“I Can Tell By The Way You Smell,” immediately reminded me of “Fell in Love With A Girl,” (I linked to the video because I haven’t watched it in so long! And thought this was a good reason to.) and now this band sounds a lot like The White Stripes to me! Especially with just two people, it’s lost that 90s feeling for me and now I can really hear how The White Stripes must have been influenced by this band. I really liked this song and also appreciated how dirty it sounds compared to “Fell in Love With A Girl” which has a more produced sound.
The next song goes back to a blues/slightly grunge feel, and I’m liking how this band seems to be taking many rock and roll influences and making their own music with just two people. I don’t know why I keep coming back to that, but I guess I’m just really impressed by the raw yet pleasing and dirty sound a two person rock band can create. And loud too!
All of these songs are pretty short, most are under or just over three minutes on the first side and even shorter on side two. I think these work as short songs, but I’m not feeling that big of an emotional connection with this music. I do like it, and while I think it would be a good live show, I just can’t see myself getting completely lost in this music, although it does feel like the musicians are getting lost in it and having fun.
Do you think you’d have had the longevity that you’ve had if you were trying to do this full-time and were in a van together six months out of the year?
DH: No, I went into the Bassholes hating touring, so that was never a consideration. Our one brush with fame, I suppose—on this level anyway—was when we had the Matador record. They wanted that over-produced double-album on In the Red (When My Blue Moon Turns Red Again), and instead I gave them Long Way Blues, which to me is by far the best record we ever did. It was just so freaking weird, they didn't promote us at all. We could have toured and played with Matador bands a lot, but we really didn’t do that. We opened a couple shows for Yo La Tengo. Man, talk about pain! Oh my god that was rough. I like people who have a particular sensibility to mine, and I don’t think there are that many.
Cringe was founded in 1994 as a poll to make fun of the polls local alternative papers took. Readers of the Live Shows calendar, which focuses on the Ohio State, Short North, Arena District and downtown areas, were asked to create a category and winner of their choice. The first issue was an e-mail, and a few months later the quarterly ‘zine’ moved to the Web.
“The name Cringe is derived from the idea that if ‘grunge’ is the Seattle sound, the Columbus sound must be ‘cringe,’ ” Treadway said. “Yeah, ‘cringe’ is kind of a sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek name.”
Exposure to local music is key to a thriving local music scene. After people are introduced to local music, they are more likely to seek it out on their own through the papers and Web sites like Cringe, Treadway said.
“We get 1,000 to 1,400 visitors who view a total of 12,000 to 17,000 pages every day,” he said.
Columbus’ music fans are as vast and diverse as the music they listen to. However, two distinct crowds exist – the cover band crowd and original band crowd.
By the time of his first and only major-label release, the late Columbus, Ohio musician Jim Shepard had compiled a body of work that was a veritable maze of home-recorded D.I.Y., stretching back to the late-'70s. Photograph Burns is a chaotic, from-the-gut amalgam of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, post-punk, and the muddy sounds of the "lo-fi" explosion, from a guy who lived through it all.
In 1980, Anstaett helped ignite the local punk and new wave scene by booking bands like The Cowboys at South Campus bar Mr. Brown’s.
After a few months, he grew tired of concert promotion and started a fanzine instead. The first issue of TKA Offense debuted on April 11, 1980, fully handwritten and printed in the basement of the insurance office where Anstaett worked by day.
“I just slapped one together,” he said. “And then I thought, well, let’s slap another one together.”
Soon the zines - semi-regular collections of reviews, interviews, quizzes and local scene reports from around the Midwest - became a hit. Despite (or perhaps because of) their homemade look and feel, the books gained distribution of about 1,000 copies in record shops around the country and even spread to England.
With three previous albums under their belts, a distinct lack of fluffy ballads, and full-blown bar band bombast, The Evil Queens' latest, Lovesong Werewolves is chock full of pulsing, chugging guitars that three-chord their way through lo-fi landscapes. Steadfast drumming rolls behind lead singer Jacob Sundermeyer's impassioned alternations between lyrical droning and impassioned screaming. More substance over style, The Evil Queens may find their brand of guitar-heavy, cerebral groove rock that finds its niche with a whiskey-swigging, hipster intellectual crowd.
If you want to play a show, you need to send us a recording of your band, a lyric sheet (we want to know what you're singing about- you must include this or you WILL NOT get a show no matter how much your music "kicks ass dude"), and a nice note telling us when you're looking for a show. Mike Thorn is the best contact for hardcore, crust, grind, punky punk or how he can eat more cookies than anyone else alive today, Emmett White is good to talk to about emo, scremo, metal,or being a hippie- talk to Jon Strange about indie, pop, pop punk or his future political carreer (or even better how much he hates all animals. Scott Niemet will have moved out as of January 1st, as he is moving into fireexit. All can be reached at the number above.
All shows are all ages and cost $3 before the first band starts $4 after. Fashionably late? You lose sucker. Smoking, Drinking booze, Doing drugs and Eating meat are bad for you- so please don't do it in our house when bands are playing. If you must smoke do it outside- but please don't bring booze to shows!!! please please please- we've been doing this for over two years- and we don't want to screw it up now. If you must drink at shows- be smart. Don't flaunt it in people's faces. Pour your beer in a differant container (like a dark colored bottle), and for god sakes pick up after yourselves. Respect us and we'll respect you.
The songs are populated by the kinds of characters who are fun to have around until the inevitable trouble begins. The stories are rich and truthful and heart-filled, and the twangy, punky rock music proves the ideal vehicle for these tales of victorious tragedy and broken-down triumph.
The roots of the music is a natural out-growth of a love of the Byrds and local Columbus legends the Beetkeepers, and is informed by a love of the pop music of XTC and Prince, among others. Fueled by the songwriting prowess of Tim Easton, grounded by the heavy rhythm section of Aaron Rice on bass and Jovan Karcic on drums, and driven forward by the dense yet glimmering guitar of Freddie Free, the album's eleven songs fly by like landmarks along a country highway.
