Verbatim

There was a point in my early music career when my tastes made a drastic shift.  This shift was caused by the never ending flow of new music into the small town where I was a part of the scene as a musician in the band Stereotheistic and a fan.
The flyer above features a few of the bands that really opened my eyes toward a genre of music that had been going on long before I took up drumming.
Labels are always hard to pick when trying to describe things, but the music I would begin to favor could be described with the following: Post Rock, Shoegaze, Neo-Progressive, and Alternative.
Some of you are thinking, wow I’ve been listening to bands like that since the late 90s.
Well we all come from different musical backgrounds and time periods, so don’t start trolling just yet!
Growing up I was always listening to my parents music collection which ranged from early blues and jazz all the way up through the 60s and 70s, a few bands from the 80s, and barely anything past the mid 90s. So I grew up on a lot of psychedelic rock and blues, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Cream, BB King, Muddy Waters, Stevie Ray Vaughn you know those guys.
Enter my brothers variable to the equation, heavy metal and hard rock, Tool, APC, Ozzy, Metallica, and a slew of other “heavy” things for their time.
The first CD I ever bought was The Offspring’s SMASH. It was rare to see me without it in my walkman or w/e generic version I had of the nicer ones.
Fast forward a bit to my first band Stereotheistic and things had changed. The post hardcore and pop punk bands were thriving and I was 100% sold on their message.
But once I began playing out with my own band and hearing new things from different parts of the country things changed. It wasn’t just my musical preferences, but my style of playing.
The focus of this leads up to a band called THE SEWING MACHINE WAR.

Prior to these guys the only band I had ever heard do this kind of thing was Dredg, whom I was growing to love. But the performance, their guitar tones, and the music where something more than just a bunch of power chords and pop hooks. It a was real theory driven process.
Shortly after seeing these guys, I discovered a band that has stuck with me to this day, Circa Survive and that soon lead to other bands who would follow the path, but that is another story.
The point is, I have always tried to identify the change that occurred in my musical preferences and where I draw my influences from, and these guys are definitely a major part of that equation.
In the past few months my current band,Alberto Alaska, has been writing new material. A few weeks ago a friend of our guitar player sat in on a practice and asked, “Have you heard of The Appleseed Cast?” Sadly I had not, but he claimed that some of our songs sounded like we spent some time listening to them in our childhood. Enthralled by this remark I did some research and was blown away. A band that had come out long before Sewing Machine War, Circa Survive, and began to grow around the same time as Dredg blowing up somehow leaked it’s way into my local scene by way of The Sewing Machine war and their creative genius.
So here I am today, doing research on a band that I played a show with almost 6 years ago, in the side room of a local Chinese restaurant, and I find out they are still playing! I don’t know if they will ever see this or if they like what I am saying about them, but they definitely influenced my musical development at a crucial time of my life.
Cheers to that!
Thanks for reading, please watch the video, check these guys out, and support local music!
http://thesewingmachinewar.bandcamp.com/

Before I head to work, checkout this archaic piece of film that showed up in my History class today

-Enjoy

Hello friends and family,

My band, Alberto Alaska, is now offering our EP for free download. Exclusively on bandcamp.

http://albertoalaska.bandcamp.com/album/alberto-alaska-ep

Our next show is July 7th w/ Amigo The Devil @ Dubland Undeground Rochester NY

Thank you for your support!

-Doug