by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Three shows this weekend, all featuring local acts. Don’t worry, there’s a boatload of tours coming through in the coming months.

Tonight at Reverb Lounge it’s a 4-act bill headlined by Cat Piss, a noise rock trio featuring Nate Wolf (Pagan Athletes), Sam Lipsett and Casey Plucinski. I’ve yet to catch these “cats.” Maybe tonight. Opening is Nate’s dad, the legendary John Wolf, and his latest heavy rock project with Chris Seibken and Jerry Hug called Bad Bad Men. Also on the bill are Nowhere and DJ Beatlebitch. 9 p.m., $10. 

Tomorrow night (Saturday), Specter Poetics a.k.a. Jack McLaughlin, headlines at The Sydney in Benson with Rare Candies and Thee Bots. $5, 9 p.m. 

And finally on Sunday, the one-man party machine of Solid Goldberg (a.k.a. Dave Goldberg) opens for Ghanian hip-hop artist Ata Kak at Reverb Lougne. 8 p.m., $15. 

That’s it for shows. In the new music category, former Omahan now LA dude Nate Van Fleet (who you remember from See Through Dresses) released a new track today under his Big Nope moniker called “Golden.” The track’s sound was influenced by Big Star and early Matthew Sweet (as well as Teenage Fanclub). Check it out and have a great 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 © 2022 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Bandcamp is waving its share of revenue on all purchases at the site today.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The last time Bandcamp waved its cut on all online shares for a day it resulted in $4.3 million in music and merch sales. It also resulted in some pretty sloooow Bandcamp server speeds.

Well, Bandcamp is doing it again today, waving its “revenue share” on all shares at its website today until midnight PDT. In addition, 150 artists and record labels are offering donations and special merchandise (check out the list). It’s kind of like Records Store Day but for online music sales. Among the labels taking part is Saddle Creek Records, which is giving 100 percent of revenue from generated sales to artists.

Actually, most of the good indie labels are participating this way, including Matador, Merge, Captured Tracks, Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar and more.

With that in mind, here are a few recordings to check out (and buy!):

Big Nope, the new project from See Through Dresses’ drummer Nate Van Fleet, today released the 3-song Back to You EP. Recorded and mixed by Ben Brodin with contributions from Nick Costa and Charlie Finnigan, this is the best Big Nope release yet. Buy here.

Last month’s Live at The Sydney live stream will be remembered as one of the few bright spots from this COVID misery we’re currently suffering, and now you can relive it after the pandemic has subsided, thanks to today’s release of Mike Schlesinger – Live at The Sydney. The six-song EP is one of the best live sets I’ve heard in a long time. Buy here.

Speaking of live sets, Simon Joyner today released Simon Joyner & The Bingo Trappers Oct. 21st 2012, an 11-song LP that features Joyner favorites like “The Only Living Boy in Omaha,” “Three Well-Aimed Arrows” and “Christine,” along with a couple Bingo Trappers covers. Buy here. Also check out Joyner’s Bandcamp merch page that includes a new T-shirt designed by urban folkie Jeffrey Lewis, with all profits today going to Food Bank of the Heartland and MusiCares Foundation.

Seminal ‘90s punk band Poster Children today released a live recording from their 1992 Cabaret Metro show. It’s a scorcher. Buy here.

Finally, released today is a vintage track from Lincoln band The Golden Age, called “Home is a Hotel,” recorded in the first half of the 2000s. The band featured Rob Hawkins on guitar/vocals with Tim Jensen, Alisa Heinzman and Ian Aeillo. Ah, where are they now? Buy here.

Have a great 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 © 2020 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Happy Monday. How about a slice of pop candy to brighten up your home offices (or whatever)…

Last week See Through Dresses’ drummer Nate Van Fleet released another two-song EP from his band Big Nope. Recorded by Nate and STD bandmate Mathew Carroll last fall, listen for the Benson shout-out in A-side “Kid I” and enjoy the party slacker vibe of flip-side “Throwaways.” Both tracks are here. So when are we going to see Big Nope on stage? Hey, when are we going to see anyone again on stage?

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Last week Pitchfork published an article about Apple Music’s $50 million COVID-19 fund and what it means for indie labels. Apple’s program offers interest-free loans against future royalties to indie labels and distributors that earn more than $10,000 through Apple Music per quarter and have a deal with Apple.

While it seems like a generous officer, the details can get rather complicated as to who qualifies. And let’s face it, this isn’t a grant, it’s a loan, so while Apple may be waiving interest on that $50 mil, we’re talking about a company with $207 billion in free cash on hand.

Among those quoted in the Pitchfork article is Saddle Creek label exec Robb Nansel, who said he doesn’t plan on taking advantage of Apple’s generosity.

“I’m interested to see what the terms are. It’s not like they’re just giving you free money.” Nansel is quoted as saying in the article. “They have a lot of cash and if they can help some people out that can be cash-strapped, it seems like it could be a good thing.”

That said, the last thing struggling labels need right now is to get further in debt.

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Speaking of Saddle Creek Records, the label has declared April the “Month of the Album” and is offering a 15 percent discount on its entire catalog with the offer code: SUPPORT. It makes it as good a time as any to finally pick up a copy of that Beep Beep album you’ve always wanted… Find out more.

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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 © 2020 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Everyone’s looking back on the ’10s decade as we close it out, and I will as well, but on this #TBT I thought it would be fun to look back at how we closed out the ’90s. And thus I give you…

1999: The Year in Music

Who remembers these guys?

Originally published in Lazy-i and The Reader, Jan. 6, 2000 — We can only hope that the current state of popular music in no way reflects what’s to come in the so-called “new millennium.” The 1900s were ushered out of our collective psyches under the rattle and hum of the worst possible soundtrack for the end of anything, let alone the ’90s.

If this year is remembered from a popular music standpoint, it will be for the rise of perhaps the two most vacant and uninteresting musical trends in recent memory: boy groups and Goon Rock.

It was impossible to ignore the rise of “boy groups,” such as Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees, ‘N Sync (and the female equivalent — this year’s Debbie Gibson/Tiffany known as Britney Spears). Back in the heyday of New Kids on the Block, children (mostly young women) “ooohed” and “aaaahed” over those five post-pubescent, lip-synching wunderkids whose faces adorned such rough-hewed music publications as Tiger Beat and 16. Adults certainly didn’t take Menudo or the New Kids seriously. They smiled at the popularity of say, Vanilla Ice, and laughed warmly during the annual Christmas parties when little Jason or Caitlin would be dragged out to the living room in their footie pajamas to imitate the dance steps of their favorite Saturday morning cartoon boy groups. Soon, New Kids quietly disappeared into the “where are they now” category.

Things certainly have changed. Look at the year in review issue of Rolling Stone, regarded as one of the premium rock music journals of our day, and you’ll see large, full-page photos of Backstreet Boys lauded as one of the best groups of ’99. Throughout the year respected music publications have featured chin-rubbing analyses of the lyrical content of the latest ‘N Sync opus, along with embarrassing, sacrilegious comparisons of acts like 98 Degrees and Britney to the great musical artists of the ’50s. MTV, once (and very briefly) a bellwether for important pop musical trends, quickly found itself with its pants down, fondly stroking off the ‘N Sync boys during “serious interviews” in the TRL studios. It is painful to watch a once-respected rock journalist like Kurt Loder seriously interview five dancing puppets who haven’t written a single note of music, who in a time well-past would have been laughed off as the limp-syncing aerobic instructors that they are. A breathless following — not only of children but also mini-van-driving adults — has given boy groups credibility that before would have been reserved only for serious musicians.

Put simply, those sexy, soon-to-flameout boy groups ruled in ’99, but they weren’t alone.

Or these guys…

Rising from the ghettos of suburban Los Angeles and the posh, baggy-Gap-adorned mini-malls across the U.S. rose the dumbest of dumbed-down heavy-metal rawk. Call it “Goon Rock” for a lack of a better term. The playas: Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, the Kottonmouth Kings (note the bizarre use of the letter K in all these band names?) Insane Clown Posse and Eminem. The music: poorly played and conceptualized white-boy rap, where the constituents brag about being playas and “keeping it real” with such mundane lyrics as “I did it for the nookie/And you can take this cookie/And stick it up your Yeah.” Limp Bizkit is the fully realized commercialization of white-boy pseudo-urban music taken to new levels of oafishness. And the kids loved it.

It wasn’t all shit in ’99. There were a number of highlights, few of which were heard on your radio. Among the best CDs of the year:

1. Those Bastard Souls — Debt & Departure
2. Nine Inch Nails — The Fragile
3. Guster — Lost and Gone Forever
4. Burning Airlines — Mission Control
5. The Faint — Blank Wave Arcade
6. Pet Shop Boys — Nightlife
7. Pavement — Terror Twilight
8. Shannon Wright — Flight Safety
9. Built to Spill — Keep It Like a Secret
10. Reset — My Still Life
11. Folk Implosion — One Part Lullaby
12. Beck — Midnight Vultures

In addition to Reset and The Faint, other notable releases by local bands included Simon Joyner’s The Lousy Dance, (given a four-out-of-five rating in the latest issue of Alternative Press); Bright Eyes’ Every Day and Every Night EP (which, along with The Faint, continues to climb the CMJ charts), and Ravine’s soundtrack to the movie Killing Diva.

Saddle Creek Records’ bands continue to be the shining hope for relevance of the Omaha music scene. If 2000 sees any breakthroughs locally, it’ll come from Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes), who will release a full-length CD this year that will push him to the next level of national exposure and acceptance. But before we get into predictions for 2000, let’s take a look at how I did last year. In my ’98 year-in-review column in The Reader, I predicted: the death of swing (hit!), a loud-then-soft reaction to a new Nine Inch Nails CD (hit again!), the rise of Oi! music (miss!), the continued rise in Internet music promotion (no duh!), another major Omaha signing a la Mulberry Lane (miss!), the opening of a new Omaha showcase lounge and the closing of a beloved one (The Music Box, although its yet to actually open its doors; the closing of the Stork Club, though I thought The Cog Factory would be the victim). Four for six, not too bad…

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God, I don’t miss the ’90s.

Meanwhile, back in 2019…

Tonight at OutrSpaces, 1258 So. 13th St., it’s the stage debut of Big Nope, the new project by See Through Dresses drummer (and now Criteria tour drummer) Nate Van Fleet. Nate’s taking the frontman position this time handling guitars and vocals, with Liv Baxter also on guitar, Aaron Lee on bass and Zachary Roland on drums.

The band has a two-song single on Bandcamp: “Never Going Outside” b/w “Grass is Greener,” recorded at Little Machine by Van Fleet and Matthew Carroll (also of See Through Dresses), mixed by studio wizard Ben Brodin at Hand Branch.

Bach Mai opens the show at 8 p.m. $10 suggested donation supports the artists.

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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 © 2019 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Big Nope is a new project from See Through Dresses drummer Nate Van Fleet.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Work kept me from the clubs this weekend, but I hope y’all had a grand time without me. Why do I miss all the fun?

A couple new bands cropped up via social media in the past few days.

Big Nope is a new project by See Through Dresses drummer Nate Van Fleet. Nate’s taking the frontman position this time handling guitars and vocals, with Liv Baxter also on guitar, Aaron Lee on bass and Zachary Roland on drums.

The band has a two-song single on Bandcamp: “Never Going Outside” b/w “Grass is Greener,” recorded at Little Machine by Van Fleet and Matthew Carroll (also of See Through Dresses), mixed by studio wizard Ben Brodin at Hand Branch.

The tune is upbeat indie pop that kind of reminds me of Thin Lizzy, I guess because of Van Fleet’s vocal phrasing on the A-side more than anything (and the arrangement). The B-side is more traditional indie. Pretty cool! Can’t wait to see them live.

I just saw Van Fleet play drums in Las Cruxes. See Through Dresses is also gearing up, and now this. What else can he pull out of his hat? Check out the single at their bandcamp page:

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Another new one is Blondo, a project by Lincoln’s Alex Malnack. This is straight-up emo-pop a la The Get Up Kids or Saves the Day, very pop-punk. On the debut 6-song EP, Heritage, Malnack plays everything but the drums, which are handled by Salt Creek’s Nate Skinner. Malnack is currently filling out his roster to play these tracks live.

This one came to my attention via Alex’s pop, Brent Malnack, the proprietor of Mars Bar and Grill, the West Omaha brew pub / performance space formerly known as Growler USA. Brent went out on his own (Growler was a chain) because he said the Growler folks weren’t down with his continued music focus for the club.

That being the case, Malnack is eagerly looking for bands to play Mars. Hit him up at the bar’s Facebook page. Tap into that unexplored West Omaha music market.

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Unexplained Death is back, this time taking aim at Mitch McConnell. Check it below via Spotify. We’re all still waiting for Whipkey and Co. to make their stage debut…

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Tonight at The Trap Room (located just north of The Slowdown), Supermoon is playing a free show. Supermoon is Omaha ex-pat / legend Jake Bellows (Neva Dinova) and members of Whispertown. 8 p.m. and free!

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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 © 2019 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.