The 28th edition of WRUW’s annual, free, all-day concert Studio-A-Rama takes place on Saturday, September 5, in the courtyard behind Case Western Reserve University’s Mather Building (11220 Bellflower Rd.), where the station’s studios are located. Guided by Voices, Enon, the Sadies and Naked Raygun have headlined in previous years. The lineup this year features headliners Mission of Burma, with eight local and regional bands getting things started.
The show kicks off at 2 p.m. with the noisy, meandering
experimentalism of Chief Bromide, followed by slapdash garage-punks
Neon Tongues (3 p.m.), psychedelic goth-rockers Flowers in Flames (4
p.m.), Uno Lady’s solo voice manipulations (5 p.m.), catchy indie pop
by Columbus’ the Kyle Sowashes (6 p.m.), rock ‘n’ rollers Mike St. Jude
and the Valentines (7 p.m.), raw Nirvana-style pop-rock trio Kid Tested
(8 p.m.) and Megachurch, whose music includes two bass players, a
drummer, tape loops and sound bites (9 p.m.). Mission of Burma are
slotted from 10 p.m.-midnight. If you can’t make it down to the show,
the entire event, starting around 2 p.m., will be simulcast on the
station. —Anastasia Pantsios
CHIEF BROMIDE
Featuring former members of local bands Kong Sauce, Rather Honey,
Volcanoes Awake, Black Wolf and Humphry Clinker, Chief Bromide
(formerly Bella Sylva) play the kind of shoegazer alt-rock that was
popular in the ’90s. “Bella Sylva was a very moody indie band, and I
wanted to do a crazy psychedelic thing,” says singer-guitarist Matt
Valerino. “I didn’t plan for it to expand into six people, but it did.”
A sinewy guitar lead runs through the droney “Plastic Bag Girl,” making
the tune sound like a mash-up between Dinosaur Jr and the Stone Roses.
“Imitations” has a Breeders quality to it, as soaring female vocals
overcome its lo-fi limitations. These guys brag they used “a Yamaha
keyboard, a circuit bent Casio, a circuit bent toy echophone, copious
loopers, a viola, a piano, regular guitars, a flute, a lap steel
guitar, a few organs, a bass, lots of delay and crybaby wahwah, an
ebow, an old Roland sampler, a maraca, some cymbals and some drums” in
making their debut, Chief Bromide Land, which Valerino says is
about “shitty Cleveland life.” With its collection of dollar- and
thrift-store toys, the band packs enough weird instruments to bring the
oddball album to life. “We just wanted to put together a far-out, wacky
record,” says Valerino. “I’ve already written the next one. It should
be a step up. I’ll have big, Flaming Lips singalong choruses.” —
Jeff Niesel
NEON TONGUES
Led by reclusive musician Adam Upp (who also swings a six-string and
sings for Cleveland post-punk new-wave rockers TV Oh Dees), Neon
Tongues is a raucous local garage-rock band. Since Upp never replied to
our request for an interview, we don’t know much more than that. But
tunes like “John Bullman,” “Painted Brain” and “Button Maker” sound
like lost outtakes by the Shadows of Knight, with a mixture of British
invasion, Chess blues classics and awkward ’90s emo. Neon Tongues sound
like they’re searching for a bygone era when stripped-down rock ‘n’
roll with punk inflections ruled the underground. — Keith
Gribbins
FLOWERS IN FLAMES
“We have taken an ’80s post-punk foundation and given it a bloody
cutting edge for today’s audience,” says Flowers in Flames frontman
Dave Chavez, who adds that the band’s self-titled CD is “stark, glam,
gothic and glamorous.” Critics all over the world have agreed with his
glowing self-assessment. Italian magazine Herz Und Geist wrote,
“Non ne resterete delusi!” about the disc (which sounds to us like it
must be totally positive). British writer Mick Mercer included the band
in his book Music to Die For: The Last Great Guide to the
Underground Scene, a goth-noir encyclopedia. Closer to home, The
Big Takeover’s Jack Rabid described it as “a post-punk
mélange of dark psychedelia and goth rock pulsing with tribal
rhythms and dripping with reverb. [Songs] have the spastic creeping
specs of Christian Death and the rich, textured guitars of the
Chameleons.” Todd Tobias (ex-Guided by Voices) mixed the album, which
was released in October 2008. The group formed in 2006, uniting
ex-members of Full Wave Rectifier and Germ Free Adolescents. Since
then, they’ve played infrequent shows at the Hi-Fi and Phantasy. Chavez
recommends the band to fans of “Ladytron, Editors, Black Angels,
Interpol, Joy Division, Bauhaus, Siouxsie and Bowie.” — D.X.
Ferris
UNO LADY
Layers upon layers of beautiful singing — sometimes
comforting, sometimes unnerving — intertwine like DNA, drenched
in fuzz and reverb, to form songs that feel as though the actual act of
Christa Ebert’s singing is an event that takes place entirely outside
of time. Ebert adopted the name and working method of Uno Lady in the
fall of 2007 because, in her own summation, “Harmony comes naturally to
me, instruments do not.” On the songs where there is instrumentation,
it’s thin and synthetic, more like a translucent skin than a skeleton.
As such, her performances are sparse affairs, featuring Ebert perched
behind a lit-up podium and a laptop, snaking mysterious words through a
thicket of her own pre-recorded backing vocals. The effect is stunning,
and until her cassette-only debut comes out later this month, her
MySpace page is a fine place to hear the stuff if you can’t make it to
Studio-A. — Ron Kretsch
THE KYLE SOWASHES
Equally inspired by Raspberries power-pop and Guided by Voices indie
rock, the Kyle Sowashes are a Columbus band that specializes in
delivering infectious pop hooks. “We’re all pretty deeply rooted in
mid-’90s indie rock,” says singer-guitarist Kyle Sowash. “But we also
like the Beatles and the Monkees and that sort of stuff.” “Oh the
Shame” aspires to be a Weezer-esque ballad, and its nerdy vocals and
off-kilter guitars nearly do the trick. The same goes for the
autobiographical “In the Mail,” which has even more aw-shucks appeal.
“Closed Captioned” is a bit harsher, though the gritty guitar work and
song-ending jam bring the track to a climactic close. Led by Sowash,
who initially formed the group in 2005 as a solo project, the band now
has a stable lineup and has released two albums. They’ve toured as far
west as Albuquerque and as far south as New Orleans. The guys are now
fine-tuning songs for a new album they hope to start recording next
year. — Jeff Niesel
MIKE ST. JUDE
AND THE VALENTINES
Those who think Studio-A is too heavy on amorphous, noisy
underground bands will find the straightforward rock of Mike St. Jude
and the Valentines a welcome oasis of musical normality. They compare
themselves to groups like the Kinks, the Faces and the early Stones,
and their tunes are drenched in the roots-rock vibe that the latter two
pioneered. The quintet have released a pair of albums: 2006’s
Fallout Patterns of the Hoodshot Blues and last year’s Here’s
to Your Black and Blue Heart. They’re packed with snappy pop-rock
songs that are easy to like. The bluesy pop romp “Enjoy a Toast” harks
back to bands like the Faces, with more than a bit of raw-throated,
mic-swinging Rod Stewart quality in the vocals. “Sleepwalking” is an
exuberant but aggressively melodic mid-tempo rocker, and “Tongue
Tied”‘s pulsing organ, portentious guitar strums and anthemic yet
wistful melody evoke a more intimate and modest version of Bruce
Springsteen. Uplifting layered harmonies are the icing on these sharp,
infectious tunes. The band stumbles a bit on ballads, which tend to go
on longer than the mostly under-three-minute rockers. But when they
rock out, you can almost smell the sweat and hear the audience singing
along. — Pantsios
KID TESTED
This Cleveland trio specialize in the sonic science of aggressive
punk-rock. The band’s auditory assaults are loud, fast and
experimental. For seven years, Kid Tested have expanded the limits of
their explosive sound, finally formulating their highly unstable debut
album Pop Era Laundry in 2009. It’s a 13-song set of volcanic,
unchecked power. Songs like “Oh Well” and “Armageddon in a Shoebox” are
disruptive post-punk rejects, weaned on razor-thin production, waves of
noise and a furious fusion of melodies (from punk to grunge to sludge).
It’s buzz-saw garage-rock that slows down only to replace broken guitar
strings, shotgun beers and blast out again, grinding sub-metallic riffs
with high/low dynamics, not unlike the Stooges, Hüsker Dü or
Nirvana. These three thrashers (bassist Domonnic Richardi, drummer Dan
Garrity and singer-guitarist Shawn Mishak) will no doubt preview some
new songs from their upcoming Lost on Purpose album. Live, it
can only be categorized as amazing and terrible all at once. “The
atmosphere of our live set is like shitting, coming and sneezing at the
same time and sometimes involves bunny ears, Mexican wrestling masks
and/or a synthetic rooster,” says Mishak. — Gribbins
MEGACHURCH
myspace.com/megachurchofcleveland
Megachurch worship the bass guitar and the groove. The group burst
onto the Cleveland scene this spring with a sudden barrage of gigs, out
of the ashes of regional indie-rockers Machine Go Boom. They’re led by
Machine Go Boom’s Mickey Machine and anchored by Machine drummer Dan
Price (continuing the combustible theme, he also played in Cleveland’s
This Is Exploding), who recruited Brian Hill to fulfill Machine’s
longtime musical fantasy: a two-bass group. “I used to play in a proggy
kind of band,” says Machine. “We had two basses briefly, but it didn’t
go anywhere. I always wanted to go back to it. It’s just a lot of fun
to play bass.” The unconventional group’s driving indie rock doesn’t
sound anything like extra-bass precedents Ned’s Atomic Dustbin or
Spinal Tap’s “Big Bottom.” Their themes — though not music
— are closer to Cleveland iconoclasts Uncle Scratch’s Gospel
Revival. With no vocalist, they fill their giant grooves with samples
of preachers delivering fevered sermons in several languages. Between
songs, Hill serves up snippets of classic Kiss stage banter. Singers
have volunteered for the band, but Machine likes it the way it is:
“We’ve talked about it, and there’s really not a need for a vocalist.
We can say everything we want to say with samples.” Of their
Studio-A-Rama set, Machine says, “We’ll just kind of do what we do.
We’ll dress up and play some silly shit.” — Ferris
MISSION OF BURMA
Mission of Burma is one of those post-punk bands everyone names as
an influence these days, even though no one really gave a shit about
them when they were first around. They sprung from Boston’s vibrant
pop/punk/new-wave scene in the late ’70s, with a jagged, jangly and
American take on the same jagged, jangly punk Wire and Gang of Four
were playing overseas. They released two great records in the early
’80s: the Signals, Calls and Marches EP in 1981 and the
following year’s Vs., their only full-length until a reunion
album five years ago. Even though they were totally ignored by most
music fans, those records helped spur the Amerindie movement. Bands
like Hüsker Dü and the Minutemen borrowed both the noisy
guitar blasts and the staccato rhythms that often drove their songs,
and R.E.M. played Burma’s “Academy Fight Song” in concert for years
(Moby also covered one of their tunes, the snarling “That’s When I
Reach for My Revolver”). All that loud cacophony caught up with them:
Guitarist Roger Miller’s hearing problems led to the band’s breakup not
long after the release of Vs. Twenty years later, Miller,
bassist Clint Conley and drummer Peter Prescott got back together (with
Shellac’s Bob Weston) and have since released a pair of albums, 2004’s
ONoffON and 2006’s Obliterati, with a new one —
The Sound, the Speed, the Light — coming out on October 6.
After all these years, they’re still capable of shattering eardrums.
— Michael Gallucci
Hear new music from Megauchurch and Uno Lady on our new online
streaming jukebox: clevescene.com/kicking_and_streaming
Mission of Burma is one of those post-punk bands everyone names as
an influence these days, even though no one really gave a shit about
them when they were first around. They sprung from Boston’s vibrant
pop/punk/new-wave scene in the late ’70s, with a jagged, jangly and
American take on the same jagged, jangly punk Wire and Gang of Four
were playing overseas. They released two great records in the early
’80s: the Signals, Calls and Marches EP in 1981 and the
following year’s Vs., their only full-length until a reunion
album five years ago. Even though they were totally ignored by most
music fans, those records helped spur the Amerindie movement. Bands
like Hüsker Dü and the Minutemen borrowed both the noisy
guitar blasts and the staccato rhythms that often drove their songs,
and R.E.M. played Burma’s “Academy Fight Song” in concert for years
(Moby also covered one of their tunes, the snarling “That’s When I
Reach for My Revolver”). All that loud cacophony caught up with them:
Guitarist Roger Miller’s hearing problems led to the band’s breakup not
long after the release of Vs. Twenty years later, Miller,
bassist Clint Conley and drummer Peter Prescott got back together (with
Shellac’s Bob Weston) and have since released a pair of albums, 2004’s
ONoffON and 2006’s Obliterati, with a new one —
The Sound, the Speed, the Light — coming out on October 6.
After all these years, they’re still capable of shattering eardrums.
— Michael Gallucci
This article appears in Sep 2-8, 2009.
