Monday, August 11th, 2008
I knew of Brian Blade through the work he did on Daniel Lanois solo records and live shows. Apparently he has also played drums on albums and tours for Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan as well as Wayne Shorter. All good stuff. To cut to the chase Season of Changes is by far my favorite album of the year, which is saying something because my guys the Black Crowes released an album that you can argue is the second best effort of their career. It is most certainly a jazz record but it doesnt feel like jazz to me. These arent just themes and chords here, The Fellowship band is dealing in loose and atmospheric songs however jazz like they might be. The albums third track Stoner Hill is going onto my list of Top 40 favorite tunes of all time. I have always loved Brain Blades drumming with Daniel Lanois. In those sessions he plays much less smoothly matching the violence and and unpredictability of Lanois live sound, but he plays so much differently here. He leads his band like a true old school hard bop band leader, he seems to direct every note of every song using fills that to me dont sound improvised. Do you ever notice that sometimes a song is perfect? Everything is perfect, not just the structure of the song or the lyrics or even the melody but all of the extra stuff thrown into a song for texture and balance, little vocal fills, drum fills, excess guitar runs, even mistakes. You listen to that song enough times and you cant imagine that song being played any other way. You see the band live and they leave out a few of those extra things and the song just doesnt hit you the same way. Thats what the whole of Season of Changes is like. allmusic.com gave it 4 1/2 stars but i dont see where there is room for improvement. A tremendous example of what music, true and pure music, can be. Unfortunately we dont get every many of those these days.
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Monday, June 30th, 2008
I went to Hershey Park on Friday to see the Black Crowes. They opened for the Dave Matthews Band. To me this seems totally backwards although i understand i suppose if you want to disagree with me. Perhaps the Black Crowes no longer have the stature of the Dave Matthews Band but there is no question as to who is the better band. On friday night the Black Crowes came on and played eight songs worth of real legitimate rock music. They played 5 songs off of their incredible new record Warpaint a couple of classics and a cover. They all drank Becks the whole time and during one song Steve Gorman, the drummer, strapped on a marching band bass drum with the idiot face of George Bush on one of the heads and beat the hell out of it with a mallet and a tambourine. All good things. I was a little upset they werent given the opportunity to play a slightly longer set but regardless of how much time they had they rocked and that was all i could ask for. As far as the Dave Matthews Band is concerned i will only say a few words. They have become a weird band. They dont seem to care anymore. they are playing all the same songs they played last year. They stop for several minutes between each song so the set has no flow. and they still havent figured out that the song they wrote for the Mr. Deeds soundtrack is one of the worst songs ever written because they are playing it every other show on this tour. If you dont care anymore Dave Matthews Band stop playing shows. Beer is too expensive and bathrooms are too far away at these stadium shows for me to really enjoy myself anymore. and dont ask bands that are better than you are to open for you. Youre just embarrassing yourselves.
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Friday, March 7th, 2008
Tuesday was one of those rare days in new music when there are a lot of things coming out that you are interested in, you have the free cash to purchase anything you want, you buy 3 or 4 or 10 records, you get them home, listen to them one after another and they are all great records. Not just, “well, i dont regret buying that” great but legitimately great, like flirting with your top 50 great. Im not saying any of these records are in my top 50 but if in five years im still listening them, they would not look strange amongst the golden tapestry of my top 50. We will take them one by one…
The Black Crowes - Warpaint
What can i say about this record that i havent already said in two of my previous posts this week. There are two misses here, “Wee who see the deep” a Mississippi Queen re-write that never gets off the ground on record and “These Gold in them Hills” which has a lot of good ideas rolling around in it but its obvious they had no way to connect them. their solution just throw them all together and pray that no one notices. However, neither of these songs are bad and they definitely dont ruin the record. there are some classics here, songs that you know are going to be in the live show for years. “Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution,” “Movin’ on Down the Line.” There are a couple of songs that are perfect for sitting on the porch of your giant Day-Glo commune House’s porch smoking, drinking some New Castle passing around a couple of guitars and a pair of bongos. I listened to “Whoa Mule,” at 9 in the morning, at the beach watching the sun shine of the waves and the birds come home over the water and “Locust Street” was obviously written while they were all stoned and drunk, tinkering with a mandolin, writing down lyrics they didnt know were good until they sobered up the next day. This is just rootsy groovy soulful music man. This is the record that the Black Crowes have been trying to make since they took their sound as far out as they could take it with Amorica and we should all get down on our hands and knees and thank the lord they were still around to make it.
Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks - Real Emotional Trash
There was always a kind of unfathomable magic to all of Pavements albums, something you just couldnt wrap your face around. Some songs were pretty and you could sing along and song songs were ugly and Stephen spent most of the songs yelping about nothing in particular and some songs just seemed like genre exercises. Never the less, the sums was always at least relative to its parts and the result of that was always too insane to think about for any real length for time lest (am I using that correctly?) the next time you pick up your guitar everything you play sounds like Summer Babe or Silent Kit . You cant sing along to Real Emotional Trash, you cant even really listen to it for more than two songs consecutively with out going to back to re-listen to them. There is just no rhyme to reason to this record and because of this fact it is just an astounding piece of music. I may like this record better than Warpaint and i am the biggest Black Crowes fan from here to Baltimore. It just cannot be described what tremendous things are being done here and the presence of Janet Weiss, formerly of Sleater-Kinney, adds a foundation to the band that Stephen never had with Pavement. One thing that this record has that Pavement records never had is a sense of direction and purpose, albeit while still reveling in its random psychedelia and sometimes cringe sometimes laugh inducing guitar wanking. Good Times.
The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia
How many times can Greg Dulli make the same record before it stops being good? Apparently as many times as we let him. Saturnalia is another notch on his moody, slightly dementedly sexual, sometimes overwhelmingly dark but always groovy belt, the only difference this time is the sustained presence of Mark Lanegan. Sometimes he changes the bands name, Afghan Whigs to the Twilight Singers, sometimes he releases an EP of covers instead of an album of covers but sometimes you really need to shake it up and bring in the preeminent baritone of the 1990’s. And who’da thunk it, it works, again, like it always does, for no reason. Every song on the record sounds grossly similar to the ones that were on The Twilight Singer’s “Powder Burns” and his solo record “Amber Headlights,” but in the weirdo world of Greg Dulli if it aint broke, dont fix it and he never fixes it and at the end of every record i find myself turning the record over sliding the needle to the edge and re-listening to the whole thing. Saturnalia is no different. I compare Greg Dulli records to fantasy novels, more specifically fantasy novels that take place within a very expertly detailed and creatively realized realm, think Harry Potter. Starts out a little scary, in the middle it gets a little boring but by the end you are totally submerged in this alternate reality fighting back demons and begging for more. This record is a lot like that. Its starts scary with Mark Lanegans creepy rumble gets a little stale in the middle and by the end you are apologizing to Greg Dulli for making him so insecure about women and checking his website for tour dates and an EP release schedule. I dont know how he does it but he does and i love him for it. There are just Greg Dulli days, when you wake up in the morning, look out the window, sigh and say “god dammit.” Thats when you want your buddy Greg next to you telling you hes got some stuff that will make the day pass faster. he may mean tunes, he may mean cocaine, booze and ladies either way youre going to feel a whole let better until it ends and you start itching for more.
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Friday, March 7th, 2008
There was a request for the set list for the Black Crowes show in New Jersey last Sunday. This was the first time most of these songs were ever played live, which was great to be a part of. There was a real energy in the crowd to hear something new, which is something i hadnt experienced before. Most bands test out a few new tunes live they dont force feed you the unknown for over an hour but thats why the Crowes are great.
Goodbye Daughters Of The Revolution
Walk Believer Walk
Oh, Josephine
Evergreen
Wee Who See The Deep
Locust Street
Movin’ On Down The Line
Wounded Bird
God’s Got It
There’s Gold In Them Hills
Whoa Mule
- break -
Poor Elijah - Tribute To Johnson (Medley) Jealous Again
Wiser Time
Rockin’ Chair
- encore -
Hey Grandma
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Monday, March 3rd, 2008
Went and saw the Black Crowes last night at the Starland Ballroom in New Jersey and i recommend to anybody that loves getting musically murdered to check them out before one of America’s last great working bands disappears off of the face of the earth. i dont anticipate this happening soon but it will one day and you will regret it forever if you dont see them now. They are playing their new album “Warpaint” in its entirety and it is an amazing collection of music. I didnt think we needed an updated version of Mississippi Queen but as it turns out we did and it is just a towering rock song. Ive been going to Crowes shows now since 2001 and the one thing that is different and better than it was back then is that they have slowed everything down to this dirty southern boogie with a groove like an undertow that you can slip into and get carried, drowning you in an ocean of guitars and grease. Another interesting things is that they no longer seem interested in playing very much of their back catalog which is fine with me. Last night they capped of a second set of Poor Elijah, Jealous Again and Wiser Time with Rich singing just the perfect rendition of Rocking Chair and that got me thinking: There is no one in music now doing what the Black Crowes are doing and if you point to a band that is doing something similar stylistically they arent doing it as well and they certainly arent doing it with the heart, soul and authenticity that the Crowes are doing it with. They truly are a national treasure and i continue to be confused and amazed that people a) havent heard of them or b) just dont like them. This makes no sense to me. what are you listening to? The record comes out tomorrow so ill review it in depth then but just be warned, last nights preview was so good, it may be in the form of a super gushing sappy mushy love note. I make no apologies.
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