Weekend of local rock volume 16

You knew that you couldn’t stop this, but could only hope to contain it. Luckily I’ll contain it for you.

This is what I came to do, plus my little bit for the cause.

We were outside on the 'beach' to get things started. No water in sight though.

I took well over 100 pictures at this event, some just for my own personal collection and some for later publication. But since this was a benefit show, I decided to do some of the more newsworthy items here and save the music review for a future post over on the monoblogue Myspace page. This way I keep a manageable amount of photos and text here in this post, and if you dig the local music portion of it anywhere as much as I do you’ll look forward to reading my thoughts on the show over on Myspace.

For those of you out of the monoblogue loop, the event was set up to benefit B.J. Mohr, who was seriously injured in an accident. Spearheading the effort was BJ’s brother Bill, who plays in a local group called Another Vicious Cycle. Here’s Bill helping out on drums for the first musician up, C.J. Hearn.

Bill Mohr was the guy responsible for getting all the bands and the venue for the event yesterday.

Working through the musical grapevine, Bill convinced eight other bands to give up some of their time on a prime working day for bands to help out the cause. While most of these groups hail from points local, two of them traveled down from the Baltimore area to appear as well. The next nine pictures will be of each group, just read the caption for the name.

C.J. Hearn (in orange, on the left) was featured as the opening act, along with his partner acoustic guitarist whose name I don't know.

The second group in line was a band I wasn't familiar with called Bear Spits Fire. They're out of Seaford, Delaware.

If you read monoblogue regularly and don't know who this group is...well, pay closer attention. This was the first half of a day-night doubleheader for Semiblind, who then played in Rehoboth Beach last night.

Se7enth Seal was one of two groups who came down from Baltimore to participate. As I like to say, they brought crunch without the crap.

The other Baltimore-area entry was Skitzo Calypso, a group who's familiar with crossing over the Bay Bridge. They come to the area several times a year.

Too Far Gone was another heavy group, mixing in a couple originals with hard rock covers of Pantera, Godsmack, and others.

This is Bill Mohr's home band, Another Vicious Cycle. They sounded pretty good despite the claim they hadn't played together much since earlier this spring.

Local groove rockers Chowderfoot closed out the show, with double the beat provided by double the percussion.

I would be remiss in not pointing out that between sets we were entertained by DJ Bczar, who also does the turntables for Another Vicious Cycle.

DJ Bczar had some serious stacks of wax with him, and spun a good number of them during the afternoon and evening.

While the bands kept me and a lot of others entertained, of more importance was the amount of money raised to help defray the expenses incurred by the Mohr family since BJ’s accident. The event itself attracted around 125 people, while the concurrent 50/50 raffle raised about $250 more. However, this doesn’t take into account other donations like what was placed in this pocket:

The fine staff at Hooters also chipped in a few bucks. Certainly they were there in spirit.

It was also a pleasure to meet several of the Mohr family members who put a lot of effort into this themselves, including the “average girl” by whose blog I first became aware of this. Hopefully I provided a wee bit of help in getting people there, but the one suggestion I would make if they need to do another fundraiser is to do it during the non-summer months. It seemed like there were just too many other competing events in OC, Rehoboth Beach, Salisbury, and elsewhere.

Once again though, yesterday was another example of good bands doing good works. It’s another reason they deserve your support and a few of your entertainment dollars.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

One thought on “Weekend of local rock volume 16”

Comments are closed.