Veteran singer/songwriter Maurice Mattei and his band The Tempers celebrate the release of their new CD, Mauled, this Saturday at The Redmoor in Mount Lookout. The show will feature an opening set by local Surf Rock band, Don’t Fear the Reverb, plus appearances by David Wolfenberger, Mike Helm, Brandon Dawson, Sharon Udoh and more.

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Fifteen years ago, if you heard about a young, new Ska/Reggae band releasing an album, you’d be forgiven for thinking the crew played some variation on so-called Third Wave Ska, the Punk-driven, Ska-tinged sound popularized by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and others. But if you subscribe to the belief that music lovers and makers often turn to more pure forms of music in times of societal uncertainty (as some say is the case with the Indie Folk movement), The Newport Secret Six’s dedication to the earliest forms of Reggae and the authentic sound they come up with should be no surprise. There are no distorted guitar or gang-vocal shouts on Licking River Rocksteady. It’s simply a fantastic modern Reggae album bustling with energy, soul, personality and tradition.

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So this is how the music industry works in the 21st Century: Without a hint of radio support, Angels and Airwaves (AVA) with opening act Say Anything got 1,500 faithful fans to show up for a Rock & Roll show here in Cincinnati.

Thank you, Mr. Internet.

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If you were to place a bet as to what local band will be the next to follow the likes of Bad Veins, Pomegranates and Daniel Martin Moore into the ranks of “nationally acclaimed” Cincinnati area artists, putting your money on Electro/Indie foursome Eat Sugar is a pretty safe wager. One listen to the band’s excellent new EP, It’s Not Our Responsibility!, and you couldn’t be blamed for betting your life savings.

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Good ol’ Art Damage Lodge opened up its doors last Friday to its regular crowd of chin-scratching art buffs, alcoholic hipsters and crusty noise mongrels, who filed into a hot, sticky room and plopped down on hot, sticky couches to get their fix of some hot, sticky, live experimental muse-sick.

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Sometimes I feel like that scene in Seinfeld where Newman talks himself into a state of bug-eyed crazy as he describes the endless stream of mail that the Post Office is forced to deal with every day. I feel his fictional pain as I look about the Bunker and realize the stacks keep stacking regardless of my efforts to review them. I’m also reminded of an offhand comment made by my glass-half-empty pal Sean Daley when we worked together at Wizard Records way back in the weighty ’80s. One afternoon, Sean started looking around the store with a vacant gaze that suggested either the onset of a stroke or the Percocet kicking in. I asked him what was wrong and he said, “It just occurred to me that my new favorite album could be in here somewhere and I’d never know it because I won’t hear it, and no one I know will buy it and turn me onto it.” That’s how deeply philosophical it got in the store when we were short on customers. Of course, my dilemma doesn’t quite drip with that level of O. Henry irony. I might hear something quite good long after its release, but I have this forum to cover it, regardless of when it was actually hot off the presses.

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By Saturday, you better have developed enough Bonnaroo survival tactics to make it through the day. The key is to keep pounding water and let the music fuel your body.

Saturday’s schedule was like NOS octane pumped into my bloodstream. The day was kicked off at 11:30 a.m. on Which Stage with Rebelution, a Reggae/Rock group from Santa Barbara. The 100-something degree weather didn’t keep a crowd from showing up and grooving out to Rebelution’s soaring, heavily reverberated jams that echo with uplifting, worry free vibes — exactly what we needed as the hottest part of the day was upon us.

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The annual X-fest rolled through Indianapolis and Dayton this weekend with a line-up featuring Papa Roach, Buckcherry, Sublime with Rome, Shinedown and many more. The annual festival is sponsored by local rock stations and draws tens of thousands of fans to the two shows from the Tristate region. 

This year the weather was beautiful and the bands did not disappoint. Dust storms formed in mosh pits as fans enjoyed the show.

Leading up to the show we sat down with Jacoby Shaddix, the lead singer from Papa Roach, to discuss the festival, their new record, and how to keep a marriage strong.

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Now in it tenth year, one of Cincinnati’s most celebrated bands, Wussy (led by former Ass Pony Chuck Cleaver and his equally skilled songwriting partner/co-frontperson Lisa Walker), has amassed an amazing discography so far. Beginning with 2005’s Funeral Dress, the group quickly developed a reputation for the “ragged glory” of its performances, both live and on record. That sense of recklessness worked impossibly well with the band’s fractured, soul-burrowing love songs and the unbridled tense, passionate energy between its co-leaders. Early on, Wussy often sounded on the verge of falling apart, but there was always something magical about the group that assured you that, even if by Scotch tape and rubber bands, the band would hold it together. 

But with each successive release, Wussy’s edge-of-cliff nature gradually dissipated. By the time of the rockers’ third album, an eponymous affair in 2009, Wussy had become a more confident, cohesive unit. But not in the way, say, Paul Westerberg went from alcoholic Punk poet to “mature” singer/songwriter. As the band’s fourth full-length, Strawberry, shows, Wussy isn’t getting boring. They’re just getting better. Which, considering how powerful albums like 2007’s Left for Dead were, is almost scary.

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There’s no such thing as “just another day at Bonnaroo." This morning I was in attendance for a mesmerizing performance by Nashville AltCountry siren Tristen in the press tent that barely ended in time for me to race over to This Tent for a performance by Black Joe Lewis & The Honey Bears that shook me to my very soul. Their raging Funk and Soul revue literally had the crowd jumping and screaming for the duration of their 60-minute set.

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