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Rock Art Rock
The Decemberists
September 19, 2009
Terminal 5, New York, NY
By Amanda Hatfield "The Decemberists played a special one night 'lottery show,' where the songs played were picked at random by a master of ceremonies, played by John Wesley Harding..."
Ra Ra Riot
April 4, 2009
Webster Hall, New York City, NY
By Amanda Hatfield "This show was, at the time, the biggest one Ra Ra Riot had sold out as headliners, and it was clear to me after watching it that the band is destined for even bigger and better things..."
Florence and the Machine
October 28, 2009
Bowery Ballroom, New York City, NY
By Amanda Hatfield "Florence Welsh and her backing band delighted and mesmerized a sold-out crowd at Bowery in her first official NY headlining show..."
Dirty Projectors
July 19, 2009
Williamsburg Waterfront (Brooklyn, NY)
By Amanda Hatfield "I was skeptical about how well Dirty Projectors' gorgeous, complex vocal harmonies would carry over outdoors, standing under hot sunshine..."
See more in the Rock Art Rock gallery.
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KISS at Arco Arena, Sacramento
KISS
November 19th at Arco Arena, Sacramento
The 1970s solidified hard, crushing rock ‘n’ roll, ushering in a new era of musical passion. Bands like Aerosmith, AC/DC, and Black Sabbath exploded onto the world stage with a loud and proud message of musical decadence. If your ears didn’t ring and your heart didn’t skip a beat, it wasn’t loud enough.
But wait! Don’t forget those kick ass guys from NYC—the ones with the painted faces, duel personas, and a musical approach that is irrefutable rock-solid. Celebrating the 35th anniversary of KISS’ classic album, Alive!, KISS hit the stage at Arco Arena following that well known battle cry, “You Wanted The Best! You Got The Best! The Hottest Band In The World! KISS!” Not since the June 20, 2004 Rock the Nation tour has Northern California been treated with such a rush of ear-splitting adrenaline. The boys from New York City are back and they’ve brought an Army of die-hard soldiers to conquer the masses.
Jim DeRogatis Slams the Pixies, Calls Them a “Hipper Journey”
[via Daily Swarm]
Man, hands up, who’s hungover today? Yeah, srsly. But you know what makes us feel a little better after having killed all those tiny little brain cells in our heads? News of people talking shit on other people. Yay! This time, it’s rock critic Jim DeRogatis taking the Pixies to task for cashing in on more reunion tours than any credible “hard-hearted punks” should. The band’s latest tour is centered around the 20th anniversary of their classic 1989 album, Doolittle, in which they play the album track-by-track.
I mean, I get what he’s saying. Five years since their “reunion” and no sign of new music, just kinda rakin’ it in at the expense of folk’s nostalgia. (Irony alert: The album is titled “doolittle” har har.) But the awesome part is when DeRogatis goes for the jugular by comparing the band to Creedence or Journey. read more
Video of the Day: Holy Ghost! vs. New Order
Holy Ghost! made one of this year’s best party jams with “I Will Come Back”, their first original track since releasing their hit “Hold On” 12-inch back in 2007.
New wave enthusiasts might notice that the song’s accompanying video is basically a scene-by-scene recreation of the video for New Order’s 1983 single “Confusion.” Compare and contrast this clip with the original New Order video after the jump…
Celluloid Heroes: Tom Waits in Down By Law
Did you know Tom Waits had a major role in Bram Stoker’s Dracula? He’s made some cameo appearances in Coppola movies, this I know, but that I did not know. Wow. Anyway, you can see Waits play a lead role the 1986 Jim Jarmusch (Stranger than Paradise, Coffee and Cigarettes) minimal black-and-white movie Down By Law, which also features Robert Benigni and John Lurie. The film takes place in New Orleans and centers around three men who are arrested individually, put in jail and placed in the same cell, and then eventually break out of jail. Neither Waits, who plays the role of a DJ named Zack, nor Jack, the pimp, committed the crime for which they were put in jail. Their Italian, English-challenged cellmate Bob (Roberto) is oddly the optimist of the bunch even thought he was convicted of manslaughter. Rather than focus on the high drama of the escape, Jarmusch’s storyline is placed on the dynamic between the three men.
The most emotive part of the whole film might just be when they all get up and start singing “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!” Which isn’t to say the movie lacked humor. The deadpan style lent the film an understated thread of comedy, while also providing a downcast mood.
Both Lurie and Waits provide music for the soundtrack. The two songs Waits provides are both from Rain Dogs, “Jockey Full of Bourbon” and “Tango Till They’re Sore.”
See a clip of a drunk Waits singing to himself, and also the ice cream clip, after the jump. read more
The Day Van Dyke Parks Went Calypso
When 80,000 barrels of oil spilled into the waters of the Santa Barbara Channel in January of 1969, the crude-splattered water, beaches, and birds along the California coast in its aftermath became the symbols of modern eco-disaster. While the ensuing public outcry helped hasten the formalization of the environmental movement as we now know it, for musician Van Dyke Parks, the spill and “the revelation of ecology,” as he calls it, was a very personal, life-altering occasion. “It changed my M.O. and changed my very reason for being,” he says. The Union Oil rig rupture in Santa Barbara made Parks go calypso.
“When I saw the Esso Trinidad Steel band, I saw myself in a Trojan Horse,” he says. “We were going to expose the oil industry. That’s what my agenda was. I felt it was absolutely essential.” From 1970 to 1975, Parks waged awareness of environmental and race matters through the music and culture of the West Indies, though in the end, “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry. That’s what makes Van Gogh go,” he says, “That’s what great art does.” Though Parks is referring directly to Esso Trinidad’s happy/sad steel drum sounds, he could just as easily be talking about his own experience during what we’ll dub the Calypso Years. read more
Them Crooked Vultures: Them Crooked Vultures
Them Crooked Vultures
Them Crooked Vultures
(Interscope, 2009)
The debut album from hard rock supergroup Them Crooked Vultures is a fairly mediocre exercise until you take into consideration bassist John Paul Jones. It was probably no easy feat for the other two Vultures, Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and Foo Fighter Dave Grohl, to record an album with a Revolutionary War hero who died precisely 217 years ago. That they could rouse any kind of performance from the long-expired sea captain is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle. Them Crooked Vultures deserve not only a Grammy but several major scientific awards for defying the laws of nature in such a bold, successful manner.
I have just been informed that the John Paul Jones in question is actually the bass player from English music legends Led Zeppelin. While that’s still quite a “get” for our pals Homme and Grohl (Zep’s Jones is known for his finicky nature), it saddens me to learn the space-time continuum has not actually been ruptured by Brody Dalle’s husband and the former drummer for Nirvana. Maybe next time, guys.
Regarding the actual music contained on Them Crooked Vultures, ’tis little more than a murky aural stew boasting the vague flavors of its highly pedigreed ingredients. Like Velvet Revolver and Chickenfoot before them, TCV remain so firmly rooted in a rote 1970s classic rock sound (a sound most commonly associated with, oh, I don’t know, Led Zeppelin and the Foo Fighters) that there is no way anyone who remembers Wolfman Jack or Lynda Carter will dislike them. By the same hand, the Vultures do so little to explore new ideas that there is no way anyone who has ever posted to 4chan or watched Glee will be excited by them. We’ve heard Homme and Grohl whip up thrilling music in the past. Is the influence of the mercurial Jones really that strong?
There are some killer riffs to be found here, like the wobbly one that holds up “Dead End Friends”, but the band’s insistence on staying in third gear tempo-wise makes the entire album seem to go on for an eternity. They could have shaved two minutes off nearly every track and still brought in nearly an hour’s worth of music. I guess sometimes when you “lock into a groove,” the “power of the rock” is too immense to stop from “enveloping your soul.” On a related note, there are a few percussion moments on Them Crooked Vultures that suggest someone was merely tapping on a bong with a pencil.
To be fair, the musicians themselves are in top form. Grohl’s drumming is crisp and precise. Homme’s voice alternates as usual between swaggering, dreamy, and paint-huffing creepy. In addition to his bass work, JP Jones throws out some keyboard dalliances that certainly liven up the proceedings. The recording and production, handled by the three men in question, was clearly done in a professional setting; if any screaming children or howling dogs were in attendance, they were expertly excised from the recording. The worst accusation you can level at Them Crooked Vultures concerns the songwriting—it’s boring, uninspired fart rock we’ve endured a trillion times before. You might as well be pouring molasses in my ear.
Most of the song titles on this record are equally eye-rolling. “Mind Eraser, No Chaser.” “Interlude with Ludes.” “Caligulove.” Who came up with these, the LSD-addled bum who lives in the dumpster behind the Hy-Vee on Route 12? If so, his name is Gene and he needs his diabetes medicine. Please make sure he gets it. We don’t want a repeat of last Christmas.
As far as vanity projects go, Them Crooked Vultures isn’t nearly as painful or offensive as Russell Crowe’s band or any of Jennifer Love Hewitt’s musical releases. Still, for a record boasting such major league talent, TCV is painfully and offensively dull. Sammy Hagar’s wretched cover of “Fight for Your Right” was more inspired and daring than anything here. Perhaps next time the Vultures should try to hire a several centuries dead historical figure to participate in their album. Then they’d at least have an interesting angle (and a potential Ghost Hunters tie-in!).
Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]
The King Khan and BBQ Show at the Independent, San Francisco
The King Khan and BBQ Show, Those Darlins
November 18th at the Independent, San Francisco
Sure, it’s kind of a schtick. But when the King Khan and BBQ Show take the stage, King Khan scantily clad in a loin cloth and skimpy, shimmering top, BBQ in a hot pink turban, it’s not like you don’t know that they’re partially there to shock. Appearances aside, they put on one of the most entertaining shows I’ve seen in a while; what sounds like a band of five (or more!) is actually only two dudes.
All I knew about King Khan was that he puts on an eccentric live show. The Shrines, his last touring ensemble, was a large group replete with horns and stage theatrics, quite unlike the minimalist garage-y punk rock that the BBQ show was all about. I was sorta standing in the front/middle of the room, but I’m pretty short so I couldn’t really see what was going on up on stage. I could only see King Khan; he’s a pretty tall guy. I could tell there was a drummer sitting to his right, mostly because when I stood on my tiptoes I could see his turban. But I couldn’t tell where all the noise was coming from. Where was the tambourine? The drummer/multi-instrumentalist, BBQ (aka Mark Sultan), was playing the drums, and the tambourine, with his feet. And he was playing guitar, and singing too! Talk about a one-man show. Before too long his turban came off, a victim of the performance, and next thing I knew he was sporting a checkered cabbie cap. The set began with fuzzy, reverb-y garage rock and at times got pretty psychedelic, an onslaught of sound tinged by hypnotic fuzzy, guitar riffs. But it was mostly a punk rock, doo-wop inspired act. How about that for something different?
Video of the Day: Pavement: “For Sale! The Preston School of Industry”
In an April 4th, 1997 appearance on Dutch station VPRO’s Lola da Musica program, Pavement wrote and recorded a new song, “For Sale! The Preston School of Industry.” It was sung by Scott Kannberg (aka “Spiral Stairs”), the band’s other main songwriter alongside Stephen Malkmus. This song’s title appears to have provided the name for the band he started after Pavement’s break-up, the Preston School of Industry.
Another great clip from the VPRO program after the jump…
Radiohead Backlash Coming to a Proverbial Head, “Stupid Lists” Backlash Just Getting Started
[via Daily Swarm]
Flavorwire has an article up titled “The Radiohead Backlash: Why Now?” that explores the boomerang effect (my term, not theirs) of Radiohead’s popularity and supposed “critical acclaim” to the current backlash cropping up lately. This question comes after a recent article in Spin that debunks certain rock myths, most of which are ones we already know, from Ozzy not really biting the head off a bat to Pink Floyd not writing The Dark Side of the Moon as a soundtrack to the Wizard of Oz. Way to crack the case on those things which have been shot out of the same bland cannon for years. However, their #1 rock myth debunked is “Radiohead Can Do No Wrong” with the subtitle “Reality: Radiohead Kind of Blow.”
The Spin article certainly has its points, like this one: “After a two-hour set, with the crowd screaming for more, Yorke retook the stage alone, sat at a grand piano, and played a quiet, minimalist nocturne. For five minutes. Before 20,000 people. The song, “Cymbal Rush,” from his 2006 solo album The Eraser — titled in an apparent gearhead reference to some sonic effect or software patch (probably between “Amp Fuzz” and “Element Isolator”) — amplified the sense that this man was so far up his own formalist ass we might as well have not even been there. It’s a valid outlook, but an odd one for someone making populist gestures in his business life and performing on such a giant stage.”
Sure, but this is coming from the magazine that easily knocks Radiohead while at the same time instinctively knowing that putting them on the cover will sell issues… like the time they put them on their November 2000 cover asking if they were “The World’s Greatest Rock Band?” How’s that for revisionist criticism? read more
Beck Comes Out on Top of Ridiculous, Somewhat Imaginary Band Feud
by: Jocelyn Hoppa
SO. Way back in August, before we even had this blog, Radiohead released a one-off charity track called “Harry Patch (In Memory Of).” Patch was the last surviving UK veteran of WWI and died just recently at the age of 111. Proceeds from the single benefit the British Legion. Seems like a nice, sensible thing for a band to do, right?
Well, on November 3rd, the webzine Spinner ran an interview with the Fiery Furnaces in which the brother half of the duo, Matthew Friedberger, upon being told that Radiohead sent out a mass email describing the tribute, went fucking apeshit about it. He said, “F— you! You brand yourself by brazenly and arbitrarily associating yourself with things that you know people consider cool. That is bogus. That’s a put-on. That’s a branding technique and Radiohead have their brand that they’re popular and intelligent. So they have a song about Harry Patch.”
Confused? You should be. While I’m sure Harry Patch was a real cool guy, it’s a rather suspect thing for a band to align themselves with so to appear as thought they are all cool and obscure with their references. As it turns out, Friedberger confused war veteran Harry Patch with American composer Harry PaRtch. D’oh! Good one, dude.
THEN. Then, because he obviously had to answer to what was at least perceived as his giant fuck up, Friedberger issued a statement saying that he knew all along that it was Harry Patch, duh, and he just thought it would be funny to make a joke. Is that even believable though? I dunno…
The story gets better and continues on after the jump. read more
by: Jocelyn Hoppa
published: November 20, 2009 in column: What Goes On
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