UPDATED: Local Bands To Check Out

 My favorite pastime is going to concerts and shows and soaking up the music. I am lucky to live in an area that doesn't have any shortage of good music around. This page is dedicated to local San Francisco Bay Area bands I am watching and listening to.

 I will be updating this page regularly and if you have a local bay area band please email me at beccajs@gmail.com. While I know there are amazing up and coming bands all over the country I want to keep it simple by narrowing it down to the SF Bay Area in California.

Jack Cutter - "Jack Cutter performs and records solo acoustic steel string guitar played without accompaniment or vocals. The rich tones, woven at various times from folk, classical, Hawaiian slack key and more, at times evokes a contemplative feeling sometimes treading towards the mystical yet accessible. At other times his music presents blues, rock, country and bits of whatever springs out of the guitar from stompin' to soft. Jack currently performs regularly in and around the San Francisco, California Bay Area."

Wolves in Argyle - "Dark alternative rock band hailing from Oakland, CA.As veterans of the International Punk Rock underground for over 30+ years, they have been members of such amazing and cult movement bands such as The GITS, Oozzies, Naked Aggression, and Evil Stig (Joan Jett fronted). In the band: Dave Holmes, Steve Moriarty, Joe Garcia, Josh Phillips." 

Solar Maximum - "From the dysfunctional family that brought you Leather Pills and closetLames, it's Solar Maximum, the ultimate drone lords! Experimental psychedelic. Hypnotic bass drones. Avant garde. Astrology. Improvisation. Instrumental. Doom. DIY. Low frequency living. Two basses. solar maximum is: Heather Salazar - astrobass/poetry and Sammy Chong Salazar - fuzzbass/noise." Check out my review of their album "Soundtrack: event I uranian fire".

The Ink Bats - "The Ink Bats are a post-punk/psych/goth-influenced band based in Oakland, California. Together, musically and energetically, The Ink Bats are an alchemic amalgamation of their diverse influences. In their songs you'll here their immense reverence for psychedelic/garage sounds of the 60's, such as the 13th Floor Elevators, Love, and The Folklords; their uninhibited enthusiasm for the unorthodox edginess of post-punk bands of the late 70's and early 80's, such as Wire and early Siouxsie and the Banshees; and their boundless affection for new wave, goth, and classic death rock, like Kate Bush, Killing Joke, and Love and Rockets." 

Bands from the San Francisco Bay Area

My Record Collection

 I started collecting records before I had a record player. From the beginning I always had the idea that one day I would get one. When I was 18-19 I finally got my first record player. The small stacks of vinyl that I had could finally be played. And from there my love for records was ignited. there was so much more to records that I didn't realize at the time.

 There's something truly special about a record; from the artwork on the sleeve to the vinyl itself. There are so many nuances on a record sleeve that I didn't notice until a deep examination. People like me love records for one main reason, they are something tangible that you can hold, collect and reference to. An album is a piece of art that sometimes comes with posters, cut outs, or a booklet with unique photos. This is something you just can't get from a digital file. It's something that a lot of young people these days aren't getting to experience. 

Other blogs I wrote about my record collection:

♪ The album art of Tommy by Mike McInnerney
♪ Scans of my single vinyl records
♪ My Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Album
♪ Why Vinyl Records Matter
♪ The Point! inserts
♪ Scan of Queen's "Jazz" sleeve
♪ Rock and Roll is the answer single
♪ "...Ya Know?" Joey Ramone's latest record
♪ Record Store Day 2014
♪ Second Skin / Social Love limited edition single
♪ The Gits limited edition bootleg

I found this at Urban Ore and thought it was cool.
Took it to the register to buy and they let me have it for free.

 While photographing my records I noticed something on my Ramones album that I never noticed before. "Lent for promotional use only" Thankfully I could Google it and quickly found not only am I in the clear but the laws have changed. In 2011 a "decision that the sale of so-called promo records — usually advance copies of new releases sent to music critics and radio stations by record labels — does NOT violate copyright laws." This was a relief, because for a second I thought I could have accidentally did something wrong. 

Teen Magazines and "The New Monkees"

 When I entered high school I dropped contemporary boy bands. Yes I was once into the Backstreet Boys but my tastes matured. I started listening to the Beatles and the Monkees at that age. This quickly separated me from my peers who were listening to the music popular at that time. I was starting to figure myself out and I learned that I wasn't the typical teenager. From there I only delved more into rock and roll and rock history. When I find something I really like I want to know as much as I can about it. I started with digging through magazines and found a lot of old People magazines that were unwanted. People magazines from the 70's in particular were so interesting to me.

Related article: Music Magazines, Not Beauty Magazines

 Since I was a pre-teen I received teen magazine subscriptions from a relative. At first it was cool, but pretty quickly I started to look at them as hilarious. The advice columns in particular were pretty ridiculous. I couldn't relate to the girls in the magazines. And before long I was drawn to magazines about things I actually liked, such as Star Wars. Other then Star Wars Insider I found myself getting into music magazines. 

 However, sometimes I would come across something particularly interesting in the many publications I flipped through. Here is one about "The New Monkees" a failed TV show that I hadn't heard about before.

 I found these in an 80's People magazine and it intrigued me that this happened. However it looked really bad and like an obviously bad idea. Interestingly enough, the first episode can be found on youtube. I tried to watch it out of curiosity but couldn't even get through it. It is so dumb, wtf and frankly obnoxious. 

 One day when I get the latest teen magazine in the mail I'm pretty damn surprised to see N'Sync copying The Beatles album pose on the cover. The backlash came quickly from Beatles fans in the form of angry letters and I mostly agreed with them. I rarely felt the need to cut out and keep anything from a teen magazine, but I felt like this needed to be scrap booked.

I found these in a "YM" teen magazine from August 2001. I found the graph and the girls responses pretty great. 

For more scans check out the BTD Photo Gallery