There are times when you come home from a show excited, whether by the music you just heard and are about to hear or because you had a cool time and got a phone number. Then there are times when you walk 30 blocks or so before realizing how cold it is and how far you have yet to go because you are astounded at the wonderful new thing that was always there that you have only tonight been allowed to witness and enjoy. I had a freaking blast at this show. I had never heard Holy Fuck or Super Furry Animals before and had not seen The Fiery Furnaces live, either.

I should apologize to Holy Fuck as I missed all but the last couple songs due to the fact that I am an idiot. The doors opened at 8 and I got to the club at 9. I figured that the first band wouldn’t start until then, but I was clearly wrong. Holy Fuck sounded like techno-house with those annoying incessant beats that last for hours for the ecstasy-addled, except without being annoying or incessant. Imagine a house song with real drums, synths, a bass player, another drummer and all sorts of weird effects and the song actually ends. These guys play music like I cook, throwing stuff in because it is good and blends. You can roll a song around in your mouth, turning over new flavors and strange tastes with each chew. They are like pita chips and cheescake, but musical. An aural alchemy. I will be buying their two albums as soon as I can. (I have yet to buy these albums as of 8-18-08, but I am broke and unemployed.)

The Fiery Furnaces were on next and I was excited to see them since I had missed them the last couple times they were in DC. They didn’t seem to really get into it until they played Blueberry Boat, but the crowd also seemed rather reserved until then, too. I liked seeing them but felt sorta blase about it because they looked so tired or bored. After they perked up, the music felt a lot more vibrant. I suppose you can’t blame people for being tired, everyone has off days I guess.

Super Furry Animals were a complete unknown to me until Uncanny Canadian instructed me to see this show no matter the cost. They were amazing, awesome would be a completely appropriate description as I was was awed by their music. Live shows are almost always better for that certain something, even if the songs are played almost exactly the same way as they were recorded on the albums. You can let yourself get caught up in the performance and forget all that stuff that gets tacked on to a home listening, like that time you made out with some girl while listening to Wish You Were Here, or how you played Transmissions from the Satellite Heart to psych yourself up to ask out some person at a coffee house. If you have never heard the songs before you see them live, you will always have that experience to play in the back of your mind while you listen at home. I’m drifting but maybe you follow me. SFA blew me away. They played and seemed to really be having a blast, and that feeling transferred to the audience. I can’t tell you what songs they included in the set, but they were all amazing. I would recommend SFA to anyone. They sound like bottled joy. At one point, the lead brought out some sort of huge, red, Power Rangers-looking helmet and held the microphone up to a hole in the top right and sang though the helmet. It sounded like he was singing from the back of some cave, or with a helmet on his head. Uh. Anyway, I have some pictures of that on my phone:

Um, yeah, so…my pictures were so bad that they broke the bloggio.  We’ll have to wait a minute or two for those.

The blob on the left is the singer.

That is the red helmet on the singer, the light blobs are his hands.

Since the last two music posts I have written went straight down the tubes, as these things are wont to do, I am not too worried about this post being read at all. It might have something to do with the new version of Wordpress, but after Repoohblic of Dogs was stricken with some mighty affliction I am not eager to switch to any new version of Wordpress. As I am not an administrator I know it isn’t my choice, either.

The Federal Reserve is a group of bands and musicians or musicians and bands. I am not really sure how many people are involved in this fantastic endeavor but there are eight bands and their relationships have been described to me as “kind of incestuous, really.” On the first Monday of the month, The Federal Reserve and many other local indie darlings/rockers/wannabes gather at Iota Club and Cafe for an evening of music. The atmosphere is relaxed and fun and seems more like a house party full of musicians. A guy may be up on the stage playing a slow rambling song about his horrible family with only a backing guitar at the start of the set and have a drummer, bass player and backing vocals by the end of a song. A lot of the music can be described as indie-americana, despite the cringiness of that term, but how else would you describe a sound created from a blend of bluegrass and rock without being country?

Last night, my ladyfriend and I arrived shortly before Anchorage started their set. Though not part of the collective, they are pretty good and I am looking forward to seeing them again. John Bustine came next and he started with an awesome song about people called “Tough Shit.” I didn’t catch the name of the last group of three guys but they^* The Moderate went on next and were also good. The guitar was more blues inspired. My ladyfriend and I had to take off because it was getting late and work ruins our fun rather consistently. The exhaustion I feel now is totally worth it.

I hesitated to write about this wonderful event because it has become one of the highlights of my month and feels almost like this little secret place I know that none of the cooler than thou indie bitches from my side of the river would dare go. I like being able to ask a musician a couple questions while I get a beer. I will freely admit that I am a complete wannabe and the closest I get to rocking is air guitar and the medium setting on Guitar Hero.

*I am a frigging doofus. I was reminded that these guys are The Moderate by the lovely ladyfriend and the band only had to say that like four times for me to totally space on it less than 24 hours later.

Ok, so I’ve been kind of out of the listening/buying music scene for the past couple months.  A lot of this is due to the fact that when I moved out to Wisconsin recently I didn’t bring my CD player with me due to space issues and its general sucktitude.

Without a CD player though, I find that my desire to buy music is greatly diminished.  It just sounds so much better when it’s coming uncompressed off a CD and going directly into the receiver.  Lately though, I’ve been kind of jonesing for some new music.  As I was browsing a Best Album of the Year at CHUD message boards that I came across the suggestion of Apartment - The Dreamer Evasive.

I headed over to their site to see if they had the album online for streaming and they totally do.  I’ve been listening to the thing as I try to get some work finished up tonight and I’m just really loving it.  It’s exactly what I was looking for and a great bunch of songs.  I highly recommend giving it a listen.  I think even Fulsome would like it (if he were still capable of typing … he tragically lost his fingers in a fingercuff mishap).

All Songs Considered has free downloads of a recent show at the Rock and Roll Hotel in DC by John Vanderslice and Bishop Allen.  If you’re into that sort of thing.

As I was completing the final leg of my journey in to work this morning, what should magically get chosen by those great KALX dj’s in the sky but Van Halen’s Panama. Ever in my mind since it’s appearance as SotD (ok, maybe not SotD, I can only find it referenced here but maybe somebody can correct me) not too long ago.

As it blared on the car stereo as I made my final approach to work, I felt like I was back in high school and cranked that radio up so everybody knew what kind of music I listen to and can be appropriately impressed. It is nice to have today marked off as a day that will be awesome. What can happen exactly to ruin today that won’t be counteracted by simply leaning back in my chair slightly and then jumping up and hearing those guitar licks race through my brain. Oh sweet, sweet guitar solos how you seduced us all so easily!

As a corollary to that, it has even made me feel slightly guilty for not going to the SF Air Guitar show last night. Not that Chuckles has begged, pleaded, cajoled, and commanded me to go in every way that he can manufacture. He is diligent and I respect that. Because perseverance is not something I always expect from him and so when he does that is usually a sign that there is some underlying quality that should be examined. Nevertheless, I blew it off for a dinner of delicious Chinese food (someday I will share the magical goodness of Hunan Smoked Pork but that will have to wait for teh l4m3 to show up!) and some good old fashioned pie-in-the-sky dream of how I will control the SF Music scene from my computer (bwahahaha). Oh, and then I went and saw the best junkyard blues band I have seen in SF (ok, maybe the only?), The Black Diamond Heavies (go here for an MP3 to saw your face off and they’ve got two songs at MySpace - one loud, one soft) totally blew me away. Hammond Organ and Drums and a growl to make Louie Armstrong swoon. I was wracked with indecision over whether to buy the album and came down on the side of cheap since I had just bought dinner for everyone apparently and gone to see the show.

The headliners, Or, the Whale, were decent. They have an alt-country sound but generally play upbeat songs that make me compare them to The New Pornographers for several reasons:

UPDATE: I need to more completely distance The New Pornographers from Or, The Whale. The New Pornographers are not really country at all while Or, The Whale employs banjos and accordians on occasion. However, I compare them with The New Pornographers for the reasons listed below.

1) Male lead sings/writes most songs
2) Secondary female lead that has a better voice
3) Six person band with one keyboard/multi-instrumentalist
4) Make infectious songs that have all the girls dancing

However, they don’t yet have the the overwhelming musicianship for the process to be effortless and have some musical depth. Their opening number was a nice balance of sounds and they let the female singer do one slightly more soulful song but the rest of their songs tended to sort of blur together in a lightly twangy, generally enjoyable sort of way.

Anyways, that was my night followed by a glorious morning and a day that is so beautiful I may have to play hooky for the afternoon. Rock on summertime! And somebody better fire up the grill!

On May 3rd, I gathered a stalwart crew and blazed a trail over to the Black Cat for the Onion’s DC Launch Party. The bill originally included Zach Galifianikis, (The Sounds of) Kaleidoscope, Georgie James and Neil Hamburger. Well, Zach cancelled and Aziz Ansari was brought in for our funny time.

The evening started at the Brickskeller where I ate a fine sandwich, a Lindemans Framboise and three Leinenkugels Berry Weiss and was thoroughly ready to enjoy a fine blend of comedy and music. We few, we happy few, marched over and got in line. The line moved relatively quickly and the weather was grand.

The Black Cat does not have a lot of chairs and standing for a four to five hour show sucks, so we grabbed a table at the back. The Onion staff had tossed swag around the tables, buttons, bracelets and copies of that week’s Onion. We all grabbed some buttons and a bracelet or two and read the fake news while we waited for (The Sounds of) Kaleidoscope to start the show.

The first sign of trouble was the Onion editor, Whatsisface, who came out to announce the band and the say hello. He was either terrified or bored out of his skull. He announced the band and shuffled off the stage. (The Sounds of) Kaleidoscope were a band that I think fulsome would label a wall-of-sound band. It might be their thing, but I would have preferred a band that mixed their sound to the point that it wasn’t all a barely coherent mashing of noise with some added yelling. If this was their ideal sound, then I have to say they kick ass at it. If not, then they should beat the sound guy.* They played for a while and we continued to read the Onion and look around at the crowd of people that all seemed intent on not paying attention to the band.

After a twenty minute or so intermission, Aziz Ansari came strolling out onto the stage and immediately started talking about how the drinks were a lot stronger than he expected. This was not a good sign. Neither was the fact that the crowd refused to shut up and pay attention to him. The crowd noise kept getting louder and eventually Aziz was shouting into his microphone to hear himself. Aziz’s jokes were clearly suffering from the drink and the crowd, so it was hard to judge his set on its humor quotient. The jokes fell into three categories: I’m famous now, I have a TV show on MTV, I hate MTV. He had three bits that really could have been funny if his timing hadn’t been ruined by the unexpectedly strong drink and the fucking annoying crowd. His first bit railed against the MTV reality shows and what we could hear of it was pretty funny. His bit about being recognized on the street thanks to his new show and then realizing that half of the people were trying to tell him his fly was open might have been funny. He had a rambling screed against censorship because he wasn’t allowed to make a joke about a dinosaur rapist, but this was really hard to hear and was followed by a series of jokes about some kid on his show, but I have no idea what the point was. The crowd acted like he was an inconvenience in their overly-cool lives. “Hey, it’s only six dollars to go drink upstairs at the Black Cat and look cool while I text my friends about how cool I am!” Fucking yipsters.

Aziz then played a couple of clips from Human Giant, but I couldn’t hear any of the audio and there were some problems with the projector. I admit that by this time I had given up on him which isn’t exactly fair, but it is what it is. Some of my crew had ventured forward to get close enough to hear him, but they reported that it was worse up front because the yelled conversations were much louder closer to the stage.

After a forty minute intermission, Georgie James finally came on to lead us to aural salvation. I first heard of them when they opened for Camera Obscura in July 2006. I liked them and thought that the singer looked remarkably similar to Anna Faris. While, after the sucky experience with Aziz Ansari, I still liked GJ and she still looked like Anna Faris. I got closer and the crowd finally shut up. I was still annoyed about the last three hours of let downs, but stayed long enough to hear four or five of Georgie James songs. It was now after midnight and Neil Hamburger had been scheduled to come on at 11:15. I knew I was going to cab it back home but wasn’t thrilled with the idea of staying for the entire show. A friend offered me a ride home and I accepted.

The music was fine and at least the tickets were only six bucks. If I were Aziz, I doubt I would be willing to do another show at the Black Cat, or even the rest of DC.

(The Sounds of) Kaleidoscope’s myspace page

Georgie James’ myspace page

All of the photos used in this post belong to Liz Gorman, as far as I know.   If she or the Wonkette people don’t like this, I’ll take them off.

*Actually, just have some words with the sound guy/gal, they have enough to worry about without adding the threat of physical violence to their list of anxieties.

Better late than never, I hope. Allow me to review a show I attended last week (02.20.07) : Grizzly Bear, Papercuts, and Foreign Born.

Foreign Born are out of LA and it was hard not to be continuously aware of it. They had a decent sound but it was amazingly produced for the first band. They sounded somewhat like The Killers or, as I put it, a wussier Arcade Fire. (side note: I am now informed that the new Arcade Fire may be edging perilously closer to sounding like The Killers) At any rate they were decent but did not strike me as being terribly memorable. None of their songs managed to pull me in and the relatively constant tempo would dull my awareness of them. By far their best song was the last one where they doubled the number of people on stage and added more percussion and a small harp.
Final evaluation: I would not pay to see them but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear them on Live 105.

Papercuts are a San Francisco product. They were recently written up by the SF Weekly in a solid review and I agree with its sentiments overall. If you have to use one made up musical adjective to describe them it would be that they are Dylan-esque. The lead singer seems to playing to his own musical vision; whenever he is not singing he turns away from the audience to immerse himself in the sound. The other aspect that I found very interesting is that I thought the music had an almost “raspy” quality to it that I thought came from the keyboards more than the vocals. Papercuts are definitely a band that is doing its own thing and doing it well.
Final Evaluation: I would probably not pay to see them – but purely for stylistic reasons.

Grizzly Bear are from Brooklyn. They were the headliners for the show and play much smoother style of rock’n’roll. The lead singer has a very melodic voice for indie rock and uses it well. They alternated from these almost ‘drone’ pieces to songs that were a little more up-tempo. I definitely liked the up-tempo ones better and, I confess, almost fell asleep through part of the final sequence that they had. They had a pretty low-key drummer for most of their songs and I thought that was one of the more usual components for a lot of their songs. It is nice, and a little challenging, to get out there without the constant thud of the bass drum and it definitely helped bring out their unique timbre. I hadn’t really heard much of their stuff previously and I think I would be curious to do it again now that I am a more informed listener.

Final evaluation: I would pay to see them again ($8) but not enough based on their current popularity.

Back to the music. San Francisco’s premiere indie rock music festival kicks off. I’m actually hoping to attend three shows there: John Vanderslice, Roky Erickson, and The Ponys.

NoisePop has a plethora of excellent bands. It is March Madness for music. Look at these choices:

02.28.07 Sebadoh vs. John Vanderslice vs. Hella — No holds barred cage match
03.01.07 Roky Erickson vs. French Kicks this one’s probably a blowout
03.02.07 The Donnas vs. The Dandy Warhols vs. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists vs. Autolux — the matchup we’ve been waiting for
03.03.07 The Ponys vs. Brightblack Morning Light vs. Clinic + Earlimart — a round robin extraordinare!

Vote for your own! Ridicule my choices. Tell me why the Sonic Youth documentary will suck.

Sorry to have another post about consumer electronics but besides the occasional task at work and the playing of video games (should I pay $4.99 to play Qbert in 720p?) much of my life is spent abusing the collection of power and time-sucking gadgets I now possess.

As I mentioned earlier, one of these is the newly acquired PS3. While I’m pretty happy with the purchase (although I wish my Amazon.com gift certificates would come so I could order an extra controller and Resistance: Fall of Man), one thing I thought I’d be able to take advantage of was the sweet SACD capability of the PS3.

So this weekend, I was at Best Buy and was looking for a cheap Blu-ray movie I could buy (I didn’t find one–although I will probably just buy Casino Royale when it comes out in 2 weeks) I decided to browse the CD’s.

I’ve been trying to catch up on older CD’s and movies that I haven’t seen or heard so when I noticed as I was browsing that there were a number of Kinks CD’s that were remastered in SACD/CD hybrid format I decided I’d pick one up to try out the SACD capability of the PS3 and hopefully continue my education on some of the musical acts that have helped define current rock (Fall Out Boy had to come from somewhere, right?).

Anyway, so I get home and put it in the machine and as usually happens I see a CD listed under the music menu on the Cross Media Bar (XMB). This time however, there’s also one labeled as a Super Audio CD. I pick that one (which is inexplicably 20+ seconds longer than the regular CD tracks) and click play. It then proceeds to tell me that SACD’s can’t be output via the optical out cable that I’m currently getting sound on the PS3 from.

Apparently SACD’s are all encrypted and since optical audio is unencrypted, they don’t want people just ripping the bitstreams. So, the only option that is presented is to output the audio via the analog red/white stereo plugs or via the HDMI port. Since I don’t have a tuner that accepts HDMI, I can’t really listen to this. I guess I should have really looked into the whole SACD thing a little bit more before I dropped $12 on a disc.

I did try to hook it up via the analog out on my PS3 but my cheap PC surround system I have is not of high enough quality that playing the SACD via analog sounds any better than the regular CD via optical.

Eventually though (perhaps when one is actually released), an HDMI 1.3 enabled tuner will go on the list of things that I need to buy when all that cash from the WRN IPO starts rolling in (although it’s really more likely that we’d just get acquired by someone looking to bolster their nerd-related offerings).

Mute Socialite

Mute Socialite were the opening act for Death Jazz! night. They were loud and fast throughout their set. Their little kicker was the drummer laid out a guitar flat and he would utilize it as another percussion or bass line. It was a little off-putting at first because it could sound slightly screechy but when it clicked with the bass lines it added a nice effect to the song.

The lead drummer would bang everything in sight while the second drummer keyed in to his lead and reinforced the rhythm. The bass player and guitar merely wove benign soundscapes and I really wish they were a little more aggressive with their contributions. Additionally, Mute Socialite are still apparently searching for a vocalist/additional instrumentalist and I think that will have a very interesting impact on the band’s sound. If they add a trumpeter, as mentioned on their myspace page, I think their sound might get an interesting twist. I was not surprised the drummer put on a black, slightly puffy coat with an orange lining after the show. I associate those jackets with the ‘80s California punk scene and he is, in my unsubstantiated position, approaching the music from this direction. This is not to say that their sound is very punk-like, however, because they their sound is definitely fused with a lot of psychedelic ideas as well as some more angular sounds.

Overall, I liked the second half of their set better than the first. They played the first few songs without their 4^th member, a second drummer (and pianist for one song), to the lineup and I thought it really settled them down. Their band leader is the primary drummer and it is definitely “his” sound. When he didn’t have to worry about setting the rhythm their sound was able to flow a little more freely. My single biggest critique has to be the difference between the sounds the drummer is putting out and the backing from the rest of the band. Some of it is appearance but I consistently felt like he was playing twice as hard as any other member.

Go-Go Fightmaster

I got excited when Go-Go Fightmaster brought their instruments onstage and the wind player unfurled his selections: soprano sax, tenor sax, baritone sax. They had a much more traditional jazz vision. They started out playing songs that sounded a lot more like a jazz standard and then the sax player would freak out and the rest of the bans would try to follow him into more avant-garde territory.

Go-Go Fightmaster’s technique was reasonably successful. The saxophonist was quite good and the bass player was generally there with him. The guitar player looked superfluous for several of the songs and the drummer was not terribly memorable which means he was, at the least, quite competent. From their banter and description, I don’t think they play together very often. The first few songs were slightly ragged and the musicians sometimes looked surprised. Once they got comfortable, those problems disappeared.

Overall, it was a decent middle act. I’m not convinced Go-Go Fightmaster is a full-time project and I don’t think the band is either. They have a good sound but their set is very self-similar to my untrained ear. I wouldn’t rush out to see them again but I think they are a serviceable opening set

miRthkon

miRthkon were the headliners for the evening and the band that made the phrase “death jazz” mean something other than a New Orleans funeral procession. They are composed of: lead guitar, rhythm guitar/frontman, drummer, bass guitar, alto saxophone, and bass clarinet/alto saxophone. This band is a heavy metal bands that added some saxophone and bass clarinet backing members. I didn’t hear a lot of jazz; the guitar player was doing solos but they were metal solos. I can imagine them fitting in to the new “hipster metal” pantheon and perhaps it is only a matter of time until Pitchfork falls in love with them.

Allow me to paint a completely false explanation of miRthkon’s existence: In high school/college, a group of friends want to start a band. The problem is that one friend who wanted to be the band but all he knows how to play is the saxophone. They talk about all the options but as soon as they start playing, it becomes apparent that they really want to be a death metal band. They don’t want to kick him out because he has the best drug connections but what kind of metal band has a saxophone? One that capitalizes it’s third letter, obviously. So that’s what they do and that’s why they sound that way.

I didn’t dislike them. The wind instruments make miRthkon fuller and slightly less dark than a “true metal” band. I actually had some flashbacks to The Voodoo Glow Skulls and The Urge, darker and louder ska bands from the ‘90s. However, miRthkon kept its focus on the metal sound. I don’t know that I would rush out to buy their album but I would go see them again (max ticket price $8).