Weekend of local rock volume 20

It’s New Year’s Eve, so let’s relive a party.

Saturday brought the 13th rendition of 12 Bands of Christmas, hosted as always by local radio personality Skip Dixxon. Even though there were only nine bands, there still was entertainment aplenty for seven hours of (mostly) local music.

Generally acoustic acts have gone first but this time an exception was made for the Aaron Howell Band. They had another show to do down the road so they led things off with their blues-influenced rock, mostly covers but one original called “Different By Design.”

The Aaron Howell Band (Aaron's on the left) led things off with straight-ahead blues-based rock, mostly covers.

After Aaron and his cohorts left the stage, we did get the lone acoustic act, Woodstok.

No, it's not sheet music. Woodstok just wanted to remind himself on the arrangement of the medley he performed to open his portion of the show.

Woodstok closed his playing with the crowd favorite original “Bacon, Eggs, and Jager” then sang over the instrumental track of a song from his upcoming CD. I thought that was interesting so we’ll see how the new compilation does when he releases it sometime in the next couple months.

Give ‘n Take restarted the “plugged” part of the show, and borrowed a “special guest” for the drumming work.

Give 'n Take turned things back up with a series of cover songs. Host Skip Dixxon didn't have it as easy as he thought he would as he graciously stepped in for a missing drummer.

The drummer is the guy who puts all this together, along with several other local music events. I think if it weren’t for him, I’d only have about 10 volumes instead of 20.

Having just seen them a couple weeks before, I knew I’d enjoy Phantom Limbs, who played next. They get two pictures because theirs came out well.

This is the more conventional shot of Phantom Limbs, who has put together an entertaining set both times I've seen them now.

I was shooting this one as guitarist Ryan Abbott was 'Zombified', which is a quirky but neat original Phantom Limbs does.

They yielded the stage to the next group, the local favorite lower case blues. Seems like we had a lot of trios to start.

If you like hot blues, lower case blues is the group to see. They don't play a lot of slow numbers.

These guys can play, but perhaps the one the crowd dug most was the last song, a rendition of ZZ Top’s “Tush.”

Another of my personal favorite local bands came up next, Lower Class Citizens.

Lower Class Citizens turned up a half-dozen or so of their original songs. They got the gathering crowd into things, picking up where lower case blues left off.

It’s sort of odd that LCC has a sound a lot like Led Zeppelin, but while I’m no big fan of Zeppelin I really enjoy Lower Class Citizens.

A band who I think must have a fairly unique set of influences was the lone non-local band in the show, although I’m wondering if Ocean City isn’t its second home.

A shot of Skitzo Calypso I took at arm's length above my head turned out to be a great band shot.

This picture of Skitzo Calypso lead singer Brad Cox turned out pretty well, so I decided to throw it into the post.

These guys must have an EZ-Pass because Skitzo Calypso is in the area a lot. Picked up their new CD while I was at the show as well, so they got their gas money and I got some new tunes to dig.

Next up were some familiar faces.

My buds from Semiblind drew the second-to-last slot.

As always, they played their rockin’ cover tunes (including the one Christmas song anyone did, you know it as “Mister Grinch”.) They did a pretty short set to save some time for the night’s final act, Blake Haley.

Blake Haley also had to borrow a band member, this time he was the bassist from lower case blues. It made for some interesting songs which he figured out on the fly.

And that was that; another 12 Bands of Christmas was in the books. Actually Blake had a fairly crowded dance floor at closing time.

Since New Year’s Eve tends to be a retrospective time and this is the 20th volume of “Weekend of local rock”, I decided to do a little bit of enjoyable research.

As one may suspect, Semiblind has been a subject in 13 of the 22 posts – there were two posts I titled “Support your local music scene” prior to adopting the “weekend” moniker. But some other bands have made a number of appearances as well – Lower Class Citizens has been featured 5 times, and 4 has been the lucky number for Aaron Howell (once as a solo act), Skitzo Calypso, Left of Avalon/Project Sideways, and going way back to a band that sadly isn’t around anymore, the Barking Crickets. In all, I’ve featured a total of 70 local and regional bands. That, my friends, is a lot of weekends and a whole lotta rock. (This doesn’t count other semi-related festival posts I’ve done where bands were present.)

But my ears and weekends continually crave for more, so I’m sure I’ll be out checking some live music soon enough.

This is my last post for 2008. I have no idea how many I’ve done this year, but hopefully you enjoyed all of them. May 2009 be the best year in all of our lives – Happy New Year!

2008 in review/2009 preview

Each time we toss out the old calendars, make whatever resolutions we figure we can break easily enough before Valentine’s Day, and get ready to spend the night with friends or watching the ball drop on TV, I sit here and figure out where this website has been and where I’d like it to go. Okay, that’s only been the last three years but traditions have to start somewhere you know.

By far, this was a year I did the most posts for the site – not to mention the other four sites I add content to. While I was contributing to Red Maryland in 2007, this year I added the Pro-Maryland Gazette, That’s Elbert With An E, and Red County Wicomico to my writing resume. There’s more eyes on what I write, despite the fact my readership here at the flagship was down somewhat.

And while that readership number is disappointing on its face, the fact is that I wrote a lot of stuff I was pretty proud of over 2008, particularly my coverage of the local Congressional race, the monoblogue Accountability Project, and the resumption of my Ten Questions series. It’s apparent that others liked what I did as well, otherwise I wouldn’t have been asked to partake in the writing opportunities that I have.

However, the little bit of coin I do make from this site depends in large part on readership, so I suppose I need to figure out where I can improve what’s here.

One thing I noticed was when I reached my peak of readers (aside from the Rushalanche) is that it came at a time when I had more local content. While I aspire to be more than the big fish in the little pond, I now have an outlet that would prefer I restore some emphasis on local and state events in Red County. Couple that with local elections, and it’s an opportunity for me to get back into the local mix.

But I can’t ignore what’s going on at the state and national levels either. With the ongoing monoblogue Accountability Project for Maryland’s General Assembly and a new Congressman who’ll likely do all he can to obfuscate his record when re-election time comes around, that needs to stay in focus too. It also goes without saying that with the changeover from Bush 43 to Obama will create many writing opportunities.

I’ve come to the conclusion that as things stand with work and other commitments I have on my time, the pace I had of about 10 to 12 posts per week is about all I can sustain unless I write several posts in advance on the weekends for the following week. But there are a few long-term projects I’d like to accomplish during the next year.

First and foremost is completing the 2009 Guide to the Maryland Blogosphere. At this time, I have over 50 sites which will comprise the bulk of the first guide, which will probably expand once this rendition is complete and people stop and say, hey what about so-and-so’s site? I’m expecting to do a part 2 in the spring and once I have that base, it’ll be easy to follow through on an annual basis. This will also give me an excuse to greatly increase the number of website links I keep on my right column.

In the new year, another plan I have is to set up two new left-hand column areas – one small one devoted to the local Salisbury city election, which will be up until the middle of April, and the other one a more comprehensive area to check out local and regional bands by expanding on the information provided here. No, I’m not going to attempt to keep tabs on who plays where when but I think the local music scene is a great one and I’ve found most who participate are pretty cool people even without an instrument or microphone in their hand.

Another goal for monoblogue is getting more Ten Questions posts and interviewing more people who readers would find interesting. I enjoy doing the interviews and getting to know the subjects a little bit better.

Many of you may not know this, but I’m on Facebook and I’ve established a group called “Fans of monoblogue.” It’s a group I’d like to expand the base of and I update it on a regular basis when I do or find out about something having to do with my site I find newsworthy – usually it’s when I’m linked on other sites or I do a post I feel is quite good. I’m fairly certain that I’m going to be placing some important updates on there as the New Year is dawning over the next few weeks.

Finally, I suspect that my “Blog ideas” e-mail folders will stay pretty full. I’m going to close this post by referring to someone else’s compilations that I found humorous as well. The Media Research Center has come up with their best “Notable Quotables” of 2008 while their Times Watch division skewered the Old Gray Lady with the Top 10 Lowlights of the New York Times. We’ll see a lot of these lists as the calendar turns and surely I’ll share those I find interesting, along with other items I think are worth sharing.