The kids of the Lana Rebel band are off to Utah for a hopefully fun weekend of partying and music….unfortunately the winds of work are blowing here at the chicken farm and I have to miss out. I was doing a bit of late night punk rock reminiscing when i came across this 1984 performance of Slip It In by Black Flag (duh). The band is pretty much firing all cylinders with Henry flying around all sweaty and macho, while Kira and Bill hold steady and solid to keep the ship afloat. The real show stopper is Ginn though, holy crap he is tearing shit up! His guitar is good and up front here and you really can hear every insane rampage through the fret board as he just cuts loose. Fucking brilliant…
Slip It In! Ginn on fire…
June 25th, 2009Shellac/Arc Welder at Berbati’s Pan 6.14.09
June 16th, 2009It was great to see so many younger people at the Shellac all ages show last night here at Berbati’s Pan in Portland. Steve Albini and company definitely didn’t disappoint, ripping through a good set of new and old with all the bile, humor and sonic abrasiveness that they are famous for. For me though I felt the show was kind of stolen by Minneapolis post punkers Arc Welder.
I can’t believe I had never heard of or seen these guys in my 20+ years as an aging indie punk musician. Arc Welder were formed in 1987 and can definitely be viewed as an evolution of the Minn punk scene. You can clearly hear the influence of Husker Du at work, although I don’t want to take anything away from them, it’s only a noticeable influence, and they clearly are headed down their own path. It was a treat to watch this energetic trio, especially bassist Bill Graber as he stalked the stage with a perpetual snarl of focused glee on his face. It’s always cool to see a competent bass player unafraid to fill out the sonic realm in a trio by playing chords. Apparently they have not released an album since 1999, but they seem to be an apple in Albini’s eye, so hopefully that will change and we will get to hear some new tunes sometime soon.
In case you were wondering, as I often have, how Steve gets that unique grinding tone, here is a map of his guitar rig, cleverly hidden in that custom aluminum box. Both Steve and Shellac bassist Bob Weston play aluminum necked Travis Bean guitars.
Lana Rebel- Blue
May 22nd, 2009Last Sunday we played a show with The Obits (former Drive like Jehu) over at the Doug Fir. The DF is one of the nicer clubs here in Portland, and I can safely say it has the best sound I’ve experienced in a club hands down. That said it is not our usual preferred venue, as we blend in more naturally in a smokey dive bar (Kenton Club is probably my favorite local indie music venue to play with Lana). It was a bit of a weird show, and a new experience for the band as a whole…having stage monitors, lots of room to actually turn around and adjust your amp if necessary! Not that any of us are rookies, or unfamiliar with playing these venues, it’s just that we have not done it as this particular band much. All in all it was a fun show, people seemed to enjoy seeing a seasoned authentic country band, and by the end I think even a few of those steadfast arms crossed hipsters uncrossed their arms and clapped a bit. Here is a video of the show I edited together with some footage from a gig we played at The East End last year. The song is called Blue, and it is a pretty slow burner that sort of reminds me of the theme to some David Lynch scene.
Lana Rebel- Blue from Eric on Vimeo.
Myspace- Lana Rebel
Website- Lana Rebel
Young Widows- Old Skin
May 16th, 2009The Young Widows release “Old Wounds” was one of my favorite records last year. Nothing revolutionary about it, just good heavy post punk rock. Here is their official video for the song Old Skin which is a short one, but a good one. The video itself is your typical live performance video and while iy’s not the most creative it gives you a good idea of the energy of the band live.
Old Skin - Young Widows from J.J. Johnstone on Vimeo.
Myspace- Young Widows
COD - A great resource for discovery
November 16th, 2008
I played in a few bands back in the late 80’s early 90’s and most of the stuff I was into was noisy, punk, or lo-fi. I recently found this amazing blog which has quite a reserve of great music from that era and beyond. Old Swans, Sonic youth, Cows, and much more for your to check out. It was great to find all this stuff available digitally as it saves me some time not having to capture and digitize my collection. There are also some really great Mr. Bungle bootlegs, as well as humor from Neil Hamburger and Patton Oswald. The site has great reviews to help with stuff you might not be familiar with written by someone who understands the time period and the music. Kudos and thanks to the creators of COD.
Cash riffing on Elvis
October 11th, 2008Oh Johnny…you were the greatest.
Colt Vista- Air Condition
September 6th, 2008We were lucky to get one of the Rontoms Sunday night gigs recently. These are free shows in a really intimate setting, in a cool club. If you are bored on a Sunday night you should get out and support these gigs, they are great for bands, and they provide a nice format to see some excellent music. If you are trying to locate Rontoms…they go the extra mile for you not to find them, no sign on the building, and their website is black text on a black background…the text is there you just have to select it with your mouse to see it, i guess they are making some kind of statement, you know, like the Spinal Tap black album. Colt Vista also crossed a small milestone as a band, in being able to write a (kickass) song from scratch as a unit, most of our previous material was written by the dynamic Bowen/Bukstein duo and just polished up a bit as a band. So here it is, the first live performance of Air Condition.
Colt Vista- Air Condition from Eric on Vimeo.
Totalfest Wrap Up…
August 19th, 2008Yawn…so after 5 days of driving, drinking, swimming, and playing music, I have returned from the great little city of Missoula Montana. It is about a nine hour drive from Portland and we got in too late to catch much of the first night of shows. I will try to list just a few of the bands I did get to catch over the three days of festivities. There were so many I am sure I missed a few really good ones. We would like of course to thank our kind hosts Josh and Nicky for letting us sleep in their Totalfest campground, they are really great people and Wantage records has really helped create a great little music scene there. The music was mostly metal, punk and rock, which made it even more fun for us, as we were the only country band. This is partly due of course to Lana’s previous career as bassist for Last of the Juanitas, and her continued relationship with Wantage (they just released her new album). Here are the bands I saw and enjoyed.
The Narrows: Official Site
They play a mixture of post rock and metal…slow churned riff which will suddenly explode into a bowel shattering earthquake of metallic sludge. Great stuff. They are a Bellingham band relocated to Olympia Washington, and singer Justin told us they are trying to find a good venue to help build the scene there.
The Lights: Myspace site
I only caught about half of their set, but it was great, a mixture of old minimal pop/punk rock. Reminded me a bit of The Fall.
Pierced Arrows: Official Site
Pierced Arrows play rock n’ roll the way it should be played. It’s not perfect, it’s not polished, but it’s honest and it will knock your socks off. Pierced Arrows rose from the ashes of the great band Dead Moon, and are one of the best rock bands I’ve seen in a while…they are out on tour now so check them out.
Titan: Myspace
Titan was an amazing metal band that lean into psychedelic territories. The band replaces the formulaic second guitar with a Juno synth which adds a lot of different texture to their massive…loud sound.
Federation X: Official Site
The festival culminated with a reunion of sorts for the Bellingham band Federation X. I had heard of these guys before, but never seen them live. They are a three piece, and guitarist Ben Wilderhaus who currently lives in NYC actually sat in with us (Lana Rebel) on Lapsteel, as the mighty JT had another gig with his Headliners. Fed X stumbled a bit at the beginning with technical difficulties, but I’m pretty sure only they noticed as the crowd was far too busy moshing around and throwing beer at them. As the set progressed they gained momentum, and it really was a fitting end to a great little festival.
Be sure to check out Wantage records, they have really solidified a great little northwest scene, and as somewhat an outsider/newcomer it was fun to be a prt of it all.
Here are a few picts of our little adventure along the way, I hope you were there and had as much fun as we did!
Totalfest Missoula!
August 13th, 2008
So I am off to Missoula Montana with the Lana Rebel band of Broken Promises to play at the DIY festival aptly named “Totalfest”. This should be a pretty fun time at a smaller up and coming festival put together by Wantage Records. Lana is also releasing her new CD, but we’ll be performing a Portland CD release party for that at the Kenton club in a couple of weeks, so I’ll add a separate post. Here is some official info on Totalfest.
Wäntage USA and KBGA are teaming up to bring Total Fest VII to Missoula on Thursday through Saturday, Aug. 14-16.
More than 40 original, independent bands are expected to draw fans from Missoula and around the region for the three-day music festival.
The concerts begin at 8 p.m. each night at the Badlander/Palace, with a record swap planned from noon to 2 p.m. on Saturday at Big Dipper Ice Cream.
Tickets cost $35 for all three days or $25 for Friday and Saturday only. ...read more
LP Cover Lover- Mourning the loss of an art form
August 11th, 2008
This was listed over at BoingBoing today, but I will list it here to second my support for this great site, LP Cover Lover. It’s really a shame that cd’s came along and destroyed the art form that was the LP Cover. As a young musician and designer I always wanted to design album covers, but just missed the LP age, and alas I only had the opportunity to design some punk rock 7″ covers. You can waste quite a bit of time on this site going through their archives, and discover some real gems.