So I just finished my show and rode my bike home from the station in the pouring rain. It's about a 2.5 mile ride and I got soaked, but luckily my iPod and laptop were tucked safely in plastic bags in my backpack. As I was riding across the bridge into Winooski, I got totally drenched by a car driving by. I swear the guy swerved into the puddle just to cover me. My immediate reflex was to flick him off. But then I started laughing b/c it's pretty funny and I would have done the same thing. Unless it was an old grandma or something.
The show was different tonight. My brothers and Rufer called in to let me know that they couldn't hear it over the internet. I wasn't quite sure it was broadcasting out over the radio locally as well, so I wasn't sure if anyone could hear me or not. When I got home, I flipped on the radio and it was coming through, but it's still not coming through over the internet. Bummer.
This week I continued the format I started last week--I featured two bands and jumped into them pretty deeply, playing multiple songs by each. In between, I played a couple tunes by other bands.
I started off the show with a track called The Hearse by Untamed Youth. They are fronted by surf/rockabilly/honky tonk guitar maestro Deke Dickerson who has put out a ton of stuff on his own and with Untamed Youth. The Youth have great surf rock songs and they have some great album artwork that really captures the energy of surf rock.
The first of my two featured bands was Australia's The Drones. They're a rock 'n' roll, gritty blues, menacing electric folk band who write and play sincere, unique, and genius sparse-beginning songs that build to a climactic explosion of passion and speaker splitting rage. They are fronted by Gareth Liddiard who sings in a voice that I'm sure my mom doesn't consider singing. His emotion and Aussie accent pour out in his lyrics and the raw energy of the band hits hard at all jagged angles. I don't remember how I stumbled upon them, but I was looking around the internet a couple years ago and somehow came across the video for "Shark Fin Blues". The riff and the melody Liddiard sang over the top, coupled with the tenacity of the live footage in the video, captivated me. I was hooked. I watched it multiple times in a row. If you've never heard The Drones, the song "Shark Fin Blues" is the perfect place to start. I had trouble finding their stuff around any local record shops, but I eventually got the album that the song is on -- Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By. Then I picked up their live album from Spaceland out in LA and finally their latest, Gala Mill. I saw them live in Montreal last year and was completely blown away. It was amazing. If you ever have a chance to see them live, don't think twice--just go to the show. You will not be disappointed. Tonight we heard three songs by them, the first being I Don't Ever Want To Change off of Gala Mill. It's an excellent high energy, rock song with a great guitar line in it at the 2:09 mark. Next song we heard was This Time off of Wait Long...and the final song was Dog Eared which is a tune off of Gala Mill, but the version I played was from their live Spaceland album.
After The Drones set, we heard a couple songs to cleanse the palate between the next featured band. Starting off was a tune off of the Fleet Foxes excellent new self titled album called White Winter Hymnal. They're a band that employ Beach Boys-esque harmonies and do it well. Next up was Liam Finn, an artist off of the excellent and multi-genre label, Yep Roc out of North Carolina. Yep Roc is a great label that makes an effort to not pigeon hole itself into one genre, but instead focuses on excellent artists/bands regardless of genre. They have an incredibly consistent, yet genre jumping line-up of bands, from Billy Bragg to Marah to Radio Birdman to Caitlin Cary, and are one of my favorite go-to labels. Growing up, in order to find new bands, I would search record stores for anything on Dischord records. Now, I've widened my "discover new bands" search criteria a bit to include Yep Roc, Bloodshot, New West, and Matador. And, of course, always Dischord. Finn, like The Drones, is also from the land down under and he the son of a guy from Crowded House. The song we heard was Second Chance off of his album I'll Be Lightning. It's an awesome song and a great introduction to this great album. We ended this mid-section set with the unbeatable Fugazi, with a tune off of The Arguument called Nightshop. I could go on and on about Fugazi, so I won't even start.
The next featured band was the Philly inspired, surprisingly Brooklyn based, Marah. I say surprisingly, b/c they love and sing so much about Philly, I'm surprised they still don't live there. They are an incredible, incredible band and I'm shocked, but selfishly happy, that they're not bigger and more known than they are. They are raw, blue collar type rock 'n' rollers who embody early Bruce Springsteen and sing about the grittiness of the streets and booze inflicted city wanderings. Their close associations with author Nick Hornby are pretty interesting to me. He wrote the books High Fidelity and About A Boy, among others, and always seems to feature music in his books--especially in High Fidelity. Most of us know this from the excellent John Cusack flick of the same name in which the title character creates endless top 5 lists of music, girls, etc. There are some great music references in the movie and I'm excited to read the book to see how similar it is or if there are other musical references in it that were left out of the movie. Hornby is really inspired by Marah and in a top 10 list of his own, he listed their song My Heart Is The Bums On The Street as #3 on his of 10 songs he can't live without. They were also in his "Top 5 Gigs Of All Time" list alongside The Who, The Clash, The Boss, and Southside Johnny and Dave Edmunds. That's some great company to be listed with. Hornby has traveled with Marah in the past and joins them on stage to read some of his music essays about various artists. Once he's finished, Marah will take the stage and play songs by that artist. Hornby has also written some Marah essays and he has read them on stage to open up the Marah set. I'd love to be able to see that. I would love to just be able to see Marah. We need more bands to come way up here to ol' VT. Tonight we heard five Marah songs off of four of their albums. First up was the first song of theirs that I ever heard--The Closer off of If You Didn't Laugh, You'd Cry. This album is a great introduction to Marah as I think it's a full, top to bottom, excellent album. Next up we heard a couple tunes off of Kids In Philly (on Steve Earle's label E Squared) called Point Breeze and the Nick Hornby fav My Heart Is The Bums On the Street. Next tune came from their first album, Let's Cut The Crap And Hook Up Later On Tonight, called Formula, Cola, Dollar Draft and we finished the set with East off of 20,000 Streets Under The Sky.
That took us all the way to about the end of the show. I ended the show with the live version of Plenty For All by the Hot Snakes off of their Australia recorded live album, Thunder Down Under. So I guess I unintentionally had an Australia theme to tonight's show.
Here's the setlist. Thanks for listening. Check out the show next week--hopefully the internet will work.
1. The Hearse -- Untamed Youth -- Untamed Melodies
2. I Don't Ever Want To Change -- The Drones -- Gala Mill
3. This Time -- The Drones -- Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By
4. Dog Eared -- The Drones -- Spaceland Presents: The Drones In Spaceland 11/15/06
5. White Winter Hymnal -- Fleet Foxes -- Fleet Foxes
6. Second Chance -- Liam Finn -- I'll Be Lightning
7. Nightshop -- Fugazi -- The Argument
8. The Closer -- Marah -- If You Didn't Laugh, You'd Cry
9. Point Breeze -- Marah -- Kids In Philly
10. My Heard Is The Bums On The Street -- Marah -- Kids In Philly
11. Formula, Cola, Dollar Draft -- Marah -- Let's Cut The Crap And Hook Up Later On Tonight
12. East -- Marah -- 20,000 Streets Under The Sky
13. Plenty For All -- Hot Snakes -- Thunder Down Under
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