Loyola Greyhound

Issue date: 1/22/08 Section: Arts & Society

Media Credit: http://www.ccas.org Charm City Art Space is a local music venue that houses concerts at a discounted price in a basement setting. Indie act Snake Vision performed there on Saturday.

Electrically taped wires entangled with Christmas lights hung above me in the five-foot-high ceiling of a New Brunswick cement basement: a perfect place for a concert. New Brunswick, a town with about 16 basement show venues, is home to an underground indie rock sub-culture where bands experiment with multiple drummers, multiple effects pedals, computer looped beats, and overall noise. Bands play their hearts out to overcrowded basements mostly consisting of Rutgers students doing their best to muffle the loud noise from the police with old mattresses. This underground network feeds and houses bands as they come from around the country. Here you will find Snake Vision, one powerful trio breaking out in this basement party music scene.

Snake Vision has been on tour for the last two weeks with Tin Kitchen, another Brunswick alum, stopping as far west as Wisconsin and as far south as Tennessee. They have been playing everything from the usual basement shows to taco restaurants to stopping at the famous Legion of Doom where such famous acts as the Smashing Pumpkins have played. Guitarist Matt Harvey spoke about their times on the road explaining how each night they play with a completely different genres of music. Harvey said that they've played with bands from the like of New York's Bomb the Music Industry, classic rock middle-aged bands, Screamo teenager bands, to even playing with a group featured on the television show, "The Next Great American Band." Harvey said at the end of each show they then try to find a couch or sometimes a cozy floor to stay for the night only to awake the next day to travel to the next venue. With no days to rest on tour, Snake Vision's keyboardist Nick Bolton said that he's looking forward to sleeping in a bed.

Their final gig was at the local Charm City Art Space in Baltimore, which if you haven't been to I completely recommend for checking out a local show. For five bucks you'll get a truly unique Baltimore music experience. It's the kind of place where band stickers wallpaper the rooms and the stage actually is just a wood-lined basement with checkered broken tile floors.

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