When we said last week that the Immigration and Naturalization Services department had asked Floor 13 frontman Winston Giles to leave the country, that wasn't entirely true. Yes, Giles' two-year work permit did expire at the beginning of this month, but Giles returned to his native Australia before the deadline passed, without any coercion from government officials or a last-minute green card marriage. Giles will return to the States as soon as another permit can be secured, says former Tomorrowpeople manager Shawn Edwardes, who's working on the paperwork now from his new home in Los Angeles. Oh well. The point is, Giles is still in Australia and Floor 13 is still broken up...
As we mentioned before, The Meat Helmets are also going their separate ways. The band plays its last Dallas show Saturday at Bar of Soap, the first stop on an area farewell tour that includes performances at The Wreck Room in Fort Worth on October 1 and the Good/Bad Art Collective on October 9. The Good/Bad Art Collective gig will also serve as the going-away party for Meat Helmets bassists Angelique Congleton and Harry Warwick, who are moving to Chicago and New York, respectively. In other Good/Bad news, the collective will hold a benefit for itself on September 17 at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios, featuring performances by Cornhole, The Golden Vipers, (Jon "Corn Mo" Cunningham and John Freeman's latest band), Mulched Lozenge, The Socially Retarded, and DU.O, which features former Banes guitarist and Rubber Gloves soundman Deron Pulley...
Bedwetter drummer and Deathray Davies bassist Jason Garner is moving back to San Antonio, effectively bringing an end to Bedwetter after months of speculation. (Well, I had been wondering at least. Maybe I was the only one.) Bedwetter hadn't performed in quite a while, as singer-guitarist John Dufilho concentrated more on writing new songs for The Deathray Davies and playing drums for Legendary Crystal Chandelier and The Hundred Inevitables, among his other various projects. The Deathray Davies, meanwhile, will carry on without Garner; look for his replacement sometime in October, after Garner takes off...
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to Trees: Pimpadelic celebrates the release of its new album, Southern Devils, at the club on Friday and Saturday. The pair of gigs will also be the band's first shows as Tommy Boy Records recording artists; Pimpadelic made it official on September 4. The label -- home to albums by bands such as De La Soul, Digital Underground, Coolio, and more recently, Everlast -- will re-release Southern Devils later this year, after adding a few new songs and remixing and remastering the rest of the disc. (And the nation waits with bated breath...) Can't say that we care much for the group's "music," but hey, that many people couldn't be wrong. Wait, they probably could. Never mind...
For those of you wondering whatever became of Rachael Strauss, the former Pervis vocalist has released a four-song EP with her new band, uzigato. Well, the group -- which also features ex-rubber bullet guitarist Richard Paul, bassist Richard Garcia, and drummer Joey Salerno -- is not exactly new, having formed late last year, and gigging sporadically around town, mainly at Bar of Soap, since then. Uzigato will perform on October 16 at Bar of Soap, but the disc is in some of the finer local record stores (read: CD World) now...
Best sign that the kids are back in school: When Washington, D.C.-based Bluetip played at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios on September 1 with Arlington's Red Animal War, not counting the members of both bands and their girlfriends, only one person showed up. Maybe that's not much of an excuse, since it was an early show, and over before 10 p.m. (Well, it would have been if Bluetip had actually played.) Whatever the reason, no one has an excuse to miss Red Animal War's free in-store set at CDX in Hurst on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. OK, except for the fact that it's in Hurst.
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