It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ... at least if you're looking at the upcoming club events happening over the next few weeks. This Sunday at the Blue Wisp Jazz Club you can get in the holiday mood by checking out Pat Kelly and his PyschoAcoustic Orchestra.
The five members of Arms Exploding are serious about making music, and it shows. The sounds emanating from Ruminari, the band’s debut album for the local Phratry label, are intense and harrowing, a melodic Post Punk/Prog cacophony of double clutch drumming, heart attack bass, delicately thrashing guitars and unhinged vocals.
My search, aided by Al Gore's trusty inter-web, lasted about two and a half minutes. That's longer than most Order 66 songs, but that's OK. My feeble attempts at research are shadowed only by my limited amount of knowledge. Alex Kuhling (drummer) wastes no time in his efforts.
If there’s any truth in the old adage that “the family that plays together stays together,” the Peytons of Indiana will be tight until the next ice age.
"They knew the lyrics to every song. It was freaking me out. They knew more of the lyrics than I did." Parents are rocking out to the Guns and their '80s-like sound that's bringing in the kids. "Maybe," Dawson says. "Kids like what kids like, and normally they don't like what Mom and Dad like."
On Nov. 23, CityBeat brought the Cincinnati Entertainment Awards to the Emery Theatre for what turned out to be the best show in the program's 12-year history. Bootsy Collins and a large band of James Brown cohorts tore the roof off right away with an opening tribute to the Godfather of Soul, part of a big celebration of Cincy's King Records' legacy.
In an era when a lot of music has scaled back and become overly somber, Electric Six has revived the concept of "more is more." Their high-energy guitar, shimmering banks of synthesizers and humor (featuring equal measures of tongue and cheek) have reinvented the Rock experience as a contemporary high-energy vaudeville act.
I'm a sucker for good holiday music. And by "good" I mean "weird." The thing is, the closer the holidays get the smaller my bank account seems to be — especially given the economic crisis. And while I have some old Christmas music hanging around the house, I don't want to rip my guests off by playing the same things as last year.
I once opened for Ralph Stanley somewhere north of Cincinnati in a pre-fabricated building with one of those signs out front where you can change the letters by hand. It said, "Tonite Ralph Stanley," and that was about all it needed to say. When Ralph and the Clinch Mountain Boys took the stage, there was an uproar. "Stone Walls and Steel Bars," somebody yelled. "Rabbit in a Log!" "Clinch Mountain Backstop!" Ralph looked flinty, with a chiseled face straight out of southeastern "Virginny" where he was born and still lives.
