at the ottobar, pfisters ripped things open with fierce extended rythmic power riffing locked in with the tandem of glenn gentzke and darren bolk, building up a cyclone before breaking down to hardcore punk tunes, steel rock riffs and outlaw hooks. They maintained that intensity with electric splashes of guitar, never veering off course, but pushing boundries of driven rythyms from all forces of the hardcore urban rock and roll trio into nearly unsustainable climaxes. and jason donnels as usual, striking jack kerouac looks in tight black tee and jeans shouting his street hassle stories, ripping and banging the shit out of his guitar.

donnells hung out next to the stage welcoming north carolina noise punkers grids , pounding his fist into the wooden corner of the pool table counting out time and pushing grids guitarist to summersaults and soaring hinterlands of a more stripped down sound from their industrial noise dirges. like the pfisters they played a 5 or six song set at full throttle.

yukon interspersed their challenging intricate english prog with soundscapes of ambience and washes of distortion. changing meter and rythyms, the trio played off each other in mind boggling fits and siezures, with nick podgurski's vocals singing through in strawbs like fashion. guitarist sam garrett shattered crimson lizards and wire angular riffs, stomping and fitting around with lion bassist brad smith, melding medieval and new giant yukon sounds. 

a casual late night sunday crowd of mostly friends and fans. band members drank and chatted and played some pool. gentzke was drawn into discussion of his hangin' and hitting the streets with local legend skateboarder jason spivey.  podgurski talked about the warm reception from the europeans on recent tour with the brooklyn based industrial pounding proggers extra life,  and how people they met in grocery stores were interested in different and experimental bands, lending to the history of openness to new and further sounds in cultures far away.  talked with donnells a bit more about the theremin and how i'm amazed at the total local press ignorance of the new flesh's epic "safe skin" -it did get notice in japan and florida. donnells, the flesh bassist vocalist, with new found ways, at least at the moment, a model citizen throughout the night, thinks it is their opus. he did admit to zero publicity and the f'd pressing and push back of release date. it will go down as a lost treasure if it does not garner worthy attention with their next release.             

kurt vile "square shells ep" matador- "walking around in circles", friends, ocean city, gimme shelter salt sky haunts under the boardwalk, stark walks, so fine a holdover 'til the long player " i love you more", "yeah yeah yeah yeah yeaah, i'm moving yeah yeah.." 

thee katatonix 2010 - pirate radio  -  world in collision combat punk and a chorus of fuck you, not quite as charming as john waters but as pink - oh! - legendary adolf kowalski, mr urbanity and king ken hebden kick out the shit with urgency, and mental metal "your mother" to the vanishing point on the sabbath and will be back for more.

like patterns "ep" - working with a soundguy recently who did sound with def leppard, stephen stills and others back in the day, a kid walked by in a nirvana t-shirt. the soundguy commented to me that cobain and co. destroyed rock. i disagreed and feel they were at the apex of kicking rock in the ass as the sex pistols had a couple decades earlier, a movement of neil young, blue cheer and sonic death, hippies and flannels. like patterns grew up directly hit, nirvana expressed it as bullets real and imagined sprayed their schoolyards. like patterns direct that hit and shift it with angular riffs, red chords, simple progged songs, feedback and celebration of the fallen angel.   

tom petty and the heartbreakers "mojo" reprise - petty's got the muddy and zeppelin blues, great coming after that aor sounding live album - this is live in the studio and raw grit down under seething double album of seriously consistant american mojo shit. could be his best, without thinking too much here, my favorite since you're gonna get it and the debut. petty takes a page from neil young and makes a record that sounds like it was strictly on petty and the heartbreakers terms. totally heartfelt, without any concern for commercial appeal - although it will be huge, but its a dose of humanist truths and pure blues of new century thoughts and they flow through the veins and this is a payback for the pain paid for the blues and delivered. updating the blues, singing i don't drink coca cola but do like some moonshine and to a reggae beat with some ripping blues licks, pleading " please don't pull me over, mr po-liceman, what i'm doing aint hurtin no one, should be legalized" and of course "she was hell on her mama, impossible to please..she wore out her daddy..got the best of me" ...and of course fine tastefull and mean guitars from mr campbell and co. "across painted hills no rich man can claim..." at least for the moment.  

ariel pink's haunted graffiti  "before today" (4ad)- funked bass, dank saxed berlin hauntings, windowpanes sunshine burst through a flight westward jumping zoned candy striped peppermint red rubberballed pathways and electro flecked disco flowered soulways acid trippin' a delightful musical journey with twisted angles and soft drops until the flash of the metal field of flames and mars spiders' voices break up the wry ecstacy before the warmth and uptempo beats and melodies restore order and the blue eyed soul rides into the clouds of wind and fire. ariel pink's "the doldrums" released what seems moons ago was a giant sprawling field masterpiece of songs and craft but not of production, it was movement making lo fi production, but it lacked any kind of editing, it was best appreciated a few epic, intricate, hook laden, wondermint tunes at a time with intermissions, but his genius showed through the murk- this production of more great psychedelic adult bubblegum, has melded and congealed a very strong summer hit of an excellent album with pink's 'laxed morrison bowie vocals and smiling falsettos leading a tight party band. dance on, lavender lizards.

discourse, voicings, stories to tell, communicating, freely intensive, violent, intuitive, generous, playing, just playin', playing for life. over a century is music in conversation between guitarist, drummer and alto saxophonist arriving at a crossroads for an arranged meeting to do just that-  music so enchanting it's gone in an exhale of old and new dreams. - han bennink, brodie west, and terrie ex "let's go" (terp records -improv series)

music revelation ensemble "elec. jazz" (diw) the counterpoint to last exit, dancing bass, funked harmolodic intricate fretwork, soulful shronking and light swinging drums - but no less fierce, just more in the blue than the red. james blood ulmer, david murray, amin ali and cornell rochester rock you, and coleman to zeppelin.

zs  "new slaves" (social registry)  orchestral sonic scapes, industrial drone marches, fierce arresting skronks and scrapes, memory serves material to the ethospheres, deep can tribal adventures from guitar, sax, drums trio and electronic friends.    

twin stumps "seedbed" (fandeath records) more industry, avant punk drill downs - spike down vocals - pain is pleasure flesh landed inspired and i was joking with new flesh guitarist gregory dembeck that he modeled the cover! - this is good throughout heavy shit. 

best rolling stones' new material in over three decades and that's cuz it was recorded over forty years ago - remastered brilliantly and warm from the musty studio stone's essential blues rocker "exile on main street" (rs records). other than an overwrought ballad, unreleasesd material on 2nd disc is a royal treat of laid back blues sessions, off the cuff jams, songs in developmental forms, keith singing improv on "soul survivor", watts and wyman tight and playful, jagger sounding at the top of his game (even if he added vocals to some of these tracks recently!) and richards exquisite slacker and mick taylor's quintessential guitars molding the masterpiece.

rangda  "false flag" (drag city) big power trio noise feast,  drummer chris corsano and guitarists richard bishop and ben chasny crash yer party with at the top free jazz rock inferno then hit byrd peaks eight miles high and interweaving television moons - monster improvised transducive free rock.

sightings  "city of straw" (jagjaguwar) a guitar, bass, drums power trio and bleepin blippen' laps and effects emittin' subterranean blips and gurgles, staying in the avant red, thrashing on, taking it to ether voids dissecting sheets of acid and spitting out panoramic abrasive cohesion and bliss. 

nas and damian 'jr gong' marley  "distant relatives" (universal republic) this collaboration kicks off with nas and damian trading riffs like bullets "'i've got the guns" "i've got the ganja" "and we can blaze it up on your block if you wanna" from urban america to global africa this is party time and real time - a beautiful pairing create a lovely, tough, honest, important world album. 

hold steady  "heaven is whenever" (vagrant records) no piano means sounds less like the keyboards ripping punked up springsteen inflected liquored smoked up alleys, more guitar rock on this sometimes touching on arena ready effort, but opens with slide guitar blues beauty and over all an excellent more southside jersey rocker with the continued lost lol suburban tales.

major stars  "return to form" (drag city)  three guitars from boston rip into red comets stratospheres from the blues rock frames fleetwood nicks and airplane slick classic vocalist sandra barrett belts.

thee oh sees "help" (in the red records)- some california dreamin loud garage heavens 

black keys "brothers" (nonesuch)   the keys recorded this in the deep otherworldly ancient alabama at legendary, cinder block muscle shoals creating a powerful blues rock epic - all the mojo darkness that puts the spell on yer shakin' ass  "..i am the bluest of blues... i be the go getter, that's my plan.. that's who i am..the go getter..go getter"

oxes "oxxxes" (monitor)  takin out of time context, deshackled of easy, lazy categorzation, playing for seven minutes or so before i figured who this is, playing it through again and again after one of the above finished,  it ripping red crimson shredding massacre rock riffs by way of guitarist marc miller (microkingdom) power trio's (natalito fowler gtr and christopher freedland drms) prog riding a free golden palomino, intense interplay, space rock avant blues. engineer bob weston (shellac, mission of burma) knew - fresh, raw, loud and vital eight years later. maybe more so.

happened to be at the afternoon greenfest in druid park and took in a few bands, and an enthusiastic hip hop group called ftp - for the people, also a street code, that were aided by a dreadlocked acid floydian guitarist and keyboardist.  they had been preceded by a good country rock band, june star, with a couple singer songwriters and three guitars playing big pink band stormers and ghostly ballads greased up with some lively organ.  after the set i complimented the sound of the lead guitarist and his desert boots (i had a few pairs moons ago) and mentioned they gave me yearnings for the byrds "lover of the bayou" and the acid tinged country rock and soul san fran pscyh moby grape.  he was unfamiliar with moby grape, gave that the name seemed familiar, like an aromatic whiff of history from a storybook, or maybe "easy rider".

i talked up the music by the band with three songwriters, strong vocals and great songs and the story, of course of singer/songwriter skip spence's lsd with yippies binging axe weilding nyc weekend and his ultimate venture from bellevue to nashville to create a psychedellic desert masterpiece "oar" singlehandedly, playing all instruments (with the help of a sympathetic and awed master engineer).  sort of like syd barrett (barrett's "madcap" was less complete and more overtly madcap!) and then, led a life of syd, lonely and estranged from music well into his fifties. 

 they were to be the true rivals of their west coast triumvariate brothern buffalo springfield and the byrds - things just blew up before they did. alot of crazy shit went down within and all around them. their record company, columbia plagued them with overhype and released five singles simultaneously from their debut.  though it was critically recieved it was looked at skeptically from many outside of california.  it was listened to often when i visited a musical serious cousin and his joni blue sisters on the east coast in the town of ephrata, but the hangover came quickly for the grape, and singer/songwriter bob mosley whacked out and cut his hair and joined the marines.  

hopefully he checked 'em out and noticed that live grape (moby grape live -historic live performances 1966-1969 (sundazed music)), including monterey, was just released this week - very much is a historic occurence that captures that fuel addled edge live playing and interaction brought to the grape's glorious tunes including "omaha", rarities "looper" and "rounder" and a first ever release (never studio released, at least by original grape) of seventeen minute three guitar metallic blues acid test psych jam "dark magic" to finish things off.

later that day that began at dawn, i caught up with yukon's midnight baltimore homecoming and an ambient interweaving set by the fuzzed guitar dual violet hour.  after getting killed by yukon and the violets i followed the lead into the suburbs of bel air for a truly underground performance that was literally threatening to blow the cellar ceiling off with a trio jam of fierce riveting earthless psychedelic sonic prayers at the witching hour of 4 a.m. 

new yukon single "life inside" (lp coming soon) is progged watcher of the skies, book of saturday crimson wetton / fairport folk style vocals with stabbing, jagged sharp wire riffing, melding in unique blissful maze of understated and heavy virtuosity. 

live at the windup space, arriving home after a north american tour, yukon played an intense thirty minute or so midnight set of a winding progressive suite that came on like the blasts of mission of burma  - loudly electric and mesmerizing - an artful power trio (drummer nick podgursky, brad smith (bass) and guitarist sam garrett)  of angular fripptronics discipline and ripping bolts of fire.