When I was a little kid, I thought the United States was the greatest country in the world. And in 1976, it very well may have been.
I remember singing Yankee Doodle Dandy in a chorus line at my private elementary school during our end of the year pageant. Being that it was the United States’ bi-centennial celebration, the feeling in the air was quite magnanimous and fantastic. Parades made their way through the Southern Florida streets. In Boca Raton, the Florida town where I spent my first 7 years, many of my schoolmates parents worked at IBM, as did my father, so there was a sense of financial security and middle-class stability as it was still possible to achieve the American Dream.
My father was a hard-working high school valedictorian who ran out of money while attending junior college, yet he was still able to secure good jobs at Lockheed Martin, then later at International Business Machines (IBM). I was proud of my dad when I was a little kid…and I didn’t even really know why. I think I was able to figure out just by watching popular culture that there were not a plethora of African American men working as systems analysts at IBM. Even as a young tyke, I knew my dad was special. Likewise, I quickly picked up that my mother was one of the most gifted high school English teachers in the country.
Now – all these years later – while I think about my country and my president…I feel more pride than I felt in 1976.
And I find it interesting that none of the news cycle pundits are questioning why Congress is voting down party lines – for every vote – for the first time in its history.
If you could put a microphone in the Republican’s caucus meetings, I’m convinced you’d hear: “The Nigger gets none of our votes…not a one…not for anything.”
I can’t wait for that racist, homophobic, sexist baby boomer generation to finally die off.
“The music business is a scornful, mirthless lover hellbent on breaking most musicians’ hearts,” said a very wise sage. Actually that’s not true, I just made that sentence up, but I think it’s more often true that not.
No talent pop stars with beautiful smiles often rise to the top of the mediocrity heap while some of the greatest recorded works by the most artful musicians never see the light of day. My friends and their former band Dynamite Hack still watch their greatest creative work collect dust as an unreleased album. Likewise, my old band Schatzi’s sophomore album Snow Is for Saving Hearts remains unreleased, tied up in legal limbo. (The film industry has it’s own version of this scenario – something called “development hell,” or turnaround purgatory – when a project or a great script can never get beyond developmental talks and negotiations.)
That jaded experience aside, Jan and Dean’s lost album Carnival of Sound is an interesting piece of music history that is finally seeing some sunlight thanks to Rhino Records’ Handmade division.
If you enjoy California surf music from the 1960s, you’ll enjoy this creative curiosity that Jan Berry spent 3 years recording after his unfortunate car accident on Dead Man’s Curve, ironically the very same stretch of road that his band immortalized with their hit song of the same name years earlier.
I love the majority of art created during the fertile period between 1967-1969. And Jan and Dean’s lost tracks are no different. Poppy, whimsical and artfully mixed in mono, Carnival of Sound is a deserving legacy to two musician’s that caught a horrible break during the height of their career.
As distribution becomes more and more available to the masses, albums like Carnival of Sound will hopefully find the appreciative niche audiences that they deserve.
The first time I’d heard of Owl City was when I checked the Emo’s show listing in the back of the printed edition of the Austin Chronicle and their show at Emo’s was sold-out about three months in advance. Out of 50 upcoming road shows, the Owl City show was the only one sold-out. I immediately went to their MySpace page (normal early 21st century protocol) and diligently listened. I had to know: “What’s the deal?” Why were they special?
Part-time Austinite Alan Palomo is Neon Indian (with a little help from his friends).
Within 10 seconds of hearing their music I discovered that they were one of those bands that would have never gotten exposure even ten years ago, before the days of MySpace and Facebook, back when radio, a killer live show and an A&R guy dictated what records got recorded.
Owl City is one guy…creating music on his computer…in his bedroom. Owl City is just a kid that spent way too much time listening to the Postal Service; Owl City’s music is like vanilla tasting vanilla ice cream. Their tracks have the gloss of a $100,000 studio, yet its just ultimately…a guy making pop music for the masses out of his bedroom.
Granted, musicians have always recorded masterpieces in their bedroom or rehearsal space, but prior to a few years ago those musicians never had a world-wide distribution network which costs pennies on the dollar. They never had blogs and social networks to spread the buzz. In fact, a great mixtape was lucky to make regional impact.
Now that technology has evened the playing field for recording and distributing music, the bedroom Beethoven can now find his/her niche audience. And his/her niche audience can become such passionate proselytizers that their feverish fandom becomes contagious.
During the music businesses’ old business model (selling CDs), the artists never made money on albums unless they were moving several hundred thousand. The companies had the machine rigged that way (See Steve Albini’s treatise, “Why Some of Your Friends Are This Fucked”).
While Owl City’s music these days exudes a hi-fi gloss, Austin’s latest bedroom maestro Neon Indian (a.k.a. Alan Palomo) possesses a novice, lo-fi charm. Earnest in its cheekiness, the Neon Indian listener feels like they could play in the band. It’s accessible while being arty. It’s the perfect mix of low art and high art pastiched into pop art and pop music.
Neon Indian list their location as Brookyln (cq)/Austin on MySpace. The hipsters of the world with too much money are moving back and forth these days (and occasionally to Portland and San Francisco). This artistic collision between Brooklyn and Austin was inevitable sealed with a miss as soon as Brit Daniel remixed Interpol several years back.
Prior to that, many hipster musician discovered Daniel Johnston through Kurt Cobain, although they likely won’t admit it now.
Every now and again a musician bubbles up from the underground scene in Austin and becomes the flavor of the month in taste-maker circles the world over. Ghostland Observatory took Bob Schneider’s formula for success (self released product + killer live show x ass shaking = exponential word of mouth fame) and moved the happening from the frat party to the dance party, complete with smoke and laser lights.
Now Austin has birthed another musician that combines dance music with a dreamy visual special effects show creating pastiche remix pop art with the insider-meets-outlier feel of someone like Andy Warhol or Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Neon Indian tastes like psychedelic candy mixed with late-night discussions about why every moment in the present is the most important moment in the universe. We live in the moment that will simultaneously decide our broken past and our translucent future. Can you dig it? Let me know what you think about the current Brooklyn-Austin collabo…
Grizzly Bear: “Cheerleader (Neon Indian ‘Sega Genesis P-Orridge’ Remix)”:
Grizzly Bear: “Cheerleader (Neon Indian ‘Studio 6669′ Remix)”:
Friday, November 27, Neon Indian will headline the kickoff show for a new series sponsored by Austin transplants WOXY.com. Click here for tickets.
One of the BlackSwanSongs’s contributors received a byline on http://brooklynvegan.com for an excerpt of the report below combined with the photos above.
Jay Z appeared very comfortable playing the role of the gracious “king of hip-hop.” Memphis Bleek dropped counterpoint rhymes, providing hardscrabble verbal interplay without the silliness of a sideman like Flavor Flav. I was a casual Jay Z fan going into the show (I bought a “Hard Knock Life” mix tape and have downloaded a couple of other records), but by the end of the show I had been become a hardcore Jay Z fan for life.
The show highlights were too numerous to list here, but they included the rock and bass bombast of “99 Problems,” the audience’s deafening call and response during “Jigga What, Jigga Who” and the booming, thuggish, palpitation-inducing low-end produced by his 10-piece band during “Dirt” and “Big Pimpin’.”
And when Jay Z wasn’t showing us Texans how his crew goes hard in Brooklyn, he spoke from the heart during his between song banter. “I know it sounds cliche, but don’t let any haters block your dream,” Hova said earnestly during one of the final breaks. Another one of the show’s more intimate moments came when he brought up vocalist Bridget Kelly for two songs. After her inspired assist on “Empire State of Mind,” Jigga Man smiled his biggest smile of the evening and said, “Damn…she put something extra on it for Texas…she put some extra bar-b-que sauce on it for Texas!”
Before Jay Z’s final curtain call, he took a break to turn on the house lights and point out individuals in all areas of the basketball arena, personalizing the show and reducing the scale as he talk to individuals, calling them out by their attire, homemades signs, dancing skills, etc.
The set list below is word-for-word identical to the setlist at the front of the stage (which I photographed). I’ve left their abbreviations and notes in tact.
SETLIST: RUN THIS TOWN
D.O.A.
Takeover
U Don’t Know
99 Problems
Show Me What You Got
Give It To Me
Diamonds
Jigga
Izzo
Jigga What
P.S.A.
Heart of City (live)
Already Home (last verse Acapella)
Empire State of Mind
A Star Is Born
So Ambitious
Dirt
—–break—–
Thank You
(PLAYBACK SET)
Big Pimpin’
Hardknock Life
Encore
Forever Young
Some nice person was generous enough to post their high definition video of Thom Yorke’s new (and still unnamed) band during their live debut Saturday night at the Echoplex in Los Angeles.
The band definitely qualifies as a supergroup: Yorke in front on vocals, Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Beck/R.E.M. drummer Joey Waronker, percussionist/multi-instrumentalist Mauro Refosco, and Flea on bass.
Check this video out! And don’t forget to blow it up to full screen. Or better still, cable it to your 1080 p television and check it out super large. The sound is decent and the HD digital video maintains so much quality that the bigger it gets, the more you feel like you are actually at the show…a strange effect of the HD video combined with the location in the room where the videographer is standing.
Last night I attended one of the best show’s I’ve seen in a long, long time. I have a copy of the Bon Iver record “For Emma, Forever Ago,” and I knew that the show would be good, but I didn’t expect it to be one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.
There is something about vocalist Justin Vernon’s voice and songs that I identify with wholeheartedly. Knowing his story – how he wrote and recorded the album in isolation, hibernating away in upstate Wisconsin after breaking up with his girlfriend and his previous band – allows the songs to resonate in your soul that much more deeply.
Bon Iver — a.k.a. indie-folk musician Justin Vernon and band — turned in one of the most memorable performances from the entire ACL Festival weekend Sunday evening at a sold-out show at the Paramount Theatre.
The band’s final performance before their tour-ending Wisconsin homecoming show couldn’t have been scripted better. The sold-out audience was hyped, fueled by adrenaline, alcohol (and who knows what else) after three days of music, sun and rain. The Paramount Theatre’s acoustics sounded as if they had been fine-tuned especially for Vernon’s booming falsetto. The show was also the final night of Bon Iver’s tour with opening band Megafaun (a freak-folk group of stunning power featuring members of Vernon’s previous band DeYarmond Edison).
Vernon was very gracious the entire evening, whether he was calling up an old friend to start the show by reciting a poem, or whether repeatedly thanking the audience for taking part in an evening that was seemingly a poignant apex in his life.
“I can’t express enough gratitude for y’all showing up to fill this beautiful theater,” Vernon said.
Bon Iver began the show with the first three songs from debut album “For Emma, Forever Ago” played in sequence, a comforting start for those familiar with what’s turned out to be one of the strongest debuts of the decade. The band’s emphasis on tone and harmony was obvious from the detail in the arrangements of their four-part vocal harmonies to the intricacies of their instrumentation. On “Skinny Love,” bassist Matthew McCaughan and guitarist Michael Noyce both played drums, adding a primal, inescapable beat accompaniment. On other songs McCaughan simultaneously played bass and a kickdrum with his foot while drummer Sean Carey played a small electronic keyboard.
As strong as the songs on “For Emma, Forever Ago” are, the band’s tireless touring for the past two years has developed them into an impassioned unit. Whereas some artists become detached from songs after performing them again and again, Vernon slipped into the songs like an old comfortable vintage sweater, filling them out with his passionate voice. The crooks and crannies of each song were not dusty and dark, but were places where Vernon’s bright voice illuminated, revealing the artistry of his song craft.
Just past the set’s mid-point, Vernon played an unexpected, rousing cover of the Outfield’s “Your Love,” inciting screams and laughter from the audience. Vernon pulled back the rhythm and created a bouncing groove, emphasizing a backbeat pocket that doesn’t exist in the original song.
An ethereal and sublime version of “re: Stacks” followed where Vernon played solo for the first time of the evening. The instrumentation stripped away to just his voice and guitar emphasized the power of the lyric and Vernon’s immense songwriting talent, recalling everything that was inspiring in Nick Drake’s music while being wholly original.
Bon Iver closed the night with a two-song encore. The first was the elegiac “For Emma,” then he brought Megafaun and various friends up on stage to cover Megafaun’s “Worried Mind” (In the video above, you can see a version of the two bands performing “Worried Mind” in San Francisco a few days earlier). The group of musicians huddled along the edge of the proscenium and used only the theater’s acoustics as amplification, Asylum Street Spankers style. After a few verses, they called on the audience to sing-along to the chorus, a cathartic “Come ease your mind, come on ease your worried mind.” The collaboration received a standing ovation (as did the first set and Megafaun’s brilliant opening set), proving that sometimes the most powerful performances at a music festival are not merely the loudest and largest.
Setlist
Flume
Lump Sum
Skinny Love
Brackett, WI
Blood Bank
Beach Baby
Josie
Creature Fear
re: Stacks
The Wolves (Act I and II)
Saturday evening – just two nights ago – I had the pleasure of attending a sold-out Grizzly Bear and Beach House show at Emo’s. I only caught the last Beach House song…and I’m glad because what I saw of their last song did not sound very good.
I like the Beach House mp3s I’ve heard, but whoa, was the bit I heard of their live show shaky.
Now Grizzly Bear on the other hand, were really amazing. I’m not surprised Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood called them his favorite band.
I wrote a review of their show which was published in the Austin American-Statesman here.
The five gentlemen from Oxfordshire, England have done it to me again. While In Rainbows continues to climb my all-time favorite albums ladder, I heard “House of Cards” this evening and tapped into the subtext of the lyrics at exactly the prefect time. I felt like Mr. Thom Yorke had penned the lyrics exactly for me. I researched the video and was reminded that in lieu of traditional cameras, the video’s director “shot” with lidar technology which detects the proximity of objects from a sensor and yields a grainy, grid-like appearance.
Turns out the technology is not proprietary; the data used to make the video was released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license and is available at Google Code.
While the story of the lyrics echoes a scene from the masterful Ang Lee film THE ICE STORM, I keyed into the initial couplet:
I don’t want to be your friend.
I just want to be your lover.
And then I got wrapped up in the next:
No matter how it ends.
No matter how it starts.
Luckilybefore I got too depressed thinking about lost love, I started thinking about M-theory string theory. I watched a documentary on the Science Channel that explained M-theory in layman’s terms. It worked out to be a much needed distraction for my brain’s solipsistic nature.
Once they broached the eleventh dimension and parallel universes, I was sufficiently safe from entering a manic episode.
Radiohead's artwork for "These Are My Twisted Words"
Well either Radiohead never had anything planned for Wall of Ice or they did have something planned and now they are just really pissed off that the shark got jumped a little early…cause the wallofice.com page is no longer linking to their W.A.S.T.E. store.
But, in chummy Radiohead fashion, they’ve released a new single for all to download – complete with cool artwork – for free.
Vocalist Aaron Berhens and keyboardist Thomas Turner rock Trophy's.
I just uploaded some shots of Austin, TX electronica rockers Ghostland Observatory rocking Trophy’s Bar back in 2006 (back when they could still play small clubs in Austin. I’ll upload the definitive interview I did with them quite soon. As soon as possible. You can check out the other Ghostland photos in the blackswansongs flickr photostream here.
The interview was conducted over three different sessions. The first with both members after a show. Then the second and third parts were conducted with each member seperately. Behrens and Turner have such unique backgrounds that them at first seem like unlikely partners, but so many things had to align just perfectly that their collaboration feels more like fate during the telling of their story.
