Currently listening to: Subliminal Souls, Corey Parker

Corey Parker is one of the best musical surprises I've had lately. I knew that Maceo Parker lives here in North Carolina, but I had no idea that his son has his own R&B/hip hop trio over in Durham. His CD, "Subliminal Souls," is smooth and jazzy, yet 100 percent funky. Corey plays keyboards, but his real strength is his deep, soulful voice and easy lyrical flow. His drummer brother, Damon, offers further proof that the whole Parker family is steeped in musical talent. When I saw him play in December at The Pour House, his band featured a jaw-droppingly great bass player who, unfortunately, isn't credited on the Web site or the CD liner notes. Imagine Flea's funkiness crossed with Geddy Lee's precision, and cover it in soul, and you get a close approximation. Even bass-snob Mr. X was blown away.

On Friday I went to my first drum 'n' bass party at The Office here in Raleigh. A guy I know has his own company, NC Fathom , and he puts on these shows about once a month. This guy is, in a lot of ways, like a kid brother: half the time we laugh and joke around, and the other half I want to strangle him, which just fills him with glee. Imagine my surprise when I get to the club and find out that, rather than shivering in line with at least 100 other losers, I can just mention this guy's name and be escorted right on past the velvet rope. I had to admire the skill with which he used his cachet to get drunk sexy girls throughout the party to pose for pictures. I guess now I'll have to treat him with a little more respect.

The place was packed, so there wasn't much room to dance (and, truthfully, I've never figured out exactly how to dance to dnb anyway). Out in the "tent" area, another DJ spun house music, while a couple of local breakdance teams engaged in an impromptu contest -- that is, before one of the aforementioned drunk sexy girls, apparently not making the connection as to what was going on, bumped and grinded her way out onto the floor and nearly got kicked in the head by some kid doing a headspin.

Dieselboy was the headliner along with MC J-Messinian, whose incessant yelling got the crowd, and eventually my nerves, worked up. My knowledge of drum 'n' bass is severely limited, shaped mostly by what I hear on BBC's 1Xtra , but even I could tell that Dieselboy's set wasn't as varied or smoothly executed as that of the guy before him, a local DJ named Jade. From what I understand, Jade has a show on WKNC and promotes his own events, but I wasn't able to confirm that before writing this. He even threw in a little garage, a sort of techno-dancehall hybrid that, until then, I hadn't really been able to conceptualize. Whereas Dieselboy's set was heavy and pounding, Jade seemed to flow through a variety of tempos, instrumentation and beats from heavy to trancelike. Basically, he managed to make my inexperienced ears hear the distinct differences in songs and styles throughout the set. Dieselboy only really caught my ear when he played the break from Slayer's "Angel of Death," which, if he wanted to throw in a little Slayer, wasn't the most original tune he could have used.

I realize I'm a bit late on the draw on this, but I just had to say something about John Lydon going on a reality TV series. Unlike "aging punks everywhere," I'm not really surprised. Considering that he's reformed the Sex Pistols twice, it's not as if he has much credibility left to shred. But I have to say, at this point, it's just about the most punk rock thing he could do. Whether or not they want to admit it, the aging punks who used to listen to songs about fighting The Establishment have now become The Establishment. They have careers and mortgages and kids whose musical tastes they don't understand -- just like their parents before them. Lydon is as much of a sacred cow to these folks as the Queen or JFK were to their parents. He seems to understand this, and is as willing to skewer himself as he was to skewer the Queen. The fact that he's going to get some attention, and maybe some cash, out of this thing is just icing on the cake.

According to the latest Vanity Fair, metal heads are out, which is a relief because now people won't assume I'm just trying to be cool when I listen to Iron Maiden. Lately I've been listening to a lot of The Darkness, whom I love simply because they remind me of the summer of 1978, when I was 11 years old and just starting to get into music. I read somewhere that they're like "a gay AC/DC crossed with a straight Queen." Personally, I think they sound like Foreigner, whom I like a lot more than I really should admit. There's nothing intellectually redeeming about them: Their lyrics are juvenile, and their cock-rock posturing puts David Coverdale to shame. But I've always felt that there are really only two kinds of music: music for thinking and music for getting laid. You can't think too much about The Darkness.

Currently listening to: Master of Puppets, Metallica

You know, I'd forgotten how much I loved Metallica, back when they actually rocked and weren't hell-bent on suing their fans. Lars Ulrich is quoted in the new Rolling Stone as saying, " I can't say that it bothers me anymore," regarding illegal downloading. If that's the case, then I congratulate him, and I hope that he will now use his spare time helping to develop and promote easy, inexpensive ways to legally download music from the Internet.

Speaking of downloads, I FINALLY got Windows XP and iTunes to work together on my computer. But now I find that I use iTunes the same way I used to use Napster and KaZaa: If I have a song stuck in my head, or want to check out a band I've heard about but haven't heard, I just listen to the free music snippets. Usually that's enough to satisfy my curiosity. I've yet to actually purchase anything, but lately I've been on a Chic kick, so I'll probably start with them. Mr. X is convinced I can learn to play funk guitar, and Nile Rodgers is one of my favorite guitarists.

I'm posting again because I made a new year's resolution to actually do something with this thing. At various times I've wanted it to be a guide to local (North Carolina) music, a place to ramble about music in general and a place to showcase some of my published articles in hopes of getting more freelance assignments. (BTW, here's the latest thing I did for the News & Observer.) I've been frustrated with Blogger's service; apparently they are no longer offering upgrades to Blogger Pro, and there's no way to upload photos on the free service. Supposedly they're going to offer some of the Blogger Pro features for free, but there seems to be no time table for when they're going to do this, and I really don't feel like waiting. I'm currently thinking about going to LiveJournal, going to Happy Robot, or simply buying my own domain name and putting up my own site, which I can do, but I'm not sure I want to do that much upkeep. Regardless, I'll make an effort to write more.

Currently listening to: Nothing because my computer’s sound card is screwed up.

So, I decided to try I Tunes, but to do so I had to upgrade my computer’s OS from Windows ME. I ordered a copy of Home XP and installed it, only to find that my sound card’s driver needed to be updated. I managed to get it working, and should have left well enough alone, but this morning I went ahead and tried to install Itunes, which screwed everything up again. In attempting to re-fix the problem, I somehow uninstalled the driver for my CD-Rom drive, and now can’t reinstall it because the system restore disk tells me the driver is missing. Well, no shit.

All this would have been bad enough, but two things have made it a borderline crisis in my life: My turntable is also screwed up, and I realized that in order to download anything from Itunes I would need the security code from my credit card – which I long ago cut up in order to prevent myself from using it. Have you ever been so angry you couldn’t see? That happened to me today. At one point I thought I might actually pass out from rage.

On a much brighter note, I saw an absolutely awesome band this evening: Stinking Lizaveta from Philadelphia. The best way I can think to describe them is Middle Eastern math rock. They’re instrumental, the bass player plays one of those proggy electric stand-up basses, and they’ve got one bad ass female drummer. The two guys look like Yanni, which is weird because, if you believe their Web site, the guitar player is named Yanni. I kept wanting to bang my head, but kept getting thrown off by their odd stop-start time signatures. They remind me a lot of Richmond’s Breadwinner, who put out some amazing singles on Merge back in the early ‘90s. Jessica took some photos with her new camera phone, so I’ll upload them when she e-mails them to me.

Tonight’s show was part of Kings’ new Sunday matinee series. They came on around 7:30 and played till 9 p.m., which got me home in plenty of time to relax, write this, play catch with the dog, stress some more over my computer woes, talk to Mr. X and finish reading the Sunday times before going to bed. There were about 15 people there, which is about what they’d get on any weeknight for an unknown band. I hope it catches on. Truthfully, I’d like to see Kings (and other clubs) start all their shows early and have the bands play two sets.

I should mention Drunk Horse, who I saw at Kings just before Halloween. The buzz was that their guitar player had been in The Fucking Champs, but, other than being heavy, the two bands really don’t sound much alike. That was good for me because, even though I love metal guitar theatrics, The Champs have never really done much for me. I think they actually shred too much --- if you can believe such a thing – and don’t pay enough attention to the foundations of their songs. Listening to them is like eating a cake made of nothing but icing.

Drunk Horse doesn’t have that problem. They are straight-up, balls out rock ‘n’ roll, tight as hell with a lead singer/guitar player (not the Champs guy) who evidently spent his childhood studying Ted Nugent, but thankfully not taking him too seriously. On the advice of their merch guy, I bought the new CD, “Adult Situations,” which is good, but doesn’t begin to capture what they’re really like live.

On a completely different note, I think Mr. X is succeeding in getting me to like dancehall. One of my current obsessions is Jamaican dancehall star Sean Paul, who can currently be heard backing up Beyonce on her single “Baby Boy.”

Article by me in the News & Observer on blogging.

You can find lots of responses from some of the folks I interviewed, as well as info on the RTP bloggers on Bruce and Katy Loebrich's site.

Upcoming shows I plan to see, and maybe write about here:

Roxotica (photos from Ross Grady's trianglerock.com). Saturday, Feb. 8 at Ringside.
Can't wait to see this one -- chick rockers and NWOBHM. What else do you need? The only thing possibly better might be the all-female Iron Maiden tribute band I keep hearing so much about.

The Datsuns, Wednesday, March 19, at Cat's Cradle.

Sahara Hotnights, same week at the Datsuns at the Cradle. Can't remember the date right not, and it's not on the Cradle site.

Still hoping QOTSA will be moved from Lincoln Theatre to the Ritz.