Last night I went to the Three Dollar Thursday at Old Ironsides, or as I like to call it, “343,” since you get three bands for three bucks. (I shoulda had a career in ad writing!) Anyway, the bands were Bright Light Fever, Prieta and Broken Poet. Broken Poet offered up with a serviceable, if unremarkable, set of poppy punky music. It was OK, just not all that exciting. Bright Light Fever is one of the few bands on the local level right now who seem capable of getting a label deal from somewhere. They are tight and have some cool songs in the modern indie rock vein. To me, they sound like Hot Hot Heat only more rockin’.

But the band I really wanted to see was Prieta. Continue reading “Prieta is not a car” »

This week, the News and Review has sunk to an all time low with their cover story and issue dedicated to Sebastian Bach. If you cannot tell from my homage to both AC/DC and Mad Magazine in the title of this entry, I am precisely the target demographic for an issue dedicated to a washed up, middle aged metal singer who has not had a hit song since 1989 and has found a new career as a reality TV star. Big whoop. And, if I don’t care, how is anyone else going to give a flying fuck about Sebastian Bach?
Continue reading “Bach in Blech” »

I saw Phillip Flathead when he opened for Justin Farren at the Fox and Goose months ago and plunked down the five bucks for his CD because it was cheap, but I wasn’t impressed with his performance. Playing solo, he fit in with any number of folk tinged Bob Dylan emulators that you can find in your friendly neighborhood coffee shop. He didn’t hold a candle next to Justin Farren’s wry humor and humble charisma. But Justin Farren has enough of a following in Sacramento that the venue will fall mostly quiet when he starts playing. Phillip Flathead had to contend with the beer soaked echoes of a crowd giving little attention to a guy they didn’t pay to see. It’s hell being an opening act.

It turns out that Phillip is excellent with a band behind him, making his self released album Four Track Mind well worth the cost of a burrito that I sacrificed and more. Playing with a band expands his songs from standard guy with a guitar fare to pleasant guitar and banjo-centered folk spiced with funk bass when he feels like throwing it in (“Slide on By.”) Other songs, like “Hollow Days” would lose its impact without the background strings. Continue reading “Album Review: Phillip Flathead - Four Track Mind” »

Sac State hosts the 30th year of this annual event that brings free music and avant-garde composers to Sacramento with, unfortunately, very little fanfare. With such a dizzying array of musical styles, from orchestral and choral pieces to solo artists and small combos, I am surprised that I have not heard more promotions for this event.

For a calendar of performances, click here. My recommendation is to check out guitarist/composer/professor Derek Keller, who performs Wednesday at Noon. Keller’s most recent work has been a 2007 tour with Kronos Quartet, and he is currently an instructor at American River College and is the curator of the Music Series at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

Never had I ever listened to Man Man before I stepped into the Blue Lamp the Friday they were playing, which is something I don’t do for shows in Sacramento that cost more than 5 dollars. But I had found the band during a night spent trolling about on Wikipedia looking up the bands listed on the slip handed to me post-TMBG show and the description was promising. A band that dresses up in war paint and doesn’t take breaks during the set sounded worth it to me, so I put it on my concert calendar. Lo and behold, the next day dear sweet Stickie sent out an e-mail informing me that they were “highly recommended.” Chalk another one on the board for Man Man. Continue reading “Controlled Chaos: Man Man at the Blue Lamp” »

Be Brave Bold Robot understands you and your twentythirtysomthing heartaches, your existential angst, your weekend drunks and all that whatnot. Shelling out a few bucks for their self-titled album, you’ll see how much as they throw their hearts down on the bare wooden bar top to point out all its scars. The problem is that they really don’t make me care. Instead they throw about songs that vary from maudlin and melodramatic to so saccharine that it’ll make your teeth hurt.

Within the album we have “Gamma Rays” in which lies the revelation of eating pancakes with Grandma, “Shun-shine” a tiny footnote of a song that illustrates how much songwriter Dean Haakenson can drag out a simile and then slap you in the face with it, and “Secrets,” Haakenson’s four and a half minute spoken word track carries the prize for the most odious of lines, with meaningless quotes like “he had the practiced stubble of a civil engineer” and the irritating paradox “silent din of the darkness.” The last is as unnecessary as it is irritating because it’s a prologue, set to explain the premise of “The $1000 Grape Drive-By.”

But BBBR can play and “Those Things” boasts a plunky banjo climax sweeping you into the story of a night out to meet girls. If Haakenson reins it in a little bit, their second album will probably be worth the money you didn’t pay for the first.

For me, the first indication of what the evening was going to be like came whilst arriving at the back of the line with TMBG ticket in hand. As I neared the doors, taped to the wall was a sign on paper that could have popped out of any printer you or I bought proclaiming, approximately “This show 14+, by request of THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS.” Which goes to show what kind of guys TMBG are. These are the guys who managed to put out children’s albums and not lose their fan base because their regular albums sound a bit like children’s albums - if the child in question is the baby from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. That the heavily adult audience gave an extended “yeah!” when the band launched into “The Alphabet of Nations” only goes to show that fans found the children’s albums another acceptable entry in the TMBG discography. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Continue reading “They Kind of ARE Giants” »

In Sunday’s Bee, Mike Dunne wrote a piece summing up some contentious items that food bloggers around the country had carped about recently.  However, Dunne also noted that, “On the local restaurant scene, no issues seem to be stirring up diners much these days.”  Au contraire, Mr. Dunne.  As Mrs. Eats can attest to, there is no manner of things that I won’t complain about given the slightest opening.  So, not being one to turn down as obvious an invitation as that of the Bee’s esteemed food maven, I’ll discuss one of them now: Music. Continue reading “Sacramento Dining: Would you like a side of harmony with your tolerance?” »

Oooookay. There are a couple of angles from which I could begin this review and I don’t know where to start so let me puss out and just lay the my main points out right here. First, the Boardwalk is a less than desirable venue that’s far-the-fuck-away from downtown with security that doesn’t let you go back to your car to get the cell phone that you’ve forgotten unless you want to skip the show that you’ve already paid for, wristband and hand stamp notwithstanding. I have no idea why that is, but I will float the idea that the Boardwalk, being the 18 and over venue that it is, is afraid that the teenyboppers, mall punks, newly-pierced and tatted future hipsters that I’ll want to punch who can’t currently drink will be sneaking out to their cars to take shots of ten dollar vodka and come back to the show and cause a ruckus that security will not want to deal with. It was just my phone dammit. I can understand that dealing with the young’uns can an amazing pain in the ass, but I mean, c’mon.

Continue reading “Play Punkers Can’t Stop the Rock” »

In our ever-diligent pursuit to keep you well informed about the stuff that we, The Sac Rag board of directors, are planning to do with our down time, and consequently what you, The Sac Rag Readers, should think about doing with your down time since we, The Sac Rag board of directors, are screwed in to the local scene like a CFL bulb (since we respect a flex alert too), we bring you another edition of “Watcha’ Doing This Weekend?” In this edition we talk about college football, comedy, outdoor sports, the parting of a local celebrity, and cheese. Continue reading “Watcha’ Doing This Weekend?” »