I’ve gotten to see the Roots live several times, often for free, since I moved to Philadelphia. That was four albums ago, when the posters for Phrenology were plastered up and down Broad Street eventually found their way into dorm rooms. That record and the one following it didn’t hit like the phenomenon did in ’99 and before, yet the Roots crew has always lived up to its reputation for a live show. They have evolved into a full fledge production, and tend to be unmatched.
I picked up tickets for the Roots Pre-Picnic show, for which the line-up boasted about a quarter of what the actual picnic was holding other than the headliner. Though I try to avoid paying 35 bucks for a show at TLA, I wanted to see what kind of heat new names like Santogold would bring. She was about to go on as we rolled in six deep.
Appearing as a less physically attractive and tiredly formulaic copy of MIA, Santogold took the stage flanked by two dancers dressed as PE-style Black Panthers, whose occasional choreographed break from ‘statue’ to ‘spaz-dance’ was about the only interesting thing about the set. Santi herself lip-synched most of the set, one clearly crafted for ready-made fans by producers in place for this former label exec to live a rockstar dream. The absolutely garbage set confirmed my suspicion that the former A&R for Epic Records would put out something sugary and contrived, taking up valuable airtime that would have been better deserved by a an original and talented discovery.
I spilled my Yuengling. All over the floor of the upstairs bar. I forked over another $5.75 for a new one and resumed my spot next to my head-shaking boys. Somehow, the next act was even worse. Janelle Monae, a fledgling on Diddy’s Bad Boy label (yes, you can smell the shit already) was fan-fared by pre-made signs, obviously handed to concertgoers who had never heard of her, which bore her name and ridiculous haircut. The patronizing effect of obviously pre-produced beats with the façade of a real band not even playing their instruments had one of my boys laughing and comparing it to a show by the robot animal band at Chuck E. Cheese. Every song was at best a weak take on Southern style pop coined by Andre 3000. She was a pretty bad performer to boot.
Finally (finally!) the Roots took the stage and murdered shit. No surprise there. Not many of my favorite old tracks were played, but we got an extra-fast version of “The Seed”, a pretty standard version of “Don’t Feel Right” and, most notably, a dub version of “You Got Me” that had my drunk ass smiling hard. The sousaphone player kicked it on stage the whole time, supplementing the bass lines in a unique way. Extra long jams on “Jungle Boogie” and “Super Bad” rang for ages, and a nice mid-set break for Black Thought gave singer Bilal a chance to tear it up for a second. A great set with well-placed surprises.
In brief, it looks like the Roots are partially surrounded by trash, even though they themselves are still holding it down. And not all of their new affiliates are worthless; Wale’s new ‘Mixtape About Nothing’ is one of the best thematic hip hop works since the Automator/Prince Paul days. But I will be weary of who the crew endorses from here on out.
The last crowd-level incident that occurred that night had us laughing; ?uestlove, as usual, tossed his sticks into the crowd, one of which my boys Brian O dove for, battled a 350 pound dude over, got it loose and fell back knocking over the guy’s girlfriend. Brian bolted into the crowd while the gigantor kept his girl from hitting the ground. It all happened fast, right in front of us and we were all losing it for a minute.
Ah summer time…what a fine season. The sleepy drone of lawnmowers filling the neighborhoods, diffusing the sweet smell of fresh-cut grass. Birds singing playfully. Bees dancing whimsically through their aimless choreography. Flowers vibrant, trees verdant. The nostalgic scent of chlorine and sunscreen. Long days, warm nights. And of course, that one thing that keeps summer in our heads all year long: outdoor music festivals.
This year, on a picture-perfect Memorial Day weekend, I kicked-off what promises to be a great summer of music at Philadelphia’s Jam on the River. As always, it was a great time. But there were a few differences from previous years, some for better and some for worse.
First, due to some kind of scheduling fiasco, the event had to be moved from the Great Plaza of Penn’s Landing to the Festival Pier. This was a shame. In fact, one of my favorite aspects of previous JOTR’s was the location. Picture standing on stadium-style steps looking past the stage out over the Delaware River, boats and jet skis skipping by. That’s the Great Plaza. It’s fairly small and there isn’t a bad viewing spot in the whole joint. There are fountains, shade trees and a gorgeous view of Camden (if there is such a thing) from across the river. It is a chill spot for a concert, and I missed it very much this year.
The Festival Pier, a much larger venue, was not bad, but it lacks the charm of the Great Plaza. With a giant stage, a circus-sized tent of vendors, and no view whatsoever, it’s a pretty lackluster scene.
Another striking difference this year was a rather weak line-up. Well, it wasn’t terrible, but there were only two acts I was really excited about: The Flaming Lips and the Disco Biscuits (more about them later.) I usually like to hit up both days of the festival, but this year I only felt the need to check out Saturday’s line-up.
Dance-pop is really one of those things you can’t go wrong with. You are guaranteed a shaking ass or twelve in every city on your tour as long as you stick with the housy beats and keep the wailing synth warm. I will, however, grant credit to whoever is doing it well. It takes skill to successfully recreate an album like ‘You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into‘ with live instruments. The record is shrill and upbeat, with drum-machine precision and carefully implemented thrash factor, which I was sure was the work of a producer. For a live show, I was expecting a rough translation at best. However, the guys from Does It Offend You Yeah? (DIOYY?) delivered on point, all the while laughing, bouncing around on stage and having a blast.
The show opened with a high-energy instrumental, and album opener, ‘Battle Royale (Album Version)‘. Watching the guys tap out the simplistic sequences on their keyboards, pound away four-to-the-floor beats, and pluck out distorted bass lines with such zeal made me move before I realized it, the beer in my full pint glass teetering recklessly. My British buddy Joe, swaying next to me, was overjoyed to hear what he feels is a refreshing revival of brit-pop. We laughed and cheers-ed and high-fived and bobbed our heads without noticing the uber-hip of Philly’s Fishtown/Northern Liberties neighborhood standing rigidly, looking around occasionally, and dressed to the nines in carefully selected thrift shop finds.
The band began to show frustration. They challenged the crowd, as an unfit parent would his meekest child. “We thought Philadelphia knew how to party” The immediate evidence proved them to be misinformed. On neither of the two levels facing the stage in Johnny Brenda’s, one of my favorite venues in Philly, were more than two people dancing next to each other. They stood there, arms folded; super-cool males and females standing around looking like band girlfriends.
We had no intention of letting the atmosphere at crowd-level interfere with our good time. It was Thursday night, dammit, and the music was sweet. Every track they belted out was familiarly from their debut album. There was a song that suspiciously sounded like a Devo cover, something Joe and I argued about for at least five minutes. We did, however, agree that a lot of DIOYY?’s songs kind of sound the same. It is indeed a style, and not one that grates on the ears after an extended showcasing by any means, but an undeniable pattern existed and there was nothing revolutionary being played. So what? It was a fun show, and it was tight.
The set ended, and the self-roadied band filed off the stage, but not before I snuck in for a quick interview. I had spoken with guitarist/vocalist Morgan Quaintance at the bar before they went on, and he was totally cool on that. We rolled in, drunk and mildly danced out, to shoot the breeze with the band for a moment.
“How did you like your set?” I asked, drawing a couple of groans from the guys, who didn’t seem thrilled with their performance. They were clearly more pleased with their set, however, than with their reception. Philadelphia was, according to them, one of the most docile crowds they had played for on this tour.
I apologized for how wack everyone there was, and explained that hipsters can be kind of snooty as an audience. I know this as I perform hip hop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn; mod central. They didn’t seem to understand the term I was using, and as I began to explain, Joe spilled a full beer all over drummer Rob Bloomfield’s clean laundry. Shattered the glass and everything. The band didn’t seem too upset, but sort of broke off into an awkward chuckle and told Joe not to worry about it. I laughed my ass off.
“You can’t take this prick anywhere!” I said. I know Joe and he will always spill a beer all over the place at the worst time. It was priceless. The guys told us how exhausted they were from touring and that they were doubling up on shows the next night in New York. We wished them a better time than they had had in Philly and exited the green room. It was another great show in Philly, and yet another confirming the lack of energy in crowds these days. I wish everyone would just swallow their pride and dance.
Honestly, my first live show was pretty weak. You might remember the bands I saw, you might remember the single songs that made each famous, but you’d rather not and neither would I. The experience doesn’t aptly illustrate my feelings about what a live show is and should be.
Rather, I had to see a lot of concerts before finally tumbling into my house in Philadelphia one night after a show and finding in my own thoughts what music mediums mean to me. It was, strangely, a pile of unused equipment that set me off.
My turntables had been unhooked, laying in a pile next to crates of old records for longer than I cared to guess. Also, lying untweaked nearby, were the knobs on that old Stanton 3-channel. Yet, when they ask, I am indeed a DJ. Still flexing after all these years. The formats had changed, the machinery standard descended into a familiar setup shared by artists and consumers; a laptop, some speakers…that’s about it.
Yet my collection had grown, now existing as an intangible cloud of little yellow file pictures hovering menacingly over the bodies, the truly physical warm blackness that is now mass buried in those milk crates.
Despite the memories, I refuse guilt. Guilt arises when you feel you’ve neglected some duty. Guilt prevails when it is true. How often I forget that my commitment is not to the medium, the empty vessel, but to the sounds themselves. It’s what mattered when I was growing up in Thailand, where you couldn’t get anything other than a bootleg tape. It’s what mattered when we played records at parties and even now, as the sounds slowly but surely become free to possess. Stored on little cartridges or shiny circles and losing their market value, the sounds become a party favor, a mere flashing arrow pointing toward the culmination; the raw, uncut live show.
The mathematics are never more apparent or uncorrupted than when the act takes the stage. The opaque panels of presentation are taken down and the sounds fend for themselves, for better or for worse. Revealing is the nature of the live show, and promising are its prospects.
We like to keep things fresh at 52 Shows. Concert reviews normally go up within a week of the show. But it’s taken my brain a few weeks to process the events that I witnessed at a stop of Cake’s Unlimited Sunshine Tour music festival in New Jersey last month.
The night involved:
a high school auditorium
a tuba fueled sexy asshole
a little person dancing hand-in-hand on stage with an elderly man
Philly/Brooklyn rockers Marah have announced a tour starting this month in support of their new album Angels of Destruction!
The album was released on Tuesday. It’s the follow up to their 2005 album If You Didn’t Laugh, You’d Cry which Stephen King liked a whole lot. Really though, how could you possibly dislike a band that gives props to Mummers?
Marah’s albums tend to be heavily produced — banjos on top of carnival sounds on top of sports announcer voice overs. This album is certainly no exception. But it’s good. And their live shows are legendary for their intensity.
To quote the band’s blog: “P.P.S. – shows to follow will be mega!”
Those lyrics open up the first track on The Else, the twelfth album from They Might Be Giants released over the summer.
TMBG did not fail to impress on Saturday at the TLA in Philly where they played the last show of a two month tour in support of the album. The guys put on a two set show, bringing out a three man horn section for the second set.
The opening act, Oppenheimer, was entertaining. A barebones duo, they have sort of a Rentals meets the Postal Service synth/homemade feel. They talked a bit too much between songs, but they made up for that, at least to me, by blasting an air horn once or twice during their music.
A team of cleanroom roadies setup the stage before TMBG’s first set dressed in full body zip-up white jumpsuits complete with hoodies. The roadies tossed out red foam fingers and glow sticks into the crowd. I angered a middle aged woman standing nearby when I snatched one of the foamie fingers above the hands of what must have been her teenage son. “You just stole that from a 14 year old!” she yelled at me. I felt like a dick, a dick with a giant red foam finger.
The band made it clear that they would be playing two sets with signs all around the venue and an announcement at the start. The first set lasted about an hour, with a mix of tracks from the new album (the Cap’m, Take Out the Trash, The Mesopotamiams) and old favorites (Puppet Head, Particle Man, Ana Ng). That set alone would’ve made for a fun show.
But after a short break, the second set kicked off with the Triceratops horn section joining the mix. The three man team featured a trumpet, a trombone, and a saxophone. They really beefed up the sound on songs like Birdhouse in Your Soul, the Guitar, and Doctor Worm.
The Johns returned to the stage alone for the encore and played Maybe I Know, a very mellow cover of a mellow 60’s song originally sung by Lesley Gore. Guitarist Dan Miller reappeared and rocked an amazing classical guitar intro to Instanbul (Not Constantinople). The rest of the band appeared and tore through the actual song with the crowd in a frenzy.
They closed out the night with a musical introduction of the band members. The intros ended with the drummer smashing violently on his kit while Flansburgh demanded that the crowd worship him. “He’s destroying his shit… just for you people!”
TMBG seemed comfortable at the TLA, a venue they’ve played plenty of times over the years. Flansburgh commented at one point on a recent name change for the venue which has been purchased by the Fillmore venue chain.
“We’re thrilled to be back the Theater of the Living Arts, also known as the Fillmore to people who have absolutely no idea where they are.”
Maybe it was the excitement of wrapping up a tour, or maybe strong doses of happy pills, but the two Johns were in high spirits. Of course, John Flansburgh kept the crowd pumped throughout with corny jokes and face to face guitar shredding battles with guitarist Dan Miller. But even the normally subdued John Linnell was all smiles and chatty.
Cake is ramping up for another run of the Unlimited Sunshine tour. This is the fourth incarnation of the traveling festival of eclectic acts headlined by the always quirky Cake.
The tour kicks off at the end of this month and runs through the middle of December with 12 stops, mostly along the West and East Coast corridors. Accompanying Cake will be Brazilian Girls, Oakley Hall, Detroit Cobras, King City, and Agent Ribbons.
After mentioning this tour to a few ladies, it became clear to me that the ladies are not so much into the Cake. Is it just that the ladies I know are Cake haters? Or is Cake a dudes-only kinda band? Let us know in the comments.
But enough chit-chat, tour dates and details after the jump …
The Melvins are all about making noise. Their songs flow like thrash jam sessions. Their lyrics are total nonsense. And they’re taking the stage these days with two full drum kits flanked on either side of a giant gong cymbal. On Monday they brought the noise to Philly.
The show opened up without a band on the stage. Instead there was just a projector screen. A series of linked animated movies played on the screen in the darkened room while booming music blasted from the house sound system. Each clip, prefaced with a vaguely political title screen, featured an odd looking mouse.
The mouse would do goofy things like stab itself with a knife repeatedly sprouting streams of blood into the air while hands appeared from the ground with funnels to transform the blood into droplets of magical water. It was as weird as it sounds. After four or so of these shorts people in the crowd were groaning. After eight, people were howling for Buzzo to come out. Ok, maybe that was just me.
After the films finished, the guys from Big Business took the stage alone. The music sounded crisp, but the vocals sounded like someone clearing their throat. They broke most of the cardinal rules of an opening act. They stretched out some songs into an all out jam. They brought out a guest bassist. And they played for over an hour.
But my primary complaint about Big Business is that they sound a lot like a Melvins cover band. The singer talked up the crowd between songs with something about the Philadelphia Phillies and Van Halen. The crowd chanted “USA - USA - USA - USA”. The weirdness of the night was increasing.
The BB guys left the stage for a while and then returned with Buzz Osbourne. A roadie set up a fan directly behind the Buzz to blow through his poofy hair. Buzz is weird but he’s skilled at melding crashing noise with groove. They stayed away from all out jam sessions though, sticking to a mix of songs from their older albums and the latest Big Business/Melvins release.
The dueling drummers were interesting at times when they riffed off each other and changed tempo on a dime. But at other times they played completely in-sync. An impressive feat, but it felt like a bit of a waste.
I went for the noise. And Buzzo brought it, even if there was some weirdness to wade through to get to it.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Elvis Costello. But on the other hand, I don’t particularly dislike him either. So, when a friend offered me a pair of tickets to see Costello live at the Mann Music Center, I jumped on them. The idea of just about any pop/rock star backed by a full orchestra is enough to pique my interest. Plus, the Mann – with its open-air seating – is the perfect venue for a late summer concert.
Unfortunately, this was not the perfect late summer concert. It was a snooze-fest.
From the opening “arrangement” of “All This Useless Beauty,” the entire show felt like musical theatre… marred by indulgent intros, long schmaltzy interludes, and missed opportunities. I guess what I was expecting was some really original and robust orchestral accompaniment to Costello’s eclectic brand of rock. Instead, the show was all orchestral “arrangements” of Costello’s song – some written by other musicians, some by Costello himself. Despite the fact that there seemed to be an anecdote to introduce each arrangement, suggesting that great care and thought went into them, every song felt like it had been shoe-horned into its new format. The musical choices were predictable and disappointing, such as the Perry Mason-esque intro to “Watching the Detectives.”
And then there was “Veronica.” Since (yes, I’ll own it) this is the Elvis Costello song that I know best, I was really looking forward to hearing what he and the orchestra were going to do with it. The answer: not a damn thing. Costello plaid acoustic guitar and Steve Nieve played the piano. That was about it. No drums. No horns. The orchestra joined them for a few bars toward the end of the song, but otherwise sat there looking hamstrung and restless. I wondered if they just didn’t even have sheet music for it. And then, when Costello was done singing the orchestra opened up with what sounded like an overture of “Veronica” but felt like an afterthought.
The only song that didn’t disappoint was “She,” the song Costello wrote for Notting Hill and which I’m pretty sure was originally written for an orchestra. It was beautiful. But not beautiful enough to keep me in my seat… as soon as that song was finished I bolted. Unfortunately, the highlight of this show for me was getting out ahead of the traffic.
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‘. Watching the guys tap out the simplistic sequences on their keyboards, pound away four-to-the-floor beats, and pluck out distorted bass lines with such zeal made me move before I realized it, the beer in my full pint glass teetering recklessly. My British buddy Joe, swaying next to me, was overjoyed to hear what he feels is a refreshing revival of brit-pop. We laughed and cheers-ed and high-fived and bobbed our heads without noticing the uber-hip of Philly’s Fishtown/Northern Liberties neighborhood standing rigidly, looking around occasionally, and dressed to the nines in carefully selected thrift shop finds. 
