Local Music Radar: Cool & Weird

There's more kids than probably ever before flexing their creative muscles musically here in North Idaho. Look at the music calendar on the left sidebar and you'll see there's all kinds of solo acoustic, blues, and hard rock acts playing out and about. That's fantastic, but there's more to life than just John Mayer, John Lee Hooker, and John "Bonzo" Bonham wannabes. A nice deep dig through MySpace's Music zone reveals that there are quite a few artists right here in the greater Coeur d'Alene area making music that falls far outside the wine tasting, coffee shop, and dive bar scenes. Be brave. Keep an open mind. I dare you to check them out:


I recently got a random MySpace friend request from Coeur d'Alene's The Pop Eccentric aka Manuel Diaz. I know nada about this guy other than the fact that I was completely taken by his classically psychedelic, shoegazey, trance-inducing tunes, like this one, "Free Life":



Zepar has more hits on her MySpace than almost any other artist in Coeur d'Alene and it's plain to see why. Her beats are fresh, as thick and delicious as a Bowl-of-Soul from Java first thing in the morning. Her spoken word samples provide a jarring, often politically laced counterpoint to the mellowness of the electronic backdrop. Here's "Hooked":



Post Falls' Tim Nagel has a slightly wounded voice that wears it's bloody pop bandages like a forlorn McCartney or a less absract Radiohead, so sweetly melodic it leaves a resonance in the air that lingers when the song is through. On this live recording of "Don't Wait and See", Nagel accompanies himself solely with a bare acoustic guitar, but manages to mostly avoid the cliches that can befall such an arrangement:



Secret Passage to Nowhere are probably Coeur d'Alene's best (only?) drum-n-bass/acid techno act. According to their page, Dylan and Jared do programming and Ty "is a fag." Well then, Ty needs to keep working his faggoty magic on fun and fast electro tracks like "My Name Is Pillchard". Isn't the 90's rave sound making a comeback in the UK right now? Must be happening in Idaho too, I guess:



Bonus Track: You really have to hear it to believe it, but don't say I didn't warn you. Ladies and gentlemen, it is with a great big not-safe-for-work warning that I present Coeur d'Alene's own Idaho Ballers. I have no idea who these rotten teen-age white-boy porno-rappers are, but they've recorded a hilariously bad and brain-toastingly raunchy ode to the Lake City called "Welcome to the CDA." The totally irony-free shout-outs to "C-Town" are outnumbered by dirty dirty rhymes which sent even these jaded old ears reeling with shock - I wanted to dump antibacterial soap in them. Enjoy: