Enjoy!

(just in case you have no clue what I am talking about find my top albums from 2000 – 2005, my intro will explain how “nerdy” this process is)

1.  The Pains of Being Young at Heart:  The Pains of Being Young at Heart

2.  The XX:  XX

3.  Lookbook:  Wild at Heart

4.  …and You Will Know us by the Trail of the Dead:  Century Self

5.  Girls:  Album

6.  Cold Cave:  Love Comes Close

7.  Matt and Kim:  Grand

8.  The Little Girls:  Concepts

9.  A Place to Bury Strangers:  Exploding Head

10. Animal Collective:  Merriweather Post Pavilion

11. Sonic Youth: The Eternal (that’s right, they are easy to pass up but they still have it!)

12. Bear in Heaven:  Beast Rest Forth Mouth

13. Throw Me the Statue:  Creaturesque

14. Say Hi: Oohs & Aahs (I am a sucker for the “hook”)

15. The Wooden Birds: Magnolia

16. The Papercuts: You Can Have What You Want

17. Yo La Tengo: Popular Songs

18. Cymbals Eat Guitars: Why There Are Mountains (Bring me back to the beginning of it all)

19. Fanfarlo: Resevoir (Sound like many but sound good)

20. Julian Plenti: Julian Plenti … Is Skyscraper (Who cares what everyone else says!?!?)

Others to listen to, not that they were next in line but wanted to pint them out.  Some great songs on these albums and some bands that deserve attention:
Minor Kingdom: My Back Will Bend (any folk music fans?); Jack Penate: Everything is New (Pure Pop from the other side of the Atlantic); Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros (2 of the top 10 songs of the year off one album?); Washed Out: Life of Leisure – EP (waiting for the full length); The Mumlers (from my neck of the woods and a lot of fun)

Thanks for reading.

Make Moon @ Troubadour

TSS first discovered Make Moon when they opened for Octopus Project at the Troubadour about three months back. Recently Tim Corbin “Dallas” and an acquaintance ventured to watch them perform at Silverlake’s Spaceland. Here is their collective accounts of the evening:

Upon first appearance, Spaceland’s stage seemed to be taken over by a time warped Viking/Pilgrim hybrid of a band. Were they going to raid and colonize Spaceland? Explore the North Western sea brink? Perhaps harvest some maize? Luckily for us they were there just here to play music, enter Make Moon a five man band lead by their very impressive singer/front man: Drew Morgan.

Paralleling Make Moon’s appearance is their sound which is just as unconventionally captivating. Listening to them reminds me of the theme for a video game just before you reach the final boss. The deceptive calm and composed sound just before the game explodes into a paradoxically blissful chaos. The band’s style is structured by swift and adroit guitar transitions, constant and sudden increases in tempo, and the charmingly vacant gauntness found in Drew’s voice.

Make Moon made for a solid live set; though I was unable to hear the backing vocals (probably a technical problem) the band executed a sound performance in terms of cohesiveness of song, keeping the audience’s interest, and overall originality. I must admit though, towards the middle of the set somewhere between “Lady V” and “Presque Vu” I failed to realize that the band had changed songs. My only critique is that perhaps their songs became a bit too cohesive in the middle of the set, or maybe I had just gotten distracted by the holographic images of talking heads projected behind them. Make Moon ended decisively with “Wine and Grapes”. The final guitar rift was quite entrancing, and appropriate in terms of their build up style, like slaying Dracula at the end of Castlevania or defeating Ganandorf and rescuing the princess in Zelda. Interpret them as you may Viking Pilgrim and all, Make Moon has much potential as a band on the rise.

For more information, please visit their myspace page Here.

The video below was shot by Capt. AKAK and George Pants:

Dirty Dancing was first mentioned by the trip’s catalyst, Yang Wang. While spending time with him in the JFK baggage claim he had mentioned that Kutsher’s was where the movie was shot. I think my Mom and two sisters watched Dirty Dancing several hundred times, actually wearing out the VHS tape we’d used to record it off cable, but for some reason I could remember no details of the plot except for the fact that Patrick Swayze was in it. Actually, I think I remember more from the MAD Magazine spoof on it, Dorky Dancing, than I do any part of the movie – I had a bad MAD Magazine habit and spent most of my allowance on it. In the 3rd grade I copied a poem from one issue and turned it in as my own work. The teacher, Mrs. Young, was incredulous but could prove nothing.

Google Images at work

Without having anything to compare it to in the daylight Kutsher’s appears to be the exact place where they shot the film: there’s the pond, large dining rooms, the hotel, cabins, pathways, lawns and it’s all surrounded by woods. Several people in the town of Monticello told us that the movie wasn’t actually shot at Kutsher’s but at another, similar, nearby resort. Why all this discussion of a pop-culture relic? Ever since we had disembarked from the plane Carl Jung’s notion of synchronicity had been enveloping us in long chains of cause and effect. The rest of the weekend and subsequent road trip around New England would eventually look like a Mandelbrot Set after punching all the data into one of Capt. AKAK’s spreadsheets while being bored on the flight home to Long Beach. Dirty Dancing was just the beginning.

We didn’t know it at the time but Patrick Swayze would be dead by Monday, the day after the last day of the festival. This would prove to be the event that upon reading it through the clouded newspaper rack window at a gas station near Cooperstown, NY would begin a series of realizations that mirrored what had provoked Ansel Adams to write to his friend Cedric Wright in 1937: “A strange thing happened to me today. I saw a big thundercloud move down over Half Dome, and it was so big and clear and brilliant that it made me see many things that were drifting around inside of me. For the first time I know what love is; what friends are; and what art should be.” Patrick Swayze was an odd way to come the realization, but all things everywhere are connected by tiny invisible threads, and music is sometimes the only way to catalyze that experience. Patrick Swayze just happened to be the tipping point.

The Kids Are All Right (photo: George Pants)

The 2nd day of All Tomorrow’s Parties, 2009, began on Saturday at 1:30pm with Sufjan Stevens performing Seven Swans in its entirety. Sufjan and his band were all wearing tie-dye t-shirts that he claimed were purchased at the Kutsher’s gift shop. I didn’t doubt this as the previous night when Capt. AKAK and I stopped in for a cup of coffee one of the two old ladies that worked there mentioned the Grateful Dead and there were tie-dye shirts available. Despite the kindness of the two old women the coffee was horrid. An apparently underpaid EMT stopped in at the same time and tried to get a free cup of coffee off of them, but struck out. Apparently the 9/11 card has lost its cachet.

Sufjan Stevens and Band (photo: Capt. AKAK)

Like Sam Beam of Iron and Wine, Sufjan Stevens is a gifted songwriter and musician; by all definitions of the concept it would be hard to say otherwise. He and his band’s positioning on the bill made sense as the mellow rhythmic build-up of his songs and the overarching spiritual/Biblical messages were a functional theoretical groundwork for the rest of the day’s coming tidal wave of sound, language and image. During his set Sufjan asked us to be ready for our maker, to sacrifice our body and mind, so I took his advice and practiced for the next two days.

There are apparently no encores at an ATP festival so when a band finished a set, that was it, which actually made for a better concert-going experience; you didn’t have to sit around and wonder if the band was going to come back or not. When they said, “this is our last song,” they meant it. After Sufjan Stevens we walked around the grounds of Kutsher’s for awhile as it had stopped raining that morning and the sun had come out. On the other side of the lake from the hotel was an assortment of antique playground equipment – rusty and extremely dangerous – so naturally we gravitated toward it.

Ruben Remus Ain't No Doctor (photo: Capt. AKAK)

Several young hipster kids and a few new-age raver kids were playing on the equipment and it wasn’t until afterward, when Capt. AKAK and I were examining our photos from the trip, that I realized we were taking pictures of several people that we would meet the following day. The web of interconnectedness was being woven – and for some reason it had to do with psychedelic drugs, cocaine and giraffes.

The Twisting Mandala (photo: Capt AKAK)

Back inside Kutsher’s we witnessed Grouper, for me one of the best experiences of the weekend and music that I’ve listened to quasi-religiously since and become enamored of. Atmospheric, lovely, frightening, extremely analog, distorted and melodic, it’s an odd expression of beauty. You can hear the set here: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Grouper/Grouper_Live_at_ATP-NY_2009_on_WFMU/. Actually, you can hear many of the weekend’s performances, including Akron/Family at http://freemusicarchive.org/curator/WFMU/All_Tomorrows_Parties_NY_2009_on_WFMU. Apparently, Nick Cave played with the Dirty Three on Friday night. That was while we were waiting for our fucking food in the fucking diner in fucking Monticello. Fuck. (see previous post)

Grouper (photo: Capt. AKAK)

From there we ventured to the 2nd stage, in anticipation of another solo act, Atlas Sound. Bradford Cox had trouble with coordinating his sampler and various other pedals with his guitar playing, but it really didn’t matter. The tone for the show had been set already – the audience wanted to hang out with the artists, the stages allowed everyone to get really close and security was at a thankful minimum – so a little bit of technical difficulty wasn’t an issue. The Atlas Sound set felt a lot like hanging out with a friend who’s playing some music at your party – one of the songs he performed was written spontaneously while playing in a pizza restaurant during a friend’s birthday party.

Atlas Sound (note the choice of chairs) (Photo: Capt AKAK)

Somewhere at this point we ate food and ran into Akron/Family arriving and getting ready to unload their van. Hugs and handshakes were exchanged where appropriate. After food we watched Sleepy Sun, which wasn’t my thing but I’m sure that someone somewhere likes them. The crowd definitely seemed into what they were doing but by the same token I don’t think I’ve ever seen a critical crowd at any show that I’ve ever been to. We’ve all been raised since pre-school to be very nice and polite, which is probably in the end a good thing, although sometimes denying the inner Bill Hicks can have serious consequences.

Sleepy Sun, mid freak-out (Photo: Capt AKAK)

What Sleepy Sun and many of the other bands, particularly the following day, had in common was a certain fashion sense and cultural reference, whether intentional or not, to the mid to late sixties and early seventies. This could just be a reference to certain “Hippiester” tendencies that the crowd in particular showed (see our article on Edward Sharpe for a more detailed discussion) but it was there and worth commenting on nonetheless. The next day would find an all-day jam psychedelic jam session with Oneida; complete with Joshua Light Show-esque liquid projections through old public school overhead projectors. There is no criticism intended in this – it was fucking cool. But there is something behind it, perhaps a nostalgia for an imagined “better time” or perhaps it’s simply fashion. My theory is that there’s an ideal world in everyone’s mind and for some reason in a segment of today’s 20-somethings that imagined world has become attached to that era, or perhaps not, but it’s not for this review to answer.

Tuning Up (Photo: Capt AKAK)

Speaking of hippies Akron/Family was next and played extremely well. I haven’t heard them live many times but each time I do they seem to have improved dramatically as a band. From the audience’s perspective the sound was relatively muddy and it wasn’t easy to hear the detail of each instrument, but despite that small annoyance the show went great. Akron/Family has a very dedicated fan base. Many of the people that I spoke with during the weekend when asked, “Who are you most looking forward to seeing?” replied, “Akron.”

Akron/Family (photo: Capt. AKAK)

After A/F we ventured back to Stage 1 to see the next four bands: Autolux, Shellac, Deer Hunter and Animal Collective. Animal Collective wasn’t scheduled to finish their set until 1:45am. This review will go on for goddamn ever if I attempt to write about all four remaining bands. Suffice it to say that Autolux was predictably Autolux. If you’ve seen them once you’ve probably got it figured out. Not that they’re not completely fucking cool in an extreme version of how L.A. is really its own universe on par with Paris or New York but in a very dirty, broken, end of the road sort of way.

Shellac (note lack of guitar strap) (Photo: Capt. AKAK)

Steve Albini made Shellac’s guitars and amplifiers. Capt. AKAK and I were impressed by this but then he came out with his waist-strap guitar strap and we realized this guy was just a fucking weird dude. If you’ve ever listened to Big Black albums you realize that there’s a lot to Steve Albini that you’ll never be able to figure out. I’m convinced he’s a total right wing nut-cum punk/industrial/electronic icon. Again, no value judgments, just an odd combination (and for you people wondering about the use of the word “cum” in that sentence it’s not what you think).

Deer Hunter (photo: Capt. AKAK)

Deer Hunter played just fine but they seem to be suited for a smaller crowd and a smaller venue. For some reason I imagine them playing in some small Northern California town like Weed or Yreka on a mild summer night in a pizza parlor for the local teenagers. A minor-league baseball game probably just finished and all the kids came over to the show afterwards. Their songs have that feel of small-scale, homemade music that is still beautiful and good, just not made for large-scale events. I recommend buying their latest EP “Rainwater Cassette Exchange”. There are some very pretty songs on there. During the show Bradford Cox said something to the effect of, “We’re not going to be playing live again for a long time,” the ultimate meaning of which was left open to interpretation.

Animal Collective taught the lesson that there is still new territory in music, you just have to be willing to sound strange until people catch on, or catch up. Yelps, electronics, electric guitars, heavy non-traditional beats, vocal harmonies, all were present in their live show which made you want to dance really bad. There were people dressed up as animals, one kid had a giraffe mask, and everyone was dancing. I remember feeling like I too needed to move to Portugal (where the ATP festival program said that Panda Bear lived despite being raised in Baltimore).

Living in Portugal (photo: Capt AKAK)

Immediately before this Capt. AKAK and I had sat through about twenty minutes of For All Mankind, the 1989 documentary on the Apollo missions. Of the experience of being on the moon one of the astronauts interviewed said, “I suppose I was supposed to feel alien, alone. Instead I felt like I belonged there, like someone was reaching out to me and saying, welcome. I felt completely at home, at peace.” Animal Collective had a similar presence. Sonicly an alien landscape, once you hang out with the music for awhile it becomes a normal thing, and your eyes shift toward future, unknown horizons.

After this we headed to the bar where DJ’s were playing more music. We danced for a while, I think, it had been a long day at that point, and then headed back to the hotel room around 3am for sleep.

If your brain is still working stay tuned for Part 4 – Day 3 “Capt. AKAK Transcends Time and Space”.

Having fun at 3am (photo: Capt. AKAK)

From JFK we drove North in a rain which had begun as we’d loaded our bags into the back of the rental car. At this point we had become crazed from lack of sleep and were having extreme difficulty in utilizing the parts of our brains that help you find places. The fact that the roads in the New England states make no sense to people raised on freeways, the grid system and adequate signage didn’t help either. Eventually, with the help of a purchased map, Internet directions, directions from 2 different smart phones and eventually a gas station attendant we made it to Monticello, New York, where our hotel was.

For the last two years All Tomorrow’s Parties has been held in the hotel and on the grounds of Kutsher’s, a once-famous resort from the “Borscht Belt” era which reached its peak during the mid-1960′s when Jewish families would come and spend summers at the various loosely connected resorts that the Catskills region was famous for. Nowadays it’s a downtrodden, practically abandoned relic echoing what was once an upscale-now-kitsch past. Attendees at All Tomorrow’s Parties had the option of staying in one of the old resort’s rooms, but they were expensive – although the performers stayed for free – or you could try to find a cheaper room in nearby Monticello.

The Econo Lodge we stayed at was run by an Indian guy who had pissed off his family in New York City and was banished to the hell-hole of Monticello. As we were checking in he seemed to imply that he could find us women if we had the money. This part of the story gets a little iffy though because about 15 minutes after checking in Capt. AKAK and I were sleeping soundly in the one queen-sized bed that our room had. This actually worked out well because by the end of the trip we found that our psyches had been completely interwoven – this can happen when people’s skulls are in the same region while dreaming or listening to loud music for extended periods of time.

Be careful, no lifeguard on duty at the Econo Lodge's pool.

By the time we woke up it was getting dark and the festival had already begun. We were hungry so we ate at a local diner before heading to Kutsher’s. The first of many miracles on the trip occurred at that diner – having something to do with the power emitted via Capt. AKAK’s beard – and a picture of Christ appeared on the table. Several of the employees were impressed, but that didn’t help our food get there any faster. For some reason the rest of the state of New York was weathering the Great Recession with a wink and a click of the heels save for Monticello, which had apparently become the dumping ground for people that couldn’t cut it anywhere else in the State. We theorized over our fifth glass of water that it had something to do with the close proximity to a WalMart, which seems to bring in its wake an assortment of the downtrodden.

Miracle at the dinner table.

After several bands had already played we were served our food, quickly ate it, then hurried over to Kutsher’s. But as with a lot of things while we missed the The Drones, The Fellies, and Dirty Three we seemed to arrive at exactly the right time. Without being aware of it at the time the next band on the bill would set the tone for the entire festival.

We were introduced to Suicide after braving a walk in the dark and the rain from the parking lot to the entrance of the venue, which was Kutsher’s lobby. Capt. AKAK picked up his photo pass from a pretty All Tomorrow’s Parties staff member who had flown out from L.A. and we headed to the Stardust Ballroom. This was where Stage 1, the main stage, was located. It had three tiers connected by ramps which were used at one time for tables where hotel guests would dine while taking in a show. Now they were empty and for people to stand, though the large one-time dancefloor near the stage is where most people would congregate during the weekend’s performances. Stage 2 was a smaller stage on the opposite side of the hotel in what looked like your standard large hotel dining room, although an oversize chandelier near the stage made it somewhat memorable by the soft light it cast over the crowd before a given band would begin its set.

2nd Stage at All Tomorrow's Parties 2009

As we walked into the Stardust Ballroom the sounds of Suicide were deafening. I knew nothing of the New York City duo so as we found our way to the front of the crowd through the darkness all I could react to was the old guy wearing reflective ski goggles at a giant keyboard accompanied by a man who was ostensibly singing and in between words smoking a cigarette. He reminded me of the old guys you sometimes see walking out of methadone clinics, all skin and bones but still able to hold a really good conversation. Like a Herbert Huncke but of the post-Vietnam world, all technology and street smarts, the inevitable step in Suicide‘s time past The Velvet Underground. However, this guy was now wearing a warm-up jacket, tennis shoes and a fleece beanie; image didn’t matter much anymore.

Suicide - Martin Rev and Alan Vega

The subs were working extremely hard passing the sound of the drum machine that the guy on the keyboards – Martin Rev, I would learn later – was blasting into them. Actually, that might have had more to do with the sound engineers and what seemed like an overall policy of the All Tomorrow’s Parties organizers: deafen or at least seriously damage anyone’s hearing standing within fifty yards of the PA speakers. Their website even warned, “Your hearing can be damaged if you do not wear hearing protection.” They weren’t kidding. I had to use earplugs (“Hearos” from Guitar Center, highly recommended) but Capt. AKAK chose to forsake any hearing protection and admitted after the 3-day festival to suffering for it but it also being a requirement to truly enjoy the music. This is not the place for the discussion but I tend to agree with him in principle – for some bands I had to take them out to really be able to hear any detailed sound – but for the most part I wasn’t willing to go any more deaf than I already am.

Despite not knowing much about Suicide‘s music or history I could get into the primitive electronic feel of it and the idiosyncratic almost spoken word vocals of the singer, Alan Vega. But what was the most striking thing was the enveloping nature of the sound – you couldn’t escape it except through removing yourself from the environment. There was no ignoring what was going on, it was so fucking loud it forced you to pay attention. The sound ripped through your nervous system, rattled your skeleton, latched onto your soul and didn’t so much cradle it as pin it down. It was like a violent spirituality and it would become the theme of the weekend: beautiful, blissed-out, ecstatic yet seedy and always hinting at darkness.

Panda Bear

After Suicide we wandered around for a moment and then waited for Panda Bear to begin his set. Most musicians would set up and tear down their own equipment during the 3-day festival which gave the audience time to see the minutiae that musicians deal with in making their music – plugging in cables, asking a stage hand for an extension cord, or figuring out how to deal with a broken piece of gear. I was familiar with Panda Bear from his albums so I was surprised to see him performing his songs solo with drum machines and samplers. It’s a lot to keep working properly – at least with instruments you can improvise if something goes wrong.

Which for me brings up an unavoidable point which is it’s difficult to talk about the musical experience of someone performing what amounts to an already known outcome. It’s a different experience, but it’s not necessarily live music. You can get just as into it but in a different way that definitely feels detached or more atmospheric as opposed to musical. The fact that he had a screen showing video behind him underlined this point; it was like we were watching him perform a soundtrack to a movie – a movie that had already been shot and we knew the outcome to. There are no value judgments in this – Panda Bear and later Animal Collective were just as exciting and in the case of Animal Collective made you want to dance just as much as anyone else, but at times it felt like technicians were playing for you as opposed to musicians. The musicianship involved had occurred during the original recording process.

After Panda Bear we stumbled into the Criterion Cinema room on the 2nd floor above the lobby to watch a movie until the next act began. We walked into the room as the final scene in Gimme Shelter was playing where Mick Jagger is in the editing room with Albert Maysles watching the Hell’s Angel repeatedly stab the black guy in the green suit. Events like this would occur throughout the weekend that amounted to an echo effect between the past and the present. It was like standing in the Grand Canyon of Rock ‘n Roll culture and being able to hear the howls and hand claps of history echo through time. We were standing on one side of those echos and Mick Jagger and Altamont and the end of idealism were on the other.

Iron & Wine

As if we needed to underline this point as the credits began to roll we headed back over to Stage 1 to see if Iron and Wine were any good. As soon as Sam Beam started his set and stopped a few bars into the first song, his song that was featured in a Skittles commercial, and admonished the audience to sing along we quickly left. No one had the heart to tell the guy that this was not his environment because he did not possess the polarity that was required by the spiritual vortex that had unwittingly been unleashed through the combination of bands, the venue, and the current cultural and historical milieu: in short, he didn’t imply that anything was on the line. Anything at his performance you were going to have to manufacture – you couldn’t sit back and let the music construct the bright, twisting mandala.

After that we were tired so we went to see David Cross tell jokes. He was funny in a way that would take too long to describe and isn’t really worth it. Suffice it to say, if you fool him twenty times, then that’s someone’s fault, he couldn’t really remember. By this time we had lapsed back into a near-coma state because of lack of sleep and our early morning experiences with Mr. Wang so instead of hanging out for the rest of the evening – the bars at Kutsher’s had DJ’s and were open until 4am or so – we stumbled out into the cold evening rain and made our way back to our queen-sized bed at the Econo Lodge.

Stay tuned for Part 3 – Day 2 “The Ghost of Patrick Swayze”

David Spade...er, Cross, sorry.

The Man who gave us a ride to the airport in Long Beach, CA. Capt Shabbin.

The objectivity of journalism is typically a farce. The author can never completely hide their intentions in writing what they’re writing, no matter how pedestrian the topic. At the very least perceptions and attitudes that they’re not even aware of as being the basis from which they’re writing color their work.

That being said it’s probably best just to be out with it: I’m not even going to attempt an unbiased account of the following events involving a trip in which two friends – Capt. AKAK and George Pants – traveled from Los Angeles to New York to witness and participate in 2009’s All Tomorrow’s Parties music festival. It begins, as many stories begin nowadays, on Craigslist.

After the festival we wanted to drive back across the country to Los Angeles on old US Highways: US 20, US 12, US 2, etc. Being the cheap bastards we are, or more accurately I am, I figured that we’d try to find one of those mythical situations that are assumed to exist but probably don’t: the family who needs their car driven from one side of the country to the other and is willing to pay you to do it. We never found them. Instead, we found a man identifying himself as Yang Wang.

Through an odd set of circumstances which began with me posting an ad offering our cross-country driving services and a lady finding it who needed a scooter delivered from New York City to Cleveland we found ourselves sitting in the JFK baggage claim at 6am on the first day of the festival waiting for this mysterious internet presence. The lady with the scooter recommended we talk to Mr. Wang soon because he needed to get a minivan from New York to Burbank – and he was supposed to deliver her the scooter at the same time.

Yang Wang's E-Mail of Death

6am is a tough time for people from Southern California to be in the JFK baggage claim. It’s really still 3am for you and things are starting to look and feel very odd. Capt. AKAK came up with the metaphor of the come down from psychedelic drugs and in a very tangible way he was right. Hopping on a plane at 9:30pm on the West Coast after working all day and landing on the East Coast at 6am the next day is a profoundly consciousness-shifting experience. Everything seemed like a diorama come to life – things that weren’t typically funny were ridiculously hilarious and there was a seedy edge to the entire scene. Capt. AKAK claimed that my beard was growing faster than it had been earlier. It was in this state of mind that Yang Wang presented himself to us.

George Pants crazed at the airport.

Mr. Wang is someone you don’t fuck with. He’s a balding man of mixed Korean/Anglo descent in his mid-thirties who speaks in a thick Boston accent and looked like he just stepped out of a thrift store dressing room. As we shook hands and spoke our initial greetings the first impression of him was of a general pleasantness, but like most people you find on the Internet he was crafty and was actually setting a trap for us to quickly fall into.

The story he’d told us up to this point was that he had the minivan sitting in the employee parking lot at JFK – he’d made a claim of “working for the airlines” – and if he was comfortable with us he would give us the keys and we would drive away toward our respective destinies. Alas, this was not going to be what went down. For the next half hour we would have to endure circuitous logic and finally exasperating frustration as he pursued his ultimate goal of making complete idiots out of us.

After initial introductions his first words to us were, “Wow, I thought you guys were gay.” This was comforting in an odd way, since he had apparently changed his mind upon meeting us. From there things went down hill. Beforehand, Capt. AKAK and I had decided that we would do a little “Good Cop, Bad Cop” routine on him. A few minutes into this Mr. Wang said, “You guys are trying out the old Good Cop, Bad Cop aren’t ya’?” Our strategy was quickly unraveling.

At the half hour mark we’d made no progress and were quickly trying to figure out how to get away from this guy. We finally agreed to meet in Boston in 3 days and pick the van up from him then…which we had no intention of doing. Somehow in Mr. Wang’s Universe meeting in Boston instead of New York made sense. At that point we were tired of asking questions.

As Mr. Wang left his parting words were, “I’ll buy you guys a hot dog in Boston.” Nice enough we thought, until he gave us one last look over his shoulder and said clearly, “I’ll make sure it’s Kosher for you.” By that time he’d entered the TSA line and we had no recourse but to walk away feeling like we’d been bested by this Asian man who enjoyed fucking with white people who prided themselves on their intelligence.

At the rental car counter we found a company willing to give us a good price on a small SUV and after loading up our bags we hit the road for the town of Monticello in upstate New York, near the Catskills.

Stay tuned for Part 2…which will actually involve music. Probably.

Capt. AKAK flying to New York.

I was introduced to Nomo at my apartment, and it instantly took me back to the first time I had heard head hunters. I haven’t been able to stop listening to it since. I called my brother in New York to tell him about it. He was at work as I was describing them and did a quick search. “Ann Arbor, MI based post-afrobeat dance explosion?” he asked. Exactly. It would be impossible to review the album as a whole as each independent track has a unique flavor and texture to itself, but I can say that the juxtaposition of modern beat sampling, funk-inspired rhythms, thick and crunchy horn choruses, and sax solos makes Ghost Rock incredible. It definitely gives you a direct order to rock the fuck out.

Check the album here:

Megafaun make me want to move to Durham, North Carolina where I imagine my life would involve frolicking around in forests, exploring gorges and finding shady rocks to use as diving boards into hot springs.  Brothers Brad and Phil Cook, along with Joe Westerlund make music that’s best served gathered in a circle lit by the moon and campfire while you “sing to each other like friends telling stories,” as their buddies Akron/Family might say.

These young men create the perfect fusion of upbeat rhythms, freak folk, and super-experimental psych rock. But, quite honestly, their kickass beards were what won over the crowd instantly August 4th at The Echo opening for Bowerbirds. The night’s set was drawn almost entirely from their new album, Gather, Form & Fly, which Phil Cook informed me was influenced in part by the death of his grandfather. But their energy comes off as anything but mournful:  it’s spontaneous enough for fans, inclusive enough for first-timers, and funny from the ridiculous banter and shit-talking between songs. The Cook brothers even jumped off stage, bouncing and goofing off with the grinning crowd. They’re happy to be playing in LA. Brad Cook pours his heart out to the audience revealing that he is the world’s biggest Lakers fan and spent all of Tuesday loitering at Staples Center. Subsequently he ended up “dusting his bank account on Lakers swag” the next day.

I’m beaming because they are beaming. It feels like they’re family. I grab the Captain’s arm and squeeze so tight as to let out some form of pent up aggression in the realization that they are about to rock my world for the next thirty minutes. This is my second time seeing Megafaun, and what is surprising about their live performance compared to their album is how much their most somber and soft songs make you want to dance. And dance HARD.

Charming as hell, in that “mountain-man-please-keep-me-warm-baby” way, they sing each song, each harmony, each note tender and blissful, mixing standard song structures with noise freakouts. They won us over immediately with “The Fade.” It plays like a happy and upbeat declaration of death and explains our minds slowly and regrettably let memories slide. But they’re smiling, and so I know everything is going to be OK.

Phil paces the title track “Gather, Form & Fly” with banjo rhythms, though his fingertips pluck the strings so softly you would think the mere touch was an accident. This fades dirty and raw when Joe Westerlund transitioned from thinking out loud with the crowd to belting out “Been a long time since I’ve spoke to an extent, reflecting on the past and the roots of intent,” emphasizing each word like he’s almost pissed off in a cute way. Then the Cook brothers join in on the vocals and  funky riffs during  “Columns.”

The highlight of the evening was when the trio engaged in free form noise experimentation for three-or-so minutes at the beginning of “The Darkest Hour,” thereafter belting out in unison, “I have been wallowing inside the darkest hour.” Their lips are nearly a foot from the microphone, which gives the harmonies a distant and faded sound. But Megafaun is anything but withdrawn from us.

For their last song, the trio formed together unplugged at the front of the stage for, “Tides.” The song sounds different from the album version in the most familiar way possible. They sang their last words with eyes closed, chins up and beards glowing. It was beautiful.

Enjoy the pics.

“The Group”

Ryan McGinley, from "Sun and Health"

Los Angeles, July 23, 2009 -

The night began like most others in L.A.; we sat in traffic. My friend Krystof was trying to figure out why his iPhone didn’t sound right playing through my car speakers. I wasn’t paying too much attention – I was busy checking my work e-mail on my phone while driving and attempting to explain a lecture I’d been listening to during my morning commute on the nature of memory by some guy named John Steele (a random Pirate Bay download). Little did I know how prophetic it would turn out to be. From Wikipedia, “While his work is often closely related to the psychology of fragrance, in talks and writings Steele also explores Buddhism, Vedic culture, the great yugas, geomancy and geomantic amnesia, geobiology, time out of balance, shamanism, the effects of geological formations on human consciousness, cross state retention, and the importance of sacred sites and spaces.” That could easily be a review of the new Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros record.

Part of a fashionable non-movement of “Hippiesters”, Edward Sharpe is a collection of ex-hipsters who have seemingly become spiritually enlightened, which only time will prove or disprove. If you’ve ever attended Agape church in Los Angeles – and if you’re plugged in to celebrity culture at all you’ve heard of it – then you’ll know the vibe (by the way, the “church” is very much worth going to at least once – http://www.agapelive.com/). There are lots of people in hippy-like fashionable garb driving home in Mercedes, Bentleys and on custom Harleys.

The band is fronted by Alex Ebert, of Ima Robot, and consists of members of various L.A.-based bands. It also has a former American Apparel chick Jade Castrinos…but I haven’t been able to confirm any American Apparel photos, just that she worked for them and was a fixture of the LA hipster scene of the mid-2000′s. But why all this background for a show review? That’s part of the deal, are they for real or not? Perhaps the suspicion arises because of the fact that Alex Ebert used to wear eyeshadow, or the connection to major Hollywood stars, or the fact that there were about a hundred onlookers behind the stage all wearing extremely expensive clothes and not dancing. Whatever the case the music is fun, a lot of fun, and that’s probably why at the end of the day none of the “why” actually matters. And to see it relatively new, before the flood, was a treat.

I won’t speak about the opening band Eskimo Hunter, it isn’t fair to them. I wasn’t there to see a cross between My Bloody Valentine and whatever else they are supposed to be so after doing my best to get into them I spent the rest of their set checking out the strange mix of people that Edward Sharpe had brought out. There were raver kids, hipsters, hippies, bro’s, adults, film industry people and an unusually large amount of high-school kids, which might have something to do with the Alex Ebert/Ima Robot connection. The place was packed – people were everywhere – but because of our connection with Capt. AKAK we were able to get right up next to the stage.

Once the one-man sound crew began setting up for Edward Sharpe you could see how fucking cool this show was going to be – piano, tambourine, a xylophone, an accordion, a trumpet, synths, 2 guitars, bongos, drums and several vocal mics. After a long time – there was one guy setting up the microphones – the band came on stage, all twelve of them. They began the set with “Janglin’” a quasi sing-along that essentially defines the band – feet stomping rhythm, lyrics about spiritual redemption, and a lot of ass shaking.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros are if nothing else a great party band. Everyone in the group is into the music and into the feeling that it elicits in the audience – you can’t help but have fun. Any cynicism or coolness you came to the show with quickly evaporates – if you don’t believe me by the end of the show I was on the stage after someone shouted “Can we get on the stage?” and Alex said “Yes, just don’t break anything.” And I don’t do those things.

But this gets back to the question – are these guys for real? Do they mean what they’re singing about and the vibe that they put off? There is the definite feeling of a spiritual movement, of proselytizing, of doing things differently. They’re like a traveling religious show. Alex Ebert wears all white, is barefoot, and holds hands with people in the crowd while he sings. His first words to the crowd were the cryptic, “I had a paleolithic egg around my heart, I’ve broke it off.” The members of the band look at you in the eye and smile, after the show everyone in the band comes out and hangs out with the audience. Krystof was able to talk with Jade (although he couldn’t bring himself to confess his feelings for her). It’s like everyone was a member of some new-age church and decided to start a band; there’s a distinct lack of guile. At the end of the show we saw the accordion player getting picked up by her Mom.

Ryan McGinley is a New York photographer and the guy who took the photo above, you probably know who he is. When asked about his pictures he said, “My photographs are a celebration of life, fun, and the beautiful. They are a world that doesn’t exist. A fantasy in which freedom is real. There are no rules. They are of the life I wish I was living.” Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros probably fall into that category. They’re a mixture of the real and not real, of a staged experience and the authentic, they evoke possibilities beyond our own inevitable ones. And for that they point to the world we all crave.

Enjoy the pics.

Pre-Game Warm-up

Eskimo Hunters

Eskimo Hunters

Eskimo Hunters

Capt strikes again.

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Hells Yes

The Crowd on Stage

The Crowd on Stage

The Crowd on Stage

The Crowd on Stage

George Pants on Stage!!

George Pants on Stage!!

Mr. Pants with Mr. Sharpe

I wonder what Krystof's heart rate is at right now

Two weeks ago, I went on a mini tour to see Dirty Projectors back-to-back nights at the Troubadour and then the Casbah in San Diego. The first night consisted on a special night out between Ebee and I where we decided it should be just the two of us as we tried to recapture the magical events that had inspired so much awe in us on New Years Eve in New York merely 7 months ago.

I have been a fan of the DP from back when the band consisted mainly as a solo act from the gawky Frontman Dave Longstreth. He would record breathtakingly awkward songs on a four track in his room that were mostly uncut and special in an Elliott-Smith-roman-candles kind of way. Their new album is in stark contrast to this, featuring professional sound and a much fuller, polished composition. I had illegally downloaded, Bitte Orce, about 6 months ago but decided that I wanted to hear the songs performed live for the first time, so I deleted it. This new philosophy of listening to music live for the first time has created a child-like giddiness leading into shows; I highly recommended it. Anyway, their new band is a much expanded lineup from its humble origins featuring three beautiful young woman, a new bass player, and a drummer plus the Frontman. The band has been able to unlock new sounds unlike any other rock band in the indie underworld that I have heard to date. There are looping interwoven harmonies, vocals that sound like a keyboard and off-centered time signatured drum sequences that flow even within their fragmented structure. The guitar work of Dave Longstreth is so different to me with his pick only strumming strings in which his fingers are placed on. I am at a loss for describing it effectively but it reminds me of David Byrne if that helps (whom they just collaborated with in Dark Night Compilation). Bottom line is the effects of the concert were electric to me, particularly the song Remade Horizons(watch the vid); the song begins with a landscape of bopping female voices, followed by an entirely new song sequence, yet by the middle the two separate loops have been united, creating a whirlwind of cold air through the frontal lobe. Seriously my legs began to weaken and my mind quieted, forgetting time.
San Diego was more of the same except the familiarity of songs now created a warmness in my heart rather than fascination from new discovery of sound. Additionally I was about to take three old friends from Texas to the show. Fun I hope was had by all and I got to meet a hilarious guy named Tim who yelled out that he loved Wilson Phillips before DP performed….it was awesome.

Enjoy the pics.

About two years ago, me and about 6 of you were able to see Tortoise live for the first time at the El Rey. I am very excited to be afforded the pleasure of seeing them again for the tour of their new album, Beacons of Ancestorship, due out June 23rd.

Two Drummers plus Jeff Parker on Guitar……lots of energy and fun. And also you know Johnny Mc is the greatest drummer ever in my humble opinion.

Ten Tickets @ $29 a piece.

1. Capt AKAK
2. Capt Shabbin
3. Willum
4. mRoyed
5. Hello Kitty
6. ebee
7. Angel
8. WB Records Friend
9. MartotheLyn
10. ??