Cheap Girls, Crimes @ Golden West Tonight
It used to be hard to discover new music. Back when underground music was, um, underground- hell, back when you could use the term ‘underground music’ without sounding like someone’s dad it took a lot to discover music that wasn’t on the radio. It usually involved knowing someone who was cooler than you were, stocking up on 6 packs of blank cassettes and scrupulously reading and cross referencing the band names being dropped in MRR and Heartattack.
Ironically, now that all the music in the world is published on the internet and can be streamed any time anywhere, it’s actually almost harder to discover new music. There’s a paralysis of choice. recommendations carry less weight and with the advent of taste algorithms any new music you do discover tends to blend together and fade into the background just as fast as you can play it.
Cheap Girls plays at Golden West tonight.
Take Cheap Girls, for example. Here’s a band that we’ve been dimly aware of for quite awhile. They’ve got a few good records out. They’ve toured with Lemuria and Against Me. They have a Bandcamp page and some write ups on Punknews.org But they’ve remained ‘in our queue,’ so to speak.
So tonight we’re going to head out to Golden West and discover Cheap Girls the old fashioned way. Live. And what are we going to discover when we see them? A band that sounds like Buffalo Tom. A band that sounds like Buffalo Tom if they’d just finished listening to a Dinosaur Jr. record. A band that sounds like that and likes to drink and misbehave. We like them already.
As a bonus, we’re stoked to see a full set from DC’s Max Levine Ensemble. They played the Kind of Like Spitting show we wrote about last month, but since our Zipcar was due back at midnight we only got to catch a song or two. The band with a jazz-band-sounding name has been around for more than a decade now, and has often drawn comparisons to the Ergs, but we’re going to go on record and say we like them better than the Ergs because they’re not as cute. Pop punk is already inherently cute, and these guys avoid the trap of making songs that are too cute by half.
Crimes isn’t cute. Crimes is Westminster from somewhere around here. Crimes is loud. Crimes is one of the Baltimore bands you need to know about this Summer. It would be a crime to miss out on them.
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Golden West Cafe is at 1105 W. 36th Street in Hampden. $8, all ages. Show starts whenever the hell they feel like starting it, but late.
I sure would come to a lot more shows at Golden West if they didn’t start so fucking late.
Ditto.
What does the comment “crimes is westminster” mean? Just wondering
Means they are from Westminster. Do I have that wrong? I thought they had some Westminster connection.
No direct Westminster connection, however some of our favorite bands (WHIFF!) are from there, and we’re flattered to be associated with ‘em. Now go buy some stuff from Wallride records.
Word. Thanks for the clarification.
You guys are honorable made made westminsterians . I now deem it so…… Congrats and good luck
is westminster the go to baltimore band association…dartagnan isn’t from there either
Yes. Yes it is.
I actually asked around about Dartagnan and was told they were from Westminster. So at least that time it wasn’t me being a lazy old fart of a blogger and going on my own misremembered assumptions. Guess I’ll throw a coin in the fountain and wish bands would fill out their social media pages better.
“Paralysis of choice” is spot on. I was much more active in finding and listening to new “underground” music back when one of the few options was ordering records from sketchy handwritten ads in MRR. Nowadays I get tired just thinking about the sheer numbers of new bands out there. Of course that could also just be my aging mind.