Cosmic Superheroes, DrumSellers.com, Vaporwave

Another fantastic band from Raleigh, NC , a drum & percussion marketplace and some great vaporwave...

As the kids say, “It’s been a minute”, or more like several minutes since I’ve had any updates for Infectious Tunes.

Cosmic

Since June of 2024 I’ve held down the drum seat for Raleigh, NC’s Cosmic Superheroes. A great band that plays a variety of tunes from their vast library of albums, and they can pull from a list of 250+ cover tunes if the occasion, or audience, calls for it.

Cosmic Superheroes

While there has been a rotation of bassists and drummers since its founding in 2014, the core of the group consists of original founding member Brandon McLean on guitar/vocals, Paul Sanders on keys/vocals and Nadya Stratton on flute, keys and vocals. Just that trio alone can play about any musical setting for any audience, but toss in a solid bass player and drummer and the depth gets fuller and way more complex.

Standout songs include “Moonlight”, “Dr. Thunderhawk” and “Wants”, but there’s so many well crafted, clever songs that it’s hard to say these are, “the best of the bunch”. That said, one of my absolute favorites to play live is “Time Ago”.

Sadly, my time with the Cosmic gang has ended however, I recently closed a deal to purchase DrumSellers.com, a large drum and percussion only marketplace so that venture is going to require a lot of time and energy, so as us old schoolers say, “it’s all good”.

DrumSellers.com

DrumSellers.com was the brain child of my good friend (and fantastic drummer), George Lawrence. Many folks know George from his days behind the drum set with the band Poco when he stepped in to fill the seat left vacant by long time member George Grantham after Grantham fell ill during a performance in 2004.

Lawrence went on to open George’s Drum Shop in Ohio before shuttering that physical location to relocate to Memphis, TN where he started DrumSellers.com as an online marketplace to sell off the remaining inventory from his Ohio based drum shop. DrumSellers.com has grown organically over the years and George has done an incredible job of launching a marketplace for a niche product that enjoys robust business and a large community of drum sellers and buyers. I’m excited for the opportunity to step in and take DrumSellers.com through it’s next phase, and if you know any drummers that are looking to buy, sell or trade gear you know where to send them now.

18 Carat Affair and Vaporwave

One of the great things about having one of the coolest teenage daughters of all time is you get exposed to all kinds of great music that otherwise might not pop up on your my radar. That’s exactly what happened when my daughter walked in my office and said, “Dad, you should check out 18 Carat Affair”.

If you’re into vaporwave then you’ll love 18 Carat Affair. For those unfamiliar, vaporwave (according to Google) is a genre of electronic music and a visual aesthetic that emerged in the early 2010s, characterized by its nostalgic and surreal atmosphere. It draws inspiration from the 1980s and 1990s, particularly from consumer culture and technology of those eras, often incorporating elements of chopped and screwed, sampling, and retro-futuristic visuals.

Of course, I went dow the Spotify recommendations and a few other stand outs include Satin Sheets, Incorporeal Visions Deluxe and one of my favorites, SPORTSGIRL.

OK, that’s it for this update but I’ll try to be better about regularly posting.

Lastly, if you’re into real estate investing, learning more about operating a short term or long term rental business or structuring deals then you should check out my other writing over at Common Cents Real Estate.