Music Features

Pretty & Nice: A Tour Diary

JEREMY MENDICINO — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:47:55 GMT

On the road from Oregon to Boston with New England's newest Sub Pop signees

DOWNLOAD: Pretty & Nice, "Grab Your Nets" [mp3]

In February, 2008, Will Spitz profiled Boston's Pretty & Nice as the band was recording its debut for Sub Pop's new Hardly Art imprint. This week, music editor Michael Brodeur breaks down how rising gas prices, a shrinking music industry, and the ubiquity of digital distribution have dramatically altered the landscape of touring. To get an up-close-and-anecdotal perspective, ThePhoenix.com asked P&N's Jeremy Mendicino (with help from the rest of the band) to keep a running tour diary as they gigged cross-country from Portland, Oregon back to Boston in time to play a record-release party on September 7. This is their story, in reverse chronological order. Check back for updates and track their progress as they make their way home.

SUNDAY 8.31.2008
Activities for passing time in the van: read (books, signs, maps, other, books, text messages), iPod (too many notes), sleep (stiff neckening), watch movies, flux capacitor (currently broken), pick fights, drive.

Drive tends to be the best option. I do this a lot. It can be a game. Points are awarded for optimizing gas mileage, in-center-of-lane consistency, smoothness of lane changes, "jumping" the windshield wipers between the telephone poles (don't ask), comfortable braking, minimizing collisions, timely arrivals etc.

Note to Self: Consider pitching these ideas to video game manufacturers for inclusion in future Grand Theft Auto installments.

SATURDAY, 8.30.2008
So there was this hurricane in Louisiana. And Baton Rouge is in Louisiana. Shows + hurricanes aren't a happy marriage, yada yada yada. We had to cancel Baton Rouge. BUMMER. I hate canceling shows. BUT. Our wonderful friend Tania in Dallas helped us out with not one, but TWO last minute shows in town, so we skipped up to Dallas, played a quick set and hustled down the street to play an "acoustic" set at an art opening. It was . . . an experience. Not bad. Strange. A horse is a horse of course of course.

P.S.: We're still poor.

FRIDAY, 8.29.2008
Travel Anxiety #327: Maintaining healthy battery life in all onboard electronic devices. Macintosh computers (two), ipods (three), cellular phones (was four, now three), GPS (one). Have blown one inverter in this pursuit. Inverter two is still holding strong. Austin has always treated us well and tonight is no exception. Biggest crowd, best reception. Best show yet? Austin + Pretty & Nice = Best Friends Forever.

Road worriers

MICHAEL BRODEUR — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:44:57 GMT

Obscene gas prices, stolen equipment, broken vans, no sleep -- so why do bands still go on tour?
Right around this time 10 years ago, our van died in the desert plains of Arizona on some godless stretch of I-8.

Pretty & Nice: a tour diary: On the road from Oregon to Boston with New England's newest Sub Pop signees.

Tour story
Right around this time 10 years ago, our van died in the desert plains of Arizona on some godless stretch of I-8. After a long wait and a longer tow (during which I rode shotgun while the rest of the band hunkered down in the van, tilted at a 45-degree angle), we finally reached a lonely garage. There, we were given a list of our beloved Big Blue’s extensive transmission problems. In her stead, while mechanics tried to save her, we were offered a smallish egg-shaped minivan rental with which to complete the West Coast leg of our month-long tour. Desperate, late for San Diego, long since broke, and teetering on the edge of multiple forms of meltdown, we took it.

We discovered that three of us could squeeze into the front (with one straddling the gearshift), and that, with the rear seats popped out, all of our equipment could be Tetris-ed into a seamless black mass of amps and cases. In the very rear corner was a tiny cubby of empty space, where the remaining two band members could hug their knees, make like luggage, think of England, and enjoy whatever was piping through the back left speaker — of course, no one up front would hear their protests if they didn’t.

Part-time villain

CHRIS FARAONE — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:09:55 GMT

Ill Bill gets nice
As much as Ill Bill eschews clichés, the Brooklyn rap goon is either a righteous friend or a torrential enemy.

ILL IS ILL: He’s not necessarily a changed man — his lyrics indicate that he’s still a conspiratorially aggressive “American who needs a blow job and a pizza.”

Get-along gang: Ill Bill has friends in fly places. By Chris Faraone.

As much as Ill Bill eschews clichés, the Brooklyn rap goon is either a righteous friend or a torrential enemy. Last week at Quad Studios in Times Square, he proved to be the former. Five years ago at Brooklyn club Southpaw, he was nearly the latter.

The magazine I wrote for at the time had given me a simple assignment: find Ill Bill before his show and ask questions about the new disc by Non-Phixion — his now-defunct white-rogue rhyme syndicate. What my editor had failed to mention was that Bill had issues with the publication after it went bourgeois and stopped regular coverage of him. Never mind that I was there to interview his crew, homeboy was unhappy. Usually I can weasel out of such corners, but Bill was not interested in my “don’t crack the middle man” reasoning. Even worse, as I stared up at his Jurassic 6’4” frame dipped in a black down jacket larger than my bedspread, I realized there was no fighting back. The situation had savage beatdown etched all over it.

But then Bill’s friend ran up with the news that they had a beef down the block. Like that, they bounced outside to settle scores, and I was saved by the bell. When they returned, I bought a round of Narragansett tallboys and made peace. I never got the interview, but I didn’t get maimed, either.

I’ve been afraid of Bill ever since, my fears being exacerbated when he knocked down a kid for throwing water on stage during a performance at the Middle East two years ago. His lyrics also sting. When 50 Cent raps, “I still kill,” the only ones who need to worry are his girlfriends and his bastard children; when Bill declares himself Brooklyn’s undefeated knockout champ, that’s because he might just slap you down. Along with his blood brother, evil rap genius Necro, Bill was one of the few white or Jewish kids in Coney Island’s Glenwood Projects, where his uncle shot dope, his parents fought violently, and, as Bill details, drug dealers snuffed the teachers while cheerleaders sucked dick under the bleachers. In short, he’s been tried and tested.

13 shots to the dome

RICHARD BECK — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:50:28 GMT

The 10 hours and 29 minutes of LL Cool J’s career
What to do with LL Cool J?

What to do with LL Cool J? Is it possible to remember a time when he was not there, licking his lips and flashing that disarming smile in the strobe-lit background? Is it possible to imagine a future in which his hulking cheer will not be vaguely present? Tupac, OutKast, Wu-Tang — one points to these weird, brooding geniuses and says, “Yes. That’s hip-hop right there.” But hip-hop is not just neon personality and virtuosic beat science; it is also crassly opportunistic, blandly entertaining, boring. It is middle-aged — and nobody better represents that more complex, alternately triumphant and underachieving version of hip-hop than LL Cool J. Here’s to L(adies) L(ove) Cool J(ames), more fully hip-hop than the rest of us.

And here’s to LL Cool J, as he approaches a professional milestone with his new Exit 13 (Def Jam). More than 20 years ago, Rick Rubin signed the 17-year-old Queens MC to his burgeoning label Def Jam with a — get this — 10-album contract that would later balloon to 13! With LL having expressed annoyance over Def Jam’s less-than-enthusiastic promotion of his 12th record, Todd Smith, this would seem to be the end of the road for him and his label. So is this baker’s dozen any good? Will the Collected Works of LL Cool J make for a handsome box set? What do these albums sound like?

Say what?!

BEN WESTHOFF — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:21:50 GMT

East Coast Avengers wrong the right with ‘Kill Bill O’Reilly’
Rapper Esoteric has been getting lots of death threats via e-mail recently. But he’s not too worried about them, if only because of their elementary character.

VIDEO: East Coast Avengers, "Dear Michelle Malkin"

Rapper Esoteric has been getting lots of death threats via e-mail recently. But he’s not too worried about them, if only because of their elementary character. “I would grade them all about a D-minus to a failure in terms of grammar, punctuation, spelling,” says this member of the new Boston-based hip-hop group East Coast Avengers. He forwards some of the messages. “I’m in bostown and u will die before ur cd out mutherfucker c u in hell,” reads one. Another: “It must suck to be a libral and have to wake up evry day of your pathetic lives. I will end that life.”

The animosity toward the underground MC is prompted by his group’s recently released Molotov cocktail of a track, “Kill Bill O’Reilly.” The song debuted on August 13 on Wired magazine’s music blog to a swirl of Internet outrage and has since been discussed on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. It’s about as subtle as a boot to the forehead. Over a soaring, cinematic beat from the group’s producer, DC the MIDI Alien, it advocates (metaphorically, Esoteric insists) the murder of The O’Reilly Factor’s host, as well as the shooting of right-wing political commentator Michelle Malkin. Their alleged crimes? Fact manipulation, racism, and sexism, for starters.

“Infrared to Bill O’Reilly’s head/That’s a key spot,” raps Esoteric. Adds the group’s other MC, Tha Trademarc: “Fuck make fun of you with punch lines/I’d rather kill your family in front of you by lunchtime/A one-line execution in sunshine.” The chorus? “We gotta dead ’em dead ’em. We gotta kill ’em kill ’em.”

That the right-wing blogosphere would go ballistic was the whole point. That Malkin herself would write about it was merely icing on the cake. “Well, I have a headache after listening to the new rap song ‘Kill Bill O’Reilly,’ ” she blogged shortly after its release, adding, “Don’t they have anything better to do? Rides to pimp? Ho’s to diss? Bling to steal?” (O’Reilly has not publicly discussed the song, and Fox News did not respond to the Phoenix’s request for comment.)

Perhaps East Coast Avengers’ greatest publicity coup was on Countdown, where Olbermann — himself a frequent over-the-top critic of O’Reilly — discussed the group in his “Worst Person in the World” segment. “Nobody’s life should be threatened, not even in the hyperbole of the moment,” he chastised. “Besides, you are rappers. You have better ethics than Bill O’Reilly does. Live up to them, don’t live down to him. Word to your mother.”

Painfully sweet

BARRY THOMPSON — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:32:00 GMT

The Toothaches are a gas
Ask the same boring question enough times to enough people and you’ll get a not-so-boring answer.

THRIFT SCORE: A uke, a glock, a plastic wood-block thingy, a trumpet, a tambourine, a megaphone, shakers — anything in the bargain bin is a potential accessory.

Ask the same boring question enough times to enough people and you’ll get a not-so-boring answer. Posterity mandates the “How did your band start?” question, despite the foregone conclusion of its near-certain negligibility, but, golly, the story behind the Toothaches reads like a tale decreed by the cosmos, or some such shit.

“He approached me and said, ‘I figure since we’re walking down the street in the same direction, we should get to know each other. My name’s Zimmy.’ He started talking about starting a band to take over the world. I really wanted to be in his band but didn’t say anything about it. Then we parted ways. We didn’t exchange cellphone numbers, so I looked for him for two months, couldn’t find him, and gave up. Then I was getting on the train at Hynes Auditorium, he was there, and we both got off at the same stop, which was just weird. I asked, ‘Would you like to get a drink with me?’ He said, ‘I thought you’d never ask.” Then we became platonic life partners and started writing music.”

Now, Rose Blakelock and guitarist Zimmy Ayer have matching tooth tattoos on their inner forearms. Aw.

Blakelock tells me this story in front of the Sound Museum, Allston’s labyrinthine jam-space multiplex. About a half-hour later, inside, under the Christmas lights dangling from the ceiling in their rehearsal room, her band play a few Be-Your-Own-Pet-with-a-glockenspiel-style tunes, demonstrating that they play rock and roll now and that their syrupy-Kimya Dawson-if-she-sang-well æsthetic from months ago is out the window. There is an elegant simplicity to the A Month of Sundays EP, that phase’s foremost artifact, and you have a black heart and no soul if “I’m hungover and over again” doesn’t make you smile. Maybe it would’ve been prudent to stick with what was working. Then again, if something else also works . . .

“We’ve always been working with what we have,” says Blakelock. “We never wanted to be a twee band, but there were three of us, we didn’t have a lot of money, none of us could play drums, so we’re like, ‘We bought this ukulele for $30. I’m going to learn how to play it. We got this glockenspiel for $30. We’re going to learn how to play it.”

Letter from London

LLOYD SCHWARTZ — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:04:05 GMT

The foggy joys of Europe’s most international city
How could you not fall in love with this city?

AFTERLIFE Michael Frayn’s new play about Max Reinhardt is self-consciously symbolic.

LONDON — “Ladies and gentlemen, due to a person under a train at Chancery Lane, there is no service on the Central Line between Holborn and Liverpool Station.” This informative announcement got repeated every couple of minutes on all the London tube stops. You’d never hear anything like it at Park Street. My favorite headline of all time appeared on the front page of a London tabloid in 1963: “CHRISTINE KEELER EXPOSED AS SHAMELESS SLUT.” How could you not fall in love with this city?

It had been five years since I’d been here. But offsetting the low dollar and the high prices (hard to find a hamburger for less than $12) was the invitation to spend 10 days with a friend who was house-sitting.

Even in August, London radiates culture. Every night the BBC Proms concerts fill Royal Albert Hall, that giant Victorian Easter egg (scene of the climax of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much) that holds some 7000 persons (with orchestra seats removed to accommodate 1000 standees). I heard the young Venezuelan prodigy Gustavo Dudamel conduct his current orchestra, Sweden’s Gothenburg Symphony, and Pierre Boulez leading the BBC Symphony Orchestra in late works by Leoš Janáček, his surprising current passion.

Dudamel has just been appointed music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. I’ve heard him conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood and Venezuela’s amazing Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, out of which he himself emerged. He combines serious musicianship with electrifying energy. But the Swedish orchestra sounded thin and ragged. An off night? Or is Dudamel not yet a fully fledged orchestra builder? The program was eclectic: familiar showpieces (Ravel’s La valse and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique) bracketing the UK premiere of Swedish composer Anders Hillborg’s 2001 Clarinet Concerto (Peacock Tales) with Swedish clarinet virtuoso — and mime — Martin Fröst.

I’m trying to be polite about this. Fröst is a good player and, I suppose, a competent mime, and Hillborg wrote the piece to suit Fröst’s multiple talents. But this banal and sentimental score, accompanied by kitschy lighting effects (Fröst turns to face the orchestra and “blows out the light” — twice!), goes on for 20 minutes. Fröst returned for an unscheduled bravura klezmer piece called Let’s Be Happy!, “arranged,” he said, “by my little brother.”

The Big Hurt: Confessions of a band namer

DAVID THORPE — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:58:56 GMT

The music industry’s best-kept secret speaks out
Maybe you’ve never heard the name Harold Wells, but it’s a safe bet that you’re a fan of his handiwork.

Maybe you’ve never heard the name Harold Wells, but it’s a safe bet that you’re a fan of his handiwork. Since the early ’70s, he’s provided names to hundreds of major acts in every genre. His naming style is so pervasive that band names he didn’t come up with just sound awkward and phony, like an off-brand dude narrating a movie trailer. Nickelback, Fall Out Boy, Trapt. . . these are not the work of a professional. This isn’t general knowledge, of course — labels want you to think that bands think up their own names. So, not to make a big deal out of what a great journalist I am or anything, but I called him up.

Obvious question first: where do you come up with band names?
They can come from anywhere. You see some word or phrase on TV that strikes you as funny, and you just know it works. Like, I remember hearing the phrase “pretender to the throne” in some movie, and immediately I wrote down “The Pretenders.” It was years before a group took that name, though.

So do bands pick pre-written names from a list you've made, or do you meet the band and work out a name?
Depends on what I get hired for, or what the label wants to pay. If they’re really pushing some new act, they’ll fly me in to meet it, or if they’re feeling cheap, they just send a CD and I send them a list of choices. Nirvana picked their name from a list, but in hindsight I wish I’d named them in person. I meant that name for a much mellower act. I would have called them Garbage. I used that name for another group later on, but whenever I hear a Nirvana song, I think, “Should be Garbage.”

Any particularly memorable in-person band-naming sessions?
Atlantic was really trying to push this act in the ’90s, real talented guys. They brought them in and I asked the lead singer to sing me a few bars, and he had about two words out before I said, “Hootie, your name is Hootie.” He hated it, though, he was saying, “I’m not Hootie!”, but I took a stand on that one. Hootie and the Blowfish. Of course, later I saw him on TV saying the same thing, still trying to weasel out: “I’m not Hootie, it’s just the name of the band. . . ” But my favorite was when this guy McLaren came in with these real awful-looking kids and I said, “Your shop is called Sex, call them the Sex Pistols,” and he said, “No. Fuck you.” And I didn’t hear from him ever again, didn’t get paid, but of course that turned into one of the most famous ones I did.

Up-tempo, downstairs

SUSANNA BOLLE — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:09:17 GMT

Beat Research’s DJ Flack goes underground
In the past year and a half, there’s been a small explosion of club nights in Boston devoted to bass-centric genres first spawned in the clubs of London.

The Big Hurt: Earnest goes to camp

DAVID THORPE — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:48:47 GMT

Plus baby comes from Clay and Bizkit defects to Manson
Hey: when the Verve play shows in America, they should start out their set with a cover of “The Freshman,” just so everyone’s like, “Wait a minute, I thought I had this shit figured out.”

GARY GLITTER, after years of captivity, has been released from a Vietnamese prison and returned to his homeland. But! Answer me this: why is JOHN MCCAIN lauded as a war hero while Gary Glitter is cast as a child molester? I won’t rest until this injustice is — oh, wait, because he has sex with kids.

Actual unaltered lyrics from the new OASIS single: “Love is a litany/A magical mystery.” I’ll bet you $50 that if you break into Noel’s house, you’ll see his Word-a-Day calendar still open to “Litany.” Another $50 says Liam thinks it’s a made-up word, like “Wonderwall.”

CLAY AIKEN has, through a process too mysterious to comprehend, sired a baby human child. As a journalist, I wish I could provide some details on how the hell this happened, but I’m just scratching my head over here. I don’t even know where to start. The Silmarillion, maybe?

Former LIMP BIZKIT guitarist WES BORLAND has joined MARILYN MANSON’s touring band, creating one of the most potent supergroups of the nü-metal era. If only all the troglodytes who might have given a shit hadn’t died years ago in Woodstock ’99 bonfire accidents.

Manson, desperate to mitigate the blow to his reputation caused by recruiting a dude from the only band uncooler than his own, issued an awkward, semi-apologetic explanation. “We have a new guitar player that’s gonna play for the first time tomorrow,” he sheepishly blubbered. “It’s the first time we’ll play on stage. His name is Wes Borland, and he used to be in a really terrible band that he left because he felt that it was a destructive force in art . . . but now he is in Marilyn Manson.”

I downloaded a leak of the new VERVE album, and the quality was a bit suspect. I was thinking some jackass might have recorded it from an Internet stream, and my suspicion was rudely confirmed when the cheery voiceover of that ubiquitous “Congratulations! You’ve been selected to receive a free laptop computer” audio banner ad came blaring through the guitars. Wait a minute — maybe that’s really part of the song and this reunion is all about the money.

Hey: when the Verve play shows in America, they should start out their set with a cover of “The Freshman,” just so everyone’s like, “Wait a minute, I thought I had this shit figured out.”

The shores of cool

MICHAEL BRODEUR — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:36:19 GMT

Interview: Liz Phair paddles back to Guyville
I’d love to get all swept up in the hullabaloo surrounding Liz Phair’s 1993, now seminal, now reissued Exile in Guyville , I really would.

VANITY PHAIR: “I got into music at Oberlin, and half of that was because it was in fashion to do it. It was a fun little fuck-off hobby.”

I’d love to get all swept up in the hullabaloo surrounding Liz Phair’s 1993, now seminal, now reissued (on Dave Matthews’s ATO Records) Exile in Guyville, I really would. I love hullabaloos. Thing is, I’ve always been more of a Whip-Smart guy. I think the songs are better, her band sound better, and her voice throughout doesn’t inspire bullshit lines like “Lilith Sternin at Lilith Fair.” Guyville, though? Really? I’m just not sure, guys.

I say “guys” because Phair’s career was, for better or worse, built on foundations of dude approval. (Girls loved her, but guys made her.) It’s Guyville’s simmering premise, after all — well, that and responding to the Rolling Stones, and passively confessing to a crush on Nash Kato of Urge Overkill. Years later, Phair has unshelved the songs that made her who she is (to everyone else, at least), directed a rough documentary revisiting the dude-heavy Chicago scene that chewed her out while eating her up, and set out to play Guyville in its entirety at select dates around the country (this Friday and Saturday at the Paradise).

Her career has been one of constant and drastic change (or selling out, as some would have it), from the raw pop of her early “Girly Sound” cassettes to her disconcertingly high-gloss output on Capitol. After paddling away from the “shores of cool,” as she sees them, Phair is allowing the tides to draw her raft back — but is that the same as washing up? I caught up with her on the phone as she was making her son breakfast.

Was there a point when you were fed up with Guyville — the attention and the expectations it brought upon you?
I’ve always had a rough time with it. I didn’t grow up wanting to be a rock star, I didn’t grow up wanting to be on stage. I got into music (in terms of writing it) at Oberlin, and half of that was because it was in fashion to do it. I wrote my crazy little songs, but I did it in my bedroom. It was a fun little fuck-off hobby.

But I got very serious when I made Guyville. I was on a mission to prove something. I was sick of these holier-than-thou music types that, for some reason, I was surrounded with. I just wanted to be like “fuck you, I can do it too — it’s not rocket science.” Then suddenly it became the defining thing of my adult life, at least until I had a child.

That’ll learn ya

CHRIS FARAONE — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:12:55 GMT

Kabir schools other MCs, little kids
In eighth grade, I decided that school and hip-hop should exist separately.

FOR THE SHORTIES: Kabir has carved a niche that few of his rap peers would be equipped to join him in.

In eighth grade, I decided that school and hip-hop should exist separately. It was spring semester, and my sexy music teacher tapped me to perform “a rap” at an Earth Day assembly. Like a pathetic horny adolescent, I obliged, not only to rap rhymes that were likely written by a 62-year-old EPA bureaucrat named Walter, but also to be dressed in her vision of what hip-hop looked like — a hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses — and to strike a b-boy pose as a finale. (Or, as she put it: “Do that thing like you’re hugging yourself.”) As I walked off stage, I detoured embarrassed for ashamed and suicidal.

Real classy: Math rap not especially dirty
On the low, we were so impressed by the integrity of some Rhythm Rhyme Results tracks that we felt like losers for bumping them. Really — how many sexual partners can you entice rolling down the street blaring lines like “When you’re adding two numbers and the signs are both the same/You add the absolute values and the sign doesn’t change”? To make ourselves feel cool about enjoying educational hip-hop, we picked our favorite classroom cuts with potential sexual or drug-dealing innuendos.

TRACK | “(Pump Up the) Volume”
CHOICE LYRIC | “Now everybody feeling this/Because you know it’s not a myth/That we’re leaving flat shapes behind/Now we got cubes and cones and cylinders on the mind full-time”

TRACK | “Circumference (It Just Makes Sense)”
CHOICE LYRIC | “You know that every circle whether it’s big or it’s little/Has one single point that’s right in the middle”

TRACK | “Inversion”
CHOICE LYRIC | “If you have an integer put a one below/To find the multiplicative inverse you know bring the bottom number up and put the top one below”

TRACK | “Meters, Liters, and Grams”
CHOICE LYRIC | The whole song

Not till my move to Boston 12 years later did I re-evaluate hip-hop’s classroom value. I’m not referring to academics who negotiate the socio-political significance of G-Unit murder anthems — I still deplore that. No, I mean the incorporation of beats, rhymes, and attitude into grade-school curricula. Educators around here teach a remarkable number of rap-inspired programs, from Boston Youth Hip-Hop Shop after-school sessions to the 4Peace Summer Arts Workshop at the Grover Cleveland Community Center in Dorchester. Even more impressive is the number of Boston rappers who daylight as educators: Jake the Snake as a classroom aide in Dorchester; Lyrical, er, Dr. Pete Plourde as a professor at Lasell College; Kabir Sen, who’s running neck-and-neck with that dude from Summer School for Coolest Teacher Ever honors.

In the field of Boston’s hip-hop educators, Kabir is the anomaly whose roles as teacher and musician are not mutually exclusive; he’s the same dude at his desk that he is on stage (minus the Hefeweizen). The son of Nobel laureate and Harvard economics professor Amartya Sen, Kabir met the mic during Boston’s underground renaissance; those who frequented Western Front battles and sweaty Middle East shows circa 2002 will recall his riding the independent wave beyond the Bean alongside cats like Mr. Lif and Esoteric. But though he still drops sporadic enlightened albums (three so far, with another on the way), Kabir has carved a niche that few of his rap peers would be equipped to join him in. (Some might even be legally prohibited.)

Nervous energy

MICHAEL ALAN GOLDBERG — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:33:10 GMT

The unlikely rise of Does It Offend You, Yeah?
“If I actually stopped to think about what’s going on, I’d probably shit myself,” says James Rushent, singer/bassist for UK electro-rock quartet Does It Offend You, Yeah?

YEAH? “The thing I love about our record is, it’s quite a naive record,” notes James Rushent.

Although his outfit is named after a line Ricky Gervais spouts in the British version of The Office when confronted about his workday boozing, James Rushent — singer/bassist for UK electro-rock quartet Does It Offend You, Yeah? — says he didn’t have even one drink before the group’s very first gig a year ago. “I swore I would never do that again,” he laughs over the phone from London.

If Rushent was nervous then, playing for 20 or so fans in a dank, tiny Liverpool basement, the situations DIOYY? have found themselves in of late — a high-profile club trek with Bloc Party, massive festivals in England, arena shows in the Northeast just this past week as the support act for Nine Inch Nails, and now their first headlining US tour, which comes to Great Scott on Sunday — have made a few calming drinks prior to showtime a virtual necessity.

“If I actually stopped to think about what’s going on, I’d probably shit myself,” says Rushent, referring not only to those times when he’s playing in front of huge crowds but to his band’s speedy career ascent. “You gauge your success when you retire, you know? You can’t think about that while you’re doing something, that’ll just screw you up. We just keep our heads down and go.”

If the band — Rushent, singer/guitarist Morgan Quaintance, keyboardist Dan Coop, and drummer Rob Bloomfield — possess any collective performance anxiety, you’d never know it from the brashness and swagger they display live. Opening for Bloc Party in Philadelphia a few weeks ago, DIOYY? prowled and leapt around the stage as they charged through a set that merged disorienting digital noise and in-the-pocket grooves, with squealing synths, gigantic riffs, iron rhythms, and lunatic screams and chants coming together in a hypnotic assault.

There’s some of that aggressive wallop on their full-length debut, You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into, like “Battle Royale” and the industrialized “With a Heavy Heart (I Regret To Inform You).” But other sounds emerge as well. The melodic new-wave-pop anthem “Dawn of the Dead” sounds like OMD with balls, or maybe the soundtrack to a remake of Sixteen Candles starring Jason Statham in place of Anthony Michael Hall. And the mind-numbing “Let’s Make Out” combines the unhinged yelps of LCD Soundsystem or Death From Above 1979 with the rubbery electro-funk of !!! and Daft Punk.

Disc drive

SUSANNA BOLLE — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:52:24 GMT

Semata Productions goes on record
Over the past year and a half, Semata Productions’ Coup d’Etat music series has become one of the go-to venues for new and unusual music in Boston.

The kids are all right

BARRY THOMPSON — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:39:11 GMT

Teenage kicks courtesy of Mindwalk Blvd
There is an outstanding possibility that your high-school band sucked.

SONIC YOUTH: With Ferreira just short of voting age, Mindwalk are already too old (and too metal) to be the next Hanson.

There is an outstanding possibility that your high-school band sucked.

If your outfit was like most others, stealing chord progressions from Blink 182 reaped a tiny following of mall-core kids who lost all interest upon discovering better local bands. After going nowhere for a few years, in a desperate bid for instant success, you went emo (as was fashionable at the time). Months later, an epic on-stage meltdown caused your singer to be hospitalized and your drummer to get divorced and put a long-overdue nail in your band’s coffin. Now you’re resigned to a future of nondescript yuppiedom. All before your 21st birthday.

But there are exceptions to this rule, like Wilmington’s Mindwalk Blvd, a bona fide non-sucky high-school band. Well, actually, two-thirds high-school — the other third is in middle school.

I had assumed that all teenagers who listen to Dream Theater would be Soul Calibur enthusiasts. Yet when I track down 17-year-old guitarist and lead vocalist (he’s also the son of Portuguese singing sensation Jorge Ferreira) Jordan Ferreira and 16-year-old bassist Mike Avakian, they’re busting caps into giant beetle asses at the Woburn Cinema’s Time Crisis 4 machine. Shortly after dispatching the vermin, the rock prodigies are slain by terrorists. Maybe they don’t usually consider video games a good use of their time.

“It’s fun rehearsing every weekend,” says Avakian a bit later, when I sit down with him, Ferreira, 13-year-old drummer Tyler Hudson, Tyler’s mom, and their “managing consultant,” who functions as a PR dude for this occasion. “I get dared to wear these robes and things when the pizza guy delivers our food, and I follow through with it. Good times. What comes after music? Making a fool out of yourself. Then you go back to play and write some stuff.”

With Ferreira just short of voting age, Mindwalk are already too old (and too metal) to be the next Hanson. Whoop-de-friggin’-do. And they’re indifferent to what anyone makes of their youth. “I don’t know. We play music” is Ferreira’s response to the “How do you feel about kids-doing-stuff-oriented newspaper articles?” question. In other words, Mindwalk rock out and don’t think too hard about why or what for. They’re not corrupted enough to concoct clever-sounding bullshit to say to reporters. Which makes a greater degree of young, vibrant brainforce available for rocking out.

Rebirth of a prince

CHRIS FARAONE — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:59:20 GMT

Digging RZA in 36 steps
I recently took the Greyhound to Montreal for a RZA concert.

WU GOES THERE: As a producer, MC, and entity, RZA introduced architecturally underground hip-hop to mainstream audiences.

I recently took the Greyhound to Montreal for a RZA concert. In fact, my lust for Wu-Tang has led me to endure even fouler things than eight hours of lavatory stink: since the Clan usually bypass Boston, I’ve had to roll to Worcester for some shows. So when three weeks ago it was announced that RZA had booked a solo gig next Thursday at the Middle East, it seemed appropriate to spread some flower petals. In honor of the sacred Clan number 36, here go that many memorable moments from the career of a producer, MC, and entity who introduced architecturally underground hip-hop to mainstream audiences.

“GRITS” | BIRTH OF A PRINCE [2003] | Born in 1969, Robert Diggs grows up poor in Brooklyn, Pittsburgh, and Staten Island. According to the song “Grits”: “A one pound box of sugar, a stick of margarine, and a hot pot of grits kept his family from starving.”

“YOU CAN’T STOP ME NOW” | DIGI SNACKS [2008] | 1979: RZA and his cousin Ol’ Dirty Bastard begin hitting kung fu flicks on 42nd Street. An imagination blooms.

“LITTLE GHETTO BOYS” | WU TANG FOREVER [1997] | Around 1990: RZA, GZA, and Ol’ Dirty Bastard collectively call themselves Force of the Imperial Master, but they change the name to All In Together Now after their song by that name blows up around New York.

"OOH I LOVE YOU RAKEEM" [1991] | 1991: Before the RZA is born, Diggs signs to Tommy Boy records as Prince Rakeem. His lead single, “Ooh I Love You Rakeem,” hardly demonstrates his genius.

“IN THE HOOD” | IRON FLAG [2001] | Wu-Tang are born from a rivalry between Staten Island’s Park Hill and Stapleton projects. RZA lives on the borderline between the two, and he pumps music from his basement studio to lure potential MCs on both sides.

“DRAMA” | DIGI SNACKS [2008] | Even with his career popping, RZA remains handcuffed to the block. Soon after the Rakeem video and EP drop, he does a short bid for gun possession.

“BACK IN THE GAME” | IRON FLAG [2001] | 1993: Following the success of the newly formed Clan’s jump-off single, “Protect Ya Neck,” Wu-Tang sign with Steve Rifkind’s soon-to-be legendary Loud Records.

“BRING DA RUCKUS” | ENTER THE WU-TANG (36 CHAMBERS) [1993] | Dropping the same year as Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready To Die and the Nas classic Illmatic, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) emerges as the grimiest, most eclectic of the three iconic releases.

Roll credits

MATT PARISH — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:14:26 GMT

Mad Man Films finish what they started
“Boston has a way of being a little too comfortable for bands,” says Zak Longo as he sits in his Brighton kitchen.

MIXED MEDIA: The band’s melding of warring sensibilities made them tough to pin down.

“Boston has a way of being a little too comfortable for bands,” says Zak Longo as he sits in his Brighton kitchen. “It’s easy to get caught up in things and forget where you stand in the rest of the world.”

Flyers are spread all over the table for Mad Man Films’ party at Great Scott this Saturday for the release of Project Manors — their first record, which pulled itself over the finish line a full year after the band crossed it themselves. The other two members — singer/guitarist George Lewis Jr. and drummer Joe Ciampini — have long since moved to New York, and Longo’s been busy wrapping up an English degree from UMass. A second show at O’Brien’s on Sunday will wrangle the gaggle of side projects sprung from Mad Man Films: Longo’s Before Lazers, Ciampini’s Death to the Weird, and Lewis’s solo project.

For his part, Longo’s been dealing with the real world more than the fantasyland of bandhood lately, spending his summer mentoring disadvantaged high-schoolers in a program to prepare them for college application and hitting the gym with them in the evenings. He takes a square-shouldered approach to conversation, like an assistant football coach; it’s hard to reconcile this Longo with the guy I once saw cover the Residents’ “Sinister Exaggerator” in a sheer white nightie.

At the heart of these efforts is Longo’s younger brother, Sean Robert Killian, who’s currently in a Florida prison trying to scrape up the funds to get back into a courtroom. Both Mad Man shows will serve as benefits toward a fund to cover mounting legal fees.

“My parents already sold their house and everything else they own for the first defense trial,” says Longo. In 2005, Killian was convicted of murder in a touchy case on the campus of the University of Central Florida. But police later convicted a second man of the same crime after getting a recorded confession. The matter would seem to be cut-and-dried but red tape runs thick. Three years later, Killian remains in jail, though he’s completed a paralegal course and has filed his own writ of habeas corpus.

“We’re just trying to build up a good foundation in hopes that Sean can get a fair trial like he deserves,” says Longo.

Guitar solos?

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:01:06 GMT

Obits go back to basics
“It actually feels really liberating, like a moment where you’re like, ‘Boy, am I glad to be an adult!’"

SOLO PROJECT: “Coming from a hardcore/punk-rock background, the guitar solo is the first thing that gets left at the door,” says Sohrab Habibion.

“It actually feels really liberating, like a moment where you’re like, ‘Boy, am I glad to be an adult!’ It’s like walking into a room and you’re not worried if your fly is unzipped. We just don’t care.” Obits guitarist Sohrab Habibion is pontificating about his new band’s exotic sound — and their break with old-guard indie-rock orthodoxy.

“We’re not young guys, so this band has definitely benefitted from our involvement in bands before. I think both in terms of how we write, what kind of music we’re trying to write, and also in terms of how we communicate, since we’re not 25, there’s as little ego as you could possibly get in a band scenario — which is pretty great.”

Habibion (singer/guitarist for early-’90s Jawbox associates Edsel) and singer/guitarist Rick Froberg (former singer for San Diego emo progenitors Drive like Jehu and garage punks Hot Snakes) have a lot of indie-guitar history to be liberated from. Obits has been, until recently, a long-gestating rehearsal-space project with a goal to, as Habibion puts it, “really crack the kind of music that we want to listen to, inasmuch as we can actually play it.”

“We are making music for our own pleasure,” he continues. “There’s no paradigm that we have to hold ourselves to. I come from the DC hardcore scene, and there are so many great bands, and I learned a lot about music and how musicmaking can be a very beneficial social and socially activist thing. And yet there were a lot of unspoken rules, and I’m glad to have nothing to do with that anymore. It feels really good to just sort of say, ‘Hey, let’s play something that sounds like a fucked-up Chuck Berry song,’ and have everybody else say, ‘Yeah, let’s try that!’ ”

The irony is, the gentlemen of Obits are stepping out of their comfort zone by exploring sounds that would normally be considered pretty “trad” — and by rediscovering their love for the buh-lazing guitar solo. “You listen to a million records and you’re like, ‘Man, I wish I could play that Tom Verlaine solo!’, but we’ve all been in situations where that sort of thing is verboten. And you know, coming from a hardcore/punk rock background, the guitar solo is the first thing that gets left at the door. So part of it, for us, is to try to, in as tasteful a way as possible, reintroduce that in our music. It’s actually taken us a long time to figure out how to do that in a way that doesn’t feel cheesy.”

The Big Hurt: Reconstructive criticism

DAVID THORPE — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:48:46 GMT

How music can be better
The job of any great music critic (e.g., me) is to provide useful suggestions to musicians, thus advancing the art.

The job of any great music critic (e.g., me) is to provide useful suggestions to musicians, thus advancing the art. Critics have always been the guiding force behind music; calling us “muses” might be going a little far, but I think everyone would agree that we’re a million times more important than musicians.

Here’s an illustration of how it works. Imagine it’s 1915 or so, and a critic is at some classical-music waltz concert or something. He hears an okay song, but he has the distinct sense that it could be better, so he writes a review saying that they should add more trumpets and shit and maybe start calling it “jazz” instead of “classical,” because that sounds more hip and modern. Upon reading this review, some musician (whose name is lost to history) decides to take the critic’s advice and invents jazz.

These major upheavals have occurred three times throughout the history of music: from classical to jazz, from jazz to rock, and from rock to rap. What with all the flagging record sales and overall music boringness lately, I propose that it’s time for another one, and I now proudly take my place in history as the critic who instigates it. Musicians, please consider these suggestions for making music better:

How about some new instruments? We’ve been stuck with the same basic crap for centuries: guitars, pianos, harps, etc. Maybe a combination of two instruments would be good, like a pianjo, or a guitar you can blow into to make extra bonus notes. Also, it should be like a video game, where if you play a bunch of notes really fast, you unlock some sort of high-score “achievement” and the blowtar company sends you a special pin you can wear.

Or, we could invent a completely new and better type of instrument. I’m not exactly sure what it should sound like (that’s for the musicians to figure out), but you should be able to play it with one hand so you can wave at the audience while you play, or simulate sex acts. Virtuoso types could even impress everyone by playing two at once. An important aspect of this instrument is that it should be relatively simple but extremely difficult to play, so the operator can make wild, sexual grimaces of effort while performing. Maybe the instrument would just be a sort of lever, and you’d have to pull it really hard to make a sound.

Interview: Shane West

JIM SULLIVAN — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:20:15 GMT

Too late to stop
The actor discusses the Germs . . . and ER.

Born in Baton Rouge in 1978, Shane West was raised by punk-rocker parents. His earliest memory of punk is humming along to a Jam song at age three. At 18, he picked up a guitar and moved to Los Angeles. Around the same time, he started auditioning. In 1998, he formed a band called Average Jo, later called Jonny Was; at present, it’s on hiatus. The acting was more successful — he played Evan Rachel Wood’s brother Eli Sammler in the ABC-TV show Once and Again from 1999 to 2002. In 2004, West signed on as the lead actor and executive producer of What We Do Is Secret, a bio-pic of the late-’70s LA punk band the Germs and its bi-sexual, nihilistic, and ultimately suicidal lead singer, Darby Crash. The indie film — titled after a 44-second Germs song — started, ran out of money, stopped, and restarted. Last year it played the LA Film Festival; now it’s finally getting national release. West plays the antagonistic, confrontational Crash, who overdosed, Sid Vicious–like, on December 7, 1980. Further mixing real and reel life, he sang lead with the Germs on tour (they played Axis in 2006), and he’s still a Germ, whenever guitarist Pat Smear is off from his other gig with the Foo Fighters.

These days, however, West is best known for quite a different role: On ER, he plays Dr. Ray Barnett, a double-leg amputee during this final season, whose job includes tending to bloody wounds. In What We Do Is Secret, as Crash, he slashes his bare chest, Iggy-like, in concert. And so . . .

Do you prefer to bleed or be the guy who stanches the bleeding?
You mean be a victim or taking care of someone? Being the victim’s a lot more fun when it’s pretend. It was fun to do it in What We Do Is Secret and put on fake gashes. But as to being the caretaker, I’ve always been that with my friends and family. It’s kind of bred in me.

It’s hard to think of more-opposite roles.
Honestly, ER fits in wonderfully. The first year I started with the Germs, we were trying to raise money and learn songs, I wasn’t on ER, and then ER came along and gave me this opportunity. It helped me out financially, and also career-wise. It helped me get acknowledgment that I can play an adult. It was a blast to join a very successful show. During those three years of hell, when I was trying to put together What We Do Is Secret, eight months out of the year I was able to go to the finely run machine that was ER to relieve my financial worries and help me stay sane.