Loney, Dear

A Mix of Blues

Holiday Music

A few weeks ago I was excited about Au Revoir Simone playing two NYC shows (6/29 & 6/30), and ambivalent about We Are Scientists, the headliners... but when the 6/30 show soldout, I leapt at Jean's offer to see the first evening. As much as I love their intimate album, I found Au Revoir Simone to be cold on stage and not much fun at all. But We Are Scientists really blew me away. Their songs were jolty, plucky, full of life. The drummer in particular was a superb contrast to cold rhythms of ARS and the other opener, the tedious Double.

On the Fourth, a team of us went to Battery Park to see Belle & Sebastian. After hours of a frustratingly penned line, we finally got to stake our claim by the sound board. Storms threatened, thankfully cutting short Martha Wainwright's set short. I've now seen her twice, and will only see her as a hurdle to endure before a band I want to see.

B&S had dropped, in particular to the mediocre "Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant." Dear Catastrophe Waitress wasn't enough of a rebound, but I was open to their latest, The Life Pursuit, in part due to the unrelated collection of Belle & Sebastian comics Put the Book Back on the Shelf.. Nothing like celebrating independence with a band from the old country.

In the evening Lars & Frauke joined Jason & Mariani, Tam & Lisa and me on my roof to catch the fireworks.

Tommorrow, I'm psyched to round out the Scottish invasion with my new favorite band... Camera Obscura. I'm going to teach Mitchell some tennis strokes in the afternoon.

Beware of That Vicious Right Hook

One of my favorite album covers is the Pogues' Peace and Love. A quick glance shows a middleweight, a long glance show that the words "peace" and "love" are tattooed on the right and left fingers respectively. L-o-v-e: four fingers plus thumb equals five. P-e-a-c-e: five fingers plus thumb equals... six? Creepy and subtle, I love it.

Last week I saw the plucky National Theatre of the United States of America (NTUSA)'s " Abacus Black Strikes NOW!: The Rampant Justice of Abacus Black." The piece is a "tent revival celebrating the history and lore of ancient knight Abacus Black" The icing for me is their poster: a gauntlet with N-T-U-S-A engraved on the fingers: five fingers: plus thumb equals six (also the right hand). Excellent. You can learn more about hexadactyly, the condition of having an extra digit.

Thunder Lightning Struck

Man, there is nothing like a killer show full of chest thumping beats, sixties soul bass lines, and cheerleading to lift one's spirits.

Gretchen and I caught The Go!Team last night at Webster Hall. Fresh off their retooled American release of Thunder Lightning Strike, the team closed out a three week US tour.

Huddle Formation and Bottle Rockets were hugely uplifting, but they tore the house down with Ladyflash to close the show. There were some beautiful slowdowns and the video mixes of old super 8s made for a great backdrop. After all the 60s/80s/90s soul/hiphop/guitar, one of the best ballads featured a banjo and harmonica.

Quite a show for a project that started out with a guy, a computer, and lots of samples. The Team now sports a multi-ethnic troup of multi-instrumentalists.

I hadn't danced so hard in ages. It was a great reminder that as good as recordings are, one really needs to be at a venue to truely feel the power. Next up, Jason and I will see Andrew Bird in a week.5. Again, another show that transcends the albums.

A Handful of Thoughts

I was supposed to spend this afternoon with my BBBS match, Mitchell today. But he called me yesterday to say his mom didn't want him on the train because of the bomb threat. It bums me out, the way we give up our lives because of this acute fear. On one hand, there would be outrage to have a successful attack and discover people weren't warned. But on the other, officials haven't done much to convince us that an attack was prevented. We are slaves to chatter and the poor judgment of our lamest jokers.

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It was great to hang out with Bennett and the guys of Pyramid. A guy from Breakthruradio.com came to do a profile on them Sat. Their MO is give an audience to great unsigned bands. After 3 nights with the boys, my sleep schedule is all messed up. I'd never make it on tour... although I loved the shows, and got in some quality foosball.

During one of our chats, Ben argued well for improvisational music, largely based on a tension of failure, and an excitement of passing through it, topped off by true synergy and communication among the ensemble. He best described it as a conversation among instruments.

Bennett Kennedy at cello for Pyramid

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Despite the soggy drippyness of Saturday, Joe and I hit some galleries... highlights included Yuken Teruya, whom I wrote about earlier, the ever reliable Diane Arbus, and Daniel Rozin 's digital/analog "mirrors" (the picture above is from his show at Bitforms).

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My blessedly persistent friend Anna Hayman, got me out to see a show. We failed at getting to the Wooster Group's Poor Theatre, but had the great concession of Spirit at NYTW. What started as a mediocre war story, became a delightful study of storytelling and theatre in general. Done by three men of Improbable on the steepest raked stage ever, they did a fair bit of physical theatre and puppetry based work.

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I saw Capote on Friday. Seymour Phillip Hoffman and Catherine Keener were their usual splendidly chameleon selves. The shows the powerful conflict on interest Truman Capote was navigating in creating a work, in a new genre, "the non-fiction novel," while getting personally involved in the lives of those he wrote about... particularly Perry Smith. It's a relationship that remains messy... in particular I remember Janet Malcolm's "The Journalist & the Murderer." These pieces continue to aim for a portrait of reality while discarding various measure of objectivity that audiences expect.

It was also interesting that the film began with some assumption of familiarity of who Capote was, particularly by highlighting his vanity early in the film, and quick references to Breakfast at Tiffany's. Eventually we begin to see more of brilliance (his 94% memorized recall). But then the film ends with a text epilogue as if we have no idea who he was... that In Cold Blood made him the most famous author of his day, that he never finished a book afterwards, that he drunk himself to death.

Waiting for Buffalo and Other Musical Notes

I got a pleasant suprise last Wednesday. My good friend, and NYC welcome party (back in '98), Bennett called to say that Pyramid was going on tour and would come to NY for two shows. Thursday night they're playing at Arlene's Grocery and Saturday they'll be at Scenic. I plan to be at both. Waiting for Buffalo is one my favorite songs from the album The First American (also available on iTunes!) By the way, I really like their splash screen, it has an effect of blowing a frosted glass clear.

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Last Saturday, my friend Peter celebrated his 50th in style. He threw at party at Sin-é and had his favorite band Antibalas play. It was great political Malian music with requisit shout outs Fela.

Peter actually spent his birthday getting arrested at the White House on Monday, along with Cindy Sheehan. The coup de gras was when women activists in Turkey referenced the arrests when she went to talk about the treatment of women in Iraq. Way to give Karen Hughes hell Peter! His son Rob did the excellent card.

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Lastly Ratzlow and Jean have launched a music blog, This is Cool, Check it Out. Jean was the one that got me turned on to them as a way of discovering new music last January. So far I really like Au Revoir Simone and Bettye LaVette (which looks to be a gem comperable to Solomon Burke's Don't Give Up On Me).

And Kanye West Hates George W. Bush [Updated]

During Book Swap on Sunday, we played the clip of Mike Meyers and Kanye West, where, visibly shaken, West blurts, "George Bush doesn’t care about black people." God bless those who speak their minds, and God bless live television. NBC later deleated the clip... so God bless the interweb.

I'll admit it, I really missed the Kanye boat, but after this weekend, I've been checking out his jams, and I'm hooked. Yeah, there's some misogyny, but there's Mos Def, Talib Kweli, a huge Gil Scott-Heron sample and more. I got the new album off of iTunes, I'm glad to toss him some support, and I'm amped that the cuts are sharp.

[Update: Here's Soundcheck's podcast on Kanye]

The Chumbawamba Factor

Pitchfork has a great feature on BigChampagne and how the music industry tracks file sharing to create marketing strategy.

BigChampange didn't promise to save the industry, but they offered to help the labels look past what they lost in sales and see what they had gained in raw information. By watching what millions of people were sharing, trading, and actively searching for, they collected reams of data that in turn fed artist development and marketing plans.

Also of note is their theory on the decline of music industry profits... today's title:

"Chumbawamba sold a lot of records, and every single one of them ended up in a milkcrate at a yard sale, six months after it was purchased. And what we told [the record labels] is, 'Look, you had a great long run of business essentially built on regrettable impulse buys,'" says Garland. "'That was a great business, make no mistake. You owed much of your success to that. But it engendered a lot of cumulative ill-will with the customer.'"

BigChampagne tracks traded files, artists listed in MYSpace, music libraries , and compiles them with demographic data, to look for possible ty-ins, such a first person shooter game for particular set of rap fans. It's great read to see how the music industry has been learning from the devil as much as fighting it.

First I Reconnected with Music, Now It's Radio

A while ago I followed my early adopting friend Sully and aquired an iPod. And I feel that my realationship with music got a major shot in the arm after a bit of neglect. I had moved to New York, didn't care to tote a diskman and CD wallet, so left the music for when I was home. But then suddenly I had 100s of albums (well really the best of 100s) with me, and much smaller than a diskman and I reconnected, especially to those songs stranded on otherwise awful albums.

But in this same time, relationship with radio has also steadily declined.... bad reception at work or home, a tendency to listen to my music rather than the radio. I tried to save some radio habits...listening to streams, particularly of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. But many other shows only streamed lived and not archived, and it was tethered to a computer. I thought Audible was a good idea for on the go, but I didn't want to pay to listen to This American Life.. maybe twice. So it really wasn't good to go. But today... today is the release of iTunes 4.9 with it's podcasting support. My first impression is: awesome.

In a few minutes, it was easy to find, subscribe and download podcasts. I'm choosing to listen at my desk. You can easily find and download older shows. If you stop, it bookmarks where you left off. It's brilliantly easy. It looks like new broadcasts will be easy enough to add. So I'm looking forward to the Prairie Home Companion et al. And to think of all the PHC shows we recorded on tape growing up...

The Record Effect

Last week in the New Yorker, Alex Ross had a great piece on the effect on music from recording technology. Among the more interesting theories he discusses is vaulting of particular musical styles for their fidelity ability to fit on vinyl; the widespread adoption of vibrato in string performance; and to what extent recording, and particularly studio recording has driven classical music towards so-called perfect execution as opposed to more dynamic performance.

It's a great read and brings to mind a parallel, that with each new technology, there is a new type of distortion or corruption which filters it's way back as nostalgia.

Audio
Broadcast radio: Squelching, faded signal, Emergency Broadcast signal
Vinyl: hiss and pop, skipping, scratching, speed manipulation
Tapes: hissing, rough cuts, speed manipulation
Electric ampification: feedback
CDs: skipping, repeats
MP3s: digital distortion

Visual
Transparency/Film: so many.... frame, textured film, melting, light strobe
Broadcast Television: Snow, Emergency Broadcast tests, CRT flashes
Video Tape: FF/RW/Pause with lines
Digital: pixel breakups
Computer: blue screen of death, monitor testing
Internet: Page not found (google WMD)

And so on, please help me add to this list!

There will be snacks!

Whitney, my super awesome lady-companion in crime treated us to the Andrew Bird show last night at Southpaw. In short the show was amazing and wonderful. I realize this says little about the music, so here is the longer take:

Bird’s songs are richly layered compositions of violin plucking, bowing, xylophone, whistling, percussion, guitar and vocal. But on stage he was accompanied by a percussionist. Bird plays the rest of the music himself by creating loops of live music. Often he’ll start by plucking out a simple rhythm on violin, then as the measure loop back, he’ll add texture, counterpoint, harmony, until the constructed loop is rich and complex. Then he sings, whistles and plays guitar over the loop, and stopping the loop to change the tempo, only to resume with more energy. It has some of Philip Glass’ repetition, but

Add to this a strong, confident stage presence, beautiful and engaging voice, making his show the kind of show I hope I find when I’m 50 or 60. It is intelligent, well constructed, surprising music that I think exhibits how much rock music has/can evolve.

I often think of the challenge for contemporary classical music, and especially new composition. Increasingly I think it’s becoming a chamber discipline with few practitioners and few patrons, trapped in sea of atonal compositions hard to distinguish from one another. Meanwhile popular music continues to fragment and change in exciting ways. Movies are frequently scored by popular musicians, who deftly capture the moods of a%2

The future is now

917Press has admittedly become blogged down in political anxiety, so I thought it'd be good to report on the powers of good.

Earlier today I attended the NYU Presidential Service Awards, where SNEAC, student network exploring arts and culture were accepting an award for programing after their first year in existence. SNEAC was founded by friends Whitney, Sarah, Jude, David and Carol. Among other fun stuff, they hosted a screening of Chisholm '72, and send out a bi-weekly "Sneac recommends" listing.

Of interesting note, relative to the issue's treatment in mainstream news, students doing work with LGBT issues were strongly represented, perhaps this trend will carry out it and illuminate the troglodites that run public opinion now.

Lastly, Whitney brought home the Russian Futurists' "Our Thickness." I found the Russian Futurists (aka Matthew Adam Hart) on a couple blogs (see 4/6/05), as I did with Andrew Bird. The music is catchy, the lyrics subversively dark, good stuff all around.

A Papal Epiphany

I know today has been busy... but one last thought:

I've been thinking about all the interest in Pope speculation, especially among non practioners and unbelievers, and why it may be important for non-catholics to care about who the new Pope may be. With today's naming of Pope Benedict XVI, that importance came in sharp relief.

Besides International NGO's, Corporations, and elected officials in their native lands, Catholics in South America, Africa and Asia are also deeply impacted by the Pope, as that's where the church is growing. So if we're concerned about AIDs in Africa, we should be concerned about Pontiffs that refuse to encourage contraception, even as their new found congregations are dying of it....By "it" I mean AIDs, though the church isn't discouraging the myth that people are dying of contraception



PS. On a happier note we are totally digging Andrew Bird's "The Mysterious Production of Eggs" something we have recent experience pondering.