Have you ever tried to write, play and record a song in 10 minutes? It's probably a bit tough for the average mortal. But Jack White sure makes it look easy as he sits down to scribble out an impromptu track in a rickety old chair next to a microphone, a scene from the sure-to-be-epic documentary It Might Get Loud which hits theaters tomorrow, Aug. 14.
In case you're unfamiliar, this doc traces the careers and influences of White and two other mildly popular guitar heroes: Jimmy Page and The Edge. The 10 minute song we speak of is something White was challenged to do on the spot by director Davis Guggenheim during a scene in the film. What came out of it was a song, eventually a single, called "Fly Farm Blues".
At this point (if you've spent anytime lurking the internet for Jack White news) you know that not only has White releasing the song on 7" vinyl through Third Man Records, but also that it bares an uncanny similarity to a song called "Ball and Biscuit" written for the 2003 White Stripes album Elephant. But even if both tunes carry the same scatty blues guitar and throaty howls, there are a couple of notable differences in lyrical content, length and meter. But as a fan, do the similarities really matter enough to make you even think twice about the quality of the new tune? Listen closely after the JUMP, and tell us what you think.
So last night a discussion was sparked over the term 'emo', and how to properly define the music that falls into this category. The conversation didn't really lead anywhere so it left me with an idea to do some research on when and where the term originated, what bands consider themselves emo and why, and anything else I come across that is associated with this word.
First was a google image search to determine how the world's biggest search engine feels about this topic. This was the first image that came up.
In this recession-plagued economy, the most enticing word has to be free. Free is good, free is seductive. It usually doesn't really matter what that free is (within reason). As long as you don't have to pay for it then why in the world are you complaining?
To capitalize on that theme, here are a series of classical concerts coming up this month that are family friendly, fun, and--did I mention--free? Just remember to bring some beach chairs, blankets and munchies. After that, sit back and relax as you take in relaxing music underneath the California sky.
The perfect way to spend a summer evening is just after the jump.
With only minutes to go until the afternoon sun leaks through my bedroom windows, I should probably be doing something productive like getting ready for work, finishing up an article or at least mowing the lawn or something. But I'm not, it's my day off. And luckily, it couldn't have come at a better time.
A few months ago, after some light pestering on my part, my aunt agreed to loan me her 1968 Fisher turntable covered in dust. It was one of the first things she bought when she moved to her house in Alhambra where she's lived for decades.
Since bringing it home, this thing has seen some major action as I drop the needle on it at least 2-3 albums a day when I have the time. But today, it's all about Marvin Gaye. Had he been alive today, he would have turned 70 years-old this morning. Somehow I've always found his birthday easy to remember. Probably because it is the day after his tragic death on April fools day, 1984. And as a self-proclaimed Motown music hound, there are some stats any respectable fan just has to know.
One thing I know right now is that I have every Marvin record I own lined up and ready to go for my thoroughly lazy day around the house. Right now I'm pretty much just hanging out here talking to you as the cymbal crash of Flyin' High (In the Friendly Sky) creeps through the cluttered corners of my work room and Gaye's soft falsetto travels in smoke rings out the back window. This is gonna be a good day. Thanks Marvin. Happy birthday.
One of the other things I think I might do is unearth my copy of the 2006 DVD "The Real Thing: In Performance 1964-1981". If you've got a chance to check out the video excerpt below, I suggest you do. It's got some really great rare performances on there.
For one event at its American Composers Festival, Pacific Symphony Orchestra teams with the Newport Beach Film Festival to present "Behind the Score," a free special screening of the James Newton Howard-scored and Academy Award-nominated 2006 movie Blood Diamond, at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 19, at the Regency Lido in Newport Beach.
Appearing at an in-person Q&A will be Howard (pictured) and the film's producer-director, Edward Zwick, also known for Glory and The Last Samurai. Blood Diamond, which stars LeonardoDiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly and Djimon Hounsou--tells the story of a gem dealer, journalist and mine worker embroiled in the mining of diamonds in Africa's war zones. It was nominated for five Academy Awards and won the Soundtrack of the Year Classical BRIT Award.
While this is a free deal, but advance reservations are required here. Call the PSO box office at (714) 755-5799 if you need further details.
Just got this email from a guy named Rick Berry. Unless you are Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man," you probably don't remember, but I wrote about him a while ago when he was playing trumpet in a group called the Jazz Rx.
The band isn't performing anymore and with all this free time, Berry has decided to run for city council in Long Beach. To help raise money, he's throwing a bash at DiPiazza's.
Here's what he sent me:
diPiazza Feb 11, 6:00 - 8:30 pm Jazz band with:
Marcia Ford, vocals Rick Berry, trumpet
Evan Solomon, saxes
Vern Waldron, piano
Barry Cogart, bass
Arturo Ramirez, drums
$5 cover. 2 sets.
If the show is anything like the Jazz Rx, it'll be full of bop, bebop and Latin jazz by the likes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and Tito Puente. Or maybe not. That's the great thing about jazz -- you never know what you're getting until it's happening.
Whatever the group plays, you can be damn sure it'll be a lot more fun than a pancake breakfast or a bake sale.
I've been a Sirius Satellite subscriber (hello alliteration) since the night before Howard Stern broadcast his first censorship-free show. But in that time, I've come to love certain aspects of the other channels and have recommended this product to everyone from friends to my parents.
Sirius and XM, its competitor, merged a few months ago after what seemed like an endless battle to turn two into one. To be honest, I didn't follow the merger as much as I should have because ultimately, I really didn't care.
Today is the Weekly's last working day in Santa Ana. We'll be relocated to Costa Mesa by Monday. For guidance and commemoration in these turbulent times, we turn to the MySpace of Costa Mesa band Pop Noir, hoping to find some lyrical closure in their track entitled "Santa Ana."
We put on our headphones; click the song.
Slick four-on-the-floor beat. Western-flavored Franz Ferdinand riffing. Here come the words:
"The Santa Ana winds blow and blow and blow and blow /
I love you, you know, you know, you know"
Uh...
"General Santa Ana rode a white, white, white, white, white horse /
Even though his heart was black, black, black of course"
OK, never mind, never turn to Pop Noir for lyrics. That tune's pretty danceable though... jesus, "blow and blow and blow" is stuck in my head now. Oh look! They're playing tonight at Detroit Bar with On Blast and Dolphin City. Seems like a fun way to celebrate Costa Mesa and the enduring power of dance-rock while forgetting that Santa Ana, song and city, ever existed. You know, you know, you know.
Pop Noir, On Blast, Dolphin City at Detroit Bar. 8 p.m., $6, 21+, 814 W. 19th St., Costa Mesa.
Colleague Matt Coker recently tipped me off to a cameo appearance I kinda-sorta make in Deja Vu, the new documentary flick about Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's 2006 Freedom of Speech tour of America, when the foursome hit the road in support of Neil Young's politically pointed Living With War album.
I'm not actually seen in the movie (god forbid), but I'm heard, which is where the kinda-sorta comes in. About 22 minutes into it, as you watch sweeping helicopter shots of downtown Los Angeles and the Hollywood sign, a voice-over reads a few lines from my review of the show (which actually went down in Irvine, not LA), that I penned on a freelance gig for the LA Times (you can watch the excerpt below, shot directly off the TV because I have lousy DVD editing software):
"Freedom isn’t free, the slogan goes, and no kidding—speech alone can set you back $251.50 . . . the famed quartet wasn’t advocating complete freedom of speech, though—just the kind they agreed with."
The narrator puts a strong, snarly emphasis on the word "they", making me totally seem like I hated the show, the tour, the album, and everything about it. Which I didn't. I liked the show, mostly, as evidenced by this paragraph that appeared a couple grafs later (You can read the full review right here):
"It was quite a kick during “Wooden Ships,” for example, to see the normally staid Nash caught up in the foreboding whirl of one of Young’s song-ending feedback orgies, the kind that he perfected with his sometime backing band Crazy Horse—and then Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young together, jamming in a tight circle, guitars screeching, wailing and shredding as if they were in a Sonic Youth tribute band. Young usually puts a lot of work into his shows, and this night was no exception, but his three cohorts haven’t been made to sweat this much on a stage in years—decades, maybe."
But it's that first mean pullquote which gets all the cinematic love and makes me sound like a total hippie-hating dickhead Republican asshole, which, as a proud veteran of 27 Grateful Dead shows, I feign great offense in. Who can I punish for this slander upon my good name, sputter-sputter?!?!?
Neil Young himself, turns out, since he directed the doc under his Bernard Shakey nom de plume. Wow—that's actually pretty cool! I envision Neil (I can call him Neil; he knows me) putting Deja Vu together, wrestling in an editing bay over where exactly to put "the Rich Kane blurb," my name rolling out past his wrinkly lips (just beneath his nose, where the cocaine booger was excised out of in The Last Waltz!). Rock critics tend to have an inflated sense of importance already, since they get to interview their heroes, but not all of them can piss one of their heroes off so much that they respond by taking a critic's words and spinning them out of context. I rule!
This makes me forgive Neil for getting sick back in 1991 during the Ragged Glory tour, which caused postponement of his LA Sports Arena show, which (long story short) was partially responsible for me getting beaten up and robbed at a Fullerton gas station . . .
Other than to play the Shally Zomorodi drinking game, of course, which goes like this: every time the giggle-prone host touches her deskmate Ben Aaron, you take a shot. But then again, if you're watching this show at 10 a.m. whilst clutching a bottle of Jaeger, you've got much deeper issues than an addiction to crappy morning TV.....
But there actually is one very good reason to watch KDOC's laughably wretched, idiot-laden morning variety show: the fact that they have mostly excellent local bands and musicians coming in each day for a song and some half-witted Shally/Ben banter. Many of which, like George Fryer, we've been writing glowing things about for years, either in this 1998 profile or just letting the man rant about his favorite music himself via this early version of our Aural Reports column.
George and his Combo were featured on DayBreak last month (peep the video below), and this week in particular, it seems as if whoever is in charge of booking the music on the show has been flipping through back issues of the Weekly, which means they've acquired some much-needed taste. We were delighted to see the fabulously gifted Chris Karn doing "Tears" solo-acoustic style on yesterday's broadcast, sans his regular band Deccatree. And this Thursday morning, none other than the amazing, soul-powered keyboard prowess of ex-Helmut Steinster R. Scott will severely goose up DayBreak's watchability, a slice of sound and vision certain to wake the show's 12 loyal viewers out of their Pete Weitzner-induced coma.
Who would you imagine has written the worst song lyric ever? Jethro Tull? Billy Joel? Vanilla Ice? Rick Ross? Wrong, wrong, wrong, and, well, close but still wrong.
3 Doors Down, "Here Without You"
In fact, the pop culture perps are Escatawpa, Mississippi band 3 Doors Down, in the form of their 2003 hit “Here Without You.” Many would call the song “inscrutable,” but I have bravely attempted to scrutinize it.
It seems that, while “Here Without You” in fact contains the worst song lyric ever written, it has some stiff competition. Not just from the hundreds of millions of other songs ever written, but rather from other lyrics within the same song.
One hundred days have made me older/ Since the last time that I saw your pretty face
I'm not sure how familiar you are with the concept of time, lead singer Brad Arnold, but even a single day will make you older, and there doesn't even have to be a girl involved.
A thousand lice have made me colder/ And I don't think I can look at this the same
Okay, yeah, so he probably says "lies" or "lights" and not "lice" but none of those things make any sense anyway.
If you're watching the video, you'll notice that it chronicles Arnold's songwriting process, and he's laboring like a motherfucker. Like, "I need something that rhymes with 'face.' Hmmm. 'Ace'? 'Space'? 'Laced'? Drat, I can't come up with anything. Well, I guess 'same' is pretty close."
The miles just keep rolling/ As the people leave their way to say hello
That's some weak Bob Seger shit right there, and again, no sense does it make. "The people leave their way to say hello?" That's not English. The funny thing is that the morons who transcribe songs on the internet don't even know what to make of it. This guyhas it as, "The miles just keep rollin/ As the people either way to say hello."
But, as bad as these lyrics are, they pale in comparison to the song's next line, which just so happens to be the worst song lyric ever penned.
I've heard this life is overrated/ But I hope that it gets better as we go
Huh? Who told you "this life" was "overrated"? And, why, exactly, are you consulting people as to the quality of "this life," the way you would about a restaurant or movie?
"Excuse me, sir, sorry for bothering you, but I'm wondering if you could recommend 'this life.' I'm interested in potentially living it."
"It's overrated."
"Oh, really? Okay great, thanks."
Apparently, this wise oracle was consulted years ago, and Arnold has sadly found him to be correct. Still, he's holding out hope that "it gets better" as "we go."
Everything I know and anywhere I go/ It gets hard but it won't take away my love/ And when the last one falls/ When it's all said and done/ It gets hard but it won't take away my love
This is a subject/object nightmare. How can "everything" and "anywhere" "get hard"? And who is this "last one," and why is she/he/it falling?
Anyway, thanks for playing, 3 Doors Down. You've got the worst lyric ever. I have to say though, the song kind of rocks.
Saturday afternoon, sunny and 80º+—it seemed like a good idea to go to Waterloo Park and sample the musical and comedic talents that some enterprising soul had cobbled together. This would ensure that I'd be dead tired by the time the sun set. But that's cool—sometimes one does one's best work while running on fumes. Of course, those SXSW Day 4 Blues hit with a vengeance. But enough about me... Onto the entertainment.
Newly signed to Rick Rubin's Def American label, Howlin Rain play grizzled Southern rock redux, but with so much fire in its belly and soul (and with chops to burn, especially keyboardist Joel Rabinow) that the retro-ness of it all doesn't pall. Along with Ethan Miller's flagrant guitar solos and gritty, testifying vocals, Howlin Rain create ideal hot sunny day outdoors rock that almost makes this vegan want to eat a slab of bbq ribs while riding a Harley 100 mph on some south of the Mason Dixon line highway. Hee-yah, or something.
After this, I ambled to the comedy stage, where Aziz Ansari was yukking it up. He was followed by Reggie Watts, Hard N' Phirm, Paul F. Tompkins, Leon Allen and a woman from the Sarah Silverman Show whose name escapes me. Watts and H&P stood out with their spot-on musical parodies. Tenacious who?
In my last post, I predicted Holy Fuck's set would be very hard to surpass. Well, I think it was at least equaled by a few artists on the bill at Barcelona—all instrumental hip-hop artists, in fact (Nosaj Thing, Free the Robots, Gaslamp Killer and Flying Lotus). Who would've thought such types would be standouts at SXSW? I mean, there wasn't a guitar to be found in the joint all night...
But first some gigs that preceded the Barcelona extravaganza. At Soho Bar, Blues Control—a weird psych band from New York—kind of disappointed with some spectral, relatively mellow blues rock that wasn't as expansive as their self-titled LP on Holy Mountain Records hinted. Their attack was muted somehow. Consisting of a guitarist and keyboardist who manned a drum machine, too, the duo churned out restrained turbulence, saving their best track for last, "Boiled Peanuts," one of the most sublimely lugubrious songs of the decade, a liquid bummer of mood elevation (paradoxes rock).
Over at Vice, Fucked Up puked up a bilious barrage of metallic punk. FU are fronted by an ornery, bald, bearded fat man who strips off his shirt and roams into the crowd to shout in your face his indecipherable lyrics (possibly about the importance of maintaining efficient digestion). At one point, he head-butted the mic. Later he ranted about the copious amounts of piss on the men's room floor. Someone needs to address this rampant problem in rock clubs and I'm glad Fucked Up's on the case.
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