Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Ringo Deathstarr — Shoegaze, Done Loud
Shoegaze, done loud. Ringo Deathstarr falls into the sub-grouping of rock bands that have learned a valuable lesson from forbears such as My Bloody Valentine: play your music loud enough and people will think you are important. Ringo Deathstarr, otherwise, is an act that gets mixed reviews. I think the lines of like/not like are age-related. Younger pop critics swoon, older pop critics have heard this all before, and then some. So, what’s to like about RS? They are the sound of 1990s London distortion, an era Ringo Deathstarr was late for but manages to duplicate well. I like them for that alone. They are the sound of the shoegazers of old, but with the occasional surprise.
They do it with melody. There are songs when the band is a guitar-snarl of effects. Then, there are ones that sound complex and dreamy, as if Peter, Paul, and Mary had been closeted shoegazers themselves and maybe old Stan Getz would possibly drop in any minute and blow a tenor-sax solo. The Ringo Deathstarr songbook, for the most part, builds tension, but never lets it release.
So, what’s up with the term shoegaze? For the uninitiated, the sub-genre came out of Britain sometime during the late 1980s and reached its peak of popularity in the early ’90s. A simple, introspective, guitar-band sound, minus the virtuoso soloing. But the guitars are always distorted to the outer limits of what a guitar actually sounds like through the use of effects pedals, which in turn are triggered by a guitarist’s feet. Therefore, to make this music, guitarists spend a lot of time looking down at their foot pedals, a habit which led to the somewhat derogatory title. Shoegaze is rock-and-roll antiquity that is tough to reinvent. That bands are working to breathe life into this ambient chapter of pop culture is worth the price of admission.
The Tennis System and the Short Eyes also perform.
Ringo Deathstarr: Soda Bar, Monday, September 17, 8:30 p.m. 619-255-7224, $7.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Ringo Deathstarr — Shoegaze, Done Loud
Ringo Deathstarr — Shoegaze, Done Loud
Shoegaze, done loud. Ringo Deathstarr falls into the sub-grouping of rock bands that have learned a valuable lesson from forbears such as My Bloody Valentine: play your music loud enough and people will think you are important. Ringo Deathstarr, otherwise, is an act that gets mixed reviews. I think the lines of like/not like are age-related. Younger pop critics swoon, older pop critics have heard this all before, and then some. So, what’s to like about RS? They are the sound of 1990s London distortion, an era Ringo Deathstarr was late for but manages to duplicate well. I like them for that alone. They are the sound of the shoegazers of old, but with the occasional surprise.
They do it with melody. There are songs when the band is a guitar-snarl of effects. Then, there are ones that sound complex and dreamy, as if Peter, Paul, and Mary had been closeted shoegazers themselves and maybe old Stan Getz would possibly drop in any minute and blow a tenor-sax solo. The Ringo Deathstarr songbook, for the most part, builds tension, but never lets it release.
So, what’s up with the term shoegaze? For the uninitiated, the sub-genre came out of Britain sometime during the late 1980s and reached its peak of popularity in the early ’90s. A simple, introspective, guitar-band sound, minus the virtuoso soloing. But the guitars are always distorted to the outer limits of what a guitar actually sounds like through the use of effects pedals, which in turn are triggered by a guitarist’s feet. Therefore, to make this music, guitarists spend a lot of time looking down at their foot pedals, a habit which led to the somewhat derogatory title. Shoegaze is rock-and-roll antiquity that is tough to reinvent. That bands are working to breathe life into this ambient chapter of pop culture is worth the price of admission.
The Tennis System and the Short Eyes also perform.
Ringo Deathstarr: Soda Bar, Monday, September 17, 8:30 p.m. 619-255-7224, $7.
Comments