The News Review:
- Local fans can join the English Beat’s punky-reggae party
- Essentials: This weekend’s live music picks
- The Valkyrie focus on showcasing its tight-knit pop-punk sound
- WMEB Spot: ‘The Big Burrito’ with Michael Fournier
- Hipster Heaven
Local fans can join the English Beat’s punky-reggae party
Richmond Times Dispatch VA
She’s Mine” mixing ska-reggae rhythms with punk music’s tension as well as its speed. “There was this certain element that we weren’t really in control of what we were doing on our instruments so it was kind of like everybody was chasing everybody else so fast that we couldn’t get any faster” said Wakeling speaking from his California home. “And that was the place where we all managed to stay in time with each other because nobody could go any faster than that!” With the albums “Wha’ppen?” and “Special Beat Service” the next two years the English Beat found itself with a growing audience in America but decided to call it a day in 1983 to pursue other interests. Wakeling and The Beat’s other vocalist Ranking Roger formed General Public while two other members moved on to Fine Young Cannibals. The English Beat’s music continued to attract attention through inclusion on movie soundtracks such as “Ferris Bueller’s Day ff.
Related from Young-elderz: Local fans can join the English Beat’s punky-reggae party
Essentials: This weekend’s live music picks
San Francisco Chronicle USA
Thorns of Life Saturday @ 924 Gilman: Word of this punk supergroup has spread via blogs and handheld YouTube videos. For fans of the principals’ past projects it’s akin to a Sasquatch sighting. Blake Schwarzenbach’s return to music since the dissolution of Jets to Brazil is accompanied by Bay Area punk veterans Aaron Cometbus on drums and bassist Daniela Sea (formerly of the Gr’ups and an actor on “The L Word”). Fans of Jawbreaker and Crimpshrine may be too old for drinking 40s in the parking lot but they will probably wax nostalgic over the return of literary pop punk from this familiar fount. With Hunx and His Punx ReVoltz ff With Their Heads and Comadre.
The Valkyrie focus on showcasing its tight-knit pop-punk sound
Charleston Post Courier SC
Like characters coming together for a quirky novel the band members assemble within the foam-lined storage room to play one of their softer songs “cean. ” There’s the American Apparel-clad lead singer the introspective bass player in the corner the funky drummer donning a graphic design T-shirt and the too-cool-for-school lead guitarist. Inspired by a variety of sources from Blink 182 to Motley Crue The Valkyrie drives to pep up the Charleston music scene with its do-gooder lyrics and jagged transitional rifts. They tend to attract young fans looking for the next big emo act but they want no labels on their name. Lead singer Ben Smith says their new songs show that they have lasting power with lyrics that demonstrate their love for performing. “This town has a really competitive music scene” Smith says. “But we turn the negative aspects of that into something positive.
WMEB Spot: ‘The Big Burrito’ with Michael Fournier
Maine Campus nline (subscription) ME
You can’t swing a bat without hitting hipsters and people in bands so it was really cool. MC:How’d you get involved with WMEB?Fournier: I was involved with WUNH when I was an undergrad but I wasn’t as involved with that as I would have liked so I was like “I’m sure Maine has a radio station. MC:What has drawn you to punk music in particular?Fournier: I was 14 and I lived in New Hampshire and didn’t have any neighbors. It was really rural and I was skateboarding a lot because you could do that without a team or something. So as I started skating I started reading magazines and my favorite skaters always had T-shirts on like Sex Pistols shirts or whatever. So I was like “What is this why do I keep hearing about these bands?” So I bought a Sex Pistols tape and took it home and I remember that I listened to it right before I had to go to church with my mom. So I listened to “Holidays in the Sun” [the opening track on “Nevermind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols”] and all throughout church all I could think about was “Who is this guy that is so pissed?” It was obvious to me that he couldn’t sing very well but he was in a band.
Hipster Heaven
Seattle University Spectator WA
Interestingly in Seattle the hipster movement seems to have emerged from the same seeds of cultural discontent that birthed grunge with the rise of Nirvana Mudhoney and the rest of their contemporaries. They even share a common starting point musically the ‘zine turned record label Sub Pop. The first half-dozen Sub Pop bands all categorized themselves musically as being post-punk the implication of which meant that punk’s place in counterculture had run its course and it was time to return to a more tried-and-true method of non-conformity by merging the aggression of punk music with the technical prowess of older rock. Hipsters found sanctuary in Nirvana because it brought post-punk angst and apathy to the masses in an easily digestible three-chord formula. Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s suicide in 1994 provided his disenfranchised hipster followers yet another excuse to throw themselves at the mercy of hedonism and apathy and since then Seattle hipsters seem to have become a niche all but entirely obsessed with a collective mindset of listlessness intellectual elitism and especially non-committal language. “Seattle’s full of [hipsters]” says Luke Taylor a sophomore political science and international studies major. “Throw a rock and you’ll probably hit one.