Being a weeklie podcaste from Madison, Wisconsin featuring several remarkable curiosities therein occurring being a compendium of live music from divers artistes
Friday, July 03, 2009
Madison Early Music Festival '09
The Madison Early Music Festival begins next week on the 11th and continues until the 18th. The festival is commemorating the fact that this year was proclaimed the International Year of Astronomy by exploring "the works of music and the arts that were inspired by scientific discovery that had a tremendous impact on culture and civilization."
Well, the rumors proved true as the Wisconsin State Journal is reporting that the Cardinal Bar, a dance club, is closing anon.
A fixture of Madison’s nightclub scene for 35 years, the Cardinal Bar is a weekend away from its last dance — a victim, a co-owner said, of bad city policies, a bad economy and bad weather.
(Koko Taylor passed away last month and this week's show is to commemorate her wonderful blues career. Since the last KT concert I posted, I've inveigled DJ Dave Watts who hosts the Blues Cruise on WORT here in Madison to pen the show notes. Many thanks to him for doing so and correcting the setlist.)
This set captures Koko Taylor at the top of her game. This particular version of The Blues Machine featured one of the many “Kings” of the guitar but one who never got quite the recognition of B.B. or Albert. Eddie King spent over 20 years as her bandleader and he has the band right in the pocket here. Her take on the Ted Nugent tune “Hey Baby” has always been a favorite of mine. I believe this is the group that was with Koko the last time she played at the Crystal Corner bar. She may be gone but she will never be forgotten as the music she left behind is quintessential Chicago Blues and she was pretty much the Queen of that scene for the last 40 years or so.
This is the first set of Koko Taylor and the Blues Machine's performance at a joint called Shades in Prairie View, IL. The date was 20 December 1991.
Setlist:
Jam I've Made Nights By Myself Let The Good Times Roll Fishing Trip Beer Bottle Boogie I'm A Woman Jump For Joy I'd Rather Go Blind Come To Mamma Queen Bee Hey Baby Going Back to Iuka
This year's Forward Music Festival takes place on 17-19 September. It was announced today that Andrew Bird will be the headliner. Pre-sales have started.
(Andrew Bird at the Wisconsin Union Theater in Madison 2007. Photo by Ilamya.)
Dane101 is relaying news from True Endeavors that Cafe Montmartre has closed. Where will Butch Vig go if/when he ever visits Madison again?
In addition it is rumoured that The Cardinal Bar is also going the way of the dodo. If true, Madison's kinky crowd will have to find new digs for parading around in leather fetish wear.
My condolences go out the to family and friends of Paul Kopecky from Racine. He was the drummer in progressive rock band Kopecky which also featured his brothers Joe and William. Paul passed away a week ago from complications of juvenile diabetes at age 37.
Van der Graaf Generator @ Shank Hall, 27 June 2009
This past weekend I made the trek to Milwaukee to catch progressive rock legends Van der Graaf Generator. It was fun to be in the company of prog heads once again with one gentleman clad in an Änglagård t-shirt and a couple folks behind me chatting about Ozric Tentacles.
Opening was an acoustic trio of Strawbs. Singer/guitarist Dave Cousins led the way through a set which went as far back to "Oh How She Changed" from the band's 1969 debut. Afterwards I chatted with a young woman at the bar (early 30s was young for this show) who said that she'd never heard of them before but that she was so moved by their music that she cried. While I shed no tears, they were enjoyable enough. The highlights for me were the English folk infused "The Hangman and the Papist" and "Ghosts" which featured some great 12-string guitar work from Chas Cronk as it weaved its way through multiple sections in typical prog style.
Born of the psychedelic 60s, VDGG morphed into an idiosyncratic progressive rock band which eschewed the symphonic approach of contemporaries like Genesis and Yes for a more chaotic sound. They disbanded in 1978 but regrouped in 2004 with the classic line-up of keyboardist/bassist Hugh Banton, drummer Guy Evans, singer/pianist/guitarist Peter Hammill, and sax/flute player David Jackson. The 2005 effort Present was the result. Jackson left the following year and the band has continued as a three-piece. They released Trisector last spring and are now in the midst of their first tour of the States of their career.
To their credit, they didn't make this a night of pure nostalgia with a perhaps a token new song thrown in. Instead half of the show was given over to post-reunion material with the emphasis firmly on Trisector. The new songs more than held their own against the classics with "Interference Patterns" opening the set. I've not heard any the past two albums but I am making a point to buy them. "IP" encapsulates the classic VDGG sound in about 5 minutes with a relatively gentle and simple open before a wandering piano part takes the song into a whole different territory. "All That Before" and "Over the Hill" were also two new tunes which must take their place as some of the best music the band has done.
Hammill's voice was in truly fine form with his hell-bent for existential angst howl as potent as it ever was while Evans hasn't slowed down a bit. He still pounds out the oddest of time signatures with vim and vigor. And Banton's Hammond organ alternately provided an aural miasma for Hammill's introspective journeys and proving that his instrument has all the muscle required for when things get heavy.
My first encounter with VDGG came in the form of 1971's Pawn Hearts after I was told to seek out "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" so it was great to hear "Lemmings" and "Man-Erg" from it. "Lemmings" saw Hammill come out from behind his keyboard and strap on a guitar. The result took me by surprise - a prog classic channeled through the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. They played "Man-Erg" more faithfully. I got goosebumps when the evil jam started. First the gentle part of the song is pierced by the screams crying out and then the thick organ chords followed. Hammill then bashing on his piano like Don Music before screaming "How can I be free?!" Just perfect.
There were a few times when I missed David Jackson's contributions, especially the way his flute would lull you into a sense of complacency just before the band would break out into prog pandemonium. And a large part of the band's brand of chaos involved Jackson's dissonant sax playing. But the remaining members still managed to pull it off through manically playing and sheer force of will.
Interference Patterns (In the) Black Room Lemmings Lifetime All That Before Gog The Sleepwalkers Over The Hill Man-Erg E: Nutter Alert
I haven't seen this show anywhere for download or trade but I do have the one from a few days earlier in Arlington (Boston). There's some video of the current tour up on YouTube. Check out "Man-Erg" from the NY show on the 21st.
Some spelunking scientists in Germany have discovered what is thought to be the oldest musical instrument:
They unearthed a flute made of griffon vulture bone that is more than 35,000 years old. So, when you go see Ian Anderson this fall, you'll know that he's tapping into some ancient mojo.
Surely you know that Michael Jackson has died. I am fortunate not to have cable TV and to not watch TV much at all because I'm sure I couldn't escape stories about his death, what a great loss it was, blah blah blah. Jonathan Rosenbaum noted that the world according to TV news stopped yesterday and remains motionless today, as per a friend of mine. The Internet is full of it too but those articles can be avoided.
Unfortunately when I think of Michael Jackson, I think of the grown man who brought young boys into his bed; I think of how he sang "It don't matter if you're black or white" as his nose went from being broad and flat to barely being there at all and his skin gradually got whiter and whiter.
Of course neither paedophilia nor hypocrisy has any bearing on whether his songs were any good or not. James Brown had a thing for beating his wives but his music is still great. But surely I am in a minority when I say Thriller was shite. I was on a very different musical path in 1982 and never understood the appeal of that album or of Jackson himself. That album and the attendant crap that went along with it symbolized all that I hated about early 1980s pop music – the palette of synthesizers sounds which ranged from annoying to intolerable and repulsive drum machine sounds. Add to that Jackson's unappealing image and the way nearly everyone fell onto the bandwagon.
The Jackson 5 made some good bubble gun pop and Off the Wall has some catchy tunes on it but I don't think he recorded anything worthwhile after that. To be sure, his music was highly popular and influential. However, it only influenced me to avoid it.
Hopefully now The Beatles back catalog will be returned to Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono where it belongs.
I recently got a copy of the Hill Country Revue show from back in February when they opened for the North Mississippi All-Stars here in Madison at the Majestic. HCR are an off-shoot of NMAS featuring Cody Dickinson and Chris Chew from the latter and their debut album, Make a Move, was released last month.
They shot a video for "You Can Make It".
At the moment, the band have no plans to return to the Madison area in the near future.
Marillion are back in the studio working on their next album which is to be (mostly) acoustic renditions of songs culled from the band's back catalog.
Pete has been playing Balalaika, Xylophone and Glockenspiel as well as bass: Mark has been discovering autoharp in addition to his piano, organ and harmonium; Steve has been exploring the delights of mandolin and Portuguese guitar along with 6 and 12 string acoustic whilst Ian has been playing a few African drums in addition to drum kit and skulls. h has been hammering on his dulcimer and "Dulcitone" - a sort of keyboard instrument involving struck tuning forks - in addition to vocal and percussion.
I prefer my tribute albums to rearrange things quite a bit so that it's not just a band essentially playing all the same notes the same way as on the original. For example, listen to Astralasia's cover of King Crimson's "I Talk To The Wind". They completely overhauled the song. Hopefully the boys will make "Slainte Mhath" into a rumba, "Neverland" into a waltz, or something equally as interesting.
In this same vein, any progheads out there heard Rewiring Genesis - A Tribute to The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway? I don't have the album but am enjoying the samples at the page above. I love how various synthesizer solos have been replaced with clarinet, accordion, and trumpet. And the real voices that replace the Mellotron part on "Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats" are just beautiful.
Last week over at another Madison music blog, Muzzle of Bees, Jay Farrar of Son Volt answered a few questions put to him.
The band's latest album, American Dust Central, will be released on 7 July and they'll be in Milwaukee at the Pabst Theatre on 26 September.
I've seen American Dust Central for download at various torrent sites but I've not grabbed it. However, I have heard some of the new material on recordings of concerts from earlier this year with "When the Wheels Don't Move", "Dynamite", "Dust of Daylight", and "Down to the Wire" being performed. You can grab Son Volt's show from 25 February at Bootlegs from Bucklberry for a preview of some of the new material.
Old news, I know, but I had to mention that The Onion's AV Club launched a new feature back in February called "Gateway to Geekery" and it covered Krautrock back in March.
The gist of krautrock is simple: It was Germany’s answer to the musical upheaval at play all across the planet in the late 1960s and ’70s, when rock did double-duty as revolutionary art-music and strived to be newly psychedelic and free. As befits countless German stereotypes, though, krautrock’s roots grew as much from early avant-garde electronic musicians like Karlheinz Stockhausen as from, say, The Beatles and The Velvet Underground. From those electronic roots grew all sorts of unusual modes, noises, and textures, which in turn proved influential in the evolution of later electronic sounds like ambient and techno (and, in less rewarding instances, that nasty bugaboo known as new-age).
I've got a Can show or two somewhere as well as one by Ash Ra Temple so I'll have to post my very first Krautrock podcast soon.
Andy Battaglia of the AV Club suggests Can's Tago Mago as a starting point. Personally I'm more inclined to suggest their first album, Monster Movie. And I was surprised that he didn't mention Tangerine Dream.
Hopefully a future installment of Gateway to Geekery will cover RIO (Rock in Opposition). Do you tell a newbie to listen to Henry Cow first or Univers Zero?
Porcupine Tree recently announced that their latest effort is titled The Incident and will arrive as a double CD on 21 September. The boys are taking a page from the Jethro Tull playbook with the title track clocking in at 55 minutes and taking up the whole of the first disc.
The centre-piece is the title track, which takes up the whole of the first disc. The 55-minute work is described as “a slightly surreal song cycle about beginnings and endings and the sense that ‘after this, things will never be the same again’.”
Here's the breakdown:
THE INCIDENT i occam’s razor (1.55) ii the blind house (5.47) iii great expectations (1.26) iv kneel and disconnect (2.03) v drawing the line (4.43) vi the incident (5.20) vii your unpleasant family (1.48) viii the yellow windows of the evening train (2.00) ix time flies (11.40) x degree zero of liberty (1.45) xi octane twisted (5.03) xii the séance (2.39) xiii circle of manias (2.18) xiv i drive the hearse (6.41)
There will be 4 separate songs on the second disc – "Flicker", "Bonnie The Cat", "Black Dahlia", and "Remember Me Lover".
You can watch some behind the scenes footage shot during the making of the album here.
I am going to be catching The Tree in Chicago the day after the album is released so I'll have to try and give it a spin before I head down.
Yesterday I listened to a BBC radio documentary called "Music to Drive to" which was about instances of listening to music in a car has changed people's lives.
It featured the testimony of a few people such as a Scottish woman who related her story of driving home with her father and brother after a rough day at a divorce court. She said that things in the car were rather somber until her dad turned on the radio. Next thing she knew, The Who's "I'm Free" was playing and she realized that her divorce was not so much the end of something as the beginning.
The host James May also adds his own commentary and admitted that he only listens to progressive rock while alone in his car. He should come out of the prog closet, methinks.
The closest thing to an experience I have had that May spoke about in the program came back in 2004. I was driving back to Madison from Louisiana after having spent somewhere from 2-3 weeks down south after my father's death. Most of that time was spent alone, a stranger in a strange land. In addition to the loss of my dad, I had to deal with the local funeral home who assured me it would only take about 3 days for me to get my dad's ashes. Three days turned into a week and a half. Then there was the Teamsters. I hired a moving truck which was supposed to arrive on a certain day. It never showed so I called and was told it would arrive tomorrow, which didn't happen. After being told the truck would arrive tomorrow and not do so a few times, it finally did.
So, after having selling my dad's house, dealing with belongings, calling his friends up to tell them of his death, etc., I finally got to go home. Honestly, I don't think I'd ever wanted to be home more than at that time. There I was driving along in I-55 in Missouri when I put on Trace by Son Volt. "Tear-Stained Eye" was playing just as I passed the exit for the town of St. Genevieve, which is mentioned in the song. The tune is rather melancholic but it also has a side that approaches the sanguine such as the line "You'll find it's better at the end of the line."
When that part of the song played, tears welled up in my eyes and I started crying. While I probably should have pulled over, I didn't. But I kept my car on the road. Once my eyes had dried, it occurred to me that the hardest part of my father's death was over. The shock had come and (mostly) gone, family & friends had been notified, everything that needed to be done in Louisiana was done, and I was more than halfway home. I was awash in this feeling that the bad stuff was behind me and that it was now time to start moving forward again.
Has anyone out there had a life-changing experience while listening to music in a car?
