5/18/26.
I was bummed out the other day when my neighbor dropped this bombshell: the Bottom of the Hill was closing. This longtime music venue in San Francisco first opened in 1991 and I've been lucky enough to catch many shows there over the years (The Clean and Richard Davies stick out as most memorable).
I went inside to look at the calendar of shows, and saw that Ted Leo & The Pharmacists would be doing a 3 night string of shows from July 9th to July 11th. Leo said that the venue contacted him about doing some shows in honor of their imminent closure. The show on the 9th will feature "The Tyranny of Distance", the 10th "Hearts of Oak" and the 11th "Shake the Sheets". I love these albums. Each is essential, each has its own sound, each is perfect (at least to me).
Once I saw the shows, I went on a Ted Leo/Pharmacists binge, which eventually took me to Bandcamp, where I found this digital single. Yes, this kind of breaks a rule of mine - there is no physical copy of this particular release, but there are tons of physical releases from Leo. He is currently touring with Gang of Four, and states that might explain how these songs are more in the "post-punk" realm. I think they're squarely in the Ted Leo realm, with a dash of Gang of Four (and maybe Green Day?).
Ted Leo is currently based in Bloomfield, New Jersey.
