Michael Jackson

Some of my first media memories include the Challenger shuttle explosion and the premier of the video for Michael Jackson’s Thriller.  It probably didn’t hurt that we recorded the video on VHS–at the behest of my sister, I’m sure, who was ten at the time–and for years I kept going back to it.  And during the years following the LP’s cover is one that always stood out in my mind when I would flip through my family’s record collection.  I finally rediscovered and began to appreciate the album in college when the LP, transferred to tape, kept me company during many hours in the dark room during Intro to Photography.

Michael Jackson’s death upsets me more than I expect.  Maybe I had been holding out hope that there would be some sort of late career redemption from the slow, sad, steady decline of the last couple of decades.  I have a friend who just wanted answers about his enigmatic life.  The assumption also seems to be that he was incredibly unhappy and tortured, which I expect is right.  In the end this last part is the greatest tragedy.  Fifty shows in London or revelatory autobiography would have satisfied something in his fan base.  It is certainly possible that Jackson would have preferred this to his own happiness but unfortunately we are left with neither the comeback, the explanation, or the fulfillment.

Nouvelle Vague at The Fillmore at Irving Plaza – June 17th 2009

I showed up to Nouvelle Vague’s Irving Plaza show from Brooklyn with uncertain expectations and without my tickets.  Luckily, they weren’t going on for another hour-and-a-half so I had just enough time to sneak back and forth.  What I entered to was an interesting mix of young American hipsters and Europeans, mostly French.  The band was a song or two into the show when I arrived and energy was already palpable.  It was clearly a crowd that loved the band and with fewer than six dates scheduled in the States both audience and band were determined to make the most of it.

What surprised me the most, right off the bat was how tight the band was.  When I think Bossa Nova covers of New Wave songs, I don’t think virtuosic guitar playing or such tightness from the drums or bass.  Songs included “(This is Not) A Love Song,” a very well-received “Too Drunk to Fuck,” a particularly exciting “Blister in the Sun,” and “Human Fly” somewhere near the end of the night.

What really set the show apart from most others I’ve seen was just the sheer sexuality emoted by Nadeah Miranda, one of the two lead vocalists on stage.  Her singing was sexy.  Her movements were sexy.  And the entire audience responded, as though caught up in collective wanting.   This performance was brought to another level by some of the greatest recklessness I’ve seen by a performer since I saw Monotonix completely violate the performer/audience division at the Bowery Ballroom.  At one point during the show, Nadeah climbed up the ziggurat of  speakers on stage right and started climbing along the exterior balcony ring above the audience.  The crowd was wild for it.  Security raced upstairs and pulled her over the railing onto the balcony.  A minute later she returned to the stage and in a most coquettish voice asked “Can you believe they tried to kick me out?”

They did not and the show kept on.  The band left to an enthusiastic applause and unsurprisingly came back for an encore.  What was odd though was that after this first encore about half of the audience bolted for the exits before the house lights came on.  I recently heard a quote somewhere to the effect that New York audiences are almost as impatient to leave entertainment as they are to get to it.  It was too bad in this case.  The band came back on for a second encore.  I got to be in the second row and one lucky gentleman to my right had Nadneah come off stage and practically seduce him.

Many more photos of superior quality are available at Brooklyn Vegan.

Todd Snider at The Bowery Ballroom – June 11th 2009

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The Decemberists at Radio City Music Hall – June 10th 2009

For someone who consistently writes songs focusing on dark subject matter, Colin Meloy is a upbeat and at times whimsical performer.  Both his intensity and whimsy were on view last night when Alison and I saw the Decemberists at Radio City Music Hall.  

My understanding is that tickets for the concert, which Alison and I originally thought was too buttoned-down of an environment in which to truly enjoy the Decemberists, were offered at a flat rate regardless of location.  I appreciate this not only because it signals a commitment to fairness (the richest fan is not necessarily the most avid fan) but also because we ended up with fantastic location for a reasonable price.   On her own whim, Alison decided to look for tickets a week or two ago.  We ended up with two seats in the fifth official row (there seemed to be a VIP area in the orchestra pit) maybe fifteen feet off center on stage left.

The show was in two parts.  The first consisted of the band, with the addition of two performers – Becky Stark and Shara Worden, playing the entirety of the Hazards of Love album without even a break between songs.  The effect was dramatic.  The band was clearly focused, coming out on stage and beginning the album without an introduction.  This focus remained for the entire show.   If there wasn’t an instrument in hand there were efficient motions to the next instrument fo rth enext song.  The only break in pure focus, perhaps, came from Stark and Worden who never missed a beat, but so obviously enjoyed their characters in the album that occasionally an unscripted smile broke through.  Hardly a crime.

Radio City Music Hall and the size of it’s stage is enough to inspire awe on its own, and for the right performers and performances it can serve as a wonderful complement rather than an imposing figure.  It was perfect for the performance of the Hazards of Love.  The songs and story are large enough to fill the space so the audience can never think of losing focus.  The incredible height of the room was used to wonderful effect as the cross lighting on the stage would often create fifty foot silhouettes of the performers on the walls.  It was incredible. 

Stark and Worden were both wonderful.  Stark played the character of Margaret and dressed in a virginal white robe. Her first feature was just amazing.  Not only did she look the part but her voice was pristine.   However, she danced in a calm manner but one which was unmistakably seductive.  Worden on the other hand, dressed in black from the waist up and silver tights had more of a manic element to her dancing in the role of the Forest Queen.  They melded in with the Decemberists wonderfully as they should have, bringing a similar intensity.

After the intermission, the second (and more whimsical) set consisted of the following:

1. Crane Wife 3 
2. July! July! –  I love this song.  A smart #2 as well.  Whether or not you know the words, it’s the simplest of choruses and everyone sings.
3. Billy Liar 
4. Sleepless (from Dark Was the Night)
5. The Bachelor and the Bride 
6. Daughter of Dracula – Meloy introduced this song by noting that most artists choose to perform their best material at Radio City.  He was going to break with that tradition by playing the worst song he ever wrote.  ”I started it with a G major 7 and then, what’s worse is that I went to a C major 7.  In layman’s terms the douchiest of chord progressions.”  He only played a few lines from the song. 
7.  O Valencia! 
8. The Chimbley Sweep 
9. Heart’s Crazy on You – Stark and Warden came back out for this song and just went to town on it.  Everyone was going nuts except for the two middle schoolers in front of us.  Too distant from the 70’s I suppose

Encore

1. REM’s Peter Buck joined the band for the first song of the encore.  I don’t recall what it was. 
2. Sons and Daughters – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  If every concert ended with a song for world peace it wouldn’t be a bad thing.

A few other notes:

At one point Meloy kept the song going and divided the audience by left, right, and balcony tiers and had us sing different parts. Feist did the same thing when I saw her at the Roseland Ballroom.  It’s a winner every time.

During one song when Meloy and Chris Funk engaged in a mock guitar duel, Meloy and Funk invited audience members on stage to take their places and Meloy then proceeded to launch himself off the stage and was climbing over the seats through the crowd.   The audience went wild for it.  Among other things I really appreciated that if he did it for us it showed that he wasn’t afraid of how the experience of being pawed at is, I’m sure, uncomfortable and if he did it for himself he was liberated enough to take the time out to experience that and see what the stage looked like with his band on it.

Deer Tick and Jenny Lewis at Music Hall of Williamsburg – June 9th 2009

Shortly after moving to Brooklyn, Alison and I headed to the Music Hall of Williamsburg to see Jenny Lewis.  Alison was also excited about the opener, Deer Tick, who I had never heard before. It’s been a while–I’m writing this post the day after Thanksgiving–so I’m just going to relate some impressions.  For some pictures and video of the night including Lewis doing “Trying My Best to Love You,”  the Traveling Willburys’s “Handle Me with Care,” and “Acid Tongue” check out Qbertplaya’s Gigoblog recounting of the night.

• Deer Tick sounds great.  I can’t say they have the most original sound out there, but their rockified alt-country is executed really well.  Given how young the band members seem to be this is exciting for how they might progress.
• Jenny Lewis is just stunning.  She’s stunning from the far end of Terminal 5 and she’s really stunning from the middle of a venue as small as MHOWB.
• She sounds great.  Her voice is so unique and full of emotion yet transitions well between the multiple styles in which she writes and sings.  It’s emotionally sweeping in a way that I think is truly special.
• In the intro to one of their Gospel songs to be sung by Lewis and the other two girls in the band, she noted that it was an odd song for three Jews to be singing and made a joke that the bands gender lines ran along its religious lines in that it could be separated into “the girls and the goys.”  Be still my beating heart.

The Hold Steady at the Bowery Ballroom – June 8th 2009

It All Started With a Positive Jam

Before heading over to the Bowery Ballroom to catch the Hold Steady on Monday evening Brent and I met up for the burger and beer special at Irving Mill.  The last I heard the deal was the burger, a shot of rye, and a Sixpoint Rightous Rye – quite the combo at $15.  As it turned out when we went the rye had been replaced by a dark rum which we took in the form of a riff on the traditional daquiri with a little strawberry puree and the Righteous Rye had been replaced with the Six Point Sweet Action – the predominating beer of my new neighborhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Over our incredibly juicy – but nicely charred – burgers Brent and I discussed my new theory of why the Hold Steady are so appealing.  For a long time I had thought it was because they so purely embody rock and roll, meditate on a number of significant themes such as religion and the angst of coming of age with potent combination of earnestness and irony.  But earlier in the day when listening to what the French call their “work,” I realized that the mediations on these themes didn’t just operate through thematic exploration but also through the heavy repetition of specific phrases.  Phrases such as “holding steady,” “staying positive,” or “positive jam” or others like them are used so often that there is an addition to the natural lyrical depths of the Hold Steady’s songs.  On top of the explorations interior to each song, these repetitions allow for actual examination of what are otherwise stock phrases.   The greatness of the song writing is that when all of the songs are listened to as a whole, an exploration of the meaning of these concepts starts to come through.  It’s an exploration that begins with the content of the lyrics but ultimately leads to the reflection of the listener. 

At the Heart on a Stick blog I found this post which has a paragraph, the first sentence of which also touches on these ideas:

If you wanted to get overly analytical, you could say that what the Hold Steady is doing is establishing an iconography, relying on recurrent phrasing, names and imagery to define its world.  It seems more likely, though, that Finn’s simply doomed to continually repaint the same canvas, to include every last bit of brainstorm that flashes across his synapses  (Lord help us should we ever hear him sing, “My name is William, people call me Bill.”).

Regardless, the concert–the first of four nights in New York –was truly excellent.  The front few rows near the center were populated by what looked like by a bunch of people wearing softball shirts with the name “Stayin’ Posi,” some of whom had traveled a great distance (one even from the U.K.) to be at the show.  They were an online fan community  apparently.

The opener Right on Dynamite were competent songwriters, had good stage banter and were very tight rhythmically though a few harmonies seemed to miss the mark.  Definitely a solid opener. 

The Hold Steady came out one by one, each to great applause, with Craig Finn last.  I was too caught up in the show to even think about keeping a set list.  The music just demands that you jump and dance and shake your arms.  I didn’t high-five anyone during the show and I regret it.

As I recall, they did “Positive Jam,” “Squestered in Memphis,” “Lord, I’m Discouraged,” “Stay Positive,” “Stuck Between Stations,” “Chips Ahoy!” “Southtown Girls,” “The Swish,” “Killer Parties,” and “Most People are DJs” among other.  And I’ve been listening to “Both Crosses” so much I can’t remember if they played it since it’s constantly bouncing around in my head.

These guys rock out, have fun on stage, and establish a relationship with the audience.  It’s tremendous.  Craig Finn was just as great as I remembered at Terminal 5 back in November.  He’s animated but not quite manic.  He knows he’s performing, but it seems so earnest.  He just picks this channel and communicates to the audience.  He’ll often repeat lyrics or just say things off the microphone and suddenly the energy that’s not capable of being communicated in words comes through—an overwhelming excitement or emotion that resonates and feels like it might just come pouring out of you—when Finn intentionally delivers his words with the specific aim of having them not be heard.  He shows the incommunicable.  It’s amazing. 

[In  In the move to Brooklyn I’m not sure where my card reader is.  Pictures and video to follow, I hope.]