Catching up and Some New Recordings

Hi Folks,

Sorry things have been silent on my end. Luckily Mr. Hawley has been keeping things up on his end. First off, we have a new blogger here, Danielle from Ish will be our first female blogger and hopefully help us keep up with everything even better.

I was hoping to drive up to Huntington on Wednesday to catch Austin, TX's amazing Voxtrot but the show was cancelled. This may have been due to some problems they've been having at Huntington's HYAMP which is a shame. They're asking for donations to help keep the club running so you might want to take a look at their plight. I won't have a chance to compare and contrast Huntington and Motown but I am going back to Athens, Ohio this weekend for the first time in forever and will be attending a show at the Union, their version of 123 Pleasant Street. I'll be sure to post some thoughts. Incidentally, Voxtrot are mulling over making a stop in Morgantown to make up for a cancelled DC show. Please write them and encourage them to come, they're one of the best new bands I've heard in years and I know kids here would love 'em.

I've seen a few shows lately but been a little busy with Valentine's and Mayday! and work and so forth. Descension Rate had a stellar performance at their show last week with J. Marinelli, Electricity Comes from Other Planets and Nakano. They debuted several new songs, some absolutely crazy makeup which had drummer Vicious looking like something out of an old Wax Trax video and frontman Jeff Jordan looking like the male incarnation of a Narnian witch. They put out a 4-song EP which they're selling for the dirt cheap price of $3. I was present during the recording of said EP last year up at NYC's Quad Studios, which was an amazing thing to take part of. I threw a picture from the recording sessions up here from my Flickr for your edification, follow the link for some more. Anyway they sounded and looked fantastic at their show, and thanks to a good writeup by the DA there were a ton of metal dudes and dudettes out enjoying things, it's nice to see them bring so many folks out.

Speaking of ECFOP, they've really matured a lot since I last saw them. New guitarist Nick is a fantastic addition to the band and they remind me a lot of the kind of things Sonic Youth was doing when I was in high school and first getting into indie rock. Good stuff. I caught them with J. again as well as Ish and Bowling League at Fuel last weekend, which is a little small but cozy. J. also has a new EP which he's selling at shows and via Myspace. He recorded it at home onto 4-track, lo-fi style, but when you're a 1-man band the recording process is a little easier. Also he's got another EP coming out on Project Active Media and I don't recognize many song titles so I think it's mostly new. Hopefully we can get some reviews of these up here soon, and with the Emergency and Librarians working on full-lengths there should be a lot of recorded material out there representin' Motown soon.

Last, but certainly not least I wanted to mention something really important. 123 will be hosting a benefit on March 3rd for Corey Bicanich. You may not know Corey but he has played guitar in a number of Morgantown bands, including Sandra Black and Lobelia, but I'm sure many more. Corey's got some amazing stories about Morgantown and he's been here a long time. He had a really bad car wreck recently and is in a coma, and this is a benefit to help raise money for Corey's medical costs. Corey really deserves all of our help, and it's awesome that the local music scene has banded together to help. Some of the area's most veteran rockers will be playing, including the aforementioned Sandra Black, Mr. Marinelli and the Emergency as well as hard rockers Treasurecat. I really hope that everyone comes out to see all of these talented bands and support a really good cause. It could easily be any one of us in Corey's shoes and he really deserves our help.