Publishers Notes Archive 9:30pm Wednesday 12/29 Congrats to Strike.Fire.Fall, from State College and buds of Bree and Devo for winning the Takeover Records sign my band contest. I recommend a lawyer to negotiate a contract. Todd Cooper, Bernie Resnick, or one of many other good ones. NYE at Crowne Plaza is gonna be good. Remember, MMC is at Crowne Plaza. Rooms people - party like it's MMC. Things are looking that way. 9:00pm Wednesday 12/29 Saw a bunch, um, 2 weekends ago ;-), more than usual. Friday, went down to York. 1st was at "The Other Place" which is a place by 1414. We didn't go to "The Other Place" much then, but on Friday, Liz and Joe of Halestorm were there. They were doing the acoustic duo thing, 3 sets, mostly covers, but some originals. Standard stuff, I mean, decent. But, that's not the point, the point is is that Liz is an amazing singer. Definitely an amazing singer, and the new song, or the original that i heard, was good. I was there with Dan and Leo and Robby, and Leo was in Halestorm before, and they talked and that all seemed to be good, and I've always wanted Dan to see Liz, and he did, so that was good. Liz is really a great singer. Then after that it was to Murph's for Via Satellite and Dark Water Transit. I haven't seen Via Satellite in a while, they played with The Underwater, Thirteen Over Eight, Sceva and Mad Revere at MMC back in Feb 2003. That was a good show, and a lot of the people that played that show are friends with other people, etc, and Via Satellite hasn't really been hanging out with, but we saw em, and I really liked em, I think they could be playing with any of the bands that were representin, The Midnight Drive, Bo Bim, The Underwater. I liked em a lot, that's the kind of stuff i like to listen to in bars. Dark Water Transit too, they're amazing, they're seeming to get the band's band status around here. Everybody who sees em generally is excited to see them again, musicians mostly. Excellent stuff. Then we went to some parties talked to some people. Went home. Woke up, i think Matt and Bree stopped by in the afternoon hung out, and then other people maybe, and then it was decided that we'd go to Kokomo's East for Darcie and the Martini Bros. That was good. Becky was there, that was good. Broed down with Deuce and Becky and Dan bfore the show. Watched a bunch of that, it's good. The Martini Bros. CD/DVD thingy is coming soon, you'll hear more about that. Went to Angelina's/Cronies, saw ????. Ok, I gotta say that I like ???? and I want ???? to do well, and Dan and Matt like ???? and hang out with ???? and blah blah blah. But, ????, dude, there were way too many cover songs there. That's all the bad I'm gonna say. Too many cover songs. ???? did a great job at the benefit at Crowne Plaza in November. The songs they have now are pretty catchy, and I think that the look is getting pretty good now. The singing and the playing have always been good. The places where they were not as strong they certainly make good good improvements in. ???? still looks like he's pretending, or acting, or something. Are we looking at that long awaited Stereo Logic reunion? (No, and ???? don't be spreading rumors yourself ;-)) Speaking of Stereo Logic - Lauren K. is doing well in Boston - spent $250 on two pairs of jeans and a sweater, haha - went vegan, and none of her pants fit anymore. she lost 15 pounds. She was always a star. So, after that me and Dan and Darcie came back to 53 and I hung out for little bit. Slept mostly, and then Dan played me the great new UW he's just started writing. And it's a great song. Then I went back to sleep I think, and then woke up (the day i wrote this), and then Bran was here, Aaron was here, then Matt and Dan, and Dan played the song for Matt, and then Dan left, then Matt wrote his part. These guys are geniuses. Then Chris Werner got here, then Dan, and there was a lot of playing the song over in different ways. I got my new/old camera today, it's kind like the old one i had but it works. Matt and Chris left, then I went in here (when i orginally wrote this). Interesting point here. This is somewhat typical shit for me, it's pretty good social life or lifestyle or whatever. I'm pretty much able to spend time with the people I want to spend time with. I'm able to hang out with the people I want to hang out with. That's all good. No complaints. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it got a lot better, more "fun" almost. But it's not about that, really. Blah blah blah, i skip it this time. 4:00am Tuesday 12/28 i spent a very long time in the rockland (ha!) airport listening to 2 people talk. it was interesting. at least a half hour, probably more like an hour or even an hour and a half i think the guy was 28?, the girl was 32?. both from islands off the maine coast One was from vhaven the other was from a different haven. 2 islands that have like i guess their own schools, neither one of them went to the others island much, maybe for football games or something, but generally, rarely. They rely on boat service to get off the island. it's regularly schedules, but, like airlines, or any type of transporation developed to this point, its dependent on the weather. Both were in town then to visit the parents for Christmas, as I was (they moved there a couple years back - sorta, complicated, but boring story there). Anyway, they were both going to DC. They both had political jobs. The guy was working for Collins, working on the fishing thing. His dad was/is a fisherman/lobsterman, and because of that, he likes the fishing issue. For Maine, fishing is an important industry. He doesn't seem to be that much of a dc go-getter type. Graduated from GW, then, i'm fuzzy, then worked for Collins. Applying to Law Schools. Amazing how many times I heard the girl say, yeah a Law Degree will let you do anything, or more accurately modified to reflect the current popular wisdom. I think that's enough about the guy. The girl works for the DoD doing policy analysis or something. Some sort of analyst position. Probably smarter than the guy, more driven. Didn't get her undergraduate school, but got her masters at Georgetown Foreign Policy. Pretty impressive. It was interesting to watch that whole interaction. She asked all the questions of him, and had some weird inappropriate quirk, can't remember what it was, some thing like she would say "great" after any sentence without any effect, like it was a very long extended quiz, it was just odd. But they're impassioned, and intelligent, caring about things i guess, It's just that I lived in DC, and I worked in politics, and I have a law degree, and I haven't heard one of those people in like 10 years, but like for years before that I heard people like that all the time. From like 89-94, those were the people i heard, mostly, not entirely, but I saw a lot of good rock shows when I coulda been studying in Law School. Haven't run into those people in 10 years. Facinating. I actually might have some decent social skills. I'm fucked up no doubt, but, I dunno, all this rocking mighta helped me. These 2 - they probably shoulda known by the time they were getting on the plane that they should be getting married. oh, yeah, you're from v haven and your from n haven. we both work in dc. here's something, he's on both fisheries and trade for Collins. he keeps talking about how he, because of his background of fishing, wanted to be in the fishing committee, or write the fishing laws or whatever, and she's like, hmm, fishing, hmm, trade. she kept on encouraging him to be more focused on the trade area. That is a calculation that is rarely ever made outside the beltway. It seemed that they were not good at hooking up with each other. I hope they do. They did seem like nice, sincere people. That was on Monday Dec 27 from like 4-8 pm something like that. Might as well just put this pointless ramble up. Some good my Daschle recommendation did me ;) 7:00pm Friday 12/17 Aight, here's a picture of Darcie Miner and Becky Miller of Bravetheday. I have a small tradition of having pix on my front page here of talented local female musicians not from the same band. I had a pic of Liz Hale and Lauren K in 2001, a pic of Liz Hale and Julie Schreiber in 2002, and now a pic of Darcie and Becky. It seems like they're friends now, and that's cool, I like that. Apparently they're gonna collaborate on something, maybe for Darcie's album? A cover maybe? Anyway, both these girls are really good and have good good resumes. Darcie was on a major sub (Beyond/Universal) and the label folded before the record was released. She was 18 at the time, so ya gotta feel bad for her. I do. She's had some good stuff since then, opening for Nationals over the east coast, appearing on MTV Advance Warning, and performing live there. She's working on a new record now. Becky started out in 1999 (or before) in Clubber. I saw Clubber back in 1999 at Gullifty's, I think there's footage of that show online, or there was. Since then, they changed their name to Bravetheday, changed the sound a bit, and the lineup a bit - the core, Becky and Josh has stayed the same. Back in 2002, they got to the finals of the Pantene Pro-Voice competition and played in Central Park in front of thousands. They just released a new CD a week ago. They kicked ass at their CD release show. Top of the heap females in Harrisburg. 1:00pm Tuesday 12/14 (This one rambles quite a bit) Aight, its been a while. Let's see, Bree wants me to mention Strike.Fire.Fall (from State College)and the Takeover Records contest on Purevolume.com. Devo does as well, and i just talked to, i think, their manager. Anyway, the winner of this contest gets signed to Takeover Records (Yellowcard's label) this is a pretty big deal i'd say and Strike.Fire.Fall is one of the final four bands. They're running this contest like a single elimination playoff, so they gotta beat the band they're against now, and then win against the winner of the other semi-final, then they win. I encourage y'all to vote for Strike.Fire.Fall. It was unfortunate that Strike.Fire.Fall was directly against The Commercials last week, it would've been best had they been in the other bracket, but, what can ya do? Go PA, Go Strike.Fire.Fall. About Myspace.com. Nifty site - most, or many, of you have heard of it certainly and many have dedicated what seems to be a significant portion of your lives to it. Which is actually all well and good. I'm thinking that myspace.com could be really really huge. Like the Yahoo (portal) or Google (search) of Music and Community. Buy that stock. I couldn't tell any business model really, other than banners, but based on my experience, the banner market bottomed out in 2001, and there are all these new types of ad sizes, and you can run more than one type of ad per page. Basically, $ could be made from ads in 1999, 2000, but then it really crashed, big time. But, now it's good again. You can run a above the scroll/ leaderboard, a box, a skyscraper and a pop on every page. Back in the day, it wasn't uncommon to get $3 CPM for a standard 468x60 banner, and you aren't really getting that now, but if you got 4 ads in a page, you'll get a $3 CPM, if not substantially more, especially if you don't have to run any defaults. Anyway, I'd guess that myspace.com's expenses are basically servers and bandwidth, and those things, especially servers, are much cheaper than they were back in 1999. The users of the site pretty much create the whole content, so there's no cost there, really. Brilliant stuff. Anyway, the core of what myspace.com does is give everybody who wants one a webpage, website. People post where they're from, a pic, age, methods of contacting (instant messaging - it tells you when they're online), the interests in music movies tv, other bio details. People can blog, put up a ton of pix, and, what's really the key to the whole thing, get friends, whose pix appear on the site. So, for instance, you can go to The Underwater band site and look at their 1017 friends and click on them and look at their info and click on their friends, and you could do that for hours. If you want a lot of friends, you just click - add to friends, and the person you're sending the request to click add or deny and then you're on their friends list and they're on yours. There's also a special band section where you get a page/site but you also can add 4 MP3s. You can search Pennsylvania bands. Currently, The Underwater is #6 artists by views today and #5 by songs by plays today. You can click on the top Pennsylvania bands and add them to your friends list. Etc etc etc. There's a shows page. What's going on tonight 20 miles from 17055? 100 miles from 17055? There's a classified section - the music classifieds are the same under the music section and the general classifeds section. Again - miles from your zipcode. A music forums section (at this point, not too strong a section - perhaps a search function could be included on the main music forums page?), on the other hand, it serves a different function, for immediate feedback, almost like a chat thingy. For more focused discussions of music related issues, go to groups. searchable by distance from zip as well. harrisburg groups, york groups, etc. I could go on and on and on. Myspace is gonna blow a lot of websites away. I was gonna do a PA Rocks redesign, I probably still will (maybe), but many of the specific plans that I had are going to be at least rethought. How does, will, Myspace effect the local sites, this one, outherealone.com, hbgonline.com, and local and national music sites? Well, first, myspace is simply going to be able to do almost everything that we do better. Mostly, because there are more people there. PA Rocks was the first in the area to do a lot of the stuff that a lot of sites are doing now. I started a pretty good schedule for southcentral PA back in 1997. Pretty nice onestop shopping. That got to be time consuming, and around 1999 PA Midstate came around with a pretty good idea, basically a way to share a database, where you could wrap your headers and footers, including your banners, around the database contents. All the websites coulda used that database, bands could go to their preferred site, typed in their info, and their info would have shown up on all the local music websites. That woulda been cool. It would have made life easier for bands and fans who were looking for a nice schedule of show dates. But, nope, although Hbgonline sorta is now, but instead of actually adding the information to the database, he puts it on his site, and then has a link to "Master Listings" which really bear no relationship to, I guess, the subsidiary listings, which are not included in the "Master Listings" But, still, it's more than anyone else did. Anyway, point being, from 1997 on, more and more local music sites have cropped up - some have been successful (outherealone.com, hbgonline.com (oh, by the way, I do read hbgonline.com occasionally, sometimes Jim Os stuff, sometimes Summers stuff, sometimes the message board and I should note that a while back, Jim O was pleased about the performance of hbgonline.com on alexa in comparison to other local music sites, including parocks. Well, shockingly enough, parocks is currently at 741,873 webmusicvideo (my video site) is at 847,753 hbgonline is at 1,198,013 - that doesn't really seem right, I must admit, because I write my ramblings here on parocks on average about 2x a month, and very little else changes, and jimo and his writers certainly do more than i do. in the webmusicvideo case, nothing much has changed with that site except to implement box ads on a few of the high traffic pages. Craziness, maybe the exclusive breaking benjamin video has something to do with it) others far less so, but, this profusion of websites has not served either fans or bands very well at all. 10 (or 20 or even 30) people reading their favorite of, or all, 50 local music websites doesn't work well. The audience is fragmented, no "critical mass" is obtained, people end up wasting tremendous amounts of time to little effect. So, Myspace comes along. The database of shows will be good. it's already pretty good. When every single worthwhile band is posting all their dates there, and pretty much skipping everything else, it'll rule. The same thing applies for almost any feature that a music website would have. Band list - forget about that. That's done. I'm thinking i'm never gonna do an update of that list. Every band is gonna be on myspace, practically. I could just link to the myspace pennsylvania band list. More PA bands will know about My Space than PA Rocks, if that hasn't happened a long time ago. So, they'll be joining myspace faster than they'll be sending their links to me. So, schedule and band links are done, crushed by Myspace. Editorial content, not a clear victory for my space. A lot depends on the content. I like to think that my ramblings here will remain roughly as popular after the changes brought by myspace. I think I have a certain degree of credibility. Not everybody who writes on the internet is good at identifying talent, or is capable of analyzing trends or whatnot, or brings to the table whatever it is that I bring. So, whoever is here reading this is likely to remain here reading it, unless they can find something better on myspace. That may very well happen. So, for the sake of argument, let's call my ramblings "quality" content. I think that sites that have "quality" content won't be hurt as bad. Sites that lack "quality" content, and have, let's say, standard, mediocre, filler content won't fare as well. Every teenage girl with a digital camera and a boyfriend in a band will be able to post a blog review of the mediocre band (and i believe that the review will be a positive one) and take pictures of the mediocre band and post them. Sites that have content that ain't much different from that are bound to suffer. Myspace is almost designed to maximize that content. "Here's a pic of my boyfriend, here's me and my boyfriend, here's me and my friends at the show, we're drunk" and the myspace friends, which are a huge part of the process, will be there to read that stuff, because it's intrinsically interesting to them, they're friends. I'm not dissing that, some of those teenage girls are smart, and they have good taste, sometimes, and can take pix well, sometimes. But the quality is gonna vary. I wouldn't be surprised though, to see bands using myspace blog reviews and photos as part of their site, as "press" I've seen cdbaby reviews used as "press" and it's basically the same thing. Sites that can provide content that differs from the typical rahrah myspace blog will survive better than those that can't. One area that local music sites can do still do well is nonband music links. Myspace just doesn't have that section, or those sections. My Space decides to do that, and they'll have that too. No one around here has worked too hard on music industry links, beyond club/venue listings, so maybe that's an area that could be developed. And what's left, message boards? Myspace'll be able to have good message boards, informative, or whatnot. There could be too many, but likely not, likely it'll function in a manner to be informative to the community. However, it's quite possible that nasty message boards - like the real old (2000-2001?) parocks board could thrive. All the people on myspace have to post with a fixed identity, they can't hide their identity on a one-off basis. They could create a fictional identity I spose, but generally people aren't gonna go through the trouble. Message boards that allow anonymous dissing of bands, attacking of radio stations, etc will do ok. People who want to do that won't be able to do that on Myspace. So, what to do? Good to understand what Myspace is likely to change, and play to the strengths and weaknesses of it. I was really only talking above about what would likely happen to existing websites if they kept on doing things the current way. There may very likely be productive ways for existing websites to coexist synergistically with Myspace. I might do that stuff. More likely, I'll be lazy and do very little ;-) Myspace really can't provide much in the way of informed, expert opinion. I've gone on way to long, yet theres a lot more I want to say. Another killer site is Sonicbids. Not quite in the same category as Myspace, but good nonetheless. The way Sonicbids works is you pay Sonicbids a small fee, around $20 or so for a year, and they give you an online epk, which is basically a mini web site. (To get an idea of the cost of Sonicbids, it costs $29.95 to submit to Millennium and a 6 month subscription to Sonicbids, it costs $20 if you're already on Sonicbids, so, it's like $9.95 for the Sonicbids when you apply for MMC9) The EPKs all look pretty much the same, you upload a couple mp3s, a few pix, put up your schedule dates, your old dates, your press, that kind of stuff. If it was just that, it really wouldn't be worth squat. You can do pretty much the same thing with Myspace. The strength of Sonicbids lies in their partnerships. Sonicbids has partnered with most music conferences, including CMJ Music Marathon (and MMC and Dewey), making Sonicbids the exclusive online source for submissions. Sonicbids has also partnered with a lot of contests as well. These days, there are a lot of music conferences and a lot of contests, and a lot of them are quite worthwhile. Tough to keep track of though. Sonicbids has got you covered. I happen to like the section called "Top 50 events" MMC9 is currently 27 on that list, after an early peak of 2 around when it was on the main page when we started taking submissions for this year. If you're on Sonicbids, you can look at that top 50, and just click here, click there, sending $10, $20, $30 whatever $ to the conferences and contests you want to apply to. It's real real easy for the bands, and cheap as well. Anyway, here's one I just cut and pasted from that to 50 site. OriginalSessions & Jagermusic NYC/NJ Buzz Band Search Deadline: Mar 3, 2005 at 11:59 PM Eastern Time OriginalSessions NYC/NJ Buzz Band Search. Be eligible to receive national promotion, become an official Jagermeister sponsored band, receive thousands of dollars in prizes and first and foremost help your band catapult to a higher professional level in your career as a band/musician. You can also get a full band spread on FMFB Magazine. In its second year, this year's Buzz Band Search will begin on November 24 and have weekly events for 3 months in venues throughout New York and New Jersey. Venues include Shanghai Rock Hotel, Pianos, Arlene's Grocery, Limerick, Opaline, OriginalSessions Art House, LoveSexy @Blaggards and more. There are 4-5 performance slots per night. OriginalSessions & Jagermusic NYC/NJ Buzz Band Search Price: $5.00 Ok, so, i'll admit, i didn't know about that contest, and i'd bet many of you hadn't either. But, you're a sonicbids member, you go on the site, you click on it, spend $5 extra, and maybe they pick you. Ya get a gig in NYC out of it if ya do. Good deal. Hey, maybe you win something. Probably not, but it looks ok on your resume. I'll tell you, I get tons of requests to add link, and it's been a long time since I've updated that section. I never delete those emails and if I ever do a good list again, those links will be added. But, I'm not sure I always actually look at those websites. When I do, I generally look at the schedule. If theres something on the schedule that's interesting to me, that makes it much more likely that i'll listen to the stuff. Generally, I find NYC gigs more interesting than local ones. Any conferences other than MMC, Dewey or Noels I definitely find interesting. I'd like to see someone play Nemo, NXNE, Atlantis, or SXSW. I definitely like CMJ, and there were a decent number of locals that played that (good job!). I'm not trying to say that these conferences are better than actual touring. Touring i think is more about dedication, but you're not likely to get shows if you suck. Conferences are, at least in theory, about talent, but you've got to be at least somewhat dedicated if you're willing to travel a bit to play a show. It's all good. Point being, just sign up for the MMC9 / Sonicbids combo package for $29.95. Then, as a Sonicbids member, sign up for one or more of: NXNE - Toronto - $20 : Pop Montreal - Montreal - $15 Mobfest - Chicago - $15 Atlantis - Atlanta - $20 Motor City - Detroit - $25 Dallas MF - Dallas - $25 Chicks Rockfest - Cincinnati - $10 or any number of other events Ok, recap of recent events. Friday was Bravetheday and Frog Holler at Gullifty's. Good show. I knew what to expect (pretty much) from Bravetheday, they've always been really good, and they're even better now. I was pleased that the peeps were also impressed with Bravetheday. (Darcie and Becky are talented dt, talented. Pay attention ;-) ). (And Liz Hale is talented too ;-) as an aside). Frog Holler was also good. Saturday was The Silo in Reading. It'd been a long time since I'd been to the Silo (3 1/2 years?) The Silo is a huge, huge club, bigger than The Chameleon. Which is good, and bad. There needs to be a lot of people at The Silo (500?) to make it seem crowded. There were not a lot of people there. So, it did not seem crowded. Plenty of people were there, I'd say, and I'd say The Underwater drew best. Not 500 though. And it didn't seem crowded, and that might've effected the energy a bit. But The Underwater did play great, and they sounded great with the great sound system they have at The Silo. And Dan was as comical as ever. It can still be a great show even if it doesn't seem crowded. BAAB was good and Shame, who I hadn't seen in a while, was also good. It was good to see Andy Nissley (cowalker, x-Thirteen Over Eight) and Jim Speese (Cloud Party) in the house. Whew, done. 5:00am Friday 12/03 Lake Trout rules. Hung with Darcie and Becky a little, cool. almost like fun. But you must remember "nothing good is gonna happen, there's no reason to go on". Now at home listening to Philly's Grandfabric. 10:00am Tuesday 11/23 This is something i read from http://www.digitalmetal.com/news.asp?cid=3708. Hopesfall conquered the west with a string of sold out shows across the coast. The North Carolina based group just completed a co-headlining run with VAUX with support from Head Automatica (Daryl from Glassjaw & Dan The Automators new project) in tow. 500+ capacity venues including The Roxy in W. Hollywood, The Epicenter in San Diego, Bottom Of The Hill in San Francisco and Chain Reaction in Anaheim were packed for the shows. In a surreal moment, the infamous Paris Hilton and 70’s porn deity, Ron Jeremy were rocking out to the band at the Roxy show. So, ya know, I'm cool, so I can clearly "read between the lines", see subtexts, or whatnot, and i see "Daryl from Glassjaw & ... Paris Hilton." I'm thinking, good deal, Daryl from Glassjaw is working with Paris Hilton, smart smart move. Daryl will prove to be shockingly gifted at writing pop hits, and Paris will get to the next level. Win win. Eh, maybe I'm just hallucinating. 10:00am Friday 11/12 Aight, let's go. First, how about Teresas benefit at Crowne Plaza this Sunday. The Underwater, Martini Bros, Darcie Miner and more. Cmon out. The Underwater will be selling tix for the hot hot hot NYE show at Crowne Plaza. This NYE thing is something that I'm like actually looking forward to. It might actually be good smokin hot. If you go to johnharris.com/nye and click on the hot deal page you can get a room there for like $109 - which aint bad if you split it 4 ways. You can see the strawberry drop if you want - 2? blocks away and catch all the hot bands. Drink in yer room. Drink in the ballroom where the bands are playing. It's all age - 21 to drink. It's The Underwater, Bridges And A Bottle, Running From Dharma, The Commercials. Only $15. Should be hot. Actual prediction - it'll suck for me, but it will be strong, it's a strong show at a strong place. Good stuff. Um other stuff. This Takeover Records (Yellowcard label) contest is pitting 2 Central PA bands against each other. The Commercials (see above - NYE at Crowne Plaza) and Strike.Fire.Fall (hey, Bree, hey). Both played MMC, both are definitely very very worthy bands. I quess the way it works is that you sign up at www.purevolume.com and then you vote for the band you like. I encourage you to vote for The Commercials and/or Strike.Fire.Fall. What happens, I think, is that one band gets kicked off every week until the end. So, I'd say to the fans of either/both bands, vote for your band, but when your band gets kicked off (unless its the 2 at the end) to vote for the other one. Ok? I've seen both bands, and they're both quite good. Ok, now some on the topic of, what I've been doing, giving props. I haven't been doing the usual shit (Gulls my fav place), but have done other shit. Went to the last Tuesday at Hardware Bar, saw Julie and Eric and Holis. Nice. Props to JimO. Saw Chile there. Then to Garrisons. Bran, Summer, and props to Hollywood Rob Fogleman. Manager of Fith. Props props props props props. I know more about Fith now than I did before. And I have their CD, and they're playing with Anthrophobia, The Shocker (ex L7) at Hardware Bar on Nov 30. Props to Frank Fields/Phobia as always. Might as well mention Erika now www.parocks.com/erikabossler She's easing back into it (That's Darey of Darey October). Whatever she wants to do, I'll be there to help. Ok, now another day, saw Amy Simpson again at Pep Grill. Remaining a great singer. Focusing on Jazz Singing, covers. Lots of people there. Then to GMan Downtown, for London File. Saw Chile there. Sara B. Simpson was there after her Whitaker show. She said there were 80 there. I was impressed. 80 aint bad. It's all ages down there / 21 to drink. I wasn't there, but I've seen shows in that room, so, basically it's an attempt to recreate the movie theatre experience (unless I'm wrong). Stage, chairs set up in rows, facing the stage, etc etc. But it did work. I've been hearing a lot very very recently about the right to rock, about people who are born to rock, etc etc, some new thing I guess, I don't know, I remember she didn't quite take to it. Interesting concept, right to rock, born to rock, eh. It seemed kinda appealing to me. Open Container - born to rock, constitutional right to rock. Interesting. Still skeptical though. We'll see. Who else? Of course The Underwater. Asper Aleesha, from Ship U radio - motivated girl. Um, how about me babbling politics for a while. Bush won, Kerry lost. Some people are happy some aren't. Roy Fair's model did great for years, and busted big time this year. Roy Fair had Bush at 57%. He got less than that. So, I'd say Bush didn't do as good as he should've this year. Why? Well, I'd say, fraud in the cities, Philly, Cleveland, Detroit. Situations where votes exceeded registrations or population. Also, what I would call "media bias" as described by Evan Thomas a few months ago. Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4, Link 5. "There's one other base here: the media. Let's talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. And I think they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards -- I'm talking about the establishment media, not Fox, but -- they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there's going to be this glow about them that some, is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them, that's going to be worth maybe 15 points." So, well, I don't think they got their 15 points, but, they got something. So, with the Democrat fraud, and the media bias, they couldn't get it done. Why? tons of reasons probably. They're talking about "moral values" as the issue, so let's assume that was pivotal. Apparently it never occured to to Democrats that Abortion and Gay Marriage were vote losers for them. I rarely go to church. I'm a lawyer, graduated from the Boston University School of Law. But I'm conservative. But the Dems would call me a stupid redneck. Fine. I was liberal though, and I did believe what you believe. I worked to get Clinton elected. I slogged through New Hampshire in 92. I was in the room when he called himself the comeback kid. A few months after that, I went to South Dakota. I met Daschle. Worked for the Dems, worked for Clinton, worked for Daschle. Skip to now. Now I'm conservative, a Republican. Want some insight? Conservatives aren't stupid - Liberals are crazy. Gay Marriage? Nuts. Crazy as shit. I'm not gonna use the Biblical arguments, just Utilitarian ones. We have a shortage of people in the US right now, and in most of the Western world. We also have Social Security. We need to reproduce more quickly, so as the younger workers won't have to pay like 75% of their $ to pay for the old people. Let's make policy changes to get the young people having lots of kids. Real basic stuff. Same with abortion. Not good for demographics. And my last name is Lott, so you can't ask me to be in favor of homosexual sodomy. Dems need to consider the concept of "big tent". After the 1992 elections, Dems had Presidency, House, Senate. After the 2004 elections, Reps have Presidency, House, Senate. The American People do not like the positions the Democratic Party takes. Advice again: Jettison your most unpopular ideas. Or "Big Tent" them. I can make a better Utilitarian argument in favor of Drinking and Driving than the Dems can for Gay Marriage. All of those people I've been hearing, telling me about their right to rock, and how they were born to rock, I'm really starting to listen to them. I think they might have something there. They can't help but to drink and drive. They Rock. They were BORN TO ROCK. They can't help it. I get it. If you make it illegal to drink and drive, it's like you're a Nazi, or a Fascist, like Hitler, blah blah blah. I mean, it's denying them an essential part of themselves. I'm not sure I agree with their arguments, but I think the arguments are stronger than the gays with the marriage. :-) Later, rockon. 3:00am Wednesday 11/3 Yay! The Underwater and Bush 2:00pm Wednesday 10/20 At this moment, The Underwater is recording at Water Music Recording Studios, Hoboken, NJ with producer David Bendeth (Breaking Benjamin, Killswitch Engage, SR-71, Vertical Horizon, Bruce Hornsby) Working on 3 songs, everything is sounding great, and are currently done recording drums, bass, some guitars and some vocals. They'll be back next week. Good stuff this weekend, especially Saturday. Duenow, from Chicago, a big hit at MMC will be playing at least 2 area shows this weekend. Friday they're playing Atomic Warehouse. Saturday they're playing Appalachian Brewing. They're sorta White Stripes meets Beck. Really good. Saturday at Gullifty's, you got Mary Prankster and Darcie Miner. Good stuff indeed. 7:00am Sunday 10/10 Just got back from the Dragonfly show and the afterparties. It was good. I didn't get a count at Dragonfly, but it was good. A Sunday, generally not as good a night as a Saturday or a Friday. Harris estimated the crowd at 200 between Midnight and Home. He seemed happy. Makes me happy. Sounded good, happy people. A couple impressions. Leo should feel good. Tons of teenage girls shrieking for him, and The Midnight Drive. Girls holding up "marry me Leo" signs. Cool stuff, makes a positive impression. Seemed authentic, I don't remember them as Reverites. The Drive Home, the Brothers Judy have their hair in a fairly similar style, long, or longish. Looking good, hair in face, cool, rock. The Underwater doesn't always do everything precisely right, but there's massive genius there. There just is. And that's what really is most important. It's there. I've said it 90 million times. I want to also hype the Brothers Judy Drive Home afterparty. Good stuff, I like it there. Most of the time was spent with a drinking game, involving fipping cups. Never saw that game before. I'd watch it on ESPN or whatever. Fast pased. Hey, we watch poker on TV now. But the point really isn't that game as much as the fact that pretty much everyone is involved, having fun. It's good there. They drink beer, smoke cigs. Team Drive Home, Brothers Judy. Messiah College, A+. Yay Jesus. 7:00am Sunday 10/10 Got back for the seeing the bands and doing the partying. It was very, very nice to see Darcie Miner happy on her 21st birthday (which is today, 10/10, and also Liz Hale's 21st birthday). I've known Darcie for a little short of 5 years now, seen her career go through ups and downs and ups, and it does really please me to see her happy on her birthday. Darcie is working with Steve Ward (ex Cherry Twister) now, doing a record. I think I gave Steve Ward an "Award" or something for the California hook. "Underrated musician of the year - Steve Ward. Steve Ward's Opening Night is an amazing album, and the hook in California is one that any A&R guy that's looking for a hit should listen to. "Seems California is your hiding place" Hook of the year - see above - California" PA Rocks 2001." Darcie's birthday party was at Gullifty's and it was good, The Underwater, The Drive Home, Bridges And A Bottle, Red Room were there to show the love. New Invisible Joy, No Show Ponies (good Mick Jagger there) were playing. It was good. Darcie seemed happy, said she was happy. That was good. I was pleased. I hope Liz Hale had and is having a great 21st birthday too. She was down in Columbia, doin the Lzzy and Joe thing, and it was anticipated to be great, I hope it was. Tonight, it's The Underwater, The Drive Home, The Midnight Drive, Douglas Fir at Dragonfly Club. All Ages. Likely a big turnout. Darcie is supposed to be there too, maybe Liz'll show up, take a picture or something. Today is their birthday. :-) Happy Birthday. Love. \ Oh, and Sick Lipsick is awesome Black Cat #13. Casual Dots definitely. Listen to Tara. Her and Robbies (ex The Underwater) and Eddies new band is coming along nicely. If you're a great bass player, who's dedicated to indie, look em up, they might or might not be needing a bass player right now. Oh and Charla, who has been preidentified as a great MMC band picker turns out to be dating Jeremy Rockstars brother. Small world. Listen to her too. I've been hearing about a band called "Fishnet Stalkers" maybe? 2 different cool people told me about them. Maybe they're cool. Apparently from Balimore, cool, not that expensive. Playing with the Dwarves at Ottobar. Skin poppin slut. The Dwarves have been around a long time, I saw them at Mid East Club back in 90? 91? 92? When I was at BU Law school. It was fun. The Underwater is playing there in a week or 2. Mongolodian Glow is from Baltimore, they're definitely cool, but I don't know how many people know that. Oh, back in June Fishnet Stalkers and Mongolodian Glow played a show (june 5, with die cheerleader die) Maybe we just have to appreciate that Champion Ship exists, and you can't drink a beer, smoke a cig and see a great band. If it was up to me, I'd say "Tony" give a bar a band you have after you have them, later that night. You know a Lobster Records, A Militia Group, whatever. And Tony, take the Casual Dots when they are presented to you. Rock, and again Love and a Happy 21st to Darcie and Liz. 8:30pm Monday 10/4 From my email inbox: Dead 50's CD Release shows "The Only Switch I Need" Oct 8-10. Oct 9, Angelina's reportedly "Best Harrisburg Rock show of the year...Guaranteed.........!" Duenow, from Chicago, big hits at MMC8, playing ABC Brew on Oct 23, and a private party at Atomic Warehouse the day before. The Commercials "all support John Kerry" are playing the west coast in Dec, and have a show at Champion Ship on Oct 17 with The Beautiful Mistake, Brandtson, Tokyo Rose. Niki Barr is writing with Butch Walker this week. Johnny J. Blair Java Juice & Art Cafe Williamsport Sat Oct 9. Dave Fox to leave Balistic - last show NYE at Thoroughbreds in Grantville. Well that's the best of 3 days. 7:00pm Tuesday 9/28 Philly's Silvertide has a new album, Show & Tell, out on J Records today. Their single "Ain't Coming Home" is doing well. Currently #8 in Rock, #16 in Active Rock, and getting added at Alternative. Silvertide has been playing around the Hbg area for a while, starting with the MMC6 in February 2002, also Gullifty's a couple times and Dragonfly. 5:00am Friday 9/17 If I was in Baltimore, MD this Saturday, I would go to Hampden Fest. Heres the band page - band page. It's like siren kinda. It's free, it's during the day, it's indie. The bands aren't as famous as siren, but there are more bands, more stages. It's about 50 bands or so, I guess. Very high overlapping between HampdenFest and CMJ. (MMC and Dewey have very low overlaps with CMJ and SXSW). I haveta call em as I see em. Did I mention that it was free, and that there were 4 stages within like 6 blocks? OK, I'll try to eyeball some overlaps. (By the way, some of us here at MMC would love to have these "overlap" bands) Ok, these bands are playing HampdenFest and CMJ Music Marathon. El Guapo, The Oranges Band, The Apes, Blood On The Wall, Gang Gang Dance, The Rogers Sisters. That's not bad. For free, you can see 6 CMJ bands. We usually don't get that, sorry, no. Nope, we don't. Eh. ok. 5:00am Friday 9/3 The Underwater and George W. Bush both spoke in Carlisle, PA on Tuesday. Kinda neat. The Underwater were at the Dickinson School of Law, Prof. Scott's Entertainment Law class. The President was at The North Middleton Twp Village Park, watching a softball game, and introducing Laura at the Convention. I was watching the twins (*** stars ***) on the TV, and The President is there, and he's like, what, 10 miles from where I am. Neat. Cares about people like us. There might be a lot more about politics later, but, um, good, good convention, let's leave it at that for now. 4:00am Saturday 8/28 Big ups to GMan Mechanicsburg - on Chris's (ex Walk Like Shaggy, Team Shorty) Open Mic Night Thursday I see Josiah (Running From Dharma), ???? (????), Mycenea Worley. Next Week Messiah College is back in session. Even better. Pleases me. 11:00pm Wednesday 8/18 The Underwater show at Gullifty's on Friday (8/20) y'all. With Baltimore's Lennex and Dark Water Transit. First Underwater show since the CBGB show in July, and first local Underwater show since the Crowne Plaza MMC show in June. Should be big! Speaking of quality intrumental / math rock kind of stuff (ala Dark Water Transit) there seems to be a good / interesting show the next night (Sat 8/21) at Murph's with Horsecop/Trephine/Headwounds/The Malevoiy. These bands have played with QOTSA, Helios Creed (excellent stuff i saw a couple times in Boston), Dark Water Transit, and more. Sometimes sending me an email and posting on my message board will get my attention. It did this time. I might actually get my ass to York and go. 3:00am Friday 8/12 Here's a show for ya. Saturday, August 14 - Whitaker Center - Darcie and Becky and more. DT, hello, DT? Darcie and Becky are PA Rocks favorites, and we really want them to do well. The Midnight Drive is on hiatus, Brad issues apparently. Dan Lukas (great bass player) apparently off to bass-sling for BAAB for a while. Good band, nice reliable paycheck. It's ok for MD. Aaron, Leo, young, accomplished, no need to worry. 8:00pm Wednesday 8/11 Update on The Bennies - The Bennies played their last Harrisburg area show as a Central PA band at The Millennium Music Conference in June at Champion Ship. Then they moved to Boston. Now I hear they're playing a few dates with The Pixies. Sweet! Congrats, Bennies! Dates - The Pixies and The Bennies - 11/30: Amherst, MA at the Mullins Center, 12/4 & 12/5: Camden, NJ at the Tweeter Center, 12/7 & 12/8: Washington D.C. at the Constitution Hall. Back last March 28, The Bennies played a super rare PA Rocks night at Gullifty's with Douglas Leader and Harbor Gentleman. Good bands at those PA Rocks nights people. 1:00am Friday 8/6 Great FREE - NO COVER show this Saturday August 7 at Gullifty's. First, starting around 9:30-10p is Night Train To Terror. They describe themselves as Fugazi meets Sly and the Family Stone. I say they sound a bit like earlier, funkier Liars. Indie/punk, but danceable and funky. Then, starting 10:30-11ish is The Lookies. Formerly Team Shorty, Shorty Porter Brother Boys. Straight ahead rock/punk/garage/grunge. Drummer Jay played drums for Dinosaur Jr. (look at Green Mind) and The Velvet Monkeys (look at Rake, with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, and more) among other bands. Next, starting at 11:30-12a, is The Suburban Sound. Think maybe Jet with horns, and a charismatic, crazy frontman. Just rock. Last, starting at 12:30-1a is Cowalker. With ex Thirteen Over Eight, a bit emo, electronic. What I want to say about this show, besides the fact that it's a PA Rocks show, is that 1) it's free 2) 4 really good, interesting bands. This is a good opportunity to see interesting, quality original bands, bands you haven't seen at Gullifty's before. For free. And you can drink beers and smoke cigarettes there. It should be good. I don't think it's gonna be massive, but if you like quality, and free, be there. Enjoy. 9:00am Wednesday 7/14 OK, i'm awake, maybe a MMC recap now, of what i remember now. Wednesday was intro of registration. i think we were in the trade show room. I think i was shuffing lams for a while, and some people picked up their lams but not many. I don't remember what happened after that. Went home? Thursday got in whenever. I probably should have gotten there all super early to supervise Meg and Pam, but I knew they were on it. Got in, hung out, saw many of the same people I've seen before. My new people were doing good. I think JH bitched at me for smoking in the office. Everything went smoothly. Nothing got broken, everyone was happy. Then to Guitar Center for Team Revere party. Good bands - Meg's Rusted Shut, Rats From The Bay, The Midnight Drive, Night Train To Terror. Me and Bree were there for that. That was good. Was supposed to be outside, was inside, and was running an hour late. I was just there to chill, but I said, well JH ain't here, so i'll tell them to get shit on schedule. Cut Rats set a little, The Midnight Drive played a magnetic set, acoustic, with everone sitting down, pretty sweet. NTTT didn't get the memo about the short set/late start thing and spent too much time warming up, but they did get some amazing amazing stuff in. They ain't hardcore, let's get them in Gullifty's. Then we went back to downtown. There we saw Darcie (love) Asa's Garden and bravetheday (getting there). Then back to the Hotel, see Moments in Grace, chill with them, Matt and Bran show up, chill more with them and Moments. Then we chill with Rick Slater. Pretty good start, especially for a Thursday. Then went home? Maybe I sent out my emailer that night?> Friday, same shit during the day. Same basic people sitting at the booths. Red Bull was key I remember. Bree continued to take good pictures. We missed Mike Galaxy, but we think that subk got good pix of him. We went to Guitar Center again to see bree's strike.fire.fall. I can't remember if we saw them or not, I think we did, because there was a good emoish band playing. After that it was Zerohour. A like, 15 yr old girl was playing bass and flipping out. Good stuff, rock, or "money" as per the guy from Victory Twin who we were hanging out with. I think that's all we saw, something about losing our rooms or something, so we had to leave during Zerohour. We went back checked in, figured out what's up, then I went off to Dragonfly. Basically, spent the whole time pretty much at Dragonfly. Good stuff. The Suburban Sound was the first band I saw. Amazing. Everybody thought they were from New York. Which I figured. They kicked ass. I knew they would. I saw them about a year ago with The Underwater at The Why're. Good good stuff. They're one of my new local bands that should have some more good gigs. I got a good bunch of them now, so I might do a show if I can. Next was DueNow downstairs, and they REALLY blew everyone away. From Chicago, so, I mean, yeah, they're great, but, I wouldn't say we'll see them again. It would be good if we did. Bellflur, Rogue Forty and The Upwelling all kicked ass as well. Team Rockit kicked ass. They played at The Rusty Nail for mmc6 with Jet Silver Bon Fuhrer Rock City Crime Wave Lisa Christ Superstar. That was a hot show. Team Rockit has gotten better, rockier, more fiery, yet hookier. Fiery Hives plus Bigstar aaaaaahhh. Didn't know what to do with them for a sec. Power-pop? Or Rock Is Back? Good at both at the same time. But of that vein, watch very closely The Suburban Sound. They got all that. The lead singer is crazed onstage, all over the place. Crazy Jet with horns. Then I wandered a bit. Remember it was packed for Bridges acoustic, but i think that was the day before. The Midnight Drive had it packed there too I think. Then the partying. It was ok I guess. Matt and Brandon from UW were at MSG in NY with Incubus and the Strokes I think backstage, so they couldn't be at MMC that day which was a bit of a bummer, but I think it was overall good. I think that was the night that Leo was there with the girl that I decided was a genius (as well as very hot), and I think that was the night that Rick Slater was there with a guy who was from the band Modern English "Stop the world and melt with you" That was good, interesting, good to meet interesting new people. We must have gone somewhere else and when i got back to my room, Stenger decided to give my bed to some guy, so i went downstairs to Bree and Megs room, chasened Lauren or Connie, and walked home across the river. Showed up the next day, same thing, Red Bulls, Bree took great pix, we made sure to catch great photos of McGathy. That was a great speech. He said some stuff that he thought would get him in trouble, but hey, Claudine loves him, so why? A nice full room and great insight from a very smart, knowledgeable person. Get USB cable for Bree, to my house to move the pix to my computer, then back to the Hotel. Chill then to McGraths for a true highlight of the conference. Erika Bossler's 3rd show post-"retirement". Nice. So so happy to see her again. By the way, Erika is "D'arey" of D'arey October. see :-). Happy. Check out www.parocks.com/erikabossler the new web site. Hope she wants to keep doing it. Anyway, I was happy for a little while even after I left Erika's presence - Bree took some great promoish pix btw, check that site. Went to Gman downtown, the plan all along, before Erika was gotten in there at the 9 slot (a good slot for me to be sure) Saw Lawyers and Janitors - ok dumbshits, Lawyers and Janitors is a band that played at MMC www.lawyersandjanitors.com, I taped them, and the tape of them broke my speakers. Too loud for too long I guess. And FUCK YEAH is a good thing. Experimental Rock. Sometimes they're playing short indie rock songs, sometimes it's ambient soundscapes that burst into QOTSA riffing. All the songs blend together. No talking between songs, no breaks. Around here, I'd say they're like a "jam band" as in, they should open for a jam band around here. They're from Mifflintown, Juniata County, and the stuff they play is like DC, Philly, NYC. Floors me, floors me. And a great bio. 3 brothers. Great promo pix, and the new site is good good stuff. Gigs? like, i think MMC was their first. I talked to them after the set, and I'm like - that's amazing - and they're "we can go down in the basement and do this for hours" That's a recipe for good good stuff. And certainly, maybe, a tight, tight band. Indie labels, take notice here. Anyway, I had a good time at that time those bands on both sides of gman. It was good, it wasn't really a way hyped show, not a show that had any locals on it, just great music. for me, it was an intended jewel. I wanted to see some indie indie stuff way close to the hotel, and it was right there. Erika was put in pretty last minute, and i'm gonna see Erika, but I was planning on Mongoloidian Glow. Jonny D of Jonny Lives was supposed to play acoustic, but that didn't happen. But I would've missed it anyway, so that's cool. So, after the Erika show and the photo shoot we went up to see L&J and The Fallen One. Also Go Machine and Zelazowa. Both Zelazowa and Go Machine were hits. Claudine and Jeremy were there and seemed happy. That's makes me happy. And I was there because that's where I wanted to be, and I planned it that way. I was happy. The guy (Daniel Hart) from Go Machine is currently playing (viola?) with the Polyphonic Spree. Cool. They sounded great, they all sounded great. That's the delight of MMC, to be able to have a show like that. Then to the Hotel. Got there during Bridges sounded good, strong, good crowd. The Underwater hit a home run as expected. They're the best band. www.theunderwater.net Then the partying. I don't know I guess i'm tired of partying. This year definitely wasn't a good year for partying, which is cool, because the hotel had to be happy, and it's important that the hotel is happy. I kinda remember going back and forth between my room and the other mmc room, and i think i was in rotoglows room. It just wasn't there, I don't know. I did see a lot of my favorite people, but i kinda see them all the time. I guess it's good not to have a party room, when you have one I guess you tend to stay there, I don't know. I ended up just going home with Dan and Dar, which, for my shitty life, ended up being a quite uneventful but chill highlight of the weekend. I guess I could say that I'm happy that I spent qt with a high percentage of my favorites, and I guess that that's true. Erika wouldn't have been there for a really big UW show. Most of my favorites would be there for that. Many of the non-UW favorites, like Virginia and Jodelle I didn't see. I really didn't get to bro down with any of the new bands that I saw, which i generally like to do around MMC. Eh. Recap: Music/Showcases close to fantastic up and down the line. I missed more great bands than I saw. Daytime, more chill than usual, but good, with stars. Nighttime, tame overall, too few "new", many favorites, some rare favorites, went home both nights. 11:00am Tuesday 7/6 Hooray for Becky Miller. More bravetheday. Shows, love and glory for Becky. The new bravetheday stuff is really really good. They should be moving beyond the area. Always, always good to see Becky. 7:00am Tuesday 7/6 Lawyers and Janitors RULE. RULE I TELL YOU. Without being here they just broke my speakers. Fuck YEAH. Lawyers and Janitors. Fuck Yeah. I gotta buy new speakers. Fuck yeah, the MMC show that I taped of them, I make people like The Underwater listen to. They like it. Fuck yeah. Lawyers and Janitors. 4:00am Thursday 6/24 MMC8 talk now, ramble. Wanna say Claudine did a great job with the Citadel Summit. No complaints there. A wonderful addition to the conference. No live rock in the X pool area. Citadel Summit is huge though, way outweighs the lack of the stage. So, if it's always Citadel Summit, and no live rock in the X area, it's cool. This year there are good opportunites for singer/songwriters, as there's a stage in the Trade Show area, and no bands. DJ BE from Nappy Roots is gonna be on that stage I think, based on what I overheard Wednesday. That's pretty cool, Nappy Roots. And Bill McGathy. Keynote Speaker on Saturday. Huge. McGathy Promotions is, um, like THE BIGGEST in rock radio promotion. What rock radio promotion is is, basically, they're the ones that get your rock song on the radio. The label has a rock song, then McGathy Promotions, then it's on the radio. Not just that, but also Manager, In De Goot Entertainment. 3 Doors Down, Puddle of Mudd, Chevelle, Saliva, more. So, this guy manages a ton of bands, and owns a huge radio promotion company. Anybody? Hello? You'd like to meet this guy. It costs like $75 or $125 now depending on who you are. Mike Galaxy has been great, has great things to say, and the Mike Galaxy Showcases are strong. About what to go see. JH always bitches for saying that I'm involved, but I know what's up. JH is in charge, will always be, unless he wants to not be. There are great bands interspersed around, some areas are ones that JH or someone else should be focused on. And I know that there are some great artists that are on bills that I'm happy are being taken care of by JH or others. So, like, without too many exceptions, I'll tell you about what I'm planning to do, pretty much, based on venues. Thursday - start with Guitar Center, see when people want to leave. I want to see Night Train To Terror. Then, what, I haven't thought about it. Darcie, but you know you should see something new, but at the same time, well, whatever. Wanna see Rod Webber. X's Citadel Show is good, that's a likely place. Friday - Key to me is the trio of dragonfly up, dragonfly down, and kokomos. Make sure you start at 9, or get there early. Same on Saturday. There's lots of good stuff everywhere. But, you know, catching 15 really good bands in 5 hours, mostly indie rock, that's good. I'm not even saying those are the best bands. It's just that that particular area, 3 areas, real close, the kind of music that i generally like, that's a good way to do it. Pick out the bands you really want to see, when you don't know, check these out. Saturday - Um, I do want to make special note of Erika Blosser. As many know, I do the MMC website too, and I do make up the descriptions, and I heard that she didn't want her former band mentioned, and I didn't mention it there. But, I'm gonna have to tell you that she's the former singer of D'arey October, so that explains why I'm so happy about this. Jared has done Thirteen Over Eight, The Skyline Drive, CYOA, and Steve has done CYOA, Erika(D'arey) is just back on the scene. I'm pretty sure there are many who feel as strongly positive about Erika as I do. I'm looking forward to this one. This one was a late add, so Saturday 9 is strong, and I'm gonna miss some shows that I wanted to see. But, I'm goin to McGraths. Anyway, the custom shows are GMan Downtown (both stages kick ass, um indie rock, but, like, nice stuff, this is good, close to experimental) and of course Crowne Plaza Hotel, which is basically, the best local bands, with a modifier of haven't played there a jillion times. I mean, how can we do this again next year. Seriously, these are all really good, young really local bands that basically have some greatness there. And, of course, The Underwater at 1sh, and then the partying (civilized) upstairs at 2sh. That a must. But be polite. Respect others. Don't destroy shit. 10:00am Thursday 6/10 Opening and Closing - All Age Venues First the Opening. This Saturday, June 12 brings the Grand Opening of Champion Ship, a new All Age Venue in Lemoyne, PA in the Hoover Plaza (on State Street, about a block from the West Shore Plaza) Jointly owned by Tony of The Commercials, his brother, and Colby. They understand the market well, and have a great deal of experience in bringing in good bands, putting together good shows. The room is good, I saw the room, glimpsed the early stages of the construction process. Thumbs up there, based on what I saw. I'd assume that if the demand is there, and I think it is, it'll likely be a smash. Aside from the Grand Opening show this Saturday (with 22 bands), there are 5 shows in the 7 days after the Grand Opening, with Glasseater, Halifax, Emanuel, Drain This Blood, The New Years, Riddlin Kids (Columbia Records), Bayside (Victory), The Commercials, Your Black Star (former members of Elliott), AVEC, The Evan Anthem, Something To Forget, Koji On The Roof, Mock Orange, Sunday Driver (Doghouse Records), Espenshade, Honorary Title, The Exploding Fuck Dolls(CA), Kamikaze Zero, The Nighttime Dealers, Brand Bland. That's 43 performances in the first 8 days of Champion Ship. Pretty damn good. For MMC, they've got 24 performances over 3 days. Here's the lineup for the Grand Opening show. Doors: 11AM $7 - The Virus, Luck Be the Lady, The Commercials, Heidnik, Nighttime Dealers, August Burns Red, Derringer, Kamikaze Zero, Genovese, Espenshade, Losers and Kings, Allison Hill, Those Who Remain, The Midnight Drive, Allendale, Craften Layer, Vagrant Forsaken, Jura, Excessive Force, American Zero, Me, Not Me, Maria Forgotten. Then the closing. Soundwaves in Reading, a great all-ages venue is closing. Here's a long excerpt about it from a Mary Prankster EMailer Thursday June 10, she says it well. "R.I.P. SOUNDWAVES After over two years as an oasis of underage recreation, the Soundwaves/Wooden Waves ALL AGES concert hall/venue in Reading, PA is closing its doors due to devastating losses incurred from not one but TWO flooding incidents during the ????ential rains that soaked the East Coast last year. Anyone who's followed the career of Frank Phobia - producer, musician, indie label president, skateboarding instructor and patron saint of under-21 rockers - knows the unparalleled commitment he's shown to fostering and nuturing self-expression in the youth of his community through Rock 'N' Roll and surfing the wooden wave. He built a community of young people united in their love of music and gave them a safe haven for their creativity, investing his time, resources and life savings in the process. Frank is a shining example of a punk who walks his talk. To catch a glimpse of the utopia he built before it shutters for good, and learn more about the Grand Finale Last Show Ever on June 19th surf on over to www.woodenwaves.net You may want to drop him an "atta boy" e-mail while you're at it." Here's the lineup for the Goodbye to Soundwaves Festival. Show 12 Noon- 11:30pm./ $10 - Mischief Committee, Suitcase Nuke, Push Thirteen, Submarine Screendoor, 3 In The Dark, COTGS, 416 South (original line-up!), Common Enemy, These Are The Days, Johnny Action Figure, Relegate, Running From Dharma, Mainline Hooker Service, McRad, Eden Park, Big Green Limousine, Mary Prankster, Choose Your Own Adventure, Five Minute Freakshow, Finalist (Eastcide), Total F**king Destruction, Divination, I Want To Kill You, Spinebelt, Anthrophobia. 25 BANDS!!!! PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS! This is a show you do not want to miss! 3:00pm Monday 6/7 Congrats to Negative Space for getting 13 spins in the last week (May 31 - June 6) on WJSE-FM Atlantic City 102.7 FM (Alternative). Also, Muse, Time Is Running Out is up to #9 in Alternative. 6:30pm Thursday 6/3 The Underwater in Kings of A&R today - http://kingsofar.com/. They're playing Arcadium in Graz, Austria today(June 3). 6:00am Saturday 5/29 South Central PA band Running From Dharma is in Japan right now, playing a few dates with Sense Field. South Central PA band The Underwater is going to Europe on Sunday, playing some festivals, clubs playing with Supergrass, Nickelback. South Central PA band ???? just got a great review from Matthew Johnson "For ????, it's all about scale. The band started out its illustrious career as a two-man acoustic team playing for 400 people. A year later, the full four-man lineup played a Sunday night all-ages show to 40 crazed fans like it was a stadium packed to capacity." Matt J. is a genius, read it, then hire that guy. Get him to NY or LA. OK, I relent, submit this for the Pulitzer or the Nobel Prize of great rock writing. Matt, I hope your readers appreciate this. I want more great writing like this. By the way, those of you who know me know that I'm no money loving guy, but I will say that I enjoy seeing a huge line up The Chiller steps. I do want to help get those people into the venue to see great music. And, I will say that I like to help put $1000 in a box in 10 minutes. I'm good at math. Need more ones, boom boom boom. 10 - 3 20 for 2 6, easy. Nice stuff, 250-300 paid at The Chiller - York Ice Arena - The Underwater last night Friday 5/28. 9:30am Friday 5/21 Lake Trout - amazing Thank you to John Harris. Thank you to Gullifty's. 4:30am Wednesday 4/21 2 things for now: 1) Saw the best Harrisburg Jam Band that I have ever seen - Quagmire Swim Team - Dragonfly 420. Good to see ex-Julie and ex-Stone just master that form. Talked to Benji briefly (he's an expert on jam bands, has been for years) he's confident they could go national, agreed, if things go well. Benji might kinda be their manager, or something like that, but that's cool. I've known him as a journalist and a promoter, he's been around enough to know these things. Most around here know to basically give Benji the benefit of the doubt, at least on the margins. 2) Hung out with ???? and ???? from ???? after their open mike / acoustic set at Zembies. Maria was there, and that's always a plus, brightens your life she does. I was cool, in my own way. Was a bit forward, started talking to the people the least far away from ???? and ????, asked them if they had heard of ????, and they hadn't, which is basically typical in those kind of situations for those kind of bands, and I jumped into hype mode, which I often do for no real reason, and started telling them about how much the radio station liked them and so on and so forth, telling em shit like Sunday is gonna be a hit, and they were loving it, they went up, got the free cd, and then later went up and signed on their mailing list. I mean, come on, I actually got random people to get on the ???? list. Isn't that love, c'mon, ????? Later, I talked to ????, and I guess he doesn't like me because I'm mean to him, but, hey. BTW, Lauren's doing real good. That one is a SUPERSTAR. 10:30am Friday 4/16 Check this out, this is from the Caribana Festival - caribana.ch - in Switzerland 5:00am Friday 4/8 MUSE UPDATE - MUSE Time Is Running Out. Station City Spins in the last week. By the way, we'd like Khyber tix :-). Or, hey, you have Sunday off, how about MUSE and The Underwater at Gullifty's/ KWOD-FM Sacramento 41 WHRL-FM Albany, NY 29 WSUN-FM Tampa 28 WFNX-FM Boston 26 CIMX-FM Detroit 25 WBRU-FM Providence 25 KRZQ-FM Reno 24 WWCD-FM Columbus 23 WROX-FM Norfolk 20 WKRL-FM Syracuse 19 KMBY-FM Monterey/Salinas 17 KNRK-FM Portland 16 KLEC-FM Little Rock 16 WZNE-FM Rochester 16 KITS-FM San Francisco 15 KNDD-FM Seattle 15 KXRK-FM Salt Lake City 15 KUCD-FM Honolulu 15 KHRO-FM El Paso 15 WPBZ-FM West Palm 13 2:00am Friday 4/8 The Skyline Drive is real good. Hook laden, medium rock. Foo Fighters? I'd say melodic post-hardcore. Lyrics seem especially targeted to me personally. They don't say "Jim" in any of their songs. They're a band that needs to be signed soon. The songs are there. They almost can't sell 90 or 115 million records. But listen. Those are some songs. They aren't kidding around about giving you hits. And they're pretty enough. Not truly young (Jared is young), so don't expect a 20 year career, but, again the songs on the record right now are there. 2500 or so spins a week on alternative, 1700 or so on active rock. It sounds great (Frank Phobia) but usually there's rerecording. This is a good band for hits now. 11:30am Wednesday 4/7 The Underwater was in a van accident in Iowa on Monday AM at around 8:00. Everyone's OK, a little banged up, but basically ok. They'll be back today, at this writing, they're around Wheeling, WV. Here's a pic of the totalled van in Iowa - Underwater Van 7:30am Saturday 3/27 I feel that I have to remind you how good Grandfabric is. I've mentioned it before, and they're from Philly, so I don't think I should really be jumping up and down about them too much, but, yeah. That's art. Not a 90 Million band, but somethings wrong if people who care about good music can't get this easily. It's beautiful. Not Sgt. Pepper, but listen to it. Above all but The Underwater (not counting Muse). It's amazingly good, really really good. It's a record that should be available. College radio, indie label, hello? 4:00am Tuesday 3/23 Muse's Absolution is released in the US today. I'm getting my copy today. I've heard The Underwater's copy, or one of The Underwater's copies many times, and it's epic, awesome, and could be mega huge. Get it today. It looks like the first single, Time is Running Out, is a hit. Spins on Alternative from Mar 15 - Mar 21 - KWOD-FM Sacramento 35, KNDD-FM Seattle 26, WFNX-FM Boston 25, WWCD-FM Columbus 24, WSUN-FM Tampa 18, KITS-FM San Francisco 15, KMBY-FM Monterey/Salinas 15, WHRL-FM Albany, NY 14, WBRU-FM Providence 13, KXRK-FM Salt Lake City 12, WKRL-FM Syracuse 12, KRZQ-FM Reno 12, CIMX-FM Detroit 11, KPNT-FM St. Louis 9, KFRR-FM Fresno 9, WAQZ-FM Cincinnati 9, KNRK-FM Portland 9, WPBZ-FM West Palm 9, KHRO-FM El Paso 8, WBTZ-FM Burlington, VT 8. 1:00am Sunday 3/14 Here's a great, really great, new band that hasn't played out yet. The Midnight Drive 237B loves them. I've seen 3 practices. Revere House always has something good going on. First show (that we know of right now for sure - I think) is Sunday 3/28 ABC Brew All Ages with The Underwater, Bridges And A Bottle, The New Years. I guess they'd be considered complex heavy emo, or emocore. Not too much of the core part, but definititely heavier than let's say Dashboard. A lot of layers, a lot of interesting, complex parts. Emoish vocals. Not gonna say "indiecore" as I'm not sure what that means, but I'd say there's some epic there. And they're really tight live, even without having played out. The Midnight Drive is the website. 1:00am Sunday 3/7 The Underwater to perform live acoustic and get interviewed today (Sunday - 3/7) on WSOU 89.5 - www.wsou.net - for those who live in the NYC area. Also it appears it will be streamed live for those of you with the internet. And, Matt calls shotty. 4:30am Wednesday 2/25 Big Day. The Passion of the Christ is today. Epic. New starts today? 4:30am Tuesday 2/24 The Underwater in the studio right now, going great. Having fun, creating epic stuff. Day 2 in a couple of hours with Marshall at Progressive. Darcie? I could probably do thousands of words right here on The Underwater. I won't. Consider that being "fair" Sunday was good, Tara's band The Kick Me's did well at ABC on Sunday, made some good contacts that she wouldn't tell me about. KRS t-shirts apparently though. So that's cool right there. They're the kind of cool indie band that just gets the fuck out of here. I can see them being liked by Sara Sherr definitely and hopefully R5 and maybe Village Voice Siren someday. Definitely not perfect yet though live. Tara's really got it though, artistically. There is such a thing as musical talent, and Tara's got it. Get yer MMC shit in. Oh, and Running From Dharma (Japan Tour) and The Gunshy (MACRock + US Tour) are doing well. Other locals are doing well, but I'm not looking at my emails. Tell me if you're doing well. Everybody hates having to sift through the same mediocre bar bands over and over again (OK, not everybody). 2:00pm Thursday 2/19 PA Rocks Love to Love Stomp. M grrrls opening St Patty's for em at homebase Gullifty's. Thank you Love Stomp. Love to you. UW, keep that date open please. 8:35pm Sunday 2/8 White Stripes RULE! 10:00am Sunday 1/25 politics - biggest primary of the season traditionally. So, I'll weigh in. Kerry - I picked him to win Iowa right. I assume Whouley is still on board. That's still a silent factor (he's rarely mentioned in the media). But, you know how the "extremests" talk about Skull & Bones, Bilderberg, etc etc? Well, Kerry's a Bonesman. Yale 68. Bush, as you all know, is a Bonesman too, Yale 66. So, what'd we got in the fall? Some sort of "generational" thing. Oh, in the 2 years between when you and I went to Yale and joined the elitest of elite secret societies in the US things have changed. Apparently there are only around 15 per year. How many people have known Kerry and Bush since college. The 67ers who were tapped by the Bushies and tapped the Kerryites. Anyway. Democrats, definitely with Kerry, you got your electable candidate. Prevetted, the perfect distinction without a difference. But, eh, Bush is gonna win, and Kerry HQ in Boston is gonna help people I know, so rock on. Kerry (at this point) the likely nominee, but less so than when I typed last about this. Oh, and great pix of him and the last JFK. Better, sexier than Clintons lame handshake at some function. On a fucking boat. Chillin with Kennedy. Hey, he might be totally evil, but JFK let him on his boat. And he did save someone's life. That still gives be a little bit of chills. Just throw in "thanks FED, but we'll do the printing of the money for now" and I'll buy in. No way Kerry is gonna say that. He's also Bilderberg (apparently - I didn't full on the sources that I trust - saw an interview (not fully trusted source) - which could be fake, wrong - with a Swede participant - Sweden kicks ass - where he ticked off a list of US Government officials that he attended the Bilderberg meeting(s) with). Edwards - the prettiest, most articulate, smoothest. Health Care is a big issue, and Edwards is there. Edwards can say "hey, health care costs are spiraling out of control, this is bad for the country. I know about this issue. I, as a trial lawyer, sued doctors, hospitals, and anyone else rich who juries could be persuaded by a pretty, articulate, smooth lawyer might have been responsible for birth defects that most responsible scientists would say are based on genetics and not on negligence during delivery. I was the problem. Insurance rates are high because of me. If I killed myself a few years ago, I could've helped you all out. But, I'm better now. I've seen the error of my ways. Just because some person has some very, very bad thing happen (ed note - very very bad things are very very bad, and I want less of them) that doesn't mean that you should use your lawyer skill to take money out of the pockets of those who were not in fact responsible." But he's saying he's "fighting" or some such word. Won't beat Kerry. Also Rans - Then Dean. Clark - Evil. Sharpton - I want him to say - "Let's Print Money!" good slogan. Blah blah blah Federal Reserve blah. No. Just say - we're paying off our debt with "UNITED STATES NOTES". Al, your constituency will like it. I'm a conservative Republican. I'll vote for you. We're just gonna print the US notes, the Kennedy 63 reds. Fire em out there. Boom. Say it. The government should be printing the money. You might get killed. That's the only bad thing you can do. The K man - same as Sharpton, but you won't do too good in South Carolina. Dean - Everyone has seen him wackout and like name states of the country and like say he's gonna go there and win and shit, and then like scream all weird. No one thought that looked "presidential", but that's cool. Kerry looks presidential. He's a bonesman. Dean is not a Bonesman. Oh, you got shitloads of money. Dean is not a Bonesman is a message. Oh, and print our own money. You can still win. You should just chill now. wait till the field is winnowed. You have the money. Hey, make a statement, I'm chillin. Then come back with "we're printing money" When I become President, you just have to type in your name, and we'll send you ten bucks. And we won't spy on you either. The Bush Doctine "KILL OUR ENEMIES" has held us in good stead. Only now, after unilateral (ish, on the decision making process side, rather than the warmaking side). We have this now. we have the Bush Doctrine here, to allow us to go apeshit crazy with our own currency. Kill our enemies. We want to have tons of cash in the hands of every American. We want to have a fixed exchange rate. We'll killl you NOW!!! if you don't take that up the ass. We have the nukes, no one can stop us. Thats how the American Empire works. I like Europe a lot. 10:00am Friday 1/23 Apparently Sonny of P.O.D. was wearing The Underwater's European Tour hoodie when he joined Linkin Park onstage Tuesday night 1/20 at The Spectrum in Philly. Anyone there, see that? See a pic of that? I'd like to see that. Harrisburg's Last Tuesday just started their US tour, goin out to LA and back. They'll be back in March. Carrie's on the Muse tip. 8:00am Monday 1/19 Wit's on the Muse tip. Who else is getting on board? 7:00am Monday 1/19 YOU GOTTA HEAR MUSE TIME IS RUNNING OUT. HERE THIS IS THE LINK TO MUSE TIME IS RUNNING OUT MP3 6:00am Monday 1/19 our time is running out Ok, I think I'll weigh in on non local stuff now. Start with Muse. Time is running out. Currently number 1 on KNDD FM Seattle. It's huge in Europe. We listened to it all the time in the Camper Car driving through Germany, Holland, Swiss, Austria, Sweden. I think Muse was number 1 in the Camper Car. I will admit that when I got there, I didn't really know Muse. But, um I know a lot more now. Super. super super super.. NME kicks ass. I live here. Anyway, Muse again. I've VERY VERY enthused about this. They're getting 34 spins on KNDD a week, and according to ALL ACCESS, theres no label. It's an import at this particular moment in time. EASTWEST RECORDS is the label in Britain. I don't know. I will say is that Atlantic is looking like Geniuses with their move with The Darkness. DARKNESS! Yeah! Superstrong. I cant find the US label on the Muse site. http://www.muse.mu/ I hear Shabba (who da man? Shabba da man) says that Muse was kicking ass in Australia. 45k (So was Thursday, Poison The Well). Anyway Fucking Muse baby. New Nirvana and shit. Beats everyone. Oh, and I met the drummer. Fucked up. What was that about. I'll tell you those details later. Muse rules. Yer gonna get it. I love The Underwater, but they know that I'd say that right now, Muse is better than them. So, yes, I will admit, there's a band better than The Underwater. Anyway. Politics. Iowa. Wholey is doing Kerry and therefore. He's a GOTV master. Give it to Kerry. I used to do this. Give me a fucking stick with a Silber sign on it and tell me who to hit. Whats Matty ONeil doing. I hate this shit, but the politics part can be fun. Hitting Joe from the TV station. Fun. Clinton might've been the biggest scumbag president, and Hillary still isn't in jail, but I know those people, the worker bees, and I want them to have good lives, so go Wholey, O'Neill, and all the rest from Silber 90, Clinton 92, Daschle 92, Johnston 92 (the worker bees - oh, and Johnston was ok) 5:00am Monday 1/19 On January 27th, Negative Space is returning to CBGB's in New York City to continue showcasing for labels. On the heels of releasing their new EP, Nothing Ordinary, the band is preparing to pick up showcasing where they left off in the fall. With the material from the the EP, and brand new material just recently finished, the band is looking forward to hitting the CBGB's stage again. Mark R. popped up on my IM just now - and I haven't been showing enough Negative Space love. 10:00am Friday 1/16 1) Music Conferences. Get your stuff in now for the Millennium Music Conference 8, being held June 24-26 2004 at the Crowne Plaza Harrisburg. Here's a convenient link to the website - Millenium Music Conference main page. Here's a convenient link to a page which tells you how to apply - Millenium Music Conference Showcase Applications page. Most of you know already if you're gonna apply to showcase already, after all this is the 8th year - you might as well get that done now. This year there's a system for waiting until after deadline, which is you pay more. Good, I'm all for that. Also, I think there might be some bonuses of sorts if you get your stuff in early, maybe you'll be picked early, maybe there will be some early pre-MMC shows with bands that were already picked. Don't quote me on that. Anyway, consider using Sonic Bids to send your stuff in. It costs about the same, and the advantage is that a lot of other conferences use Sonic Bids as well, and you can just easily submit to other conference once you're in the Sonic Bids system. For instance, NXNE in Toronto. Their deadline is today, Friday January 16. I'll certainly mention you if you got it to go to Toronto and you're from around here. Here's a link to the NXNE showcase application page. So, while you're at it, go to the MMC8/SonicBids application/signup page - link here - sign up for Sonic Bids and apply for MMC8 at the same time, then apply for NXNE. Here's a tip when uploading pix to Sonic Bids. Unless they've changed their policies, they used to say to limit the size of the pix to some 250 pixels wide, or whatnot. Not necessary. Upload the biggest pix you got. Sonic Bids will resize em, in the browser, and when the conferences go to save them, and we need hires pix, we'll get the original hires pix you uploaded. Yes, it'll probably make your EPK load slower, but, so what. 2) Other Local Music that's not The Underwater. One of the best talents out there right now that you probably haven't heard about is Tara. Tara was in The Blahs with Robbie, who left to join, um ;-) let's just say another band. I thought The Blahs were great and I especially thought Tara was great, as you just don't see around these parts indierockin girls who can sing and play indierock guitar. That's an emphasis on the indie, as certainly Darcie Miner is a delightful rock talent, and Liz Hale is a delightful rock talent, and there are others who are good as well, but they don't really have the indie thing that I'm talking about. Tara's kinda like a female Kurt Cobain (or was in The Blahs). It's that kinda indie. Scratchy growly screamy vocals, tortured yet melodic. Great distorted riffs on the guitar. Superfuzz Big Muff. And, a very strong writer with a gift for hooks. She's working on 2 projects right now, one is the Brett White Stripes project. Currently this is a 2 piece where Tara is singing and playing guitar, and Brett is singing and playing drums. Brett is ex The Bennies (who by the way, are another great band, from Dillsburg, who have toured with Frank Black and the Catholics - I believe The Bennies are planning a relocation to Boston in May maybe? I would very much like to see The Bennies again before they go. The drummer is in Boston now, so it might take a little bit of $ to get that to happen, but hey, it's not that often that we get a chance to see a band around Harrisburg that Frank Black (he was the leader of the Pixies, they're playing Coachella this year) likes enough to take on tour with. And it aint a thousand bucks we're talking about here. C'mon. I'll admit, they haven't been hustling, hustling, hustling to build their following in the local bar, but, c'mon, you'd think that there would be an audience, in South Central PA of over a Million, for a good band that Frank Black likes enough to take on tour. Anyway, here's a link to their site - the email still works. http://thebennies.com. Ok, of this project, I can definitely say this will be good, as I've heard Tara sing a couple of the song while playing guitar and I've heard a recording of Tara Brett and an earlier bassist play the songs without vocals, and I know that the talent is there. I haven't yet heard the completed stuff, so I can't say exactly how great it's gonna be, but I was definitely knocked out by her when she was playing the guitar and singing it, and if it's as good as that, then it's real, real good. That's the White Stripes project, with Tara playing Jack White (not really, but to me that's a good hook; however, they might add a bassist). If you book them you're gonna get a quality interesting indierock show. The other project I'll call Tara's allgirl electroclash project. This one I have heard a couple of songs from. Really really good stuff. This was one I listened to over and over. This has Tara playing guitar, a female singer with punk attitude, sorta a Karen O or Andrea Zollo type, and a synth/bass player and a electronic drum player. I haven't been to a practice yet, but Tara tells me there's a buzz starting. Chile is on it, as is Mike Powers of Roundtable. Why wouldn't there be? An original allgirl band with some talent in this area would be a winner right out of the box, and most people would recognize that right away - it certainly would be more interesting than 80-90% of what's out there locally. And an electroclash, or riotgrrrlelectroclash, or yyys sounding band would certainly be more interesting than 90%. Put those numbers together and you get something extremely distinctive and extremely marketable. It also happens that the songs are hella catchy. However, I will withhold judgment at this time as to the overall hugeness of this particular band, as I have yet to see them or hear them perform live. It may be that it might take, um, let's say a couple weeks to get them ready to perform live in front of an audience. But, I haven't heard them perform live, so I can't say either way. Ok, here's the demo. It's an extremely raw demo, but you'll be able to get the idea. Here it is. Enjoy! I've seen lots of bands in the last few months. I guess I'll mention 5 now that are relatively new to the scene and are meritorious in one way or another. I've probably covered this type of stuff on my message board, but I might as well cover it here. Bridges and a Bottle, C Minus Society, ????, Reno Fontaine, The Drive Home. All are doing well at Gullifty's. All have talent. All have fans. Before I get started I should mention that it ain't too hard for you to go out there to a bar in Harrisburg and make up your own mind. Let's go in alphabetical order as listed above. Bridges and a Bottle - 2 very good lead singers/frontmen. Homebase is Gullifty's, and they draw exceptionally well there, due to the Cedar Cliff connections (I'm not sure the details there, except some of BAAB went to Cedar Cliff HS). On the mellowish side of the rock spectrum, sorta have a loose Jack Johnson/Jason Mraz/Dave Matthewsy kinda feel. One of the vocalists sounds like Vedder. Great rapport with the audience at Gullifty's. Fans know the songs and sing along. Songs are good to very good, with some great parts to some of the songs. They do some impressive stuff for local bands, such as getting dates at good venues outside the area. They've played Beachland in Cleveland with The Carlsonics (from DC, good band) and Philly at The North Star and the Troc Balcony, and in NYC at The Knitting Factory and the Mercury Lounge. That's the kind of stuff I look for, and it's the kind of stuff that impresses me. BAAB has been playing out for a little over a year as I recall. C Minus Society - A quite new band (first show, 10/14/03), who had fans from the get go, in part from their participation in bands like Creamsicle, Dingleberry Shortcake and Novelty. They're working hard to develop a local fanbase and are successful at it. I've only seen them once, would characterize them as contemporary sounding pop-punk, with polished musicianship. I'll almost certainly see them again, and I'll likely get a more nuanced idea about what they do. All indications are, with their fan base and professionalism, they'll move forward. ???? - Features ex members of Stereo Logic, 3-Star, Eureka Bone, Julian Fist, all popular, talented bands. ???? played their first show as an acoustic duo (???? ex Stereo Logic and ???? ex Julian Fist) in late 2002 fairly shortly after Stereo Logic and Julian Fist broke up in 2002. I'm sure those of you with long memories have heard mentions here of Stereo Logic and Julian Fist. They played as an acoustic duo for a while until ???? and ????, who were in 3-Star at the time, joined. I think this was around May or June of 2003. That's the current lineup. The phrase "supergroup" was coined to describe the band, and it's sorta on the mark, at least as respects South Central PA and Harrisburg, especially, as Julian Fist, 3-Star and Stereo Logic had all played numberous shows in Harrisburg/Gullifty's/Etc. Anyway, enough history. Based on this pedigree, one could easily tag them with the label "most likely to succeed" Certainly, the ????/???? version was worth watching, knowing that ???? was a great singer (as he was in Stereo Logic) and that ???? was in one of the more popular local bands (Julian Fist). When ???? and ????, extremely well known and well liked in the local music community, joined, one could only expect that they would do quite well. And they have done quite well. Experienced music professionals all, they create good sounding records and have a tight, good sounding live show. They have a good fan base, and ???? still has a great voice. Their songs are good, I've heard "Radio" being referred to as a hit. Reno Fontaine - the newest of these 5 bands, featuring ex Mad Revere and ex C-4. Mad Revere was a good band, played good shows last year at MMC7, Underdog among other places. Reno's first show was 10/17/03, at this point they're playing good groove rock, I saw their 6th, 7th shows, they're developing a good fanbase and they're sounding good. They, like the others, are likely to continue to grow a fanbase and continue to get better. I'll be seeing them again. The Drive Home - Recent Messiah College grads. 2 brothers. Good look. Hooky emopoprock. Haven't seen em in a few months, looking forward to it, this Saturday. I recall one time being surprised that one of the songs wasn't a cover. Hits maybe? Ok, a little compare and contrast here of the 5 bands. It seems like out of the 5 bands there, there are 2 types. Bridges and Drive are of one type and C, Condition and Reno are of another type. Bridges and Drive developed more slowly, in a younger, more scholastic context I'd think. I'd also think that the average age of those 2 is probably the youngest. Bridges developed out of a Cedar Cliff base, the Drive Home out of a Messiah base. For a while, there was little if any "industry" or "scene" expectations, as they were unknown. For the other 3 bands, their first few gigs were well attended, as those shows were anticipated, seeing that people in the "scene" knew the bands that they were in before. Eh, I'm not sure what any of that means. 3) New All Age Venue in Harrisburg? Apparently Tony from The Commercials is working on a All Age Venue. "We are now filed as a business with the state of PA. We will have a place picked out by next week, and then have our loan approval shortly after. It is going to be called Champion Ship CD's, Records, and Performance Arts Venue. It will be a record store, club, and recording studio. We are also probably going to have practice space available to rent out." - From the Out Here Alone Message Boards. Wow, this is good big news. Places like the Why're were places to see really good bands. Seeing Tony involved with this project means reliable quality entertainment once again. I wonder how this might effect Todd's efforts for a Why're replacement? Todd (or Team Todd) and Tony (or Team Tony) both know what they're doing, both provide quality entertainment. I do want to mention the final Why're show (yes, a long time ago), as I said I would. I was at Dewey that Saturday 9/27 (the day of the "real" last show, the big last show) so I wasn't there. By all accounts it was great, a wonderful experience, with over 400 paid over the course of the day. I was there the technically last day, the 9/28 show, saw Last Tuesday there, but everyone there told me that I missed the really really good one, and I'm sorry I missed the 9/27 show. I hope that there's room for both Team Tony's (Those Who Remains) venue and Team Todd's venue, or if there's only one, that everyone is happy and productive and working together. On a related topic, I checked out a post on my message board from Night Train to Terror. Good stuff. Like ATDI, Blood Brothers, the Liars. Bands that sound like Night Train to Terror strongly encouraged to post to my message board. That's the kind of music that's good and interesting, and rarely gets heard in bars around here, but is often heard in allage venues like The Why're. Over the years, plenty a good band has played in rooms like the Why're. I was looking through this site CPA Punk Flyers - seeing that bands like Saves the Day played at Studio 22 in Hershey, Thursday played at Studio 22 in Hershey, At the Drive In played at The Why're in New Cumberland. Hmm. Oh, the Monroe shows are organized here. 6:00am Thursday 1/15 The Underwater pictures from Europe. (over 200) Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5 Publishers Notes Archive - 2003 - 2002 - 2001 - 2000 - 1999 Music News and Announcements Archive

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