And if you will consider hanging out in the Queen City’s finest corner gin mills, off the beaten path saloons and heavenly dive bars as “busy” then we are on the same page.

Starting in this week’s ARTVOICE is a regular column called Three Guys Walk Into A Bar which derives its name from the start of a thousand old jokes. Like those innumerable jokes, it would seem there is an endless amount of old bars in Western New York. The aim is to visit as many off as possible with me and a couple other guys – and by “guys” we can be talking about dudes, gals or whatever – showing up and taking in everything these joints have to offer.

We start the journey of Three Guys at a place of old wood walls, strong drinks and Nightmares: the unsung Hertel Avenue treasure called Del Denby’s.

Read about it here.

RECORD STORE DAY!

I spoke to one of Buffalo’s great record gurus slash mod slash ace drummer Brandon Delmont and spotlighted Record Theater’s participation in Record Store Day.

All of this was good, however I goofed in excluding the great newcomer and vinyl haven Spiral Scratch Records at 2531 Delaware Avenue in North Buffalo.

Yeah, Spiral Scratch – named for after a legendary Buzzocks 45 -  is new to town but owner/proprietor Dave Paulmbo has been slogging it out here in the Queen City his whole life and is undoubtedly a familiar face to anyone who has hung out at punk shows, dug through crates of albums or participated in other related activites.

Spiral Scratch is mostly vinyl – with CDs, DVDs, books, t-shirts and other off the beaten path rock arcana – in the less than six months of business it has seen the stock on the shelves steadily increasing and become a hot spot for in store gigs.

Not only does Spiral Scratch get a glowing endorsement from Record Needles in the Camel’s iPod in general, it should ABSOLUTELY be a stop for anyone out perusing the bins for Record Store Day.
Though Spiral Scratch was not listed on Record Store Day’s official site, the store is participating and will be stocking many of the limited and special edition releases slated for shops.

Dave and Spiral Scratch were featured by our good friend and colleague Jeff Miers in today’s Gusto Sound Check.

Check it out here.

Follow me on Twitter for the blow by blow from the trenches and then where we go afterward to drink beers and make fun of each others purchases.

Have a happy Record Store Day.

So far, we know we’ve got No Doubt, Blink-182 and Limp Bizkit.

Who cares… until now.

There’s a few legendary Buffalo bands and then there’s Bobo.

from garbaz.com

Jimmer Phillips is the Queen City’s #1 candidate for greatest rock star that never was.

Like some kind of twisted cross between John Lennon and Johnny Thunders, Phillips’ skill to write unforgettable, hook-heavy garage pop nuggets was perhaps matched only by his knack for self-destruction and personal rock and roll immolation.

Signed to local imprint P22, Bobo managed a six-song EP and a killer split LP (with fellow beloved going scenesters Girlpope) before calling it quits early in the 2000s. The band’s revolving ranks – at one time or another – included favored local guitarist Frank Sterlace and former Goo Goo Dolls/Jackdaw drummer George Tutuska.

Full details about the Bobo reunion are slim but a recent post at wnymusic.com from longtime Bobo bassist Marc Hunt says that the band is reforming for a gig with pervasonic trio The Irving Klaws for a show on March 13 at a place where Phillips and company played many a famed local show: Mohawk Place.

In the midst of the excitement, all I can think to ask is:

“What would Ray Davies do?/He’s so cool.”

Have I been keeping up on that end? Not at all.

So, here’s my first blast at redemption.

A glance of the things that came into my orbit in the last couple days weren’t exactly “all new.” They all had a warm familiarity and that can be a wonderful thing.

In the last couple years, Ani DiFranco has made more local news as  patron saint of the corner of West Tupper and Delaware. That’s hardly the whole story, however.

Beyond the rehabbing of the historic downtown church she now calls Babeville, Ani’s also been busy being a mother to daughter Petah (born in January 2007) and not so much slowing down her musical life as balancing it with her new role. 2007’s best of Canon marked a quick stop gap as DiFranco was readying to move ahead. Her new album finally comes out September 30 and some well-placed friends over at Righteous Babe made sure I got a copy of Red Letter Year a little early.

A couple listens in, it has to be her most daring and engaging work in years. In some ways, it feels like the “post-Ani” Ani record. While it doesn’t lack any of the immediacy of her earlier work, it does bear the marks of a record that was slowly and carefully put together over time. Her writing is a naked and honest as it’s ever been but there’s a tempered subtley and a very jazz imbued flair. Ani getting torchy? A little bit and it’s a terrific turn of events. You can see the goings on of all things Ani at her Righteous Babe site.

And on the other side of riot grrrl rock/feminism aisle, Rhino says “We do put out!” to one the greatest punk movies ever. Now, everyone can finally see Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains!

The 1981 cult classic chronicling the rise and fall of an all girl punk band in the seamy world of rock and roll – with a cast including real punks like Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook, The Clash’s Paul Simonon and “white punk on dope” Fee Waybill – had about a thirty second theatrical release and would only occasionally pop up on late night cable television in the ’80s, filling hours on the old USA Network’s killer wee weekend hours program Night Flight. Otherwise, it was a coveted bootleg in the days of VHS.

Finally, a very spiffed up digital release is on the shelves as the first installment of Rhino’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Cinema series. The DVD has the usual upgraded sound and picture and includes breand new commentary track with stars Diane Lane and Laura Dern as well as one with director Lou Adler.

It’s a full-on girl punk revival almsot thirty years later. The Stains even have their own MySpace page.

And as I go back through my past, I can admit that I owned Tony! Toni! Toné!’s 1993 new jack swing opus Sons Of Soul highlighted by the irrepresible hit “If I Had No Loot,” complete with its Ice Cube sample. The band issued one more album before Raphael Saadiq went solo. Now, Saadiq on his own was always a bit of a headscratcher. I liked some of his production work but his Lucy Pearl project was lackluster and his solo records sounded – to me – like unremarkable standard fare r&b/soul,pop.  What happened to that son of soul?

This time he got it so right it’s as if he stepped out of Hitsville USA studio circa ‘66 into a time machine.

An unabashed homage, with The Way I See It Saddiq has made a record of all new tunes but written and recorded with the stylistic earmarks, cool and sheer power of prime Motown, Stax, Huff/Gamble and the like. Saadiq has never been a straight revivalist. He was always the type to mix a bit of “old school” so as not to scare off modern audiences. This time around, he’s clearly not worrying about that.

One look at the Marvin Gaye-aping cover and you get an idea where he’s going.

The bio reads, “Listening to The Way I See It, it’s immediately obvious that it could have been recorded thirty years ago.”

Thirty years? Try forty!

The entire record is in the vein of ’60s to early ’70s-style soul. It’s a gem and I’m hooked. Listen to some songs here.

Why I didn’t have my own giant hunk of grease across ARTVOICE’s recent food issue is beyond me because – besides music – one of my favorite things to debate and talk endlessly about is food here in the Queen City.

There’s nothing like deliberating with friends what joint has got the better wings or wecks, ever trading off favored off the beaten path gin mills and surprise spots of gastronomical treasure in attempting to trump one another.

No stretch of local road rates higher on the great food scale for for me as the mile of Delaware between Hertel and Kenmore Avenues. It’s here where I insist you can buy Buffalo’s best Italian sausage and pork products (Scime’s Rite Price), get chicken wings that put every other in joint in town to shame (Kelly’s Korner) or grab for a great sub, ravioli dinner or custard at host of other choice stops.

So it was fitting that along this part of Delaware – making that all too often stop for the beloved Three Cheese Burrito – I saw this sight: what I decided was a sort of a tap out in a veritable Buffalo fast food Clash of the Titans.

Click on the picture for a closer view.

Buffalo Common Council president David Franczyk introduced a plan at yesterday’s Council meeting to ban loud car stereos in the city of Buffalo.

Franczyk’s ridiculous and unconstitutional plan – which apes a new law in Sarasota, Florida – hopes to not only ticket and potentially give jail time to drivers playing music deemed too loud but actually aims to make owning sound systems capable of higher dBs illegal!

In an interview today with WBEN radio today Franczyk was heard spouting some lovely racial profile-speak when he cited that loud car stereos are part of  “gangster” lifestyle and that most users of such are probably already involved in criminal activities.

It’s great that in a city with dramatic poverty, failing schools and certainly much bigger crime to chase that the Common Council is really hitting at the hard “quality of life” issues and with a barely-veiled racist tenor.

In Franczyk’s honor, I promise to blast Boogie Down Production’s 1989 classic “Who Protects Us From You?” when I am riding the streets of the Queen City later today… and I do have a subwoofer in my trunk.