Lemuria, Nightbirds @ Charm City Art Space Tonight

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Man, were we glad when December was over, because honestly all that Christmas mumbo jumbo is kind of boring. The thing about it is that when people schedule things well in advance, they all tend to do the same thing… look at the calendar and say “Oh well let’s pencil in something after New Year’s.” In consequence of that, we’re seeing more music this week than we did in all of December, and we’re trying to be in two places at once tonight.

Fortunately for us, those places are literally right around the corner from one another, and we can easily bounce back and forth from the show we told you about yesterday at the Metro Gallery, and the show we’re telling you about today at Charm City Art Space.

Lemuria brings their brand new record, Pebble, to CCAS tonight. 7 pm doors.

No matter how much bouncing around the block we may do tonight, we’re going to be damn sure not to miss Lemuria when they go on at the Space. The last time we saw them it was at Mike and Julie’s wedding show, because that’s the kind of super-adorable warm and cuddly emo-rific band Lemuria is. The kind that plays wedding shows. They’ve got a new record called Pebble that was just released this week on Bridge 9, so tonight marks your first good chance to buy it. If you don’t then your heart is obviously made of cold rusted iron and your body may resemble that of a scarecrow in an empty field. Just sayin’.

We’re also going to make a point of catching Night Birds who are ex- the Ergs (and other bands), and who remind us all of two things:

1. That not everyone from the Jersey Shore is a dumbass Guido shart.

and

2. That psycho-surf garage punk is taking over the scene in 2011.

Ever worthy openers on tonight’s bill are local punks Dead Mechanical, and post hardcore screamers Pianos Become the Teeth. We’re big on both of these bands, but on a night like this their solid work ethic is not in their favor. We’ve seem both several times before, and they play often enough that we’re confident we’ll see them again before long, which we can’t say about the acts at Metro Gallery.

It’ll be interesting to see how tonight shakes out, but no matter what, it’s going to be a good time. Among the Art Space, Metro and the premiere of Sticky Buns Burlesque at the Windup Space, Station North is going to busier than it’s been in a while now. Get in on it.

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Charm City Art Space is located at 1731 Maryland Ave in Station North. All ages.

Landspeedrecord!, Poly/Western @ Metro Gallery Tomorrow

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Why is it that sometimes the best bands are also the laziest? We don’t mean to call anyone lazy, especially since we pretty much take the cake for sloth in this town, but we can’t help but notice that sometimes those with the most talent do relatively little with it. Consider the scant output by writers like JD Salinger and John Kennedy Toole, or the recent careers of local bands like Landspeedrecord! and Poly/Western.

Granted: LSR put out a shitload of records, and was no slouch back in the day, but since they got back together they’ve played out only occasionally, and seem to be doing things just for the fun of it (not that there’s a damn thing wrong with that). We already told you how cool they are back in May, so we won’t waste words here telling you again. They’re still cool, okay?

Landspeedrecord! plays the Metro Gallery tomorrow. 8 pm doors.

Poly/Western is also a sort of groundhog of local music. Every now and again they’ll pop up and play a show, see their shadow or not, and go back underground for as long as suits them. If they were to start playing and traveling regularly though, or maybe even release a record, we think they could really be a band to watch for 2011. They’ve got that slow, full, ambient feel while still staying true to pop/rock song structures that we’ve begun referring to as the Baltimore Sound, and they do it a lot better than many bands who seem to work a lot harder than they do. On this blog, we try to give you a heads up for what you can expect at local shows, but rarely can we do it with such precision so easily. Here’s a youtube video of Poly/Western playing at the Metro Gallery. In other words, it’s pretty much exactly what you can expect to see tomorrow.

Joining in on the fun are a couple of bands who play a lot more often around town, Thee Lexington Arrows and The Matrimonials. Both are worth watching, and for $8 at a bar that stocks cheap Löwenbräus, this is our idea of nightlife.

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Metro Gallery is located at 1700 N. Charles St. in Station North. Tonight’s show is 21+.

Grant Hart @ Black Cat Tonight

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When we went to the Obits show the other day, we mentioned that sometimes we’re too cool for things, and sometimes we’re too old for things. Seldom is it both, but if you thought there was any chance at all we were going to go back there tonight and see Das Racist, well then you don’t know us too well, do you?

The cool kids may eat it up with a spoon, but nope… tonight the Chop is both too old and too cool for school. We’re staying as far away from that as possible. So far, in fact, that we’re leaving Baltimore entirely. You mixtape and DJ set types can keep your Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bells. We’d rather listen to rock and roll.

Grant Hart plays the Black Cat tonight. 9 pm doors.

You don’t need us to tell you who Grant Hart is. Grant Hart is a fucking legend. Once or twice in a generation someone comes along and changes the game entirely… and those people are relatively unimportant. In our book, Grant Hart and Bob Mould invented the game. As far as we’re concerned, they’re right up there with Joe Strummer & Mick Jones, Keith Morris & Greg Ginn, Joey & Johnny Ramone, Brett Gurewitz & Greg Graffin, Ian MacKaye & Guy Picciotto, or Richard Hell & Tom Verlaine.

If any of those guys play within an hour of your house and you don’t go, well, you’re just not that cool. We’re saying that for the record.

Opening up tonight is Chapel Hill power-pop outfit The Venables. Just the fact that we describe them as “power pop” is a good indication that they learned everything they know from guess who… Grant Hart. Their most recent 7 song recording Grab Bag is also available as a free download on their bandcamp site. Two great acts for $12 on the back stage is as cool as it gets for grumpy old rockers on a weeknight.

Now get the hell off of our lawn!

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Black Cat is located at 1811 14th Street NW in Washington DC. Metro accessible from green/ yellow lines to U St/ Cardozo Station. Grant Hart’s website is granthart.com

The Soft Opening: Quality Over Fanfare

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For some people a new year can also mean a new business venture. Whether you’re a national bank or restaurant chain buying up properties in a new market or a little guy opening a humble shop on a main street corner, your first instinct might be to hire a PR firm and an ad agency, build a lot of buzz, excitement and goodwill, and pull out every gimmick in the book from free iPads to air dancers and spotlights to midnight madness doorbusters. We say save it.

The Chop fully endorses and approves of the soft opening.

Baltimore is a city of small businesses and corner places in which you are your reputation, and reputations are still made by word of mouth. People in this town tend to be pretty savvy about what works and what doesn’t, even to the point of passing judgment on certain shops, cafes and bars without ever having been inside.

Word of mouth can make a bar legendary. Worked for this place.

This might seem counter-intuitive, but this is also a town of very few surprises. We’ve been just about every place that’s worth going, and the truth is that we’ve seldom been surprised. If someone says a spot has the absolute best bloody marys, they probably do. If the word on the street is that the service is terrible, you can believe that it is. And if a place gets a reputation as a neighborhood’s best kept secret, you’d be much encouraged to get yourself in there as often as possible.

Granted, in this day and age word of mouth is also word of email. It’s word of tweet and word of status update, as the folks at Cafe Hon are finding out. The bottom line remains the same though, if you’ve got the goods you’ve got a good reputation. You can hire all the PR people and social media strategists you want, but none of them can do for your business what a few good words, honestly spoken from a trusted source will do.

So we say skip the big grand opening, no matter what you’re opening. Don’t bother with the 60% off sales and the double-happy happy hours. Forget about the groupons and ad campaigns and luring critics in the door and all of that nonsense.

Just hang out your shingle, open your doors, and offer your offerings as best you can. Baltimore will do the rest for you.

Obits, Sal Bando @ Sonar’s Talking Head Stage Tonight

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Sometimes we’re too cool for things. Sometimes we like to pretend we’re too cool for things, when we’re really just too old and jaded for them. This is not one of those times.

We’ve talked before about the right and wrong ways to continue a musical career after some initial success. It’s become increasingly easy to sit at home, especially during the dead of winter, and wait to hear the meh reviews of live sets from bands who were only marginally exciting 15 years ago. That won’t be the case at Sonar’s Talking Head Stage tonight.

9703-bed-bugs

Rick Froberg is an archetypal model for how to conduct a career. We said as much in the link above about his former bandmate John Reis (Drive Like Jehu, Hot Snakes), and Froberg’s newest band Obits is putting out exactly the type of music we want to listen to at this point. Late Night Wallflower once described them as Surf Like Jehu, and that’s a good thing. We don’t think we can sum it up any better.

Playing in support tonight is DC’s Shortstack, who are another band currently putting out just what we want to hear. It can be tough to describe their particular brand of rocky-tonk, but if you think the Old 97’s are a little too polished, Ryan Adams is a little too precious, and Uncle Tupelo was just about right, then Shortstack is right up your alley.

The natural choice for a local slot on the bill is Baltimore’s own Sal Bando, who’ve all got their own laudable musical resumés, and their own surf garage band that kind of sounds like the Hold Steady would sound if Craig Finn actually knew how to sing and didn’t just talk over the music in the same annoying manner record after record. Not sure why Sal Bando is waiting around so long to put out an album, but if they’d go ahead and release one we’d definitely buy it.

It’s not all old man music tonight though. Local favorites Double Dagger are also on the bill, and are guaranteed to bring it fast and manic enough to ensure that none of the old codgers coming out of the woodwork (and there will be plenty of them (us) there tonight) don’t fall asleep at the bar. We missed their final show of 2010, which was a crowded round-robin affair with Orphan and Dope Body, so we’re happy to see their first date in 2011 before we split town.

Just informed that Double Dagger is not on the bill. What do we look like, some kind of music journalist or something?

So yeah. We’re excited. You should be too, since we’d bet dollars to Dogfish that even though it’s early yet, this show makes our top ten list for 2011.

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Sonar is at 407 E. Saratoga St. downtown.