Bands On The Rise

You Can't Be Everywhere at Once – Carousel at Turner Hall

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Sometimes, you just can’t make it to show as much as you’d love to. As a local musician, I hear a lot of really sad excuses for not making it to shows, but I promise, I’ve got a good one for not making Carousel and Cherub at Turner Hall Ballroom tonight. You see, I stay busy, and getting married at the end of this month doesn’t alleviate the schedule. The bachelor party is today, and if my best man does things right, I wouldn’t remember the concert even if I made it. Oh well, I at least had a chance to check out their music, watch their videos, and chat with the Kevin from Carousel and ask some questions about the band.

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First Impressions

5 Things Learned from the Juiceboxxx Incident

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Promoting last week’s East Side Music tour in Milwaukee, local hip-hop artist, Juiceboxxx, made an appearance on the local news. The interview was awkward, the quality of the performance was terrible, and the internet blew up. While the popularity of the video will actually probably help Juiceboxxx in the end, it’s a bit of a shame to see the knee-jerk reaction so many people had to a situation pretty well beyond his control. The incident demonstrated the ugliness that sometimes happens when artists get out of their niche and into the general public. After watching the video several times, looking at Juiceboxxx’s other performances and material, I compiled the top 5 lessons we can learn from the Juiceboxxx incident.

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Waxing Philosophic

Tom Waits, A Map, and Big Data

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Hot damn I love the internet. While “researching” for this blog last night I stumbled across a simple website: tomwaitsmap.com. It basically is just a google map with pins marking the location of every place mentioned in a Tom Waits song. It’s a great way to visually qualify what we already knew about Mr. Waits: that he LOVES traveling, and more specifically, singing about traveling. I found myself spending tons of time clicking on each pin, singing the lyrics in my head, and thinking about what all these places could mean to Tom Waits.

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All Time Top 5

5 Favorite Jimmy Fallon Music Videos

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Jimmy Fallon just got a big ol’ promotion. I’ve always been a fan of his. He takes his music just seriously enough to make it really good, but not quite so seriously that he can’t have a ton of fun with it. In honor of his new position (and hopefully not the death of his ability to do fun things like this) I bring you my top five favorite Jimmy Fallon music videos.

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Album Reviews

Sharing and Reviewing My Favorite Unknown Album

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Big news! My go-to “I bet you’ve never heard of this” album, no longer available in stores and produced before the days of Bandcamp, is now available on YouTube. It looks like it was actually uploaded about a year ago, but I just discovered it and compiled it into a playlist. I absolutely adore this album. It’s a rare confluence of raw edge, intelligent songwriting, and intriguing lyrics delivered by a solid three-piece. At only 8 songs at about 5 minutes each, it’s a pretty quick listen, so get listening while you read why I love it so much. The Whole Fantastic World – Chime Here’s to Looking Up Your Old Address: Like a few others tracks on this record, this song is about death. As the melody weaves in between the choppy guitar, smooth synths, and an active bassline, we learn about a girl named Dreary’s last night, concluding with “As she made her way out of the bank, To see a sea of Turin’s finest steady their aim, With one shot. Her last night.” This song sets up the tone for the rest of the record with active instrumental interludes in between many of the verses. We’ve Got … Continued

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Videos

Train On the Island – Old Crow Medicine Show

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I’ve got a short but sweet video to kick off your work week. This weekend I rewatched the documentary film The Big Easy Express. For anyone that has yet to watch it, you are missing out. This clip comes fairly early on and captures Old Crow Medicine Show doing what they do best: playing music. No bells, whistles, or audience, just a band and their passion. Cory Younts just nails the vocals. Eat your heart out.

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Digging In

Gigs, Shows, Festivals, and Battles

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Today is Milwaukee’s long-awaited East Side Music Tour. If my Twitter and Facebook streams are any indicator, all of Milwaukee will be there. Sadly, I won’t be there for various personal excuses, but it’s honestly one of the most exciting things to happen in the local scene since it’s inaugural appearance last year. Seriously, do go if you’re not like me and stuck at work on a Saturday with several house hunting and upcoming wedding errands to take care of. I did debate hopping on the bike to catch a show or two, but alas, it’s a ticketed event. This got me thinking about the various ways that local shows are run, and why some work and some should be avoided at all costs.

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News

Flying With Musical Instruments is Now Less Scary

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Any traveling musicians out there? If you are like me, you have at one point you have taken off your strings, packed the case with spare clothes, and crossed your fingers that you got a nice flight crew that would look the other way as you refused to let the baggage crew jump up and down on your favorite possession. Well hopefully we will never have to do that again.

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