Tonight: The Gunshy, Austin Britton, and Bill Latham at O’Leaver’s. The Gunshy are from Lancaster, PA/Chicago, IL and play souring indie rock fronted by a guy with a raspy voice that’s a cross between Tom Waits and Dicky Barrett. They’ve got a new album coming out on Latest Flame Records. The track I listened to on their site prominently featured trumpets. Wonder if they’ll have a trumpet player in tow. Austin Britton plays in Kite Pilot. Good stuff. $5, 9:30 p.m. Down at Sokol Underground, Irving, CA, band Thrice is playing with Underoath and Veda. $18, 9 p.m.

Saturday: The Cops, featuring former Omahan Mike Jaworski, is playing at The 49’r with Mt. Fuji labelmates Little Brazil and Race for Titles. The Cops are touring their new CD Get Good or Stay Bad, due in stores Nov. 1 — consider it a modern revisionist version of The Clash’s London Calling. Nice. $5, 9ish. Meanwhile, The Show Is the Rainbow is headlining downtown at Sokol Underground with Books on Tape and Lincoln legends Her Flyaway Manner. $7, 9 p.m. And if that wasn’t enough, those swinging kids, One Mummy Case, are playing a gig down at The Foundry Coffeehouse on 60th and Maple. 8 p.m., free.

Sunday: Underground hip-hop artist Sage Francis performs with Sole & Sol.iLLaquists of Sound at Sokol Underground. $15, 9 p.m.

–Got comments? Post ’em here.—

Column 46 — Omaha’s Other Record Label
Public Eyesore could be an earsore to some

Sure, everyone knows about Saddle Creek Records, but did you know that there’s another record label right here in river city that produces CDs that are distributed all over the globe by bands that tour all over the globe to fans all over the globe?

Public Eyesore Records has been thriving right under your nose for the past seven years. How could such an enterprise exist without your knowledge? Probably because most — if not all — of the bands on the label’s roster are known only by the tiniest of audiences who listen, collect, perform and enjoy a genre of music that’s been referred to as “avant-garde,” “minimalist” or “experimental.” In fact, your typical FM radio listener probably wouldn’t consider it “music” at all.

“I call it music,” said Public Eyesore owner Bryan Day, who operates the label out of his midtown apartment. “I might call it ‘sound art’ or something like that. Referring to it as ‘experimental noise’ is naïve terminology since there are so many subgenres within it.”

As research for this article, Day sent a care package that included a handful of CD-Rs in colorful cardboard sleeves, jewel-cased CDs and some vinyl. Among them:

Monotract, Pagu. Released in 2002, the LP contains rhythms beneath layers of electronic noise/static/squawks that sound like messages received from outer space. Amidst the chaos are tracks like “Birao de Lao,” a pleasant tone poem lightly sewn together with clicks that fall on a beat.

Jad Fair and Jason Willett, Superfine (May 2003). Known as the frontman of the underground punk band Half Japanese, this solo collaboration between Fair and HJ band mate Willett is almost commercial sounding. Fair’s solo work has been released on such labels as Kill Rock Stars, Jagjaguwar and Matador, but this is still an oddity in the Public Eyesore tradition. Fair and Willett play a variety of instruments, pick out weird melodies and blend it with shrieks and comic vocals. The 20-song “enhanced” CD also includes 155 mp3 tracks for more than five hours of additional music.

Blue Collar, Lovely Hazel. Released this year, the trio plays trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone, percussion and “sings.” Opening track “48/1” sounds like boiler pipes moaning in an old building or someone moving furniture in the apartment upstairs. The bleeping horns have an improvisational feel and often build to a noisy conclusion. Along with Superfine, it’s among the label’s best sellers.

Jorge Casto, Sin Titulo #2. The 2001 CD-R contains pulsing noises like faraway satellites that slowly mutate into ambient tones over its single 44-minute track. Atmospheric and somewhat soothing, it has no discernible melody.

Jesse Krakow, Oceans in the Sun. Krakow is a member of Fast and Bulbous, a Captain Beefheart-influenced avant-prog band. The 2004 CD-R opens with “Tree for Me,” a track that features beatbox, organ and Krakow actually singing a melody.

Onnyk, Private Idioms. The 2001 CD-R contains two live sessions recorded in October 1995 and January 1997 in Morioka, Japan, that sound like stringed-instrument improvisation but could be confused with random noodling. The band includes Day’s wife, Yoko Sato.

Naturaliste, A Clamor Half Heard. The Omaha-based ensemble has included among its members Lonnie Methe, Simon Joyner, Chris Deden, Charles Lareau, Chris Fischer and Day himself. This 2001 CD-R is a wall of noise, distortion, pure nihilism that’s both grating and disturbing.

Day admits that to the untrained or unwilling ear, some of his label’s music will sound like noise. He markets his catalog nationally via magazine ads and the Internet (his website is publiceyesore.com), but he’s never focused on Omaha, though his discs are available at The Antiquarium record store.

“There’ such a small market for this kind of stuff to begin with,” he said. “It’s something where if you’re naïve to the whole scene you can’t appreciate it as much as if you’re actually a part of it. It’s difficult to get into unless you’re doing something with experimental sound.”

Despite the limited audience, Public Eyesore has released 14 recordings so far this year and is on target to release his 100th catalog item by year-end. CD releases have 1,000 to 2,000-copy runs. CD-R releases are painstakingly hand-produced in lots of 250 — a process that Day said he’s dropping because of the manual labor required to cut and assemble the sleeves.

The work doesn’t end there. Day also books tours for his bands in the U.S., Europe and Asia. “The tours are much more successful in Europe,” he said. “Japan has a big scene as well, and there are some places on the coasts of the US where you can tour successfully.”

That said, his own band, Paper Mache — which he describes as “definitely not as loud as Naturaliste and easier to understand” — is taking off on a two-week tour of the US heartland later this month, including gigs in Iowa, Minneapolis, Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Tennessee and Missouri. “It should be interesting,” he said. “You never know who’s going to show up.”

Last night’s Built to Spill show sold out sometime yesterday afternoon as expected and when I showed up at around 11 Sokol Underground was filled to the gills, it was like stepping into a third-world Customs holding tank, but with smokers — lots of them. I chatted with someone outside the venue while one of the openers was on stage. “What’s going on in there?” I asked. “Just a lot of sweating and secondhand lung disease.” There’s something weird about Built to Spill attracting so many smokers. Maybe unbeknownst to me they’re sponsored by American Spirit, though I didn’t see anyone passing out free pastel-colored boxes of their cigarettes.

As per usual, Lea Thompson and Dave Foley were there. Okay, guys, it’s time to go back to Hollywood now (I guess their movie wraps tomorrow). I never saw Foley. Thompson spent part of the show on the stairwell leading outside, I assume to gulp in fresh air or something else. I also saw some people who looked exactly like Steven Spielberg, Vincent Gallo, Sean Penn, and Napoleon Dynamite, as well as a guy who looked exactly like Doug Martsch, though he was older and balder than the Martsch I saw at Sokol Underground six years ago. But other than playing guitar better — and longer — he and his band didn’t sound much different. Martsch isn’t exactly a stage ham. He stands up there with his guitar, surrounded by four other guys, and does his thing, separating songs by saying “Thanks a lot.” We got treated to at least three songs from Keep It Like a Secret. I can’t tell you more than that because I don’t have any of his other CDs. I thought the band sounded tight, though the mix was too muddy for my taste. It wasn’t as loud as typical shows (maybe all the bodies in the room were acting as buffers) and I was able to take out my earplugs for most of it. The biggest complaint I heard was that the songs went on too long. He used them merely as starting points for 10-minute “jams” (probably the wrong word to use since these guys are anything but a jam band). I was standing in the back of the room toward the end of the set and one die-hard fan I knew stopped to say so long. “Where are you going?” I asked. “It’s just more of this for 20 minutes” he said, referring to another one of the structured rock odysseys that seemed to tail up and down forever. I hung around just to see if they played “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” which I had heard they were playing at other shows. Sure enough, Martsch and Company launched into it as the encore, but I left before he finished his solos. It was a looong set, probably over 90 minutes.

Tonight is Sleater-Kinney with The Gossip. I figured this one would have sold out by now, too. Seems like I’m the only person in the continental United States that doesn’t like S-K’s new CD The Woods. It’s been lauded as one of the best records of the year in almost every indie/rock music publication. I think it sounds like they tried too hard to be hard, and sacrificed melodies for gronk to create a Zep-meets-grunge noisefest better suited for L7. That won’t stop me from going tonight, though (being exhausted might). $14, 9 p.m., with two bands, it should be over by 11:30. We’ll see.

–Got comments? Post ’em here.—

Something of a surprise is that tonight’s Built to Spill show at Sokol Underground is not sold out (at least at the time of this posting). In a post on SLAM Omaha last night, One Percent Productions said that there were fewer than 50 tickets left. I have no doubt that they’ll be gone before show starts. I blame their lack of sell-out power on the fact that the band hasn’t released a new CD in four years (frontman Doug Martsch’s solo album, Now You Know, came out three years ago), which made me wonder why they’re touring now. Apparently they’re playing a number of new songs for an album to be released this fall. Funny, when I interviewed them waaay back in 1999 they were an icon band that had just signed to Warner Bros. and were positioned to become huge. Meanwhile, a fellow Pacific Northwest-based band that took root in their shadow called Death Cab for Cutie was quietly emerging. Well, we all know the rest of the story.

The last BTS show was one of the smokiest in Sokol Underground history — that was before they installed the SmokeEaters though. Look for a cover of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” during the encore. Opening are Mike Johnson (ex-Dinosaur Jr.) and Helvetia. $15, 9 p.m. This will be an event.

–Got comments? Post ’em here.—

I essentially took the weekend off from hitting shows and got some well-deserved sleep as we prepare for a big week’s worth of huge shows, well, two for sure anyway. Before we get to that, however, there’s tonight’s paring at O’Leaver’s — San Francisco indie rock band Audrye Sessions, who’s music is described on their site as “beautiful and bittersweet,” headlines a show with opener Mars Black — yes, that Mars Black. I’m sure there’s a good story behind all this, but you’ll have to go to O’Leaver’s to find out what it is. Also on the bill is The Cushion Theory. $5, 9:30 p.m. It’s day 3 of 11 straight days of One Percent Productions shows.

–Got comments? Post ’em here.—

Strange pairing of bands last night. Not sure why The Double — essentially a noise/art band — is touring with Vanderslice — a run-of-the-mill indie singer/songwriter.

I figured The Double would come off experimental live. They did. Imagine Ian Curtis fronting The Fall with lots of drone and you begin to get the drift. A four-piece featuring organ/keyboards right in the middle and nice drums but with no real beat. At times it reminded me of Interpol if Interpol weren’t a dance band. Trippy stuff that came close to reaching epic proportions but never quite got there. Funny how their single, “Icy,” sounds just as out of place in their live set as it does the CD. I assume Matador listened to the demos and said “You can have all the strange organs and jangle-drone shit you want, but we need a single to use on the comp.” And it is a good single.

Vanderslice started out strong — I loved the first two songs — but then he got into his regular indie-pop groove, which is a bit too vanilla for my taste — sort of a less fun version of Matthew Sweet or a watered down Ted Leo. The crowd seemed into it, but after about a half hour people started to leave. I’m somewhat guilty of never having given Vanderslice much of a chance from the beginning of his career. I never got into Mass Suicide Occult Figurines when it came out in ’00, and I still don’t get what all the fuss is about. Seems like a nice guy, though. Head count: I’m guessing 125. I left before the encore.

A glance at the weekend’s best:

Tonight: Lee from Bad Luck Charm does a solo set at Mick’s. Cross town at O’Leaver’s Shinyville is headlining a four-band bill consisting of bands I’ve never heard of. I’ve never heard Shinyville, either, but I hear good things about them. $5, 9:30.

Saturday: The Street Urchins at The 49’r for what’s being billed as “their final Omaha show.” Opening is Brimstone Howl. This will be a mob scene. Come out and see The Urchins one last time so you can say you saw The Urchins. They’re that good, by the way. $5. Also Saturday, Mal Madrigal is at O’Leaver’s opening for Medications (ex-Smart Went Crazy, ex-Faraquet). $5, 9:30. Down at The Goofy Foot, Kite Pilot is opening for First Fight recording artist The Floating City, a straight-up, laid-back indie band. It’s an early show — 8 p.m. — and will cost you $4.

Sunday: Good ol’ William Elliott Whitmore is back, this time at O’Leaver’s. It’s worth it just to see a 27-year-old white guy sound like a 70-year-old black man singing Texas blues a la Blind Willie Johnson. Opening is local blues artist Sarah Benck sounding like a 20-year-old white girl. $5, 9:30.

–Got comments? Post ’em here.—

This week’s printed column in The Reader is a tightened up version of the Oct. 1 Lazy-i entry/review of last Friday’s Two Gallants show. There are a couple tiny differences, but nothing worth putting online again. Next week you’ll get a fresh column and a fresh feature story about another record label here in town, one that you probably don’t even know exists…

Tonight it’s John Vanderslice, McCarthy Trenching and The Double at Sokol Underground. I know more people who are interested in seeing the openers than the headliner. McCarthy Trenching is Omahan Dan McCarthy (Mayday). Brooklyn’s The Double is a new band on Matador Records that released its label debut, Loose on the Air, Sept. 13. Their music can be trippy or jangly, experimental (in a Flaming Lips sort of way) and even straight forward (“Icy” off their new CD is a bouncy, organ-driven rocker). There used to be a time when being on Matador was all it took to draw a crowd. Those were days… $8, 9 p.m. Should be fun.

–Got comments? Post ’em here.—

I knew it was going to be weird when I saw the sign out front of Sammy Sortino’s a.k.a. Slammers that welcomed “Piano Man Mark Mallman.” When I walked in, the guy who took my money said, “You here to see Mark Malberg?” Uh, you man Mallman? “Mallberg.” OK.

The show was supposed to start at 7:30. I got there at 8:30 and the opening acoustic guy playing cover songs was still on stage. He went on to play for another hour.

Mallman didn’t mind. Including me, there was only three people there to see him play. He said the venue wouldn’t let him use the big P.A. stacked on either side of the stage. Instead he was told to use a couple tiny Peavey amps the size of cereal boxes. That meant that he wasn’t going to be able to do his regular show, which involved he and a drummer playing on top of prerecorded instrument tracks – supposedly recreating the full sound heard on his records. Instead, his drummer watched with the rest of us, videotaping Mallman’s solo set. Lord knows he wanted a record of his gig in Omaha.

I guess it was the kind of disaster show that all touring bands dread. Here was a guy who, just a year ago, opened for Head of Femur at an SRO Sokol Underground show. His records are released on one of the more respected indie labels – Badman Records – home to such acts as My Morning Jacket, Mark Kozelek, Rebecca Gates and Hayden. And now here he was, playing in an Omaha pizza restaurant, propped up on a riser looking at row upon row of empty tables. Let’s face it, he could have bagged — he could have simply canceled the gig and passed up his portion of the $15 door. But instead he hunkered down and pulled out a memorable solo set that included a couple songs from his self-released comp CD, which I highly recommend you find. Heck, Mallman didn’t even mind when someone walked up to the stage between songs and asked him to play a cover – any cover. “I might be on a great indie label but I’m not too big to do a cover,” he said before going on to do a half-assed version of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” that included a few new lyrics written especially for the occasion. Priceless.

I gotta tell you, Mallman has a helluva voice and knows what he’s doing on a piano. The whole set sounded kind of Elton John/Billy Joel-esque, and I think he knew it. His songs, however, took on a darker hue when sung alone. I talked to him before the show as he was compiling his set list, crossing off songs he couldn’t do solo. He said he felt kind of weird playing songs about loneliness, death and incarceration while families sat around and ate pizza and watched the Yankees. Let’s hope Mr. Mallberg — uh Mallman — has better luck tonight in Denver. He deserves it.

–Got comments? Post ’em here.—

Somewhere in Omaha tonight, Mark Mallman performs. I’ve been told by Omaha’s busiest bass player, Mike Tulis (The Third Men, The Monroes, Simon Joyner), that this show should not be missed, that Mallman is the ultimate showman. I’m listening to his new CD, Seven Years, released on Eagles Golden Tooth, as I write this. It’s an enticing combination of Ben Folds, ELO and T. Rex sung in Mallman’s Midwest-via-Minneapolis nasal voice. His sound is relentlessly throwback, sort of a tribute to ’70s glam and so absolutely embraceable that I’m shocked he hasn’t broken through the real-but-invisible radio barriers that keep indie down. You might have seen him before as he’s opened for Guided by Voices, Beth Orton, Linda Ronstadt, Cat Power, Donovan, Tegan and Sara, Ozomatli, Everlast, Exene Cervenka, Howie Day, and Cracker, among others. Sounds good to me.

The problem: I’m not sure where he’s playing. O’Leaver’s has Mallman listed on its show schedule, but Mallman’s site says he’s playing at Slammers, formerly Sortino’s at 1414 So. 72nd. St. The venue’s shows are booked by Dreamweaver Productions, but their website is either broken or not updated. So what the hell? If I find something out that’s more definitive by lunchtime, I’ll update this page.

Noon Update: I now know that Mallman will not be playing at O’Leaver’s tonight. I assume, then, that the show will be at Slammers. If I can confirm this, I’ll update the site again when I get home tonight.

–Got comments? Post ’em here.—

Saturday night’s sparsely attended show at O’Leaver’s could very well make it onto my year-end top-10 “best shows of the year” list, just because the music was that good — two hot bands playing two hot sets for 30 or 40 people.

Jeremy Buckley — boy wonder behind the Lincoln Calling music festival — gave me a head’s up a couple weeks ago about Eagle*Seagull. So excited was he that he e-mailed me a couple of their mp3 files, one of which wasn’t properly mastered and sounded pretty bad. I didn’t hear whatever he was hearing.

Buckley was right, though. Eagle*Seagull – a band whose name is a pain in the ass to type because of the unnecessary asterisk – is a 7-piece ensemble that includes three guitars, a violin and two keyboards. You can imagine how crowded they were on O’Leaver’s “stage.” Their intricate, new wave-esque, and perfectly executed arrangements make them Nebraska’s version of The Arcade Fire – at times they sounded just like them. E*S has only been around a year or so. Lead singer Eli Mardock told me he’s well aware of Arcade’s music. Still, he didn’t list them as a specific influence, instead referencing Leonard Cohen, who they obviously sound nothing like (He said he meant it from a lyrical perspective). At other times, E*S also has an Interpol sheen. Regardless, their songs are at times more tuneful than both those bands, while during quieter moments Mardock reminded me of Jarvis Cocker and during the fast parts, a yelpy James Johnson from The Wilderness. The live set was more upbeat and focused than their new CD, which demands further study. We need to get these guys back on an Omaha stage soon.

They were followed by Oakland’s The Heavenly States, an upbeat 4-piece ensemble that prominently features violin on most songs (I could honestly barely hear E*S’s violin during their set). Unbelievably entertaining. If pushed for comparisons, Spoon or Dismemberment Plan comes to mind, but neither really fits. Leader Ted Nesseth plays a left-handed guitar and sports a wicked phrase (for whatever reason, his vocal phrasing sometimes reminded me of Phil Lynott). His between-song patter is also some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever heard on stage. The motor behind their sound, however, is their rhythm section anchored by Jeremy Gagon on drums, a veritable dynamo that keeps it simple and keeps it moving. Violinist/keyboardist Genevieve Gagon blew me away as well. I picked up a copy of their new CD, Black Comet, and while the songs were just as good, the mix sounded muddy and unfocused — it just didn’t pop from my speakers the way this band popped from the stage.

–Got comments? Post ’em here.—