Live at the Black Cat, 1811 14th St, NW, Washington, D.C. | Thursday, April 12, 2012 | chainandthegang.tumblr.com
-
-
Live at Vicar Street, 58-59 Thomas Street, Dublin, Ireland
Check out their latest video below for their song Hey Jane which will be released on thier new album due out any day.
-
Live at the Double Door, Chicago, IL, September 17,2011 (Band Website)
Check out their new track "Metronome."
-
Jim Colby, bass player, Reverb Galaxy.
-
Solly's, 11th and U Streets, NW, Washington, D.C. -
This guy was a good drummer. It's rare to see someone set up a full set by himself and bust out a beat.
-
UPDATE: The above pic was selected as photo of the day by DCist.com.
This past Thursday I went down to the Velvet Lounge in Washington, D.C., to see friends of mine in the group Musicband play a show. I broke out the camera and took some shots of them and another band from Baltimore called Thee Lexington Arrows.
While shooting, I learned a cool new photography trick (at least for me) using flash, really slow shutter speeds and front curtain sync. I have always read that you want to use shutter speed to define your ambient light and use aperture settings for the subject, but when you get down to really slow shutter speeds of 1" to 1.3", aperture and ISO are all you got to modify the light (at least on camera), so adjust accordingly. With front curtain sync on the flash fires immediately and then you can simulate motion (the streaks of bright lights) by moving the camera. This essentually allows you to paint a picture with the lights in the scene. Also most photo blogs and books I have read tell you to achieve this effect you want to use rear curtain sync. However, with rear curtain sync the effects you get rely mostly on the motion of the subject. Of course you can manually move your camera around using rear curtain sync but it's much tougher to compose and time the shot with a delayed flash.
So what I have learned is that front curtain sync is great for mostly stationary subjects when you want some modicum of control over motion effects. Rear curtain sync is good for capturing moving subjects, like cars or when the person has a glow stick or flashlight they are moving about.
You can see all the photos I have posted for both bands on Flickr:
So what about the bands, were they any good?
Hell yeah! Musicband features two members of DC punk legends The Goons playing what I would call pub rock. Most of their tracks reminded me of The Levellers, Social Distortion and Flogging Molly wrapped into one. Check out their well done video for the song "Drug War" below:
Thee Lexington Arrows from Baltimore really surprised me. They are a garage rock band that at times can sound like The Pretenders from the late 70's, especially on their slower tunes or songs where they instill some dynamic range in the composition.
If you like that kind of sound definitely check out their record "Cut Me Loose" that they posted on Bandcamp.com. The tracks from the album are posted below using Bandcamp's awesome sharing widget:
-
The Digital Capitol Week closing party, techARTS, will take place at the 9:30 Club from 10PM to 3AM on Saturday, June 19. The bands and artists that will be performing wll be selected by "crowdsourcing." In otherwords, my current music project needs your vote to make it for consideration. Please take the few seconds it takes to click this link, give us 3 votes, and help us rock this joint!
So you know what you are supporting, here's a track that we did for St. Patty's Day last year:
Even if we don't make it in, we're going anyway. You can purchase a ticket to the show here: http://bit.ly/techarts930uv.
Please like this post and retweet it for us if you like the music. Thanks!
-
Master mixer Max Tannone has pulled together one of the most brilliant mash ups I have heard in years. This 10 song release features tracks from Mos Def's musical career mixed with some of my all time favorite old school ska, rock steady and dub reggae songs. If you like Mos Def you'll dig it. But if you are a fan of Desmond Dekker, Jimmy Cliff, The Scientist, Lee "Scratch" Perry, King Tubby, etc., you will absolutely love it! Click the image above to download a zip file of the entire album, or you can click here.
Max Tannone is also responsible for such mash ups as the infamous Jaydiohead album and the Beastie Boys' Double Check Your Head remix.
