Monday, December 7, 2009

Ben Meyercord's Live Music Picks for Monday, December 7th

Hello Dear Readers,

Last night got taken over by a very productive Y La Bamba practice. I don't want to give too much away but, we are working with a guest member. We are working on a new song and are stoked. Anyway, after that I was pooped. Plus it has been ridiculously cold. In fact I am not sure if I will be able to make it out tonight. The low here in Portland is 17 degrees. That is barely in the double digits. I am cold right now. Sorry to complain. But jeez. Here are the shows I will most likely miss.

Monday, December 7th

Crystal Ballroom is having a show with Passion Pit and Hockey. Passion Pit is a pretty popular band in the "indie" scene right? I have heard of them. They have a high pitched singer and play "indie-dance-rock". I put it in quotes because their album is released by a major and an indie, Columbia and French Kiss respectively. It will probably be a lot of fun. But I am mostly writing because of Hockey. They are a band whose time line,if I am not mistaken, went like this: Move to Portland, play a couple of house shows and some smaller venues, and then sign to Capital Records, play many huge festivals, get a huge following in Europe or whatever. That is just crazy. I had the pleasure of actually being on the bill of a few of those smaller bills. I think they are pretty great. They are catchy as hell they have smart lyrics for pop music. The singer has a great voice with some raspy soulful voice. The bass player makes really cool grooves and the guitar player has the dance guitar thing down. But they are not a dance band. They are a pop band that happens to make very danceable music. It is super fun. The ALL AGES show is $20 and starts at 8 PM.

Valentine's is having a show with Terraform, Don Hellions, and Fuck You Safari. Album release for Terraform. I have never heard or seen them. But I have read that they have a "Germs/Mae Shi/Arab On Radar punk energy" achieved with a tight rhythm section and a saxophone player. I think that rock music with a non-traditional use of sax (i.e. sax solos from the E. Street Band) is cool. For example the other band playing, Don Hellions also makes good use of the sax. But they mix it with the organ playing of their lead singer and the awesome drummer. Don Hellions is great. I am doing a piss poor job of describing them, but trust me they are great. Fuck You Safari has the cutest little bio on their myspace. It is so cute that I have decided to repost it here:
"mando (capricorn) and beren (virgo) lived in Portland, OR. leif (aries) moved down to Portland from Bellingham, WA in may of 2008. he went to many magic johnson (mando's main project) shows and began to hang around hotboat (mando's house) more often than not. one day in early june, leif asked mando if he wanted to start a project that was more noise influenced with pop capabilities. mando said that would be great. mando and leif played guitar and shouted words. they created ten songs in a week and a half. after a month of playing their songs, they decided to look for a drummer on craigslist. one day after the ad was posted online, there was only one response and it was from beren (formerly from the shotgun and currently from eat skull). mando and leif were so amazed beren had responded, they jumped up and down in the air. mando and leif invited beren over to practice in july. beren, mando and leif decided that they liked one another enough to play shows and have practice while working around jobs, not having jobs, and emotional squalor. they still need to go dancing together sometime."
Plus I hear they dislike certain computer operating system. So they got that going for them too. The show is FREE and starts after 9 PM.


If you see me at any of these shows please say, "Hi". There will be no high fives tonight lest I find a good pair of gloves.

-Ben


Hockey plays the Crystal Ballroom tonight.

1 comment:

Songplacements said...

I just found this blog. Great name! It made me laugh.

Thanks for the post.

Song Placements