adrian is rad

When you’re not working, any weekend can be a three day weekend[1]. I decided this would be in–Saturday through Monday. It was a good one. Really good.

three girls in Khayelitsha

Saturday

Saturday I did not expect. A friend of a friend asked me to help with a podcast that she helps with at a school in Khayelitsha. (She wanted my help because of all my experience in radio.) I helped with it; that was pretty good but rather straight forward. Then, it turns out, one students’ mom was performing a sangoma ceremony so we went as unannounced (but invited) guests. I’d been to a sangoma ceremony before on a township tour, but that this was genuine–that it was not done for tourists was special. Twenty, thirty people packed into a tiny house watching, singing, clapping, dancing during the ceremony.

After that, a kid of my parents’ friends was having a birthday party and I went. I met some cool people, chatted, had a couple drinks and some good food. I may have someone to watch some NFL with and some other people to play pub trivia with now, so that’s good.

Cape Town CBD plus Green Point (stadium, in construction, at left)

Sunday

Sunday was clear–crystal clear blue skies–and warm for the first time in a while, so that meant going up Table Mountain by foot. After parking mid-morning, it was a beautiful but strenuous hike up. It’s just about straight up for 3km straight. There are more stairs (made of rocks) than switchbacks and it’s step after step, one foot in front of the others. At the top it was gorgeous, as always, but I think some of the best parts are on the hike up. I meant to take the cable way down, but the high winds forced its closure for the day, so hiking back down was the option and that’s what I did. I still ache…

the Atlantic plus wildflowers

Monday

Monday I went to the Postberg peninsula in the West Coast National Park[2] to see the wild flowers. The trip up there was wonderful: the R27–the West Coast Road as they call it–goes from city to nothing very quickly. It’s a dead straight shot with no buildings and nothing but plains and a glimpse of the ocean for most of it.

The national park itself is fairly plain, but it has nice unspoiled beaches and lagoons. The peninsula was filled abundantly with wildflowers of yellows, whites, oranges and purples. It was really beautiful and worth the day trip.

I didn’t really plan for a three day weekend or really any of this, but that’s how it turned out. Pretty nice, I have to say.

[1] It could be argued that it’s always the weekend in such cases, but I feel like that would require always doing weekend activities.

[2] Can you believe I got a card that will get me into every national park for a year for ~$30?? Ridiculous!

Three unrelated topics that are on my mind.

On race: I forgot how blunt people[1] can be about race in South Africa. Having lived in places where mentioning race is equated with racism, it’s a bit shocking. I wouldn’t say these people are racist just for being aware of race–it’s simply a nation that’s very conscious of race as it was a very prominent difference for many years. There’s still racism, of course, it’s just not always the same as the blunt language.

On baseball: I watched a baseball game this afternoon. ESPN World replayed last night’s BoSox vs. Tampa Bay game. I didn’t realize they aired baseball in this market–though I do remember them airing pennant-hunt and playoff games in Asia when I was there in the fall a couple years ago, but those markets are much more interested in baseball than this one. I also saw an ad for Sports Center, though it’s the world edition so we’ll see how it is. Maybe the top 10 plays will still be good.

On coincidental encounters: Yesterday at a small shopping center, I passed two American girls (judging by accents), one of whom was wearing a University of San Francisco sweatshirt. Not only is that that town I just came from, I was on the USF campus the day before I left. Not in South Africa, but there was nevertheless an odd coincidence on Tuesday. We ran into a friend of my aunt’s while out on a walk with her dog in a small town outside London and it turns out she’s about to go to San Francisco to visit her brother. Her brother lives in Noe Valley on 26th St., which is probably within five blocks of where I just lived in SF (also on 26th St.). And I’ve undoubtedly walked by his house as I used to walk up 26th when I needed some peace and quiet.

[1] By “people” I mostly mean people of my parents’ generation. I have had few lengthy conversations with people my age in South Africa and their attitudes are possibly/ probably different.

Two Sheds @ Beauty Bar

A few weeks ago I went to SxSW and saw 46 bands and 23 shows in 4 days. I recaped it at my music blog but I got a number of questions about what the highlights were, so here’s some of that.

Top five shows:

1. the Rural Alberta Advantage @ Central Presbyterian Church
2. the Wooden Birds @ Okay Mountain
3. the Avett Brothers, the Wrens @ Radio Room
4. Fanfarlo @ Central Presbyterian
5. Tallest Man on Earth @ Red 7

Band that most changed my opinion about them: Mumford & Sons (I went from being blah to liking them)

Local band that I liked most: Two Sheds

Any questions?

Some people took sausage and wrapped it in bacon and slathered it in bbq sauce. Does anyone really need to ask why this has gotten some attention?

I found this article about transitioning White House style interesting.

It has fun quotes, like:

In the West Wing, Mr. Obama is a bit of a wanderer. When Mr. Bush wanted to see a member of his staff, the aide was summoned to the Oval Office. But Mr. Obama tends to roam the halls; one day last week, he turned up in the office of his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, who was in the unfortunate position of having his feet up on the desk when the boss walked in.

I’m once again heading to SxSW, which happens in a month and change. The preliminary list of bands is dizzying. I’m looking forward to it, though.

It’s Motown’s 50th anniversary this month. Popmatters put together a good list of their 25 top singles. It includes a streaming music player. On my other blog, I put together my favorite Motown songs from 1959, their first year.

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I did my first long bike ride in a while yesterday and certainly my first new route in a long time. It mostly hugged the water around the bay and coast of San Francisco. It was based on the SF Chronicle’s “Outer Limits” ride. It ended up being about 27 miles.

It was a gorgeous day yesterday. Warm, but not hot, clear, even out by Ocean Beach, and there were some gorgeous views throughout. I also went through a number of parts of San Francisco that I’ve never seen before: the Presidio, Seacliff, Land’s End, Lake Merced and parts of the Marina.

I also missed some turns, went the wrong way and blew a tire (while riding without a spare for the first time I can remember) and so I almost got stuck out on the Great Highway (among all those ghosts). It’ll be better next time.

I posted my best of 2008 list yesterday over at the music blog. Executive summary:

1. Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago
2. J Tillman Minor Works
3. the Rural Alberta Advantage Hometowns
4. Horse Feathers House with No Home
5. Two Sheds Two Sheds EP [EP]
6. James Hunter The Hard Way
7. Joe Pug Nation of Heat [EP]
8. Silian Rail And I You, to Pieces
9. Johnny Flynn A Larum
10. the Dodos Visiter
11. Raphael Saadiq The Way I See It

More description and mp3s over at the music blog.

I’ve also posted my best concerts of 2008.

My Blackdrop Portraits series has reached 22 photos of musicians. Here’s one of Justin Ringle of Horse Feathers

Justin of Horse Feathers by Adrian Bischoff

1. Coronado, a beach near the Hotel Del. Mid-afternoon. Walking across that area of sand that’s firm because water has run over it recently and dipping my fingers into the chilly Pacific and pondering aloud if the military planes roaring overhead on their way to the base were Harriers. I don’t think they are.

2. A bar in South Park. Night time. Between local bands giving it their all on a small stage in the dark club and packed in among the local young hipster population, discussing merits of a variety of many recent bands on the scene with a new friend.

3. Balboa Park, near the Moreton Bay Fig. Late afternoon. Lying on my back on the slightly damp grass, staring up at the deeply saturated sky, talking about finances and how it’s strange to be an adult with an old friend.

I just got back from “South by” as some (silly) people call it.

I saw around 38 bands in 5 days. It was pretty crazy. Some amazing stuff (like J Tillman (listen in, Tarky!), Two Sheds, and Fanfarlo) and some not so great stuff, but overall I was pretty thrilled with the stuff I saw.

But it got me thinking about music. I mean, even moreso than normal. After all, I had five days to basically only think about music. Here are some thoughts:

• label: seeing so many great bands that are unsigned or not signed in America got me thinking that maybe I should start a label. I don’t know the second thing about starting a label, though–I know the first thing, the first thing is that it’s a time and money sink–so I’ll need to talk to some people and get a better idea of what’s involved if I’m serious about it.
• self: I want to start recording and playing more music. I was even thinking about trying to get enough tracks together for a demo and maybe try to play a show sometimes. I don’t know what instrument I’d use. Maybe Wurly or banjo? I’m not sure. I need to get better at instruments as well.
• self, pt 2: I think I ought to get decent at trumpet again and ply my trade to the bands of SF to play for them.
• blog: I spend a whole lot of time on that thing. Is it worth it?
• presents: I should present more shows, I think. I was even thinking it’d be cool to be involved in a party/ showcase at SxSW next year. I’ll need to talk to some people about how to go about this.

I’m in Austin for SxSW. You can follow along at my other blog or my other blog’s corresponding twitter feed.

David Bazan recommended some nachos to me tonight. This is the sort of life I lead.

Number of days: 112

Number of days or parts thereof spent traveling: 47 (3 to/ from, 7 intra-Taiwan (3 Kaohsiung, 2 Taroko, 2 Kinmen), 37 intra-Asia (7 Indonesia, 5 Thailand; 15 Hong Kong, Macau, China; 10 Japan)

Number of countries visited (since moving): 6 (Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Japan, U.S.) + 2 special administrative regions with separate border controls (Hong Kong, Macau)

Number of countries visited (year to date): 8 (above + South Africa, Swaziland) + 2 S.A.R.s

Number of flights (since moving): 14 (SFO-> TPE-> CKG-> DPS-> CKG-> TPE-> BKK-> TPE-> HKG-> TPE-> NRT-> TPE, TSA-> KNH-> TSA, TPE-> SFO)

Number of flights (2007): 31 (SFO-> CVG-> IAD-> JNB, DUR-> CPT-> JNB-> JFK, BOS-> JFK-> SFO-> BOS-> DFW-> SFO-> HNL-> LIH-> HNL-> SFO + above + SFO-> CLT-> DCA)

Miles flown (since moving): 27,406 miles (44,106 km)

Miles flown (2007): 63,569 miles (102,304 km)

Number of high speed train journeys: 4 (Taipei->Kaohsiung->Taipei, Tokyo->Kyoto->Tokyo)

Number of train journeys: 6 (above + Taipei->Hualien->Taipei)

Approximate number of km ridden on scooters: 225

Best hotel (overall): Kamandalu Resort, Ubud, Bali. A connection to the cousin of the owner opened the door for staying in this swanky place. Gorgeous surroundings and really nice rooms. Private verandas looking over rice paddies. The service was also excellent. We went out riding bikes around the rice paddies one day and came back sweating. Pretty soon after we entered the lobby we had cool moist towels to wipe our faces with. Perhaps the only nicer place I’ve stayed is the ridiculous Schlosshotel Veir Jahrezeiten (Four Seasons Palace Hotel) in Berlin. (They had a Ferrari convention while we were there and it didn’t seem out of place.)

Best hotel (value): Hirano Guesthouse, Kyoto. 3500 yen a night in Kyoto is very cheap and besides a nice place to stay, the owner was very friendly, helpful and accommodating, making us tea when we came home for a break in the afternoons. She also made us breakfast every morning, let us use her bicycles and computer/ internet. Oh and there was a candy bowl and after we ate an unreasonable amount of it, she didn’t complain, she just refilled it.

Number of American chain stores patronized (not counting convenience stores, exact): 3 (2 Subways-Taipei, 1 Denny’s-Kyoto)

Number of American chain stores patronized (counting convenience stores[1], approximate): 22.2 (the above + Circle K’s in Taiwan, Bali, Thailand, ampm’s in Japan, plus 0.2 for a Mister Donut in Japan[2])

Oddest food obsession: Harbo’s Happy Cola gummy candies

Most common food eaten: rice (~ >1.5 servings a day)

Most common food product eaten: Kinder Chocolate (~ 0.6 a day)

Most “exotic” foods eaten: crickets, silk worms, frog

Number of Dr. Peppers consumed: 2 (one in Japan, one in Thailand)

Foods most missed: good bread, good cheese, Dr. Pepper, good beef, shelled shrimp, deboned fish.

Number of Hello Kitty products seen: in the thousands

Number of Hello Kitty products purchased: 1 (alarm clock, convenience store, Japan)

America: so quiet, so dark, so many English speakers, so many whites/ latinos/as, blacks. big supermarkets. low population density.

Least useful piece of clothing: dress shirt (the greenish one, never worn, given away at the end)

Most useful piece of clothing: shoes (the brown Adidas, nearly daily)

Most useful piece of clothing out of its original purpose (and new use): board shorts-style swimsuit (exercise shorts)

Piece of clothing I most immediately realized I’d forgotten: navy blue cotton boxers (that I use as warm weather pajama bottoms)

Number of books read: 5.75 (2nd 0.5 of Slow Man by Coeztee, Love is a Mixtape by Sheffield, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: a Story of the Hip Hop Generation by Chang, Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Klosterman, Born on a Blue Day By Tammet, You Don’t Love Me Yet by Lethem, first 0.25 of About a Boy by Hornsby)

Number of concerts attended: 3 (Emily the Band @ Underworld, Apples in Stereo @ the Wall, Sugar Plum Ferry @ the Wall)

Number of CDs purchased: 19 (5 in Hong Kong (Monitor), 5 @ WWR (1st trip), 5 @ WWR (2nd trip), 2 @ IMPO, 1 @ FINAC, 1 @ Roses(?))

Number of pieces of mail received: 6 (3 packages of promo CD(s); 1 each from Ian, Lauren, Gumbeaux)

[1] This is tricky because things are confusing. 7-11 is Japanese for instance.

[2] Mr. Donut is an American brand but the Asian stores are run by Duskin Co out of Japan under a licensing agreement.

I learned on Friday about the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival. Pretty much immediately after I found that some of the movies I most wanted to see (”Darjeeling Limited”, I’m Not There, Persepolis) were either sold out or at times that I couldn’t go to. Doh!

Another one that I was psyched to see (Ki-Duk Kim made the amazing “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring”) is only showing in Korean with Chinese subtitles.

However! Not all is lost. I did go to see Steve Buscemi’s Interview last night and I bought a ticket for the Sigur Ros movie. I’m still undecided about whether to see This is England or not.

I wasn’t actually expecting a ton from Interview, as it seemed like a pretentious indie two-person character piece, but it turned out to be alright. It was pretty engaging and well-written and the ending wasn’t quite what I expected.

I also found out that Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is showing in at least one regular theater here (not as part of the film festival, that is) so maybe I’ll go see that in the next few weeks.

A couple weeks ago I went swimming. The next day my left ear felt a bit weird and my hearing felt muffled. I thought there was some water still in it. After a few days it still felt weird so I had assumed it had developed into a minor ear infection, “swimmer’s ear”.

After two weeks, I decided I should have it checked out. I’m going to be place next week where it’ll be even harder to go to a doctor, so with the help of some coworkers I went to a doctor this evening and he checked me out.

There’s no water, ear wax or ear infection in there. The doctor things it’s noise trauma. Basically (hopefully) short term partial hearing loss. (Ironically, I’d light-heartedly talked about thinking I was going deaf in my left ear because my ear buds were breaking about 3 weeks ago.) His instructions: no ear buds/ headphones and try to limit limit noise for a few days.

The short term is unpleasant: no ear buds at work (at night I can play music softly on speakers that I have) means no music and I don’t like being without music. It makes me antsy. I’m going to be on planes and trains for most of Friday, alone and that would be a particularly nice time to listen to some tunes. More than it being nice, at times I almost find it necessary. After a bad or long day, after a frustrating decision, when I need to drown out this foreign world or mitigate loneliness, music is often my first resort. It may not be the best thing to turn to but it’s certainly better than turning to the bottle. This is a bit distressing.

The longer term, the prospects, the possibilities, at least, are traumatizing. That there’s even a possibility of longer term hearing loss is scary. Music is a big part of my life and between being a college radio DJ and having a music blog it’s more like a vocation. That that might be endangered or altered permanently is not a prospect I look forward to.

Just to note, I’ve always been very careful about the volume of my music on earphones and other people who try my headphones often think I listen to music too softly. I wear ear plugs at concerts, even advocating them publicly. If there’s one probable culprit here it’s listening to music on the bus and/ or while walking along streets here. Both are quite noisy and can encourage a louder-than-healthy volume on ear buds.

Last week I got to see the Legong of Mahabrata @ the Ubud Palace, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. The group performing was Sekaa Gong Jaya Swara Ubud. It was balinese dance accompanied by gamelan. Gamelan is an Indonesian (Balinese and Javanese) music with tuned percussion instruments, instruments like (but not exactly) xylophones (metallophones), tuned gongs, cymbals, barrel drums (kendhang). Sometimes, like in the gamelan I saw, they also have fipple flutes and a two-stringed spike fiddle called a rebab. (It should be noted: gamelan is a set of instruments, not the players/ history. The Berlin Philharmonic is the people, not the particular instruments they play.)

The venue, the Ubud Palace, is a courtyard of a 16th century palace. Not to be flippant, but it’s sort of like making the Great American Music Hall a lot more historic and even more beautiful.

The group came in, some dancers and the gamelan players shaking these tuned bamboo rattles called anklung in addition to the barrel drums mentioned above. The players went to their seats and there was a pause before the music began.

Gamelan itself means hammer. That’s because most of the main instruments are struck with hammers of various sorts. The music often starts fairly simple and slow. One line on the metallophones and one on the cradled gongs. More lines come in. People with hammers are hitting the instruments with one hand and selectively damping them with the other. All this while amazing and tremendously precise dance was going on in in the middle of the U made by the instruments.

I was completely enthralled from beginning to end. I have to say, I’ve been to some great shows this year, some that I might even call “better” but quite possibly none that kept my attention as singularly as this one.

Gamelan “Gender” Wayang – Krepetan (mp3)

(I searched for a while I’m really not sure where you can get this CD other than in Bali. Amazon has other Balinese gamelan CDs, though.)

Gamelan Gong Kebjar – Hudjan mas (mp3) (buy)

My other music experience while on Bali was marching ensembles in a Balinese death parade and ceremony (amazing for many reasons, but I’ll just stick to the one here.)

They played similar instruments to the gamelan: tuned gongs, hanging gones, cymbals and barrel drums, but they also used whistles and their voices, even breaking into the ketjak rhythm for a moment. Here I was able to get right up up next to them and be almost surrounded by the sound. The tuned gongs were doing a slower rhythm while the cymbals were being hit together at a very fast pace, only to suddenly stop and all by thrust into the air. It was great.

Here’s my playlist from this week.

here’s the mp3 of the show which you can download and listen to if you wish (mp3).

Local folksy band Beatbeat Whisper appeared on the show and play a live set.

Last night I saw Jonathan Richman perform live accompaniment to the 1921 Swedish silent movie Phantom Carriage at the Castro Theatre.

I haven’t been to the Castro Theatre in a couple years and as I went in and saw the beautiful molding and ornamentation in the theater, I remembered how amazing that place is. There was an interesting mix of people milling around and finding their seats: Jonathan Richman fans, silent movie aficionados, indie movie people, etc.

If you’ve never seen a silent film with live musical accompaniment, I’d recommend it. It’s usually a pretty good experience. The semi-improvisational nature of the music adds a lot of excitement to the movie.

The movie itself is pretty complex for the time. The plot’s based around a Swedish folktale. The idea goes that the last to die in a year that has bad things has to spend the rest of the year being Death’s carriage driver. It employed a few techniques that I was surprised were employed then, including non-linear story telling and some fairly good special effects techniques for the ghosts.

On now onto the music. I’d seen Jonathan Richman before. He’s really quirky live and has a lot of charisma and stage presence, so I was really curious how it’d end up when these things were taken away. The set up was Jonathan on (nylon string) guitar and pump organ. Other players were two hand bell players, a trumpet/ baritone player, a bass clarinet/ saxophone/ flute player, a violinist and a cellist. I thought their accompaniment was really good and all the players were very talented. It worked really well with the movie. The main characters had motifs and there were parts were these two motifs were almost colliding when two characters were talking or arguing. A daring move was during certain particularly intense moments in the movie there they left it completely silent; I think it paid off.

View the full photo album.

Update: I’ve noticed the bad justification to the text next to the photos. I have tried to fix it, but it’s stubborn. Sorry!

I scanned and uploaded a bunch of black and white photos to my picasa thing.

Galleries include Pittsburgh over Christmas, my first try at fisheye, the Oakland A’s last game of their sweep of the Twins in the playoffs, Jose Gonzalez @ Stanford, and John Vanderslice @ Stanford.

I’ve been doing this in stealth for a couple days, but I feel like it’s time to announce my other blog. It’s a music blog.

I’ve felt for a while that I was writing too little about music for this to be a music blog and too much about music for this to be a personal blog. In one case, outside readers see too much personal ranting and in the other, friends get alienated by the constant music talk , so I’ve split it off.

I’ll still be blogging here. I won’t be posting here about music, unless it’s related directly to me, like music I write/ record, radio playlists or if it’s a mixtape. I’ll be co-posting the last two of those.

I feel a bit weird about it—I’m always written this for myself and maybe a couple friends, but writing about any specific x is an admission that someone wants to read that. Now I have a whole blog where I pretend that people want to read my writing about music.

Last night I saw Elvis Perkins (in Dearland) at the Cafe du Nord. I got there a little bit before he went on when they were finishing setting up and sound-checking their mics. I was a bit surprised because they had large diaphragm condensers for his vocals, the harmonium and as an overhead for the drums (?!).

When Elvis and co. came out, they pretty quickly launched into “While You Were Sleeping” which was fine with me, as it’s my favorite track off of his album Ash Wednesday. The band consisted of Elvis on guitar and vocals, a guy that switched between guitar, harmonium and trombone; an upright/ electric bassist and a drummer/ percussionist. Everyone sang back up vocals. “Ash Wednesday” followed soon afterwards. His sound from the get-go was really good. His voice was clear and the mix was nice.

His set quickly veered away from album songs. “Weeping Pilgrim” was a great song. I think it’s a traditional song. It was rollicking and fun. On a few songs including that one, the drummer got out from behind the set and played a marching bass drum with a mallet on one side and a set of jingles (like on a tambourine, but in a line) on the other.

All in all, the show was a lot of fun and the band and sound were good. I’d definitely recommend it if you like Ash Wednesday or if you’re on the fence about Elvis Perkins.

Perkins did do a couple things that could be taken as arrogant or endearing, depending on how you look at it. The one that I’m mostly thinking of was before the last song he said “Well, the last song before we go backstage and you clap for a while and we come back out.” and then later while people were clapping he stuck out his head out of the dressing room and said “louder!” It was a little much

more photos after the jump

(more…)

A pretty good evening last night.

First Uncle Frank’s BBQ in Mountain View w/ andyl and liz. This place is awesome. You walk through to the back of Francesca’s bar to get there and it’s the sort of place where there are paper towel holders at the tables. They don’t mess around. Ridiculous brisket, good links and ribs, good corn bread. I couldn’t get to the sides (baked beans and greens) due to stomach capacity issues. Hilarious waitress.

Second, my friends the Light Footwork played at Make Out Room. They have cheap beers. When’s the last time you got two pints (Anchor Steam and PBR) for $6? (Answer only if you live in an overpriced city.) The Light Footwork put on a fun show, as always. I also ran into KZSU alum Nick Mirov again. We chatted about SXSW and various bands.

Really, I can’t complain. Good times.

I’m a little backlogged as far as the concert review posts go, but here’s one I definitely wanted to mention.

[As a side note, does anyone but myself like these concert reviews?]

On Friday I saw Hrishi Hirway and the One AM radio at Fort Oregon in Berkeley. I’ve mentioned the One AM Radio before in this post about his kickball music video (which I still love) and this concert recap of his last Fort Oregon show.

Gumbeaux and I got to the Fort around 10pm. It’s just a house in Berkeley with occasional shows in the basement. As a venue it’s pretty odd–you’re standing under ducts or next to a furnace quite often. The opening band was the Golden Birds. It was quite a turnout for them and I think they have a following around here. The basement was pretty full. They were good indie pop but the sound seemed a little bit like a band playing in someone’s basement.

The One AM Radio’s sound combines the electronic elements with intimate vocals and colorful arrangements. Their live set up this time through was Hrishi on guitar, vocals and laptop operating; a tenor saxophonist, a tenor/ alto saxophonist and an upright bass player. The only things that were amplified were the vocals, guitar and laptop.

The One AM Radio started out with the Greatest of Ease (mp3). A really nice version of “Drowsy Haze” with the audience singing backups followed [1]. After a few songs from the new album (including In the Time we’ve Got (mp3)) he asked if there were any requests and after hearing a few, he played Flicker (mp3). He then played my favorite new song (”Echoing Airports”) and favorite old song (”All I Can Recall is the Haunting”) in a row.

His last show I was pretty tired and wasn’t all that into it. This one was completely different. I enjoyed it a lot. The mix was great (despite the fact that the mix was being done by the guitarist/ vocalist/ laptopist and the rest weren’t being amplified); Hrishi’s voice was great; the song selection and the songs were great.

[1] I have mentioned it before but I’ll mention it again: I like when bands ask the audience to sing along. I like it a lot.

First: Winner of the Noise Pop one day music video contest, the Blammos “Girl of My Dreams” video. The guy walks around the Mission and sings a love song to strangers.

Second: (for the jdawg, a pinball wizard) a Pepsi commercial with San Francisco as a giant pinball machine.

(both via sfist)

Last week, I saw Mr. Ted Leo a couple of times, first as part of Noise Pop and then as part Stanford Concert Network’s campus concerts.

I came to the first concert with a familiarity with Hearts of Oak and Shake the Sheets. I like those albums, but didn’t play them too often.

I got there on Friday just before the Georgie James set. They were competant musicians, but it was sort of take it or leave it in the end… I might post separately about some thoughts it got going in my head, but I don’t want to connect them directly with this band, because the thoughts aren’t.

After the usualy pre-headliner shuffle and push toward the stage, Ted Leo came up to much applause and excitement. Immediately he started rocking out with high energy. After a handful of songs, I started thinking “oh, he’s just playing the hits. what’s he going to do when those run out?” After a few more songs I realized he wasn’t just playing hits; his catalogue is just really good.

He bantered well between songs, answering people yelling out from the audience and whatnot.

Ted Leo live is like the best things from punk, indie rock, and folk. Punk: high energy and a DIY melody. Indie: great melodies and chord progressions. Folk: interesting and multi-layered lyrics.

Ted really goes all out with the whole show. I’m surprised he can put so much into his vocals and not completely destroy his voice. His falsetto is pretty amazing, too.

He played a handful of new songs, including a really great one called “Lost Brigade” with a really nice repeated line “Every little baby has its own song” (which doesn’t sound great when I write it, but you can check out a live version of the song here). They also did a live covers of Chumbawumba’s “Rappaport’s Testament: I Never Gave Up” and the old Irish tune “Dirty Old Town.”

I went in not knowing what to expect and in the end, I was pretty much floored by his performance.

Sunday’s concert (which the Stanford Daily covered) had different openers: Stanford bands. They weren’t really good at all, though the last, the Bee’s Knees were an interesting combination of 50’s throwback and modern pop.

It was in an odd venue, Kresge Auditorium. Immovable seats close to the stage made for awkward standing during the show. The crowd was not your standard indie rock crowd. Far more—what do you call them?—frat boys in attendence.

But for Ted’s part it was a fairly similar performance in that he brought his A game once again. There was a fairly similar set list, but he was still great. One amusing anectdote from the evening was when Ted started saying that their set was originally going to be longer but … (then he sort of trailed off, I think he was going to say that his voice was starting to go or that he wasn’t feeling well). Someone from the crowd then shouted “Fuck you!” to a completely stunned Leo and crowd. He then just said something like “Okay. I guess we’ll keep going” and then they rattled off another half dozen songs.

Overall, two really enjoyable shows.

Recommendation: go see Ted Leo when he comes to your town. He’s touring the US starting at the end of March. Check to see when he’s in your town and buy tickets.

Overheard at last night’s Mountain Goats show at the Bottom of the Hill.

Peter Hughes: You know, we’ve been playing at the Bottom of the Hill for so long that I remember a show where my now ex-wife’s best friend was buying us shots of liquor.

fan, from the back: yeah, it was Old Grand Dad

Peter: yeah, it was.

and later in the show

fan, diferent from the first: T SHIRT SONG!

John Darnielle: There is no such song!

fan: T SHIRT SONG!

JD: It was an improvisation and therefore not a real song!

So my ridiculous pursuit of the moment is my concert list

It’s meant to be a list of every concert I’ve ever been to. It’ll never be complete, but I’m trying. I have a lot of concerts on there already and then I have a lot of concerts that I don’t remember/ can’t find the dates of.

Fionn Regan topped my list of best albums of ‘06 and for the first time (I believe) he’s touring America.

Well, actually he’s just playing four dates. But if you’re in Austin (or will be for SXSW) or NYC, you really shoud go:

15 Mar Stubbs Austin SXSW
16 Mar BD Rileys, 204 East 6th St Austin SXSW
17 May Mojo BBQ (1-4pm) Austin SXSW
20 Mar Mercury Lounge (7.30pm) New York w/ Get Cape Wear Cape Fly

So buy tickets already!

I haven’t been to a rock show in a while and all of a sudden, it seems like I’ll be going to quite a few, with Noise Pop this week, a couple of Stanford Concert Network shows and some random bands coming through (some of which I’m considering/ am seeing multiple times). Here’s what it looks like:

• February 28: Noise Pop: Sebadoh (original line up) at Great American Music Hall
• March 1: Noise Pop: Alexi Murdoch w/ Aqueduct at Cafe du Nord OR
• March 1: KZSU presents Hella at the 750 Pub, Stanford
• March 2: Noise Pop: Ted Leo at Great American Music Hall
• March 4: Ted Leo at Kresge Auditorium, Stanford
• March 7: Mountain Goats at the Independent
• March 9: Mountain Goats at the Bottom of the Hill
• March 10: Long Winters at the Independent
• March 16: the One Am Radio at Fort Oregon, Berkeley

There are also Badly Drawn Boy w/ Adem, Elvis Perkins, Adem (headlining) and other bands at the end of March. Goodness, life’s so hard.

I saw a review of I Belong to this Band: 85 Years of Sacred Harp Recordings in the latest Rolling Stone (which I apparently have a subscription to, maybe because I’m a world famous radio DJ.) I tried to find Rolling Stone’s review online, but I did find one in Stylus.

From that CD, I found a documentary about Sacred Harp, Awake My Soul. Did anyone see this? Apparently it aired on PBS recently. The trailer actually give a decent, quick introduction to Sacred Harp singing.

For a taste of it, listen to my favorite song in this style (from the Alan Lomax-recorded Southern Journey, V. 9: Harp of a Thousand Strings – All Day Singing From the Sacred Harp by the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers):

Alabama Sacred Harp Sings – Sherburne (mp3)

Sacred Harp (wikipedia!) is a form of shape note singing, which was developed as a form of notating music such that four shapes on either a line or a space indicate the eight notes of the scale. Sacred Harp was a hymn book written using shape notes in 1850s. It’s been sung in pretty much the same way since that time, largely in the American South. See also: how Sacred Harp is sung.

Usually there is a different conductor for each song. The singers run through the melody once on solfege before running through the song once. They then move right on to the next conductor and the next song. There’s no practicing or rehearsing songs.

My favorite idiosyncrasy the style are that the singers just sing. There are no pretenses of being polished.

In much the same way that it’s been sung for the last 150-odd years, it’s still sung today, in fact, I could (and am considering) sing in a group in Palo Alto though, I have to admit I’m not very good at site singing.

Last night I saw Ralph Stanley at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. Laurie Lewis opened. Tickets were due to my wicked smarts and quickness with the internet in responding to a flavorpill quiz.

Laurie Lewis (and Tom Rossum and the Right Hand Band) was up first. She’s a local bluegrass fiddler and singer. Her band’s set was good and her band’s tight. It went by pretty quick.

Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys came up next. Right at the beginning of the set, Laurie came back on and made a big deal because it was the eve of Ralph’s 80th Birthday. They had a cake and a proclamation from Berkeley’s mayor.

Once the festivities ended, the set started in earnest. Ralph introduced the members one by one (including Ralph Stanley II and Nathan Stanley, the grandson) and they did a short number featuring that member. They then did a few full band numbers, Ralph did ‘O Death’ solo and a capella, and then went back around featuring each member that had a solo CD out (which was most everyone). From there it was a couple more full band numbers before the set ended. Ralph didn’t do all that much in the set aside from singing on the full band numbers and playing clawhammer banjo for one song. It seemed a bit obvious to me that this was, at this point, a franchise. They were selling the Stanley name and artistic vision more than his actual musicianship. It sort of reminded me when I saw the Count Basie Orchestra 15 years after Count’s death.

All of that said, his band was tight. When you’re Ralph Stanley, you can get some good pickers for your band, certainly. Going into the show I was actually a bit afraid that the show would drag on a bit, but, even though the set was well over an hour, it didn’t bore or drag on. For Ralph’s performances himself, he certainly can still sing and play a mean clawhammer banjo. I enjoyed the night.

(more photos after the break)
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Daytrotter has some mp3s of a recent in-studio by Elvis Perkins. They’re four songs, all originally on Ash Wednesday. The voice recording is a bit boomy but they’re otherwise good.

Somehow I missed this: Pitchfork publishes a weekly list of bands and artists on TV that week.

For example, this week’s:

Monday, January 22:

ABC: “Jimmy Kimmel Live”: Nas (rerun)
CBS: “Late Show With David Letterman”: Nellie McKay with the Brooklyn Philharmonic
CBS: “Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson”: Lady Sovereign (rerun)

Tuesday, January 23:

CBS: “Late Show With David Letterman”: the Shins [1]
NBC: “Late Night With Conan O’Brien”: Cheap Trick (rerun)

Thursday, January 25:

CBS: “Late Show With David Letterman”: Gwen Stefani (rerun)
NBC: “Late Night With Conan O’Brien”: New York Dolls (rerun)

Friday, January 26:

NBC: “Last Call With Carson Daly”: Young Jeezy (rerun)

Saturday, January 27:

NBC: “Saturday Night Live”: Ludacris (rerun)

Monday, January 29:

MTV2: “Subterranean”: the Shins

Now you can totally be up on that stuff. Set your Tivos!

[Update:] [1] Did anyone else catch this? Did you see Gibbard playing with them? That man’s everywhere!

There are a few links I’ve been meaning to put up. Things I find interesting but I don’t want to add to the sidebar on the right.

Random links:

• designverb: a blog about design related topics, largely product design and the like. fairly interesting stuff.
• rbally has a nice Cat Power show from Berlin for download [update: rbally seems to have taken this down/ broken]
• youtube has a great chemistry lab safety video explosion. (dylan, are you seeing this?)
• bitsandpieces silly college humor, but sometimes entertaining
• wikipedia has a list of African countries by GDP (adjusted for purchasing power parity) per capita. South Africa’s on top, but barely. For reference, the US is 3rd in the world for GDP (PPP) per capita at about $42,000.
• oregon trail is it possible you haven’t played this game? there are even shirts about it. And you can download an emulated version
• Tom Wilson I feel like I should add him to my list of best producers. He did Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Velvet Underground and more

There were a number of the links on that kottke best links of 2006 list that I had already seen, but I’d enjoyed.

• Simpson’s beginning, in live action (British made)
• when indie yuppie took off (a term/ concept created by Vice records honcho Adam Shore and pushed by stereogum
• Wes Andersen’s odd AmEx add don’t leave home without it
• how to get a human customer service representative at a lot of companies
• a Henri Cartier-Bresson photo gets trashed on flickr
• a picture of eyes above an honor-system drink payment box makes people more honest
• easily mispronounced domain names whorepresents.com? still hilarious
• Jimmy Kimmel’s hilarious ‘Unnecessary Censorship’ video put bleeps where there weren’t any before and it makes things very funny
• devastating photo of a homeless heroin addict in the Tenderloin (where I often go to the Great American
• Aries Spears rap impressions
• Noah takes a self-portrait everyday for 6 years and makes a video of it interesting, haunting eyes

My New Year’s Eve activities included seeing Pan’s Labyrinth and later the Light Footwork at the Hotel Utah.

I was intrigued by Pan’s Labyrinth because it had one of the highest ratings I’d seen for a movie on metacritic. It also has a pretty interesting description in some of the reviews: it’s a fantasy movie and a war movie and a love story and… It seems like there’d be a lot going on but while you’re watching it, it doesn’t. It’s a fairy tale of sorts, but it’s possibly the most gruesome fairy tale you’ll see this year.

Post-Spanish civil war, mid-World War II, Ofelia and her very pregnant mother travel to the mountains of Spain to join the new husband/ step-father. He is a captain whose mission is to eliminate the remaining resistance in the area. We quickly learn that he’s not a nice guy. Ofelia is fascinated with fairy tales. During her first night at the mill, a fairy comes and leads her to a labyrinth on the premises. A faun explains to her that she is the long lost daughter of the underground king and that to return to her throne she must complete three tasks before the full moon (in a few days).

The rest of the movie is her trying to complete these tasks, the struggle of the resistance, a love story between one of the resistors and one of the people working under the captain, the struggle between her and the captain, etc.

I still don’t know quite what to make of it. It’s still swimming around in my head. It’s a light fairy tail and, yet, it’s heavy and affecting.

Later in the evening, Gumbeaux and I went over to the Hotel Utah. I’ve known the guys from the Light Footwork for a while and recently heard them live for the first time. They were playing their first gig “out”. The Hotel Utah is small venue which has apparently been around forever.

They put on a fun set full of their signature indie pop songs. Lots of energy. The one area I think they could work on is the banter. (Without some talented DJ leading the banter, it fell a little flat.) Gums and I weren’t in the mood for more, so we left after the Light Footwork.

A couple weeks ago, I finished Body Piercing Saved My Life by Andrew Beaujon (named after the “clever” shirt.) (Amazon, , one review, two mp3-blog like posts by the author about Christian music)

It’s a look at Christian Rock, capital C, capital R, by an outsider. Beaujon is a writer for Spin so he comes from the mainstream rock criticism side of things. I’ve never been really involved in the scene he talks about although I stood at the edge of it a couple years, so I’m a bit of an outsider to it as well. (Which reminds me of a post about an article of the same topic and perspective…)

He spends chapters looking at aspects and events in the Christian music world. He looks at particular bands and people as well as other cultural forces like Mars Hill Church and Tooth and Nail Records. There are various people that come off earnestly and then there are some more slimey people. I’d heard some negative things about T&N (that they don’t give their bands a fair shake) and they were sort of confirmed in this book.

Perhaps my favorite section is the chapter about David Bazan (at the time of the interviews, still in Pedro the Lion). Where a lot of interviewees seem to sidestep questions that might result in controversial answers, Bazan seems to take any and all questions head on without flinching. Sufjan denied the interview request, apparently, so there’s only a brief section on him, which was a bit disappointing.

Overall, it’s an interesting, informative and well-written book about a large cultural phenomenon (Christian records easily outsell jazz records currently). I’d recommend it if you are curious about the scene or genre.

I’ve since moved on to the Dave Eggers editted The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004.

That Beirut show that I went to has has popped up at the Internet Archive.

It’s a really good show, even in repeat. There’s a woman screaming like an idiot next to the guy recording it for the first song and a bit of the next couple, but once you get past that, it’s a worthwhile listen. It’s available in a number of formats, too (mp3, ogg, FLAC). And it’s free.

There are a couple entertaining videos that I found or ran across in the recent times:

Aries Spears impressions while freestyling. This is a guy doing impressions of LL Cool J, Snoop Dog, DMX and Jay Z while freestyling. It’s pretty dang impressive, though I’m not familiar with DMX at all and only somewhat familiar with the other three. I’m still very impressed. (A couple things of note: a) that’s Live 105, in SF and that’s the same studio where I did the college dj of the week thing and 2) it appears Woody, one of the hosts, is a Steelers fan as he’s sporting a hat and a Willy Parker jersey). (via stereogum)

Peyton Manning Mastercard Priceless Ad. I can see how you might not like Peyton Manning, but man, I love this commercial which started running last year. They have a second, similar one this season but it’s not as good. I laugh every time I see this one.

[Update:] Oh man, I found another Peyton priceless commercial and it’s hilarious too. Also, there’s a blooper commercial from the first Peyton video and the making of (including the actual commercial at the end) a third in the series.

I went to see Bishop Allen (their myspace page) on Thursday at the Bar of Contemporary Art. They were the second of three on the bill, the headliners being the Starlight Mints.

If you don’t know Bishop Allen, check out some of their mp3s on their webpage or listen to the ones I’m going to hand pick for you:
Bishop Allen – Same Fire [from June] (mp3)
Bishop Allen – Flight 180 [from April] (mp3)
Bishop Allen – Things are What you Make of Them [from Charm School](mp3)

They’ve announced (and so far followed through with, though sometimes a bit delayed) a plan to release an EP for every month until they release their next EP. I can’t imagine doing this, especially for months when they’re touring. I may or may not have bought all the months EPs they had for sale at the show (January-August). I’ll possibly post a review of all of them later.

Bishop Allen went on after a somewhat clever but ultimately unexciting opener. The stage at BoCA is basically tiny, so the drums were off to one side, instead of the usual behind-the-leadman and the bass player and guitarist were behind the drums. Sort of an odd set up. I feel like I’m fairly unfamiliar with Bishop Allen—I’ve only listen to Charm School a few times and then the mp3s that they’ve offered up for the month EPs, but somehow I went through the set knowing most of the songs they played (maybe all but two). That’s always kind of nice, knowing the songs a band is playing.

They played well. Particularly I liked the versions of “Busted Heart”, “Same Fire”, “Flight 180″ they did. It was a fun and energy-filled set.

After Bishop Allen, the bar cleared out before Starlight Mint came up and continued clearing out throughout their set to the point where about forty people were left. The sound for the first part of their set was really badl; well the vocals were too low for the whole set but sound at the beginning was particularly muddy. They did a number of halloweeny or horror movie sounding songs at the beginning and that, combined with the muddy sound, put me off for most of their set. I must say I liked the last few songs they did.

I’m pretty excited to say that super-local (Redwood City) blog favorite the Light Footwork will be performing live on KZSU’s Wednesday Night Live, its live local band show, on Wednesday December 13 at 9pm (PST). I’m going to be hosting the program. Let me know if you have any burning questions for the band; I can ask them between song.

If you don’t know the Light Footwork yet, check out some mp3s. (Or check out any of the aforelinked blogs.)

Also, Jay (of tLF) and I hit up the Bishop Allen show at BoCA in SF last night. Good show. I’ll write more about it later. Something I was pretty amused by: someone took one of those ‘Visitor’ stickers and filled out the rest ‘to the hipster indie world (please by nice)’.

Once again, tune in to KZSU (90.1FM or online) on December 13, 2006 at 9pm (PST) to hear the Light Footwork. (I’ll see what I can do about putting an mp3 up of the show after the date, but no guarantees.)

I went to ten [1] (rediculous!) concerts in October, so I was pretty busy there. There were a couple I wanted to write about but didn’t and now they seem a bit irrelevant. Well, I’m going to write what I wanted to say about them, in brief, now:

• Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, October 7: You get to see great artists (Earl Scruggs, Gillian Welch, etc.) for free, but you have to put up with the worst crowds ever.
• The Long Winters at the Cafe du Nord, October 13: What Made Milwaukee Famous was entertaining, the Long Winters were good. John Roderick was very entertaining. I took some pictures and put them here.
• The Hold Steady at the Great American Hall, October 17: They’re a bar band. They’re loud and rawkus. Craig Finn was almost definitely very drunk. The vocals were too low in the mix for a band that I like largely because of the deep lyrics, but it was still a very fun show.
• Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy at the Great American, Oct 31: While I was standing outside waiting for some friends, who walked up to the will call booth but Mark Kozelek. I barely avoided turning into a total fanboy and played it cool. Oh and the show: Will Oldham is a fantastically weird guy. Parts of the show were great and parts of the show were a bit boring.

[1] for real:

1. Jose Gonzalez at EBF, October 6
2. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park, SF, October 7
3. Sufjan Stevens in Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, October 11
4. John Vanderslice at the 750 Pub, Stanford, October 12
5. Long Winters w/ What Made Milwaukee Famous at Cafe du Nord, SF, October 13
6. the Hold Steady at the Great American, SF, October 17
7. Damien Jurado at the Swedish American Hall, SF, October 20
8. Beirut at the Great American, SF, October 20
9. David Bazan at Swedish American Hall, SF, October 27
10. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy at the Great American, SF, October 31

On Friday, Laura and I went over to see David Bazan (ex-Pedro the Lion, Headphones) at the Swedish American Hall. It was an odd billing. I had never seen DB play anything but a headlining (or co-headlining) slot and here he was opening for someone I’d never heard of Kristin Hersch (of Throwing Muses, apparently). It was also an early show (doors at 7:30pm–DB was on by 8:30ish) which led to an odd mix of older people and even some infant kids.

We got there as the first opener was in her last couple songs. She was good enough but, honestly, I didn’t pay much attention. Tip to artists, by the way: say your name or band name fairly often, and at least once at the end of your set. I don’t know the opener’s name.

David came up next. It was immediately obvious that this was going to be the most laid-back show of his that I’d seen yet: he was sitting down and playing a nylon-string guitar. (Later I also learned that he was sober, apparently a new thing for solo shows.)

I can’t remember the exact order of songs he did but he definitely did a nice mix of old (Ptl) and new songs (DB) and even one Headphones (H) song, in no particular order: “Transcontinental”(PtL), “Hot Shit” (H), “Fewer Broken Pieces”(DB) (on which he tacked on parts of a new song that he was working on), “Cold Beer and Cigarettes”(DB), “the Longer I Lay Here” (PtL), “Priests and Paramedics”(Ptl), “The Poison”(DB/ PtL), “Of Up and Coming Monarchs”(PtL), “Bands with Managers”(PtL), and “Bad Things to Good People”(PtL) (which I hadn’t listened to for quite a while but had been actually listening to earlier in the same day—good song!). I’m sure he did half-a-handful of other songs, but I can’t remember them all.

He played well and sang well—it’s sort of snuck by me that he actually has a great falsetto. I missed that some how, or at least I’d never noted it before.

It was obvious that crowd was not all DB or Pedro fanatics as some of his ‘quirkier’ lyrics ellicited giggles from the audience.

He also did his usual question-and-answer session during songs. These are always fun. One of the kids (~5 years old) asked him why he said “smokes a lot” during one of his songs (I think). DB sort of winced like he does and then awkwardly tried to explain that he said that because he doesn’t have a very good vocabulary and instead uses hyperbole to try to say what he means. He also said he uses explitives in his songs for the same reason and basically apologized to the father for swearing around this kid. (A few minutes later he launched into “Hot Shit” of course…) The same kid also asked him if he was married and that got DB into a story about how the minister that married him left the church because he tried to go on a date with the secretary and the minister’s wife didn’t like that, “but that’s another story…”

The one question I asked was whether he regrets releasing any of his songs; if you’ve listened through his catalog, this question may occur to you as well as it sort of “switches gears”, one could say. His response was “the Promise”, the last song off of It’s Hard to Find a Friend. His reasoning was mostly that he likes the somber mood that he created with the three songs before that (”The Bells” to “Secret of the Easy Yoke” (still one of my PtL favorites) to “The Well”) and then it jumps into this “pop jingle” as he calls it. He we was too scared to end on a somber note then. He also doesn’t particuarly like “the Promise.”

After the show, it was still early so Laura and I headed over to Sparky’s for a milkshake and a slice of delicious pumpkin pie. I think I am currently suffering from a heart attack due to consuming these foods, but, dang, it was worth it. The milkshake was possibly one of the best I’ve ever had: a perfectly blended vanilla ice cream with a dollop of peanut butter shake.

After the break, check out more photos and my list of David Bazan/ Pedro/ Headphones shows.
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I had a dream last night where something had happened where I’d been signed or discovered or been given a good review online or something and suddenly I was going to play a show as a headliner. I was trying to get enough material together. I was going to play some originals on wurly and guitar. I was going to play some old songs (Greetings from Johannesburg? Where’s Luke??) and some new stuff. I wasn’t very good at the songs and playing wurly and guitar (in the dream, of course not in real life) so I needed to practice. The night of the show came and the openers went and were good and I was thinking I shouldn’t be the headliner of the show. Then it was my turn to play and I realized that I really hadn’t practiced much and I was totally unprepared.

I don’t remember my dreams much.

Here’s a clip of the Times are a Changin cast performing “Like a Rolling Stone” (the greatest song of all time) on the View.

I couldn’t make it all the way through. Can you?

Ouch. Ouch!

It takes talent to produce something that horrible.

(via stereogum)

Last Friday I managed my third (I believe) ever two show night [1] [2]: with Damien Jurado w/ Rosie Thomas followed by Beirut.

The night started with meeting Dave and Dasha outside the Swedish American Hall at about 8:15. We got inside and Rosie Thomas was on, having already started her set. Rosie is really funny in a goofy way. She has this tiny voice but has a huge voice, easily filing the hall when she wanted to. Her set was good: her music’s a bit on the sappy side, but it’s still nice. Her between set banter was very funny; I’m not entirely surprised she’s also sometimes a stand-up comic (as “Sheila”). Apparently she’s friends with Sufjan, which makes me happy.

[full write up and pics continue after the break]
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I’m all musicy lately, but here are three more things of interest:

• Sort of an update to that Sufjan @ Zellerbach post: the East Bay Express has an interesting article about how the Pacific Mozart Ensemble got to sing with Sufjan
• TW Walsh is now giving away (free! with artwork!) his band, the Soft Drugs’ latest EP, In Moderation. Solid stuff and I particularly like Defending the Paint (mp3)
• It looks like Dave and I (as Greetings from Johannesburg) are going to enter “Thaw” in Salon’s Song Search Contest

In the comments of my Rogue Wave benefit post, Mie from Our Lady of the Highway (who I saw open for Zach Rogue’s solo gig over the summer.) She sent me links to a few songs which I listened to.

OLofH is sort of hard to pinpoint as to what they sound like. They sort of stradle a lot of sounds: indie rock, alt country, dareIsayemo, folk, classic rock. “I get the sense” is a cool song with some Built to Spill-ish stylings. It’s a single off of their latest album and sounds sort of singley (that’s not always bad).

Our Lady of the Highway – I Get the Sense (mp3)

“Brown Dress” is folkie sort of song with a dark, distorted side. Man, I’m horrible with these descriptions.

Our Lady of the Highway – Brown Dress (mp3)

How local are they? They’re based in SF, I believe, but it appears Mie works around the corner at Stanford.

I’m still catching up from my crazy week last week.

On Thursday, I hung out with the nicest man in indie rock, John Vanderslice for a few hours and saw him play a solo gig at the 750 Pub at Stanford.

A couple weeks ago I talked to JV after the Rogue Wave show and since he played on my show we’ve had some rapport. I mentioned that it was cool that he was playing at Stanford and he asked if I wanted to hang out before the show. Well, yes!

I showed up at the 750 around 5:30. It’s kind of weird describing hanging out with someone, so maybe I’ll just skip most of that part. I met Chris, the guy from Pattern is Movement who was also on the bill, as well and he was pretty cool. JV is still just about the nicest person I’ve met.

A bunch of cool people showed up at the show, including KZSU DJs galore: Matt, Kirstle, Eel, and Megan, who helped organize it. Jay and much of his band, the Light Footwork also showed up and we got to hang out a bit again. I also met a few new cool people at the show.

First up on the bill was Pony Pants. They were sort of math-rocky with some classic rock influences and drum machine drums (played off an ipod) with female vocals. They were entertaining. The lead guitarist pulled out all the stops, playing being his head, standing on his amp and up in the face of an audience member.

Next up was JV. He was playing solo, acoustic. The room actually (somewhat surprisingly) got pretty packed. At some point during the show he said that earlier he was walking around Stanford with his “friend Adrian” and I felt pretty cool. He played a handful of new songs and a bunch of old ones. He got us all clapping along for a great version of “Pale Horse.” He is apparently doing a 7″ and wrote the B-side two weeks ago and recorded it the same morning as the show. He was saying that he’s never written a b-side before and he kept worrying that it was too good or that he was spending too much time on it. He played it and it was good.

Pattern is Movement was last; I missed most of their set chatting outside with JV.

All in all a great evening. Fun chatting with JV and a great set.

Starting last Friday, totally crazy 8 days:

• Friday:
  • Oakland A’s ALDS game 3: tons of fun
  • Jose Gonzalez at EBF, Stanford: packed and sweaty and good
• Saturday: Earl Scruggs, Gillian Welch and Jerry Douglas at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2006 (Day 2), SF: good
• Sunday: day of rest. (And watching the Steelers): disappointing
• Tuesday: ALCS game 1 @ Oakland: disappointing
• Wednesday: Sufjan Stevens @ Zellerbach, Berkeley: amazing
• Thursday:
  • hanging out w/ John Vanderslice: awesome
  • JV concert at 750 Pub, Stanford: tons of fun
• Friday: Long Winters at Cafe du Nord, SF: excellent. John Roderick is fantastic

Tonight I saw Sufjan Stevens in Berkeley at the Zellerbach Auditorium. He had a full choir (the Pacific Mozart Ensemble) along with a string octet, a brass trio and a backing band.

Holy crap. That was really good. Amazing, really.

I actually wrote down the setlist this time:

• unknown instrumental
• Sister
• The Transfiguration
• The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders Part I: The Great Frontier Part II: Come to Me Only with Playthings Now
• He Woke Me Up Again
• Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!) [1][2]
• The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get us[3]
• Abraham
• Casmir Pulaski Day
• Seven Swans
• That was the Worst Christmas Ever[4]
• Jacksonville[5]
• Majesty Snowbird[6]
• The Man of Metropolis Steals our Hearts[7]
• Encore: Chicago

The concert was so theatrical and, to use an entirely over-used word, epic. All the songs were added to in weight, joy or emotion by the massive number of musicians on the stage. There was certainly some surprise in the number of songs that ended in a cacophonous ‘freak-out.’ Notably, freak out at the end of “Predatory Wasp,” a particularly subdued song for much of it’s length, was a parculiar juxtaposition.

I’d also recommend being a nut and being online when the tickets go on sale for future concerts at the Zellerbach. I was in the third row in the wings (tiers) that come down and touch the stage and the vantage point was excellent.

One last note: the show was so good that even the usher, would was advanced in her years, gave the band a standing ovation at the end of the show.

[1] Acknowledging that it wouldn’t be a popular sentiment in this area before he said it, he dedicated this to the Detroit Tigers.

[2] He inserted the lyrics “Tigers Stadium” “‘84″ into that repeated section with the various locations in the middle.

[3] This was so incredibly gorgeous. My eyes literally welled up during this song.

[4] 100 inflatable Santas were throw off the balcony during this song. I did not get one.

[5] Funky. Move your booty.

[6] New song about the dark eyed junco. It’s pretty great. You heard it here first: my prediction is that Sufjan’s next album will be about birds. (Think about it: Majesty Snowbird and Great God Bird? Not a coincidence.)

[7] similar to [4], lots of inflatable supermen were thrown off the balcony during this song. I did not get one.

When I first heard about Jose Gonzalez playing at Enchanted Broccoli Forest from a fellow DJ I couldn’t believe it. Why would Jose Gonzalez be playing a weird coop at Stanford? Well it turns out that it was real and being put on by the Stanford Concert Network, which, it turns out, is being run by yet another fellow DJ these days.

The space in EBF where they had the concert was maybe a dining room or a living room. The posted maximum occupancy was 65. I’d guess there were closer to 222 people in there. It was packed and hot and sweaty. I couldn’t see Jose for most of the show.

But the sound was good and Jose played a good show. He didn’t say much and just ran through his songs and covers. He doesn’t have a giant repetoire yet, so he played most of Veneer and most of the covers he plays.

Final four songs:

• Heartbeats (the Knife cover)
• Crosses
• Hand on Your Heart (Kylie Minogue cover)
• Teardrop (Massive Attack cover)

Encore:

• Love will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division cover)

Pretty dang good final five songs.

So starting Friday, totally crazy 8 days:

• Friday: Oakland A’s ALDS game 3. Jose Gonzalez at EBF, Stanford (to be blogged)
• Saturday: Earl Scruggs, Gillian Welch and Jerry Douglas at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2006 (Day 2), SF
• Sunday: day of rest. (And watching the Steelers)
• Monday: nothing
• Tuesday: ALCS game 1 @ Oakland. Go team!
• Wednesday: Sufjan Stevens @ Zellerbach, Berkeley
• Thursday: dinner w/ Vanderslice, concert at 750 Pub, Stanford
• Friday: Long Winters at Cafe du Nord, SF

In 8 days, 5 concerts and 2 baseball games. Goodness.

So I’ll have plenty to blog about but probably won’t be blogging a lot, probably.

My playlist for tonight.

John Vanderslice also did a little call in (mp3) to promote a show he’s doing on Stanford’s campus next Thursday, October 12. We ended up chatting on the air for a bit.

Last night Rogue Wave hosted a benefit concert for Pat Spurgeon, their drummer, who was born with one kidney and now needs a transplat for his now-failing second kidney (the first failed in the early 90s). They are also taking donations at their website so you can donate if you have the means and feel compelled.

When I heard about this two weeks ago from Laura, I was floored by the line up: Rogue Wave, Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie,) Matthew Caws (Nada Surf,) Ryan Miller (Guster,) and John Vanderslice; it was to be mc-ed by the sometime Magnetic Field (on accordion) Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket. I like or love all of those bands and seeing them on the same bill would be incredible, I thought. It also helped that it was at the fairly intimate and cool Independent in SF.

(Incidentally, benefit concerts are awesome.)

We got to the venue right as it was starting, probably 5 minutes before Daniel came on to introduce the first band, the Wine Chuggers. They played a short set; they played some rock. It was pretty good. Next up were the Moore Brothers. Despite playing down this aspect on stage, they do sound sort of like Simon and Garfunkle. They traded off guitar playing duty and both sang, which brings me to a Rule for Rock Bands (#12): guys need an instrument on stage unless (a) they are backup singers in a soul band, (b) are Bono or Mick Jagger (and honestly, both of them look a bit silly too). It just looks stupid; you don’t know what to do with your hands and then just start doing bad dance moves. I’m sorry, that’s the truth.

I expected the bill to go in exact reverse order (Wine Chuggers, Moore Brothers, Ryan Miller, Matthew Caws, John Vanderslice, Ben Gibbard, Rogue Wave) of billing[1], so I was a bit surprised when my close personal friend [2] and nicest guy in indie rock John Vanderslice[3] came on next. He did a couple nice versions of recent songs solo acoustic (”Trance Manual”, “Angela”, “Radiant with Terror” among them). Then he brought on Ben Gibbard, who looked very English Professor with his glasses, scruffy hair and brown blazer, to play the upright piano on stage right and sing harmonies on an old mk ultra song (I think it was Letting Go). All the hipster were going crazy with the camera phones! Later he brought up 2/3 of Nada Surf (the bass player and the drummer) to act as his backing band on “Pale Horse” and finally the full Nada Surf with Matthew Caws doing harmony vocals on a song. All in all, it was an awesome set from JV.

Up next was Nada Surf whose latest, the Weight is a Gift, I’ve enjoyed a lot. Their basic set up was Matthew Caws on guitars and vocals, the drummer on a cajon box drum and the bass player on the bass (well, mostly on the smoking and drinking, but sometimes on the bass as well). They went through a good set of tunes mostly from their last album, like “Do it Again”, “Your Legs Grow” (see mixtape 1), and a really fun version of the gratuituously expletive-laden “Blankest Year.” (These guys were apparently a one hit wonder in the ’90s, but they didn’t play that song).

And then!! what all the ladies were screaming for: Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service, of course)! He started out on a borrowed guitar[4] playing a version of a Postal Service song, I think “Brand New Colony.” It’s cool to see him do PS songs live on guitar because they sound so different from the recordings. After that he moved over to the piano for a cool, slow, dark version of “Soul Meets Body” and a couple other Death Cab songs, including “Passenger Seat” Again the crazy cross-band collaborations happened with Caws helping out on a Harry Nilsson-penned Monkees number, “Cuddly Toy”. Daniel Handler came out next (insulting the “Cuddly Toy” choice of song, incidentally), to play accordion on a couple song with Ben switching back over to guitar. He finished up his set with “Title and Registration” and a folksy version of “Such Great Heights” (strummed, interestingly enough, because last time I saw him solo he basically did the Iron & Wine version, fingerpicked, even acknowledging that it was a “cover of his own song”.) I was probably about 12 feet from him during the guitar portions of his set (not to be all fan-boy about it) and I can’t imagine with the current stage of things ever having a chance to see him in such an intimate venue or at such a close distance again. I understand backlash toward Death Cab—they’re giant, by indie standards, they’ve jumped ship to a major—but Gibbard put on a thoroughly entertaining set: he was funny, good musicianship, good singing.

At this point, there were actually a bunch of people who left. I understand that Death Cab is a lot more popular than the other bands on the bill, but did you see the rest of the bill? Worth staying for, people.

I’ve talked a lot about music and before I get to Rogue Wave, I’ll talk about other stuff for a bit. There was a lot of talk of Pat’s kidney, Pat, people’s love for Pat. Gibbard referenced Woody Guthrie’s sticker that said “this machine kills facists” and suggested that all the guitars that night should have stickers that said “this machine buys kidneys.” Heck even Pat’s mom was there to talk about Pat’s story and to introduce Rogue Wave. The Small Stakes designed an awesome poster and shirt for the event with all the proceeds going to Pat. You can see the poster and buy it. I got a couple of the posters.

Finally, last up were Rogue Wave. They started out with Zach on the piano for “10:1.” After Zach switched to the guitar they then went into an interesting and not-exactly-like-the-recording cover of “I’m only Sleeping” which was good (an exception to the rule that Beatles covers are overdone and don’t add anything to the song). Around this point they talked about the bill and thanked all the other artists. They joked that they’d opened for all these bands and now they wrangled them into opening for Rogue Wave. They did a nice set of songs off of Descended like Vultures (”Love’s Lost Guarentee”, “Salesmen on the Day of a Parade”, among others) before bringing on Ryan Miller of Guster (whose “Demons” was my obsession song of October 2000) to play guitar on a freak-out jam version of “California.” They joked that he plays to a million people a night and now he was being relegated to playing with them. To finish up the night they brought up everyone that played that night (plus Dominic of Our Lady of the Highway who opened for Zach’s solo gig over the Summer) for a couple covers, the first of which was (What’s so Funny ’bout) Peace Love and Understanding). It was a indie pop style love-in there.

The crowd, I image, had to have gone home happy. An amazing bill with great sets and once-only on-stage collaborations. What more can you ask for?

[1]It all made sense, the strange order of the bill, when I realized later that Nada Surf was opening for Guster that same evening in Berkeley, so they were probably finishing up their sets and rushing over for their sets at the Independent.

[2] not actually. I do like making a big deal out of whatever affiliation I have with JV. During the last song, he saw me out in the audience and pointed out at me. After the show he said that when he saw me he thought “that’s my boy!” He also told a bunch of people around him that I was famous and that I’m rad. I can’t argue there, JV; I can’t argue there.

[3]Dug was complaining on Friday that I write too much on my blog about John Vanderslice (and someone else, I forget who). Well he’s awesome in so many ways it’s rediculous. So sorry, Dug.

[4] One of the cooler things about the show was that it was obvious that all these guys knew each other and were friends. They used each other’s instruments and joked around and gave each other hugs a lot. During the last couple songs with everyone on stage, I’m pretty sure they were having as much or more fun than the audience.

As Drag City notes, Will Oldham’s Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy will be playing on Conan tonigth, September 19.

Inside of Bumbershoot 2006 was Flatstock 10 a silk-screened (indie rock) poster show from dozens of artists from around the country. It was really cool and possibly one of my favorite parts of the day at Bumbershoot.

There are a lot of artists with a variety of styles. There were two sort of camps, the ones that went for the old psychadellic poster style that’s common of posters in the late 60s—bubble lettering and bright colors—and then there’s the camp that’s more into simple graphical silk screens and more standard fonts. I personally like the second style a lot, but I saw good posters in each camp at the show. I could have easily spent hundreds of dollars there.

My local (Oakland-based) favorite, the Small Stakes was there. I love Jason’s posters. They’re simple but great. He may over-use the heart in his designs but that’s pretty appropriate for that sort of indie pop that he’s designing posters for. I picked up two from him: a Jose Gonzalez one from the Swedish American Hall show that I went to (normally I would have bought it from Jason at that show, but Jason was out of town for it) and an awesome Mates of State poster that he did:

That brings my total small stakes posters up to six (one, two, three, four, five, six). What can I say? I like his stuff and I like buying posters from shows I go to (which is the case for all but one).

I also ran into a few Pittsburgh artists, which I thought was pretty cool. Budai (Michael Budai) lives in Pittsburgh and does his work for Pittsburgh shows. It was cool seeing posters for places like the Roboto Project and Garfield Art Works. I ended up buying a cool hand silkscreened/ hand drawn little character (Monocle Man, who is saying “I really think monocles should make a comeback”) from him. Really cute. He was a really nice guy and we talked about Pittsburgh for a bit.

There was also Strawberry Luna (samples) who shares a space for Budai, but she produces show posters for Philly venues. Her stuff is good too. I ended up buying an art print (”E is for Elephant”) from her.

And finally, there was the Pittsburgh–>SF transplant Lil Tuffy (myspace, view samples). His work has a pretty big range from the surreal to the psychedelic to the simple graphics. He and I talked about SF Steelers bars and he gave me a Tuffy pin which has the US X hypercycloid (aka the Steelers logo) along with ‘Tuffy’ on it.

There were other cool poster designers there, of course. Some of the big ones and some little guys who were obviously just getting their start (one guy named Zack, in particular, was particularly fresh-faced and nervous looking). I had a fun time looking around at all the stuff that was displayed. I took particular note of the above ones but I’m sure if I’d kept more careful track, I could have written about a bunch more of the designers.

Last weekend whilst in Seattle, I went to Bumbershoot (Day 2) with Paul.

Here’s who we saw:

Spoon Spoon’s one of those stalward indie bands that’s been around for a chunk of years and they have their fan base, but they’ll probably not break into the mainstream. I was curious to see them live. They put on a pleasant set but it wasn’t incredible. Good enough.

Jeremy Enigk Jeremy Enigk (ee-nik) was the front man of the proto-emo-pop band Sunny Day Real Estate. Here he was doing a set under his own name and I was a bit curious to see what his current music sounds like. He put on a nice set of songs mostly on acoustic guitar, some accompanied by a band. His vocals have this sort of strange high-pitched strain to them. It was a nice set.

[Paul lent me his digicam for the day.]

Mates of State The Mates of State are so great live. This is at least my 8th time I’ve seen them and they always put on a very entertaining show live. Paul (unlike all the rest of the shows) did not seem to be completely bored. I can honestly recommend their live show without quals. Even if they’re not amazing, they’re still really good. They did a fun medly of “Like U Crazy” with Gnarles Barkley’s “Crazy.” They did a mix of new songs and older songs—in fact I was pretty pleased with the number of their “classics” they did.

Jose Gonzalez The hands-down worst scheduling of the day was having the Mates of State overlap with Jose Gonzalez. I thought I’d still be able to make some of his set after the Mates of State, but a 32 minute set (likely because he needed to go play with Zero 7 as well) meant I only saw one song by him. I’ll have to go see him at Enchanted Broccoli Forest.

Kanye West (with Lupe ) Kanye was day 2’s headliner. I’ve liked his music recently and his two albums are the two hip hop albums I own. He had a full string section and a harpist on stage with him. He put on a pretty good set—well he did the songs I like and then there was the normal hip hop fair of misogyny and marijuana—but the sound was pretty bad (vocals too low, percussion too high). The chunks of the set I liked, I liked and the parts I didn’t, I was sort of bored.

[space needle]

I was in Sealth (or Seattle, as you may call it) for the labor day weekend. It was a good time. I saw some of them old tEppers (including ppham) and saw some of the sites and some music.

Paul made us take this picture:

Recap:

• Tour of UW.
• Good dinner in Ballard
• Boeing wide-body plant tour: this turned out to be really cool. The building is the largest, by volume, in the world. It’s pretty incredible. I bought a model 747-400, the sexiest plane ever made.
• Drinks (and more drinks) with Squid
• Easy Street Records. The haul included: the new Jason Molina, the new Eric Bachmann, the new Mono, Elliott Smith’s Roman Candles, the KEXP live comp, Unwed Sailor’s Circles, an oldies comp, a soul comp and a 2-CD doo wop comp. I liked Easy Street a lot: cheap, great selection and a helpful staff.
• Bumbershoot (Day 2) [separate post later]
• Seattle Underground Tour: entertaining and informative. If you have any tolerance for puns, I think you’d enjoy it. I’d recommend it.

(I also ate a mufaletta.)

That was the weekend in short. The biggest lose of the weekend was that the Boeing Surplus Store wasn’t open on Monday. I was really hoping to go; it looks like a mech e geek’s dream.

Tonight was the 826Valencia benefit show at the Palace of Fine Arts with Patton Oswalt, Zach Rogue, Mark Kozelek, Dave Eggers, Sarah Vowell, Jonathan Richman, and Aimee Mann.

The Palace of Fine Arts is a pretty big building. The auditorium area has very comfortable chairs in stadium-style seating and the walls are drapped in red velvet. (I’m getting that old that I’m really glad that this was a seated show.) The stage area is large and the visibility from pretty much anywhere seemed like it’d be good. The sound was excellent. That’s thanks to the sound guy, John Karr (seriously, that was his name). Thanks John!

Let’s go through the night:

Patton Oswalt: actor comedian guy. I recognized him. IMDB tells me it’s probably King of Queens (from the twoish times I’ve watched it). Turns out he’s very funny, in the offensive vein of humor, mostly.

Zach Rogue (Rogue Wave): I’ve seen him play solo before. He played a short set including “Publish my Love” and “Postage Stamp World”. He sounded great on the guitar and his vocals sounded really good too. He said a couple funny things and a few things about 826 and that was that.

Mark Kozelek: I feel pretty lucky I live in the same city (or metropolitan area) as Mark Kozelek (Sun Kil Moon, Red House Painters) and that I get to see him with some frequency. This guy is amazing. His voice is just so pure and incredible and his fingerpicked guitar playing is intensely good, though my concert companions wished “he’d just strum a chord sometime!” His set included “Trucker’s Atlas”, “Rock N Roll Singer”, and “Glenn Tipton”. I could listen to him singing about killing babies and he’s probably sound good. [I do no condone killing babies.]

Dave Eggers: He just showed a video about 826. It was fine. Then he showed some slides of the work of this kid named Alex who utilizes 826NYC. These were hilarious. He’s about 7 and does this collages of things like a peanut and a gingerbread man and then scrawls “A gingerbread man and a peanut got married. Can you imagine what their kids look like?” or a picture of a robot playing a trumpet and the scrawled writing says “Robots are the new jazz man. They are not good. If you want to go to a jazz restaurant, do not go, no matter how good the food is! DO NOT GO!” I’d buy a book of these if they made one.

Intermission: Hug Dave Eggers for $20, get a “buddy punch” from Sarah Vowell for $5 (or 5 for $20! bargain!). I did not partipate in these deals.

Sarah Vowell: She did a reading of a story she wrote about her favorite explorer, a German cartographer named Charles Preuss who she read about when she was on a book tour, reading a book about explorers. Patton Oswalt provided the voice of Preuss in thick German accent. He was quite funny about it. The story was entertaining and funny. I’m saying “story” but it was more like a report or something. There were many mentions of the Oregon Trail, but no mentions or jokes associated with The Oregon Trail. I was quite disappointed. You gotta pick the low hanging fruit!

Jonathan Richman: The last time I saw him was also a benefit show (and also with Mark Kozelek). He’s still as absolutely entertaining as always. He’ll move his hips to the music while playing Spanish-influenced guitar and singing in Italian while providing running translation in English or making off-handed comments. And then he’ll do an odd stage bow (or think of it as a figure skater at the end of a routine). I had a big smile on my face the whole time. I’m not overly familiar with his music but he closed with “Not So Much to be Loved as to Love.”

Aimee Mann: She was the only one to play with someone else, Paul Brion (any relation to Jon ?) He sang back ups, played bass (which was up way too much in the mix, only sound problem of the night), and guitar. I’m not incredibly familiar with her stuff, mostly just her Magnolia work and a handfull of other songs. She played a nice set, including “Save Me” and “You Could Make a Killing.”She’s got a great voice and the way her melodies work over her guitar is something else.

I’d heard reports of collaborations (Byrne/ Stevens and Gibbard/ Roderick) at other 826 benefits and so I had my hopes up for this one, but nothing materialized. Mann/ Richman? Mann/ Kozelek? Kozelek/ Richman? I wonder what any of those would have sounded like.

All in all a very good concert. What’s with benefit shows being great shows? I want my Small Stakes poster for this one, though. (I don’t think any were actually made.)

So not only does Ken Jennings have a blog (which is hilarious), but he likes the Mountain Goats and he writes about it. How cool is that!

As has been mentioned, I saw Jens Lekman in a pizza parlor in Brooklyn before he played at Sound Fix. And there’s photographic evidence.

I also scanned some more pictures tonight of NYC (color, b&w) and Pgh.

“You rock!” may be an appropriate thing to yell between songs at an indie rock concert. Here are some things that may not be appropriate to yell:

1. “Not bad!”
2. “I am not bored!”
3. “I am undecided whether to buy your CD or not!”
4. “Your instruments seem to be in tune!”
5. “If you were on the radio I would not change the station!”
6. “You guys are OK!”

1 drink (sip) if:

• any member of the band says “thank you” or “thanks”
• the band asks you to applaude for the opening act
• the band illicits applause by mentioning the headlining act
• the band mentions the name of the town the concert is in
• each time you see someone wearing a winter hat inside
• each time you see someone wearing a hoodie or jacket inside
• the band says “this is a song about…” or something to that approximation

2 drinks if:

• a tall guy stands right in front of you
• the band is selling something hand-made at the merch table
• the band mentions drinking or buying alcohol
• the band responds to someone yelling from the audience
• the band ironically covers a mainstream song

3 drinks if:

• band asks for a place to sleep while on stage
• an audience member buys the band something to drink
• the band gets in an argument with a heckler
• the band seriously covers a mainstream song
• the band covers a song by another act on the bill

Am I missing any here?

Here are some tickets I’ve purchased or obtained for the upcoming period of time:

• 8/13 Black Heart Procession Great American [kzsu free tix]
• 8/19-8/20 James Brown, the Donnas at the Fogg fest [kzsu free tix]
• 8/28 Book Eaters 826 benefit with Amiee Mann, Jonathan Richman, Mark Kozelek, Zach Rogue, Dave Eggers, Sarah Vowell.
• 10/11 Sufjan Stevens @ Zellerbach

Concerts I might get tickets for or go to:

• 8/12 Elvis Perkins at Great American
• 8/22 the Mountain Goats at Amoeba
• 9/5 Eric Bachman at Cafe du Nord
• 9/6 Centro-matic at the Bottom of the Hill
• 9/13 Laura Veirs and Karl Blau at Cafe du Nord
• 9/22 Andrew Bird at Great American
• 10/16 Badly Drawn Boy at Great American
• 10/17 The Hold Steady at Great American
• 10/20 Beirut at Great American
• 10/30 or 10/31 Bonnie Prince Billy at Great American

I was entertained in NYC.

Rye Playland. I went to one of two parks listed in the National Registry of Historic Places on Tuesday. It’s a great old park. It has a few newer rides including one of those vomit-inducing spin-you-around-while-already-spinning you-around-in-a-different-axis rides (I believe my quote to my ride companion liz was “it’ll be a bonding moment when we puke on each other”—yeah, I’m gross), but most of the rides are classic older ones, including the Whip, the Swing, the (Mind) Scrambler, the Derby Racer (wow! 25mph on a carousel-like ride) and a great old carousel. It’s pretty similar to Kennywood in a lot of ways, but smaller. It’s an extremely photogenic park, with a main promenade and a common color scheme throughout. I hope some of my photos from the park turn out. I recommend this park if you’re into classic amusement parks.

Conan O’Brien taping. Despite waiting in lines for approximately the same amount of time that the show filmed, I enjoyed this quite a bit. I laughed a bunch (a chunk of which was during the audience warm up by Brian McCann). The theater is a lot smaller than I thought it’d be. As has been observed by others, seeing a taping does ruin a little bit of magic, though for years I’ve realized that the interview portion of the show had prompted questions and Conan doesn’t do a great job of hiding it. It was still funny and fun to watch.

Jens Lekman at Soundfix Records. We headed off to hipster-central, Williamsburg, Brooklyn to see Jens Lekman play an in-store at Soundfix Records. We had some pizza at a place down the street from Soundfix which was mostly not noteworthy except for Jens Lekman sitting in the catty-corner booth. I wished him a good show as he was leaving. The show space was in a separate room from the actual store part of Soundfix and when we got there it was packed and really hot. This was during the heat wave so the outside temperature was probably still in the 90s and the temperature in the room was probably between 115 and 125. It was like a (swedish) sauna. I wasn’t surprised that it was packed—it was a hipster band in a hipster locale; only later I realized that the last NYC Sleater Kinney show (and the fourth-to-last S-K show ever) was the same night; that’s why brooklynvegan, hipster extraordinaire didn’t fill us in with pictures from Jens, I guess. After we realized that one could stand outside, in the relatively cool air, and still hear the show fine, it was a pretty enjoyable, but rather short, show. I like Jens a lot. Afterwards I bought a couple CDs at Sounfix (the Wrens, Kelley Stoltz, Masters of the Autoharp) and we headed back.

Monday:

1. Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island
2. walking the Brooklyn Bridge (west to east)
3. Grimaldi’s Pizza and Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory with Paul Koh of earbud clip fame
4. wandering around [and purchasing foam headwear in] Chinatown and Soho
5. aforementioned PowerDinner(TM) at Hallo Berlin with mim, liz, jdawg, perlick and qwdgbo

Tuesday:

1. Empire State Building
2. pastrami and dr. brown’s at katz’s deli
3. rye playland! with liz and later jonwerberg and helene [who, I'd like to make clear, despite earlier implications is no way a freak and whose school is only sort of a freak fest]

Wednesday [are you ready for it?]:

1. B&H
2. the Met, the Guggenheim, the Cooper-Hewitt, and the Moma
3. watched a taping of Conan with jweberg and liz
4. pizza in Williamsburg [/Greenpoint?], Brooklyn with Jens Lekman in the catty-corner booth with the above plus mim
5. Jens show at Soundfix Records with the above
6. drinks at d.b.a. with the above
7. a savanna dry cider with jdawg back in the bronx

saw zach rogue at rickshaw stop STOP second trip to rs STOP jens lekmen previously STOP

zr acoustic and without band rogue wave STOP new and old songs STOP enjoyed both STOP intersong space filled with awkward humor STOP zr has singular gift at melody STOP

old telegraph style played out STOP any of you ever received a telegram?

Likely to not be of interest to many, but…

Touch and Go Records is having their 25th Anniversary Celebration. All the online peoples (for instance) are having themselves a fit because Steve Albini’s band Big Black will be playing and they just skim by other bands, including the underrecognized Seam (which doesn’t even have a wikipedia page). Seam hasn’t played in a while and might as well be broken up.

The T&G celebration includes a bunch of great acts, in addition to that, including Ted Leo, Black Heart Procession, Pinback, Man…or Astroman?, Shellac, Calexico, etc.

It’s pretty cheap too ($35 for the weekend). Maybe I should fly to Chicago.

A couple weeks ago, Dylan IMs me:

Dylan: what’s the girl that plays harp and sings like a cat in a blender?
Me: Joanna Newsom?
Dylan: yeah, that’s the one.

Today, there was a pretty well-wrtten post by Long Winters front man John Roderick covers Bonnaroo for CMJ. In part he talks about Cat Power:

I thought, “Great. I’ve been suckered in. Chan Marshall is backstage having kittens and we’re going to sit out here with building anticipation only to have her never leave her trailer.”

On Monday I saw the Mountain Goats at the Bottom of the Hill.

We got there a few minutes after the posted start time and there was a line around the block. It was a sold out show, but they held 50 tickets at the door for day-of and they hadn’t yet sold those out so there were a lot of people in line that wouldn’t get in.

When we finally got inside, Barbara Morgenstern was just starting her set. Her first song was promising: it was a sort of electro-pop song with nintendo-like stylings, sort of like b. fleischmann’s work and his work with Duo 505, but with female German vocals. After that first song, she continued with this electro-pop, but the rest of her songs didn’t really have the catchy melodic arts of her first song.

Before JD (John Darnielle) came on, I went to check out the merch table and who was there but John Vanderslice. I’m like “Hey JV!” He then goes to say that he loves KZSU and listens online all the time. And that the interview I did with him was the first and best he did after Pixel Revolt and that all the interviews he did later were framed in light of that one. Wow, didn’t I feel pretty good about myself.

JD and Peter Hughes (the MGs) came on to thunderous applause. I hadn’t seen them in probably three or four years. At the time I was familiar with approximately three or five of their songs, none of which were played at that show. At this point, I know three MG’s albums and I am familiar with about another three. Mountain Goats fans tend to be intense, slightly obsessive completists. I felt like I was in the minority in not knowing just about every song that they played. People were singing along to pretty obscure songs.

JD had the audience in the palm of his hand the entire show. It probably helped that everyone was an obsessive fan, but his stage banter and sometimes meandering talking drew people in.

Among the songs he played were “Your Belgian Things” and “Palmcorder Yajna” from We Shall All Be Healed (the latter of which had lead vox by JV who JD called onto the stage), “Broom Broom”, “Love Love Love” and “Dance Music” from the Sunset Tree, some new songs and some covers, most notably “The Sign,” originally by Ace of Base, which had the entire audience singing along.

They kept up a high energy show. I liked it a lot.

Update: They did two nights in SF. This wasn’t from the night I went to, but the second night the whole audience sang “No Children” (mp3) because JD needed to rest his voice. It’s pretty amazing.

I had some backup in the blogworks so I’m doing a somewhat abbreviated and consolidated post here.

A few weeks ago now, I saw Mogwai play at the Fillmore. Mogwai is a Scottish guitar-based post rock band. Honestly this is a bit long ago at this point so I’ll do the executive summary. First trip to the Fillmore (I think): it’s good, better than the Warfield by a lot. Mogwai’s set: super loud and apocalyptic stuff->softer more minimalistic poppier stuff->loud stuff->20 noise fade-out from their encore. They played some of my favorites especially those from Rock Action like “2 Wrongs Make 1 Right” and “Take Me Somewhere Nice”. I mostly liked the softer more mininmalistic stuff.

Mogwai – 2 Wrongs Make 1 Right (ATP Version)

A week ago Friday I saw Danielson at the Bottom of the Hill. Danielson is sort of a quirky indie pop folk band with epileptic fits of craziness in the middle of their songs. The first openers were a band called Pants Pants Pants. They had a fun electro indie rock thing going. At one point their drummer came out from behind the drums and just started dancing crazy. The second opener, Young People, were just so bad that I’m not going to talk about them further. Danielson came on close to midnight in light-blue-with-navy-accents Salvation Army-style uniforms, each with a patch of the player’s name on the breast.

This band is just crazy. Quirky is probably a better term. They have these softer or sweeter parts to their songs interspersed with these intense, high-energy parts with often high-pitched vocals. It’s almost disorienting to see them play. Daniel Smith, the leader of the group, has this way of singing that’s half in falsetto, but the parts of his mouth and throat that he uses to sing aren’t normally used by people unless they’re imitating a cat meowing. His two sister and the keyboard player, Evan, all sing with such energy that it seems like they’re yelling into the mics. There were a couple probably unintentional funny bits where Daniel asked the crowd to clap along to the songs and then proceeded to show us incredibly complicated and rather long clapping rhythms that no one could follow. It’s the sort of music that you probably either hate or it puts a smile on your face. One guy whose face had a giant grin on it was John Ringhofer of Half Handed Cloud who was standing a few feet over to my left.

Already 1am by the time they were going back on stage for their encore, I took off. The next morning I was waking early for my Tahoe Century bike ride. It was fun while it lasted though.

Danielson – Did I Step On Your Trumpet

This past Friday I saw The One AM Radio at Fort Oregon, a house in Berkeley. The One AM Radio is an electro indie singer songwriter. I arrive just in time to see the last song by a kid called Hank May. When I say a kid, I don’t just me a “guy,” I literally mean, a kid. He was probably 15 or 16 years old. Turns out he’s the touring guitarist for the One AM Radio (and apparently a cousin of a friend of Hrishi’s) right now but he had a solo set to start out the night. The one song I caught, I was actually pretty impressed with. He wrote a song with skill beyond his years. I’m going to check him out further and probably keep an eye on him.

The next act, Earthen Sea, was a improvised guitar/ loops group/ guy. It was good and pretty relaxing and he played a multi-parted piece with smooth transitions and some nice parts. Michael Zapruder’s Rain of Frogs was next. They were an alt-country sort of group with cello and violin (and wurlitzer 140B!) in addition to the usual suspects. They had their more rock-based numbers, which I think they crowd liked the best, and the more folksy numbers, which I liked better.

Somewhere in there, I went back to the merch table and picked up a shirt and his split EP with Ted Leo. I mentioned that I’d gotten something in the mail designed by him, which was a wedding invitation for my best friend’s wedding. We chatted about the wedding for a bit and Hrishi said he wished he could go.

I said the “crowd” up there, but this was a concert in a basement about the size of my livingroom (which is a decent sized living room, but it’s no rock club). By the time the One AM Radio was on, I’d say about 40 people were there. I was sitting on the floor (like most people) about 3 feet from Hrishi’s (tOAMR’s main guy) mic.

The One AM Radio went on next. They warmed with “Drowsy Haze” and Hrishi asked the audience to sing a repeated back up part on it. First rule of winning over Adrian when he’s in your audience: ask him to sing or clap (rhythmically, not just on the back beats) along to your song. Just a FYI on that one.

They—Hrishi on guitar and vocals and manning the laptop, Hank May on guitar, a guy on stand up bass and two guys on french horn—continued with a set filled with mostly old songs but a handful of songs that I hadn’t heard before. I liked the old stuff, of course, and I liked most of the new stuff. I was a little tired and the One AM Radio isn’t dance music or high energy at all and I was sitting so I caught a couple winks here and there, unfortunately. Their last song was “All I Can Recall is the Haunting” where Hrishi once again asked us to sing along to a part, a part that went “The sea swallowed up the sky.” It’s a gorgeous song and it was the same song they closed with last time I saw them— that time with jdawg werberg in a basement at BU. Just like that time, I left the concert singing that phrase over and over again. This time the trip home was a bit longer so I didn’t sing it all the way home.

An Interview w/ The One AM Radio

The One AM Radio – Flicker

Here’s a contest that can send you to Austin City Limits for three days to blog about the festival. I’m probably going to enter a spruced up version of this post. Wally, you should do this.

And this is a songwriting blog with some tips and whatnot on various aspects of songwriting. I’m not sure I’m picking up all that they’re putting down, but it gets the mind going.

Both of these, I think, I got from largeheartedboy.

• I should go to more risk concerts, fewer good concerts by bands I’ve seen before. For instance, I should see Danielson in a couple weeks and I probably shouldn’t be sad that I missed the Mates of State a couple weeks ago (I’ve seen them 8ish times)
• I’m trying to decide if songwriting taking into account all or almost all of my musical influences is possible. I like a lot of music. I like indie rock, post-rock, old-timey/ early american field recordings, celtic, african, other world music, motown (and other early R&B/ soul), oldies, some hip hop and the list goes on. In the past, I’ve managed to combine some influences together in my songwriting: the Greetings from Johannesburg stuff was largely an experiment in fitting world music ideas into indie pop (”Thaw” is based on the Balinese Ketjak rhythm, “Bitter” has Senagalese sabar drumming, “Nashville” cops a brazilian drumming line, “Drunken” has a 15 beat long beat-cycle). I also combined—in my opinion successfully—motown, indie rock, african drums and a banjo (which I couldn’t really call “old-timey” or country either) on one of the covers contest songs. But really, there’s a ton more stuff out there and floating around in my head. I always thought music had to be segmented a bit. Like Where’s Luke? was the folksy mostly-acoustic group, the Grievance Committee was going to be my post rock band. But many great bands aren’t like that: many of them combine a lot of disparate influences to make their music. I don’t know if I have the ability to do that.
• I’m thinking of trying to write some hip hop instrumental/ base tracks. I’ve been listening to a little bit of hip hop recently. I don’t like a lot of hip hop because a lot of it is a) musically crap and b) lyrically stupid (sometimes well-written but still stupid). Personally, I think a lot of the hip hop paradigms are stupid: songs about smoking pot and being misogynistic toward women aren’t for me. There is some hip hop out there that has good music and that tackles complex issues in the lyrics. I’m getting off on a tangent here. My point here is that a lot of hip hop has crap music and so I’m thinking of writing some hip hop music. I don’t think I could MC well, so I’ll either leave that for someone else or leave them as instrumentals. Any aspiring MCs out there?
• At a certain point I stopped really getting jazz. Most music has tension and release. Often in jazz the tension comes from dissonance in the harmonic structure and progressions. I don’t always find the way this is done in jazz satisfying. (On the other hand, I’ve really come to appreciate some “new” jazz, like Magali Souriau’s “Dersu Usala” which is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard.)
• I mostly don’t like this dance indie rock that is all the buzz (and has been for a year or so). It doesn’t get me going.
• I’m thinking of spinning of my music stuff into a separate blog and turn that into more of an mp3 blog. It’s probably be over at the new me. It probably me mostly indie rock mp3s, but I’d love it be a place where I could equally post Sacred Harp field recordings and rare Motown tracks. I don’t know what would be left here, though, as half of what I post here is music stuff and I’ve already moved most of my photo stuff over the godhatesmath.

So I saw John Vanderslice at the Independent again on Friday with Dylan and Gumbeaux. Opening were Laura Veirs and Division Day. The latter was supposed to be Nedelle but she had to cancel, unfortunately.

I only saw about a song and a half of Division Day after I got there, so I’ll just skip to the next bit.

We got there well into the first band and JV (as those of us that are his pals call him) draws a lot of people in his home town of SF, so I was surprised that we could get right up against the stage before Laura Veirs. I haven’t been right up against the stage in forever. I felt like a school boy.

Laura Veirs put out a solid album in 2005 called Year of Meteors. While we had in in rotation at KZSU I played it every week. I sort of didn’t think about it much since then, listening to it occasionally. Laura came on and it was just her; she sometimes tours with a band but I think this part of this tour was just her. It was just her and a guitar and a bunch of pedals. Oh and she had a really sweet drum machine. I should find out what it was. Anyway, she played through her set using a sampling pedal to great effect (much like my friend Jeff Miller does), sampling her guitar, drum machine and vocals and looping. Overall a very solid set. I’ll have to listen to more Veirs.

Incidentally, Laura Veirs is not only talented but she’s very attractive. Basically, I want to marry her.

JV came on after a bit of a break. Once again, he seemed overjoyed to be home after a long tour. He joked around with his band mates and the crowd. He’s touring with the same band two tours in a row for the first time in forever and they sounded pretty tight. They put together a marathon set (25-ish songs) that lasted almost two hours, but it was a good time.

Overall a good time. It would have been cool if Nedelle had been on the bill as well, but you can’t win them all. The only downside of going to this concert was missing Jason Molina across town at the Great American Music Hall and Elf Power over at the Cafe du Nord. Seriously, couldn’t they have scheduled all those bands a couple days apart?

Nedelle played on my radio show last night. It went pretty well. One minor problem: it seems I had some mic distortion here and there—mainly on ’s’ sounds. Any thoughts on that one? Just a mic placement? Popper stopper? I was pretty pleased with out it sounded otherwise—the guitars and the mix both sounded good to me.

The mp3’s online:
Nedelle – Live at KZSU

Her setlist:

• The Last Thing I Do
• I Hate a Mountain
• Spell the Night Right
• Heatstroke
• Blueberry Mineshaft

The rest of my playlist.

The BBC3 put on the Manchester Passion, a passion play/ musical in which all the music was by Manchester musicians, including New Order and Oasis. Some current local (to Manchester) rockers and actors play key parts in the play. It appears it was performed and broadcast live while roaming through the Manchester streets, ending up at the city hall.

It looks pretty cool. You tube has plenty of video of it, including Jesus singing “Love will tear us apart again” at the Last Supper.

Pretty cool idea, I must say.

On Tuesday I saw Belle & Sebastian at the Concourse at the SF Design Center.

My main reaction to the evening was who in the world thought that this would be a good or appropriate venue for a concert? It’s huge, making for a very impersonal show. The acoustics are horrible (lots of flat metal walls). Many of the places you can stand have obscructed or no view of the stage. I’m not planning to go back to this venue.

Shame on Another Planet Entertainement for booking shows there.

I was a bit distracted during the concert, having paid a lot plus exorbitant “convenience” fees to see a show in a crappy venue. B&S were fine, playing some good old songs and some new ones. I think they made the most of a bad venue.

On Saturday I saw Jose Gonzalez at, appropriately, the Swedish American Hall.

This was my first trip to the Swedish American Hall, though it’s right above another venue that I’ve been to many times, the Cafe du Nord. It’s an interesting venue, to be sure. Imagine a Swedish Elks Lodge hall and that’s about what you’d have. Lots of tudor-like exposed beams and whatnot. It was a seated show, which was nice and appropriate to the music. The acoustics were pretty good, but it’s very reflective, especially of audience noise. Luckily the audience was pretty quiet and respectful, but all the applause sounded thunderous, even when it didn’t seem like people were clapping particularly loud or hard.

The opening band was the the Finches Have you seen the Jerk? Remember the scene on the beach where Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters sing “You Belong to Me”? The Finches are sort of like this. Simple and, in a way, old sounding songs with sweet lead female vocals and male harmonies. It’s just guitars and vocals. I picked up their EP for $5.

the Finches – Daniel’s Song

I talked to the guys from Cafe du Nord, who book the Swedish American Hall shows, a couple months back about this show and they were a bit worried that Jose wouldn’t fill this room. Well it ended up selling out a week or so before the show and by the end of the Finches set, it was standing room only.

I like Jose a lot. He’s sort of like the Swedish-Argentinean version of Iron & Wine. He doesn’t have a whole lot in his catalog yet, an album and a CD singles/ EPs, so maybe 15-20 songs, and they’re all about 3 minutes long. He ran through his main set not talking a lot and playing his songs without much of a break. He came back for an encore and did another 3 songs. All of this lasted about 50 minutes. I was pretty tired, so this worked out pretty well.

It was a good show, but not in the sense of Jose bringing a lot more to the live show than he brings to his recordings. He played his songs well and said a few short, funny things between songs, but that was pretty much that.

Jose Gonzalez – Crosses

I saw Dave Chapelle’’s Block Party last night with the roomies, Raag and Jesse. Good times!

Quick summary: Dave Chapelle gets signed to a $50 million contract, decides to blow some of it. He throws a block party in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn and invites a bunch of people from his current hometown in south west Ohio. (NOTE ANDY: he grew up in Silver Spring for part of his time!) He also found some decent hip-hop acts to come and preform (the Roots, Kanye, Mos Def, the Fugees, etc)

And also! he invited a marching band, once again proving that marching bands are cool.

It happens that Michel Gondry directs, but that doesn’t have much bearing on the situation. Dave Chapelle’s funny as it turns out. The music is pretty fantastic. I loved a lot of the performances. I’m not the most familiar with either mainstream or underground hip hop and I imagine most of you are more familiar so you might enjoy the music even more than I do.

I loved the scene of Kanye watching the marching band play his “Jesus Walks” with a huge smile on his face.

There are also little stories of people through out. The old woman from Ohio. The two kids from Ohio that are out of their mind that they get to go. The very very strange couple that lives in the most-abandoned house right where the block party is going to be held. The marching band director and members. The neighborhood pre-school director.

In the end I sort of wish I could have seen more of all of it: the humor, the music and the people stories.

It’s good and surprisingly uplifting. I vote yes.

This is the year of the marching band, I tell you. Gwen Stefani has one, I was talking about my indie rock marching band idea and now Kanye West and Jaime Foxx have one on the Grammy’s with them.

Maybe I should start this indie rock marching band now to catch the trend.

My friends in the Night Rally will be in Pittsburgh March 6 at the Garfield Artworks with the Triggers, Luke Doucet and My Sexiest Mistake. It’s $6, so you should consider going if you’re around the area. You can check out mp3s of Night Rally. Anyone know the other bands?

I’ll even pick out an mp3:
Night Rally – Humor is Non Sequitur

Here are other tour dates for those of you in other parts of the world:

03.07.06 in Bloomington, IN TBA

03.08.06 in Philadelphia, PA @ The Manhattan Room

03.09.06 in Boston, MA @ Bill’s Bar

03.25.06 in New York, NY @ Sin-e

03.27.06 in Cambridge, MA @ The Middle East (Upstairs)

These guys play good music and (as of last time I saw them at least) sport some serious and enviable facial hair. My friend Farhad, aka Yahktoe, is a fantastic drummer and producer (just check out his production on the hip hop album, Onomatopoeia on which I played trumpet on a couple tracks) and now plays some fantastic bass on the Night Rally stuff. Devin and Luke are the other two. Fantastic people. Devin and sometimes Luke would cohost my show back on WMBR a few times way into the early hours of the morning.

Sigur Ros, who put out the excellent Takk last year are on Conan O’Brien tonight. It’ll be interesting to see how they’re received.

This is probably too late for most of you.

NPR has a nice recorded interview/ performance with my favorite Swedish crooner, Jens Lekman.

Iron & Wine and Calexico were pretty good on the Late Late Show last night., I was pretty tired by the time they came on, though.

In other news, I think I write too much about music.

Set your tivos! Iron & Wine and Calexico are playing on the Late Late Show tonight.

(via who else but stereogum)

Watching the Penguins the other night, Mike pointed out that Ryan Malone (USC HS, class of ‘98) plays for them now.

It got me thinking. Ryan was on my school bus for many years. Coming back from elementary school, we (the boys, at least) would sing on the bus every afternoon. We only sang two songs: “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling” (Righteous Brothers) and “Barbara Ann” (Beach Boys).

I am finally having the opportunity to write up the John Vanderslice (the nicest guy in indie rock) at the Independent a week and a half ago.

When JV was on my radio show in August, he said he’d put me on the guestlist (plus a guest nogal!) if I emailed him about a week before the show. I did and he did. (He also sent me Pixel Revolt following the show, so I figure I owe him at least $30 for the tickets and that.)

I went down with Bokoch and Tom-I-guess-his-name was (a friend of Mike’s). We drove around for a while looking for parking (which always happens when I go to the Independent). We wanted to have some dinner right near the club and we found Brother-in-Law’s BBQ #2. They were out of brisket and some other stuff, but we got the ribs and they turned out to be good. It’s a very no-nonsense type of place, which I liked. I’d recommend it if you’re down in that area. I gave Gumbeaux a call as we headed over to the Independent and he met us there. We met a couple nice people in line because we had some extra tickets (Gums and Bokoch both bought tickets (Bokoch three) and I had my extra) so we gave our tickets to them and they bought us beers. Not a bad trade…

I’m not going to waste any writing on the openers, just to say that they were something to bare rather than enjoy. I had seen John Vanderslice before, but only as an opener for Pedro the Lion and, of course, solo on my radio show. This was my first time seeing him for his band and since I bought albums and became familiar with some of his music.

(Before JV even came on, I saw that Ian Bjornstad would be playing a converted Wurlitzer 206A with the top removed from the base. After the show I saw him outside of the club and as I was walking past I pointed to him and said “Nice 206A!” He laughed.)

JV and co. (they were calling themselves John Vanderslice and the Photographs for this tour) went only pretty late, I guess close to 11:40. I was a bit restless by then, but the music settled me down pretty quickly. One thing that I noticed immediately was how good it sounded, which other people have noted. He toured with his own sound engineer and religiously does sound checks at every venue. They were also finishing up a 20-some date tour so they were really tight. JV and the rest seemed to be just so happy to be home. Dave Broecker, the bass player, sang harmonies and was spot on in both pitch and matching JV’s voice. It basically sounded like JV was doing his own harmonies. Matt Cunitz who plays a lot of the crazy keyboards like mellotron and celeste on JV’s records was not touring with the band, but brought a few keyboards and played with them for the night.

They played a marathon set. Not Bruce Springsteen-marathon, but 24 or so songs and 1.5 hours. JV announced quite a bit through the set that he didn’t like encores so he was just going to play every song the band new and then stop playing. They played a wide range of songs, but a lot from the last two, so I was familiar with most of them. I’m having a hard time at this point recalling which were my favorites of the night. He didn’t play what are quite possibly my two favorites from Pixel Revolt, which are “Peacocks in a Video Rain” and “Dead Slate Pacific.” That might be the only negative point of the whole night.

Besides the concert being awesome the big bonus for the night was that they were recording the show that night and that it’d be up on JV’s site sometime in December. I’ll link to it once it’s posted.

Over the weekend I went to two concerts in as many days. I was going to make it three concerts (at three venues) in four days by going to see the Rachel’s at Great American Tuesday night, but I am sick so I gave it a skip.

Saturday was Jens Lekman at The Rickshaw Stop. It was my first trip to the Rickshaw Stop. Right around the corner from the Opera House, the facade is not marked as the Rickshaw Stop and if I had not known where to look, I probably wouldn’t have found it. Inside it’s a fairly small space with high ceilings and a two-level balacony/ mezzanine level in the back. There are, aptly, three or four rickshaws which you can sit in around the place in addition to a number of chairs and couches.

Nedelle from Oakland, was touring with and opened for Jens. She plays nylon-string (classical) guitar and sings. The guitar style is fingerpicked, mostly folky or poppy but sometimes with some pretty jazzy chord changes. Because of the very clear sound of her guitar and her voice, I was reminded a bit of Joanna Newsome, but without the annoying. Her songs were pleasant enough, but what really won me over was when she introduced Smokey Robinson song—”The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game”, recorded by the Marvelettes—and invited us to clap along rhythmically (not just on the downbeats) during the chorus.

Jens and his band played/ sang on a few of Nedelle’s songs. After about a fifteen minute break, they came on for their own set. Jens played mostly guitar and his band added cello, violin, bass guitar, drums and keyboard. Nedelle also added guitar and harmony to some songs. Jens is a Swede and apparently he’s been to #2 on the Swedish pop charts, so he’s a genuine pop star over there. He’s got a wonderful baritone voice (that often gets him compared to Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields) and an often-over-the-top pop songwriting style that just makes me smile. He often samples obscure records that he finds at rummage sales.

Jens Lekman – Black Cab
Jens Lekman – Maple Leaves
Jens Lekman – The Opposite of Hallelujah [I'm hosting this one so I'll probably only leave it up for a week or so. Download now if you want it.]

I’ve linked mostly upbeat over-the-top pop numbers here but he has his share of softer/ sadder songs too.

Anyway back to the show. They started out with a song that had the lyrics “We’re all going to die/ We’re all going to die/ Don’t know how/ Don’t know why” repeated. Rather than be some dirge or sad song The whole group was singing this joyfully and Jens was marching around the stage and blowing a whistle between songs. There were points when Jens would unplug his ukulele and walk out to the edge of the stage to sing without amplification, accompaniment or a microphone. He did this for “Julia” and “A Sweet Summer’s Night on Hammer Hill.” During the encore he was playing a song on just uke and walked through the audience to one of the couches in the back and stood on it while continuing his song. He stopped right before one of the verses and asked if he could stand on the table in front of the couch. When someone shouted yes, he got onto the table and finished his song. He told funny stories, for example about he and a friend wanting to buy a small Swedish village. I really liked “The Opposite of Hallelujah.” They could sing the chorus from that all night long, for all I am concerned. The encore closed with an amazingly tender version of “Cold Swedish Winter” with Jens playing what he called a kalimba (but what looked more like an mbira to me) accompanied by bass, cello and violin.

Jens is swell. This new collection of songs he put out You’re So Silent Jens has a few EPs on it plus some of the album tracks. I’d recommend it.

On Sunday I saw American Analog Set at the Bottom of the Hill. This is apparently their last tour.

Gumbeaux and I got there in time for the first opening band. They were fine, but I really wish we hadn’t; my back hurt a ton by 12:30am or whenever the concert finished. The second opening band was sort of boring. In the mean time I picked up the new AmAnSet CD and another poster by Jason at The Small Stakes (it’s currently the first on the page— the safety pin holding the two hearts together).

I’d seen AmAnSet a couple years ago at TT the Bears but had forgotten most of the details of the performance. The set was really solid of course, with a nice selection of songs. They did nice versions of “The Postman”, “Hard to Find” and (as an encore) “Punk as Fuck.” Andrew Kenney seemed really nice, responding to people shouting out from the audience and making a point of telling the first opening band that they did a good set and that they should find him after the show.

American Analog Set – Hard to Find

I was in the City yesterday hanging with Gumbeaux near the Haight so I went to Amoeba and got a few CDs:

• Iron & Wine and Calexico In the Reins
• Stubbs the Zombie [Soundtrack] bunch of indie and mainstream bands doing covers of 50s songs for a video game soundtrack
• Low and the Dirty Three In the Fishtank
• Sigur Ros Takk
• Matt Pond PA Several Arrows Later

I should probably not buy any more CDs for a while…

I’m a bit sick. Both of my roommates were sick last week and now I am. I thought I could squeeze by without getting what they had but the late night/ early morning today was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m going to go to sleep in a minute here.

The Steelers just squeeked out a win over the Ravens. They really need to stop taking these games to the final minute/ seconds like that. It’s not good for my heart.

I went to two concerts this weekend: Jens Lekman at the Rickshaw Stop on Saturday and the American Analog Set at Bottom of the Hill. Both really quite good shows. I’m going to write a post about them when I don’t really need to get some sleep and get not-sick.

You may leave your comments proclaiming your undying love for me. Also (if you’re female) you may leave your email address or other contact information. (If you’re male) you may leave contact information of available female friends.

Patbird just changed domains on his blog and even though he didn’t take any of my suggestions for a blog name, (what’s wrong with nastydonkeyporn.com I ask you??), he’s got a new domain name. Nevermind that I didn’t know of his blog before, but, I present to you urbansaddle.com. Patbird is really rockin’ out over there. I read just about all of the posts so far last night.

Here are my favorites:

• In this post a link to a set of two TV commercials, both in their original versions and their redone-Pittsburgh-backyard-camcorder versions. Very funny stuff.
• Andy went to the Mountain Goats at the Warhol Museum on Friday. Pat couldn’t go to his first Mountain Goats show there because it was sold out, but he went to the Uptown Theater in Little Washinton and writes about it here.
• Pat writes about running into and talking to a Pittsburgh mayoral candidate on the street.

I’ll be keeping an eye on your blog there, Pat. I’ll also put it on my blogroll over on the right side there at some point.

Another thing that I’ve been meaning to add to the links on the right is largeheartedboy.com. He writes a lot about music and books. His daily “shorties” are just links to about 10-15 articles or blog posts. I usually find a couple interesting articles in there everyday. Some of his longer articles are pretty good too.

These roundup posts are pretty lame.

Two weekends in a row, I went to music festivals for no cost to me. I’m a big winner!

Last weekend I went to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 5 last weekend in Golden Gate Park and this Saturday (the 8th) I went to the Download Festival at Shoreline Ampitheater in Mountain View. The first is an annual free festival. The latter I got a staff ticket to from KZSU. This is the first year of the American version of the Download fetsival; it’s been over in the UK for a few years and it’s yet to be seen whether it’ll be annual here.

I went up last Saturday for the first day of HSB. I ran a bit late and it took me a while to find parking, so I got there just before Earl Scruggs went on. He was pretty fantastic. Classic bluegrass and some hot playing on all the instruments. Gillian Welch played a great set after that. She and Dave (Rawlings?) both played mostly guitar, but Gillian (Welch, not Amrhein, which I have to specificy because Amrhein seems to be confused about these things lately) also played some banjo (girl banjo players? so hot!) and harmonica. The crowd went nuts for her excellent cover of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

(I tried to go to HSB last Sunday too for Ralph Stanley, Ricky Skaggs and JD Crowe, but drove around for an hour and some not finding parking before I headed back. I lose!)

Saturday (the 8th), I went to the Download festival. There were a bunch of bands playing, but I showed up just before the Arcade Fire and stayed for Modest Mouse. Shoreline is sort of like a lot of those outdoor ampitheater places, with regular seating and lawn seating behind that. It’s not nearly as big as Starlake, for those of you who are familiar with it, but it can handle a good number of people (25,000, says the webpage). The Arcade Fire came on and did a thoroughly entertaining set. The people in the band seemed really energized, but, in a place that big, it’s hard to project the energy, I think. I’d like to see them again—this time in a small club, like the Great American Music Hall. (If you haven’t heard the Arcade Fire or need proof that their performances can just about bust open with energy, listen to this show from KEXP. These five songs are the first I heard from Arcade Fire and I’ve listened to this recording enough that I still think of these versions over the album versions in my head.) Modest Mouse came on and did a pretty good set. They didn’t seem to be really into it and I was feeling a bit tired so I left about 45 minutes into their set. They do a decent set, but I’ve seen them twice now, both times fairly similar, so I’ll probably won’t see them again.

Matt Pond PA was on Conan last night. Anyone see them? I recorded it on my “tivo” (what I call my VCR), but haven’t watched it yet.

U2 is the only guest on Conan on Thursday night. I’m going to tune in, if I can stay away, to watch. They’ve been really good on SNL in the past couple of years.

Death Cab for Cutie does a a pretty interesting interview with the Onion AV club.

Also from largeheartedboy, Nick Hornsby talks to the Boss.

And by films I mean that in the literal sense, of captured, originally, on film.

And by documentary, I mean documenting real events.

I saw three recently:

1. NFL Film’s History of the Steelers NFL Films used to have a weekly show called “This is the NFL” and I would watch it many weeks, even before I was much of a football fan, just because they had beautiful footage and the sound, especially of the impacts, was incredible. There’s something about watching football on film that’s great. I liked this DVD a lot. I learned a bunch about the pre-70s Steelers and there were many interesting interviews with former players and coaches and whatnot. I also saw that there is quite a symbiotic relationship and feelings of duty and mutual respect between the Rooneys (the family that owns the Steelers) and the Team, the Team and the Fans, the Fans and the Rooneys. My one sort of complaint about the film was that it glossed over the big losses. An intricate part of the story of the Steelers, at least over the last decade, has been some big losses, I feel. Definitely worth watching if you’re a Steelers fan or a fan of football in general.
2. Low in Europe Dave gave this to me for my birthday. This shows some great footage and interviews of the band on a tour of Europe following the release of Trust. Maybe I just haven’t looked for many interviews of Low, but it seems that they haven’t been interviewed much, so it’s nice to see some more in depth coverage of their lives in this movie. There’s also some great footage of the band playing live; one of my favorites is a couple acoustic songs at a radio station in Frankfurt. The film ends with them playing at the Union Chapel in London, which no longer hosts shows, but while it did was a fantastic place to see a band like Low, as Andy or I can attest to. Worth watching for fans of Low or if you’re interested in becoming one.
3. Drive Well, Sleep Carefully The Death Cab for Cutie tour documentary. This close to 90 minutes of interviews and performances from a tour last year. The interviews seemed a bit lacking and single-tracked, but there’s pretty good pacing and editting between the interview portions and the song portions. The individual performances of the songs vary in how good they are. It’s worth watching if you’re a fan or are just an OC watching hipster.

A reminder to listen today because John Vanderslice is playing on my show in the 8am (PST) hour. woo!

The playlist for the rest of the show.

I saw Johnny Clegg at Slim’s last night. Johnny is a South African who is sometimes called the “White Zulu.”

It wasn’t my normal indie rock concert fair. The crowd was entirely different—much wider range of ages. It was good fun though. I was suprised at how few South Africans I heard. I mean, how do you hear about this guy if you’re not South African? Have any of you heard of him?

The music was good; many of the 80s-era cheesy keyboard lines weren’t recreated live, fortunately. Johnny told some interesting anecdotes and danced some in the Zulu style. He also speaks a fair amount of Zulu, it seems. One day I’ll be able to speak a fair amount of Zulu.

my radio show is indirectly mentioned on tiny mix tapes today.

check the second show under the “tour.”

I went to see Sufjan Stevens at Great American Music Hall two nights in a row on Sunday and Monday. This may be the first band/ artist I’ve seen two nights in a row…I tried to see the Polyphonic Spree twice in a row at Slim’s but the second night was sold out.

The shows were fairly similar but different enough that I got new things out of each of them.

The material was mainly (almost entirely—I think the first night it might have been entirely) from Illinois. This was fine with me. There’s certainly enough good material on that disc to put together a good set. I liked the softer songs a lot: “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” and “the Predatory Wasp of the Palisades” were both played both nights. The would-be-singles “Chicago” and “Come on Feel the Illinoise” were also played both nights. He also finished the main set both nights with a song I didn’t like too much on the album but liked live “the Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts.”

I’d forgotten how good Sufjan is at instruments. He’s a good enough guitar player. He writes interesting guitar parts and plays them flawlessly, but they’re not incredibly hard. He’s a fantastic keyboard player, though. He’ll just plow through a fast solo on a song or play some of the rhythmically difficult things he writes in 5/4 or other strange time signatures without a hesitation. He’s also a great singer.This latest album he uses his falsetto a lot to good effect.

He’s fun to watch on stage. During the Michigan/ Seven Swans tour, he told lots of (made up) stories about the origins of the songs and whatnot. He didn’t really talk much about the songs but he did do cheers. The whole thing for this tour is Illinois cheerleaders (or Illinoisemakers); like for the last tour his back up band was the Michigan Militia, dressed in little boy scout-like uniforms with American flag hankerchiefs around their necks. So do go along with the cheerleader outfits they wore, they did cheers for some cities, like Peoria and Metropolis (which rhymed Metropolis with “Balki Bartokomous“). They were mostly under-prepared and sometimes forgotten. They were endearing in that way.

The second night the encore consisted of his cover/ version of “Star Spangled Banner” and “Romulus” both, apparently, by request. Those are two of my favorite Sufjan songs so I was pretty pleased with that.

His former bell player and back up singer, now just back up singer, is still really cute!

One major complaint was that I think there was only one or two songs with banjo and John Ringhofer (of Half-Handed Cloud) who was playing as part of the backup band, did the banjo playing, not Sufjan. Dylan and I tried to start the chant “B-A-N-J-O” (same cadence as “B-I-N-G-O” was his name-o) and I was tempted to yell “More banjo!” and later “Put away the damn guitar and play some banjo!” I encourage you to yell these things or to start the “B-A-N-J-O” cheer if you see him later this tour.

I saw the Headphones last night at Cafe du Nord. Serene Lakes and Crystal Skulls opened for them.

Serene Lakes were enjoyable. Sort of emoish or like the mid-90s band Seam. They had free CD EPs at the concert and I got one. I haven’t listened to it yet.

The Crystal Skulls have a lot of potential in that they have two members, Yuuki Matthews and Casey Foubert, in common with the great Seattle band, Seldom. In the end, though, they were not that good. They would start out a song and it’d sound good but it’d ineviably turn bad. The harmonic ideas were noodling and random; the chords just seemed to go from one random chord to another in an unsatisfying manner.

The Headphones played a short but enjoyable set. David Bazan and TW Walsh have good non-verbal communication and are tight when they play together. John Vanderslice was in the front row and seemed to be enjoying the show.

from Asthmatic Kitty

Sufjan Stevens
* w/ Liz Janes
July.15 San Diego, CA – Belly Up Tavern – * w/ Bunky
July.16 Los Angeles, CA – El Rey Theater – * w/ Bunky
July.17 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall *
July.18 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall *
July.19 Santa Cruz, CA – The Attic
July.21 Portland, OR – Aladdin Theater *
July.22 Seattle, WA – Triple Door *
July.23 Seattle, WA – Triple Door *
July.24 Vancouver, BC – Richard�s on Richards *
July.27 Boise, ID – Neurolux *
July.28 Salt Lake City, UT – Lo-fi Cafe *
July.29 Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater *
July.30 Aspen, CO – Belly Up Aspen *
August.1 Phoenix, AZ – Rhythm Room *
August.2 Tuscon, AZ – Plush *
August.19 New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom
August.20 New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom

Tickets went on sale for the GAMH shows today. I bought two for each show.

stereogum has a nice live cover of the Magnetic Field’s “Strange Powers.”

Last night, as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival, I saw Street Angel with live musical accompaniement by American Music Club.

American Music Club is a pretty old indie band (started in 1983!) with Mark Eitzel (who’s done some good stuff as a solo artist) that’s recently reunited. AMC did a great job with the music. They didn’t follow many of the customs of silent movie accompaniement. For instance there was singing!

The movie was surprisingly nuanced and complex for a movie of that error. I’m used to watching some of the more facetious silent movies, like Buster Keaton movies (who’s completely awesome!). This movie was much darker but still with a happy ending.

If you’ve never seen a silent movie with live musical accompaniement, I’d recommend it highly. Most of the time it’s a piano or organ. The Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto has a Might Wurlitzer organ with silent movie Wednesdays during the summer.

This is a three concert week (well, eight days) for me. I saw the Crooked Fingers at the Great American Music Hall last Saturday and the Album Leaf at the Independent on Tuesday. It was my first time seeing both of these bands. On Saturday I’m going to see a silent movie accompanied by the American Music Club.

I’d only started listening to the Crooked Fingers after the tsunami benefit at GAMH in January where he, Jonathan Richman, Mark Kozelek and Ben Gibbard. And here was this guy who was the leader of the seminal indie rock band Archers of Loaf playing toned down americana sort of stuff. I checked out some records at the station and they were good.

It’d been a long time since I’d gone to an undersold show at GAMH. It was surprising that people weren’t packed together (and that I could sit down in the balcony).

They put on a good show. They did their songs well. There was enough energy but nothing really special. The best part of the show was during part of the encore when they took acoustic instruments (two acoustic guitars, an upright bass, a fluegelhorn, a flute, a snare and a high hat) and went right into the middle of the audience and played for everyone completely unmiced and unamplified.

According to my crappy Sidekick camera, it looked sort of like this:

The Album Leaf were good. One of the things that makes live performances different/better than the studio recording is energy. Nominally electronic music can’t really have more energy, but that is not a worry with the Album Leaf live show, as it turns out. Plenty of emotion and energy.

I guess that’s all I have to say about that.

Oh wait, I do have a little more to say. This was my first trip to the Independent. It’s layout is somewhere between the Paradise and TT the Bear’s (for the Boston music sceners out there). It’s got high ceilings but it’s a fairly small room. The crowd wasn’t giant (which I always like) and the vibe more down to earth than the usual San Francisco venues.

The San Francisco International Film Festival is coming up.

Here are some of the movies I may want to see. Anyone want to go to any of these?

• 3 Iron Arpil 22 9:30pm, April 25 9:30 pm. A nearly silent love story, apparently about a drifter and an abused married woman. The main reason I want to see it is that it’s by Kim Ki-Duk, the guy who did the absolutely hypnotic Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring.
• Boxers and Ballerinas April 27 2pm, May 1 6:30pm, May 3, 1pm. About two boxers and two ballerinas, two each living in Havana and Miami. I don’t know, but I’ve liked boxing movies lately (by which I mean Million Dollar Baby).
• Boys of Baraka April 29 1:00pm, April 30 12:45pm, May 4 9:30. This one looks really interesting. A documentary about twenty inner city boys from Baltimore are taken and put in a bush school in Kenya.
• Shepherd’s Journey into the Third Millenium April 27 8:30pm, April 28 5pm, May 4 7pm. A documentary about shepherding in the Swiss albums. I’m not quite sure why this sounds good, but it does.
• Street Angel April 23 at 9pm. A silent movies with live music accompaniement provided by indie band American Music Club, Mark Eitzel’s band.

GQ, of all magazines, has an article about a giant Christian rock festival call Creation. It’s lengthy and sort of interesting.

As someone who’s never seen the appeal of “Christian rock,” even to Christians, I took some particular joy in this passage:

That’s the last thing I’ll be saying about the bands.

Or, no, wait, there’s this: The fact that I didn’t think I heard a single interesting bar of music from the forty or so acts I caught or overheard at Creation shouldn’t be read as a knock on the acts themselves, much less as contempt for the underlying notion of Christians playing rock. These were not Christian bands, you see; these were Christian-rock bands. The key to digging this scene lies in that one-syllable distinction. Christian rock is a genre that exists to edify and make money off of evangelical Christians. It’s message music for listeners who know the message cold, and, what’s more, it operates under a perceived responsibility�one the artists embrace�to “reach people.” As such, it rewards both obviousness and maximum palatability (the artists would say clarity), which in turn means parasitism. Remember those perfume dispensers they used to have in pharmacies�”If you like Drakkar Noir, you’ll love Sexy Musk”? Well, Christian rock works like that. Every successful crappy secular group has its Christian off-brand, and that’s proper, because culturally speaking, it’s supposed to serve as a stand-in for, not an alternative to or an improvement on, those very groups. In this it succeeds wonderfully. If you think it profoundly sucks, that’s because your priorities are not its priorities; you want to hear something cool and new, it needs to play something proven to please…while praising Jesus Christ. That’s Christian rock. A Christian band, on the other hand, is just a band that has more than one Christian in it. U2 is the exemplar, held aloft by believers and nonbelievers alike, but there have been others through the years, bands about which people would say, “Did you know those guys were Christians? I know�it’s freaky. They’re still fuckin’ good, though.” … In most cases, bands like these make a very, very careful effort not to be seen as playing “Christian rock.”… And here, if I can drop the open-minded pretense real quick, is where the stickier problem of actually being any good comes in, because a question that must be asked is whether a hard-core Christian who turns 19 and finds he or she can write first-rate songs (someone like Damien Jurado) would ever have anything whatsoever to do with Christian rock. Talent tends to come hand in hand with a certain base level of subtlety. And believe it or not, the Christian-rock establishment sometimes expresses a kind of resigned approval of the way groups like U2 … [These bands] take quiet pains to distance themselves from any unambiguous Jesus-loving, recognizing that this is the surest way to connect with the world (you know that’s how they refer to us, right? We’re “of the world”). So it’s possible�and indeed seems likely�that Christian rock is a musical genre, the only one I can think of, that has excellence-proofed itself.

Then again, it likely falls into the same trap that he accuses Christian rock of falling into: preaching to the converted. (I can’t imagine the average GQ reader to like Christian rock).

Much of the article is about five (I think five) crazy friends from West Virginia that the author meets and hangs out with. There are some interesting happenings.

I like that their relationship ends like this:

Darius said God bless me, with meaning eyes. Then he said, “Hey, man, if you write about us, can I just ask one thing?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Put in there that we love God,” he said. “You can say we’re crazy, but say that we love God.”

Overall the article is a pretty good read. It falls into some of the usual traps of misinterpreting Christians and Christianity, but surprisingly, the overall effect is not slamming either.

I’m in the Charlotte airport on the way to london. I have a few hours here. I’m going to a cousin’s wedding. I won’t be bloggong a lot. (hopefully).

I saw low and pedro the lion last night at great american music hall. good show. low was interesting. lots more distortion and stuff, keeping with their new album.

I got 2 hours of sleep last night. I didn’t remeber to bring the british money my dad gave me and I don’t have cuff links for my french cuff tux shirt.

Last Friday, the 18th, I saw Paddy Keenan at the Plough and Stars in the City.

Here’s a nice bio/ interview of Paddy if you want to know more about him. He’s an uilleann piper, and one of the best. The guy who introduced him at the Plough and Stars called him the best piper that ever lived. I don’t know. Seamus Ennis was really good.

Uilleann pipes are the irish sorts of bagpipes. Much more social and less loud/ militaristic than the scottish sort. And more difficult to play. Wikipedia will tell you more about the uillean (pronounced ill’ ee-an or ill’ an) pipes.

The Plough and Stars is a great place to see irish music. Lots of Irish there and not a lot of the stupid people who go to see the Chieftans and start clapping at the slightest sign of a reel.

Paddy was there with Tommy O’Sullivan, his touring partner and guitarist. Tommy did a few songs but the bulk of the night was focused on Paddy.

Paddy is just amazing. He has such tremendous technical skill on the pipes. He can start a reel out fast and then speed up even for the last time through. He can do all this while playing the regulators as well. He can also improvise in a tasteful manner and play the low whistle like a champ.

Paddy had a few guests on for a couple songs. There was a guy playing lap steel (dobro), which was more interesting than good and a guy playing bodhran, which was nice to hear.

I got a practice set of uilleann pipes a few years back. I should break those out and see if I can do something with them. It’s a gorgeous sound.

They played “California” like I thought they would.

They were good. But geez do they need to get a new sound person. Once again the vocals were totally wrong in the mix. They sounded very detached. In a band where the male and female vocals intertwining really make the sound, it’s pretty bad if it sounds like the two voices don’t know the other one is singing.

The same thing happened when Death Cab was on Carson.

The 2nd of 3 concerts I saw last week was the Polyphonic Spree at Bimbo’s 365. I went with Judit and Shad, but ran into (Kenny and Michelle) and (Julee and Droid) there.

From Bubble to Sky was one of the openers. They were a solid indie rock band, more or less playing their own songs that could have been Beatles songs. Very much in that style. I’m not going to go out of my way to hear them, but they were enjoyable to watch.

The Polyphonic Spree took a while to come on and it took even longer for the crowd to warm up to them, but once they were going, boy, were they going. A really good show. I’m always amazed at how much energy they can put into a show. If you have the chance to see them, do.

A few more things to note about the evening:

• Droid and Julee left because Droid didn’t like the religious overtones of the show. That’s just dumb. Hello! They wear robes and sings like 10 songs about the Sun. Of course there are overtones.
• Jon Brion played guitar for that night.
• it was the last night for the trumpet player Logan Keese, who, up to this point, I believe, has been the only trumpet player to play with the Spree. He was really good. They had a second trumpeter there, I guess learning the ropes from Logan.
• It was the last PS show for a while. The implication is that they’re taking a break and revamping the show/ the band. We’ll see what comes next.

Alright, I’m catching up here on the past few days. It’s been crazy. The NoisePop Festival is going on, so I’ve been to 3 concerts in the last 4 days.

I went with Margot from the station. She’s on right now (Saturday midnight-3am) if you want to listen. We caught the last couple minutes of the first opening band, who were nice enough to listen to but not good enough for me to look up the name of or link to.

Smoosh was up next. They are a 10 and a 12 year old girl playing drums and keyboard, respectively. You think, awww, that’s cute. It’ll be fun. Then you’re like, wait, these guys are actually sort of good. In the end it’s something between a total novelty and total rockin’ music. If you’re interested, give this KEXP live in-studio recording a listen. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. I’m going to totally make my kids be in an indie rock band.

Aqueduct was just fun. It’s mainly one guy and his keyboards, writing songs about “Growing up on GnR” (Guns N Roses), which is available at the barsuk website I linked, and the like. His touring band has drums, guitar and bass as well. He had just found out (that day, I think) that they were going to be on Conan O’Brien two days later so he was really excited. I think in general he gets really into the show and is generally exuding happiness.

the Mates of State were great. Kori and Jason were in top form, returning to their former hometown. For the first time in all the times I’ve seen them, they brought along another keyboard in addition to the still-gorgeous Yamaha YC-45D. The second keyboard was a Yamaha electric piano, maybe a P80. I was scared at first that it was some cheesy synth that didn’t have the depth of the 45D, but it was just a piano and it allowed them to do “I Have Space,” a favorite of mine that I’ve never heard live. I was really happy with the selection of songs they did, including “A Duel Will Settle This,” the awesome one off their new EP “Along for the Ride,” their version of “These Days” and a bunch off of Team Boo. I like hearing “Hoarding for Home” and “Throw Down” live but you can’t get everything.

Overall, a really solid and enjoyable show throughout.

I like to make lists of all the shows I went to by bands that I’ve seen a ton, so here’s the one for the Mates of State:

• Oct. 7, 2001 at the Middle East with Beulah
• Feb. 23, 2002 at MassArt
• Oct. 5, 2002 at TT the Bear’s
• Feb. 1, 2002 at the Middle East with Rainer Maria
• Oct. 10, 2003 at the Bottom of the Hill
• Feb. 6, 2004 at the Los Gatos Outhouse (the teen center out back of the Los Gatos High School Football Field)
• Feb. 23, 2005 at Slim’s with Aqueduct and Smoosh

I’m tired and about to go to bed, but I wanted to make a note on time sensitive material.

One of the bands that opened for the Mates of State was the Aqueduct and they’re going to be on Conan O’Brien later tonight (Friday, the 25th). Check them out if you’re around.

They play some fun music.

I went to see the Evens last night at the Terman Middle School auditorium. What kind of band plays in a middle school auditorium besides one that was put together for a talent show? I’ll tell you. It’s Ian McKaye from Fugazi playing baritone guitar and Amy Farina playing drums. They both sing.

It was a tiny show. Three rows of 15-20 folding metal chairs and a few people in the back. I sat down in an empty seat at the front (about 6 feet from where Ian sat while playing) and almost immediately the dad sitting next to me asked if I’d gone to MIT. He’d seen my WMBR shirt. We talked about WMBR for a little bit, then he went on to explain to his 10 year old daughter that MIT was a nerd school and that she could go there for grad school but not for undergrad because he couldn’t afford it unless she got a scholarship. They also talked about internships for a while and somehow got on the topic of a spinning-talking-sensing pumpkin. The girl, quite amazingly, described a pretty good way to make this thing that would be nice to kids and try to scare adults. She was 10 years old (give or take, I never asked)! At age 10, I was trying not to cry into the paste I was eating.

There were too many amusing things to tell you all of them, but here’s a short list:

• Ian repeatedly asking if the people in the back if they were comfortable and if everything was under control.
• they finished a song with a hard vocal part. Ian: “How was that?” Amy: “Alright.” Ian: “Let’s try it again.” They do it a second time. Ian: “No, still not right. One more time.” A third try. Ian: “That was better, right?” Amy: “Yeah, that was good.”
• Ian went to Terman Middle School for 9 months in 1974-75 (I think) and told some stories about a school dance (in that very auditorium) and making a heart in wood shop with a torqoise inlay. It was stolen on the last day of school before he could give it to his crush.
• The aforementioned dad next to me at some point volunteered his 7th grade yearbook and Ian asked where he went to school. Dad: “I went to Paul Revere Middle School in LA.” Guy 1 (behind us): “I went to Paul Revere.” Guy 2 (in the back): “I I went to Paul Revere.” Ian: “See? We’re bringing people together.
• Ian asked people to sing along to a song. Ian: “Are you ready to give it a try?” The first person to say yes was Ian’s dad, who turned out to be in the back row.

It was an enjoyable and cheap ($5!) evening.

Oh and there was a girl there that looked like Emily Warman with long redish brown hair. There was a striking resemblance in facial features.

Other quick things:
I just found out that I’m missing Cat Power saturday. Dave’s coming today. We’re going on my company’s trip to this place in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Will “Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy” Oldham and Matt Sweeney will be in Baltimore at the Ottobar on April 25. It’s the last date of the tour.

Oh and Tarky, they’ll be in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts on April 17. (And Pat, in Pittsburgh at the Rex Theater on April 14, if you’re interested)

I missed them at Amoeba (free!) a couple weeks ago because I was in Pittsburgh for the game.

The new (collaborative) album is pretty good from first listen. I’m reviewing it for the station.

So I went to the tsunami benefit concert at Great American last night. Four men and their guitars. Usually I’ll go to a concert so I’ll miss one or more of the opening acts. Here is perhaps the first concert where I wanted to see everyone that was playing.

First up was Eric Bachmann (Bacchman? Bachman? I’ve seen all these spellings on the internet) of Archers of Loaf and the Crooked Fingers. He fingerpicked a classical guitar and sang in a somewhat strained voice that bears some resemblence to his voice on the Archers records. From the first song, I was impressed. It was nothing like the Archers of Loaf. It was gorgeous, sad music with more than a nod to traditional American music with songs like “Death Train.” If I’d heard any of the Crooked Fingers or Barry Black (which I just found out is his solo project), I would have been more prepared for his “new” style (the Archers of Loaf haven’t done anything since like 1997). I’ll have to check them out now and play them on my show.

Next: Jonathan Richman. I was very familiar with the name and familiar with a couple of his songs, but I don’t know very much about him. I know he was in Something about Mary. And apparently he was the front man for the Modern Lovers. Live, he’s quirky and goofy. He moves his body and plays his classical guitar without a strap (just sort of holding it against his body). He does this goofy bow at the end of a song that reminds me of a someone on the Ed Sullivan show. Sometimes he basically fingerpicks and sometimes he almost plays in a flamenco style. He sang in Spanish, Italian, French and English. He would interject strange things in his songs (”the English part!” before a bunch of “oohs-ahhs” or “guitar!” before a guitar solo). I had a huge grin on my face the whole time because he’s just so entertaining to watch.

Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters (who were active 1992-2000ish) and Sun Kil Moon (the last year or so). I was really excited to see him solo. I’d heard a lot of the RHP and SKM but his solo stuff is what I like best. He came out and asked the fairly young crowd “So when does the school bus come to get you guys?” He also repeated referred to Ben Gibbard as “the guy from the post office.” Then he started playing. Oh my gosh. I don’t know if there could be a better combination of voice, guitar style and songwriting ability. He could really do no wrong solo; he could sing about killing little babies and I would probably think it was the prettiest song ever. He did a “funny” song, as he put it: a cover of “Neverending Math Equation” by Modest Mouse. Done in Kozelek’s style it’s not quite the same.

The man all the girls were screaming for: Ben Gibbard. Sporting an unkempt beard, glasses and scruffy hair, he was definitely the crowd favorite. And he was definitely really good, but I don’t think the best of the night. He opened with a cover the of Archers of Loaf song “Web in Front”. He also covered the Monkey’s song “Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)” later in the set. He did a number of solid versions of Death Cab for Cutie and Postal Service songs, including, of course, “Such Great Heights” (which he called a cover of a song he wrote) but also “the Dream of Evan and Chan” (technically a DNTEL song). He said he was intimidated playing guitar after the previous three “of the best guitar players I’ve seen.”

Overall, it was probably the best acoustic concert I’ve seen.

So according to a news item at Pitchfork, the guy from Pedro the Lion, David Bazan, and one of the other current members of the band TW Walsh are going to release an album as the Headphones in May on Suicide Squeeze. They’re throwing away the guitars and playing it all on keyboards. It’s electronic, but not electronica so much. Apparently real, non-sequenced drums and such will also appear.

I just got heard about and got tickets for what could be a totally sweet concert. Are you ready for the line up? Are you ready? I don’t think you are.

But here goes: Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service; Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon and solo work; and Eric Bachman of Bachman Turner Overdrive— just kidding, he’s from the Archers of Loaf. I like all those bands and the solo work I’ve heard from the first two and solo stuff I usually like more than full band stuff, so I’m pretty excited. Additionally, it’s at Great American Music Hall, which is a great venue, especially for the acoustic stuff.

It’s a tsunami relief benefit concert. If benefiting tsunami relief is this good, I should give all my money.

I bought three tickets. Judit? Dale?

Other concerts I have tickets to or will probably soon:

• Early Day Miners 1/25 at
• Mates of State 2/23 at Slim’s (part of Noise Pop)
• the Polyphonic Spree 2/24 at Bimbo’s 365 (part of Noise Pop)
• Portastatic 2/25 at Bottom of the Hill (part of Noise Pop)
• Low with Pedro the Lion 3/29 at Great American Music Hall
• Magnolia Electric Company (formerly Songs: Ohia) 4/30 at Bottom of the Hill

(Seam is a great minimalist indie rock band from Chicago, active mostly from 94-99. They’re worth checking out if you haven’t heard them.)

I’ve been listening to Seam a lot lately, especially the middle two albums (the Problem with Me, which I know intimately, and Are you driving me crazy?, which I recognize all the songs on, but am not as familiar with), so I decided to poke around on the interenet to see what was up. I was surpised to see that they still have a website (well a fansite) and that it has some news in the past few years. I had given up Seam as totally bust but they actually seem (get it?? seem!) to have played once in 2003. Crazy. They haven’t toured the US since early 1999, I believe.

And another surprise was that Sooyoung Park, the lead of Seam, is in a new band called Ee. I’ll have to check them out.

There are bands that few people really liked when they were active but now get named dropped a lot. Slint was one of these bands and now they’re having a reunion tour and people are out of their minds. Then there are bands that people liked at the time, like Archers of Loaf and, to some extent, Seam, that no one mentions now. When’s the last time time you read a review that said a band’s sound harkened back to Seam? Weird.

[Update: haha. search and ye shall find. Here's a review that name drops Seam. There aren't many however. ]

12. Seven Swans by Sufjan Stevens
11. Funeral by Arcade Fire
1. Sufjan Stevens at 7/31 Great American Music Hall
2. the Mates of State 2/6 at the Los Gatos Outhouse
8. Pedro the Lion with John Vanderslice 6/03 at Bottom of the Hill
3. Iron and Wine at Great American Music Hall
13. Our Endless Numbered Days by Iron and Wine
10. Damien Jurado 11/09 at Great American Music Hall
4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
5. the Cameraman (with Buster Keaton) at Stanford Theater with live organ accompaniment
6. the Polyphonic Spree 7/18 at Slim’s
15. Hero
17. Napoleon Dynamite free screening at Stanford
7. Arcade Fire Live at Museum of Television and Radio (archived by KEXP)
16. From a Basement on a Hill by Elliot Smith
14. Before Sunset
9. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring

On Friday, I went to Live 105’s Not So Silent Night on Friday. The line up was Taking Back Sunday, Muse, Interpol, the Killers, Franz Ferdinand and Modest Mouse. Tickets were expensive ($35) and it was in a large venue (Bill Graham Civic Auditorium) and, correspondingly, there were a lot of stupid people there. The sound sucked for many of the bands; the bass was far too heavy. It probably didn’t help that we were standing pretty much directly in front of the subs.

But let’s get to the music: we got there during Muse. Muse was bad. Killers were unimpressive. Interpol was above average, as was Franz Ferdinand. Modest Mouse was good, better than I expected. I liked their albums, but I’d heard that their live show wasn’t good.

I heard a little too much “oh I hope they don’t play their new stuff. their new stuff sucks. they were much better at the Fillmore. blah blah blah I’m dumb.”

We had our work Christmas dinner at Kuleto’s in Burlingame. It’s a pretty fancy Italian place with good food and the service was, well, unnoticable (in a good way–unobtrusive and my food just sort of appeared). We did a gift exchange. It was one of these things where you can pick a present or take someone else’s present and people kept taking my presents, except I ended up being able to take anyone’s present at the end. I got something pretty sweet.

When I found out about the company party last week I thought that I wouldn’t be able to go to Iron and Wine scheduled for the same night, the tickets for which I bought in September. Then I figured if the party ended by 10pm in Burlingame, I could be at the concert by 10:25 or so and if the concert started at 9 and there was an opening band or two, I would be alright. Turns out I missed about 15 or 20 minutes. I gave Judit a call as I was on my way up and she made her way over from where she was in the Haight to go to the show. She was ‘on call’ for the show.

It was just Sam Beam and the acoustics in Great American were great. He did some great versions of his own songs, not necessarily sticking to how he recorded them. He did a few of his songs that are unreleased (one of which I liked a lot, but I can’t remember for the life of me enough about it to look it up on the internet). He also did a few covers, one of which was of course “Such Great Heights” (Postal Service), which he closed the encore with and Judit just about died, and the other, more surprising one was “Love Vigilantes” (New Order). A really solid concert overall. I wish I’d seen all of it.

I saw Pedro the Lion with Half-Life Souvenir and Viva Voce last night at Slim’s. Chris Atwell went with me.

We got there during the last couple songs of Viva Voce. The first of which was a sort of Low-like steady-rhythm, slow-build song and the second of which was ‘Tonight you belong to me’ (which I know because Steve Martin plays it on ukulele in the beach scene of The Jerk (and Bernedette Peters’ character pulls out a trumpet out of no where and does the solo)). I ended up buying their album, Heat Can Melt Your Brain, which is odd and goes from one idea to another quickly, but is pretty good from first listen.

Half-life Souvenir is promising. Rosie Thomas (who’s recorded with Damien Jurado) sings in this. The guy and her sing an octave apart, which I’ve heard in other bands before but can’t think of specific examples. The drummer was solid; he ended up playing keyboards and aux percussion with Pedro. Anyway, they have some of Low slow-changing-chord stuff, some Album Leaf or Ms. John Soda electronic-indie stuff and some of their own sort of sound. It’s hard to describe, but I’ll be keeping an ear out for their future stuff.

Pedro was good. He had a four-piece: (Pedro is not a guy, but David Bazan, who is basically the band, is, so I refer to Pedro the Lion as he.) he and TW Walsh (drums), of course. A bass player that I recognized but don’t know the name of and a keyboard/ aux percussion guy named James. He played a lot of early stuff and a few songs each from Control and Achille’s Heel. He did solid versions of ‘Magazine’, ‘Indian Summer’ and ‘Criticism as Inspiration.’

They were out of my size of the Pedro Lion’s tail shirt, but I ended up getting a Pedro scarf, which is pretty rad and good conversation starter with the cute girl standing next to me.

I’m trying to figure out how many times I’ve seen Pedro, so here’s my list:

• February 14, 2001 w/ Low at Sommerville Theater
• September 16, 2001 w/ Seldom and TW Walsh at the Middle East Downstairs
• May 4, 2002 w/ Damien Jurado(?) at the Middle East Downstairs*
• November 3, 2002 w/ Seldom at the TT the Bear’s
• May 5, 2003 w/ Stratford 4, Alan Sparhawk (solo) and Ester Drang at the Middle East Downstairs**
• February 27, 2004 w/ John Vanderslice and the Advantage at Great American Music Hall
• June 2, 2004 w/ John Vanderslice at Bottom of the Hill
• December 7, 2004 w/ Half-Life Souvenir and Viva Voce at Slim’s

*one of my few two-show nights. I went to Belle and Sebastian at the Orpheum (early show) and then went across town for Pedro. I’m not convinced that Damien Jurado was at this date, or maybe I just missed him while I was at the other show.
**this show was probably the best, I think. He was working out some new songs so he did a chunk of great songs with the band and then the new ones solo acoustic, including the ‘Poison Makes’ and ‘Backwoods Nation’, which he’s basically refused to play live since.

So, I guess that’s eight. That has to be a record for bands that I’ve seen. I’ve seen a bunch of bands three or probably even four times. I think I counted six times for the Mates of State. Eight is just ridiculous. I started liking him early, he tours often and I just kept going to shows. I’m looking forward to the Low/ Pedro date at Great American in March. Should be good.

I’m trying to draw a pattern from various indie rock/ hipster fads, which include trucker hats (foam domes, as I call them), work shirts or work jackets, old thrift store shirts (especially solid color shirts with simple black or white silk screens), hoodies, old sweaters and pabst blue ribbon.

A lot of these are tied to each other, but each criterium adds something. Not all of them will be true for each fad. These are more tendencies than strict rules.

1. cheap (probably able to be obtained used). thrift stores, surplus shops are usually good places to find things.

2. unpretentious. pabst blue ribbon (still) doesn’t advertize. no one used to advertize foam domes.

3. obscure enough that people in the “mainstream” probably don’t wear it/ drink it/ do it, but not obscure enough that people don’t previously know about it.

4. previously relegated to the working class. trucker hats, work shirts, and PBR all fall into this category.

5. ironic, usually because people in the ’scene’ wouldn’t previous think of using such a product. haha! sweet hat! my grandfather wore one of those!

6. not intrinsically ugly or baggy. I think big sweatshirts with big bubble letters would not become an indie fad even though they are cheap, ironic, and obscure because they are both ugly and baggy. hoodies (at least those worn by indie kids) tend to be tighter.

7. like much retro-influenced fashion, the two decade rule applies. you can wear 70s and you can start to wear 80s fashions as retro-ironic, but you can’t really wear 90s stuff. If you’re wearing multiple flannel shirts, you’re stuck in the past, you’re not starting a new trend.

Julee, Avni and I just saw Zakir Hussain play in San Jose. Originally he was schedule to play with Ali Akbar Khan, sarod master and guru-ji to my teacher Georgeji (George Ruckert), but Khansahib was sick, so it was just billed just as Zakir Hussain.

The first half had Alam Khan, 22 year old son to Ali Akbar, playing with Zakir. He performed well, but undoubtedly the same half with Khansahib would have been untouchable. The second half was Zakir performing accompanied by a violinist. He was mezmerizing. It’s really hard to describe the brilliance of his playing or the extent of his mastery.

Go see him sometime if you get a chance. And Ali Akbar Khan too.