Things I Think You Should See

4/2-Making Time-Girls/ The Dum Dum Girls@ Voyeur

4/2- Major Lazer (Diplo), Rusko, Sleigh Bells@ Starlight Ballroom

4/3-Best Coast/Reading Rainbow/Creepoid@ The Barbary

4/5- Florence And The Machine/Holy Hail@ TLA

4/6-Serena Maneesh/The Depreciation Child@ KFN

4/13- Xui Xui@ The First Unitarian Church

4/15Titus Andronicus/The Babies@ The Barbary

4/14-Orbit To Leslie/ Caves, Da Comrade!, Kite Party@Johnny Brendas

4/15-The Thermals /Past Lives/Coathangers@ The First Unitarian Church

4/16-Liars/Fol Chen@ The First Unitarian Church

4/18-Real Estate/ The Beets/Family Portrait@ The Barbary

4/22-Architects@ The First Unitarian Church

4/25-Echo And The Bunnymen@ The Keswick Theater

4/25-Earth Crisis/ First Blood/Think As Blood@ The Barbary

4/25-Think About Life@ Johnny Brendas

4/30-Thursday/Converge/Touche Amore/Lewd Acts@ The Troc

Vote and You May Win!

Hockey Brings Me Sunshine

Hockey, the four piece band hailing from Portland, Oregon, is nothing short of being the quintessential hipster band of 2010. The hype surrounding them is thick and rightfully so. Hipsters Eat For Free has been trying to get a hold of Hockey since they were last in Philadelphia and when we finally did it brought sunshine to my rainy day, unfortunately only metaphorically.

Although singer Ben Grubin and I were worlds away from each other (he was in London) we each were feeling the bitter chill, relentless winds and icy rain; him more so than me. I spoke with the front man of Hockey while he wandered around London in the rain. “How’s the weather there?” “It’s freezing rain and stuff. I’m walking with literally my entire family. My sister just got married and moved here. I am walking to the tube, but I should have a few minutes before I have to go down into it.” While I was comfortable at my desk, I could hear the drops of rain and the distant conversations of the people around him as Ben and I chatted about his music.

Hockey is a prime example of an indie band. They produced Mind Chaos on their own and walked away from a deal with Columbia records. “We were just a two piece then…It was way too tense trying to write singles with producers. It just wasn’t cool.” Ben reveals that rejecting Columbia was mostly due to the fact that they lacked the confidence as a band and simply were “not ready for anything.” While most bands in the same place as Hockey would have jumped at the chance to belong to Columbia, Ben realized they just weren’t good enough yet… yet.

That’s when Ben and Jeremy (Jerm) Reynolds decided they needed some additions to the band in order to make the music they were striving to make. Drummer, Anthony Stassi, and guitarist, Brian White, were the missing ingredients for success. The new members added to their sound and provided the lacking confidence. But Columbia was still out of the picture.

Instead, the colorful quartet wrote and self-produced Mind Chaos. No big shots telling them what’s what and all the control in their hands. “It was a cool and simple process. It was good for us at that time. We could do what we wanted, control the board.” From the short ten minutes I spoke with Ben Grubin I got the vague impression that he is a perfectionist, which is a great thing to be when making music and an even better thing when you have all the say.

Grubin did most of the writing for Mind Chaos. “Others added, we arranged it together, added solos etc” Hockey is in the very beginning stages of creating a new album, Grubin tells me. They only have two new songs so far but that is enough to get the storm going. This is one storm I can’t wait to weather. With the added members of Hockey the writing process has become more collaborative; hopefully we can expect a new and exciting sound from their album in the distant future.

Hockey, although it has its own unique sound, has been compared to bands like MGMT and The Strokes. In the music world it is nearly impossible to break free from being compared to someone else. “It doesn’t bother me. It’s inevitable and there is some truth in it. It puts music on the map…Where music is right now everyone is a combination of past and present. I’d like to escape it but I don’t think we’ve done that yet.” I see the likeness in musicality between Hockey and other indie dance bands out there today, but their intellectual take on dance/pop music is what will distinguish them from the others.

Most of the tracks on Mind Chaos have the killer combination of infectious dance beats and witty, thoughtful lyrics. These are songs you can listen to while dancing at The Barbary or at home while writing a blog post. I asked Ben one final question as his family urged him to get a move on, “What do you want listeners to take away from Mind Chaos?” “A dynamic ride and lyrics… Whatever I can do I’ll do it.” And I like what he is doing. As Gruibin descended to the tube, I turned up the volume to “Curse This City” and danced the storm away.

Diary of a Band: Odessa Stair

Odessa Stair, the band that other bands didn’t want to play with at recess, has been reaching new levels of popularity. Between opening up for U2, swinger parties at Feist’s house, and Pat winning Best Actor for Crazy Heart at the Oscars, there has been precious little time for diary entries.

We finished our demo and committed it to 100 cassettes in December ’09. We decided that instead of a set title, each cassette would be individually named after one of the rebus riddles you find on the caps of Lionshead, such as Sky’s the Limit or Lady and the Tramp. We learned a very valuable lesson: Never try something so stupid again. Explaining that to everyone is bad enough, but we got drunk while solving the riddles, so a lot of them are called Fuk U LOL! orPUSSYMART!!!!

People have not been shy to me about their distaste for the cassette format. “What’s next? 8-Track?” “How are you going to make money selling tapes?” “Can you put it on a CD-R for me?” Let me be blunt: If your band’s demo is on CD-R, you’re an asshole. Hold a copy of your CD-R demo in your hand and look in the mirror. If the first words out of your mouth aren’t “God, I’m a pussy,” you probably don’t even have a mouth in the first place.

We played our first Brooklyn show in January at a place called Goodbye Blue Monday. People from Philly get very impressed when you tell them you played a show in Brooklyn, as if there are at least five record company executives in every Brooklyn club at all times. Little did they know that playing Goodbye Blue Monday requires little more than signing up through e-mail. The show went well and some drunk chicky declared her affections for Dan’s belly, but she didn’t buy anything. Girls are assholes. Girls and bands with CD-Rs, man. Assholes.

I feel better than ever about this band. Creepy strangers are starting to dig us, people are enjoying the tape and we’ve got tons of new songs. I can’t wait until Odessa Stair becomes the soundtrack to your lives and is the last real thing you can hold on to in this world of pain and corporate greed. That’s when we’ll sign to Sony and take over the Billboard charts on the strength of our smash single “How’s My Dick Feelin’ (In Your Booty).” Everyone will know it as “That Song in the KIA Commercial.”

~Steve

PS: If you were stupid enough to get rid of your tape deck, you can download our tape here (Dan will give your computer AIDS if you burn it on CD-R): http://www.archive.org/details/OdessaStair-__________

PPS: We’ve got a show at the Khyber on Tuesday, April 6. Come out and see us. You check out all the other bands that get hyped on Hipsters Rarely Update This Website, so you might as well check us out too.

Constantly On the Verge: Philly Rock ‘N’ Roll (Part 1)

Since the invention of rock-n-roll, certain regions of the country have added their own unique flavor to the mix. Cities within these regions have fostered their own rock culture and acts that reveled in it. Philadelphia is no exception, but seems to stand like a volcano looming in the distance; it could erupt at any time and should be feared and respected, but has mostly lain dormant. This is a city that is almost there, seemingly permanently.

You can’t talk about rock without mentioning its heritage. Macon, Georgia gave us Little Richard and Memphis gave us Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. St. Louis was the home of Chuck Berry. The fusing of southern blues, country, and gospel created the foundations of what all rock music is based on.

Over a short period of time, the acts and regions started to influence one another. Picturesque southern California created pleasant surf/car/girl-loving music like, The Beach Boys and also the reverb work of Dick Dale. During the 50s and 60s, Michigan’s booming industry was fertile ground for music as well, with early pioneers like Hank Ballard and The Midnighters along with Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels. Later in the 60s, a revolutionary band called The Stooges emerged from Ann Arbor, taking rock in a new direction. In the 1970s, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s southern rock made its mark, particularly in the modern karaoke scene. Then, of course, there is the omnipresent New York City, which needs no introduction.

Sometime between the late 70s and the early 80s is when things really started to change. Rock acts were evolving and diverging, some staying in the time-tested mainstream while others embraced the obscure. Cities like Nashville hung on while others, like Detroit, seemed to crumble in the industry. New York remained omnipresent. Glam and hair rockers like Guns-N-Roses dominated airwaves from Los Angeles and rose to super stardom. At the same time, Boston was nursing a burgeoning underground with The Pixies and Mission of Burma. The Dead Kennedys came out of San Francisco in 1979 in response to the hippie fervor of the previous decades and bands like Jefferson Starship and The Grateful Dead. In the late 80s and into the early 90s, music turned upside down. The underground became the popular and the stage was set in Washington State. Nirvana, Soundgarden, and even Sunny Day Real Estate blossomed in Seattle, the home of Jimi Hendrix.

Yes, the art of rock-n-roll has a long tradition of evolution created from the spliced genes of the cities that adopted it. Chicago, Austin, Portland, and D.C. were all there. New York, still, remains omnipresent. But what about Philly?

To Be Continued…

Post By: Patrick Neiderriter