In other words, side- or-post projects of Creed and Days of the New and the  band that sings “She Hates Me.” I promise I’m not making this up.

Recap of the pop music recap:

May 31: The Wailers, Saunter, Pete & J, Jive Mother Mary
June 14: Cravin Melon, Pete Francis (Dispatch)
June 28: Carbon Leaf, Colourslide, Bill West & the Sunshine Kids
July 12: Alter Bridge, Tantric, The T’s, Cori Yarkin, Kennebec
July 26: Old 97s, Balsa Gliders, Richard Bacchus & Luckiest Girls
August 9: Bad Company’s Brian Howe (featuring a Bad Company Greatest Hits Show!), Jim Bianco
August 23: Puddle of Mudd, Eve 6, Saving Abel

Art stunts!

Les Savy Fav was all set to close out Troika in November, but the Brooklyn band, which includes Durham resident Harrison Haynes, had to cancel its Duke Coffeehouse gig at the last minute. Never fear: Les Savy Fav will play Nasher Museum of Art at 8 p.m. on July 12, the eve of Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool’s close at Nasher. Tickets are $5-$10 and can be purchased here.

Lots of good shows around the Triangle last week and weekend, but I haven’t been able to post much in the way of reviews due to a busy end to my semester. Check below for some brief recaps as well as videos (many of the videos we’ve uploaded to Scan’s YouTube channel are now available in high quality).

Third Eye Blind/The Roots @ Duke’s Last Day of Classes (04.23)
Duke’s annual Last Day of Classes event coincided with my last day of student teaching, and fortunately the rain subsided so the celebration could go on as planned. The Roots were a more than adequate replacement for the originally scheduled opener Lupe Fiasco, whose opening spot on Kanye West’s Glow In The Dark Tour interfered with the already booked LDOC show. Giving extended solos to guitarist “Captain” Kirk Douglas, new bass player Owen Biddle (who held his own in the wake of longtime bassist Hub’s departure), Tuba Gooding, Jr., and pretty much everyone else not named ?love, The Roots crew stretched their legs several times over the course of an hour-long set of hip-hop jams, including the classic Do You Want More???! cut “Mellow My Man.” The already tipsy crowd didn’t get fully into the set until a late run through of hit “The Seed (2.0).”

The crowd was much rowdier when Third Eye Blind started soon after. It was interesting to see frontman Stephan Jenkins, ever the drama queen, follow a set by such a showy live band. Their set wasn’t going to win over any undecideds in the crowd, but who in this college crowd hadn’t heard “Semi-Charmed Life” a decade ago? They stuck mostly to energetic versions of the singles and album favorites, along with a couple tracks from the long-awaited fourth album that Jenkins claimed would be finished after the current tour. Don’t hold your breath, especially considering the quality of the unfortunately titled “Non-Dairy Creamer.” I’ll go ahead and apologize for being part of an audience that Jenkins facetiously claimed inspired the new material.

Red Collar/Hammer No More The Fingers @ NCSU’s Smells Like Green Spirit (04.25)
Unlike the Duke show, this event (on State’s last day of classes) was sparsely attended, due in large part to the traditional Hillsborough Hike falling on the same night. Unfortunate, as Hammer No More The Fingers were on top of their game, blasting out their danceable, buzz-worthy post-punk to everyone within earshot. Here’s video of a couple that lead up to the closer O.R.G.Y.

Red Collar followed with an intense set that drew the crowd ever closer, until “Used Guitars” had several extras on the makeshift stage, including WKNC Local Music Director/DJ Stevo joining in on vocals. This particularly blistering performance, featuring Evan Rowe of Maple Stave on a second drum kit, shows why Red Collar keep moving up my list of favorite local bands to see.

Get in your car now.

Sorry we’ve been tardy in tipping you to the new location for Earth’s show, but it’s tonight (Saturday, May 3) at 10 p.m. at Katmandu (the old Comet Lounge) with In the Year of the Pig. Tickets are $10. I’ll be there. Super-excited. Below, what we would have said in this week’s paper about Earth:

05.03 EARTH @ DOWNTOWN EVENT CENTER KATMANDU
The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull, the sixth studio album from Seattle band Earth, is one of the year’s best records and one of the best re-renderings of blues music one can fancy: Earth started as a drone metal band, letting glacial sheets of highly amplified guitar hum charge the air and braze the ear drums. Epic, innovative and proudly stubborn, Earth gave doom metal something from which to build and, to this day, aspire. After a nine year break, Earth returned in 2005, still moving slowly but substituting those magnificent monoliths for subdued, singular blues guitar lines, cutting through haze and floating sound up into arid revelry. Three years later—thanks to magnificent organ and piano additions and a rhythm section that’s heavy, quiet and graceful—architect Dylan Carlson has turned the pure sound into a purely brilliant band. Do yourself this favor. With the face-breaking In the Year of the Pig. 10 p.m. —Grayson Currin

No Depression, subitled The Alternative Country Quarterly, hit some record stores and maybe even a newstand or two in the fall of ‘95. Sharing its name with the front half of a Carter Family song, Uncle Tupelo’s debut album, and an American Online music forum, it documented a style of music that at the time had almost as many names as it did practitioners as listed in that first issue: Americana, Western Beat, Twangcore, Countrypolitan, Insurgent Country, Outlaw Country, Cowpunk and Grange Rock. Another way you could put it is that the magazine deemed to cover music a) that had some kind of country component or influence b) that you wouldn’t hear on commercial country stations.

The covers of the first three issues featured Son Volt (led by Uncle Tupelo cofounder Jay Farrar), Mississippi roots rockers Blue Mountain, and Steve Earle, respectively, and a run through Son Volt’s “Windfall,” Blue Mountain’s “Blue Canoe,” and Earle’s “Hard-Core Troubadour” could pass for a mission statement for the fledgling magazine. All in all, for those of us who worshipped at the altar of the Bottle Rockets and Gear Daddies and figured we were one of maybe a dozen listening to that brand of country-rock, the mag’s appearance showed that there were, well, maybe a dozen or so others of us out there.

If No Depression has a Mount Rushmore, it’s Earle, Dave Alvin, three-time cover subject Lucinda Williams, and Alejandro Escovedo (eventually named Artist of the Decade by the magazine). And, in a way, he was the prototypical No Depression artist, a reformed punk rocker turned rootsward under the influence of Hank, Gram, Merle, and/or Buck. That’s the path taken by Kenny Roby, Ryan Adams, and Chip Robinson, Triangle band leaders whose outfits earned feature articles. Six String Drag, Whiskeytown and the Backsliders were just three of many North Carolina acts given the feature treatment over the years, joined by Tift Merritt, Dexter Romweber, the Avett Brothers, Jolene, Tres Chicas, Thad Cockrell, Malcolm Holcombe and others.

And there’s always been another special connection between the magazine and the Triangle area; coeditor (along with Grant Alden) Peter Blackstock has twice lived in the area during No Depression’s run: an early stint in Durham, with a recent move to Mebane bringing him back to the region. And it was a much-quoted (by me anyway) Blackstock passges from his review of Jolene’s full-length debut Hell’s Half Acre that truly cemented North Carolina’s alt-country identity: “Several months and three issues into the existence of this magazine, it’s becoming fairly clear to me that if indeed the No Depression community has a home base at the moment—a geographic region that seems unusually rich in alternative-country acts, in terms of both quantity and quality—it’s North Carolina.”

Issue number 75 of No Depression is just out (with Buddy Miller on the cover, whose visage would be a proper addition should that ND Mount Rushmore ever expand), and it is the last. The publication has announced that it’s closing up shop, at least its print shop (its Web presence is set to endure, and even grow). A letter in the “Hello Stranger” foreward section of the March-April issue carried the announcement, citing the decline in advertising revenue as well as more high-level issues such as the continued fall of the music industry.

The demise of No Depression hits me hard as both a reader and a contributor. On top of a bookshelf that houses my box sets and books about music are two piles containing every issue of No Depression. It goes without saying that the magazine cost me more money than any other. Not in subscription fees (as a contributor, I received a complimentary copy), but in terms of the five or so CDs I’d inevitably buy after reading about them in the latest pages. And I’m truly proud to be able to say that I had at least one byline in every issue from #3 onward, a streak of 73 issues. Take that, Joe DiMaggio. And thanks, No Depression, for giving me an alt-country identity. Thanks a lot.