RTP-area local music and culture

[grady <grady AT ibiblio.org>]

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