On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, my day job threw a benefit concert for Covenant House Pennsylvania, a children's homeless shelter in North Philly. The show started off with the musical complexities of guerrilla sticker warriors Out of the Beardspace, a prog rock outfit featuring the Berklee College of Music dropout talents of our very own Sam Gutman on keys, as well as shifting time signatures, lineup shifts, and the occasional saxophone solo. The fact that they groove a bit harder than most prog I've heard helped get the party going, and the band members were quite enthusiastic about raging on with the other acts, extreme talent not translating into extreme arrogance in this particular instance.
As you may remember, I like Lost in Company quite a bit, and not just because our own Ryan Reese plays a mean guitar. It's not too often that a band remembers the dance music origins of rock'n'roll without overusing synthesizers, and when it does the results are not often this delectable. Frontman Chris Johnson has a powerful voice, fully capable of the whispers-to-wails dynamics called for by their soulful sound. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Little Bar makes use of the same Behringer powered speakers as I do, and that they conveyed LiC's set at least as well as the more expensive setup at Hard Rock.
Banned Books is buzzing quite a bit now, and with good reason. Their spastic, overdriven beats shift tempos almost as often as those of Out of the Beardspace, while remaining consistently rhythmic enough to accompany some dope freestyle raps from our resident rappists Mikey Mo, Trizz, and La Chameleon before Banned Books frontman and our coworker Zane. As they moved into their own material, the contrast between Zane's laid back, frequently falsetto vocals and the gritty instrumentation competed for attention with the propulsive impact of the sheer noise level they were putting out. With such a compelling live show, it is no wonder they are currently leading The Deli's Philadelphia poll for the breakout artist of 2011. [vote here]
By the time resident DJ Aaron Ruxbin took over for one of his usual all-vinyl sets at the regular rock weekly, we had raised $300 for Covenant House, and had ourselves an excellent time doing it.
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