The Kavanaghs - Thee Lexington Arrows - The Electricutions -- DC9 - Aug 19 2010

The Electricutions - A couple of guitars alternating on vocals with bass and drums. Full speed ahead punk with power-pop like hooks, but staying strong. The guitars blast away while the bass player sprints up and down his neck handling the more complicated lines. I recognize him from Yell County who I have enjoyed in the past, so I figure this set will stay strong. It does. They sound like a solid LA-Dangerhouse era punk band somewhere between the Dils and the Zeros, I would say. Very quick, plenty of hooks and no screwing around. All business, very few breaks, just a bunch of cool songs that could probably work at any speed. It is always fun to see this sort of music done well. See if you agree with me.

Thee Lexington Arrows - Another four-piece from Baltimore this time around. We are clearly in for another set of punk rock. The difference this time is that this band is looser than the previous band. Not loose, per se, but there is more of a New York Dolls or MC5 lead guitar sound in the otherwise uptempo catchy pop-punk sound. The leads are good and help color a couple of really excellent songs that stand out from the rest. So there is a higher standard of deviation between the songs, unlike the first set. The vocals got a little buried n the sound at times and they had an annoying buzzing sound that turned out to be a guitar problem and not a cord, but a loaner from the headliners fixed that. Enjoyable set at the end of the day.

The Kavanaghs - This four-piece came from Argentina. No punk sound this time around, pretty much staight ahead mainstream pop-rock. The guitarists alternate lead vocals and do some harmony. The singing is the strongest part of their sound although there is some punch to the songs. It is just a little too mainstream for me. The early songs sound like those that any bar band could come up with. Fortunately the latter songs had a bit more of a power-pop sound with good harmonies. So I was won over--barely, in part because the band was enthusiastic and there was a positive vibe tonight amongst the moderate sized crowd. And if you need any more hints at their sound, their last couple of songs for their encore were covers by Badfinger and the Beatles. What, no Klaatu?

Litigation Update - Finally, Jake Holmes has decided to sue Jimmy Page for his deserved share of the royalties of his song "Dazed and Confused". Holmes' version is great, it came first and it obviously is where the Zeppelin version came from, although the words were changed some. Actually Page did it first in the Yardbirds and a comment by their drummer Jim McCarty prompted me to engage in an email exchange where he implied that I was right about Holmes and he his stage comment only meant that they did it before Zeppelin. Supposedly McCarty brought the song to the Yardbirds arranged it and did not get (or steal) any of the credit. So he's clear. I am not even sure Page is fully at fault as he probably let his gangster management take care of these things. But compare the Page original "Black Mountain Side" to the Bert Jansch traditional arrangement of "Black Waterside" and you do start to wonder about that first Zeppelin album. I think a bit of income redirection is needed here and hopefully the courts will agree, although this should have been settled long ago without Holmes having to initiate anything in the courts.