This post is not about this man, sadly.

I had a brilliant idea in the shower two days ago. I’d write my next Gray Area column about R. Kelly. Robert Kelly, a true American musical genius and auteur. But a lot of you have a hard time taking that man’s work as seriously as he does, and I don’t think you’re ready to write an honest, critical analysis of his work.

So instead, we’re going to chat about Canadian hucksters Fucked Up. Equal parts Pixies, Jethro Tull, and Minor Threat, the band cuts their roots as an 80s hardcore band, but it’s fairly clear from the get-go that their riffing is a bit too soft, their intentions a bit too grand, and their output a bit too well orchestrated. We’re talking about a band here who staged the longest concert ever in Times Square, trashed MTV Canada twice just because they could, and has put hidden grooves in some of their numerous seven-inch singles. It’s hard to really try and pin down their true intentions, or their true musical direction.

The band released countless seven-inches throughout the aughts, and then with Hidden World in 2006 they simultaneously started experimenting with drawn out intros and wore out their hard riffing as a way of life. In 2008, Chemistry of Common Life expanded even further into non-traditional hardcore structures, seeing the band up their chops and expand their horizons won them the Polaris music prize in Canada.

But what we should really be talking bout is their seminal eighteen minute track “Year of the Pig,” from the twelve-inch single of the same name. It starts with a jaunty 3/4 walking bass line and soft drumming, and builds on itself with actual singing (from a lady no doubt!) and expansive piano playing in a classic sense. As it builds and Pink Eyes’ vocals come in, the song changes course and ends up with an extremely sophisticated section in the middle where the drums are playing in a different time signature as the bass, pushing the notion of polyrhythms just about as far as Yes took them. Essentially, everyone’s favorite hardcore band of the past six years went full on prog rock and managed to not alienate their fans.

Now, not everyone might recognize this brand of prog, since Minor Threat fans tend not to be sympathetic to Ian Anderson, his flute, or his tights, but let’s face it: “Year of the Pig” would fit nicely on anything between Minstrel in the Gallery to Heavy Horses. Substitute 80s hardcore riffs for Jethro Tull’s early heavy blues metal riffs, and voila.

I’m not entirely sure what this means for the future of hardcore. There’s been a handful of throwback bands lately, but there always seems to be some sort of progression into other genres. Hell, the new Blacklisted sounds exactly like Nirvana. Ultimately, I think the love and respect that Fucked Up has for music is what helps them pull the whole thing off. If you read any interview with the band, they’re all vinyl nerds who listen to a lot of music all of the time. And while superfans don’t always become the best artists, there’s an attention to detail that helps them craft authentic songs. It works for Patton Oswalt in comedy, and it works for Fucked Up in hardcore.

Gray Area Score: Concrete

One of us.

“Just pretending to be in the Ramones I felt cooler than I ever have in Black Flag, Descendents, or All.”

-Bill Stevenson (Descendents/ALL) on playing a Halloween show as the Ramones

I’m sitting behind my drumset on Halloween night on a stage that also doubles as a skate ramp. I can hear the crowd cheering, but I can’t really see them. There are spotlights glaring in my face, and I’m pretty sure the same is true for the rest of my band. We’re going to start our set any second now and I can hear Andrew, who’s on guitar, affirm that everything’s OK on his end. We’re greenlit and ready to go and all I can think of are Bill Stevenson’s words.

“This is going to be fun,” I keep repeating to myself like some Orwellian doctrinal entity. I’m hoping it’ll work. I’m hoping I’ll be convinced.

Like they always do in these situations, my hands are getting sweaty. Not good. And, as I hear Ryan yell out “One-Two-Three-Four!” I grip my drumsticks as tight as I can, hold my breath, and pray to whatever celestial being will listen:

“Dear God, don’t let these sticks fly out of my hands…”

How did I get here? If anyone were to tell me a year ago that I was going to play in a Ramones cover band on Halloween, I’d politely give them directions to the nearest mental institution.

You better shut it up.

Truth be told, the idea first manifested as far back as May in a dark and smoky bar in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I remember being with Justin talking about music (which is what we usually do), surrounded by new people and talking about cover bands. I can’t remember whose idea it was to cover the Ramones (it might have been the Yuengling lager), but we both committed immediately. We dissect the idea: we will call the band Halloweenage Lobotomy, and there is a Halloween party in October in Philly that Justin is hosting that we would play. He then points to a skinny, tall, and admittedly handsome fellow (it could have been the Yuengling) and says, “Andrew can play guitar!”

I hadn’t met Andrew previously but his immediate enthusiasm, his inherent knowledge of the Big Apple’s Fab Four, and the assurance that, musically at least, he’s in tune made him a synch. Who would play bass?

‘We’ll figure it out, don’t worry!’ says Justin.

I get to know Andrew as the night goes on and I like the guy…substantially. “This is going to be fun,” I assure myself. However, I should have known there might be a glitch in this Matrix when Andrew and Justin both give me the same exact answer to the question, “When are we going to practice?”

“We’ll figure it out, don’t worry!”

Huh? Days, weeks, months go by, and to my disappointment (and in spite of my heavy persistence), Halloweenage Lobotomy has not developed from its embryonic state at the bar with Justin and Andrew.

Then, in mid-October I get an event invite on Facebook for a Halloween show here in Harrisburg at a friend of ours’ venue called Colormake. I look under the heading:

“Featuring Halloweenage Lobotomy”

Twenty-four hours to go.

What the fuck?! The first thought going through my head is “This isn’t real.” No such luck. A couple of texts verify my fears: there’s a Halloween show two weeks away, we’re playing, there’s people showing up to see us, and we haven’t even practiced once! With no time to spare I decide to take charge, convince a new acquaintance Ryan to play bass, and try to find us a practice space. Slowly, Andrew commits, then Ryan. Unfortunately, Justin has fallen off the face of the earth and in between jokes that he might have either disappeared, died, or turned into a werewolf (the man sports a beard fit for the halls of Valhalla, after all), it becomes apparent that the band isn’t happening…until I get a text message from my Lycan friend six days before the show:

“Practice tomorrow at 1″

The final piece of the puzzle has fallen into place, and like some tragic cosmic wheel made of irony and regret, our practice space is going to be the very same venue that’s hosting the show.

There's no stoppin' the cretins from hoppin'.

“It started as just a joke, but became quite a serious undertaking. We ended up practicing ruthlessly trying to get the stuff to sound “just so” (Ramones, i.e. perfect).”

-Bill Stevenson

I show up to the first practice on a sunny Sunday with a six-pack of Yuengling. What’s the plan? Well over the next three days (!) we’re to pick a setlist, practice it, and have a rehearsal show at Justin’s Philadelphia party (that I had all but forgotten about). This party in Philadelphia will serve as a dress rehearsal. The day after, we’re to drive from Philly back to Harrisburg and play the Colormake Halloween show. The show.

Don’t let anyone fool you, playing the Ramones ain’t easy, and on that very same Sunday, it becomes apparent that I’m the only one who’ even remotely prepared (as I’ve been practicing the songs sporadically over the past couple months). We can’t even play a single song all the way through, and I curse the fact that I brought Yuengling to our practice. We have three more days to get it right, and I’m starting to get nervous. On Monday we make it through a couple songs and finalize a setlist. On Tuesday we make it through a couple more and decide to add a cover of “Monster Mash” at the end. On Wednesday we make it though the entire setlist… sloppily… ONCE… and, much to my amazement, call it a night. We can’t practice Thursday due to everyone else’s commitments, and the next time we’re playing together is at the Philadelphia party on Friday; the “dress rehearsal.” Justin has made us custom shirts with the Ramones emblem in orange and our names superimposed. It makes me feel a little better, but diverts little from the fact that I’m getting a bad feeling about this. Particularly when I’m packing my drums into my car and I hear Justin say:

“I’ve got a GOOD feeling about this.”

At the Philadelphia party we find out there’s a Misfits cover band playing after us.

“Curses!” I think. “We should have done the Misfits instead!”

I know that we’re not prepared for this show, and I’m right. We start the set with “Rockaway Beach” (MANDATORY opener for any Ramones cover band – no excuses!) and Andrew misses the cue halfway through and ends up playing something different. At the same time, I don’t know what the fuck Ryan has chosen to play instead of the songs we practiced. Luckily, we make it through the set, sloppily, awkwardly, but kicking and screaming.

“Well, let that be a lesson,” I say to myself. “Besides, how much better can the Misfits cover band be?”

As it turns out, the answer to my question is much better. I can’t hear their set clearly through the dark basement room, but it’s painstakingly and embarrassingly obvious that these guys are dishing out a smooth and tight set effortlessly. I must be hallucinating. It must be the Yuengling I’ve been drinking all night.

I remember being there on Halloween night playing, and thinking, “this is the coolest I’ve ever felt.”

-Bill Stevenson

So, here I am. Sitting behind the drumkit. In front of a hundred people. At Colormake. On the ramp. Where you came into the story. This is the one that counts.

“ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR!!!”

I hit the crash and hope for the best.

We sound good this time. Better than I expected. Rockaway Beach is sounding better than ever.

“OK, Ollie, do everything you can to stop any mistakes from happening.”

So, I start singing the words along at the top of my lungs just in case someone in the band gets confused as to what part of the song we’re at. Much to my surprise, we don’t need it, because our playing tonight is tight, and it makes me smile. I take off my leather jacket and this time let the drums really have it; “Teenage Lobotomy.” I look around and everyone is having a good time. Ryan’s walking on the vert and keeping control, Justin’s owning the crowd, and Andrew is singing right along with me. This is what I was hoping for! “Do You Remember Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio?” People from the crowd are making their way on ‘stage’ and singing along in the microphones. It seems like they do.

The set blazes by; “Sheena is a Punk Rocker,” “The KKK Took My Baby Away,” “Do You Wanna Dance?” “Beat on the Brat,” and our own rendition of “Monster Mash.” Every beat is there, every transition is made, and every word is spot on. I can’t see the crowd, but I can hear them having a good time. It’s nothing short of a miracle. We end the set, and thank the crowd. I take off my wig immediately and go outside to get some fresh air. Everyone’s congratulating us on the set, and I’m eternally grateful to them.

Later that night, after numerous beers, many familiar faces, and countless stories with friends, I’m driving home, with my drums in the backseat of my car and my leather jacket on thinking about the show. This time I know it’s not the Yuengling. Bill was right.
It’s the coolest I’ve ever felt.

Ollie Mikse is a graduate anti-student at Penn State Hershey. When the professors aren’t looking, he does freelance writing for Ground Control Magazine, Punknews.org, and sometimes, Razorcake. In between hazy days and sleepless night, he spends his time with his band The Ottomans and his mistress Red Sound Records. Photos by Britany Ziegenhagen.

What’s your town’s nickname?

Some call Washington, D.C. “Washington.” Others call it “D.C.,” or just “DC” (but, when spoken, you can’t hear the missing periods). Still others call it “The District of Columbia.” Still others call it “Chocolate City,” as many black folk live here (though, these days, it’s kind of a white chocolate city due to Caucasian yuppie invasion). Still others call it “Dodge City,” taken from the Go-Go Posse’s “D.C. Don’t Mean Dodge City,” a response to the metropolis’ high murder rate in the early 1990s (the murder rate has since declined). George Washington called it “The Federal City.” Sarah Palin calls it “Inside the Beltway.” I’m not friends with Sarah Palin, so I don’t call it that.

Why do you live there?

I am a “brain punk,” not a “pop punk,” or a “gutter punk,” etc. Brain punks like D.C. because you can go to law school or work on Capitol Hill, but you can also see Dischord bands and volunteer at Food Not Bombs. I never volunteered at Food Not Bombs, though.

What is your favorite local attraction (monument, park, etc)?

There’s a statue of Albert Einstein on Constitution Avenue near the Mall that’s friendly and makes me feel warm inside. Since most people think of a huge phallus (the Washington Monument) or staid marble memorials (Lincoln, Jefferson) when they think of D.C., this friendly rococo statue is a pleasant departure from our downtown’s severe classicism.

What is the best time of year to be there?

Summertime is boiling and muggy and sweaty. Most people hate it and blast their air conditioning, but I just lie around in my hot house and try not to move and am glad it’s not icy and freezing and January.

Who is your favorite local celebrity/personality?

Blelvis (a.k.a. “Black Elvis”) is a colorful local semi-homeless alcoholic who knows the words to every Elvis song and will sing to you for money. Also, if you don’t see him for awhile and ask where he’s been, he says, “Don’t you know? I’ve been in Blemphis, studying at Blemphis University.”

Where is the best place to drink and what’s their specialty or happy hour?

I don’t drink, but I like the Abita root beer at the Black Cat, a local indie rock venue of some repute.

What is your favorite local band?

Protect-U. They are an instrumental electronic duo that pioneers an aesthetic called “swimming pool” or “spiritual techno.” I recorded their 12-inch in my studio. Also, I am currently sleeping on their couch.

What is your favorite diner or restaurant and what is their best dish?

There’s this insane Indian buffet in College Park, MD right outside of town called “Woodlands.” It’s vegan friendly, and they have these awesome enormous portraits of Indian ladies doing this funky hand jive that’s like some kind of yogic hand jive or something. Also, they have Indian Chinese food.

What is your favorite local shop?

Atomic Music is this paradise of well-priced vintage gear. I wrote about them once for Washington City Paper, and now they give me deals. I didn’t write about them to get a discount, though. In fact, every time they give me one, I want to explain that it’s unethical for me to accept it, but there wasn’t an explicit quid pro quo, so maybe the discount is okay. I also don’t have the heart to turn them down because I know they’re just being nice to me. Also, once, they gave me an oversized T-shirt. Also, the deals aren’t that great, I think just like $20 off. I’ve probably spent like $10000 there since 1996. Maybe more.

What is your favorite local publication (alternative weekly, zine,
website or blog)?

I’ve written for the Washington Post, the Washington City Paper, and this hipster doofus website Brightest Young Things, but I’m not sure if any of them are my favorite publication. I really like this weird zine called Many Hills Mostly that’s done by my bandmate up in New York, so I guess that’s not really local, but he distributes it locally, so maybe it does count.

HAIR BAND.

Artist: Ancient Sky

Album: Ancient Sky

Label: The Perpetual Motion Machine

Year: 2009

Ancient Sky seems to have forgotten something when they decided to form a stoner metal band: the metal. But that’s okay. In fact, it’s refreshing. Instead of crushing distortion, as the guitars plow through spacey riffs, the band is accompanied by haunting organ tones and other reverbed keys. But don’t get confused. Ancient Sky isn’t playing psychedelic rock and roll like Dead Meadow or half of Tee Pee’s roster.  The songs are all based on simplistic heavy riffs played with a touch of restraint and plenty of introspection. The album has a few blues dirges, a strung out ballad, and some heavy swung Deep Purple riffs, all laid out in a natural progression. It’s an impressive debut with a bright showcase on some detailed songwriting — take, for instance, the counter melody the bass takes on album opener “Guilt Is Universal.” It’s a pretty solid musical technique you don’t often see from band’s who seem to take more inspiration from bong rips than Beethoven. Or maybe I’m just reading way too far into it.  Either way, Ancient Sky is an album worth listening to.

What’s your town’s nickname?
I have no idea, in Bosnia we call it Klivlend. (I dont know why the foreigner who has only been in Cleveland about a decade is answering these questions.)

What’s your nickname for your town?
CHEAP RENT.

Why do you live there?

CHEAP RENT. Actually i think its a mixture of a true affection towards the city, the inevidable economical convenience, as well as the aspect of home – mommy lives here, daddy also, bla, bla. Some members of hotchacha have lived all over the places and YET we still come back.

What is your favorite local attraction (monument, park, etc)?

The Beach!!! Many people don’t realize that Cleveland seriously has beaches.  Not super fancy or clean for that matter, and you might not want to swim on days after rain, YET there is sand and water and we roll around in it on the few sunny days we get. (I mainly just lay there and complain about the heat)

What is your favorite local event/festival?
One of the greatest things about Cleveland is the ethnical diversity it offers.  This brings about a magnitude of events that celebrate different cultures.  So, all summer long one can find wonderful festivals that offer music, food and celebration from all over the world.

What is the best time of year to be there?

Summer- for sure!!!! actually Fall is really pretty too.  Winter- NO!

Who is your favorite local celebrity/personality?
Justin Coulter

What is your favorite record store and what was your best find there?

You simply must visit Waterloo Rd. and check out Music Saves as well as Blue Arrow record stores. I

Blue Arrow Records

have not found anything there because I have been buying my music digitally, which allowed me to buy…actually i am lying.  I have been taking music for free of the internet as well as buying music at shows.  Which is what most people do.  This is not completely cool.  That is why I got this job now making insane amounts of money, which will let me go to record stores and buy my music there.  Which is what I promised to myself I will do in order to boost local economy (besides buying from local farmers, as well as eating at locally owned restaurants).  See you on Waterloo!!!!

What is your favorite local shop?
There is quite a few that have been opening recently.  You might want to check out Room Service along a few other shops on Detroit Ave.

What is your favorite local publication (alternative weekly, zine, website or blog)?
Scene is a great source of local info.  Pink Eye just came out recently and its a great magazine that offers art, music- very visually stimulating!

Appeaing tonight only on your throwaway TV channels!

With every new technology comes a slew of folks trying to cash in on it. Case in point — the waggleverse of Wii releases budgeted out and coded for a cheap thrill upon the release of the system. Anyone with HD channels knows this as well: there’s a whole crap load of channels dedicated to stuff that looks good in high definition without any real production value behind it.  Example? Palladia. It’s a channel dedicated to HD repeats from MTV and CMT and VH1 as well as never-ending concert footage from weird bands you don’t care about. Until last Sunday. For some reason, this gimmicky HD music channel decided to play D. A. Pennebaker’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, a 1973 David Bowie concert film that was restored and released in 1983.

It’s easy to lament missing out on seeing the great 70′s rock acts perform in their heyday: no one’s denying that seeing the Stones or Bowie now would be great, but there’s been about thirty years of boring music from both that makes any show today more like a greatest hits compilation than a relevant generation defining performance.

So what did we learn from this viewing? Bowie’s range definitely wasn’t as high on stages as it was in studio (probably due to Bowie being too high himself), Bowie didn’t let Ronson play the main guitar intro riff to “All The Young Dudes,” and that “Oh You Pretty Things” is better played slower with a longer drawn out intro and more dynamic contrast.

But goddamn was it awesome to see. Gimmick TeeVee, I salute you.

These guys also play rock and roll music.

These guys were in other bands, but aren’t anymore. Black Wine have some great fuzzy psyched out garage riffs and hooks, but is the world ready for everything they have to offer? As a test to see if their rock ‘n roll will melt your brain, you can check out two Black Wine songs on the band’s MySpace page.

If you’re giong to check out “Couch Critics” and “Belong,” I suggest having a set of ear plugs ready lest the greatness pollute your eardrums and force you to only listen to Black Wine for the rest of the year.

A little bit creepy.

Artist: Evangelista

Album: Prince of Truth

Label: Constellation

Year: 2009

Evangelista’s Prince of Truth is one of those albums that could very easily be a shelver. Playing like an avant noise jazz group doing their best rough-edged indie rock impersonation laden with dramatic swells and emotional outbursts, Prince isn’t quite the most accessible album of the year.

But for all the feedback driven ambient intros, there are cohesive moments of melody and form. “You Are A Jaguar” has it’s share of freak out improvisational moments, that’s for sure, but the core of the song is a grandiose waltz.

It’s definitely an album worth poring over, allowing multiple listens to penetrate your listening habits and create a foundation for this album to rest on. One unfamiliar with jazz might have a hard time listening to the simplistic bass foundation of “Crack Teeth” and finding melody. But for Evangelista, what the band isn’t playing is almost just as important as what they are.  Their limited arrangements create negative space, and that’s one of the hardest things to do in music.

Music is one of the arts, but it’s hard to categorize most albums the same way as a painting. Most music exists in a concrete form for easy digestion; Prince of Truth is instead a modern abstract painting, open for interpretation and able to generate an emotional response beyond the lyrics themselves. Now it’s just a question of whether or not you can give the album enough time to reveal itself.

One of the possible candidates...

Easy Freddy. This right here is to be a blog about two important subjects.
1. Drum & Bass
2. Halloween spooky sound effect CDs

Come with us now on a journey through time and space. Every week I’ll be typing up some words to update everyone on this seasons offerings of Halloween spooky sound effects CDs. The Zombie part of this blog.  The Autumn season is upon us, and that means Halloween excitement for me.  Halloween is by far my favorite holiday.  And with the chill in the air also comes seasonal goodies.

One of which is, of course, those cheap Halloween spooky sound effect CDs that you can find at just about any store that sells discounted high fructose corn syrup.  I’m sure you’ve seen them before, usually done up in orange and black with lots of creaky doors, dragging chains, screaming, etc.  Sometimes they have scary stories on them.  I’ve been collecting these recordings for years.  In all formats: CD, tape, record, etc.  (if any one has seen a mini-disc spooky sound effects ‘official’ release, please let me know)  And the thing I love the most about them is their poor quality.  Usually there is an inverse relationship between how much you pay for the recording and how awesome the recording is.  Beyond some of the interesting stuff that has passed as ‘haunting music’ it fascinates me to no end how and why these CDs are produced.  I imagine some failed sound designers and some goths getting together and mass producing these CDs for my entertainment.

I’ve just gotten my first batch of CDs during a recent trip to Dayton, Oh.  4 discs from CVS.  I’ve listened to a bit of them, but I’ll throw up some fotos and a review later…

Now to our Amen portion of the blog.  I’ve been asked to bring some of the gems from the drum & bass end of the electronic spectrum to Ghettoblaster.  So to best facilitate my rants and to superimpose some sort of narrative on to the blog, I’ve got some ground rules that I’ll abide by.  My task is to go through the entire back catalog of d&b records available on Juno.  Juno records is a London based electronic music specialist that’s been around since ’96.  Defiantly one of the biggest record shops that specializes in electronic dance music.  Right now they have about 2700 records in their back catalog.  So I’ll be writing and reviewing for a while.  Additionally, they update their catalog every week, and if you know how quickly singles come out in the d&b world, it’s almost an impossible task to complete the entire catalog.  But it’s my spring board.  I enjoy dubstep and just ‘bass’ music, or what ever you’d like to call all the splinter genres with roots in dub, jungle, what-have-you.  There’s a lot of genre pollination right now, so I feel it’s a good time to spot light some of the newness.  Drum & Bass was the one that got me into electronic dance music, and I’ve been a DJ for about 8 years.  And sometimes I get more than free drinks when I play out!  But it always surprises how other DJs hate on d&b.  Or how people sometimes have no idea how to dance when you’re playing d&b.

So for our benefit I will take stock of what’s good, what’s bad, and what is just plain ugly.  I’ll take 20 singles at a time, basically one page of the back catalog, and muse about what I’ve been know to call “jazz’s redemption from fusion and its natural evolution.”  Pumpkin flavored ale is also a seasonal treat I enjoy.

That’s the impetus.  Basically.  Stay focused on your computer screen.

N

Is that handpainted?

Artist: Reigning Sound

Album: Love and Curses

Label: In The Red

Year: 2009

The great thing about modern garage bands is that they have decades of music that early garage inspired to pull from as well. It’s hard to imagine Reigning Sound without Bruce Springsteen’s back catalog or The Dead Boys to look back on, but at the same time, their simple approach revitalizes the best moments of Nuggets and Pebbles.

There’s a lot of passion (and Hammond organ) to these songs, and very few chords. That’s the way it should be. Reigning Sound takes the best from classic chord progressions, and modernizes them just enough with straightforward lyrics about love and loss to give the listener a toe-tapping pop album that stretches past most pre-conceived notions.

Most reviewers know that there are more albums available to review then there is time to review them, hence: The Pile. This column is designed to put a spotlight on some of those albums before they slip through the cracks.