August 11, 2012

I'm breaking with tradition a little bit by including two bands that I actually heard (!) but that did not appear in the club listings. The Ancients and Tyrannosaurus Grace both played terrific sets at the Rat and Raven last Thursday. Andrew James Robison opened with an exciting acoustic set, followed by Your Mother Should Know doing whatever it is we do. (Catch Andrew at the Funhouse this Sunday, with Black Plastic Clouds and Canals of Venice).

The Ancients
I probably wouldn't pick this name out of the listings, but it fits perfectly the band's wildly theatrical Adventure Metal genre. These guys would be right at home with a tiny Stonehenge on stage.

The Hooten Hallers
I like how the name spoken sounds like a raucous good time, but written looks like the denizens of Hooten Hall, no doubt some Wodehousian country manor.

Howth
Castle Dwellers
These get in as a set. They're on the same bill at the Sunset on Sunday, and happy chance in the listings creates a reference to Howth Castle, back to which we are brought by a commodious vicus of recirculation in the first lines of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. It just so happens that this very night, August 11, 2012, my brother and partner in rock and roll, Neal Kosaly-Meyer, performs -- from memory -- John Cage's "Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake" in honor of the 20th anniversary of Cage's death. Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center, 8:00 p.m. It's gonna be a great show!

Tyrannosaurus Grace
This is one of those names that just sounds right. I don't know what it is -- some kind of Wesleyan dinosaur, I guess -- but I like it.