A bass guitar provides the beats. An electric guitar provides the lightning. Drums lay down the thunder. All three brought together by a smokin’ band of ladies and you got some dangerous, killer rock and roll.
Welcome to the Green Lady Killers hailing from Phoenix, Arizona who play exactly what they want, when they want to. These rockers are chock full of nasty garage punk riffs and tight metal grooves.
The Phoenix trio did not forget that a good band has to have solid vocals and lyrics to bring the whole thing together, and this is crystal clear as you listen to their ass-kicking songs.
The Green Lady Killers’ Just Fine, is an album you need to include in your arsenal of down and dirty rock and roll. Park it right beside your late 1970’s live Zeppelin and don’t forget about it. This powerhouse trio of rock is going to slap you silly and leave you wanting more.
Songs in this podcast: (White Stripes Intro: Jimmy the Exploder) Green Lady Killers: Dance Floor, Linger On, Power, Another Place, My 45. (Ends with Primitives: Buzz, Buzz, Buzz.)
Look up in the sky on the next sunny day. Do you see that big huge yellow ball that is stinging your eyes unless you have a nice pair of shades on. It’s hard to miss. It’s sitting right there amongst those clouds in the big blue sky.
With a little technological lovin’, a dash of genius and some good ol’ fashioned hard work, we might just have the planets energy solution sitting right in front of our faces. Sunpower has been slapping on the sunscreen knowing full well about this practical alternative energy resource since the 1970’s when rock and roll was dirty and sweaty.
Today, Sunpower is one of the global leaders in developing high-efficiency solar solutions for homes, businesses, commercial building and utilities. Sunpower is in a position to be a major force in the alternative energy revolution.
Music Go Music is little theatrical, a bit comical, but definitely funky and cosmically dialed into their 60’s style vibe. You can’t help but smile when you hear this band. You will definitely want to let your hair down and cut loose.
Infusing catchy pop with metal, psychedelia, disco and dirty rock and roll this is a band whose style is the very definition of whatever retro means. They even look cool and put out neat music videos. They are a visual delight.
How could you not want to go see a band like this? These LA based California hipsters are heading out to London soon to play some shows including a set at the Next Big Thing Festival. Check em’ out! You can buy their Just Me Single by clicking here.
Ecovative Design Founders. Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre
Ecovative is a Green Island, NY based environmental company whose passion for sustainable products has led them to the creation of environmentally responsible insulation that works.
Greensulate, according to Ecovative Designs, “is the worlds first sustainable rigid board insulation. If you’re looking for an affordable and environmentally responsible rigid board insulation, for your roof, structural panels, or walls, Greensulate is the best choice.”
This is some very cool stuff here that Ecovative has going on. Greensulate is literally grown. It is a natural process that uses a growing organism to transform agricultural byproducts, like cotton seed hulls and buck wheat hulls, into energy-efficient insulation.
Ecovative used a similar process successfully with their natural packaging they refer to as EcoCradle. This compostable, environmentally friendly packaging uses mushroom roots to bond the packaging into any shape.
Ecovative Design LLC was founded in 2007 by two RPI graduates Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre.
This weeks Soundcentury podcast features a collection of bands who have gathered within the respected collective, Village Produce.
Village Produce represents a growing coalition of independent artists banding together under one roof to better support their careers in music. According to Village Produce, “it is a place where we listen, love, share and celebrate independent music.”
New England is a breeding ground for some of the most talented bands in the world, and Village Produce represents a core group of the influential cats who have been rockin’ the northeast and beyond for many years now.
I was lucky enough to see all of these bands many, many times over the years in New England and I look foreword to catching a few shows soon. Make sure to stay tuned to Village Produce to stay in the loop of what with what these talented musicians are up to.
The Chills Make it to my Sidelines category. Another band I hope comes back around. I really like what the folks over at LaLa are up to, and as I was cruising around checking out some of my favorite tunes, I remembered the New Zealand band, The Chills. Ahh…What cool memories connected to this band. Most notably, the tune “Heavenly Pop Hit.” It is such a cool song, and although I am certain nearly everyone of my readers is more than familiar with the tune, I just thought I would throw it out there. I know I have not heard it in a while. I wonder what these guys are up to these days? I did find this Chills fan site, which seems to be doing a nice job cataloging their career. Here is a cool music video of the Chills back in the day. If you dig this song, make sure to look into some of their other work over the years. A lot of great bands branched off from the Chills including The Clean, Toy Love, Sneaky Feelings, The Heavy Eights, Luna and The Verlaines.
The United States Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Steven Chu recently announced that more than $20.5 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be allocated to five major projects.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act supports deployment of community-based renewable energy projects, such as biomass, wind and solar installations. The idea behind these projects is that not only will they create jobs, but will also provide the foundation for long-term renewable energy infrastructure.
Hopefully, other communities will keep a close eye on these projects and begin to look into starting their own local projects. “These projects will help us cut carbon pollution at the local level,” said Secretary Chu.
The clean energy revolution must begin at the local level, with local communities spearheading projects and thinking out of the box. The five selected sites geographically represent the United States well.
According to the United States Department of Energy website the five projects include:
City of Montpelier (Montpelier, Vermont) This project will further Montpelier’s energy goals by supporting installation of a 41 MMBtu combined heat and power (CHP) district energy system fueled with locally-sourced renewable and sustainably-harvested wood chips. The CHP system will be sized to provide heating to the Vermont Capitol Complex, city owned schools, the City Hall Complex, and up to 156 buildings in the community’s designated downtown district for a total of 176 buildings and 1.8 million square feet served. By providing 1.8 million KWh of power to the grid, the system will maximize its operating efficiency and reduce thermal costs for users in the community. Montpelier will conduct outreach to encourage replication regionally and nationally through its project partners, the Biomass Energy Resource Center, the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation, and Veolia Energy North America. DOE share: $8,000,000.
Forest County Potawatomi Tribe (Forest County, Wisconsin) The Forest County Potawatomi Tribe proposes to implement an integrated renewable energy deployment plan that will provide heating, cooling, and electricity for the Tribe’s governmental buildings, displacing natural gas and propane. The renewable energy installations will include: a 1.25 MW biomass combined heat and power facility that will provide heating, cooling, and electricity; a biogas digester and 150 kW generation facility; three 100 kW wind turbines (788,400 kWh/year); and three dual-axis 2.88 kW solar PV panels (14,000 kWh/yr) located at the Tribe’s Governmental Center. DOE share: $2,500,000.
Phillips County (Holyoke, Colorado) This project proposes a community-owned 30 MW wind energy project with an ultimate goal to build a 650MW wind farm within Sedgwick, Phillips, and Logan counties in Northeastern Colorado. This project will impact the local economy by sharing the project’s revenues with local landowners and other project participants, by generating local jobs, substantial property taxes, and providing clean renewable energy for the area’s primary communities. Plans for sharing this ownership model are part of the business plan and will be coordinated with DOE to increase national delivery of the message. DOE share: $2,500,000.
Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) (Sacramento, California)
SMUD will install the state’s first-ever “Solar Highway,” which will feature three PV system installations on 2 miles of highway right-of-ways (300kW of concentrating PV, and 400 and 800 kW of flat plate PV distributed at 2 sites), with total capacity of 1.5 MW. SMUD will also install a full scale co-digestion process of fats, oil, and grease (FOG) and liquid food processing waste with sewage to produce biogas with estimated power recovery of 1-3 MW, and install two low-NOx anaerobic digesters fed by two dairy facilities that will produce 500 kW of combined heat and power and generate 600 kW of electricity through a molten carbonate fuel cell. The projects will demonstrate that solar PV and anaerobic digesters can be readily implemented through collaborative partnerships, and avoid siting issues and transmission constraints that pose barriers to renewable energy capacity additions. SMUD will partner with the State of California (CEC, CalTrans, and CARB) and DOE to promote replication of their approaches, technologies, and implementation strategies statewide and nationally. DOE share: $5,000,000.
University of California at Davis (Davis, California)
UC Davis’ proposed Waste-to-Renewable Energy (WTRE) system is one component of a campus oriented mixed housing and commercial development venture. The system would generate power from a renewable biogas fed fuel cell. The organic waste will enter a receiving station in which it can be collected and prepared for digestion. Once the appropriate mix has been created in buffer tanks, the waste will flow to the reactor where methanogenic bacteria will generate methane and carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, etc. These gases will flow to the Bio-methane Upgrade System for hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide removal, so that cleanup is to a level appropriate for use in a fuel cell system, and the cleaned gas is stored. Housed alongside the WTRE system within the Community Energy Park will be an advanced storage battery and a 300kW fuel cell that will be fueled by the on-site biogas and provides electric power to West Village end-users. DOE share: $2,500,000.
Soundcentury recently uncovered these rockers based out of Coventry, England. The band sent me this write-up and a first track fresh out of the studio. They are currently recording an album as I write this. This is rock and roll. Stay tuned to an upcoming podcast featuring lot’s more from Charles Dexter Ward & The Imagineers!
“Charles Dexter Ward & The Imagineers howl murderous blue tales and scream deep blue shanties about fighting ghosts, hunting witches, urchins and opium, while a wave of psychedelic fuzz washes over you as it passes through the souls of a thousand dead pirates. Charles Dexter Ward & The Imagineers sound like the bastard sons of Tom Waits wrestling with Led Zeppelin high on absinthe sailing on the high seas with only a broken pocket watch for direction.
Led by the screams of Az Malin and the searing lead guitar of Chris Harper all bound together by the thunderous rhythm section of Leigh Urquhart and Ben Mochrie.”
Richard James Band. Graphic by Soundcentury. Concert Posters by Maria Dichiappari
The other night I was sitting eating some Maine born and bred clams and one them slipped on some butter, flew off my plate and glided onto the floor. As it hit the ground, it began to spin around and around. The clam was dancing to some kind of funky beat. I began to think about the beats and sounds it was boogieing down to. This clam had style. This clam was slick, nearly busting out of its shell much like the sleek and funky eight-piece collective, Richard James Band.
This instrumental powerhouse infuses charging rhythms and harmonious vocals to create an infectious, danceable sound that will be certain to continue packing music venues for many days to come.
Their debut album “Along the Way” traverses an eclectic range of styles and genres. It’s stuffed with funk, psychedelic tendencies and eccentric lyrics. It’s groovy, slightly stoney and full of catchy progressive pop-rock.
This New England rock band, based out of Boston, Massachusetts, is a band not to be missed. Stay tuned to what they are up to on their myspace page. Their debut album is currently available on I-Tunes and is being sold in Bull Moose Records and Newbury Comics.
UPCOMING RICHARD JAMES BAND TOUR DATES: Jan 29 2010THE PARADISE ROCK CLUBBoston, Massachusetts
Throughout the Copenhagen climate conference there remained hope that some type of universal agreement was going to be met in order to help slow down global warming.
It’s been over a month now since the final day’s of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, an event hailed as a turning point in global warming, but an event which ended without any concrete legislation in place to curb global warming. Despite the scientific facts on the table and their consequences if no action were to be taken, Copenhagen was unable to get past arguments over who is to blame the most for adding gasoline to the fire.
In other words, the world’s biggest polluters walked away with big, fat, greedy smiles on their faces knowing that their battle against the success of this summit was won. Their companies could remain doing exactly what they have been doing with no regard for the scientifically proven long-term effects their practices are causing to our planet.
Or did they win? After exploring several sides of the issue, it appears that the very failure of this climate summit could shine a light on the fact that curbing pollution to lesser levels is not the issue. We could fight this battle against big, stubborn polluters for many years to come and end up exactly in the same place we were when we walked out of Copenhagen.
The solution to this mess can be found in alternative energies that will replace the need for the big polluters. Alternative energies will not only curb emissions, they will nearly eliminate emissions. So, the issue, as far as I can see it, is focusing 100% on creating the best possible alternative energies right now that can be affordable and available to the masses.
Once the big polluters see that there is momentum and profit in the alternative energy sector, they will move faster than they have in decades. So perhaps, Copenhagen was just a reminder that our solutions don’t rest under the nose of the media in glorified summits, but rather through decisive action that will really end the problem, and not simply minimize it.
