Andy Gapin

Yikes! It’s been a while since I’ve posted about t-shirts. I’ve been slacking quite a bit, some of these shirts are a couple months old already and have been sitting on my dining room table waiting to be photographed.

The first is titled “The Happiest Place in Middle Earth” and came from The Yetee. Very simply, this shirt combines two things I am a huge fan of, Disney World and Lord of the Rings.

Second, we have a Night Birds shirt from when I saw them in the beginning of this month. I didn’t have much of a choice with which design to go with if I wanted to stay with am SFW one, so I went with the plain one.

Next up, we have “Troy and Abed in the Morning,” from TeeRaiders. This is not my first Community shirt, but I couldn’t resist this one. Unfortunately, TeeRaiders prints their shirts on Gildan Heavy Cotton which kind of sucks, but at least their shirts are only $10.

Fourth, is “The Original Zombie Walk” from TeeFury. I already have a ton of zombie shirts and generally try to hold back on buying more, but a 5k inspired one (even if it’s specifically a walk and not a run) nicely set itself apart from the others out there.

Lastly, we have “Tennant’s Timepiece Repair” from ShirtPunch. I couldn’t hold back on wearing this shirt a few weeks ago so I snapped a few quick photos on my phone which is why these are of lower quality. Anyway, this is my first Doctor Who shirt, but I can already say it won’t be my last as I have another one on the way. Somehow, I’ve yet to post anything around here about Doctor Who, but it’s something I’ve gotten myself very obsessed with over the last few months. I got into it at the end of the Summer and blew through the Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Doctors pretty quickly. Now I’m working on Torchwood and then I plan to start with the First Doctor and move my way up from there. My wife hates how into this I’ve gotten. But, back to the shirt. I chose this as my first because it showcases my favorite Doctor (so far), David Tennant, plus it’s a design that keeps a good sense of humor is doesn’t scream “Doctor Who” to those who aren’t into the show.

I went to see Night Birds last night in Philly. It was a good time. I took some photos.

These are a week and a half old, but I’m finally getting around to posting these photos from Shellac’s show at Union Transfer in Philly. The show was awesome, the venue is brand new and pretty cool.

Alright, so it’s been a little while since I’ve blogged. Oops. It’s probably going to be slow for the next month as well while final wedding stuff is coming together. Sorry about that, but I haven’t abandoned this thing, I promise!

Last weekend, I took a trip down to Baltimore for Insubordination Fest. This was my third time at the fest and it was probably the most fun year I’ve attended. There were no venue issues like last year. In fact, the venue, The Ottobar, couldn’t have been better for the weekend. I couldn’t come up with a complaint if I tried.

One of the highlights of the weekend was actually a joke band that was put together solely for the sake of the fest. And amazingly, the songs that were recorded a few days before the fest are actually better than most real bands’ stuff. Their set was a ton of fun.

But, that being said, the hands down best set of the weekend was from The Copyrights. So damn good. If you’re not already listening to this band, you should be.

I got myself into a little trouble with continuous mode on my camera though. I came home with almost 1400 photos from less 36 hours. Insane. I narrowed down to about 200 to edit and I narrowed down further to about 70 to post.

Enjoy.

Alright, so 90s indie-rock band Archers of Loaf is currently in the middle of a reunion tour. These things can really be hit or miss, but I figured that I’d give it a try since I’ve never seen them before. I’m not going to do a full review of the show, but for a bunch of guys in their 40s (?), they had an insane amount of energy. They really brought the show. They played everything I wanted to hear and played it well. They were tight and awesome. I was genuinely surprised and impressed. The only thing I could have done without would have been the two encores. Seriously, society as a whole needs to come together to abolish the concept of planned encores.

I’ve never been to the Music Hall of Williamsburg before, but it was very nice. We got there early and snagged a couple seats in the balcony and stayed there all night. It was a great spot to watch from, but combined with the ultra-low lighting, it was not a great spot to take photos from.

Here’s what I got.

Last Friday, I took a ride up to Brooklyn for the first night of the Don Giovanni Records showcase at Death By Audio. The lineup was The Steinways, The Measure [SA], Black Wine, Full of Fancy, and Big Eyes and except for the disaster that was The Steinways’ set, the show was awesome.

I was able to photograph three of the bands, but of course the lighting was awful and I didn’t bring my flash. I had to bump the ISO all the way up to 3200 to get non-blurry shots, but they turned out to be pretty damn noisy. But since I knew this would be the case going in, I didn’t worry about it too much and just had fun with it.

I ended up having to convert most of the photos to black and white to deal with the different colored lights, but I did decide to keep the color for a few to see what I could salvage.

Honestly, I kind of enjoyed some of the results.

Blake Schwartzenbach’s new band, forgetters, has a new song posted and it’s pretty solid. This is a lot better than the forgettable forgetters EP from a few months ago, it sounds much more like Jawbreaker too. Nice.

It’s a position I never thought that I’d find myself it, but with The Playlist coming to an end after next week’s show, I’ve realized that I don’t know how to keep up with new music on my own anymore. It’s actually kind of interesting when I think about it.

For the last seven years, I’ve hosted a radio show dedicated entirely to new music, so you’d think that I’d know all about digging up new music. Unfortunately for me, that’s not true at all. Being at a college radio station gives such amazing access to new music that you really don’t even have to try at all, it’s just there for you. Seven years ago, I took over the position of Head Music Director at 90.3 The Core and it was awesome. Even though I had been a DJ there for two years already, I had no idea just how much music the station received on a weekly basis. We’re talking 60-100 new albums a week. That’s a lot. Even with ten other people working under me in the department, I still had to be reviewing at least 30-35 of those albums each week myself just for the department to be able to keep up. I had no choice, all this new music was shoved in my face. I would complain every once in a while about not having the time to listen to the music I wanted to anymore, but in hindsight, that was probably one of the best problems anyone could ever have.

After a while, I had gotten so used to this that I didn’t look for new music on my own anymore. I would find out about a few bands here and there from friends or the indie music message board that I spent way too much time on, but I never had to actively look for new music. When I stepped down from the position as Head Music Director after two years–I wasn’t a student anymore and didn’t think it’d be right to keep the position–I still had access to all of the music. Since then, I’ve shown up a few hours early to every show just hang out and check out new music. Again, no effort. And one of the best things about this was that I had access to the full albums for free.

That’s all over now.

In the couple years before all of that, most of the music I found out about was from friends, going to shows, and from running a small venue for a while. None of this really took any effort either, there was still a ton of music just being pushed in my direction.

The last time I had to actually put effort into finding out about new music was before people did this via the Internet. It was the late 90s when most people still didn’t go online regularly. I would actually have to go to the CD store and take a risk buying something I knew only by name. I would check out the bands listed in the thank you section of the liner notes for albums. I would check out bands that I saw on show flyers for shows I didn’t even go to. I would actually ask people what they were listening to and go through the CDs they had in their backpacks. This was real work! Even once Napster hit the scene, you still needed to have an idea of what you were trying to listen to.

Over the course of the last ten years, everything changed. People don’t need to do that kind of work anymore. The Internet took over and made it super easy to find out about tons of new music and download it for free to at least check it out (totally not suggesting that people shouldn’t make sure the artists get some money in their pockets). I missed out on a lot of that. I don’t even know what sites to read and where to download music anymore. I really don’t. I didn’t need it, so I didn’t pay attention to much of it. Now I need it and I don’t know where to go.

Even though I’m a pretty big tech geek that spends a lot of time keeping up with technology, I feel like some clueless old dude who was just told he needs to use online banking for everything now, but has never actually used a computer before. What the hell do I do?!?

What are the credible sites to read for finding new music? Where do people download stuff these days? Beyond subscribing to the RSS feeds for Punknews and Absolute Punk and looking at what people are listening to on Last.fm, I’ve got nothing. I don’t have time to read any new sites or message boards. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to do this when I actually have to work for it and it’s not just all right there for me.

I guess I knew this day would come at some point, but that doesn’t make this any easier.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!

Jimmy Eat World is streaming the first single from their upcoming album, Invented, on their site right now. It’s called “My Best Theory” and it serves as proof that not even Mark Trombino can bring these guys back from the land of mediocrity that they’ve fallen into in the last ten years.

This band seems to get an endless number of chances from old fans that have been around pre-Bleed American. With each release since Bleed American, I hear the same thing about how the previous album wasn’t that great but this new one coming out is going to be so much better and serve as a “return to form” for the band. There’s always some good enough sounding reason behind this too. I always buy into it, but it never pans out. This time around, Mark Trombino was supposed to be their savior. I was willing to give it chance, what he’s done with them before was strong, there’s no denying that. But the truth is, despite what they graced us with in the second half of the ’90s, this band is just mediocre. Many of us “indie” kids still have a very soft spot in our hearts for Jimmy Eat World, but I think it’s time to give up hope. Let’s just walk away with Static Prevails and Clarity and be happy that we got those two incredible records from them. With two-thirds of their albums just being alright and their new single giving little hope for their seventh album, I think it’s time, guys. I’m sorry to be the one to say it.

To quote Gaslight Anthem, “those days are gone and you should just let them go.”

My review was going to be titled “Fuck Gaslight Anthem,” but alas, it is not. Nor should it be. The last time I saw the band kind of killed them for me for a while, they played well, but they gave off a rockstar vibe that just didn’t sit well with me. Then American Slang came out and it was (is) solid. Very solid. I started to get excited about Gaslight Anthem again. American Slang was the in-your-face indication that this band is still on its way up and is the real deal. After that, the video for “American Slang” was released featuring nothing but New York City imagery. What the hell? It felt like a slap in the face. Moving from NJ isn’t a big deal and writing some songs about NYC, especially when you’re from a state squished between two major cities, isn’t either. That stuff is totally cool with me, but it felt like Gaslight Anthem had turned their backs on New Jersey and no song about Andy Diamond and The Court Tavern was going to be enough to convince me otherwise. New Jersey isn’t just where the Gaslight Anthem is from, it’s who they are and what made them what they are. This was always something they embraced, but I I didn’t feel that way anymore. It wasn’t that they weren’t putting Jersey front and center anymore, it was that they dropped it and replaced it.

Now last night, the band came out to Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” and Fallon was wearing a Yankees shirt–on its own, who cares, if you’re from Central or North Jersey, you’re probably a Yankees or Mets fan–but with everything else…yikes. This immediately felt like a second slap in the face. I felt all the sincerity this band had just disappear. And that’s saying a lot for me because I’ve always felt that their music oozes sincerity more than just about any other band out there.

At this point, I was really thinking about how I was going to say “fuck this band” and that wasn’t helped much when Fallon had someone else play second guitar just so he could hold the mic stand with two hands while singing on a few songs.

I stand by most of these feelings, but still I have to say, damn, this band writes some great songs and damn do they know how to play them on a stage. They were absolutely great. They really were. Despite everything else, the sincerity was still there and the passion for the music was as strong as ever.

The set was long, over an hour and a half. My knees were hurting, but I was still enjoying every second. The band ripped through almost everything they have spanning every release under the Gaslight name. It was impressive how much they got through and how much they didn’t neglect Sink or Swim except a few of the songs you would have expected them to play. In fact, just about the only songs they didn’t play from Sink or Swim, besides the acoustic ones, were the expected standards. “Red in the Morning” was even followed up by a comment from Fallon saying how he thought it sounded like it should be a song by The Bronx. This was a comment that about ten people in the crowd actually got. I looked around, no one knew what he was talking about. It was awesome.

Honestly, Gaslight Anthem was seriously solid last night. Seriously.

Now, Frank Turner…well, I would have liked to see more than I did. Thanks to an ever-late friend, we got there in time to only see a few songs, but he sounded awesome. Frank Turner is the kind of opener that I would gladly pay to see headline and I’m hoping that I get the chance soon.

The outdoor stage at the Stone Pony was surprisingly decent as well. There was a nice breeze and the sound, while not great, was good enough. It was a serious set up and I think I enjoyed it more than I would have inside. However, they were charging $20 for parking which is ridiculous. We drove three blocks down the road and parked for free near Asbury Lanes. I would suggest anyone going to other shows this summer there do the same.

And below are a few cellphone pics that all look the same. I tried and failed to get the DSLR in.

PS: A friend mentioned something about Brian being sick of the Springsteen comparisons, but I say that’s a load of crap, if you don’t want to be compared to Springsteen, don’t sound so much like him. Easy solution.

PPS: Contrary to the rumor going around before the show, Springsteen did not come out and play with them.