waaaaaa let’s all destroy!

Man I’ve been moving houses for like 3 days! It cold sucks to move, but when I’m all cozy in my new place with like a glass of whiskey in my hand and a hound snoring at my feet, I will look back and say “It cold sucks to move.”

So what’s the haps, slap-pappies?

THIS.

Thursday night, I Was Totally Destroying It is BACK with a vengeance. What a great band. If you don’t know who they are, please stop doing that right now, and go see them. One the area’s hugest, most powerful group of sorcerors. The equally brilliant Ben Davis and the Jett$ hold down the middle with their jagged guitars and drum-tight rhthyms (I spelled that right first try, all). Art -damaged dance group Today the Moon, Tomorrow the Sun opens up. Show starts at niner.

Friday oh my god, two of the best of the best. The magnificent Spider Bags releases their new 45 on Chaz’s label, and Chaz will be there to spin records before and after the show! The equally phenomenal Dry Heathens open up, but this is basically a bill of huge headliners. Like seeing Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. They flip a coin to decide the order.

Saturday, thanks for Pistil, Scientific Superstar,  and Anna Rose Beck for jumping on the bill. Gonna be sweet. I love that Pistil song about eating brains and stuff.

OUT.

-KPH

final four!!!…days in March

Ok I’m probably not doing myself any favors right now, and I might get murdered in Chapel Hill, but you are reading the words of a pleased man right now. Why? Because March is almost over! Also, because Duke is in the Final Four! Can you feel it America. I know you can feel it.
Modern Shakespeare month is over tomorrow with some Meta stuff, as Vincent Price totally murders people in ways adapted from Shakespeare plays! Get ready for:

RATED R! Aw yeah.

Tuesday we got another open Belly Dancing night, with musical interludes provided by the classiest dudes in town, Los Nomads. They are nice gentlemen, but they will rocket your brain into the stratosphere with their drumming skills. Gonna be good.

Wednesday night sees one of my new favorite bands release their first album. Casual Curious is an amzing fucking band, all consummate 80′s synth pop layered under dreamy waves of abstract noise and electro chatter. One man garage-techno wizard Workday/Schoolnight opens up. Be there…AND be square.

-PHKPHKPKHKPHKPKHPKKHKPHKPHKPHKHKPHPKHKPHPKHKPHKPHK

NASTY!

Daaaaaaaaaaamn, what it is ‘pon this fine 85 degree day, Durham? Don’t get used to it, the weekend gonna be nasty. In so many ways. Nasty with rock, and with the singing of us, collectively, in a karaokegasm. The watchword of this blog post is “nasty”, and I use it in an incredibly positive way. The way The Stooges were Nasty. The way Prince is Completely Nasty.

THURSDAY!!! – The nastiness begins with the nastiest girls on earth, Vancouver’s The Pack A.D. These people play the music of sexy danger, with foot-stomping rhythms and that excellent sneer. SO good. They got a new album dropping in April, so check’em out before they completely explode. Raleigh’s absolutely nasty Gross Ghost opens up the show. I love Gross Ghost. If you don’t make it to the capitol that often, do not miss this shit. They rule, and they deserve many lovers in Durham.

FRIDAY!!! – The Deleted Scenes headline a stellarific bill of utter nastiness. These guys are stoned geniuses from DC, playing consummate atmosphere-scratching dreamy rock. Get there early for Lands of Wonder, Wilmington’s premiere mavens of psychedelic fantasticosity. One of NC’s best bands, easy. Lille Bronze opens the show at 10.

Nasty.

SATURDAY!!! Gonna let the image speak for me.

The last time we all got nasty with some Karaoke it was the funnest night on earth, so let’s do that shit again! Starts at 9, but by 11 hopefully everyone will be drunk and singing like beautiful, rare tropical birds.

DONE!

=PHK

quite an interesting film

UPDATE: 2 new things!

1. Don’t forget to VOTE for us at Indyweek.com. We love you, so vote. Vote for us for best Vietnamese Restaurant, Best Hair Salon, whatever, just VOTE!

2. You can sign up for weekly email updates from the Pinhook RIGHT HERE! WE LEGIT, DURHAM. Get the advance word on upcoming shows, specials, movies, dance parties, trivia jams, Wolf Nipple Foofaraws, etc.

Aw yeah it’s nice to be writin’ this thing after playing the Cat’s Cradle. Perhaps you saw my band play there tonight. We are called “The Electric Blahblah” and we opened up for some band called Deerhumper. Why anyone would be proud about their predilection toward humping innocent deer is beyond me, but they turned out to be pretty good. They ended the set with a cover of “Haven’t got room for the pain” by Carly Simon, which is weird, because that’s the same song we ended our set with! Those deer humpers stole our idea.

Enough about me and the things I saw and did tonight, let’s talk about tomorrow’s movie.

It is called Prospero’s Books, directed by the brilliant Peter Greenaway. This is a very odd and fascinating film adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and it took me like a million years to actually find a copy of it. The great John Gielgud provides voices for all the characters, and it uses motion capture, animation, and copious amounts of nudity. It rocks, and is rare, and all ya’ll should come out.

Tuesday is some awesome rock n’ roll featuring Dark Water Rising and their revivalist, soulful southernity; the nasty and jubilant horn-based ecclectic stylings of Red Pon Clock; kicking things off is Gossip Grows on Trees, the most enthusiastic group of traditional geniuses this side of The Far East (where traditional geniuses Grow on Trees.)

Wednesday is the Hip-Hop jam of a lifetime as Raleigh’s incredible Dasan Ahanu anchors some ridiculous grooves. Greensboro’s UpRite Lions headline, and The Big Chill Music kicks things off early at 9. Do not miss this, because NC has a sadly underrated hip-hop scene, and these guys deserve to be the next big thing.

Alright! Out!

-PHK

it’s time to dance, durham

Oh man, we got not one but two rockin’ dance parties a’happenin this weekend. To it, shall we? Yes, let’s all shall to it.

Thursday we got the amazing sounds of The City SkyScape, a well-mannered pop act from Boston MAAAA, bringing some nice dance floor edge. Brett Harris opens the show, and Jake Winstrom of the lovely Tenderhooks holds down the middle. Please donate affectionately!

The dancing kicks off Friday with an eclectic dance party hosted by our very own DJ Dude Femme, of Durham! Will there be line dancing? Maybe. It’s a benefit show for CHOICE USA so dig deep y’all. The gorgeous Mary Johnson Rockers opens the party off with a live set at 10 oclock.

Saturday is a damn Cops + Robbers Dance party, also a benefit to send students to the Hague to work in humanitarian law. Cool crowd, ya’ll. It’s gonna be hypno-bananas.

OUT,

PHK

OMG more trivia

Yo all, the last Trivia night was fun on a bun, and this one is going to be even better! Because I know what I’m doing now! There needs to be tie-breaking questions, because there are probably going to be at least two teams who know everything about music, ever. My new goal in life is to STUMP those people, thus proving my own magnificence!

As usual, the deal is, if your team wins a round, your team wins a pitcher of beer. No questions asked. Just…here is the beer. Yet again, the team that wins the whole thing gets to pick several DVDs each from my gian box of DVDs. I need to stress that these DVDs are not crappy movies like Underworld and Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans. These are solid things like whole seasons of Mr. Show, David Cronenburg movies that are too scary for me, and myriad other fine entertainments that I don’t have room for in my life anymore. Word up!

Trivia starts at 9! Maximum 5 people per team! Do it!

Tomorrow night SHAKESPEARE MONTH continues with Baz Lurhman’s Romeo + Juliet, the movie that caused a million teenage boys to despair when they realized that they would never, ever have sex with Claire Danes. It’s easy to have sex with Leo, but Claire Danes? That shit is untouchable. Check it out!

Wednesday is St. Patrick’s Day, but we’re not an Irish bar, so we call it St. ROCK’s Day. The lineup is thus.

Sleep Bellum Sono – Poised, accomplished post-punk with a kind of dignified air. Quite and impressive band.

The Antibubbles – Brand new Raleigh rockers. Is cutecore a genre? If it is, these guys are not it.

Rapid Cities – Dense, droning, magma-thick rock that hits like artillery. Listening to them now. Am Excited.

Love,

PIHHK

it’s votin’ time

Wassup m’ droogs? Y’all excited about the warm weather? I told you it was coming, and I was right.

Jumpin into this…

Thursday is gonna be the shit guys, as two great bands from the frozen north grace our glorious stage with their glorious selves. Opening the show is The David Wax Museum, this totally hot folk group from Boston. They’ve played here before, but that was before their stock kind of went through the roof like a faulty water-heater.

The main attraction is our buddy The Daredevil Christopher Wright, from Eau Claire, WI (the home of Megafaun and Bon Iver). DCW kills you softly with gorgeous, chiming folk-pop with a slightly spooky edge.

Friday is a Ricky and Joe Dance Party! You know how those can be (they can be awesome). The theme this month is Kings and Queens, which could, uh, mean a lot of things. If I were to go as my favorite King it would definitely be Leonidas of Sparta. If I were to go as my favorite Queen it would be either Elizabeth the First or Freddie Mercury. ZING! Because he was in that band, get it?

Friday begins with the angry guitar pyrotechnics of Speed Governor, continues with a set of laconic psychedelia by Chapel Hill’s righteous Embarassing Fruits, and ends with the fist-pumping acousticality of Red Collar vocalist/guitarist Jason Kutchma! It’s gonna be so good I can’t wait except this particular dude is gonna be out of town. If you run into Joe Norkus from Embarassing Fruits, you can tell him that they rocked. Even if they haven’t played yet, you will still be saying a truth.

Guess what time o’ year it be? It’s time to vote on all your favorite stuff in the Independant Best of the Triangle Poll! The Pinhook’s gonna be up for best local bar in Durham country, best place to see Rock n Roll, Best Bartender (vote for Zack), and best place to Chill.

Go here to vote y’all. http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/page?oid=411491

Love,

Us (and Me)

rock block

Yo all. The sun is in my damn bones at the moment, after a long hard day of brunchin’ with Chef Shirle and then chillin in the solar rays on top of some buildings. It ain’t a rough life, so much. Not when life is Durham and the temperature is not 17 billion degrees south of zero. Ya’ heard. 17 billion below.

Anyway, y’all ever seen Scotland PA? It is MacBeth, but it takes place in 1970′s Pennsylvania, in a fast food restaurant. with a soundtrack that is mostly Bad Company. It is the next Film in our March series of Modern Shakespeare Adaptations. Why March? Julius Caesar was killed on the Ides of March. Shakespeare wrote a play about Julius Caesar. To my knowledge, there is not modern adaptation of that play in the form of a film. So we did this for no reason, except that we are awesome and can do whatever we want because life is short and needs to be lived.

Yes, I have had drinks at this point.

POSTER IN YR FACE!

Look at that carrot-mouthed madman. This movie is incredibly great, and I have seen it 25 times, which means that I can actually tend bar tomorrow and not worry about missing the movie. BE THERE.

Tuesday, unfortunately The Slow Death had to cancel their tour, so that shit is off. But come anyway for some old-school bar chillin’! Free Pool Till 8, y’all. Also, I just wanna rep Tuesday’s special for a second. It’s called the SS Pinhook, and what you get is a shot of Evan Williams bourbon and a muh-fuh’n Schlitz! You can do this. You can have this. The world is yrs.

Wednesday, there be crazy shit on this Wednesday. It’s a Wednesday of the ages, and I’ma gonna let my man K. Rumble tell you about it.

Wolf Nipple Foofaraw, an acoustic group musical happening
All welcome — BYOA: Bring your own acoustic
We’ll play acoustic songs from the folk, country, blues, bluegrass traditions, new and old, instrumentals and sing-alongs, bring a song and a friend to share. All skill levels welcome — all acoustic instruments welcome.
8 pm till ….

Contact Ken @ rumblek (at) gmail.com for questions

THAT’S RIGHT THIS JAM IS CALLED THE WOLF NIPPLE FOOFARAW! HAHAAAA THAT MAKES ME A HAPPY MAN.

Out.

-Wolf Nippler

just so much rock to which to rock

Jumping right in here, because the next three days sees some explosivity.

THURSDAY! – Alcazar Hotel, Graveyard Fields, and Come Hell or High Water – This is going to be unavoidable for people who dig on the countrier side of things. Winestained, heartbroken ballads to offtherails foot stompers from two of the area’s best, plus an opening set by relative newcomers Come Hell of Highwater that IS NOT TO BE MISSED. SERIOUSLY GET HERE AT LIKE 8:45 because these guys are awesome.

FRIDAY! – North Elementary and Aminal team up to deliver some of the most heady, catchy rock music around. Both these bands are currently at the tipp-top K2 Annapurna of their respective games. DC riffsmiths Caustic Casanova open up at 10:pm

SATURDAY! – More of that sweet acoustic stuff, as national Americana Heartthrob Austin Lucas headlines after Mary Johnson Rockers and our own Django Haskins opens things up.

HIT’EM WHERE IT HURTS.

-The Pinhook

oh god it’s terror pigeon! nooooooo!

YES! There is no escaping the Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt, who will be shaking the floor here on Wednesday night. These guys are like a traveling freak/medicine show from New York who just generally spread good vibes and total weirdness all over the land. They wear stuffed animals instead of clothes. They eat rainbows instead of food, but sometimes they bake cookies and cup cakes for their audiences. I really can’t describe them that well, but here, you can read about them in THE NEW YORK FUCKING TIMES. Also, they are on David Byrne’s label. What?

Scorched, soulful fuzzy guys The Shakes play at 10, and Mad Happy brings the electro up from Florida at 9. Make it here!

Movie nights continue to rock on with a month of Shakespeare Adaptations. Tomorrow night, Henry the IV is retold as the story of two young male prostitutes in My Own Private Idaho. Yippeee! See the Kean and the Phoen, in some Gus Van Sant shit.

An Tuesday is another non-shitty Open Mic night, hosted by the electric-oud playing maniac, our buddy Jonathan Thompson.

Alright!

-P