Crazy Talk!

Show Review: Explosions in the Sky, Eluvium - Slims 05.01.2007

From their soundtrack to one of the best sports movies around ("Friday Night Lights") to, for that matter, a man changing a light bulb on a Friday at 9pm, the musical intent of tonight's headliner is not complicated.

For Explosions in the Sky you really don't need much more than one word:

epic.

The Wit & Wisdom of Will Sheff (of Okkervil River)

Recently, I have read a few interesting articles featuring Will Sheff, of Okkervil River. Now I don't know much about the band ("For Real" was a fun song, and I have a special place for "Happy Hearts", a song performed with Daniel Johnston), but I now have a new-found respect for the person.

The first is lifted from The Believer, the wonderful journalism magazine. Please read the magazine, amazingly wonderful writings abound.

I. THE KNIFE FIGHT

THE BELIEVER: So the first thing I wanted to ask you was if you’ve ever been in a fight.

WILL SHEFF: Oh. I was in a knife fight just a couple months ago, believe it or not. I was at a party—kind of a hipster party in Austin. It was New Year’s Eve. And there were lots and lots of people there. I dropped Scott [Brackett, Okkervil’s trumpet and keyboard player] off and I drove back to the party for no good reason. I was really drunk, walking around, and I turned a corner and saw two gentlemen having a fight. One of them pulled a hunting knife out of his jacket. It was like a ten-inch-long hunting knife, and he swung it at the other guy’s throat! And the other guy turned his head at the last minute and he got cut on the back of his neck. But if he hadn’t turned his head he would have gotten his throat cut.

The guy who got the back of his neck cut shouts, “He’s got a knife! He’s got a knife!” So I see this guy swinging this hunting knife around and in a blind, drunken impulse I grab the guy’s hand—the guy with the knife—and I was going to try and pull the knife out of his hand. But the instant I grabbed his hand, I looked down at this knife and I realized that this is a real, very sharp, very metallic knife—and it could very well stab me in the gut or something like that. And so I thought, All right, well, I really have to pull this knife out of this guy’s hand or else something bad’s going to happen. He was holding it really, really tight and for just a second, he loosened up his hand. I saw that as my window, so I pulled as hard as I could to get the knife out of his hand—I actually cut my hand in the process of it. I pulled so hard, and it was such a crowded party, that in the process of pulling the knife out of his hand I stabbed somebody in the leg.

BLVR: Oh my god.

WS: So I stabbed this guy in the leg and he goes [abruptly] “Ow!” And I said, “Hold on a second—I’ll be right back.” And I ran and hid the knife somewhere the knife’s owner wouldn’t find it. But where, in the morning, the person who had been assaulted could find the knife and use it as evidence.

BLVR: That was very responsible of you.

WS: When I got back, the guy who had pulled the knife was long gone. The guy who I stabbed was still there. And he was just sort of drinking a beer. And I said, “Man, I’m really, really sorry I stabbed you in the leg, but a guy pulled this knife…” And the guy said, “Oh, no, no, it’s OK. I’m fine.” And his girlfriend said, “No no no, you’re not fine—you have blood all over your hand.” He had his hand over the wound, and when he lifted it, his hand was slick with blood. There was blood all over his hand.

As it turns out, he was on ecstasy, so he didn’t really care that he had been stabbed in the leg. So I said, “Well, go to the bathroom, look at the wound, and see if you have to go to the hospital, I’ll pay for it or whatever.” So he goes to the bathroom and the news quickly spreads that this guy’s been stabbed in the leg. No one realizes that the other guy actually was assaulted and there was a fight. They just heard there was somebody who pulled a knife and stabbed somebody in the leg.

BLVR: It was you.

WS: Yeah. So I go to the bathroom to check on this guy and there are all these girls in the bathroom and they’re all like [girl voice], “We’re taking care of it! We’re taking care of it! Go away!” And then the host of the party comes out and goes: “Everybody out. Somebody pulled a knife. Everybody out of here.” He’s called the police. I say, “I don’t want to leave. I’m the person who actually inflicted the wound and I feel I should pay for it if he has to go to hospital.” And he says: “You’re the one with the knife?! What kind of sick fuck brings a knife to a party? What the fuck is wrong with you? Get out of here!” And I was like, “But it wasn’t my knife!” And he said, “I don’t want to hear it. Just get the fuck out of my house.” And then the police showed up, so I was like—I’m not sticking around. So I left.

It turns out that the guy who pulled the knife now has criminal charges pressed against him. And the guy who I stabbed was not that gravely injured.

So that was the last fight I got in and it involved a large hunting knife on New Year’s Eve.

BLVR: And for the rest of your musical career, every song will be based on that.

WS: Well, the funny thing is, it’s become this thing in Austin that people talk about—and nobody really knows the story. People think that I brought the knife to the party. And one person said to Travis, our drummer, “Hey, I heard your boy was trying to get fresh with some girl in the bathroom at a party and she wasn’t having it, so he stabbed her in the leg with a knife.” So in a sense I have been typed, now, as a kind of knife-wielding psychopath.

II. ALL THE THINGS I COULDN’T POSSIBLY GET AWAY WITH

BLVR: It was funny reading articles about you guys, or the blurb for the gig tonight. They kept emphasizing how bookish the band is—how you’re a “bookish, literary” band. And I always think of you as such a violent band—violently feeling, violent lyrics, musically violent. Supercharged, big swinging gestures.

WS: There is a definite difference between live shows and the recordings. The recordings are for all time, hopefully, so you do want to bring across these layers of subtlety. But the live show is this primal experience that everybody’s having at the same time, that the recording can at best try to imitate or duplicate. There’s this DVD we’ve been watching in the van—and I can’t believe it’s true but it really is, it’s changing my whole attitude about live music—it’s a DVD of Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, in the Netherlands in 1975. It’s going to be a classic one day. It’s the best concert film I’ve ever seen.

BLVR: Dr. Hook… Was that the band from the Muppets?

WS: Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. Just a stupid classic rock band. Their big hit was “Cover of the Rolling Stone.” And they’re playing in the Netherlands and it’s a live TV show. And they are so, so wasted. They’re probably on coke. The electric guitarist very obviously has something against the rest of the band and there’s some kind of rivalry happening. Every time the electric guitarist goes to sing he puts a red bandanna over the microphone; he doesn’t want to sing into the same microphone that the other singer is singing into. And the songs are falling apart; they’re apologizing in the middle of them. There’s this ending part where the guitarist goes into a crazy, terrible noise solo and they’re all cowering away from him. There’s all these famous stories of drunken tomfoolery with rock bands, but the thing that’s special about this Dr. Hook concert is that they’re laughing and enjoying themselves. And it reminds me that rock and roll—and more broadly than that, song and folk music in general—is a jubilant, communal celebration of what’s grimy and great about life. I think that that’s what we’re trying to go for in our live shows. Make people remember that they’re seeing a real thing, one time only, in front of them.

I find the bookish and literate tag vaguely insulting to pop music. As if pop music is ennobled when it has some kind of literary aspirations. The Shangri-Las weren’t bookish, and they were brilliant. You know? I don’t want to be some fop pretending to be a half-baked poet. I think the difference for us is that it’s a sort of celebratory, Dionysian thing, as opposed to an Apollonian scene. I’m very happy that the New York Times wrote a big piece and called us “literary,” because it’s good to have somebody say something about you, but honestly I think it’s all bullshit. My favorite groups, whether it’s the Rolling Stones or Neil Young or the Shangri-Las, they don’t have anything “literary” about them. It’s like saying that comic books are good if they’re like paintings. In the end, it’s classist, you know? And all these bands that are trying to dignify themselves by coming across as literary are classist.

But then you have somebody like Dan Bejar from Destroyer—who I think is one of the best writers writing these days.

BLVR: He’s a marvel.

WS: Of all contemporary songwriters I think he’s been the biggest influence and inspiration. Because he is pretentious, but in a way that makes it into a game.

BLVR: He rejoices in it.

WS: Exactly. It’s not really pretentious in the end, because he’s copping to it from the very beginning. He takes pretension and turns it into this high-school costume show where everybody’s invited in and we all get to pretend to be so grand. He also has a really clear aspiration to this idiotic rock and roll tradition, and this understanding that it’s supposed to be idiotic, and there’s something very absurd about it.

We have a song called “So Come Back, I Am Waiting,” which is a song with all these big words in it. I would hope that people don’t think that the big words are what makes the song good. The big words are my attempt to be pretentious in a way that’s hopefully, maybe, wry? “Oh my God, can I really get away with this?” “Let’s just do all the stupidest things.” A lot of the time, my guiding principle is to try to do all the things I couldn’t possibly get away with, and do them well. I think that that keeps a bit of excitement in there. If you’re going for things that are really terrible ideas you have to really have all your faculties about you to get away with them without being crucified. The best rock music gets away with something, somehow, that it shouldn’t be allowed to get away with.

III. WHEN YOUR HEAD IS SMASHING INTO THE CONCRETE

BLVR: You’ve said before how much you’re inspired by soul music, and that really rings true with what you’re saying now. Because soul music has that kind of stumbling around, saying stupid lines about things you really mean, and hoping to fall into something true.

WS: Look at a song like “Please, Please, Please,” the first James Brown single from 1956, where the lyrics are like: “Please please please please please please please don’t go yah no I love you so I just want to say I I I I I…” It doesn’t need to be some dumb Shakespeare sonnet set to music: it’s an outpouring of emotion. Songwriting is an emotional medium, and rock and roll is an emotional medium. When you listen to something like Otis Redding or even Sam Cooke, in a sense, you know in that Live at the Harlem Square Club recording…

BLVR: Yeah, I love that album.

WS: Sam Cooke and Otis Redding are people that brought this tremendous amount of intelligence and used it to shape this tremendous amount of emotion that they had. And the result is this sculpture, with an insane, wild, passionate emotion that has been very carefully sculpted by a really ordered, controlled thought process.

I don’t pretend to be one twentieth as good as Sam Cooke on his worst night, but that’s a real inspiration for me.

BLVR: You talk a lot about the Incredible String Band.

WS: I think that’s another example of pretentiousness: they’re so pretentious, but it works for me because they believe it. Robin Williamson sings like he is going to part the seas and calm the waters and bring the rain from the skies. He believes it. And it’s such a stupid idea—but believing makes it so, and I think that’s the thing about pop music. It’s a touchingly idiotic, thorough, complete dedication to the dumbest ideas that there are. As people we’re dumb, stumbling idiots—and rock and roll is one of the only art forms that fully cops to that and revels in it.

BLVR: I like what you’re saying about pop music and dumb ideas—turning dumb ideas sort of over in your heart, and then seeing what happens… What dumb ideas do you sing about with your band?

WS: I’ve always just been really impressed by a song that can take a simple sentiment and transform it. Like “Please Please Please,” that James Brown song. It’s almost a meditation on the word please, and his idea of begging someone, and yet he turns it into such a towering thing. Or with the Velvet Underground: they took it a step further and made it adult. So I guess that’s sort of what we’re trying to do, to make pop music that’s adult. Which is not to rule out teenagers, but a kind of music that has a sense of people being compromised and people betraying themselves and selling themselves out, selling themselves short. The weight of guilt and baggage that grown people have—bringing that to bear on this emotional medium.

BLVR: There’s also the adult idea of moral grayness—whereas as a kid it’s all good or bad. “This isn’t fair.”

WS: I always think it’s far more admirable to confuse people than it is to reassure them. Here’s a good example. That song “Bodies” by the Sex Pistols. It’s one of my favorite songs. And one of the reasons it’s one of my favorite songs is that it makes me tremble with pro-life sentiment. When I hear that song it makes me feel so pro-life. And I’m not pro-life. I’m very emphatically pro-choice. But that song fucks with me. Because it is filled with horror and moral outrage and this very sly attitude—and it just makes me feel like a conservative fucking anti-abortion moralistic teenager kind of thing. It’s an amazing song.

BLVR: Your song “For Real” kind of makes me pro-murder.

WS: [Laughs] I could really go for that! I think people misinterpret “For Real” because it’s not supposed to be about murder at all. It’s a lot more about sexuality than it is about violence. But nobody seems to have cottoned to that. Which is not surprising. Hopefully it’s not just about sexuality; there’s a level of—wanting to smash your head into the wall to make sure it’s real? You know what I mean?

God, a couple months ago I tripped and I smashed my face up and I really fucked up my glasses and I haven’t been able to close them since. And I caught my eye and smashed my lip up and I got this deep-tissue bruise. And it was the first time I felt a very severe degree of pain out of nowhere, really suddenly—this is long after I wrote “For Real”… But there was really no mistaking it. That was a very real sensation. You have these moments where you’re like—Do I like this girl? Do I love this girl? Or do I just like her? Do I want a ham sandwich or do I want a turkey sandwich? Are my political beliefs just somebody else’s beliefs that I’ve simply adopted or are they what I really think? But when your head is smashing into the concrete you don’t have that kind of question about whether it’s a real sensation. And ultimately, that’s what’s going to unmake us all—smashing up against the physical reality of death and decay, and being unmade.

And I think that we want it, on some level. Or some people want it, maybe. Or we don’t want it but we wonder about it and we wonder about who we’ll be in that situation and what it will do to us. And then there’s a certain sexualization to that which is very mysterious. To me, “For Real” has a lot more to do with that than it does as some dumb “murder song.” “Westfall” is a murder ballad, straight up.

BLVR: Or “Kathy Keller.”

WS: Or “Kathy Keller,” yeah. But it was sort of frustrating for people to say that “For Real” is a chilling murder ballad. Because to me “For Real” is more—I think of “For Real,” believe it or not, as a kind of tender, happy song. I know that sounds weird. But I do.

IV. MORE STABBINGS

BLVR: Did your parents play music?

WS: No. My grandfather was a trumpet player. He played in a swing band. He paid his way through college in a swing group fronted by an eighty-year-old man, on Newfound Lake in New Hampshire. It was this little club which all the local riffraff would go to and all the people who were somewhat out about being gay—and they would play these six-hour-long swing sets. And then he got asked to tour with Les Brown, who was the swing fixture of the day. He was the only musician in my family that I know of. He’s a fantastic, fantastic guy who is fortunately still alive. But my mother’s just a sentimental lady—she likes Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins. My dad likes music but not so much. My mom likes the Shangri-Las and stuff like that. She’s got a great singing voice—I wish I could say the same for myself. But she’s not a musician.

BLVR: So what happened to make you commit?

WS: Ah, it was just a lot easier than any other option. No, I wanted to be a filmmaker, actually, when I was in high school and college. But I just decided it would be more expensive to do, so I sort of decided music would be more fun. I also have a perverse streak—I had a girlfriend in college who was trying very hard to dissuade me from doing music and I think it was sort of a “fuck you” to her, maybe. I don’t know. I just went down that path. But I was always one of these people who is irrationally moved by stupid pop songs.

BLVR: In the car, weeping to Fleetwood Mac.

WS: Oh, I love Fleetwood Mac. Ask Travis about it. The last tour, he would just be like, “I’m sorry but we’re listening to Tusk right now. Shut up and fucking listen to this. I’ll stab you in the neck.” And then we’d be listening to it and he’d be, “No, seriously, shut up!” And then it turned out to be one of my favorite albums of all time. I love Tusk. Travis tells me what to listen to—I just follow his orders.

BLVR: You recently did some recording that your label said you never intend to release.

WS: We just did that thing because I had moved out of my house—so I thought, Let’s move the recording gear in. It was really great to do stuff we knew we were never going to put out. Because this whole indie scene—and even more so the major-label scene—it’s motivated around big releases that have a huge PR campaign around them. And you forget that you’re not going for the gold cup every time you record something; sometimes you’re just trying to have fun. You get so caught up in the pressure of a release for a reason that you forget that the whole point of doing art is to have fun. I’ve often envied painters and artisans—people who make, like, chairs—or even film editors, where it’s all about the process. Because they’re not so built around these results that are highly publicized and promoted. So I thought it would be interesting to do a recording that was 100 percent not for anyone, ever—just for our own enjoyment.

BLVR: And how much was it different as a result?

WS: Do you want to hear a song from it?

[We listen. The band discusses timpani on the downbeats.]

WS: I want it to be Phil Spector style.

BLVR: I’m recording this so I can leak it on the internet.

WS: If you do, I’ll stab you in the fucking leg.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The second is about the complications of filesharing, borrowed from Stereogum.

On File-Sharing by Will Sheff

Over the nine-odd years that we in Okkervil River have been trying to make a living playing music, I've developed a kind of love/hate relationship with the world of file-sharing. The first good job I ever had was at the website Audiogalaxy.com, where I drew a respectable salary for writing music reviews and editorials as a kind of not-very-convincing camouflage for what was at the time one of the world's largest file-sharing networks. At the time, my attitude about file-sharing was that it didn't particularly hurt artists – most of whom were being ripped off by their labels anyway (it's a little known fact that very few musicians actually make any money off of record sales) – rather, it helped spread the word about their music to people who, if they liked it enough, would buy the CD. I felt that the party who genuinely had cause to be frightened of file-sharing weren't the tiny little indie bands but the colossal major labels; if you put out a Britney Spears CD with only one good song on it, I figured, people would just steal the one song and no one would buy the CD.

When feeling grand – usually after one or two of the free 20 oz. Mountain Dews available in our office kitchen fridge and a few rounds at the Nerf hoop – I'd imagine a new and digitally reinvigorated world in which sales of major-label behemoths like Britney and Creed would plummet, in which major labels would topple, in which culture would be reinvented as a kind of meritocracy where anyone with artistic ambitions could draw a decent living by setting up a PayPal tip-jar on their little corner of the internet. Don't laugh – you thought that, too.

About a year later, the RIAA finally came gunning for Audiogalaxy and shut us down. The dot-com crash hit, and everyone started wondering where the money was. I was taken into the special room at my offices – the one with the big, soft leatherette couches, the one reserved for hiring and firing – and fired. I loaded a box with my belongings and a pair of stolen Sony headphones and drove home from the gutted Audiogalaxy offices. A couple of weeks later I cast my lot with Okkervil River, and I headed out on my first major tour. I've spent more than half of the intervening five years on the road. After tour upon tour of paying more for gas than we were making at the shows, of skipping meals, of asking people in the sparse crowds we drew if any of them had available floor space where we could spend the night, I've finally managed to make it pay enough so that I draw roughly the same salary as a clerk at a 7-11. I use that comparison solely descriptively, as I couldn't be possibly be happier to be making a living doing what I love. At the same time, with no health insurance and no house and no idea how long my "music career" will last, it's kind of become everything I have. I try to use that fact as reason to throw all of my energy and my care into every single thing that I do; as a result, my attitude about file-sharing has become more complicated now that it has a direct impact on my life.

I'm not sure if file-sharing impacts our sales enough for it to hurt us. Sometimes I suspect that it does – other times I'm glad people get a chance to be exposed to our music. I do know that there's a subscription-based service called Sound Scan that all industry professionals – labels, booking agents, promoters, publicists – look at regularly. Sound Scan estimates how many records you've sold in stores and over the internet, and it is used to determine how "big" you are. If you're angling to have the opening slot on a lucrative tour or trying to get signed to a new label and someone takes a look at your Sound Scan numbers and doesn't like them, it's over. That's an aspect of file-sharing that I'm not sure people take into account. In any case, I honestly don't care quite as much about the commercial implications of file-sharing because they're basically out of my control and I guess that inside I still do take the view that file-sharing can be radically empowering to fans and that I can trust those same fans to buy the records.

My real concerns with file-sharing are primarily aesthetic.

The internet – with its glut not only of information but of misinformation, and of information that is only slightly correct, or only slightly incorrect – fills me with this same weird mixture of happiness and depression. I sometimes feel drowned in information, deadened by it. How many hundreds of bored hours have you spent mechanically poring through web pages not knowing what you're looking for, or knowing what you're looking for but not feeling satisfied when you find it? You hunger but you're not filled. Everything is freely available on the internet, and is accordingly made inestimably valuable and utterly value-less.

When I was a kid, I'd listen to the same records over and over and over again, as if I was under a spell. The record would end and I'd flip it over again, doing absolutely nothing, letting the music wash over me. My favorite record albums become like a totem for me, their big fat beautiful gatefolds worked as a shield against the loud, crashing, crushing world. I would have laid down my life and died in defense of a record like Tonight's the Night or Astral Weeks. I felt that those records had, in some ways, saved my life. These days, with all the choice in the world, it's hard for me find the attention span for a single album. I put my iPod on shuffle and skip impatiently to the next song before each one's over. I don't even know what I'm looking for.

Because my work is the most important thing in the world to me, I sometimes feel uncomfortable about it existing freely in the digital Library of Babel, these songs that I worked so hard writing and revising and rehearsing and recording and mixing (and re-mixing) and mastering (and re-mastering) shucked off the album and thrown up on the internet in hissy and brittle low-resolution versions with no kind of sequence or order, mixed in with odd leaked tracks and some sub-par live versions. In a world overstuffed with stimuli and choking on information, I feel like a musical album should have a kind of purity and a kind of wholeness, that every aspect of an album – from the sequencing to the artwork even down to the typesetting – should feels labored over and loved, and that the finished product should feel like a gift.

At the same time, I am a very ardent supporter of the way in which the internet empowers fans. I truly believe that the internet allows fans to connect with and participate in art in a way that's far more meaningful than it's been for decades, in a way that's more akin to the way folk music worked in the 1920's and for hundreds of years beforehand. Anyone who has ever been to a perfect rock show by their favorite band in a small venue can testify to the circuit of energy that is created at those shows between the audience and the band, to the way that energy washes up onstage from the crowd and is radiated back out again from the performers, to the way that it becomes less about an artist and an audience and it becomes entirely about a singular unrepeatable shared moment between a group of people. That's why I go to shows, and that's why I play music myself.

By the same token, those same great shows don't always sound the same when you run a line out from the soundboard into a minidisk player and put it up online. For one thing, soundboard tapes are notoriously bad; everything that's supposed to resonate through the air – like drums and amps – gets lost, while everything that's miked or going direct sounds dry and ten times louder. Similarly, all those other ineffable things that resonate through the air – those things that are the reason we go to rock shows in the first place – simply can't be captured through a line-out on a soundboard. I've heard a lot of the Okkervil bootlegs out there; some of them sound great and some of them make me wince. I don't mind that they're out there and I encourage bootlegging, but sometimes it's painful for me to contemplate how there are hours and hours of terrible-sounding Okkervil River music readily available on the internet.

We're going on tour again in the fall and we'll probably be playing some new songs. I love sharing new songs and refining them live in front of people. However, I'm going to save some of the new songs for our next recording session – in spite of the fact that we could use the rehearsal – for the simple reason that I don't want them to be heard first in versions that are inferior because we're still working through them and they're poorly from soundboards. I'm not at all asking that you don't record and share shows; rather, I myself am going to try to choose some songs that I'm okay having shared in early versions. Just as long as when the album comes out you don't do that thing on the message board where you go, "hrumph, I much prefer the earlier version better, by the way. I find so much more pure the version from Madison where Will's guitar is out of tune and he's so wasted that he forgets half the words and then apologizes and starts the song over. And then he forgets them again." -- Will Sheff

Show Review: Amiina with Peter and the Wolf (04.17.2007)

Really quick:  I saw a show last weekend at one of my favorite music venues in San Francisco - the Swedish American Hall.  The show was the traveling Austin-ites called Peter and the Wolf, followed by Amiina.

Peter and the Wolf play simple, compact folk songs from the traveling 1930s, all minors and sevenths.  Simple, yet effective, beautiful harmonizing songs.

Amiina are from Iceland and are Sigur Ros' string section.  Their set was other-worldly in the otherworldly way only Icelanders can do.  Now, I love me some Bjork.  We all do.  But when you get to the spacier Icelandic acts (Mum, Emilie Simon, Hanna Hukelberg, etc.) then you come to the source of it.  Swooning along, I had a ridiculous musical understanding:

Iceland's music strikes you the way music made from "ice" would (yes, you heard it here first).

To me, ice sounds include:  sounds resembling a saw (which Amiina utilized as a four-piece) or a crystal bowl (which Amiina compensated for by the circular motion of their fingers on 5 perfectly calibrated crystal wine glasses) or even a soft, tinkling sound (which Amiina accounted for with the use of bells, glockenspiel, large-glockenspiel-like-thing).  The bottom line... amazingly relaxing.  The only thing I wished I'd had was a bed.

Speaking of, I was so inspired that I bought their upcoming album which I am currently listening to.  And I see my bed in close view, in perfect form for me to float right beneath.  (yes, i sleep underneath my bed, what is the problem here?)

Video: Acoustic Guitar, Ladies and Indie Rock

All I'm saying is that this is well worth 10-minutes of your time.

Acoustic Indie Rock

Girls covering Indie Rock songs via acoustic guitar and our new/old best friend, Youtube.

Neutral Milk Hotel.

Mazzy Star.

Wilco.

The Smiths.

My favorites are the Shins "Young Pilgrims" R&B cover and the Radiohead "Karma Police".

What are yours?

* thanks to What Would Jesus Blog.

Video: Damien Rice & Ray Lamontagne cover "To Love Somebody" by the Bee Gees

i don't even know what to think of this, but i will say it is all worth it for the final 45 seconds. hello the new bee gees!

Video: M. Ward: Rag/Duet for Guitars #3

M. Ward's fingers still rule.

Video: The Arcade Fire: Guns of Brixton (Clash cover)

Now I am no Clash historian by any means, but I am sure it would be hard to find a more appropriate cover for an opening (performed in the middle of the crowd in a London theater) to the oncoming The Arcade Fire onslaught. Battle cry, indeed.

Tonight they will even be performing on Saturday Night Live. Welcome to the Big Time.

6 drummers

yes.

I Wanna Sex You Up: A Treatise on the collision of Early 90s R&B & Fashion

I am assuming most of you have probably already seen the new Saturday Night Live Digital Short, following "Lazy Sunday", featuring Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake, but if you haven't go andcheck it out now ... Dick in a Box.

What I really want to talk about here though is one of the bands this serves as an obvious parody of, Color Me Bad. Now I will happily say I was able to purge myself of some of the more skeptical purchase in my middle school years from Columbia House, kings of the 12-for-1 CD deal (i.e. Amy Grant and others), but I will happily say I could not rid myself of two of the best new R&B albums of that era, yes you remember, Color Me Bad: C.M.B. and Boyz II Men: Cooleyhighharmony. While I have probably sung the praises of Boyz II Men on this here site before, I will always and at any hour happily recount my obsession with Nate "Alex Vanderpool", Shawn "Slim", Wanya "Squirt" and Michael "Bass".

Most assuredly I showed up at my eighth grade dance sporting a suit coat and shorts (Kriss Kross: Totally Krossed Out, another keeper, weren't the only ones with a fashion statement -- clothes backward). Without question me and my white boy friends in Gainesville, Florida fashioned ourselves the next group on the horizon. However, what actually makes my vision of my eighth grade self the most happy is that now when I listen to the album, I am able to appreciate the intricacies on a whole new level -- the James Bond theme incorporated into "Sympin", the wonderful accapella introduction to "Under Pressure", and that isn't even mentioning "Motownphilly", "Uhh Ahh", or perennial sports favorite, "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday". Boyz II Men, I will make love to you like you want me to!

But Color Me Bad, the next step down the link of evolution from Timberlake's N'Sync, had style. Colored sportscoats with T-shirts underneath, a member of multiple nationalities (an evolutionary link to Black-eyed Peas?), a blatant call of "I Wanna Sex You Up", the ridiculously peppy "All 4 Love", titles with numbers and even a brief detour into the booming world music market with "I Adore Mi Amor", delivered one of the hottest bands around for about a year.

I'll stop because I have no point with this post and no direction, which, in a way is the point. Music is for many people, memories. It becomes timeless as you are able to step into your eighth grade shoes for at least a moment, even if it is by means of conjuring up a few more bands that time may forget.

Color Me Bad, thanks for being so bad!

Kriss Kross, I will never Miss the Bus as long as I live!

Boyz II Men, you'll always be at the End of my Road!

A Neverending Story

So, you gotta just love what the blogosphere has become. I don't want to quite use the term "po-mo", because I know many who happen to despise it, but you just have to love a reference of a reference of a reference. And if it does just happen to be post-modern, then please sue us (Ed. note: Not really).

The wonderful (at times) goldenfiddle, spewing its most lubricious tongue on all of the sometimes high art in pop culture, made a little reference to a certain article they wrote as a different name regarding Mr. Sufjan Stevens (as previously documented by Howie). Well now, it seems our good friends over at goldenfiddle have now made a reference to our reference of their reference (seen here under "Blowing own horn" link).

Well for you fine fellows here is another reference for your reference of our reference of your reference of your reference.

Touche.

SONS OF A GUN: The Intersection of Film and Music

Recently, I had the amazing opportunity of working with some friends who just recently got their documentary, Sons of a Gun, accepted to a film festival in New York. One thing that makes this such an exciting event is I have always been personally affected by the intersection of music and film, as it forces you to finally place visuals with a medium that instinctually inspires whole scenes to take place in some of our minds. However, this is a tricky task, because one can be devout in the practice and match up the song that focuses on love into a scene creating a love story, including the words and all. At times this device works amazing, and the scene is lifted to upper heights, but sometimes the audience feels as if they might as well just get slapped across the head and yelled how they are supposed to be feeling. What excites me much more is serving as DJ and remixing moments in songs to potentially create a whole new juxtaposition within the scene.

Regardless, the process is fascinating and forces one to look at music in such a new context, and, as such, I was going to include a bit of our correspondence regarding the various songs which can serve to make the film a better film. Additionally, the trailer is available at the website linked to above should you like to see it. The 8-minute trailer is the one I was part of the process on.

Additionally, I am going to start a list of films whose soundtrack is indelible to the feel of the movies, and which I believe work the best.

* "Dead Man", by Jim Jarmusch. Featuring a ragged, electric soundtrack by Neil Young.

* Paul Thomas Anderson films ("Magnolia", "Punch Drunk Love"), generally coordinated by Jon Brion. These films combine instrumental pieces by Jon Brion, as well as an eclectic selection of songs which really create amazing scenes.

* "Baraka", "Koyaanisqatsi", by Phillip Glass. Obviously sensorally phenomenal.

* "Harold and Maude", by Cat Stevens. Cat Stevens best works simultaneously capture the light-hearted comedy ("If you Wanna be Free") to his most somber ("Trouble").

* "Stealing Beauty", by Various artists. The story a teenage girl traveling to Italy that manages to blend Liz Phair, Stevie Wonder, John Lee Hooker and Portishead rather seamlessly.

* "Singles", by Various artists. Potentially what I would call the seminal album of the grunge era capturing twentysomethings in Seattle, with the added bonus of a guest spot by Pearl Jam.

* Vincent Gallo, Wes Anderson films. Eclectic and amazing.

* "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", by Ennio Morricone. Classic film, classic soundtrack. Has influenced mostly any Western following it.

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greg,

so, these are my endeavors so far.

song 1: (0:01 - 2:51) "poor boy, minor key" - m. ward

it feels as if this is the perfect piece of music for this documentary's feel; potentially as a whole. it simultaneous references the era and potential personal history of most of the protagonists, and also introduces a sense of whimsy. potentially, as you are looking at the full-length i would keep these ideas in mind, as what works in the trailer, will probably be too dramatic for the actual film. also, it might not even be a poor idea to consider using the majority m. ward songs, as he quite prominently displays a love for old american music (from louis armstrong jazz, to john fahey acoustic fingerstyle, to chet atkins electric guitar).

song 2: (3:01-3:50) "for the widows in paradise..." - sufjan stevens

* "devil's waiting" - black rebel motorcycle club (1:49 - 2:23)

this song references the same american era (this one blues), but has a sense of bittersweet foreboding to it. it also continues the "acoustic" theme of the piano established on the first track.

* "it never changes to stop" - the books (0:00 - 1:45)

the books would be an amazing soundtrack for any film. this song may particularly work for this film, as it has a sense of unease. it is also closely related to the sufjan song, and introduces the mourning wail of the cello.

* "landlocked blues" - bright eyes (2:04 - 2:25)

delicate and simple acoustic part. would have to be looped in some format though.

* "poison oak" - bright eyes (1:57 - 2:15)

still delicate and acoustic, but announces mourning wail in this case of the pedal steel guitar.

* "a ribbon" - devendra banhart (0:00 - 0:35)

mournful acoustic picking. alot of devendra is like this

song 3: (5:40 - 7:00) "vampire/ forest fire" - the arcade fire

i think this song really works as well. these other recommendations provide a less/more significant tonal shift. by utilizing the arcade fire's prediliction for creating epic songs, the mood will prove succesful, but potentially contrived. these other tones will help clarify exactly what you are after in the segment.

* "crap kraft dinner" - hot chip (5:20 - the end)

this song creates a caucophony of horns, almost in an easy listening thread, but with the hip-hop beats below it, it makes it potentially cathartic. hot chip makes music meant for films as well. i included a couple of songs with back-beats which maybe too heavy-handed in terms of changing the feel, but maybe not.

* "free until they cut me down" - iron & wine (1:38 - 3:12)

you may think, iron & wine, wha' happened? but this song has this slow build, so that when they actually start rocking out it is pretty intense. also, something that this song as well as a few others creates is this rhythmic, pounding, almost tribal feel which kind of works for the segment as this is the first time, these otherwise docile characters, are shown to be animals as they bite and bleed and fight and yell.

* "when we watch the hill" - the black heart procession (the joe beats experiment remix)

this song takes the mood into a more subdued level, where these actions kind of happen and the music becomes a passive narrator. to a degree staring at the situation in awe, rather than trying to guide.

* "one fore one" - the knife

same idea as the song before, but a little more spooky.

* any song by M83

all of their songs are extremely epic and fall under the idea of using the arcade fire song.

song 4 (7:50 - 8:45) ?

i personally think the repeat of an intense rock song is a bit too heavy-handed. the first time viewing this was my least favorite musical choice. therefore, one idea is to then echo the beginning piano and acoustic, and have something that is surging, without feeling as if it is mtv manipulating your emotions -- potentially bringing back the feeling of whimsy.

* "ooh la la" - the faces

this may prove to be to much of an homage as wes anderson and "rushmore" has now, at least in my mind, indelibly changes the meaning of this song. however, it is an extremely happy, carefree piece.

* "prank calls" - kelley stoltz (1:20 - 1:30)

you would have to chop up a bit of the song, but this specific section immediately echoes the m. ward song at the beginning, but in a much more triumphant manner.

* "james" - josh rouse (2:32 - 3:00)

this song is like 70s lite rock at a rocking pace, even busting out the flute. it may potentially work as well.

* "chariot" - page france (2:45 - end)

this is the final build of this song and it becomes intense before releasing into a rather soothing note at the end.

* "show me" - the cure (0:00 0:48)

though potentially outdated, this may potentially work.

well, i hope some of these work, or at least instills some ideas in your head, and let me know if you need any more assistance.

thanks for contacting me, i love thinking of music in other contexts.

(daimian)

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Indie-Classical: The Books live in concert

So to pick up where good old CrazyTalker Shoop-shoop left off, I did get a  chance to catch The Books in concert, in tow with The Clogs at the Great American Music Hall.

Something, I don't think I have shared with a whole lot of people is my love of a sub-genre slowly picking up steam, "Indie-classical". For a number of years there it was one of my favorite bands of the genre The Dirty Three producing a number of beautiful albums and holding the fort together (including the notoreity of being the the best band to back Cat Power with the wonderful album, "Moon Pix"). "Ocean Songs" from The Dirty Three still ranks up there with some of the most emotive albums I own. The idea that the swelling waves already so proficiently inhabited by Debussy, Mozart, and whatever other classical composer names you can conjure might have the ability to crash, to tip the boat, is a thing of beauty. The modern rock fan only really needs a driving drum beat to really allow any music to explode into their head. Classical, generally, has never really prescribed to that notion.

One of the oddest music comments I made was prior to seeing Christopher O'Riley in concert performing works from his first Radiohead cover album. I laughed as I said it, but he was an indie-classical pianist -- tried and true. However, in terms of his work, one of the most appealing things for me is not the ability to transform modern pop/rock to classical conventions, but to point out the correlation between modern composers and their classical forefathers. With his new album set to focus on the works of Elliott Smith, I think it finally is time to give some credit where credit is due. We are in the times of Rock-maninoff. We don't need no Rachmaninoff.

However, onto the show. Helping to lead the most recent offerings, alongside the wonderful The Arcade Fire related, the Belle Orchestre, The Clogs besides being frequent touring partners also parlay into the same mood. To my untrained ears the only element in The Clogs performance lacking from The Belle Orchestre show I previously attended was the absence of drums (and horns) to set it off into much more unruly territory. The Clogs, featuring members of The National, for this show were comprised of an electrical guitarist and a violinist primarily, with the further addition of The Books filling in the stringed orchestra with acoustic guitar and cello. Their melodic natures made me want to swoon, not to mention sit down, or more aptly, lay down.

The Books themselves put on an amazing show. Combined with their aesthetic of found sounds (everything from old interviews, to trees snapping, to whatever you can imagine) they created a multi-media presentation featuring clips of videos they have procured from various thrift stores on tours. These included videos focused on the founding fathers of the Mormon church, animal documentaries, travel exposes, and so forth. The most amazing part of the show is the overall awe not only inspired by the gorgeous music, but the visual accompaniment. I read in an interview that The Books members joked that 90% of the visual corresponds with the audio and I would have to agree with that assessment. From the initial audio/visual presentation coyly alluded to with the statement, 'We tip our hats to the founding fathers of the Mormons', featuring brief clips of at least 20 different Mormon gentlemen from the late 1800s/early 1900s either removing or returning their cap, to the suggestion we reflect on meditation while one member was tuning his guitar which actually led into approximately 50 seperate statements culled from the letters in "MEDITATION" (including the hilarious "I TAINTED OM"), the visuals served as a form of Baraka to transport the viewer. The set included "Take Time", "Enjoy your Worries", "If not now, Whenever" and a cover of "The Cello Song" by Nick Drake.

Unfortunately, I would say it is rare to leave a show not only feeling fuller, but more intelligent, more aware, more alive. This show allowed that. I will say actually the show so fully allowed a meditation within the audience that the show aptly ended with the demonstration of a tool featuring a lamp holder, a toilet apparatus and a smoke machine to create smoke rings, while they brought up their merchandise guy Matt who ad-libbed a story for about 5 minutes with members of The Books and The Clogs ad-libbing the music in the background. The audience didn't have a second thought about this otherwise unconventional finale. They didn't have to. They were already creating the next chapter.

Album Review: The Botticellis Ep

Somehow, miraculously, The Botticellis E.P. has come into my hands. Now generally I am not a fan of guitar-driven pop, but these guys seem to be onto something. From the beautifully dark cover of a beach scene with Van Gogh birds, one would assume the record is comparably in the doldrums; however, goodbye dark monsters, hello sunny future!

I always thought that once I moved out to California I would instantaneously  have the Beach Boys in my blood and start writing cheery confections. Maybe it has something else to do with some other Californian stylings, but sugar somehow has evaded my diet. These guys, though, seem to revel in it. The driving, choppy guitars, elaborate  choruses, and the sprightly drums all make the sweetest banana split possible. Combine the Shins with a pop/punk band and, voila, sunny-side up!

"Killing Spree", the most obvious single from the E.P. has summer jam written all over it, even ending with a delicate phrase where all of the sound just floats away with the breeze. As almost an echo of the moment, the album's last song, "The Timing", ends with the opposite feeling -- a triumphant build, a chorus of "Oohs" and "Ohs" -- a bitter-sweet reminder that makes me sad the summer is finally over.

Go see The Botticellis with The Papercuts in San Francisco on Thursday, February 8 at Cafe du Nord. Doors at 9:00pm, show $8 in advance, $10 at the door.

Another blogger's intelligent rant on "indie music" today (and clever, question-toned title)

This is borrowed from Tuning Fork, who has a site to review and critique the behemoth of all internet music magazines, Pitchfork Media, and their at-times, inconsistent, elitist quality:

(As a sidenote, for those who question Pitchfork's ability as the New York Times of the internet music world witness item "A", Clap Your Hands Say Yeah meteoric rise after their self-produced demo was review on the site, or, "B", the fact that (as referenced by Tuning Fork) Neutral Milk Hotel's excellent, and 8-year old, "In the Aeroplane over the Sea" album saw a 52% increase in sales after their re-release achieved a perfect 10.0 on Pitchfork's scale.)

Why I will not personally review, in full, the new Broken Social Scene or Animal Collective 

Or Devendra or Franz. I don’t need to. I can leave that task to People magazine and Teen Vogue.

What happened? I feel like the new definition of indie means we have a slightly higher ratio of stupid haircuts and eat less meat then those top 40 loving types. The press… like every fucking magazine and website I read is interviewing and reviewing the same “underground” artists over and over again and these bands that once felt like the most awesome secret in the world now have equal billing to Demi and Ashtons' wedding on the page.

I actually asked my friend today what Justin Timberlake was up to tonight because if I read one more wee tale of Devendra's recording experience in a big studio or My Morning Jackets take on politics, I was going to poke my eyes out.

Interview: The intimate interview with Two Sheds

In the spirit of continuing a fledgling tradition here at Crazytalk, and expanding upon it, we are not only going to talk of amazing established acts, we are also in the business of promoting the raw sound we hear randomly down the street, or on some website -- the people without the booking agents and the publicists. The ones who are still winding the path.

In this tradition I would like to present you Two Sheds, a band I, for one, feel has that essence -- the "thing" you have to have that not only shows your talent, but your love. Caitlin, the lead singer/songwriter, was nice enough to indulge me in this crazy, cyberspace land of ours by answering some questions about art, technology in the modern age, and her 8th grade french class. Enjoy.

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So, first the obvious questions. What is the band’s backstory? How did you come into existence/ significance of band name/ where are you based/ members and instruments/ introduction to music/ music as lifestyle? And how would you describe your ethos toward music, as well as how would you describe the current sound you are achieving?

Well, in the fall of 2003, Rusty Miller (our drummer) and John Gutenberger (our bass player) were both experiencing a lull in their other bands’ playing and recording schedules. (Rusty sings and plays guitar in "Jackpot", Johnny plays bass in "Jackpot" and sings and plays guitar in "Milwaukee"). I had spent the summer acquainting myself with the drums, and the three of us decided to start playing together, just for fun. I would hammer away at the drums, Russ would play guitar, and Johnny would play bass. We were just looking for something to do on weeknights, really. And we had a natural musical chemistry. Well, I had played guitar for a while (about 4 years), and