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Straight to Video
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..."
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Search results for: sugar ray
Steely Dan: “Show Biz Kids”
There is little, if anything, that colored my upbringing more than the music of Steely Dan. Wordsmiths and masterful jazz-rock composers Walter Becker and Donald Fagen have been along on every car trip I can remember… and probably some trips before then. But if there is one thing that has been more of a fixture in my upbringing than the music of Steely Dan, it would be my dad’s blue Nordic sweater with the funky ’70s collar. It’s threadbare, sure, but it has outlasted two houses, three cars, and two dogs. Both Steely Dan and the sweater were present one night during the Winter of ’07 when the whole family was seated around my parents’ dining table—after dinner, before dessert, that dangerous lull during which many idle comments have become fighting words.
Steely Dan’s Countdown to Ecstasy was playing, and I commented on the vamp from “Show Biz Kids”, something along the lines of: “The loop where they say, ‘You go to Lost Wages,’ represents yet another instance of rock bands forging prototypical hip-hop techniques. The band couldn’t hold down the groove, so a 30-ft tape loop was strung up in the studio. See also: The Beatles’ ‘Revolution 9’ and ‘Strawberry’”…
“Wait,” said my dad. “Whaddayou mean ‘the vamp where they sing, “You go to Lost Wages”’?”
The Boy Least Likely To Make Lemonade
Back in 2005, the Boy Least Likely To charmed audiences with their debut album, The Best Party Ever. It was an endearing record fraught with peppy melodies and eclectic instrumentation (glockenspiel, banjo, clickity-clack percussion, and recorder solos) alongside melancholic lyricism, wide-eyed wonder, and a dash of neurosis. There’s a sad, scary world out there after all, full of monsters and spiders and the onset of adulthood. On their sophomore album, The Law of the Playground, two boys continue to hold their heads up high, clap their hands, and sha-la-la while battling life’s anxieties and fending off false nostalgia. In other words, it’s the kind of music that’s childlike, yet never childish. We chatted with lead singer Jof Owen via email about their new album, what it means to be twee, the English countryside, and “the most rubbish cartoon superhero ever invented.”
Crawdaddy!: It took four years for your follow-up album to arrive. There were some issues with your record label, right? What were some of the hindrances that prevented Law of the Playground’s arrival sooner?
Jof Owen: I still can’t believe it took that long. It was held up because of the label that we signed to. It’s difficult to explain exactly what happened, because we’re not really allowed to talk about it, but basically we finished recording the album two years ago and took it in to the label, and that was when we were told that they didn’t exist as a label anymore, and that they had no intention of releasing our record, and that they weren’t able to release it even if they did want to. It was frustrating. We thought that they would just give us the record back, because they weren’t going to do anything with it, but they didn’t. So we were stuck signed to a label that wasn’t a label anymore. We might as well have been signed to a cake shop. We spent most of last year trying to get the record back so we could release it ourselves. It ended up taking a lot longer than we thought it would. I wish the truth was more exciting. I wish we’d been doing something constructive with the last two years, but we haven’t. It shouldn’t have taken two years for it to come out, and it feels like there’s so much more expected of the record because it took so long, but I try not to think about it too much because it just reminds me of that horrible time. Every time someone sent me an email asking when the album was going to come out, it would break my heart. I was completely disillusioned with everything. I always thought a record deal was everything I’d ever wanted. It was as if I’d spent my whole life dreaming about something, and now that it was actually happening, I couldn’t believe how unhappy it made me. I didn’t ever regret signing with the label, because there isn’t any point in regretting things, but every day I would wake up and wonder how my life would be different if we hadn’t done all the things we did.
Michael Jackson: “Billie Jean”
Michael Jackson’s best song—and I can say that it is with certainty, now, in the ecstatic hindsight that his death has brought, following weekends of car speakers and barrooms full of young, dancing Brooklynites and barbecue boom boxes—is also, in hindsight, his most poignant. “Billie Jean”, aside from being his breakthrough hit, and unprecedented floor-filler once again, is almost eerie in the way that its lyrics seem to have predicted the torments that would define the subsequent second half of Jackson’s life. I mean, what is “Billie Jean” if not, first and foremost, a not particularly believable protestation of sexual innocence?
Pop songs, representing, as they do, the art of seduction in 200 seconds or less, are rife with unreliable narrators. Even before his teens, Jackson was compromised and duplicitous (as well as sexualized): The narrator of “I Want You Back” has already betrayed his love (at least) once. Who’s to say he won’t do it again? But Jackson-the-narrator has never been a more unreliable narrator than in this song, based on his and his brothers’ own experience with crazily devoted fans. Surveying the consequences of such an intense engagement with the audience, Jackson came up with a song in which he admitted: Sure, she looked like a beauty queen; sure, she caused a scene; sure, they danced, on the floor, in the round; sure, she came and stood right by him with her sweet perfume; sure, he went to her room; and sure, the baby’s eyes look like his—but, no, Billie Jean is not his lover, and the kid is not his son. Suuure.
A lot of the credit for the ambiguity-at-best should go to the paranoid, slow-building production (probably equal parts Jackson and Quincy Jones), and Jackson’s supremely anguished vocal performance. (Never more so than when “remember to always think twice” is echoed with “don’t think twice,” like the devil on the opposite shoulder of the angel.) But the real punch comes from what we now know are the true implications of the things he says.
People Like Us: Vanguard of the Avant-Retard
Vicki Bennett, better known as People Like Us, has dazzled and bewildered listeners for over 15 years with highly original audio and video collages. Long before “mash-up” became part of the common vernacular, Bennett’s mutant pop completely dismembered songs and reconfigured the scraps into an absurdist playground. Today, she is one of the world’s foremost collage practitioners, with numerous awards and grants to her credit. Her recent collaborations with Ergo Phizmiz, including their most recent release, Rhapsody in Glue, have found great critical and public acclaim. Her extensive solo recordings and radio show with WFMU, Do or DIY, are unmistakably unique expressions of her eccentric worldview.
On the afternoon of our interview, the prolific artist was gardening at her London home, preparing herself psychologically for a new major project. “It’s like the way a cat walks round and round in circles before lying down in the middle,” Bennett muses. “I have ambitious garden ideas this year.”
Sugar Ray: “Mean Machine”
It seems like I’ve been hearing about the pathetic state of the American auto industry my entire life. Detroit’s been in decay since before I could walk, and no one (not even Michael Moore) has been able to prevent scores of Rust Belt workers from punching out forever and fading away into a penniless oblivion. The blame for this can probably be placed on Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman revamp. You saw that sleek, rocket-fueled, Anime-lookin’ thing Keaton was cruising around in. No way did any part of that behemoth roll off a GM assembly line in Flint, Michigan. Bruce Wayne had to be outsourcing to Japan. Hence, a whole generation of drivers after that movie opted for white-hot rice burners instead of the boxy US tanks they should have been piloting.
One group you can’t point fingers at is Sugar Ray, who most people remember from their 1997 pool party hit, “Fly.” Two years earlier, this band of frosted-tipped Californians, originally known as the Shrinky Dinks, turned in the last great slice of 20th century rock ‘n’ roll dedicated to just cruisin’ around and burning up gas in an American bucket of bolts: The epochal “Mean Machine” from their 1995 debut, Lemonade and Brownies. In addition to a musical bed of heart-pounding, head-banging proto-metal that makes you wanna slam down the accelerator and tear out of your high school parking lot from the explosive opening drum roll, “Mean Machine” throws down the gauntlet regarding four-wheel supremacy. From the first couplet, there’s no question that imports are not the way Sugar Ray rolls:
“The only good thing that’s creeping in the city, Elvis had 50 but this one’s mine / Japanese cars, man, such a pity, AM radio suits me fine!”
Bonnaroo: June 11-14, Manchester, TN
When June reels around every year, I hear the siren call of Tennessee’s mega-music bacchanal, and despite the rabid heat, grungy camping, and general hassles involved, I’ve made the ’Roo pilgrimage the last four years in a row, including this one.
Bonnaroo stands outside the hamlet of Manchester, TN, on a 700-acre farm, an hour south of Music City. Every summer, Bonnaroo becomes Tennessee’s sixth largest city, and the festival even publishes its own daily newspaper, the Beacon. This isn’t the little hippie-fest-that-could anymore; though jam bands are still well-represented, it’s become something else: America’s arguably biggest, most musically diverse, and probably best music festival. It’s the Woodstock for the digital age.
I arrived this year on Friday morning; though it technically starts on Thursday, few bands play that evening. I spent that night in Nashville on honky tonk row, getting in shape for the upcoming events. It’s a good thing too, because thunderstorms soaked the area all evening.
The Church of Love: A Blessed Beatles Event
Warning: Contains Spoilers from the Beatles Love show by Cirque du Soleil
Against the Beatle naysayers of the world, there is a well-documented list of ‘firsts’ that can be used to win the argument on technical points—first live, international satellite broadcast (“All You Need Is Love”, 1967), first use of feedback in a studio recording (John Lennon’s vibrating A string tacked onto the intro of “I Feel Fine”, 1964), first rock band to employ stadiums for live shows (started at Shea Stadium, 1965, ended at Candlestick Park, 1966), first rock musicians to mix amphetamines and strippers (the influence of amped, bored, Reeperbahn strippers on the Fab Four is often overlooked). That’s just a partial list, mind you, but it nicely illustrates the significance of the band to anyone who needs a reminder.
However, everyone I know that loves the Beatles does so not for their technical or cultural milestones. They love them for their music, which naturally includes their spirit, which naturally comes from their story. Loss and tragedy followed by success so huge it becomes a sort of tragic burden in itself—that is the band’s story. Pain, triumph, defeat, and victory for everyone who followed—in some ways, it is the archetypical martyred king legend. Much time and music has since passed, yet still the Beatles’ victory survives as a memory, and thrives as an influence, which takes us back to a winnable argument against those who feel the Beatles were pop stars and nothing more—a sentiment that reminds me of the Python quote: “What have the Romans ever done for us?”
Plastic Rock: Let It Die
Hand on the neck, settling the pick in the other so it just peeks out between thumb and forefinger at a solid right angle from the nail. The familiar weight on your shoulder. The hum of live amps and cabinets in waiting. An anchoring glance at the setlist, and then over to the pedal array to make sure the right LEDs are lit. Out of the corner of one eye, a drummer in the dark stops the anxious twirl of sticks to tighten that high hat wing nut one more time. Without looking, the pinky finger slides the volume pot open just enough so you can hear a change in the amplified hum and buzz. You can’t help it, your eagerness gets the best of you and you chunk the strings to make sure everything is all right. The house music fades. House lights freeze, then wink out. The place is dark—darkest where you stand. Dotting your horizon is the familiar pattern of red pilot lights, red LEDs the size of distant stars, and amber LCDs. Give the cable one clean shake—a big proud cat twitching its tail in anticipation of the pounce. Follow the trajectory of a waving flashlight in the hand of a stranger in shadow. It’s just a few small steps—they mark the beginning, and they’re the ones you wait for every night you get to do this. The other noise—that thrum you get paid in—it swells but doesn’t break… yet. A few rogue hoots and whistles rise above like spikes of foam. And then, four clicks.
* * *
It doesn’t matter how many times you do it, at least for me, and I’ve done it hundreds of times. It doesn’t matter if the ocean meeting the beach you’re standing on is big or small, tumultuous or calm. The only thing that matters are those four clicks and what follows. Music and the ability to be moved by it. Music and the ability and eagerness to play it. Music and the desire to move others in exchange for a response—almost any response, be it tiny or enormous. That’s what matters when it’s happening or about to happen.
OK Computer In the Future
Many books come out each year deconstructing rock music: The musicians, their albums, their songs, their showering habits, and their other habits. It’s here where we’ll take an excerpt of a book for you to check out before you make the purchase. As of now these will exclusively feature the venerable 33 1/3 series, which picks apart an album by a band or musician. In the future, we hope to include more rock books of all varieties.
Dai Griffiths is Head of the Department of Music at Oxford Brookes University.
***
Rock the Bells at Shoreline Amphitheatre, SF
by: Marissa G. Muller
August 9th at Shoreline Amphitheatre, San Francisco
“What you’re about to see… is what we’ve been trying to put together for a while: Peace, love, unity. This is what this music is about.” In an act of unity, a banner falls from the top of the stage as KRS-One, host of Rock the Bells, announces this year’s headliners: Nas and Damian Marley. Representing two segments of hip-hop culture, a portrait of Nas against Brooklyn’s skyline and a snapshot of Marley in front of Kingston’s horizon provided the backdrop for their performance and the final act of Rock the Bells on the final night of the 2009 tour.
“Hip-hop is dead,” Nas chanted as he swaggered onto the main stage for his shared set with Marley, the “Jamrock” prodigy. With a populous band ensemble and a twirling Rastafarian flag, Nas reminded the crowd of an era when the mainstream rejected hip-hop, when the game was about delivering a message instead of an advertisement, when hip-hop spoke for the community instead of the corporations who commission it. “Reminiscin’ when it wasn’t all business / If it got where it started / So we all gather here for the dearly departed.” Spitting rhymes to a crowd of over 10,000 people, Nas berated the “rap culture” hip-hop has become throughout tracks like “One Mic”, “Made You Look”, and “Road to Zion”, his duet with Marley off their new collaborative album, Distant Relatives. While Nas commanded the crowd’s attention for his more popular songs like “The World Is Yours”, Marley got them to move. Covering a slew of his legendary father’s discography, Damian jived with two frenetic vocalists and the Roots’ guitarist, Captain Kirk Douglas, who wailed electric blues throughout his set. Dancing around on stage with meters of bouncing dreadlocks, he finished off the evening with “One Love.” While Nas and Marley’s pleas of unity may have been romantic, their sentiments were echoed by other performers throughout the day.
read more
by: Marissa G. Muller
published: August 14, 2009 in column: It Shows
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