What amazed me the most about seeing Thurston Moore today is that even with an acoustic guitar in his hands he can still create that "Sonic Youth" sound. Those chiming chords contrasted with the loud open-string drones still have that sound that made me fall in love with Daydream Nation when I was a teen. Moore's just one of those musicians that can get exactly the kind of sound he wants out of an instrument. Of course, It didn't hurt that Moore's band mate in SY Steve Shelley brought that great primitive drumming sound to today's gig.
The show was a great sampling of what's on Moore's new record Trees Outside the Academy. Even with a different band Moore brought plenty of that free noise sound to bring out the power in his songwriting. I loved how violinist Samara Lubeski's playing melded with Moore and Chris Brokaw's guitar playing. It reminded me of how John Cale's viola would mix with the guitars on Velvet Underground records. While I've complained about the mixes at Amoeba shows before I was pretty happy with how everything sounded today. The vocals were clear and up front when Christina Carter joined Moore for "Honest James," which may be my favorite song of 2007. It was great number to close on.
After the show I got the CD and poster signed by Moore. I told him the same thing I told Bob Mould a few days ago, that his guitar playing really influenced me and that I'm grateful for the music he's created. This means I've met two of my favorite guitar players in one month. October's closing soon but who knows, maybe I'll see Peter Buck or Kevin Shields celebrating Halloween here. Permanent Link: 7:34 PM |
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Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Don't worry, rock
I've been thinking hard for a long time of the idea expressed in this recent (and very good) Fluxblog post. For the past few years, pretty much since I moved to SF in 2005, I've been trying to conquer my various anxieties and neuroses. At the same time so much of American cultural has gotten more neurotic and anxious. I see it all the time. I see it when I read New York magazine's article on the "Age of Insolence" brought on by Gawker and the popularity of using the Internet to spread gossip. I see it when I read Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone article from last year about 9/11 conspiracy believers when he ends by saying "It may be that America has become too big and complicated for most people to deal with being part of. People are longing for a smaller, stupider reality." Matthew Perpetua of Fluxblog is seeing it when he sees that "at the root level, indie/alternative/college rock/blog rock/whatever you want to call it is poisoned by the vanity of its audience." When it comes to taste in music, as well as many areas of life but we'll just stick with rock 'n' roll for this post, so many people are fine being fickle and disapproving. I assure you I don't want to get near politics but it feels with the United States becoming a faded empire the upper-middle class's frustrations with culture has become as glaring as the guys to go before us, Great Britain. It used to be that no one could touch the British music press when it came to cattiness and the good ol' practice of build-'em-up-and-tear-'em-down but now there seems to be plenty in this country who can do just a good a job.
When I moved to SF I was finishing college so I barley played guitar and did not keep up with music intensely as I used to. I went to exactly one rock 'n' roll concert, The Electric Six at The Independent. It was a ton of fun but I was too busy to spend much time with pop culture. Any free time I had went to comics and old movies. I come out of university an adult, both personally and professionally, ready to jump back into the world of rock 'n' roll and I see behavior that reminds me of my high school days (and I despised it then, too). I'm about to put myself out there as an artist and this new harsh audience has been cultivated. Not a harsh audience the way you would classify the aggressive crowd at a concert in Boston or Philadelphia. That actually be a great learning experience as Philly raised stand-up comic Paul F. Tompkins says. In that case you're dealing with something tough but also something honest. With the sniping done on-line and in person, for the record I've seen this type of attitude from about half of the rock 'n' roll fans I interact with, there's this cruelty you're getting from someone who is not entirely honest with themselves. For them it's more fun to dump on groups than to praise them. You can all join in the fun of sneering at someone. Displaying genuine enthusiasm for an artist makes one a little bit more of an individual and who wants that?
I suppose I'm being a bit neurotic myself when I tell you here I am already worried about this before I've recorded any music or played any shows. But for me it's another reason to find a center of my own. It's why I hold on to the music I love and remain inspired by certain bands no matter what is going on in the current world of pop. That's why I have Creedance posted above. John Fogerty and his band still amaze me. It's not just becuase they were producing so much great music in such a short amount of time, although that certainly does blow me away. It's becuase these guys came up in the Bay Area where in that place and that time, as well as all over the world, there so many far-reaching and grand ideologies being thrown around about music and the world at large. People depended on rock 'n' roll to change the world (seriously, Timothy Leary said that The Beatles were the next step in evolution). CCR was able to transcend all that bullshit and simply churn out one great song after another. They were too in love with the integral elements of rock 'n' roll to bother with anything else. They couldn't be cool or fashionable. The people who care about that stuff don't really love the music. But for those of us who just love the music there's nothing better than just turning up Chronicle, Vol. 1 and letting that sound seep into your brain.
I love how Steve Hyden picked "Ramble Tamble" as "the most rockin' song of all time" in his post of The Onion's AV Club. In that post he writes "rockin' requires an utter lack of self-consciousness, and attempts at rockin' in the past 25-plus years are inherently self-conscious and old fashioned." It's that lack of pretension I'm trying to develop in my own songwriting. I do work hard to make my songs as good as they can be. I just don't want to start worrying about if I'm sounding too "retro" or if I'm going to reinvent the wheel or not. There's no way I can make myself happy going down that path becuase there is no end to the ways I can make myself worry. Worrying doesn't lead to rockin'. Permanent Link: 9:15 PM |
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Monday, October 22, 2007
The Go! Team at The Mezzanine 10/19/07
When you walk into The Mezzanine you automatically feel like a beautiful person. The ground floor has all the space for standing, a bar but then you notice there's another bar inside a little room off to the side. It's when you get to the second floor and see the little rooms with couches on them perfect for beautiful people to make out on (as well as the third bar in the building) you begin to think to yourself "by simply being here I have become awesome." Even if you're at the show alone and know you are going to write about the show for a blog maybe ten people read you feel cool.
I was there to see a proper show from The Go! Team. I had seen them the night before at Amoeba Records but as energetic as the band was the mix for that show was horrible. As on their records, the band has a lot going on and the vocal get buried under the sound (think of the sound of singing on My Bloody Valentine's Loveless). I have seen The Bell-Rays and The Raconteurs at Amoeba (I'm probably going to see Thurston Moore there Oct. 28th) and knew that the mixes could be bad. Still, what do you want for nothing, a rubber biscuit? I had gotten just enough of a taste of this group that knocked me out with their charisma, frontwoman Ninja's charisma really, and their catchy mix of rock 'n' roll and hip-hop. I remember reading a an article where a woman predicted, after listening to Chuck D guest on Sonic Youth's Goo, that when Sonic Youth and Public Enemy mix everything will change for the better. She was disappointed to see that the mix between hip-hop and rock resulted in Limp Bizkit and Korn, band's that combined the worst in hip-hop and rock 'n' roll. The Go! Team takes the best of the two worlds with bubblegum melodies, avant-guitar and Ninja's part raps, which could come straight from the era of Kurtis Blow and Afrika Bambaataa. They even got the esteemed Mr. D for their new record.
After a strong DJ set the opening band Bodies of Water took the stage. At their best they sounded like a New Wave opera. The harmonies of the two male/two female line up provided much of the hooks, backed up by some driving music. Soon it was easy to notice that most of the vocal melodies came from chants of "ah-aaah!" I started to wish the band changed up their approach to instrumentation and let the keyboards or guitar carry the melody for once. Even more lyrics in the chants would be welcome, as it was in their best song of the night "I Guess I'll Forget the Sound, I Guess, I Guess" (they have a link to the song on their site but unfortunately it doesn't work). Their commitment to create a choral sound based on the personnel of a typical rock band impressed me and I would like to see what they come up with in a few years.
When The Go! Team hits the stage they immediately have the crowd in the palm of their hand. Ninja tells the audience that they're beautiful and that San Francisco reminds here of the hippest parts of London. As soon as the bands rips into "Grip Like a Vice," also the opener of their latest record Proof of Youth, the energy and fun that the band was feeling bled into the people on the floor. The band sounded great. This mix was pretty even in the fact that everything was in the red, accurately reflecting how The Go! Team sounds on record. As the band went through most of Proof of Youth as well as favorite from Thunder, Lighting, Stike, "Ladyflash," "Junior Kickstart" and most approvingly "Huddle Formation," it became impossible not to dance. Everyone in the audience in the stage felt euphoric joy being part of this mass of ass-shakers. At the encore Ninja asked us to shout along to the chorus of "Doing It Right" ("Do it! Do it! Alright!") but she didn't have to. The woman had us in her control. It felt damn good.
The next day I compared The Go! Team's first album to their latest. I had never really investigated the matter. I had only heard a few songs from the band, preferring to really get a sense of the band live. That's probably why I'm biased towards Proof of Youth over i>Thunder, Lightning Strike. Most of the first album was recorded in the kitchen of band leader Ian Parton. His approach to mixing samples and live instruments is innovative but the album has just as much slow instrumentals as it does fist-pumping numbers like "Huddle Formation." Proof of Youth really benefits from Parton forming a band for his ideas. It feels more alive and is dominated by songs with big exclamations and loud hooks. I've been playing it like crazy since seeing the show. I suggest you sample it as well. Permanent Link: 6:47 PM |
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Friday, October 19, 2007
The Beach Boys' Carl Wilson responds to Sasha Frere-Jones
Okay, not really, since the Carl Wilson from the Beach Boys has been dead for nine years. But Carl Wilson the music critic for Slate.com has written a great rebuttal to Frere-Jones' New Yorker piece. He points out how simplistic Frere-Jones' essay is and even catches the write contradicting himself. The second best thing about Wilson's response is that he relates current indie rock 'n' roll to class rather than race (which are intertwined of course) and does in a much better way than the New Yorker piece did. The best thing about Wilson's essay is that he links to the above video of Win Butler and Regine Chassagne playing "Keep the Car Running" with Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band in Ottawa. Every piece on concert footage from The Boss should end with a big Canadian dude yelling "holy shit!" Permanent Link: 1:28 PM |
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Thursday, October 18, 2007
And I think you can dance to Arcade Fire
I've read a lot of Sasha Frere-Jones' work in the UK magazine The Wire, The New Yorker and on Slate. I've found that he's often had solid points about popular music in his articles but it's often buried under perplexing notions Frere-Jones doesn't even try to prove. The last time I considered Frere-Jones was reading this New York Time article which confirmed for me that he suffers from a problem a lot of cultural critics do. He comes to these conclusions that makes sense to him on an immediate emotional level but rather than testing them with the facts he just tries to spin his original gut feeling into something that sounds convincing.
This piece from The New Yorker is a prime example of why Frere-Jones frustrates me. While I enjoy The Arcade Fire, The Decemberists and some of Wilco's new material I have some reservations about the orchestral and elaborate direction rock music has taken. Frere-Jones' argument comes from a slightly different direction, asking what has happened to danceable rhythm in rock 'n' roll? He opens the argument to race, tracing how white rock 'n' roll bands like The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin were greatly influenced by the blues and R&B music of black musicians but now, since black artists can make it on their own and white kids are scared by political correctness, the sounds of black and white musicians are more (dare I say it?) segregated than ever before.
The problem I have with the article is that Frere-Jones completely ignores bands that would complicate his argument. By the third page I was screaming inside my head "why haven't you mentioned The White Stripes? Why haven't you mentioned LCD Soundsystem?" As soon as I saw this was an article on race and indie rock I knew we were in for a mention of TV on the Radio, one of the best bands around and whose line-up is 4/5ths black. But the band isn't mentioned. I'm glad that they weren't used as a token but I also felt that it was another sign that Frere-Jones is just ignoring certain bands so he could create a stilted argument.
It's a shame becuase becuase I did like what Frere-Jones has to say about how the rise of hip-hop completely changed the conversation between pop musicians of all ethnicities. But at the end of the article instead of coming up with an idea that readers could really chew on he just says that the Internet has "made individual genres less significant." So he went from selecting a few bands to prove a shaky point to using every band out there to subtract real substance behind his words. There is a good article or book to be written on this subject but Frere-Jones only supplies a feeble jumping-off point.
Edit at 8:13 p.m., after a shitty day at work and coming back from seeing The Go! Team do a free show at Amoeba: You know, what annoys me about this article is that the real story is why so many bands are moving to a sound of grandeur. Or maybe the real story is why complicated music is hitting kids the way three-chords and a drum beat used to (and still does, let's be honest). But Frere-Jones doesn't concentrate on what these bands are, he concentrates on what the bands are not. Bringing in anxieties about race robs the examination of this subject of coming upon any vital discoveries. What a waste. Permanent Link: 5:58 AM |
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Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Bob Mould at the Herbst Theatre 10/16/07
Azerrad: Were you a punk at St. Paul?
Mould: Absolutely.
Azerrad: Are you still a punk?
Mould: Probably.
If you saw Husker Du play at some dingy punk club in 1983 you would probably have a hard time believing that 24 years later the big guy holding the Flying V and bellowing his soul out would be having a deep and thoughtful discussion about his career at a theatre across the street from San Francisco City Hall. But that's exactly what Bob Mould was doing, on his birthday no less.
As part of Noise Pop's Talking Music series Michael Azerrad, author of Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From the American Indie Underground 1981-1991, interviewed Mould about all the major personal and musical events of his life. Azerrad's book remains one of my favorite books about music and I especially love the chapter on Husker Du. This is due to the fact that the music Mould, Grant Hart and Greg Norton created in the 1980's just smashed into me when I was growing up in the 1990's. I love most of Husker Du's music but it was Zen Arcade by itself that shifted my outlook on music considerably. To hear sweet melodies stand beside moments of fearsome anger made me realize how powerful music could be if you could combine those opposing elements. At this point Mould's guitar playing has had such an influence in how I approach the instrument I don't even have to think about it. More than a decade after studying "Celebrated Summer" and "Charted Trips" I find myself using droning open strings to string together chord changes. I picked that up from Mould.
Early in the discussion Mould talked about how he was immediately drawn to playing music at young age. When he discovered punk rock with The Ramones' first album his love of music was clearly taking over his personality. He knew he had to leave the small upstate New York town he lived in and flee to Macalester College in St. Paul, MN one for it's leftist politics but also becuase the Twin Cities had an awesome punk scene. Joining with fellow songwriter Grant Hart on drums and Greg Norton on bass to form Husker Du, Mould didn't just join that scene but would soon moved punk rock as a whole forward.
Like a lot of hardcore bands Husker Du's music was fast and loud but there was always this introspective rage in the songs. Mould said that came from being at the time a self-hating homosexual. He was uncomfortable with himself and with a government that didn't deem him "part of the program." Listen to songs like "I Will Never Forget You" or the band's cover of "Eight Miles High" and you will hear that cathartic howling coming out of Mould. Mould said that he and Hart being gay was never a problem in the punk world, perhaps that was becuase everyone else there was on the fringes of society as well. The band toured constantly while also creating these great albums and for seven years the guys were just spent. When there manager killed himself and drugs became a bigger problem the three went their separate ways.
Mould retired to his farm and created the album Workbook which featured quiet acoustic guitars and strings. If Mould's intense playing in the punk days was emotionally catharsis then this was a catharsis from the catharsis. Mould would not be away from the electric guitar and traditional rock 'n' roll for long. He formed Sugar in the 1990's and played with the bands he had influenced in his earlier days including The Pixies and Nirvana. I learned that Mould was actually in the running to produce Nevermind. When touring with Nirvana in Europe he said he was scared of these three young guys becuase they struck him as so similar to how Husker Du was on tour. Mould was was satisfied that he saw his innovations appreciation by a modern audience, both with Sugar and Husker Du's acolytes. When seeing the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" Mould just thought to himself "We won."
Mould's output slowed down in the late-1990's, saying at one point he was done with rock music. He actually got a job writing for the wrestling producers WCW for seven months. But Mould has come back to rock 'n' roll and even playing Husker Du songs in concert now. It's a sign of how, after living a life filled with extremes, he has become confident and landed. The once self-hating homosexual, who was outed in a Spin article during Sugar's days, now writes an advice column in a Washington DC weekly. DC is Mould's home now and he has teamed with Fugazi's Brendan Canty is making new records. He has a DVD out, Circle of Friends, that features him playing new stuff as well as Husker Du and Sugar songs. A new CD is coming out as well.
Throughout the interview it was clear how sharp and perceptive Mould is. He has plenty of things to say about the record industry. He believes that bands have to reconnect to audiences now as ticket sales will be the main source of revenue. It's not a controversial idea for someone who came up in the hardcore punk days, when crashing on a fan's couch was de rigueur. Mould's made his career with independent labels, his new record will be from Anti-, but he has nice things to say about the major labels, insisting that the only people let working there are ones who really love the music.
Mould ended the night by playing six new songs, one of them was "Again and Again" from the forthcoming record, on an acoustic guitar. It was magical seeing the light reflect off of Mould's guitar in the spotlight was he played. The hard strummed guitar chords and wordless howls used to come from a place of anger. They still hold power but now they're delivered with songs comfortable told with plenty of workmanship, a favorite word of Mould's, behind them.
After the event Mould was signing DVDs. I finally got my chance to tell Mould how important his music is to me. I told how much his playing has influenced mine and thanked him for all the wonderful work. He was modest about his playing but appreciative. It was a great way to end a great night. Permanent Link: 7:20 PM |
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Monday, October 15, 2007
Co-starring John Hodgman as "Small Penis"
Jesse over at that other place I write for has unveiled what is the greatest undertaking of The Sound of Young America yet.
Jesse interviewed George Saunders recently. I guess they got along fine becuase Saunders gave America's Radio Sweetheart the right to turn one of his pieces "Ask the Optimist" into an audio play. Not satisfied with the theatre of the mind the piece was turned into a video with puppets doing the physical acting. The vocal talent is the main draw, though. Besides Hodgman there's Maria Bamford,Jonathan Katz and Andy Daly in the starring role. I'm glad Daly's getting some exposure. He's not as known as he is funny but if you ever see him do improv at The LA UCB Theatre you will have some of the biggest laughs of your life. Until then enjoy the above video. Permanent Link: 6:29 PM |
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Thursday, October 11, 2007
I have returned an educated man (and I kept the receipt)
A question I got a lot when I stopped Brill Building was "when are you going to return to blogging?" I even joked about it in my "last" post (it's not even the post before this. That would be the commentary on my Comic Foundry piece). There have been a few incidents that convinced me to come back. There was being recognized at this year's San Diego Comic-Con (thank you nice woman whose name I have forgotten). I was told by an established writer/editor that blogging is a great way to keep visible. So I figured I'd start this little enterprise again. The fact that I've already been writing a bit at The Sound of Young America's blog (Podthoughts appears every week!) helped. It kept my skills from getting rusty.
What had me hesitate from starting up the blog is this: I'm not excited about too much in comics. I look forward to new issues of Casanova, Criminal, Iron Fist and various other books under the Fracbaker empire. I like seeing my name in Punisher War Journal (thanks Matt!). I'm addicted to Naoki Urasawa's Monster. But that's about it I'm afraid. I've still got the new 24seven and Tekkoninkreet to get to but I can't see anything on the horizon that would compel me to produce a meaty post once a week. That's why I've turned to other subjects.
Since graduating college (that's right, you're now reading the blog of a college graduate and a published author. Those are two claims I couldn't make at the beginning of the year) I've made a discovery similar to one I made at thirteen-years-old. I've found playing guitar and listen to music is way better than comics. Some of you may disagree and that's fine. Personally I'm more excited about finding new music to listen to than than finding new comics to read. In addition to reading Blog@Newsarama and Progressive Ruin everyday I scour Fluxblog and Aquarium Drunkard for new bands. I await every week for a new edition of the Chicago radio show Sound Opinions becuase I value Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot's take on the music business and taste in new music. The most significant change is that I'm playing guitar seriously again and writing songs at a pace as quick my high school days. I've given a lot of thought to becoming a musician in addition to a writer to cover more of my creative abilities. I enjoy writing prose and screenplays but songwriting, while still a challenge, just feels so much more natural to me. Yet I hesitate to totally dedicate myself to musical career becuase the music industry scares me. I'll illustrate with one of the biggest topics on the blogosphere this week. And yes, if you were wondering, I do a lot of hesitating. In fact, I think I spend most of my time hesitating.
Yesterday, as I'm sure you heard, Radiohead released their seventh album In Rainbows on their website for a price of your choosing. I ended up paying the price of a regular CD becuase I felt, even before hearing the album, that this band deserves solid financial reward for creating good music (that and, to be honest, I kind of screwed up the exchange rate). Now that I've listened to the album, both complete and individual selections, I feel I completely got my money's worth. But you don't need to be told "twenty-something white person enjoys Radiohead." That's not news. The big deal is how they distributed the album. "It's the future of the music industry!" declared the people who like to declare the future of things. "It's the end of the music industry!" declared the people who liked to declare the end of things. Let's tune out the noise and just look at the facts.
It makes sense that we would see a change this big now. Radiohead cultivated their dedicated fanbase in the '90s, the last days of the old ways. You would find out about an artist through radio or MTV, buy an album in stores and see them in concert. The only thing about that process that has stayed true today is the last item. There was a much more financial give and take between artists and audience. Now radio and MTV play has dried up, along with the royalties to go with it. A lot of fans have no problem obtaining music through file sharing services (I'll save it for another post but real quick I'll say I'm disgusted by the act of downloading whole albums and catalogs for free even though I do it myself. Yeah, I know. It'll be a Hell of a post). Those of us who remember when the video for "No Surprises" would premier on MTV's TRL have grown up with the band and have no trouble following it to a new model of consumption. A lot of artists could pull this off. Prince tried it in the '90s but he was hampered by having to deliver CDs to people. Trent Reznor's been threatening to do this for a while now. But what if you're starting out as a musician? What if you're Joe Nobody with just a guitar and an ear for hooks? If I came up with an album and said you could pay what you want would you be more inclined to try it out as opposed to if I was an artist with a major or established indie label behind me? Would you be more comfortable with the latter becuase it proved if someone else is willing to put money behind me maybe you should too? Or would you dig the former becuase it said I'm a true artist who finds the art more important than the capital? How would even find out about me in the first place?
It's such a hard problem to untangle, the music business. The movie and comic book businesses are screwed up too but not as bad as the music business. I'm angry with the fans because they don't realize getting product for free amounts to telling the money men "don't bother caring what I want Mr. Bean Counter, sir. Ignore me and all my desires!" I'm angry at the record companies for having their heads up their asses, which they've always have, but are now being more impatient with their artists and A&R people. I'm angry that they look like a bunch of old out-of-touch losers who are confused and afraid by this here Interweb (I mean, that's what they are but they could at least have the decency to obscure that fact). The only people I'm pleased with are their artists. I'm pleased with The White Stripes, PJ Harvey, LCD Soundsystem and the former On a Friday (shows how much of a nerd I am) for producing amazing music this year. That's why I keep returning to my Epiphone guitars, one electric and one acoustic, and keep doing what I'm doing. Maybe no one will listen. Let's face it, probably no one will listen. But I'd like to imagine myself having a steady, uncompromising career not unlike what Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Richard Thompson have.
