…is what I would say if I spoke Gaelic, or was just telling people what my band’s name meant. Omaha folk-punkers Pog Mo Thon will be at Louis Liquor in the Benson neighborhood this Friday at 7 pm. Get out there if you can. Yes they do kind of look like pirates.
Category Archives: music
Cool, Reddit-Derived Grooveshark Playlist
http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/New+Stuff+To+Try+Out/44038352?src=5
Click that up there. It’s an expansive playlist featuring a lot of bands you’ve never heard of. All of it is based on this thread from Reddit. There is stuff going on with this music that excites me. Go listen for yourself.
One Knuckle At A Time
This here is a band from St. Louis, MO called Fister. They are part of the Pissfork recording group/project/blog, which also includes Ashes and Iron, Black Dwarf, Harkonin and other sorts of death/doom/sludge/ambient death/black/fartcock metal. It’s hard to talk about Fister singularly because several of the members are longtime friends and appear on multiple shows together. Under the Pissfork banner they share a common love for metal and a wry, sardonic sense of humor. They are fond of making 7″ vinyl and cassette tape releases – though they do make their material available for download too, as the tapes and records are limited releases that go out of stock pretty fast.
Recently Fister put out a cassette called Bronsonic – yes that is Charles Bronson’s face on the tape cover superimposed over Beezlebub – which disappeared after its release. Again it is available online, or you can track down someone who has the cassette and they can dub it on some ancient, twin-deck stereo.
Below is the first Fister video, “Bronsonic,” the title track from the cassette.
Well My Day’s Just Been Crapped On
Fresh off the BBC:
Mr Moore, 58, was, originally from Belfast, and was a former member of the legendary Irish group Thin Lizzy.
Adam Parsons, who manages Thin Lizzy, told the BBC that Mr Moore had died in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Mr Moore was originally drafted into Thin Lizzy by its singer Phil Lynott. He later gained acclaim for his solo work and was a former member of the Irish group Skid Row.
The Northern Ireland guitarist was only 16 when he moved from Belfast to Dublin in 1969, to join Skid Row, which featured Lynott as lead vocalist.
He was later brought into Thin Lizzy by Lynott to replace the departing Eric Bell, another guitarist from Northern Ireland.
Mr Bell told the BBC on Sunday he was still “in shock” at Mr Moore’s death.
The hyperlink at the top goes to the rest of the article.
My personal favorite of Gary’s work with Thin Lizzy was their ’78 album Black Rose. His fiery, signature leads were all over tracks like “Toughest Street in Town,” and “S&M,” and he was always there to give Phil Lynott a square kick in the ass and make him crank out his best work. “Do Anything You Want,” is a very great example of Moore meshing perfectly with Scott Gorham on guitar:
Gary’s solo work started off as your average, 70s blues-based hard rock. Here he is on Old Grey Whistle Test w/ Lizzy doing a slow jam of “Don’t Believe A Word:”
Later Gary got deep into 80s hard rock and kinda went glam metal for a while. His Victims of the Future record is still a favorite of old headbangers. This era has not aged well at all, kind of sounding like music that would go on a Tom Cruise movie of that time. Nonetheless Phil was there with him again for “Out in the Fields,” and considering we lost Phil back in ’86, it’s one of the last documents we have of him.
Gary moved away from the glam rock stuff in the 90s and got down into 60s style English blues rock for the rest of his career and life. He marketed himself as a blues musician, but really his guitar tone was so searing and saturated, that he sounded more like John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers and early, Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac. This blues era got Moore the most critical acclaim he’d seen in decades, a signature guitar from Gibson, and exposure to a wider breadth of fans. His final studio album, 2008′s Bad For You Baby, was given 3.5 stars by Allmusic. While his music by that point hadn’t diverged much from where he’d started with 1990′s Still Got the Blues, he was not going through motions and craved to wrench every inch of emotion he could from his voice and guitar.
What’s cool about this next video is seeing Gary rock a Telecaster, which was out of the norm for his blues period, as Gary preferred a Les Paul for much of this material. Also it’s very evident Gary hadn’t slouched nor laid back as he approached his 60s. This performance sweats and swaggers.
Gary died today in a hotel room in Spain. The cause of death remains unknown at the moment, but damn it sure is sad. Thanks for all the great music, Gary. You were gone too soon.
Rock of Aging
The 23 year old me:
“Hmm let’s see, it’s Friday, what the hell is going on tonight?”
*Looks on internet, clicks on local entertainment website, checks events calendar*
“Oh cool, I like that band. They’re at Dirty, Dingy, Smoky Club Dowtown tonight? I love that place! It’s such a shit hole! I love shit holes, because I’m in my early 20′s and don’t care about hygiene or being mugged! What time’s the show? 9 o’clock? Awesome, because I really have no motivation to go anywhere before 8 pm. It’s going to be awesome watching two other bands play that I don’t give a shit about, and wait until nearly midnight to see the one group I want to see! Maybe I’ll just stay up after I get home too? Fuck it, I’ve never just sat around drinking until the sun came up, let’s see what happens!”
The 30 year old me:
“Oh fuck yes, it’s Friday. I’ve been getting up at 6:30 am all week and I’ve had to either shovel snow or scrape the ice off my car all goddamn week, and my commute has taken 10 minutes longer due to the idiots too dumb to drive in snow. I can’t wait to crack open a beer and not do jack shit. Oh wait, what’s this on my Facebook?”
*Clicks events notice, sees a show by a band I enjoy is playing nearby tonight*
“Hey, maybe I could go to that? Okay what time does it start?”
*Doors open at 9 pm, three bands are on the bill. I have heard of one of them, and it plays last*
“Uh…9 pm start, band won’t go on until 11:30 or so, I’ve been up since 6:30, my car payment’s due and the next pay period isn’t for a week – oh and it’s cold.”
* * *
“Fuck it, not going.”
