Mimi Luse

current_issue Tom Tom, the online magazine devoted to female drummers, is finally launching its debut print issue. Their launch party, tonight at Bruar Falls on Grand St, promises to be a rockin show.

Mindy Abovitz, drummer for Taigaa and More Teeth, as well as a Rock Camp instructor, founded the magazine with friends. It features interviews with women percussionists and drummers (Alison Busch of Awesome Color, and Frankie Rose of the Crystal Stilts). Tom Tom (online) also acts as a portal of information, offering technique tips and links to encourage the young girl drummers.

Playing tonight: math-rock influenced Each Other’s Mothers who make smart angular and jazz-influenced compositions, and Zombie Dogs, who bring back oldschool hardcore with fierce drum rolls, a female singer who yells like Ian Mackaye, and lyrics about “the pit.” Also in the house will be Painted Face (a brother and sister duo from DC, Allie ex Eystek), and a DJ Set by Telepathe.

Photos by Mimi Luse.

The venerable harlequin thrash-core group An Albatross (Wilkes Barre, PA) closed the Panache Booking showcase at Union Pool this Saturday, capping off a week of excellent shows during this year’s CMJ Music Marathon. An Albatross have heavy thrasher guitar riffs, deep molasses bass lines, and break-neck drumming, but their lead vocalist, Eddie B. Gieda III, exudes a crusty glam-rock swagger and screams like a depraved Steven Tyler, sweating profusely, smiling with a false propriety, punishing his tambourine as if this were the last cry for help from a torture chamber of self-inflicted mental water-boarding.

When I walked backstage after the show to talk to Gieda, I found him on a tiny set of stairs, sobbing with his head between his knees. “He always cries after his shows” a thin blonde lady friend informed me, gently fanning him with a rolled-up shirt. “What are you thinking about when you’re performing?” I ask him. “I think of myself as somewhere between a fetus just prior to birth and a human form just about to die. And about how absolutely dehydrated and malnourished I am” he replied. This was An Albatross’s first US show this year, and kicks off a month-long tour of back-to-back shows all over the country. Watch footage of this show here.

Girl Drummer Zine “Tom Tom” Launch Party

An Albatross close CMJ and kill while at it