Another Planet Entertainment is committed to producing safe events. Please review our most up-to-date COVID-19 policy requirements for entry on our Health & Safety page.
* Policy is subject to change
This event is 21 and over.
$25.00 – General Admission (Door)
*plus applicable service fees
All doors & show times subject to change.
Add this event to your calendar:
Des Rocs
Des Rocs is a fearsome force of nature, a self-invented rock ‘n’ roll star for a new age and a generation seeking direction, a streetwalking cheetah with a heart full of napalm on a mission to search and destroy our social media-addled brains. The artist otherwise known as Danny Rocco is an original… sui generis, taking elements of the past and forging a fresh destiny for high-energy guitar, bass and drums electric music.
Dream Machine, his new album, and first for legendary rock indie Sumerian Records, is Des Rocs’ vehicle to take us along to that place… where life is heightened, and rock ‘n’ roll once more rules the zeitgeist. He’s not going to be a best-kept secret for long. His brand of self-titled “bedroom arena-rock” – which captures a blend of DIY intimacy and large-scale vision – is ready to infect the masses, to find the artistic tightrope within that populist thrust. Every performance is “on the edge of life and death” for Des Rocs, who works without a safety net in a “Never Ending Moment.” He was born to do this.
“Dream Machine is the beginning of the journey into the Des Cinematic Universe, my vessel of escape. I’ve spent my life dreaming a rock ‘n’ roll vision that is grand and entirely modern, standing on the shoulders of giants, but filtered through my own lens and life experiences,” says the man about his follow-up to his 2021 feature-length debut, A Real Good Person in a Real Bad Place.
Produced by both Alain Johannes [Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures, PJ Harvey], Matt Wallace [Faith No More, Maroon 5] and Danny Rocco, Dream Machine offers a bold invitation to follow Des down his rock ‘n’ rollin’ “Alice in Wonderland” rabbit hole, a journey to the center of the singer/songwriter/guitar hero’s messianic mind, leading us out of our doldrums back to the glory days of classic rock, psychedelia, metal, punk, grunge, hardcore and into the future.
Once again accompanied by his fellow power trio members, bassist Eric Mendelsohn and drummer Will Tully, Dream Machine evokes the thunder and lightning of metal gods past (“Bad Blood”), the wide-screen whisper-to-a-scream mythmaking of the cinematic string-orchestrated set piece, “In the Night” and the Flamenco-flavored acoustic guitar solo which intros the first single, “Never Ending Moment,” in which Des anticipates the ending of a relationship with a kind of reverse nostalgia.
Boasting the hip swivel of vintage Elvis Presley and the playful sneer of Johnny Thunders, this proud New Yorker found his true calling after dark on the streets of New York City’s downtown club scene and around the country, playing with the same bug-eyed intensity to the back row, whether in front of 90 people or 90,000, opening for the Rolling Stones at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field (which he did in 2019 right before Covid). Des Rocs has also opened for Muse in arenas across Europe.
“Making music for us is existential,” says Des, a proud heir of the New York City rock tradition which spans the Velvet Underground, Kiss, the Ramones, Sonic Youth and the Strokes. “We spend our whole life just making it possible to play music without a real day job. We’re just so happy to be on-stage.”
You can hear that joy of primal rock ‘n’ all over Dream Machine. The title track opens with a bone-weary driver, “It’s 2:10 in the morning/I’m on the BQE,” referring to New York’s Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. It’s a fever dream that boasts a singalong chorus which takes you on its own psychedelic trip that recalls the doomsaying of Jim Morrison. “Come on take a joy ride/In my dream machine.”
“Natural Born Thriller” and “I Am the Lightning,” both dealing with Des’ shaman-like passion to entertain and perform as well as a personal self-empowering pep talk, boast ominous bass lines and thunderous metallic guitar riffs that distinguish a vision that is equal parts messianic, dystopian and apocalyptic.
“This music is the antithesis of that too-cool-for-school, navel-gazing indie-rock scene,” insists Des. “I grew up worshiping that big sound and theatricality, watching Queen at Wembley as a little kid in my underwear.”
“I firmly believe your chances of success are the same whether you try to imitate something else, and join the herd, or do something unique,” he says. “So, you might as well be true to yourself and your vision.
“We spend our whole life struggling to be able to make music itself. We are just so grateful to be on-stage.”
Des Rocs reigns as a disciple of rock n’ roll, wielding his musical prowess to conjure a spellbinding bridge between past and present. Dream Machine is the thrilling vessel for his journey, the finely-tuned engine of transformation he’s prepared to unleash on the world. This electrifying force of rock n’ roll is his life, his salvation… and he wants to make it yours as well.
The Blue Stones
Since bursting onto the scene with their acclaimed debut album Black Holes, The Blue Stones have delivered a crowd-thrilling live show that defies the laws of physics, generating an impossibly massive sound from its two members alone. On their third album Pretty Monster, the duo fully capture the controlled chaos and combustible energy of their live set for the very first time—all while expanding on the potent songwriting and sonic ingenuity shown on Black Holes (a 2018 release that earned them a JUNO Award nomination for ‘Breakthrough Group of the Year’) and its 2021 follow-up Hidden Gems (a JUNO nominee for ‘Rock Album of the Year’). Despite the colossal growth they’ve experienced since getting their start playing dive bars in their small hometown, The Blue Stones instill every track with equal parts unchecked passion and a joyfully adventurous spirit.
Mainly produced by multi-GRAMMY Award-winner Joe Chiccarelli (The White Stripes, The Strokes, Spoon), Pretty Monster came to life over 35 consecutive days of recording at an off-the-grid studio in Kingston, Ontario. During that time, lead vocalist/guitarist Tarek Jafar and drummer/backing vocalist Justin Tessier worked tirelessly in preserving the raw vitality of the album’s demos while embedding each song with so many unexpected details (gritty beats, restless grooves, elegantly frenetic textures). A striking departure from the more atmospheric sound of Hidden Gems (a widely lauded effort that spawned three Top 5 radio hits in Canada), the result is a triumphant body of work that merges the hard-hitting dynamics of rock-and-roll with the indelibly catchy hooks of pop.
A wildly anthemic track built on kinetic rhythms and a commanding vocal performance from Jafar, Pretty Monster’s exhilarating lead single “Don’t Miss” reveals the unbridled creativity The Blue Stones brought to the album-making process. To that end, Jafar sketched the song during a session with writer/producer Kevin “Boonn” Hissink (grandson, Mike Shinoda), after spontaneously composing an explosive riff on Hissink’s baritone guitar. “The riff was so punchy, it inspired me to write this song about completely owning your confidence—sort of like, ‘The hype is quite real, and here’s your soundtrack to prove that,’” says Jafar. Another heady shot of fortitude, “Cards Are Down” unfolds in blistering guitar tones and fuzzed-out grooves as The Blue Stones speak to the pure power in “putting everything you’ve got on the line toward whatever you want most in life,” as Jafar puts it.
On “Good Ideas,” The Blue Stones shift into a more introspective mindset, channeling a brooding urgency with the track’s hip-hop-leaning beats (an element crafted with the help of WZRD BLD, who also produced “Cards Are Down” and has previously worked with artists like Illenium and Highly Suspect). “It’s about feeling like you don’t know what to say, what to write, what to create anymore,” says Jafar. “I wrote it during lockdown when I was feeling so stuck, but then the song itself ended up proving me wrong by becoming something I’m really proud of.” Meanwhile, on “What’s It Take To Be Happy?”, The Blue Stones present a soulful meditation on the often-frustrating search for fulfillment, brilliantly twisting the mood with the song’s bright guitar work and sing-along-ready gang vocals. “That one came from trying to write a song from major chords instead of the bluesy minor chords we use a lot of the time,” Jafar recalls. “I thought it would be fun if the lyrics contrasted the happy feeling of the music, so it turned into a song about how the search for happiness can sometimes feel endless.”
The most heavy-hearted moment on Pretty Monster, “Camera Roll” reflects on a particularly brutal form of post-breakup nostalgia. “Letting go of a relationship is always so difficult, especially when your phone is full of hundreds of photos of the person you’re trying to move on
from,” says Jafar, who wrote the hauntingly delicate track on piano. “Getting to the point of hitting delete and finding some closure is really tough, but hopefully this song will give people the strength to find closure for themselves.” Elsewhere on Pretty Monster, The Blue Stones push into such previously uncharted sonic terrain as the stoner-rock intensity of “Stay With Me.” “There’s usually more of a swagger to the beat in our songs, but that one’s this straight-ahead, driving, four-on-the-floor rock song,” notes Tessier.
For The Blue Stones, there’s an undeniable sense of both purpose and pleasure in boldly following their creative impulses. “Our approach has always been to make the music we want to hear,” says Tessier. “Every song we create is something we wanted to see in the world, and hopefully if that goes far enough, it’ll help move things forward for the whole genre.” And by staying true to their instincts, the duo ultimately hope to make a profoundly positive impact on their audience as well. “We want our music to be cathartic, but we also want it to motivate and uplift people and make them feel more confident,” says Jafar. “And when they come to our live show, we want everyone to feel absolutely energized by the time they leave, like they’re ready to take on the world.”