Growing up, there were local shows at teen centers, VFWs, and in friends’ basements nearly every weekend. My parents retired to Palm Lagoon, a shitty beach town on the Florida panhandle, and due to health issues, I came down to help them out. I started going out and exploring the local music venues, with the goal of giving back to the DIY scene that gave so much to me.
I decided to apply the same support check-list I adhered to in my hometown:
Attend Events
I figured since this place is basically sandy Alabama, the bands would be playing country and covers. I started at Bruno’s Barefoot Bar to see a band called Dirty Work, simply because of their name, which seemed like it would be a hard rock group. Nope, Steely Dan tribute band.
I think Steely Dan, like most classic rock bands, is fine. I wouldn’t buy their albums or anything, but if they come on somewhere, I don’t complain.
The next week, I went to Don’s Hideaway and saw Reelin’ In The Ears, another Steely Dan tribute band, except they dress up. I made it a point to go see a different show for the next two weeks, and it was literally all the same. Every single group was a slight variation – There were The Show Biz Kids, who did deeper cuts, Steely Ann, which was the all-female group, Steely Drum which did reggae versions, the goofs in Yacht in the Act focused on Steely Dan songs, and Old McDonald’s Farm the Michael McDonald impersonator from Tallahassee only does Steely Dan songs from when he was in the group. The “Live Band Karaoke with Aja” had a song binder exclusively of Steely Dan, even the “Pretzel Logic Trivia” hosts would get booed if they didn’t have Steely Dan questions.
Even when the local shows were two hardcore bands in hockey jerseys opening for 12-year-olds covering Sum 41, I never felt this alienated.
Recommend Them To Perform At Venues
No need. Everywhere I went: Rum Shack, Hurricane Huey’s, Johnny Rebel’s, and The Typhoon, all had one of these Steely Dan cover acts playing. They play every night, sometimes at the same bar during the same week, and sometimes they open for each other.
If you are looking for live covers of Steely Dan, you have your pick. Right now, I’d kill to see an old man in a Hawaiian shirt and parrot hat doing Jimmy Buffet songs.
Buy Merch
As a teen, my battle vest was covered in pins and patches, and I covered my Plymouth Reliant in stickers. It was a way of expressing ourselves and throwing up a flag for like-minded folk and a cheap way to financially support the bands. Aside from Dread Zeppelin, I’ve never seen merch for tribute acts, but these dudes’ merch tables take up half the room. It’s not stickers and t-shirts, these are premium items for the modern boomer – polo shirts, windbreakers, golf balls, golf markers, and visors. All for a fake band!
Put up Flyers or Posters
My Kinko’s was the scene’s base of operations. I worked the overnight shift, collecting all the copy cards, and once my manager left, I hooked up everyone. Zines, fliers, CD inserts, if you asked nicely, I got you. I used those connections to start promoting shows and putting out 7 inches. Down here, they don’t need to promote. Unless football is on, one of these Dad band rejects is playing.
Support them on Social Media
I added these local groups on Instagram and it fucked my algorithm. Now I’m getting ads for reverse mortgages, watching bathtubs, and Fox Nation. I’m permanently cursed for following the musical equivalent of the CVS orthopedic aisle.
Help Them Collect Tips
To help ends meet, we’d regularly pass around the bucket. Most of the time, no matter how small the crowd, they’d drop whatever they had in. One night, during the merciful interlude when Donald Fakin’ drops some trivia about how the original drummer was Chevy Chase before going into a welcome medley of “Holiday Road,” “I’m Alright,” and “You Can Call Me Al,” I passed around the empty tip jar from the bar. I encountered nothing but venom.
Tell The Venue How Much You Enjoy Their Music And That You Came To See Them
Here’s the thing: None of these bands are even that good. They’re always drunk, but not in a chaotic way, just sleepy. I tried to contact old acts from my youth and try to book them down here, but the travel is too much, and I can’t honestly sell it as a vacation spot, since the only beach in town has more syringes than grains of sand. So I’m stuck here, being the sole supporter of a scene for bands I fucking hate.
Sadly my editor wouldn’t let me put every album in a six-way tie for first, so here’s the band’s final album in last place. While it features all of the trademarks of a late-period Dillinger album – a mix of mathcore hissy fits, soaring rock choruses, and virtuosic instrumentation – it never truly shocks you with something you’ve never heard before from the band. Granted, with it being their final release, looking back into their two-decade history and mining it for inspiration makes it an apt swansong. There are some quirky left turns like Mahavishnu-esque strings and a trippy IDM detour that sounds like a rejected Aphex Twin B-side. There’s also that scream in “Honeysuckle.” You know the one.
Replacing a beloved frontman isn’t easy. However, when Dimitri Minikakis left the group after only one album, Dillinger knocked it out of the park with the addition of human bicep Greg Puciato. Not only could he deliver a deranged scream like his predecessor, the Italian stallion can croon like a lounge singer with a martini in his hand. His clean vocal chops are showcased most notably on “Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants” and “Unretrofied,” two tunes that have more in common with Faith No More and Nine Inch Nails than anything else in their catalog at that point. This pissed off a bunch of cranky metalcore dudes and set the precedent for future Dillinger material that would resemble actual music.
“One of Us is The Killer” answers the question “What if the Dillinger Escape Plan made another record that’s just really fucking good like their previous ones?” “Prancer” and “When I Lost My Bet” might be the best opening duo of the band’s career and the whole record masterfully blends their more melodic tendencies with the chaotic hardcore of their early days. Killer also features one of their better token instrumental songs in the wonderfully janky “CH 375 268 277 ARS” (rumor is that if you can guess what the title means, they must reunite). My money’s on Billy being the killer, by the way. It’s always the unassuming ones.
There are several dudes out there who smell like garbage and have Man Is the Bastard neck tattoos who will tell you that this is the only good Dillinger Escape Plan album because it’s the gnarliest. There’s no clean singing, no quasi-radio-rock bangers, and the instrumental interludes feature looped samples, squelching noise, and grinding machinery. Is it Dillinger’s best album? No, but is it their most important album? Absolutely. It kicked off a legendary career with one of the most deranged and unique debuts in the history of punk and metal. “43% Burnt” is also a great song to put on at a party when it’s 3:00 a.m. and the only people still there are three weird guys doing key bumps in the kitchen and you want them to leave.
While every Dillinger Escape Plan album is varying degrees of weird, this is the weirdest one by a significant margin. While Miss Machine introduced some new flavors to the Dillinger recipe, “Ire Works” swung the fridge open and started throwing everything into the pot (I shouldn’t write these when I’m hungry). There are straight-up pop-rock songs, Warp Records-style electronics, Indonesian gamelan bells, Latin percussion, and all sorts of other silliness. “Ire Works” can be a bit of a jumbled mess at times, but that’s what makes it so compelling considering it’s from a band known for its robotic precision. The promo cycle for this album also yielded Greg singing on Conan O’Brien’s desk which gives it substantial bonus cred.
Very fitting that this record is called “Option Paralysis” as that’s what I experienced when deciding what to put at number one. In revisiting the discography, it was this record that made me go “Wow, that was fucking cool” more than any other. While albums like “Ire Works” and “Miss Machine” tracks can be organized by the heavy songs, the pretty songs, and the weird songs, the bulk of “Option Paralysis” blends all three vibes seamlessly within the same compositions. It stuck a middle finger to the rearview and firmly told anyone hoping for a “Calculating Infinity” Pt. 2 that they would never get what they wanted. It’s the heaviest, catchiest, and most adventurous album by a band that does all three things better than anyone else.
Turns out inviting that old lawyer to one of your sex-and-cocaine afterparties isn’t such a bad idea after all.
If your current singer is a hard-working team player who can sing really well, you could save yourself a lot of time by just letting them continue in their current role.
Whether mailing the news, sending a singing telegram (via your new singer), or breaking up in person, you’re going to want to know where they’re holing up these days.
Sure, you’re a grind band with only guttural vocals, but we recommend having “Oh Sherrie” twinkling somewhere in the background anyway.
This could also be step #1. A simple internet search will indicate if you have to go through the stress of a breakup or if you can just save face by calling them a hero in the media before finding a replacement. (See: AC/DC.)
Is it possible your frontman already knows, and you don’t have to tell them? That would be so great!
And be thorough. You don’t want them wandering back to your next rehearsal claiming they forgot their Nirvana poster.
Soften the blow by easing them into obscurity. Maybe see them off with a gift basket and a card signed by the band.
It worked for Van Halen in 1985.
We know it’s a one-in-a-million shot.
As a concept, Collins’ long-awaited foray into Archies/Partridge Family turf is a fantastic one, but if my editors caught me giving this bubblegum pop album anything but the bottom spot, I’d be put in punk-satire-website solitary confinement with the folks trying to get Captain Beefheart headlines approved. This album seems to exist as an exercise in “how many different ways can we deconstruct “Yummy Yummy Yummy” (in fact “Hot Sour Salty Sweet” straight up pilfers its chorus!) That said, every song on “Ka-Blooey” paints a fluorescent vision of the Dirtbombs leaving a high school dance gig to go solve an animated mystery with their talking pet, and that’s pretty cool. Plus, we love a title with a “Calvin & Hobbes” reference, don’t we folks? Take this ranking with a grain of salt and a few dozen truckloads of Pixi-Stix.
The Dirtbombs’ first full-length LP is probably their least focused offering…but since the Dirtbombs started as a “single releases only” experiment, this is something you just gotta embrace. Hot ‘n heavy live tracks like “She Blinded Me with Playtex” and “Shake!! Shivaree” provide a shambolic looseness that most echoes the type of thing Collins perfected in the Gories (although the Gories themselves are PROUD imperfectionists, they’d be the first to admit.) It’ll definitely leave you pumped and wanting more, and puzzled over why these guys weren’t bigger than the White Stripes. But be forewarned: the album cover may have your parents asking you some invasive questions.
As the album title may give away, this is the Dirtbombs at their most lyrically paranoid…And justifiably so! Have you gotten a load of this planet lately? Woof! Here we have a collection of songs about the downfall of society that are as relevant today as they ever were (folks, we gotta stop this society thing from downfalling, and SOON!) Collins’ vocals are in fine form (when are they not, this guy could croon circles around you with laryngitis) and he even puts the echo effects to good use, amplifying the anxiety factor. Throw in both a Sparks and Dead Moon cover and we’re happy…still upset about that whole “world collapsing” stuff, but, y’know, may as well crank up those guitars while we still have a power grid.
The sheer feat of covering deep Detroit techno tracks and turning them into heavy, driving rock songs is something NASA scientists were probably hard at work on, but lucky for us, the Dirtbombs beat ‘em to it. Their take on pulsating house slabs like Inner City’s “Good Life” are somehow more hypnotic than the originals, letting you get lost in a groove while still never letting you suffer withdrawal from those screeching fuzz guitars we know you kids can’t get enough of. It sounds exactly like a rave is happening after hours at the Ford assembly line. The ‘bombs are always taking the time to salute others’ music, we hope they don’t mind us using this opportunity to salute THEM for once.
This album doesn’t just want you to feel the steady pour of sweat drip down your face, it wants you to wring it out into a highball glass and chug it for more fuel. A straightforward ripper of a record, this one’s all about fun. Highlights include the “rolling down a never-ending cartoon freeway” vibe of “F.I.D.O” and the “how have these guys not written a song about being stuck in the garage yet?” pounder “Stuck in Thee Garage.” Throw this on the next time your head’s in need of a proper banging. “Dangerous?” Yes. “Magical”? Oh hell yeah. “Noise”? No way, baby, this is MUSIC!!!
A masterpiece through and through. Collins valiantly leads his roving team through an endlessly impressive gauntlet of soul and R&B covers that work insanely well when peered at through garage-punk shades. Throw a dart at the tracklist and any one you hit will have your speakers, and your ears, eating good for the next three minutes. From songs everyone knows off the top of their heads like Stevie Wonder’s “Living For the City,” to songs everyone SHOULD know off the top of their heads like “Ode to a Black Man” (off Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott’s second solo album), Ultraglide is the perfect showcase for Mick’s velvet vocal cords. An absolute crash course on some of the finest American music ever made…and we do put the emphasis on “crash,” since this will undoubtedly have you running red lights from singing along.