New Years Eve at the Lafayette

UPDATE! There are less than 40 tickets as of December 27 at 10 am. Buy tickets now!!

Casbah Presents New Years Eve at the Lafayette Hotel!

We love good music and we love a good party, so The Casbah and Cunning Fox have teamed up to produce a New Years Eve Party at the Lafayette Hotel that people will talk about even after the Mayans destroy the planet in 2012. (Or something like that…)

Featuring:

The Silent Comedy

Transfer

The Creepy Creeps

The Heavy Guilt

Hell On Heels Burlesque

Creepxotica

Low Volts

The Visual Underground



Food by: Tacos El Paisa

The Details:

Individual tickets for the event can be had here.
A special pre-sale rate of $25 is good thru November 16th.
Tickets are now $35 through the day of show. $40 day of show.





Hotel packages which include two tickets start at $169. They can be booked directly here.


For all the fine print, see the event page on The Lafayette's site here. 

Rocktoberfest 2011 in Photos

I don't know about you, but I had such an amazing time at Rocktoberfest. The lineup was stellar and all of the bands were not only incredibly professional, but all proved why they represent San Diego and can command festival sized stages. I arrived with The Heavy Guilt long before the gates opened to help with last minute details and make sure I had covered all my bases in getting out set times through the tweet-o-sphere and the interwebs. Luckily everything was running smooth and I had time to visit my friend Pete at True North to get some food before the festival. (If you haven't eaten at True North, you are seriously missing out. Get the juicy lucy with tots and you'll be converted.)

By the time I was back, 3pm rolled around and gates were opened. Unlike last year, when it rained and we opened gates at noon, this year the event was well attended from the start up until the finish. I can speak on behalf of West Coast Tavern and the Casbah in saying that this year's attendance blew last year out of the water. With a full bar, a good selection of beer (Beck's Oktoberfest was my personal preference all night), and re-entry allowed so you could grab a bite at a nearby restaurant if you didn't want to wait in the food truck lines, this is the perfect setup for a micro-festival. West Coast Tavern also has the nicest bathrooms in North Park, in case ya didn't know, and I sat down with Everest for awhile as they finished their dinner before their set, so that was pretty great, too. If you didn't come last year, you should know that the two facing stages was a new setup and I think it was perfect allowing the music to jump back and forth all night long. 

I'm just gonna post a couple photos and I really don't need to go through a band by band rundown because they were all fantastic....The Heavy Guilt, Low Volts, The Styletones, Bully, Dead Feather Moon, The Creepy Creeps, The Soft Pack, and Everest all delivered. Everest played a bunch of new stuff and told me they're working on a new record for the beginning of 2012. Tim Pyles did a great job as MC and even let me come up on stage and introduced me so I could get this crowd photo:



You can see my photos on Facebook if you want to tag yourselves or at SoundDiego with all of my Foursquare adventures.

Just a few of them after the jump.

The Visual Underground Returns to CASBAH - Oct 29th.

The dirty pirate hookers of film+rock+art are back. I cannot tell you how surprised I am to be doing another show as a member of The Visual Underground. I can even go as far as to say that at one in my life I swore I would never do one again. Well, like the oath I made about never drinking again, I broke my promise.

It was 2003 (or 2002), when Gavin Allen and myself (John-Ryan Shea aka AVicious), then film students at San Diego State, went to Sundance to work the NoDance Film Festival. Gavin was a pompous ass I knew that like Billy Wilder movies and looked like a reject from a Chico State catalog. Trying to save some scratch to get there we shared the gas bill and set off on the road to independent film land. When we arrived at Sundance and got to the condo we found they had us bunking up with the preverbal "guy on the couch" and a bunch of other guys discussing the relevance of old George Lucas vs. new George Lucas - yeah, fucking lame. We tried to join in the conversation but soon said screw it and went back to our shared room to crash for the night. Well, he couldn't sleep because of the time change and I couldn't sleep because he kept farting. I would like to think that no homoerotic thoughts were part of the night but after an uncomfortable hour and half of lying there and wishing for fresh air Gavin broke the silence...

"Let's get out of here and go get a drink," he said.

From that moment on we hit to the lily white bars of Park City and binged on the delicious 2.5% alcohol beers and doubles where we needed to pour the second shot in ourselves. Needless to say it took quite some time to garner an adequate buzz. The time allowed us to get to know each other. To dig deep and discover that going to movies about the Ramones & sitting through shitty short films is just much easier with alcohol. It was beautiful to find out that a pompous ass who likes Billy Wilder movies and a wildly attractive and yet rouged guy who likes Francious Truffaut movies could co-exist if they could drink together. Hell, they might even form a bond that would forge the beginning of what would become The Visual Underground.

Returning to San Diego with the west coast premiere of "The Ramones: End of the Century" documentary we hit the Ken Club, sold out and knew we had an awesome idea. People like to drink shit and do shit. We started at the Ken Club, moved to the Whistle Stop & were graduated to The Casbah.

7-8 or so years later with over 50+ shows, 3 Venues, 400+ films, 80+ bands and 60+ artists having worked with - THE VISUAL UNDERGROUND RETURNS!!!

This Friday October 29th, Gavin Allen, John-RyanShea & David Mishoulam will reunite for TVU Presents:SPOOKY VUE 6 "The Zombie Prom" at the Casbah.

We will be joined by artists:
JJ Hynes
Kelly Hutchinson (Dark Vomit)
The Infusion Project
Wendy Teague
Lindy Ivey.

Performing will be:
The Creepy Creeps &
The Lords of the New Removed Church (featuring Gary Shuffler)

The film fest continues and we surely will not disappoint - Let's just say a vampire and a menstrual cycle are part of it.

We would love to see you down there and to be part of one of San Diego's all time best Film+Rock+Art Shows (even though the beautiful and wildly talented Rosey panned one of our last shows - love you girl!).

FRIDAY - OCTOBER 29th @ The Casbah - Doors 8:30pm 21+
2501 Kettner Blvd. San Diego, CA 92101

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SAVE $2 at Door with phrase "Everybody Gets Brains"

The Night Marchers, The Creepy Creeps, The Cheap Leis @ Belly Up 7.17.08

This is my first time blogging, so I am about as nervous as a guy going up to a random girl at a bar, “How’s it going? Uh, uh, uh,…” But like that guy, I am still going to give it a shot.

It's a long post, so rather than take up the entire page, to read the whole details of the crazy night click on the "keep on reading..."

I had my plans all set for Thursday night, Team Abraham and Earlimart at the Casbah. Then around 2pm a text came through from my friend Ryan “Are you going to the Night Marchers tonight.” It totally surprised me, first off, I haven’t seen or heard from Ryan since he got married about 3 months ago. Second, he is one of those guys that is just… Awesome, but seems just as allusive as his awesomeness. So I made a quick audible and decided to meet up with Ryan and see the legendary John Reis at the Belly Up.

I made my way up to Solana Beach early and stumbled upon what seemed to be the human equivalent of a dog park for kids. The park was teeming with kids, running rampant, jumping on benches, rolling on the ground, these were suburban kids finally able to let loose. Behind all this was a singer-songwriter playing mellow beach-style music, his covers included Sublime and Neil Young. Can’t remember his name, but now I know there is a concert series called Concerts at the Cove by the Lifeguard station in Solana Beach. Being a family scene, it ended at dark and I went for food and drink.

After grabbing a few beers at Tidewater (Pizza Port was too crowded), I headed over to meet Ryan at the Belly Up. We were there early enough to catch The Cheap Lei’s, which was cool because I always wonder how San Diegans playing Hawaiian music would sound. The venue was pretty empty at that point, and the music set a good mood for people who were just getting there and talking with their friends, but I couldn’t help but think how I would love to see them at a day time outdoor show and sip on some Mai Tai’s. They also did a cool Hawaiian rendition of a RFTC song, though I don’t know the name of the song.

Next up were The Creepy Creeps and they brought it hard. All of them had on World War II motorcycle helmets and green zombie masks, and were flanked by two Go-Go dancers with large cartoon eyes on their chests and cartoon monster mouths on their chonies. It was the perfect visual compliment to their organ driven zombie rawk mayhem. Their stage presence was great, I kept thinking the coffin case keyboard would fall to the floor any second with all the rawkous playing. On top of that, there were two giant dudes in grease monkey jumpsuits and Mexican wrestler masks dancing throughout the crowd. The bassist kept the crowd entertained in between songs with banter of “this next song is a dance tune” “this song is a grinding song, you know, like you did in junior high” and finally as a guy was offering the bassist a beer, he said “no, I don’t drink, cause then I would end up sleeping with you.” I couldn’t help but really dig these guys.

Lastly, was John Reis’ band The Night Marchers. Taking the stage slimmed-down and tan, dressed in dark grey polyester pants and a vertically striped 70s shirt, he seemed like the happiest guy in the room. They came out blaring in traditional RFTC fashion, and Reis’ perfect bright-white grill seemed as though it could chomp your head off with every raspy line sung into the microphone. Reis owned his guitar and rocked some great solos that fit perfectly with the songs. In the middle of the set, with dark spots seeping through the polyester shirt, Reis described to the audience how the set was diagrammed, “High, then low, and then bringing it back up even higher to end.” This said, even the low was great, with a kind of funky, bluesy slow song that really had an amazing groove, props to the drummer, he killed it. As they brought back up the energy, the crowd responded with lots of jumping, and beer being thrown in the air, at a “divier” bar the crowd would have gone completely insane. When they ended it seemed like the set had flown by, sure enough the crowd cheered for more and got it. But Reis explained with a huge smile, “You aren’t getting more than you should, we just shortened the front half, so with the encore you are only getting the full amount, not extra. An insider tip into the music business.” They rocked out two more songs and left the stage. I couldn’t tell who had more fun that night, the crowd or Reis. It was a great show and all the bands brought something unique and awesome. And Ryan, you should hang out more.
-Dagart