Jun 24 : "Twelve Seventy-Three" - Five Pound Snap (Detroit)

I fell in love with the chords right away, and listening to the online samples was what propelled me to do an after-work trip to Trans-Pecos a few weeks ago. The band is Five Pound Snap. They're Space-Groove, and they're from Detroit. When I saw them on May 24, they were finishing up a tour that took them through the East Coast, South, and Midwest.

This was my first trip to Trans-Pecos, actually the first time I crossed the border from Brooklyn into Queens (Ridgewood) to hear music. I like all the windows and the skylights at this venue. The closest to an outdoor concert while still being inside, and still maintaining the industrial vibe! The concert with four bands began when it was still daylight, with light pouring in from all sides. As the evening progressed and the natural light began to fade, they gradually upped the lights inside. A nice effect; I liked this. This was one of those situations where the band and venue were a perfect match. A good evening.

It's usually the instrumentals and melodic lines that first attract me to any particular music. And that was certainly the case here. When I started listening to "Convex Hollow", the first track on the band's 2017 album, "White Birch Lakes", the chords at the beginning of the song grabbed me, and, by the time I listened to the whole album, I knew my visit to see them would be a sure thing. Good chord action with lots of interesting progressions. Wow!

However, as much as I first liked "Convex Hollow", I'm highlighting the album's second song in this writeup. It's "Twelve Seventy-Three". I've seen in some of their songs how the band switches over between different tempos and different textures, a little jumpy or choppy at times. And in this "Twelve Seventy-Three" they manage to pack in pretty much everything, samples of a lot of different textures and instrumentations that appear throughout the body of their work as a whole. A good representative sample.

Since they just finished their tour, it doesn't seem like they have any dates coming back East soon. But here is the click to their Facebook page where you can follow them ::: Five Pound Snap on Facebook (CLICK HERE). And, to hear more of "White Birch Lakes" as well as some previous work, here is the click to their Soundcloud page ::: Five Pound Snap on Soundcloud (CLICK HERE). If you listen to the earlier music and do a comparison with White Birches, you can hear how the band's instrumentals have changed over the past few years, developing more depth and a fuller sound, all with a stronger yet smooth presentation.

Jun 22 : "F****** New York" - Trash Boy (Philly)

Philly Music

GENTRIFICATION and DISPLACEMENT

True Story: Chris Fortunato of Philly punk-rock band "Trash Boy" wrote the lyrics of how his father and grandfather and ancestors before them all lived in New York, and of how the city changed and how his family was driven out. And how he later set up his own life by moving to Philly. ... These are the basic story lines that are behind the lyrics in the band's song "Fuck New York", which is the lead track on their 2017 album, "The Future Is Trash".

The song is about how New York is changing with rising gentrification and income inequality (although these dynamics could be applied to many places). It talks about a city where there's enough money and resources for 10,000 more dorm rooms for rich kids but only obstacles for average people who are struggling to survive and achieve a dream of their own. This particular song singles out New York due to the band's personal experience, but they move on to talk about this injustice in a larger context.

It's in our society where the public is told not only "not to watch" as more income is transferred to billionaires, but, in another one of the band's songs, "Government Skatepark", where they might be taking aim at City Hall in Philly, they accuse the government of trying to channel people into mindless recreation so that the people won't be out in the streets protesting these economic outrages.

The band rejects the upward mobility when it is tied to maintenance of the order of inequality as the price to be paid. In the song, "40s and Blunts", they sing:
dont wanna be a boston aristocrat
dont wanna be a dc diplomat
or an ass kissing journalist who gets paid a lot to be wrong

Many bands are becoming more topical in their lyrics, and Trash Boy brings talk about income inequality as a main issue in a lot of their songs. In their live performance I saw them go after injustice with even a more piercing anger than what can be seen or heard through their web presence.

Chris Fortunato along with Dan Baggarly and Nolee Morris form this Philly three-piece. If I were to say these folks were "out from the underground", you might say well that's cliche, but they really are, for, in addition to their performing, they've also operated the South Philly basement venue, "Slime Time Live". That was where I saw them for the first time do a show back on May 11 (same night as Madam West, in my previous writeup). It was undoubtedly the nicest basement venue I've ever visited. No loose hanging wires from the ceiling at this place!

So here was the band's good riddance to New York :::

And if you would like to read the lyrics as you listen, here is a click to the words: Read and Listen (CLICK HRE)

The band is currently on their "Summer of Trash Tour". They have a couple more shows coming up soon. And where are they going to be? In New York! Yikes!The first is tomorrow on June 23 at Punk Island, and June 27 at The Bowery Electric". And, if you would like to visit them on Facebook, here is the click ::: Trash Boy on Facebook (CLICK HERE). So they'll be presenting this song in New York? Are they trying to recruit more people to move to Philly? If that's what they want to do, then, hey, they better not keep singing that Philly has "shitty pizza". haha.lol

In this song the only villain that's named specifically is NYU. If the band wants to look at Philly through those same lenses, they might find some ripe topics in questionable actions by universities here. For example, there was (maybe still is) the recent controversy about Temple's attempted encroaching into its surrounding neighborhood to build a new stadium.

Personal Note: And while I also moved from New York to Philly, that was decades ago and I don't share the band's animosity towards NY. But the band's work is important as they talk about these economic issues.

Jun 10 : "Strongest Son" - Madam West (Brooklyn)

New Music / Freshly Written & Recently Released (March 2018)

A MOTHER'S QUESTION

Madam West first came onto my radar screen back on February 23 when my friend, David Burgos, did a post onto my Facebook page inviting his band friends to post their music, and Sophie Chernin, vocalist for Madam West, posted a track there. So I'll start by doing a shoutout and thank you to both David and Sophie! ... This is my first official followup.

My work schedule limits my concert going to some Thursdays and a few Fridays. So it wasn't until May that I saw Madam West was doing a show on one of my free nights. (Found out about it through Songkick). Cool basement show here in Philly at Slime Time Live.

Before I went to the show I listened to a couple songs and was generally aware that a lot of the lyrics are about relationships. And that was reinforced when I heard the music at the show.

It wasn't until afterwards when I started to focus more deeply on some of the lyrics that I became aware of the intensity of the scrutiny that some of these interpersonal relationships were receiving, as to what relationships have turned out to be, how they've changed, how they could have been different, if only, and trying to accept that they have changed, or not.

One of the strongest human relationships is between mother and child. In "Strongest Son", the lead song of the band's recently released album, "Warm Bodies", they talk about the relationship between a mother and son, or mother and any children who might have been usurped by today's war machine and the possibility, or inevitability as the band sees it, of nuclear war. It's a song that shows the mother's strength in her watching out for her children's safety, but also a feeling of helplessness.

The song opens with a mother's lament of how to put into words something that will help us get through these times. Yet while she reflects on the uniqueness of these times, she sees the threat of impending war as something that is timeless and that has always been present since ancient times. She talks about the "strongest sun", nuclear war, and her "strongest son".

The second verse talks about the attributes of the nuclear weapon, its being "colorful". I think this section could be a metaphor of the way some people in our political life are quite enamored with the thought of war and the prospect of maybe using one of these horrific devices, that they're so eager it's a "foregone conclusion". No way out here, we're doomed to "foreclose."

And in the final verse the awareness of the absurdity of war as she describes that war is the worlds' children being made to fight against each other. And here is the rhetorical question about what to do now.

This song is filled with word play and metaphors. Is the "mother of all" the collective spirit of all mothers and/or is it the biggest and most horrific bomb of all? I'm ending my comments here because I've rewritten this post about a dozen times. Each time I go back to read and listen I come away with possible new meanings and wordplays. This band knows how to challenge the listener! :)

So here is "Strongest Son", the lead single on Madam Wests's new album, "Warm Bodies", just released in March. :::

If you'd like to read the lyrics while you listen, here is the click to the song's Bandcamp page ::: Listen and read lyrics STRONGEST SON

Right now Madam West has another show coming up on August 25th at National Sawdust in Brooklyn. To visit Madam West in the meantime, here is the click to their Facebook page ::: Madam West on Facebook (CLICK HERE).

And the mother's big question at the end is And O, what to do now?

Jun 03 : "Nobody Knows (Demo Instrumental)" and "Not Mine (Demo)" - Overwinter (Philly)

Philly Music!

On a trip to "Warehouse On Watts" on April 19 I saw Philly music outfit "Overwinter" for the first time. Overwinter is a solo project, "Sarah" on her Soundcloud page, describing herself as a "multi-instrumentalist". An unusual thing about her web presence is that she not only has a Bandcamp page showcasing her vocals, but also has a Soundcloud page where she has taken some familiar motifs and built them into "Demo Instrumentals". One such song is "Nobody Knows".

Here is "Nobody Knows (Demo Instrumental)" by Philly multi-instrumentalist, Overwinter :

And other songs appear first as demo instrumentals and then later as instrumentals with vocals. Here's an example: "Not Mine":

Her music is recorded and produced in North Philly!

If you would like to see Overwinter perform live, you're in luck!. She will be doing two shows in June and July, the first at Trafalmadore on June 19 and the second at Pharmacy on July 23.

In the meantime, to visit Overwinter on Soundcloud where you can hear more of the demo instrumentals, here is the click : Overwinter on Soundcloud (CLICK HERE). And here is the click to her Facebook page : Overwinter on Facebook (CLICK HERE).

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6/9/18 >>>>> UPDATE >>>>> OOPS. A little odd, but the Artist seems to have removed all of the music from her Soundcloud page. I've tried accessing it with a few browsers, and, even though the music links from my page are sourced to her Soundcloud page which now seems to be empty, that music still seems to appear here.

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6/24/18 >>>>> UPDATE >>>>> IT'S MAGIC. The artist's music has reappeared on Soundcloud! So click away!