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August 02, 2005
Random Notes
Rolling Stone magazine gave Chapel Hill/Raleigh/Durham the #2 ranking on their new list of "Schools that Rock" (er, "areas that rock and have schools"?). I doubt RS really crunched the numbers or came up with the hard metrics that might give their top-10-music-scene list the same sort of official weight as all those oft-cited "Best Places To Work" and "Best Places To Live" studies, but hey, it's always nice to see WXYC and CD Alley get plugged in a big music magazine. Too bad the NC piece had to start off with some out-of-date drooling over Duke's now-scaled-back "free iPod" program.
Local 506 wasn't explicitly mentioned as a factor in the Triangle's #2 ranking, though I vaguely recall the club being praised in a similar 2003 Rolling Stone article that claimed Chapel Hill was "the fourth best college music town in the United States". In any case, I'd like to take the time right now to praise Local 506 for experimenting with a new weekly podcast on which a host runs through the upcoming shows for the week, gives some information about each band, and plays some short musical snippets from some of the bands. I'll have to see how I feel after hearing two or three of these things, but my initial suggestion for improvement might be to try and supplement the informative "concertline"-type summary with periodic podcasts of actual standalone MP3s (legally obtained or voluntarily submitted) from some of the upcoming acts. A full MP3 would allow a curious listener to hear a lot more than a few seconds of a band, and perhaps the MP3 could even be tagged with some sort of "playing at Local 506 on August 4th"-type comment.
I didn't change the tag or anything but I will go ahead and use one of my podcast feeds to send out an MP3 of a band playing Local 506 this Thursday, August 4th. Fan Modine is opening up for the Tall Dwarfs that night, and here's a 1999 single that I found online:
Not sure who is playing on this much older song, but Fan Modine's main man Gordon Zacharias is currently supported by an impressive cast of Chapel Hill rock vets, including Ash Bowie (Polvo, Libraness), Chuck Johnson (Spatula, Shark Quest, Idyll Swords, Pykrete), and Lee Waters (Work Clothes, Lud, Cobra Kahn). Should be a solid opener for Knox and Bathgate.
Posted by Tim at August 2, 2005 11:56 PM
Comments
that's funny, that's the only fan modine song i've ever heard. carlie put it on some mix last fall. i was kinda hoping i could hear a different one. it's a good song, though.
Posted by: T.I. at August 3, 2005 11:16 AM
Thanks for the tip on the 506 podcast!
Your site doesn't take trackbacks so I wanted to let you know I wrote about this: http://lotusmedia.org/an-incredibly-good-idea
Posted by: Ruby at August 5, 2005 06:16 PM