This Week in Charlottesville, VA.

I'm not from Cville, so I'm sure others will have more to add...

Although, I think it was good the Pudhouse finally got shut down (the people who started it are either in Brooklyn or going to law school now and the two guys who ran it to the end needed some time off) those 2 boys from the Hook are still huge jackasses.

any other recommendations for where my band might be able to get a gig here?

Look into the Tokyo Rose -- it's a sushi restaurant (excellent food), with a nice basement club where lots of indie bands play, as well as tons of other stuff. It's been awhile since I've been there, so no guarantees as to the booking.

this is the place i was talking about but i think it's closed now

Outback Lodge

hmm, tokyo rose still has a website and stuff.

they were closed but I had heard rumours they were trying to reopen. definitely worth contacting if info is there. I grew up in Cville but haven't been there in over a year.

also try the 2 weeklies online, Cville Weekly and The Hook. Or get in touch with the staff of Plan 9 Records.

How weird. The weeklies are often worthless and one of them mostly put the nail in the coffin of the Pudhouse, but whatever, any town weekly has a show listing. This is the best resource for Charlottesville music shit, though:

http://www.nailgunmedia.com/blog/

Tokyo Rose is open as a restaurant but not really a place to play anymore, totally differnt thing despite the name.

how about bel rio?

sleeve i grew up in cville too -- what highschool'd you go to? i went to wahs out in crozet.

maybe you'd know, what is that one place -- the dust? an old utz chip warehouse (!) that has been converted into an artist's residence/venue of dubious legality somewhat east of downtown, if you just go down ... water st, i think, for a while, past avon st you'll see it ... ring any bells?

jordan try rapture they do shows. i saw some local band cover the strokes there on like xmas eve 2008 (lolz) when i was home for the holidays.

rip pudhouse and (the old) tokyo rose . one of my regrets is not seeing lightning bolt play at the former in early 00s and one of my fonder show memories is seeing dismemberment plan play at the latter on the 'emergency and i' tour. with the rah brahs! haha mid atlantic late 90s early 00s indie represent! and cville represent too for all yall ilxor cvillers coming out of the woodwork here

thanks.

how about bel rio?

?

Jordan, what kind of band are you in? That would dictate where you should look quite a bit. Dust is cool, but very sporadically does shows. If you contact the people at nailgun media (which I linked to above), they can help you find contacts and suggest places to play all over town. Rapture is generally a terrible idea, they rarely book anything not geared towards selling a lot of beer, so if you play in, let's say, an ironic cover band or something of the sort, yeah, look into it. Otherwise go to the nailgun site, look at the show listings on the right side of the page, and explore. The Tea House books a lot of smaller lever old time, folky, or reasonably un-noisy indie type of stuff and is a nice non-smoking vegetarian friendly place. Outback Lodge handles all things rock and roll of both the terrible and generic and really good, it is just a bar atmosphere with an adequate soundsystem, but not really a "cool" place unless you get your crowd of people to show up. I know nothing about Bel Rio. The Bridge Progressive Arts Space is just that, and one of the guys who runs the nailgun media site is involved there (as one of them books at the Tea House and other places in town as well). The Bridge is great, but shows are as they feel like doing them and are pretty sporadic as well. Good luck.

yo uptown churl I am old, I went to WAHS from 81 to 83 and ended up graduating from Tandem in '84. My whole family other than me still lives in the area.

Jordan's in a funky New Orleans style brass band. They need a Baltimore show too.

Well, the Tea House wouldn't be a bad fit, as they generally get a pretty diverse crowd and Charlottesville has a lot folks who dig stuff like Bluegrass, Jazz and funky variations of whatever. Miller's is also a place that puts on a lot of Jazz and more non-indie/underground stuff. I would say there are definitely some fans of New Orleans style music all over Charlottesville, but a great way to approach this would be to contact the radio station WTJU, affiliated with the University of Virginia. They have an active Jazz department as well as people who specifically play Zydeco and other New Orleansish stuff. Always a good idea to get local DJs interested in your show, as they are often booking stuff or filtering information to people who dig the kind of shit they are into. Old-fashioned networking that really means something to the folks who do it, as opposed to firing off emails and blogging etc. (which can work too, of course).

I grew up in C-ville, too. Haven't been back in a long time, though, and even the last few times I did go back, I didn't feel like I knew the place anymore because it changed so much. My memories are OLD lol. Contacting WTJU is a great idea, though. Good luck Jordan!

Forgot this exists. RIP to so many things mentioned here.

I had forgotten about this thread as well. Twisted Branch is still going, yeah? Millars will never close.

Oh yeah, Twisted Branch is still putting on most of the good shows in town! Seeing Chuck Johnson there tomorrow, psyched. And Miller's is still there and doing fine, though I haven't been in a long long time.

I'm not sure how much appeal this book would have to people not from Cville, but I really enjoyed it. Since I went off to the midwest for college in '84 I was an intermittent participant at best, but it's amusing to read this and realize I caught shows at most of the key venues during most of the eras covered (Traxx in the 80s, C&O in the 90s, Tokyo Rose in the 00s). I do wish there had been more about actual record stores, and radio station WWWV was pretty key to some of the late 70s/very early 80s scenes touched on in the book but doesn't seem to get a mention.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/rich-tarbell/regarding-charlottesville-music-an-oral-history/paperback/product-23797621.html

grandavis gets a brief mention, as does my old friend K3n G@nfield who played w/Malkmus pre-Pavement and was the person who told me to buy Slay Tracks bitd

I had no idea there was a popular goth band from Charlottesville (Bella Morte)!

Also, I am a total sucker for oral histories of music scenes, ymmv

also Yerac get in here and tell stories

were you at the infamous window-breaking goth show that got Tokyo Rose shut down?

awwww. There was a closed fb group awhile ago soliciting pics for this book (called "I Hate Charlottesville" from the atsushi song).

Bella Morte was probably past the time you were there. There was a huge goth scene around them in the 90s.

ha xpost.

I was not at that show. Although for the life of me I have been trying to remember the kind of Make Up-like band that was playing the one ok frat house and the lead singer kicked out a window and sliced some appendage wide open but kept playing.

Oh, i see I already posted above a little.

"the one ok frat house" - in the early 80s this would have been Sigma Nu?

there's a hardcover version of the book with all the pictures, but there's also a paperback with just a few pix and the oral histories.

I'm confused about all the "punk rock parking lot" stories because the Corner lot I remember my punk friends working at was a multilevel garage, not a surface lot

There was a parking lot behind the Plan 9 on the corner. There is actually a doc about it (a friend made it).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parking_Lot_Movie

omg

yeah that's totally the one I remember, maybe the multilevel part came later?

I would have to look up the frats. It was the one that actually had decent bands come play. If you were walking up Rugby from the school they were before the bridge on the left.

Yeah, I only knew it as a regular flat parking lot.

hmmm, i wish I could see some of the inside of the hardcover. A lot of old flyers had been circulating. it was fun to jolt those memories again. Although I was not there for that long, I did probably manage to get the charlottesville music bingo.

if you can find it I'd love a link to that FB group! I still have some Traxx flyers from the summer of 1985.

Ah, I found 15 pages to preview. Funny that there is a pic of my spouse's ex gf, like right away.

wow looking at an old Tokyo Rose show calendar and :0

Dirty Three/Pelt/Tower Recordings triple bill, nbd, same month as a Mountain Goats/Alastair Galbraith show

This is a great conversation hah hah! I sure wish I had been in Charlottesville for that Dirty Three / Pelt / Tower Recordings show! Will try to contribute more when I get a chance, but yeah some serious shows at that little basement. My first is still maybe my favorite: Aerial M + Panapoly Academy Glee Club + teenage Staunton sensations The Union of a Man and a Woman, who just tore it up and were a great live band. Certainly one of the reasons I stayed in town hah hah.

hi grandavis. I think I know you.

Hah well my name is in the handle, just with a few extra letters tacked onto the front.

My fav Tokyo rose bill memory is rah-bras and dismemberment plan... my least favorite is literally a “bill” memory of trying to get my top drunk friends car keys away from him at a smog show and failing ...

I was at that Smog show! One of the only Tokyo Rose shows I made it to, the other was the Happy Flowers' 20th Anniversary <3

was trying to remember who else played with Smog that night but couldn't

grandavis, we know each other. Read my name backwards.

I was at that dismemberment plan show.

Ah yes, I think I knew that but have been checking in and out here in a rushed fashion. Hi Yerac!

Also, Rah Bras were a really fun and good live band. Got to see them quite a bit for a stretch there.

I know maybe it’s mostly nostalgia but so many of those shows were so great — fugazi + the ex at traxx, also yo la tengo + happy flowers there too

I think I played at a battle of the bands in 7th grade at traxx, organized by Bruce Hornsby ... now that I type it that sounds insane. Also multiple friends of mine in that parking lot doc. Geez I’m getting old

my wife and i were in bands based out of williamsburg and richmond from like 98-03 and played at tokyo rose a number of times. i think we mostly played with locals (vhs & the babies, the carlsonics out of DC) but i remember my wife's band opened for calvin johnson and maybe boyracer there?

"the kind of Make Up-like band that was playing the one ok frat house" there are so many bands this could have been

Maybe I am thinking of Serp? I just looked at a map of frat houses.

I feel like the band I was thinking about was from philly. Short lead singer, but Ian Sven look going on.

The Carlsonics!

input lust was the first band that came to mind but there were so many of them

we played with order of the dying orchid regularly too

What was your band NA? I am positive I would have seen you (as I was at so many shows from 98 to 03 and was friends with members of all the bands you mentioned).

i was in a band called the id and my wife was in a band called times ten

Oh yeah I definitely saw The Id! I am not sure I saw Times Ten, but a lot of those shows are kind of a blur because I was going to so many. The Id were cool though, those were some good bills!

there is some decent video of us on youtube playing at tokyo rose with vhs & the babies

Cool! Will go take a look when I get a chance.

Ween show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9XI0cmVYas

Neutral Milk Hotel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMeRhZ5fFvs