Very Close to, if not actually in, the CD player:
seen/heard ° listen ° buy
seen/heard ° listen ° buy
We Held Our Tongues Throughout It (Siren Music Festival 2007, That's Right, 2007, Bite Me)
Holy lousy sound system, Batchaps, the annual Village Voice Siren Festival is today! A stirring reminder that I never posted a recap of last year's Siren Festival. And timeliness is next to godliness. On, like, the other side. Anyway.
I'm not sure how much I'll remember, but last year's pictures were taken closer than this year's will be. I embrace any opportunity to regurgitate my Flickr account into your RSS feed. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, one last time into the Douchebag Pit, my generously comped brethren!
At times, the D-Pit was fully stocked! The Voice has to keep the posmens flowing somehow, and a line-up of hand-me-downs (Dr. Dog, Elvis Perkins, The Detroit Cobras all did time at Pool Parties the year before; Voxtrot was in Prospect Park; M.I.A. was at Summerstage in 2005; The Dolls stepped in at the Seaport when Alex Chilton's band hit a snag. Matt & Kim shows are almost free, anyway) wasn't gonna do it.
The 2008 line-up, aside from the two headliners (and maybe Islands) looks like a couple decent nights at Cake Shop. Not that I'm complaining. Complaining about the roster at a free gig only proves how undeserving you are. Hi-yo, beggars, away!
*
Whoever schedules these things has a real weird sense of how a day down the shore is supposed to start. In 2006, the fest kicked off with Dax Riggs' swampy, blood-obsessed blues; the next year it was the fucking Twilight Sad. Who at least have a little more kick than their name would imply. But: Dark, much? (This year's opener, Dragons of Zynth, suggests that you should start your day by sucking hard.)
A delay on the Sad stage - during which we got to listen to Ultragrrrl spin stuff from her own label's Oohlas record, yay - meant my day began with...
White Rabbits (myspace). Not all pink and fluffy, either, but they've got bounce.
This band does a lot of things right. In some ways the manner of their music and exposure offer a handy counterpoint to some of what's wrong with Vampire Weekend. (I'm working my way back to it. I know. It's The Last Dangerous Visions of blog posts. No one should care, anymore, either way. But I promise it will happen before I shutter this joint. I can only listen to so much bad music before I bust my gourd. Also, it's like twenty pages long, and that's not healthy.)
This was only the second time I'd seen the Rabbits; the first was an early Mercury Lounge appearance opening for Asobi Seksu. Neither was a particularly good situation, and both times they left me feeling a bit shut out. There's six of them, with two drummers, and two guys who trade off being lead, so they set up in a semi-circle so they can communicate better. But it felt like a closed-off semi-circle. There's tons of heat in the music, so much happening rhythmically, the music's hot, and the band's into it. But their presence is sort of cold.
Again, not the best of situations, and maybe everything's not so McDLT at a proper show. I've had tickets for subsequent performances and have had to miss those.
The Rabbits' set was one of only three full sets I saw.
Stayed for two, maybe two-and-a-half, songs from Philadelphia's Dr. Dog (myspace). I've seen them twice before, and the lowered expectations presented by their awful name serve them well. Bits and snatches will grab me, but they don't have anything that sinks its teeth in. There's never been a song I've wanted to hear a second time.
I enjoy the raucous group stuff that starts and ends sets from Elvis Perkins in Dearland (myspace), but the straight-up folk singing is... well, more for people who enjoy straight-up folk singing. Catch him either coming or going.
The Noisettes (myspace). Have the energy, don't have the songs.
The Detroit Cobras' (myspace) mid-day meat-and-potatoes rock set was a real snooze, and shame on that. They should have relished the opportunity to show up the hipper stuff on the schedule. Complained about playing with the sun out. C'mon, you guys are how old? A bit of professionalism, please.
The VIP sections can seem huge, but they also stop letting you in once they've filled to capacity. Unable to watch The Black Lips pretend to blow up chickens to a packed pit on one stage, I settled for listening to Becky Stark talk and talk and talk and talk across an empty stretch of pavement at the other. She's so spacey and positive that it's easy to think of her as a cynical parody of herself. Or hope that she is. Shocking when she swears!
Anyway, she went on (and...) about how it was "the most beautiful day of all of the days" and how "planet Earth is the best planet in the world" and how she wanted to start an amusement park called "The Fantasy Pleasure Complex" (though this was a working title and would not be as adult-oriented as that might sound).
Caught maybe two songs, one of them then-new. I sort of feel bad for these guys, because they seem to have a healthy sense of humor and there were some good tunes on that first record and... well, talking about WAS feels so 2006. And it always feels bad to say things like that.
The only other time I had seen M&K was a couple years ago in the basement of The Delancey; I was pretty sure it wasn't a real band, that someone had jumped up on stage to fill in for an act that hadn't shown up.
I have zero interest in their music - why, if they'd just go a little LO'ER-fi, they could be the biggest thing in the world! - but you love them as people. This band could have spent the rest of its existence playing Todd P shows; when they played (and sold out) the Bowery Ballroom they insisted on Todd P pricing. Because they wanted to play a show they themselves could afford to see. Contrast that with how The White Stripes say Fuck You to all the mattress-repairing Jack White would-bes out there; how Stooges shows, awesome as they are, are now attended by women in fur coats.
On stage here they were more than gracious, they were in disbelief. This is the best of DIY rock, where the people up there might as well be you. The crowd reacted appropriately, putting on as much of a show as the folks on stage. Yay Yay.
This was a dead spot on my schedule, honestly. I'd seen M.I.A. a while back and, no matter how much I liked Arular, the live performance did nothing for me. In the other corner, though, was Voxtrot. So.
It turned out to be one of the highlights of the day; in retrospect that might have only been because it was our first exposure to most of the material on Kala. The band was still just a lax D.J. During her set Arulpragasam stopped to fix her make up, complained about being stuck in rainy London and then complained about how sunny and hot it was at Coney Island.
Just after she asked the audience to bum rush, she dragged herself off to the side and sat down and sipped at a beverage. The first girl who jumped up got dragged off by security; Arulpragasam tried to retrieve her, but wound up bringing up a completely different person (weirdly enough I think it was this woman).
I thought I'd split time between the New York Dolls (myspace) and Cursive. The Dolls were going to, you knew, play basically the same set I saw at CB's and the Seaport; Cursive's underrated Happy Hollow was one of my favorites from the year before.
But the Dolls should play basically the same set all the time (I think they did "Frankenstein" this time, too, hooray), and once they started I knew I wouldn't be leaving. I don't care if this felt anticlimactic to some (and "Gotta Get Away from Tommy" is not a good encore closer). This city should make sure these guys play a free outdoor show every summer.
More from last year? The Battering Room has links to others who were there. And my full Flickr set is here.
2007! Rock on. Timeliness is overrated, anyhow.
Next up, a recap of the seminal performance John Cafferty & the Beaver
Brown Band gave at the Delaware State Fair in 1986.