Friday night, man. Traditionally you’re supposed to go out after work, get fucked up, party your ass off and all the rest of it. All I want to do on a Friday night is sleep. And usually, that’s how it goes. But when Cortez is making the trip down from Boston and hooking up with Mighty High for a show in Brooklyn that’s not even in the middle of hang-yourself Williamsburg, well, showing up is the thing to do. So it’s the thing I did.

Last time I was at Hank’s Saloon was just over a year ago, to see Black Thai (which boasts two members of Cortez in its ranks) hit up a gig with Thinning the Herd, and as low key as that was, I knew that with Mighty High on the bill, good times were bound to be had. When I rolled in, there was what had previously been described to me as an “alt country” act on the stage. It was a little white girl, soul-singing like little white girls do, accompanied by some dude who seems to have found Les Claypool‘s tailor on guitar. Striped pants, silly hat, and — inevitably, predictably, excruciatingly — a kazoo. Hell, it was bound to happen, but they were about half done when I got there, so it could’ve been worse. They covered Spinal Tap‘s “Gimme Some Money,” and that was a fun reference.

They’d been put on the bill by the venue, which as I understand it, is for sale. Bar-ownership being something of a long-term fantasy of mine, as Cortez set up their gear on the small stage, I looked up at the ceiling beams, down at the dirty floor, over at the walls full of pictures and stickers and post-its with cabbie phone numbers. I inhaled the smell of mold and thought to myself, “Yeah, I could do this.” The Patient Mrs., joining me for the night on the town, seemed less thrilled at the notion.

Cortez frontman Matt Harrington would soon blow out the Hank’s P.A., but as soon as they got going, they were on the ball. They hit up a few songs from their forthcoming self-titled (vinyl master is on the way, reportedly), including highlights “Monolith,” “Johnny” and the catchy “Until We Die,” with bassist Jay Furlo adding backups to Harrington‘s melodies while Scott O’Dowd, aka Scotty Fuse, let fly carefully constructed riffs and drummer Jeremy Hemond (also of Roadsaw and Black Thai) managed to do some equipment damage of his own. I can’t remember ever seeing him play that he didn’t require a new snare at some point in the set, and Hank’s was no exception.

They rocked in spite of any and all technical difficulties, and much as I’d hoped, the night played out as sans-bullshit as possible. All I wanted was a rock show with some good bands, good people, decently-priced beer and no Friday night fashion show, and that’s basically what I got. Mighty High‘s boogiethrash blend of Slayer, Black Flag, Motörhead, Sabbath and any number of ’70s obscurities I’m not qualified to name was the perfect finale. Decked out in a Foghat Live t-shirt, guitarist/vocalist Chris “Woody High” MacDermott introduced the native Brooklynite act by saying, “We’re The James Gang from Ohio,” and it only got better from there.

The thing about Mighty High, though, is that as much as songs like “Chemical Warpigs” (a highlight) “I Don’t Wanna Listen to Yes” (another highlight) and “Breakin’ Shit” (always a highlight) are about getting high and having fun, they’re also maddeningly good. Mighty High hit like a megaphone yelling at stoner rock to get its head out of its ass, but they have the chops musically to back it up. I’m not going to say they were perfect up there, but even where they stumbled, they did it right, guitarist Kevin Overdose, drummer Jesse D’Stills and bassist Labatts Santoro seeming to take the instruction to heart as Woody led the way through the opening cover of “Kick out the Jams.”

When they were done, I walked out with the “Hands Up!” chorus still in my head, where it stayed for much of the weekend, and — now that I’m thinking about it again — remains. The Patient Mrs. had already filled her rock quota for the evening and retired to the car, so I said some quick goodnights and we headed back to Jersey, where I happily checked off the first of three shows in a row and fulfilled my Friday destiny by crashing out as quickly as possible. Good fun.

Extra pics after the jump.

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Congratulations to Ripple Music on their one-year anniversary. The label is home to the likes of Mighty High, Poobah and Stone Axe, and in celebration of their solar revolution (hopefully the first of many), they’ve made an exclusive digital compilation available for free download from their Bandcamp page. That’s cool enough, but the compilation also features new music from Iron Claw and Grifter, who’ll both have new albums out before the end of the year.

Here’s the news from the label, followed by the audio stream of the comp:

Now, as Ripple Music moves into its second year, founders John Rancik and Todd Severin want to celebrate the enthusiasm of their music lovers with some anniversary specials. As a thank you to their fans and supporters who’ve allowed Ripple to strike out and bring independent music to the world, Ripple is releasing it’s first ever free digital compilation album.

Featuring every band that has made the first year of Ripple Music such a success, Ripple‘s anniversary album kicks off with Stone Axe, before heading down the Ripple highway of Poobah, JPT Scare Band, Fen, and more. And as a special bonus, The anniversary album features the world’s first sneak peeks at two new Ripple releases; Grifter‘s self-titled debut album, and the eagerly anticipated A Different Game, from underground legends, Scotland’s Iron Claw. But the free compilation album may be available for only a limited time, so get over there quickly to get yours!

But wait, there’s more. Over at the Ripple Store, everything is still 15% off until July 4, and every waverider who places an order will get their name placed into a drawing for a very special, last-one-of-a-kind surprise test pressing!

This isn’t the first charity auction that Ripple Music founders John Rancik and Todd Severin have put together. In the past, they’ve auctioned off test pressings for Stone Axe and The JPT Scare Band for the BP oil spill and the Japanese earthquake/tsunami disasters, and as the planet continues to show us just how badly it wants us off of it, Ripple Music is once again stepping forward to help out the tornado victims of Joplin, Missouri.

The PR wire has the details. Help out if you can:

Continuing with the company tradition of giving back to the community, Ripple Music will auction an extremely rare original test pressing of Heavy Ripples: Vol. 1, featuring Stone Axe, Sun Gods in Exile, Grifter and Mighty High, with proceeds going to benefit Joplin tornado victims.  The auction will take place on eBay at the Ripple store, starting Tuesday, May 31, and run for seven days only.

Only five of these test pressings exist, and this is the only one made available to the public.  You can jump into the auction, win a cool heavy rock collectible and benefit disaster relief at the Ripple Music Ebay Store.

Hard to know where a split ends and a compilation begins, but in the case of Heavy Ripples Vol. 1 (Ripple Music), I’m inclined towards the former, if only because the release’s format makes you pay specific attention to each of the bands involved, rather than bludgeoning you with track after track from disparate acts. Everyone here is pretty like-minded, and there’s only four of them, so it’s not too much to handle, and the double-7” release ensures that you’re going to be really working to listen – the longest side is just about seven minutes – so Heavy Ripples isn’t something you can put on and forget about. Not that you’d want to with the likes of Stone Axe, Sun Gods in Exile, Grifter and Mighty High around anyway, but at just under 20 minutes total runtime, Heavy Ripples is an efficiently drawn beeline to the rock. Each of the bands contributes something unique to the whole, and for something you could feasibly listen to three times in an hour, Ripple’s latest split packs more memorable songs than most full-length albums. Like I say, efficient.

Stone Axe open with “Nightwolf.” The track finds the Port Orchard, Washington, revivalists in their core duo form of vocalist Dru Brinkerhoff and multi-instrumentalist/vocalist/producer T. Dallas Reed, but as usual with them, nothing in personality is lost for the lack of personnel. Brinkerhoff has enough swagger in his delivery for three bands, and I can’t think of any more appropriate way to kickoff Heavy Ripples than a non-ironic song with “night” in the title. If you know Stone Axe, you know what they’re about, and “Nightwolf” is right in line both in terms of style and quality with the bulk of their work. And excellently complemented on side B by Maine upstarts Sun Gods in Exile, whose “Over My Broken Bones” is set to appear (re-recorded) on their second Small Stone full-length later this year. Sun Gods in Exile’s Black Light White Lines was a solo-enthusiast’s wet dream, and “Over My Broken Bones” follows suit, but as was the case with that record, the guitar histrionics is backed by solid songwriting and isn’t showy just for showiness’ sake. Two strong modern classic rockers with a little over nine minutes between them, kicking out righteous jams that, even had Ripple chosen to release this as a one-disc affair, would still be worth investigating.

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If you’ve never been, the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn is to hipsters what the Ent forest is to orcs. They seem to just spring up out of the ground. It’s a nonstop fashion show of apathy, misdirected misogynist irony, and expensive beer. Good sushi, but you pay for it in more than just dollars. It’s like a theme park. Hipster Disneyland.

Nonetheless, for Mighty High, Cortez and The Crimson Electric, I’d gladly hoist my fat ass off the couch to brave such unwelcoming climes. Some band no one ever heard of opened the show at The Charleston, to which I’d only been once prior, to see Kings Destroy. It was now as it was a couple months ago: a basement with surprisingly good sound. Kind of like Lit Lounge in that way, but if dank and moist isn’t your thing, you probably weren’t going to the show anyway.

Mighty High gave the Stooges a stoner boot to the ass, debuting their new lineup, vocalist/guitarist Woody High and drummer Jesse D’Stills joined by new guitarist Kevin Overdose and bass player Labatts Santoro. The foursome ran through probably twice as many songs as anyone else played that night, hitting high marks with “Cable TV Eye,” “Breakin’ Shit” and the “prog rock epic,” “Yes Sucks.” It was the first time I’d ever seen them, and they didn’t disappoint in the slightest. Their music and their presentation is completely without pretense. They don’t dress up, don’t bullshit around, just play their songs and have a good time. Amazing that in a borough so full of assholes, there’s any room on the other end of the spectrum for Mighty High.

Loud in that basement, too. Kevin Overdose and Woody High split some vocal duties, but for the most part it was straight-ahead motion the whole time. And there was some motion. They had the best crowd of the night (being the hometown heroes) and you just can’t watch them and not enjoy yourself if you have anything even close to a sense of humor. This won’t be the last set of theirs I catch.

It had been a while since I’d seen Boston‘s Cortez — long enough for drummer Jeremy Hemond (also of Roadsaw) to get a haircut, anyway — and as always, it was a pleasure. Not only are they some of the nicest guys on earth, but they riff with an energy and crispness that makes me think of what it must have been like to see stoner rock when stoner rock was young. Their sound and style is more solid than ever, and as they said a new album was in the works, I can’t wait to hear it. I wonder who’s going to put it out…

They put a couple older songs in the mix, among them “Stone the Bastards” from the 2007 Thunder in a Forgotten Town EP, which I managed to capture for the video you can see below. It was kind of dark, but I think you can still get the idea. Scotty Fuse‘s riffs, Hemond‘s giant cymbals, Matt Harrington‘s vocals and Jay‘s bass all managed to balance out pretty well down there (though admittedly, there’s an awful lot of cymbal on that video), and their set, as always, was a highlight of the night.

The Crimson Electric were down a bass player as of about two weeks ago, and they struggled some because of it. Their solution to the issue was to run one of the guitars through a bass and guitar cabinet both to fill out the low end, and it actually worked pretty well to thicken the sound, but there were some technical issues that took some momentum out of their set. I don’t doubt they did the best they could with what they had, and they still rocked, so I’m certainly not about to complain.

That said, being the last band on stage at a show like that has one distinct disadvantage: you’ve already done a full night’s drinking when you start, and you still have to get through the material. There was some shit-talking from the stage and it very nearly crossed the fine line between friendly joshing and dickery, but everyone in the crowd, myself included, knew the deal, and at the end of the show, The Crimson Electric still sounded killer. I remembered how great they were at last year’s Stoner Hands of Doom in Maryland, and I’m sure once they get their lineup nailed down again they’ll have no trouble getting back there.

I got back to my humble river valley shortly after three and was up for maybe another hour. I’d managed (somehow) to stay sober, though I’d swear I saw some dudes taking beers out of their socks at the club. A little recession-special espionage. You do what you have to, I guess.

Good people, good tunes, good times. It’s nights like this, when the “scene” and the inherent politics thereof stay at the bar upstairs, that remind me why I love this music so much.

I hate to be that guy who listens to the band he’s going to see that night before he actually goes to see them, but Mighty High covering the anthemic “Kick Out the Jams” is just too cool to resist. If anyone’s around, they’re playing The Charleston tonight in their native Brooklyn with the formidable likes of Cortez, The Crimson Electric and some band no one’s ever heard of. Should be a good time.

At some point in the next week, I’m going to have a new podcast up. Keep an eye out. I’ll also have an interview with UK doom-thunderers Conan, and maybe the chat I had with Man’s Gin‘s Erik Wunder if I’m feeling fancy. Which I am. Always.

Toward the end of next week we’ll close out September, so stay tuned for that. If you’re headed to the Small Stone showcase in Philadelphia tonight, have a great time and drive safe if you’re driving. Be sure to tell Keith from Sasquatch some schmuck on the internet says hi.

Enjoy the weekend. We’ll see you back here Monday for more adventures.

Time-wise, it’s a short blip of a release, but the new split 7” single between Port Orchard, Washington, rock resurrectionists Stone Axe and green-thumbed Brooklyn, New York, stoner punkers Mighty High has much more to give the listener than its seven-plus minutes would indicate. The offering, released by Ripple Music, brings together two seemingly disparate bands with two very different missions, who nonetheless work well in a row because listening to each one serves so specific a purpose. It’s short, but for anyone who hasn’t yet experienced either, Metal Damage/Don’t Panic it’s Organic is a great way to be introduced to two bands who most definitely are worth your time.

And if you have heard either band before now, you don’t need me to tell you whose song is “Metal Damage” and whose is “Don’t Panic it’s Organic.”

Present for Stone Axe on “Metal Damage” is the core duo of multi-instrumentalist and recent Obelisk interviewee T. Dallas Reed and vocalist Dru Brinkerhoff. To compare the track to Stone Axe’s recent full-length, Stone Axe II, “Metal Damage” is heavier in a traditional sense and, as you might guess, pretty metal. One of the best parts of listening to Stone Axe is picking out the influences on display – in that way they’re very much a band for music nerds – and here they pair Judas Priest’s driving rhythms and Holy Diver-era Dio riffing with an early Ozzy Osbourne (think Bob Daisley) bass line that’s just killer throughout the short, straightforward 3:41 song. Brinkerhoff does the lion’s share of tying “Metal Damage” to Stone Axe’s prior output – he’s a rock vocalist here almost in spite of himself – and the song in no way sounds flat for having just the two of them recording it. As ever with Reed’s recordings, you get a full band sound whether or not you get a full band.

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As a force for all that is right and not-taking-itself-too-seriously in Brooklyn — where such forces are sorely needed — the band Mighty High should not be allowed even the faintest hiccup of inactivity. Accordingly, let the following announcement from the band ring out so that some good soul can step in and fill their now-vacant bassist position. Tommy Blow, we hardly knew ye.

And by that I mean we never met. But anyway, all the best. Here’s the note from the band:

After seven and a half years of service Tommy Blow has decided to retire from Mighty High. So that means we need a new bassist pronto. Tommy will be retiring after our show on April 10 with Cortez, Federale and Kevin Omen at Hank’s Saloon in Brooklyn.

If you or anyone you know wants to work the thud stuff on our Black Flag Railroad attack, get in touch and let’s rock. We got nine songs in the can for our next record and a bunch more we’re about to start working on to finish it off. There are shows to play, beers to drink and ears to bleed. Life is short, so play loud!

Available through the band?s own Mint Deluxe Tapes on a blue splatter 7? vinyl, leading hemp advocates Mighty High?s Mighty High Drops a Deuce affirms the appeal put forth by the band on last year?s ?In Drug City full-length. And it?s a pretty basic appeal. These are four dudes from Brooklyn who write simple stoner punk songs about getting high. Rarely does it get more straightforward than that.

I like Mighty High because they?re honest. There?s infinitesimally little bullshit to their presentation. They?re not on stage pretending to be monsters or posing out as pseudo-intellectuals too smart to rock. They?re singing ?Hands up if you want to get high!? and calling themselves ?Brooklyn?s number one regressive rock act.? They?re having fun. Non-ironic fun! What a concept.

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It’s more than just a clever name — these dudes are seriously fucked up. Like “Set your phasers to ‘stoned.’” So high that when the album showed up the cover was sideways. Really, really, really high. That’s apparently their thing.

I always wonder what bands like this say to their parents. Granted, I’m pretty sure Jesse D’Stills (drums), TJ Whippets (guitar), Tommy Blow (bass) and Woody High (guitar/vocals) are using stage names, but even so, when mom calls and asks how the band is, does Tommy Blow answer, “Well ma, we’re really fucking high. How’s dad?” I sure hope so, because that would be awesome, and Mrs. Blow would never see it coming.

Mighty High do one thing and do it well. Their brand of junkie punk encompasses a narrow scope and even “T.S. Eliot” is about getting high and fucking shit up. On last year’s debut, …In Drug City (released through their own Mint Deluxe Tapes), they come off like a druggier (obviously) Easy Action, and Woody has a regional aggression in his voice more fitting the band’s New York City home than their penchant for killing brain cells. As songs like “Dusted,” “Hooked on Drugs,” “Stone Gett-Off,” “Buy the Pound,” “Mighty High,” the title track, “Albert Hofmann” and “I Live to Get High” would suggest, they know what they like and they stick to it. As they say in the aforementioned closer “T.S. Eliot,” “You don’t like it?/So what?/We do/Tough fucking shit.” It may not have made the cut as a basis for foreign policy throughout this decade, but coming from Mighty High — who, like the guy being dragged out by security dangling a Ziplock baggie full of green nuggets, “aren’t hurting anyone, man” — it’s positively charming.

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