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Archive for the ‘The Breeders’ Category

Belly: King 30th Anniversary Tour (Underground Arts, Philadelphia, PA, October 27, 2025)

Posted in Belly, Los Angeles Power Disco, Philadelphia, PA, Tanya Donnelly, The Breeders, Throwing Muses, Underground Arts on October 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: October 27, 2025] Belly

I really liked Belly when they first came out.  Their debut album is great and the follow up King is probably just as good.  When this tour was announced I wasn’t sure if I had listened to King all that much but when I put it on again I realized I knew it quite well.  Then I looked at other setlists to see of they were playing any of the songs from Star, and the were.  So I decided to see them.

I’ve always liked Tanya Donnelly–she’s been on the periphery of massive success pretty often.  She founded Throwing Muses with Kristen Hersh (her step sister). But I feel like Tanya left just before they became more commercially successful.

Then she formed The Breeders with Kim Deal.  But she left before they released Last Splash.  And then she formed Belly.  She had a pretty big hit with Feed the Tree.  But King wasn’t as successful and Belly broke up.  Tanya went solo.

Belly reformed in 2016 with almost all four original members.  The original bassist was replaced by Gail Greenwood right after Feed the Tree and is with them as they reunited.  Belly put out an album in 2018 which I missed entirely.

They toured in 2016 playing a set of mostly Star and King, then toured in 2018 playing mostly the new album, Dove.  And now they were back for King.

The set was great and I was delighted with how much fun bassist Gail was.  She was very chatty with the audience and when she said that the next sing would make you cry, a guy next to me said I’m crying already, and she went over and gave him a hug.  Gail also sang an amazing range of backing vocals, from really deep voices to very high pitched ones.  And her bass sounded great.

The stage set up was interesting, with Tanya and Gail right up front.  Lead guitarist Thomas Gorman was on the far side.  He was in the background a bit although he did take front stage for the few guitar solos he played.  His brother, drummer Chris Gorman was behind a pole and I didn’t see him for the whole show–but the drums sounded great.

But of course the focus is Tanya.  She exuded a coolness that I really enjoyed.  But she didn’t see aloof or above it all.  She seemed to be having a really good time.  Especially when Gail said, thanks for cheering us on even when we suck.  But they did not suck.  They sounded great and Tanya’s voice was really impressive.  She hit some high notes in the encores that really blew me away.  And the harmonies between her and Gail were fantastic.

I didn’t know every song from King.  It’s weird that I didn’t really know the first two songs all that well, but I knew the next few–who doesn’t remember the first song on an album?  And when they sang the jittery Red, I couldn’t wait to shout along with the chorus.  Silverfish sounded fantastic and Super-Connected was even better than I remembered.

After the album, they took a short break and came back with a second set of mostly songs from Star (which was great!).  I got to hear all of my favorite songs from the album, so that was super cool.  They played two songs from Dove which sounded very nice, if not a little slower.  And they ended the set with the Dive track Shiny One.  They merged that song into Jimi Hendrix’ Are You Experienced (which I see is on their B sides record, so I guess it has been a part of their set for a while) which merged back into Shiny as they headed off for the encore break.

It’s obvious that they were going to do an encore (it was on the setlist after all), but it’s always nice when a band seems to really appreciate that the people there are excited for them to come back.

I didn’t know the first song, Thief, which is a bonus song on their greatest hits album.  This was one of the songs where Tanya really showed that she could hit those high notes.  It was a quiet, almost acoustic song (she didn’t play acoustic guitar) for about half of it. And then the band kicked in to rock the rest.  The final song was Full Moon Empty Heart.  I aways assume bands are going to save the big hits for the encore–but no one seems to do that anymore. And that’s fine. But I found it odd that they picked this song to end the show.  Unless it was an opportunity for Tanya to save her voice for the end, where she–damn–really hit some impressive high notes.

I also really appreciated that this was an evening with Belly and the whole show was done by around 10:15.

I’m really glad I finally got to see them.

SETLIST
King album

  1. Puberty ♠
  2. Seal My Fate ♠
  3. Red ♠
  4. Silverfish ♠
  5. Super-Connected ♠
  6. The Bees ♠
  7. King ♠
  8. Now They’ll Sleep ♠
  9. Untitled and Unsung ♠
  10. L’il Ennio ♠
  11. Judas My Heart ♠
    Set 2
  12. Low Red Moon *
  13. Gepetto *
  14. Slow Dog *
  15. Human Child ◊
  16. Spaceman ≅
  17. Dusted *
  18. Feed the Tree *
  19. Shiny One ◊   >
  20. Are You Experienced (Jimi Hendrix song)
    encore
  21. Thief ≅
  22. Full Moon Empty Heart *

≅ Bees (2021)  [also appeared as new songs on their Greatest Hits album in 2002]
◊ Dove (2018)
♠ King (1995)
* Star (1993)

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The Breeders: 30th Anniversary Tour / Screaming Females (The Fillmore, Philadelphia, PA, September 20, 2023) [DID NOT ATTEND]

Posted in Philadelphia, PA, Pixies, Screaming Females, The Breeders, The Fillmore Philadelphia on September 20, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[DID NOT ATTEND: September 20, 2023] The Breeders / Screaming Females

When The Breeders released “Cannonball” 30 years ago (!), I fell in love with the song (and the video).  It had so much Pixies in it and Kim Deal sounded great.

I believed that I loved the whole album, but it’s possible that I only really liked a couple of songs.

When I saw that they were doing a 30th anniversary tour, I thought that I had to go to it since I’ve seen Pixies without Kim a few times now.  But this show turned out to be the same night that Igorrr and I’ve had tickets for that show since December and there was no way I was going to miss it.

I guess realized I liked The Breeders a bit more in memory than in reality.

Screaming Females opened the show.  I really liked them a few years ago.  I bought most of their records and saw them live twice. But recently, for reasons that are completely unclear to me, I’ve gone cold on them.

Oh well, no biggie.

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Samantha Irby–Wow, No Thank You.: essays (2020)

Posted in Alanis Morissette, Ani DiFranco, Beck, Bjork, Broad City, Dave Matthews Band, Drugs, Erykah Badu, Everything Sucks, Fiona Apple, Ginuwine, Hole, Indigo Girls, Jill Scott, Juliana Hatfield, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, LGBTQ, Lisa Loeb, Liz Phair, Mariah Carey, Marriage (Happy), Memoirs, Menstruation, Michigan, Parenting, Pearl Jam, PJ Harvey, Poo, Portishead, Poverty, Queer, Racism, Radiohead, Reality Bites, Restrooms, Samantha Irby, Sarah McLachlan, Sex, Sexism, Shrill, Smashing Pumpkins, Taxes, Technology, Teeth, The Breeders, The Cranberries, The Roots, Toilets, Tori Amos on November 11, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE ROOTS feat. JILL SCOTT-“You Got Me” (1999).

I’ve wanted to listen to more from The Roots ever since I was exposed to them on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.  But as typically happens, I’m listening to other things instead.  So this seemed like a good opportunity to check them out (based on Samantha Irby’s rave below).

One of the best things about this recording (and The Roots in general) is Questlove’s drumming.  In addition to his being a terrific drummer, his drums sound amazing in this live setting.

Erykah Badu sings on the album but Jill Scott (Jilly from Philly) who wrote the part, sings here.

It starts out quietly with just a twinkling keyboard and Scott’s rough but pretty voice.  Then comes the main rapping verses from Black Thought.  I love the way Scott sings backing vocals on the verses and Black Thought adds backing vocals to the chorus.

Midway through the song, it shifts gears and gets a little more funky.  Around five minutes, the band does some serious jamming.  Jill Scott does some vocal bits, the turntablist goes a little wild with the scratching and Questlove is on fire.

Then things slow down for Scott to show off her amazing voice in a quiet solo-ish section.  This song shows off how great both The Roots and Jill Scott are.  Time to dig deeper.

[READ: November 1, 2020] Wow, no thank you.

This book kept popping up on various recommended lists.  The bunny on the cover was pretty adorable, so I thought I’d check it out. I’d never heard of Samantha Irby before this, but the title and the blurbs made this sound really funny.

And some of it is really funny. Irby is self-deprecating and seems to be full of self-loathing, but she puts a humorous spin on it all.  She also has Crohn’s disease and terribly irritable bowels–there’s lots of talk about poo in this book.

Irby had a pretty miserable upbringing.  Many of the essays detail this upbringing.  She also has low self-esteem and many of the essays detail that.  She also doesn’t take care of herself at all and she writes about that.  She also doesn’t really want much to do with children or dogs.  And yet somehow she is married to a woman with children.

From what some of these essays say, it sounds like she is married to this woman yet somehow lives an entirely separate life from the rest of the house.  It’s all rather puzzling, although I suppose if you are already a fan, you may know many of the details already. (more…)

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Keith Gessen–“How Did We Come to Know You?” (New Yorker, April 16, 2018)

Posted in Hospitals, Keith Gessen, New Yorker, Russia, Short Story, Summer, The Breeders, Tiny Desk Concert on April 16, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE BREEDERS-Tiny Desk Concert #731 (April 16, 2018).

Gah!  The Breeders do a Tiny Desk Concert and you only get 3 songs in 11 minutes?

I understand that three songs is accepted for the Tiny Desk, but come on!  Other bands have been eking out nearly 20 minutes, you’ve got Kim Deal and the original line up in front of recording devices having a grand old time and you don’t ask for a fourth song. Well, perhaps they just didn’t want to.

The Breeders play three songs. Two new ones and one old one (which comes not from one of the albums with this original line up, but from Title TK).

What’s most notable about this Tiny Desk is just how goofy they all (especially Kim who is laughing almost throughout the whole show), it seems.

“MetaGoth” seems to open in the middle of the song, like they just started recording while they were jamming.  Josephine Wiggs is on lead guitar, Kim Deal is on bass and Kelley Deal is making some fascinating noises on her guitar (this is especially true later in the song when she seem to be simply scratching up and down the strings with her blue gloves).  Kim and Josephine are duetting lead vocals with Josephine speaking and Kim delicately singing over her.  About midway through the song we cam see that drummer Jim MacPherson is hitting heir roadie in the head with his brushes and the roadie is going “chhhh” to be a cymbal.  The song is weird and cool and very Breeders.

As they set up for “All Nerve” Josephine switches to bass, Kim takes acoustic guitar. Kelley stays on electric guitar but takes over as the spoken vocal  underneath Kim’s quiet leads.   Kelley’s voice is echoed pretty heavily and almost creepily.  It’s got a very cool sound, but is quite short.

“Off You” is a nearly 6 minute delicate, surf rock-feeling song.  The song begins with “Kim Deal’s faux-exasperation at Josephine Wiggs for starting a wind-up toy just before a song.”  Kelley says “you guys can sing along if you know the words.”  Kim chides, “no they’ll be out of pitch, Shut up Kelley.”  They start the song, “1, 2, here we go. fuck, shit, 1, 2, here we go” (Kim apparently messed up but it’s unclear to me what she did.  For this song Kelley switches to bass (and is apparently reading the sheet music).  She has taken off the blue wrist guards she had on.  Kim is on electric guitar and is playing it in a fascinating way–holding it almost vertically and strumming gently on the neck–laughing as she sings the vocals.  Jim doesn;t have anything to do and Josephine isn’t doing much for the first minute or so.  She is sitting up front on a desk but when the time comes she plays bass as well–doing some lead bass lines.  The roadie who was the cymbal is now playing the more lead guitar parts while Kim strums.  There’s a lot going on for such a quiet song.

As the Concert ends, Kim apparently stands at attention just repeating thank you, thank you.  Maybe they didn’t want to do four songs after all.

[READ: April 12, 2018] “How Did We Come to Know You?”

This was a fascinating story that went more or less around the world to talk about family.

Arkady left the Soviet Union with his mother and brother when he was 4.  He now finds himself back in Moscow looking after his elderly grandmother, who is nearly ninety.  As the story opens, he has grown a little tired of “babysitting” her and has let her go out by herself–where she falls on the stairs and needs a hospital.  The ambulance takes her nearly an hour away to a national hospital.

When they left the Soviet Union, Arkady’s brother Dima was 16.  Dima remained Russian in outlook and when the Soviet Union collapsed, he returned to Moscow.  Dima lived with his grandmother and was involved in all kinds of businesses.  He called Arkady to look after their grandmother because he was going to London for (no doubt questionable) business and he didn’t want anything to happen to his grandmother (or her apartment) while he was gone.

As it turns out, Arkady was happy to get out of New York for a time as well. (more…)

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Max Blecher–“In a Waxworks” (Harper’s, January 2015)

Posted in Death, Excerpt, Harper's, Max Blecher, Phish, Short Story, The Breeders, Translation on June 1, 2015| Leave a Comment »

harp janSOUNDTRACK: PHISH-Live Bait 10 (2014).

bait 10The last time I checked, there hadn’t been a new Live Bait release for quite some time.  I wasn’t even sure if there were going to be any more.  And then, when I was browsing the Phish site I saw that this had come out a few months ago.  It’s so hard to keep up.

This is yet another great selection of live songs.  There’s eleven songs in over three hours with most of them clocking in around 20 minutes.

“What’s the Use” opens this set.  It’s an amazing instrumental and one I haven’t heard them play very often.  It comes from The Siket Disc and is really stellar in this live setting (from 1999).  One of the great things about the Bait discs is they way the songs jump around from different years  So, the “Stash” from 1994 with its wild raging solos butts up nicely to the 30 minute “Tweezer” from 1995.  The band seems to have been really fun back then with the jam section of the song being really wild.  Right after the “Uncle Ebeneezer” line, they go nuts banging on their instruments.  The jam proceeds along until it comes to an almost staggered halt which morphs into The Breeder’s “Last Splash” (sort of).  The jump to 2010’s “The Connection” is only jarring because I haven’t heard too many live shows with this new song on it.  But it sounds great.

Disc Two (if you burn this to disc) starts with a great 24 minute version of “Down with Disease” from 2011, and then jumps back to 1998’s “Bathtub Gin” which is also kind of wild and zany.  I gather that their shows may have mellowed some over the years.  I like the way the jam section of this song returns to the melody of “Gin” since most of the time the jams just kind of fade out.  1992’s “My Sweet One” is a lot of fun.  There’s a really long intro before the lyrics (almost 3 and a half minutes) during which they play the Simpsons theme and Fish shouts “oh fuck” but who knows why.  There’s also thirty seconds of silence as they try to find the “pitch, pitch, pitch” before the final “name.”  “The Mango Song” is 18 minutes long.  The jam section starts around 5 minutes in and the first five minutes still sound like the Mango Song (because of the piano) then the last 8 are really trippy with lots of echoes.

Disc 3 opens with “Fee” which I always love to hear and assume they don’t play much anymore (based on nothing, really).  There’s a 5 minute jam before the start of “The MOMA Dance” which you can kind of tell is “The Moma Dance” but not really.  The song merges into “Runaway Jim.”  And the final song is a great version of “Chalk Dust Torture” from 2012 (as the liner notes state: Fans of recent performances will also find the “Chalk Dust Torture” played during the iconic “Fuck Your Face” set at Denver’s Dick’s Sporting Goods Park.)

Glad to have the Bait back.

[READ: March 21, 2015] “In a Waxworks”

This piece was translated from the Romanian by Michael Henry Heim and comes from Blecher’s Adventures in Immediate Irreality.  I don’t know what the full book is about and I found this excerpt to be more than a little puzzling.  Perhaps most fascinating though is that Blecher was born in 1909 and died in 1938 from tuberculosis of the spine.

It is a series of thoughts about the infinite and how thinking about things in reality would impact his thoughts about the infinite shadow–of birds in flight, the shadow of our planet, or even the vertiginous mountain chasms of caves and grottoes.

As he was a youngish man, thoughts turn to sex, and there’s some connection to a wax model of the inner ear.

But primarily the story concerns the world as a stage–as if life was some kind of artificial performance. He felt that the only person who could possibly understand the world the way he did was the town idiot. (more…)

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