the man of twists and turns

pardon my absence

2005-09-30T10:57:00.000-05:00

i may be fooling myself by excusing myself from writing recently, since no one may be paying attention. kind of like asking your neighbors if they've been kept up by all the late-night shenanigans. but i digress. i've been busy with stuff at pulse and also on trying to get the pulse music blog up and rocking. i'm trying to grow this thing gradually and this is where it lives:

pulse music blog

live it up.

the f merlins

2005-08-22T13:03:00.000-05:00

here's an article on jazz (that's right, i'm calling 'em jazz and i'm sticking to it) band the fantastic merlins, who really are fantastic. i can't vouch for the merlins part.

fantastic merlins

i self devine article

2005-08-05T12:20:00.000-05:00

ye olde linke to the pulse article on i self devine:

tantric hip-hop

word them up.

reliving it.

2005-07-30T14:37:00.000-05:00

so (thanks to my sponsor) i'm in the middle of reliving the 2004 ALCS between the red sox and the yankees. let me say this: even if this weren't the red sox, and even if the yankees weren't the most evil team in all of pro sports, and even if this victory by the red sox didn't represent ultimate justice, i think this would still be a fascinating series to watch, from front-to-back, to see how it happened.

spirit is a tenuous thing, and watching game one, you can see that the yankees think they have it. mussina takes a perfect game into the 7th, where the yanks have an 8-0 lead, but then lets 3 runs in and varitek hits a homer off sturtze to make it 8-5. this spirited come back ultimately fails, but now, re-watching, it seems to prefigure the future comebacks in games three and four that would ultimately destroy the yankees faith in themselves.

the swing in this series, from the yankees wining the first three games, the third 19-8, to losing the series is the kind of extended collapse that i think has parallels only in a relationship. i considered comparing it to video footage of people getting hit by cars, in that after you've seen it, you can see it again and again and KNOW it's coming, but that's really just a random occurence. i think that often, when a relationship falls apart, we have a desire to go back and see what happened in the week before it hit the fan, or the month, or the half-year, to see if we can pick apart the moment it started to unravel, and that's what i'm watching this series for. when do the yankees go from this juggernaut that feels like it can't lose to a team split open at the sternum, hemorrhaging hits and runs? is it rivera's collapse in game four? that seems late. are there hints before that, even as early as game one? does the yankees ability to stop this comeback in game one and then to go on to slaughter the sox in game three leave them wide open to overconfidence?

when a relationship breaks up, we don't get to do this. we can't go to the videotape, only to our memory, which is inevitably colored. even reality shows have been edited by someone post facto to milk every situation. it's all been massaged, but with this, we get to treasure joe buck theorizing about the possibility of the red sox coming back from eight runs down. the last team that happened was 75 years ago that very night. it didn't happen, but who knew the red sox would go on to pull off coming back from three games down in a seven-game series, which no team in baseball had EVER done.

i'm looking for tragedy. and i mean greek classical tragedy. where a hero is brought low by one tragic flaw which neatly undoes the whole thing. i want to see what that is in the yankees. terms like tragedy and irony have been misused and reappropriated in this culture; irony means arch coincidence, tragedy is just misfortune. but here we really have the chance to see these things in action, within the narrow confines of a staged ritual (baseball game) just as these things are really only possible in their original meanings within the confines of a staged ritual (play, book, movie).

in their classical definitions, things like irony and tragedy can ONLY exist within a set of rules. outside of this artifice, loosed into the real world, there aren't the symmetries and boundaries required to truly create them. but here they are in the ALCS.

go sox.

a couple of articles

2005-07-27T17:42:00.000-05:00

here are some links to stuff i've written for the pulse recently:

pernice brothers article

intonation festival in chicago

musicapolis: scene and seen 1965-2005

plus, you shold go visit the new dane cook website. it's just been relaunched to coincide with the release of his new 2 CD + DVD effort, retaliation. the man slays me.

i want this so badly

2005-07-21T16:50:00.000-05:00

red sox ALCS and world series dvd

sweet jesus. if i'm anybody's favorite, order this for me.

oh the glory of it all

2005-07-21T15:38:00.000-05:00

i'm reading the intermittently fantastic new book by sean wilsey of the glory of it all right now. it's a slightly frustrating memoir of growing up rich in a truly fucked-up family, and it's almost all interesting, plot-wise, but there are some parts that just don't snap. a lot of it is more like just recounting his life because it happened, but what pulls you along are great lines like this, regarding trying to figure out how to get girls to like him:

"I was like some kind of primitive man who had seen fire and was trying to make it out of incorrect, resolutely incombustible materials, like lettuce."

that's pretty genius. dave eggers loved it, and it's not unlike reading a dave eggers book or something from mcsweeney's. rambling, very personal, occasionally great, mostly just there.

btw, i'm at urban bean, and i think lorenzo lamas just walked in.

clap your hands now ...

2005-07-21T14:47:00.000-05:00

so i'm pulling off the intonation article because, well, first of all, it was pointed out that as the music editor of the pulse they may not want me to republish things here that i do for them. so what i'll do instead is direct you to:

pulse of the twin cities

where you can read stuff i write for them. besides, thought i, i want to add content to this site, not just duplicate it. so here's some other stuff i haven't written about anywhere else.

clap your hands say yeah

i'm directing you to the website because, amazingly, this band is unsigned. you've probably heard of them if you're a watcher of places like pitchforkmedia.com or salon.com. but if you're related to me (which i think is about a 3 in 5 chance knowing my readership) you probably don't know about them. they're this band from brooklyn who recorded at fireproof, where i was going to record with my last band before we broke up, and made an amazing record that you can only get at their website for now.

they combine elements of the walkmen, interpol, and the arcade fire musically with a singer who sounds a bit like a cross between thom yorke (of radiohead, calley) and david byrne. and yet, they're in a good mood. it's one of the things that sets them apart from a lot of brooding bands. if the arcade fire's album was the "funeral," this band's is the irish wake. also, i just recently learned that album titles go in quotes, not italics. ditto for plays and movies. so, disregard every italicized title you've ever seen hear and imagine quotes. but back to CYHSY.

they've basically made an album with one weirdo curveball track (the opener), two transitional intrumentals (tracks 4 and 9) and nine great songs. seriously. right now 2, 3, 5, and 6 are each so brilliantly tuneful and unique sounding without being derivative, i'm honestly flabbergasted about how they accomplished it. all those bands i mentioned before? parts of their stuff sound like all those things, but i doubt you could mistake their sound for anybody else's. and yet it doesn't seem like they're trying too hard. ever. a really joyous gem of an undiscovered album that's really worth the hype.

soon enough, they'll be on conan, so if this kind of thing's important to you, you better order it before they get snatched up in the bidding war which is no doubt raging right now over the phonelines and airwaves between williamsburg and midtown.

feist-icuffs.

2005-07-04T11:58:00.000-05:00

Part of the joy of writing about music is learning not just about great bands, but about world traditions. For instance, July 1 is Canada Day, which is, according to the Canadian Heritage website, a celebration of “a proclamation signed by the Governor General, Lord Monck, call[ing] upon all Her Majesty's loving subjects throughout Canada to join in the celebration of the anniversary of the formation of the union of the British North America provinces in a federation under the name of Canada,” a little factoid I picked up while interviewing Leslie Feist in transit from Ottawa to Toronto to play the second of two gigs in one day.

That kind of gig-hopping might be unusal for Feist, but genre-hopping has become de rigeur for the Canadian-born singer. After stints touring with rock bands and making homemade demos, she collaborated with her then-roommate Peaches (yes, the hirsute Peaches of ‘Diddle my Skittle’ fame) on 2002’s The Teaches of Peaches and the subsequent tour. Then, as a way to pass the Candadian winter, she got together with some friends and booked a show a few months down the road with the intent to write all the material fresh in the time before the gig. The result was the formation of indie rock darlings Broken Social Scene. And now she’s 0ut in the U.S. and elsewhere supporting the release of her proper debut solo, Let It Die, which is a perfect slice of makeout music. You might not expect that, based on her resume, but that’s just what it is; she’s a kind of Norah Jones for the hip set and the disc is a sweetly compelling mishmash of ballads, torch songs, and Brill-building era pop channeled through a breathy, slinky, and definitely sexy set of pipes.

Ever since I heard lead single ‘One Evening’ after downloading it from salon.com, I’ve been pushing Feist on everyone I know, saying that the song made me want to have one night of life-affirming getting-it-on after years of coke-addled one-night stands, circa 1978. Apparently, I’m not the only one. “Things are just starting in the States,” she explains. “[Let It Die]’s only been out for a month or maybe six weeks. I’ve been pretty astounded; I thought I’d be playing to completely closed and fresh ears and all the playing I’d done in Canada and Europe wouldn’t make a difference, but I guess from the Internet people are already familiar with the album. And the first tour I had done was with the Kings of Convenience so anybody who had heard that record knew me from that.”

Besides guesting on the Kings’ most recent effort, she’s made appearances on Apostle of Hustle’s and French siren Jane Birkin’s latest outings, so when did she even find time to make her own album? “The sessions that we had done were song by song and we didn’t have the intention to make a record,” she says of her work with Chilly Gonzales, who played a large role in bringing the record together, playing most of the instruments and co-writing and arranging many of the tracks “It was just to see how the collaboration would look; what the songs would become if they weren’t in jeans and T-shirts. Since they were one-offs we’d just do a few songs between tours. Some stuff didn’t fit together well. Some stuff we’d approach from left field and some from right field and in the end there were 20 songs there and it was clear which songs fit together as an album, that sounded like they came from the same session.”

The result is a an intimate but far-ranging work whose unifying quality is a certain sparseness. It’s an album that doesn’t force its way down your throat, opening with the lovely ‘Gatekeeper,’ featuring Feist’s vocals supported by only acoustic guitar and vibraphone, and closing with ‘Now At Last,’ a gentle Blossom Dearie song reminiscent of parts of Ella Fitzgerald’s Pure Ella, where her only accompaniment is piano. In between she channels P.J. Harvey’s swampiness (‘When I Was a Young Girl’), Maxwell’s bedroom eyes (‘Leisure Suite’) and hits the highlights of ‘Mushaboom’ and ‘Inside and Out,’ the latter a cover of the Bee Gees ‘Love You Inside and Out.’ In fact, the last four tracks on the disc are covers and her live shows often include her rendition of the Kinks’ ‘There’s Nothing in the World to Stop Me Worryin’ About that Girl,’ a mainstay on the Rushmore soundtrack and a gem of a sixties ballad. “I like to try traditional songs so there’s no mirror flashing back at you from current times,” she also explains, in reference to ‘When I Was a Young Girl,’ “It’s like free reign over the song.”

Her trip to the Twin Cities is bringing her to the Varisty Theater for a solo show, and I’m hard-pressed to think of a better environment to be introduced to her music: it’s cozy, classy, and what could be better than seeing a show from the comfort of red-draped air mattresses on risers? Abroad, though, she’s played to considerably bigger audiences, and has already won a Juno (the Canadian Grammies) for Best New Artist and been nominated alongside Celine Dion and Michael Buble for a MuchMoreMusic Award from MuchMusic. “I don’t really think about it,” she says on winning and being nominated for awards, “That’s one of the external responses in general and all those external things just come from people who see your videos or look at your website. It comes from those people who are in positions to nominate. I don’t mind being singled out; it only means there are more people who recognize you. But it’s not like ‘Oh, it’s like my life is falling into place right now.’”

Speaking of falling, in the midst of our conversation, she deals with the impending disaster of her amp falling off the luggage belt, not to mention making her way through security, marshalling her band into two cabs for the ride to the evening’s venue, and snappily deadpanning when asked about plans for the future, “Go[ing] to community college and becom[ing] an elementary school teacher.” After the ensuing pause and half-laughed “Really,” I shoot back, she says, “No, of course not; I’m going to make music, it’s what I do! Of course I’m going back into the studio, of course I’m touring. Of course I’m going to make a new record and another one after that. You do what you do.”

That kind of unerring sense of direction is the kind of thing that helps you make a simple, subtle record that doesn’t come across as mannered or sentimental. Her voice is strong, but not overpowering, always used in the service of the tune and never at the expense of it. The arrangements are spare and alluring; the melodies addictive and hummable. All those things have brought her recognition abroad and in her native country, and here’s hoping someday she’ll be hopping flights to hit multiple gigs on some of our biggest holidays. Happy Canada Day, Ms. Feist.

this call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes

2005-07-01T15:55:00.000-05:00

does anybody know where i can get a thing to record phone calls? because jesus, i don't ever want to do another interview over a cell phone while typing on my keyboard again. regardless, it was an all right interview (with leslie feist from broken social scene and her own bad self) and the results will be posted on here shortly.

in other news, i was quoted on salon.com! woo-hoo!

king kaufman's sports daily

it's towards the bottom, in reference to marquette's nicknames. i know, it's kind of lame to get excited about, being as i am an actual writer and soon to be the actual music editor of the pulse, but it's still kind of neat, and it's not even in my area of expertise! well, okay, puns are my area of expertise, but not sports. put that in your pipe and smoke it, joshua james peterson! oh, and if you're not into sports, the nickname of alabama is the cocks, so that's the hinge of the whole joke really.

rectum? i nearly killed him.

mixlplick

2005-06-30T12:01:00.000-05:00

is that how you spell that guy's name from the justice league cartoons? i don't know. i'm running out of names for mixes. here's the current one, which i made after finding myself bouncing around from playlist to playlist too much.

artist :: song :: album

morphine :: honey white :: best of
spoon :: they never got you :: gimme fiction
mountain goats :: this year :: the sunset tree
cut chemist :: lesson 6: the lecture :: deep concentration (among others)
13 & god :: perfect speed :: s/t
coldplay :: swallowed in the sea :: x + y
aimee mann :: king of the jailhouse :: the forgotten arm
pernice brothers :: my so-called celibate life :: discover a lovelier you
cloud cult :: happy hippo :: advice from the happy hippopotamus
m.a.c.c. :: hey baby (land of the new rising sun) :: stone free
amusement parks on fire :: the ramones book :: s/t
team sleep :: ever (foreign flag) :: s/t
at the drive-in :: lopsided :: in/casino/out
ozma :: battlescars :: rock and roll part three
bellwether :: willing to trade :: seven and six

i revised it last night and i'm much happier with it now, although that at the drive-in tune is problematic. doesn't seem to fit. but it's such a good song. i long for the days of having turntables when i could make seamless mixes. or back at WESU when we had two cd players and a fader. that's one serious problem with itunes and mp3's, and especially with ipods: there's that little gap between songs when you listen on an ipod, so it's impossible to make things match up exactly. kudos to the mars volta for releasing an itunes specific version of frances the mute so that you can listen to cassandra gemini uninterrupted.

there aren't too many better mix tape closers than that bellwether tune. so lovely. a lot of times, pop songs are about how bad things are, or about how great they are, but rarely are they about how they're okay, but you still miss something a little bit.

i'm happy with what i've got
i'm good with what i've made
but i'm willing to trade

nowadays, i appreciate it more from a songcraft perspective, because i'm not willing to trade what i have now for anything else, but once upon a time, when seven and six came out, listening to this song felt like getting kicked in the eye. in a good way.

on the flip side, morphine's 'honey white' is a great way to open. that blast of saxophone warbling followed by the lurch of the bass into an ironclad groove starts things right. i don't think they're the deepest band around, and their best of is really pretty much all you need. they did one thing, and did it very, very well. the bubbling menace of the two-string bass tuned in unison (and often played with slide) and the bari sax puts them into the same category as portishead and, yes, coldplay as purveyors of one very good thing.

here's the last thing i have to say about coldplay: if you're in love, and can listen to 'swallowed in the sea' and not love whomever you're in love with a little more, you're a coldhearted sonofabitch. they're not groundbreaking, and articles like the one on salon a couple weeks ago (i'm not going to link because you need to subscribe to get to it now) that say they're positioned unsuccessfully between the friendliness of u2 and the spikiness of radiohead are wrong. if they were positioned as such, they would be, but i think of them more like inxs. a great singles band where there's nothing on their cd's that sounds bad, just things that are either hits, personal favorites, or okay things between these other things. a band where ten years from right now you'll be buying their masterworks or 21st century masters cd and liking pretty much everything on there.

btw, i've taken to calling songs 'things' in the manner of jimi hendrix, who i've been having a mini-renaissance of ... him. damn you prepositions. in fact, the live version of 'izabella' from woodstock was on this mix not so long ago, but it stood out too much, both for being live and for being from 1969. but seriously, i used to be into him mostly qua guitarist but goddamn that guy could write a song. simply amazing.

a random thought

2005-06-26T13:27:00.000-05:00

another thing i thought of last night, watching the plastic constellations, was how good it makes me feel to hear a really great band for the first time in a great venue. immediately, i thought about how great it feels to play great music. but then also about how much crap comes along with all that. their bassist jordan just got married, and that's a happy happy thing, but it can often complicate a band's arrow. do things sometimes suck for the plastic constellations, sitting in their rehearsal space, not sure where they're going? how much of anybody's life that you appreciate or that makes you yourself go out and work all that much harder on what you do because of that inspiration is really not all that great?

that led me to think that maybe life isn't about being virtuous and avoiding sin so much as it is doing something big enough with the great stuff that it outweighs the tough stuff in the end.

or not.

sims release show

2005-06-26T10:44:00.000-05:00

have you ever seen princess mononoke? if you haven't, you should, because it's a great movie by hayao miyazaki which is a really nuanced look at man's relationship to the environment. and it's not some kind of flowery, love mother earth kind of thing. its basic stance is that man is trying to master nature through technology, and nature is fighting back like a sonofabitch. nature isn't some kind of happy peaceful creature we're kicking around; it's red in tooth and claw and so in steps a young man named ashitaka who's been cursed after being infected by a giant boar turned demon. he's just trying to get everyone to live together without destroying each other, he discovers that one of the effects of being cursed is that as he draws his bow back to fight off a bunch of soliders torching a village, his arm begins to ripple with some kind of malevolent force. the purple and black bruise on his forearm pulses, and, shocked, he lets the arrow fly and it cuts some poor samurai's head clean off. that scene is what i was reminded of last night watching p.o.s. on stage during doomtree's set.

doomtree is a tremendously exciting group of rappers and producers. it's telling that their two main producers (lazerbeak and marshall larada) are also members of two fantastic and volatile rock bands, the plastic constellations and swiss army, respectively. and as for the MCs, i can't think of a crew that's more reminiscent of some kind of team of deadly killers where their skills complement each other perfectly. cecil, mictlan, sims, p.o.s., dessa. none of them are trying to be "that same guy (or girl (sorry, dessa))" and each has their own thing. and p.o.s is like the dark, flawed tragic hero of the bunch. it seriously is like holding the mic gives him powers that he's barely in control of sometimes. the way he projects through the microphone is an amazing thing to see.

also: news flash: the plastic constellations are awesome. it's one of the things i love about the twin cities: i've lived here for a year and a half and have been hearing about them since i moved here, but somehow i never heard tpc until last night and i'm happy to report there is yet another great band here. it's just great that you can be farily involved in local music here and still be missing out on some great music to discover. cf the tin horns a couple of weeks ago when i finally heard them.

another highlight of the evening was tpc returning to the stage with doomtree for a performance of 'no homeowners' from sims' album. i think there were about twenty people on stage, including turbo nemesis, paper tiger, tom servo, toki wright, and a bunch of people who just came up to have a good time. it was like the underground hip hop version of puffy's 'all about the benjamins' remix video from back in the day where he takes over a band at a highschool prom and leads them in a heavy metal version of his hit song. it was great and hugely energetic.

by the end of the night, sims looked pretty exhausted and happy, kind of like a senior after commencement, and as a guy who "dropped out of college for a book," to quote dessa, maybe this was a little like that for him. his first record is finally out and it's great and a ton of people came out to celebrate. congrats, mr. sims.

Sims: Mr. On-Course

2005-06-20T10:28:00.000-05:00

The first time I met Andrew William Sims was playing pickup basketball over on Lyndale and 33rd. I knew he was involved with Doomtree, but it wasn’t until several months later that I learned he was a rapper. Such is the down-to-earth and basically modest air he carries. Most rappers seem to be overly-concerned with letting you know who they are constantly, but Sims is just trying to be himself.

“Performers will be quick to grab an identity as something to run with,” he laments over a couple of beers on the Doomtree house porch, “I did it, too; At first I was like ‘The Live Kid’ or ‘The Really Aggressive Dude,’ but at some point I decided, fuck it, I am ‘You, Dude.’” He really does seem to be a kind of everyman, the hair on his head usually the same length as his facial hair, whether shaved or slightly scruffy, and usually sporting paint-stained boots and jeans. Even his rap alter ego is simply his last name. “I struggled with that for a while,” he admits, “I had a crew in highschool, and then I had another crew, and I had different names, but they were always so contrived. You know, like, Mega Blast One. Like Scribe and all that shit, it’s just like they’re so bad.” Eventually, on the eve of his first show with Doomtree and in need of a moniker to put on the CD sold especially for the event, P.O.S. decided that enough was enough. “Stef said, ‘That’s it. You’re Sims now.’”

The False Hopes released that night was his Doomtree debut, but he’s getting ready to drop a much bigger first on the Twin Cities and hip hop in general: his debut CD, Lights Out Paris. Being a musician used to live bands, I’m eager to find out how the collaboration process between rapper and producer. “I usually ask people who make beats to give me beats and try to take it from where it is and make it into a song. It’s something that I’m still learning how to do. Before I have any of the raps I have the patterns in mind, so I map it out sonically. Or I’ll just write journal-style and find a beat and plug in verses; sometimes you wind up with a lot cooler shit that way, like that song ‘May 1st.’ I just try to get in the mood of the music.” Whether it’s collage or collaboration, it starts with patterns for Sims. Discussing music he’s into currently and rapper MF Doom, he explains, “He’s a pattern rhymer, he’s a tech writer. When you write a lot, you notice people’s schemes and patterns. I grew up listening to other people’s shit and not understanding it, just hearing that the end word always rhymes, and then you listen to Biggie and Rakim and Kool G Rap and that multisyllable shit. There’s so much math involved with rap it’s unreal.”

But it’s not all just math; there’s English and, for Sims, French. Lights Out Paris contains several snippets of the language of love, and when asked to explain the title and the samples, he elaborates, “Paris is the city of lights, the city of love; it’s a place in the world that means something. It’s brightness and it’s culture and it’s art and it’s all these things. And the record is about our generation and the things that we go through. We’re living in this dark time right now where there’s a loss of those things. It’s about falling out of love. Like when Paris falls, what’s left?” And the discussion sampled and placed between ’15 Blocks’ and ‘Tape Deck?’ “What they say is, ‘Did you ever hear about the guy who’s falling off a building? On the way down, floor after floor, he keeps telling himself so far so good.’ And at the end, they say, ‘It’s about a society falling: on its way down it keeps telling itself, so far, so good.’”

They might be discussing French hip-hop, but they could just as easily be talking about Western civilization at this point, and that agitation is reflected in the music. The album overall is propulsive and rhythmic with a caustic edge; just as dark as Ipecac Neat but more muscular, less angular. Sims touches on topics ranging from relationships to self-image to war, but is particularly proud of the sprawling ‘Market Made Murder.’ It began life as a track by newest Doomtree addition Mike Mictlan, and after working on the song in L.A. with him, Sims brought it back with more ideas. “I was like, ‘I gotta get Toki Wright on it,’ because Toki Wright’s one of my favorite rappers in the city, he’s just so sick. And then Marshall [Larada, Doomtree producer] came up with this great idea of how to make the song dip and come back. The structure of the song is amazing. ‘Market Made Murder’ had five different heads working on it at the same time, plus Stef helped and [Hideaway studio owner] Joe Mabbott was there, so that’s seven. That middle section is so hard and Toki just kills it. The beat on that part and the way Mabbott mixed that shit out, your stereo just rumbles and nobody has a more perfect voice for something like that than Toki.”

He’s right, but underneath all that rumble is a critique of free-market capitalism. His stance is equally political on songs like ‘Frontline’ and ‘Dreamsleep,’ so is he out to make a difference? “At first, I came into it with the idea like, ‘Yes! We’re going to change the world! Pump your fists up!’ Then I realized that angle is such bullshit. At least the people who commercialize being a revolutionary and take the money for themselves. If you’re going to be a revolutionary, that’s not what you do. So, no, we’re not changing the world,” he admits. “For me, it’s more like, ‘Can you identify with this? Can you feel me on that?’ What’s cool about politics is that it transcends lines to [get to] who are we? As a people. How we think as a group. I was raised Unitarian and one of the only things I remember is in Heaven and Hell there are huge tables with dinner laid out, but nobody has elbows, and in Hell they’re trying to feed themselves and in Heaven everyone’s feeding each other’s mouths. So it builds a community and it builds a spirit within us, a commonality between people, and it’s a good way to bridge gaps and connect people.”

He’s politically-minded, but on a personal level, and this embodies the balancing act he finds himself performing between understanding and questioning, between appearance and “keeping it real.” In the midst of answering a question about how he sees himself in relation to Doomtree, the Twin Cities hip hop scene, and hip hop in general, he nails it: “The problem with rappers is that they always try to be infallible, and the problem with emo rappers is that they’re always trying to be broken, and I walk that line.” He laughs a little, deciding if he should finish the thought out loud, and then does: “I stand on that razorblade all day long.”

nba redux

2005-06-09T22:56:00.000-05:00

okay, again, here's an nba diversion. it seems that hubie brown and al michaels, in tonight's opener, can't talk about anything without pointing out how despite the fact that this is a low-scoring and defensive game it's still a really good game. you know? they can't stop emphasizing that in it's own way, this is as good as a high-scoring flashy game.

what's funny about this to me is that you never have people saying that despite it being a flashy and high-scoring game, it's just as much fun as a defensive and low-scoring game. never. so judge for yourself.

go suns.

check your pulse

2005-06-08T16:52:00.000-05:00

hey all, i wanted to formally announce some pretty cool news for yours truly, which is that i'm going to be taking over as music editor for the pulse starting in july. rob van alstyne's leaving to pursue further education and i'm flattered and honored to get the nod. he's done a great job and i hope to continue the tradition and build on what he's already done.

i also want to give mad props to david de young and howwastheshow.com for getting me started writing again and writing about music for the first time in a published way. last november when i met him and he mentioned needing people to write about local music, i never would have thought that it would lead so quickly to such a great opportunity, so thanks dave.

bear with me on this one

2005-06-06T23:09:00.000-05:00

so this isn't going to start out about music, but i do have a musical point. tonight, the detroit pistons beat the miami heat in game 7 of the eastern conference finals to advance to the finals against the san antonio spurs. in doing so, they have set up a series between what are probably, when all factors are considered, the two best teams in the nba.

yawn.

san antonio has gotten there this year, and in other years, in the words of their own coach, gregg popovich, by not doing anything wrong. and the pistons have returned to defend their title by playing stifling defense and scoring as a team. neither team has a go-to guy, with perhaps the slight exception of tim duncan, and even so, he can't be counted on for clutch free throws or three-pointers down the stretch. they've done it by being solid, consistent, and largely unremarkable.

it's like if eric clapton were playing the allman brothers for some kind of musical title. and that's not what i want to see. i want to see spoon vs. the mars volta. i respect the careers and consistency of both of the former bands and am a fan of their earlier stuff, but i want excitement and vision and risk and cool. i want the miami heat and dwyane wade taking on steve nash and the phoenix suns. but as my dad never tires of pointing out, they got beaten and aren't you always supposed to try to win? that's the point of sports, isn't it?

yes, i must relent, it is, but it's not the point of music, and maybe that's why that's where my heart is. i've always liked underdogs, in sports as well as music, and the good news in music is that making the most money or playing the most notes or filling the most seats is not the only goal, although to some it's the most important goal. you can follow music for the creativity, passion, conviction, and swagger that a select few bands bring to the table.

you can do the same for teams like the suns, who play inspired creative team basketball and for players like lebron james who are innovating the game not just by shooting badly needed threes at clutch time as part of a system that requires you to do little else (robert horry, derek fisher, manu ginobili, reggie miller: i'm looking at you) but by doing it all and doing it all with panache. but my dad's right: when it comes right down to it, the best team usually wins. it's a dirty and sometimes unglamorous job being the spurs or the pistons, but someone has to do it if there's going to be a champ.

so here here for music, which, to quote mark mallman, isn't a dirty job that somebody needs to do; it's just a dirty job.

the case against the case against coldplay pt ii

2005-06-05T13:30:00.000-05:00

okay, so i'm a little more lucid now after last night coming home from the big trouble show and howwastheshow anniversary party. so here are the things that get me about this article: he pretty much says in the first paragraph that there's nothing wrong with what coldplay is about, but then goes on to say somehow, in spite of that, they still suck. as if there's something objective and unidentifiable about them that makes them bad when what he's really showing is his own personal view that they're bad. as if it's some kind of sherlock holmes mystery: "they have all the elements of a good band, yet somehow, they're bad; how could this be?" how it could be is that you just don't like them, and there's nothing wrong with that, but don't try to hide it behind a bunch of fancy mumbo-jumbo.

whenever i read music writing, i want a little blurb about the author that says what their first concert was, last concert was, last album bought and hated and last album bought and loved. because otherwise, how do you know where they're coming from? who does this guy like? in keeping with that wish: INXS, the mars volta, dungen: early recordings: 1999-2001, spoon: gimme fiction. there: context.

he also commits the cardinal sin of music writing, imo, which is to quote lyrics to prove how bad the lyrics are. lyrics exist in a symbiotic relationship with the music, and in coldplay's case, i think the lyrics are effective because they are evocative and because they complement the music. are they kind of vague and general? yeah. sometimes cliche? check. you know what else? the mars volta's lyrics don't make any sense, especially read off the page. but they're not supposed to. leonard cohen's lyrics are fantastic and nuanced, but frankly, i've never been able to get into his music because so little attention seems to go into the music itself. his stuff from the early 80's just sounds too cheesy for me to get lost in. and for this guy, martin's lyrics and singing style are that kind of barrier, but rather than just saying that, he has to make it a personal vendetta against martin. so his lyrics don't translate well to being written down and read off the page. so what? "all you need is love?" how banal is that?

looking at his other articles, it seems that mr. pareles enjoyed the boredoms, a japanese noise-punk band who've always been better than they sounded, imo. and that's the real thing here, i think. coldplay isn't a concept band; they're just a really good band, and that's something that critics (certain critics) hate. one reason they had so much success in england is that the isle is awash in hip, self-referential music and coldplay came as a breath of fresh air. they are, as he says, like radiohead without all the sharp angles, but is this such a bad thing, really? over here, we're awash in overly earnest claptrap like nickelback and mainstream country and so i think unfortunately a truly musical appreciation of them falls into the crack between this earnest mainstream hogwash and all the artsy stuff that's bubbling up under the surface. i think the mass of americans who watch mtv and vh1 and listen to "alternative" radio think that there's music (what they listen to) and then crap (all the other stuff). music critics think there's music (what they listen to) and crap (what the aforementioned demographic listens to).

the real secret is: it's all crap. music is just stuff we do to make money or hang our faith on. so is coldplay mostly focused on A or B? i don't know. i guess i'll have to wait for X & Y to find out for myself.

the case for coldplay

2005-06-05T00:54:00.000-05:00

jon pareles screed against coldplay

if you can be against some band because they've gotten big and you find their whiny lyrics annoying, then can we please be against music critics so in love with their own opinions that they sound whiny? so a band is huge and has made a huge album. i haven't gotten to hear it yet, but one thing i hate and most music critics love is trying to take down a band they don't like through some kind of justification that tries to make it sound like there's something more to a band than just whether they like them or not. coldplay's (well, chris martin's) desire to do good in the world is lamentable, apparently, and has some kind of bearing on the music, although i don't know how. he's whiny. oh, i don't like falsettos. can this guy shut his trap? he obviously doesn't know anything about the lineage of music he's discussing, since he complains about bands like travis that are coldplay-alikes. travis has been around way longer than coldplay. i even remember the first article about coldplay i read in q that said they'd be the next travis. so take that.

who exactly does this article benefit? who really believes that coldplay has to be taken down a notch? just leave them alone. okay, i'm wicked tired and i'll probably have more to say about this tomorrow.

you're in big trouble

2005-06-03T21:29:00.000-05:00

hey readers. i'd like to formally invite you over to the debut of a new musical project i'm involved in, along with peter leggett and sean mcpherson from heiruspecs and josh peterson of martin devaney's band called BIG TROUBLE. we're playing at bar 3-3-1 in northeast minneap tomorrow (saturday night) from 9 to 11 pm, so maybe before you go to the howwastheshow.com anniversary party at the turf or wherever you go late night, you should check us out. basically, we're playing instrumental versions of songs you know in kind of unorthodox ways. i wasn't sure how it was going to shape up, but after a marathon eight-hour rehearsal today, it's sounding pretty good. songs to be played include ones by a tribe called quest, u2, bjork, dj shadow, inxs, death cab for cutie and local heroes p.o.s. and rob skoro. seriously, i think this is gonna be pretty cool so come check us.

the joint is at university and 13th ave in northeast and again, the time is 9, which is when we'll be starting so come early.

Cloud Cult: Question Marks to Candy Canes

2005-05-30T10:50:00.000-05:00

this article's going to appear in the pulse this week in preparation for cloud cult's release party at first avenue on friday. i advise you to go, not just for the great cloud cult but also for ida, who are opening. cloud cult were great fun to interview and just super-good people. both of their most recent discs are well-worth checking out, especially their newest. i didn't have the space to write about everything we talked about, so i'm going to try and just post some interview excerpts straight up later on this week.

“I’d like to get a piano that works, and I’d like to play piano a lot. And I’d like to work on the farm a little more.” Craig Minowa is discussing his plans for the future towards the end of our interview, and I’m serious: when asked, this is how he begins his response. It’s a room temperature early summer evening and I’m sitting with Minowa and the rest of Cloud Cult on cellist Sarah Young’s deck in Southern Minneapolis.

For a band that’s known as the brainchild and vision of one man, Cloud Cult seem more like a family. Also in attendance are drummer Dan Greenwood, bassist Mara Stemm, violinist Theresa Hanley, and Young and Hanley’s partners and children. It certainly doesn’t seem like the rock and roll lifestyle; where are the limos and the piles of drugs? All we’ve got here is some delivery pizza.

At the beginning of the interview, Minowa touches on that. “Success on that level was never a goal and I don’t want it to be a goal. As far as anything that happens with the music, it’s kind of by chance, so, with [2003’s] They Live on the Sun, it just needed to be created. it wasn’t that there needed to be a lot of listeners behind it [but] once the listeners started coming on board, it sort of felt like there was a good combination between what we wanted to do and having people enjoy it,” explains Minowa, “Which is rare for bands: to not feel like you have to go out there and shove it down people’s throats. To have cities that I’ve never been to have really good charting and sales is just so mystifying.” He seems genuinely awed by it. In person, Minowa is soft-spoken, hiding the heart-on-sleeve singer whose voice pitches somewhere between Isaac Brock and Conor Oberst on record. Cloud Cult make an unabashed effort to be environmentally conscious, printing all their CD’s on recycled material and donating 100% of their profits after expenses to environmental charities, and Minowa sees that as an essential part of the way they make music. “The fan letters tend to be [from] people [whose life it impacts] in a really positive way,” Minowa says, “so then there’s a certain sense of personal responsibility to continue to perpetuate that.”

So they’ll have to pardon me if I say that they have no right to be as good as they are. I’ve met plenty of bands (mostly jam bands) who were plenty psyched about saving the world and their music was mostly bland, but Cloud Cult’s is thick, layered, listenable, resonant and—seemingly impossibly—hip and possibly O.C.-worthy. Their mish-mash of influences include Rasputina, Radiohead, Polvo, and Kate Bush. “I always got made fun of for the stuff that I liked when I was younger,” says Minowa, explaining his own influences, “I liked Art of Noise a lot and the wrestlers in my hometown didn’t like that I had Devo scratched onto the front of my folder, but they (Devo, not the wrestlers) were just creative: visually and musically.” They’ve been garnering not unfair comparisons to the Flaming Lips recently, although Minowa stoutly refuses even one listen to The Soft Bulletin. “I don’t want to end up in a spot where it’s like, ‘Oh, they’re so obviously influenced by such and such,’” he explains and Greenwood breaks in: “I came really close to forcing him one night; I was like, ‘You gotta listen to them, man!’ And he said no.’” But Minowa has kept abreast of current music like the Polyphonic Spree and the Arcade Fire, which he likes for the “celebration element” they bring to their music.

Bringing that element and being creative visually as well as musically is something that Cloud Cult does as well. Joining them on their upcoming tour out to New York and then back across to the West Coast will be several different painters who’ll paint live on stage during the shows. “There’s a lot of bands that just kind of get up there and do it, but when it comes to art, you’ve got five senses going. You’re sipping on a beer or a tea or something, you’ve got one taken care of, you know. You’re listening to the band; why not fill your sight with something?” asks Minowa rhetorically. Imagery is important to his own writing as well, particularly with the menagerie that inhabits their latest, Advice from the Happy Hippopotamus, including bumblebees, hummingbirds, horses, and the titular hippo.

“Well, the hippo’s been weird just because I know everybody’s got their totem animal and most people’s are really romantic like tigers or snakes or things like that, but when I moved up to Duluth I started having dreams about a hippopotamus. It’s inspired so many different lyrics that it was kind of time to let the hippo out. It seems goofy and loony, but there’s something about a hippopotamus: it’s really Jurassic, just kind of a giant pig—half-pig, half-crocodile,” says Minowa, and when I point out that they’re actually supposed to be super mean he goes on, “The artist (Scott West) didn’t like it either. He was working on the album art and I’m like, the name of the album is Advice from the Happy Hippopotamus, you’ve got to put the hippo on the cover. And he’s like, ‘Hippos are unattractive, you can’t use the hippo on the album art.’”

West eventually relented, though, and the hippo made it on there in addition to being in there as a lens through which Minowa can explore weighty issues like mortality. With a couple of children in attendance at the interview, it’s hard not to think of Minowa’s own son Kaidin who died suddenly at two years of age, but Minowa seems to have reached a place of acceptance: “Kaidin is a big message, too, or a big sort of inspiration behind everything. On the last album (2004’s Aurora Borealis) there was a big struggle in trying to understand where he went and why he left and the darkness involved with that and trying to just accept it.” Now though, it’s about “feeling him here and also taking that gift of his life and trying to make it as huge as possible. Saying, ‘Okay, you had two years here but I want to take those two beautiful years and share that with everybody and try to do the best dang thing I possibly can with his life.’

It’s not just the tragedy, but the acceptance of it that gives Minowa’s music weight and depth: this isn’t Oberst whining that at 22 he should have figured out more about life. Knowing his story, it’s almost impossible not to get a little choked up listening to him sing, “I’m just wondering what comes at the end/ I hope I meet you again,” in ‘What Comes at the End’ and his desire turn all his ‘stupid question marks into simple candy canes,’ in ‘Bobby’s Spacesuit’ doesn’t seem like escapism so much as acceptance that some of those big issues in life may never get answered. The most important thing is taking advantage of what you’ve got right now.

Finishing his answer to what lies in the future for himself and his band, Minowa says, “Musicwise, if it’s gonna go, it’s gonna go. I think one of the good things about the whole crew is that we’re all doing it because we like what we’re doing. In the music industry, there’s so many people that are really caught up in ego or a superficial kind of success or wealth or attention. It would be nice to be to a point where we’d know that we could cover our basic bills and everything and live a good ethical life on top of that, but beyond that, I don’t really care; as long as we’re all just being good, it’s gonna be all right.”

2005-05-30T07:24:00.000-05:00

i'm in the process of writing up an article on cloud cult that will appear on this site shortly, but before doing that, i've been reading a review on salon.com of three books about bees and came across this great little tidbit about bad writing, courtesy of gavin mcnett, discussing holley bishop's 'robbing the bees':

... I'm sorry — it's really that bad when Bishop shifts from expository, fact-based prose, which is merely stuck together at slightly odd angles, into a more expressive, personal style. Here's one place where you can see such a shift:

"[Honeybees] live for only several weeks and heroically die after delivering their dreaded, venomous sting. Bees shape the very landscape in which we all live by cross-pollinating and changing the plants that nourish them. After decades of living in honeyless ignorance I added these divine insects and their delicious produce to my recommended daily allowance of magic and wonder."

This bandage on my head is from when I set the book on fire and beat myself silly with it (it's a thick book), thinking that some people can write like that with relaxed certainty, like a bowling ball rolling downhill, whereas I could barely finish anything for years, classically blocked and in mortal dread of publishing an imperfect sentence (as you can see, I've largely gotten over any silly concerns with quality. And yet, there are things like a puzzling chapter of Bishop's in which she's hanging around her New York apartment naked during the '03 blackout, that make "relaxed certainty" seem a more perilous mindframe than ever).

We're on a bit of a tangent here, and we'll be back to the bees (and Bishop's book) in just a paragraph or two, but perhaps the best example of the contemporary dilettante book is Daniel Pinchbeck's "Trust-fund Shaman: My Psychedelic Journey Through the Fascinating World of a Bunch of Old Carlos Castaneda Paperbacks" (published under the title "Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey Into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism"). According to Pinchbeck, a good-natured and well-meaning son of a wealthy literary family, he remembered that psychedelic drugs are widely said to have religious significance, and went around reading books about drugs while also taking a lot of them, often in far-flung locales. Achoo!, he sneezed, and a book deal was in the Kleenex. It's an interesting topic, to be sure, although in classic low-dilettante style, Pinchbeck describes things in over-limpid, imprecise terms, as though (this is a crucial characteristic, and also the thing about "Robbing the Bees" that best explains Bishop's writing style) a book were like a paper to be turned in for a grade: As if someone who comes from the right place socially need only demonstrate that he did the relevant reading, and write correct prose with no serious logical or factual errors, to be able to expect comments like "Great work!" or "A revealing treatment of the subject matter!" and be rewarded with an authorial career.

as it is, i think it's hilarious, although of course once i get my book deal, all bets are off.

The Mars Volta :: Roy Wilkins Auditorium :: May 19, 2005

2005-05-24T22:29:00.000-05:00

Beyond the realm of the general populace, past the place where over-40’s listen to pablum like Celine Dion and Michel Buble and the teens listen to tripe like Linkin Park and Sum 41, there lies the land of the music snob. But far from a harmonious place, there are two warring factions that divide this territory up in a bitter civil war. On one side are fans of bands like the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers Band, and maybe even Yes. To them, the true meter of music is technical proficiency and personal expression. Mostly, you can’t hold a decent conversation on their side of town because of the drum solos. The other faction consists of the hipsters, who distance themselves from their music with irony and a self-referentiality that’s sometimes feigned, thrown up to protect their cool, but nevertheless, they sneer at “noodly” music and wear out their copies of albums by the Velvet Underground, Television, Leonard Cohen, and other bands “you probably wouldn’t have heard of.” Their side of town needs a hug and a good cry, probably.

Lately, though, a kind of peace has formed over the Mars Volta, which is quite a feat, because the accepted logic is that you can be techincally proficient and lame (Phish) or minimal, boneheaded, and cool (the Ramones), but that it’s nearly impossible to be techincally proficient AND cool. Somehow, the Volta have done it, and they’ve even managed to make a dent in the Warped tour crowd.

Which has shown up in force tonight, apparently shelling out $30+ a piece after Ticketmaster’s “handling fees” to chat loudly with their friends and show off their cool fire-breathing tricks. I’m not even kidding; this happened a couple rows away from me several times. I had arrived to Roy Wilkins a little late, towards the end of what I think was the Mars Volta’s first song, just in time to hear singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s admonishment to the crowd, “This ain’t the Warped Tour; Be nice.” To which someone near me shouted, “I went to that shit! It was weak as hell!” And how much did that ticket cost you, buddy?

Let me back up, though. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a venue the size of RWA (as the kids call it) and I don’t miss it. It’s all so impersonal. I got past all that, though, and set my mind to settling in and getting involved in the show.

As I said, the band was in media res when I came in, sort of floating through an ambient bit not unlike those that split up the proper tracks on any of their releases. They’re not so much a soft verse/loud chorus band as they are a psychological horror/slasher flick band, and they do a good job of breaking up the intense bits with some more experimental passages. If they didn’t, it’d all be too much to take. Somehow, they manage to combine bits of punk, stadium rock, dub, ambient music, Latin rock, African highlife, and prog into one giant and largely compelling whole. Their secret? As my friend Wes observed, “There’s just no bullshit.”

Guitarist and ringleader Omar Rodriguez formed the band with singer Bixler after the demise of the also truly amazing At the Drive-in. They provide the spark and meat of the band as a concept, but live, you gain a much fuller appreciation for drummer Jon Theodore’s contribution. His steady hand guides the band through seas of odd time signatures and off-kilter transitions, while bassist Juan Alderete de la Pena holds the harmonies down with the assistance of keyboardist Ikey Owens, who mostly sticks to Hammond organ. A full-time percussionist and reed player (tenor sax, flute, and bass clarinet (a rarely seen instrument in any setting, much less a rock band)) fill out the sound and leave Rodriguez free to dominate precedings like a kind of benevolent dictator—I’ve heard that the sessions for their most recent disc—Frances the Mute—were done piecemeal, with each musician contributing only to a click track, a feat which seems amazing given the tight and organic feel of the band as a live presence.

The first song I got to hear beginning to end was ‘Eria Tarka’ from their first full-length De-Loused in the Comatorium. This and pretty much every other song of the night was stretched beyond its recorded borders, although the central bits remained intact and mostly unchanged. That is, they were punishing, cathartic, convoluted, and often catchy. Parsing Bixler’s lyrics sometimes feels a bit like cleaning up after someone who’s been dropping used Word-a-Day calendar sheets on the floor all year, but there’s no doubting he means it. Live, he prowls the stage with frontman bravado, but he’s smart enough to never upstage the band or the music with histrionics. And here I'd like to give a shout-out to frontmen who just sing; there aren't enough of them these days, and I always have respect for and possibly a little jealousy of charismatic and talented lead singers. Likewise, Rodriguez calmly runs the show from behind a massive pedal board and just starboard of a table full of analog delays and other relic pedals.

As they worked their way through a set that included happy treat ‘Concertina’ from their first EP, erstwhile radio single ‘The Widow,’ and punishing 30+ minute closer ‘Cassandra Gemini,’ I was struck again and again by how discplined and basically musical they are. They may have drifted a bit too much here and there, but I’ve been to my share of free jazz concerts and there is a difference between good and bad free jazz. The Volta was mostly good, plus, free jazzers almost never reward you with a moshable release at the end. The crowd as a whole seemed a little confused at times, impatient for a musically sanctioned opportunity to bash into the people around them. I think somewhere around 1995 there came a moment when slam dancing or moshing or whatever you call it stopped being about expression and starting being about concussion. It just doesn’t look like fun, or maybe I’m getting old. It makes me wonder how the Mars Volta feel about it; they obviously take what they do seriously, and the success of their music is largely a product of no one who’s involved doing any kind of slacking or acting in a less than totally involved way. So what do they make of people who come to their show to smash into other people?

These are the kinds of things you have time to think about when you’re in a balcony seat a hundred yards from the band. By the time they wound around to the highlight of the evening—‘Haunt of Roulette Dares’—I had mostly stopped trying to figure it all out. ‘Haunt’ contains some of their best melodic writing, and despite being ten or so minutes long, feels lean and taut. While the indivudal parts of the song might be complicated, the way in which they’re arranged and developed is never needlessly convoluted, and the payoff when Bixler hits that last “Caveat emptor to all who enter here,” before the final chorus is worth a hundred Franz Ferdinands. Okay, I admit it sounds a little ridiculous in print, but this is a band that demands careful attention and (most importantly) rewards it.

After ‘Cassandra Gemini’ reached its abrupt and denouement-free climax, they left without encore. What else was there to do? This is a band that has broken down all kinds of barriers between the hipsters and the proggers and has somehow managed to crossover into some kind of mainstream acceptance with an album that clocks in at 75 minutes split over five songs and a live show that resembles nothing so much as a reenactment of Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies days. Who knows if most of the kids who trotted down the hall with me are taking any of what the Mars Volta are doing to heart? Even if it’s only a few of them, maybe they’ll band together one day, years down the road, and bridge that gap between Techtown and Ironyville when the peace treaty has broken down again.

Abbreviated setlist:
Eria Tarka
Concertina
Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt
Cygnus … Vismund Cygnus
L’Via Viaquez
Haunt of Roulette Dares
The Widow
Cassandra Gemini

what a wondrous time it is to be alive

2005-05-17T20:13:00.000-05:00

so last night my gf said everything that i say sounds like i've planned it all out. which is not true, incidentally. and she wasn't saying it was a bad thing, but since i was talking about music, i thought i'd put some of it down now.

so the thing is: i feel incredibly lucky to be alive right now, hearing the music's that's being made. i have to believe that—britney spears and all—this has got to be one of the best times for music ever. i think about times when only a few select people had ever heard an orchestra, when music was a privilege of the rich. there's something great about people having to learn to play music to produce it, but a piano reduction of beethoven's fifth just isn't the same thing.

the advent of recording brought music into people's homes, that is, other people playing music, but the technology prevented music from being recorded the way it was played. fidelity was bad, and wax discs could only hold three minutes of music, setting the precedent for pop music from there on in. but now, the technology of recording has advanced to the point where with top of the line speakers and surround sound you can virtually be in the orchestra hall.

but what's really exciting about this to me is not that you can capture sound more accurately than ever before, but that people are beginning to realize that that's not all that interestng. much like virtual reality, the most realistic depiction of reality can only be that, but a fantasy? that's a whole other thing.

when i was at the national guitar summer workshop, ronnie earl's piano player (can't remember his name right now) talked about practicing so that at any moment you wouldn't have to think about the technicality required to pull something off; you'd just do it. in graphic design, you need to brainstorm hundreds of terms up for a project and collect imagery so that all your bases are covered. how can you evaluate ideas if you haven't basically tried EVERYTHING? and that's what recording technology can do right now: it doesn't just mimic or document acoustic sound, it can create acoustic realities that could never exist otherwise.

plus, for every classic band that came out of the sixties, i'll bet my hat there were tons and tons of terrible ones. overall, i think we've got it pretty good right now. okay, i'd give good money to be coming of age in '67, when my dad was 20. '67–'71 is pretty damn hot, too. beatles, hendrix, dylan, the allman bros, janis joplin. that ain't bad.

but still, looking at albums by spoon, the mars volta, mf doom, the arcade fire, and the mountain goats that have all come out this year, there's more diversity, creativity, and exploration going on now than i can remember in a long time.

give me a hug.

nell powers graham is a genius

2005-05-15T16:06:00.000-05:00

so my friend npg has suggested starting a breakfast blog, and i did.

she is the smartiest.

the most important meal

go there now and let's talk egg and toast.

doom to the tree

2005-05-15T12:16:00.000-05:00

p.o.s. at the vox vermillion release show
Originally uploaded by rodeojones.

hey y'all. p.o.s. rules, but if you read this blog, you know this. last night at the vox vermillion release show doomtree killed it. featured on stage were sims, p.o.s., and recent l.a. transplant mike. oh and paper tiger on the ones and twos. personally, i think these are really the three best m.c.'s that the tree has to offer, and while i could have wished for more songs i knew (the only tracks from ipecac were 'duct tape' and 'lifetime') his new stuff sounded great, and i gather they're just wrapping (no pun) it up over at the hideaway. plus, sims' debut long-player comes out june 25 and his stuff has amazing promise as well. there just isn't another act in the twin cities that i feel as excited about when i'm standing up front than p.o.s. every time i would decide that i had taken enough photos, when stef would step up for a song i was just compelled to go back in the bag and try to capture some of his charisma. this pic was really the best one i got. let me tell you: it's hard to take pictures of rappers. they move around a lot.

also great were the tin horns and digitata, neither of whom i had seen before. i realized part way through the tin horns set that i used to work at cheapo with their guitarist casey nelson, back when he was in end transmission. and this guy matt risnes. i don't really know what the lineage is, since from what i understand when end transmission ended transmission they were a very different band, but there he is, in the tin horns. didn't get to say hey, but maybe next time, which there certainly will be. the tin horns were really super excellent: some odd time signatures, some great harmonies, some rocking out. they reminded at times of a hard-rock big star.

and digitata were a fun electronic outfit. i want to be in a band and have a job like the dude triggering samples: push a button on beat and then drink and dance. sounds like the life. seriously, though, they're very catchy and they used a dr. rhythm section drum machine for some stuff, which is my personal choice when it comes to drum machines. bravo.

vox vermillion: "fuck, i don't have any time to masturbate."

2005-05-09T10:27:00.000-05:00

this article is going to appear in the pulse this week, in a radio edit, and, in all likelihood, with a different title than that. it was just too good a quote to pass up.

Vox Vermillion are going places. Or rather, they’ve just gotten back from places all over with Atmosphere, P.O.S. and Grayskull. Come again? They’re not hip-hop, but singer/pianist Kelsey Crawford explains, “We were all very stunned at the acceptance we got. Typically the audience members that we met actually looked a little punk rock to me.” I guess it’s not a shock to find Atmosphere fans looking a little punk rock, but the crossover goes a little deeper than that. Hip-hop acts around the Twin Cities have approached the group asking to sample their creepily compelling blend of cabaret, rock, and chamber music, although today the only guy who approaches Crawford, cellist Emily Dantuma, bassist Ollie Dodge, and drummer B.J. Wuollet in a Dinkytown coffeehouse is asking for money for destitute children.

“It’s the code of the clipboard,” says Wuollet, waving his Sierra Club signup sheet and handing over a few dollars. Halfhearted attempts at recruiting a new Sierra Club member are unsuccessful, but the interactions with the crowd on tour were a better give-and-take. Dantuma explains, “I think hip-hop’s really onto something as far as engaging a crowd and putting on a show. It’s not a passive experience: it’s something more. It’s amazing to be around that kind of audience and to participate in something like that.”

They shouldn’t be surprised at the response. As a lyricist, Crawford occupies a world kitty corner to Slug’s own, informed by a cynical idealism that hopes for the best but isn’t surprised by or unfamiliar with the worst. She’s also unafraid to tackle topics that might be considered taboo. In the fine tradition of Cyndi Lauper’s ‘She-Bop,’ ‘Wanted,’ from their new album Standing Still You Move Forward, explores, um, self-love.

“When I was coming up with the lyrics, I was almost uncomfortable singing it,” says Crawford, “and I had a bunch of our guy friends saying to me, ‘That’s kind of hot, but how can you get away with it?’ I used to get embarassed singing that verse, and I’d get really red in the face, but it’s not just about doing what’s always going to be easy or safe.” Their lyrics in general tend towards the abstract, hung on top of hooks that might hide the darker meaning behind the words. As Dodge explains, ““The way I see it, the songs [Crawford and Dantuma] write are intricate and subtle enough for a music geek or a literature geek to appreciate, but they’re also simple and honest enough for your average person off the street to appreciate. You know, sometimes, people get so into music theory, they just fill their songs up with way too much for your layman to really hear what’s going on and to sing along to.”

Wuollet interjects, “I believe the term is layperson,” and the group breaks up in laughter. After all, with two women in the band, a deal with Slug’s Women Records, is it possible to avoid questions about the role of women in music or feminism in general? “As cliched as it is, I feel like when we play All Ages shows, the people that are hearing it the most are young girls, and I want them to think that it’s okay to be expressive in any way possible,” Crawford says, “I personally grew up listening to Liz Phair and she sang about some pretty controversial things. And Bikini Kill would just set up on stage and scream all kinds of profanity, but it was always in the name of feminism. I definitely think that we’re all feminists; I think that Slug is a feminist. I think there’s a common understanding in the music there.”

Whatever you believe about Slug’s feminism, there is a musical commonality. Vox’s songs are built on spare strings and arpeggiated piano chords that bear a resemblance to Atmosphere tracks like ‘Godlovesugly’ and ‘Shrapnel.’ The process is collaborative: “Emily will come up with a cello part and I’ll sit down and try to recreate a piano part to go with it,” explains Crawford and Dantuma adds, “For most of the last album (Well-Read), I would write the keyboard part and then Kelsey would be gracious enough to learn it and put her interpretation on it and write her vocal part and the lyrics from that. Then we’d go to the cello and write cello in response to the vocal part, and then we’d bring in bass and drums.” The end result is a blend of a lot of different styles. ‘Underground’ calls to mind Spoon collaborating with Morcheeba while ‘July’ is a Bach organ recital outtake and ‘Freeways and Highways’ a late Beethoven sonata with vocals courtesy of Siouxsie Sioux. Despite the non-traditional instrumentation, the players are sympathetic enough to each other that the resulting music feels natural and airy, not jammed full.

Such sympathy was not always the way, though: “Emily and I really hated each other when we first started playing together,” remembers Crawford, “So there was a real power struggle, but once we set our egos aside we realized that we had this amazing ability to write some really kind of creepy and cool songs together.” Asked about exactly what kind of struggles, Crawford elaborates, “I’m talking about a year of us moving to different states and running out of the country—“

“Lot’s of practices ending in tears—“ interjects Dantuma and Crawford concludes, “You know, wrestling matches in the 400 bar parking lot.” Really? Well, not really, apparently, but adversity builds character and that’s what it takes to go out on the road, which is their plan for the summer and fall, in addition to more writing and recording. Curious what a band this diverse listens to in the car on long drives, I discover that there are some limits.

“It’s kind of embarassing,” admits Dantuma, “but the only thing I’ve been listening to since we went on tour has been this Schumann opera,” and Crawford jumps right in: “Which we did not let her play in the car. I wouldn’t draw the line, but if I was driving, that type of shit would totally stress me out. I’d be like, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got to pull the car over.’”

But Dantuma responds, “See, I love listening to classical when I’m driving because everything happens along with the music. You know, I’ll be at a red light and then (sings ramping up music) and then the light turns green and (belts out brief aria). You just start associating it like a Dark Side of the Moon, Wizard of Oz-type thing,” and Dodge warns, “You just don’t want to start playing [Wagner’s] ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ or you’ll start running into things.”

So in the end, it’s not just about going places: it’s about not hitting stuff on your way there.

a quick top ten

2005-05-09T10:15:00.000-05:00

so, i've gotten to thinking about lead guitar a little bit, because it's something i used to play quite a bit, but not something i do very much anymore. a technically impressive solo isn't something that really gets me going anymore, but there are some old ones and some more recent ones that i think represent the best examples of guitar solos in the service of the song and so here i present a top ten, in current order of favor, of great and musical guitar solos. or something. and it goes guitarist :: song :: artist :: album

1. steve yernberg :: 'rules' :: the ashtray hearts :: perfect halves
2. marc ford :: 'sometimes salvation' :: the black crowes :: southern harmony and musical companion
3. omar rodriguez and john frusciante :: 'cicatriz e.s.p.' :: the mars volta :: de-loused in the comatorium
4. tad kubler :: 'positive jam' :: the hold steady :: almost killed me
5. a.c. newman :: 'miracle drug' :: a.c. newman :: the slow wonder

okay, i have stuff to do, so it's only going to be a top five. sorry. guitar isn't really that great anyways.

new releases

2005-05-03T11:42:00.000-05:00

is there a better day than tuesday? it's like spring every week. okay, i have my own reasons for loving thursday, but it's a great week when a ton of great new music comes out. today i'm ripping new albums by aimee mann, the hold steady, mike doughty, and ryan adams. plus, i finally got around to getting leslie feist's solo album and i'm finally ripping the okkervil river album i got on rob van alstyne's recommendation. the early vote: aimee mann=amazing, ryan adams=treading water and i still haven't found the track that makes you cry on the record yet, the hold steady=craig finnalicious as always, mike doughty=nobody better at writing songs that make you want to drive around with the windows down in summer, and feist=maybe one of the best things i've heard so far this year. mostly, the feist gets it for making me want to have a night of life-affirming getting it on after years of meaningless and coke-dazed one-night stands circa 1978. it's a peculiar and singularly-realized album of sade-esque beguilingness from an indie.rock chick. the single, 'one evening' is available at salon.com, if you've got a subscription, i think, which you should, cause it's great.

i already really like the aimee mann and i can't wait to sink my teeth into it. let me go on record saying that i love concept albums, especially since people have decided to make good concept albums. rick wakeman, i'm looking at you. the production on 'the forgotten arm' is also really quirky and yet still solid. a lot less slick than her other stuff and more organic, but still impeccable. joe henry helmed it.

i'm a little disappointed that dave matthews makes a cameo on the new mike doughty. there's a way in which mike doughty is always just a sappy chorus away from dmb territory, what with the acoustic rock, funky rhythms, and off-kilter vocals. okay, i'm listening to it right now, and it's not too bad. better than 'busting up starbucks,' track 4, which i wasn't super into. overall, it's sounding goood so far, though. maybe i'm partial given the involvement of dan wilson and standup guy (and bass player, get it? standup? you see ...) john munson, but i'm also partial because i've always liked soul coughing. ooh, baritone guitar on this one ...

so early front-runnners for the top ten albums put out this year are as follows:

the mars volta :: frances the mute
feist :: let it die
the decemberists :: picaresque
jeff hanson :: s/t
the ashtray hearts :: perfect halves

okey, so that's how it's looking right now. soon, something on vox vermillion. woot.

in the wee small hours

2005-05-01T12:11:00.000-05:00

so last night i couldn't sleep. i was on the point of just drifting off when one of my roommates came home and began a loud converstaion with my other roommate. now, i have no problem with that really. it's a communal space and it's part of living with people. it just so happened that it arrested me at just the moment of descending into sleep where i could just not finish getting to sleep. after i had gotten up and asked the roomies to keep it down a bit, which they did, i lay there awake for 45 minutes before finally relenting and getting up. whereupon i started reading my buddy josh's blog and from there suns player paul shirley's blog. that's some funny. here's a link to josh's blog:

wryly sly

and also to paul shirley's "daily journal:"

paul shirley

if you cotton at all to my or josh's style of writing, i think you'd get a kick out of shirley's stuff, which is great and funny and not at all what you'd expect from an nba player. even if you don't dig basketball, check it out. you'll be pleasantly surprised.

The Ashtray Hearts :: An Old Conversation

2005-04-28T15:00:00.000-05:00

this article will be appearing in the pulse next week, probably in a radio edit. here's the album version.

The Ashtray Hearts: An Old Conversation

In Elizabeth Bishop’s poem ‘The Moose,’ passengers on a bus late at night fall into fitful rest hearing “[i]n the creakings and noises/ an old conversation/ —not concerning us,/ but recognizable, somewhere.” Those half-heard conversations that feel strangely familiar when you’re alone and it’s late, are the Ashtray Hearts bread and butter. Their first album (2002’s ‘Old Numbers,’) was the perfect soundtrack to late night nostalgia and melancholy, and their new long-player ‘Perfect Halves’ continues in that vein, even if things are a little different this time around.

“The songs for the first record [were ones] that I had written before we were a band,” explains singer/guitarist Dan Richmond, “This is a more full-band record, for sure; we made it that way from the ground up. I’d come to the band with the skeleton of a song, then the band fleshed it out, moving around from instrument to instrument to figure out how it’s going to sound.” Dusk is falling outside Aaron Schmidt’s (vocals, trumpet, piano) house in southeastern Minneapolis, and over a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon, I chat with Schmidt, Richmond, Steve Yernberg (guitar/vocals), and Brad Augustine (accordion/piano). “As far as the words, I keep a pretty good journal of everyday life, and [the lyrics] are taken from pieces here and pieces there. Some songs are directly about something, but others are a combination of different experiences. I don’t like music that’s really obvious; you don’t want the lyrics to be so straightforward that there’s no room for interpretation. I don’t know if there’s a whole lot of mystery to it; it’s just finding words that sound good together, ideas, and a story behind the song.”

Richmond makes it sound easy, fashioning songs that sound like one side of a breakup conversation on a phone in a coffeeshop, but his bandmates clearly get it. “For pretty much every song on this record,” says Yernberg, “I can place it with some memory of a certain event or events, and I don’t even know if it’s the same thing Dan wrote it about, but I definitely have certain things that I think of for every song on the record.” They leave enough space to let the listener into the song, to fill in their own experiences.

Heartbreak and longing are constants in the Ashtray Hearts’ world, but their new album displays a subtle modulation up in the emotional register: if their first was the sound of being knocked flat on your back, ‘Perfect Halves’ captures the moment you get up to your elbows and get ready to take another crack at it. As bassist Ryan Huber Scheife and drummer John Jerry join the conversation on the stoop, Jerry notes that “There are a few songs with sticks on this record.” Opener ‘Rules’ starts out with the gentle sound of Augustine’s Wurlitzer, but Yernberg’s biting solo halfway through the tune serves notice that this isn’t going to be a retread of their first disc.

For one, the recording process was a lot different this time around. “We recorded at Sacred Heart, which is this landmark church, way up on a hill in Duluth,” explains Richmond, “We heard about it through friends that had recorded there; Bellwether had recorded a couple songs there, Haley Bonar did her record there, Low did ‘Trust’ there. Just for our own sanity, we wanted to change things up and not do the same thing twice. None of us are getting rich off this, so it’s all about the experiences and having a good time doing it. We went up there for four weekends last year and recorded eleven songs. [Sacred Heart] was a good place to get the basic tracks for 90% of the songs on the record, but then we made the mistake of trying to mix it ourselves, even though we had a really capable engineer there, and I think we were still missing something, too, so we took the summer off and came back in the fall saying, ‘The record isn’t done,’ so we added one more song (‘Rules’) and re-recorded two of them, at Tom Herber’s [studio, Third Ear]. And I think the song we added, which is the first song on the record, was the missing piece.”

Whether it was Sacred Heart, or just the natural process of growing together as a band, ‘Perfect Halves’ is a much lusher and stronger record. Its ten songs present a picture of a band hitting its stride, and it’s striking how unified the vision feels. Scheife, in addition to bass duties, designs the band’s albums and explains, “I was actually listening to some of the tracks that didn’t make it onto the record yesterday, and I think it was a good call because they don’t fit. I don’t know if it was a conscious effort, but as a band I think we know.” Their sense of texture and the addition of instruments like the Chamberlain (which uses actual tape loops—think ‘Strawberry Fields’) and the Hammond organ expands the sonic palette this time around, and a slightly different ethos had to go into making a record on tape as opposed to on a computer. “We worked in an all digital studio before,” says Richmond, “and we had a lot more room to make errors and go back and cut and paste things, but when you’re working with tape, you want to keep things simple so you’re not spending thousands upon thousands of dollars. You just to get to a point and say, ‘That’s good,’ and try not to worry about it. When you add all the elements, they all just kind of fall into place, kind of like it does in the live show where you know not everything’s perfect.”

The record as a whole breathes in a way that ‘Old Numbers’ doesn’t, and I could go on at length about the virtues of each song, but that job has already been done better by their friend Wade Ostrowski in the copious liner notes. They wanted to do something kind of over the top, and in much the same fashion as Blue Note records from the sixties contained mini-essays, ‘Perfect Halves’ has a track-by-track examination of the disc. Amazingly, this actually adds to the enjoyment of the record. They’ve known Ostrowski since they were highschool kids, and that camaraderie shows through, along with the generally warm and welcoming vibe that seems to surround the Twin Cities music scene. “[2024 Records’] Dave Campbell and I were talking last week about this: It’s just really good here to play music: it’s really comfortable, and everybody helps each other out,” says Augustine, and Richmond adds, “You don’t have to fight tooth and nail to get your music heard. Think about it: There are two weeklies that are covering local music and three radio stations that play a lot of local music; there are not a lot other cities that can boast that.”

So does that lack of competition make bands soft? I had heard a rumor about an attempt by Martin Devaney to start a feud with the Ashtray Hearts at a bill they were splitting at the Entry recently. When asked about it, the band breaks into laughter; “No, no,” chuckles Yernberg, “we would never do that. You can tell that poser he’s not even worth it.”

It’s so on.

The Few Nice Words w/ General Ben + Cowboy Curtis :: Kitty Kat Club :: 04.22.05

2005-04-25T13:04:00.000-05:00

There’s something I really like about the Kitty Kat Club as a venue. Despite the less than ideal stage size and sound system, it’s always reminded me of the shows I played growing up in Massachusetts, with no monitors, right up in people’s faces, and nothing mic’d except vocals. Of course, it’s a lot nicer than those places when it comes to seeing shows, what with the quasi-jungle decor and comfy couches. Tonight, I’m exhausted, and if I had to pick a venue to be at alone to see Matt Foust’s new project, it’s this. Well, or it’d be from the comfort of my own couch, but since I started taking 100% of the door and paying bands in butter, no one wants to play in front of my couch anymore.

General Ben takes the tiny stage first, featuring no one named Ben, but one guy named Brett Bullion on drums from Tiki Obmar and another named Luke Hillestad on nylon-string guitar and vocals. It’s guitar and drums, but they’re definitely not the White Stripes. Luke bases the songs around fingerpicking while Brett accompanies him with some very melodic drumming. Sometimes I’m struck by the fact that in the Twin Cities there are two categories of drummer: guys (and girls) who play beats and guys/girls who sound like David King. Mr. King’s presence is strong at the Kitty Kat tonight, with Brett treating the drums not so much as a groove thang as a collection of sound-making tools. It’s great to hear, actually, and the music General Ben makes is interesting, with echoes of acoustic acts like local Jeff Hanson and maybe Bright Eyes, a comparison particularly applying to Luke’s voice. Given the talent on display on the instruments, I couldn’t help but wish that the vocals were a little stronger. The stripped-down nature of the band is unique, but it tends to emphasize any part that’s not as strong.

Cowboy Curtis is a band I’ve seen on posters and heard about for nearly a year now, but this was my first time getting to see them, and I have to say, they have a terrible name. I think I steered clear of them for so long because of the kitschy association of their name with Pee Wee’s Playhouse and also some impression that there was something country about them. In reality, they’re a not-goofy band with almost nothing country about them. I recognized singer Neal Perbix from the Love-cars show last November, where he was front and center, singing along with most every song. That influence shows boldly on his sleeve as he guides the band through odd time-signatures, chunky-clean guitar parts from Jake Hanson, overdriven catharsis, and some more Dave King-esque drumming from brother Nate Perbix. Much like Love-cars, Cowboy Curtis manages to drum up emo (I mean good emo: Sunny Day, Promise Ring) levels of bluster without the annoying whiny aftertaste. A full-bodied brew, Cowboy Curtis is mining the same vein of smart pop that Love-cars opened.

Matt Foust is apparently still hanging around near that particualr vein. In much the same way that Julian and Sean Lennon both look like John Lennon but not like each other, The Few Nice Words and Halloween, Alaska both sound like Love-cars, but not very much like each other. While Matt Foust’s new project incorporates both electronic sounds and Halloween, AK keyboardist Ev Olcott, they’re used more as texture than as structural unit, and the sage inclusion of Mike “Bill Mike” Michael on lap steel brought me back to his days with Love-cars. That, and Brett Bullion on drums for the second time tonight, had me waxing nostalgiac for most of their set. Foust’s vocals are not unlike his bandmate James Diers’, although he tends towards either the whispery or the shouted, eschewing the middle ground. Once again, odd time-signatures and nine- and five-bar choruses dominated, and that’s the stuff I love. Foust’s ability to take a hackneyed progression and revitalize it by chopping off a beat or adding a bar is something I find myself trying to emulate, and I admire his ability to make these jigsaw creations feel natural. Of course, a lot of credit has to go to Bullion and Tiki Obmar bassist Graham’s (does nobody know his last name?) sensitivity to the material. With Olcott and Michael layering textures in over the top, the closest relative in sound is definitely Love-cars. Foust has assembled a crack group of fellow travelers here, and I can’t wait to hear the album which I hope is forthcoming.

sorry i missed your call

2005-04-21T14:00:00.000-05:00

so i've been a bit busy recently picking up some freelance design work, but i'll be posting a big article on the ashtray hearts that i'm writing for the pulse soon. actually, i'm interviewing them today, so if you have any questions you want me to ask them, post a comment and i'll work it into the conversation. and by the way, their new album is great. at first, i thought it wasn't so different from their last one, but after listening to them back to back, i've come to appreciate the subtle ramping up. plus, this one sounds a ton better. it's called perfect halves and is available online at:

ashtray hearts website

the thing i'm most impressed with right now is how the lyrics are neither abstract nor conventional. these aren't story songs or direct personal addresses. they're not backporch country songs. but they're also not the product of convoluted word games a la wilco. it's almost like you're eavesdropping on one side of a breakup call in a coffeehouse. now that's cool.

also, i'm not paying for my old band's website anymore and so i've lost my picture. boo. friendster and myspace are pretty savvy about making it difficult to link to photos on there, soi have no recourse to web storage for imagery right now. anybody have a domain where i could stick a tiny tiny photo of myself?

oh wait. i just went and maybe figured out how to make it work. raise your hand if there's a little skeleton beating on a big skull where my face used to be. a picture of that, rather, not an actual skeleton.

a man, a plan, a canal: askeleton

2005-04-15T15:00:00.000-05:00

so yesterday, knol tate invited me over to askeleton studios to record some guitar for the upcoming "happy album." kids, the shit sounds great, and i don't mean my shit. knol's been feeding me little bits of stuff and it looks like this one is going to live up to its moniker. the songs are much more open and relaxed, with a live-band sound predominating. i contributed a television-ish little lead part to one song, a spoon-esque tremolo bit to another, and some pretty, ringy stuff to a third. knol's heading to a new studio space soon, wherein i assume he'll be finishing up the album. and as you can expect from a studio maven/musician, everything sounds really great. he's definitely got a touch with the drums. anyways, you can check out some new tunes from the album at:

askeleton on myspace

soon, he'll have a line of jelly beans called skelly bellies.

bons mots of the day

2005-04-13T10:54:00.000-05:00

from andrew o'hehir's review of todd solondz' palindromes on salon.com:

I watched Todd Solondz's new film with a kind of horrified fascination: It's like seeing a fatal car accident happen in slow motion, or noticing that your shy neighbor is masturbating in the picture window with a jack-o'-lantern on his head.

now that's funny.

The Decemberists w/ Okkervil River :: Fine Line Cafe :: 4/9/05

2005-04-12T10:08:00.000-05:00

so flickr's being a jerk and i couldn't get a picture into this without all the single and double quotes going all rogue on me, so if you want to see a couple of pictures from the show, click here.

Last spring, the Decemberists played what would come to be determined by a panel of judges to be my favorite show of last year. They were a pleasant discovery for me that spring: a fantastic band with a passel of fantastic albums already under their belts. Colin Meloy’s smart and grandiloquent lyrics were the kind that I wanted to write and their weirdo obsession with 19th century urchins and chimney sweeps affected me in a way that musicals like Oliver never could.

Since that time, the band has said, “So long,” (or, more likely, “Avast,” or “Yargh,” or something appropriately piratical) to longtime drummer Rachel Blumberg and welcomed drummer John Moen (of the Minus 5 and the Jicks) and violinist/vocalist Petra Haden (of that dog and the Rentals) into the fold. So I eagerly looked forward to another Decemberists concert, slightly worried that it might not live up to their last. What would happen?

That, right there, is suspense. First I have to tell you about Okkervil River, about whom I had heard some things, mostly good, but I didn’t really know what to expect. Will Sheff took the stage all by his lonesome, armed with an acoustic guitar and looking like—and sounding not unlike—Robert Smith’s nephew. Immediately, comparisons to and overtones of Bright Eyes sprang to mind. This was further reinforced by the shambolic group of musicians that soon joined him, trading instruments, jumping around, and making a clangy, roots-y mess of music, most of which was very strong. Once the band got going, a host of other influences and contemporaries spilled out: My Morning Jacket, Neil Young, and their road buddies the Decemberists. With songwriter-based bands, songs that might get a hold on you in the privacy of your home or car can sometimes slide right off in a live context, and while Sheff clearly believes in what he’s singing, I found that a lack of familiarity with the material hindered my enjoyment, particularly of some of the lengthier songs. I suspect that upon hearing them on record, I’ll be much more appreciative. The 18+ crowd seemed to know their songs, though, and that’s who matters, as any record exec will tell you. Speaking of which, the crowd was overwhelmingly underage; it was like every college literary magazine editor showed up.

Meloy and his band have always worn their pretensions boldly on their sleeves, but this is beginning to change ever so slightly. It used to be that you had to listen to a Decemberists record much like you read Joyce: with a dictionary and a history book open on your lap. True to that form, they took the stage to the sound of a shofar, clad in khaki shirts and red bandanas, ersatz soldiers in a makeshift army, and burst into “The Infanta,” the lead track from their latest, Picaresque. But the outfits didn’t stay long, and one by one they shed them until they looked just about like any other band making great music. In much the same way, on their latest they’ve shed the stage dressing and Word-of-the-Day calendars in order to focus in on the characters and their stories, relying on narrative to carry the day. Meloy isn’t exploring Hemingway-esque minimalism yet, but he’s at least more like Mark Twain than Charles Dickens this time around.

The first time I saw them, my impression was that everyone was doing so many jobs on so many different instruments that they were just barely holding together a coherent sound, but this time around there was a newfound air of professionalism. Rachel Blumberg was a charming presence, with her little girl voice and competent drumming, but Moen’s sound on the kit is bigger and more confident, as is Haden’s voice, and her violin sounded great; it’s a texture they use to great effect alongside Nate Query’s stand-up bass.

Early on, Meloy apologized for his sickness-weakend vocals, but as the evening progressed, it seemed no apology was necessary. The set was well-constructed (I couldn’t help but share the giggle they must have had over following “The Soldiering Life” with “The Sporting Life”) and built up nicely through a selection of songs from their entire discography (bar their first EP) to their set closer, “The Mariner’s Revenge” and encore “The Tain,” a five-part song cycle that comprises an entire EP and takes about twenty minutes to play. It’s nice to hear a band save not their hits, but rather their most ambitious tracks, for last. “The Mariner’s Revenge” is set Jonah-like inside the belly of a whale and Meloy instructed the audience to make sounds like they were being swallowed by a great sea beast on guitarist Chris Funk’s mid-song cue. It was all terrific fun and the audience was absolutely down to play along. Other high points from the set included a cover of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” sung by Petra Haden and the gentle and affecting “The Engine Driver,” wherein Meloy spins verses from manual laborers against a chorus from a writer, ultimately conflating artists’ attempts to be rid of pain through creativity with everyone’s attempts to do the same through work, no matter what their profession.

In the end, the packed house made for a slightly less intimate experience than my last Decemberists show, but their sound and professionalism has been raised to a new level by the addition of capable new members, and I can’t begrduge them their success. Meloy’s skills as a tunesmith are catching up to his skills as a wordsmith, and this band of colorful rogues provides a welcome alternative to the cavalcade of instrospective, egocentric indie rock that’s glutting the scene. Here’s to hoping the Decemberists’ ship stays seaworthy for a long time.

Setlist:
The Infanta
July, July
We Both Go Down Together
Leslie Anne Levine
The Soldiering Life
The Sporting Life
From My Own True Love Lost at Sea
The Engine Driver
On the Bus Mall
Wuthering Heights (Kate Bush)
Los Angeles, I'm Yours
Billy Liar
Grace Cathedral Hill
The Mariner's Revenge

Encore:
The Tain

the cardinal sin

2005-04-07T09:19:00.000-05:00

hey! someone actually paid me to write something!

pulse article on the cardinal sin

what's the world coming to?

in memoriam mitch hedberg

2005-04-01T14:50:00.000-06:00

i was, as i'm sure many were, saddened to hear of the death of comedian mitch hedberg yesterday. not that, let's face it, it was a complete surprise from someone who was very open about his drug use and had a heart condition, but it's still sad. his cd's gave me and many others many a laugh, particularly on long car rides between venues. i always loved stand-up comedy, but so many comedians are so stock that the few that are truly funny are a treasure; dane cook and mitch were two of the only ones that i consistently paid any attention to.

this guy's going to miss mitch hedberg. well, he's a misser. i'm going on break.

the bloc stops here.

2005-04-01T13:45:00.000-06:00

so the next big band is bloc party. i can tell you this because they're selling their CD and nobody else's at urban outfitters; am i supposed to wear this? it just screams that this band is a fashion accessory and not a musical entity. don't get me wrong: urban outfitters has done a lot of good stuff, especially design-wise, and lots of people i know and respect have worked there, but they're kind of like a good-hearted but clumsy oaf who wants to do good, but ends up crushing things underfoot. or rather, if you want to go all freudian, they really do want to do bad things because they're run by a former hippie and current neo-con. it's a twisted corporation, let's put it that way.

and it's too bad that bloc party is getting blown up bigger than a peep in a microwave because they're actually a good band, but they're not THAT good. i've known about them for a while thanks to my friend pete, who introduced me to their single 'banquet' and its superior remix last summer and they can definitely write a hit, but the problem with bands that write hits is that they can't always write hits and so their album has a bunch of good songs and a bunch of not-great songs. in the good column: like eating glass, banquet, helicopter, this modern love, and luno. that's five out of 14, which is great for a lot of bands, but not for the next 'it' band. they've got the strokes written all over them, which sucks. they're better than that; they're the kind of band that if they were a local band in your town, you'd go apeshit over them and when they never made it, they'd be one of the great lost bands you'd tell your friends about. you'd make mix tapes, there'd be discussion boards, possibly graffiti. but now they're an international phenomenon, on the covers of every music magazine and they can't possibly stand up to that hype, given that they're basically just a new wave band with a great rhythm section.

but i guess that's what makes them cool. they're more than the sum of their parts and they do create this vulnerable glass egg of cool that seems all the more special for its intangibility. which is in marked contrast to, say, the mars volta who are built like a brick shithouse. the mars volta has the inevitability of a tidal wave about them, like they couldn't care less about whether you think they're good or not.

i think dave de young hit the nail on the head when he said he gets no feeling from the bloc party album, and that's the thing. there's something missing from the heart of this band, and i guess that's one way to do it. for a country that seems to pride itself on feeling and earnestness, we like an awful lot of coldness and triteness in our pop music. how does that happen? real emotion and conviction is tossed over for emptiness and sentimentality. go usa!

damn, my hair smells good.

2005-03-23T11:31:00.000-06:00

as you can see by the picture over yon (look right) i've got a new haircut, so i got this new aveda control stick stuff, which is just great. i was using the brillant pomade before, which also smells great, but i had to jack the front of my hair way up (see again, right) for it to stay. this new stuff, though, is better for this haircut and now i look less like a rockabilly reject and a little more like an irish footballer. which is good. i think. what's that? oh yeah, the new decemberists ...

i'm listening to it right now. definitely falls in line with their development from castaways and cutouts through her majesty. the sonic palette continues to expand to include many more instruments, among them strings and brass. as i mentioned yesterday, it seems that the title of the album—picaresque—should imply some kind of concept, but it's not a story album in the way that the mars volta's last was, or, say, the wiz. and yet it seems to have a cohesiveness to it, not the least because of singer colin meloy's fantastic lyric writing. now i know that some aren't so impressed with his wordy ways and grandiloquence, but i think it's great that someone's out there writing lyrics like, "as time wore on you proved a debt-ridden drunken mess / leaving my mother a poor consumptive wretch." is that really so far from 'styrofoam plates' by death cab? it's an interesting tactic, though, because most indie rock relies on a universality that you can put yourself into so you can "feel" the song. ben gibbard also bucks this trend to an extent, but meloy goes so far as to basically make his songs novellas. you're not necessarily supposed to put yourself into the characters shoes, but rather to perceive how the characters' relationships reveal universal properties of human relations. revenge stories, love lost, peer- and familial-pressure. all these things come into play, and the album as a whole builds into a crescendo which peaks on 'the mariner's revenge song,' which is essentially a whole musical in one song, a sort of condensed version of what they accomplished with their five-part song cycle 'the tain.' listened to as a whole (the album), it's very rewarding, although it contains fewer flat-out great songs than their first, with the exception of '16 military wives' and 'on the bus mall' which are both very catchy. oh, and it's a great length: ten songs, plus one fantastic postscript track 'of angels and angles.'

recommended for fans of belle and sebastian, the magnetic fields, les miserables, accordions, pirates, and grog.

in praise of difficult albums.

2005-03-22T09:52:00.000-06:00

right now, i'm listening to the new decemberists' album picaresque. bastards. they stole the name of my magazine. which incidentally, is a story about a righteous protagonist traveling through an unjust world and his/her many adventures in said world. so you can bet there's an overarcing theme to this album. so i'm not even one time through it, thus, judgement is suspended.

the difficult album i'm thinking of is the mars volta's frances the mute. i've known since i got it that this was going to be a tough disc to get through in one sitting, mostly because most people i know have no interest in music as chaotic and—let's face it—pretentious as this. but what elevates these guys above pretension is that the music actually rewards repeated and deep listening. i'm beginning to perceive the outline of a story in the album, now that i've finally gotten to listen to it front-to-back while cleaning the kitchen. i think, maybe, that it's about an abused woman who kills her husband. viz: a song called 'the widow' with a lyric like "freeze without an answer, free from all the shame" and a subsection of a song called 'multiple spouse wounds.' granted, that's a pretty silly title, and yes, sometimes i think the album gets away from them a little bit here and there, but bless 'em for trying. plus, first certifiably genius move on this album i've noticed so far is that the little weird acoustic thing that starts the album comes back some sixty minutes later as the last song. a simple move, but a nice touch.

plus, omar (guitarist) reuses some of the tones from the first album almost exactly in a few places here and there, and they almost act as guides or signposts. okay, that sounds weird, i know, but think about it like this: on their first album—de-loused in the comatorium—there were several patches of non-standard guitar sounds, like towards the end of 'tira me a las aranas' he comes in with these overdriven volume swells with an octave/harmony effect on them. so as you figure out that album, those swells come to represent the transition into the next song and they acquire a sort of color, so when he reuses this element on the new album, it sets up expectations that can then either be rewarded or abnegated. it's a tell, or an aspect of his vocabulary, just like e.e. cummings use of the lower case "i" or hitchcock appearing in his own films. or maybe omar just doesn't have that many pedals.

well, if literary critics can imbue works of literature with more meaning than their creators intended, why can't i do it with music?

new albums soon.

2005-03-21T01:12:00.000-06:00

well, i don't have much to report on right now, kids. i've been away on vacation with my gf for a week, so i haven't been listening to or going to see all that much music, but on tuesday, the new decemberists and the new prefuse 73 come out, so you can bet i'll have something to say by then.

saw a guy in chicago named mike mangione, who's related to chuck mangione. they played 'hunger strike' by temple of the dog. yup.

i put up a new picture in the old profile of me with the new haircut. it's large and in charge.

more soon.

tour diary cont.

2005-03-12T12:52:00.000-06:00

last night: kryptonite in rockford, il
tonight: the bone in st joseph, mo

currently on the hifi: steve earle. weren’t we just here yesterday? oh yeah, we were. last night was hilarious/pathetic/the best show musically so far. as we rolled into scenic (sarcasm!) rockford we drove past a guy being arrested by like six cops with two cars and a paddywagon. damn. this seems rough. then we discover that we already drove by the club and it was where dude was getting cuffed. an auspicious beginning. so we chill for a country minute and play the world series of darts: best of 5. i win 3-2. a very close series, including an almost-stunning come-from-behind victory by martron in games 3 and 4. but i was not to be denied, and also, after more games later on in the evening, i have become amazing at darts. i won one later game by a score of something like 294 to 64, with an mpr of 2.68. mpr is “marks per round,” that is, dart hits that score or close, so, man, that’s like almost all of my darts hitting every round. i am rewarded by a little graphic at the end that says “good darts.” thanks, they were.

so this dude brent plays first, and is fine. plays acoustic guitar and hasa guy along who plays a beatles-y-looking bass on a couple of tunes. and so we play and ta-da. bingo. then it’s off to the upstairs, which has really cool lighting and comfy chairs. i take a bunch of rad pictures and discover a new technique of taking a flash photo with a slow shutter speed and moving the camera around and pointing it at lights and stuff with the shutter open; this results in a crisp picture with lots of crazy crap all over it. ansel adams, i’m coming for your ass. you, too, francis wolff.

the last band has image problems. they play some pretty good songs, mostly original with one choice elvis costello cover, and sit kind of between a jam band and a regular rock band. really good players, a solid singer, but they just don’t look it. the singer is wearing a baseball hat, and a striped shirt, and if he just looked all shaggy and f’ed up, they’d sound better. i’m sorry, but that’s how it is. of course, playing ‘billie jean’—even as a joke—doesn’t help your street cred.

plus, they play for like two hours. that’s just retarded. so we wait and wait and wait and invent a new game we like to call ‘playing electronic darts and writing the results down on paper.’ then, mr. douchebag-frat-jerk-off-of-the-year runner-up informs us that since we didn’t draw anyone, he’s just going to giveus $30 for gas. sweet. and how are we supposed to draw anyone when you don’t even hang up posters and we’ve never been to rockford before? jackass. we won’t be back to this place anytime soon.

so we head for a strip down the street which holds forth the promise of various –lodges and inns of comfort, sleep, days (holi- and not), alpine, and red roofs. a mere block from this wonderland, however, the road is closed. there are police and flares and a 24 hr mcdonald’s, so that’s where we go. we sit eating cheeseburgers and watching the cops stomp out flares and move orange cones. could there be a better metaphor for tore than this?

the travelodge when we get there is nice enough. we get a deal on the room, seeing as how it’s 3 am, and pull around to load stuff in. and man, the hallway smells like nether-region-body-odor. like wet dick. fortunately, the room does not and it’s big, with a plant, which martin humps in a fit of joy. and a shower, which is great, because we didn’t get one at mark’s, so we smell like two gigs and about 1000 miles of midwestern states.

today, so far, i found frank o’hara’s collected poems at b&n (including the one i was looking for: ‘animals’) and we went to cracker barrel for the first time. my friend colin has always recommended them to me, but somehow, after 5 years of consistently not going, i found it hard to break such a streak. i shouldn’t have been worried; it’s awesome. really great breakfast meat and also crazy and kitschy crap. why can’t anyone stock hats large enough for my fat head?

like donnie darko, i can see translucent wormy appendages extending from our chests into st joseph.

kansas city, mo :: the hurricane

2005-03-10T23:50:00.000-06:00

so some pretty awesome scheduling had led us to play kansas city, then rockford, il (7 hours away), then back to st joseph (7 hours back, but half an hour from kansas city). right now, we’re on I-80 en route to rockford. woo hoo! we just finished listening to son volt’s ‘trace,’ and are moving on to pedro the lion’s ‘it’s hard to find a friend.’ as you can tell, it’s a non-stop party of party music here on the road. and i heard that I-80 was going to have wireless the whole way across. it’s not happening.

we made good time yesterday into kansas city and so we walked about a bit in the westport area. it’s super-near kansas, actually, and i upped my total of states visited to 33 since we ended up in kansas by mistake. nebraska: i’m coming for you.

we ate at a restaurant called nelle’s last night and i had a chicken fried steak. first time for that, there, and perhaps last. it wasn’t everything i wanted it to be. it mostly made me crave the crispy orange beef from shanghai café. damn. that’d be good right about now.

the hurricane was a strange venue. a very small place with a circular bar. i had picked up a copy of ‘poems retrieved’ by frank o’hara in a vain attempt to locate this poem with this ending part that’s something like “i wouldn’t want to be better or faster than that now / o you were the best of all my days.” it wasn’t in there. martin suggests ‘lunch poems,’ which i’ll look for the next time i’m in a bookstore. so what was i saying? oh, i sat and looked through the book until it gave me a headache, which reading too many poems in a row can do, and then i read brian greene’s ‘fabric of the cosmos’ until that gave me a headache from pondering the implications of a non-local universe.

there was only one other band on the bill, called in the fire, and they were good guys. mark kelly, in particular, was good enough to put us up for the night after the show. he rules. they played rocky power-pop with some funny time signatures and some pretty good hooks. we played the usual, and it went pretty well, although my vocals were really hot and i wasn’t really used to that, so i was extra self-conscious about my already not great vocal abilities. but there were drink tickets and a guy who really liked the ‘mats and they were showing ‘most extreme challenge’ on the big screen. simultaneously i wish for cable and the downfall of western civilization.

no shower this morning, but it’s cool; it’s tor, as my bro says. good coffee at a good coffee shop where they bought a copy of martin’s album to play and were helpful with directions and free internet so we could find out just how well and truly fucked we were for travel today.

who thought it was a good idea to name a franchise kum & go.?or pump & munch for that matter? you pump, i’ll munch.

here's what music critics love:

2005-03-09T20:02:00.001-06:00

hating things that other music critics love. ergo: i hate it when music critics hate on stuff other critics love. think about it.

the frames w/ mark geary :: the 400 bar :: 03.07.05

2005-03-09T13:43:00.000-06:00

in addition to this review, i just posted retroactively to march 4th some stuff about the tour that i'm currently in the eye of, so scroll on down and check it out. also, pictures from this show can be found at howwastheshow.com frames pictures.

Perhaps you’re familiar with the way that hype—real, genuine hype—builds up around a band. I don’t mean the cover of the Rolling Stone variety, but rather a more organic, almost grassroots buzz that you sometimes hear with your ear to the ground. I first heard about the Frames a few months ago in a passing conversation between my friends Bill Caperton and Martin Devaney; it was just a comment about how amazing they were, but I took note because Martin and Bill have their wheelhouses of musical taste in fairly different areas that occasionally cross, usually in the realm of excellent songwriting.

A few weeks later, I was in Roadrunner Records when I noticed a new Frames release—‘Burn the Maps’—which I promptly picked up and mentioned in passing on my blog. My friend and yours David de Young promptly filled me in on the Frames (giants in Ireland, best live show he’s ever seen, great guys) and tells me about their upcoming show at the 400. I’m so there.

And then I hear rumblings. The New York Times has a video review of their album up on their website, Salon.com’s music critic-in-chief breaks from the hipster façade to proclaim their show in NYC “one of the most purely enjoyable, uncomplicatedly gratifying rock shows [he’d] seen in a long time.” Apparently, there was fist-pumping.

So how do I, as a responsible and objective music journalist (right, finding the Loch Ness Monster would be easier than finding one of those), respond to the weight of hype that I have personally already received? Firstly, I listen to Mark Geary.

I had no clue who Geary was going into the concert, so his set was a great surprise. Armed only with a Martin guitar, some aggressive strumming, and his Irish charm, Geary won the crowd, which included some genuine and unexpected fans, calling out requests for songs like ‘Adam & Eve’ and ‘Christmas Biscuits,’ both of which he honored. I find that it’s often hard to characterize the sound of a man singing with an acoustic guitar as something other than exactly what it is, but if I had to draw parallels, I’d say David Gray’s quieter moments showed up, along with Damien Rice minus the histrionics, and a heaping helping of Gaelic-inflected stage banter. Beyond his winning songs, this was Geary’s real gift for performing; he related anecdotes about growing up with seven brothers and sisters (“My dad worked at the contraceptive factory, but he never brought his work home with him”), and recorded the crowd’s applause onto a tiny digital recorder for—according to him—replay the next morning to get him out of bed. Afterwards, I picked up his debut CD ’33 1/3 Grand Street,’ which adds drum and bass tastefully to the mix and features several lovely songs, including closer ‘Here’s to You,’ which you may want to put on repeat and make out to. Just a suggestion.

Pressed close against the stage (something I haven’t felt like doing for a long time), I awaited the Frames with a little concern. Could they live up to it? I mean, they’re just a band, right? Even if their singer was in ‘The Commitments’ (true story), the Frames were going to have to deliver and deliver big.

Taking the stage, it was confirmed that their violinst Colm MacConIomaire was not present, apparently at home with his wife and newborn child, but they did bring along a third guitarist, covered in Sharpied comments like ‘THINK!’ and ‘HELP!’. Interesting. After tiptoeing through taut opener ‘A Caution to the Birds,’, I got a taste of singer/guitarist Glen Hansard’s winning charm as he prefaced one of the best songs from their new album (‘Keepsake’) by explaining that the song is about walking out of your house in the morning, picking up the morning paper, taking a book of matches, lighting the paper on fire, throwing it into your house, closing the door, locking the door, breaking the key off in the lock, and giving the broken key to the first girl you see. As Thomas Bartlett observed on Salon.com, Glen is so humble that the overtly emotional songs never come across as whiny or melodramatic, although I’m inclined to agree with him that the Frames live show is probably better off without MacConIomaire after listening to their live CD ‘Setlist;’ I can’t put it any better than Bartlett: “String sections = good (some of the time); single violins = bad (nearly all the time).” I know that the fiddle is an integral part of Irish music, but as someone who doesn’t listen to an awful lot of Irish music, it can come across to me as just too sentimental.

Which is a real danger all the time with this band. But the miraculous thing is that they almost always avoid the pitfalls of sappiness that seem built into their songs. Any other band leading the crowd in a whistle-along would not only be disastrous, but lame, yet the Frames make it work. Hansard is a consumate frontman, and I’ve been relating his anecdotes to my friends for the past two days. From graciously deflecting song requests, to making lyric-forgetting an art-form, to quoting Jeff Buckley’s version of ‘Lilac Wine,’ Hansard makes you feel like every little bit is just for you, and this is obviously a large part of why they’re a giant success in their home country; a lot of bands low down on the totem pole act like the audience isn’t even there, and higher up, a lot of really successful acts get the audience into it, but the Frames belong at the upper echelon of bands that make going along with them a foregone conclusion. You can bet they’re just as comfortable playing to 10,000 people as they are playing to 10, and that is a wicked hard thing to do.

As for the songs themselves (that is, the bits that fell between the funny talking bits), live performance much improved the sometimes too subdued production of their new long-player. ‘Burn the Maps’ is definitely subtle and intricate, but sometimes too much for its own good, with a very brittle drum sound and overly harsh guitars, the exception being hit-single-to-be ‘Fake,’ which, oddly, live, came across as almost too rote and not nearly as powerful as some of the slower-burners like ‘Sideways Down,’ ‘Finally,’ and ‘Keepsake.’ In this way, they don’t remind me so much of U2, which is who they usually get compared to (and no, they don’t wear green hats and eat Lucky Charms, thank you very much, St Patrick’s Day), but local masters of the slow build, Love-cars. This stands in marked contrast to their earlier material, which is much simpler and direct, but certainly no less appealing. Much like Geary before them, it seems difficult to describe the Frames as anything other than what they are, which is simply an excellent rock band. Shades of the Wedding Present, perhaps a little bit of the Hunters and Collectors, but mostly a band that, especially live, is much more than the sum of its parts. If they continue on the path that’s being laid out by the New York Times and Salon and pushers like David de Young, within the next year they’ll be back and playing a much larger venue, so I greatly appreciated the opportunity to catch stadium-sized rock in a handy bar-sized container, even if it was the 400 Bar ($5 Guinness for an Irish bill! What a treat!)

Under the weight of almost unbearable expectations, the Frames delivered the goods, putting on one of the best rock shows I’ve seen in recent memory and firmly establishing them at the top of the heap so far this year. Their albums are slowly growing on me, particularly the simple charms of ‘For the Birds,’ which I’d recommend over ‘Burn the Maps’ as a place to start. On a final note, the definitive moment of the evening came for me when Hansard expressed his bewilderment over the bad reception of Kings Of Leon’s new album. See, the hype around them is not the organic variety: it’s bona fide cover of the Rolling Stone, and music critics have a nose for that stuff, even when it surrounds a genuinely good album like ‘Aha Shake Heartbreak.’ The lovely thing about Glen Hansard is that he seems immune to this kind of judgement, and it’s probably exactly that quality that lets him get away with making such heart-on-the-sleeve, lighters-aloft rock and roll without any twinge of conscience.

in re: des moines.

2005-03-08T23:31:00.000-06:00

when martin and i stopped in des moines, ia on sunday night, we played with this killer band called i can lick any sonofabitch in the house. man, they completely leveled the place. just awesome punk-southern rock in the tradition of drive-by truckers, the supersuckers, and slobberbone. the place was pretty much empty and they brought it like it was an arena. i took a ton of pictures, and they've posted some of them on their site:

photos of sonofabitch

and also, check out their site and listen to some songs on cd baby and then buy their cd:

i can lick any sonofabitch in the house website

they'll be on tour for the next several weeks with the rev horton heat, and i highly recommend checking them out if they come to your town.

rock on.

hello chicago.

2005-03-08T11:18:00.000-06:00

martin+steve
Originally uploaded by rodeojones.

so we're in the middle of tour respite right now, back in the tc for a few days and one show before martin and i head out again. i'm planning on posting some blog entries retroactively about the tour, but for right now, here's a lovely photo taken by my friend colin of us playing at the red line tap in chicago. now i have to go write a review of the frames. more soon.

chicago, il :: the red line tap

2005-03-05T19:17:00.000-06:00

so fondly we wave goodbye to the road star inn and all of that value and head to chicago, a short three-or-so hours down the road. we arrive safely at my parents' apartment building and head up to the 45th floor. it is sometime around then that we learn that martin has something of a fear of heights. but he deals and everything is great. i shower, and we go out in search of a dean markley acoustic pickup to prop up my crappy crappy fishman pickup.

first stop is the chicago music exchange which has lots and lots of fun-looking guitars that are just begging like little puppies to be played with, but we’re on a mission, and one which unfortunately will not be fulfilled here. i’ll have to remember this place when i come back in a week or so. damn. that’s soon.

reluctantly, we head to guitar center. if you’ve never been, don’t go. if you have, don’t go back. it’s like the microsoft/starbucks/electronic arts of musical equipment. lots of metal being played, almost no service going on. we’re greeted with a “how ya living?” and of course, the answer is large and we get the pickup and we’re out of there as fast as we can manage. martin’s itching to get his hands on a fantasy baseball magazine so we stop at b&n (like, the guitar center of bookstores) and then head up to meet hobby.

the awesome news is: hobby lives in a rectory. rectum? i nearly killed him! seriously, though, his apartment is sweet, but sweet in the way that the stanky lounge in the house i lived in junior year of college was sweet. like the way athlete’s foot smells kind of sweet. a lovely place, but it could use some work. for the ladies, i mean.

martin, hobby, hobby’s roomie sean, and i head to the edgewater lounge, located in the historic, um, somewhere neighborhood of chicago, where we have excellent burgers. one thing i really appreciate about chicago is bars that have good beer lists. in the tc, it’s more like, “we have premo AND old style.” don’t get me wrong: i love you premium.

aftewards we head to the red line tap in historic rogers park (got it this time!), unload the stuff, and then i spend two weeks finding a parking space, only to get back to the bar to find that there’s a parking lot. which is actually farther away than i ended up parking. i win!

the bar is nice and not too big and everything seems on-point for the evening. we go on second, my parents come out, my friend colin and his girlfriend lindsay come out, and rail drinks and tap beer are $2. the first band plays, and they’re all right; solo acoustic stuff and then they’re joined by a bassist, another acoustic guitarist, and a hand drummer. let me tell you: ‘the bends’ by radiohead doesn’t need a djembe. it just doesn’t. that goes double for ‘ziggy stardust.’

and then, suddenly, they’re done and two jamoolies are setting up! wtf? apparently, they’re buddies of the first band, and i’m not one to judge people prematurely, but before they’ve even struck a note, i hate their guts. they take twenty (20) minutes to set up (for a duo!) and then proceed to play the most flaccid, crappy sensitive male folk rock i’ve heard in a long time. and they don’t even look they’re having fun. but martin and i are having fun forming a new band: we’re going to contact bands like this and have them send us their instrumental demos. then, we write lyrics about elves and mist and treasure to be sung operatically over the tracks. the band is called “in shadows, the wizards…” the dot dot dot is very important. additionally we find a flyer for a band called heavy matters whose best press quote they could pull is “definitely impressive.” this is some priceless shit.

so we drink, and drink, and play, and the playing is alright, despite my dean markley pickup not living up to its end of the bargain, and my idiocy leading to the baritone guitar going through the p.a., and we have a particularly fun time with ‘empty moon’ and ‘lost highway,’ the hank williams tune. luke zim and his zimmermen follow us up and sound a lot better than last night. hobby is smart enough not to mic the drums or the bass. why is it that sound guys feel like they have to mic every damn thing in a room no bigger than my apartment? justifying their existence? feelings of inadequacy? let’s just agree that you’re more well-endowed than me and you can let me just turn my amp up, k?

so late-night drinking follows before-late-night-drinking and much bitching is had about women and music (although i’ve got nothing to complain about) and eventually we head back to the parents’ apartment, where we fall asleep (nb: in separate beds), the sears tower watching over us.

appleton, wi :: tom's garage

2005-03-04T22:40:00.000-06:00

so after the hellish five-hourish drive that is getting to appleton, martin and i stumble around blindly looking for franklin st. in classic man fashion, as we begin to get into the outskirts of town on rte 41, i ask martin what exit to take of the next six which are for appleton. “well,” he says, “probably not the first. and probably not the last.” sounds good to me, and college ave sounds even better. that’s gotta go downtown, right?

it does, and so we hope we’ll cross franklin st, where the club is located. but we don’t. and so we pay a visit to the y, where they give us the goods on this “franklin st” and we get over there no problem. it’s good to be a man; somehow it feels like a victory for the pioneer spirit, despite asking for directions. take that, donner party.

the venue is a sports bar. which means: crappy for playing at, good for hanging out at beforehand. there are darts, and ping pong, and nba basketball on a screen that makes shaq look like godzilla. i mean, MORE like godzilla. plus, there’s a buyout for some delicious pizza which we get delivered and a tab at the bar. as we order the pizza, we have no idea of the value it will provide over the next several days, but let me tell you, a large pizza goes a long way. especially when it comes with breadsticks. thanks muncheez!

in classic devaney fashion, we haven’t actually rehearsed. at all. so we run through the set backstage and await the arrival of luke zimmerman and the luke zimmermans (aka andy on drums and joel on bass) who will be playing with us for the next several nights. upon arrival, they setup mad fast and deliver a solid setof acoustic folk-rock-songwriting stuff. joel’s strap breaks and he ties it together like a champ. that’s heart.

so there’s nobody there, but they seem to enjoy luke’s stuff and martin and i take the stage, at which point, my gibson’s acoustic pickup shits the bed. it will go on to shit the bed every night from now on, no matter what i try. i’m taking the ibanez out next week. say what you want, but the japanese know how to make things that involve soldering.

set is kinda crap, but fun, and singing harmony is so much fun. i’m sorry to have missed out on it all these years. post-the show, we have to figure out where we’re sleeping, and it better be cheap, because the deal was 100% after $150 at the door and they made $140. piss. luke and the boys are set up at the road star inn and so that’s where we go. and get $5 off. thanks AAA! we’re intent on maximum value from this room, so despite the lack of heat, we make the best of it. we use the microwave, the fridge, sit in all the chairs, take the guest towel, two bars of soap, and leave the heat lamp on all night. that last one probably wasn’t a good idea. road star, if you’re reading this, we love you. but we love value more.

it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me, and i’m feeling good.

on the road again.

2005-03-04T00:57:00.000-06:00

tomorrow i'm heading out with my good friend and yours, martin devaney, for a short tour in two acts. tomorrow we hit up appleton, wi, then chicago, il the next day, then des moines, ia. we return to the twin cities for a show at the turf on tuesday, and then out on the road again, and i can't quite remember where. i'll keep this updated from the road, probably in chicago, since we'll be rooming chez les parents. which is french for chez my parents.

in the mean time, i highly recommend you check out the new mars volta cd frances the mute. it's not everyone's cup of tea, for sure, and i don't even exactly know why it's mine, except that i loved at the drive-in and really like the direction that cedric and omar have taken their stuff. it's some over-the-top, wigged-out prog rock. i've been trying to put my finger on why i think this band succeeds where so many others have failed. firstly, i think that their energy cannot be overlooked. this is not some music made by musos that's harder for them to play than for us to listen to; this stuff is visceral, and a large part of why that is comes from the multicultural background of the band. these aren't just straight rock rhythms they're playing; their drummer played in golden, a dc outfit in the style of fela kuti, and there are some seriously complex polyrhythms that would make it danceable if it weren't so darn hard to find the one. a lot of the lyrics this time around are in spanish, tipping the hat to omar and cedric's heritage. they're a band that can take themselves so seriously, and yet not sound hyper-intellectual, part of which comes from the very free-associative nature of the lyrics. this is a dense record, and i haven't even gotten a chance to listen all the way through, but i can say confidently that there are layers, and that's part of the enjoyment with the mars volta: picking all that apart. discovering the structure of each song brings meaning, and repeats and choruses and bridges set up expectations that are sometimes rewarded, sometime thwarted and they're very deliberate about it. if you liked at the drive-in but somehow slept on them until now, get this. if you like ta det lungt or even know who that is, check this. not recommended for fans of franz ferdinand.

also, listen to more muddy waters. it does a body good.

clem snide is back on top.

2005-02-25T14:48:00.000-06:00

i love clem snide, and i even loved them when they released soft spot, which sucked. really. i know eef was going for something with that record: tired of all the irony and smartassedness (can i say that on the internet—smartassedness?) of their early recordings, he set about making a love album because he had become a father. and there were some really great songs on that disc; they just happened to be squashed by boring production. one thing that has always plagued clem snide is that their albums have never captured the raucousness of their live shows.

and this new album—end of love—is not going to change that, but let me say it's a great album. soncially, it's closest relative is their spinart debut your favorite music which is still one of my favorite albums. eef is still holding his spleen in a little on this one, but it's a strength here, rather than a watering down. if you haven't heard clem snide, they're pretty hard to describe. the lyrics have a kinship to leonard cohen and the beat writers: abstract, and hip, but with feeling. instrumentation has acoustic guitars as a base, but the additions can be banjos or feedback. current wilco is not an unfair comaprison. although they're more country than wilco is now and less groovy.

so anyways, if you haven't heard them, i'd start with your favorite music but if you were scared off by soft spot, come on back to the fold.

and they're playing the 400 bar here on march 12, at which time, regrettably, i'll be on tour with martin devaney. damn you, devaney!

today is a great day.

kiss me like a drug

2005-02-18T13:26:00.001-06:00

let's talk about aimee mann. such a sick, sick songwriter. here:

so baby kiss me like a drug, like a respirator
and let me fall into the dream of the astronaut
where i get lost in space that goes on forever
and you make all the rest just an afterthought
and i'll believe it's you who could make it better
though it's not.

that's the last verse from 'it's not' from her great album lost in space. what you can't hear, obviously, is the icy way she delivers this verse, which is what really propels her work above and beyond good. this same stuff sung in an overwrought way could be unbearable, but it's almost like she doesn't care. that final line is delivered so offhandedly and in such a jaded, though not bitter, and wisened way it kills. the song as whole isn't too much more than a look at that nadir in the cycle we go through from giving ourselves up to someone else only to get hurt, to healing, to doing it again, and that isn't revolutionary, but look at the way she draws the metaphor out: using the respirator imagery already makes it seem desperate, attached to the thing that gives you life, but it could be in a hospital or scuba diving, but here it's an astronaut's respirator and the image of an astronaut floating through empty space with nothing except a tank of oxygen evokes so well that feeling of suddenly realizing how exposed you are in a relationship that you've invested so much in. and after all that elaborate setup to show us that delusion of feeling like this one other person can make everything all right in your life, she simply tells us that it's just that, a delusion.

sometimes, this song gives me a stomachache.

speaking of which, are there any other words where "ach" appears twice back to back? looking at that word makes me want to pronounce it "sto-ma-CHA-chi." actually if anyone can tell me about any other words in english where the same three-letter sequence appears consecutively, especially if they represent different phonemes, let me know.

P.O.S. at the Tsunami Benefit Show 02.13.05

2005-02-14T15:14:00.000-06:00

P.O.S. at the Tsunami Benefit Show 02.13.05
Originally uploaded by rodeojones.

sunday night, heiruspecs and the olympic hopefuls hosted a fabulous benefit show for tsunami relief efforts. during sims' set, p.o.s. got up and right away went into an a capella that had everybody paying attention. here's the proof. my comprehensive review should be up at howwastheshow.com soon. and if you click on the photo there on the right, you can see a big version on flickr, and there are more photos from the show up there which can be found on the upper right, i think. maybe.

an apology

2005-02-12T09:06:00.000-06:00

i would like to publicly apologize to sandusks and all those at radio k for saying that they didn't have online listening capability. they totally do! i'm just a moron. it's up at the upper left-hand corner of their homepage, which is, once again:

radio k

you know, i was just looking at the page before and didn't see the big LISTEN NOW! up in the corner. maybe you should have it on a regular menu too? it just looks like part of the logo. that's no excuse however, and i'm falling on my sword here. radio k is the shizz-nit, and y'all should listen to it. they work real real hard and put on some great shows, too. this weekend alone they've already sponsored last nights ashtray hearts/martin devaney and friends show at the entry and tonight is the cardinal sin/ela/passions/the acoustic godzilla at the entry and tomorrow is olympic hopefuls/heiruspecs/sims/passions at the trip rock. that last one is a tsunami benefit show and all the proceeds ($8 at the door) go to tsunami relief. so go to all these shows and give dusks a hug in her bigass coat. she brings the rock. and she calls me at 1:45 am to point out mistakes in my blog.

going back to cali

2005-02-09T15:20:00.000-06:00

hey. remember when i went off about the plethora of songs called and/or about california? well, i made a mix:

los angeles, i'm yours :: the decemberists :: her majesty
california :: low :: the great destroyer
california :: mason jennings :: s/t
why you'd want to live here :: death cab for cutie :: the photo album
california :: phantom planet :: the guest
california :: quasi :: featuring "birds"
california stars :: wilco/billy bragg :: mermaid ave vol. 1
california :: rufus wainwright :: poses
no peace los angeles :: mike doughty :: skittish
california :: jay farrar :: terroir blues
los angeles :: atmosphere :: seven's travels
goodbye california :: jolie holland :: escondida
california one/youth and beauty brigade :: the decemberists :: castaways and cutouts

it's interesting how the songs basically fall into one of two camps: california as the promised land v. california (specifically l.a.) as a shallow and terrible place. or some kind of mix of the two, like 'los angeles, i'm yours.' i can't think of any place that so embodies the hopes and fears of a nation. aside from hartford, ct, i mean.

dear metal fingers ...

2005-02-07T20:35:00.000-06:00

okay, i'm sorry. back two months ago i said that mf doom's mm ... food wasn't so great. it is. like most things about this fab mc, it takes a while to appreciate what he's doing, and i should've known better than to be impatient with one half of the team that made my number one album of 2004. 'potholderz' has one of the best backing tracks i've heard in a hip hop song recently. fretless bass is where it's at. plus:

he do it for the smelly hubbies
mc's know what time it is like it's time for teletubbies
few could do it; even fewer could sell it
take it from the dude who wear a mask
like a 'tarded helmet.

so again, doom: i'm sorry for doubting you.

also, friends: check out the frames cd burn the maps. that is, if'n you like some awesome indie rock. they cover an awful lot of ground, at times sounding like david gedge of the wedding present and cinerama fronting some kind of combination of interpol and pavement. yeah. like that. best songs so far 'fake' and 'underglass.' but they're all good, and apparently they're one of damien rice's favorite bands. and that guy wrote 'the blower's daughter,' so there you go. a nicely designed cd as well, for those of you who care about such things.

also purchased today: m83's new one (can't remember what it's called) and also devandra barnhart's oh me oh my on the rec of my ex-roommate/bff/absent-minded professor colin. i haven't jumped on the devandra bandwagon yet, but i heard a song of his on 89.3 today and liked it. so.

i really will buy just about anything. just tell me to and i will.

you're listening to 89.3 the current.

2005-02-06T11:53:00.000-06:00

and when i say you, i mean everybe-fucking-one i've talked to over the past two weeks. if you're reading this from somewhere else, minnesota public radio just launched a third station here in the twin cities which features what i can only describe as a genre previously unknown to fm radio: "good" music. they play a lot of old stuff, like blues and jazz and also current indie rock and old country and lots of local artists but part of the beauty is that they mix it up all the time, which is wonderful to see. it's kind of like the college radio station you wish you had. all that freedom at college radio is great, but it often results in two straight hours of music you wouldn't ever want to listen to. that doesn't happen on the current; much like the weather everywhere, apparently, if you don't like it, wait three minutes and it'll change.

don't get me wrong, i love what radio k does. people seem to think that radio k and the current are now squaring off against one another, with radio k feeling like the current is just a watered down version of what they do and that they're just going to end up getting crushed because 89.3 can broadcast at night, which k cannot since they're an am station. plus, the newcomer has the backing of the best-funded public radio network in the country. well, i hope radio k doesn't go away for one because it's an institution and because you also need people to put together entire shows of music that you might like or not like. sometimes not liking is just as important as liking.

but if i need to flip on the radio for a short drive, i'm much more likely to flip on the current. it's just good stuff, and sure, they're not going to play everything you like, but if they did, no one else would like it, you hipster. anyways, listen to them both. you can find 89.3 online for your listening pleasure at:

minnesota public radio

and check out radio k at:

radio k

they don't have any online listening capability, but they're a really great place for sponsoring events and putting out the stuck on am series of cd's and also for being where sarah sandusky works.

top ten 2004 final.

2005-02-01T09:39:00.000-06:00

all right. i posted my top ten of 2004 as it stood back in november, but now it's time to make the final decisions, and a couple of things have changed since then so here's the list:

1. madvillain :: madvillainy
2. p.o.s. :: ipecac neat
3. the arcade fire :: funeral
4. maritime :: glass floor
5. a.c. newman :: the slow wonder
6. pinback :: summer in abaddon
7. s :: puking and crying
8. the velvet teen :: elysium
9. ela :: stapled to air
10. ted leo/pharmacists :: shake the sheets

if anybody out there is as dorky as me, post a top ten here if you want. i'm always interested to see what other people have been listening to.

i really can't say enough good stuff about the s album. s is basically jenn ghetto from carissa's weird and she has one of the most beguiling voices i've heard in quite a while. i was basically sold on this album from the moment i listened to the first track in reckless records in chicago but the whole thing is great. shades of electronica, but also indie rock. some aspects not unlike the postal service, but not as techno. her voice sounds a little like bjork's at times and the general feel is downtempo. like a less precious mazzy star with laptops. kind of. anyways, it's worth picking up.

quote of the day

2005-01-27T14:13:00.000-06:00

from a review on salon.com of former new jersey governor christine todd whitman's new book:

"Bush's narrow victory in November completed the Republican Party's transformation from a vehicle for principled conservatives into a debt-fueled pimpmobile for crony capitalists and religious hucksters."

it's a quote that gets at the heart of one of my major problems with the administration. there was a time when i disagreed with the way that conservatives viewed the world, but at least felt that we were looking at the same world. the current group in power just seem completely insane to me. i mean, conservatives are supposed to be fiscally responsible, right? so let's continue to lavish money on the rich from tax cuts while at the same time running up a huge deficit over the "terror war." so many planks of what i thought were the conservative platform have been thrown out by dubya and his ilk that it doesn't even resemble what i thought the party stood for. i used to disagree with conservatives because i thought they were wrong, but now i don't even know what they're talking about.

okay. wow.

2005-01-25T10:16:00.000-06:00

i'm on the third song of low's new album, the great destroyer, and wow. this is a bit of a departure. i can't pretend i'm a huge low fan (well, i suppose i could, pretend i'm a low fan), but i've listened to them intermittently and have caught the black-eyed snakes in concert, and this is a lot closer to black-eyed snakes than most low i've heard. me likey. it's a thunderous clamor of an album, especially balanced off against their previous work, and i think it would be clamorous even if they weren't a band that had been so fixated on being as quiet and subtle as possible for so many years. i really liked the second track ('california') and now i'm into number four. i wonder if you could get a whole cd's worth of songs called 'california' together? well, let's see: we've got such songs by low, unified theory, lenny kravitz, joni mitchell, local guys semisonic, other local guy mason jennings, robert bradley's blackwater surprise, rufus wainwright, jay farrar, phantom planet, copeland, and oh about a brazilian others including that band that spike jonze did the video for with the guy on fire. remember that? can't remember that band. dave? help? and aside from that song with the video with the guy on fire, they're all pretty good songs. and we haven't even opened it up to songs with california in the title, like 'california dreaming.' i'm now on track five, called 'just stand back, and it's my favorite since track two. which was called 'california,' in case you've forgotten.

maybe i should write a song called 'california.'

george bush scares the living crap out of me.

2005-01-20T11:25:00.000-06:00

he does. did you listen to his inaugural address today? you can call colonialism freedom, but it's still colonialism. all his promises to bring freedom to the dark corners of the world? why not just say dark peoples? and my favorite line had to be: "the key to self-government is the governing of the self." wow. that's right up there with ask not what your country can do for you, ain't it? and the awkward pauses when he finished another bland statement before people realized they were supposed to applaud were great. goddamn four more years. here's the stat of the day for you, courtesy of salon:

$40 million: Cost of Bush inaugural ball festivities, not counting security costs.

22 million: Number of children in regions devastated by the tsunami who could have received vaccinations and preventive health care with the amount of money spent on the inauguration.

26,000: Number of Kevlar vests for U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan that could be purchased for $40 million.

this is truly terrible.

2005-01-16T11:31:00.000-06:00

okay, my buddy david deyoung posted this on his blog at howwastheshow but in case mine is the only blog you read (aw shucks) you should really check this out. nickelback is now officially the worst band EVER. these are back-to-back singles off of their album, helpfully panned left and right by a innovative soul to show how exactly these songs match up. good god. someone shoot them now:

see how nickelback sucks

adventures in everyday life.

2005-01-13T11:27:00.000-06:00

so last night my friend sarah asked me if my blog was about my adventures in my everyday life, which it's not, except for today. right now i'm at one of my favorite coffee shops in the twin cities, anodyne, having just enjoyed an eggspresso, which, let me tell you, is the shizznit. they put an egg into a soup cup and them steam it with the little steamy thing on the espresso machine (a separate one from the espresso-making one, if you're listening health dept) and add cheese and salsa and some fabulous toast on the side. consume and enjoy. plus, they have the best coffee. i often work at urban bean because it's very close to my house, but change is good.

so: often in my daily routine i bore people with discussions about typography. if i've done this to you, but haven't spoken to you recently, go here:

talk like steve

and you can relive the glory days.

i'm listening to my morning jacket's it still moves which has been woefully underlistened to by me since i got it. but i'm trying to make up for lost time here and now, after a conversation with the aforementioned sandusks on the greatness of mmj. hmm ... that's kind of like mmw (medeski, martin, and wood). are there other mmx bands where x=a letter of the alphabet that's not w or j?

i'm reading kavalier and clay, which is pretty much as great as everyone says it is. i'm not that far into it yet, but i'm enjoying it immensely; it reminds me of jonathan lethem a bunch, what with the comic-based content. when did comics become the new black? it's, like, the hippest thing out there right now. i'm telling you, it's the next grunge. or the next whatever that came after grunge that i had my head in the sand for.

i'll see you in a magazine...

2005-01-11T13:11:00.000-06:00

hey yo. i made a magazine this past semester about minneapolis living, and now it's available online for your perusal.

picaresque

check it. nice.

atmosphere + band.

2005-01-10T01:52:00.000-06:00

so, i just came from the entry and one of atmosphere's seven (now eight) shows to celebrate the reissuing of headshots. and i have a lot of mixed feelings about the new atmosphere, complete with band. here are some of those things: slug's an amazing performer and a motherfucking charisma machine. he just knows how to hold a stage and relate to just about every person in the room. it's a gift, really, and it's always great to see him play. now in re: the band: i've played with atmosphere twice and seen them once, so that means i've never seen a show with dibbs and have only seen him with a band. so sometimes live hip-hop makes me wonder.

to me, something essential about the process of creating a hip-hop track out of samples involves the way producers will find some little tiny quirk of a bass part or a drum part and magnify and create a whole song out of it. what's beautiful about hip-hop is what's fucked up about everything else, and when a live band plays it (usually) all those rough edges get ironed out. see: the piano part in 'fuck you lucy,' the little drum hiccup in 'woman with the tatooed hands,' and those are the things that i really like about atmosphere's music. i definitely appreciate the way that the band hasn't just tried to emulate the records and has expanded the arrangements. the new version of 'trying to find a balance' was great; they tacked on a double-time punk rave-up at the end that was fantastic. but on pretty much the exact same hand, i thought that a song like 'shrapnel' really gets its power from the restraint of the music set against slug's lyrics, and when you add distorted guitar, it's just a little too much hitting over the head.

the new stuff that they played was the strongest i thought, and i'm willing to bet that this stand at the entry will turn them into a crack unit, it just makes me wonder about hip-hop generally. there's a strange relationship between the music and the lyrics in hip-hop because far more than any other kind of music, the two are independent of each other. the mc relies on a beat, and the decoration dropped on top of it can be shifted dramatically. so do you shift in when you have a band? to me, i like live hip-hop that attempts to replicate the truncated, chopped up beauty of sampled hip-hop to an almost insane degree (cf. the roots, although not as much recently) but i think it can be equally valid to go the other direction and try to truly make hip-hop with a live band. i guess i think this is most successful when something about the lyrics connects more directly to the music (cf again, the roots on 'the seed 2.0') and maybe that's why i found the new stuff to be the most successful.

all right, all this is hurting my brain too late in the evening. go listen to p.o.s.

new mix.

2005-01-05T17:44:00.000-06:00

okay, it's been a minute since i've written anything so i'm hereby posting a new mix hat i just cooked up on the old itunes for adventures in 2005. oh and happy new year, by the way.

the velvet teen :: counting backwards
the postal service :: the district sleeps alone
spoon :: anticipation
pinback :: penelope
big star :: thirteen
the hang ups :: maroon
clem snide :: sweet mother russia
the verve :: sonnet
s (jenn ghetto from carissa's wierd) :: falling
a.c. newman :: miracle drug
the arcade fire :: rebellion (lies)
askeleton :: birdman
bloc party :: banquet
crosby, stills, nash & young :: helpless
the la's :: i can't sleep
hound dog taylor :: give me back my wig
mike doughty :: no peace los angeles

i'll think of something else to write later.

gigposters.com

2004-12-28T21:07:00.000-06:00

hey all, if you like gig posters, then you should go to this site:

gigposters.com

people submit and sell posters for shows, and there are a whole lot of great screenprinted and other types of posters up there, including a couple by your truly. here are those:

missing numbers release show

martin devaney release show

gig posters are a lost art. okay, maybe not lost, but at least wicked cool, and you should give the people who make these some love.

in other news: neko case rules. this just in: big star's third/sister lovers is an extra fine druggy break-up album. i'd start with #1/radio city, but third is a nice next step to take. although you could also go pick up a.c. newman's slow wonder, which is in much the same vein and has one of the best singles i've heard recently, "miracle drug."

tomorrow: back to the twin cities.

the life aquatic.

2004-12-25T16:37:00.000-06:00

okay, i just saw this movie, and i thought it was pretty damn good. not as good as rushmore, but maybe as good as tennenbaums. i'd need to see it again. if you like wes anderson, i think you'll like this movie. but here's what i really want to talk about. i've read a couple of the negative reviews of this film on movies.com and i think they're completely asinine. they seem to think this movie is somehow "ironic" and "hip" and that that's its biggest failing. i think these reviewers are completely out of their gourds on this one, and i understand that as mainstream reviewers, they need to speak to their audience, but it shows a lack of understanding about the state of narrative. i think anderson has a huge heart personally. here's an excerpt from david foster wallace's infinite jest that speaks to this, i think:

It’s of some interest that the lively arts of the millenial USA treat anhedonia and internal emptiness as hip and cool. It’s maybe the vestiges of the Romantic glorification of Weltschmerz, which means wolrld-weariness or hip ennui. Maybe it’s the fact that most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip — and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It’s more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendent horror is loneliness, excluded engagement in the self. Once we’ve hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit to be part-of not to be Alone, we young. The US arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it’s stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naivete. Sentiment equals naivete on this continent.

and see, i think wes anderson is aware of this, not consumed by it. wallace—in his writing—is always dealing with the fact that this is the way it is, and the way to change it is not through a straight return to sentimentality and traditional storytelling. he sees that you have to push through this anhedonia and hip ennui to get to the heart of what's going on. you know, you want hip ennui, look at napoleon dynamite, which i loved, personally, but i didn't think it had the kind of resonance that anderson imbues his movies with. see, there is a kind of emptiness to anderson's films; there a lost sons looking for fathers, there are fathers who are dealing with mid-life questions of worth. and turning that into a mush of sentimentality does the situation no favors. i don't want to give away the turning moment of the film, but it's very small and very subtle and very moving i think, and all the more so because you've gone through that coldness. sure, the movie had its share of faults, but i think it's a mistake to think that it's a movie that's overly concerned with being hip. i think anderson is working with the vocabluary of post-modern writers and filmmakers and trying to make something that can connect with an audience that has an appreciation of the modern condition of storytelling.

merry x-mas.

2004-12-24T21:24:00.000-06:00

yeah, kids. i'm chilling it out in chicago at the parents place, peeping the sears tower out the window with the packers and the vikes on tivo. don't tell me how it ends. drove down in my dad's new accord, which couldn't support my ipod, but we had a nice time listening to a.c. newman (from the new pornographers, his solo cd's awesome), mike doughty, the mountain goats (all hail west texas: this is their best album for sure), jay-z, broken social scene, guided by voices (they need to make last albums more often; half-smiles of the decomposed is awesome), the decemberists, and, nope, that's it. the vikings need defense. i'm using my new ibook and the space bar doesn't work so hot. i think i'm shutting it down now to fix it. so merry, y'all.

boards of canada

2004-12-23T16:57:00.000-06:00

get off yer ass and start listening to boards of canada's first album music has the right to children. go. now. i admit i'm not a huge electronic music fan, but it's the only electronic album to have permanent residence on my top ten of all time list.

the album is so multi-layered and rewarding. i've owned it for well on five years now, and i still hear new stuff on it. it reminds me of aphex twin in terms of tone, but to me, it's a little more welcoming and rewarding, not quite so stark and hit or miss. for a long time, i wanted to make a movie that could be played along with the cd for a rewarding multi-media experience. i'm thinking of old seventies footage of kids playing in sun-dappled yards mixed with industrial parks. the music has a charming innocence which is always kind of at odds with this darkness below the surface. like sesame street on heroin. but in a good way. it's probably on sale right now. buy it.

playing in paris

2004-12-22T19:15:00.000-06:00

hey kids. i just got some hot footage of one of the shows i played in paris. i'm on the left for most of the clip. this chick estelle goldfarb who's playing the violin on this is awesome. anyways, check it out for your bad selves:

hoodios chez paris

new computer

2004-12-22T01:25:00.000-06:00

so, please to introduce my new computer: the lappy g4. it's sleek and slimline and only 12" big, which is hot. i mean solid. i mean huge. woke up this morning (that was really the best part), got up, went out, and came home to find a fedex waybill on my door, informing me my computer would be delivered tomorrow. that sucked. so i went upstairs to check the tracking number and find out if i could pick it up, which i didn't figure out, but consoled myself with the knowledge that it would be here tomorrow. lo and behold, though, when i went out again, i spied a fedex truck. so i forced him off the road and got my computer. my condolences to his children.

really, though, it's the hot ish. and apparently, my downstairs neighbor has wireless internet. it only gets hotter.

so yeah, so sweet. anybody who read this: go see my brother's band heiruspecs at the triple rock here in msp on thursday night. it's x-mas eve eve and they wil be dropping it as if it were hot.

also, music related: have you heard the decemberists? you really should. i've been listening to 'castaways & cutouts' and it's just fantastic. i saw them at the 400 bar here in june (i think?) and it was one of the best shows i've seen recently. their songs are so literate and clever and non-standard. and it ain't all pirates, despite what you've heard. recommended for fans of just good goddamned songwriting.

martin devaney w/ big ditch road + dana thompson 12.17.04

2004-12-18T13:49:00.000-06:00

It’s Friday, kids, and my first time back at the Entry since it re-opened. Aside from slightly better-mannered staff and slightly higher drink prices, everything’s pretty much the same. You know, vigilante cops looking for the drug masterminds who killed their partners and/or wives, awkward preteens blossoming into elegant swans when the jock squad bets the captain of the football team he can’t play Pygmalion to her Galatea, mismatched college friends on the road trip of their lives. The point being, this isn’t going to be a night of mind-expanding music and boundary-breaking, but what the hell’s wrong with that? Exactly; nothing.

Downstairs before the show, the cast gathers (Darrin, Brian, Amy, Ted, and Tim from BDR, Martin and Kevin from Martin’s band) and the discussion meanders to the possible doping of the beer supply at the Entry (howwastheshow.com is breaking this story FIRST!), terrible broken bones suffered both while drunk and sober, on snowboards and not, and to Chris Riemenschneidr’s recent article about alt. country. Given the lineup tonight, it seems almost inevitable that we’d get to this. I haven’t actually gotten to read the article yet, but the consensus seems to be that Riemenschneider’s just trying to pick a fight. Sure, alt. country has its limitations, and just about anything can become trite, but tonight’s show pointed out just how comforting convention can be.

I mean, let’s face it: Big Ditch Road is not going to be making a sprawling, Pink Floyd-esque concept album anytime too soon (unless they’re keeping it a secret), and I wouldn’t want them to (okay, maybe a little). BDR play good old-fashioned, home-brewed, German hops-inflected rock and country and when you’re driving home from the club after the show, having gotten the cold shoulder from every girl you approached, a little tipsy, a little bleary-eyed, you’re not going to listen to the Mars Volta; you’re going to listen to BDR’s paeans to heartbreak and minimum wage living. Sure, the music’s kind of a downer, but new memebers Amy (bass/vocals), Ted (guitar/vocals), and Tim (drums) have injected enough energy into the lineup to make the shows rock and it’s all the better for that. Plus, the harmony vocals sound great, as do Ted’s tastefully girtty fills. A large amount of the material covered will be making an appearance on their next album, currently in the works at Mark Stockert’s studio.

Dana Thompson took the stage with a largely non-electric lineup, Bob McCreedy playing acoustic for this show, and she delievered a sweet set of that hi-fi lonesome sound. As someone next to me observed, Thompson has one of the most underrated voices of any of the current crop of Twin Cities singer/songwriters, but I doubt it can stay that way for long. Hers is the kind of voice that you want to hear last thing before you fall asleep, singing a soft lullaby right into your ear. I haven’t gotten the chance to check out her disc yet, so I was unfamiliar with most of the songs, but they were compact, lovely, and heartfelt. And some nights, that’s just about what you want to hear.

Last up in the headliner’s slot came Martin Devaney, who I think has always come across better live than on disc. As Riemenschneider pointed out in his review of Devaney’s latest (‘La Mancha’), singing isn’t exactly his strong suit, and he himself will admit as much, but under the hot lights and after a few beers, forced to sing at the edge of his range, Devaney’s voice has a ragged glory about it that admits its shortcomings and goes ahead anyways. Most of the songs from the night’s set came from his newest disc, but there were a couple choice older numbers thrown in, including “Impressions” from his ‘September’ album. Brian from BDR came up on a few songs to contribute some understated pedal steel and some guy who’ll remain nameless sang harmony on a couple numbers. That inclusive vibe is one of the great things about a Martin Devaney show; Devaney’s albums are good and all that, but if that’s the only way you’ve experienced him, you need to get on out for a sloppy good time at one of his shows. Anything goes and often does, and it usually feels more like a slapdash get-together than a production.

And that’s the lesson of tonight’s show. It’s easy to sit back in your home or office and look at trends, listen to CD’s, and extrapolate ideas about said trends and CD’s, but often, music can just be a good excuse to go out, see your friends, drink a little bit, and have a good time. It doesn’t always have to be rocket surgery.

je m'a retournu de paris

2004-12-15T12:25:00.000-06:00

steve and abe.
Originally uploaded by rodeojones.

well, kids, i'm just back from paris and playing a few shows with hip hop hoodios. i took copious notes, some of which will be appearing here in the near future, but for now, just dropping a photo on you of guitarist/hack rapper/bad dancer abraham velez and i hanging out on a bridge with a nice view of la tour eiffel. there are a bunch more pictures on flickr.com, so follow this link if you want to see the rest.

tour highlights: beatboxing on radio nova, reading dedicated live requests for fuse tv in the streets of paris, getting crepes with ham, egg, and cheese across from st-germain-des-pres, and invading a chinese restaurant with 17 people at 11 pm after the show on sunday.

from paris

2004-12-12T13:48:00.000-06:00

make a wish. last night, played at la scene de la bastille. a fairly ragtag show, but the musicians were all good enough to make it a fun evening. abe and i went after for drinks at café des anges. talked about girls and music. what else is there? this morning: interview and reading dedicated live requests for moira from fuse tv. a lot of fun. oh, and i beatboxed last night on radio nova. i’ll have to add that to the resume.

currently: at café de la danse. just finished soundcheck. estelle goldfarb currently soundchecking. the contraption for adjusting the lights makes me fear for mr. lighting man’s life.

paris is, as it always seems to be, grey and cold. i’m digging it the most i’ve ever dug it, though. when i was hear last: eight months into a relationship, 22, crazy, scared. speaking a lot of french this time. it’s nice. i would like to live abroad, although not in paris, i don’t think.

this is a really good sounding venue. jessy should hear estelle. she really kicks ass. what is it with french (or belgian, in this case) women? she looks great w/o makeup and also great w/, but in a totally different way. classy.

lighting is an underappreciated aspect of live performance.

i’ve had some nice time to wander around paris by myself, which is one thing i missed out on in st. petersburg.

a half-assed review of one and a half bands and their asses at the turf club

2004-12-05T11:48:00.000-06:00

so my plan last night was to go to the turf and catch moon maan (former afghan whigs guitarist rick mccollum's new band), food team (former 12rods impresario ryan olcott's new band), and the spectacle that is mark mallman. and the evening started nicely enough with a plan to watch a movie at heiruspecs drummer peter leggett's house. present for the movie: jake money, twinkie, pietro, and myself. and man, we watched this totally f'ed up movie from japan called 'suicide club.' have you seen it? don't. it starts eerily enough with 54 schoolgirls simultaneously jumping in front of a train to kill themselves and it looked promising at that point, but then, partway through, there's suddenly a music video sung by some kind of japanese cross between david bowie and frank n furter while his henchmen rape and murder women tied up in bedsheets. yeah. my thoughts exactly. after that, we proceeded to the groveland tap and meet up with bill caperton for some fantastic wings and road dawg discussions, still with the intent of getting to the turf on time. then, see, we went back to bill's place, stopped at sharett's on the way, and then played poker and drank whiskey, beer, and vodka. not all at the same time. several confusing rounds of texas hold 'em and slightly less confusing rounds of five-card draw later, we're joined by skoro and lynn. apparently, skoro and my brother are on a date tonight, and sean's a little dismayed to see that rob brought lynn, but it's all good. elvis costello is discussed, television (the band, not the appliance) is listened to and eventually we make it out the door to pile into the skoro-mobile and head to the turf. of course, when we get there, food team has already gone on, which we're kind of ripshit about and moon maan is on stage.

the first thing that strikes me about the band is that this is the guy who played slide on 'crazy,' one of my favorite afghan whigs songs and certainly one of my favorite slide guitar performances ever. the slide guitar playing is truly great and moon maan is kind of a blend of bar rock and indie rock, not unlike a certain band whose name starts with af- and ends with -igs. i'm going to put that song 'crazy' on right now. mmm ... the whigs. mccollum, however, doesn't have dulli's simmering, vaguely creepy, slightly cheesy, but definitely sexy menace and i'm not totally feeling the band. as is often the case with bands and seeing them live for the first time, i suspect that maybe i'd be into the record. and what's up with that name? moon maan? i want to know more.

we retire to the clown lounge for a while, where jake and i form a fulfilling bond over the topic of the greatness of making out. it's so great, the making out. speculation is tossed around about a possible relationship between two locals who i'll refer to as CM and HB. but nobody knows exactly what's going on. especially not jake schaffer. rumbling upstairs singles the beginning of mallman's set and we head upstairs to check it. nice.

what can be said about mark mallman that hasn't been said before? the man's a wack-job in the best possible sense of the word. the set featured many songs from his latest and a couple golden oldies. he left the piano at one point to play guitar, which the crowd just ate up. and, per usual, there was the cliimbing on the keyboard, the humping the keyboard, the stomping on the keyboard, and the banter. i don't know how you could not love someone who explains that someone once asked him why he sweats so much on stage and he replied that he wasn't sweating; it's his whole body crying. high-larious. mallman is something best experienced in person and i've been a fan of his live show ever since i saw him for the first time since i've been back in the twin cities at the museum of american art with just his drummer, pete anderson (of wilco (not really)). someday, i will buy one of his records and then maybe i can evaluate him in a more objective way, but i definitely recommend you go and check him out when he plays one of his all too rare local shows.

okay, i'm done with that. have you heard boom bip? they have a great album called 'seed to sun,' which bears a certain resemblance to boards of canada, but ever so slightly less inward looking. the track that really got me was 'mannequin hand trapdoor i remember' which features a rapper. uh, dose one. and it's one of the prettiest songs i've ever heard.it starts with just drums and dose one, and then a bass drone comes in, and you feel like you know all the moves this song is going to make. it's dark and kind of ominous and dose's style is like a nasty whisper in your ear. brings to mind massive attack stuff with the guy who raps in that band. then the bass riff fills in a bit and it still feels really droney and dose starts up with a harmony rap thing. like a whole bunch of doses chanting together, sounding vaguely like muslim prayer. and then the bass changes into a major chorus part and the song just opens up in this totally lovely way. and you're happy. there's a great little guitar melody that comes in kind of low against this totally satisfying progression and then it goes up an octave and it's just super delicate. dose one's vocals are still borderline creepy, but like creepy with this super-comfy blanket wrapped around it. it's all super. check it out if you can.

she called my name

2004-12-02T21:36:00.000-06:00

tonight, on my way to borders to buy my nth copy of david foster wallace's infinite jest which i needed (the book) to complete this project i'm working on, i stopped by my apartment in the vain hope that my missing copy would be laying around. it wasn't (cf. trip to borders), but i did have the presence of mind to grab the la's one and only album, the la's off the shelf and goddamn! i forgot how good this album is. i mean, 'there she goes' has to be one of the greatest pop songs ever written, but the whole album just presages so much stuff that's around now (viz. spoon). it's so tight and all the songs are short and it sounds fantastic. amazing that this was recorded in 1989 because it sounds like the coral could have made it yesterday. lee mavers perfected that timeless vintage sound that's so hip right now. how did people forget how to record guitar between the kinks' 'you really got me' and 1988? lee remembered. go get this here album ... NOW.

so much work i think my eyes might bleed.

2004-12-01T09:53:00.000-06:00

am i complaining? no. i'm just saying. if'n y'all are interested, check out my new "band" on myspace.com. the name is the copyright act of 1976. and no, there's no "band" per se yet, but i threw up a demo i did all by my self fairly recently. should be up and running soon. did i mention pinback recently? pinback, motherfuckers, pinback. their new one is rapidly climbing in my esteem. also, the new mf doom? not fantastic, i'm sorry to say. too many funny little samples, not enough of doom rapping. he's a great producer and all, but i want to hear him do things like this:

lookey here it's just the way the cookie tear
prepare to get hurt and mangled like kurt angle rookie year...
...mad plays the bass like the race card
villain on the case to break shards and leave your face scarred
groovy dude, not to prove to be rude
but this stuff is like what you might put on movie food...

that's you if you want a dude who wears a mask all day.

i dream a highway

2004-11-29T22:46:00.000-06:00

i dream a highway
Originally uploaded by rodeojones.

gillian welch kicks my ass:

what will sustain us through the winter?
where did last year's lessons go?
walk me out into the rain and snow,
i dream a highway back to you

oh, i dream a highway back to you, love
a winding ribbon with a band of gold
a silver vision come and bless my soul
and i dream a highway back to you ...

i'm just going to go stab my eyes out, now.

teeth update.

2004-11-28T22:21:00.000-06:00

okay, it has come to my attention that i'm supposed to have 32 teeth. now i'm depressed. at first, i was excited that i had eight more than i thought i had, but now i'm worried about my wisdom teeth. where are they? i never had them out. they're still in there somewhere, plotting, planning, getting ready to ... do evil or something. i'm gonna hafta unleash some justice on 'em. where's dubya when you really need him to fight some terr-uh?

ike reilly assassination w/ the lift and friends like these 11.24.04

2004-11-28T22:17:00.000-06:00

It’s the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, so what is everybody out to do? Drink. And what goes better with drinking than an Ike Reilly show at the Triple Rock? Nothing, apparently, since arriving shortly after door time, I find a line down the block. After a little time spent soaking in the beginning of Minnesota winter, we’re in, and man is it dark. Plus, holy cow, there’s a crapload of gear on the stage.

Joining us first this evening is The Lift, from Los Angeles, who take the stage amidst copious equipment and in front of a projection screen, which I have to say, already gave me doubts, and, sure enough, I think The Lift were a little out of place at the Triple Rock. I know that pretentious bands with stage shows have to start somewhere, but it just didn’t feel right to me to have images being projected behind this band. They reminded me of nothing so much as an anonymous alternative band from the post-grunge, pre-rap-rock era (viz. Dishwalla, Dada). Things like a lit up sign for their merch table (“The Lift Station”) shouldn’t really matter, but it just seemed so … Los Angeles. And not in a good way. If you’re going to be so slick, you may as well write some catchy melodies, but alas. Perhaps in an alternative universe, The Lift are wildly popular, and no doubt fish feel much safer there, because there are no hooks.

Friends Like These came onstage like a breath of fresh air. FLT just gets better and better every time I see them. Besides songs from the EP ‘Deliver us From Evil’ and album ‘I Love You,’ the band played a handful of promising new tunes, which singer/guitarist John Solomon assured me are in the process of being put down on tape. “The Difference” rocked, “7th St. Queen” rolled, and, per usual, “Karen” got lodged in my head again, and hasn’t left since. If any band from the Twin Cities deserves to make it, these guys do; they’re what I thought and hoped the Strokes were going to sound like before I heard them, with spiky, sometimes Stones-worthy guitar and blasted, weathered, yet somehow sweet vocals. If you play in, hang out in, or wake up in bars, sometimes regretting your lifestyle choices, FLT’s music is like the hair of the dog, giving you more of what got you in trouble in the first place. Despite some technical difficulties and a crowd that seemed more interested in their Amstel Lights and baseball hats, the band acquitted themselves well and I look forward to a new album from them sometime in the near future.

After much anticipation, the Ike Reilly Association emerged onto the darkened stage and began the rock, which the people seemed to love. I have to admit that I didn’t really know what to expect, and didn’t really appreciate what I got, but I had the feeling that the show would’ve gone over a lot better with me if I had been more familiar with his records, which Adam from FLT assured sound just great. I could have then been up there singing along with the masses. The very sold out nature of the show led to me hanging out more in the back and not getting caught up in the action up front. Reilly’s lyrics are clearly razor-sharp and his band is fantastically tight, but I just felt I was missing out on his blend of Dylan-esque vocals and hopped-up blues rock in the vein of Monster Magnet. And there’s a special part of my heart resolved for smartass rock, so maybe with a copy of Ike’s latest in my hands, I can put aside some of that space for the Assassination.

a quick appreciation

2004-11-27T16:37:00.000-06:00

thursday afternoon i flew into o'hare and was picked up by my dad, who spirited me on home accompanied by a conversation about crossover promotions with current bands. this is why i love my dad: he began talking about the postal service (the band) v. the postal service (the postal service) in an npr story, which i already knew about, but what he then said was, "yeah, but what was funny was that they had talked about death cab for cutie being featured on 'the o.c.' and then went on to talk about the postal service and didn't even make the connection." let's have a quick round of applause for a 57-year old president of a non-profit grants granting institution who knows there is a connection.

top ten till now 2004

2004-11-23T19:51:00.000-06:00

so i know we're jumping the gun here, but if you can start your christmas shopping now, i can start my year-end list now. so this may be bound to change, but here it is so far:

1. madvillain :: madvillainy
2. p.o.s. :: ipecac neat
3. maritime :: glass floor
4. heiruspecs :: a tiger dancing
5. pinback :: summer in abaddon
6. the velvet teen :: elysium
7. the holdsteady :: almost killed me
8. wilco :: a ghost is born
9. ela :: stapled to air
10. ted leo/pharmacists :: shake the sheets

updates soon. no doubt.

counting teeth

2004-11-22T18:02:00.000-06:00

counting teeth
Originally uploaded by rodeojones.

look! twenty-eight.

twenty-eight? can you believe that?

2004-11-22T15:45:00.000-06:00

okay, i just checked and i have twenty-eight teeth. that's like eight more than i thought i had. if someone had asked me to estimate yesterday, i would have said twenty. i even took a picture to put up to prove it, but it's kind of gross. i'll post it above. i guess i never think about my molars. it's one of those things that makes you realise how little attention you can pay to something inside your own body. btw, i checked, and it's still just ten fingers and ten toes.

pinback sneak attack

2004-11-22T09:55:00.000-06:00

pinback is a band that will sneak up on you. sitting in urban bean last night working on a design project, i became aware that i liked what was playing in the background. and then i became aware that i recognized it. and finally i realized it was pinback's new album 'summer in abaddon,' which i own. but i own a lot of cd's and i don't always get to listen to all of them intently. so now i'm listening intently to it and i'm saying go pick it up. that is, if you like, say, television's 'marquee moon' or the notwist's 'neon golden.' the trick is that it doesn't seem terrific right away, but it grows compelling over the course of the album. it's full of subtle things that form a greater whole. the chunky clean guitar on "the yellow ones," the synth part on "the red book," the reference to kentucky indie-rock legends slint on the closer "afk." who were on touch and go (slint), which is also pinback's label. it's all so incestuous. anyways, yes, it's also recommended if you like slint. a grower, not a shower.

love-cars review 11.19.04

2004-11-20T14:55:00.000-06:00

It’s not every day you get to see Love-cars. Nor every month. Nor even every year. Especially when you’ve been living on the east coast for the past six years and this is the first time you’re getting to see them in Minneapolis since you broke up with your girlfriend, about whom you feel all the songs have been written. With whom you planned trips to Minneapolis around Love-cars’ gig schedule so you could see them.

So it’s a little personal, and upon arriving criminally early at the 400 Bar I considered sitting down in front of the stage, all highschool-sophmore-at-a-Phish-show style to get the best seat in the house, but, discretion being the better part of valor, I got an Old Style and read the weeklies.

The 400 filled up pretty quickly with a mix of fresh-faced youths and parents-of-the-band-looking people, which I heartily support, being both in bands and having parents. Superdanger took the stage around 9:30 pm, decked out in ties and jackets, brandishing a combination of emo drums and retro-new wave vocals a la Stellastarr. Despite the sartorial savvy, the presentation didn’t deliver the tight, punchy impact the music demanded. Give them time, though; these guys looked a little out of place with beers in their hands, and their own voice is in there somewhere. Oh, and the bassist broke his headstock off at the end of the show smacking it on a cymbal. That sucks.

The Glad Version was up next and delivered a good if not fantastic set. In all fairness, it wasn’t entirely their fault. The songs were great and singer Andy Svec has got a fantastic voice, but the mix was poor. The snare sounded mushy, the bass was indistinct, and the guitars were too bright by half. I picked up their CD, reviewed on this site by Jesse Norrell, and it’s much broader sonically than the show and is highly recommended for anybody who likes American Music Club, newer British bands like Snow Patrol, or even, say, Love-cars.

Which bring us to Love-cars. When I first moved to Minneapolis in 1998, I was a jazz guy, fresh out of college. And Love-cars made me a rock guy again. They were the first Twin Cities band I saw (at Lee’s, with Mason Jennings (!) opening), and have remained one of my favorites since then. What makes them so compelling to me is their combination of three disparate elements: virtuosity, irony, and sentimentality. The first thing you notice is the complicated yet melodic drumming of David King, which is the obvious thing that sets the band apart from other rock bands, but that’s really only the beginning. The lyrics mix smartass quips about John Travolta’s (or Kirstie Allie’s) private jet, chain wallets, and highschool yearbooks with heart-on-sleeve confessions of longing and disillusionment. The songs are deceptively complex, relying on familiar resolutions drawn out a bar longer than expected, or else hammered home so insistently that a refrain like, “Collect them all and sell them separate,” becomes a barbaric yawp.

The set opened with “This Conversation Has Only Got One Side” followed quickly by a reinvented version of “Hand Over That Rulebook” from their first disc, Chump Lessons. At this point, the critical part of me is recognizing that it’s all a little ragged around the edges from ten months off and one rehearsal, while the drooling music fan part of me is thinking how I haven’t heard this song live in five years and all that’s happened since. Next up was the first of two as-yet-unreleased songs, “Everyone Reads.” Both this and “Hopefully” need to see the light of day soon, like tomorrow, and singer James Diers assured me after the show that they’re working on getting together new recordings, battling the little things in life that get in the way of good rock and roll. Like kids. Who are cute, I’m sure, but I need the rock.

Highlights from the rest of the show included “Broken Toes,” sounding a little more shambly than I remember (apparently it was unrehearsed)and “How I Get,” which everyone was clamoring for. David De Young observed that the crowd was yelling out lyrics and song requests as if they were at a national show, and they got most, although not all, of their wishes. The single high point had to be during second encore “Call Me Sometime Best Friends Forever” when Diers backed off the mic and let the rabid crowd handle the “Your yearbook is the universe expanding” that breaks the song wide open.

In a way, it’s too bad that Love-cars didn’t turn into the next big thing. Songs like “Northwest Orient,” “CMS BFF,” and “My Shoestring” are certainly radio-ready and catchy as hell, but in another way, I’m glad they get to be ours. What Love-cars specifically introduced me to about local music was the joy of going to see a truly phenomenal band that felt like they were all yours. Like you had this great secret that you needed to share with everybody. Forget trends and scenes, though. Music is about connection: to people, to ideas, to emotions, to moments, and no show I’ve seen has made me feel more happy, sad, old, and young than this one. And what more can you really ask of a great band?

felix at 11th and nicollet

2004-11-18T23:42:00.000-06:00

felix at 11th and nicollet
Originally uploaded by rodeojones.

ah, remember summer? this is from a heiruspecs show downtown back in june. i loved the way the sun was reflecting off orchestra hall. and i loved the ladies. oh yes.

clinton at his liberry

2004-11-18T22:50:00.000-06:00

19library.xlarge1
Originally uploaded by rodeojones.

who looks like a real president in this picture? and is his library going to include a copy of my pet goat?
photo by jeff mitchell of reuters.

jeff buckley

2004-11-18T21:51:00.000-06:00

his version of 'lost highway' on the new expanded edition of grace is great. i mean, it's a studio outtake and so it's just him and the guitar, but that always seemed to be the way he performed best. when you've got a voice like that and the guitar skills to go along, anybody else probably just gets in the way. okay, i don't really believe that, but goddamnit. why'd he have to go so soon? a colossal talent that didn't have time to grow into himself. he was always at his best playing other people's songs. like 'lost highway.'

just a deck of cards
and a jug of wine
and a woman's lies
makes a life like mine.

–- hank williams (?)

right?

oh, and then my ipod gives me the postal service's version of 'against all odds.' it's got a thing for covers.

i like to mix things.

2004-11-18T20:45:00.000-06:00

not just things. stuff, too. here's a mix i made for my friend bill on the occasion of his birthday.

1. Bloc Party - Banquet (Phones Disco Edit)
2. Bright Eyes/Britt Daniels - You Get Yours
3. Everything I Do, Nothing Ever Seem to Come
Out Right - The Decemberists
4. Sword in the Stone - Ted Leo
5. Baby Belle - Chris Lee
6. Homefront Cameo - Cotton Mather
7. Unititled - Bundy K. Brown
8. Stay in Bed - Lo Fine
9. Concrete Seconds - Pinback
10. Nick Drake Tape - Clem Snide
11. Jealousy - Spoon
12. Map of Your Head - Muse
13. Flip-Book Oscilloscope - Turing Machine

have you heard bloc party? yes, they're derivative, but damn, that remix of banquet is one of the best things i've heard recently. the guitar tone is so punch-you-in-the-face-tastic. stay in bed is by a band from massachusetts. and yes, that's all i have to say today about that.

i just started doing a little writing for howwastheshow.com, and apparently, they can work some magic whereby that site links to this one. hopefully we can make all that happen.

sweet.