The Gardenheads at The Barley Street Tavern, Nov. 8, 2013.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

I tweeted the following at around 9:15 Friday night:

Gardenheads start at 10 at the Barley St. I’m tellin’ ya. Zero people here. Ah, the power of Lazy-i.

No surprise no one was there. Ted Stevens and Dave Dondero were playing across town at O’Leaver’s and the Bastard Sons were at The Sydney and let’s face it, no one has a clue who The Gardenheads are (despite my September column lauding their debut record. Who remembers that? Who reads my column?).

But as 10 rolled around a few people showed up and were treated to a pretty good set, maybe a bit twangier than I’d hoped based on their album, which isn’t twangy at all. As one patron told me after the show: “They sounded like they’re from Missouri.”

The four-piece slouched onto the stage and proceeded to play a set that included favorites off their latest album (“Adderol” was their set closer), new material and an obligatory cover (a John Prine song).

Their error in judgement came toward the end of their set. They blazed through a ballsy rendition of hell-raiser anthem “Fucked Up Kids” that included something I haven’t seen or heard in years — an extended drum solo. That’s right. While the frontman laid flat on the stage and the bassist went to get a beer, the drummer did a full-on John Bonham routine that would have made any drummer proud.

The error came after the band got back together, finished the song with a fist-pumper of an ending, and instead of leaving on a high note played three more songs. It was like hitting a winning walk-off home run and then sending the next batter up to the plate.

Still, a good set that didn’t make me embarrassed for having made such a big deal out of them back in September. I’d love to see them come back through town and open for someone like The Filter Kings or The Sons Of… or The Whipkey Three. They’d be a good “trade” band, who could probably help set up a show down in their stomping ground of Springfield, which is just a few hours south of KC.

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The week starts off slow show-wise and ends with a bang Thursday when we’ll be pulled in three directions at once, with Gordon and New Trust (members of the Velvet Teen) at O’Leaver’s, Saintseneca at Slowdown Jr. and Hear Nebraska Presents Red City Radio at The Brothers Lounge.

Then Friday night is the big Pleasure Adapter/Pro-Magnum/Brigadiers show at Slowdown Jr. while So-So Sailors return to O’Leaver’s with McCarthy Trenching.

And then Saturday night Simon Joyner and Eros and Eschaton both return to Slowdown Jr.

And then Sunday the big Hear Nebraska Omaha Girls Rock show at Slowdown Jr.

Whew!

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The latest clue…

The Black Friday at O’Leaver’s clues keep coming. I know it’s impossible to read the graphic at the left, but that’s all the space I’m giving it. Here’s the translation:

Then We Found a Clue. ONE special performer has THREE unique albums available in the saddle-creek.com online shop. A special or deluxe edition of an album does not COUNT as an additional unique album. Black Friday O’Leavers.

People have begun to figure out this show…probably. Check out yesterday’s Lazy-i comments. Got to hand it to the band for its clever marketing.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2013 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Snake Island at The Waiting Room, Nov. 8, 2013.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

With bands rotating on and off stage playing only 20-minute sets, last night’s Flyover Country CD release show felt like a social gathering more than a rock concert. The smallish crowd of fewer than 100 got a taste of a handful of bands with tracks on the CD. The two highlights I caught were Snake Island playing a blistering, well-crafted set of garage-ish rock that was too well-played, too “put together’ to really be considered “garage.” The word “slick” came to mind, along with “professional” and “tight.”

Dereck Higgins at The Waiting Room Nov. 8, 2013.

The other highlight was composer/performer and local legend (he probably gets tired of hearing that description) Dereck Higgins, who took the stage behind a keyboard and laptop and performed throbbing, synth-fueled multi-layered dance tracks that got a handful in the small crowd moving their asses — no easy feat in flyover country. Cool stuff that anyone who grew up listening to Factory dance records, or bands like New Order or Depeche Mode would appreciate. Higgins said the movie soundtrack was a taste of the material he put together during those creative sessions. Look for a new full-length Higgins release in the near future. I’d love to see how his stuff would translate at House of Loom played to an audience that came to dance.

A final footnote on Flyover Country: The film’s premiere is tonight and tomorrow at The Omaha Community Playhouse. Film rolls at 7:30, and tix are available from flyovermovie.com.

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Way back in September, I wrote a column about a Springfield, MO band called The Gardenheads. The piece, which you can read online here, was a review of the band’s LP release Growing Season, wherein I referenced Big Star, Alex Chilton, Matthew Sweet, The dBs and Wilco, among others. I called the record one of the best I’ve heard this year, and certainly one of my favorites. I never expected to hear from the band again, let alone see them play.

Well, lo and behold, The Gardenheads are playing tonight at The Barley Street Tavern. The band is opening for The Beat Seekers, which means if you want to catch them, you’ll have to get there early. $5, 9 p.m. Funny how these things happen.

Also tonight, David Dondero returns to fabulous O’Leaver’s topping a stellar line-up that includes Brad Hoshaw and Ted Stevens Unknown Project. Dondero is on the road supporting his latest album, This Guitar, which was just released on vinyl by Unrequited Records. $7, 9 p.m. O’Leaver’s is  selling tickets to this one, which you can buy online right here.

Meanwhile, over at The Sydney, Mark Stuart and the Bastard Sons performs with The Willards and Randy Burk. $5, 9:30 p.m.

Saturday’s highlight is Junkfest #19 at The Sweatshop Gallery. The 11-band line-up is a celebration of Unread Records, which you read about in detail here. Among the performers: Furniture Huschle, Ramon Speed, David Kenneth Nance, Spirit Duplicator, I Am the Lake of Fire, William Wesley & the Tiny Sockets, Simon Joyner, Charlie McAlister, Hossflesh, Church of Gravitron and Nathan MA. 6 p.m., $7. Come celebrate the cassette culture and some fine, fine music.

Also Saturday night, Snake Island plays at O’Leaver’s with Ex Nuns and Pisswalker. $5, 9:30 p.m.

Oh yeah, one more thing… They’re calling these folks the return of emo, and judging by their name, I can see why. Sunday at Slowdown Jr. it’s The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die (yes, that’s the name). Pitchfork compares their new album Whenever, If Ever (Top Shelf) to Bright Eyes and Arcade Fire in this 7.8-rated review. Opening is Better Friend and I Forgot To Love My Father. $8, 7 p.m. Bring a hankie.

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The latest clue regarding O’Leaver’s Black Friday concert…

Speaking of O’Leaver’s, I receive yet another clue about their mysterious Black Friday show in the form of the graphic on the left. No idea what it means. I did receive some other data regarding this show last night, basically confirming that no, this is not a warm-up show for Cursive’s December residency at The Waiting Room, nor is InDreama on the bill. Others have speculated (correctly) who one of the bands will be. See if you can figure it out.

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Did I leave anything off the list? Put it in the comments section. Have a fine weekend.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2013 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

In the Better-Late-Than-Never Department…

Tonight at The Waiting Room it’s the official release show for the motion picture soundtrack to the film Flyover Country.  While I was unwilling to weigh in with an opinion of the film in this write-up in The Reader, I will tell you that my favorite part of this film is its soundtrack, specifically the work of legendary Omaha musician Dereck Higgins.  Dereck provided the primary score, which is upbeat, moody, an experience in itself.

But in addition to Dereck, the soundtrack features the following songs and artists, making the Flyover Country soundtrack one of the better local music comps I’ve heard in a long time:

“Give Me Light” BLUEBIRD; “Enzymes” DIGITAL LEATHER; “Shine” DOMESTICA; “Airplane Over Me” SUZY DREAMER & HER NIGHTMARES; “Try Too Hard” MITCH GETTMAN; “Hanging Out” GREEN TREES; “Cruel Heart” THE KARMA LOGS; “Details” LONELY ESTATES; “The House” LOW HORSE; “Can’t Get Off That Train” MEZCAL BROTHERS; “Blue View” SPIKE NELSON; “Just You Wait” THE RENFIELDS; “Drinkin Boots” ROCK PAPER DYNAMITE; “Do What You Feel” EVAN SCOTT; “Symptoms” THE SEEN; “Oh Lord” SNAKE ISLAND; “Till Death” TARA VAUGHAN

According to One Percent Productions, tonight’s album release show will feature performances by Dereck Higgins, Snake Island, Blue Bird, Rock Paper Dynamite, Lonely Estates “and more.” $7, 8 p.m.

But that’s not the only thing happening tonight. Down at Slowdown Jr., New Jersey punkers Screaming Females (Don Giovanni Records) headlines a show with one of my favorite new local bands, Gordon. $10, 9 p.m.

Check out some Screaming Females below:

Finally, over at fabulous O’Leaver’s Denver party-electro-spazz-funtime-party rockers The Photo Atlas returns with John Klemmensen and The Party and The Knew. $5, 9:30 p.m.

Check out some Photo Atlas:

Let the weekend begin a day early, I say…

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2013 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

In this week’s column, the story of Unread Records and why the label, which is celebrating its 19th birthday this Saturday with an 11-band concert at the Sweatshop Gallery, continues to release (primarily) cassettes. It’s in this week’s issue of The Reader, and online right here…

And heck, since the column is music-related, online below.

by Tim McMahan

Every year right around now, I put my Mini Cooper convertible in storage and replace it with a ’96 Geo Tracker. My Cooper has virtually no ground clearance, which makes it useless in any measurable snow, while the Tracker not only stands high above the ground but also is four-wheel-drive, making it virtually unstoppable.

The downsides of my Geo: It’s beginning to rust. The driver’s side door handle is broken. The rims are the wrong size, so the tires have a habit of deflating overnight. It smells like my dogs.

The upside: It has a cassette deck. There’s something particularly awesome about digging out a mixtape from the summer of 1994 and listening to forgotten bands like Uncle Joe’s Big Ol’ Driver or Morphine or The Wedding Present or Game Theory.

But for Chris Fischer, the label executive behind Unread Records, cassette tapes are more than just a nostalgia trip. The motto on the homepage of unread-records.com: “Creating homemade tapes from empty aluminum cans since 1994.”

Fischer used to live in Omaha. The Lancaster, Pennsylvania, native, now living in Pittsburgh, was wooed to our city in the late ‘90s by none other than Conor Oberst after Fischer set up a show for him in Lancaster back in the early Bright Eyes days.

Back then, Fischer’s Unread Records was part of the underground world of cassette-tape-only record labels. Now 19 years later, it still is, even though super-cheap digital music technology should have made cassettes obsolete. Instead, Unread boasts a catalog of 148 cassette tapes by artists such as Charlie McAlister, Ramon Speed, Spirit Duplicator and Omaha’s own Simon Joyner.

Those artists will join seven more from the Unread Records roster for Junkfest #19 — a concert at the Sweatshop Gallery in Benson this Saturday at 6 p.m. Fischer said the event, which celebrates the label’s 19th birthday, will be “a great show, very bizarre, an experience.”

When I interviewed Fischer back in 2000, the central question was: Why cassettes? Not so strangely, the question remained at the forefront when I talked to him last Saturday. He admitted cassettes have inferior sound quality, degrade faster and are more expensive to mass produce than CDRs. And if you thought finding a turntable was hard, finding a cassette deck means scouring eBay, Craig’s List or your local pawn shop.

Fischer said his love of cassettes is a product of growing up idolizing tape labels of yesterday like Shrimper, Catsup Plate and Omaha’s Sing! Eunuchs. “Cassettes are more artistically attractive to me,” he said. “It’s a mechanical thing, a physical object. It feels better to hold a cassette. It jangles around a bit. It has screws. It’s not that I’m anti-technology, there’s nothing wrong with CRSs, they just don’t look as attractive, and I don’t understand how they work.”

Plus, like vinyl records, cassettes have two sides. “Everyone now just wants to purchase a song off iTunes or just buy increments of music as opposed to a whole album,” Fischer said. “There’s nothing better than listening to an album — the A side, the B side, hits or no hits, I like to hear it all for what it is.”

Over the years, Fischer has gone from a production process that involved plugging tape decks together to dub six tapes at a time to using professional dubbers. He dubs between 50 and 150 tapes per title, depending on how well he thinks they’ll sell, then gives half of them to the artists. Not a total Luddite, Fischer said if an artist provides the master on CD, he makes the tracks available for digital download. But it’s the cassettes that are the cool, collectable thing, not the downloads.

Simon Joyner, who ran Sing! Eunuchs with Chris Deden, said cassettes became an important medium in the late ‘80s into the ‘90s because everyone had a cassette player and recorder at home. “So, people who wanted to create music could do it very easily and inexpensively. They could try anything they wanted because no studios were necessary, no label was necessary. Out of this, labels formed around this DIY concept that artists were everywhere and here’s the music, cheap and accessible.”

But Bandcamp and other digital music file-sharing sites have made cassettes unnecessary. “What’s going on now is fetishistic, econo-chic,” Joyner said. “There is nostalgia around the cassette medium because so many great, important artists and bands started out that way, during that time when it was the cheapest, easiest way to get music out there. (Today) most people releasing music on cassette are feeding that population of cassette fetishists while also releasing the same music in other ways, having their tape and eating it, too.”

Joyner said when he was putting out tapes, he “longed for vinyl, and that hasn’t changed.” Fischer agreed, and Unread has released a number of vinyl records. “I would love to do a lot more,” Fischer said, “but 80 percent of my catalog is cassettes only because of cash flow. If I won the lottery, I’d do more vinyl.”

But even if he did, there would still be a fascination for cassettes. “Nowadays, cassettes are cool and retro,” Fischer said. “A friend of mine approached me to put out a cassette and didn’t have the first idea how they worked or what they were. It blew my mind.”

Joyner, who never liked the “low-fi” label placed on him early in his career, accepted tape hiss as an unavoidable product of recording limitations.

“You should only love that sound if the music in the foreground is good,” Joyner said. “Then as now, a lot of music released on tape is no good, and having it on tape doesn’t change that fact. But when it is good, there is something nice about the hum and hiss as I drive around the city in my decrepit Ford Escort just to hear it.”

Or in my Geo Tracker.

Over The Edge is a weekly column by Reader senior contributing writer Tim McMahan focused on culture, society, the media and the arts. Email Tim at tim.mcmahan@gmail.com.

First published in The Omaha Reader, Nov. 6, 2013. Copyright © 2013 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

The latest mysterious message about O’Leaver’s Black Friday event…What could it mean?

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Village Pointe Cinema is hosting a special screening of Made of Stone: The Stone Roses. The documentary by covers the Manchester band’s 2012 and 2013 reunion tours, which culminated with a headlining spot at the 2013 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in California. The screening is scheduled for 7:30.

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OK, now O’Leaver’s is just playing with us. This showed up on the email right before lunch. Can you decipher its meaning?

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2013 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Weird Black Friday graphic attached to the cryptic message concerning O’Leaver’s…

Not much time for an update, just a couple things to pass along…

If you’re not already getting the One Percent Productions email blast you really should. This week’s “ramblings” included info on Cursive’s three week hometown residency at The Waiting Room in December as part of a new live recording project. The band will perform on the first three Thursdays of the month – December 5, 12 and 19 – with two special guests opening each night.  “Each Thursday’s setlist will be a mix of fan favorites and a number of deeper cuts from Cursive’s extensive back catalog of seven full-length albums,” said 1%. Tickets for each individual show are $12 and a pass for all three is $30.

In addition, One Percent announced that Cat Power is slated to play at The Slowdown Nov. 22 with Nico Taylor. Tickets go on sale Thursday and are $22.50 Adv/$25 DOS.

Sign up for the One Percent Productions email blast right from their homepage.

Finally, over lunch I received a cryptic e-mail from a sender who identifies him/herself as “Black Friday” with one sentence: “There will be a special performance on Black Friday (November 29) this year at O’Leavers Pub.” More to come?

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2013 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Of Montreal at The Waiting Room, Nov. 2, 2013.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

While last Saturday night’s Of Montreal concert was the usual spectacle that one expects from these colorful Athenians, it was only a medium-sized spectacle, especially compared to the last time they came through town and played at The Slowdown.

Your first thought might be that they pulled back because The Waiting Room has a smaller stage than The Slowdown’s cavernous maw, but you’d be wrong because I’ve been told the two stages are about the same size, and that TWR might actually be a tad larger. No, the real reason could have had something to do with the style of the band’s latest album, which is less of a party and more of a psychedelic head trip.

To help build that trippy buzz, Of Montreal’s eye-blazing projector-powered graphics got an extra punch of wow — pure acid-flashback dazzle combined with strange 8 mm-style film effects.

Theatrics did abound. Three “extras” made stage appearances in a variety of costumes, most resembling blobs or giant wadded up pieces of paper. When they weren’t stumbling around in bulky costumes, the extras slipped into place in white body stockings, unfolding umbrellas that reflected targeted projected graphics (see the eye-popping skull above).

And then there was the music. Of Montreal played their mega-hit “Wrath Pinned to the Mist and Other Games,” (a.k.a., the Outlook Steakhouse commercial jingle from a few years ago) in the middle of the set, surrounding it with new glammy material from Lousy with Sylvianbriar, their latest Polyvinyl release. If someone ever decides to make a David Bowie biopic, Kevin Barnes would be the shoe-in to play the Thin White Duke — his voice (at times) was a photo-realistic replica of Bowie’s, complete with the obvious, recognizable inflections we’ve come to know and love.

Beyond the Bowie comparisons, Barnes has a mammoth voice that keeps going and going, and is the clear centerpiece of the entire performance. Good thing, too, because while Of Montreal’s music often has a thumpin’ beat, it lacks a strong central melody. The reason “Wrath Pinned…” was a hit is because it’s one of the few songs they’ve written that invites you to sing along. The rest of Of Montreal’s melodies are two-dimensional gymnastics — dense, complex and sparkly — but forgettable. It’s the reason Of Montreal never broke through the way Arcade Fire has, though the two bands do very similar things (and one might argue, Of Montreal does it better).

But who cares when you see Barnes coming out after a costume change dressed as a 12-foot tall singing psychedelic ghost?

La Luz at The Waiting Room, Nov. 2, 2013.

Opener La Luz was a fun exercise in genre rock, described to me by one listener as Middle Eastern-infused surf rock. To me they played traditional garage rock with a sinister undertone. Great stuff, in small doses.

* * *

The big shows keep rolling on tonight:

Cold War Kids play tonight at The Slowdown with Crystal Antlers, whose latest, Nothing Is Real, is brash and loud and worth getting to the club early for. $20 9 p.m.

Meanwhile, over at The Waiting Room, chillwave superstar Toro Y Moi headlines with Classixx, a DJ duo who have remixed everyone from Phoenix to Yacht to Holy Ghost to Ladyhawke. $17, 9 p.m.

Why does it have to be Monday?

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2013 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

A screen capture from Of Montreal’s video for “Fugitive Air,” the first single off their latest album.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Welcome to November.

And that’s all I have to say about that, other than get ready for a solid weekend of shows.

It starts tonight with Deer Tick at The Slowdown. I kind of lost track of Deer Tick after I interviewed them in 2009. The band has released three albums since then, including their latest, Negativity (2013, Partisan), which pulls them further from the folk rock category to whatever genre Wilco is known for. Opening is Nashville’s Robert Ellis (New West Records). $17, 9 p.m.

Also tonight, Omaha’s monsters of punk Pro-Magnum play at The Sydney with red hot electro-dance newcomers Routine Escorts and the always entertaining Touch People. $5, 9 p.m.

BTW, it’s Benson First Friday again, so you may want to try Larkin’s Parkin’ right across from Jake’s if you can’t find a spot. It’s valet — fancy!

Saturday’s marquee event is Of Montreal at The Waiting Room.

You could say Of Montreal’s latest album, Lousy with Sylvianbriar, is more organic than what we’re used to. Frontman Kevin Barnes downshifted his songwriting to something less ornate (and confusing) and more sonically straightforward. In addition, he threw out the technology and recorded the whole thing on a 24-track tape machine, in fact most of it was recorded live with the band in a single room. The result sounds like a ‘70s glam album welded to an indie rock underframe. Barnes has always reached for Bowie stylistically, but usurped it with his trademark layered harmonies (reminiscent of ELO). Yeah, this is a ‘70s record, and I mean that in a good way.

But forget about the record, Saturday night’s show is about staging. The last time I saw Of Montreal a couple years ago at Slowdown it was, indeed, a spectacle, with iridescent metallic body suits, a simulated wrestling match, a giant blob, a pig person, a 12-foot-tall shimmering thing with four arms, all done with campy flair. I ‘spect we’ll get more of the same, though the new record — which seems more serious and backs away from dance beats — is better suited for a hippie pageant than a space odyssey. Regardless, an Of Montreal show is always worth the price of admission.

Opening is the strutting, sexy, spy-guitar-fueled garage stylings of Seattle’s La Luz (Burger, Hardly Art, Suicide Squeeze). $18 Adv/$20 DOS. Starts at 9.

Finally, country folk twangster Robbie Fulks is playing at The Waiting Room Sunday for an early 5 p.m. show. $17 Adv/$20 DOS.

If I forgot something, put it in the comments section.

Have a good weekend!

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2013 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.