“Every new record should be the best possible version of your band.” Jacob Bannon—artist, label owner and Converge vocalist—has taken time out of his day to talk to me about his band’s new album, All We Love We Leave Behind. “I’ve always held the idea that if you’re making art, then the next thing you do should be a new step forward for you. I want to push things further and become a more cohesive artist and more successful in some way.”
For those of you who hold onto antiquated ideas regarding country music, this month’s edition of Localized will make you rethink your assumptions. Both The Folka Dots and Triggers & Slips have been around the Salt Lake scene for a couple of years now, and on Oct. 13, they’ll deliver a night of music filled with everything from country-rock to bluegrass, folk and blues. The music starts with the folk-informed doo-wop of Bullets & Belles at 9 p.m. at the Urban Lounge (21+), and just $5 gets you in.
2012 marks the third annual Summer of Death skate contest in collaboration with Roughneck Trading Co. Johnny Roughneck and his crew traveled from San Francisco to Salt Lake City to rip up the streets and bring a small piece of the BART Tour to us. This year’s Roughside Contest, presented by Scion, was held on Saturday, Sept. 8. It started at Fairmont Skate Park and traveled to multiple secret, scouted spots around the city.
Take a moment and think back to that feeling you used to get as a kid around Halloween: that deliciously spooky cobweb of eeriness cast over everything, with decorations and tricks everywhere, celebrating all things creepy. That’s the feeling Christel Edwards and Stephen Simmons are looking for when they put together their annual, fall spook-fest extravaganza, An October Evening. It has become a sought-after event for artists, filmmakers, designers and performers to showcase their work.
Three years ago, Minor Threat, Black Flag and the Misfits played in the basement of an abandoned building somewhere in Salt Lake City. Of course, it was actually Utah’s xCOMMUNICATEDx, Pass-A-Fist and Youth Descent, impersonating and playing cover sets of some of their favorite punk bands in a Salt Lake tradition: Punk Rock Halloween. “It’s the idea of dressing up and being someone else for Halloween, but, instead, bands are doing it,” says Robin Banks, the local artist and SLUG Mag contributor who helps organize the event.
Incubated in the Pacific Coast and awakened by California sunshine, the ’80s L.A. punk scene birthed swarms of influential and notorious bands, and inspired youngsters Dave Markey and Jordan Schwartz to document the happenings in the xeroxed annals of their acclaimed fanzine, We Got Power. Recently, a compilation of photos, essays and reprints of the zine was published as the book We Got Power: Hardcore Punk Scenes from 1980s Southern California. SLUG got in touch with Markey to chat about the heady days of ’80s punk.