Ryan Adams was back in fine form last night in Santa Cruz, playing a relentless three-hour electric set and rocking the plaid pants and a Celtic Frost t-shirt. The show at the Catalyst Club was general admission, so I was most excited about this show (the other ones to come this week are all seats); my favorite kind of show energy comes from a packed-in standing audience.
I knew it was going to be a good night when we ducked into the club bar hours before doors to use the restroom. Thanks to our fearless reconaissance, we got back into the stage section and were able to see part of the soundcheck before a member of our contingent got the willies about being caught and we scampered out — we saw mostly noodling and some of Cold Roses. But it was clear even from what we saw that Ryan was loose and happy and in fine form and we were stoked for the show.
The show was so long and my company so lovely that I am having some trouble remembering the setlist, but highlights for me included an absolutely scorching, riveting, insane version of “I See Monsters” (if I need one mp3 from this whole show, it’s gotta be that one), “Dear Chicago,” “Please Do Not Let Me Go,”and I think “Let It Ride” all the way at the end (to the point, well-done, never get tired of that song). I couldn’t hear the banter, but according to someone else he “played a 5 second song about Teen Wolf (why are you so sad?), joked about Neil’s fancy pants and cracked a few Matlock jokes (always on time).”
A picture of the setlist had some awesome titles included like Ming Dynasty, Egyptology, Beautiful Sorta Mellow Yellow, and Frozen By The Naked Witches (I am so not making this up) but the set we actually got sounded like this:
On our way over the hill to the show, we were discussing what era Ryan was our favorite, and what kind of show we wish we could have seen in incarnations of years past. The three of us in the car were apparently all rockers at heart, and the consensus went back and forth between Love Is Hell, Rock N Roll and Demolition if we had to pick just one era to see live.
On the way home my muddled mind was going over the show as I watched the yellow divider lines on the highway flick past, and I felt satisfied with the set because it was kinda the rocker Ryan coming back out in the jam-country he’s favoring lately, if that makes sense. He was on it, in his element. Playing that electric guitar with reverence and fire. Even though there were some prolonged jams, which (last night at least) I lack the attention span for, he took the rocker vibe, blended it heavy in with the Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Nights material, and just let it ride all night long.
Look at Ryan. He’s all wiped out from just recording some excellent alternate renditions of songs from Easy Tiger back in March. These performances were videotaped in front of a curtain of white lights and some of them were released on a bonus DVD. Now, thanks to the magic of audio-ripping, you can listen to them on your iPod even if it’s not a fancy video one.
These tunes are my salute to Mr. Adams as we both head towards California in the coming days. He’s been kind enough to arrange a roll through the SF Bay Area during the same time I’ll be there for my cousin’s wedding, and he is going to rock me in several different cities. I am looking forward to it, wahoo! I’ll take 62% less ramble/38% more music this time aroundpor favor.
And since we’re talking about alternate versions of things, this performance was taped on Letterman, but they aired “Two” instead (which was also lovely and caused me to go to bed singing that melody):
When I read this: Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno is curating a compilation CD called Song of America, a 3-CD set of songs highlighting America & its history, and featuring artists such as The Black Crowes, Devendra Banhart, Andrew Bird, Ben Taylor, Matthew Ryan, John Mellencamp, Bettye LaVette, Marah and Blind Boys of Alabama…
All I could think of is this:
“My throwing stars and numchucks will make you the mayor of pain.”
For the next six Wednesdays I’ve been asked to contribute my thoughts to the WXPN 885 Memorable Moments In Music series. Along with their listeners, they are working on creating a massive list of moments that we remember from music. A list of 885 means a lot of variety, so there will be plenty of room for all the possibilities that this daunting list implies. Here’s where I feel like starting today.
I wasn’t alive when this article below was written, and for most of my life I edged away from what I saw as the bombastic jangle of Springsteen until my eyes were recently opened a few years back; I’ve seen the light of his gorgeous songwriting and performance skill (even if I still don’t care for the bandanna-as-sweatband look). This article is one of the best pieces on music that I’ve ever read, by a Jon Landau at my age, feeling old, listening to his records, going to shows to feel that fire in his soul kindle again. This article was pounded out late at night (when the rawest and most honest missives are penned) after seeing rock and roll’s future in a fresh-faced guy from Jersey trying to carve out a name for himself.
Growing Young With Rock and Roll by Jon Landau May 22, 1974
It’s four in the morning and raining. I’m 27 today, feeling old, listening to my records, and remembering that things were diffferent a decade ago. In 1964, I was a freshman at Brandeis University, playing guitar and banjo five hours a day, listening to records most of the rest of the time, jamming with friends during the late-night hours, working out the harmonies to Beach Boys’ and Beatles’ songs.
Real Paper soul writer Russell Gersten was my best friend and we would run through the 45s everyday: Dionne Warwick’s “Walk On By” and “Anyone Who Had A Heart,” the Drifters’ “Up On the Roof,” Jackie Ross’ “Selfish One,” the Marvellettes’ “Too Many Fish in the Sea,” and the one that no one ever forgets, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas’ “Heat Wave.” Later that year a special woman named Tamar turned me onto Wilson Pickett’s “Midnight Hour” and Otis Redding’s “Respect,” and then came the soul. Meanwhile, I still went to bed to the sounds of the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man” and later “Younger than Yesterday,” still one of my favorite good-night albums. I woke up to Having a Rave-Up with the Yardbirds instead of coffee. And for a change of pace, there was always bluegrass: The Stanley Brothers, Bill Monroe, and Jimmy Martin.
Through college, I consumed sound as if it were the staff of life. Others enjoyed drugs, school, travel, adventure. I just liked music: listening to it, playing it, talking about it. If some followed the inspiration of acid, or Zen, or dropping out, I followed the spirit of rock’n'roll.
Individual songs often achieved the status of sacraments. One September, I was driving through Waltham looking for a new apartment when the sound on the car radio stunned me. I pulled over to the side of the road, turned it up, demanded silence of my friends and two minutes and fifty-six second later knew that God had spoken to me through the Four Tops’ “Reach Out, I’ll Be There,” a record that I will cherish for as long as I live.
During those often lonely years, music was my constant companion and the search for the new record was like a search for a new friend and new revelation. “Mystic Eyes” opened mine to whole new vistas in white rock and roll and there were days when I couldn’t go to sleep without hearing it a dozen times.
Whether it was a neurotic and manic approach to music, or just a religious one, or both, I don’t really care. I only know that, then, as now, I’m grateful to the artists who gave the experience to me and hope that I can always respond to them.
The records were, of course, only part of it. In ’65 and ’66 I played in a band, the Jellyroll, that never made it. At the time I concluded that I was too much of a perfectionist to work with the other band members; in the end I realized I was too much of an autocrat, unable to relate to other people enough to share music with them.
Realizing that I wasn’t destined to play in a band, I gravitated to rock criticism. Starting with a few wretched pieces in Broadside and then some amateurish but convincing reviews in the earliest Crawdaddy, I at least found a substitute outlet for my desire to express myself about rock: If I couldn’t cope with playing, I may have done better writing about it.
But in those days, I didn’t see myself as a critic — the writing was just another extension of an all-encompassing obsession. It carried over to my love for live music, which I cared for even more than the records. I went to the Club 47 three times a week and then hunted down the rock shows — which weren’t so easy to find because they weren’t all conveniently located at downtown theatres. I flipped for the Animals’ two-hour show at Rindge Tech; the Rolling Stones, not just at Boston Garden, where they did the best half hour rock’n'roll set I had ever seen, but at Lynn Football Stadium, where they started a riot; Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels overcoming the worst of performing conditions at Watpole Skating Rink; and the Beatles at Suffolk Down, plainly audible, beautiful to look at, and confirmation that we — and I — existed as a special body of people who understood the power and the glory of rock’n'roll.
I lived those days with a sense of anticipation. I worked in Briggs & Briggs a few summers and would know when the next albums were coming. The disappointment when the new Stones was a day late, the exhilaration when Another Side of Bob Dylan showed up a week early. The thrill of turning on WBZ and hearing some strange sound, both beautiful and horrible, but that demanded to be heard again; it turned out to be “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” a record that stands just behind “Reach Out I’ll Be There” as means of musical catharsis.
My temperament being what it is, I often enjoyed hating as much as loving. That San Francisco shit corrupted the purity of the rock that I loved and I could have led a crusade against it. The Moby Grape moved me, but those songs about White Rabbits and hippie love made me laugh when they didn’t make me sick. I found more rock’n'roll in the dubbed-in hysteria on the Rolling Stones Got Live if You Want It than on most San Francisco albums combined.
For every moment I remember there are a dozen I’ve forgotten, but I feel like they are with me on a night like this, a permanent part of my consciousness, a feeling lost on my mind but never on my soul. And then there are those individual experiences so transcendent that I can remember them as if they happened yesterday: Sam and Dave at the Soul Together at Madison Square Garden in 1967: every gesture, every movement, the order of the songs. I would give anything to hear them sing “When Something’s Wrong with My Baby” just the way they did it that night.
The obsessions with Otis Redding, Jerry Butler, and B.B. King came a little bit later; each occupied six months of my time, while I digested every nuance of every album. Like the Byrds, I turn to them today and still find, when I least expect it, something new, something deeply felt, something that speaks to me.
As I left college in 1969 and went into record production I started exhausting my seemingly insatiable appetite. I felt no less intensely than before about certain artists; I just felt that way about fewer of them. I not only became more discriminating but more indifferent. I found it especially hard to listen to new faces. I had accumulated enough musical experience to fall back on when I needed its companionship but during this period in my life I found I needed music less and people, whom I spend too much of my life ignoring, much more.
Today I listen to music with a certain measure of detachment. I’m a professional and I make my living commenting on it. There are months when I hate it, going through the routine just as a shoe salesman goes through his. I follow films with the passion that music once held for me. But in my own moments of greatest need, I never give up the search for sounds that can answer every impulse, consume all emotion, cleanse and purify — all things that we have no right to expect from even the greatest works of art but which we can occasionally derive from them.
Still, today, if I hear a record I like it is no longer a signal for me to seek out every other that the artist has made. I take them as they come, love them, and leave them. Some have stuck — a few that come quickly to mind are Neil Young’s After the Goldrush, Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions, Van Morrison’s Tupelo Honey, James Taylor’s records, Valerie Simpson’s Exposed, Randy Newman’s Sail Away, Exile on Main Street, Ry Cooder’s records, and, very specially, the last three albums of Joni Mitchell — but many more slip through the mind, making much fainter impressions than their counterparts of a decade ago.
But tonight there is someone I can write of the way I used to write, without reservations of any kind. Last Thursday, at the Harvard Square theatre, I saw my rock’n'roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time.
When his two-hour set ended I could only think, can anyone really be this good; can anyone say this much to me, can rock’n'roll still speak with this kind of power and glory? And then I felt the sores on my thighs where I had been pounding my hands in time for the entire concert and knew that the answer was yes.
Springsteen does it all. He is a rock’n'roll punk, a Latin street poet, a ballet dancer, an actor, a joker, bar band leader, hot-shit rhythm guitar player, extraordinary singer, and a truly great rock’n'roll composer. He leads a band like he has been doing it forever. I racked my brains but simply can’t think of a white artist who does so many things so superbly. There is no one I would rather watch on a stage today. He opened with his fabulous party record “The E Street Shuffle” — but he slowed it down so graphically that it seemed a new song and it worked as well as the old. He took his overpowering story of a suicide, “For You,” and sang it with just piano accompaniment and a voice that rang out to the very last row of the Harvard Square theatre. He did three new songs, all of them street trash rockers, one even with a “Telstar” guitar introduction and an Eddie Cochran rhythm pattern. We missed hearing his “Four Winds Blow,” done to a fare-thee-well at his sensational week-long gig at Charley’s but “Rosalita” never sounded better and “Kitty’s Back,” one of the great contemporary shuffles, rocked me out of my chair, as I personally led the crowd to its feet and kept them there.
Bruce Springsteen is a wonder to look at. Skinny, dressed like a reject from Sha Na Na, he parades in front of his all-star rhythm band like a cross between Chuck Berry, early Bob Dylan, and Marlon Brando. Every gesture, every syllable adds something to his ultimate goal — to liberate our spirit while he liberates his by baring his soul through his music. Many try, few succeed, none more than he today.
It’s five o’clock now — I write columns like this as fast as I can for fear I’ll chicken out — and I’m listening to “Kitty’s Back.” I do feel old but the record and my memory of the concert has made me feel a little younger. I still feel the spirit and it still moves me.
I bought a new home this week and upstairs in the bedroom is a sleeping beauty who understands only too well what I try to do with my records and typewriter. About rock’n'roll, the Lovin’ Spoonful once sang, “I’ll tell you about the magic that will free your soul/But it’s like trying to tell a stranger about rock’n'roll.” Last Thursday, I remembered that the magic still exists and as long as I write about rock, my mission is to tell a stranger about it — just as long as I remember that I’m the stranger I’m writing for.
from The Real Paper, “Loose Ends” column ****************************************
There’s no boot of the actual show that Landau attended, according to some ubergeek Springsteen pals (who I love), but this show from a few months later at The Main Point in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania captures that bright rebel fire of a young and hungry Springsteen in what some have called “one of the most compelling performances of Springsteen’s entire career.”
This show marks the very first known performance of Thunder Road (with in-progress lyrics and a different title) and a whiz-bang version of Chuck Berry’s “Back in the U.S.A.” I’ve been really deeply enjoying this version of Dylan’s “I Want You” for a while now without realizing it was from this show. Everything that is droll and straightforward in Dylan’s delivery on the original is wrenched and wrung of every bit of longing in Springsteen’s rendition, with instrumentation that sounds like a waltz or a carnival. Also, many consider this to be one of the definitive versions of “Incident on 57th Street.” Enjoy. Grow young.
When I was watching Tom Morello on Sunday night I remembered that the last time I saw him live was probably here:
After the show Morello and I chatted about that day and he said he remembered it being an insane show and — it was. I was somewhere in that churning crowd, practically dying, and completely loving it.
I didn’t know that a pro-shot video existed, so watching it again today after 11 years makes me happy.
A large part of the reason that I go to live music performances is because I am looking for some element of connection. I can sit at home in front of my stereo, listen to sterile studio recordings made in a far-away state that have been remastered and flawlessly captured. Sure, I hear a lot of good stuff that way . . . but I also feel a need for a visceral connection, an elemental thread of immediacy tying creator to listener in the same physical space. It’s why I prefer smaller venues – not from snobbery, or so I can tell you that I saw them way back when they were still playing the [insert tiny club name here]. It’s so I can see their eyes and feel their words, with flaws and all. I find myself feeling less than satisfied when I see a show at a huge venue on massive Jumbotron screens. The performers are tiny little ants a million miles away, and most of the action comes from the folks dancing around me. That’s fun, and I’ll do it, but that’s not the connection I really want with my music.
On Sunday night in Denver at the Larimer Lounge, I got to enjoy this awesome moment of connection with a musician that was just pure and simple sharing of the music with no pretense. I know I sound cheesy and that’s fine; if you were there, you probably would have felt the same way and still be smiling about it just like me. Ike Reilly is a musician that I’ve written about several times since discovering him on the recommendation of a friend just a few months ago (even though he’s been around for years, making great albums).
He’s a fierce and pointed lyricist with unstoppable tunes that have a rough punk-rock edge mixed with a bit of 1950s rebelliousness. He kind of reminds me of the hellion-rebel character in all the high school movies ever made — the one hanging out behind the bowling alley trying to swindle the guys and fondle the women.
Ike was taking a break from touring with his full band, The Ike Reilly Assassination (back in the fall, though) to open for Rage Against The Machine/Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello. Tom is currently travelling with a new solo-folk-troubadour one man act where he dubs himself The Nightwatchman and brings a political message.
The show was sold out (even for a “school night,” as Tom kept saying) and the crowd was absolutely on fire, pressing themselves against the low stage, the air crackling with anticipation. Ike found himself playing to a friendly audience who often sang along heartily to his every word (he asked at one point, “Who could possibly know this?”). This was the second song he played:
IKE REILLY, “GARBAGE DAY” (ACOUSTIC)
He also came out and joined Tom Morello (they both grew up in the same Illinois town of Libertyville) for a fiery cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son”:
TOM MORELLO & IKE REILLY: “FORTUNATE SON” (listen to the Rage-worthy ending here – I almost expected us all to start yelling “I won’t do what you tell me!”)
The most delightful moment, though, came long after the show after most folks had gone home. The Larimer Lounge has a little beer garden behind the venue, draped with white globe lights with green plants everywhere. Before the show I had a beer with Ike on the patio and he commented what a perfect night it was – the air was still and cool and summery. Long after midnight, after the show, I heard guitar strumming coming from a small group of about six folks out in the corner and I walked over to check it out.
Ike had pulled out his well-battered guitar at the request of a kid who said he “just had to” hear Heroin, a song Ike hadn’t done earlier in his set. He went on to play 6 or 7 tunes for a crowd that slowly grew into about 30 of the folks who were still hanging around, taking requests. We had been talking about “Charcoal Days and Sterling Nights” earlier in the evening (it’s based on an episode of COPS, love it) so he played this one for me:
IKE REILLY: “CHARCOAL DAYS AND STERLING NIGHTS” (patio-tastic version that’s really dark, maybe you can adjust the brightness on your monitor?)
Once Tom Morello came out and sat on a nearby picnic table, they started laughing at each other and the set kinda tapered off. But it was pretty dang cool, not at all as hambone as it potentially sounds. Thanks Ike.
Ike has a handful of shows left with Tom down the West Coast: Portland tonight, Seattle on Wednesday. They’ll be in San Francisco on Friday night (read this excellent article from the San Jose Metro that just ran to draw attention to that fact) and closing out in LA on Saturday.
You can now listen to their recent World Cafe performance on NPR (featuring four songs and nice stage banter), and they’re also playing at the Austin City Limits Festival on Sept 13, with a full-band tour slated for the fall.
I’ve been checking Blender.com regularly to see when they were going to post the video that they shot at the Denver Jesse Malin show a few weeks ago. Finally, it’s up, and for all the filming (they shot the entire show) there’s about 45 seconds of actual concert footage – the rest is a very interesting interview where he talks about his performance ethic, his songwriting, and how he found himself singing with Springsteen. I’d love to see the rest of the footage they got, but bah. It’s still really good.
Sono distrutta this morning – a bit destroyed (it comes out in Italian, I don’t know why). But happily so, the after-effects of seeing a fantastic show last night with Ike Reilly and Tom Morello. More on that later, but portions were near magical. I will try to gather my Monday thoughts coherently on all of your lovely behalfs because there are some great new tunes this week.
Into The Colors [video] Ben Harper Soulful songman/insanely good Weissenborner Ben Harper is back with a hotly anticipated album Lifeline (due August 28th) and already garnering positive advance reviews. I find myself heartily enjoying this song from the opening notes — playful and smooth, possibly his catchiest tune since “Steal My Kisses.” For the love of all things holy, go see the man in concert if you can (a few festivals left this summer, and hopefully a fall tour in support of the new album). He fairly ignites in spontaneous combustion flames from the fervor of his virtuosity in playing, and I love it.
The Storm Patrick Watson Remember our good pal Jake Troth with the impressive potential? He recommended that I take a listen to this next artist and since I like Jake’s music, I promptly heeded his advice — and I’m really impressed. Patrick Watson is a musician out of Montreal, Canada whose 2006 album Close To Paradise slipped past me somehow. Man alive; close to paradise indeed. This is otherwordly stuff, haunting and melodic — like being trapped in Labyrinth, without David Bowie in spandex. And I’m not gonna solidify the most obvious comparison, but listen to those vocals; they bore an eerie resemblance to someone else I deeply love, pure and soaring and wrenching.
New Dark Ages Bad Religion Truthfully, I probably first heard So-Cal literate punk band Bad Religion at the implied behest of Eddie Vedder – in ’93 he loaned guest backing vocals to two songs on their Recipe For Hate album. And since ’94 I’ve really liked their single “Infected” (even with that whole rant in the middle about crucifixtion and other violent desires; it’s got an unbeatable riff). Bad Religion has been together since 1980, and their fourteenth studio album finds them still alienated and politically aware, but fiercely melodic and intense as always. Frontman Greg Graffin has one of the most distinctive voices in punk rock: it kind of reminds me of standing over an active volcano. New Maps Of Hell is out now on Epitaph, and was produced by Joe Barresi (Tool, QOTSA).
White Dove John Vanderslice This is a punchy cut off the fresh release from San Francisco’s John Vanderslice, in which he impresses me by (among other things) using the word veranda right off the bat and making it sound so lovely. I would like a veranda that overlooks the ocean. And maybe I’ve just got Ike Reilly on the brain, but the beginning is almost identical to “When Irish Eyes Are Burning,” although it morphs into something completely unique by the time the lyrics kick in. Emerald City was recorded mostly at Vanderslice’s all-analog studio Tiny Telephone (a dying breed) in the Mission District of SF, and is out July 24th on Barsuk.
Cigarettes & Gasoline Emerson Hart The former frontman of Tonic goes solo with this new release on EMI/Blue Note Records. Cigarettes & Gasoline is an intimate and well-crafted album from Emerson Hart which is loosely gathered around personal themes of his father’s unsolved murder and Emerson’s childhood associations with the man (cigarettes, gasoline). There’s a quality in his voice that draws out something from me — like sucking venom out of a rattlesnake wound. History: I’m undereducated on Tonic, but I remember not liking “If You Could Only See,” Tonic’s biggest hit, and also loving their song “Sugar,” which still makes me think of summers and all kinds of borderline nefarious activities. Hart’s new album is out tomorrow.
The rhythmic & fabulous Austin band Spoon released their 6th album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (count how many Gas to put here) on Merge last week, and just because they’re nice they also included a full EP of bonus material called Get Nice!. Before I dash out the door tonight, I wanted to put up three tunes off that bonus collection which have been rocking my earbuds nonstop lately — especially this first one, can’t get enough of it:
No need to hide — there’s a new compilation CD coming out August 28 from Engine Room Recordings called Guilt By Association, which nobly is working to “bridge the gap between TRL and Pitchfork.” It’s a shrewd concept album which realizes that for each of us, maybe behind those thick black spectacles, chunky haircut, and Strokes t-shirt, is a soul screaming along the words to Mariah Carey on our car stereos.
A project of Engine Room Recording’s co-founder Peter Block, working with music supervisors Randall Poster and Jim Dunbar (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The School of Rock and my second-favorite TV show Lost), the album asks the indie stars of today to reinterpret their favorite guilty pleasure songs for our auditory enjoyment. There are hits and misses (and I boldly do not feel guilty about liking some of these originals), but check the tracklist –
GUILT BY ASSOCIATION 1. Petra Haden: “Don’t Stop Believin’” (Journey) 2. Devendra Banhart: “Don’t Look Back In Anger” (Oasis) 3. Mark Mulcahy: “From This Moment On” (Shania Twain) 4. Luna: “Straight Up” (Paula Abdul) 5. The Concretes: “Back For Good” (Take That) 6. Jim O’Rourke: “Viva Forever” (Spice Girls) 7. Goat: “Sugar We’re Going Down” (Fall Out Boy) 8. Will Oldham/Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy” “Can’t Take That Away” (Mariah Carey) 9. Woody Jackson Orchestra featuring Money Mark: Love’s Theme (Love Unlimited Orchestra) 10. Porter Block: “Breaking Free” (High School Musical) 11. Mooney Suzuki: “Just Like Jesse James” (Cher) 12. Geoff Farina: “Two Tickets To Paradise” (Eddie Money) 13. Casey Shea: “Chop Suey” (System of a Down) 14. Superchunk: “Say My Name” (Destiny’s Child) 15. Mike Watt: “Burning For You” (Blue Oyster Cult)
The arguably crazyDevendra Banhart has been called “one of our favorite freaky people” by The Black Crowes, and here he takes on Oasis with his trademark warbly folk meandering. If you prefer fragile delicacy over confident generational anthems, this is just for you:
Don’t Look Back In Anger (Oasis cover) – Devendra Banhart (link removed)
Will Oldham / Bonnie “Prince” Billy busts out the aforementioned Mariah Carey. Well, not exactly busts out. More like lets the slow jam ebb out. It’s playful and surprisingly enjoyable.
Can’t Take That Away (Mariah Carey cover) – Will Oldham/Bonnie “Prince” Billy (link removed)
Go to the MySpace page to hear Petra Haden tip her hat to my boys in Journey with a sunny acapella-harmony-deelite version of “Don’t Stop Believin’” with some Wilson Phillips tossed in at the end just to really drive that guilty pleasure idea home. I think that the last time I did karaoke I tried my hand at covering the same song; pretty sure it didn’t sound as bubblegum delectable. The crowd may have, in fact, stopped believing, despite my exhortations to the contrary.
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California Giving context to the torrent since 2005.
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. Rock on.
Ryan Adams was back in fine form last night in Santa Cruz, playing a relentless three-hour electric set and rocking the plaid pants and a Celtic Frost t-shirt. The show at the Catalyst Club was general admission, so I was most excited about this show (the other ones to come this week are all seats); my favorite kind of show energy comes from a packed-in standing audience.
On our way over the hill to the show, we were discussing what era Ryan was our favorite, and what kind of show we wish we could have seen in incarnations of years past. The three of us in the car were apparently all rockers at heart, and the consensus went back and forth between Love Is Hell, Rock N Roll and Demolition if we had to pick just one era to see live.
Growing Young With Rock and Roll
Ike had pulled out his well-battered guitar at the request of a kid who said he “just had to” hear Heroin, a song Ike hadn’t done earlier in his set. He went on to play 6 or 7 tunes for a crowd that slowly grew into about 30 of the folks who were still hanging around, taking requests. We had been talking about “Charcoal Days and Sterling Nights” earlier in the evening (it’s based on an episode of COPS, love it) so he played this one for me:
Name: Heather Browne
