The Menzingers - Chamberlain Waits

Before I begin:
I'm turning this blog into a zine. It'll be a mash up of music reviews, my comics, personal/political pieces, assorted artwork, and New Yawk scene stuff. I'm also doing a zine covering the history of powerviolence, as well, consisting of interviews, a "best of" list with reviews, and other goodies. I have no idea when this will come to fruition, but you can count on the former seeing the light of day in the not so distant future.

Admittedly, it's been a long-ass time since I had any desire to give the The Menzingers' debut LP a listen. In fact, it wasn't long after completing last year's review that the album's luster wore off and it faded from my priorities list. I guess it would've made sense for me to have rectified this change of heart via an update or something, but well, it's a miracle that I write anything at all, sometimes. Fortunately, the same can't be said about their follow-up, Chamberlain Waits, as it has been percolating in my ears long enough that I feel confident in giving it props. You see, its actually a fantastic concept album detailing the fictional life of Tom Waits' older, seafaring brother, Chamberlain, as he comes to grips with his m,Kkgvd9u2

Ugh, I'm admittedly out of practice with this record review stuff.

Chamberlain Waits features a far more clean and dynamic sound than their debut, and features 10 great-to-fantastic tracks of heartfelt, melodic, folk-tinged "orgcore", and 2 comparative duds. This time around, the band put a greater focus on vocal melody and less on really dated sounding dual scream-singing, and it pays off in spades. If you don't have the right ear for it, I can see Tom May's emotive crooning coming across as a bit overstated at times, but for whatever reason, I love the shit out of even his more warbly moments. With hindsight given by a listen to their new single, I now hear this album as a vaguely transitional one. It seems like the band had grown a bit tired of the gruffer pop-punk sound of the debut and followup EP, and were just beginning to inject more aspects of indie-folk/alternative rock into their repertoire. The results are a fairly smooth mash up of the two halves, and I'd even rate the first 8 tracks here by the arbitrary and mindlessly personal scale of "almost perfect"... well, excepting that cheesy screaming section of "Home Outgrown". Holy dicks are "Times Tables" and "Male Call" great songs, though, both lyrically and musically. I'd hate to pull that boring-as-fuck "worth the price of admission alone" cliche here, but well, if you spank it to the altar of punk news idols, these are two tracks you'd be wise to track down. Okay, here's one:

In reference to a major flaw in the first disc, this one fortunately features no short fuses like "A Lesson In The Abuse Of Information Technology" and "Even For An Eggshell", both of which I listed as standouts in the previous review. Their appeal is about as short lived as how fast they get stuck in your head. There are really only two tracks I don't particularly care for here: "No We Didn't" sounds like that yucky opener on A Lesson... reduced to a more merciful brevity, and "Come Here Often?" is sort of marred by grating/dull vocal patterns. I suppose they're not unlistenable, though, and do in fact vary up the disc's prevailing mood... but so would covers of "ALL!" and "No, ALL!". Does that go without saying? I'm tired since I had to rewrite half this fucking review due to blogspot's inability to consistently save my progress.

Yes, that's why my writing sucks. Because of blogspot.

http://www.mediafire.com/?nk0uwjewzmj

So it seems like my opinion of this album is about the same as my initial thoughts regarding the debut - THIS TIME WITH MORE CONVICTION. Although, wouldn't it be just a chuckle riot if I totally denounced everything I said here in a future review of the band? Ho HO.

Tuesday - Early Summer

This may be an instance where the hoary cliche "preaching to the choir" could rear it's boring head, but well, if you're not familiar with the branches of the Slapstick family tree, you'd be doing yourself a favor by taking a look at this. Personally, I don't hold it in the place of reverence that many people do, but there are certainly some goods to be had here. For instance, while Slapstick, The Broadways, and Alkaline Trio have always kicked my ass, The Lawrence Arms, The Falcon, and The Honor System are thoroughly, thoroughly underwhelming. Emphasis on the former, albeit that statement may come across as heresy; the way I see it, they started off as an inferior version of The Broadways and slowly made their way into a dull-as-shit, glossy alt-punk waste of time.
Less Than Jake and Tuesday fall somewhere between the two. Admittedly, and somewhat embarrassingly, I actually like the pre-'96 material of the former, and regarding the latter, I only have the EP in the top left corner to indulge in.
Tuesday formed in '96, shortly after Slapstick's dissolution, and were able to clamp their collective sphincters for only a year before releasing the godawful Freewheelin' LP in '97. While the Early Summer EP was 4 tracks of catchy, bass-y, hard-hitting pop-punk with the combined vocal front of future Alkaline Trio bassist Dan Andriano and drummer Rob Kellenberger, Freewheelin' sounded like the band spent the intermediate phase smoking weed and listening to stacks of surface-level Midwestern emo albums. And I don't mean that in the American Football way, either; the band essentially took their infectious style of old, sucked all the life out of it, and slathered it in melodramatic cheese. It's a mess measured by the meter stick of those horrible acoustic songs on Goddamnit if you know what I mean.
Giant globs of criticism aside, Early Summer is great as it's followup is disappointing. At the time, the band were a trio, and the songwriting style was decidedly more in the Crimpshrine/Jawbreaker vein than anything approaching 3rd wave emo. Despite that, the 4 songs here sound surprisingly strong and fresh, with solid guitar hooks and as much care put into the verses as the choruses. Dan Andriano's voice has a lot of bite to it here in comparison to all future ventures, and actually sounds like he belongs in a punk band, which plays especially well off of Kellenberger's cleaner harmonies. My favorite song off of here has to be the closer, "So Awake" (which was later re-recorded as the much weaker "Too Much Of Today" on Freewheelin'), but the preceding 3 are just as strong. Also, I'm pretty sure that's the last positive love song Andriano would ever write.

http://www.mediafire.com/?bkmyawhmkq2

This EPs out of print as fuck, but I'm pretty sure you can get it cheap on discogs.com and amazon. After all, pretty much no one knows/gives a shit about this band anymore. Oh, and while I can't confirm this, I heard that The Honor System's demo sets everyone up for disappointment just as bad as Early Summer. At least Andriano didn't postulate that more pro-tools vocal effects would be the key to the kingdom. What the fuck, Hanaway.

Alkaline Trio - Maybe I'll Catch Fire

This is probably the least musically relevant thing I've ever utilized as an introduction, but it's something that just now crept out from my periphery: have you noticed that, like, 70% of the female populace between the ages of 16 and 35 are clad in membrane-snug black tights? They're probably the most revealing garment I've ever seen achieve this kind of homogeneity, especially when worn as a pants-substitute. To clarify, I don't intend this as a blue-balled, prudish/misogynist jab at women, as I understand almost everyone, regardless of sex, is caught somewhere in the fashion undertow, but I can't help but raise an eyebrow at how widespread this shit is. It's like a nationwide showcase of ass at the molecular level.

Anyway, to start, the handful of somewhat ambiguous jabs I've penned about Alkaline Trio in the past still stand. They are, and probably always will be, complete cornballs of the "dark" and angst-laden persuasion with lyrics that curdle milk. In fact, I could probably lambaste them in the same light as The Gaslight Anthem, who I dissed several months ago for their similarly laughable (albeit totally different) lyricism. Just like the aforementioned band, though, I've gone through a cycle of acceptance with Alkaline Trio illustrated below:
1.) Infatuation
2.) Light criticism of thematic elements/lyrics
3.) Total disdain and/or embarrassment followed by abandonment
4.) Re-visitation and light criticism
5.) Love of the material with a tongue planted firmly in cheek
And yeah, Maybe I'll Catch Fire is an album I really love, regardless of how fucking silly and un-relateable the lyrics are. Alkaline Trio are one of the most well-known branches of the Slapstick family tree and are a (duh) trio comprised of Dan Adriano of Tuesday, Slapstick, and eventually The Falcon, Matt Skiba (who's also in the unheard-by-me band Heavens), and Derek Grant, previously of The Suicide Machines and a zillion other bands.
This album is their sophomore effort, and the follow-up to 1998's excellent debut (except the two putrid acoustic tracks), Goddamnit. I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure this is the band's most popular album, if not just for the band's staple encore song, "Radio", but it's definitely mine. The songwriting here is really strong, and less raw and bass-y than their first album, with the general pace slowed down to allow the melodies to really develop. I wouldn't call this an indie rock album, exactly, as tracks like "5-3 10-4", "She Took Him To The Lake", and "Madam Me" truck it pretty hard, but there's a distinct adaptation of a more rock-esque format here. Unlike almost every pop-punk band of the past 10 years, the dual vocal approach is considerably reserved, which makes the harmonies stand out a lot, especially in "You Got So Far To Go", which is easily one the album's best tracks next to "5-3 10-4", the dark-warmth of "Sleepyhead", and the refreshingly non-accusatory "She Took Him To The Lake". The latter's got a pretty typical theme of heartbreak, but despite the male described being abandoned, blame never gets heaped on the girl for being a vicious heartstomping witch or whatever bullshit you'd find in virtually every Descendents song.

http://www.mediafire.com/?fmey4i4jyym

In conclusion, I'm tired of sitting at the computer writing this. Also, if you've got a bias against this band due to their cheesy, "gawthic" image or perceived "emo-ness", try to ignore the lyrics. The music itself, vocals included, make for a really great package, and even the imagery's pretty vivid and satisfying once you stop taking it seriously. I guess I should probably mention "Radio", though, since everyone loves that song: it's pretty good. Unfortunately, it also contains the line “shaking like a dog shitting razor blades".
Hm.

Mixtapes - Maps

What sucks is that I actually want to operate this blog again. Also, after about a year's hiatus, I've resumed creating autobiographical comics to publish on a blog or something in hopes of a.) getting my name out there so I may begin freelancing and b.) feeling a semblance of personal fulfillment by putting my artistic leanings to use again. What sucks (while simultaneously "rules") is the fact that these two prospects will fall by the wayside so shortly after reinvigoration, seeing as I'm going vagabonding again for several months and may or may not return in a mindset conducive to writing about this kind of music.

And furthermore, (paragraph of personal bullshit prone to putting off any passerby) HA HA SELF PARODY JDGSJHD

Mixtapes are a Cincinnati, Ohio 4-piece comprised of 3 hairy dudes and a girl with Romulan bangs that play a form of punk music that sidles between the worlds of pop-punk and indie-pop without ever really matching up with the current climate of either genre. Which is to say, there's no intentionally poor production values utilized as a garage band tribute, heavy, springboard basslines, or vocalists that could use a lozenge. Also, as far as I can tell, they came out of fucking nowhere, which is totally confounding if only because of how incredibly good they are. I know "good" is not the most professional or descriptive term, but when so many aspects of a band sound this polished and mature, it's hard not to reach for umbrella terms. I don't like to sink into the eye-rolling depths of hyperbole, but for a debut, this is a pretty much flawless release.
Maps is 10 songs in 18 minutes, and contained within that microscopic running time are enough instantly memorable hooks, melodies, sing-a-long-able vocal harmonies and lyrics than most bands can muster between several LPs. The songs are all super short ditties that alternate between anthems, speedy pop-punk, and pretty acoustic tracks with a crystal clear production that makes the consistent juggling of modes sound perfectly natural and seamless. I wouldn't say there are any tracks here that standout among the rest, but considering the circumstances, I couldn't give a better compliment; in essence, pretty much every track on here is not only cohesive with it's surroundings, but also feels perfectly suited to exist outside of context, say, within a sentimental CD-R or cassette compilation format. Fuck you, I refuse to make a joke about the band's name.
Oh, also, there's a minimalistic yet prevalent use of piano which suits their sound really well.

try it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?uq3w3v2b980998x
buy it here: http://animalstyle.limitedpressing.com/products/13339

The two vocalists' interactions are probably the biggest hook the band employ, though. The earnest, quasi-snotty voice of (male-bodied vocalist) and the smokey, pretty voice of (female-bodied vocalist) intermingle in such a way that the lyrics are constantly comprehensible despite the two's knack for harmonizing. It's kinda like The Anniversary were less putrid and keyboard heavy and more punk rawk. The lyrics might put some people off, as they straddle the line between awkward and self-righteous, but goddamn could I relate to this just a few years back. A running theme here is the comfort in being alone, not partying, and quiet aggrandizement relating to allegiance to the two aforementioned themes. I might be reading too much into the posturing behind their lyrics, but they sound exactly like something I would've written as a painfully self-aware, socially awkward, self-described intellectual who's internal deprecation was only transformed into defensive pride by the upstroke of mood swings.

I dunno.

I want there to be a song called "Watching Porn On A Library Computer". Do you think Dillinger Four would make that song if we got a petition going?

Rivethead - Cheap Wine Of Youth

Hey, do you guys (not gender specific) remember when "industrial metal" sounded like a cool idea? I actually don't, which is funny, because I was into some really shitty music that occupied the same microcosm in my proto-high school years. Fortunately nu-metal only sounded good as a 14 year old who had exposure to approximately nothing but shitty 70's rock and radio bullshit, so I don't feel much shame in admitting that - especially since I was over dung like Korn and Slipknot by the following year. Why am I writing this as an intro to Rivethead? Well, no good reason, just the fact that there's apparently an industrial metal band with the same moniker sharing a page on last.fm. For a few golden minutes, I thought the not-terrible Rivethead was touring again, but it turns out tattooed dorks with goatees and Ministry-fixations are still writing and performing tuneage for 13 year old angst buckets.

Rivethead’s a band I only got into through exposure to the member’s current/recent projects, and if you look at the list (Banner Pilot, Off With Their Heads, Dear Landlord, The Gateway District, etc), you'll instantly understand why giving this a spin was unavoidable. Cheap Wine Of Youth is their 2003 final statement, unfortunately, and the too-short follow-up to the similarly great 2001 EP, City Sound Number 5. Rumor has it the band actually concluded with a split with a band called Caulfield I've never heard, but it never saw the light of day.
Rivethead were a great, somewhat short-lived unit from Minneapolis, MN that played one of my favorite stylistic variations on pop-punk - Drunkscreechingweaselwithbeardscore. You know the kind; high-paced, sorta simple, super catchy songs with raspy, gruff vocals and tons of interplay/harmonies, and heavy, crunchy guitars that still retain that sweetness we all love as bubblegum chewing, Chuck Taylor brandishing youths. As I noted, this band's sound is definitely indebted to Ben "Complete Piece Of Shit" Weasel's classic-era Screeching Weasel, especially in regards to the clever use of multiple vocalists, but fortunately there's no "wuh-oh"s or early 90's girl-crazy, quasi-misogynistic lyrical cheese to be had.
Cheap Wine Of Youth is 9 classic tracks of 20-something angst, idealism, anger, and just enough sentimental imagery in the lyrics to make me wanna just get drunk and break into abandoned buildings. I guess this is more of a 12“ EP than a full length LP, but hey, if we can consider Gridlink’s Amber Gray a full length, then pretty much anything passes - the point is, despite the short running time (just over 20 minutes), this is a totally fulfilling listen, with awesome, fist-pumping songs like “48 Double Stack”, “Past Days”, “Traffic Street”, and “In My Heart A Warehouse Burns For You”, the very former-most of which is among my favorite songs in the pop-punk galaxy. Most importantly, the very latter contains the line "I love you just as much as I hate the man". Punk rawk.

http://www.mediafire.com/?1qmzfdz4tzm

If you dig these guys sound as much as I do, the next best thing you can do is pick up some Dear Landlord. I wouldn't say I like it quite as much as Rivethead, but it's stylistically the closest of the preceding projects, and just generally kicks the veritable ass. And hey, if you already dismissed the band's full length, Dream Homes, following the insurmountable fortress of hype built around it prior to it's release, give it another shot with expectations only for a solid, straightforward and catchy-as-shit pop punk album and you should enjoy it.

P.S. Eliot - Introverted Romance In Our Troubled Minds

Hey guys, I'm back.

I may or may not have mentioned this, but I've been traveling/reinventing/mixing things up, so to speak. Did I have time for maintaining this blog? Yeah, probably, but well, I've never been one to not suck at almost everything... extra emphasis on adhering to a self-imposed schedule for creative expression. I mean, c'mon... who needs to actually express themselves through a selected medium? Isn't it always better to just ignore all impulses to create out of apathy/fear of failure until they've built up into black tumors of stress twisted throughout my psyche?

Of course it is.

This is normally the part where I'd give a brief bio of the band... as far as I remember, at least. It's been a while since I wrote anything here, so my old M.O.'s not so fresh in my mind anymore. Unfortunately, there's either close to no biographical information available online, or I'm just incapable of locating any. Basically, though, lead vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Katie Crutchfield teamed up with her sister Alison and one or two more instrument yielding human specimens and formed P.S. Eliot in '07 or '08. Or maybe it was just the sisters on the demo? I guess it doesn't really matter since we're (RAMBLE RAMBLE RAMBLE) not talking about the demo. Speaking of which, P.S. Eliot has released one fuzz-guitar demo called The Bike Wreck!!!, this here LP, an EP called Living In Squalor, and as of April this year, a 2nd LP called Sadie. Also, apparently Katie and Alison were in a band called The Ackleys I just found out about (and now desperately need material from), and currently operate in the adorable fuzzed-out pop punk band, Bad Banana, as well as Katie's acoustic project, Waxahatchee.

Likely uninteresting information aside, the band plays, in my mind, a perfectly balanced blend of lo-fi 90's indie rock and pop punk brimming with incisive, wordy, and somewhat nostalgic lyrics and that special brand of down-to-earth beauty that permeates throughout every aspect of their sound. In other words, this is one of those albums - the kind that I end up flogging for months on end and bullying it onto any friend of mine who'll listen. For your information, this list also includes The Sidekicks' Weight Of Air, Defiance Ohio's Share What Ya Got, and Common Rider's Last Wave Rockers - all near perfect and completely infectious albums you totally need.
The opening track of their hometown's namesake, "Tennessee", is a gorgeous low-key number that sounds like it was written specifically to be played on a foggy, heavy-hearted drive home at night through a shitty sound system. It's one of those songs that sound like they should go on forever. The rest of the album is more upbeat, but it's somewhat murky quality and the non-laughable English Major angsty-ness keeps it from floating too far into the cheery pop-punk realm. It never becomes a downer, though, and while tracks like "Sore Subject" and the amazing harmonica punctuated "Incoherent Love Songs" feature themes of realistic, dull, pain, they still end up on the "uplifting" end of the spectrum.

buy it here: http://www.salinasrecords.com/
try it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?yyxwn44znrt

Sadly, the band just announced they're throwing in the towel after 4 years of activity and a relocation to Brooklyn. I still haven't had the opportunity to see them yet, so there's no way in hell I'm missing their final show in the city this December. If you end up liking this, definitely check out all the aforementioned projects and releases - every one of them is worth a listen, and for the record, Bad Banana killed it at Plan-It-X Fest this year.

Also: Good to be back. Expect regular updates again from now on.
Tentatively.

Discount - Half Fiction

First off, I'm really happy I haven't been the only one posting this month, so thanks to all the staff guys who've been contributing. I've been kind of scatterbrained/preoccupied with things that everyone reading this would find utterly un-compelling. Oh! But I did score a ticket to the way sold-out Paint It Black/Punch/Iron Chic/Vaccine show in Brooklyn, so ain't nuthin' gunna break mah' stride. Especially not that local Laura Stevenson & The Cans/Paul Baribeau show. Not that I feared it would, but you understand comedic phrasing, right?

I figure since I introduced Discount here with their final album, I may as well start heading in reverse chronological order to continuing heaping on the praise. Today I'm covering their second, and most well-loved album, Half Fiction. I already described the band's sound in the last review, but if you don't feel like backtracking, they played really hooky, high quality pop-punk rooted in the classic East Bay sound with the amazing, exuberant vocals of Alison Mosshart at the helm. On their third album, Crash Diagnostic, they mashed that sound together with post-hardcore (and created one of my favorite albums ever) but this one fits the first descriptor to a tee/"t"/whatever. It's about as straight forward as their preceding album, but everything has been smoothed out thanks to a much cleaner production, with the songs having become much more vocal driven (with Alison's voice brought to the forefront where it belongs), more dynamics at play, and the band as a whole sounding just as youthful and honest as they used to, but more practiced and comfortable.
I feel the "honest" remark in that sentence needs to be emphasized: Discount circa-Half Fiction sound like a band who accidentally became something amazing while pursuing something simple and personal, like playing the music they wanted to hear or simply trying to express themselves. As far as my travels have taken me, the band is one of the few that conveys almost no self-awareness, with absolutely no punk posturing or seemingly any intent beyond what's presented in the material. I know it sounds like a case of trying to use an intangible impression as a selling point, but I think it's clear when you give it a listen.

As far as the actual songs go, this is flawless from start to finish. And in case that didn't sound like hyperbole enough, I'd probably call this one of the best pop-punk albums ever. It doesn't tread into experimental territory like Crash Diagnostic, and aside the comparatively subdued "Toxic Home", this is pure, energetic, often surprisingly pretty pop-punk without a single weak moment all the way through. I don't know if I can really list highlights considering how consistent the album is both in terms of style and quality, but I'd probably list "Torn Jeans", "Keith", "The Usual Bad", and "Dreamt This Was A Castle" as my favorites. None of them have quite the emotional impact on me a lot of the songs on Crash Diagnostic (or challenge the position of "Math Won't Miss You" as the best Discount song), but that's more of an issue of sentimental value than anything you should be concerned about.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ngyymmwgvx6

If you're new to the genre, or just looking for the greats, this album is pretty much mandatory; up there with Crimpshrine's Duct Tape Soup, The Broadways' Broken Star, Dillinger Four's Midwestern Songs Of The Americas, Apocalypse Hoboken's Easy Instructions For Complex Machinery, and pretty much everything J Church ever did.
I mentioned this in the Crash Diagnostic review, but it bears repeating: if you dig Discount and Alison Mosshart's vocals, that's criteria enough not to bother checking out The Kills or The Dead Weather. If I wasn't informed that Alison was involved with either unit, I would've had no clue - and she provides most of the fucking vocals! Don't bother unless super-affected, incredibly dull, yet critically lauded pseudo-garage rock bullshit is up your alley.

Iron Chic - Not Like This

You may know the band Latterman and their honest lyrics sung passionately in gang-vocal fashion. Iron Chic had two members of Latterman within their ranks and I believe are now only left with one. However, Iron Chic's sound is still very comparable to that of Latterman. Though it's apparent these guys have matured a bit. The lyrics are wonderfully sarcastic but I feel as if there's a sense of relativity that pokes it's way through. Don't get me wrong though, there's not a single song on this record that doesn't lack a certain charm that demands to be sung along to. The sarcasm in the lyrics is definitely a great thing, it's come across as brutally honest with all the bullshit put aside.

Not Like Thisopens up with a mid-tempo drum beat that's filled with energy. There's your punk rawk bassline going on and some jangly guitars. A lot of the record follows this formula but Iron Chic isn't afraid to speed things up either.



DOWNLOAD AND SING ALONG - http://ironchic.bandcamp.com/album/not-like-this

Dead Ringer - Demo 2010

I was introduced to New Jersey's Dead Ringer through the now-deceased Mitch Clem Forum ("Clorum" for short) after vocalist Kristia Moya joined to share her new band's demo with the posters. Reading through the thread, my skull nearly cracked open when I saw totally unanimous praise for this band throughout. In my 3 1/2 years as a boardie, I'm pretty sure that was the sole instance of complete community acceptance of literally anything a single boardie had to share. Punknews and B9's board seemed to feel the same when I dug around the net for more info, so, intrigued as hell, I coasted along the wave of awe and hype, downloaded the demo and got to work on weighing its worth. After one spin, I added my compliance to the forum's anomalous chain of thumbs up, filed it away for some reason, then hastily moved into a 90's hardcore and powerviolence blitz that lasted for several months.

SO HERE WE ARE IN THE FUTURE. I had almost completely forgotten about this betwixt the aforementioned marathon and my current free-jazz/krautrock/noise/bullshit bender, but I noticed it sitting in my itunes library, noted that it was only 3 tracks deep, and decided to give it a review. Honestly, I'm a little confused by the memory of my initial reaction. I guess I was feeling especially non-critical at the time, but well... this is sort of dull. I mean, it isn't bad or incompetent by any means, and the band are certainly tight enough, but... this is the band that spawned a 3 page thread of comments like "this is great stuff" and "one of the best things I've heard this year"? Dead Ringer are made up of two members of Exit She Calls (a band I'd never heard of until their side project made waves) and play really generic 90's pop punk. Y'know, that grinding, not-so-hooky brand of uptempo pop-punk/skate-punk you'd expect out of Fat Wreck or Epitaph circa '92-'97? That's what this sounds like, except it's approximating Lemuria's schtick, whether by influence or chance. Of course, this only really extends as far as a similar vocal approach, what with the pristine female leads and the warbling, Calvin Johnson-esque accompaniments - otherwise, these three songs sound lack the dynamics, non-standard song structures, and consistent use of odd time signatures that make Lemuria so appealing.
As I said, though, there's still nothing necessarily "bad" about what these two are doing, but that's also where the problem lies. The band constantly hints at being able to play much more enticing, memorable music, but they never push beyond the tribute phase to sound anything but faceless and inoffensive. There's a reason this style of pop-punk was expanded upon so heavily in the 00's - it got worn the fuck out during the preceding decade and would have been pointless not to take cues from neighboring genres and draw from a wider pool of influences. It's the same thing that happened to hardcore punk in the early 80's, and again during the mid-90's. I feel like sort of an asshole bashing this upcoming band publicly, but it's only because I feel like they have the potential to be a lot more entertaining than this... like, I wouldn't bother calling out a shitty band I saw no reason to pay attention to or had any hope for.
I'm starting to sound like a faux-altruistic prick refuting my review, though, so here:

http://deadringer.bandcamp.com/album/demo-2010

One last thing: considering Dead Ringer states that they're for fans of Discount (among others), it's amazing how little this sounds like Discount. Unless they meant that both bands have a girl singer and that's probably your only criteria. In which case, yeah, spot on.

The Broadways - We All Know That You Can Do It

If the blog's moniker didn't alert you, or you simply weren't familiar with the reference, I'm a huge fan of Chicago's The Broadways. Ever since fellow staffer twoeyes turned me on to these guys mid-high school, I've been close to obsessed with their wares, never going longer than a couple months without giving them a spin. I'd been meaning to pen a lengthy (likely exhausting) review of their sole LP, Broken Star, long before this blog's conception even, but it's a pretty daunting task. If you braved the piece I did on Defiance, Ohio's Share What Ya Got, you have an idea of what to expect - a long winded autobiographical affair laced with commentary about the disc's tangible content and all the sentimental and personal meaning it stews in. Acceptable territory for ctrl+f'ing the mediafire link, in other words. That, or an ever-so-egotistical public journal entry.
Since I haven't built up the intestinal fortitude nor the commitment to sit down for another "deep" marathon post yet, let's take a look at The Broadways' debut EP, We All Know That You Can Do It - 4 super high quality melodic punk tunes that never get old. If you've never listened to these guys before, their sound is steeped in the classic East Bay pop-punk vigor; most notably Jeff Ott's bands Crimpshrine and Fifteen, alongside some prevailing Jawbreaker influence. Fortunately though, The Broadways never get too bogged down in introspection like the latter, nor do they resort to dull, chugging, filler garbage like Fifteen often indulge in towards the middle of most of their records.
Having formed from the dissolution of the awesome ska-punk band, Slapstick, the surviving members were able to get all their chops down in a different genre before tackling pop-punk, resulting in an really fresh, energetic band who sound like they're between newcomer and veteran status (ie a practiced but never formulaic). It's really unfortunate the band chose to split after such a short time together, but as such, the earliest recordings of the band sound exactly like the band performing their final 7 songs at the beginning of the Broken Van compilation - consistently great across the board give or take a song or two. The band members wouldn't really hit a dud note until two of the core members formed The Lawrence Arms, but I know I'm in the minority in thinking that... more on them some other time.
Fortunately, each one of the four songs on here is a classic, and could only be more of an accurate summary of the unit if one of the songs was led by Chris McCaughan. "TV Song" is your quintessential Brendan Kelly sung uptempo track, with a well placed break towards the middle that accentuates the lyrics perfectly. "Ben Moves To California" was later re-recorded for the band's Broken Star LP; the vocals here are a little less nasally sounding than the 2nd version, and the guitar is a little different during Brendan's part, but overall, there's not much difference between the two. I guess that's why this song was left off the Broken Van compilation, but if you're like me, you pretty much need it. By the way, does anyone have the lyrics to what Brendan sings? For whatever reason, they're completely absent from both the booklet and the entire internet. "Broadway And Briar" and "Rainy Day" are definitely the best cuts on here, with the former being a mid-paced anthemic track, and the latter being Hanaway at his most Jeff Ott-y.
Sorry, song-by-song reviews suck and I'm not strong enough a writer to defy that fact. Regardless, you need this:

http://www.mediafire.com/?8rlwnq4wpncrf6p

I also threw in the song "Fuck The Church", which only appears on the Drive Thru Records compilation Where's The Beef?. I really don't know why they left it off the Broken Van compilation, but it's a good one.

The Menzingers - A Lesson In The Abuse Of Information Technologies

Here's an album that took me a long time to get into for some particularly stupid reasons. Have you ever found yourself listening to an album for the first time when suddenly, a track or two will come out of nowhere and make you rock the fuck out like you've heard it a million times? And then you find on subsequent listens that you're waiting impatiently until those fist-pumping anthems start up again, basically ignoring every track that precedes them? Then you get annoyed by the perceived "lack of consistency", forsake the album for other territory, then return wondering what spell you were under jut a few weeks earlier? That pretty much was what happened here. That, and the fact that the production on this particular album is not exactly well-accentuated by the muddying powers of my in-car stereo system. I found the guitar lines getting buried in murk and wrote them off as non-existent for some reason. It's unfortunate to be this dumb.

The Menzingers are yet another "orgcore" band, but what can I say? Though it may be the most retarded and pointless "genre" title ever conceived, it does entail a certain sound quality and style. I also happen to love the shit out of beard-y dudes with gruff voices playing pop-punk way more than skinny "geeks" taking cues from the Dickies, so that's what a lot of this blog will be dedicated to. These guys formed in 2006 in the shithole Scranton, Pennsylvania I got stuck in on my last bike trek. Apparently if you enter Scranton on a bike, but do not carry around a motor vehicle in a capsule like Dragonball, your only hope for leaving that goddamn city is to backtrack about 30 miles and take an unbelievably massive detour AROUND the truly enormous area attached to Scranton. Fuckin' Scranton and it's many attributes. Anyway, A Lesson In The Abuse Of Information Technologies was the band's debut full length from 2007, and while I still don't think its quite as skull bustingly good as their producer, Jesse Cannon ( "I record bands every day and almost all of them are missing something. The Menzingers have it all — the songs, the aggression, the heart, and the passion that most only dream of."), it is a really solid, consistently enjoyable album with only a few weak links.

Like I said before, these guys are an "orgcore" band - a band with two harmonizing gruff vocalist, shards of heartfelt melody, a lot of grittiness, and some scream-a-long moments best suited to live performances and an enthusiastic audience. Apparently they formed from the ashes of a ska-punk band called Bob And The Sagets who I've never heard of, but the ska influence only shines through on the opening track, "Alpha Kappa Falls Off A Balcony" and somewhere in the middle of "Clap Hands Two Guns" (in case you're vehemently opposed to listening to anything that could be considered ska). Unfortunately, the opener is fucking awful, and sounds completely out of place with the rest of the record. It kinda reminds me of the dark-ska moments on Choking Victim's No Gods No Managers, but mixed with lame, attitude heavy rap rock. I have no idea what it's doing on here, nor have I any idea why the band chose it to open the record with it considering it doesn't sound anything like the warm, folk-damaged, pop-punk that dominates the rest of the material.

Aside that, the only track her that could've used a bit of reworking in "Richard Corey", which features a vocal melody that almost brings the song to the emotional peak you can tell the band were aiming for. After those two, the rest is a lot of fun. The tracks of instant accessibility I mentioned before are the awesome title track, "Even For An Eggshell" (check out the reworking of the chorus mid song), and "Straight To Hell", primarily because they feature the most straightforward hooks on the album, but the acoustic numbers "Cold Weather Gear" (albeit it should be twice as long) and "No Ticket", as well as "Ave Maria" are my favorites.

try it here
then
buy it here

Overall, really solid enjoyable album by a band who seem to be improving a lot; check out their newest LP, Chamberlain Waits. I haven't given it as much time as this one yet, but overall it seems like everything has been tightened up and improved a decent amount. I guess an acoustic album is also in the works, but the only article I found for it doesn't give much more info on it than I just did. Here's a video for the single accompanying their new album:

The Sidekicks - Weight Of Air

I've been meaning to write up a piece about this album for a long time now, but sometimes its hard to form a coherent thought, let alone pen an entry for this dumbass blog.

About 7 months ago, my friend Lindsay invited me to a Tigers Jaw concert in Pennsylvania with three staff members of this blog in tow, oddly enough (Sean, Jack, Blizzard Of '93). I dug the first Tigers Jaw album well enough, and I figured it might be the last time I see any of this crew for a long time, so I decided to hop on board. It was right before I left on a bike trip with no planned conclusion (one that ended far too soon), and I felt obligated to pack in as much party as possible into what little time I had left. The show was opened by a handful of bands I was only quasi-aware of but hadn't heard - Captain We're Sinking, Kite Fight, of course, the band in the header. For whatever reason, while the band was tight as hell and the vocal harmonies were pulled off to great effect, I remember saying something to the effect of "I wish they'd have laid off the college rock stuff and play more of the fast shit -perhaps to cement my presence as a generic punk rock asshole. I didn't bother giving their latest album a spin until a few months after, but if there's any testament to this band's songwriting talent, I was able to recognize 4 songs on Weight Of Air right off the bat as songs they played live.

The Sidekicks are a 4-piece, dual vocal pop-punk/"orgcore" band from California (I think) and have released 2 full lengths and a transitional EP between them. While their debut, So Long, Soggy Dog sounds a lot like what you'd expect from a band doing rounds on punknews with it's quasi-gruff, vaguely alt-rock indebted, and crunchy guitar'd pop-punk sound, Weight Of Air is a more mature, midwestern indie rock kind of album, with that 70's pop jangle and most of the aggression of the first album and preceding EP vanquished. That's not to say this is a trudger, though; almost every song is mid-to-uptempo, but the punk aspects have been toned down considerably and replaced with wonderfully hooky, Replacements-y, collegiate rock with appropriate touch of folk and the aforementioned 70's pop vibe. I apologize if that description could be clearer, but I really can't think of any current bands that encapsulate the same sound as these guys do. They're not reinventing the wheel exactly, but they're a great pastiche with no real contemporaries.
Here's an acoustic rendition of one of my favorite of their songs, "A Healthy Time" done for the Pink Couch Sessions; I feel like the easy transition from electric illustrates the point about their lack of "punkiness" pretty well:

While the songs aren't technical or complex by any means, there are lots of little intricacies that begin to show themselves upon repeat listens, like tinkering with the guitar leads from verse to verse or the cadence of the vocal harmonies; nothing ridiculously innovative, but the real charm here is how naturally the songs fall together and progress, especially with the incredibly hooky vocals and sing-a-long-able choruses. Just top notch songwriting throughout, and a sound that the band seems much more comfortable with than the aggressive pop-punk of their first two releases.

try it here
then
buy it here

I really wish I had gotten into these guys before I saw them live, 'cause it definitely seems like a wasted opportunity now.

Discount - Crash Diagnostic

I originally wrote about this album in my old blog and presented it in a really squirrel-y, uncertain manner in which I was forgoing any attempt to convince the few readers I had to download it because it was such a radically different kind of music than I commonly waxed on. It seemed kind of pointless at the time, but in retrospect, I just should've tried harder. I mean, why not? What's there possibly to lose? Just for value of a persuasive writing exercise, maybe. This blog is probably a better home for it, but really, I'd recommend almost everyone I know to stockpile the majority of albums I reviewed and uploaded on my old blog, too. I mean, sure, the chances of anyone reading a blog like this liking half of ye olde blogg's contents are nil, but dammit if I don't wanna try to convince you to give them a chance. I mean, Fela Kuti was pretty punk rock, right? He stood up for his limited rights, and paid a few horrible prices for them too. If you're gonna harvest anything from the old blog, I strongly oh wait I never published that Fela Kuti review. Nevermind.

And that concludes the worst intro ever.

Discount was an amazing Florida pop-punk unit that released 3 full lengths and a slew of splits and EPs and is renown for being the only non-shitty musical entity Alison Mosshart has ever partook in. I really, really, don't like The Kills or the Dead Weather at all. I also don't use heroin, though, which may be a contributing factor. And by "renown", I kinda mean "in my opinion". After all, The Kills have approximately 50 times the amount of listeners on last.fm than Discount do. Oof. But anyway, Crash Diagnostic is the band's third full length, swan song, and an album I saturated so completely with nostalgia/sentiment late in high school I can barely listen to it anymore without getting foggy eyed.
If you've heard any of the band's preceding work, this album sounds like a mash-up between the exceedingly pretty, vocal driven pop-punk of Half Fiction and the more churning, dynamic sounds of early post-hardcore a la Fugazi. Prior to this album, Discount's sound could be traced to the family tree inhabited by East Bay pop-punk, J-Church, and Jawbreaker, but never sounding like an extension of any of those bands. Just pure, exhuberant, melodic punk music for young guys and gals to lose their shit to. On Crash Diagnostic, it sounds like they went out of their way to challenge convention and make their sound more conceptual. It kinda seems like a weird thing for a pop-punk band to do, but it's pulled off really well - not perfectly, as some of the songs embody one genre over the other, but even without perfect cohesion, every song on here is excellent. I know I'm making this album sound like a comparatively pretentious, self-conscious work compared to its predecessors, but there's a reason I chose this album for coverage over the others. Listen to "Broken To Blue", "Black And White Can't Capture Blue And Red", "Math Won't Miss You" (one of my favorite songs ever), "Harder To Tell", "Hit", and "Age Of Spitting". They might be less perfunctory than their older stuff, but all the energy's there. It sounds like a lot of care went into each of these songs.

I should reiterate, though - The Kills aren't bad just because of their lame retread on later Royal Trux's sound, but coming from a Discount-fanhood, it pains me to hear Mosshart's once vibrant, hooky, emotional vocals reduced to a dull, obnoxious slur. It's actually hard to believe they're the same person. Seriously, go on amazon.com and listen to some samples from any of their albums. I realize she was only like, 19 or 20 when this album was released and still finding a vocal niche that suited her, but man did things take a turn for the drawl.

http://www.mediafire.com/?dm2mon4t4yt

I'll be able to die happy if I get to see these guys reunite for a few shows, as unlikely as that seems. One more thought: the amount of assholes who comment derisively on how Alison looked circa Discount compared to how she looks now makes me want to punch a hole in the wall. I guess it's just a symptom of mainstream exposure, though.

Off With Their Heads - Hospitals

Unfortunately for this blog, I'm slipping back out of my strictly punk-ass phase and into another bout with avant-garde, purely noise, improvisational, and otherwise fucked-up tuneage. I think I detailed this bizarre transformation in an old entry on my other blog, but the gist is basically as follows: I spend roughly half my time in phase A, then without warning, morph to phase B. Phase A is populated strictly with pop-punk, hardcore, powerviolence, folk-punk, and indie rock. Phase B is packed with free jazz, krautrock, noise, ambient, proto-metal, power electronics, psychedelic, and other matters of experimental music. While I'm in either phase, I want nothing to do with the music in it's opposing phase. I don't know how to explain it, but that's pretty much what happens every 4 months or so.

So hey, if any staff guys wanna help me fill the 10 entry per month quota, I'd really appreciate the help. I'm still gonna post, but it's probably not going to be as "spirited" as usual (or whatever word you'd use to describe my shitty writing style).

Say, you like nearly cringe-worthy quantities of pain and self-loathing in your pop-punk, right?
Off With Their Heads feature some of the darkest, most angst-laden, almost laughably negative themes I've ever had the fortune of encountering in such an upbeat brand of music, and they're all the better for it. Formed in Minnesota in '02, these guys started off playing somewhat light-weight, keyboard-laden power pop/pop punk before trimming off the cheesiness, speeding up, and cranking the distortion. If you've ever been confounded enough by the stupidity of the term "orgcore" to look up the bands that define it, you've probably seen this band's moniker in there somewhere; in other words, these guys play gruff, aggressive, poppy punk with raw, pack-a-day vocals and an angsty edge. Oh... I guess the "orgcore" term also includes folk-punk, but don't expect Plan-It-X or junk band-esque stuff if you try out The Riot Before or Gaslight Anthem.

Hospitals is an mini-LP (I think it was a 10 inch... do they still make 10 inches? Also: obligatory penis joke) from 2006, and probably my favorite material of theirs. Stylistically, it's really not far from really anything else they've recorded (aside from the aforementioned keyboard bullshit), but it's probably their strongest, catchiest songs paired with the most appropriate production style they've ever used. There's only 8 songs on here, but each one is filler-free and memorable, including the itty-bitty "Idiot", which clocks in at around 25 seconds. Jovial anthems like "Die Today", "Heroin In NYC", and "Your Child Is Dead" all feature some really catchy, poppy melodies unfitting of such gutwrenching themes, but it's never overdone or reeks too strongly of irony. Even though it's obvious these guys have a sense of humor regarding their craft, their songs still contain huge doses of catharsis and emotional resonance, which makes me wonder if any of their lyrics reflect on the writers' personal experience. Maybe I'm just falling for their schtick, but my favorite track almost always gets my eyes to well up; the closing track, "Jackie Lee" slows things down, and is based around one really strong melody that permeates the entire song. I can't exactly relate to the song's lyrics, but they stand out for some reason:

Drunk in a waiting room, I can't fall asleep
Without knowing how you're gonna to be.
Think about what you have,
It isn't that bad.
Sometimes it's so hard to see.

High in a waiting room, I can't fall asleep.
It's not funny how things came to me.
Thought about what you had, it wasn't half bad.
Sometimes it's so hard to see.

My time spent in hospitals makes it seem impossible
To ever walk back through that door.
You've got so much more to do.
I'd trade it all with you.
I'm just a drug addict and nothing more.

The rest of their material is strong, too, especially the EPs featured on their All Things Move Towards Their End compilation, but this is definitely my most listened. I think it's been re-pressed recently, so you know the drill:
Download it here
then
Buy it here

Descendents - Milo Goes To College

Time for another block on text on the internet! Yeah! So this is an incredibly obvious choice for a punk-centric blog revolving around my favorites or now and then, but hey, let me once again remind you (myself) that this blog's "followers" include two staff members out of three. Also one of them is me so I'm alerted when another staff member writes something. The first Descendents LP, Milo Goes To College, is considered a classic by pretty much everyone, cemented in the annals of musical history for furthering the developing of both pop punk and the melodic hardcore non-scene a few bounds, leaps, etc. Basically, the band took the speed of hardcore and melded it with some left-field pop sensibilities, packed it full of wonderfully melodic basslines, and developed the whole nerd-chic bands would pillage and forcibly conform to for years on end. Oh, and then the band members formed ALL at some point, who were super-saccharine, girl-crazy, nerd-pandering, garbage that took all the thematic elements of the Descendents and applied them to dull, generic, pop-punk.

I guess I could technically stop there without any repercussions. Those are usually all the things I cover in these reviews reduced to a single paragraph. BUT ANYWAY, this album is the 1982 followup to the ridiculously brief and comical Fat EP, and features 15 crucial tracks in something like 23 or 24 minutes. I don't remember. Either way, it was here that the band began to buckle down and write more focused, less nonsensical material - basically this is to Fat what Dirty Rotten LP is to Dealing With It! - all presented in a super energetic, not-quite-polished aggression with tons of memorable hooks, especially in the vocals and bass. Milo's lyrics are mostly a continuum of the angst/youth/girls triad found on the preceding EP, but now injected with lots of non-satirical misogyny and really naive-sounding sexism. Fortunately I discovered (and loved) this album a few years before any semblance of social awareness set in, because currently it's difficult to ignore such gross quips as "take a girl out, she won't fuck you, after you just bought her a gram of coke" and "the only fish I smell are on the deck of my boat". I guess they both might require some elaboration. Eh, just listen to the album and you'll get it. Pretty much every song is along the whimsical lines of "women are whores and cockteases", though.

http://www.mediafire.com/?flsgh0snt2z

I don't know if I made this sound like a worthwhile album, but it is. It's really incredibly good. The thing about the Descendents, though, is that they have a lot of really, really, really fucking awful songs, too. In fact, I made a list:

10.) Hurtin' Crue
9.) Parents
8.) No FB
7.) All-O-Gistics
6.) Van
5.) Enjoy
4.) Blast Off
3.) Sour Grapes
2.) Orgofart
1.) The Days Are Blood

They're in order of least-worst to worst-worst, by the way. And "Parents" is really catchy and has a great bass line, it's just incredibly stupid. Maybe I shouldn't have included it. After this album, though, the band got less and less good until they ended up with their good and bad songs completely distilled and polarized into either trait on the ALL album. Basically, if it's played in a pop-punk vein, it's good; if it's played in horrendous, sub-Black Flag style, it's... yeah, bad.

Lemuria - The First Collection

I have a friend who's probably a dozen times more qualified to review this collection and talk about this band. I'm probably gonna ask her to do an article on them in the future, but right now the spirit has actually hit me and I need to write something before I return to indifference.

Lemuria is a pop-punk/indie pop 3-piece from upstate New Yawk with dual male and female vocals I discovered right before their full length Get Better dropped in 2008. My mp3 player was in the shitter at the time (since I dropped it in a stream mid-song due to an apparent lack of foresight), and I was forced to download a couple albums onto my trendy phone to keep me company on the obnoxiously loud bus rides to and from campus. Due to the wonder of the internet, I've had a semi-difficult time giving each album I've DOWNLOADED ILLEGALLY the proper amount of time to sink in. Considering how little space was available on my phone, I figured this would be a good opportunity to pile in some stuff I wasn't entirely familiar with to see if sparks would fly upon repeat listens. While it turns out that Tuesday's Freewheelin' is nauseatingly corny, Latterman's Turn Up The Punk We'll Be Singing is almost like injecting distilled boredom into your eardrums, and the pre-Wilhelm Scream band Smackin' Isaiah realized the full extent of their shittiness early on, Lemuria's First Collection somehow didn't wear itself out over the course of two months and actually became a favorite of mine.

I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this documents everything the band did from their formation in 2004 up to the last release before their 2008 LP. Usually, I would break this into individual releases to cover here, but therein lies the appeal of this compilation: every EP this is comprised of is relatively short, so I get the feeling that a lot of love and care went into perfecting every song on here; fortunately, though, the production on each effort is similar enough that it doesn't feel like you're listening to a mash of different records in a row, but one cohesive piece with a lot of variation and multiple recording sessions' worth of energy. As I said before, Lemuria's vocal front is XX/XY, with guitarist Sheena typically taking the lead and sounding like a less erratic version of Alison Mosshart circa-Discount; drummer Alex is more along the lines of Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening, pulling a monotone slur that complements the more crisp leads. I've heard the non-term "progressive punk" bandied around this band's camp recently, and it took me a while to even guess what the fuck it's supposed to be in reference to. People know that "progressive rock" was an approximation of classical music using rock instruments, right? "Progressive" isn't a catchall term for bands that happen to use weird time signatures sometimes. That said, Lemuria do have very few songs with the traditional pop structuring (and do utilize some odd timings in most of their riffs) but isn't it easier to call them a pop-punk/indie band that isn't generic? Either way, almost every track on here is great (except "The Origamists". I really don't like that song.), and as I said before, the fact that this is pieced together from a bunch of different studio sessions gives it a lot of diversity, both in mood and sound without ever straying too far away from what makes them sound so appealing (except "The Origamists", again).

I was going to post a video for "Bristles And Whiskers", which is my favorite song of theirs, but unfortunately the only semi-passable video youtube had featured Ben Barnett of Kind Of Like Spitting sharing the vocals for some reason. "In A World Of Ghosts" is probably one of their most accessible songs, so it seems like a good alternative:


Download here
then
Buy here

Their two LPs that preceded this are good, too (one of which *technically* hasn't been released yet), but something about them just doesn't appeal to me as much as this does. I don't even think it's sentiment, for once. Oh, and go see them live if you get the chance. My friend Tess and I got to see them play a gross little acoustically-horrific, capacity-breached basement a month ago, and they still ended up being a lot of fun.

IntroDICKtory

I don't know why I spiked the title with profanity.
But let's move on... this is the companion/irrelevant secondary blog to The Rest Is Just Music, which focuses primarily on art school disaster, avant-garde, noise, free jazz, and other music that no one actually likes but pretends to in order to appear cutting edge or unique (including me).

I'm a really big fan of pop-punk, hardcore, early emo, ska-punk, powerviolence, crust, and the like, but posting about stuff like the Beatnik Termites between reviews of Archie Shepp and the Incapacitants is a little pointless. I think it's safe to say most people stroking their beard and furrowing their brow to some Dave Burrell aren't going to be skanking to Choking Victim later. Actually, a Choking Victim fan probably isn't going to be listening the Beatnik Termites, either... Call it pandering if you like, but whatever, I'm really not a good enough writer to convince a world music enthusiast to try out a Promise Ring album (or vice-versa), so hey, here's a brand new blog.

Hopefully this'll be a collaborative thing, too, with lots of other (or probably "a few other") guys/gals contributing articles/reviews/uploads/concert feedback/naked photos. Hell, if virtually anyone asks, I'll let them give it a shot. Because I am a good Samaritan.

NEXT TIME: CONTENT