Heart on a Stick
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Sink or Swim (Deerhoof/Beirut/Apollo Sunshine, McCarren Park Pool)
posted 08/17/2006
Finally dragged my trunks to JELLYNYC’s series of free Sunday Pool Parties in McCarren Park – the reasons I’d missed the previous five (!) weeks are too numerous and pathetic to mention – and these shows really are a sort of gift. Though the people curating the shows have put together good to great line-ups, it doesn’t even really matter who’s playing. The important thing is the space: There are generous amounts of it, the whole dilapidated hole in the ground an open invitation to do what you will, while you’re there. Dodge balls, whiffle them, hula hoop. Dance. Tan. Eat, drink, slip, slide.
I saw a guy with a Mohawk playing hackey-sack. It’s a cross-cultural triumph! Or, at least, a Police Athletic League for hipsters.
Okay, maybe it was just someone who doesn’t know how to accessorize.
As a pool, I’m sure McCarren was awesome – Wikipedia says it was built to hold 6800 swimmers – but this series does more than merely make the best of a bad situation. As a concert venue, the sound is great; LiveNation (hosting its own series of overpriced indie shows on select nights) has – cost-saving measure or no – left its pro stage platform erected, poolside, and sightlines are great from wherever. As an exercise in community-building, it’s wonderfully laissez-faire; security inside is minimal, as is (Yeti mentioned this, somewhere) advertising. Considering these are free shows in NYC2006, that last point is remarkable; extra ups to the Jelly folk and their sponsors for not making the place look like Ricky-Bobby’s dream village.
They’ve got three shows left, and next week’s a good – though very different – one: Archie Bell’s headlining with Mighty Hannibal. If you want to know why you should know Archie Bell, ask The New York Dolls at their free show this Friday at the Seaport (or you can just look at Pitchfork).
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And man, the weather was lovely.
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Every time Massachusetts trio Apollo Sunshine (myspace) threatened to get too hippie-dippy for my taste – and the threats were constant – Sam Cohen would step back and just kill his guitar. Boy can play, and jumped from one of those hilarious double-necked retromonsters to a lapsteel to a, um, regular guitar. With strings, and shit. I’m getting technical, here. None of their songs grabbed me – the pop was a bit wan, and “Magnolia” got sugary (if you ever want to see me put a loaded gun in my mouth, throw some Grateful Dead on) – but the playing did. Liked them more when they settled into traditional bluesy stuff.
Bassist Jesse Gallagher, in the outdoor park spirit, tossed a basketball out to the crowd and made a hoop with his arms. Max claims to be one of the two people who sunk a shot; apparently you all owe him a beer.
- There are songs streaming at the band’s site
- Macktronic just posted a handful of mp3s.
- More at Hype Machine
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I liked headliners Deerhoof (myspace) much more than I thought I would; I’d actually planned to cut out early and catch Sasquatch and the Sick-a-Billys (myspace) at the Knitting Factory. Have never been able to listen to the hoofers’ recordings. Always thought they sounded like someone reciting the “Knights of Ni” sketch over some loud-soft-loud noise rock. “Eki eki eki p’tang z’boing...”Live, though, Satomi Matsuzaki’s vocals seemed less shrill. Sometimes they achieved a sort of charm, providing sing-songy wee-girl contrast to her boomboom bass; sometimes they just lost out to the noise. Drummer Greg Saunier, who has apologetic Scandinavian features and is roughly twice as tall as Matsuzaki, banged the shit out of his duct-taped baby drum kit. Guitarist John Dieterich seemed to be in his own little world. Which worked, rocked. It’s still not the sort of music I’m going to run home and wrap myself in, but I didn’t run away from it, here. I missed the start of the set, when the band came out and played with DJ ?uestlove (who was excellent, all day)... but stayed through the end.
You can go find more Deerhoof music at Hype Machine, but here:
Sasquatch’ll be back for the Drop Dead Fest. And if you’re in or near Asbury Park, NJ, they’ll be playing this year’s Jalopy Jump & Jive on 8/19.
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Why, why am I taunting you with unrelated twangy rockabilly goodness when all you want to read about is Beirut (myspace)? Why must you wait?
Because good things come to those who wait.
And no one’s waiting when it comes to Beirut.
Have I mentioned how much that new Hot Snakes CD rocks? What?
Oh, right, Beirut.
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I’ve purposely avoided the beiruthaha (ha, ha) over Zach Condon’s little project. His/their debut CD, Gulag Orchestra benefits from bunches of borrowed Balkan flavor, but there’s no crime in that. I’ve never understood the urge, though – and this applies to other groups (Calexico, Devotchka, Black Heart Procession, etc.) I’ve tried and failed to find interesting – to indie-down Latin and Roma music, to take such vibrant palettes and effectively mute them. Joy and anger are winnowed away; what’s left is solemn, mopey, dull. It’s like learning French because it’s the language of love, then mumbling it.
I dread the day indie discovers polka. It’ll have the Shmenges yawning into their cabbage rolls.
Condon certainly has talent. The kid was nineteen when he recorded Gulag, played bunches of instruments on it, has a beautiful, full balladeer’s voice. The album’s got a couple good cuts. The instrumental title track works as an effective album intro. “Postcards from Italy” is a pretty little thing. Most of the rest I find pretty meh. “After the Curtain” is pretty funny stuff, I’ll give you that. “Left, right, left, right.” Yeah, I love that song in “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” where they teach the wizard to walk, too.
That photo's from Beirut’s performance, this past Sunday. Condon’s the one on the left. He could learn a lot from the guy on the right, and I hope he does.
It was pretty funny, months back, when Beirut played their first big full-band live set ever to a packed main stage at the Knitting Factory. Not funny that the band’s performance was, by most reports, an unmitigated disaster. But funny that folks were scrambling over each other to see any band’s early live set, as if trying to qualify for a Scenester Merit Badge. Bands don’t spring fully-formed from the head of Zeus, nevermind twenty-year-old blog-proclaimed wünderkinder from New Mexico.
As Ms. Modern Age astutely pointed out, they’re like the indie Cobra Starship.
Three months later, now that the band has an exhaustive dozen (?) gigs under its belt, it was billed second in a free show at a venue that could hold somewhere north of 5500 people. It seemed a good opportunity – at least 5500+ people seemed to think so – to see if the band was ready.
[Left: The crowd before Apollo Sunshine. Right: The crowd before Beirut.]
The band’s performance said, “No, we’re not.”
It’s not Condon’s age. Dylan was nineteen when he came to New York and lied about coming from New Mexico. Conor Oberst’s been nineteen for a good ten years, now. Britney Spears was lip-synching for ten times as many people, before she was that old.
It’s not the age, it’s the act. The band – and there were eight? nine? of them, clustered center-stage in front of bunched-up mic stands, switching off on bari sax, clarinet, mandolin, bouzouki (or 12-string mandolin?), ukuleles, glockenspiel, violin, keys, accordion, cello, euphonium, trumpets, et ceteras – rarely found room to enjoy performing. They looked like they were thinking. It felt like they were thinking. Condon himself has all the stage presence of a piece of stray equipment; his voice warbled off-key, he cracked notes when he turned to his trumpet (and it’s debilitating when your frontman pulls away from the mic to suck face with a horn). There were moments something would spark, but the branches are green, the fire never caught.
I’m sure they were a bit scared. Why the hell wouldn’t they be?
This band will never have a month-long Pianos/Sin-é/Random Shithole residency, and they’re worse off for that. After the pool performance I thought: They’re not so bad they’re worth avoiding, they’re just not good enough to be considered an attraction.
But perhaps it’s the act and the attitude. Wes mentioned a recent New York profile of the singer, and reading it just now turned me purple. In it, Condon says:
“It all seems like style over substance. Gogol Bordello is a Balkan punk beat-box band – I don’t want to be a part of that. Half of what makes that band work is the fact that the singer dresses crazy.”
Not only a pathetically ignorant statement – the little boy who sits alone in his room writing songs as provocative as travel agency posters (Could Zach Condon be the 21st-century Martin Denny? Stay tuned.) assails a Chernobyl-survivor who uses music (and musicians) from his native country to craft work about the immigrant experience? – it reveals Condon’s intentions as a performer. I’ve always contrasted Beirut with the infinitely superior Gogol; one is mopey and withdrawn, the other exciting and involving. The accusation that Gogol’s Eugene Hutz is posturing, cartooning his own image is – like everything else that comes from Condon – nothing new, but completely misses the point. I don’t remember what Hutz & Co. were wearing at their show in April; I remember how insane their music made the crowd, how everyone was dancing, and laughing, and roaring. Here, this one goes out to Zach:
It’s ironic Beirut’s sucked up an immediately-devoted audience, because Condon’s got no idea what to do with them. His whole M.O. has been to deny the inherent exuberance in the communal music he’s co-opted; now he’s staring out at a community that deserves to be entertained.
Why doesn’t “Mount Wroclai” stretch out past its running time, out past the stage? Why aren’t they encouraging the crowd to howl along, why doesn’t it accelerate into a frenzy? The cover song they closed with, the triumphant “Siki Siki Ba Ba,” does work... and feels like a complete change of gear. That guy in the red shirt, up there (Paul Collins, perhaps?), did everything but pull out pom-poms to rouse the audience to action. But when you’ve been putting a crowd to sleep all set long, it takes more than one jump to shake the pins and needles off.
- Beirut – Mount Wroclai (Idle Days)(mp3)(buy)
- There’s another track on the band’s site
- Ryspace has MP3s from two previous NYC gigs at Bowery and Soundfix
- Bradley’s Almanac has MP3s from a show in Boston
- More on Hype Machine
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The times we blogged...
Everyone who wasn’t in Norway was there:
- Audelay
- Brooklyn Record
- Brooklyn Vegan - 1 2
- CMJ
- Ellen9
- Fiddle While You Burn
- Fists with Your Toes
- Kathryn Yu
- Merry Swankster
- Modern Age
- Music Slut
- My Brooklyn Year
- New York Times
- PaperMag Blog
- Phnotv
- Pop Tarts Suck Roasted
- Punk Guy
- Quick Brown Fox
Rob Lathan.com - Underrated
- Weary Medic
- Who’s Driving the Bus
- Wong Way
- More of my photos here.
- More of everyone else’s photos in this Flickr pool or in these Flickr clusters
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Did all this make you hungry? Of course it did. Please head over to The Record Robot where you can download MP3s of Vincent Price's guide to Austro-Hungarian Cuisine.
Remember: Paliscenta is a dish that spells "hospitality," and mushrooms are so emphatically something.
YES? YOU THERE IN THE BACK? (7)
2. mjrc left...
08/19/2006 3:24 pm :: http://lostinyourinbox.blog-city.com
for the life of me, i can't figure out why people feel compelled to compare
devotchka to gogol bordello. they simply don't play the same kind of music.
one is romantic, string-based and ballad-heavy, the other is a rollicking
punk band. yeah, they both have eastern-european roots, but to me they are
different animals.
3. Jen left...
08/19/2006 5:57 pm :: http://themusicslut.org
Great post. Glad you posted what Condon said in New York about Gogol and
the true nature of the group. I honestly think that they are a true
inspiration- the create music that is brilliant, fun and inspiring while at
the same time bringing cultures together for a good cause.
4. J____ left...
08/21/2006 1:08 pm :: http://heartonastick.blog-city.com/
Now, guys, don't encourage me.
5. mjrc left...
08/21/2006 3:04 pm :: http://lostinyourinbox.blog-city.com
well, that was my other question, have you ever seen them live. i hate to
be overly argumentative, but there is an intensity of emotion that grabs me
with them. it happens to be sorrow, or pain, or even heartsickness, but i
find it compelling. they're going to be at the spiegeltent on sept. 9th, i
believe. maybe you can see them and then get back to me!
6. Max Power left...
08/21/2006 8:04 pm
Great review, as usual. And yes, I DID sink that free-throw and will be
bragging about it in perpetuity. It was an interactive concert moment
rivaled only by Andrew Bird acknowledging my "Will there be snacks?" query
at Bonnaroo with "There WILL be snacks" (and later honoring the request).
Yep, these are the things that keep me off the streets.
7. Dogs Must Be Carried left...
08/25/2006 2:14 pm
Indie already discovered polka...20 years ago!