Month of January , 2006

Bell Orchestre / Clogs
Bowery Ballroom
Jan. 22, 2006

I took to the front stairs of Bowery Ballroom just in time to catch Clogs setting up before their set. As I expected, their set - a mix of softly lulling chamber music and swirling percussion driven maelstroms - ended just as quietly as it began. The real surprise was the reverance of the usually talkative crowd at the ballroom. Between songs people clapped politely, and quietly awaited the next song.

Padma Newsome, violist and primary songwriter for Clogs is also known for his collaboration and live performance with The National. Bryce Dessner of The National plays guitar for clogs, Rachael Elliott on oboe and Thomas Kozumplik on drums and marimba round out the line up. Anyone familiar with The National may not be surprised with Clogs' sound, as some of it feels like the prettiest parts of Alligator drawn out and recontextualized. The rest throbs with unexpected primal energy, with Newsome whipping his viola about in a frenzy.

Bell Orchestre entered the room with lights attached to their bodies and the stage completely dark. Normally I wouldn't make mention of it except that their particularly self-serious, annoying entrance antics and stage garb distracted me for the first 2 or 3 songs. Whether it was an attempt to be "spooky" or "funny", I can't tell because it completely fell flat and made me wish the band hadn't wasted 20 minutes of my time drawing out their appearance. Let's be honest, I saw them in their plain clothes while they were setting up their instruments.

Wardrobe malfunctions aside, Bell shares members with Montreal's The Arcade Fire, so a more bombastic set was to be expected. Band leader Richard Reed Parry alternately bowed and strangled his upright bass, at times locking in precisely with drummer Stefan Schneider to - I kid you not - massive dance grooves. Sarah Neufeld attacked her violin as if it were cheating on her with a cello, while Kaveh Nabatian and Pietro Amato's horns were wrung through a myriad of delay pedals and effects like sonic squeegee mops.

The result was a group of people playing together who all had fresh interpretations of what they could do with their instruments. At one point, Nabatian was pulling and manipulating a live radio signal into a song, and at another Schneider left his kit to play an old manual typewriter. Bryce Dessner of Clogs even came out for some searing slide guitar. By the end of the evening, however, I was beginning to have enough of all this music with no singing - and despite their best efforts Bell's music began to sound like a soundtrack to modern interpretive dance (which I understand was the motivation behind the group's formation).

Already nursing a backache, and feeling a bit numbed from Bell's over-exuberance (members of Arcade Fire, right?) I stumbled out the door as they began their faux-encore. Can we cut the pretense out and just play, please?

was riding down to New Brunswick on Saturday for a jammy Sceneless road trip with Billy and Adam when a track called "Under Surveillance" forced the car into collective silence. The beat-heavy hip-hop political manifesto delved into the ever-speading influence of Big Brother and drew parallels between the FBI's Cointelpro program (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cointelpro) -- which targeted the Black Panthers, The Weather Underground and even the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- and today's post-Sept. 11, anything-goes government reconnaissance. The songs that followed were a brilliant mix of political and globally conscious beats and Golden Era (1988-1996) hip-hop like Big Daddy Kane and Gang Starr.

I remember being in high school from 1990-94 and hearing this type of politically relevant and utterly brilliant, jazz-infused hip-hop on a regular basis. From the tight rhymes and Afrocentic lyrics of the Native Tongues collective folks like Eric B and Rakim, Diamond D, Pete Rock and CL and Showbiz and AG to the harsh social criticism of Blackwatch members X Clan and an upstart Public Enemy, there was a lot more substance -- even if style was relegated to CrossColours apparel or Starter jackets. People salivate over acts like Dead Prez, Talib, Mos, the Roots, Common and Pharoahe Monch (who battled Tribe back in the day as a member of Organized Konfusion), but they're the dwindling big-name continuation of a much larger legacy. The underground artists on shows like this and on mixed tapes and online playlists across this great land of ours are what keep hip-hop honest.

I'm not going to turn this into a rant against Hot 97 or Power 105 -- or even commercial hip-hop. I just want to extol the virtues of what I see as a continuing, vibrant underground of cerebral hip-hop that will trudge on long after 50 Cent spends his last dime. As for the return of consciousness to commercial hip-hop, unlike in the '80s and '90s rappers are more prone to hide any intellect to avoid alienating any potential buyers. Jay-Z gave the best assessment of this sad state of affairs on "The Black Album":

"I dumbed down for my audience to double my dollars
They criticized me for it yet they all yell "HOLLA!"
If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably be
lyrically, Talib Kweli
Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense
But I did five mill' - I ain't been rhymin like Common since"

It's a damn shame. Considering that this is a time when rappers of his stature could be modern-day Dylans by voicing their political beliefs (see: West, Kanye), it would've been great to see Jay as a force for change rather than a force for dollars.

By the way, the WFMU show we were listening to was called "Bring That Beat Back" and is hosted by Billy Jam. If you'd like to find out more about it, or want to listen to some of his old playlists, check him out here:
http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/BJ

And if you're feeling nostalgic, check out NYC25's "The Bridge," and NYC-centric old-school hip-hop video show Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. It's one of the best things about both public television and life in the New York Metro area -- that 15 years later we can still sweat the technique:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycmg/nyctv/html/shows/thebridge.shtml

I see that the Two Boots Pioneer is showing "End of the Century" on Sunday night. I've heard it's a decent Ramones documentary and, at an rate, it's better than "Rock 'N' Roll High School," but it got me thinking about rock cinema in general. You have a whole generation that will stake their lives on "The Last Waltz," "Woodstock", "Monterey Pop" and "Don't Look Back" as the greatest rock films of modern times. I stepped across a poll that didn't list a film beyond the 1984 Talking Heads documentary "Stop Making Sense." Well thanks a fucking heap. If I'm 20... hell, I'm 30 and that flick doesn't resonate much with me. Then they throw up "The Decline of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years" and don't even pay lip service to the ingenious first installment that followed around the SST bands like Black Flag and the Minutemen.

Listen, I'm not saying that the original DoWC is exactly fresh material, but it was a hell of a lot more real that "The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle" and the best snapshot of "punk" culture until "SLC Punk" or "Boston Beatdown" -- which have nothing to do with "punk" and everything to do with punk artifice. I hate lists, but I'm going to go into it because they forced my hand. Here are my ALL TIME, TOP TEN music films of the modern era: 1980 to present.

10. Rock 'N' Rule (1983): It was an obscure animated film made for Canadian TV and followed the path of the darker, post-Heavy Metal (which you will not find listed here... the music and horror-comic storylines are garbage) Western animated features like Watership Down. Set in a post-apocalyptic world full of half-rat creatures who play in dive bars in what used to be New York, Rock and Rule had easily the best soundtrack of the bunch... with Lou Reed providing the musical sequences for the bad guy, Debbie Harry as the love interest, Rob Zander from Cheap Trick as our hero and Iggy Pop as the monster from the great beyond. Main characters get offed, animated strippers get naked and the set gets cranked up whenever Lou Reed sings "My Name is Mok." Beautiful stuff.

9. Boston Beatdown (2003): Ever wonder how hardcore gangs came to be and why they'd bludgeon you in the pit? Boston Beatdown offers quite a bit of insight by taking a look at FSU (Fuck Shit Up, Friends Stand United), a Boston-based gang that started out as an anti-Nazi collective and soon became the bullies of Boston. Lots of Blood For Blood, Ten Yard Fight and Wrecking Crew concert footage spliced with scenes of brutal beatings. It was targeted by the Boston Police, but serves more as a document of the times than a form of entertainment.

8. Velvet Goldmine (1998): Oh Brian Slade, why were you taken so soon? As much a look at 70s glam and androgeny as it is a murder mystery, it gave us a look at the movement that took all the hippie and psychedelic tenets and shoved them right up their producers' collective asses. You want free love? Try a world without gender. You want to create epic music that raises the collective consciousness, why don't you learn how to compose music first or execute it with some form of emotion. Goldmine is a great period piece that shows the progression of rock as well as its hedonistic decline.

7. Dig! (2004): If ranking on Williamsburg and hipster bands has become your favorite pastime, this is your film. The Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols -- who were once spoken about in the same reverential tones as the Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens are now -- for some reason decided to take napalm to both their careers and credibility by doing this documentary. Actually, the Warhols had a much better go of it and actually put out some workmanlike material like "Bohemian Like You." Head case control freak BJM singer Anton Newcome just decends into madness and ends up ripping his band to shreds. VH1 actually aired the scene where he fights his new guitarist onstage and busts up a sitar. Although Warhols frontman Courtney Taylor doesn't come off smelling like a rose, he's the one you'd more likely want to run into at NorthSix on a weekend. I'll have this film in mind at the Broken Social Scene Show this weekend.

6. Rhyme and Reason (1997): THE hip-hop documentary. Where "The Show" falls flat on its face, Rhyme and Reason actually comes through with insight into the artists and their music. It falls right after the late-80s, early 90s golden era, but just before Bad Boy's gospel of bling caught on. To see a guy like Pharcyde's Fat Lip standing toe-to-toe with Biggie and Pac shows the amount of talent that's bubbling under the surface. When I hear people praise Kanye, Common, Mos Def and Talib now, I can't help but think that, in 1997, almost EVERYBODY in the game was at that level or better. In was never more conscious or informed, and this film provides a blueprint to what it one day could be again.

5. Wild Style (1982): Hip-hop's big-screen Old Testament. Seeing the Rock Steady Crew IN ITS PRIME makes you wonder how b-boying ever went back underground to begin with. Everything about Wild Style is so livid.. from the graf, subway shots and breakin' to Grandmaster Flash, the Cold Crush Brothers and Busy Bee just RIPPIN' IT freestyle!!! A lot of hip-hop heads credit this film with opening their eyes and consider it THE hip-hop movie. It's a monster, but I beg to differ.

4. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001): This film killed the term "rock opera" and popped the overinflated sense of purpose that usually plagues such works. John Cameron Mitchell made this film work on so many levels... from incorporating raw, powerful songs that actually help the flow of the film rather than impede it to a flawless portrayal of the tortured transgender hero/heroine that endears his/herself to anyone with a heart. It's less about rock and more about the search for purpose and self, and the countless abortions it takes to find either. However "Wig In A Box," "Wicked Little Town" and especially "Midnight Radio" are among the greatest songs ever composed for film. If you get the chance, pick up the Wig In A Box tribute album featuring Sleater-Kinney, Spoon, Bob Mould, They Might Be Giants and The Breeders. It's well done and the cash goes to a good cause.

3. SLC Punk (1998): As stated earlier, not so much about punk as about the contradictions inherent in it. Matthew Lillard's main character cleverly navigates us through the life of a Utah punk -- who could be a punk kid from any suburb in the U.S. -- and hits on both the great and not-so-great elements associated with the "scene." There's the inherent (if not gender exclusive) comaraderie and collective push against the establishment. However, there's also the ridiculously ignorant series of constructs that keep punks from actually elevating to the point where they can make a difference -- the aversion to "selling out" and the rather ambiguous definition of that term, the embrace of anarchy without consideration of the ramifications (or whether society is actually stable enough to support such an ideal) and the separations between "punks" other groups (usually completely aesthetic). A riot, but more because of the truths inherent to "The Scene." When I look at guys I know in their 30s still acting like teen punks and adhering to the same "rules," it brings this film to mind almost immediately.

2. 24 Hour Party People (2002): All he had was a piece of paper signed in his artists' blood, but Tony Wilson turned it into an absolute force in music and burned Manchester onto the map. That's the history. The film itself is brilliant, with Steve Coogan masterfully breaking the fourth wall and helping dilettantes along with brilliant anecdotal narration. You could know nothing about Joy Division, New Order or the Happy Mondays and come out of this film fulfilled. It's just brilliant, from Wilson booking early Joy Division gigs in a Connections-style club to birthing the Manchester dance scene at the Hacienda. This film's worth watching if just to discover that the proceeds from "Blue Monday" provided the capital for an entire movement... except the guys who actually performed it. From Coogan's comedy to death of Ian Curtis and the tragic collapse of Factory, the film is a joy to behold. It makes you wonder whether there are still cats out there like Shaun Ryder, who are big enough to hold an entire label by the balls and then yank really hard.

1. Krush Groove (1985): Considered by many to be terrible, it's actually the film on this list that's MOST relevant to its generation. It's this simple: Without Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin out there hustling, hip-hop never gets to be more than a blip on the radar... an NYC phenomenon. Thanks to DefJam and the stable of artists featured in this film (Run DMC, the Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Kurtis Blow, the Fat Boys -- don't laugh, the Fat Boys were the first rap act to get their own feature film.. you have to have Hammers to get Tupacs), hip-hop was exposed to audiences it never would have reached if it was just Grandmaster Flash and DJ Red Alert heading the charge. DefJam's artists appealed to a broad base and were able to turn kids on to something other than pop or bad metal. Sure, the Fat Boys "All You Can Eat" sequence and the Blair Underwood/Sheila E "Tender Love" scenes are corny as hell, and not a damn rapper in this film can act, but it kicked open the door. I remember my cousin Brian -- a big Rush and Queen listener and the whitest man on the planet -- going out and buying Run DMC's "Raising Hell" and trying to do backspins on his flattened Commodore 64 box. Now THAT's transendence.

Tapes 'N Tapes
The Mercury Lounge, NYC 2006-01-10

Performers (in order of appearance):

• The Twenty Twos
• The Soft Explosions
• Finian McKean
• Tapes 'N Tapes

This was my first time to The Mercury Lounge, venturing there with Adam C. of Sceneless and The Meltdowns. The show itself was $8 USD. Beers were around $5. $4 for PBR. But still, looking back, $8 for a night of rockingfuckingroll at a nice intimate club with great sound and a great atmosphere beats the living crap out of about $30 (inc. ticket fees and things) for a bigger show at Roseland or Webster Hall where the sound is always going to be a bit mush and the band will be far away.

But I digress. When we arrived and burst through the doors to the back room for the opening band, the place was packed. Not bodies on top of each other just yet, but enough that people were a bit prickly about moving around. When we payed at the door, we were among the five people who had arrived so far to see the opener, with some 30-odd slashes next to "The Twenty Twos." Lo, I am shameless, and worked my way up to the very front of the room, where there was a huge space in front of the stage - as though some invisible line kept the spectators back. But I am shameless, so this presented no problem for me.

The best line of the show had to be: "I've been a better lov-uh with your mutha"

I only caught the last two songs of the Twos's set, but it was impressive. The girls move about stage like cats, born to be rock stars (the annoying record exec and photographer up front, and their sony website are evidence of this), and their drummer was damn good. Only seeing the end of their set, it's hard to make a fair judgement of the band, but the songs I did catch didn't make me want to pick up a CD at the merch table.

Between bands, and even songs, for the whole night, the annoying older guy with the yuppie scarf who kept obviously making it known that he was a sony records guy. Weird. He eventually left. Moving on.

The next band up was The Soft Explosions. Here's a band that know how to mold a sound, take their time, catch your ears, slap you about, and make you dance, all without actually ever going faster than say 160bpm. The strength of this performance, in fact, the person who stole the whole show and everybody's heart that night, was the lead guitarist, a young woman with a whole lot of goddamn soul in her fingers.

letting the slide fall off her finger, discarding it like spent ammunition

She broke my heart and makes me want to quit my job and practice my guitar all the time. The band's songs were really good, but her accompaniements, Kim Deal-ish backing vocals (not quite so dry, far more melodic), her careful use of various effects and her instruments capabilities, and an ability to rip a slow shred, are what pushed this band's songs over the top.

To be fair, the lead singer of the group is quite charismatic, knows when to put down his guitar, pick up morracas, shake that shit, swing the microphone stand around, and sing rock and roll. In fact, it was specifically that combination for the Explosions's second or third song that got a normally non-mobile crowd shaking their hips and dancing awkwardly (including Shamus McShameless).

One particular highlight from their set was when the lead guitarist had her guitar howling along with a delay pedal and a metal slide, when she stomps another pedal to switch tone, and held her left hand out, letting the slide fall off her finger, discarding it like spent ammunition, grabbing the neck of her instrument and bending away into the next lick before the slide even hits the stage floor and rolls away unnoticed.

Damn.

There were more than three or four times during the Explosion's set where the crowd openly started cheering and hooting in the middle of the songs to get the excitement out, often as a result of the cool and blistering young woman on stage left.

Tough act to follow, especially when it's just you and your drummer. But Finean McKean steppd up to the plate and delivered. The guitar has a really interesting style of singing and playing his guitar at the same time, with a really muddy sound and an old Danelectro guitar amplifier with a serious tremelo effect. His drummer (also from the Push Kings like McKean) was the perfect accompaniement.

The songs grooved, picked up, slowed down, got the hips shaking, the drummer1 really driving all of the songs and giving them the life they needed. In fact, this helped cut through quite a bit of the mud on the guitar. At times during the set, I really wanted Finean to switch to another pickup or turn the freaking treble up, I want to HEAR that instrument screech! The drummer's backing vocals were really good and really well placed, few though they were.

Finean's guitar work is somewhere between old-school blues guitarist, and the kind of crunching chordal riffing you here on Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream. Among my favorite things of his performance were how often he would cut loose and stomp across the stage banging away on his instrument. The drummer was constantly in a tight kind of mind-meld with Finean, following his every twist and stomp.

Finean is good and his songs are damn interesting. I'd love to see what he can do with a full band.

So, Tapes 'N Tapes. They were really good. The band is quite a bit more powerful than they let on in their recent release, The Loon. The drummer is this little guy who packs such a freaking whollop; it really caught me by suprise, and when I listen to the songs on the record now, I'm wishing that the producer did a better job with the drums. The guy is *powerful* and has a really good slight of hand (like the rapidfire rim-shot tapping on "Insistor"). Quite a number of tracks on the record seem a tad stuffy and awkward, and with the drummer so in-your-face live, I suddenly "got them," and ended up really feeling a couple of tunes.

"10 Gallon Ascots" was badass. "Cowbell" was disturbingly infectious and I suddenly realized that I knew all the words to the chorus and couldn't help but sing along with the rest of the room. The best line of the show had to be: "I've been a better lov-uh with your mutha", said in a vicious deadpan. The band played their hit "Insistor" as the third or fourth tune and anybody in the audience who was unfamiliar with the band was sold.

Did I mention what a good crowd was in the house that night? Just like with the Explosions, and during Finean's set, the crowd was not shy, letting loose howl's and woo's of approval EVERY SINGLE TIME the level of rock n roll exceeded 11.

The whole band was in great form. The singer has a persona that dominates the stage, and that kind of twitch that some jazz drummers have when they are really into a run. I really got a kick out of watching the multi-instrumentalist member of the band switch from tambourine to baritone horn (kinda like a smaller tuba) to keyboards2, stumble-dancing about the stage - perhaps the only person in the band who moved around so much. I wonder in retrospect if he had been perhaps a tad inebriated.

Tapes 'N Tapes performed with a nervous energy that worked really well with their material, and by the end of their set they had really loosened up, with the guitarist/lead singer showing off an unexpected proficiency with his instrument, ending the set with the catharctic and melancholy "Jakov's Suite," which found the room soberly swaying to the final lyric, "you don't move / you don't move / when you don't move / you don't move away."

All in all, I couldn't believe how good every single band was that night. Not one of the openers was a band you'd want to miss.

Common themes in the night were bands really taking the time to mold a sound, to take their time expressing themselves, make you wait, shake your hips, and then give you the rock. And every single band was full of talented musicians, especially the guitar players.

I wonder if 2006 is one of those years where we'll see a resurgence in really well-played guitar featuring prominently in rock music? Is this the year that rock music slows down and gets more soulful? Is this the year that the kids start dancing again?

I suppose we'll see!

1As usual, I have tragically forgotten his name. Of course, I did go hunting for it on Finean's website, but came up empty. Let that be a lesson to you! Fame and popularity can be YOURS if you INTERNETS! Something tells me his name was Peter Brennan, but it's foggy.

2The squeegee noises of "Illiad" still have me giggling