MAKING MERRY: Lazy Magnet’s Harris. |
Ten years of doing anything these days has to be considered an unmitigated success. But when you spend those 10 years navigating the roiling waters of a local music scene, any local music scene, well, you know you have Buddha on your side. Corleone Records started on a wing and a prayer a decade ago, hoping to call attention to Providence’s incredible underground. Since then, they’ve released music by Alec K. Redfearn, Tiny Hawks, Get Killed, Landed, and the Body, acts that have helped define the Providence underground as a mecca of demented decibels and the seriously deranged.
This is, of course, a good thing. Reaching way back to the late ’80s and early ’90s, and the dawn of indie rock — before that, you’ll recall it was referred to as “college rock” — Providence has supplied the national underground with a bevy of masked marauders and savant musical savages. As one of our city’s recorded music curators, Corleone has done its part to ensure that reputation never fades.
This week, Corleone celebrates 10 years in the record business with a festival-like, all-day affair at AS220 featuring more than a dozen of its artists, beginning at 2 pm with WORK/DEATH and closing with sets by LORNA DOOM and THE BODY. One of the acts on the bill is LAZY MAGNET, Jeremy Harris’s unorthodox and colorful one-man show/turned wild-eyed collective. Harris and Lazy Magnet just released its debut for Corleone, a disc whose title is too long to print here. Look for it at the show along with recent discs by TINY HAWKS, FRED THOMAS, and Lorna Doom.
The show, tagged “Ten Years In the Hole,” also commemorates the release of the label’s first DVD, 10 Years: Everything I Own Is Broken or Bent. Pick up a copy if you’re interested in owning a sliver of the maniacal memories of the city’s music makers in flagrante delicto. The DVD makes for some astonishing viewing, with everything from animated videos to homespun gig footage. Some of this stuff challenges your tolerance, some of it is mesmerizing — all of it is captivating. If you need examples, the video of FANG ISLAND playing in an elementary school classroom is hysterical as the wee kids dance wildly. (The teacher asks the class, “Can you spell ‘fang?’ ”) But the defining moment on the entire video is Landed’s raving blast of distortion. The trio’ is filmed at a basement show in stark black-and-white, and the “song” is an eruption of white noise, the sound of a band receiving a third-rail shock, and, coursing with electricity, touching the audience. Devastating, and a crystallization of all the great things the Providence underground represents.
Mahi Mahi + Lorna Doom + Tiny Hawks + Bonedust + Night Wounds + Work/Death + Lazy Magnet + Jacob Berendes + Fang Island + Fred Thomas + Vvltvre + Get Killed + Barnacled + Alec K. Redfearn & The Eyesores + The Body + Uke Of Spaces Corners County + Pines Of Rome + More | October 20 | AS220, 115 Empire St, Providence | 2 pm | $8 | 401.831.9327 | as220.org
