Metro Pulse/Music/Eye on the Scene

Eye on the (Web) Scene: Chicks Ahoy!

Once again, a word from our on-line correspondent, Electroboy:

Okay, they've lost their drummer and—horrors!—some people are saying bad things about them on the MetroBlab, if you can imagine such a thing. But Jag Star has a great website. It's got photos, it's got a media kit full of positive reviews, and there are even streaming videos. What there isn't is a lot of free downloadable music, which I, personally, like in a website. But you can check 'em out at www.jagstar.com. Maybe you'll be able to get the streaming videos to play; I couldn't, but I'm not sure whether to blame their server or my RealPlayer.

Speaking of Knoxville groups fronted by women, the Kim Baxter Band recently made the Number One slot on The Women of MP3.com with their song, "Back to You." Watson's voice ranges from Janis Joplin to Ella Fitzgerald; the band's overall sound falls somewhere in a zone bounded by Eat a Peach-era Allman Brothers, Humble Pie, and Head East. Some might call it '70s retro, but whatever you call it, it sounds pretty good. I caught their show at Manhattan's a couple of weeks back, and they rocked. Hear 'em at www.mp3.com/kimbaxter.

The Cheeksters are half women (er, well, one of them is a woman, and there are two of them all told, so....) and they have a new CD out, called Skating on the Cusp, on the Disgraceland label. It's getting good reviews: Charles Earle of Nashville's In Review said, "I like this band a helluva lot more than Oasis...Oh, that those annoying, constantly warring siblings could be so cool..." Watch out Noel & Liam—The Cheeksters are gaining on you. Dissension can ruin a band, you know. It's at www.mp3.com/cheeksters. (And if you're an Oasishead, you can see their page (but with no free streaming music, the bums) at www.mp3.com/oasis.

Local CD Review #1

Southeast Exports 2

By their very nature, local compilations have enormous potential to, well...suck. Especially those which take as their focus the realm of heavy, aggressive rock, an area afflicted nowadays with a terminal scarcity of imagination.

That's why Southeast Exports 2, a showcase of local heavies assembled by Moose's Music Hall and radio station 94.3 (home of the Southeast Exports local/regional radio show), is such a compelling anthology, a veritable hard-rock cornucopia of cathartic, bludgeoning treats.

Not that the bands herein are creating startlingly original sounds out of whole musical cloth; the responsible parties, influence-wise, are often pretty apparent. Knoxville's Zed, on their contribution "Ode to Zed/Superhead," for instance, plug Foo Fighter-ish choral vox into Badmotorfinger riffs; Greeneville's abandcalledL.I.F.E. ("Slave to the Gravity") ply a slick and highly evolved take on latter-day Chili Peppers; and locals Skeyebone contribute a splattery, spacey little gem called "Spun Out" that might be the best song Monster Magnet never recorded.

But if you're gonna steal, steal from the right places. And all of the bands on Exports 2 nick their girded riffs from all the right places—from proto-thrash and alterna-heavies who fashioned their basic templates with none of the stultifying roteness of posturing hip-hop metallions. Nary a dim-witted Bizkithead nor a Korn-y whine specialist within earshot.

And beyond the heaviest hitters, 2 foists a few welcome outliers on your sound-damaged ears, including the effervescent garage rock of Knoxville's beloved Mustard ("I Make You Sick"), and the Shaken Babies, whose funky, freaky "Smokin' My Dead Friend's Weed" should win the band either a) a recording contract or b) an expense-paid convalescence in one of our fine state mental health institutions. I'm just not sure which.

There are a few dead horses here, although it's hard to complain when they're beaten this well. Bands like Nocturna and Sub-Train and 12V Negative Earth play the thrash card with enough verve and raw-throated panache to make it all work just this one more time.

But for all of the good stuff Exports 2 has to offer—and for true rivet-heads, there's not a loose bolt to be found—the disc's greatest treasure lies within the uncredited 17th track, a bit of vintage soundbite madness from Moose's D.J. Trey. Formerly known as college radio personality Colonel Bacchus, Trey's mad-cap mix-and-match aural collages have been too long from these ears.

Local CD Review #2

Scott Miller
Are You With Me?

All right, in case you've just emerged from a cave or moved here from Des Moines or whatever, Scott Miller is a damn fine singer and an even better songwriter. Late of the V-roys, if you don't know (jeez, how deep was that cave?), with a solo debut expected later this year on the Sugar Hill label, he's filled the space between with a kick-ass live acoustic album. Apart from a lovely duet with the always welcome Peg Hambright ("I'll Go to My Grave"), it's just a man and his guitar. And that's all you need when it's this man, this guitar, and these songs. The 12-track album, mostly recorded at the Down Home in Johnson City, includes a handful of V-roy faves ("Goodnight Loser," "Lie I Believe," "Virginia Way"—the latter in perfect medley with Neil Young's "Across the Line") and a bunch of songs Miller's been singing around town for a while but never recorded ("Mess of This Town," "Can You Hear Me Tonight?", "Bastard's Only Child"). It's hard to pick any standouts, frankly, because there ain't a weak one in the litter. But I was particularly happy to finally have the father-son meditation "Daddy Raised a Boy" in playable form, I'm a sucker for train songs like "Amtrak Crescent" (which includes the line, "There ain't no ham like a Birmingham/ To make a fella wanna stay in Alabam"), and the Civil War lament "The Rain" shows Miller stretching himself admirably as a narrative songwriter. Are we with you, Scott? Hell, yeah.

—Emma "Check out the new calendar section. Now." Poptart