Every day we hear about people doing shit like this and we love to see it and it fills us with joy and momentarily restores our faith in humanity, but at the same time we hate that people HAVE to do shit like this, which once again makes us wonder if the world wouldn’t be better off getting hit with another dinosaur-extinction-level asteroid.
I guess this is just the world we live in now. Happy Thanksgiving Eve, y’all.
Hey there! I’ve got two (completely unrelated) things to bring to your attention today, both of which might interest you if you live in or around the Pittsburgh area, and one of which might still interest you if you are in any of several other areas throughout the eastern or central United States.
First up:
Join the American Birding Association for a fun weekend of birding in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania!
On Sat. morning, Sept. 20, we will bird together at Hartwood Acres Park where we will explore the trails around the estate buildings, meadows, and mature woodland areas. In the afternoon, we head over to Beechwood Farms Nature Reserve for two presentations, one by Brian Shema and the other by Nick Stahlman, hosted by the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania. In the evening, come down into the city and join us at East End Brewing for a little urban birding and socializing over pizza and local drinks on their outdoor patio.
On Sun. morning, Sept. 21, we will visit Frick Park, one of the area’s top birding locations, to look for fall migrants. Later we will gather at the Frick Environmental Center for a fun presentation by Mike Fialkovich, president of the Three Rivers Birding Club.
All bird walks, talks, and workshops are free and open to the public (with cash bar/food during the evening social), but registration is mandatory. The ABA’s bird-friendly SongBird Coffee will be served before and after each bird walk and presentation.
We are grateful for the support of Vortex Optics, who are providing a variety of excellent Vortex binoculars for participants to use during our field trips. There are limited binoculars available for loan, and we will distribute them on a first come first served basis, so sharing might be needed and appreciated.
Don’t miss out on this fantastic opportunity to connect with fellow bird enthusiasts and enhance your birding skills. Sign up now and join us for an unforgettable weekend!
All of the locations listed here are local hotspots for bird activity — especially Frick which has been buzzing with reports of migrating warblers and flycatchers over the past few weeks. As stated above, all of this weekend’s events are FREE, you just have to sign up here. I’ve been looking forward to this ever since the ABA first announced it early this year, and I hope to run into some friendly faces over the two-day gathering!
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and next:
If you haven’t figured it out based on your email inbox bursting at the seams, It Is Bandcamp Friday.
Before we all head out for the weekend, real quick let me call your attention to two releases (one from early last year and one from early this year) by Pittsburgh’s Coffin Womb, self-described as “A bunch of losers who just want to ruin your day.”
Good afternoon, y’all. Last time, we talked about the most recent release by Canadian neofolk trio Musk Ox and the news that their music was being featured in the CBS medical/mystery drama Watson. (In case you missed it, episode 2, which broadcast about two weeks ago, set their song “Weightless” against a montage wrapping up the various storylines near the end of the show.)
Anyway, at that time I had promised more music from Musk Ox members would be forthcoming, and so here we are. The group’s cellist (and co-writer/arranger) Raphael Weinroth-Browne put out his first solo record back in 2020, which at the time was met with plenty of acclaim on this website. But the following year, he released a brand new version of the whole thing re-recorded live, which we’ll take a look at here. And to cap things off, we’ll also check out an EP the cellist created in collaboration with Chicago-based Warr guitarist Jason Blake, just about eleven months ago.
Dear gentlepersons of the internet: once more I bid you hello and good day. Things have been pretty quiet around here for a bit, which has been (as per usual) the result of extensive craziness happening BTS IRL. So much, in fact, that I’ve missed the year-end deadline for compiling my year-end list by a couple of weeks now. I’ve got it narrowed down to a manageable collection of contenders, just need to revisit them to cut that number in half and then put them in order — which I’ll hopefully accomplish in the near future, now that I’ve finally emptied my inbox of everything from 2024.
Speaking of which, over the past two months we’ve been dormant here, Food Desert Recordings put out another of their esteemed fundraising compilations, which I’ll take a rare minute of downtime to bring to your attention. Welcome to the Spectrum benefits The Autistic Self Advocacy Network, a very worthy cause, since unlike some other well-known organizations, it does not view Autism as a disease to be cured or eradicated…
After a lengthy break due to… well, you know… the Ohio Doomed and Stoned Fest returns next weekend! This time it will be at Westside Bowl in Youngstown — so you can go rent some ugly shoes and enjoy some ugly riffs for two whole days.
The line-up includes several great bands we’ve discussed on this website in the past: Michigan’s Bog Wizard, Massachusetts’ Problem with Dragons, West Virginia’s Horseburner, and Ohio’s own Brujas del Sol and Rebreather. Plus a bunch more mainstays of the local and regional scenes, many of whom I can personally attest put on a fantastic show. An almost ludicrous total of 39 bands altogether.
Hey! As we continue inching ever-closer to the conclusion of yet another calendar year, let’s continue talking about some of the great music that has come out in 2022.
Today I’ve got two albums to share: one that was just a recent discovery for me, that I somehow missed when it came out over the summer but which has been getting SO much attention lately as all my writing peers have started publishing their own year-end lists, and then one that just came out this month, and based on that timing I’m afraid it may have inadvertently missed catching many other people’s attention.
Here we go…
Hello everybody…
Remember a few months back when I told you about Food Desert Recordings, the label who, since forming earlier in the year, has now put out a pair of charitable compilations?
Well anyway, today I’d like to make sure you’re also acquainted with another label that just opened up over the past few months. This one started out when an individual from British Columbia, who happens to hang around a few of the same Discord servers I sometimes frequent, was tossing around the idea of creating an explicitly anti-fascist, anti-sketch, and anti-capitalist cooperative (since unfortunately, way too many of them turn out to be far in the opposite direction). He joked that the name would have to be the most stereotypically Canadian thing anyone could think of, and came up with Syrup Moose.
The record label’s online bio clearly specify that it had just started out as a joke — which is absolutely true — but within weeks the collective found itself with an ever-growing roster and quite an unfunnily busy slate of upcoming releases, including cassette versions of each, as well as unique (and highly collectible) tarot card designs exclusively painted and printed for each new release.
Out of that already-extensive-and-rapidly-expanding catalog, I’ve selected one of the first as well as one of the most recent, to share with you this afternoon. The fact that both of these artists happen to be based in Pittsburgh is purely a coincidence — honestly!
Hello out there! We’re back from the holiday weekend and slowly starting to emerge from the mini ice age into which we had been plunged for the past several days.
And suddenly we find ourselves swiftly approaching the end of another calendar year. Many other writers and other websites are busily publishing their year-end lists; most of the larger outlets who also have print editions have had their lists out since last month if not earlier. Here in the Valley that window stays open until the last day of the year, as always, and the year-end list will be posted in the appropriate spot on the first of January.
But given that it is nearly the end of 2022 and everyone is in just a reflective mood, let’s take a look back at a couple of releases from much earlier this year which we inadvertently hadn’t gotten around to covering yet…
Hello — and Merry Christmas Eve Eve, to those who celebrate.
What a nasty, ugly day this has turned out to be: snow, rapidly plummeting temperatures, and huge wind gusts that very nearly sent our trash cans careening down into the river. Again. That is, we lost one of them to the river during a windstorm a couple years ago; this time both of them did go flying after they were emptied this morning, but I was able to rescue one from the edge of the embankment, while the other has managed to wedge itself between two trees halfway down the hillside, just out of reach of any of the long-handled implements I have readily available so I’m hoping it will stay in place long enough for me to figure out a way to retrieve it.
Anyway, enough about that, let’s listen to some nasty, ugly music befitting such a nasty, ugly day!
Valley of Steel 