34 posts tagged “music”
Well, that happened.
When I was 12 years old, Iron Maiden represented the apex of human musical achievement. Every song was loud, fast, at least 5 minutes long, and usually about something cool like mummies, or swords, or sword-wielding mummies. I had an Iron Maiden patch sewn onto my jean jacket, and used to regale my friends with stories of Iron Maiden's lavish stage shows (told entirely second-hand, from what I read in Hit Parader). Iron Maiden's "Powerslave" was not my first heavy metal album (that honor goes to Twisted Sister's "Stay Hungry"), but it was the first album of any kind I ever fell totally, passionately in love with.
As it happened, my love affair with heavy metal ended before I ever became an avid concert-goer. Before last night, the closest I'd ever come to a heavy metal show was when I saw the Darkness play before a sold-out crowd at the 9:30 club (still one of the five best concerts I've ever seen). But the Darkness are more glam than metal, and they serve up their rawk with more than a few knowing winks.
When I learned that Iron Maiden was not only coming to town, but that they would be playing a set taken exclusively from their first seven albums...and on a Powerslave-themed stage set, there was no question in my mind about whether I'd be attending. I was pleasantly surprised when Hotrod -- a recent convert to Maiden's charms, thanks to Guitar Hero 3 -- agreed to join me.
I'm not sure what I was expecting when I walked into the arena, but it certainly wasn't a capacity crowd of completely devoted, unapologetically loyal fans, bedecked in Iron Maiden apparel, screaming at the top of their lungs for their favorite band on the planet. New music? These people want none of it. Maiden was great in 1984, and they're equally awesome now, thank you very much. No, they don't think those songs about wizards seem a little ridiculous 20 years later, commie. It was a little bit overwhelming, frankly. If you want to feel really good about yourself and the choices you've made in life, I humbly suggest attending an Iron Maiden show and basking in the contrast.
So first, the good news: The band were absolutely committed to their performance, charging around the stage like teenagers, screaming Britishisms, snarling, nimbly dodging enormous pyrotechnic explosions. They looked fantastic...I don't think the boys in Iron Maiden ever suffered nightmarish descents into drugs and alcohol. You'll never see a healthier-looking bunch of 50-something rock musicians. They played the "hits." I left about an hour-and-a-half into a show that was still going strong and they had already played every song I really wanted to hear. The highlight was "The Trooper," my all-time favorite Maiden song. I had that picture up in my room as a kid, and I sang along with every word.
As for the bad: If I'm ever amidst that sort of crowd again it'll be too soon. I've never seen a larger concentration of mouth-breathing fuckups in one place. There are the best and brightest of society and then there are people that go to Iron Maiden shows. Wholly off-putting, especially when they're pressing their loins up against you to brace themselves to get a better grainy photo of the band. Also, Bruce Dickenson is inexplicably bitter about how he is perceived. The slights leveled at Iron Maiden throughout the years were a recurring theme in his stage banter -- a little unseemly for a 50-year old multi-millionaire who plays dress-up and sings for a living. Making matters worse, the mix kinda sucked, as did his voice, which is not so acrobatic as it was 20 years ago. Finally, no Eddie. Eddie is Iron Maiden's zombie mascot, pictured above in "Trooper" regalia. He didn't make an appearance on stage while I was there, though its possible they saved him for the encore.
So that's it. The final chapter in my Iron Maiden story. I feel like I checked an important box. I'm glad I went, but I'm equally glad I left when I did.
I just got home from watching Iron Maiden perform before 10,000 screaming troglodytes in a giant outdoor arena. It is quite possible the show -- some 40 miles away from my home -- is still blaring on as I type these words. I very much hope to write a more detailed review in cold light of morning, after my hearing has returned and I've had some time to reflect, but I thought I'd get down some of my visceral impressions before I toddled off to bed.
- I really am too old for heavy metal concerts. That one was it for me, unless my (as yet unconcieved) kids discover my old Judas Priest records and develop a taste for the stuff.
- The male-female ratio was about 15-to-1. That's a conservative estimate. It may have been closer to 20- or 30-to-1.
- On a scale 1 to 1,000, the level of ironic sentiment in the audience was about a 1.3.
- Budweiser, pot smoke, and body odor smell bad enough individually. I don't need to take them together.
- You don't want to spend too much time with your average 30-something Iron Maiden fan.
- The previous sentence would probably be more accurate if you removed the modifier "30-something."
- Iron Maiden apparently has a plane. Who knew?
- US Airways pilots support Iron Maiden. At least according to a sign I saw hoisted in the front row. Something to consider when you're making your next travel booking.
- For a guy with millions of dollars, legions of loyal fans and a plane, Bruce Dickenson is a little bitter about how the critics perceive his music. He told us so.
- After this show, I'm not so sure that musical "loyalty" is the virtue I always thought it was. It's probably not the best of signs if you're still listening to the same thing you were 20 years ago.
- They played all my favorite songs before I left, which was before the end of the main set.
- All that bitterness and head-banging is apparently quite healthy. The lads look rather slender and spry for 50-somethings.
Ok. Now I'm tired (see point one). More thoughts tomorrow.
Fucking Dan Bejar.
I was all prepared for this week's post to be a bilious rant about how much his show sucked, what a giant turd farmer he is and how sandwich-eating Cannucks are a blight on the music industry.
I was pretty excited about it. I've been carrying around a lot of hate following his shameful performance with the New Pornographers the last time through town and I was very keen on a little character assassination. So what does that unshaven, curly haired fuckstick do on Friday night? He takes the stage at the Black Cat and puts on a tremendous show, during which he appears to actually care about every song.
Vexing.
I like slagging douchebags more than anyone, but I find it real, real hard when they're talented. And Dan Bejar is one talented douchebag.
So in lieu of bashing Bejar, I guess I'll just have to comment on one of the odder phenomena facing the indie hipster concert goer. If there was a dark stain on last night's show, aside from an air conditioner that could have frozen mercury, it was a phalanx of sorority girls and their thick-necked, date-raping fraternity counterparts clustered directly in front of us.
The guys were distinctly uninterested, mercifully leaving to go take Jaeger shots and share uncomfortable homo-erotic silences after just a few songs, but the sorority girls persisted for the bulk of the show, throwing the devil horns, shouting woo, and taking an unending supply of Myspace photos -- not of the band mind you -- but of each other ... pretending to listen to the band. One of their number, a willowy blond, dressed in a short skirt and hooker boots, didn't look at the stage once.
This whole display was more curious than it was annoying. Other than their relentless commitment to flash photography, they weren't actually disruptive, but I couldn't stop thinking of how they managed to stumble into the Black Cat to see a famously persnickety Canadian art rocker sing about literature.
You will never convince me that any of them owned a Destroyer record, or, in fact that they could properly describe what a "record" was. And its not like the week before the Black Cat hosted Toby Keith or whoever the milquetoast kids are listening to these days. The Black Cat is an unstintingly snooty hipster venue, far from the part of town where they trade in $4 mojitos and rohypnol. So what the hell were they doing there? I spent much of the show writing mental scripts for how they managed to show up there (dare? pledge initiation?) but none of the explanations satisfied.
And the truth is, this happens all the time at indie/punky/off-the-beaten-path kind of shows. One of the realities of listening to non-mainstream music is that, depending on the band, you can usually predict the concert demographic with stunning accuracy. And then the sorority shows up and throws off all your calculations. Perplexing.
I'd like to propose an ambitious new program to fix what's wrong with music today. My plan calls for rounding up all the wan, sickly, post-ironic indie douchebags (Carl Newman's ears must be burning) and packing them off to re-education camps to learn the art of showmanship. In between hourly canings, the lads would be treated to lectures and demonstrations by artists who have mastered the fine art of giving a shit on stage. Classes could include Finding Your Inner Comb - The Fine Art of Stage Preparation; Singing the Hits People Paid to Hear; and Acting Like You Have a Clue How Fucking Lucky You Are.
I propose that the commandant of the inaugural camp be Frederick "Toots" Hibbert.
I saw Toots and his Maytals for the first time last night at the State Theater in lovely Falls Church, Virginia. As a general rule I: a) don't go out to late shows on school nights and b) don't go to Falls Church, ever. But the chance to see a reggae and rock steady legend at a tiny venue overrode those guidelines, so my girlfriend and I schlepped out to the suburban wasteland and the surprisingly accommodating State Theater.
The State is like a miniature version of the Warfield in San Francisco, with a small, sunken standing area down front, cocktail tables and bars behind that, and a balcony overhead. There was a pretty good crowd on hand, but none of the nuts-to-butts claustrophobia typical of most DC venues. The night started inauspiciously enough, as the crack team at the State seemed to have a little difficulty getting all the microphones working. By the time everything got unfucked and Toots took the stage, it was past 10:30, and I was starting to wonder if this show had been such a hot idea.
It took about .5 seconds of hearing Toots singing "Do the Reggay" to erase my concerns. The 62-year-old Toots took the stage wearing a sleeveless leather and wool pinstriped suit that might seem ridiculous on somebody else. He's been at it for so long that many of the Maytals are his actual offspring, including the bass player and one of the backup singers. From a technical standpoint, the band sounded amazing, and Toots' voice is unbelievably strong. His energy was outrageous and infectious. With a few shouted exhortations he had the whole crowd skanking along (mostly) in time (this is Virginia, after all).
Toots played all but one song I wanted to hear (She's My Scorcher) including Pressure Drop, Monkey Man and Sweet and Dandy (above). He closed his set with a raucous, 10-minute rendition of the amazing 54-46, his signature track (and former prison number, if the story is to be believed). He didn't leave the stage until he had shaken every hand that he could reach in the audience. Just stunning. He'll whip Carl into shape in no time.
When Hotrod informed me that Iron Maiden were coming to town, I felt a great surge of satisfaction. Here was my opportunity to fill one of the great gaps in my concert-going experience by seeing my first-ever favorite band live. When I read that they would performing material exclusively from their first seven (!) albums, and modeling their stage set on the Egyptian-themed "Powerslave" tour (think zombie mummies and laser-beam pyramids), I felt like Christmas had come early this year.
I don't listen to a lot of Iron Maiden these days, but when I was 12, I thought they were the best, most brilliant band ever to walk the face of the earth. While other bands sang about yucky girls, pointless dancing and stupid emotions, Iron Maiden performed songs about important stuff, like the novel Dune, ancient calvary battles, the flight of Icarus and the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
While other bands pranced around like dandies in their linen suits and ponce-y feathered hair, Iron Maiden wore leather and spikes and grew their ratty, greasy tresses down to their asses (one of my great complaints in junior high stemmed from my inability to grow my hair long - stupid afro). And most importantly, Iron Maiden were always accompanied in concert by an 8 foot tall animatronic zombie named "Eddie." In a word, Iron Maiden were cool...to a geeky 12 year old science-fiction enthusiast who had yet to kiss a girl.
More than 20 years later, I still feel a little defensive of my first musical love, being as they are the butt of many, many jokes. In his book defending such artistic giants as Poison and Cinderella, Chuck Klosterman makes sure to potshot both Iron Maiden and their fans as hopeless dorks. "This is Spinal Tap" is essentially a 2-hour satire of Maiden (see the above video if you don't believe me). Sadly, the band has even lost its ability to convey a sense of menace to outsiders. While playing Guitar Hero, my girlfriend remarked that the "Number of the Beast" sounded "awfully jaunty, kind of like a musical."
It's lonely out there for an Iron Maiden fan, especially if you live somewhere other than a trailer park. But to all you goddamn hipsters who think you're better than me, I say you can fuck right off. I'll back Iron Maiden against whatever lousy sissified crap you were listening to when you were 12. When I throw the devil horns and bang my head this June, you can be assured that it will be without a trace of irony.
Here are a few facts:
- The Pogues are one of my all-time favorite bands.
- The Pogues were in town tonight performing the second of two sold-out shows at my favorite local concert venue.
- I have a ticket to the show, for which I paid $55.
- I'm as fit as a fiddle.
- I had no conflicting plans.
- My musical hero, Joe Strummer, once said, while fighting off a bad flu at a Pogues show: "stay at home, when the Pogues are in town? That's the stupid thing to do."
- The show is going on right now.
- I am not there.
I got back from an extremely mellow vacation in the Bahamas on Saturday, and since then I'd been feeling decidedly ambivalent about going to see this show. For starters, it's on a Monday, which is the worst of all days to schedule a rock show. Second, the Pogues haven't put out an album of new material since the lamentable "Pogue Mahone" in 1996, and they haven't put out a good album since the 1988 masterpiece "If I Should Fall From Grace With God." Third, the Pogues haven't exactly been on heavy rotation on WDabysaninHammerSmithPalais ("The Quiet Storm") lately. I was probably in college the last time I listened to a Pogues record in its entirety.
The problem with these perfectly rational reasons is that they all suck.
I like The Pogues' music. I know from first-hand experience that they put on a wicked-good live show. They were in town, and I had a ticket. So why didn't I go?
What it really comes down to is the type of people who go to a Pogues show. The last time I went to a Pogues show (last year around this time) I was shocked when I walked into the venue. Years of going to more wussified indie rock concerts had conditioned me to feel like Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians. At 6-0, 185, I'm no giant, but I'm more than capable of elbowing your average New Pornographers fan out of the way to get a better vantage point. I walked into the Pogues show and stared up at a wall of backs. From my nonscientific sample, the average Pogues concert attendee is 6-9, weighs 300 pounds and is on speaking terms with ancestors who only recently came down from the trees. It's all dudes. All. Dudes. Drunk dudes. Big, drunk, ornery Irish dudes. And the few girls who do claw their way in are not the sorts you'd like to meet in a back alley. At their last show here, I very nearly got in a fight (thankfully with one of the few non-simian attendees, but still).
The thing is, there was a time when I really liked that sort of thing. When I saw them in college, the crowd was -- if anything -- just as big, younger and more dangerous, but there I was, down in the pit, pogo dancing with skinheads and loving every violent second of it. I even got a little thrill from it last year. But today, the concept of battling for oxygen with that gang of drunken ogres made me a little queasy. I'm looking forward to when The Destroyers come to town.
One annoying side effect of my anxiety about air travel is that it kills my creativity right before trips. That's my excuse, anyway, and I'm sticking to it. In another year, I may have let this week pass blog-less, and come back to my little corner of the voxosphere refreshed after a much deserved vacation, but not in 2008. The faithless naysayers issued a challenge, we at Dabysan in Hammersmith Palais intend to see them eating their words in 2009, while we, in turn, dine on the Blackberry Pie of Triumph.
Tomorrow morning I'm up bright and early to jaunt off to my super-secret training facility on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. My team of trainers suggested that I get started early this year on preparing body and soul for the rigors of KttD IX. It's a tough job, but I'll do anything for the sport.
Though I'll be back on Saturday night, several days of yoga always leaves me a trifle conciliatory, which is no state to be in when you're blogging.
In the meantime, I'll leave you with yet another benefit of my newfound Guitar Hero obsession, my late discovery of the face-crushingly awesome Priestess.
(Editors Note: I started writing this post and got about halfway finished before I remembered that Jodi had done something awfully, awfully similar a few months ago. On the bright side, she came to all the wrong conclusions, so let's just call this imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and move on.)
I can't stand instrumental music. Can't stand it. This probably why I'm so hostile to jazz in all wankerific incarnations. It may also partially explain my profound loathing for hippie jam bands (though they're despicable on so many levels that it's probably not worth parsing the individual reasons why they suck). Music, especially rock and pop music, for me is all about the vocal. This is not to say I don't enjoy an impressive rhythmic or melodic flourish, but I really need the lyric to tie it all together.
Lyrics don't necessarily have to be important, or profound, or even cogent (I'm looking at you Anne Wilson) but they do have to grab my attention if I'm going to make the emotional investment of listening to a 3-minute rock song. Suffice to say, if you're selling you're little song to me, the lyrics are important, and perhaps none more so than the opening line that sets the table for the whole listening experience.
The opening line is key. A bad one is like a canary in a coal mine -- it can clue you into a bad song before it picks up steam (see: uno, dos, tres, quatorce). A good one can tip you off that you're about to hear something special (e.g. I knew a girl named Nikki, I guess you could say she was a sex fiend). So here, without further ado, are the top ten opening lyrics of all time, until I remember the ones that I'm forgetting.
(Astute readers will also note that some of these opening "lines" are in fact the opening two, or even three "lines." I could have called it "best opening complete thought" but that would have been a little bulky. - ed.)
1) "I'm a street-walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm" - Search and Destroy/Iggy and the Stooges
As a statement of intent, you don't get much stronger than the first line of the first track of the Stooges 1973 masterpiece Raw Power. Iggy is informing all of us that he is about to rock our faces off, and that if that doesn't sound like our cup of tea, we may want to stick to Seals and Crofts.
2) "Kick out the jams motherfuckers!" - Kick Out the Jams/The MC5
I don't know what was in the water in Detroit in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but I want some of whatever it was, cause it produced the two best opening lines ever. To be honest, the ordering of the rest of this list is pretty arbitrary, but numbers one and two are absolute locks. This line is even better in the original live recording when Rob Tyner yells to the crowd: "And right now! right now, right now I think it's time to.....kick out the jams motherfuckers." It's like the anti-Wilco.
3) "I got a letter from the government the other day, I opened and read it. It said they were suckas" - Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos/Public Enemy
As a lyric-driven genre, hip hop has some of the very best opening lines. You could probably compose this entire list out of hip hop lyrics and not be that far off. As awesome as this lyric is on paper, you really need to hear Chuck D's menacing delivery to get the full impact.
4) "I knew a girl named Nikki, I guess you could say she was a sex fiend" - Darling Nikki/Prince
I can't imagine I need to defend this choice, but suffice to say that this line gets extra bonus points for singlehandedly creating the Parental Advisory label. I love picturing Tipper Gore's face when this little gem came pumping out of the family hi-fi in front of her lily-white daughter.
5) "In the days of my youth I was told what it means to be a man" - Good Times, Bad Times/Led Zeppelin
The line that introduced the world to Led Zeppelin. I'd day it was pretty effective.
6) "One Saturday, I took a walk to Zipperhead. I met a girl there and she almost knocked me dead" - Punk Rock Girl/The Dead Milkmen
Simple. Direct. This is how all love songs should aspire to start.
7) "A cheap holiday in other people's misery" - Holiday in the Sun/The Sex Pistols
Johnny Rotten always had a flair for a nasty turn of phrase. This was his best opener.
8) "Wake up Maggie, I think I got something to say to you" - Maggie May/Rod Stewart
If only because I have to agree with Jodi about something.
9) "Concrete and chaos rise up, spiderweb across the land like a giant rash" - Big City/Operation Ivy
If you don't know Operation Ivy, you should quit reading this list, buy their discography and come back when you've rectified the gaping hole in your music collection.
10) I'll tell you one thing that I know: You don't face your demons down, you gotta grapple 'em jack and pin 'em to the ground - Long Shadow/Joe Strummer
Yes, I realize its like four lines (see above), but its awesome, and nobody really thought they were getting out of that list without reading something written by Joe Strummer, did they?
I've got blogger's block. There's plenty of stuff I want to write about, but I can't seem to muster the energy to sit down and compose it. It's possible that I'm blowing through all my "A" material in my weekly fantasy football recap (that's right ladies, and he's still single), or that my ongoing career change is sucking up all my mental bandwidth, or that I've just been watching too much Top Chef and The Ultimate Fighter.
Whatever the cause, the muse is just not taking me to flesh out some of the higher (all terms are relative) concept bloviations that have been knocking around in the old melon. So until I can will myself to birth these fabulous ideas, I'm dusting off an old standby, the Guilty Pleasure of the COUGHweekCOUGH. I think there was once a time, for like three-quarters of a month, when I actually used to post these weekly. Now, not so much.
Anyway, this week's installment is a doozy. I discovered it while I was watching an episode of the powerfully broadening Rob and Big on MTV. At the end of the episode, Rob dumps five grand in ones on an adoring crowd to the tune of this gem from Fat Joe.
Fun Fact: "Making it rain" refers to the practice of throwing paper money at an exotic dancer in such great volume that it appears to be "raining" singles. This expression achieved popular saturation in the case of disgraced NFL star Pacman Jones, who's rain-making activities led to a shooting in a Las Vegas nightclub and got him suspended from the league for a year.
So yeah, very socially redeeming tune. The beat is hot though.
This is the Polyphonic Spree. They are touring behind their new album "The Fragile Army." Hotrod and I saw them play tonight at the 9:30 Club. When they come to your town, go see them. Trust me on this one. That is all.
