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The Influents Oakland foursome breathe new life into pop with their second album, Some Of The Young, the highly-anticipated follow-up to their 2000 debut, Check Please. With influences ranging from The Beatles to The Replacements, Some Of The Young shows The Influents straying further from the “pop-punk” label typically associated with them, having created a sound that’s closer to sunny, earnest, mid-tempo pop. “When
we were first touring, it was really frustrating because everyone
assumed we were a Pinhead Gunpowder off-shoot… and clubs would
assume we were a straight-out punk band because we are on Adeline
Records…. The thing is, the music isn't that different. But
it’s the crowd that can't accept it and see it for what it
is. I think it’s sad that because two bands look different
and sound a little different, they can't play for the same crowd.
What happened to going to a show to hear good music?” |
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Hudson Bell (click here for full story) Baton Rouge-born singer/songwriter Hudson Bell follows the tradition of the typical San Franciscan who has roots in a place where it’s a little slower and quieter and has left old friends and humiliations behind, whether he wanted to or not, to explore the world as an oyster. We recently talked with Hudson at his home in the City, where his love of literature was as apparent as his passion for music, shelves of books leaning as comfortably against the walls as his guitar. “[In
making music], I think I’m just as much—if not more—influenced
by writers as I am [influenced] by like Bob Dylan. Before I write
lyrics, I like to read a lot of different stuff. One person I read
a lot during the last album was Frank Stanford, this poet from Arkansas
who killed himself. Unfortunately, a lot of people I like kill themselves.” |
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Drunk Horse Comprised of Eli Eckert (guitar, vocals), Cyrus Comiskey (bass), and Cripe Jergensen (drums), Drunk Horse has been playing its cerebral style of beer-fashioned rock around the Bay since their self-titled Man’s Ruin debut in 1999, appealing equally to shaggy-haired hipsters with large record-collections, to grizzly, beer-guzzling metal dudes. Their third release, Adult Situations, is set to be released March 11th on New York label, Tee Pee Records. “…We have a song on the new record called ‘The Bitch is Bach’, which is basically just a brief description of J.S. Bach’s life, with a little humor thrown in. I was just having fun, writing a kind of flippant rock song about the master of western music. He was an amazing, amazing genius…. We’re by no means classically trained, but Cyrus and I have both taken a few music classes, and in one of them you spend half the semester analyzing his music because basically he wrote the rulebook for western harmony. It’s like, first you learn the way he did it, then you can go and break those rules.” |
| Plus... Buzz's
Bands To Watch: Loquat, The Junior Panthers, The Invisible Cities,
Brett Swain Also… K-leen’s Cheers & Jeers and “Stage Left” by dani eurynome
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