Peach Kelli Pop plays tonight at Reverb Lounge.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Omaha readers already know that it would be a good idea to stay away from social media today, as all channels are being flooded with Omaha Gives solicitations.

Every year for one day every non profit in Omaha comes to Facebook and Twitter with hand in hat begging for cash to get them through the year. Fact is Omaha Gives is an effective way for them to raise money. Look, would you rather have someone asking for donations just once a year or all year long?

My advice: Jot down your list of favorite charities, bite the bullet and make your donations. Then step away from the chatter for the rest of the day. Kind of like turning off NPR during their semi-annual fund drives (after you’ve made your pledge, of course).

That said, if you’re a music fan and you’re looking for a good 501(c)(3) organization to give to, you’d be hard pressed to find a better organization than Hear Nebraska. I say this not only because I’m a founding board member of HN, but because no other non-profit does more for local music than Hear Nebraska.

HN’s sole purpose is to promote Nebraska bands and music. That’s it. If you’re in a band, consider HN your personal PR agency. It’s there to help you get people to come to your shows and buy your music. It does this through hearnebraska.org — a website that covers local bands and musicians with in-depth feature articles, interviews, videos and photos taken at performances (lots of them). The site also has the most comprehensive gig calendar for Omaha and Lincoln you can find anywhere online. HN also organizes a shit-load of programming featuring Nebraska bands all year long throughout the state.

Has Hear Nebraska ever:

— written about your band?
— covered one of your shows?
— posted photos from one of your gigs?
— promoted your upcoming concert on its calendar?
— booked your band to play one of its many programming events?

Or have you ever gone to an event sponsored by, organized by — or that you heard about from — Hear Nebraska?

Then, come on, take a second and click this link and donate to Hear Nebraska during Omaha Gives. Minimum donation is $10 — less than the price of a single movie ticket. That donation will help HN continue to promote Nebraska bands and musicians.

Do it.

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This morning Live @ O’Leavers announced via Facebook the reason why they haven’t released any new live recordings lately. The reason:

“...during an electrical storm, we happened to lose both our main and backup drives which we thought were safe as they were stored at separate locations. This means nearly everything from July to February has been lost.”

Well, not lost entirely. The data still may exists, but it’ll cost just north of $900 for a data recovery outfit to try to get the sessions back.

Among those lost sessions are live recordings of performances from Cursive, Beach Slang, Lithuania, Mike Schlesinger, Bib, Bus Gas, So So Sailors, All Dogs, Whispertown, The Subtropics, Wet Nurse, The Ridgeways, Super Moon, The Vahnevants, Brilliant Beast, Bellum Boca, Sucettes, Lithuania, Ex-Breathers, Boytoy, Eagle Seagull, Megafauna, Lineman’s Rodeo, Sean Pratt and The Sweats, Sharkmuffin, The Olympics, Tara Vaughan, MXMW, Ecstatic Vision, Pleiades and the Bear, The Sunks, Hag, Ocean Black and a ton more. As many as 85 sessions.

That’s a massive chunk of live recordings. O’Leaver’s doesn’t charge listeners for the service, so there ain’t no money to pay for the data recovery. What money they do have to invest in the Live @ O’Leaver’s project has gone toward making sure this kind of massive data crash never happens again.

“We have a better redundancy system in place now; multiple backups of each session spread across five drives placed in multiple locations and a cloud backup of the entire shebang. All told, we have over 11 terabytes of data since the February restart,” said Ian Aeillo, who does all the work surrounding Live @ O’Leaver’s.

Ian says new sessions could begin going online next week, hopefully. To whet your appetite, Ian posted the following recording from local super group Healer, recorded last October before the troubles, appropriately titled “Rainy Day Song.”

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Tonight at Reverb Lounge it’s Peach Kelli Pop. Read my 10 Questions interview with frontwoman Allie Hanlon from yesterday. Should be a high-energy show. Opening is The Way Out. $8, 9 p.m.

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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 © 2016 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Speedy Ortiz at O’Leaver’s, 8/15/15. The band plays tonight at The Waiting Room.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Peach Kelli Pop is Canadian Allie Hanlon and four other women playing jangling, abrasive, driving straight-four beach-flavored punk rock that sounds like go-carts and too much coffee. On the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it LP, Peach Kelli Pop III (2015, Burger Records), Hanlon and her band race through 10 songs in just over 20 minutes — simple math tells you that averages about two minutes per song, just long enough for punk rock. Popular themes are video games, Chinese food and conspiracy theorists as well as the usual songs of love.

We caught up with Hanlon and asked her to take our Ten Questions survey. Here’s what she had to say:

1. What is your favorite album?

Allie Hanlon: Red Cross’ s/t EP, released 1980

2. What is your least favorite song?

“(You’re) Having my Baby” by Paul Anka

3. What do you enjoy most about being in a band?

Free stuff! Just kidding, I like going on adventures, traveling and playing music with 4 really cool girls.

4. What do you hate about being in a band?

Having your work and time constantly devalued. Also rude sound people

5. What is your favorite substance (legal or illegal)?

Ice-cream & fancy cheese

6. In what city or town do you love to perform?

Tokyo, Japan will always be #1.

7. What city or town did you have your worst gig (and why)?

Our shows in Nashville have sucked the last few years, so we stopped playing there. On tour in Europe last fall, we played a show in France where we were playing on the floor, with some drunk, confrontational people inches from my face during our entire set. They spilled beer all over my pedals. I don’t condone violence, but I was ready throw down.

8. How do you pay your bills?

Usually via credit card over the phone.

9. What one profession other than music would you like to attempt; what one profession would you absolutely hate to do?

Canine massage therapist or a psychic. I think I’d be a great aerobics instructor as well. I would hate being a meter maid or having any profession involving sales.

10. What are the stories you’ve heard about Omaha, Nebraska?

Growing up in Ottawa, Canada, I didn’t know anything about Omaha, NE. I learned about Saddle Creek Records and its bands, which were really influential when I was a little teen, and became more familiar. The rich music history makes Omaha stand out. I also heard that 311 is from Omaha which is pretty cool.

Peach Kelli Pop plays with The Way Out Wednesday, May 25, at Reverb Lounge, 6121 Military Ave. Tickets are $8, showtime is 9 p.m. For more information, go to onepercentproductions.com.

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One of the biggest shows of the month is happening tonight at The Waiting Room where The Good Life kicks off its latest tour in support of their 2015 Saddle Creek release, Everybody’s Coming Down. That alone is worth the price of admission, but then you add indie superstars Speedy Ortiz and you’ve got yourself a monster of a show. But wait, there’s more. Local indie rockers Oquoa are opening the show. All this entertainment for a mere $15. The show starts at 9 p.m.

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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 © 2016 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Check out a brand new episode of the Lazy-i Podcast (above)! In this week’s episode:

— Saturday is Record Store Day! Homer’s GM Mike Fratt talks about what his store has to offer, the promotion’s impact on smaller labels and risks involved with stores going “all in” with RSD merch.
— Live Reviews of BUHU and Peach Kelli Pop.
-– Modest Mouse headlines a strong Maha Music Festival line-up. Will this the best Maha ever?
— The list of the hottest shows happening this weekend in Omaha.
— Music from Modest Mouse, Alvvays, Wagon Blasters, BUDU, Peach Kelli Pop, Oquoa, John Klemmensen and the Party, and Clarence Tilton.

It’s 21 wasted minutes of your life you’ll never get back, but who cares, it’s free. Check it out.

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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 © 2015 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

The Maha Festival line-up was announced last night, and it’s a doozy…

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

By now you’ve heard the line-up for the 2015 Maha Music Festival, which is being held Aug. 15 in Stinson Park at Aksarben Village. If somehow you’ve missed it, here it is again:

Modest Mouse
Atmosphere
Purity Ring
Wavves
The Jayhawks
Alvvays
Ex-Hex
The Good Life
Speedy Ortiz
All Young Girls Are Machine Guns
Both
Freakabout

Their best line-up ever? Maybe, maybe… Modest Mouse was the first name I’d heard from this line-up prior to the announcement, and my reaction was, meh. I’ve seen them live and they’re less than interesting, to say the least. It’s hard to undersell the impact of their album The Lonesome Crowded West, which was groundbreaking at the time of its release in 1997. They’ve had more commercial success with later albums, but never reached the level or arcane creative madness/genius heard on that ’97 album, and likely won’t again. On stage, they pretty much stand around and play their songs.

So no, I wasn’t exactly tapping my heels with joy when I heard they were the headliner, even though I knew their booking would sell a lot of tickets. Neither did I understand why Maha booked The Jayhawks, a band that is legendary in its failure to draw a crowd in Omaha. Does anyone remember who these guys are? Obviously someone associated with Maha does.

Atmosphere has a big following in Omaha. Their style of hip-hop just ain’t my thing.

So those were the only bands I heard were booked for Maha until a couple weeks ago. Then the floodgates opened.

Unless you wanted to arrive an hour before the show or wait in line forever you weren’t going to see Alvvays at South By Southwest this year. The band was a “must see” act, thanks to their 2014 debut album, which is somewhat awesome. Alvvays is the band I’m most looking forward to seeing at this year’s Maha festival.

But coming up right behind them is Speedy Ortiz (who I did manage to see in Austin this year), Ex-Hex (featuring Mary Timony of Helium, and whose last album is a Pitchfork favorite), the electronic kaleidoscope of Purity Ring (not exactly dynamic live when I saw them a few years ago, but a departure for this festival), and Tim Kasher’s pop band The Good Life (anytime you can get Kasher on your stage, you’ve won).

I tip my hat to Wavves. They outshined Best Coast when they opened for them at The Waiting Room back in 2011. Wavves is the closest thing to garage rock you’re going to get at this year’s Maha.

As for the three locals who fill out the balance of the bill, well I haven’t seen or heard any of them, though I’m familiar with AYGAMG’s recorded stuff.

Pound-for-pound, Maha has a more attractive line-up than Des Moines’ 80/35 Festival, despite having half as many bands on the bill — which is perhaps as good an argument as any to keep Maha to one day (though I still think they should put on a concert somewhere the evening before).

Looking back at my comments, last year’s festival drew 7,000. Will they beat that number with this offering? Ironically, Death Cab for Cutie (who headlined last year’s) would probably draw better this year because they just released a new record. That said, Death Cab vs. Modest Mouse is probably a wash in terms of draw.

This year has a better undercard than last year’s Doomtree/Radkey/Local Natives/Head and the Heart combination. From a legacy-band perspective, Aimee Mann/Ted Leo is a teensy bit more well known than The Jayhawks. And it will be hard to beat last year’s local stage offering (Icky Blossoms/Domestica/Whipkey/M34n Str33t/Envy Corp (who I consider local), which was as good as it gets.

What I said after last year’s festival applies again this year:  “For every person I talked to who loved the line-up there was someone who whined about the line-up. Maha will never be all things to all people, nor should it be.”

To me, Maha has remained consistent in its mission (as I understand it), which is to put together one of the best indie concerts in the region. The operative word here is “indie” — not garage, not heavy metal, not punk, not C&W, not pop. If indie was their target, they’ve scored a direct hit. Just remember, indie is a sub-genre with a limited audience. Maha may never exceed that coveted 10,000 threshold as long as they stay as a one-day festival…

* * *

BUHU at O’Leaver’s April 10, 2015.

Speaking of rock shows, there was a nice one at O’Leaver’s last Friday night. Austin band BUHU was a two-man crew featuring one guy on synths and the other on guitar and vocals, creating a catchy post-wave music, thanks in part to great programming and to the lead guy’s sweet vocals. Fun stuff.

Peach Kelli Pop at O’Leaver’s April 10, 2015.

BUHU was followed by the all-female power-garage sound of Peach Kelli Pop. It is, no doubt, sexist to call this band an “all-female group” (why not refer to BUHU as an “all-male group”?). That said, the band epitomized the best parts of a long history of all-female punk rock bands. I loved their style, their sound, their energy. I’ll have a snippet of their music in this week’s podcast, online Wednesday.

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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 © 2015 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.