On Location: MySpace.com

For this week's installment of "On Location," I've traipsed all the way to www.myspace.com to check in on the music pages of Westbrook-based bands and musicians.

The Good:
Black Rose
Westbrook City Clerk Lynda Adams is unashamedly bitchy. Or at least that's how describes herself when her band, Black Rose, covers Meredith Brooks's "I'm a Bitch." Black Rose also does a mean cover of AC/DC's "TNT" (though I don't think that's Adams grunting in the first :23), Heart's "Barracuda" (no word yet on whether the Wilson sisters have sent a cease-and-desist letter to this Republican* woman), the Guns 'N Roses' "Mr. Brownstone," and Melissa Etheridge's "Bring Me Some Water."

G-Cote the Mastermind
A former classmate of mine, G-Cote the Mastermind (or as he prefers it, "The Future aka The Mastermind aka G-Cote") has come a long way since we rapped together about the Fourth Amendment (set to the rhythm and sounds of Warren G's "Regulate," if my memory serves correctly) for a project in eighth grade. And yes, that was as pathetic (or funny) as it sounds.

Future Legendz
Consisting of a couple other former classmates, the Future Legendz are what you'd get if you mixed a cocktail containing the popularity of hip-hop culture among America's youth, one of the whitest states in the Union, the mean streets of Da Brook, and the beats of G-Cote etc. (see above). Seriously, though, these guys are actually pretty good. My personal favorite: "Dhoom."

Kinda Blue
Made up members of the Westbrook High School jazz band, this quartet's page features four songs, including covers of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" and John Blackburn and Karl Suessdorf's much-covered "Moonlight in Vermont."

Leigh Charest
I know next-to-nothing about this girl (woman?), but I do know I like what I hear. Must listen: The grotesque but starry-eyed "The Boyfriend Song."

Pallaso
I could pluck some money quotes from Sonya Tomlinson's (aka Sontiago) March piece on Pallaso, or I could just link you to it. I'm lazy, so I'll do the latter (here).

The Bad:
Fuzzy Bear
In his essay about MySpace's effect on music (sorry, no link), the critic David Hajdu writes, "After an hour or so of using the search mode to find something worth the effort, I got punchy and, after the words "sounds like," typed "shit." Pages for more than three hundred bands popped up, and the first five, I can attest, were well categorized." Even though Hajdu doesn't confirm it, Fuzzy Bear was probably one of those approximately three hundred bands. After all, they disgustingly describe their sound as "a live rotted fetus thats (sic) been stabbed in the eyes with fillet knives, dropped into a vat of boiling ureic acid, and then thrown in a blender."

Stay classy, boys.

And the Others:
Marc Mailhot
Matt Natale
Sidereal Day

- John C.L. Morgan

* Adams was a Republican until she lost in that party's primary for the City Clerk job. She subsequently won the job after registering as a Democrat.