Live: Ian Cheap Girls and Mikey Erg with Dave Hause @ Cake Shop 5.1.11

As regular readers may surmise, I was in this for Ian Graham of the exceedingly awesome Cheap Girls. Beyond that, I wasn't sure how the evening would present itself. Given the three parties and their usual go-to instruments, I thought we might have ourselves a little ad-hoc rock band with rotating singers, but I came in to a fourth dude doing a Rocky Votolato kind of thing with another dude on electric. As it was a school night, I wasn't all that enthused about the addition, but he was decent enough and Ian appeared soon after, knocking out twenty minutes of fucking great tunes that I have a not-great but decent recording of if anyone wants. E-mail me.

At this point I was pretty stoked. It was still early, so I figured I'd catch a couple Mikey Erg tunes and bail. Post-Ergs, I've grown so accustomed to seeing him play drums in almost every band that would allow him behind a kit that I forgot what a great songwriter he is. His half-hour set featured the cream of his namesake's output performed on solo electric, as well as a pretty aces run through your favorite Cee-Lo Green chestnut. Yannich is one talented dude, and perhaps one who has moved back to NJ? Off-hand banter seems to suggest as much. It's hard not to see him, but see him sing sometime soon, if you can. I got a recording of that set, if you are of a mind, so holler if you'd like a link. I didn't stay for Hause, nor did it seem a lot of others, but I did see Franz on the way out and still made it home early with embarassingly rudimentary recordings in tow. If you missed this and are going to find yourself in the Northern climes this summer, Mikey and Dave Hause are doing a Canadian spin later on this year with Tony Sly, so keep an eye out.

R

Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock by Sammy Hagar

Lets get this out of the way from the jump: the best Van Halen was when Dave fronted the band. I still remember getting up early to hear the debut of new single with Sammy on WPDH and being pretty flummoxed at the lack of rocking. As a VH obsessive, I still picked up the record, but secretly hoped that there would be a reconciliation. Don't get me wrong, Hagar has some great tracks and expect that sooner or later a Montrose epiphany will occur, but the first four Van Halen records are pretty untouchable.

That said, after I heard about Red on That Metal Show, I was at The Strand the next day picking this up. Not that I wasn't openly mocked (anonymously) by the staff when they paged me to pick it up, but such are the crosses one must bear to be old and metal in the new millennium. Ok, so now that we've added the Dave caveat, let it be knowm that Red is one hell of a book. Assuming that most of the tales herein are true, Hagar is quite a guy. Frankly, I thought the Cabo thing and the sale of 80% of the tequila franchise for a cool 100 million were dumb luck, but come to find Hagar has struck gold a couple times before, having been the biggest (and second ever) mountain bike purveyor on the West Coast and invested heavily in Northern California real estate even before he made his stadium turn with Van Halen.

Hagar is no angel and is quick to admit it, but to hear his side of the Van Halen story, especially in the wake of the ridiculously disrespectful ousting of Michael Anthony, it's not that easy to be part of the Van Halen machine. Anyone who saw the cadaverous cover he did for Guitar World could tell that there was something seriously awry, even above and beyond his fight with cancer and divorce from long-time partner Valerie Bertinelli. Red dishes dirt, but not from an especially malevolent place. Hagar seems like a filthy rich older guy who appreciates what he has. It makes for an engaging read that is optimized for the rock nerd but compelling for the average punter. I'd pick it up. Try here.

Glasvegas - Euphoric Heartbreak

Glasvegas kinda rocked my world when they dropped their debut a couple years ago. Motown-isms, Glaswegian accents and healthy doses of reverb all are things that will curry favor at JS-NYC HQ and Glasvegas had them all in spades. The singer looked a lot like Joe Strummer, they had a bad-ass lady drummer and the neighbors soon got well sick of the repetition.

There was a pretty big push in the Q when this dropped and I gotta say that I wasn't all that excited to hear that the enigmatic frontman had written the lion's share of the record in Malibu and was currently wearing nothing but white, had his mother recording spoken word parts on the record and had two new tracks subtitled Homosexuality, especially when they were not concurrent with the singer announcing his practitioning thereof. Don't even get me started with the punctuation. Soon after, I got Euphoric///Heartbreak\\ flowed my way and can't say that I was over the moon about the whole thing. It seemed ponderous and didn't flow well at all. After the six or seventh spin, I realized I'd been playing the record backward and liked this a lot more. With all the sartorial and musical pretentions, I would have liked Euphoric///Heartbreak\\ to be a lot more engrossing than I find it currently, but it's a solid sophomore shot from Team Glasgow and I bet that I'll really fall for this over the next couple months. Stay tuned here for backpedaling revisionism. In the interim, keep track of Glasvegas here.

R

Pusha T - Fear Of God

Your boy Pusha has had a pretty good year or so. Even if your first exposure was on Runaway, you'd be a fool to dispute that the VA boy is nice with his, but the Kanye connection has really taken T to the next level. This mixtape comes courtesy of Re-up Gang and Whoo Kid and has a dozen tracks (as well as the obligatory Scarface intro) that should do pretty well when it comes to whetting peoples appetite for the Pusha T debut on Good Music.

As you might surmise, the drug game is often referenced, as are the spoils and female companionship that results from such entrepreneurial endeavors. Rick Ross shows up to kill a verse with Ab-Liva, while Pharrell and 50 bring big guns but ultimately don't do so well. The young people may feel differently. Ye shows up for a track that is definitely not on the level of Runaway, but does bode well for another solid collabo when the new record drops. Pusha is definitely one of the sharpest out there, but the lyrics don't carry the tired mid-tempo vocoderisms of Cook It Down. I wouldn't call this a must-own, but if you rep for the Re-Up, you could do a lot worse than Fear Of God.

R

Brad Williams - Coming Up Short

I picked this up as a matter of practice for the comedy column. Lets be clear from the jump: I think we both know that if I had been able to rub two brain cells together and made the connection between the title and the fact dude was a midget, I would have passed this over like a free pass to a Demetri Martin set. Much like most fat comedians (Louie Anderson, Gabriel Iglesias), that aren't the great Ralphie May, the human sight gag gets old after five minutes at best and you just wish they would die. Or maybe that's just me.

Brad Williams is a midget. He talks about it a lot. Luckily enough he's pretty funny. I hadn't heard him before, although (and from where I'm sitting, because) he evidently has done a lot of stuff on Mind Of Mencia. He is tailor made for the gig, if only because Mencia can't steal midget jokes. I'm not sure whether he's got anything in him past this record, but Coming Up Short has a bunch of good bits that will more than satisfy any average person's curiosity about midget sex, dating or nome (gnome? sorry..)nclature. He's funny enough that he shouldn't have had to resort to calling the record Coming Up Short, but marketing is marketing. If you're not an asshole like me, get your copy and keep tabs on all things Brad Williams here.

R

Live: Seaweed @ Bell House 4.22.11

I'm no David or Jim Wilbur, but I like me some Seaweed. It had been a long damn time since I had seen them, and Aaron mentioned it had been ten years since they'd been East. I can only assume that the show was the lackluster SESAC showcase at Coney Island High, a memory that didn't portend all that well for a one-off fly-in show on borrowed gear. In fact, the poor sound for the first couple songs did little to diminish my crankiness over having ridden out to the wilds of Brooklyn. Luckily, by the time Losing Skin jumped off things were firing on all cylinders and Tacoma's finest dispensed with the ass-kicking for the duration.

Seaweed have songs. Check that set list, kids, and know that while some pounds have been added to various frames in the franchise, these veterans can still bring it. I'd like to see them and Samiam do some touring together. There's a new Seaweed record coming, so lets hope that the planets align and its not just on the West Coast.

R

P.S. Eliot - Sadie

I'm not sure how P.S. Eliot came on my radar, but they have got a fair amount of spin around JS-NYC HQ over the last year or so. The local ladies have been kind of bringing it in recent years (Little Lungs, Measure (sa), Bridge & Tunnel) so I can only assume some string pulling from one of them got them our way. Either way, the record release for Sadie was a good time and the new songs sound pretty great.

Twelve songs, with the title track and Pink Sheets standing out. Shitty and Tragic is pretty aces as well. Lovers of the post-Deal era of lady rock will find much to like about Sadie. As at least one member still hails from Birmingham, I'm not sure how actively PSE are going to be touring behind this, but see them if you can and pick up Sadie from If You Make It or buy the vinyl from Salinas here.

R