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Archive for July, 2016

Darlingside–XPN Fest: Marina Stage (Wiggins Park, Philadelphia PA, July 23, 2016)

Posted in Darlingside, Marina Stage, Philadelphia, PA, Wiggins Park, WXPN 88.5 FM--Philadelphia, PA, XPN Fest on July 23, 2016| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: July 23, 2016] Darlingside

2016-07-23 14.21.10 Although I had wanted to see five bands on this day, my main focus was Darlingside, a band who sings beautiful songs with wonderful harmonies.

Because we had the kids with us and they were feeling a little wilty from the heat, we spent some of their set walking around looking for shade.  This was less than optimal in terms of enjoying the set, but since the sound was really good, there was no denying how great they were.  Their harmonies were right on and even in a big opened air setting, they still sounded amazing.

What I didn’t expect was how funny and lighthearted they were.  (more…)

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George Saunders–“Who Are All These Trump Supporters” (New Yorker, July 11 & 18, 2016)

Posted in Consumerism, Corporate skewering, donald tRUMP, Dystopia, Essays, Fears, George Saunders, Greed, Guns, Hillary Clinton, Humiliation, Lydia Loveless, Lydia Lunch, New Yorker, Poverty, Religion, The Byrds, The Knitters, Threats, Tiny Desk Concert, Violence, X, Yuck! on July 22, 2016| Leave a Comment »

CoverStory-KadirNelson-ADayattheBeach3-879x1200-1467305948SOUNDTRACK: LYDIA LOVELESS-Tiny Desk Concert #369 (July 1, 2014).

lovelssI want Lydia Loveless to be a punk singer–Her name is like a combination of Lydia Lunch and a last name that conjures up an asskicking punk.

But not the country singer that Loveless is (even if she is ass-kicking herself). Loveless is a new breed of alt-country which is pretty explicit with noticeably rocking guitar solos.  But her voice is so twangy it’s hard to not call it country (and in fact it’s a bit too much for me to take sometimes).

“Head” features this rather memorable chorus “Don’t stop getting undressed /Don’t stop giving me head.”  It seems especially surprising since Loveless looks like she’s about 12 (she was 23 at the time of this recording).  The buzzy solo is lengthy and more or less runs throughout the song.  Although at some point when Loveless takes her own solo the whole sound seems to fade out and get a little anemic.

Her band is fun with her bassist being very tall and having very long hair playing a very tall upright bass.  And then there’s another guy playing guitar and lap steel.

“Verlaine Shot Rimbaud” has a title that begs for an awesome song.  It’s not an epic masterpiece or anything.  In fact its closer to a pop song, The slide guitar and Loveless’ heavy accent on the chorus place it firmly in the country camp.

“Mile High” has a fun folk riff.  It sounds a lot like The Byrds and the chorus is super catchy.  If I could get her to sing less twangy I would love this song much like I love the punk country of X, or at least the Knitters.

[READ: December 29, 2010] “Who are All These Trump Supporters”

[This essay in the New Yorker also came under the heading “Trump Days.”]

So the title of the essay is a question I myself have been asking as I watch the hatred and vitriol bubble over during the convention.

If there was anyone I wanted to write this piece it would be George Saunders and he is actually the only reason I read it in the first place (I plan to read all of his contributions to the New Yorker eventually, but I’m glad to have read this one when it was timely–I hope it will be utterly irrelevant by the time I get to the rest of his works).  He self identifies as a liberal (although he was a conservative who loved Ayn Rand way back in the Reagan era).  He is a thoughtful and not prone to anger–a perfect foil for the crowd.  And he’s got a great way with words.

So great in fact that I’m just going to be quoting him a lot.  I could have pulled more excellent quotes from the essay, but really you should read the whole thing. (more…)

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Carrie Brownstein–Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir (2015)

Posted in 7 Year Bitch, All Songs Considered, Bikini Kill, Books about music, Boredom, Carrie Brownstein, Cate Le Bon, Cats, Corin Tucker, Depression, Dogs, Eddie Vedder, Excuse 17, Feminism, George Michael, Heavens to Betsy, Janet Weiss, Madonna, Mötley Crüe, Mecca Normal, Memoirs, Pearl Jam, Pets, Portlandia, Record Labels, Regrets, Riot Grrrl, Sleater-Kinney, The Byrds, The Gossip, The White Stripes, Tiny Desk Concert, Wild Flag, Yeah Yeah Yeahs on July 21, 2016| Leave a Comment »

carrieSOUNDTRACK: CATE LE BON-Tiny Desk Concert #337 (February 18, 2014).

cateCate Le Bon has a very interesting style of singing–it reminds me of Grace Slick in her enunciation, but also like someone whose speaking accent is very strong and is somewhat masked by her singing (like the way she sings “reason” as “ree-sun” as opposed to “reezun”).

The blurb explains that her “phrasing is completely tied to her Welsh dialect — in fact, her first record was in Welsh…. The enunciation is completely tied to the loneliness and the questioning.”

 For this concert it is just her and her fellow guitarist H. Hawkline (both wearing super cozy sweaters).  They share the guitar licks very nicely–it’s not always clear who is playing what–with her sometimes finishing his lines (I believe).

“Are You With Me Now?” has a very catchy chorus (with an “ah ha ha ha ha” part that makes it sound like an olde English ballad).

“No God” plays with very simple guitar lines (chords played very high on the neck of her guitar and a simple accompanying riff).  Hawkline plays keys (and sings some great falsetto backing vocals) to flesh out this song.  Everything is so clean you can hear each note from the guitar and her voice.

“Duke” opens with some interesting slightly off sounding from Cate while Hawkline plays a simple chord pattern (his fingers are enormous, by the way).  Hawkline’s falsetto is almost as engaging as the vocal lines that match the guitar line which Cate plays.  And when she says “I’ll see you here” in that unexpected pronunciation, it’s totally captivating.

I like Le Bon a lot and want to hear what she wounds like on record.

[READ: May 18, 2016] Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl

After finishing Bob Boilen’s book and thinking about how I don’t really love music-based books, I immediately read Carrie Brownstein’s book.  Carrie Brownstein is one of the two guitarists in Sleater-Kinney and Wild Flag.  She is also one of the leads (writer and actor) on Portlandia.  And she wrote for NPR for a while, too.  Basically, Carrie is the shit.

One thing I took away from this book is that I’ve read a few musician memoirs (Mötley Crüe and Marilyn Manson to name a few) and this is the first one I’ve read that was filled with so much sadness.  Not “I was stoned and regret sleeping with that person with an STD sadness,” but like, real family problems and even a dead pet.  And, as Carrie herself jokes, her stories of being on tour and ending up in the hospital are not based on drugs or other debauchery, but on anxiety and even worse, shingles.

The beginning of the book starts in 2006, around the initial break up (hiatus) of Sleater-Kinney.  Carrie is in pain–emotional and physical–and she can’t take much more.  She starts punching herself hard in the face. (more…)

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Bob Boilen–Your Song Changed My Life: From Jimmy Page to St. Vincent, Smokey Robinson to Hozier, Thirty-Five Beloved Artists on Their Journey and the Music That Inspired It (2016)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Angel Olsen, Asaf Avidan, Ásgeir, Bob Boilen, Bon Iver, Books about music, Carrie Brownstein, Cat Power, Cat Stevens, Chris Thile, Colin Meloy, Conor Oberst, Courtney Barnett, Dave Grohl, David Byrne, Fantastic Negrito, Glenn Gould, Hüsker Dü, Hozier, Ian MacKaye, Interviews, Jackson Browne, James Blake, Jónsi, Jeff Tweedy, Jimmy Page, Josh Ritter, Justin Vernon, Kate Tempest, Leon Bridges, Lucinda Williams, Michael Stipe, Nickel Creek, NPR/PRI/PBS, Philip Glass, Pokey LaFarge, R.E.M., Rilo Kiley, Sara Watkins, Scritti Politti, Sharon Van Etten, Smokey Robinson, St. Vincent, The Beatles, The Staves, The Velvet Underground, Tiny Desk Concert, Tiny Desk Contest, Tiny Desk Unit, Trey Anastasio, West Side Story, Wilco on July 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »

boilenSOUNDTRACK: ANGEL OLSEN-Tiny Desk Concert #333 (January 27, 2014).

angelBob Boilen has liked Angel Olsen for some time, so when she did her Tiny Desk and most of us had never heard of her, he was already a fan.

Olsen plays a long set but with four songs.

She sits very still, strumming with her thumb and singing kind of low–not unlike Sharon van Etten.  The first song, “Unfucktheworld” is only two ans a half minutes.  The second song, “Iota,” is a little longer.  She sings in an affected almost falsetto style, although the guitar remains very spare.

Between these songs, she is coy about the title of the new record although she is quick to say the first word of the title “burn.”  Later she admits that the final song contains the title of the album, if we wanted to spend time figuring it out.

I marvelled at how high the chords were that she played on “Enemy,”  She seems to eschew any bass for this song.  This one is five and a half minutes long and is just as slow as the others.

Before the final song they talk about whether this is the most awkward show she has done.  She says everyone is very alert–and indeed you can hear utter silence between songs.  But then they talk about the storm outside (and potential tornado) and how this show may never air if the storm is really bad.

“White Fire” is an 8 minute story song.  She does use the whole guitar for this one, which has many many verses.   Since I don’t really know Olsen’s stuff that well, I don’t know if this was a good example of her show or a fun treat to hear her in such an intimate way.

[READ: May 10, 2016] Your Song Changed My Life

This site is all about music and books, but you may be surprised to know that I don’t really like books about music all that much.  I have read a number of them—biographies, autobiography or whatever, and I don’t love them wholesale. Some are fine, but in general musicians aren’t really as interesting as they may seem.

What I do like however, is hearing a decent interview with musicians to find out some details about them–something that will flesh out my interest in them or perhaps make me interested in someone I previously wasn’t.  Not a whole book, maybe just an article, I guess.

I also really like Bob Boilen. I think he’s a great advocate of music and new bands.  I have been listening to his shows on NPR for years and obvious I have been talking about hundreds of the Tiny Desk Concerts that he originated.  I also really like his taste in music.  So I was pretty psyched when Sarah got me this book for my birthday.

I read it really quickly–just devoured the whole thing.  And it was really enjoyable. (more…)

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Mary Karr–“High Maintenance” (New Yorker, May 16, 2016)

Posted in André Leon Talley, David Foster Wallace, Essays, Hillary Clinton, History, Mary Karr, New Yorker, Suzanne Vega, Tiny Desk Concert, Victoria Beckham on July 19, 2016| Leave a Comment »

may16 SOUNDTRACK: SUZANNE VEGA-Tiny Desk Concert #336 (February 10, 2014).

vegaSuzanne Vega is practically a one hit wonder except that she has released a half-dozen great albums that are full of wonderful songs.  I stopped listening to her some time in the mid 90’s, so I missed her 2000s comeback, but this four-song show from 2014 has her two most famous songs and two songs from her then about t o be released album Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles.

As the Concert opens, she asks “for real?” and the hits the Tiny Desk gong (with quite a flourish).

Then she launches into “Luka.”  She plays acoustic guitar and sings.  Her voice sounds pretty much exactly as it did twenty years ago.  In part, sure, it’s because her singing voice is practically a whisper, but it’s amazing how good she sounds.  She has a second guitarist, Gerry Leonard, with her (on electric guitar) who plays a great sounding solo in the middle of the song.

The first new song is “Crack in the Wall.”  She says that it  describes when a crack appears allowing you to see into the spiritual world.  In this version (I don’t know the studio version), it sounds a lot like an old song–stripped down and simple, with Vega’s interesting gentle acoustic guitar chords and voice.  There’s also a cool echoed electric guitar solo.

For “I Never Wear White” she takes off the acoustic guitar.  It’s just her singing and Leonard playing.  And his guitar his rough and distorted.  It is pretty shocking for a Vega song, but it works really well with her voice.  I really like this song a lot.

She ends with “Tom’s Diner.”  She was going to say the one and only, but says they’ve done so many different versions of it.  So this is their latest.  She sings parts a capella but the guitar plays some wonderful washes of sounds (looped) with different parts layered.  He also plays a percussive sound that makes the song kind of danceable.  And when she mentions the bells of the cathedral, Gerry plays some cool harmonic notes that are echoed and sound like clock chimes.  It’s very cool.

Vega’s speaking voice sound a little like Hillary Clinton’s (especially during the thank yous at the end).  But it’s nice that her singing voice still sounds the same and that 2014 album seems like it might be interesting.

[READ: July 6, 2016] “High Maintenance”

The May 16, 2016 issue of the New Yorker had a series called “Univent This” in which six authors imagine something that they could make go away. Since I knew many of them, I decided to write about them all.  I have to wonder how much these writers had to think about their answers, or if they’d imagined this all along.

I’ve never read Mary Karr, I only know her peripherally as connected with David Foster Wallace.  This may not have been the best introduction to her, although since she mostly writes memoirs, maybe this is the perfect introduction.

Mary Karr would like to uninvent high heels.  And while she does speak of this with some humor, the entire article just reeks of vanity and foolishness.  (The fact that she even mentions she can still squeeze into a size 4 should tell you all you need to know about this essay). (more…)

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Ted Chiang–“Bad Character” (New Yorker, May 16, 2016)

Posted in Essays, History, Language, New Yorker, Polly Jean Harvey, Sofia Rei, Tiny Desk Concert, Word usage on July 18, 2016| Leave a Comment »

may16 SOUNDTRACK: SOFIA REI-Tiny Desk Concert #338 (February 22, 2014).

sofiaSofia Rei is an Argentinian singer.  For this Tiny Desk Concert she has two accompanists: drummer Franco Pinna incorporates a drum from the Argentine Pampas into a traditional drum set and guitarist/bassist JC Maillard plays a pretty guitar and a modified saz bass.

In profile Sofia looks a bit like Polly Jean Harvey but when she sings it’s very different.  Her voice is sultry and influenced by Argentinian jazz.

I love the way the first song, “La Gallera” starts with slow verses but the chorus are just wild and crazy and full of rhythms and some great chords.  And of course, that drum is an integral part of the solo that fills the middle so the song.

“La Llorona”  is a beautiful slow ballad with Rei’s voice floating above the percussion and gentle modified saz bass (more on that in a moment).  The song builds over five minutes with her voice getting louder and more impassioned.  And just as the song really builds and seems as if its going to rock out, it ends–leaving us wanting more.

“Todo Lo Perdido Reaparece” (“Everything That Has Been Lost Reappears”) brings her back home to Argentina.  The song starts quietly with Rei singing some syllables and noises before the song proper starts.  It is a slow ballad filled with percussion.  Midway through the song while Maillard is doing a wonderful guitar solo, Rei picks up a charango and plays lovely high notes.  The chord progression during this and the following section with vocals is fanatic–catchy but also unusual.

At the end of the show, Maillard talks about his modified saz bass.  He says it is based on the Turkish instrument but it was made for finger picking rather than plectrum.  His is the first ever made.  With eight strings, it has bass strings for thumb picking and high notes for the other fingers.  It also has a lot of “empty” spaces to make interesting percussion sounds. I love seeing new instruments and this little demonstration is very cool.

[READ: July 11, 2016] “Bad Character”

The May 16, 2016 issue of the New Yorker had a series called “Univent This” in which six authors imagine something that they could make go away. Since I knew many of them, I decided to write about them all.  I have to wonder how much these writers had to think about their answers, or if they’d imagined this all along.

Ted Chiang says he never learned anything in the Saturday morning Chinese school he was forced to attend as a child.  But that’s not why he wants to get rid of the Chinese character-driven alphabet system.

He says that he is a fan of literacy but that Chinese characters have been an obstacle to literacy for millennia. You have to learn three thousand characters and you can’t use pronunciation to help you–it’s all memorization.  Even highly educated Chinese speakers regularly forget how to write the characters that they use infrequently.

He also decries the technological obstacles that Chinese poses–computers and smart phones are impossible to use.  And even dumbed-down solutions like Pinyin just cause more work.

Interestingly, even though he wants to do away with the written characters the last couple of paragraphs of this essay talk about the virtues of this system.

Pronunciation changes over the centuries, so as language evolves, older works are harder to understand (take Beowulf).   This is why “Classical Chinese remains readable precisely because the characters are immune to the vagaries of sound.”

Chinese culture is notorious about tradition.  He says this is not because of the Chinese characters but there must be some influence.  He speculates that if the English language had not evolved since the days of Beowulf, that maybe English culture would be more Anglo-Saxon.

Conversely if China didn’t have the language it does, it too may have evolved over the years and might be less resistant to new ideas.  Perhaps the country would be better able to deal with modernity.

Regardless of whether that would be better or not, he’d love to live in a  world where he wouldn’t have to hear the misconceptions about Chinese characters “that they’re like little pictures, that they represent ideas directly, that the Chinese world for ‘crisis’ is ‘danger’ plus ‘opportunity.'”

That’s a bit anticlimactic of an ending, but the overall essay was interesting.

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Jane’s Addiction (The Stone Pony Summer Stage, Asbury Park, NJ, July 16, 2016)

Posted in Asbury Park, NJ, David Bowie, Dinosaur Jr., Jane's Addiction, The Stone Pony, The Stone Pony Summer Stage on July 17, 2016| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: July 16, 2016] Jane’s Addiction

2016-07-16 21.49.18When Jane’s Addiction came out back in the late 1980s, I loved them.  Nothing’s Shocking was my favorite album for a few years and Ritual de lo Habitual was a close second.  There was something about their sense of sleazy and weirdly catchy songs that I totally gravitated towards. I probably should have gone to Lollapalloza that year, but I didn’t.

But then I moved past them.  When they released Strays back in 2003, I didn’t even give it a listen.  Same with The Great Escape Artist in 2011.  I just didn’t care all that much.  I’d also gotten a little overexposed to Dave Navarro and his exploits over the next decade.

And while I was interested in seeing them–especially since they were doing Ritual in its entirety, I was much more excited to see Dinosaur Jr.

But wow, was I impressed by their show.  The most impressive thing for me was the sound quality.  Whether that is chalked up to the venue (I doubt it–outdoor venues aren’t usually that good) or the way they mixed it (more likely), I couldn’t get over how great the band fit together–it sounded like the album (not like it was prerecorded or anything, just really full).  And most of the applause goes to Navarro. (more…)

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Dinosaur Jr. (The Stone Pony Summer Stage, Asbury Park, NJ, July 16, 2016) [JANE’S ADDICTION]

Posted in Asbury Park, NJ, Dinosaur Jr., J. Mascis, Jane's Addiction, Living Colour, Lou Barlow, Minus the Bear, Primus, The Cure, The Stone Pony, The Stone Pony Summer Stage on July 16, 2016| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: July 16, 2016] Dinosaur Jr.

2016-07-16 19.49.10I have wanted to see Dinosaur Jr for many years.  I intended to see them last year when they toured with Primus, but I couldn’t get to the show.  So I was pretty excited that they were touring again, this time with Jane’s Addiction.

I had never been to a Stone Pony Summer Stage (never been to The Stone Pony either) and I didn’t really know what to expect (reviews on Yelp are pretty harsh).  Things got even more questionable when the weather turned nasty.  The show was supposed to start at 6, but as of 4:30 there was a huge thunderstorm in Absury Park, so they delayed the opening of the show.  And since there were more storms threatening for later, it was possible that it might get cancelled.

Just to make things a little more unsatisfying, Living Colour was supposed to be the first band on the bill.  I’ve never seen them and while I wouldn’t go out of my way to see them, I thought they’d be a lot of fun live.  I found out yesterday (although this was probably decided much earlier) that they weren’t playing in this show (they are in Germany), and that Minus the Bear would be opening instead.

I don’t know Minus the Bear (a lot of bands with names like “noun the noun” lately, and I don’t really know any of them).  I listened to a few songs before the show and thought they might be fun.  But the gates didn’t wind up opening until 8PM, so Minus the Bear didn’t even play. (more…)

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Ben Folds with yMusic (Levitt Pavilion, Steelstacks, Bethlehem, PA, July 16, 2016)

Posted in Ben Folds, Bethlehem, PA, Gracie Folds, Guster, Levitt Pavilion, Regina Spektor, Steelstacks, yMusic on July 15, 2016| 1 Comment »

[ATTENDED: July 14, 2016] Ben Folds with yMusic

2016-07-14 22.42.16This was the third time that Sarah and I have seen Ben Folds and he never fails to put on a great show.

Both of the previous times had been as an opening act (and both times were with Guster, interestingly).  So it was great to see him headlining.  I didn’t know a lot about yMusic before the show, but I enjoyed his disc with them So There.  It promised to be a great show.

And since, as I mentioned with Gracie Folds, we were literally three people from the stage, we knew the show would be special. (more…)

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Gracie Folds (Levitt Pavilion, Steelstacks, Bethlehem, PA, July 16, 2016) [BEN FOLDS w/ yMUSIC]

Posted in Ben Folds, Bethlehem, PA, Gracie Folds, Levitt Pavilion, Regina Spektor, Steelstacks, Tori Amos on July 14, 2016| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: July 14, 2016] Gracie Folds

2016-07-14 19.36.50The Levitt Pavilion Steelstacks in Bethlehem is one of my favorite venues.  Last year I saw Modest Mouse there and this year it was Ben Folds.  I raved to Sarah about the venue last time but I don’t think she realized just how great it would be until we walked onto the grass and walked up to the stage where there were only two people in front of us.  And, if we were pushier, we could have easily gotten up to the fence.

So, yes, we were about three people from the stage.  And just to make it better, the forecast predicted massive thunderstorms all night long, but by the time of the show, the clouds had parted and a cool breeze came in through the field.

As the show started a young girl walked out and sat at her keyboard and told us her name was Gracie.  Anyone who is a fan of Ben Folds knows he has a daughter named Gracie.  But those of us who have no concept of time passing still assume she is like 6 years old.  Well, she is 17 and she opened for her dad.  And that’s pretty awesome. (more…)

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