A few weeks ago, I helped dragged a table out into a bar parking lot on a lovely Sunday afternoon and interviewed last summer’s winners of Denver’s best alt-country band title, The Hollyfelds. They have a new EP coming out Friday, and they played at our Hillbilly Prom last weekend (oh wait, that was the Lurleens).
Feel free to jet on over to Gigbot.com and see what we had to talk about.
[photograph by my favorite Todd Roeth]
“I was asked if I was interested in covering a pearl jam song by mtv2. I thought it was funny that they wanted to include me, being a rapper and all, but I wanted to take a shot at it. I loved ten when it came out, rocked the tape till it popped. One of my favorites on it was why go, none of the bands they asked had picked it yet so I did. I thought about reworking the original lyrics into a rap kind of situation, but then I was playing the melody on one of my keyboards and thought it might be more fun to just straight cover it. So I did. It was fun. I hope you likes it.” – P.O.S.
P.O.S.was among artists picked to cover Pearl Jam in celebration of the re-release of Ten.
Barely having caught my breath from Texas, I prepare this week to board a jet plane to Chicago for a mostly-work-related (but fun) 5 days in the Windy City. I’m going to check out a semester study program that I help coordinate and timed my visit so that I could see the Numero Group‘s hotly anticipated Eccentric Soul Revue on Saturday night. I am thoroughly excited about it, since I adore most everything that this crate-digging reissue label has discovered, dusted off, and given new life to.
When I explain the Numero Group concept to friends, I liken it to musical archaeology of the raddest order. Founded in 2003 by Ken Shipley (an old high school pal of mine), Rob Sevier and Tom Lunt, the Numero Group relentlessly explores old vinyl singles and reels of tape from groups with potential who never made it to top 40 airplay, the unnoticed and unappreciated. Their goal is to create reissue libraries of varying niche genres and of the highest caliber, and to date this library feels like “a mix of thrift shop soul, skinny tie pop, Belizean funk, and hillbilly gospel.” In my mind they are one of the coolest labels currently in existence.
I’ll be visiting the Numero Group on Wednesday to see my student’s internship placement there that I hooked up. I look so forward to seeing what goes into making one of their excellent compilation albums. If you are looking to expand your musical horizons, to be schooled (humbly) through the exhaustive liner notes on genres you never even knew existed, and to hear some of the best music that was ever forgotten, check out the Numero Group’s catalog.
Today’s Monday Music Roundup is five songs from their brilliant library, with the goal to entice you to explore them further.
Shark
Gary Charlson
From the #24 Numero release It’s All Pop! (a compilation of songs from the Missouri Titan Records label) this song starts out pretty heartfelt for a power pop song, talking about their relationship and how well they know each other over a rich golden guitar riff. Then he segues in with the winner line, “Won’t you come over so we can make out in the dark?” SAY YES, mystery girl. Gary Charlson is a forgotten Missouri power-chord winner, along with all the other artists on this charmingly effervescent (and rockin’) compilation.
Shame, Shame, Shame
Harmonettes
Oh man, this song is bursting with explosively hot Equatorial vibrancy. One of the Cult Cargo series, Belize City Boil Up was a breathless recommendation to me several years back by a friend out on tour with a band of an entirely different type. We found common ground on this blisteringly sexy hybrid of songs from the shores of Belize, calypso, funk, disco and soul all with a dash of the exotic. Restored from their original analog, as the Numero Group is so good at doing, this cut starts with an exhortation — “You know babe, I want you to feel that!” And I do, and you will too.
Country Loving Country Style
Bobby McNutt
In 1967, Allen Merry formed a youth program in East St Louis through the South End Community Center. The Young Disciples aimed to channel kids towards making (soulful funk-drenched) music instead of bad decisions, and the good-beyond-their-years results are reissued on the Eccentric Soul series album of the same name. There’s nothing country about this song, other than that the singer comes from there and laments the women in the big city — but he does it with wails and certain gyrations.
Can’t Let You Break My Heart
The Quantrells
Another favorite of mine from the Eccentric Soul series, the Home Schooled: ABCs of Kid Soul collection recalls groups like the Jackson 5 in their dulcet, prepubescent hit-making talent. As the album notes ask, “You know Michael, Jermaine, Tito, Marlon and Jackie, but what about Altyrone Deno Brown, Michael Washington, or Little Murray & the Mantics?” No, I didn’t know about those Mantics, but now I do and I am a better (more funky) woman because of it.
We’ve Had Enough
Arnie Love & The Lovettes
The “heavy sugar boogie” of Recording Tap from the Don’t Stop Numero series includes the fluidly hot basslines and tribal drumbeats of this up-all-night burner, minus the white bellbottoms and spangles. With the eager chorus of women here on background vocals, and those strutting bass notes that reel out and glide back in, this is for those, as Chris says, who feel the new Hercules & Love Affair album just isn’t quite dramatic enough.
Tickets are still available for Saturday night’s show at the Park West. The performers are all from the defunct Chicago soul label Twinight, which was resuscitated on the 2006 Numero compilation Eccentric Soul: Twinight’s Lunar Rotation. Some of these groups are still actively performing, while others will take the stage for the first time in 30 years. According to the Numero breakdown of Saturday, “In true revue fashion, we’ve hired Chicago’s stalwart Uptown Sound to back the entire performance and expanded their tight rhythm section to include horns, backing vocalists, and strings. The show will be preceded by an interactive slideshow of photographs by Michael L. Abramson who document the Southside soul and blues scene in the mid to late 70′s and a DJ set from The Numero Group.”
Aw, come on! I’ll be there with my new camera lens (replacement for the casualty of SXSW) and eager ears. I would imagine there might also be some dancing.
Also — subscribe to Numero Group for the entire 2009 year on vinyl or CD. You’ve spent $100 on less.
A.A. Bondy is fast becoming my new favorite artist, and unreleased songs like these from his Daytrotter session last summer scrape at my insides. As I listen to them today in a quiet house, snow sparkling clean in the bright sunlight, something inside of me immediately identifies with the high lonesome harmonica and the roughed-up weariness in the vocals.
Bondy writes, “This song feels like it was buried in the ground long before me and my shovel just happened to strike it one day.” Yeah, and it’s oddly a story of a vampire and an alienation from the world — the sleeping during the day and the going out at night looking for a quenching to the thirst. Never thought I would identify but somehow I do… and there is the mark of a great, great song.
Oh The Vampyre (unreleased, live on Daytrotter) – A.A. Bondy
And one more, about black haired girls and layin’ among the pines as the night comes rolling in.
Among The Pines (unreleased, live on Daytrotter) – A.A. Bondy
Go and get the rest of the set for free on Daytrotter.
A.A. Bondy is playing Sasquatch Festival on Memorial Day weekend. Anyone up for another roadtrip?
[image credit Jonathan Purvis]
The wonderful fellas in Everything Absent or Distorted (my favorite Denver band) played a show in NYC a couple weeks ago — to an audience of “card-carrying members of the East Village punk aristocracy.” Even though they couldn’t fit all 8 members onto the small stage (and spilled into the audience), they undoubtedly gave it their all because they always do. The event at the Bowery Electric was hosted by Jesse Malin and I hear filmmaker Jim Jarmusch was lounging out front. Sweet. At their second New York show two nights later, my correspondent on the scene reported sightings of both Franz Nicolay from The Hold Steady and The National’s drummer Bryan Devendorf, for an exuberantly passionate show as can be expected.
The positive review and attention from the musician community gives me boundless joy; as I wrote in my review of their album, they deserve a bigger stage (literally and figuratively). Let EAOD ring. Good job, boys!
Aquariums – Everything Absent or Distorted
[pic by laurie scavo]
As I start writing this post, I am blazing up I-25 somewhere just outside of El Paso. We’re taking the long way home from Austin, and enjoying the time to let the SXSW experience percolate and settle between the yellow divider lines that flick past on the road in an endless stream. Cracker’s “Eurotrash Girl” is playing in the radio, and the windows are down as we try and sing along. Life is still really good.
We all stayed in Marfa, Texas last night at the modernistic Thunderbird Hotel, and I highly recommend it if you ever find yourself out thisaway. Pedaling rented cruiser bikes, we stopped at the charmingly-painted El Cheapo Liquor Store (really) and then rode out to an inky black field off Pinto Canyon Road to watch for the famed Marfa lights after midnight. We saw them, holy mackerel. Natural phenomenon or hoax or something in between, it was otherworldy spooky last night. As we rode home in the aching silence of the mid-desert (ok, punctuated often by our laughter), it occurred to me that I don’t know when the last time was I’d seen such a brilliantly sparkling number of stars.
These last few days I’ve been processing the absolute whirlwind of SXSW. I meant to write each day of the festival but somehow that never happened. From the time I stepped foot into those festive, loud streets, I feel like I was sucked into something that was simultaneously thrilling (because I mean really, that much music all in one place?!) and crushingly exhausting at the end of each day. I was too busy to stop and write about it, despite my best of intentions.
Let’s start with the bands that knocked my socks off.
#1 tops: Mumford and Sons on Maggie Mae’s Rooftop
One thing I loved and envied about Austin were the number of great open air venues built specifically for live music. You can’t beat the earthiness of the fresh humid air against your skin and the scent of the breeze while listening to amazing music, instead of the (mostly) indoor sweaty air I’m used to. Mumford and Sons completely blew us all away in a setting like this, their impassioned sweet harmonies rising perfectly out into the night. Their young faces and world-worn lyrics carry a strong current of hope, all banjos and stomping foot percussion.
This was one of my most anticipated shows and they didn’t disappoint. They opened with that new song “Sigh No More” that I posted last week and it absolutely slayed me. The chorus sings of “love will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free — be more like the man you were made to be.” I felt more like me, only better, when their set spun off at full tilt. Jawdroppingly pure.
Pretty & Nice at Beauty Bar
My SXSW experience started at Beauty Bar (amidst the sparkly pink paint and old-fashioned hairdryer chairs) to the carbonated punk of Boston’s Pretty & Nice. Their angular rock keeled off-kilter, in the vein of Guided By Voices, and they looked like they were having a hell of a lot of fun:
The Damnwells at Threadgills
I have loved this band for a few years now, but never seen them live. One time I (briefly) considered driving to Phoenix to catch them at a film festival for their excellent documentary Golden Days, but that plan fizzled. So before my first night got rolling in Austin, I set off walking (and walking) over the river to Threadgills to see them play on an outdoor stage as the sun set. Alex Dezen’s voice is even more gorgeous and stirring in real life, and the material off their new album was solid. Here they are doing “Bastard of Midnight“:
Starfucker @ Radio Room (MOKB)
You’d have to be dead not to have fun at this band’s live show. All clad in the headbands/neon sunglasses/running shorts look, Portland’s Starfucker blew the roof off Dodge’s MOKB Showcase on Wednesday night. Explaining it to a friend who hadn’t heard them, I described their sound as Eighties sheen with real classic pop-song construction underpinning. An intensely fun 45 minutes, and a band I would love to see again.
Elvis Perkins In Dearland @ The Central Presbyterian Church
Midnight redemption.
BLK JKS @ Radio Room
Victim to the same thief that got to MSTRKRFT, South Africa’s BLK JKS (“Black Jacks”) lost all their vowels and then played the NPR SXSW party. Despite that somewhat humorous confluence of abbreviations, their set was electrifying and elemental and sounded completely fresh — an “unmistakable otherness.” Their debut EP is out on the excellent Secretly Canadian label, and their set went like this:
Oh! And in a brilliant apex of total surrealism, I watched this show with Roy from The Office. Jerk to Pam that he is.
Other memorable shows were Voxtrot at Emo’s (pretty sure I caught some new stuff in there that sounds very exciting, totally different), the bright swing and soul of Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears at the Paste Party, and Superdrag closing my festival out with a scorching set of new material at the SPIN Afterparty. Less good was Third Eye Blind. Don’t even ask, please. Sometimes you do things that make you feel dirty at SXSW.
Irish-fronted Minneapolis country band Romantica (who once recorded that soul-gasping duet “The Dark” with Ryan Adams) was an early afternoon treat Friday, in a dark and tiny bar across the highway. Australian band The Grates at Vaya Con Tacos were an acrobatic whirl of girl rock and swirling ribbons, and King Khan exploded the Rolling Stone party as expected.
The Mile Hi Fidelity Party fairly packed out The Jackalope with great Denver bands, and as an occasional hot freak myself I was pleased to spend a large chunk of my hours on both Friday and Saturday at the Hot Freaks party, listening to absolutely ravaging bands like Henry Clay People (and some confusingly fun ones like Peelander Z). All the blog showcases I attended were quality.
Oh, and Lady Sovereign looks like the cool difficult girl from junior high that totally lit that one guy’s locker on fire and then cut Saturday school.
On a personal music experience level, my favorite moments of the festival came when I saw The Hold Steady twice in one damn day. I was half a foot away from their afternoon show in a little white tent at the Hot Freaks party at the Club de Ville, with a setlist that would make grown THS fans cry. They blew out that tent, and I almost got smacked in the face a few times with their instruments. That one looked and felt like this:
At the end of the night, at the midnight Noise Pop party, I got to see them again next door at the Mohawk, also outdoors with all of us packed in close around the small stage in the warm Texas night. The crowd was appropriately rowdier and the BAC was higher, well, all around. It was like a line from one of their songs: “Let’s clutch and kiss and sing and shake…. Tonight, let’s try to levitate.”
I’ve seen THS shows several times before but never with a friend who loved them every fervent bit as much as I do, so from the opening notes the two of us screamed out the lyrics at the top of our lungs as the whole crowd became one roiling, pressing, pogoing, diving mass. Everyone had their arms around each other and for about 90 minutes I felt no pain. That was one of the best concert moments of my life. Let this be my annual reminder that we can all be something bigger.
As I stuffed clothes back into my suitcase before checking out of the hotel, I thought about the post-festival depression I always feel when the last notes of music die away, and how much more acute it was after a week of this magnitude. I am overwhelmed with the sheer number of bands I wanted to see and didn’t. I keep remembering new ones, too. Ack.
But I am so grateful for the experiences I had, both musical and non, and cannot wait to come back next year. Holy heck.
A fair rogue Avett covers Merle Haggard on the tour bus at SXSW.
While all of Colorado seems to be bunkering down for a storm of Biblical proportions, I am sitting in my office tapping my toes to the new Harlem Shakes album Technicolor Health. Another band I missed at SXSW and wanted to see — this stuff sounds phenomenal.
STREAM IT ALL: The Harlem Shakes – Technicolor
To take with you, this is my new favorite track from the album — chimey and shimmery and ridiculously catchy.
Sunlight – The Harlem Shakes
The album was produced with Chris Zane (Les Savy Fav, The Walkmen, Passion Pit, White Rabbits), and the record release party is tonight in Brooklyn at the Music Hall of Williamsburg.
Thao Nguyen and the Get Down Stay Down played several kickass shows in Austin this year. Her set on Friday night at Momo’s was one of the most packed that I personally attended, with a huge line outside left unsatisfied. I squeezed my way in nimbly up to the front and wow — that woman is ferocious and fearless in her music and her stage presence. She knows how to wield a guitar and craft a song with all the right balances.
Thao played a brand new song to the packed house (there’s one blurb of scratchy audio but then my camera gets on the ball):
A new album is expected from Thao this year.
I saw These United States twice in Austin and their live set absolutely crackled with rough and rowdy energy. They are the perfect headliners for our First Annual Denver Hillbilly Prom this Friday night at the Hi-Dive. I am wearing a peach and white striped Gunne Sax/Jessica McClintock dress from the early ’80s and –of course– my cowboy boots.
Get Yourself Home (In Search of The Mistress Whose Kisses Are Famous) – These United States
Y’all come out, and for those of you who can’t, check out this fabulous (deafening) performance from the Hype Machine/Music Slut SXSW Party last week:
Catch These United States on the road if you can, because their sets were packed full at SXSW:
Mar 25 @ The Sub (College of Santa Fe) Santa Fe, NM
Mar 26 @ Sundown Saloon Boulder, CO
Mar 27 @ Hi-Dive, w/ Lurleens Denver, CO
Mar 28 @ Pioneer Inn Nederland, CO
Mar 29 @ The Dusty Bookshelf Manhattan, KS
Mar 30 @ Slowdown Omaha, NE
Mar 31 @ The Nomad Minneapolis, MN
Apr 2 @ KRUI Live In-Studio Iowa City, IA
Apr 2 @ The Mill Iowa City, IA
Apr 3 @ The Hideout Chicago, IL
Apr 4 @ Founders Grand Rapids, MI
Apr 5 @ P.J.’s Lager House Detroit, MI
Apr 5 @ House Ann Arbor, MI
Apr 6 @ Village Idiot Maumee, OH
Apr 7 @ Scene Metrospace East Lansing, MI
Apr 8 @ Canal Street Tavern Dayton, OH
Apr 9 @ My Old Kentucky Blog live session Indianapolis, IN
Apr 9 @ Locals Only Indianapolis, IN
Apr 10 @ The Comet Cincinnati, OH
Apr 11 @ Transylvania University Lexington, KY
Apr 11 @ Al’s Bar Lexington, KY
Oct 20-24 @ CMJ Music Marathon New York, NY
[our fine poster designed by the fearsome Todd Roeth, in the back of our car somewhere between Texas and New Mexico last night. True story.]
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.
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