SuperWonderBang

One of my favorite bands, Modern Skirts,  finally released this great video for their song “Pasadena.” I can’t wait to see them again.

When I was a child, my father was a traveling salesman. He would travel to all these small towns all over south Georgia and north Florida. In the summers, he would take me with him. We would be gone for a week at a time, sharing hotel rooms, sharing the adventures of the road, and sharing the delicious food at all the tiny out of the way BBQ restaurants.

The other thing we did was play harmonica and sing songs. Not with the radio, but just from our own recollection. Well, really my Dad’s recollection. One of my favorite songs that we sang back then was Gordon Lightfoot’s Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (see video below). Something about the distilled despair and sadness in the song resonated with me.

So, I’m very excited to say the I get to see the inimitable Gordon Lightfoot at TPAC tonight. My buddy Dave is going to be there and so is Kim. My wife is going, too. I’m thinking I might tear up a bit when he starts into Edmund Fitzgerald.

I ventured out to the Rutledge last night to see Modern Skirts and Bain Mattox play. The Rutledge is said to have the best sound in the city and I don’t have any reason to disagree. Both groups sounded great.

As always the Skirts put on a great show. All four guys put a lot of energy into every song. It’s hard not to when the songs are just so damned good. I am continually impressed by their songwriting. Since I was standing so close to him last night, I have to point what I really great guitar player Phillip Brantley is. He was doing some pretty cool things during some of the solos and bridges. Nice little tempo and minor key changes. I’m impressed.

I was really happy to see Bain Mattox again as well. Amazingly, this is another solid songwriter who uses some different instrumentation (accordion, banjo, harmonica) to make his mark. The crowd was a little small and low-key. Inexplicably, the Rutledge has tables and chairs where people should be standing and dancing. But Bain put out a lot of effort to get a rise from the crowd. At one point, he was walking through the crowd with his accordion admonishing us to sing along to the chorus of a song about driving people up walls.

A great show from both groups and I really hope that Nashville starts to pay them more attention. Both are definitely on the verge of big things.

Sadly, I couldn’t stick around to listen to The Bridges from Anniston, AL. I caught the first couple of songs and the harmonies were very nice. Certainly not enough time for me to form an opinion but I’d like to check out more of their stuff.

Technorati Tags: modern skirts, bain mattox, the bridges, nashville

One of the most infectious songs ever. The video is very impressive as well. The whole album is excellent, but this song just hooks you.

I have a nice little schedule of shows set for the Spring. There’s lots more I’d like to do, but time and money preclude it.

Here’s the schedule. Links take you to buy tickets should you want to join me.

Mar. 23 - Bang Bang Bang, Modern Skirts - Exit/In - 8pm

Apr. 14 - TV on the Radio, Noisettes - Cannery Ballroom - 9pm

Apr. 28 - Drive By Truckers - Georgia Theatre - 10pm sharp

May 19 - Bright Eyes, Gillian Welch - Ryman Auditorium - 8pm

Live music has become a big part of what I do lately. Not every show is great (YMSB was a big let down), but it’s a fun night out.

Because of this, I have had to do more business with Ticketmaster than I would like. I would prefer to pay anyone other than Ticketmaster. I presume a lot of artists don”t have control over how the tickets are sold, but I see more and more artists controlling their ticket sales (like the Drive-By Truckers).

Ticketmaster as a business has a right to charge whatever they would like. My problem is how “black box” the process is. Their “convenience charge” seems to be somewhat random and in the case of those $29.50 Bright Eyes tickets, I paid $8.40 per ticket for this convenience. Then, Ticketmaster has the gall to charge me $2.50 to email me my tickets. Add to that some random $1.50 fee and a $2.50 venue charge and it just becomes absurd.

I don’t mind paying a fee to buy tickets online. I realize the ticket company has to make money, but there’’s got to be a better way. The TV on the Radio tickets were bought through TicketWeb which charged a flat $5.00 fee regardless of how many tickets I bought. That makes sense to me. It even included them mailing me the physical tickets. This is similar to what Ticket Biscuit and Baseline Ticketing are doing. It’s simple and reasonable.

Woohoo! I just bought tickets to see Yonder Mountain String Band at City Hall in downtown Nashville. This is in addition to the TV On the Radio show I bought tickets for a few days ago.

Unfortunately, I had to use Ticketmaster. So, for $40 worth of tickets, I ended up paying $62.50. That’s more than 50% in fees and taxes. It’s absolute highway robbery. It’s $6.95 per ticket, plus tax, plus a nebulous $4.95 charge for something, and then $2.50 to EMAIL me the tickets. That charge to email something is just amazing, especially considering that they put ads in the files which they email.

It’s a testament to Yonder Mountain String Band’s draw that I would put up with Ticketmaster’s bullshit. Why can’t someone take these guys out of the market?

I’m finally going to get to see TV on the Radio live. They are playing at the Mercy Lounge in Nashville in March. I’ve already ordered the tickets. I really up they live up to the hype in my head.

I set out yesterday across the state to visit Athens, GA. My plans included catching a R.E.M. tribute show at the 40 Watt. I was looking forward to seeing Five Eight, Patterson Hood and Modern Skirts play the songs of R.E.M. Five Eight has long been my favorite band, second only to R.E.M. Patterson Hood leads my beloved Drive-By Truckers and Modern Skirts are an up and coming group that is going to be huge. With this in mind, my wife and I scuttled through the rain back to our alma mater. We were looking forward to a fun night out and maybe some neat surprises on the stage. When we were checking into the hotel, the desk clerk and I talked about why I was in town and she said that there had been tons of people coming into the hotel for the show. It was a small clue as to what the night might hold, but we had no idea what was waiting for us.

The tribute was set up to raise charity for two worthy causes in Athens: Family Connection and Community Connection. The night included raffles and auctions of R.E.M. memorabilia and also featured quite a few clips from the new DVD and CD retrospective of their years with I.R.S. Records. The crowd spanned all ages and types of music fans. The varied bands on the schedule and the fact that it was R.E.M. meant that the crowd was eclectic to say the least.

The mood started off very low-key with Claire Campbell, a folk artist with which I was unfamiliar, interpreting two songs using a saw and a busker’s dance. It was an odd start to a rock show. Then, with no notice and no introduction, the unbelievable happened.

Through the curtain at the back of the stage strode the four members of R.E.M. and they launched into “Begin the Begin.” The scene went from low-key and jovial to absolutely euphoric. Every face in the place had a smile on it. The most amazing bit was seeing Bill Berry on the drums. After his illness and subsequent retiring from the band, it’s clear that he has stayed in “fighting shape.” There he was right in front of that iconic light-bulb 40 Watt logo keeping perfect time.

According to Michael Stipe, the group was in-town recording some new stuff and just decided to stop by. A little more banter and R.E.M. unleashed a rocking version of “So. Central Rain.” At the end of the song, Mike Mills and Peter Buck were absolutely bashing their instruments and seemed to be having a great time. Bill Berry was into the groove as well and was dropping fills everywhere though he was just on a small trap kit. Stipe was bringing out some of his old, admittedly bizarre, dance moves that many of the fans have seen in videos before.

There was laughter and cheering and screaming. The entire club simply stopped to watch these guys performed. No drinks were being ordered, or served for that matter, during the two songs. No one went to the bathroom and no one took their eyes off the stage. It was historic.

Though the guys only played two songs together, everyone, except Bill Berry, would reappear throughout the night playing along with the other bands that had come to celebrate them. They seemed to enjoy hearing new spins on their material as well as having a chance to bust out some of the songs that they don’t play very often in concert.

Some other highlights of the show were Tin Cup Prophette’s set, Patterson Hood’s story of his first R.E.M. concert in Oxford, Miss., the Observatory’s atmospheric and psychedelic set, and the finale begun by Five Eight.

For Tin Cup Prophette, the challenge was following the two songs done by R.E.M. They performed some interesting versions of the tunes and seemed graceful and dogged in the challenging spot in which they found themselves. The lead singer appeared in the night’s finale standing right next to Michael Stipe singing along with him, so I think he did his best to make up for the slight overshadowing she might have experienced.

Patterson Hood talked about his first R.E.M. concert which was in 1984 at a converted church in Oxford, Miss. After some drunk asshole shouted through the gang’s a cappella rendition of “Blue Moon” at the close of the show, they returned for an encore during which Hood says, “You could feel the hate they were giving this guy.” So, they started up with “Blue Moon” again and since Peter Buck doesn’t sing, he stood at the edge of the stage and “eye-fucked,” according to Patterson, the guy through the entire song. With Hood’s storytelling prowess and a great example of R.E.M.’s early days, Hood’s beaming grin was shined back at him from the crowd. Indeed, throughout his set and the finale, Hood wore a huge smile and seemed genuinely floored to be able to share the stage with his admitted “heroes.”

Members of the Elephant 6 collective joined forces to journey through a set that visited many of R.E.M.’s more esoteric and atmospheric songs from the earlier albums and B-sides. There must have been 15 of them on stage and they created a mesmerizing wall of sound that shown new light on what were some of R.E.M.’s least commercially viable, but perhaps most musically adventurous, songs.

Five Eight has a long and somewhat murky history with R.E.M. At one point, R.E.M. had chosen them to open for a series of shows in the west coast. Five Eight had a new album out and this looked to be their big break. After several shows on the west coast, the R.E.M. tour was headed to Europe and everyone, including Five Eight, assumed that they would be the opener throughout Europe. At the last minute, R.E.M. chose another band, Now It’s Overhead, and left Five Eight back home. With a snide smile, Five Eight’s deadpan jokester, Dan Horowitz, played a banjo-lead version of “Driver 8″ with lyrics detailing this somewhat raw relationship between the two bands, rousing the audience with the chorus, “Five Eight, take a break, you’ve been up our ass too long.” Add to that the finale, lead by Five Eight, but joined by members of the bands from throughout the night and 3 of the 4 R.E.M. fellows as they hammered through a long and loud rendition of “It’s The End Of The World (As We Know It).”

One of my favorite new bands, Modern Skirts, put in a polished performance with some great harmonies. Their set didn’t seem to quite approach the transcendence of some of the others. In fact, their attention to detail and craftsmanship might have let them down in that they weren’t portraying the sheer exuberance of the other sets. However, as Bertis Downs pointed out, their rendition of “Perfect Circle” was a great fit lyrically and musically. All that aside, they are a tight band that clearly has a lot more to offer in the coming years. I can’t wait to see how their sound matures. With a piano man like Jojo and those awesome harmonies, the coming days are salad days for sure.
It was truly a historic night for an R.E.M. fan such as myself. A lot of money was raised for two good causes and I have memories that I will keep for a lifetime. This is what truly great music, especially live music, does for people. It generates feelings, connections, and memories that are the true bone marrow of life. All of that and a ticket was only $12.

Technorati Tags: music, r.e.m., rem, athens ga, athens, patterson hood, five eight, modern skirts

I just finished watching a documentary about heavy metal called Metal: A Headbanger's Journey. It's a decent film, but veers way too much to the fanboy side of things for my taste. It does a decent job explaining what there is to like about metal while showing as well what there is not to like.

Sam Dunn, the host and writer, is an anthropologist and he does a great job breaking down the societal and cultural aspects of the musical genre. I did find it a bit disconcerting that all the violence and sex and satanism in the music was touched on, but just winked away by the film as just entertainment. It intimated that those who didn't understand that it was all some great big joke where just "out of it."

I would have enjoyed a little more exploration into the actual musical structure of metal music. There is some discussion of the "devil's note" and the diminished fifth scale, but no real follow-on as to how it plays out in modern metal. Indeed, there is very little in the film about the craft of modern metal. It's really more about personalities and an overview of the genre as a whole, but it does a decent job with that.

The strangest part to me was when they showed George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher of the band Cannibal Corpse. He is almost certainly missing a chromosome or something. The guy is one hell of a frontman, but he should lay off the acid when he's on film.

Mr. Dunn has created a really cool genealogy of metal which appears in an interactive version on the DVD and is also printed without logos in the liner notes of the soundtrack. That little extra is worth the price of admission.
Technorati Tags: metal, music, cannibal corpse, corpsegrinder, headbanger

This remix stuff has just exploded. Was this a scene that existed before and has only now found popular purchase? I first became aware, like many I expect, with DJ Danger Mouse’s “Grey Album” which mixed Jay-Z’s “Black Album” with The Beatles “White Album.” I’m enjoying most of these as novel ways to enjoy acts I might not otherwise listen to. The old axiom about putting a danceable beat behind anything is certainly true here. There are tons of blogs and forums out there, but the best by far is GYBO: Get Your Bootleg On.

You’ll find plenty of links there to mashups. There’s also info about how to remix, including ideas on beats, tempos, software, and even legality issues. It’s a well-rounded gathering of people with interest in this scene.

Here’s three mashups that I think are the cream of the current crop. These are full album mashups which intrigue me much more than the singles that are coming out of the woodwork. Adapting an entire album is a serious effort and can show much more talent than just busting out a single.

• Dean Gray’s “American Edit“
• The Silence Xperiment’s “Q-Unit“
• The Silence Xperiment’s “HotStop: A + B“

I don’t know how long this scene will be out there, but it’s an interesting pop culture moment made possible expressly by the web. Without getting too mystical about the web’s impact, it also relies greatly on inexpensive music software and production tools. In short, this scene exists simply because the technology exists.

Technorati Tags: music, mashup, boots, remix