Axe and the Oak Emerge From Their Cave to Play Sweatstock
Above all else, Miami trio the Axe and the Oak trade in scarcity and outsider-ness. The band, whose core is frontman Sander Willig and bassist Myles Kaplan, seem to almost deliberately cultivate mystery. Their live performances are rare, spooky, spookily polished, even. Their sound is tight but twangy, full of minor-key reverb and Willig’s emotive [...]
Pool Party Will Make a Big Splash at Sweatstock Saturday
Here’s the story of cult punk foursome Pool Party as they — and their small, but rabid circle of longtime fans — would have you believe. The members first met some 10 years ago when they bumped into each other while searching for drugs on the bathroom floor of the long-defunct South Miami club 5922. [...]
What You Need to Buy on Record Store Day. Says Who? Says Me.
When Salty Eggs asked me to come up with “four or five” picks among the many Record Store Day releases to tout as must-buys, I figured it was a cake assignment. Just look through the list, write up a handful that pique my interest, and call it done. The assignment proved more difficult than I [...]
Radio-Active Records’ Mikey Ramirez Talks Shop
Until recently, Radio-Active Records sat in a nook of the Gateway Shopping Plaza on Sunrise Blvd. in Fort Lauderdale, a hideaway between stores selling sandwiches and soap and vintage dresses. Like the archetypal record store of the imagination, Radio-Active was born when, creatively speaking, its surroundings were in the midst of a dearth — Blue [...]
Record Store Day Is Bigger Than Christmas, But Is This Vinyl Bubble Ready to Pop?
Record Store Day has gotten so big so quickly, it’s spawning subplots: Will the hardened eBay sellers who try to buy up all the limited album pressings spoil the fun for everyone else? Will the resurgent vinyl LP — the centerpiece of Record Store Day’s expanding product line — continue its retail revival? Or have [...]
Suede Dudes Amounts to More Than the Sum of Its Prolific Parts
Although Suede Dudes opened for Andrew W.K. on April 7 — just a week and a half ago as of this write-up — you need not worry if you missed it. Their upcoming performance at Record Store Day is likely to be more seminal. “We didn’t technically open for Andrew W.K.,” vocalist/guitarist Bryan Adams admits. [...]
Five Memoirs for the Musical Bibliophobe
One of the most fascinating things to me about the memoirs of musicians (besides the sex, drugs, and rock and roll, of course) is the amount of people who read them who normally wouldn’t crack a book. A guy who had recently read Keith Richards’s 2011 memoir Life cornered me at a Christmas party last [...]
Garage Band Beach Day Channels ’60s Pop, Plays Radio-Active Records Saturday for Record Store Day
The phrase “beach day” denotes not so much an event, as in a way to spend the afternoon, as it does a warm, fuzzy feeling. There are words in other languages to describe that blissful sleepiness you get after a day at the shore (or so I’ve been told). The rosy-cheeked, languid haze that tends [...]
Q&A: Lauren Reskin of Sweat Records Talks First Mix Tape, Sweatstock, and What’s Next
As this is the week that over 700 independent record stores gear up for Record Store Day 2012, it’s more than appropriate — and almost sacrilegious not to — to spout off about the evils of corporate record store chains. But once in a great while they can help serve a higher purpose — like [...]