Unconventional ’08 :: Whoever this Obama kid is, he sure incites some excellent music

Last night in Denver, the Unconventional ’08 shindig took over a madhouse-packed Manifest Hope Gallery amidst the brick warehouses on Larimer Street.

Earlier in the evening a free concert featured Silversun Pickups, Nada Surf, DJ Z-Trip, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Cold War Kids. Starting around 10pm, a late-night supergroup performance brought together Ben Gibbard, Jenny Lewis, Johnathan Rice, Zooey Deschanel, and Matthew Caws to perform for a slew of eclectic luminaries that included various congresspeople, Moby, the mayors of San Francisco and Seattle, Fergie’s boyfriend Josh Duhamel, Jin from LOST — oh, and me. How did this happen?

As I approached from blocks away, the crowd was spilling in the street as they waited to get in through the half-lowered garage door entrance. A converted police car flashed multimedia exhibits onto the faded warehouse wall, with music pulsing loud enough to be heard at the Convention Center. Pandemonium!

Inside the thousand-degree gallery, I did some general browsing of the political artwork covering the walls, and then the requisite gawking and people-watching (most eclectic crowd ever – mixing political pinstripes with the indie kids and watching them try to dance side-by-side). This non-Dem was admittedly a little creeped out by a few of the near-deistic portrayals of Obama in various painted settings; a friend and I were talking about how we felt like we’d entered his shrine. But overall it was a cool expression of passion and commitment by the artists who contributed, with a few ace lighthearted inclusions (Stephen Colbert! Slaying evil!).

Comedienne Sarah Silverman started things off with her hilariously deadpan ruminations on the convention and the election, and she was dipped into an enthusiastic two-armed welcome (totally almost like this) by San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom (SCU Broncos represent!). Newsom then introduced Seattle’s mayor Greg Nickels, and after many words and rousing rhetoric, the five musicians finally climbed onto the small stage. Throughout the 70-minute show each artist took turns on lead, with various duets, group singalongs and covers. It was lighthearted and felt like a rare living-room collaboration.

See all the glory in pictures from last night.

UNCONVENTIONAL ’08 KINDA SOUNDED LIKE…

This Is Not A Test (live 8/2/08, Newport Folk) – Zooey Deschanel & M. Ward
Zooey was completely charming, and performed this song with her guitar. Halfway through she stopped abruptly and laughed at a small mistake she made, saying it was the first time she’d ever played guitar in public since she usually rocks the piano.

Love Hurts – Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris
Johnathan Rice and Jenny Lewis sang this ’70s staple, and in a move of complete awesomeness, they dedicated it to Obama and Hillary.

Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds cover) – Jenny Lewis & Johnathan Rice
They didn’t sing this song. But they did lots of duets together, all lovey and gazing into each other’s indie-alt-country-couple eyes, and sounding good.

See These Bones (live on MOKB Sirius) – Nada Surf
I loved every note and word that spilled from Matthew Caws last night (recall my fondness). I was unabashed dork fangirl, coincidentally ending up right at Matthew’s feet for the set, and I didn’t even bother to check my singalong enthusiasm. He kept eying me in bemusement as I sang “the lights of this city are more or less blinking…” with possibly more enthusiasm than he did.

Weightless (live on Leno) – Nada Surf
You know those gorgeous Beach Boys harmonies at the end of this song? Picture the full gallery crowd and those other four voices on stage all swelling together behind Caws’ lead vocals. Jenny Lewis admirably played band leader, cupping her hand around her ear and waving her arms in encouragement. Nada Surf drummer Ira Elliott stood off to the right (in front of that massive Obama/Lincoln meld) and kept time with fancy claps for the whole song. You can take the drummer off the stage …

Silver Lining (Rilo Kiley cover, live at Hiro Ballroom 6/30/08) – Ben Gibbard
Ben didn’t play this one either. But he could have. I think Jenny would have been down with that.

Cath (live at BBC6) – Ben Gibbard
This song appeared on last night’s setlist but was substituted with “Sound of Settling,” which was great by me because we all got to “Ba baaa! Ba baaa!” heartily instead.

Military Madness (live 10-22-06, Bridge School) – Death Cab for Cutie, Gillian Welch, Neil Young
The five musicians closed with this Graham Nash cover about military madness and solitary sadness. Ben Gibbard led on the piano, and despite one false ending (another chorus? should we stop? let’s do both) it was a stirring closer. This live mp3 is one I saw at the Bridge School Benefit in CA a few years ago with a slightly different lineup.

ZIP: UNCONVENTIONAL ’08

Oh, and …

Dude, I’m practically one of the Oceanic 6.

Coachella Day 2: It was hot but remember how stunning?

The waves of radiating heat by midday arrival at Coachella on Saturday felt the most heady of the three days, but perhaps it was just the swell in the crowd numbers in anticipation of The wee sexy Artist. More people = more body heat. Although I was excited about so many acts that day, the gild was off the lily-fresh novelty of Friday and I kept finding myself jammed into overpacked tents with too many hip dudes in neon sweating on me. This was the day I wanted to spend the most time in the Do Lab so that guy above could spray me with his cooling mists of the gods, in time to the pulsating electronic music. In that crowd, you cease feeling hot, and just feel blissful.

I started my rounds over in tent village wandering from French synthpop band The Teenagers over to the Gobi Tent for the music of Mick Jones’ (the Clash) side project with Tony James of Generation X, Carbon/Silicon. Their sound is true to those (slightly idling) punk guitar jags and the cockney drawl, but my friend kept shaking his head in dismay at Mick’s pink button down dress shirt. “Joe Strummer would’ve beaten him up for that shit,” he muttered under his breath. Ah, but we all age. Not all still sound as good as these guys did; it was an enjoyable afternoon set.

Denver’s “indie rock with a circus-polka-cabaret-Eastern-European spin” Devotchka was next, and not only were they all dressed up like a symphony in their (surely godawful hot) dress blacks, they brought acrobats and tubas.

I love how you can see the whole stage and the crowd reflected in Jeanie Schroder’s tuba, and who doesn’t want flailing spandex-clad women swinging from large scarves in time to their live music?

After a few songs from Cold War Kids, I got right in the middle of the main stage crowd for an exhilarating Spanish language bonanza with Mexico City’s Café Tacuba. Hot damn, that was one of the most fun sets of the entire festival for me. I had no idea what was going on. There were Mexican wrestler masks, flags being waved, everybody and their nephew singing along en español at the very top of their lungs — and I loved every minute of it. Once when I was studying abroad I went to an Italian pop/rap concert by Jovanotti and this was not a dissimilar experience. It’s great to feel out of place at a concert and yet completely, totally in place because you can share that kind of passion. Please go see Café Tacuba if you get a chance. The force of the energy exploding from the tiny man on stage felt like it looked:

After Dwight Yoakam (Dwight Yoakam!) and his hillbilly muuuusic –which seemed to go over quite well, as a testament to the variety of this festival– I headed over to get trampled at Hot Chip. The photo pit was as packed as the tent, spilling out into the open air, all of us sweating, weeping for a good shot of the band, and trying to deny that the rhythm of Hot Chip was indeed, in the end, going to get us. Those beats were just as delicious and tightly-woven as I had expected and the crowds were out in full force to be a part of that.

P.S. – You need proper athletic wear to survive Hot Chip (below). I also saw 5 grown men dressed only in matching Speedos and hip packs and it made me die a little inside.

If I thought I was trampled at Hot Chip though, my goodness it was just preparation for M.I.A. I found it interesting that the two most buzzed and frenetically attended sets of the whole festival that I saw were out in the Sahara Tent (bet it woulda been three if I made it to Justice). Traditionally, I understand that’s been the dance/DJ tent but it seems to me that maybe genres are bending and next year the organizers shouldn’t assume that the dance kids will all fit inside it. Under the stars at the outdoor stage would have been so much better. But nonetheless, M.I.A. was stomping and bright, a dizzying set causing complete crowd chaos from this Sri Lankan wundergirl.

In between Hot Chip and M.I.A. I swooned a little over Jenny Lewis, who charmingly dug out the same outfit she must have worn for her tap dance recital in 1988, and whose fellow Rilo Kileyans sounded warm and perfect in the setting sun:

Golden confetti during The Moneymaker as the sky darkened….

Portishead was alternately mournful and sexy and numbing and thrilling all at once. Under the starry desert sky Beth Gibbons’ voice floated like a ghost weaving in and out of the trance.

Also worth noting that Portishead’s set possessed the magical ability to completely jam the cell phone text messaging network, leaving thousands of us stranded, wandering with a dazed look in our eyes as we sought our friends. It was a near tragedy of Herculean proportions. You just don’t DO that to techno-addicted younguns. How did I survive festivals before texting? It was brutal.

Finally – Prince! You do not take pictures of The Artist. You take pictures of the screen showing the artist. Only Prince’s “personal photographers” were allowed in to the photo pit, much to mine and everyone else’s chagrin. I wanted to see how tiny he was from 15 feet away. But it was okay because his essence radiated all the way back to where I ended up on the field and I felt the heat, baby. One only needs to watch him play guitar like he’s in The Throes of It All to see why women flock to him (not this one, but some women. So I hear).

He was moody and sensual, I never could figure out what he was going to do next, he changed clothes in the middle of his set and played an hour after noise curfew with little concern for silly rules. And really, who was going to tell him to stop? And he pretty much blew the standard for future headliners sky high. I am not a huge Prince fan with the exception of a few undeniable favorites (Never Take The Place Of Your Man? P Control?) but this man was in charge. His cover of Radiohead’s Creep was one of those wtf moments where I looked around and said, “Wait, is he actually doing this?” – the ways he changed the lyrics eviscerated the song of a lot of its insecure meanings, and I didn’t care for that, but he made it his own. One thing Prince does not do is wish he were special.

As the final notes of Prince’s set vibrated off into the sexy oblivion where all of his performances are stored ad infinitum, one of my friends commented that people were going to be talking about that set for years. And indeed, everywhere I went I overheard conversations, starting with one at the table behind me when getting bagels the next morning.

“He kept changing what he called us!” Young Man With Visor #1 remarked. “Like, first it was [slight falsetto] ‘Hello Co-ah-chella!” then he switched and was all, “Y’all are the coolest, Cuh-chella. Unh!” When he achingly closed the sentence with that perfect Prince “unh,” I almost spit out my coffee trying not to laugh because then they would’ve known I was eavesdropping. Their conversation then veered into hypothetical situations that amused me so much I had to get up and leave: “So, if you had a nipple on your forehead, would you just wear a beanie all the time? Or a sweatband?”

On that thought-provoking note, we headed out into the ghostland observatory of Coachella on a sparsely populated Sunday . . .

Monday Music Roundup

I’m back from my aforementioned 20-hour dash through Wyoming, Nebraska, and back into Colorado. It was a spur of the moment thing, leaving me at the ranch/hostel place on the remote Wyoming border with nary a toothbrush at 10pm on a Sunday night. It was exhilarating to get out and see a part of the country I’ve never seen, simply because I wanted to see where the freeway took me on a full tank of gas. While on the jaunt, I listened mostly to my two Fuel For The Open Road mixes, and the twangy overtones fit perfectly on the county highways and prairies.

Here’s what else I might have listened to if I hadn’t left my iPod on the charger at home.

Future Rock
The Muslims
I’d seen a flurry of short posts about The Muslims in the blog world a few weeks ago, but they truly won me over when I read this great quote from the band that Bruce cited over on Some Velvet Blog: “We don’t know what the fuck we’re doing. And that’s why it sounds like The Velvet Underground. Because it has chords and my guitar is trebly. We like the E chord. It’s simple. None of us listen to math-rock. We tried it, but it didn’t work out that well. We’re not bad, we’re just not really good.” And AMEN, ain’t that humbling. This song is young and dirty and fast — what more could you want? The Muslims play Denver’s Larimer Lounge on May 2, with lots of other shows coming up as well.

Silver Lining
Rilo Kiley
This song is in no way new music, but it has risen to the tip-top of my playlists in recent weeks. I somehow glossed unfairly over Rilo Kiley‘s 2007 release Under The Blacklight after reading a few lukewarm reviews, and never realized the genius of this track until recently. Lame! I know. Well, it finally hit me, all handclaps and disco beats, and I was instantly won over by the stark confessionals from Jenny Lewis and sentiments I can appreciate. If perchance you also missed it like I did, for the love of Pete, take a listen and try not to love it, all the way down to those mellifluous closing gospel chorus notes. My song of the month (a perfect video too).

Sun Giant
Fleet Foxes
As I crested hill after hill of winter-bleached prairie grassland early this morning as the rising sun splintered across it, I listened to a bit of My Morning Jacket. One of the things I enjoy the most about their music is the way it feels golden and expansive, all sundrenched reverb and eerie harmonies. It’s easy to see why that same vibe would draw me effortlessly into this opening album track from Seattle’s Fleet Foxes. As you delve into the rest of their songs you do hear a bit more of the classic rock influences, but gorgeous vocal tracks like this sound like a perfectly-crafted hymn (“Our Prayer” by the Beach Boys, anyone?). Their Sun Giant EP is out now on Sub Pop/Bella.

Tick of Time
The Kooks
I’m liking where the Kooks are going on their second album Konk, out tomorrow on Astralwerks. They’ve tuned down a bit of the herky-jerky swagger of their first album an lapsed a bit more into the acoustic harmony vibe, and they sound terrific. Konk was recorded at Ray Davies’ studio of the same name, and was produced by Tony Hoffer who has worked with The Thrills, Beck and Supergrass. This is the last track on the album and they sound like they’re having fun.

Glad It’s Over
Wilco
I’m confused about this “musical companion album” to the excellent TV series Heroes, which is a show that messed with my brain. When watched in large doses, Heroes gave me the kind of vivid dreams I haven’t had since Alias when I dreamt that Rambaldi was trying to send me encrypted messages through run-of-the-mill neighborhood night noises. In any case, I don’t remember hearing Wilco on Heroes. Nor Bob Dylan, MMJ, or even Nada Surf. But look! Here’s a brand new Wilco track from that collection, catchy as all get out. The selections on this soundtrack are “inspired by the characters” in the show, and are pretty bulletproof in terms of the quality tunes & artists here.