Talkin' New York, Vol 6 - The Cummies

It’s been a while since I’ve done this - written about a New York band/artist. Needless to say the delay has caused a backload and I’ve got a bunch that I’ll be posting in the next week or so. This post is one I’ve been sitting on for a while because the band doesn’t provide much info on either their website or their myspace. I’ve been hoping for some huge update, tour information, noteworthy news, anything really that would help with putting something together for them. But there’s not much - so I had to scour the internet to round up a few bits of intelligence.

The Cummies are a New York by way of Madison, WI garage rock band, and after seeing them perform a few months ago at Pianos I can safely say that they may be more on the angry/aggressive side than most of the music I write about. Whatever though, their songs were full of these dirty little punk rock melodies that sounded like an early Sub Pop Greatest Hits compilation. As if he was a 20 year-old Kurt Cobain fronting The Stooges in 1973, lead singer Joey Tokyo let out some sort of uncontained, primal rage into that microphone that may have given it brain damage. The band (Tokyo on guitar, Stevie Queens on bass and John Airis on drums) was just flat out raw power, seething with a confident swagger and pummeling out gritty rhythms. The crowd was split between their fans and fans there to see the alt. country band that followed them, but they had little trouble winning over nearly everyone in the room.

They have recently released a 4-song self-titled EP, and 3 songs from which are streaming at their myspace. Speaking of which, I just saw a blog entry on that site that said the following:

“We're going to be recording an album in August at a very nice studio; with a very good engineer.....we'll leave it at that for now, details to follow. Totally trying to get ready, that's why it seems like not much is going on but really, behind the scenes, we are pretty busy.
Because it's baseball season we as a band are completely obsessed with stats. Here's ours as band collectively:

Rookie Year in NYC:
30 Shows
18 New Songs
1EP Release
832 Albums Sold
2 Arrests
7 Jobs
10 Clubs Played
96 Teardrops
Thanks for the Memories


Check out a song from the new EP:

MP3 :: White Radio
(available on The Cummies' myspace)
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The Cummies are playing 200 Orchard on July 28 and again on August 17.
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