January 2006

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Dead Batteries and Dirty Looks at the Feist show; Phil and Julia Bither do the daddy-daughter dance at the Walsh Files karaoke party.

Filed under: Weekly 20

Just got back from the pretty amazing Feist show at the Fine Line. We (Jay, Fran, and I) got busted by Leslie Feist for laughing about my dead-battery digital camera (you and Mr. Tequila had to be there) during her magnificently buoyant version of Ron Sexsmith's "Secret Heart," but we were absolutely gobsmacked by her performance. One song in particular slayed.

"Intuition," off of her new forthcoming one. About the ending of a love affair, how both lovers know when its time to pull the plug on something and move on, and "even now, I don't know what's true or false."

What a voice. What a night. Big love goes out to the gang at O'Donovan's Irish Pub, the only bar left open 'til 3:30 on a Sunday night in the city that always sleeps. Yo, my karaoke all-stars: The big Anthony Peeler lookalike dude who gave us a killer "Purple Rain." C.J., the singer from Denver who tore up "Sweet Child O' Mine." Brother-dude who brought every "Hungry Heart" together. The Hard Rock Cafe staff by the fireplace who chatted over my miraculous "Seven Year Ache."

Next week, an all-local Walsh Files. Until then:

1. "2000 Funerals," Graham Parker. It should be FCC rule that those sentimental fucking U.S. Army TV commercials be followed by footage of all the poor minority kids coming home in caskets. Sing it, you angry Brit. Cover it, you sleeping on the job Bruce. Put it at Number One with a bullet, or write something even more timely.

2. "Uppers Aren't Necessary," Rocky Votolato. The whole of this record is terrific; one for all those who hear an actor at the core of Bright Eyes' story-songs.

3. "Wishing All These Old Things Were New," Merle Haggard. Haven't heard his new one, but until then, there's cold comfort in the sound of an old man looking back at the roaring '80s and not trying to hide his yearning for all the cocaine, women, and wildness. "Craggy" doesn't begin to do it justice.

4. "No Other Love," Chuck Prophet. If for no other reason than the every-single-damn-time magic-carpet ride of "mama, I'm flying."

5. "Butterfly," Crazy Town. Like, like, like... driving around Lake Of The Isles with the windows down and the baby-got-bass bumping into everything it hits.

6. "Telescope Eyes," Eisley. Heartbreak lyric of the moment: "I'm just like you so leave me alone."

7. "Don't Look (Back) and It Won't Hurt," Richmond Fontaine. It's what you say to your kids when they're getting a shot or stitches; put the "back" in there and it becomes an adult reminder to not lament the past. Something like this: "That people are unknowing does not mean that they are unknowing like cows or goats. Even ignorant people look for a pathway to reality. But, searching for it, they often misunderstand what they encounter. They pursue names and categories instead of going beyond that name to that which is real." -Digha Nikaya

8. "Love & Communication," Cat Power. I like the title more than the song, but there's moments where her voice and the guitar and words ("Can you memorize the scenes? It'll be different next week") come together at the intersection of Deepest Desires Drive and Simply Sated Street.

9. "I'd Like to Walk Around In Your Mind," Vashti Bunyan. Fine, but you might get really really really lost.

10."I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine," Thea Gilmore. Massive 'n' inexplicable 'n' to say anything more would be

11."My Life Is In Storage," Frank Black. In which the man with the cold-storage heart packs up all his pictures of permanent fixtures and locks it away. For safe-keeping. "Can we have a little fun?," he sings, finally, knowingly, happily, the way only a thawed-out heart can.

12. "Come Back to Camden," Morrissey. You can't go home again, just like you can't go back to a you you're not anymore.

13. "Why Can't I? (iTunes Originals Version)," Liz Phair. Anyone who thinks this song was a studio creation should hear the ache in her voice on this acoustic shot.

14. "On & On," Film School. Great song.

15. "It's Gonna Take an Airplane," Destroyer. Great song.

16. "Six O'Clock News," Kathleen Edwards. Great song.

17. "Fake Tales of San Francisco," Arctic Monkeys. Really, now; you can't have enough cathartic kiss-offs to fake rock stars and trendy corporate fucks.

18. "Socialist," Ernesto. Decadence and political incorrectness never sounded so funky.

19. "Beautiful Wreck of the World," Willie Nile. Until his new one arrives later this month, this pipes-fueled upper is the shit.

20. "On Your Porch (Acoustic)," The Format. Sitting next to the mailbox. Watching the cars go by. Legs touching. Dandelions on the hill across the street. Talking, just talking, and taking in what they both realize is a fleeting moment. Devastating.

This week's guest Walshfilers are none other than massive musicheads Julia and Phil Bither.

Ladies first. Take it away, Jules

1. "Brighter Than Sunshine," Aqualung. I first heard this in the movie A Lot Like Love. Pretty pathetic, I know, but I couldn't help falling in love with this song. It's especially helpful for those days where you just feel like you can't move unless you get a feel-good melody in your soul.

2. "Rebellion (Lies)," The Arcade Fire. I was first attracted to "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" like every sane human being should be, but when I decided to expand my horizons I found this great piece of work. Slightly Franz Ferdinand, but extremely original.

3. "It'5," Architecture in Helsinki. Eight people in one band? Somehow AIH made this work beautifully. This song just makes me so happy, plus it's great fun to wake up to.

4. "If She Wants Me," Belle & Sebastian. My dad tried to turn me onto these guys for a while but I refused. It wasn't until I stumbled upon this song on iTunes that I started to appreciate the lyrics:

I wrote a letter on a nothing day
I asked someone "Could you send my letter away?"
"You are too young to put all of your hopes in just one envelope"
I said goodbye to someone that I love
It's not just me, I tell you it's the both of us
And it was hard
Like coming off the pill that you take to stay happy
Someone above has seen me do alright
Someone above is looking with a tender eye
Upon your face, you may think you're alone but you may think again

If I could do just one near perfect thing I'd be happy
They'd write it on my grave, or when they scattered
my ashes
On second thought I'd rather hang around and get down with my best friend
If she wants me

5. "We're All In This Together," Ben Lee. It's Monday. And I'm pushing through the halls trying to find a friendly face.... or my next class. This song shows up on my Ipod and I feel my heart dancing. I begin to notice things. The eyes that linger, the hands that hold, the smiles that echo this illumination. EVERY thing is connected and that's the ONLY thing that matters.

6. "Hunter," Bjork. As much as she scares me, this song happens to be fascinating. Over this pulse-y beat her voice is eerie but somehow extremely powerful.

7."Bowl of Oranges," Bright Eyes...unbeatable. Although this song came out years ago, the tune hasn't aged one bit. The lyrics are incredibly bittersweet, just like the song itself. The lyrics are so skillfully written in fact, that you can't help that the last lines are still echoing in your mind: "But if the world could remain within a frame like a painting on a wall/Then I think we would see the beauty/Then we would stand staring in awe."

8. "In this Life," Chantal Kreviazuk. Although this song is hopeful, something about her raspy voice and truthful words strikes a chord in me. Just the first verse alone can make me tear up.

9. "Title and Registration," Death Cab for Cutie. Ah, Death Cab. What continues to amaze and amuse me is how they are able to turn logical lyrics into a raw, lonely love song.

The glove compartment
isn't accurately named
and everybody knows it.
So I'm proposing
a swift orderly change
Cause behind its door
there's nothing to keep my fingers warm
and all I find are souvenirs from better times
before the gleam of your tail lights
fading east to find yourself a better life

10. "Manchild," Eels. The eels, actually introduced to me by Jim, have totally captivated me from the beginning. I guess all I can say is this song is so beautiful. But I thought my best friend Sarah's reaction was pretty much perfect. After hearing it for the first time, she said, "See, if some guy came to sing outside my window, I'd want him to sing that song. I don't care if it's depressing, it's just so.....pretty."

11. "Here Comes The Summer," The Fiery Furnaces. My dad and I first heard these guys on the Current with the song Candymaker's Knife In My Handbag. Although repetitive, this song is catchy and original.

12. "All We Have Is Now," The Flaming Lips. This song always gives me an eerie epiphany about how SHORT life really is and how little time we have to be who we are.

13. "Le Garage," The Futureheads. The first 30 seconds of this song-it could be early Beach Boys. As the drums and singing kick in, you think you are listening to a modern Clash song. This combo happens to totally pump me up.

14. "Jezebel," Iron & Wine. This song is nothing but relaxing. Sam Bean's voice totally calms me especially on finals week!

15. "Do You Remember?," Jack Johnson. Jack Johnson is definitely one of my most favorite all-around artists. I love the soft voice he uses even while reporting tragedy:

I remember watching
That old tree burn down
I took a picture that
I don't like to look at

16. "The Gravy," Japanther. This song is from Don't Trust Anyone Over 30, one of my favorite Walker performances of all time. I am also addicted to this two-man band who can scream with the best of 'em.

17. "Anyone Else but You," The Moldy Peaches. I love these lyrics. Seriously. I spent an entire hour in Spanish writing all the words. I also LOVE Kimya Dawson's less-than-perfect voice.

18. "Holland, 1945," Neutral Milk Hotel. I know absolutely nothing about this band but this song is just perfect for blasting on a bad bad day.

19. "Potions for Foxes," Rilo Kiley. It was hard to pick which Rilo Kiley song was my favorite. But how can you resist a song with a chorus of " Baby I'm bad news"??

20. "Infiltration," Sam Phillips. Sam Phillips is one of the only artists that I love everything about and every song by. I have fallen in love with these disjointed almost- crying-for-help but still-upbeat lyrics.

21. "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead," Stars. Pretty much my current favorite song. Depending on the day it can make me completely ecstatic or it can make me cry. The voices are amazing. The lyrics are painfully close to home and the music is melancholy but original.

22. "Walking With A Ghost," Tegan & Sara. Besides Kimya Dawson, these girls have some of the most distinctive voices in my music collection. Maybe that's why love this song... or it could be the fact that it's constantly stuck in my head. Hmm.

23. "Just Traveling Through," The Thrills. I'm proud to admit , I'm one of those who didn't discover these guys from the O.C. (excuse my constant gagging). And although I have no idea what half of the Thrills songs are about, I heart them.

Go, brother Phil, go:

1."Cool Water," Laura Veirs. The understated slacker-voiced Seattlean combines soulful shuffle, organ, chimes, a touch of minimalism in her songs about natural phenomenon and odd creatures. The chorus of this one has hung in my head all week, "cool water" on hot day... a great metaphor for all kinds of unfulfilled desires all week.

2. "Enjoy Your Worries," The Books. What a great balancing act between experimental and accessible. They combine banjos and sampled voices, fiddles and electronics and somehow make it seem like the most natural thing in the world.

3. "Memory Song," Meredith Monk. Last week, I was in New York meeting with Meredith Monk (on a new project for the Walker) and we were reminiscing about the first project we worked on together -- The Games, a huge-scaled collaboration with Ping Chong in 1984(!) I was a know-nothing 25-year-old wanna-be curator (working at BAM as a line-producer) and she was under huge pressure to produce a major avant-blockbuster. We leaned on each other. I've been a huge fan, and we've been friends, ever since. When I got back home, I dug into my home back catalogue to listen to her beautiful "Memory Song," a stirring highlight of The Games.

4. "11 More Days," Carl Hancock Rux. Art renaissance man (playwright, actor, spoken word artist, musician) goes deep with poetry, electronic ambiance, urban despair and funk. Popped up the other day on the Ipod shuffle and grabbed me even more than the first time.

5. "You Ain't Going Nowhere," Bob Dylan. This week, a favorite moment was driving and singing this silly yet timeless song loud, out loud, with my 15-year old Julia. Feeling like I could use a few more flights "into the easy chair" these days. When is someone going to finally put out that definitive Basement Tapes box set?

6. "Changes," Seu Jorge. So unlikely but so perfect, this favella-raised, charismatic Rio singer uses his lilting baritone, acoustic guitar and gorgeous Portuguese language to somehow even top the Bowie original. I'd heard him live, but it is thanks to my nephew Mike for passing the Bowie disc along (from Wes Anderson film).

7. "Sinbad El Calipsico," Axel Kreiger. My favorite Argentine pop musician who no one in the States seems to know. Here he seems to be channeling Morricone, my favorite film-composer. Discovered him from some Buenos Aires-based dance-performance artists we brought here a few years back for Out There fest. Their friend Kreiger made for them a fantastic commissioned soundtrack.

8. "You Ought to Be With Me," Al Green. I saw him in Holland at a jazz fest last summer. His gorgeous falsetto still makes my spine tingle and brings me such joy, and Willie Mitchell's production from this era seems sent down by heavenly messenger.

9. "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime," Beck. Such longing and sadness. Those strings swell and it fills my heart like Brian Wilson does at his best. It was an inspired choice for the Eternal Sunshine soundtrack (where I first heard it).

10. "The Plans that We Made," Jon Langford and Sally Tims. Mekons main man keeps reinventing himself, and here he and long-time songmate Sally squeeze the heartache and tragedy out of this country tune (by Lonesome Bob Chaney) that traverses adultery, murder and retribution (with great punk sense of irony, putting it on a disc to raise money to fight the death penalty).It is one of many highlights of Langford's first (and brilliant) performance piece The Executioner's Last Songs which arrives at the Walker in a week or so.

11. "Not Great Men," Gang of Four. I pulled my vinyl Entertainment! out of my attic record storage area last week to show Jules and her friend how ahead of their time Gof4 was...combining guitars that cut like a razors, staccato funk and quick-stop rhythm changes that sit like paternity papers proving Franz F. (and dozens of others) are their direct offspring. Maybe spreading around some good old Marxist punk can help re-balance the insane direction of our body politic, circa 2006.

12. "Senegal Fast Food," Amadou & Mirium. The brilliant and infectious Mano Chao's production meets the hard working, blind Senegalese couple's fantastic afro-rock head on ...and it's a beautiful marriage.

13. "Heard it Through the Grapevine," Bill Frisell. With patience and indirection, he weaves around the melody then finally deconstructs and embraces it all at the same time.

14. "The Way We Get By," Spoon. I've liked Spoon, but it was my pal Jules and who first played me this song last fall and it ended on my fave list of '05. Still love listening to it.

15. "Close Behind," Calexico. Caught them four nights ago at Joe's Pub in NYC. They were always something of a mystery to me. I assumed they were these older rough-edged, alley-lurking eclectic musicians who worshiped at the feet of Garth Hudson and Levon Helm. Then out come on to the stage these earnest, fresh-faced Arizona young-ish guys. Didn't make their music any less appealing, especially when those accordions and mariachi-horns kicked in. Here they too seem to be on a Morricone binge.

16. "Things Grandchildren Should Know," The Eels. It's like a Truffaut movie - Jim turns Jules who turns her dad onto the eels. "I'm turning out just like my father, though I swore I never would..." strikes a bit too close to home (occasionally anyway). Sometimes I too walk around my neighborhood averting eyes.

17. "Macho Woman," Ornette Coleman. Ornette was the (long overdue) awardee at a 4000-seat banquet of mostly mainstream "arts presenters" I attended in NYC last week. Many of those present didn't seem to know who he was. I took subversive joy in hearing this gentle genius mystify these folks over his 25-minute harmolodic recitation of his life, with lots of oblique pearls of wisdom. My personal living artist hero. The memories of our three-day festival to him at the Walker last year remains one of my moments of all time art ecstasy.

Posted by Jim Walsh at January 30, 2006 1:11 PM | Comments (1)

 

"I REALLY HOPE YER THERE. I HOPE TO GOD YER THERE." - TIM FITE

Filed under: Weekly 20

I ain't into it tonight. Writing about music. Explaining it all. Sunday night notes. Talk to me. Pity the fool.

This week's (1/23) mix:

1. "Spiritual High, Pt. 3," Amanda Vincent, J.F.T. Hood & Moodswings. Mark Morford may be right. There may be a sea change afoot. You can feel it: The town once ruled by garage logic is being pushed by Mischke's mind-time. More people watched Brokeback Mountain than the Alito hearings. Even more people saw Glory Road, about people of different backgrounds getting together and making a statement, and still more saw The New World, about people of different backgrounds falling in love. Youth is about to be served in Torino, because the young and young at heart are fed up with the old. Martin Luther King Jr.'s message of peace and love and equality for all, as heard on this trippy track, was everywhere last week. Hope.

2. "What's Under That Dress?"; "Up Tight Good Woman"; "That's a Man's Way"; "Groove Me" etc., Wilson Pickett. Throw a dart, can't go wrong. Sleep well, soul man.

3. "Faking the Books," Lali Puna. Some of my boy friends like this. I like the "everybody knows this isn't heaven" bit in the same way I like "Too Close To Heaven," but I also find it sort of cold, in the same way I hear Imogen Heap as mostly (only) clever. I'll check back when I'm in a better mood.

4. "What's Mine Is Yours," Sleater-Kinney. How am I supposed to rest my head on your heart when those guitars are telling me to get down on my knees and worship your thighs?

5. "World So Full," Jon Dee Graham. I love this fucking guy. I met him in the Entry basement one night, and you could just tell he'd been through the shit, but hasn't been sucked under. We talked about his song "Waiting For A Sign," and commiserated on how sometimes that's all you're left with - some sign from above that tells you you're on the right path. This is a similar prayer that starts "I get so lost, I get so down, inside out and turned around, that I turn away from the world so full," and concludes, "I know it's hard, I know it's sweet, complicated and incomplete, but I'm still in love with the world so full." Like I said, I love this guy.

6. "Hockey," Jane Siberry. Been taking the kids to the parks for skating lately. Cracked or bruised my ribs again tonight, got half a Vicodin in me. Here's a beautiful ode to the romance of pick-up puck, from a canuck who recalls Sunday afternoons on the frozen river, and using "your rubber boots for goal posts." Her song "Calling All Angels" crumples me into a girly paper man. Here's a photo of the ice rink, before the fall:

7. "Passenger Seat," Death Cab For Cutie. With my feet on the dash, the world doesn't matter.

8. "I Hope Yer There," Tim Fite. Been thinking about how artists cultivate their audience and seek pity. Come feel me tremble, etc. I suppose it's natural, because when you expose yourself - one songwriter friend of mine likened it once to being an over-the-hill stripper - especially in this small town, you risk a lot. Better to just go underground, go away, smart go crazy. Or you can suck it up quit whining and keep trying to connect.

9. "The Great Sound of Letting Go," Moodswings. Deep and tribal and universal and going, going, gone. Oneness, baby.

10. "O Happy Day," Edwin Hawkins Singers. Kicks my sore hockey-fool ass into the sunrise.

11. "Drowning," Langhorne Slim. This man has a bad crush on the lifeguard who takes care of his soul as it floats away on the sea. He is getting his heart broken. His insides are defiled. He is singing, "Truth is a lie and I'm trying lesser every day" and he is wondering if that is a good thing.

12. "Ultimatum," Long Winters. If this be shoe-gazing music, I will stare.

13. "I'll Not Contain You," The Microphones. If you really love someone, you let them go. Free. To the bar. Like a little butterfly. Or a cotton ball on the wind. Or a Q-Tip floating in a puddle. Or a snowflake over an open fire. Or nudists in the IDS. Or gandy dancers in a big conga line looking for the winter carnival medallion.

14. "It's Not Your Day To Shine," Smoosh. Buddhist theory, as sung by 'tweener emo-rockers.

15. "Factory Girls," Flogging Molly. With Lucinda Williams, the lot of whom sing with great empathy for people who actually work for a living.

16. "Colors and the Kids," Cat Power. When we were teenagers, we wanted to be the sky. Must be the colors and the kids that keep me alive, 'cos the music is boring me to death.

17. "Cherry Chapstick," Yo La Tengo. Smack.

18. "Drawing Curtains," Buck 65. A duet. Finally. I feel all the furies of love violently. Flowers in the rain, wild fires in the orchard. Singing through the pain, I beg to feel tortured. Sugar and chaos, everyone else is boring. Let's make dirty babies until the morning. Love sick, how much deeper still can this get? Show me where it hurts and let me kiss it. Je joue en l'envers de l'amour et toit. Je suis le mystere de l'amour pour tois. After the holy mess we make you wash my hair. While the smoke makes pretty designs in the air.

19. Via con Me," Paolo Conte. Chips, chips. Now appearing at a multiplex near you. In a really cool Coke commercial.

20. "The Good Life," Weezer. Always reminds me of this. Enjoy:

When You Wish Upon a Star
By Peter Van Dusartz III

When you wish upon a star... you're most likely setting yourself up for a kick in the gut from disappointment. This is the relentless painful lesson of truth for fatal optimists like me. I have long been accused of being overly optimistic, the condition I used to refer to as "the eternal optimist". But as I get older I have changed my title to "fatal optimist" because as life goes on it seems to me, if I don't find a cure this will eventually kill me.

It is still my initial impulse as a hopeless romantic to believe in dreams come true. But I've been doing my best to resist the temptation, to get steely cold and brush-off those magical "what if"s. My wife has been my teacher and my mentor, guiding me to change my foolish ways. She preaches and embraces the inherent value of cynicism with the mantra "expect the worst and hope for nothing and you may not only avoid heartache, but actually be surprised by a nugget of happy karma once in a while"

I swear, I'm doing my best. That's why when I heard about Weezer going on tour I immediately began a list of nay-says: I just saw them two years ago, I can't afford those tickets, I have to work that night anyway, we just got tickets to Bruce Springsteen's acoustic show for one week later, you can't see every show, let it go.

But I knew the forces of the universe were against me when I learned Weezer was doing a special tour of small venues only, a dozen shows in all of North America before jetting off to tour Europe and maybe then Japan, and one of the few shows was slated at First Avenue in Minneapolis.

Damn.

A dream show. Weezer at First Ave, 1500 people, their first album in four years.
The album and the tour are entitled "Make Believe".

It's hard to explain exactly why I like Weezer so much, but it has something to do with their endless mocking of everything sacred. The hallowed practice of mocking is severely underrated. They are the patron saints of nerds, intellectual geeks turned rock gods, champions of the underdog and skinny social-phobes everywhere. Everything they do seems to be tongue in cheek, self effacing, and hilarious while at the same time using raw, real, emotional lyrics and loud, brash, punk-pop songs that just beg to be cranked.

No. Get over it. Let it go. You'd never get tickets anyway. It took everything I had to refuse to even try. I immediately regretted that. Sure enough, the tickets sold out in less than two minutes. Their face value was $28. Within days they were selling on eBay for $125 apiece, and eventually close to $200. Nerds everywhere were in a frenzy. I was reduced to pathetic attempts to win tickets from the radio station like the rest of them. Let it go.

But like I said, my optimism is terminal. I saw a glimmer of a chance and began to concoct a plan. I have this friend who is "hep". Hep as in "hepcats". Chic. "With it". Keen. Notorious, renowned, cosmic. Cool. I'll call him "Morpheus". He and his hepcat wife own an art gallery and we were invited to a show. Morpheus told me that a certain "Star" was going to be "arranging the music" for the evening. This guy is a big fish in the Minneapolis pond of rock-and-roll, a true insider who knows "all the right people". I'll call him "Willy Wonka".

My sickness is bad. I secretly began to conjure a ploy, knowing if anyone could get me into that show, it was Willy Wonka.

I cranked Weezer in the minivan all the way into the city. We had decided to enlighten the kids and turned this into a night of forced family fun. They love Weezer too, they've been singing those songs for their whole life. I confessed my scam to my wife:

"I'm making it my goal tonight to become best friends with Willy Wonka, so he'll take me to see Weezer". I tried to pass off as if I was mostly joking. She raised an eyebrow and looked at me with a sad smile, as if to say:"Why do I even try?"

I bided my time, Morpheus was gracious and charming as always, and then I made my move, going right for Willy Wonka's heart:

"I made my goal tonight to become your best friend so that you would take me to see Weezer at First Avenue". Willy Wonka smiled, his wife rolled her eyes.

"Oh, when is the show? I really want to see them". I tried to banter politely and told him we had actually met once before at the R.E.M. show at Midway Stadium where a huge thunderstorm burst into torrents just as they were singing "It's the end of the world as we know it". Willy Wonka said:

"Oh yeah, I remember that show, that was awesome". I did my best to small talk, and then he stepped out of my reach with the phrase:

"I'll look around and talk to some people and if I come up with anything I'll look you up".

Let it go. As I drove the minivan out of the city I made a shot at reclaiming my dignity.

"That was one of those social niceties, things people say at cocktail parties to be polite, wasn't it". She smiled at me warmly and said

"Yes honey, that's what it was".

I felt better. I emailed Morpheus thanking him and his wife for the party and mentioned how gracious Willy Wonka was to humor me and not cringe. As the weeks went by I suffered silently about missing the show, entered contests online, speed dialing to the radio stations, imagining Weezer on that stage, but for the most part I was proud of myself. I had mostly grieved it, mostly moved on, it hardly bummed me anymore. I was letting it go.

Until exactly one-hour before the show. My wife called me at work.

"You won't believe this, Willy Wonka just called me and said you're on the guest list at the door".

"SHUT UP."

"I'm completely serious. He said he wasn't sure if it was a "plus one" or not, but you're on the list."

I was standing at my desk, 50 miles away, in another state. I had a scheduled meeting with clients in one hour, exactly the time the doors were to open. My mind raced. There was slim chance I could cancel, and even if I did, I'd have to forfiet the Bruce show next week. I needed to find out if it was a "plus one" or not. I had about 8 phone calls to make, and I immediately knew, I would be at that show.

"SEE?!"

"SEEE??!!"

"I knew it!!!"

What she could see was that I was going to be impossibly hopeless forever.

I quickly realized that "plus one" was big fish hepcat lingo for "and a guest". I called the First Avenue business office and actually got through. I tried to sound nonchalant:

"I'm on the guest list for tonight's show but I'm not sure if it is a "plus one" or not".

"Which list are you on?"

"I'm not sure, Willy Wonka got me on the list".

"Just a minute, OK, yeah it's a plus one".

It's the classic American father and son bonding dream. Dads working late again, but then he gets a phone call, free tickets for tonight, a chance to be a hero, just dad and the kid. Work will have to wait.

"I'll pick you up in 15 minutes, we're on the guest list to see Weezer at First Avenue."

"SHUT UP."

"I'm not kidding, Willy Wonka just called".

"So shines a good deed in a weary world." W.W.

OK, maybe the classic American dream includes a big league ballgame, but this is our big league. While some dads bring their kids to ball practice, I drive my kid to bass lessons at Willie's Guitar. While some dads might try to get an all-star autograph, I recognize John Munson at the x-treme sports skateboarding Expo, introduce my son to him as a budding bass player, and get his autograph on a Fobia bumper sticker which my son puts on the back of his bass. While some dad's idyllic evening is a game of catch in the backyard, we try to translate my guitar chords tab to his bass tab and jam to Weezers song "Say it and so". My son is 15. His bands are Nirvana, Green Day, Weezer, AC-DC, Pink Floyd, Boston, Led Zepplin and Deep Purple. God dammnit I love that kid.

Believe me, this was our big league ballgame. Bringing my son made it a dream come true.

We rocked out to as many tracks as we could on the way, parked in a ramp, and jogged through downtown to First Avenue. He was in awe. I pointed out the tour busses and told him stories of all the bands I had seen there. As we waited in line to get in, we overheard the bouncer tell the four teens in front of us that the tickets they had paid a kings ransom for on eBay were no good. The Oompa Loompa bouncers ushered out the spoiled rich kids (ala Veruca Salt). This magical night was not meant for them.

The teller asked "Which list are you on?"

"Not sure, but Willy Wonka got us on the list."

"Oh, then you're probably on Weezers guest list, yeah, here you are."

My son is also named Peter, and he said "Oh man, my name was sooooo on that list."

I gave him the tour telling him more stories of Semisonic and Soul Asylum and the mayor of Minneapolis stage dive when theFlops played the "Rock the Vote" show. We looked at T-shirts and he pointed out his favorite and then strategized our way around the staircase onto the main floor. He was floating, sparkling an endless grin, giddy. Me too.

The floor was packed as we watched the warm-up. Their music was good, but the bass was played on a sampler by a guy staring at a monitor who looked more self conscious than any kid at my son's Junior High school, and the eager Weezer true believers mostly only tolerated them. Soon the Oompa Loompa stage managers ushered out the techno dweebs (ala Mike Teevee). This magical night was not meant for them.

We were about 20 feet back, stage-left, in front of the bass player as the lights went up, when we were surged off our feet to about 12. It was chest-to-back, swaying out of control, and I did my best to create a pocket in front of me for him to breathe. My son inherited my "late bloomer genes" and is Rivers Coumo style in stature and I actually got scared. I hollered into his ear, "How you doin?" He looked up with the grandest of smiles and hollered back: "I'm doin great!"

Of course he was. It was perfect.

As it turns out, most of the worst of the rib crushing pressure was caused by a group of drunken frat boys determined to force their way through the true Weezer purists to the stage edge. I later found this post from one of the internet geeks on the Weezer website blog scoffing at the brutish band-wagoneers:

"This was my 4th time seeing the band, and they were great. but It also disgusts me how many meat heated jocks show up to the show and pummel their way up front when the green album jams are played. it was funny noticing them just bobbing their head to "Good Life" or "Getchoo", and not knowing the words."

There were no Oompa Loompas to usher them out, but this magical night was not meant for them either.

No, this magical night, at this magical place, was destined for the old man with the big mustache and the young boy with the floppy long hair.

Weezer rocked loud and the crowd rocked a lot louder with a chorus heard above the amps, shouting every word to all of the songs like a just-past-puberty boy's choir. After a few songs the crush loosened enough for the whole floor to pogo, my son included as he held the universal sign of Weezer high above his head with both hands.

Rivers Coumo outdid his enigmatic weirdo self as he carefully and meekly took center stage, shoulders hunched, with a quirky smirk, seeming bemused by the fervor the entire night. I swear he looks like an emaciated Ernie Douglas, rippling with understatement as he blares out his guitar solos with one finger, and smiles while singing his tragic ballads and wry parodies of superstars, dopeheads, and the privileged, mocking them all and his fans, as well as himself, as he feigns praise and sings anthems of pseudo homage. Man that kooky little weirdo cracks me up.

Everything about Weezer cracks me up. From their Spinal Tap-ish =w= logo in old-fashioned marquee lights, a glaring parody of Van Halen's legendary =v= , to the last show I saw when the drummers platform raised high over the crowd in a smoking/flashing final song solo... leaving the drummer stranded until the roadies rescued him with a two story step-ladder, as he slowly crawled down in full view, only to return five minutes later to slowly climb the same ladder for the encore. I had never seen anything so fucking hilarious, especially since the joke seems to have gone unnoticed right over most of the fanatic's heads.

Pay attention Alanis, this anorexic Ernie Douglas Rock God is the guru of irony.

For example, I know what you Republican'ts are whining out there, "How can this guy proffer a field trip to a bar with his son, to hear a punk band sing songs entitled "Hash Pipe" and "We're All On Drugs" as his consummate example of Americana father/son character building?"

Ay, there's the rub. For in that song of drugs lies the sardonic trope, Rivers ruse, that at first appears to glorify but actually ridicules: "When you're out with your friends/In your new Mercedes Benz and you're/On drugs/And you show up late for school cause/You think your really cool when you're/On drugs/And you put on your headphones/And you step into the zone when you're/On drugs/But the world don't care/If you're not there cause you're/On drugs".

In fact, the song actually becomes an anti-drug PSA anthem: "And you twitch in your seat cause/You wanna hit the street when you're/On drugs/And you cause such a fuss cause/There's no one you can trust when you're/On drugs/And the best of your days/Will all vanish into haze when you're/On drugs/And you wish you could quit cause/You're really sick of it but you're/On drugs"

But the beautiful irony finally fully blossoms when he manipulates the stoners themselves into complicity, to proclaim his message for him, by hooking them into chanting the catchy chorus over and over, "We're All On Drugs, We're All On Drugs, We're All On Drugs, We're All On Drugs..."

Brilliant. Maniacal. Too friggin funny. What a blast. Just listen to the song for yourselves, that line is an addicting earworm. C'mon, all the cool kids are doing it.

And the rocking mocking didn't stop there as he went on to lampoon:

the beautiful people in "Beverly Hills" - "Look at all those movie stars/They're all so beautiful and clean/When the housemaids scrub the floors/They get the spaces in between... I wanna live a life/like that/I wanna be just like a king/Take my picture by the pool/Cause I'm the next big thing!",

himself in "The Good Life" - "When I look in the mirror/I can't believe what I see/Tell me, who's that funky dude starin' back at me?/Broken, beaten-down can't even get around/Without an old-man cane I fall and hit the ground/Shivering in the cold, I'm bitter and alone",

and fatal optimists like me in "Island In The Sun" - "On an island in the sun/We'll be playing and having fun/And it makes me feel so fine/I can't control my brain... We'll run away together/We'll spend some time forever/We'll never feel bad anymore".

But I'm not suggesting Rivers is uncaring. At one pause between songs he leaned forward surveying the churning mayhem and muttered, "Gee, it looks kinda scary out there", which of course elicited a jubilant cheer, causing him to chuckle, shrug his little shoulders and reply, "Well I guess you're having fun anyway."

Again with the understatement. It was all fun, and the sound was great, the crowd never stopped singing and bouncing, even to the songs on the album yet to be released. The energy was gleeful and positive, even the air was clean and fresh, and it was all a little surreal. Like a dream.

When the screen finally came down, we pressed our way to the merch table, and I bought the kid that favorite shirt, tossing it to him like Mean Joe Green tossed his jersey in that old Coca-Cola commercial.

We strolled past the autograph seekers waiting by the busses as they tried to avoid the wino beggars. We read the bandnames "Stars" on the wall. I pointed out Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, he pointed out Green Day. We stopped in Schinders to buy a couple bottles of Coca-Cola and scan the comic book covers. We talked and laughed about the spectacle of it all and listened to more of the songs. When he got out of the car he gave me a hug much too long for his aloof teen age and said: "Thanks dad".

"For some moments in life there are no words." W.W.

The next morning reality snapped back as I watched a live news report, broadcast from outside the front of my son's Junior High school covering the story about two of his classmates. They were being held in police custody for creating and distributing a "Hit List" of names of 12 more of my son's classmates. We talked about it on the way, like we talk about everything every morning on the way to school.

He tells me which kids are the "popular" kids that were on the list. He tells me which kids are the stoners, which kids are the wanna-be stoners, which kids bring drugs to school, and which kids have offered them to him. I know I can't keep it away from him. But I can show him how to get high, how to get away from it all, how to find magic without the drugs and alcohol.

And I know he won't always tell him everything. But I believe in him.

And I obviously can't protect him from the dangers. But I'm optimistic.

So who is this Morpheus? Who is this Ernie Douglas? Who is this Willie Wonka?

"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." W.W.

As I watched him walk into his school, the magic of the night before seemed more dreamy than ever, and I was overwhelmed with gratitude. It occurred to me, that when you wish upon a star, if it's the right star, your dreams really will come true.

Willy Wonka: "Don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he'd ever wished for."

Charlie Bucket: "What happened?"

Willy Wonka: "He lived happily ever after."

Thank you Willy Wonka.

Weezer
First Avenue
Minneapolis Minnesota
May 3rd 2005

Setlist:
Tired Of Sex
In The Garage
Hash Pipe
No One Else
This Is Such A Pity
Buddy Holly
Photograph
Hold Me
Getchoo
Say It Ain't So
We Are All On Drugs
Island In The Sun
My Name Is Jonas
Peace
Beverly Hills
Haunt You Every Day
---
Undone - The Sweater Song
The Good Life

Posted by Jim Walsh at January 23, 2006 1:46 PM | Comments (0)

 

A Letter To Minneapolis; In Memory of Bob Feldman; Jay Walsh Names the 'Mats Tour; and Lou Wright's Top 20

Filed under: Weekly 20

Dear Minneapolis,

The other day a lovely Irish-British woman who married a Minnesota rock-boy said to me, "People from Minneapolis are the biggest music snobs in the world."

And...?

"When I first moved here, the first thing people asked me was, 'What kind of music do you like?'"

And...?

Anyway, I ain't no provincial son. I'm here to say I'm stoked for the we-are-the-world winter Olympics. Especially this year, because of all the hate 'n' war, but mostly because of don't-give-a-fuck-but-kick-ass-anyway characters like Bode Miller and the Donnas and the new "Fall Behind Me" commercial starring the U.S. Olympic Snowboarding team, which shows the world how hard American chicks rock. Seriously, if you were in some female-hating hovel of the Middle East and saw how much fun American women have with electric guitars and snow, you'd go a little nuts, too.

Speaking of rocking hard, I don't pretend to know much about Likehell. They're one of those local bands who didn't fit the brand-new-young-legend-in-the-making profile we've (I've) fostered and been led to believe and buy and whose name always only reminded me of something my friend Bill wrote a few years ago after getting home from the bar: "Like hell I'll ever go see Likehell again."

Bill would flip over Likehell. I saw their mockumentary the other night with my friend Mary Beth, because neither one of us wanted to watch anything sad or too serious, because it had been a sad and serious day, and it reminded me of the end of Steppenwolf, when Mozart says to the sad-sack protagonist Harry, who has spent his life gnashing about the meaning of life:

" 'Enough of pathos and death-dealing. It is time to come to your senses. You are to live and to learn to laugh. You are to learn to listen to the cursed radio music of life and to reverence the spirit behind it and to laugh at its distortions. So there you are. More will not be asked of you.'"

"Gently from behind clenched teeth I asked: 'And if I do not submit? And if I deny your right, Mozart, to interfere with the Steppenwolf, and to meddle in its destiny?'

"'Then,' said Mozart calmly, 'I should invite you to smoke another of my charming cigarettes.'"

Anyway, I missed it when it screened at Sound Unseen two years ago, but it's out on DVD now and all that will be asked of you is that you do everything you can to see it. (It ain't on Netflix. Yet.) I might have been high, but I laughed harder at this thing (subtitle: "The Unbelievably True and Amazingly Accurate Story Behind Rock's Most Legendary Supergroup") than anything I've seen in a long time, including The Office. It reminded me of a great Ween show, in that it's a wicked parody of rock's self-mythology in particular, artistic navel-gazing in general, and the Behind The Music-ization of everything. Plus, it mocks the shit out of stuff like these self-conscious twerps.

But don't believe me. Ask Brian Oake; he narrates it. Or go here and buy it and tell everyone you know to do the same. Somebody who knows somebody at HBO should get it on the air. Make these smart-asses so infamous they can tour to ironists and rockists the world over and get rich. Here's my Rotten Tomatoes quote:

"Likehell: The Movie is the funniest rock movie since This Is Spinal Tap or Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster, not to mention the only film in the history of filmdom to feature cameos from Lori Barbero, Tommy Stinson, Slash, and Jim Marshall. Warning: You will see something of yourself in it. It will not be pretty, but it will be pretty hilarious."

This week's (1/ 06) mix, dedicated to the warm memory of Bob Feldman.

1. "100 Miles," Abra Moore.
2. "Ain't Life A Brook," Ferron.
3. "Change Your Mind," Neil Young.
4. "Greatest Mystery," Terry Walsh and 2 A.M.
5. "No Time To Cry," Iris DeMent.
6. "No Place For You," Paul Westerberg
7. "For Those Whose Work Is Invisible," Suzzy and Maggie Roche
8. "Asking Too Much," Ani DiFranco
9. "The One," Oh Susanna
10. "Song Of Bernadette," Leonard Cohen
11. "Not Dark Yet," Bob Dylan
12. "Drunken Angel," Lucinda Williams
13. "The Tide," Lucy Kaplansky
14. "River Road," Jimmy LaFave (thank you, Jackson Buck)
15. "Hard Times In Babylon" Eliza Gilkyson (thank you, Ellen Stanley)
16. "Here In The Going, Going, Gone," Greg Brown
17. "The Roving Gambler," Spider John Koerner
18. "Burning Down The Hard Rock Café," Farm Accident
19. "Wash My Eyes," Leandra Peak
20. "That's What Makes A Legend," John Gorka

OK, so in anticipation of when the Replacements get back together and hit the road later this year, my brilliant brother Jay has some suggestions for the tour name:

WE STILL FUCKING STINK

FOUR BOTTLES, WILL TRAVEL

WE HAVE MORTGAGES NOW

YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A CUSTOMER.

COLOR ME DEPRESSED

WE NEED A GODDAMN JOB

FORTY SIX BLUE

WORSE THAN EVER

THROWING APPLES AT GORILLAS

GETTING IT WRONG THE SECOND TIME

WE'RE HERE FOR YOUR GRANDAUGHTERS

MONEY TRUMPS HATE, SWEETHEART

PAUL APOLOGIZED

REHAB MADE ME SADDER

PETER'S WET DREAM

SEND THE GOO GOO DOLLS BACK DOWN TO TRIPLE A.

BASTARDS OF OLD

YOU BOUGHT A HEADACHE

PAULIE'S GONNA DIE

WHITER AND LAZIER

GARY LOST HIS BONER

BOB'S LAST WISH.

HEY, THERE'S STILL A BOB ON GUITAR

Yep, it's a Walsh Brothers production. It's gonna be subtitled the "Hayday 2006" tour, they're gonna dress up like the Hee-Haw clowns, and, well, it's about damn time this came true:

St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN) December 14, 2001 Section: Express Edition: City Page: E1 Column:POP MUSIC

HERE'S HOW TO FULFILL A BIG 'MAT ATTACK
JIM WALSH
Pop Music Critic

The New Year's fantasy news story goes something like this:

ST. PAUL (AP, Jan. 1, 2002) The Replacements are back.

The Minneapolis-based band, whose legendary live shows and records defined a generation in the '80s and provided building blocks to the college and alternative-rock movements of the '90s, have decided to reform after a 12-year hiatus.

The news came just weeks after the dedication of a park bench to the memory of late Replacements guitarist Bob Stinson. The ceremony, which took place Dec. 15 at St. Paul's Turf Club, featured performances from several local bands and a toast to the bench, which sits in a garden at Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis.

"The bench is real nice," Replacements singer/guitarist Paul Westerberg told Kurt Loder of "MTV News." "I walked over there the other night, sat on it, and asked, 'What would Bob do?' The answer: Get his band back up onstage as a bunch of old (expletives) and flop."

News of the reformation spread quickly within ecstatic Replacements circles. Asked to comment, New York-based critic Ira Robbins said, "I guess I'll just reiterate what I wrote in 'The Trouser Press Record Guide': 'For a time the (Replacements were the) world's best rock 'n' roll band -- proof that those who missed the '60s could still build something great on the crass and hollow corpse of '70s music."'

Music historians have long championed the Replacements as a band that wasn't for everybody. But with a new trend toward rawness and feeling over all else, and bands such as the Strokes, the Hives, the Midnight Evils, Wilco, Marah, the Now Explosion, Slobberbone and Ed Tinley and His Hired Guns gaining a new audience, the time might be right for a full-fledged Replacements revival.

"It's about time," said Tom Cook, a.k.a. "Drummer Guy," the musician/talk-radio host who has often lobbied the band to reform on his weekly KFAN-AM show, "Rock Talk With Drummer Guy." "Those songs deserve to be out there, being played in front of large gatherings of people, now more than ever."

Said singer/songwriter Ryan Adams, "I am a complete fraud -- especially compared to those guys, whom I obviously love. But I couldn't carry their guitar straps."

After a tumultuous 11 years together, the Replacements (often referred to by fans as "the 'Mats") finally split up in 1990. Since then, all four band members have put out solo albums and all but drummer Chris Mars have played live. (Bassist Tommy Stinson lives in Los Angeles and plays with the on-again-off-again Guns 'N' Roses.) The foundation for the reunion was laid when Westerberg ran into Mars recently at a Minneapolis bookstore near the home of Replacements guitarist Bob "Slim" Dunlap.

"We started talking about old times, George Harrison, Joey Ramone, Ground Zero (a Minneapolis punk band) and what a crappy year it had been," said Mars, a Minnesota Twins season-ticket holder.

"The next thing you know, we're in Slim's basement, playing 'When It Began,' 'Bastards of Young,' 'Kids Don't Follow' and 'Darlin' One'," said Westerberg, who lives within walking distance of Dunlap and Mars. "Then we remembered that Tommy was in town, visiting his mom and daughter. We called him up, he came over, we gave him (expletive) about Axl and Slash, and did 'Sixteen Blue.' From there, it was like riding a trike."

Westerberg has written and recorded more than 25 new songs for a solo record, including "Let the Bad Times Roll," which should see the light of day this year. He said he was considering putting together a touring band when the fated meeting with Mars took place. After two days of rehearsals ("or male-bonding-goofing-off-therapy," cracked Mars), Westerberg called his old friend and former 'Mats road manager Bill Sullivan, owner of the 400 Bar in Minneapolis.

"He goes, 'Can I bring my band down?' " said Sullivan. "I said, 'Sure,' but he hung up before I could ask what band. He shows up a couple hours later, and it's the 'Mats. They played for 90 minutes. Old songs. New songs. Paul songs. Chris songs. Slim songs. Tommy songs. A Shania Twain song. It was a Monday night. Ten people were here."

The next night, the word was out. A line of amped-up 'Mats fans snaked its way down Cedar Avenue to the Metrodome, so the band high-tailed it across the river and set up at the Turf. By the time they finished a two-hour set that included "I Will Dare," "I.O.U.," "Nowhere Man" and "Put a Little Love in It (According to John)," the club was a madhouse.

Another ardent Replacements reunion advocate has been Minnesota Daily critic Brianna Riplinger, who recently wrote in her syndicated column, "Riplinger's Riffs," "I'm 20 years old, and I never got to see them live. To me and a lot of my friends, the Replacements have this mystery that no other band does. I don't care that they're not wild or drunk or crazy. I just want to hear the songs."

As it stands, the band plans to do a short six-city club tour to gauge interest and "see how it feels," said Westerberg. If all goes well, a full tour could happen later this year. Opening acts have yet to be named, but interested parties are already throwing their hats in the ring.

"Back in the day we used to open for the Replacements and vice versa," said the former singer for a local band who asked not to be identified. "I like to think they had some of their best shows when we opened for them. We were all competitive little (expletives) back then.

"We'd inspire each other. We'd go after each other. We'd play what was for us a great set, then they'd come out like prizefighters, level the room and make laughingstocks out of us. They were always up for a challenge."

Pop music critic Jim Walsh can be reached at jwalsh@pioneerpress.com or (651) 228-5553.

-- What: The Bob Stinson Birthday and Bench Celebration with Slim Dunlap, Rank Strangers, Bleeding Hearts, Kruddler, the Mammy Nuns, Jake Wisti, the Beatifics, Vena Cava, Mike Suade, Lotus Eaters, Andy Crowley, Chris Dorn and B.O.B.
-- When: 8 p.m. Saturday
-- Where: Turf Club, 1601 University Ave., St. Paul
-- Tickets: $5
-- Call: (651) 647-0486

That's all I got. Have a great day, Minneapolis and Minneapolis-lovers, wherever you are. I'm glad you're alive. Stay safe. Safe home, etc.

Love,
Jim

P.S. Speaking of the future, here's this week's guest Walshfiler. Sixteen-year-old St. Paul native Lou Wright, now living, reading, studying, listening, playing music, and chasing girls in Los Angeles:

1. We Belong Together - Rickie Lee Jones from Pirates Perfectly evokes youth and Los Angeles and youth in Los Angeles. The youth that needs desperately to believe that it is always right and that nothing ever crumbles and fades simply to keep existing. The Los Angeles that is just barely saved from tumbling into the Pacific by an older, balding version of the same belief.

2. Stay Up Late - Talking Heads from Little Creatures Lester Bangs once said that David Byrne has "mental institution eyes", but that his are the eyes of a calm, collected, brilliant psychopath, and not the flailing maniac eyes that stare out of album covers produced by his contemporaries (cf. Television's Adventure, Richard Hell and the Voidoids' Blank Generation.) The calm psychopath somehow got a hold of his sister's baby, and is making it entertain him all night long. The Matterhorn of uncomfortable claustrophobia + ineffable catchiness.

3. Annual - Water Bears from Water Bears Water Bears are a local folk band from the western Los Angeles area. I had the ridiculous good luck to perform with them at a recent arts festival. They are downright amazing, and everyone who hears them agrees on this. They also are a happy reminder of how much Neutral Milk Hotel and their ilk have quietly changed the collective countercultural consciousness in the past couple of years. Was a time, a time called the mid-90's, when this kind of freak-folk would have been frowned upon outside of college towns and hackey-sack circles. But now, with the Decembrists, Devendra Banhart, and handfuls of other androgynous, symbolist folkies populating the airwaves, any teenager with a guitar thinks he's Jeff Mangum. Thing is, Zak Marmalefsky of Water Bears quite possibly is.

4. How A Resurrection Really Feels - The Hold Steady from Separation Sunday I kind of feel bad citing this song, because one has to listen to Separation Sunday all the way through to get the Jim Steinman catharsis of it in toto, let alone to catch all the references to earlier songs. But even if you don't do that, or if you simply can't stand 45 minutes or so of Craig Finn's voice, which I admit is an acquired taste, the song can stand alone better than any other on the album. And with a punch line like "Hallelujah was a sexy mess / and she looked strung out but experienced / so we all got kind of curious," Finn's strange brew of Catholicism, drugs, youth, and frantic poetry - not to mention one of the best releases of 2005 ��" gets it's tragic, triumphant exclamation point.

5. To Hell With Poverty - Gang of Four from Return the Gift Gang of Four is sorely needed these days. There are a few exceptions, but as of late danceable music has lost almost every ounce of snark that it once had. We have the dormant !!!, Radio 4, Death from Above 1979, The Killers, and a host of other dance-rock bands producing the living daylights out of otherwise well-done songs, and there is no one to turn to for a Gang of Four-style feedback-meets-dance-floor aesthetic. I beg of you, modern dance-rock bands, sell your bongos. Buy guitars. Grow some balls. Okay, now that I'm done being negative, listening to this song, crammed into the backseat of a tiny, tiny car with all of nothing in your pocket is where it's at.

6. Cruiser's Creek - The Fall from The Nation's Saving Grace One of the best songs on the Fall's The Nation's Saving Grace, the first album featuring keyboardist / vocalist Brix E. Smith. "What really went on there / we only have this excerpt..." sneered through a megaphone gives way to catchy guitars and reports of a "party going down around here." This is the kind of music that "angular" guitar riffs are made for, not that cheap, nihilistic frequency that Olympia, WA emitted for a while.

7. Easy Winners - The Max Roach Double Quartet from Easy Winners It's ragtime! String quartet ragtime! Orchestrated by one of the best jazz drummer-slash-bandleaders in history! Sound the alarm! The alarm that goes "AWWWWWWWW-RIGHT!"

8. Ten Little Kids - The Jayhawks from Tomorrow the Green Grass I'm not exactly sure what this song is about. My best guess is this; Gary Louris is looking back at the time in his life when sex was first brought to his attention, and commenting on how insignificant those facts of life seems in retrospect, as well as on the innocence of the young'ns on the side of the road who are yet untouched by 'carnal knowledge'. The sentiment is common, this yearning for innocence, but the structure of the song and the sheer playfulness of the lyrics manage to skirt cliché, and to turn a potentially trite song into a hooky paean to childhood.

9. Gravity's Angel - Laurie Anderson from Mister Heartbreak "You can dance. You can make me laugh. You've got x-ray eyes." Though the times don't coincide, I always wished that this song was about Lou Reed, because it would've been perfect. Those dreams dashed by the pesky constrictions of time and space, one is left with Anderson's peculiar blend of well-timed synthesizer, magical falsetto, and slightly unhealthy worshipfulness tempered by equally unhealthy vindictiveness. The song is also one of her most human moments, a far cry from the seemingly unfeeling, sardonic, bionic woman whose voice graced Big Science.

10. Television - Robyn Hitchcock from Spooked It is Robyn Hitchcock's playfulness that continually saves him from being an artsy, self-important morass of ex-punk melancholy. In "Television", Hitchcock flexes his wit, having the audacity to make "bing a bong a bing" the chorus to a song about maladjustment, misanthrophy, and lonliness. But within that wit is deep emotion and complex poetry, most notably in a confession of love and dependence to the television; "my kid will look like you, I swear."

11. Sweethearts - Camper Van Beethoven from Key Lime Pie The imagery in this song is so undeniably amazing. If every Camper Van Beethoven song was this complex, this well thought out, and this catchy, we would never have had to go through the unexplainable horror that is Coldplay's popularity; the collective music-buying public would have been too enthralled with Dave Lowery's expert songwriting. Speaking about a bombing mission over China, he describes how "the flowers bloom where you have placed them, and the lady smiles, just like mom." There is nowhere to go from there. It's too perfect.

12. Czar - Frank Black from s/t "Time. If he could travel time. He would've been on time." Frank Black is a big, angry, ridiculous baby in person, but on record he is a triumphantly absurdist post-punk crooner. I mean, what more do you want from an ex-Pixie? There's theremins. There's death. There's ridiculous lyrics. There's you wishing you could be this cool when you were unabashedly silly and morbid.

13. Typical Me - Kano from Home Sweet Home So you don't like indie rap. You don't like grime or ragga or any rapper that doesn't come with a billion star producers, a pointless chorus, miles of gun-talk and bling, and an eponymous, disgusting breed of purple cognac or energy drink. I can understand why you, American hip-hop listener, might have a hard time swallowing The Streets, Dizzee Rascal, or Wiley, the choppy, cerebral headliners for the British grime movement. But if your not dancing by the time the first chorus to Kano's "Typical Me" hits, you might want to check your pulse.

14. Something About England - The Clash from Sandinista! Exposing the skeletons in the closet of tranquil, polite British society is a road well tread by the likes of The Waterboys, Billy Bragg, and The Sex Pistols. However, none of those groups - wonderful and brilliant as they may be, and all of them are - come close to the eloquence with which Joe Strummer illustrates English nationalistic uppitiness. Opening with a choral "they say the immigrants steal the hubcaps / of respected English gentlemen / they say it would be wine and roses / if England were for Englishmen again...", the song goes on to describe horrors committed upon the English people by their own government, specifically the snubbing of returning veterans while "the world was busy rebuilding itself" after WWII. Great songwriting, and, more importantly, great organ hook.

15. House - The Psychedelic Furs from Book of Days So many people have heard the Psychedelic Furs, loved the Psychedelic Furs, and have no idea who the Psychedelic Furs are. (For their information, they're a New Wave band with a saxophone, and, despite what everyone in the world will tell you, they beat The Cure up and down the street.) It seems there are two schools of thought on the Furs; either they are that band with that song from the Molly Ringwald movie, or they are awesome and underappreciated geniuses. I belong to the latter, and it was comforting to hear the largely forgotten Book of Days being played in a bookstore today. On that illustrious and soupy album, the best song, a hymn of Anglican social decline, crashes down with the words "this day is not my life", and proceeds to assault the listener with Richard Butler's vindictive, slithery vocals, a driving beat, and what sounds like 6 different jingly-jangly guitars. Like nirvana from a can of rotten peaches.

16. Bakersfield - Vic Chesnutt from Little For a long time, the only song I really listened to on Chesnutt's Little was "Danny Carlisle", his heartbreaking, nostalgic song concerning childhood and dreams. One day, however, I forgot to start it over again, and I was deposited in the next song, "Bakersfield". It's a more forward-looking song, which I believe reflects well on Chesnutt, a song in which he faces old age and the looming prospect of death with fortitude and poetry, outlining a pilgrimage to the deadest location in America, Bakersfield, CA. He presents one of the more nuanced approaches to death, saying that it's "strategy, not protocol / that brings me here", that he's come to the point where the long, slow slide into oblivion is a matter of choice, not necessity.

17. Girl Named Captain - Robert Pollard from Not In My Airforce Robert Pollard's songwriting career, the major part of which ended in 2005 with Guided By Voices' last show, has been anything but consistent. It is hard to come by a GBV album that once can listen to all the way through, and the same goes for his solo albums, whereas the other mind behind GBV's The Who-obsessed post-punk, Tobin Sprout, has actually made some solid, listenable pieces such as Moonflower Plastic. But this song, the imagery is just so vivid and the philosophy is so direct, succinctness and bare-bones insight being rare for a man who writes songs about Chinese restaurant owners and "giggling faggots." The subject of the song has one of the best lines in human drama; "I'm not in your dreams / get out of mine."

18. Halloween - Halloween, Alaska from s/t Cloudy, moody synthesizers give way to an atmosphere of small-town calm and nostalgia. The vocal track floats over a listless heartbeat, and cool air streams in through a window you wish you could escape through. Sit back, relax, let Halloween, Alaska give you their unique view of being stationary while everything moves much, much too fast. "Someone told me / you came home last Halloween / but it couldn't be you / you had a mask I haven't seen."

19. Fried My Little Brains - The Kills from Keep On Your Mean Side To understand the Kills, I really think you have to see them live, careening into each other, twitching and flailing and kissing and working out every inch of nervous energy in the room. But short of that, there's "Fried My Little Brains", a song about (guess what!?) drugs, but, more importantly, a juke-joint masterpiece of dirty guitars and intangible snark.

20. The Impression That I Get - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones from Live at the Middle East Remember the late 90's ska revival? Remember this song on the radio? Yeah, me too. That was cool.

Posted by Jim Walsh at January 16, 2006 2:13 PM | Comments (0)

 

Universe Speaks, Random Mixer Writes

Filed under: Weekly 20

God bless my Artist Of The Year for his "honest to Christ, honest to Christ" performance last week, and God bless Mary Lucia for having me on to talk MUSIC a few days ago.

It's Sunday night and I'm gonna let the iPod godz shuffle and verily I say unto you that for this week's mix (1/9/06) I will write about whatever comes up, sorta like automatic writing or messages from the grave (luvs, I now feel comfortable enough with you to confess that my 8th grade science project at Annunciation was "Communication With The Dead"; I got a 'B' and some weird looks), only not like that at all. Here goes nothing. Play, shuffle…

1. "Magia," Pilar Montenegro. What a wretched song. What can I tell you? After my basketball squad, the Pearl Carrots, got throttled by McCrae 40-12, and after post-game tacos on Saturday, I bought a bitchin' shirt from El Primo on Lake Street. Black, all polyester, with an embroidered Our Lady Of Guadalupe stitched on the breast and back. The woman at the counter spoke no English, and my Spanish is rusty, but I'm pretty sure she said, "With this you are officially the most handsome bad-ass gringo in town." Caliente!

2. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," The Band. First time I heard this was at the free stage at the State Fair in about 1974. My pal Rick Schreiber and I decided we were going to bring only five dollars to the Fair, and do all the free stuff. Big mistake. We never got to the Midway, but we ate our bag lunches and sat through a cover band that introduced us to The Band. Priceless, brother.

3. "If Not Here," Michelle Shocked. A stunner. One soul baring all to another, about trying to walk the line, and resting in peace on earth in a lover's arms: "If not here, then where?"

4. "Stupid Girl," The Rolling Stones. Nick Hornby was recently asked, "Let It Bleed or Sticky Fingers?" Dude should have answered, "Aftermath."

5. "Kill Your Television," Ned's Atomic Dustbin. Good idea, crap song. Delete. I'd rather listen to something my old pal Jim Peterson sent me ��" Little Steven or "Miami" Steve talking about the legacy of "Howl."

6. "Crowded In The Wings," The Jayhawks. Beautiful tune; it always takes me back to 35W in Texas years ago, driving 100 miles an hour all by my happy lonesome self down to SXSW. Makes me think about Terri Sutton and Dave Paulson and campfires and Summit and the old City Pages offices and this ratty motel I stayed in in Oklahoma City and I'm pretty sure I'm going back this year, because Neil Young's gonna be there.

7. "Art Lover," The Kinks. Nabokov and Humbert Humbert had nothing on Ray Davies, the dirty bastard.

8. "I Met A Girl," Wheat. So full of wanderlust and reverence for femme-mystery and romantic love, I never get sick of it, or the T-shirt, or when it's on the radio, coming out of that Yeah Yeah Yeah's "they don't love you like I love you" deal.

9. "I Try," Macy Gray. Never gets old. Always rips me up. "I try to keep my cool," she says, but instead here she is, singing like the caged bird who just met her match. Ang Lee or Jane Smiley reference here.

10. "Jesus On The Radio," Guster. Goddamn January. It starts out with all that new-firing energy, and at some point, like last night, you get reminded that you're stuck with yourself. Same old me, different day. Why bother? Why bleed or feed or try to do anything? Why not just go away, close up shop…

11. "Wonderland," Eliza Gilkyson. "Take off your old coat, take off your dark cloud, shake off your reservations, come play with me/I don't need promises or happily-ever-after maybes/I just want your sweet kisses/Hey, don't you know what this is, baby?" Yes! Yes! Yes! "This is wonderland!" Thank you, baby; I needed that. Oh, and nothing says Minnesota winter like my friend Craig on a frozen lake near Cass Lake. With the families. Sub-zero. Looking at the stars. Drinking chilled Jagermeister And me with my new camera. Cheers:

12. "Urban Guerilla," The Suburbs. From Big Hits Of Mid-America, Vol. II. Words to live by: "Fuck that poetry, you gotta fight for it."

13. "Caravan," Nick Heyward. From From Sunday To Monday, a blast of Brit boy-pop. Dunno if Itunes or Wippit has it, but it's worth gobbling up, especially for this top-down sunny-side upper, which goes ever-so nicely with R.E.M.'s "Catapult." "She still loves to play the Jam," always reminds me of Jeaneen.

14. "When You're Old and Lonely," The Magnetic Fields. "When you're old and lonely, you'll wish you'd married me." That's just the beginning, and what follows is the dark side of the Yeats poem that goes like this.

15. "El Ciclon," La Sonora Dinamita. From Colombia, with love.

16. "Will Your Lawyer Talk To God?," Kitty Wells. Hell hath no fury like a fire-and-brimstone-and-litigious woman scorned.

17. "Mozart: Porgi amor (from Le Nozze di Figaro)," Maria Callas. I could be a good atheist. But when I see a winter, spring, fall, or summer vista or hear the sound of a voice that makes me rethink and refeel everything vis-à-vis "simple" beauty, I feel obliged to thank some one/thing for it, so I thank whatever my version of God is at the moment.

18. "Tell Me What You Want Me To Do," Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band. Thank you, God.

19. "Milkshake," Kelis. Took the kids bowling the other night. First ball, fell flat on my face. Foot foul. Got up, glasses hanging off my nose, limping, to guffaws all around, including plenty of wildly entertained strangers. During the second game, when she got bored, my daughter's seven-year-old friend Sophia sang this to my seven-year-old daughter, complete with the "Warm it up, the boys are waiting" bit. Where's my shotgun?

20. "Freedom," Amanda Ghost & The Armchair Resistance. Almost as good as her "Idol" and "Filthy Mind." House music as release.

Posted by Jim Walsh at January 9, 2006 9:48 AM | Comments (0)

 

Happy new year, you beautiful people. This week's (1/2/06) mix:

Filed under: Weekly 20

1. "Would You Be My Friend?," Paul Kelly. Start the new year right by sending this ode to complicated friendship out to a complicated old friend.

2. "Hello January," Fishing For Comets. Itunes as used record store. Click-clack of the keyboard as the click-click of CD browsing. Hmm. Who are these guys? From Dallas. Cool acoustic guitar. Simple, sad, sweet singer. Anti-folk and ��"country that makes the coldest month of the year sound like something to be looked forward to. Sold!

2. "Don't Mistake Kindness For Weakness," Albert Collins. Tony Pucci got me drunk on vodka tonic and Schell's Snow Storm on New Year's Eve. Then I went to bed and had the. Weirdest. Dream. Ever.

I am not making this up:

I went to the White House and visited the president. He was in his robe. Laura was there, doing laundry. We sat on a tattered couch, he told me to forget about the column I came to write, talked to me about a biography of a nun he was reading, and he politely suggested I write about the commonalities we all have.

Then he lay down on me, shaman eyes rolling back in his head, and pressed his heart chakra into mine. As I left, I watched him greet people at the White House gate with that practiced tough-guy smirk, but I knew better, because I'd seen his peace-seeking inner and outer vision for '06. Blanche, you may be right: I have totally lost my mind.

3. "Fountains Of Wayne Hotline," Robbie Fulks. The smartest, funniest piece of aural rock criticism since The Mr. T Experience's "I Wrote A Book About Rock 'n' Roll" or anything by Belles Of Skin City, whom I have yet to hear, but who plenty of smart people say are great, so in them I trust.

4. "You Must Have That True Religion" and "Keep On Pushing," Mavis Staples.

5. From the new Joe Henry-produced I Believe To My Soul; here's hoping she graces us with both when she storms the Dakota this week.

6. "Can't Stop Thinking About It," The Dirtbombs. "Men are idiots; they all want what they can't have," says my neighbor Mary Beth. "Women are the same way," says me. "Shut up, you're both right," burp the Dirtbombs.

7. "Dying For More," The Wannadies. Music? Video? Nah. The secret groove of the iPod revolution is in audio books. I've spent the last couple nights listening to Thomas Mann's A Death In Venice--as precise a depiction of the human condition as has ever been put to parchment. At one point, Mann describes longing as "a lack of information," which sums it up nicely:

When I long, it's for something immeasurable, and so I pick up a book or the phone or the guitar or the headphones and start looking. Sometimes I look out the window and see snow cakes on the trees, and I'm sated until the next pang for simple beauty sails by. Speaking of which, here's a freaky photo I took the other snowy night, while walking the hound:

8. "He Was A Friend Of Mine," Willie Nelson. The old folk standard, recorded by Dylan and recast in 1963 by the Byrds as an elegy for J.F.K., is now the postscript to Brokeback Mountain as a love untold song. When I saw it the other night, much of the audience was sobbing at the song and the closing credits, not because they were trying to figure out which character they related to most��"the lover who wanted to risk everything to be together, the lover who was too afraid to make the leap, or the destroyed spouse��"but because they saw something of themselves in all three.

9. "Beast," The King Of France. From Rilke: "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers."

10. "Behind These Hazel Eyes," Kelly Clarkson, and "Hazel Eyes," The Darkness. Turns out 2005 was the year of the unforgettable hazel eyes, as painted by big chords and choruses.

10. "Temptation Eyes," "Sooner Or Later," and "Where Were You When I Needed You?," The Grass Roots. Lesseee, I got 'em around here somewhere... ohwhatthefuckdl. Drinking and downloading, go!

11. "Designs On You," Old 97's. From their new live one. When Rhett Miller croaks, "You can go ahead and get married, and this will be our secret thing, I won't tell anybody except at the nightclub where I sing," his voice sounds much wearier than when he recorded it nearly ten years ago, and his electric guitar sounds like a marble rolling across the floor. Only thing missing is the background sound of a jealous husband and a barroom brawl.

12. "Old Times Sake," Kathleen Edwards. Recorded from under a tent/fort of too-clean sheets.

13. "Like A Rolling Stone," Bob Dylan. Best music book of last year was Greil Marcus's Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads, which was nothing if not a labor of love, driven by one fan's passion to delve into the context, minutia, and heart of a single song that changed the/his world. In terms of can't-put-down rock reads of 2005, overshadowed only by Dylan's own Chronicles.

14. "A Change Is Gonna Come," Sam Cooke. Peter Guralnick once told me he thought rock critics should only write about music they like. At the time, I was writing for a daily newspaper, which necessitated I review things like Garth Brooks and Yanni, but even though I appreciate thoughtful rips and all sorts of criticism, I understood what he meant. Now more than ever, because there's so much good music out there and because Guralnick's latest The Triumph Of Sam Cooke is testament to his own credo.

15. "I Owe You," Zolof The Rock & Roll Destroyer. Despite my best efforts, these guys and gals do not yet rule the world, so I am now forced to take you by the hand and do the comparison shuffle (think Moldy Peaches meets Tulip Sweet meets Green Day meets early Queen with a bright red emo-cherry on top), and quote my favorite lyric heading into the new year: "It's not gonna be OK, but it's OK (it's OK)."

16. "Hey Ya!," Outkast. Is King Kong racist?, goes the headline. It's just a movie!, go the anti-intellectuals. Yawn. More interesting to me is the idea that it's a commentary on archaic knee-jerks, that it could easily viewed as purposefully meta-racist (see: the Amos 'n' Andy sign prominently featured in the background of the New York Cityscape), and that the voodoo savages on Skull Island are drawn so over-the-top wild so as to set up the milquetoast blackface-on-Broadway dancers at the end.

Knowingly or not, that dance was an homage to Outkast's much-criticized performance of this pow-wow hip-hop hit on the Grammys a couple years ago, which plenty of unimaginative minds similarly deemed "racist," a word which, whenever it's wielded, always strikes me as the great takes-one-to-know-one broad stroke of the arrogant/ignorant art-hating name-caller.

17. "Story Of An Artist," Daniel Johnston. Another headline recently dismissed Steven Spielberg as "Uneven Steven," which reminded me of a terrific essay I read years ago, in which the writer took to task a letter-to-the-editor for using the word "uneven" in describing a work of art. Do we really want "even" art? Not me, not never; that's why I love this ode to anybody who tries to make art in the face of all the evenness that society throws our way. M. Ward's version is cool, too.

18. "Bathtime In Clerkenwell," The Real Tuesday Weld. Wiggle wiggle wiggle. Hup, hup * + * + * + * + *

19. "Purify Me," India Aire. Slinkiest slow dance of last year, heard only by a couple of people, because it got lost on one of those dime-a-dozen soundtracks.

20. "MLK," U2. Written for the fallen civil rights leader, but on a snowy night, curled up with the headphones on, it's nothing short of a let-it-be lullaby from him to me, me to you.

Posted by Jim Walsh at January 2, 2006 11:25 AM | Comments (1)

 

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