Thursday.
-Listening to Parallax II: Future Sequenceby Between the Buried and Me in the car this morning. There are some incredible moments in it, and as with any BTBAM album, it’s going to take a while before I feel like I’ve heard the whole thing. What a band.
-Listened to the Black, Red and Orange EPs from The ColorSpectrumby The Dear Hunter.
-Listening to Abrahadabraby Dimmu Borgir to close out the work day.
Wednesday. Back to listening to Epicloud by Devin Townsend Project in the car.
-Listened to the self-titled ‘94 Motley Crue album while working this morning.
-Listening to Monster by KISS. It’s like I’m back at The Tour!
-Listened to “Thoughts Like Hammers” by Enslaved. EN-SLAAAAAAVED!
-Listening to Kids Raising Kids by Kopecky Family Band
-Listening to October Rust by Type O Negative
-Put on Parallax II: Future Sequence by Between the Buried and Me in the car. It’s awesome.
Holy cow. I’ve gotten so behind on this log, so I’m going to do one big catch-up post. Saturday-Tuesday (10 days, damn).
I got a lot of new albums in this time period, and I’ve mainly been switching them in and out of my ears. Here’s just a list of what I’ve listened to the past 10 days:
-Kids Raising Kids by Kopecky Family Band; it’s awesome, really an astoundingly good record
-Monster by KISS; it’s exactly what they said it would be: straight-forward, no-frills rock. and they did a damn good job of it. one of the more solid KISS albums ever I think. I’ve also been practicing for our upcoming Merry KISSmas show.
-Parallax II: The Future Sequence by Between the Buried and Me; It’s up to par with Colors, which is a masterpiece. still sinking into this one, but I love it so far.
-Epicloud by Devin Townsend Project; still my album of the year
-Born Villain by Marilyn Manson; it has some of the best songs Manson has written in a looong time on it. there are a few clunkers as well.
There have also been a few one-off things I’ve checked out throughout these days that I made note of:
-a demo that Whitney Coleman sent me. One of my favorite songwriters/voices in town.
-watched the video for “So You’re Afraid” by Tremonti; cool riffage
-listened to The Afterman by Coheed and Cambria; certainly not bad, some songs click with me more than others. overall, I like this band.
-watched a video by Butterfly Boucher; she’s interesting
-listened to Clockwork Angels by Rush; it’s #2 on my albums of the year list so far
-Late Autumn Cassette by Evan P Donohue; one of my favorite Nashville artists, I love his style
-watched the video for “Raise Your Fist in the Air” by Doro. Goofy.
-Listened to some Tom Waits with Casey.
-Joseph showed me some new cuts by New Culture. The song “Bells” is a damn good tune.
-Listened to some new tracks from the upcoming Deftones release. Sounding awesome, I’m pretty sure this new album is going to live up to my expectations.
-A few new Stone Sour songs have surfaced, most recently one called “RU486”. It sounds like this album will be much more aggressive that the last one, which will be welcome.
Ok I think that should get me caught up. Yay music!
October 5, 2012 (Friday)
Friday night there was a free album pre-release party at Jackalope, a fairly new brewery down on 8th, to celebrate the debut full-length from Kopecky Family Band, Kids Raising Kids.
I had never been to this new brewery before, and I found the event to be most enjoyable. The beer was great (we put back quite a few Thunder Annes, highly recommended) and the set-up was very nice. The first few people there got advance copies of the new CD (you bet we did - it’s really a great album), and the bands were set up in the loading dock playing out into the parking lot. The first performer was Kate Tucker.
Kate put on a good show, I got her new EP. Before she took the stage I thought she was Butterfly Boucher (was even wearing almost the same outfit Butterfly was wearing at the Gotye show a few nights before), but she delivered a very enjoyable performance.
Up next was one of my favorites, Evan P Donohue. He had Kopecky Family Band minus Gabe and Kelsey as his backing band (Davey is Evan’s roommate), so that was cool. Loved it.
We actually didn’t get to see Kopecky Family Band perform, as it started raining and they decided to move everything inside. We decided against waiting 45 minutes in the packed-to-the-brim interior for the band to re-set up everything, so we bounced. But it was great to get to hang out and catch up with Kelsey for a bit, and seriously their new CD is awesome. Go get it!
October 4, 2012 (Thursday)
I headed down to Exit/In to attend the release show celebrating the new (and debut) EP from Roots of a Rebellion.
When I got there Sol Cat was in the middle of their set. I like this band, they have a really cool vibe about them.
Next up was Vitek. It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of this band, and it’s really cool to see them tightening up and evolving after losing Lydia and Whitney. Who needs BGVs when you can watch Anthony dance like that?
And then Roots of a Rebellion took the stage and made everybody in the audience feel groovy with their uplifting aural message. I really like this band a lot and I see big things coming for them in the future if they continue to work as hard as they have been. The new EP is excellent! It was also good to see and catch up with buddies in the audience from Moon Taxi and Max & The Wild Things. Fun night!
October 3, 2012 (Wednesday)
In what ended up being a fortuitous unfolding of events, Katie was contacted by a friend that she used to work with who is now working at Lightning 100. This friend wanted to know if Katie would like to attend the meet and greet session for Gotye. She of course said yes, but didn’t know whether that would get her into the show or not. Turns out she got two tickets to the show, so down to The Ryman I went!
The opening artist was a guy from South Africa called Jonti. His stuff was pretty cool, lots of weird electronic instruments on stage. He seemed very gracious to be out playing and his fun translated well into the audience. Very enjoyable!
Up next was Missy Higgins. She’s Australian, and her style reminded me a lot of Sara Bareilles (so, no surprise when we later saw Sara hanging out at their bus after the show). She recorded her latest album her in Nashville with Butterfly Boucher, who was playing bass for her (and convinced me that she’s bonafide badass with her performance). Really cool stuff!
Finally, Wally and his band came out and immediately put us on a trippy rollercoaster ride through an audiovisual wonderland. All the musicians were top-quality. All the drum breakdowns and fun with synthpads never got old. And the artwork being displayed amped the whole show up 1000%. So cool. And Wally’s voice sounded fantastic. If you ever get the chance to see a Gotye show, do it. It was one of the coolest concert experiences I’ve had!
September 27, 2012 (Thursday)
Continuing the excellent installments of this year’s Live on the Green free concert series that are held at Public Square Park in downtown Nashville, Katie and I went down early this week to claim a spot on the lawn and get in before the expected masses descended. The cause for such a clamour was that Alabama Shakes, one of the biggest musical popularity explosions of the past year, headlined the show. But more exciting, our good friends The Apache Relay were playing also!!!
The first band to play was Fly Golden Eagle. They were really cool. I had never heard them before, but I knew they had been out on the road with Alabama Shakes. They have a pretty eclectic sound, and had really cool exploratory instrumental sections laced with cool vocal melodies. Thoroughly enjoyable for a nice night outside.
Up next were our boys The Apache Relay. It was fun listening to Mike giving an interview on the radio on our way to the show. Love that guy. They played an awesome set, and got a great response from the huge crowd. Too cool. Seriously can’t wait until they record their next album, all the new songs are so good!!
Closing out the night in front of 14,000 people (!!!) was Alabama Shakes. I completely enjoyed their performance, Brittany Howard sure does know how to stir a crowd into a frenzy with that insane vocal energy. The musicians were tight but played with palpable feel. Just an all-around great band. Fun night!
Friday. Holiday weekend, yay! Listening to Epiclouder by Devin Townsend Project in the car.
-Listened to the Inner Light EP by Roots of a Rebellion. The release show last night was awesome, way to go guys! This EP is really good, I’m digging it!
-Listened to Neptune’s Crown by Max & The Wild Things. It was awesome getting to hang with Aidan and Cole last night, had been way too long!
-Listened to a snippet of a song called “A Rumor of Skin” by Stone Sour. Sounding pretty good and heavy, looking forward to this record.
-Listened to audio samples from the Between the Buried and Me album being released next week. It sounds excellent. Definitely will be picking this up on Tuesday. Also watched the video for “Astral Body”. Holy shit what a cool video and song. It sounds like this might actually be on par with one of the best musical masterpieces ever released in my opinion, Colors.
-Listened to the new Tomahawk single, “Stone Letter”. Anything Mike Patton is involved with is cool with me. And they’re playing Exit/In in a few weeks! Stoked!!
-While telling Frank how cool the Gotye show was, ended up watching the performance of “State of The Art” from that night. Sweet.
-Ran into my neighbor Jeffrey James when I swung by the house for lunch, and he gave me the pre-mastered CD for his Make Your Way to the Flashing Light EP! Sitting at work now jamming out on it, and it’s awesome.
-So much fresh local music being sent my way today! Colin from Montezuma Fire Machine just sent me a couple of demos they’ve been working on. If you haven’t heard this band, I highly recommend checking them out. They’re an instrumental jazz/rock/prog/fusion/Zappa/metal/whatever-they-damn-well-please band, always a fun ride listening to their stuff.
Thursday. Listening to Epiclouder by Devin Townsend Project in the car. This is the bonus disc of demos from the deluxe edition of Epicloud. There are some really cool songs in here!
-Watched the video for “The Galaxy” by Dethklok. Sounds like Dethklok.
-Listened to a new song from Geoff Tate called “Dark Money”. Shit song.
-Listened to “A Liar’s Chain” from Jeff Loomis. This guy comes up with some awesome riffage every time!
-After the Roots of a Rebellion show, I hung out at the house with Clint, Joey, Drew and Tommy, and we listened to “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” by Pink Floyd.
Wednesday. Listening to Epicloud by Devin Townsend Project in the car.
-Watched the new music video from Kopecky Family Band for their song “Heartbeat”. Cool band, looking forward to their new album coming out next week!
-Heard 2 new KISS songs from Monster, “Long Way Down” and “All for the Love of Rock ‘n’ Roll”. They sound pretty awesome! Definitely going to be picking this up next week!!
-Listened to another new Deftones song, called “Tempest”. Another cool track, can’t wait til November 13 when the new album drops!
-So I finally got around to watching the much-buzzed-about “Gangnam Style” by Psy. Holy shit, I think it’s the new macarena. At least that’s most sense I’ve been able to make of it so far.