Column 102 — For ‘Biggest Oversight’ by an awards show…
The nominees are…

Before I get into this, I must tell you that I’m one of those hallowed few who have been asked to be a member of “The Academy” for the Live Music portion of the Omaha Entertainment Awards. And I also must explain that The Reader is one of OEAs’ media partners, if not one of its chief organizers. So one could yell “Bias!” at these words, but one would be incorrect, as I hold no allegiance to the organization and have just as many gripes as you about the Nominees list published last week. Instead of griping for gripe’s sake, however, I wanted explanations.

So I picked up the phone and called Tony Lange, the guy responsible for how the OEAs are being conducted. Lange comes to Omaha from Cincinnati, where the CEAs are in their 8th year. He said they were the boilerplate for the OEAs, right down to how bands were nominated. Anyone (as in you) could have submitted a nominating ballot, and Lange said around 2,000 of you did — not bad for the first year. A five-person committee (of which Lange is a member) developed the categories with the help of a few others who were brought in to “broaden the knowledge base.”

That brings us to the nominees and my list of gripes, first and foremost being the inclusion of South Dakota blues act Indigenous under the category of “Traditional / Indigenous” music. Anyone who’s ever heard a lick of the band’s Stevie Ray Vaughan blues-hammer aping knows that they don’t belong in this category, and that South Dakota ain’t Omaha (or Nebraska).

Clarification No. 1: Any performer from a 75-mile radius of The Holland Center was eligible for nomination, which explains why all those Lincoln bands are on the list (but doesn’t explain why the awards aren’t called the NEAs (N as in Nebraska instead of O as in Omaha)).

Lange admitted that, yes, Indigenous isn’t from Nebraska, and no, they don’t play indigenous music, and yes, the whole thing was a mistake. “That’s one that slipped by us,” he said. “We’ll take the blame. It’s a result of me not growing up here. It should have been caught.”

Some of the categories, however, were tougher to explain. Why, for example, group “hard rock” and “metal” together? Everyone knows they’re different genres. Apparently not everyone. “I know there’s death metal and speed metal and hate metal,” Lange said. “Next year we may consider separating the categories.”

“Next year” also applies to including a “Singer/Songwriter” category, an omission that is the awards’ biggest oversight, as Omaha is known nationally as a singer/songwriter town. Lange had no real explanation for this, other than to say he wanted to include the category but that other committee members preferred naming it “Adult Contemporary.” This, of course, makes no sense, but “that’s what you get when you deal with a committee.”

Lange is not apologetic about the “Cover Band” category. “Cover bands are the core meat of the local entertainment business,” he said. “Their art is just the same as anyone else’s. Remember, this award is based on entertainment.”

Complaints about who got nominated falls squarely on you, the voter, and your favorite bands’ inability to “get out the vote.” Lange admits that there always will be acts that simply aren’t comfortable lobbying for themselves. That may explain why local jazz legend Luigi Waites was overlooked under the “Jazz” category or why Breathless wasn’t nominated under “Hip-Hop/Rap.” It also explains why there are no punk bands under the “Punk” category. Would a real punk band lobby for votes? Go ask Johnny Rotten.

For the first go-’round, the list of nominees isn’t horrible, especially under categories “Alternative Indie” (rightfully dominated by Saddle Creek Records acts), “Folk Americana Roots,” “Hard Rock” (I’m leaving metal out of it) and “Live Music Event.” The full list is available online at oeawards.net. Yes, there are omissions, but hey, give them a break, it’s the first year.

The most glaring omission is in how the local media have covered the event. Yes, The Reader is a sponsor, right along with NRG Media on the radio side. That shouldn’t preclude the great, gray Omaha World-Herald from covering an event that has the full support of the Chamber of Commerce and a plethora of important local arts organizations.

The fact is, the OWH has historically put its own needs in front of its readers when it comes to covering anything that’s sponsored by rival media, whether it be an alt-weekly newspaper, radio or local TV station. They need to let the paranoia go and realize what everyone else already knows: They don’t have any competition. No one’s going to steal away any of their potential advertisers and/or readers, certainly not The Reader. Acknowledgement of the OEAs by the OWH and other media is critical if this thing is ever really going to get off the ground. But I’m afraid that the polarizing, Citizen Kane mentality of local media will never let that happen, even for an event that’s designed not to make money (OEA is a 501c3, nonprofit organization) but to celebrate this city’s talent. Let’s do this, before all that talent finds a more grateful place to play.

Tonight at O’Leaver’s, Iowa City citizen Ed Gray takes the stage. Gray is something of a legend in the low-fi folk circuit. His first serious recordings involved John Crawford (Head of Femur, Grey Ghost), violinist Tiffany Kowalski (Lullaby for the Working Class, Mayday, Shelley Short), and producer Alex McManus (The Bruces, Bright Eyes). On his new record, Gray plays with a crapload of Omaha musicians that are usually seen orbiting around Simon Joyner. It’s a folkie treat in a style that is right at home with Simon and Outlaw Con Bandana. Hear for yourself at his myspace page. That said, it makes sense that he’s playing with Simon tonight, who, according to Ed, will be backing him along with the rest of the band, which he refers to as The Wind-Up Birds. Don’t know if this is a different line-up than we usually see in The Fallen Men or not, but there’s one way to find out. $5, 9 p.m.

But first, this member of the Academy for the Omaha Entertainment Awards will be venturing west, to Shag for the OEA showcase. The show starts at 7 and will include performances by Anonymous American, Scott Severin and a host of others (the schedule is here), while the American Music Awards are broadcast over Shag’s television screens. I suspect this will be a surreal event and that I and the rest of the Academy will be plied with booze, whores and drugs in an ill-fated attempt by the nominees to garner our votes. Fun!

There are a ton of questions that arose when the OEA nominees were announced last week, which I’ll attempt to answer in tomorrow’s column. Look for it, and a reflection on tonight’s festivities.

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Column 101 — And Now a Song from our Sponsor
Commercials go indie…

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I dig watching sports on TV. Football, baseball, basketball, you name it. I know it isn’t cool from an indie perspective to admit to such a steak-and-egger sort of past-time, but at any given moment during the season I generally know where the Yankees stand in the AL, and I cry right along with everyone else in the Big Apple when the Knicks inevitably skid to the bottom of the Eastern Division (Damn you, Isiah!).

The problem with watching televised sports, however, is having to put up with all the commercials, and Sunday Night Football is easily the worst. Why? Because during every time-out, you’re force-fed John Mellencamp’s ode to America in the form of a Chevy truck commercial. Once upon a time, Little Johnny Cougar wrote real songs — stuff like “Jack and Diane,” and “Pink Houses.” Not anymore.

Artists whoring their music to Madison Avenue is nothing new. Even such upstanding, well-respected musicians as U2 have gleefully traded in their flesh-and-blood to sell a few iPods. If Reverend Bono does it, it must be okay, right? Certainly it’s a no-brainer for someone like Mellencamp, whose flat-lined career was in the same place as Bob Seger’s when Seger let Chevy turn “Like a Rock” into a commercial.

But these days, it isn’t just the county fair circuit that’s grabbing the cash. Earlier this year I heard Spoon’s “I Turn My Camera On” used to sell Jaguar XKE’s. And it wasn’t just incidental background music — the commercial was produced like a rock video prominently featuring the song along with tight, quick cuts of a shiny new Jag. When they replayed the spot about five minutes later, I immediately thought, ‘Well, there goes that song.”

Then last night the whoring reached a new low. On screen was a commercial for Outback Steakhouse. Amidst the weird buzzing didgeridoo noise was the melody from Of Montreal’s “Wraith Pinned to the Mist (And Other Games).” But instead of Kevin Barnes singing “Let’s pretend we don’t exist / Let’s pretend we’re in Antarctica,” some poor schmuck sang “Let’s go Outback tonight / Life will still be there tomorrow” while animated cave drawings danced gleefully around a steak.

My first thought: “Those idiots! Don’t they know that Barnes will sue their asses off when he finds out that they so blatantly ripped off his song?” Then I went online and found out that Barnes was in on the whole thing. Pitchfork reported that Barnes had given Outback’s ad agency permission not only to use the song, but to rerecord it with new lyrics.

“We thought it would be totally amusing to hear their take on one of our songs as a jingle,” he told Pitchfork. In this case, “totally amusing” means receiving a check worth a few thousand bloomin’ onions.

Can you blame them for selling out their music? Fact is, in the case of both Of Montreal and Spoon, more people heard those songs on those commercials than will ever hear them on the radio. What price can you put on that kind of exposure?

When you live in a town like Omaha — a city with no real college radio station — TV commercials may be the only way to hear new music over the airwaves. And I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t admit that I’ve searched out a song used in an ad.

Case in point: The latest commercials for Geico featuring that loveable caveman that gets no respect. He first appeared on TV having lunch with a high-powered ad exec who apologized for the insensitivity of the company’s “so easy a caveman can do it” commercials. “I didn’t know you guys were still around.” Caveman’s response: “Maybe you should do some research.” Classic.

In the new ad, our caveman (Who I’m sure is now headed for a sitcom career) stands on a moving walkway headed toward his departure gate in an airport when he passes yet another insensitive Geico airport display ad with the same catchphrase. Meanwhile, in the background plays a cool, simple, Casio-powered song that is, quite frankly, absolutely infectious.

Two seconds after entering “Geico Caveman Commercial” in Google, I discovered the song was “Remind Me” by Norwegian Euro-dance duo Röyksopp — an act I’d never heard of, and likely wouldn’t have without this commercial. Like Trio’s “Da Da Da” song — which went unnoticed for 15 years until it was used in VW commercials in the mid-’90s — “Remind Me” also is destined to become an international smash that never would have been discovered if not for some savvy ad exec picking the song out of the ether and placing it in the commercial.

Like it or not, the same can probably be said for the new Mellencamp song. Without its Chevy connection, it never would have made it out of the blocks. Now it’s fueling his next world tour.

I feel like I got Borat-ed by The Slip. They went on and on in our interview about how much they don’t want to be plopped in with the rest of the jam band scene — how, sure, they used to do experimental jazz “back in the old days” but that now their music is much more structured and melody-dependent. A listen through their new CD, Eisenhower, and you (almost) believe they could be a next-generation indie band.

But last night… well… they sure sounded like a jam band to me. I was expecting to hear tight, structured renditions of songs from the new album. Instead, The Slip launched their set with four acoustic numbers, none of which I recognized, then went right into an electric set that featured lots of wild, experimental sound collages, jazzy interludes and an extra helping of long-form solos — i.e., jams. When they finally got around to playing their pop opus “Children of December” the song was so all-over-the-place that it was tough to recognize.

There’s no denying that these guys are first-class musicians. It was some of the best instrumentation I’ve heard in a long, long time — throaty, precise drums, intricate guitar and spider-hand bass. But the basic underlying structure seemed designed only to allow for the musicians to pull away from standard songcraft (especially on the rock songs). So while, yes, they played well, their songs were hidden somewhere in a cloud of noodling.

The only time they came close to sounding like an indie band was on “Airplane/Primitive,” but even that was marred by a number of improvisational gymnastics that would have been more at home at a groove festival. Missing were some of the more gorgeous ballads from the new album, including “If One of Us Should Fall.” Why skip it? The only thing I can think of was that frontman Brad Barr was uncertain about his vocals, though he clearly had the chops last night on the acoustic numbers (including a new song that reminded me of classic ’70s folk rock tune). Or maybe they were catering to the tiny crowd of 40. Just to add fuel to the jam-band fire, they encored with two instrumentals — one featuring drummer Marc Friedman playing a home-made PVC-pipe percussion device that made hollowed notes when pounded with flip-flops Blue Man Group-style. Bonnaroo here they come.

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We’re having some serious technical difficulties around the Lazy-i servers these days, which is why there was no update or column yesterday. Look for Column 101 tomorrow morning if I can get the FTP transfer mumbo-jumbo figured out. Thanks for your patience.

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I’m back from Dallas, and here’s The Slip interview I promised Monday. The story ended up focusing on the band’s inability to shake their “jam band” status that they developed early in their careers. Believe me, they, uh, dislike jam bands and the jam band scene, which they made perfectly clear in their interview. In fact, their manager sort of warned me that it was a sore topic with the band and that they’d be a bit unresponsive to questions about the whole jam band thing. But once we got started, the topic dominated the discussion. As I say in the story, judging from their new album on Bar/None, The Slip sound more like a traditional indie rock band influenced by Death Cab and Built to Spill than a jam band. One would hope that constant touring and the strength of their new album, which just came out, will help them get past being thrown in with noodlers like Widespread Panic and Phish. The show is tomorrow night at Sokol Underground with The Lovely Feathers and The Bon Savants. $10, 9 p.m.

The problem with going out of town all week is trying to catch up. Column 101 is ready to post, but I don’t have the time to do it this morning, so look for it tomorrow morning.

Tonight at O’Leaver’s you got Outlaw Con Bandana with A Poet Named Revolver and “The Antiquarium Staff” — no idea who that could be — along with Good with Guns. I have a feeling this could be a night of good eclectic music. $5, 9:30 p.m.

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Well, I’ve got this great interview with The Slip that I’m dying to put online, but y’all gonna have to wait until Friday to read it because I’ll be out of town for the next few days on biz (You can always find it in The Reader). That means no updates over the next few days. I still haven’t had a chance to write a live review of last Saturday night’s Eagle*Seagull/Coyote Bones show at the Saddle Creek Bar (it was a good one), and I don’t have time now, either. That said, I probably picked a pretty good week to be out of town. The only thing I’m going to miss is Book of Maps/Thunder Power/Hot Sick tomorrow night at O’Leaver’s (though you shouldn’t). I’ll probably be back in time to catch Unwed Sailor/Adam Weaver and the Ghosts Thursday night (also at O’Leaver’s). Have a good week and I’ll talk to you Friday.

Post ’em here.—

This is one of the more rambunctious weekends for shows in quite a while. Four humdingers at four different venues. If Omaha were Lincoln, all of these would be mere walking distances from each other and we could stumble from one to another lost in an indie rock music haze. But instead, we’re in Omaha.

Let’s do this in alpha order, just so’s it doesn’t appear that I’m showing any favoritism.

Down at Sokol Underground, Brimstone Howl takes the stage with Bazooka Shootout, Alaphabet, & I Miss America. The Howl are flying high these days, what with signing to Alive Records and working with the guy from The Black Keys. No idea who the other bands are, and various research tools (Google, Myspace) come up with nothing. Still, $5 is a cheap price just to see Brimstone on a big stage before the band explodes to national notoriety. 9 p.m.

Meanwhile, over at The Saddle Creek Bar, Coyote Bones wraps up a nice little tour that took them to the East Coast and back. Playing along is Eagle*Seagull (who, one would hope, will be unveiling some new material) and Neva Dinova frontman Jake Bellows. $5, 9 p.m.

Just over the hill at The PS Collective (6056 Maple St. — part of The Pizza Shoppe), Shelter Belt is celebrating the release of their new CD, Under The World Awhile, with Omaha jazzman Luigi Waites & Paul Sim, The Masses, Fizzle Like A Flood (who’s coming out of retirement for this show), and Lincoln’s Papers. Shelter Belt kicks it off with an instrumental set at 6 p.m. and the thing runs all night (or at least to midnight). This one’s free and will be packed (with musicians, if no one else).

Finally, over at The 49’r, The Third Men take the stage with The Pendrakes. It’s been quite a while since T3M have played, so maybe we’ll get treated to a few new tunes and a new cover song. Niner shows start around 10 and will run you up to $5 (though I don’t know how much they’ll be charging tonight).

Choose wisely.

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What can be made of the fact that Cursive only drew 800 last night at Sokol Underground? Some might say that the number is significant in its diminutiveness, a bellwether of sorts of the lagging interest in either the band and/or indie music in general. Maybe, maybe… But I’m not so sure that it means anything. Cursive just played the same venue in July — had I gone to that one I probably wouldn’t have went last night, either. And then there’s the $14 ticket – the highest price I can remember for a Cursive show, probably due to all the opening bands (who I missed, btw, due to Rutgers). Still, one would hope that a band like Cursive could sell out Sokol Auditorium even at that price, especially when you consider such unfortunate, lame shitmeisters like Hinder easily sell out the place at a higher price. Like everyone else in this scene, I blame radio for our area youths’ poor taste in music. They’ve been indoctrinated to believe growling, talentless swine like Kottonmouth Kings and Slipknot are “important” music worth their time and money. Like I’ve always said, you play anything on the radio over and over and over and the listeners will find something they like about it, which explains why that wretched piece of novelty shit by Psychostick is actually selling (and some would say, also explains Tilly and the Wall).

But I digress…

It was a different sounding Cursive than I’ve seen over the years, a more restrained, almost adult-contemporary version. The 8-piece came out at around 11 amid a cloud of dry-ice smoke. The line-up included a 3-piece horn section (one of them doubled on keyboards) and a cellist. By god, it bordered on being a lounge act. The sound was certainly more refined than when only the four members play. That version is rowdier, noisier, much more dangerous, and unconcerned if a little thing like melody gets lost in the jangular din. Even when Gretta Cohn was in the band, you rarely could hear her despite the fact that she was plopped down right up there front and center, obscenely straddling her instrument.

Last night’s cello player got stuck somewhere way in the back, but you could hear every stroke of her bow (Every time I heard Cohn play, she might as well have been playing a cardboard cut-out of a cello). Whether it’s their new songs or the arrangements or the deft touch of the soundman, utter noise no longer dominates the ensemble. Cursive has become less metal and more mellow, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. I noticed early in the set that a stone sober Tim Kasher was doing a lot of finger-pointed pontificating along withother weird hand gestures while he sang (At one point, he sang while holding the back of his right hand against his left cheek. Try that right now and imagine how odd it looks). It didn’t dawn on me until about halfway through the set that the only way he could be doing all those gestures was by not playing his guitar. Ted Stevens now is the dominate guitar player, and maybe always has been, though I remember Kasher being much bolder with his ax in the old days.

All that instrumental restraint meant that Kasher was much more out front with his vocals, which have never sounded better — maybe because this was the first show of the tour and he’s well-rested. Kasher showed his full vocal range, from the low death rattle to the usual Robert Smith-ian howl, to the classic bluesman grunt to a girlish falsetto complete with high-pitched squeal. Rarely has he sang with such broad, emotional range.

The set, however, seemed short, though the band mixed it up pretty well with material from the last three albums. Songs off Happy Hollow rightfully took the lead. For me, the new songs (“Big Bang” “Dorothy…” “Bad Sects”) were the night’s highlights (but then again, I love the new album) along with the few from Domestica (“Lament for Pretty Baby,” “Night I Lost the Will to Fight”). There were a couple weird interpretive numbers that bordered on noodling, and a few songs that I didn’t recognize where Kasher seemed to be wandering.

Keeping with the restraint theme, even Kasher’s between-song monologues — which can go on for five minutes or more — were kept to a minimum. There was only one real rant about five songs in where he declared his unconditional love for Nebraska, saying that if you’re from Nebraska, it’s okay to say it sucks, but if you’re not, than fuck you, or something along those lines. Kasher said he feels safe in Nebraska “but not in some sort of weird, racial way.” (I’m paraphrasing.) He later introduced the band but skipped the core line-up, only saying “these guys are trying their hardest to smile tonight.” What the hell did that mean?

Tonight we all have to squeeze into The 49’r for The Terminals CD release show with The Shanks and Now Archimedes! I see from perusing the Star City webboard that CDs will be in hand and available. I suggest you go to the show and buy one along with a copy of The Shanks’ new 7-inch. You may also want to pick up a record player at Sol’s or Best Buy while you’re driving around… you’ll need it.

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Column 100 — Metal Machine Music
The Terminals turn up the noise.

I was driving west on I-80 headed to Lincoln doing close to 90 because everyone else was and you either keep up or get run right off the road. No one told me about all the construction, the constant “Stay In Your Lane” warning signs that flipped past as the road jerked indiscriminately in odd directions, the left lane mere inches from large concrete barriers designed to keep semis and large SUVs from jumping into oncoming traffic. Lord only knows what hitting those could do to something like my Mini Cooper, which has a wheelbase akin to a rollerskate and the suspension of a go-kart. Every time my tiny tires found a piece of grooved pavement, it jerked the Mini in the wrong direction, either toward the deadly barriers or the adjacent lane crowded by a fleet of Voyagers, Caravans and Ram-tough Dodge SUVs that towered over me, blocking my view.

Meanwhile, blaring on my car stereo was the new CD by The Terminals, the band I was headed to Lincoln to interview. I’d seen them a number of times at O’Leaver’s and The 49’r, playing hep-cat cool retro garage punk spiked by Dave Goldberg’s gospel-infused organ twirls, frontwoman Liz Hitt’s snarling, jagged guitar riffs and Brooks Hitt’s beefy stick work. Fun stuff.

The CD, however, sounds nothing like that. Instead, most of the songs sound like a room filled with industrial power tools — jack hammers, grinders, band-saws — tearing through a concrete wall while an angry monkey pounds on a metal slab with a stone hammer. The recording is blown-out and raw. By the time I arrived at the Hitts’ Lincoln home, my back was as tight as an iron rod and I could already feel the tension-pain in my neck that would haunt me the following day.

To say that The Terminals are not entirely thrilled with their Dead Beat Records debut, Forget About Never, would be an understatement.

“The first time I heard it I was furious,” Goldberg said. “I called Liz with a list of complaints and got to No. 1 before she hung up. There are parts of the record that border on migraine-inducing industrial noise.”

The story behind the recording began when Liz sent a handful of 7-inch records to Tom Spencer, the label chief at Dead Beat Records, hoping to get him interested in Brimstone Howl, another band on Hitts’ and Goldberg’s Boom Chick label. She also threw in some Terminals recordings just for kicks. “They were quite impressive,” Spencer said of the Terminals. “So I told the band that I was interested in doing their debut album. After deciding on the track list, we got Andy Caffrey from The Horrors to record the album, and it turned out great.”

Caffrey, Liz said, is “hot shit, and we accidentally made the mistake of telling Tom we knew him.”

The band recorded the album live at The Zoo Bar when it was closed. Amps were placed in the bathrooms while the drum set was on stage. “(Caffrey) ran everything into this fucking box of noise and what came out the other side became the record,” Liz said. “Getting Caffrey to record it was Tom’s way of getting us credibility with these (types of) bands.”

“With Andy, you take the good with the bad,” Brooks said of Caffrey. “He has a weird view of things. He’s the most over-the-top guy doing this kind of recording.”

“The aesthetic is similar to other stuff you hear on Dead Beat,” Goldberg explained. “The audience they’re catering to are total speed freaks that enjoy that type of thing because they’re always in that state of mind.”

“Uh, I don’t know if trashing our record during the interview is the way to go,” Brooks added sheepishly. The fact is, the band actually likes the record, and so do I. The recording is almost artsy in its brazen, abrasive approach. The wall of static punk rock is aggressive and unnerving, and ultimately, very cool.

Goldberg said it took a few spins before his hatred for the recording turned into admiration. “Some of it is awesome. I’m pretty sure that people in Europe that are fans of this style of recording will go ape-shit over it. Most bands wouldn’t put it out, and that aspect of it I enjoy. It is, dare I say, controversial.”

He is concerned, however, that the stark contrast between the record and their usual live sound could result in some confusion, if not disappointment. “I’m afraid that people who are into the record will see us live and say ‘What’s this shit?’ and by that same token, people who like us live will buy this record and say ‘What’s this shit?'”

Replicating the record’s sound, however, is out of the question. “It would take a lot of expensive or broken equipment for us to sound like that on stage, Goldberg said. “Perhaps we should start poking holes in our PA speakers.”

Omaha fans will get a chance to check it out Friday, Nov. 10, when The Terminals celebrates the official release of Forget About Never at The 49’r with Now, Archimedes! and Boom Chick artist The Shanks, which also will be celebrating the release of their “Cut Me” 7-inch single. For those of you driving down from Lincoln for the show, you may want to wait until you get home to listen to the CD, for your nerves’ sake. Drive safely.

Before we get to the news, just a quick reminder that it’s election day, which means you need to get your lazy ass to the polls and vote. I can’t remember the last time an election was more important. Check out the Douglas Co. Election Commission website to find your poling place and to see a sample ballot. Do it, people.

Onward…

Anonymous American frontman Matt Whipkey is on the mend after injuring himself Oct. 20 in a bizarre scissors accident in his bedroom. “It’s hard to explain what happened,” Whipkey said. Apparently he was using a pair of scissors to cut plastic zip ties that were holding together a bundle of guitar cables. “I got to the second to last tie and was holding it with my left hand and cutting with my right hand,” he said. “The scissors slipped and stabbed into my left index finger on the palm side underneath the knuckle. It severed the tendon in that finger.”

As a result of the injury, Whipkey couldn’t bend his finger at the knuckle. “For a professional guitar player, it’s as big a nightmare as it gets, right up there with losing your hand,” he said. Whipkey went under the knife right before Halloween to have the flexor tendon repaired and now has a huge scar on his finger beneath a cast that he’ll wear for the next month. Rehab is ongoing and it will take several months before the finger is easy to move. He has plenty of motivation to get back in playing shape with a 30-day solo tour scheduled to begin Jan. 10 and a CD release show slated for Dec. 30 at Sokol Underground.

Although the prognosis is good, Whipkey’s doctor tells him he’ll never play exactly like he did before. Time will tell. “It’s difficult to watch people play guitar now, especially at shows. It’s maddening,” he said. “I gained massive perspective on life as a result of the injury.”

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The first news about Bright Eyes’ forthcoming LP is finally hitting the interweb. NME reports (from something they read in Spin) that the follow-up to I’m Wide Awake/Digital Ash will be a rather dark and stormy affair. “The apocalypse is a prevalent theme in my new songs,” Oberst said. “There’s a feeling in the world right now like everything is unravelling, but maybe that’s not a bad thing. I’m not convinced that the human race is good for this planet anyway.” Sounds like there will be some tsunami and hurricane-flavored country psychedelic folk rockers in the batch, along with songs about “telepathy” (unless Oberst was pulling Spin‘s chain). Read the full NME item here. Omahans will likely get a sneak preview of the new material at the Dec. 15 Bright Eyes/Simon Joyner/Bruces benefit concert at Sokol Auditorium. Tickets went on sale last Saturday, so if you wanna go, you better click on this here One Percent Productions link and buy some tix before it sells out.

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It’s a busy Tuesday night musicwise, with two very hot shows going on around town. The Saddle Creek Bar will be hosting Starlight Desperation, Virgasound and This Blush ($7, 9 p.m.), while a few blocks away Ontario band Tokyo Police Club and Bombardment Society will be playing a rare Tuesday night show at The 49’r (No idea on the price for this one, though it’ll probably be around $5 and will start around 10).

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