Seeing as how we didn't have anything for you tonight and the Good Records thing starts early tomorrow (we usually don't leave the house on Saturdays until several hours after this thing starts), we decided to go ahead and give you the lineup right now. There will be free food and beer if you're 21.... and they check ids, kids- not to mention to superegos (paging Dr. Freud). This is the Good Records Birthday/store moving party, by the way.

11am: Voot Cha Index (UPDATE: Actually some pretty decent noise pop stuff. Probably worth checking out if you can get up in time)
noon: Fishboy (pretty good)
1pm: The Theater Fire (yes!)
2pm: Deathray Davies (whateva)
2:30pm: Salim Nourallah (actually pretty good, despite what we expected)
3pm: Astronautilus (who?)
4pm: Record Hop (fun)
5pm: Daryl (don't know, don't care)
6pm: Jetscreamer (never heard)
7pm: Baboon (have heard good things about their new stuff)

Then the store will close at 10. Forever. Until they open again on Greenville next week. Really this is the best record store in Dallas, so we have to give props. Looking forward to exploring their new, much bigger location.

This really is a first for us. Friday night and nothin doin'. There are shows all over the place tonight, just like every Friday night, but nothing that really stands out to us. This means that you should go to house parties, or stay home, or do whatever it is you do. We're going to do whatever it is WE do. Feel free to post your events in the comments section, or to tell us how crappy we are for not including such and such a show on our list. Power to the people!

So call us Mr. Butterfingers or whatever because we just recently learned about the massive Wall of Sound event taking place in Fort Worth on Saturday April 8th and Sunday April 9th. Some of the highlights include Low, Starlight Mints, Okkervil River and the Black Angels, as well as pretty much every good local band you can think of. The festival certainly will be one of the biggest musical events in DFWD this year, so you should probably be seen there. Tickets go on sale today in like an hour.

Wall of Sound Festival website

So we wanted to tip you off on a good Denton band we started listening to recently. As we've said before, one of the things that separates bands that might get national attention (even if its only in the indie community) from those that are destined to play Mondays at Club Clearview forever is the quality of their vocals. Local bands just looking to have some fun can get away with having an average (or below average) lead singer and still be able to get girlfriends or whatever, but bands that have bigger aspirations have to get their shit together on vocals. Shiny Around the Edges has accomplished this goal, and they have the songwriting chops and unique artistic vision to properly back their two excellent singers, who also happen to be the only two people in the band.

SATE has been together for about four years, and both members share songwriting, singing and arrangement duties. They've released two limited edition Eps, a DVR, and have contributed songs to a number of different compilations. Most of the band's music is quite minimal and has an ambient and atmospheric quality that will remind you of Brian Eno, Castanets, Swans, Six Organs of Admittance, and maybe some of the early experiments of Sonic Youth. The sounds that you'll hear on some of their tracks are "noise" by definition, but its very controlled and quiet, allowing their vocals and songwriting skills to take center stage. Male vocalist Michael sounds a little like Leonard Cohen and Michael Gira, and female vocalist Jennifer seems to channel Massive Attack and a pinch of Stereolab. The band throws all of these influences in a blender along with some front porch folk, striking a proper balance with the drone minimalism that sets the emotional tone for their music. The result is a sound that is challenging yet perfectly accessible, poppy in a sense yet strange enough to strike a chord. Its like art school without the art students.

Some MP3s if you please:

"In the Heart" Link

"Waiting for the Night" Link

Kind of a slow Thursday night here in big D. Hopefully the weekend will be better. This weekend, and every other weekend starting now, we're going to do what we like to call the "Weekly MP3 Blog Round Up." I guess by now you realize that there are about 8 million blogs out there telling you to "Check out this new so and so from wherever that sound like this and that," and sometimes they're right on. However, a lot of the time they can fuck right off, especially if they try to tell you that Arctic Monkeys are the new Oasis, or that The Subways are the new Arctic Monkeys. I can't believe I typed the name "Arctic Monkeys" twice (three times) in one paragraph. Moving on, we'll sort through the shit for you and post the mp3 links that are actually good along with a link to the sites we got them from. With 8 million blogs talking about three of four new bands a day per blog, thats a lot of overhyped crap that you won't have to sort through because we'll do it for you. And you know our taste is better than yours anyway. So here we go, it list time:

1. Dj G 80's Night @ Hailey's: We've talked about this enough. If you need details you can email us.

2. Mile End with Dj Laureen (Fallout Lounge)
Same applies here.

If you know of anything else going on tonight that might be worth the time and trouble of the upwardly mobile demographic that reads this blog, feel free to post about it in the comments.

JR- weshotjr@yahoo.com

Just to let everyone know, coming up in the next few days we'll have a couple profiles of local bands that you may or may not have heard of, some new local and national Mp3s, and 7 1/2 questions with the Undoing of David Wright.
And if you're lucky, some free love on the free love freeway.

1. The Party w/ DJ Nature (Rubber Gloves- Denton)
The party is growing on Wednesday nights, so you should go drink cheap beer and dance to such a wide variety of good music that we can't even describe it.

2. 80's Night w/ DJ G (The Cavern)
80's dance, house, synth, new wave, whatever you want to call it.

Of Montreal put on a pretty good show tonight, even if it did happen to start at fucking 10:15, which caused us to miss a few songs. The set was more or less tight, and the band played with a good deal of energy to a pretty packed Granada crowd full of kids jumping around and dancing to all the hits from the two most recent records, along with some older types sitting around talking about stocks or something.

However, despite the fact that the band really didn't do anything wrong, the show was less than great. I believe this is mainly due to the fact that the Granada is just not a great place to see a concert. For one you can't smoke, which annoys us beyond words (although we are aware that some of you jerks might actually enjoy smoke free environments). And more importantly, the sound quality in the main room just isn't that great . We don't know much about sound waves and acoustics and all that, but something about the Granada's main room just kills the sound of live music and makes everything come out all compressed and flat. There is usually a lot going on in Of Montreal songs, but we really couldn't enjoy much of it since most of the time we just couldn't differentiate between sounds. Granada is a pretty cool theater in a great location, and everything probably sounded fantastic up close. But those of us that got there late and had to stand in the back really couldn't hear anything very well. Maybe it was the band and we just don't know it, but we've noticed this a few times at the Granada and we have decided to blame the room. Perhaps you know more and can explain to us why we're wrong. Or maybe you heard a different show all together tonight, and think we have cotton stuck in our ears. Let us know in the comments if thats the case. But for now we're going to be grumpy about the Granada, at least until they let us smoke inside.

JR- Weshotjr@yahoo.com