Know what’s been on my mind late­ly? Local music! Lots of it. I just caught the Purl­ing Hiss bug last week . Just got hand­ed the new Prowler CD by my favorite bar­tender at Mem­phis Tap­room, Kei­th. Ran into Ports of Call there, too. Snagged the new Woe disc. Watch­ing Shak­ing Through videos with Par­ty Pho­tog­ra­phers and Read­ing Rain­bow. (Give Shak­ing Through some mon­ey, okay?) Picked up the new Sun Air­way LP. Need to get that Night­lands record ASAP. Turns out there’s more to the Philly music scene than Dr. Dog. Who knew?

Lots of peo­ple did. I’m lit­er­al­ly the last guy to the par­ty. Why? Nev­er paid much atten­tion to the local scene when I was com­ing up as a rock crit­ic because Doug Wallen had that beat cov­ered like a blan­ket and I was­n’t all that impressed with what was hap­pen­ing back in the mid-’00s, apart from bands like Man Man and Espers. That’s changed. And how.

Sure, some of it can be chalked up to me not being paid to care about music any­more. Lis­ten­ing to new music became a chore. Feel like I missed lots of great stuff because I tuned out, but now I’m back with open ears. In fact, I’m arrang­ing inter­views with some of the bands list­ed above now. Can’t wait to chat with some of these artists and show­case a renewed Philly music scene!

So tell me: who are your favorite local bands?