Two great shows early this week, presented by Boston music bloggers. Slightly belated notice for a night of indie electro with Count Rockula and Cassette tonight (Sunday, April 19th) at the Middlesex Lounge, presented by Enough Cowbell. It’s a benefit for Cycle Kids, and you should go.
On Tuesday night (April 21st), Ryan’s Smashing Life presents a terrific lineup including z=z faves Logan 5 and the Runners, The Lights Out, Fishhawk, and Hundred Years War. It’s at Great Scott in Allston.
If you’re in Boston, this is a great week to check out lots of great live music, as it’s the 31st Annual WBCN Rock’n’Roll Rumble, a battle-of-the-bands style competition in which four acts do short sets each night. In typical Boston underdog fashion, there’s said to be a curse on the winners and the losers are celebrated. You can see a full schedule here, or check out the nifty play-along-at-home chart above. It’s from Boston Band Crush, who have pretty comprehensive coverage of the event. And best of luck to z=z friends Logan 5 and the Runners and The Motion Sick.
Put it on your calendars, everyone – the first official zed equals zee Happy Hour has a date! Join myself, guest blogger Scott, and intrepid correspondent Tim Smith at the Miracle of Science on Monday, March 30th, from 6 to 8 pm. I’ve talked to the bar about taking over their stereo for a playlist of z=z faves from Boston, Seattle, and beyond.
I’m looking forward to putting some faces behind the usernames, and we’d love if you can join us. RSVPs to me or in the comments are appreciated for planning purposes, but are by no means necessary.
Hope to see you there!
There’s a new music-related-service for Twitter, 
♬.ws. The basic premise is that you can enter the name of a band, and you’ll get a page with info on the band, a listing of relevant tweets, and links to iTunes, Amazon MP3s, and Musebin (a website of one-line music reviews and, not incidentally, the creators of ♬.ws). But the big advantage to the memorable-but-annoying domain name is a very short URL for your query, which can be embedded directly into a tweet (in lieu of a hashtag, for example).
I beta-tested it with two z=z faves, The Motion Sick and Logan 5 and the Runners. The Motion Sick worked pretty well, with only one nausea-related false positive. I was less successful with L5R; their album name, Featurette, hit lots of non-music-related tweets.
It’s an interesting concept, but I think it still needs some work. It’d be great if it also gave website and Myspace pages for the artists. And I hope they redesign the results page – I’d happily trade the 18-pt type and ugly Roman font for more tweets on a page and something more legible.
I think that Boston’s Logan 5 and the Runners pretty much had me at their name (if you are not as much of an über-geek as I, this is the reference. If you are, there might be a new version coming out next year.) But it’s their Britpop-esque sound that sealed the deal – if Pulp and Roxy Music, had a bastard love child who was born in the 90s and is now an avid consumer of TV, movies and the Internet, it might sound like Logan 5 and the Runners. Singer David Berndt (who bears a resemblance to actor Michael York, which inspired the band name) has a voice which sounds raw and sexual with an overlay of sophistication, or possibly the other way around. As befits their sci-fi namesake, Berndt’s vocals are backed by synthesizer hooks and tense guitars, coalescing into a catchy and memorable sound that evokes an alternate-history 1980s London.
They’re playing at the Midway Cafe in Jamaica Plain on Friday, February 6th, in support of their recently-released debut album, Featurette. Check them out.
More Logan 5 and the Runners: Boston Phoenix article, website, Myspace
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zed equals zee 
