Joey Baltimore

Earlier this year, The Queers stopped through Madison and played a show at The Frequency. There was a bunch of confusion as to online and early ticket sales, mostly on my part, and I didn’t end up going because it had sold out quite soon after they were released.

Once summer came I was listening to The Leftovers new Eager To Please album quite a bit, and even had a chance to see them at Gnarly House in town with The Transgressions, so when they announced on their MySpace that they were doing a tour with The Queers this fall (and had a Madison show listed) I regained that excitement from seeing that first show listed.

That night I headed up to The Frequency to get tickets but nobody that was working had even heard that the show was happening at that point. So, a few months later, after checking on tickets quite a few times, I had a pair in my hand and was ready to go.

The Transgressions had a sound check with the back room already full of people. After a while, sound check done and new drinks in hand, they took to the stage, playing the most aggressive set of the night (if you can consider any form of pop punk aggressive).

On second were The Leftovers, who, although they’re based out of Portland, ME, feel like a hometown band they’ve played here so much this year.

The Leftovers played a stellar set of bubblegum punk akin to The Queers Don’t Back Down album (swap the sarcasm for more songs about girls, though) meets some classic Cars or Elvis Costello. Always a good time and I’d recommend catching them next time they come to your town. Especially when one of the band members is celebrating a birthday. Lot’s of good-natured teasing on stage.

Finally The Queers came out and played quite a full set of their poppiest tunes. They had the crowd bouncing and dancing around (and that’s a feat in itself for Madison) while handily combining two parts Beach Boys with one part Ramones for everyone’s thirsty ears.

All in all, this was the exact remedy needed for the foot and a half that fell in town the day before, the temperature being around zero, and a distinct lack of decent lineups at shows of the recent past.

Tags: concert, leftovers, madison, music, pop punk, punk rock, queers, the freqeuncy, the leftovers, the queers, the transgressions, transgressions, wisconsin
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So, Jessica and I got into watching some classic hip hop videos last night, and this one was probably the most memorable for me, having grown up in the grunge era and all. I did tend towards hip hop, but The Goats put it over the top for me. A rap group with live band and mosh pit? (keep in mind RATM wasn’t around yet) I still remember having both of their full lengths and a handful of CD-singles, too. Anyhow, you can find out more about them at their website and listen to more of their music on their MySpace.

Tags: music, philly hip hop, rap, the goats, video
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In a former life I used to run a zine called The Little Playmate. It lasted all of 5 or 6 issues, but I was able to satisfy the Jack Black record store asshole in me by curating and releasing a CD compilation of Michigan based bands through the zine in one of the final issues.

Click to listen to Redlined “Dealing With Rejection”

It was quite a chore, as some of the songs had to be taken from cassette and transfered to digital (not such an easy task in 1999) like the Redlined track above, mastered to sound right with the digital recordings of most of the bands, and burned to disc (on a 2x burner = 20 minutes per).

Click to listen to Elemental Groove “Statica”

Everything was worth it though, as I did get to meet quite a few fantastic people, like Joe (aka Elemental Groove) who ended up being my suitemate in the dorms at EMU the next year.

Click to listen to Lurch “The Grave of Bella Lugosi”

We even ended up having a release show for it, featuring an over-the-top dark metal band that didn’t even have anything to do with the release. Heh. Yeah, the Michigan Theatre’s manager decided that a cd release show should get this band called Lucifer’s Hammer on the bill because they’d ben bugging him for a show for a long time. Anyhow, the show went off, without many people at it, because the same manager also decided that it had to be on prom night for the local high school during the early evening (6pm doors). So, the event was a dreadful failure compared to what it could have been, but we did get to pair Lurch (listen above) and Circuitree (another electronic project of the old suitemate) with said black metal band, which left the night being one of the few shows I can recall that had all completely different genres performing (and no, I don’t count things like twee-pop and indie-pop as different genres).

Anyhow, I’m rambling on about the past maybe a little too much. Instead, just check out the compilation in it’s entirety, with all high quality mp3 files. It’s a doozy of a zip file (129Mb), but I swear it’s worth it.

The Little Playmate presents 20 Reasons

Tags: elemental groove, lurch, mp3, music, redlined, the little playmate, zine
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Shelby gave me the head’s up on this show. I was planning on waiting to go see the Pon’s show over the weekend, but he said that Bald Eagle is some of his buddies from back in Missouri, and that they’re rad. Damn if they weren’t one of a very, very, few bands that was on par with Screamin’ Cyn Cyn and the Pons (Usually the Pons steal the show).

View the Bald Eagle set.

View the Screamin’ Cyn Cyn and the Pons set.

Tags: bald eagle, concert, music, screamin cyn cyn and the pons, the annex
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