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!

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.