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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.