Couches on Fire: Morgantown via Myspace

The other day it occurred to me that Myspace was taking over the universe of band websites. Here's a site that makes it easy to connect with fans, give them songs to check out and ways of giving feedback to your band/project/thingee. The other day I noticed how even though the Emergency have a lovely website complete with their own domain, I was drawn instead to their Myspace page. Now I know some people despise Myspace, but for a fan of non-mainstream music it's gotten difficult to avoid because of the promotional options for bands, dance nights, clubs, and even record labels.

I browsed through Morgantown's offerings, and I noted most of regularly gigging bands at places like 123, the Rosewood and the Brewpub have myspace pages. So I thought I'd take a stab at separating the wheat from the chaff and provide you all with a vaguely comprehensive list of who's who on the Morgantown Myspace nexus, including all genres, entities and so on. It's unavoidable that this will leave someone out, but I'm trying to include pages where people have actually put in some effort and might conceivably play a show in the future, or did in the past. I counted about 120 active bands, musicians or projects, plus a smattering of venues, defunct bands and dance nights.

Due to the immense number of links I have divided them into some rough categories. Hopefully people will understand the need for this and not be too nitpicky on who's in what category. I also tried to separate active from inactive bands but I may have lumped some of each in the wrong section. And before I go further, does anyone know who the Foolish is? It's a one-man band with some of the yummiest influences, a record deal and a bunch of really good tunes and I've never heard of him/them before. Anyway take a look, there's a bunch I'd never heard of, maybe there's someone who could open up for you next time you play a show?

Clubs

123 Pleasant Street
the Rosewood Theatre

Indie

the Aviator
David Bello and His God-Given Right
the Black Giraffe
Bowling League
Braille Drivers
Electricity Comes from Other Planets
the Emergency
the Foolish
the Greenwalds
M. Iafrate and the Priesthood
Bobby Lane
Librarians
J. Marinelli
Moon
Nakano
Sandra Black
Xylen Roberts

Jam / Bluegrass

the Adventures of Maximum Jackson
Rachel Eddy & the Mo-Town Rounders
the Greens
Adam Hurt
Scott Phillips
Solar Plexus
Tanglewood
Thred
Vern's Pot 'o Chili

Hip Hop / R&B

304 Reconz
6'6" 240 (supposedly this is the link but following it gives the wrong profile, but he's on there if you search for him)
8bitz
Ace Beanz
B Hyphen
Big Savage Fats
Chivalry
D-Why
DJ Andvil
G-Mode Morgantown
Johnny Harmonic
ICE$I$
Jathara
Meuwl
Mischievious
NHC vs AOD
Profit Money
Questionmarkomcross
Tynisha
Way-D's Side Projects

Electronic / DJs / Dance Nights

Beloved Dead
Big Ass Manatee
the Bloodblisters
Bombscare
DJ ComaKid
DJ Brian Connelly
DJ Dude K
DJ Phorest
Dreams of Mirrors
Evasdad
HailDark
Mayday!
Plastic Surgery for Music
Anthony Steele
Telesys
Underwater Sex Plants

Punk / Ska / Emo

Accidental Fashion
Cryptorchid Chipmunk
the Days Past
Hate Ashbury
Hello Canteloupe
J.C. and the Latter Day Taints
A Lesson Learned
Law Biting Citizens
the Monkey Knife Fights
the Non-Stop Ultimate
Smokehouse
Unsupervised
xAPx

Metal / Industrial / Hardcore

Anger Within
Blind Tempest
Descension Rate
Diabolus
Justification
Mechanical Failure
Pinebox
Rezinus
Seahag
So Run Like Hell
Sweet Cuppin' Cakes
Thrall
Withouteyes
Walking Out Blind
Warren Hughes

Rock Comma General

American Sound Syndicate
the Argument
the C.O.Z.
Cherry Grove
the Doughboys
Matt Estel
Fake Eddie
Grundeldrag
Hovel
Ish
Jason Lewis
the Love Me Knots
Billy Matheny
the New Relics
One Foot in the Gravy
the Ones That Got Away
Sha

Experimental / Weirdness / Comedy

ah.
Tony Castillo
Demon John
Huron
Jimi Original
Krueger's Circle Jerk
Maximum Headlessness
Shoe
the Dirty Rotten Tampons

Acoustic

Almost Heroes
the Black Knights
Brett Hammon & Andrew Slater
Malificent
the Night Armoury
Triplane
Your Old Converses

Defunct Bands

Buddha Thunkit
the Caterpillar Scheme
the Devolvers
Dev / Null
the Dylans
Karma to Burn
Kukim
Peter & the Pets
the Tighty Whities
Tomorrow the World

Oh, and lastly as soon as it's working again I'll make us our own Myspace profile for Couches on Fire and post a link to it here soon.

19 Comments:

At 1/24/2006 1:20 AM, miafrate said…

damn! that's exhaustive!!
At 1/24/2006 1:49 AM, Anonymous said…

You forgot Nakano.

http://www.myspace.com/nakano
At 1/24/2006 8:31 AM, Brian said…

I'll add them. It may be that they didn't turn up in a band search (this was the case for Maximum Headlessness) or that I missed a page, as there were 27 pages in all, so about 265 results from the search to weed through.
At 1/24/2006 10:10 AM, Anonymous said…

pennington-

you read my thoughts. i had to browse for band links the other day when i posted the weekend round up, and i thought to myself, 'what if all of this was in one place'? and then the next morning it is! great job.
At 1/24/2006 10:21 AM, Brian said…

Thanks, Aaron. Hey where's '85 Flood's Myspace page now, eh?
At 1/24/2006 10:46 AM, Anonymous said…

eh, doesn't exist yet. it will though, as soon as we have some semi-decent recordings. i agree that myspace is making music webpages almost obsolete. there's no reason to go out and hold down that "85Flood" domain name anymore, because myspace will do all the work for me.

i like having links here on couches on fire. do you think they should be added to the sidebar (though there are so many that it could get a little unruly). or could we make a seperate page with a little more info, like a descriptive tagline for each band, or maybe contact info? just a thought.
At 1/24/2006 11:08 AM, Brian said…

I think we need a separate page but Blogger is not very good at facilitating multiple info pages.I'll just have to build a page on one of my accounts somewhere and we'll put a link to it on the sidebar. Or someone else can, whatever. I won't have time to work on it until this weekend at the earliest.
At 1/24/2006 11:33 AM, miafrate said…

switch to wordpress, dogs! ;)
At 1/24/2006 6:53 PM, Skull-Shaped Maracas said…

thanks, louis harold!

actually, thanks to brian, and tom from myspace. i was going to buy a domain name too, but lately i've realized that jmarinelli.com would be more trouble than it's worth.
At 1/25/2006 12:05 AM, Brian said…

Sorry, I had to remove Mr. Harold's personalized comment, I didn't want to be responsible for his Google PageRank going up.

So we have a myspace page now, http://www.myspace.com/couchesonfire

Between myspace and blogspot etc. you don't need a website unless you want to add things like more than four songs and videos and such.
At 1/25/2006 12:24 PM, Skull-Shaped Maracas said…

the foolish is a project done by a fellow named mitch, who i knew (but not very well, unfortunately) in the late 1980s. he played in XANAX, SALO (essentially xanax under a different name), and earlier, DARK FACTORY (who, as you may suspect took a bit of influence from joy division and the wake) -- these bands were based out of kaiser, and would play in morgantown fairly often.

i have a great xanax/salo story that involes a lot of acid, effects pedals, mud, and burning pubic hair. let's just say that their set out at randy's farm in late august '89 was the perfect capper to a rather weird evening.

i take great comfort in knowing that (1) he's still playing music and writing songs (because he's great at both) and (2) he's based out of morgantown.

if you're reading this, mitch: play a show at 123 -- we love you!
At 1/25/2006 2:04 PM, Anonymous said…

check out the red nails records website (there's a link from the foolish's myspace page), and you can find mp3s galore.

j
At 1/26/2006 1:39 AM, Anonymous said…

Hey, actually, The Foolish isn't Mitch. Mitch passed away in January of 1996 and is sadly missed by all. He wasn't in Dark Factory either. Mitch was in Salo, Xanax, Youthinasia, Colourzone, and Skag Passion, as well as doing a lot of solo recordings. The Foolish is just me (Hi, I'm "Bunk") and I've previously performed/recorded solo as Murray the Cop and with many bands (Dark Factory, The Skipping Class, Loaded For Bear, Legoland, Drug, Linus, etc...). I'm originally from Keyser WV, am currently residing in Asheville NC, but will be a Morgantown resident this summer and wanted to get a jump start on being part of the scene again by changing my My Space location profile to Morgantown. Thanks for the fine comments Pennington! I hope to be playing some shows (with a full band) in late summer/early fall in the Morgantown (and regional) area. I haven't played there since September 2002, so I really can't wait!

I've been reading this blog pretty frequently since my family & I decided we were moving to Morgantown about 2 months ago. It's great to see that the scene it still strong and thanks to this blog for doing your part in keeping it strong!

Oh, and as stated in the last post, tons of mp3's at http://www.rednailmusic.org if you're so inclined.
At 1/26/2006 3:59 PM, Anonymous said…

Hey Bunk,

I'm sorry to hear that he passed away. Very sorry -- from what I knew of Mitch, he was a great musician and a fun-loving guy.

Good to hear, however, that you'll be in Morgantown soon. You make incredible music.

Take care,

J.
At 1/26/2006 4:56 PM, Brian said…

Hey Bunk, good to hear from someone who'll be coming to Morgantown soon. We had some dark patches but the 'scene' seems to be chugging along much better now.
At 1/30/2006 1:01 PM, Anonymous said…

re: "dev / null"

fyi, the proper spelling, though not reflected by myspace, is "/dev/null". it's a unix/Linux thing.
At 1/30/2006 9:47 PM, Skull-Shaped Maracas said…

"re: "dev / null"

fyi, the proper spelling, though not reflected by myspace, is "/dev/null". it's a unix/Linux thing."

I think I made, like three /dev/null flyers (for/d/n / Braille Drivers or Egoslovia shows) before I got the name right. I always liked the name, phonetically especially, because it sounded (to me) like 'Death Knell.'

Unix. used that program during my dark, dark Synovate days. I wrote a really short song about it called "Log In, Eunuchs!" based phonetically on the LOGIN UNIX command. I'm quiet, true enuff, but a deep, deep thinker.

Ridin' the Sleep-Dep Express,

J.
At 2/05/2006 2:24 AM, Anonymous said…

Thanks a million for putting this expansive list together. I've spent the last week or so checking out all the bands and am just astounded at all the good music currently in Motown! I'm really looking forward to this summer and autumn! Again, great job!
At 1/09/2009 8:36 PM, Anonymous said…

Thanks much for doing this. We have never played Morgantown and you literally saved me hours of work. THANKS!

- Dan
www.myspace.com/occasionalmonster