Having a handle like Bleeding Through can be a stigmatic sign of boring generic metalcore or fashion-produced punk made for pimple-faced teens. But this Orange County act is far from sappy, and its members tend to rail against such trite assumptions. Not that the name is entirely off the mark…
Over the past decade, Soda Jerk Presents has grown from a small, do-it-yourself operation into an aggressive and well-tuned booking machine. Its history is rife with tales of hey-remember-that-show, since Soda Jerk founder and promoter Mike Barsch has handled some of the underground scene’s most notorious venues, filling The Raven…
Being single on Valentine’s Day is like being an orphan on Christmas: It sucks. The entire city turns pink, communication is degraded to sappy messages on little candy hearts, and everyone else is getting flowers at work. In other words, it’s a legitimate excuse to get tanked. Lone wolves can…
Like the Lisa Frank of youth crew hardcore, Good Clean Fun is a pigtail braid of butterflies and unicorns. Formed back in 1997 as a means to bring back positivism to posi-core, the D.C. outfit is as much a parody band as Jon Stewart is a news anchor. The act…
Reggie and the Full Effect is like the composite scenester kid that’s been at the ass end of every good/ dumb punk-rock trend from the past five or six years. Songs Not To Get Married To is a VH1 special of “I Love Hot Topic Band T-Shirts” that ironically and…
Thomas Stemrich and Matt Hoefler are making the perfect girl and putting her on celluloid. Since last summer, the two film-school students have been stitching together I Am a Teenage Frankenstein — a feature-length script about a precocious serial-killer teen who collects body parts to re-create his lost soulmate but…
Banyan is an alt-rock graveyard for musicians from the era of Cindy Crawford, Wayne’s World and those nonsensical No Fear T-shirts. Tagged — and printed on every one of its albums — as the brainchild of former Jane’s Addiction/Porno for Pyros drummer Stephen Perkins, the supergroup has featured such blasts…
Talk about friendly competition! For the past year, DJs Durtbag, Dirty Sanchez and Panda Porn have spent Sunday nights fighting for the attention of their many mutual bar-hopping-and-alcohol-swilling associates. Durtbag, aka Michael Scott Howard, and DJ Wesley Wayne started hosting Rawkus Sundays nearly two years ago at the 15th Street…
A good fight on film is a beautiful thing. It takes a precise cinematic scope with slow-motion camera sweeps and perfect corn syrup blood to really give that jab to the jaw just the right crunch. But, like real estate, it’s also all about location. Where would Tyler Durden be…
The archetypal rock band has one golden rule: No girlfriends/boyfriends allowed. Few couples can survive the asphalted adventures of touring, and fewer still can endure the even more harrowing experience of actually being in a band with one another. It’s usually a contentious John Lennon/ Yoko Ono ordeal or an…
The vacant lot on Walnut Street was just a patch of dirt when John Burr bought it with the idea of expanding his rehearsal-studio business. Building additional studios led to the notion of attaching a live-music venue, which led to the concept of adding a bar and a thin-crust-only pizza…
Great music is birthed when a collective of people get together and believe in the silly idea that banging on instruments can somehow change the world. It won’t, of course, but when a band like the North Atlantic comes along, it doesn’t really matter. Drummer Cullen Hendrix and bassist Jason…
Dave Wakeling speaks in a soft British accent. He uses words like “magpie” and compares getting compliments to scoring a goal in football (that’s soccer to us Yanks). Even in a tiff, the English Beat alum is as cordial as afternoon tea. Take, for example, the clash that currently divides…
Ah, tequila — one of Mexico’s favorite exports, it sends shivers down the spine and many imbibers to the floor. It’s the nectar of the Spring Break gods and takes an iron stomach to keep down. Give your refined palate a Latin kick on Friday nights at Aztec Sol (2219…
That Guy — you know, the one at the show who thinks it’s funny to drunkenly bellow, “Play “Stairway to Heaven’!” — is finally getting what’s coming to him. His comeuppance will be delivered by Lez Zeppelin, who’ll actually do it. This New York-based act proves that it’s okay to…
Kosta Razatos went from trading futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to cooking chiles rellenos at the Old Curtis Street Bar (2100 Curtis Street), and he couldn’t be happier. His father, Pete Razatos, who opened the joint back in 1976, had considered selling the place about a year and half…
Planes Mistaken for Stars is dead sexy. Never mind the unwashed hair and tattered jeans or the unkempt beards and the dirt under their fingernails; on stage, the act’s animal instinct rivals the pretty-boy posturing of other groups and looks every bit as good. Some may mistake Planes for emo,…
New Year’s Eve is one of the busiest club nights of the year, with everybody and their mothers celebrating across the city. But the magic doesn’t have to end when the clock strikes two — as long as you can keep yourself entertained for five hours until the after-after-parties start…
The end is nigh. Sometime in February 2006, The Lounge (1509 Marion Street) will close for good. “Honey, our lease is up, and that’s it,” says Mara Leone, who runs the popular hipster bar in the space originally taken on by her mother, Jan Leone. A decade ago, Jan Leone…
Sometimes people get lost in circumstances that don’t quite make sense, and they’re left to wander through time in a search for meaning. Individuals in such situations will undoubtedly relate to The Reals, whose members force dreamy alt-country through their guts by way of documenting their own philosophical wanderings. Vocalists/siblings…
Those Lipgloss guys are everywhere — including this column, where they’re making their third consecutive appearance. Starting on December 15, the fearsome foursome of DJs Tyler Jacobson, Tower, Tim Cook and Michael Trundle will unleash the beast every Thursday for Oh Shit, a kiddie-friendly eighteen-and-over night at the recently revamped…
Music nerds know two things: how to make best of/worst of lists and how to put together excellent mix tapes. Some call the self-directed compilation an art form, but it’s likely just a fanatical cry for companionship. It’s a way to reach out to each other and perk up new…
