Scene Recap: TVLPA, Lez Pop, Honor Role

Published October 14, 2022

There’s a ton of great outlets, organizations, and individuals covering the music scene in Richmond. So many that it might be hard to keep up to date on all of them. We’ll try and collect some great articles, coverage, and news bits we’ve read each week here at The Auricular.

• Marilyn Drew Necci did a deep dive into the new record Walk With Me by metal group TVLPA at RVA Magazine. I give a lot of recommendations here about new local music, but you should always, always defer to Marilyn Drew. Anything with her stamp of approval on it needs to be experienced immediately. Great article here. (Article link here.)

• Going from metal to techno, Wyatt Gordon had a great look at local DJ Lez Pop over at Style Weekly in preparation for her set at Fallout this past Wednesday. Don’t miss out next time Lez Pop performs around town! (Article link here.)

• Staying with Style Weekly, Davy Jones penned another article after last week’s impressive run of articles, this time talking with Kurt Vile before his recent show here, which also took place on Wednesday. (Article link here.)

• River City Sounds returned after a short break with Episode 63 featuring Donald Shimoda. This episode goes hard and is definitely worth listening to. (Spotify link here.)

• Really enjoyed No Moniker this past Tuesday over at Shockoe Sessions. “Mask Song” in particular really impressed me. Sol Roots performs this coming week so make sure to bookmark that so you don’t forget! (YouTube link here.)

• We’re still rolling with our weekly Roundup column that covers all the new music out of Richmond. (Article link here.) But we’re also not perfect — there’s about 8-10 things we missed last week. We’ll get to them next week for sure, but in the meantime, make sure to keep an eye on HearRVA’s weekly curated list of new releases that they put up Friday mornings. Chances are if we missed it, they picked it up and ran with it… because they’re awesome! (Instagram link here.)

• Lot of fall festivals and Halloween activities going on this weekend, but also a lot of a live music. As always, the nifty team at RestlessRVA have a great “tasting” menu of all the shows available over the next couple of days on their Instagram page so check it out. (Instagram link here.) And the sensational Marilyn Drew Necci always has a deeper dive available over at RVA Magazine each week so make sure to check out her column that zeroes in on 8 specific shows. (Article link here.)

• Time to wrap up with a local song. I’ve started making a list of songs I want to talk about on here, mostly stuff from the past decade that I can relate personal memories and milestones alongside the release date. But I also don’t want to overlook music that came from before I entered the scene or even before I began listening to music. Honor Role is one of these bands, local legends that had a full life before I ever walked down Grace Street and saw the numbers 929. Their music is largely overlooked today and their errant discography is represented on Spotify with only two releases, the 2006 No Way Records release 1982 and Merge Records’ 1997 compilation Album. That compilation in particular gave Honor Role its biggest exposure, though it unfortunately came after the band had already disbanded. Not the first time something like that has happened to a cult favorite band, but bittersweet nonetheless. My first exposure of Honor Role came from someone who loved Album and he burned me a mix CD way back when that featured several of their songs as well as some DC punk bands from the early ’90s. “Purgatory” opened that mix up and it’s been one of the songs from Honor Role that’s really stuck with me over the years. What’s funny is writing this made me take a look at their Discogs page which states they released this track as a single through Eskimo Records back in 1986, which is the same year I was born. Cool. I ended up being able to relate a personal milestone to this track after all! Anyway, enjoy “Purgatory” below and if you dig it, check out more of their stuff on YouTube where you can find some great playlists that capture their discography. I’ll catch you all next week!