UPCOMING CONCERTS
Upcoming Concerts: The Panic Division, The Yellowjackets, Pennywise, Michael Franti and Spearhead
By Brian Staker, 1-16-06
The Fully Down
Panic Division, Lovehatehero, Secret Lives of Freemasons, The Fully Down
Naming your band is a perilous endeavor: you want to moniker it with something memorable, catchy, that speaks of what type of music it is without too fully giving away your hand, whether giving birth to a heavy metal power trio or small jazz combo. Wordplay and punnery have favorites in the musical arena at least since the Beatles misspelled an insect and gave it the kick step Ringo couldn’t quite manage. Thus San Antonio’s Panic Division brings to mind the
renowned queercore unit Pansy Division, who conversely played off the title of Hitler’s brutal armored squads. Are the Panics punk enough to bear the comparison? The ‘panic’ might just be over whether they aren’t just too generic sounding to handle a handle that might get the Pansies picked up instead of them by listeners searching record store ‘pre-cutout’ bins for their debut Versus on Militia Records.
Then Lovehatehero searches bring up the stoner party band Love/Hate, the early 90's techno ensemble Love Hate Love, etc. None of these are very good names for bands, but the histrionics of ‘hero’ does help elucidate that we are in the emo genre. As does the entire lineup, since emo bands, like emo kids, run in little... not sure what to call them, packs or squads or schools. Secret Lives of Freemasons sounds like it might be a 70's progressive rock band,
which would be a welcome development, and that style has made a comeback as well. But they are just a misogynist screamo band. Emo/screamo wants to be the grunge of the 2000's: the voice of angry, disaffected youth, but it just comes out a whine, and for my money the new folk music, for all its faults, has
so much more to say.
January 18, Club BoomVa, Ogden
Michael Franti and Spearhead
Here is a hip-hopper with a pedigree: since the 80s with the Beatnigs and the 90s with the Disposable Heroes of Hiphopracy and Spearhead still, Michael Franti has made music of integrity and intelligence, not to mention political punch. His early use of industrial and punk music influences was years ahead of its time, and his lyrics are as trenchant. Last year saw the release of Love Kamikaze: The Lost Sex Singles & Collectors' Remixes, a set of Spearhead tracks that didn’t make it onto any of their albums, another enlightening chapter in their story, as well as live discs from the Fillmore in San Francisco and Sydney, Australia, the latter in the new ‘dual disc’ format playable on CD players with video for DVDs.
January 20, Suede
Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband
Ryan Shupe is one of those musicians inherent to the local musical scene, having been given the thumbs-up to distribute on ldsaudio.com and at Deseret Book, as well as being anointed local SXSW representative from City Weekly several years ago. Their self-described “Post Hee Haw Hip Hop Funkadelic Newgrass� really isn’t as godawful as their own description sounds, but is pleasant enough it may keep you off that Utah County candy, prozac, if it doesn’t drive you to it. Their off-beat sound includes lyrics wacky but not sinful. Their newest release, Dream Big, signals their signing to Capitol Nashville, and they really are living the dream, as annoyingly upbeat as you might or might not find it.
January 21, BYU
Yellowjackets
There once was a time when jazz groups started to venture out into foreign stylistic territory, in the seventies, when crossing over between different genre boundaries was still relatively unheard of, shoppers didn’t venture out of their sections of the record store (remember those?), before the lines got too blurred to tell what counted for credibility. In an age when jazz music has seen much retrenchment, in good measure to the detriment of adventurousness, the Yellowjackets aren’t afraid to veer off into odd time signatures, convoluted song structures, or even–heaven help us–funk! Last year’s album Altered State, with Peter Max artwork, seems likely to make them as close as a jazz combo can get to rock star status at the present moment, when rock itself
doesn’t have the use for jazz inflections it used to. Their inclusion in the Jazz at the Sheraton series is local proof of their welcome into the certified jazz canon.
January 23, Sheraton
Sound Tribe Sector 9
Here is a band whose name tells a great deal about what they are about: the ‘new tribalism’ of the late 90's Burning Man set, ‘sector’ both a metaphor for Big Brother paranoia and a byte of computer terminology, and ‘nine’ alluding to the randomness of numbers and the psychedelic sample ‘number nine’ from the Beatles. With tape loops, self-induced mystical paradigms, indigenous and out-digenous instruments from their native Georgia, and dub-influenced rhythms, they are a natural with the new age-stoner-computer programmer-environmentalist crowd, and thus several years ago moved out to their consumer base, Northern California. Last year’s Artifact, on System Records, could be called an entertaining artifact of a certain state of mind.
January 23, Suede
Pennywise, Suicide Machines, No Use For a Name, Love Equals Death
Never mind the emo, these are some real punk bands, from back in the day when you went to Raunch Records every month to get your copy of Flipside to know what’s what. On Epitaph almost from day one (still there for last year’s The Fuse), Pennywise was one of the great combos to fuse two-minute barrages of noise and speed into a fusion of skate and sound, when the SoCal scene still meant something. Suicide Machines had to drop their “Dr. Kevorkian and the� preface to their name for legal reasons, and add a Detroit toughness to the mix without sacrificing any pop sensibility. Last but far from least, No Use For a Name is almost into their third decade, and still going strong with their ‘05 release Keep Them Confused (Fat Wreck Chords).
That these bands are still around and kicking, putting out vital music, is testament to the staying power of old school punk. And SaltAir rises once again, smell the brine, people!
SHOW HAS MOVED! Note new venue.
January 23, In the Venue
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