Stereo Subversion |
Jon Rogers plays music next to a revolving door, rotating band members in and out who remain just long enough to make an album or play a tour and then leave for the next big thing. And after several years, he says he’s growing tired of it. Can’t blame him. Everything, Now!’s latest album garnered one of the highest grades our site has ever handed out, and for good reason. The little known Indianapolis act creates “space gospel,” as discussed below, and pulls from seemingly every genre yet makes it all a balanced, beautiful affair. And yet, without a cohesive line-up, Rogers finds it hard to move forward to the national scene. We recently sat down with Rogers to discuss their new album, the space gospel genre and why even his current band members have all quit on him before. SSv: There’s been a bit of time since Spatially Severed came out and I’m wondering what expectations you had for it when it first came out until now. What’s the tension between being hopeful and realistic? Jon: Since we switched back to putting out our own albums a couple years ago, the sales have dropped off a lot. We’ve sold only a few hundred copies of each one, so this time instead of 1,000 copies, we printed 1,500 copies to make this one bigger. 1,500 is a pathetic number for most bands, but that’s what we could afford so that’s what we did. This time was less about selling them and more about getting this one out there. We just wanted to get rid of 1,500 copies regardless of the money side of it. That approach is working pretty well. We’re touring a lot this year and we’ll probably go back into the studio later this year, but there’s no plans to release an album. We’re all pretty sold on this one. We put a lot of work into it - about eight or nine months in the studio. And it was culled from a bunch of songs - maybe 25 or 30 - and we worked it down to where it’s at now. I think we really believe in it and we’re more excited about this one that we have been about any of the other ones. I think we’re just gonna keep getting the right people to hear it. We’ve been working hand-in-hand with more promotional companies, friends, local places than we have before. We’ve got the drummer from Everthus who is our booking guy now and that should work out really well. A lot more people are with us on this one than in the past and a lot of that has come from living in Indianapolis. SSv: You’re able to pull off so many sounds and influences on the new album and I wondered if you were worried about going too overboard - throwing too many ingredients into the stew? Jon: I was kind of anxious about that idea, but in the last year or so, I changed my approach to making music. I don’t know if it’s just a rhetorical device that helps me to write songs better or to not have any worry about what it sounds like. But I try to take the songs outside of my own reality. We imagine that songs already exist and that they’re in deep space and that they can move radio waves or different lingering technologies or somehow that those things can be directed toward earth. It’s all imaginary, but it’s a good exercise to think about how a song will work or what you want to say. Then you imagine it being something else and that we’re just trying to represent it or that we’re the instrument for the being or song that already exists. Does that make sense? [Laughs] SSv: I suppose, but I guess I was just wondering about how that happens tangibly? Jon: I think that’s just how we’ve done it. When I started the band, it was my idea being 18- or 19-years-old that I should try to make all the types of music that I was into. That’s how I felt about it and that’s what I wanted to do. I’ve taken that into some pretty bizarre experiences. Now, I’ll hear something and think that it was a total mistake, but that’s a part of it. That’s what anyone who creates art will find. And I think what’s important is to capture influences in a way, but also what I appreciate at the time that I’m writing. I want to include the things that are musically or artistically or spiritually important to me and pull them from all different places. I don’t think I’ve ever worried too much about the results. If I had more pressure on me, then maybe I would. The guys I play with are usually supportive, so that doesn’t happen. And labels only come to us after we’ve recorded, so they don’t have the chance to tell us what we can or cannot do. SSv: As people come across the band, one of the first things they will read is “space gospel.” Jon: I think that’s very representative of what we’re doing right now and Spatially Severed is the first album in a trilogy of albums. I think that’s an important concept to what we’re trying to make. It started as just a joke. I watched this video seminar about how to market your band and there were some things that were total bullshit. There were also things I thought were interesting. One of the things the guy said was if you have to describe your band’s genre name, it needs to be a genre that basically says ‘Our band is the only one.’ I don’t think that our band is the only one who can use ’space gospel,’ but you don’t hear it very much. I think it gives at least a hint toward the music. It doesn’t sound like church music or anything and it’s not actually Christian gospel, but for us, the point is to uplift at this point and do it in this science fiction style. So we thought that was a good idea for this trilogy of albums and different elements will show through on each one. The second album is going to be heavier and the third will be mostly gospel. [Laughs] SSv: I read this was much more of a collaborative band effort than past efforts. Jon: I basically wrote the songs on the guitar and then I would take them to our bass player, Eric, at the time and our drummer and we would flesh them out that way. They came up with their own parts after that. Everybody had a lot more input than our last two albums, which were mostly me on my own. Some people would help me here and there, but this was one of the first times we could write together and work on songs in the studio as a group. I really hoped to change that, but I never know who’s going to be in the band by the time we get to our next album. SSv: How frustrating is that? Jon: It’s starting to be. I don’t think I used to mind, but now that I’ve wanted to change my philosophy to us working together as a band, it is frustrating. In the last year, I’ve learned a lot about running the band and I’ve had to handle the manager side of things and financial sides. I really feel like, as we’ve taken it more seriously, that I need to have dependable people. I need to know who will be a part of the band. I’m always losing people. Someone is always wanting to go somewhere or getting a job. But it’s always ‘okay, we just need to find somebody else and keep going.’ We’ve had a lot of good friends around and that’s fun, but I’m hoping someday to just have a really solid group that will stay together. SSv: There are five guys now, but how many former members do you have? Jon: Our current keyboard player, Justin, who has always at various points played guitar and miscellaneous percussion for a while, this is his third or fourth time in the band and he recently made an entire history of all the line-ups that we’ve had. I would say that close to 10 or 12 people have been in the band at any given point. Right now, our keyboard player, bass player and drummer have all quit at some point and come back. Some will probably leave again. It’s unpredictable, but it does keep me on my toes for live shows. When it gets frustrating, I just think that I’ll grab whoever I can and record that way, but it really affects the live show to know who won’t be there. SSv: Best live show for you guys ever? Is there one that comes to mind? Jon: Definitely. It was just a couple months ago maybe in the beginning of December. There was a house show and it was our keyboard player, Drew, at the time and one of his last shows he played with us. It was this big party. I know that everybody there had a great time and, at the end, we all felt like it was our best show. But those things happen over and over again and the most recent one always feels like the best. As the others get further in the past, it’s hard to remember what was so much fun and we always want to outdo ourselves and make the next one more fun than the last. At that point in those shows, everybody in the band is on this spiritual kick about it and we feel we’ve reached this nirvana or zen-like state where you don’t exist anymore. That’s always fun when you hit that. That’s what makes those shows memorable is how you feel during the music. |
Elbow |
Fresh Fruit: Everything, Now! |
My Old Kentucky Blog |
Fresh Session : Everything, Now! on The Laundromatinee Everything, Now! is one of the hardest working, most prolific indie rock bands Indianapolis has to offer. In 2007 the band self-released two quality, under-the-radar long-players in Ugly Magic and Bible Universe. They returned this year to release Spacially Severed. With their own slew of cameras, they dropped by The Laundromatinee to record with us. |
| MOKB by Dave December 5, 2008 |
Let's Get Claustrophobic |
| Indy.com By Matt Conner Feb 5, 2009 |
Everything, Now! Discusses The Local Scene We recently sat down with Jon Rogers, the band’s principal songwriter, to discuss the local scene and get his take on venues, other bands and how he maintains hope for the future. Indy.com: As a local band, what’s your take on the Indy music scene? Jon Rogers: I only moved here a couple years ago after living in Muncie for several years. I only know that I see a lot of really great bands with a lot of great people within those bands. I probably don’t get out as much as I should but I do find there are some great bands in town that I didn’t know about before I moved here, such as Marmoset, Ammo Joy and others. I don’t really know much about the Indianapolis music scene though. I think it’s moving toward house shows and less about bar shows. I’m not a big fan of the bars around here, especially for shows. Most of them are punk rock venues, so it’s harder for non punk bands to play. Indy.com: Where’s the best place for you guys to play on a local level? Jon: The Melody Inn, which is a punk bar, and Radio Radio has been good. They’ve always treated us really well, but even that’s kind of a punk rock bar. There are a few other places, but those are my favorites at the moment. We’ve had a good year playing at those a lot. Indy.com: As a musician, what are some steps to improve the local music scene? Jon: Well, I do think there are some good things happening. I think house shows are picking up and I think that’s where rock and roll belongs in Indianapolis. House shows are always a good show for the band and the people who go there. It cuts out the middle man a little bit, but I think there will always be a few good bars around for shows, too. The other thing is that I think some labels around here are doing good things – Joyful Noise, Musical Family Tree, Standard Recording. Plus you have some great acts from around here like Grampall Jookabox, Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s and Everthus the Deadbeats. Hopefully people will start getting a little more interested in Indianapolis as a town where you can find good music. But if not, I don’t think that will bother anybody that much anyway, because it seems like a town where there’s always been good bands with people who appreciate that even if the national level doesn’t give us that attention. Indy.com: That’s what I was wondering – if the local scene was helping you break through to a national level at all? Jon: That’s the hard part. We’ve been touring for five years off and on and it changes depending on where you go. I don’t think it’s bad. I think there are a lot of places for bands to play and a million bands out there. But breaking on a national scale is so hard to do. You have to have the right people at the right label and the right money and all that shit. I don’t know. I think that Indianapolis is at a point right now in its music scene that it could get a lot bigger, if people find the bands that are a bit more obscure. The Impossible Shapes just broke up but they had a decade of fantastic albums. So if some of these guys can get a major label deal or a TV spot, that would be good. |
| Buzz Grinder by Blake Garris December 17, 2008 |
Everything, Now! are some kind of 70s psychedelic band that hail from Indianapolis, Ind. Think Brian Jonestown Massacre but happy. I really don’t know anything else about them — except that they’re friends with Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s and they may need or be on some kind of medication. This interview with frontman Jon Rogers is also worthless if you want to learn anything about them. But… their latest album Spatially Severed is amazing and you should probably buy it for everyone in your family. Legal bills against Coke can be expensive. To begin, I like your band a lot. Why? Also, you may be a bit cracked. Can I be cliche’ and ask you what your name means? There isn’t much information about your band online, except for a number of glowing reviews. What are you hiding? Describe your band to people that have never heard of you. You are in Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s top 8 Myspace friends. Why? What is the songwriting process like for you? Are you ever going to drop the exclamation point from your name like Panic at the Disco? If I say Larry Bird, what is the first thing that comes to mind? What about Reggie Miller? And Manute Bol? What’s next for Everything, Now!? http://www.buzzgrinder.com/2008/interview-everything-now/ |
| EC WORD by Breena Siegel February 2009 |
Saturday concert rocks Runyan If you ever contemplate a journey to the moon, there is a band eager to provide musical inspiration for such an experience. The space journey will require the music of Everything, Now, an Indianapolis-based quintet that stormed through the Orchard Room Saturday evening. The ferocious Awesome Color, hailing from the streets of Brooklyn, took the stage after Everything, Now greased up the platform. The musical entertainment provided by Student Activities Board (SAB) kicked off with Earlham’s own Big Princess, comprising seniors James Gaffield (guitar), Jay Kozel (drums), Elliott Krome (saxophone) and Bryan Purcell (bass). Following Big Princess, the boisterous visiting band Everything, Now set the mood with pump and gusto for a free-for-all dance party. The musically diverse band included Jonathan Rogers III (guitar, vocals), Justin K. Prim (keyboard), Eric Alexander (bass), Dan Schepper (drums), Dave Carter (guitar) and a dancing friend. Everything, Now’s most recent publicity move was promoting their dream of holding shows on the moon. They consider it to be the finest venue for expressing their type of music: Space Gospel. The band’s hope for connecting to outer space in one form or another is evident in their latest album, “Spatially Severed” (2008), which features cover art depicting a crab-headed man on the moon and such song titles as “Save a Life with Diet Chocolate Sprite” and “Self-Proclaimed Prince of the Hamlet.” Among others, keyboardist Prim illuminates the band’s imaginative nature. “It’s like this awesome emptiness,” he said, describing the visceral experience he has while playing. “I would consider tonight the perfect show because it happened. This is the divine connection.” Guitarist Carter described what he imagines while playing. “I pretend that I’m in my room in high school and no one’s around,” he said. Carter explained that the experience of imagining that he is alone alleviates the pressure of the crowd, which at times can be overwhelming. Beyond Carter’s escape method, Everything, Now clearly enjoyed its experience onstage, as seen in the band’s synchronized vibe. Awesome Color was the final act to take the stage. The band created a different level of intensity as the number of musicians onstage shrank down to three from the previous five. After meeting in Michigan, the members of Awesome Color gravitated toward each other again after they moved to New York. Their music has since then been picked up by noise appreciators, including Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. Awesome Color will be touring through the spring and summer with the band Dinosaur Jr. Though students trickled out of the Orchard Room over the course of the evening, many devotees stayed to finish off the set with Awesome Color. As the crowd shrank, the room’s energy heightened. “[I feel] a connection between the music and the body,” said freshman Miriam Dowd, explaining her own visualized experience with the music. “It’s almost like a translation.” |
| Good Beer Show Podcast By Jeffery T September 17, 2008 |
| Everything Ted What can I say? The group featured on the long awaited GBS 160 is one of my favorite local groups, “Everything, Now!“. They have a new album coming out in November and guess what? The Good Beer Show gets to play some songs off of it first. Beers sampled on the show were Budweiser American Ale, Brugge Triple the Ripple and EN!’s leadman’s homebrew. This beer was fantastic! I want the recipe. Necessary links are to “Great Fermentations” and our Oregon vacation photos. goodbeershow.com/?p=493 |
| Good Beer Show Podcast By Jeffery T May 26, 2007 |
Everything Chimay |
Good Beer Show Podcast |
Everything, NOW! and Two Yuenglings There was not enough beer talk in this episode. I was going to insert more after the fact but decided to keep it as it was. It was a fun show. I took the show upstairs in the “Viking Lodge”. Its quietness broke the mood and all the usual table talk did not happen. I will make sure the beer talk is at the norm when we do a new “Bell’s” and another Bell’s draft that we snagged 3 kegs of on next week’s show. The beer for this show was Yuengling “Black and Tan” and “Porter”. This is not available in Indiana and Yuenglings are always a treat for me. The musical guest was “Everything, NOW!”. This group of guys are one of my favorite local groups. They put on one hell of a live show. Their CD “Police, Police” has been dominating my ipod for half a year now. The two unreleased songs that the band let me play are templates for the new album that they will record later this year. The band’s website is here. Their current album is available at Standard Recording. If you missed out on show #27, the first and last song on it are also from this band. They are great fun to watch! A new month has started, please vote for me at podcastalley.
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BSU Daily News |
Everything, Now! produces a sound that is difficult to describe to even the most savvy music connoisseur, partly because of the styles reflected in their name: everything. A tour through EN's repertoire is a maze of sounds from country to shoegazer to folk, the common denominator being good old rock. While many have attempted to pin EN to the likeness of Modest Mouse and early Flaming Lips, singer/guitarist Jon Rogers said that a direct comparison to any particular band is misleading to first-time listeners. "We're a really young band... if anyone is going to compare us to that stuff (Modest Mouse, The Flaming Lips), they have to know the history behind those bands and how they started," Rogers said. EN is always looking for new ways to redefine music, causing listeners to forget everything they expect to hear in a rock song and just allow the music to take them. Everything, Now! established itself with the name "The Grand Opening" with only two members: Rogers on guitar/vocals and Sutton accompanying him on the bells. They gradually added members until they played their first show with the current line-up in February, 2003: Jon Rogers on guitar and vocals, Rob Williamson on bass, Ben Sutton on bells, Drew DeBoy on keyboard and Dan Shepper on drums. All members except Sutton, who lives in Indianapolis, reside in Muncie, making practice and song development fairly easy. The band has weathered the initial processes of formation, writing, recording and releasing an album, and setting in with one another as collaborators. "I think that at this point, we're pretty strong as a group... we all kind of hate each other, but we sound good together," Rogers said, employing characteristic sharp sarcastic wit. The roots of EN's songs are found somewhere in the dark, enigmatic mind of Rogers. After graduating from high school, he began writing lyrics while working a summer job at a gas station. The free time and isolation gave his mind plenty of time to roam. And roam it did. Explorations of death, the value of a virtuous life, politics and pop culture weave through songs with no lack of biting irony and satire. Songs begin as concepts in Rogers' mind, which he later shares with the other band members, who, in turn, flesh out a song as it comes naturally. While many people are satisfied by nothing less than a pristine display of virtuoso musicianship at a show, EN seems to revel in their mistakes and improvisational style. An ideal performance for EN involves forgotten lyrics, fumbled drumsticks, missed chords and an audience that is left amused, offended or confused. "When we're playing, it's like we all have this joke going on between us while we're playing, but the audience doesn't necessarily know that." Williamson said. Rogers said the band appeals to people because of its showmanship. "We're not a punk band, but we have a kind of punk aesthetic about our shows," Rogers said. EN's recently released, self-titled CD features just short of an hour of music that was recorded over a period of eight months. The band is thrilled with the quality of the recording, despite the fact that much of it was recorded in various basements and bedrooms around Muncie. EN gives credit for the CD's polished sound to the near-legendary Tyler Watkins. Watkins mixed EN's tracks to their finished state, along with other familiar names on the Muncie circuit, namely Crusoe, Days and Nights in the Skeleton Crew, and Revel in the Morning. Maintaining a balance of artistic autonomy and label support is a difficult one, but one that EN is willing, and apparently waiting in anticipation, to make. The group has gained a sizable following while playing a sporadic pattern of dates around central Indiana with the likes of Crusoe, Revel in the Morning, Arcade and Away with Vega. Necessary to the growth of the band's popularity is the recent publication of the band's official Web site, www.everythingnowmusic.com. The site is still under construction but features information regarding shows and contact information. DeBoy, author of the Web site, says that downloadable MP3s and bios of band members are currently in the works and should be up soon. Using the momentum that they have gained in just less than one year, they would like to sign a deal with a record company that would bring them greater distribution and therefore access to a wider fan base. Several companies have stepped forward with promising offers, but EN is focused on keeping priorities straight. "All we really want to do as a band is play shows, have a good time and make good records," Rogers says. |
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BSU Daily News Allyn West March 4 2004 |
LIVE REVIEW at mt cup: Castle Oldchair and Everything, Now! But just after 8:00 p.m., the man known as Castle Oldchair started hauling his gear into the mt cup. Flanked by an anonymous bass player and drummer, around 8:30 p.m., Castle settled in with his sticker-covered acoustic guitar and squeezed out a warbling, country-tinged voice that would charm the audience for the next 45 minutes. Though failing to introduce his band members or what they were playing, Castle Oldchair effortlessly fed the crowd song after song replete with a tight rhythm section, catchy melodies and inventive guitar breaks. At times sounding like The Thrills, Yo La Tengo, The Byrds or a combination of the three, Castle Oldchair hung in the veins of Americana and alt-country music, being well-acquainted with the G and C chords. With great pacing and better songs, the Indianapolis-based band's set was ridiculously catchy and ultimately, ridiculously satisfying. The five-piece collective called Everything, Now! followed, headlining Alexander's show. Beginning in a manner reminiscent of The Flaming Lips' "Zaireeka" albums, the members of Everything, Now! spread to each corner of the room with tape recorders and instruments. Three tapes of ambient noise were played simultaneously as Crafty Johnson started a long, acoustic piece, which eventually bounded toward a rhythmic drum-led coda. As planned, Everything, Now! immediately had the crowd engaged. On a night commemorating the band's one-year anniversary, Johnson jokingly admitted the band was off, as evidenced by a few false starts during a low-fidelity cover of David Bowie's "Heroes." But rough edges aside, Everything, Now! proved again it might be Muncie's most-creative band: the five-piece featured, throughout its set, two jingle sticks, a xylophone, finger cymbals, maracas and a cooking pot as percussion instruments, each accompanied by Johnson's quirky, cryptic lyrics. Unlike Castle Oldchair, Everything, Now! plays difficult pieces, eschewing traditional pop structures (verse-chorus-verse) in favor of pieced-together fragments that sound like modernist poetry looks. While it destroys conventions, Everything, Now! is endlessly interesting; and, on Friday at the mt cup, despite self-admitted looseness, the band proved it again. |
| Paste Magazine By Emily Beard on October 12, 2005 |
BAND OF THE WEEK: EVERYTHING, NOW! “Everything, Now!” pulls double duty as a band name and an accurate description of what the group’s music aims for. Chief sonic experimenter Jared Cheek says it’s like tea kettles and house fires, Brian Wilson, Captain Beefheart and “hijacking a bus filled with kids on their way to space camp and making them listen to Bowie records backwards until we get back to Indiana.” The band’s members are psychedelic-influenced noisemakers, but their new goal is to add definition to the sound by using more deliberate arrangements of their often layered instrumentation. “I was really into the idea of putting as much sound into every song that we recorded,” says mastermind and primary songwriter Jon “Crafty” Rogers, “but we’re moving away from that now.” Rogers started writing songs during high school in his hometown of Athens, Ga., but Everything, Now! didn’t begin until he relocated to Muncie, Ind., to attend Ball State University. It wasn’t long before people who wanted to join his band started turning up, whether they could play or not. “I’m not much of a musician,” says Cheek, "but Crafty needed someone to play some parts, and a judge ordered him to allow me into the band in order to meet county affirmative-action regulations in which a six-person band must have at least one member wearing flannel at all times.” It’s possible that half of Muncie has played in various incarnations of Everything, Now! since the band’s inception. But lack of stability has been a strength rather than a weakness. Rogers’ guidance anchors the style, but the fluctuation of members is what fuels the group's creativity. An always-changing lineup ensures a fresh approach and keeps audiences interested. “People come out to see what’s going to be different about it,” points out Rogers. “[If it turns into] the same thing every time I’ll probably get bored of it.” Since the music is largely experimental, live performances can feature madcap improvisation (like former band members hopping onstage to smash plates or add a little off-the-cuff flugelhorn). “We always try to have the biggest party we can have,” Rogers says. “Most of the people who come to see us have been seeing us for the last two years, it’s like one or two hundred people, and they have the CD, and they sing along. And we have about 20 instruments and they play along with us." In the last couple years, Rogers has had Bowie and T.Rex on heavy rotation, but says “I’ve always been interested in Brian Wilson’s arrangements.” Since he and his bandmates live and work in a record store, there’s an endless amount of music to soak up. “Between all of us we probably listen to hundreds of records, just absorbing it and spitting it back out.” You can hear the grandiose Bowie aesthetic fixed with T.Rex’s vocal onslaught and rimmed with Pink Floyd’s cinematic vision in Everything, Now!’s more recent efforts. Rogers is really interested in the big picture. He recently started writing scores for local Indiana filmmakers, and the influence shows. Expect more strings and re-worked instrumentation in addition to more complex arrangements on the band's forthcoming record. After releasing Police, Police in 2004 and recovering from a few self-booked mini tours, Everything, Now! is getting ready to go back into the studio. Twelve-plus songs are on the schedule, and for the most part, the band’s got its ideas mapped out. With its new, loftier goals, the Rogers and co. are excited about spending as much time as possible fine-tuning the album, and about working again with friend and Standard Records labelmate Tyler Watkins of Margot and the Nuclear So and Sos. Watkins engineered Police, Police in his and Rogers’s basement, and they plan on working on the new record in the same fashion. Rogers says with Police, Police he had a plan for every song, knowing what parts were going to sound like a marching band, and which needed to replicate ritualistic jungle drums. With the upcoming project, he says, “there’s a little bit of that, but I’ve learned to get comfortable with the spontaneity of recording [instead of being] afraid that if I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do it wouldn’t work out.” |
BSU Daily News |
Live Review: Crusoe, Everything Now!, Moriarty, Away with Vega Sometimes local shows are good, and sometimes they are great. This particular show was one of the great ones. A large group of local scenesters packed into the basement for what may have been one of the best local shows of the year. Away with Vega played first. This band, though I wasn't keen on them at first, is really beginning to grow on me. Gaining quite a bit of popularity and fanfare in the local scene, their emotional, upbeat rock was as catchy as ever. Although a bit of their set was slowed down by a broken guitar string, Away with Vega still managed to attract the audience's attention with their genre-bending indie-rock sound. After Away with Vega finished, Warsaw band Moriarty took to the stage. I think this was one of the most enjoyable performances I have ever seen in Muncie. To describe them is difficult, but I will try. Imagine Portishead but not as trip-hop oriented. They had their own niche. Nearly every head in the audience was nodding to their infectious grooves and chilled sound. Every member of the band was amazing at what they do, and if they ever play in Muncie again be sure not to miss them; I was absolutely blown away. Local favorites Everything, Now!, who just released their album "Sunshine of Doom," played one of their best performances on Friday. Playing songs both on and off their new album, Everything, Now! put me in a better mood than listening to an oompa band at German Fest. I don't think I will ever get tired of seeing this band; go see them, buy their album and listen to them as often as possible. Crusoe was the last band to play at night. Despite microphone problems in the middle of their set, it was an energizing set that sparred neither the audience nor one of the light bulbs in the basement. This particularly aggressive set was also particularly enjoyable to watch. Complete with their signature hardcore sound and sing-a-long-able hooks, Crusoe reminded the crowd why they are one of the Muncie scene's best bands. One of the things that keeps living in Muncie tolerable is its local shows. Muncie seems to have been blessed by bands and people who just know how to make incredible music, this particular show made me realize just that. So I urge you, dear reader, to start coming to the local shows and support one of the only things about Muncie that doesn't suck, that being the local music scene and local shows. You won't be disappointed. |