Blanche song I covered, very appropriate for my current status
Sketch of the Night
Get in on the ground floor with tayloaf’s drawings, you can say you knew about them before everyone else.
Cool video I’m in
A Velvet Underground cover for your listening pleasure
True Stories From Rock n Roll (Part 1)
Diving into the completely factual, but oftentimes overlooked, stories of musicians past and present.
The Time Staind Headlined Coachella
Anyone who considers themselves a music fan in the 21st Century is familiar with the annual gathering in Indio, California known as Coachella. The music festival has become the closest this generation has gotten to a Woodstock experience, with the world’s top artists descending on to a desert oasis for three days of musical bliss, now extended to consecutive weekends. With fans paying upwards of $300 for tickets, Coachella has established itself as the must attend event of every year. But as any true success story goes, the festival came from much humbler beginnings.
Although the first Coachella Festival was officially held in 1999, many are unaware this was simply a renaming of a decades long event, the Indio Date & Dance Music Hootenanny, featuring 3 days of delicious recipes incorporating Indio’s number one fruit export coupled with national touring county-western and roots rock bands. Best known for its famous slogan, “The only three days you’ll never have to worry about finding a Date!” the Hootenanny was wildly successful for its very specific audience, often drawing crowds in the upper 4,000’s.
Headlining the 1997 Hootenanny was psychobilly sensation Bubbahead, featuring members Aaron Lewis on vocals and Gibson ES-150, Johnny April on upright bass, and Jon Wysocki on drums. Hot off the release of their final LP as Bubbahead, “Chicken-Fried Coffin,” the group played an epic 45 song, 76 minute set to close out the fest. According to concert attender Sam Burkens, “I had seen three or four of their shows before that night, but that was Bubbahead at their peak, Aaron’s vibrato vocals and speed-picking on top of Johhny and Jon’s incredible driving rhythms were untouchable. They brought new meaning to the genre of psychobilly.” Although there has yet to be any found recordings of this performance, the set list featured Bubbahead’s biggest hits such as “Tommy Took Her To The Grave,” “Diabolical Psyc-ward,” “Outerspace Punk Machine” and “It Had Been A While (Since We Murdered)” a song which they would later rework into a Billboard chart topper.
By 1998, the members of Bubbahead were beginning to feel pigeonholed by the limits of the genre which they had clearly conquered and decided to take their sound in a new direction, with Aaron shaving his signature 11 inch flat top and adding lead guitar player Mike Mushok, Bubbahead became the band many know now as Staind. Lewis on the new band name, “We knew the 79,000 fans we had at the time would never forget our time as Bubbahead no matter where we tried to take our music, so we felt the band would always be stained with our psycho roots.”
After such a memorable finale from the previous year, the 1998 Date & Dance Hootenanny struggled to get the attendance necessary to turn a profit after wheeling out headlining act, David Allan Coe. Word had gotten out amongst mainstream musicians about the legendary Bubbahead performance and the magic they were able to create in the desert, turning Indio into the hottest, literally and figuratively, spot for touring bands to play. Festival organizers realized they needed to make a change in order to keep the concert experience alive by capitalizing on the buzz created and the next year, Coachella was born. So as you watch tens of thousands of college students, hippies, and music geeks jam out on back-to-back weekends this year to the biggest bands in the world at the Empire Polo Club, know that they are partaking in the Festival That Staind Built.
5.0 Shades of Plaid
With overwhelming amounts of both press and sales, E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey can easily be called the must read book of 2012. Taking over for female audiences waiting for a successor to the Twilight series, 50 Shades is a racier, more adult themed tale of taboo love. Savvy publishers, striking while the iron is hot, have begun looking for novels that will tap into this market while relating to different age groups. One of these upcoming books tells the passionate story of a college-aged girl attending a popular independent music festival titled “5.0 Shades of Plaid”
5.0 Shades of Plaid
I will never again reach the ecstasy I did during that weekend I spent with Gerald Plaid. Between the actual ecstasy and the sensual heights we reached as lovers, my heart felt like a tidal wave of lust crashing over and over.
Gerald first caught my eye during Odd Future’s mind-blowing performance. Tyler the Creator was shooting a nacho cheese gun on the crowd while Earl Sweatshirt was doing the Truffle Shuffle, turning the whole crowd into a frenzy. Through the massive audience however, my eyes were drawn to the most tantalizing creature I had ever encountered. Nacho cheese glistened of the edge of his handlebar mustache as he wiped his Rivers Cuomo’s lens-less designer glasses on his patterned button-up shirt. I caught a peak of his flowing stomach hair on his gut that protruded slightly, aged beautifully by pitcher upon pitcher of local micro-brews.
As I stood clenched tightly in his arms, Gerald leaned in and murmured “Let me review you.”
Edited Due To Explicit Content
After we walked out of the portable bathroom, Plaid grasped me tightly and murmured a phrase that sent tingles down my spine into my ear, “I’d give that experience a 9.2.”
Song i wrote a while back, figured I’d share since I haven’t put any tunes up for some time.
Hey guys.
(Source: thatsnotfunnycomics)
Natural Child “Hard In Heaven”
Natural Child had a lot going their way at the start of this year. While opening for punk/gunk rock favorites Hunx & His Punx, they released “For The Love of The Game” a rip-roaring affair that allows a 20-something to experience the excitement of Rolling Stones riffs the way they were meant to be played, by fellow 20-somethings, straight out of Nashville, Tennessee.
What makes Natural Child’s sound work so well, is that instead of trying to imitate the Stones sound of imitating rockers from the South, is the fact that they are actually rockers from the South. There are no layers of irony, they play straight up rock n roll, influenced by the masters of Blues, from Blind Willie McTell to Robert Johnson.
With that in mind, “Hard In Heaven” is a natural progression for this still young band. They could have easily embraced the garage hits/sensibility of “For The Love of The Game” and become underground rock superstars. That will never be the aim of this band however, as the trio is about staying true to the music that they love, not the irony-laden rock that gets attention from other sources at this age.
With songs such as “B$G P$MP$IN” and “Laid, Paid, and Strange” Natural Child acknowledges their ability to create kick you in the mouth singles, but tracks such as “Blind Owl Speaks” and “Derek’s Blues” show you a depth to a band that is much more than a flash in the pan. It is impossible to see Natural Child as a Flavor of the Year for 2012 rather than the future of rock n roll for 20-somethings in an generation filled with samples and overdubbed tracks.
Instead of trying to singing and playing over melodies that have been done before, Natural Child are trying to take something from the past and make it into their own, which is something to be commended in this day and age. While they could be the most ironic band possible, they embrace where they come from musically and see a broader horizon for songwriting and potential fan base with “Hard In Heaven” which is a straight-forward rock’n’roll record that leaves those who are unprepared laying by the wayside.
