Friday March 12
Denton, Texas’s NX35, originally a panel for Denton bands at SXSW, celebrated and produced a formidable first in what one could only hope becomes more in-town annuals March 11-14. I had attended the first Denton-anchored event and was experiencing this bloated annual with every bit of awe and elation as, I expect, those who had put it together must have also felt.
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Thursday night at NX35. Opening night. Denton is not a 9-to-5 kind of town, but even the indiest community feels the workday pinch when putting on a ruckus, even one as all-consuming as NX35.
Rob King, who has some experience with local music, made the trek to Denton, Texas for NX35, a music conferette and cultural explosion. I, however, got sick and missed most of it. Rob will tell you the full story of NX35 later this week.
What I did experience was two febrile nights of venue-hopping greatness, a video dump of which I’m providing here.
For what it’s worth … Continue Reading »
It was a fine evening a couple of weeks ago, occurring as it did in an inconvenient time of year for those caught in more traditional types of jobs and families. Readings from Upstart Crows and Upstart Crows II were interspersed with Farrago-friendly music.
The delay was great, but the video is in HD, so enjoy a few highlights. Sadly, the video does not include JD Reid’s reading of his “Exeunt, to Screaming,” which contains a reference to Michael Dudikoff and is thus the pinnacle of Western literature.
We’re still working on the best way to archive and present these events. Recordings of various quality are made, but until a strategy is worked out, the best I have to offer is short YouTube clips of varying degrees of decipherability, recorded on a low-quality digital camera with too little memory to record even a sample of each performer in an evening.
While the inside, full-on proper show later in the night provided the focus of the night’s festivities, the patio at Dan’s Silverleaf provided the more immediate and ephemeral experience.
That’s just how it happens, and I was in the mood that night to fill my memory card with this despite the amazing performances of our headlining acts. After all, anyone who has seen them knows the power of Warren Jackson Hearne or Pinebox Serenade in concert, and they’re already heavily represented on YouTube.
Presented here are four clips, with three of the four focused on the outside, unmiked portion of the evening. Continue Reading »
You can’t go wrong with zombies in sunglasses.
Actually, you could—you could go very, very wrong with it. When I hiked down the Harry Potter-esque alley to The Boiler Room in Asheville’s historic Grove House, I didn’t know what to expect. I was there to hear Zombie Bazooka Patrol. Great name, but would this be some ’80s Goblin rip-off? A bunch of “musicians” with unhealthy appreciations for Argento’s soundtracks?
Defining the weird in music may be even more challenging than in literature, and as this blogspace fills you’ll likely see several different takes on it. Post-rock, as a genre, seems to warrant a place, if only because it has informed, or at least played loudly during, the writing of at least a couple on the Farrago’s Wainscot staff.
So when a band that self-identifies (via a sticker that proclaims “Post-rock that actually rocks!” on their album cover) as post-rock is as resolutely cute and cheerful as The Octopus Project, they provoke some questions.
How can this be post-rock, when it’s so pink? Shouldn’t this be more dour and depressing? Why aren’t I looking at my feet while it’s playing? Can the weird be, god forbid, danceable?
