Yukon @ Windup Space Tonight

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Yukon might just be the best Baltimore band you’ve never heard of. In fact, if you haven’t heard of them, it’s likely because they’re as bad at playing shows as they are good at playing their instruments.

Which is not to say that they are actually bad onstage, but merely that they certainly haven’t made playing live a priority over the last few years. Yukon has always been the sort of band that thrives in the practice space and in the studio, and playing live has been incidental. There is, of course, that pesky little thing called the music industry, which dictates that you have to play live once in a while, like when you have a new record to sell.

Yukon plays the Windup Space tonight. 9 pm doors.

These guys do have a record to sell, by the by, called Life Inside and tonight’s date at the Windup Space is a homecoming show after a fairly extensive tour of the US and Canada. It’s up to you to give them a warm welcome, Baltimore, because we frankly don’t want them to turn into one of those bands that blows up huge in faraway places and never bothers to play their own hometown.

They’re supported tonight by the down-tempo psychedelic female duo Violet Hour and the even slower, even more psychedelic Each Others. And when we say slow and psychedelic, we mean it. These aren’t the basement shows of yore that Yukon used to play when they were a bunch of 18 year old math-rock prodigies. That’s for damn sure.

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The Windup Space is located at 12 W. North Ave. Doors at 9pm, show at 10:00.

The Thermals @ Ottobar Tonight

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It’s always been true of the Chop that we’re either late to the party or a very early adopter. In the case of the Thermals, it was the latter.

Your Chop got the inside word on the Thermals back in 2002 because of our pre-existing love affair with Kind of Like Spitting. We were way out in front of anything in which Ben Barnett was involved. Roommate & the Chop both love Ben so much that Roommate was even his point man in Baltimore for a few years there, booking shows and inviting KOLS to crash at the house (yes, we had other houses before the purchase of the North Baltimore Pleasure Dome).

The Thermals play the Ottobar tonight. 8pm doors.

So we got a good chance to see the Thermals the first time they ever came to Baltimore at the Charm City Art Space even before the release of More Parts per Million, and again when they came back to the Supreme Imperial. Back then, they were a four-piece with Ben on guitar, and Portland was a cultural second fiddle player to the other West Coast cities.

A lot has changed almost 10 years later. Now PDX has become a hipster mecca (even luring a few former Baltimoreans out to the left coast), and for our money, the Thermals were instrumental in making that happen. What started out as a sloppy, frenetic garage hobby-band has been growing and evolving ever since into one of the biggest and most recognizable acts in all of indie rock.

Their 2006 record The Body, the Blood, the Machine was a clear turning point in that evolution, marking a maturity of both sound and concept not present in their earlier work. It put them on the map, so to speak, winning universal praise from both critics and fans. It was recognized as one of the best albums to come out that year, and for the Chop’s money it’s on the shortlist of best records this decade.

Last year’s Now We Can See carries their sound forward picking up right where The Body, the Blood, the Machine left off, matching it track for track for high concept, musical excitement and lyrical calisthenics. Tonight’s show is a must see for any Thermals fan, as it’s a great chance to hear what sort of set list the band builds, now that it has so many building blocks to work with.

They’re supported tonight at the Ottobar by Seattle’s Past Lives and the (very adorable) Coathangers.

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The Ottobar is at 2549 N. Howard St. 410-662-0069 Doors at 8pm, show at 9:00.

Summer Shoes Do’s and Don’ts

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Time to get serious Baltimore… serious about summer. The snow is a distant memory, the random rain showers are just about over, and daylight is stretching ever longer. Those trusty old Doc Marten boots you’ve been stinking up all winter aren’t going to cut it anymore. You need to get yourself up to Van Dyke and Bacon or down to Benjamin Lovell or someplace and get your feet right.

Lucky for you, the Chop is here to tell you how to get your feet right. Seeking style advice from GQ, Esquire or the internet at-large is a good start, but these sources are full of effete New Yorkers, Miami Beach wannabe’s, and of course, shoe advertisements, which are not quite the same as advice. In Chop Style, we’ll be telling you from time to time how to dress for Baltimore City since that’s where you live.

So without further ado, the Chop is glad to give you summer shoe choices that will take you from Canton to Hampden in style. (All images and prices are from Zappos.com and all pictures link to purchase page.)

Do’s:

Casual Loafers: Loafers like these Suds by Ted Baker ($135) are a great choice. These were made for pairing with chinos but can go with jeans as well, and they’ll show up without showing off.

Bucks: It’s a shame you don’t see more of these in town, since they’re a classic and they embody the property that all Baltimoreans demand from their clothes… they look better with age. These Kearneys ($89.95) from Florsheim will hold up well. True, Florsheim isn’t the most modern of brands, but they’ve been trying to resurrect their image by bringing Duckie Brown on board. The Kearneys are much the same as the Duckie lace-ups, but with a more classic sole and at fraction of the price.

Desert Boots: We proclaim 2010 the year of the desert boot. It’s hard to go wrong with Clarks ($95), who invented the desert boot, but most any brand will foot the bill. The sand suede pictured above is a little conservative, since one of the best things about desert boots is that they look flash as hell in any color of the rainbow.

Classic Sneakers: We know some of you out there are sneaker freaks. That’s all well and good, but we’re just not big on them. They are handy to have around though, especially during the summer. We say keep it classic, but maybe give the Converse a rest this year, huh? For us these Tretorn T-56’s will do the job, and we strongly recommend buying sneakers in dark colors, since white always goes dingy way too quickly. The best part about these? On sale for $44 (from a mere $55 original sticker).

Don’ts:

Running shoes: Compare these to the T-56’s above and you can easily see that all athletic shoes are not created equal. These are great shoes for running (we suppose) but you can go ahead and leave them in your gym locker, because they just look out of place in a social setting. (New balance MR760, $99.95)

Sandals: These Kenneth Coles ($78) are actually pretty nice sandals. Problem is, you can really only get away with sandals at the water’s edge. Poolside is okay, an open fire hydrant on Montford Avenue is not. Down the ocean is okay, the inner harbor is not. You also have to be very careful about what pants you pair sandals with, since the Chop does not approve of short-pants on grown-ass men.

Clogs: Just don’t. We don’t care if your girlfriend bought you these UGG Heralds ($120) for your birthday. We don’t care if they kind of sort of look like real shoes. Just don’t wear them, because when you do, you make all men everywhere look like schlubs.

Sanuks: Yep. We saved the worst for last. Your shoes say a lot about you, and these things say “Hey Brah, let’s drive the jeep up Gunpowder, put on a Badfish record and get fuuucked uuup. We can always find a job tomorrow, right?” From the quasi-gator green color to the flat foamy soles to the shoddy construction to the Name “Kerouac” ($54.95), these things look like they came straight out of a communal factory run by retarded hippies. The overall effect is similar to the clogs, but they only make you look like a shart, not all mankind.

Tax Day! Our Bi-Weekly Political Roundup

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If you’ve been watching this space regularly, then you probably know by now that the Chop is a good Democrat, and a frequent participant in the Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally. You should also know that DL is free, fun, friendly and open to anyone who wants to come out. Tonight we’re meeting again at Joe Squared, home of tasty pizza and pitcher beer.

Baltimore Drinking Liberally meets at Joe Squared tonight. 7 pm

If you know all this and are still on the fence about coming out, well, you really should. Frankly the Chop is tired of bumping into women we used to date. Such is the curse of being stunningly handsome with an easy wit in Smalltimore. (Ha!) The more new people around to chat with, the better for everyone involved.

This is also the part where we get to blog about politics, and there’s a lot out there in the political ether right now. The big story is of course the impending retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens. Conventional wisdom says there will be a months-long knock down drag out fight, but we sort of doubt it. At least, we don’t see it coming to a Filibuster or anything like that. We’re not looking to swap out a Scalia for a Ralph Nader here, and Obama is as savvy as anyone who’s ever set foot inside the beltway. He’s not going to get Borked, no matter what. After the Sotomayor pick, the media can finally shut the fuck up about racial makeup, which is nice for a change. Whoever is nominated now might be of any race or gender and it won’t matter much since no one really cares, which is a nice thought. The big idea now is that he might pick someone with an ‘alternative resume’ meaning not a federal judge, but to our mind that’s kind of silly. You hire judges to judge because they’re good at judging. They’re also pre-confirmed by the senate if they’re sitting on the federal bench.

It’s also tax day tomorrow, which means it’s more or less the one year anniversary of the teabaggers. It’s kind of hard to believe that those sharts have only been around for a year, since it feels like about for-fucking-ever. In the past year it seems like they’ve been omnipresent, making headlines almost every day. It seems like they’ve completely overtaken the Republican party and are marching armed in the streets and about to stage a coup.

But that’s just how it seems. In reality these people huff and puff like spoiled children. They’re still not taken seriously by anyone in America, and they’re still the same bunch of unstable, racist, ignorant, uninformed sharts they ever were. We can only hope that they continue to speak for the GOP entirely, since it’s the best thing that ever happened to the Democrats.

The Baltimore City budget just dropped, and it ain’t good news. We’ve got to give a lot of credit to the mayor though. No one can squeeze blood from turnips, and she’s done a pretty good job of trying to spread the pain around. We’re BIG supporters of any plan to tax suburbanites who work in or benefit from the City. We like to pay taxes, because it means there are plenty of cops on Greenmount Ave, so we don’t have to march up and down the street with an open carry permit “taking our country back.” We’ll let the police handle that, thanks.

Last but not least, let’s just say this for the record… slavery caused the civil war. The south lost the civil war. The civil war is over, and in the year 2010 anyone who wants to go around waving confederate flags and promoting ‘southern heritage’ is a fucking racist. No amount of winking and nudging and addenda to proclamations will ever change that.

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Drinking Liberally meets the second and fourth Wednesday of every month at 7 pm. Joe Squared is located at 133 w. North Ave. All the above opinions are that of the Baltimore Chop Blog, and not of Drinking Liberally, it’s Baltimore Chapter, Chapter members or Joe Squared.

Giant Chatroulette and Knife Throwing @ Ottobar Tonight

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Yes Baltimore, you read that headline correctly. It’s one of those ideas that’s so simple, and so simply brilliant, that we don’t really need to explain it in much detail.

You know what the Ottobar is, and you know what Chatroulette is. One sets up a ginormous 80 inch screen and broadcasts the other, for free, for the amusement of all involved.

Whatever you see up there, you'll never be able to un-see it. Ottobar hosts Chatroulette tonight. 9 pm

Bad Decisions in Fells Point tried this last week, and word on the street is it was a smashing success, inasmuch as that sort of thing can be successful. The Ottobar is going them one better tonight though, getting Alex B. to host and tossing in a butcher knife throwing contest, cause nothing goes better with whiskey than knife throwing.

We can only hope that some local bar owner will answer back next week with a giant round of Chatroulette Bingo.

The best part? If you get tired of massive random cocks being projected up on the screen, you can always escape to the upstairs bar, where it’s 2 for Tuesday tonight.

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Doors at eight, gross-out fest at 9. 2549 N. Howard St. 410-662-0069