Category Archives: Music

Foxy Shazam To Take Over The World (or something like that)

Genre slamming rock spazz stars Foxy Shazam are getting ready to riot out of Cincinnati, OH and take it to the streets.  The shock rock act will be dropping their major label debut entitled Unstoppable on April 13th thanks to Sire Records.  The band takes inspiration from legendary musicians Elton John, Marvin Gaye, Bruce Springsteen (the Born To Run years) and adds their punk attitude and ruthless energy making for one hell of a sound.

Love them or hate them, this band will be heard one way or another.  Just check out the video below.

Foxy Shazam headlining tour dates (sadly no Cleveland show…) are as follows:

3/15 – Exit/In – Nashville, TN
3/17 – Las Palmas Racetrack – Las Palmas, TX
3/18 – House of Blues – Houston, TX
3/19 – SXSW – Austin, TX
3/20 – SXSW – Austin, TX
3/21 – White Rabbit – San Antonio, TX
3/22 – Higher Ground – Metarie, LA
3/23 – Juanitas – Little Rock, AR
3/24 – Masquerade – Atlanta, GA
3/26 – Orpheum – St. Petersburg, FL
3/27 – Jack Rabbits – Jacksonville, FL
3/28 – Canal Club Downstairs – Richmond, VA
3/29 – Studio @ Webster Hall – New York, NY
3/30 – Great Scotts – Boston, MA
3/31 – Knitting Factory – Brooklyn, NY
4/01 – Webster Underground – Hartford, CT
4/03 – Petit Camps – Montreal, QC
4/05 – Sneeky Dees – Toronto, ON
4/06 – Mohawk Place – Buffalo, NY
4/07 – The Basement – Columbus, OH
4/08 – Eagle Theater – Detroit, MI
4/09 – Mad Hatter – Cincinnati, OH
4/10 – Beat Kitchen – Chicago, IL
4/11 – The Vault – Minneapolis, MN
4/13 – Marquis Theater – Denver. CO
4/15 – El Corazon Lounge – Seattle, WA
4/16 – The Venue – Vancouver, BC
4/17 – Satyricon – Portland, OR
4/18 – Bottom of the Hill – San Francisco, CA
4/19 – Boardwalk – Sacramento, CA
4/21 – Troubadour – Los Angeles, CA
4/23 – Martini Ranch – Phoenix, AZ
4/24 – Launch Pad – Albuquerque, NM
4/26 – Jackpot – Lawrence, KS
4/27 – Off Broadway – St. Louis, MO

Uniform Motion Unique

It’s not typical that I start out a video on my posts but this one was too unique to not showcase immediately.  Above was the flash music video for Uniform Motion‘s “Back Up Your Soul”.  If you watched it with a careful eye you might have seen something a little different – I customized it.

The duo (1 part music and 1 part visual effect) has developed a combination of social media, flash animation, and music to create a customizable greeting card music video featuring the band performing along with a personalized message that appears on their backdrop.  Not only is the idea of the video cool but so is the band’s music and style.

The flash video actually emulates the duo with one half on the instruments and the other behind an electronic sketch pad. Dreary and dreamy folk music is what this band does best and I can not get enough.  It is like chill-out folk music that puts me in a trance on more than one sensory level.

Uniform Motion just dropped their second album on February 9th entitled Life.  Defined as an Anglo-French Illustrated Indie Folk band the act combines music with visual arts. Their latest CD carries 8 tracks and a collection of 9 canvas arts for you to get lost in as you absorb their material.

Head over to their website to check out more of the tunes as well as customize your own video.

Polysics @ Musica – Akron, OH – 02/12/2010 – Concert Review

Culture was shocked in Akron last night thanks to Tokyo, Japan’s Polysics making a special appearance at Musica.  The orange jumpsuit wearing foursome traveled half way around the world to perform their Devo inspired music to a packed club on what normally would have been just another regular Friday evening.  Scenesters as well as a couple punk rockers and plenty of proud geeks piled into the quaint club in downtown Akron with perfect knowledge of what would soon progress.

Polysics is best defined as a pop power punk electronica experimental new wave outfit or “technicolor pogo punk” as they dub themselves.  Think heavy synthesizers and guitar matched over insane voice altering vocals as well as a very energetic male lead vocalist Hiroyuki Hayashi (Hiro – and yes, he sounds like Hiro from the TV show Heros) who blasts out English, Japanese, and gibberish lyrics.  Formed in 1997 out of the pure love for Devo as well as The Tubes the band is an underground sensation thanks to their extremely energetic live shows and of course their orange jumpsuits and straight bar-style sunglasses.

Opening the evening was a band called Stiletto hailing from Kent, OH.  The band reminded me of Bedlight For Blue Eyes and Roses Are Red with their slight heavy rock sound.  The lead singer had a good voice and when the band had it together they sounded fine.  They sadly kept having issues starting their songs and it became apparent that they needed some more practice as it became downright annoying to some of the crowd.  Still, they did well and get props from me when the lead signer quoted Tupac but really did not match up to the headliner at all.

Armed with my trusty camera I really thought upon entering Musica that I was going to grab some photos during Polysics’ set but while inside the venue I saw this:

That really was something I did not want to see.  I respected the artist though and did not shoot anything until the very end of the show because who am I kidding…I need at least one shot.

Good thing I did not take photos as there was a dual braided memory card deleting bandit who was part of the Polysics crew.  I understand the premise of his doings but you should have seen this guy.  He stood upon a stool and the moment a flash went off he was bolting over to that non-sign reading schmo and erasing any Polysics related photo from their camera.  Seeing what this guy was all about I really did not want him touching my gear so I parked the camera to my side and just enjoyed the show.

Hands were about the entire evening.  It was a party.
Hands were about the entire evening. It was a party.

You know a crowd is excited to see a band when they cheer insanely as the band is setting up their gear on stage.  Things just got better when the band actually took the stage and just started hammering out songs.  The songs they played ranged from almost industrial heavy pieces to absolute insanity jump-all-over-the-place songs.

Still a novice to this band I just started with amazement throughout their set not having any idea what was going on other than a damn good time. The couple songs I did recognized were “Young OH! OH!”, “Fire Bison”, and just amazing “Shout Aloud!”

As entertaining as Hiro was throughout the night (especially when he screamed “you gruys awre awresoooooome!!!”) I absolutely adored the straight faced Kayo on the synthesizer and vocoder.  I could not help but envision the scene in Revenge Of The Nerds II when the nerds played the concert at Hotel Coral Essex.

According the band’s MySpace page Kayo will be parting ways with the band after the tour so I am pretty psyched I was able to the original line-up.  The whole night was a party with Polysics controlling it.  Fans danced and tossed their hands about to the music.  It was indeed a interesting and fun evening.  If I had to describe the evening I would have to say just imagine Daft Punk, Devo, and the Teen Titans humanized and in orange jumpsuits and you might have some idea what happened.  It was amazing.


Polysics – Young OH! OH!

POLYSICS | MySpace Music Videos


Pretty Good

POLYSICS | MySpace Music Videos


Polysics – Moog Is Love

POLYSICS | MySpace Music Videos

I had to throw this in too…

Babble Blog: Ben Folds Han Solo

Today started out like any other day – I woke up.  I barely opened my eyes and absorbed the NPR that cancelled out the strange dream I was having and just zoned out until I got the guts to face this Friday.

Today is different than most days.  I have been thinking about going back to college.  It has only been 12 years or so since I last took classes and the time has come to finish up.  I made some poor choices in life when I was younger and never finished school like most right minded poeple do.  I was thinking of going to Kent State and majoring in Being Awesome.  What to do what to do…

In other news Ben Folds is playing the House Of Blues in Cleveland on April 15th.  Advance tickets are $35 and went on sale this morning. 

I actually had an extra $40 to spend today.  I was either going to use it on my application fee or use it to see Ben Folds make love to his piano.

Any normal person would not think twice about what is right but I for a moment there thought about delaying the admission process…

Let’s see, education and further my life or see one hell of a show?  An education lasts a lifetime and I am sure Ben Folds will come by again right?  Still sucks I could not do both.

I did the right thing and applied over the internets to KSU and dropped $40 on an application fee.  I was highly bummed out about this because some of me fought to use that money to get a Ben Folds ticket.  I better get accepted dammit.

After hitting the “submit” button cancelling out any hope of seeing Ben Folds I get an email:

You and I are going to Ben Folds. I just bought a pair of tickets. All you have to do is beat up Rad-am for me.

Seems fair.  I have great friends.  I will assault one friend to appease the other and in return will get to see Ben Folds after all.  Today is a good day.  Mr. Addicted To Vinyl made my day.

Thanks Matt and sorry Rad-am.

Where Does Rock Live? Columbus Apparently…

Ok so that is not entirely true.  Rock lives everywhere.  Rock is where the heart is?  Ok, I will stop.

Now you can buy rock in Columbus, not that I know that personally or anything, but you can also rock out hardcore for a weekend thanks to Rock On The Range returning to the Columbus Crew Stadium on May 22nd and 23rd.  This will be the festival’s fourth run in the center city of Ohio and the lineup caught my attention more so this year than any other year before.

When I see that Coheed & Cambria, The Deftones, Helmet, Rise Against, Mastodon, and Killswitch Engage are all playing over one weekend I immediately want to go.

Other bands appearing at the festival are Godsmack, Rob Zombie, Three Days Grace, Limp Bizkit, Seether, Slash, Papa Roach, Five Finger Death Punch, Bullet For My Valentine, Theory of a Deadman, Puddle of Mudd, Sevendust, Drowning Pool, Skillet, Apocalyptica, Halestorm, Airbourne, Mushroomhead, Adelitas Way, Escape the Fate, Cold, Anberlin, Nonpoint, 2Cents, Violent Soho, Janus, Shaman’s Harvest, Year Long Disaster, Taddy Porter, Like A Storm, and Noise Auction

I can tolerate some of the acts but others I just can not stand and I fear if I go I am going to be punished…

Couple other personal comments in regards to the line up:

  • Who the hell are half of these bands?
  • Cold is still together?  So is Puddle Of Mudd?
  • Five Finger Death punch is still the stupidest band name I have ever heard next to The Prisoners.
  • Matt from Addicted To Vinyl (also a ROTR veteran) pointed out there is a possibility that Mushroomhead may play a bigger stage than Helmet.  If that is true I will be a sad panda.
  • Why no Jimmie’s Chicken Shack?  While I am at it, why no Monster Voodoo Machine and are they still a band?
  • Is it worth the $120 for the field general admission tickets???
  • Furthermore is anyone else planning on going?

I’ll be thinking about this heavily over the next few weeks.  I would hate to miss the opportunity of seeing a couple of my favorite bands but I do not know if I have it in me to sit though the whole weekend.  We shall see.

If you are interested in the festival head over to Rock On The Range’s website for ticket information as well as other info in regards to the weekend rock-out.