Tag: Creative Loafing Tampa
Creative Loafing Best of the Bay 2019: The bands of Tampa Bay
The annual Best of the Bay reader poll/survey for Tampa Bay residents is out and will be active during the month of August. A lot of subject-maters and items are covered within the survey/poll, which is divided up into four sections (“Goods and Services”, “Arts and Entertainment”, “Food and Drink” and “People, Places, and Politics”).
While I usually go first-and-foremost to the “People, Places and Politics” section because of my affinity and involvement in sports, I went to “Arts and Entertainment” firstly this time around in order to quench a curiosity that I have. A curiosity in music, sweet music…
It’s not news for me to mention I’m running a local-theme Spotify playlist. What is an issue is me actually looking for and finding more artists to put on the playlist (not like anyone actually listens to that thing though :-/) I also wonder about the local scene and performing artists (of original nature) that are out there.
There are many.
Read MoreDiscovering the Best Releases by Local Bands nominated in the 2018 Best of the Bay poll
Creative Loafing’s annual Best of the Bay is here for the 2018 season. I won’t tell you what to vote for and all that jazz (I’m not a nominee, nor is this blog. Not like that would have happened anyway). What I would like to provide here is a little tool of hyperlinks for specifically one voting list.
The Best of the Bay Arts and Entertainment section has quite a few music related categories and voting opportunities. There’s general band listings, rock, hip-hop, country, bluegrass, blues, etc. The category that’s leading to this post is “Best Release By A Local Band”. Read More
Members of the Tampa Bay music scene
I’m a regular in a Reddit subgroup that represents the entirety of the Tampa Bay area, /r/tampabay. Most of the citizens of the cities in the Bay area aren’t members of that group, they’re in the singular cities like /r/tampa, /r/stpetersnurgFL, or not in a city subgroup as all (hey, power to the people – it’s not like everyone goes on Reddit to talk about local life).
Anyway, a couple of months ago on the less-populous /r/tampabay subreddit, a new-resident sounded a disdain for the lack of original musicians in the Tampa Bay area:
So, I’m starting to think there just doesn’t exist any kind of local music scene here at all, unless you consider septuagenarians playing jurassic-rock covers a “scene”. Please tell me I’m wrong. The only show that I’ve gone to in a year and a half was when I flew back to Ohio to visit. This is depressing.
This opens up a question of where in the Bay area they were looking for performances and when – it’s not like it’d happen every day of the week. It’s also not like you can expect original music by local band members to be available at a golf resort or at a bar/pub/club/tavern deep in suburbia. Oh, it likely happens but you’re more likely to get cover acts in small time locales like that.
Lack of local music scene, though? No… That’s not the case. Read More
The “Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band” anniversary and math
I hate posting this. I do. It’s just that a flaw in a featured piece about the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album anniversary over at Creative Loafing Tampa has an outright flaw quite early in the piece:
Sing it with me, children, all together now …
“It was 50 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play.”
Uh, excuse me? Excuse me… Hi… Uh, I need to make a correction for you here (and for anyone else locked in on the 50th anniversary of the album). Let me quote the writing tandem of John Lennon and Paul McCartney here to point out the issue with history:
It was twenty years ago today
Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play— “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” lyrics via Genius
If it was 20 years on June 1, 1967 (the date of release for the album), it’s 70 years in 2017. I realize the intention of the length of time is something to revel in here and the intro attempt by the article author is a rally-point, but add some logic here… Sgt. Pepper (the personality) and his colleagues had been around a while, going “in and out of style” but they remain “guaranteed to raise a smile”.
At any rate, the article touches on the weight of Sgt. Pepper to the Fab Four, it’s worth a click-thru and a read…
Going for the "Jangular" from the Pretty Voices
A garage band named “The Pretty Voices” seems a little odd, but that’s the gist I think: to be a little off. The group isn’t aimed at a profound/powerful vocal arrangement; they’re about doing the rock thing in the garage-band kind of way: Independent, holding amateur flaws but also showing an ability that warrants exposure in one fashion or another.
It was completely by chance and a “well why not?” attitude on my part that got me to check out their album, Jangular, which was released in May of this year. The entire album is available online for purchase but it’s also able to be accessed through YouTube.
Now, I’m not a garage band listener on the norm… Heck, I rarely listen to anything of current (which holds to this story in a way, we’ll get to that in a second). I really did just listen to Pretty Voices by chance (the direct influence being Creative Loafing Tampa’s tweeting about their review of Jangular). I was drawn into the group from what I was hearing simply because the band could hit an influential riff in their pieces, such as in Control. It’s simple enough, though it also has its flaws (late in the song, it just ends up sounding messy).
El Camino, in beat and pacing, is pop rock in how it comes off. I can’t make out the lyrics but that’s my flaw with hearing disability and it – missing out on lyrics – is a running truth for most of Janular songs. That’s not a flaw for them, not as much as when engineering / production can’t diversify the sound produced for bridges in Pretty Voices songs.
The track that stands out for me to the point that I bought it was “Crackle Pop” which I embed here:
The oddity of the number is that it was released as a single three years ago by the group. The entire concoction of Jangular was put together and amassed over five years. Back to “Crackle Pop”, it’s a brilliant mix of the riff and pacing to truly come off as a crackling pop-rock number. The take from years ago seems a little less refined than the album version of the song.
In the end, Jangular and Pretty Voices are worth checking into in one way or another – be it an online listen on YouTube, buying a track from an online store, or checking the group out in-performance at a show in St. Petersburg.
