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Primus at Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, 1030 15th Street, Suite 100, Sacramento, CA on Sep 14
Menomena at Showbox at the Market, 1426 First Avenue, Seattle, WA on Sep 10
Ratatat at Riviera Night Club, 4746 North Racine Avenue, Chicago, IL on Sep 10
Search results for: Paul Williams
Understanding Bob Dylan… On His Birthday
Bob Dylan turned 69 years old today. He’s had quite a run so far… creating music that’s spoken to and for more than one generation, a consummate artist whose catalog has been canonized, whose lyrics interpreted as literature. A Midwestern troubadour turned global icon, Dylan is a wizard of the song and the page, a treasure who’s touched more hearts and minds than nearly any other musician in our modern age. And today he celebrates another year of his extraordinary life.
There’s been so much said already about Bob Dylan that you don’t need me to tell you what he means to me (more than a lot), or remind you why I feel he should have a place in your own life. Paul Williams, the founder of Crawdaddy! and widely credited as the godfather of rock journalism, wrote more than a few important pieces on Dylan, including a number of books, but one of his more heralded articles was called “Understanding Dylan,” which delves into the seminal album Blonde on Blonde upon its release. It comes from a place of reverence but, per Paul’s signature style, is rooted in accessible intellect: Before the rest of the world chimed in, when Dylan’s direction was still unknown, when both writer and subject were still so young. I urge you to check out this piece, or reread it if it’s been a while. It really is one of the most refreshing things you’ll ever read on Bob Dylan. It was published in the fourth issue of Crawdaddy!, in August 1966.
Read: “Understanding Dylan” by Paul Williams
Download Free Fan-Compiled Titus Andronicus Rarities Compilation
Thanks to Pitchfork, who alerted me to the news that a Titus Andronicus’ fan site is offering up for grabs a free, fan-compiled rarities compilation. Yes, fan-compiled… “an unofficial, fan-made collection of demos, b-sides, and live tracks during the Airing of Grievances era of Titus Andronicus (pre-2010).”
Included in the comp, which is called Feats of Strength, are two covers, one of Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So” and another of the Modern Lovers’ classic, “Roadrunner.” (Side note: Speaking of “Roadrunner”, read this article by Crawdaddy! founder Paul Williams on the song, written way back in 1993). While it was a chance encounter upon a live show by Titus Andronicus that initially drew me personally to their intelligent, rousing rock ‘n’ roll, their latest album, the Civil War-themed The Monitor, not to mention the aforementioned Airing of Grievances, are exceptional records, so be sure to check out these studio packages as well, if you’ve yet to do so. You will not be disappointed.
Mind the Gap: Notes from the London Underground, An Introduction
It was back in 1963 when a tiny little club in Surrey, England played host to a then unknown swagger and shout—blues-soaked psychedelia that made the paint peel off the walls and soon after had the people piling in for £1 a ticket. When the Rolling Stones first took the stage at the Crawdaddy Club, they blew the place apart. And it was only a few years later that Paul Williams was doing the same thing to the rock journalism world. The rest, as they say, is history. Though with Crawdaddy!, there is always history left to write.
So let’s get started, shall we? After an entire childhood of being in love with the country I was born in and left so early on, various trips back and forth and many a plan put into place along the way, months of scrimping and saving, and a final week’s delay courtesy of mother nature’s latest act of destruction (a cloud of volcanic ash canceling flights all over Europe), I am actually, finally here: In amongst the endless possibilities of London town. I can already hear the buzzing in my ears—the unlimited musical fodder to be found in this, one of the most inspiring cities in the world.
London has always seemed like a land of absolute opportunity, and for me, that quality can instantly be recognized in the city’s musical realm. It’s an anyone-can-come-along-just-as-long-as-you-bring-a-guitar-or-your-voice-or-a-tin-can-to-bang-against-the-stage type scene, and it breeds an immediate desire to create. Here, you can quite literally fall down the rabbit hole (or bustle down the steps to the London underground if you will) and find a world of new sounds, new ideas, and new and old souls alike sharing and expanding with each other. From buskers in the tube stations to countless shows in countless clubs on countless nights (that would be every night to be exact), to bizarre musical instruments and unexpected record gems picked up in weekend market stalls, to every day’s hundred-odd new faces turning on the amp for the first time, the resonance of this place is astounding.
Paul McCartney: Indie Rocker
[Via Daily Swarm] The Wall Street Journal reported today that Paul McCartney has officially yanked his entire post-Beatles catalog out from under EMI, and bestowed global distribution rights unto independent record label Concord Music Group. Of course, CMG isn’t exactly Asthmatic Kitty, or even Merge for that matter. It’s a conglomerate of Concord Records, Fantasy Records, jazz label Telarc International and newly relaunched soul label Stax. It was CMG that partnered with Starbucks for their Hear Music label, which has already put out en EP, and LP and a double live album by McCartney. The CMG corporate umbrella ultimately covers over 20 other imprints besides.
So, really, where McCartney has gone isn’t all that interesting in and of itself. CMG handles a mighty swath of artists current and bygone, big and no-longer-big, from the Bar-Keys to Vanessa Williams, Dave Van Ronk to Elvis Costello. It’s not an inappropriate home for McCartney and his roughly 50 albums from the past 40 years. It does, however, reinforce two points that are obvious enough now that they’re barely worth repeating: EMI is going down the tubes, and the terms “indie” and “independent” are often totally meaningless in the cultural sense.
Amy Annelle’s Seventh Album Coming This Summer
There is greatness living, walking and dreaming among us, people! Austin-by-way-of-everywhere troubadour Amy Annelle has finished work on her seventh album, Cimarron Banks, and has slated its release for sometime this summer. Either under her own name or as the backbone of a permeable folk/rock ensemble called The Places, Annelle has been unfurling her consistently passionate and spectral acoustic marrow for over a decade, and though she wins praise from every heart punctured by the ether-tipped jags of the storm-felled trees that are her songs, we end to think the world can do better. And this summer (”For now we can say late May/early June,” she has reported via email) the world will get its next chance.
According the website of her own record label, High Plains Sigh, the new album “features very special guest Ian McLagan (Small Faces, Bob Dylan) and longtime musical ally Paul Brainard (Victoria Williams, Alejandro Escovedo), as well as new friends from Austin’s vibrant music community.” The site is well worth checking out, by the way, as it also houses some gorgeous photography shot by the songstress on tour and on wanderings amid desolate, broken-down stretches of the great American expanse.
Annelle will be touring the US and beyond in support of the album’s release. In the past, she has lent her talents to back up such diverse and shadowy greats as Jandek, Michael Hurley, Roy Harper and R. Stevie Moore, and in the future, who knows? One thing’s relatively certain, though, which is that her own original graces will no longer be obscured by the group moniker. “the places handle has been retired” she writes. “this is an amy annelle album.”
The Places are dead. Long Live Amy Annelle! Video of her performing a new album song after the jump…
The Wall Street Journal Asks, “Are All the Good Band Names Taken?”
[via MBV] Are all the good band names taken? The Wall Street Journal, cornerstone to any good music journalism investigation, is on the scene. Their claim? That punchy, one- or two-word names are dwindling and that bands are now resorting to the “unwieldy or nonsensical.” Because band names like the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Chocolate Watchband, Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Stone Temple Pilots, Three Dog Night, Pearls Before Swine, Hootie and the Goddamn Blowfish! The point is, people have been picking weird band names since the whole rock ‘n’ roll thing got started. Obviously, it’s probably harder today to think up a band name these days, but some of this comes down to taste and creativity. Example…
Between takes in a recording studio, Mr. Jones [John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin] brainstormed about names with his new band mates, including former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl, then checked them online. Their first choice, Caligula, turned up at least seven acts named after the decadent Roman emperor, including a defunct techno outfit from Australia. Eventually the rockers decided on Them Crooked Vultures. The words held no special meaning.
Caligula? Oof. I’m not exactly sure that’s making any cold, hard, irrefutable argument. But seriously, why do they act like it is so impossible? However, this certainly does bring the situation into focus:
There are about 1.4 million artist names, including 29 individual musicians name John Williams in the database of Rovi Corp., which owns website including allmusic.com and licenses editorial content to Apple’s iTunes and other music services. Last year, Rovi added an average of 6,521 new names a month to its database.
Okay, that’s obviously something to contend with, but the idea that people are only now coming up with nonsensical names is crap. After the jump, I shall name bands that surfaced within the last five years or so that have an original name that’s not nonsensical and that’s at most two words (not counting the word “the”), and then I’ll also see if I can come up with a few originals myself. read more
Jokey Rap Group To Perform Album By Other Jokey Rap Group
Looking for something to do tonight? If you live in Brooklyn, why not hop over to the Cameo Gallery in Williamsburg to see Das Racist (they of “Combination Pizza Hut & Taco Bell” fame) perform Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boy in its entirety? It’s only five bucks. How much did you pay when you bought the original version of Paul’s Boutique? More than five bucks, probably.
Live Show Review: Dengue Fever at the Independent, San Francisco
Dengue Fever
January 8th at the Independent, San Francisco
Who knew that traditional Cambodian pop and psychedelic, indie-rock would make such damn good bedfellows? Evidently, Ethan Holtzman did. On a trip through Cambodia, the LA-based guitarist heard popular Cambodian singer Chhom Nimol sing in a karaoke bar and subsequently convinced her to come to the States with him and sing for his band. The result is a surprisingly coherent, fascinating sound that translates into an energetic, enthralling concert experience.
Taking the stage in a show-stopping cocktail dress and sparkling heels, Nimol had the sold-out crowd eating out of the palm of her hand right away. The pint-sized vocalist comfortably shifts between Khmer—her native language—and English, while shimmying and slinking around the stage with an effortless confidence and grace that even the most seasoned rocker would appreciate. Her easy style and boundless swagger stands in stark contrast to her guitar-playing cohort. Holtzman sports a beard that’s half Rasputin, half homeless guy. He—along with the rest of the sextet—spent the show’s duration bouncing around the stage with reckless abandon.
Yoko Ono: Between Her Head and the Sky
“I’ve passed the time when I used to think I’m going to surprise people with this, break the sound barrier, I’m going to put in some chords that nobody has ever put in or whatever. That day is over. I just want to be myself,” says Yoko Ono.
Pioneer of the avant-garde, godmother of the new wave, conceptual art maker and peace advocator: Ono has been called all these things, and others, some of them not quite as nice, during her 40 years in the public eye and 50 years as a working artist. These days, she’s back to fronting the Plastic Ono Band, the group she and her husband John Lennon founded in 1969 as an outlet for his post-Beatles expression and the couple’s most political and experimental work. It was also the beginning of a period of intense collaboration for them, inside and outside the studio, which lasted ’til Lennon was assassinated in 1980. Beatles fans and critics were notoriously unkind about the partnership, particularly regarding Ono’s musical participation in it. “I’ve been attacked so much, I thought, ‘Oh, being attacked… this is a normal thing,’” she says.
Next year marks 30 years since Lennon was murdered and 40 years since the break-up of the band he founded in Liverpool over 50 years ago. Had he lived, he would be turning 70, while his and Ono’s son, Sean, who shares a birthday with his father, will turn 35. Though I neglected to ask the reported numerology and astrology buff Ono about the significance to all those round numbers, I don’t have to consult any oracles to know that her next birthday in February will be an auspicious 77. After all these years, it is amazing that she even bothers with fielding the inevitable Lennon questions and Beatles queries, and she does it with admirable enthusiasm and personal dignity, too. Certainly, in the face of a tragedy that could’ve defined the last 30 years of her life, she couldn’t have been blamed if she had chosen to retreat. But Yoko’s too much of a life-lover to go down that way. “Why is this life so beautiful, so interesting?” she exhales on the new Plastic Ono Band album, Between My Head and the Sky. Remaining a kind steward of her husband’s legacy—overseeing the release of The Beatles: Rock Band, their remasters, and curating a New York exhibit of Lennon artifacts currently on display—it’s no wonder she demurs when asked if she’ll ever sit down to write her own story.
Don Letts on Big Audio Dynamite’s Punky Reggae Party
by: Denise Sullivan
“Anybody’s who’s meant to get it, gets it, and those who don’t, they never will,” says Don Letts. The filmmaker and musician is talking about the ways in which the rhythms of Africa have a habit of turning up in popular music from around the globe, most noticeably these days in the work of Vampire Weekend and Animal Collective. But Letts could just as easily be commenting on his own career as a DJ, writer, and member of the Clash posse, or as an accidental pioneer of sampling as a member of Big Audio Dynamite, the Mick Jones-led Clash sequel.
“Like a lot of great ideas, these things are stumbled upon rather than by design,” he says, somewhat understatedly. But when it comes right down to it, Letts’ life story reads like a series of 20th century music history flashpoints: From the time his ganja-inspired meeting with Bob Marley led to the Rastaman’s song “Punky Reggae Party”, to when, as a punk club DJ, he spun reggae when he ran out of punk discs (few existed at the time). “New wave/new phrase,” sang Marley. “Rejected by society / Treated with impunity / Protected by my dignity / I search for my reality / It’s a punky reggae party / And it’s all right.”
You might even say that without Letts’ point in the magic triangle, the resulting permanent alliance between the two major forms of rebel music might not have ever happened.
Letts is also the dread pictured on the cover of the Black Market Clash EP, confronting police at the Nottinghill Carnival (which went on to inspire the Clash song, “White Riot”). Letts was also with Joe Strummer at the Dillinger and Leroy Smart all-nighter described in “White Man in Hammersmith Palais.” But his own enduring contribution to modern music came when he fed some Clint Eastwood movie dialogue into an early sampler and the accompanying beats provided the blueprint for the sound of This is Big Audio Dynamite, the best album the Clash never made.
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by: Denise Sullivan
published: September 3, 2010
in column: Feature Story, interview
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