In This Game A Minute

Yes, TECHNICALLY it's 2012...

2012-01-01T01:54:00.010-05:00

...but most of you are drunk or asleep (or both). So let me revisit 2011 for a moment and sneak in my list of personal jams of the year.

I say "personal" because some of these songs may not have been released in 2011, but they were fresh to me and got heavy rotation.

So in no particular order (and available for download here):

Song of Solomon / Animals As Leaders
side one / Earthless
Caroline / Fleetwood Mac
Too Much MIDI (Please Forgive Me) / Ford and Loptatin
Novacane / Frank Ocean
Glass Jar / Gang Gang Dance
White Rune / Iceage
Frame By Frame / King Crimson
Claudia Lewis / M83
Fallout / Neon Indian
More Than This / Roxy Music
Two Rivers (feat. Heems) / Small Black
Seed of Memory / Terry Reid
A Little Effort Goes Away / Ahleuchatistas

It's the Year of the Dragon by the way, so prepare for the angel and the serpent to come in many forms (Chinese, Korean, Rourke, etc)...

Paul Motian, RIP

2011-11-26T00:18:00.001-05:00

Favorite of his bands, favorite song...

Follow Your Vision...

2011-10-20T23:49:00.004-04:00

(no photoshop. just a flash and my dome putting its saturated dreams to reality.)

Droppin Knowledge

2011-10-16T00:42:00.004-04:00

My homeboy Amani just got me hip to this brotha. Learn sumpin...

He kinda goes too far out of "character" and format into some straight sexist terrain at the end, but otherwise on point...

"Drive" influences, my influences

2011-10-12T01:47:00.011-04:00

"These films share a world of sleek surfaces and ostentatious style, fueled as much by modish electronica and gauche fashion as their narratives’ sine wave ripples between glacial inactivity and hard-hitting action."

-Simon Kinnear, Clothes on Film-

Danger Gets Dangerous

2011-10-11T02:10:00.005-04:00

On the Road Again (and back)

2011-09-22T22:09:00.032-04:00

Another Citay tour complete...

This time as openers for the super chill peeps in Fruit Bats

and Vetiver

It was an interesting tour for me. Given the draw the of main acts, we were able to play larger venues than usual. It's always a treat getting to rock out at a mid-sized, 500-800 capacity club or theater. It feels more like a "concert", not just a show. And the little extras, like a stage monitor soundperson and an actual stocked green room (not just an extra storage space) make me feel a little, ya know, special. The one thing that I did have to sort through was playing on a bill with bands in a genre (a sort of indie-americana-folk rock) I had previously known very little about, and that I honestly didn't have much personal interest in exploring, especially given my current obsession with glassy and gauzy 80s pop.

But the level of songcraft, musicianship, and taste in each band really impressed me. I was also struck by the fact that the individual band members of Fruit Bats and Vetiver were all serious pop music heads, discussing everything from the accuracy of various John Lennon biographies to the spanish-language version of David Lee Roth's first solo record (as further proof, Fruit Bats keyboardist/guitarist Dave Depper recently released a note-for-note cover album of Paul McCartney's "Ram"). So over the course of the week, I saw how all of these factors informed each band member's personal playing and added a layer of depth to the songs that came without necessarily wanting to "push" the genre further . A quote I heard once that often comes back to me is "art doesn't always move forward, sometimes it moves sideways." And that was certainly the case for this tour. These folks took their genre as an art form and were working hard within it, giving it interesting colors and shapes, but not necessarily creating something new. Another quote I like is from my music college professor, Anthony Braxton, who said that music is comprised of "Innovators" and "Stylists". I still prefer the former, but I now see the value and satisfaction of the latter.

The kickoff Boston gig was packed, with the best crowd of the tour. Of course, I'm biased because it's my hometown and I love playing for my childhood friends (big up Nep), but Fruit Bats and Vetiver also commented on the good turnout and crowd response for that show. And Citay came out swinging! We were 1st of 3 for the night and needed to let everyone (including ourselves) know we would be starting these shows with some serious rock. Then came NYC, which was a professional highlight for me because we were returning to Bowery Ballroom to do a full set of Citay tunes (as opposed to the last time, which was a fun but short ten-minute set of covers). While playing that stage was great, my personal performance wasn't quite on point. And things kinda went down from there for me on the next couple of gigs. I had pedal and amp issues in both Philly and DC that were frustrating and distracted me from my performance, but the band as a whole was still sounding very good. By Virginia, I (mostly) knew what was going on and was borrowing an amp from Dan in Vetiver (who has a great project of his own with his bandmate/girlfriend Sarah on keyboards and vocals called Pure Bathing Culture). This got me off the gear fixation and back on the music.

As a sidenote, the venue in Virginia, The Jefferson Theater, was fantastic:

It's a beautiful, 100+ year-old theater that has hosted performances by acts ranging from Harry Houdini to the Grateful Dead (our bassist, Tay, has 'Dead bootlegs from there).

Finally, everything properly culminated in a near-perfect set in Durham, NC. At that gig, I felt "pro": the band was listening to each other and playing tight, my gear was working, I was hitting my marks, and my solos were 80% to the right ratio of shredding to abstraction. We ended with a fantastically lush psych jam on the song "Eye on the Dollar", with members of Vetiver and Fruit Bats sitting in on pedal steel and keyboard. Ezra (Citay's songwriter/bandleader) said that particular rendition of the tune was one of the most memorable musical experiences he's ever had. Durham was a great coda for the tour.

The next morning we left NC and drove for 10ish so hours, only stopping for gas and lunch at an Applebees somewhere in Delaware:

By 10pm, we were all back with our loved ones in NYC.

Local shows ahead...

Why be a servant to the law, when you can be it's master?

2011-09-06T01:12:00.004-04:00

Goodbye Summer, Goodbye Dreams...

Summer Jams

2011-07-26T22:22:00.012-04:00

Hey yall!

Summer's almost half over and my soundtrack for the season is a small assortment of quality tunes/albums (which you can download here), but nothing that rises to the status of

In years past, there's been one song (Twin Shadow,"Slow", summer 2010) or album (The Mars Volta, De-Loused in the Comatorium, summer 2003) that has been joyfully and obsessively repeated because of it's ability to capture the wanderings of my imagination (sunny or otherwise) for the months of July and August. That hasn't happened yet this summer, and it's been a strange absence.

But this is most likely because I've been obsessing over my own new song, "Hard", which you can now download for free (along with a newly remastered "Body") over at my Bandcamp page. While "summer jams" usually connote boombox blasts at a bbq in the park or harnessing the emotional pull of a perfect midday sun, these two songs are more in the spirit of a hazy, humid, late night love prowl or gettin down to it at your boo's place. A"Summer Jams, After Hours Edition", if you will.

Enjoy!

Guitar Nerdzzzz

2011-06-13T22:34:00.015-04:00

Finally settling back into routine after a short tour with Citay. Been awhile since I was on the road, forgot how time and place become dislodged and filtered through a fisheye lense of sleep deprivation, beer, unexpected beauty, strange personal encounters and 40 minutes of daily visceral intensity. Here are some club pics (courtesy of Pitchfork and Patrick O'Reilly):

And a link to our Mission of Burma set at the "Our Band Could Be Your Life" 10th Anniversay Concert.

Since that band is so guitar-oriented, I've definitely been working my way back towards thinking conceptually about what I'm doing on the guitar. This came to the forefront on Saturday after going to a show in Greenpoint featuring my bros STATS and Multitudes. After righteous sets by both bands, Hank from STATS suggested I stick around for the the headliner, Ahleuchatistas. I had never heard of them, but was told they were an improv duo with a stellar guitarist. Within the first 10 seconds of their set, I knew something serious was happening. The drummer was like a jazz-informed Zach Hill, restlessly working his way around the kit with constant propulsion and odd rhythmic placement. But the real find of the group was guitarist Shane Perlowin. He began by fingerpicking this melodic thicket that over the course of ten minutes morphed into a noise drone, an asian-influenced, ring modulated melodic loop and finally a metal shredfest. I left after about 15 minutes. It was 1:15am and my brain/ego could not take anymore of Perlowin's striking creativity. It was literally overwhelming.

Since that show, I've been tightening up my definition of "sound concept" as it relates to electric guitar playing. To me, "sound concept" on electric guitar is a creative tone (or several tones) pushing out of the speaker combined with well-crafted songwriting and/or melodic/non-melodic (noise, pedals) phrasing. "Sound concept" is an important idea for me and I'm always working to make improvements to it in my own playing.

Here are some guitar players that have inspired me with their strongly developed sound concepts...

Adrian Belew

D.P. Holmes

Nick Zinner (circa 2002)

Andy Gil

Andy Summers

The Edge

Bill Frisell

Brandon Ross

Nels Cline

Robin Guthrie

Kevin Shields

Eddie Van Halen

And the man who started it all...

Building a City

2011-04-14T10:05:00.000-04:00

As mentioned a couple posts back, I am now playing guitar in the band Citay. It's been going really well. After a few initial weeks of guitar rehearsals...

band leader Ezra Feinberg started full rehearsals with these fine folks...

(from left) Maxwell McDonald, Ezra Feinberg, Yours Truly, Noah Plotkin, Colby Cecca, Grant Schulte

We're starting to really solidify into a singular rawk machine and the psych jams are getting more magically celestial with each rehearsal.

The NYC incarnation of Citay will make its debut (of sorts, bassist Max McDonald will be on tour with Acrylics) on May 22 at the Bowery Ballroom. The show is actually a tribute bill to the now seminal historical account of 1980s indie rock, This Band Could Be Your Life. Acts on the bill (including St. Vincent, The Dirty Projectors, Ted Leo and Dan Deacon) will each cover a band profiled in the book. Citay will be covering Mission of Burma.

Two days later, we'll be heading out on a short Northeast tour:

Tuesday, May 24th - Cambridge, MA @ TT the Bear's Place w The Donkeys
Wednesday, May 25th - New Haven, CT @ BAR w The Donkeys
Thursday, May 26th - New York, NY @ Cake Shop w The Donkeys
Friday, May 27th - Hudson, NY @ The Spotty Dog w TBA
Saturday, May 28th - Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie w The Donkeys

So exciting things are ahead!

One wrinkle to the proceedings has been a pinched nerve/muscle spasm that put me out of commission for a few weeks, during which time I could not keep my left hand around the neck of a guitar. It's the cliche of a musician's worst nightmare, but when that shit is real, it definitely brings a lot of fears of career sustainability (I make a living playing guitar in schools) and life choices to the surface. Luckily, music production doesn't require two hands, so I have been able to keep busy writing some new music. And now the pain is starting to subside, so I am slowly bringing the 6-string back into the mix. At this rate, I will definitely be shred-ready by showtime.

And for the latest in the world of Evan Patrick, check out the new Bandcamp page.

Mystery Sessions, v.1

2011-03-15T23:57:00.010-04:00

I laid down some re-e-tar-ded, Mike Post-esque, 80s guitars for a high profile, immensely talented pop savant vocalist/songwriter/instrumentalist and her sonic wizard producer:

More details on them and the album they're working on to come...

Avant Gaaaarde

2011-02-21T20:28:00.011-05:00

I went to a show in Williamsburg last week. Saw ARP (good but not great solo Tangerine Dream-style), Robert A. A. Lowe (fantastic modular synth/vocal performance), and this:

Sometimes an "art" experience can simultaneously elevate your consciousness and crush your hope for elevating your consciousness.

Upcoming Music for 2011

2011-01-27T23:11:00.024-05:00

So as I mentioned in my last post, I have some new things happening musically this year. The first is a sideman gig playing lead guitar in the band Citay.

Citay is the brainchild of my friend Ezra Feinberg. Ezra started Citay as a solo recording project, but he honed the sound and got things popping with a live band and a legit label (Dead Oceans) after moving to San Francisco. While still using Citay as primarily a solo vehicle that is supplemented with musicians for shows, Ezra has now returned home and is in the process of putting together an East Coast version of the band. I'm very psyched to be part of that.

The music is a really fun and genuine homage/celebration of classic duel lead guitar shredding, Italo prog pastoral acoustic adornment, psychedelic space jams and 60's folk via 70's Laurel Canyon pop. My parts are primarily all single line guitar leads, so learning the music has gotten me back into some serious practice. I had plateaued technically a couple years ago, but now my fingers are on the brink of new shred-itude. Ezra's hoping Citay will start gigging in May, so I will keep folks posted on that here and on Facebook.

In addition to Citay, I'm also in the middle of a very creative and productive songwriting mode with my own music. This actually started over the summer, while I was in Taiwan with my family. The language barrier and cultural divide drove me into a deep funk, which then became literal funk. I combed the internet for any and all Prince I could find: albums, unreleased tracks, live shows, etc.

This became the basis for my current batch of songs. Other influential listening that I've done since the summer includes Twin Shadow, Tears for Fears and Bowie's discography from Station to Station to Scary Monsters (essentially the avant-garde cocaine/drinking years in LA, Berlin, and NYC). So all of that has been reflected in this new material, which I think has much more aesthetic and stylistic focus than anything I've done in years. Here are rough mixes of a couple of tunes...

Body

Sheena

I'll keep sharing songs as they come together and will also try to post some vids/pics that document the songwriting/home recording process as it unfolds.

Enjoy!

Back on the Block

2011-01-16T23:44:00.017-05:00

Well it's a been awhile kids...

Not gonna recap too much except to say that daddyhood, new tunes and an exciting new side gig have kept me busy. More on the last two items to come. But for now just wanted to share my experience last night on the Lower East Side.

After FINALLY seeing Abel Ferrara's unreleased strip club dramedy Go Go Tales (which was pretty much a meandering bore except for Asia Argento's tour-de-force strip tease with a dog and her sultry seduction of a horribly bowl-cut Matthew Modine) at Anthology Film Archives, I wanted to take advantage of a rare night out in the city.

Over the years, I've often found myself in the position of wandering around the LES/East Village at various points of the night, hoping to find something "happening". In my head, that "happening" involves a Fellini-esque loft party or an encounter of Bukowski-esque gutter depravity. In reality, it usually ends up with me paying a cover charge to see some bands I've never heard of, hoping that one of them will be good. And 8 times out of 10 they are not good. They are deeply flawed and/or highly formulaic. But that 20 percent success rate is always rewarding and keeps me trudging through the other 80 percent. Thankfully last night, I was on the good end of that figure.

Walking east from the theater, I decided to pop into Cakeshop. I have continued to go to this club despite my personal experience of never liking a show there. I generally find the bands they book to be a bad combination of too twee, too amateurish or too noisy without refinement. But I do read/hear good things about shows there, and I am still naively wooed by critical opinion, so I keep going in the hopes that it has just been my bad luck. Well, last night proved that theory to be correct.

After a likable but unmemorable opening set by local band Guitars, Prussia (from Detroit) went on and immediately took control of the room.

The set began with the singer doing an acapella verse, which served as an inviting call to attention. His voice had a slightly bratty yet romantic and sincere urgency that reminded me of Alex Turner from Arctic Monkeys and The Last Shadow Puppets. He was a great frontman. Then the band kicked in and laid down a blistering set of tunes that combined classic 50s pop, 70s Two Tone and contemporary indie/jingle jangle/etc. The vocal harmonies were spot-on, the rhythm section had a deep pocket and the guitars were properly cutting. Their overall delivery reminded me classic Elvis Costello and the Attractions - tightly wound and executed with control, but always on the verge of boiling over.

I'm really glad I rallied through the cold and bad luck to happen upon these guys. As drummer and nightlife icon Don McKenzie says, "persistence beats resistance". Def check 'em out.

Nolan's Lost in the Maze

2010-07-18T00:29:00.014-04:00

Saw "Inception" yesterday.

And despite the strangely uniform high praise, the film personally left me a little cold. Which isn't to say it's not an impressive piece of work, but within the context of Christopher Nolan's other films, it comes up short.

Without giving anything away, it's worth comparing the opening shots of "Inception" with Nolan's last film, "The Dark Knight" to illustrate this point. Both begin with no credits. We are thrust into a universe and must navigate our way through it. In "The Dark Knight", that universe begins with a dense, exploding cloud emanating from what appears to be blue fire, with bat shapes in the background forming an abstracted Batman symbol. That dissolves into a wide shot of a city, slowly but insistently zooming in on a black glass-paneled office building. The zoom takes enough time to allow the viewer to focus on the texture on the glass, just before one of the panels shatters. It's an elegant, restrained yet unnerving beginning to (arguably) Nolan's best film.

In contrast, "Inception" begins with closeups of waves hitting rocks on a beach. My first thought was of familiarity - "From Here to Eternity",

The camera moves down to the face of Leonardo DiCaprio laying in the sand, unconscious. My reference point expanded to "Robinson Crusoe" and any other castaway film/story. And crudely, the scene even slightly evoked those Calvin Kelin "Eternity" ads.

The action continues and Leonardo is awakened by a man wearing a uniform with a gun, speaking an Asian language. The camera pans to an enormous house modeled on traditional Asian architecture. Again, familiarity - take your pick of any adventure film/anime with a beachfront evil shrine/fortress/etc looming above.

These two examples show my main problem with "Inception" - it raises Nolan's interest in psychological puzzles but severely lacks his signature combination of unique visual style and intense mood. I found myself drawn to the story, but the world Nolan created to tell the story lacked the depth of his previous work. The reason for this may be twofold: it is the first movie he's written without his younger brother Johnathan, who may be big bro's screenwriting foil in keeping plot in check with other film components. The second is that these "arty" commercial directors often get on a hot streak and then the studios allow them to indulge their creative impulses too much, without giving proper attention to the craft. Darron Arronofsky made this mistake with the beautifully shot but highly flawed "The Fountain"

In that case, it was the inverse of Nolan's issue: the visuals were much better developed than the story. But after the critical and commercial failure of "The Fountain", Arronofsky reeled himself in and made the far superior "The Wrestler".

Unfortunately for Nolan, critics seem to be buying into "Incpetion" like hip sheep buying the latest ipod. I only hope this doesn't indicate the direction he will be taking with the next (and final) Batman film.

"Boz Scaggs: SIx Silk Degrees of Steely Separation?"

2010-06-23T23:00:00.024-04:00

Hey yall! Got I got a guest post here today from my man Michael Plunkett, who is a dear old friend as well as a talented educator/writer/musician. After telling him in passing that I only liked Lowdown from the Boz Scaggs album "Silk Degrees", Michael took it upon himself to give me a track-by-track argument in favor of the entire record. While I'm still not totally convinced, I thought his response merited an audience for his pointed and nicely anecdotal critique. So here it is, enjoy...

I do not disagree that Boz Scaggs can be considered as something of a Steely Dan-lite figure in the annals of American popular music; however, if we look back to his 1976 classic, Silk Degrees, the “Becker and Fagen For Beginners” label becomes more and more tenuous. We will recall that 1976 was the same year as The Royal Scam, arguably Steely Dan’s first great album. And when we consider the Latin tinged, lush pop jazz of “Harbor Lights” we admire it all the more as we recognize that it came out a year before Aja. If one is fond of pursuing these types of progressions further, one might trace “Harbor Lights” (1976) to “Aja” (1977) all the way to Billy Joel’s classic take on the pop rock song cum jazz standard with “Zanzibar” in 1978.

I was a year old when Silk Degrees came out. My father blasted the record on the hi-fi in the basement with his buddy Frankie Barber and then played the cassette continuously in his Buick Regal. The title alone was perfect for a young child’s fascination - Silk Degrees? Silk Dungarees? What the hell are silk degrees? This could leave you wondering for hours as you contemplated the magical cover.

There’s Boz himself, coyly turned to the left on a green bench in front of a brilliant harbor, the lights of which are shining from above. And there’s that unmistakably feminine hand with red nail polished beckoning, the index finger pressed over the ring finger in an almost Egon Schiele manner.

Again, those red finger fingernails – were The Cars thinking of these red fingernails three years later when they conceived of the cover art for their first album?

Let’s put the needle down, press play, start the mp3…

1) What Can I Say? - What can I say? The funk starts and never lets up. Boz is so soulful. What is that African American soul voice doing in this white dude's lungs? He pulls it off so respectfully...never showboating. The sax solo blasts us off into the harbor and we are on our way. The lead off track is an absolute gem of optimistic, radio friendly white male soul... No soft rock here.

2) “Georgia” just keeps things going...straight up, uncomplicated - "your daddy was high the night he dreamt of you"!!! One of the actual lyrics my adhd father can actually remember. After years of misheard and misremembered Steely lyrics, there's no obfuscation here - just straightforward, easy to follow, churning music.

3) “Jump Street” - perfect roadhouse funk filler.

4) “What Do You Want the Girl To Do?” ... ok, not the best...pseudo gospel funk pop...

5) “Harbor Lights” - I will take this song to my grave. One year before “Aja” and two before Billy Joel's “Zanzibar”, Boz was “sailing shadows, reds and blues” with this luscious ditty. But where a stalwart Wayne Shorter on tenor and a blissed / coked out Freddie Hubbard on flugelhorn propelled the others, respectively, here it’s all Boz. The flight of fancy keyboard outro can be attributed to Steve Porcaro, brother to drummer Jeff. There is an uncredited trumpet solo – could it be John Madrid? Touring member of Silk Degrees? In any event, as far as those jazz solos go, well, you can never really touch Wayne Shorter. The guy sounds like he’s still somewhere between “Miles Smiles” and Weather Report, and as far as Freddie goes, he does play his balls off on Zanzibar. But as far as group dynamic goes, the Porcaro brothers and the phantom trumpeter on “Harbor Lights” seem to have the democratic group concept thing happening (again, knowing their role and what to play for the benefit of the song) where Steve Gadd, bless his chops, never can seem to make up his mind whether or not he’s Bonzo channeling Elvin Jones or vice versa; he puts on a clinic and clinics are best left in the music store. On a final note, one may ask, how can we compare “Aja” to Boz Scaggs’ “Harbor Lights” and Billy Joel’s “Zanzibar”? Let’s recall, “Aja” is a good tune, but it’s really just a tune. The powerhouse Wayne Shorter / Steve Gadd “blowfest” at the end is a delight, but these guys are hired guns, paid to come on board and flex their chops for our delight. Sonny Rollins and Neil Peart could have done the same thing to a Simon and Garfunkle tune. And as far as Liberty Devito goes, he may nail it on “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”, but his clunky bass drum bombs on beat one every measure of Zanzibar are unforgivable, as we were all told to leave that type of predicable jive back in the practice room sophomore year of high school jazz band. Back to the tune … The descending bass chromatic thing that leads into the chorus kills me every time. The post – Bitches Brew intro is playful but not self-indulgent. There may even be a touch of Tom Waits in this tune, no? Junkyard melody?

6) “Lowdown” - Everything about this song is near perfect. No matter how much you might be convinced to go see Boz play live these days, you almost wish he wouldn’t play this one live. It can’t happen again. This is studio recording at its finest. It’s the goddamn apotheosis of the hi hat. Almost a proleptic hip-hop groove at the beginning. Who the hell needs “Black Cow” when you have the dirty “Lowdown”?

7) “It's Over” - You need this tune to mellow off the high of the other stars in this constellation...At the risk of coining an oxymoron, I’d venture to say that this is perfect filler. Might stand on its own...but, as filler, it is perfect.

8) “Love Me Tomorrow” – This Boz Scaggs song makes me feel as strangely sexy today as it did when I was four years old. You got yourself a funky reggae groove, the constricted lungs of Scaggs' bizarre funked out soul tenor and the gleaming studio touch of Jeff Porcaro: you can not go wrong. In a weird way, it has the sexy crunch of Stevie Wonder's "Superstitious". Don't know why. Just does.

There's a sense of vertigo here – an Indiana Jones crossing the bridge in the temple of doom. One wrong move and we'll all fall over and never be heard from again. One thing about Scaggs that I admire – he’s nearly always singing about a woman. No this is not unique, but it is cool. And most white dudes who sing with black women backing them aren’t quite pulling it off. It’s a nice musical gesture and it can sound good; but it is rarely an extension of a deep, empathetic connection to the blues. I’ve seen Fagen pull it off live at a concert in Philly. The same goes here for Boz. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the strange juxtaposition of those soulful singers on Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” as much as the next guy, but it sounds like a British white guy and a female “American soul” woman singing. Here, Boz and his background singers don’t sound exactly sound like one voice; that’s not the point. They are an extension of his blues approximation. They are on the same side of the sonic coin.

9) “Lido Shuffle” - An undisputed classic. I've heard hip rock bands covering this. And it works. There is such a larger than life, positive feeling to this funky, synthy, absolute gem of a song. I can't believe this album has so many great tunes. The triplet synth bridge almost seems to prefigure Van Halen's "Jump", no?

10) “We're All Alone” ...again...taking it down. End of the night...Seven scotch and sodas later and, who knows, a little Dr. Feelgood to boot … we might as well dip into the second person here … isn’t vicariousness what this is all about anyway? You are slow dancing with your lady. You are a guest at a wedding and you've really taken advantage of the open bar; you’ve almost crossed the line a few times tonight; but now this song is playing and everything is alright. You are standing tall and you trace your fingertips over the goose bumped back of your lady as you dance. You have left the harbor lights and you are now somewhere else in the cosmos …all alone. The intimacy of the lyric makes you think that if you were cast into oblivion and had to start over and you only had the wisdom and sensibility of this song and “Deacon Blues”, you might be the greatest man alive.

Words by MP
Pics/links by EP

LCD Soundsystem at Terminal 5

2010-05-23T01:26:00.025-04:00

Saw Mr. James Murphy and Co. last night...

In the 3 years since I've seen the band, they've become an even tighter and more powerful live act. Even songs I was not really a fan of on their records were delivered with such focused abandon that it was impossible to not shake a head or foot in timed unison. Stylistically, the songs and band seamlessly weaved in a rich cross-section of record geek "hip" subgenres (disco, electro, hip hop, no wave, new wave, post punk) with a decidedly nyc flair. Murphy takes his talking points in the definitive "Losing My Edge" as both an ironic critique of "hipster" authenticity and a genuine sonic blueprint for his own music and artistic influences:

But have you seen my records? This Heat, Pere Ubu, Outsiders, Nation of Ulysses, Mars, The Trojans, The Black Dice, Todd Terry, the Germs, Section 25, Althea and Donna, Sexual Harrassment, a-ha, Pere Ubu, Dorothy Ashby, PIL, the Fania All-Stars, the Bar-Kays, the Human League, the Normal, Lou Reed, Scott Walker, Monks, Niagra,

Joy Division, Lower 48, the Association, Sun Ra,
Scientists, Royal Trux, 10cc,

Eric B. and Rakim, Index, Basic Channel, Soulsonic Force ("just hit me"!), Juan Atkins, David Axelrod, Electric Prunes, Gil! Scott! Heron!, the Slits, Faust, Mantronix, Pharaoh Sanders and the Fire Engines, the Swans, the Soft Cell, the Sonics, the Sonics, the Sonics, the Sonics.

You don't know what you really want.
As opposed to label mates The Juan MacLean and Holy Ghost!, LCD Soundsystem interjects its quite deliberate genre play with Murphy's fearlessly personal lyrics and uniquely droll charisma. At the show, this combination created an interesting and at times jarring juxtaposition of delivery and reception between the band and the audience. There were times where I was very aware of watching a man who clearly has an intimacy with sadness, yet the majority of the largely inebriated early 20-something audience seemed to only connect with the throbbing beat and melodic elements of the lyrics, not the actual content. For example, at the beginning of the fantastically epic yet lamenting live version of "Someone Great", a young drunk girl said "Oh my God I love this song." People started pumping their fists and swirling their feet in circles, but check out these lyrics:

I wish that we could talk about it,
But there, that's the problem.
With someone new I could have started,
Too late, for beginnings.
You're smaller than my wife imagined,
Surprised, you were human.
There shouldn't be this ring of silence,
But what, are the options?

When someone great is gone.

This is a really fucking sad song and watching it being performed actually made me feel bad for Murphy. It must be a strange experience for him, as a forty year old man, to be processing his emotional life for an audience that is 10-20 years younger than him. I think it's fair to say that age group is generally too young to really understand the burden of time and its emotional toll. Nonetheless, there was an element of catharsis to much of the music, and that seems to be the trade off. This was particularly true of a near sublime version of "Me and My Friends" that built to an audience sing-along crescendo with full stage lights blaring (keyboardist Nancy Whang was beaming with surprise)

and also a mash up of "New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down" into a cover of "Empire State of Mind" that ended the show in a flurry of white balloons toasting the city and the audience.

It's quite a hat trick that Murphy pulls off, allowing listeners deep into his inner psyche while inspiring them to dance into yesterday's future, today. Definitely one of the best and most moving shows I've seen in quite a while.

New Music By Me

2010-05-01T00:34:00.041-04:00

After a year of solitary and obsessive tracking, mixing, tape bouncing and mastering...

MY EP IS FINALLY DONE!!!

This EP is the product of my singularly unhealthy interest in 80s detritus, which I know is cool and whatnot at the moment, but is still a totally sincere and personal pursuit for me. The music is my formative youth re-imagined and redefined in the present. Using a tank-sized PC and a Tascam 246 4-track tape recorder, I've attempted to capture the sounds of Tears for Fears, Rush, Hall and Oates and Tangerine Dream as they echo in my memory and fingers. At the same time, my baby son is falling asleep to the occasionally static-interrupted sounds of Caribou and M83 playing on a local college radio station. I hear the music in the in the kitchen while I do the morning dishes.

You can stream the EP on MySpace or directly download it below (give about 20 seconds after you click on the link and a zip file will begin downloading):

The Geek Out EP (mp3 version)

For a high quality cd version, click on this link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?wzzzdndqyom

Hope you enjoy the music!

Pass it onto your friends and look me up on Facebook.

the Director of MIA's New Video

2010-04-29T00:04:00.012-04:00

In an apt confluence of agendas, MIA's new video is directed by relative unknown yet high concept video director Romaine Gavras. The video's explicit depiction of a US totalitarian regime huting down a very select minority group has garnered some controversy, but overall the video is not much more than a very clever narrative stunt.

(I'd recommend clicking on the square box icons in the bottom right corner of these posted clips for fullscreen)

M.I.A - BORN FREE VIDEO OFFICIAL (real and explicit version)

I say confluence because both artists work in a shady area of examining/critiquing/exploiting violence through commercial media. I'm not a big fan of MIA because I think her legitimately compelling backstory has unfortunately given her carte blanche to rant off shallow rebellion rhetoric and gun-fetish imagery to hungry white indie rock fans looking for ethnic authenticity and affirmation of their softball liberalism. Gavras could also potentially be accused of the same pandering, but the severity of his images and their specific locality gives his work more depth and insight.

Although not as well credited as he should have been, Gavras's work really came to public attention in 2008 after the release of his video for "Stress", by the electro-rock duo Justice:

justice stress (official video)

In it, a multicultural gang wearing Justice logo jackets go on a random crime spree in the streets of Paris. The cinema verite-style of the video forces the viewer to voyeuristically observe graphic scenes of muggings, fights, sexual harrassment and vandalism up close as it happens. It's an uncomfortable video to watch and the intention of it is not clear. Since it is still essentially a commercial to purchase products from Justice, are we celebrating the fictionalized gang as an counterpoint to Justice's musical domination in pop culture? Or is the music a springboard for Gavras to examine class "warfare" through the violent eyes of the culturally disenfranchised?

To make better sense of the Justice video, it's worthwhile to examine it within the context of Gavras's other work. A year before "Stress", Gavras directed a video by another Ed Banger Records artist, DJ Medhi:

SIGNATUNE (Dj Mehdi / T. Bangalter edit)

This video is more stylized than "Stress", with an ironic nod to Travolta's iconic apartment scenes in "Saturday Night Fever" and a general tone that both mocks and celebrates the testosterone-driven, self-actualization of tricked-out car culture. Nonetheless, there is an undercurrent of potential violence that rides underneath the carefully framed bleak, urban backdrops and closeups of working toughs. The implication is that these men choose cars over fists, but still maintain a firm gang identity. The storyline also builds up a rivalry between the protagonist and a competing car stereo enthusiast, with the competition being the only buffer between them and a physical altercation.

The last example is a video for "The Age of Understatement", by The Last Shadow Puppets; a side project featuring members of Artic Monkeys:

The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of the Understatement

In the video, snowy images of the duo in a tank brigade are interspersed with shots of a young girl ice skating and a third, slightly surreal scene at what appears to be a Greek Orthodox church. The geographic location for all the action is an unnamed eastern European country that appears to have once been been ruled by the communist party. Gavras is metaphorically connecting the lyrics of flirtatious yet calculating young lovers to childhood innocence and the cultural weight of faded military prowness and religious orthodoxy. Despite such disparate sources, the video successfully holds it thematic images together into an implied, abstract exploration of loss and power.

I think the real trick in Gavras's work is that he infuses a socio-political narrative into music that usually does not have one, in essence adding layers of complexity by creative contrast. And until the MIA video, his thematic ideas seemed to have been specifically tied to historical and contemporary culture in Europe, as seen through the working class. Also of interest is that Gavras is the son of noted film director Costa Gavras. Gavras Sr. is known for his innovative, early use of handheld camerwork in feature films such as "Z" and for addressing issues of social injustice and political corruption. One could then argue that Romaine is continuing the work of his father in a modern context. Conversely, once cannot ignore the fact that Romaine's videos are still funded for the purpose of commerce and may ultimately be manipulating sensationalist imagery to sell products and brands. I would guess that he is acutely aware of this and perhaps encourages that skepticism as part of his creative agenda, but that idea in itself is a product of luxury, not politics.

Electro at a Price

2010-04-10T23:08:00.007-04:00

Got shut out of the Washed Out show in Williamsburg tonight, bummed.

Decided I didn't want that happening again with another show, so spent a little time seeing when LCD Soundsystem was playing here. Found this interesting ad:

I have an extra LCD soundsystem ticket. If you are a hot/cute/sexy chick, preferably hipster looking and/or with tatoos, between the ages of 17 - 35, love james murphy, ride a bike, have a strong affinity for all things craigslist, and can dance, I am offering up one lcd soundsystem ticket at the cost of: face value ($20) + 10 second make out sesh w/me + 1 dance w/me at the show. Interested? Yes? Good! Shoot me an e-mail. p4p (if you don't hang out on craigslist, that's lingo for "pic for pic")

Disclaimer: If you are fun to hang out with, you can exchange some fun/witty conversation instead of the 10 second make out sesh. If you are NOT fun to hang out, then you better be a good kisser.

About me: 24, love music, have great dance moves (obviously), and love meeting new people

Seems like this could be a joke. Or then obviously it's creepy. Is the goal of hip daters to cleverly obscure genuine sentiment until a level of intimacy is established?

Video Kids

2010-04-10T00:32:00.011-04:00

They're really trying, but it's hard to approximate the gravitas of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush when you're 7 years old:

ha, ha, moving on...

Jared Leto is definitely not a kid, but his band 30 Seconds to Mars has a HUGE teen/tween following. I never quite got the appeal until I saw this video, which seems to be both an homage to 70s/80s "gang of kids" movies (ET, The Lost Boys, Solarbabies, The Goonies, The Warriors, etc.) and a sincere rally anthem for alt/emo/critical mass youth (does that cross section even exist?). Despite it's obvious demographic targeting and heart-on-sleeve emoting, the video still genuinely engaged me. The sap is thick but the sentiment of creating one's own community of outsiders remains oddly (sadly?) resonant. I also appreciated the director's clear research and mastery of the aforementioned film genre and the photographic influence of the Scott Brothers in it's orange sunrise/dusk aesthetic.

Lil Wayne's video for "Drop the World" also implies a rally cry of sorts, although it could also be interpreted as nihilistic end of youth called forth by his will and the power of his rhyhme skills. Either way, Lil Wayne's youth differ from Leto's in that they are a) all guys and b) either "thugs" or aggro skaters. It's also interesting that Leto's community is devised as escapist while Wayne's is destructive. Is that a cultural/class distinction?

It seems like such a long time ago that I was "committed" to a band. That is such a wonderful part of the teenage process: your band/singer is your identity. Commitment at that (albeit absurd) level speaks to an idealism and belief that generally only kids can hold. I miss that.

Corey.

2010-03-10T22:42:00.002-05:00

What would you do baby?

2010-03-08T00:34:00.008-05:00

Recently re-discovered this gem of a tv theme:

Don't laugh man, I'm fucking serious. Just close your eyes and try to de-contextualize it. Great changes. And you know who sings it? Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams. BAM!!!!!

Now to get SUPER nerdy for a minute...the first season had the same song, but a different version done with all studio musicians. Just compare the musical choices and level of nuance:

This really illustrates the difference between "pro ses" musicians and those with more expressive creativity. It's like Wallace Roney vs Miles Davis. I consider Mathis the vocal counterpoint to "Live Evil"-era Miles...

In other words, gutbucket funk in a sheen of noise and confusion. Or is that the hair I'm thinking of?

Like the BRAND, not the BAND

2010-03-01T22:23:00.010-05:00

Kinda old news, but people seem to be pretty unanimously in favor of the new Julian Cassablancas record. I don't really get the bru ha ha. To me, it has that Strokes-ian combination of vague cool and pervasive blandness. But what is appealing to me about the record is the accompanying promo campaign.

Whoever brainstormed the look of the album and other related "brand content" (website, videos, concert posters, etc.) did a bang up job melding a lot of my favorite 80s shit (early digital imaging, post-apocalyptic narratives, cyberpunk landscapes, smoky backlighting) with a kind of neo-classical design aesthetic. Great stuff. Here are some stills from various sources:

DAMN!!!!

2010-02-12T23:49:00.006-05:00

I was just talking to my friend Jared today about how you reach a certain age and it becomes exponentially harder to be excited about music. There are many less "woah" moments.

However...

I just watched this and was really impressed. The performance was high energy, took risks and was real tight:

Especially since I think the Neon Indian album is pretty weak compared to fellow lo-fi 80s fetishist Washed Out, this was a real treat.

Oh Those Pretty Lies

2009-11-15T20:03:00.020-05:00

When I was in high school, I told my friend Jack that there was a movie we HAD to see, but without letting our parents know. In preparation, I first constructed a viable alibi: We were going to see "Firebirds".

If questioned, it would be described as an mediocre film with decent arial stunts, but essentially a "Top Gun" rip-off.

Then I chose a theater where we would not be seen: Copley Plaza Cinemas in Downtown Boston, which was a full 3o-minute train ride from home.

Jack didn't care about the deception because he had been lying to his parents for years, sneaking out at night to oggle at hookers in the lobby of the Marriott near his house off the Charles River. On the other hand, I had never been so deliberately misleading. I was a good kid to a fault. But something about this film made me push my own self-inflicted boundaries.

As we approached the theater inside Boston's newest and most upscale mall (they had Lord and Taylor), my hands were wet. The indoor waterfall with geometric rock designs blurred into a shapeless mass of anxiety. Jack kept asking "you ok dude?" In fact, I was not ok. We arrived at the ticket booth and I said quietly

"Two tickets to 'Wild Orchid' please."

Yes, "Wild Orchid". Mickey Rourke's thematic companion to "91/2 Weeks". With this film, I imagined Rourke (and vicariously myself) revisiting and developing the emotional complexities and sexual exploits of his star-making vehicle with Kim Bassinger, but with a different locale and different lead actress (Care Otis). And this time, Rourke (who I saw as our generation's Brando) would raise the stakes - I had read that one of the sex scenes featured actual penetration, since he and Otis had apparently started dating during the filming. All of this made "Wild Orchid" essential viewing.

But as I watched Rourke and Care Otis in a seated position, legs crossed over each other and thrusting, it wasn't stimulating. The image was too clean, too pretty. I realized that my own preconceptions about the film were rooted in a private narrative that involved a summation of style and content from Rourke's best work: the grit of "Angel Heart", the tragedy of "Johnny Handsome", the poetry of "Rumble Fish" and the erotica of "9 1/2 Weeks". No film could deliver all that, it was too personal and too specific. In addition, I was uncomfortable watching celebrity soft porn in a public space. My sexual curiosities and insecurities were best left to safe, self-satisfying solitude or worked through by groping with a willing partner in the dark. They were not meant to be share with strangers over popcorn.

But there was an additional, welcome feeling that I was not expecting: adult sophistication. Zalman King's smoke-hued and glossy direction gave the proceedings an atmosphere of artfulness. The film created a visual environment that struck at base desire through photographic beauty, even though that desire was essentially theoretical and not executed to truly arouse. Nonetheless, the combination of images kept my attention: Care Otis and Mickey Rourke fuck in a tasteful color palette of light blue and white, followed by Rourke riding off on a red handlebar chopper into the spare, desert dusk. (This attempt at combining raw sexuality, high art and motorcycles would later be mastered by Vincent Gallo in his unduly panned gem, "The Brown Bunny". ) There was an assumption of maturity and aesthetic appreciation from the audience, which made me feel older-cool and art-savvy.

So the film finished and Jack said "That kinda sucked." I agreed. But I was still pleased. I had completed some sort of teenage right of passage: to lie to one's parents for the purpose of looking sex, even if it was in celluloid. And certain elements of the film piqued my curiosity. I made a mental note and kept that experience as a reference point for future artistic interests.

Jungle Fever

2009-10-26T00:51:00.019-04:00

I managed to get sneak out for a couple of hours last week to see the free afternoon shows for CMJ. The first and best band I saw was Stricken City, from London.

Everything was right about them: they were tight, had a bunch of good hooks and a fetching female lead singer. However, their style (a combination of "ethnic" rhythms, post punk guitars, 80s synth and yelpy vocals), while smart and engaging, was nonetheless pretty familiar. If I had heard these kids a year and a half ago, I probably would've flipped. But in that time, there has been a strong growing presence of african/tropical influence in indie rock. Generally it's tastefully done (with the exception of the feigning fey, snobbish entitlement of Vampire Weekend), but I just don't know where it came from. Did those aforementioned post-colonial indie prepsters start it? Whatever the source (dubious or not), this development adds an interesting wrinkle to the genre. Here are a few other bands (some obvious, some not) playing with that sound:

Fool's Gold
Mahjongg
Yeasayer
The So So Glos
The Dirty Projectors

It actually made me think of the immediate predecessor to indie rock's jungle fever: 1980's pop artists who wrote particular songs or albums with an african/world music-influence.

"Remain in Light"-era Talking Heads did it best, thanks largely to supplementing the quartet with kickass black studio musicians (which live included P-Funk keyboardist Bernie Worrell) and the guitar wizardry of Adrian Belew (David Bowie, King Crimson):

There was also....

Thomas Dolby (recently discovered this great song that's totally out of character with the rest of his synth-heavy material)

Peter Gabriel (a classic done in painfully earnest and hilarious performance)

Toto (awesome, tasteless, perfect)

Hans Zimmer (soundtracks also reflected this trend)

There are others I'm missing from both eras, but you get the idea. Now instead of examining the cultural ramifications of this particular brand of re-appropriation, I'm going to briefly focus instead on pure aesthetics. "Jungle Fever" seems to be part of a cycle of style in pop music. It comes and goes and returns. Other elements in this cycle include vocoder/autotune, drum mixing preferences (natural vs. processed), inclusion of guitar solos and choices in reverb. Compare the sound of the drums on Led Zeppelin "II" to Def Leppard's "Hysteria" or the use of reverb in the recordings of The Supremes compared to that of Destiny's Child. All of these elements contribute to defining a stylistic moment in musical time. Jungle Fever is simply another element in that mix, permutating and dissipating with every new era.

Who is this guy?

2009-10-16T00:42:00.018-04:00

Has anyone noticed he's been in almost every significant comedy of the last 2 years? He's the asian Forrest Gump of comedy. How come more people aren't talking about him? Regardless of the quality of the project, he's always hilarious and is arguably better than similarly ubiquitous "it" comic Zach Galifianakis. So let's learn a bit more about

Ken Jeong

According to my sources (cough, imdb, cough), Jeong has an interesting backstory:

"After graduating from Duke University & attaining his MD at the University of North Carolina, Ken completed his Internal Medicine residency in New Orleans while developing a cult comedy following. While in New Orleans, Ken won the Big Easy Laff-Off. Late NBC president Brandon Tartikoff and Improv founder Budd Friedman judged the competition and advised Ken to move to Los Angeles. Once residing in LA, Ken began performing regularly at the Improv & Laugh Factory. Soon after he appeared on ABC's The View and was named 'The Funniest Doctor in America.' Subsequent appearances on Comedy Central & BET cemented his reputation as a comic who appeals to a wide variety of audiences."

Jeong made an audacious film debut as an asshole doctor in "Knocked Up"

He followed that up with cameos and supporting roles in a slew of high profile tv shows and films:

Not a bad list for a 40 year-old doctor, eh? Hopefully Jeong will soon get the props he deserves. And thankfully, this shows that Hollywood is finally moving on from the dark days of Long Duck Dong.

Here's a great outtake of Jeoung from "Knocked Up".

I'm Talking...About Me

2009-09-26T22:18:00.011-04:00

My friend Loose Shus goes in deep for an interview with me about Evan Patrick music and topics I've discussed in the blog. Check it out here.

He just launched the website and it's a really great place for folks interested in nerding out about electro/synth artists and production techniques. Samples of my jazz sidework and tv scoring gig can also be heard in the interview, as well as my new song, "Misfits of Science".

Film Brothers Use Continent for Production Design

2009-09-25T01:40:00.022-04:00

Successful film directors/television producers Tony and Ridley Scott...

...managed to license a dust storm in Australia for the filming of their new feature, "Top Gun 2: Nights of Thunder". Here are some production stills:

Everything New is Old Again...

2009-09-17T23:37:00.015-04:00

So been away for awhile tending to this guy:

Besides having my hands full, I hadn't figured out a way of commenting on both fatherhood and my personal interests...until now!

Being the father of a newborn is akin to certain public media events this week that were strange yet echoed of familiarity. The trifecta of Rep. Wilson's "you lie", Serena Williams's temper tantrum and Kanye West's interruption of Taylor Swift were all moments of public shock, yet were also completely un-shocking in their cultural continuity with media events/phenomena of the past. The cyclical nature of our personal and communal narratives pretty much fated that these events would happen. Which doesn't diminish their impact so much as contextualize them. Here are some compare/contrast examples:

Obama (still really bad, there seems to be no precedent for the heckling of a president in office by a state representative, but it is nonetheless a semi-common occurrence in politics)

Serena Williams

(a funny match and pun, since McEnroe has regularly criticized both Williams sisters for being "disrespectful" of the game)

Kanye West (only the greatest ego of pop music today could evoke...himself)

And as a tangential coda, Jay Leno has supposedly re-branded himself and the concept of primetime television with a nightly "comedy show" at 10pm. In reality, he's simply made an annex for his version of The Tonight Show, using the same band, skits and set design:

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

The Jay Leno Show

So getting back to my original point: new fatherhood interjects shock to the familiar. But it's not a shock of outrage like the aforementioned media trifetca, or the shock of watching a program carefully simulate change while actually having none. In this case, the shock is of discovering previously untouched levels of emotional commitment, love and fatigue while still sorting through the familiar banalities and occasional victories of life.

The Slow Burn of Summer...

2009-08-06T00:52:00.011-04:00

Kinda got my head in a bunch of stuff these days, including finishing some new tracks. I'm going to post a rough mix of my newest joint here. Comment and lemme know what you think. Here are a couple of other cultural confections:

Finally saw Kathryn Bigelow's first film, "The Loveless" from 1981.

I mentioned her a few months ago in my Patrick Swayze post. The flick's been on my radar for awhile, since it was both her and star Willem Dafoe's first film. Besides a really cheap ending, it's an interesting riff on "The Wild One" and other 1950's youth-in-trouble films. It's also quite different from her subsequent films (most notably "Near Dark", "Blue Steel" and "Point Break".) While her preoccupation with the tribal rituals of men remains (this time in the form of biker gangs), the film has a subtle tone of irony and an attention to set design and costume that was lost in her films by the late 80's (although she does bring back humor with the dialogue in her latest film, "The Hurt Locker" - a must see). "The Loveless" also has a leisurely pace befitting it's setting in a small, rural southern town during a languid summer, a pace which she also moved away from in favor of a (albeit totally righteous) signature of tightly pace, taut thrillers with surprisingly nuanced characters. So it was interesting for me to compare and contrast this early work with those to come.

Went to a metal show last week in Williamsburg, and that apparently is not so much of a rarity anymore. Hadn't been to a real metal show for awhile (instrumental math shit doesn't count, even though it's also schaweet). My friend Joel astutely observed that the difference between "indie" metal (i.e. not all-ages shows in Bayridge; wish I had the balls to keep it that real) and more "traditional" metal is that the indie guys fully embrace their white trash roots and do so mainly with beer before, during and after the shows. So as opposed to say, Metallica, who still seem to be driven largely by angst and anger well into their middle age,

these indie guys want to rock the fuck out, have a good time and maybe be a little weird while doing it. Hence, Mastadon can be played on the same ipod as Belle and Sebastian, but Shadows Fall or God Forbid may get strange looks from your co-workers. Clearly, these delineations are pretty ridiculous, and most metal bands have shared interests before splintering into their chosen sub-genres (Sabbath, Zeppelin, Metallica, Death, Slayer, etc. are all required listening). But I would say that the players of indie metal (along with their cousins in the first wave and a few second wave screamo bands, particularly The Fall of Troy) are more open to integrating styles from the various subgenres of metal and creating their own sound. Of course, there are other indie metal bands that seem to emphasize the signifiers of the genre over any depth in the music (as exemplified by bands like The Sword).

At the show, I missed the first band but made it in time to see Children, who kicked serious ass.

Their songs seamlessly went through all forms of "heavy", from 70's stomp to pulverizing thrash while somehow maintaining a consistency in their songwriting. It was really great to hear a band who could equally embrace Thin Lizzy and Testament. My only criticism is their stage presence was a little lacking and their drummer didn't hit hard enough. The last problem was not apparent at all in the next band, Saviors, whose drummer was keeping it quite real with perfect double bass drum hits, no shirt exposing a mutitude of tats, and thunderous snare thwacks. These guys were totally pro and claimed the stage immediately. However, their influences were much narrower than those of Children, concentrating pretty much on early to mid-80s's British metal like Judas Priest, Motorhead and Iron Maiden. While fun for a couple of songs, it got overly derivative pretty quickly. But I hope Children play in BK again soon. They RAAWK!

Hip Hop Lives

2009-07-23T22:38:00.007-04:00

My old high school friend Nep recently returned home to the East Coast from Cali. Last night he sang backup for underground hip hop staple Chali 2na.

2na was a member of seminal West Coast underground hip hop collective Jurassic 5. The set (augmented by a live band) was tight, well paced and high energy. Due to the quality of the PA system, it was hard to make out 2na's words, but his flow was consistent and his vocal timbre was strong. He was essentially another instrument in the band, which was actually cool. 2na also had a relaxed and confident stage presence that really put the crowd on his side. Instrumentally, the band clearly knew their past and present funk, which gave some stylistic weight to the material. The songs were also intermittently split up with DJ breaks of "old school jams", which helped create an ebb-and-flow for the set and added another historical layer to the music. Onstage, 2na had a great rapport with both Nep (who interjected soulful phrasing into the songs) and another mc/sideman who helped out with some hook lines and call-and-response, which is always great when well-rehearsed and done with more than simple repetition of a few words.

Prior to 2na, former Freestyle Fellowship member Aceyalone gave a totally pro (that's a compliment), wholly entertaining set of his own.

Armed with only a DJ and mic, Aceyalone immediately owned the stage and reminded me that a creative MC with solid tunes can be totally engaging and just as exciting as a band. He was also flowing over some deep samples taken from 60's r&b records. That's underused source material for hip hop and I was really glad to hear it.

The Benefits of Extremity

2009-07-19T01:43:00.014-04:00

On Thursday, I went to a show in Williamsburg to see the band of the regular Tuesday night bartender at Botanica (where I occasionally work as a DJ). The band is called Dead Stars, and the music was thoroughly enjoyable, 90's-style indie rock (check out "Break the Tide" on their myspace page). The tunes had strong hooks and surprisingly compelling extended jams in the vein of Dinosaur Jr. After their set, I was pretty psyched to be out hearing good music and relaxed with a G&T buzz.

But that did not prepare me for the next band, the Marionettes of Satan.

The music started out well with (what I thought was) a trio that played an avant noise variation of 60s psychedelic rock. The drummer in particular was very good. He obviously had some training and maintained a deep pocket that reminded me of Mitch Mitchell. He was bookended onstage by a headband-wearing guitar player and a lanky mini-organist. The guitarist had the most trebly tone I've ever heard. It was uncomfortably piercing, but rightly reminiscent of the thin-fuzz tone of the psych-rock era. He played a combination of feedback, atonal melody and riffage while the organist made a Ray Manzerack-like ruckus of surf/blues vamps.

Then the singers came out, and the music abruptly shifted into an aggressively abstract southern revival meeting, with primeval urge as the object of worship. The first singer was a theatrical, gay(ish) fellow in jean cutoffs, a white t-shirt with artfully placed holes, face paint and a minor's light on his forehead. The other was a fetching young woman with long black hair and a blank stare who looked a bit like Chan Marshall. They both sat cross-legged on the stage and screamed/wailed in soulful long tones, staring at each other with vague sexual intensity. This strange cacophony continued uninterrupted for about 15 minutes. The crowd stood in complete astonishment, including me. Stylistically, the band made no sense. But the music was tirelessly listenable. My recollection of their set is a series of 7-10 minute songs that eventually climaxed into a mashup of "Billy Jean" and "Light My Fire".

Seeing this band reminded me that I need more opportunities to chance upon transgressive musical encounters. I use the word transgressive, because these encounters are not meditative exercises in "losing oneself", like a deep listening experience with Satie or Coltrane. It's more like sublime confusion through an intentional aural dislocation of time and place. I've been keeping a short mental list of concerts that fall under this category, where my predominate feeling has been "What the fuck is happening?" (usually in a good way).

The list includes (with it's most recent addition):

Peter and the Wolf (Symphony Hall, Boston, 1983)
Ornette Coleman and Prime Time (Berklee Performance Center, Boston, 1994)
Sonic Youth (Hammerstein Ballroom, NYC, 1996)
Arab on Radar/Wolf Eyes (Knitting Factory, NYC, 2000)
Rhumba in Havana Vieja (Havana, Cuba, 2003)
Marionettes of Satan (Public Assembly, Brooklyn, 2009)

Interestingly, this sense of dislocation was reproduced in a different context on Saturday night while watching the film "Bruno".

Now haters have been reviewing "Bruno" as "Borat-Lite". I had similar concerns that the film would simply be a variation of the previews and promo appearances, i.e. Sasha Baron-Cohen provoking hicks, minor celebrities and right wing politicos with gay fear-mongering. In essence, Baron-Cohen would be substituting xenophobia with homophobia. Which he does end up doing. But the methods by which he does so are still both ruthlessly explicit and deeply psychological. Every stunt both provokes and reflects upon the theoretical benchmarks of our society - safety, comfort, truth, etc. Through extreme comedy, Baron Cohen dislocates the viewer from the comfort of familiarity. His actions are so aggressively removed from the cultural norm that they rupture our own established boundaries of belief and behavior, thereby thrusting us (via laughter) into an alternate reality of ironic absurdity and extreme prejudice. It was a cinematic analogue to the "what the fuck is happening?" musical experience and I was happy to be there (again).

For Your Reconsideration: Kenny Loggins

2009-07-13T19:53:00.009-04:00

(I recently finished a post for the blog Video Pop. Couldn't wait to see it up, so I'm double dipping)...

Over the last year and half, I have become slightly obsessed with Soft Rock. Now this is not some post-ironic, Yacht Rock kick. This is the real deal. And I'd like to share with you some of the artists/albums that go down smoother than a 2005 Le Clos Jordanne Chardonnay.

To get things started, I wanna get you down with my man Kenny.

Now many people may associate him with this:

Or this:

But the fact is, Kenny is a seriously killing songwriter. Particularly in the late 1970's, he had a winning combination of pop songcraft, jazzy arrangenents and a voice reminiscent of a white Stevie Wonder. Stevie actually lent him a Yamaha C-80 keyboard for the record "Keep the Fire". Prior to that, Kenny recorded the 1978 album "Nightwatch" with producer/keyboardist Bob James.

James is best known for the tastefully funky, frequently-sampled song Nautilus and the painfully smooth jazz label, GRP. But with "Nightwatch", Loggins and James got just the right balance of cheese and genuine blue-eyed soul.

"Nightwatch" starts out with a moody, bass-driven title track that effectively combines Kenny's meticulous songwriting with James's delectably questionable take on faux-noir atmospherics and "session" musicianship. You can practically hear James holding a glass of Ridge Monte Bello and saying "This tune is a dark, romantic groove. Turn the lights down low Kenny, I want you to really feel this one". It's so obvious, but sometimes cliches work if done with some creativity and total commitment.

Other notable tracks include Wait a Little While and the classic duet with Stevie Nicks, Whenever I Call You Friend. Record geeks will also note that the album contains the song What a Fool Believes, which Kenny wrote with Michael McDonald. McDonald would (smartly) re-record this song later with the Doobie Brothers. It's interesting to compare each version, which ultimately shows that Kenny didn't quite have a handle on the vocal delivery and James should have helped more with tightening up the arrangement. As a side note, I recently just found another version with Aretha Franklin singing lead. McDonald still wins. He just owns that shit.

More gems can be found on Kenny's aforementioned 1979 follow-up record, "Keep the Fire"

which has his most famous soft rock hit, This is It.

But my favorite track is Who's Right, Who's Wrong, featuring backup vocals by a young Michael Jackson. The song has a surprisingly complex arrangement that takes some unexpected turns (in a good way). In addition, the title track is great and demonstrates how Kenny can really rock out while maintaining a soulful croon when needed.

In the 1980's, Kenny dramatically shifted his sound to stay relevant in a youth-driven pop marketplace. But check out his 1970's discography. The songs mentioned in this post can be found here. Hold from the tip, give a light twist, smell the aroma, and then taste the richness of the soft.

The Look of Love

2009-07-04T01:19:00.014-04:00

Watched "9 1/2 Weeks" on cable at my parent's house in MA tonight...

I was psyched to watch it for three reasons:

Mickey Rourke is the shit
Sex Scenes
Adrien Lyne's style

The first two are obvious, so let's talk about the third.

Lyne was one of a few very influential British tv commercial directors who came over to the States in the early 1980's to make Hollywood films. Two other prominent directors from the Brit commercial invasion were brothers Ridley and Tony Scott. Together, they largely defined the glossy, highly stylized look of 1980's major studio films. The hazy, soft focus (often achieved through literally smoking up a room and then diffusing it with light) and fine attention to specific color palettes (white, grey, blue and brownish-orange are often the most important - there's actually a great article about the color palette of "9 1/2 Weeks" here) created an instantly recognizable aesthetic that was both artistic and accessible.

Looking at their collective body of work, a set of style-defining films emerges: "Flashdance", "Blade Runner", "The Hunger", "Top Gun", "Fatal Attraction" and the aformentioned "9 1/2 Weeks".

Some critics say that these films sacrifice character development for aesthetics. In his review of "9 1/2 Weeks", Vincent Canby wrote:

"In '9 1/2 Weeks,' [Lyne] has created a work that might well qualify as a truly nouveau film. Here is a movie in which actors impersonating characters are blended into the decor so completely that they take on the properties of animated products, no more or less important than exquisitely photographed strawberries."

While Canby does have a valid point, ultimately I don't care. These films are gorgeous and visually innovative, operating in a similar manner as Kinetic Eye Candy, although with a different intention. Kinetic Eye Candy is about adrenaline and sensory overload, whereas these films are concerned with creating an atmosphere of sensuality built from elements of contemporary design, fashion and/or music.

Here are some examples:

On a personal level, these films have definitely informed my songwriting, production preferences and guitar sound. Maybe I'm just seeking a musical identity through displaced nostalgia, yearning for an adulthood in a different era. Whatever the subconscious logic, it just feels right.

1:47am

2009-06-28T02:22:00.011-04:00

perpetually tired and awake, dreading more drum programming.

i hear the calm drone of a florescent hum, water dripping, echoes of accordion and spanish singing from the other side of the station.

We didn't get enough...

2009-06-26T00:25:00.010-04:00

Notes from the Underground

2009-06-22T23:38:00.044-04:00

So a couple of weeks ago, I went on a short tour of Switzerland, Finland and Germany with the Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet (link has streaming clips of the Sextet, click 2nd and 3rd clips.)

The band for this tour consisted of:

Taylor - cornet
me me me - guitar
Matt Bauder - tenor sax, clarinet, flute
Tomas Fujiwara - drums
Mary Halvorson - guitar
Nate McBride - bass

Although he does have a problem with knives, Taylor is nonetheless an old friend of mine and has been kind enough to include me semi-regularly in his music projects. Here's a synopsis of the tour:

Landed in Zurich, had some bar chow with Mary and Tomas, watched a guy dry hump a woman in a wheelchair on the street, and eventually went solo. Ended up at a great bar late night that was under a highway. A wonderfully weird psychedelic blues duo was playing:

I would have stayed longer, but Matt and Tomas came crashing into the bar, grabbing random crotches and saying I had the key to the hotel room. Those two have a tour ritual of drinking 1 bottle of the local cough medicine, 1 bottle of the local chardonnay and then trying to embarrass me. Hasn't worked yet fellas!

The next night we played at Rote Fabrik, an artist collective's venue with multiple performance spaces and a history of lefty political action and arts advocacy:

Met up with Christian Weber at the show, a bassist who Tomas and I had an amazing improv gig with in Chicago last fall at the Umbrella Music Festival.

Next day hopped on a plane to Finland, hit the hotel for 10 minutes, then right to the venue for setup:

That show was probably our best. Everyone was inside the music, the solos were concise and the tunes were executed very well.

That night a few of us went to a club that was inside the hotel. The Fins were quite friendly and eager to talk. I seem to remember having acquired a very large bodyguard at one point, who would not let the "riff raff" talk to me, including our bassist Nate.

Anyways, I ended up eating Pizza late night (yup, the sun's a little kooky over there) with some nice locals.

We went to a friend's apartment (one of whom was a Somalian refugee)

and argued over the merits of a 911 conspiracy and the apparently rigged Obama election. Then I found a snake wrapped around my neck. It's skin was given to me as a souvenir.

I think I slept for about an hour and a half before getting on yet another plane (thank-you Clonazepam and red wine), headed for Cologne, Germany.

I will now describe the German part of the tour using pics courtesy of Tomas and Nate, because I left my phone/camera in Finland.

This is a view from the hotel (shwaeeet)

Found a legit beer hall.

With legit sausage.

"(insert funny caption with penis reference)"

A band disagreement ensued at the end of our 27 beers, because the gregarious host (whose assignment was to keep the spirit jovial and the rounds in motion) charged us for 35 beers. Most in the band chalked it up to local custom/screw the Americans. Tomas and I felt a little American know-how was appropriate and insisted on making a stink. The host ended up shoving Tomas, which really pissed off Mary and she started screaming at the host in French. Taylor grabbed a sausage and gave the host a good ankle thrashing while Nate and I yucked it up over some Spaetzel. We ran out yelling the theme to "Different Strokes" and calmed ourselves down at the local arcade

The next day we rehearsed for our gig, which included some really great charts from other band members.

The gig went well. Personally, I liked Finland better, but this one was totally solid and it was nice to mix up the old repetoire with new compositions.

I really enjoyed this tour. Good tunes, Good peeps, weird shit. That's all I ask.

My Sonic Youth Project, Pt 2

2009-06-22T23:20:00.005-04:00

Guitar Center doesn't carry the new SY custom Jazzmasters. Fuuuck. I'm not about to go all over town looking for these things. Guitar geekery project...

However, as a nice coda (and still on topic), here's an article about a recently recovered guitar that has been missing since the massive 1999 SY gear theft:

http://www.revivl.com/news_detail.php?nid=17607

A Strange Encounter

2009-06-22T01:36:00.007-04:00

Thru the uneven but sometimes very funny gay comedy duo Jeffery and Cole Casserole , I discovered a sacchrine but kinda great pop song sung by "Moonlighting" star Cybill Shepard

and former Duke boy Tom Wopat.

Now I know the lyrics in this tune are questionable, particularly "too many lunches in L.A., bumper to bumper all the way" and "all I want is to go back to the home of the blues". However, the emotional tone of song does properly capture a sense of nostalgia and quiet longing. In addition, the vocal harmonies are great and there are some nice chord changes. The baby kinda puts the scene over the top, but whatever, I like it.

My Sonic Youth Project, Pt 1

2009-06-15T01:24:00.008-04:00

I recently stumbled upon this cultural curio:

So apparently, indie rock guitar pioneers Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo have joined the ranks of Steve Vai, Carlos Santana, Brian May, Zack Wylde and others in sponsoring a line of guitars. This is weird for a couple of reasons. First, most of the guitarists who do this sort of thing are either metal technicians (Vai, Wylde) or classic rock vets with a distinct sound (Santana, May). Either way, they are usually players with chops. Thurston and Lee def do not have chops. Which is not a criticism, simply a statement of fact that they have attested to in their own interviews. SY's chops are demonstrated in the manipulation of sound on their instruments.

Secondly, I feel like buying a sponsored-line guitar is kinda like cheating. If you want to sound like someone, do the research, do the modifications yourself and include all gear (amps, pedals, rackmount fx, etc). For a band like Sonic Youth, whose cultural identity has been built on the concept of indie credibility (DIY, vintage equipment, specific and obscure points of musical entry), giving away the secrets of their hours spent tweaking the electronics of their guitars, (which is critical both to the sound of the band and their aesthetic as players) seems like heresy to their own mythos. Or perhaps they are staking claim to a form of guitar geekdom that has traditionally existed outside of the realm of "indie" music. Their sponsored line is a statement of purpose - "what we do on guitar is as valid as what Eddie Van Halen does".

So obviously, they got paid a shit ton of money to do this. But what are the results? Do the guitars themselves bring clarity to these conflicting issues of authenticity?

My "Sonic Youth Project" is to find the guitars at the capital of guitar geekdom (Guitar Center), play them and report back.

In Praise of Swayze

2009-05-25T00:28:00.014-04:00

I just watched "Point Break" for the first time in awhile tonight.

I remember being captivated by the adrenaline junky/surf philosophy/heist flick combo back in high school, when that kind of thing could really resonate. Obviously, parts of the film have not aged well (super shitty early 90's alt rock soundtrack, overly romanticized surf montages), but it's still a wonderful genre mashup done with style by the highly underrated film diretor Kathryn Bigelow. It's pacing and action scenes match the emotional momentum of its characters, particularly an extended foot chase sequence.

Another element of the film that has remained compelling is the performance of Patrick Swayze. Now I don't want to get into the performance too much, except to say that Swayze really nailed the uncharted acting waters (sorry, had to say it) of playing a "zen" ocean guru/criminal mastermind. But what's even more interesting to me is the fact that Swayze has been in a few films that really defined certain cultural moments:

Dirty Dancing

This was one of the first independent blockbusters of the 1980s and helped to establish a cultural foundation for the independent film boom of the 1990s. "Dirty Dancing" showed audiences and producers alike that quality, widely-appealing and highly profitable entertainment could be made on a low budget outside of the major studio system.

Ghost

This movie was a sleeper EVENT. The story was ridiculous (dead/alive romance mediated by a kooky psychic with a crime thriller subplot), the cast was all over the place (Swayze on the upswing from "Dirty Dancing", Demi Moore gaining her professional footing post-Brat Pack, Whoopi Goldberg working on her crossover), yet it had an earnestness and tragic romance that really held the public's attention, in the same way the "Titanic" would years later. The question wasn't who had seen "Ghost", it was who HADN'T seen "Ghost".

Donnie Darko

Again, a totally random movie that somehow hit upon the public's imagination. The cast was pretty much unknowns, it was the director's first film, and the story was cryptic to the point of vague. Nonethless, "Donnie Darko" had an interesting tone that mixed melancholy, nostalgia and dread, with genre elements of sci fi and coming-of-age 80's teen dramas. All of which made for a very unique film that initially flopped but eventually gained an extremely devoted fanbase which supported it through midnight screenings for over 2 years. This created enough demand that the film was theatrically re-released, even after being released on dvd.

In addition to these films, Swayze has also been in two classic, modern B-movies that are defended vigorously by shlock-lovers like myself: the aforementioned "Point Break" and the criminally overlooked "Roadhouse"

"Roadhouse" was a great, gulity-pleasure of a film done with smarts and craft. It featured Swayze as an in-demand bouncer/manager who relies more on his wits than his fists.

Here's a signature scene where he breaks down his work philosophy:

The film also featured B-movie heavyweights Sam Elliot and Keith David, who are always fun to watch and add grizzled cool to whatever project they're doing. And for extra gravitas, John Cassavettes-regular Ben Gazzarra played the heavy with playful abandon. This movie was top loaded to deliver it's meat-and-potatoes storyline and orchestrated throwdowns with some class. "Roadhouse" has gained its own kind of cult following as a film that is better than it should be. This following was enough to turn it into a successful off-broadway show a few years ago.

So Swayze...not just an actor, but also a man whose presence in a film often predicates some kind of cultural relevance. The reason for this? That's as elusive as the perfect wave man.

Space XXX

2009-05-24T00:41:00.005-04:00

I should more regularly promote myself and my friends, so here's something that features both:

Air Kiss on Mars is the brainchild of fiction writer Paul Ohan. It's a mashup of electro, hip hop and anal penetration. Paul writes wonderfully twisted tales of bathroom sex with terrorists and searching for the sublime in depravity. The music is stylishly tongue-in-cheek, but serious in its intentions of melding the party with the intellect. Paul worked with a variety of producers for his first batch of songs, included yours truly on the track "World Trade (Gigilo Remix)"

Def worth a listen!

Space Camp

2009-05-19T22:10:00.013-04:00

Two of my favorite film and television producer/directors

J.J Abrams

and Ryan Murphy

have new projects that have recently been released. Abrams with the franchise prequel "Star Trek"

and Murphy with the "High School Musical" network tv appropriation "Glee".

While each project has the clear stamp of their maker's style and thematic interests, only one is a true winner.

What I like about Abrams is that he has a strong command of the three key ingredients to a successful adventure story - character development, hairpin plot turns and technical virtuosity. The extensive mythology and plotlines in "Lost" and the very premise of "Alias" demonstrate that Abrams understands a good yarn in a modern context. He combined this with popcorn thrills to great effect in "Mission Impossible 3", which was the best of the series and featured some great action scenes. He clearly has spent some serious time studying the sequences of Steven Spielberg, Sam Peckinpah and John Woo. Abrams also always takes time to establish his characters and let them develop with his twisty plots, so there is a core of emotional authenticity to the stories.

All of these were put to good use with "Star Trek", but there was one additional element of Abrams's repetoire (that he has used in every project) which diminished the overall experience: time travel. (kinda spoiler) "Star Trek" could have been perfect if Abrams had followed through with the linear narrative he was establishing by introducing each character and letting the plot move at a mid-boil. Instead, he felt the need to go all "Lost" on us, with multiple realities of time occurring simultaneously for the sake of sneaking in Leonard Nimoy. I get it, he wanted to bridge the old and new series. But Abrams should've just trusted his own storytelling facilities and let the kids have their run on the Enterprise. Enough with the time crap already J.J.!!!!

So surprisingly, Ryan Murphy wins with "Glee". Now this is surprising for a couple of reasons. First off, "Nip/Tuck" seriously sucks now. It started out as a culturally transgressive show where a plastic surgery office was a springboard to explore issues of morality, beauty, age, sexuality, and emotional intimacy. This was done through (at times) shockingly raw and outrageous plotlines that nonetheless allowed the viewer to reflect upon serious ideas. Like the best Aldomovar films, early "Nip/Tuck" rode a successfully delicate line between camp, tragedy, parody and drama. But that period is over, and "Nip/Tuck" is now a parody of itself.

I had assumed Murphy had lost his touch, but he has really regained it with "Glee". On paper, this show is simply riding on the coattails of the "High School Musical" franchise. The premise is simply one teacher's attempt to revitalize his old high school's glee club (which for those, including myself, who don't exactly know, is essentially a musical theater club). So my second surprise is that "Glee" takes all the best elements of the "High School Musical" series (charismatic young performers, strong production numbers, playful self-awareness of high school narrative tropes) and mostly one ups them while forgoing the chaste, vaguely christian, blandly multicultural atmosphere of its predecessor. The tone of "Glee" winningly flips between Murphy's signature poles of camp and drama, and can at times be humorously harsh. For instance, the football team mockingly signs up for the club under the name "penis" and the star singer belts out a wholly compelling ballad before the scene quickly cuts to her having red fruit punch thrown in her face. My only concern is that Murphy further develops the secondary characters, who in the pilot were relegated to the wheelchair kid as comedic relief, the black girl as deliverer of sassy one-liners and the asian girl as inarticulate sexpot. So I'll keep my fingers crossed on that.

On another plus side, Murphy is working with a fantastic music director who not only chooses very cheeky, clever songs for the production numbers ("Rehab" by Amy Winehouse, "Dont Stop Believing" by Journey") but employs accapella music as the background score, which both supports the show's premise and adds wonderful texture. DEF check out "Glee" online and when it returns in regular rotation.

VIDEEEO HITS 1

2009-05-05T15:27:00.004-04:00

Big Ideas (don't get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

Keep Your Social Issues in Documentary Form

2009-05-04T18:21:00.009-04:00

There is a moment in the new film "Sugar" when two baseball players are talking on the team bus. One is from the Dominican Republic and has never graduated high school, the other just finished Stanford. Both are black. They trade notes on favorite ball players, laugh at each other's cultural differences, and then the American player asks "Hey man, have you heard TV on the Radio?" This is then followed by a rousing montage of baseball moments set to the TVOTR tune "Blues from Down Here".

Wow! An Ivy-League educated, Black baseball player who listens to TV on the Radio and is getting "hip" with his DR bro-han. High five everbody!!!! Now let's go watch "The Wire". Awesome. Everything around me is more colorful and less burdened by social inequality. I haven't felt this good about myself since Natalie Portman showed me how to change my life:

Directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden really let me down with this one. I was a pretty big fan of their last film, Half Nelson, but this time they skirted the deep character study in favor of liberal pandering under the guise of a sports film. The standford-grad player is the perfect example of someone who may represent 2% of pro players, but had a solid supportive role in the film because he is easy to relate to for the target audience of liberal/progressive, multi-culti hipsters. I mean hey, they got my ass in a seat.

Too bad, because "Sugar" started out pretty interesting. We saw the day-to-day operations of a US baseball franchise camp in the DR and how the players dealt with the dangling promise of playing for a pro team while still living a world away from it. But by the end of the film, the protagonist, Sugar, has gone through such a cliched set of "immigrant" experiences that I could just feel Fleck and Boden trying to squeeze every last issue they could into this guy's story while affirming the core values of their audience. They should watch some more John Sayles movies to really get how to combine narrative with social issues, or just move to documentaries.

Lights...Cameras...OMG!!!!!

2009-04-30T22:06:00.037-04:00

The best film of 2009 so far is "Crank 2", the story of a hitman chasing down various baddies who stole his heart, literally. Yes, it is the BEST film of the year (so far). Now I know there are more "artistic" or "indie" endeavors out there, but that kind of authenticity is soooo boring. It's been quite awhile since I sat in a movie theater and thought "I can't believe this! This is cr-a-zy!" I don't want to ruin the witty fantasia on display too much, but suffice to say I never imagined I'd see Godzilla, REO Speedwagon and hilariously gratuitous public sex in the same movie.

Perhaps a better approach would be to say that "Crank 2" belongs at the top of the cinematic pantheon of Kinetic Eye Candy. This is a relatively new sub-genre of film (that I coined - due props, represent!) that combines an aggressively personal (and often innovative) visual style with breakneck pacing. Most (but not all) Kinetic Eye Candy films are either Action or Sci Fi. They include:

The Road Warrior

Pee Wee's Big Adventure

The 5th Element

Natural Born Killers

Baz Lurhman's Romeo and Juliet

Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle (no joke)

Hard Boiled

Fight Club

District B 13

To varying degrees, style is the substance in Kinetic Eye Candy. This is also the main criticism of the genre's detractors. But if "meaning" in gallery artwork is often expected to be found solely on the surface, why can't that apply to commercial film?

The visceral jumble of metal and motors in the last 20 minutes of "The Road Warrior"

is a celluloid counterpart to the work of John Chamberlain:

The ballet of gunfire in "Hard Boiled"

is as elegant and detailed as any Renoir

The bombastic explosion of color, composition and cultural reference in "Charlie's Angels 2"

belongs to the same pop art tradition as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and David LaChapelle

Visual art, regardless of the medium or role in the marketplace, can equally and legitimately lead the viewer into a moment of the sublime or emotional catharsis by the unfolding of carefully crafted and intelligently executed imagery designed to inspire and exhillerate. This is the expressed purpose of Kinetic Eye Candy, and "Crank 2" is one of the best examples. Go see it!

Soft Rock vs. Smooth R&B

2009-04-26T00:15:00.016-04:00

So My friend Alex keeps insisting that Steely Dan and Sade both fall under the genre of Soft Rock. I know he does this to annoy me (mission accomplished!), but it did inspire a clarification of what differentiates

Soft Rock

from Smooth R&B:

Soft Rock was developed in the mid 1970's by LA session musicians who played on both rock and r&b records. The sound was a combination of r&b rhythm in mostly mid tempos, sophisticated arrangements (that sometimes utilized jazz harmony), emotionally restrained vocals, and pristine production highlighted by low-tuned and naturally mixed drums, guitars with chorus and/or slight phaser, electric piano and a tasteful wash of reverb on everything (except the drums).

Soft rock artists/musicians often appeared on each other's records (in particular backup/lead singer Michael McDonald, guitarist Larry Carlton and various members of what would become the band Toto, especially drummer Jeff Porcaro), which enabled a consistency in style and sound to develop. The overall feeling of Soft Rock was detached cool, and water images easily come to mind when listening to it. Love was either something quietly pined for or softly fought for; moments of emotional intensity were rare and generally saved for choruses and guitar solos. Notable Soft Rock artists/groups include Steely Dan, Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins (pre-Footloose), Ambrosia, Player and Christopher Cross.

Choice Cuts

(you may have to click "skip this ad" at the top of the page):

Player - "Baby Come Back"

Kenny Loggins - "Who's Right, Who's Wrong"

Michael McDonald - "I Keep Forgetting"

Ambrosia - "Biggest Part of Me"

Smooth R&B had it's initial seeds planted in 1970s soul music. A few individual
artists such as Marvin Gaye, Minnie Rippington, and Barry White chose to turn down the gospel-influenced emotional catharsis of soul music in favor of something slower, quieter and more sexy. This laid the groundwork for what would become known in the 1980's as Smooth R&B. Smooth R&B was defined by slow to mid tempos, heavy reverb, programmed drums, buttery synths and acoustic piano, deep bass and stylized, emotive vocals. As opposed to Soft Rock, which was created by a collaboration between singers and musicians, Smooth R&B was created mostly by singers collaborating with a producer (or group of producers). But the initial stars of the genre (most notably Luther Vandross) split their sexy Smooth R&B material with more conventional pop ballads and uptempo numbers.

However, by the end of the 1980's and into the 1990's, as the envelope of sexuality was being pushed more explicitly in pop music, Smooth R&B became fully established as it's own genre. Artists and vocal groups could more easily define themselves by the aesthetics of the sexual and sensual without having to balance it with tamer pop material. While there were plenty of male artists doing solid work (Babyface, Blackstreet, Al B Sure), it was two female artists who arguably contributed the most to the genre at that time: Anita Baker and Sade.

Anita Baker's jazz-inflected phrasing and spare instrumentation became a benchmark for style and production. She also separated herself from other Smooth R&B artists by focusing mostly on acoustic instruments. Her musical influence can still be heard in the Smooth R&B spinoff genre of Smooth Jazz, with instrumentalists like Boney James, Kenny G and Dave Koz assuming the role of the singer.

Then there was Sade.

Yes, she indeed was (and still is) very beautiful. But beyond her beauty lay an alluring, airy swoon hinting at an emotional depth floating just below the surface. This, combined with a seamless blend of subtle beats, lush synths and delayed guitars made her music the most artistically ambitious of the genre. Her music also became the cultural crossover soundtrack to a generation of teens getting it on between the years of 1985 and 1992. I particularly remember the drummer in my suburban high school band saying something to the effect of "there's nothing betta than 'Love Deluxe' when her parents are outta town, It's so frickin hot."

As mentioned earlier, credit should also be given to the producers in creating Smooth R&B. The music would not have been possible without the fine work of people like Quincy Jones, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Babyface and Marcus Miller. A whole other post could be written about their work.

Choice Cuts:

(you may have to click "skip this ad" at the top of the page)

Luther Vandross - "If Only for One Night"

Al B. Sure - "Nite and Day"

Anita Baker - "Giving You the Best that I Got"

Sade - "Cherish the Day"

In short, the differences between these two genres can be summarized by the basic terms of mating ritual: Soft Rock is the candlelit courtship and Smooth R&B is the red wine seduction.

Hello again....R.I.P. Denim as Cultural Capital

2009-04-23T01:54:00.009-04:00

it's been awhile. you look good. do you feel good?

"wherever you go, there you are", as my friend Buckaroo Banzai said.

i totally forgot how jean commercials used to be so "american", "cool" and "sexy". that whole branding concept is gone. I think the the fall of the soviet union, the internet and growing resentment of our fine yet flawed supernation killed the american jean fetish market.

Barack Obama, fix our economy with SEXY COOL JEANS!!!!!

Yup, Vampire Weekend

2008-03-07T03:56:00.012-05:00

My friend Alex Klein and I have been arguing about Vampire Weekend for about a year. He thinks they're great, I think they're overblown amateurs. But in an interesting development in our debate, Alex was a bit peeved by a recent NPR review of the band's album, which he thinks ignored the inherent contradiction of a band that sells itself as privileged playing music largely influenced by punk. Here's a bit of what he had to say:

The reviewer emphasized the punk bit (did you listen to the audio version? she plays clips from their album where they're doing the whole "oi oi oi" schitck). But she also seems to celebrate the way this band is self-consciously pitching themselves as the next best thing since Rob Lowe started rocking Ralph Lauren. She didn't even think it was worth remarking on the fact that these guys celebrate richness and privelege by co-opting a musical form that came about as an attempt to celebrate the working class.

I thought that was an interesting point, but I surprisingly find myself (somewhat) backing Vampire Weekend. To play devils' advocate, one could argue that mixing working class musical forms with upper class lyrics is in itself an act of cultural discourse, not co-option. In the article on Vampire Weekednd (VW) in the latest issue of Spin, the keyboardist for VW mentions Jean-Michel Basquiat as a personal hero. Basquiat regularly worked with themes of image, class, race and perception. The interviewer also discusses the singer's experience teaching in Bed-Stuy. No middle/upper class white person teaches in Bed-Stuy without being knowingly forced to deal with class consciousness on a daily basis. I don't think VW take their privilege for granted. I think they are extremely self-conscious of it and of the cultural disconnect between them and their musical influences. I would even venture to say that the band purposely made musical choices in the hopes that these kinds of discussions of class and culture would occur,if for no other reason than it would produce press. But despite their class consciousness, VW still appear to be quite comfortable in their perch of entitlement and are not a "message" band (as opposed to their oft-cited influence, Paul Simon, whose Graceland album was made in part to address political issues in South Africa and the United States.) Politics for VW is a commercially beneficial by-product of the music, as it has been for other “co-opting” bands such as The Police, Talking Heads and The Beastie Boys. VW are simply an indie-pop band using African musical idioms as their mode of delivery and hype. As opposed to someone like Peter Gabriel, who used world music idioms as a means to bring awareness of international politics and injustices. Or a band like Dengue Fever, who are a hyped cambodian pop band using indie-rock idioms as their mode of delivery. But I digress…

An artist can draw from whatever sources they enjoy without feeling obligated to adhere to the source material's context. For example, if I want to sample recordings of slave work songs and put a beat over it, I don't need to add my own commentary on the nature of commerce and race. Likewise, Vampire Weekend do not need to be sympathetic to the ideology of punk or afro-pop in order use their forms. However, the musical technique used in incorporating these musical forms is critical in establishing artistic credibility and success. In other words, the musician (to an extent) must be able to play within the form and demonstrate an understanding of its aesthetic before recontextualizing it.

In the case of punk, I think VW is on solid ground. Contrary to the opinion of NPR and many music critics, most of the guys in VW cannot play their instruments. A lack of musicianship was pretty much the prime prerequisite for punk and was also a large part of its democratizing appeal: the fact that literally anyone could play it. Where VW falter is in their lazy interpretation of African music, and this issue is (ironically) almost entirely due to the drummer’s punk technique. For what I think is a fair comparison, listen to any mid-late 1970s recordings of Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Pete Thomas was by no means a reggae drummer, but he had enough pocket, technique and creativity to incorporate some of reggae’s rhythmic idioms into the songs written by Mr. Costello, which had a jerky punk feel. VW’s drummer doesn’t have the technical facility to successful pull off that kind of alchemy and the result is brutishly crass. The band’s acceptance of this less than academic approach to cultural rhythm speaks more to their entitlement and class than their more easily digestible punk influence. It’s the musical equivalent of watching “The Wire” in a beach house on Cape Cod: a self-serving act that allows for class sympathy while having no real investment in cultural dialogue or change.

The Need for Self-Criticism

2008-02-13T23:41:00.012-05:00

My man Taylor Ho Bynum recently posted on some of the finer points of critiquing/commenting on criticism. It is indeed (as Taylor says) a very "meta" occupation. I would add that it's also a nerdy, self-absorbed and extremely subjective writing form.

In other words, perfect for blogging!!!

I say this because yet another recent article has piqued my interest. In this case, it is by infamous New York Press film critic Armond White. I say infamous because he is commonly known to have some, shall we say, unique takes on films. His summary of Joel Schumacher's tepid "Phone Booth" was "Colin Farrell, targeted by a sniper, suffers for our sins. Improper but important." Huh? And then in 2002, after including a Spielberg reference in literally every review that summer ( I was counting,) Mr. White rated "A.I." as one of the top ten films of all time. Like, up there with Citizen Kane and The Godfather.

Generally, any film Mr. White hates is one I (and many other people) will probably enjoy. There are exceptions of course. He gave a positive review to "No Country for Old Men" (as I did, with some reservations.) But he also said in the same review that the Coen Brother's best film so far has been "The Man Who Wasn't There." Again, huh?

Keeping this in mind, I was completely bewildered when I found myself nodding in agreement with Mr. White's article from last week's Press on the overpraise of film director Sidney Lumet. Now generally, I will not harp on this sort of thing (unless it's Vampire Weekend.) While I did not like Lumet's most recent film (also reviewed here,) I have enojoyed some of his past work, including "Dog Day Afternoon," "The Verdict" and "Q and A." But after netflixing Jane Fonda's 80's comeback thriller "The Morning After" (which Lumet directed,) I felt White was well within his bounds to take the director down a notch. Anyone who could helm such a travesty should be taken to task.

Now I know what you're thinking...Jane Fonda 80's comeback thriller, huh? Well besides the kitsch factor, I expected the man who directed the impenetrable "Network" to make a film with taut pacing, a tight plot/structure, good acting and Fonda in hot cougar mode. All I got was the Fondacougar.

After being set-up for a murder, Fonda aimlessly wanders around LA with Jeff Bridges for most of the film. They don't really look for clues or run from any baddies. The odd couple (she's a washed up alcoholic actress, he's a vaguely racist ex-cop) mostly just drive around, yell at each other and drink. In the last scene, a clue finally appears and the crime is solved. The casting of Fonda against type was promising and the Sunset Boulevard-esque subtext was very, uh, meta, but it was a miserable 96 minutes that didn't even have my desired 80's thriller sheen (as found in other flicks of the genre like Fatal Attraction, Black Rain, Year of the Dragon and Sea of Love.)

In addition to White's criticisms (which are more focused on Lumet's dubious rep as a quintessential New York City director) the problem with "The Morning After" and many of Lumet's films is his choice of scripts. When working with a solid writer like David Mamet (The Verdict) or Paddy Chayefsky (Network,) Lumet is a fine craftsman who handles the material with an unadorned efficiency that emphasizes emotional depth and intensity. But he seems to equally choose scripts with middling plotting and uninspired dialogue, perhaps because they contain the themes that he frequently explores (corruption, morality, the infrastructure of power.) In these instances, Lumet does little to edit the material or make stylistic decisions that can help the film. And the results ("The Morning After," "Famiy Business," "Guilty as Sin," "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead") are serviceable at best.

In general, I don't understand how seasoned directors like Lumet, Spielberg (War of the Worlds, anyone?) and Brian DePalma can be so inconsistent after decades of experience in the industry. Perhaps it's an unfair comparison, but I don't think Elvis Costello or Roy Haynes will put out a bad record at this point in their careers. It may not be a great record, but it will certainly not be "The Morning After."

A Reflection on "Quirk"

2008-01-17T00:26:00.000-05:00

Well here I am. Nice to be back. Been hibernating in the studio and home in Boston. Two eps in the bag which you can hear here and here. Two recent articles inspired me to take fingers to keypad once again.

An article by Michael Hirschorn in The Atlantic this month discusses the concept of "quirk" and how it is employed by Wes Anderson, Ira Glass, David Eggers, tv shows like "Flight of the Concords" and other artists. He argues that these folks create a skewed but familiar world that unfortunately often skitters into the blandness that they are trying to undo. Thank-you Mr. Hirschorn! Ever since "Little Miss Sunshine," I have been irked but unable to articulate what it is about these "quirky" projects that bother me so much. Interestingly, a response to the article that (weakly) tries to defend "quirk" actually sharpened my opinion of why it is problematic. In his article "In defence of quirkiness," Phil Hoad writes

"Maybe because I fall smack-bang in the middle of the demographic that created it and I have a tendency to regard my life as a string of encounters that some unspecified observer (my peers, if I'm feeling particularly desperate) may or may not be taking a dim pleasure in, I find it (quirk) harder to condemn."

This is a sentiment that I find irritating with not only these aforementioned artists but many Gen X'ers and Y'ers in general. Hoad is alluding to "quirk" as the performance of detachment. Social interaction becomes a series of clever exchanges that play with convention (i.e. carrying themes through unrelated discussion topics, articulating contrarian points of view in the first person) and then resolve with an appropriate amount of sincerity. There is an unspoken determination of success in whether the exchange had every element (cleverness, detachment, sincerity) in the right ratio. This success is determined by the "unspecified observer" (an individual's malnourished ego or the inflated ego of the over-intellectualized peer group.)

The performance of detachment is then reflected in the work of "quirk" artists (Mr. Hirschorn explains,) as they self-consciously give a character an extra little funny personality trait, pick an odd location for a scene or choose a song whose emotional tone is juxtaposed against that of a sequence just enough to detach the audience from the proceedings but not too much to lose the "timeless themes" as they unfold. In essence, the artist is sharing his/her ego with you, allowing for a masturbatory exchange of intelligence and cultural sophistication. I recently watched a film called "10 Items or Less" which embodies everything that is wrong with this aesthetic.

The film is about a famous actor (Morgan Freeman, essentially playing himself) who is researching the role of a supermarket manager for a small indie film that he may agree to make. Through his research at a supermarket, he meets smart, feisty Paz Vega (stereotype alert) who works at the check-out counter and wants more out of her life. After some obligatory "quirk" (Freeman mirroring the glacial movement of the elderly store manager, a long shot of Vega and Freeman walking in a lot with over-sized, technicolor trash containers expertly placed in the background) there is an exchange of belief between Freeman's privileged optimism and Vega's working-class realism. The audience is supposed to be delighted by the films's exploration of class and dreams through it's meticulously framed, hand-held "indie" camerawork, primary location of a real East LA supermarket and self-conscious casting. Needless to say, I was not delighted. To add another layer of annoyance, the film was financed by Freeman's production company and given a strict 15-day shoot. Given Freeman's deep pockets and his studio connections, I'm going to assume this shooting schedule was a conceptual choice. Therefore, the whole project was predicated on the notion of artificially creating something small and personal with a script and cast to reference its own transparency.

And this brings up the ultimate failure of "quirk" - it is just too calculated to be emotionally revealing. To me, risk is crucial. Hirschorn is very critical of "This American Life" because despite its often unusual settings and subjects, the stories are always framed within a strict narrative of conflict and resolution, i.e "lessons learned." And this is true of most of the artists who use "quirk." The emotion of the work is often tempered and the structure is pedestrian. What is there to learn and/or absorb in the creative world of an artist who does not take structural or emotional risks? This doesn't mean that only strange or avant-garde art projects are valid. Rather, making a decision that will reveal something highly personal or uncharted in an artistic medium/genre is preferable to safely adding the clever texture of "quirk." If you're going to skew the world, why not just go all the way and turn it over a few times?

Discovery

2007-12-01T12:41:00.000-05:00

Here are the results of my most recent expedition to the territories of new music:

Russian Circles

Solid instrumental heavy/dreamy rock in the vein of Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky.

Standout Track: "Micah"

Maps and Atlases

These guys remind of those 90's math and spazz indie pop/rock bands like U.S Maple, Archers of Loaf and Polvo. There is an endearing, tight nervousness to Maps and Atlases that is accentuated by their occasional use of finger tapping. The vocals are strained but effective. There is also a hint of 1970's Yes in the clean, complex guitar lines played against simpler vocal lines.

Standout track:

"The Most Trustworthy Tin Can."

The Hellacopters

Underappreciated Swedish garage band that's been around for over 10 years. Their songs are beyond tribute to groups like MC5 and The Sonics. From the production (especially on their album, "Supershitty to the Max!") to the fearless bravado, they actually sound like forgotten heroes from another era.

Standout Track:

"Gotta Get Some Action Now"

Damone

Journey meets Joan Jett. Endlessly catchy. And they're from Boston, my friggin hometown.

Standout Track:

"You're the One" (mostly for the over-the-top key change and guitar solo at 2:50)

Western Promises

2007-11-27T00:39:00.000-05:00

My friend Abby (with whom I had an absolutely wonderful dance-music performance tonight) says I've been musically flogging myself too much on this blog, so I will now recount my experience with the new Coen Brothers movie. But more flogging is always possible!

These brothers confuse me. I found "Fargo" depressing, "The Man Who Wasn't There" irritating and "Raising Arizona" delightful. I'll enjoy one of their films for awhile and then a new character, plot twist or set piece will be thrown in that clashes with everything else. They also often venture into emotionally twisted, dark corners that I don't necessarily want to explore for two hours. So I wasn't sure about seeing "No Country For Old Men," but figured I'd give it a shot, since I'm a sucker for contemporary westerns (Extreme Prejudice, El Mariachi, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) and their revisionist cousins (El Topo, Unforgiven, Dead Man.)

Surprisingly, I liked the film right away. There was no typical Coen quirkiness that I sometimes find distracting. The film, which basically outlines the trajectory of a desert drug deal gone wrong, took its time with each scene, but kept the characters and plot developing steadily. I could see with it's stark landscape and deliberate, yet unhuried pace,

"No Country For Old Men" had placed its dusty feet in the slow-paced, rural crime narratives and morally-ambiguous westerns established by films like Bonnie and Clyde, Badlands, Electra Glide in Blue, and The Wild Bunch. From the very first frame, the Coens were clearly and successfully continuing the genre play of these earlier films. In addition, the script and actors had just enough personality in the characters to give them all different shades of humanity and moral intention. And there was no musical score, which I actually thought was a great choice by the Coens. Without music, I was more interested in the minutae of character movement, body language and cinematography. So for most of the film, I was truly engaged in the experience of this quietly detailed, unfolding narrative.

But at the end, the Coen Brothers decided they needed to inject some greater "meaning" into their story. Which is something they often seem to unwisely do in their films. Without giving away any detail (don't worry, no spoilers,) it finishes with a rumination on the affects of choosing work on both ends of the law. A quick series of character scenes verbally and physically express ideas of duty, vocation, luck and violence that were better implied by the actions of the characters. To me, this ending not only broke the "show don't tell" rule of storytelling, but also disrupted the film's natural pace. The actions of the characters took me on a visual meditation from sand-drenched to beautifully benign scenery while encouraging a reflection on the ways in which the violence of men is dealt with by different generations. Those ideas did not need explicit explanation or further symbolic association. So while I enjoyed the slow and bloody burn of "No Country For Old Men," the Coens ultimately opted for a density of ideas over a clarity of vision.

Pre-Holiday Shred

2007-11-21T13:07:00.000-05:00

Red Lights played last weekend at this weird bar in Tribeca. It was a decent size, but didn't seem to have regular customers and the sound was (as usual) crappy. Luckily Jared (the promoter and guitar player in Shrine of the Black Madonna) brought in some peeps. We played ok, definitely better than the Halloween show. But this line-up could use a few more gigs to really gel. I just wish we could hone our chops somewhere besides the bottom-feeder, NYC rock club circuit.

There was one nice moment of guitar wankery at the show, captured by my pal Alan Roth:

Right now I'm knee-deep in the world of recorded material. The Red Lights to Rio tunes should be mastered soon and I'm finishing up a solo ep of my Evan Patrick stuff. I'm also editing sound and performing live (along with cornetist and fellow blogger Taylor Ho Bynum) for a dance piece by my friends Abby and Pei Pei, which will be performed this Monday at Judson Church. And it's FREE!

Have a good Thanksgiving/stick it to the red man/nice family time/long weekend!!!!

The....Will Not Be Televised

2007-11-13T02:51:00.000-05:00

I was just skimming the blogosphere (ick) and hit upon this hip hop/culture page that managed to irk me in less than a minute by connecting the world "texture" of MIA to the fourth season of The Wire. Ok, kinda of a neat idea, but...

Liberal Sheep "BAAAAA BAAAAA" ENOUGH of MIA and THE WIRE already!!!!!

Fake culture music and a lefty tv show on a major cable network do not make a revolution.

You know what's revolutionary...

Fugazi charging $5.00/ticket for every show they ever played, whether it was a basement or a 2,000 seat venue.

Not having a tv

None of which is to imply that I'm leading a revolutionary lifestyle. "Nip/Tuck" and "Prison Break" are staples in our household. But I will say there is a no MIA clause in the apartment.

Sorry, just ranting off again.

Day Off

2007-11-13T01:02:00.000-05:00

So I was back to daylight today, and decided to take Vera to the movies (a night owl's twisted logic.) There are a bunch of crime flicks out right now that I've been jonesing to see, and Sidney Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" was at the top of my list.

I'm a big 1970's/early 1980's film fan and Lumet pretty much owned crime/political procedurals with classics like Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Network and The Verdict. His films always featured nuanced performances and complex spins on morality. So I was pretty excited about him doing a caper picture with the interesting cast of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney and Marisa Tomei. But it didn't work.

In Lumet's defense, this was largely due to the script, which structured the action in the already overused formula of the fractured narrative. You know, films like "Resevoir Dogs," "Memento," "Amores Perros" that jump back and forth through time to accent different character motivations and plot twists. The film used this structure and crashed a bad 90's heist film into a daddy-issue melodrama. It wasn't just the narrative that was split, it was the whole movie.

Lumet's strength has always been executing a straightforward narrative at a slow burn, throwing in some moral curveballs and filling it out with strong performances. He got the performances (especially Hoffman, who does a frightening quiet rage) but they're wasted on a pedestrian storyline that doesn't quite work as a caper or a family drama.

Lumet's 83, so I don't know how many more films he has left to make. But hopefully he can return to the hushed, wood-paneled courtrooms and skittish NYC streets of his finer work.

In the trenches....

2007-11-12T00:24:00.000-05:00

I'm here on the last evening of mixing tracks for the upcoming Red Lights to Rio album. Everything's sounding really lush and that's pretty much all due to the great engineering of Scott Harding. Scott has worked with a diverse range of artists, from Wu Tang Clan to The Dears. He has not only made my sonic ideas happen, but has thrown in some new ones that have totally enhanced the tunes. Hopefully a label, manager or booking agent will also find it interesting. Fingers crossed.

We've been working 10-12 hour days since Thursday, a lot of which for me has been spent sitting on the couch and just listening. During that time, I've been crafting a response to the New Yorker article by Sasha Frere-Jones called "A Whiter Shade of Pale." The article is basically a theory to explain why most contemporary indie rock (and rock in general) often lacks any real elements “blackness.” I figured I should chime in before the article completely fades from public memory. So here goes...

In the article, Mr. Frere-Jones outlines the well-traveled history of entangled cultural influence between black and white musicians. The usual suspects are mentioned (spirituals, folk music, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin,) and he marks 1990’s west coast hip hop as a turning point in this tradition of musical dialogue. According to Mr. Frere-Jones, the inclusion of live instruments played with a murky slink on “The Chronic” ignited regional competition that led to a splintering of the hip hop, which then spilled over into splintering rock. This new regionalism (also spurred by a decrease in the use of samples,) combined with the growing trend in academic discourse of examining how culture and systems of power are created, made it harder for white people to imitate or interpret black music, unless done with irony (The Beastie Boys) or total mastery (Eminem.) While this is an interesting idea, the turning point in my opinion actually came at the end of the 1970’s. Up until that time, rock and roll had always been intimately tied to the blues. But two things happened at that time which broke with this tradition – punk and heavy metal.

Now I know people always say that bands like Led Zeppelin and Blue Cheer were heavy metal. But those early heavy bands were “riffing” on the blues (Black Sabbath included) and heavy metal is not about the blues. It’s about theatrical bombast, explicit sexuality (not double entendres) and chord progressions that do not rely upon repetition or call-and-response structures. Metal really took off at the end of the 1970s, when the arena rock torch was passed from blues-based acts like Zeppelin and Aerosmith to more aggressive bands like Judas Priest and AC/DC. Unlike their blues forbearers, these new bands were not going down to the electric crossroads looking for redemption. They were perfectly happy to remain in sin. And this decadent party of virtuosity had no time for soul-searching. In the 1980’s, the outrageous onslaught continued with arrival of hair metal. The preeminent guitarist of that genre, Eddie Van Halen, has been quoted as saying that Jimi Hendrix was not a major influence to him. And while that’s an incendiary comment for any guitarist to make, Mr. Van Halen’s style backs the claim. The clean precision in his phrasing is antithetical to the muddied, deep string bends of the blues. This isn’t to say that the blues is inherently sloppy, but it certainly allows for a sloppiness in execution and emotion that is not found in heavy metal, which strives for perfection.

As heavy metal grew in the arenas, punk rock started gritting its teeth in the gutter as a response to the meticulous pomp of the various arena rock styles (heavy metal, prog, pop rock.) By emphasizing simple and raw emotion coupled with an attitude of playing for the moment, punk shunned (at least in image) any concessions to professionalism or the audience. While one could argue that this element of rawness shares a certain spirit with the blues, the difference is that punk’s adamant amateurism limited the ability of its musicians to be traditionally expressive on their instruments. And technical expertise (oral and/or notated) used for personal expression is a critical component to all of Black music. But punk musicians developed their own, non-traditional techniques of instrumental expression, which were eventually incorporated into the process of songwriting and became the foundation of post-punk. Interestingly, post-punk initially embraced the black rhythms of reggae, hip-hop and funk. But the genres that followed in its wake (new romantic, noise rock, math rock) kept post-punk’s urban malaise and sonic exploration while eschewing its rhythmic sensibility and emotional tone. So unlike Mr. Frere-Jones’s assertion, rock music had been splintering since the 1980’s. It was simply in the next decade that this splintering cut to the surface of public awareness.

In the 1990’s, exchanges between “black" and "white” music in the field of rock had been replaced by an intricate tapestry of subgenre. There was hardcore and straight-edge hardcore, indie rock and indie pop, hair metal and death metal, etc. People were constantly cutting and pasting different styles and sounds together, burrowing into established genres to make new ones. In his article, Mr. Frere-Jones describes these phenomena as a unique development in hip hop. In reality, lines were being drawn all over the musical and cultural map. The music market became a series of interlocking niches. And these niches did not necessarily have to be (or want to be) associated with black music in order to establish credibility, an identity or an agenda.

In addition, the ease of mass-producing cds (independently and thru labels,) the growing market of music downloading and the developments in digital recording had begun to make it easier to own, create and distribute music. Having this kind of access diminished the role of the fetish-like music object (record, tape or cd.) There was no longer much of a demand to browse through liner notes, read lyrics or examine cover art. So the rarified nature of owning black music on vinyl that drew rock bands (especially in England) in the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s to dialogue with its form became a vestige of an earlier age. An overall emphasis shifted from using a knowledge of black music as a guide for creating rock to having an erudite knowledge of all music and choosing which strands to use as a direct influence. Which why indie artists (as Mr. Frere-Jones noted with Devendra Barnhart) will often cite an appreciation of black music, but not necessarily use its forms.

Image is Everything

2007-11-01T19:00:00.000-04:00

Last night my band attempted to dress up as Thomas Magnum (aka Magnum PI) for our Halloween show at Trash.

But the fake moustaches didn't have adhesive on the back, so we ended up looking more like the house band on a cruise ship. The costume malfunction was a sign of things to come, as our show was far less than stellar and the "crowd" (as usual) was mostly my small but wonderfully loyal group of friends (big up to Jake, Tony, Amani, Ali, Pei Pei, Rachel, Lauren and Ms. Tang.) I left the stage pissy, looking to pimp out two gin and tonics from my one drink ticket. My friends have tried to assure me it was a decent performance. Agghhh.

Anyways...in a different intersection of image and music, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings

have a new video for the song, "100 Days, 100 Nights." Now before I get to the video, let me just say that Ms. Jones is a great singer. She has one those classic soul voices whose tone and delivery imply experiences with profound love, gut-punching heartbreak, tearful tragedy and epic redemption. But Ms. Jones's popularity seems partially derived by the inversion of the typical formula of a "soulful" white singer fronting a black band. In her case, Ms. Jones has some "hep" (as in jazz/funk/hip-hop heads with goatees, see Soulive) and mostly white dudes in vintage suits doing an admirable impression of the Funk Brothers (i.e. the in-house musicians for Motown Records in the 60's and 70’s.) Despite these contrived circumstances, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings have generally shown an aptitude for strong songwriting and delivering legit-sounding 60's soul. But this clever video is an uninspired product of that aesthetic.

By the first shaky frame of the digitally "handmade" titles, I knew what was unfolding: the re-creation of a 1960's variety show musical number. The acts from shows like The Ed Sullivan Show and Shindig! often performed in front of a blank wall accented by a few set pieces. The video for "100 Days, 100 Nights" really captures not only this design style, but the look of the actual film/video stock and corresponding use of sloppy dissolves in the editing. But after the first minute or so, I got the joke. And to a certain extent, the video takes away from the music because the antiquated format reinforces the artifice of the band. The suspension of disbelief required to enjoy Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings is maintained through the quality of the songwriting and Ms. Jones's voice. By overly emphasizing the "retro" element of their sound, Ms. Jones and the Dap Kings reduce themselves to a novelty act, like those jump swing bands from the 90's. They are better than that and could have at least done something with a theme, like this video for Dionne Warwick's "Walk on By."

Perhaps I'm being too critical of a group whose purpose is to play inside a genre, which extends to all aspects of its image. The semblance of authenticity is their objective. But neither the song nor the act is given any more layers of meaning or association by this video. And besides the obvious purpose of commerce, isn't that what a video is supposed to do?

Dark and Bubblegum

2007-10-30T00:33:00.000-04:00

I found this great early 80's band (ok I'm on a kick) that I'd never heard of called Romeo Void. Judging from their sound, the band seems to have been around at the tail of the postpunk movement. You can hear traces of that style's staccato guitar rhythms (found in bands like Gang of Four and Echo and the Bunnymen) meshing with more orchestrated synth arrangements that were associated with the burgeoning new romantic bands like Duran Duran and Simple Minds. Two songs in particular that struck me were "Never Say Never" and "A Girl in Trouble." Both are carried by the sexy and feminist-leaning vocals of Debora Lyall. "Never Say Never" in particular has a great hook with the line "I might like you better if we slept together." I can see Brett Easton Ellis listening to this while writing on a balcony in the hollywood hills. Interestingly, Lyall did not have a traditional pop look. She was chubby and had some kind of ethnicity (pacific islands?) that would definitely never fly in today's market (which sucks.)

The musicianship was also pretty good in the band (except the sax player, ugh) which is something I always appreciate in pop music. The rhythm section had a tight angular attack poking through the suggestive and soft anger of the vocals. They're quite a find.

One of the best examples of technique and hook-saviness is another band from the same era, Missing Persons, featuring uber-geek drummer Terry Bozzio. That band also had a female singer (Terry's wife, Dale) but their sound was lighter with subtle prog flourishes. The album Spring Session M is AMAZING and should be mandatory for anyone who appreciates well arranged and executed ear candy with some heft to it.

Self-Promotion

2007-10-29T17:05:00.000-04:00

photo by amani willet

So I'm playing with my band, Red Lights to Rio, on Wednesday at Trash in Williamsburg at 8pm. For those of you who know my line-up saga, this will be guitarist #4. But he's a ringer. Adam Caine is an old friend of mine from my early NYC days of playing in a free-jazz-pop-metal band. He's got a real skronk sound that should fit our tunes nicely.

Adam will be flanked by the ever solid fingerings of our Argentinian bassist, Jony. Jony's been a real find after the sad departure of last bassist. He's quickly fit into our musical family, bringing real professionalism, technique and enthusiasm to the music.

And I am still very lucky to be working with the estimable Don McKenzie on drums. The name of this post is actually a phrase he likes to use when waxing poetic on his years in the music business. He's worked with an impressive group of musicians (Veron Reid, Elliot Sharp, Marc Ribot, the infamous P. Diddy) and will sometimes say "I've been in this game a minute" when trying to "school" me on some music knowledge. It's an ongoing battle of wills, but I'm happy to have a foil to make the music the best it can be. And we both enjoy the game.

So come hear how these flammable entities ignite in ROCK AND ROLL FIRE!!!!!

(too much?)

Post Tribute Post

2007-10-26T23:01:00.000-04:00

Let's leave the droopy indie kids for a moment...

For those of us who grew up in the 1980's, (I know that era reached saturation 5 years ago, but stick with me on this) television memories include shows like The A-Team,
St. Elsewehere and The Greatest Amerian Hero.

What many of them had in common was television theme composer Mike Post. The melancholy, yet hopeful piano ballad that opens Hill Street Blues was written by Mr. Post. As was the signature guitar riffing over heavy orchestral strokes of Magnum P.I. Post often worked with tv producer Stephen J. Cannell, who created the aforementioned The A-Team, The Greatest Amercian Hero and other 80's pre-pubescent shows like Hardcastle and McCormick, Riptide and Sonny Spoon. Mr. Post’s themes always matched Cannell’s style of combining humor and quirky characters with straight action. In short, Mike Post’s music was the soundtrack to my funny shoot ‘em up boyhood fantasies.

Mr. Post began his work in the 1970s and first gained attention for co-writing the theme to The Rockford Files, for which he eventually won a grammy. That show starred James Garner as aging and irreverent ex-con turned private detective Jim Rockford. The show’s theme is a strange juxtaposition of style – blues harmonica and country twang guitar played against a nasally 70s synthesizer. But somehow it works. Mr. Post makes it easy to picture Garner dragging his bad back up a set of stairs in a back alley as Suzanne Somers giggles in bemusement while wearing a pair of yellow hot pants. Like all of his themes, it struck me how creative yet economical he was in putting together this piece of music. It establishes the whole attitude and style of the show in .58 seconds.

Given how often (but not always) great the music is by Mr. Post and other tv composers (especially from 1970's shows like Maude, Fish, The White Shadow and of course, Barney Miller,) it’s disappointing to think about the decline of this really fun genre. It is due in part to the trend of licensing songs already written by singers or bands, so I shouldn't really complain about that. Nonetheless, there is something lost when the theme is not specifically written for a show. A good tv theme welcomes you into the world that you’ll be visiting for the next 30-60 minutes. And more so than the show itself (whose image details are too specific,) a theme can evoke memories of the particular time in your life when the show was aired. Lastly, a theme can simply work as a catchy and tightly arranged instrumental piece to be enjoyed on it’s own merits. For example, you can still hear the theme to Hill Street Blues on some lite fm stations. But don't hold that against Mr. Post, because he is a master of the form.

Radiohead Review

2007-10-18T22:46:00.000-04:00

So let’s get the obvious out of the way – it’s cool that we can pay whatever we want for this record. But that’s where it ends, as a cool idea. Only a wealthy band can afford this as a viable business model. And it certainly places Radiohead back in the zeitgeist, which I thought would be unlikely after the artistic stasis of their last record, “Hail to the Thief.” But that isn’t to say that “In Rainbows” is necessarily a step forward.

There is a consistency to the songs on this album that one has come to expect from Radiohead. Since “The Bends,” the band has demonstrated a high level of sophistication with arrangement and hooks. And since “Kid A,” there has been a regular use of overdubbed guitar effects, synthesizers and programmed drums. All of these are on display with “In Rainbows,” but I do not hear them being used in fresh ways or original songwriting. The one exception is “All I Need,” which is nestled in the middle of the album. It begins with a muted drum beat and is followed by a great synth bassline that reminds me a bit of “Turquise Hexagon Sun,” by Boards of Canada. Thom Yorke’s lead vocals enter next with a counter line to the bass and the layers continue to grow from there. “All I Need” is subtle, catchy and structured with a simplicity that is fattened by sound ideas which develop over the course of the song’s three and a half minutes. I would certainly place “All I Need” in the canon of other great Radiohead songs like “High and Dry,” “Paranoid Android” and “Everything in it’s Right Place.” The one slight drawback is the final drum part, which has crash cymbals washing over the other instruments.

This brings up one of my biggest problems of the album, which is the drumming of Phil Selway. I have always felt that he brings the least amount of creativity to the band. His parts have generally been adequate and tasteful, but rarely inspired. On this record, many of the songs are anchored by his drums, which establish a rhythmic motif for simple guitar lines, vocals and synth textures to play over. In order for this kind of structure to be compelling, the drums have to simultaneously invite head bopping and complement the tone of the song. As usual, Selway gets the tone right but doesn’t put his “ass” into the kit. In other words, he plays very straight. Which is too bad for the songs and for bass player Colin Greenwood, who has a great touch and often writes very interesting, sinewy parts of his own.

(As a related sidenote, I would highly recommend reading Sasha Frere-Jones’s current piece in the New Yorker entitled “A Paler Shade of White.” )

Overall, I was impressed but not particularly excited by “In Rainbows.” The songs cover ground that has been heavily tread by the band already. There is the melancholic piano piece, the melodramatic, minor-key guitar ballad, the mid-tempo britpop and the live/electronic hybrid of syncopated drum patterns. The only real development is the use of more acoustic guitar on a few tracks. It would have been interesting to hear more of that on the record, as a kind of brooding response to the oversaturated and annoyingly quirky freak-folk trend. Or even better, they could have written better songs. An average Radiohead record is still well above the best work of most bands, but why settle?

Late to the buzz party but still ready for a good time

2007-10-12T00:01:00.000-04:00

photo courtesy of white denim

goddam pissed jeans rawk!!!

Like the gutter-trash cousins of arab on radar with less amphetamines and more jim beam.

Arcade Fire/LCD Soundsystem/Blonde Redhead Concert

2007-10-08T23:48:00.000-04:00

On Saturday night, I walked onto the field of Randall's Island as the delay-laden voice of Kazu Makino (from Blonde Redhead) echoed over a washy drone that complemented the evening's humidity.

Unfortunately, my party arrived late for the concert and we were only able to catch the end of Blonde Redhead’s set. But from what I could tell, the material from “23” is much better live. While I am a huge fan of the shoegazing bands from the early 90’s (Slowdive, Chapterhouse, My Bloody Valentine,) I can also appreciate the general criticism of “23” that it is a somewhat pedestrian take on the genre. However, when the music was complemented by subtle stage lighting and an outdoor venue at dusk, the result was dreamy and alluring.

photo courtesy of babbu

Next up were James Murphy and his studio project, LCD Soundsystem.

Now, I really didn’t want to like this band. Murphy’s label, DFA, was part of the early 2000s co-option and branding of the Lower East Side (and Williamsburg) as a playground for denim-clad, skinny disco/punks looking for a fashion orgy. And the press enjoyed portraying this “scene” as the legacy of the late 1970’s, CBGBs-era New York City. In reality, artists like The Rapture, The Strokes and Ryan McGinley were and (continue to be) simply interested in capturing a style, whereas their elder counterparts like Talking Heads, The Ramones and Nan Goldin were committed to the more valuable pursuit of innovation through style.

That being said, the new LCD Soundsystem record, “Sound of Silver,” was my guilty pleasure of the summer. The deliberate stylistic attention (ESG, Sugarhill Records, Gang of Four) was still there, but it was softened by a genuineness in the vocals and lyrics that added a layer of sincerity. This makes sense since Murphy (37) is just old enough (as he has said in interviews) to have heard a lot of the bands that influence his sound when they were performing in their heyday. Still, I was a bit suspicious of seeing LCD Soundsystem live, since I find embracing "retro" a generally adolescent pursuit.

In concert, this odd mix of intention was amplified and it actually had a wonderful effect. Murphy’s band sounded TIGHT and all the members were clearly schooled in the nuances of early 80’s hip-hop, funk and no wave . So when the disco ball lit up during a propulsive high in the second song,

there was a palatable connection between the stomping crowd and equally stomping band.

Then there’s Murphy’s voice. It is a mid to high pitched yelp that does not have a lot of natural strength (as opposed to unfairly say, Aretha,) but still manages to attain a power by his sheer will. This determination, coupled with Murphy's self-deprecating and humble stage presence, completely won the crowd over. And his stage banter was constantly hilarious. At one point, Murphy interrupted the piano ballad “New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” to say, “Hey guys, do you know Tony? He’s sitting in on this song and plays guitar for Arcade Fire. How cool is that?” Then he went right back to singing, without missing the beat (barely.)

LCD Soundsystem set the bar high for the headlining Arcade Fire, who began their set with a montage of evangelical Christian videos. This was a clever allusion to their current album, “Neon Bible.” The band then ran onstage in the shadows of red neon and flashing tv screens. It was a scene that could have been taken out of Blade Runner or a 1980's Prince concert.

photo courtesy of Pablog

I literally couldn't talk for about 2 minutes because it was absolutely stunning to watch. But once I adjusted to the spectacle and started to really listen to the music, a disconnect occured to me. What I was hearing and watching did not fit. The presentation was Andrew Lloyd Webber (as my friend Tavia said,) but the music was quirky and self-consciously heartfelt, with the emotion of each song shifting monotonously from confessional to declaratively heavy-handed. There was no extravagance or even pop bombast. To match the awe of the stage set, the band should have initially knocked out high energy material like "No Cars Go" or "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)." Instead, they opted for a slow burn, which started with the first two tracks from "Neon Bible"(neither of which I like) and continued in a similar, mid-tempo dirge until the show was almost over. At that point, the band finally played two of their largest, lightest tunes: "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" and "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)." But it was too late to get excited.

I enjoy the collision of new wave and old-timey instrumentation that is found in many of Arcade Fire's songs. Unfortunately (like many indie bands at the moment,) they are lately more interested in channeling Bruce Springsteen with an overbearing sense of melodrama. More than half of their set borrowed liberally from the rhythmic feel and melodic phrasing of "I'm on Fire" and "Born to Run." Lead singer Win Butler seemed to be trying on the hats of both a young Bruce and "Joshua Tree"-era Bono, strumming his acoustic guitar and preaching to his rapt audience from a cyber-punk electric church.

But Butler had neither Bono's combination of ego, piety and charisma nor Bruce's everyman persona. Instead, he came off as humorless and pretentious. I think Butler and Arcade Fire took the "Neon Bible" concept too literally and attempted to create an indie-rock revival meeting with Butler serving as the minister. If you're going for the Christ as Rock Star concept, you better have your lyrics profound and your music sublime. Arcade Fire have neither and my interest in them is not for worship. They are simply a very good, perhaps excellent, rock band; and one that has some genuinely novel concepts. I might have enjoyed the brooding simmer of their set list choice had their stage show been toned down in scale. Conversely, I might have bought the indie via broadway aesthetic if they had come out swinging with three or four upbeat and familiar songs at the beginning, instead of at the end.

Conceptual flaws made Arcade Fire neither breathtaking nor emotionally engaging. The showstopper had already played before them.

MIA Rant

2007-10-04T03:29:00.000-04:00

Well, I haven't posted for awhile and I'm waaaaay behind, but I just finished this e-mail response to my friend's enthusiasm for MIA and it seemed appropriate. So here goes:

MIA...hmmm...i think there are many conflicting components to her act. She has genuinely experienced poverty and fringe political elements, but her popularity has largely do to with savvy positioning amongst (past and present) hip urban artists like Peaches, Diplo and Elastica. I suppose one could argue that her "authenticity" is no more important than that of a rapper, but I think her particular breed of pop music is built upon the indie audience's perception of her being a cultural savant. Theoretically, her experiences in different countries have been directly reflected in her music, which use a variety of cultural "field" samples and styles. This is appealing to an indie crowd that has always felt inadequate about their own cultural heritage (hence the influx of country, gypsy and blue-collar bar rock into the indie-rock style lexicon of the last 5 years.) So by that reasoning, her image would also be a reflection of her varied cultural experiences. However, in her video, she chooses to only be crawling around like a savage in the jungle and riding elephants. And apparently her stage show is some faux-rebellion pastiche where back-up dancers wear fatigues and pump their fists over megaphones and sirens. The reality is that she has also spent a lot of time in London art galleries and other haute-couture locales. But those experiences do not help to sell the image of an exotic asian girl who somehow managed to make cool and primitive beats that retain an urban sensibility.

I think MIA has an honest interest in bringing worldly sounds into her songs, but the presentation is just too calculated for me. And given the similar development of incorporating traditional south asian music into beats by bhangra, trip-hop and hip-hop producers like Talvin Singh and Timbaland , I don't think what she's doing is THAT original. She's just hitting in a moment of zeitgeist when south asian culture is becoming more mainstream and America is finally ready for a pop star of that particular ethnicity. In contrast, Missy Elliot (especially in the late 90s) was taking disparate cultural elements and blending them, but in a genre and for an audience that was not predispositioned to "open-mindedness" and "respect for other cultures." She was taking a risk. MIA takes no risks, at least artistically.

Last Call, Pt. 2

2007-08-24T12:49:00.000-04:00

Tonight is my last night in Taipei. The family went to see Pei Pei perform with an improv dance troupe in a public park.

It was an engaging show and a good way to relax and reflect before going back to NYC. I'm not entirely looking forward to my busy yet "productive" lifestyle. I wasn't even able to leave it behind while I was here. But I do miss my friends and my own family. Big Up MEAT HOUSE. And I'm excited about having new members in the band.

Moving backwards, here's where I left off in the last post...

The final club Kung-Pei and I visited was The Wall. I was hoping for a better than average time, because as much as I had enjoyed going out to hear music, I hadn't really found a club that felt entirely comfortable to me. The Wall was actually in the basement of a generic office building (which was odd,) but the stairwell looked promising.

At the bottom of the stairwell was a small, kinda hip mini-mall. There was a rehearsal studio, tattoo parlor, bar and cd shop.

The club was pretty big, had good sound, fun lights and even dry ice!

The first band was solid but were very reminiscent of the Goo Goo Dolls,(which now includes my highschool friend Ryan,) so Kung-Pei and I decided to hit the cd store. Once inside, it was clear this was a Kim's or Newbury Comics-style venture. I saw Broken Social Scene prominently displayed on the counter and an assortment of 'zines on a table.

A feeling of comfort and relief overcame me. I really don't really like a lot of indie rock, but there's something about that snobby esoterica that feels like a home. After talking to the store clerk, I learned that the store was an extension of a local label called White Wabbit. White Wabbit was started by the singer of a local indie band called Nipples. The label grew from exclusively putting out Taiwanese indie rock to also distributing music from various U.S. and UK indie labels. Very savvy business thinking! The clerk let me hear some bands on White Wabbitt and it was nice to finally hear some rock/pop that was interesting and adventurous. Kung-Pei and I went back to the club and heard a couple more bands, but the real find of the evening was White Rabbitt. Later that night, I went home and started connecting some of the bands I had heard in the store to others in this newly diescovered "indie" scene:

Sugar Plum Ferry

8mm Sky

The Shine and Shine and Shine and Shine

This was an encouraging night. Even though the clerk said the crowds for these indie shows were small, at least the music exists.

Among the various family activities I've done in the last couple of weeks, one was the visit to a memorial temple. Ashes are stored there for families. The remains of Vera's uncle are there, he died 2 years ago and was the patriarch of the Tang family.

Food for the afterlife..

Money for the afterlife...

I could continue with little anecdotes and ditties, but instead I'll just leave you with an assortment of pics. They should give you a disjointed and abstract sense of my visit, which basically reflects the experience itself (blah, blah, arty detachment, etc etc)....

Last Call, Pt.1

2007-08-23T10:50:00.001-04:00

I'm baaaaaack!!!!!

Sorry for the delay people. But thanks for wanting more anecdotes from my time in the far east. It's been a fun, strange, lonely and happy trip. I've been working hard on my music for the dance featuring Pei Pei and her friend Mia

and we're having a showing tommorrow for a few people. I really like how the piece has come together, but it's odd to collaborate via making music alone on a computer. Nonetheless, I think the music works well with the movement and the performance will be strong.

Some new characters have been introduced in the last couple of weeks. One is Vera's cousin Chiao, who is very quiet and a bit spacey.

But she has quite a knack for watercolors and illustration. I think she has an artist's disposition.

Vera and I were also reunited with her husband, Bonnie.

When Vera was at an all-girl's junior high school, she had a very unique and complex familial system with her friends. They were all husbands, wives, daughters and grandchildren to each other. So Vera had a husband, a wife and several grandchildren. But no children. I know, it's very confusing. In any case, the whole "family" was reunited for dinner the other night.

I've also hung out a little bit with Pei Pei, Mia and Mia's husband Scott.

They all live in a beautiful apartment community in the hills.

One of the best things about Taipei are these communities, which are all about 20 minutes from the city. They are like self-contained neighborhoods, with parks, community centers and restaurants. But unlike American subdivisions,

these communities are quaint and people are very friendly. This is Mama Tang's house.

Back to Scott and Mia. They have a world music fusion group called A Moving Sound. We went to see them perform outside as part of the Very Fun Park art festival.

I've tried to see a lot of music this month, particularly of the rock persuasion. Since Vera and I are talking about moving to Taiwan for a little while in a few years, I wanted to start getting an idea of what my options were for playing here. From what I can gather, there is a very small rock scene in Taipei. It is centered around 4 clubs: Witch House, The Underground, The Wall and the Riverside Cafe. I've been to three of the four clubs on this trip. My partner for these evening excursions has been Vera's brother, Kung-Pei.

We first went to Witch House, which is a funky and intimate cafe/club owned by a German couple who have a large collection of German table games that patrons can play during the day.

Witch House is also a hangout for local lesbians. The back of the club seems to be a tribute to women, with one side having portraits of female musicians

and another side having an assortment of woman-themed posters.

The band we saw was an above-average pop group in the Fiona Apple-vein, with smart arrangements and interesting interludes.

On another night, Kung-pei and I visited The Riverside Cafe. This was swankier spot than Witch House. It reminded me a bit of a modern Village Vanguard. There were pictures of Jazz and Rock musicians on the wall

and the layout was similar to that NYC musical institution. Speaking of institutions (i'm such a hack,) the owners of the club also run a large music school. The school seems to be preparing musicians for professional careers in jazz and pop. This is unusual for Taiwan, where musical training has been exclusively classical. The music that night started with a polished but boring pop singer who had labeled himself as "indie." What's interesting about this is that in America, "indie" has a very particular social and musical aesthetic. But in Taiwan, I guess it just means pop music not made on a major label. Anyways, the guy was fine but didn't really move me. However, the next band did. They were called something that I don't remember and could really play.

One thing I've been noticing here is that the level of musicianship is not very high, so it was great to see a rock band with good players. But while I enjoyed their set, it dragged at times because they insisted on playing 3-4 pop ballads. I think the shadow of pop looms far over most of the music culture here. Even more so than in the States, pop is everywhere.

And since pop is so strongly embedded, "alternative" music often seems to be simply stretching certain aspects of pop, rather than outright rebelling against it. The exception being punk and metal bands, but they stick pretty close to established templates as well. Of course, one could make the same point about American music, but I think Taiwan has yet to have a true musical "counterculture." They are still building their Max's Kansas City. I think it's slowly percolating though, due in part to a very savvy singer/record store owner. More on that next time. Sorry to be so brief, but I still have work to do on this dance piece.

Greetings From Taiwan

2007-08-07T10:47:00.000-04:00

I'm writing this as a monsoon is sweeping through Taipei. Which basically means some serious rain, but nothing too serious.

Unlike a 17-hour plane ride, which is very serious to me. The last time I came here, the plane flew INTO a monsoon. But this time, I prepared a mix of red wine, xanax (a mild dose) and my new favorite band, mew .

After arriving, one of the first things we did was visit Vera's grandma ("Ama",) who lives about and an hour and a half south of Taipei. It was nice to see the love.

Vera and I have spent a good deal of time with Mama Tang and Mao Goo, who is Vera's nephew (first picture.) The three of us, along with Vera's aunt, visited a temple nestled in the hills outside of Taipei.

There was also a small village at the foot of the temple.

In the village, we ate some delicious organic treats from a small shop that displayed their different herbs and spices.

Later that evening, Mao Goo, Vera and I met up with my friend Pei Pei, who I haven't seen since college.

Pei Pei is a dancer/choreographer and we're going to be working on two pieces together while I'm here. On that night, we were greeted by a robot.

Then the four of us entered a former leper hospital (yep) and watched a concert sponsored by a worker's rights organization. The featured band, Black Hand Nakasi, performed songs that they had written in collaboration with worker's associations throughout Taiwan.

"Black Hand" is a taiwanese derogatory term for the working class, as in people who get their hands dirty. The band appear to be reclaiming this term as a title of empowerment. And from what I could gather, this concert was part of a larger organized labor movement. Maybe the first in Taiwan. As part of this movement, Black hand Nakasi apparently operate as an electric folk act "of the people," in the same way that Woody Gutherie and Paul Robeson were the voices for the American labor movement in the 1930s and 1940s. I know this sounds like liner notes to a Folkways cd, but it's pretty interesting stuff.

So back to the family...Vera, Mao Goo and I also took a trip into the city and spent the day with Papa Tang. Here he is putting Mao Goo in a sleeper hold.

After a few days, Vera's brother Kung-Pei and sister-in-law Pei-Rong arrived.

Now the whole family is here, which is great. I really like hanging out with everybody. But I'm feeling a little antsy about getting started on the music. Tommorrow is the first meeting with Pei Pei and her dancer, so things should settle in more. I've also been trying to settle some loose ends in NYC. In brief, the name Shaka Zulu Overdrive has been changed to Red Lights to Rio. We have a new bass player from Argentina but now need a new lead guitartist. Suggestions are welcome. Phew.

But I'm trying to get "into" Taiwan, so I'll leave you with some more pics:

Bringing my "A" game

2007-08-02T06:38:00.000-04:00

Alright, alright. I know I need to bring it for this post. Your comments don't go unnoticed. So here's a jacked-up, Barry Bonds-style edition, straight from Taiwan.

(more on taiwanese life coming soon...)

On Monday night, I played guitar and started producing a song written by my friend Paul.

We recorded at the Hook, a club in Red Hook, Brooklyn. There is a studio in the basement co-run by my boy Tony.

I took a couple of pics of the neighborhood on the way to a bodega to buy batteries:

The session went really well. The tune, "World Trade," is an irreverant, punk-metal take on gay sex, terrorism and perceptions of the exotic. I know that sounds like an academic thesis, but the song is both hilarious and politically pointed. Paul's friends Ismael and Diallo formed a relaxed yet tighty rhythm section, while guest-vocalist Jane dished out some sassy backgrounds.

(that's Ishmael)

(Diallo with Paul)

(Paul and Jane in a publicity still for "The Fantastiks")

We all performed with soul, but Jane proved that soul can most definitely grow in New Jersey. This fact was also evident (sidenote) in a daytrip Vera and I took to the faded glory of Asbury Park:

(sidenote finished - back to the session) After laying down the instrumental tracks, we headed over to the bar Moonshine. Paul, Tony, Jane and I engaged in some serious Connect Four.

I was thoroughly creaming everybody until I lost my mental game, like late-80s Agassi. Despite that crushing turn of events, it was a good night of work and play. I'm glad there will be more time to hang with those folks as we begin the overdub and mixing phases.

But for now, I'm chilling in Asia.

Space is the Place

2007-07-28T01:23:00.000-04:00

Tonight I played at the Whitney Museum as part of a tribute to Sun Ra. It was a fun show. The rhythm section (I love being part of the "rhythm section," usually I'm the center of attention, by default nature of the rawk) improvised while the horns played around the upstairs lobby. Eventually they joined us downstairs in the performance area and we played a 5-part suite written by my buddy/musical ally Taylor Ho Bynum. Another friend in the band, Keith Witty, played a really sweet solo. Keith is a also a sweet guy, but gets points taken off for saying my pants looked tight. Well Keith, let's see how you look after giving birth to your first child. It's no picnic, I can tell you that much. And bring your bass head next time (oh snap, yes I did go there!!!) Actually, he was told they had one, so TECHNICALLY it wasn't his fault. Of course, I always bring two full guitar rigs in case of a situation like that. But we can't all strive for perfection (double snap!!!) If there was a drawback at the show, it was stage sound, which was not good at all. Apparently it was better in the crowd. I wish that dynamic was the exception for shows and not the norm. Oh...I sometimes miss the days (2 total) of rock star treatment with Black Gold, where we got a decent soundcheck, a LOT of free booze and an 8-person team to carry our equipment. But aaartsy fartsy has it's own wonderful rewards.

After the show I went upstairs with Vera and my friend Paul to check out the psychedelic art show. It was actually really good. I wish we had more time to check everything out. Those kids really knew how to combine pop and abstraction, which is kinda my "raison d'etre."

Mon dieu! I'm very pretentious. Fawk off ya frickin fuckas, I'm off to friggin Baastan tommorra. My high school friend Lee just had a kid, Ethan Bonham. Yes, like that Bonham. Lee had the best yearbook quote EVER - "I will run with the bulls of Spain because I am Lee."

enuf said.

My Maiden Voyage

2007-07-26T02:10:00.001-04:00

Ughhh...hmmm....San Dimas High School Football Rules!!!!!

Ok, just getting used to this format. That was cool.

I'm going to keep this short. Thank-you for coming. In future posts, you will
get a look into the aesthetic principals that guide the films of Michael Mann,
a scathing critique of the band Vampire Weekend, an update of the

Shaka Zulu Overdrive search for a bass player and commentary on the rock music scene in Taipei.

Laters...