Weekend of local rock volume 8

It’s not a full weekend and it’s a few days past Christmas, nevertheless I went out to Steer Inn last night to enjoy the 12 Bands of Christmas. Today I’ll do the pictures and a little descriptive text for each, later this week when I have more time I’ll come back with more thoughts on the show over on the Myspace site for monoblogue.

First of all, props go to this man:

This guy has put together this event for 10 years now. At the mike is Skip Dixxon of Ocean 98.

There’s not many people who have supported local music like Skip Dixxon. When X106.9 lost his services, it pretty much ended their reign as “the” local music station (and probably hastened their eventual demise as an alternative rock outlet.) Now Ocean 98 is the place where bands go to get airtime and be noticed.

The opening band was one I hadn’t heard before, Melodic Groove. Funky stuff out of Crisfield.

Three-piece band of funk, rock, and a little blues. You pick which is which.

I’ll be linking them on here once I get through with my article. Next up was a band I was somewhat more familiar with, the Aaron Howell Band.

Take one talented musician with a liking for roots rock and add in bass and drums, you get the Aaron Howell Band. Aaron's the guy with the guitar.

His was the second band to start us off with sort of a bluesy classic rock style. But the next band in line kicked things up a notch or three. Meet Another Vicious Cycle:

These folks hammered out about a half-dozen doses of hard stuff.

I’ll go further into this on Myspace, but I saw AVC in one of their first shows and they’ve really put things together since then. After they finished, there was another band I was hearing for the first time.

Slowing things back down a bit, Trailerpark Romeo came across to me as more of a jam band than anything else.

Trailerpark Romeo is a band I wouldn’t mind hearing a little more from. Obviously they’re not as heavy as some of the others but they have a good bar band sound. I’ll be linking to them as well since they hail from Ocean City.

Of course, band number five was a good one.

New drummer, same old great sound from Semiblind.

Yeah, it’s Semiblind with their new drummer. They even played a couple covers I hadn’t heard from them before and did a great job with Sabbath’s “War Pigs.”

Michelle from Semiblind. I think I took this one just as a song that she wasn't singing ended.

As is generally the case I took my gratutitous Michelle shot as well. This one came out halfway decent. I have a second gratuitous shot later, you’ll see why.

Following Semiblind came another staple of local rock, Lower Class Citizens.

Lower Class Citizens rocking out. I thought the 'Keith Richards for President' shirt on the bass player was amusing too.

On their Myspace (it’s linked from here, look to the right) they claim Led Zeppelin as a prime influence and I’m not going to argue with that one bit. There’s more of a classic rock tone to them than there is with most bands.

The OC theme continued with band number 7, Pirate Radio.

Longtime local band Pirate Radio got their set in. Unfortunately, most of my pictures of them didn't come out so hot.

For those of you who were there, Pirate Radio was the band that got Roma (the belly dancer) on the floor. She was actually there advertising classes in tribal bellydance, so I’ll give her a plug. Roma certainly can dance, I’ll give her that. Score a point for unique marketing too. I think she’s why my picture of Pirate Radio was off-center.

Now you’ll notice that I was pretty much able to go where I want for pictures for the first seven bands. Band number eight changed that, they were called Agent 99 and you’ll see just why below.

In this shot, Agent 99 had a guest vocalist. Skip Dixxon is helping out on drums, by the way. And I have no clue what the guy on the right is looking up at.

This band was the one true cover band we had as they played Heart, Skid Row, and Night Ranger songs (among others). I also got gratuitous picture number 2 here, of the bassist – her name is Casey as I found out later.

She isn't quite dressed as black as coal, but she did pretty much stand like Bill Wyman. That reference will probably go right over the head of 99 percent of my readers. Guys like me dig chicks with bass.

The band who probably came the farthest was Skitzo Calypso. They’re from Baltimore but they come down here quite a bit. Last night was probably the third time or so I’ve seen them in my time here and I don’t go that far for shows.

Skitzo Calypso was definitely one of the more active bands on stage, as this shot bears witness to.

Finally, closing out the show was lower case blues. (Yes, there were just 10 bands but they still named it “12 Bands of Christmas” – it’s tradition you know.)

Closing out the show and making it sort of a full circle were the three-piece sounds of lower case blues.

Not surprisingly, they played the blues, but not the slow, sultry kind. A little more uptempo was their set for the most part. They had a few out on the dance floor, which didn’t get a whole lot of use for the bands prior to that (except for Roma). The crowd had thinned some since the departure of Agent 99, but those who remained seemed to dig what they heard.

So ended another marathon show with 10 bands in seven hours. Haven’t gotten word yet, but if the delmarvanightlife.com website is still a profitable enterprise, their anniversary show would fall about the beginning of February and should be the next multiband event locally. However, if you get the opportunity to catch a local band in a soon to be smoke-free bar or other venue near you, go check them out. We have a lot of talent around here as last night demonstrated.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.