Jukebox The Ghost Ruined My Rock Show

This past weekend, the missus and I decided to take in a show.  I was excited to see that Say Hi (née Say Hi To Your Mom) was coming to the Black Cat, and that local favorites Jukebox The Ghost were opening for them.  Or so I assumed.  Turns out it was the other way around, which is really too bad for all concerned.

Following the Junior League Band (banjos! fiddles!) , Say Hi did a great set, keeping the banter to a minimum (seriously, rock and rollers, can none of you maintain 30 seconds of witty banter?) and playing some kick-ass songs both old and new.  I was really impressed with their live sound - their records all sound pretty low energy, even on the faster songs, and it was cool to hear the songs played with a much higher level of energy on stage.  I always find it more interesting to hear a band do a different take on their music live as opposed to just regurgitating exactly what you can hear on a recorded album.  Even if some bands take that idea to the extreme.

After they left the stage, I waited eagerly for Jukebox to come on and rock the place.  I should state at this point that while I really like a couple songs from their album Live And Let Ghosts, on the whole I think it sounds like a lot of unrealized potential.  In other words, they would make a great opening band.  However, this being a hometown show for them, I can understand their place in the lineup.  What I don't understand is why they felt it necessary to have a bunch of people come out and spend the next almost 30 minutes taping up xeroxed copies of their band logo (picture a poorly drawn Blinky from Pacman) and throwing glowsticks and whatnot out into the crowd.  Between that, stringing up ghost lights, and other nonsense, they managed to totally kill the momentum of the show.

As if that weren't bad enough, frontman Ben Thornewill took the stage with the smarmiest smile I have ever witnessed at a rock show, and kept it plastered on his face from that point on.

I don't know if he ever actually winked, but it was pretty close to watching Sarah Palin play the keyboards.  They played the one song my wife really wanted to hear, and we left after 4 disappointing songs.  I would  give them another chance if they were opening for someone cool, but I don't think I ever need to see these guys headline again.

Here's a couple songs I like by each band.  Enjoy!

So, you ever walk out of a rock show?  Why?  Tell me in the comments.

While you're pondering, enjoy some other great DC bands.

Dischord Goes Digital

I haven't looked too deeply into this yet, but I was very excited to read on DCist (hat tip to Amanda of Creative DC) that famed DC label Dischord Records has made their entire catalog available for download in the form of 320 kbps DRM-free MP3s.

It's not FLAC, but I'm not ready to complain. Yet. Anyone plan to download anything?

I Like Saving Money

I was reading an interview with Sam Simkoff of Le Loup today at BrightestYoungThings when I came across this line in one of his responses about a show they did at the Black Cat with Bellman Barker and the Ruby Suns:

i’ve only ever seen bellman barker’s live show once, and it blew me away. anybody familiar with the DC music circle knows why they should see bellman barker.

As much as I love music, I guess I'm not as familiar with the "DC music circle" [Editor's note: "circle"??? WTF?] as I should be. So of course I went to some of my favorite bittorrent sites in search of this band. (If you're curious, sometimes when I use bittorrent, I try-before-I-buy, and other times I just outright steal.) Well it seems that the users of those sites aren't familiar with the DC music circle either, because I struck out. Much as I loathe MySpace, I headed over to the band's MySpace page to see where they sell their CD (no point posting it to my lala "Want List," they haven't sent me anything in months). I was only half-surprised to see that they are selling it via Amie Street.

I looked at Amie Street a couple years ago when they first opened shop, and at the time, I couldn't find any music I was interested in. Time has passed, and now there is a ton of great music up on the site, all priced using their innovative "demand-based pricing" model: the more demand (i.e. downloads) there is for a particular track, the more that track costs, topping out at 98¢. That's a pretty cool model, especially when you factor in that if you recommend a track on the site (by writing a little review for it) and the price for that track subsequently rises, you can earn a credit that you can apply to downloading more music. And free money is the best. (I don't know if the prices ever go back down if an artist gets less popular - that would be funny).

At the moment, the site only has MP3s (uploaded in various bitrates by the bands themselves, for the most part) but supposedly higher-quality formats are coming soon. All tracks are DRM-free, or else I wouldn't bother posting about them. If you want to sign up, please let me know in the comments and I'll send you an invite code. I don't want to miss out on the 50 cent credit I could be getting!

Bottom line: I got the album for $2.68. Upon several listenings, I would give it a B-. But hey, it cost me less than $3, and I got a blog post out if it. Woohoo!

Washington, DC: Ridiculous Taxi Fares, Great Music

As an excuse to use imeem's new playlist creation tool (see my review of it here), I decided to create a playlist of my favorite songs from DC-based artists. Inspired by this post on Creative DC, I recently started listening to some more local bands, such as Le Loup, Georgie James, and Jukebox the Ghost (I was bummed to miss them in concert recently - anyone know where I can buy their CD online?).

The results were fantastic. I'm hearing new music, and supporting the local economy at the same time. And I'm getting inspiration to finally get my band up and running. More on that later, if we ever get around to really doing it. Which we will.

Here's the playlist:



What are your favorite local bands from anywhere you've lived?