Author: spencer-lathrop

It used to be that when Christmas holidays approached, many in the music industry celebrated the success of the CD box set. It was the gift that said both, “I tried to be more thoughtful than a gift certificate,” and “I knew you would never spend 60 bucks on yourself, so Merry Christmas.”

In the LP age, box sets were not yet fully on the musical horizon. There were multidisc live records from all kinds of bands. (Yes and Leon Russell come to mind). Some of them even started to resemble box sets, like Chicago’s At Carnegie Hall, which can still be found occasionally in used LP bins. Elvis and Sinatra had retrospective LP box sets.

But when the industry switched over to CDs, the record labels began to fully realize that they were selling music to consumers who already owned the music on LP. They were willing to buy it twice. And the combination of increased consumption of prerecorded music and a high dollar holiday sent the CD box set to its apogee. The CD box set became a testimony to a band’s greatness, a good way to encapsulate a career, and a daggone great Christmas present.

Always around the beginning of November, new CD releases from big artists became scarcer than the hits on a K-Fed record. And simultaneously, increasing numbers of multiple CD release boxes, sometimes from various artists but more likely the music of a sole artist or band, would begin to show up on store shelves.

Some of those boxes were pretty good too, and big sellers. I still laugh at the photo inside the two-disc NRBQ box of the four band members standing in line at the record store waiting to buy the Bruce Springsteen box. The two Rhino Records Doo-Wop boxes were considered definitive statements, and were followed by the garage-rock sets called Nuggets. Some boxes had a very limited shelf life. The John Lennon four-CD set with lots of home recordings and rare studio takes seemed like it was available for all of one month before Capitol pulled it from distribution. The Beatles box set, with no new music, but all of the U.S. releases, separated people from 200-plus dollars because there was included a detailed history of every track. Savvy. Mosaic Records also had scores of obscure jazz performers, with very detailed liner notes, available in box sets. The Led Zeppelin complete set may be the biggest seller of all; although, it’s hard to find sales numbers.
      
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This year, there appear to be a lot fewer box sets than previous years, and they seem a lot more expensive. The employees of the record store that I visited recently seemed particularly uninterested in what the new box sets were, or whether any of them were selling well.

I have come to tell you. There is a new five-disc box of The Band, which makes their third box set, and this one seems a lot more interesting than the first one. It also lists at $100. Sony has packaged all of the 19 U.K. singles by The Clash into a box set, with bonus tracks, of course. There are new box sets from Slade and The Strawbs, who seem as unlikely as Perry Como to have a box. Sufjan Stevens has boxed together his five Christmas EPs, and his label, Asthmatic Kitty, claims “orders have far exceeded expectations.” Weird. There are also new box sets this year from Bruce Hornsby, Sublime, the New York Dolls and Roxette. Having trouble getting excited?

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If you are looking for someone green and nasty who lives on Mount Crumpet this Christmas, a likely candidate could be Warner Brothers Music CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr. With CD sales down $2 billion since 2000, and downloading making up 17 percent of the music consumption in this country, Bronfman has said that his company deserves a piece of every download that originates from iTunes. If that’s the case, then the record companies stand to make a sack of cash off the pending deal between Apple Records (the owner of The Beatles catalog) and Apple Computer (the owner of iTunes) to put The Fab Four’s music online.

Big bucks for The Band: Their new five-disc box set sells for $100.

The big five record labels already take a cut of blank “audio” CDs. So fat, so greedy, unable to nurture an artist that anyone cares about, the major labels have totally squandered their opportunity to think creatively in music’s digital coming of age. One day, we are going to see the big labels take charge of their online catalog. At that point, you may no longer find yourself Christmas shopping in a record store.

Typically, I wait until December 23 to try and put myself in the holiday spirit, but some people prefer to take their time with the holidays.

Get in the spirit: Debbie Hunter and her group will present medieval English carols and more at St. Paul’s Memorial Church.

Debbie Hunter’s early music vocal group, Mira, will be putting on an event of holiday music on Thursday, December 7, at St. Paul’s Memorial Church across from the Rotunda. Mira consists of 18 singers and several string players, and the evening’s performance will include medieval English carols, European Renaissance motets, works of Palestrina and Gabrieli, and Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols. Guest artists will include Richmond Symphony harpist Anastasia Jellison, and Marge Bunday, whom Hunter describes as a “very in-demand alto for early music and beyond, as well as a hot-shit D.C. soloist.” Custer LaRue will also perform, and Hunter says, “I know a lot of great singers, but she is one of the most amazing singers I have ever heard.”

If you cannot make that show, Hunter will also be performing a Solstice concert at the Gravity Lounge on December 21. Together with Mary Gordon Hall and other guests, the Gravity show will feature more folk carols, solstice songs and dance.

Hunter, who has more about her music posted at www.debbiehuntermusic.com, has also been writing a lot lately in anticipation of a new recording in the spring. She has also been exploring the relationship between music/tonalities and healing.

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Have a guitar player on your Christmas list? If so, you may want to stop into Specialty Guitars Plus, now in its second week of business. The store carries a mix of affordable and higher-end acoustics and electrics, some of which are limited-edition runs. Owner Larry Howard says that he shops around for interesting instruments, and he has a number of Ibanez, Gibson, Fender and G&L electrics, as well as Ovation acoustics in stock, and he is expecting Spector basses any day. He also says he has a good relationship with long-time local music shops Stacey’s and Charlottesville Music because his inventory is different. His shop is located on the terrace level of Woodbrook Shopping Center, but be sure and go around back. When I stopped in, Howard’s son was shredding in the front room.

This Sunday, December 3, Plan 9 and the Satellite Ballroom will be hosting the 3rd Record Wares and Robot Fair from noon to 5pm. This year’s event looks to be much more varied, with crafts, homemade toys and clothes, and so on. But at least two vinyl vendors will be on hand to sell records, and there is a good possibility that one of them will be eBay store Hall of Robots. Monkeyclaus members Matthew Clark and Chris Hlad will DJ. Vendors are invited to stick around for the Ballroom’s show with Skeleton Key. The next night, the Satellite hosts an interesting show with the Cape Verdean singer Lura, who has inspired and been inspired by Cesaria Evora.

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Although I lived a few places before I landed here, Charlottesville gave me my first real taste of devout Deadhead culture. I never understood the depth of reverence. That love of Jerry Garcia is holding up well, eleven years after his death. We have our own fine cover band, Alligator. And Starr Hill is able to host two nights of the Dark Star Orchestra, the tribute band that faithfully recreates the sound and set lists from the Dead’s hallowed 2,500-concert history. The Chicago-based outfit has played 1,300 shows themselves, and are listed as a Top 50 National Touring Act. Their attention to the sound of the Dead’s music has been so exacting that Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, and Donna Jean Godchaux have joined them on stage. DSO even plots the stage based on how the Dead would have set up. At the end of every performance, the band announces the date and venue where the original Dead show took place. DSO will be here December 4 and 5, for Deadheads and rock historians alike.

Also for Dead fans, In New York this January, there will be two concerts to honor the release of the band’s two fine records, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. The American Beauty Project will honor the two albums, both recorded in 1970, with performances of tunes from the records by various artists including Jorma Kaukonen, The Holmes Brothers, The Klezmatics, Mark Eitzel and many others. Performances are free and will take place Downtown at The World Financial Center Winter Garden. For more info, go to www.myspace.com/americanbeautyproject.

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Debbie Hunter current spins: LaRue and The Baltimore Consort. The Tallis Scholars. I love Jai Uttal. New recordings by Mary Gordon Hall and Bahlmann Abbot. I am proud of both of them. Richard Thompson as always. And my son Blake Hunter’s band, Trees on Fire, who are playing Uncle Charlie’s this Saturday.

Let’s just say some old college photos surfaced at a party. Maybe not the ones DJ Stroud was really worried about, but interesting photos nonetheless.

Stroud came to UVA in the mid-1980s as an engineering student. He was also a brother at Theta Chi. After he finished Old Dominion University with a finance degree, Stroud came back to Charlottesville to open a silk screen and t-shirt shop on the Corner. There he hooked up with DJ Duncan Habberly and the two of them began throwing underground raves known as Wiggles.

“I had listened to some electronic dance music like Depeche Mode, but most of them were still bands.” Then in the mid ’90s, with the decline of grunge, DJ and club culture started to really take off and many industry types thought that it was the “next big thing.” During that time Stroud was getting a lot of gigs in D.C., hosting a regular Monday night show on WNRN, producing his own music, and even had “a real job for a year.” During a peak year, he spun records at 200 gigs. He was making a good living, although he was also working very hard—about 80 to 100 hours a week. His music started showing up on dance music charts around the world, and many aspiring DJs were sending him demos to try to land a cut on his label, Mining Vinyl.

Stroud says that the best local DJ scene started out in Baltimore, but then relocated to D.C. with the opening of the nightclub Nation. The D.C. scene evolved from underground warehouses to a much more refined, club-type atmosphere. More internationals appeared in the big clubs, and the music became less underground, which Stroud says did not hold the same appeal: “It wasn’t the big baggy pants any more. It didn’t have the same raw, edgy feel that it used to.”

Then, 9/11 and the subsequent recession happened, and the club scene felt the reverberations. Stroud has always tried a lot of different approaches. He was part of a band with Everything leader Craig Honeycutt, and he was a member of a trip-hop group with some locally known musicians. He taught D:Fuse (now an international club star) how to spin. Stroud talks about missed opportunities, but they are not from lack of effort.

Two years ago, Stroud had a bout with cancer, and he was off the scene for a couple months. During that time, he started to consider his priorities. “I thought, I better get back in the water,” he says. Stroud had grown up in Virginia Beach, and he developed an early love of surfing there. But after an ankle injury that required a long rehab, he gave up surfing for 14 years and pursued music instead. When he decided to surf again, he bought a wetsuit and made a trip to California. He also rediscovered his boards, long and short, many of which he had shaped himself. He has a 6’1" thruster that he shaped, imprinted with the Stroud logo, hanging on the wall of his bedroom. He is putting as much into surfing now as he did into music: “I was obsessed before and I am obsessed again.”

Recently, he has made trips to El Salvador and Costa Rica, and he is currently on a weeklong surfing trip with his girlfriend to Nicaragua. “I love Central America,” he says. “And I get to fit it in between gigs.” Stroud recently DJed a wedding of some friends on the Outer Banks, and part of the payday was that he was able to surf Nags Head.

You can catch Stroud at Club OBL at The Outback Lodge on Friday, November 24, playing house, trance, etc., or at his regular R2 gig, or you can also check his website, www.miningvinyl.com, with some great El Salvador and Costa Rica surfing shots.

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Stroud’s recent spins: ”I spend a lot of my time on those surf trips listening to absolutely nothing, which often surprises people. It is my getaway after all, though. As far as electronic dance music goes, that stuff comes and goes so fast it’s hard to reel off a recent favorite. I am fortunate to have a couple of my favorite artists, Noel Sanger and Chuck Lepley, coming out with tracks on my label, either right now (Chuck), or in the very near future (Noel).”

For more information, go to:

www.myspace.com/djstroud01

Andy Waldeck found his dream bass guitar on eBay recently. Waldeck, who likes trying to collect instruments from his birth year, recently found a 1966 candy-apple-red Fender Jazz Bass “with the most rare factory option, [the matching peg head paint.]  This one is, as stated, in dead mint condition. Played lightly and put away for 40 years!!! My heart skipped a beat. It’s the proverbial needle in the haystack. This is THE BASS !! Now, if I only had a spare 13 grand!”

Waldeck’s new CD will be released at the Gravity Lounge on Saturday, November 25. Recorded at Rod Coles’ Esmont Studio, Waldeck played all the instruments except drums, and he invited a number of guest musicians to come in and add parts. Waldeck describes the new disc as his first full-length, electric project since Earth to Andy. Backing him up at the CD release party will be longtime collaborators Joe Lawlor, Tevis Marshall and Andy Rowland, and recent co-conspirator BJ Pendleton.

Waldeck’s better half, Jenn Rhubright, says that although she “has never been very saintly,” she was inspired to make a trip to New Orleans this week. The Charlottesville Chapter of Habitat for Humanity is helping to build a musicians’ village in the Crescent City, a set of 81 homes for displaced musicians.

As part of that project, Rhubright and a good friend are asking for donated musical instruments (wind instruments, percussion, strings, guitars, basses, keyboards, amplifiers, PA gear, microphones, speakers, cables, etc.). They will head south on Starlight Express buses to deliver the goods to the Tipitina’s Foundation (www.tipitinas foundation.org). The instruments will go to musicians who lost their instruments following Hurricane Katrina as well as to music programs in the local schools.

Rhubright says, “We can use any instruments that are in playable condition.” Anyone interested in making a tax-deductible donation to a good cause, contact Rhubright by Saturday, November 18, at jenn rhubright@gmail.com.

Rhubright has also become interested in photography and recently had a showing of photos at Starr Hill. Part of her itinerary will be to shoot some interesting photos in New Orleans.

And this Friday, before they leave, Rhubright’s band The Dirty Dishes are playing a set at the Gravity Lounge. The Dishes, also featuring Chris Ruotolo on guitar and bass, Juliet Trail on keys and cello and Lea Calvani on percussion, describe themselves as “Vibe-Girl Lounge” and play a mix of originals and covers influenced by Ella and Morcheeba.

The Dishes will be a followed by an increasingly rare local show by Jay Pun and Morwenna Lasko. This performance is only rare because the dynamic duo has been on the road in other parts of the country of late. They played an acoustic side stage for a DMB show in Virginia Beach this summer, and they were also invited to open for Ralph Stanley. They were well received. Lasko and Pun were also asked to join a short tour with Nashville up-and-comer Adrienne Young, who saw them at Floydfest and wanted to take them to some new venues. Pun says that they have also logged some miles in western North Carolina, which he says he really likes, and they have a date this month with Jen Chapin at The Living Room in New York City.

Pun says that their Myspace page has gotten them quite a bit of exposure. After opening for The Avett Brothers at Starr Hill, Pun says that a lot of fans reported they had found out about their music on Myspace. They got quite a few hits after the show, too.
Pun also says that the he and Lasko have a lot of new material and are looking to record with the goal of a new CD  by springtime. You can catch the new material this Friday. Should be an excellent show.

Word has it that Scottish fiddler Bonnie Rideout is looking to make Charlottesville her new home. She must have been positively impressed after her Paramount date.

I got to say, I think Keith Morris spends way too much time on MySpace. Oh my god, Sidney Tapscott has a MySpace page.

Jay Pun’s recent spins: “The new Hamiltons CD. I was very excited to get that. We also like the new ones by Chris Thile, John Legend, Mindy Smith and Thom Yorke. As most people know, we are all over the place.”

For more information, go to:

www.andywaldeck.com

www.mojamusic.net

I saw Dave Chappelle’s movie Half Baked last weekend (I know, I’m the last person in town to see it), and Chappelle is very funny, but it got me wondering. Can you really laugh hard at a weed movie without ever having been stoned? This is also the dilemma facing the filmmakers who will premiere their local music documentary Live from the Hook at The Paramount Theater this Saturday, October 28.
    Like the producers of the documentary, I am also part of the class of ’84. My third night in town, I went down to The Mousetrap and saw Root Boy Slim, who was so messed up that the band pushed him out on stage in a shopping cart, and he proceeded to do the whole show from there. I also remember frat parties (just don’t ask me which frats) where Skip Castro was playing on a weeknight, and just putting the thump on the audience—me and 200 other grinning, wildly dancing students. In fact, I can remember it like it was last week.
But judging from the 12-minute teaser that I watched recently, the movie hardly sets up the scene for anyone who wasn’t present. Was Charlottesville just another college town with a bunch of great bands, all focused around the spring bacchanal known as Easters? Or was it a state of true individual transcendence that deserves to be documented?
    The filmmakers (director Joe Grafmuller, director of photography Cybel Martin and line producer Bill Reifenberger) lucked out on two counts. One, they had Charlie Pastorfield and Bob Girard on whom to center the action. Pastorfield and Girard could tear it up musically then, and they continue to tear it up now. The thing that differentiated Charlottesville from my hometown scene—besides the number of blonde, college-age girls—was the ravenously eclectic tastes of the musicians here. It seems like every band, from Skip and his jump blues to The Casuals Dead-influenced New Wave, dug as deeply as they could for inspiration. I’d lay money on the fact that Charlottesville was the only town where more than one band was covering Garland Jeffries’ tunes. Unbelievable.
    The other stroke of serendipity was the uncovering of old ’70s videotape of bands playing around town. It seems that Bucky Pomerantz owned one of the first video recorders. (My friend Tim Anderson says it took six Sherpas to carry the thing around.) The video footage surfaced in the middle of Live’s filming, and most folks assumed that the film was probably ruined by humidity and the like. But miraculously, a restoration company in New York breathed new life into the video, and some of the footage is pretty entertaining.
    Apparently the project is not quite finished, and the version premiering at the Paramount will still be a rough cut (filming of a Captain Tunes reunion is yet to be completed). Hopefully, the film is better organized than the trailer, which is basically a string of reminiscences by musicians on the scene. There are no revelations about how the scene came about. Was it UVA that brought players like Pastorfield to town, or was it just a bunch of townies, totally consumed by rock ‘n’ roll music, who provided a sure audience (and the promise of free beer) most nights of the week? I’m guessing the latter.
    In the film, Skip pianist Danny Beirne admits, “We meant a lot to these people.” I hear that the Paramount show is already sold out, so it seems likely that he is right.

While rumors have long swirled about Gravity Lounge’s demise, people close to the source tell me that December really will be it for the club. Here’s hoping that’s not true—but in the meantime, you should show your support by checking out The Roches this week, and the unbelievably talented and funny Asylum Street Spankers next month.

If you haven’t made your plans for Halloween, you’re in luck. Mass Sabbath will be performing their third annual extravaganza at The Satellite Ballroom next Tuesday night. MS—which only covers Black Sabbath material up to Volume 4 (meaning no Dio Sabbath)—has expanded their personnel and now boasts four guitars, two basses, two drummers, three violins, vocals, keyboards, and even a few go-go dancers. There are also plans for some video projection.
    Mass Sabbath is the brainchild of Nicholas Liivak, formerly of Mensa Select. Liivak says that each year the band crystallizes a little more, and last year they drew a crowd of several hundred. Some of the members have been in the band since the beginning, and some are first-time performers. One of the vocalists, Butch, is also a member of the Houston-based, but locally well-known, punk rock band 30 Foot Fall. Butch is flying to Texas to play in that band’s Halloween show, and then returning immediately for the Mass Sabbath show on Tuesday night. Stratton Salidis also handles vocals.
    Liivak says that Black Sabbath strikes a chord in people. The crowd is way into the performance and Liivak says that “when I am up there singing, and I forget a lyric, I look out in the crowd and they are all mouthing the words to the tune. I am a rock god for, like, the next 20 minutes.”
    For this year’s show, many band members are going to dress as famous dead rock stars. One of the guitar players is contemplating Randy Rhoads. The other two bands on the bill are locals Horsefang, which Liivak describes as Motorhead meets Mastadon, and RCA recording artist Priestess. So put on your most outrageous costume and get to the Satellite early. It should be a wild show.

Andy Friedman, painter and visual artist (he’s a cartoonist for The New Yorker), and singer-songwriter, has a strong Charlottesville connection that runs through local folk star Paul Curreri. Curreri says that Friedman was such a serious art student at Pratt, in New York City, that he became disillusioned after a gum eraser battle broke out in a professor-free classroom, and ultimately transferred to the Rhode Island School of Design. Friedman and Curreri were roommates at RISD, and later in Brooklyn, New York.
An artist his whole life, Friedman used to merge his pursuits. “I wanted to follow my paintings around on the road, and so that became my stage show—with polaroids, slides and spoken word. And now I’m just so in love with music, and totally in love with playing with my band.”
Friedman and his band, The Other Failures, will have an unofficial release of his second CD, Taken Man, this Wednesday at The Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar. Friedman says that, although he has probably played every room in Charlottesville, “the Tea Bazaar was so great [the last time], and I had such a good time there” that he chose the venue for his CD release. Friedman also enlisted the fiddle playing of Ketch Secor from Old Crow Medicine Show, and other locals, like Curreri, for the new disc.
Friedman and Curreri laid down the basic tracks for the CD in two and a half days in Curreri’s home studio. When the session was over, Friedman told Curreri that “we work so well together that we could record a CD and drive to San Francisco in five days.” Curreri, not normally a gusher, says, “It is an amazing record.”
Friedman regards Charlottesville as his “gateway to the rest of the world”—he always makes sure to include an in-town date at the beginning or end of his tours. He plays 60 to 70 dates a year, and says that part of the reason he loves touring is that he gets to listen to music all day and eat at Denny’s in strange towns. And while he’s enjoying the first year of his son Walker’s life, Friedman adds, “I don’t really want to be domesticated for 360 days a year, either. I love missing my family, and then coming home to them.”
Paul Curreri says of Friedman, “No matter how shitty his life was going, he kept doing cartoons, and they were hysterical, and he had a pretty good outlook on life.”

Young and old alike should go see a slice of real 1970s Charlottesville nostalgia in Captain Tunes. The predecessor of both Skip Castro and The Casuals will reunite for a one-off Starr Hill show Saturday night in conjunction with the Virginia Film Festival premiere of local music documentary Live from the Hook (so-called because certain old-timers, finding themselves drawn repeatedly back to Charlottesville, nicknamed it “the hook”) at the Paramount next week.

Just as you seldom hear a news report of a bus accident where the bus doesn’t “plunge,” I think I have never seen an article about The Melvins without the word “sludge” in it. If you’re curious about aural sludge, The Melvins play Starr Hill on October 23.

An apology to Brent Hosier: I said that many of the tunes on his CD anthologies of Virginia music [“Collector’s edition,” September 18] were compiled from LPs. Hosier says that the bands that he is interested in seldom made LPs, and were instead putting out 45s. Either way, his discs make for great listening.

Andy Friedman’s current spins: “The iPod has totally screwed with the way that I listen to music. As a painter, I listen to music nine hours a day, and I used to take nine CDs to the studio every day and work until I had listened to all of them. Now my favorite album is definitely the shuffle. Like, I may not have known that I was so hot on Lightnin’ Hopkins until the shuffle. I would say my current list includes Willie Nelson’s Honeysuckle Rose soundtrack, which is my Dark Side of the Moon. It has been on my chart for the past four years. Randy Newman’s last one, Bad Love. So good, so good. He is like a New Yorker cartoonist with a piano. And the last two Silver Jews CDs. David Berman came to see me in Nashville and heckled me, so I was interested—but when I heard his music, I hadn’t been so affected since hearing Leonard Cohen. And I’ve known Sufjan Stevens for about 10 years, but I didn’t realize how much he had exploded. At a party I asked him if he wanted to hit the road and play banjo to my slides, and a girl took me aside and said, ‘Don’t you know he’s playing thousand-seaters?’ He could have been another Failures. It’s nice to see him turn into Elvis Presley.”

They call themselves a new kind of record label, and their business plan makes room for old and new technology. Mark Fulton and John Guenin launched the online label Record Theory this past February, distributing CDs for seven bands, most of them local.
    Fulton and Guenin both grew up in town and graduated from UVA. Fulton was a founding member of The Stabones. Both are big music fans, and they recognized that traditional labels were the modern version of the company store: charging way too much for CDs, and passing only a small portion on to artists. Factor in the digital distribution of music, and the two decided that they could design the proverbial better mousetrap.
    Record Theory sells both CDs and MP3 downloads. Fulton believes that bands, for now, still want to press CDs for promotional use and to sell at shows. So Record Theory will sell you a CD, but at a cheaper price than traditional outlets (between $7 and $10, 60 percent of which goes to the band). Every CD purchased comes with a free MP3 download of the music, and postage is included.
    Digitally speaking, Guenin contends that “all the copy restrictions that iTunes, Napster and others insist on end up annoying the few people actually willing to pay for music, while doing very little to stop music piracy. Our idea of ‘copy prevention’ is just to be fair to everyone involved, and create goodwill between fans and musicians.” Record Theory believes in the freedom that comes with digital downloads, and they offer the most flexible format out there. While the company realizes that the exchange of MP3 tunes online is basically unrestricted, they also see that as part of the beauty of online music. Because music fans realize that bands are seeing more money from the sale of CDs and downloads, Record Theory is hoping that they’ll be willing to purchase music, as well as trade.
    Not only does Record Theory believe in reimbursing the artists for music, but they’re also committed to keeping the label-band relationship nonexclusive. That means that artists can leave easily—but, theoretically, a band won’t be inclined to leave a label that treats them well. This way, the label is indebted to the band, not vice versa.
    Of the bands currently on the Record Theory roster, five of the seven are from Charlottesville. While not the original plan, Fulton says that Charlottesville has so many good bands that it just sort of worked out that way. The Stabones were the initial offering, followed by All of Fifteen, Truman Sparks, Minus the Sidekick and The Nice Jenkins. Whores For War, a punk rock band from Chattanooga, and Fire At Will from Roanoke round out the roster.
    Fulton says that most bands have been receptive to Record Theory’s way of doing business, and that the company has profited from good word-of-mouth. Any bands or artists who are interested in finding out more should go to the website at www.recordtheory.com—the partners can easily be contacted there. Music fans should also check out the site.
    Fulton says, “We think that the idea is in everyone’s best interest. It is where things are going, and where they should go.” If the label gets enough support, there seems to be a good possibility that the enterprise can positively change the nature of music sales, at least locally.

    This week, Eric Clapton and Robert Cray appear at John Paul Jones. Some people thought I was a little hard on Clapton in a previous column, so I asked my resident guitar expert Rick Olivarez about the show. “About Robert Cray, Jimmie Vaughan summed it up best: He said, ‘[Cray] sings like Sam Cooke and plays like Otis Rush. It’s not fair.’ About Clapton, I don’t care for Armani blues. I can name 10 guitarists that I am friends with who can blow him out of the water.” Please address all hate mail to R. Olivarez, New Orleans, Louisiana.