Tarnished's First Facebook Live-Stream Concerts, Plus A New Cover!!

For a 32nd straight day, we have a new daily news post on the SMS, and hopefully this is helping keep things reliable and entertaining just a little as we continue dealing with everything going on right now! Fingers crossed we won't have to miss a day for a while yet. Today's post is mostly devoted to new live-streamed performances from a familiar local band, but we do have a new cover video to round things out as well. Here's what you should know!

With their weekly arrangement at Biggby Coffee (and other concerts) on hold due to Michigan's stay at home order, local hard rock band Tarnished have jumped into the live-streamed concert arena with a pair of hour-long concert sets streamed on their Facebook page! The implied schedule has them playing daily concerts, including twice tomorrow at 12:00 & 6:00 PM, though as of this writing, there have only been the two. In both cases, they feature singer/guitarist Alex Traynor and bassist Josh Fair also on guitar (no sign of Nathan), and I'll leave any discussion about social distancing for someone more qualified, though I trust they're using common sense. In lieu of their usual "tips and coffee" format at Biggby, you can leave them a "virtual tip" on Paypal at this link, so consider helping them out when they can't play a proper show. The first live-stream begins about 5 minutes in, but audio quality issues are always present, and I could only hear the performance with my computer's speakers at the absolute maximum.

Alex & Josh start by covering of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary", with a section of Stealers Wheel's "Stuck In The Middle With You" appropriately stuck in the middle, before Alex covered Warrant's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" solo while Josh tried to fix the audio. He returned in time for renditions of Poison's "Talk Dirty To Me", C.C.R.'s "Who Will Stop The Rain", and ZZ Top's "Tush", before playing their original song "Shortcut", marking the first time that a song from Tarnished's upcoming debut EP has been featured in a public Facebook video. That's followed by covers of Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' Bout Love", Everlast's "What It's Like", Bob Seger's "Turn The Page", Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers' "Last Dance of Mary Jane", Cameo's "Word Up", Sublime's "What I Got", and AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long". The audio quality is a severe detriment to this video, despite what appears to be a solid performance, so be warned going in that you may not hear anything without maximum volume, headphones, or personal intervention.

The second live-stream has slightly improved audio, so I have embedded it below, but there are clearly still quirks to work out. In order, Tarnished can be seen covering Kenny Wayne Shepherd's "Blue On Black", Incubus' "Drive", Three Doors Down's "Kryptonite", AC/DC's "Highway To Hell", Stone Sour's "Through Glass", Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell", Alex's own solo original "Crazy World", Alice In Chains' "Rooster", Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World", Steve Earle's "Copperhead Road", The 4 Non Blondes' "What's Up", and Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Now, not all viewers of the live-stream had major problems listening in, but even with my computer hooked up to external speakers, I could barely hear anything in these videos. To even make out the guys talking between songs, I had to rip the files, convert them to audio, import them into Audacity, and severely amplify them. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Tarnished are new to the live-stream arena, but given their teased regular schedule of Facebook concerts, I hope they work on the audio quality in time for their planned streams tomorrow. Even if you can't eliminate the pops & clipping in the background, at least boost the volume! From what I can hear, Alex & Josh have a strong handle on these covers, both familiar and surprising alike, so give both a watch above and below!



We'll close today with the latest videos from local/Elliot Lake, Ontario alt-punk solo project Ashoka At The Show (courtesy of their 184Films YouTube channel) over the last couple of days! Today's video features frontman Darren MacDonald apologizing for not posting a new musical performance video in the last couple of days, despite promising to post a new song a day, though he did admittedly hold a video back out of not being personally satisfied with the quality. At least he's honest and forthcoming! Darren also asked fans to tell him what they're doing to stay busy while on lockdown, so drop him a comment there if you are so inclined. However, Darren did post a new cover on Monday that we haven't talked about yet, namely an acoustic cover of Tony Sly's "Toaster In The Bathtub", and it's well performed with strong vocals, so No Use For A Name fans should definitely like this one! Give it a watch below, and stay tuned for more from Ashoka At The Show!



That's all for today, but stay tuned for more recent performance videos on the site tomorrow! Thanks everyone!