Deleted Scenes, The Life and Times @ Golden West Tonight

As Walter Sobchak once said: “Life does not stop and start at your convenience you miserable piece of shit.”

Such is the case tonight when the Deleted Scenes show will start sometime after 10 whether it’s convenient for you or us or the rest of Baltimore or not. And for most people, we’re guessing that comes down to not.Late Monday night might be a convenient time for people who work in restaurants or second-shift retail, but for the rest of us, it’s quite inconvenient.

The Chop, however, is blissfully funemployed at the moment, so we’ll likely head over to the Avenue tonight, even though we’d rather have it start at 7 and be in bed by 11.

Deleted Scenes brings their new record to the Golden West tonight.

You can’t have everything, after all, and even though we may have to stay up late to see this show, at least we won’t have to fight crowds. In fact, it may be our last chance to see Deleted Scenes with a little elbow room, because if they’re not filling every room they play now, it’s only a matter of time. Their second full length Young People’s Church of the Air is a very solid follow up to the excellent Birdseed Shirt, and is going to bring people out in numbers in the near future. In fact, tonight’s show is the very first chance you have to buy it on vinyl, so if you want to be the first one on your block you have no choice but to turn out.

For those of us who aren’t voracious vinyl collectors, or who can stand to wait 3-5 days, you can simply order it here or stream and purchase the record in convenient digital format.

Deleted Scenes is making their way up and down the coast with The Life and Times which makes for a pretty tempting double bill. We’re not going to front… We’ve never even heard of The Life and Times until just now, but after checking out their site we highly suspect that’s probably our fault and not theirs. Sounding kind of like a cross between Juno and early Jimmy Eat World, their stuff is right up our alley, and we’re looking forward to checking them out.

And really, that’s the whole reason why we bother to go to crummy little restaurant shows on Monday nights, and why we go to so many shows in the first place… to get to know new bands. It’s sometimes less than convenient, but it beats the hell out of sitting around reading Pitchfork.

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Golden West Cafe is at 1105 W 36th Street in Hampden. 10 pm doors.

Tonight: Heads for Deleted Scenes, Tales for Vivian Girls

Well, lucky Chop. We’ve got another night with too damn many interesting things going on. We already told you yesterday about the Found Footage Festival at the Creative Alliance tonight, and we can scarcely find room to mention that Madison Smartt Bell is also reading from his new novel and signing copies at Atomic Books tonight.

Sadly though, we’re not quite in the mood for film or literature tonight. We feel like getting drunk and listening to some rock and roll bands. And there’s no shortage of them going around either.

Black Lips play the Ottobar tonight. 9pm.

It’s impossible to go wrong with Deleted Scenes, who have been getting a lot of attention lately as a band to watch. Some of that attention has been from this blog, as we named them among the 10 best shows we blogged last year. Riding that momentum, we expect they’ll be playing a number of songs from their forthcoming record Young People’s Church of the Air, which is bound to be one of the better records coming out in 2011. They’re playing the Metro Gallery tonight with North Carolina’s equally buzzworthy Hammer No More the Fingers, who are set to record a full length in May with J. Robbins, as well as locals Gary B and the Notions and Vinny Vegas.

It’s a show we’d jump on under normal circumstances, but tonight there’s an equally interesting show happening at the Ottobar. A Vivian Girls show is always a good time, and they’ve got a new album of their own, Share the Joy coming out on Tuesday. If you just can’t wait that long, you can click over to NPR’s First Listen and hear the new stuff before the show tonight.

If Cassie Ramone, Kickball Katy, and new drummer Fiona Campbell look noticeably more suntanned than this crummy overcast Spring should allow, it may be because they’re fresh off the Bruise Cruise on the Carnival Imagination. Go ahead and read that link and we think you’ll agree with us that the end of Punk, and Western Civilization is very, very near.

They’re playing tonight with a band we like but have never seen before, the Black Lips who are the heirs apparent to acts like Ween and the Dead Milkmen. It’s a tough call. A trip to the Ottobar tonight may mean a quality John Waters sighting, or it could also mean a few ex-girlfriend sightings. You pays your money and you takes your chances, we guess.

So we’re going to leave it to chance. Not being bothered to try to see both shows, we’re just going to flip a coin. Heads for Deleted Scenes, tales for Vivian Girls. We’ll let the Queen decide via a British pound coin.

Deleted Scenes, Medications @ The Sidebar Tonight

We were just saying the other day how we never get around to going to DC anymore, and how when we do all we seem to do is go straight to the Black Cat and then come straight home. We even skipped out on yesterday’s trip to the DC Record Fair.

But why would we want to go to DC anyway? Considering: A… Baltimore is way better, and B… If we just sit around and wait, the best of DC will come to us, which is exactly what’s happening at the Sidebar tonight.

Deleted Scenes, Medications play the Sidebar tonight. 9 pm doors.

If it please the court, here are the facts of the case:

Gary B and the Notions provide local support. We’ve written about them before and even compared them favorably to Elvis Costello. If that’s not a shining recommendation, we don’t know what is.

Medications have a new record out on Dischord called Completely Removed which completely rules. You might recall the members of this band from former Dischord heavy hitters like Faraquet, Smart Went Crazy, and Beauty Pill, who are all largely responsible for making the DC sound what it is. (Fugazi didn’t do it all by themselves, kiddies.)

Deleted Scenes is that rarest of rarities, a really cool DC band that is not on Dischord. The J Robbins produced Birdseed Shirt is probably better than any record on your shelf right now. Don’t take our word for it though. We’d like to enter into the record testimony from expert witnesses Pitchfork, Brightest Young Things, DCist, Pasta Primavera, and Aural States. They’ll all do a better job than we can of telling you why and how this band is so unique, innovative and superior.

Closing arguments: Despite the fact that it’s Monday and you probably want to flop down on the couch after work and sleep where you lie, you should go to this show; not because it’s something to do on a Monday, but because its probably the best show you’ll see for some time. Besides, we know you all stayed home last night watching Lost.

Verdict: Awesome as charged.

Sentence: Two hours of hard listening.

Court is in recess.

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Sidebar is at 218 E. Lexington Street downtown. Sidebar is a legal term, and the Sidebar Tavern has a gavel in its logo. This whole post is a pun. Pretty clever, huh?