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(accordion death squad)

Tonight Accordion Death Squad will play at the Tea Bazaar, along with Petersburg, VA’s High Street Lowlifes and NYC’s BrownBird Rudy Relic. Should be a pretty great night of Americana, roots and klezmer.

Also, there will be a Bike-In Movie at Community Bikes. Food Not Bombs will have shishkabobs starting at 7pm in celebration of Bike Week, and a short film and The Goonies will follow once the sun sets. So pedal your way on down to Community Bikes, behind the Hampton Inn on East Main.

And if you want to dance, DC’s Bob Mould and Richard Morel are in town tonight with their Blowoff dance night with their to help kick off a new weekly gay dance night at Rapture/R2). Read more about that in my C-VILLE column.

(a good band with a silly name)

Evil Bebos are playing at the Tea House tonight. I caught their act at Outback a few months ago, and was pleasantly surprised; despite the goofy-ness of their name, they’re a totally solid act and well worth seeing. They’re a 5-piece band from Nashville; glancing at each of the band members individually, you might assume they were interested several wildly disparate genres, and they sort of sound that way too — they play 20-minute songs that somehow gradually move from satisfyingly heavy death metal to transcendent post-Mogwai epic rock, but there’s never any forced or awkward transition and they can play both of those styles really well. SO, come to the show, it should be really good. A band named Horse Breath has apparently just been added to the bill; can’t find any info on them online, though. If you know anything, post a link in the comments or something.

There’s also a new-ish local metal act named Koto Nashi playing at Outback tonight; I saw them at Dust last weekend and they killed it. They’re playing with Property and Cyanotic Revelation, about whom I know nothing.

Tonight’s C.L.A.W. match will be a benefit for the Cville Derby Dames; Brendan from the C-Ville (one of this week’s celebrity judges) says: Tonight, the Charlottesville Lady Arm Wrestlers (CLAW) plan to break some wrists, tear some biceps and otherwise wreak havoc on one another to raise money and support for the Charlottesville Derby Dames, a start-up team for would-be roller derby athletes in the area […] The match runs from 8-10pm, admission is free, and the competition is fierce, so if you can drop by for a few minutes, it would be great to see you. I’ll be in the judges booth with C-VILLE editor Cathy Harding and local country musician Jim Waive, accepting bribes on the match to raise money for the Derby Dames.

So, I’m pretty excited about that one. There’s some other really cool shows this week that I just found out about, including an awesome metal band at the Tea House on Thursday, and pretty cool line-up at Dust on Sunday. There’s links over thar on the calendar, and I’ll blog about them more in detail as those events approach… get pysched. This week looks awesome.

The Never and D.B.B. Plays Cups will be at the Tea Bazaar. Yours truly plays bass guitar in Cups, so come early and check us out. It’ll be fun.

Black Twigs, Charlie Parr play at Miller’s.

Measax, Jeffrey S., Fason, Boyd 80, Bristol will get you dancing at OurSpace.

There’s three shows tonight: Bombadil and Will Eat Rats to Survive at the Tea House; Hoots & Hellmouth with Prabir and the Substitutes at Gravity Lounge, and Suzukitron and Dark Autumn at Outback.

BUT before all those shows, there’s a screening at the Bridge Film Series tonight; Jordan Taylor has put together a night of films by/with/about poets, with live poetry readings between the films. It starts at 8pm, $5 cover. The films are by Amy Greenfield, Lawrence Jordan, James Broughton, Rudy Burckhardt, and Alfred Leslie; the poets are local high-schooler Hannah Webster, UVa Grad Maria Noffsinger, and former local Jeff Fallis, who has read poetry as an opener for bands such as Dark Meat and Elf Power, and whose poem “Rock Death” is reproduced below: [Read more →]

(british sea power - photo by christoph!)

Tonight British Sea Power, The Rosebuds and Jeffrey Lewis play at Satellite Ballroom. I saw British Sea Power a few years back. They decorated the stage with fall foliage and rocked out. The Rosebuds make fun indie pop and are on Merge Records. Jeffrey Lewis has songs with names like “Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror” and “The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song.”

This is one of only a few non-local shows at the Ballroom before it loses its lease to CVS at the end of May, so come out to show your support for the space and the great bands that they’ve brought to town.

Also: There are other shows going on tonight. Check them out to your right.

After spending the last month in the studio up at MonkeyClaus, refining their expansive, pummeling sound, Horsefang are returning to the Outback tonight to unleash their art-metal fury. RPG and Dead Goats are also playing.

There’s also a show an electronic / electro-acoustic / noise show at The Bridge before that; since Bridge shows tend to end early and Outback shows start late, it’s probably very possible to catch both of them. Pinko Communoids are playing along with video by Chia Chi Charlie Chang, Caustic Castle is doing a set with fellow Richmond-er Clifford Schwing (playing “no input” and “sax,” respectively), Conner Lacy will present a multimedia performance, and DJ.k00k will be spinning a set to start the evening. There’s also going to be food there, and the suggested donation is $5. It starts at 7pm.

At the Satellite Ballroom tonight, there’s a really solid line-up of local acts on the country/folk axis: Jim Waive and the Young Divorcees are headlining, surging forward on the success of their excellent new album. Also filling out the bill: folk-rock legend Shannon Worrell, and the St. Ours Brothers. Shannon has recently returned to her acclaimed music career after a lengthy hiatus, and we’re all glad to have her back playing shows again. The St. Ours clan are a notorious family of local musicians, film-makers, and iconoclasts; some of you may have heard tales about Bobby St. Ours and his gentle folk protest songs; I’ve heard some of the other Brothers play music, but never all together, so it’ll be interesting to hear that tonight. Doors at 8pm, $8/$6 advance

There’s also a show at Dust: The Nice Jenkins, Koto Nashi, Corsairs, and Fire Dancers. Many of you are familiar with the Nice Jenkins of course; but at this time I have very little info about the other acts — for instance, I’m not sure if “Fire Dancers” is the name of the band, or whether that signifies that there will actually be literal fire-dancers at the show — but I do know that one of the bands (”Corsairs,” I believe) features three of the guitarists from Mass Sabbath doing a 70’s metal/Led Zep-type thing. Doors at 9pm! More updates/links for the other bands as I recieve them.

OR, why arguments about the quality of music which are based on popularity and commercial success are silly and disingenuous

I’d just like to take a minute to refute some of the claims made by a particular Letter to the Editor in this week’s C-Ville Weekly (scroll down to “Rag-time” by John Dove), which was written in response to Brendan and John’s article on local music in last week’s issue.

Regardless of one’s view of the specific artists discussed, I wanted to refute some of the claims and accusations that Mr. Dove makes, regarding the value of popularity in music. His claims are old, tired ones, but I still keep hearing them over and over again: namely, that people who like independent or underground music are “elisist,” and that people who like commercially successful classic rock and popular music are somehow more authentic or better.

[Read more →]

Truman Sparks are playing at DUST tonight, and it’s rumored to be their last show, at least for the time being.  (Check out the poster graphic to the right…) I remember seeing one of their first shows at Starr Hill, back in… when was it? 2005? Anyway, Truman Sparks kick ass, so get out their and show your support and give them a good send-off. [update from Ray’s comment: looks like they’ve decided this won’t be the end. Rejoice, Charlottesville rock fans!]

Also filling out the bill are Order of the Dying Orchid, Mortiferous, and the aforementioned D.B.B. Plays Cups (which includes John Ruscher of this-blog fame). That’s an awesome line-up of bands, right there. Doors at 8pm, $5 cover.