Sep 152012
 

Return to Forever.

The other day I read a little interview in GQ with Bob Mould. Mould is an artist I’ve long tried and wanted to like in his various guises but never quite can. My interest in Mould starts with the strong sense that he’s a good egg and a real music lover. In the 5 minutes I spoke to him about favorite punk records of our youth after a Husker Du show years ago, he was a good egg. I actually passed out for a second, leaning against the stage during his show. My friend—a close, personal friend and Townsman who shall not go named—and I were wasted on an experimental combo of canned vanilla weight loss shakes and vodka. It was a tasty combination, but not one worth revisiting. I liked Husker Du that night as much as I could have imagined. I especially liked the vibe they gave off. It was like watching some local bands in our scene at the time, good eggs onstage and off, each with a couple of really good songs and fun people watching them from the floor to occupy my time during the boring numbers. Although seeing Husker Du live helped me like them more than my experiences skipping over 10 songs on each album for the 2 good ones, the combination of Mould’s horrible open-chords on a distorted Flying V tone and his bellowing Gordon Lightfoot-style singing voice were limiting factors in my long-term enjoyment.

The hardest trick to pull off in rock and roll is the dreaded “return to form,” that abstract idea that a veteran artist can somehow, after a few decades, reclaim both the sound and the energy of their earlier work. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been told that a new Pearl Jam album is “their best album since [insert favorite old Pearl Jam album here].” I can’t tell you how excited I was when Metallica released Death Magnetic and it sounded way more like old Metallica than new Metallica. Being an artist is a real bitch because fans always want you to go backward. They want you to recapture a moment of discovery in their lives that can’t truly ever be recaptured. And you’re supposed to do all of it without sounding repetitive. No wonder so many musicians are prone to smashing their instruments. – Drew Magary, from his intro to the GQ interview.

A few years later I bought Mould’s first solo album, Woodshedding, or something like that. It featured energetic, acoustic guitar-driven songs with cellos and the backstory of Mould wanting to move forward and develop a meaningful, direct approach to songwriting like that of his new hero, Richard Thompson. Remember that time in the mid-’80s, when Thompson suddenly became a guiding light for slowly maturing punks looking for a way to move forward? I was one of those punks; I sought guidance from Thompson, buying almost all his works leading up to the stuff Mitchell Froom started producing once he earned his long-overdue critical acclaim. Mould’s Woodshop album was pretty good, more in tune with Thompson’s hardwood folk-rock albums prior to Froom’s addition of a cheapening polyurethane finish. With the crappy Flying V out of the picture, the lone stumbling block to my fully embracing that album was Mould’s voice. He still sounded like a punk rock Lightfoot to me.

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Sep 122012
 

Imagine, if you will, a series of short films documenting classic live albums. Directors would be commissioned to either assemble a concert film from archived or found footage or stage dramatic interpretations of the album. Each film would run the length of the live album’s original vinyl release.

You mission follows:

  • Suggest a live album for this treatment
  • Select an appropriate director
  • Imagine the visual style/storytelling technique for your film.

I’d like to see Paul Thomas Anderson direct a dramatic treatment of Lou Reed‘s Rock ‘n Roll Animal. It would be shot in grainy, washed-out color, somewhere between the porno look of Boogie Nights and the painterly oil drilling scenes from There Will Be Blood.

Staying with Lou Reed, I’d like to see The Velvet Underground‘s Live at Max’s Kansas City directed by Michel Gondry, who would find ways to make the most of the crumbling legacy of an already underground band as they plays what would be their farewell show. Song performances involving puppetry and primitive-futuristic technology would be expected.

The summer tentpole movies of this series would be KISS Alive I & II. I’ll leave it to fans of that band’s live albums to select the director(s) and sketch out the films’ treatments.

I’m sure you’ve got your own classic live album short films to produce.

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Sep 092012
 

OK, maybe not a dedication but an observation from our fellow townsman, hrrundivbakshi, who is in the UK. He texted me last night with this request:

I’m in the UK at an otherwise totally irritating massive rock festival. Despite my dire immediate artistic surroundings, I have to say my eyes have been opened by one band in particular. Since the internet is basically unavailable on the Isle of Wight, please post this two-sentence concert review:

Holy shit — New Order is amazing. Who knew?

Favor done, my friend.

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Aug 132012
 

I stink at math, but I am confident in my belief that John Doe‘s bass stance from this X performance meets the ideal angles (ie, crotch-to-feet triangle, feet-relative-to-shoulder width, etc) that all bassists should emulate. May I request that one of the Hall’s mathematicians calculate the angles that make up this ideal bass stance? I was really hoping that Letterman would ask Doe about his stance. This research will benefit other bassists in learning and adopting this proper bass stance? Thank you.

Previously.

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Aug 082012
 

Yesterday’s death of composer Marvin Hamlisch reminded me of one of the most annoying performances I’ve ever witnessed. Hamlisch, as you may have been reminded in reading about his life, adapted Scott Joplin‘s music for the fine Robert Redford-Paul Newman film The Sting. It wasn’t the memory of an annoying performance by Hamlisch or any other professional musician that has haunted me over the last 24 hours but a 2-hour performance of the song on the piano in our living room by a 7-year-old boy.

This was years ago. We had friends over for dinner. Our oldest son, who was also in first or second grade, had been taking piano lessons, Like any firstborn, he pleased his parents with painstaking renditions of the simplest 8-bar songs. He played something in the presence of our friends. They made the appropriate fuss over his performance. Then their son sat down to display his chops. This cherubic little boy banged out a perfect version of “The Entertainer.” We were dazzled and heaped on deserved praise. He played the song again, and we were delighted by his wind-up doll dedication. A few renditions later my ear-to-ear grin turned to horror. He kept playing “The Entertainer,” not pausing between takes, not varying his tempo or attack. It went on for a solid 2 hours as we tried to continue our dinner party. This became the most annoying performance I’d ever witnessed, topping (“bottoming?”) the self-indulgent preschooler behavior of Victoria Williams at a small club in Philadelphia in the mid-1990s and any other annoying concert I’ve seen since. More annoying than the time I saw New Order and the drummer did nothing but occasionally play a swishy hi-hat over programmed drum beats when he wasn’t up from his kit, literally standing directly behind the woman on keyboards with his arms wrapped around her front, placing her index fingers on the appropriate keys for the band’s simplistic keyboard parts.

To be fair, this young boy’s chops were astounding for such a tender age. To this day I’ve got nothing against this cool young man and son of great parents. However, 120 minutes of “The Entertainer” was 117 minutes too much of a good thing.

What’s the most annoying performance you’ve ever seen?

I look forward to your responses.

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Aug 052012
 


The Band — Circa 1995 — Free?

Street festivals, county fairs, ethnic celebrations…every weekend I scour local events calendars to see if there is anything remotely interesting to see around DC, especially for free. (Oh look, Weezer is playing a free show at a Microsoft store in Arlington, VA on Aug. 11th!)

Last summer, I saw The Bangles (who are still keeping it together) at a county fair. I’ve seen Al Green (fantastic), Joan Jett, Kansas (umm), Soul Asylum, Gin Blossoms, Etta James, Old 97s (at an Italian Fest in Chicago!) — some good, some bad.

But the most memorable free show was seeing the 1990s version of the Band at a Taste of DC festival…circa 1994 or so. They sounded great, Danko was there, and there they were playing in front of about 500 people at some side stage.

In the spirit of season, what’s the best show you’ve ever seen for free?

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