En road

getting ready to head out on the road with my band, Stay Fucked--whom you see above-- for a month (!). very excited, stressed, happy, tired, etc. should be a fun tour. check out the itinerary here and come on out to see us if we're playing your town. if anyone has done this before and has tips re: what to bring or what not to bring, i'm all ears.

*****

suffice it to say, i won't be on here much at all through New Year's. i leave you with a few updates and recommendations:

1) re: my upcoming writing stuff... had a fun time researching and interviewing Gene Ween re: his band's new album and career and all that stuff. check the Time Out site next Thursday, 11/29, and you'll be able to read that.

2) also, in a few weeks' time (not sure exactly when), my 2007 Top 10 (i.e., CDs i liked best this year) will be published via same mag, so keep an eye out for that if you're interested.













3) re: that list, one CD that isn't on it is "Nothing But Change" by the Octagon. believe me, it wasn't left out due to it not being an absolutely awesome rock album. it would, though, seem kinda dubious to plug it via my day job, simply b/c i am old friends with those boys and once played in a band w/ frontman Zack Mexico. however one slices it, it's an outstanding disc--raucous yet efficient, wrenchingly sad yet goofy at times; very, very raw yet poetic; daring; honest, even scarily so. i wonder what it must be like to play such emotionally up-front music. it's real and new and smart and, yes, extremely catchy. special nod to one of my drum heroes, Will Glass, who manages to make REAL jazz know-how and kit-tone sound at home inside punk-spirited indie rock--no small achievement (if you are really listening, you will hear Ed Blackwell and Levon Helm for sure). buy here, at the website of Serious Business, a label owned and operated by my also-bud Travis Harrison.

here's one of my fave tracks from that record:

The Octagon - Lee Harvey

4) "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" is a viciously exhilarating picture. was not really prepared for the rawness and the relentless downward spiral, emotional wringer, etc. of this one. kind of feels more like a play than a movie in parts, but it is admirably single-minded. it just wants to show you what life looks like as it is just completely tanking--methodically, excruciatingly tanking. beware but don't miss, if you get my meaning.

5) am still working on my freelance piece on the remarkable percussionist Cleve Pozar. more news in early '08. meanwhile...



6) and i leave you with a gem. this is the theme song to Robert Altman's insanely weird winged-serial-killer drama/farce "Brewster McCloud" by one John Phillips, late of the Mamas and the Papas. surreal, scary, lush and like the movie, utterly fucked up. [this track was recorded around the time of "Jack of Diamonds," Phillips's second solo LP from the early '70s, which was not released at the time, but has just come out in CD form--this song appears as a bonus track on said CD. my thoughts on that disc will also be in the next issue of Time Out NY.]

John Phillips - Last of the Unnatural Acts

***

have an awesome holiday time. i will see you in '08...

[though i reserve the right to jump back on here around Christmastime if i feel it necessary.]

Beheld... the future

feeling utterly screwed thanks to the flu. no doubt it would be even worse if it weren't for Skullgrid, the new opus by NYC prog-metal titans Behold... the Arctopus. while tossing and turning last night, i had this one on--yeah, for some reason, i like to fall asleep to death metal--and it was just the thing. took me away from my illness and thrust me onboard a superfuturistic space cruiser. this is serious, serious science fiction as filtered through metal. i have no words to express how strange, advanced and completely crucial this CD is. you will envision 4-D alien architecture, posthuman technology, the flowering of cyborg civilization, etc. etc. listening to this, you'll be truly astonished at how far the team-up of humans and instruments has come.

my band had the great pleasure of opening for these dudes on Saturday night and dear God, did they slay. people were freaking.

speaking of my band, we have a new CD out, and we're embarking on a monthlong U.S. tour starting 11/23. please check here for all tour dates and come see us if we're coming through your area, which we most likely are!

*****

quicklike: No Country for Old Men is splendid entertainment. Coen Bros. choose not to fuck w/ McCarthy's cometlike--read: righteously brisk/curt--novel and emerge with a, well, righteously brisk/curt film. the film pretty much cruises. maybe invincible archvillain Chigurh was a tad goofier than i'd've liked, but Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin (Brand from Goonies!!!) were completely at home in their roles. as many have pointed out more eloquently than i, Coens really got out of the way of this one and just let it roll. read the book too, for sure.

*****

quickerlike: overheard at Thursday's brutally efficient Enslaved/Arsis show at B.B. King's (read Kelefa Sanneh's likewise brutally efficient, and expertly calibrated NYTimes preview thereof here):

curly-maned teenage Arsis fan [addressing equally curly-maned--and severely denimed-out--Arsis bassist, Noah Martin]: Great set, man!

Noah Martin: Thanks, man!

C-MTAF: Can I ask you a weird question?

NM: Sure, man.

C-MTAF: Uh, [points to NM's curly mane] so, do you condition?

NM: [smiling proudly] Yeah, actually I do!

...

not much you can really say about that, huh?

also, some guy took the break between the Enslaved set proper and their encore as an opportunity to get up onstage and actually PROPOSE to his girlfriend, who was absolutely NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. she eventually came running up toward the stage, but it was too late; the dude was already slinking away from the mike, deeply ashamed. incredibly awkward times down at B.B. King's, lemme tell you!

...

Enslaved definitely ripped it. meat-and-potatoes Norwegian black metal, seasoned w/ plenty of RAWK and some goblet-raising prog grandeur. nothing too flashy, just killer riffs and good times. apparently the dude next to me thought so too, as he kept whipping me in the face with his own curly mane. thems the hazards of headbanging, right there...

What's "My Name..."?

as promised, here's my take on "My Name Is Albert Ayler," opening tonight at Anthology Film Archives. any Ayler fan really needs to see this.

also, have been very much digging the new ESP reissue of Ayler's Hilversum Session--tape is a little wobbly (there are some weird panning effects happening), but the playing is insane. for my money, this was Ayler's best group: the "Spiritual Unity" trio plus Don Cherry.

Don Ayler, R.I.P.

just heard the sad news of Don Ayler's passing at this excellent Albert Ayler site. funny, since i just reviewed the very strong new Ayler doc--which features extensive interview footage of Don and a lot of info on the brothers' tumultuous relationship--for Time Out. that issue will be out Thursday and i'll link to the piece here. (Don's on the left above, btw.)

here's an mp3 that might be of interest. it's from Don Ayler's only Albert-less recording, a triple-LP set called "In Florence 1981." all info on this session is here. some of this stuff is surprisingly straight-ahead, but this track is pretty out there (i snagged Volume 1 from Church Number 9 before it went belly-up; anyone have parts 2 and 3?). some nice Ayler soloing after the reedist has had his say:

Don Ayler - The African Song
rec. 7/18/81 in Florence

*****
same Ayler site led me to this fascinating clip of evangelical saxist Rosie Haynes. the Ayler resemblance is pretty intense:


also in more Ayler-universe news, check out this flyer advertising a new Sunny Murray large group--performing only in Luxembourg, unfortunately--containing an insane array of talent: Odean Pope, Khan Jamal, Bobby Few and Sonny Simmons, for starters--hot damn!

*****

p.s. - if anyone happens to read my Nate Wooley live review in this month's Wire and can't figure out why parts of it don't make sense, it's due to some editing snafus. drop a comment here if you want to see the corrected text--don't think the mag would be cool w/ me posting it here.

Anything said

forgot to link to my Say Anything preview in Time Out, which resideth here. tho it kinda don't matter too much, since the show in question was *tonight*!

attended w/ Laal. had great deals of fun. this one was a first on several levels. had not seen Say Anything before, but had also not been to Hammerstein Ballroom before. i generally despise the vicinity of my office, so i bolt as quickly as possible, but tonight i had to stick around b/c the Hammerstein is like four minutes from where i work. for those who have not had the privilege, picture Webster Hall reimagined as an airplane hangar and you're part of the way there. this place is fucking HUGE, cavernous, etc. i felt like i was at a track meet or something.

it would have been dumb not to expect a raging teenybopper crowd at this one, but the whole MySpace Music Tour thing caught me a bit off-guard. i had kinda half-registered the fact that the site was sponsoring the tour (other bands were Hellogoodbye and Polysics, both of whom i missed, and the godawful Young Love, who were like a lobotomized version of the Cars or somethin.). i name-checked MySp in my article above, but it was sort of more a reference to the whole emo zeitgeist than a specific nod to that online community. but lo and behold, there it was: manifested in a gargantuan MySpace-logo-festooned tour bus parked on 34th St and in actual MySpace-equipped kiosks stationed throughout the venue. as if people need another excuse or opportunity to fucking go online...

and there were of course references sprinkled throughout the set. one of the guitar players was like, "So how's everyone enjoying the MYSPACE MUSIC TOUR?!?" he was totally serious. Max Bemis (lead singer) was a bit less tacky; asking if people had checked out the songs from their new album, he said, "If you've checked our MYSPACE page anytime recently, you might have heard this one." his tone was gently mocking, but yeah, the pluggery was intense. (as was the camera-phone-video proliferation. jesus christ, you can probably view every second of this show from like 7000 different angles on YouTube as we speak...)

as was Say Anything's set. the band is a joy to watch. Max really works the crowd and sings his guts out, but he's got a lot of help in the form of, count 'em, FOUR guitarists, all of whom double on vocals. yeah, a lot of motion of the stage. all the guys look so young, especially the drummer, who couldn't have been 20.

the band was in total crowd-please mode setlist wise. about 70% of the tunes were taken from "...Is a Real Boy," Say Anything's 2004 breakthrough disc, which over the past few months i have come to regard as one of the catchiest, funniest and most insanely ambitious things ever to emerge from the alt-rock movement. "Belt," "Woe" (Laal's fave), "Every Man Needs a Molly," "Yellow Cat (Slash) Red Cat," "The Futile" and of course the two biggies, "Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too" and "Alive with the Glory Love." the audience was screaming along with every word, and i gotta say, it was pretty amazing to hear "Alive," dealing as it does with the Holocaust--my oh-so-eloquent preview sez the song "recasts [Bemis's] grandparents’ persecution in Nazi Germany as a teenage sex romp--screamed by a bunch of young'ns: "Our Treblinka is alive with the glory of love!"

a few tunes from the new disc, "In Defense of the Genre," were played, and i gotta say, i'm pretty happy it was only a few. the disc (actually it's two discs) has been sort of dudlike for me. out of almost 30 songs, i only really like two or three, which is pretty paltry. it's still very ambitious and grandly conceived, but a lot of the awesome self-deprecation and quirky humor that makes "Real Boy" so great is just totally missing. as are the badass hooks. though the song "Shiksa (Girlfriend)"--currently spinning at, whaddya know!, the band's MYSPACE PAGE, which (OMG!) actually has a scan of my frickin article--is fucking killer, a really vicious slice of sexually intoxicated emo. hope i come around on the rest of the disc b/c i've fucking worn out my copy of "Real Boy."

you've got to hear that CD. if you haven't checked the two "hits," please do so.



(that one is absolutely hysterical! brilliant, presumably autobiographical lyrics about a vegetative phone-sex addict:
"If I die and go to hell real soon / It will appear to me as this room / And for eternity I'd lay in bed / In my boxers, half-stoned with a pillow under my head...")

and "Alive..."--a less-inspired video, but a song for the ages, no b.s.:



that one gives you a nice view of the long-maned bassist's epic hair-flips, which were in total daredevil effect tonight.

cool show, and so short! less than an hour start-to-finish.

At the Helm

Laal and i checked out the Midnight Ramble at Levon Helm Studios last night! definitely a trip. basically the deal is this: Levon Helm, former drummer of the Band, has built himself a studio/performance space in a big, beautiful barn in Woodstock, NY, and every few weeks, he puts on concerts there.

i'd known about this for awhile and though i'd wanted to catch Levon forever, i avoided it b/c it was too damned expensive. but the stars (cough, press perks, cough) aligned this time and everything worked out. it was definitely a pilgrimage sort of thing--i was really happy to be able to check Levon off my list of Idols Witnessed in Person.

we flaked and did not bring a carved pumpkin, as was requested. but many other attendees came through as you can see above (photos weren't allowed inside the show, so this is all i got). i thought it was a little funny that someone chose to carve the "Last Waltz" logo given Levon's very public disdain for that concert and production (the full story is in his incredible memior, This Wheel's On Fire, but Levon's basic position is that the Band's breakup was a money-grabbing stunt perpetrated on the other members by Robbie Robertson), but the pic still gives you an idea of the homey vibe happening up there.

so it really was a barn, for real. people brought all sorts of chips and cookies and potluck sorts of things that were laid out on the first floor. the studio was upstairs--all unpainted wood and brick. modern-looking but very classy. the ceilings were high but space was pretty limited. if i had to estimate i'd say about 100 people fit in there. though they could have, they didn't oversell the thing. most of the folding chairs were taken, but there was plenty of room for dancing and whatnot.

we watched from the balcony for most of the set. Levon's band came out after a few opening acts, which we missed for the most part. he's got a pretty excellent little group, with two guitarists--one of whom, Larry Campbell, produced Helm's new album and happens to be the brother of this dude who was my boss at an old temp job--a stand-up bassist, a trombonist, a saxist, a pianist and a few guest singers: one a female country singer and an excellent blues singer/harmonica player, Little Sammy Davis. [sorry for the sketchy personnel info; can't find all these folks' names.]

Levon's voice is hoarse, but very much there. he sang lead on about half the tunes, and drummed on all but a few--getting up for some mandolin numbers in the middle. the setlist was probably 70% old-timey blues, country and rock & roll (songs like "I Want to Know" that i hadn't heard, but that felt very familiar), with a few Band songs ("Ophelia," "Rag Mama Rag," "The Weight" and--probably the highlight of the night--"Chest Fever," w/ Campbell doing a really solid lead vocal and a great guitar imitation of Garth Hudson's famous organ part) and a few Dylan songs (including a great version of "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry").

this isn't intended as an insult, but Levon's music post-Band is not rocket science. he's not a songwriter in any sense, and he's not really interested in expanding his repertoire; he just likes to groove and have a good time, and this show reminded you that his real gift is entertaining. being a drummer, i obviously had my eyes glued to him the whole time, but i know i wasn't the only one. he just exudes good cheer and pure rhythm and the bounce and groove were heavy all night.

in some of the Band videos, especially "The Last Waltz," Levon's performance has an almost dire vibe, with a lot of grimacing and visible effort. here though, he was all smiles. there was rarely a minute when he didn't have this huge grin on his face--his hair is silver, but he looks totally sharp. he was winking and nodding his head to various audience members--i think i even got a nod at one point and felt totally blessed--and just generally holding court. the sound was absolutely excellent and though it was a little chilly right near the entrance, the studio was really, really cozy and awesome.

back to the drumming, though. i'm sort of stalling on this part of my account, because it's hard to evoke it accurately. let's just say that his chops and groove are completely intact and that i was totally digging the copious classic Levon licks he was busting out. his fills were minimal yet epic as always; there's that great little move where does a little press roll moving from the hi-hat to the ride and gives that little snarl. and then there's his awesome syncopation, the way his cymbal hand generally follows his snare hand--totally busting up the idea that drumming is all about limb independence. there were many times last night where he was playing the exact same thing on the cymbal, snare and bass drum, and the pocket was just insanely deep. he was also throwing out those awesome one-handed rolls--he never uses back-and-forth sticking unless he needs to. also, i was thrilled to hear maybe my favorite rhythmic figure in rock played live: that cavernous syncopated bass-drum thud in the outro of the chorus of "The Weight"--duh / duh / duh / duh / duh --***boom***... kang. i felt that so deeply last night.

listen, if you're a fan, you've got to go check this out at least once.

*****

made contact with another phenomenal drummer on Friday, Mr. Cleve Pozar, alive and well in Clinton Hill. i'm working with Cleve on his oral history, portions of which are scheduled to be electronically published soon. i'll keep you posted! absolutely fascinating cat. details were sketchy when i posted on him awhile back, but i'm getting the full story from the source! short list of heavy players Cleve has worked with: Bob James, Cooper-Moore (then Gene Ashton), Eric Dolphy, Bill Dixon, Jimmy Garrison, Peter Ivers. many crazy tales, i assure you...

Lance Hahn is dead

just heard some really fucked up news, which is that Lance Hahn from J. Church died on Sunday of kidney disease. it seems petty to write myself into this story, but i was just listening to the band yesterday at work; i even poked around for some info on what they were up to and heard about Lance's illness, but man, nothing about this...

i don't know what to say about J. Church (which, for all intents and purposes, was Lance, with whomever he happened to be playing with at the time)... they were one of my favorite bands in high school, one of those bands that seemed to completely transcend the genre they were tied to. i guess you could call them "pop-punk" but this music was just so much more real, honest, intelligent, etc. like there was a time when i would've applied those adjectives to Bad Religion, but i've long since outgrown that phase. not so w/ J. Church, who still sound real to me.

Lance's lyrics were incredibly personal, incredibly poetic... i always liked this verse, from "Foreign Films":

"She comes around on a Thursday night,
With a six pack of Becks and a lot on her mind,
I’ve got to work tomorrow at eight A.M.,
I find two glasses that have not been used,
She follows me into my room,
She plays that same R.E.M. record again"

it doesn't look as good typed, and might even appear self-consciously arty or whatever. but there was just this sense listening to J Church that you were listening to the sound of someone sort of scraping by, getting through. and not in a woe-is-me way: actually sort of celebrating the marginal aspects of their existence.

Lance was always very upfront in his songs about the almost gravitational force that work was in his life. he wrote about it often, as in the song "Bottom Rung," which really captured the ecstasy and despair of the five-day work week, something of which i knew nothing when i first heard the song, but which now makes almost too much sense:

"Friday night I went out for a drink.
Saturday and Sunday I was free.
Free to sleep.
Free to read.
Freedom from security."

jesus, amen. on a similar theme, there's a really interesting little treatise on that topic here, which seems to amount to a reversal of Hahn's earlier position. in that blog entry, he claims that "I sort of feel all musicians should also have a day job." he describes a period when he was only touring and how he felt sort of guilty or useless. maybe it's just that without the daily grind, he didn't have much to write about. he wasn't a mope, but existential despair was pretty central to what he did.

beautiful singer, beautiful melodies, extremely literate, always rattling off philosophy and free-jazz references in an extremely nonperfunctory way (check out the Hahn review of Bill Dixon's Odyssey that's archived here--it's listed as "In the J Church Listening Room"), definitely a classic punk-rock lefty--he wrote for Maximum Rock & Roll and was not above scene politics. but he always took a feminist stance that was very appealing: a sticker on his guitar read "overthrow cock rock and idolize your girlfriend."

anyway, speaking of work, that's where i've gotta go, so i'll leave you with two of my favorite J Church tracks:

Tide of Fate
[meditation on futility: "I can sleep under open skies if I'm back at work by Monday / Swim against the tide of fate if I'm back at work by Monday." whew...]

Contempt for Modesty [beautiful minute-long relationship parable]

J. Church forever. thank you so much, Lance. peace. Great American Artist for sure.

[lots of great J. Church info is here, as it always has been. i strongly recommend the albums "Prophylaxis," "Arbor Vitae" and "The Precession of Simulacra."]

And for the record...

thanks to Olympia's TWIN, Brooklyn's Animal and L.A.'s Veer Right Young Pastor, as well as the awesome venue Goodbye Blue Monday and the booking expertise of Susie Deford, it was still possible for us to have an awesome show on Saturday night that had absolutely nothing to do with CMJ.

Hyper, ballad

some of my thoughts on CMJ are here, interspersed with reports from my Time Out colleagues. highlight was Ruins Alone at the Knit on Friday, hands down. (HEALTH and Aa completely slayed at same show too, tho.)

and apropos of absolutely nothing, a really intense performance of a truly gorgeous song:

Dear flabby

Dear,












i sent a letter to Pitchfork today. this might seem like a trifling point, but it's been bothering me for a while. the context is that there's a review of the new Nels Cline Singers disc on the site today. or should i say "recent" Nels Cline Singers disc--it came out in ***late June***. i brought up a similar point a while back when they reviewed the latest USA Is a Monster disc three months late. it might seem stupid, but i find it disrespectful, as if they were using these esoteric records as arbitrary and haphazard seasoning in the indie-rock stew. hopefully the Animal Collective analogy i use in the letter makes the point more clear. i'm not faulting the writer--the review is reasonably well-argued and astute. i just take issue with the editorial ethos behind it.

anyway, here's what i sent:

Dear Pitchfork,

As an avid jazz listener, I appreciate the fact that this genre is not really within the scope of what Pitchfork regularly covers. But it frustrates me when you run jazz reviews many months after a record's release date--it shows a blase attitude toward the style and makes it difficult to view this coverage as anything other than tokenistic. In the jazz world, a new Nels Cline Singers CD is at least as important as, say, a new Animal Collective CD is in the indie-rock world. Whether one agrees with your assessment of "Strawberry Jam" or not, the fact that that review ran on the day of the album release is at the very least a statement that you are engaged in a serious way with your subject matter. The average Pitchfork reader probably has no idea that you're reviewing the new Nels Cline CD four months after its release, well after the jazz community (not to mention many mainstream outlets such as "The New York Times") has already has its say. But if you want to engage with the wider music community outside the indie-rock bubble--as opposed to just throwing the odd bone to an esoteric record--you've got keep your coverage in those areas fresh. Running CD reviews on time would help me to take your jazz coverage more seriously.

Thx for listening,
HS