February 2008 Archives
Jeffrey Lewis (Interviewed) & Crass (Covered): Part 2 of 3
by Alec Hanley Bemis
February 29, 2008 9:00 AM
In this week's print edition of LA Weekly, I contributed a piece about Jeffrey Lewis's new album 12 Crass Songs, and the phenomenon of young(ish) indie rockers covering 80s era hardcore punk songs. Here is the unexpurgated Q&A.
- Read Part I
Was there a reason these songs needed to be interpreted now?
I've always been interested in unusual and unexpected cover songs, so I'd always thrown in random covers of songs over the years. Songs that people wouldn't think not only that they wouldn't think I would cover, but that they wouldn't think anyone would cover. I like the idea of surprising cover songs being part of a set. We used to do “Murder Mystery” by Velvet Underground and stuff by the Last Poets that requires great deals of memorization, and many many words.
I had been doing some Crass songs live over the past four years, and then it was really just one night I just sat down with a tape recorder, and an acoustic guitar and a bunch of Crass albums and just had the inspiration to record a bunch into the tape recorder see what they would sound like. I filled up a tape, and listening to that tape the next day a lot of them just sounded fantastic. The lyrics were so clear and powerful and there was so much I could do with these songs. This was probably back in 2006, and it just became a bedroom project with my friend Matt who has a set up in his living room -- mics and Protools -- and over the years I would work on these songs, and over about a year and a half of working very relaxed in stop and start fashion with no thought of deadlines or idea that it would be my next album, I ended up with these twelve finished songs.
I emailed with Crass's record label to see what they thought of the idea of this being an officially released album, and got very positive responses from the Crass people. But it's very ironic. By the time this album is released in America, the Dirty Projectors have just put out that album of Black Flag covers, so it seems as if these things are just popping up at the same time as some kind of unconscious cultural wave of retro interest in that period of hardcore.
After the jump, a Jeffrey Lewis explains how his project differs from that of the Dirty Projectors, and invents a new word which you, the readers, have permission to use when you want to sound extra pretentious.
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On Wednesday morning, the subterranean temple that is the KCRW studio complex on the campus of Santa Monica College played host to a great six-song set by Grizzly Bear, of Brooklyn, New York. Broadcast live on Nic Harcourt's Morning Becomes Eclectic show, the set, which you can listen to on the station's fancy new online audio player, was beautiful.
A dozen or so lucky hangers-on and invitees (including former Defamer editor Mark Lisanti, enjoying his first full week away from the blogging ratrace) stood in the sound room and watched Grizzly Bear through a window like the foursome were subjects of some sort of sociology project; we observed their mannerisms, the way they moved around the room with their instruments, the way Ed Droste stood solidly, his back to the window, his mouth in front of the mic, crooning, “can't you feel the knife” during a haunting version of their amazing “Knife.” Daniel Rossen, who plays guitar but prefers not being called their “guitarist,” (read my interview with Rossen here), sang “Deep Blue Sea” the way he does it on Grizzly Bear's recent Friend EP: as a soft, emotional lament that pushes his falsetto around the register like a submarine through underwater canyons. The band is rounded out by Chris Taylor and Christopher Bear.
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Kids of Widney High,
Amoeba Records, Feb. 28, 2008
By now, I hope that most people reading this know who the Kids of Widney High are, so I'll only briefly mention their story for those who might have forgotten. They're a group of disabled students (or former students) from a Los Angeles special education high school that write and perform their own songs with the backing of teachers, and session musicians on instruments. The group's songs are funny, clever, sometimes even touching. Playing live, they also usually repeat the chorus a good ten times or so, but the songs are so catchy, it's not a big deal, and it encourages a lot of singing along from the audience.
No one mentioned how long the Kids of Widney High have been writing and performing songs, but 2008 marks 20 years since the program started, and the Kids' debut album came out in early 1989. Twenty years! Though they're known everywhere, they really are a California institution at this point, they've appeared on Kevin & Bean Christmas tapes, acted in a Johnny Knoxville movie, and played more shows at the Smell and Mr.T's Bowl than the average Echo Park indie band.
Tonight, seven of the Kids including Cain, Pee-Wee, Daniel, Shelley, Elisa, traded off lead vocals on a dozen or so songs, starting with a cover of "Respect," with lyrics that fit their situation a little closer than Aretha's. Tanesa not only sang, but translated a lot of the lyrics into sign language for the crowd of a couple hundred people. How often do you see a band do that?
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Bone Thugs-N-Harmony Week Day 4: Searching For the Elusive Identity of the "Ghetto Cowboy"
by Jeff Weiss
February 29, 2008 1:15 AM
I actually own this on CD-single, which is either keeping it real, or keeping it really retarded.
- From the first moments of the reel, one can immediately infer that the film is going to be of quality. Why? The stamp of quality from Mo' Thugs Family Features. Like the ill-fated male fortuneteller scheme alluded to in "1st of tha' Month," the film company was yet another financial miscalculation for Bone. Though to be fair, the company did churn out several pictures of high repute, including Thug Scuba Diver, Ghetto Holy Roman Emperor, and Thuggish Ruggish Mortgage Broker.
- Ghetto Cowboys apparently love the harmonica. They too understand that the harmonica is the most undervalued instrument in rock. Well, that and the mandolin. (Oh, Arcade Fire, you're so precious.)
- Counting your money seems to a prerequisite, which may or may not involve a mastery of the abacus.
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In this week's print edition of LA Weekly, I contributed a piece about Jeffrey Lewis's new album 12 Crass Songs, and the phenomenon of young(ish) indie rockers covering 80s era hardcore punk songs. We're using the blog to post some related materials.
Remember that all the way back in 2006 when the Beastie Boys released Awesome: I F***in' Shot That? It seemed like such a novelty. Video cameras were handed to audience members and the resulting footage was later edited into a full-length concert documentary. Today, cell phone cameras are so ubiquitous it's a good bet one could put such a video together from footage shot at half the indie rock concerts that happen every night in major, blog-obsessed cities like San Francisco and New York.
Today, by contrast, we're going to look at some of the scattered and spotty primary documents which survived Crass's actual tenure on this planet earth.
Here is a recently posted, heavily edited video that attempts to present what it was actually like to see Crass in their prime:
Why is the footage so crappy, in this, the era of YouTube's documentary bounty? Well, Crass usually refused all stage lighting but for common household lightbulbs. Ergo, the minimal video that has survived to this day.
Was this merely bad planning? The band were vocal anarchists and, one would guess, not the best group of people to plan for posterity. (And I imagine that it was really difficult to get kitchen chores done at Dial House, their collective home.) But comments from the group's extended family indicates there was some thought to avoiding the demystifying power of videotape. This quote from, Mick Duffield -- responsible for the band's multimedia presentations -- appeared in The Story of Crass by George Berger, the best available biography on the group:
They were very difficult to film, because with Super-8 you needed far more light than was available at a Crass gig -- all you'd get was shadows and light -- that would be about it. So it was a bit pointless filming the gigs. I did try asking for maybe 60 watt bulbs instead of 40 but there was no deal
After the jump flyers, stencils, banners, more video, et. al.
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Bone Thugs-N-Harmony Week Day 3: Why "1st of Month" is the Greatest Song Ever Written About Welfare
by Jeff Weiss
February 28, 2008 12:21 AM
Sometimes, I feel sorry for the 13-year olds of today. I can't even begin to imagine how disgruntled my adolescence would've been had I been forced to listen to "A Bay Bay" and "Low" everywhere I went. We got "Regulate," and "Hip-Hop Hooray," they got the Soulja Boy dance. And of course, there was "1st of Tha Month," a song that pretty much defined the summer of 1995. Those were a weird couple of months. O.J. tried on the infamous "if it don't fit, you must acquit" bloody gloves, Jerry Garcia died, and really not much else happened. It was the 90s, this was perfectly common. In fact, all I really remember doing that summer was watching a whole lot of Small Wonder, playing a lot of Tony LaRussa Baseball, and listening to E. 1999 Eternal. I'm still not sure whether it was supremely awesome or the worst summer of my life.
In particular, I listened to "1st of tha Month" more than anything else. It was hard not to, the thing was everywhere, from the radio, to MTV and Rap City, to my basketball practices in the afternoon. I even distinctly remember one day in my sweltering summer school computer class when a sub came and we spent the entire period listening to E. 1999 Eternal on flimsy Discman headphones and flipping through the liner notes, baffled by the hazy mysticism of the Misterouija board, the street map of E. 1999 Eternal and the mournful RIP message to Eazy who had died in March.
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Jeffrey Lewis (Interviewed) & Crass (Covered): Part 1 of 3
by Alec Hanley Bemis
February 27, 2008 9:00 AM
In this week's print edition of LA Weekly, I contributed a piece about Jeffrey Lewis's new album 12 Crass Songs, and the phenomenon of young(ish) indie rockers covering 80s era hardcore punk songs. Here is the unexpurgated Q&A.
What are you doing the next few months?
Well I'm doing a bunch of solo dates opening for the Super Furry Animals and Times New Viking and immediately after that I'm doing the west coast with the Mountain Goats, and then I'm doing a bunch of one offs with Kimya Dawson + Mount Eerie, and then a full US tour with Ra Ra Riot and The Cribs. I'll do whatever I can scrouge up. I've worked with whatever I manage to bring up. All this US stuff wraps up in April 4th, and then I'm doing some festival stuff in Belgium starting April 15th. So we have about a week off between now and May.
Is it an interesting time to go out there with Kimya given her recent success?
I've played tons of shows with her in various situations. I've known her for years so it's not that strange.
Well you have to acknowledge it seems like a pretty good time for anti-folk again -- between Kimya contributing all those songs to the Juno soundtrack, one of the best selling records of this year, and you having a bit of a renaissance of interest with your 12 Crass Songs?
For myself it's not so much that there's been a resurgence because...don't call it a comeback I've been here for years.
After the jump, a Teenage Kicks exclusive: Will Jeffrey Lewis's next covers project be devoted to Public Enemy?
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Bone Thugs-N-Harmony Week Day 2: "Thuggish Ruggish Bone" And the Importance of "Branding"
by Jeff Weiss
February 27, 2008 12:53 AM
Whether consciously or not, rappers have understood the concept of branding since the on-and-on-to-the-break-of-dawn days. You can listen to everything from the "The Breaks" to "Crank That" and figure out pretty quickly that they were performed by Kurtis Blow and an autistic 4th Grader with a rudimentary understanding of Pro Tools, respectively. You don't see that sort of self-promotion in other genres. Thom Yorke doesn't ad-lib "Radiohead, up in this bitch!" in the middle of "Paranoid Android." Jimi Hendrix never wrote hooks like "J-I-M-I/How do you stay fly" Though Benny Goodman once write a pithy couplet big-upping the fact that he was the"Good-Man."
The thing is, it's good business sense. You can't buy someone's music if you don't know who they are and logically, you'll increase your notoriety the most by repeating your name 15-plus times in the course of a three minute song. Of course today, most every pop star is a brand, with their own clothing line, fragrance, and unique sexually transmitted disease. But rappers have been doing this sort of stuff forever and out of the thousands of mostly worthless odes to themselves, "Thuggish Ruggish Bone" is one of the greatest, every bit as as good as "Nobody Beats the Biz," "Who Am I (What's My Name)" and "Ice Ice Baby." (relax, it's a joke.)
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In the last few years, Wired Magazine has transformed itself from the best magazine about obscure geeky technological shit that might one day make people rich into the best magazine about obscure business concepts that are already making people rich (but that most people don't know about). Wired is the magazine that lets the wider world in on the secrets of these forward-thinking capitalists. For example, editor-in-chief Chris Anderson's celebrated article about The Long Tail made everyone understand the secret of Amazon.com's success (i.e. that it has a bigger selection than any single record or book store on earth). It was also a notion I have toyed with in print.
And that notion is? That in our increasingly wired world, small is the new big; that the future is not about the mass market, but the niche which you control; that blockbusters are a thing of the past; and finally, that benefiting from many small transactions is the wave of the future.
Now, Anderson has done it again, with Why $0.00 is the Future of Business in Wired's March issue. (You can click here to download a free PDF of the article or here to read it on the web. Yes, here's a case where a publisher is putting their money where their mouth is.)
Anderson will publish a book-length explanation of this phenomenon in 2009 and as befits a longer work, his new article hints at a detailed taxonomy of how free functions in our day-to-day economic life -- as advertising, as "freemiums," as cross-subsidies, et. al. My favorite passage in his piece, however, is BIG IDEA graph wherein he provides a clear explanation of the major difference between the winner-take-all markets of the 20th century, and the "free" markets of the future:
To follow the money, you have to shift from a basic view of a market as a matching of two parties -- buyers and sellers -- to a broader sense of an ecosystem with many parties, only some of which exchange cash.The most common of the economies built around free is the three-party system. Here a third party pays to participate in a market created by a free exchange between the first two parties. Sound complicated? You're probably experiencing it right now. It's the basis of virtually all media.
In the traditional media model, a publisher provides a product free (or nearly free) to consumers, and advertisers pay to ride along. Radio is "free to air," and so is much of television. Likewise, newspaper and magazine publishers don't charge readers anything close to the actual cost of creating, printing, and distributing their products. They're not selling papers and magazines to readers, they're selling readers to advertisers. It's a three-way market.
After the jump, I start making weird allusions to communism and explain why Anderson unfairly disses the music industry.
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Once upon a time, Elliott Smith and Aimee Mann were nominated for Oscars, and despite the KCRW-ness of it all, it still felt good to watch them up there against the Celines and the Disney movie stuff.
Of course, it was always Celine Dion or Phil Collins or whomever that walked away with the award, but just having them up there felt like a little progress had been made towards bringing the Best Song category of the Oscars up to... oh, maybe 1962. To hope for something closer to the year 2000, well, probably not. Disney's still gonna make movies, Celine's still going to make soundtracks, and the awards will still go to them.
But then...
And then....
And now, the next morning, there's stuff all over the place about Marketa coming back to get to say her thanks.
It felt sweet, and honest and genuine. I'm sure the three songs nominated from Disney's Enchanted are wonderful in their own way, but for once, it was nice to see the juggernaut get passed over.
Click here to read Ryan Ward's review of the Swell Season performing in L.A. from August.
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Liars
El Rey, Feb 22, 2008
By Jonah Flicker
Liars are a constantly shifting band, taking a new tack on dark post-punk, experiments in early industrial music, and tribal minimalism with each new record they release. Their debut effort, They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top (Mute, 2002), indicated yet another band entrenched in the then nascent dance-punk movement, albeit with heavy shades of Suicide and Pigface thankfully mucking up the formula. Since then, they’ve opted for a more abstract vision with an emphasis on drums, drums, and more drums. The band’s recent self-titled effort does have a few more urgent and tightly-would rockers than on their past few releases, but it’s proof that Liars are able to satisfy their bizarrely creative instincts while still managing to wrangle popular and critical success.
All photos by Timothy Norris. More after the jump.
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Alec (who is the same age as Jesus) responds to his critic. Also, a special guest appearance by Judas aka Bob Dylan (you know, the guy from the panty commercial).
by Alec Hanley Bemis
February 25, 2008 9:00 AM
A commenter writes of my post on These New Puritans:
I have met people in their teens and early twenties who are much less arrogant than this writer(Alec Bemis).New Puritans are OK, definitly not cutting edge, and not like anything we havent heard before.Yes, I'm old, but I was into The Fall as well as the Stones thousands of years ago and I still recognize what bands from the past brought to the party.Maybe Alec is burnt out on the oldtimers, which is understandable, but if he could think past his own experience it would be a nice.He remionds me of a spoiled kid I once knew that would break his toys when he got tired of them so no one else could enjoy them.
Posted on February 19, 2008 11:10 AM by andrew
Let me respond.
1. As a clarification, I am 33, the same age of Jesus. Clearly those kids in their teens and early twenties who you're meeting have some work to do to get as arrogant as me. But don't worry, sounds like they have plenty of time to catch up!
2. I never said that These New Puritans were "cutting edge." They cite terrorist videos as an influence for Alec's sake, and those have been around at least twenty or thirty years. I even point out in my post that their music reminds me of groups like the Fall very very much. I think you are taking a typical boomer-era view of praise, and assuming that I think the only art worth celebrating is "original." Really, though, my criteria for artistic greatness has much more to do with "excellence of execution." There is a huge difference.
3. I'm not "burnt out" on the old timers. To this day Sonic Youth are consistently one of my favorite bands to experience live and there's a reason I was posting video of Mark E. Smith only a few days ago. I will see Bob Dylan live every opportunity I get until the man dies. But I am quite aware that the more comfortable a band gets, the more discomfiting sponsorship opportunities can be. I'd be the last person, for example, to criticize the Shins when their music was used to shill for McDonald's early in the band's career. They almost definitely needed the money. As a band becomes more of a self-sufficient entity, however, it needs become increasingly aware, and careful, of how its accumulated chain of cultural associations are wielded in public view.
In other words. Rolling Stones shilling for Rice Crispies in 1964 = A-OK!
The Rolling Stones shilling for Tommy Hilfiger on their No Security tour in 1999. Well, you've got to be joking me. Maybe if they called it their Social Security tour I would have been more sympathetic.
After the jump, Bob Dylan's most embarrassing-slash-greatest commercial moment(s).
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So, last week I was going off all the time about old people like Mick Jagger, Mark E. Smith, and Sonic Youth. (I wonder if, when they started, they ever thought they'd exist long enough for that name to take on the extra layers of meaning that have accumulated with age?)
In any case, I apologize. Alec Bemis doesn't care about old people. But he really wanted to explore the way sincerity and referentiality is being explored in music these days. And, sure, he's probably undercutting that message a bit by referring to himself in the third person. So, again, he'll apologize, and leave you, instead, with this newish track from These New Puritans -- his greatest current object of musical obsession.
"Navigate, Navigate" was originally created as a soundtrack to Hedi Slimane's Autumn ‘07 collection for Dior Homme -- Slimane being clothing designer of choice for skinny rock dudes. It was released last week, and it works its post-punk groove obsessively for over 15-minutes. I think what makes it work is the sense of mystery to the track. It sounds less like the band was playing than they created, cutted, pasted, and built this thing out of scraps found on the rehearsal room floor. You don't know what is coming from people, what is coming from machines, and if any of it could or will be reproduced anywhere beyond. It's as ephemeral as a Prada shoe -- expensive, disposable things being coin of the realm in our modern world, a society in which luxury itself has been turned into something of a commodity.
And then there is the vocal line -- a stupid yelp, a stutter, an approach that has more than a little to do with Mark E. Smith's manic ranting in the Fall. As with Smith's lyrics, there's very little you can be sure of. "Image! Image!" he yells. Or was that "Cinders! Cinders!" Then "you know, you know." (No actually I don't.) Or wait, did he just say "regal is strange," or "regal is straight"?
Just goes to show, fashion and rock can mix without a hitch.
More about how These New Puritians deal with our increasingly mediated culture after the jump.
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Girl In A Coma
Knitting Factory, Feb. 21
By Scott Schultz
Girl in a Coma’s Thursday night set at the Knitting Factory demonstrated the growth the band has made over the last year of touring. The San Antonio threesome has been on the road nonstop in support of their Joan Jett-released debut disc, Both Before I’m Gone, including an opening spot on Morrissey’s fall tour. His influence is all over the band’s current sound. The band, who is named after a Smith’s song, actually sounds a lot more like The Moz now than they did a year ago.
Nina Diaz, whose voice resembles a Tex-Mex Patsy Cline has added some Morrissey mannerisms such as the dramatic, sustained vocals and yodels and the homage to their mentor complements the band’s sound nicely. At 19, Diaz, with her Texas twang, has one of the more distinctive voices in the indie scene, a punk rock torch singer, who also plays a mean guitar. Her bandmates, older sister Phanie D. on drums and Jenn Alva on bass, make a solid rhythm section, but all eyes are on Nina when she’s on the mic or the guitar.
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Autechre - 4/14, Echoplex
Bad Religion - 3/4,5,11,13, House of Blues
Bamboozle (All-American Rejects, Jimmy Eat World, Paramore) - 4/5, Verizon Amphitheater
Bamboozle (My Chemical Romance, Anti-Flag, Saves the Day, Chiodos) - 4/6, Verizon Amphitheater
Bjorkestra - 3/9 , Safari Sam's
Black Keys - 4/1, Wiltern
Bone, Thugs n Harmony - 2/22, Crash Mansion
The Boredoms - 3/16, Music Box
Carla Bozulich - 3/20, Safari Sam's
British Sea Power - 2/27, Echo and 2/28, Spaceland
Brother Ali - 3/13. Troubadour
Cat Power - 2/29, Wiltern
Les Claypool, Tim Fite - 4/4, Wiltern
The Coup - 2/23, Crash Mansion
The Cribs (rescheduled form Dec.) - 4/4, El Rey
Kimya Dawson - Amoeba - 2/22, Amoeba (free, 7 pm)
Delta Spirit - 3/7, Troubadour
Duke Spirit - 3/5, Echo
Steve Earle - 3/25, Royce Hall, UCLA
Eels -4/16, El Rey
Explosions in the Sky - 3/17, Wiltern
Jose Gonzalez, Mia Doi Todd - 3/25, Wiltern
The Gossip - 4/19, Music Box
Gram Rabbit - 5/31, Safari Sam's
Grizzly Bear & LA Phil - 3/1, Disney Hall
GZA (performing Liquid Swords - 3/29, El Rey
Gutter Twins (Greg Dulli, Mark Lanegan) - 4/2, Avalon
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Last week, DJ Khaled announced the creation of his We the Best Music, a new vanity label that will be distributed and released under the Def Jam umbrella. In a press conference to promote the pact, Khaled repeatedly proclaimed "we the best" and that "we taking over internationally." As I find Khaled neither "the best" nor a viable candidate for global supremacy, I challenged him to a debate. Most graciously, Khaled accepted the offer and informed me, "you the worst." I knew right then that I was in for a difficult time. It's hard enough to debate when your opponent has hired Rick Ross to school him on the ways of elocution, let alone when he is a cunning linguist capable of eluding the sand traps of conventional English grammar.
Moderator (Birdman): May you each make an opening statement to prove who be the #1 stunna. (Makes bird call)
Khaled: We the best. We takin over!
[Audience roars with applause]
Weiss: Who's the best?
Khaled: We
Weiss: Why?
Khaled: Because....I'm so hood.
Weiss: I always thought you'd look good in one of those tropical-colored hipster hoodies. Fair play.
Baby makes unwanted and lascivious eye contact with Weiss and Khaled. Khaled tries on a hoodie and continues to chant "I'm so hood" to deafening approval from the room.
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The Daily Swarm collects an argument currently consuming the web regarding the relative merits of L.A.'s reigning superstar DJ, Steve Aoki. A few days back Pitchfork (predictably) slammed Aoki's new mix, Pillowface and His Airplane Chronicles. Reviewer David Raposa gave it a 2.5, writing: "After 50 minutes of this tired nonsense, with the highlights (like the bloops and bleeps of Yelle’s thankfully untouched “Je Veux Te Voir”, or the bits of Datarock’s strummy “Fa-Fa-Fa” that aren’t beset by hot hot air) sorely outnumbered by the lowlights, the mix ends with another turgid rock-meets-dance-with-guest remix, this time a track by Dim Mak group (and post-punk aficionados) Scanners with additional words of wisdom offered by Justice labelmate Uffie."
Urb editor-in-chief (and occasional L.A. Weekly contributor) Joshua Glazer had no patience for the indie-centric Pitchfork's tirade, and shot back a defense. "Pitchfork may suckle at the teat of Justice and Daft Punk," he writes, "but you know at their fundamental core, they'd rather be giving Arcade Fire the obligatory handjob while posted up in their Chicago digs (Chicago indie rock, btw, is the most pretentious smarter-than-thou scene in the entire country). So that leaves poor Aoki, alone with his mix-CD on Thrive (a quintessential old-school electronica label) to pummel mercilessly as the once mighty Pitchfork lashes out against a section of the music industry that doesn't need their approval to survive. And it stinks."
Whether you agree or not on the merits of Aoki's mix debut (I'd give it a 5.264826547, - and deduct at least .7854126 points for the appearance of the world's worst rapper, Uffie ) it deserves mention that reviewer David Raposa doesn't seem to follow current dance music all that closely, and seems ill-prepared to weigh in; in his long list of reviews for Pitchfork, the writer appraises mainly (surprise surprise) rock and indie rock (Mary Timony, Bottomless Pit, Tara Jane O'Neil, Queens of the Stone Age). The closest thing he comes to writing about dance music is New Order (Waiting for the Sirens' Call, which Pitchfork gave an astounding 7.9).
UPDATE: Aw, shit, now Time Out Chicago's gotten into this mess: Taking umbrage at Josh Glazer's characterizaton of Chicago as "the most pretentious smarter-than-thou scene in the entire country," Time Out's Scott Smith fires back that "Urb’s got to be a little touchy. If I lived in the metro area of Los Angeles/Beverly Hills and the most buzzworthy band my city had right now was Film School, I might start tossing around insults, too."
It's a shame that Smith doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about, but a bigger shame that I'm wasting precious time reporting this crap. Jeezy creezy, man, can't we all just take a jumbo bong hit, pop on a Tortoise album, listen to some tasty jerk-off-jazz-rock licks and take a little nappy-nap? Maybe we'll all wake up feeling chill, man.
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Pete Rock needs no introduction. His new album NY's Finest drops on Tuesday. While it might not be a classic on the level of a Soul Survivors or Mecca & The Soul Brother, it's a strong record with occasionally great moments. But buyer beware: Jim Jones yells "floooosssssiiiin'" no less than four times.
Q: You’ve stated that your intent for NY’s Finest was to modernize your classic sound while attempting to retain that ‘grimy boom-bap” music that you helped pioneer. How did you go about achieving this? Was it a matter of you implementing a new philosophy, buying new equipment, a combination of the two?
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The Hives, Donnas
Wiltern, Feb. 19
Photos by Timothy Norris
It's been eight years since the Hives started telling us they were going to take over the world. Back in those heady days of early 00's, rock bands were back out of the garage and into the spotlight big-time, scoring bonus points if they were from Sweden. In a way, you have to feel a little bad that the Hives' plan of domination didn't work out like they said it would. Here we are, still loving Swedish bands, but it's the more modest ones like the Shout Out Louds and Peter, Bjorn and John. They're in danger of becoming dinosaurs, like the Tyrannosaurus Hives of their '04 album.
The Hives took the Wiltern's stage in darkness under a huge, red neon sign, while the creepy instrumental "A Stroll Through Hive Manor Corridors" played. The neon was the sole flash of color in their black and white set-up, that covered their clothes, guitars, even Chris Dangerous' white-painted drumsticks.
The crowd came alive in no time, a bit of a surprise, since the Donnas, who opened the show, couldn't seem to get much energy flowing in the room, despite their
best efforts. Songs from the Hives' latest, "Try It Again," and "You Dress Up for Armageddon" sounded stronger in the Wiltern than they do on the Black and White Album.
It helps that Howlin' Pelle Almqvist's energy seems limitless. He crossed the stage from one end to the other every ten seconds. He climbed a stack of amplifiers, made his way into the crowd ("If anyone finds my button, please return it to the lost and found, ok?") and made some impressive leaps in the air from the drum kit.
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Siouxsie Sioux, The Music Box at the Fonda, February 15
by Randall Roberts
February 16, 2008 9:39 AM
Siouxsie Sioux
The Music Box at the Fonda
February 15, 2008
By Steve Baltin
The calendar may have read as the day after Valentine’s Day, but inside the Music Box it was pure Halloweeny. Siouxsie Sioux was in town, and a thousand of her disciples, clad in black (of course), leather, top hats, and other celebratory attire came out to worship at her altar.
photos by Timothy Norris
As the front woman for her Banshees, Sioux is the queen of new wave and goth. In her 90-minute set it was easy to spot where followers like Bjork (in her movements) and Shirley Manson (her look, demeanor) have borrowed from Sioux. And like any music royalty, be it Dylan, Aretha, or Morrissey, Sioux had to do little more than take the stage to receive complete devotion from her legions. Well aware, she made her proper diva entrance on cue, clad in a shiny metallic silver and black futuristic ensemble, a moment after her four-piece backing band.
However, Sioux, who recently spoke in an interview about being most concerned with the now , is backing that up. After three decades, she’s just released her first solo album, Mantaray, to illustrious reviews; she brought that same vigor and wisdom to the Music Box. Dancing and interacting with the crowd from the outset, Sioux relied heavily on material from the new album, including some of the night’s finest moments, like the kiss-off song “Here Comes the Day,” the dance-flavored “About to Happen,” the rhythmic grind of “If it Doesn’t Kill You,” and the avant garde German cabaret of “Drone Zone.” And while she dipped into her past, to the delight of the crowd, for songs like “Dear Prudence,” the night’s highlights, was an impassioned closing version of Mantaray’s lead single “Into a Swan,” a song in which she declares, “I’m on the verge of an awakening/A new kind of strength for me.”
Bellowing “I burst out – I’m transformed” with the snarl that’s been her trademark since rising from Sex Pistols fandom to icon in her own right, Sioux made every person in the building believe those words.
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Black Lips,
El Rey, February 14
By Jonah Flicker
Reports of Black Lips’ onstage antics have apparently been greatly exaggerated. The Atlanta quartet, which released Good Bad Not Evil on Vice Records this past fall, is renowned for committing alleged acts of debauchery at live shows including, but not limited to, vomiting, making out, getting naked and small explosions (not necessarily in that order). Tonight, being Valentine’s Day and all, I expected, at the very least, the appearance of a penis or two or some kind of awkward physical or emotional boundary crossing. But the illicit behavior was limited to one member spitting in the air and catching it in his own mouth and a cryptic comment about a dick in John Wayne’s ass.
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Grupo Fantasma
Echoplex, Feb. 14
A musical question -- when was the last time you saw dueling trombones? Personally, I've seen dueling pianos in Memphis, dueling trumpets in New Orleans, dueling guitars at every single God-awful metal show I've ever been to. Trombones -- not so much. So when the Austin-based Latin-funk ensemble Grupo Fantasma took the Echoplex stage last night with two trombones in tow, I was intrigued. As it turns out, the actual band only has one trombonist, Leo Gauna, the other was just sitting in for a few songs. The songs he played on, though, were wonderful, with mystery trombinist and Gauna alternating and intertwining solos and providing some great exchanges -- both playing with the competitiveness of musicians who really know their instrument and want to show it to the other guy.
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More from my thoughtstream about artists who might be taking too much inspiration from other art....
First, here's an image I'd like you to consider: Sonic Youth rocking out last week at Marc Jacobs' show during New York Fashion Week.
Pile that on top of the news Thurston Moore let leak that SY are in the midst of curating a traveling art exhibit:
"We're putting together this museum show that's utilizing all the artists that we've worked with on different covers and concepts, and that's going to happen for two or three years... It's going to happen in young museums, there's one outside of Paris, there's one in Malmö, Sweden."
The blog which reported this news noted that Moore's leak came "after the band played 'Kool Thing' at Jacobs's request." I'm not one to get holier-than-thou about bands selling out -- selling out is how bands get by -- but I'll admit that sentence fragment made me throw up a little in my mouth.
More vomitus after the jump!
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Mark your calendars if you're making the trip to Austin for South by Southwest this year. The LA Weekly party is Friday, March 14 from noon to 5:00, at La Zona Rosa, 612 W. 4th Street, Austin.
The LA Weekly / Village Voice concert will feature The Black Keys (seen below playing Austin two years ago)
Health (just written about in LA Weekly a couple of weeks ago.)
The Cribs
And Soundtrack of Our Lives, seen below playing Australia, not to be confused with Austin.
Nice....
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"Talking Heads are the Enemy" (aka Dirty Projectors as Black Flag, Jeffrey Lee Lewis as Crass)
by Alec Hanley Bemis
February 14, 2008 11:00 AM
In a second we'll hear from this man, Mark E. Smith. But first, a quote from Jason Gross in this year's Pazz & Jop critics poll which got me thinking: Have artists lost the ability to act? Is reaction the only thing left? Or, to put it another way, has the post-modern condition taken hold to the degree that all artists have left is the ability to comment on what has come before?
Here's the quote:
"Lately we're getting bombarded by acts that cover the music scene themselves pretty well in their own tunes: Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, the Hold Steady, LCD Soundsystem. This may mean that rock criticism is in danger of actually being replaced by the thing it's reporting on. At this rate, these acts will be bigger competition than the blogs out there."
I think Jason's point is that the Hold Steady and LCD often employ lyrical narratives about what it's like to grow old in various pop music scenes. But I think his point could be equally applied to their music as sound -- that Hold Steady equal a gloss on Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen; that LCD Soundsystem sound a bit too much like someone with a record collection that includes New Order, Steve Reich, and many a tasty electronic nugget I'm too busy to namecheck right now. Basically, my extrapolation of his point is that bands have become better articulators of the pop music canon than critics or other outside voices; and, more importantly, that they have more ability than critics to revive interest in older music with a flagging reputation. (And if LCD and Hold Steady are too obscure for you, look at how Kanye resuscitated the career of Daft Punk.)
Two artists who Jason didn't mention, however, highlight this idea even more pointedly: Jeffrey Lee Lewis and Dirty Projectors. They have created two of my most listened to albums of the past 6 months or so -- Dirty Projectors with Rise Above a re-interpretation, from memory, of Black Flag's Damaged and JLL with 12 Crass Songs, a re-imagining -- in studied detail -- of the music of UK crusty punk band, Crass.
Where JLL's hyper-articulated vocals make Crass's intense rhetoric audible...
Jeffrey Lee Lewis "End Result" (excerpt)
Dirty Projectors make Black Flag's hardcore punk-as-jazz sound almost unrecognizable...
Dirty Projectors - "Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie" (excerpt)
...while somehow managing to maintain the group's emotional core.
After the jupm, more dense, overthought prose -- and a slurring yet articulate Mark E. Smith!
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The headline, if you can't read it, is: "Topanga's Hippest Hippie Devendra Banhart Plus More Cali Madness." I mean, come on.
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Willie Nelson,
Nokia Theatre, Feb. 13
Photos by Timothy Norris
If Willie Nelson had delivered a show with half as much heart, enthusiasm and class, it still would have been an excellent night of American music. I'm ashamed I expected so little from the man. With a simple backdrop of the Texas flag, a blessedly straightforward eight-piece band, and a setlist that would make Dylan, Van or Stevie Wonder shake their heads in awe, Nelson flips through nearly thirty songs, one after another, barely pausing for a breath.
"Trigger," Nelson's battered Martin guitar, still hasn't disintegrated into dust, and Nelson plays the thing all night. No roadie comes out to tune it or swap it for some newer instrument. And by no means does Nelson ever just take a break from it and let his other two guitarists handle the duties.
Nelson not only plays Trigger, he rules the stage with that guitar. He knocks out solo after solo, never letting the opportunity pass quietly if there's a couple of measures where he can pull another run out of the instrument.
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Introducing Teenage Kicks + A Moment of Rock Crit Glory
by Alec Hanley Bemis
February 13, 2008 4:00 PM
Welcome to Teenage Kicks, the replacement for my Psychic Hipster column, which appeared in the LA Weekly's newsprint edition from 2005 to 2007. (For those who have inquired, the name began as a joke between me and my editor. As time went on, something that seemed cute and entertaining, grew embarrassing and inappropriate. In that way, it's similar to the relationship Mick Jagger must have with rock'n'roll and, more specifically, his leather pants.)
In any event, I can only hope Teenage Kicks will be as entertaining as Chicago area rock critics Greg Kot and Jim DeRogotis were on their Monday night appearance on the Conan O'Brien show.
Was this the greatest moment of rock crit glory since Lester Bangs was immortalized in Almost Famous? Probably. Then again, it doesn't take much to make it onto a list of rock crit's coolest moments. Photos of Jagger's wizened visage + his geriatric kicks after the jump!
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Last week we offered an extensive list of L.A.-based bands hitting South by Southwest in Austin this year (March 13-16). Alas, we missed three of them, all from the beautiful township of Midcity, Cali. This from Brian Miller:
Noticed on the la weekly sxsw blog that 3 la acts are missing. I have
a feeling its because they are registered as all being from Midcity,
CA ... midcity being the neighborhood in la around the 10 freeway and
fairfax. Could you please add them to the list?"
the acts are:
Captain Ahab (watch this video right now, but you have to commit to watching it to the very end).
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"This is the number one rule for your set/In order to survive, gotta learn to live with regrets/And through our travels we get separated, never forget/In order to survive, gotta learn to live with regrets"-Jay-Z "Regrets"
Rappers today don't live with regrets. Or maybe they just don't express them well enough. The truth is that 99 percent of them are liars. I've spoken to more than enough of them to know it and Ben Westhoff's very on-point article in last month's Miami New Times effectively hammered home this point. Sometimes it feels like every one of them is a billionaire, a drug kingpin, players who treat objects like women (to quote the great Jeffrey Lebowski). It's all kayfabe. Label execs wondering why sales are in the tank, might want to think twice about their artists' lack of relatability. Sure, things ultimately come down to who makes the hottest tracks, but never underestimate Kanye's sense of humanity, something that made him infinitely preferable when contrasted with 50's steroid-addled caricature.
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The Night Marchers
All Star Lanes, Feb. 10, 2008
By Ryan Ritchie
Photos by Timothy Norris
Two songs into The Night Marchers’ L.A. debut on Monday night, it became clear why John Reis has abandoned three talented bands within the past three years. Sure, the angular post-punk band Hot Snakes weren’t around long enough for too many fans to miss them, and the down-strummed mayhem of the Sultans went unnoticed by most, but Reis throwing in the towel on long-running critical darlings Rocket from the Crypt was a move that signaled a definite change.
The singer/guitarist has never stuck to one band. His diverse resume (which also includes Drive Like Jehu, Pitchfork and solo project Back Off Cupids) afforded Reis the opportunity to carve out and maintain a niche for each act. But apparently that’s a thing of the past. San Diego’s favorite son has gone the way of the mega-corporation and downsized his efforts into one entity, but the result compresses his many styles into a kind of greatest hits package for sounds in his head.
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Radiohead not playing L.A. until late summer at the earliest
by Randall Roberts
February 12, 2008 9:22 AM
The bad news: we're gonna have to wait until the fall. The good news: we've got frequent flier miles.
RADIOHEAD CONFIRMS MAY 2008 U.S. DATES & VENUES
RADIOHEAD has confirmed the dates and venues to be visited on the first segment of its upcoming North American tour. They are:
May 5 - Cruzan Amphitheatre - West Palm Beach, Florida
May 6 - Ford Amphitheatre - Tampa, Florida
May 8 - Lakewood Amphitheatre - Atlanta, Georgia
May 9 - Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre - Charlotte, North Carolina
May 11 - Nissan Pavilion at Stone Ridge - Bristow, Virginia
May 14 - Verizon Wireless Amphitheater - St Louis, Missouri
May 17 - Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion - Houston, Texas
May 18 - Superpages.com Center - Dallas, Texas
Pre-sale for the above dates will begin February 14 via W.A.S.T.E. with general on-sales following on February 16.
The second half of the North American tour will follow the band's summer tour of the UK and Europe.
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Remembering the Time: Minor Epiphanies Gleaned Upon Re-Watching Michael Jackson's "Remember the Time" Video 17 Years Later
by Jeff Weiss
February 12, 2008 12:55 AM
- Nothing says "epic video" more than a hourglass filled with shifted sands. Nothing.
- I'm fairly certain that "Remember the Time" is actually an alternative history suggesting the importance of New Jack Swing to the ancient Egyptians. Hieroglyphics that were once thought to have depicted the everyday life of the people were instead merely capturing them in the midst of the Cabbage Patch. If there are any Egyptologists out there reading this (if so, you should probably stop now), I highly advise you to look further into this phenomenon.
- I imagine that whoever suggested that the video feature feral cats running around as to be historically acccurate was very pleased with himself. You can almost hear a hare-brained label guy screaming, "Cats, we need more cats!"
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The best view of the Grammy Awards from where I sat.
The coolest thing I learned last night in the media room at the 50th anniversary Grammy celebration had to do with a Woody Guthrie performance. Recorded on a spool of wire, The Live Wire – Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949 was found by an old Rutgers University alum in his Florida closet, explained producer Steve Rosenthal. To transfer the music from brittle copper thread – a mile and a half of it, a mere 1/3000 of an inch thick – to computer required the patience and precision of a watchmaker; the engineers had to move through the recording millisecond by millisecond and even out the sonic warbles, wows and flutters due to bends in the wire. But it was worth it. Th