Tower Control Records CD Release at the Beachland Ballroom

This past Fri­day was an event that I’d been look­ing for­ward to for sev­er­al months. Tow­er Con­trol Records’ CD Release Par­ty for The X Bolex and Jerk. 12 bands, $5 cov­er and free food pre-show. It was super-well orga­nized, no chance to miss a band’s per­for­mance and just enough time in between them to snag a smoke if you swung that way. I def­i­nite­ly did my duty drop­ping bills on the local music scene releas­es. I had the intent of get­ting video of every band but many of the sets were too dim for effec­tive tap­ing. What I did man­age to cap­ture fol­lows:

I’m a dum­b­ass and thought Shawn Flow­ers was Theodore Vril when I first start­ed hang­ing out with these folks a cou­ple of years ago. Yeah. Dum­b­ass. This was a good open­ing set, but nec­es­sar­i­ly short due to the fact that 11 oth­er bands were play­ing.

Low Lamps aka Bri­an Straw was a dif­fer­ent per­for­mance than I’m used to see­ing from him; but one well-appoint­ed to this noise-ori­ent­ed show. He does some crazy and inter­est­ing things with his gui­tar in this clip.

Par­don the worth­less­ness of view­ing this video, but the joy that is Giants of Gen­der should­n’t be tossed aside due to lack­light. I don’t know much about this trio, but I’m guess­ing they’re con­ser­va­to­ry stu­dents. Improv sax/clarinet, vio­lin and vibra­phone.

This is the first song off of The X Bolex’s new record, so it is called Mastodon. Their funky jazz-jam riffage and time-change col­laps­es have made them a favorite around here for awhile and I was hap­py to pick up their disk, so I can have ’em with me every­where.

It was great see­ing Nep­tune again after last year’s recock­u­lous show at The Church. I bought their newest release, on 220g orange vinyl. They made the trip out from Boston for just this one show and hit the road back to play a Sat­ur­day show. Thats some seri­ous respect for them to make the trip for TCR. I’m even more con­vinced that Nep­tune is what heavy met­al should have become.

Alto­geth­er a great night. I was sup­posed to go to Fear of a Black Plan­et at Touch the next night to see TMIBH, Muamin and The New Surah Orch­es­tar, but I fum­bled on that play.