How to make ‘Trash Rock’ with the Radar Waves
Radar Waves with Local H —Sideouts Sports bar and grill, Island Lake Illinois.
Today we will be learning how to make ‘Trash rock’ with local Chicago band Radar Waves. An alternative punk rock band that plays catchy rhythmic tunes, upbeat percussions with a hard hitting distorted grunge sound. Now first off, don’t worry if you make a messy sound. First you’ll need five tablespoons of pop punk, three tablespoons of power punk, to give your sound a vibrant taste. Now chop in some fast uplifting rock to give it a nice blended melody. Add about a half cup of grunge’s melodramatic lyrics and another half cup of uplifting lyrics for harmonic balance. Next, add one part funk rock drums with your preferred taste of bass from the 90’s. Add a half cup of power rock guitar and blend. After this point it’s up to you if you wanna add other musical genres. Just be careful that your ‘Trash Rock’ music doesn’t come off sounding like it has too many vowels in the chorus breakdown. You can fix this mistake by heavily diluting it with some satirical punk.
All jokes aside, I’ve had the pleasure of photographing Radar Waves a few times over the past year now. Most recently a few days ago when they opened up again with Local H. The band formed back in 2012 out of Chicago, they took the underground scene and called their sound ‘Trash rock’.it only took Radar Waves a few short years to grow a loyal fan base called “Trash Rock Island” and make their first album “Dirt” by 2017. When I first heard their sound it was a bit chaotic but in a good way. Their sound is almost heavy, yet funky and poppy with this grunge that’s layered over like icing. It’s a sound you can’t place in one musical genre. I would soon learn this musical mix is called ‘Trash Rock’. A mixture of different bands throughout the decades that have influenced frontman and creator ofRadar Waves Charlie Thornton (guitarist-lead singer-creator), Mikey Cervenka (drums-creator), and Rob Wash (Bass player) to come up with catchy songs and high powered guitar intros like their song “Dirk Diggler”. Charlie’s spin on his band’s sound is like going to a garage sale and randomly finding different musical sounds and making them come together. Which shouldn’t work most times when you have too many chefs in the kitchen, but Radar Waves somehow pulls it off and quite well I might add.
They’re vibrant nostalgic mix of 70’s to the 2000’s punk, grunge, power rock sound even caught Scott Lucas, lead singer-creator of Local H, attention. A veteran musician who will probably play music even if he lost both his arms and legs. If you haven’t listened to Mr. Lucas’s podcast LIFERS, I highly recommend giving it a listen because his knowledge of musical and movie history is extremely impressive and scary at the same time. Seriously, the guy makes wiki look like a pamphlet brochure. All brown nosing aside, I would like to thank Scott. If he hadn’t played with Radar Waves last year, I don’t know when or if I ever would have found Radar Waves on my own. Because of Local H and Radar Waves my career as a concert photographer took off even further and I’m extremely grateful to both bands. So thank you.
Finally, my overall take, It’s safe to say Radar Waves are a top class musical chefs of ‘Trash Rock.’
Review and photographs by Eric LeClair/rantingphotos
