Clamsterdam – Radiator
There was little in this whole big world quite like the Ramones when they started out. And, quite famously, all they could rely on was the same chord played across the guitar neck and their strangely wired imagination about circus freaks, gay war vets and crazed teens.
The good news is that people have still worked out a way to get over their excitement of hearing the Ramones. Groups form every week who look, sound and try to think just the way that the NYC quartet did.
But, if you think that this is all bound to get dull very soon, but are still looking to receive some of the same kind of excitement, musical power and boundless imagination, artists like Clamsterdam are here to make it easy for you.
Clamsterdam’s “Radiator” is a strange jazz-punk hybrid that, thankfully, is more than just a goofy experiment. This is the kind of song that Dee Dee would’ve written had he never left his apartment, created a whole mythology around the objects in it and, miraculously, along the way discovered how to play jazz chords. It’s fun, exciting and, most importantly, it’s something else!
The Overjoyed – JOY VAMPIRE
People like Frank Zappa used to complain that music, especially at the height of punk-rock, had become too simple. If anyone could learn three chords, then what was to stop them from starting bands of their own? Of course, that thinking was to miss the whole point.
But, beyond that, music, especially nowadays, involves an incredible amount of choices. From which style to play, and what to write about, there are also choices to be made about what gear to use, what pedals to add to your effects chain, what software to invest in for music production and so on.
If musicians get bogged down in all of these choices, there’s a good chance that they’ll never finish anything or that, when they are done, it’s going to sound like Frank Zappa. Nobody wants that, I hope, and that’s why a band like The Overjoyed is a fantastic antidote to this paradox of choices.
The Overjoyed’s “JOY VAMPIRE” is well-produced and to-the-point melodic punk. It’s a Southern European version of Californian punk-roc,k complete with singing that, at times, brings to mind the confident vocals of Billy Talent’s Ben Kowalewicz. Best of all, The Overjoyed sounds like a band that knows precisely what they want from their music, and what they’ll fight desperately to avoid.
