Category Archives: Music

Bob Dylan Doesn’t Always Respect His Paying Audience

Music

Where: Tempe, Arizona, 1980
Dylan Era: Born-Again Bob

The Weirdness: Deep into his three-year fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist phase, Dylan found himself confronted by a hostile crowd of University Of Arizona students. They wanted to hear the hits—but Uncle Bob wouldn’t budge. He played nothing but his brand-new, Jesus-powered material. “If you want rock ’n’ roll, you can go see Kiss and rock ’n’ roll all the way down to the pit!” Dylan snarled from on high. Gene Simmons and Satan were unavailable for comment, but one can only imagine that both parties were pleased.

The Austin A.V. Club chronicles Bob Dylan’s best (worst?) onstage meltdowns.

SXSW 2009 Post-Mortem

Music

This year’s South by Southwest Music Festival featured a ton of great bands. Between day parties and official night showcases, we managed to catch 27 bands in four days. Here’s the music we heard, from favorites to forgettables.

1. Sam Roberts Band
As the Canadians hanging out in El Sol Y La Luna told us, this group sells out arenas north of the border, but here they played to a bar full of fans. The music was definitely arena-worthy, with a huge wall of sound that was reminiscent of U2 or a good Bon Jovi. They closed their set with a monster guitar rave, and then topped it with their encore. A great show.

2. The She Creatures
The She Creatures claim to be from Venus, but their homeworld is really Planet Garage. The all-women band’s blue wigs and space silver bodysuits could be concept overkill with another group, but the group kept it fun with killer fuzz-rock songs like “Sexy Robot” and “She Creatures Invade.”

3. Slow Club
A British boy-girl band—he picked away on guitar, she banged on the drums, and both of them sang high, beautiful songs. It wasn’t all sappy stuff, though—they had some drive in their pocket, and could kick it up to a joyous, jump-along tempo. The crowd loved them.

4. The Golden Arm Trio
Set in a dark, cavernous jazz club, Golden Arm Trio bandleader Graham Reynolds led his group through a tribute to Duke Ellington. A piano, trombone, tenor saxophone, bass and drums all chimed in for a precise, beautiful set, full of small wonders and easy breathing.

5. The Peekers
We stumbled on this group at a day show while reconnecting with high-school friends, and they stood out above all the happy BSing. They had a perfect outdoor sound, with a bright organ, perky harmonies and a happy, skipping uptempo feel.

Continue reading SXSW 2009 Post-Mortem →

Death Lives

Music

Inspired by Alice Cooper, an all-black band from Detroit cuts a proto-punk classic, only to have it be ignored for 30 years. A little buzz from collectors and a demo tape pulled from an attic lead to a re-issue. Decades after their demise, Death is reborn.

The New York Times has a great article on the band, “This Band Was Punk Before Punk Was Punk,” and you can check out three of their songs at their MySpace page. The music is great—fresh and powerful, with a strong MC5 vibe.

SXSW 2009 Preview: Part Three

Music, SXSW,

Sprengjuhollin

They are: An Icelandic pop band. According to their SXSW page, “Sprengjuhollin’s success in its native Iceland can be viewed objectively by the broadness of its fanbase that covers art school hipsters, mechanics, housewives, convicts and politicians.” Unfortunately, my Google search for “Icelandic Convict Radio” failed to return more information about this exciting new subgenre.

Sounds like: The type of band that plays over the credits of a Wes Anderson movie. (Their web site says Belle and Sebastian, so I don’t have to.)

The Tracks (from their MySpace page):

Worry till Spring
Some brass over the chorus gives this mellow groove-rider a little extra flavor. Clean production, warm vocals and a plucked guitar keeps the whole thing humming.

The Drive
A snare heavy intro (channeling “Get Off Of My Cloud”?) gives way to surf-scented fuzz. It’s a nice groove, reminiscent of Apples in Stereo, but it doesn’t seem to quite have anywhere to go.

Tonight
A descending violin squall jumps into a propulsive, string-heavy rush of a song. It turns dreamy at the end, with chanted “Oh la la”s that are bright enough to life the mood of even the most jaded convict.

The verdict: Sprengjuhollin is a great pop band, with a fun, clean sound, but they seem a bit too edgeless to be compelling live.

SXSW 2009 Preview: Part Two

Music, SXSW,

Parenthetical Girls

They are: “Parenthetical Girls are a musical group operating within the pop idiom. Entanglements is the name of their recently completed full-length album. A dense, winkingly ambitious orchestral song cycle, Entanglements is an eleven-song, linear meditation on authority, adolescent sexuality, quantum mechanics, consent, and other moral ambiguities—all set to an elaborately orchestrated olio of timeworn, traditional pop forms” (SXSW web site).

Uh, yeah.

Sounds like: Lou Reed’s “Goodnight Ladies,” only with more orchestration and an actual singer

The tracks (from their MySpace site):

A Song for Ellie Greenwich
I don’t know how “winkingly ambitious” it is, but it kicks off with a lively trumpet/baritone setpiece and walks through a multinstrumental suite. It’s dense, but never too heavy, and the vocals are warm and well-placed.

Unmentionables
Falsetto vocals begin over a halting trumpet-tuba-ukulele pattern before the whole thing swoons to strings. The song changes gears mid-way, passing through a brassy march and pizzicato strings en route to an understated finish. A neat track.

The Weight She Fell Under
A light, pushing drone and xylophone arpeggio pace this bright tribute to a woman seemingly sliced in half by a train.

The verdict: Very cool stuff. Their sound is complex without being overstuffed, ambitious without being pretentious. There will be a lot of pieces to pull together live, but I’d like to see how they’re going to do it.