the magnolia collective @ the station, may 2011

One of my favorite things about MagCo’s ongoing Thursday residency at the Station, besides the facts that they’re fantastic, I’ve gotten to meet a bunch of amazing people hanging out there, and the always excellent challenge of shooting the same band over and over again, is their rotating cast of local opens — I haven’t…

acrylics — lives and treasure

I saw Acrylics open for the Morning Benders just over a year ago; if fellow tour partner and opener the Miniature Tigers were the Morning Benders’ rock and roll side, Acrylics’ performance and their lovely debut album, Lives and Treasure, are much more closely aligned to the electronic, hollowly delicate side of last year’s stellar…

college baseball: unc-asheville @ unc

Eleven. A lesson to all young pitchers: if a batter sends a particular pitch 425 feet out of the park, don’t throw it to him again in his second at-bat. It will, like the first pitch, go real far, real fast, right out of the stadium. Bryant Gaines was otherwise stellar, the bullpen was beastly,…

dax riggs @ local 506

There’s something deeply soothing to me about Dax Riggs’ complex, gothic garage rock; he’s a great musician and his voice sounds like oil slicks under a car, and I can absolutely zone out on the sound of his music, just completely blissed out on rock and roll. That’s how the show at the 506 was…

skylar gudasz & the ugly girls @ local 506

I am holding good to my goal to see more new-to-me local bands this year, and I love it when I can do that in my own backyard; Skylar Gydasz and the Ugly Girls (who are all, in fact, adorable dudes) threw a kickass CD release party at the 506 last Friday, and I hung…

wintersleep @ kings barcade

Like every good Canadian band I go see, Pam turned me on to Nova Scotians Wintersleep earlier this year with their 2007 album Welcome to the Night Sky; y’all know me and you know that every attempt I every make to describe a band descends into incomprehensible comparisons to trees, but if somebody, in a…

college baseball: umd @ unc, game 1

Nine. Patrick Johnson, who Coach Fox once referred to as the kitchen sink, struck out a career-high 12 in seven scoreless innings last night; he was still touching the mid-90s at the end of his 129 pitch outing. It was masterful. Although to be fair, I would primarily classify the University of Maryland baseball team…

good vs great

A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense, and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety. — Ansel Adams