[ATTENDED: August 9, 2016] Mariachi Flor de Toloache
Some time ago, I watched Mariachi Flor de Toloache on a Tiny Desk Concert. So when I saw they were playing Bethlehem’s Musikfest, and that they were on just an hour or so before the band I was really excited to see, I made a point of getting there extra early to witness the mariachi greatness in person.
Mariachi Flor de Toloache are from Brooklyn and are one of the few all-female mariachi bands on the East Coast. On record the full complement of the band is 13 members, but the touring band seems to be Mireya Ramos on violin who played some amazing solos ; Shae Fiol on vihuela (see below) who was a great performer, encouraging everyone to clap and dance. Veronica Medellin played guitarron and sang and Julie Acosta played (impeccable) trumpet and taught us all to “oip!” at the right time. (more…)
Why have we seen Barenaked Ladies so many times? Because they unerringly put on a super fun show. Whether it is headlining their summer extravaganzas or even playing at our lowly Balloon Festival [*I was taken to task for calling this festival lowly, please see the end of the post for an update], their sets are fun and they always give their all.
Their set seemed really short this time–although it was the same number of songs as previous summer sets. Sometimes it feels like they are stuck playing the same songs a lot. They absolutely have to play a few songs–“$1,000,000,” “Brian Wilson,” “Big Bang Theory” and of course “One Week” and at least one or two new ones. And yet they do a good job of pulling out some unexpected songs.
And they really mixed up the stage show this year. In the past, they have started big and ended with some acoustic songs. But this year they started with a small acoustic set. (more…)
[ATTENDED: June 12, 2016] Flight of the Conchords sing Flight of the Conchords
After having gotten a number of concert tickets fort he summer, I had planned a moratorium. But it was impossible to pass up the opportunity to see Flight of the Conchords. Especially if they were going to be singing Flight of the Conchords! I didn’t even realize they toured (clearly they do), and since there were no plans for a new television season and since Jemaine Clement has lent his voice and face to all manner of awesome evil roles, I assumed the FotC was no more. [Bret McKenzie has also done things but not nearly as much as Jemaine].
Since we loved the show and the music, I jumped on tickets once they were available. Once again, I thought our seats would be better than they were (I really need to understand seating charts better), but it didn’t matter because they had two giant screens on which they projected the two of them and did many great visual effects as well. It was easy to forget to look at them on stage since the screens were so compelling, but it’s always important to see what the guys are doing too.
They played 13 songs in total and did a lot of very funny banter in between. The strange thing is that I didn’t know they had released a second album (how did I miss that?) so a lot of the songs that I thought were “new” were just new to me. Although there were some brand new songs thrown in as well.
It was also awesome that as soon as Arj Barker left the stage, there was no delay before Flight of the Conchords came out. (more…)
I have liked Muse since their debut album, although I really got into them with Origin of Symmetry. Given their over the top sound and Radiohead meets Queen meets really heavy metal I am astonished that they are as popular as they are.
I wished that I had seen their previous tour because I really liked their last album, and while I enjoyed Drones, it was a bit more basic than the over the top sound of The 2nd Law. Nevertheless, I was pretty excited to see them live, especially when my friend Joe said they were the best show he has ever seen.
And I have to concur with him. This show was outstanding. There was nothing disappointing about this show at all. Even before the show started, they had a Drone Processing Entrance for anyone with general admission seats (I didn’t know there was such a thing, but they all got to stand on the floor inches from the band, which is pretty cool). The stage setup itself was spectacular–a circular stage with two catwalks extending out to either side–like a bow tie–which guitarist/singer/superathlete Matthew Bellamy and bassist (and growler) Chris Wolstenholme ran to throughout the show.
Just before the band came out, a dozen stormtrooper-looking guys with batons and blue glowing lights came out to “patrol” the perimeter while they played “Straight Outta Compton.” And then the lights went out.
The giant orbs lit and up descended from the rafters while the prerecorded “Drones” played. These drone balloons had lights on the bottom which scoped out the audience.
And then the band came out and launched into “Dead Inside” while the drones floated around above them. It was cool to see Wolstenholme’s bass with the led lights on the fretboard. And before I forget, drummer Dominic Howard is a monster. His set was right in the center of the stage anchoring the whole business. And his drums were loud and impressive and super fast when needed. I also liked that at the end of the show, he ran to both sides of the bow tie stage to wave to fans. (more…)
I had never seen Blue Öyster Cult even though I’ve been a pretty big fan since college. So when I saw they were playing at the Wellmont, I had to go see them. As it turns out Vanilla Fudge was going to be the opener.
I have known of Vanilla Fudge, but I realized that I had no idea what they sang. And when I looked them up, their biggest hits were all covers. It turns out, that’s what they are–the world’s most successful and unusual cover band (Led Zeppelin opened for them in 1969, and Deep Purple got their organ sound from Vanilla Fudge).
Although they do covers, their sound is very much their own. They don’t so much cover songs as transform them into their own style. And that style is psychedelic and very heavy.
The band released five albums from 1967-1969 and then broke up. They reunited and recorded an album in 1984. Then split up. And reunited in 2002 (with a different singer) and released an album of rerecorded old Vanilla Fudge as well as a cover of a Backstreet Boys and an N’Sync song (!).
Then the original lineup reunited in 2007 for an album of all Led Zeppelin covers called Out Through the In Door. And then last year they released a new album called Spirit of ’67 (a collection of songs from 1967). This featured all of the original members except the bassist who has retired.
So, here it is almost 50 years later and the original lineup (sans bassist) is still touring. And they sounded amazing. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Stan Rogers Folk Festival Canso NS (July 2, 2005).
Back in 2005, the Rheostatics played two days at the Stan Rogers Folk Festival. The first day’s show was a kind of mash up of the Rheostatics and other bands. Indeed, the recording includes some other artists along with the Rheos.
The sound quality of the recording is okay, but there are some really loud gusts of wind that seem to mar the sound.
They talk about how they are there to represent the excellence that is Toronto.
The second song is by The Chucky Danger Band (who later changed their name to Paper Lions). It is called “Hola” and is pretty fun (there’s a story about them being in a foreign country and writing a song with these simple words in Spanish.
Then the Rheos come back and they are joined by Suzie Vinick and Jill Barber.
Suzie sings a folky, unusual cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock n Roll.” Then Jill sings her own “Nothing on Me” a nice folk song. Then they do a super fun version of “Red Dog Ray” by Hank Fisher.
It’s back to Suzie with her cool song “A 7 minor.” Then a folky rendition of “Bad Time to Be Poor” with great backing vocals
Suzie gets one more song, this time, her own “Happy Here.” The last track is a fun rendition of “Claire” with a kazoo solo! It seems like a perfect folk festival setting.
[READ: September 7, 2015] “Working Clean”
This is the first story I’ve read by Ruthnum. It went in a direction I totally did not expect.
I enjoyed the way it opened: “I got my break and found my wife on the same day. The wife part happened by coincidence, but the break–getting in with Jeev–that was a coincidence I made happen.”
So this story is about stand up comics on the comedy set. The narrator, Ed Brooks, and his friend Richie Hagen are struggling as standups. In fact, they both got in trouble at work for calling in sick when his boss heard them on the radio. But Jeev is doing great. And they agree that they hate him.
Jeev was in town because he needed clean material for his upcoming appearance on The tonight Show. So he was working in small clubs to prefect his act. The audience didn’t know who he was, but he still killed. He was on the same bill as Richie and the narrator, but he seemed oblivious to them. (more…)
Karl Ove mentions many bands in this book, but the deLillos are the only Norwegian band that he plays. They sing in Norwegian and play sprightly, jangly guitar pop–they would fit in very well with some of the lighter alt bands from the late 80s and early 90s.
I have no idea what they’re singing about (well, the title translates to “love” so I guess I know what they are singing about.
The singer has a high, delicate voice and there’s some interesting harmonies. I really like the way the song transitions from verse to chorus with the picked guitar notes–very catchy.
It comes from their second album, Før var det morsomt med sne (Beforeit was funin the snow), which along with their first was quite popular and was reissued with a bonus disc in the 90s. Having said that I see that Amazon has one copy of the disc and no album cover listed. Worse yet, I can’t find many other songs online (Spotify lists the album, but I can’t get it to play).
Sorry, deLillos (even searching for you gives us more Don DeLillo than you guys).
[READ: June 24, 2014] My Struggle Book Four
I started including the British edition page numbers because at my work we received both editions of the book, and I received the British one first so I grabbed it and started reading. I noticed the page numbers were quite different (the British book is taller and the print is quite bigger, although this doesn’t explain why the previous books have fewer pages).
I had been interested in the differences between editions from the get go. I had enjoyed the American editions, but I enjoyed reading this British edition more (bigger print?). But when I noticed on one of the pages that the word “realise” was spelled as I typed it, it made me wonder if the American edition changed that to the American spelling. [Actually, I see that Don Bartlett lives in Virginia, so perhaps he translates it into American first]. While I wasn’t about to go into a deep inspection of the topic, when I saw the American edition on a shelf at work, I had to do a little comparison.
And what I found out was that even though Don Bartlett is the (amazing) translator for both editions, someone (perhaps Bartlett himself?) is translating the American into British (or vice versa). I looked at a couple of pages and noticed these changes from British to American:
BRITISH EDITION = AMERICAN EDITION
Pack it in, now = Give it up, now
roll-up = rollie [about hand rolled cigarettes]
looked daggers at = gave her a dirty look
a complete prat = completely useless
is that possible? = really?
to cook and wash up = cooking and doing the dishes
I had got = I’d gotten
had penned = had written
and yes, realised = realized.
Other than select phrases, every word is exactly the same. So somebody goes through the books and changes them to British english idioms and spellings. That’s fascinating.
I also see that this is the first book I had not read an excerpt from first. Not that it would have made any difference as to whether I read the fourth one. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it.
So book four is set in Håfjord, a town in Northern Norway near Finnsnes (a five hour flight away–okay I had no idea Norway was so big!). Karl Ove is 18 and has decided to become a grade school teacher there for one year. The tax breaks are great if you teach, and he plans to teach and write his masterpieces and then get out. He has no interest in teaching, but the town is small (most grades are 3-7 students), so he figures it can’t be too hard.
As in most of Karl Ove’s books, the stories jump around and flash back and do not stay all in this one time, but it is largely set in this locale.
My first thought was that I have never read a story with as much semen (both nocturnal emission and premature ejaculation) in my life. It is a strange take away from the book, but there it is. Karl Ove is 18 and really wants to have sex for the first time. About 3/4 of the way through the book he reveals that he never masturbated (it just never occurred to him, apparently, and at 18 he’s too old to start–what!?). As such, he seems to have wet dreams every night. And every time he gets near a woman, he has an orgasm too soon. He is horny all the time–it’s a bit disconcerting.
And since I mentioned that, I don’t know if Karl Ove’s life is typical of Norway, but I am shocked by the number of women who take their clothes off around him (he may have never had sex, but he was about to on at least a half-dozen occasions). And he says that all through school (from around age 13 and up) it was common place for the boys to lift up the girls’ shirts and kiss and or fondle their breasts. It is mind-boggling to me. And the 16 year olds all seem to be having sex all the time–this may be skewed from Karl Ove’s perspective, but that’s what I now believe happens in Norway.
But while sex is the main theme of the book–sex, sex sex, there is more to it.
Karl Ove’s parents have split up and his father has started drinking in earnest. The dad has remarried and has just had a baby. Incidentally, I was also shocked to read that Karl Ove’s father, who is an abusive stodgy old man who is cranky and mean and abusive and all the stuff that we read about in the other volumes was only 43 at the time that Karl Ove was 18. So the old man who I pictured as a gray-haired curmudgeon in this book is actually younger than me. Great.
In Håfjord, Karl Ove is teaching kids who range from age 13 to 16. It’s disconcerting to read about him thinking lustful thoughts about his students, until he reminds us that for most of the students, he is only 2 years older than them. I am pleased to say that he behaves himself (except in his mind) with all of the students. There’s even a really interesting flash forward to eleven years later when he runs into two of them again.
He proves to be a pretty decent teacher it seems. The kids mostly like him (the girls all think he is hot) and he is young and tries to make it fun (he himself hated school and everything about it). He even seems to help out an awkward boy (although that is never resolved). We see him teaching, trying to interact with the kids and generally being a pretty good guy.
Until the booze comes out.
For in addition to semen, this book is chock full of alcohol. Before graduating from gymnas (high school), Karl Ove basically stopped caring about anything. He spent most of his time drunk. It is astonishing the amount of drinking he does–it’s practically like an Amish Rumspringa how crazy he goes. But even in this retrospective look, he talks about how much he likes it, how it loosens him up and makes him less nervous.
But really he just spends most of his time drunk, hungover or sick. He even got into the hash scene for a while. He was living with his mom at the time and she was appalled at the way he acted–especially when he threw a party which trashed their house. She even kicked him out for a time.
He seemed to be over the drink in Håfjord, but it turns out that there’s precious little else to do except drink up there, especially when it grows dark for most of the day. So there is much drinking–he only misses class once or twice because of it but he comes very close a lot.
The irony that he is appalled at his father’s drinking, while drinking so much himself, is apparently lost on him.
The other main preoccupation with Karl Ove is music. He talks a lot about his great taste in music (he reminds me of me–a little insufferable). Back when he was in gymnas, he spent a lot of time discussing his favorite bands and favorite songs. He got a job (at 16) writing reviews for a local paper (holy crap, jealous!) and then later gets a job writing a column for another paper. For the previous book I listed a lot of the bands he mentioned, and I wish I had written them down for this one. U2 features prominently (this is 1987, so I’m guessing Joshua Tree), but also Talking Heads, a Scottish post-punk/new wave band The Associates and their album Sulk which he describes as “an utterly insane LP.” he and his brother really like The Church and Simple Minds (before they got so commercial). He also has a whole thread in which he makes connections with albums:
Briano Eno, for example, started in Roxy Music, released solo records, produced U2 and worked with Jon Hassell, David Byrne, David Bowie, and Robert Fripp; Robert Fripp played on Bowie’s Scary Monsters; Bowie produced Lou Reed, who came from Velvet Underground, and Iggy Pop, who came from the Stooges, while David Byrne was in Talking Heads, who on their best record, Remain in Light, used the guitarist Adrian Belew, who in turn played on several of Bowie’s records and was his favorite live guitarist for years. (64).
He also specifically raves about “The Great Curve” from the Talking Heads album, and of course, he raves about the first Led Zeppelin album as well.
Music is a huge part of his life (and he dresses accordingly too). It’s unclear whether the kids think this is awesome or not, but he may be a bit too much for some of the locals. The locals are mostly fishermen (which makes sense), and Karl Ove is a bit intimidated that he is so wimpy compared to them–one of the women even teases him about his tiny arms.
But his main focus is writing. He writes a few shorts stories (to my knowledge he has never published any of them). We see some excerpts and they seem fine–he fancies himself Hemingway. But he also mentions a bunch of Norwegian authors (I love when he does that). Sadly again, not too many of them have been translated into English. [I really hope that some mega fan creates a database of all of the bands and authors he mentions]. He also talks briefly about his first novel which alludes to his time teaching here. I happened to read a small summary of said novel (Out of the World) and feared that it spoiled what was going to happen. But, in fact there does appear to be a difference between his fiction and non-fiction.
The book moves very quickly–from party to party, from failed sexual attempt to the next, even from his staying up all night long trying to write. And most of the time he comes off as kind of a dick–he is also very self-critical, which somehow tempers that dickishness.
As with the other books I cannot figure out exactly why I am so addicted to his writing. I brought the book home on Thursday night and finished it (all 548 pages of it) Monday night. This really completes the picture of himself as he moved from childhood to adulthood and really lays the foundation for whatever is to come next. Early in the book he talks about the books that he loved at that age, books that talk about the move from childhood to adulthood. And thus, this book becomes something of a bildungsroman as well. Although whether or not Karl Ove actually grew up at the end of this book will have to wait until volume 5 (which I have to assume is still another year away as there is no information about it online at all!).
For ease of searching, I include: Hafjord, For var det morsomt med sne.
This skit (more of a monologue) comes from Monty Python’s Contractual Obligation Album, the first Python album I ever bought. It’s not my favorite bit from them, but it’s short and wedged in the middle of the rest of the album which means that I know it by heart. Now, the skit is most famous for naming Toad the Wet Sprocket (Eric Idle says he tried to come up with the most absurd name he could think of and there it was). The band featured Flamboyant Ambidextrous Rex who fell off the back of a motorcycle.
What I tend to forget is that the rest of the joke is all about one band Dead Monkeys who have just broken up again. They were together for ten years, but for nine of those years the band had other names. Primarily, the names are fishy: Dead Salmon, Trout, Poached Trout in a White Wine Sauce, Dead Herring. Then they ditched the fishy references for Dead Loss, Heads Together, Dead Together and ultimately Helen Shapiro.
This extended riff is rather silly and I’m not even sure it’s appropriate for a joke on bands. I can’t think of many bands who have broken up and reformed under new names (I mean, yes, there’s a couple, but not enough to warrant this extended joke).
And yet, I still remember the joke, so it must be something, right?
What do I think of Dead Duck? or Lobster?
[READ: September 16, 2014] “Liner Notes”
This Shouts & Murmurs piece begins so strongly that I was super excited to read it. Saunders riffs on liner notes in albums, specifically failed albums. His liner notes are for the album 2776: A Musical Journey Through America’s Past, Present & Future which is just another attempt to “engage with the vast sweep of American history” via the musical epic.
The best joke is citing Meat Loaf’s “Ben Franklin Makes Love in a Foggy Grove of Trees” (which failed to translate to live performance). [I would totally listen to that song]. He then talks about a Tim Rice-Andrew Lloyd Webber production of “Johnny Tremain” which was too intellectual for a nineteen-seventies audience. But I feel like Saunders goes off track when, instead of staying with the slightly absurd realism, he jumps the shark by saying that the songs were too risqué “for a staid culture that, at that time, still believed that babies came when you left a pastel turtleneck rolled up in a wad overnight.” It broke me right out of the exaggerated realism into the realm of outrageous farce.
Which is a shame because returning to real artists like Tom Waits making a biography of Jesse James called “A White-Trash Rambling Christ Figure Just Shot Your Brother, Amigo” is pretty darn funny. (more…)
I expected Brass Bed to be a goofy band because of the snapshot image of them singing into toy microphones. I was initially disappointed by how normal they were, but I was soon won over by their interesting floating sound. They have this overall trippy underwater vibe (which seems to be accomplished by a bowed slide guitar). This is especially notable on “Yellow Bursts of Age” their best song in the set. Later the guitar solo is echoey and also underwatery. It’s a very wild sound for a fairly simple song.
They tell a funny story about being from Louisiana and encountering Washington DC snow and (of course) not having an ice scraper (although they did have bag of sand).
“Cold Chicory” is an upbeat sounding song musically although it is kind of a bummer lyrically, but again there’s the great sound of the bow on the slide guitar and the echoey lead guitar. “Please Don’t Go” is a slow song—with more interesting effects from singing into that slide guitar.
The plastic mikes do come out in the last song “Have to be Fine” in which they sing into the echoey mikes for the intro (with very nice harmonies). They sing the intro for about a minute, and then the slide guitar player takes lead vocals on this simple but pretty song (I don’t know any of their names).
At the end, the NPR folks gave them an honorary NPR ice scraper.
[READ: June 24, 2014] My Struggle Book Three
I read an excerpt of Book Three just a few weeks ago. And in the post about it I said I wouldn’t be reading this book for quite some time. But then the book unexpectedly came across my desk and I couldn’t resist grabbing it while it was here. So it appears that I will now have to wait well over a year before Book 4 (which is, I think about 1,000 pages–yipes). I also see that Book Three is fully called “Boyhood Island” in Britain.
At the end of Book Two, Karl Ove was more or less caught up to the present–writing about what he was then up to (with a few years gap, of course). So it makes sense that this book is about his childhood–showing us how he came to be the man he is.
The book, amusingly enough, starts off with memories that he cannot possibly remember, and he even says as much. He is using memories of his parents and piecing together pictures from when he was an infant. In 1970, (Karl Ove was born in 1968) his family moved to the island of Tromøy (and check out the idyllic picture that Wikipedia had). This is where Karl Ove spent his (rather traumatic) formative years. Their island is small, so he knows everyone in his school, but there are some amenities around like the Fina station and the B-Max, and there’s lots of soccer to be played and bikes to be ridden.
Things seem normal at first–he runs and plays with his friends, there is ample green space to run around in, and they have boats to sail on. And we meet two of Karl Ove’s earliest friends: Geir and Trond (so many people are named in the book, I’m very curious to know if any of them remember him). In an early scene they chase the end of a rainbow looking for a pot of gold (and have a discussion about what happens to it when the rainbow vanishes (the boys even play a prank on Karl Ove that they actually found the pot,a dn while he doesn’t initially fall for it, he is compelled to go back and they tease him).
But the looming figure here and throughout the book is Karl Ove’s father, who, at least according to Karl Ove’s memory, is pretty much a monstrous dick. He is demanding and exacting, unforgiving and seemingly uncaring. He is either bipolar or a drunk, jumping from goofy to outright rage in a mater of seconds. Karl Ove and his brother Yngve fear him unconditionally and, by the end of the book they both seem to hate him. The scene where their dad tries and fails to teach Karl Ove to swim is heartbreaking, especially when the dad goes home and tells their mom right in front of him “He’s frightened of water.” There are dozens of instances of fear and intimidation (often accompanied by a wrenching of Karl Ove’s ear). Like when Karl Ove turns on the TV for his grandparents (he wasn’t allowed to touch the TV but he wanted to do something nice for them). After a few minutes, the TV fizzed out and, naturally, he was blamed for it and sent to bed without supper (after some minor physical abuse). (more…)
Sarah and I saw BNL this summer with our friend Megan, and the show was great. That marked the fourth or fifth time that I’d seen them. When we found out that they were coming through again (to the close to us and cool Bethlehem Sands) we thought it might be fun to see them again. Especially with our friends Matt and Marisa who like them but had never seen them. So we met up and had a very fun time. We ate at Emeril’s Burgers and More. The burger was good (although it took an incredibly long time for it to arrive). The strange thing about the burger was that it was very crispy on the outside (which was good) but rather and odd shade of pink on the inside (which may have been the lighting, but it was certainly pinker than usual for medium), but it was not juicy/bloody—how is something pink but not juicy? It was weird. But still rather tasty.
But back to the show. Our seats were in Row 20, which was much better than our seats this summer. The pictures here are mine taken with my phone—they’re blurrier than I’d like, but not terrible.
And this show was a ton of fun and full of surprises. They started with “Limits” an unexpected song from their new album. And then they jumped into “Never is Enough” a surprise old song. Ed always does an introductory rap (which no one ever includes in the setlists online for some reason). This one, while not as good as the PNC Bank Center one was enjoyable. Ed explained that he ran a half marathon that day on the Sands grounds. Well, actually he ran a block but did cross the finish line (the band played along with Da Don’t Run Run). It was very funny. “Pinch Me” is the new crowd favorite. Whereas they used to throw Mac and Cheese during $1,000,000, now they throw underwear. And much hilarity ensues. (more…)
[ATTENDED: August 9, 2016] Mariachi Flor de Toloache
I Just Read About That... 