The plight of the American punk rock band (part 1)

Crime In Stereo broke up this week, just months after releasing one of the most captivating albums of their career – and one of the best of 2010.

Rumors are swirling around whether or not singer Kristian Hallbert’s recent jaw infection had anything to do with the breakup – it’s also entirely possible that the band wasn’t making enough through album sales and touring to sustain themselves financially.  It’s a familiar story, but unfortunate nonetheless.

Crime In Stereo called it quits this week.

For a band, this breaking point seems inevitable.  There simply comes a point in time where, if you can only tread water, it doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense to keep plugging away.  With rock-bottom album sales and limited incentives for consumers to purchase a digital album as opposed to stealing it, how the hell is a band supposed to put gas in the tank to tour the country?  After all, punk rock is primarily a form of performance art.  Sure, there are indie-darling bands like Les Savvy Fav and Broken Bells that might only need to play festival lineups before returning to the studio to record another album – similar to a hip hop artist.  But for punk rock bands, the culture has always been centered around the basement shows and the VFW halls.

A common misconception is that – if albums aren’t flying off the shelves – bands can still sell enough merch to fill their tanks and their bellies.  Truth be told, I don’t know how much stock I put in that argument.  If you’re one of four bands on a show, you need to sell at least six or seven $10 t-shirts to fill your van’s tank and probably another five or six to feed yourselves for the day.  Now consider that every other band on the bill has to do roughly the same thing.  That’s close to 40 or 50 shirts a night.  On some nights, you might not even pack 50 people into a show.  Also consider that on bigger tours, more popular bands will raise the price of their merch and force opening bands to raise the minimum for their merch as well – most likely causing a drop in merch sales for the smaller bands.  Personally, I’m always disappointed when a band t-shirt is more than $15.  I don’t care if you chose to print your band name on the nicest American Apparel garments available – $18 -20 is too much.

Another thing to consider is that some venues actually take a cut of the merch sales from each band at the end of a show, which eats away at the amount of money bands are left with.  At the end of the day, there might just be too many hands in the coffers and not enough revenue to split.

Touring bands are often left with the sad realization that there just isn’t enough money to go around.  Harder still is the ability to build a rabid following from your desk chair.  Caught between a rock and a hard place is not exactly the “sex, drugs and rock-n-roll” lifestyle that budding musicians dream of.  Still – perhaps sleeping on floors, living off dollar-menus and touring the country’s finest DIY venues are all just rights of passage for artists who want to be remembered and revered for dedication to their craft.  When obligation creeps up and it’s time to get a real job – maybe it’s time to pass the torch on to the next young, starry-eyed punks.

As for Crime In Stereo, you guys will be missed.

Category Five – a retrospective

How could I not do a post about my old band?

It’s been roughly 10 years since I started playing music with Justin Stewart, Blake and

In the fall, Blake's moving from NYC to Boston and attending Harvard Business School! He always was the brains behind the band.

Colin Boeh in Category Five.  We called it quits in the summer of 2004, so I guess it’s been almost exactly 6 years since we played our last show.  Seems like all the places we used to play have since changed hands or closed down completely – which is a little sad.  Hell, even the websites we used to maintain have closed down (mp3.com has been gone for a long time and I lost our homepage domain when I graduated from Penn State – we still have a Purevolume site though!).

I know the chances are that if you’re reading this, you already knew the band.  I guess at the end of the day, I wanted a place to share and post the music – and to post some of the demos that you never got a chance to hear!

Nervous & Worried (click to download the album)

Colin grew out his hair and his beard - depending on the season you can find him in Maine or Idaho. Usually somewhere away from crowds.

Shortly after joining Category Five (formerly Exit 3) in 2000, we started looking for a place to record an album.  At this point, we were opening for the Buzz Poets at Banana Joe’s in the Pittsburgh Strip District and playing with other kids at the Cyber Golf (a mini golf course that used to be a movie theatre) in Butler, PA.

When we finally started tracking at Soundscape Studios, we were really wet behind the ears.  None of us had any idea how to record an album.  I think we blew through almost $10,000 making the album – we even had Justin’s dad take out a $5,000 loan to finish it up.  I remember at the end of the recording process, we won a battle of the bands at Club Laga that afforded us the ability to record two new songs for album – they ended up being “Freezing Rain” and “White Houses”.

One of the things I’ll always remember about the studio was hiding in the vocal booths and writing the music for “Lucky Summer Sky” on an acoustic guitar.  In the dark.  It was a really emo time in my life.

When the album was finally finished, Justin and Blake drove to Canada to pick up the albums from the manufacturing plant because it was somehow cheaper than getting all the boxes shipped to us (we pressed 1000 copies).  I remember them tracking me down in the halls of Seneca Valley when they got back to school and dropping a copy into my hands.  I don’t think I had ever been more excited about something in my entire life!

Justin quit vet school - and at the ripe old age of 30, he still spends most of his time traveling to video game conventions.

These days, I can pick the songs apart a little bit.  Our songs sounded very similar to each other.  The single guitar parts, the lack of depth in the bass, the way Justin interchanges “she” and “you” in “Lucky Summer Sky”, making for a somewhat confusing lyrical experience – they all drive me a little nuts.  We were young though, and I’m still extremely proud of this album.

Low Tide (click to download the song)

We recorded this song at Mr. Smalls Funhouse in Millvale – I want to say in late 2001.  This was for a local Pittsburgh band compilation that we had a chance to be a part of – and I think it just provided us a good opportunity to get back into the studio and record something new.  Aside from that compilation and shows – I don’t think we ever posted this on our website or Mp3.com or anything.  I think this was in our transitional period where we were in the middle of trying to find a second guitarist to fill out our sound.  We did eventually re-record it, although that version was never completed.

2002 Demo Tracks (click to download the EP)

As we were starting to play better shows (we got to play Warped Tour in 2001, opened for Billy Idol – and played at the Pittsburgh rib and wing fest!), Joe Seles (who was a stage manager at Club Laga at the time) asked if he could play guitar in our band.  Having tried a couple other guitarists in the past, I think we were all a little weary, but Joe actually showed up to the first practice with parts written to most of our songs.  He was an technically savvy guitarist and it actually allowed Colin a little freedom to start exploring different chords and riffs and improve his own playing (although I would say it took a while for Colin to feel comfortable with another guitarist in the band).  Shortly after Joe joined, we moved our gear into his basement in Pittsburgh and drove out to his place 2 nights a week for practice.

In the late summer of 2002 we started recording a brand new EP of songs.  We re-recorded “Dub Vee” and “Low Tide” and laid down the 4 new songs that we had written with Joe.  Tentatively, I think all the songs were titled “Genitals and Scissors” with a number associated with them (it was an inside joke revolving around a trimming accident) – but most of them were renamed (except G&S1).  We recorded drums for the EP at some place in the Northside of Pittsburgh.  Blake was a champ and knocked out most of the songs a lot quicker than he ever had before.  The rest of the recording was done at our producer’s home-studio in Dormont.

Joe got married... he basically has the ultimate punk rock family. An adorable wife and several pit bulls.

During the middle of recording, I went off to Penn State.  Joe ended up quitting the band in the late fall and we scrambled to pick up the pieces a little bit.  Justin finished 3 of the 6 tracks on the EP, but the other three still don’t have vocals on them, sadly.  When we attempted to get the studio tracks back from our producer, it turned out that he had actually lost our hard-drive.

I still listen to these tracks often – I think they ended up sounding a lot more mature and listenable than our earlier material (a lot of that can be attributed to Joe – and us growing up a little).  It’s a shame that we never ended up with a finished product though.  I still think “Genitals and Scissors” would’ve been a great song, had we finished it.  Fun fact – I have since gotten a HUGE tattoo of the lyrics to “Our Finest Hour” on my chest.  Oh yeah, I’m EXACTLY like that highschool quarterback that can’t let go of the glory days.

Last Songs (click to download the songs)

Tim moved to Florida and started a new band... And I assume took a lot more drugs.

After Joe quit the band, we played a couple shows as a four-piece again (one of them was opening for Brand New and the Movielife at Club Laga) but we intended to fill the spot eventually.  Our friend Tim Lease stepped in and played guitar for us starting in early 2003 (I vividly remember a weekend spent hanging in his garage teaching him the songs and lounging in his hot tub).  We finished out my freshman year at Penn State by winning a battle of the bands and playing at the student run “Movin’ On” festival at the end of the year.  That was a pretty triumphant time for us.  I think we all felt like we could still be a band even after Joe (who was a pretty strong influence on us all) had bailed.

We spent the following summer attempting to write new material.  The result was one song that we labored endlessly over.  I think we may have only ever played it once or twice to a crowd and we never recorded it.  Stew and I were both working for my dad doing construction and it felt like we barely ever attempted to play any shows.  The next year we didn’t do much together – but we did get together and play one last show in the summer of 2004.

As for me, I'm just kinda hanging out. Workin' in New York. Drinkin' too much.

At the end of college, I started to get really into recording songs in Garageband.  So our final opus wouldn’t ever be completely forgotten, I attempted to recreate it in demo form.  I also recorded an electric version of “Lucky Summer Sky” because I’ve always wanted to see what that might sound like.  They’re a little rough, but I’m satisfied with the results.  Maybe not as satisfied as if we had recorded them both as a band.  Who knows what’ll happen in the future though.

Rest in peace – you funky, child-loving man

Seriously.  How awesome was Michael Jackson?

Man, we’ll be celebrating the anniversary of his passing for years.  If you don’t think MJ was as big as (if not bigger than) Elvis, you’re kidding yourself.  Remember last year… Michael Jackson broke Google.  Michael Jackson caused MTV and VH1 to resort back to playing music videos.  At Sony Music, MJ single-handedly bolstered the record label for the financial year.  Unbelievable.

Regardless of your opinion on his personal life – the man made some funky jams… even in his crazier days!  Hell, “You Rock My World” from Invincible is classic!  I don’t know if anything tops Thriller though.  7 singles… on a frontline album… and they all reached the top 10!?  Are you kidding me?

Rest in peace, Michael Jackson.  Thanks for the tunes.

The Elms are breaking up

So I signed on to Facebook today only to see a post from The Elms’ guitarist Thom Daugherty (PS, that guitar he’s holding in his profile is actually mine!  I let him borrow it for a radio promotion in NYC the last time they were here – sick brag):

If you don’t know who the Elms are, stop reading this post right now and go here and listen to the song “Back to Indiana”.  If you like Americana rock n’ roll music in the style of Bruce Springsteen, John “Cougar” Mellencamp or Neil Young, you’ll understand what this band is all about.

My friend Kate turned me onto the Elms a few years ago. She sent me an unreleased track from The Great American Midrange demo sessions called “A Miracle” that I couldn’t stop listening to for months.  I was introduced to Thom who sent me The Chess Hotel and a few other new tracks that were up for consideration on the upcoming album.

As the band entered the recording studio to record the final mixes for The Great American Midrange, I frequented Thom’s blog to read about all the vintage gear and recording techniques they had been utilizing.  See, there’s not many bands (at least that run in my circle) that share the same affinity (…obsession?) for finding the perfect guitar tone – and I guess I felt that the Elms were a sort of kindred spirit band.  A band of analog purists in an age where everything can be spliced and cleaned up in not so much as a mouse click.  There might not be a touring band around today that I respect as much as the Elms in that sense.

And today that band is planning to hang it up.

But the good news is that this isn’t some sort of implosion or tension-induced breakup.  A lengthy post on the band’s website this morning explains that the band simply wishes to end things on a high note.  You can’t fault a band for knowing when to call it quits – no matter how incredibly talented they are.

As a bonus for fans, the band has decided to release a 40-track digital bundle (including some unreleased demos, live tracks, rarities and more for only $16.99!) and a 58-page digi-book chronologing the Elm’s 10 year run.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite Elms tracks.  It’s a song that didn’t make it onto The Great American Midrange, but that the band is offering in the digital bundle I just described – it’s called “Bring a Little Love to My Door”:

The band your favorite pub will most likely file a restraining order against

Proving once and for all that alcohol might as well be a performance enhancing drug – Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Jaguar Shark:

Composed of mostly the same line-up as New Jersey’s Hidden In Plain View (Mike Saffert, Chris Amato, Jay Snyder and Derek Reilly – plus non-HIPV guitarist, Jim Richardi), Jaguar Shark makes no attempts to cash in on what the kids are listening to these days.  These grizzly, unfortunate looking souls understand that they don’t belong in your Hot Topic stores or your Alternative Press magazine spreads along side bands like All Time Low.

No sir, this is a band that has taken a long hard look at itself… and afterwards, needed a stiff drink and a chance to blow off some steam.

What you end up with is unapologetic punk rock.  It’s not pretty.  It never should’ve been pretty in the first place.  Loud guitars and gravelly vocals with gang chants in the chorus.  And beer.  Lots and lots of beer.  They just recorded an EP over the past weekend – and from what I hear, it was a rager of a time, fueled by Pabst Blue Ribbon.  The result is closer to Jawbreaker and Small Brown Bike than today’s hardcore/punk mashup bands like Set Your Goals.

The band is streaming their brand new EP tonight on their myspace, facebook and purevolume channels.  Enjoy it with a drink in hand!

***Update – now streaming at their Purevolume site***

When you’re so far up your own ass…

Sometimes you don’t know that you’ve already made the same record twice before.

Tom Delonge’s pet project Angels and Airwaves released their third album, LOVE, for free on Valentine’s Day this year (hit up www.angelsandairwaves.com to download it).  Lately, Tom’s been on a soapbox telling anyone who will listen that this album is the most prolific release he has ever been a part of.  Unfortunately, he’s said the exact same thing twice before in response to each of the previous Angels and Airwaves albums (We Don’t Need to Whisper and I-Empire, respectively).  I’ve fallen for this trick two times now.  I was a big blink-182 fan and a huge Tom Delonge fan, so when the band broke up and two new projects were formed – I was really looking forward to whatever Tom would do next.

“Biggest rock band on the planet?!  Sounds good to me,” I thought.

We Don’t Need to Whisper was a big fat disappointment.  I-Empire on the other hand (even though it sounded similar in most respects to its predecessor) was a vast improvement.  The songs were catchier and the lyrics weren’t nearly as shitty.  I don’t know that either release lived up to the hype and the grandeur that was promised though.

But now we get LOVE.  On Valentine’s Day, no less.  Like Valentine’s Day, you get the feeling that the altruism is muddled with commercialism.  Sure, the album is free – but it comes with the hope of exposing millions of people to Tom’s new-fangled web platform, Modlife – a subscription service intended to bill fans for content from their favorite artists (advanced presale for tickets, access to artist updates, blogs, video posts, etc.).  This is supposed to be the savior of the dying music industry.

After a few listens – I can safely say that this isn’t the worst Angels and Airwaves record yet.  It probably isn’t better than I-Empire either – what I can say is that it sounds familiar… and not in that comforting sense.  From the first synth pads on the opening “Et Ducit Mundum Per Luce”, you get the sense that the band went into the studio and limited themselves to the same tools they’ve been using for the last two albums.  Hell, the  guitar riff throughout “Epic Holiday” uses the same delay-influenced rhythm as the lead single from I-Empire, “Everything’s Magic”.  Same plodding 4/4 time signatures as the last two albums.  Same vocal phrasing.  They even threw in some more epic, yodelly “Oh oh oh’s” for good measure.  I think I even heard that damn toy piano from “Start the Machine” off We Don’t Need to Whisper.  Bottom line – I’m sick of being fooled.  I don’t care about the next audio revolution.  I’m also getting a little tired of the whole Intergalactic Space Battle theme (Coheed does it better).  Let’s hear a little personal growth instead.

On a positive note, “Hallucinations” is a good jam.  Glad they picked it as the single.

We’re also supposed to finally see the movie that was intended to be released years ago by Angels and Airwaves.  A movie conceptually conceived by, but not starring the band (yet featuring LOVE as the soundtrack, ultimately).  Maybe that’ll be cool.  I have a feeling that like Delonge’s other recent solo ventures, it’s going to feel too big for it’s britches.

At the end of the day, what concerns me (read: “your average rabid blink-182 fan) is that Delonge’s illusions of grandeur are going to infect or deteriorate the promise of a new blink-182 album.  Whether or not he realizes it, his songwriting is at its best when it’s complimented by Travis Barker’s mind-bending talent for creating rhythms and Mark Hoppus’s ear for pop sensibility.

You’ve created your epic space odyssey, dude.  Come back to Earth.  Leave the ego in orbit.

And for christsakes, would you please pick up a Stratocaster?

Another band that shouldn’t have broke up

The Matches were a weird band and then they broke up.  They were a band that probably wasn’t ever going to crash the mainstream rock scene.  Their sound was so quirky that their popularity never really spanned across the entire punk and emo scene that they were born from (like a Brand New or a Thrice).

“Band doesn’t make it big… that’s a pretty unremarkable intro there, Steve,” you say to yourself.

The difference between the Matches and most other bands that never became a stadium filling superstar act is that the Matches deserved it.  This is a band that started grinding it out in California by playing acoustic guitars outside other punk rock shows – basically commandeering the ears of other bands’ fans.  True grassroots, guerrilla punk rock.  And they became one of the best live bands I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing.

When I first heard the Matches, I was probably a sophomore at Penn State.  My Asian doppelganger, Chris Kung, insisted that they were incredible and that I had to listen to their album E. Von Dahl Killed the Locals.  Upon first listen, I was totally underwhelmed.  I mean, this band was weird.  Like, really weird.  Why did the singer have such a strange voice?

Then I went home to Pittsburgh one weekend near the end of the school year to see three shows… I saw Midtown on Friday night.  On Saturday I went to a Matchbook Romance show to flyer for an Over It/A Wilhelm Scream show the following night (I already mentioned that I was a big Over It fan).  The Matches were an opening act at the Matchbook Romance show (why would you book a band with such a similar name to open?)

The Matches were awesome.  Spastic.  Intense.  Loud.  And the lead guitarist had the biggest blonde afro I had ever seen.  That was pretty much the moment I became a Matches fan.  Any band that could rock a club like that deserved a more open-minded listen.

So E. Von Dahl slowly became a car staple throughout the rest of college.

The last week of senior year, I got a leaked copy of Decomposer, the band’s next album.  From the first song, “Salty Eyes”, it was pretty obvious that they had decided to go in a newer, weirder direction.  There’s not a song on Decomposer that remotely resembles another one.  The production was much glossier.   I seriously doubted the band would be able to pull off these disjointed, but wonderful sounding songs in a live setting – and I didn’t really care.  This wasn’t so much a punk album or an emo album… and I still don’t know what to call it.  It’s dark and sadistic like an AFI cd, but it was goofy and odd at the same time.

If you don’t know the Matches – this would be a good album to start with.

Decomposer was a brilliant, ambitious album… but it sold like shit.  And the next album was fraught with that frustration.  A Band In Hope was to be the sister album of the previous effort – just as wacky and just as ambitious.  And what I really like about the Matches’ third album is that it doesn’t pander to the audience that didn’t get them.  Being disappointed with the sales figures of Decomposer, they might have written a more accessible album just to reach the masses.  Instead, they didn’t relent.  A Band In Hope was another hodgepodge of oddities.  The songs took longer to hook into me than I initially expected and at first, I considered it inferior.  Once again, it took seeing the band play live to appreciate the album.

The Matches opened for Bayside in New York.  It was the last time I’d get to see them play.  It was also the first time I truly realized how incredible this band really is.  Believe me when I say this – the Matches were one of the most thrilling live acts I have ever seen.  They performed the hell out of every song.  I left the show feeling like there was no way they weren’t going to be the biggest band on the planet someday.  It was only a matter of time.

Sadly – the Matches broke up shortly after that show.  They’ve since started several new projects that fail to excite me as much as another studio album from the band would.

This is what you’ll be missing out on, everyone: