Friday, March 30

Collexion, 109 E. Loudon

Some of North of Center’s readers may remember last year’s “Double Down Tour” featuring Peter J. Woods and Bryce Beverlin II, who over the course of two nights presented electric and acoustic noise sets, a monologue, and a physics discussion.  Well, Peter J Woods is once again venturing outside of Milwaukee, this time with the harsh noise/free improve group Phoned Nil Trio, which also features Dan Schierl (of Dan of Earth) and Neil Gravender (of Lucky Bone, and a recent Nohl Fellowship winner).

Because their sound is difficult to pin down, here’s a description from a recent Phoned Nil Trio press release: “The sounds are spastic and totally awkward, combining harsh static blasts with synth pulses, tape hiss, arbitrary vocal samples, and long silences in a way that barely holds itself together. Sounds awkwardly cut in and out, slowly reaching a point of equilibrium only to have it ruined by the next jarring idea, leaving the audience constantly in a state of intriguing confusion. Live, the group matches its bizarre sounds with a strange theatricality, including the band brewing a free pot of coffee for the audience at every show during the performance (the percolator often doubling as a musical instrument as well).”

Rounding out the show are Lexin’tonians Wretched Worst and Trance Substantiation.  Wretched Worst plays “gore-splattered, wounded-berserker, barebones squish-metal—metal too liquefied to bang your head to.” All you can do, one fan has opined, is “grimace and make a sour face, while shaking your head in disapproval, unable to turn away.” Trance Substantiation, meanwhile, makes for what NoC reviewer Matt Minter has called “uneasy listening” that comes “from the bottom of a barf bucket—like the radiation that is slowly giving you cancer, or the sound of somebody getting stabbed in slow-motion.”

Those hoping to imbibe more than the live-brewed coffee provided by Phoned Nil Trio ought to bring their own refreshments—It’s OK.

–Aaron German

Doors open at 8:30PM, Show at 9PM; $5 donation (more or less as you are able)

There’s nothing particularly holiday-like about this installment of the NoC music calendar. I’m just calling it that to encourage you to spend more money.

And here’s what you should spend your money on, since we’re on the topic: bagels. Specifically, the bagels at Great Bagel, located in the University Plaza strip row of stores on Woodland Avenue, right on the corner next to the Subway. I went there for lunch today, and my goodness, that’s a good bagel. I had the club on onion, and I could’ve eaten four of them. And the brownies are superb.

I bring this because I’m an east coaster and I miss good bagel shops, and now I’ve got one just around the corner from me, and I don’t want it to disappear. It’ll be tough, because you Lutherans and Presbyterians evidently know nothing of bagels and won’t patronize the place, and it’s also in that cursed location where nobody lasts a year. So I’m doing my part: go get some bagels. Continue reading »

Since the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, we in the NoC music department have had some difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality. Sorry.

Wednesday, November 23

Freekbot

Cosmic Charlie’s; 388 Woodland. 10 P.M.

Those who command magic are to be praised or feared, depending on how they choose to wield their talent, for they are powerful beings and at a whim can aid or hinder the causes of common folk such as you and I. Continue reading »

Wednesday, November 9

moe.
Buster’s; 899 Manchester. 8:30 P.M.

For 20 years, the jammiest of the jam bands have toured relentlessly, building the grassiest of grass-roots fanbases. I don’t know anyone who owns any of their albums, nor anyone who can even name a particular song, though I’m sure those people exist. Then again, with music like moe.’s, songs and albums are nothing more than arbitrary divisions of the never-ending groove.

Beirut
Kentucky Theater; 214 E. Main. 8 P.M.

This show costs $27.50. I bring this up because even though we don’t usually print ticket prices herein—the idea is that the cost of art is irrelevant when considering whether to consume it, and that most shows in Lexington are pretty cheap anyway—this particular price caught me off guard.

Now, I am old, but hear me out: I saw Clapton in an arena, 10-row floor seats, for $22. That’s 22 smackers to sit no more than 30 feet from Slowhand himself. This was 1990, on the Journeyman tour. Nathan East did a haunting “Can’t Find My Way Home” on vocals and electric upright bass. Then Eric encored with “Cocaine.” $22. Continue reading »

By Danny Mayer

John Hartford AereoPlain.

John Hartford is one among a generation of artists—Kentuckians Hunter S. Thompson, Ed McClanahan, and Gurney Norman among them—who came of age during the 1950s, soaked in the cultural and social upheavals of the 1960s in hippy-dippy California as relative (and relatively old) unknowns, and then proceeded, in the early Seventies, to produce some of the most thoroughly saturated “Sixties” works one could ever hope to encounter.

It wasn’t until 1971 that Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas appeared in the iconic ’60s startup Rolling Stone magazine. That same year McClanahan’s “Greatful Dead I Have Known” hit the Playboy stands. Ditto for Norman’s Divine Right’s Trip, subtitled A novel of the counterculture, which began to run serially in the back-to-the-earth publication The Whole Earth Catalog.

For the song and dance man John Hartford, 1971 brought the release of Aereo-Plain, an album best described as a perfect expression of counter-cultural bluegrass music. The sound was a distillation of Hartford’s two different decades as a musician. There was the 1950s teen years spent listening to late night country radio, playing old time fiddle and banjo music, and dreaming about the Mississippi River. And then there was the Sixties, spent as a radio DJ in Nashville, later as a witty but otherwise undistinguished California-type folkie with a banjo, and later still as an accomplished session player for albums like the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo.

In Aereo-Plain in 1971, Hartford synthesized those two decade pulls. The new and the old matched. Critics cite the record as ground zero for the newgrasss movement with good reason. It fused the more conservative old school bluegrass traditions of Hartford’s youth to the feel-hippy adventure-seeking wit and punch he encountered as a studio musician playing at the height of the 1960s acid rock craze. Even his Aereo-Plain band, new-school long-hairs Norman Blake and Randy Scruggs and old-school short-hairs Vassar Clements and  Tut Taylor, split generationally down the middle. Jim Morrison talked about doors; and here was Hartford, the old hippie with the old-timey goggles, a veritable time and sound portal. Continue reading »

So last time out I was pretty down, and couldn’t really muster the energy to tell you about all the wonderful live music due to be played in our fair city in the fortnight following the last issue’s publication. As you almost certainly don’t recall, I was feeling confused and hurt by Opeth’s latest release, and the world of music seemed so barren.

But I’m good now; I’m over it. I got my groove back. I still don’t like the album, but it’s a big world, you see, and there’s much more to listen to. Such as…

Thursday, October 13

Greg Abate

Natasha’s; 112 Esplanade. 9 P.M.

You like jazz? No? Then you’re a goddamn Philistine. Enjoy your algorithmically generated, mass-marketed bullshit “music.” In fact, let’s see what you’re listening to these days…a quick check of the Billboard charts reveals that Adele still holds you in sway. Yeah, whatever. Number two: Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera. What, Alvin and the Chipmunks weren’t available to collaborate? Continue reading »

Hi. Buck Edwards here. I’m your NoC Music Editor. Normally, as longtime readers know, I fill this space with all sorts of clever writing about upcoming shows, but frankly, I don’t feel like doing that this issue. I’m pretty down on music, as it turns out. It’s only temporary—don’t worry!—but right now I’m just not in the mood.

What happened is that my favorite Scandinavian progressive/goth/melodic death metal band, Sweden’s Opeth, just released a new album, Heritage, that frankly isn’t very good. Not only is it not very good, it isn’t even metal. Like, at all. Instead, it’s seventies-style progressive rock, in the vein of King Crimson, or Camel. One song sounds just like Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow. Continue reading »

The Spooky Qs formed in 2007 as a three-piece band. Four years later and with a real-live drummer (Chris Oaks), the Q’s have put out 2 records, Winterband and the more recent Rid of You, both of which are available as vinyl record or fee download (donations welcome) on the band’s website. NoC caught up with the band to ask them about their long-planned album of resistance music, rumored to be near the recording stages.

NoC: Have you released Rid of You yet?

Jack Cofer: We have! For free digital download on the web site. Also, we have the vinyl ready, but not their sleeves. Still seeking someone to assist in the printing of those.

NoC: Where are you all in your album of resistance music? When are you hoping to have it completed?

JC: Truthfully, we had hoped to have this completed by….a while ago, but as good prefects go, this one grew and grew and now we are in the stage of rehearsing them for recording. Continue reading »

By Graham Cleary-Budge

The queer community in Kentucky is blossoming with talent and promise, and they’re happily willing to share. Queerslang is a music, film, and learning festival geared towards Lexington’s Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, and Ally community. Conceived, planned, and created by UK radio station WRFL’s grant director, Jack Cofer, upon hearing of the LGBT part of South X Southwest, Gay X Gay Gay.

As a satellite event to the Boomslang music festival, Queerslang will be an all-day extravaganza on Saturday, September 24. The event will feature a choice of four different workshops, and two independent documentary film screenings. Attendance at just one hour-long workshop will slash your ticket to the dance after-party at Cosmic Charlie’s from $15 to $8. (A Boomslang weekend or Saturday day-pass wristband will get you in for no charge.) Continue reading »

Boomslang weekend and day passes will are available in advance at www.boomslangfest.com, and tickets to individual shows can be purchased at the door as venue capacity allows. All shows are 18+ unless noted otherwise.

Friday, September 23

Those Darlins with Onward Pilgrim and Scott Carney (Wax Fang)
Cosmic Charlie’s; 388 Woodland Ave. 8 P.M.

Boomslang’s weekend of music kicks off with a triple bill of energetic, fun-spirited rock-n-roll that should appeal to mosh-loving hipsters and public radio junkies alike. Starting with local psych-groovesters Onward Pilgrim and headlined by Tennessee garage-punk honky tonk darlings Those Darlins, whom you may have caught playing a set on NPR’s World Cafe last month, the bill will be rounded out by a rare solo set from Wax Fang founder/vocalist/guitarist/Theremin player Scott Carney. This set will rouse your senses and get your blood flowing early, and end by 11 p.m. to make way for the late dance party of the century – don’t sleep on it! Continue reading »