20 Most Important Inventions of the Next 10 Years

Things are looking pretty bleak right now. But, the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. Check out some innovations that may be coming to a future near you.

One Way System – Poop – Thought Process – Knocked Out Cold – Revolt & DestrOi! – Pogo Brats – at Shivers – Costa Mesa, CA

Piratical Productions have once again provided Orange County with another enthralling Punk Rock show, where One Way System played Sunday night. The show was originally scheduled to be hosted at The Piratical Warehouse in Santa Ana, but was relocated last minute at Shiver's in Costa Mesa. Doors opened at 6, but the show began early at 6:30 because of the line-up which included six different bands. Among the bands that played were Pogo Brats, Revolt & DestrOi!, Knocked Out Cold, Thought Process, Poop, and One Way System.

South Central natives Pogo Brats opened the show and brought all street credibility back to Punk Rock. The band played a set that included songs that reminded the audience of UK 82 Street Punk, and impressed the crowd with the raw and in your face music and attitude.

Los Angeles' Revolt & DestrOi! played second, and carried along their Street Punk influences over to Costa Mesa. The band played Punk that combined Hardcore hints into their music, and showcased an impressive performance that members of the audience really enjoyed. Similar to Pogo Brats in lyrical content, Revolt & DestrOi! possessed songs that narrated life in the big city and circumstances of the city streets. The band's performance was exciting for the crowd, and many agreed that this is a band worth seeing again.

After the LA bands played and did their thing, Knocked Out Cold represented Orange County by demonstrating their own talents and Punk Rock tunes. The band played a set that moved the kids and got the crowd to showcase their own performances around the floor and even alongside vocalist Jesse Ransom. The band even managed to incorporate a skank worthy song that caused a couple of the people at the show to start a skanking circle. The band's performance was fun to watch and partake in, and one huge shout out to the Orange County scene.

Thought Process played after and like always, demonstrated their skilled talents and efforts throughout their performance. The band had heads in the audience nodding along and moving along to the beat, and though there was no circle pit, the crowd remained in the building to enjoy the hardcore influences of the band. Thought Process' set was once again insightful, and not worth missing at all.

Poop came next and almost stole the show with their loud aggressive music and ever so enigmatic guitarist Rikk Agnew, who most people seemed to overlook at first. The small venue seemed to get crowded pretty fast during the band's set, and once people realized that Rikk Agnew was on guitar, most were anxious to see exactly what the band had in store for us. Poop played songs that varied from one another, and provided a set that was intricate and complex in their musical stylings.

The crowd was anxiously waiting for One Way System to take the floor, and the wait was long and almost difficult to endure. The audience attempted to maintain their anticipation by running up to the microphone several times to give shout outs, yell out their hometown name, or just to mess around and say a joke. While it was a fun mediation between the crowd's anxious wait and One Way System's performance, the only concern still being imposed was the overall expectation of the band's arrival.

When the members of the band took their place, no one could contain their excitement, and the venue was ready to pop out. The first half of the band's set was massively enriched with energy and tremendous vigor on behalf of both the band and the audience. The circle pit was instantaneous and always packed, and kids all over were singing along to their songs. During the middle of the set, something went wrong with the P.A, and none of the microphones worked. True to the belief that "The show must go on", the show continued despite problems with the P.A, and although the vocals could no longer be heard, the audience maintained their loyalty by providing just that. Throughout the rest of the set, the vocals for all of the songs were chanted and sung in unison by the audience, and it was completely endearing to observe. Near the end of the set, the band played crowd favorites "Jerusalem" and "Give Us A Future", which the audience sang fiercely and with force. The band played until the end, and gave the kids all of their time and energy, even with the outage of the P.A. After the band played their set, band members stayed to sign merch and take pictures with the crowd, and showed their gratitude and humility, which gives One Way System fans all the more reason to love and enjoy them.

Piratical Productions have once again succeeded in bringing the youth good times and great memories, and the One Way System show at Shiver's was insane and over the top. If you missed the Sunday show because of school or work the next day, it's a shame you couldn't make an exception, because the show was an enjoyment from beginning to end. The line-up was perfect for the type of energetic Punk Rock that a band like One Way System brings, and each band performed their best and did a great job capturing the audience's attention. Forget Fox's Sunday night line-up, this was a Sunday night line-up to blow you and your television set away, both at the same time.
 

-Stephanie M.-
Senior staff reporter

 

More photos of the show can be seen HERE

 
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Music fans turnout for Record Store Day

So, as you know by now yesterday was National Indy Record Store Day, the day when we all go out to support our indy stores by grabbing a bunch of freebies on records we'd buy anyway, and get to feel superior because we blow our budgets to hell once a month as opposed to once a year like the other plebes jamming the checkout lines.

Early on in the afternoon (hey, it's a weekend) Em and I headed down to Amoeba Records Hollywood to start the day, and try for one of the $50 gift-card raffles (unsuccessful). On the way in, a kid was out front flyering for an LP sale going on down the street at the recording studio near Santa Monica and Orange. After stimulating the economy a bit, and downing a recharging snack at the nearby In & Out we followed the promise of over 1000 records for a dollar a piece.

The vendors were set up in an unassuming tent on the sidewalk, and the records were jumbled up in battered cardboard boxes, but the promises were true. Thousands of records, most for a dollar. The only problem was there was a lot of ABBA. And Village People. Man, I had no idea how many albums those guys released.

Still, extended digging had it's rewards. I found a copy of the Boys' "Boys Only" album for $1 and Angelic Upstarts' "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" for $5. These are great records by well-known bands, and if you don't have them you should check them out for sure. But they're also relatively easy to find, so if I don't tell you about them someone else will.

I'm going to tell you about another record I salvaged from the heap of bad disco (is there any other kind?) and 80's hair metal (if you need Dokken records, I know where you can go).

The band is Blotto, and the album is titled "Hello! My Name is Blotto What's Yours?". The record first caught my eye because it's a simple black and white image of a dancing woman with a drum for a head. The background has a manifesto printed, with all the words run together giving a short history of the band and telling "serious poseurs" where to buy shirts so they really fit in.

A little research later discovers that this is the band's first EP released in 1980. Another record with the same title and cover was released in 1983 with a completely different track list.

Still up in the air, I flipped the album over to check out the track listing. The first song was titled "I Wanna be a Lifeguard (a wet dream)". Sold. That's pretty much guaranteed to be hilarious, and for a dollar, you'd be hard pressed (no pun intended) to go wrong.

When I got home I threw the record on, and to my delight found something a little bit surf-rock, but reminding me heavily of some twisted bastard love-child between the AGs and the Undertones. The songs were clever, a little pop-y, but not in a terrible way. In fact, the second song on the A side is a satire of all those top-40 bands that still seem to multiply like bacteria under the moist folds of a sweaty man-bosom. Titled "(We are) The NowTones" it starts off:
"we are the now tones
we do top 40
we wear matching outfits
we look real sporty
like a living jukebox
we play the hits
appear in nightclubs
that are the pits.
We get down while the crowd gets drunk"
and goes on to further lampoon the soul-less machine of mainstream pop. Brilliant.

The B side has a cover of "Stop: In the Name of Love" which is still weird enough to be funny, and a song titled "Bud... Is After Us (call my lawyer)" which isn't as good as the first two on the first listen, but grows on you after a second or third hearing.

Overall, I'd say this is an excellent record, well worth picking up if you get the chance.
Blotto is apparently on iTunes, and their website http://www.blotto.net/ has a link to a merch page with two albums on CD available.


-Jo Problems-
 

Music play list for the week ending April 19, 2009

Top 25  - In no particular order -

Modern Lovers - Morning of our Lives
Half Off - Rain On the Parade
Coldplay - Green Eyes
Pearl Jam - Parting Ways
Adolescents - I Hate Children
Mouthpiece - What Remains
Strokes - Trying Your Luck
One Way System - Jerusalem
Inside Out - Burning Fight
RKL - Why
The Spits - I H8 Pussies
Pixies - Digging For Fire
Necros - Face Forward
Friendly Neighbors - Memento Mori
VCR - Rad
Joe Esposito  - You're the Best
Descendents - Myage
Misfits - Attitude
Flesheaters - Pony Dress
Marty Robbins - A White Sport Coat
Hammer Bros - A New Beginning
David Bowie - Aladdin Sane
Ventures - Diamonds
The Damned - Melody Lee
Robert Johnson - Me and the Devil Blues

The above list are some of the top played songs amongst our staff this week.

 

This weeks playlist brought to you by: TKO Records

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Shows and events calendar for Los Angeles, Orange County, Ventura, San Diego, San Bernardino, California and states all over the United States and the world. Complete and extended listing covering Punk, Indie, Rock, Psychobilly and more.

Coachella Music Festival – Indio, CA

Coachella - Day 2   Saturday April 18, 2009

Day 2 got off to a lazy start. I stayed up partying the night before so i decided to show up to the festival a few hours late. The first band we saw were the Drive By Truckers and it was the first time I had ever seen them. They reminded me of being drunk on the bayou with a straw of wheat hanging out my mouth singing to the gators. That's real blues rock right there. Smoking a few bowls during their set didn't hurt either, it just heightened the enjoyment.

Next I stopped by the main stage to check out Paolo Nutini who i hadn't heard of but turned out to be pretty awesome. Feel good music at the perfect time of day. The vibe was cheerful as i danced my way through the crowd to use the air conditioned restrooms located in the VIP area. There is nothing like the comfort of AC in the desert especially if you gotta take a leak.

The Gobi tent was the location for 1/2 of the Dresden Dolls, Amanda Palmer. Although her slogan reads "who killed Amanda Palmer?" it was clear that she's alive and well. I had to make a decision to see either Amanda or Henry Rollins who was doing a spoken word set a mere 50 feet away. She turned out to be a wise choice since she gave us one of the most memorable moments in Coachella history when she crowd surfed from the front to the back of the entire crowd while a superman song played over the speakers. When she made it to the back, she sat on the rafters with a fan holding the mic and started playing Radioheads "Creep" on a ukulele. The crowd couldn't help but sing along (and film) to the whole song. Then her set ended with a parade through the entire festival,and everyone was welcome to come along.

DJ AM and Travis Barker nearly died last year and it was safe to say that mostly everyone wanted to see them, if only to witness two men who met their maker and said "i ain't done yet!." Now I'm not a huge fan of Travis Barker, and yeah i know he's a great drummer and has done some pretty ground breaking stuff but personally I'm not a fan of anything in particular. But when they performed at Coachella it was great to see him rocking it. Best moment was when they brought out Warren G to perform his hit "Regulators," that was the shiznit!

I stayed a little too long seeing AM-TRV$ that i missed Booker T's performance of "green onions" which nearly made me cry. I guess he played it as his first song???what the hell? and his backing band was the DBT's (Drive By Truckers). He still rocked but I'm kicking myself in the ass forever for missing green onions.

MIA was taking the main stage so I stopped to get her shirt that came with a horn! While she performed she kept asking those with the horns to blow em along to the songs, it was crazy rad! It was like she incorporated the crowd in a new way. Then she brought on stage an entire clubs worth of people and had a concert within a concert. It looked like a huge party up there, you could see on the screens people passing red cups around. All I really have to say is, damn that chick is awesome.

Since The Killers were headlining I think the organizers knew they were gonna have a bunch of drunk dudes wandering around thinking "man if i have to see The Killers I might actually kill someone," so to keep all those dudes and all those cool, smart chicks happy while The Killers do exactly what their name says they'll do, the Mojave tent had a back to back lineup of TURBONEGRO!! AND MASTODON!! Need I say any more? It was a dream come true for many. Turbonegro got the pit going nuts and they brought out Nick Oliveri of Mondo Generator to sing on a couple of songs.

Mastodon just released a new album called "Crack the Skye" which they played in its entirety. It was amazing for me since that's one of the only CD's Ive been listening to lately. The guitar work in that band is insanity, and the whole performance goes along to a futuristic video that plays in the back round. It was a perfect ending to quite possibly the best Saturday I've ever had.

-Bobby Vega-
Big Wheel music scene reporter

 

More photos of the show can be seen HERE

 
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Tipper’s Gore – The Crawlers – Bad Antics – Migraine – Cat Party at Jumpin Juice n Java – Foothill Ranch, CA

Foothill Ranch is kind of creepy at night. . . Not creepy like Skid Row or Compton of course, but creepy like a George A. Romero zombie movie. Once you stray off the 55 or 405 Freeways in Orange County things can get a little weird in some places. The coffee shop that was hosting the show was in the middle of a shopping center, but even the shopping centers in Foothill are surrounded by vast amounts of nothingness. Still despite the backwoods appearance of the city there were no cops hassling anyone and for the most part the show seemed to go unnoticed by anyone who wasn't inside. The staff were cool and didn't seem to freaked out by people slam dancing or being generally rowdy.

Cat Party played a lot of new material from their upcoming full length that is supposed to be out on Flat Black in a few months. They seem to have gotten a lot more confident in playing live than they used to be and a few of the older songs were sped up a bit. Orange County is really lucky to have a band like Cat Party, who are unique and do their own thing. Their sound is often compared to Joy Division, but there's also quite a bit of Wipers in their mix. It was cool to see them play at a show with hardcore punk bands and they helped add diversity to the bill.

Migraine came down from the Bay area of California and played some songs that were fast and angry. They were followed by Bad Antics who also played fast songs that may have been a little more lighthearted and less angry. Both of these bands inspired some thrashing in the audience. I had a pretty tasty strawberry/banana/orange vegan smoothie while one of them was playing.

It is almost inevitable that any hardcore band from Portland will get comparisons to Poison Idea, but in the case of The Crawlers the comparisons are pretty accurate. Like some of Poison Idea's later work there is a bit of a rock influence incorporated into their sound, but it is never overbearing. Their performance was solid and it was clear that the band was putting all of their energy into it.

Tipper's Gore's set consisted mostly of material from their L.P. and first 7" with a couple of brand new songs thrown in for good measure. The new songs are definitely cool and slow things down to a mid pace at times, which helps keep things interesting. There was some chick there dressed up in a fuzzy leopard print body suit complete with a tail and at one point during T Gore's set she hugged Davy. It looked like she had been planning her move for a while. It was strange, but for some reason most people in the audience didn't even seem to notice. The people working were cool and let the band play a little over their time limit. Overall this was a pretty mellow and low key show and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

-Ditch.-
Big Wheel Asst. Editor

 

 
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