Pat Cochran

Plenty has already been written about the sublime music of the mighty Reigning Sound, once of Memphis, lately of Asheville, North Carolina. Critical accolades and rabid fan-raving about the band have never been in short supply. So, it may be somewhat of an exercise in futility to rant on here at length about the particulars of their sound, how bandleader and songwriter Greg Cartwright and his band may be the best torchbearers for the empyrean spirit of rock & roll. But, in fact, they are all that. 

Nashville is more than just a music industry city. It’s a music industry spectacle, and the obeisance and fealty paid to its glittery mechanics is quite different from anywhere else.  Unlike in, say, Los Angeles, in Nashville even underground rock & roll bands are in wide-eyed thrall to the dull whims of the music industry, thousands of guitar-wrangling, drum-pummeling rock musicians competing for a shekel of sallow grace from know-nothing A&R hacks with fat wallets and egregiously-styled hair.

Cool and cocksure, Bass Drum of Death listened to the old cryptic story and started connecting the dots (or wires, as it were). Just picking up that receiver made them cooler than most rock bands out there. I first saw Bass Drum of Death about three or four years ago at a dark, dank, and nasty lounge attached to what may very well have been a hooker-and-crackhead hotel in Jackson, Mississippi.