Fans at The Roots Picnic 2014 @ Festival Pier.
Images by Michael Bucher, Rick Kauffman and Sean Kane.
As usual, The Roots Picnic was a great party, loaded with amazing music for more than 10 hours (see pics from the performances here).
But it was also a place to see and be seen. Here are some of the folks we saw floating around at the party.
Eyehategod, Ringworm and Enabler @ Underground Arts.
Text and images by Paul Imburgia.
Any local metalhead knew to get to Underground Arts on Sunday to see Louisiana sludge lords Eyehategod, in town as part of their 2014 North American tour promoting the very recent release of their self-titled full length album, their first since 2000..
The Southern doom metallers received fervent tour support from their openers, Cleveland’s own thrash/hardcore outfit Ringworm and the punk-encrusted Enabler. The show also kicked off with Philadelphia’s Sunburster and the musically comprehensive Sadgiqacea.
Needless to say there was no lack of heavy and the riffs were plentiful on this night – Eyehategod is infamous for their long, self-sustaining sets. The rest of the lineup was dense and eclectic and brought some of the best out of local headbangers, from fans of punk and hardcore to metalhead diehards.
The Roots Picnic 2014 @ Festival Pier with Snoop Dogg, The War on Drugs, Chill Moody, Janelle Monae and More.
Text by Chris Malo. Images by Sean Kane, Rick Kauffman and Michael Bucher.
The 7th annual Roots Picnic took over the Festival Pier this past Saturday on a glorious, sunshine filled day.
Waiting for the line-up announcements to hit the interwebs for the summer festivals has become a part of any live music listener’s springtime diet. When I saw the uber-busy and multitasking ?uestlove announced the 2014 show (and by announced I mean flipped through cue cards as he was getting his hair braided), I thought it was good look and that it covered a broad spectrum of audiences. I was also curious about the Festival Pier remodeling, hearing it got a major facelift and it was going to be my first look.
Text and images by Darragh Dandurand.
Tobacco smoke circled around the door to Northern Liberties’ Bourbon and Branch while the sound of bass lines pounded from the inside. On Thursday night the small, second-floor venue filled up fast for a line up featuring Philly’s own Black Stars and Vita & the Woolf. Openers Bueno and the Goods and The Valhallas played short sets in the dimly lit bar, warming up the audience for a long run.
Text by Beth Ann Downey. Images by Jesse Marass.
Joe Godino, drummer for Philly punk quartet The Menzingers, set the tone for the evening by making sure to snap a photo of the crowd a few minutes before his band took stage Saturday. He knew he’d want to remember this one.
The band played to a seemingly sold-out Union Transfer audience, their first time headlining one of their hometown’s big venues. The crowd went nuts the second The Menzingers started their set with the same sort of energy more regularly served up at a DIY house show.
It’s been all about The Menzingers since the band released their fourth full-length album, Rented World, in April (see our spring cover story on the band for more information about the making of the album). Friends and fans were at the show to help to celebrate but also showed appreciation and camaraderie toward the opening acts – the Philly punk girls in Cayetana, Canadian hard rockers PUP and the uniquely ethereal indie pop rock from Buffalo, New York’s Lemuria – who are supporting The Menzingers through July on their Rented World summer tour.
Cayetana set things off right, playing through their hits including “Hot Dad Calendar” and reminding the early crowd that the band will soon release its full-length debut, Nervous Like Me, in August via Tiny Engine Records. The Cayetana girls expressed their excitement to be touring with The Menzinger dudes and also the Toronto-born boys of PUP.
The Philly crowd warmed well to PUP, whose set caused the first stage dives of the night as they performed fast-paced, angry punk with smiles on their faces. Many in the crowd already knew the words to the tunes of the band’s breakthrough self-titled album released in April on SideOneDummy Records.
Lemuria opened their set with “Brilliant Dancer” and gave the crowd a high-energy breather as vocalist Sheena Ozzella serenaded the crowd with her soothing vocals.
Though Rented World tunes took precedence, The Menzingers drew from their entire catalog for their set, including “Gates” and “Good Things.” There certainly wasn’t anyone “having a horrible time” in sight.
Summer Issue Preview: The Spank Issue!
The summer issue of JUMP will start hitting the streets this weekend!
It’s a great edition, featuring Spank Rock, who will perform at the JUMP curated Red Bull Sound Select at Underground Arts on July 19.
Also in this issue are Cheerleader, Mumblr, Sore Saints, Lantern, Bondage & Discipline, Ang & the Damn Band, Season of Mist, Ma Jolie, Lame-O Records, Josh Miller, Strand of Oaks, Sad Actor, Woodmere Art Museum, MilkBoy Recording, The Dolphin and the adventures of Arrah Fisher. Lots of other stuff as well.
Follow us on facebook to see when and where we make drops.
The Menzingers: All Grown Up.
Text by Beth Ann Downey. Images by Jessica Flynn.
The four members of The Menzingers file into a long booth at The Pub On Passyunk East just as they would on stage. Tom May and Greg Barnett, the Philadelphia-based punk band’s two singers and guitarists, are flanked by drummer Joe Godino and bassist Eric Keen.
They’re so visibly the four moving parts of a unified front – no one person the target for this front line of battle. This is how they got here, moving together from Scranton to Philly, seeking better opportunities to play shows and make something of themselves, being signed to one of punk’s premiere labels, traveling the world and creating exactly the kind of music they want to make.
This is how they got here, and this is the way they will remain.
But share a few happy hour beers with The Menzingers and you’ll start to pick up on their subtle differences, aside from varying draft and food orders. You’ll notice Godino is kind of a jokester, the one who will crack the jokes that have everyone in stitches. Keen is the quiet, artistic one who even created some of the props soon-to- be featured in the band’s album art. Barnett, while also deep and well-read, has a goofiness to him that completely washes away when he’s on stage. He’s also the band member most focused on the business, constantly bringing up touring, ticket prices and live shows. May’s stage persona, on the other hand, is close to his demeanor – hard, but still approachable.
They’re a cast of characters who don’t seem like they should have been playing music together since 2005 and living together in the same house for years. Now they all live separately, but still within a two-block radius in South Philly. Despite this, it’s also apparent that around each other they’re at their most comfortable and candid.
The thought of getting sick of each other any time soon is laughable to them.
“We’ve made it this far, so I think we’re good,” Barnett says. “Honestly, if we weren’t doing an interview, it would seriously just be the four of us sitting here doing the same thing. We lived in the same house together for years. Everyone was like, ‘You guys are fucking crazy. How do you deal with that?’ I don’t know why it’s so crazy. Tomorrow, if we all had to move back in together, I could do it. It wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
Read more…
Thrills: Of Creation and Destruction.
Text by Beth Ann Downey. Image by Jessica Flynn.
When Michael Mullin talks about his music, he talks about destruction.
It’s how he describes the production, distortion and sampling he puts most of the many musical parts through to create a Thrills song. Whether it’s the vocals he sends through a space echo to the point of incoherence, or the bubbly textures of his guitar that he then slices into a trance rhythm, Mullin refers to his electronic stylings in this seemingly negative manner, despite the beauty that they create.
“The destruction that happens, I’m really attracted to because you’re taking something and destroying it or making it very small,” says Mullin while standing the basement studio he’s built in his South Philly home, using eggcrates taped to the walls for makeshift soundproofing. “I would make something and then cannibalize it with the process. It just sounds like things are traveling through the intestines of some big acoustic monster.”
It’s fitting that Mullin uses these negative words because he was motivated to create the first Thrills album after a very unfortunate experience. He had just moved in to this house, and before having time to unpack, had to leave for tour as the keyboard player for Vacationer. At 3:45 a.m. in Cleveland, he received a call from his new roommate that he had been robbed. Almost everything was taken, except miraculously, Mullin’s instruments in the basement. So he set out to recover the oldest thing he could remember that wasn’t taken from him – the catalogue of songs that he’d been dreaming up since long before the incident, but never put down.
“I wanted to recreate that and destroy it, kind of take that destructive event in my life and own it,” Mullin says. “I’d had these songs and they’d been stewing in me but it was that [feeling of] everything else is gone – but they left my music here – so I’ve got to do this thing that I’ve wanted to do forever.”
It was the help of friends that got Thrills off the ground to play in a live setting. Kenny Vasoli of Vacationer played bass on the record, Thrills of Constantly Collapsing. Greg Altman, also in Vacationer and metal band Ratkicker – of which Mullin is also a member – joined with Thrills to play bass along with Ratkicker drummer Earl Martin.
Shinjoo Cho: Selling Philly To The World.
Shinjoo Cho is the director for international business investment, working out of the city’s Commerce Department. She’s also a classically trained musician who performs on the bandoneon with her group, Oscuro Quintet. The globetrotting musician spoke with our G.W. Miller III about how her two worlds overlap.
What is a bandoneon?
That name actually derives from the inventor of the instrument. I believe his last name was Band. He was German.
How is it different from an accordion?
They’re cousins, for sure. They’re both free reed instruments. But they’re completely different in keyboard layout.
It’s almost like a concertina?
Yes, it’s more similar to a concertina. Slightly different materials. The keyboard layout is what makes the bandoneon very challenging and illusive to a lot of people because there’s no logical relation in the keyboard layout. There’s no pattern. For people who were raised on a mechanical keyboard, like me, it’s fairly insane.There are four sets of keyboards. The right hand is completely different from the left hand. It’s a similar sound to an accordion but the bandoneon has a mental tinge that sets it apart.
How did you wind up playing this?
When you play tango and you want to play a singing instrument – and you want to play something that is very symbolic of tango, this is the sound. I studied piano classically and went to conservatory. Sometime in my sophomore or junior year, I realized that I want to be happier with music making and be able to play something other than classical music all my life. At the conservatory, I came to the realization that there are so many people who are superb. I’d rather be doing something for myself rather than compete with world-class people.
I first encountered it through flamanco music. One of my part time jobs was to be a live accompanist for a flamenco class at the ballet school in Princeton. A few years later, when I was actually in Korea discovering Korean traditional music, I went to a concert that featured Astor Piazzolla’s music. I was kind of struck by lightning or something. I had to find out what that was all about. I came back to the Philly area but I couldn’t find people to play with. So I started taking dance lessons, thinking it would help me understand the music better.
Sometime around then, I traveled to Serbia as well because I was also fascinated with Balkan music. I had picked up the accordion in the middle of the forest in Serbia because there was no instrument for me as a keyboardist. Since that was at my disposal, I started playing the tango with an accordion.
Eventually, I realized I should go to the original, essential instrument of tango. So I traveled to Argentina to study Spanish, buy the instrument and get to know the tango music from the source.
When did Oscuro Quintet form? And was that the first time you performed with the instrument?
About eight years ago. For the first couple of years, I was still playing the accordion. As you can imagine, it’s very nerve-racking to perform with an instrument you are not very proficient in. It was a slow progression. Now I perform solely on the bandoneon. Read more…
Our photog Jessica Flynn caught Spraynard (above) at The Church on Saturday, with Timeshares, Everyone Everywhere, Armalite and Sundials. She had too much fun to take notes and stuff but check out the awesome pics from the show. Read more…
JUMP: The Philly Music Project 