w/ The Violent Femmes and The Avett Brothers

9/28 New York, NY Sin-e’ w/ Keegan DeWitt


Audio links:

“Something Left To Say”





“You Don’t Belong To This World”

Table at Raleigh Music Hall tomorrow night

Re-post from Russ:
TABLE
BLACK MONA LISAS
THE CASSANDRA PROJECT

Raleigh Music Hall,
upstairs from Alibi,
on Martin Street,
downtown Raleigh

Aug. 1, TOMORROW!

BML is Brian, Drew, and Josh doing a destructo take on garage punk, with Neal from Toomestone doing some moog. Syd fans note: they do a killer Interstellar Overdrive.

TCP has Elizabeth from Blackstrap.

Table is Russ, Tom, Mike.
WE JAM RETARDO.

...and our promotional onslaught knows NO bounds!

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Roosters on KNC

From A Rooster for the Masses

Tune in tonight 07.27.06 to WKNC 88.1 @ 5:30pm and tomorrow 07.28.06 @ 6pm.
We will be talking about what is going on with the Rooster and giving away CD's and tickets to Saturday's 07.29.06 show @ The Pour House Music Hall
So tune in and we will see you Saturday,
Hank

Caspian Sea Monsters tonight at the Underground





Mark from Caspian Sea Monsters wrote to say that they are playing tonight at The Underground which is part of the whole Charlie Goodnights complex. I've never been to a show there, so this could be interesting.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Metal for a good cause

My colleague David Menconi writes in his blog about a metal show this Friday at the Depot in Cary of all places. The band Speakers for the Dead is on tour to raise money for their guitarist's treatment for cancer. Also on the bill is Dreamscapes of the Perverse, who I have yet to see, so I will probably be there.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

New podcast with The Stugglers and All Night



http://www.rockthetriangle.com/podcasts/20060723_podcast.mp3


This week's podcast feature Carrboro roots rock band The Strugglers (singer Randy Bickford is pictured above), and bass player Nikos Chremos' old band, All Night (pictured below).

Black Skies show and interview online tonight

From a Black Skies myspace bulletin

LISTEN TO A LIVE SHOW AND INTERVIEW FROM YOUR COMPUTER TONIGHT!

Sunday, July 23rd live radio show on WUAG 103.1 fm Greensboro!
Starts @ 8pm EST
Go to: www.wuag.net for more info. Theres a live stream from this site so you can listen to the show from wherever you are!

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Vetiver and Heavy Pets at Kings

Last night felt like old home week, with so many G-boro folk in town. The only thing that would have made it complete would have been if Mitch McGirt, grabbed the guitar from Andy Cabic and started playing some Duran Duran covers.



The first band was The Heavy Pets, including (pictured) Art from Mercury Birds and Allnight on vocals/guitar. I'd never seen Heavy Pets before, and they really reminded me a whole lot of Allnight, which always reminded me a lot of The Allman Brothers, with maybe a little Blue Oyster Cult thrown in.

The Heavy Pets from Mann's World on Vimeo.





Most of Vetiver




The rest of Vetiver: See-through Sanders


However, I was mainly looking forward to see Vetiver (Myspace), who just released a phenomenal new CD, "To Find Me Gone." Andy, who is the soul of Vetiver, used to be in The Raymond Brake (listen to last Sunday's podcast for more from Vetiver and The Raymond Brake), and both Sanders and Brend from the band used to be in another Greensboro band, Rebar. I enjoyed The Raymond Brake -- they were fun, poppy, cute boys who wrote fun, poppy, cute music. But Andy's music, lyrics and vocal presence have grown so far beyond the Raymond Brake that it's hard to believe both bands were fronted by the same guy. I've yet to get "Been so Long" or "Maureen" out of my head. Check out the videos from Wednesday's show.

Vetiver from Mann's World on Vimeo.



Another one by Vetiver from Mann's World on Vimeo.

Monday, July 10, 2006

Podcast featuring Double Negative, Willard, Vetiver and Raymond Brake



http://www.rockthetriangle.com/podcasts/20060710_podcast.mp3

This is going to be a double podcast, featuring two bands (Double Negative and Willard) by Brian Walsby, whose latest comic book, "Manchild 2" was just released by Bifocal Media, and two bands by Andy Cabic, currently known for the San Francisco freak-folk band Vetiver, but remembered in Greensboro for his college band The Raymond Brake. Enjoy!

Also, here's a link to the Independent's feature on Brian.



Monday, July 03, 2006

A look back at Pure



Here it is: the long-awaited (well, by some folks) podcast on the early-90s Asheville band Pure.

http://www.rockthetriangle.com/podcasts/20060703_podcast.mp3

As I stated in the podcast, Pure put out a 7-inch record on Merge that seemingly everyone in North Carolina loved before mysteriously disappearing. Before putting this podcast together, I asked several folks I know if they knew anything at all about this band. The only info I got was from former Shiny Beast guitarist David Sullivan, who remembered playing a show with the band, and thought that one of the band members worked for Bob Moog. I did some more searching and eventually got in touch with Martin Beeler, the band's former guitar player, who then put me in touch with bass player Steve Dunnington and drummer Danni Iosello.

Following are bits from e-mails from the various band members. If you'd like to leave a message for the band, you can do so here in this blog, or you can e-mail me.

From Martin Beeler:
I played electronics, guitar, and Moog Rogue, in a
band called "Or" in Knoxville TN in the mid-late 90s.
Droney, noisy stuff. Or still exists in theory, but
probably only in theory. We last played a show around
X-mas two years ago, which consisted of a sort of
homage to Tony Conrad's "Outside the Dream Syndicate."

I have a couple of other projects underway, but
nothing worth speaking about yet.
Pure released that one single on Merge and a
self-released demo cassette (cassette!) that included
a couple of songs not on the single. That was it. I
believe we recorded a couple of additional studio
tracks, which Steve engineered -- he probably still
has the masters --, but never got around to releasing
them.

(I have a bunch of live cassette recordings and some
4-track stuff, which I plan to post on my
cassette-only mp3 blog, once I get that going. I'll
let you know once I do, if you're interested.)

From Danni Iosello:
Martin wants me to tell you that after I quit Sisiters Of Mercy, I joined a
convent in Oswego.

Instead, after Pure, I
a) went to school at Chapel Hill
b) lived in Germany on a Fulbright
c) moved back to Chicago and joined the band Califone
d) later formed my current band, Sin Ropas, (www.sinropas.com)
e) moved back to NC to a town called Marshall

5 steps cover 10 years.

From Steve Dunnington:
That’s funny – I still have a test pressing of that single lying around somewhere. Pure was my first “real” band – I was 19 when we started it. One of my recollections is passing up an opportunity to open for Nirvana in Charlotte (when they were touring to support Bleach) because I had a calculus exam the next day. I guess that’s not very “rock”, eh? I heard there were only 15 people who went to that show anyway ha ha ha. I got a B in that calculus class. There were so many nice people in NC around that time – and some really good bands – I remember really liking willard – I also remember playing w/ erectus monotone, polvo, emmanuel lewis flea circus, porn orchard. It was a really fun time to be in a band – except in Asheville, it was so sleepy back then you could walk around downtown on a weekend around 11:00 pm and it would be totally deserted.

Since then I finished college in 93– got a job working for Bob Moog at the end of 94 and have been doing that since. He died last year, which really sucks (he was a really fun and amazing guy) but the company’s still happening. I’m now helping to design new products. I played guitars and/or keyboards in a bunch of other bands after Pure none of which ever really did anything but we did have fun – let’s see – There was Snorebox, Valve, Spool, Chandelier Swingers, Tripod (not the metal version), Roberts Street Quartet, Sexpatriots. Now I do a thing called Soldadura – it’s mostly electronic noodly sort of stuff – kind of out there. We play out once every other year or so or not.

If I can find the cassette and a cassette machine that works, I have a Pure song that I recorded at UNCA that never saw the light of day. I have some other demos on cassette too. I also somewhere may have the original 4-track demo of “Senseless” that’s very different – it’s acoustic guitar, clarinet and synth burbles – recorded at the very first apartment I had in Asheville. (must have been the fall of 88). That would be fun to get out there and available.