Category: Music

So last night Lisa and I went to see Lou Reed at the Moore Theatre. Amazing theater, almost 100 years old and (except for some peeling paint, and chairs that remind me of middle school) a perfect performance space.

Lou came out about 7:50 leading his band: Mike Rathke on second guitar, the amazing Fernando Saunders on bass, synth drums, and vocals, Jane Scarpantoni on cello (!), and Anthony on backing and lead vocals. (Much has been made, at least in Lou’s web stuff, about Anthony, Lou’s countertenor discovery, and I have to admit that for much of the show I wasn’t impressed. Of course, that could have been because he was blocked by the tower speaker on our side, and I couldn’t see him.

The opening of the show: Lou played three chords: E A G. The crowd went nuts. He paused, then repeated the progression, then stopped. “You know how hard it is to keep playing the same three chords all these years? Well, the secret is it’s actually four chords…” and he played it again: E A G Bm A. Then he launched into “Sweet Jane.” He had to stop again in a second though, and said, “Could you please not take flash pictures? Now I can’t see.” A few more chords and—“Look, I’m not kidding. I tried the nice way, don’t make me try the hard way. If I can’t see, I can’t read the Teleprompter!” Fortunately there were no further interruptions.

After that a brilliant turn on “Small Town,” reimagined as a sort of driving funk tune during which Mike Rathke played a synthed up guitar that sounded like a piano, and which Lou stopped towards the end to ask, “So out of curiosity: Seattle? Small town?” Some cheers. “Big town?” More cheers. “I dunno…” (making an equivocal shrug before playing the final notes). Then “Tell It To Your Heart,” with Antony and Fernando taking vocal duties on some of the verses. I don’t remember the rest of the set list order, but he played “Dirty Blvd,” “How Do You Think It Feels?,” “Vanishing Act,” “The Day John Kennedy Died,” “Ecstasy,” “Call on Me,” “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” and “Venus in Furs,” featuring an extended cello solo from Scarpantoni during which it sounded, particularly in some overtone passages, as though she was chasing away John Cale’s viola with a handful of rocks.

“All Tomorrow’s Parties” and the set’s penultimate number, “The Raven,” were punctuated by Lou’s tai chi master, Master Ren, performing exercises in the corner of the stage in a shiny red gi, which was a bit distracting. Lou’s take on “The Raven” was pretty straight except for a few four letter words, nothing like what I reported some fans imagined during his last Seattle performance.

And I skipped a tune: “Street Hassle,” which with both Scarpartoni and Fernando playing bowed lines, moved along like a brand new song rather than the dusty 25-year-old junkie street poem that it was. The last part, during which a young Bruce Springsteen mumbles something in a fake Southern accent on the record, was redone with traded shouts of “sha la la la la” over a rising extended vamp.

And who would have figured two songs from Berlin? “Men of Good Fortune” early in the set, “The Bed” later, which was bloodchillingly stark.

Missteps were few: I thought Fernando’s song “Reviens Chérie” was okay but out of place, and some of Antony’s vocal turns were forced.

And then “Set the Twilight Reeling,” which comes across on record as a quiet apologia for being an aging rock and roller that tries to become a loud roar, but here struggled to get out of gear, especially during Antony’s verses. (It’s difficult to hear a countertenor warble the line “As the drums beats he finds himself growing hard” without giggling.) But the crescendo at the end, egged on by Jane’s cello, driven higher by both guitars playing like they were possessed, was the key—I suddenly understood everything. Now I’ve forgotten it, of course, but for a second the whole year made sense.

We had to go at this point, the end of the set, since Lisa had a 5 am call this morning. Which means I probably missed the only chance I’ll ever have to see Lou play “Heroin” live. But since I’m grateful Lisa went at all, I can’t complain too much.

I won’t be around tonight; I’ll be hanging with Lou Reed. Blog amongst yourselves.

Later… Ooops. I’ll be waiting for the Man another day; forgot the concert was Sunday, not Saturday.

The best Elvis box set around is now (mostly) online at the iTunes Music Store. That would be Elvis Presley: The King of Rock‘n’Roll: The Complete 1950s Masters. It’s only available by the song, but there are some great tunes on that set that are only available there, as far as I know, such as a full disc of a live performance from the 50s.

I also have to confess that I have in the past bought two albums by Dread Zeppelin, the short-lived reggae Led Zep cover band fronted by an Elvis impersonator, whose octave-lower version of Robert Plant sounds uncannily like the real thing. Dread Zeppelin’s first album, including their Elvis-meets-Zep “Heartbreaker (at the End of Lonely Street), is available at the iTunes store.

And, to rectify my embarrassing admission of lack of taste, let me point out that eMusic has lots of early Sonic Youth rarities, including b-sides and live performances.

If you’re not into discovering mind shattering classical recordings you may want to skip this post.

Okay, now that everyone but my family has stopped reading: A few weeks ago I did something unusual—I bought a few CDs. Since the advent of online music purchases the physical article has seemed unnecessary, but what the hey, I was waiting for the Sears across the street to replace Lisa’s tires and I had nothing better to do. I listened to the Big Star disc and liked it a lot, but forgot about one of the others until yesterday, when I played it—and got crazy excited.

On the surface the disc is nothing special: an unfamiliar label budget two-disc set called “Music of the Gothic Era.” When I looked at the liner notes, though, I started realizing I had hit gold. The conductor, David Munrow, had revolutionized early music in the late 60s and the 70s by hiring top notch musicians, particularly vocalists, who were able to bring top performance quality to these ancient (in some cases 800 year old) works and make them sound like music to modern ears. And the group? Well, I had never heard of the Early Music Consort of London, but I had heard of some of the vocalists, among whom were David James, Rogers Covey-Crump, Paul Elliott, and John Potter. These are guys who were also in a little group called the Hilliard Ensemble—still one of the superstar groups of early music for their vocal performances which are so astounding they’re almost superhuman. And this recording has them before the Hilliard Ensemble took off, covering some of the same material for which the Hilliard Ensemble later became famous, under a director who had very different ideas about performance.

Very different. If this were a Hilliard Ensemble disc, it would probably have been recorded only with voices in accordance with modern understanding of medieval performance practices. Instead, in the pieces attributed to Léonin (the legendary founder of the Notre Dame school of sacred music, in which for the first time in documented history chant was augmented with harmony), the voices are accompanied by bells. In some of the anonymous fourteenth century motets (including a recording of “Alle, psallite cum luya,” which I sang as a Christmas processional—and sometime drinking song—with the Virginia Glee Club), a shawm and tabor are added. Other pieces have lute, fiddle, portative organ, and slide trumpet. But regardless of the amount of extra baggage added, the sound of the voices is still thrilling, bringing this ancient music alive.

Music of the Gothic Era stays my “Current Listening” today as I work my way through Disc 2. It’s definitely recommended—a two-disc overview of some of the most unusual and rewarding vocal music around.

I was surprised to see traffic from Jenny the Shifted Librarian this morning. She follows up my thoughts about the iTunes Music Store and eMusic, noting,

I’m fascinated that this surge of supply to meet the pent-up demand for quality, online music downloads is resulting in lists of “finds.” By that, I mean posts by people who can’t believe they found a place to legally download their favorite bands’ music. We’re posting lists that express our disbelief, and those posts are what I’d like to aggregate.

This could be huge—a searchable list of artists that is annotated with the online stores that carry their music. I wonder whether such a project would cause the hoary cry of “no deep linking” to rear its ugly head. Probably not, I think, as long as the download sites still make money. But IANAL.

And in the spirit of Jenny’s post about stuff she’s found at Rhapsody, here are some of my other finds from eMusic and the iTunes Store:

• eMusic
  • Red House Painters
  • the Pixies – just about everything save the recent compilations of b-sides and live tracks
  • Nick Cave – Nocturama
  • Miles Davis with Sonny Rollins – Dig
  • Mono
  • Mull Historical Society
• iTunes Music Store
  • Gil Scott-Heron, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and “Lady Day and John Coltrane”
  • Blur
  • Johnny Cash – Cash IV
  • Mark Eitzel – West
  • …and others I’ve already listed

A confession: I wasn’t an online music buyer until Apple’s iTunes Music Store came along. Too many of the stores seemed to offer music in proprietary formats which only proprietary clients could play. All seemed to have a crawlingly limited selection.

Of course, I realized after a week or so happily downloading stuff from the ’Store, the same is true of Apple’s offering. Proprietary format? Close—AAC appears to be supported by a very small constellation of players (fortunately including both iTunes and the iPod). And limited selection? Well, no Radiohead, Sigur Ros, or Beatles, and (at least for now) no indie labels. But, I decided, I was still having a good time with the service.

But what to do about all the indie music? As a loyal KEXP listener, I yearned for something beyond the major labels. Then Scott Rosenberg wrote about eMusic: “If your musical taste runs to obscurities anyway, this is one of the best bargains on the Net.” Encouraged, I gave it a try. And Scott was right: eMusic rocks. MP3 downloads, lots of indie labels, and (bonus) enormous swaths of the Fantasy back catalog, including Prestige and Riverside recordings (think Monk, 50s era Miles and Trane, and hundreds of other key jazz records). Over the last week (during my trial membership) I’ve downloaded the Pernice Brothers, Yo La Tengo, Kristin Hersh, Daniel Lanois’ latest (oh well, always at least one clinker), an EP of My Morning Jacket, and some oddities to round out old reconstructed mix tapes, like Peter Murphy. Plus the cover of “You and Your Sister” by This Mortal Coil with Kim and Kelley Deal on vocals.

So that unanticipated side effect? All of a sudden, after Apple’s breakthrough, buying music on line seems like the most natural thing in the world—regardless of who’s selling. I wouldn’t be surprised if eMusic and other online stores get a big lift over the next few months.

It’s true, and it’s in a magazine, Kung Fu magazine to be exact. Apparently Lou has been studying Tai Chi since the early 80s, and he’s hooked up with a pretty major league master, Ren Guangyi. It appears Master Ren may be touring with Lou this summer, which means I’ll get to see him in action when the show comes to Seattle. Should be pretty cool.

There are a few bands that surface over and over again in interviews with rock stars as serious influences on serious musicians. Others rattle the landscape even if they inhabit their own space, free of any imitators or hangers on. Usually they’re bands you’ve never heard, or even heard of. In the past I’ve been richly rewarded by seeking out some of these bands—like the Velvet Underground, Robert Johnson, Robert Cage, Gemma Hayes, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Gastr Del Sol, Dock Boggs, and others.

But I always put off listening to Big Star, despite hearing artists like REM, the Replacements, and the dBs claim them as touchstones. Why? No good reason, really, except that they were from the 70s (their song “In the Street” is the theme song of That 70s Show—in a cover version by Cheap Trick(!!)), and that one of their founding members was Alex Chilton, with whom I associated hundreds of bad a cappella covers of his classic song with the Box Tops, “The Letter.” But I kept wondering. Could they be as good as everyone said they were?

Nah. They were’t that good. They were better.

My first inkling of this was listening to “You and Your Sister,” a rare b-side by the co-founder of the band, Chris Bell (cut less than a year before his death in a car crash in 1977), on the most recent Oxford American Music Issue cd. The voice is haunting and high, the lyrics pained and honest (“Your sister says that I’m no good/I’d reassure her if I could/All I want to do/Is spend some time with you…friends fail every day…”), the melody gorgeous and simple. Okay, I thought, it’s time.

So I picked up Big Star’s first two albums, #1 Record and Radio City, on a single disc budget compilation. And fell in love. The first song, “Feel” has high strained vocals that uncannily recall 70s scream rock (think Cheap Trick, Led Zeppelin, or “Rock and Roll Coochie Coo”) coupled with a chorus that could have been on Pet Sounds. And then the instrumental break busts out an incredible brass line that reminds you that, yes, Big Star came from Memphis. (Most of the rest of the songs mercifully dispense with the scream rock vocals.) “In the Street,” while not as swaggering as the Cheap Trick cover version, is somehow more interesting in the places it goes, sounding a little Beach Boys and REM by turns. Other songs presage Uncle Tupelo and bring echoes of the Byrds. And those are just some of the songs from the first album; Radio City is even stronger. No wonder radio wasn’t ready for Big Star. It’s the sort of music that’s almost too good to share.

Getting some traffic from a new site (as in it’s new to me), No Rock and Roll Fun, who pointed to my February bit about the Charlatans UK. (Permalink on their site broken, I don’t know why I even bother since Blogspot never gets archives right, but it’s still on their front page.) The rest of the articles appear to be a mix of music links and scandalous gossip—excellent late Friday afternoon reading if things at the office get a bit slow. Which they won’t for me, as I get the afternoon off to do an early start on Memorial Day weekend.

I was in a meeting yesterday when someone said June Carter Cash had passed away. It’s like the departure of an elemental force as well as a touchstone back to the Carter Family and the long-lost roots of a distinctly American music. And an American love story. Who else but June could have brought Johnny back to the straight and narrow? Who else but June could have written “Ring of Fire”?

The New York Times has a moving obituary.

One last program for the year with the Cascadian Chorale, this one featuring Fauré’s Requiem and Copland’s In the Beginning. It’s fun to sing the Fauré, though I have to confess that, this being my fourth or fifth lifetime performance, I have to remind myself to stop and listen every now and then to appreciate the beauty.

The Copland is a different story. A rare piece for Copland, it’s written for a cappella choir and soprano solo and is more akin to his early avant garde works than later symphonies such as Appalachian Spring with their explicitly folk-tune based melodies. The piece is is no specific key or meter, but visits about twelve different tonalities throughout, all with hummable melodies and each yielding to the next in a slow chromatic rise of pitch throughout the piece until the final lines are sung in an ecstatic seventh above where the music started. The rhythms are propelled by the natural rhythms of the text, the first chapters of Genesis. The whole work is said to be one of the most challenging choral compositions of the twentieth century. I believe it. But it’s also one of the most beautiful.

Hope to see you all at the concert…

Last week, you could buy Radiohead’s OK Computer in the iTunes Music Store. Not this week. No comment, no notice.

Wonder if the leaking of Hail to the Thief to the web soured Thom and the boys on the whole music download thing? If so, I hope it’s a short term anger…

Also now absent: Sigur Ros. They had a headline in the Alternative section last week.

Update 9 May 9:12 am: See the expanded version of this post at Blogcritics.

Going from my own list of tracks I’m trying to replace from CDs that were sold during college at the end of each semester for gas money (true!), I found some gaps in the Apple Music Store’s 2000 songs. I haven’t gone back to figure out who owns the rights, but I have pinged the Music Store Management using their handy suggestion form.

Here’s the list:

• Peter Murphy: no tracks
• Jesus & Mary Chain: no tracks
• Jesus Jones: only their last album available
• Radiohead: only OK Computer

There were also some tracks I didn’t expect to find, namely:

• U2’s One single, including the fabulous “Lady With The Spinning Head”
• Bugs Bunny on Broadway, including the full soundtrack to “Long Haired Hare” (“L-L-L-Leopold!”)

And finally, some notes on pricing: No apparent discounts for albums; you can only buy some songs, notably those over 6 minutes, on albums (no downloading just the 38-minute version of “Sister Ray” from the Quine Tapes box set for you!).

Although Peter Murphy is not available on Apple’s iTunes Music Store, William Burroughs is. Dead City Radio and Spare Ass Annie. Track by track.

If you’ve never heard Michael Franti and the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprasy backing up Burroughs’ insane rants on the latter album, you at least owe it to yourself to spend the $0.99 to check out the title track.

Hey, anyone notice you can’t link to anything in the iTunes music store from the Web? Dumb, Apple.

Eric Olsen at Blogcritics reports on Wilco’s celebration of the one-year anniversary of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s release with the streaming audio release of an Australian EP featuring alternate versions of YHF material and new songs. Cool, if you can get through.

And if that isn’t enough, another BlogCritic reports that you can get all of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and some of Fight Test via stream here.