The Post-Rockist

Sharon Jones (Credit:Carrie Musgrave–livebabylive.com)

It’s a rather stylish northern audience in Detroit, here to witness the kind of Northern Soul that Brit bands from the Stones to Belle and Sebastian have so reverenced and adored. It’s a Mod crowd–not a Rocker in sight. I can’t remember a time I’ve seen so many freshly shined patent-leather shoes, especially of the red, high-heeled type. Everyone has stance, a pose, but also a smile and a strut. Some even partake of pre-show shimmies and shakes for the pleasure of their pals, belles, and beaus. It’s the kind of crowd that makes you feel like this is the place to be in the city tonight.

And so it was.

The thing about that sweet Soul music is that it makes us conscious of the beat of our hearts. It’s revelatory. It’s romantic. It draws out the human intensity that is natural to us all, but sublimated most of the time.

Soul music is fiercely sexual, honest, and transformative, even if the transformation lasts only as long as the show.

Everybody at the show is unbelievably cool. As a group, we exude a vibe I can’t really describe with words. Nobody sneezes at a Soul show. Nobody trips over feet. There are no faux pas. No one is feeble. We are all full of virility. We all say just the right things, move just the right way. Every curvature of the back, every sidestep, every cigarette, every laugh, every conversation, every hip shake is a fashion statement. But it’s all pretty much unconscious and none of us will have power over our own bodies once the music starts. But we will feel the beating of our hearts.

The Dap-Kings come on stage. I’m sitting at a circular table to the left of the stage. The music starts, and I begin to feel uncomfortable with my pad of paper and pen, writing by the light of my cell phone in the dark room. The band plays a song and my feet won’t stop tapping on floor as I sit on a high stool, writing. Bandleader Binky Griptite sings a song and I’m standing at my little table now, writing gibberish on paper because I’ve lost the ability to look down at my scraps of paper. I can’t look away from the stage. I’m becoming uncomfortable in my current pose as a critic, my body is beginning to take over my mind, and I am beginning to sweat a bit (read: foreshadowing). I feel myself gaining dancing momentum like Joliet Jake as the light shines down upon him in church during Reverend Cleophus’s sermon.

And then Sharon Jones stepped onto the stage.

It is at this point that my notes stop. I made my way into the crowd, dancing. Got to center stage, dancing. Just two rows back from Sharon Jones herself, dancing. I couldn’t push any closer, dancing. I stood there mesmerized, but dancing, not standing.

The next thing I remember was the icy sweat running down my brow and down the back of my shirt as I walked out of the Magic Stick that night into the cold Michigan air, to go home and to bed, because what else is there to do after a night like that?

Check out Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings in your city:

Dec 1–San Diego, CA, The Belly Up Tavern
Dec 2–Santa Ana, CA, The Galaxy Theater
Dec 4–Los Angeles, CA, El Rey Theater
Dec 5–San Francisco, CA, Bimbo’s 365 Club
Dec 7–Portland, OR, Doug Fir Lounge
Dec 8–Seattle, WA, Neumo’s
Dec 9–Bellingham, WA, The Nightlight
Dec 14–Philadelphia, PA, Theater of Living Arts
Jan 4–Fort Lauderdale, FL, Jamcruise
Jan 17–Washington, DC, Black Cat

–Posted by Scotter

(credit)

To say that I had become obsessed with the Fiery Furnaces since I had seen them at Desdemona last year would be something of an understatement. It wasn’t just a great show; it was one of those rare, earth-shattering, mind-melting concert experiences that had completely broken down and rebuilt my expectations of what a simple four-piece band could pull off in a live setting. It was an explosion of sound and possibility, set off with minimal effects and stage trickery, and only the barest of garage rock instrumentation, and yet the result was thoroughly overwhelming.

The Fiery Furnaces, after all, aren’t the sort of band to leave a person wanting more. It’s a uniquely American trait, I think, this emphasis on overindulgence and excess, and the Fiery Furnaces are, without question, an all-American band. It’s as if the siblings Friedberger are hell-bent on pursuing a strategy of complete and total domination of their audience; oppressing us with music; subjugating us with more hooks, more extended solos, more convoluted story lines, more syllables per meter, more misleading prog rock intros, more confounding bridges, and more songs crammed within songs than the human brain can possibly comprehend in a single sitting.

I was exhausted. I was exalted. I was whipped.

And then there was Eleanor. I don’t know what it was - the elocution; the awkward, reluctant stage presence; the bangs - whatever it was, I was captivated. This fast-talking, big-haired rock’n'roller with the flood pants and ankle boots managed to reign total control over my concentration, despite the outbursts of noise and feedback and tempo changes. Just like Joyce DeWitt in Three’s Company, she was at once entirely out of place and yet completely essential to the scene, staying grounded while everything around her spiraled out of control beyond reason. I just stood there the whole show, like Ralph Furley, wide-eyed, gawking.

So you can imagine my surprise when I descended the stairs of Blueberry Hill to the Duck Room and the first person I encounter is none other than Ms. Eleanor Friedberger herself.

(Continued)

Continuing with our revitalized interest in 1990’s guitar bands, Irish shoegazing demigods My Bloody Valentine are officially reunited, recording, and more amazingly, preparing to tour. For years the ol’ rumor mill had churning out tall tales about the impending follow-up to 1991’s ineffably beautiful Loveless, so when The Daily Swarm reported that MBV would be reuniting to perform at the 2008 Coachella festival, I just scoffed and thought, “Yeah, that’s gonna happen - right after MJ and Macca record a new album of duets!” Turns out, for once, my sarcasm was unjustified. While the Coachella performance is still unconfirmed as of this date, the following times and places are guaranteed to feature Kevin Shields and company:

June 20, 2008 – London, UK – The Roundhouse
June 28, 2008 – Manchester, UK – Apollo
July 2, 2008 – Glasgow, UK – Barrowland

Tickets go on sale this Friday, November 16th. Tickets for all shows will be available at www.seetickets.com and venue box offices. Unfortunately, this post-rockist will be nowhere near these sure-to-be legendary performances.

While the tour dates were just announced today, the world officially learned of My Bloody Valentine’s plans for reuniting and releasing a new album on November 6 when Kevin Shields sat down with Ian Svenonius of VBS.tv’s Soft Focus for a half-hour interview in an empty English pub during the middle of the day. The first part of the interview is embedded below, and the remaining three parts can be found here. If you can make it through Ian Svenonius’s pompous affectations and pretentious questions about Time and History and Husserl’s phenomenological reduction, it’s actually a decent interview. Kevin Shields offers up many interesting tidbits of information, from his love of the Ramones and the Partridge Family, to his illogical beliefs on climate change, to the plans for the hotly anticipated album of shoegaze lore. For instance, Shields states:

We were making a record in the 90s, around when the band broke up in 1995…and I continued with Belinda. We kinda made we made most of an album….It’s going to be this ‘96/‘97 record half-finished record finished, and then a compilation of stuff we did before that in 1993–94, and a little bit of new stuff.

I pretty much know what the one that’s going to come out this year is going to sound like because its already pretty much 3/4’s done already…it sounds like what we sounded like – different but not radically different. People will go, “Yeah, it sounds like My Bloody Valentine.”

Holy shit.

Can I just say, as the hopelessly biased and uncritical critic that I am, that I’m already in love with this album?

Listen in:

There’s no word yet on when the new My Bloody Valentine record will be released, or even if it will be released like a proper album supported by a label or if they’ll drop it unsuspecting on the web, Radiohead-guerrilla style. A good bet, however, would be to check the band’s new website: http://mybloodyvalentine.co.uk/. In the meantime, why not, here’s another video.

“You Made Me Realise”

-Posted by Todd

What? I thought they broke up.

…but it is, in fact, the face of former-Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic.

For those of you who may have been wondering what happened to the non-Foo Fighting /world-touring/officially-stepped-out-of-the-shadow-of-Kurt Cobain member of Nirvana, you can read weekly updates by checking out Krist Novoselic’s blog posts for the Seattle Weekly. If you haven’t been keeping up with Novoselic since 1994, you’ll find that he’s been putting his energies toward politics more than music and has become an important and interesting commentator and activist on national and Washington-state politics over the past 10 years.

But unlike Bono’s glamorous-gladiator-for-the-good persona, traveling in fast luxury jets to third-world locales for professional photo shoots and gaining entrance into closed-door meetings with world leaders based solely upon the leaders’ giddy excitement at meeting a real rock star, Novoselic has been scrapping politically in the mucky trenches of American grassroots activism.

Based on a reading of his first blog, it seems that Novoselic will be writing partly about national and local politics and partly about music and Nirvana (and, most likely, will be using music as a segue into political conversation).

Novoselic’s first post presents an interesting and, I believe, particularly sensitive understanding of anarchy in the USA. Nothing crazy or bombast here. Just a mind who is simultaneously dedicated to real justice in American life and, consequently, was the bassist to the most influential and important band of my lifetime.

–Posted by Scotter

I realized the extent of my NPR nerddom earlier this year while listening to my local Detroit station before work. That morning, the new Nina Totin’ Bag was announced to the NPR listening public. It’s just a tote bag with six Warhol-esque representations of NPR Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg. But as I sat on my bed drying my hair after my morning shower, sipping on a hot cup of java, I thought for a few seconds, “You know, I’d really like to have one of them Totin’ Bags.”

That’s right, I wanted that Nina Totin’ Bag. Should I be feeling uncomfortable with myself? Could Marx possibly have foretold my desire when he penned his first words about commodity fetishism?

Anyway, if you didn’t think NPR was that cool before, you’ll think so now. Our very own national public radio station (well, unless you’re one of our Canadien, British, or Bengalese Post-Rockist readers) has just launched a new music page that is chock-full of great content from its vast archive of original shows, such as All Songs Considered and World Cafe, along with programs from other NPR-affiliated stations, such as KEXP in Seattle. The site also features many live shows taped at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, where I had personally seen many of these great shows when I lived in our nation’s capital. Type the name of your favorite band in the search field. They’ll probably be in there.

In addition, NPR has started a really cool program called Project Song, where a songwriters is given 2 days to write, record, and master an original song, and we get to watch and listen. The inaugural show features Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields fame and, from this very first episode, it looks like this could be one of the most interesting music programs in some time, particularly if NPR can enlist great guests on a consistent basis.

So I don’t feel bad about my NPR obsessions anymore. Tell you what, I might just buy me one of them Nina Totin’ Bags, and I wouldn’t think twice should they ever come out with a Bob Boilen Hot Tea Kettle. I may order two.
–Posted by Scotter