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November 30, 2005
The Great Cover Up
By necessity this might be one of the vaguer promo spiels that I have ever attempted, but here goes anyway....
The 7th Annual Great Cover Up is happening Thursday through Saturday of this week at Kings. If you've never been to a night of The Great Cover Up, it can be a lot of fun - just imagine three straight nights of various local musicians performing short one-off cover band sets to a bunch of excited people who don't know what (other) bands they're going to hear when they walk in the door. The wide variety of bands/artists chosen and the whole element of surprise are a large part of the charm....and I frequently hear people recall the brilliant moments that I missed with comments like, "oh man, so-and-so pulled off an amazing set of such-and-such, plus they even looked just like them."
So anyway, I'm performing in The Great Cover Up for the first time this year. My group hits the stage sometime Thursday night, maybe around midnight or so? I cannot reveal who we are going to be, but I will say that we will be deviating significantly from The Great Cover Up mean, if such a thing exists. One of our crew is a Great Cover Up veteran, but his role on Thursday will be nothing like his previous stints as David Yow and Glenn Danzig (see below).
For starters, he'll actually be keeping his shirt on this time!
All proceeds from The Great Cover Up go to benefit Interact and the Wake County Literacy Council, so come on out to Raleigh on Thursday night. And/or Friday. And/or Saturday. I can't get any more specific than that, but I think most Cover Up aficionados would agree that it's those knowable unknowns that help make the event so intriguing...
Posted by Tim at 12:50 AM | Comments (4)
November 28, 2005
Diamonds Are Forever
Carolina's basketball team is a cool 3-0...and the holiday shopping season is just starting to heat up. So it must be time to make one last pitch for the soon-to-be-out-of-print "Dynasty" t-shirts. A small number of shirts have recently been restocked at Schoolkids Records on Franklin Street, and I still have a few at home to use for mailorder. After that, they're all gone...just like Rashad. Buy a t-shirt for that special Carolina fan on your list who already has all of the officially licensed souvenirs. Or hell, give one to yourself...you'll wish you had one come springtime.
As with all the other "Dynasty" tees purchased over the last 6+ months, five dollars from each t-shirt sale will be donated to the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service. I recently read that Katrina-induced donor fatigue has been plaguing many local charities this fall...so be a sport and help us add to the several hundred bucks that we recently sent to the IFC.
If you've already got a Dynasty tee or if your tastes in semi-obscure basketball references lean more towards the professional end of the spectrum, check out the hot new line of T-shirts being offered up by our friends at FreeDarko. While you're there, you can even come full circle by reading up on some of Rashad's post-collegiate adventures.
Speaking of coming full circle, tomorrow night is the so-called "rematch" between a completely different Carolina team and an only partially-depleted Illinois. After the games this past week I am actually pretty optimistic about UNC's chances, especially if James "bucket of fouls" Augustine performs anything close to the way he did on April 4th. That said, I would like to clarify one small semantic detail about the T-shirts before tomorrow's game and especially Saturday's game at Kentucky - "we will not lose" is a general attitude, and not necessarily an assertion of literal fact!
Posted by Tim at 11:58 PM | Comments (2)
November 25, 2005
Black Taj
A year and a half ago I was idly speculating about if/when a Black Taj album would come out at some point in the future. So now I feel the need to help spread the exciting news that yes, a Black Taj CD has recently been released on New York City's Amish Records. Amish has been very supportive of the NC rock scene over the years, having released records by Pipe, Evil Weiner, and Ivanovich. Now the folks at Amish kindly give us 44 minutes of the Taj. Astute air guitarists are already squealing in delight...and here's an MP3 teaser for the rest of you:
Read this Independent article for all the juicy details. And for any of you Triangle residents looking for some post-Thanksgiving entertainment of the non-sports variety, Black Taj play Kings tomorrow night with Birds of Avalon. Solid rock, indeed.
Posted by Tim at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2005
Konono N°1
Exactly one week ago, some friends and I got to watch the incredible Congolese group Konono N°1 at Logan Square Auditorium in Chicago. Konono N°1 dish out these epic thumb-piano-and-percussion jams that reach a completely new level through the addition of otherworldly (over)amplification, melodic singing, energetic chanting, and a charismatic leader armed with a traffic whistle and a cool hat.
We had to leave during the 5th song or so, but up to that point it was a pretty amazing hour-and-a-half performance. I'll leave the formal concert review to the Chicago Tribune, but here are a few pictures that I took:
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And here's my full album of (mostly blurry) Konono N°1 snapshots.
To hear an approximation of what this live Konono N°1 show sounded like, check out this 1978 Konono N°1 recording that Christopher Porter kindly posted on his blog The Suburbs Are Killing Us. Then go cop yourself a copy of Congotronics (out on Crammed Discs), which Ryko is now distributing domestically to retail outlets big (Amazon) and small (CD Alley).
And look, now we even have a Congotronics 2 CD/DVD comp to look forward to...
Posted by Tim at 12:36 AM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2005
Inferno di Novembre
It's about that time! Disco Inferno will be blazing in Hell tomorrow night from 9pm until 2:30am. We might have a whole new floor layout with the DJs set up by the pool tables and the elevated "stage" area available for dancing. We might have a renowned Miami bass expert in the house, spinning a few quad ditties or other faves. We will definitely have DJ Silvaback on the decks for an extra-special "it's-my-birthday" set. And the Recluse and I will fill in the gaps with the usual old-school-meets-new-school mix. Get on up and dance!
In other "free monthly, no cover" news, the one and only DJ Premier will be spinning at Club Oxygen next Tuesday night. It's free if you sign up on the Scion website. Boxy xB not included...
Posted by Tim at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)