Argh. If you've checked out either our cheery little blog or the much-loved shows list within the past 36 hrs. or so, you may've noticed that both parts of this site looked pretty damn weird and/or totally unformatted, with all the actual page content jammed over into the right-hand sidebar like a very large person in a very small swimsuit. sigh.

Apologies for the weirdness -- I'd initially blamed my perennial Web bugbear, Blogger, for the issue (we've got history with this sort of bullshit), but now it's looking like it's actually Feedsweep that was the culprit. They apparently changed some of the functionality of their feed widgets, a couple of which SCR uses, and that appears to've broken the formatting of both sections.

At any rate, the problem should be fixed now, at least formatting-wise. I've had to remove the "Stuff to Read" and "Recent Blog Posts" sections from the sidebars of both for the forseeable future; when I can figure out how to fix 'em so they don't hose up everything else, I'll get 'em back on the site.

Thanks to the kind folks who emailed to warn me that the site was doing crazy shit -- the heads-up is/was greatly appreciated...

Labels: Admin Stuff, Random Rambling

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

Yours truly spent some quality time last night with his peers in the H-town music-writing community last night, thanks to Caroline Collective-izer and all-round cool guy Matthew Wettergreen, who cajoled and coerced nearly a dozen writer-type people into showing up at Cecil's and hanging out for a few hours. And it was a hell of a lot of fun.

Because I tend to generally be kind of a shy person by nature and am these days a kid-having, near-burb-living homebody, the sad reality is that I often meet my fellow writers, even in the relatively small, brackish pond that is the Houston scene, only in online form. So it was extremely cool to be able to catch up with the handful of folks I have already met and finally put a face to an email address/byline for a lot of the others.

I'd like to say we discussed deep, secret Music Writer Things, but the reality's a lot more goofy -- I ended up talking SXSW and beer with David Cobb & Craig Hlavaty, the perils of flight with Sara Cress, and then (somewhat more seriously) how annoyed I get with great, great bands that write amazing songs and then vanish in a puff of smoke before anybody outside their little micro-scene gets to notice 'em.

There were a few folks who couldn't make it (sorry to hear you had to work, Adam...), but all things considered, the turnout was pretty great. Here's the list of folks I remember seeing there last night, in quasi-alphabetical order (and if I leave anybody out, I'm really, really sorry):

• Me (duh)
• Marc Brubaker (Houstonist)
• David Cobb (Houston Calling)
• Sara Cress (29-95.com)
• Andrew Dansby (Houston Chronicle; 29-95.com)
• Anna Garza (Free Press Houston; ex-Hands Up Houston member)
• Craig Hlavaty (Houston Press)
• Joe Mathlete (29-95.com)
• David Sadof (Houston Music Examiner; ex-Lunar Rotation host)
• Brittanie Shey (Houston Press)
• Matthew Wettergreen (Caroline Collective)

• John Gray (an accidental walkup -- he was apparently meeting w/Craig to go see Mariah Carey and found himself trapped in the middle of a bunch of fellow writerly people; Houston Press)
• Bucky (another surprise walkup; ex-Hands Up Houston member)

Like I said, there were some who couldn't make it -- I'd have loved to meet the Breakfast On Tour gang, the IndieHouston.org guys (again), or the AudioADD or weworemasks folks, any of 'em -- but it was quite a crew, even still. I joked morbidly at one point that one well-placed bomb could take out the bulk of H-town music coverage... (Hrm. Maybe we should keep the time/location of these things secret so as to avoid the wrath of disgruntled band members/musicians?)

Anyway, thanks to Matthew for setting it all up, and high-five to all the folks I got to chat & bond with; I've got my fingers crossed that there'll be many, many more of these things.

Labels: Admin Stuff, H-Town News, Musical Crap, Public Service Announcements, Random Rambling

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 7 comments

I'm a little torn about mentioning this on here, but it's just too damn weird and seems to get weirder by the day. Back in 2008, a very nice woman (I'm not going to put her name up here unless I have to, in case what's going on isn't her fault) emailed me, saying that she was a local artist and music fan, and she wanted to see about helping out with this little site. We emailed back and forth a few times, she seemed pretty cool, and so we sent her a handful of CDs to review; that's usually how it works.

She emailed not long after that about a Christmas-type craft market she was involved in at a local church, and it sounded cool, so I mentioned something about it on the blog, then ended up going to the actual thing. The woman I'd talked to online spotted me and introduced herself, and she seemed nice, friendly, and sane. Over the course of the next year, she wrote a dozen or so reviews for the site, all of which I liked and happily posted up on SCR.

Now, however, I've gotten a series of increasingly deranged emails from this person's email address, and I'm not sure what the hell is going on. She emailed a while back to wish me & the fam a merry Christmas, to which I sent back the same, and then this week I started receiving bizarro emails like this, ostensibly from her:

MR. JEREMY HART,

YOU HAVE 24 HOURS TO REMOVE ANY MENTION OF THE NAME 'XXXXXX' AND ANY
AND ALL WRITTEN CONTRIBUTIONS
FROM THIS WRITER.

ATTORNEY AT LAW
JIM ADLER

And this:

PAGE 2 OF 2

MR. JEREMY HART OWNER OF WWW.SPACECITYROCK.COM

YOU ARE HEREBY ORDERED TO PERMANENTLY DELETE/ERASE ANY AND ALL CONTRIBUTIONS
MADE BY XXXXX
WHETHER IT BE WRITTEN OR PHOTOGRAPHIC IN NATURE. HER NAME OR CONTRIBUTIONS
ARE TO BE SEEN NO WHERE ON
WWW.SPACECITYROCK.COM OR ANY AFFILIATES OR SUBSIDIARIES THEREOF.

THIS IS YOUR FIRST AND FINAL WARNING.

ATTORNEY AT LAW
JIM ADLER

Naturally, my first thought was, "holy shit, am I being sued by The Texas Hammer? Badass!", but that probably just shows I watch waaaay too much late-night TV. My second thought was significantly more confused, something along the lines of, "wha?"

I responded that I thought this was a scam and wanted to hear from the writer itself before I did anything. So then the capper came today (with all formatting and language intact, minus stuff that'd identify the actual writer):

To: Jeremy Hart,

XXXXX here. The reason that you totally SUCK at managing and updating your
website is because you are currently living in hell on earth since you
choose money over Jesus & family. You sold your soul to the devil and you
look fucking ugly as shit and have no friends because of it. The only way
that you can get out of the fiery furnace of never-ending hell is when you
remove my name, articles, photos that I provided and/or donated. There shall
be no trace of my name or contributions on this site of yours. I never gave
you copyright permissions. If you choose to deny Christ and you don't follow
these instructions your soul will burn eternally forever and ever and ever
and ever times infinity. WS:

*If you want to get even MORE out of HELL than you should give away *

*everything you own including your house and cars to charity and live in a
homeless shelter or on the street until God directs you further on where to
go and what to do. Let your family take care of themselves. *

*You are an unfit father and deserve only the worst condemnation that's
coming to you.*

- REMOVE IMMEDIATELY --- THE CLOCK IS TICKING AND YOU ARE ALMOST DEAD.

Wow. I'm even more confused about this mess than I was with the first emails. Now, there've been situations in the past where a writer needed me to remove something they'd written -- in general, it's been because they were able to sell a piece to a real-live paid publication, and hey, I can't fault 'em for that. I've always, always, always done what they'd requested and taken it down ASAP. This is a volunteer-driven site, and despite the copyright notice at the bottom of the pages, I don't consider myself to be the final owner of the content; that's primarily there to protect the writers from having their writing swiped by some other site or publication.

In this case, though, I was pretty pissed after reading the last email (there was another in there that quoted Biblical verse and said something about how this person has the keys to Heaven and I don't), and I was not inclined to give in to any demands. Here's my response:

XXXXX -- assuming, of course, that you actually *are* XXXXX, since you sound absolutely nothing like any other correspondence I've received from this address -- I'll make my initial response simple: no. That's the gist of it, but if you'd like further elaboration, read on.

First of all, I suspect this whole thing is a scam by somebody who's pirated this address and who is attempting to make the real XXXXX look bad. Especially because of those initial emails purporting to be from lawyer Jim "The Texas Hammer" Adler (yes, I watch local TV, too), which I'm fairly sure were fraudulent. If I'm wrong about that, and this really *is* XXXXX, I've apparently misjudged you greatly these past several months and sure wish I knew what the heck triggered this.

Second, removing the reviews is extremely unfair to the bands and musicians being reviewed. I'll immediately remove "your" *name* from the reviews, if that's what you'd like, but I'm not taking 'em down. I'll refrain from posting the several sets of pictures you sent, however.

Third, in exchange for the reviews, I sent you CDs (for all but the XXXXX and XXXXX reviews) that were received by me from various PR companies and record labels and for which I am responsible. Unless I am able to return all that promotional material to the labels and PR people in question, I don't feel comfortable removing the reviews. I'm not in the business of giving away CDs just for grins. You want the reviews down? If you really *are* XXXXX, then you should be able to send me back the CDs I sent and delete all related digital media from your hard drive.

Fourth, threats and the like only serve to piss me off and make me *less* likely to do what you want me to do, particularly since you miss the mark repeatedly. I'm choosing money over Jesus and family? Wow -- I'll have to remember to tell my wife when I get home that I've been raking it in all these years with the Website, and we can finally retire to our private island. Please. I have yet to make a single dollar of profit from running this site, but have instead sunk thousands of dollars of my own money into it, because I genuinely love music and want to help out bands and musicians both in Houston and elsewhere.

I suck, as you put it, at managing this site because I have to have a 9-to-5 day job to be able to continue to afford to run it. Claiming that I "choose money" is ridiculous and demonstrates that you don't know what the hell you're talking about. As for how I should give away all my possessions and live in a homeless shelter, well, thanks for the advice, but no.

The ironic thing is that if you'd come to me and said, "hey, I really need you to take down all the stuff I wrote and remove my name from your site; I'm really sorry, but I've got a conflict with having it all up there," I'd have taken it down. Immediately. Since you decided to go about this in this way, however, I'll be damned (get it? ha!) if I give in to your threats and smears. And as for the vitriolic attacks on me and my family, particularly the bit about me being an unfit father, you can go fuck yourself.

Now, I'll admit that I'm no lawyer, so I'm curious to hear what the legal ramifications of this might be. Can I be sued if I refuse to remove the writer's material from the site? As I said above, I've generally done so in the past when it was requested, so I've never run into this before. I definitely can't afford to fight a lawsuit, especially not over some bullshit like this, so I'm just curious as to how long to fight it. Any lawyers out there feel like weighing in? Keep in mind that here at SCR we generally don't use contracts or anything.

I should say, by the way, that if this whole thing didn't seem so damn shady and strange, I'd have gladly taken down the "offending" articles. I'm not going to let a band or musician bully SCR into removing a negative review, no, but I respect the people who selflessly give their time, energy, and creativity to write for this site, and I consider their work to be theirs. So I guess my letter above's a bit of a bluff, or at least just a middle finger to somebody who's either a scam artist or has gone off the rails and started behaving inappropriately.

I'd also wanted to post this up here in the off-chance that whoever's been emailing me is a con artist posing as this writer. If she sees the first part of this post, she'll know I'm talking about her; if this isn't you sending all this crap, email me at "gaijin" at "spacecityrock dot com", please, and let me know. If it is you, well, you can re-read the last sentence of my email above a few more times.

Labels: Admin Stuff, Random Rambling

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 7 comments

Argh. Just when I think my ISP issues are a thing of the past... Sorry, folks, but I'm afraid that if you currently try to view the ever-loved Upcoming Local Shows list at its usual location, you may see not much but the heading and a lot of blank green space. I'm not sure why this is happening, but for some reason the SCR site's server-side includes are no longer working, and that means the shows list isn't visible like it should be.

So, for those brave souls reading this, I'm going to throw caution to the winds and show you to the back door for this thing -- if you desperately need to see who/what's going on this weekend, fear not, because you can get to the (unformatted/ugly) shows list at the following location when the main one's not working:

http://www.spacecityrock.com/houston-shows.html

Shooting myself in the foot somewhat, I know, but what the hell -- I'd rather folks be able to actually see the show listings, even if that means they don't see the ads and whatnot...

I'm attempting to figure out what's going on; hopefully things will be back to normal soon.

Labels: Admin Stuff

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 1 comments

On the pseudo-administrative tip, I wanted to mention a couple of new-ish things... Like the fact that we now have the little "player" version of the official, sporadically-updated SCR H-Town Mixtape up on the main page of the site for all to see, click, & enjoy. You can also check out the full-sized Opentape site at http://opentape.spacecityrock.com/, or embed the dang thing into your own blog/Myspace/online diary/whatever by copy-and-pasting the following code into your Webpage:

<object width="300" height="160"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> <param name="movie" value="http://opentape.spacecityrock.com/res/jw_player.swf?playlist=bottom&displayheight=0&thumbsinplaylist=false&file=http://opentape.spacecityrock.com/code/xspf.php" /> <embed src="http://opentape.spacecityrock.com/res/jw_player.swf?playlist=bottom&displayheight=0&thumbsinplaylist=false&file=http://opentape.spacecityrock.com/code/xspf.php" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="300" height="160"></embed> </object>

In a similar vein, while I definitely do want folks to keep coming back to SCR, I can't help but want to share the goodness of the also-official SCR Google Calendars, which you can subscribe to one or both RSS feeds using the reader of your choice:

• SCR Cool Shows
• SCR General Shows

As an added bonus, you can also embed both calendars into your own Internet thingy, so you can always have our most up-to-date-est show information close at hand. Just copy & paste the code below into some HTML, and you're good to go:

<iframe src="http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?showTitle=0&showTabs=0&showTz=0&mode=AGENDA&height=1200&wkst=1&bgcolor=%23990000&src=bcu8grsnk0kpk8rri7fvvcenoc%40group.calendar.google.com&color=%23A32929&src=13l7sq6hmt9348g9aiogan1jd4%40group.calendar.google.com&color=%236E6E41&ctz=America%2FChicago" style=" border-width:0 " width="450" height="1200" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Of course, these aren't strictly new -- I know I've blogged about 'em before -- but now we're actually opening up things a little and offering 'em up to anybody who wants to use 'em. All we'd ask (politely) in return is that if you embed the calendar somewhere, please link back to the SCR site in some way, eh? We do this because we love you, folks.

Labels: Admin Stuff, Cool Web Junk, Musical Crap, Public Service Announcements, Things To Download

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

I'd hoped to wedge this into the pile of reviews that went up late last week, but alas, it was not to be. Part of it, I'll confess, was due to my reluctance to bother even listening to Pete Yorn's latest album, Back and Fourth; fair or not, I tend to lump him into a pile of samey-sounding, guitar-/piano-slinging singer/songwriter dudes like John Mayer & Jason Mraz, all of whom magically seem to've appeared out of nowhere the last decade or so and about whom I'm generally meh.

With Yorn's latest, though, I'm slowly but surely being won over. He's gone a bit more country-folk this time out, at least when compared to his stuff from the Me, Myself, & Irene soundtrack and subsequent album Musicforthemorningafter, drifing out to Nebraska to record w/Mike Mogis and get all rootsy, and my apprehension aside, he makes it work to a surprising degree. The songs on Back and Fourth, which at first seemed fairly generic and dull, have steadily crept up on me, to the point where I find myself really, truly digging 'em, particularly tracks like the California-poppy "Paradise Cove," sweetly post-modern, Sun Kil Moon-esque "Social Development Dance" (is that actually where the term "social" for a dance-type party comes from, btw? if so, weird...), and defiantly unbowed opener "Don't Wanna Cry." Check the full review here if you feel like reading more ramblings from me on the subject.

Yorn's playing in town tonight, as well (hence my guilty rush to get this up today), up at The Meridian with somebody I've never heard of called Zee Avi (who's apparently originally from Borneo, which is intriguing). I'll grant his music may not be for everybody -- there are definite moments of Wallflowers-like Adult Alternative, to be sure -- but I'd recommend it.

New Featured Bands, Believe It Or Not: And as a bit of a side note, yes, I've added a couple more folks to the "Featured Bands" section, namely messy, noisy Pasadena rapper B L A C K I E and mathy, noisy post-rockers Tambersauro. Sorry it's taking me so damn long to update the Bands page -- it's just been hard to find the time, lately. I've got another dozen or so "Featured" people I want to get up there, and while I added some new band links to the "big" bands list today, too, I've got about three hundred more of those to add. Gah. Stay patient, y'all.

Labels: Admin Stuff, Featured Bands, Musical Crap, Public Service Announcements, Reviews, Things To Do

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

Hey, all -- heading off to yet another family dinner thing for the long weekend, but before I go I wanted to mention the new stuff that's up as of, well, just now... For one, we've got a brand-spanking-new interview with the mysteriously cool georgia's Horse., purveyor of dark, sweet-yet-melancholy folk-country rock, up right here, just in time for her first show in about a year(?) tonight up at Super Happy Fun Land.

Then there's a sweet review of the May 8th American Fangs show at Fitzgerald's with cool folks The Vettes (not to mention the last place you look, who also blew the roof off, The 71's, who were far, far better than I'd expected, and Female Demand, who made me finally go, "ah, now I get it..."). This one's by new (to us, anyway) writer Dre Giles, and it's up here, complete w/pictures by yours truly of the Fangs guys.

Check 'em both out, then get up to SHFL tonight, eh?

Labels: Admin Stuff, Interviews, Live Reviews, Musical Crap, Pseudo-Reviews, Things To Do

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

Damn, damn, damn. I don't honestly yearn for my not-misspent-enough youth real often, but there are days when I miss the freedom of being a kid & being able to just get up and hit the bars any damn night you want to, watching bands play & hanging out 'til the cash runs out. Tonight's one of those nights; I'll be homebound, which sucks, because tonight's one of those weird-ass Thursday nights where it sure as hell feels like a weekend.

Quasi-mea culpa time: okay, so I'm not sure whether the date I saw was wrong or I mixed it all up in my head, but I just discovered that the date for the Luna Face Promotions "Summer Jammie Jam" show, featuring Spain Colored Orange & a bunch of other badass people, is actually May 17th, not May 7th. Fuck. Sorry about that, y'all -- if anybody showed up to Azteca's today at 3PM, I apologize profusely. (Hangs head in shame.) Anyway, here're a couple of good shows that are going on tonight; I've only got time to write up one or two, but the others at the bottom are darn cool, too:

Lucero/Black Joe Lewis:
First and foremost, one of my favorite roots-rock bands ever, Lucero, is playing up at Walter's on Washington. If you have yet to hear the band, trust me when I tell you that you really, truly need to. They're alt-country for people who no longer give a crap about that misbegotten, half-assed non-genre, people who thing Springsteen's at his best when he ditches the pop sheen, and people who think The Replacements were the Best Bar Band Ever. (People like, well, me.) They play raw, hearts-on-sleeves, countrified rock that'd be equally at home in a kicker bar in West Texas or a blue-collar hangout somewhere up in Jersey.

Frontman Ben Nichols voice is the most awesomely raggedy thing I've heard since, say, Shane MacGowan, and he can take that raspy, cigarette-scraped sound and make it all desperate and yearning and hopeless, all at once. The guitars are Son Volt-esque, distorted but not too distorted, the rhythms are gently driving, and the lyrics are all about shattered dreams, going home alone, and playing guitar because it's what you know to do (and on at least one song I know of, about young, confused men headed off to war). I swear, "My Best Girl," "All the Same to Me," "Tears Don't Matter Much," and "The War" all make me want to weep. It's great stuff, seriously -- they don't have anything new out yet, sadly, but the past couple of albums are damn good, and Nichols has a solo album out right now, I believe...

Plus, the opening band tonight is Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears, recipients of some truly well-deserved hype -- they're like James Brown if James Brown never made it to the big stages, still grinding it out in smoky bars with a backing band that blows everybody else off the map. Excellent, sweaty, rough-edged soul-rock that should probably somehow end up on Daptone Records one of these days. Man. (Tickets, btw, are $14 if you didn't buy 'em already; doors open at 8PM, bands go on at 9PM. And if there's any justice in the world, this show will be sold-ass out, so get up there early.)

Mad Sin/Phantom Rockers/Blackmarket Syndicate/Born Anchor @ The Meridian
I'll be brutally honest, here: I couldn't care less about Mad Sin or Phantom Rockers, but I'll gladly follow Blackmarket Syndicate (formerly Deathbed Repentance) off a freakin' roof if I have to. Those guys play some great old-school, roots-tinged punk rock, the kind that shows that just 'cause you've got a mohawk and anarchy symbols tattooed on your hands doesn't mean you don't have feelings, dammit. Think Social Distortion or Rancid but more country boy-ified, and you'll be getting there. And openers Born Anchor have some cool songs up on their Myspace -- acoustic solo versions, at this point, but nicely done, and actually kinda reminiscent of the stuff Lucero does, oddly...

Runners-Up:
Old Crow Medicine Show/Justin Townes Earle @ Warehouse Live
Los Skarnales/Zydepunks/The Unzipped @ Fitzgerald's
Montrose City Council Open Session, featuring Courtesy @ Mango's

Labels: Admin Stuff, H-Town News, Musical Crap, Public Service Announcements, Things To Do

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

Hey, all -- the astute & keen-eyed may notice a few changes to the SCR site over the past week or so, so I wanted to mention what's new and/or different both so's nobody gets confused and to perpetuate the illusion that this freaking thing actually does change occasionally (kidding! kidding...um, kinda?).

New Classifieds/Board:
Yes, the old, ugly, pain-in-my-ass (and yours) way of putting Classifieds up on this site is dead, dead, dead, and I am happily kicking its corpse down the street. As yours truly is typically about a half-decade behind the latest Website technology, it should come as no surprise that the old method/page for classified ads was, while astoundingly popular, an utterly manual deal, requiring you to email me and me to remember/have the spare time to stick your ad up on the site via a dedicated Blogger blog. (At one point, I was all about using Blogger to do every damn thing; now, they can bite me.) This was not only plain-text-y blah and a major waste of time for me, but it meant that if I got busy, your ad could languish in my mailbox for, um, a really long time. Which sucked pretty hard for anybody looking for a new band member or band or vintage keyboard.

I'm really, really sorry about that, and to make amends, we're attempting to modernize somewhat. From here on out, if you want to post a music-related classified on the site, the Classifieds link takes you to the brand-new Space City Rock Board & Classifieds, where you can post your own ad in one of the four categories (Bands Seeking People, People Seeking Bands, Junk For Sale, & Junk Wanted), either logged-in as yourself or as a guest. Makes things way faster, way prettier, way better in general.

BTW, I've ported over the classifieds that'd already gone up this year on the old page, so if you sent me a classified ad under the old system, you may see your post out there now with my name on it. I did decide to scrap anything older than late 2008, so if you really, truly need your ad put back up, heck, go for it. All yours.

Plus, as you can guess from the board's name, this thing also includes "Board" areas, General Talk & Upcoming Shows, where anybody who feels like it can post stuff, babble about things they like/dislike, mention their band's next show, etc. It's pretty wide-open, as long as you keep it civil; no death threats, eh? That sort of crap does nobody any good.

I don't mean, btw, to try to steal away the Hands Up Board's loyal, if sometimes conflicted/embittered fanbase. Anybody who wants to use this thing can; if not, hey, that's fine, too.

Mixtape & Other Links: You might remember a little while ago that I'd mentioned the new SCR Mixtape, powered by the Opentape framework here on our little site. Well, I have yet to get it to fit properly into the page like I want it to, but rest assured, it's still alive & well, and now it's linked from pretty much anywhere in the SCR site, as is the aforementioned Board.

Oh, and if you really want to keep up on what all goes on the Mixtape, you can subscribe to its RSS feed using your favorite newsreader. Should you want to keep stalker-ly close to us, y'know.

Possible Shows List Changes:
As I noted above, there was a time when the world of Blogger was magical and amazing to me, and back then it seemed like it could help me run the ever-popular Shows List oh-so-slightly. Times change, however, and these days the blog-based setup I'm using feels horribly antiquated and overly manual to use.

So, to that end, I've started messing more with Google Calendar lately. It's far from a "new" tool itself (although it's somehow still in beta, apparently), but I've only recently been really figuring out how to use it properly. The end result of that is that right now you can subscribe to one of the two public calendars I've currently got set up, via your own Google Calendar, Apple's iCal, or an RSS reader:

SCR Cool Shows:

SCR General Shows:

This is something that I've been needing to do for a while now, I think; it might take eyeballs away from the site, but hell, I think it's worth it. The real downside, though, is that it duplicates work, seeing as all shows now have to be added to both calendars. And that's never a good thing.

Right now, the Google Calendars exist alongside the old-fashioned, plain-text, blog-generated shows list that you all know & love. I'm thinking more and mor, though, about kissing that goodbye, too, in favor of a differently-formatted embedded Google Calendar showing both the "Cool" & "General" shows, as above. Something like this:

Apologies if it comes out a little weird -- still fiddling with getting the iframe to align properly. But that's the basic idea, anyway. So...what do y'all think? Good? Bad? Don't give a shit? If I can get it to work the way I want & people aren't horribly opposed to it, this may be the way the SCR Shows List shows up in the future (probably in the same place). If you care, leave your votes in the comments...

Labels: Admin Stuff, Cool Web Junk, Random Rambling, Things To See

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

For a while now, I've been passing around mix CDs of music made by Houston-based bands & musicians, forcing the CDs on friends & family with the manic, "why don't you all understand?" zeal of a fresh-faced missionary kid knocking on apartment complex doors at 9AM on a Saturday so he can spread The Good Word. (Except that in my case, obviously, the salvation I'm selling is musical; come to think of it, though, there is a spiritual side to that, but eh...)

The reactions I've received range from "what the fuck is this shit?" to "if they're not on the radio, they must not be very good" (and no, I'm not making that one up, although I wish I was) to "holy crap, this is great!" I've learned a few things about people, been surprised at how bland and unthinking some people's musical tastes are, and made a handful of converts. When somebody joins the fold, even temporarily (meaning that they're probably not going to run out and buy their own copy of News on the March's debut EP once they've listened to all of my copy), it brightens my day, seriously.

Of course, more ears are (almost always) better, so I've been trying to figure out a way to do something with this here Space City Rock site to make my little mixes available to all who feel like listening. Some might recall the Muxtape thing from a while back -- it was/is a handy little Web-based interface that let you upload whatever songs you felt like uploading and just sending people to a handy link to listen (i.e., spacecityrock.muxtape.com). Sadly, though, the musical-enjoyment-destroying evil overlords at the RIAA stepped in and whacked the Muxtape site down, hard, and the old SCR muxtape died a too-early death.

Muxtape is back up now, btw, although my muxtape and account are dead & gone -- thanks to the RIAA's machinations, the site's creators had to scrap their initial idea and instead retool the site to be more of a promotional tool for bands & indie-ish record labels to put their own stuff (meaning, "stuff they own") up on the muxtapes. Kind of like what sites like Purevolume (and others, although I'm blanking on which ones) have already done for a while now. Dang.

Never fear, though, because we've already bid our farewells to that endeavor and moved on to an open-source deal called Opentape, which has a very similar interface but is installed on your (er, our) own server. You can check it out at its very own URL: opentape.spacecityrock.com. I haven't yet tried to customize it much, although I may at some point later on if I'm feeling industrious -- the app's front-end is apparently pretty flexible.

Plus, the app lets you create a cool little player within other Web pages, which is something I've wanted to do for a looooong time (esp. now that The Skyline Network's down & has taken its cool player with it):

So there you go -- I'll be adding (and probably removing) songs to it sporadically, so check on back & see what's new. I'll most likely be sticking w/newer stuff for the moment, but may throw on some scene-oldies every once in a while. Anything that goes up there is stuff that I think is particularly cool, song-wise, and shouldm't be taken as the be-all and end-all of what's good in Houston music, so if you're in a band and you don't see a song of yours on there, please don't take offense. Odds are I'll put a song of yours up there one of these days. (Assuming you're any good, of course.)

On the flipside, like I said way back when with the muxtape thing: if you happen to be in a band whose song(s) I've got on the mixtape, and you don't want to be on there for whatever reason, just email me at "gaijin" at "spacecityrock dot com" and I'll get it off there asap. I don't want to get on the wrong end of anybody's lawyer or (more likely) get punched in the face by anybody the next time I hit the bars...

Labels: Admin Stuff, H-Town News, Musical Crap, Random Rambling, Things To Hear

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A bit of administrative-type news first -- I'm heading out shortly for a much-needed vacation to the wife's sister's place in London (well, Ealing, actually, but it's technically London, although that's a bit like saying Surfside is technically Houston), so things're likely to be a bit quiet on the blogging/reviewing/etc. front for next week-and-a-half or so.

Don't fret, though; I'm not taking this opportunity to meander off into the sunset a la the Skyline site. SCR will be back to normal as soon as I get home & get things unpacked. In the meantime, though, I wanted to mention a few cool upcoming things...

Most crucially, on Tues., February 24th, Kirke of Teenage Kicks has set up a show featuring sing-along folk-punkers Ghost Mice and local quirky/sweet folksters Sew What over at Amy's Ice Cream (3816 Farnham). I'm seriously, seriously happy to see shows happening at Amy's once again -- I've got fond memories of Matty & Mossy and Junior Varsity playing there, among others. Show's at 8PM, and there's no cover, but Kirke suggests donating a bit to the bands for gas money & whatnot.

There's still plenty going on while I'm out, btw, so here's an abbreviated list for those looking for things to do:

Tues., February 17:
Songwriters Night, featuring John Evans, Benny Notgrass, & Little Joe Argo @ McGonigel's Mucky Duck
Then Something Happened/Linda Ln./Sunrise & Ammunition/Litost @ Alvin Bowling Center (300 Motel Dr., Alvin; 7PM, $6)

Wed., February 18:
The Snake Charmers (CD release)/Robin Kirby/Otis Futhermucker/Helicopter Jones @ Bohemeo's

Thurs., February 19:
The Born Liars (record release)/Welfare Mothers @ Sound Exchange (8PM, all ages)
Skeleton Dick/Jumping Stray/A Dream Asleep/The Monocles @ Rudyard's
Clandestine @ McGonigel's Mucky Duck
Bleeding Through/The Acacia Strain/As Blood Runs Black/Impending Doom/Before...There Was Rosalyn @ Javajazz Coffee House (Spring)

Fri., February 20:
...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead/Funeral Party/Midnight Masses @ Walter's on Washington
Electric Attitude/The Goods/The Wonderland Avenue/Alkari @ The Mink
The Suspects @ The Continental Club
Bayou Monster/Little Brother Project/The Blue Threads/Soulever Lift/The Red Line/House of Orange/Woodpecker @ Fitzgerald's
KTRU Battle of the Bands, featuring a bunch of Rice-folk bands @ Lovett Undergrounds (Rice Univ. campus; 7PM)
...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead @ Cactus Music (TBA)
Heads Up Houston Launch Party, featuring Dave Wrangler & more @ Boondocks

Sat., February 21:
Lucinda Williams/Buick 6 @ Warehouse Live (Ballroom)
Loretta Lynn @ Arena Theatre
Danseparc Is For Covers, featuring Diamonds & Pearls (as Prince & The Revolution; mem. of Future Blondes, Indian Jewelry, & The Entertainment System), P.L.F., The Caprolites (as The Jesus & Mary Chain), Chocolate Crucifix (as The Go-Go's), & more @ Numbers
Scale The Summit (CD release) @ Warehouse Live (Studio)
D.R.U.M. @ Onion Creek Coffeehouse
America/Second Day Red @ Stafford Centre (Stafford)

Sun., February 22:
The Reign of Kindo/Tastydactyls/Air and Ivory @ Javajazz Coffee House (Spring)

Mon., February 23:
Earnie Banks/The McKenzies @ Boondocks
Son Volt @ The Continental Club

Tues., February 24:
Flogging Molly/The Loved Ones/Beat Union @ Verizon Wireless Theater
The Chieftains @ Jones Hall

See y'all when we get back...

Labels: Admin Stuff, H-Town News, Musical Crap, Public Service Announcements, Things To Do

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Yep, I know I've been slow lately when it comes to the bloggerating. I'm going to blame it on the wife, for the moment -- she started hanging out on Facebook to chat w/her sister in England, then started running into friends from high school and beforehand, and then I got on there so I could see what the big deal was, and...well, it's been hard to focus on the SCR blogging when I can post pithy status updates or political links up for all to see (my profile's up here). Never fear, though -- I haven't forsaken this here blog, and am resolved to get things moving quick-fast. Keep your eyes peeled.

As a side note, we're now doing something a bit different for the trusty old Space City Rock email list. The damn thing rarely gets updated at all, largely because it's one in a long, long list of a bazillion things to do, and that's not fair to the folks who subscribe. So, as of tonight, anything that gets posted to the SCR blog will also automatically get sent to the mailing list for those folks to read, making it more of a real updating thing. Hope y'all enjoy being a bit more in the loop.

Labels: Admin Stuff, Random Rambling

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Fuck. This week was supposed to be Full-On SCR Time, a whole blast of unadulterated headphones-and-laptop mayhem that would result in me A) clearing the gigantic pile of "oh, crap, I really need to review that" discs off my overburdened desk and B) posting every damn day like a muthafuckah and give myself that happy feeling of accomplishment we're all trained from kindergarten to try to reach.

As you can probably guess (or observe, possibly), neither A nor B happened. sigh. Turned out the week has been -- and most likely will continue to be -- far, far busier than I'd anticipated, and I've been House Dad-ing it for the past several days. Which means taking The Midget to school at 9AM, picking up The Midget from school at 12PM, cleaning the house, painting the hallway, multiple Home Depot/Lowe's trips, sawing a quarter-inch off a new door so it'll fit the damn non-standard doorframe, spackling bunches of cracks, and making gingerbread (still chillin' in the fridge). Hence the utter deserted wasteland, posts-wise, since this past weekend.

Actually, though A hasn't been a total loss; I've managed to grab some time here & there to listen to some stuff, just not nearly as much as I'd hoped. We will definitely have some New Good Shit up before the weekend, like probably tomorrow sometime, so don't cut us/me off quite yet, eh? SCR yet lives, in spite of the few days of silence...

Labels: Admin Stuff, Random Rambling

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Yes, ladies and gents, it's true -- in the intervening time between now and my last post on the subject, I have indeed been working on revamping, updating, and expanding the Awesomely Huge and All-Encompassing Houston Band Map (anybody got any ideas for a better name?). Check the super-duper-sized version of it here, but be warned; it's about 6MB now.

In addition to adding a bunch of connections various people've passed along -- and removing a few erroneous ones -- this time I've also included the "orphan" bands I left out last time. These're bands that connect to somebody somewhere along the way but don't connect (yet, anyway) to the main cat's-cradle at the map's center. I cut them last time out for reasons of, well, size, but after getting a lot of questions about why some bands were left out, I figured I'd better go whole-hog this time.

Here's a smallish slice of the updated/revised map, for those interested:

Big, big, big thank-yous to all the folks who chimed in and offered info; I'm particularly indebted this go-round to Joel from Fired For Walking, April 5K (of Alarma!/Guitars infamy), Ramon Medina (Linus Pauling Quartet), Doug from AWAKE, Joe Mathlete, Danny Mee (The Jonx), Bill Grady (The Suspects), Matt from MYTWILIGHTPILOT/Ghost Shark, Josh Barry (Japanic), J.R. Delgado (Party Owls/Sugar Shack), Mike Williams (Antarctica Starts Here), & the indefatigable crew over on the Hands Up board, some of whom I'm afraid I'm forgetting (sorry!).

Of course, this thing ain't near complete yet. I'm planning to come up with a way to better delineate out-of-town bands in the pile -- right now I've got links in to bands elsewhere that were spawned from H-town bands (meaning Rogue Wave, Golden Millennium, Superjoint Ritual, etc.), because I think the connectedness to other scenes is cool to see, but I want to make it clearer that no, Rogue Wave doesn't live here. Working on that, I swear.

Plus, I know there've got to be a bazillion connections I'm missing, esp. with the "orphan" sets. If anybody can add anything to this mess, particularly if it connects up one of the isolated little pods on the right side of the map, definitely let me know, either by commenting on this post or emailing me at "gaijin" at "spacecityrock dot com". I can't make this thing planet-sized without y'all's help...

Labels: Admin Stuff, H-Town News, Musical Crap, Random Rambling, Things To See

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 1 comments

I'd originally hoped to do a big-ass update of all the reviews & interviews & such we've been stockpiling the past several weeks, but alas, that hasn't happened. Instead, I've been piecemealing things up on the site as necessary, like the Coldplay review David Cobb did or the Caddywhompus and Parts & Labor reviews yours truly did.

The down side of that, though, is that the "feature"-type stuff I put up a week or so ago has languished, unrecognized. But no more! Time to post about it, folks. First off, we've got a cool, ultra-recent interview with Owen's Mike Kinsella that new-ish contributor Jessica Golden put together quite literally at the last second (Seth @ Polyvinyl: you rock, man...). And it's good shit, even if Kinsella gives Jessica grief about her recent electoral inaction. It's on the short side, but it's my favorite of the recent interviews we've done, I think.

On top of that, indefatigable/unflappable contributor Brandon Hernsberger ventured into the Belly of the Corporate Music Beast (aka the new H-town branch of the House of Blues chain) to witness and document the recent TV On The Radio show here in our fair city. See here for the whole deal -- I enjoy the heck out of the juxtaposition Brandon throws out there.

More to come, very, very soon...

Labels: Admin Stuff, Interviews, Live Reviews, Musical Crap

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It's been a weird week. Due to the vacillations of our disconnected-from-reality market, The Day Job decided to make a big change to our current vacation scheme; as of 1/1, we can't roll over our vacation days like we used to. We used to accrue time throughout the year, so you'd have to roll some over each year if you wanted to have New Year's off or take a trip in the spring -- now we get the full load of time right on January 1st, to do with as we wish the rest of the year.

Which is okay, really -- honestly, that setup makes a lot more sense to me than the old accrual-based one -- except that yours truly has a ton of vacation time banked. Me & the fam had planned to take a big, long vacation this year, but between selling one house, buying another, moving, & Ike, it just didn't happen. So instead, we were thinking of a trip in the spring -- Scotland, maybe, or Italy, or New Mexico. And then there's the camping trip we keep threatening to take the Munchkin on...

Now, though, all those wonderful hours I'd accumulated will be going away, vanishing into the accounting ether, if I don't take 'em ASAP. I can carry some over to the new year, still (until April, anyway), but not the whole pile. (As you might expect, there was near-panic in the office when the announcement went out.)

So, I had to sit down w/my boss earlier this week and figure out when I was going to take time off. After a quasi-serious lecture from her on learning to actually take vacation (I had the 2nd-highest total in our dept; woo, runner-up!), we worked out the numbers, the result of which is that I'll be in vacation all of next week, and then again from Dec. 12th through Jan. 5th. Hoo-ah.

Because of the short notice-ness of this, sadly (and our general broke-ness), we'll probably be staying here in H-town for most of that time. On the good side, though, that should mean that I'll be able to focus a while on some stuff I've been meaning/needing to work on for a while now, site-wise.

I've got a pile of music to review that's a mile tall, for one, and I've got a couple of "special projects" I've been messing with, some of which I'll be posting about here soon. Keep yr fingers crossed that I don't get swallowed whole by the honey-do list my wife's kindly already populating...

Labels: Admin Stuff, Random Rambling

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Some folks may remember that way back in the day, Space City Rock began life -- as a journalistic-type endeavor, at least -- as a real-live paper zine. Our first-ever issue had a bunch of stuff in it, including an interview with members of my soon-to-be-defunct heroes, Jawbox, that I still can't really believe the band bothered to do, tidbits of already-stale local news, a profile of local label Pinche Flojo Recs, and a cool chat I had with Keith Gendel of Papas Fritas, who'd blown me away not long before at Emo's (and who never really got their due, I don't think).

The centerpiece, though, literally and figuratively, was something pal Josh Denk and I'd dubbed "Six Degrees of Pop Deflation"; it was a hand-scrawled (by me), two-page map, of sorts, diagramming the various connections to and from different Houston-area bands. Some connections were already ancient at the time (i.e., The Party Owls to Sugar Shack), but others were just beginning to sprawl outwards (i.e., Fatal Flying Guilloteens & Jessica Six to just about every other band in the city). We named it for one of the coolest bands of the time, Pop Deflation, whose name happened to rhyme with "Separation" and made us both think of that play that got turned into one of Will Smith's first serious movie roles.

Of course, me not being an all-knowing genius, the map required the help of a ton of other people -- I remember Justin Crane, Will Adams, & Mike Bonilla having a major hand in it, and Mike & Will practically re-drew whole sections of it late one night up at KTRU back when my shift & Mike's were wedged back-to-back. The original map was truly something to see, nearly illegible in its sloppy hyper-connectedness. Sadly, it didn't survive the moves I've made since then, and I've got no clue what happened to the damn thing, something that really bums me out to this day.

Before it vanished into the depths of Albans House (most likely, anyway), though, I transcribed the whole thing as neatly as I could, creating the version of the map that ended up in SCR Issue #1 for all the world to see. (I scanned it in a while back, so click here if you feel like checking it out.) SCR rolled on and on and then became digital & all that, and over the years I thought several times about revamping the thing, but it always seemed to be too much of a pain in the ass to maintain, to redraw, etc. Hell, I think Justin and I even talked about him doing it in Lotus Notes, at one point.

Flashing forward to the recent past, though, all the recent activity over on the Scene Wiki got me thinking once again about the "Six Degrees..." thing. A wiki seemed like almost the ideal way of setting up something like that, except that there was no real way to see the whole shebang at once. Then Ben Murphy emailed to see if I still had the map & could send it to him; after I did, I got to thinking more about some way to format the map data into something graphical. Surely somebody had to have come up with something like that, right?

And yep, they have -- turns out that various smart people have tried to come up with markup languages for doing stuff like easily graphing the atoms in a molecule, diagramming logic flows, and other somewhat useful stuff like that. One of the resultant languages, DOT, happens to be dead-fucking-easy in terms of taking a simple pile of words (or atoms, or actions, or what-have-you) with " -> " in between 'em and turning them into neat little graphs. My jaw seriously dropped when I realized I could use the same damn thing (via the open-source Graphviz app) to turn my jumbled mess of interconnected band names into, well, a much neater, easier-to-keep-up jumbled mess of interconnected band names.

So, that's it over there on the right; well, part of it, anyway, because spread out to full length, the damn thing's a monster. I've tried to update things some, adding new bands and connecting old ones where I now know they connect/connected, and the end result is a sprawling, kinda terrifying cat's-cradle that makes the original "Six Degrees" map look picayune. Click here if you're foolhardy enough to want to see the whole thing (and if your browser can view PNG files).

Now, I'd dearly love to build this thing bigger and better, expanding it to heights of navel-gazing interconnectedness the likes of which the world has never seen. But frankly, I'm at the limit of what I know. I've got a second "extra" map going, even, of orphaned connections of one or two bands that never really -- at least, as far as I know -- hook into the big pile. So if you check out the "new" map and see stuff that's wrong or stuff that's missing, definitely let me know. You can either put it in the comments to this post or email me directly as "gaijin" At "spacecityrock DOT com" with the "Subject" line "Six Degrees!" (or something similar).

If anybody's seriously interested, heck, I'd be more than happy to put the .gz file up somewhere where people can edit it themselves. The only real rule is that a band on the map has to exist or have existed in more than just a theoretical way. If the band played a show, they count. Concept bands that never got past the concept stage, though, don't. Beyond that...well, go for it, y'all. Let me know what all I've missed...

Labels: Admin Stuff, H-Town News, Musical Crap, Random Rambling, Things To See

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Y'all might recall that I'd briefly mentioned The Skyline Network's SceneWiki a while back when talking about the BandCamp stuff, but I've finally, finally started delving into it myself over the past few days. And I have to admit, it's pretty fucking addictive.

I still have some issues with the interface, I'll admit, like the lack of a homepage & links on the left side to quickly take you to lists of bands, venues, labels, people, etc. -- see Minnesota Public Radio's MinneWiki for a very cool example of what I'd dearly, dearly love to see (and I swear, ADR, I'd be more than willing to give it a shot myself, if need be). But eh, that's minor; as a slide in a dull company meeting earlier today proudly proclaimed (in a totally different context), content is king, and with the boost in visibility the SceneWiki's received from BandCamp & other places, a small crew of devoted scenesters are busy churning out informative/humorous/imbecilic articles for the wiki on every Houston music-related topic you can imagine. (And if you can't find one you're imagining, hell, go write it yourself.) A lot of what's up is junk or scenester in-jokes nobody but the five people involved will ever, ever get, but there's some darn good info on there, with more going up all the time.

I've been attempting to contribute some, for my part, although I'm leery of putting up stuff about people who, um, still play and/or live around here. Not entirely sure why that is -- it may be because I honestly just don't know all that much about a lot of more recent bands, at least beyond the music itself, so I really, really don't want to write some bullshit about Cool Band A and look like a fool. So there's that.

Instead, I've been attempting to dredge up memories from my own out-and-about, in-a-band days, when I did know more of the folks involved personally and not just as an email address, MP3 file, or Hands Up alias. It's been an interesting exercise, forcing myself to remember things like, "oh, wait...Gilbert Alfaro was in Refuse To Fall, wasn't he? Hey, that's right...," especially since my memory is godawful bad at this point in my life. Profuse apologies to anybody whose published history I've unintentionally screwed up; I'm just putting up what I can recollect, which isn't always all that accurate.

Haven't done too many so far, because my OCD nature won't let me move on until I've gotten everything totally fucking perfect, or as close to it as I can manage. I've got an entry up for old-school, long-dead indie-rockers Celindine, old-school, long-dead straightedgers Refuse To Fall, and old-school, long-dead emo dudes The Trigger Quintet (sensing a pattern yet?). And after seeing the entry for The Monocles' Out of Your Mind 7", I have a feeling that tonight I'll be attempting to create entries (with cover scans, hopefully) of some of the bazillion old-ass tapes, 7"s, and CDs I've got lying around.

I like this whole idea because y'know, there's a lot of music-scene history floating around out there in people's brains, and eventually, once we've all grown up and/or moved away, it's going to be lost, gone forever. Which isn't a major loss in some cases, really, but I honestly believe that this scene deserves to be documented for the vibrant, ever-changing beast it is; that's part of why music in this town's always attracted me, really. (Heck, I would never have done the whole "Six Degrees of Pop Deflation" thing otherwise.) I figure the whole SceneWiki thing can work, then, for both old and new -- document the old, let people know about the new.

Get on over there & help out...

Labels: Admin Stuff, Cool Web Junk, H-Town News, Public Service Announcements, Things To Do, Things To Read

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As hinted at previously, it's been a loooong time since I posted up here about all the reviews, interviews, featured bands, & such. That doesn't mean, though, that we've been sleeping -- not even a fucking hurricane can keep this li'l e-zine down, y'all. So, in the interests of letting y'all know about all the new stuff that's gone up on the site since, um, the end of August. Here goes...

Interviews: Akimbo

Live Reviews: Herman's Hermits; Joe Bonamassa; The Octopus Project/Diagonals/Electric Attitude

Featured Bands: Teenage Kicks

Venue Reviews: Avant Garden; Notsuoh

Reviews: Room 101; Blitzen Trapper; Lords of the North; Jadewood; Mechanical Boy; Tambersauro; This Year's Tiger; Jr. Juggernaut; Sprawl; Flight of the Conchords; The Diplomats of Solid Sound; Evenstar; Kingen; Racebannon; Young Agent Jones; Machine Meets Land; The Panic Division; Reggie and the Full Effect; Terror; Wolf Parade; Mötley Crüe; Redcast; Eric Avery; The Silver Jews; Roedelius/Story; Tenspoke Indies; Vacation Bible School; Take Action 7.

More on the way soon, honest...

Labels: Admin Stuff, Interviews, Live Reviews, Reviews

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Got a friendly email about this pre-Ike, but then it got swept to the side by all the storm winds & having no electricity at the house & yadda, yadda. Sorry about that, you guys! I swear I meant to post about it earlier on...

At any rate, the deal is that the three guys (Matthew Wettergreen, Ian Wells, & Philip Beck) who do the Revelry Report show on KTRU (6-7PM on Fridays) are organizing an event they're calling Bandcamp, which is meant to be a conference of sorts on the myriad problems/difficulties facing local musicians/bands and the H-town scene as a whole, with the end goal of, y'know, actually fucking doing something about it. The guys are planning discussions on all kinds of scene-/music-related stuff, workshops on promoting your band, instructional stuff on making the most of your studio time, and general meeting and greeting of (hopefully) everybody and anybody involved in this mess.

I know, I know -- this has been done before, with the get-togethers Ian Varley used to do (that've since passed on to Gina over at SugarHill), and probably other similar things besides that I can't dredge up out of my memory, but I'm extremely impressed with the Revelry guys' focus on actual, real results from this. Discussions about what's wrong and what's not are great, but I think it's going to be very useful for a lot of musicians to check out the workshops on booking, promoting, merchandising, etc. -- hell, I would've killed to go to something like that back when I was in a band.

Plus, at the end of the whole shebang, the goal is to pull together a set of recommendations, questions, and what-have-you to take to the city and see if things can be improved. These guys correctly recognize that in other major metropolitan areas with burgeoning scenes (Austin, S.F., Portland, etc., etc.), the cities themselves are just as big a booster as any local mag or blog, if not moreso. In all-business Houston, though, the definition of "The Arts" seems to generally end at the theatrical and visual, with only opera and classical music (and maybe country) being included in the pile. That's got to change if our diverse, multi-tentacled H-town scene is ever to get real recognition elsewhere. Thinking about it, hell, I can't believe it hasn't been taken to the City Council before now. (Maybe it has? I dunno...)

Hrm. I feel like I'm probably forgetting something, so I'm going to go ahead and plug in the manifesto the guys sent me, just to cover all the bases:

In the wake of these articles by multiple writers in Houston about the general dissarray of the Houston Music Scene we want to hold an open discussion/forum/conference to address some of the root problems. We'd like to open up discussion about the state of the Houston music scene and take steps towards rebooting and re-energizing the Houston music scene by teaching bands how to tour, merchandise, promote themselves on and offline, obtain licensing deals, etc. We're going to attempt to address all the things that go into running a successful band by inviting Houston bands that have expertise with one or more of these facets as well as inviting experts from around the nation to fly in. Another thing that we'd like to address is getting national awareness of the Houston music scene to those who don't pay attention because currently it's just a sleeping giant but we can all change that. The final goal is to begin a dialogue with the City of Houston on how they can provide more aid or support for musicians, similar to cities like Austin. Dan Workman (of Sugar Hill Studios) is on a City of Houston committee that addresses these specific questions and is going to go back to them with directives and suggestions.

And now, the ever-crucial details: Sunday, October 19th (it was originally scheduled for last month, but that damn Ike guy screwed things up there, too...), 12PM-5PM, at the Caroline Collective on the outskirts of downtown (4820 Caroline, to be precise). Oh, and it's free; all you've gotta do is register on the Bandcamp wiki site. (You can also check out who all else is registered & see the possible sessions there, too.)

Now, obviously, this ain't gonna work a bit if nobody shows up. So, if you A) give a damn at all about the continued survival and/or hopeful progression upwards of the Houston music scene, B) are fumbling around in the dark trying to figure out how to promote your band on your own w/no guidance, or C) just want to hang with the bright musical lights of this city, you need to just fucking go. Seriously. What've you got to lose, a couple hours on a Sunday? Houston is absolutely poised to become well-known nationally and beyond, and if those of us involved can figure out what we can do to push it forwards, I'd say it's well worth the time spent.

Labels: Admin Stuff, Free Stuff, H-Town News, Musical Crap, Public Service Announcements, Things To Do

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

Man...before now, I'd never really considered how totally & completely I rely on electrical things all around me to work -- now that the power's back on at SCR HQ, as of yesterday afternoon, I find myself giddily amazed at the fact that the lights actually come on when I hit the switch. Getting into the shower this morning, I paused, disoriented for a minute, thinking that something was different; it finally hit me that I'd become used to showering in the near-dark over the past 10 or so days, so being able to see in the shower was throwing me off.

And happily, when I plugged the modem & wireless router back in -- poof! -- it all worked, just like magic. No cable yet, but Internet, phone, & electricity, so 3 out of 4 ain't bad... Speaking of which, last night after we'd flipped all the breakers back on, made sure the A/C was working, and plugged all the unplugged stuff back in (fridge, computers, yadda, yadda), my wife noticed a crew of guys in hardhats conferring on the sidewalk between our house & the neighbors. I decided they were part of the re-energizing crew, so I braved the sparrow-sized mosquitoes and went outside to shake their hands and thank 'em. One guy saw me coming and asked if he could help me with anything, and I shook his hand and thanked him profusely for all his hard work.

Me: Man, thank you guys so much for everything you're doing. It's such a relief to finally get the lights back on.
Guy in Hardhat: Oh, uh...yeah -- um, we're with the cable company.
Me: Oh! Um... Well, our cable's definitely out, too, so y'know...

A half-embarrassed retreat ensued, but heck, at least now Comcast knows our house is down (the guy said we had a bad drop back behind the house).

Anyway, with the re-energization & all, SCR will hopefully lurch back to its usual state of quasi-timeliness and quasi-responsiveness. If you've emailed me in the past week or so and I haven't replied, you may have to be patient w/me a little longer while the inbox gets cleaned out. Hope everybody out there either has their own lights back on or gets 'em on soon...

Labels: Admin Stuff, Public Service Announcements

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 1 comments

Hey, all -- well, it's been a rough few days here in H-town, but yep, SCR HQ is indeed still standing. We were lucky enough to have a generator on-hand, so while the lights aren't back on yet, hell, at least we've got fans. And, uh, water. And walls and roof. So we're basically doing okay, and we hope to heck everybody reading this is, too.

For obvious reasons, the site's going to be down for at least a while longer. We've currently got no Internet access -- typing/sending this via the phone, and even that access is spotty right now -- so send on any show updates, scene news, etc., and I swear we'll get it up ASAP once we can get back online. The rock never sleeps, it only naps.

That said, I've got to send out a message of solidarity to our neighbors to the south. I dearly love Galveston, the whole damn strange, Big Easy-gone-to-seed place. And Bolivar -- ah, God. My heart breaks just thinking about the place.

Stay safe, everybody.

Labels: Admin Stuff, H-Town News, Public Service Announcements

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 2 comments

Holy crap. Got this forwarded from good pal Mel, who apparently knows one of the women involved; apparently late Thursday night the co-owner & the sound guy over at local loud-shit club The White Swan attacked a group of kids who'd been at the show, one of whom had knocked on the club door to see if she could get the car keys she'd forgotten inside the place. The White Swan staff reportedly got violent, the whole thing escalated, & it all sounds really, really fucking bad. Damn.

Here's the start of the original LiveJournal post on the whole thing:

Last night (Thursday Aug. 14th) a couple of friends and I went to go see my friends' bands play at The White Swan. It's a venue I've been to before and it was a fun night up until girls started getting brutally beaten.

It all started when a (female) friend of mine who will remain nameless for now accidentally left her car keys inside and knocked on the door after closing and simply asked if she could get her keys... then for no reason, one of the OWNERS and employees started to brutally assault her and at least four other people (two of which were girls).

One of them was beaten in the head by the butt of a shotgun so badly that she had gashes in her head pouring blood all over and had to be taken away in an ambulence.

What sort of low-life scum beats women with the end of a shot gun?
There's never a good enough reason for something like that to happen.

Read the whole thing for the details... Jesus freakin' Christ. Now, I know this is second-hand and all, but the poster's a friend of Mel's and was one of the people attacked. The pictures on the original post are pretty damning, as well.

This really, really disturbs me. I know full well how easily things can get out of hand, esp. when folks are tired and/or drunk, but I can't honestly think of a reason to beat somebody with the butt of a shotgun unless they're trying to hurt somebody I love. Fuck.

Whether or not these guys suffer any legal consequences from this, I can tell you that I'm boycotting The White Swan, effective right now. All show listings for the place will be taken down, they'll be removed from the Venues page, the whole deal. It ain't much, but it's what I can do, at least. Supposedly some bands have already decided to boycott the club, and I'm guessing booking people are going to think twice before booking shows there. Could be the end of the place, if this spreads far enough; H-town's hardcore scene is a relatively small, close-knit place.

Nice going, morons. And to the folks who were injured: I seriously hope y'all are doing okay. Nobody deserves to be attacked like that, no matter the reason.

Labels: Admin Stuff, H-Town News, Musical Crap, Public Service Announcements

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 5 comments

phew. Well, that wasn't nearly as painful as it could've been -- as of late-late last night, Space City Rock is officially off Old Crappy Expensive Webhost and on New Smooth-Running Cheap(er) Webhost, and with any luck, most folks won't have noticed any difference. If you do find something broken/weird on the site, definitely let me know; I haven't checked every page yet...

Anyway, I'm posting this partly because, well, I can. Whee! Y'see, the whole Blogger-and-Network-Solutions thing has been fucking up my blogging capability for so damn long that I'd cringe every time I wanted to put something up. My mind would immediately flash back to the last time I tried, posting and re-posting and re-posting and re-posting and re-posting for an hour or so each time before giving up and coming back later on, fingers crossed that maybe this time it'd done its thing while I was gone. It was killing me, seriously. Blogging was up there with weedwhacking the back yard on The List of Painfully Annoying Things I Don't Enjoy, and that's not a good place to be.

But no more, dammit. I'm free, free, free, finally, after far too long. It'll probably take a little while to work out the kinks w/the new webhost, but hopefully this'll mean more posting from yours truly -- more weird crap culled from the Interwebs, more not-so-fresh local music news, more political babbling, the works. All the good stuff, naturally.

BTW, the migration also kicked me towards making a few minor tweaks to the main SCR page design; namely, I finally got rid of the old "Subliminals" thing up there at the top that most people probably didn't even realize was there & that I hadn't updated in, oh, 2 years or so. It makes me a little sad to see it gone, yeah, esp. since it'd survived from the very start of the long-ago print 'zine days, but it was a maintenance nightmare and not real useful. Rest in peace, little buddy.

Actually, though, it's gone only in physical form, not in spirit. The "Currently Rocking" section is toast now, too, replaced with a list of neato things I/we enjoy just called "Stuff We Like". This is where all the old Subliminals stuff will go from now on, updated more regularly and there for all to see. Enjoy...

Labels: Admin Stuff, Random Rambling

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

Okay, so it seems I inferred incorrectly from a very-very-very brief conversation w/Jacob Calle that he was also doing some kind of organizing for the Creature Comforts Art Show this coming July 12th, and I'm currently feeling like a big ol' idiot. Per more informed sources than me, Jacob's not running the show, but just happens to have some artwork in it...whoops. Just to be clear, I'd like to say that this was totally me drawing incorrect conclusions from a half-garbled conversation in a club, and Jacob in no way tried to claim credit for the show, so please-please-please don't bug him about it. This was me being a dumbass, without any help from anybody else -- mea culpa, y'all.

So, big apologies to the people who are actually behind the Creature Comforts show, the ArtStorm crew, who will hopefully not sneak up on me at some random point in the future and deliver a crushing kidney punch or something to my out-of-shape ass (you know how artists can be, yo). I didn't mean to misinform, and I am a fool -- kids, this is what happens when you frantically speed-blog a bunch of crap up on a site so you can go help your father-in-law lay down vinyl flooring...gah. (Every time I think nobody actually reads this damn thing but me, I swear, it bites me on the ass...)

Here's the actual info, just to clarify things -- the Creature Comforts show's a cool showcase of art & music that features a bunch of excellent H-town artists and music types, as well as Torontoan (Torontoite?) Michael Deforge. Local artists include Eli Sebastian Brumbaugh (who I think is the show's primary organizer, as well), Lisa Marie Godfrey, Rene Cruz, Shane Hillman, and yes, Jacob Calle, and there'll be bands on hand at the opening reception on the 12th (which runs from 7-10PM), like the ever-excellent Young Mammals, Wicked Poseur, News on the March, & L.A. band Hard Place. It'll be over at the recently-opened Caroline Collective at 4828 Caroline (where ArtStorm currently lives), and it sounds like be a good time. If you can't make it, though, the art (although not the music) will be on display 'til August 9th (check the ArtStorm site for hours).

Labels: Admin Stuff, Arty Shit, H-Town News, Musical Crap, Public Service Announcements, Things To Do

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 0 comments

Okay, not literally, but that's kind of the idea. Y'see, yours truly will be hopping on a jetplane at the end of this month to fly to beauteously hot Tucson, Arizona (which is a lot neater, somehow, than it was when I was a child & was forced to spend my summers there). There I'll meet up with my Dad & drive north listening to his Neil Diamond's Greatest Hits CD on infinite repeat, all the way up to Flagstaff & the Grand Canyon, where we'll fulfill Dad's lifelong desire to hike the damn thing.

We're no Supermen, mind you -- I think the trail we're taking (Bright Angel Trail down from the South Rim, hang around at the bottom a bit, visit Phantom Ranch, then back up to the North Rim, where we'll pass out & wait for the once-a-day shuttle bus back to the car) is pretty much the Grandma Route -- but Dad's planned the whole thing out pretty nicely (I hope), so it should be a cool, if painful and exhausting, trip. If we don't die, that is, or collapse out of sheer exhaustion because we're both in a lot worse shape than we think we are (honestly, I think he's in better shape right now than me).

And yes, over there on the right is my daughter, who's mad as hell that she doesn't get to go with Daddy & Grandpa. Assuming I survive this, munchkin, I promise...

At any rate, seeing as I'm going to be stuck with my Dad's godawful musical tastes for a full week, I've been frantically cramming my iPod full of as much "Grand Canyon-esque" music as I could possibly think of (to be fair, he's bought his very first MP3 player for this trip for pretty much the same reason). I tend to get a little nuts about stuff like this -- for our last trip, to Sweden, I packed my iPod with candy-shiny-sweet Swedish/Norwegian pop, spending hours and hours culling through piles of music to see what the absolute perfect songs would be, y'know? In the end, sadly, since I was traveling with the wife, the midget, & my wife's mom, there never really was any "alone-time" to ever listen to the damn playlist.

On the good side, the last time we went to England I did pretty much the same thing; I had two separate playlists, one of more pastoral, folky British stuff (for those long drives through the twee English countryside, obviously) and one of more Mod-ish, urban-sounding stuff. And again, it being a "family" trip, there wasn't a whole lot of time on my own, so the iPod stayed in my backpack for 95% of the trip (other than the mind-destroyingly long plane ride, that is).

One day, though, I ended up by myself on the train out from London to Windsor, sick as a dog and wishing I'd done like I almost had and stayed on the platform 'til I could catch the bus back to my sister-in-law's house. So, since nobody was paying much attention to me and standing felt better for my stomach & head than sitting, I put on the headphones and went to stand by the doors, watching the bleak train tunnels roll by. And listening to the "urban England" playlist was freakin' perfect, I swear -- The Jam really is the best possible soundtrack for the blighted, graffitied, concrete-and-rubbish side of Britain. (Although yeah, Cock Sparrer and New Model Army worked pretty well, too.)

These days, though, my Music Library's big enough it's gotten away from me, and so despite already spending a ridiculous amount of time picking and choosing songs for this next trip, I'm left feeling like I'm missing a whole bunch of songs I could be putting on my rapidly-growing Grand Canyon playlist. I'm also feeling a bit more pressured since I long ago topped out my iPod and now have to judiciously remove stuff if I want to put anything "new" on there -- I already had to remove some stuff so I could fit Joel R. Phelps' awesome Blackbird on there.

So, seeing as I've pretty much hit a wall, I figured I'd throw it out there for any & all to contribute -- any suggestions? Anything particularly Grand Canyon-like that I ought to put on there? I'm not talking specifically about songs that refer to the Grand Canyon, mind you (although I've already got Sugar's "Hoover Dam," which isn't too far from there), but more about songs that'd work for me hiking my out-of-shape ass down into the heatstroke-inducing bowels of the earth and/or staring up at the clear-black night sky for the first time this decade. I've kinda been leaning towards lower-key, more stark, country/spacey-sounding stuff so far -- Explosions in the Sky, Son Volt, Damien Jurado, Death Cab, etc. -- but hell, I'd love to hear ideas, if anybody's got any.

Comment away, if you feel so inclined...

Labels: Admin Stuff, Musical Crap, Random Rambling, Travel Stuff

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 6 comments

Fuck. It happens once or twice a year, these days, but it never gets a whole lot easier -- I guess I should be glad we're not Pitchfork, 'cause I'd imagine they get a shitload of hate mail, given their prominence & the volume of stuff they review. We here at SCR recently slammed a CD sent to us by a local band (not gonna name any names), and, well, it was pretty harsh. But I like the writer's style, and I thought he at least did a good job with the smackdown, so I let it run as-is.

Not even a day later, I got a bitterly angry, all-caps email from the band whose CD it was, somewhat understandably pissed at the negative review. And me being the relatively sensitive soul that I at least like to think I am, I got all second-guess-y and apologetic, kicking myself for not revising the review to make it lighter, kicking myself for running the damn thing at all, the whole deal.

I emailed the band back to apologize, in part, but also to say, "hey, this is how it goes, y'know?" Because as somebody who was once in a band, I know it sucks to get a bad review, but I also know it's not the end of the world (it wasn't for us, anyway). I told the band guy that I actually liked what I heard of the disc (which is true), but I can't review everything, and my pile of to-be-reviewed stuff is miles high, etc., etc., etc. The whole time I'm thinking to myself, "why in the hell did I even publish that review?"

We've held back reviews of local Houston-area bands before. That probably sounds cheesy, but yeah, we've done it. Back when I started this thing, I figured hey, Houston bands have it hard enough without me sucker-punching 'em, right? So we went by sort of a "Mom's rule" when it came to local bands: if you can't say anything nice, well...

Over time, though, that came to make less and less sense. We'd get in CDs by local bands and avoid reviewing 'em because we just plain didn't like the music, and so the CD would sit and sit and sit and get stale and old. It was a waste. And then there were the bands themselves. How do you tell somebody that's emailing you four times a week that you just don't care for what they sent, so you're not going to bother with it at all? Most of the time, we just wouldn't respond, and as somebody who's been on the receiving end of that myself, I can tell you that that sucks in itself.

Beyond that, we've had bands tell us we need to write negative reviews of local releases, that we shouldn't be afraid of it. We've gotten criticized ourselves for being too soft, too friendly-to-everybody, believe it or not. And I get that, especially these days, but that's getting ahead of the story a bit.

At any rate, the slighted band responded to my first apology email and said they wanted to get some good press but can't even use their very first review (ours) because it rips the disc apart. They went on to say that if that was how we treated "a hard working hometown houston band," then they wouldn't support our little site any longer and would warn off all the other bands that they're friends with. And yep, it sent me back into self-recriminating spirals of shame and regret, wishing again in my non-confrontational way that I'd never put the damn review up on the site.

As I thought more about it, though, my thinking shifted a bit. Should we be soft-pedaling on a band, just because they're local? What the hell good would that do? I can't speak for everybody, but if I read a magazine/blog/etc. that gave a blatant pass to every act from their hometown, I doubt I'd waste my time after the initial read. There'd be no fucking point. Why?

Because it's not honest. Music criticism only works when it's critical -- and that doesn't mean totally blasting every band we run across, no, but that it requires serious thought and a commitment to being truthful about what you like and dislike about something. Giving a pass to somebody just because they're part of the same scene you happen to be a part of is bullshit, and it's fake, and it does nobody any good except Band X, who gets a shiny-happy blurb for their press kit that is fake-fake-fake. And what good is that, really? Did they learn anything from the review, beyond that the writer's afraid of stepping on anybody's toes? Nope.

Negative reviews, even the brutal kind -- and yes, I've received plenty -- can be a lot more of a boost than positive ones, if taken in the right way. When I've been smacked down, it just made me even more determined to do what I was gonna do anyway, and fuck what The Man thinks. Anger can be a beautiful thing. When you get slammed by some writer, you have to learn to take it in stride, absorb it, and use it as a motivator. Anybody who gets a review, especially from us (and I'll get to that), and burns their guitar and swears never to write music again probably shouldn't have been doing it in the first place. The world isn't made for people that fragile, folks.

Plus, what happens to some reader -- who, frankly, are the audience and as such should be the most important people in this whole discussion, at least from my point of view -- who reads my lame-ass "give it to 'em 'cause they're local!" bullshit review, buys the CD, and realizes that it's awful? Not only will they blame me and the e-zine for leading 'em down the wrong road, but they'll have blown their money on something crappy when they could've bought, say, the Something Fierce CD. Think they're going to believe me the next time I tell them that Deathbed Repentance disc is really, really excellent? Nuh-uh -- I love, the reader loses, and any band I write about loses, too.

Which brings me to the other half of the equation. Saying, "oh, I'm not that keen on this, but since they're from Houston, they rock!," that does a disservice to all the bands we've reviewed that we have liked, both recently and in long-past Space City Rock history. I now get why band people have prodded us about not giving negative reviews in the past to fellow locals -- Good Band Y has worked their asses off as much as Crappy Band X, put out something infinitely better, and then gets basically the same amount of recognition from our site? Wow, how worthwhile...

I should point out, by the way, something I mentioned to the slighted band at the heart of this whole debacle: I have yet to meet a Houston band that doesn't work their asses off. Setting yourself up as a "hard-working band" doesn't really give you any kind of clout, in that respect, because not only does it not really matter when everybody gives their music everything they've got, but it also makes it sound like other bands don't work as hard. Which, obviously, is bunk.

So screw the "Mom's rule." All it does is create a false atmosphere of happy-feelgood-ness that's not useful to anybody -- us, the bands, or the readers. What put the final nail in the coffin, for me, was when I realized, halfway through writing my response to the band we collectively pimp-slapped, that I wouldn't even be writing it if they weren't from here. Seriously -- I don't bend over backwards justifying myself and my e-zine when some band from Dallas or NYC takes umbrage at a review we've published. The only reason I even answered this guy's emails was because, hey, he and his band are here in Houston and not in Seattle.

And that's not the way this should work. Part of the reason this site got started was to level the playing field for Houston bands, to put deserving, good bands from H-town on the same plane as good (and probably better-publicized) bands from places like Austin, Portland, SF, and NYC. If we're serious about getting some much-needed respect for Houston music, we have to treat it fairly and write about it critically, the same way we would the latest Sub Pop release or latest Canadian indie-import band.

Not that we take ourselves über-seriously or anything, mind you. Part of what always boggles my mind when I get mail like this is, well, that they seem to think we here at SCR are that big of a deal. Don't get me wrong -- I'm immensely proud of this site and everybody who writes and/or supports it. It's just that, all things considered, we ain't Pitchfork. Heck, we're not even Stereogum. We've got no pretensions of being the be-all and end-all of things musical, in Houston or anywhere. We're just a bunch of people who write reviews of stuff and upload 'em to a site, in the hopes that people will maybe read 'em & learn something they didn't know about music. Period.

So if you send us your CD and we hate it, trust me when I tell you that it's not the end of the musical world as you know it. There is a wide, wide world of sites, magazines, blogs, e-zines, and whatnot out there that do things kinda like we do. Get out there and hit them up, too -- not to slight our efforts here, but a negative review from us means a lot less than a positive review from either of the sites mentioned above. Hell, there're a ton of local outlets these days, too: Houston Calling does reviews sometimes; The Skyline Network only reviews local stuff; Free Press Houston reviews a bunch of stuff, local and otherwise; the Houston Press covers it all; the Chronic has some fine, dedicated local-music folks; the list goes on and on. If we don't like you, all is not lost, even within the confines of Harris County.

For the final bit from our slighted band, about how he (and the rest of the band, presumably) is no longer going to support Space City Rock, well, that's just how it goes, and we'll deal with it. I get why somebody we hand a thumbs-down to wouldn't want to read the site anymore; seriously, I do. He also said he'd be warning off friends who were in bands, and hey, that's thoroughly understandable, too.

In fact, maybe that's a good thing, both for the bands and for us. We get a ridiculous number of CDs to review, and a fair chunk of those are local. In spite of that local representation, though, we don't ever promise to give somebody a good review, local band or not; that's just not something we've ever, ever, ever done. I don't even promise folks who are close personal friends that we'll praise their CD to the skies, because y'know what? It might not be our writer's -- whoever gets the thing to review, that is -- cup of tea. We don't all always agree, not by a long shot.

And while we'd certainly love to have every band in town support us and tell all their buddies about us, we definitely don't want that support if it means we have to lie to ourselves and the world at large about somebody's music. If that's what it takes to get a band's support, then thanks, but we'll pass. We'd rather get that support honestly by doing what we do than whore ourselves any way we can to make people like us.

So, just to clear up any further problems, this is the way this thing works: if you are in a band and want us to review your CD, send it in and we will give you our honest opinion of it, good or bad. If we like it, we will say so, probably effusively. If we don't like it, we will most likely say that, too. We do try not to be assholes, but dammit, music is passionate stuff, and if we feel a certain way about something, we feel pretty much obligated to translate that feeling into words. Even if it hurts. If you don't want to read us ripping your hard work to pieces, do NOT send it to us. Seriously, don't do it.

'Cause it's a definite possibility, even if we like you as a person, respect your band, love what you do for The Scene, yadda, yadda. This is about the music, and that's it. If it flies, it flies; if it doesn't, it doesn't. That's what music criticism's about, really -- the take of one person or group of persons on somebody else's hard-fought attempt at art. And if you think that's a waste of time, hey, that's up to you. We think it's important and worthwhile and necessary to talk about these things. It's easy to sneer at music reviewers and deride what they do as meaningless, but like it or not, that's how human beings find out about things that are good or bad, from other people.

Okay, I'm gonna sign off now before I get really incoherent. Anybody who reads this & has an opinion, feel free to chime in.

Labels: Admin Stuff, Musical Crap, Random Rambling

gaijin || Link || E-mail || 20 comments