Let’s get right into it shall we? I got an email just before the holidays from a Chicago band called The Dogs and today I’m checking out their debut album which is available for free from their website. It’s definitely got a home-spun quality to it, but shows some good potential. Lead vocalist Peter Walters, sounds a little bit like a young Adam Green (Moldy Peaches). He’s got room to improve, but his voice is nice enough. Taking cues from bands like the Avett Brothers, the Dogs use an assortment of percussion tools to offset the guitars and bass that drive the songs. They’re a little rough around the edges, but it’s easy to see that if they stick it out for a while longer they’re going to develop into a nice little folk-indie trio. I’m glad they submitted some music because I’m really interested to see where they go with this stuff.

www.myspace.com/thedogs

Listen to the Dogs - “Sea Shanty“(MP3)

Hey everybody! Welcome to 2009, the year that broke punk. New things happening now - we’re going to start changing the coverage areas of said blog to handle more stuff from the Chicago scene. In fact, there’ll probably be a name/URL change coming up as the QCLA moniker is a bit dated and confusing. It originally was QCI (Queen City Independent) when I was promoting concerts in Charlotte (the Queen City) and then I moved to Los Angeles as a publicst and combined LA with QC to get QCLA, but it didn’t really mean anything. Now it’s two years almost to the day that this site was opened and it’s time for a change. I’m going to focus on my home away from home - Chicago, as well as national music news.

So stand by for some redesigning, a new name and very regular posting. I’m open to name suggestions as well. I’m going to be taking inspiration from Kevin Bronson’s Buzzbands.LA site and will be highlighting great indie shows in Chicago and covering some awesome local bands. Please feel free to submit music and MP3s and whatnots.

Cheers!

Brian/QCLA

ho ho hold my calls. i’m cancelling blog posting until the economy recovers. or until i get settled in at my new pad.

happy holidays from QCLA!

also, we’re trying a new thing here - posting music we’ve never listened to. take a peek and let us know what you think. their new ep is free at their website.
listen to xylos - “in the bedroom” (MP3) /xylosmusic.com/

Just received word that Team Love Records (Conor Oberst’s shindig) has a vast and powerful library of MP3 selections.

I’ll let them explain it:

When Team Love started we had the simple and possibly self-defeating notion that posting all our albums on the website as free downloads would be a good detour around the wreckage of the music industry and a way to avoid getting bogged down in the number one topic of discussion and distraction: piracy, illegal downloads, P2P networks and so on.

Five years later and the debate still drones in the background, and while some bands have adopted a mutated version of the “free download” (pay what you wish, etc), we’ve decided to reshape out policy in a different direction and introduce the Team Love Library. Each month (or so) we’ll be rotating the Library’s selections, featuring different Team Love albums as well as exclusive content such as unreleased songs, live or remixed versions of TL favorites.

The library will be open to the public 24/7, and as we have an endless abundance of MP3’s (we fucked up and made too many of them), anything you take from the library is yours to keep. You will not be notified if you fail to return something on time, and you will not lose your library privileges if you share selections with friends.

So there you have it. Just head on over to: http://library.team-love.com/home/wp-login.php?action=register and get rockin’.