Dirty Glitter 2013 In Review #5: The Technicolors, Queen V & The New Electric Sound

Once again, welcome to Dirty Glitter with Brody Ramone-review. We're up to part 5 my High Voltage Magazine-recap of artists to re-discover, the artists and songs that I selected for play. Here we go:

Dirty Glitter 7/11/2013:

The Technicolors- "Again"
The Technicolors are out of Phoenix, AZ and their music is modern rock colored with shades of Britpop with good guitar work in the forefront: think shades of Oasis and Supergrass. They're a four-man outfit made up of Brennan Smiley, Mikey Finezza, Michael Nicolette and Kevin Prociw and their current album, Listener, is a solid piece of work and on it is a pretty wicked cover of Chris Isaac's "Wicked Game." But on the original side of things, here's the Technicolors with "Again."

Queen V- "Good Enough"
Queen V isn't just a band, it's the woman who fronts this hard rocking outfit from New York City. Even though rock is typically a boy's club, Queen V brings swagger, attitude and the ability to hold her own on a stage, with a guitar, writing songs and definitely when she opens her mouth to sing. She's toured with Billy Idol and Twisted Sister and her new album released on June 25th, The Decade of Queen V, basically sums up the music she's made since 2005 and she gets a little help from her friends like Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine) and Lemmy of Motorhead. While she specializes in gutsy and hard rocking music, this track is the softer side of Queen V yet still gives you a clue as to what she's about as well as her incredible lung power.

The New Electric Sound- "Suitcase"
Los Angeles by way of Utah is the New Electric Sound and all you really need to know about this five-piece can probably be found in a few key lines in their biography:

"You ask yourself what it is that makes this music so incredibly catchy, so deeply arresting. Suddenly, you are humming melodies against your own will and snapping your fingers uncontrollably. You begin to find that you are unable to perform the most basic of tasks - food becomes impossible to masticate, your favorite movie cannot be watched, the cutest kitten cannot be stroked. You experience an uncanny joy."

Fronted by Scott Vance and drawing influences from the likes of Buddy Holly to the Kooks, the New Electric Sound's vintage surf guitar tones make for solid songs that really do stick. So much so that they were one of the bands I asked to play my High Voltage birthday show in July, which happened to be their first LA show. They've a full album that came out in 2012 and I highly recommended that you dig into it.

Signed,
Diary of a Concert Whore  aka @dharma69

Dirty Glitter 2013 In Review #4: Sunset Strip Music Festival Edition

Saturday, August 3rd in West Hollywood, CA was the Sunset Strip Music Festival. Born in 2008, it takes place on and along the notorious Sunset Boulevard as well as inside it's world famous venues the Viper Room, the Roxy and the Whiskey where, once upon a time, the Doors were actually the house band. The fest is all about honoring and promoting the live music scene that the Sunset Strip was built on and every year's festival has a special honoree who has been an influence on The Strip: past honorees have been Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue, Slash and last year, the Doors. This year the Strip recognized that girls rock, too: 2013's honoree was none other than the one and only Joan Jett. Why? Because just like us, the Sunset Strip loves rock & roll.

Dirty Glitter 8/1/13: Sunset Strip Music Festival Edition

Andy Clockwise- "Everybody's In A Band"
He's charming, roguish, audacious, a bit of a wild man on stage...he's Andy Clockwise. An Aussie who came to Los Angeles for a visit and, in discovering that he felt quite at home among the madness, never left. "Schizo pop" is Clockwise's trade but what it sounds like is a swaggering maestro of wit and awesome. On Saturday at the Sunset Strip Music Fest Clockwise played the Viper Room stage where he did, indeed, pull out this song: from his 2011 release The Socialite (which was an examination of the cult of celebrity through humorous and partially vodka-iced eyes) it's appropriately titled, "Everybody's In a Band."


Sabrosa Purr- "The Lovely People"
Sabrosa Purr is an LA four-piece that sometimes defies description but often gets compared to notable bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Jane's Addiction. I simply call them "a collision of stoner fuzz and metal punched up by guitar rock, glam and as ethereal and enigmatic as any drug induced head trip". They've two EPs and one full album and listening to them takes the mind on multiple trips as Will Love’s vocals bend from pliant, boy/man coos to eye-watering, nu-metal howls that would earn Kurt Cobain’s seal of approval...and those will be happening in this song. During SSMF they occupied Viper Room stage. Sabrosa Purr is guitar driven, ethereal, haunting, bombastic, occasionally quiet and with a female rhythm section, it officially makes them one of the sexiest bands, period.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club- "Rival"
The Sunset Strip isn't the typical stomping grounds for garage rockers Black Rebel Motorcycle Club but Los Angeles is their home, LA loves them and BRMC are always ones to rock for a good cause. The good cause in question was the non-profit Music For Relief (which was founded by headliners Linkin Park). A portion of SSMF ticket sales went to MFR which is all about musicians supporting disaster relief efforts. So on Saturday BRMC did their awesome thing at the festival on the main stage and it was loud and from the heart, which there's a lot of tucked inside the leather jackets of Peter Hayes, Leah Shapiro and Robert Been. This track is from their latest release, Specter At The Feast, and it's Black Rebel Motorcycle Club at what I described as possibly their 'hi-octane grungiest'. It also contains my favorite drum performance from Leah Shapiro since she joined the band in 2008.

Signed, 

Diary of a Concert Whore  aka @dharma69

Dirty Glitter 2013 In Review #3: Say Hello to the Janks, D & M and Javier Dunn

Hello again, lovelies. What time is it? Just Dirty Glitter with Brody Ramone-review time. Third installment of my High Voltage Magazine-recap, so let's get down to business.

High Voltage Segment on Dirty Glitter: 8/22/2013

The Janks- "Rat Racer"
If you listened to an album's worth of the Janks music you'd be able to pinpoint their very specific formula: no, rules; just right- whatever 'just right' is. The Janks are Zachary Zmed, his brother Dylan Zmed, Paul Kilmister and Leon LeDoux and they have a serious classic rock jones but rock out so eclectically, sometimes irreverently. One of LA's premier radio stations described them as “Imagine Jack White had a baby with Jimmy Page. And that baby had a brother. And those brothers were adopted and raised by a commune of favorites like Father John Misty and Family of the Year." That's pretty much it. Vocals and brotherly harmonies are provided by Zach and Dylan and their live show is incredible. In August they had a month-long residency at the auspicious LA venue, the Satellite and what a fantastically successful residency it was.

And if the last names Zmed or Kilmister sound familiar, they should be: Zach and Dylan's dad happens to be actor Adrian Zmed and Paul? His dad goes by the name of Lemmy (Motorhead).


D&M- "Dirty Love"
From Philadelphia we have the duo D&M, simply named so because the players are Danny Fornasa and Matt Klahre who met in college back in 2009 and bonded over their love of rock and roll, blues and pop which you can hear plain as day in the grittiness of this track. Danny has some impressive vocal range and tone which is just as at home on any genre style. Expect a full length release from these guys later this year but in the meantime here's "Dirty Love".


Javier Dunn- "Couple Of Drinks"
For the past 10 years or so Javier Dunn has been the right hand guitar-man of singer-songtress Sara Bareilles but now making music under his own steam: it sounds like that shyly confident romantic storyteller with a Taylor guitar on open mic night getting his synth-washed sexy back and phone numbers on cocktail napkins. Javier has a terrific new album out called Trails that's all about love and its potential, if not inevitable, highs and pitfalls with an overlay of R&B groove and pop sense electronically tweaked. This track comes from that album and it's pretty much a tale of a night out on the town and romancing via liquid courage. Here's "Couple Of Drinks."

Signed,
Diary of a Concert Whore  aka @dharma69