Good bands: The Grates; Bell

Gye Greene and I saw a really good local band play, yesterday. By accident. They were playing in a park, and we were passing by. They were good, so we stopped. Ended up staying for the whole thing!

They're "The Grates" -- "grates" like "big metal grilles", not like "spiffy, nifty, most excellent." (Not "The Oh-Needers," either.) Website at: http://www.thegrates.com/

And -- they ARE pretty great! ;)


In this Age of the Internet, I think it's un-strategic for bands to have non- web searchable names -- names that don't yield a positive hit. Like "The Cars" or "The Strokes" -- hard to find.

It's better to have common words that are misspelled (e.g. "Korn"), or uniquely unusual combinations (e.g. "They Might Be Giants"). I'm just saying...


A good example of that is one of my all-time favorite bands, "Bell." From Seattle; they're the DICKENS to web search! Keep getting "Bell Labs," "Bell Helicopters," "Taco Bell"... Even after adding "music" to the search field, you get hits for musical bells. Adding "Vanessa" (the name of the songwriter/guitarist/singer) gives you "Vanessa Bell" -- some British painter.

Try "vanessa veselka" plus maybe "bell." This is the first hit I got:

http://www.musicscene.com/msi/bands/bel/vanessa.html

Note the click-able songs down the right side. I'm pretty sure they're all from their album "A Clear Sense of Beauty" -- one of my all-time faves.

Sadly -- as seems to be the case with any non-famous band I really like -- instead of finding fame and fortune, the band dis-banded [an oxymoron?]. Bummer.

Check half.com, or similar, to see if you can pick up one of their albums. I recommend "A Clear Sense of Beauty." "Perfect Math" has good songs, too.