Tuesday, October 20, 2009

TVD's Comet Calendar for October, 2009 | The show of your choice is FREE!

TVD and Comet Ping Pong are excited to launch a new series of ticket giveaway contests where each month you can see your show of choice at Comet—FREE. Simply because we're looking out for you and your good time.

Here's how it'll work: each month we'll publish Comet's full schedule right here at TVD, you choose the show you'd like to see and be the first person to claim the tickets for that show in the comments to this post (with contact info!) and you're in FREE—no questions asked.

It's that simple. No long love letters, nothin'.

There will be just ONE winner for a pair of tickets allowed per show and you can't win more than once in a month. (Hey, we gotta have SOME rules...)

We're starting mid-month this time so the schedule below picks up where we are on the calendar right now. Check back soon for November's full calendar and updates as bands get added.

The giveaways start TODAY, so get to it...


THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22
Lovvers/ ZZZ

Lovvers
Post Punks hailing from the UK. "These kids are alright" Lovvers are a strange mix of music’s forgotten / blank generation, re-calling the spirit of Darby Crashes’ Germs, the weirdness of Flipper, Wipers style pop and the careless attitude of The Replacements; at one show a girl was so confused / annoyed that she wrote to KERRANG describing this music as “highly offensive, wanting to erase them from her mind." Offensive? Then it has to be good...right?

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23
Birds of Avalon/ Loose Lips

Birds of Avalon
The monsters of North Carolina psycherock blow into the city with howls and roars. Testify.
Loose Lips
Don't say a word, let the blood shake your heart as DC's own shows you what you need to know.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29
The Heiz (Tokyo, Japan)/Love the Bomb

This one's already FREE!
The Heiz
Shaku and Asako were members of the well-known Tokyo electro-rock band Milkteath while Kimura played drums for indie rock band Outside. Both bands released many CDs and DVDs, toured Japan nationwide numerous times, and appeared on several television shows. But Shaku, Asako, and Kimura couldn’t get any satisfaction…

The three members of “the heiz” first met in 2005 when their respective bands played together for the first time. Three years worth of jam sessions later and “the heiz” were born.

The theme of "the heiz" is "DO NATURALLY”. "the heiz" eat MUSIC and excrete ROCK’N’ROLL. "the heiz" want to make pure music, like the musicians that inspire them. “the heiz” really want you to hear their ROCK’N’ROLL.


Love the Bomb
Sal used to be in Blondsai, Mike used to be in the Gamma Rays and still is in Geisha Lightning. One night they got drunk at a lackluster Jay Reatard show and decided to form a band.

TVD | I Go Walking

Four times a day, often at half hour stretches...there’s plenty of time for reflection and the mind to wander. A song to sing. A record to recall.

Pete just sniffs along too. The perfect spot is here – no, there. Here – no, there. And no perceived lack of shame to be doing it outdoors at the height of the evening’s rush hour. Business men wind their way around Pete’s business.

I recall my dad saying goodbye to Pete the morning he left for the hospital before his heart operation. ‘I’ll be back...’ he said in his best Arnold impersonation, but didn’t return. So Pete became my mom’s dog alone.

My mom had her fall this summer and was yanked from her home by paramedics without, I’m guessing, a farewell Pete. And from what I understand, she hasn’t been asking for him from the Alzheimer’s wing of the nursing home at all.

So, four times a day, often at half hour stretches...he takes his sweet ol’ time.



Richard Pryor - Acid (Mp3)
Silver Sun - Far Out (Mp3)
Shudder To Think - Hot One (Mp3)
Bee & Flower - Wounded Walking (Mp3)
Starling Electric - She Goes Through Phases (Mp3)

TVD | Musique Non Pop


New column from Brandon of We Fought The Big One!


Punk, Post-Punk, Rock and Roll, Jazz, Avant Garde, Rap and any other genre that sprung up in the 20th century never made a total break from any existing tradition. They only, in their own ways, redefined traditions and/or played with them. Sometimes this was done lovingly; sometimes not so lovingly. But ultimately, by tradition, one of these untraditional new sounds would be pressed up on vinyl as all other sounds before.

These were then circulated to the unsuspecting and unreceptive. Perhaps these unpopular children would languish in total obscurity only receiving a serious audience late at night in an older brother or sister’s room or as heard by a curious ear through the speakers of a radio tuned to a small college radio station. In this way good, but unpopular music hung around as electronic pulses generated off some scratches on a thin, circular piece of vinyl.

The yet-loved song would travel a complicated path through collections and parties and radio stations and families until one day its intended mark was found and a world was turned on its head. But only by physical presence has the innovative spirit of music persisted; perhaps made for the few at the time, but over time proving that the second act is much more important than the first.



Right now, being hip to vinyl is a way to ensure consistency in the way the generations talk to each other. Weird thought, that. But it’s important because there is no earthly way that someone is going to pick up an mp3 at an mp3 fair in 20 years time and CDs have already shown themselves to be simply shiny coasters. The internet has changed the way we all listen to and buy music with literally a whole world of music available at any time. Things move so quickly that some legitimately great pieces of work might be passed over before they have even had a chance to impress.

But without that solid tangibility--that fat chunk of vinyl--brings the chance that a great tradition-defying, transcendent work will escape recognition completely. Today’s artists understand that implicitly and as such, vinyl is again the medium of choice.

So here I am bending the old-time traditions of dissemination and trying to catch the great (and maybe not so great) pieces of forward-thinking vinyl on their way by on limited pressing runs and give them greater exposure via this monthly online column with new-fangled digital sound samples (now you don’t even have to hang out with your jerky older brother!)

Musique Non Pop is its name. I sincerely hope that other people will become excited by what we hear and in turn, also buy the record and then maybe play it for a friend or even their kids someday. Shit, podcast it if you must. Or at very least, if the tunes ultimately fail to excite, sell the record to a nearby shop so that someone might be lucky enough to discover a dollar bin keeper. Everyone knows E-bay is for thieves. The beat goes on.

And with that I say: “Welcome to my electronic living room.”


Nothing People - Twinkie Defense (Mp3)
From their first 7" single, "Problems" on s-s records, 2006. From Orland, California.

Dead Luke - Jumpin Jack Flash (Mp3)
Record Two 7", Sacred Bones Records. Sometimes a cover is a measure of band (man) even if originals are mandatory in these ego-forward times. To take a rock classic and distort it through some heavy synth seasoning, taking liberties with it before dumping it in an industrial wasteland while somehow never really abusing it is right gentlemanly and pretty brilliant. Dead Luke is the alias of one Luke William Gasper who runs an excellent cassette-only label (a whole other blog) called Jerkwave Tapes. He promises a new album soon, "Cosmic Meltdown" on Troubleman Unlimited Records.

Cheveu - Like A Deer in the Headlights (Mp3)

Live on Viva Radio, Brooklyn, 2009. From tiny-town, Metz, France. Cheveu, along with such luminaries such as The Anals and A.H. Kraken, make Metz a good bet to unseat Brooklyn as the undisputed capital of world hipster cool. Here is a much more sonically agressive radio version of a song on 7" only from 2009 on Born Bad Records, Paris. Cheveu are one of the best bands out there. Period.