Oct. 22--It's that time of year again.

Autumn is here, the leaves are falling, Jack Frost is gearing up to kick our collective booties for the next few months and your music-playing friends and neighbors are releasing records they'd like you to hear . . . and buy.

Here is just a smattering of the recorded sounds of Northeast Ohioans that have come across my desk (or at least across the piles of crap on top of my desk).

As always, whether I dig it or not, if it sounds interesting to you, please go out and buy a copy or go hear some of the performers in your local bars and/or clubs. And buy a T-shirt or some panties or an adult diaper (you'd be surprised at what bands will put their logo on these days).

So here we go.

Beaten Awake

-- Thunder$troke

This Akron/Kent band has been through quite a bit of change between its debut, 2007's Let's Get Simplified, and its follow-up, Thunder$troke. The band lost and replaced a couple of members -- most importantly, singer/songwriter/guitarist Joel McAdams, who left after Thunder$troke was recorded.

On its second full-length offering, the band -- now a quartet -- opens up its sound a bit. Whereas its debut played like a quiet, almost mournful and gentle collection with a couple of up-tempo songs to hold back the tears, Thunder$troke is a bit louder.

McAdams has become a more confident singer on his songs, including Danger Pins and Suite Cheetah, while still detailing the little moments in life that most folks like to forget in the 61/2-minute I'm Not Asking for the Moon.

Keyboards play a more prominent role, providing a new wave-ish groove for the title track by singer/guitarist Jon Finley (who also sings/plays guitar in Drummer).

Where Let's Get Simplified set the mood early and carried the listener through, Thunder$troke is more of a grower and feels more like a collection of good songs.

It's available at any decent record store.

Ralph Carney --

Ralph Carney's Serious

Jass Project

Saxophonist/multi-reed player Carney is a member of Tin Huey and a former musical cohort of Tom Waits and has recently been touring with They Might Be Giants.

For this record, Carney, for whom the terms "wacky" and "outre" may have been coined, plays it almost completely straight on a collection of classic jazz and jump blues tunes with a solid piano trio in tow.

Much of Carney's solo work revels in the odd, and frankly, it's weird to hear Carney not be . . . well, weird, as he improvises on several lesser known tunes by Duke Ellington and offers some big ol' school honkin' sax on Jay McNeely's Jay's Frantic (And So Is Ralph) and duels with himself on Blow Big Ralph (aka Blow Big Jay).

There is none of his signature self-invented reed/wind instruments and the arrangements are pretty standard, with Carney providing his own horn section, but his sense of humor does come out in a few of the vocal tracks, including Futuristic Rhythm and Black Beauty.

Carney cuts loose with a little bit of complex bebop "egg scrambling" on sax on Ellington's toe-tapping Dancing on the Stars and gets down and dirty on the bari-sax on the slow-crawling Jeep Blues.

It's available online at CDBaby.com.

Misery Jackals

-- The Misery Jackals EP

Yeeeehaw! This group of backwoods, dive bar-dwelling Ohioans raises quite a hillbilly ruckus, if the average hillbilly group sang about rollergirls named Gail and desperate searches for cocaine for which to cook some crack or the dangerous crosswalk at Akron's Mill Street.

The band describes its music as "Pillbilly Browngrass." Its members sport monikers such as Beener Nix and Pirate Jenny (who wears an eyepatch!).

Its old-timey acoustic guitar/banjo/accordion/double bass/washboard/drums lineup belies its subversive sense of humor, found in songs such as the ummm . . . cautionary tale (I guess) of Keep It in Yer Pants. It's also found in the truly odd story-song The Ominous Anthropophagous Slackeye Slim, about a man who was "shot in the face while still in his mother's belly" and grows up to become an angry cannibal and eventually a flesh-eating zombie.

The band's theme song, Misery Jackals, is a straight-ahead punk song played hillbilly style (the band also sometimes performs "banjotized" covers of classic punk tunes).

It's fun and goofy stuff that I'd wager gets the average bar full of properly lubricated patrons a hootin'-and-a-hollerin'.

It's available at CDBaby.com.

Music series

I'll have more local music next week, including some gospel, more indie rock, a jam band and more.

But we're going from local rock acts to international rock icons with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 14th annual American Music Masters Series, which will focus on the late Janis Joplin.

Starting at 5 p.m. today at the Cleveland museum's 4th Floor Theatre, original Big Brother and the Holding Company members Peter Albin, Sam Andrew and Dave Getz will give a live interview, followed by an autograph signing.

A few hours later at 7 p.m., Big Brother and the Holding Company will perform at the Beachland Ballroom with Cleveland native Mary Bridget Davies, who starred in the local stage production of Love, Janis (inspired by Joplin's sister Laura's best-selling book).

In early November, the rock hall will hold its American Music Masters tribute concert and it will probably be quite star-studded, as Joplin is a female rock icon and an inspiration to many who followed her.

Past tribute concerts have brought artists such as Elvis Costello, Aretha Franklin and Bruce Springsteen to pay tribute to their heroes. It was at the 2004 Leadbelly tribute that Robert Plant and Allison Krauss first sang together before teaming up in the studio to record Raising Sand, their Grammy-winning duet album.

Last year's concert honoring the late Les Paul was not only well-timed (he died nine months later) but was also a great evening of music with ax-slingers such as Slash, Billy Gibbons, Lonnie Mack, Richie Sambora and Steve Lukather showing their love for the master.

Malcolm X Abram can be reached at mabram@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3758.

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