Funk Babblings

It's been a long time since I've posted about upcoming shows, partly because I've been so far away from them. But now I'm only half an hour away from lots of good ones.

Last.fm pointed out some of these to me, and from there I decided to see Ticketmaster's entire list of concerts for the next couple months....

Tue Oct 2 - The Donnas @ Newport Music Hall
Mon Oct 8 - Johnette Napolitano @ House of Crave (She was the singer for Concrete Blonde.)
Tue Oct 9 - Bad Religion @ Newport Music Hall
Sat Oct 13 - Loreena McKennitt @ Palace Theatre
Wed Oct 17 - Raveonettes @ The Basement
Fri Oct 26 - Oswald & the Herringbones @ House of Crave (They were big in Columbus in the late 80s and early 90s but then disappeared, so this will be a rare show.)
Mon Nov 26 - Tegan and Sara @ Newport Music Hall

I admit it: I've had some musical obsessions recently.

One is Cake Or Death, a side project of the leader of the band Black Lab. Black Lab is decent, but not nearly as interesting to me. (I heard both on podcasts, and first heard Cake Or Death on the TPN Rock podcast.) I love the haunting quality from the mixed male/female harmonies and the minor keys. Too bad track 3 sucks and track 6 is just mediocre.

Another is The Darling Buds, a female-fronted late-80s / early 90s alternapop band. You might've heard one or two of their songs before, like "Long Day In The Universe". Every time Pandora played them for me I loved it, so I bought all three of their CDs.

Other bands I've been getting into a lot tend to share qualities with those two, especially the women singers.

For more harmonies and minor keys, I still love Tegan and Sara, especially their So Jealous album. Oddly, it's one of those rare albums that puts the best (or at least most single-worthy) songs in the middle rather than near the beginning. Gotta love "Walking With A Ghost".

For something with some serious 80s synthpop flavor, there's The Sounds (both albums!).

For something a bit harder, there's the Sahara Hotnights (especially the Jennie Bomb album), and The Donnas' last two albums (Spend The Night and Gold Medal).

Interesting that both The Sounds and Sahara Hotnights are from Sweden.

Oh yeah, on a more indie Latina-pop-punk note there's Go Betty Go, whose Nothing Is More album is much better than I expected. My favorites there are the two songs in Spanish, though some here might enjoy "The Pirate Song". I might have to get the EP that preceded this album.