Briefly for I have zero time: Fromanhole is playing a special gig tonight at Bemis Underground, 12th and Leavenworth, with Chicago band Gemini and Ladyhawke. Bands begin at 8 and it's free. While you're downtown, One Mummy Case is also playing a show at Ted & Wally's. That one starts at 10. Have a fun Halloween.

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They had a lead singer who's quivering voice was a strange mix of Stuart Staples of Tindersticks, Cat Stevens and Tricky, a bass player/guitarist who looked like Jason from Saddle Creek, a drummer who looks like James Cameron, a second guitarist who looked like he belonged in Gang of Four circa 1981, a keyboardist who struggled to balance a tower of keyboard on his lap. Each song had something interesting and unique woven within its arrangement. You could argue that they're progressive, but you'd probably lose the argument to someone who insists that they're angular traditionalist indie miracle workers. I fancy them as straight-on purist songwriters who aren't afraid to inflict layers and layers of rhythms into the center of any song. Tim Putnam has a subtle quality that isn't coy or treacle, Jay Clarke's keyboards are assertive, adding a broken-hearted counter that, at times, reminds me of Vince Guaraldi in their tonal range. Neither Putnam nor the second guitarist (whose name doesn't seem to appear on the new CD's liner notes) ever seem satisfied with a run-of-the-mill rock guitar approach. Highlights included the guitar counter on "Little Green" (played by bassist Rob Oberdorfer) that cut-syncopated against the Putnam's vocals. Another was the lovely, amber "Hills Above," that featured a gorgeous chiming piano line and Putnam singing broken "When I left home they said you're a helluva disaster / So I moved fast but disaster moved faster…" This was special. Too bad nobody saw it.

It's a shame that there were only about 25 people on hand to see one of the coolest bands to come through town, playing some of the coolest music I've heard in a long time. It's depressing to hear someone pull out an amazing chord progression and then look back at an empty room. It seems to be happening a lot lately (Last week's remarkable Dios Malos show comes to mind). Blame it on the holiday or the costume party that was going on upstairs. Blame it on the sheer volume of indie shows that have come through here in the past month. Or blame it on the scene's unwillingness to take a risk on a band they just don't know much about. At least I got to see and hear it.

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I wrote blurbs for The Reader this week for a couple upcoming shows. One of the blurbs was for tonight's show at Sokol Underground headlined by The Standard with The Mariannes and The Close. In the words of Mariannes' frontman Matt Stamp: "Very few people around here are familiar with The Standard. They are really f***ing good. Equal parts jazz, art rock, folk songwriting, ambient experimentation. Wounded, introspective lyrics." Matt should know. He's their biggest fan. In fact, he's been hounding us for months to hype this show. It's our pleasure. The Close is a tight pop rock band from Atlanta "worth the price of admission just to see their bass player dance." Thank you, Mr. Stamp. It does sound like a fun show, especially for a mere $7. And a costume isn't required. Meanwhile, upstairs at Sokol Aud, The Jazzwholes is hosting their CD release show/costume party w/Sarah Benck and The Robbers. The Jazzwholes, who gig for free at The Goofy Foot every Sunday night, sound like the sort of combo that would play during commercial breaks of a late-night TV chat show. They promise an "exciting, diverse, large scale production." It better be for $15.

Saturday night is dominated by costume-related shananigans, the most interesting of which is The Lude Boys, a Social Distortion tribute band, and 138, a Misfits tribute band, at The Brothers. Something tells me a lot of the patrons' costumes will involve leather, and yes there will be a contest at some point in the evening. $5, 10 p.m.

I wrote this blurb about Sunday's Broken Spindles show at Duffy's w/The Golden Age: Broken Spindles is a project spearheaded by Joel Petersen, better known as the whirling-dervish bassist in Omaha No Wave band The Faint. Here, Petersen takes center stage on keyboards and vocals, and instead of the usual AV gear he'll be backed by a full band that includes Faint cohort Dapose, Garaldine Vo, and Javid Dabestani of Lincoln's Bright Calm Blue. They'll be performing songs from Inside/Absent, Petersen's latest long player on Saddle Creek Records that's part noodling-keyboard-spider-web-tinkling spook and part thump-thump-thump electronic pulse. You'll either dance or be very afraid. Lincoln band The Golden Age's downbeat folk-rock should provide a jarring contrast. $5, 9:30, no apparent costume requirement, though I'm sure there will be plenty to go around.

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Column 48: Digging Through the Stack
A round-up of worthy recent releases

Dipping through my stack of CDs, here's a handful of recommendations to check out at your local record store. The keyword here is "retro," as in "tribute" or "influence" or "return of a style" or "art repeating itself" or "there is no such thing as 'original' anymore." Oh well. Rock's been eating itself since before Bo Diddley and will continue gnawing away at its own foot long after the kids from Smoosh (rocking from the age of 8) are finally put to bed.

Ester Drang -- Rocinate (Jade Tree) -- Think Avalon-era Roxy Music with a touch of The Sea and Cake and Flaming Lips and you're halfway to this Oklahoma band's summer-breeze vibe. Tracks like "Hooker with a Heart of Gold" and "Great Expectations" sport a cushion of lush strings, brass and piano that would make Burt Bacharach blush with admiration. Jazzy and carefree, it's hard to believe this was released on post-punk label Jade Tree, home to such angst brutes as Girls Against Boys and Onelinedrawing, and Omaha's own Statistics.

Early Man -- Closing In (Matador) -- I profess to rarely listening to metal of any stripe these days. Sure, I dug Queensryche and Iron Maiden as much as the next guy, but that was back in my younger, stupider days (he said with a sniff). Then along comes Early Man, and suddenly I feel like a 17-year-old again, riding around in my brother's El Camino cruising for chicks and booze. Fist shaking. Bloody nose. Angry for no reason. Angry because it rocks! Sure, it sounds like the riffs were lifted directly from 1) Black Sabbath, 2) Judas Priest, and 3) Metallica (not necessarily in that order), but there's no denying the pure head-bangin' extravagance of rippers like "Death Is the Answer," complete with Bobby Beers a.k.a. Steel Dragon falsetto intro. Could they single-handedly bring metal back from the dead? If it all sounds like this, I sure hope so.

Eagle*Seagull -- Self-titled (Paper Garden) -- I've already proclaimed that these swinging Lincolnites as being Nebraska's version of red-hot Canadian "It" band The Arcade Fire. Why? Could be because Eli Mardock's breathy moan resembles AF's Win Butler's, or that both bands have a penchant for jaunty non-traditional arrangements on a grand scale ("Your Beauty is a Knife I Turn on My Throat" sounds like it came straight off Funeral). Still, the comparison ain't fair. Too often E*S's debut veers headily away from AF's Bowie worship, especially on tracks like the momentous "Lock and Key," with its late-song waltz that creates a majesty uniquely its own. Ambitious, and good too.

Acid House Kings -- Sing Along with the Acid House Kings (Twentyseven Records) -- Like the last Kings of Convenience album, Sing Along... sports a falling leaves / Simon and Garfunkel texture thanks to its gliding strings, chiming acoustic guitars and twee vocals. Add more reverb to the guitars, hand claps and some sweet West Coast harmonies and you've got a modern-day version of The Association. Elevator music for a new generation.

Sufjan Stevens -- Come on Feel the Illinoise (Asthmatic Kitty) -- Like listening to a choir of indie slackers led by a Little Prince in a Cubs hat whose voice is a morph of Art Garfunkel and Ben Gibbard singing lullabies to Jacksonville, Decatur and Chicago. Fans of Greetings from Michigan will find it all too familiar (In fact, if you weren't paying attention, you'd be hard-pressed to differentiate between the two). Can there be too much of a good thing? I don't think so. On the other hand, it could get pretty tired if he repeats it over the next 48 states (albums).

My Morning Jacket -- Z (ATO/RCA) -- Am I the only one who thinks that the CD's first single, "Off the Record," with its Hawaii Five-O guitar riff and trippy reggae beat, sounds like a laid-back Who track circa Who's Next? Maybe it's because of how they've made Jim James sound like Robert Daltrey or the fact that there's so much reverb throughout the album that it feels like it was recorded from the bowels of whale... or the back of a smoky arena circa 1972 haunted by the memories of Neil Young, Alex Chilton and Joe Walsh.

Ex Models music is a hard pill to swallow. Very noisy, very chaotic, to many it'll sound only like noise. Writing this feature (read it here) was reminiscent of writing the Public Eyesore article a few weeks back, where I had to find the method to the madness. Ex Models Shahin Motia is very aware that he's going to alienate fans of the older, more danceable version of his band, but he figures that's just the way it goes. I asked him if he thought the methodical shift from album to album to becoming a more "noise-based" band was what also drove down the band's numbers from four to just two guitarists. "Yeah," he said. "For me personally, I feel like Other Mathematics (their debut album) was very rhythmic, and we spent a lot of the time creating these bizarre drum patterns and threading the guitar and bass through them. A lot of that was simplified on Zoo Psychology (their follow-up) through raw power. At the end of that tour, I felt like I personally had grown tired of it. We were going into rehearsals with very little creative energy and I knew what the four of us were capable of, and it wasn't a good feeling. I was convinced personally that I didn't want to deal with drums anymore; I didn't want the beat to be the thing anymore."

Motia went on to say it's been tough learning to play live as a two-piece. "We have played 100 shows since February and have figured out what we want to do and what we like about it," he said. He divides the band's audience into three groups: Those who are familiar with their old stuff who turn up and say "What the hell is this?"; another third who like the old stuff and think the new stuff is great; and another third who will have seen this incarnation of the band before and have come back for more. "The U.S. is the only place we've toured as a two-piece twice," he said. "So now there are those who have seen it who were never into our older stuff. That's cool."

Tonight it's Statistics and Little Brazil together at one show at O'Leaver's. The gig is a warm-up for the bands' upcoming joint tour, where Little Brazil will actually be acting as Statistics' backing band. Should be a rousing good time indeed. $5, 9:30 p.m.

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Yesterday morning was spent writing a feature on The Ex Models (online tomorrow morning) and a column's worth of CD reviews (online Thursday morning) and recovering from a weekend of shows (see Oct. 22 and 23 entries). A full week of shows begins tonight at O'Leaver's with what essentially is a Hot Topic tour, featuring The Forecast with tourmates Lorene Drive and My Epiphany. The Forecast is a straight-up indie rock band with male and female vocals. They've got a new CD coming out on Victory -- the king of bland pop-punk labels. Sacramento's Lorene Drive is the kind of band that is thrilled to be opening for an act like Yellow Card, and signs their e-card "See you in the pit" even though no self-respecting punk would ever listen to their music. My Epiphany has a new CD out on Eyeball Records and has a lead singer with one of those yearning emo voices (Dashboard Confessional?) that can only be described as "unfortunate." This should have been an all-ages show somewhere, as the bands clearly fall into the high school or younger demographic. Still, it's three touring bands (as lame as they may be) for $5. If you feel like going out anyway, you might want to check out Kyle Harvey and Reagan Roeder at Mick's. It's free. I'll be at home, watching Game 3.

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I went to see Swords last night. I left discovering Dios (Malos). Swords weren't bad. The six-piece band that included two drummers (one of whom also fiddled with electronic noises), a keyboard/violinist and a couple guitarists had way too much going on and the result was muddled and unfocused. Their music actually sounds bigger and more thought-out on CD. Live, it's a bit too fey and yearning for my tastes. One guy described them as sounding "pretty." Another patron complained "Could they sound anymore like Death Cab?" Well, other than the lead vocalist's upper-register voice, they sounded nothing like DCFC, not nearly as catchy or interesting. Maybe they just didn't have it last night. O'Leaver's small size can be either intimidating or disappointing to bands, even if its full as it was last night. Their set seemed like it lasted about 20 minutes and was over without a flourish. "Are they done?" the guy in front of me asked. Looks that way.

I had zero preconceived notions about Dios (Malos). Like I mentioned yesterday, I got lost on their website and never found any music files online. After last night, I don't think I've been turned on by a band as much since maybe The Smithereens' first album. No, Dios doesn't sound anything like The Smithereens. They do have a similar aesthetic regarding traditional song structure. But the comparison ends there. Dios also has a relationship with My Morning Jacket in that giant-sized singer/guitarist/keyboardist Joel Morales uses a huge amount of reverb and delay in his vocals, which make them sound -- appropriately -- big and haunting. You knew it was going to be special when, during the pre-set sound chec,k Morales improvised piano fills to New Order's "Temptation" which was playing on the juke box. Their first song played off the opening organ chords of Led Zeppelin's "All of My Love" before turning into a Dios original, sort of (I think it was merely a warm-up exercise). Whereas everything seemed lost and confused with Swords' mix, the sound couldn't have been any better for Dios -- they did have an unfair advantage in that drummer Jackie Monzon would make my top-five "best of" list for drummers seen and heard at O'Leaver's -- unbelievable stuff. So were the songs, whose So Cal sensibilities and nod to retro supersede any indie rock labels, though they certainly are an indie band. Uber-engineer Phil Ek produced their just-released eponymous CD on Star Time that captures the band's crisp take on laid-back rock. A pleasant surprise.

Tonight: Fromanhole at O'Leaver's with Landing on the Moon and touring band from Minneapolis, Self-evident. Just added to the bill: self-proclaimed rock/blues/death metal band Black Horse.

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The night started out on the wrong foot. I missed the two opening bands, and then was told that earlier in the evening, a member of Metric was pissed at the headline used in The Reader story (He didn't understand why the media keeps getting hung up on the whole "metric system" thing... it might have something to do with the fact that the band is named Metric). Apparently the same Metrician was overheard making a colorful comment about our fair city. "We went downtown this afternoon. Sucks!" I guess when you're from Toronto, Omaha's Old Market is going to be somewhat lacking. Hey, you know what? It's all we got. So whatever love I had for the band was slightly tarnished by the time they took the stage at around 11. Despite all the hostility, I gotta admit that they put on a pretty good show. If you read their one-sheet you'd think they were symbiotically tied to Goo-era Sonic Youth (In fact, their soundguy played "Kool Thing" over the PA right before their set), but the way they were mixed last night, they seem more like descendants of Depeche Mode or The Cure. The kick-drum was so amped that you could feel the thump-thump-thump shake your insides to Jello -- it was huge. So huge that it overpowered the rest of the mix. Instead of an experimental noise rock band, Metric has turned itself into an electro-clash dance band, someone you might hear opening for The Faint. A number of songs started off subtly, pretty, toned with edgy keys or echoing guitar, but once the drums came in, all you got was THUMP-THUMP-THUMP. If you were there to dance, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it killed Jimmy Shaw's gorgeous, shimmering guitar lines and overpowered pretty Emily Haines' too-thin vocals. A few times they reached some sort of equilibrium (or maybe I just channeled out the kick drum) and created an unstoppable dance vibe. Shame that so few people in the crowd picked up on it (Come on, we all know that nobody dances in Nebraska!). The 150 or so in the crowd did what they usually do -- stood and stared as Haines and bassist Josh Winstead tried to get their groove going. They didn't succeed until the encore -- the two best songs of the set, neither of them recognizable from the new CD. Ten minutes into the last song, during a killer guitar solo drenched in reverb, Haines coaxed part of the crowd on stage. It wasn't easy, in fact she had to ask three or four times and practically drag them up. After the first couple got up there, though, 20 or so more slowly came up and did their thing with the band. I have no doubt that Metric could easily jump to the next level if they got on the right tour (Yeah, they would be perfect opening for The Faint). Instead, they may be satisfied playing their string of sold-out Canadian shows scheduled through the end of October. Something tells me the downtown scene is cooler in Edmonton, Calgary and Saskatoon.

I mentioned to a couple people last night that I'm probably going to pass on the sold-out Decemberists show at Sokol Underground and head to Swords at O'Leaver's. No one's heard of the Portland-based six-piece, apparently, though their new CD, Metropolis, on Arena Rock Records has gotten accolades from The Boston Globe, Magnet and Time Out New York, among others. I dig it. Fred Mills from Magnet called it "chamber music for post-rockers" and that sums it up well. The title track, for instance, reminds me of brooding early Genesis with vocals as light and airy as Lindsay Buckingham's. They have a big sound, maybe too big for O'Leaver's. We'll find out tonight. They are not the headliners -- apparently Dios Malos is. Trying to figure out something about that band, I got totally confused and lost on their website. I did find the Startime Records site, where you can download their cover of Beck's "Asshole." Nice. $5, 9:30.

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The weekend starts with an all-Canada showcase at Sokol Underground, headlined by Toronto band Metric and opening acts The Most Serene Republic, a Milton, Ontario, six-piece who sound heavily influenced by Death Cab/Postal Service, and The Lovely Feathers, who sound like a strange cross between Two Gallants and Pavement. 9 p.m., $10. If that doesn't trip your trigger, check out The Terminals with Austin's The Midgetmen and Lincoln's Ideal Cleaners at O'Leaver's. $5, 9:30 p.m. Also tonight, the Sixth Annual "Sisters Doin it for Others!" all-girl revue at Mick's featuring Goodbye, Sunday and Sarah Benck, among others. It starts at 7:30, and all donations go to the Lydia House, a shelter for battered and abused women and children.

Tomorrow night's hot show is the sold-out Decemberist concert at Sokol Underground with opening band Cass McCombs. So mad should that house be that I will probably instead go running to O'Leaver's, where Swords is opening for Dios Malos (I'm going for Swords). $5, 9:30 p.m

The weekend winds down on Sunday, again at O'Leaver's, with Fromanhole, Landing on the Moon and Minneapolis band Self-evident. $5, 9:30 p.m.

Look for live reviews here all weekend...

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Column 47 -- Biography of a Digger
Zero Street is more than a store, it's a way of life

Mike Garber is a reformed digger.

No, I'm not talking about a guy who makes a living preparing final resting-places. Diggers are record collectors (not CD collectors) who think nothing of flipping through a few thousand pieces of vinyl at record shows, garage sales or places like Zero Street Records at 65th & Maple in Benson -- Garber's new shop -- to find that hidden, elusive side that's been haunting them all their lives.

Garber's quite familiar with the digger's lifestyle. He was one for years. He speaks of his early record collecting days like a reformed junkie recalling a bleary-eyed life on the street desperately looking for a fix, living off Ramen noodles to save every dime he could scrape together. Not for drugs, for more records.

"I scored some great stuff back then," Garber said from behind his store's counter. "Every penny I had went to pay off records. A thousand dollars for one 45 meant nothing to me. I loved owning this stuff. I recognized the beauty and value in it."

So much so that after earning his degree in Fine Arts at UN-L, Garber dashed any thoughts of a career in graphic design when he was offered ownership of his first record store, Lincoln's original Zero Street Records, named after Alan Ginsberg's poetic dig on "O" St., where the store was located. Growing up in Omaha, Garber spent his youth digging through stacks of sides at The Antiquarium. He wanted Zero Street to be Lincoln's version of that classic record store, selling not only used, but new music.

So dedicated was he that he gave up one of the most important things in his life -- his record collection. "I sold it at market rates and took the money and invested it in the store and the building it was in," Garber said. "I recognized life is more than a record collection."

But it only took five years of sitting behind a counter all day and trying to keep up with stocking new music before Garber burned out on Zero Street. He closed the Lincoln store last August, and just like he'd done before, someone stepped up and reopened it -- but it didn't take long before the store closed for good.

Garber spent the next year traveling to record shows and buying private collections. One New Jersey collection of fewer than 100 records set him back six grand, but included two ultra-rare singles -- one by a '70s Connecticut punk band called Tapeworm, another by a Texas punk band called The Rejects. Never heard of them? Neither had I. Regardless, each fetched more than $1,000, thanks to the wonders of eBay, the 21st Century diggers' hunting ground and Garber's new field of dreams.

So why open another store? Garber said he got tired of the road and being stuck in his apartment eBaying all day. "I wanted that social interaction again that I got from running a record store," he said. After considering Chicago and Minneapolis, he was drawn back to his hometown and the low-rent storefront in the heart of Benson.

Things are going to be different this time, however. Zero Street sells no new records or CDs, only used vinyl. Step inside and there's not much to see -- freshly painted blue walls, shiny aluminum heating ducts, and lots of waist-high wooden crates filled with record albums.

"Half the people who come in to check out the store think it's a novelty," Garber said. "When you walk in, it doesn't look like much, but if you're a record person, you'll recognize it. If you're a digger, you're gonna come in and think there's some really great records here."

The proof was right before our eyes. While chatting, a mustachioed guy worked his way through a stack of rare R&B 45s, playing them on a small turntable behind the counter before buying about 50 bucks' worth. Meanwhile, another guy laid a 2-inch-thick stack of albums and singles on the counter -- again consisting mostly of R&B sides -- which ran him well over $100.

As important as guys like these are to Zero Street's success, Garber says there's one clientele even more important, and it could include you: It's people cleaning out their apartment, house or garage looking for a place to sell those old records that have been sitting around unplayed for so many years.

"The only way this store will survive is if people sell me their records," he said. "I won't last long without them."

Spoken like a true digger.

This week's feature interview with Metric just went online (read it here). I didn't get a lot of space, but I didn't need much, either. Metric guitarist/songwriter Jimmy Shaw mostly talked about the process of recording the band's new CD, Live It Out, and how much he hated going to Julliard. Since Julliard appeared so prominently on the band's one-sheet, I figured he'd be tired of talking about. "Actually, no one's asked me about Julliard before," he said, then went on to rail against the institution. Guess that whole dancing-in-the-streets-of-New York thing you see in Fame is bogus, or Shaw just never took part. He also talked about his apprehension to finish the CD, second-guessing the quality of the tracking and underscoring the need for an outside voice to give the project perspective -- in this case, mixing engineer John O'Mahony, who would stop Shaw from rerecording or throwing out tracks destined for the eraser head. "Someone's got to kick you out of the studio or you'll twiddle to oblivion," Shaw said. "Someone was interviewing Miles (Davis) when he was painting in his back yard. They asked him to define jazz, and he put one last stroke on the canvas and said 'That's it, now it's done.' The whole point is to call it finished. You could go on forever, there's no such thing as perfection. I got too close to the recording. 'Poster of a Girl' (off the new album) happened as it is right now on tape. I had it in my head that we had to go back and fix the arrangements. The first time John heard it, he said, 'It's finished. Give me the hard drive.'"

I didn't go to United States Electronica last night because I plan on going to New Black tonight at O'Leaver's with Ris Paul Ric, the new project from Christopher Richards of Q And Not U. New Black has been compared to Le Tigre, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Lost Sounds, Death From Above 1979, Sonic Youth, X-Ray Spex, ESG, Suicide, X, and Siouxsie And The Banshees. Yikes. 9:30 p.m., $5.

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Tonight, United States of Electronic again graces Omaha with its frontal-assault dance party at O'Leaver's. Here's a profile I wrote about the band last March when they came through with Aqueduct, and here's the review of the show. This being a Tuesday night, who knows what kind of crowd it will draw -- I suppose it'll be a testament to whatever buzz they've managed to generate between gigs. Opening the show is Seattle band The Divorce, which is touring a new album out on Made in Mexico Records. The couple songs on their website sound like '80s Breakfast Club music, sort of Simple Minds meets The Cure. Probably a good fit with USE. $5, 9:30 p.m.

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- The only show I hit this weekend was The Gunshy at O'Leaver's Friday night, and boy did I get the preview write-up wrong. I expected a soaring indie band, but what I got was a singer/songwriter and his guitar. I should have known better. Although this guy has just finished recording a full-length with a full band, he rarely tours with one. Everyone I talked to seemed to know this already (He's apparently toured with Darren Keen of The Show Is the Rainbow on a number of occasions). He told me after the show that his modus operandi might change for his next tour. There weren't many people there anyway, and only a few actually paying attention to the stage. Unfortunate.

-- Regular versions of the Two Gallants story (here) and Public Eyesore story (here) went online yesterday; the Public Eyesore story was restored to its original 1,200-word version, so there's a couple more details included.

-- Look for a feature on Metric Wednesday and a column on Zero Street Records Thursday. Fun, fun.

-- Tonight, hip-hop artist Hangar 18 plays at Sokol Underground with Cryptic and local artist Breathless. $8, 9 p.m.

--Got comments? Post 'em here.--

Tonight: The Gunshy, Austin Britton, and Bill Latham at O'Leaver's. The Gunshy are from Lancaster, PA/Chicago, IL and play souring indie rock fronted by a guy with a raspy voice that's a cross between Tom Waits and Dicky Barrett. They've got a new album coming out on Latest Flame Records. The track I listened to on their site prominently featured trumpets. Wonder if they'll have a trumpet player in tow. Austin Britton plays in Kite Pilot. Good stuff. $5, 9:30 p.m. Down at Sokol Underground, Irving, CA, band Thrice is playing with Underoath and Veda. $18, 9 p.m.

Saturday: The Cops, featuring former Omahan Mike Jaworski, is playing at The 49'r with Mt. Fuji labelmates Little Brazil and Race for Titles. The Cops are touring their new CD Get Good or Stay Bad, due in stores Nov. 1 -- consider it a modern revisionist version of The Clash's London Calling. Nice. $5, 9ish. Meanwhile, The Show Is the Rainbow is headlining downtown at Sokol Underground with Books on Tape and Lincoln legends Her Flyaway Manner. $7, 9 p.m. And if that wasn't enough, those swinging kids, One Mummy Case, are playing a gig down at The Foundry Coffeehouse on 60th and Maple. 8 p.m., free.

Sunday: Underground hip-hop artist Sage Francis performs with Sole & Sol.iLLaquists of Sound at Sokol Underground. $15, 9 p.m.

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Column 46 -- Omaha's Other Record Label
Public Eyesore could be an earsore to some

Sure, everyone knows about Saddle Creek Records, but did you know that there's another record label right here in river city that produces CDs that are distributed all over the globe by bands that tour all over the globe to fans all over the globe?

Public Eyesore Records has been thriving right under your nose for the past seven years. How could such an enterprise exist without your knowledge? Probably because most -- if not all -- of the bands on the label's roster are known only by the tiniest of audiences who listen, collect, perform and enjoy a genre of music that's been referred to as "avant-garde," "minimalist" or "experimental." In fact, your typical FM radio listener probably wouldn't consider it "music" at all.

"I call it music," said Public Eyesore owner Bryan Day, who operates the label out of his midtown apartment. "I might call it 'sound art' or something like that. Referring to it as 'experimental noise' is naïve terminology since there are so many subgenres within it."

As research for this article, Day sent a care package that included a handful of CD-Rs in colorful cardboard sleeves, jewel-cased CDs and some vinyl. Among them:

Monotract, Pagu. Released in 2002, the LP contains rhythms beneath layers of electronic noise/static/squawks that sound like messages received from outer space. Amidst the chaos are tracks like "Birao de Lao," a pleasant tone poem lightly sewn together with clicks that fall on a beat.

Jad Fair and Jason Willett, Superfine (May 2003). Known as the frontman of the underground punk band Half Japanese, this solo collaboration between Fair and HJ band mate Willett is almost commercial sounding. Fair's solo work has been released on such labels as Kill Rock Stars, Jagjaguwar and Matador, but this is still an oddity in the Public Eyesore tradition. Fair and Willett play a variety of instruments, pick out weird melodies and blend it with shrieks and comic vocals. The 20-song "enhanced" CD also includes 155 mp3 tracks for more than five hours of additional music.

Blue Collar, Lovely Hazel. Released this year, the trio plays trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone, percussion and "sings." Opening track "48/1" sounds like boiler pipes moaning in an old building or someone moving furniture in the apartment upstairs. The bleeping horns have an improvisational feel and often build to a noisy conclusion. Along with Superfine, it's among the label's best sellers.

Jorge Casto, Sin Titulo #2. The 2001 CD-R contains pulsing noises like faraway satellites that slowly mutate into ambient tones over its single 44-minute track. Atmospheric and somewhat soothing, it has no discernible melody.

Jesse Krakow, Oceans in the Sun. Krakow is a member of Fast and Bulbous, a Captain Beefheart-influenced avant-prog band. The 2004 CD-R opens with "Tree for Me," a track that features beatbox, organ and Krakow actually singing a melody.

Onnyk, Private Idioms. The 2001 CD-R contains two live sessions recorded in October 1995 and January 1997 in Morioka, Japan, that sound like stringed-instrument improvisation but could be confused with random noodling. The band includes Day's wife, Yoko Sato.

Naturaliste, A Clamor Half Heard. The Omaha-based ensemble has included among its members Lonnie Methe, Simon Joyner, Chris Deden, Charles Lareau, Chris Fischer and Day himself. This 2001 CD-R is a wall of noise, distortion, pure nihilism that's both grating and disturbing.

Day admits that to the untrained or unwilling ear, some of his label's music will sound like noise. He markets his catalog nationally via magazine ads and the Internet (his website is publiceyesore.com), but he's never focused on Omaha, though his discs are available at The Antiquarium record store.

"There' such a small market for this kind of stuff to begin with," he said. "It's something where if you're naïve to the whole scene you can't appreciate it as much as if you're actually a part of it. It's difficult to get into unless you're doing something with experimental sound."

Despite the limited audience, Public Eyesore has released 14 recordings so far this year and is on target to release his 100th catalog item by year-end. CD releases have 1,000 to 2,000-copy runs. CD-R releases are painstakingly hand-produced in lots of 250 -- a process that Day said he's dropping because of the manual labor required to cut and assemble the sleeves.

The work doesn't end there. Day also books tours for his bands in the U.S., Europe and Asia. "The tours are much more successful in Europe," he said. "Japan has a big scene as well, and there are some places on the coasts of the US where you can tour successfully."

That said, his own band, Paper Mache -- which he describes as "definitely not as loud as Naturaliste and easier to understand" -- is taking off on a two-week tour of the US heartland later this month, including gigs in Iowa, Minneapolis, Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Tennessee and Missouri. "It should be interesting," he said. "You never know who's going to show up."

Last night's Built to Spill show sold out sometime yesterday afternoon as expected and when I showed up at around 11 Sokol Underground was filled to the gills, it was like stepping into a third-world Customs holding tank, but with smokers -- lots of them. I chatted with someone outside the venue while one of the openers was on stage. "What's going on in there?" I asked. "Just a lot of sweating and secondhand lung disease." There's something weird about Built to Spill attracting so many smokers. Maybe unbeknownst to me they're sponsored by American Spirit, though I didn't see anyone passing out free pastel-colored boxes of their cigarettes.

As per usual, Lea Thompson and Dave Foley were there. Okay, guys, it's time to go back to Hollywood now (I guess their movie wraps tomorrow). I never saw Foley. Thompson spent part of the show on the stairwell leading outside, I assume to gulp in fresh air or something else. I also saw some people who looked exactly like Steven Spielberg, Vincent Gallo, Sean Penn, and Napoleon Dynamite, as well as a guy who looked exactly like Doug Martsch, though he was older and balder than the Martsch I saw at Sokol Underground six years ago. But other than playing guitar better -- and longer -- he and his band didn't sound much different. Martsch isn't exactly a stage ham. He stands up there with his guitar, surrounded by four other guys, and does his thing, separating songs by saying "Thanks a lot." We got treated to at least three songs from Keep It Like a Secret. I can't tell you more than that because I don't have any of his other CDs. I thought the band sounded tight, though the mix was too muddy for my taste. It wasn't as loud as typical shows (maybe all the bodies in the room were acting as buffers) and I was able to take out my earplugs for most of it. The biggest complaint I heard was that the songs went on too long. He used them merely as starting points for 10-minute "jams" (probably the wrong word to use since these guys are anything but a jam band). I was standing in the back of the room toward the end of the set and one die-hard fan I knew stopped to say so long. "Where are you going?" I asked. "It's just more of this for 20 minutes" he said, referring to another one of the structured rock odysseys that seemed to tail up and down forever. I hung around just to see if they played "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" which I had heard they were playing at other shows. Sure enough, Martsch and Company launched into it as the encore, but I left before he finished his solos. It was a looong set, probably over 90 minutes.

Tonight is Sleater-Kinney with The Gossip. I figured this one would have sold out by now, too. Seems like I'm the only person in the continental United States that doesn't like S-K's new CD The Woods. It's been lauded as one of the best records of the year in almost every indie/rock music publication. I think it sounds like they tried too hard to be hard, and sacrificed melodies for gronk to create a Zep-meets-grunge noisefest better suited for L7. That won't stop me from going tonight, though (being exhausted might). $14, 9 p.m., with two bands, it should be over by 11:30. We'll see.

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Something of a surprise is that tonight's Built to Spill show at Sokol Underground is not sold out (at least at the time of this posting). In a post on SLAM Omaha last night, One Percent Productions said that there were fewer than 50 tickets left. I have no doubt that they'll be gone before show starts. I blame their lack of sell-out power on the fact that the band hasn't released a new CD in four years (frontman Doug Martsch's solo album, Now You Know, came out three years ago), which made me wonder why they're touring now. Apparently they're playing a number of new songs for an album to be released this fall. Funny, when I interviewed them waaay back in 1999 they were an icon band that had just signed to Warner Bros. and were positioned to become huge. Meanwhile, a fellow Pacific Northwest-based band that took root in their shadow called Death Cab for Cutie was quietly emerging. Well, we all know the rest of the story.

The last BTS show was one of the smokiest in Sokol Underground history -- that was before they installed the SmokeEaters though. Look for a cover of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" during the encore. Opening are Mike Johnson (ex-Dinosaur Jr.) and Helvetia. $15, 9 p.m. This will be an event.

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I essentially took the weekend off from hitting shows and got some well-deserved sleep as we prepare for a big week's worth of huge shows, well, two for sure anyway. Before we get to that, however, there's tonight's paring at O'Leaver's -- San Francisco indie rock band Audrye Sessions, who's music is described on their site as "beautiful and bittersweet," headlines a show with opener Mars Black -- yes, that Mars Black. I'm sure there's a good story behind all this, but you'll have to go to O'Leaver's to find out what it is. Also on the bill is The Cushion Theory. $5, 9:30 p.m. It's day 3 of 11 straight days of One Percent Productions shows.

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Strange pairing of bands last night. Not sure why The Double -- essentially a noise/art band -- is touring with Vanderslice -- a run-of-the-mill indie singer/songwriter.

I figured The Double would come off experimental live. They did. Imagine Ian Curtis fronting The Fall with lots of drone and you begin to get the drift. A four-piece featuring organ/keyboards right in the middle and nice drums but with no real beat. At times it reminded me of Interpol if Interpol weren't a dance band. Trippy stuff that came close to reaching epic proportions but never quite got there. Funny how their single, "Icy," sounds just as out of place in their live set as it does the CD. I assume Matador listened to the demos and said "You can have all the strange organs and jangle-drone shit you want, but we need a single to use on the comp." And it is a good single.

Vanderslice started out strong -- I loved the first two songs -- but then he got into his regular indie-pop groove, which is a bit too vanilla for my taste -- sort of a less fun version of Matthew Sweet or a watered down Ted Leo. The crowd seemed into it, but after about a half hour people started to leave. I'm somewhat guilty of never having given Vanderslice much of a chance from the beginning of his career. I never got into Mass Suicide Occult Figurines when it came out in '00, and I still don't get what all the fuss is about. Seems like a nice guy, though. Head count: I'm guessing 125. I left before the encore.

A glance at the weekend's best:

Tonight: Lee from Bad Luck Charm does a solo set at Mick's. Cross town at O'Leaver's Shinyville is headlining a four-band bill consisting of bands I've never heard of. I've never heard Shinyville, either, but I hear good things about them. $5, 9:30.

Saturday: The Street Urchins at The 49'r for what's being billed as "their final Omaha show." Opening is Brimstone Howl. This will be a mob scene. Come out and see The Urchins one last time so you can say you saw The Urchins. They're that good, by the way. $5. Also Saturday, Mal Madrigal is at O'Leaver's opening for Medications (ex-Smart Went Crazy, ex-Faraquet). $5, 9:30. Down at The Goofy Foot, Kite Pilot is opening for First Fight recording artist The Floating City, a straight-up, laid-back indie band. It's an early show -- 8 p.m. -- and will cost you $4.

Sunday: Good ol' William Elliott Whitmore is back, this time at O'Leaver's. It's worth it just to see a 27-year-old white guy sound like a 70-year-old black man singing Texas blues a la Blind Willie Johnson. Opening is local blues artist Sarah Benck sounding like a 20-year-old white girl. $5, 9:30.

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This week's printed column in The Reader is a tightened up version of the Oct. 1 Lazy-i entry/review of last Friday's Two Gallants show. There are a couple tiny differences, but nothing worth putting online again. Next week you'll get a fresh column and a fresh feature story about another record label here in town, one that you probably don't even know exists…

Tonight it's John Vanderslice, McCarthy Trenching and The Double at Sokol Underground. I know more people who are interested in seeing the openers than the headliner. McCarthy Trenching is Omahan Dan McCarthy (Mayday). Brooklyn's The Double is a new band on Matador Records that released its label debut, Loose on the Air, Sept. 13. Their music can be trippy or jangly, experimental (in a Flaming Lips sort of way) and even straight forward ("Icy" off their new CD is a bouncy, organ-driven rocker). There used to be a time when being on Matador was all it took to draw a crowd. Those were days... $8, 9 p.m. Should be fun.

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I knew it was going to be weird when I saw the sign out front of Sammy Sortino's a.k.a. Slammers that welcomed "Piano Man Mark Mallman." When I walked in, the guy who took my money said, "You here to see Mark Malberg?" Uh, you man Mallman? "Mallberg." OK.

The show was supposed to start at 7:30. I got there at 8:30 and the opening acoustic guy playing cover songs was still on stage. He went on to play for another hour.

Mallman didn't mind. Including me, there was only three people there to see him play. He said the venue wouldn't let him use the big P.A. stacked on either side of the stage. Instead he was told to use a couple tiny Peavey amps the size of cereal boxes. That meant that he wasn't going to be able to do his regular show, which involved he and a drummer playing on top of prerecorded instrument tracks - supposedly recreating the full sound heard on his records. Instead, his drummer watched with the rest of us, videotaping Mallman's solo set. Lord knows he wanted a record of his gig in Omaha.

I guess it was the kind of disaster show that all touring bands dread. Here was a guy who, just a year ago, opened for Head of Femur at an SRO Sokol Underground show. His records are released on one of the more respected indie labels - Badman Records - home to such acts as My Morning Jacket, Mark Kozelek, Rebecca Gates and Hayden. And now here he was, playing in an Omaha pizza restaurant, propped up on a riser looking at row upon row of empty tables. Let's face it, he could have bagged -- he could have simply canceled the gig and passed up his portion of the $15 door. But instead he hunkered down and pulled out a memorable solo set that included a couple songs from his self-released comp CD, which I highly recommend you find. Heck, Mallman didn't even mind when someone walked up to the stage between songs and asked him to play a cover - any cover. "I might be on a great indie label but I'm not too big to do a cover," he said before going on to do a half-assed version of Billy Joel's "Piano Man" that included a few new lyrics written especially for the occasion. Priceless.

I gotta tell you, Mallman has a helluva voice and knows what he's doing on a piano. The whole set sounded kind of Elton John/Billy Joel-esque, and I think he knew it. His songs, however, took on a darker hue when sung alone. I talked to him before the show as he was compiling his set list, crossing off songs he couldn't do solo. He said he felt kind of weird playing songs about loneliness, death and incarceration while families sat around and ate pizza and watched the Yankees. Let's hope Mr. Mallberg -- uh Mallman -- has better luck tonight in Denver. He deserves it.

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Somewhere in Omaha tonight, Mark Mallman performs. I've been told by Omaha's busiest bass player, Mike Tulis (The Third Men, The Monroes, Simon Joyner), that this show should not be missed, that Mallman is the ultimate showman. I'm listening to his new CD, Seven Years, released on Eagles Golden Tooth, as I write this. It's an enticing combination of Ben Folds, ELO and T. Rex sung in Mallman's Midwest-via-Minneapolis nasal voice. His sound is relentlessly throwback, sort of a tribute to '70s glam and so absolutely embraceable that I'm shocked he hasn't broken through the real-but-invisible radio barriers that keep indie down. You might have seen him before as he's opened for Guided by Voices, Beth Orton, Linda Ronstadt, Cat Power, Donovan, Tegan and Sara, Ozomatli, Everlast, Exene Cervenka, Howie Day, and Cracker, among others. Sounds good to me.

The problem: I'm not sure where he's playing. O'Leaver's has Mallman listed on its show schedule, but Mallman's site says he's playing at Slammers, formerly Sortino's at 1414 So. 72nd. St. The venue's shows are booked by Dreamweaver Productions, but their website is either broken or not updated. So what the hell? If I find something out that's more definitive by lunchtime, I'll update this page.

Noon Update: I now know that Mallman will not be playing at O'Leaver's tonight. I assume, then, that the show will be at Slammers. If I can confirm this, I'll update the site again when I get home tonight.

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Just another typical night at Sokol Underground? Hardly.

The draw was around 100 if I had to venture a guess, not as many as I thought would show up. So much for the we-just-got-signed-to-Saddle Creek drawing power. Two Gallants is still on the rise, they're not going to sell out the Underground. Not yet, anyway. Someday, probably. Sooner than you think.

Anyway. Opening the show was Anonymous American, who I've seen at least a dozen times. They're good. Look, if you like your rock and roll with a double-shot of bourbon and a long-neck chaser, if you like massive hooks (not indie hooks, not prog hooks, not country hooks for God's sake), the kind of hooks you expect to hear on your local FM, you have to check out AA. They're a top-drawer saloon band that would be right at home behind a wall of chicken-wire fencing. Frontman Matt Whipkey is and will ever be a top-notch showman, a throwback performer to a time when people expected more from a band than four slouching beatniks that look like they're about to cry. That said, AA doesn't belong in Omaha. Austin? Maybe. Nashville? Possibly. The West Coast, definitely. Omaha, hmmm… I don't know. They definitely were out of place on this bill, but it didn't matter. They just wanted to rock.

So now, the star turn…

After they finished their set I was standing by the cash register and in walks Lea Thompson (Caroline in the City, Back to the Future, Jaws 3D) and Dave Foley (Kids in the Hall, News Radio, Celebrity Poker Showdown), along with soon-to-be-star Nik Fackler. I'd heard that all three had been cast in a movie being shot around town. And here they were, checking out some of Omaha's gritty nightlife. My recollection of the two out-of-towners: Both are very short. Thompson is as lovely as ever. Foley looked like he grew up in South O instead of Canada, sporting a head o' gray hair and an old-guy beer gut. They looked like a couple of locals, which I guess is what they're playing in the movie.

But I digress. The stars showed up just in time to see The Holy Ghost Revival, the band touring with Two Gallants who's music is somewhat in the same vein, though a little more fleshed out with keyboards, a bass, sort of like a regular band but with a frontman who looked like Iggy Pop's son complete with tit-length hair and exposed abs throughout his shirtless set. I heard them described as a cross between Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Frank Zappa. I likened them more to a psychedelic jug band. I will say that I didn't dislike them as much as everyone else I spoke with, none of whom "got" what they were trying to do (The clarinet on the opening song was a bad way to start). Fact is, their style seemed identical to Two Gallants' albeit a little more proggy and sung by Geddy Lee.

Finally, on came Two Gallants. For as many people who had seen them before, there were just as many who had not and had come out to hear who this band was that Saddle Creek Records just invited into their fold. My girlfriend probably caught the gist of their sound best when -- listening to their track on the new Saddle Creek records compilation, Lagniappe -- she said "Who is this guy? He sounds like Rod Stewart." I hadn't thought of that before, but I couldn't get it out of my mind while watching them on stage last night. Lead vocalist Adam Stephens does have a certain Steward-y gravel-drawl that's even more noticeable when he reaches his raggedy limits.

Two Gallants' music comes in two distinct flavors. First, there's the high-energy, 3/4-time pirate songs, where Stephen belts out an endless stream of lyrics over his electric guitar and Tyson Vogel's all-over-the-place-but-with-no-bottom drumming. Vogel's style is completely scattershot, a miasma of rhythms like a beatbox with the knobs twisted to "hyperactive." Their upbeat songs all sounded identical to me, like rousing ship-galley sea-shanty ballads on meth.

Then there's their slower, quieter tunes that downplay Vogel and accentuate simple, repeated melodies along with the endless stream of lyrics. While less ferocious, the gentle ballads are more interesting.

In both cases, the songs are too long -- a criticism that I know the duo is sick of hearing. Regardless, they have no intention of moving away from largess -- Stephens told me that their new CD has one track that's over nine minutes long.

On the surface, Two Gallants appears to be an odd fit for Creek except for the fact that, other than maybe The Holy Ghost Revival, no one else sounds quite like them. Their music is unique, done without a scintilla of concern as to its commercial potential or critical acceptance. You'll either "get it" (as most of the folks near the stage did) or get bored. I fall somewhere in the middle. Their songs always start out great, but lose me at about the five-minute mark, when I start to wonder how many verses I'm in for. A little goes a long way.

The duo played about 45 minutes and did a one-song encore (Stephens asked for an acoustic guitar, I think it was "All Your Fatherless Loyalties" off Lagniappe) then called it a night.

Outside of Sokol after the show I got a chance to meet tiny Lea -- a very nice lady. Foley came out moments later, shirt unbuttoned exposing his white T-shirted gut. Before long there were about 20 people standing around on the sidewalk along 13th St. I snuck away wondering where their entourage of local indie musicians was headed next.

Tonight: The Heavenly States with Lincoln's Eagle*Seagull at O'Leaver's -- the usual $5 and 9:30 start.

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