I have been a Butch Walker fan for over a decade. I met him at a rooftop party and thought he was maybe the prettiest thing I had ever seen. I won’t lie, this is what inspired me to pick up his first album and give it a listen. But once I actually got turned onto his music, I truly became a fan. He writes beautiful, playful songs with catchy hooks, and even when he leans towards country (my version of the “c” word) I forgive him. In my eyes he really can do no wrong.
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“Guilty Pleasures” you say? Oh I got ‘em. As a punk rock girl from Pittsburgh who grew up listening to DRI, The Ramones and Suicidal Tendencies, I tend to feel guilty about owning up to my hair metal exploits. Well…sort of. In the context of the past all can be forgiven. But then how could I possibly own up to my current ipod play list? Full of Matchbox Twenty, Pink, Rick Springfield, it’s all deadly. And so what?
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Red Bull Records just signed a little band called Five Knives. This video as well as their sound makes me happy. I had the opportunity to see them play at Empire Automotive while in Austin for SXSW and it was such a wall of sound it was hard to get a grip on. But they are definitely worth checking out. Watch their new video below the fold.
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From Tuesday, through Sunday of this past week I spent every waking hour in Austin working during SXSW. It was physically and emotionally exhausting. Yet upon returning to LA there were still two shows that I refused to miss. Two nights in a row at the Troubadour, Anti-Flag was celebrating their 20th Anniversary. These Pittsburgh punks have been rocking political anthems for longer than some of those kids have been alive. They survived the Reagan area. They survived the Iraq war. They survived the Bloomfield Bridge Tavern. It was more than a return to a scene from my youth, it was a re-awakening.
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In the summer of 1990, I was attending community college, lived at home with my parents, my boyfriend was in jail, and I was listening to LA Guns. The picture above is a scan of a magazine clipping that I have had all these years in a box with a collection of old letters and memories. (I have no idea who took this pic, but am almost certain it came from a Metal Edge Magazine.) Those two lovely boys are Tracii Guns (guitar) and Phil Lewis (singer) for the Los Angeles based metal band. On the night of July 6th, outside of the famed Metropol in Pittsburgh, we got acquainted…and yes…shit got weird.
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Months ago I was invited to a charity event, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Man and Woman of the Year, where there was both a silent auction as well as a live auction. This is pretty standard where charity dinner/galas are concerned. This also generally comes with an open bar to help grease the generosity wheels.
Three, maybe four cocktails into the evening, the silent auction closed. I walked away the proud winner of a day on a luxury yacht to Catalina for me and 5 very good friends. This should have satiated my compulsion to do good, but no. During dinner the live auction commenced and someone was foolish enough to hand me a paddle with a number.
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“Trouble on my mind, gettin’ lost in these fast times. I’m fallin’ behind.” With so many of my favorite bands coming out this year with lukewarm offerings, its nice to see the Bouncing Souls remain consistently awesome. Their new album, Comet, has another 10 fast, light-hearted songs that not only make me dance in my car, but “sing along forever.”
I am doubly blessed to remain friends with the boys themselves. Bryan Kienlen and I met years ago in a Pittsburgh bar after an Anti-Flag show, while drinking Red-Headed-Sluts and talkin’ about the east coast punk scene. I had the pleasure to hang out with the boys again this past weekend at the 2012 Hootenanny, an outdoor concert in the middle of canyon country California.
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Shit doesn’t always go as planned. These are things we all know to well. However, I thought on this particular Friday, I would share some quick easy suggestions that might help you get through the disappointments, and back on the path to awesome town!
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In 2011 ChinaShop Magazine (of which I am the Editor-in-Chief) partnered with legendary rock venue, The Roxy Theater on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood, to renovate one of their back stage dressing rooms. In an effort to do more than just spruce it up, we came up with the idea of getting a beautiful turquoise Polarts couch and asking all the bands who played the Roxy throughout the year to sign it.
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Nothing gets me more excited than a free sticker. Perhaps its my inner 8 year old, or perhaps that intoxicating toxic smell of vinyl and adhesive. For years I have squirreled away a whole drawer full of the sticky tape. Every now and again I pull some out and paste them inside one of my sketch books. I took some time to scan a few of those pages for your amusement.
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