April 2009 Archives

Details from Big Mama's Karaoke Cafe in Seymour about L.A. Guns on July 4, which we reported yesterday would be happening in Sevierville:

Saw the LA GUNS vs AMERICAN PLAGUE post.  Actually, that is going to be
at Big Mama's.  We have a larger outdoor venue in the back and we'll be
having a 4th of July BBQ featuring:

LA GUNS
The American Plague
The Rock City Angels (80s hair metal/punk crossover, were signed to
Geffen)
+more

Legendary NYC noise/prog/punk explorers Sonic Youth are coming to Knoxville on Friday, July 10. They're playing the Bijou in support of their new album The Eternal, due out in June. 

Reports coming out of The American Plague camp that the band's opening for L.A. Guns on July 4 in Sevierville.

Chinese Democracy came out last fall, Steven Adler played Seymour, and now L.A. Guns in Sevierville. I don't quite know what to make of that confluence of Guns N' Roses-related events. 

It's very likely that Dead Milkmen frontman Joe Jack Talcum's solo show at Pilot Light this weekend might get overlooked. So don't overlook it. He's playing Sunday, May 3, at 10 p.m. Admission is $5. Bastards of Fate and locals-by-way-of-Chicago I Need Sleep open.

A recording of Wilco's sold-out show at the Tennessee Theatre on Saturday has popped up online, for those of you that didn't get to go and those who want to relive it.  

Bobby Bare Jr. and his Young Criminals Starvation League and a whole bunch of locals--Mic Harrison and the High Score, Todd Steed and the Suns of Phere--along with 20-year-old YouTube ukulele phenomenon Julia Nunes are performing tonight at Barley's Taproom as a benefit for WUTK 90.3 FM (the University of Tennessee's student-run radio station, which depends entirely on donations) and tomorrow's EarthFest celebration.

WUTK general manager and program director Benny Smith talks about the music he's been listening to lately here.

Show starts at 9 p.m., admission is $5. 

In more Record Store Day news, Knoxville's Royal Bangs will appear at Grimey's in Nashville on Saturday. 

Didn't get tickets to Saturday's sold-out Wilco show at the Tennessee Theatre? You were planning to visit Disc Exchange for Record Store Day that afternoon anyway, though, right? Because Pitchfork reports that the band will make an appearance at the store at 2 p.m. that day. No music from them, but they'll be there.

UPDATE: Just so you know, DE says you have to buy Wilco's new DVD at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday in order to get in line. So those of us hoping for a chance to, you know, just sort of say hi and hang out with Nels Cline are out of luck.
 
photo by Mary Ellen Matthews

So there's this big free live music series downtown on Market Square that you might have heard of called Sundown in the City. New Orleans' alt-rockers Cowboy Mouth--a kind of Mardi Gras version of Smashmouth--headline tonight's show, with an opening set by Phil Pollard and His Band of Humans.

Best thing that happened to me today? This album came in the mail.

A cursory listen reveals that it sounds just like you'd think it does. 

 

In this piece on the newly reformed Superdrag, Village Voice Music Editor Rob Harvilla calls the band's new Industry Giants "easily the best rock record of 2009 to date" and their recent show at the Bowery Ballroom "the best rock show of 2009 to date." it's a good story beyond that, too--an obvious familiarity with and appreciation for the band past "Sucked Out," and not a drop of condescension toward John Davis' outspoken Christianity. it's great to see them getting some national press again. (It's also nice to have some outside confirmation that my own enthusiasm for Industry Giants isn't undue boosterism. Or at least not entirely.)

Mykel Board, a longtime columnist for Maximumrocknroll and general provocateur, will be reading from his books and columns at the Longbranch Saloon on Cumberland Avenue on Saturday, April 18. Starts at 9:30 p.m., costs $5.





(Thanks for letting me know the day we go to press, Longbranch!)

If you've been thinking that the final piece of downtown Knoxville's redevelopment puzzle, the one thing that the city's newly invigorated urban center needs but doesn't have, is a big ol' country nightclub in the heart of the Old City, you've got what you've been wishing for.

Southbound Knoxville, a "Country Classic Rock Southern Rock" club at 106 Central St.--the former Hooray's building, and recently home to such long-running and sorely missed venues as Thinq Tank, Red Iguana, and Club 106--is set to open on Friday, May 1, with a show by Confederate Railroad, early-'90s authors of the beloved hit "Trashy Women."

 

The retrial didn't attract anywhere near the same kind of attention that the first trial did--I didn't even know it had started, in fact, until after it was over. Phil Spector, the ex-whiz kid producer, inventor of the Wall of Sound, producer of the unbelievably classic "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes and the underappreciated Ramones album End of the Century, and a standard-bearer for L.A. freak-out paranoia, has been found guilty of murder. 

Nik Cohn wrote a profile--admiring and a little wary at the same time--of Spector in 1969 in Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom, one of the best rock books ever: "He was demoniac. He'd take one good song and add one good group and then he'd blow it all up skyhigh into a huge mock-symphony, bloated and bombasted into Wagnerian proportions. ... And he looked down from his box and hurled thunderbolts. Added noise upon noise, explosion on top of explosion. Until it wasn't the song that counted, the voices, nothing like that but only the sound, Spectorsound, and the impetus. momentum, lurching and crushing and bursting, and it couldn't possibly be stopped."

Except it was.

Tonight: Go see Scott Miller's in-store appearance at Disc Exchange. His new CD, For Crying Out Loud, will be there for you to buy. (It's got "Heart in Harm's Way," an old favorite from way back when, on it.)

A report from the Black Lillies' CD release show at the Square Room on Saturday night, from MP contributor Janet Jay:

It was standing room only Saturday at the Square Room for the Whiskey Angel CD release party by Cruz Contrera's new band the Black Lillies. This strong freshman effort of rock- and blues-tinged Americana should put to rest any concerns that Cruz's musical career peaked as the "CC" of Robinella and the CC String Band.
The group of musicians Cruz assembled for Whiskey Angel played more like a seasoned ensemble than a band playing their first real show together. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the band includes local heavyweights Leah Gardner (the Maid Rite String Band), Jamie Cook and Tom Pryor (the everybodyfields and Whisky Scars), Jeff Woods (Dark Mountain Orchid), and Cruz's brother Billy Contreras.
This album marks a number of firsts for Cruz: first time writing and producing an album, first time as frontman, and the first time he's truly unveiled his unique voice. And if this first show is any indication, the Black Lillies are a new force to be reckoned with in the Knoxville music scene.

In addition to The Dirty Guv'nahs' CD release show and former American Idol winner David Cook's show at the Square Room tonight, here are the rest of the weekend's Official Metro Pulse-endorsed Events:

• The Black Lillies, featuring Cruz Contreras, Leah Gardner, Tom Pryor, Jeff Woods, and Jamie Cook, are having their own CD release show at the Square Room on Saturday, April 11, at 7 p.m.

• The Hector Qirko Band is playing at the Laurel Theater in Ft. Sanders on Saturday at 8 p.m. Hector says "this concert setting will let us do some of our more laid back (and also more experimental) stuff, so might be a good one."

• Jon Reep, aka The Hemi Guy, is performing better-than-average redneck stand-up at the Tennessee Theatre on Saturday.

From this morning's interview with John Paul Keith, formerly of The Viceroys and currently heading JPK and the One Four Fives out of Memphis:

ME: "Do you ever get tired of being referred to as a former boy genius and ex-Viceroy?"

JPK: "Nobody refers to as boy genius except y'all."

Oops.

The One Four Fives are playing--with a top-notch local lineup performing under the title of the Bob McCluskey Show--at Pilot Light on Saturday, April 18, to celebrate the release of their new album, Spills and Thrills.

The Dirty Guv'nahs come into their own on their new self-titled sophomore album. You can read their story here, and then you can go see them at the Bijou Theatre tonight at 8 p.m. with The Deep Vibrations.

Sundown in the City starts tonight with Atlanta hip-hop group Arrested Development. It's been--wow-- 17 years since their first and biggest hit, "Tennessee." Their debut album, 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of... had two more hit singles, "People Everyday" and "Mr. Wendal," but they never followed up on that initial success and broke up in 2006. They've been touring together again since 2000 and have apparently released five albums since then. Who knew?

Head-music head Julian Cope has invented his own KISS anthology for April's installment of his album of the month series.

Can't really argue with the fact that a compilation is the best way to deal with KISS. The studio albums are spotty. I don't think I'd trade "God of Thunder," "Cold Gin," and "Black Diamond" from the already pretty excellent Double Platinum for "Got to Choose," "King of the Night Time World," and "Great Expectations."

Since we didn't get any coverage of Dan Deacon's upcoming show in this week's paper (blame his publicist, not us), here's a review of his new album:



Dan Deacon
Bromst (Carpark Records)
When Baltimore's weirdo-du-jour Dan Deacon suggested last year that the followup to his 2007 breakthrough Spiderman of the Rings would be a notably darker affair, his fans (including more than a few Knoxvillians, thanks to his frequent stops at Pilot Light) were surely left curious. What could "dark" mean coming from a guy whose maximalist electro-spaz, as occasionally disturbing as it can be, is best described as nothing short of giddy?
He later clarified his meaning somewhat, but Bromst speaks just as well for itself: There's not a whole lot of darkness, but from opener "Build Voice" on it's apparent that Deacon has put much more of himself into his work this time around, and the result is a disarmingly affecting electronic pop record. Where Spiderman often felt like a collection of half-songs and silly sound art packed around best-of-the-year barnstormer "Wham City," Bromst works much better as an album thanks to its relative emphasis on composition. There's still some sketchwork, and pieces that work better by themselves (like rubbery live favorite "Woof Woof"), but for the most part Deacon has stepped up both his sonics and his songs, often in tandem; the quiet moments (parts of Bromst recall an ADHD-afflicted Múm) marry together well with his trademark Toontown coke-rave soundtracks, thanks to an increasingly organic knack for tension and release, and his meticulously double-stuffed aesthetic pushes his hooks to places no sane man would dare.
There are portions of Bromst where Deacon repeats himself--his melodic sensibilities are strong but a bit narrow--but he makes up for it with increased focus. Unmistakable whiffs of the sublime "Wham City" are easily forgiven, especially when the similarly central "Snookered" very nearly overtakes it with poise and poignance. Even Dan Deacon's admirers may have questioned his ability to mature, but Bromst is an exhilirating step forward. (Nick Huinker)

Deacon's playing at Catalyst on Tuesday, April 7, at 8 p.m. with Future Islands and Teeth Mountain.

photo by Ray Roy