Gather yee round oh children of night, for October has brought fourth the season of fright! Demons and ghouls, detestable creatures, are just a small portion of what Baltimore features. With screeches and banging, the air fills with screams, these monsters push forward their small music scene. So here once again to share tales that will haunt, here are the bands that played Joe Squared restaurant!
10/7/16 - Defenders // Enemy Planes // Red Valley Nursery
The crowd packed into our pizza basement on Friday for the return of odd-time riffers Defenders, and the alt-metal grooves of Red Valley Nursery. Joining the lineup and hailing from the land of Prince was Minneapolis, MN’s Enemy Planes. Synth-heavy psychedelic grooves and impressive falsetto vocals by frontman Casey Call made for some really cool songs that helped break up the guitar-heavy carnage of the evening. Thanks for the light show gang!
10/8/16 - The Stents // The Insomniacs // The Hall Monitors // The Jay Vons
It’s October and the Stents have returned once again with some of their garage buddies to provide an evening of high-energy entertainment that I somewhat recall, due mainly to the ingesting of 9% stouts early and throughout the evening. At this point I’m not too sure what to say about the Stents, so here's a transcript of Quint’s “Indianapolis" speech from the classic 1975 film Jaws wherein I’ve replaced the word “shark” with the word “stent”;
- Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin' back, from the island of Tinian to Laytee, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first Stent for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know how you know that when you're in the water, chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know... was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh huh. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, chief. The Stents come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it's... kinda like ol' squares in battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the Stent comes to the nearest man and that man, he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the Stent would go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that Stent, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a Stent, he's got...lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin' and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and rip you to pieces.
Y'know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men! I don't know how many Stents, maybe a thousand! I don't know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin' chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, boson's mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well... he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He's a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the Stents took the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.-
Anyways… Also joining us Downsquares on Saturday was Jersey mod-rockers The Insomniacs who laid down some great fuzzy poppers to the delight of the Charm City folk. DC's The Hall Monitors used the night as an opportunity to reunite and unleash a long overdue return to rock n’ roll form, fantastic! Closing things out was NY’s The Jay Vons with a great set of pop-centered guitar rockers and dance numbers which was a great way to end the evening. Note to self: don’t start with stout… Hell of a show.
10/9/16 - Copper Marmalade // Johnny Mainstream // Medicine Man
Sunday was debate night, and I think a lot of people were staying close to a television to witness the shit show. If not, Downsquares provided a pretty diverse lineup of music for you. Baltmore’s Copper Marmalade played some bizarre and beautiful synth numbers before bar-rocker/ trash folkers Johnny Mainstream took the stage for a set of hook-laden sing-a-longs. Medicine Man finished things out with some blues-inspired rockers and fantastic vocal performances. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday night.
Copper Marmalade
That does it for me. October is stacked so I’ll have plenty more to cover as the weeks move forward. Stay safe out there dawgs!
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