DANIEL BROCKMAN

Post-masters

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:43:19 GMT

47 releases in, Wire can still get it up
In the annals of rock-and-roll-origin stories, Colin Newman, singer/guitarist for the pinned-down cynical conceptualist rock band Wire, has one of the odder ones.

NEWMAN, LEWIS & GREY: “That full-on rock thing from the early part of this decade, I’m not feeling that anymore at all. I’m feeling very bored with rock music.”

Methods to the madness: How Wire songs happen. By Daniel Brockman.

In the annals of rock-and-roll-origin stories, Colin Newman, singer/guitarist for the pinned-down cynical conceptualist rock band Wire, has one of the odder ones. “At the tender age of 20, I was sitting in my bedroom in Watford deconstructing rock and roll. My mission was to take the ‘and roll’ out of ‘rock and roll.’ ” There’s a pregnant pause, and then he deadpans, “You’re supposed to laugh when I say that.” Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to know where the dry wit and brutal irony of so much modern pop music comes from, it is a defensible theory that it all began in a bedroom in Watford.

Although they were thrown into the general category of punk when they formed back in 1976, there was always something . . . different about Wire. Newman’s sardonic voice — capable of being plaintive and yearning in one song (say, the shimmering effervescence of 154’s “Map Ref. 41ºN 93ºW”) and snarkily nasty with punk vitriol in the next (the pummeling proto-hardcore of Pink Flag’s “12XU”) — always met the music at odd angles. Which makes sense, since the simple no-fills clunk-clunk of the drums and the martial rigidity of the bass and twin guitars compelled their songs to move in straight lines. They had a prickly, studied attitude, like a buzzkill at a party. Newman recalls, “When Wire first played America in 1978 at CBGB’s, we were told that we couldn’t play, because we didn’t have proper songs, that they didn’t end properly. Bands like the Sex Pistols and the Clash were playing much more traditional rock songs than us. And for me, I could see them for what they were: there was great entertainment value, but it wasn’t so . . . interesting, what they were doing musically.”

Dungen | 4

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:14:27 GMT

Kemado (2008)
The playing is looser and rougher than you might expect, with tons of drum fills that teeter on the verge of sloppy, but this adds to Dungen’s trademark unpredictability.

Interview: Amanda Palmer

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:48:06 GMT

At home with the Dresden Doll's solo joint
So it’s the eve of the release of local sensation and Dresden Dolls vocalist/pianist Amanda Palmer’s solo debut album, and I’m sitting in her bric-a-brac-filled South End apartment drinking herbal tea.

So it’s the eve of the release of local sensation and Dresden Dolls vocalist/pianist Amanda Palmer’s solo debut album (produced by Ben Folds), and I’m sitting in her bric-a-brac-filled South End apartment drinking herbal tea. We’ve just taken a moment to notice a remarkable spider web forming in the open window of her kitchen; closer inspection reveals a spider in the center packaging up a helpless victim for a later lunch. I interrupt the moment to ask the obvious question:

Okay, so let's get the biz out of the way first: your new album is Who Killed Amanda Palmer?, and now it's like "Ooh, are the Dresden Dolls finished, what does this mean?" What do you think people will read from this?
I don't know what people want my answer to be. I think the fans probably want to hear that the band is going to go on forever and ever. And I think in some incarnation, it will. But Brian and I are also really happy doing our own projects right now, and we haven't nailed down what's going to come out after this.

Was this solo album intentional, or did it just sort of happen?
It all sort of happened, it started out as a much smaller thing, and originally this was going to take a matter of months.

When was this?
This was two years ago. I was going to record it in my apartment with a local engineer, and record it, master it, put it out, no press, no fanfare. And the collection of songs was different back then, it was this collection of piano ballads. And so that changed. Once Ben Folds got involved, it kind of morphed into this large project. Also, while that was happening, the band was evolving. Evolving and de-volving.

What do you mean "evolving"?
Well, I think that Brian and I were getting fundamentally burned on touring. We had been touring for I think pretty much five years non-stop. We were just getting burned on everything: the routine, each other. It's really, really hard to maintain a relationship like that when it's just two people.

Was there ever a turning point or an event where you thought "How can I keep doing this?"
There were a lot of those events. I mean, that's the sort of thing, when you're touring together, and you're constantly — I mean, Brian and I are very different, and —

All Tomorrow's Parties: MBV

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:13:16 GMT

My Bloody Valentine at Kutshers Country Resort, Monticello, New York, September 19-21, 2008
If you thought that you could handle the band’sjangly rattle and strum, then you had to brace yourself for “You Made Me Realise,” which was interrupted by an excursion into bone-melting NOISE.

Dirt merchants

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:39:11 GMT

Farm Aid crops up in Massachusetts
In the hegemony of mid-’80s mega-rock-star benefits, Farm Aid stands as the American blue-collar uncle to Live Aid’s international whiz kid.

COUNTRY FEEDBACK: “We started out to save the family farmer,” said Willie Nelson, “and now it looks like the family farmer is going to save us.”

In the hegemony of mid-’80s mega-rock-star benefits, Farm Aid stands as the American blue-collar uncle to Live Aid’s international whiz kid. The first one was held in 1985 in Champaign, Illinois, and the franchise has since been personified by its three founders and main headliners: Neil Young, Willie Nelson, and a small-town kid from Indiana named John “Cougar” Mellencamp. (Dave Matthews joined the Farm Aid board in 2001.) For those Americans becoming increasingly disillusioned with the real-life burden of Reagan’s “Morning in America,” Mellencamp and Farm Aid consolidated, in ’80s pop culture, a working-class populism that never seemed pandering or patronizing.

Farm Aid’s annual concert has since been wending its way around the country, and it will make its inaugural New England appearance this Saturday at the Comcast Center — with the aforementioned four as well as Nation Beat, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, Steve Earle, the Pretenders, and many others. Why Massachusetts? Farm Aid spokesperson Jennifer Fahy: “Willie has always wanted to be sure that we reach out to farmers across the US and to make sure that farmers can come to the shows because, really, we do it all for them.”

What many may not realize is that Farm Aid is a year-round organization that has adapted and grown with the changes in the lives of American farmers. Fahy goes on: “Back when it was started, it was the era of benefit concerts, and the message was easy: ‘These people need our support.’ In the ensuing years, we’ve had to increase the depth and breadth of our project and change what we do to stay in line with the changing opportunities out there for farmers. This has meant embracing direct marketing, farmers’ markets, supporting the transition to organic or sustainable growing methods, etc.”

Whoa, hold on there, organic or sustainable? No question that, in the years since “Rain on the Scarecrow,” America’s perception of its farmers in the popular culture has altered. Fahy: “The message of the event has significantly changed. Initially it really was an urgent humanitarian response to a crisis. Willie and John and Neil thought that they would do the one show and call attention to the issues, and that, you know, the government would step in and take care of it. But things have changed, especially in the last 10 years. Willie came up with great quote that we often use, which is ‘We started out to save the family farmer, and now it looks like the family farmer is going to save us.’ We started out calling attention to the problems that family farmers were facing, and now we’re calling attention to problems that the entire nation is facing, and we are looking to family farmers to provide solutions to those problems.”

Preserved Jam

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:01:30 GMT

Paul Weller at Berklee Performance Center, September 9, 2008
There’s always something great about seeing someone who is (or has been) big in the UK when he comes to Boston.

Annie

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:34:41 GMT

Don’t Stop | Island
Annie is adept at balancing bratty tweener kiss-off ’tude with dance-friendly bliss — meaning that someone over 16 can listen to her music without wincing.

Shredding zoo

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:46:10 GMT

Extreme rock the New York State Fair
As guitarist Nuno Bettencourt and vocalist Gary Cherone prepare to play what is, to most, their one hit, a moment pops into my head.

Throwback throwdown

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:27:21 GMT

Magic Christian at the Middle East Upstairs, September 6, 2008
Last Saturday night, Cyril Jordan made his first visit to Boston in three decades — to give audiences a sustained punch to the gut.

Nine-step program

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:26:50 GMT

The best pedals ever to happen to rock music
The history of rock, as a technical story, is a mix of skilled craftsmen and total doofuses sticking their fingers in wall sockets over and over.

The history of rock, as a technical story, is a mix of skilled craftsmen and total doofuses sticking their fingers in wall sockets over and over. Nowhere is technical innovation and retarded abandon more on display than in the world of guitar effects pedals, where the goal is to distort and/or otherwise screw up a guitar’s natural signal. Here are nine of the more infamous interfaces of man and pedal.

TYCOBRAHE WAH PARAPEDAL | Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath on “Paranoid” | Iommi’s wah took on a bizarre edge with this beyond-obscure artifact, and that gave his “Paranoid” solo a baby-thrown-down-a-well feel that has made it the stuff of legend.

Metallica

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:37:12 GMT

Death Magnetic | Warner Bros.
It’s hard to say who detests Metallica more.

Pedal pushers

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:31:18 GMT

A Place To Bury Strangers have it in for your earbones
The history of rock is littered with crazies who have craved nothing more than volume on top of volume, who have short-circuited themselves in the pursuit of the purity of noise.

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TARGET: AUDIENCE: “You’re always playing for that one kid who would get excited about it,” says APTBS frontman Oliver Ackermann.

The history of rock is littered with crazies who have craved nothing more than volume on top of volume, who have short-circuited themselves in the pursuit of the purity of noise. It might seem a foolhardy pursuit, but from those who make it their obsession, you’ll hear statements like this one feverishly uttered by A Place To Bury Strangers frontman and Death by Audio effects-pedal impresario Oliver Ackermann: “When you plug in a guitar and you turn it up really loud and get that awesome sound that comes out of an amp — that’s just kind of that thing you fall in love with. And then, as your ears get more damaged or as you get more used to certain sounds, you kind of try to push it forward to other crazy sounds.”

Nine-step program: The Best Pedals ever to happen to rock music. By Daniel Brockman.

Ackermann’s quest for crazy sounds began in the mid ’90s in Fredericksburg, Virginia, with high-school band Skywave, an outfit equally influenced by the doomed romanticism of the Jesus and Mary Chain, the unhinged sonics of My Bloody Valentine, and the simplistic relentlessness of the Ramones. A move to New York at the beginning of the new millennium might have spelled doom for the trio, but not for Ackermann’s mania for decibels. Skywave were notorious for getting shut off at shows for pure volume, and A Place To Bury Strangers — his next project — are no different. Did it ever bother him to meet such resistance to his noise evangelism?

“No! That kind of thing never bothered me. I mean, other members of the band can get depressed when you play a show and the audience gets really pissed off or the club owners get really pissed off at you. But I am always fine with that — that’s part of the excitement and the edge, when they turn off the soundboard. And there’s always some kids out there that are really excited about it. You’re always playing for that one kid who would get excited about it.”

APTBS quickly won (or assumed) the title of “NYC’s Loudest Band,” and though I don’t imagine that they actually are, anyone knows that noise and loudness are felt, not measured: in your gut, your ears, your skull. Now that they’re on the verge of a tour opening for Nine Inch Nails, do they have any plans to upgrade their arsenal. “We’re hoping to make like two really huge tall stacks of amps, if they’ll let us. We want to stack amps like 20 feet high; we’ll see if they’ll let us.”

Mirror ball

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:52:45 GMT

Fables of deconstruction
The stirring pop hits of the day can’t help but reflect the refracting cracked mirror of our nation’s increasingly emotion-laden psyche.

HEAD SCRATCHERS: Expect another work of genre-hopping, inscrutable genius from Of Montreal.

In a few decades, we’ll probably look back on the tumultuous days of autumn 2008 the way we now look back on the fall of ’68: as a tense political atmosphere subsumes all, the stirring pop hits of the day can’t help but reflect the refracting cracked mirror of our nation’s increasingly emotion-laden psyche. Or at least, that’s the conventional fable about why major labels and rock stars exist: to take our hopes and fears and produce the archetypes that will inspire us during the interesting times we hope to live in. But those broken mirror shards now resemble nothing more than the zillion smashed-out pieces of our pop culture, as everything from Disney tween pop to vinyl-only garage scuzz to low-down stripper krunk exists on its own little fringe island.

NELLY’s long-delayed Brass Knuckles (Derrty/Universal) sees the light of day on September 16, with the unlikely guest-list mishmash of Fergie, Chuck D, Akon, Snoop Dogg, Usher, and T.I. Being under house arrest on pending gun charges hasn’t slowed T.I. down — his new Paper Trail (Grand Hustle/Atlantic) hits on September 30. Swizz Beatz and Kanye are all over it, and watch for M.I.A.-sampling lead single “Swagger like Us” with Jay-Z and Lil Wayne. R. KELLY is another artist who hasn’t let his recent run-ins with the law slow him down: this fall will see the release of 12 Play 4th Quarter (Jive). Kelly dials down the outlandish tone of his last few albums, but if lead single “Hair Braider” is any indication, this isn’t going to be a chaste and penitent move for the R-Man. LUDACRIS’s new Theater of the Mind (Def Jam; October 21) is billed as “conceptual,” though we can assume that he’s staying away from the kind of political diss that got him in hot water with the Obama campaign.

Pop diva CIARA’s Fantasy Ride (Jive; December) is rumored to be a multi-disc extravaganza in three parts titled “Groove City,” Crunktown,” and “Kingdom of Dance.” This fall will also see two former Destiny’s Child solo discs: BEYONCÉ’s Virtuoso Intellect (Columbia; November 11) and MICHELLE WILLIAMS’s Unexpected (Columbia; October 7). And October 7 marks the release of two competing hipster-diva records: Norwegian electro-dance queen ANNIE’s Don’t Stop (Island) follows up on her 2004 Pitchfork-friendly debut, and LADY GAGA’s much delayed debut, The Fame (Interscope), shows her taking Kylie Minogue’s Eurosleaze throb and giving it an American twist.

You may now unpeg your pants

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:26:40 GMT

Regeneration Tour at Bank of America Pavilion, August 20, 2008
If the inaugural Regeneration Tour seemed likely to play out as a string of “We’ve played our big hit, now what” moments, well, guess again.

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.”

Three 6 Mafia

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:02:39 GMT

Last 2 Walk | Sony
Last 2 Walk is a club-banging record, but it’s hard to recommend something so by-the-book.

Retro active

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:51:20 GMT

The Regeneration Tour reheats the ’80s
The ’80s, pop culture’s most tenacious decade, were a mix of greed, technological breakthrough, and hope for a bright future.

SKINNY TIE, SYNTH, NO HAIR “A hell of a lot of it is nostalgia, right?” says the Human League’s
Phil Oakey.

The ’80s, pop culture’s most tenacious decade, were a mix of greed, technological breakthrough, and hope for a bright future. At least, that’s the story we buy into before pegging our pants and bounding out to one ’80s karaoke night after the next.

“The music from that era is very uplifting — I think it’s the last really creative decade of music,” says Belinda Carlisle, solo artist and still-occasional Go-Go, speaking from a London hotel before embarking upon the 2008 Regeneration Tour, which comes to the Comcast Center this Wednesday with a cavalcade of ’80s recidivists. “A lot of songs from that era are anthemic and uplifting. Sometimes the stuff sounds ’80s due to production, but the decade, songwise, certainly has a certain sound.”

Sax-crazed: No decade blew harder than the '80s. By Daniel Brockman

Phil Oakey, of the Human League (also rocking Regeneration), has a somewhat amused perspective about the appeal of ’80s music. “A hell of a lot of it is nostalgia, right? It’s not exactly cutting-edge, but it serves to remind the audience how much they enjoyed something from a formative period in their lives that was, and is, very important to them.”

The Human League began in the late ’70s as a product of and a reaction to the rise of British punk; their career culminated in the worldwide smash of their 1981 Dare album and single “Don’t You Want Me.” “There was a bleak industrial movement going on in Britain, and we sort of liked being a part of it, but at the same time, we really loved pop. I wanted to be Donna Summer or Barry White, you know? And we really wanted chart success. People that we admired, like David Bowie or Bryan Ferry, were often people who’d stepped up their game and said, ‘Right, we’d better do some popular records!’ ”

One defining characteristic of this game-stepping-up was technology — in particular the rise of the synthesizer. Oakey and Mike Score, singer and synth player for A Flock of Seagulls (also on Regeneration), had similar moments of epiphany. “When I was a kid, I was into science fiction,” says Score, “and that’s what I wanted the band to sound like: from outer space, almost. And synthesizers were the newest, latest thing. I think I was the second person in Liverpool to have a synthesizer.”

Millionaires

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:35:06 GMT

Harpers Ferry, August 10, 2008
Millionaires played the kind of set I wish I’d see more of: high-energy, hit-filled, and mercifully short.

The Faint

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:22:05 GMT

Fasciinatiion | Blank.wav
It’s as if I were at a party where they’re endlessly playing “Dead or Alive” while some guy next to me mumbles nonsense in my ear and some kid in the corner hits random keys on a Juno.

At home away from home

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:48:55 GMT

CSS take on the world — again
“We love all the pop stuff.” says Sá. “We do love the Pixies, but we also love Mariah, you know?"

SÃO PAULO ROCK CITY? “It’s our home, we love it — but I think everyone in the band feels that
every time we come back, nothing’s really changed.”

CSS guitarist Luiza Sá is resting in New York City, on a rare break from her band’s non-stop tour, and reminiscing about the first song they played at their first rehearsal: Madonna’s “Hollywood.” “We met up to rehearse, we were all in the living room, and we’re like, let’s just play something to see how it sounds. And then [CSS vocalist] Lovefoxxx came in wearing a Motörhead T-shirt — I think she was scared that we were going to be all ‘Rock and roll, grrrr!’ — and we turned to her and said, ‘Hey, we just learned Madonna’s “Hollywood,” ’ and she was so happy about it, just ‘Oh, thank God!’ ”

Brazilliant! A brief foray into Brazilian rock. By Daniel Brockman

CSS’s willfully careless mishmash of pop and rock styles has made them an international phenomenon and arguably São Paulo’s biggest musical export. The success of “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death from Above” and “Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex,” from their 2006 CSS Sub Pop debut, shows that, at least in certain circles, the world is ready for their mix of froth and hooks. “We love all the pop stuff.” says Sá. “We do love the Pixies, but we also love Mariah, you know? And we don’t want to choose. Our songs are our versions of pop.”

Said songs are fun and wacky; they’re also naively naughty. “Fuck Off Is Not the Only Thing You Have To Show” is all the more insanely catchy for its nutty use of the English language. “When we did the first album, we didn’t speak English all the time, so we could say a lot of shit and we didn’t realize it. Now, we’re not the same people because we’ve toured a lot, and we speak English all the time, and the new album shows that. The first album we recorded not really even considering that we were going to tour; and then we toured so much that we changed as musicians. This new album is much more organic, much more how we sound live. We’re not being all serious and trying to start a revolution, you know. It’s still us, we’re just a little bit more mature.”