RTP-area local music and culture

[grady AT ibiblio.org]

I'm going to DC this weekend to ___<redacted>___ outside of the 
____<redacted>____, so you'll have to fill in any blanks I may have left 
yrself. Some damn good shows for a holiday weekend, though. Y'all are lucky:


Thursday, May 27
Apple Juice Orchestra [http://www.pidgeonenglish.com/bands.php]
Kings, Raleigh



Friday, May 28
Mothlight, Appalindia [http://www.futurock.com]
Bickett Gallery, Raleigh

How do I love Mothlight? A million ways. Nick Whitley goes free-jazz
nutso on the drums while Danny Vaughn stomps blues riffs into
submission and contorts his frighteningly pale & beautiful face into
all kinds of screamy grimaces. Then he sits down & plays beautiful
Nick Drake-style folk. Then who knows? Last time it was a totally
straight cover of "Fly Me to the Moon."

Here's what Nick Whitley says about this show:

"MOTHLIGHT - daniel and i will perform our first concert since our
last one at bickett; there will be drums, there will be guitar, there
will be keyboard, there will be very pretty singing.  please come
check us out.  also, mothlight will be acting as the backing band for
my man Max aka The Beatgeek in the debut of

"APPALINDIA" - a live interpretation of futurock records' forthcoming
electronic concept album/rock opera; there will be guitar, there will
be keyboard, there will be some very pretty singing, there will be
some MCing, there will be costumes, too, i believe.

hope to see you there, and god bless elvin jones' soul, may he
R.I.P."



Friday, May 28
Schooner, Eyes to Space, North Elementary
[http://www.northelementary.com], The Rachel Nevadas
[http://www.therachelnevadas.com/]
Nightlight, Chapel Hill



Friday, May 28
Transportation, des_ark [http://www.des-ark.org], All Astronauts
[http://www.allastronauts.com/]
Kings, Raleigh

Transportation are from Chapel Hill; they veer wildly from rumbly
70s-influenced rock to harmonious 70s-influenced
glam-power-pop-whatever. They'll pomp you like Queen & then sweetly
balladize you like Badfinger.

All Astronauts are from Winston-Salem, and they meld big metallic
Shellac-y riffage with the intense vocals of Haydee Thompson
(ex-Squatweiler), who may not be so dour & uncompromising as Jean
Smith or Shannon Wright, but is somewhere near their ballpark, or at
least their side of town.

des_ark will set up on the floor in front of the stage. Tim's drums
will be as loud and boomy and utterly gorgeously huge as it's possible
for drums to be (and without help from the PA, most likely). Aimee
will stagger around & bust a lotta Ted Nugent back-bend moves while
she wrings the shit out of her guitar & knocks it out of tune & then
improvises whole new sections of the song to compensate. Four songs &
they're done, and most likely so are you.



Friday, May 28
Shark Quest [http://www.mrg2000.com/merge/bio.html?id=sharkquest],
Bringerer
Local 506, Chapel Hill

Shark Quest have only intensified with age; you may insert yr favorite
food/drink metaphor here, if you so desire. All I know is that the
addition of Chuck Johnson on guitar & the incorporation of electric
piano by Sara Bell provided them the tools necessary. And it appears
that the opportunity to score Brett Ingram & Jim Haverkamp's "Monster
Road" provided the push to get them thinking in a few more dimensions.
Whatever the source, the result is pure Shark Quest, only moreso.

Bringerer are a local pick-up group featuring, among others, Ron
Liberti (TGOR, ex-Pipe, ex-Clok Lok RIP) and Amy Wilkinson (ex-Chew
Toy).



Saturday, May 29
Fake Swedish [http://fakeswedish.4t.com/index.html], Velvet
[http://www.velvetpop.com]
The Cave, Chapel Hill



Saturday, May 29
Shallow Be Thy Name
[http://www.screwmusicforever.com/music/artists/shallow/index.html],
Mowing Lawns, Fashion Design, Lud [http://members.aol.com/~ludkmr/]
Local 506, Chapel Hill

Clarque & Caroline of SBTN join forces with Internationalist & the
Raleigh kids in Axis for Change to get GWB the fuck outta office with
this showcase/benefit/awareness-raiser.

Fashion Design are on the vanguard of the new local UK-style
new-wave/postpunk revival--think Jesus & Mary Chain, Siouxie,
what-have-you.

Lud have been around for the past umpty-zillion years, irregularly
turning out brilliant albums, and occasionally clambering up onstage
to school the whippersnappers with the genius guitar-tone of Bryon
Settle. They'll play 12-minute epics that take you through civil wars
in Africa; they'll play 5-minute bossanovas. They are unstoppable.

Shallow Be Thy Name are the Partridge Family on better drugs,
compressed into two people & under house-arrest with a couplea guitars
and a four-track. And some black hair dye. They moved here from
Florida, which means they know how to rip out yr heart and show it to
you while it's still beating, although they don't generally feel the
need to do that now that they're Carolinians. At least not literally.



Saturday, May 29
The Jimi Hendrix Inexperience, Riff-Raff
Kings, Raleigh

JHI is Grant Tennille (Idyll Swords) & his boys doing completely
deadpan & dead-on Hendrix covers. You will be amazed, one way or
another. I'm told Riff-Raff is an AC/DC tribute band. I can only
assume that they'll have the schoolboy uniforms. If they don't,
somebody oughta do something about it.



Sunday, May 30
Billy Joe Winghead [http://www.winghead.com/], Chrome Plated Apostles
[http://www.demonbeach.com]
The Cave, Chapel Hill



Sunday, May 30
Hella [http://www.hellaband.com], Need New Body
[http://www.neednewbody.com/], Make Believe
Go! Studios Rm. 4, Carrboro



Sunday, May 30
snmnmnm [http://www.snmnmnm.com/], The Mattoid
[http://www.antifolk.net/artists/themattoid/]
Local 506, Chapel Hill



Wednesday, June 2
Howard Seltzer + Jazzkammer, Raoul Bjorkenheim & Lukas Ligeti
Nightlight, Chapel Hill

Nightlight says:

AIM benefit show featuring Howard Stelzer + Jazzkammer / Raoul
Bjorkenheim and Lukas Ligeti . 10PM . $5  - Experimental music from
Scandinavia! Howard Seltzer and Jazzkammer (the duo of Lasse Marhaug
and John Hegre, from Norway), will be playing improvised
electro-acoustic music while Raoul Bjorkenheim (guitar) and Lukas
Ligeti (drums), two great improvising musicians living in NYC, will be
performing cuts of their new album "Shadowglow", just released on the
TUM record label from Finland. Skål!



Thursday, June 3
The Washington Social Club [http://www.washingtonsocialclub.com],
Starlite Drive
Kings, Raleigh

Not gonna miss this one this time, goddamnit. This is what I said last
time:

For at least a year, Washington Social Club have been my favorite
non-local band, or at least in my top 3, based solely upon a
half-dozen MP3s I downloaded from their
[http://www.washingtonsocialclub.com/main.html] website
(seriously--endure the flash load & go to the sounds page & get
everything, especially the "previous tracks"). I've never actually
seen them, but I must've listened to "Backed to the Future" 200
times.

What're they like? Well, on record at least, they're
charismatic-frontman pre/proto/postpunk, who at various times remind
me of Violent Femmes, Modern Lovers, and on at least one song, the
Adverts (really!), with a bit of Svenonious-style bombast thrown in
for good measure, natch, as they're from DC. They've got
call-and-response, they've got the occasional squirrelly strum stolen
from the Feelies, they come with some kind of dance-based imperative.

I didn't make it to that show, but Jay did, and he said "the show at
king's tonight was great.  i'd never seen washington social club
before.  they were fab."



--------> http://www.trianglerock.com <--------