caught some interesting shows this weekend, which i will run down for you in speed-demonly manner...
Miracle Condition, whom i previewed for Time Out, sounded pretty suave at Union Pool this night. this unit includes two guys--guitarist Mark Shippy and drummer Pat Samson--who used to play together in the admirably fucked U.S. Maple. tonight's show was supposed to be a collaboration between MC, plus this "sound artist" (cough) Jeffrey R. Robinson and one David Yow. crazily, though, we were told before the gig that Yow was hospitalized with a collapsed lung. was pretty bummed about that, though the Miracles hit a nice stride in their first two songs--expansive, droney two-guitars-and-drums pieces, driven by Samson's absolutely sick/slick swinging pocket. the dude's playing was just hugely funky and molten. Shippy and the other guitarist had some nice atmospherics happening too--almost reminded me of a more abstract Battles at times. things got a little "eh" once some video projections started and Robinson joined in tho. didn't have the stamina for the whole set, but i'm really psyched i got to hear Samson.
*****
speaking of Battles (as i did above), i was reminded o' them during Saturday's Cornelius show at Webster too. (i knew nothing of Cornelius going in; it might be helpful to think of him as something like a Japanese cross between Bjork and Moby) my bud Tony had heard that his new Sensuous Synchronized Show tour was something to see and so we checked it out. it was definitely Sensuous, with huge video projections, seizure-ish LEDs streaming across the stage and the music itself, which was like state-of-the-art Muzak or something. really sort of dancey, broadly enjoyable pieces ranging from an electronica sort of vibe to playful thrash metal, reggae and funk. the musicianship was pretty much astonishing. live, a four piece band was recreating all the stuff that 'Nelius had done via samplers and synths and stuff on the record and it was amazingly robotic--they were playing these art-funk sort of pieces that were way, way complex, like "Discipline"-era King Crimson or something like that. really funky too, though. the band was just insanely locked in. was pretty psyched on the pot fumes in Webster Hall and the general vibe of fun and enjoyment. it's good to be reminded every once in a while that not everyone goes to shows to be Challenged (as i often do for sure). fun stuff and the new record, "Sensuous," is definitely worth checking out.
*****
hit up Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes opera on Friday at this beautiful church in Brooklyn Heights. a strange experience--it was "semi-staged," which meant that the actor/singers were sort of wedged in between the orchestra and the audience, with no stage to speak of. overall, the effect was sort of noncommital, i.e., i wish i had seen a fuller production. the opera was strange--it's basically about a British fishing village turning against this fisherman for his brutish ways. you sympathize with this dude being persecuted even though he's kind of a monster in a sense. anyway, i had read about this one in Alex Ross's "The Rest Is Noise" and had been very psyched to check it out, but in some ways i enjoyed reading about it more than hearing it. there were definitely some wrenching and beautiful moments, but i find it pretty hard to reckon with bel canto, honestly. sometimes i wish that opera didn't have to be sung like opera--like i have no problem with the narrative aspect, but it seems to me that you're sacrificing so much grit and emotion by restricting vocals to these incredibly pure and vibrato-laden deliveries. anyway, i saw past that at times and enjoyed the work's complexities--esp. these sort of virtuoso choral passages where the town's beration of Grimes took on an elaborate grandness--but overall, the whole thing felt a bit too long to me and again, i just had trouble FEELING the story. maybe me and opera have a future, but i'm not so sure...
*****
lastly, the new Mick Barr album (Ocrilim - ANNWN) is fucking astonishing. his most majestic, heartwrenching work yet. i definitely FEEL more for this one than any other--very vibrant and emotional. preview it here. comes out early February on Hydra Head.
Laal and i caught Mastodon and Neurosis at Brooklyn Masonic last night. a fun and happy if rather boomy show. hung out with many cool folks, including dudes from the awesome Warmth, the ever-awesome Emily K and an old friend from far back whom i sort of never thought i'd see again.
anyway, the show! it was absolutely freezing out and due to some crowd-control mishap, we had to stand outside for a good while even though the show had already started and we already had tickets. i hadn't brought my jacket, so that ended up being really, really fun.
so we missed a bit of the Mastodon set, arriving just as they were ripping into "The Wolf Is Loose." it was jam-packed and really shitty sounding on the floor, so we made our way up to the balcony where there were these awesome bleacher-type seats that were excellent for mosh-pit gawking. the hall was large, old and pretty gorgeous--it had kind of a grittiness to it, kind of like a VFW hall or like Warsaw if you've ever been there. nothing too ornate, but it was elegant nonetheless.
Mastodon live pretty much does what they do. i'd say their last show i saw (at Webster Hall w/ Converge right around the time "Blood Mountain" came out) was a bit better in terms of energy and vibe--and certainly overall sound--but they are always really fun to watch. they're pretty workmanlike, just churning out songs--the sound was so boomy it was almost like they were playing in the next room. the overall effect of checking out their set for me was like a parade of familiar awesome riffs. i know ALL Mastodon's riffs from the past few albums, but i'm always at a loss to ID which ones come from which songs and in what order they appear. maybe that's a knock on their songwriting cohesiveness, but it also makes for a fun, surprising time seeing them live b/c all of a sudden one of your favorite riffs will pop out of nowhere and you'll be like "hell yeah!" (setlist-wise, i heard no new stuff, as was rumored; just favorites from all three recent albums. no "Colony of Birchmen" or "Bladecatcher," unless they played them before i got there, which was a bummer...)
only caught a bit of Neurosis. have never been a huge fan and have always sorta felt that they're a band people like to namedrop more than listen to. plus, the bands they're said to have influenced (Isis, etc.), i'm really not into at all. that said, what i saw of their set i thought was really solid. first off, the sound was 100 times better for them than for Mastodon. the music was pretty much what i expected: dire, abrasive doom sprinkled with atmospheric passages, but they sounded pretty goddamn massive. i was pretty blown away by the power of Scott Kelly's vocals--really soulful and gritty bellowing. the vox and the overall sound reminded me a lot of this incredible band Stay Fucked played w/ on tour: The Felon Wind, from Atlanta. (i actually like the Felon Wind a lot better than Neurosis! one reason being that their drummer swings like hell...) anyway, Neurosis took forever to set up, but i guess it was worth it since they had this big-ass projection screen behind them--videos of flowers blooming, wolves running, etc. etc. pretty standard-issue "avant-metal" visuals, but it was easy on the eyes.
on the way out, i beheld an amazing sight: the Masonic Temple's calendar of events for January, which listed "NEUROSIS/MASTODON" amid members' birthday parties and baby showers!
*****
must say i'm pretty thrilled with the Mosaic solo Andrew Hill set i ordered. i was starting to get scared that i'd never listen to a jazz CD that wasn't Tyshawn Sorey's "that/not" (man, that's a sick record), but these discs quickly supplanted that.
Hill solo is such a complete trip. this stuff feels really sumptuous and even wistful at times, but there's this extremely strange sense of choppiness at play too. Hill's movement across the keys can feel extremely smooth one second and then halting and almost unsure the next. he demands total engagement. his dynamics are very strange too, like sometimes he'll be playing extremely softly and this just bash out these big blocky chords. there's a kind of cubist feeling of constantly changing directions, but it always feels completely intutive.
the experience of checking this stuff out is totally different than group Hill, b/c with nothing tying him down, he sounds so much more intensely abstract, but also so much more romantic. some of this stuff has a sense of swooning. all the titles describe California cities, and you get the feeling that he's very taken with the sunlight and such. three CDs worth of pieces that all kind of sound the same--reflective, eccentric, balladlike, fractured--and it's such a treasure, just constant surprise. btw, 2/3 of this stuff is previously unreleased. pick it up--it's a great way to remember the master.
had a good time at last night's Wordless Music Series concert, despite being sort of skeptical about the idea of the series in the past. from what i gather, WMS has been all about trying to expand the classical audience by booking classical music alongside rock acts, or classical pieces with rock appeal. from what i've seen of the lineups, the endeavor feels a little self-congratulatory and NPRish--the rock bands that have been chosen (Beirut, Grizzly Bear, etc.) are all pretty colossal in the indie world, and they seem more chosen for their ability to pack a room with hipsters than to actually stimulate an audience.
Radiohead is even more of a sure sell, of course, so last night's show--featuring the premier of 'Head ax-guy Jonny Greenwood's orchestral piece from "There Will Be Blood"--was jammed. it was a good piece. i enjoyed it more live than i did in the movie: lots of weird fluttering dissonance and primitive string-thumping. it was very well-paced and clocked in at a nice, manageable 20 minutes or so. in the movie, the "modern dissonant drone" thing felt gimmicky to me just b/c it was so anachronistic vis a vis the setting of the film, but live it came across as really logical and coherent and even subtle.
i also dug the Gavin Bryars piece that opened the show. it was a longish musical depiction of the sinking of the Titanic. i'm really wary of such literal-minded stuff--and there was a fair amount of beat-you-over-the-head programmatic material like taped excerpts of interviews w/ Titanic survivors and whatnot--but this piece managed to break free from all that, mainly by being just flat out gorgeous. it didn't really have sections; it was just this kind of sumptuous, wistful melodic haze, hanging in the air. Bryars said he was trying to simulate the effect of music in water, how it would just dissipate and dissipate. there was definitely that diffusion effect: it was very dreamy and unabashedly gorgeous, and reminded me--and this is going to sound ridiculous--of how beautiful classical music can be. especially live and especially in such an intense cathedral-like space. there wasn't really an element of challenge in listening to this piece. it just sounded beautiful.
i was really bummed by the short John Adams piece in the middle, "Christian Zeal and Activity." i really can't even remember what the music sounded like, only that, a few minutes in, a tape recording of a preacher came on: "Jesus is in the Holy Spirit, Satan blah blah blah." in a fraction of a millisecond, you were like, "Oh, wow, another unsophisticated critique of evangelical furor." and it just kept going and going, drowning out the music. not only is it a really obvious and played-out topic, it just felt insulting to have him lay the theme on so thick. it's like, "Isn't the title enough of an indication of where you're coming from?"
it made me think about this whole modern classical convention of the use of "tapes," like pieces scored "for orchestra and tapes" or "for clarinet and tapes," which always seems to confer like an avant-garde mystique on the proceedings. the thing nobody wants to mention is that "tapes" almost always means "heavy-handed extramusical garbage whose only purpose is to spell out for you EXACTLY how you're supposed to be interpreting whatever you're hearing or EXACTLY what political or psychological message the composer is otherwise failing to convey." program notes describing programmatic intent are one thing (Bryars's were really well-written), but do we really need the imaginative assistance of extramusical chatter and sound effects? i don't like it on "Dark Side of the Moon" and i don't need to hear it in classical music.
anyway, interesting concert. i don't see enough classical. if you ever have a chance to get up to this church for a show, you gotta; it's breathtaking. 60th and Columbus.
*****
have been on this Tyshawn Sorey kick that seems never to exhaust itself, but i'm feeling drawn to solo Andrew Hill, i.e., "Verona Rag" and that Mosaic Select box of '70s stuff that came out recently. was reminded of the fact that i haven't dug this stuff enough when i read/played along with the pianist Vijay Iyer's awesome blindfold test from the Jazztimes website. it's really amazing b/c the way they have it set up, you can take the test along with the artist by listening to mystery mp3s and forming your own opinions before hearing theirs. and there's a ton of these archived on there! really great site. i'm very into Vijay's commentary too--he's got great taste. need to check out his music more. now that i've gotten so into Tyshawn, i'm really psyched about the forthcoming Fieldwork record (Iyer and Sorey and saxist Steve Lehman). that band plays this sort of ultracomplex math-jazz--really advanced and NOW.
my favorite recordings right now are ones that don't seem to give up their mystery.
have been spinning Tyshawn Sorey's that/not nonstop recently and i feel constantly magnetized by it, though i never really feel like i'm exhausting any of its weirdness. such a strange record, really. i put it on my top ten of 2007 for Time Out NY at the last minute and i'm really glad i did.
Sorey is a young drummer-pianist-composer from NYC. he talks in the liner notes of that/not about how he wants to defy the expectation that his record will feature his drumming in particular. instead he goes way, way in the opposite direction. it's a mood record; if it's about anything, it's about staying still, holding back, etc. most of the two-disc is scored for trombone, piano, bass and drums and Sorey includes all these really slow, enigmatic pieces that just sort of drift along. they're beautiful, but also unsettling. the music is so subtle that it just completely slips by if you don't listen close. it's jazz-related, but strikes me more as some really eccentric sort of chamber-pop at times: stately, ominous, grand in a really muted way.
themes flow in and out of improv. the record can seem static and then comes some moment of brilliant architecture. Sorey's incredibly patient drumming steers the whole thing with unfathomable calm, often w/ just one dry ride cymbal tracing a super intricate arc. the stillness of this thing is just so luxurious and unusual. you imagine score sheets that are miles long, the entire band playing in a trance, in a black room, the lights dim. space-trance-slow-prog-jazz-pop with a strange, untraceable flavor of moody electronica; somber yet droll and stylized and futuristic. it's a new thing entirely, i think.
*****
Carbonized is that super strange and eclectic Swedish avant-metal band i mentioned a while back. finally got a track uploaded here:
this is from the Disharmonization album, another disc that doesn't stop not making sense. in this track, crunchy, ham-fisted death-thrash moves into lo-fi prog like Voivod meets SST, which then meets otherworldly lounge music and bare-bones psych. intensely eclectic, but not at all "clever" or gimmicky. it's a logical composition and just a really purely experimental document. whole album is sick if you can find it.
*****
i also wanna say that great things are afoot w/ two of my friends' bands. Yukon has just closed a chapter, documenting the last insanely intricate and gorgeous math-world-prog-pop songs penned w/ sadly departed guitarist Denny Bowen, and Dysrhythmia--Stay Fucked's billmates at Cake Shop th'other night—- has written some blast-off new stuff. vanguard progressive heaviness. please support both organizations.
*****
also Veedon Fleece by Van continues to amaze. have relished sharing that w/ Laal...
in my haste to recap the tour on here, i made a major omission. i guess it makes sense that i would leave out the most significant musico-emotional discovery of the experience--maybe subconsciously i knew that it merited its own entry.
driving down Sunset in early December, it came on the radio. placid, jazzy, almost Yacht Rock-ish, but with deeply yearning, almost Peter Cetera-esque hooks that instantly seemed familiar. "I am the eye in the sky / Looking at you / I can read your mind." what the hell was it, all in the car wondered? i quickly jotted down all the lyrics i could make out.
googling around at our destination, i quickly nailed it: "Eye in the Sky" by the Alan Parsons Project. shortly afterward, i found the band's greatest hits on the budget tape wall at Amoeba, and we were equipped. no single song received more play in the van.
it was everything i remembered. a slow, gently trippy first verse with squarely "hip" jazz chords. a presumably cuckolded man telling off his mate for the last time:
"Don't think sorry's easily said Don't try turning tables instead You've taken lots of chances before But I'm not gonna give anymore"
there's a calm, almost nerdy resolve in the delivery--the "I'm fed up" doesn't bite as much as it should. after another verse, though, the tension bursts, and you didn't even realize how much had built up. the harmonies soar, cold light rushes in:
"I am the eye in the sky Looking at you I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules Dealing with fools I can cheat you blind"
even if you've heard that last stanza a million times, nothing prepares you for its sheer vicious egoism. it's a totally creepy, godplaying statement; it's not an exaggeration to say that it sounds like the outburst of an insane person. it's one thing to tell your woman you've had enough, but it's quite another to cast yourself as a kind of unmerciful god, capable of "cheating [her] blind."
there's something very special about a pop song that goes to these sorts of scary emotional lengths. the extremity of the sentiment, its power to shock, reminds me of the rawness and emotional desperation that Steely Dan can touch on, but this Parsons tune doesn't give you the comfort of irony. it creeps along and then it bites. its placid resolve is terrifying.
we would play this tape in the van after shows. in a way i felt like i was unwinding, but i don't know if that's what it was--i just craved the weird mindset of this song. i remember one night drive down a misty highway in Houston. i was going faster than i was comfortable with, trying to keep up with the guy who was leading us to where we were going to crash. the drive had a Michael Mann feeling--that on-the-outskirts-of-the-city brooding--with hazy lights and speed and soft, spare, overproduced music that spelled "cool," or some mythological version of cool, and made you feel like you were in some kind of urban cocoon. the drive was key, but i think the song alone can get you most of the way to that place of sublime postmodern solitude:
thick with inertia over here. back from tour. a million thoughts and experiences to process and a million more to prepare for as i prepare to resume life as it was.
since i've been back, everybody asks me how this experience was. have lamented to my girlfriend that each time i've been cut off soon after i've begun to answer. no one seems to want to hear more than one anecdote, more than one impression or angle. but really, it was a month's worth of experiences, with all the ups and downs that that would entail.
i can tell you the greatest feeling easily. sometime earlyish in '07, my bandmate Joe and i stood by the stoop of his Greenpoint apartment discussing the idea of getting serious about Stay Fucked, pushing it further, allowing ourselves to own up to what we really wanted it to be. our goals were pretty modest, but not simple by any means. we wanted a record out on a label and we wanted to really head out on the road, to capitalize on all the contacts we'd made, to test out an idea we suspected was true--namely that our band did in fact measure up.
returning from the tour last Saturday, after an absolutely hellish drive from D.C. during which we averaged about 15mph, we were unloading Joe's stuff from the van onto the very same stoop. i felt totally exhausted, residually ill--i was sick with flu-like symptoms for the majority of the tour and still haven't fully recovered--just completely zonked, but i was able to relish the moment for a second. there we were, back in the same place, having simply done what it was we said we were going to do: 26 shows coast-to-coast in 29 days; released an awesome-sounding, awesome-looking CD via a cool label that sold pretty damn well on the road; hell, we even made our own T-shirts. it is weird that it's so hard, but it is, to simply come up with an idea and do it.
i have no idea how to summarize this experience. some observations:
1) Myspace makes booking a fun and even solvent tour really, really easy. I mean sure we had to bother people over and over again and sure some of those people totally flaked on us, but for the most part it was a breeze. all you have to do is find bands you'd like to play with in whatever city and just ask nicely for a show.
2) You can get a lot more for your money in other cities. The awesome John Delzoppo, of the killer Cleveland-based avant-shred duo Clan of the Cave Bear, is proof of this. For less than i pay for my tiny Greenpoint bedroom, he inhabits a palatial loft complete with practice space, recording studio and a totally sweet Guitar Hero rig. We spent two of the funnest days of the tour hanging at--and envying the shit out of--Chez John.
3) Waffle House is quite good! The waffles themselves are kind of average and sub-Eggo, but you can't beat those hashbrown options such as Scattered, Smothered (w/ onions), Covered (w/ cheese), Peppered (w/, uh, peppers), etc. Has anyone noticed that the veteran noise-rock Unsane has an album ("Scattered, Smothered and Covered") that was very likely named after this exact menu quirk?
4) If you ever go on the road for a long time, you should bring a lot of stand-up comedy. All Stay Fucked members have a nearly limitless and omnivorous appetite for tons of different music (i personally tripped hard over late Zeppelin on this trip--big ups to "Presence," like our old bassist Andres said), but after a while, you just long for words and sentences, especially of the absurd variety. a book on tape might be hard to concentrate on, but the bite-sized format of stand-up really did the trick. We got some serious mileage out of Daniel Tosh's "True Stories I Made Up." Imagine the even more super-sarcastic and cutting offspring of Seann William Scott (Steve Stifler of "American Pie" fame) and Ryan Reynolds ("Waiting," anyone?) and you'll get an idea of where this guy is coming from.
5) Every truckstop tape rack contains two or three incredible oddball selections. Always buy them. An '06 Big A little a tour yielded a selection from the illustrious discography of everyone's favorite lovably tame African-American comedian, Sinbad. This time, we had a few outstanding finds, including the ripping King Crimson live record "USA"; Shudder to Think's way-underrated second major label effort, "50,000 BC"; "SST Acoustic," a totally improbable compilation featuring unplugged tracks from SST groups like the Minutemen and Saccharine Trust; an album of Dudley Moore's New Age piano music (!?!?); and last but not least, the true find of the trip: "Disharmonization" by Carbonized, a Swedish avant-death-metal group that sounds like a combination of Voivod, late Black Flag and primitive grindcore. truly out there stuff; am trying to find some tracks to post...
6) Tallahassee, Florida, has an incredibly advanced and fertile music scene. we played an intensely fun show at a cavernous yet awesome-sounding venue called the Beta Bar with four very diverse bands including the powerful, Isis-esque trio the Western Hold and the riotously awesome math-rock&roll outfit Spike Mott and the Blackest Knights of the Darkest Apocalypse. then we hung deep w/ members of the latter band and talked prog and jazz till dawn and marveled at the seething eccentric creativity of these dudes, all of whom were in like six other bands, including the UNREAL tech-metal quartet Spiketrain and the gorgeous post-rock group Dead Legs. go there and play if you are a weird band.
7) two best sandwiches of tour were at Kevino's Hot Dogs and Sandwiches in Atlanta and Primanti Brothers in Pittsburgh. the former was a very unassuming looking spot in a strip mall right near Lenny's Bar, where we played. the cuisine was advertised as Chicago-style, which was odd, considering that we were in the south. this place totally came out of left field with a crushing onslaught of flavor. Joe scored a tilapia bite, Tony a bulbous cheesesteak and me a glorious "Chicago style beef" number, dripping with jus and seasoned with an amazing concoction of pickled peppers and carrots. total sumptuousness. Primanti's meanwhile, is more of a known city landmark in Pittsburgh. pretty basic hot deli-ish sandwiches served on thick white bread, but with the added awesomeness of FRENCH FRIES mixed into the sandwich itself. definitely a trip.
8) coolest venue of tour may have been Detroit's Big Gray Shack. imagine a punk house combined with a ski lodge and you'll start to get an idea of the cozy electricity of this joint. incredibly nice people too. check out the totally brutal avant-grind band Letters in Binary; they slayed and were some of the warmest folks we encountered.
9) it was a huge personal thrill for me to play in front of a few of my musical heroes on this tour, including Will Scharf and Joe McTighe of Craw, Nick Sakes of Dazzling Killmen and Thymme Jones of Cheer-Accident. these dudes are all sine qua nons of the music i play now. though some of them are more modest than others, they're all geniuses and pillars of American underground awesomeness.
10) biggest mindblowing laffs were courtesy of the Crazy Dave Tape II and the "Office Hours" cartoon by Brad Neely. the former was a DVD handed off to us by a disturbed-seeming indie-scene guru in Cleveland. we laughed it off until we popped it in on a lark and were blown away by its hysterical barrage of skillfully segued gore and porn clips interlaced with weirdo cartoons and intensely unlikely celebrity clips from the netherreaches of pop culture. a truly committed artwork that we must've watched ten or more times over various tour stops. "Office Hours" is simply a masterpiece of freeform comedy. it simultaneously makes no sense and some deep form of unprecedented sense. please watch it here (note: my browser doesn't seem to like to play videos from this site, Super Deluxe; let me know if it plays okay when you click it):
i'm going to let all that suffice for now. so much more experienced, so much more to say. thanks to all dear friends for housing, support, company on the road, help with T-shirts including: Laal, Russ, Anna, Tom and Abby, Eli, all my family and friends in KC/Lawrence, Maya and her family in L.A., my aunt Sandy and Uncle Jon, my cousin Casey, the astoundingly nice and hospitable Dave Erb and his band the Yoleus of St. Paul, Tin "Above and beyond" Cagayat of San Diego, Shane Perlowin, Gideon, Sean, Craig/This Is My Condition, Eric in Madison, Sammy and Burgers of Lubbock, the dudes and dudettes of the Yukon, Calabi Yau and The Felon Wind and Muscle Brain and Lemp and Motion Turns It On and I, Octopus and A. Armada and Thrips and Capillary Action and Robots vs. Villages and Barkitecture and Flesh Epic and Thy Mighty Contract and Agape and Pincer and Good for Cows and entourages and all the other incredible bands we played with and Vanessa from War zine for interviewing us and the good folks at KFJC radio in Los Altos Hills and all photographers (pic above is from Chicago by Nick Shamblott) and anyone i'm forgetting. whew!
*****
for the curious, here is where we went and who we played with:
Friday, 11/23 BALTIMORE, MD - Ottobar w/ Yukon + Monarch + Jason Dove and the Magic Whip
Sunday, 11/25 CLEVELAND, OH – Now That’s Class w/ Pincer + Clan of the Cave Bear + Defeatist + Black Ladies
Monday, 11/26 DETROIT, MI – Big Gray Shack w/ Slicer Dicer + Letters in Binary + Dean Machine
Tuesday, 11/27 MADISON, WI – Cafe Montmartre Eric’s U. Wisconson art studio w/ Capillary Action + Bastard Trio
Wednesday, 11/28 ST. LOUIS, MO – Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center w/ Muscle Brain + The Sacoth + Waxwork of a Dynasty
Thursday, 11/29 CHICAGO, IL – The Mutiny w/ Behold! + Goodbye Satellites
Friday, 11/30 ST. PAUL, MN – Big V’s w/ The Yoleus + Kontrol Panel + Arctic Universe
Saturday, 12/1 LAWRENCE, KS – The Replay Lounge w/ This Is My Condition and Dan Kozak + Cave + Monobrau
Sunday, 12/2 DENVER, CO – Rhinoceropolis w/ They Will Use Your Bones for Tools + Spellcaster + Kitchclub
Monday, 12/3 SALT LAKE CITY, UT – Red Light Books w/ Agape + Cathexes
Wednesday, 12/5 SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Thee Parkside w/ Hammer Horror Classics + Thrips
Thursday, 12/6 OAKLAND, CA – 21 Grand w/ The Devin Hoff Platform + Weasel Walter/Kyle Bruckmann/Moe! Staiano Trio
Friday, 12/7 SAN DIEGO, CA – Scolari’s Office w/ Fkenal + Secret Fun Club + Hialeah
Saturday, 12/8 LOS ANGELES, CA – The Smell w/ Good for Cows + Grandpire
Sunday, 12/9 LONG BEACH, CA – The Que Sera w/ National Sunday Law + Cossack
Monday, 12/10 PHOENIX, AZ – Trunkspace w/ Harlequin Babies + James Fella
Wednesday, 12/12 LUBBOCK, TX – La Panza’s house Jessica’s house w/ La Panza + The Numerators
Thursday, 12/13 HOUSTON, TX – Super Happy Fun Land w/ Stove Blow + Thread Atlas + Motion Turns It On
Friday, 12/14 NEW ORLEANS, LA – Hi-Ho Lounge w/ I, Octopus + Tchoupchoupacabra
Saturday, 12/15 ATHENS, GA – Caledonia Lounge w/ Caledonia Social Club + A. Armada
Monday, 12/17 ATLANTA, GA – Lenny’s Bar w/ Thy Mighty Contract + The Lasch + Ski Club
Tuesday, 12/18 TALLAHASSEE, FL – Beta Bar w/ Spike Mott and the Blackest Knights of the Darkest Apocalypse + Tron + The Western Hold + Thank You Kindly
Wednesday, 12/19 ASHEVILLE, NC – New French Bar w/ Robots vs. Villages + Doom Ribbons + Flesh Epic
Thursday, 12/20 CHARLOTTE, NC – Yauhaus w/ Calabi Yau + The Felon Wind + The St. Peter Pocket Veto
Friday, 12/21 WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Lighthouse w/ Barkitecture + Double Dutch + Hindges + Stymphalian Birds and White Stags
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.
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.]
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...
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.
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:
***** 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.
