Best Live Music Seen in 2012

Being less a list than a year-end roundup in numbered sections. The order is not to be taken as a ranking of relative quality, except perhaps for #1, which was pretty much transcendent.

1.
Fred Hersch/Dave Holland/Billy Hart @ Jazz Standard
This is the one I've found myself thinking back on most often.

2.
Milton Babbitt Retrospective @ CUNY Graduate Center
Seeing Philomel live is an experience I'll take with me to the underworld.

3.
Oliver Lake @ 70
In the latter half of 2012, especially the period around his 70th birthday, Oliver Lake seemed to be everywhere in NYC. Playing with several different groups at several different venues, it was hard to keep up with all his activities, but I did manage to catch him a few times. Sets with his organ quartet at Shapeshifter and playing new material with Tarbaby at Le Poisson Rouge were memorable, but the high point for me came at Jazz Standard, where Lake joined Andrew Cyrille and Reggie Workman as Trio 3 with Geri Allen guesting on piano. It was as good as those four names would suggest. At Shapeshifter, Lake was preceded by the Darius Jones Trio, who played beautifully and had Lake sit in for a couple tunes of inter-generational altoism.

4.
Tim Berne @ Shapeshifter Lab X3
Like Fred Hersch, Tim Berne figured in my Best of 2011 Iist as part of John Hebert’s Mingus tribute project Sounds of Love. While I didn’t manage to see Berne’s most acclaimed new project this year, Snakeoil, I did catch him in several other groups, including three excellent sets at the new Shapeshifter Lab - trios with David Torn & Ches Smith (Sun of Goldfinger) and Nels Cline & Jim Black (BB&C) and a new septet (the Tim Berne 7) that includes the members of Snakeoil. The guitar trios were both beasts, with highly formidable guitarists and drummers capable of taking the music at any moment from eerie soundscape to titanic freak-out. As for the septet, I haven’t yet gone back and watched it again on YouTube, but I remember having the feeling as I left Shapeshifter that this was one of the best sets I’d seen all year. The combination of Ches Smith on vibes, Matt Mitchell on electric and acoustic piano and Ryan Ferreira on electric guitar brought a sort of depth-of-field and range of color I’d never heard before in Berne’s music. I’m hoping this band, or at least some version of it, has a future within the ever-expanding Berneverse.

5.
Andrew D’Angelo @ Shapeshifter Lab X2
Andrew D’Angelo turned up in last year’s list as a member of the School for Improvised Music Big Band, where he stood out among a very distinguished lineup with show-stopping solo on a Kris Davis arrangement. This year, I followed through on my resolution to check out some of the saxophonist's own projects, two of which I saw at Shapeshifter Lab - a quartet with Bill McHenry, Mike Pride on drums and the young bassist Noah Garabedian, where the two saxophonists displayed some of the best musical chemistry I saw all year, and D’Angelo’s own big band, the DNA Orchestra. D’Angelo writes knotty, rhythmically and melodically intricate tunes in the bop lineage, but plays them with a passion that never allows the music to sound like an intellectual exercise.

6.
Peter Stampfel & The Ether Frolic Mob @ Brooklyn Folk Fest
Stampfel makes friendly, joyful, and joyfully twisted music that still has and probably always will have the power to inspire WTF? reactions, putting him in good company among the truly singular American artists.

7.
Ethan Iverson/Ben Street/Tootie Heath @ the Village Vanguard / The Bad Plus’ On Sacred Ground @ Damrosch Plaza
After several Smalls appearances (two of which I mentioned in 2010 and 2011 roundups) and a live album, it was about time Iverson got to bring his simple-but-profoundly-rewarding concept of playing standard jazz repertoire in trio with some of the Master Elders of the music into the Vanguard. The tunes spanned several decades (from Eubie Blake to Paul Motian) and were well-chosen to showcase the many aspects of Tootie Heath’s drum mastery, to the benefit of a very appreciative audience. If you missed it, the NPR stream will give you a pretty good taste. Seemingly at the opposite end of the spectrum scale-wise from standards at the Vanguard was The Bad Plus’ take on The Rite of Spring, presented with synchronized video projections, in front of a big crowd outside at Lincoln Center (what they had in common: deep attention to rhythm). In the big outdoor venue, On Sacred Ground almost felt like Stravinsky as arena rock, in the best possible way - I even saw people attempting to groove to the Rite's still-radical-sounding mixed meter. The authority with which drummer Dave King, in particular, handled those rhythms was a marvel to behold.

8.
Psychic Paramount @ LPR & Pitchfork Festival / Earth @ Littlefield
Earth’s slooow tempos and repetitive, heavy but spacious riffs add up to a sound that reminds me of Noguchi sculpture - massive but refined, static but seething with potential energy. There’s a temptation to resort to metaphors involving coiled desert snakes and the like, and "menace" is certainly a word that comes to mind. Not a band to be compared to immovable stone objects, the Psychic Paramount are all about forward motion. Although it was fun to see them outside on a sunny day (well, maybe “overcast” is a better word - it poured rain soon after their set) at Pitchfork Fest in Chicago, they were more in their element inside at Le Poisson Rouge (although the set was a bit early by their standards, at least it was in a basement, albeit a pretty fancy one) where they could deploy the smoke machines and strobes that make theirs one of the most unified presentations in music today - they actually care about matching a look to a sound, and it pays off to overwhelming effect.

9.
Nick Lowe @ Town Hall / Human Hearts @ Hank’s Saloon / AC Newman @ Rock Shop
In which I lump three of the great songwriters of our time, all quite distinctive, somewhat arbitrarily into one list entry. Nick Lowe is a tremendous, charismatic solo performer, but with a backing band (including the soulful Welsh keyboardist and singer Geraint Watkins) his songs, new and old, come into full bloom. Franklin Bruno (as The Human Hearts), celebrating the release of his excellent (and in its Kickstarted-funded vinyl incarnation, beautifully packaged) new album Another, did some songs with only a drummer and was joined on others by guest guitarists and singers, including Laura Cantrell. Bruno is a fine guitarist and I'd love to see him sometime with a keyboardist who could get into some of the Steve Nieve-ities that show up on the new record and recent EP. I saw Carl Newman at the record release party for his latest (and best) solo record, and while he didn't play as long a set as I imagine he would on a regular headlining appearance, the combination of his new songs and new band easily made it one of the most satisfying nights of music of the year.

10.
In which I cram A Few More Outstanding Performances into one entry to make an even ten.

The JACK Quartet @ Abrons Art Center

Lee Konitz's Les Enfants Terribles (Bill Frisell/Gary Peacock/Joey Baron) @ the Blue Note 

Billy Budd @ The Met
A fine night at the opera with Benjamin Britten’s Melville-by-way-of-E.M. Forster all-male sea tale. Most impressive: the chorus of sailors (“heave away”!), though the closing epilogue, with Captain Vere alone on stage reprising the opening and completing the frame that contains the rest of the story, is hard to forget.

Jason Kao Hwang’s Spontaneous River @ Brecht Forum


Repeat Performances

I tried to select different artists, or at least different projects or lineups, for this year’s list, but a few acts from last year that I saw again in 2012 are worthy of another mention.

I put Bill McHenry’s quartet w/ Andrew Cyrille, Orrin Evans, and Eric Revis on last year’s list for what I believe was their first engagement at the Vanguard. I saw them at the same venue twice more this year, including during the March run that yielded their new record, La Peur du Vide, and was reinforced in my opinion that this is one of the most exciting groups going. I’ve read varying opinions on this group from some fine critics, often hingeing on the McHenry-Cyrille pairing (as opposed to McHenry’s previous, longstanding collaboration with Paul Motian): pro, con (scroll down), and some of both. While I happen to like both drummers in the context of McHenry's music and admit that the change makes a big difference, I would argue that the change in chording instruments, from Ben Monder’s guitar to Orrin Evans’ piano, is the most important factor in the new McHenry sound, something that comes through very dramatically on the first track of La Peur du Vide, “Siglo XX”. And as anyone who’s seen Tarbaby live can attest, the combination of Evans and bassist Eric Revis is one that always produces urgent, exciting music. The new album, while very strong, hasn’t yet managed to displace McHenry's previous release, Ghosts of the Sun, as my favorite of his - McHenry-Motian was a special combination, and I believe it reached its peak on Ghosts. Based on the way the current quartet were playing in October, though, I'm very eager to hear more from them, live and on record.

Another group from last year's list that I saw twice more in 2012 was Marshall Crenshaw backed by members of the Bottle Rockets. Neither of the two performances I saw (indoor and outdoor shows at City Winery) surpassed the 2011 Chicago show that saw, but they each presented new aspects of this partnership (I've now seen the “Marshall Rockets” in three different configurations, differing in which one or both of the BRox guitarists were available). While City Winery would probably be fine for a Crenshaw solo show, it felt wrong to be seated at a table sipping Gamay while the full force of the three-guitar lineup kicked in. The Winery's back yard stage was a better setting, and the outdoor show featured a tune I hadn’t seen them do at the previous shows, a very creditable cover of Hendrix' “Manic Depression”.

I mentioned Jeremy Denk’s Zankel Hall pairing of the Ligeti Etudes with the Goldberg Variations in last year’s roundup. I saw him again this year, playing a far smaller and more casual (if I remember correctly, Denk wore jeans) venue, Le Poisson Rouge. He played some of the Etudes again, but the centerpiece of this recital was a time-stopping performance of Beethoven’s last sonata (Op.111), which is paired with the Ligetis on Denk’s latest album.

Recent Faves from Pop Vets

The Human Hearts - Flag Pin EP
Franklin Bruno's recent EP is a digital-only appetizer for the forthcoming full-length Human Hearts album Another, which is getting a Kickstarter-funded vinyl release. I'm not familiar with the entire Bruno discography - it's extensive and spans many years and many tiny labels - but I've enjoyed his work with John Darnielle as the Extra Glenns/Lens, his '90s solo material collected on Local Currency, and, especially, the album of his songs recorded with Jenny Toomey and Calexico, Tempting. The title track of the new EP is a rocker that deals with a subject that was (thankfully) more-or-less absent from the recent campaign season. "Flag Pin" features one of the best Bruno vocals I've heard and, as with many of his songs, is a bit more complex than it sounds at first listen. "Plot of a Romance", currently my favorite track on the EP, is a smart, self-aware love song, a bit meta though not unsincere, the kind of song I associate with New Wave, especially early Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello (Bruno is the author of one of the most musically insightful volumes of the 33-1/3 Series, on EC's Armed Forces). Though it nods to the Attractions sound, this is a Franklin Bruno song through and through - who else (outside of the English folk revival) would refer to the couple in the song as "fair maid, ardent swain"?

A.C. Newman - Shut Down the Streets
Carl Newman's latest is for me the first of his solo records to match up to the best of the New Pornographers (by my definition, their first three records). Newman's songwriting took a somewhat different direction after Twin Cinema, and that direction seems to have finally, fully paid off with Shut Down the Streets. Not only did he write a batch of superb songs, but he found the right group of musicians to realize them. At the Rock Shop record release party, I was struck by just how beautiful and intricately detailed the arrangements of these songs are (incorporating flute and banjo, among many other instruments) and how well Newman and the group were able to translate them to the stage. "I'm Not Talking", perhaps the most memorable song on the record, is sequenced first, but I wouldn't call Streets front-loaded. There are plenty of other high points, like "Encyclopedia of Classic Takedowns" - the most New Pornographers-y track here, both in sound (Neko Case's harmonies are prominently featured) and title - and "There's Money in New Wave", one of the best (and least treacly) father's-advice-to-his-young-son songs I've ever heard.

Redd Kross - Researching the Blues     
Though Redd Kross' music has been described many ways ("sugar-punk"?!), I would just say that this is one of the best power pop records I've heard in ages. I need to revisit Neurotica, often considered this band's masterpiece. My recollection is that that record, from 1987, had some rather un-assimilated punk and metal elements while Researching fits more comfortably in the lineage of classic guitar-pop, though there is certainly punk attitude. It's a brief album, unabashedly Beatlesque in places (even the total running time is very 1965) and full of brief, super ear-catching gestures - twin George Harrison-style melodic slide guitars, a distorted guitar that appears to play a couple of sustained, bent notes before vanishing, and even some good-old-fashioned "la la la" harmonies. The best of the best for me is "Stay Away From Downtown", the track that the band and their label (the great Merge Records) seem to have recognized as the catchiest thing on a record full of them, promoting it with a KISS-inspired video. "Stay Away" is a three-and-a-half minute masterpiece, with an unstoppable and unforgettable main riff. Another favorite is "Winter Blues", which, despite the title, could be considered one of the great odes to California sunshine ("solar-regulated days"), a category of song that's certainly been well-represented in pop music since the '60s.

Top Ten Things Currently on My iPod

In no particular order:

Sebadoh - Harmacy
I imagine this is an unusual entry point into the Sebadoh catalog (I almost entirely slept on them in the '90s), but I picked up this second last of their records after hearing "Ocean" on The Best Show on WFMU. Best Show boss Tom Scharpling's interview with Lou Barlow on the Low Times podcast also pushed me toward finally catching up on this band. With a mix of well-written, often moving jangly pop songs broken up by shorter, harder punkish outbursts, Harmacy is a mighty fine electric guitar record considering this was a band that made their name mostly with lo-fi acoustic recordings.

Miles Davis - Big Fun
A copious mixed bag spanning a few years worth of different sessions and employing an all-star army of musicians, this is a strong and semi-essential if not a cohesive electric Miles record. There's a particular pleasure, almost unique to '70s Miles, in hearing some of these long, sketchy pieces coalesce into the beautiful and/or wildly grooving passages that justify the whole enterprise. Miles did seem to be making truly "experimental" music in that there seems to be no way he could've fully anticipated the results of the musical situations he was setting up. Teo Macero's cutting, pasting, and sound manipulation, so important a component of Miles' studio work in this era, is very much in evidence here, nowhere more than on "Go Ahead John", with its wild noise gate effects, hard whip pans, and multi-Milesing overdubs.

Jack White - Blunderbuss 
This first White solo record has enough strong songs and stylistic diversity to make it highly re-listenable. Once it's done, I want to hear it again. Scattered notes: the title track reminds me of a Dylan song, though I'm not sure which one ("Isis"? "Time Passes Slowly"?); White makes good use of keys and acoustic instruments, expanding on a trend which started to appear on later White Stripes records, but there are still enough deliciously nasty guitar tones here to meet expectations. In fact, there's even a moment that reminds me of John McLaughlin's damaged, can-of-bees solo from the aforementioned "Go Ahead John".

Richard Strauss' Don Juan (NY Philharmonic 1998 live recording)
I still haven't quite connected with the rendition of Death and Transfiguration on his disc, but the Don Juan is exuberance itself and I can't get enough of it. Now I need to seek out more versions of both and go on a Strauss tone poem binge.

Nick Lowe - The Old Magic
In which Lowe continues to refine his already quite aesthetically refined, relaxed late-period style - retro in a non-period-specific way, with mellow sounds often serving as camouflage for the lyrical barbs that have never not been present in Lowe's music. His recent show at Town Hall presented this music in the best possible light, and it was a treat to finally see him with a full band (including frequent collaborator Geraint Watkins, quite an artist in his own right and sort of a Welsh Spooner Oldham), though he's just as effective as a solo performer, a fact that testifies to his personal charm onstage and the strength of his songs.

Ches Smith & These Arches - Finally Out of My Hands
Although these musicians, individually and collectively, have a penchant for (usually quite rewarding) trips to Weirdsville, this album is distinguished by some really strong, even hummable, tunes. Disc opener "Anxiety Disorder" is one of the strongest and features some especially fine drumming from Smith (love that fast cymbal pattern!).

BB&C (Tim Berne, Jim Black, Nels Cline) - The Veil
Though I missed the Stone show documented on this album, I did catch the trio (also known as the Sons of Champignon) at the promising new venue Shapeshifter Lab in the Gowanus. It's obvious that Tim Berne is not a musician to be easily intimidated, as evidenced by his willingness to step onstage with guitar demons the likes of David Torn or Nels Cline armed only with an alto saxophone, looking to the uninitiated like a man bringing a knife to a gunfight. Fortunately, this music is about collaboration, not competition - if the music sounded violent at times, it was a three-way, collaborative violence.

It's hard to describe the kinds of sounds Nels Cline is capable of producing, and at close range in a smallish venue, it can be an overwhelming, immersive experience. If a Wilco show doles out the high-proof Nels in sensible drams, contained-though-dramatic outbursts, this was like bathing in the stuff, football-coach-Gatorade-bath-style. At a few different points, Cline and Black locked into some ferocious grooves, driving the music along with an incredible intensity. At other times, when Black switched to laptop sound manipulation, it was possible to imagine Berne's saxophone as a lone human voice calling out amid the electronic thunderstorm. An argument could be made that this group is the legitimate successor to Motian-Lovano-Frisell, the drums-sax-electric guitar trio. Though their music may seem radically different on the surface, there is some overlap in the textures and moods the two groups explore as well as a history of collaboration and influence (Berne recorded with both Frisell and Motian, Cline and Frisell have collaborated live, and I once saw Black studying Motian at the Vanguard from the front row, directly in front of his kit).

Billy Hart - All Our Reasons
I've been listening to this for about a week now, and it keeps getting better. It's well-written, well-played, well-recorded, and most importantly, is animated by moments of spontaneous invention and surprise of the kind that aren't always captured on a studio record. Current favorites are Mark Turner's "Nigeria", which ends with the kind of interplay between Hart and Ethan Iverson that I enjoyed so much when I saw this group live, Iverson's "Ohnedaruth", with a piano intro (featuring a hard-to-describe but very distinctive touch and rubato-ish time feel - sort of swaying rather than swinging) which is one of the album's most ear-catching moments, and the memorable closer "Imke's March", composed by Hart and bookended by group whistling(!).

WTF
Marc Maron has done some excellent interviews on his long-running podcast in recent weeks, including a surprisingly personal look into David Cross' childhood and early career and a very easy, free-flowing conversation with a man whose outlook I always find inspiring, the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne.

The Pod F. Tompkast
I haven't even scratched the surface of everything that's going on in comedy podcasting right now, but it's hard to imagine that anyone is doing more with the format than Paul F. Tompkins. I can't recommend starting with the latest episode (#17) if you're new - this is one of those things that's best experienced from the beginning - but it is one of the funniest I've heard. Tompkins is developing the stream-of-consciousness, improvised monologues (accompanied live-in-the-studio by Eban Schletter's piano) he does between recorded bits into a viable comedic form that he totally owns.

Best Live Music Seen in 2011

Once again, The Selected Ballads strives to be the last blog to submit a yearly Best Of list. The format this year is my top ten (or eleven, depending on how you count them) live shows of 2011 followed by six honorable mentions and two music-related events worthy of note. The list is in no particular order, except for the first entry, since there was no question that I had to give pride of place to the great, recently departed Paul Motian.

Paul Motian MJQ Tribute Quartet - Village Vanguard
Even if he hadn’t passed away this year, Paul Motian would’ve been my Artist of the Year. I don’t think there was any artist I saw live more times this year than Motian, and as I continued picking up his records, I may also have listened to more of his music than any other artist. The fact that his last year was such an active and creatively fertile one is both inspiring and adds to the sense of loss (what might he have done in 2012?). I think I saw all but one of the groups he brought into the Vanguard in 2011, including two different ones with Masabumi Kikuchi. It’s a tough call, but the MJQ tribute quartet (with a lineup matching the Modern Jazz Quartet’s vibes-piano-bass-drums format) was my favorite. I loved what Steve Nelson on vibes brought to the music, and this group seemed to provoke Motian to some particularly fine displays of beautifully unorthodox swing. If any of the six nights they did play were recorded in some unofficial or official form, I hope the music comes to light.

Ethan Iverson Trio (feat. Buster Williams & Ben Riley) - Smalls
and
The Bad Plus w/ Joshua Redman - Blue Note
I saw almost as much of Ethan Iverson this year as I did Paul Motian, including their trio with Larry Grenadier at the Vanguard and Billy Hart’s quartet featuring Iverson, Mark Turner and Ben Street. I chose to highlight this Smalls appearance, a trio with two masters in Buster Williams and Ben Riley (who I’ve been enjoying on Hank Jones’ Bop Redux, a Bird-and-Monk-only trio record that I picked up over the holidays), simply because it was the most fun, producing moments of surprise and beauty and swing out of some of the most familiar tunes in the canon.

This year, the Bad Plus were coming off arguably their strongest album, and I can’t imagine any instrumentalist stepping in and contributing more to their already strong material than Joshua Redman did. The fact that I was wedged into a remote corner of the Blue Note's bar area for the Bad Plus set (due to my own lack of planning) meant that seeing the trio at Smalls was a bit more enjoyable, but musically, both groups succeeded in achieving their very different ends (or was it that they achieved the same end - making good music - by different means?). They don’t need me to tell them this, but Bad Plus fans with an open ear shouldn’t sleep on Iverson’s other gigs (or Dave King’s newish duo with Matt Mitchell, either). 
[Update: just noticed after posting this that DTM linked here the other day. Quite a spike in traffic around these parts. Thanks Ethan!]

Bill McHenry Quartet - Village Vanguard
I saw McHenry numerous times this year, including a fine set at Smalls, but the group he assembled for the run at the Vanguard helped make this the best. Along with two members of Tarbaby (who I regret missing when they played NYC this year), Eric Revis and Orrin Evans (who I also enjoyed this year with his Big Band and sitting in with Ari Hoenig at the drummer’s Monday night residency), Paul Motian was to have been the drummer in this group before his final illness led him to cancel all his gigs. As it turned out, McHenry made an excellent choice in calling Andrew Cyrille, and the group came together beautifully, taking McHenry’s music to places I’d never heard it go. I hope they reconvene soon.

John Hebert’s Sounds of Love - The Stone
This was a one-time, all-star band that totally delivered on its promise, making some of the best music I heard all year with an all-Mingus set. Like an unorthodox general manager assembling a great team out of seemingly incongruous parts, Hebert brought together associates from the different corners of the jazz world he inhabits, resulting in some unexpected but exciting interactions (I’d be surprised if Taylor Ho Bynum and Fred Hersch had ever shared a stage before, for example - the group also included frequent collaborators Tim Berne and Ches Smith). The set was heavy on material from Mingus’ later-period Changes albums (some of my favorite Mingus), and Hersch’s playing managed to be completely right for the material while sounding nothing like Don Pullen, whose piano was such an important element of the original albums. As with Bill McHenry, I saw Tim Berne several times this year with various groups, including Michael Formanek’s (whose latest album with Berne I've just started listening to) and a couple of groups of his own. I’ve also been enjoying the reissue of Julius Hemphill’s multi-instrument solo album Blue Boye on Berne’s Screwgun label.

Bill Frisell Quartet - Village Vanguard
Bill seems to make it into my Best Of somewhere every year, but good is good, and this set was extra-special for me as it fell on my birthday. As a baseball fan, I like to think this quartet’s (Frisell’s usual trio supplemented by cornetist Ron Miles) rendition of the “St. Louis Blues” was a harbinger of the Cardinals’ success (not to mention the resurgence of the hockey team that shares a name with the immortal W.C. Handy tune). The set also included an encore, something rarely seen at the Vanguard, with Frisell and bassist Tony Scherr pulling out acoustic guitars for a loose-but-sublime medley of “Moon River” and “Misterioso”.

Mary Halvorson Quintet - Barbes
By March, Halvorson’s group, now on their second album, had become a more powerful force since I first saw them a year or so before, when the compositions that ended up on Saturn Sings were new and horns had only recently been added to her original trio. On this night, they sounded to me like one of the best working groups around. I don’t know what the future of this lineup is, but If she can keep these players together for another album, there’s no reason to think they won’t continue on their upward trajectory.

Jeff Mangum - Loew’s Theater, Jersey City
I went into this one with some skepticism and cynicism. I’d seen Neutral Milk Hotel a couple of times back in the ‘90s and been strongly affected by them, but I had some doubts about Mangum’s “comeback tour”, playing the same music, with no new material, 10+ years later. Mangum’s still-powerful voice and the thoroughly undiminished power of his songs cut right through my defences, though. The cavernous, slightly spooky Loew’s Jersey Theater was an appropriate venue for Mangum and his ghost-haunted songs. Tantalizingly, he mentioned that he’d like to come back with “the band” and have Julian Koster play the theater’s organ. He mentioned it casually, contributing to the sense that he was just picking up from where he left off in 1999 or so, with no self-consciousness about or need to explain the long gap in his performing and recording career.

Swamp Dogg - Metrotech (Downtown Brooklyn)
Playing to an outdoor lunchtime crowd within the sterile confines of Metrotech - not the ideal conditions for deep soul music to thrive, but Swamp Dogg proved that old school showmanship and professionalism can overcome almost any obstacle if the audience is willing and the songs are strong. I’d thought of Swamp Dogg as primarily a great songwriter who also happened to be a good singer, but had no idea what a dynamic performer he is.

Sean Nelson Sings Nilsson - Rock Shop
Though he sometimes sings Nilsson with orchestral accompaniment, on this night, backed by members of Kay Kay & His Weathered Underground, Sean Nelson brought Harry into the rock club, notably on the set closing ”Jump Into The Fire”, but no less successfully on gentler tunes like “Daddy’s Song”, made famous by the Monkees, and Point favorites “Me and My Arrow” and “Think About Your Troubles”. Nelson is a hell of a singer, which you have to be to creditably sing Nilsson, and hearing songs I’ve loved for so long on record done beautifully live was a moving experience.

Marshall Crenshaw w/ The Bottle Rockets - Old Town School of Folk Music, Chicago
I was excited about this pairing as soon as I heard about it, and though I wouldn’t have thought to match them up myself, I went in with high expectations and had them exceeded. I’ve seen Crenshaw a couple of times solo and heard some of his live albums, but I’ve never heard his songs sound as good as they did with this lineup. Crenshaw and Brian Henneman’s contrasting styles of guitar mastery added a good kind of tension and gave extra juice to just about every song, making these electric guitar-based songs somehow more electric. Bassist Keith Voegele ably contributed the harmonies that are so important in Crenshaw’s music, and Mark Ortmann proved to be the perfect drummer for MC’s style, reminding me a bit of Pete Thomas, a comparison that had never occurred to me while listening to Ortmann with the Bottle Rockets.

The Bottle Rockets opening acoustic set (coming off their live acoustic release Not So Loud) was also superb, taking advantage of the well-tuned sound of the Old Town’s hall. Just as the Bottle Rockets helped make Crenshaw’s old songs sound new, some gems from their own back catalog showed hidden facets as banjos were added and tempos were changed, in some cases returning to the form the songs had when first written.

Honorable Mentions

Jeremy Denk - Zankel Hall
A severe workout of a recital, pairing Ligeti’s Etudes with Bach’s Goldberg Variations, from a pianist I enjoyed on record and in writing in 2011 and hope to see and hear more from in 2012.

Logan Richardson (w/ Greg Osby, Nasheet Waits, Sam Harris, Burniss Travis) - Smalls
Tremendous group led by the impressive and still rising saxophonist, with Greg Osby (billed as “Egg Cosby”, in the tradition of “Charlie Chan” and “Buckshot LeFonque”), and the mighty Nasheet Waits on drums (I wasn’t able to catch Waits as much this year as last, but his drum duo with Dave King at the Bad Plus-Bandwagon Prospect Park show was one of the year’s great moments).

SIM Big Band - Brooklyn Conservatory of Music
A who’s who of the Brooklyn scene playing compositions by several of the members. Andrew D’Angelo’s passionate solo on Kris Davis’ composition (the title of which I don’t recall) and the drumming of Tyshawn Sorey throughout were the highlights for me.

Don Byron Ivey-Divey Trio - Jazz Standard
Don Byron, whether on clarinet or sax, plays with a combination of wit and soul that seems to be a genuine expression of his personality. This new edition of his Ivey-Divey Trio project, focusing on Lester Young-derived standards and Byron originals, had Geri Allen and Charli Persip (author of How Not To Play Drums and almost the drummer on Sketches of Spain) in one of the city's classiest and most comfortable venues. 

Eugene Chadbourne - The Stone
Chadbourne is someone I’d wanted to see for years, and this solo show reinforced for me what a great songwriter the good doctor is, above and beyond his impressively wacked-out instrumental prowess.

Jason Moran/Mark Helias/Tom Rainey - The Stone
A novel opportunity to see Jason Moran in a piano trio that wasn’t The Bandwagon. The greatness of Moran w/ Tarus Mateen and Nasheet Waits is well-known, but this was more than a novelty, as these three entered into a high-level dialogue on their first time out.

Two Music-Related Highlights of 2011

Shadows - Collapsible Hole
The Hoi Polloi company, under the direction of Alec Duffy, very creatively exploited the potential of an unusual, garage-like theater space in Williamsburg, to bring John Cassavetes’ 1959 "Beat movie" to the stage. Also a fine study in maximizing available resources, Rick Burkhardt’s music used limited instrumentation to great and varied effect, creating an appropriately hip, improvisational feel without restoring to pastiche or mere "jazziness". Shadows was somehow both irreverent toward and respectful of its source material, managing to generate real emotion and atmosphere.

Nick Tosches - Jefferson Market Library
A theatrical, borderline demonic reading by the dark bard of American music’s underbelly, with an appropriately gloomy, Gothic setting in the Jefferson Market Library and an audience that included major rock’n’roll figures like Little Steven Van Zandt and Lenny Kaye, as well as one of the original Jaynettes (who Tosches writes about in Save the Last Dance for Satan, the book he was promoting at this reading) in attendance.

Jim Dickinson on Big Star's Third

This post is over a year old, but I just discovered it. Jim Dickinson interviewed about the recording of Big Star's Third (aka Sister Lovers, aka Beale Street Green). If you're a Big Star/Alex Chilton fan, this is THE SHIT.

Dream Journal #7

Had a strange dream last night involving husband-and-wife evangelists/cult leaders who may have been based on a similar husband-and-wife team from Season 2 of True Blood, a show I haven't watched for several months. They were really into fishing ("fishers of men"?) for some reason, and at some point I think I swallowed a small, live fish whole. They were also control freaks, in true cult leader fashion, at one point inserting a small metal button or peg in the floor so that I couldn't close the door to my bedroom. I was living in some sort of communal house with them and some other people who'd fallen under their spell. I seemed to be the only person who knew that the situation was bad news, but no one would believe me. My favorite detail of the dream was that the cult leaders had some sort of Christian rock band who played in the style of the early Sir Douglas Quintet, and they'd had great success recruiting wannabe Sir Dougs from Sweden, where there was apparently a large group of young SDQ fans ripe for cult indoctrination.

Three Brief Music Items (w/ many links)

1.
So, the Vivian Girls came up right after the Detroit Cobras on my iPod recently.  It was just a single track by each of them, and I realize these bands are pursuing two very different aesthetic agendas, but the back-to-back comparison was not flattering for the poor Vivians. (I haven't hear their latest stuff, but apparently it shows some development in their sound.) On a positive note, it was good to be reminded that The Cobras' Rachel Nagy is one of the flat-out greatest rock'n'roll singers of our time (right up there, I'd say, with Lisa Kekaula of the Bellrays).

2.
All signs have been pointing me to Mal Waldron this week. Well, two signs: the Oliver Lake Organ Quartet's version of his "Fire Waltz" at Roulette over the weekend (here is Lake playing it with a different group), and rereading Frank O'Hara's "The Day Lady Died" with its image of Billie Holiday whispering "a song along the keyboard to Mal Waldron" at the Five Spot.  So, I listened to Waldron's The Quest, which turns 50 years old this year.  The whole thing is highly recommended, but I'd like to direct your attention to the track that really grabbed me on these most recent listens, "Warm Canto", featuring the sublime combination of Eric Dolphy on clarinet and Ron Carter on cello. Also, if you're at all interested in Waldron and haven't read Ethan Iverson on the subject, you should do so immediately.

3.
Check out this video, featuring the great Marc Ribot playing some Sabbath-y but thoroughly Ribot-ized doom blues with the whimsically-named but not whimsical-sounding trio Whoopie Pie.  Help, what's the incredibly familiar theme Bill McHenry is playing in this clip??? It's on the tip of my tongue... [Update 3/16/11: Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street" is what I was thinking of.]

4.
Bonus Update Item (2/25/11)
This little addendum is my way of comforting myself for my utter failure to score tickets for the NYC and Jersey City Jeff Mangum shows that went on sale today. Instead of getting into a predictable rant about shows that go on sale nine months in advance and sell out in (literally) seconds, I'll simply remind myself how lucky I was to have been in the right place at the right time to see Neutral Milk Hotel at their peak, when none of us at the 40 Watt Club could've suspected that we were witnessing something that was about to go away for the better part of a decade. On stage, Mangum burned with a riveting, even frightening intensity in those days. Living in Athens then, I had a few chances to say something to him, tell him how much I was enjoying the then-new Aeroplane, but after seeing him play I was frankly too intimidated, even though he cut an unassuming figure around town.

I don't know the answer to the mystery of Mangum's post-Aeroplane semi-silence. Maybe he was close to the edge of some kind of precipice and was smart and self-aware enough to pull back from it.  Maybe he'd used up his allotment of inspiration and knew it.  In any case, I'm glad he's decided to play some shows this year, and I hope he can give those in attendance a little taste of what I saw on those nights at the 40 Watt. [Update to the update: Ignore the nostalgia-tinged self-pity above. By means of precision timing, I managed to get tickets on the second day of the Jersey City sale (versus the first day "pre-sale"). PATH train, here we come...]

Best of 2010 - Ten+ Musical Moments

I'm still in the process of paring down a very long "long list" of the best shows I saw in 2010, so as a sort of preview and in lieu of an "honorable mentions" section, I've compiled this list (in no particular order) of great individual moments or aspects of live shows that aren't going to make my final Best Of list:

Watching Bill Frisell play Monk and Stephen Foster from about 10 feet away on a summer night inside the sweltering, nearly swoon-inducing Stone.  (Two other memorable solo guitar performances come to mind: Robert Fripp's "Soundscapes" performance at the Winter Garden - finally, someone found a way to work with the cavernous acoustics of the space rather than being swallowed up by it - and Mary Halvorson on Christian Marclay's Wind-Up Guitar at the Whitney - wish I'd seen frequent music box user Frisell playing it. Anthony Coleman's bemused expression while reading the "score" of Marclay's Pret-a-Porter off of models' thrift-store wear was another image that stuck with me from the past year).

Vijay Iyer playing "Human Nature" with his great trio in Tompkins Square Park (it's on YouTube!)

Greg Osby pushing an end of the envelope that's rarely pushed, by taking a very, very quiet solo with Paul Motian and Jason Moran at the Village Vanguard, bringing an already attentive Village Vanguard crowd to an absolute hush.  Focus, control, mastery, taste.

Moran w/ Mary Halvorson and Ron Miles romping and stomping through David Bowie's "Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family" during a boldly varied, adventurous set at Jazz Standard.

William Parker augmenting his Little Huey's Sextet with a percussion ensemble of face-painted neighborhood kids at Campos Plaza in the East Village on the first day of the Vision Fest.

Ethan Iverson, Corcoran Holt, and Tootie Heath taking a joyride through the jazz canon at Smalls.  One of the most purely fun shows I saw this year, I'd intended to catch just one set but couldn't leave until the last note had been played.

Dirty Projectors' opening set and Phoenix's "unplugged" encore set (including a beautiful Francoise Hardy cover, sung in French to the annoyance of some meatheads seated near me) at Madison Square Garden, both better than the oversized, over-polished chrome machine Phoenix has become live (though Daft Punk was a nice surprise!).

Marty Ehrlich's beautiful, detailed, and sometimes even delicate compositions for his 4 Altos group at The Stone - one listen was certainly not enough to grasp all the nuances in this deep music.

?'s eternal rock'n'roll fire and old-school showmanship (including singing a duet with Ronnie Spector while lying on his back!) and Frank Rodriguez's junky '60s organ tone (achieved on a decidedly non-'60s synthesizer) providing the key element of the Mysterians sound at Damrosch Plaza.

In another case of a keyboard player driving a rock band, Dave Amels' beyond-tasty organ work with the Jay-Vons at the Rock Shop.  The greatest compliment I can pay these guys is to say that they're the only group to really remind me of the Get Happy-era Attractions, the gold standard for guitar-organ-bass-drums lineups in a rock'n'soul context.

Four Things Found On The Internet

1
This photo book, from Thurston Moore's new publishing concern and featuring the work of former Village Voice photographer James Hamilton, looks like it could be some kind of milestone in the photos-of-musicians genre.  That Johnny Rotten photo!  He looks downright huggable, almost angelic. [via]

2
The limited exposure I've had to Tao Lin's work (like the majority of the small minority of people who've heard of him, I have a greater familiarity with his self-promotional stunts and shenanigans than his writing) has left me intrigued but a bit doubtful of the success (in literary terms) of his admittedly distinctive project.  I didn't really "enjoy" but was at least semi-engrossed by his recent account of being arrested for "trespassing" at NYU, but this piece in Canteen is a pretty impressive literary performance, bordering on heroic feat of sustained concentration (actually, I think "heroic feat of sustained concentration" might more accurately describe the act of reading the piece).  I hate to go here, but it did remind me a little bit of a DFW footnote (like, say, some of the longer ones in Brief Interviews) in its "how long can he keep this up?"-ness.

3
I'm glad somebody (Ben Ratliff, though there are probably others by now) has written about the "new" (1940) Savory recording of "Body and Soul", a sample of which was posted by the Times yesterday.  I don't really have enough knowledge of the state of jazz saxophone circa 1940 to know just how far ahead of its time Hawkins' playing is in this sample, but it seems like he's making some pretty strikingly radical choices here.  The playing is so much more modern-sounding than the recording that it produces an exciting friction (frisson?) - there must be a good analogy, but I can't come up with it.  It's not like he's into Dolphy territory exactly, but it's hard to believe anybody else was playing like this 70 years ago.  It's also hard to believe that I'm posting about a 47-second sample of something.  Obviously, I'm eager to hear the whole thing.

4
And last but far from least, rare foulmouth Elvis blues (with commentary by Nick Tosches!).  The Hound should be declared King of the Internet, at least for today, for posting this.  Go listen before somebody makes him take it down.

New Wave Jet Age

It looks like this appeared a few years ago, but I've just discovered a very cool thing: old issues of St. Louis new wave/punk/pop/rock'n'roll 'zine Jet Lag available online with commentary by co-founder (and longtime community radio DJ) Steve Pick.  Highlights are too numerous to mention - just starting browsing anywhere - but I was particularly intrigued by Beatle Bob interviewing Chuck Berry (and giving him a sort of "blindfold test") in issue #7.  Check out Pick's commentary on this issue in the blog - apparently, there's been some speculation about the authenticity of the interview, given B-Bob's occasional willingness to sacrifice truth on the altar of rock'n'roll.  (If I haven't done so before, I'd like to state that, on the divisive issue of Beatle Bob, I am firmly in the pro-Bob camp.  As a general rule, it's good to be in the same camp as Robert Pollard.) 

? & The Mysterians @ Damrosch Park, 7/31/10

F**k yoga, I wanna get on whatever health and fitness regime ? (of ? & The Mysterians) is on.  Unless it's yoga, in which case I will start doing yoga.

"96 Tears" came out 44 years ago, and these guys are still killin' it.  Of course, maybe in Martian years, ? is still the young man that his on-stage energy (the man can dance!) makes him seem to be.  Rock'n'roll.

Bonus Links
Check out this Flickr set of the Lincoln Center gig (w/ Ronnie Spector joining in on "96 Tears"!!!)
What the photos don't capture is the blinding light that was coming off ?'s sequined outfit

And don't miss the Hound's ? post, including a good comments section

Five Geezers Who Were Mates

Check out The Adios Lounge preaching The Truth about The Faces.

Alex Chilton - Part Three - With A Selection of 14 Recommended Post-Big Star Tracks

From the weekly playlist of Bob's Scratchy Records, one of America's greatest radio programs, and the brainchild of photographer / rock'n'roll wild man / man-about-St. Louis Bob Reuter, in re: the death of Alex Chilton:

"I saw your very soul naked, stark naked….I suffered the pangs of disillusionment; I saw a man in torment struggling towards inward harmony... Forgive me, I cannot feel in halves." - Schoenberg wrote to Mahler after hearing the latter's Third

------------------------

I suppose it's possible for someone to like, or at least appreciate, all the wildly different phases of Alex Chilton's career - The Box Tops, Big Star, the dark, weird post-Big Star solo work of the '70s, the eclectic r'n'b/soul/rock of the '80s EPs, the reunited Big Star, the reunited Box Tops, etc. - but it's not possible to like them all equally.  Everyone has a favorite and a different opinion on when he reached his peak.  For me, it's probably Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers, a kind of perfect midpoint between the power pop that preceded it and the damaged, primitive, mutant rock'n'roll that followed.

As Chilton's music evolved or veered from one phase to another, his persona changed too.  He was a teen idol/garage rocker, an Anglophilic semi-dandy, a CBGB art rocker/punk, a folkie, a collector, a Southern gentleman and an asshole, a hipster connoisseur of black music, and finally, an elder statesman able to embrace (if sometimes warily) several of the earlier selves, which he probably would've said were all one anyway.

-----------------------

Something I've been thinking about in revisiting some of Chilton's music over the last week is how much his later work has in common with his sometime producer Jim Dickinson.  They were both great at digging up worthy and often rare or forgotten r'n'b, country, soul, and jazz tunes to record, a proclivity that was inseparable from their seeming unconcern with commercial success.  They recorded the songs that interested them, and their musical interests were very broad.  As a recording artist, Dickinson had the advantages of having one of those gritty, imperfect voices that gets cooler with age and of having raised his own world-class backing band - his sons Luther (guitar) and Cody (drums).  I would guess that the opportunity to make music with his sons was a big reason for Dickinson's recording as much as he did in his final decade.

-----------------------

With those, probably my final thoughts on Alex Chilton for a while, out of the way, I'll give you my list of recommended listening from the post-Big Star years, a confusing, sometimes frustrating period on which there is little agreement, but which, like it or not, amounts to the bulk of Chilton's career:

[Ass-covering note:
This list is necessarily non-definitive, since I haven't heard everything Chilton released after Big Star.  I think it does give a sense of the range of material he released in the past 30+ years, though, and hits most of the high points.]

Baron of Love, Pt. 2 - this is really Chilton associate Ross Johnson's show, a messed-up mashup of a trashy Elvis biography and The Doors' "The End" being narrated by an apocalyptic weirdo at 4 AM in a Memphis t*tty bar. The version of Like Flies On Sherbert I have leads off with this track, which is not the case on other versions.  Hard to imagine it any other way now, though. (I also have a version of this labeled Part 1, which seems to just be an alternate take - nearly as good but quite similar to the more familiar Part 2.)

My Rival - the tape sounds at the beginning, the shaky-but-real sense of rock'n'roll danger and menace, the coming-unhinged lyric and vocal - if you wanted to grasp the Like Flies On Sherbert "concept" by listening to just one track, this would be an excellent choice.

Hey! Little Child - in a discography with many funny and perverse moments, the roll call of Catholic girls' schools near the end of this stands out as one of the funniest and most perverse.  "Hey! Little Child" is to Like Flies on Sherbert as "Cyprus Avenue" is to Astral Weeks, or something like that.

Like Flies on Sherbert - "IT'S...so fiiii-i-ine" - I notice that AC Newman has cited this as his favorite Chilton song - "beautiful and messed up" indeed - only the Chilton-Dickinson pairing could have yielded something with this track's very specific, yet impossible-to-define quality of strangeness.

Bangkok - Chilton takes his listeners on an ultra-sleazy Southeast Asian sex tour with this bizarro punk rocker from 1978 - tough choice between the eccentric production of the single (including machine gun fire) and the Live In London version, where it fits in well with sloppy/edgy renditions of several Like Flies tracks.

Walking Dead - one of the weirder entries in the Chilton catalogue (and that's saying something), this is arguably the best thing to come out of the semi-disastrous Jon Tiven sessions (the results of which were released on The Singer Not The Song EP and the LP Bach's Bottom - and the CD version of Bach's Bottom, which is apparently very different - Chilton's '70s/'80s discography is a minefield) - this finds Chilton getting into Roky Erickson territory with the subject matter while reaching new heights of hazy weirdness with the sound.

Tramp - dangerous-sounding live version (from the Sherbert-era Live in London, with the Soft Boys rhythm section) of the Lowell Fulsom blues/soul standard made most famous by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas' duet.  When Chilton says that he "won't even smack ya in the face" on this track, you're not sure whether to believe him.

Train Kept A Rollin' - hiccuping rockabilly energy - a fine loose version (from Live In London) of fellow Memphian Johnny Burnette's horny, hopped-up all-time classic.

No Sex - Chilton's musical response to the AIDS crisis, from 1986, including one of the greatest lines of his career, "c'mon baby, f*ck me and die".  "Streets of Philadephia" (or "Philadelphia") it ain't.

Dalai Lama - from 1987's High Priest, a wacky ode to the Lama and his swingin' pad ("he had a far-out decorator") in the Himalayas.  This is just good, ridiculous fun, and I love it.

I Remember Mama - a highlight from what is perhaps Chilton's best-titled album, Loose Shoes and Tight P*ssy (originally on a small French label with a great cover, it was lamely retitled Set when first released in the US), this was a Shirley Caesar gospel/soul heart-tugger played by Chilton as a gritty Southern rock anthem.

Single Again - Alex goes honky-tonk on this Gary Stewart cover, also from Loose Shoes.

Il Ribelle - the source version of this Chilton live set staple is a nice piece of honkin' sax Elvis/Chuck Berry-style rock'n'roll, Italian-style.  On paper, this seemed like one of his more left-field cover choices, but it gave AC a chance to show off his rockabilly chops (and foreign language singing).  First appearing on the very solid, well-produced if not-quite-transcendent studio album A Man Called Destruction, this also shows up on the 2004 Live In Anvers.

What's Your Sign Girl - another staple of Chilton's later-period live shows (and also on A Man Called Destruction), this tune is a nearly forgotten, smooth late-70s Philly-style r'n'b gem from Barry White protege Danny Pearson.


Bonus Links

An incredible piece on Chilton's bizarre, harrowing, and sporadically brilliant '75-'81 period, rivaling It Came From Memphis as a depiction of pure, undistilled Mid-South weirdness.

I love this footage, from a New Orleans cemetery, which has been linked to and embedded in a lot of places in the last week.

Steve Scariano has some amazing true-life tales of interviewing Chilton for Bomp! Magazine and getting more than he bargained for.

Alex Chilton - Part Two

1
The Alex Chilton line I'm thinking about today?

"But you know you don't have to / you can just say no"

People like to talk about the "power of Yes", but that line from "The Ballad of El Goodo" expresses an incredibly empowering (that word has been abused, but I think it's the right one here) sentiment when you think about it.  And I think it's a sentiment that Chilton lived by, at least in terms of his post-Big Star career.  He did the Big Star reunion, even a Box Tops reunion (that I'm sure no one expected), but after Radio City, he never really played the fame/music biz game, except by his own rules.  

2
In reading all the tributes that have popped up today, I came across the word "sprezzatura" in one of Ben Greenman's pieces.  After I looked up the definition, I had to say, "yeah, Alex Chilton definitely had sprezzatura".  In spades.  And as someone who could rock the house en Italiano, I think he would've liked that description.

3
I'm with The Gurgling Cod on this one:
"...'Jesus Christ''s failure to get traction as a Christmas staple continues to baffle me."

4
I wrote a bit about Chilton's shambolic some-kind-of-a-masterpiece Like Flies On Sherbert here.

Alex Chilton - Part One

I want to write something about Alex Chilton, but I need some time to process the fact that he's gone.  A couple of quick things for now.

If there's somebody you want to see play, and they come to your town, get off your ass and go.  Don't wait until "next time".  I skipped Big Star's recent Brooklyn show, and now there won't ever be another one.

I did get to see Alex play with his trio a few times, and one memory stands out:

One annoying aspect of seeing Chilton live is that people were constantly yelling for Big Star songs.  He would play a couple in a typical set, and as great as they were to hear, it was clear that his heart was really in the wild mix of covers he played, from obscure r'n'b to jazz standards to Italian rock'n'roll to Michael Jackson. 

One night, somewhere in the middle of what was probably the best Chilton performance I ever saw, he was between songs and all the usual requests were being shouted out.  With perfect timing and impressive volume, one of my friends shouted "PLAY WHAT YOU WANT!" from the back of the club where we were standing.  Chilton heard it, smiled slightly, acknowledged the non-request with a "yeah!" or "right on!", and proceeded to, in fact, play what he wanted.  I don't remember what song it was, but I remember feeling good that he got the message, that some of us in the crowd were happy to let him drive the bus, to accept him on his own terms.

Disambiguation Of A Bell

Just saw the news that the founder of Taco Bell has died.

For several years, I was under the impression that Chris Bell, of Big Star and "I Am The Cosmos" fame, was the son of the man who created Taco Bell. I even used to enjoy sharing this bit of false trivia with people, helping to spread my own inadvertently created rock'n'roll "urban legend".

I only recently learned the truth and realized the cause of my confusion. Somewhere along the line, I had taken two pieces of accurate but incomplete information - Bell's father owned a restaurant and Taco Bell was founded by a Mr. Bell - and put them together. In fact, Chris Bell's father was a restaurateur, but his place was called the Knickerbocker. And the founder of Taco Bell was named Bell, but he was from Southern California, not Memphis, and was apparently no relation.

As for Taco Bell, my fondest memory of the place is the time that a high school friend accidentally threw away his retainer along with his greasy taco wrappers and climbed into the dumpster behind the restaurant to retrieve it. I didn't offer to help with the search, but I can only imagine that what he encountered there was just as terrifying as that thing behind the restaurant in Mulholland Drive (I would link to the clip, but I don't want to be responsible for any heartattacks).

Underrated, Underappreciated (#5 in a Series) - The Bobby Fuller Four

The Fantastic Mr. Fox, with its final scene use of "Let Her Dance" rivaling but not quite surpassing Rushmore's "Ooh La La" finale, reminded me that I hadn't listed to my copy of The Best of the Bobby Fuller Four in years. Produced by '60s indie mini-mogul Bob Keane, Fuller's records feature heroic scale reverb, doubled guitars (and, I think, vocals), and some unusual mixes (in "Never To Be Forgotten", the cymbal seems about twice as loud as the vocals, though maybe I just need to tweak my equalization). The result is a big, enveloping sound, like Buddy Holly updated from the Jet Age to the Space Age. In fact Fuller did more with the Holly template than anyone I can think of outside of The Beatles and Marshall Crenshaw (a Fuller connoisseur himself), developing one of the great Stratocaster sounds of all time. Unfortunately, Fuller also followed in his hero's footsteps by dying young - his death is one of rock'n'roll's strangest, most compelling mysteries, unsolved after more than 40 years.

The idea of the BF4 as "one hit wonders", encouraged by oldies radio's reduction of their career to "I Fought The Law", is easily countered by listening to the concise wonders of "Let Her Dance", "Another Sad and Lonely Night", or "Julie" (covered by Crenshaw on his excellent My Truck Is My Home live album). Although the guitar work is always the first thing to jump out at me from Fuller's records, he was also a fine singer - witness his thoroughly convincing, lovelorn crooning on "A New Shade of Blue", a masterful retro (even then) doo-wop-y slow dance number.

Although love and girl songs were his specialty, Fuller also had quite a few car songs (with titles like "Phantom Dragster") that I haven't heard yet (the older Best Of that I have skips them). There are also a couple of volumes of early Texas recordings that I'm interested in checking out. Despite having recorded one of the most instantly recognizable songs of the '60s, Bobby Fuller remains an underrated, too often overlooked figure in the history of rock'n'roll, with a surprisingly deep catalogue worthy of exploration.

Bonus Link

Fuller puts down the Strat and picks up a Vox (?) to back a midriff-baring Nancy Sinatra in this YouTube clip

End-Of-Year List #3 - Best Live Music Experienced in NYC - Top Nine in '09

I'm not posting a best albums or singles list. I think this list of live music better represents my "year in music". Plus, with the possible exception of Alasdair MacLean (whose records with the Clientele seem perfectly realized), all of the artists on this list are better experienced live than through their recordings.

I could make another list of the live music I most regret missing out on, and it would probably look as good, if not better, than this list. There's so much good stuff out there. I resolve to catch more of it in 2010.

Please note that the following are in alphabetical order, not in order of preference (ranking stuff is hard, maybe even pointless):

#1
The Bottle Rockets at Mercury Lounge - the Mercury Lounge is the place to go to hear the rock'n'roll, most especially when the Bottle Rockets are in town (related post here)

#2
Anthony Braxton (with the Walter Thompson Orchestra) at The Irondale Center - there was talk of a possible release of the recordings from these shows - I'd love to have the opportunity to relisten to this music, but I think this was a case where the cliche truly applies - you kinda had to be there (my original review is here)

#3
Ornette Coleman at Jazz At Lincoln Center - still reinventing, searching, and making music that sounds like no one else (my original review is here)

#4
Bill Frisell Trio at the Village Vanguard - I saw Bill Frisell in several different contexts this year - tough to choose the best - getting to see Ron Carter work his magic up close in a trio with Frisell and Paul Motian was a rare pleasure, and the annual Motian-Frisell-Lovano run at the Vanguard was certainly up to their high standard - but I'm going with this trio set because I think it was the best I heard Frisell play this year (my original, kind of goofy, review is here)

#5
Fred Hersch Trio at Smalls - I saw Hersch (with different drummers) at Smalls and the Vanguard this year - both were excellent, but I'll give the nod to Smalls because it's pretty much the place to see piano (my original not-really-a-review is here)

#6
Alasdair MacLean at Joe's Pub - playing with members of the Ladybug Transistor, this was, surprisingly, even better than the most recent Clientele NYC appearance (my original review is here)

#7
Paul Motian/Jason Moran/Chris Potter (Trio 3 in 1) at the Village Vanguard - I saw a few different Motian groups this year - I enjoyed them all - this one was the best (my original review is here)

#8
Eric Revis/Jason Moran/Ken Vandermark/Nahseet Waits at Jazz Gallery - a hot group that I hope we haven't heard the last of (my original review is here and Mandatory Attendance has an embedded video here)

#9
The Yayhoos at Mercury Lounge - take what I said for #1 and substitute "Yayhoos" for "Bottle Rockets" - I once saw a double bill with these two bands - it was mighty fine

Paying A Debt To The Masters - Two Great Live Covers

David Rawlings Machine (incl. Gillian Welch, Jon Brion, Benmont Tench, Sebastian Steinberg) - Queen Jane Approximately (Live at Largo, LA)

From a David Rawlings Machine live performance that I downloaded recently, this is certainly the best cover I've ever heard of the Dylan classic, and (dare I say) may even rival the original. If that sounds blasphemous, I should admit that QJA is my least favorite song on Highway 61 Revisited. Of course, that album has no bad songs, or anything remotely close, but I've just always found "Queen Jane" a bit repetitive. It drags in a way that "Desolation Row", at twice the length, never does (thanks in large part to Charlie McCoy's acoustic guitar).

Rawlings and company (who probably wouldn't agree with my assessment) address this problem, such as it is, very simply and effectively, with superb instrumental performances. The acoustic guitars propel the song forward, and Benmont Tench's piano (from what I've been able to determine, it's Tench on piano and not Jon Brion, who was apparently on guitar) provides ultra-tasty accents throughout. The combo of acoustic guitar and piano is a great, underexploited sound, and the way the band rides the instrumental groove they've built up toward the end of the song reminds me of some of Ronnie Lane's songs with the Faces, with their instrumental outros giving Ian McLagan a chance to shine.

On record, David Rawlings has always lived in (or been) the shadow of his partner Gillian Welch. His harmonies are so exceptionally tight and close that he seems to disappear into her voice at the same time as he's hugely enhancing the effect of it. Live, though, his acoustic guitar playing tends to steal the show. No one plays quite like he does, a bluegrass flatpicking virtuoso's dexterity with an expressive, emotional depth and directness that, at its best, seems to be on loan from Neil Young. The Machine has a record coming out soon - pretty safe bet that it'll be a winner.


The Bottle Rockets - Lookout Joe (Live at the Mercury Lounge, NYC)

As I may have mentioned before, The Bottle Rockets are the greatest interpreters of Neil Young's music out there today. The only officially released evidence of this is on their sole live album (a new live DVD is in the works), in the form of savage versions of "Hey Hey My My" and "Cortez the Killer", but anyone who has followed them over the years (or done some YouTube searching) has probably heard a wide variety of other Neil material, from "Walk On" to "Down By The River". The David Rawlings show I discuss above contains good versions of "Field of Opportunity" and "Cortez", and I've heard Welch and Rawlings absolutely nail "Albequerque", a slow, minor-key song perfectly suited to their style, but no one can touch the Bottle Rockets when it comes to getting across the raw gut punch of Neil's best electric music.

Lately they've honed "Lookout Joe" (from Tonight's The Night, and referenced in the BRox deep cut "Dohack Joe") into one of the most sure-fire, fearsome weapons in their arsenal. As the seemingly unplanned final encore at the band's recent Mercury Lounge show, it brought an excellent night of rock'n'roll to a satisfying conclusion. They totally inhabited the song's peculiar groove and achieved ragged glory on the bridge's "craaaazy clowwwwwn" peak. Like I said, untouchable.

The Sister Ray Test

If you're interested at all in Lester Bangs, I highly recommend checking out The Hound's remembrance of him here. Besides being a fascinating first-hand account of the legendary rock writer, it also gives you a sense of the street level, day-to-day reality of the late-'70s NYC downtown scene, the days when a weekend at CBGB could feature a Ramones/Cramps double bill one night and Alex Chilton/Lester Bangs the next.


Bonus Link

I may have linked to this before, but if so I intend to keep linking to it every time I think of it. In fact, a blog that did nothing but post a link to Lester Bangs' piece on Astral Weeks every day would be a noble and worthy undertaking.