I know this overblown mess is careening toward another horrid conclusion where everything's made better by, like, wishing or Fate or a kiss or something similarly retarded.  And we're already waist-deep in ridiculous:  Did we really just spend one fourth of that episode watching people stare into their laptops?  And all this Rose Tyler stuff without actually giving her anything to do, or any reason to be around?  (Not that anyone had anything to do.  They were all staring into their laptops.)  And and and?

But Jesus you know how to get us to tune in next week.  Fucker.

(People watching the U.S. schedule, just ignore all this.  You'll get excited/frustrated soon enough.)

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*

Tina looks great.  Chris looks like Bill Clinton.  TTC's DJ looks like he popped out two generations after this band first played.  TTC's guitarist looks like a DJ.  Mystic Bowie's pants look like they're carpet remnants from KidZone.  Mystic Bowie looks like he does 1,000 push-ups a day.  Mystic Bowie chucked ads for himself into the audience at the end of the set.

It's a lot of fun saying "Mystic Bowie."  It is probably a lot of fun being Mystic Bowie.

I haven't heard that first Tom Tom Club record in over a decade, though you never stop hearing "Genius of Love."  "Wordy Rappington" was livened up by trade-offs between bongos and DJ Grandkid.  We got covers of Hot Chocolate ("You Sexy Thing") and Al Green ("Take Me to the River").  Mystic Bowie can't hit Reverend Al's high notes, but then few can.

PA system played Modern Lovers while TTC's gear was getting packed.  Ooooo, so close to being a reunion of The Heads.

*

Some folks are really into Devo.  Which is cool, because it's not.  (I'm not -- cool, or really into Devo.  A friend had a +1.)  Luckily, the cats (or, okay, subhumanoids, or whatever) in Devo (myspace) are still really into Devo, too, tearing through coveralls and ripping apart guitar strings and proudly modeling kneepads.

Early on, Mark Mothersbaugh tossed out a few of the band's iconic red conical crowns.  One bounced off several sets of outstretched hands and landed on the ground between two people near me.  Both reached down to pick it up; they came up holding a clear plastic cup.  Devo, where art-punk meets magic.

Also there:  Best Week Ever, Brooklyn Vegan, Flaming Pablum, Kevchino, Merry Swankster, Moneyries, nyctaper, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Sky Report, Twang of the Void, The Vault of Buncheness

"Uncontrollable Urge" is just an awesome song.  And so it goes into the new single-minded muxtape along with LCD Soundsystem, Usher, Cyndi Lauper, The Pogues, The Golden Dogs, Matt & Kim, Jimmy Strange, Busta Rhymes, YYYs, Local H, and a certain over-vigilant purple dude.

Don't you hate those lame-ass mixes where some dude obviously just searched iTunes with a keyword and schlumped a bunch of tracks together based on their titles?  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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"The Arcade Fire must be a pretty great band. Because there's been an awful lot of awful writing about it.  I'm not being sarcastic. Or superior: I've contributed to the cause, and it looks like I'm about to do so again."  - Some dumb motherfucker on the Internet, 2-18-07

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Photos from the 26th Annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade:

• Page 1 (Favorites)
• Page 2 (Kids)
• Page 3
• Page 4
• Page 5 (NSFWish)
• 2007 Mermaid Parade Pics
• 2006 Mermaid Parade Pics
• 2005 Mermaid Parade Pics
• Others' pics from this year via Flickr and the Coney Island Message Board

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• Vogue (Coney Island Mermaid Parade 2008, Page 1)

Hey!  This is a family show!

2008 Coney Island Mermaid Parade pics to come.  Jeez, people are so fast.

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[The Shangri-Las, "Past, Present and Future" (Fan Video)]

"I used to sing..."

The Shangri-Las weren't an amazing singing group, technically.  Today their voices would probably get tweaked up and rounded out in the studio, which is a shame because you shouldn't fuck with perfection.  When I saw Mary Weiss perform last year, she sounded fuller and more exact than she had on either the old ‘Las recordings or on her new disc; Weiss mentioned that having monitors on the stage was a luxury she wasn't used to.

Your voice sounds different in your own head, buried in a pillow, behind a door you've just slammed shut.

What made the Queens quartet click was their acting ability.  Working at a label owned by Lieber & Stoller, guided by writer-producer George "Shadow" Morton, they had a great sound and great scripts from which to work.  Their catalog goes much, much deeper than the A's everyone knows - "Leader of the Pack," "(Remember) Walkin' in the Sand," "Out in the Streets."  "Train from Kansas City" was an Ellie Greenwich/Jeff Barry-penned B-side!  (Surely you own the compilation Myrmidons of Melodrama.  You don't?  You must.)

The Goodies - Sophisticated Boom Boom (mp3) (buy)

The Shangri-Las - Sophisticated Boom Boom (mp3) (buy)

This secondhand B is one of the greatest songs ever smacked on wax and if you don't think so then hmmmmph.  According to the book that comes with One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found, Lon Guyland gal gang The Goodies were Morton's first choice for "Leader of the Pack" because he wanted to get in lead singer Maureen Reilling's pants; "Boom" and its A-side ("The Dum Dum Ditty," which Weiss & Co. would also cover) were a consolation offering.

If you're not paying attention, sure, square, those're exactly the same.  (The re-deaux has a bass strung slack and that weird nose trumpet (?) solo.  Whatever.)  Same director, same direction.  But the ‘Las version is one thousand times better, and not just ‘cause I say so.  This is why casting matters.  Exhibit A is substandard sorority house talent show-level play-acting - those might as well be The Pipettes.  Reilling can't go anywhere but through the motions, and you're gonna follow her lead?  When Weiss enters the room she brings her bad girl starpower - which gives the hilarious mock-belle accent context - but she also brings hips and swagger.  Of course the band's at attention!  It has nothing to do with hitting the right notes, and everything to do with hitting the right notes.  Dig?  Boom, boom.

That's not very sophisticated!  And it's a lot lighter than the usual ‘Las fare.  Perhaps this offers a more eloquent compare/contrast:

Shadow Morton - Dressed in Black (demo)(mp3) (buy)

The Shangri-Las - Dressed in Black (mp3) (buy)

The Nu-Luvs - So Soft, So Warm (mp3) (buy)

The Pussycats - Dressed in Black (mp3) (buy)

(The Morton demo is an (circle one) interesting/embarrassing curiosity - like watching Scorsese go "You talkin' to me?" in front of a mirror.)

The three official versions of this record, as far as I can tell, were all released in 1966.  Someone loved this song and wasn't willing to let it go.  Its cryptic post-romance petulance, the way the narrator shrouds her man in mystical terms - break-up as death - makes it  perfect Shangs fodder and they moaned it first, as a B-side to "He Cried."  Morton quickly turned it around, flipped it over for The Nu-Luvs, rechristening their A-side "So Soft, So Warm."  The Pussycats version stayed in the family*, on top of the record.

You just heard Weiss acting out in "Sophisticated," so it's clear she's underplaying her "Black" monologues.  It creates a bigger contrast between the sulky exposition, the choral affirmation, the comfort of the memory.  Their version - and the "but now he's gones" are totally flat! - is best, brilliant.  Two very rich particulars:  The way Mary monotones "This girl's love is getting stronger with each passing day" is totally unconvincing.  It's a pledge, it's self-delusion.  Her parents were right!  She keeps mumbling as the chorus swells.  Then, though Weiss booms the first chorus on her own, in this second one she comes in late, joining and soaring over the group on "I live on just a memory..."  This is our stubborn dissociative conclusion.  As her back-ups' vocals go sour, it's clear our girl will go on resenting reality, existing in the what-will-never.

The subsequent singles are sung better, don't work as well.  The Nu-Luvs come in as a group from the start, which seems like a bad idea (especially on lines like "we're so much in love"); it forces the narrator to establish herself at the first monologue, robs her of her initial solitude.  Theirs has a sweeter center, more obviousness, like that outré "No no no no..." flourish.  The Pussycats have a sharper, full-chested, traditional sound.

But these things live and die with the monologues, the best actress makes the best choice.  Look on each ending as a matter of taste.  The Pussycats' narrator sobs over "no one can hear me cry," the Nu-Luvs' goes catatonic and repetitive.  Do you prefer your narrator who can't control herself?  Or one like Weiss, who matter-of-factly shuts you out?

Every moment has meaning in these songs.  You cannot possibly over-analyze them.  We're living in the heightened hormonal reality of a teenager, and Morton and the Shangri-Las realized it better than any amped emo anthem or lo-fi blow-out ever could.

(And yeah, that echoey wood block knocking drives me nuts.)

Which brings us to the fan video at the top, which I find captivating.  "Past, Present and Future" - this was a charting single! - is this genius, bizarre, picked scab of a... song?  Is it a song?  It's a monologue over the Moonlight Sonata, it's all talk and background music.  It's a soap opera and a perfume commercial and a LiveJournal entry. 

Critics clue in on the song's post-traumatic vibe and its strongest lines ("But don't try to touch me.  Don't try to touch me.  Because that will never happen again.") and figure the narrator to be the survivor of a sexual assault.  Weiss says that never occurred to her; in this universe, every broken date is a fatality, so "touching" the narrator might simply involve rousing her from an emotional coma.

People weren't rushing to reproduce this one - the only cover AllMusicGuide lists came in 2004, from ABBA's Agneta Fältskog (it's neither pop nor Bergman) - and I don't think I'd ever ever ever want to see this in concert.  But "Past" is perfect for the Internet, even though its wounded restraint seems antithetical to the divulgey oversharers online.  The narrator is approachable yet distant, present but locked in her own skull.  She will dance with you as long as there is never any contact.

[Mary Weiss (myspace) - no longer a teenager, and therefore free to enjoy herself - will be doing a free show at the South Street Seaport on Friday, July 18th with Novellas (ex-Dansettes, myspace) and The Lost Crusaders (myspace).]

* If you want technical stuff from the labels:  The song was written by Morton, V. Gorman, and Tony Michaels.  The Las' Redbird 45, a "Kama-Sutra Production," credits Morton as producer and Artie Butler as arranger.  The N-L's Mercury 45, a "Phantom Product," credits Morton and Michaels as co-producers and arrangers.  The ‘cats Columbia 45, again "Kama-Sutra," has Michaels as sole producer and Butler as arranger and conductor.

*

Speaking of free stuff, crews have been setting up the stage for tonight's Met Opera perf in Prospect Park for half a week, now.  Much bigger rig than years past, with video screens and whatnot; apparently they're busing folks in for this one.

The other night, when testing the speakers, the crew was playing AC/DC.

*

Man Man Man:  "We need Matt Damon in this band. I think it's going to save us."

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Happy 50th, dingus.

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["Delhi Wall" by Tod A.  "Clown Graffiti" (Franklin St. in Greenpoint, Brooklyn) by d.billy. (via)]

Firewater (myspace) released a fine record last month, though all your favorite new media outlets were too busy suckling at Scarlett Johansson's massive PR teat to notice.

The collective helmed by singer-guitarist Tod A. has been dealing in Waitsian carny cabaret and world musics since long before the current round of indie indulgences, and it doesn't have to resort to rummaging through record collections and staring at postcards.  Firewater has shared members with Balkan Beat Box and Gogol Bordello; the group fielded on this tour includes a French drummer, a Swiss guitarist, Brit dhol player Johnny Kalsi, and, from "Tel Aviv by way of New Jersey," trombonist Reut Regev.  The Golden Hour, their first new disc in four years, includes recordings of performers met during travels through South Asia and the Middle East.

They're not cuddly enough to get a shout-out from David Byrne.

Firewater - Some Kind of Kindness (mp3) (buy)

Firewater - 6:45 (So This is How it Feels)(mp3) (buy)

These two songs appear back-to-back on Hour - odd, because I think they're basically the same tune reworked with different textures and attitudes:  "Kindness'" vigorous gypsy rumba(*) and kicked-up backbeat make the best of a bad situation; "6:45's" beachside samba repaints paradise as a personal hell.  But they help highlight what works on the record as well as raise a couple of questions.

That the same song can function so well twice in a row shows how capably the band incorporates sounds and styles.  Balkan, Middle Eastern, and Caribbean flavors intermingle in a very fluid way, but it's very much a Western rock album ("Three-Legged Dog" steals some "ooos" from "Sympathy for the Devil;" "Borneo" quotes the Pixies).  The band's lax last effort, The Man on the Burning Tightrope, was too complacent inside its circus tent.  This album was built on the lam and never feels lost.  Wherever it goes, there it is.

A. can be a fantastic songwriter and he writes perfectly for his own voice.  Well-turned phrases and an evocative vocab, when coupled his slurred, world-weary growl, come off as more than bored wordplay.  There's character, here.  The hopelessly frustrated malcontent, the overeducated underdog.  You don't resent the vagabond who occasionally takes refuge in elegant locution.

(He has affectations.  He enjoys similes.  And that lovely "sleeping down under the overpass, dreaming that our dreams have come true" is part of an ongoing series of netherdirectional maneuvers:  Elsewhere on Hour he sings, "I've been down so long that coming up is giving me the bends;" one older work contains the song "Woke Up Down," another the line "going down like a pederast at a boy's school.")

Hour indulges in some obvious political smack - two separate songs bash Bush as both baboon ("got a monkey for a president") and buffoon ("Hey Clown" flips "Those Were the Days My Friend:" "We had it all and then you threw it all away/Hey, clown/You turned our happy upside-down") - but the personal stuff's got punch.  The last resort described in "6:45" is so horribly beautiful.  A vivid skysplash melts morbidly ("the sun has cut the sky and the clouds are still bleeding"), the entertainment is torture ("the band's on fire - it's a pyre and the bodies are burning"), beautiful women only remind you of your broken heart ("she's just the end of a melody that sings to me of you").  You can't run from your memories.  Wherever you go, there they are.  "So this is how it feels to crawl out from the accident and die beneath your wheels."

Easy to see A.'s extended escape - before an overland trek from Delhi to the Afghan border and a jump to Istanbul, there were stints as a teacher in Thailand and a "professional plagiarist" in Calcutta - as domestic despair (a marriage meltdown, the 2004 presidential election, the ongoing yuppification of New York) playing dress-up in worldly concerns.  That's a good thing - anything that gets you out of your house, right? - and there's no attempt on Golden Hour to gloss over the idea that he's running-from more than going-to.  But there are self-righteous motivational burps in the promo material that waft a stink of false empathy over the writing.

At the start of this self-described "infomercial" (put together before Golden Hour had a distributor), A. tosses off stuff like "I kind of wanted to go see the places [America] was bombing" and "in a way this record is a document of my attempt to gain understanding about what my country was doing."  It isn't until four minutes in that we hear he never actually, y'know, made it into Afghanistan or Iraq (though measure of America's influence and reaction to same can certainly be found all over).  The images - helping a stuck car, shaking hands, doing something vaguely votive-looking at something temple-ish - are clumsily chosen if not completely contrived.  And his "Minority" t-shirt makes you want to punch him in the face

So yeah, don't watch that.

Problem is that A. primarily writes in the first person, singular and plural, and the vid above - along with inclusion on the album by random, seemingly meaningless snippets of captured dialogue - implies a noble eye-opening agenda, like this Firewater record might give voice to otherwise unheard victims of our foreign policy.  Extremely iffy when your narrator's smearing out stuff in "Kindness" like "we're so dirty" and comparing his comrades to "sick monkeys in a zoo."

Always best to let folks speak for themselves.  And one of the things that makes it possible to push past presumptions of pretense is the robust party music provided by, among others, musicians A. hired along his trek.  The other is that A.'s oeuvre is well-established.  If it's not enough that the album's structured as a round trip, his voice is distinctive enough that it's hard to think his songs are from anyone's point of view but his own or that of his usual cast of hard-luck itinerants.  Early track "This is My Life" has the former Cop Shoot Cop member singing "I've never cared for authority."  Okay, duh.  I'm over being overconcerned.

*

(If this widget still works, you can stream all of Golden Hour before buying it.  If it doesn't, admire the pleasing colors.)

href="http://www.reverbnation.com/main/widgets_overview" mce_href="http://www.reverbnation.com/main/widgets_overview" >

("Borneo" is available as a free download at Amazon.  Which is something I've not noticed before.)

*

"This song was written on the border of India and Paki... oh, I'll just shut up."

Firewater's a better live band when the center shifts.

A.'s:  Gangling, craggy, amiable.  Looks like he might live off bummed smokes.  Pinstriped slacks and a black t-shirt with Japanese (?) writing and the stitching on the outside.  (On Saturday.  Monday it was orange and read "SUPER FUNK 69.")  Wheat-colored thatch styled by static electricity.  This set has a couple theatrical moves - there's a spread-armed evangelist bit where "rise up" fingers flirt with hassapiko; "Already Gone" has roller coaster screams written into the lyrics - but he slacks through them enough to inoculate himself from the threat of dramatis personae.

He begged the Southpaw techs to kill the twin spotlights trained on him.  "I don't mean to be a dick about this," he said, "but it's like being a mineral collection."

Given the chance, he happily ceded the floor to either Kalsi or Regev.  The former made the instrumental "Bangra Bros." the highlight of Friday's performance, jumping around behind his dhol, whomping its short side with a long stick and its broad side with something that looked like a leafy crowbar, leading the audience in a bit of call-and-response applause.  The latter's slide work - she switched briefly to "flugabone" and again to an adorable Lilliputian trombone, and had a second effects microphone set up for echoey psychedelic asides - was pulled out as the go-to jam, and for the most part she was amazing.  (At Sunday night's show it seemed like every song had a trombone solo, and every song certainly didn't need a trombone solo.)

It's got to be tough deciding what sort of band to bring along.  There's such a variety of instrumentation on Firewater's records they could either bus along a sprawling selection of role players or distract the audience with a shifting squad of multi-instrumentalists.  "Already Gone," for instance, starts with a jumpy, vaudevillish (**) banjo and - after the occasional brass band blast - morphs neatly into ska, the banjo slurs to something vaguely Oud-like.  Budgetary and sanity considerations helped, I'm sure, in paring it down to a very full-sounding sextet, stocked with musicians like Regev who can seamlessly shift tones and genres between breaths. 

But they also limited the set list to the new material, a shame given these were the band's first shows in its hometown in four years... and the first times I've seen them.  Even with two encores at Southpaw, they only played three older songs ("Some Strange Reaction," "Dark Days Indeed," and another I didn't recognize).  Their fans were game and danced throughout - even calling out requests for new songs - but I really would have liked to hear something from my favorite Firewater record.

Firewater - Another Perfect Catastrophe (mp3)(buy)

1998's The Ponzi Scheme - full of surf-and-spy twang, reeds and strings, expressive keyboard riffs - struck me as the soundtrack to a potential Dennis Potter-style project.  Storywise I suppose it spends more time mired in motivation - Hour's opens with its F.U.-I'm-outta-here, Ponzi's hobo call ("So Long, Superman") comes in its last quarter - but the writing's still sweet:

No plans

I'll go where the machine goes

The past is a placebo

Dissolving in a drain

I sleep beside the railroad tracks

With no rent or income tax

I've got no fixed address now

Waiting for a train

I've always pictured "Catastrophe" - "the floor turns into wall and then the wall becomes the ceiling" (suck on that, Ty Pennington) - as a bar brawl staged at some dockside underworld bar.  The calculated approach of the guitar line, the thuggish pair of saxes.  From the shadows, the Slavic fiddle and sly Asian piano, hints of foreign intrigue. 

It lacks the depths (and possible responsibilities - another monkey in another zoo, here) of Hour, but it's a glorious, stylized fiction.

*

Monday's Bowery show felt tired - maybe it was the near-identical set list, maybe I was just tired, maybe it's that first opener DJ Boro seemed to spin long past his time - and suffered through a host of technical difficulties.  (During a stretch of dead time, someone in the crowd asked a very good question of the bandleader:  "Don't you have any interesting travel stories?"  I mean, seriously.)

But it was more than worth it to see Skeleton Key.  I'd never heard of them before, shame on me, and you have to love a band whose myspace blurb reads "You still exist?"  Led by Firewater's touring bassist and former Lounge Lizard Erik Sanko, the sludgy band had a Grammy-nominated (for packaging) major label record in the late ‘90s, released a full-length follow-up five years later on Mike Patton's Ipecac label, dropped a few scattered EPs.  Not a high-output group.  But they've got one of the most dynamic percussion sections I've ever seen.

There's a band member whose job is just to wail on junk.  Actual junk.

It's more controlled than that sounds.  It sounds like this:

Skeleton Key - The Barker of the Dupes (mp3) (buy)

Piles of discarded metal - propane tanks, garbage pails, what had you - are sometimes played for tone, like a roadkill marimba, sometimes for crunch.  The drummer has a piece of old ductwork mounted into his standard kit, and sometimes pauses to whip a piece of plastic tubing around in the air, but the real dirty work's done by brutish showman Benjamin Clapp.  He chucks broken cymbals up into the air and slugs them on their way down.  He has the worlds most dangerous tambourine:   A rectangular frame, I'm guessing 36" x 24", with CIRCULAR SAW BLADES strung on it.  How he doesn't injure himself or his co-workers I'm not sure, but no one tell OSHA because the dude's fucking amazing.

Kalsi started watching from the band from the side of the stage, then crept out to watch from the main floor.  Maybe for safety's sake, maybe to get a better view of the awesome.

Skeleton Key - Roses (mp3) (buy)

The tunes are good, too.  "Roses," from SK's 2005 EP The Lyons Quintette, provided a natural, incredible climax.  A sad, quiet thing you just know will have the shit kicked from it by song's end, Clapp disappeared at its start.  The trombone solo midway through - the instrument had a spotlight strapped to it, so I couldn't make out who was playing - came from the Bowery's balcony.  When time came to get loud, Clapp was back up there, down on his hands and knees, pummeling at scrap with an honest-to-God hammer.  And it was never less than musical.

If you see these guys on a bill, any bill, go to that show.

*

Cordero (myspace) opened the Southpaw bill.  I'd heard good things?  Maybe I'd heard about someone else and gotten confused?  The Spanish-singing Brooklyn band has a too-timid singer (the most interesting thing about her was her outfit; the sleeves seemed to be vomiting feathers) and a drummer who thinks he's funny.  Tolerable.  Good background music for an outdoor summer conversation about anything unrelated.

*

Also there:

At Bowery:  Flaming Pabulum, Insky's Photos (pics)

At Southpaw:  En/Gender, A Report on the Next Clues (en Francais)

NPR's World Café Live will be broadcasting an appearance on June 18th.

*

New all-chick mux.  This one's got:  Artificial Joy Club, Wanda Jackson, Kelly Pickler, Miranda Lambert,  The Dollyrots, X-Ray Spex, Leslie Gore, Skunk Anansie, Dixie Chicks, The Gits, Neko Case, and Christina Aguilera.

(*)  I need a course in Latin rhythms.  This isn't technically a rumba, I don't think.  But it's such an expressive word.  Rummmmmba.

(**)  Obviously, by this point, I have no idea what I'm talking about.  Per the usual.

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Ranking American Idol contestants might exit with Soundscan expectations, but I'd imagine few viewers look out for post-show artistic success.  Idol as talent search is about the search.  It's a program about judgment, it's not about results.  It has manufactured three undeniable stars:  Simon, Paula, Randy.

Idol has had musical success stories, sure, at least three big ones (Clarkson, Underwood, Daughtry).  Even with its recent ratings slide it's still the highest-rated television program in the country, the biggest marketing platform you could get.  I would guess the show's sold a few Ford hybrids, too.  But reaching beyond whatever remnants of the fanatical texting populace remain after the finale, reaching people who actually listen to music to listen to music, not to judge and root, that's a whole new competition.

There was no reason to think Kellie Pickler (myspace) - sixth place on Season Five, if you're counting - would record anything worth hearing.  Or record at all.  Cast as an exaggerated (but winning (or at least, placing)) dumb blonde hick, Pickler was more grin than voice.  She seemed destined for the role of TV Personality.  Morning talk show correspondent.  Something like that.

Her 2006 record Small Town Girl went gold, landed at #9 on the Billboard 200 and topped the magazine's country chart.  Oh, and:  There's some seriously good stuff on it.  All three of the record's singles, two of which were co-written by Pickler, move differently.  "Red High Heels" sasses, struts.  "Things That Never Cross a Man's Mind" smirks, drives.  And "I Wonder" digs in and breaks your heart.

Have a hanky handy:

Perhaps it's because she's an Idol alum, one who very consciously developed a personality to act out, one who returned to the show with a very surgical makeover... that any hint of truth from her proves so affecting.  Especially when she works in a genre that loves to profess authenticity as a requirement, package it as a selling point.  She's introduced here as a "small town girl made good" who's "singing her story straight from the heart."  Go on, pull the other one.

But while Pickler's life and manner might have been mined for yuks on Idol - She was a roller skating waitress!  She can't pronounce "calamari!" -she's had enough knocks to make at least a couple good country songs.  This one's for her mother, who at eighteen abandoned her two-year-old girl.  (Kellie was raised in a small town in North Carolina by grandparents.  Her father's an ex-con; that song'll come later, I guess.)

The songs are good because the songs are good (and this one was written by Pickler and three other people).  I like the recorded versions just fine, but I've really responded to the live performances (like that unplugged, charming version of "Man's Mind").  Which isn't surprising.  The assumption is that these reality contestants have their vocals tweaked into place during production, so the singing's where it should be on record.  But Pickler's a personality, not a voice.  She came from TV, so of course YouTube>mp3.

This performance at the 2007 CMAs is amazing.  Not technically.  She's still stylistically erratic.  Even her accent seems a smidge fake.  But it's not (despite a brush with questionable choreography and that oddly unused earpiece) overworked or oversold.  Just as the song is direct and meaningful but restrained at the right moments (that dangling thought about forgiveness is a killer).  When the tears come (hers and mine) I do not feel manipulated at all.  There is a greatness as Pickler struggles to regain her poise, just as she might if talking to her mother, and as the crowd roars to support her.

This is A Moment, it can only exist with this song and this singer at this venue.  Because "I Wonder" uses geography to represent places in Pickler's life:  Carolina is where she was left behind and brought up; California is where she thinks her mother's supposedly run off to (the line "I hear the weather's nice in California, there's sunny skies as far as I can see" seems like a flub - the second "I" should be a "you," right? - but works as an economically conveyed fantasy reunion), and Tennessee is where Pickler's headed to make her life.  It's a song about growing up and leaving things behind and Pickler here - here, on stage in Nashville, Tennessee - sings a daughter's pain as a grown woman.

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There's a new Solomon Burke (myspace) record, and... a lot of it's pretty bad.  Not the singing, of course, that couldn't be.  But the tone on Like a Fire's set by its title track; written by Eric Clapton, it's the sort of gruel Clapton's been ladling out for years.  You can stream the whole thing at AOL.  I dare you to ask for seconds.

This track, though, is devastating.  I'm not going to want to talk about it when it's over.

Solomon Burke - The Fall (mp3) (buy)

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Jewel - no, seriously - reeks of authenticity envy, spends a lot of her critiquing time making sure contestants know just how many times (a billion, usually) she's done what they're trying to do, been where they be is.  And she doesn't even use the word "dawg!"

(She slept in a car, people.  She slept in a car in Alaska and then yodeled her way into our hearts and minds and on to VH-1.)

The judges, so far, have both been better than Idol's in that they were generally coherent and constructive, and worse in that they didn't fall into the standard reality competition triumvirate (hard-ass/soft shoulder/swing man) so you don't know what role each is there to play.  There was a hilarious taped moment from the auditions - the show jumped right into its Top Twelve, one of whom was discarded by the judges at the end of tonight's ep (this abbreviated schedule only serves to emphasize disposability) - when judge John Rich (of Big &) pulled out a guitar, started playing, and told a contestant something like, "Do you know this one?  Try this one."  Oh no the judges have brought instruments.

(There's some upcoming confusion wherein the contestants will be divided into three teams - Men, Women, and Ladyboys Groups - and the judges will also be coaches.  Whatever.)

Taylor Swift, who I'll say I like because everyone says I must, performed.  And then was judged!  Was judged to be excellent!  Awkward.  One of the judges said she "maximized our brand potential."  Or something like that.

(The third judge is Jeffrey Steele, who was apparently in a band called "Boy Howdy," and who has some serious bone structure going on.)

No Brits or Aussies or people who're otherwise ferrin, ‘cause this is country.  There was an African-American dude (who nervously, messily overworked his song's melody and was subsequently overpraised).  And two of the eleven remaining contestants have connections to the military.  Which is nice, because it reminds everyone that we're still at war.  But isn't so nice because it inevitably factors into the competition.  What, you're going to vote the dude in the navy off the show and send him back to Iraq?

Two acts I liked.  Melissa Lawson got an unfortunate clip package wherein the emphasis was all about how she's a big girl, "not a size six," not a wee hot blonde thing.  Like Jewel!  But all the UGoGirl stuff was unnecessary b/c she's got a big voice.  She harps hard on the sass - she sang "Let's Give Them Something to Talk About" - but had fun and has a more powerful instrument than any of the others.  And Laura & Sophie are lifelong best friends who are 16 & 18 (those must have been two very lonely years for one of them) and never spend any time apart and never do anything but sing together.  Creepy!  But, other than some flubbed high notes at the end, their "Stand by Your Man" was pretty awesomely harmonized.  Also, xx Tammy Wynette.

In conclusion:  It's kind of hot outside, folks.

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I had wondered where Eli "Paperboy" Reed's old-school soul (myspace) might land him.  Since that Union Hall show he's had New York dates at Irving Plaza opening for an emo act (btw In Defense of the Genre is probably the worst album title I've ever heard EVER), a record-release party at hoity-toity Joe's Pub, and now this here cost-nothin' Big Apple BBQ appearance.  A properly egalitarian itinerary, good for the places where he's found and the folks who find him there.

Sandwiched between a passable local comic country act and distinguished Canadian twangers The Sadies, it might have been too hot for Reed and his True Loves to go *splat* the way they can, but they made people very happy nonetheless.

It would be nice if he got out from behind that guitar more often, and the band should wear suits.  But it was hot.  And it's not like I'm going to dress up, even under the best of circumstances.  And "Take My Love with You" is just a killer tune, no matter what it's wearing.

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The Crooners (myspace) were having a blast just off the park in the "Bourbon Bar."  I haven't taken any band pics for a while; the close quarters - the trio was doing the bluegrass thing, huddled around a single mic - and their energy made snapping fun.  Though, as usual, the "fun" photos all wound up blurry.  These make 'em look more serious then they was.  But I really like the one above.

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Alex Battles & The Whisky Rebellion (myspace) has a guy who plays a washboard/coffee can/cowbell (with photo of Christopher Walken!)/mini cymbal/desk bell with whisks.  (They're whisky, yuk-yuk.)

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No, I didn't eat anything.  Whoever made up the entry banner - "Welcome ‘Cue Lovers" - had obvs grabbed the wrong homophone.

I left before The Sadies because of the time and the weather.  God punished me by striking the F train down with a power outage, and by letting the MTA be its usual uncommunicative disaster.  At one point, it seemed like they were telling people looking to go south of 2nd Avenue to take the D train all the way out to Coney Island to catch a Manhattan-bound F.  At Jay Street, I found people who had been waiting thirty minutes for a train they hadn't yet been told wasn't running.  Took three hours, three trains and a bus (ugh) to get home.

For all the bitching about the heat, this weekend wasn't that bad.  Hot, sure.  But the humidity was tolerable and the air kept moving.  Got warm early - it's not even summer, yet - but this isn't emotionally scarring three-showers-a-day stuff.

I wrote that last paragraph while sitting four and a half feet from a busy air conditioning unit.

More pictures at Flickr and Vegan

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Well put, Hill.  Here's hoping John McCain has similarly wonderful stuff scattered throughout his concession speech.

But this line...  "If we could blast fifty women into space, we will someday launch a woman into the White House."  Um, *splat*?  Not exactly the visual you want to promote... unless you're promoting Wipeout, ABC's Made-in-the-USA retooling of the awesomely awesome Japanese masochism exhibition Most Extreme Elimination Challenge.  Wipeout, coming June 24th!

(Also, I think the line would have sounded better had "If we could blast fifty women into space" been followed by "Why not all of ‘em?"  But that would be a whole ‘nother reality program.  Plus, yeah, misogyny is so 20th century.)

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- Kenai Fjord National Park, Alaska, 6/30/04 

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 - Kenai Fjord National Park, Alaska, 6/30/04

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I must really hate the Lakers.

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(photo via Enrico Maioli's Flickr)

Well, you're right, and there are some very good reasons.

It's a whole form that can seem devoted to indulgence, its musical joys expressed as an inside joke, its communication plagued by opaque melodies and obsessive, intellectualized technique.  Or:  If there aren't enough indulgences and difficult corners, it melts into dinner music.  It can seem either all big words or prune juice, and how embarrassing would it be to find yourself enjoying the wrong thing?  Yes, you're right, jazz can be scary.

(I had a friend tell me that all jazz piano made him think he was trolleying over to The Land of Make-Believe.  When I asked if that was such a bad thing, he meow meow meow convincemeowed meow meow meow.)

Esperanza Spalding (myspace) is pretty terrifying herself, at least on paper.  The Oregon-born singer-bassist's bio begins all "wrong side of the tracks" and "economically adverse circumstances."  Moves-thru: Home-schooled, self-taught, multi-lingual. GED and university at 16, BA in three years, college faculty member at 20.  Time spent as a band mate and/or session player with the likes of Pat Metheny and Michel Camilo.  She's 23, now, just released an acclaimed second CD, Esperanza,  and seriously, she wins, you lose, you're never going to catch up.

So sit back, engage and enjoy.

Spalding - who writes or co-writes much of her own music - makes very active, very accessible, stuff.  Nothing to be afraid off.  Its ideas of fusion don't feel obtuse.  Her charisma pushes her from precocious to playful.  There's the odd shrill tweet, some stretches of noodley meltdown.  But those who fear the giant J-word should take comfort in her serious crossover potential.  (Spalding is one of the performers (others include Gnarls Barkley, Deerhoof, and Santogold) at the Roots-curated fest this weekend in Philadelphia.)

For instance, the affirmative "Fall In," which she performed last night on Letterman, should settle in nicely next to Alicia Keys on the R&B charts.

About as straightforward as you can get, that sunny voice can sell.  But what I like about Spalding is that she can produce a variety without losing identity or feeling like a Nellie McKayish novelty.  Her inclination toward Latin Jazz always helps, because that stuff never carries an air of exclusivity about it.

Esperanza Spalding - Perazuán (mp3) (buy)

Another legitimate argument against jazz is that it's so of-the-moment that a performance errs toward instant obsolescence.  There are instances worth capturing, but a lot of it's just wasted time.  And I'd never dispute there isn't tons of chaff, and I don't like chaff, I don't need more music these days.  It's one of the reasons I've never listened to tons of jazz, the way aficionados do.  But I don't think there's a better music to illuminate every passing timepoint's potential.  It's not about isolating specific occurring facts, but about electrifying possibilities.

"Perazuán" is from her first album, Junjo, and it's short and airy and smart and lovely.  Her click-scat's not as gutsy as an Ella or as annoying as a McFerrin.  Spalding and her melody here are like a cat and a string.  They're both present throughout, but what we hear is the action, the pounce and paw and sway.

Esperanza Spalding - I Adore You (mp3) (buy)

From the new record.  Full-bodied, Brazilian flavored (something about the basic melody, maybe just the childlike la-la-la-la-ley anchor, reminds me of older Caetano Veloso).  It's seven and a half minutes and - other than that uninteresting piano aside around the 2:45 mark - keeps finding reasons to go on, directions to go in.  Every time it threatens to go unmoored something holds it down.  I don't think you'd even notice how rhythmically insane everything is but for the brief respites where the piano reigns itself back to basic riffs and all the fill percussion drops out.  "I Adore You" has one of those fantastic rousing climaxes where you want to jump up and down and clap your hands because everything totally makes sense.

Esperanza Spalding - I Know You Know (mp3) (buy)

That's just as much a song, in the pop sense, as "Fall In."  I like it better because it's both easy enjoyment and a dare to delve deeper.  A step slower and the rumbaish chorus would be undeniable, but that punchy startstop approach encourages you to engage your higher faculties.  This song gives gorgeous face, great personality, fine conversation.  If your A-game ain't any better than a C-minus, maybe you should be terrified.

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Speaking of scarrrrrrry stuff, boys and girls, have you heard about the new M. Night Shyamalan movie?  The Happening?  Why, it promises to be the most frightening film since Ingmar Bergman's A Thingy.

What's odd is that the SECRET SURPRISE ENDING has already made it to YouTube and Fox hasn't had it yanked, yet.

Hmmmm.  Very Simon of the Desert.

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Sorry. 

*

And yeah, thanks, I did see this, and that's why I've said before Pitchfork shouldn't go there.  They did better than I thought they might - and I thought they might, after seeing ads for the record running on their site this week - by giving 12 Angry Months several positive words... before burying it under a number that guarantees no casual reader will ever read them.

It's how they can feign appreciation while never having to leave their dismissive little hidey-holes; they've got their "mook rock" prejudices and they're going to hold on to them to the detriment of any great rock and roll that might come along.  It's reactive, it's reductive, and it's why you never ever want to sit at the same table with any of these sad little people.

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New muxtape.  I rather like this one.  It may have turned out to be more about Death than I'd intended but don't let that get you down.  Sometimes that's how things work out.  A lot of times, actually.  Some Fripp, some Bowie, two-and-a-half Finnish bands.  Including this one:

The Dø - Travel Light (mp3) (buy)

I mentioned The Dø (myspace) and A Mouthful and the hat tip in passing the other day.  The Franco-Fin M/F duo's put together a fine record - a pretty great one if you excise (or excuse) tracks 9 thru 12 - that feels both instantly familiar ("On My Shoulders" =  Fleetwood Mac, I swear "At Last" is built around a late Sleater-Kinney riff) and quietly restless.  Avoids overt over-tinkering.  It's the sort of CD you're sort-of in love with by the third song.

"Travel Light" is a hike that seemed easier at its outset.  Marches in steady surges, pauses for breath.  The marker here's the wistful "Lately I've been walking away/floating like a song in the air" refrain, which - as Olivia Merilahti (she can coo, does bark, elsewhere on the album) swerves off into a sad soar - somehow reminds me of Big John Wallace's haunting bridge from Harry Chapin's "Taxi."

(Comes in around 3:30.  And if you find Wallace's falsetto awkward, check out the Shatnerized version.  According to Wikipedia, those particular lines are "from a Sylvia Plath poem," but no title is cited, no sources are mentioned, and there seems to be no other corroboration via Google.)

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Found "Silence in the Library" - no spoilers! - enjoyable but upsetting (and not in a good way).  It's mostly a bunch of bits cobbled together from Moffat's three previous Who stories.  "Hey who turned out the lights" is the new "Are you my mommy."  Some great lines, a great death scene, but its regurgitations from "Blink," "Fireplace," and "Empty Child" felt less like auteurism and more like a clip show.  Not encouraging that, when he'll have the whole season to fill, he's already recycling ideas.

Also, the plotting was iffy and the Doctor felt dumbed-down.

Hopefully Part Two will introduce something grand.

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(photo via deadlydesign.com's Flickr)

Lose your cool.

There's been all this talk about "Where's our summer jam?" (as if the universe owed us one, sheesh).  Swallow yr pride and soundtrack your life with this:

Local H - Michelle (Again) (mp3) (buy!*)

Roll those eyes back down and hit that PLAY button.  This is pop, peoples.  "Michelle's" simple-stupid riff and smart-dumb lyrics are genius; if it gets a bit shouty at the end, it doesn't do so in an emoaggro way.  Guitars are allowed after Memorial Day, too.  What, you gonna tell the boys from Thin Lizzy to get out of town?

PLAY IT AGAIN.

I've been waiting since February of 2007 to post that track.  Loved it at first listen, haven't stopped loving it since.  Though it only spent some time on a myspace page, I called it the best thing about all of last year.  It's on disc, now, and I can't imagine anything topping it in AughtEight.  It was the second song the band (myspace) played at Union Pool a couple weeks ago and, no matter how much I like their whole catalog, two songs later I started hoping they'd play it again.  I want to hear it blaring from open car windows, I want to hear old people humming it in the park.  I want EVERYONE to know that Heather had it all, Rita had a little more than all, but that nothing else has got it like "Michelle."

I want to be able to come back from a Local H show and complain about how bad the sound was at Terminal 5.

Why the hell isn't this song just fucking HUGE?  It's not that I don't understand, I guess.  It's just that I'm not in an understanding mood.  This band, my favorite band, is not hot or hip or young.  It's not some nascent ascending entity people can clutch to their chest as a precious personal discovery, it's not some newly-crowned part of the poptimist canon makeover.  They are not cool.  But the other side of that fucking hill is a pretty interesting place, folks.  Good stuff in them thar.

Also, er, it's not the single.

Whatever, who cares.  Summertime's no time for sour grapes.  This is a great song from a great band.

PLAY IT AGAIN.

(*  It's always a nice surprise when I get a report from Amazon that someone's actually bought something by clicking through from here, but it was especially cool to see that people were buying this record.)

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As a palate cleanser, here's an acoustic version of their TV on the Radio cover from a radio station appearance (via, via).  You can understand the words!

Local H - Wolf Like Me (Live Acoustic TV on the Radio Cover)(mp3)

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WIRE is in town!  Come join the drunk yammering investment bankers at the Seaport tonight!  Yell requests for their big hit, "Connection!"  Soundbites has a slew of mp3s.

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This is a fine record, and a track from it is included in this fine mix.

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Um, sure, yeah.  While I'll feed these guys all the rope in the world, and while they can make just about anything compelling by phutzing around with the fourth dimension, is there really two years' worth of stuff left on this show?  "Bad things" doesn't seem to justify what, after last season's amazingomgkickass finale, was an inevitable U-turn.  But the producers of Lost need to do more than make us care about finding our way back to the place we've been trying to leave for four years.  They need to come up with some intriguing new questions.  Because I'm already getting the feeling I've had too much explained away, and the curtain's always more interesting than whatever's behind it.

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Yesterday was a beautiful, easy pre-summer day, the sort that should be remembered before the air gets determined and thick.  Could there be anyone better to help hold on to this weather than Al Green (myspace), the man who can make the seasons change just by waving his hand?

Al Green with Corinne Bailey Rae - Take Your Time (mp3) (buy)

When Green leaned into "Let's Get Married" (capably selling the line "might as well" as romantic in that context, like you wish you could) at Coney Island a couple summers ago, a woman near me laughed.  "I don't wanna get married, Al," she screamed.  "I wanna get laaaaaid!"  The Reverend at his best - even at his most devoted -suggests a single destination, and it's not an altar.

?uestlove helmed the new Al Green record, Lay it Down, wisely made an old Al Green record of it.  It's steady and focused, it'll get you where you need to be.  If there's any serious criticism to be leveled, it's that there's no obvious standout track.  My personal favorite is the most demonstrative, "I'm Wild About You" ("I never talk about love.  I just like to show." Which he does.).  But that one's a little hot and sticky for what I've got in mind, today.

"Take Your Time" is airy and simple, its flute trills the line between perfection and corn.  Rae is a yawn - Al, you could do better - but a more aggressive partner would have trampled the vibe.  (There are other unnecessary intrusions on the album.  The equally dull John Legend proves a second-rate second banana; Anthony Hamilton fares better, but who invited all these people into your bedroom?)  Lose yourself in the song's conservative call if you'd like, letter-writers.  But it's more satisfying to listen past what they're saying to what they're singing.

You can see Green - and shell a lot of it out - at Carnegie Hall on June 27th.

Eli "Paperboy" Reed & The True Loves - I'll Roll with You (mp3) (buy)

After catching him live, I'd been looking forward to the first full-length from Eli Reed (myspace).  Roll with You doesn't disappoint one smidge, a seriously solid collection of original retro soul numbers.  One of those cases where tried and true = just right.  Get yourself some.

Best track's still "Take My Love with You."  Tucked in the current muxtape, it travels well, it's got legs, it'll go straight on ‘til forever if you let it.  But I'm in love with that title track, too.  The trumpet and claves tap out keen 1964 high school formal magic.  Grab that gal you've been afraid to talk to all year and slow dance.

Reed and his True Loves will be opening for The Slackers at Irving Plaza on June 7th (tix); the following afternoon they'll be roastin' out of doors for free at the Big Apple BBQ in Madison Square Park.

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Just a couple quick things, because it's way too nice out for long things.  (Cough, New York Times Magazine, cough.  And look who's coughing.)

Muxtape had a meltdown, which afforded an opportunity to offer something sunnier and outsidier.  So here's some soulfunkstuff for you to burn off an hour to.  Sharon Jones does something for Janet Jackson, Aretha gets gospel on Simon & Garfunkel, Merry Clayton steps out on the Stones.  Swamp Dogg, King Khan, Miguel de Deus, and Alèmayèhu Eshèté totally destroy your mind, man.  Always close with Sam Cooke when you can.

And yes, I was happy to hear - after so recently gushing over his merits - that Steven Moffat has been named the new showrunner at Doctor Who.  Only concern being that it might dilute his effectiveness.  I'd rather have one brilliant episode a year than a gaggle of okay ones.  (His new two-parter starts in the UK on Saturday 5/31, in the US a few weeks after that.)  But fingers crossed, hopes high.

Season Four, so far, has been a typical, watchable mixed bag.  The Ood ep was oddly affecting; the silly Sontaran thing was redeemed by a single giddy sequence.  If you're following the UK schedule, you know that "The Doctor's Daughter" was a solid sf idea made enjoyably awful by bad writing and acting and classically lousy f/x .  There was some sort of fanboy appeasement in casting, in the titular role, Georgia Moffett... who is no relation to Steven Moffat, obviously, but who IS the daughter of Peter Davison, the long-running show's Fifth Doctor (1981-1984).

Which is all just a roundabout excuse to post this great short scene, filmed for some British "Children in Need" (but aren't they always?) charity telethon:

Unlike Georgia, that is a product of Steven Moffat; it features current Doctor David Tennant bumbling into Fifth Doctor Davison.  It's meant to take place between Seasons Three and Four, but that doesn't matter; the plot's just a gobbledygook toss-off to bring the two actors together.  On display is the enthusiasm what makes Tennant such an enjoyable lead - he is the biggest fan - and the show's adoring, self-deprecating view of its own corny, lovable past.  "You were my Doctor," indeed.

Have a good holiday weekend.

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Sympathies, condolences, etc..  But part of me instantly thought, "Yes!  This recession is working!" 

Too soon?  Fuck you.  Go back to Jersey Connecticut.

Of course, in a couple months a film crew will be remaking the whole thing a tasteful three or four blocks away, and Anthony Anderson will be pseudodryly quipping shit about "too much starch" hahahahahaha.

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(photo by Benedict Kupstas)

This isn't working for me.  Or at least I think it isn't.  Thinking might be the problem.

Stars of the Lid (myspace) makes ambient music built on slow surges and recessions.  Their last CD, And Their Refinement of the Decline, topped my 2007 Best-Ofs but a lot of what I liked about it was its lack of immediacy.  Its size was overwhelming, its world alien, its movement out of reach.  So naturally there's going to be something different when the work's chopped apart and served up right in front of you.

SotL's Brian McBride and Adam Bryanbaum know this, obviously.  Before the performance - the band's first in New York City in something like seven years, and the last Wordless Music plans to schedule in this venue - they ask for total darkness in the unelevated performance area and tell us to "take some drugs if you have them."

And now they're making their music.  But there are things other than music here, and they're sort of in the way.

You, you're here, at least a couple hundred of you are.  Every time I open my eyes:  People!  Sitting around me!  Respectful people, bless you for that.  I've heard a single cough, haven't seen a single camera flash.   But you're all here, and that's very disorienting.  We're sitting on seats which aren't particularly uncomfortable, but people shift around because they're trying to get a better view or their asses hurt or whatever.  (And we're in a church, and there aren't pews, for whatever reason, and that's its own distraction.)  Luke Savisky's globby lightshow is being projected on to the curved recess behind the pulpit, and for the most part the images aren't the ones from my dreams at all.

What I can make out of the musicians, because you look at musicians when you're a concert:  One is rather neatly dressed, slacks and dress shirt, with short hair that seems prematurely gray; the other's in a bright yellow hoodie pulled tight over his head, Unabomber fashion.  Both stand in front of keyboards with guitars slung over their shoulders, though you rarely hear anything that sounds specifically guitar-like.  A string trio camps between them, facing each other like the three weird sisters; thanks to the lights on their music stands, their sawing's the only thing you can clearly see.

I don't notice any laptops.  I suspect they're in there somewhere.  But it's nice not to see them.

Because of the strings, which play throughout, the timbre of the music's so much warmer than it was on record.  I don't remember ever wishing before, at any other show, for things to sound more electronic.  But if they were, two of the most beautiful acoustic touches - both from Yellow Hoodie, who surprises by playing at a baby grand that had seemed abandoned detritus from an opening act, who starts banging away at his electric guitar while it is unplugged at a place in the music where that tinny jangle stands out precisely - would mean more.

If anything surprises or stands out during this sort of music, it had better come with some sort of meaning.  What I loved about Stars of the Lid was losing myself away to their work.  Here I am very much in the moment.  This is the type of music that makes you conscious of the most basic of concert contrivances.  There are people are making this music.  There are other people listening to it.

The sound only gets LOUD during the last number of the main set ("December Hunting for Vegetarian Fuckface," which YH introduces as "a song about a fucking asshole I knew" (Hey!  We're in church!)) when the band is joined by Savisky.  He grabs a guitar and stands behind a keyboard and the volume pushes out and up.  The projections against Good Shepherd Faith's stained glass solidify into something perfectly angelic.

Magic, later, just how it ought to come.  As I walk along an empty 65th Street, through the fog, towards Central Park West.  From some balcony above, I couldn't see where.  Wind chimes.

*

Also there: 

Acknowledged Classic

Feast of Music

PowderBlueOrbit

more pics at BKVegan

*

But what I really wanted to talk about was one of the openers, that night.  Face the Music (myspace) is a group of public school kids between ages ten and fifteen that focus on late 20th-century/early-21st century classical music.  Which, you know, cool.  Or... is it?

Their part of the program (and yes, there were printed programs) started with John Adams' Hallelujah Junction for two pianos.  Pretty impressive.  Stumbled a bit when the instruments had noticeable exchanges between each other, but y'know, they're ten to fifteen years old (and one pianist was twice as tall as the other).  I'm not going to pee on their collective lolly.  Even if their take on Michael Gordon's "Yo Shakespeare" broke yonder in a big fucking mess.  Everyone S.O.'d and cheered encouragingly.  BNM!

But should elementary school kids be playing John Fucking Adams (and that's John Coolidge Fucking A., not John Luther F.A.)?  My initial reaction was, opening minds, canon, great.  I don't remember what we played in our high school band (in elementary school, we played dodgeball), but I know when All State Auditions rolled around material rotated pretty exclusively through the Mozart Horn Concerti.  (I played French horn, suck it.)

Something wasn't sitting right.

Why only stuff like J(CF)Adams'?  "New works played by teens and tweens" is their shtick, and perhaps they get their classical bran elsewhere, but it feels backwards to separate new from old when it's all really one big thing.

And crawl-before-walk concerns?  Though I really don't know if, when it comes to technical know-how, there are more steps separating "Mary Had a Little Lamb" from "Einstein on the Beach" or Bach.  It's not like you need - though these kids might be getting it - a pervasive knowledge of theory to play music.  Just read what's written, just toot x note at y time.

It was during "Yo" that I realized from whence my reservations sprung.  Watching the ensemble's flautist juggle a flute, piccolo, and different groupings of pan pipes, I realized that this was America's Future Indie Rock Death Squad.  Overcomplicated, fundamentally questionable, not particularly engaging.  Let's drag all of Kaybee Toy & Hobby on stage but forget to write a decent melody.  Not that the onus of any of this should be placed on the (yes I know 10-15-year-old, yayTommy) children.

There was a laptop in this band.  As I suppose there would have to be.

What's going to sound "normal" to these kids?  It's a crotchety get-off-my-lawn thing to say.  Especially when, after being raised on John Denver and Brahms, this sounds pretty fucking normal:

Gilbert Kalish - Ives Piano Sonata No. 2 ("Concord, Mass, 1840-60"), 3rd Movement ("The Alcotts")(mp3) (buy)

Yaysegue.  That's the first piece in the most recent redo of the muxtape.  Largely instrumental, this one errs toward noise and dissonance.  There are songs about abstinence and serial killers and sexy car accidents and growing old.  There's prog-bluegrass, free jazz, Kurt Cobain, Alfred Schnittke, Alan Vega.  Makes sense to me.

It was pretty easy, with only a few secondhand facts, to adopt Charles Ives (1874-1954) as a personal hero.  One of America's greatest composers sold insurance all his life, listened to the premiere of his Second Symphony over the radio a half-century after he'd composed it.  Prescient genius toiling in blue collar obscurity!

Only not so much.  He went to Yale, he founded his insurance franchise, focused on estate planning, he retired sort of early to focus on his music only to decide that "nothing sounds right."  One of the last things he worked on was this sonata, though that was only to make revisions in 1947 on a piece he'd originally completed by 1915.

I love Ives' music as an active mental process.  He'll rework traditional melodies - here Beethoven's Fifth and a dash of "Dixie" - in skewed ways.  Sometimes, because you imagine it's what happened right at the moment of the writing, a marching band will parade through (his father was a bandmaster).  Somewhere, I'm sure there are wind chimes.

*

If you enjoy ambient stuff, or electro-collage, or, y'know, music - you should seriously soak up the new Paavoharju album, Laulu Laakson Kukista.

Paavoharju - Pimeänkarkelo (mp3) (buy)

Gorgeous, varied (there's a dancier track at Gorilla vs Bear) stuff.  Finnish born-again Christians piling up sounds at the top of the world.  This one is less... underwater than their last, the also lovely Yhä Hämärää.  (Amazon has each available as mp3 downloads for $8.99; the actual CDs are pricey imports.)

*

YayLOVE IS ALL tour dates.  Though that Cake Shop show will be unmanageable.

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I bought myself another copy of Nothing's Shocking.  I replaced the Grace that might still be stuck in your goddamn car stereo, even if you've made me never want to hear it ever again.  Those and the others, they meant more to me than you.  But keep them, fine, they're yours.

New Local H (myspace) album TODAY mfers.  After four loooooong years, Twelve Angry Months should be in stores and iStores near you.  You should buy it and rock the hell out to it and never let it leave your sight.

Local H - The One with ‘Kid'(mp3) (buy)

What's the matter?  Not LO-FI enough for you?

"‘Kid'" is the first track on the record, an introduction to the end of a relationship gone wrong.  I usually hate lyrics that rattle off names of other bands or songs.  Let's all just sing our myspace interests and iTunes playlists to make a cheap identity-grab, a secondhand attempt to associate yourself with other bands and their fans.  IMPRESS ME WITH YOUR RECORD COLLECTION.

But I could never hate Local H, and even when Scott Lucas is -checking stuff that might have his own fanbase holding ?s next to their !s (Interpol?!) he doesn't need anyone else's cred.  He's naming names because this break-up's become territorial and Kyuss ("You never liked ‘em UNTIL YOU MET ME!") is his Kamchatka.  During the dusty staredown that takes up the first two minutes of "‘Kid,'" Lucas juggles the urge to see his ex with the need to reject her, wonders what parts of his life are still his.  When it comes time to draw - winning is all that matters - the hangouts, the friends, his insides are Zeppelin CDs and ACDCs and that one Blondie twelve inch.

The second half of the song is ferocious cathartic jumparound fistpump stuff.  It's b