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ITHE ROCKOUT IS COMING—GIVE IT ROOM Perhaps many of
you can recall the mega-band music event known as the Anti-Freeze
Rock Out that took place in March 2001. The promoters, Ashley
Hahn (now a Metroland writer) and Bob Carlton (who
is Mr. Sixfifteens), got involved with the endeavor over a
bet (that they couldn’t successfully book a weekend of music).
The Anti-Freeze Rock Out reigned supreme: It featured more
than 20 bands at a handful of Saratoga Springs venues, and
hoards of winter-weary music-loving folk attended.
The pair wanted to do it again last winter, but winter became
spring, spring became summer . . . But now they’re on it.
And it seems as if the wait was worth it. They’ve enlisted
the help of another music fiend, John Suvannavejh, to help
make this Rockout (it’s not cold enough for the anti-freeze)
even bigger. The shows will take place in Saratoga, Troy and
Albany this time around—which will be next Friday and Saturday
(Nov. 7-8).
The Saratoga sites are: Last Vestige (437 Broadway), King’s
Tavern (241 Union Avenue), Falstaff’s (Skidmore College) and
Club Caroline (13 Caroline St.); Rockout Sites South are All
Sports in Troy (194 River St.) and Valentine’s (17 New Scotland
Ave., Albany).
Mixing their influences of Thin Lizzy and Mötörhead with rockabilly
abandon, the Supersuckers will play twice on Friday:
a free performance at Last Vestige (5 PM), and later, on the
bill with To Hell and Back and Until Sunday at
Valentine’s (upstairs, 10 PM). It’s nothing but garage-rock
downstairs at Valentine’s that night, with Boston-based Downbeat
5 and local troupe the Staynes (10 PM). Also at
10, the Day Jobs, 4 Minute Mile and Nero will
descend upon King’s Tavern.
The Saturday shows are mainly in Saratoga: Ohio-based glam
punks Cobra Verde will play at King’s Tavern, with
three local acts, mudflap-rockers Coal Palace Kings,
heavy-hooksters Small Axe and post-punk seizure rockers
the Wasted, sharing the bill. At Club Caroline, it’s
the Sixfifteens, the Trauma Queens and the Mitchells;
at Fallstaff’s, locals Pirate School (electrified Kamikaze
Hearts) and the Weigh Down will play; Scientific
Maps and Samantha DeBie will be at Last Vestige. Rockout
South will take place at All Sports, with garage legends the
Lyres and the Fleshtones, with our local garage
legends Thee Ummmm, opening.
Check out rockout.com for a complete schedule.
FILMMAKING
ON A SHOESTRING Area avant-garde experimental band and
multimedia project Wet Shoe- laces, who won
Best Homage to Pre-MTV Peter Gabriel in this year’s Best Of
for their Umbref Records release If Gods Were Stoned,
have been too busy to get soggy as of late. The Clifton Park-based
duo, Allen Bailey and Steve Gregory, landed a job scoring
Thunderbubble Pictures’ Chaos Monster and the Sun God,
a heartwarming tale of a job opportunity gone bad due to some
acid-spiked soda. The film is included on a DVD comp, Lawn
Chair Frontier, out on Thunderbubble. Umbref Records has
released the CD-soundtrack to Chaos Monster and the Sun
God, available on www.wetshoelaces.com. Go to www.thunderbubble.com
for the DVD. Bailey and Gregory hold film scoring near and
dear to their hearts, so this must have been a good time.
Two of their songs are also featured on another film, The
Faith Healer’s Manual for the Slightly Inebriated.
The duo have been making music together since 1998, when they
were in the trio Queen Elvis together. But they enjoyed
the creativity and complexity that recording offered more
than performing live, so they retreated to their four-track.
Gregory gets his live fix performing bass with Blackcat
Elliot and Zen Vandals—and he’s also a multi-instrumentalist
with Radical Polynomials and Discordian Liberation
Front (band names are a second language to these guys).
Wet Shoelaces’ fifth release, Fanfare for the Umbref King,
is due out Friday. It has a handful of songs with words—featuring
the disquieting poetry of frequent collaborator E. Aubrey
Andrews—and a bunch of instrumental tracks. They’re releasing
the album on Halloween, “in honor of the dark atmosphere of
the new disk.” Check their Web site for any further information.
A
HOLE LOTTA LOVE Metroland is in search of music
fans who can write, and who’d like to write, reviews of live
shows and records. We’d especially like those interested in
DIY basement shows, hiphop, rap and R&B. So send a writing
sample or two to: Kate Sipher, Metroland, 4 Central Ave.,
Albany, NY 12210, or e-mail ksipher@metroland.net.
—Kate
Sipher
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