Vocalist Billy Crooked, guitarist Michael James, bassist Bo, and drummer Angelo Merendino made up Cleveland's Vacancies, who released a record on Reno's Smog Veil (2004's Gutpunch) before hooking up with Joan Jett's Blackheart Records for the 2005 full-length Beat Missing or a Silence Added. Gutpunch had been one of the more anxious blasts of punk revivalist energy to bust out of the Midwest, and no one expected anything different from Beat Missing. In October the Vacancies announced they'd be supporting the album by touring with the Turbo A.C.'s and the Dwarves, a lineup that made perfect, sleazy, lively sense. ~ Johnny Loftus