we can bring it back

Last night I saw Sonic Youth perform the entirety of Daydream Nation. I almost didn't even get there. Having ridden BART across the bay up to Berkeley, and walked from Downtown across the entire campus to the Greek Theater, the last bit running because I was late, I arrived at the venue and there was no show. The way the theater is positioned from the North, you can't really see anything till you arrive, so it probably looked pretty funny to passersby when I jogged determinedly up to a completely deserted complex, then stopped and stared in horror and, I have to admit, some tiny degree of relief. I wasn't sure I could sit through all of Daydream Nation -- as cathartic and revelatory as some of it can be, the album still contains periods of prolonged boredom punctuated by Lee Ranaldo pretending that melody's gone out of style. What happened was, I'd bought tickets for the following night's show, at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles.

So I called Camille, and -- brief note: this is why I got married -- she tolerated a few minutes of whining, followed by a few minutes of fake, forced commentary like "Nevermind, it's not that big a deal" to cover my brokenheartedness, before finally getting on Craigslist and persuading me to walk over to the Berkeley Community Theater, where the show was actually taking place. It's actually about a block from the BART station, so not a huge sacrifice. Anyway, I bought a scalped ticket for $5 above face, displaying a phenomenal lack of haggling ability when, having gotten the guy to agree to face value (don't like to pay less, refuse to pay more), I realized I didn't have change and just gave him two twenties instead of insisting. I was so relieved. The only time I've been any good at haggling was when I was in Senegal, where it's just basic practice, but it didn't stick. Although I got pretty good at eating fishbones and unidentified beef chunks there too, so I guess I left a lot of skills behind.

The show was awesome. I actually have very little to say about it. a Kim and Kim and Kim and Kim was hot despite looking (as always) slightly reanimated. I hadn't realized how much of a "Hip Dad" vibe Lee Ranaldo puts out, but that was also entertaining. Thurston Moore is ageless and godlike, as Sleater-Kinney recognized awhile ago. The album felt more bombastic live, in part because the Berkeley Community Theater doesn't have the best sound system for a waves-of-noise band like Sonic Youth. Kind of the same problem with the Roots when we saw them there in 1999. "Teen Age Riot," "The Sprawl," "Total Trash," and "Silver Rocket" were incredible. Hearing Daydream Nation from start to finish reminded me how much of what I love in music these days came in some part from the bracing novelty of that album. I'm very glad I got a chance to see them do this somewhat unique tour.

ribot = badass

New York's remarkable experimental music venue, Tonic, closed its doors on Friday. Just the most recent in a long, sad list of music venues that don't book Fall Out Boy or charge $50/ticket to close due to skyrocketing rent. Everyone's not going to go to Avery Fisher to hear exciting new performers, and every exciting new performer isn't going to play there. So when the Tonics and CBGBs of the world get squeezed out by condo towers, and when the music itself is improvised/collaborated on/composed specifically for events at the venue, that music quite literally disappears.

Marc Ribot kept playing till the cops shut the place down, and got arrested because he is, in addition to being a truly gifted and bizarre guitarist, a straight badass motherfucker.

Hmm? What's that? What did I do for the world of music today?

Oh. While I was riding the BART to work, I composed a song called "Get Me A Donut," which, as should be patently obvious, has no verses.

Classical music + Jeans = Badass

A lot of badass stuff has taken place since the last time I posted on this, but here's the thing. Those linky-linky blogs always disappoint me a little. It feels like you're a teacher in a college seminar where, instead of reading responses, the students brought in "cool rocks" they "found in the yard."

So even though this particularly badass thing happened a while ago, I haven't had time to settle down and think about it. I don't have time to do that now, either, but irregardless it's totally badass and not only that, but when you read about it you might even describe it as urgently badass. Probably that will not happen.

Eric Edberg is a member of the music faculty at DePauw University. Along with being a cellist, he also describes himself as a "Drum Circle Facilitator." I have no response to that, because it speaks for itself. I will say that, although many things about this story are badass, facilitating a drum circle is not.

But in August, he did something pretty badass. He put on a concert of "classical music in jeans," which he describes as an "'informal/interactive musical event' -- a recital with the usual rules of concert etiquette suspended." Okay, that description isn't likely grabbing you by the throat, but think about it:

1) Live music is something you have to go out of your way to see. Unlike TV, radio, internet, wireless media, digital storage, and most of the other things it competes with in the entertainment field (not to mention alcohol and parlor games), experiencing live music requires a relatively substantial investment of time and money in advance. What did they do to punish you in first grade? They made you sit quietly and do nothing -- sometimes in the dark. (Or at least, the time-out room was always less well-lit than the others. I spent some time there.) So why would you voluntarily submit to that, especially for an experience you're likely unfamiliar with, only to find yourself too embarassed to divulge it on Monday at the water cooler. With the rigorous etiquette suspended, classical music becomes a lot more like a visit to the museum, the theater, the movies, etc. Add a big red cup of beer and some fried appetizers and you'd see frat guys there in no time.

2) Classical music hasn't been "classical" for about 150 years. Even when it was, it had plenty of waltzing, stomping, balladry, and even some groove. All the elements that characterized popular music have become more and more a part of so-called "classical" music, to the point that the "classical" moniker, which meant nothing at first, means even less now. Unlike jazz, hiphop, punk, etc., the vast cosmos of music that falls into the "classical" category at this point has very little uniting it into a cohesive genre, and very little separating from its counterparts across the record store aisle. Longer format (although not really), different instruments (although not really), lower volume & lack of amplification (although not really), distinct separation from folk/popular music (although not really) -- well, you see where I'm going here. At this point, and actually for about the last 75 years, the only things really separating classical music from everything else were its conventions and its audience. No reason not to change the former in order to increase the latter.

3) Many of the pieces currently experienced in worshipful, darkness were originally greeted with cheers, boos, rioting, etc. They didn't give you cough drops outside the theater. They didn't patronize you by announcing the rules at the beginning. If you coughed during the slow movement, you didn't worry about having your car keyed after the performance. I'm not saying I don't find these things disruptive, and it actually is distracting for people to pay $50 to see a concert and then talk straight through it. But that is, and always has been, the price you pay for being alive and not a hermit farmer. The idea of doing everything you possibly can to replicate the original sound, including period instruments and deep score research, only to perform the piece in a context completely alien to its original life makes no sense whatsoever. We need to give it up.

4) Up above you might have been doubting my assertion that beer would be enough to lure frat guys to a classical music concert. First off, just re-check your math there. But also recognize that people's musical tastes are forever broadening, and audience divisions are disintegrating accordingly. We have the internet and progress in musical innovation to thank for that. Unfortunately, classical music audiences are behind the curve in this respect (no evidence for this, though I've read various things in the past). Even though the DePauw concert was certainly a novelty, and this attracted more attention than it otherwise would have received, the audience response demonstrates that the concept worked. People are not allergic to classical music, and if presented in a format which they can relate to, they'll listen. Amplifying the performance and looking at less traditional venues could probably do more to build the audience and shape the experience.

5) People who care deeply about classical music (me, yup) stand to lose little to nothing with these kinds of changes. None of my favorite performances (either as a participant or a listener) took place in a darkened concert hall -- and most involved no tuxedo at all. Anyone who has seen Radiohead or Public Enemy live knows that you don't need etiquette to be serious musicians and convey your music well. If it's a less of a sacred experience because the pianist's wearing sneakers, then you need to reexamine why you go to concerts in the first place. You don't need a classical concert to see solemn people in formalwear make pained expressions: just go to the junior prom.

Here's the video footage of the concert. See how, without all the pomp, it becomes obvious that Haydn (I think it's Haydn) wrote a piece for people to get up and dance to? Yeah, the dancers are awkward and maybe trying to get attention, but just the small etiquette changes (jeans, cheering, etc.) make it seem a lot less bizarre than it would.

Conclusion: Badass.

Yo La Tengo at the Fillmore 10/21/06

I love Yo La Tengo. How much? They beat out the Beatles, Percy Sledge, Springsteen, and everyone else as the song choice for the first dance at my wedding. With a cover of a forgotten disco song by George McCrae. That’s how good they are. Which explains why I’ll always see them live despite their tendency to do 15-minute-long feedback jams. Last Saturday was no different. Since I don’t yet own their new album – I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass – I was especially excited to hear the new material live.

why? opened the show, and they killed. The crowd was actually into the opener and disappointed to see them go, for a change. In fact it shouldn’t surprise me too much, since why? hails from Oakland, and the Bay Area certainly isn’t hurting for Anticon fans. Is there a succinct way to describe this band? They sound kind of like Lou Barlow fronting Steve Reich and Musicians. One dude plays drums and vibraphone simultaneously, one dude plays keys and guitar simultaneously, Yoni Wolf leads the group, plays organ, snare drum, and various little pitch/feedback boxes. He also beatboxes. They all sing and go crazy. Yoni Wolf is more or less what you’d expect from an Anticon member: he's Jewish, he loves hiphop but has better sense than to make it, he has a warped sense of language, and displays no respect whatsoever for genre boundaries. Hearing why? live was remarkable and unique, and when CDs come back into the budget I'll definitely buy the albums.

Yo La was their normal, withdrawn, awkward selves, but with a little more chattiness. Over the course of the night they proved -- as the new album title suggests -- that they aren’t afraid of shit. They opened with “Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House,” not too much of a barn-burner but nice to hear. Georgia had kind of a raspy, unwarmed-up quality to her voice that coupled with Ira’s geeky rocking-out on the organ to crank the endearing quotient right up. But the show didn't really start until James launched into the monster bass vamp of “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind.” Holy cow, is that song menacing. Props to James for playing the same riff for 12 minutes without phoning it in, and props to Ira for making the various solo sections sufficiently different from one another while still getting across the overall message: “I Am Not Afraid of My Guitar and I Will Beat it to Death with My Hands.” After that, a happy detour for “Beanbag Chair,” segueing us into a piano section dominated by songs from the new album (which relies heavily on piano). They breezed through "I Feel Like Going Home" and “The Weakest Part,” pausing to channel Prince on “Mr. Tough.” Then into “Flying Lessons (Hot Chicken #1).” Not my favorite song but exhilarating to see live. The obsessive minor-key vamp gives Kaplan so much space to do crazy feedback solos. Also not my favorite thing, but for one night every year or so I’m willing to listen to a 4-minute feedback solo and Ira Kaplan's the guy to provide it.

In other news, the Fillmore got rid of their ice-cream sandwich desert…very sad, but I had apple pie. Highlight of the evening: me getting back to the floor, mouth full of apple pie and ice cream, just in time for Ira blast the intro to “Sugarcube.” I almost cried, because the sentiment of “Sugarcube” – trying to do better, or at least do whatever’s necessary to make someone happy – just resonates with me. It was one of the harder parts of growing up into a man and husband (so to speak). Doing what’s “objectively” right (or imitating the concerned nice guy on TV doing what's "right") is one thing, and I did that unfailingly for my first 3-4 relationships. It takes a lot more courage and risk to actually look at your own behavior, acknowledge the aspects of it that prevent you from being happy, and commit to change. Which isn’t to say that I’m an expert, just that I first heard this song around the same time I was trying to figure out how to be together with (as opposed to just in love with) Camille. So the song gets to me.

Then they played “Tom Courtenay,” which I love equally but I haven’t even bothered to learn the lyrics to (beyond the first and last few lines), so double good for me. One of my favorite Yo La Tengo tricks: Ira Kaplan singing over his own shrieking guitar squall, while Georgia and James hold the rhythm and harmony together. The end of “Tom Courtenay” offers an awesome example of this, with Ira repeating “I’m thinking about the needle” over and over. Have I mentioned how much I love Ira Kaplan? Yeah, I have.

The set proper closed with “The Story of Yo La Tango” [sic] and “Blue Line Swinger.” Live, “The Story of Yo La Tango” is damn near unlistenable because it’s so loud and screamy. I love the lyrics, though, and I suspect that (as with “Cherry Chapstick”) a very beautiful acoustic version is floating around somewhere. Actually, if I’m being honest, I know there’s some kind of acoustic version because Yo La Tengo appeared for about 15 seconds on the Gilmore Girls, playing that song. I didn’t watch the episode, I found it on Youtube. Really. I've watched Gilmore Girls, I admit, but it's not like I watch it. I already married into a family of smartmouth women who talk too fast -- why would I voluntarily watch one? Anyway, I think plays this tune so loud and squall-y because they want the audience covering their ears, scowling, leaving the venue, etc. They have cred to maintain.

“Blue Line Swinger” was perfect, and I mean perfect. It's such a unique song. The intro purposely turns off the crowd, with the endless organ loop and drum pageantry. Over time, the chord change gets burned into your head until you don’t even notice it. And the audience gets so used to hearing Ira’s guitar squeal and Georgia whanging away out of time that even people who know and love the song (like me) give up any hope of it improving. Then, when the beat finally kicks in and the organ loops line up with the drums and guitar, and James starts powering the low end, the wave of relief cannot be described. A good approximation would be "Woooooo!" Then Georgia starts singing the sublime melody, and you can never understand the lyrics when she sings, so it's fine for them to devolve into “Ba-ba-ba-dah” and ultimately fall apart. For that special feeling of having your brain put through a washing machine, buy Electro-Pura or just download “Blue Line Swinger.”

First encore: the theme from the new movie Old Joy, which Yo La Tengo scored, “Demons” from I Shot Andy Warhol, and a blistering cover of Bob Dylan’s “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” which is a lame song (and it rips off the Beatles verbatim) but they put it over.

Second encore: A bad song by Stoneground (I don’t know anything about this San Francisco band from 30 years ago, and there appears to be a reason for that), “My Little Corner of the World,” and a heartbreakingly beautiful version of “Take Care.”

Third encore: “Big Sky” from Yo La Tengo’s first album Ride the Tiger. This song, like the others on that album, is almost good but not quite. It still made the diehard fans happy, though, and the fans like me who only listen to the band's good material got a timely reminder that almost-good Yo La Tengo’s still better than the rest.

Stills @ The Independent 10/5/06

We went back to our old neighborhood last night to see The Stills at The Independent, which is tied with Café du Nord for best live music venue in San Francisco (no fries, but better sound & stage). Camille and I have loved the Stills since 2003, about six seconds into “Lola Stars and Stripes.” Wait, that’s not accurate. She’s loved them since then, but at the time they released Logic Will Break Your Heart (their debut) I was engaged in an aggressive boycott of New York haircut bands. So I dismissed them like so much unnecessary conditioner.

You remember that era. Strokes, Hives, Vines, Doves, etc. I had this suspicion that, despite the improbable catchiness of Is This It?, these bands had no shelf life and secretly sucked. And I didn’t want to get too invested. It also really bothered me that Rolling Stone would “predict” some band like The Vines to be "the next big thing," then two months later would put them on the cover – like, See, we were right! It's always been that way -- just in the past, I'd had the time and inclination to investigate the music and figure out what I felt was actually good, separating it from the garbage. Now, even though I still have no time, I've got better sources. But then, I had to give up on pop music altogether. Anyway, I was right about the shelf life of all those bands, but wrong to lump the Stills in with them. For one thing, they’re from Montreal. They only look and sound like a New York haircut band. And, really, they don't sound too much like that -- their record was produced that way (in Brooklyn, no less), and they were certainly marketed in that way, but it doesn't fit well. They don't fit well with the slightly more recent Canadian invasion either, but no one fits these labels in the first place, and there's no such thing as a metropolitan music "scene" anyway, so forget I said anything and let's move on.

The band killed. Like every other mainstream popular rock band right now, The Stills are five white guys, aged 25-28 in suits/ties/formalwear of some sort, with camping hair. Left to right:

A guy who was too French for the Strokes, a guy who was way too French for the Strokes, fat Steve Caton, and my 13-year old cousin Benjie. [aka Tim Fletcher (Vocals/guitar), Olivier Corbeil (bass), Liam O'Neil (keyboards), and Dave Hamelin (Vocals/guitar)] Drummer Julien Blais isn’t pictured – but that’s fine. During the show Camille summed him up fine: “He’s kind of cute…wait, I can’t see him.”

You have to hand it to this band, though. They understand the difference between a song formula (boring) and a song recipe (tasty!), they know that it’s easier to rock out to simple melody & complex harmony, and they play tight new-wave arrangements in a loose, bombastic manner. Best of all, when their lead guitarist left, their drummer switched to rhythm guitar and took over half the vocals while their lead singer/rhythm guitarist switched to lead and made space for a new voice. It’s rare to have multiple lead singers of the same gender, and especially rare for the singing lineup to change three years in. What’s even more rare is when the less-attractive, less charismatic singer with a dorkier voice gets to sing a larger percentage of the songs on the sophomore album. But we loved him. He wasn’t totally comfortable on the guitar, so at first, due to his awkwardness and concentration, Camille starting referring to him as the “boy genius” of the band. It made sense later when we found out he’s not the regular guitarist or singer. It gave the band a more democratic feel, which is always nice.

They started with “It Takes Time,” from their new album Without Feathers (no idea whether they named it after the Woody Allen book or not – probably not). Great, but just a warm-up for “Lola Stars and Stripes.” Three years ago I would have thought the Kinks had mined that name for all its catchy singability, but obviously the Stills found unexplored potential. It’s impossible not to like that song. The follower, “Gender Bombs,” tried a lot harder to be dark and unlikeable, but since everyone in that club plays Smiths and Galore when they’re doing dishes, no luck there. Other highlights from the old album included “Yesterday Never Tomorrows” with sparkling keyboards, “Love and Death,” and a propulsive, snarly “Changes are No Good,” which Dave Hamelin (aka “Boy Genius” or “Teeny Weeny Rock Star”) prefaced by saying: “I wrote this one about a party that I wasn’t at, and wasn’t happy about it.” Camille leaned over to say “Yeah, cause you were at Hebrew school.” Buuuuuuuuuurn!.

About halfway through the show they announced that they were about to blow our minds, then revved up “Retour a Vega” and Tim Fletcher (who's hot enough as it is) started singing in French. Macy's panties department instantaneously made $900.

The songs from the new album got enthusiastic treatments too, which I always like to see. Nothing’s worse than a band that doesn’t commit as hard to its new material because of the crowd’s unfamiliarity. “The Beginning” had that bright, sunshiney epic feel, and their intense delivery of “Helicopters” helped bring out the lyrics’ lurking paranoia. I love lurking paranoia:

So keep this song
Till you catch diseases
And wait them out
Till the tundra freezes

Helicopters are chasing
Animals through the fields
Helicopters are chasing
Our spirits into the sea.

Can't front on a song about helicopters chasing animals through the fields, especially when it's set to soaring harmonies in a coda that makes you scared and elated at the same time. Good stuff. Also good: the rollicking guitar/drums/tambourine version of “Oh Shoplifter,” which offers a completely different take from the Smiths on that five-fingered art.

All in all, excellent show by a band with just a little more talent and depth than their hype would suggest. Don’t miss them if they’re coming to your town.

The Go! Team

Great American Music Hall
4/28/06

I saw The Go! Team last week, the night after Sekou Sundiata. But I decided, instead of reviewing the show, to just develop a list of all the relevant terms, ideas, comparisons that have accumulated over the last 2 years of unrelenting hype for this band. Originally I was gonna list them at the beginning of a longer review, to get them out of the way, but once done with the list I realized that I didn’t have much else to say. Feel free to explore these at your own leisure – Pitchfork, RS, VH1, et al have all covered the group.

Cheerleading
70s cop show soundtracks
Mixing issues (album & live)
Crowd participation
Original vs. US release
Record vs. live lineup
Why do they use sampled horns?
Ninja works the crowd
Two drummers
Buzz Band
Fatboy Slim/Public Enemy/Motown/etc./etc.
Experience/Exuberance

The show was a total rave-up, and the crowd was more into the band than any I’ve seen since the 2001 Okayplayer tour. So that was great. But intentional or not, mixing was pretty horrible. Based on the arrangements, I'd assume the density is intentional, but that's all the more reason for a good mix. It did help cover Ninja’s lame lyrics, but I thought the lame lyrics were sort of the point.

Swedish psychedelic rockers Dungen co-headlined. They look like they just left the Shire and grew 14 feet, and they play a weird, Scandinavian breed of hairy, stompfoot Viking rock. I think Jethro Tull would be the closest analogue, but that might just be the flute solo talking. The bassist, who we could barely see through the hobbit-fro, had the line of the night:

“Excuse me. We sing in Swedish, so if you do not understand…

...then that is the reason.”

Sekou Sundiata

Sekou Sundiata is basically a poet, of the spoken word variety as opposed to the Edna St. Vincent Millay variety, though in the last few years he’s transformed into more of a performance artist. I went down to Stanford last week to see the world premier of his new performance piece, The 51^st (Dream) State, which he’s been developing during a residence. As the title suggests, it’s sort of a dreamy rumination on American identity. The performance set-up for this new piece fairly resembles that of his critically-lauded blessing the boats: a full band on stages, vocalists, and Sundiata moving about speaking poetry and prose with musical backing. They had also erected a series of screens at the rear of the stage, which projected dancing, photo collage, and interview footage.

I can’t speak for the music in the last one, but The 51^st (Dream) State ran the gamut from jazz to gospel to raga and back again. I find this kind of hodge-podge wonderful to enjoy in the moment, and less memorable as time goes on. Programmatic music needs a pervading musical sensibility -- not necessary a strict genre, just a style and tone -- in order to communicate and sustain whatever themes it's intended to accompany. The Hindustani improvisation over Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” was jarring and beautiful at the time, but its disturbing effect fades in memory and the cavalcade of other musical styles that preceded and followed it effectively prevent listeners from gaining an understanding of its function within the whole. That's a major problem, and an easy way to make your audience into a bunch of glassy-eyed trout.

The same problem extended to the poetic content, unfortunately. When poetry is presented well (not that I’m much of a judge, but I have some experience due to my parents’ occupation and my own early aspirations), an audience over the course of an evening gains a sense of how the poet interacts with the world, and what he/she would like to reveal to you about it. Sundiata’s poetry, at times transcendent, at times aimless, did not accomplish this, at least not for me. He prefers to inundate you with words, imagery, and rhetoric, which may entertain you but will only communicate something substantive if he's exercised discipline in putting them together. I loved his trenchant re-vamping of the tired cliché “Everyone’s a nigga if you look at it right," and so did the rest of the crowd. Meanwhile, his first-person narrative of the confusion and horror immediately following a terrorist attack left the audience (included me) shocked and clammy – his character describes recognizing brain tissue, amongst the carnage, because it’s “ticking like a watch.” You don’t hear that everyday. Even the juxtaposition of taped interviews with a Japanese internment survivor and a post-9/11 Arab-American, heavy-handed as it was, did a good job bringing our struggle with American identity into relief.

Sundiata's weaker material simply rambled through a variety of clichés about facing up to our own injustice, greed, etc. I hate to say this of a respected poetry professor, but he sometimes kind of sounded like a sophomore AmStud major doing a book report on Notes of a Native Son. Which isn’t to say that the sentiments aren’t appropriate for the times, given the current, volatile conflict over what is and isn’t American. This was just a classic situation of trying to address much more than anyone could cover in two hours -- especially through the medium of song and poetry. Camille described it well when she said, leaving the theater, "I just wanted them to follow up something."

One last thing I’ll say: one thing I admired about The 51^st (Dream) State was that, of all the art I’ve seen in the last six years, I think it was the most comfortably situated in the 21^st century. It made no effort to be timeless, or to explore history separately from its relation to the present. It avoided various dated paradigms of race, gender, colonialism, etc., while confronting head-on violent acceleration of culture, commerce, and empire that has characterized the last decade. With more focus, any of these topics could have made for a challenging (and memorable) theme.

As it was, all I can say is that I saw Sekou Sundiata perform last week. I’m not too sure what he did.

kid koala/mike relm

Kid Koala/Mike Relm/J-Boogie
Independent
4/1/06

Have you ever been to a “turntablist” concert?

That’s right: “No.”

You should go to one. If you like dancing to music, and aren’t ashamed to be a geek, it’s likely to be more fun than whatever live music’s available that night, and way better than CSI: Milwaukee (or whatever).

Turntablism: the record player/mixer as musical instrument. A lot of people have trouble accepting the pretense, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone holding onto that opinion about after seeing a show like the one I went to last week.

I’ll skip J-Boogie, because I always get bogged down in the openers. But Mike Relm is more fun than a barrel of Fun-Dip. Seriously, DO NOT MISS HIM IF HE COMES TO YOUR TOWN. He’s a dorky guy in glasses and a black suit, with a sense of humor, a lot of ridiculous things on vinyl, a fairly pointed (but not always apparent) political sensibility, and the innate DJ ability to make any record kill. And in his newer shows, he’s introduced the Pioneer DVJ-X1, which is a scratch-able DVD “turntable." A while back Pioneer developed some kind of algorithm to simulate vinyl manipulation and match it to a physical "scratching" interface, the size of a 45 record. That was a revolution, and now they've applied the same process to DVD audio, and built a parallel system for visual data. Imagine what it might look like on screen if someone was moving the spindles of one of those old reel-to-reel projectors back and forth, and you'll get the idea.

Relm already had made visuals a big part of his show, but with the scratch-able DVD, and a DVD burner, they can become totally integral. Video/audio clips include: Bjork’s “Human Behavior” video (where she sings at her Cheerios and gets chased by a stuffed bear), the “O face” and other scenes from Office Space, a mix experiment using the “Twist” scene from Pulp fiction (you can find video of that here), “99 Problems,” Peanuts/Peewee’s Playhouse, Fight Club, School of Rock…you name it. Plus blends of Led Zeppelin, the Cure, Public Enemy, John Lennon, Rage Against the Machine (two cuts!!), RJD2, etc. etc. etc. etc. I was in heaven. You can get a taste of it on his website , and check out some fan-recorded visuals at YouTube (they’ve even got clips from the SF show).

Kid Koala was also awesome. Folks will know him from Handsome Boy Modeling School, Deltron, and of course Gorillaz. Also Bullfrog. Koala’s set includes elaborate mood pieces, frenetic B-Boy workouts, artsy stuff, and lots of humor. He’s in the vein of other hiphop renaissance men, like Prince Paul, DJ Spooky, etc. He’s a cartoonist and composer, with clear designs on a niche market that has slowly become acceptable in the mainstream: geeks. Which isn’t to say he didn’t rock hard or get everyone dancing. But what stays with me was his Plunderphonics-style reworking of “Moon River,” his performance of “Drunk Trumpet” (in which he uses the turntable speed and vinyl surface to create his own jazz trumpet solo over a rhythm section), and his “spooky” set, which mixes Slayer, RATM – it was a good night for them – and various scary sound effects. It’s impossible not to have fun when this guy is playing. I can’t say enough about his creativity and the freshness of his approach to the instrument. Go get his first LP, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, and listen to it with open ears.

And see him when he’s in your town.

I know I say that about everybody. I guess what I’m recommending is more live music. It’s the best possible way to spend your entertainment money. Do you remember any movies you went to in 2005? You’ve got maybe a dim memory of buying Milk Duds, right? Live music is interactive, and it stays with you much longer. Though, by the same token, it takes much longer to wash a bad show out of your brain than a bad movie. So do what I do – once every 1-2 months, spend an hour combing through Citysearch, or the events listings of your local paper. Alternately, you might make a list of the venues that you enjoy in your town and comb through their calendars. Then buy a set of will-call tickets in advance, and write it into your calendar. That way, you’ve already spent the money and blocked out the time, so you’re committed and you’ll make it out the door (which is the hardest part).

Mad for Sadness

Arab Strap
Cafe Du Nord, San Francisco
3/25/06

Wow, what a difference. Camille & I last saw this band at the Guinguette Pirate in Paris, which is actually an old Chinese junk docked on the banks of the Seine. It's a horrible venue for live music. Woozy, cramped, navy toilets. They have the right idea, in that it resembles an awful dive bar, but at least in an awful dive bar you don't have to walk down the gangway for fresh air, or wonder if there's sewage in your drink.

This was the summer of 2003. Arab Strap had released Monday at the Hug & Pint the previous April, and was touring on it. They were not happy. Which, to anyone who's heard their music, will seem like a redundant statement. But they even seemed unhappy beyond the general level of gloom and disgust for which they're adored and/or detested, depending on your view.

The concert in 2003 was pretty awful, what with the sound problems and onstage bickering, but I've come to love this band deeply since then. Somehow they made it onto the list of artists whose releases I will always buy new, not used, as soon as they come out. I don't know what it was about their sound that got to me, but it was something. Slow, echoing fingerpicked guitar, plodding drum machine, and half-sung, half-growled, half-whispered lyrics about alcolhol and one-night stands in an impenetrable Scottish brogue. Occasional strings, plinky pianos, effects.

I know, I know, it sounds irresistable. But Arab Strap will seduce you (like fruits and vegetables, or a woman – (c) Oliver Babish). Lead singer Aidan Moffat has a Serge Gainsbourg-like delivery, and a rather distinctive way with a couplet. From “Packs of Three,” off Philophobia:

It was the biggest cock you’d ever seen
But you’ve no idea where that cock has been
You said you were careful, you never were with me
I heard you did it four times and johnnies come in packs of three

Meanwhile, guitarist Malcolm Middleton seems to have an endless supply of reflective, slowly-winding guitar backdrops. Rather than developing chord structures, bridges, etc., he strings these long lines together, so the overall effect is something between a guitar and a music-box drone with flange. It's distinctive, and immediately unsettling.

Over the course of the last ten years, the band has cautiously added new elements to their palette. Strings, bagpipes, music boxes, percussion. Each album gets a little more conventionally “listenable.” I actually like that they seem to work slowly and deliberately on their sound, rather than making a constant effort to fling themselves into new areas. They’re the perfect example of how doing the same thing over and over can work. Like the Morgan Freeman of Scottish indie rock.

Alright, the show. The first opener was A Whisper in the Noise. They courageously started with a 10-minute long slow tune. I leaned over to Camille and said “Side one of The Wall called, and they want their shouty, echo-y vocals back,” which she thought was funny. Then I told her I needed to remember that for the blog, and she retracted her statement, saying it wasn’t quote, “funny enough for the internet.” To which, of course, I had to respond: “If yeh don’t eat your meat, how can yeh have any pudding? How can ye have any pudding if yeh don’t eat your meat!?” I guess I don’t remember much more about the opener. They didn’t particularly pique my interest. Kind of detached and plodding for my taste. I feel bad saying that, since they suffered some misfortune later on in the tour, but being weird is not the same as being good. And even though I like weird music, I don’t like it because it’s weird. To be fair, I was hungry and waiting at the bar with my wife, who was also hungry (and a little cranky), so who knows.

His Name is Alive had the middle spot. I can’t get into their music too much. Some of it is terrific, some is just boring, wandering nonsense. “I Thought I Saw,” from their new album Detrola, is a super singable Motown-type shuffle, with horns and scratchy guitar goodness. It got the patented Camille head-bounce, which is hard to earn. But that song proved an exception during the show, and is probably an exception in their overall catalogue. The majority of their music left me cold, bored, and annoyed that I didn’t spend my money on something else. It’s worth noting, though, that their recorded output, from what I’ve sampled on ITunes, seems more varied than what they presented, and might offer more to eclectic ears. Unfortunately neither the songs nor the performance had the immediacy to translate well in a live context. Worse, their setlist was sequenced funny. It didn’t have much variety, and it didn’t build. ¾ of the way through, when you should be warming up to a band, getting comfortable with their sound and style, I was wishing HNIA would get off. That’s never a good sign.

Oh, right, the headliner. Well, they fucking killed. They’re in rock band mode now – no strings, two guitars, bass, and live drums instead of a machine. The concert opened with “Stink,” the snarling first track on their new LP, The Last Romance. The buzz on this album is that it’s more “upbeat” than the previous ones (true), but it’s comforting to know that even with sprightlier tempos, they haven’t strayed too far from the template. The first line of Stink is “Burn these sheets that we’ve just fucked in,” and it goes pretty much downhill from there. They are not Kool & The Gang. They tore through some new songs, including the new LP’s first single, “Dream Sequence,” as well as “(If There’s) No Hope For Us” and “Don’t Ask Me To Dance.” Like the older material, these songs explore the claustrophobic, disorienting nature of love and the need to escape, or at least get your bearings. But the upswing in pace and rock-ier instrumentation makes the music’s hopeful side a little more credible. Listening to the earlier albums, I had trouble believing that Aidan Moffat actually wanted his drunken, destructive lovelife to change. If he wasn’t addicted to wallowing, he was at least sincerely committed to it. The Last Romance, on the other hand, has a struggling, driven aspect to it that fundamentally alters the perspective – to me, at least. It’s just more hopeful, there’s no other way to say it.

As the show progressed they dug back into their ten-year catalogue for “Pyjamas,” “Who Named the Days,” “New Birds,” and “Packs of Three.” Though “Who Named the Days” is a gorgeous, whispered ballad, the overall crowd response & rapt sing-along leads me to believe that it’s become a minor anthem despite their best intentions. They closed the set with “There is No Ending,” an absurdly catchy uptempo dance number with a big trumpet hook and reluctantly optimistic lyrics. Yeah, it talks about pedophiles and nuclear holocaust, but it still falls squarely into the “love song of resistance” mold – sort of like “No Surrender” being covered by the patrons of a sports pub in the Northern UK. You know – “Love will keep us together…again.” My favorite part:

If you can love my growing gut, my rotten teeth, and graying hair
Then I can guarantee I’ll do the same as long as you can bear.
If you love my little poofy hands, my skinny arms and reeking feet
The way I dance the way I eat…

Plates may smash and doors may slam, my comments may be less than kind
But that won’t mean I’ve changed my mind
I’m a huffy prick the best of times, I love to sulk and shout and squeal
But please don’t doubt the way I feel.

For the encore, Aidan and Malcolm came back with an acoustic guitar and took requests. It offered a great window into the heart of the band, and a picture into how they must of looked, felt, and sounded back in the mid-nineties. I’m one of the fans that’s always glad (so far) to see them change their approach to music, and how it reflects their outlook on life, but it was nice to get a glimpse during the encore of the bare elements that called critical attention to Arab Strap a decade years ago: brutal honesty, dark humor, and passionate longing of the very modern, urban variety.

So Arab Strap was great. As for the other openers? Well, I’ll put it this way. They were not Scottish.

My Ferrari does 185...

This weekend I attended the final night of the San Francisco Tape Music Festival. If it continues, I'll be going back -- it was overwhelming, unique, confrontational -- all the stuff good live music should be, without any of the distractions.

It took place at the ODC theater, down in the Mission. They sit you down, completely darken the room, then play tape music over a spectacularly designed set of 16 speakers. However, the sound in this place was incredible. From my notebook: "Electrical noises skittering across the ceiling. Clouds of static opening overhead. Voices whispering across the hall, feel intimate. Swooping synthetic noise. Groups of sounds stuffed into a corner to my right, grumbling."

The concert was a tribute to Luc Ferrari, who died last year. Before I go on about how great it was, this is probably not something that anyone who reads this blog will actually want to go out and buy. If you have the money, spend it on something that has less of a chance of inducing overpowering nausea and discomfort. If you like electro-acoustic music, or are serious about listening to and enjoying sound, then by all means.

The Program:

Etudes Aux Sons Tendus/Study on Stretched Sounds (1958)
Presque Rien Avec Filles/Almost Nothing with Girls (1989)
Tautologos 1 (1961)
Place des Abbesses (1977)
Les Anecdotiques/Exploitation of Concepts no.6 (2004)

There are a couple ways to look at this kind of music. On one hand, it was basically ~100 people, sitting in the dark, being assaulted by random noises we don't really enjoy or understand. If aliens were watching us, they'd assume we had all been prescribed radical behavior modification therapy, or that we were blind and someone was playing a horrible trick on us.

Of course, no one in the audience seemed at all ruffled. This was an achingly hip event in an already hip district of the hippest town in the country. They weren't going to stand up and shout "Fuck this! I'm going to Arby's." One woman was so into it that she actually whooped after a few of the pieces, as if she'd just caught Tom Jones' sweaty undershirt, instead of listening to what most people would describe as three minutes of R2D2 farting in his sleep.

Here's the play-by-play, as I experienced the evening's program:

Etudes Aux Sons Tendus: Unfortunately, the first piece of the night was the least likeable, and the most terrifying. You have to imagine this theater, with its exposed beams and industrial pipe, lit eerily from below by a laptop screen under a single spotlight. Given the sounds, and the ambiance, I kept expecting a man-bat to drop from the ceiling and drain the guy next to me, leaving only his scarf, Pumas, and bloodsoaked (but still ironic) t-shirt. In the liner notes, Jean-Christophe Thomas described Etudes with the phrase "uncompromised disparity," which is pretty much on the mark, whatever it means. I heard squeals, beeps, abrupt cuts and splices, accompanied by an assemblage of feedback, industrial noise, and carefully shaped squall -- it really was like being in a sonic haunted house. By the end I was mystified and regretting my decision not to stay home and watch Homicide with Camille (by the way, in case you're wondering why I mention her a lot -- our pre-nup contractually obligates me to work her into every post).

I had actually heard Presque Rien Avec Filles in college, but it'd be a serious stretch to say I remembered it even the least little bit. Ferrari composed this piece after he'd gotten a good hold on his technique and sensibility, melding undiluted "field" recordings with electronics, interviews, his own verbal cues, etc. Female voices meander in and out of a general "outdoor" texture, while the sounds gain density and dissipate gently. The highlight for me came when Ferrari dissects the voices and begins to intersperse electronic tones and clicks, echoing and conversing with the filles. I started smiling, cause I there's nothing quite like obliterating language to wake up your ear.

Tautologos 3 could also be accurately titled: 65 Electric Organs Fall Out of a Cargo Plane and Land on Detroit. Not much else to say, except that the structure exists, and the piece has an undeniable emotional effect. To all the folks out there who think these guys just make random, unlistenable stretches of electronic sound -- something actually does separate good composers from not-good ones. At some level, every good composer (and performer, for that matter) understands the connection between sound, emotion, and physiology. They know how to get to you. John Lennon claimed to Rolling Stone in 1971 that he was an artist, and if you gave him a tuba he'd "bring you something out of it." So, even though I didn't particularly like Tautologos 3, my heart was racing at the end, and I felt exhilarated and paranoid and exhausted all at the same time.

Place des Abbesses was the standout of the night. This piece was captivating, and reminded me why I'd been so taken with the few recordings by Ferrari I heard in college. Snatches of flute, clarinet, synth, plucked strings, woven into a modal feel that was very appropriate for these Terry Riley stomping grounds (Warning: before you click Riley's link, be advised that, despite the man's boundless creative talent, it's probably the worst website ever made). I know Ferrari was a fan of Riley's In C, so the circular, wandering tonality makes sense. The winds don't play melodies, they play little gestures and hints of jazz licks, like three seconds of Debussy or a snippet of "Body and Soul." Ferrari makes particular use of the similarities between pure, open clarinet tone and bottle hiss. Drums and rudimentary rhythmic patterns emerge and fade away. Seriously, it was mesmerizing -- and I know so because I had that awkward, intense desire not to interact with anyone as soon as the lights came up for intermission. I didn't want to hear them all dissecting it in the lobby, or talking about Sam Alito or the Super Bowl. That's how I know something's good, when it ends and my first thought is "Whoa," followed immediately by "Wait, do I have to talk to these fuckers now?"

Finally, Les Anecdotiques presented a perfect example of Ferrari's documentary-style composition. He describes the piece as taking place on three different planes: sequences of recorded material from his travels around the world, electronic sounds/detritus, interviews with young women which add "balance to the discourse." The piece visits and revisits locations, musical themes, narratives, situations. Even though my mind wandered over the course of the 55 minutes, it was wandering in the way your mind wanders when you're hiking a mountain or taking a bus tour of an unfamiliar city. You come in and out of engagement with what's around you, but you preserve a constant sense of immersion in another world. The piece begins with a heartstopping whoosh of sound, then a woman asking "Qu'est-ce que je sens?" ("What do I feel?"). It ends with the question only partially resolved. Sound rushes from the back of the hall to the front, seeming to sail through the front speakers and out of the room, to Greenland, or Gibraltar, or another dimension. Everyone breathed a sigh of wonder and relief.

If you want to get a better sense of Ferrari and where he's coming from, Paris Transatlantic published a fascinating interview in 1998. It does a much better job than I have.

The other thing to do is get La Creation Du Monde, by Bernard Parmegiani. I think, of the electro-acoustic music set, his work remains the most accessible. By the way, I searched for about five minutes for a good description/review of this masterpiece, with no luck, until I remembered that I wrote an entire term paper on it -- and the reason I wrote a term paper on it is that as far as I'm aware no substantive analysis of this piece exists in English. With any luck, in the future Creation will be regarded like the B-Minor Mass, or Beethoven 9, or Mahler 8, or OK Computer, or whatever your preferred musical representation of the human experience is. Ferrari probably will not make it into that company, since he's too much of a radical, and "disparity" isn't a good sonic accompaniment to touchy-feely events at the UN. But who knows.

muffled stoplights burn out right in front of me...

Saw the Invisible Cities with Goh Nakamura last weekend at the Hotel Utah, which I'd never been to before. They have a regular open mic there, and I've been invited to play/listen a couple times by a friend, but haven't worked up the courage -- or figured out the missing middle-eight chords for my poor, bridge-less songs.

Anyway, the Invisible Cities were without a drummer, but had nicely reworked their songs for the different arrangement. "Double Fisted" turned into a hard-rock shuffle, in the mode of the New Pornographers' "My Slow Descent into Alcoholism," and "Birthday" came across all ethereal and squall-y.

I like squall. It kind of sounds like the name of a flightless bird from Northern England that needs constant protection from poachers. But of course I'm thinking of squab, which I've never eaten but sounds disgusting. It might not be from England.

Look, don't eat squab. I don't think it can even fly. That's all I have to say on that.

Okay, so the band also played a few new tunes, and generally re-confirmed their status as the most adorable band in the world, even when the music is edgy or angry.

Goh Nakamura, who plays solo as well as with the band, opened with a friendly and limber opening set of solo acoustic guitar songs, about teenage longing, geekiness, unrequited love of the self-consciously literate variety. Stuff that resonated fairly well with me. It sounded great in the small space. He also had the courage to cover "I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)," and pulled it off nicely despite having as little in common (at least on the surface) with Otis Redding as anyone could. I liked his use of the loop sampler pedal, and I liked his not-use of it even more. I can't stand it when guitarists are constantly fiddling with that thing. When Camille and I saw Garrin Benfield a few months ago, opening for Dan Bern, it was like "LOOP SAMPLER MADNESS WITH GARRIN BENFIELD -- NO SONGS SPARED!" It should come as a warning sign if, when you bend down to start pushing buttons, the audience groans and settles back in its seat.

But Goh Nakamura was pretty judicious, at least in this show, and he combined it with singing into the pickup behind his strings, which produced a quavery harmonic-ed background harmony. An all-around good opening, not even spoiled by Camille spilling her Wyder's, cutting herself on the glass, then getting mopey about the whole affair.

The highlight of the show, for me, was the cover of the Flamin' Groovies "You Tore Me Down," which sounded terrific, and a gentle version of the band's "Lost in Translation," from whence comes the title line of this post.

people go the movies i don't
get what they see
muffled stoplights burn out
right in front of me

you, another sidewalk
you, another phone
you, another thought won't leave me alone

Warning: Don't listen too much to the Flamin Groovies. They're really catchy, and mildly narcotic, but what you're forgetting is that at some point people whose opinion you care about will be over at your house, and they'll see the CD, and they'll be like "Who the hell are the 'Flaming Groovies?' Are you kidding me? Didn't you used to listen to Dead Prez? Fuck this, I'm outta here. Have a nice day, Wavy Gravy."

That will suck for you.

Otherside, Invisible Cities, etc. 3/16 at 12 Galaxies

Though the show itself had its ups and downs, it’s been almost two months since I’ve seen some live music so I remained completely content throughout. Plus, 12 Galaxies (on Mission St. in San Francisco) has Full Sail on tap.

The venue is bizarre, to say the least. It’s sort of like seeing a show in an Iroquois longhouse, if you can imagine. The shape doesn’t adversely affect the sound in any serious way, but it creates a feeling of emptiness even with a good-sized audience. Given that it was a Wednesday night four-act show starting at 9PM, the crowd was decent. Had my girlfriend not been under the weather I would have had someone to talk to, but nice folks were all around.

Okay, music. The opener, Habit Forming, did an excellent job of completely weirding everyone out. I had a blast imagining them as the band for Peewee’s Playhouse – a position in which they would have excelled. They’re a local dance-rock outfit with vague funk and metal leanings, and no discernible self-awareness. The highlights were a fragmented song-cycle dedicated to Josie Wales and an absurd, jerkily dance-able cover of Slayer’s “Angel of Death.” As usual, I was much more interested in hearing other people play Slayer than in listening to the actual albums themselves.

Fastpass, the second band, burned through about twelve uptempo indie screamers, a la The Thermals or the Get Up Kids of a few years ago. I can’t offer a lot of comment here because this particular indie subgenre tends to leave me lukewarm. Great to bounce around to, difficult to remember afterwards.

The main reason I went to the show was to see The Invisible Cities live, since their album has been in non-stop rotation at work and at home for the last month or so. Like I said before, this band has a huge talent and tons of potential. The live show covered all the same emotional territory as the album, and I was glad to experience in person the unique moments of reckless joy, doubt, humor and quiet resignation that made Watertown so special. The absence of some of my favorite cuts was mitigated by a run-through of what seemed like a newish song, “A Squared Plus B Squared.” It’s about triangles, among other things, so awesomeness immediately followed. Anyway, reviews (even informal ones) make it nearly impossible to communicate the nature of the music, so I’ll again fall back on the tired old mainstay of accessible-but-still-slightly-insiderist comparison. Ahem: The Invisible Cities sound roughly akin to a mixture of Exile in Guyville, Life’s Too Good by the Sugarcubes, and Yo La Tengo’s mid-nineties LP, Painful. If that doesn’t explain it, I guess I’m not surprised because writing it certainly made no sense. Anyway – buy the CD and do your best not to completely adore it, I dare you.

As for The Otherside, when they started playing I went to The Otherside of the room, where the bar is. I liked the band fine, but the sound system wasn’t doing any favors for their particular brand of dark, jagged alterna-rock. Plus by then it was 12:45AM and I had to get home. You can find some of their stuff here, which sounds considerably better than it did last night. This will sound strange coming from someone who worships Mahler and Nine Inch Nails, but The Otherside came across as altogether too serious for my taste.

That's all. I hate writing reviews, but I desperately want people to listen to new music. Speaking of which, look forward to upcoming reviews of Corey Harris, The Decemberists, and Toychestra. (I'm really excited about Toychestra)