Blog — Page 275 of 275

Part 1: Mission Statement, Introduction, and first terribly nostalgic musing

A number of years ago, a few friends of mine, myself, and people who would quickly become my friends used to take over our college's radio station every Wednesday night for what we deemed "Punk Rock" night. It was the one thing that helped me personally get over that mid week slump. It was usually a giant party. I remember having more than 20 people in the studio one night in a room that was smaller than my dorm room. I looked forward to this party aspect (the lemon tossing incident will always have a warm spot in my heart) and the many life altering (quite literally as I met life long friends, met my wife, started a short lived record label, and many other great things) experiences that seemed to happen on a weekly basis, but I also looked forward to all of the great music that I heard and was introduced to as a result.        

The night would start off with a more mainstream punk show that would play some of the more popular "punk" acts. The kids who did this were good guys and were great talkers. Then, my show, Be Afraid would take the air. I (and a cadre of fools that included at one time or another Dented chest Chuck, my brother, my future wife, Punk C, Ryan, and a couple of other kids) used to spin a lot of NY hardcore a la Madball, H20 (pre Faster Than The World), Agnostic Front and, of course, Sick of It All as well as more metal influenced hardcore (metalcore was not a term to describe a genre then) like Coalesce, Converge, Deadguy, etc. After my show, Robbie and Bill's show, Youth Enrage, would follow; they spun a large batch of DC hardcore as well as records by Born Against and Life's Blood. Then Josh and Denis' show would close the night out at like 2AM. Their show's name escapes me right now, but they played everything ranging from Assuck to Catharsis to His Hero Is Gone.

Like I said, I heard a bunch of great music during these shows (finding new music was still challenging then), some of which I cherish and listen to still. The point of this blog, for the next few entries anyway, will be to highlight some of these bands (sometimes obscure, sometimes that are now well known) and hopefully inject some people with some of the same excitement and great feeling that I had back then. If all goes well, once a week a new Be Afraid (so named after my now several years deceased radio show) blog will appear with this same mission in mind. This first installment will feature the criminally unheard and short lived band, Ottawa.

I first heard Ottawa's name when Josh (who helped to helm the late show) happily proclaimed that he bought the Jihad & Ottawa split 12" record from someone. I remember the first show that he had once he received the record. The Ottawa side was played in its entirety, twice. Did I mention that we did almost anything that we wanted to do during these shows? Well, we did; and although Ottawa's side of the split was right around 15 minutes, that is still a large chunk of a 3 hour radio show. It did not matter; we were listening to Ottawa. Hearing this record for the first time reminded me that for all the political posturing and the meat head violence that could be associated with it at times, punk rock could be fun and have a sense of humor (and I am not referring to idiotic and or sophomoric humor); it was a breath of fresh air when I needed it the most. It was not until several years later when I had the opportunity to procure a copy of this record for myself; when I finally received the record in the mail, I listened to it 6 or 7 times in a row (I still have yet to play the Jihad side which I probably should even though I do not think I have ever heard their side) while pouring over the lyric sheet and marveling at all of the Lord of the Rings references. Thanks to the hard work of my brother (thanks again, you still have terrible taste in music), I recently found MP3's of this record which reignited my fascination with Ottawa, caused me to share the MP3's with Michael (the head honcho here at Scene Point Blank), and demanded me to write this long winded dissertation.

With a sound falling somewhere around the territory that His Hero Is Gone traversed with a bit of Left for Dead sound quality and aesthetic, Ottawa drills through their 13 songs, plus a lifted track from one of the old Rankin/Bass Lord of the Rings cartoons for ambience, in what amounts to a quick coffee break at work. They make use of several vocalists that make for good variation and break the whirlwind of guitars and rough blast beats up a bit. There are a bunch of samples added for good measure that set up a couple of songs (like using a speech from Saruman to his Uruk-hai hoards from the aforementioned Rankin/Bass cartoons before "The Onslaught of the Uruk-hai"). It is incredibly difficult to nail down exactly what makes me enjoy this record so much, but rest assured I find it just as enjoyable as I do the Left for Dead records (and that is saying something coming from me).

This split 12" is all that really ever was released by the band; although, rumors and whispers suggest that their half of the record was remixed with the intent to release as a "discography", but I doubt that will even see the light of day. The band is a part of a small niche group of bands of which even they are a relatively obscure part; too few people know about the hidden gem that is Ottawa (but those of us who do enjoy them a great deal) for a super small label like Council (who put the split out originally) to press a bunch of records that probably just will not move. Perhaps if more people knew of the band and showed an interest, we will see that repress in some not too distant future; the record deserves it.

For those interested, you can check out some of their music at a fan run page:

• http://www.myspace.com/ottawahardcore

Shook Ones, for the uninitiated, are a melodic hardcore band from Seattle, Washington. Their debut LP, Sixteen, had some serious Kid Dynamite aping going on, without a doubt, but it was a really solid effort regardless. The more I listened to Sixteen though, the more I found it kind of ran together for me. It ended up being finished before I even realized it, most times.

In the beginning of 2006, they released a 7" called Slaughter of the Insole (what a great fucking title!) and towards the last quarter of the year, the band dropped their 2nd LP, Facetious Folly Feat. While ...Insole skewed their sound in a bit more of a melodic direction, Facetious Folly Feat dove headfirst into Lifetime/Jawbreaker land. All the songs on the record have a much more unique feel than anything on Sixteen ever did.

In addition, the band recently released a split on Alliance Trax with Easel, who you should definitely check out as well. For me, this will probably be the best split since Western Addiction and New Mexican Disaster Squad shared a release!

Hopefully all three of you reading this enjoy Shook Ones! Make sure you check out Easel too!

To check out songs from both of the Shook Ones' full-length records, head over here or here.

Remember when the idea of Friday the 13th used to be scary? Maybe its because I am a grown adult, but there just does not seem to be any horror or fear of the dreaded 13th when it falls on a Friday anymore. And whatever happened to all the weird things that were supposed to happen on a day like today? I did not see one thing out of the norm today... how sad. I guess the only way to relive those dreaded days of yester-year is to watch a classic (because these modern day horror films seems to share more in common with comedies than the gory psycho-thrillers of the 70’s and 80’s) horror flick and hope than one day I will have to live through a ludicrous storyline just like that - because these normal Friday the 13ths are really boring.

You have no idea how wonderful it is to be finally typing these words.

Not that my work is done: a SPB staffer's work is never done! But seriously: typing the blog out means that the big tasks are done, at least until someone discovers another critical bug hours before launch.

I've been Scene Point Blank's webmaster for over 4 years now (well, since SPB began, really) and I can safely say that the current site is the most ambitious and feature-packed it's ever been. One of the best parts for me as a programmer is that so much of the site is automated now that I can sit back and relax a hell of a lot more. My next goal is to program a review-writing robot so I can gradually replace the staff, one by one. I don't think anybody would notice if I swapped Neil out...

But I digress. What you really want to know (I hope) is just why the new site is the greatest thing on the internet. So without further ado, here is an enormous list of all of the changes, improvements, new features and other miscellany relating to Scene Point Blank in 2007.

Aesthetics

• Beautiful new layout (duh)
• Design that gives prominence to content and allows expansive viewing rather than cramped screen real estate.
• Some pretty fucking awesome CSS techniques including dynamic graphing, rounded corners friggin' everywhere, tab boxes, modal boxes, image galleries and more.
• Snazzy Javascript effects (try clicking some of the SPB Network icons).
• New news icons (with sneaky geek references).
• Nicer reviews layout with info panel and link area.
• Better pagination for both news and features (that's right, we introduced a "Next Page" link!).
• Sexed-up staff profiles (check out Graham, he's hot! Particularly compared to the mainly ugly other SPB staff)
• Ads are slightly less intrusive than before. Yeah, nobody's going to get excited about this one, but hey, we gotta pay the bills!

Improved Capabilities

• Advanced and intuitive content sorting (now for features as well as reviews).
• FINALLY view all reviews by a specific staffer including multiple reviews.
• Distinguish between 200 Words or Less, Multiple and normal reviews in the main review index.
• See related reviews when browsing interviews.
• Users can automatically enter contests through dynamically-generated forms.
• Tons of admin/backend changes that you mortals won't appreciate but trust me, they're good.
• Better displaying of multiple author reviews.
• Ability to see all 200 Words or Less reviews, or all Multiple Author reviews.
• Search the entire site at once using new "Whole Site" option on the search bar.

Brand New Features

• Podcast! ... okay, so at the time of writing, this isn't up yet, but believe me, we're working on it behind the scenes and it's going to rock your ears.
• New links section to allow us to fiendishly boost our Google PageRank by engaging in link exchanges.
• Staff Blogs - keep an eye out for these for some more informal music journalism, inane ramblings, or photos from staff's recent shows, interviews, or new haircuts.
• Updated news categories (TV, General News and Videos)
• "Breadcrumbs" (I didn't coin this term) navigation at the top of content - the internet equivalent of a "You Are Here" sign by a map.
• Logo now links to the homepage! Okay, kind of an obvious one, but you'd be amazed how far into the new design we got before it was implemented.
• Integration with message board. While we're not using this right now for anything beyond staff access, watch this space for future user interaction.

I could go on and document every little code change made over the last six months, but the odds are you don't care. Hopefully you'll like the new stuff mentioned above, and find it useful in your site browsing.

SPB Redesign: the documentary

Since we now live in the age of YouTube, it seemed only right for us to go amateur filmmaker and produce a brief short documenting the redesign. Click below to watch a quick documentary of the redesign process, including rejected designs, logo prototypes, production testing and a particularly exhausted Matt, laden with caffeinated beverages.

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