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...

We were really looking kind of hard for something to say about tonight’s show. Off With Their Heads is coming to the Golden West. We don’t have too much to say about them because we’re not very familiar with them. They’re a punk band on Epitaph so it’s like...

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...

We’ve said before that Baltimore may be suffering Festival Fatigue. This weekend is evidence of that. There’s enough music being played live this weekend in Baltimore to easily last a full Summer if it were stretched out. According to our count, there are nearly 70 acts performing...

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...

Although we didn’t blog about it, we went to Punk Rock Karaoke at Liam Flynn’s Ale House the last time that outfit came through town in late March. Take it from the Chop: it was cool as shit. It’s rare that a crowded bar has the atmosphere and bonhomie of a house party full...

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...

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,...

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’re pretty much convinced that this whole crummy decade is just the 90′s all over again. At least musically. There are slackers everywhere. WHFS is back on the air. Beavis and Butthead are on Mtv, and just this week we dropped by the Sound Garden and found so much Toad the Wet...

Half of us will never know what it’s like to be a woman. Most of us will never know what it means to be punk, either. It’s only a precious few people who live the experience of being a woman in punk, and tonight at the Creative Alliance some of the most prominent of those women...

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:...

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...

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...

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...

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...

There’s no Sunday Night Football tonight. There’s no Sunday baseball game of the week either. Hell, there’s not even any new episodes of Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, the Walking Dead, or any of the other premium TV fare the networks have started to crowd up Sunday Nights...

We’ve never been very big into the Queers. There was a point in time, early high school, when we should have been a huge Queers fan. It was all there on paper: they’ve got songs about drinking, girls, farts, pranks, the suburbs, hating school, etc, etc. When we were a 15 year old...

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...

We really should have more to say about this show. We’re short on time though, and a little short on patience today. There are four bands playing this show: Head Home, Crimes, Brick Mower, and Black Wine. They are all good bands. They’re punk. They’re a little grunge....

We kind of miss they heyday of pop-punk. When you go to high school out in the far suburbs, you tend to get sentimental about some pretty strange things; domestic economy cars covered in stickers, VCR’s playing cheeseball comedies, shopping malls, Denny’s, egg throwing… when...

You know, we just don’t hear the phrase “Hail Satan” often enough anymore. Time was when you could walk down any street in Fells Point on a Sunday afternoon and cross a group of kids with bags of records in hand walking around on nearly every block. The common parlance in...

For all the complaining we’ve done recently about old bands dragging their carcasses around the country on tours trying to relive their glory days and pay their rent, you’d think we’d be staying as far away from Sonar tonight as possible. To the contrary though… the...

Okay, Baltimore. Today is the last day for you to go over and vote for us in the Mobbies. Go ahead. Click over and do it now. We’ll wait. Are you back? Okay. Cool. Thanks for that. Anyway, We’re still hoping to pull out a win in the Music/Nightlife category. We seem to have fallen...

It’s getting to be that time of year again; the time of year when non-profits and worthy causes of all stripes double down on ‘awareness campaigns’ trying to pull your holiday heartstrings, and get their ledgers in order with some last minute donations before the end of the...

With records like these, who the hell needs friends? This is our question to you, Baltimore. Our answer is “No Idea.” And speaking of No Idea, you could do a lot worse than trading in all your lousy, crummy friends for a shelf full of No Idea releases. The label that...

The astute among you will quickly notice that the shape of the graphic below is not Puerto Rico, but is in fact Australia. It’s Australia because that’s where John Sharkey III fucked off to after Clockcleaner. Sharkey returns to the US tonight with his new project Puerto Rico...

Well, it looks as though we’ve really lucked out this time. After coming home on Friday, we’ve had quite enough of bumming around the house and watching the rain. Look out Baltimore, the Chop is taking to the streets once again, and we couldn’t have come up with a better bill...

There’s an interesting contrast before us today. We can go up to the second day of Honfest, which is (ahem) a a community celebration of homespun charm, independent creativity, and the blissfully absurd or something like that. We can celebrate those things while we drink a cool Heineken...

What’s important to you Baltimore? Is watching the World Cup really very important? Is it of grave urgency that you wear funny wigs and feather boas and drink in the street this weekend? How about stealing back the foursquare mayorship of some bar? Is that crucial? Tonight something...

So, the Baltimore Chop has already gone on record as giving brunch our seal of approval, but if there’s one thing we like more than fancy hotel brunch, it’s gotta be DIY punk rock brunch- which is exactly what we’re doing today. This is late-breaking developments, Baltimore!...

We were very, very looking forward to seeing Leatherface at the Ottobar tonight (scroll down), but late breaking word on the street is that their visas were denied by the US customs and border protections. Long story short, they’re not playing tonight and shit’s fucked up. (For the...

With the British parliamentary elections taking up headlines the past few days, you’ve probably heard a lot about the special relationship enjoyed between our two countries. Aside from sounding slightly suggestive and covering intelligence, economics, and military power, the special...

Malcolm X was once asked what he thought of Socialism. His response; “Is it good for black people?” It’s a simple, yet very profound sentiment. The Buzzcocks are playing the Ottobar this Wednesday. The Chop will not be in attendance. We’ve already been very clear about...

Hey Baltimore, you can keep your fancy festivals and super exclusive microshows. Give us a good old fashioned DIY show any night of the week. In fact, give us one every night of the week. We had such a great time at Floristree last night, we’re heading right back out to Ruintown...

The Business is coming to Baltimore tonight. We should be excited about that. We should be dusting off our Doc Martens and brushing up on the finer points of football hooliganism. We should realize how lucky we are to get a chance to see one of the greatest hardcore/punk bands of all time, and...