It is one of the great injustices in the music world that shitty bar bands who cover top 40 songs are usually some of the best paid bands out there. We don’t mean to say that getting up and playing Margaritaville and Rehab is ultra-lucrative and you can quit your day job doing it, but on...

It was a slow weekend around the Chophouse. We spent most of it drinking boxed wine and watching hard-boiled movies from the 70′s like Midnight Express and Dog Day Afternoon. Hell, it was a slow weekend around Baltimore. Except for Sunday night, there wasn’t much doing. So we...

First there was just the urban landscape. Here’s an old train station and here’s a little patch of grass and here’s a statue and a few old brownstones around. Then somebody got the idea to fill the landscape up with art. They called it “Artscape.” It was a pretty...

Terrible Feelings is a band. They’re from Sweden. This is what we imagine they look like when they play live. They sound like a cross between The Vicious and Siouxsie and the Banshees. They sound like this: There are more songs on their Soundcloud page. They’re playing with...

You know the Shamrock Inn. At least you should know the Shamrock Inn. It’s a Baltimore landmark of sorts. If you’re a true blue Baltimoron your dad probably knows the Shamrock Inn. You’ve likely driven past the Shamrock Inn a couple hundred times and said ‘Damn it, I...

And now we come to the Blogger’s Paradox. The Blogger’s Paradox holds that the more a band does, sometimes the less there is to write about them. As a music fan, we love it when our favorite bands play all the time. Getting to see a band you love twice a month is great. Who could complain...

So here’s what happened: 2 years ago Blackberry was still a viable company and hadn’t decided to roll itself off a cliff yet. It had just released the Torch, and we bought one, and never really liked it much. Once our 2 year contract was up we practically ran to Best Buy, where we...

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...

A couple of years ago we wrote our first post about going to a roller derby bout. We were pretty happy with how it turned out, and it was probably the most popular post of 2010. Problem is, we kind of said everything we know about roller derby right there. It can be kind of tough to write...

Maybe the closest to Zen thought that a lot of us ever get on a regular basis is to ponder the question “Is Punk dead, or is Punk not dead?” It’s a real tree falling in the forest kind of thing. Punks have been asking that question in one form or another for thirty years now,...

Sometimes writing blog posts about bands is easy. Sometimes you know the band well and they’ve been doing some interesting things and there’s a natural angle to take and the post writes itself. Sometimes it’s pretty hard. Occasionally there’s nothing to say about a band...

If you were to walk up to us and say “Hey Chop, who’s your favorite band?” We would say Kind of Like Spitting. If you were to say “No, I mean like, really your favorite, favorite of all time?” We”d look you square in the eye and say without any hesitation...

We don’t really like folk punk. The last time we went to a folk punk show it was maybe the worst show we’ve ever been to and we ended up demanding our money back after 90 minutes of horseshit and a headliner that didn’t show up. That’s what you get with most folk punk-...

If you ask Friend Collector, they’ll tell you that they are the best band in Baltimore right now. They’ll say it with a straight face. They truly believe it. They make a good argument too, inasmuch as they’re the kind of band that’s not afraid to call your band a bunch...

One of the disadvantages of leaving the country for months at a time is that you miss out on what’s going on here at home. Since we left in November, one of the major things that went on here in Charm City was Roomrunner’s instant ascent to the upper echelon of Baltimore bands....

This isn’t a music blog. It’s a personal blog. The point of this blog has never been anything more than to say “Hey, here’s what we’re doing tonight.” Kind of like Facebook, only not insipid and insidious. So here’s what we’re doing tonight:...

So, we guess we gotta go see Those Darlins tomorrow. We haven’t really got much choice in the matter. The show’s not gonna watch itself, as they say. It was a lot easier to stay home the last time they played at the Golden West. It wasn’t even that long ago- March 31 to be...

Now that a whole weekend has elapsed, this is probably old news already. With gossip moving at the speed of broadband these days, we’re probably not the first to tell you that Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore are getting a divorce. Then again, perhaps you haven’t heard. They decided...

Today is an important day in the city of Baltimore. Double Dagger will play its penultimate Baltimore show tonight at the Charm City Art Space. If you don’t know or care who Double Dagger is, or if you don’t think tonight is important, then you can go look at some fucking cats or...

As Walter Sobchak once said: “Life does not stop and start at your convenience you miserable piece of shit.” Such is the case tonight when the Deleted Scenes show will start sometime after 10 whether it’s convenient for you or us or the rest of Baltimore or not. And for most...

You probably know by now that this blog is a big fan of local band Poly/Western. We’ve posted about them before and go to see them every chance we get. Luckily, we get another chance tomorrow night at the Sidebar. We’ve always said that they were a great band who were bound to get...

So we’re going to see Strike Anywhere at the Ottobar tonight. Sounds pretty normal, except that we’re not actually going to see Strike Anywhere. Oh we’ll stand there and watch them. We’ll probably even sing along a little. What we mean to say is that even though...

You gotta go see Shellac tonight. Among the many reasons why you gotta go see Shellac tonight is because you’ve probably never seen them before, and the smart money says you’ll probably never see them again. After all, even though they’ve been around forever, they’re...

We were sad to hear the news a few weeks ago that the Hexagon Space was closing. We’re sad to hear about any venue closing up, even if we don’t go there very often. Fletcher’s, The Supreme Imperial, even Hal Daddy’s; we may have gone there pretty seldom, but any venue...

…And now for something completely different. The Chop is on our way to the Red Emma’s Queer Music Explosion! at the 2640 Space tonight. That might surprise some regular readers of this blog, who are more used to us talking about pretty straightforward punk and post-punk bands....

If you ask any punk in town, ‘What’s going on at the Ottobar tonight?’ they’d tell you ‘Reagan Youth, Duh.’ That’s not the right answer though. Well, It’s technically the right answer, but it’s not the best show going on in that particular...

It’s strange when you grow up punk. Your musical tastes have to evolve eventually. At least a little bit. Three chords alone can’t sustain anyone forever. Over time, even the kid with the spikiest hair or the dirtiest pants will start looking to explore decidedly non-punk records,...

So, basically, every place that has ever had music is having music tonight. There’s no shortage of choices, and there’s too much to talk about in detail, so we’ll just give you our picks and let you decide what kind of show you want to go see. Still not sure where we’ll...

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...

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...

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...

We’re getting a little tired of hearing about festivals. Especially out of state festivals that we have no interest in, and couldn’t get to if we wanted to, like SxSW, Coachella, Glastonberry, The (Gainesville) Fest, etc. Recently the Atomic Books Blog ran a post about local...

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...

Sigh, We see you there Baltimore… Standing there staring at the jukebox, playing with your hair while you sip your Jameson and coke, shifting your weight from hip to hip in a not-unsexy way. We noticed the way you matched your favorite Chucks to a Betsey Johnson bag and threw in a...