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This page is a Monthly Archive of entries from March 2008 listed from newest to oldest.
John Kosmopoulos knows what it means to keep doing what you love. And despite the fact that he is older than you might expect, you'd never guess it from his boyish good looks and endless charm. Plus, he can still throw as good of a party as anyone in this town. Not bad for someone who can remember Nixon in office.
I discovered St. Louis rock quintet Ludo quite by accident a few years ago when I brought family and friends to see suburban darlings The Dog And Everything at the Metro in Chicago. I was ready to see an excellent show that night, but had no idea I would be finding one of my “happy accidents” — a band that wins me over with live performance and joins my list of favorites. Ludo was on the bill that night, and hit the stage with a veteran swagger and theatrical flair that had every single person I was with lined up to buy their self-titled album. Their solid freshmen effort was followed with the concept/rock opera EP Broken Bride, which showcased the band's full understanding of orchestrations and composition, as well as their ability to craft stories through clever lyrical turns. The apocalyptic zombie attack song “Save Our City” still regularly moves me to tears, and I say that sincerely. The early March release of You’re Awful, I Love You, Ludo’s second full-length effort and first on major label Island Records, was something I anticipated with great expectations.
Tonight at The Iron Post, local group The Brother Whys releases their debut album, I Wrote This With Our Bare Hands, to the self-proclaimed tune of Pixies and Built to Spill. If the songs available on their MySpace page are any indication, this is a group you would be wise (so sorry) to pay attention to — both their songwriting and the execution are tight.
The Brother Whys will be preceded tonight by special guest Lucky Mulholland, who will be coming out of winter hibernation to show off their power-pop sensibilities, and by Beat Kitchen vocalist, local legend (and chili chef) Brandon T. Washington.
The Iron Post is located at 120 S. Race St. in Urbana. The fun starts at 9 p.m. tonight, and cover is $5.
Local band Green Light Go may have dissolved in early 2006, but fans, take heart; the resurrection is at hand.
Hot Cops, the current project of former GLG bassist/vocalist Mike Daab, debuts tonight as a special guest with Hathaways and Snowsera (pictured). If you don't go to check out the ambient rock of Snowsera, or the talent of one Kate Hathaway and her not-even-barely-legal brother, go for the new music — who can say no to a hot cop?
After downtown bar and former venue Cowboy Monkey closed its doors to local music at the start of this year, rumors flew — were they tearing out the stage? Were they still hosting shows on weekends? Were they expanding the kitchen? Was this a knife in the back of the downtown music scene?
Let the rumors rest (for now) — this Saturday, Cowboy Monkey opens its doors to local music once again, hosting Ryan Groff, Casados, and Washington, D.C. act Vandaveer.
Ward Gollings, longtime talent buyer at the Monkey, is not surprised by the show, and blames local bloggers and forum-frequenters for fueling rumors: "(The show this weekend) does indeed indicate that there will be 'one-off' events and periodic shows. My two cents? Stop hating. And when you see or hear of a good band at Monkey, and you have the time, go see it. Same goes for every other venue in town."
Perhaps if enough people come out to show their support for this decision, a few hearts might grow three times bigger, and perhaps local music at the Monkey won't be such a rare occurrence.
The show starts at 9:00 p.m. and is mercifully located at 6 E. Taylor St., Champaign. Cover is $5.
There is always a certain amount of justifiable skepticism involved when approaching a record performed by an actor or actress. Sure, some of these folks are probably more extensively (and arguably better) trained than a good number of our favorite musicians, but that’s the point, isn’t it? We don’t want to hear a hundred records per year by classically trained musicians. We want music that’s unbridled, that seems to come naturally to the performer, that’s off-kilter enough to question training in the first place. We don’t want a publicity stunt. And though I adore both Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward, the duo behind the moniker She & Him, I approached Volume One with a skepticism similar to that with which I’d approach any of the above performers.
Aloha’s fifth album, and fifth for Polyvinyl, finds the band shedding their electric guitars, and focusing more on the their songwriting craft.
In fact, there are no electric guitar driven tracks on the entire record. Light Works is a new sound for Aloha, showing the pursuit of releasing the most straight pop approached album in their catalogue.
John Isberg likes to wear a couple of different hats. It's just part of his style.
After performing with The Blackouts The Living Blue for a couple of months, Isberg paired up with The Firebird Band in 2001 where he joined Chris Broach for a series of high intensity releases and tours in the post-Braid era.
i:scintilla decided to relinquish their status as a "local band" earlier this year when they moved to Chicago. Generally speaking, I'd be the first to tell an indie band that this move is a bad one and that they were making a huge mistake. The rent is higher, the scene is harder to break into, and the chance of being "discovered" at something like MOBFest fell out of fashion at the onset of blog culture a few years back.
Fortunately for i:scintilla, they aren't an indie rock act at all.
It’s not every week that an act from overseas decides to stop in town, and tomorrow night the Canopy Club has Brighton England’s indie-rock post-punk revivalists British Sea Power.
From their great frantic spazztastic debut The Decline of British Sea Power, and their excellent sophomore effort, Open Season, the "Power" are now on tour supporting their latest full length, Do You Like Rock Music?
What exactly is "Northern Rock"? I am not quite sure, but I can state without question that I want to hear more of it if bands like Great Lakes Myth Society are leading the movement. Based in Ann Arbor, Mich., this quintet led by the brothers Monger, have been churning out its dramatic brand of chamber pop since 1999. First known as the Original Brothers and Sisters of Love, the band has morphed into its current incarnation after two core members left in 2002. By 2005, Great Lakes Myth Society was officially born and started making the rounds on the national indie scene with performances at SXSW and CMJ Music Marathon.
Since 2005, WPGU and Buzz have presented the Champaign-Urbana Local Music Awards, a festivity to celebrate excellence in the music scene. Nominees are selected and then voted on by the public in categories such as ‘Best Rock’, ‘Best Hip-Hop’ and ‘Best Singer/Songwriter’.
Each year, the nominees have become increasingly aggressive in their promotion tactics and going as far as printing so-called ‘attack ads’ on their competition to sway the vote to their advantage. Our Sizzler! reporters have uncovered a few of the smear ads sent to voters this year:
Check out the madness after the jump!
There are two major schools of thought when discussing bands in terms of their elements: one faction contends that there is infinite possibility in music — that each time a guitar is picked up, originality is possible, regardless of the history, influence, age, etc. The other faction argues that music, particularly rock ‘n’ roll, paints with a limited palette — that musicians are merely a sum of their parts, and particularly of their influences, and that—basically—what any critics might call “originality” is simply luck.
This, in some ways, is not so different from the argument between Creationists and Evolutionists.
Perhaps of lesser global significance, this division of music critics yields strange similarities: it produces the strange nomenclature of “musical gods,” of worship, rumors of unearthliness, and simple declarations that the premier progressors of rock ‘n’ roll not only will never be surpassed, but can never be surpassed.
With their recently released sophomore album, Some Racing, Some Stopping, in their hot little hands, local indie-pop darlings Headlights head home from Virginia, now halfway through a North American tour. Guitarist and vocalist Tristan Wraight reports from the road.
February 23rd. 3rd Floor. Fredricksburg, VA.
It's hard to leave the lap of luxury, but them's the breaks. We are playing an all-ages place that sounds like it will be a lot of fun. We have a shortish drive through the Virginia country side. It is as gloomy as it is beautiful and Shearwater's Palo Santo feels good and spooky. We make a wrong turn or two but get there at the perfect time. Not too early, not too late. The 3rd floor is just as we predicted: a large open art gallery with a corner stage set up. It's really great. These shows are always fun. There is a back room where we are allowed to have beer. Beer is better than nothing, but it's not the kind of juice that makes us hurt children with sound waves. Luckily Ben and Laura have come to this show too and have brought the supplies for "Big T's Tavern" (another name for the looney bin...probably our band fave). There are a lot of kids here and they are full of energy so we have to try to keep up with their youthful verve. The promoter and the other bands (Exit Clov from D.C.) tonight are great. We got some rooms at a nearby Days Inn and had one last hurrah with Ben and Laura. It will be sad to say goodbye to some of our best friends in the universe.
A long-time Crowes fan through the missteps that were the years 1998 through 2006, save a couple of damn decent solo records from frontman Chris Robinson and the 2000 collaboration/tour LP with Jimmy Page, Live at the Greek, it was easy to be skeptical about the first Black Crowes studio record in seven years. Many of these years were spent releasing misses of records and self-indulgently releasing as many B-sides and live shows as possible. It all felt money-grubbing, considering the band was on hiatus for at least half of that time. Frankly, though the Crowes are a great rock band, and in this reviewer’s estimation a great rock band is always relevant, it was difficult to tell—through all of the sibling rivalry and Hollywood press—whether or not brothers Chris and Rich Robinson could get it together long enough to recognize this relevance. Needless to say, here we are in 2008: The Black Crowes are no longer on hiatus, and Warpaint is, surprisingly, a solid record.
Our search for The Next Big Thang continues and we are still looking for entries! This is the perfect opportunity for someone looking for a leg up. Are you tired of whack home recordings through cheap microphones that don’t quite capture your ideas? Can’t find a way to get the attention of local promoters? This is your chance. Step up to the mic and let us hear what you have to say. If we dig it, you’ll get a full length original track and a feature profile right here on Yes Yes Y’all. What are you waiting for?
Entry instructions after the jump.
I know exactly what'll happen. I'll sit down, play a few holiday songs, and then some drunk jerk will yell out, "'Piano Man,'" and everybody will start clapping, and I'll look like a real asshole if I don't play it.
Tonight at The Canopy Club, The Piano Man will play in The Small Hall (moved from The Void Room), utilizing his extensive mental Filofax of songs to charm and entertain the masses. Fancy some Ben Folds, Coldplay, or Elton John with your Tuesday night? Is 105.9 not filling the Genesis-shaped void in your soul? If the music isn't enough to convince you that you're in a real piano bar, the special on $2 long island iced teas should help.
The Canopy Club is located at 708 S. Goodwin in Urbana. Doors open at 9 p.m. for the 10 p.m. free show.
Excerpt from "What I would be Thinking about if I Were Billy Joel Driving Toward a Holiday Party Where I Knew There Was Going to Be A Piano," Michael Ian Black, McSweeney's Internet Tendency
I wanted to review Jane Boxall. I really did.
I trudged to Aroma Café last week with all the best intentions: I would write up the show with Lynn O’Brien that she was playing at the café that night. However, as soon as Boxall took her place behind her instrument of choice — the marimba — and picked up her mallets, I found myself quite unable to describe exactly what was happening. My stilted review (“The noises Jane makes on the big marimba are very nice") would not have done her justice.
Boxall is a diminutive performer who harnesses the sound of the 500-pound marimba like a lion tamer, and in her spare time, she drums for — of all local groups — aggro-metal band Tritone. (She’s also the former drummer for prog rock ex-outfit Triple Whip.) At Aroma, the longer I watched her intriguing performance, the more I gave up on finding my own words, and the more I wondered what led her to choose the marimba, choose a metal band, choose central Illinois as the stage for her career.
George Hunter moved to “Catfish Haven” when he was four years old. He only lived in the rural trailer park for three or so years, but that was enough time for the place to leave an indelible impression on him. To hear him talk about Catfish Haven, the place, is to begin to understand Catfish Haven, the band.
“Catfish Haven was a really small stretch of land in southern Missouri . . . probably seven or eight trailers connected by a gravel road out in the middle of nowhere,” Hunter told me in a 2006 interview. “For a kid it was a magical place. I could explore everything. . . . Our neighbor had a pig pen and I would ride these pigs with my six year-old friend.”
Stephen Ucherek and Joe Prokop know a little something about perseverance. Now in their 10th year as bandmates in one of Champaign’s most beloved psych-rock acts of all time, The Living Blue, the quartet (with what seems to finally have a stable rhythmic core) are gearing up to release their fourth album together, and second as The Living Blue, Walk, Talk, Rhythm, Roam.
Alright folks! Now’s your chance to do some sizzling of your own! Check out the picture below and comment on it. If your caption beats mine, I’ll let you have an autographed copy of the highly-acclaimed Hedlites album, Sum Racing, Sum Stopping.
If Illinois is Renaissance Italy, Urbana’s Paul Kotheimer is the Leonardo Da Vinci of the home studio. Originally from Chicago, he’s been making his home in Urbana for nearly fifteen years. A little story about Paul: once a local songwriter told Paul that she was interested in starting a collective of local musicians. Surprised, Paul responded that he had been acting, for years, as if there already were a collective of local musicians. He helps out everywhere, often for free: WEFT, Red Herring, The Channing-Murray, people’s weddings, loaning equipment, setting up PAs, playing for something, nothing, anything, nowhere somewhere anywhere, in the acoustic nightmare of local cafes, 6th and Green late Friday night, crooning to drunk jocks, singing louder than the MTD Green line, playing the WEFT sessions, having his music mixed through a blender, recording the Guerilla Parlor Ensemble, helping Beezus, helping me. Hoping somebody will occasionally toss the words “thank you” into his guitar case. Some guy from Herring Boys still hasn’t paid Paul for the Rickenbacker bass he took.
Of all the fresh-faced rock and roll upstarts who call Champaign-Urbana home, there are only a handful who have experienced the evasive place called fame. It's the place where hard work and serendipity meet. Lucky for Headlights, fame has opened the door and waved them through, and lucky for us, they are truly keeping their friends close, and the city they call home closer. Currently halfway through their cross-country tour (which guitarist/vocalist Tristan Wraight chronicles in our Tour Diary), the band bows out of their whirlwind of national acclaim and press tonight to return home for a good old-fashioned indie rock celebration. Join them with guests Evangelicals and Tall Tale tonight at The Canopy Club for the local CD release of their sophomore album, Some Racing, Some Stopping.
The Canopy Club is located at 708 S. Goodwin Ave. in Urbana and is an 18+ venue. Tickets are $10 at the gate and doors open at 8 p.m. for the show at 9:30 p.m.
Photo courtesy of Justine Bursoni.
Recently, Champaign-Urbana has been lucky to be on the receiving end of the influx of talent being developed 120 miles east of C-U in Indianapolis. The "biggest small town in the world" has developed some of the more interesting artists in the Midwest as of late, and one of those without question is the one man avant po-dunk player, David Adamson, better known as Grampall Jookabox.
The Canopy Club, Feb. 28th, 2008
William: Opening with a vigorously plodding country number, Jessica Lea Mayfield’s opening set soon accumulated rock mass, with bowed upright bass and jagged electric guitar. The result is a restrained southern violence, a thunderhead sweeping across the gentle delta.
The band wear suits and each countrified ballad is delivered like an important piece of hard-earned wisdom. Mayfield mentions she is from a musical family; the bassist is Jessica’s brother. The drummer uses brushes and looks like Andy Warhol. The guitarist sometimes descends from view to manipulate what sounds like a pedal steel.
Cristy: My mother saw Mayfield in Springfield last year, opening up for The Avett Brothers. Back then, she was a 17-year-old chitlin, sporting a mohawk and appearing solo. She has since changed her moniker (back to her given name, I assume) and gotten a band that only enhances her talent. A shy presence, Mayfield’s maple-rich voice betrays her elfin countenance. She sings like the meek girl in school who pines after boys from afar, then retreats to her bedroom to sing soulfully along with Dusty Springfield records.
After almost nine months of being MIA, college rock favorites Santa are returning to the stage to promote their debut extended player, My Bones. Each member spent their requisite semester abroad in the fall, and during that time, sharply readjusted their focus and their sound: they are no longer your trustafarian roommate's favorite local band. They have shed much of their neo-hippie sounds for a much crisper and tighter display of rock music that is akin to the likes of Jeff Buckley, Pearl Jam and Coldplay.
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