Piñata Hit Parade occurred, and it was fun!

All photos by Katie McGuire. 

The 331 Club hosted the first ever Piñata Records Hit Parade on Saturday. We gave away CD samplers and donut holes, and we all had a lot of fun.

Mystery Date

 As soon as the Drinking Spelling Bee relinquished the stage, Mystery Date bit into their set with their usual flair. Seeing this band is always a joy for me. Their songs rub a part of my brain that reminds me why I love music to begin with. Expecially bright spots included their new song that might be called "Wouldn't You Like to Know" and, as always, "Lightspeed Romance". The latter appears on their forthcoming Piñata single, to be released on April 12th and currently available for preorder.

Black Diet

By the end of Mystery Date's set, the 331 Club was nearing capacity. Black Diet took the stage and reminded the packed venue that they're one of the most consistently exciting live acts going now. I imagine that seeing Black Diet now is a bit like seeing The Beatles in Hamburg in 1961. They've been playing a ton of shows for the last year (some would wrongly say too many), and they've honed their presentation and performance to sharp edge. It's only going to be a short matter of time until Black Diet is bigger than Minneapolis. Within minutes, the 331 Club had to turn away new patrons, and we were out of donut holes.

Narco States

And now for something completely different. "Please and thank you, Narco States!" They make a unique pummeling psychedelic punk sound without the sloppiness or wimpiness that usually seems to accompany the word "psychedelic". Right out of the gate, they tore through their debut EP from front to back. Singer Michael Meyer climbed, crawled and contorted throughout their too-brief set.

Southside Desire

The final performance was from the band that all of the people who started the label are in, Southside Desire (I'm the drummer!). I think we did a good job. We played with a certain ferocity that comes from playing last after 3 of your favorite bands have been inspiring you all night. Our set featured a handful of songs from our debut LP Songs to Love and Die To but we mostly did newer songs that we've been recording in various studios for our next record, to be released in the early fall. We've also been lucky enough to convince Black Diet's keyboard player Sean Schultz to fill out our sound lately. Our final pairing of new song "Missing" with a ferocious take on "Walk Along" ended the concert.


And yes, thank you thank you thank you! It was such a fun night for everyone involved. And we really appreciate the support we've received to make this label get where it is. I heard several people talk about how great it is that a label has such a wide variety of genres, and we couldn't agree more. All of the bands make very different music, but they all have a common passion for music, and that's exactly what we wanted to show off on Saturday.