This Week's Mix - Anniversary Style

Since this week's mix coincides with our site's anniversary, I thought that it would be appropriate to make a mix of some bands that have helped keep us in business over the years.

The Vita Ruins - Godspeed To That Polytheist
The Jaguar Club - The Sirens
Bound Stems - Taking Tips From The Gallery Gang
Jukebox the Ghost - Victoria
Telograph - The Fever
AVEC - Ageyeva
Papertrigger - We Are Nations Now!
These United States - The Business
Middle Distance Runner - With Swords
Thrushes - Flying

The Jaguar Club Resides

Our friends The Jaguar Club start a residency at Piano's in NYC tonight. They have some great bands joining them, like Scissors For Lefty tonight and Bridges and Powerlines next week. You can check them out on 11/7, 11/14 and 11/28. When they are done with that, they are celebrating by heading south. If you won't be in New York this month, you can see them as follows:

12/5: The Abbey @ ABC, Harrisburg, PA
12/7: DC9, Washington, DC

Also, they are up for band of the month at The Deli Magazine. If you like what you hear, they'd appreciate it if you took a second and voted for them. I'll leave you with some videos and mp3s. "Perfect Timing" is a new song and might be their best yet.

Perfect Timing (Live)


The Sirens (Video)


World Gone By
The Sirens

The Jaguar Club and The Vita Ruins

Two bands that I have a personal fondness for are touring the Northeast this week. Brooklyn's The Jaguar Club and DC's The Vita Ruins kick things off tonight in the DC area and finish off this weekend in NYC.

8/20/07: IOTA, Arlington, VA*
8/21/07: Ottobar, Baltimore, MD*
8/22/07: The Manhattan Room, Philadelphia, PA
8/23/07: Lava Lounge, Pittsburgh, PA
8/24/07: Cake Shop, NYC

* With Baltimore's Faster Faster Harder Harder

The Jaguar Club - The Sirens
The Vita Ruins - Alien
Faster Faster Harder Harder - Calm Down

You can also download The Vita Ruins' EP here.

Tuesday

Wow, it's only Tuesday. Yet, tonight's regional concert slate is loaded. No matter where you are, there is something worth seeing.


At Sonar in Baltimore, you have a fantastic show. Scotland's The Twilight Sad has been taking America by storm and they will be in town tonight. Philly's Relay will be joining them.

The Twilight Sad - That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy
Relay - Context


Ottobar has the rescheduled date of last month's postponed Voxtrot show. The support slots read like a who's who of Baltimore bands. Two if by Sea, The Heavycoats and The Jennifers are all playing a set tonight.

Voxtrot - The Start Of Something
Two if by Sea - High Water Mark
The Heavycoats - Sea Song
The Jennifers - Oh Caroline


Down in DC, there is an excellent show at Black Cat. Canada's The Besnard Lakes and Brooklyn's Dirty on Purpose will both be in town tonight.

The Besnard Lakes - And You Lied To Me
Dirty On Purpose - No Radio


DC9 also has a fantastic show. My friend's The Jaguar Club and San Francisco's Scissors For Lefty are both on the bill. This should be a nice early week indie dance party.

The Jaguar Club - World Gone By
Scissors For Lefty - Ghetto Ways


Finally, IOTA also has a great show. Local favorites Junior League will be joined by the fantastic Hoots & Hellmouth. Gringo Star is also on the bill.

Hoots & Hellmouth - It's Close, I'm Undone
Junior League - Chess Records
Gringo Star - No Reason

The Jaguar Club - The Sirens

Fresh off of their first show headlining at Mercury Lounge, IA favorites The Jaguar Club have released their debut music video. The piece for "The Sirens" is great in it's simplicity. Enjoy...




The Sirens

Six Points: Tonight @ DC9

Six Points Music Festival put together a pretty good Thursday night show for DC9 tonight. Lejeune will be playing in advance of their upcoming release and Brooklyn's The Jaguar Club will be supporting the excellent EP that they released a couple of weeks ago. They will be joined by The Glory and The Majesty and Life in a Hospital.

Lejeune - Bizarre Histrionics
The Jaguar Club - World Gone By

Interview: The Jaguar Club

Editor's Note: I also contribute to a DC site called Metro Music Scene. They are a sponsor of Six Points Music Fest and asked me to do an interview of The Jaguar Club. I thought that the piece turned out pretty well, so I am also going to post it here.


The Jaguar Club is a 3-piece indie rock band from Brooklyn. They are heavily influenced by the college radio music of the 80's and Brit Pop. Mixing the sounds of bands like Echo and the Bunnymen, New Order, Joy Division, Pulp, Talking Heads, R.E.M. and The Smiths, they make highly danceable music that takes a little from all of those bands. Since I am one of the few people in the region who is familiar with them and they are playing DC9 for Six Points Music Festival on Thursday night, I caught up with them and asked them to introduce themselves to the music fans of the area. Will and Jeremiah were nice enough to talk to me and our conversation follows.

Right now, Six Points Music Festival is all of the rage in DC. Due to your involvement, your name has been around town and hardly anybody knows you. I've actually had several people ask me, "What is this Jaguar Club of which you speak?" Take a minute and introduce your band to DC.

Will: We're from Brooklyn, New York, though none of us are natives. We are a three-piece comprised of Yoi on bass, Jeremiah on drums/backing vocals and myself on guitar and lead vocals. We pride ourselves on our live shows, which hopefully isn't setting us up to have pie on our faces Thursday night. Personally, I think that performing is just about the best thing in the world. Recording is something that I find incredibly painful. Basically, we do what we want to do on stage and we’re fortunate that other people think we're onto something good.

How would you describe your sound?

Will: If I had my way, we'd sound like Bob Dylan fronting Blondie.

Jeremiah: That's pretty good.

W: But somehow we end up sounding like New Order and The Smiths.

J: Well, that's what I'm going for. So…

W: Cool. Fine, you win. I hate you.

J: Cool.

You've actually played DC quit a lot lately. I believe that this will be the third time since early March. How did you get involved with Six Points and is this a trend that we should expect to continue?

J: A friend of ours is from DC and thought that we'd be a good fit at Six Points and we're trying hard to…

(Will Interrupts)

W: Let me field this one. There's something about the DC music scene that's really appealing to us. All the bands seem to know one another, and go to shows, and they just seem to be supportive of each other, which is a nice change to what we're used to in New York. Obviously there are a lot of pluses to being a band in New York, but a real "scene" isn't one of them. So, yes… we will be back as often as DC will have us. We really feel comfortable playing there.

You were in DC a couple of weeks ago to release your new EP. Considering that you haven't formally been a band for a year yet and you already have 2 CDs out, how do you feel that you have grown in that time?

W: Well at least half that year was spent trying to figure out how to be a three piece and not a quartet. We've actually been playing together for more like a year and a half and I used to only sing, but then our guitar player quit - about this time last year actually. So there were a lot of depressing times and a lot of uncertainty, but we toughed it out and now it's starting to feel like we've really come into our own as a live band.

J: I agree, I think that the songs were basically always there. The first EP we recorded on our own with nothing really, just a four track in our practice space. So with this new release, I think we wanted to show what we could do with a little more polished production.

Given the pace that you have been going at, when should we expect another release, July?

W: We're going to be releasing a 7" single with "World Gone By" and a slightly different version of "The Sirens" on it, but we aren't really planning on releasing anything new for the time being. We need to work this one for a while, I think. Part of the reason that we put out a 2nd EP so quickly, was that we kept hearing "your CD doesn't do your live sound justice." Which makes sense, since that one was recorded before we ever played a show.

J: We've definitely got the material for a full length; it's just that so few people have heard what's out already. So, we're going to try and get this release out to more people and in the meantime, we're always writing new songs and debuting them live.

Do you have anything else that you would like to share with the fine citizens of the district?

W: I love that the crowds in DC dance. You don't get that everywhere and it makes a huge difference for us and our energy on stage. We're not just a band for dancing, but that's certainly a big part of the equation. So continue dancing DC. We love it and we'll see you at DC9 on Thursday night.

Thanks for taking the time to talk with me. It is always a pleasure.

W: Anytime, sir. Thank you.

I'll leave you with a couple of songs. If you are intrigued, check out the show on Thursday and pick up a copy of their wonderful EP.

World Gone By
Beautiful House

Thanks To The Jaguar Club

A couple of weeks ago, I went to see my friends The Jaguar Club play DC. They gave me a copy of their new EP and to my surprise, they had a little treat for me on the inside. So it's official, IA finally made someone's liner notes! Will, Jera, Yoi -thanks so much for the kind words. Since our old links are no longer active, I'll repost a couple of tracks from the excellent EP.

For those of you in DC, check them out on Thursday night at DC9. They will be performing as part of the Six Points Music Festival.

World Gone By
Beautiful House

IA Exclusive: The Jaguar Club

Brooklyn's The Jaguar Club has a lot going on. The band will not celebrate their first birthday until May, but they are preparing to release their second EP on April 7 and they will be playing all over the East Coast in the coming weeks. Locally, you can catch them as follows:

3/31/07: Velvet Lounge, DC
4/03/07: The Ottobar, Baltimore
4/19/07: DC9, DC

On Friday, I received a copy of Ceci n'est pas le Club de Jaguar (French for "This is not The Jaguar Club") and it shows definite growth from their debut EP. The songs are more danceable, the lyrics show more depth and the vocals have more range. The band continues to grow and I look forward to their future releases.

To top everything off, they asked me to premiere one of the new tracks and the new version of "This Year." I am proud to, because it's impossible to listen to "World Gone By" and remain completely stil. Take a listen to the tracks and let me know what you think.

World Gone By
This Year

Introducing Amie Street

So things have been quiet around here lately. Yeah, yeah... what's new, right? Even when it does not seem like it, I am always working on something. Today, I wanted to talk about one of my projects and a special deal that I negotiated for all of you.

Over the past couple of months, I have been sharing some ideas with an upstart digital music store. The site is called Amie Street. I believe so much in what they are doing, that I agreed to contribute to their site. I am writing some features for them and providing a weekly recap of the best indie tracks of the week. Chris is even going to pitch in when he gets the chance.

The thing about Amie Street, is that it isn't your normal music store. There are several things that set them apart.

To start off with, they are all about the underground. Most of their artists are unsigned or on labels that you have never heard of. To give you an idea, their best selling indie track of all time is "Naturally" by Middle Distance Runner. This is really cool, because they are promoting these bands and only these bands. The quality acts are being exposed on the main page, the way Justin Timberlake and Foo Fighters are exposed by iTunes. They cater to all genres as well.

The artists retain the rights to their music and they don't have to sign an exclusive contract. Amie Street keeps the first $5 a track makes and the artist gets 70% of all sales after that. They also offer special deals for the artists to extend to their fans, which also helps the artists gain stature on the site. The artists can put a couple of tracks up or their full body of work. It is entirely up to them and they can add more, whenever they desire. There is no waiting around for the music to post either, it's immediate. Even cooler, is the fact that they can reach fans all over the world.

You can test out new artists without it costing you very much. Every track starts out free and stays free, until it has been purchased 15 times. As the track continues to sell, it goes up in price. Each track maxes out at 98 cents, after 85 purchases.

It is actually possible for YOU to profit off of a song. When you purchase credits, you receive REC's. You use these to recommend your favorite tracks. If you recommend a track when it is free and it goes up to 98 cents, you can cash out and get 98 cents credited to your account. If you recommend a track when it is worth 5 cents and you cash out at 35 cents, 30 cents is credited to your account. How you do it, is entirely up to you.

When you purchase a track, it is yours. You can download it as often as your would like, wherever you would like. Plus all tracks are unprotected mp3s, so you can play them anywhere and on any device.

The system rewards good artists and fans with good taste. That sounds like all of you, right? Now the question is, do they have any good artists? The answer is yes. Just to start off, I will tell you that you can purchase music from IA favorites like Middle Distance Runner, Cedars, These United States, The Epochs, The Jaguar Club, The Payola Reserve and Saturna. The really cool thing, is that you will be buying their music for much less than you would pay anywhere else and they will receive most of the profits. If you catch it early enough, it's free.

Since I love my readers, I negotiated a deal for all of you. When you sign up, enter "instrumental" as your promo code. This will hook you up with free money and REC's, that will allow you to start exploring the site with zero risk. To make it easier on you, I am writing a weekly recap of my favorite songs. So check that out on their main page and you should be all set. I will be updating that early each week. If you are an artist, I'd love to see your music there. I love to access music as soon as I want it. Alright, I am done. Go explore. If you join, look Chris and I up and be our friends. Our user names are joepcas and chrisanalysis.

Questions? Comments? Fire away...

Tracks that you will find on Amie St.:
Middle Distance Runner - Naturally
Cedars - This Century
The Epochs - Mouths to Feed
The Jaguar Club - The Sirens
The Payola Reserve - Lay In Wait
Saturna - Blanket of Stars

The Jaguar Club

I wanted to take a minute to mention a band that I recently stumbled upon. The Jaguar Club is a trio out of Brooklyn, NY that formed in May. They just released their self-titled debut EP in the past few weeks. I guess the best way to describe their sound, is a mix of 80's college radio. Their best is yet to come, but this is definitely a promising start.

The Sirens