RTP-area local music and culture

[grady AT ibiblio.org]

I think I typed "2003" for every single one of these entries in the 
database at least once. Guess that's one way to retrain:


Tuesday, January 6
Rapider Than Horsepower
[http://artists.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/Rapider_Than_Horsepower/], Dead
Elephant Bicycle
Project Space 211, Winston-Salem

Rapider Than Horsepower are from Bloomington, IN, home of many more
weird/wonderful things than you might expect. Not that I know anything
about the band.

Dead Elephant Bicycle used to be called Babar (how do *you* pronounce
it?) and they're from the Triad somewhere. They make odd
pretty-cum-demented grls-with-cellos boys-with-guitars "rock" music.



Tuesday, January 6
Roxotica, Resurrectum, Pray for Death
Go! Studios Rm. 4, Carrboro

Roxotica are our own NWOBHM tributants-turned-serious metal-rockers.
One of em's currently Atlantan, too, so your chances of seeing them
have been curtailed over the past 4-5 months and will continue to be
so for the foreseeable future. So don't squander this one.

I read this about Resurrectum: "Finally came Resurrectum, & this was
the first time I got to discover this band, but I've known many of
them for a while now. They're locals & fuck were they brutal! & any
band who does a song about Manowar & the only lyrics are
"mano-fucking-war" are alright in my book. In yr face, brutal
female-fronted hardcore...I hope they stay around for a while." -
[http://masterdik.com/archive/shows/jd/121102.html] masterdik.com



Wednesday, January 7
Dead Meadow [http://www.deadmeadow.com], Sweet Militia, My Dear Ella
[http://www.mydearella.com]
Go! Studios Rm. 4, Carrboro

Dead Meadow are from the DC area, IIRC, and they make heavy stonery
Sabbathy rock. I've managed to see them 2-3 times and while they've
never exactly ruled my world, they do their thing pretty well. I
vaguely recall some excellent Echoplex utilization. They've never
managed to top that MP3 I downloaded like 3 years ago, the one that
was like Sabbath with actual tiny elves singing. If only I knew what
I'd done with that . . .

Sweet Militia are 3/4ths of Analogue II with the crucial addition of
Cy Rawls on bass, occasional singing, and vest. Those of you who
didn't even know Cy could play should ask him about his high school
band sometime.

My Dear Ella have largely forsworn their early Beatlesy jangle in
favor of a more muscular Swervedrivery thing, or so I'm led to believe
by highly selective listening to their forthcoming album whose name
escapes me.



Wednesday, January 7
Tungsten 74 [http://www.tungsten74.com/]
Nightlight, Chapel Hill

Tungsten 74 are from Brooklyn and they claim to play "instrumental
space-rock" and you'll have to figure out the rest on your own because
their [http://www.tungsten74.com] website is an utter piece of
overdesigned crap.



Thursday, January 8
Blackstrap
Nightlight, Chapel Hill

Every time I listen to Blackstrap (hey, I've never seen them, though
I've been present in a building while they were playing innit) I'm
reminded of Dead Kennedys, both in terms of sheer nearly-falling-apart
nervous energy and vocalist-annoyance factor, which is probably good
because I'm pretty sure that's what they're going for. Don't even try
to imagine Jello Biafra as a tiny woman, though.



Friday, January 9
The Dynamite Brothers [http://www.dynamitebrothers.com/], A Problem of
Alarming Dimensions
[http://www.8088records.com/problemofalarmingdimensions/], The
Strugglers [http://www.thestrugglers.org/], Utah!
[http://www.utah-rock.com]
Cat's Cradle, Carrboro

You know how you're always bitching about the paucity of new bands in
the Triangle? We both know you're full of it, and here's a
mini-showcase to prove it. At least half these bands moved here from
elsewhere (I haven't decided whether to count the Strugglers among
them or not). Utah!s latest LP is on Raleigh's Bifocal Media &
somebody in the Indy called it the local indie-rock album of the year,
I think. I suppose that depends on what other local indie-rock albums
you heard this year, but I'll definitely vouch for the lush brilliance
of at least a third of the cuts on it.

A Problem of Alarming Dimensions are, on record, pretty
spacey/droney/floaty, with guitars, but also samples & other noises.
They oughta hook up with Raleigh's Shadow of a Great Name, actually.
Notice that I refrained from mentioning their fairly recent move from
Arkansas.

Two different people have randomly recommended the Strugglers to me;
all I know is that they're purported to be stripped-down and
bummery-folky in a Songs:Ohia or name-yr-midwestern-bummery-guy kind
of way.

Dynamite Brothers are spazzy flail-around shockabilly/backwoods blues
boogie-punk, or something, with a wonderfully apropos touch of CCR in
there.



Friday, January 9
Red Skeleton, Sun Eye
Nightlight, Chapel Hill

What happens when Scuppernong singer/guitarist Brian Neelon defends
his dissertation? Apparently, he starts making/joining/spinning off
other bands as fast as he can, since he's in both of these, IIRC. Red
Skeleton were made to soak up some material that was too poppy (in a
Small23 kind of way) for Scuppernong; I haven't yet figured out Sun
Eye. The Nightlight schedule also promises the "Nightlight All Star
Cover Band" *and* free admission, which I think makes it your default
stopover when navigating from Cradle to 506 to Go and back.



Friday, January 9
Monsonia [http://www.monsonia.com], Goner
[http://www.gonertheband.com/], Patty Hurst Shifter
[http://www.pattyhurstshifter.com]
Go! Studios Rm. 4, Carrboro

Hope you're wearing your walking shoes because if you time it right,
you can see, goddamn, mebbe a dozen local bands all duking it out
within a couple of blocks of each other tonight. At Go we've got
Raleigh's roots-rocking (and mysteriously perennial Indy
band-of-the-month) Patty Hurst Shifter, along with their moody-as-fuck
coffee-jerking compadres in Goner, who're about the most "emo" band
I've ever seen, despite their singular lack of 6-string guitars.

Rounding out the bill is a brand new ensemble called Monsonia, who've
described themselves via various 90s noisy/aggro indie comparisons
that don't really seem to be sparking my head-cold-addled synapses, so
just go check [http://www.monsonia.com] their website, or wait, don't
bother, it's nought but a giant mailto link.



Friday, January 9
$2 Pistols, Bad Checks [http://demonbeach.com/checks.htm], Buzzsawyer
[http://www.angelfire.com/band/buzzsawyer/]
Local 506, Chapel Hill

This is night one of the annual Elvisfest, and as I'm lacking any hard
info other than that the aforementioned 3 bands will be there, along
with probably another 2 or 3, I'll just let you extrapolate from those
data.



Friday, January 9
Place of Skulls [http://www.placeofskulls.com], Rise
Kings, Raleigh



Saturday, January 10
Suntan [http://www.suntanmusic.com/], Great Falls
Nightlight, Chapel Hill

Nightlight says: "from boston, the band named after everyone's fav
thing about going to the beach will attempt a similar effect on yer
earholes. the results however will not be pink & scaley, but burnd &
droney. not quite mellow swarming waves of sonic energy to bake your
insides. w/ them they bring some G-boro pals to baste you a bit
beforehand."



Saturday, January 10
Billy Joe Winghead [http://www.winghead.com/], Cowslingers
[http://cowslingers.com/], The Leroy Fix
[http://www.theleroyfix.com/]
Local 506, Chapel Hill

Night 2 of Elvisfest.



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