We’ve conducted a company-wide poll (yes, all three bi-coastal, night-lit, wi-fi-capable, dumbwaiter-equipped offices) and concluded that Telefon Tel Aviv needs to release more records (a LOT more!) and tour more (a LOT more!), and almost everyone else needs shut it down completely, today, right now.
Joshua Eustis, the surviving half of the original TTA, was last spotted at Manhattan’s Mercury Lounge and is apparently still under contract with Berlin music label BPitch Control, which released the former duo’s last album, Immolate Yourself, which was, and remains, utterly fantastic. BPitch Control’s website lists only one upcoming show, and it’s at some dump called Berghain, which could only be somewhere in central Europe and, thus, nowhere near where it needs to be.
Josh, we need you to bring the road show back to your home country. You have fans here. You sold out the Merc Lounge — on a warm late summer Saturday night, mind you, when New Yorkers had about seven trillion other entertainment options made all the more attractive by the looming six-month deep-freeze — and you know you have loyal followings in other American locales.
We need you now more than ever. Yeah, there’s some okay music coming out here and there. But it’s a seller’s market if we’ve ever seen one: The radio waves have been hijacked by some R. Kelly/Weezy hybrid and a floozy who used lezploitation to get big when Jesus didn’t pan out. People in San Francisco are so desperate for a new jolt they’re paying scalpers $100 a pop to see Die Antwoord, those South African chavs behind the “I’m a Ninja” web video that made the rounds a couple years ago, while in New York, the same ‘zef’ (we looked it up, too) jokers were anointed the new Gogol Bordello after their Governor’s Island show yesterday. Officially. Michael Cera and Dash Snow Terry Richardson presided.
So come back, Telefon Tel Aviv, and play a 70-city U.S. tour and drop three albums before next spring. Our collective sanity depends on it.
With a career whose roots reach back to Broadway—he performed in the original Broadway cast of Hair and, of course, immortalized the role of biker Eddie in The Rocky Horror Picture Show—it makes sense that rocker and pop culture icon Meat Loaf has a highly attuned sense for the theatrical when it comes to his music. And his fan base, which goes back to 1977’s Bat out of Hell and before, wouldn’t have it any other way. For Meat—as he’s colloquially known—perfectionist recording sessions and intensely physical live shows are par for the course (the 2007 documentary Meat Loaf: In Search of Paradise showed firsthand how self-flagellating he can be of his live performances).
For his latest foray into the studio, Hang Cool Teddy Bear, Meat has joined forces with veteran producer Rob Cavallo (who produced Green Day’s American Idiot album, which is currently enjoying another incarnation as a successful Broadway musical). The pairing is a seemingly idyllic one—Meat, who approaches his songs with an actor’s intensity of a character study, has Cavallo in his corner for this go-round, who himself is no stranger to character-focused concept albums. Hang Cool Teddy Bear, whose title is taken from a line in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, is the musical story of a soldier (“Patrick”) who is dying on the battlefield. Instead of watching his life flash backward, the album tells the story of his experience watching his life flash forward into his imagined future. Meat also brings on a few guest pals on board for the ride, including Jack Black, Hugh Laurie, and The Darkness’ Justin Hawkins.
Meat took time out to speak with Dunce Cap Quarterly about how his musical influences range from Kings of Leon to John Phillip Sousa, why good albums are akin to circuses, and how this record may be his last studio album (you heard it from DCQ first).
DCQ: Congratulations on the new album—it’s great. I hear you’re really happy with the way it turned out.
ML: I’m beyond happy. What is it, ecstatic? Let’s go above ecstatic. It’s spiritual. [laughs]
Can’t beat that. I heard that in working with Rob Cavallo, he’d come to you and said “I’m here to do a Meat Loaf record, not a Rob Cavallo record.”
That’s the complete opposite of any other producer I’ve ever worked with, where they would say, “well you know, my name is on this too and this is my career too.” And Rob Cavallo – he just doesn’t go on that. He’s secure with who he is, obviously.
Right. So was the recording process just completely miles away from anything you’ve ever done, studio-wise?
Completely. Yeah, any other time I’ve ever done a record, people would go, “don’t we have to the studio?” And I would go, “Yeah, yeah.” “Well, aren’t you gonna go?” “Yeah, I’m gonna go down there, yeah yeah.” “Well, shouldn’t you go?” “Yeah, I’ll go in a minute, yeah.” And with this one, I would wake up in the morning just dying to go. I’d get up in the morning and go warm up, and I’m gone. “Okay, I gotta go. Bye.” I’d wanna be there. But then, I get tired around 11 o’clock and I have to leave. And Rob kind of moseys around in the afternoon. It’s very funny, the energy level. My energy level is like 112 in the afternoon and his is running about 80. And around about 8 o’clock, mine starts to drop and his picks up about 11 o’clock, he’s running at 140 and I’m like, falling down. So I go, and they’ll stay about another three hours and do all kinds of stuff, and the next day I’ll come in and hear what they did, and he’ll go, “you like it?” and I’ll say “yeah!” or “no, I don’t like that.” And he’ll go, “okay, well, don’t use that, erase that.” And it’s great—he could spend three hours doing something and I could walk in and go “I don’t like that.” “Okay, cool, no problem, get rid of it.” And that’s the beauty of Rob. It’s like “okay, nope, who cares. If you don’t like it, we won’t use it.”
That’s probably why there’s such a range of styles on this album, too.
Yes, there’s a range of styles. I’ve always tried to do that. I always considered it being like going to a circus. And a circus would be really boring if you walk into a circus and there was two-and-a-half hours of an elephant. I mean, you’d be going “what is this?” But when you’ve got camels and giraffes and – maybe I’m using the wrong thing here because sometimes circuses can be cruel to their critters, but you know what I mean. They’ve got trapezes, they’ve got clowns, they’ve got all kinds of things going on. And it makes it a really interesting fun, visual kind of thing. So when I make records, I want them to be fun and visual. And this record would have been the perfect record in 1972 for [Lee] Strasberg to give to his actors studio image Method class.
Ha, absolutely.
It would have been absolutely perfect for that. I would have loved to have seen the visual. This is actually to me even more visual than [Bat out of Hell]. Bat is incredibly visual. But I think this is a more –it’s an easier road to walk down in the visuals.
I was really struck by your vocal range on this album. Did you have to do vocal rehabilitation after being diagnosed with a vocal cord cyst on your European tour in 2007?
Yeah, we did with the cyst. They put me on the road when they shouldn’t have—oh God, you have no idea what misery it was from 2006 until the end of 2007. It was just—I was in hell. I mean I literally was in hell. And they just wouldn’t stop beating me. It was like, you know, basically they were saying, “well, he’s not ever going to do anything else, so let’s get everything we can get out of him while he’s still standing.” And I had the cyst on my vocal cord, and once the cyst popped, they were trying to put me out on the road in February and the doctor yelled at them and said, “he can’t sing for a good six or seven months. He needs three to four months of doing nothing, and then we’ve got to rehab him for three or four months.” And they booked shows in June that I didn’t even know about and put them on sale, the old managers. And I’d just gone through this whole thing in Newcastle where I had to walk off the stage and I was at my lowest point ever. And all of the sudden they put me back on the road in the summer of what, 2008? And I’d have a show that was okay and I’d have a show that wasn’t good at all. My vocal cords just wouldn’t hold up. So I was just quitting. I was going to quit, and then I said “I can’t go out with that record.” The [Bat Out of Hell III] record. ‘Cause visually it was wrong, the character studies were all wrong, there was no polish to the characters. That’s what I kept trying to tell people, and they’d just look at me like I’m crazy. And I’d keep going, “show me where your character is here.” “Oh, he’s right here.” And I’m going, “yes, but where’s the development of him? How did you develop the character from this?” “Well, it’s right there.” I’m going, “there’s nothing there.” And they were going to record companies behind my back—and it was just mind-boggling what was going on. And so then I changed management, and I got Rob Cavallo, and you know what? If I end now, it’s great. I’ve had the greatest experience ever in my life going into the studio with Rob Cavallo, and if it ends, I’ve delivered a record that I think is spectacular and I don’t care what anybody says. I know that these characters and these songs are so well-written. True screenwriters, true playwrights—if I got anybody to review my record, that’s who I’d want to review it, because they can see these songs for what they are and understand what we did to develop these characters and understand the line of the development of the story. And they would love it. And it’s a beautiful, beautiful piece and so well-written. And the songs—because I’m so emotional about this record and I do wear my heart on my sleeve—that if anybody says anything about the songs, I’m incredibly upset. Because those people are ignorant and know nothing about songs. Nobody wants to work for anything, it just all has to be hand-delivered to them constantly, and these songs are so well-written and so well-crafted, that they’re brilliant songs. But I didn’t write them, I helped with pieces of them. The reason I can say that they’re brilliant and I’m not being pretentious or bragging is because they’re really not mine. You know, “Love is Not Real,” I wrote some pieces on that, and “Song of Madness”—there’s bits and pieces of me in there. There’s bits and pieces of me in every none of them, but I’m not the guy who started the song, I’m the guy who finished it.
I love the narrative of the album with the flash-forward and then the flash-backward at the end.
Oh yeah! [The character] is in California pretty much the whole time. The first song—see how well-crafted it is—the first song sets up the situation and tells you his position in life. The first line of the song says “goodbye my friends, it was good to know you, I hope you understand.” And how he’s done nothing with his life. It’s really kind of a bit of a wallow in self-pity from time to time, but if you’re dying, I suppose you’re allowed to do that. He talks about how he loves his mama. It’s really well-done. And the second song [“Living on the Outside”] really tells you who he is. “I’ve got a nickel in my boot, I’ve got losers for friends, and I’ve got my mama’s gun”—they’re outlaws. He’s a total outlaw. He’s everything that is not what is supposed to be. He would be looked down upon as like a bum, a loser. So what happens to him is that immediately, his life flashes forward, and he immediately goes to who he is. And he lives in hell with that woman in “Los Angeloser,” having to follow her around and be her puppy dog and be the guy who walks behind her two steps. And then the speech in that song, an option was “I wanna thank all you women, especially the ones who have shown a little love for someone like myself,”—this pitiful character. But I had to maintain some credibility with him, so he had something to move on with, so I chose it that way. So when I’m doing vocals, while every other singer goes in and does notes and meter, I’m saying to Rob and them, “now listen, I’m trying to make these words come across like this.” And they’re looking at me like I’m insane. When I do that and we’ve got the vocal, and they go “well, what about the notes?” I go, “well, I don’t care about the notes.” And Rob Cavallo then coined a phrase about me—that I’m an actor who acts like I can sing. Because I always try to twist the meaning of everything. I pointed out all kinds of stuff to Rob. I move too fast. Once I’ve locked my character in, and I know where I want to twist him and move him, I can’t sit around and explain him. I don’t have time, we gotta move while we can. But when the recording was over, I showed Rob some pieces in there, like in “Love is Not Real,” where I sing the line “love and hate.” And I sing “love” like I hate you, and I sing “hate” like I love you. And I’m constantly doing that with lyrics all the time, through every song. I give it the other side of the meaning.
I think it totally works on here. Because of that characterization too, I wasn’t surprised to hear that there’s talk of possibly making Hang Cool into a screenplay.
Oh yeah, I would love to do that. Or even a stage play. A stage play, it would work really well because not only would it be very dramatic in places, but it also has a real sense of humor in the sense of the movie M*A*S*H. It had a lot of drama, but at the same time it had all of those comedic characters. They tried to make light of these bad situations and that’s kind of what this is about. I never wanted the tracks to get heavy-handed. I took “Peace on Earth”—which is a very dramatic song—and took the strings and told [conductor] Dave Campbell, “I don’t want these European melodramatic strings, I want the John Phillip Sousa kind of instrumental going on behind it. An upbeat kind of thing, instead of dark. And I told Rob, “we want to make all the songs upbeat, because what we’re going to talk about a lot of time is very dark. But I’m going to twist it so it becomes a National Lampoon kind of humor that’s dark but it’s funny.”
Right—it’s got that twist.
Yeah. I’m always twisting everything. I only know how to twist. [laughs]
I heard that with this upcoming tour, you’re not only going to be singing songs from Hang Cool, but that you’re looking to incorporate material from every album, back to [1971’s] Stoney and Meat Loaf.
Yup, yup—well, even before then. I’m actually going to play the first song I’ve ever wrote, and then people will know I don’t write songs. [laughs]
Are you looking forward to the tour then?
Yeah, I am looking forward to it—you know what I look forward to is putting it together. I have it in my head. It’s like I had this album in my head, but Rob Cavallo came in and exceeded every expectation I possibly could have had. So now it’s my job to make what’s going on in my head happen with other people, like Bill Sheldon and some of the people who are doing the graphic stuff with me for the stage show, like some of my inflatables and things that we use to make it all come to life. And exceed my vision.
In going along with the touring, for the In Search of Paradise documentary—
Oh yeah, I’d learned one thing from that. If anyone asks me after the show “how was it?” I’m going to say “it was fine, thank you.” [laughs] I didn’t even know I did that. It’s like every time they asked me how it was, I’d say “no, it wasn’t right. No, it wasn’t good.” But I do that with everything. I beat myself up every night. Every day.
Did seeing that documentary change the way you perform live or the way you approach performing live?
I don’t know. It may have, subconsciously, in a sense. See, what’s funny is that what I do—it’s just not normal. [laughs] If you go see a Bon Jovi show, you go and you see Jon. You go see Bruce, you see Bruce. I mean, yeah, they have a persona and they take the persona on stage and that’s what they are—I’m different in that I create a different character for Meat Loaf for every tour. So every tour has some different persona going on. I’m working off a different back story. Basically, I get a different back story for every character and I take him out there. So now, for this album, I obviously can’t go out and play a 24-year-old, so what I have to do is create a back story that brings me forward so basically what you’re going to get from me is the persona of [Hang Cool’s main character] Patrick, who did live and is now up on stage. But he’s now 62 as opposed to 24. [laughs] So we have to deal with that. But I bring these different personas up every time. Like I see these videos from Bat out of Hell, and that guy should be committed.
From the original Bat—it’s just too much, huh?
I work things completely different. I’m an actor who acts like he can sing. I bring different characters to every movie, so why wouldn’t I bring a different character to every tour?
What are you listening to right now?
The one band I really, really love is Kings of Leon and mostly because I like who they are. And I love the Foo Fighters too, I love Dave Grohl. I mean, those guys—anytime you meet somebody and they’re really nice and they’re genuine and they’re great, then I tend to really love ‘em. When I meet ‘em and they’re pretentious pricks, I really could care less. But those guys, Kings of Leon, are really good kids and really got their feet down on the earth and I really admire them for their attitude. And the Foo Fighters are not only a great band but really a bunch of really good guys.
What advice would you give to struggling musicians trying to get awareness for their music, seeing as record labels aren’t necessarily the way to go these days?
You know what—I have no idea. You gotta figure it out. Someone’s going to come along with something and figure something out. If you’re really serious about it, you do whatever you can do to get it done. You go out and play for people. It’s always the people who matter in the end. The audience is out there and the audience is starved. But we’ve gone into this other world when it’s all about celebrity and it’s not about artists anymore. And it’s completely different from anything I’ve ever seen.
It’s definitely taken a change.
But the audience is there. They’re starved for good stuff. You just need to present it to them, but the problem is they’ve lost their trust. And even though somebody might tell you, “this is a really good record,” they’ve lost their trust. It’s not different in the movie business either. There’s very few of the movie stars they can use to open a movie anymore. They’ve lost their trust and it’s all about something else. Give ‘em a remake of Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street and you know what, they go, “well, we know what that is, so we’re gonna go there, ‘cause we know what we’re getting.” The business on all sides—from the book business to the music business to the film business to politicians—everybody’s lost their trust in everything and it’s all splintered. And no one side trusts anybody and it’s a shame.
Do you see that there’s the pressure in the music business to retread the same path?
Yeah, they’ve been doing that to me for 30-something years now and finally I just go, “no, I’m not going to do that anymore, if we’re going to do something, I’m going to do it this way.” And we got Rob Cavallo and basically I did it my way, with the help of Rob. I did it Rob’s and my way.
And do you think for future projects and albums, are you planning to enlist Rob?
I have no idea, but I wouldn’t do another record without Rob Cavallo. So either I never do another record, or I do it with Rob Cavallo.
So is there a chance this could be the very last studio album?
Yup, there’s a good chance. Yup. Pretty good chance.
Would you consider continuing to tour even if you weren’t recording in the studio?
Nah. [laughs] You heard it first here! ________________________________________________________________________
Meat Loaf’s latest album, Hang Cool Teddy Bear, drops nationwide in stores and is available on iTunes nationwide on May 11.
Over the course of a few decades, a host of superlatives have been ascribed to rock legend (there’s one already) Patti Smith. Godmother of punk. CBGB-era trailblazer. Rock’s poetess. Thing is, the most accurate descriptions of Smith are probably the most understated, as evidenced by her appearance at the New York Public Library’s series Live From the NYPL on April 29. The event, which was held (mostly) to discuss her new book Just Kids about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, also managed to shed light on a few more things you probably didn’t know about her:
She’s hilarious. When moderator Paul Holdengraber would try to steer the conversation, James Lipton-style, into a somewhat solemn tone (“Patti, let’s talk about your yearnings as a child”), Smith’s reaction—a mugging to the audience—was almost sheer comedy cabaret.
She possesses an infectious, childlike enthusiasm—when discussing in amazement how she viewed Virginia Woolf’s cane and Charlotte Bronte’s writing desk earlier in the day in the NYPL collection, one rather tends to forget that this is the woman who penned the controversial song “Rock ‘n’ Roll Nigger” back in the day. More than simply enthusiastic about her favorite topics, the woman is practically bubbly. “If we maintain radiance, often radiance will come our way,” she told the crowd.
She wasn’t necessarily destined for music—perhaps it was the other way around. “You know, kid,” Smith deadpanned, channeling what her waitress mother had told Smith when she first moved to New York, “you’re never gonna make it as a waitress.” Lucky for us, her mother was prophetic.
But then again, music and poetry often tend to press the same buttons. Smith, who took the stage for three songs over the course of the event, described how music affects her. Upon first hearing an aria from Madame Butterfly as a child, she told of how that experience was equally moving to her as hearing Little Richard for the first time, calling both “a physical reaction—a sensual reaction as much as a child could have.” It’s a thread that seems to have weaved its way through her life. But even as she spoke of tragedy she’s faced, such as when she related the story of Mapplethorpe’s passing, Smith still managed to find the silver lining. She told of the morning she heard of Mapplethorpe’s death, and described hearing one of her favorite pieces by opera singer Maria Callas’ arias come on. The song? “I lived for art, I lived for love.”
Photo: Fin Costello/Getty Images. Circa a long time ago.
If you think “Blue Oyster Cult” and immediately think “more cowbell,” it’s doubtful that even the band would fault you—even band member Eric Bloom mimed the bovine-based percussion at the beginning of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” at their late show at B.B. King’s in Manhattan on Saturday night. Then again, whether it’s Will Ferrell vogueing or a long-forgotten song given a second life via a commercial, the usual conduits of discovering music don’t seem to apply anymore anyway—and it’s hard to see that as anything but a positive thing.
One assumes that Blue Oyster Cult is likely to agree. Judging from the liberal sprinkling of young-looking hipsters in the crowd for the show, it seems to stand to reason that a well-known SNL sketch ended up giving the group’s fanbase a new life. But despite the fact that the band penned such seemingly novelty-styled tunes like “Godzilla,” there are surprisingly few kitschy things about a BOC performance. The band, having been around the musical block more than a few times, knows exactly how to please both their hardcore fans of decades and more casual listeners within the live realm—give ‘em energy, give ‘em the hits, give ‘em your all. Truly, no easy feat—and somehow they manage to pull off even the kind of lengthy guitar solos that would seem masturbatory in the hands of the wrong group.
Delivering a relatively quick but aurally dense 75-minute set (their second show of the evening), the band left some fans so intensely demanding an encore that the group had to come back onstage and let the audience know that they had to wrap up before a late event began at the club. Judging from the reactions, it doesn’t look like AOR is poised to die anytime soon. Don’t fear it.
(Note: Every so often, we run short of rational ideas and dip into DCQ’s archives. The bulk of this post, intended to remind our East Coast followers that the specter of the eternal winter is so much peacenik propaganda, originally ran on June 20, 2009.)
Puerto Rican flags and bandanas were flying off the shelves in Los Sures and Spanish Harlem and on D-Block over the last few weeks. On recent weekend days, you couldn’t round the block without catching Big Pun blaring from a passing SUV. The PR trinket hawkers crowded out the Halal cart guys and the Mexican mango stands, pushing them off the corners with sprawling setups dripping red, white and blue. Then, finally, Sunday came: The one day of the year when browns outnumbered whites on 5th Ave. With the JAPs and WASPs retreating to their Hamptons cottages, the Upper East Side belonged to the Boriqueños.
Def Jam’s street soldiers came out:
As did the hooptie crews:
And the merengue fellas, with the requisite porcine drummer man:
Then there was this guy; photos don’t do it justice, but as you’ll pick up, the owner’s clearly a fan of vintage Pacino:
Backside detail: so excessive, it just might be genius. Or a ludicrous waste of money — jury’s still out:
Chicken trike man rocked a picture of his chicken trike ON his chicken trike! A proud fan of fowl:
Jewish Hipster or Hip Jewster? Hewish Jipster? (Did we manage to offend TWO long-persecuted ethnic groups with the latter? Awesome.):
Watch out, everyone — Sad Red may be actively channeling Philip Glass rocking out to Nick Drake on the Brooklyn band’s latest record, Elder. Give ‘em some space.
That may seem like a simplistic aural comparison, but it’s an accurate one. Besides, it’s not like such a course of action would necessarily be a bad thing. (And frankly, who wouldn’t want to watch that? Especially if there’s a musical exorcism involved.)
But make no mistake, Sad Red’s influences aren’t limited to one arena or genre (and you’re right if you’re thinking that a Glass/Drake one-two punch is a pretty heavyhanded move). Rather, they’re all over the map. Elder isn’t shoegazer at all, but fans of the genre are likely to enjoy this album (also, just a hunch, but Alice in Chains fans may be besides themselves).
Minimalism can be a lazy label, but not when applied correctly. Sad Red’s latest effort is moody and dark, yes, but it’s also evocative. Not a lot of bands can say that. The genre got its sea legs with bands such as Stars With Fleas and saw its torch carried on — in part, and in a big way — by groups like Grizzly Bear.
As for breakthrough potential, Elder’s album-closer, “Glass,” easily lends itself to radio play (but on a radio station that’s plugged in enough to truly “get it”), while “The Garden and the Lemon Tree” (stream below) successfully embodies the airy nostalgia of the childhood memories described therein. In short, the good gospel of Sad Red possesses the basic qualities it needs to spread further — perhaps beginning tonight at Brooklyn’s Union Hall, where the band celebrates the record’s street release with fellow locals Hungry Hands and Dusty Brown.
Flattery, it’s been said, will get you everywhere. And if — to conjure up another adage — imitation is truly the sincerest form of flattery, Sons and Heirs are geared up to, well, go everywhere.
The group, which has set out to recreate the experience of seeing the The Smiths play in their ’80s heyday, bills themselves as a “tribute band” as opposed to a cover band. One would be forgiven for not initially knowing the difference, but after seeing Sons and Heirs take the stage, it’d immediately become clear. Within their tribute act, which stopped by the Bell House in Brooklyn on Saturday night, no detail is spared. How close to reality did they really come? Lead singer Ronnissey, who plays the role of goth’s fearless leader Morrissey, throws gladiolas into the crowd from his perch onstage, just like Moz himself used to. The garb worn onstage is down-to-minutiae period costumery. But if you’re still not yet convinced, try this on for size — former Smiths bassist Andy Rourke, DJ’ing on the bill for the night, even came onstage to join the band for a song (much to the utter shock and delight of the crowd). Not many tribute acts of any ilk can claim the blessing (or involvement) of actual members.
If it’s not yet apparent, seeing Sons and Heirs play is watching pure theater — good theater. Certainly, there are many impressionists and/or impersonators in the rock world, but if you’re going to stand out to Smiths fans — some of the most rabid devotees on the planet — you had better be good. Thankfully, Sons and Heirs don’t have a problem in this department. If New York audiences get the occasional bad rap of being passionless, you’d never know it from the crowd response to the band. From the constant dancing and lyric-shouting going on, you would have been forgiven for confusing the Bell House with a particularly raucous karaoke bar.
In an era where commentary on art is itself art, the Sons and Heirs truly manage to epitomize the concept.
Sons and Heirs throw down like it’s 1985 (above) before original Smiths bassist Andy Rourke joins the tributeers onstage (below).
(Note: This post originally ran on March 4, 2009. Yes, another one from the vault. Don’t get used to it.)
I just returned home from a screening of the documentary Flustern & SCHREIEN (Whisper & SHOUT) at the Hammer Museum in Westwood. First of all, accolades to the Hammer for consistently providing great, FREE programming to the public. Second, this film totally rules. Released in 1988, it follows several East German bands and their adoring fans as they tour the country. What struck me most, aside from the fabulous German New Wave and punk soundtrack, were the attitudes the featured young people displayed. All of them had marvelously positive outlooks on their lives and what they wanted to achieve, despite the fact that they were already tied down to government-assigned jobs (e.g., chimney-sweep) in a completely isolated land. It was truly amazing to juxtapose their words against the fact that the wall came down only a year later.
The bands themselves (Silly, Feeling B, Chicoree, Sandow, and more) were required to apply for government-issued certifications to play concerts. According to the gent who introduced the film, the bands would have to submit lyrics and perform for the state in order to receive clearance to play a show. Logically, these groups grew to master the use of poetic and subversive language that relayed their rebellious message to their audiences while appeasing the state.
Overall, a must-see — for the music, for the amazing punk attitude of all the kids featured, and for the radical threads rocked by all.
P. Diddy: “Yeah, SK, down at the BET studios. I was making it rain fake paper when it flew into the crowd. We put the shit on lockdown and patted everyone down, but shit was gone. One a those kids in the audience took it, no doubt. LOL.”
“Ya mon, Me sister, me own flesh-an-blood, mailed it to me, but it never come. She even take out insurance on deh package!”
“Oh yeah? So you cool then, huh? How much you covered for?”
“500.”
“500 grand?”
“No. $500.”
“Oh.”
“Ya mon.”
(silence)
“But after, me stahted thinkin’…me thinkin’ ‘twas the devil made me buy dat necklace. The devil lyin’ down to sleep een deh 64 different colors.”
“Yeah?”
“Ya.”
(silence)
“And what’s more, I was thinkin’ of gettin’ rid of it anyhow. Too twinkly. An’ Walgreens comin’ out with a 112-crayon set soon as well, so me considerin’ an upgrade.”
“Wait, you modeled the thing after the generic crayon set? You ain’t heard of Crayola?!”
“What you mean, ‘Crayola’? That like Walgreens for poor people?”
“Never mind. Well yo, I appreciate you calling me up. Holla at me next time you do Madison Square.”
“Ya KNOW I will, Puff.”
“Don’t call me Puff.”
“Ah, right, Diddy, me mistake…you got a lot a names to remembah, ya know!?”
“Haha, yeah, you right. I got more names than you got crayons. LOL.”
“Not funny, mon.”
“You know I’m playin. LOL.”
“Why you keep saying ‘LOL’? It don’t mean nothing ‘less you typin’ it. And even in that context it’s basically devoid of value — it’s essentially a social tick with little to no substantive meaning. A filler word, as they say, akin to ‘well’ or ‘y’know.’”
Dunce Cap stopped by Highline Ballroom Sunday night as Outernational and friends celebrated the release of the band’s spanking-new EP, the Tom Morello-produced Eyes on Fire. Notes fom the frontline:
* Lest it seem as though nothing could top first opener R-tronika singing the chorus “I am a hipster” while watching assorted hipsters in the audience dance their asses off (meta? Maybe), wait and behold the power of second act Japanther.
* Donning a homemade mask, Japanther drummer/singer Ian Vanek conjured up a tattooed Burt Ward. (Substitute, of course, the “holy cow, Batman”s with some feedback and garage rock.) ‘Course, the Boy Wonder was concerned with the crimefightin’, while Japanther is more intent on throwing off governmental shackles entirely (e.g., at one point instructing President Obama to “go fuck himself”). Then, more instruction: “We’d be as happy playing in front of three people at your house. Make your shit small and independent.” And — anarchy-wise, at least — they practice what they preach: By the end of the set, the drum kit was thrown across the stage.
* You’d be forgiven for thinking Outernational was ready to serve up some Kid Rock — Southern fringed shirt and red leather pants on the frontman will do that — but their music and politics couldn’t be farther apart from those of the greasy-haired, tank-top-loving rocker. Maybe if Kid Rock was well-produced and progressive, he could compete with Outernational. The group’s fan base is rabid (and skews young — the band made a point of giving props to Highline for being one of the few venues in town to host an all-ages show), and tends to show up wearing red armbands along with the rest of the band. And the group treats its fans in kind, bringing one up for a guitar jam (one of the best moments of the evening) and letting more climb onstage to get their vogue on during the last song.
* Verdict: no better way to end the weekend than being in the audience for such an epic show. Will learn the good gospel of earplugs next time? Affirmative.
Thoreau once wrote, “most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” The sentiment couldn’t be truer than within The Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle’s songs, whose characters seem to have stepped straight out of the pages of a particularly devastating Raymond Carver story. But The Mountain Goats — which consist of founder Darnielle and a backing band — brought much more than run-of-the-mill literary depression on Tuesday night at Manhattan’s Webster Hall.
How then, do they (he) manage to strike such a universal chord with his stories (a more apt description than mere “songs”)? To the uninitiated, watching this (by all accounts, completely joyous) man perform songs of anguish while hopping around onstage in his socks might seem a rather striking — if not downright strange — juxtaposition. But it works, and Darnielle, within his songs, manages to get way down in the depths of his followers’ psyches, into areas they probably hadn’t explored in years. Who hasn’t dealt with a situation as a child that’s stuck with you until adulthood, or endured the end of a relationship you thought you’d never truly get over? Darnielle knows that you have, and paints characters that are frozen in time, unable to move past it. They suffer, if you will, so you don’t have to.
If that seems like a creeping religious metaphor, it’s no accident. Much of Darnielle’s music uses religion — especially Christianity — as a backdrop, and consequently the theme of redemption is an easy read. (The Goats’ latest album, The Life of the World To Come, is based entirely on verses from the Bible.) Still, the label-prone don’t refer the Goats’ disciples as members of the Church of John Darnielle for nothing: There is a very basic — yet not at all primitive — thread that runs through nearly everything he writes. But if those songs were dismissed as being solely about religion, then there’d be a big piece of the puzzle missing: Darnielle is onstage acting out the lives of the people about whom he sings — the highs, the lows, the sometimes near-hysterics — and he’s frequently playing the part of the person laughing in the face of dashed hopes. Sometimes that character just happens to be his former self, set to song, and he makes the autobiographical element clear when it’s there.
But let’s be clear about The Mountain Goats’ live presence, lest it be argued that their shows are purely about Darnielle’s theatrics and pageantry: The transition from full, raucous band with pyrotechnic-esque light effects to stripped-down, man-and-his-guitar mode was seamless enough that the audience barely noticed the change — the music itself was what transfixed the already absorbed (and for all accounts, pretty dazzled) audience.
Finally closing the set with full band back on stage, Darnielle launched into crowd favorite “This Year,” a song featuring the famous chorus “I will make it through this year if it kills me.” Maybe Thoreau didn’t quite have it right — looks like defiance can kick quiet desperation’s ass any day.
