SSLYBY

Not anymore.

Bubble lounge

I guess the boom really is back. Wasn't this an Industry Standard cover story in 1999?

(Not to be confused with "Suddenly, Rich Marino!", a pilot for a bubble-era sitcom that, sadly, was never picked up after everything fell apart.)


FMFM: A couple of new songs from Ray's Vast Basement, a literate, contemplative San Francisco collective.

Longer, shorter III

Re: The Long And Short Of It, here's Exhibit B:

This is a bloated, overlong rock record that shouldn’t have even considered breaking the 40-minute mark. It breaks that cardinal rule like Bane broke the back of The Bat. The song lengths can’t even keep their enthusiasm in check; it’s unlikely that four of the fifteen songs really honestly needed six minutes to explain themselves. Anything cuts like "The Lost Brigade" and "C.I.A." had to offer discerning ears gets lost in the shuffle of the exhausting track lengths.

It almost seems like the writer didn't listen to the longer songs, and guessed that they couldn't possibly be all that interesting! What else could he mean by "it's unlikely"?

Also, is he anthropomorphizing the timings themselves there? Gosh, 5:57 can be so enthusiastic sometimes. I hate it when he does that.

Man, I feel like....

While escaping the Arctic night air of the Oakland Coliseum in the faux-est of Irish pubs within the ballpark's bowels, Jim from Berkeley asked me curiously, "Is there any genre of music you're not interested in? And are you keeping tabs on all of them just to keep up?"

It's a very good question. I suppose there are some extreme fringe genres that never appealed to me -- grindcore, for example. I never embraced the world of metal, apart from, say, Zep and Sabbath (and it'd be a stretch to say I ever embraced Sabbath!), but I can't say I really have a proper boundary there. I've shopped from nearly every bin in the record store, save for the "black metal" section at Amoeba, if that's the question.

What Jim was really asking me, or at least what I wish he were asking me, is: Are there good ideas to be found in every idiom? And my answer is, most probably yes. Obviously I'm knee-deep in rock'n'roll, jazz, folksong, CBGB (the acronym) and, increasingly, classical music. My gut tells me that the great innovators in modern music are the ones who embrace technology, and that most music cognoscenti (me as well) give criminally short shrift to electronic composition. Yet I admit I have a hard time being truly touched by purely machine-made sound, and will quickly grow bored if I can't hear someone's hands and/or windpipe at work. Sue me.

I will always embrace some cultures more than others in this world, and we can debate all day long whether some are right and some are wrong (or "more right" and "more wrong"). But I do believe that they can all contribute something of value, in the end: an academic idea, an artistic notion, a form of tonality, an instrument. I don't exalt the oud for its otherness, but I'll bet there's an oud player who can show me something. I'm not one to take sides: "World music is for hippies," etc. The Clash didn't say that, and neither did Ellington.

Greil Marcus once wrote of Sleater-Kinney that he liked them because they knew things he didn't know. This person wishes new indie-rock bands would sing in French, lest he "have to listen to someone 20 years younger than me try to tell me something I don't already know about the human condition." Can an artist in an easily-reviled genre such as Contemporary Hit Nashville Country tell me something I don't already know? Of course she can, and I'm simply not willing to wave my hand and write it all off due to antiseptic production, retro-awful synth sounds, slickness or whatever, without admitting that it's possible that they can tell me something new.

To wit: Listen to the "killer chorus" of this song. Do your best to ignore the screwed-up Tron video (sorry, conflated with one of her others), and check out the timing of the words and the oh-ohs. Is it as original, as strange, as something off of the Pixies' Surfer Rosa, universally lauded as a major influence on modern rock song structure? I could make a very good case that it is. We applaud Spoon for doing the same thing, and in fact we applaud them for making such weirdness a little more palatable -- for their specific choices in being derivative!

But (and I can't believe I'm going to write this) Shania Twain's "Man! I Feel Like A Woman" does not signify as influential music for early adopters who pride themselves on being ahead of the curve (or, for that matter, college kids who think violent head-splat fantasies are hilarious). Rather, "Man! I Feel Like A Woman" signifies as fun radio fare for Women Who Want To Have It All. How does it signify this? By not using appropriately vintage guitar equipment, by deploying synths reminiscent of the bold, primary-and-pastel-colored 1980s, by the silly video that remakes another silly video that's all about the costumes, by the snare drum that's loud and obvious and simple enough that even the line-dancers can find it after a few Bud Lights, and by (as Anthony notes in the comments section of another post below) the haircuts of the people involved. And although the Twain record seems to come from a different world, it's not like Mutt Lange's never heard of the Pixies.

All right, then: No, "Man! I Feel Like A Woman" doesn't really speak to me. (I'm not a Woman Who Wants To Have It All.) I'm just trying to say (back to my original point) that there are good and bad ideas everywhere, regardless of idiom. In a way it's amazing that Mutt and Shania made such a weird little bit of music acceptable to an audience of 40 million people. I could have rejected it out of hand, because of where it came from and what, at first blush, it seems to stand for. But it's really not a bad little musical idea, see? Or, at least, it's one comparable to things people trip over themselves to applaud (see hilarious love shown in Pixies 'Gouge' documentary). It's very easy to fall into the trap of accepting lesser ideas because they seem like familiar good ones. (Don't get me started on cumulative advantage; that's for another day.)

At any rate, there you have it: my rationale for how it came to pass that I can find myself spinning an Oliver Nelson record one minute and a Hüsker Dü speedfest the next, via Shania Twain's "Man! I Feel Like A Woman." In fact, I'm willing to wonder aloud whether the flat-out dismissal of a whole genre - say, reggae -- is really all that different from saying that there aren't any good ideas coming out of Jamaica, period. How, exactly, are those two ideas different? There's intense reggae, languid reggae, violent reggae, peaceful reggae. The easiest way for us to dismiss reggae, though, is to associate it with a particular kind of listener and suggest that we don't like that kind of person, which is the ultimate disservice to a work of art. And that last idea is one for which I have little patience.

Attitude amplification

Compared with last time I saw them, everything good about Silversun Pickups is even better now, and everything irritating is even worse. Last night's show at the Independent revealed a band ready for takeoff, with a massive ego up front that's quickly spinning out of control.

What's not to like about the flailing, wrong-handed drummer? About the deep science of the electronics whiz seated at stage right? The shyly grinning, expressive bassist? The squalling guitar figures, reminiscent of so many great bands when they get fully sonic? The pieces are all in place, and yet it's apparent that the frontman is developing one of the worst attitudes in rock music.

As the night wore on, the between-song banter became more and more self-congratulatory. "I think we booked too small of a venue," singer Brian Aubert told a sold-out crowd full of people who either bought tickets in the first ten minutes they were on sale, or paid through the nose to get them afterward. "What do you think? I was starting to feel bad for the people waiting outside when we got here." Later, he delivered this gem: "San Francisco is very important to us, because Live105 was the first radio station to add 'Lazy Eye'." Are you serious, amigo? If you're going to call me your market, you'd better deliver some serious songs. And, I'm afraid, the band did not.

I'd like to say that the band's more rhythmically complicated numbers benefited from their ambition, but the truth is that those songs seem more like filler. The band's hooky little grooves, like the otherwise poorly-written "Little Lover's So Polite", are really their bread and butter. I haven't really spent much time with their records, and I've only seen the band play twice, but it's increasingly apparent that the lyrics don't give a person much to hold on to. People sang along with the parts they could remember. "It's everything that is connected and beautiful, and now I know just where I stand," goes one. "I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, but it's not quite right," goes another, and so forth. The disconnected ideas really don't add up to much in the end, and the noisy crescendos and intricate textures start to seem like so much hot air.

Hmmm. Lots of buzz, long on style, precious little substance... um, what city did you say they were from?

Aubert thanked "the beautiful people" about a dozen times, and appeared to spend a lot of time soaking up their applause. It's hard not to be cynical about a rock star's motives when his narcissism is so apparent. (Ever see a film of Sting when the Police were megastars? Same attitude.) By the end of the night, I felt like I should've sold those tickets on eBay, and gotten myself something I could really use.

[BAD VENUE ALERT: The Independent's fine, generally, but when you ask the bartender for water and he automatically gives you a little bottle of Calistoga and charges you $2.50, he doesn't deserve your business. He should have asked if I wanted tap water. It came out of his tip.]

[UPDATE: Check out someone's terrific pictures here.]


FMFM: Living With The Living, Ted Leo's latest record of timely, commentary-focused songs. Apart from the irritating "Bomb.Repeat.Bomb.", which should have been a non-LP single, the record highlights Leo's best traits while cleaning up some of his more abrasive ones. I'm not quite sure about the full-blown reggae song, but I love the tin whistle on "A Bottle of Buckie" and the straight-ahead simplicity of "La Costa Brava". As always, he means every word. Why would I ever bother with Silversun's nonsense when I could be listening to this?

All your life is channel 13

Although the program is two years old, I'm posting about the hour-long documentary aired on KQED last night: From Shtetl To Swing, which traces the rise of Jewish-Americans in the performing arts, particularly the jazz sphere. It's amazing how the minor third's "longing" could unite klezmer music and blues in one of the most distinctly American fusions that's ever happened, undoubtedly paving the way for the birth of rock'n'roll less than two decades after Benny Goodman's heyday. The entire program was worth watching just for the clip of the Goodman's quartet bashing its way through an uptempo number -- pure ecstasy in music. Keep your eyes peeled for this one. (Side note: I'm not sure exactly why KQED aired it immediately prior to a documentary about the Nuremberg trials.)

FMFM: Lee Morgan's The Gigolo, a fiercely loud (but acoustic) session featuring complex melodies, often harmonized between Morgan and Wayne Shorter. (I could listen to that sound all day -- two horns playing in unison until they split for a tricky little harmony, like Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan used to do. I've had studio engineers tell me to write a little Bacharach figure, and I never tell them I'm really sourcing this stuff instead.) The Gigolo is a sunny-day blaster that's as much soul-jazz as hard-bop in many ways, with hard-hitting grooves and bright horns. Wonder if the title track and "Speedball" pointed the way to Morgan's untimely end...

Chilly, chilly is the evening time

Saturday was likely a slow night in the Irish bars of the City, as it is every time the Frames are in town. I shook off some minor cold symptoms and met up with the freshly returned Mexican Submariners and some other old friends at the Fillmore, ready to cheer on the bands despite an inability to raise my own voice in approval.

We arrived precisely at showtime and were somewhat surprised to hear Los Angeles-based duo the Submarines covering "Waterloo Sunset" for what may very well have been the first song of their set. I don't know why in the world anyone would take the stage by covering "Waterloo Sunset," and their version was pleasant enough, but my goodness, I wish they'd done something else for a set-starter. With sampled drums, assorted electronic whooshes and atmospherics, male-female harmonies (but very little if any call-and response), and (usually) a pair of electric guitars up front, the Subs were sweet enough to be worth watching, but I couldn't imagine bothering with their record. Maybe there's something more to the lyrics (apparently the story of the band members' breakup, prior to their reunion); I'll probably never know. The female singer's enthusiasm did project, and I can see why people like them. I think they'd be a lot better with a real live drummer; they'd certainly be more interesting to watch. But if they're sticking with the laptop drums, they'd be wise to start creating beats out of other interesting, non-drum noises. Just a thought.

Oh, and they had a glockenspiel up there. Another glockenspiel band! Reminded me of the Bishop Allen, another group in danger of terminal cuteness but whom I liked more than the Subs. Three, as they say, will be a trend. Anyone else? I'm sure there's someone.

Anyway the Frames arrived around 10:00, and began with an unusually tender 6/8 ballad, called "Races". The band structured its set with about five quieter numbers up front, before breaking into their bread-and-butter material ("part two of the concert," said the singer). Although their recorded output includes a fair number of adventures (as far as I know, I'm not all that familiar), they definitely have a sweet spot of midtempo, vaguely adult-oriented contemporary rock plus electric violin, generally topped off with impassioned and/or pleading lyrics.

I imagine that sounds like I'm saying they seem fairly ordinary. Somewhere in the Counting Crows area, maybe: five-chord songs where the singer bitches about his girlfriend or something. Well, there are times when the Frames' material is pretty ordinary, and they certainly do some things a lot of other AAA/Jack FM-type bands can do. But there's another side to the Frames too, in which the personal idiosyncrasies of frontman Glen Hansard are entertained. The songs frequently seem to be built around the vocal, pausing for a word or phrase, changing tempo to suit his delivery. Instead of laying down regular grooves into which the singer can fit his words, the songs are set up to support his writing and timing. They play with structure a lot. He's a decent lyricist, usually offering up something fairly comparable to Ryan Adams' diary entries; it's the way the songs are set up that makes them convincing.

None of this would really work anywhere near as well as it does, though, if the Frames weren't extremely well-rehearsed and highly in touch with their instruments. I believe everyone in the band wore wireless belt packs and at least one earphone monitor; the overall sound and texture seemed to be of the utmost importance. Although the fiddle player took a few turns in the spotlight, the others seemed content to play with their heads down, without gesture or vanity.

In that sense, they're there to set up Hansard as he indulged some antics. He's a highly charismatic guy onstage, a true frontman in every way. He invited crowd participation on at least four or five songs if not more; he told good jokes in between songs; he's animated and passionate at the mic. I definitely thought he clowned a bit too much, undermining his material on a few occasions. And why in the world would he make a point of telling the crowd what a banal chord progression he'd written in "Fake," stifling the song's hooky propulsion by throwing in a few bars of "Private Dancer" and then most of "No Woman No Cry"?

Despite some of his overselling (or in the case of "Fake", underselling!), it's apparent that Hansard is deeply committed to his songs, and the night's best moment was probably his straightforward performance of "Finally," the first encore. No midsong talking, no goosing the crowd for a singalong -- only the thing I'd come there to see. The re-emergence of the Submarines for another song was charming enough, but slowed the Frames' momentum; I was pretty bored after that. The band tried to send everyone home with a final singalong they were supposed to take outside into the streets; I don't think it worked.

The Frames draw a heavily Irish crowd, and a crowd that likes to drink, and a crowd with a lot of women in it, and a crowd that likes to listen to songs about frustrating relationships. Being slightly ill, I experienced the evening stone-cold sober. Believe me, there was a lot of people-watching to be done as the somewhat-duller encores went down just after midnight. I hope there weren't any fights in the street afterward. Singing would be better.

Quoted

"[G]enerally speaking, baseball players don't have the coolest music taste. I think your ability to hit a baseball takes away from your ability to like good music."




"There's no doubt that there are a dozen or more players who are overpaid, but that's the American way. Shouldn't we all be overpaid? Don't we all want to be overpaid?"