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  • From: grady <grady AT ibiblio.org>
  • To: RTP-area local music and culture <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Kings cover-up thoughts
  • Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 09:56:01 -0500

Todd Morman wrote:
I went to the Friday and Saturday shows, camera in hand, and had a blast.
Years and years in, the Cover-Up is still one of the best music parties the
Triangle has to offer. In fact, I'm having a hard time coming up with a
serious competitor.

Didn't go to the Troika Music Festival, didja? I love the Cover-Up (when it's good, that is; when it's bad, it's excruciating &, thanks to the smoke levels at Kings, somewhat life-threatening), but that final night of the Troika, featuring amazing sets from Audubon Park, Work Clothes & Tenement Halls (plus Schooner onstage while half the people were turned around watching the Bulls fireworks show out the open garage doors whilst still rocking out), not to mention hot dogs & funnel cakes (and LocoPops!) was about the best local music party I've seen in my 13+ years of living here. And it was in Durham! WTF?

Ross wrote a few days ago, "Over the past few years, a
trend has developed whereby the local 'bands' aren't local bands at all, but
are instead just accretions of otherwise-unrelated local musicians,
assembled solely for the purpose of playing the Cover-Up," but my brain
tells me 'twas ever thus, from at least the 3rd year on.

Let's see: This was year 7, so years 4-6 would be, roughly, "the past few years." QED.

It's hard to beat an event like that. Really; I dare you to try. The
Cover-Up has consistently been one of the funniest, most musically
interesting events of the year; it's the kind of thing that helps reflect
and define the current music scene, and if you're one of the few folks who
still insist on turning your nose up at it out of some misguided scorn for
"cover acts," well, you're acting like a fucking moron and you should stop
as soon as possible.

Where did you get this straw man from? If the crowds on Thursday & Saturday were any indication (I had to miss Friday due to Smoke Inhalation, which sucks, because that was obviously the crucial day -- Saturday was entertaining, but hardly a mind-blower), everyfuckingbody in Raleigh and big chunks of the rest of the Triangle are Down with the Program.

However, I do have to quibble with your characterization of the thing as somehow scene-defining. The Cover-Up is the icing, the side-benefit we get from having a wonderfully healthy music scene, but it's hardly the one show you can/should attend all year & expect to gain full benefit from living around here.

In fact, on Saturday night, at roughly the same time that whomever was covering Def Leppard at Kings, Aimee/Des_Ark was hunched over her guitar at Bickett, working through a batch of new songs (for fucksake, she's written like 8 new songs in the space of 3 months, which more than she & Tim wrote together in like 3 years) that are as good or better than anything she's done; at once "confessional" and yet, like the best Mountain Goats stuff, constructed with the discipline & nuance of classic unreliable-narrator fiction. & then a couple of hours later, probably around the time that "The Damned" were finishing "New Rose," Randy Bickford's Strugglers were taking the stage (OK, um, the corner of the gallery) at Bickett to perform a set of songs from what is probably the best local album of the year.

(& for what it's worth, I had conversations with more than one musician at Bickett that night about which bands they'd always wanted to do at the Cover-Up; I can't think of *anybody*, in fact, who has turned up their noses at the whole concept -- where *did* you get that straw man from?)

That most-recent CantwellGomezJordan show at the opening of Chaz's Bull City Records in Durham was one of the most brutally intense rockshows I've seen all year; they're playing the Coffeehouse on Wednesday with Xiu-Xiu and at the risk of sounding like Todd Morman, you'd be a fool to miss it. & Oh yeah, they're multi-year Cover-Up vets, *and* they're one of a half-dozen bands participating in the Minutemen tribute thing at Local 506 this Saturday, so you can check out one of the best local bands currently playing in *both* originals and covers-mode in the space of a few days.

And *that's* the mark of a healthy music scene, mebbe.

todd no really we're laughing at you morman

Speak for yrself, please. I'm not laughing at anybody.

Ross




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