Babyrain Dance

2007-08-01T13:52:00.000-07:00

Would Lester Bangs Listen to the White Stripes?

I almost didn’t go to Birmingham on Monday. I read it on the White Stripes “Little Room” fan-board that Jack sounded sick on Sunday in South Carolina. I had to borrow $40 from my land-mate to make the bus-ticket. I had less than $3 in my bank account (and even though my monthly paycheck would be deposited at midnight, I feared that the hotel might reject my Visa debit card at check-in, just like in the movies when the star is suddenly destitute for whatever reason).

I was feeling just as my friend Kassi wrote recently on her myspace blog, saying it succinctly, surely, and sweetly: “i cannot afford my rock n roll lifestyle. but i also cannot afford not to live it.”

But we find the way to make it, no matter what, because the music pulls us in and pulls us to another rock and roll road trip, helpless addicts all of us—like the prostrate muslim during proper prayers or the worst crack-and-meth-afflicted-junky-ho.

So, I left the farm with my family and a flat tire in the trunk. We had to stop on the way to Nashville to repair the tire, and we almost didn’t make it downtown in time. The crowd in the bus station overflowed into the street. I had that awful moment of “What was I thinking?” But somehow, there were just enough seats on the bus. And I got to Birmingham just in time.

Checking into the hotel was without worry, but my “hard ticket,” allegedly being Fed-exed from the friendly publicist in New York was not waiting. A phone call and email later, I discovered that I would have the usual access at will-call after all. Within a short while after that, I’d connected with the amazing Anne from Houston and the fansite, and she’d agreed to give me a lift to the show. It turned into a carpool with Chris and Sandra from the Atlanta area. I love the serendipitous fan connections with folks who are willing to go into debt and sleep-deprivation and probably worse just to travel to a show.

On the way to and from Birmingham on the Greyhound, I read Let it Blurt—the amazing biography of rock writer Lester Bangs written by Jim DeRogatis. Since Lester, Jack White, and I all share some serious Detroit energy in common, I couldn’t help but wonder: “Would Lester Bangs like the White Stripes?” He certainly wouldn’t care for the fact that the band wrote a song for Coca-Cola, I mused. But the revival of the Detroit garage sound that the Stripes made famous and infamous still seems most insistently Bangsian.

But Janis and Jimi bless Google, someone had already posed the question. A blogospheric rock critic who claims to channel Kerouac and Bangs had already posed the problem in a sideways manner. (See http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/07/12/082244.php)

It began with a record review of Icky Thump that took the form of a fantasy involving the writer and Meg White (who can blame him, really). And them the comments raged with all things anti-Stripes and pro-Stripes and all things in between.

I tend to sympathize with the poster called “JC Mosquito” who wrote:

“Would Lester have liked the White Stripes? Hmm... historical (or hysterical) rewriting in the making - I'd say yes he would. He liked the Guess Who, he liked Metal Machine Music, and he took matters into his own hands when he started a band. He would've liked them becuse his sense of humour was right in tune with the lo-fi DIY Stripes' ethic.”

When my male-menopause-cum-midlife-crisis kicked in a few years ago and fully fueled my rock music fan obsessions, I felt blessed to find a burgeoning underground scene made even more palpable by the instant access provided to DIY by laptops and the internet. And almost with perfect synchronicity, while technology made everyone an engineer, a promoter, and producer, this same DIY ethos drove people away from the computer and back to more purely rootsy forms, which in part explains why so much of the old-time music scene is comprised of ex-punks.

So many bands keep me busy that it’s hard to think about just one. But the Stripes are one among the many.

Please see my 'official' review at Interference.com

2007-06-11T12:16:00.000-07:00

Kings of Leon kick out their dirty south jams at the Orange Peel in Asheville!!

For my review of the show, please go here.

Photos by Jonathan Marx (jonathanmarxprophoto.com).

2007-05-03T23:18:00.000-07:00

When Win wins, we all win!

Yesterday, I saw Montreal's Arcade Fire in Asheville, North Carolina. The band has bounced back after having to cancel some European shows due to Win's sinus surgery.

Before the show, I met lead singer Win Butler in the street. He made my night by confirming that the band would play "Windowsill" (lyrics follow) from the new record Neon Bible.

Even though the 14-song set did not include two of my favorites ("Antichrist Television Blues" and "Wake Up"), the overall overwhelming energy of the band and the fans made for an incredible evening.

When time allows, I will pen a proper review of this amazing show.

Don't wanna hear the noises on TV
Don't want the salesmen coming after me
Don't wanna live in my father's house no more
Don't want it faster, I don't want it free
Don't wanna show you what they done to me
Don't wanna live in my father's house no more
Don't wanna choose black or blue
Don't wanna see what they done to you
Don't wanna live in my father's house no more

Cause the tide is high
And it's rising still
And I don't wanna see it at my windowsill

Don't wanna give 'em my name and address
Don't wanna see what happens next
Don't wanna live in my father's house no more
Don't wanna live with my father's debt
You can't forgive what you can't forget
Don't wanna live in my father's house no more
Don't wanna fight in a holy war
Don't want the salesmen knocking at my door
I don't wanna live in America no more

Cause the tide is high
And it's rising still
And I don't wanna see it at my windowsill

MTV, what have you done to me?
Save my soul, set me free!
Set me free! What have you done to me?
I can't breathe! I can't see!
World War III, when are you coming for me?
Been kicking up sparks, we set the flames free
The windows are locked now so what'll it be?
A house on fire or a rising sea?

Why is the night so still?
Why did I take the pill?
Because I don't wanna see it at my windowsill

Don't wanna see it at my windowsill
Don't wanna see it at my windowsill
Don't wanna see it at my windowsill

2007-03-29T05:42:00.000-07:00

Preview and Interview: THE BLACK ANGELS

many thanks for the photos of Alex by Briana! Visit her at:

http://www.myspace.com/bpurser

At the Mercy Lounge, Friday, March 30^th

The Black Angels are a youthful band in debt to the music that initiated the counterculture four decades ago. While the retro label suggests a kind of dated backwash, the Angels courageously deflect such implications. Lead singer Alex Maas insists, “When using the word retro—by definition meaning ‘old-sounding’—that’s fine with me. There’s tons of amazing music from the Sixties, and people should shed light on it.”

In transcendent fashion, the band’s war-sick and wigged-out theater of thump and drone digs deeper into the back catalog to invoke a lifestyle—not just the notable influences. As this particular past tense shamelessly fuses the Doors and the Velvet Underground alongside fellow Texans like the 13^th Floor Elevators and the Butthole Surfers, haunting vocals get fuel-injected with guts and groove, all held down by Stephanie Bailey’s stabbing drums. Hiding his good looks behind beard, bangs and pageboy cap, Maas cannot hide the brutal reckoning of his lyrics. In addition to tracks from last year’s Passover, the Angels’ upcoming set will include a sampling of new songs recently recorded and awaiting release, some of them due on a split EP with Vancouver’s Black Mountain. (www.theblackangels.com)

What follows is the transcript of a conversation between writer Andy Smith and Alex Maas, lead singer from the Black Angels from the morning of March 21, 2007.

AS: Wearing your debt to the Velvet Underground up front, with your vocal stylings being frequently compared to Jim Morrison, making music so strongly reminiscent of an era 40 years gone, discuss how you carry the weight of your influences?

AM: It’s not really a weight. We just have influences that we like. If anything, we feel like it is our duty to spread good music.

AS: Are you concerned with how people use the ‘retro’ label to describe your music?

AM: When using the word retro—by definition meaning old sounding—that’s fine with me. There’s tons of amazing music from the Sixties, and people should shed light on it.

AS: Yourselves and others have described what you do as psychedelic. What do think contributes most to the psychedelic sound that you have?

AM: 13^th Floor Elevators, the Red Crayola, even Butthole Surfers—a lot psychedelic music comes from Texas. There’s tons of psychedelic music—anything from like Can to modern psychedelic music like Psychic Ills.

AS: Is there something specific that you do musically? Is it what you call the drone machine? Is it the wah-wah pedal? What is it?

AM: It’s not just one thing; it’s everything. It’s the sound, the layers. Christian’s guitar is one of the main things—and Nate [bassist] as well. The overall feel of what we’re doing—I don’t think we never set out to be super, super, super psychedelic to where it’s stuff that doesn’t have a song in it.

AS: When the record first came out, there was a lot of talk about the fact that several you share a house together. How would you describe the relationship between communal living and the band’s writing and touring process as band.

AM: That’s definitely played a part in the cohesiveness of the band. We moved in with eachother—that’s kind of serious, like a big marriage or something. We all moved into the same house. We’re all sitting here listening to the same music, eating the same food, sharing the same stories. So, we’re definitely growing and evolving as a band. Living with each other creates ideas to bounce off of each other all the time. It’s a real positive thing that we all moved in with one another.

AS: Talk about some of the changes that success have brought for you personally.

AM: We still love to tour. Maybe our standards are rising. We’re not sleeping on people’s floors as much anymore.

AS: You get a hotel room instead of a couch?

AM: We get a couch instead of a floor. We sometimes get a room and that makes it an awful lot easier.

AS: Do you drive the bus yourself or do you have a driver?

AM: We have a 15-passenger pan we drive ourselves. We all share driving. We drive with eight or nine or sometimes 15 people in the van, so we’ve got plenty of drivers.

AS: Are you ready for Bonnaroo?

AM: I know it’s a big festival. I’ve never been. A lot of our friends are playing.

AS: You reference the Vietnam War and the Iraq War in your singing and lyrics. Coming of age during the wars since 2001, how has this affected you personally and as a band?

AM: We’re definitely freaked out by everything that’s happening. It’s a scary situation. I’ll never go to war—not unless it’s something I really believe in. I think it’s ridiculous that we’re over there. A lot of people are talking about it but a lot of people are just thinking it and being kind of complacent. There’s definitely parallels between the Sixties and what’s going on right now. It’s really easy to see that we’re falling into the same kind of problems; history’s repeating itself.

AS: Is there already a follow-up to Passover planned?

AM: We’ve got six new songs recorded. Right when we got back from Europe, we tracked six more songs in the studio. We have a lot of material; we’re just trying to figure out when’s the best time to release it. We’re about to do a split with Black Mountain, do you know them?

AS: From Vancouver, they’re phenomenal.

AM: We’re doing three originals, and we’re covering a Black Mountain song.

AS: Are they going to cover one of yours?

AM: I think so; that’s the whole plan.

AS: So you have a split record with Black Mountain and possibly another of your own? So, two new records coming out this year?

AM: Yes.

AS: So what can we expect when we see you on the 30^th?

AM: We’ll be playing a lot of new stuff in the towns we’ve been to before.

AS: So I better let you get to the rest of your calls. I’m sorry about the technical difficulties.

AM: Technology’s always difficult.

2007-03-27T08:38:00.000-07:00

They put out the fire that can't be put out:
Cold War Kids, Tokyo Police Club, and Delta Spirit Just Kill it in Nash Vegas

Please see my 'official review' at interference.com/intermedia

Here's another excellent review of the show:

http://outtheother.typepad.com/blog/2007/03/cold_war_kids_m.html

Thanks to Kassi for this setlist:

more or less how it went down, probably with a few gaps:
We Used To Vacation
Red Wine, Success
Rubidoux
Hang Me Up To Dry
Saint John (all out jam session)
Robbers
Hospital Beds
God, Make Up Your Mind
Hair Down
Quiet Please
*Encore*
Tell Me In The Morning
Well, Well, Well – John Lennon Cover

These are some more of Landin King's pictures that did not make it up with the other story. There's one of CWK singer Nathan and me--as well as one I took of Landin and Nathan.

2007-03-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

With warmer weather and lots of work, my Spring Concert Season is finally here! Hopefully this blog will get busy with photos, reports, and generally good-hearted buzz about all things about to rock.

Here is my dedicated and delicate itinerary:

3-24 Cold War Kids w/ Tokyo Police Club & Delta Spirit

3-30 Black Angels w/ VietNam

4-12 TV on the Radio

4-23 The Killers

5-2 Arcade Fire

5-26 TOOL

6-14 to 17 Bonnaroo

2007-01-15T04:08:00.000-08:00

Jacketastic Still: I am ready to testify after Ogden night two

While I am generally skeptical of competition and comparisons and generalizations and platitudes, I am about to lay them down plain and simple. And while I hate to break it to the fans of other bands, I have seen the future of rock and roll, and its name is My Morning Jacket.

As students of great rock themselves, the Jacket channel their classic influences in a spiritual, non-derivative way. They are rock stars in terms of theatrics but not pretension or ego. We can hear the echoes of Radiohead, Neil Young, Lynard Skynard, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, and so many more.

On stage in strange costumes, Jim James holds court like a science-fiction action-figure protagonist carrying his band of brothers into ever more majestic and mystic moments of pure sonic poetry. This is what rock and roll was supposed to be in their bedrooms when they were fourteen and as it has been engraved on the souls of teenage air-guitarists everywhere. No-fucking wonder Cameron Crowe put them in a movie playing “Freebird.” Because that filmmaker appreciates the mix tape of the soul like few others in Hollywood, as evidenced by the story of Almost Famous and the cheesy but priceless ending of Elizabethtown.

To experience it in such intimacy two nights in a row is profound. To tell of its cinematic and religious qualities is point others to the sounds. But of course this means that the career should take these guys to the next level next time—which means I must cherish this closeness and ineffable camaraderie now. Someday they may hold stadiums rapt, and I can only pray they keep the same playful seriousness in tact. Meanwhile, mainstream radio ignores them, so we know it is through the albums and the shows, the internet and places like the theatrical screenings of Okonokos that we can gather like a tribe, each of us wearing the morning jacket of his or her choice.

In the last few years, I've seen the Flaming Lips, Tool, A Perfect Circle, Coldplay, U2, Scissor Sisters, the Killers, the Mars Volta, the Black Angels, the Black Keys, a wide array of awesome people at the 'roo from Bonnie Raitt to Radiohead to Matisyahu and many more, too many to name.

Over the years, I've seen a serious catalog of live rock shows including acts as diverse as Rush, the Stones, REM, the Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Grateful Dead, Operation Ivy, Fugazi, the Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, Kiss, GWAR, you get the idea. Too many to name, truly.

And frankly, and honestly, and I can only say this heartfully after Denver MMJ for two nights, I've rarely seen a band put on a live show like the Jacket. Best live band on the planet right now.

Best old school rock band of our time. Great by any standards. Big words, yes, and deserving of them this band is.

Wildly, they're still relatively underground. I mean, I still can't get over how cozy the venues they sell out are. With 5 albums behind them, these late twenty-somethings are the music fringe's best kept secret, even after owning a share of what the American rock festival means from Coachella to Bonnaroo to Lollapalooza and many of the smaller festivals and on and on.

Who plays 2 hours or more every night? Who switches the setlist every night? While some nights are mirrors, at least one song will inevitably change. But the two-night stand in Denver shares with the fans some otherworldly shape-shifting ecstasy much like I imagine the multiple nights at the Filmore were.

I don't wish to rag on other hard-working acts, but the serious, traveling fans are paying your freaking bills for heaven's sake! Give us some love, give us some variety, stop settling for 70-minute sets produced every night on auto-pilot.

The Jacket have set a new standard for nailing each song as if the earth depended on it and playing each show as if it were their last. Other bands, please take some notes.

The crossover appeal to jam band fans everywhere should not be understated, but it should not be misrepresented or misinterpreted either. The Jacket groks the integrity of the song and gives its live rendition the space to breathe, but not the space to grow like mold into boring, self-referential, cock-rocking whateverland. They take us to the outer galaxies and back, sure. Yes, they can sustain a musical thought for more than ten minutes, and they can get tweaky and freaky and geeky in the most gifted manner. But they return to rock's mission statement in a way that's both refreshing and chilling, understanding a vocation to write and perform rock songs—not to randomly splash sounds on the sonic canvas.

MMJ has something so sincere to offer, frothing with showmanship but not showing off. I love how tight and completely communal the shows are now, but I imagine bigger things for these deserving guys. It's not a secret I can keep. If you love rock and roll and everything you thought it had lost through thirty years of shitty sell-out commercialism, go see the Jacket. At this point, I could confess, that asking me about this band would be like asking a nun about Jesus.

2007-01-14T11:13:00.000-08:00

Hair on the Bear

This is Anu and Viva last night at the second My Morning Jacket show at the Ogden Theatre.

At the end of Golden, I threw my golden wig to the stage. I got a knowing, amused look from Two-Tone Tommy. A song or two later, the hard-working stage tech took the goldilocks mop and placed it on the bear's head. Looking for a picture of my hair on the bear.

2007-01-13T01:53:00.000-08:00

Soaked in Reverb & Second-Hand Reefer Smoke: My Morning Jacket at the Ogden Theatre in Denver, night one

At 620 pm, we started the car and started scraping snow. On the road from Lafayette by 630pm. By 710, we're driving through the slippery streets of downtown Denver. God! the blackened piles of snow in the parking lots resemble the mountains in these parts.

Found parking on the street and walked quickly through the surreal chill. By 730pm, we're inside the Ogden. My, this place is small—and basically empty now, even so close to show time. I visit the coat check and get a PBR for only $4 (the cost of a sixpack of PBR, but still, a pretty cheap beer for a show). Rocky (my stepson) and I find a place by the first railing, just above the small section of front floor (the entire lower level being separated by tiers).

(My wife and anticipated date for the night is home with her daughter-in-law-to-be, nursing a cold and waiting on tomorrow night, when all four of us will check out the show.)

We debate about getting right up front, but this spot we found has such an incredible sight line and expected sound, that we decide to stay there. At this point, having only see 'em at the Ryman and the 'roo, I am still utterly shocked by both the small size of the venue and the sparse crowd so close to curtain. Are people just fashionably late or intimidated by the weather? Either way, I'm grateful for the generally mellow and not-too-crowded vibes.

Just after 8, Elvis Perkins and his band take the crowded stage. Speaking the pure language of what's come to be known as freak folk (and reminding me of Dylan, Nick Drake, and Devandra Banhart), this group grooves with acoustic guitar, harmonica, stand-up bass, trombone, and an antique marching-band bass drum. Center stage, there's also something strange and sounding from the keyboard family that my limited knowledge and vocabulary cannot surely name, perhaps a close relative to the concertina, squeezebox, or harmonium. Given the story that they got stranded on the way to Salt Lake and missed last night's show and how utterly tiny the crowd still is at this point, this ensemble puts on an emotive and playful set, only making me wish I'd made myself more familiar with their stuff before tonight.

Elvis Perkins and people exited the stage around 845pm. By this time, the club finally started to feel full, and during the break, more people came in from the cold. But, compared to some shows, it was still really easy to move around and get to the bathroom and bar and back in plenty of time for the buildup to lights down and jacket up. Around, 925pm, the place went black, the old-school pre-show music filled the room, and the Jacket was with us. “One Big Holiday” proves the perfect opener, and we're off.

The show had many breathtaking, mind-stretching moments. When Jim's pipes climbed to the high, high notes at the end of “Wordless Chorus,” the “weeowoohwah” or whatever-it-is-so-angelic-and-eerie-that he does struck itself inside my soul. He finds a similar synthesis of soul-soothing and spirit-shocking inside “It Beats For You.”

Just as Jim finds such elusive epiphanies with his vocal yoga, the band bends its own massive metaphors when channeling the classic-rock gods—as in the spacier, harder, longer, let's-not-call-them-jam-band-moments of tracks like “Lay Low,” “Run Thru,” Steam Engine,” and “Mahgeetah.”

As good as it is in such a small room with such great sound and friendly folks heating up a hideously chilly night, there's something just a little off about it all. Our bassist Two Tone Tommy needs a chair to sit for a few tracks and seems generally woozy or grumpy or something. In general, the whole band has an end-of-the-leg leeriness about it, an understandable “We just risked our lives getting here, and we're tired as fuck” mood.

In one of his few moments of speechifying between songs, Jim referred directly to the death-defying drives, of trusting the tour bus driver to face the snow drifts safely. He also mentioned a flu in the whole crew, suggesting that no-one kiss the band-members tonight.

When we think about the 115 minute set in the context of how utterly whipped they all must be, we can understand how heroic they still are in spite of it, giving 200% for the fans who risked as much just getting there, too.

Our family member reverb can be defined as “the acoustic environment that surrounds a sound.” One very cold Colorado Friday night, the Ogden Theatre patrons were soaked in sacred reverb and smoked-out by second-hand reefer fumes. By the end of the show, I could loosen my scarf and feel the heat of: Carl and Jim's dueling guitars; Patrick's cymbal-riffs rocketing through my head; Tommy's bass bad-assedly thumping my third-eye; and Bo's bopping keyboard cool keeping it soulful and real.

The show lacked any cover songs and several favorites we might wish for tomorrow tonight, when I expect they'll mix it up just a little and play longer, as Jim made more than one remark to those he expected to see two nights in a row.

Setlist (please forgive and correct any errors):

One Big Holiday
What a Wonderful Man
Gideon
The Way That He Sings
Wordless Chorus
Lay Low
Phone Went West
Off the Record
It Beats for You
Golden
Dondante
Run Thru
They Ran

BREAK

Bermuda Highway
Knot Comes Loose
Steam Engine
Mahgeetah
Anytime

photo by Anu

2007-01-12T11:28:00.000-08:00

Zero Degrees and Waiting

This week, we traveled to Denver to visit family and friends—but also to catch the last two nights on My Morning Jacket's winter tour that included three larger-than-life nights to ring in the New Year in San Francisco.

My people here assure me that recent Colorado winters have not been so severe, but now that I'm experiencing the bone-chilling temperatures and colossal piles of snow first-hand, a part of me cannot help exclaiming inside “What were you thinking!?!?!” Checking the weather has become ritual, and now that Friday has arrived, we have temperatures around zero. Last night, there were flurries in the air, and another dusting is expected tonight. This report from last night's Jacket show in Salt Lake City deal directly with the snow:

“Many a band would have used the day-long snowstorm Thursday to duck out on a potentially disastrous show in Salt Lake City to assure their arrival for two sold-out gigs in Denver. But My Morning Jacket proved yet again that they are far from typical with an epic performance at The Depot.
The quintet lost its opening band on the way to Zion, and weren't sure if much of a crowd would show, but My Morning Jacket found much more than a packed room when they arrived at the venue Thursday. They found the inspiration to deliver a deadly, energetic set that will surely increase the positive word-of-mouth they deserve before their next visit. [. . .]
Who: My Morning Jacket When: Thursday Where: The Depot, Salt Lake City The Bottom Line: The Louisville rock act braved a blizzard to deliver two hours of far-reaching rock.”

(http://www.sltrib.com/themix/ci_4998610 )

The last time I attended a General Admission gig (the Killers in Philadelphia, about a month ago), the weather was so mild that we were able to come early and line-up outside for a prime space inside. Tonight, we won't have that luxury, but I'm hoping others will only show up when the doors open as well. As on the moment as the MMJ online forum is, there's no place we can look online to confirm that the tour bus has made safe passage from Utah to the parking spot closest to the Ogden Theatre's stage door.

When I was very young, my brother, Dad, and I attended a KISS concert at the Cleveland Coliseum. We had only been able to score rear-stage, obstructed-view seats. But the night of the show, a monstrous blizzard hit. Surprisingly, a lot of people stayed home but the show went on. We 'upgraded' to incredible seats and had an awesome, ear-bleeding time. A rock fan was born inside my 11-year-old body that night. The obsession for going to shows would follow me to middle age. Tonight, I can only hope that the Jacket are like KISS and that the fans are like we were in the respect that despite the snow, the show must go on.

Seattle gig Photo by Gregory A. Perez from

http://depts.washington.edu/kexp/blog/?p=1671

2007-01-08T16:25:00.000-08:00

Confirmed: Jacket Fanatic

Photo by Angela Prazza from mymorningjacket.com

Back in the day (as in 1988), I resented it when people called me a Deadhead. While I still enjoy the music that the Dead made and have an honest respect for the nomads who lived on the road with them, my musical tastes and social demeanor never could fit the jammed-out pigeon hole.

Those who dubbed me a “peace punk” were perhaps closer to the mark, but really, there's no musicological page in the vast backpack of rock fandom on which to scribble my story. Rather, I'll fill notebooks until the day I die with sonic testimonials and still feel restless and unsatisfied with any singular label. One tag is too limiting, but multiple, meandering, effusive lists of combinations and revelations, well, that's another thing entirely. Which brings us to the Jacket, My Morning Jacket—the Kentucky-based, ass-kicking, reverb-breathing answer to my rock-and-roll prayers.

Jim James, Patrick Hallahan, Two-Tone Tommy, Carl Broemel, and Bo Koster—this quintessential quintet consistently justify the bushel of adjectives and elusive epiphanies that critics regularly harvest off an imaginary Kentucky farm to describe them. “Spontaneous, spacey, soulful” says August Brown in the Los Angeles Times.

Writing in the rival LA Weekly, and previewing a recent southern California show, Scott T. Sterling nails it like a Carl Broemel guitar riff: “What’s the story, morning glory? Jam bands not only got cool while you weren’t paying attention, they got good — really good, in the case of Louisville sluggers My Morning Jacket. The truest missing link between Coachella and Bonnaroo, MMJ pile on the reverb for headphone fiends but never lose sight of the song, no matter how far afield their telepathically tight improvisation takes them. It’s no surprise that their last album, Okonokos, was a live one, bordering on the epic majesty they’re known for creating in the flesh. If Phish were the Grateful Dead, Part 2, MMJ are the actual evolution, Jerry’s revenge in the form of an outfit wise enough to take sonic mind expansion and genuine musicianship to that hallowed next level. These fellas are an honest band for scarily dishonest times. Reality — what a concept.”

So, while I was much too young to really claim the Dead as my own—although I was privileged to see them twice with Jerry in 1987 and 1988—and frankly, I never could get behind the post-Dead delirium that coalesced around Phish and Widespread Panic. But my Kentucky neighbors and the veritable Bonnaroo house band combine a fierce, falsetto-driven, melodic edginess that belongs to popular alt-rock with a brain-bending blitzkrieg of banger blessings that only the heads with headphones understand. And you can dance to it.

When the breakthrough album Z pierced me to the core, the upbeat whiteboy funkiness of “Off the Record” struck my soul as inspired by the dervish-spinning nature of devotees always on tour. This Dead-meets-disco spirit comes fully realized on the recent New Year's Eve tapes—originally broadcast on the radio and available for download from archive-dot-org—where covers of Kool and the Gang's “Celebration” and Lionel Richie's “All Night Long” ushered in 2007.

This week, when the post-holiday, winter blues should have me buried, I'm instead anticipating two Jacket shows in Denver like Christmas morning. To be continued.

2007-01-01T15:26:00.000-08:00

Best Records of 2006!

Yes, I know that "best of" lists are ubiquitous--yet ambiguous and ridiculous at best.

Who cares what records I wasted money buying or time downloading and actually loving this year?

But I read movie and music lists incessantly, so why not share my own? So, here are my faves from a calendar year when my collecting was particularly prolific.

Tool—10,000 Days
The Killers—Sam's Town
Red Hot Chili Peppers—Stadium Arcadium
Black Angels—Jerusalem
My Morning Jacket—Okonokos
The Flaming Lips—At War with the Mystics
TV On the Radio—Return to Cookie Mountain
Michael Franti & Spearhead—Yell Fire!
Ben Harper—Both Sides of the Gun
Gnarls Barkley—St. Elsewhere
The Black Keys—Magic Potion
Scissor Sisters—Ta Dah
The Strokes—First Impressions of Earth
Snow Patrol—Eyes Open
Thom Yorke—The Eraser
Espers—Espers II
Damien Rice—9
Sean Lennon—Friendly Fire
Goldfrapp—Supernature
Matisyahu—Youth
Cold War Kids—Robbers & Cowards
Bruce Springsteen—We Shall Overcome: the Seeger Sessions
Keane—Under the Iron Sea
Wolfmother—Wolfmother
Pearl Jam—Pearl Jam
Cat Power—The Greatest
Dresden Dolls—Yes, Virginia
Peaches—Impeach My Bush
The Rapture—Pieces of the People We Love
Raconteurs—Broken Boy Soldiers
Sonic Youth—Rather Ripped
Richard Ashcroft—Keys to the World
Chumbawamba—A Singsong and a Scrap
Belle and Sebastian—The Life Pursuit
Silversun Pickups—Carnavas
Muse—Black Holes & Revelations
The Mars Volta—Amputechture
Beck—Information
Live—Songs from Black Mountain
The Alarm—Under Attack

2006-12-10T17:32:00.000-08:00

Ta Dah: Irony We Can Dance To

The Scissor Sisters' second record singes with irony and sadness, a sober assessment of the band's chaotic rise to stardom.

According to the ensemble's profile on MySpace, returning home from two years of intense touring in 2005 was "the mother of all comedowns." From being "crazy and successful and amazing and colorful," the Sisters finally felt the mundane grip of "the threads of our daily lives." This daunting drama made the members feel like a collective "astronaut re-entering the atmosphere from space."

Such days are difficult even for seasoned superstars but for performers who went from cult heroes of the gay underground music and club circuit to international heavyweights with their 2004 self-titled debut disc, this quick rise sent the Sisters into the year off and then the studio for the sophomore effort reckoning with the "stifling weight of expectation and gnawing self-doubt."

If this mood sounds like a monstrous melancholy for a megagroup, imagine trying to write a dozen glamorous dance tracks that reflect it. From the sizzling single "I Don't Feel Like Dancing," co-written with Elton John, to the loving coda "Everybody Wants the Same Thing," "Ta-Dah" talks trash about its own sense of artifice, dishes the myths of power and popularity, and ultimately shows that the Sisters' sinister and oversexed sound can combine vulnerability and endurance.

With an appetite for ambiguity, the record comments on itself: "It's not easy having yourself a good time" ("I Can't Decide," featuring actress Gina Gershon on Jew's harp); "This is the land of a thousand words/But it seems so few are worth the breath to say" ("Land of a Thousand Words"). By creating a self-conscious parody and paradox we can pump our pelvises to and indexing each album with references to Oz and places over the rainbow, the Scissor Sisters join a long tradition of the primarily gay subculture known as Camp.

The challenge of "getting it" for all the non-gay members of the fan base, however, is only exacerbated by Scissor Sisters records being absent from the shelves of so many big-box stores. Retailers have consciously banned the group, both for the drug and gay sex content of its lyrics, and for Jake Shears' relatively recent swipe at stores charging way too much for new CDs.

Rather than compare anything on "Ta-Dah" to the first record and the infinite heights of "Take Your Mama" or "Filthy/Gorgeous," listeners might study the sturdy and contemplative lyrics or hit the dance floor enjoying the loving licks of mere mortals. Outside the gay club scene, the Scissor Sisters have been embraced in the States by the eclectic and imprecise genre of alternative rock, a tent so massive that it can include punk and prog, goth and grunge, roots and rap. Somewhere inside this millennial mix tape mixer, a soothing soundscape emerges, shamelessly invoking everything from show-tunes to the epic rock and pop disco of the late '70s.

Looking at both Scissor Sisters records as two chapters of its career, we hear reverberations of everything from Bowie to the Bee Gees, from Elton John (a huge Sisters' fan and friend) to Chic. Of the band's many challenges on this disc and current tour comes the task of resisting the coffin-nail critiques of the fickle pop punditry. While some writers would happily dismiss the latest incarnation as a cult novelty or obscure nicety—something like this generation's Village People—the band must keep its communal head about itself, fiercely showing the world that infectious funk and falsetto can still fluff up the fans and forge a new folk music for the urban freak scene.

2006-10-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

The Killers Invite Us to “Sam’s Town”

A supremely self-conscious rock band from Las Vegas has released an epic, over-the-top masterpiece—perhaps the best record of 2006. Steeped in the parched aura of a poppy Americana, “Sam’s Town” soars to astonishing heights—especially for a band whose lead singer is terrified of flying. But, boy, did the preening Springsteen of the Strip make a colossal mistake when he said over the summer that it would be the best record of the last 20 years.

If anyone had the vox and visage to get away with such hyper hype, it was this awkward and ambitious paradox of a pop icon, the manic Mormon Morrissey and messianic Metrosexual Meatloaf. But it appears he’s not getting away with it very well at all.

For reasons known and unknown, the critics crashed the party before it began; and as the record hits the racks, the backlash against Brandon Flowers rages full on. The disc’s many detractors would have apparently preferred “Hot Fuss, Part Two.” But as it pays tribute to region with calculated religiosity, “Sam’s Town” aims big and owes a spiritual debt to Bono and Bruce. But in coming home to Vegas to celebrate America with Joshua Tree-style pretension, some critics wish the band had stuck more to its British influences.

If we temporarily forget the odd facial hair and Anton Corbijn photos, the disc itself has musical and poetic depth, anchored in an intentionally mystical, yet earthy, flavor. Sure, the record has an intricate and over-produced sense of its own power, but not a throwaway track among the 12, and several simmer with stunning similes and sonic soul. With so many soothing hooks, addictive anthems, and hypnotic hymns, the band deserves better than to have its sophomore sojourn savaged because of the young singer’s loose and boastful tongue. The conceptual title track and searing sing-along single aside, tracks like “Read My Mind,” “Uncle Jonny,” “Bones,” and “The River is Wild” are all as good—or better—than anything on the first record.

Waking up for track four “on the roadside in the land of the free ride,” Flowers feels the wind on his face as he faces the devil of his own doing. Why is an ambiguous anthem about spiritual survival that drenches us in “desert rain” called “Bling (Confessions of a King)”? As the coda takes us “higher and higher,” we’re left to ponder another kind of bling, perhaps made of fool’s gold or a heavenly treasure that cannot be worn on fingers or in ears. If this is an honest reassessment of the trappings of success, Flowers isn’t crisp enough in navigating the lyrical landscape to get away with it. Understandably bewildered, many listeners will see this sophisticated confession as a conceptual train wreck.

Now, as for the whole band posing as rugged, scruffy, trailer-park tramps: image manipulation, as anyone who has been paying attention to the genre for the last 40 years knows, is part of the profession. Rock’s nothing more than a giant, dress-up closet for grown, gregarious men unafraid to nurture the boy (and often girl!) within. The photogenic Flowers has a flair for fashion—as his large following of less cynical fans would gladly testify. The rest of the group—David Keuning (guitar), Mark Stoermer (bass), and Ronnie Vannucci, Jr. (drums)—look really good, too.

But for the corp of American rock media intelligentsia, certain cows are sacrosanct, and their hides should not be donned—even as part of a drag show. The previously fey Flowers has been fluffing on a steady diet of all-American musical beef—and a particularly choice New Jersey cut at that. So, the scathing stateside skewering of “Sam’s Town” is not so much an attack on this honest and awesome record, but a knee-jerk, almost reactionary, defense of the Boss.

And since the born to run for another massive metaphor nature of it all is more black jeans and bolo tie than E-Street bite, the whole press circus seems rather silly. The Killers remain dancy, synthy, a new generation’s new wave group. However, some uptight people (many of them rock critics and the kind of nerds who post excessively on rock blogs) think the too-good-looking-for-his-own-good Las Vegan meant some kind of disrespect by acting Boss. Such naysayers may be jealous or just forgetting that imitation is flattery. But all of us entering this fray (this reviewer included) are discussing the side-story, forgoing the sheer fabulousness of the record.

The Killers’ brand of American pride is more about channeling camp and kitsch than about killing anything. So why does the man who gave us the line “I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier” deserve a media trampling from the cynically correct reminiscent of the one the Dixie Chicks got from the warmongers?

While the entirety of “Sam’s Town” engraves its musical mood more with each listen, it’s not an easy record to come home to precisely because it’s a record about home and roots dedicated to a place that has a surreal and rootless soul so tangled up in cash, tits, and bright lights. The record rocks carefully and carelessly, rolls soulfully and shamelessly, selling a biblical sense of itself: confronting demons like addiction; invoking clouds, hills, wild rivers, and thunder beings; and kissing the dirty ground.

With “Sam’s Town,” The Killers’ extreme makeover involves more musical nuance than merely altering an outward aesthetic. But taking Vegas as an anchor to revision roots music in a time of national confusion is, in fact, an extremely risky move for a band most associated with synthesizers and eyeliner. But “Sam’s Town” is an extreme record—extremely good.

2006-05-24T16:25:00.000-07:00

The Flaming Lips Live:
Apocalyptic & Hypnotic Fun

A downtown Georgia plaza on a balmy spring day was suddenly transformed into a psychedelic theme park as the sun went down.

People had road-tripped from all over the region to see the Flaming Lips, weird yet accessible pop-rock veterans that some in the British press have embraced as “America’s greatest band,” heirs to the mantle of “Cosmic American Music,” an aural attitude made magickal and memorable by such divergent cult acts as the Grateful Dead and Butthole Surfers.

Without sounding too derivative or dated, the Lips ride a holy thread made of streamers and confetti, craftily connecting the dots between the legacies left by the musical likes of Pink Floyd and the culture-jamming social mischief of Merry Pranksters.

After two days of sonic variety sponsored by Southern Comfort, the conclusion was an uplifting prop-filled pop cacophony and multimedia mind-bending mission trip to Wayne’s world. Understanding that an old-school happening will fill an audience with playful and participatory pleasure in ways that a mere concert won’t, the Lips still kept the whole spectacle so solidly and sonorously grounded in infectious grooves that the critics can’t really call it a gimmick-fest. To make it all more meaningful and interesting, serious showman Wayne Coyne provided intermittent infomercial narration between songs, pithy and self-conscious annotations to bolster the entire experience.

Sure, a stripped-down practice wouldn’t have the hopelessly sexy and dorky lead singer rolling over your outstretched arms in his inflatable ball that resembles a gigantic hamster toy or the pomp and silly power of the Lips’ legion of bopping benevolent aliens and swaying stoner Santas; but the songs—mostly from the new At War with the Mystics and augmented with a stellar selection of past triumphs—still provide the prime motivation and main attraction. When properly prodded, who wouldn’t want to sing about Yoshimi battling the robots? Or join the hypnotic trance parody of the “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”?

Apocalyptically crushing cover tunes packaged the entire set like bookends of tribute and irony to rock as over-the-top indulgence and profound protest missive. Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” done karaoke style would have taken the roof off had this been an indoor-show, but really, it confirmed why the Lips are most at home in the free-fest and freakfest festival scene.

And the courageous coda was carefully-framed by Coyne’s preface: some of our friends are in Iraq, and they could be here with us if it wasn’t for the war. What followed was a poignant, pounding, and emotionally ferocious version of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” that pushed the boundaries of a corporate-sponsored forum and surely banged some of the buttons of the Georgia crowd (as I overheard some folks remarking as they walked to their cars). Even though the latest disc has deep political subtexts, Coyne made it clear that he is no politician, and to me, that only made his message more politically meaningful. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld: take notice and warning: this insurrectionary incantation will fill the eyes and ears of thousands of young people across the continent this summer, stirring the sea that’s already ripe with discontent.

The Flaming Lips pack humor and doubt with mythic decibels and convey earnest artsy ambition with a communal and convivial spirit. The eclectic audience appeared more than open to sipping this wizard’s brew, in some cases enhanced I’m sure by the brews that SoCo was peddling. It was really a perfect rock show, with songs lingering on my tongue and ricocheting around my mind late into the night, leaving me a longing to see the Lips again, whenever I get the chance.

–Anu Bonobo

Atlanta

22 May 2006

2006-05-08T07:52:00.000-07:00

Shine On Benevolent Sun:

4,000 words on 10,000 Days, or personal outtakes on the new Tool record

It's been six or seven years since I listened to Tool for the first time. Around the turn of the century, deep inside a suburban Nashville hideaway, I was fucking my lover (now lover and wife). Beyond being madly in love, my ears were banging in religious bewilderment. I had no idea what had hit me. Was it metal? Was it punk? Was it that mythic, pompous, and pretentious beast known as "progressive rock"?

Four years since the last tour, the fourth full-length studio album by Tool hit the streets and stores this past Tuesday, May 2nd. But as is standard course in the sticky world of the web, the devout fans were madly downloading the recording for days preceding its proper release. And so, the serious questions, wicked rumors, and ponderous theories began to pour from the electronic hose like the muddy water that rocks my humble hollow after a Tennessee thunderstorm.

Is it an Internet hoax?

Like too many Tool fans, I tasted the forbidden fruit and listened to a leaked version a whole week before it hit the stores. Would this band-known for its puckish pranks and culture-jamming jabs-actually devote themselves to making two records, one fake and one real? By the second snoop on April 25th, I knew I was in the presence of profound sound, each song perfect in its own way. I never doubted-as some cyber denizens definitely did-that this was the authentic article. Then, on May 3rd, I dutifully paid $14 for my own real copy, packaging and all.

Is it merely a low-dose of Lateralus part two?

I will never really understand why fans of bands with such overall distinctive sounds are always complaining when "all the songs sound the same." Sure Lateralus sounded like Aenema and 10,000 Days sounds like Lateralus. Can we say "duh"?

Because at the end of the day, this is still a Tool record, a sacred incision in the skin of the collective consciousness, an insurrectionary incense for the ears, a barrage of sonic stinkbombs so entirely unique that the aural aroma will linger in your dreams for days.

Even during a good year, many fans would still require a post-graduate degree just to approximate a layman's understanding of the lyrical poetry or the musical math. And then, probably, some people posting all this pissy problematic poppycock just aren't Tool fans-poseurs, we used to call them.

Granted, it took me a long time to get here as a serious Tool fan, and like any kind of geeked out devotee, we can doubtless be a bit annoying. But now that I'm living it, loving it, and basking in this new record, I'm not really grooving when I read some bone-headed off-the-cuff dismissive bullshit from folks who heard the record once on the I-pod. Tastes differ, granted, but if you loved the last two records . . . and hate this one?

Are these really Tool fans bitching and whining about the similarities of the new record to Lateralus? Like, "Gawd, that new blissed-out, earth-shattering ejaculation was such a boring orgasm. It was so much like my previous orgasm."

Is it going to be too political? Is Maynard just another Bush-bashing post-whatever rock dinosaur doing the Billy Joe Armstrong-Eddie Vedder-Michael Stipe-Bruce Springsteen-Neil Young dance?

Please don't get me wrong-I am a huge fan of those five I mentioned as musicians and as anti-war, anti-Republican rockers and am perfectly fond of as much Bush-bashing in my daily soundtrack as it takes. And I'm not going to join any sour-mouthed mosh-pit of people puking on A Perfect Circle's last record of peace, love, and pissed-off cover songs. In fact, I love A Perfect Circle and Tool-just like I love sweet and sour or dusk and dawn, fully and equally.

But symbolic protest itself is not enough, as Maynard makes perfectly clear in a recent Revolver interview: "I've lost a little faith watching the whole political thing. Looking back, I was just a little kid living in Ohio when there were students getting gunned down on campus because they were speaking their minds. And it seems like nowadays, people sign a petition online or they send an email. That's about as much as they can do, and it's a little depressing to me."

I reject the simplistic pseudo-analysis of the blurb on Amazon: "Singer Maynard James Keenan is back on mystical form after his hiatus with the politically slanted A Perfect Circle . . ." How dare the critic break it down as though mystical and political were opposing camps as though Maynard could bifurcate himself like that! If anything, to say that Maynard has moved past the socially-cutting lyrics just because he finally came home to Tool after sojourning with his uber-political side-project would be to deny the defiant agit-prog that Tool are. Tool-who turned the middle-American metal-head masses onto Alex Grey and Bill Hicks-don't seem like they should just jettison the critique simply because Maynard went way over-the-top doing John Lennon and Marvin Gaye impersonations on the last record.

So, the new record is not too political. And it's political in all the right places-namely "Vicarious," "The Pot," and "Right in Two." (More on these in just a bit).

Further, the fullness of a Tool record can only be taken in on multiple levels, in manifold registers, and loving the lyrical jujitsu is only part of the larger equation. Fact is that this is Adam's band, Danny's band, Justin's band as much as this is Maynard's band. This is perhaps part of why the vocals like to lay so low in the mix, as if the words were that guy at the club who lurks in the corner on the verge of something important to say.

One dependable and fallible feature of critical fandom concerns reading way too much about the object of one's fascination, deliberation, and admiration. So, I have, I confess, read about Tool on the Internet daily for at least the last two weeks. I've purchased two mainstream magazines with prominent, cover-story interviews. I've read way more blogs, forums, show reviews, and the like than is probably considered healthy. I've skimped, though, on reading the record reviews for two reasons: (1) the kinds of questions I mentioned above do drive me a little crazy; and (2) I wanted my first scribbled testimony to be based as purely as possible on listening to the record. The record itself is the primary text. All this online babbling about it-while at times captivating and intoxicating when it's not infuriating-is nothing more than mere metatext, a story about the story.

But all that said, five days since the official release of 10,000 Days and eight days before I see the band live at Detroit's Fox Theater, I decided to take break from reading about the band and the new record and do as any decent fanzine writer must do. I decided to write about the disc, record my personal revelations.

And on the note of critical interpretation, let's be clear, that while I may be very interested in what "Maynard means" or what the band intends about any given song or snippet, interpretation always belongs to the listener, is always open for discussion, and changes with each interaction. So this is where I'm at after about twenty-three listens in thirteen days. How will I feel after 10,000 Listens? Before I compulsively browse another bulletin board or fulminate at another forum, here's my take, my reaction to, and my tangential digression on (as informed as it is by what I've already read), track by track, the new Tool record.

Vicarious: Damn the first track if it isn't any good. Damn Tool for making us beg for mercy as they unleash this "death rattle" on our war-weary imaginations. Damn anyone who doubted-this pummels me across the room. Damn this painfully accurate synopsis of how sucked-up and fucked-up the violent Wal-Martians can get as they purchase their little fourth-of-July flaglets, made in China, before they go home to blow the neighborhood apart with faux fireworks and infantile Independence Day fantasies.

Like too many Americans, I was deeply disgusted by the feverish, flag-waving bloodlust that filled the mass psyche in the months after September 11, 2001. I didn't understand my neighbors who don't understand history ("Fuck your short memory . . ."-Aenema). President Photo-Op and his operatives tapped into something we cannot pass off as a mere symptom of their massive power-the massive, voyeuristic death dream of the masses. You've seen them or been one of them, these are the ones who "Stare like a junkie/Into the TV/ Stare like a zombie."

We saw it just recently as the vividly vengeful-only some of them actual "victims"-gathered to ask for the death penalty in the case of Moussaui, alleged participant in orchestrating the deadly destruction in New York. Americans want to see others bleed-but on the big screen.

Indeed, without a sense of the past and with a deep sense of the dark Dahmeresque, cinematic ooze that is the video game vision of Grand Theft America, what do we end up with? We end up with:

"We won't give pause until the blood is flowing

I need to watch things die... from a good safe distance

Vicariously I live while the whole world dies

You all feel the same, so...

Why can't we just admit it?"

Jambi: Beyond what is rumored to be an overt reference to a genie character from PeeWee's Playhouse, this song already packs some mean mojo, a wild-eyed woo-woo wallop. Or put another way, to those who worried that the magnetic mysticism of Lateralus had been muted on this new release, listen to this track until you "get it." And then listen to this track again. And again.

Sure, it's easy for a fat and rolling motherfucker like Maynard to talk about "wishing it all away." Yeah, we've heard it all before-because rich famous rock stars are well-known for ranting against the worthiness of material wealth and preaching like paupers of the Rumi and Jesus variety. When I get sick of listening to that, I just dig on a little class-war from my friends in the folk, punk, and rap genres. But Maynard and company make me believe it this time, and that means something.

Essentially this is two songs in one, which is easy when the complete track clocks in at just shy of eight minutes. The opening march, made magick under that tantalizingly Toolesque beat that boasts bass and drums as crisp crushing beatitude, teaches that timeless parable about the successful sonofabitch who doesn't realize how good life is:

"Here from the king's mountain view

Here from the wild dream come true

Feast like a sultan I do

On treasures and flesh, never few"

So the epic song's protagonist realizes the real deal and passionately propels his prostrate devotion:

"But I, I would wish it all away

If I thought I'd lose you just one day"

The object of this lyrical longing-kicked and coddled by the crunching noise behind it-could be lover or god or both-but it doesn't really matter as the first half of the song is just a warm-up, a prelude to where it's all so prolific and profound that the difference between lover and god dissolves.

After a monstrous middle where the guitar gouges out your third eye and the bass begs your bowels for the shit, a new song commences or the conjuring conclusion kicks in:

"Shine on forever

Shine on benevolent sun

Shine down upon the broken

Shine until the two become one"

So the message and the meaning are obviously spiritual, so simple to sing yet so hard to actually realize: shine on. Yeah, that's "shine on" in the "Instant Karma" sense of it, but even John Lennon never rocked this hard, except maybe on "Come Together" or "Cold Turkey." Note to self: If you ever go "cold turkey" again like you did with cigarettes, take this Tool record with you.

If I had to quit the record after only two tracks, it would be a ballsy, ballistic EP. But what's coming next will nearly break me.

Wings For Marie (Pt 1) and 10,000 Days (Wings Pt 2):

Even though these are technically two tracks, I'm going to have to write about them as one. I agree with those who suggested this should be just one, very long piece. These comprise seventeen of the most intense minutes in recent rock in intimately risky territory. While the first two picks got me pumped up and primed, these next two tracks took me to the water, to the spring, to the ocean of salty, pouring, wailing, hollering, desperate, deep, open, empty.

At my day-job teaching first-year college writing, we strongly discourage essays devoted to deceased friends, lovers, and family members. It's the par of an emotional kind of plagiarism, shamelessly playing to the reader's sentiments at best and manipulating the sensitive professor for an easy A at worst. In film, the tearjerker requires its own genre, to which I am admittedly an occasional sucker. In music, the sappy song is even more dangerous territory. When done poorly, there's nothing more wretched and pathetic. When done well, it's time for me to run for the handkerchief. Yes, I love an emotional roller-derby of a song when it gets me in that secret place. But from Tool? Let's just say I didn't expect "Wings For Marie" and "10,000 Days." And if I did know that the band would devote a whole fifth of the record to a deep tribute to Maynard's mom, I might have expected "Judith, Part Two" and "Judith, Part Three."

"Judith," as you might remember, was a seething skewering of religious dogma from the Perfect Circle songbook, circa 2000. She died-it's worth noting-in 2003. With his mother Judith's faith and paralysis as a rhetorical platform, Maynard minces no words with

"You're such an inspiration

For the ways

That I'll never ever choose to be

Oh so many ways for me to show you

How your savior has abandoned you

FUCK Your God

Your Lord, your Christ

He did this

Took all you had and

Left you this way

Still you pray, never stray, never

Taste of the fruit

Never thought to question why

It's not like you killed someone

It's not like you drove a hateful spear

Into his side

Praise the one who left you

Broken down and paralyzed

He did it all for you...

Oh so many ways

For me to show you

How your dogma has abandoned you"

We'd have to scour the depths of punk purgatory and re-read atheist rants from Crass and Chumbawamba to find an anti-religious rock anthem of this vigor and velocity. It's a chilling and basic question that maintains currency for eternal doubters everywhere: If your "God" is so damn good, then why does "He" leave the humble and faithful to suffer so?

But if "Wings" and "Days" actually do constitute a coda to "Judith," then Judith is also a preamble to this deeper prophecy. What makes Maynard a serious, soulful thinker and a more-than-interesting poet is that we take it both with us-the dark and the light, the angry and reflective, the desperation and affirmation.

Yes, 10,000 Days as album title could mean many things. Fans joke that it's the time between Tool records. One theory is a reference to the length of the Vietnam War. But as a song title, "10,000 Days" does suggest the time that Judith Marie Keenan spent after a stroke paralyzed her until the time of her death. And the epic lyrics to this section of the disc do confirm that.

Maynard's already on-record that this is in fact a blues album. If anything in the Tool library even approaches the primal moan that is the dark music of the African diaspora in America, it could be these songs, especially cuts three and four, this cutting "cry for your mama" catechism. Certainly, this is not "blues" in the most formulaic sense, but some blues basics bellow beneath the surface: both the bowl of radical religious skepticism and a stiff shot of faith to make the medicine go down.

The eerie, edgy, haunting of the first six minutes just prepare us from the drenched cinematic stench of the second eleven minutes. Thunder and lightning and rain pouring down, I imagine this song's narrative holding space in the country church down the street on a dark, sopping Sunday night. I like my fundamentalism with a pinch of southern gothic, Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor. This is a progressive rock version of a ballsy bluegrass number about the roll getting called up yonder. And this song still makes me weep. For my friends and loved ones who've died after a long life. For you. For me. For all of us. For how the broken pure humility of it all can save us no more than the arrogant rockstar pomposity, no more than the righteous anger of whatever ideology rocks your world this season.

This song faces death in the face and does not fuck with death. It says death is definitely a leveler of all playing fields, a grim reaper who has no gratitude for self-aggrandizing gibberish, an equal opportunity harbinger for all, for even you, your time will come.

And it's a heart-breaking homage to mom. It's the kind of song that turns the bad-ass rock star into a little boy in his mother's arms. It takes to task the hypocritical faith that made "Judith" so jarring, but it takes it a step farther. Maynard takes down his guard. He takes down the shield of intellectualism, cynicism, rational rejection. He holds out a candle, an eternal flame that burns bright in a brutal storm.

Maynard comes full circle. He sings. I weep. He sings. We listen:

"Give me my wings.

You are the light, the way, they will only read about.

Set as I am in my ways and my arrogance

Burden of proof tossed upon non-believers.

You were my witness, my eyes, my evidence,

Judith Marie, unconditional one.

Daylight dims leaving cool flourescence.

Difficult to see you in this light.

Please forgive this bold suggestion:

Should you see your maker's face tonight

Look him in the eye

Look him in the eye and tell him

I never lived a lie, never took a life,

But surely saved one

Hallejullah,

It's time for you to bring me home."

The Pot: Some records intentionally extend the silence between tracks. Not here, but this is one moment when that would have worked just fine for me. Many listeners are still processing "Days" when this dog hits. I suggest the pause button.

The split-second between cuts is barely enough to recover and prepare for more Maynard and a high-pitched hype hovering in the outer reaches of some alien octave. And what he hollers is worth hearing:

"Who are you to wave your finger?

Ya' must have been out your head

I hold deep in muddy waters

You practically raised the dead

Rob the grave, to snow the cradle

Then burn the evidence down

Soapbox, house of cards, and glass

So don't go tossin' your stones around

You must have been high

You must have been"

Musically, this might be the most radio-friendly shot from the whole record, but for obvious reasons, it wasn't released first. With Justin jacking a funky bass he could have borrowed from Primus or the Chili Peppers, "The Pot" packs two obvious meanings-and probably many more. For starters, it calls up the common saying of "the pot calling the kettle black," an idiomatic invocation of idiotic hypocrisy. And then, it refers to reefer, marijuana, ganja, the pot plant popular as medicine and intoxicant. In one couplet, Maynard summarizes how so many of us feel about the sorry majority of lawyers, cops, and politicians:

"Foot in mouth, and head up asshole

What you talkin' 'bout?"

All in all, "The Pot" is Tool at its hookiest, poppiest, rowdiest, and most rollicking. Allegedly, at the tour debut at the Coachella festival, two days before the record was officially released, Maynard stopped and more-or-less scolded fans who were singing along for downloading the disc. And I imagine it will garner a sort of special cult-status among the segment of fans who safely imbibe the smokable sacrament.

Lipan Conjuring: Midway through the album, I call this tribal interlude the intercession and intermission. The Lipan Apache are band from Texas, also known as "Warriors of the Mountains." Tool aren't the first American rock band to pay some respect to Native Americans, but it is always proper and appreciated, even as the shortest cut on the record.

Lost Keys (Blame Hofmann): Much heavier than most jam bands or most certainly more brutal than the Dead, Tool still share some of that psychedelic mystique. Tool ritually pays tribute to the mild-altering possibilities of-and implicitly endorses experimentation with-what some have called the "good drugs"-marijuana, LSD, psylocibin, and the like.

This track, which some are calling filler, is like the edutainment blurb before the next blistering pick pickles your brain. It not so subtly names the man who discovered acid-Albert Hoffman. Already online, people are confusing the freak drug scientist Albert with freak insurrectionist Abbie Hoffman.

The infomercial with guitars warns the listener that acid could get you in the hospital. It could also say that drugs are the lost key to truth, but further, that tripping people should not drive, or they will lose their keys and end up in the looney wing.

Rosetta Stoned: It's been already suggested that "Rosetta Stoned" is simply the reply from the character introduced in the previous piece. That would provide plausible reasoning behind the pure narrative that follows in all its pathos and perversion.

As much parody as prophecy, this places us in a new paradigm or a deep problem or both. The band can't really be accused of promoting drug use-because asking preteens to listen to this song and study its lyrics might likely be more effective anti-drug counseling than the sober low-shock therapy of officer-friendly showing you what weed looks like.

As for combining the compelling and complex as few other bands do, Tool take it far out into the outer reaches with this one, the last section an almost lyricless, stellar soundgasm.

Intension: Like any artwork, an album has an internal logic to it. By track nine, especially after an assault like "Stoned," the listener is ready for the kind of healing balm that reminds you why this round piece of plastic was worth the cash.

For any person seeking a clear-headed, hopeful, and honest introduction to the basic principles of magic, this song might be a good place to start.

Pure as we begin

Move by will alone.

Leave as we come in.

Pure as light.

Return to one.

Right In Two: While the previous track sweetly summarized a personal ethos of new age, anarchist, and magickal responsibility, this one levels the critique on humans' crude, cruel, and unevolved ways. What could compel us, as Maynard puts forward, to reject the garden-choosing war instead? What might make folks use their reason to choose the life without? Human stupidity opens the channels for Maynard's stark nihilism and cynicism about human community:

"Silly monkeys give them thumbs,

They make a club

And beat their brother down.

How they survive so misguided is a mystery.

Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to live to light

a heaven conscious of his fleeting time here"

I'm still siding with the foolish hope that the monkeys might finally learn to love, but I bet Maynard's money is on the mother earth pushing on without us.

Viginti Tres: The last track is another that some call filler; it's essentially your reward for making it this far, especially enjoyable late-at-night, eyes closed, on headphones.

I don't think I've ever spent a whole day's work on one record review-until today. Did I say it any different than the other fans even more diehard than me? Did I make a point to put this in another perspective, diverging from 10,000 Reviews? After all the mystical shit has been pondered and all the agitation and preaching has been exhausted, of only a few things about this band I'm certain: Tool sound really good when the listener is sober. Tool sound like a kick of coffee in the ass of a new day. Tool sound really good after a decent beer buzz. Tool sound heavenly when stoned on substances you should first consult your witchdoctor or clergyperson about trying only in moderation. Tool should be listened to loud-I prefer to feel them in my testes and toenails. Tool are a rock band. Tool sound really good with the headphones on.

Tool are Maynard James Keenan, Adam Jones, Danny Carey, and Justin Chancellor.

Anu Bonobo
Pumpkin Hollow, Tennessee

2006-03-29T05:26:00.000-08:00

The Case for Coldplay

Continental Airlines Arena, aka The Meadowlands 25 March 2006

(picture *not* from these shows!!)

Last year, Jon Pareles wrote an article for the New York Times called “The Case Against Coldplay” where he called them “the most insufferable band of the decade.” Last night, I went to his neighborhood (northern New Jersey, to be exact) to witness the case for Coldplay.

While I never thought I’d share so much spiritual geography with teenage girls and emo rockers, it seems like that it’s exactly that kind of “guilt by association” that turns Mr. Parales sour.

While he doesn’t like what Coldplay does, he clearly realizes that they’re good at it. Witness this impeccable prose: “It's not for lack of skill. The band proffers melodies as imposing as Romanesque architecture, solid and symmetrical. Martin on keyboards, Jonny Buckland on guitar, Guy Berryman on bass and Will Champion on drums have mastered all the mechanics of pop songwriting, from the instrumental hook that announces nearly every song they've recorded to the reassurance of a chorus to the revitalizing contrast of a bridge. Their arrangements ascend and surge, measuring out the song's yearning and tension, cresting and easing back and then moving toward a chiming resolution. Coldplay is meticulously unified, and its songs have been rigorously cleared of anything that distracts from the musical drama.”

No, it’s the emo effect that gets this critic’s goat. It’s Chris Martin and his lyrics: “I hear a passive-aggressive blowhard, immoderately proud as he flaunts humility. ‘I feel low,’ he announces in the chorus of ‘Low,’ belied by the peak of a crescendo that couldn't be more triumphant about it.”

While it was an epic and eternal sound that sucked my brain on the first listen to “Clocks,” the spirit of the project kept me. Emotion truly pulled me to Coldplay and kept pulling me. My first "emo" band. (Now, I know, especially with the help of some folks on a fan-based web forum, that Coldplay are not "emo" in the literal sense of that particular genre of pop-punk, but I think some of the anti-Coldplay backlash of the last while rests on the same anti-sentimental scaffolding as anti-emo rhetoric.)

Perhaps the frustrated rock critics are jealous, since the sensitive rockers seem to get a lot of affection, admiration, and adoration from fans who "get it" of both genders.

In such an intensely miserable world, it’s this cozy component of Chris Martin’s sensibility that makes a Coldplay concert a kind of postmodern love-in. I still like my anger in folk, punk, and hip-hop, but sometimes such ranting can leave me cold. Coldplay makes me warm and wet.

People of all ages, arms waving, hearts swelling, vocal chords wailing: we are in this fucking together, and we want more. Now, some people get that buzz at church or singing the Star Spangled Banner at football games. But for those of us unable to access too much religion or patriotism, we have rock and roll.

And of those rare and bombastic and hokey enough to try transforming a hockey arena into a homey happenin’ hoedown, Coldplay has come to the top of their crowd and can draw the crowd.

Northern New Jersey is a kind of example of why modernity might have been a bad idea, an exurban unimpressive pavement monster. Just finding my hotel room and getting to the show were a chore. But once in the parking lot, with the Amstel Light and Dominican rum warming the hearts of the hospitable tailgaters I happened upon, the beauty of the pre-concert communion shed my doubts about why I’d traveled so far again—"just to see a band." While some of my friends are baffled by my devotion, my new friends were just impressed. They had the same infection as me and completely understood.

The etymology of the word “fan” (from the root fanatic) is instructive here. I’m a fan in the true sense. Two nights of Coldplay equals my March madness. There’s more to say about last night, but it’s time to get ready for tonight, with Ashcroft onstage in less than two hours!!

Nassau Coliseum, Long Island, 26 March 2006

"I'm warning you -- I'm in an extremely good mood; I'm expecting a baby soon."

Chris Martin made my weekend two nights in a row. Moving from the main floor to side stage, lower level, I enjoyed my great view of the band, who are absolutely on their game--personal and passionate and totally professional.

At least twice, Chris commented on how the crowd exceeded his expectations. Now, it's hard to find a fellow fan having as much fun as me -- but people were as friendly (although not as drunk or wild) as in New Jersey. I still don't understand why some folks feel compelled to talk during a show (as some near me did during R. Ashcroft, prompting me to move) or constantly play with their phones -- an activity Chris M. apparently condones ("Cell phones is cool").

Seeing all the waving lights during "What If" was inspired, but I wonder what it would be like if people just turned them off and got more into the show. Into the show, indeed.

An unparalelled ecstasy could be found at the close of Clocks, a stunning climax that sent the whole place into a deafening post-orgasm moan.

At the close of Fix You, I grabbed my coat and sprinted to the car, motivated by Martin's leaping and dashing acrobatics, the best, of course, being his mad lap to the back of the building during In My Place. As Chris warned of his mood during the opening strains of Square One, I want to carry that joy home with me on the plane and back to work today. We certainly all need the love that Coldplay carries every time we hear their hooks, in a big hall or privately on headphones.

Setlist both nights:
Square One
Politik
Yellow
Speed of Sound
God Put A Smile Upon Your Face
What If
Don’t Panic
White Shadows
The Scientist
Til Kingdom Come
Ring of Fire
Trouble
Clocks
Talk
Swallowed in the Sea
In My Place
Fix You

2005-11-17T19:43:00.000-08:00

Wear Black!

It’s not exactly an original fashion statement—but one I return to again and again. It started in high school as a not-so-subtle diversion from my brief days as a prep and a jock. It began with late nights sneaking into smoke-filled clubs to listen to raw, rebellious, raunchy rock.

It started then and never stopped. I still wear black. For a protest, as a statement, for formality, as a uniform, for a job, to hide the food stains.

In music, it’s everywhere, from Green Day to Coldplay. Black provides a somber uniform that unites punks and goths and God-fearing rockers. It’s back, like an AC-DC album title or a Rolling Stone lyric, “I see a red door, and . . . .”

From black armbands during ‘Nam to the militant anarchist black block in Seattle to the silent and pacifist Women in Black (WIB) that started in the Middle East, protesters love black. A statement that never loses style. WIB write, “Participants in vigils wear black as a sign of mourning for all that is lost through war and violence. Through this calm and dignified, but still visual and telling way of protesting, we hope to inspire pacifists in many countries.”

Today, on the occasion of the new Johnny Cash fictional, filmic biography, I turn to the notorious man in black for inspiration. He reminds us why in his legendary lyrics for “Man in Black”:

Man in Black
Johnny Cash

Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,
Why you never see bright colors on my back,
And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.
Well, there's a reason for the things that I have on.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he's a victim of the times.

I wear the black for those who never read,
Or listened to the words that Jesus said,
About the road to happiness through love and charity,
Why, you'd think He's talking straight to you and me.

Well, we're doin' mighty fine, I do suppose,
In our streak of lightnin' cars and fancy clothes,
But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back,
Up front there ought 'a be a Man In Black.

I wear it for the sick and lonely old,
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,
I wear the black in mournin' for the lives that could have been,
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.

And, I wear it for the thousands who have died,
Believen' that the Lord was on their side,
I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died,
Believen' that we all were on their side.

Well, there's things that never will be right I know,
And things need changin' everywhere you go,
But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
You'll never see me wear a suit of white.

2005-11-17T19:36:00.000-08:00

Creating more Critical Fandom.

Welcome to Babyrain Dance, a new blog, with a title based on two fanzines I worked on once upon a time, before the Internet, back in the 1980s.

With music as a focus, this blog will embrace a construct known as "critical fandom," an idea once dsecribed by a devotee of Xena Studies as "a constant battle for truth, justice" where we "persist in the battle against the Behemoth of Commercialism."

This hybrid will hopefully combine the intelligence of analysis and critique often expected from academics and journalists with the honest love and admiration for bands and songs the distinguishes fandom from the profit-driven demons of the mainstream publishing world.