Jun 20 : "Stay Away From Me" - Stellarscope (Clifton Heights)

A few years back, Tom Lugo, mastermind of local band Stellarscope, used to advertise his shows with the tag line that when you came to hear his music, "Your ears will bleed." Well, when I went to his recent show at Kung Fu Necktie, I found that, even though he no longer says it, MY EARS STILL BLED.

It's been a little while since our schedules clicked. They've been a strong part of the Philly music scene and I was happy to see them again. They played a variety of music in a fairly long set. While they played mostly shoeagaze when I first heard them, they've more recently added some post punk and some indie stylings onto their playlist.

Here's one of their post punk tracks, "Stay Away From Me" :::

Stellarscope has another show coming up on July 14 at the Cobra Club in Brooklyn. To visit them on line in the meantime, here is the click to their Soundcloud page ::: Stellarscope on Soundcloud (CLICK HERE).

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6/27/20 ::: OOPS! ::: The band appears to have removed this song from their page!

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Jun 02 : "Bleeding Blues" - Vamanos (Brooklyn)

When I plan a BIG music night, I've gotta make sure that there's lots of music, that it starts early, and that it goes late. Don't want to get stuck spending half the night in Penn Station or Port Authority waiting for the 3am trip coming back home.

One band that did more than its share to keep my Sunnyvale night going strong was Brooklyn band Vamanos. Definitely the highest highest energy of any of the acts that night. Vamanos just has two members, Alex Knoche on the guitar and Tyler Bower on the drums, both do vocals, but they sound like they've got more guys on the stage than just the two of them. I like new music; if you want to hear some new music, they just came out with a new album on "beer-colored" 10-inch vinyl. Check out the Bandcamp link listed below.

But they've also got an "official music video" that came out a few years ago. Here is "Bleeding Blues", published in 2013.

More noise, more energy, more crazy, more loud, more rock, Vamanos! Check them out. They'll be doing a show at Shea Stadium on July 1. In the meantime here is the click to their Bandcamp page: Vamanos on Bandcamp (CLICK HERE)

May 26 : "Melt" - Spritzer (Brooklyn)

I kept going back and checking the web pages because I didn't believe it! I didn't believe that the band "Spritzer" I saw on the web was the same one that I saw at Sunnyvale. But it's true. Spritzer's Facebook page does have references to the Sunnyvale show, and Matt Meade, the band's mastermind, appears on the Facebook page as well as the music page. So it must be the same. But the band sounded a world apart on stage as compared to on the web.

There are two segues from my last posting to this. First of all, the chronological: Spritzer followed def.GRLS on stage at the show. But the second segue is that both bands (on stage) work with different genres. In the Spritzer show there were a couple points where the music paused, and then resumed going down a completely different road.

The music had a vibrancy and a lot of action, there was a lot going on. The band was a five-piece on stage, and, unlike the web music, had a saxophone as part of the mix! The sax seemed to go off on its own path a few times, but it was all brought back together. Here is a diagram, the best I could do in the dark, of the lineup of the actual musicians in the band. There were drums in the back, two guitars up front center and right, with keys over at the front left and the sax standing a little to the right of the keys. It was interesting that the sax and the keys were next to each other, because there were a couple interludes where the sax had some rests and he reached over and became a third hand on the keys! Wow!

So here is a sample of the Spritzer's online presence, which, while good music, has nothing to do with what you would hear if you were to see them live. Here is "Melt":

I enjoyed Spritzer and want to go back and hear them again, especially if they're a five-piece with the sax. But I don't see upcoming shows posted at the moment. In the meantime, here is the click to their Soundcloud page: Spritzer on Soundcloud (CLICK HERE).

May 18 : "GRL" - Def.GRLS (Brooklyn)

A couple weeks ago I was looking for a full evening of good bands, and I came across listings for a new venue that I hadn't visited before. The venue is "Sunnyvale", and it's located in East Williamsburg, almost bordering on Bushwick. It was an interesting space: new fixtures in an older building. They had chalk in the unisex bathrooms so customers could get a head start on doing the requisite bathroom graffiti that every decent venue should have.

First up for the evening was Brooklyn outfit "Def.GRLS". From their Facebook page: "Def.GRLS is the love child of boyhood friends Mark Brickman and Craig Martinson and the surrogate mother to their rock n’ roll spawn, Hannah Teeter. Perpetually oscillating between the irreverent, macabre, hilarious and heartfelt, the gender and genre bending trio is impossible to pigeon hole."

Yes, they were impossible to pigeon hole except to say they were consistently fun to listen to. There wasn't any one genre, the music jumped around style to style. The music on their web page is smoother than what they played at Sunnyvale; the Sunnyvale music had a more solid bass and underpinning, and yes it did jump.

Here is the opening track of the bands album, titled "GRLS EP" that was released last Fall. The track is titled, "GRL". :::

If you would like to visit Def.GRLS, here is the click to their Facebook page ::: Def.GRLS on Facebook (CLICK HERE)

As to my visit to Sunnyvale Brooklyn, even though I was there on a busy Friday night, I didn't feel jammed in. I like the layout of the place; I know I'll be going back.

May 10 : "And West Is West" - Ron Childress

Definitely the best fiction I've read in a year! I recommend this to everybody.

While browsing for books I generally try to go against the old adage, "Don't judge a book by its cover", for if the art department at the publishing house is doing its job properly, then the cover of a book should be a good representation of the consciousness of the writing inside.

A couple months ago I was browsing at my favorite, the Independence Library, and I came across a brilliant cover that begged me to pick it up. The book is titled, "And West Is West", and this is blurb I found on the inside of the jacket cover: "When Jessica, a young Air Force drone pilot in Nevada, is tasked with launching a missile attack against a suspected terrorist halfway across the world, she realizes that though women and children are in the crosshairs of her screen, she has no choice but to follow orders. Ethan, a young Wall Street quant, is involved in a more bloodless connection to war when he develops an algorithm that enables his company's clients to profit by exploiting the international financial instability caused by exactly this kind of antiterrorist strike. These two are only minor players, but their actions have global implications that tear lives apart-including their own." Through various circumstances, both characters wind up losing their jobs and being forced to take the blame for decisions that they did not make (Was one of them "set up"?). A lot of the book concentrates on what they do next. These characters "learn the hard way about the devastating power of new technology to isolate us from the consequences of our actions."

I do recommend "And West Is West" to everybody. It is a good suspense novel, and it also has a wide range of diverse and interesting characters who are dealing (or not) with vital and intertwining issues, personal, political, and societal. While the theme of the book is disturbing, I did enjoy spending time with the characters. Here is the click if you'd like to check the book yourself ::: "And West Is West" at FLP