Tortoise Jason Urick is the kind of guy you’re never surprised to see at any show or in any record store. He’s been embedded in the fabric of Baltimore music for so long, in fact, that it can be easy to forget that he’s kind of a big deal now, a Thrill Jockey recording...
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For good and bad, Courtney Love the public figure can’t take a backseat to her band Hole’s comeback third–or fourth–act. Since a not embarrassing appearance at SXSW and the uniformly unimpressed response to the new album, the media’s love affair with Love the walking entertainment blog fodder has kept her almost continuously in the...
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We Used To Be Family Recently, when news began making the rounds that Baltimore instrumental band We Used to Be Family had a new song called “Jerkface Shipley,” multiple people jumped to the conclusion that it was about me. If I’d earned their ire with a negative review, it wouldn’t be the first time...
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The Out of Your Head Collective puts together a new combination of musicians for an improv set every Tuesday, and perhaps what keeps that format fresh week after week is the curators’ refusal to stick to a formula when assembling the one-off ensembles. That was amply demonstrated this week, with the trio of Dave...
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Ayoko Kataoka Yup, High Zero, the continent’s finest four days of all-in improv and otherwise musical exploration, is announcing this year’s lineup piece-by-piece at its Twitter handle, @highzero. So far, the fest, which takes place Sept. 10-13, has announced Dan Deacon and Ayako Kataoka. Follow away. Image courtesy High Zero.
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This track’s from Labtekwon‘s forthcoming record, NEXT: Baltimore Basquiat and the Future Shock, which is out Aug. 3, according to the video’s YouTube page. I think Lab invented a new genre, again. Awesome.
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English pianist Stan Tracey is a giant in European jazz circles, but if he’s known at all to most American listeners, it’s because of his collaboration with Sonny Rollins in 1965-’66, two live albums and the Alfie soundtrack. So it makes sense that the last time Tracey played in the mid-Atlantic area, at the...
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This week’s Detroit Metro Times, a CP sister publication, features a fairly exhaustive feature on Negative Approach/Laughing Hyenas frontman and aggro rock legend John Brannon. (His current outfit, Easy Action, recorded a couple of albums for Baltimore’s own Reptilian Records.) If you paid any attention to ’80s hardcore or post-hardcore underground rock (i.e. the...
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Kadman, by Al Shipley The band Kadman has been kicking around Baltimore for the last couple years in a few different incarnations, usually as a trio with a rhythm section accompanying singer/guitarist David Manchester. But perhaps the most exciting lineup of Kadman to date is its current one, with Manchester being backed only by...
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Probably way better than this. From BinaryApe. Whoa, talk about a record collector’s wet dream. Woodward’s in Hampden is having what sounds like a massive record auction this Sunday, unloading everything from country 78s to Zeppelin and Sunn O))) LPs. Find a full rundown here.
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GayBomb By day, Andrew Barranca works as a special educator, assisting children with autism. In his spare time, the Fredrick native (who now resides in Rockville) moonlights as GayBomb, whipping up sonic-slurry shakes–created in part using a card reader Barranca discovered “in the supply closet of my first classroom”–that suggest a hybrid of industrial...
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Keys and Lil Kim, from missjia.com . . . and calls out Nicki Minaj associate Puff Daddy. Remember, Minaj is the target of a currently quite-hot diss track by Keys. Read more here.
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Andre Watts by Christian Steiner The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra had just finished a lovely version of Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” and was getting ready for Bela Bartok’s “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” when conductor Marin Alsop turned toward the audience and spoke into a microphone. The two pieces, she remarked, had both...
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Photo By Rob React The real-life record skipped. Chief Rocker Busy Bee–Baltimore resident since 1989 and party-rocking MC since his ’70s NYC youth–had gotten the crowd pumped up for his 1982 hit “Making Cash Money.” It was time for Los Angeles’ DJ Ice to extend the instrumental break of James Brown’s “Funky President” using...
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John Dierker As organizer of the annual High Zero Festival and the experimental hive the Red Room, the High Zero Foundation (HZF) has been an integral part of the city’s arts community for more than a decade now, and a forerunner/sparkplug of Baltimore’s current arts explosion. But the HZ folks also understand that there...
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You're Not As Weird As You Think You Are A week-long, multi-venue festival, a packed-to-the-gills one-night stand, an ambitiously incestuous remix project-qua-baccanal, a 7-inch series, abject silence: there’s no right or wrong way for a record label to celebrate an anniversary. While the compilation is among the most common commemorative expressions, there’s an unfortunate...
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Dave Rawlings, Gillian Welch Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch—he of the scruffy beard and white cowboy hat, she of the dyed-red hair and faded green dress—began the song “I Hear Them All” alone at the Recher Theatre, as if they were back home in Nashville, working up a harmony vocal. More often than not,...
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Bruce Daigrepont, from the artist's web site On almost every Sunday for the past 25 years, the Bruce Daigrepont Cajun Band has played for the afternoon Fais Do Do dance at Tipitina’s in Uptown New Orleans. In a club named after Professor Longhair (and featuring his bust in the foyer), in a club where...
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Medications Sometimes it appears there’s a generation gap in Washington, D.C. rock, one separating the postpunk old-guard represented by Dischord Records from the younger indie bands trying to make a name for themselves. But Monday’s bill at the Sidebar was a testament to the fact that there are bands on either side of that...
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