Ladytron’s latest album “Velocifero” will almost certainly make my year-end best album list in a year with many viable contenders. Ladytron played a show at Terminal 5 in New York last June and have greatly increased the stage production from previous tours. They had a large red-light LED backdrop that perfectly emphasized the detached synth wave that Ladytron so expertly tread.

Since I seldom see arena bands, I seldom get to see a band with a an elaborate stage or light show and really appreciate it when a band that I do like have the means and desire to kick the live production value up a couple of notches. I have to say that Ladytron nailed it on this one. Be sure to check Ladytron out if they swing through your town.

Download: Ladytron - Runaway (Live)

Dillinger Four - Twin Cities Sinners, United
More Than Music Fest
Columbus, OH
6/27/98

Keeping with the trend of “Fuck Yeah Fest” related posts, here’s a clip of Dillinger Four from over 10 years ago. Rumor has it that over 700 people attended that year. I believe this night was headlined by Atom And His Package.

Download: Dillinger Four - Twin Cities Sinners, United (Live Video)

Thanks to my cool older brother, I was exposed early to independent music with one variant being 80s California punk-rock. Among others, The Circle Jerks‘ album “Wonderful” along with the “Repo Man” and “Sid and Nancy” soundtracks, which also feature The Circle Jerks, were in heavy rotation in many of those formative years. One thing that I always liked about many of the 80’s era California punk bands was they often had a sense of humor, which is exhibited well by the Circle Jerk’s paean to good manners and etiquette, “Wonderful”. I have been listening to these albums recently and they are really quite good. Here is a fun fact: The lead singer of the Circle Jerks was the singer for the pre-Rollins Black Flag. Who knew?

Anyway, I caught the final stop on recent Circle Jerks headlined F-Yeah Tour at Club Exit in Brooklyn that also included Dillinger Four, Matt and Kim, and others. The Circle Jerks set highlights included a new song (new album in the works?!?) as well as classics like “I and I”, and the Black Flag track “Gimme Gimme Gimme”. It was a really fun show.

I have a video of dubious quality “I and I” so the mp3 is included as well.

Download: The Circle Jerks - I And I (Live)

Download: The Circle Jerks - I And I (Live Video)

I caught partial sets of Matt and Kim at last year’s Siren Festival as well as at the recent F-yeah tour (featuring Circle Jerks, Dillinger Four, and others) . As the name suggests, Matt and Kim are a male/female duo - Kim plays drums and Matt plays keyboards. After seeing them a few times I have put them in the “Bands to check Out Soon” folder. One thing that is impressive about Matt and Kim is that they have a fairly large and young punk-ish following which is impressive since 50% of their instrumentation is keyboards.

Download: Matt And Kim - Silver Tiles (Live)

Continuing in the tradition of great bands coming out of Kent, OH (think Harriet The Spy or The Man I Fell In Love With), Annabel are out on tour right now supporting their new-ish EP. They are traipsing around the south right now, so if you’re lucky enough to live in either Florida or Georgia, you may still be able to catch them. I’ll have to wait a while longer for them to make it all the way out here to the west coast.

Download: Annabel - Boquet Mines

For the rest of the week I’m going to be clearing out my e-mail and posting new tracks that have caught my ear that I’ve been meaning to write about. First up is Back In Judy’s Shack. The fantastic UK blog Indie MP3 compared this now defunct Swedish duo to Insides, which I certainly can’t argue with. Though not as polished as Insides, they certainly are in the same vein. This is my favorite track that I’ve heard off of the newly re-issued self-titled EP on Series Two Records.

Download: Back In Judy’s Shack - The Puff -The Drag, The Whiff

The Vaselines were a sadly very short lived Scottish band whose combined catalog ended up issued stateside on a single album on Sub-Pop in 1992. The album “Way of the Vaselines” features male-female duets not done with such humorous aplomb since the days of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra making them a cool Pop-Lounge-Punk-DIY novelty act, of sorts, that has gained them a devout cult status. Titles like “Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam”, “Rory Rides Me Raw”, “Sex Sux (Amen)” and “You Think You’re A Man” are delivered with a sweet and innocent delivery ingeniously masking the inferred rated PG-13 content - A conceit that would make Lee and Nancy proud.

Some years later they came into prominence due to Nirvana (and former Sub-Pop label mates) covering three Vaseline songs for MTV Unplugged which, of course, turned out to be among Kurt Cobain’s final recordings.

Sub-Pop evidently convinced The Vaselines to resurface to perform for the 20th Anniversary Sub-Pop Festival. En route, they played two sold-out and very well received shows in NYC, one of which I was very fortunate to catch.

Download: The Vasalines - You Think You’re A Man (Live)

The Wedding Present
Maxwell’s
Hoboken, NJ
5/26/94

A couple of years ago I posted a video from this same show. This is a far superior audience recording from a different source. Only one problem…the cassette that I had listed this show as May 26 at Maxwell’s, where the video was listed as May 30th. Here at TSOI we strive to be as accurate as possible, and all of my usual sources didn’t turn up an exact date, so if knows please let us know. Anyway, enjoy this better than average audience recording of a great and very long Wedding Present Watusi-era set.

Set List:
1. Let Him Have It
2. Blue Eyes
3. So Long, Baby
4. Corduroy
5. Big Rat (Ooops!)
6. Gazebo
7. Silver Shorts
8. Big Rat
9. California
10. Click Click
11. The Queen of Outer Space
12. Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah
13. Rotterdam
14. Swimming Pools Movie Stars
15. Crawl
16. It’s A Gas
17. Dare
18. Catwoman

Sample: Rotterdam (Live)

Download: The Wedding Present - Hoboken - 5/26/94 - 379 MB

I Am The World Trade Center are back! Well, almost…Dan Geller, the principal behind Kindercore Records and current member of Ruby Isle enlist Amy Dykes from IATWTC for vocals on one of the tracks of their forthcoming record Night Shot which is being released in September. As an extra bonus, they have Minneapolis native and Chocolate Rain scribe Tay Zonday join in on some backing vocals on one track. They will be promoting this record next month, so make sure to keep an eye out them on their August tour.

Update: I guess I was a little over zealous on posting the Solsbury Hill track. The band has requested it be removed, but they’ve been generous enough to let me post a different track in it’s place. Instead, here’s the title track off the new one, Night Shot.

Download: Ruby Isle - Night Shot

I caught the Radio City show of The Cure on their recent pass through NYC this June. The show was a marathon of old and new that lasted three (!!) hours.

As usual, new songs were highlights (for me anyway) as well as “Catch” and a bit to my surprise “Killing an Arab”. I remember reading in Rolling Stone magazine probably 15 years ago that Robert Smith stopped playing “Killing an Arab” due to it being perpetually misinterpreted - boneheads calling him a fascist or whatever. I wonder at what point he determined that the idiot quotient was low enough for him to dust off the song to play live again and not receive undeserved retard blow-back. (if anyone knows, please chime in)

You know, I could have asked him that question myself some years ago when I had one of my better celebrity ‘run-ins’. I used to walk across Central Park South everyday to get to and from work in Midtown. One day, probably after after-work drinks, I had to micturate like a fiend. Being the super-genius that I am, I figured I could nip into one of the several hotels along Central Park and use their ‘facilities’, not realizing that these hotels are among the swankiest in NYC. I believe I wisely chose The Lenox, who, naturally, would be very accommodating to a jack-nut off the street; “Hey man where can I drain the main vein around here?” Perfectly timed, just as if I was a very astute concierge, as I opened the front door, out comes Robert Smith. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be bothered and cruised in and paced the lobby only to find out fairly quickly (remember I am a super-genius) that finding a place “to walk the lizard’ in a hotel of this caliber was untenable. Once it seeped in that I had just brushed shoulders with R. Smith himself, however, it gave me enough adrenaline to exit the premise and continue on to a less tony of a locale…or maybe I just wet myself. I don’t remember.

Anywho, this show at Radio City was great but I have one pet peeve. Why on earth would someone with the stature of The Cure not have a factotum to play synth parts. The canned synth segments, although few, put a bit of a damper on an otherwise killer show.

Download: The Cure - Kyoto Song (Live)