If you haven’t scored your tickets for the Cincinnati Entertainment Awards music ceremony this Sunday, you’re out of luck. For the first time in the show’s 12-year history, the event has sold out. Thanks to everyone who purchased a ticket. All of your admission money is given to the Michael Bany Scholarship Fund.

Read More

Bush was the peak of Alternative music success in the mid and late ’90s. After an eight year break, the band reformed with as fresh a sound as they ever have provided. From its first No. 1 album, Razorblade Suitcase, Bush was an unstoppable force until its split in 2002. In 2010, lead singer Gavin Rossdale put the band back together and Bush recently released its fifth studio album, The Sea of Memories. CityBeat caught up with Rossdale to preview the band’s concert with Chevelle and Filter this Friday at Riverbend's PNC Pavilion. We discussed the process of putting the band back together, the current tour. R.E.M.'s breakup and how his turbulent upbringing impacts his songwriting.

Read More

Sitting in my high school government class, I didn’t think the guy quoting South Park was someone I’d hear about after graduation, but less than a year after he put his best foot forward, I hear Cal Scruby is now a boy genius.

On Sept. 19, Scruby released Boy Genius, which is his second Hip Hop mixtape in less than a year. In two weeks, Boy Genius is less than a thousand downloads from surpassing Best Foot Forward, which Scruby released last November.  

Over the 10 months since officially entering the music scene, Scruby has taken off. While making Boy Genius, Scruby studied at Ohio State University and played a few shows. His biggest shows included opening for J. Cole at May’s BuckeyeThon Benefit Concert at OSU. Recently, he opened for Machine Gun Kelley and performed at Ohio University’s 10Fest.

Along with live performances, Scruby and his team at LandSea Media produced enough videos to keep fans entertained while they worked on Boy Genius.  

The wait for the new music was worthwhile. I was instantly blown away at the quality of the music. It didn’t sound as if it was produced in a dorm room, but rather a professional studio. The audio was balanced and the vocals weren’t hidden under a blanket of bass.

As for the lyrics, Scruby uses a mix of wordplay and comedy in his songs, and it works. His tracks follow a life of love (or rather, lovemaking), success and partying. Although I find these themes to be a stereotype of rap, Scruby pulls off the stereotypical rap lifestyle with ease. 

Mixtape opener “Double Time” features Cincinnati’s own DJ ETrayn. He welcomes fans to the musical journey before the song begins. The start of this track is reminiscent of Dumbfoundead’s “Green.” This song makes me want to lean my driver’s seat back and drive with one hand on the steering wheel while doing 50 in a 25.

What seems to be a fan favorite is “Fux With Me.” Crowds at 10Fest wore shirts donned with "I Fux With Cal Scruby." The song isn’t my personal favorite, but I enjoy the tour of people who "fux" with Scruby and how he doesn’t let it slow him down.

My personal favorite is the bonus track “Midwest City,” which is a tribute to his hometown, that city where they sin two times. This closes the album and leaves me wanting to hear more from Scruby.

Even though high school is long gone, I can’t go somewhere without hearing about the guy who was super cereal about ManBearPig and now, he’s super cereal about his music.

Check out Scruby on Facebook and go here to download Boy Genius.

Before its current successful run of reunion concerts across the globe, The Afghan Whigs played its final live show at a New York City club called Hush on Sept. 29, 1999. But that was a private concert. The Whigs last public appearance was Sept. 25, 1999, at Cincinnati's Bogart's with special guests Howlin' Maggie. (The set list featured a large chunk of final album 1965, as well as lots of dips into cover tunes and snippets, including opener "The Boys Are Back in Town," and dashes of "Superstition," "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," "Little Red Corvette," "People Get Ready," "Hot for Teacher," "All You Need is Love" and Madonna's "Express Yourself," among others.)

Today it was announced that The Afghan Whigs will return to the scene of the crime and perform their first hometown show in over a decade on Oct. 25 at Bogart's, one month and 13 years after that final concert. Tickets are $33.50 ($45.86 with fees). The fan pre-sale starts this morning at 10 a.m.; tickets go on sale to the general public this Friday at 10 a.m. Click here for info. (Check The Afghan Whigs' official site for a password to get in on the pre-sale.)

Though the neighborhood has changed a lot since The Whigs roamed the earth originally, the band returning to Corryville is fitting. While frontman Greg Dulli would eventually bring his band The Twilight Singers to Newport's Southgate House frequently, Bogart's was the Whigs hometown concert home. Before that, the group played many shows at long-since-shuttered Sudsy Malone's across the street from Bogart's, while it and Top Cat's just a few blocks up the street were the sites of a few epic "secret shows," warm-up gigs for tours where the band would perform under a pseudonym like The Havana Sugar Kings or Gato Negro. 

Update: The fan pre-sale password for Bogart's is uptownagain. Use it here starting at 10 a.m. today.

Update2: The pre-sale is now at noon today, according to the ticketing site.

Up-and-coming underground rapper Chris Webby performs tonight at downtown club Play. Doors open at 7 p.m. and tickets are $20 at the door. The show is open to all ages. Guests include GMB, Nynewest and hosts DJ Scholar and DJ Drowsy.

Webby is a Connecticut native (he has it tattooed on his chest; I'd move to Ohio if I were going to do that) who started rapping before high school and began to draw crowds at freestyle battles and with his popular mixtapes releases. Webby's built huge buzz in independent Hip Hop circles and has so far resisted signing a record deal. Click here to check out his mixtapes and other releases.

Webby recently tweeted that he's just recently boarded his plane to Cincy. "PLAY in Cincinnati is about to get real weird tonight," he added.



• Utah rockers The Used blast into Bogart's tonight. The 7:30 p.m. show is all ages and includes openers Stars In Stereo. Tickets are $25.

The Used's energized Post Hardcore style is sparked by vocalist Bert McCracken, whose stage antics are an unpredictable throwback to Rock & Roll's more dangerous frontmen (Iggy, etc.). The Used's latest album, Vulnerable, came out earlier this spring on Hopeless Records. The album hit No. 1 on the Top Independent Albums chart when released and made it to No. 8 on the Billboard 200.

Here's the video for The Used's single "I Come Alive."



• The song of legendary drummer Ginger Baker, Kofi, is bringing his Cream tribute band to Covington tonight for an 8 p.m., all-ages show at the Madison Theater. Kofi Baker formed Kofi Baker's Cream Experience after catching the Cream reunion in 2005 and deciding he'd like to pick up where the originals left off. In the Clapton role is Tony Spinner, a Rock/Blues singer and guitarist who was a member of Toto in the ’00s. Playing bass is another talented musician, Ric Fierabracci, who has performed with the likes of Chick Corea, Shakira and Yanni.

Kofi made his first live appearance when he was 6, playing with his pops on BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test in 1975. Here he is rocking with the Cream Experience in more recent years.



• MOTR Pub in Over-the-Rhine has a free show tonight headlined by Canadian Electro Pop group Parallels. Showtime is 10 p.m. and like-minded locals Skeleton Hands also perform.

Parallels has drawn comparisons to New Order and singer Holly Dodson has been likened to singer Kate Bush and Madonna. The band was formed in 2008 by Dodson and Cameron Findlay, the former drummers for popular electronicists Crystal Castles.

Parallels sophomore full-length, XII, is due out June 26. Here's a clip for the band's song "Ultralight."



Click her for more music events around town tonight.

[Further Thursday coverage: 172 photos here and multimedia show here.]

14. At the risk of getting too wordy, I’ve decided to do a list to keep myself under control. (Insert reader’s furious clapping here.) Why? Because people love lists. And I love lists. I’ve noticed that band members particularly love lists. Set lists, lists of things they need to take to the show, lists, lists, lists. So in the spirit of Rock & Roll and lists, here is my list. Wait, the list has already started. Stay with me.

Read More

This coming Tuesday, RCA Records will release a new EP by Cincinnati AltPop quartet Walk The Moon. The Tightrope EP features the title track — WtM's current single from last year's self-titled LP — in its original form (check the music video here) and an acoustic version, plus new recordings of "Tete-A-Tete" and "Drunk in the Woods," album "B-side" "Anyway I Can" and a live version of the group covering the Talking Heads' hit "Burning Down the House."

Today, Walk The Moon leaked "Tete-A-Tete" via Twitter. Check it out below. Tonight in Minneapolis, the band starts its latest round of touring, which will take them all over the States and Europe through March.



UPDATE: Billboard magazine reported on Walk The Moon's Tightrope EP this afternoon. Click here to read it and listen to the EP's live version of the band's excellent "Burning Down the House" cover.

"AAAANND welcome to 97.3 The Wolf!”

Um, what? I wouldn’t preset a Country station on my car stereo if my life depended on it. I flipped around frantically, trying to find The Sound instead of the bumpkin bonanza that was currently wreaking havoc on my speakers. Zilch. Gone. I later found out that The Sound, which enjoyed popularity in its early broadcasting stages but was forced last fall to move from 94.9 FM to 97.3 FM after its rankings plummeted, is now available only on HD radio due to continued low ratings.

Read More

Music Saturday: There's a clinic on modern Psych Rock music at the Southgate House as three disparate practitioners team up for a  9:30 p.m., all-ages show. Headliners The Black Angels touch on the Velvet Underground brand of psychedelia, with droning hypnotics, as well as later artists like Spacemen 3 and Jesus and Mary Chain. D.C.'s Dead Meadow have been working their brand of hard-rocking trippiness for the past 13 years, while L.A.'s Spindrift make soundtracks for desert vision quests, influenced by the likes of The Doors, Hawkwind and Electronic music pioneer, Bruce Haack. The band's cinematic sound has been used to soundtrack several film projects (including the Tarantino-produced Hell Ride), and, this spring, the group released Classic Soundtracks Volume 1, featuring 14 themes from various scores, which were made into short films by various directors, touching on everything from Bollywood to film noir (the films, music videos and trailers from the project have been screened to a national audience on the IFC network). Check out a few examples from Spindrift's soundtracks project below. Tickets for tonight's show are $18 at the door.

Read More

One of the more popular features at this year's MidPoint Music Festival isn't a band or singer/songwriter — it's a truck. The "Rolling Record Store" used by (and stocked with releases from) Jack White's Third Man Records will be at MPMF Sept. 28 and 29, between visits to the Muddy Roots Festival and New York City's CMJ conference/fest.

An extension of White's tiny Third Man record store in Nashville (connected to his label's HQ), the record truck stocks all kinds of Third Man releases, including limited edition vinyl, as well as various Third Man merch. There is also reportedly a DJ station so visitors can spin tunes and a sound system was installed so that bands/musicians can plug in and play. White himself has performed a few times along the Rolling Store's travels (but it's not a guarantee).

The Third Man Records Rolling Record store — which debuted last year at South By Southwest in Austin, Tex. — will make a great addition to the growing MidPoint Midway, the outdoor area featuring vendors, a side-stage, poster exhibitions and other cool "pop up" projects. The bright-yellow truck even has local ties — it was built by Erlanger, Ky.'s C. Cook Enterprises, a car restoration and metal fabrication shop.

I visited White's Third Man headquarters in Nashville a few weeks ago and got to check out the cool merchandise on sale in that closet-sized shop. The Rolling Record Store was parked in the parking lot. I didn't get a tour, but even from the outside, it's a pretty striking vehicle (and I took a few photos, like the one above). Can't wait to see inside at the end of next month!

Here's White playing a "B show" (side gigs on his current solo tour) next to the truck during the recent Outside Lands Festival.