(Photo: Binary Sunrise by Fred Holston)
FRIDAY
Assassination City Roller Derby 2010 Season Black and Blue Awards featuring New Science Projects/Yeah Def (The Loft): Categories include “Favorite Assassination City Skater” and “Favorite Local Band.” I don’t know if it’s the acts or the categories, but for some reason this reminds me of a time when I was somehow talked into judging a poetry slam at a bubble tea shop.
Steel Hook Prostheses/Welby/The Watchers/Depths (Good Records): This mini noise-fest has turned into something of an annual event in honor of Mark Church’s birthday. It is also a rare chance to catch some actual noise on Greenville Avenue, and that should be a good jolt to the unassuming random customer.
DJ G/DJ Nicole (Fallout Lounge): This is billed as a Bowie Tribute night so ‘Thin White Duke’ (or any era really) attire encouraged (though I should add that almost nobody looks good in Bowie attire except for David Bowie). You’d probably be better off living a little dangerously to achieve that unforgettable eye color.
Mindless/High Anxieties/End Times/Special Guest/Releaser (1919 Hemphill)
The Gourds/Naptime Shake (The Kessler)
West End Motel/Fiend Without A Face/Pinebox Serenade (Rubber Gloves)
SATURDAY
Neeks/Binary Sunrise/Shiny Around The Edges (Pastime Tavern)
Bullitproof Tiger/Public Love Affair (City Tavern)
People Men/Cut Throat Freak Show/Electric Vengeance/Shudder (1919 Hemphill): It’s surprising to see a stunt gimmick, fire tricking, glass-eating freak show performance listed at 1919, especially considering that they turned down an opportunity to book the far less gimmicky Justice Yeldham. Yeldham, at least, performed actual music, even if he does use broken glass shards in lieu of standard instruments. Cut Throat Freak Show has performers that also use glass in their performance but they apparently just snack on light bulb shards rather than doing something constructive with them. The act has appeared on both Wife Swap and America’s Got Talent, and I’m sure I will never have to type that about any act that plays 1919 Hemphill again. If you’d like a sample, there is a clip on YouTube which features Nick Cannon almost maiming one of the performer’s nether-regions with explosives. Can’t imagine how that wouldn’t get further in the elimination process. We have mentioned Fort Worth’s People Men here before, and this new description on the 1919 site mentions that they play instrumental surf songs “too fast to be instrumental surf songs.” We’ll see.
Stoogeaphilia/The Black Dotz/ETA (Lola’s): Stoogeaphilia is a well-regarded Stooges cover band, so at least you’ll know the source material is solid, not to mention sacred. This still sounds appealing even if I was sent into an almost-depressed state pondering the entire existence of cover bands when I was handed a flier for a free AC/DC tribute act leaving a Mavs game last night. A patron in front of me immediately threw the flier on the ground while exclaiming “Cover band? Please.” I shrugged and thought, “Yeah, that’s about right.” But the thing is, “that’s about right” fits only if the band is overly professional. There is nothing worse than a cover band that takes itself too seriously. So, I figure, the worse the better, sacred source material or not. This is to say nothing of Stoogeaphilia, and I’ve heard that they are quite good. Just hopefully, not too good. The Black Dotz are Wanz Dover’s straight-forward rock band and features members of The Falkon.
Estrogen Highs/We Are Brothers/The Uptown Bums (Rubber Gloves): There was a tendency in punk bands that stuck around into the mid 1980’s to start incorporating pop elements into their music: jangly guitars, harmonies, etc. These “explorations” are usually frowned upon by afficianados when assessing a band’s complete catalogs, and of course, the purist cliche is that “Nothing they did was ever as good as those first three singles.” Estrogen Highs sound like this “second period” of a band’s career, only it’s their sound right off-the-bat. There is a lazy charm to their music that separates them from many of their aggressively forward, garage-dwelling peers. But that sort of devil-may-care attitude prevents them from coming off as foolish as said peers, many of whom try really hard and yet aren’t good for much more than selling expensive jeans and Scions.
SUNDAY
Capital Disco with Redsean (Elm Street Bar): I remember Redsean’s original Disqo Disco weekly in a much different time. It was early 2008 and J.U.S.T.I.C.E. was still a big deal, though already on the way out (even that far back, believe it or not). As time went on, the weekly moved increasingly away from blog-influenced mixes and more into actual disco, and the event started to live up to its own name. Capital Disco will most likely start off with a sure-footed awareness that Disqo Disco took two years to build, and it will be interesting to see and hear where Sean is now.
