Two Good-News (Temporary) Reunions: Weird Party + Blueprint

A couple of bits of good news to share, in case you haven’t already heard, primarily from the One-More-For-The-Kids-Yo department…

First off, readers of this here blog may recall a depressing announcement from a while back about spastic, fiery garage-punks {Weird Party} imploding in a burst of greasy black smoke. The {Houston Press} did what my lazy, non-journalistic ass didn’t (although to be fair, I don’t know any of the WP guys, so I felt/feel kinda weird emailing ’em) and got more details on the breakup, including a link to the download of the band’s never-to-be-released LP, which the band’s offering up for free. The band was dead & buried.

And it probably still is, I’m thinking, although I did a double-take when I saw the listing for the Black Lips show at Fitz on Fri., April 29th — the Vivian Girls had dropped off (although they still list the show on their Myspace), to be replaced by (dum-da-de-dum), Weird Party. Who have a brand-new Facebook page, to boot. Um. Wha?

My bet is that this is a temporary reunion, what with the members of WP already moved onwards to two new bands & all, but hey, it should be well worth seeing, even for that…

Next up: just got word today that long-dead emo kings Blueprint have reunited again for a couple of shows; they played up in Austin (as part of SXSW, I believe) and are coming back home Sat., April 9th at ECHO (which makes sense, considering Gilbert Alfaro‘s been doing the booking over there), along with the very cool {Side Arms}, {The Stereotype Takeover}, & Dirty Nasty.

I ranted & raved about the band the last time they reunited, about a year ago for a benefit for Alex Arizpe, so I’ll skip rehashing that for now and point you to that post, instead. I’ll just say that as a starry-eyed college kid, Blueprint was That One Iconic Band that seemed to blaze bright for a short, amazing time and then singlehandedly populated the indie-rock/emo scene in this town for five or six years after. They pretty much set the bar for everybody who followed.

I’d heartily recommend checking out the band’s self-titled full-length and Come On By, which is now happily available over at {Texas Punk Treasure Chest} — click here and here for those.

Again, this one looks to be only a temporary reunion, and I’ve got no idea who all will be onstage when the band starts playing (pretty sure Shane Ray doesn’t live in these parts anymore), but hey, it’ll be cool nonetheless.