Got the dude maced in the face.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Halloween Costume for the Guys
Fellas if you have a few minutes on hand tonight and dont mind putting together your costume last minute. Here is a good idea.
LMF - Scott H. Biram
Something a little dark in honor of Halloween. This is a guy who played in Milwaukee in July, and I didn't go to the show. I should have taken that opportunity, because his tour stops look like a KKK rally schedule - rarely jumping north of the Mason-Dixon line. Surprisingly, he also stomped through Europe for about 25 shows. Europeans love anything that smacks of the old frontier, Wild West image of the unrestrained, American cowboy.
Scott H. Biram is a pretty indescribable mofo from Austin, TX. To me, he sounds like what would happen if a guy who raped and murdered your grandmother picked up a guitar and poured the anger and deliriousness in his heart into a performance. Except better than that.
He calls himself a "dirty ol' one-man band." He sits with an old 1959 Gibson steel string guitar, amplified with plenty of distortion and bass, cranking out sloppy, bluesy riffs that could be John Lee Hooker or Black Sabbath, and then growls and howls frightening shit into the mic. I'm pretty sure what he is playing qualifies as rock music, but it really has a lot of obvious influence from country and blues with a deep hillbilly backbone.
He has cranked out about a half-dozen albums over the past decade and just works really hard playing shows on the road. Looking at his website, he's played over 100 shows in the past 12 months from Texas, Florida, Tennessee, the Carolinas, all the way up through the Midwest, into Canada, and all the way to Ireland, Italy, Germany, France, England, Belgium, Slovenia and Croatia. Living the dream.
I like a lot of different genres of music and love seeing all kinds of live music - pretty much everything but modern country. When it comes to a live act, I don't need to walk out thinking that it's my favorite band, or the best music ever. I don't even really need to like the music to appreciate the show. Really, I just want to walk out of a show knowing that I really saw something. "That was something" - literally, that's good enough for me to be satisfied that I got my money's worth. Scott H. Biram delivers, that much is clear. If he comes back to the area, I'm going to make an effort. I'm also going to watch my back among his fans.
Check the performance of "Blood, Sweat and Murder" below. It seems to be a love song to his woman about how she makes him so mad, but he could never hurt her, so he just kills some other woman to satisfy the demon. Say what you will, but you have to admit at the least, "I don't know that was, but it was something."
Scott H. Biram is a pretty indescribable mofo from Austin, TX. To me, he sounds like what would happen if a guy who raped and murdered your grandmother picked up a guitar and poured the anger and deliriousness in his heart into a performance. Except better than that.
He calls himself a "dirty ol' one-man band." He sits with an old 1959 Gibson steel string guitar, amplified with plenty of distortion and bass, cranking out sloppy, bluesy riffs that could be John Lee Hooker or Black Sabbath, and then growls and howls frightening shit into the mic. I'm pretty sure what he is playing qualifies as rock music, but it really has a lot of obvious influence from country and blues with a deep hillbilly backbone.
He has cranked out about a half-dozen albums over the past decade and just works really hard playing shows on the road. Looking at his website, he's played over 100 shows in the past 12 months from Texas, Florida, Tennessee, the Carolinas, all the way up through the Midwest, into Canada, and all the way to Ireland, Italy, Germany, France, England, Belgium, Slovenia and Croatia. Living the dream.
I like a lot of different genres of music and love seeing all kinds of live music - pretty much everything but modern country. When it comes to a live act, I don't need to walk out thinking that it's my favorite band, or the best music ever. I don't even really need to like the music to appreciate the show. Really, I just want to walk out of a show knowing that I really saw something. "That was something" - literally, that's good enough for me to be satisfied that I got my money's worth. Scott H. Biram delivers, that much is clear. If he comes back to the area, I'm going to make an effort. I'm also going to watch my back among his fans.
Check the performance of "Blood, Sweat and Murder" below. It seems to be a love song to his woman about how she makes him so mad, but he could never hurt her, so he just kills some other woman to satisfy the demon. Say what you will, but you have to admit at the least, "I don't know that was, but it was something."
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Finally
I stumbled upon this video over at With Leather, and I just want to say it is great finding someone who loves drifting as much as I do. If you are unaware drifting has been a part of the Japanese culture for many, many, years. It is a tradition handed down from generation to generation. You would know that if you could speak japanese and understand what these clowns are actually saying. Since I am a fellow drifter I can say this, behold the perfect drift.
Babes Reading Lebowski
I dont know why I love this, but I have watched it three times already today.
Friday, October 23, 2009
LMF - Cork n' Bottle String Band
This is probably the band I've seen perform live the most times. These guys are an inspiration to anybody who ever dreamed of playing in a band. They took their name from the liquor store on East Johnson in Madison, where several of them worked. They practiced in the basement storage area of the liquor store. They really weren't musicians. That didn't slow them down. They taught themselves, they took lessons, they worked hard, and they just kept plugging away.
Eventually, they became a downtown favorite. Playing their updated style of bluegrass, which they called "Big New" grass, they performed every Wednesday night at Ken's Bar on S. Butler from 1996 to 2002. Ken's was a tiny little dive bar, but it was packed to the rafters on Wednesday nights.
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My buddy Trike and I would get over there by 4:30 to get a place to sit. If you got there after five, you would be standing shoulder to shoulder with a massive blended crowd of hippy chicks, after-work business folks, blue collar joes, UW students and wannabe hipsters. I would speculate that in 1997 alone, I probably saw them perform at least 40 times. I remember they once put out "Tour t-shirts" that said on the back:
1997 Summer World Tour
June 25 - Ken's Bar - Madison, WI
July 2 - Ken's Bar - Madison, WI
July 9 - Ken's Bar - Madison, WI
July 16 - Ken's Bar - Madison, WI
(and so on, you get the idea)
Ken's Bar is gone, but the Cork n' Bottle lives on. I believe their weekly show is now at the UW Memorial Union, in the Rathskellar or on the Terrace, depending upon the season. They are Madison legends and they also tour around a bit, performing at bluegrass festivals, etc. Recently, they put out a DVD about their history, how they got started, the run at Ken's Bar, etc. Trike sent me a copy and I just sat back in awe watching it. A slice of life on plastic. Amazing. If you ever experienced the Cork n' Bottle Wednesday at Ken's, be sure to check it out. Here's the trailer.
They are a funny bunch of dudes who write clever little songs, they sing, play a couple banjos, guitars, the double bass, the violin, and a mandolin. Most of all, it is just really good music in the bluegrass tradition, and every year they get a little more skilled and a little better. You could watch them develop, you'd see the 2nd banjo player work through a fairly technical solo that you hadn't seen him do before, and you could see the whole band watching him and pulling for him, and then openly celebrating that he made it through. You also got the sense that the crowd was really pulling for these little weekly improvements, and celebrated them wildly. I just remember thinking how lucky it would be to be a part of something like that.
Think about it. Playing music with friends. Learning as you go, but still playing packed shows on Wednesday nights. Wednesday nights! Even a dad can get away with that, right?
Here is a video that is claimed to have captured the performance of the song "Big New" on the last night at Ken's Bar before it was closed and torn down.
Eventually, they became a downtown favorite. Playing their updated style of bluegrass, which they called "Big New" grass, they performed every Wednesday night at Ken's Bar on S. Butler from 1996 to 2002. Ken's was a tiny little dive bar, but it was packed to the rafters on Wednesday nights.
My buddy Trike and I would get over there by 4:30 to get a place to sit. If you got there after five, you would be standing shoulder to shoulder with a massive blended crowd of hippy chicks, after-work business folks, blue collar joes, UW students and wannabe hipsters. I would speculate that in 1997 alone, I probably saw them perform at least 40 times. I remember they once put out "Tour t-shirts" that said on the back:
1997 Summer World Tour
June 25 - Ken's Bar - Madison, WI
July 2 - Ken's Bar - Madison, WI
July 9 - Ken's Bar - Madison, WI
July 16 - Ken's Bar - Madison, WI
(and so on, you get the idea)
Ken's Bar is gone, but the Cork n' Bottle lives on. I believe their weekly show is now at the UW Memorial Union, in the Rathskellar or on the Terrace, depending upon the season. They are Madison legends and they also tour around a bit, performing at bluegrass festivals, etc. Recently, they put out a DVD about their history, how they got started, the run at Ken's Bar, etc. Trike sent me a copy and I just sat back in awe watching it. A slice of life on plastic. Amazing. If you ever experienced the Cork n' Bottle Wednesday at Ken's, be sure to check it out. Here's the trailer.
They are a funny bunch of dudes who write clever little songs, they sing, play a couple banjos, guitars, the double bass, the violin, and a mandolin. Most of all, it is just really good music in the bluegrass tradition, and every year they get a little more skilled and a little better. You could watch them develop, you'd see the 2nd banjo player work through a fairly technical solo that you hadn't seen him do before, and you could see the whole band watching him and pulling for him, and then openly celebrating that he made it through. You also got the sense that the crowd was really pulling for these little weekly improvements, and celebrated them wildly. I just remember thinking how lucky it would be to be a part of something like that.
Think about it. Playing music with friends. Learning as you go, but still playing packed shows on Wednesday nights. Wednesday nights! Even a dad can get away with that, right?
Here is a video that is claimed to have captured the performance of the song "Big New" on the last night at Ken's Bar before it was closed and torn down.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
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