Here we go again!
It’s the last week of November and I’m officially hard at work on my annual review of the year in local music. That means I’m scrambling around, looking high and low to make sure I know about everything that happened, musically, in Central Oregon in 2011.
That includes recordings by local artists. I want to make sure I have ‘em all. So peruse the list below and see if your band or project (or a band or project you know of) is missing. This is what’s currently sitting on my desk and hard drive (or in a couple cases is on its way to me as we speak):
Anastacia, “Where the Road Meets the Sky”
Mike Biggers, “Smoke Signals in a Hurricane”
Bloodlust, “Ekbom Syndrome”
The Bobby Lindstrom Band, “Bring It On”
Boxcar Stringband, “Going Down South”
Laurel Brauns, “House of Snow”
Cadence, “Cadence”
Capture the Flag, “A Loss of Innocence”
Willie Carmichael, “Patched & Pulled Together”
Tim Coffey, “Strings Unbound”
Erin Cole-Baker, “Big Sky”
Laura Curtis, “Loving A Ghost”
Jared Delaney, “Waterfalls”
Dela Project, “Desperate Nuance”
The Dirtball, “Nervous System”
DSkiles Band, “Get Your Boogie On”
Empty Space Orchestra, “Empty Space Orchestra”
ER, “The Risk of Tragedy”
Brian Hinderberger, “Natasha’s Fight”
Kylan Johnson, “A Collage of Memories from the Month of June”
Jones Road, “The Whipping Boy”
Keez, “Keez”
Kleverkill, “Kleverkill”
Larry and His Flask, “All That We Know”
Phil Paige, “Simple Things”
The Pitchtones, “Cold Wind Blowin’”
Mike Potter, “The Turning”
The Quons, “Quiet Room”
Rural Demons, “Ghost Lights”
Stillfear, “Stillfear”
Strange Attractor, “The Fault”
Jay Tablet, “Put It on the Tab”
Tuck and Roll, “Broken Radios”
Various Artists, “Americana Project: Tracks in the Woods”
A couple of notes:
1. If you or your band released something in 2011 and you don’t see it on this list, write me ASAP at music@bendbulletin.com and let’s talk. But first, read #2.
2. Please note that what I’m looking for here isn’t really demos or unreleased stuff or a single song you posted online, though I would truly love to hear any or all of that stuff and I hope you’ll send it to me. But for this particular project, I’m really looking for full EPs or albums that have been recorded, packaged in some way and released for public consumption, either in a physical format or on the Internet.
3. When you put it all together and look at the list, I think this is by far the local music scene’s most folk/rock/blues-heavy collective output since I moved here in 2006. Which is fine. I love folk, rock and the blues. But I’m a bit worried about the lack of hip-hop, DJs and other more beat-oriented music on this list.
Three years ago, I wrote an article titled “Hip-hop dominates local music scene in ’08″ that cited releases by The Dirtball, Mindscape and Mosley Wotta, Cloaked Characters and Amsterdam, DJs Moksha, Smoke and Barisone and more to support the assertion in the headline. Now I look at the list above and I see rap albums from The Dirtball and Jay Tablet and a dubstep-ish EP by Brad “Keez” Jones, but beyond that … not much.
Is hip-hop dead or dying in this town? Is this the late-arriving but inevitable result of beat-friendly bar The Grove’s closure in 2007? Are all the DJs putting their mixes on Soundcloud and I’m just not doing a good enough job of paying attention?
Perhaps it’s all the above, I don’t know. If you know, leave a comment.
And, if you know about any local hip-hop or electronic music that I don’t know about, I really want you to get in touch. Because like I said, I love folk, rock and the blues, but it’s not all I want to listen to.
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