Tag Archives: rock

Champagne & Reefer: Rolling Stones Shine a Light

Posted on by

Rolling Stones Shine a Light movie poster

 

Mar­tin Scorsese’s long his­tory with musi­cal doc­u­men­taries and con­cert films includes work­ing as assis­tant direc­tor and edi­tor on Wood­stock (1970), direct­ing an account of The Band’s final con­cert as The Last Waltz (1978), exec­u­tive pro­duc­ing and design­ing the shots for Peter Gabriel’s con­cert film PoV (Point of View) (1987), direct­ing part of the mas­sive The Blues tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary series (2003), and craft­ing the defin­i­tive Bob Dylan and George Har­ri­son doc­u­men­taries No Direc­tion Home (2005) and Liv­ing in the Mate­r­ial World (2010).

Shine a Light is a lit­tle of all the above, but mostly just a straight­for­ward con­cert film fea­tur­ing the Rolling Stones in a ben­e­fit con­cert thrown at New York City’s Bea­con The­ater in 2006. The Stones are joined by spe­cial guests Christina Aguil­era, Jack White, and Buddy “Moth­er­fucker” Guy (watch the DVD bonus fea­tures for the enter­tain­ing story behind that moniker). It was orig­i­nally released in IMAX, and no doubt loses some­thing in trans­la­tion from 50-foot the­aters screens to small tele­vi­sions. U2 did them one up by releas­ing U23D in 3D IMAX the year before.

Martin Scorsese and The Rolling Stones in Shine a LightAre you sure you want to see these faces in 50-foot-high IMAX?

Like Gimme Shel­ter (1970), a doc­u­men­tary account of the fall­out fol­low­ing the killing of a fan at a Stones con­cert in Alta­mont, Shine a Light is some­times less than totally flat­ter­ing. Mick Jag­ger is seen to be so ruth­lessly single-minded that he will not deign to col­lab­o­rate with Scors­ese. Even when meet­ing no less than Bill Clin­ton, he only wants to talk about whether or not the light­ing will dis­tract from his per­for­mance. But to be fair, The Rolling Stones hit the big time long before either Scors­ese or Clin­ton, so per­haps Jagger’s van­ity may be par­tially excused. Let it not be said that the old codgers in the band don’t embrace new tech­nol­ogy; wit­ness as Jag­ger strikes clas­sic poses for fans in the front row to cap­ture on their mobiles.

Keith Richards and Buddy Guy in The Rolling Stones Shine a LightKeef jams with Buddy “Moth­er­fucker” Guy

Scors­ese is famously a fan, uti­liz­ing Rolling Stones tunes in his sound­tracks so often that Jag­ger now jokes that “Shine a Light was the only film of his not to fea­ture the song Gimme Shel­ter.” I like The Stones well enough, but I’m not a huge fan. Here’s what a sim­i­larly casual lis­tener might learn of them based on Shine a Light:

  • Char­lie Watts, also a suc­cess­ful artist and jazz drum­mer out­side of the Stones machine, comes across as quite dis­tracted, almost to the extent of appear­ing senile (or maybe even more drug-addled than Keith Richards). He behaves the same in vin­tage inter­views scat­tered through­out Shine a Light, so per­haps it’s just his nat­ural demeanor. But there’s no doubt he can still rock his stripped-down drum kit.
  • Mick Jag­ger still has the body of a pre­teen girl, albeit one with impres­sively ripped arms.
  • Every­body knows the leg­endary Keith Richards has abused his body to such an extent that he has no busi­ness still walk­ing this earth. He jokes in the film that he must come from hardy stock, but maybe he is in fact already dead, see­ing as how he barely notices a kiss from Christina Aguil­era. He still has chops, though, beyond going through the highly rehearsed motions of a typ­i­cal Stones spec­ta­cle. In a telling moment, the cam­era catches him alone, play­ing some moody blues licks to him­self as the rest of the band hobnobs.
  • Ron­nie Wood comes across the best, remind­ing fans that although Keith Richards may have co-written many of the most pop­u­lar and endur­ing rock songs of all time, he’s the one that plays all the solos.

Scors­ese includes him­self as a char­ac­ter in his own film, appear­ing at least twice in a char­ac­ter­is­tic track­ing shot that caps the film: fol­low­ing the Stones off­stage and out of the the­ater, and fly­ing up into the night sky over New York. The world will have to wait for Scorsese’s true doc­u­men­tary on the Stones to equal No Direc­tion Home and Liv­ing in the Mate­r­ial World as a true fan’s deep look into some of the world’s most inter­est­ing celebrities.

Offi­cial movie site: www.shinealightmovie.com/

But the Blu-ray or DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

A Tall Tale: Taking Woodstock

Posted on by

Taking Woodstock movie poster

 

Ang Lee’s Tak­ing Wood­stock is based on Elliot Tiber’s mem­oir Tak­ing Wood­stock: A True Story of a Riot, a Con­cert, and a Life, that pur­ports to be the untold story of how the Wood­stock music fes­ti­val came to Bethel, NY, in August 1969. Tiber claims he was the cru­cial go-between that intro­duced the festival’s orga­niz­ers to Max Yas­gur, owner of the farm that became the site of the famous three days of music, peace, love, mud, brown acid, and traf­fic jams.

Even if only a por­tion of Elliot’s tall tale is true, it’s incred­i­ble that it has not been dra­ma­tized before now. In his ver­sion of events, an ordi­nary, meek kid becomes the acci­den­tal mid­wife of one of the biggest cul­tural events in mod­ern his­tory. Mix in most of the hot-button issues of the time — the hip­pie vs. square cul­ture clash, gay awak­en­ing, anti-semitism, the mafia, and fall­out from the Korean and Viet­nam Wars — and you end up with what should have been a richly defin­i­tive movie deal­ing with the era.

Demetri Martin and Paul Dano in Taking WoodstockTrip­ping the light fan­tas­tic in the magic bus

That Tiber’s account of the fes­ti­val is vig­or­ously dis­puted by almost every­one involved (and sober enough to recall events now) is beside the point. The story is a good one, but the film never seems to cap­ture the joy, anx­i­ety, or excite­ment of the moment. So what if it isn’t true? We already have a sup­pos­edly objec­tive doc­u­men­tary on the fes­ti­val (but more on that below).

The biggest prob­lem is Demetri Mar­tin, who despite his suc­cess as a come­dian and con­trib­u­tor to The Daily Show, pos­sesses approx­i­mately as much star charisma as a plank. To be fair, his char­ac­ter is writ­ten to be repressed and buttoned-up, but the kid remains bor­ing even after what ought to have been a trans­for­ma­tive num­ber of enlight­en­ing expe­ri­ences, includ­ing his first gay kiss, first acid trip, and betrayal by his mother. Emile Hirsch appears in a small role as a psy­cho­log­i­cally scarred vet, and clearly would have been bet­ter in the lead role. Even Elliot’s par­ents are both more com­pelling char­ac­ters than he. His father’s (Henry Good­man) inter­ac­tions with the bur­geon­ing coun­ter­cul­ture awaken him from the vir­tual coma his life had become, and his mother (Imelda Staunton) is a self-destructive hoarder, which the film links to Holo­caust survivor’s guilt.

Demetri Martin and Liev Schreiber in Taking WoodstockThat’s a man, baby!

Lee’s visu­als are fairly straight­for­ward, mak­ing it rather jar­ring when split-screen sequences visu­ally allude to Michael Wedleigh’s doc­u­men­tary Wood­stock (1970). Tak­ing Wood­stock sup­ports Wedleigh’s the­sis that the mostly harm­less hip­pies that sought a week­end of peace and music instead found hos­tile locals and a com­bat­ive, con­de­scend­ing press. But other moments in Tak­ing Wood­stock serve to under­cut the orig­i­nal doc­u­men­tary, such as when Wedleigh is seen coach­ing a trio of nuns to flash the peace sign. If that iconic image was staged, what else might have been false or exag­ger­ated? Tak­ing Wood­stock may be a tall tale, but it also makes clear that Wedleigh’s film isn’t nec­es­sar­ily reli­able either.

Tak­ing Wood­stock ends with orga­nizer Michael Lang (Jonathan Groff) about to mount another free con­cert fea­tur­ing the Rolling Stones. The Wood­stock fes­ti­val may have been chaotic, but it was suc­cess­ful inso­far that it proved peo­ple could gather in mas­sive num­bers and cel­e­brate pos­i­tively and peace­fully. Lang is ener­gized by what he achieved, but the mood is not so opti­mistic for those of us that know how it all turned out. The chaos and mur­der of the Alta­mount débâ­cle that marked the end of the Sum­mer of Love would be doc­u­mented by The Maysles Broth­ers in Gimme Shel­ter (read Matthew Dessem’s excel­lent take on the film at The Cri­te­rion Con­trap­tion).

Demetri Martin in Taking WoodstockOne of the most famous traf­fic jams in history

Just as Tak­ing Wood­stock never quite takes off, Elliot never actu­ally makes it to the con­cert. The fact that we never see it, and barely even hear it, is part of the point. Many of the 400,000 atten­dees prob­a­bly never got any closer, either. And even those that did may have been too altered to recall much.

Ran­dom observations:

  • There are puz­zling hints that Lang’s assis­tant Tisha (Mamie Gum­mer, Meryl Streep’s daugh­ter) is sig­nif­i­cant, but her char­ac­ter is ulti­mately super­flu­ous. The role is not sig­nif­i­cant enough to match the notable casting.
  • Like con­tem­po­raries Michael Win­ter­bot­tom and Danny Boyle, Ang Lee seems deter­mined to never make the same film twice. Seen in that light, Tak­ing Wood­stock is a refresh­ing break in tone from his grim, thor­oughly nonerotic Lust, Cau­tion.
  • Fur­ther, it’s also worth not­ing that Eliot’s homo­sex­ual awak­en­ing is much more suc­cess­ful and ful­fill­ing than that of the tor­tured cow­boys in Broke­back Mountain.

Offi­cial movie site: www.takingwoodstockthemovie.com

Buy the book, Blu-ray, or DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

The Ultimate Six-String Summit: It Might Get Loud

Posted on by

It Might Get Loud movie poster

 

It Might Get Loud indeed, when three gen­er­a­tions of rock gui­tarists con­vene for the ulti­mate six-string sum­mit. Jimmy Page (rep­re­sen­ta­tive of 1970s sta­dium rock and, with Jeff Beck and Eric Clap­ton, part of the canon­i­cal trin­ity of gui­tar heroes) joins The Edge (child of the punk/new wave era but also para­dox­i­cally a bit of an egghead) and Jack White (stu­dent of Amer­i­cana and free­wheel­ing blues-rock of The White Stripes and the Racon­teurs). The three had no doubt crossed paths before now, but prob­a­bly never had a chance to pick each other’s brains, let alone trade licks and jam.

Direc­tor Davis Guggen­heim also made the Al Gore doc­u­men­tary An Incon­ve­nient Truth and the soc­cer drama Gra­cie, but the core con­cept came from Thomas Tull, pro­ducer of Bat­man: The Dark Knight. As White quips in one of the DVD bonus fea­tures, he thought Page would make a fine Joker.

The Edge in It Might Get LoudU2’s The Edge is a child of the punk/new wave era but is also para­dox­i­cally a bit of an egghead

Through­out, White is con­sid­er­ably more witty and spon­ta­neous than the oth­ers, both ver­bally and in his effort­less impro­vi­sa­tion. In com­par­i­son, The Edge some­times seems ret­i­cent and com­pa­ra­bly tongue-tied. Con­sid­er­ing his noto­ri­ety as the man that intro­duced cod-Satanism and Tolkien into Led Zeppelin’s lyrics and iconog­ra­phy, Page is quite the dap­per Eng­lish gen­tle­man. He arrives in a chauf­feured Rolls, while White and even The Edge drive them­selves to the set.

Jack White in It Might Get LoudJack White, of The White Stripes and The Racon­teurs, keeps it real

While Page and White share a back­ground in the blues, The Edge comes from some­where else alto­gether. He’s long been more inter­ested in son­ics and tex­tures than in impress­ing audi­ences with fleet-fingered tech­nique. Page was, for a time, one of the biggest rock stars in the world, but of the three, The Edge has enjoyed per­sis­tent fame the longest. He states with total con­vic­tion that This is Spinal Tap was, for him, not funny at all: “it’s all true.” A deleted scene answers a ques­tion I’ve long had: U2’s nick­names date back to their child­hood, and now even The Edge’s mother now no longer calls him David.

There’s no need for an onscreen inter­viewer when no one else would know bet­ter what to ask these three men than each other. When gui­tarists get together for gabfests, a nat­ural topic is to wist­fully rem­i­nisce over their first instru­ments (The Edge and White still own and play theirs). Their con­ver­sa­tion is inter­spersed with short ani­mated sequences and price­less early footage, with relics includ­ing embar­rass­ing very early footage of U2 as gawky teenagers.

All three have enjoyed com­fort and suc­cess for quite some time, so it comes as a rather awk­ward shift in tone when they are called to reflect on times of cri­sis in their careers. None were instant stars. Page’s early anx­i­eties are the most inter­est­ing; he became a highly suc­cess­ful ses­sion gui­tarist fairly early on (work­ing largely in the now-forgotten musi­cal genre of Skif­fle), but real­ized he was look­ing at a cre­ative dead-end. He found release in The Yard­birds, a fer­tile caul­dron that famously also included Beck and Clap­ton at var­i­ous times, and arguably invented hard rock. The hair came down, the pants flared, and the cello bow came out. Multi-instrumentalist White recounts a child­hood sleep­ing on the floor in a room too crowded with drums to leave room for a bed, and found­ing his first band while work­ing the lonely job of fur­ni­ture uphol­sterer. The Edge recalls the con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal tur­moil of Ire­land as a back­drop to his anx­i­ety over being “just a gui­tarist” and pos­si­bly never a song­writer. From this cri­sis of con­fi­dence came the polit­i­cally charged U2 stan­dard “Sun­day Bloody Sun­day.” His sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to U2 were delib­er­ately obscured by the unusu­ally demo­c­ra­tic band; it’s only recently that they have begun to talk more openly about their inter­nal divi­sion of labor (gen­er­ally, Edge demos the music, Bono sup­plies the lyrics, Larry works along­side the pro­ducer, and Adam is res­i­dent sartorialist).

Jimmy Page in It Might Get LoudLed Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page is now quite the dap­per gent, but was once an infa­mous 70s bad boy that intro­duced cod-satanism and Tolkien to sta­dium rock

The nat­ural wish is for the three to strap on their gui­tars and jam. So as each is cel­e­brated as much for their song­writ­ing as for their chops, they take turns teach­ing the oth­ers one of their sig­na­ture tunes. The Edge’s chim­ing “I Will Fol­low” riff fails to take off, but Page’s “In My Time of Dying” pro­vides a bed for some fan­tas­tic slide-guitar solos from all three play­ers. The cli­mac­tic clos­ing tune is ill-chosen; The Band’s “The Weight” is with­out a doubt a great, clas­sic song, but not much of a gui­tar showcase.

Offi­cial movie site: www.itmightgetloudmovie.com

Buy the Blu-ray or DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Scratching in the Dirt: Peter Gabriel’s Scratch My Back

Posted on by

Peter Gabriel Scratch My Back

 

As a Peter Gabriel fan for over two decades, it’s dif­fi­cult to admit that I find myself strug­gling to appre­ci­ate his first new album in years.

There have always been three core things to love about Gabriel’s work: his lit­er­ate song­writ­ing, metic­u­lous sound­scapes, and emo­tion­ally expres­sive voice. Behind the creep­ily organic album art, Scratch My Back is an exper­i­ment in sub­trac­tion. It finds Gabriel cov­er­ing other artists’ songs, accom­pa­nied only by solo piano or orches­tra (the oddly defen­sive mar­ket­ing pitch “No drums, no gui­tars” says it all). That leaves only the voice. Soul­ful and grav­elly even as a teenage cofounder of Gen­e­sis in 1967, Gabriel’s voice should be more than enough to jus­tify any­thing, so my pat reduc­tion here is not totally fair. Gabriel and John Met­calfe clearly labored over these orches­tral arrange­ments, but I miss the com­plex son­ics of the rock and world music instru­men­ta­tion that has char­ac­ter­ized most of his music for over 40 years.

Gabriel did very nearly the oppo­site a decade ago, when his high-concept mil­len­nium project Ovo made a point of cast­ing Paul Buchanan and The Cocteau Twins’ Eliz­a­beth Fraser to sing his songs. The most recent col­lec­tion of his own songs was 2002’s Up, fol­lowed in 2009 by the col­lab­o­ra­tive project Big Blue Ball. Casual fans of his music might not be aware that Gabriel is an active human­i­tar­ian, par­tic­u­larly as cofounder of Wit­ness and The Elders, so the tem­po­ral gap between his musi­cal ven­tures is not entirely explained by chronic pro­cras­ti­na­tion (although he would prob­a­bly be the first to admit he’s eas­ily dis­tracted). Gabriel has stated that he hopes to work on more song-swap projects in the future, but first plans to work on some of his own songs. How long until he pre­pares a new album over which he can claim sole authorship?

Peter Gabriel Scratch My Back

Gabriel told the New York Times:

“I was try­ing to make a grown-up record […] This is treat­ing peo­ple as if they can han­dle dif­fi­cult music and words. Not that I’ve courted the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor before, but there’s a play­ful­ness and child­ish­ness in some of my older work that isn’t present on this record.”

He is pre­sum­ably refer­ring to the media satire of “Games With­out Fron­tiers” and “The Barry Williams Show”, the randy sex romps “Sledge­ham­mer” and “Kiss That Frog”, and the vaude­ville silli­ness of “Excuse Me” and “Big Time”. Gabriel is one of the few musi­cians that I first lis­tened to as a teenager, but whose music has aged with me. So I would have expected myself to appre­ci­ate an album of him cov­er­ing many songs that I know and love well (par­tic­u­larly David Bowie, Lou Reed, Elbow, and Talk­ing Heads), but I find that I don’t know what to make of Scratch my Back even after repeated listening.

Many song­writ­ers lose their dark edge as they age (case in point: Pink Floyd’s once tor­tured, prickly Roger Waters is now a big smi­ley softie), and by all accounts Gabriel should have been fol­low­ing that track too. After leav­ing Gen­e­sis in 1975 to deal with fam­ily issues, his first four solo albums were increas­ingly dark and sin­is­ter. But 1986’s So marked a notice­able turn­around in tone and an appar­ent psy­chic heal­ing. Now report­edly still pals with his old Gen­e­sis cohorts, aging grace­fully into a pot­belly and gnomish goa­tee, remar­ry­ing, father­ing two new sons, and rec­on­cil­ing with his two daugh­ters from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage, he seemed to be trans­form­ing into a cud­dly grand­fa­ther fig­ure. A trickle of releases over the past decade showed him favor­ing directly-worded songs for chil­dren, includ­ing the Oscar-nominated “That’ll Do” (from the movie Babe), the unsub­tle “Ani­mal Nation” (from The The Wild Thorn­ber­rys Movie), and “Down to Earth” (from Wall-E).

Sud­denly, he appears to have reversed back into depres­sive ter­ri­tory. Nearly every song cho­sen for Scratch My Back has been trans­formed into a mourn­ful dirge. Espe­cially when lis­tened to in one sit­ting, I find many of the inter­pre­ta­tions to be too depress­ing, and I actu­ally like depress­ing music. My favorite exam­ples along these lines are Michael Andrews and Gary Jules’ cry-your-guts-out cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World” (from the movie Don­nie Darko), and Elbow’s ago­niz­ingly heartrend­ing ver­sion of U2’s “Run­ning to Stand Still” (from the War Child ben­e­fit album Heroes).

Peter Gabriel Scratch My Back

Gabriel’s ver­sion of The Mag­netic Fields’ “Book of Love” has appar­ently become some­thing of a sen­sa­tion on YouTube, licensed in tele­vi­sion shows, and played at celebrity wed­dings. Per­haps I’m cold­hearted, but it does absolutely noth­ing for me. Song­writer Stephin Mer­ritt says his ver­sion was sar­cas­tic, while Gabriel’s is deadly serious:

At first I thought, How hilar­i­ous, he’s got a com­pletely dif­fer­ent take on the song. But after a few lis­tens I find it quite sweet. My ver­sion of the song focuses on the humor, and his focuses on the pathos. Of course, if I could sing like him I wouldn’t have to be a humorist.

Did Gabriel just plain miss Merritt’s point, or did he inten­tion­ally trans­form it into some­thing sen­ti­men­tal, singing the same words but alter­ing the instru­men­ta­tion and deliv­ery? All that said, some­thing to cher­ish in Gabriel’s cover is the pres­ence of his daugh­ter Melanie on back­ing vocals.

Elbow’s “Mir­ror­ball” is one of the most rav­ish­ing love songs I’ve heard. Elbow remixed Gabriel’s “More Than This” in 2002, pro­vid­ing a more organic rock struc­ture to Gabriel’s per­haps over-processed stu­dio orig­i­nal. But Gabriel does not return the favor here, turn­ing their gor­geous love song into a depres­sive bummer.

The once case where Gabriel’s bummer-o-vision may have actu­ally been appro­pri­ate is with Paul Simon’s “Boy in the Bub­ble”, which actu­ally does have very dark lyrics.

The orig­i­nal record­ing of David Bowie’s “Heroes” boasts an unfor­get­table lead gui­tar line from Robert Fripp, which by his own rules Gabriel must sub­tract. He sings Bowie’s Berlin-inspired lyrics in cracked, anguished tones, not an emo­tion I asso­ciate with the song.

The one song I liked imme­di­ately was “Lis­ten­ing Wind”. The orig­i­nal is one of the odder tracks on Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light, and Gabriel rather amaz­ingly draws out a catchy melody embed­ded in the exper­i­men­tal song.

The Spe­cial Edi­tion includes a sec­ond cd with four bonus tracks: a cover of The Kinks’ “Water­loo Sun­set” and alter­nate ver­sions of “The Book of Love”, “My Body is a Cage”, and “Heroes”. It might have been inter­est­ing to also include some of Gabriel’s past cov­ers, includ­ing The Bea­t­les’ “Straw­berry Fields”, Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne”, and Joseph Arthur’s “In the Sun”. I would have also very much liked to hear instru­men­tal mixes of some of Metcalfe’s orches­tral arrangements.

Offi­cial Peter Gabriel site: www.petergabriel.com

Buy the Scratch My Back Spe­cial Edi­tion from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

MGMT live in Brooklyn, July 1, 2009

Posted on by
 

The electronic/disco/pop/rock group MGMT has made a huge splash, earn­ing spots on tours with no less than Paul McCart­ney and Beck. The wildly catchy “Time to Pre­tend,” “Elec­tric Feel,” and “Kids” (the lat­ter fea­tur­ing a truly deranged music video) are not out of keep­ing with the rest of their reper­toire in terms of style and instru­men­ta­tion, but the infec­tious hooks do stand apart from the for­get­table rest. At their Cel­e­brate Brook­lyn con­cert in Prospect Park on July 1, they debuted a few new songs set for their forth­com­ing sopho­more album that didn’t imme­di­ately grab me either.

MGMT live in Prospect ParkMGMT live in Prospect Park

For a band called “synth-hippies” by Pitch­fork, they all looked rather clean-cut to me (but they evi­dently have a very young and boozy audi­ence — one kid passed out and lit­er­ally col­lapsed on our feet only a few songs into the con­cert). Their sound may be very elec­tronic and a throw­back to disco, but their live instru­men­ta­tion is very rock gui­tar ori­ented. The only excep­tion being “Kids,” for which the band put down their ana­log instru­ments and let the syn­the­siz­ers and sequencers take over, even recre­at­ing a live fadeout.

MGMT live in Prospect ParkMGMT live in Prospect Park

Offi­cial band site: www.whoismgmt.com

Buy the MGMT album Orac­u­lar Spec­tac­u­lar from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

California Guitar Trio & Tony Levin’s Stick Men, live at the B.B. King Blues Club, New York, June 22, 2009

Posted on by
 

The Cal­i­for­nia Gui­tar Trio may not actu­ally be from Cal­i­for­nia (they actu­ally hail from Bel­gium, Japan, and the US), but there are indeed three of them and they each play a gui­tar. In a way, that tells you every­thing and noth­ing you need to know. As des­ig­nated spokesman Paul Richards explained dur­ing their June 22nd show at The B.B. King Blues Club in New York City’s Times Square, they met as stu­dents in one of Robert Fripp’s early Gui­tar Craft courses. The promis­ing pupils became mem­bers of the tour­ing out­fits The League of Crafty Gui­tarists and The Robert Fripp String Quin­tet, and formed the CGT to present their orig­i­nal reper­toire inter­spersed with well-chosen pro­gres­sive rock and clas­si­cal cov­ers. As a King Crim­son fan, I’ve wound up see­ing them live no less than three times, all with­out hav­ing specif­i­cally meant to. The 1992 R.F.S.Q. show in Philadel­phia still stands in my mind as one of the best con­certs I’ve attended, and I recall their open­ing sets for King Crim­son in 1995 (also in Philly) and The Trey Gunn Band in New York in 1997 going over great with audi­ences (dur­ing most con­certs I’ve been to, audi­ences can’t be pried away from the bar dur­ing the open­ing act). Richards also told the crowd they had been record­ing and tour­ing the world for 18 years, long since deserv­ing to cease being described as for­mer stu­dents of Fripp. (but a lit­tle name­drop­ping never hurts!)

California Guitar Trio liveCal­i­for­nia Gui­tar Trio

Mon­day night’s con­cert was also an unmiss­able chance to see Tony Levin’s Stick Men, a new band formed with fel­low stick player Michael Bernier and drum­mer Pat Mas­telotto. The droll, genial Levin is one of the world’s great­est bassists, a fan-favorite (lis­ten for the inevitable moment when crowds go wild as Peter Gabriel intro­duces him on any live album he’s released in the past 25 years), and not to men­tion one of the world’s longest-running blog­gers. Mas­telotto is a pow­er­house, a true drum demon obvi­ously enjoy­ing him­self enor­mously on his array of acoustic drums plus var­i­ous elec­tron­ics a drum geek would have to iden­tify (com­ments below, please). He shat­tered a stick at one point (star­tling Bernier as a bit of shrap­nel flew in his direc­tion), but deftly swapped the casu­alty for a new one. I’m not famil­iar with Bernier’s music, but as if his tal­ents weren’t obvi­ous on Mon­day night, Levin gave him props as a player who influ­enced his own tech­nique (mean­ing a lot com­ing from the leg­end that helped pio­neer the Chap­man Stick instru­ment in the first place). Also, Bernier’s got a lit­tle bit of a Hugh Grant thing going on.

California Guitar Trio liveCal­i­for­nia Gui­tar Trio & Tyler Trot­ter per­form Tubu­lar Bells

Gen­er­ally speak­ing, the Trio gave a mel­low, con­tem­pla­tive show, while the Stick Men came out blast­ing with some very dense, funky, mostly instru­men­tal prog rock. They were really, really loud — very glad I brought my earplugs — and even chased a few peo­ple out of the venue. I’m shame­fully behind on my CGT and Levin album-buying, so I wasn’t famil­iar with much of the later reper­toire of either trio. I only own the first three CGT albums (includ­ing what I think is a rare copy of an epony­mous cd I pur­chased at the R.F.S.Q. show, that isn’t even listed on their offi­cial site). Copies of their lat­est are on order from Ama­zon as I write, but I picked up a pristine-sounding live record­ing avail­able for sale right after the show. Here’s the set list accord­ing to Hideyo Moriya’s Road­cam, along with some of my sub­jec­tive comments:

  1. Punta Patri
  2. Unmei — Beethoven’s 5th Sym­phony rearranged by Moriya in a 1960s surf gui­tar style that totally, unex­pect­edly works.
  3. Cathe­dral Peak
  4. Tubu­lar Bells / And I Know / Walk Don’t Run — A con­densed ver­sion of the album-length pro­gres­sive rock epic by Mike Old­field (per­haps more famously known as the theme music from The Exor­cist). Their sound guy Tyler Trot­ter joined the band on melodium.
  5. Port­land Rain
  6. Androm­eda
  7. TX
  8. Moon­light Sonata — Richards briefly described Fripp’s Gui­tar Craft les­son of “cir­cu­la­tion” as a key tech­nique that has stuck with them. Here they’ve dis­trib­uted the notes among three gui­tars, pass­ing sin­gle notes from one to another. I’m not an expert, but when it comes to clas­si­cal music, Bach in par­tic­u­lar seems well-suited for the guitar.
  9. Echoes — Long­time Pink Floyd fans (myself included, I must admit) rec­og­nized it from the first note, but when the major melody appeared, the audi­ence went nuts, even more so than when some King Crim­son cov­ers appeared later in the evening! The CGT ver­sion includes a gor­geous ambi­ent inter­lude, stretch­ing the bounds of what an acoustic gui­tar can do when con­nected to all sorts of elec­tronic devices.
  10. Eve — Levin joined them for this bal­lad, sound­ing a bit like his own “Waters of Eden”
  11. Mel­rose Avenue — A great, terse rocker. With Levin & Mastelotto.
  12. Block­head — With all three Stick Men. One of my favorite CGT tunes, but they omit­ted any kind of solo (Fripp him­self plays a stun­ner on the R.F.S.Q. album The Bridge Between). Amaz­ingly, they started cir­cu­lat­ing power chords.

The Stick Men stayed on stage for the next set, which included the fol­low­ing (and a lot more):

  • Sasquatch
  • Red — The clas­sic King Crim­son barn­stormer, which Levin mod­estly iden­ti­fied as “we didn’t write that one.”
  • Indis­ci­pline — Sung by Bernier.
  • Soup (or Superconductor?)
  • Encore: Larks Tongues in Aspic Part II — An effortless-seeming ver­sion with the CGT. King Crim­son fans will know what I’m talk­ing about when I say here’s another pos­si­ble inter­pre­ta­tion of the “Dou­ble Trio” concept.

California Guitar Trio & Stick Men liveCal­i­for­nia Gui­tar Trio & Stick Men

Levin con­grat­u­lated an audi­ence mem­ber in the first row for con­sum­ing a slice of cheese­cake dur­ing one of the rock­ier num­bers. He also described their recent, greatly mean­der­ing Euro­pean tour, which sounded very excit­ing to some­one with a nor­mal day job. No doubt a pro­fes­sional musi­cian will quickly counter that that much trav­el­ing and border-crossing is gru­el­ing. But if there’s time for even a few days off along the way, it sounds to me like a great way to see the world. Or maybe it’s just hell.

Tony Levin's Stick Men liveTony Levin’s Stick Men

Thanks for read­ing, and I invite any­one to please com­ment below. And finally, if any­one cares enough to have read this far, one last thing: fel­low New York­ers might know what I’m talk­ing about when I say that some days New York is more New Yorky than usual. Mon­day was one of those days, and the nut­ters were out in force. On my way to the venue, I was blessed (or cursed, maybe, I’m not sure) but a green-clad street preacher wield­ing a cross made of twisted wire. Min­utes later, the guy sit­ting next to me in Star­bucks got an ear­ful from a totally dif­fer­ent preacher. And then, in B.B. King’s, one audi­ence mem­ber in the back near me was obvi­ously stoned; not on some­thing rel­a­tively harm­less that merely makes you stu­pid, but rather on the sort of thing that makes you manic and insane (cocaine? speed?). He couldn’t stop loudly bab­bling for the entire con­cert, and was almost lit­er­ally bounc­ing off the walls. I kept hop­ing the man­age­ment would toss him out, but no luck.

Offi­cial band sites: www.cgtrio.com and www.tonylevin.com

Buy the Cal­i­for­nia Gui­tar Trio’s Echoes and Tony Levin’s Stick Man from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Nine Inch Nails & Jane’s Addiction live at Jones Beach, June 7, 2009

Posted on by
 

STREET SWEEPER SOCIAL CLUB

Street Sweeper Social Club, the new band formed by Rage Against the Machine gui­tarist Tom Morello, opened. Their badass cover of M.I.A.‘s “Paper Planes” was a highlight.

Nine Inch Nails live at Jones Beach New York

NINE INCH NAILS

It felt wrong some­how to see a band as moody and dark as Nine Inch Nails play while the sun was still up. But clouds soon moved in, obscur­ing a sun­set that would have been impres­sive over the water, mak­ing every­thing suit­ably gloomy and very, very cold as NIN chased sum­mer away. This stripped-down four-piece ver­sion of the band played a great cover of David Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Amer­i­cans,” the best song Nine Inch Nails could have but never wrote, and ended with the over­whelm­ingly sad “Hurt.” Sur­pris­ingly omit­ted was “Closer,” what I would assume to be a req­ui­site entry in any NIN set list (but the end theme did fea­ture in a short instru­men­tal jam). Speak­ing of, said jam was one of only two instru­men­tal por­tions of the set (the other being The Fragile’s ambi­ent inter­lude “The Frail”). A lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing, given that Trent Reznor has been becom­ing more and more musi­cally exper­i­men­tal and adven­tur­ous of late, with whole chunks of The Frag­ile and the entirety of the mas­sive two-disc Ghosts being instru­men­tal. Per­son­ally, when it comes to Nine Inch Nails, the music (not so much the gloomy lyrics) is where the action is for me.

Nine Inch Nails live at Jones Beach New York

JANE’S ADDICTION

All thanks to Reznor for play­ing peace­keeper in reunit­ing the noto­ri­ously frac­tious and unsta­ble Jane’s Addic­tion, at least for the length of the NIN/JA tour. Basi­cally a funk/prog/metal power-trio fronted by the antics of Perry Far­rell, a… unique indi­vid­ual whose ego (he once re-released a raft of Jane’s Addic­tion songs under just his own name on a solo great­est hits album) has often cre­ated con­flict with bassist Eric Avery. The full moon peek­ing out from the clouds prob­a­bly only added to Farrell’s lunacy. They opened with their mag­num opus “Three Days,” an epic fea­tur­ing more dis­crete gui­tar solos by Dave Navarro than I could count. Hon­estly, where do you go from there? They kept find­ing high points to hit, how­ever, includ­ing “Ocean Size” and the closer (what else?) “Jane Says.” It only took a few songs for the age­less Navarro’s vest to dis­ap­pear (he must have one heck of a per­sonal trainer, not to men­tion a chest hair waxer), and Perry’s shirt fol­lowed shortly thereafter.

Jane's Addiction live at Jones Beach New York

THE FUTURE

Reznor has made vague noises about Nine Inch Nails com­ing to some kind of end fol­low­ing this tour. It remains to be seen whether he means retir­ing the name in favor of solo work, start­ing a new band, or sim­ply ceas­ing to tour for a while. He’s report­edly been clean & sober for some time now, and engaged to be mar­ried, so more power to him. If he retreats now, he’d be going out on a high note. I hope the orig­i­nal lineup of Jane’s Addic­tion man­ages to keep it together to con­tinue work­ing in some form or another. With only two stu­dio albums to their credit (I’m not count­ing the awful Strays, writ­ten & recorded with­out Avery’s inim­itable bass), the world needs some new songs from them.

GETTING THERE AND BACK

I had a lit­tle unex­pected adven­ture on the long trip from Man­hat­tan all the way out to Jones Beach. Met a few fans on the Long Island Rail­road as we debated the var­i­ous ways of get­ting there, all of which suck. Thanks to Kim & friend for the impromptu car ride to the venue! But I didn’t have the same luck on the way back, an ordeal that included wait­ing a full hour for a LIRR train to arrive. Pic­ture dozens of hun­gry fans, shiv­er­ing atop an ele­vated plat­form in the mid­dle of nowhere.

Jane's Addiction live at Jones Beach New York

THE VENUE

Blech. Sur­rounded on three sides by water, Jones Beach sounds nice in the­ory, but in per­son it’s cold. Never mind if you’re going to a show there dur­ing the sum­mer; dress warmly. Also, for a music lover used to all kinds of venues in Man­hat­tan and Brook­lyn, it’s in the mid­dle of nowhere, with no food or water for lit­er­ally miles. The exor­bi­tant con­ces­sion prices are, let’s be hon­est here, graft. Just to keep from dehy­drat­ing and get­ting a migraine from all the second-hand pot smoke, I reluc­tantly paid $6.50 for a bot­tled water, which I cer­tainly hope the venue recy­cled. Also, the sound sys­tem is kinda crappy. Jane’s were notice­ably louder than NIN, but Farrell’s mike sounded pretty muf­fled, espe­cially on the first and last songs.

THE AUDIENCE

The audi­ence was a weird mix­ture of goths, met­al­heads, and gray­ing thir­tysome­things like me. Although NIN has remained extremely rel­e­vant for some time now, the orig­i­nal Jane’s lineup has been out of action for more than a decade, and both bands date back to the late 80s / early 1990s, when I was in high school. The black-fingernailed lon­ers didn’t sur­prise me, but I didn’t really expect so many head­bangers. I even saw a middle-aged, bearded, fat dude in a skirt, a look I thought fiz­zled on arrival in the mid-90s. In ret­ro­spect, I shouldn’t really have been sur­prised, but I come at Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addic­tion from a dif­fer­ent angle. Lis­ten­ing to NIN is an exten­sion of my appre­ci­a­tion for elec­tronic and pro­gres­sive rock, and Jane’s vis­cer­ally filthy, slightly sleazy rock owes more than a lit­tle to Led Zep­pelin (who were also arguably a bit prog).

Offi­cial band sites: www.nin.com and www.janesaddiction.com

Buy The Slip, Nine Inch Nails’ lat­est album, and the new Jane’s Addic­tion rar­i­ties boxed set A Cab­i­net of Curiosi­ties from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Mogwai live at The Music Hall of Williamsburg, April 2009

Posted on by
 

The Scot­tish instru­men­tal rock out­fit Mog­wai earned their rep­u­ta­tion in part for sheer vol­ume, like My Bloody Valen­tine and The Who before them. Their music is also notable for explor­ing the kinds of extreme dynam­ics you usu­ally only hear in elec­tron­ica or pro­gres­sive rock, wholly unlike the fatigu­ing con­stant loud­ness of most pop, punk, and metal.

My teeth are still res­onat­ing. This was far and away the most vis­cer­ally phys­i­cal con­cert I’ve ever attended. In all seri­ous­ness, I believe it would be pos­si­ble for a deaf per­son to enjoy a Mog­wai show. I don’t mean to be offen­sive to the deaf com­mu­nity here; I felt the waves of sound as much as I could hear them.

This con­cert, part of a three-night stand at The Music Hall of Williams­burg, was filmed and might appear on a future DVD.

Mogwai live at The Music Hall of Williamsburg, April 2009Mog­wai fear nothing

Offi­cial band site: www.mogwai.co.uk

Buy Mogwai’s lat­est album The Hawk is Howl­ing from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Lou Reed’s Berlin

Posted on by

lou_reeds_berlin.jpg

 

Lou Reed’s 1973 album Berlin is a con­cept album relat­ing the tale of a doomed woman named Car­o­line liv­ing in the epony­mous city. The term “con­cept album,” then and now, invokes imme­di­ate con­de­scen­sion from fans and crit­ics alike, call­ing to mind the pro­gres­sive rock excesses of 1970s mega­bands The Who (Tommy and Quadrophe­nia) and Yes (Tales from Topo­graphic Oceans). The poet and arty down­town Man­hat­tan­ite Reed might have bet­ter served him­self by refer­ring to Berlin as some­thing more fancy-sounding, per­haps a “song cycle.”

Reed’s pre­vi­ous album Trans­former was a great com­mer­cial suc­cess, debut­ing the endur­ing hits Satel­lite of Love, Per­fect Day, and Walk on the Wild Side. To fol­low it up with some­thing like Berlin may have been loaded with artis­tic integrity, but was ask­ing for trou­ble in terms of mak­ing a liv­ing. I recall read­ing that enough mate­r­ial was recorded for it to be a double-lp, but it was edited down to a sin­gle disc before release (I can’t find a source for this fac­toid online, but I believe it was related in the liner notes of his 1992 ret­ro­spec­tive boxed set Between Thought and Expres­sion). Pro­duced by Bob Ezrin (whose con­cept album cre­den­tials also include Pink Floyd’s The Wall), it was a com­mer­cial dis­as­ter at the time. So, cursed from the begin­ning, the full stu­dio ver­sion has appar­ently never been released.

lou_reed_berlin_1.jpg“Car­o­line says / While bit­ing her lip / Life is meant to be more than this”

In ret­ro­spect, Reed now seems to have been com­pelled to flee from com­mer­cial suc­cess, or at the very least was bound and deter­mined not to repeat him­self. Reed’s other infa­mous com­mer­cial dis­as­ter Metal Machine Music was another delib­er­ate provo­ca­tion: even the most open minded musi­col­o­gist might char­i­ta­bly char­ac­ter­ize it as ear­split­ting noise. But Berlin is dif­fer­ent, hated more for its tone and sub­ject mat­ter than its sound. Sev­eral of the songs are lovely, but wow is the com­plete work depress­ing, full of anger, venom, resent­ment, death, despair, and guilt. The song “The Kids” is espe­cially har­row­ing, end­ing with a tape of chil­dren wailing.

Over time, the album was even­tu­ally redis­cov­ered. One of those reap­prais­ing Berlin was no less than artist and film­maker Julian Schn­abel. So it came to be, that 33 years after its release, Schn­abel pro­posed to Reed that Berlin really ought to be a film. Schn­abel is obvi­ously attracted to artists ded­i­cated to their work with utter con­vic­tion: rev­o­lu­tion­ary New York Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in the epony­mous biopic, the gay poet Reinaldo Are­nas in Castro-era Cuba in Before Night Falls, and the par­a­lyzed writer Jean-Dominique Bauby in The Div­ing Bell and the But­ter­fly (read The Dork Report review). Berlin’s DVD bonus fea­tures include a brief con­ver­sa­tion with Reed and Schn­abel on Elvis Costello’s show Spec­ta­cle, in which Schn­abel describes his attrac­tion to the cin­ema from the per­spec­tive of a painter: he rev­er­ently refers to the canvas-like movie screen as “The Rectangle.”

Some­thing that only peo­ple who’ve seem him live would know is that Reed is a great gui­tar player. He’s also vis­i­bly in sur­pris­ingly good shape for a for­mer junkie (sorry, but it’s true). Does he prac­tice yoga? Reed in per­for­mance is supremely cool and detached, but some star­tlingly real emo­tion comes through in his vocal deliv­ery; he spits out the lines “they took her chil­dren away” from the song “The Kids” with real venom.

lou_reed_berlin_2.jpgAntony dances the rock minuet

Orig­i­nal gui­tarist Steve Hunter rejoined Reed for the Berlin tour, and can barely con­tain his plea­sure, despite the grim sub­ject mat­ter. Bob Ezrin con­ducts with great enthu­si­asm, but oddly, he seems to be fac­ing the drum­mer, away from the choir and wood­winds. One of my favorite bassists, Fer­nando Saun­ders, doesn’t really get to shine, but per­haps it was my sound sys­tem that couldn’t do him jus­tice. Julian Schnabel’s daugh­ter Lola directed film clips pro­jected dur­ing the per­for­mance, star­ring Emmanuelle Seigner as Caroline.

So Reed finally got a chance to present Berlin live, as a whole. Now the once-denigrated work has become a world tour, a the­atri­cal fea­ture film, a live album, and a DVD. Reed is now con­sid­ered a New York deity, not the erratic heroin addict he was back in the day. His career is far from over and there’s plenty of time for more drama, but could this be his ulti­mate revenge?

The encore includes a spe­cial treat, a lovely ver­sion of Rock Min­uet sung by Antony Hegarty (of Antony and the John­sons) in his oth­er­worldly voice. Rock Min­uet was not from the orig­i­nal album, but a spe­cial request from Schn­abel, who rightly felt it belonged. But it’s fol­lowed by a bum­mer: a desul­tory per­for­mance of the Vel­vet Under­ground stan­dard Sweet Jane. It’s a let­down that after the emo­tion­ally intense pro­ceed­ings, that Reed seems truly bored here and just walks through a song he’s prob­a­bly played hun­dreds if not thou­sands of times.

Offi­cial movie site: www.berlinthefilm.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Sigur Rós: Heima

Posted on by

Sigur Ros Heima Movie Poster

 

Dean DeBlois’ doc­u­men­tary film Heima (mean­ing “com­ing home” or “at home”) fol­lows the band Sigur Rós on their sum­mer 2006 tour of their home coun­try Ice­land. The tour con­sisted of mostly free, unan­nounced con­certs, and with the band in three basic con­fig­u­ra­tions span­ning the con­tin­uüm of the purely acoustic to the fully elec­tric. The four core mem­bers Jón Þór “Jónsi” Bir­gis­son, Georg “Goggi” Hólm, Kjar­tan “Kjarri” Sveins­son, and Orri Páll Dýra­son per­form sev­eral acoustic songs just for the cam­era. The extended band (includ­ing string ensem­ble Ami­ina) is also seen per­form­ing out­doors, fully unplugged, at a con­cert protest­ing an envi­ron­men­tally destruc­tive dam to be built by the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment. Finally, in con­trast, we also see the full band in indoor con­certs with dra­matic light­ing and video effects.

Sigur Ros HeimaSigur Rós live in concert

Most Sigur Rós songs are sung in an invented lan­guage called Von­len­ska (“Hopelandic”), adding to the uni­ver­sal­ity and inter­na­tional appeal of their music. For the unini­ti­ated, Sigur Rós are a key rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the musi­cal genre “post-rock,” which gen­er­ally refers to highly evoca­tive, cin­e­matic, largely instru­men­tal music some­times com­pared to movie sound­track com­po­si­tion. Other notable bands work­ing in roughly the same idiom include Mog­wai, Explo­sions in the Sky, and Múm. In this Dork Reporter’s opin­ion, you can trace the genre’s her­itage back to the pro­gres­sive rock of Yes and King Crimson.

Sigur Ros HeimaSigur Rós live in concert

Inter­view clips and stun­ning land­scape images punc­tu­ate the film, mak­ing it almost as much about Ice­land itself as the band. The most incon­gru­ous clip is from the avant-garde band’s unlikely appear­ance on the Late Late Show with Craig Kil­born. They dis­cuss being unpre­pared for the busi­ness side of a career in music (lawyers, con­tracts, etc.), but under­stand that they have to think of the future.

The sec­ond disc of the two DVD set fea­tures full unin­ter­rupted per­for­mances, but with no two songs played in sequence, let alone a full con­cert. The frag­men­ta­tion of both the main doc­u­men­tary film and the sup­ple­men­tary fea­tures is mildly dis­ap­point­ing. How­ever, as reported in Pitch­fork, the band has plans for a full con­cert film directed by Vin­cent Morisset.

Offi­cial movie sites: www.heima.co.uk and www.heimafilm.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.