Dreams of some idiot Dreamer

Drive-By Truckers at the San Diego House of Blues: 5/6/2010

2010-05-07T22:11:00.000-07:00

I could tell you about the physical impossibly of navigating downtown San Diego in a car (one-way streets anyone?) or about the semi-painful nostalgia of navigating a downtown anywhere after my suburban exile, or about the still-unsolved mystery of how my ticket managed to evaporate from my pocket as I drove, requiring I buy a whole other one at the door....

But you don't want to hear about any of that. What do you want to hear?

Well, the show was great. Like, capital letters GREAT.

The crowd was kind of what I expected. There were aging grungies, a few hipsters with their plastic glasses, at least one punk-rock girl (past her first blush of youth), Country fans with their cowboy shirts, hats, and boots. There were even combinations of the above. I ended up getting kind of adopted by a pair of soldiers in the front row who knew even more DBT lyrics then I did.

Opening act was The Henry Clay People, who looked like someone'd put hipster glasses on a bunch of grunge musicians, with their flannel shirts and their veils of unkempt hair. Their blond singer was set up stage left, while their guitarist, who's stoned-looking face never moved once the entire show, jumped on amplifiers, stood on one leg, and on numerous occasions, wandered over to the singer to lean against him, share his mike, or generally invade his personal space. It figures that those two are brothers. This group had to face a nice wall of malaise from the stoney crowd, as the apathy that greeted their entrance and first numbers was pretty impressive, but they broke through it, and by their fifth song, everyone was bouncing. They come from So-Cal (frontman shared stories of working at San Diego's maritime museum back in the day) but they sound like punk-rock from Missisippi, if that makes sense. One of the longest too: they played for over an hour but made the time pass quickly. They rocked the room, and were easily one of the most impressive opening acts I've seen.

But everyone was there for the Drive-By Truckers. They would play for about 3.5 hours, a testament to the depth of their catalog, and someone like me would only recognize maybe two out of three of the songs they played. They were heavy on the new material, which I love. They're the kind of group that just turns the stage into a long, happy roadtrip, and we're all going together. Patterson Hood doesn't so much sing his songs as act live them, delivering a performance of "Sink Hole" that'll haunt you for days. The core of this group is the contrast between band-leader Hood and his foil Mike Cooley. Mike Cooley is aloof and cool where Patterson is engaged and passionate, and tends to more mellow renditions of his songs live then you get on his recordings, but he can sound like the Devil Went Down to Georgia when he decides the occasion warrents it. His deeply empathic "Birthday Boy" was a highlight of both the newest album and the show. The third lead singer of the night, bassist Shonna Tucker, has a voice like thick sweet honey, enfusing "Someday it's gonna be I told you so" with some dance-floor bounce and striking heroic poses with a bass roughly as big as she was. The drummer looked like he moonlighted as a member of ZZ Top, or Sasquatch, but played with almost delicate precision. The third guitarist, wild card John Neff, was the band's non-entity. He seemed to have no destinguishing features at all except his playing, but his playing was enough.

I loved this show. I love this band. Even if the super-long run time in a club with no Verizon service meant my sister would be frantic to reach me by the time the show was done, that was the best show I've been to in ages.

Movie Review: GREEN ZONE

2010-03-27T00:14:00.000-07:00

It is kind of impossible to talk about GREEN ZONE without comparing it to (or even calling it) a Bourne movie. Paul Greengrass directed the second and third installments of the Bourne trilogy, and Matt Damon is wildly recognizable as the amnesiac super-spy.

The Bourne movies were also, well, damn good movies. Jason Bourne is THE action-hero of early 21st century, post-9/11 America. He's an unstoppable bad ass, but he's also a kind of personification of the damage the War On Terror has done to America's idea of itself: haunted by horrible deeds he doesn't even remember, hunted by former bosses who now see him as a liability, he's something that must have looked like such a good idea on paper that it was worth breaking a few rules to make it happen, only for unintended consequences to turn Mission Accomplished into a clusterfuck. Bourne is damaged goods, and Matt Damon, to his credit, never let us forget it.

If there is something driving Roy Miller (Matt Damon)'s hunger for the truth besides sheer decency, we don't find out what it is, but that's alright, Damon is more then capable of grabbing us and just pulling us along for the ride. In fact the entire cast is spot on, which is not just good, but vital with a script this thinly written. Many characters are stand-ins for real people, painted in broad strokes, but it's still interesting to watch Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan), the Judy Miller-styled reporter who's face lights up when she recalls how this high ranking official put the raw intel right in her hand, like it was one of the happiest days of her life. Brandon Gleeson radiates a kind of deep intelligence as Miller's CIA ally, who also carries the deeply held delusion that the truth matters.

Greg Kinear doesn't have a gesture or glance to spare as the Paul Bremer administration goon, who is so fixated on the Political victory that he just plain doesn't see the human cost of the choices he makes. When Miller eventually uses his fists to try and beat some sense into him, it's about as close to a comeuppance as this character gets.

The Iraqi casting is also impeccable. Khalid Abdulla plays the one-legged Iran/Iraq war veteran "Freddy" as a haunted, conflicted figure who strives to remind everyone that nobody, not even well-intentioned Miller, really understands Iraq. Yigal Naor, who played Saddam himself in a BBC docu-drama and plays Iraq's top general here, radiates the kind of quiet, iron-handed command that might actually be able to hold a country together.

This is really as pulse-pounding as action-thrillers get. You'll find the same hand-held camera shots, frenzied pace, and incredible chase sequences that you found in the last two Bourne movies, proving again that Paul Greengrass is a director who can make even "person reading an e-mail" seem full of kinetic energy. He might be physically incapable of shooting something dull. The quieter scenes are not so much quiet as eerie. He portrays the Green Zone as a kind of surreal island. The scene where our battle-clad soldiers barge in on a relaxed, beer-swilling pool party is jarring. That's the gap between the people who give the orders and the people who carry them out, and that's why the righteous intentions of the men on the ground are foredoomed to failure. It's hard to get worked up about such hypotheticals as bloody civil war when your beer is cold and you've got a reputation to protect.

A lot has been made of the politics of this movie, but even with it's rooted-in-reality screen credit, the plot of the movie is very clearly the plot of a movie: it puts one man at the center of all the action, gives him the drive to solve the mystery, and brings it all to a kind-of victorious conclusion...kind of. Of course you can't escape history, and as we all know the mess Iraq turned into, we settle for the sort of watered-down victory we get. Miller gets through Iraq with his morality intact. This, it turns out, is as much as can really be hoped for.

I think when current American cinema is writen about in retrospect, GREEN ZONE will turn out to be a significant movie. It's not the best film anyone's made about the Iraq War, but it's a director and a lead actor using all the tricks they've learned from the wildly successful Bourne films to make a real-world point. I hope this won't be Matt Damon's last collaboration with Greengrass. These two get eachother, and for all it's flaws, this is one of the most tightly constructed thrillers you'll see.

It's a damn good movie. I don't know if I've mentioned that enough. A damn good movie.

Deke Dickland's Guitar Geek Festival in Anaheim: 1/16/10

2010-01-17T17:06:00.000-08:00

This one went simply. I read a write-up of the event in the LA Times. I had nothing going on that day. I decided to attend.

I found the perfect parking spot right in front of the hotel. The only soul in sight was an old, fat, white-bearded man walking slowly out of the lobby doors, carrying an old guitar case.

There was a gold Mickey Mouse statue in the lobby. Someone had slung a music-note-shaped guitar on it. I was DEFINITELY in the right place.

3 PM--DOORS OPEN
- there was a big sign over the door saying "YOU FOUND IT: Welcome to the guitar geek festival!" The line of tattooed dudes, mostly older, mostly with long hair snakes around the bar. I start noting down band t-shirts to research later.

3:15 PM--THE SEEING RODRIGOS
This trio of mariachi-costume-wearing guitarists bragged that, since this is a "guitar geek" event, they'd ditched their drummer. This was probably a mistake. Their dedication to instrument purity was, uh, admirable, but their sound could really have used the grounding. Without it they sounded like they were playing slightly-rocked-up mariachi music on guitars, which they kind of were.

3:30 PM--MESHUGGA BEACH PARTY
Billing themselves as "the world's only all-jewish surf band" these guys wore long Orthodox robes, black hats and big bushy fake beards. They, thankfully, appeared as a full band, with two guitarists, a bassist, a keyboard-playing woman, AND a drummer. And no one was fluff. Mixing surf music and jewish folk tunes sounds like one of those ideas you'd have after drink number one-way-too-many, but surprisingly enough this band cranked it up and never looked back. Plus they shared "cultural knowledge" by reading aloud from a rhinestone studded Dead Joke Scrolls, which were exactly what they were advertised as. That's the kind of cheese that makes me love you forever.

4:15 PM--BUDDY AND SUZY
Sorry. I hadn't eaten yet that day, headed out for an urgently-needed burger and missed it.

5 PM--STEVE TROVATO AND CARL VERHEYEN
Apparently, rhinestone-hatbanded Deke has gotten more requests for the both of these players individually then for anyone else he's ever hosted at his guitar-geek festivals. Now they are touring together, so it works out perfectly for him. They were two rather out-of-shape guys in their forties or fifties, wearing colorful shirts who adored each other. Each one kept trying to out-love the other one, asking for lessons, passing off the lead chords, and asking if their wives were in the audience. I love to see a bromance in the full of it's bloom.

They were master-players, that much was obvious even to a layperson like me. A google search tells me that these two are very in-demand studio musicians. I don't know what songs they were playing, for all I know they just jammed up there for fifteen minutes, but I could have kept watching them for days.

6 PM--"CRAZY" JOE TRITSCHLER
This guy was a sort of Co-MC, helping Deke out and serving as foil and witty banter. He is a funny, funny guy. He played this gig on his "satanic midget guitar." It was satanic because it was high and evil sounding. Somehow the music didn't grate. Engineering new instruments seems to be this guy's stick. He sounds like a punk-rock Buddy Holly.

7 PM--"HONEYBOY" EDWARDS
Had to move my car and missed it. Sad about it too, as this guy is billed as the "last of the Delta bluesmen," a contemporary of Robert Johnson.

7:30 PM--ELECTRIC 12-STRING NIGHTMARE
The rules were simple. Bring your own twelve-string. One guy will tune them all. Reclaim your weapon, crowd onto the stage and play. There were 17 of them total, including one woman dressed up like Tinkerbell (not making it up). The song was "Mr. Tamborine Man" re-written as "Hey Electric 12-string man, please play in tune for me." Crazy Joe conducted with a big board that had the cords on it and a whammy bar as a baton. That's how you know this is a REAL guitar geek event.

It actually wasn't much of a nightmare. It sounded like chaos of course, but it was controlled chaos. Even Tinkerbell was a more-then-competent player. Deke said in conclusion that if he'd known it would sound so not-awful he wouldn't have called it the Nightmare.

7:45 PM--BRIAN LONBECK AND ELAINE FRIZZELL
The only thing I really remember about this gig was that these two are old with a capital O. Elaine had a huge brown wig, massive plastic glasses, and I don't think her hollow-body was plugged in. Brian Lonbeck was singing and playing, but while I remember it being pleasant, it wasn't so pleasant that I didn't ditch to use the bathroom and hit up the bar for the most watery gin and tonic I've ever had in my life.

8:30 PM--HISTORY OF THE STEEL GUITAR
THIS was interesting, and apparently it was attended by all the giants of the steel guitar scene, which is a small scene, but a real scene. One guy explained that the Acoustic Island slide guitar originated when the suer-plantation owners imported South-American cowboys to teach the native laborers how to heard cattle. When the cowboys went back to South America, they left their guitars behind. The natives, of course, had no idea how to tune or play these properly, but one day some guy must have dropped his knife on the strings and noticed the sound it made, which is how the instrument came to be played with a metal bar against the frets. Through further experimentation, it turned out that adding a bullet-shaped end to this bar enabled the instrument to make the full range of notes and octaves. A grammy-winning Island slide player demoed this technique, playing a piece that made me wanna hula dance right there, which would not have been pretty, so I'm glad I resisted the urge. A stand-up bass, jazz drummer, and ukulele accompanied.

Down the line the instrument got more advanced. First it got electrified, as demoed by one guy. Then effects pedals were added, as demoed by that rarest of creatures: a steel-guitar player who has been employed for 40 years. Apparently he is Merle Haggard' band-leader. At the very end of the line was a guy who invents his own steel guitars, who's machine created incredible futuristic kinds of sounds.

Informative AND entertaining. Perfecto.

9:30 PM--JOEL PATERSON AND THE MODERN SOUNDS

10:15 PM--DEKE DICKERSON TRIBUTE TO JOHNNY RAMONE
Best part of the show was seeing all the unhappy old people scowling down their noses at all the noise. If Deke hadn't been the event's MC, he would never have gotten away with it. I guess the supposed demise of the punk-rock generation gap has been greatly exaggerated.

Sponge-Bob's voice actor was the evening's Joey Ramone. He stressed that you need to put the Ramones in context: if you're a 14-year-old in a small town in the midwest and looking for balls-out rock music, and you turn on the radio and hear "More then a Feeling" and other bloodless drek, and then your friend's cool older sister goes to New York for a week and comes back with a Ramone's album that sounds like BLLARRRGHHGHG and off they went.

Thank you Deke Dickland. Thank you, SpongeBobby Ramone. I've tried to be a Ramones fan before. I didn't get it.

I do now. Thanks again.

11 PM--GEORGE TOMSCO AND 3 BALLS OF FIRE
Like Duane Eddy, George Tomsco is another part of an important instrumental group from the sixties, though he's not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and his work, though familiar, isn't as omnipresent as Eddy's. Still, he was a bubbly fifty-something Tex-Mex with an epic mustache and an effortless stage presence who was quick enough to fill in the missing notes when the weird little techno-keybord thing Deke was trying to play died on everybody. My primary impression of this gig was "warm." Everything about it was warm. And the music was great, but saying so is almost redundant right now.

MIDNIGHT--DUANE EDDY
Hey, this guy looks familiar...
Yes, the random guitar-carrying old man I'd spotted as I arrived was none other then the evening's headliner, the Hall of Famer himself. Well HUH.
The only instrumentalist to get into the rock-n-roll hall of fame. I guarantee you have heard his songs before. It was cool to Deke, Crazy Joe, and other parts of the other acts gathering around a man who is clearly a hero to all of them. Deke said that ever since he was a kid, he's dreamed of the day when he will get to play "Peter Gun" with Duane Eddy, who replied "Let's do it." This gig brought the house down. Rocking and heartwarming.

I'm glad I went.

Back to Back to the Grind: 1-8-2010

2010-01-09T01:56:00.000-08:00

When I was growing up in this town, I didn't hang around coffeeshops. I didn't really hang around anywhere. But I'd been to "Back to the Grind" quite a few times in my life. Their coffee is strong, their hot chocolate comes with generous amounts of whipped cream, the lemonade is cheap as hell, and as the biggest independent coffee spot in downtown it's possibly the hippest place to be seen.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they sometimes have bands there. Like they did tonight. No cover charge, one drink minimum, and three local acts. This was a chance to get to know the "scene" in my suburban So-Cal town, such as it is, so I figured it was really time for me to stop lolly-gagging and head OUT on a Friday night.

The first band was Mothers of Gut. The guitarist I talked to said it was the frontman's idea. He washed his hands of the name. The guitarist held his Strat like he was worried he would break it, the sweater-wearing, emo-haired bassist could have been wearing a mask and no one could tell, the frontman had a huge bushy moustache that I couldn't see past. The drummer was the only one who looked like he was having any fun. They did not so much play their music as construct it, and they layered on the effects so heavy that the guitar sounded like it was under water, the singer was in a tile bathroom, the bassist was playing a synthisizer and the drummer was...who knows. This is music that takes itself very, very seriously. Get some production behind Mothers of Gut, and it could really fly. The coffee house is not for them.

After that, The Polite were a breath of fresh air. Where Mothers of Gut had been tense, joyless creatures, The Polite were all smiles, cracking wise with the people at the front coffee tables, taking a long time to tune their instruments, and it seemed like they personally knew all of the people who suddenly flooded the bar. The coffee house was packed and at least one hipster leaning against the bar knew all the words to the songs. They were poppy and punky and a bit surfy, and even if they didn't challenge much, they are extremely easy to like.

The RAGA was the last group, with a barrell-chested, hollow-body wielding, Spanish-singing frontman, who sound not unlike Los Lobos's less muscular little brother. Not an un-apt metaphor for East LA vs. Riverside.

Not many dendrites in this group, but a fun diversion.

A Night at the Roxy: 11-4-09

2009-11-07T01:46:00.000-08:00

My first solo expedition into LA, to a club with no little mythology of it's own thanks to the fame of the Sunset Strip. The Viper Room, the Wiskey A Go-Go, the House of Blues, and the Roxy. I wasn't sure really what to expect. What does fame bring a place, really?

Apparently it brings it a section of V.I.P tables so precious that the bouncers won't even let you lean against the half-height wall that surrounds them. There's definitely a percentage of people who patronize this place for reasons other then an interest in music.

You could see them, hovering around the bar, talking, looking important, and completely ignoring whatever poor guy happened to be making noise on the stage at that moment. They were sitting at the tables like that older gentleman, engrossed in conversation with his two playboy-bunny lady friends sporting boobs that could double as emergency life-rafts. There was one short older lady accompanied by two younger guys who stood really close to the stage and looked stony all night. There was one tall thin girl off stage left who looked like she smelled something foul. There was the drunk dude with all the yakuza tattoos who wanted me to know all about his metal podcast that he does with some guy from New York. He was trying to pick me up, but not in a threatening way: I think he was just drunk and lonely. Those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head. The Roxy is definitely prime ground for people-watching.

It's also definitely built with the live show in mind. The ceiling was high, the stage was low, the bar (technically two bars and a cocktail waitress) was in the back, the merch area has it's own alcove and bright neon sign. The men's room also had a neon sign. The ladies room did not. I call discrimination. Lady's room was also at the entirely other end of the venue, just off the lounge-type area by the entrance where I guess you could wait for your friend/date/agent/escort to show amid red light-bulbs, smokey mirrors, and a giant poster for a Bruce Springsteen show. At the Roxy. From the "Born to Run" tour. That's the kind of place this is.

Anyway, the first band up was Putnam Hall, a power trio with a long, lean, Asian front-man with a reedy, barking voice and a little slab of a guitar, an aloof drummer who gives off a sort of "adult supervision" kind of vibe, and a bass player who really impressed me by wielding his large, heavy instrument like he was born with it in his hand. You don't often see BASS PLAYERS who are showmen, yet all four bands that night had charismatic bassists. I'm not familiar with Putnum hall's music, and it didn't make that strong an impression on me, but they were enjoyable. They have a striped-down indy rock kind of vibe. They are also apparently good friends with Resident Hero, who's front-man was spotted in the audience and honored with a rousing, tone-deaf cover of his hit "Happy Without Me." It was endearing.

The next band Media Orphan had a sax player. That just about sums it up. And it seemed like the snazzy-hatted-bassist was the band leader. Also a short, stocky guitarist as proud as a peacock with a full tail of feathers, and an even MORE aloofly amused drummer. They also had a dedicated singer with a barrel build and a voice to match. I wish they'd given the sax more solo time: that instrument gave the band a kind of film-noir flavor that could really have been taken farther. How cool might a jazz-age rock band be?

But Resident Hero was who I came to see. Ever since I encountered their live-video special and got "Happy Without Me" stuck irrevocably in my head for two days, the more I learned about this group, from the raw honesty of their sound to the fact that Ryan White (the frontman/songwriter/band leader) still waits tables and can't seem to land a record deal, the more I liked them. I got their White EP and wore it out. Then I got their album and am still in the process of wearing that out too. Their brand of music is melodic rock with teeth, both beautiful and intense, and I was determined to catch them live when I could.

They didn't disappoint. They are one of those groups that walks onstage and explodes. Ryan White, who has a round, boyish face completely dominated by a pair of huge blue eyes, is kind of the most non-threatening-looking guy to ever transform into a shrieking, heart-sick demon when he gets onstage. He's the kind of performer who can do knee-slides and thrash his instrument without the slightest hint of cheese, because the emotions just run that high.

The broad-shouldered bass player is like a superhero, playing from a stance so wide he's basically doing the splits, with a five-stringed instrument and a sizable board of effects peddles. I wish to hell I could remember what Ryan White asked him for, something to the effect of "Play me something dirty and magnificent" but the result was a roaring intro to one of my favorite songs, "Life in Hell," which brought the house down.

And I was surprised by the drummer: lean, sharp-edged and long-haired, he's got the kind of dramatic flare you don't normally see this side of Brian Viglione* hollering the words without a microphone, pulling his hair, rocking back and forth, shooting himself in the head with a drumstick... it's like the music is all in his head and it's ripping him apart. He's the face of the story. Together this power trio crammed more passion and more fire into their seven-song set then some hour-long shows I've seen in my life. It was so worth the hour-and-a-half I spent in the car.

Lukas Rossi was the headliner. I'd run into his eye-lined self outside the venue when I first arrived to hear Resident Hero sound-checking, which made me happy, but the box-office closed, which made me less happy. He came out of the front door, and since no one else was around, I asked him when the box-office would be open, and he told me eight and I was relieved. That was kind of as deep as our conversation got, but he did laugh at a lame joke I made about his glittery hat giving him the power to fly, so I was kind of obligated to at least check out his set. His very professional street-team leader also cornered me after Resident Hero, saying she thought she recognized me but giving me a wrist-band and telling me she would want to know what I thought of Lukas after the show. I said I'd stick around.

I lied to them. It was almost midnight. I had an hour-and-a-half drive ahead of me to get home. Watching Lukas, immediately after Resident Hero was an interesting study in contrasts. Resident Hero are not virtuosos, but they set the stage on fire. This Lukas clearly IS a virtuoso. He's got a voice that can shift effortlessly between Thom-Yorke style eerie balladeering, punk-rock-barking, metal screaming and everything else. His band were slick and professional, and he had some vaguely amusing banter with his alcoholic bass player. He was deft on his guitar and just oozed style. He was the only one to actually have a small crowd standing exactly at the edge of the stage, gagging to see him. But he could not wake them up. Looking around I saw polite head nodding and toe tapping. That was as much enthusiasm as people could muster for the evening's headliner, and he'd been playing for forty minutes already.

I bailed. Sorry Lukas, sorry street-team lady, but if you're gonna play last, you better be worth the wait and you just weren't.

Anyway, Dear God, make Resident Hero super-stars already please. And while you're at it, world peace would be nice too. Alright? Thanks!

*if you don't know who Brian Viglione is, he was the drummer of the theater-geeks-turned-rock-star Dresden Dolls. Check out his theatrical magnificence here.

Pearl Jam at the Viejas Arena: 10-8-09

2009-10-11T21:52:00.000-07:00

This was how it went. The show was in San Diego. My sister lives in San Diego. I figured I could go to San Diego, see the show, and crash at her place. However, the Angels had a playoff game at the very day of the concert. My dad got tickets for my sister and himself. She would not be in San Diego at the time. She told me I could still come, and she ordered her boyfriend to look after me. This ended up working perfectly.

My sister's boyfriend is named Mike. He was extremely accommodating. So much so that he was actually OK with us ditching the lousy seats we were given and sneaking closer. So instead of being up in the nosebleed section staring at Matt Cameron's back all night, we were actually only a few rows up, off stage left--

But you know what, you don't really care about any of that. I'll talk about the show now.

First off, Ben Harper rocks. There's lots of other ways to say that, but none of them sum it up so nicely. He's clearly a powerful enough force to rock a venue on his own, and he deserved way better then a half-empty arena of concert-goers who are barely paying attention. At least they WERE barely paying attention until the tiny, flannel-clad Eddie Vedder staggered onstage and he and Ben ripped through a cover of "Pressure" which really woke everyone up.

Eddie, it turned out, wasn't just staggering around because he's clumsy. Someone who made his name climbing hundreds of feet onto lighting fixtures, leaping over speaker cabinets, and generally being a human tornado wouldn't have made it into his forties if he was clumsy, but at this show he'd be limiting his stuntwork to some gravity-defying yoga-type poses with the very sturdy microphone stand. Other things he tried, like the jumps, the throws, and the simply walking across the stage wouldn't work so well for him.

Blitzed. Three sheets to the wind. Shitfaced. Hammered. Furry. Zipped. Talking to Earl on the Big White Phone (my favorite). Call it whatever you want, it's probably why Eddie Vedder squeaked on his highest notes and breathed through his lowest, but losing his voice didn't stop him at Outside Lands, so getting swimming drunk wouldn't stop him in San Diego. Pearl Jam was wrapping up the American leg of the Backspacer world tour with this show, and three members of the group spent important parts of their lives in the city so they were treating it like a homecoming and celebrating accordingly. "We got lots of family and friends here," said Eddie, "and you guys are making us look really good, so thank you!"

As usual, you'll have to go elsewhere for the setlist. It didn't strike me as that special until the encores, which were heavy on the hits, but this was one of those shows where the energy hit the roof early and just stayed there. The crowd was on their feet, almost every song was a sing-along, and the group were fired up. Quoth Eddie: "We got a shitload of amps and guitars, lets blow the roof off this motherfucker."

THIS is why Pearl Jam has made it almost twenty years. played tens of thousands of shows over almost twenty years, but they seemingly effortlessly convince you that tonight, tonight, is as special for them as it is for you. They are as glad to see you as you are to see them. After tens of thousands of shows to massive audiences all over the world, how the hell they manage to do it is beyond me, but Mike (who had only a passing knowledge of Pearl Jam) walked out of there talking about what a down-to-earth, genuine, likable guy that singer seemed to be. He said it was cool that they played "Last Kiss" facing the seats directly behind them where Mike and I would have been if he hadn't gotten away with stealing closer. That was considerate of them. Then Mike asked if he could burn my Pearl Jam CDs to his computer, and what that song they'd played about surfing was called.

It was called "Amongst the Waves" and it was from Backspacer. We listened to it in the car on the way back to the apartment. Eddie had intro-ed that song by saying "This is a song you'll like if you're a surfer. Or you'll like if you're in love. If you're a surfer in love it'll blow your fucking mind." They ended up playing most of Backspacer that night, including "The Fixer," "Got Some," "Johnny Guitar," (less obnoxious live then it was on the record) and a powerful version of "Just Breathe" that featured just Eddie, alone, with an acoustic guitar. "We've been playing this with a string quartet, but...fuck it, this time I'm going naked." For the record, he remained fully clothed throughout the whole show. Just saying. Mike said that song was what proved to him what a singer Eddie Vedder really is. Even if I, sadly, can no longer deny that the alcohol and a lifetime of smoking have eroded the window-rattling power he had when he was twenty-five, the raw, unironic, unapologetic honestly of his voice is still among the most formidable weapons in Rock and probably (hopefully) always will be.

Eddie told stories about the band's respective histories in San Diego: Matt Cameron was born there, Mike McCreedy lived there as a kid, Eddie spent about two decades there after leaving Illinois, discovering surfing, learning guitar, and working odd jobs as well as morphing into the open wound he'd be when he shipped a demo-tape to some dudes in Seattle who were looking for a singer.

One more story from Eddie: Pearl Jam's single longest-running roadie (now working for Ben Harper) was the first of the band's extended "family" to take the big step into adulthood and have a kid. He had an adorable little daughter, all the more adorable (according to Eddie) for being named "Lou. What's cuter then a girl named Lou?" Eddie remembered going to the hospital the day after she was born to visit her, and catching the new parents on their way home. Dad went to put the new Mom in the car, and somehow Eddie was left holding this day-and-a-half-old baby, trying to shelter her from the pouring Seattle rain.

"She just turned sixteen today!"

He brought "Lou-Lou," a blond girl in a sporty hat who was only a little bit shorter then the front-man, out onstage, put his arm around her, and hugged her like an adoring uncle. Then he had the whole arena sing "Happy Birthday" to her while the band brought out a cake and had her blow out the candles. I didn't miss that when it looked like she didn't have enough lung-power and was gonna miss a candle or two, Eddie, hovering just over her shoulder, lurched forward to help, but she got it. Everyone cheered.

Someone just became the coolest kid in school. Suck it, My Super Sweet Sixteen. You brats all WISH you could be Lou-Lou.

I ask you, how many multi-millionaire, A-list, globe-trotting, platinum-selling bands would do that for the kid of a former roadie?

Mike McCreedy's old high-school drama teacher, whom he has kept in touch with over the years, was there, and that fact had inspired Eddie to track down an important teacher from HIS high-school days, and actually find him! "After thirty years, I just had to tell him..." he gestured around at the audience. "Check this out! This one is for them." And they played Betterman... which of course the entire audience sung along to.

Eddie talked about how he had worked as a night-shift security guard, and had had "a really great boss" whom he had begged to let him get a mohawk, saying "I really appreciate this job and it's a great job and I appreciate that you gave me responsibility, making me SUPERVISOR of night-shift security and gas-pump detail," he said with relish, "and I wish I could promise it would be worth it but I can't because I don't know, it might never go anywhere at all, and I like this job a lot but if I don't do this thing, this punk rock thing, I..." he didn't finish the thought.

And his boss thought about it, hemmed and hawed and eventually said "Yeah, you should do it."

The boss was actually there that night: a huge black guy in the VIP section that Eddie kept pointing at through the whole story. He was pointing back and pumping his fist. The mood was so joyous and communal that Eddie closed with, "I liked that job, it was a great job, but this job, this job I've got now...I AIN'T NEVER GONNA QUIT!" You believe he means it.

I can't help but wonder if that boss had ever heard Eddie sing before he decided to humor his rock and roll dreams. I wonder if he suspected that he'd be standing in a stadium full of thousands of people all transported, all because of his supervisor of night-shift security and gas-pump detail. And his band, of course.

Who knows where talent comes from. Some people are just born with the raw stuff to conquer the world. But it doesn't do everything: far more people have talent then manage to build an actual life with it. Some crash and burn trying. Most take a look at the odds and choose a normal, reliable life instead, keeping their talent locked in a secret box inside them.

Some make it to Viejas Stadium, standing center-stage with their old mentors just off stage left, bursting with pride while an entire arena belts out the words to a song you wrote in your room when you were a teenager.

Also, there is Mike McCreedy. If you ask me he is, bar none, the best guitarist to come out of Seattle since Hendrix himself.

I'm going to quote Jason Owens of the San Diego News Network because it summises the ending of the show perfectly:

"While Vedder takes center stage on almost anything and everything Pearl Jam, the final two songs were definitely about Mike McCready and his guitar.

With the crowd hungry for another Pearl Jam hit, the band delivered with a version of “Alive” from the debut album that featured McCready and Vedder climbing on to the tops of the stage-side speakers as McCready wailed on what may be the band’s most familiar guitar riff.

By the time they closed with “Yellow Ledbetter,” which McCready transitioned into a Hendrix-esque “Star-Spangled Banner,” there was nothing left to give."

The biggest hits had already been played, but the show didn't end. Eddie thanked everyone from the heart and said goodbye, but the show didn't end. Mike had to leave to get to the car before he got ticketed, but the show didn't end. The house lights came up, but the show didn't end. Mike turned the end of his solo into a whole other song while his bandmates ran around throwing guitar picks, set-lists, and drumsticks at the crowd. Up until the very end, the energy level was just insane. Like that, it was over.

Finally the curtain call. Lou-Lou returned to the stage. The two music teachers, who had replaced their students for a cover of "Little Wing," also came back to the stage. Everyone threw their arms around each-other, and bowed deeply.

They don't make rock shows better then this one.

Dreamer Reviews: Black Gives Way to Blue

2009-10-01T23:00:00.000-07:00

Grunge was a genre that saw more then it's fair share of brilliant singers. Layne Staley of Alice in Chains was one of them. Layne had a voice like a heartbroken werewolf, all bitterness and wild power, and he could hold his own easily with rock's best frontmen.

Layne Staley is also the one Grunge casualty to boast of an end even more harrowing then Kurt Cobain's suicide blast to the head. A shotgun, though gruesome, is at least quick. Layne chose the long, lonely, painful path of the hard-core drug addict. In the end, he had become so isolated that he would be dead for weeks before his 6'1, 86-pound body was finally found.

Maybe that's what Jerry Cantrell, the band's surviving principle songwriter, is referring to in "All Secrets Known," the opening track of Black Gives Way to Blue. This is Alice in Chains first album in fifteen years, and first album ever without Layne, but their former band-mate casts a long, dark shadow over the group that they have only just begun to make peace with.

The song starts with a Slash-in-a-haunted-house style riff, which swings back and forth as the vocals kick in. "Hope / A new beginning/ time/ time to start living," a life-affirming sentiment made flat and factual by the droning, weary singing. Jerry Cantrell, lead guitarist and the band's principle songwriter, has mostly taken over lead vocal duties, and his voice, though tuneful with a pack-a-day grizzled edge to it, lacks the dog-of-war power that Layne took with him to his grave. Instead Jerry sounds flatly amazed that life continues on even after "we died." There's no joy here, just perseverance in a world that won't ever be the same, and for reasons everyone knows about.

The group members have, for the most part, avoided talking too explicitly about Layne in public, but for for me it makes the most sense to think of this album as the band's attempt to say goodbye to their band-mate properly, even if posthumously. Like most posthumous goodbyes, they'll probably spend the rest of their lives trying to get it right.

Check My Brain has become a hit all over rock radio and it's easy to see why: the churning, droning guitars are classic Alice in Chains. Jerry Cantrell's singing voice may or may not be up to sharing space with a ghost, but he's a powerhouse on the guitar and probably always will be. He doesn't have the naked virtuosity of Mike McCreedy but his brand of droning, haunted, bluesy metal sounds like nothing else you'll hear.

The song's topic is Cantrell's re-location from Seattle, with it's rain and oppressive cloud of memories, to sun-bathed Los Angeles which he declares "alright" with all the enthusiasm he can muster. It looks like California is one of the last places he expected to end up, let alone be happy. You get the sense that he's not really at peace with being at peace, calling himself "a creep in the fog," but he's found healing there, for better or worse.

Last of my Kind is the first track on the album co-written by new member William DuVall, and it starts with an atmospheric, haunted ambiance before degenerating into the kind of deconstructed, post-apocalyptic noise of see-sawing, screaming guitars and slow, thundering drums. It's a one idea song and while rocking hard, I found it a bit musically underwhelming.

The lyrics are pure Alice in Chains too: a portrait of a mythical outcast, exiled and forced to scrounge for survival in a world that hopes the hardship will beat him into complacence. It's dark, it's dream-like, and it fits right into the pantheon of dystopian metaphors that Alice in Chains has always traded in.

Your Decision is the first track on the album worth actually buying it for. It's a mostly acoustic number and displays an unexpected strength for the new Alice in Chains: sentiment.

I was listening to this track on headphones in the middle of the community college computer lab and I started tearing up. In public. Some mournful cello adds portent to the situation, the acoustic guitars have an almost folk feel before the aquatic, electric solo kicks in. This is one of the first tracks were new guy William DuVall's supporting vocals are audible,

The lyric writer was, simply, powerless. He couldn't stop "you" from destroying yourself. He couldn't change the fact that, when faced with the world, you chose to die rather then deal. They needed you. You choose fear instead. It's a choice you made knowing what it meant, and it inflicted no small damage on the people around you. "You feed the fire that burned us all/when you lied."

The singer loves you and he hates you, he's washed his hands of you for the pain you've caused him, he desperately misses you. There's something bitter and angry in this song, wounded and howling, quiet and sad. Tragedies are whirlwinds, and there are no easy answers. Art might be unique in it's ability to take something so painful and make it into something so beautiful. The spell it casts lasts long after the song ends.

This live performance is noteworthy too. First because the lack of strings and the totally acoustic treatment of the song makes it sound more frank and places everything in a smaller space. William Duvall's choice to wear sunglasses onstage is an interesting one: they make him stylish but anonymous. Jerry Cantrell's face, on the other hand, says everything. He's the beating heart of this band. Maybe he always was.

Bands tend to stick together because they believe they can bring out the best in each other. If the three of them didn't still believe they have something to offer the world, as a group, then this resurrection would have never happened. Where DuVall fits in I don't know quite yet.

A Looking In View was the first taste anyone got of this album, being the framework of the atmospheric and very NSFW music video that featured, in succession: child abuse, obsession, decay, repression, dehumanization, religious fanaticism, despair and, at the end, something resembling renewal. The whole sad play is bathed in the colors of despair and isolation, and there's even a visual reference to Alice In Chains very first hit single. This video is what got me paying attention to this band's comeback. Bands that play this grim card are a dime a dozen now, but this one might just be the real thing. Another interesting note: the band themselves don't actually appear in the video, and that works too.

The song itself is like a dirge: the tempo is torturously slow, like a migrane throb, but everything piled on that kick-drum beat comes on like a hurricane: the bass-line is breakneck, the guitars drone and shriek, the vocals snarl. It's a long song, over seven minutes long, ending in a fade-out. It's a fairly accurate barometer of whether or not you'll like this new Alice in Chains: if you got through the whole thing, then you'll get through the whole album. It's also the second song on the album to end in a fade out. Apparently new AIC is more interested in how things start these days then how they end.

When The Sun Rose Again is where things slow down for me. Well they slow down for everyone, it's a very slow piece with acoustic guitars and shakers easily audible, and though this combination is usually a recipe for sadness, this song is more pensive and vaguely ominous then sad, and the lyrics are the album's most ambiguous yet. "Were you burned away/ When the sun rose again?" could be a reference to the resurrection of the band, or a retelling of The Snowman so that doesn't narrow it down. "Pray / squeal when you're caught/ cry/ it's not my fault," which, though straight-forward enough in it's imagery, could refer to any number of things. "Time to trade in never-befores / Selling out for the score" could be nitpicked to death. We're in dense metaphor country here, but at least we're out of fade-out country. The next songs flow flawlessly, one into the other, letting the landscape build: a feature they didn't even have to make a big deal about in the promos, (cough)Timbaland!(/cough)

Acid Bubble starts out sounding like A Looking In View's little, more sensitive brother with it's buzz-sawing guitars, the murderously slow pace, but the relentlessly dark tone suddenly takes a more mysterious turn when the chorus starts soaring. "I am the child that lives and cries in the corner." Since this is AIC we're talking about, they soar on broken wings close to the ground, but they are on wing nevertheless. This is as anthemic as post-Layne Alice in Chains is gonna get, I suspect. It even contains a Green-Day-Style plot-twist when the style shifts to a menacing march that sounds like an army advancing, then retreating, then taking the hill for good over the songs six minutes.

Lesson Learned reminds me of "Last of my Kind" in that it's another sloggy rock number that is shorter then "A Looking In View" and doesn't have "Acid Bubble's" militant plot-twist. However, it does have a nice tremolo-heavy solo.

It could be interpreted as being about that rock-bottom moment when you learn that the end is not the end. "Nowhere to buy in, most of us hiding, others are shining" is another nice positive thought wrapped in so much world-weary drear that you'd ALMOST think the singer was being sarcastic if the tone wasn't so frank. This is a quality Jerry Cantrell's voice has that Layne's never did. Layne was a beast of the underworld, and he never went near sentiment without the armor of angry resignation. Jerry Cantrell and William DuVall can voice the occasional positive thought without sounding sappy or insincere. "In your darkest hour you strike gold."

Take Her Out is yet another sloggy, droning rock number. Make no mistake: this album is not a triumphant return for one of the 90s most evocative rock groups. The musical choices themselves are redundant enough to make this a promising start at best. Yes, the sludgey metal IS Alice in Chains, but Cantrell himself is usually more then willing to dabble in other styles. I hope they just need to get their nerve back.

All the same, I'm probably not alone in suspecting that "Her" in the title is Alice herself (i.e, his band) and this song is as close to an answer to those who question his right to resurrect the group as we are probably going to get.

If I'm sure of one thing, it's that Jerry Cantrell wants to be in this music thing for the long-haul. His millions haven't robbed him of the fire in his belly. He's also realized that he's always going to be "Jerry Cantrell from Alice in Chains," expected to play those songs. Well, he wrote those songs.

"I feel time is dragging on/ Aren't you getting tired of me?" he asks. Who is he asking? Himself? The fans who keep showing up to his shows? The band-mates who where quick to answer his homing beacon? The people waiting for him to decide whether to claim AiC for himself or split from it entirely? All of them?

"Want to take her out again." At least he knows he wants to do what he's doing. It's everything else that's uncertain.

Private Hell is slow, with a mournful tone the electric guitar solo gently weeps, the arpeggio riff the song seems written around is beautiful, strong, and very sad. It'd be too easy to say this one is about the self-imposed suffering that you-know-who locked himself into. He's not the only one in the world who ever died this way. Choosing to stay in the cell you made for yourself, opting out of love, joy, and eventually life itself, nevertheless the song doesn't have much of "Your Decision's" droning bitterness. This song is a cry of mourning.

Black Gives Way to Blue. If you need one reason to get this album, it's this song. The song is a sensitive arrangement of acoustic guitars, a slow tempo, delicate, rushing cymbals, and one crying electric guitar that made me think of Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight:" slow, beautiful, and as full of love as a guitar can be. I even heard a xylophone in there somewhere. The band really pulled out all the stops for this song.

By the way, according to the liner notes, the piano was played by Elton John. Elton John + Alice in Chains = Owch my brain. However, if it sounds dorky in concept, it's not at all dorky in practice. This is the only piano I can find anywhere on the album and it gives this track a graceful solemnity.

Every time they've performed it live, it's the last song they play, and they've played it "for Layne." And maybe this is the best way to handle Layne, his legacy, and their own grief. After all the blessing, damning, begging, loving, cursing, and crying is over, this is the best thing you can do for the ghost you see everywhere.

You tell him you'll never forget him.

You tell him you love him.

Then you let him rest.

If this is the start of a new stage of Alice in Chains, or just the farewell the band deserved, I can't say. But I'll be listening. That's for sure.

Nine Inch Nails at the Hollywood Palladium: 9-2-2009

2009-09-17T13:55:00.000-07:00

This is WAY after the fact, but what the hell. I haven't yet worked through my own feelings towards this event. I'm a relatively recent Nine Inch Nails fan: I first discovered them last year, so the fact that they are going to no longer be touring isn't as loaded an issue for me as it has been for others, but there was something like desperation in the brutal, every-man-for-himself vibe I was getting from the crowd as we all jostled for position. Maybe it was partly my fault for showing up without anyone I knew. Normally sallying forth solo into the unknown is how I like it, but this place was going to get very intense very fast. My pre-show jitters were more intense then they normally are.

On the plus side, someone at the Palladium must have known I collect buttons. The commemorative NiN button they were handing out now decorates the new black trilby I got at Outside Lands to replace my much-loved, faithful red DREAMER hat that got lost in my move.

The opening act was called Queen Kwong, a five piece I had never heard of before; an eclectic line up of bass player rock-god-type who was dressed all in black and slinging his bass from his knees, a woman with lots of curly hair and a silver violin, a cellist and drummer I could not see from where I was standing, and a slim, dark-haired front-woman who wielded the only guitar. Her small orange instrument provided the group's crunch, while the strings wove a haunted, paranoid tapestry, creating a very interesting kind of multi-layered effect. The front-woman also has an effortless way with a crowd, engaging in some banter with front-row people who were inaudible but apparently complementing her on her bass player, since her response was an enthusiastic "I KNOW, that's why I have him in the band!" Her bubbly attitude was kind of at odds with her malevolent vocal style: she snarls, yelps, growls, drips disdain and reminds me strongly of Prince of Darkness Trent Reznor's breathy, emotional range.

Now, I know a lot of very smart people who swear by MEW, the electronic-goth-mind-bendy group from Denmark. They even had their own cheering section in the front to wave little Danish flags when they took the stage. All the same, I just didn't like them. They had a big multi-media display behind them that kept showing surreal animation clips that they looped over and over, which was atmospheric but distracting (to an animation nerd like me anyway) and their music, at least to my over-anxious, uneducated ears, washed around my head like an otherworldy tide without giving me anything to really hang on to. And the bass was turned up so high that the overhanging speaker cabinet rattled my bones like an LRAD. It's not the greatest first impression I've ever gotten from a band.

Then came Nine Inch Nails. All hail, the moment of reckoning.

What is it with the bands I see and the front-men falling sick? Incubus's guy was sick. Poor Eddie Vedder was sick. Now Trent was sick, and while it didn't stop him from grabbing the mic with both hands and striking that runner's pose we all know, screaming his lungs out, diving into the audience during "Piggy," or much else of anything, really. He apologized around 2/3 through the show for his "shitty" voice, but since "shitty" in his case meant "hoarser on the low-ranges then it usually is" no one minded that much. And the rest of the band, of course, was phenomenal. Robin Fink is less of a guitarist and more of a guitar-plucking space-alien with liquid joints and the voice of a demon. Justin Mendal-Johnson looks like a normal guy who's bass transforms him into Your Worst Nightmare: stomping around and screaming his backing vocals. Drummer Ilan Rubin is a tornado with arms and hair. This line up rocks.

Oh, there was a guy Trent introduced to the crowd as "having a huge influence on what Nine Inch Nails turned into." His name was Gary Numan, he was a pickled little goth guy with huge black hair who walked up to the microphone and took over the band effortlessly. Trent, probably grateful for the break, retreated to his keyboards and for the next three songs, it was this Numan guy's reedy croon that ruled the day. This Numan is impressive, whoever he is.

They played "The Downward Spiral" beginning to end, too. Forgot to mention that part.

It was hot as hell in the pit. I was still badly sunburned from Outside Lands, and didn't last longer then about three songs. And then I found out they weren't letting people off the floor, so there was no way to get to the water-bottles. I got so thirsty I grabbed an abandoned, half-full bottle off the floor and drank THAT. The fact that it doesn't seem to have made me sick amazes me.

Amazing show, and eventful enough to clear Shoreline's "NiN/JA" disappointment from my mind. Not that NiN was bad, but JA was so much BETTER....

It's sad that NiN is going away for a while, but as Yahtzee has said (in a completely different context) if the original creator really wants to put his pet project down humanely, it's usually in everyone's best interests to let him.

Until we meet again, then. Now that Year Zero TV show.... THAT is something to get excited about.

Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival: August 28-30 2009

2009-08-31T22:23:00.000-07:00

This is gonna be abreviated because I'm heading to NiN in an hour or so, so I'm gonna do this review in Bullet Point form!

Friday

Wish I'd gotten there earlier. Zap Momma was cooking up some bluesy, jazzy magic at the Twin Peaks stage the instant I arrived. I didn't get to hear them for long since I wanted to see Built to Spill but it was quite a way to start the festival.
I missed Built to Spill. That's what I get for "short-cutting" through the Beatles: Rock Band tent. I guess I forgot that I'm extremely distractable.
Silversun Pickups are one of those buzz bands that's got a hit single and a lot of good press these days, but unlike most of those flavor-of-the-weeks, they actually deserve the hype. Their lead singer/guitarist looks like Caleb Followill and sounds like Billy Corgan, all while stalking the stage like a starving tiger. The bass-player was atypical as well, a pale girl with a purple sundress, gently rolled hair, and a shy-but-confident demeanor. She's one of those bass soloists and her style with the instrument is brisk and effortless. The drummer was a whirl of long black hair, speed and power, popping his drumsticks into the air and turning his shirt dark with sweat. The keyboard guy had a selection of instruments and a hat like the one John McCrea used to wear. This group was playing to a bigger crowd then they were used to and were plainly exhilarated by it: Singer guy said he'd had NO IDEA they were going to get to share a stage with Built to Spill ("One of the best bands in the fucking world!") Then he turned up the volume and rocked the house. This group was the first big surprise of the festival.
INCUBUS! If you've listened to rock radio anytime at all since '99, you've heard at least one Incubus song, and they played them all that evening. The lead singer was the slim, beautiful boyish type and was stretching out while his band-mates picked up their instruments, so I knew we were in for some acrobatics. They weren't as intense as hoped, but they had roared through "Pardon me" and another song before stopping for break. The singer had a cold that day (he said) and was nervous about performing, so one of his bandmates suggested getting drunk. The crowd cheered, so he said "From your reaction I'm guessing you agree!" He raised his glass of wine and said "Isn't it great, the way we all look out for each-other?" He finished his glass and had stripped his jacket and shirt off before the end of his set as well for his rubber-jointed flailing, but his illness had made his voice weak and reedy and the rest of the band, though musically more-then-capable, were not engrossing enough for me not to loose the fight against my bladder, give up my spot and head for the bathrooms.
Pearl Jam! The main event, and poor Eddie Vedder lost his voice! The golden baritone that has become one of the most famous (and oft-imitated) voices in music was more like the raspy tenor today as he sang around an octave above where he normally would. He apologized for this, saying it was the very end of a long tour and "it's pissing me off that my voice isn't what it usually is, so I'll take whatever help you're willing to give me." Fortunately the show itself seemed built around encouraging this: the setlist never strayed too far from a greatest-hits list, along with "Betterman," "Daughter" (which morphed into "Another Brick in the Wall") and other well-known tracks like "I Am Mine." "The Fixer,"and "Got Some," their newest singles, even got their slots. There were none of the tortured political anthems from their last few albums, no bellyaching, just Pearl Jam enjoying being Pearl Jam, with Eddie Vedder taking flying leaps off of monitors, Mike McCreedy playing the guitar behind his back, Stone Gossard doing scissor-kicks and throwing picks across the stage, Jeff Ament prowling in a circle, and Matt Cameron being the cool cat I totally didn't recognize that night at the Crocodile. Eddie said that a number of people from the Bridge School were there, off stage right, (they were the recipients of most of the flying picks), including Ben Young, Neil Young's boy which might explain part of why the band were so effin' excited. Eddie told the crowd a story about a night "kind of like tonight" about when the band were on their first big national tour and were all revved up and raring to play the same San Francisco polo field where they were playing tonight, when "I came down with the worst case of food poisoning I've ever had in my life." In short, Eddie was out of commission, disaster loomed, and Neil Young swooped in to save the day. Ever since then there's kind of been nothing Pearl Jam wouldn't do for Neil Young. They've been regulars at his annual Bridge School Benefit Concerts for over ten years and have obviously built up some relationships of their own with the students there, judging from the adoring vibes the band kept sending to the alcove just offstage. They rocked their hearts out. There was crowd-surfing. There was jumping. The last encore of the night was a barn-burning rendition of "Rockin' the Free World." All this while their singer's voice was completely shot. Pearl Jam are the real shit.

Saturday

Street Sweeper Social Club: I won't lie. I love this band. Tom Morello can do no wrong in my eyes, and while I'm not entirely sold on Boots as a singer (his vocals still tend to get swallowed up in Tom's riffs) this show kicked ass. Converted the two rail-sitters I was sitting next to to instant fans within five minutes too, because it was that kind of show, and they are that kind of band. These guys are the real deal.
Portugal: The Man: An indy rock outfit from Wasilla, Alaska that got an unwitting popularity boost when someone else from Wasilla, Alaska became a political superstar over-night and the band took to their blogs to try and warn the country about what they were getting into. I really want to like their band, if just for that reason. Their brand of rock is quirky and dreamy, and the lead singer sounds like a girl. I couldn't figure out if I liked it or not.
Mastodon. Alright, ladies, grab your pom-poms! Now gimme an M. Gimme an E! Gimme a T! Gimme an A! Gimme an L! What does that spell?! METAL! Now throw your fucking devil horns in the air and ROCK OUT!
TV on the Radio, and I'd thought Boots Riley had some happy feet. I didn't know nothin'. This band of odd-balls make funky psychedelic soundscapes that are creepy and vaguely apocalyptic. They kept tossing the lead vocals around and switching instruments. Pretty cool.
The Mars Volta, sharing the headlining time-slot with Dave Mathews, couldn't have been LESS like Dave Mathews if they were from another planet altogether. Think a cross between Pink Floyd and Metallica, with some Latin seasoning and a lead-singer with 80s hair who will get into a fight with his own band's name-placard and loose, right before putting his foot right through it. And at least a dozen crowd-surfers. It was demented, and I was hooked 30 seconds in. Wow.
I can't tell you how Dave Mathews was because by the time I got to the crowd, I realized I had dropped my camera and spent the set running around shining my flash-light at people's feet, but my friend David is a huge Dave Mathews fan, and was watching on the Webcast so when he says it was a great show, I'd believe him. I still haven't contacted my two rail-sitting friends, who were looking forward to seeing them on Facebook, because I can't believe I've lost ANOTHER camera. That makes a total of four. I am NOT getting another one until I figure out who put this Camera-Jinx on me and how to fix it.

Sunday

Bettye Lavette said, during her mini-bio "when I was sixteen this was the first song I cut. And when I was sixteen, not only did I know I was a singer...I also thought I was a star." Well, she might not have been famous when she was sixteen, but she was always a star. She was born a star. In an alternate universe, she was as big as Aretha Franklin. She even moved away from the mic to bellow out her song from the Main Stage and everyone HEARD her. What a powerful voice on that woman. Her guitarist, a long-haired man who had to be around half her age, introduced some truly searing guitar work to the soul anthems, joining her center-stage for a little dance number at one point. So even though she might have looked more at home in a glittering dress in a smokey nightclub then in jeans and a leather jacket on an outdoor stage at 1am on a foggy day, but she guided her set with the unshakable hand of a born star. In another world, she would have been as big as Aretha Franklin. She has the goods.
Modest Mouse were trying hard, they really were, switching instruments and bellowing through different microphones, and they inspired lots of smiles and head-bobbing, but they distinctly failed to electrify the crowd. Maybe they were having an off-day (their old guitar-player has left), but they didn't help their case by not playing any songs anyone knew. Really, I go see Modest Mouse perform, and they don't play "Float On?" Really? But I've heard from other sources that live performance is just not a strength for Modest Mouse, which is a shame because they have some genuinely interesting stuff in their catalog.
M.I.A, on the other hand, WAS electricity. This woman brings the idiosyncratic fashion without the class-baiting, richer-then-thou flavor of Lady Gaga, and with her two female backup singers, two blue-suited male backup dancers, and beat-meisters all decked out in Micheal Jackson T-shirts, she ruled the stage. She threw horns into the audience. She made it look so easy. AND she played "Paper Planes" to close, so whatever aversion Modest Mouse has to their own hits, she didn't share. She's amazing. Sunday was a good day for the ladies at Outside Lands.
Tenacious D (aka "Jack Black's Band") filled in for the Beastie Boys and were (as a friend of mine had predicted) hilarious and fantastic, just not headliner-caliber fantastic. Lots of people were grumbling at the D getting the headlining slot when there were plenty of other acts on the bill that could easily have been bumped up to headliners (M.I.A could have done it easily), and it turned out to be pretty justified. That's not to say their act isn't funny: but if you've seen "Pick of Destiny" you've seen pretty much all of Tenacious D's material. I hope Adam gets better soon. The Beastie Boys were missed that night.

Alright, that's my bullet point synopsis. Time for NiN.

CAKE at the Fox Theater: Pomona 8/27/2009

2009-08-28T00:48:00.000-07:00

Since I'm heading to Outside Lands tomorrow, this one will be a quick one.

Something was up with CAKE. I mean, I love CAKE. Their brand of architectual pop rock blues with a trumpet and John McCrea's chilly, detached speak-singing make them a band unlike any other you'll ever hear.

But something was up with them tonight.

The monitors were irregular, there were problems with guitars requiring roadie assistance, and tense conversation between band-mates. The show took a while to take off, probably because of the general strained attitudes of the performers.

And curiously enough, there was a "break." A period of fifteen minutes or so when they brought the curtain down and let everyone go to the bar or the bathroom. Now, the only other time I have been at a live show that had a break, I went to see a Jam band that'd been playing for hours already.

If I had to bet, I'd say the break was due to a technical problem that required more re-setting-up then the roadies could do otherwise. When they took the stage again, to a roaring cover of "War Pigs" the mood seemed more relaxed. By the time the show finally wrapped up, things had finally started to take off, thanks to a funny interlude about a tree that people were doing push-ups for, since the normal question of "what kind of tree is it" was a bit redundant considering the lemon growing on the tree.

And CAKE are a cool band. They all wear checkered shirts and look like your neighbor, especially the relentlessly normal multi-instrumentalist who has a different thing in his hand every time you look at him, and when he doesn't have a thing, he dances. The drummer hunched over his kit like he was worried someone would see him. Bassist played like he'd been born with a bass in his hand, and the guitarist tapped his heal, rocked his hollowbody, and swaggered like a guy who knows he is good at his job. And John McCrea was a real ringmaster in terms of orchestrating the audience sing-alongs, and he was in fine voice.

So I still love CAKE. But I can't help but wonder what the deal was that cast such a spell over the evening. I doubt I'll ever find out.

Kings Of Leon at the Forum: Inglewood CA, 8/22/2009

2009-08-23T01:06:00.000-07:00

It's difficult to know where to start with this one, so I'm going to start at the beginning.

I took my sister to this show. We bought the expensive beers. We ate our respective salty carbs. We ended up sitting in a place very similar to where Mom and I saw Bruce Springsteen, so we were close, but would be looking at lots of shoulders, as opposed to faces, which gives the show a different feel but (as my sister pointed out) provides a perfect, rare chance to watch the drummer. Try patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time if you want a glimpse of how hard drumming really is. It's amazing to watch.

The opening act, the Whigs, were an impressive power-trio hailing from Athens, Georgia and boasting of some serious athletics. These guys are powerful musicians, in every sense of the word. They are amp-hoping, two-stepping southern rockers who make a much louder noise then you'd think three people could, more like the noise of Lynyrd Skynyrd then the alt-rock, grunge retro headliners. Later on in the show, Caleb Followill would call these three his friends and declare "Someday they'll be headlining here!" and I would hope he's right: it won't be for lack of talent if these guys don't make it.

Kings of Leon have clearly made it. Their fascinating amalgamated brand of rock comes on like a hurricane and never lets up, and I swear, spirits were running so high that in comparison, they might as well have been asleep the last time I saw them.

Iggy Pop once said of the Stooges sibling rhythm section "You can't get a bond like that without blood." And although a lot of fantastic bands haven't needed blood, the Followill brothers + cousin have been playing together since they were children and it shows. I got the feeling an earthquake couldn't derail this crew.

And Caleb Followill, who had barely a sentence to spare for the audience last time I saw them, was positively glowing. "I was so nervous I was throwing up all day, but now that I'm here, and you're a great crowd, I'm having a great time!" Then he downed his red plastic cup and yelled "I'm getting drunk!" Everyone cheered. The reason for the nerves was made apparent when he said that he had lots of family and friends in the crowd, here to see them to finally play the big venues "we get to play everywhere else" and how "rarely enough these days" every last person in the band was having a blast.

They seemed to be. Guitar picks were flicked. Nathan's drumsticks went flying across the stage more then once. No one but Caleb said anything, but the band's high-spirits were evident in that sort of intangible quality the best live music has, the kind that just sets the place on fire. There was just pure exhilaration in the air.

"You guys, you guys are great but some of you, some of you I know are sitting down. This is for you, stand up, let's have a party!" And he rocked into the fuzzy, dirty bass-line of "Crawl." I didn't see anyone sitting. Although some of Caleb's attempts to get the crowd to take over vocal duties were more successful then others (Everyone was singing along to "Use Somebody"), the crowd was loud and enthusiastic and quick to clap and cheer and scream. It was a crowd anyone would be proud to have their mom see them play to.

There was even a sign-waver: "Caleb can I hav ur hankie?" Unfortunately he didn't manage to throw it that far. There's a reason why he's a musician and not a pitcher.

Caleb's sign-off was heartfelt, about how "We're up here, we're playing music, we get to play music with family... and that's the most important thing in the world." He thanked everyone again (he'd been thanking us all night), and declared, "standing up here, looking out at all you...you make this boy from Tennessee very happy." He meant it too.

The Rock n' Roll dream lives.

Elvis Costello at Aguas Caliente Casino: 7/10/2009

2009-07-11T00:08:00.000-07:00

I left this show convinced of two facts. One; Elvis Costello kicks ass. Two: I do not know enough about his catalog, his history, and music in general to fully appreciate how much ass he really kicks.

On the drive home, my mom had to explain to me that His rendition of a deeply romantic love song called "Alison" contained snippets of "fuck you" songs from the 60s like "Tears of a Clown." Songs which I, being a child of the 90s and 00s, have never even heard of before: a hole in my education that I was never aware of before now.

Elvis Costello is way smarter then me. That's the third fact I left convinced of. He's also the only rocking frontman I can think off off the top of my head who performs in a suit and tie. I guess in recent years he's toned down his Buddy Holly style: wearing smaller glasses and incorperating touches like a violet tie and patterned turquoise shirt into his wardrobe. He plays his gold-top slung low, or his telecaster suspended in front of him with one hand: punkish moves Buddy Holly never did. And you'll still catch Elvis wiggling his legs like back in the day. More then anything else he has that quality that just dictates that when HE'S onstage, it doesn't really matter who else is there or what they're doing: he's the one you look at. That's a quality you can't teach: you either have it or you don't, and Costello, like Springsteen, and Reznor, has it in spades.

Which isn't to say his band wasn't worth watching. His back-up band for this tour was called The Imposters, and consisted of a stout, goateed drummer, a bass player all bedecked in head-to-toe white, complete with a white cowboy hat, and a keyboardist who's rig of keyboards, sythesizers, and odd gadgets would make him the source of the most interesting wailing, space-agey sounds. He even took a cue from one of Costellos lyrics and played a note with his toe, and him not so young neither!

Too bad the Casino audience sucked. For starters, any audience comprised of mostly middle-aged white people (and some younger white people) seemed unable to manage such tricky feets as "clap in rhythm" or even "Stand up out of their chairs." Costello was clearly gesturing that he wanted the people of orchestra level to gather at the foot of the stage, and since he did so during a roundy rousing number, quite a few people down in front tried to comply, only to either get dispersed by a house bouncer or by their own misguided sense of propriety. Bad audience karma. Blarg.

Speaking of house bouncers, this leads me to the biggest problem of the night.

Short.

This show was too short!

The show did not start until 9pm. It ended, after a highly abreviated encore, promptly at 10:35, the house lights came on less then a millisecond after the band had left the stage. B.B King also had this problem: the man could have played all night, but there was a house curfew to meet.

This is the downside of gigs at Casinos. This theater was large, state-of-the-art and beautiful, but the casino wants the show to end early. Their whole motivation for hosting the show is to funnel people through the casino, and they want to make sure the show ends with plenty of time for the audience members to gamble some more.

I know I'll be trying to see Elvis again, but not until I've done some serious homework. And hopefully, not at a Casino.

Wilco at the Greek Theater, Berkeley: 6/27/2009

2009-06-28T01:21:00.000-07:00

This was one varied crowd. Not in terms of ethnicity, it was white on white on white, but in terms of age. Young kids, 20-somethings, 50-somethings, and everyone in between was standing in the long line waiting to get into the Greek Theater, presumably hoping to grab a spot in one of the ornate concrete thrones that lined the edge of the first rings of long, low steps that was the Greek's seating arrangement (more fun then folding chairs). I know that's where I would have sat if I could have had my choice. I know the rail is always fun but c'mon, a concrete THRONE? You get to watch the show like some Greek dictator watching the gladiators. How could you say no to that?

Anyway, I think I know how Wilco acquired such a generation-spanning fanbase. I brought my folks to the show, and they both left Wilco believers.

I first saw Wilco at Outside Lands last year. I'd never heard of them, but 2 out of every 3 conversations I overheard that day was people making plans to catch Wilco, so I figured I could check them out. I did, and I've been waiting to catch them again with some better knowledge of their back catalog. All I knew was they made a delicate, glorious noise.

Wilco is a six-peice band from Chicago. You want a full history, go elsewhere. You want a setlist, go elsewhere. This is what the show was actually like.

It even started out well. Well, not WELL, but with promise. I'll be frank, Okkervil River is not the best band in the world, mostly because a few of their members are downright lifeless: the girl guitarist (plagued by technical problems that demanded she fiddle with her les paul for most of each song), and the two keyboardists had about as much charm as cardboard cut-outs. But the tall, blue-clad bassist had a laid-back attitude that made being up there in front of a sold-out house look easy. Their drummer wailed on his pale-pink kit with a lot of fire, if not a lot of finesse. Still, if there's one reason to see this band it's that frontman, with his strong, clear voice and his effortless, effucient stage pressence. He was so energetic that his shirt was soaked through by the second song. He has real star quality even if his band doesn't.

Alright, we're done with the opening band: time for the guys we all came to see. And it hurts that they opened with Wilco (the song) while I was in the bathroom line, so I didn't get to witness live what I will always associate with Stephen Colbert and a strategically placed HOPE sticker.

There wouldn't be much else painful about the set. Wilco was flawless. Dad pinned "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" as the moment where he stopped enjoying the show and realized he was watching something incredibly special. My mom couldn't get over the drummer. He was a classically trained percussionist, she could tell, and she was riveted watching him. It was the kind of performance that makes you listen to a band a whole different way. It's the kind of stuff fans for life are made from.

And thank Heebus Dreamer's bad audience karma stayed away this time. This audience knew lyrics, sang loudly to fill in gaps, and clapped (more or less) in rhythm.

As a native So Cal gal, I could have handled a little less bad-mouthing of So Cal from Tweedy ("They're saying 'thank you!' after songs instead of clapping. What's that about?") but the Nor Cal audience, of course, ate it up. And there was an adorable moment where Tweedy admonished the Berkeley crowd "Look what you've done to my son, you dirty hippies!" and a fine boy, around ten and almost as tall as his dad already, came sheepishly from the wings wearing garish tie-died pajamas. "He goes for a walk and he comes back like this!" Everyone laughed. The kid shrugged all dramatic-like and scampered off after Jeff's "Go take a bath!" Adorable.

EDIT: The kid, it turns out, is about 14 or 15, and an avid blogger. He writes about the tie-die incident here.

Jeff Tweedy would reference the joke later, dedicating "I'm the Man who Loves You" to his wife, who was apparently somewhere over near the sound board, adding, "Sorry I let our son become a hippie!" He was also heckling some guy in the front row who had passed out, then shrugged it off, then passed out again. His stage persona was warm, affable, even slightly goofy but completely in command. Like any great frontman, he made the impossible look effortless.

Still, my favorite member of Wilco is still Nels Cline. Their new-ish lead guitarist was poached from the improvisational jazz circuit and plays like a more eccentric Eric Clapton. Not kidding. The man's searing solos were almost always the highlight of any given song. Plus, I love anyone who can rock a pair of bright red pants and still look as stern and intimidating as a tall, wispy blond guy in his middle-ages can realistically look. He had a formidable guitar rack next to him and it wasn't just for show. What a wizard.

Speaking of Wizards, Pat Sansone, the multi-instrumentalist, proved he can rock a guitar with as much charisma as anyone when he's allowed out from behind his keyboard. My mom was so sure he was a teenager, he looked so young from so far away. Bass player too got his moment in the spotlight. In fact, everyone got their moments in the spotlight except the dedicated keyboardist. He just sat behind his keys and played. Well, I guess someone's gotta play rhythm.

The biggest moment of the night was the next-to-last song where every single member of the group grabbed a tamborine or a maracca and all built the tension, holding their instruments high while the percussionist, Glen Kotche, stood on his drumstool with his sticks held high in the air, dramatically backlit. I don't know what song they launched into when Glen came crashing down again on his drumkit, but it doesn't matter. The moment was perfect. And so was the show.

IAMX at Slims - 6/9/2009

2009-06-10T01:02:00.000-07:00

I guess under other circumstances I wouldn't do shows at this clip, but this is my Last Month Here and I needed a pick-me-up. I'd listened to some of IAMX's stuff on youtube, and his dark, sleezy brand of pop appealed to me. A friend on Twitter unexpectedly helped out with a free ticket! So I had no reason at all to miss this show.

The friend was HardRockChick of live-blogging fame, who is, by the way, exactly as cool as you might imagine she'd be. She's sweet and soft-spoken and comes to life when it's time to talk music. After a few false alarms in which I weirded out a few slim, dark-haired people (though I AM sure I've seen the girl in the black ruffled dress somwhere before: she said she was a musician so maybe... Kimos?) we connected stage left.

The opening band was Hypernova, a six-piece pretty standard line-up remarkable for their curls, their glittery-but-driving hollow-body guitar riffs, their pounding drums, and their bespectacled frontman with the short beard, the booming voice, and the face carved out of wood. I think it would take him days of intense concentration to form a smile, even assuming he has it in him at all. They weren't a bad group, in fact they were actually pretty good, but I didn't enjoy them. And I'm not above accusing the frontman's inapproachable, unresponsive face of being the thing that stopped me from really connecting with the group. I'm not sure what this says about me and my standards. Upon hunting down the link to their myspace I discovered they are actually from Iran, which is interesting and makes me sad I didn't enjoy their show more then I did. If there's one place where rock and roll SHOULD flourish, it's in a country where those who play can be publicly flogged.

Maybe some smaller glasses on the frontman. This isn't nerdcore.

There was a very long interval between sets thanks to all the gear that had to be changed, so Hardrockchick and I filled the time by talking. Our conversation included, in no particular order: NiN/JA (her stories are MUCH more interesting then mine), Tom Morello's badass superpowers, how much Chris Cornell's solo show suffers from a distinct LACK of Tom Morello, how much "Scream" sucked, even live, Trent Reznor's now not-so-secret sense of humor and aggressive tweeting, how funny the concept of "aggressive tweeting" is when you think about it, Boots Riley's sense of fun, Ilan Rubin's raw talent, repeated my interview question and she promised she'd try and get him to answer if she can, Carl Restivo's coolness, how much we love Restivo's bubble-tweets and wish he'd do more of them, both hoping details surface about his twitter party, whatever that turns out to be.

Have I mentioned this Jaimie girl is awesome?

As for the main event, I can sum it up by saying my feet are bruised and covered in dirt. And glitter. I am never wearing flip-flops to this kind of show ever again. I count myself lucky to still own ten toes, but in happier news, Dreamer's Bad Audience Karma was LIFTED! If just for tonight! During the set a girl with a jangling outfit of feathers started dancing with me out of nowhere, then a girl with a short brown bob grabbed my hand and sling-shotted me to the front of the stage where I jumped, jammed and pumped my fist in my wonderful out-of-rhythm way until my poor unprotected feet couldn't take it anymore and I was forced to retreat, mercifully late in the set, only to get snagged on some kindly gay giant's button.

But this blog ostensibly isn't about me, so how was the performer, IAMX?

He was very...small. I mean, Jaimie had told me he was small, but I wasn't expecting him to be AS small as he was. He wasn't a little person or anything, but he's definitely tiny, so much so that I believe Jaimie when she tells me he has to make his own clothes, since most men's clothing doesn't come in a small enough sizes for him.

Good thing the guy melts some serious face. What a performer. His sweet tenor is full of an almost tender despair. His brand of dark pop filled the whole room, two synthesizers working full blast to keep the electric waves coming, but not detracting from the vitality of the live performers: a keyboardist woman in some truly horrific make-up and a guitarist with an open shirt and a headband. They commanded almost as much attention as the frontman did, singing back-ups and leaping on things, clapping and doing whatever they could to get the audience fired up.

It worked. They were fired up. I'm not familiar enough with his catalog to tell you what his setlist was, but the audience adored him and I heard sing-alongs at more then one point. Wow. Remarkable.

When it was all over, I counted all ten toes (thank goodness), bid a fond farewell to the Hardrockchick, thanked the gentle gay giant for unhooking me from his button, looked in vain for the woman who had dragged me to the front row, told Gentle Gay Giant to thank her for me, bought some buttons, and went home.

Good people make for good times. It's a truth.

A Night At Cafe Du Nord: 6/7/2009

2009-06-07T01:23:00.000-07:00

I had just hung out with this friend last night, but he sent me a text anyway and asked if I wanted to catch a show. Turned out a family friend of his had a band that was kicking off their tour tonight, and he was attending. Asked if I'd go too. Sure, why not. It'll sure be cheaper then trying to bum tickets to see Janelle Monae which was my OTHER plan for the evening, so I hit the road.

The following will contain no coments about lyrics. Like most small places, this basement venue had a problem with drowning out the vocals. It was a low-ceilinged place, fairly dark with a large bar and a pool table stuck behind the stairs like they didn't want anyone to find it. Beers were three dollers, so it was better then Kimos.

First band was the Dave Rude Band. There wasn't much that was particularly rude about it, just loud. They were a three-peice that played pretty straight-up rock. It's kinda funny that for a band bears the name of just one guy, the frontman was the group's least interesting member. The manic metal bassist, hunched over his instrument with a scowl and some serious flare, was much more fun to watch. And the drummer's standing-up behind the kit fury on the skins bellied his well-groomed, Nice Jewish Boy looks. They were pretty good, loud, full of fast riffs and just the right touch of swagger.

I noticed that the next band setting up had an extremely professional air about them: all of their gear was decaled and the design on their kick drum was a lovely mixture of pop art and anime, a description which actually perfectly describes the motley-but-coordinated stage costumes of the band: sequins, dyed-hair in shades of pink, white, and black, eyeliner on everyone while still allowing the band their individuality. Their sound was pop-rock with some synth looping things up and an interesting dark undercurrent provided by the scuzzy guitars and heavy basslines. And this is also one of those rare situations where I have seen co-lead-singers actually work well together: the pink-haired pixie keyboardist and the guitar-wielding, eyelined frontman pass off the mic with their pure, pop voices. The bassist almost exclusively played from a stance so low he was almost doing the splits, the black-clad guitar player had some sort of problem with her ax that recurred throughout the night but she didn't let it slow her down too much as she posed like Dave Navarro and made the most of the tiny stage they were working so hard to rock. The drummer lady was barely visible behind her monster rig. I didn't even realize she was a lady until the set was over. I bought their EP for another listen. Hope to catch them again sometime, hopefully on a bigger stage with a less apathetic audience: Dreamer's bad audience karma continues...

I'm writing this a few days after the fact so forgive the following impressions if they're a bit vague: Triple Cobra is what you'd get if you took a couple old west showgirls and incorperated them very fully into a traditional glam rock band. The girls, with their feathered costumes and coordinated dance-moves seemed to be the band's main attraction. The frontman, who sported conditioned hair and more glittery eyeshadow and lipstick then either of his female sidekicks. He looks kind of like an effemninate Lenny Kravitz and acts kind of like one too. He flings himself all over the place, virtually injuring himself in the spirit of rock. Bubble machines, strobe lights, smoke machines and flying feathers all testify to the sheer chaos of the show, but somehow it worked.

And I got to see my friend again. Three weeks left in SF and counting...

Album Review: "The Red Album" by Weezer

2009-06-03T18:24:00.001-07:00

(Had this sitting around on my computer for ages. Might as well throw it up here.)

Oh, Rivers Coumo. You're a world-famous rock star and you still stand behind the mic like you're self-consciously stalling until the REAL singer gets back from the bathroom. The only thing that keeps you there is sheer willpower.

But then that's your charm, and the charm of Weezer. These guys were nerdy before nerdy was chic, and it's reassuring to see that their sixteen years and millions in record sales haven't changed that much, even if, as this album suggests, the band is conducting some soul-searching and experimenting of their own.

The opening track "Troublemaker" is conventional enough: a youth-centered, adrenaline fueled thrill-ride centered around a kid declaring he's gonna be a rock star come fire, flood, parental disapproval or grounding. Five or ten years ago, this would have been a sure-fire radio hit and you would have heard boys and girls singing it in the locker rooms of high-schools all across the country. These days high-schoolers are usually too busy browsing myspace and listening to last.fm to care about what's on the radio, but it gets things off to an energetic start before the heavy stuff sets in. It's a song tailor made for and saved by Coumo's delicate but defiant vocal style, delivered as if he himself is desperate to believe he's actually telling the truth.
I know this album has been touted as "experimental" and a big example of why is song #2: "The Greatest Man that Ever Lived." This song is a self-conscious mix of styles which I am throughly too dull to even attempt to name. Just know there's a lot of them, and somehow, the song works anyway. It's a testament to how good of a hook-man Rivers really is.

Track number 3, "Pork and Beans" is a return to the theme of rebellion, and like Troublemaker it's a rabble rousing rock anthem given an almost desperate edge by Coumo's boisterous but frail character. It's catchy, it's fun, and it's already all over the radio. There is no escape.

Songs don't often give me goose-bumps and make me stop in my tracks, whatever I'm doing, to listen to it over and over again. Track 4, Heart Songs, did that. It's clear as a bell, slightly choral and plays like a hymn to a life lived in music. From the low-profile beginning to the revelation of a crescendo, I love every beautiful moment of this beautiful song.

Next up, "Everybody get dangerous." Again with the defiance, (yeah, get dangerous, fuck the system, yeah!) but with the twist this time that instead of writing about stuff he's done, instead Coumo is writing about stuff he hasn't done..... I think. He might never have tipped cows, but not much else is certain in this up-tempo, intense, very Weezer song. Wither it's real rebellion or vicarious imagination, the song is dark, wistful, and either a thrilling cautionary story or the fantasy of a good boy who sometimes wishes he were bad.

"Dreamin"' is a sonata. No really! It's got the four movements with the speed changes, the form, the up-tempo shifts, the slow dance movement, the quick finale...It's a friggin sonata as a rock song. Wether it's a good rock song, the answer is a resounding "maybe:" if you don't know what a sonata is, the song's shifts will seem random, maybe even disjointed. All in all it doesn't hold together as well as The Greatest Man that Ever Lived, but it makes my classical music loving geek happy, and it'll make you happy too if you're wondering how popular music format changes over the years. Or rather, how it does not.

Now things get tricky, because here something unprecedented has occurred.

Weezer has always contained two camps: one camp containing people named "Rivers Coumo" and one camp containing people NOT named Rivers Coumo. The Rivers make the rules. The Rivers write the songs, play lead, sing, and run the band. The Rivers is god. Don't question the Rivers.

Well the planets must have aligned somehow because holy crap, someone else let the Not-Rivers actually DO things! They are writing! They are singing! How it happened I don't know, but this is the kind of thing I love, because when creative people mix it up, that's when real magic can happen.

Brian Bell, second guitarist, is first to step up to the mic with "Thought I Knew," a cheesy little number with tightly constructed rhyming lyrics and a slight sci-fi folk-song flavor. It's inevitable that his voice will be compared to Rivers', so I'll just say Bell doesn't have that range, but as his voice scrapes the upper limits of his own register, he sounds both sardonic and heartfelt. It's not too challenging a song, but it's easy listening and there's a danger it'll get stuck in your head.
Definitely the most interesting song on the album comes from the bass player, Scott Shriner, and his "Cold Dark World." It's a blatantly romantic song, a man assuring a despairing but beautiful girl that he'll always be there for her, and here's the twist: the song is terrifying. The minor-key cords, the menacing bite the singer gives those sugar sweet lyrics (here Coumo's delicate voice wouldn't have fit) all add up to a rain-slicked horror movie of a song. It's like a glimpse inside the mind of a serial killer stalking his pray with his own sick kind of love, or it's from the woman's fear of strangers, but whatever it is, it's intense and dark and very, very cool.

After all that intensity it's nice to go back into outer space for another folk song for robots. Call me crazy but I like it. It's as mechanized as a robot, but it's a wistful robot with a beating heart and the slower, melodic pay-off is worth it. It's called "Automatic" and it features Patrick Wilson, Weezer's drummer sounding much more at-ease behind the mic then Rivers sounds banging away at the drum-kit. He sings like a singer and his voice has an echo of Coumo's in it's mix of rough and sweet.

Perhaps it's because my ears are attuned to the smaller soundscapes of the Not-Rivers, but when Coumo himself returns with the longing album closer "The Angel and the One," it's not him saying goodbye to a lady he can't stay around for. He gives the upper part of his range a work out as he begs the world not to leave, not to make him leave, and I could make an observation about fame in this time of two-minute attention spans...but I won't, because this lovely piece is so mellow. It's a fine send-off and a reminder that while the Not Rivers may be stretching their wings, there's a reason why this was his show for all those years.

There isn't a single bad song on this album: it's an incredibly varied collection and although it leaks some random parts, I'm awed by the creativity of the thing. As Weezer's forever awkward teenage nerds settle into their stable, comfortable adult lives and weather the music industry's turbulence on the cushion of their large fanbase, it's reassuring to know that just because you're an adult doesn't mean you can't keep dreaming.

The New York Dolls at the Grand Ballroom 5/24/2009

2009-05-25T00:20:00.000-07:00

This is officially the most rock-filled week of my life. One would think I'd be rocked out by now, but hell, are you kidding me? The New York Dolls at a venue I wander by all the time? The New York Dolls? C'mon, of course I'm not gonna miss this one.

Me being me, of course I get the timing wrong and show up late: I missed the opening act and the New York Dolls were already 20 minutes into their set, so I grabbed a ticket ($30- more then I expected!) and went dashing directly into the ballroom.

The music hit me like a wave. This is a band that was built from the ground up for rowdy dancing. It's like time-travel: just like how B.B King offered a portal to the jazz dance-halls of the 50s, the New York Dolls will give you a glimpse of the New York rock clubs in the early 70s. You have to conjure the sticky floors, drag queens and drug dealers on your own, but you feel the mood.

And again with the bad audience karma. Round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows. The room was respectably about 3/4s full of mostly older white men and their mates. There were many Ramones-esque leather jackets in evidence. And the only people who were dancing were off to the left of the stage.

Well I sat through B.B's dance hall. Damned if I was going to sit through the Dolls. I also didn't want to be that dick who was jumping around amongst strangers who don't deserve it, so I needed to find some jumpers.

I finally found some in the very front row. That's how I ended up dancing with a goateed, handsome Russian boy who was very drunk and danced as badly as I do, so we were a good match. His sister arrived dressed in a self-made "Rock n' Roll Nurse" costume, which made me like her instantly. So I got my dancing in.

And I what a glorious soundtrack it was to dance to. This band is nothing short of fantastic live, and never let anyone tell you differently. So what if the drummer got ahead of the song on occasion? Train-wreaks are a Dolls tradition and no one does 'em with more flare. These guys strut, they pose, they preen, they wear gorgeous glammy trashy outfits and some stellar hats. David Johanson's throat is coated with sandpaper and honey, and with his heavy Staten Island accent and infinite swagger he can still kick your ass and look fabulous doing it. Technically speaking I think he's a better singer now then he was when he was young: age, smoking and tragedy have given his voice more texture and an edge of mortality that gives the slower songs their bite. He still dresses in low-riding jeans and women's blouses. He still owns the spotlight with the effortless charisma of a born star.

His partner in crime, the only other living member of the original Dolls line-up is rhythem guitarist Sylvain Sylvain: a short stout wiseguy with a vintage hollow-body and more enthusiasm for rock then a fourteen-year-old at a Jonas Brothers concert. the impression that he's a much better player then he chooses to be. He has got the technical goods, but for him style comes first, and his the bond between David and Syl is the beating heart of the band. David showed it too, always directing the spotlight Sil's way, declairing things like: "For this next song, Sylvain will play an acoustic guitar...and it will be so beautiful, that angels will come out of the walls and sprinkle angel dust upon everyone here." He was almost right.

Lead Guitarist Steve Conte (replacing the essentially irreplacable Johnny Thunders) wore a jaunty hat and his hair just so, and played his guitar like he could barely control it, even turned it upside down on one of the lights, rubbing the strings against the edge. The best thing I can say about him is he honors Thunder's memory while still having a kind of inept glory all his own. Sami Jaffa, the bassist, wore a pink waistcoat, a wide stance and a sneer. The drummer was bald, lofty, and aristocratic. They're as colorful a crew as you'll find anywhere.

It's hard to be objective about the Dolls. I have a soft spot for these guys so large it's not really a spot, it's like a huge bean-bag in my stomach.

When coming back onstage for the encore (orchestrated by Syl) David talked about how they'd never played this song live before. They were waiting for San Francisco, and I gotta hand it to the crowd: what they lacked in movement, they made up for in volume. He said to try and imagine what this song would look like. He said "This is an exorcism of despair!" and launched right into the rocking, which turned into "Personality Crisis," their single most recognizable tune/trainwreak and yes, it was magnificent.

Bruce Springsteen wrote that for a performer, your exhilaration is proportional to the void you are dancing over, and these guys (two of them at least) dance over the largest void imaginable everyday. These guys keep going out of love to their new band, as in synch with the spirit of the old group as you could wish. As important a group as they are (being the cradle of both punk rock and glam metal) they've never enjoyed the superstardom they deserve, and it's too bad because these guys are a masterful live band. Don't forget it.

NiN/JA Tour : Shoreline Ampitheater: 5/22/2009

2009-05-23T01:26:00.000-07:00

This one has been The Big One for me for a good long time. Ever since I tripped on a twitter and fell headlong into Nine Inch Nails fandom, I have been waiting for this show.

The fact that it has Street Sweeper Social Club is a surprise bonus. One reason, two words: Tom Morello. That guy is everywhere. This has got to be something like his eighth band and normally I'd mock him for that but this time I totally don't care because every show needs more Tom Morello! It's the law or something.

Street Sweeper has really gelled since I saw their premiere in Seattle. Boots Reilly has got some seriously happy feet and watching him dance is fun just by itself, but with the volume turned up, his rapping's like a cold fast river. The Freedom Fighter Orchestra (now wearing different uniforms) have really come into their own. Carl Restivo especially flaunts that Gibson like HE'S the star, which is a big change since the first time I saw him, looking stoned and slightly vacant in the Filmore in SF way back in October 2008. This band has come a long way. My favorite song of theirs is STILL a cover (M.I.A's "Paper Planes") but they've proven themselves a real band, not a vanity project.

Nine Inch Nails of course were who I came to see: Trent Reznor and his crew of less-buff but equally pale side-kick/minions. It hurts me to admit that I think they got upstaged. Don't get me wrong, I ENJOY Nine Inch Nails music hugely and wore myself out jumping around to "1,000,000," "Discipline" and "Head like a Hole" (A song I was anticipating, "Survivalism" ended up sounding a bit like a train wreak) but...well, I donno. Something was just missing.

It wasn't Ilan Rubin: NiN's current drummer is 20-years of human-shaped whirlwind: all curly hair and flying sticks, and watching him get up from his stool to...I can only describe it as "scamper" over to the keyboard during "March of the Pigs" then scamper back to his drums was adorable AND rockin'! And that's an irrestable combination for me. Look out Jay Weinburg, you're not the only intensely talented percussionista prodigy out and about these days.

As for Trent Reznor himself, all I can say is that if ever a man was born to do a job, Reznor was born for this one. He's the Dark Prince counterpoint to Springsteen's sacred radiance, commanding the black fires of the underworld like no other performer out there. Modern times have produced no heirs. If he's serious that this is his last tour, then the music-loving world is about to suffer a huge loss, because his mix of rage, ironic tenderness, and genuine raw musical talent is worth seeing at least once in your life and I'm glad I can now say that I've done it.

It was pretty good. I was happy. Jane's Addiction, it turned out, would leave me happier, and not just because the two ladies in front of me were smoking a lot of weed. The show was a fantastic three ring circus with a more colorful lighting design and some surprisingly non-intrusive integration of a shadow-movie screen playing clips from Natural Born Killers and other films I've never seen.

Perry Farrel is easily one of the best frontmen I've ever seen. He makes the task of getting an audience to love you look effortless. Where Reznor kept himself to his brief speach about this "maybe" being his last tour (simultanius response is "boo!" and "Yeah right") Perry Ferrel chatted away like he was everyone's long-lost friend. Topics of his speeches included going easy on Obama ("Give him a chance, he can't be worse then what we had") his love of San Francisco ("We'd be your house band if you'd have us!") Bill Grahm ("I knew him, I know two of his kids, and his spirit lives on!") age ("I'm fifty, I hope I'm still going to shows like this when I'm 60!") and "faggy clothes" as an expression of freedom ("I'd rather die then give up my corset!"). The crowd adored him. His voice, though slightly distorted by a heavy echo effect, has an element of boyish sweetness that clashes with his decadent attitude. He's just a character, and he LOVES San Francisco. He should come back so we can elect him mayor.

Dave Navarro is always worth a second look. He seems to be frozen permanently in his mid 30s, and plays with his buff tattooed torso on full desplay. His stance is as wide as any classic punk rocker, and with his blistering, generally high-pitched guitar he sounded like a scar of sound, or a blinding flash of light. His playing is what gives the music it's teeth.

Perkins was playing in his underwear and hammering on two bass drums like he was two drummers glued together. He also couldn't resist mugging for the stage-camera to his left: he kept fixing it with deep stares, his head turned just so. Eric Avery, the original bassist and single reunion hold-out before now was the only one who didn't look like he was having an absolute blast. When Perry came to his side of the stage to bring the spotlight, Eric completely ignored him. He remained hunched over his bass, seemingly lost in the music and not really paying attention to anyone, even the audience until he decided to sit with his legs dangling off the stage. But he never lost the trademark Jane's Addiction deeply melodic groove, not even once, and it's easy to see how it just couldn't be the band it is without him.

The ignoring thing might have been in my imagination. Again, the ladies in front of me had a lot of weed. I left the venue feeling really good about the world.

This is being billed as Nine Inch Nails's farewell tour, and the comeback for the original Jane's Addiction (several attempts at replacing Avery have failed). Who knows what the future actually has in store for these two groups, but just this night, now was enough.

Kings of Leon at Bill Grahm Civic Auditorium, San Francisco: 5/21/2009

2009-05-22T00:16:00.000-07:00

Some things are all about timing.

I've seen obscure indy bands rock bars, playing to crowds that exist only in their starry-eyed dreams. I've seen veteran rockers raise the roof like they were born to do it.

I've never before seen a band like this one. They've been rock royalty for years now in places like England and Europe but an American breakthrough always eluded them, until now. Their 4th studio album finally produced their first bone-fide radio hit, and sent them on this current tour, their first head-lineing arenas across the country, and they clearly relish their new status as stadium rockers. They've finally made good, they're touring hard and partying harder, their crash is still pending. This is what a band at the very hight of it's abilities looks like.

It looks really good. Kings of Leon are what you would get if you threw southern swamp rock in a blender with gritty urban sleaze and just a twist of high technology. It's the restrained antidote to overblown flyover rock, and it's convinced me that West Coasters like me don't really know what we're talking about when we talk about "southern music." There's something dark and almost cosmic in their sound that's unlike anything else I've ever heard. In a world before the music industry collapse, they would have been headlineing eons ago.

Kings of Leon is a family band consisting of three brothers, plus one cousin, all named Fallowill. Caleb Followill is the lead singer, and as such did most of the interacting with the audience. He was falling-over drunk, but it didn't seem to slow him down or affect his now-famous, counter-intuitive old-man wheeze of a singing voice. He kept thanking the crowd, remembering how they played San Francisco a few years back... as an opening act. "We were always opening acts." And latter, "I know there's a lot of stuff you can spend your money on right now, so thanks for spending it on us." It was all very well-intentioned. He even mentioned that the group has the day-off tomorrow, so they might end up partying with some of us. Well not me: I'm heading off to see some NiN/JAs. But it's fun to imagine anyway.

But mostly the stage banter was disposable. He gets points though for saying "This one goes out to all those people sitting down...you guys in the front, you probably don't give a shit about this one." They were wrong. Everyone cares about "Sex on Fire." It's the stuff we came for. It's mind-blowing.

Have I mentioned the show rocked? Some groups, you see them once, and you know you'll be a fan forever. That's it.

Who knows what the future has in store for Kings of Leon, but they've proven there's at least one real band left in the world who made their fortune the hard way and now get to reap their reward.

A Night at Benders

2009-05-10T01:47:00.000-07:00

First off, Benders in San Francisco is a GREAT place to play gigs, get drunk, dance around and see live music. I've been in a number of bars, this is my favorite. And not JUST because their grill was still open at 11:30, allowing me to get meself a much-needed belly full of cheeseburger.

Really good vibes in this place. It's in a more residential part of the Mission district and it's got bike-racks, a low stage, tables, and the bar is right next to the door so that those who just want to duck in and get a beer don't jostle too much with those who are there to listen to the music and bounce around. The whole place just seemed like a happy place, and it was a good-sized crowd to, better then I've ever seen at Kimos, for instance. And people were DANCING.

I was there because I knew Inferno of Joy was playing again. I befriended these guys during one of their Kimos gigs, blogged about it here. They are still really good. They whip themselves into crazy sweats during their 40-minute bar sets. That frontman still wears the vest, the boa, the workshirt, the vinyl. Their dirty glam sound wouldn't have been out of place in the New York City the Velvet Underground and the New York Dolls inhabited, and I can't help it, I'm a sucker for a group that clearly cares so much about the show they put on. Guys, check these dudes out if you ever can.

There was only one other group on the bill called "He Who Must Not Be Named." This "He" was a shirtless, skiny guy in a Mexican wreastling mask who made a big show of being unable to talk in anything other then groans and squeals. This meant his band-mates, a female bass-player all in black with doc martins and two-tone hair, and a guitarist with an S.G, a cowboy hat, a cigarette, fine black leather loafers and a little black dress (Not a night out in San Francisco if there's not at least ONE man in a dress), had to translate his stage banter for him. It would have worked better if "He" wasn't suddenly singing coherent English after presumably having his will interpreted by his band-mates. But oh well. Also, the drummer was wearing a yellow afro wig made of These guys were a pretty straight up hard rock band: playing loud high on the fretboard and keeping up a pretty fast tempo for their entire set, which lead all the kids in what looked like a mosh. They even kicked over the drumset when they left. Rock and roll.

Short post, short evening. Oh well. Beddy time.

Chris Cornell at the Grand Ballroom: San Francisco 5/1/2009

2009-05-02T01:59:00.001-07:00

I wasn't going to write this blog. But hell, if Hard Rock Chick can say it, so can I.

For those of you who have stuck with this since the beginning (thanks Dad!) you might remember that the first show I ever blogged about was Chris Cornell in Santa Cruz. I enjoyed it: it was loud, the band had fun chemistry, and Cornell's kid-friendly charm and effortless charisma carried the day. I hadn't heard much of his stuff (some Audioslave, some Soundgarden, and "You Know my Name") but I had a good time.

A lot has happened since then. "Scream" came out: you can read my opinion of it here. I ended up getting banned from Chris's forum for reasons still unclear to me (though some...'ahem, "spirited" debates might have had something to do with it.) But the most significant thing was that I've seen, in person, Chris's old bandmates. I've seen Tom Morello play three times. I've seen what a glorious monster he is. Pete Thorn and Yogi are excellent guitar players, but with their powers combined, they can't come close to the unholy might of Morello's infamous "Arm the Homeless" and when they play those Audioslave covers, damned if you know it.

And I saw Soundgarden. Soundgarden as a beast without a head, but a living beast. It was nothing less then astounding.

Chris played two of the three Tadgarden songs. They were fine.

Really, that's how I describe this show. To sum-up: it was fine.

Chris's backing-bandmates are more fused with each other and with Chris. They have the feel of a group with serious road-miles under their belt. They were fine too, but I couldn't help but wonder if, and why, they were jostling with Chris for the spotlight. Or why Chris would give it to them. They're HIS backing band, after all. I guess the respect-your-bandmates stage instinct hasn't entirely left him, which is to his credit actually but it makes for a confusing live experience: who are you supposed to watch? Why would you watch someone you didn't come to see? Who are these musicians anyway?

They deserve better. Yogi in particular is a lovely player with a fluid, effortless style and I hope that very soon he will have better gigs then this one.

Okay kids, today I am going to tell you about something called "Frontman Syndrome." Every music fan knows that you can't have a great band without having a great frontman: he's the face of the group, the one the audience is going to project onto. The best frontmen have charisma and personalities that become intertwined with the group's sound and identity.

When band's break up (happens sometimes) and those frontmen go solo, they often find they're suffering from the blessing and curse of being literally unable to open their mouths without conjuring the ghost of their old band. Or both of their old bands, in Chris's case. This is "Frontman Syndrome." It's nostalgia on such an unconscious level that it's often mistaken for something else, and the danger becomes when the singer himself doesn't know that he's cruising on someone's fond memories instead of current reality.

Chris Cornell has justified all the covers he plays by pointing out he wrote all the music for them anyway, but it doesn't matter who wrote them when that essential, insubstantial something is missing.

He'll keep touring. With each show he'll get more easy, more confident, more comfortable. And I suspect my love of the old stuff is strong enough to keep me comming back.

But don't go looking for rock fire here. It's like the brief, breathtaking pose that Cornell struck with his acoustic: legs wide, head down, hair flying as the band kicked in at the end of his solo acoustic set.

Seeing him in that pose, just for a moment, that acoustic is a skuzzy black Gibson. That hair is even longer. You see the shadows of Kim Thayil, standing a mile high, and Ben Shepard's cool swagger. You hear the ghost of Cameron's extra drums and flying sticks. And for a moment, a brief moment, you get the smallest glimpse of the stuff musical legends are made of.

Then it's gone.
What you're left with is just fine.

Also, those hecklers were back. You know, the ones from Tom Morello's show. I couldn't believe it. They started a goddamn fistfight right in front of me. Thank God they didn't recognize me. Dreamer's bad audience karma: will it ever end?

B.B King at Morongo, CA:

2009-04-19T22:19:00.000-07:00

It's good to be the King, especially when you've throughly earned your crown.

In case you haven't heard of B.B King, you should know he basically invented the blues guitar as we know it, and to this day is considered one of the masters of the instrument. What, I guess, is less well known is that the man is also a damned good singer. Age has given his voice a texture that is pure, undiluted blues.

Interestingly enough, one thing he doesn't do is play guitar and sing at the same time. He sings, he plays, but he switches off, instead of doing them both at once. And his guitar sounds like a voice: clear and liquid with notes that shine cooly in the air.

Like Springsteen, B.B is a natural frontman. Out front is where he belongs, and where he's most comfortable: sitting on his chair, cracking wise with long, winding stories and playing off the audience in a way that gives you a glimpse of the sort of all-inclusive presence he must have been in the dance halls in his prime. I am convinced that bandleaders like him must have been the forerunners of the stand-up comedians as we now know them. A one-stop-shop for a night's entertainment. The only thing missing was the dancing that his quick, sax-heavy band was clearly built from the ground up for.

Speaking of that band, I have seen some good jazz acts in my time, and these guys were worth price of admition all on their own. I think the youngest member of that band must have been at least in his 60s, and they were so in synch they were virtually finishing eachother's sentences: musically speaking. B.B reminded me of no one so much as Bruce Springsteen when he had his band-members pantomiming the correct responses to his jokes (turning away in wonderfully self-conscious disbelief when he declares he has "never seen an ugly woman") and reading his mind as regards to the timing of the songs, the lengthly intervals filled by his rambling, often tawdy stories of blue pills and seduction how-tos. It's the kind of connection born of so many road-miles it's crazy. I could imagine the E-Street Band getting dropped into any venue and making it work for them, but their actual venues remain pretty uniform: B.B and his band really can play everything from Jazz festivals to indian casinos to rock clubs and will make it work for them somehow. They're that good.

B.B King is 83 years old. He sits for the entire performance. He has his guitar (the famous Lucille) and he has a microphone, and he has a band that can read his mind. He ended the show throwing whole handfuls of guitar pics and necklaces into the crowd, but we'd already gotten our biggest treats.

Hail to the King of the Blues.

Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band at the LA Memorial Sports Arena: Los Angeles, 5/15/2009

2009-04-16T02:05:00.000-07:00

So...... that's what all the fuss is about.

Holy shit.

My ticket karma didn't hold. My seats were pretty far back. At least they were on the aisle, so instead of kicking the chair next to me, I would sometimes totter at the edge of the step.

But who cares about that when I think I just saw a miracle. Finally, I know what people are talking about when they talk about Bruce Springsteen.

And here's the crazy thing: it happened during the encore. It'd been a fantastic show, don't get me wrong, but during the encore something happened that just sent the energy level rocketing straight through the roof. I wish I could tell you what it was, I really do, but all of a sudden I realized something fucking miraculous was happening right in front of my eyes.

The band had played for around two hours, and I'd been really enjoying it, the whole set was noticeably both looser and tighter then in San Jose. I don't think I need to mention that the band sounded great, but they did, and my Dad, for one, left a devout fan of Max Weinberg: the Mighty One never stopped playing ONCE during the entire 2 hour and 45 minute set. While other people got to breath, Max did drum-rolls. Whatever stiffness he had in San Jose was not there this time. What a drummer.

Again, you're going to have to go somewhere else for the setlist, but it felt like he'd got the kinks worked out and settled down into a song collection that came on like a hurricane without breaking any of the pale hips in the audience. Two songs in the main set and one in the encore were sign requests: him grabbing them up, piling them on the stage, and plunging in like a kid jumping into a leaf pile in the fall, sending the rejected signs flying in all directions until he found the perfect one. Then he ran around showing it to the band members before leaning it against the mic stand where the camera could finally show it to the audience. Both songs were pretty amazing. I think "Spirit in the Night" might be a new favorite of mine. And Bruce actually talked to the crowd, both name-dropping extortions to get the LA people riled up and a sermon about building a house of love and music out of all the good news and bad news. He'd avoided addressing the crowd for most of the San Jose show. Now he couldn't keep his hands off them.

Really, I thought he spent a lot of time on his catwalk before: I hadn't seen anything: I swear to God, Bruce did an actual STAGE DIVE. Honest to God, plunging into the crowd body-surfing. One of the security guys had a hold of him so he didn't go far, but still! Sheesh! I don't think a single song went by without him taking to the stage skirts at least once so's the people could feel those sturdy, age-defying legs of his.

It did it's job. Somewhere along the line it actually, finally hit me: I am standing in a room with Bruce Springsteen. If I were down there in the pit, I would be able to reach up and feel him. He's really there.

That feeling is worth a hundred youtube videos.

Far away as we were, I felt like we saw more of Springsteen. At times it was almost like he wasn't so much a singer performing a song as an actor creating a character, a bunch of them, and switching them around and blending them together.

I've been trying to figure out what made this show so intrinsically different from San Jose. One of the most obvious, and curious, things was the distinct lack of red on the stage. Patti Scialfa wasn't there, and maybe I was imagining it but it seemed like Bruce, Nils, and Steve were switching their guitars more often, perhaps to cover up for the lack of her blue acoustic. Before Bruce launched into "Kingdom of Days," the song that had been his nightly duet with his wife, he shouted "This one goes out to Pats! And the kids!"

In a way the song packed even more emotional punch when sung solo. It was still a celebration of love, except it was love turned bittersweet. And great as Patti Scialfa is (haters can suck it!) maybe her absence was a large part of what made Springsteen's character so complete. The last time he was playing to crowds facing foreclosures, layoffs, and bad debt, it was the 80s and Bruce was alone. Although he shared the spotlight with Clarence (the spotlight never leaves Clarence for very long: he'd be the star if he was in any band except this one) and calling Steve out to holler his backing vocals, but this night was all about Bruce. I've described him before as being full of holy fire. Well, tonight he must have thrown some holy kerosene on that holy fire, because he was shining bright enough to be visible from space.

And he was fired up, too. He pinwheeled on his guitar like a madman. He grabbed that microphone stand and spun around like a kid on a banister. His knee-slide has become a staple of his shows ever since he awesomely sent his crotch rocketing into the living rooms of millions of Americans on Superbowl Sunday.

And if that wasn't enough: everyone's favorite political populist pyrotechnic guitar monster Tom Morello appeared from the shadows, strapped on that colorful guitar of his, hiked up all the way to his chest as usual, and proceeded to burn the house down. Bruce echoed the outraged screaming visually, holding down rhythm guitar from a fighter's crouch, eyes never leaving Morello, though he could not contain some awestruck gaping when Tom out-soloed himself and turned me into the happiest young woman on the planet. My life is complete. I could totally die now. Thank you universe.

He even had his suspenders back.

And to top it off, the "encore" wasn't really an encore: not if the band ends up playing for another hour. Tom came back to lend a bluesy solo to "Hard Times Come Again No More" and then something mysterious happened. The energy just went through the roof. I can't even describe it. The climax was symbolized perfectly at the final end of the last song, when Bruce turned his guitar into a hula-hoop: spinning it around himself until he caught it, firmly and perfectly, with one hand.

It's like the knee-slide. From anyone else it would be cheesy. From Bruce it was perfect.

Now I know what all the fuss has been about all these years. Bruce Springsteen. The last of the vinyl Rock Gods, the rock and roll evangelical who can turn despair into hope, sorrow into strength, and make you believe in dreams.

What a night.

Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band at the HP Pavillion, San Jose: 4/1/2009

2009-04-02T02:00:00.000-07:00

What is there to really say about this show? In a way, I'm kind of reluctant to actually try and write about it. Not just because I'm dog tired, but because this show might be kind of beyond description.

Outside influences factored in. I went to see Springsteen with my mother. The last time she saw Springsteen, she'd only barely met the man who would eventually be my dad. It was 25 years ago.

When Bruce took the stage she let out a squeal and gave me a hug.

That was WHEN Bruce took the stage. The show started an hour late, as most of the attendees seem to have anticipated that it would, filling the vacant seats at the sold-out venue around an hour behind schedule while my mom and I twittered, marveled at the sky crew's high-wire antics on the huge lighting rig above our heads (one small blond woman was termed "Spiderwoman" by my mom for her high-speed, high-altitude surefootedness) and wondering what the hold-up was. My mom hypothesized that since this was the first show of the tour, they must be backstage fretting over the set-list. This was supported by the fact that every so often, some roadies would materialize, switch the papers lying around, and then vanish again. When one of them appeared carrying what could only be Clarence's saxophone, we knew it was only a matter of time, but still the waiting continued.

The house lights changed colors fairly regularly, and each change would bring hopeful cheers from the new fraction that had leaked in since the last lighting change. This was a big place. Not to brag, but we got some pretty awesome seats: around ten rows up behind the keyboardist's right shoulder, and it was hard to believe some of those tiny little figures almost out of sight, way high up in the distance were actual human people. So, this is a stadium. I don't think I've ever really been in a stadium before, let alone one absolutely full-to-bursting with white people over the age of 50.

At long last, the house lights went dead, and I mean dead, as in pitch-dark dead. There was just enough lighting from the emergency lights that we could see some shadowy forms making their way through the stadium's bottom entrance and coming up under the stage. The room was loud, pretty darn loud, with cheers and woops and clapping and "BROOOOOCE!!"

When the house lights came up, there they were. Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band. It was like Max Weinburg is the most overdressed drummer I'd ever seen in his silk shirt and waistcoat. Stephen Van Zandt plays his guitar like a gangster wields his machine gun. Nils Lofgren became my favorite by being the too-much-energy-in-too-small-a-packaging firework of a man with bones of rubber who soloed like Satriani (minus the teeth) and was never in the same place twice. Red-headed Patti Scialfa (a rare splash of color on a stage full of black clothing) had a blue acoustic, a calm face, and the sturdy, wide-legged stance of a veteran rocker.

Let me say a few words about the seats I got, because I was quite proud of them. They were around ten rows up, right behind the stage and could see everyone more easily then we could see the jumbotron. Or specifically, we could see their right shoulders, which were what they had facing us most of the time, but that was alright since it turns out, even Springsteen's shoulder has charisma. Also, the keyboardist would turn, look at, and point at us from time to time. I'm pretty sure he saw me.

You're gonna have to go somewhere else to get the full playlist, I didn't keep track. They started playing and they kept playing with no pauses, no breaks, straight from ending beat to intro beat for something like 40 minutes. Bruce didn't even address the crowd until a pause in... god what song was it, I couldn't even tell you, but he only chit-chatted some three times during the whole show. The first time was to shout out to San Jose and get people riled up. He wouldn't address the crowd again until the encore when he pleaded for people to donate to the local food bank accepting donations in the hall. I was glad to see their coffers stuffed by the end of the evening.

The rest was rocking. Hard core, full-steam-ahead rocking. No one in the E-Street band is as young as they used to be; Max was favoring his right arm, Nils was nimble but the night was devoid of dive-rolls, the Big Man was leaning against a stool for most of the set, and even Bruce winced as he pulled himself out of his slides. But they can still bring down a house.

I asked my mom how the show was different from 20 years ago. She said Bruce used to pile on the energy and just keep it coming until the end. He's gotten more mature since then, and his show is more evenly paced: sequences of hard, loud rockers and then quieter breaks. I'm a hardy soul and can jump around continuously for a three-hour show, but I was in the minority, and since I was forbidden to jump around anywhere except at my seat, even I had to sit down and collect myself sometimes.

Yeah, I had to jump AT MY SEAT. Lame, but I guess that's stadiums for ya. Also, Dreamer's bad audience karma continues: the guy next to me didn't crack so much as a smile for the whole show, and spent most of his time sitting down, his leg braced against the seat in front of him as if to ward me off. I have a bruise on my shin from where I kept knocking it against the edge of his chair, but since he never stood up, I couldn't mosh my way out of this problem. I have no idea what his goddamn deal was. Mom thought he might be autistic. He approached this rock show with all the joy of a corporate board-meeting.

My spirits were slightly mollified when they played "The Ghost of Tom Joad." The solos didn't hold a candle to Morello's, but who gives a shit. Nils the Soloist shone on this one, and Bruce himself proved he's no slouch at the shredding. "Lonesome Day" and "Radio Nowhere," were on the list, and they are some of my favorites, as well as the obvious Springsteen essentials like "Thunder Road" and "Born to Run." He even grabbed a couple of signs out of the audience: one of them said "I just turned 18, I need some GROWIN' UP!" and that's the song that they played.

If it sounds like I'm avoiding talking about Springsteen himself, I kind of am. Far better writers then me have killed many trees and even more hours trying to describe what happens between the Boss and an audience when he's onstage live. For me, it's impossible to do without delving into the impossibly, mind-meltingly cheesy. Because Bruce Springsteen has the light of grace in him.

Sorry, I just don't know any way else to describe it. The arena is dwarfed by the size of his soul, and when he's belting it out like he means it, you believe in miracles, you believe in healing, and you believe in hope. He's the antidote to cynicism, and this is a time when America deeply needs some of what he has. Springsteen no-doubt knows that, but it doesn't change that the album he's currently touring on is a personal album, full of songs overflowing with love and hope. Don't get me wrong, love and hope are really good things, but we're talking about the Clusterf@ck to the Poor House here. This is not the best time for upbeat adoring gushing.

The closest thing we came last night to seeing the real "Working on a Dream" tour was Bruce and Patti singing a romantic, charged duet on "Kingdom of Days" while they looked into each other's eyes from at least twenty feet away. It was the show he would be putting on if the stock market hadn't crashed, sending unemployment skyrocketing. If Bruce was into pure fuzzy escapism he'd be all set, but since he's apparently serious about tackling the times and fighting for the soul of the country, the sooner he gets back into the studio and re-equips himself, the better off we'll all be.

It sounds weird to critique a performance this tight and this full of non-stop rocking. If it were anyone else, I would have walked away more then satisfied, but this is Bruce Springsteen we're talking about, backed by what is considered to be one of the best live bands in the world, and they never really took flight.

Since I broke my own rules AGAIN and waited two more days to finish this blog, I can say, the San Jose Mercury had a much sharper review. Read that one instead.

Bruce is beyond me.

Still Cruising

2009-03-28T01:17:00.000-07:00

I am still buzzed from the Seattle Justice Tour. Somehow I have a hunch this will continue for a few days at least. At least, I hope it does.

I'd like to share something I found on another blog, written by what looks like a veteren reporter on the Seattle scene.

Her photo of Ben Shepard really says it all. That's it up there, taken during the "Kick Out the Jams" sound check.

Tell me that is not the face of a man in love. He's coming home. He can smell it.

Thanks, Cherry, for that moment of sheer poetry. That's just wonderful. Inspiring.

The Justice Tour: Slim's 3/26/2009

2009-03-27T01:25:00.000-07:00

I must have bad audience-karma. Two nights ago I was trapped in the midst of some loud killjoy annoying girls. Tonight I spent the whole time getting rammed into by some of the loudest, most aggressive, most annoying hecklers I've ever encountered. One of them humped me at one point. I put up with it because I wanted that spot near the stage. I was the only female they did that to who did so.

Jackasses.

I told myself I wasn't going to go for this one. I mean, the last Justice show is just damn impossible to top. It doesn't get better then the (almost) reunion of a living myth, a pick, and a hug from Wayne Kramer.

I just had to push my luck and attend the show at Slim's tonight in SF. Fortunately it was a good show. The hecklers were a pain and days that end without hugs from Wayne Kramer are definitely less desirable then the ones that do, but there was still Tom, there was Steve Earle, there was Boots and the whole Freedom Fighter Orchestra. Joe Satriani played the guitar with his teeth. Sammy Hagar sang some tunes with an outsized attitude. Wayne Kramer had this adorable huge goofy smile on his face the whole time. And it must have been Carl Restivo's birthday or something, because everyone, and I do mean everyone, was walking over to give him some love: Satriani even let him rock a solo...kind of, I mean, Joe Satriani being Joe Satriani, he was still playing like twelve notes to his one, but The Wizard's muscular black Gibson was definitely being shoved into the spotlight more often then usual. He even demonstrated Tom's own kill-switch trick.

Steve Earle was back with his acoustic guitar and harmonica, knocking out some folk music that was quiet enough that the Hecklers felt it was the perfect time to start abusing the other members of the audience. Through the night, various people would try to shut them down. No one would succeed. Not even the poor Slipknot guy who had the misfortune to be the subject of their misplaced adoration could get them to stop their drunken hollering for more then around two seconds.

The Hecklers loved Slipknot, and wouldn't let a single moment go by without saying so, which was sad becayse the Slipknot guy (Cory something) was a genuine guy. He was introduced as the first person ever to agree to one of Tom's Justice shows, he had an acoustic, a thick muscled neck, pale blonde hair, a strong, surprisingly sweet and emotive voice, as well as a sense of humor (played some country-western chords for fun). The Hecklers just wouldn't leave him alone: hollaring out "ACOUSTIC SLIPKNOT!!" and requests for what I guess are Slipknot songs. I felt sorry for him. I also felt sorry for me, since the Hecklers kept ramming into me, trying to debate politics during the acoustic songs, songs, and pressing against me during the rowdy parts. Also, they had my purse and stuff under the stage right in front of them. They didn't steal anything.

Steve Earle was talking about handing out barittos to homeless people as part of their volunteer day, and how he just happened across a guy who'd played in a band that he had recorded a song with back in 1986 (year I was born.) This guy still plays in that band. he came out with an emaciated face, a small steel recorder, and clothes worthy of the homeless to play the the song in question.

Earle and Morello covered "Ghost of Tom Joad" again. It's still great.

When it was finally time for "This Land Is Your Land" Tom and co. were joined onstage by...lots of people I didn't recognize who were playing what looked like Tom's gear: one of them had the Gibson he played two nights ago in Seattle (drop D tuning it turned out, which caused problems and required re-tuning mid-song), a thin, pretty singer* who dove out into the audience to deliver his verse, a guy on Morello's own "Arm the Homeless" (hope he knows that honor: playing THAT guitar live).... and another set of house lights that failed to come on on cue, but oh well.

*This guy turned out to be the frontman of OK GO. I didn't recognize him without the colors.

Wasn't as great as Seattle, but I have a hunch very little actually will be.

Wayne Kramer didn't come out and hug me. The Hecklers actually got the pick he lobbed in our direction, which I resent.

Someone out there, please get Tom a new pair of suspenders. He broke his in Seattle and I miss them.

Now the question is whether or not I'll actually get over my shyness and volunteer for something. I donno. I'll sleep on that one.

The Justice Tour: The Crocodile, Seattle, 3/23/2009

2009-03-25T00:07:00.000-07:00

Am I allowed to say that rocked?

Am I allowed to say that the venue was small and smelled of paint? That the backstage was basically a screen that apparently had the power of Mary Poppins's magical bag judging from the sheer number of techies, children, and various other mysterious persons who zipped in and out of existence? That the night was plagued by technical difficulties including, but not limited to; a failing microphone, ineffective lighting cues, one guy stepping on another guy's guitar chord, Tom not knowing the words to his own songs and awkwardly stalling while a roadie ran to the dressing rooms to fetch the cheat-sheets, then drafting audience members to hold them up?

Am I allowed to say that none of that stopped this from being the single most perfect rock and roll show I've ever been to?

There's a moment we're all after when we go to rock shows. A moment of complete and total happy abandon where everything just rocks so hard and comes together so well that you forget everything else. These are moments when crazy stuff happens. This happened to me tonight.

It helped that I had great seats. Arriving an hour or so early we got a nice, early spot in line and were some of the first into the Croc. Tickets were sold out and the room was going to be full to capacity, so this part was important. I claimed a spot right in front sat with my back to the stage, waiting for the show to start, pondering such deep questions as "who'se American Flag guitar is that?" and playing "guess whose legs" with whatever pair of nikes/parachute pants was visible behind that not-so-private curtain.

By the way, anyone who says Seattle people aren't friendly have obviously never actually talked to them in their rock-club element. An aging grungie with a big smile and an effusive personality struck up a conversation about how he'd been in Seattle in the early 90s, he was a drummer, he'd been so bummed when they'd closed the Croc. He'd been to clubs all over the nation, and this was THE club as far as he was concerned. He's glad it's open again, it's death would have meant Microsoft won: the corporate culture had finally stomped out the aging but still resilient grunge presence. Then he veered into a defense of drugs, and how drugs made him a better drummer, which is where he lost me, but he was a sweet guy all the same and I was glad to meet him. His name was Billy. He asked me to save his spot while he went to "shoot some heroin."

I stared.

"Just kidding, I'm going to go get a beer."

"Oh. Okay then." Grunge joke. Muaaa!

He left. His spot was promptly filled by three (or four) knattering women all wearing tons of makeup. I was fated not to like these women, but more on that later. First it's time for the black-lights, the oddly florescent guitar, and Wayne Kramer.

In an intro eerily similar to Boots Reilly's the first time I ever saw Tom Morello, he said he usually has a full band up with him (he's in the MC5), but he was "falling behind the Nightwatchman and Steve Earl." And with that he launched into two mid-tempo, warm renditions of songs I didn't recognize, but enjoyed quite a bit: Kramer made being alone with his guitar look effortless, which is frankly more then Tom Morello's managed to do quite yet, though Tom's banishing the mood lighting with "I don't look good in blue" was a nice way to kick start.

For the record, he's right about the blue. Something about his skin-tone: he turns purple. Not a good color on anyone.

This was emphasized when he read his introductory speech off of papers taped to the floor, managing to sound both enthusiastic and like he had. a. bit. of teleprompter. disease. Tom's a lot of things; he is not is a natural front-man, and his stage-banter skills still need some developing. He gets away with it because of his naked enthusiasm. The guy just oozes goodwill and a moral mission. A guy this much in love with what he's doing can't help but bring you along for the ride.

He introduced Blue Scholars, an excellent local hip-hop act who won my geek heart right away by jamming their first beat on an iPhone. Clipped, clever rhymes delivered with perfect dictionary precision, their songs ran together for me but the themes were clear ones that I related to, like the good/street hip-hop vs. the bad/radio hip-hop. As someone who dispised hip-hop until I discovered the topical treasure trove that isn't on the radio, I could only agree. These guys are good.

There was a frazzle to get set-up again, guitars and techs and wires everywhere for what seemed like a long time. Organized chaos with emphasis on the chaos. Eventually everyone came out, grabbed their gear (Tom had "Arm the Homeless!" prompting the squeals from me and everyone else with any sense in the world) and launched into their first song, which wasn't one I recognized. It's either new or it's just a cover I didn't know, but I was glad when they launched into their standard repertoire of such populist sing-a-longs as "Whatever it Takes," and "The Lights are On in Spidertown." Although the Freedom Fighter Orchestra again wore the starched, ironed shirts of the First Day of the Tour they've morphed into a tighter rocking unit since I saw them last: exchanging the kind of subtle (and not-so-subtle) signals of a group that's put in it's share of roadmiles, and even a few in-jokes. Tom's black Nightwatchman uniform looked anything but ironed. In fact, Tom's outfit was a mess. He looked like he'd slept in the dirt, maybe out of comradery with the homeless children of Seattle, whom he was advocating for so passionately during his speeches.

100% of the profits from the night's show went to a Seattle homeless shelter for kids and teens, and it's hard to hold a grubby shirt against a man whose heart was so obviously in the right place. It's a moment where you imagine you can see how, exactly, he gets all these legends to agree to play his show even though they're not making any money. All too soon the orchestra put their stuff down and disappeared behind the magic curtain, and Morello introduced "hero and champion of the working man," Steve Earle.

This guy is a legend for a reason. Talk about a study in making it all look so easy. Acoustic, harmonica, laid back attitude, just the right amount of fire. Talked about voting for Obama but still seeing all kinds of crap he didn't agree with all over the TV. Except this one: "There is no such thing as Clean Coal. Coal's an ugly back mess and once you get it in your lungs it never leaves. Looks like some people are trying to bring back the good ol' days of coal mining: when everyone did well except for the folks who had to go down in the fucking hole. This is a song for them." I didn't know his songs but Tom obviously did, and he was sitting right off to the side of the stage, singing along and clearly enjoying every minute. This guy's a hero of his; it was written all over his grinning face.

So imagine my annoyance when the females who'd crammed in front of me insisted on talking all through the quiet acoustic numbers. And talking loud, and giggling, and stacking their coats and purses on the edge of the stage which restricted the room the rest of us had access to, meaning we were crammed into a smaller amount of space then we should be. Would not take hint that they should move thier stuff. Me not like these girls.

Anyway, I sprawled over the stage and concentrated really hard and Steve Earle is quite something, he really is. After around three songs, he brought Tom and the Freedom Fighter Orchestra back out, and said this song was one off his new album of Townes Van Zandt covers. Now, Townes Van Zandt was a legendary folk hero who wrote beautiful, delicate songs. Listen to around three of them, and I guarentee you will want to kill yourself. Performing a whole album of Townes covers seems a risky endevour. Tom apparently plays on this track on the cover record. A lucky combination of Morello's electronic muscle-mass and Earle's sardonic, throaty singing negated the suicide-inducing quality that Van Zandt is known for and the show could continue.

Also, at some point, Wayne Kramer came out, picked up the American Flag guitar, and joined in the playing. He has the easy manner of a veteran performer, and gave the rhythm playing a nice steroid shot. He was also right in front of me. I had a front-row seat to his getting his guitar-chord stepped on as he was trying to plug in.

This is kind of the end of the "Annoying girls" saga, so bear with me. What annoyed me the most about those four girls was that they refused to dance. They bobbed their heads politely sometimes, but I maintain one of the golden-rules of rock concert-going is that if you don't want to jump around, you don't belong in the very front row. Hell, the band can SEE YOU THERE, and if they see you not getting into it, what are they going to think? This isn't the fucking ballet.

Fortunately, one of the songs Tom, Earle, and Wayne would play was "The Ghost of Tom Joad." If you haven't seen the video of Tom performing this with Springsteen, punch yourself in the face, then get to youtube. All kinds of awesome, so when I realized this group were going to play it live, I went a little crazy. The song didn't disappoint. The amazing thing about Tom (and why the people who call him a charlatan are wrong) is that he can launch into these crazy, pyrokinetic solos that contain some ungodly noises but he never looses the thread of the song. I love it, I love it to bits, and I was going to show that to the universe, spoil-sport stationary neighbors or no. I felt a bit like a one-woman mosh-pit, and got some seriously dirty looks, which was kind of gratifying. You know lady, if you moved those coats in front of you to down by your feet, you could step far enough away from me that I wouldn't be kicking you in the shins by accident. But you never figured that out and I couldn't be bothered to tell you. To the end I guess I'd rather be oblivious then out-of-line. Either way, the nice ladies didn't crowd me or even really bother me for the rest of the show, so that's the last you'll hear of them.

After this, a number of dudes left the stage and the set-up vaguely changed for the world premiere of Street Sweeper, the no-longer-secret band Tom and Boots formed a few years ago that they're about to take on tour with Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction.

Now, I don't really like Street Sweeper. Boots Reilly is a human feline, the ultimate cool cat full of intelligent scorn and a lofty attitude and it just plain doesn't match the bombast of Morello's huge monster guitar hooks. Zack De La Rocha could face down a wall of electric guitars because he had such a livid delivery that such unholy, tormented, inescapable noise was a perfectly fitting backdrop for his rage. Zack's a molotov cocktail to Boots's cold beer, and it just doesn't blend. Tom needs to learn him how to play plugged-in without morphing into the 800-pound gorilla he really is. I didn't hear a single thing Boots said for his entire set.

Don't get me wrong, Boots is a hell of a performer and he's worth watching if just to see the way he moves, and the music rocked hard enough that there was plenty to enjoy, even if the songs all ran together and the volume of the microphone was so low that I couldn't make out the words anyway.

Also, Wayne Kramer totally flicked me a guitar pick. So not kidding. He looked right at me, smiled, flicked it high in the air, and it came down right on my palm. So I guess even if the annoying girls were too cool to show enthusiasm (in the first fucking row) there were some others who didn't object too much. I am going to have actually check out his band now.

I am really fading now, but I'm determined to get this written. I don't remember much of the specifics about how Mark Arm came out: relatively little aplomb, but also...plenty of aplomb. He took Boots's mic and was, for a moment, confused about whether he should sing into that one or Tom's Mic, since Tom had deserted his Front-Center-Frontman position, also for reasons I forget. He ended up keeping the hand-held one, shrieking through a song I didn't recognize it...again, but it had something to do with the American Dream, I hope I'd recognize it if I heard it again because I really liked that tune. Arm's singing can still peel the paint off the walls, and he's fascinating to watch.

The next big entrance had nothing to do with aplomb. It was mid-song. No one said anything at the time. He just walked onstage from behind the curtain and stood right fucking in front of me. And he already had his black Gibson SG strapped on. That was kind of all he had to do for the room to go completely mental.

For the life of me I wish I could remember what song they were on when he did this. I know he was there by the time the group (now consisting if Kid Lighting, Tom Morello, Wayne Kramer, Tom's drummer guy, and... uh, the new guy) launched into "Kick Out the Jams!" which is a song I like under any circumstances, but.... especially these. Um, it rocked. It really really rocked. I can't say much more then that, except...fucking wow.

Yes, it was Kim Thayil. He had a neatly trimmed beard, a long, frizzy ponytail, and carried himself like a king: movements reserved but powerful, eyes fixed mostly on his instrument. This is a guy who doesn't screw around. He doesn't have to. Ladies and gentlemen, the Grunge Lords are in the house.

And he was RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. I mean, I had to be careful where I threw my devil horns so's not to hit him. I was so close the only way he could really have seen me was if he looked straight down. I could have reached out and touched him. I didn't, that would have been weird, but I could have.

Song over. Mark left. Tom headed off to stage right, introducing Ben Shepard, also looking lordly and somber, handling his black fender bass like it was serious business. Tad someone, and a name I didn't catch that must have belonged to the handsome blond drummer* who took over the kit, giving Tom's poor guy a much-deserved break. I'm sure he was a big deal too, but I didn't know him. Tom introduced them as "Tadgarden" which was totally lame but didn't matter because they'd launched into action and...uh...

See, I pride myself on my ability to describe almost anything. I can't describe "Tadgarden's" set. Well, yes I can. It was Soundgarden without the vocals. The Tad's microphone was turned so low that his Not-Chris-Cornell-factor was easy to ignore, as was he. I had a frontrow seat to Kim's guitar work. The last song they played was "Let me drown." And they were... fucking... Soundgarden. Or at least, the closest we're probably ever gonna get. And there were kids backstage, sporting headphones and getting what was probably their first good look at "Dad's Old Band." I could relate. I was less then ten years old when Soundgarden were big, and this was my first real look at what all the fuss was about.

And this fuss was about a whole fucking lot. These three guys, with all the signs of the unrehearsed, took all of around ten seconds to morph together into what might be the tightest rocking unit I have ever seen live.

EDIT: Okay, this is a major Mea Culpa: That Handsome Blond drummer was Matt Cameron. Yes, THE Matt Cameron. My only excuse is that looking at old pictures of Soundgarden depresses me, and Cameron wasn't on the formal bill. Apparently he had told the press he wasn't going to show up, then changed his mind and ended up behind the drumkit. Awesome. Chris Cornell, the spoilsport, wasn't there because he's too busy living la vida popstar somewhere in South America, but you almost didn't miss him: not with Tom Morello gleefully playing 2ed Guitar like it was a childhood dream. Would have been nice to have some singing to go along with the song, but Tad's microphone was turned so low that if you wanted vocals, you had to provide them yourself, and plenty did.

Tom looked like the happiest man ever to play 2ed Guitar. "I haven't been this fucking excited in a long time. It's like I won some kind of contest or something." Tad started to ask what people wanted to hear, but Kim didn't even wait for him to finish the question before launching right into the intro to "Spoonman." They roared on like a freight train from there.

Rock epiphanies. We live for them. That and the dirty looks the annoying stationary girls shoot me when I'm leaping around, and I swear I did a lot of that. Cornell's solo show didn't have half this much electricity, even at it's highest moments.

There wasn't much you can do to beat a glimpse, however brief, of a genuine legend, so they wisely wrapped with an all-star version of Tom's favorite rebel jam, "This Land is Your Land." Mark Arm was summoned back and told to grab a microphone (he had been standing just offstage for the entire Tadgarden set). Wayne Kramer came back, Steve Earle came back, Boots came back, everyone except Blue Sky came back. "Get Kim back out here, he needs to rock a solo on this one," said Morello, and Kim appeared, grabbed the cable and plugged in again. I was already familiar with Tom's closing-act trick of bringing up the house-lights and telling the whole room to jump up and down, but apparently whoever was in charge of the lighting booth wasn't, and although the blue lights went up, the house lights remained off. The singers handed off the verses, and Mark Arm's verse was tragically foiled by the fact that the microphone he'd found wasn't turned on. He spent the rest of the time singing into the bassist's back-up mic. And we did jump, appropriately enough, to Kim's grungy, dirty, virtuosic solo. It was a fucking big finish.

And when it was all over, the clearly still pumped-up Wayne Kramer, walking outside for some fresh air, grabbed me and hugged me. "I'm glad you came!" he said.

Best show I have been to in my life.

Another Night At Kimos

2009-03-15T21:19:00.000-07:00

I broke my own rule with this one, because I'm typing it the day after. I was so exhausted by the time I got home that I could barely get my head on the pillows before I was unconscious.

It was a three-band night at Kimos last night, and seems the theme was pop-metal. The bands were good: I had a fun time bouncing around, but despite some really impeccable musicianship none of them were particularly memorable.

With the exception of the singer from The Backup Razor, the first band of the night. That guy alternately morphed between a Green Day type bratty whine, a hellish metal demon's scream, and a Trent-Reznor sinister whisper. He was three singers in one, sporting impressive dreadlocks and some one-liners lazily mocking the crowd for hanging around the corners of the room. That was partly their fault: they launched into a one-minute long song about beer with Ramones-style speed, not giving anyone any time to get to the front. Their music is fast hard rock that's almost metal, and it's good fun for the nodding-your-head crowd, but two days on, I couldn't tell you what my impression of their songs were.

Two Headed Spy were also a four-peice, except their frontman had a guitar, their bassist had technical difficulties, and their lead guitarist had a vintage Rage Against the Machine T-Shirt which explains the more hook-heavy nu-metal of this particular group. The two guitarists allowed for a more filled-out sound, and there was a cool part where the lead guitarist played a bongo drum for a couple minutes, and overall their sound was more complex and detailed then their opening act. They even covered for their poor fumbling bassist by launching into an impromptu jam-session on a song that they later told us was unfinished. I enjoyed the fact that their arrangements were more detailed and subtle then the preceeding act, and in that, I think, they showed the most promise. I can see them evolving into something really special someday.

I was sad to say, and maybe a lot of it was my own fault for being so dog-tired, but as the last band of the night Solcraft were putting me to sleep. It wasn't their fault, probably: the lead singer spent most of his time off the stage, dancing with some ladies who were clearly friends of the band, and at his absolute worst he was still a strong singer. That guitar player was the single most impressive player of the night: morphing seemlessly from metal to blues to hard rock and back to metal, often within the same song, and letting fly on cue with some seering high-on-the-fretboard solos. But for me, the interest just wasn't there. I was more then ready to leave by the time their set wrapped up.

Walking back towards Van Ness (or as I like to call it "Where the Taxis are") was kind of like walking through a ghost-town. So many "For Lease" signs. And the big Virgin Megastore downtown (the landmark I can always use to find my way to the Metrion) is going out of business so I went there and spent $90 on stuff and enjoyed their chipper British live DJ while he's still got a job.

Times is hard.

Psychologist on Music Torture.

2009-03-08T23:24:00.000-07:00

I'm fascinated and repulsed by the process of using Music to torture, in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. That something so benign can be used to inflict pain and suffering says something about the sheer creativity some people bring to the process of hurting other people.

Human Rights activist Andy Worthington has written up as good of an overview of the whole disgusting mess as I've read.

This kind of thing makes me really want to take action. But I have no idea what to do.

Trent Renzor joins the list of "Rockers with Principles" for his condemnation of the practice.

Another Night At Kimos

2009-03-01T02:31:00.000-08:00

Sometimes things just go very well. Sometimes you just happen, luckily, on something exceptional.

It happened to me tonight. It was four bands for five bucks at Kimos again, and they were all great. All of them. Part of it might be that, by accident, I stumbled on Glam-Rock night, but the night was full of filthy guitars, moshing, wailing, and eyeshadow. If you need more for a perfect night at the local dive-bar venue, I don't know what it would be.

The first group was called "Inferno of Joy," a classic-rock four-peice. I love those. There's a monsterous teddy bear for a drummer, nice guy, talked to him before the show. There's Argentine bass player who stands wide and doesn't screw around. There's a guitar player who looks sort of like a soft-boiled Axl Rose who was doing incredible things on an intriguingly ancient Telecaster, which he, like a pro, swapped for a white Mexican after he broke a string. There's a lead singer in vinyl pants, a red work-shirt and long gloves, writhing and yelping like a younger Iggy Pop. This performance was just a whirlwind from beginning to end. Dirty, sexy, slinky, sounds like something you'd hear in a sleezy club in New York in the 70s, and that's a very, VERY good thing. This performance was just incredible.

So incredible, in fact, that the straight up hard rock of the next act, Lucabrazzi , couldn't really hope to follow. Don't get me wrong, they were pretty great: a power-trio in the style of Primus with the blue-dredlocked, sandy throated bass player as the frontman, and a lethe, dark guitarist who, despite more then a few technical difficulties, still jumped right off the stage to mosh with the front row...while still playing his guitar. They were pretty hard rock, pretty no frills, but sometimes, that's all you need.

The third band, Floating Corpses, was another three-peice and looked like it was going to be the most experimental band of the night. A red-headed girl in a black vinyl constructon was working a synthesizer, the dressed-to-match frontman (sequin miniskirt anyone?) had his guitar and a keyboard, the mics had the echo effect turned all the way up, and the drummer didn't seem to match because he looked totally normal. He was an absolute beast on the drum-kit. He brought a contingent of large, moshing Latino men with him, and the results were painful but preditctable. Thankfully, synth or no synth, the songs were meaty enough on their own that there was always plenty to dance to. They were very good. It sounds boring to say, but it was great to be there.

Last act of the night was Pink Swastika, fronted by possibly the shyest gay man ever to don a little-bo-peep polka-dotted dress and rock out on a lead-heavy blue Tele. I can't describe these guys without saying that they were, hands down, the most visual band of the night. The drummer stripped to the waist, smeared colorful body paint all over himself, and mimicked a broken robot over his kit. The bass player's hair was teased up in epic fashion, he sported a mini, some leggings, and a fuzzy red cardigan sweater. The keyboardist could double for Arther "Killer" Kane of New York Doll fame: huge blond hair, a tight sequened top, giant boots, and netted arm-warmers. He worked his keyboard with as much flare as I've ever seen anyone do it. And the singer, well, I've already mentioned him, so definitely this was a group that demanded attention, but how did they sound? Well, less heavy on the bottom then most of the other act (one sways side to side rather then bounce up and down) but still harsh, angry, scary, and.... yeah. Anyway, they were great too.

This was a great set-list. Thanks a lot Kimos. I owe you one.

Meet the Republican Rapper

2009-02-28T13:29:00.000-08:00

Since the musician life seems to be an extension of liberal philosophy, I'm always curious about the phenomena of right-wing musicians. I've marveled at the Junkyard Prophets trying to turn Rage Against the Machine's formula of heavy rap-rock against them. I wish I were objective enough to evaluate their stuff on it's own merits, to me they sound devoid of any real fire or the edge that the genre is usually about, but in the meantime, interesting study.

Here's the only republican rapper. The Eminem of the right-wing, so to speak, though he talks in deliberate eubonics. This guy's fascinating, if just because he says his world was changed by listening to talk radio for ten minutes, but his own rhymes contain very little of that roaring bluster.

Full Album Review: Chris Cornell "Scream"

2009-02-12T22:17:00.000-08:00

It's only fair that I write this. I've definitely whined and moaned about it enough in other circles, so I gotta put my money where my mouth is.

+++

Here is my full review of Chris Cornell's album with Timbaland: "Scream." It is very long. You have been warned.

I like originality.

I like it when brilliant people step outside their comfort zone and try new things.

When creativity pushes the boundaries and forgets genre in favor of doing something new, that's when real magic can happen and a whole new thing can be born.

In that spirit, today I am going to review Chris Cornell's "Scream," his...uh, collaboration with pop mastermind Timbaland.

I will review this album the way it was intended. Back to back and in it's entirety. Once this review starts up it just doesn't stop. So you better be ready, because this is gonna be intense.
Seriously, if you're not ready, the back button is right up there. I don't force anyone to care about my opinion, the same way I don't force anyone plant their nose in my armpit, and inhale deeply, and the back button is RIGHT up there. So if you want to keep reading, you've got no-one to blame but yourself.

Still here? Okay then, here we go! Pray for me!

Track 1: "Part of me"
What is this, an intro to an MGM musical? Is this really the right album? The sound shifts quickly to some vaguely eastern psychedelia stuff that gives me "Prince of Persia: Sands of Time" flashbacks and now I feel like a huge geek, but I don't really object because I loved that theme song and anything that reminds of it can't be all bad, right? There's some rumbling spoken word that's so heavily distorted I have no idea what it's saying, so it can't be that important. Though I heard the words "Chris Cornell" in there, so I'm guessing this was some cheeky meta self-reference.

I hate when my music winks at me.

And now we're on to the actual song part of the song, which, by the way, is not the least bit eastern-sounding, so I dunno what the intro was about. It's, well.. it's very clubby, lots of electric beeps and overdubs. Overdubs.

You know what Overdubs says to me?

It says late 90s pop explosion.

It says, "pay no attention to the pretty face on the box, it doesn't really matter who you're listening to. Dance, my hand-puppets, dance, and bring unto me the dollars of the idiotic masses." After I realized that the name on the box was just whatever was marketable at the moment and couldn't be any less relevant to the actual creative force behind the album (whoever that is) I didn't listen to any popular music at all for almost six years. I kid you not. For years all I listened to was Yoko Kanno, instrumental soundtracks, and jazz. The fact that this album, like all "pop" is heavy on the overdubs is not an endearing trait to me. Not at all.

The song's central character is a guy trying to convince this one girl that this other girl who he what-evered in a club was "just a fling" , calls her a bitch (twenty-two times) and whatever and ...blah blah blah... this plot-line makes Lil' Wayne sound like Bob Dylan in terms of lyrical depth.
C'mon Cornell, you don't have the ironic, casual misogyny required for this kind of topic. What's swaggering when coming from a huge ghetto club lord dude (guess who's the whitest chick in America?) doesn't quite sound the same from an ernest, skinny white guy.

Also, the beeping back-drop is boring me to tears. I got excited for a few minutes when I thought I heard some real instruments in the bridge, but they didn't last long before the electronica swallowed them up. It makes me sad because now I just know there is a REAL musician buried in there somewhere and I am never going to get to hear what they really sound like.
Now it's time for the 'transition," and kids, don't let the hype fool you, of the fourteen 'transitions' on this album, only two or so are 'seamless.' The rest leap from sound to sound in disorienting ways, like right here. They shift abruptly from key-tar scales to some bubbly sounding blue cold "ayy" sounds, and before you have time to get your bearings,

Track 2: "Scream."
I've actually heard this one played live. "Scream" and it's much better live, though it still contains no screaming at all. Still, it annoys me much less then the previous one, if just because it doesn't contain the word "bitch." The lyrical theme seems to be a actually a pretty accurate reflection of what happens when two people are just at each-other's throats all the time for reasons neither of which can really remember. Few people do the poisoned relationship theme better then Chris Cornell, THIS is the kind of stuff his brooding, dark vocals were made for.
And just when I'm getting into it, who shows up but Timbaland. In the flesh, spouting some grammatically incorrect hood-speak into his microphone.

Just in case anyone was in danger of forgetting the man behind the curtain, Timbaland is here to remind you who is the stud-muffin, and who is the wing-man.

It upset me so much I completely forgot to listen to the rest of the song.

At least the transition actually IS more "seamless" this time. I'm guessing this is what we were supposed to expect from this album, though went on about 30 seconds longer ten it should have to maintain interest, and it doesn't blend perfectly, but oh well at least the song's over.

Track 3: "Time"
Ok, there actually IS some screaming in this song, and that's great because I love it when Cornell screams at me. But I gotta say, it's strange hearing that howl of his in what is such an unabashed pop song. How unabashed?

One of the lines is, no joke: "Make a little love."

And while it was not followed recommendations that we should 'get down tonight,' I think the point is made. This song wouldn't be out of place in a disco in the 1970s, a decade, by the way, that I give thanks everyday that I was not alive for.

Wait a minute. That's it. This isn't a club track, this is a disco track! A disco IN SPACE, if the cosmic keyboards are anything to go by. A space disco! And the theme is how powerless we are in the face of time.

Normally I like my Space Discos keeping me up to date on the weather conditions on Mars but you know what, I'll totally make an allowance for this one because it reminds me of a Red Dwarf, and anything that reminds of Red Dwarf, I like. Because yes, I am a geek.

Track 4: "Sweet Revenge."
The good news is we're out of the space disco. The bad news is we're back in the club. Very, very much in the club. So deep in the club that Justin Timberlake just turned up with twenty underage supermodels and got them all in without ids.

That is how clubby this is.

By the way, the Timberlake thing didn't come out of nowhere: he actually sings on this track as one of the anonymous computer-generated phantoms warbling the chorus in that studied falsetto of his and doing his best to kill any angst that Cornell's seething bitter lyrics are building up. Justin Timberlake's a talented guy, but every time he opens his mouth, my IQ drops five points. Perfect when I've had a few drinks and really want to get stupid on a dance floor. Not so great any other time.

I like the theme of the song, it's classic Cornell raging against those who would control and direct him (bad managers, ungrateful band-mates, the music biz in general, fill in the blank) but unless you're a pretty sulky drunk, the people who will listen to this will not be lovin' the angry vibe running through what's otherwise a perfectly decent, upbeat dance song.

Track: 5: "Get Up."

Get up. Get up WHERE? How? In what way? So many questions, not enough answers!

The lower depths of Cornell's vocal cords gets a good workout here, making this track a new low (rim-shot), but his voice is so coated with effects that it if you hadn't read the box it would be hard to tell it was him. There is lots of trilling button-pushing here: lots of keyboards, and some heavily coating of the vocals with (to me) unidentifiable effects that have the effect of making everything sound very abstract. If I were to describe this song in one word it would be "vague." There's kind of nothing here to hang onto and I can't figure out where or what anything is supposed to be. Forget the outro foreshadowing the next song too: that's the whole first verse of the next song. With the guitar interlude I was sure there was a whole different song in there somewhere, but since it only exists for around 30 seconds, it doesn't get any chance to really go anywhere.

Ok, I have to amend my previous statement. It's not "vague." It's "disorienting." The world keeps shifting around and I'm currently not nearly drunk or high enough to be at ease with it. Maybe that's intentional, but that might be giving them too much credit. I'm LOOKING for a unifying theme here, but I'm just not finding it.

Track 6: "Ground Zero"
May I say this song, more then any other on this record, tests my "skip reflex" to it's maximum. There's a sampled "ay!" noise in the background and some synth strings over a danceable electric chorus of overdubbing that I swear is the cheeriest setting imaginable for the phrase "blood on the concrete, river of deceit" imaginable. Where in the world am I gonna go? Well, not here, that's for sure. This is ground zero, so run for your life. Run, AWAY from the cringe-worthy sampling, away from the first actual live percussion I can remember hearing on this album (at least, I think it's live) away from this whole sad affair.

Track 7: "Never Far Away"
This is, simply put, the most unabashedly bubble-gum romantic pop song that Chris Cornell has ever sang ever. In fact, it's so different from his normal pessimistic attitude that there's this evil little voice in the back of my head saying there is NO WAY he actually wrote these lyrics.
Timbaland productions feature an infamous revolving door of contributers. What would the odds be he got someone to ghost a song for one of rock's best songwriters?

Naw, not even he's that low.

I hope.

Anyway, the raw honesty of Cornell's voice IS touching and an effective counter-point to the love-struck bubble-gum cheerfulness of the lyrics, before some fake-sounding guitars shift this song from ernest to foreboding, some deep male chants and it's back into the realm of the "Prince of Persia" which was teased at the beginning.

Finally. We've been waiting the whole album to find out what that was all about.

Track 8: "Take me Alive"
Ok, I'll admit the eastern stuff is psychedelic and cool. Too bad I can't figure out what it has to do with the song's theme: a guy lamenting his inability to end a destructive, controlling relationship. It's similar in theme to Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage" in which a man declares defiantly he will soon break free from what holds him prisoner, but by the end of the song, the prison is still very much intact. He just can't take that final step. In that way, the narrative character of "Take me Alive" declares he won't ever be taken alive, it's pretty clear he already has.

The destructive relationship is kind of a standby for Cornell, and the "exotic" framing doesn't seem to have anything to do with the domesticity of the subject, but hey, I'd rather be striding down the street to the bazar then trapped in a hum-drum dance club, so I won't complain too much.

You know something I've just realized. Every single song on this CD is abbreviated. Really, it's like you get two-thirds of a real song, and the last quarter of any track is just teaser for the next one, some teasers better then others (this one is a return to the 70s keyboards and shimmering electronica with heavily distorted vocals).

Track 9: "Long gone."
Ok, I just heard this verse, it was part of the teaser, and now you're making me listen to the same exact thing again? That's annoying me, which is too bad because this song, "Long Gone" actually showcases the strength of Chris's voice more-so then most on this album: until, that is, the wanton overdubbing of the chorus ruins it, the way it can make even the strongest voices sound devoid of personality. Another kind-of break up song, with a key-tar bridge reminiscent of "Scream," which I guess is some cheeky self-reference. Great, now I want to scream.

I don't really have much to say about this one, because it sounds kind of like a rehash of "Sweet Revenge" without the bitterness and without the novelty of a J.T cameo. Next please.

Track 10: "Enemy"
So we've already been to Turkey. Who's in the mood for a little Irish jig? Because that's exactly what's next. Kind of. Don't worry, it's only two seconds long, and the rest is nicely nondescript club noises.

"Enemy," is what it's called, and it features some of the darkest lyrics on the whole album, which is too bad because it's such a dull song. Cornell's voice is almost unrecognizable under a multitude of retro-electronic effects, and key-strings and some dull drumming rule the day. Maybe it's just because I'm writing this extremely late at night, but I almost dozed off during this one. Good thing it doesn't last too long. None of these songs are longer then two verses, which is a good thing and probably shouldn't be.

Track 11: "Other side of Town"
Finally a transition that actually works. This morph was so seamless I almost didn't hear it happen.

The good news is that live, military-style drums are DEFIANTLY audible in this one. Too bad the vocal effects and spacey keyboards are back. Oh and the sampling. "Ee-yah!" repeats over and over somewhere in the wallpaper of this song.

This song is a narrative about a guy who's ex follows him from a party. She's high on something and what actually happens between them is unknown, but next thing you know, he's feeling guilty as hell but she doesn't want to talk to him. He whines about it for the rest of the song. One minute he wants to get rid of her and the next he's begging for forgiveness? I just don't follow you.

The transition consists of some sensitive pianos and strings. The strings give everything a sort of cinematic sheen, if, ya know, a cinema is one of those little TVs that plays montages in a club. It's all very moody and sparkly. I can imagine it being the center piece of a music video featuring slow-mo dancing and lots of blue light, but I can imagine that about most of the tracks on this album.

Track 12: "Climbing up the walls"
This track ounds a lot like the proceeding: more strings and electronic keyboards and a very, very basic drum beat. Overdubbing producing a layered kind of disjointed timing in the chorus that sounds kind of interesting but mechanical and definitely artificial.

That's what gets me about pop, and it's why I didn't listen to it for years. It's just so damn FAKE. That's not singer's real timing: Cornell didn't actually sing the chorus that way, he sang bits and they were assembled like puzzle pieces to create the finished product. Cornell has insisted over and over in interviews that he was an equal partner in writing these songs, but I just plain don't trust anything that has this many raw seams visible is anyone's construction but Timbaland's. In his world, the singer just doesn't have any power. He can sounds like anything, and lines and phrases and notes can be moved about at will, it's all a matter of pushing the right buttons.

I think there's a real guitar buried in this one somewhere, but don't worry, it's very basic and doesn't last long. Overall, this slow-to-mid-tempo dancey number just doesn't have much personality, except Chris sounds vaguely more miffed then before. For once I'm actually thankful for the outro's arrival, if just because it means the song's almost over. This one is a new one: sounds like Cornell strumming some sort of acoustic and singing moodily through what sounds like an old radio. It's actually pretty cool, but what it has to do with what follows is utterly beyond me.

Track 13: "Watch out"
I guess someone could tell I needed a jolt to wake me up: this song begins with some unidentifiable mounting noise, an insistently whispered "wake up" and some buzzing hooks, all telling the story of a hell-bent danger girl who drives like a maniac all the time. And, to make it worse, since the other line in the two-line chorus is "pick it up" she's a litterbug as well! Scandalous!

Now I know Cornell occationally rides his metaphors right into the ground ("Nothing left to Say but Goodbye" anyone?) but if this crazy driving is supposed to be a metaphor, and NOT, literally, about a crazy driving litterbug girl then it's just too heavy handed. Even for me. Maybe the last verse has some stuff about mirrors, but for the most part, it keeps on with the crazy girl, talking about how she's crazy.

I think Timbaland's got a hatred for instruments. He cant even let his own choruses go by unaccosted by bumps, scratches and jolts. The ending, with the sound of film running out of an old projector, is kind of cool in a found-noise-you-hear-at-the-end-of-an-Oasis track kind of way.

Track 14: "Two Drink Minimum"
Now comes the album's actual conclusion. Starts pretty promising actually: a solo electric guitar that I can ACTUALLY imagine getting played somewhere, Chris's brooding vocals for once free of any noticeable distortion, even in the chorus (the voice jumps at :30 seconds in though, so there's been SOME editing). Some western folk harmonica gives everything a very western feel. In my mind I see a country saloon at sunrise, and the slow, thirsty defeat of a man anticipating getting absolutely hammered after a huge loss. An organ materializes, and the whole thing has a very funereal air, Cornell's voice actually infusing some desperation into the grim, slow proceedings. To me this is the most atmospheric, emotionally complex piece on the album. It's my hands-down favorite and serves as a semi-painful reminder to me of why, exactly, I'm a fan of this guy in the first place.

Though a better example is the rock-solid, touching blues of the track "I promise It's Not Goodbye," which is available for free download on Cornell's website. This song is an exquisite arrangement of bluesy guitar, a solid drum beat, and some folk harmonica thrown in to get the tears flowing. It's an arrangement vaguely reminiscent of "Two Drink Minimum," except with more muscle and direction. It's the restrained, unadorned pain in Cornell's voice that's gives the song it's power, transforming the sorrow into transcendent willpower. The lyrics are in the voice of a child who has "risen," leaving behind a family, whom she comforts one at a time, by name, and if they sound kind of simply sentimental for a Cornell song (after "Never Far Away?"), it's because they weren't written by him, but by a fan named Rory Dela Rosa. Rory wrote in the voice of his daughter, whom he just lost lost to cancer at the age of 6. Cornell's treatment of the material is just masterful, conjuring in turn the strong, reassuring presense of the child's spirit, the loving father willing her to stay close to him, and the third party, the singer, praying for them both in the best way he knows how. It's a powerful, it's emotional, and it's a wonderful song.

People have decried his aging vocal cords as evidence of his deteriorating power. These people are idiots, and for all it's faults, there are moments where Cornell proves that voice of his can still rip right to your soul when he decides he wants to. There's still no singer out there who can articulate the honest, gut-wrenching emotion quite like he can. It's just too bad honest, gut-wrenching emotion seems to be exactly what Scream, for the most part, couldn't care less about. This isn't an album for philosphizing over and crying to. This is an album for clubs, workouts, and jogs, a role it actually fullfills more then capably. It's not a bad album, it's just... it's being marketed as this unique collaboration, this great meeting-of-the-minds sure to revolutionize music as we know it, and it's just plain not the case. This isn't any sort of brilliant fusion of anything, this is an unadorned, pure, unadultrated pop album, full of solid, get-stuck-in-your-head pop, not unlike everything else Timbaland has done, and a bit like stuff Cornell himself has previously dabbled in. It's got some interesting tweaks, like the MGM intro, but the tweeks don't seem to serve any purpose besides they're own novelty, and if there was an overarching unifying theme to the album, I couldn't find it.

Fortunately, whoever bankrolled the album smelled out the reviews like this one and sent Chris and Tim on a charm-offensive campaign tour of the West Coast, full of interviews about how proud they are of this work and how much fun it is to play, and how it's unique and original and implying anyone who doesn't think so is stuck in the past.

It's done it's job; there is no way this album isn't going to make gazillions of dollars from those simply curious about if it's REALLY as original as people say it is, and it'll no doubt go on to win "critical acclaim" from critics who love them both.

These are indeed dark days for music.

My prediction? Cornell will continue to write and tour. I don't think he really knows any other way to live. His life show will continue to be great, and that includes his Scream material, which is much more fun when it's played live by real musicians with real instruments. Timbaland will continue to wallow in his own genius and crank out hits exactly like his last hits. His name has become so synonymous with pop success that there's a whole generation out there who don't know anything better exists. Whatever will unseat him will be big, and new, and actually will change the face of popular music as we know it. And what's more, they will deserve every bit of the success they've worked so hard for, and they'll restore some of music's lost innocence.

What's Wrong with "Scream"

2009-01-26T13:16:00.001-08:00

As small a victory as it is, I'm proud that, as of right now, the highest rated review of Chris Cornell's single "Scream" is mine. I rated it one star and sarcastically titled it "Congratulations Timbaland" and went on to admonish him for making one of the strongest, most unique voices in Rock and making him sound like a really sulky Justin Timberlake.

I still stand by that, by the way. It annoys the crap out of me because, I'm a fan of Cornell, and I'm also a fan of innovation and something as counter-intuitive as a Grunge Lord with an electric R&B pop mastermind sounded at least as promisingly nutty as a rock god and a bluegrass angel, and that latter pairing produced something exquisite and utterly unique. I'm a staunch advocate of taking brilliant people out of their comfort zones and seeing what they come up with. So believe me when I say that I WANTED to like it.

And it breaks my heart because I read the touching, insightful blogs Chris has written about how much he appreciates fans going along with this new thing he's doing and I just wanna tell him just because it's new TO HIM doesn't make it NEW. I wanna tell him that the reason why he keeps having to insist that he actually contributed to the work in the press is that even his most ardent fans can't HEAR him under all the layering. Oh they hear the voice, sure, but there's almost nothing of Chris discernible in there. He could be anyone of the many singers Timbaland's worked with over the years.

Chris and Timbaland set out to revolutionize a genre and make a great record. And in doing so, they got caught up in their own egos and now the work languishes in limbo for unknown reasons. Release it already to the world can buy like eleventy billion copies, Cornell becomes an "overnight" pop sensation, he goes on to make sixty more records with Timbaland and rock is killed just that much deader. We all know what's comming, so lets just get it over with.

There's one thing that gives me hope though. Cornell played a couple of the "Scream" songs LIVE when I saw him perform a few months ago. And I gotta say, when they're played live, by a real band, with real instruments, they're not that bad. That's a hopeful sign.

A Night at the Angels Roadhouse

2009-01-03T02:05:00.000-08:00

Thank goodness, my hometown isn't quite so devoid of culture as I feared. A scan of the local paper today revealed a local band, Dionysos, playing somewhere called the "Angel's Roadhouse Bar and Grill" around a half-hour's drive from my parents' place. I myspaced the group, found it was some pretty heavy psychedelic stuff that was polished but humdrum, eh, they might be better live, so I roped my mom into comming with me and we took off through the thick, unseasonal fog into the wild unknowns of Yukaipa, California.

Angel's Roadhouse is exactly that. A Roadhouse. It was kinda seedy, it was full of rednecks and drunken regulars and the odd fan actually there to listen to the music. "Roadhouse" was also the name of the first band of the night, and funnily enough, they also happened to be the best band of the night. Bluesy, heavy southern rock, and four excellent musicians, but what was unique about them was that they were the only group of the night that felt like a GROUP. They really fed off eachother and read eachother's minds the way only the tightest rocking units do. One memorable moment was when the bass player, a massive blond with even more massive hair, broke a string and the duo of lead singer and lead guitarist teamed up on a delicate two-man peice to cover for him while he changed it. The lead singer was also a blond with big hair, loose limbs and the most by way of stage-crafty leaps and bounds. The guitarist was a brunette, not a blond. He handled his instrument effortlessly and the guy oozed the blues, clearly wriging all the glory he could out of his solos. He took over lead vocals for some songs and his voice was true, but unlike the other standouts of the evening, he didn't leave his band in the dust: he complemented them, they complemented him back, and the four of them rocked like they shared the same mind. Well done, boys, I am now a fan of yours.

After such a display of unity, the next act, "Stage IV Sleep", was a bit jarring in their disjointedness. I have a soft-spot in my heart for the classic rock four-peice line up: one singer, one bass player, one drummer, one guitarist, and these guys had some fans in the audience, cheering along and shouting back, but there was something off about them. The singer in question looked like he would have been more at home in a football jersey, sprinting towards the ten yard line then prowling the stage shouting profanity at the imaginary punk club moshing in his head. And I'm supposed to buy this buff jock is screaming about existential angst? The bass player was huge and sported a bleached mohawk, so he looked like he maybe could be wierd enough to actually be musical, but there was nothing really special about his bass playing either. The drummer was an Asian in glasses and a ski cap who chewed on his upper lip the whole time. The guitarist was a skinny, ropey, left-handed, bespecticled who looked for all the world like the kind of guy the Lead Singer would, ideally, be shoving face-first down a toilet. The guitarist was the stand-out of that band, standing with his skinny leg perched defiantly on the amplifyer, churning out the buff, punk-metal riffs that gave the songs their character. But like the restless pacing of the singer symbolized... I just couldn't figure out what they were doing there. Their fans liked them. I didn't.

The electric something machine. I wish I could remember their full name. The band itself? Meh. But they had emotion, and it seemed sincere. The singer was a hairy mountain creature, thrashing his vocal cords like any self-respecting metal fan. But they had the best musician of the evening. Their drummer was nothing short of a marvel: two of his drums were painted with a mountain scene, and ya know, given his expansive ten-arms-at-least sound, it was an apt metaphor for his playing. I couldn't have told ou about the string section, or about what songs they played (except a Rage Against the Machine cover which just revealed how short a guitarist can fall when compared to Tom Morello) but that drummer? Brilliant. All I can think is how he really deserves a better band then he's currently in.

As for the headliners, the ones I came to see? Dionysos? I really wanted to like them. They were polished, professional, and excellent musicians, in fact, if the drummer had competition for the runaway best musician of the night, it was that fluid, virtuosic bass player. But they had no chemistry. And their music had no personality. They were putting my mom to sleep. I felt sorry for them, because they played last, the place was empty, and no one seemed to be listening, and they had all the right ingredients, including heart; they WANTED to do well. And it just didn't work.

It was a late, late night. It's time to sleep

New myspace find + Old Friend

2008-12-23T13:52:00.000-08:00

This pint-size teenage Chinese-Canadian girl has an axe, and damn, can she ever wield it. This is woman-kind's answer to Joe Satriani. A plugged-in Kaki King. It just took the span of one song for me to become a fan of hers. Her music's delicate and shimmering and yet full of heavy electric crunch.

And my longtime friend Frank. I recently did a favor for Frank: I bought a $5 guitar strap and painted it with a design inspired by a conversation we had about guitar straps and a blog he made about Korean dating.

He finally paid me back, in form of this video. It's about time is all I can say.

The House of Bernarda Alba - BADA in London

2008-12-11T04:07:00.000-08:00

What's this? A rock fan reviewing a play? Since when are they supposed to have any culture?

Suck it up, I like rock and I like the symphony and I like plays. So this is my review/write-up of the British American Drama Academy's production of "The House of Bernarda Alba" a play about an abusive mother and oppressive gender roles set in some inspecific "past" probably the 1800s or so.

First off I'll say it was a student play. What this meant was, to maximize the experience for the young actors, the entire cast (save the title character) would switch their roles at the end of each act. This, and the simularity of the costumes to each other, made it hard to keep the characters straight. This made the majority of the cast largely irrelevent: it sent the message that casting didn't matter and counted on the writing itself to keep the audience informed about who was who, and I'm not sure how successful it was. You form a bond to one character given a good scene or moving moment, and next thing you know, the character is literally someone else. It made the crucial suspention of disbelief really hard.

Two characters didn't have that problem: the vicious title character, played with a dark brand of bitchy that went beyond the pale... Sonia Acosta might have some momma issues, but she sold the audience on a brand of evil and opression born out of utter desperation and heartbreak. Bernarda's mother, Maria Josefa, was the gem of the show: the madwoman with a playful side, who'se nurosis is her answer to the stiffling confines of her world and who'se gentle affection for her family provides the contrast to the dark storm of Bernarda's rule.

This is a play all about that storm. But the storm itself is also the problem. It's a play full of characters who are trapped: by circumstance, by rules of gender and society and since it's well illustrated that death awaits any who break the rules, the sensation of being stiffled is tangible. It gives the story it's edge, but it also means no character, not even the wicked Bernarda, has any power over it's outcome. The most powerful force in the story is Pacco, the handsome young suitor who plans to marry the oldest sister for her inheritance while sleeping with the youngest; his influence is what drives the story to it's conclusion, and he's never actually seen in the play. The overall effect is a plot that isn't really a plot, it's a series of events that can only really end one way. The voice-of-reason housekeeper comments sadly that the problem is that "They are women without men," and all the girls yern for the release of sex and for freedom from their house, both of which can only come from a marrige. I'm glad I didn't live back then.

It's one of those plays with an awkward curtain call. No one wants to cheer once the inevitable has happened. Thought provoking as it is, it's not what anyone would call uplifting. Though I guess I can be thankful that I didn't live back then. The age of drawing rooms and dowreys sounds utterly miserable.

Dir En Grey at the Grand Ballroom

2008-12-01T12:38:00.000-08:00

I normally don't go to shows like this. I was on the way back from shopping when I saw this huge long line going around the block. Turned out the cause was a visit from a Japanese hard rock band called Dir En Grey, which I'd actually heard of. I don't know much about them except that they were a Visual Kei band, they sing ONLY in Japanese, and I've been unable to really get into what I've heard of them...

But hey: I knew of them. They were right there. They're a Japanese band, so who knows when they'll be in town again, and besides, I havn't gone to a show in a few weeks: after the lackluster night at Kimos, in fact. I can't let that stand, can I?

So into the line I went, shopping goods and all. The dude directly in front of me was a douche. The lady he was with (?) wasn't. He spent the whole time chatting someone's ear off about everything. It took ages. The crowd was mostly young-ish goth kids, nerdy looking j-pop or anime fans and their parents. The group wasn't particularly friendly, and after finally getting inside, stashing my stuff at the coat-check, and heading into the dark grand ballroom, I was fully prepaired to not like this scene, just as I didn't like it's denizens.

That said, I actually went home fairly pleased.

An American band opened for Dir En Gray; "The Human Abstract" was a typical six man lineup with a singer who'se haircut was so emo it made Pete Wendz look like Lars Ulrich, though he sounded like a demonic Chester Bennington. He was a remarkably pure-voiced tenor when he wasn't bellowing like a demon. This group were plainly very used to touring, and they were a tight rocking unit: the keyboardist was a little waif of a guy with another emo cut who headbanged at his keyboards so hard it was like his joints were made of rubber. He got some decent solos, and he gave the band some class in it's quieter moments, which I thought had more character their usual metalic bombastic onslaught. This was a band of almost schizophrenic contradictions, but it's an experienced kind of schitzo, and it was full of forceful personalities. The bass player was a huge slab of humanity with a mohawk who handled his massive, six-stringed instrument effortlessly and looked as proud as a lion. The dreadlocked lead guitarist spun his hair like a weapon and provided the more forceful back-up roars that the lead singer's voice was apparently too sweet to handle. The other guitarist was taller, blonder, and kept vanishing from the stage. The drummer had fizzy hair and a black t-shirt and looked relatively normal, for a drummer, and he was definatley one of the hardest working members of that band. That guy got no breaks and by the time the set was over he was so drenched it looked like he'd been swimming. The sound alternated between sweet Linkin Park-esque interludes and high-pitched metalic thrashing. They never relent long enough for the hook to take hold, and I'm not sure how much the stone-faced audience was feeling them, despite the fact it was a good show.

Time for Dir En Grey. I didn't know much about them, besides that they were part of the Visual Kei movement in Japan in the 90s, so I imagined gender ambigity and flamboyant outfits. What I got were five long-haired and thin but normal-looking Japanese guys in black t-shirts and jeans (on the band) and green track-suit (on the singer). So they've changed their image somewhat from the days of fishnets and eyeliner. Maybe it's because they don't want to wierd out the new American fans, or maybe they've just outgrown that stuff. But these guys can rock. They rock very hard and very loud, and in a more balanced way then their opening act.

Their backdrop logo is a big eye with a Mayan calender in the center of it, and it actually fits, because their sound-scape plunges primal a surprising number of times for a brand of rock this heavy, though I should have seen it coming when I saw that their drum kit looks like a fighting cage with, well, drums all over it. And the lead singer can only be described as a human jaguar: prowling, glaring, and yowling at inhuman pitches. I swear he even produced a perfect feminine scream at least a couple times. Dude has got some serious pipes, and he's quite a showman: doubling over and singing from the gut, even taking the stage (almost) solo twice to enact musical scenes: a man possessed, alternately pathetic and vicious, and a shaman beconing you to ruin, both aided by the lighted table his short self climbed on so that the audience could see him. His lyrics aren't in english, but since I've yet to attend one of these shows were the lyrics are at all coherent anyway, that didn't make much of a difference. Stage banter was limited to the "rast songu!" repeated in increasingly frantic voice until, well, the band launched right into their last song of the night which, like all the songs before it, full of roaring guitars, relentless percussion and that inhuman catterwalling that was just melodic enough that the song itself wasn't lost in all of the volume. These guys can play.

In spite of, or perhaps because of this band's lack of English, the communication between the crowd and the musicians was impeccible. Dir En Grey is a Japanese band with Japanese lyrics, which means radio play isn't in the cards for them, and if they want to break the American market, they've got to do it by relying on the rock powers that transend language. Not only do these guys play loud and hard, they play with personality: the bassist made one part of the audience his own and kept looking to them during the performance, grinning and spinning his hair every time they answered his beconed calls for more noise. He would throw up his long, thin arms for applause, shrug off his bass strap and hold the instrument above his head like a triumphant warrior, even sat down on one of the speakers, took his bass into his lap, and played directly to us in a very winning way. Since he was right in front of me and so engaging, I had to remind myself sometimes to look at the other band members from time to time, which was as rewarding.

Because they don't sing in english, radio play and local promotion will be limited, but if they keep up this kind of transendant communication, they might well break here in America.

Another Night at Kimos

2008-11-21T02:06:00.000-08:00

This show was free, since I still had the wristband from the night before. My conscience didn't put up too much of a fight. I am a cheap bastard.

Going to this place on your own, if you're seeking to enjoy the music and not socialize, is a bit awkward. I gotta say, this place attracts some colorful characters, and not all of them are the types you want to talk to, but avoiding contact with them in a place this small? Not the easiest thing in the world. Still, no one was really threatening and it was relatively simple to set up a base camp where you could keep watch over your stuff and still check out the music.

It was a four-band night but I missed the first act. The last three were serrial nightmares, in ways both good and bad.

I am perceptive when it comes to art. I can usually read an artist's intention and subtext with reliable accuracy. JEALOUSY, the group, clearly operates on some level I simply cannot grasp.
One relatively-normal looking musician guy in a hat, playing with delay and reverb and a whole plate of effects pedals, doing some spoken-word thing so heavily echoed that I couldn't make out any of it, backed up by a woman in a 1950s style polka-dotted dress, red nylons, and some 1920s-1960s era porn projected on the wall upside down. That was their backdrop. A tall blond girl was also apparently part of the band?... She was so drunk she couldn't stand up straight, she almost fell on me while I crouched to get a better look at the spectacle onstage, offered me a sip of her drink as an appology, walked onstage, collapsed against the wall and, it looked like...fell asleep? Then got up, wandered over to the guy playing the effects-bass, threw her arms around him and warbled into his microphone. I assume she was..part...of...the show? I'm not sure. And there was a lanky drag queen in colorful cleft-palate style make up eating bananas while posing elegantly on a folding chair right there in front, right onstage. The bananas had been painted black. That was all he did. It was all very...artistic? Yeah. I don't even know. After that I hoped the next act would be a bit more straightforward.

It was, but only a bit. Aunt Dracula are a Philadelphia psychadelic band that suffers from a severe lack of a rhythem section. Two guitarists, one pale and red-headed with a striped polo shirt, the other with a silver plaid shirt and a hat that matched, and a long-haired guy who'd qualify as a giant bent over a PC clicking a mouse to produce bursts of drum noises. Guys.... you're great with the effects. It's all very trippy, but without a real rhythem section, the whole thing feels rootless. Not a very memorable set.

I gotta say this about The New Thrill Parade: they were memorable. They were also the most serreal nightmarish brood of the night. Think CAKE's rythems and diverse instrumentation, but with the tempo slowed to a funeral march and a singer who spends each song sobbing and begging and sucking on his microphone. That was when he wasn't wearing his pink pig gimp-mask. This whole line-up looked like the cast of some dark Wonderland type fable. The big percussionist on the floor, banging out on a pair of cymbols and a drum, actually rocked back in forth, miming like he was sobbing his heart out, dressed in a flesh-tone apron criss-crossed with strips of color, like some sort of color butcher throwing a tantrum. the saxaphonist was a girl in a hoody wearing what looked like a net made of torn gray sheets and a full-face gorrilla mask. A huge bass player had a fringed cape and a round old-man bubble mask. The keyboardist/violenist wore a cardigan and a steady expression, looking like a cousin of Steve from Blue's Clues and just as unphased about his unreal surroundings. The Guitarist stood out just because he was a guy in a t-shirt and jeans.

Guys, either everyone in the band should wear the crazy, or no one in the band should wear the crazy. When one guy is wearing homemade overalls and fashing his nipples while begging for his life through a pig gimp-mask, and one guy looks totally normal, it just dysrupts the band visual synch, and you SHOULD be visually in synch. Figure out the cast of characters you want and stick to it.

That said, this group will haunt me. I'm not even sure if I liked them or not, but I know they unsettled me. Which might have been their aim.

I gotta get better at this art thing, maybe.

A Night at the Kimo

2008-11-20T02:16:00.000-08:00

Not the worst five bucks I've ever spent.

Kimos has a reputation as a dive full of shady characters, so bring a friend to keep tabs on you. Besides, you'll enjoy it more if you've got a sidekick.

The upstairs room is low and narrow, the walls painted red and adorned with bills. The bar will give you ice with your free tap water. The doors open at 9, relatively late, but the actual show didn't start until almost an hour after that. The stage was so small that the lights, rather then the edge, seemed to dictate it's real parameters: you stayed out of the band's light, and you stayed out of their space. It takes someone with real guts to enter that sphere, which a friend of mine did: gutsy, but gutsy is what listening to the Ferocious Few makes you, so I didn't blame him.

The Ferocious Few are a two-piece southern-rock/Rockabilly group, getting street-famous for gate-crashing other people's big gigs and poaching several hundred members of the audience for themselves. There's always more then a few converts after a Ferocious onslaught: they were the single best group I saw at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and they weren't even formally booked there. Even on a formal stage you can see what makes this pair special: they play like every eye has to be won, that they could get kicked out at any moment, and everything depends on playing with everything they've got NOW. Their drummer is a madman with a tiny drumset, a stone-wall pout and a tamborine. The singer has a dark, brooding presense, a southern twang in his voice, and a really loud amp. This is an expression of hope and a kind of faith: at a time when the music industry doesn't know how to make stars anymore, these two won't stop until THEY'RE as big as the people they poach their audiences from. You catch these guys once and you don't forget them. Check them out here. As is often the case with this band, they were the best set of the night.

Rollar Coaster was up next: a three peice consisting of a bassist with a tattooed neck, a lot of sinew, and a back leather leather cap; a drummer with a long John Kerry type chin and a strawberry goatee, and a singer with authentic British vowels, a green military-style jacket, an orange slab of a guitar, and a vendetta against microphones. Really: he threw his to the ground not once but twice. All my friend and I could figure was that that must have been a really good move at some other show, but in the Real World when you throw your microphone to the ground, and your hands are occupied with your guitar, you gotta fumble to get it in position again before you can again sing into it. I can understand mistaking this once I guess, but twice? The rhythem section were pros about it and played right their their frontman's fumbles, so there's no way the song was going to fall appart, but there are quite a few kinks to work out in this live show. They were good musicians, and they've got some catchy tunes with some meaty riffs, and the finale with the twin feedback squeels between the bass and the guitar were pretty classic, but they've got some ways to go before they're a tight rocking unit.

The Revealers are probably big White Stripes fans. I can't think of why I'd say that except their frontman's androgenous bangs, white face and scarlet eye-shadow and all-black garb. He strutted the stage, but sensitively and delicately. He was the first of the night to leave the stage, turn his back to the audience, servay his bandmates and then walk back. A keyboard filled the bass's part and lead vocals were handed off between the guitarist and the keyboardist. It didn't matter though: they have the same sort of pure young-man type voices, and the mix or the mic or the reverb or something was so bad that no one could understand a word of the lyrics no matter what happened. My friend called them bluesy; I say their songs were interchangable and ran one into the next. They were also good musicians, especially for dudes who looked as young as they were (I swear that frontman has BRACES!) but they didn't grab me. They'd be worth a look though.

Three bands for five bucks and none of them stunk. Not bad, not bad at all.

Three Things I love

2008-11-19T00:30:00.000-08:00

There are three things I love about this video.

1. Colbert's six lapel pins. That'll show that hippie Jeff Tweedy to try to Out-American HIM!

By the way, if you think it was cool of Wilco to poke fun at one of the more pathetic non-scandal scandals of the election cycle, you are forgetting that Wilco gave away a song for free. That makes them commies. No wonder their favorite candidate is Obama.

2. They brought their Grammy to counter Colbert's Emmy, and just happened to leave it on the piano where everyone could see it. Real subtle. Nice try guys, but he's got a Peabody too. Got an answer for that one?

3. Curse you Nels Cline! The Obama buttons the whole band was wearing so liberally were small enough for the cameras not to catch them, but you just HAD to put that "HOPE" sticker right on your amp, RIGHT where the camera would catch it when you went to work the feedback. Clever, Cline. Very clever. You win this round.

......

Can we have Wilco back on Colbert please? They fit right in.

Burn, Hollywood, Burn

2008-11-15T03:31:00.000-08:00

This is why the Music Industry deserves to die.

It screws over it's artists.

It sues it's own customers.

And the music it's currently promoting is crap.

So die faster, Music Biz. Go down in flames please. What we get in the end will be better, I hope.

Current Favorite Myspace Find

2008-11-14T23:45:00.000-08:00

If Alice Cooper knocked up Britney Spears in the catacomb mazes under Paris and their child grew up toying with the skeletons and finally ventured out into the world to get her revenge, she'd sound like this.

What a voice. Innocent, haunted, full of ghosts, and delivered with a sneer. I love it. Love it too.

Hall of Shame

2008-11-12T12:07:00.000-08:00

This was one crazy election. Just for fun, I'm going to preserve for posterity my favorite bits of election-inspired comedic madness.

Of course there's the classic Tina Fay - Palin skits. The thing about these is that Fay, of all people, was possibly the first to land a solid blow on the public image of the surprise VP pick.

Speaking of Palin, she inspired not one but TWO adorable devotee polkas. And the occational ballad. And whatever this is.

And some of this stuff. Wow there's a lot of them. Did everyone (someone really has a good tonal ear!) and their mom literally make a parody song about this lady?

There are more. I'm not going to find them though.

And her "I can see Russia from my house" comment, Russia can see her right back! Some UK guys sang the best song though.

And singing Hockey Moms.

Ya know what, I've been wrong about Sarah Palin. She's been a gift to world comedy.

Even though this one scared me.

History's Soundtrack

2008-11-07T02:22:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama was actually elected. It actually happened.

Motherfucker. Talk about an opportunity for dancing in the streets. Or singing, as the case may be.

Now the biggest question on my mind is:

Who will play the Inaugural?

My hope is Chicago country blues-rockers Wilco.

Come on, I know the Black-Eyed Peas have been stumping for Obama for a while, but Wilco actually asked first.

Come on, I know Jay Z is Obama's favorite, and the Boss himself might be releasing an album to cooincide with the inauguration, but Wilco's got first dibs, right?

I've never in my life been so happy to be American.

UPDATE: THIS has become one of my favorite videos ever. The perfect drumroll and the spontaneous (random?) electric guitar notes that punctuated the announcement, followed by Stipe singing with his whole heart, even though he can't really believe it? It WAS an unbelievable moment. I had snuck into a democratic rally at a hotel in downtown SF, and believe me, we all felt like singing.

Also, everyone in the entire UNIVERSE has been reporting that Beyonce volunteered to play Obama's inaugural. She didn't. What she actually said was that she was ready and willing to volunteer: whether that be singing or some other capacity. Anything that she can do. She's a multi-millionare superstar who could be doing anything in the world she wants to right now, and she's heard the call to civic duty? It boggles the mind.

They say JFK had the uncanny ability to draft people into civil service from all walks of life. Caroline and Edward Kennedy have said Obama reminds them of their lost relative. Are they right?....

Exciting time to be alive, that's for sure.

Dragonforce at the Grand Ballroom, Sutter St.

2008-11-06T00:53:00.000-08:00

Dragonforce are loud.

Stunning I know. But they are so loud, so overwhelmingly loud, that the setlist really could have said anything: they weren't songs so much as they were collections of solos, choruses, and thrashing on all parties. I feel for that singer, I really do: he's a tenor of remarkable power and sustain and his belted lyrics might as well have been in Finnish for as much as I could understand them. The volume of his microphone just could not compete with those roaring guitars. He must be used to this though, and devoted most the never-ending solo time to hamming it up for the cameras and dumping water bottles on the crowd. He worked up the croud like an expert and strutted the stage like king of the hill, but no one really came for him. Everyone came for those two guitarists.

And whoa. Those guitarists. They thrash, ok? They thrash hard. Their shtick is to act nonchalant and try and one-up eachother in the solos, and their stage-yawns and casual gestures are endearing but not convincing. They clearly take their thrashing very, very seriously, and virtuosic though they are, damned if they don't start sounding the same after a while. Or maybe that was just my ear drums dying a slow death. This band is all about it's guitarists. Though that keyboard player is a close second for the simple reason that the man is able to play a two-level keyboard AND do high kicks at the same time. That's pretty impressive stuff.

Dragonforce doesn't lend itself well to detailed scrutiny. There were beers with straws in them taped to the mic stands, there was thrashing, there was 3-man synchronized jumping, there were many water-bottles emptied onto heads, there was a mosh-pit half the size of the room, there was a keyboard solo and the bassist grabbing one of the guitars in the interest of proving HE can shred as well as anyone else (he's kind of right), and there was a lot of screaming. Devil-horns were thrown. Photos were snapped. My limbs feel like rubber and my voice is gone. I'm exhausted.

What more can you ask for from a rock show?

Tom Morello at the Fillmore

2008-11-02T01:34:00.000-07:00

Pardon my gushing but this show simply rocked. Part acoustic, part electric, ALL FACE MELTING AWESOME!

This review is a challenge from me to me: lets see if I can finish writing it before my ears stop ringing.

The intro act was a tiny black guy with fierce muttonchops. He is a rapper. Not a bling-bling bitches and hoes kind of rapper, an Oakland rapper and his stuff was all political. He also possessed easy, crisp diction, which immediately endears him to ME since I'm of the opinion the mush-mouth "yo, ganstas in da hood yo!" Timbaspeak of most rappers is a shortcut for dudes who can't be bothered to actually find words that rhyme. This guy could definitely rhyme. He played with his voice too: going high and low, almost like singing but not quite.

A recurring theme of the night was "it's the first show of the tour," with all the pros and cons that come with that. The rapper forgot his words a few times, and commented at one point about how he's used to having a whole band backing him up. Instead he had this one blond, If-Kurt-Cobain-Were-A-Biker-Guy acoustic guitarist supplying the "backing beats," a very basic set up, but hey, they made it work. And Boots Reilly has charisma. He reminded me of a cat: all cool, slow grace with sleepy eyes and wild edges. It was good, but I gotta admit, even when it's well done, rap is just not my thing, and while I admire the guy for fearlessly facing a new set up and clearly having buckets of talent, I was ready for the main event by the time his set was done. Too bad we had to wait some more while more people fuddled around with the gear. It seemed to take them forever.

At last, finally... they killed every light in the place. And when the lights came up again, there was that giant Negative Stars and Stripes up there. How it got up there so fast, I've got no clue, but I gotta say, that thing, full-sized, appearing out of nowhere does put a nice chill in the bones. Nice priming for the Nightwatchman's entrance: all in black with that baseball cap casting dark shadows on his face, suspenders hanging at his sides, and huge mirrored aviator sunglasses giving him a menacing kind of anonimity. Like or hate it, the Nightwatchman in full regalia, backed by that spooky flag, IS a pretty imposing image that Morello's kept pretty consistent ever since he began his solo exploits, but it doesn't always blend with Tom's actual, de-sunglassed stage persona: conversational, upbeat, and a full of a kind of crackling energy that might have been optimism. His knack for refering both himself and "the Nightwatchman" in the third person creates a kind of ironic seperation too: sometimes Tom Morello IS the Nightwatchman, and sometimes he's just telling us about his folk-rock creation. I forgive him because the Nightwatchman, real or fake, is an interesting character, and since there's irony anyway in a Stadium-Rock Guitar God like Morello masquarading as a shadowy, underground folk hero, the storytelling/fantasy element works just fine. Both Morellos, the real and the invented, are compelling personalities, and both of them rock pretty damn hard.

Tom seemed to enjoy letting us all know that this was the very FIRST show on the Fabled City tour, how he was originally going to start the tour in LA (cue the boos) but he remembered how much he loved San Francisco (cue the cheers). He remembered how he'd been performing at that very theater back in 2003 when the US first invaded Iraq, and how after the show he'd marched downtown in the anti-war protests. So he's got history with San Francisco, and this was clearly his crowd: both artistically and politically. This was clearly his crowd: if the T-shirts weren't Rage Against the Machine or Audioslave, they were The Nation or Cindy Sheehan for Congress or "Arrest Chaney First." Unlike Cornell, he didn't comment on the sharp smell of weed in the air.

He went through a few songs on his own, then brought out what he called The Freedom Fighter Orchestra, revealing the source of that Kurt Cobain look-alike. He was back and he had this black, old-looking electric, and I remember looking at him and thinking: damn, that's gotta be intimidating, playing electric guitar in a band with Tom Morello in it. The guy was decent through: sounded nice and big and fuzzed out and was in fact the ONLY electric guitar on the couple songs before Tom put down "Whatever it Takes"...... and picked up his infamous customized electric "Arm the Homeless."

"Well well, what have we here?" he said. And the crowd went crazy.

And that was the meat of the show. Plugged-in versions of songs off the first Nightwatchman record like "One Man Revolution," newer songs like "Whatever it Takes," a harrowing cover of the Ghost of Tom Joad, and even the heart-stopping into to "Bulls on Parade," which almost turned the crowd into a giant mosh-pit right then and there. It was a night big on emotional highs and lows: one minute you're leaping around, pumping your fist in time to thunderous electric rock and the next minute everyone's dead silent, listening to Tom strum quietly and sing without his mic. There was even a surprising RATM cover "Geurilla Radio" which, acoustic and sung in Tom's thoughtful, gravelly barratone, acquired a fascinatingly different kind of weight. The scratching solos were classic Morello, there were at least five mid-air splits, and he brought the house lights up so that he could watch us all sing (and jump) along to "This Land is Your Land." He told an awkward story about some 5-year old's mother asking him if they made stuffed animals of him, for her kid. He put down a guitar entirely for the verses of one particular song and it's odd seeing him onstage without one: he clung to the microphone with what looked like white-knuckles. The new stuff still had the edge of experimentation, and none of it was boring.

But it was also, again, their first show of the tour. Hell, the Freedom Fighter Orchestra uniform shirts still had their sharp fold-lines, and there were a few technical difficulties. I pity that poor unknown, hardworking guitar tech: every two minutes or so it seemed he had to rush out from the wings and tweak something or other. Tom broke a harmonica holder and needed to duck out of a song's chorus entirely to grab his back up. Something was wrong with Arm the Homeless in the middle of a song and THAT had to be fixed. All members of the band save the drummer gestured at the sound guy at some point with problems with the mix, and the band were jostling with each other onstage over who was supposed to go where... It's a testament to Morello and his band's stagecraft that he didn't let any of these shinanagans took you out of the moment for too long. After all, this is the first show, and clearly some edges are going to need ironing before they're a tight rocking unit. Didn't stop the show from being throughly enjoyable.

It was a long show. I won't lie, I was exhausted by the time it was over. But goddamn, if it wasn't great fun. It ended two hours ago, and finally the adrenaline is wearing off.

Si Ce Puede. Viva le Nightwatchman!

Rage in Vain

2008-11-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

This fucking broke my heart.

Using their music this way? Them, of all bands? All I can say is the people in charge of Gitmo don't get irony.

For the record: torture is an absolute evil and by engaging in it, USA has relinquished any claim they had to the moral high ground.

And James Hatfield, you're an asshole.

For more information on music as torture, check out the list that "broke" this story here (playlist here), and this very well thought out Guardian article about it here.

P.S I know this news is over a month old, making it obsolete in blogger terms. Too bad. I'm still upset about it so deal.

Edit: better article about it here. Good ol' brits doing our job for us.

Politics and Music

2008-11-01T13:52:00.000-07:00

It's a fundamental fact: music is great when the government sucks.

In that vein, I'll miss W. I'll miss how he became a barometer for an artist's progressive integrity. I'll miss how he rejuvenated flagging careers. I'll miss how he made art relevant as the frustrated and horrified found their voices.

If McCain pulls off the upset he's been promising, then things will stay the same. A President Obama wouldn't inspire nearly the same kind of eloquent, powerful venom.

So everyone stock up on your protest songs now, before they become dated.

This whole blog point basically stolen from here. Read it, know it.

Chris Cornell at the Catalyst: Santa Cruz

2008-10-31T02:23:00.000-07:00

My first post on this blog might as well be a gig report. No reason why not, right? My blog, my rules!

The Catalyst looks like any other bar/club from the street but inside it's pretty huge. Two levels and a full bar and an arcade. Could use more bathrooms. Griffitti everywhere. Old wood panneling. Looks like this place has been around for a while.

The opening band, Zen Vendetta, was pure 80s hair glory: cheesy, but heartfelt and sincere. Their singer was clearly excited that they were opening for Cornell, and he said so repeatedly. I enjoyed them: it's thrashy, head-bangy goodness and they're clearly rock romantics of the very oldest school. It's hard not to love some dudes who believe so fully in what they are doing, and have made peace with living according to old rules, their eyes firmly fixed on an old dream. They strut and pose and sing like rock gods, and then they cart all their own gear offstage, reduced to mortals again.

I didn't really know what to expect from Cornell, live. He's been pulling a kind of singer-songwriter shtick lately which I don't think really fits him: his songwriting chops are respectable and he's a lyricist of haunting power, but he's not a singer-songwriter, he's a frontman, and like any frontman, he needs a solid band behind him in order to thrive. I had this image in my head of an self-indulgent singer mugging for the cameras while everyone else thoughtfully avoids the spotlight.

I didn't need to worry: It might have been called "Chris Cornell" but it was everyone's night. This band was clearly a real band: they fed off each other and everyone got their moments in the spotlight. The guitarist pulled off some crazy stuff playing his ax in midair and leaping off the platforms, his band mates, even Chris at one point, who retaliated by stealing the guy's bowler hat. The drum kit was behind some sort of clear plastic barrier, I guess to protect it? Or to counteract the fact that it was so loud. It was definitely huge: I didn't catch more then a glimpse of the drummer until he walked out at the end to throw his sticks. The rhythum guitarist had a black emo-kid haircut and was playing a beautiful golden Gibson: he wasn't as flashy as the lead (didn't leap off anything either), but he held his own in a nifty dueling-solos segment. The bassist was short and bald and was making metal GRR faces the entire time, even when first Chris, then one of the roadies, then the rythem guitarist came over to fiddle with his bass, which was, apparently, not working right. Or maybe he was just miffed, not metal. The keyboardist was a young bald black man with a big smile and a tuxedo t-shirt: he was working that keyboard with as much stage flair as if HE were the big star. He was also the primary back-up singer; he had a very strong voice.

As for Chris Cornell: his entire band had taken the stage, hammed it up for the audience and donned their instruments before he showed up. My first impression was he didn't look that good. He's a sinewy guy: you can see all the veins in his neck and arms, his curly hair was kinda limp and he looked tired. The opening song wasn't one I recognized (probably off one of his solo albums) but the second was "You Know My Name" and that was his REAL introduction. After that he was noticably looser. And he has a very easy sort of banter with a crowd: making fun of us for not drinking ("Only a few beers...but from the smell in the air, you're hitting something else." He was right; it was Santa Cruz after all) and setting up a raport with someone in the very front row who was holding up request signs with the names of obscure b-sides on them. "We got about half of those...one more maybe....I don't even remember how THAT one goes. But I guess it's a good thing when your career lasts long enough you gotta relearn shit you wrote." He held one of the papers aloft: GUN was written on it. Later in the show he and the band played the chorus of that song, just off the cuff. That was fun.

Around halfway through the show he said he wanted to introduce a special friend of his: her name was Kaylee and she was very despointed when the Tulson show was canceled because of a "glass-covered football got stuck in my throat and I couldn't sing. I don't know how it got in there". He told everyone it was Kaylee's birthday tomorrow, "she is turning ten years old! And we're gonna sing her happy birthday....but not us professional singing people, no, YOU are gonna sing her happy birthday!"

The Kaylee was a little blonde girl up on the balcony who was hiding her face in her hands and turning bright red. Her mom was smiling and rubbing her back.

Chris started singing "happy birthday," then held the microphone over the crowd. So we sang. The girl was brilliant red but smiling like a maniac.

Once that was over, Cornell said; "She claimed she didn't have a favorite song, but I finally got one out of her." And he sang it, alone, with his acoustic. I recognized it as an Audioslave song, I think it was "The Last Fading Light" but I wouldn't swear by it. I will swear by the fact that it was the best his voice sounded that night. He put extra effort into that one. Maybe having kids of his own has made a softy out of the old grunge lord. Or maybe it's a cynical bid at emotional minipulation. Or maybe that's thinking about it too much.

The whole group just seemed to be having fun. The band, Chris, everyone was just having such a good time rocking out that it's hard not to get sucked in. The group was clearly on an even keel performance-wise and they where THRILLED; with eachother, with how they were doing, with us for cheering at all the right times. The guitarists kept throwing guitar picks into the crowd, causing a frenzy as people scrambled for them.

I remember watching that in dismay going "the only way I am getting one of those is if one actually crashes into me." And then something sharp and plastic hit my shoulder. So I got my pick. Then, I noticed something shiney in a beer puddle by my foot. So i got another pick. Then I found another on the ground. And...yeah, I ended up with five picks. I gave one to my friend who gave me a ride to the gig, and one to the lady in the plether nurse's outfit whose boot had been on one after the concert was over. Great karma for someone just learning to play guitar!

It wasn't a gig to change the world, and but it was a blast to attend. Cornell is a hell of a performer and his band is great fun, and....Yeah. It was just a good time. A real good time. Spreading good vibes!

Hope to catch him again sometime. See him if you can!