therobots.org - select * from robots

Check out my friend Sarah's band Poradova. She also has some audio samples up on her myspace page.

-ick!

Three months late for 2006 but I've finally completed my annual Top Albums list. 2006 was a bit of an off year for music overall but I really enjoyed most of these albums. My finds of the year made number six and seven on the list. In the Pines are a folk / country string band from Kansas City. I attended their CD release party and was pretty well blown away. Ten Kens I found through MySpace and I love their debut CD. Good job guys. Feel free to comment on this list as I always enjoy hearing what others are listening to...

*****Top 100 Albums of 2006*****

It's a rare occasion that you get to completely blow the mind of a record store worker about something music related. I managed this last night as I picked up a couple new CDs at the last remaining record store in midtown. Stumbling in, I was surprised to hear Lamb's Fear of Four playing, which I happen to own and is at least 5 years old. I mentioned to the clerk that this CD has a hidden track before the first track that you have to rewind to get to. He blinked for a few minutes then proceeded to finish bagging my purchases. A few seconds later, after giving it some time to process, he retorted "Really?", then "I'll have to check that out at home tonight".

This last week was pretty fun. I finally escaped the doldrums of winter and made it out to several fun events around the city. I don't have too much to say about the last several months, just know that lots of movies were watched, many books were read, and the number of mostly-completed crosswords littering my house is innumerable.

Tuesday, I saw old favorites Of Montreal play at The Granada in Lawrence. They'd just played in Larryville a year before and I'd attended that much more sparcely attended show. Their popularity seems to have expanded exponentially in one year and I can't figure out why. You'd think after ten years and almost as many full-length albums that the masses would have recognized their great talent for writing great pop songs. Maybe it's the recent Outback Steakhouse commercials that feature the reworking of "Wraith Pinned to the Mist" that are bringing out all the kids. At any rate, the show was pretty good but not quite as good as last year's performance (which still rates in my top 5 of all time), even with the new video backdrop and stage props. A Japanese sextet called Elekibass opened for them. They fit right in with their bubblegum pop over thick Japanese accents. I left thinking that I probably won't see anything like this ever again.

I just finished up a great new compilation CD for a CD group that just started up again. We pick 10 songs and a bonus track but I usually burn a whole disc's worth just to have extras in case somebody else also picked one of my songs. The theme of this one was my idea, "cities". The requirements I set up for myself were that every song had to have the city in the title, I could only use a city or artist once, and the song had to be about the city or repeat the city name at some point in the song. Here's my list...

I've had a really good last month or so. The weather hasn't been too bad. There have been a handful of decent local rock shows around the city. Halloween is always a blast and this November also marked a very surprising and momentous midterm election. Top this off with my trivia team's domination over the last few month and things are looking on the up.

I stayed at the recordBar late after a big first place trivia win one week and watched up-and-coming Detroit indie rockers Thunderbirds Are Now!. TAN! showed up early and competed against fellow bar patrons in skills of the mind. They held their own and I think they had a pretty good time. About two years ago, I was quite impressed with them as an unknown opener touring with Enon (who produced their new album). Once again, they didn't disappoint . I was also a big fan of the local opening band. I didn't catch their name but I'm sure I'll see them again somewhere around town. They were a bit of a Yeah Yeah Yeah's ripoff - but who gets tired of that. The female lead singer was just as much a spaz as Karen O.

This must be the year for traveling. I'd already been in six states this year and just added three more with a couple of weeklong mini-vacations along the I-35 corridor of Kansas City, Austin, and Minneapolis / St. Paul. These trips were nice but not entirely leisurely in nature and at times even stressful. More than ever now, I'm just looking forward to some downtime in my home city as fall rolls across the midwest.

I finished out August with a surprise visit from my out-of-town friend Rick. He'd heard that a few other high school chums were playing a special show at McCoy's that weekend and decided to make the drive up from Springfield for the event. We caught some great pizza and beers at Waldo Pizza and I won $20 from him in a bowling bet before we went to the show. My friends' band Golden City, Mars were the opening noise band / performance art installation. Most of the band members wore masks and their only song was 10 minutes of drony gloom-and-doom chords. I can't do them any justice retelling the mythical tale of how they came to earth from Golden City, Mars - just know that it happened. McCoy's own 30-Minute Recess headlined and were solid as usual. The highlight for me was the Brokeback Mountain theme played as an intro to one of their own country numbers. Hilarious.

This Tuesday I had the opportunity to see the legendary synthpop android Gary Numan at the recordBar in Kansas City. I've been a fan of Gary Numan's music since my friend Daniel first popped in the Pleasure Principle CD as I was cutting my teeth on electronic music. His early stuff is absolutely fantastic and he's been consistently releasing music and redefining his sound...

As the date of this show approached, I became increasingly apprehensive that it may be cancelled. I looked up some of the other dates on the tour and every show was booked in rather large concert halls or House of Blues venues. One such bar was Bogart's in Cincinnatti that I have been to and holds at least 2000 people. The recordBar holds maybe 300 tops and the stage hovers but only a few feet above the floor with little room for maneuvering about. I felt cramped on there just hosting trivia one night and that was with hardly any equipment. Also, I had heard that he had a ridiculous list of audio equipment demands that would be tough for the relatively new bar to provide. Luckily, I pulled up to the club to see his enormous touring bus parked outside. I guess I'm just one of the lucky ones that gets to see a true music icon in a most cozy setting. Kudos to Billy for booking this show...

As part of my vacation to the great northwest,I reserved tickets to the Sasquatch Music Festival in George, Washington (that's the city not the man, perv). Washington was a long haul in a cramped rental van of 5 dudes. We finally made it to George in the late afternoon and set up the tent and campsite. This was only my second camping music festival so I had an idea of what to expect. It has been years since the last one and I most often prefer the confines of a nice cool hotel or house after a sweaty multi-day festival. The Sasquatch Music Festival is held at an amphitheater situated on the bluffs overlooking the Columbia River. It's very beautiful and I understandd why it is consistently voted one of the top musical venues in the U.S. We skipped the shows Friday night (didn't want to spend $$$ to see a bunch of goth / industrial bands). Instead we sat around and had some beer and made friends with the neighboring campgrounds...

It seems as though there have been a lot of changes around me here lately. Some of these changes are good and welcome, some of them I could do without, and some of them don't effect me at all - they're just around me. Such is life I suppose. I go through my days optimistic and just hope to grow from each one of these experiences... and sometimes you just have to wait for everything to marinate. I guess I'm marinating right about now...