The Herms
Outline Kit
The Latrells

The Herms

Vital statistics: Matt (guitarist): The band formed when we were in school at Berkeley last year. Alex (the bassist) and I started playing music together and we tried playing with some other people but they were either too rocked out or all neurotic or just annoying to play music with. It’s hard to play music with people because you have to value their ideas and most of the time people’s ideas aren’t any good and I guess you can try and compromise and do something like meet in the middle with two ideas but that usually comes out sounding like bullshit. So Ryan came along and he said all the drummers he saw us playing with sucked and he could do a better job. So about six months ago we started playing with him and it sounded good and now we’re playing shows.

Who are your influences / inspirations?
Matt: Well, it sucks that most things out there are not any good but some things are good. I can’t list it all but I like The Beatles the best. The problem is I don’t listen to music much these days because it seems like everything I own is broken. My record player’s broken and my tape player sucks and all the CDs I have skip all over the place. I listen to Smokey Robinson a lot and I like that song ‘I put a Spell on You’ by Screamin’ Jay Hawkings. Alex listens to all sorts of stuff but I don’t know if he’s influenced by any of it. That’s the same with Ryan, too.

What are the band's goals?
Matt: I don’t know. It’d be nice to do KALX Live but I’ve tried to book a show there and they were really lame about the whole thing. After a while they wrote me this e-mail saying that if you send us another e-mail requesting to play KALX Live we’ll never let you play here. So I wrote them an e-mail telling them I won’t send them another e-mail. They got these weird rules too about CD-Rs vs. CDs that were recorded at a real studio and they said something like they can’t put CD-Rs in the studio library because if they did they’d have too many CDs to deal with. I guess that’s true. But the people over there are kinda annoying to talk to.

Current status:Matt: I have this 8-track reel to reel thing I can record on so I guess we’re going to keep recording songs on that. All the songs we have are recorded on that thing. It’d be nice to record at a real studio but that costs money. Anyway, we’re playing shows in this order:

April 21st at 12 Galaxies with Continuous Peasant & The Meek
May 6th at Café Du Nord with Pretty Girls Make Graves and Sea Change
May 8th at Gilman with The Phenomenauts

Make contact: www.theherms.com or the_herms@hotmail.com

Outline Kit

Vital Statistics:If it’s possible to play punk rock with neat edges, then Outline Kit fits the bill perfectly. Formed in 2000, this Bay Area trio combines sweetly feminine and powerful vocals, a solid rhythm section, and melodic, noisy guitar work to create a sound that’s hard not to like.

Current Status:The band just recorded a full-length album, which will be released this May, and are playing shows locally.

Contact: www.outlinekit.com or outlinekit@hotmail.com

The Latrells

Vital statistics: The Latrells are a combination of elements that could only exist in the Bay Area (and at least, be appreciated). Billing themselves as "psychedelic soul," the band combines peppy funk, heartfelt soul, pop, and rock in a butt-shaking-inducing mixture.

Current status: They’re currently playing a weekly Sunday night gig at the Boom Boom Room for the month of May. Check them out, but be prepared to sweat and get very low to the ground.

Contact: www.pacificsoulrecords.com