Weekend Roundup 3/31 & 4/1

No fools here...

Friday, March 31st
123 Pleasant St. - Moon, Stonewall Jackson 5ive, Cobra
Brothers of Indie-vention
Corner Cafe - Future Kings of Nowhere, Midtown Dickens, Monkey Knife Fights
Catchy tunes from international waters (and North Carolina)
Fuel - Amber, Black Market Diary, Asleep, Stranded on Third
Hardcore rock and roll
Side Pocket Pub - The New Relics (Up All Night sponsered by U92FM)
Soothing pop sounds
WV Brewing Co. - Zen
Jam-a-rama


Saturday, April 1st
123 Pleasant St. - Jackass Flats, Halftime String Band
Halftime String Band CD Release party!
Fuel - Mojo Filter, Genius Negative, OFFSET
Loud and rowdy
McClafferty's - Herb and Hanson
High speed acoustic duo
Side Pocket Pub - Strung Out String Banned (Up All Night sponsered by U92FM)
Bluegrass to sing along too
WV Brewing Co. - Thred
Funk Pranksters



Support Local Music!

The virtue of the right venue?

I like that I live in a town where "I didn't catch alot of music this past weekend", means I only saw two shows.

I started out at 123 Pleasant St. on Saturday night for the Hackensaw Boys/Morgantown Rounders show. The Morgantown Rounders are really cooking right now. They played a short and sweet support set which was in contrast to their all-night St. Patty's Day throwdown I had seen the week prior. The energy at both shows tops anything I'd ever seen from them in their "home venue" of the Rosewood. The crowd was large, hooked up with the band, and ready to get down. The Hackensaw Boys delivered an hour and half set that gave all in the room exactly what they came for: a two hour dance party of sing-along heavy bluegrass.

Both crowds were here for the band. They came for the music first, and the party second which leads to attentiveness and activeness on the audience's part. I for one, feel a good show starts with the crowd feeling like they are participating rather than observing.

I found out that such was not the case in all situations.

At setbreak I headed up the street to catch part of Thred's set at Chic n' Bones. Now, I don't frequent Chic n' Bones and other bars of that ilk, something I'm pretty sure I share in common with most of the people who co-habitate in this corner of the web. For me, if it's not a place I see live music, I don't really go. Now, recently Chic n' Bones has added a huge new room that is very, very nice. It has a high stage, a big dancefloor and an elevated bar that stretches the length of the back wall. It's the kind of room that in a bigger city would book exclusively mid-range national acts. I'm not sure what the capacity is, but I'm sure it's pretty big. It strikes me as twice as big as the Rosewood, and much more polished.

So here's Thred, ripping away with their origional brand of funk on a nice stage, in a nice room, getting a nice guarentee, and playing to hundreds of people who are doing everything in their power to pay as little attention as posisble. Hell, with the bar positioned as it is half the room have their backs to the band.

Now, these people didn't come to listen to music. They're here to get wasted and laid. Band? Music? Who cares. In fact, there is now a new line inside the bar to get back into the "old room" which is more suited for simply sitting and drinking.

On one hand, the band is being paid nicely (though I beleive had to bring their own sound), it's a nice room, and there are alot of people there. To grow as a band you have to expand your audience past your friends, roommates and non-gender-specific significant others, but at what cost?

The question is: is this type of gig a good gig for a local band who plays origional music?

Everyone Needs a Drummer

Reports this week that the number of formerly drummer-laden bands now drummerless in the town of Mo has reached three. Maximum Headlessness have been on the prowl for a drummer for some time (I think theirs moved or went into the military), Bowling League have been sans drummer since the departure of workaholic Kevin Post, and Descension Rate robo-drummer Vicious is moving to Tennessee to start a new job. Drummers often end up doing double duty but I suggest flyering to find some unmined drummers in the rough.

As for the D-Rate, they will soldier on with a completely robotic drum machine but are reportedly on the lookout for a human drummer who uses normal drums and a keyboardist. In the meantime they have two more shows with their current lineup, one multigenre show here with rockers American Sound Syndicate, hip hop heavyweight Meuwl and out of towners Devola from NYC, who apparently sound like every genre form the second half of the 20th century, and are female-fronted as well, keeping the bill 50/50 on singer vocalist ratio. The show is Friday week, one week after this Friday's Moon / Stonewall Jackson 5ive / Cobra rockfest.

Almost forgot to mention though that Descension Rate got on the bill of a major industrial show in Pittsburgh. They'll be opening for Slick Idiot, which is some of the fellows who used to be in KMFDM (#1 in Descension Rate's list of influences). Also on the bill are Pittsburgh's industrial flagbearers Rein[Forced] and a couple other bands I'm not familiar with. If you want some details, check out Descension Rate's Myspace page. Kudos to them for landing a spot opening for some bigtime folks in another city entirely.

Lastly I spoke for a while to Arms over Arteries drummer Chris Quattro when I ran into him at the Den the other day. I didn't catch their show at the Corner Cafe but they've apparently been touring a great deal and not playing much locally. I hadn't seen their name about for a long time until the show's flyers began surfacing, but they're still going strong.

Oh and very very lastly, I noticed via our barely-used forums that local one-man recording unit Shoe has finished an entire album which he describes as indie pop (not, I noted, indiepop) and is giving it away completely free to download here. Go out and get some free new music, and use the forum dammit. Thank you and goodnight.