Yes, I got all my grousing about Christmas and Christmas movies out of my system yesterday. On to more immediate and important things:
The Secret Sound Society is brewing up another secret project! (The last one, if you missed it, was the Secret Sound Festival back in October). Yesterday, STLSSS put out a call to local musicians, asking them to email an a capella track on an mp3 to queries@stlsss.org by no later than January 17 at midnight. The hope is to attract "an awesomely diverse cross-section of local St. Louis musicians," and put together a release sometime during 2011. And of course the nature of that release is still...secret.
Tomorrow, Euclid Records releases its first 10-inch EP from the Euclid Sessions (if you've been keeping track, Euclid's been doing little concerts in their store; these are the recordings from those shows). It features The Sights, "Detroit's kings of kick ass, power chord, garage heavy, take no prisoners Rock and Roll," who played in-store last May. The disc not only comes with an exclusive track (a cover of Nolan Strong’s “My Heart Will Always Belong To You”) but the packaging riffs off The Who's Live at Leeds with "a nice collection of inserts, including a beautiful 20” poster, an all access pass facsimile, a band payment sheet from a gig in London, the lyric sheet for performing 'My Heart Will Always Belong To You,' a (lack of) royalty statement from their first album, a review clip from a newspaper, and a Canadian immigration form." The run is limited to 300 copies, one per customer, and $1 from each record goes to support New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund. The only place you can pick 'em up is at Euclid, either in Webster, or New Orleans.
And on January 13, local Johnny Cash tribute band One More Round will be at Atomic Cowboy, playing Live at Folsom Prison in its entirety. The band's chosen sort of a funny anniversary year for it—the 43rd—but something tells me Johnny Cash might appreciate the lopsidedness of it all. Though the show promises to be a recreation of "the music just as it was...in lock step," Atomic Cowboy's Chip Schloss says that frontman Bill Forness is not a Johnny Cash impersonator so much as he is a Johnny Cash channeler. No specific names were mentioned, but they're also promising "an all-star line-up of local musicians." (More secrets, eh?) Click above for a preview of Mr. Forness performing solo.