Welcome to Ve!

This is the start of a glorious future in music blogging, I’m sure. Ve is a collaboration blog of music aficionados with a variety of tastes and backgrounds. The hope is to generate a small network for those of us who just love spending our free time checking out band, after band, after rapper, after pianist.

One feature of this blog that I’m particularly excited about is the Weekly Theme Day, which will be every Sunday except this one from here on out. On this day, a pre-chosen theme of music will be chosen, be it a genre, an era, a location, whatever really. Then, Ve writers will come up with an attempt at a comprehensive list of bands that fulfill this theme, and post links to YouTube videos of said bands. This way, a reader can get a crash course in the theme just by making a YouTube playlist. Fun!

I’m going to kick off this blog by posting albums by since broken up bands from the 530 area code (that’s most of California north of Sacramento) each day for the next ten days. That’s free albums people!

(Oh, and if you’re in the band and don’t want me sharing your music, just say so and I’ll gladly take it down)

Let’s start this off with a bang. Smeat was a band that had broken up before I ever got a chance to see them, so what I know about the band I gathered from stories. Undoubtedly, Smeat was one of those bands that were utterly unique in their style and approach to music. The band was fronted by Steve Worthless, an avid Japanophile with a strong interest in creating a wall of noise with his abundant effects pedals. His brother, J-Town, would often be too high at live shows to do much besides noodle his guitar. The trio was rounded out by Danimal, who was known for his infrequent use of clothes. Stories suggest that Smeat’s live performances were endearingly terrible and chaotic, which is a far cry from what you’ll hear on their final release, One More Time With Feeling. The album is spastic, but at the same time, tight and solid. Equal parts drunk punk and compelling artcore, this is the sort of album you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else.

Download link here.