Very Close to, if not actually in, the CD player:
seen/heard ° listen ° buy
seen/heard ° listen ° buy
seen/heard ° listen ° buy
We Are All Hacks
"Sigur Rós have inspired more terrible music writing than any other band in the past decade; to get the ball rolling, I'll submit some of my own." - Rob Harvilla, Village Voice, 6-24-08
"The Arcade Fire must be a pretty great band. Because there's been an awful lot of awful writing about it. I'm not being sarcastic. Or superior: I've contributed to the cause, and it looks like I'm about to do so again." - Some dumb motherfucker on the Internet, 2-18-07
Vogue (Coney Island Mermaid Parade 2008)
Photos from the 26th Annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade:
I'm Pretty Sure This is Illegal Somewhere
There Were Moments When
[The Shangri-Las, "Past, Present and Future" (Fan Video)]
"I used to sing..."
The Shangri-Las weren't an amazing singing group, technically. Today their voices would probably get tweaked up and rounded out in the studio, which is a shame because you shouldn't fuck with perfection. When I saw Mary Weiss perform last year, she sounded fuller and more exact than she had on either the old ‘Las recordings or on her new disc; Weiss mentioned that having monitors on the stage was a luxury she wasn't used to.
Your voice sounds different in your own head, buried in a pillow, behind a door you've just slammed shut.
What made the Queens quartet click was their acting ability. Working at a label owned by Lieber & Stoller, guided by writer-producer George "Shadow" Morton, they had a great sound and great scripts from which to work. Their catalog goes much, much deeper than the A's everyone knows - "Leader of the Pack," "(Remember) Walkin' in the Sand," "Out in the Streets." "Train from Kansas City" was an Ellie Greenwich/Jeff Barry-penned B-side! (Surely you own the compilation Myrmidons of Melodrama. You don't? You must.)
The Goodies - Sophisticated Boom Boom (mp3) (buy)
The Shangri-Las - Sophisticated Boom Boom (mp3) (buy)
This secondhand B is one of the greatest songs ever smacked on wax and if you don't think so then hmmmmph. According to the book that comes with One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found, Lon Guyland gal gang The Goodies were Morton's first choice for "Leader of the Pack" because he wanted to get in lead singer Maureen Reilling's pants; "Boom" and its A-side ("The Dum Dum Ditty," which Weiss & Co. would also cover) were a consolation offering.
If you're not paying attention, sure, square, those're exactly the same. (The re-deaux has a bass strung slack and that weird nose trumpet (?) solo. Whatever.) Same director, same direction. But the ‘Las version is one thousand times better, and not just ‘cause I say so. This is why casting matters. Exhibit A is substandard sorority house talent show-level play-acting - those might as well be The Pipettes. Reilling can't go anywhere but through the motions, and you're gonna follow her lead? When Weiss enters the room she brings her bad girl starpower - which gives the hilarious mock-belle accent context - but she also brings hips and swagger. Of course the band's at attention! It has nothing to do with hitting the right notes, and everything to do with hitting the right notes. Dig? Boom, boom.
That's not very sophisticated! And it's a lot lighter than the usual ‘Las fare. Perhaps this offers a more eloquent compare/contrast:
Shadow Morton - Dressed in Black (demo)(mp3) (buy)
The Shangri-Las - Dressed in Black (mp3) (buy)
The Nu-Luvs - So Soft, So Warm (mp3) (buy)
The Pussycats - Dressed in Black (mp3) (buy)
(The Morton demo is an (circle one) interesting/embarrassing curiosity - like watching Scorsese go "You talkin' to me?" in front of a mirror.)
The three official versions of this record, as far as I can tell, were all released in 1966. Someone loved this song and wasn't willing to let it go. Its cryptic post-romance petulance, the way the narrator shrouds her man in mystical terms - break-up as death - makes it perfect Shangs fodder and they moaned it first, as a B-side to "He Cried." Morton quickly turned it around, flipped it over for The Nu-Luvs, rechristening their A-side "So Soft, So Warm." The Pussycats version stayed in the family*, on top of the record.
You just heard Weiss acting out in "Sophisticated," so it's clear she's underplaying her "Black" monologues. It creates a bigger contrast between the sulky exposition, the choral affirmation, the comfort of the memory. Their version - and the "but now he's gones" are totally flat! - is best, brilliant. Two very rich particulars: The way Mary monotones "This girl's love is getting stronger with each passing day" is totally unconvincing. It's a pledge, it's self-delusion. Her parents were right! She keeps mumbling as the chorus swells. Then, though Weiss booms the first chorus on her own, in this second one she comes in late, joining and soaring over the group on "I live on just a memory..." This is our stubborn dissociative conclusion. As her back-ups' vocals go sour, it's clear our girl will go on resenting reality, existing in the what-will-never.
The subsequent singles are sung better, don't work as well. The Nu-Luvs come in as a group from the start, which seems like a bad idea (especially on lines like "we're so much in love"); it forces the narrator to establish herself at the first monologue, robs her of her initial solitude. Theirs has a sweeter center, more obviousness, like that outré "No no no no..." flourish. The Pussycats have a sharper, full-chested, traditional sound.
But these things live and die with the monologues, the best actress makes the best choice. Look on each ending as a matter of taste. The Pussycats' narrator sobs over "no one can hear me cry," the Nu-Luvs' goes catatonic and repetitive. Do you prefer your narrator who can't control herself? Or one like Weiss, who matter-of-factly shuts you out?
Every moment has meaning in these songs. You cannot possibly over-analyze them. We're living in the heightened hormonal reality of a teenager, and Morton and the Shangri-Las realized it better than any amped emo anthem or lo-fi blow-out ever could.
(And yeah, that echoey wood block knocking drives me nuts.)
Which brings us to the fan video at the top, which I find captivating. "Past, Present and Future" - this was a charting single! - is this genius, bizarre, picked scab of a... song? Is it a song? It's a monologue over the Moonlight Sonata, it's all talk and background music. It's a soap opera and a perfume commercial and a LiveJournal entry.
Critics clue in on the song's post-traumatic vibe and its strongest lines ("But don't try to touch me. Don't try to touch me. Because that will never happen again.") and figure the narrator to be the survivor of a sexual assault. Weiss says that never occurred to her; in this universe, every broken date is a fatality, so "touching" the narrator might simply involve rousing her from an emotional coma.
People weren't rushing to reproduce this one - the only cover AllMusicGuide lists came in 2004, from ABBA's Agneta Fältskog (it's neither pop nor Bergman) - and I don't think I'd ever ever ever want to see this in concert. But "Past" is perfect for the Internet, even though its wounded restraint seems antithetical to the divulgey oversharers online. The narrator is approachable yet distant, present but locked in her own skull. She will dance with you as long as there is never any contact.
[Mary Weiss (myspace) - no longer a teenager, and therefore free to enjoy herself - will be doing a free show at the South Street Seaport on Friday, July 18th with Novellas (ex-Dansettes, myspace) and The Lost Crusaders (myspace).]
* If you want technical stuff from the labels: The song was written by Morton, V. Gorman, and Tony Michaels. The Las' Redbird 45, a "Kama-Sutra Production," credits Morton as producer and Artie Butler as arranger. The N-L's Mercury 45, a "Phantom Product," credits Morton and Michaels as co-producers and arrangers. The ‘cats Columbia 45, again "Kama-Sutra," has Michaels as sole producer and Butler as arranger and conductor.
*
Speaking of free stuff, crews have been setting up the stage for tonight's Met Opera perf in Prospect Park for half a week, now. Much bigger rig than years past, with video screens and whatnot; apparently they're busing folks in for this one.
The other night, when testing the speakers, the crew was playing AC/DC.
*
Man Man Man: "We need Matt Damon in this band. I think it's going to save us."
Ugly Americans (Firewater, Cordero/Skeleton Key, Southpaw/Bowery Ballroom, 5/24 & 5/27/08)
["Delhi Wall" by Tod A. "Clown Graffiti" (Franklin St. in Greenpoint, Brooklyn) by d.billy. (via)]
Firewater (myspace) released a fine record last month, though all your favorite new media outlets were too busy suckling at Scarlett Johansson's massive PR teat to notice.
The collective helmed by singer-guitarist Tod A. has been dealing in Waitsian carny cabaret and world musics since long before the current round of indie indulgences, and it doesn't have to resort to rummaging through record collections and staring at postcards. Firewater has shared members with Balkan Beat Box and Gogol Bordello; the group fielded on this tour includes a French drummer, a Swiss guitarist, Brit dhol player Johnny Kalsi, and, from "Tel Aviv by way of New Jersey," trombonist Reut Regev. The Golden Hour, their first new disc in four years, includes recordings of performers met during travels through South Asia and the Middle East.
They're not cuddly enough to get a shout-out from David Byrne.
Firewater - Some Kind of Kindness (mp3) (buy)
Firewater - 6:45 (So This is How it Feels)(mp3) (buy)
These two songs appear back-to-back on Hour - odd, because I think they're basically the same tune reworked with different textures and attitudes: "Kindness'" vigorous gypsy rumba(*) and kicked-up backbeat make the best of a bad situation; "6:45's" beachside samba repaints paradise as a personal hell. But they help highlight what works on the record as well as raise a couple of questions.
That the same song can function so well twice in a row shows how capably the band incorporates sounds and styles. Balkan, Middle Eastern, and Caribbean flavors intermingle in a very fluid way, but it's very much a Western rock album ("Three-Legged Dog" steals some "ooos" from "Sympathy for the Devil;" "Borneo" quotes the Pixies). The band's lax last effort, The Man on the Burning Tightrope, was too complacent inside its circus tent. This album was built on the lam and never feels lost. Wherever it goes, there it is.
A. can be a fantastic songwriter and he writes perfectly for his own voice. Well-turned phrases and an evocative vocab, when coupled his slurred, world-weary growl, come off as more than bored wordplay. There's character, here. The hopelessly frustrated malcontent, the overeducated underdog. You don't resent the vagabond who occasionally takes refuge in elegant locution.
(He has affectations. He enjoys similes. And that lovely "sleeping down under the overpass, dreaming that our dreams have come true" is part of an ongoing series of netherdirectional maneuvers: Elsewhere on Hour he sings, "I've been down so long that coming up is giving me the bends;" one older work contains the song "Woke Up Down," another the line "going down like a pederast at a boy's school.")
Hour indulges in some obvious political smack - two separate songs bash Bush as both baboon ("got a monkey for a president") and buffoon ("Hey Clown" flips "Those Were the Days My Friend:" "We had it all and then you threw it all away/Hey, clown/You turned our happy upside-down") - but the personal stuff's got punch. The last resort described in "6:45" is so horribly beautiful. A vivid skysplash melts morbidly ("the sun has cut the sky and the clouds are still bleeding"), the entertainment is torture ("the band's on fire - it's a pyre and the bodies are burning"), beautiful women only remind you of your broken heart ("she's just the end of a melody that sings to me of you"). You can't run from your memories. Wherever you go, there they are. "So this is how it feels to crawl out from the accident and die beneath your wheels."
Easy to see A.'s extended escape - before an overland trek from Delhi to the Afghan border and a jump to Istanbul, there were stints as a teacher in Thailand and a "professional plagiarist" in Calcutta - as domestic despair (a marriage meltdown, the 2004 presidential election, the ongoing yuppification of New York) playing dress-up in worldly concerns. That's a good thing - anything that gets you out of your house, right? - and there's no attempt on Golden Hour to gloss over the idea that he's running-from more than going-to. But there are self-righteous motivational burps in the promo material that waft a stink of false empathy over the writing.
At the start of this self-described "infomercial" (put together before Golden Hour had a distributor), A. tosses off stuff like "I kind of wanted to go see the places [America] was bombing" and "in a way this record is a document of my attempt to gain understanding about what my country was doing." It isn't until four minutes in that we hear he never actually, y'know, made it into Afghanistan or Iraq (though measure of America's influence and reaction to same can certainly be found all over). The images - helping a stuck car, shaking hands, doing something vaguely votive-looking at something temple-ish - are clumsily chosen if not completely contrived. And his "Minority" t-shirt makes you want to punch him in the face
So yeah, don't watch that.
Problem is that A. primarily writes in the first person, singular and plural, and the vid above - along with inclusion on the album by random, seemingly meaningless snippets of captured dialogue - implies a noble eye-opening agenda, like this Firewater record might give voice to otherwise unheard victims of our foreign policy. Extremely iffy when your narrator's smearing out stuff in "Kindness" like "we're so dirty" and comparing his comrades to "sick monkeys in a zoo."
Always best to let folks speak for themselves. And one of the things that makes it possible to push past presumptions of pretense is the robust party music provided by, among others, musicians A. hired along his trek. The other is that A.'s oeuvre is well-established. If it's not enough that the album's structured as a round trip, his voice is distinctive enough that it's hard to think his songs are from anyone's point of view but his own or that of his usual cast of hard-luck itinerants. Early track "This is My Life" has the former Cop Shoot Cop member singing "I've never cared for authority." Okay, duh. I'm over being overconcerned.
*
(If this widget still works, you can stream all of Golden Hour before buying it. If it doesn't, admire the pleasing colors.)
("Borneo" is available as a free download at Amazon. Which is something I've not noticed before.)
*
"This song was written on the border of India and Paki... oh, I'll just shut up."
Firewater's a better live band when the center shifts.
A.'s: Gangling, craggy, amiable. Looks like he might live off bummed smokes. Pinstriped slacks and a black t-shirt with Japanese (?) writing and the stitching on the outside. (On Saturday. Monday it was orange and read "SUPER FUNK 69.") Wheat-colored thatch styled by static electricity. This set has a couple theatrical moves - there's a spread-armed evangelist bit where "rise up" fingers flirt with hassapiko; "Already Gone" has roller coaster screams written into the lyrics - but he slacks through them enough to inoculate himself from the threat of dramatis personae.
He begged the Southpaw techs to kill the twin spotlights trained on him. "I don't mean to be a dick about this," he said, "but it's like being a mineral collection."
Given the chance, he happily ceded the floor to either Kalsi or Regev. The former made the instrumental "Bangra Bros." the highlight of Friday's performance, jumping around behind his dhol, whomping its short side with a long stick and its broad side with something that looked like a leafy crowbar, leading the audience in a bit of call-and-response applause. The latter's slide work - she switched briefly to "flugabone" and again to an adorable Lilliputian trombone, and had a second effects microphone set up for echoey psychedelic asides - was pulled out as the go-to jam, and for the most part she was amazing. (At Sunday night's show it seemed like every song had a trombone solo, and every song certainly didn't need a trombone solo.)
It's got to be tough deciding what sort of band to bring along. There's such a variety of instrumentation on Firewater's records they could either bus along a sprawling selection of role players or distract the audience with a shifting squad of multi-instrumentalists. "Already Gone," for instance, starts with a jumpy, vaudevillish (**) banjo and - after the occasional brass band blast - morphs neatly into ska, the banjo slurs to something vaguely Oud-like. Budgetary and sanity considerations helped, I'm sure, in paring it down to a very full-sounding sextet, stocked with musicians like Regev who can seamlessly shift tones and genres between breaths.
But they also limited the set list to the new material, a shame given these were the band's first shows in its hometown in four years... and the first times I've seen them. Even with two encores at Southpaw, they only played three older songs ("Some Strange Reaction," "Dark Days Indeed," and another I didn't recognize). Their fans were game and danced throughout - even calling out requests for new songs - but I really would have liked to hear something from my favorite Firewater record.
Firewater - Another Perfect Catastrophe (mp3)(buy)
1998's The Ponzi Scheme - full of surf-and-spy twang, reeds and strings, expressive keyboard riffs - struck me as the soundtrack to a potential Dennis Potter-style project. Storywise I suppose it spends more time mired in motivation - Hour's opens with its F.U.-I'm-outta-here, Ponzi's hobo call ("So Long, Superman") comes in its last quarter - but the writing's still sweet:
No plans
I'll go where the machine goes
The past is a placebo
Dissolving in a drain
I sleep beside the railroad tracks
With no rent or income tax
I've got no fixed address now
Waiting for a train
I've always pictured "Catastrophe" - "the floor turns into wall and then the wall becomes the ceiling" (suck on that, Ty Pennington) - as a bar brawl staged at some dockside underworld bar. The calculated approach of the guitar line, the thuggish pair of saxes. From the shadows, the Slavic fiddle and sly Asian piano, hints of foreign intrigue.
It lacks the depths (and possible responsibilities - another monkey in another zoo, here) of Hour, but it's a glorious, stylized fiction.
*
Monday's Bowery show felt tired - maybe it was the near-identical set list, maybe I was just tired, maybe it's that first opener DJ Boro seemed to spin long past his time - and suffered through a host of technical difficulties. (During a stretch of dead time, someone in the crowd asked a very good question of the bandleader: "Don't you have any interesting travel stories?" I mean, seriously.)
But it was more than worth it to see Skeleton Key. I'd never heard of them before, shame on me, and you have to love a band whose myspace blurb reads "You still exist?" Led by Firewater's touring bassist and former Lounge Lizard Erik Sanko, the sludgy band had a Grammy-nominated (for packaging) major label record in the late ‘90s, released a full-length follow-up five years later on Mike Patton's Ipecac label, dropped a few scattered EPs. Not a high-output group. But they've got one of the most dynamic percussion sections I've ever seen.
There's a band member whose job is just to wail on junk. Actual junk.
It's more controlled than that sounds. It sounds like this:
Skeleton Key - The Barker of the Dupes (mp3) (buy)
Piles of discarded metal - propane tanks, garbage pails, what had you - are sometimes played for tone, like a roadkill marimba, sometimes for crunch. The drummer has a piece of old ductwork mounted into his standard kit, and sometimes pauses to whip a piece of plastic tubing around in the air, but the real dirty work's done by brutish showman Benjamin Clapp. He chucks broken cymbals up into the air and slugs them on their way down. He has the worlds most dangerous tambourine: A rectangular frame, I'm guessing 36" x 24", with CIRCULAR SAW BLADES strung on it. How he doesn't injure himself or his co-workers I'm not sure, but no one tell OSHA because the dude's fucking amazing.
Kalsi started watching from the band from the side of the stage, then crept out to watch from the main floor. Maybe for safety's sake, maybe to get a better view of the awesome.
Skeleton Key - Roses (mp3) (buy)
The tunes are good, too. "Roses," from SK's 2005 EP The Lyons Quintette, provided a natural, incredible climax. A sad, quiet thing you just know will have the shit kicked from it by song's end, Clapp disappeared at its start. The trombone solo midway through - the instrument had a spotlight strapped to it, so I couldn't make out who was playing - came from the Bowery's balcony. When time came to get loud, Clapp was back up there, down on his hands and knees, pummeling at scrap with an honest-to-God hammer. And it was never less than musical.
If you see these guys on a bill, any bill, go to that show.
*
Cordero (myspace) opened the Southpaw bill. I'd heard good things? Maybe I'd heard about someone else and gotten confused? The Spanish-singing Brooklyn band has a too-timid singer (the most interesting thing about her was her outfit; the sleeves seemed to be vomiting feathers) and a drummer who thinks he's funny. Tolerable. Good background music for an outdoor summer conversation about anything unrelated.
*
Also there:
At Bowery: Flaming Pabulum, Insky's Photos (pics)
At Southpaw: En/Gender, A Report on the Next Clues (en Francais)
NPR's World Café Live will be broadcasting an appearance on June 18th.
*
New all-chick mux. This one's got: Artificial Joy Club, Wanda Jackson, Kelly Pickler, Miranda Lambert, The Dollyrots, X-Ray Spex, Leslie Gore, Skunk Anansie, Dixie Chicks, The Gits, Neko Case, and Christina Aguilera.
(*) I need a course in Latin rhythms. This isn't technically a rumba, I don't think. But it's such an expressive word. Rummmmmba.
(**) Obviously, by this point, I have no idea what I'm talking about. Per the usual.
Just Shuts Down
Ranking American Idol contestants might exit with Soundscan expectations, but I'd imagine few viewers look out for post-show artistic success. Idol as talent search is about the search. It's a program about judgment, it's not about results. It has manufactured three undeniable stars: Simon, Paula, Randy.
Idol has had musical success stories, sure, at least three big ones (Clarkson, Underwood, Daughtry). Even with its recent ratings slide it's still the highest-rated television program in the country, the biggest marketing platform you could get. I would guess the show's sold a few Ford hybrids, too. But reaching beyond whatever remnants of the fanatical texting populace remain after the finale, reaching people who actually listen to music to listen to music, not to judge and root, that's a whole new competition.
There was no reason to think Kellie Pickler (myspace) - sixth place on Season Five, if you're counting - would record anything worth hearing. Or record at all. Cast as an exaggerated (but winning (or at least, placing)) dumb blonde hick, Pickler was more grin than voice. She seemed destined for the role of TV Personality. Morning talk show correspondent. Something like that.
Her 2006 record Small Town Girl went gold, landed at #9 on the Billboard 200 and topped the magazine's country chart. Oh, and: There's some seriously good stuff on it. All three of the record's singles, two of which were co-written by Pickler, move differently. "Red High Heels" sasses, struts. "Things That Never Cross a Man's Mind" smirks, drives. And "I Wonder" digs in and breaks your heart.
Have a hanky handy:
Perhaps it's because she's an Idol alum, one who very consciously developed a personality to act out, one who returned to the show with a very surgical makeover... that any hint of truth from her proves so affecting. Especially when she works in a genre that loves to profess authenticity as a requirement, package it as a selling point. She's introduced here as a "small town girl made good" who's "singing her story straight from the heart." Go on, pull the other one.
But while Pickler's life and manner might have been mined for yuks on Idol - She was a roller skating waitress! She can't pronounce "calamari!" -she's had enough knocks to make at least a couple good country songs. This one's for her mother, who at eighteen abandoned her two-year-old girl. (Kellie was raised in a small town in North Carolina by grandparents. Her father's an ex-con; that song'll come later, I guess.)
The songs are good because the songs are good (and this one was written by Pickler and three other people). I like the recorded versions just fine, but I've really responded to the live performances (like that unplugged, charming version of "Man's Mind"). Which isn't surprising. The assumption is that these reality contestants have their vocals tweaked into place during production, so the singing's where it should be on record. But Pickler's a personality, not a voice. She came from TV, so of course YouTube>mp3.
This performance at the 2007 CMAs is amazing. Not technically. She's still stylistically erratic. Even her accent seems a smidge fake. But it's not (despite a brush with questionable choreography and that oddly unused earpiece) overworked or oversold. Just as the song is direct and meaningful but restrained at the right moments (that dangling thought about forgiveness is a killer). When the tears come (hers and mine) I do not feel manipulated at all. There is a greatness as Pickler struggles to regain her poise, just as she might if talking to her mother, and as the crowd roars to support her.
This is A Moment, it can only exist with this song and this singer at this venue. Because "I Wonder" uses geography to represent places in Pickler's life: Carolina is where she was left behind and brought up; California is where she thinks her mother's supposedly run off to (the line "I hear the weather's nice in California, there's sunny skies as far as I can see" seems like a flub - the second "I" should be a "you," right? - but works as an economically conveyed fantasy reunion), and Tennessee is where Pickler's headed to make her life. It's a song about growing up and leaving things behind and Pickler here - here, on stage in Nashville, Tennessee - sings a daughter's pain as a grown woman.
*
There's a new Solomon Burke (myspace) record, and... a lot of it's pretty bad. Not the singing, of course, that couldn't be. But the tone on Like a Fire's set by its title track; written by Eric Clapton, it's the sort of gruel Clapton's been ladling out for years. You can stream the whole thing at AOL. I dare you to ask for seconds.
This track, though, is devastating. I'm not going to want to talk about it when it's over.
Also, You Win a Truck!
What an awkward, phony-looking production this Nashville Star thing is. I guess it's been on for years - hello, Miranda Lambert (and...um... um...) - but either they retooled it for its network debut and stuff hasn't settled, yet, or it's just perpetually creaky and ham-handed. I was hoping for something sort of homey and Opryish. But here's Achy Breaky Famous Daddy Billy Ray Cyrus as Chris Gaines as Ryan Seacrest! Here's Jewel - no, seriously, Jewel! - calling a decision to perform Train's "Drops of Jupiter" a bold choice.
Jewel - no, seriously - reeks of authenticity envy, spends a lot of her critiquing time making sure contestants know just how many times (a billion, usually) she's done what they're trying to do, been where they be is. And she doesn't even use the word "dawg!"
(She slept in a car, people. She slept in a car in Alaska and then yodeled her way into our hearts and minds and on to VH-1.)
The judges, so far, have both been better than Idol's in that they were generally coherent and constructive, and worse in that they didn't fall into the standard reality competition triumvirate (hard-ass/soft shoulder/swing man) so you don't know what role each is there to play. There was a hilarious taped moment from the auditions - the show jumped right into its Top Twelve, one of whom was discarded by the judges at the end of tonight's ep (this abbreviated schedule only serves to emphasize disposability) - when judge John Rich (of Big &) pulled out a guitar, started playing, and told a contestant something like, "Do you know this one? Try this one." Oh no the judges have brought instruments.
(There's some upcoming confusion wherein the contestants will be divided into three teams - Men, Women, and Ladyboys Groups - and the judges will also be coaches. Whatever.)
Taylor Swift, who I'll say I like because everyone says I must, performed. And then was judged! Was judged to be excellent! Awkward. One of the judges said she "maximized our brand potential." Or something like that.
(The third judge is Jeffrey Steele, who was apparently in a band called "Boy Howdy," and who has some serious bone structure going on.)
No Brits or Aussies or people who're otherwise ferrin, ‘cause this is country. There was an African-American dude (who nervously, messily overworked his song's melody and was subsequently overpraised). And two of the eleven remaining contestants have connections to the military. Which is nice, because it reminds everyone that we're still at war. But isn't so nice because it inevitably factors into the competition. What, you're going to vote the dude in the navy off the show and send him back to Iraq?
Two acts I liked. Melissa Lawson got an unfortunate clip package wherein the emphasis was all about how she's a big girl, "not a size six," not a wee hot blonde thing. Like Jewel! But all the UGoGirl stuff was unnecessary b/c she's got a big voice. She harps hard on the sass - she sang "Let's Give Them Something to Talk About" - but had fun and has a more powerful instrument than any of the others. And Laura & Sophie are lifelong best friends who are 16 & 18 (those must have been two very lonely years for one of them) and never spend any time apart and never do anything but sing together. Creepy! But, other than some flubbed high notes at the end, their "Stand by Your Man" was pretty awesomely harmonized. Also, xx Tammy Wynette.
In conclusion: It's kind of hot outside, folks.
Rack and Soul
I had wondered where Eli "Paperboy" Reed's old-school soul (myspace) might land him. Since that Union Hall show he's had New York dates at Irving Plaza opening for an emo act (btw In Defense of the Genre is probably the worst album title I've ever heard EVER), a record-release party at hoity-toity Joe's Pub, and now this here cost-nothin' Big Apple BBQ appearance. A properly egalitarian itinerary, good for the places where he's found and the folks who find him there.
Sandwiched between a passable local comic country act and distinguished Canadian twangers The Sadies, it might have been too hot for Reed and his True Loves to go *splat* the way they can, but they made people very happy nonetheless.
It would be nice if he got out from behind that guitar more often, and the band should wear suits. But it was hot. And it's not like I'm going to dress up, even under the best of circumstances. And "Take My Love with You" is just a killer tune, no matter what it's wearing.
*
The Crooners (myspace) were having a blast just off the park in the "Bourbon Bar." I haven't taken any band pics for a while; the close quarters - the trio was doing the bluegrass thing, huddled around a single mic - and their energy made snapping fun. Though, as usual, the "fun" photos all wound up blurry. These make 'em look more serious then they was. But I really like the one above.
*
Alex Battles & The Whisky Rebellion (myspace) has a guy who plays a washboard/coffee can/cowbell (with photo of Christopher Walken!)/mini cymbal/desk bell with whisks. (They're whisky, yuk-yuk.)
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No, I didn't eat anything. Whoever made up the entry banner - "Welcome ‘Cue Lovers" - had obvs grabbed the wrong homophone.
I left before The Sadies because of the time and the weather. God punished me by striking the F train down with a power outage, and by letting the MTA be its usual uncommunicative disaster. At one point, it seemed like they were telling people looking to go south of 2nd Avenue to take the D train all the way out to Coney Island to catch a Manhattan-bound F. At Jay Street, I found people who had been waiting thirty minutes for a train they hadn't yet been told wasn't running. Took three hours, three trains and a bus (ugh) to get home.
For all the bitching about the heat, this weekend wasn't that bad. Hot, sure. But the humidity was tolerable and the air kept moving. Got warm early - it's not even summer, yet - but this isn't emotionally scarring three-showers-a-day stuff.
I wrote that last paragraph while sitting four and a half feet from a busy air conditioning unit.