1.21 Gigawatts

Gigawatts Festival Feature: Dirty Fences

More Gigawatts Festival bands… now it’s time for Dirty Fences… I first met Dirty Fences a year and a half ago at a breakfast place in Austin, Texas during SXSW. I barely remember this little factoid, so I’m sure the guys in the band don’t remember it at all. I was hanging out there before this showcase that I’d booked at the Sailor Jerry house and they happened to be there as well, a mutual…

Gigawatts Festival Feature: White Mystery

More Gigawatts Festival bands… now it’s time for White Mystery… As we start to get into the bands that I’m not so much homies with, these articles might start getting more editorial style and less “diary” style. I’m going to try and make sure they still stay light and generally totally uninformative, because that’s what I want and I’m pretty sure everyone else wants that too… SO White Mystery……

Gigawatts Festival Feature: Secret Crush

More Gigawatts Festival bands… now it’s time for Secret Crush… Secret Crush is one of the newer bands on the Gigawatts Festival lineup this year, but the members of the band have been playing in various projects in the scene for about as long as I’ve been in Brooklyn. Greg Timmes formerly fronted Marlon Rando and played in Total Slacker, Nick Rogers fronted Hippy and currently fronts Holy Tunics,…

Gigawatts Festival Feature: Bugs in the Dark

More Gigawatts Festival bands… now it’s time for Bugs in the Dark… Bugs in the Dark is a band that I’d heard a lot about but hadn’t actually seen until somewhat recently. Last CMJ I went to Lot 45 to hang out with the Honduras guys and check out their show, coincidentally Bugs in the Dark happened to be playing the same showcase. As we walked in the band had just taken the stage, so I took in the…

Gigawatts Festival Feature: Warn the Duke

More Gigawatts Festival bands… now it’s time for Warn the Duke… Warn the Duke is the new project of former River City Rebels member, Dan McCool. On a much less “official” note, Dan is also roommates with Jeremy Sampson (drummer for pretty much every band in Brooklyn). I could sit here and write a few hundred words about how Warn the Duke is this “new awesome punk band reminiscent of early Social…

Gigawatts Festival Feature: Forever Lesbians

More Gigawatts Festival bands… now it’s time for Forever Lesbians… What a fucking band name, am I right? Forever Lesbians… try forgetting that name for as long as you live. Aside from killing it in the band name department, the Forever Lesbians crew obviously also kills it in the music department. I was first introduced to the band when I went to the Silent Barn to meet up with Chloe from the…

Gigawatts Festival Feature: BOYTOY

More Gigawatts Festival bands… now it’s time for BOYTOY… You know all of those classic 90s teen movies that we love? Movies like She’s All That, 10 Things I Hate About You and Can’t Hardly Wait, remember those? BOYTOY is if you took that vibe and mad it edgier. The songs are crunchy and distorted, yet remain catchy and poppy. BOYTOY sounds like if someone ran the Clueless Soundtrack through a…

Gigawatts Festival Feature: EULA

More Gigawatts Festival bands… now it’s time for EULA… We’ve already talked about Alyse Lamb’s other band, Parlor Walls, but now it’s time to talk about the OG Alyse Lamb band. Is it really the OG Alyse project? Probably not, but it’s the most OG one that is still active that I’m aware of. EULA is a band that I’ve been hearing about basically since I arrived in Brooklyn years ago. It’s a name…

Gigawatts Festival Feature: QUARTERBACKS

More Gigawatts Festival bands… now it’s time for QUARTERBACKS… Here’s the thing with QUARTERBACKS, they’re on the cover of our new issue that will be coming out later today. So why would I bother writing 250 words of nonsense about them when we have this well written cover story for you to read? Here it is, Sam Stoeltje’s cover story on QUARTERBACKS… A Peek at the Playbook of Tuneful Pop-Punkers…

Gigawatts Festival Feature: Surfbort

More Gigawatts Festival bands… now it’s time for Surfbort… I’ve only ever seen Surfbort once, when they were playing with my homies Dances, but that was all it took to remember them probably forever. When they took the stage, the five piece band including two lead vocalists wasted no time in diving right into their thrashy punk tunes. And the crowd was right there with the band, throwing back…

Gigawatts Festival Feature: Adult Dude

More Gigawatts Festival bands… now it’s time for Adult Dude… Now we start to get in to the bulk of the bands that I don’t really know personally. Adult Dude is a band that I’ve heard a lot about for the better part of a year now. I have a poster hanging next to my desk from the 2014 Chumped/Adult Dude tour, so I literally see the name Adult Dude every day of my life. I first got into Adult Dude…

Gigawatts Festival Feature: Parlor Walls

More Gigawatts Festival bands… now it’s time for Parlor Walls… So last summer James Watson had this thing on his roof where a bunch of DIY bookers sat and talked about booking and people watched us talk. We each also got to pick one band to play a set at this event. Someone picked Parlor Walls and that’s how I saw them play for the first time. Super interesting story, right? Anyway, Parlor Walls…

Gigawatts Festival Feature: BAMBARA

More Gigawatts Festival bands… now it’s time for BAMBARA… As far as DIY bands go, BAMBARA would win the award for most intense live show. Most bands roll in to the venue, plug into the house amps, play their set for 30-40 minutes and that’s it. There are a lot of bands that can do that well, and that’s cool, but every once in a while a band like BAMBARA comes along. Loading their gigantic amps,…

Gigawatts Festival Feature: Whiskey Bitches

More Gigawatts Festival bands… now it’s time for Whiskey Bitches… Whiskey Bitches play loud, fast rock n roll. That’s the easiest way to put it I guess. Madge and Kate can be seen out on any given night either playing their fast, catchy tunes as loud as possible or taking shots of whiskey (obvi) and any of the neighborhood bars decked out in their own custom Whiskey Bitches leather apparel.…

Gigawatts Festival Feature: Lame

More Gigawatts Festival bands… now it’s time for Lame… The project of Layne Montgomery, Lame is an interesting band to write about mostly because they have nothing online to talk about. There’s a facebook page with a smattering of likes, but no real content. We’ve booked them on a show once before and it was fun, they did a Blink 182 cover so that was cool. Earlier today, Layne and I talked…

Gigawatts Festival Feature: Mannequin Pussy

ALL the Gigawatts Festival bands… now it’s time for Mannequin Pussy… As our Gigawatts Festival mascot, BIG MUFF RADIO, says in this video, Mannequin Pussy has probably the best name on the entire Gigawatts lineup this year. I’m not sure how I came to know Mannequin Pussy, but it was probably the usual of seeing them at a couple shows then emailing them to play one of mine. Mannequin Pussy is one…