On an ambitious, multi-leg concert tour, the celebrated UK singer-songwriter gets intimate with his fans.

BY NICOLE ROBERGE

I meet up with David Gray backstage in his dressing room at The Wang Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts - the first stop on his "Lost and Found" tour. (The newest U.S. leg will resume in late June; go here for tour dates.) Different than his typical shows, where the set list embodies both rock and quieter songs, the focus of these shows is more intimate, with an emphasis on his most recent album, "Foundling," and stripped down and acoustic versions of songs off his other albums.  It is, he says, different than anything he's ever done before.

When I walk into the dressing room, Gray is sitting on the couch, scribbling in a notebook.  His tour manager leaves us alone and he immediately welcomes me to sit down, and then shows me what he has been writing.  Sprawled across two pages are the titles of songs from all of his albums that he hopes to cram into a two hour set-list.  As a special treat for this tour, he provided fans the opportunity to write in and request songs to be played, and he is trying to accommodate all of them.  The response he got was surprising. 

"It was quite moving," he says.  "I got 156 different songs requested, which is an awful lot and we can't do all of them.  Some of them were so obscure that I don't know what they were.  They were barely written, some of them I don't think I've ever performed.  I think it's fans trying to outdo each other.  I'm going to try and do as many as I can.  Some off my first album, ‘Shine,' and many I play quite regularly anyway.  There were some crazy requests for covers.  A Doors song.  And there are memories attached to each song.  This tour is very much about trying to do justice to the album I just released, ‘Foundling,' which I didn't think would be as tactile if we played it in the usual way. It seemed to just be quieter.  The whole volume of the show tonight will be much quieter than the usual rock show.  But in representing this new music, I'm also going to be taking a giant sweep of my music from the beginning so it's probably the most in-depth tour of all the records I've released and the music I've made, which is great.  I've given myself two hours tonight.  An hour and a half is a normal set, to go over that I wouldn't always do.  But with this, I don't know how to fit it in otherwise."

Read the rest of the interview at http://blurt-online.com/features/view/877/

Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By IAN MOORE

I could tell you the story about the night I slept in a bloody bed from a murder the night before (the hotel manager had simply flipped the mattress over).

I could tell you about the night when our song "Muddy Jesus" (the closest thing El Paso had seen to an homage since Marty Robbins) caused us to be mobbed on a seemingly quiet night in Juarez, and a mob morphed our vaguely exciting identity to a much more thrilling one – Pearl Jam, over the course of a few hours. We narrowly escaped before evading the head of the biggest drug cartel in Mexico, who wanted to pull us into a multi-day, locked-door party where we would be the "guests of honor," of course not allowed to leave until he declared the fiesta over.

I could tell you some juicy, fucked up stories, but I would rather rest my road-weary brain and simply wrap it around the 20+ years of touring haze to tell you about the most brilliant, fucked up thing I have ever done: sing in a rock 'n' roll band.

Being in a rock band is like permanently being a senior in high school waiting for college to start. An endless summer of reckless abandon, ambitious half-formed plans, and the promise of something much more grand in the coming Fall that never quite materializes. Short-term glory buttressed by seemingly endless stretches of monotony and indecision.

I watched as my friends grew up and seemingly went through adult-forming school. They adopted different, mostly healthier, habits, and faded into a gentler phase filled with adult conversations that seem formed and appropriate for our age. Meanwhile I was stuck in endless conversations about why The Teardrop Explodes matter (or don't), why ironic dress and facial coif had its place until a couple of years ago, and other forays into the minutia of pop culture that truly should be mainstay thought for an 18-year-old, but are more suspect when calling 30-year-old friends "kid" and still chasing down your bartender friends for free drinks.

Being in a band is a youthful endeavor. It is amazing to look out onto a packed room filled with attractive people who believe that music can change the world. Unfortunately I believe the same thing as well? When do you get the mailer that actually explains what the 'grown ups' are supposed to really think? When do I get the insight that allows me to stop being so idealistic and cash in on the collective sins of our species? I'm stuck in this fountain of youth and it stinks of urine and folly. The kids are splashing around, oblivious to anything but the importance of their play in the cultural waters, long fouled and drained of meaning, each waterfall smaller than the one before until the final drip is sliding out of the concrete orifice of some suburban kid with X-ray vision specs that say "Google".

Speaking of fucked up, what is it with drummers? Am I the only one who finds it ironic that the very person that we rely on for meter and time is completely incapable of simply showing up at the same time that all other adults can? Of all of my drummers, and there have been many, I can think of only one person who was capable of actually showing up at the time he said, and he quickly got out of drumming and started trying to save the world by selling eco building products to yuppies who needed a slight hedge to hide their rabid consumerism.

If I had any sense I would have bought a stopwatch years ago so I could keep a running tally of time wasted to gripe about in the golden years. I do believe in irrefutable truths. I believe that humans are inherently good and that we are all capable of change. Consequently I am repeatedly dumbfounded as our drummer saunters towards the van, elegantly smoking, and seemingly troubled by nothing, a good 30 minutes after our said departure time, as we wait outside his house in complete awe.

I keep waiting for this phase where I am bestowed some flowing robe of knowledge and my acolytes surround me being filled by my vast musical knowledge and discourses on integrity. I see that Willie Nelson has released his book The Tao of Willie and is being considered for Sainthood by the Catholic Church, who are willing to look past his phenomenal marijuana consumption. Meanwhile I am stuck in this half-form, not able to speak of my rock 'n' roll exploits lest I sound like a braggart, but considered smug and distant if I stay tightlipped when my younger friends educate me on their new cultural bounty – a bounty that we pawned many years ago to lighten the load.

Excuse me. Didn't mean to sound bitter. Now, that's fucked up. I can't think of anything cooler than playing in a rock 'n' roll band.

Did I mention heavy metal soundmen?

Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By SHUNDA K.

The most fucked up thing I have ever seen is how parents verbally and emotionally abuse their children, which leads to low self-esteem and insecurity, which can turn into teens harming themselves and contemplating suicide.

Abuse is any behavior that is designed to control and subjugate another human being through the use of fear, humiliation, intimidation, guilt, coercion, manipulation, etc. Emotional abuse is any kind of abuse that is emotional rather than physical in nature. It can include anything from verbal abuse and constant criticism to more subtle tactics, such as repeated disapproval or even the refusal to ever be pleased.

Emotional abuse is like brain washing in that it systematically wears away at the victim's self-confidence, sense of self-worth, trust in their own perceptions, and self-concept. Whether it is done by constant berating and belittling, by intimidation, or under the guise of "guidance," "teaching", or "advice," the results are similar. Eventually, the recipient of the abuse loses all sense of self and remnants of personal value. Emotional abuse cuts to the very core of a person, creating scars that may be far deeper and more lasting than physical ones. In fact there is research to this effect. With emotional abuse, the insults, insinuations, criticism and accusations slowly eat away at the victim's self-esteem until they are incapable of judging the situation realistically. The person becomes so beaten down emotionally that they blame themselves for the abuse. Their self-esteem is so low that they cling to the abuser.

Emotionally abused victims can become so convinced that they are worthless that they believe that no one else could want them. They stay in abusive situations because they believe they have nowhere else to go. Their ultimate fear is being all alone.

I can relate so much to this and have endured much emotional, even physical abuse at the hands of my grandmother, growing up as a kid. My grandparents raised me because my mom was strung out on drugs and my dad was around only when he had time, which was very rare.

I'm not sure why my grandmother was so harsh to me, but the only conclusion that I could draw, now that I'm all grown up, is that she was raised the very same way. She has told me many stories about how her parents raised her and her siblings and how they never had a chance to go to school or have a childhood because they had to work in the fields from sun up to sun down.

My grandmother came up during the time of sharecropping (where former slaves used the land of former slave masters to farm in return for 50% of the crop), so they never had a life outside of work. And, with my grandmother, I believe there was much resentment and animosity built up due to these facts, and so, what other way to express herself aside from the way she was raised and brought up.

I can remember many times being cussed out because I was on the phone all day or wanted to go somewhere. During my childhood, I was always into athletics and, when it came time to be picked up from practice, I had to walk home many nights because grandma felt like it was a waste of time.

Once a person inflicts verbal and emotional abuse for so long, the next thing will be physical abuse. My grandmother didn't mind beating my ass and would use anything she could get her hands on. I was genuinely afraid of my grandmother and always sought to please her, but it seemed like the more I tried the less she was satisfied.

What finally pushed me over the edge and made me leave the situation was when I graduated from high school (with honors may I add) after being told I would never be shit. I earned an academic and athletic scholarship to college.

One day I came home and my grandmother always had a thing of opening everybody's' mail. On this particular day, my grandfather gave me an envelope from my financial aid that had been opened and my check cashed (my name was on my grandmother's bank account so she could cash checks in my name, etc.). With my money, they went to the dog track and spent my damn money gambling.

After everything I had to endure coming up in school, with no support, after all the hard work I had put into being who I had become, they felt like they could just cash my check and give me the excuse that they've been raising me all these years and so I shouldn't have shit to say about what they do with my money. That was all I needed to step out on faith and keep it moving.

In my life, I had always felt alone. I was terrorized in school because I didn't have the name brand clothes and with no support at home, when it came to everything I aspired to do, I had to do it on my own. Of course, it was a very lonely road, but if I didn't do it for myself, no one else was going to.

So, I'm here today, standing strong, though my faith in God, to let each and every one of you know that you too can make it out of any drought you find yourself in. Life is worth living and just because someone is in your life, making it a living hell, that's no reason to end it.

As I mentioned before, it's hard to leave an abusive relationship, but if you don't, the consequences could very much be death. You have to encourage yourself and keep it moving no matter how hard it may seem.

To be free is definitely a gift from God and if you're dealing with people in your life that are only tolerating you and not celebrating you, you need to stand up to them (give them a piece of your mind) and keep it moving to a healthier environment, even if you have to stay in a shelter.

Now and days, my relationship with my grandmother is a strong one because I stood up to her and let her know that she wasn't going to talk to me like that anymore. It took me a few times saying this, because any habit is hard to break. But, she now recognizes me as a human being that she is no greater than.

In conclusion, God is love and no matter whom you are and where you've been in your life, the people you surround yourself with need to exhibit this love. Life is what you make it. Take charge of your life and love yourself enough to accept nothing less than the best!

Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By Jason Reece

Yeah, Hawaii doesn't seem to like the place to have a seedy underbelly. It's a paradise for fuck's sake. Big Island tropical fever madness strikes deep in the back wood boonies. Meth heads growing weed, burned out hippies living the dream gone wrong and pissed off Hawaiians mad at the "fucking Ha'ole's " who stole their land. The tourist brochures never covered that part. I lived in a half-built house with no electricity, no running water, out in the middle of a rain forest, far from the main city of Hilo. This was a drenched and beautiful place, but we were bored poor fuckers living off the land, off the grid, looking for something more.

At my friend Ani's house getting ready to go to some shitty high school dance. Heavy metal blasting out of the speakers – Judas Priest's "Hell Bent for Leather" was our jam. There's nothing like smoking some strong-ass bud straight from your backyard garden and killing a bottle of some shit whiskey before hitting the high school function. There was nothing to do but this.

It was time to walk a few blocks to our friend's house, whose parents would drive our license-less asses to the dance. We needed to get some air and composure to face them, so the walk – we thought – would do use some good. It was drizzling and very quiet as we hit the street. Several loud pops destroyed the eerie silence. We thought that was strange, but continued on as if it was nothing. As we turned on to a more populated block, we could see a man on the ground. His head was blown off; his brains were all over the street. People started coming out of their houses to see what the commotion was as police sirens blared in the distance. We were stunned to see a real murder, a violent death that happened within blocks of our homes and our slow-motion Hawaiian existence.

We started laughing, and kept laughing, as we ran to our friend's house. It was the only emotion that I could express because it was so fucking crazy and real. I had never seen a dead person; this was my first and it was a fucked up as it gets. I found out later that it was a dispute over a drug deal. They caught the murderer immediately and he was high as shit on meth. We headed to the dance to tell the all our friends. Curiosity ensued as all of our friends wanted to see the murder scene. They wanted to see where it all happened.

We left the dance at around 10 pm. We decided to meet at Ani's place because his folks didn't give him a curfew, or didn't really care. Some of us had to sneak out. A group of five trudged through some cold rain sipping on Old Crow whiskey. There were no street lights and the dark wet added to the creepiness of the adventure. The flashlights guided us to 4th and Hamakua St. where the deed was done.

We could see the chalk lines fading in the rain. The outline of the unlucky soul. We then saw his fucking brains still on the grass and pavement! What the fuck? The police just let that shit slide. They hardly cleaned the scene up. There were skull fragments everywhere, and a bunch of [us] giddy children jabbering away about how fucking weird it was. This dude was there, alive, hours ago – and now his head was blown the fuck off. Death became very real to me that night.

We ran away again, howling like dogs down the dark, rain-soaked road, trying to kid ourselves that death was a joke and that we were never going to die. It seemed all too wrong for a kid to see this, but there it was. It could happen anywhere, I guess.

Aloha 'Oe, dead guy. Aloha 'Oe.

Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By TYLER PARKFORD

Birds have always fucked me up. I remember a pigeon exploded in my face once when I was 10.

I used to hang with a bunch of kids at this little burger joint in Long Beach near a busy highway. There were always tons of birds trying to steal our french fries. Everyone would try to throw food in the street to see how close the birds would get to the oncoming traffic. None of them were stupid enough to take a chance. They'd always scramble away to safety at the last minute.

Weeks went by and nobody got even close to killing one of them. I always would just watch. One day they all threatened to squash my cheeseburger if I didn't participate. I threw a piece of fried zucchini in the street just as this huge truck was approaching. A pigeon flew over to grab it but accidentally tripped on something and exploded under the front wheels of this truck. All I saw was a gust of feathers shoot out at my face and this low-frequency "pop" sound like a handgun. I guess that was the sound of all the air in the bird's lungs getting rapidly pushed out.

When the feathers cleared we looked down at our burgers and saw that they were covered in bird guts. One of my friends started to cry but everyone else thought it was funny. For the rest of that day I was completely mortified and didn't say a word.

That night I woke up in a sweat and ran to my parent's room. I told them I couldn't go to sleep since I'd killed a bird. My dad told me to put on my clothes and get in the car. We drove to where the pigeon exploded and he gave me an empty pizza box. The bird was completely flat by now.

"Scrape it off the street, Tyler."

I had to peel the thing slowly off the asphalt with my little fingers and put it in the box. It smelled like tires and grass and looked like a feathered football that just got deflated.

"This used to be alive 'til you blew it up, Tyler. I want you to put your hand on it and think about what you did."

Cars whizzed by and strangers slowed down to see what I was doing. After a few minutes my dad took the bird away from me and I threw up all over his sneakers.

That was the first bird flu. The second didn't happen 'til years later when I was in high school. There was this new kid who didn't talk a lot and was kind of a jerk to anyone who tried to befriend him. It was a boarding school so everybody stayed in their rooms and had to sleep, eat, play and shit during specific times. One day I found this dead pigeon in the bushes and put it under the guy's bed sheets when he was out taking a shower. It was after "lights-out" and I heard him screaming at the top of his lungs: "Who did this?!"

I walked outside and saw that this kid was completely naked and pounding on everybody's doors holding this dead bird. He came up to me and I could see that he was crying. "Did you put a bird in my bed? Did you put a bird in my bed? Did you put a bird in my bed?"

He kept saying it like he was in a trance. I told him I didn't and he just walked on to the next room. I think he transferred later that year. To this day I wish I had the balls to apologize to him or at least put a face on such a horrible gag.

Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By JEFFREY CAIN

Years ago my band and I packed up our belongings and left our home of Alabama to record an album out West. We spent several months secluded in a house on the outskirts of Santa Rosa, California where we would rehearse, write, and record day and night. Occasionally we would make our way into town to attempt being social and to clear our minds with a good late night drink. Our local haunt was a small bar in the basement of the old Belvedere Hotel. The Pixies, GBV, or The Wedding Present would usually be playing on the jukebox and the bartender would start pouring your favorite drink as soon as you walked in the door.

The night I saw the most fucked up thing I've ever seen was an ordinary night. My friend and I arrived at the bar just at closing time, yet we somehow talked them into letting us throw down one whisky. As we drank our nightcap a young girl approached us. She seemed to know we weren't ready to go home and suggested we walk her home and come up for a drink.

Without a second thought we found ourselves walking through the foggy streets, up some stairs and into her small bare apartment. I have no memory of any details of the apartment, maybe a bike in the corner of the room, a futon, a stack of books. She poured us a drink and we sat down on the hardwood floor then asked, 'Do you mind if I play my drum?' Of course not, please... we'd love to hear you play.

Within a few moments she had found a small hand drum with some kind of skin pulled over it, rested it between here legs and started to lightly tap a loose rhythm. The beat was so faint, it hardly kept my attention at first. My eyes and thoughts wandered for the next several minutes, then I noticed something had changed. Her beat became very steady, her head hung low, and her body was deathly still except for her hands which moved as if they were no longer attached to her body.

Not a word was said between us as the beat grew louder and with more authority, I could feel it straight in my chest. The pulse of my heart was now the drums... and the pattern she played became more and more intricate. I had never heard such a complex beat, I was amazed, I was entranced, and I was becoming scared. Losing my breath, I tried to break this hypnotic pull I felt. Her hands continued to play as her head hung down. Suddenly I knew I was beginning to lose control, something was taking over me. Was this really happening?

I turned to my friend to see if this was all just in my mind. I will never forget how pale he looked, paralyzed with fear and unable to utter a single word. Like trying to wake out of an awful dream, I finally broke through the heaviness that had taken hold of me and screamed, "Who are you? Who are you?"

The hands stopped and the room was finally quiet. She raised her head, every the muscle in her face had dropped. I was staring deep into the eyes of a two thousand year old Chinese man.

Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By Amy Speace

Bangkok, June 2000. My younger brother Matt was living in Southeast Asia and invited me to come visit to trek around for a month. We had no set itinerary, just a desire to see Vietnam and Cambodia and the Thai islands and have an adventure.

A few weeks and a 17-hour flight later, I was walking down Kao San Road in Bangkok, looking for the café my brother said I'd find him in. It was very The Beach: a road that seemed to be the gateway to the backpacker trail of hippies and ravers and dropouts and walkabouts, a steaming, humid pavement that reeked of pot and piss lined with outdoor cafés filled with hippies and ravers and dropouts and walkabouts making plans, waiting on visas, drinking morning beers with their banana pancakes.

I heard my name called amidst the steaming throngs and turned to see my brother sitting casually at a café, waving, just as he'd told me. He held up two chilled beers. I was bleary and tired after the long flight, but he'd had the day planned well, from the beers to the two-hour Thai massage to the temple tour to dinner to a late-night hang on a road called Soi Cowboy.

I'd heard rumors of this place – the red light district. Although I'm a fairly well-mannered folk singer, I've been to a few strip clubs with friends. I've had friends who stripped to make rent, or to pay for law school. I'd seen the lap dances, smelled the cocoa butter, wondered about the law of gravity when flinging triple-D's around an oily pole. So it didn't creep me out – too much – to go see a Thai strip club with my little brother. We hopped a rickshaw that darted through the chaos of Bangkok nightlife. The creep factor crept in when the rickshaw driver leaned back and said in his broken English, "You want go see sex show? Girls fucking donkeys. You want?"

Um. No. Ew.

I was surprised that this district seemed rather civilized, less like the seedy street I envisioned. More like Bourbon or Beale Street. There were clusters of post-college backpackers with the boys trying to seem cool and girls giggling and well-dressed elderly older couples, out on date night, and junked out single men, leaning into the alleys, in torn military fatigues, a cliché from a 70's film. Beautiful Thai women stood at the club entrances like carnival barkers, "Nice naked ladies inside. Come in. You like?"

Matt and I chose one at random, lured in by the lack of cover charge and the need to get out of the Bangkok steam, a humidity that clings to you like syrup. We took seats at the bar, a large semi circle stage with two gold poles at either end and two bikini-clad women working the bar. Red velvet curtains, clean lounge, black leather barstools, the dark club lit by purple and blue neon, like a mid-high range corporate strip joint in NYC. Not Joe's Topless in Newark. We ordered drinks and the show began.

It started slow and, to my experience, normal. Pole dancing, choreographed erotica, G-strings with paper money tucked in like flags at the hip. Then a girl, completely naked and shaved, sat down, spread her high-heeled legs wide and proceeded to slowly pull a long string tied with what looked like little Koosh balls out of her vagina. I shifted a bit uncomfortably. The next girl sat down and pulled a similar string, but tied with razor blades.

I squinted, shifted and crossed my own legs. Drank another beer. Looked to my brother, who said, "Just wait." This went on, and alongside the women who pulled long strings out of their ya-ya's were the women who shot bullseyes with darts, launched ping-pong balls at customers, sucked on cigarettes and blew smoke rings out of their nether regions. This was impressive. This was no NYC strip club.

But then, the piece de resistance came. I was unprepared.

A woman danced out, naked, and shimmied over to the bartender, who placed one of those old-fashioned bottles of Coca-Cola on the dance floor next to the pole. The dancer stood above the bottle, legs parted, and pliéd seductively over it, teasing it with the lips of her bread box, up and down, side to side. Then, in one move, she grabbed the bottle with her hoo-hoo (No. Hands.), flipped herself upside-down on the pole, and drained the soda into her shoo-fly pie.

The patrons clapped and shouted, slapping their hands on the dance floor. I was aghast, and laughing, probably a bit drunk at this point. The dancer righted herself, placed the empty bottle down (again: No. Hands.) and twirled up and down the runway. Not a drop escaped.

The bartender then placed another bottle down. Jack Daniels. Next to the pole. The dancer again shook it on over and did her thing. The crowd went bat-shit wild as she chugged the entire bottle with her watusi. Once more, she flipped herself upright and danced down the runway.

My jaw scraped the tabletop as my brother laughed himself to tears. The crowd cheered. I was dazed, confused, a bit freaked out, and yet I couldn't take my eyes off her. Again: nothing drained out. She held that shit inside of her.

I thought I heard my brother say, again, "Oh, no. Wait for it."

The bartender took bids from the crowd like farmers at a pig auction. An Australian man won, and plopped his money down. The dancer was shaking her groove thing, stirring up the booze in her coochie. Mr. Oz frothed at the mouth while the bartender produced a glass of clinking ice cubes and placed it in front of the big winner. The dancer strutted over to Winning Bidder, gave him a flirty look, did a fifth-position plié over the glass and peed out a Jack & Coke. Winning Bidder raised the glass high to the cheering crowd and downed the drink in one gulp, slamming the glass upside down on the floor to a wolf-rabid crowd. The dancer kissed him full on the mouth, licked her lips, smiled and left the dance floor to a well-deserved standing ovation.

And that is the last time I ever need to step foot in a strip club.

Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By Blurt Staff

Between the summer of 1966 and early 1967, The Beach Boys recorded, in several sessions, a bounty of songs and drafts for an album, SMiLE, that was intended to follow the band's 1966 masterpiece, Pet Sounds. The sessions were ultimately shelved, and The Beach Boys' SMiLE has never been released. With the full participation of original Beach Boys Al Jardine, Mike Love, and Brian Wilson, Capitol/EMI has collected and compiled the definitive collection, 'The SMiLE Sessions,' for worldwide release this year in multiple physical and digital configurations.

The SMiLE Sessions presents an in-depth overview of The Beach Boys' recording sessions for the enigmatic album, which has achieved legendary, mythical status for music fans around the world. The SMiLE Sessions will be released in 2CD and digital album packages and a deluxe, limited edition box set.

Co-produced by Mark Linett and Alan Boyd, all of The SMiLE Sessions' physical and digital configurations will include an assembled album of core tracks, while the box set delves much deeper into the sessions, adding early song drafts, alternate takes, instrumental and vocals-only mixes, and studio chatter. The SMiLE Sessions invites the listener into the studio to experience the album's creation, with producer, singer and bassist Brian Wilson's vision leading the way as he guides his fellow Beach Boys, singer Mike Love, drummer Dennis Wilson, lead guitarist Carl Wilson, rhythm guitarist Al Jardine, and newest member Bruce Johnston (who'd replaced Brian Wilson in the touring group during 1965), through the legendary sessions.

"I'm thrilled that The Beach Boys' original studio sessions for SMiLE will be released for the first time, after all these years," says Brian Wilson. "I'm looking forward to this collection of the original recordings and having fans hear the beautiful angelic voices of the boys in a proper studio release."

"One of my favorite songs from the SMiLE sessions is 'Wonderful'," says Mike Love. "The song truly lives up to its title, as do many of the tracks on SMiLE. Cousin Brian was at his creative peak during those sessions. I'm unaware of anything that comes close in pop music."

"I recently played some of my personal acetates from the SMiLE sessions and they held up really well," says Al Jardine. "We would come home from touring and go straight into the studio to record. Brian couldn't wait to show us his latest ideas. We were recording SMiLE and Pet Sounds material simultaneously, so the tracks and vocals all have the same great quality. Most of the vocals were done at Columbia Studios in Hollywood, across the street from Western Studios, where most of the tracking was done."

"For me, it's always been about the way Brian Wilson brilliantly composed and 'voiced' his amazing chord progressions and melodies," says Bruce Johnston. "SMiLE really made me smile!"

"Personally, I loved it," the late Carl Wilson said in 1994 of the SMiLE sessions (from the Don Was-directed documentary, Brian Wilson: I Just Wasn't Made For These Times).

"In my opinion it makes Pet Sounds stink - that's how good it is," the late Dennis Wilson told a journalist in 1966 of the planned SMiLE album.

What Brian Wilson brought to the table, in his effort to maintain The Beach Boys' position among the top rock 'n' roll bands of the day, was beyond what anyone could have expected. Beginning with "Good Vibrations," then into SMiLE, Wilson had begun to construct songs in a modular form, crafting individual sections that would later be edited together to form a coherent whole. In several intense bursts of creative energy, Wilson, drawing on the talents of the finest studio musicians in Los Angeles and utilizing the best studio facilities available on any given day, laid down dozens and dozens of musical fragments, all designed to fit together in any number of possible combinations. No one had done this in pop music, and Wilson had just created "Good Vibrations," The Beach Boys' best-selling record in a long string of hits, by using this method. His next endeavor would be an album-length version of this unique and luxurious songwriting parlance: SMiLE.

In 1965, Brian Wilson had met an up-and-coming session keyboard player and songwriter, Van Dyke Parks. Noticing Parks' conversational eloquence, Wilson felt that he could help to volley The Beach Boys' songwriting into the wave of broader-messaged and socially-conscious rock 'n' roll that would come to define the '60s. They were soon collaborating on keynote songs for SMiLE, including "Heroes and Villains," the band's follow-up single to "Good Vibrations." Wilson and Parks would also co-write "Surf's Up," "Vegetables," "Cabin Essence," "Do You Like Worms," "Wonderful," "Wind Chimes," and other bits and pieces of the SMiLE tapestry. Parks also introduced Beat-Pop artist Frank Holmes to create album sleeve art and a booklet interpreting the album's James Joyce-mode lyrics.

The reason SMiLE did not see a release in early 1967 had more to do with back room business that obscured the creative side of the program than anything else. In late 1966, The Beach Boys formed Brother Records, initially to produce outside artists. Soon, however, The Beach Boys would become embroiled in a court action with Capitol Records with the goal to become the top-selling artists on their self-owned, independent label. The group withheld "Heroes and Villains" and announced they would instead release "Vegetables" - recorded with the band's own money in April of '67 - on Brother Records. By July of 1967, Capitol Records and The Beach Boys had come to terms, with Capitol agreeing to distribute the band's Brother Records, and it was agreed that SMiLE was no longer to be the band's next album.

The SMiLE Sessions' global release date, complete track lists, and artwork will be unveiled soon.

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By Tim Hinely

Hungry Ghost, Sara (Unwound) Lund's new band opened this evening but I didn't arrive in time to see them perform. I did get to the venue in time to catch the second half of the Corin Tucker Band's set.  Her debut record, which had some interesting moments, didn't do much for me, but live the songs really came to life. I didn't catch any song names but the last 3 or 4 songs rippled with the kind of electricity that the record didn't. The few folks I spoke with who caught the whole set said I saw the best part.

It had been at least a decade (maybe more) since I'd seen NYC's Versus, a longtime favorite upon hearing this first single (1992's "Insomnia"). The band had had some different folks in the lineup over the years (including Patrick Ramos and a 3^rd Baluyut brother, James). For this tour the band was back down to the original trio of Richard Baluyut on vocals/guitar, bassist Fontaine Toups and drummer Ed Baluyut while adding Margaret White on keyboards and violin. They played a nice mix of songs, both old and new. (For the new ones, however, when Richard said "new" I did not know whether he meant brand new or simply from the latest record, On the Ones and Threes.)

Still, it was hard to complain with a set that included "Thera" (from their Teen Beat debut, The Stars Are Insane), "Circle," "Into Blue," "River," "Double Suicide," "Forest Fire" and plenty more. For encores they played "Bright Lights" (their amazing 2^nd single) and "Blade of Grass" (for which ex-Team Dresch-er Jody Bleyle came on stage and did the oooh-ooohs).  None of us wanted it to end, but sadly, it had to. A band can't play forever.

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By Carl Hanni

We live in the age of global groove cross-over, and the musical migrations seem to be picking up speed and shedding inhibitions as they go along. Nations may fuss and fight, but increasingly musicians, it seems, want to mix and match from the wide palette of world musics. This is nothing new, of course; musicians worldwide have been crafting all kinds of fascinating combinations for as long as music has been prefaced with the word ‘popular.'

South America and the Caribbean seem to have consistently been ahead of the game here. Going back at least as far as the late ‘50s and early ‘60s and you'll find thousands of examples of local combos taking little bits of whatever they heard on the radio, mixing it in with what was hot at the local record shop or sound system with their own local music, and turning out one fabulous hybrid after another. Whether it's from Columbia, Peru, Cuba or Jamaica, this part of the world has long embraced music-as-melting-pot. 

Fast forward to 2010 and we have Fantasma, a group of multi-disciplined musicians, artists, and filmmakers from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Not to be mistaken with Austin's fabulous Grupo Fantasma, Fantasma play a spirited, polyglot mix of electro, cumbia, hip hop, reggaeton and whatever else they take a shine to that has a sexy groove. Fantasma is pushing the pulsating cumbia groove into some new territory and inviting everyone along to the dance. Definitively electro based (but still using plenty of accordion), Fantasma make bouncing, buoyant, infinitely danceable music that also has both humor and a socially relevant aspect to it. 

Pretty much everything here is really strong and consistent. "Danza Danza," with a jaunty whistling chorus, melds electro cumbia and reggaeton into an instant dance floor classic. "Encantador de Serpientes" sounds like Egyptian Lover reborn as an intergalactic DJ street gang. "Cumbia Que Pega" and "Muevelo Que Sube" bring the hip hop forward, while "El Paisano," "Esto Es Asi" and "Cumbia Callejera" work the electro cumbia groove to perfection. Sure to draw some attention is a sci fi, Kraftwerked cumbia version of "Ghost Town" by The Specials, a wickedly great re-imagining of one of the signature songs of the 1980s. 

If you're looking for some early summer in this endless winter, Fantasma have condensed it down and put it onto a CD. Look no further.

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BY WILSON NEATE

We continue our sprawling spiel with the legendary bassist. To read Part 1, please go here.

BLURT: The idea of constantly learning from people - is that something that motivates you to collaborate with other artists as much as you do?

MIKE WATT: Yeah, and with bass, too, the politics of it is interesting. You look good making other people look good [laughs]. We're kinda like the grout between the tiles. Most people go in the head and they look at the tiles, and I'm the grout between the tiles. It's kind of a mysterious thing. Everybody's different, so you gotta fit to them, and you learn different ways. Even when you've played with somebody before, you don't wanna bogart and dominate and stuff; you avoid just rubber-stamping things where you've been. So, each time, I really try to approach it like I'm here for the first time, thinking, how do I make an interesting conversation out of this? It is a challenge; it is tough. But it's worth it. Like on this album, I asked Tom and Raul to set the direction - I don't think you can learn everything by always being the boss. Life is about taking turns.

        You know, no matter what humans do, it seems the longer they do it, the more they do. But the weird thing about bass is that, often, the physics punishes us; we get all small, we have too many notes. So it's always this big search for the right notes, and that's why somebody who's just started playing can write a great bassline. I've been surprised so many times when I talk to people who've just started out. It's not about more and more with the bass because of the long wavelengths at the low end...and, of course, it's a rhythm thing too. And everybody sees that stuff differently, so it's good to have a lot of different teachers.

Has it been a learning experience working with the Stooges? You've been doing that for the last eight years.

The Stooges come from a '60s sensibility. I was only a boy then, and I wasn't playing yet, so playing with the Stooges, it's a neat classroom to sit in. It's the primary source, man. I mean, now you get it second- or thirdhand with other bands, and these guys are the daddies. So that's pretty intense. Ig's really helped me become a better bass player. For one thing, he doesn't work a machine; he's almost in a conductor position, and he's also like a bridge to the gig-goers. He gets the big picture that us people working the machines don't get, so he's given me a lot of perspective in playing. It's different than the trios I do, where we're all engaged in working our things, and it's hard to get a big sense of it ‘cuz you're so involved with yourself. So Ig's helped me a lot. Also, Stooge music is really about feeling; it's not really about a bunch of complicated parts, so that's helped me too.

Did you ever go to any Stooges gigs back in the early days?

I didn't see the Stooges in the '70s. We didn't know about clubs. We were into arena rock - my first gig was T. Rex. We didn't know about clubs until punk, and stuff from the '60s was long gone by that time. I guess there was a little of it still up in Hollywood, but we didn't know about it in Pedro. I wouldn't have believed it at all if somebody had told me I'd be playing with the Stooges one day. It's pretty much of a mind blow. I love playing with those guys. I just got back from Australia - the first Stooges gigs of this year. It was my third Big Day Out tour there. I blew some clams, but I always try my hardest for the Stooges. It was a little difficult with my knee still hurt. I dislocated it - last note of the first song, "Raw Power," at a gig in France, in July last year.

How different is it with James Williamson playing guitar now, instead of Ron Asheton?

It's just like when you hear those records - they're different Stooges. I know it's only one different guy, and Ronnie was on bass on those records, but it was a different band. You know, even though James didn't play for a long time, he's still got the sound. He didn't play for like 30 years! His son wrote an essay in college called "Coffins in the Corner," about the guitars in the house that never came out of their cases. The first practice I did with James, I could tell right away this was the guy that played on Raw Power - it was that guitar sound.

Listening to hyphenated-man, the Beefheart feel seemed especially strong. He's always been a big influence, obviously.

Yeah, big time! Minutemen was way into Beefheart. Big time. When punk came, to us, Beefheart and the Stooges were already doing punk - they just didn't call it that yet. Then, the Pop Group was a big influence on us, too: they took Beefheart and put it with Funkadelic, which to us was almost the perfect thing. Beefheart really resonated with us. I saw him on the Doc at the Radar Station tour at the Whisky in Hollywood. My leg was in a cast [laughs] - I'd just had knee surgery. I even talked to him on the phone once. He was taking calls on KCRW, and I was the last caller. I was talking about Strictly Personal, and I told him how [the gatefold photo] used to scare me when you opened up the sleeve, and he said, "Yeah, it scared me too." I was wondering if there was something behind it, and he just said it was stuff he had laying around in his garage.

Although he'd been ill for ages, his death felt like a big deal. He really was a major figure.

It was very heavy. I was doing an interview and the guy had just heard and he told me about it, and it was hard to talk. I knew he was sick for a long time but still.... He was Big Daddy. And as way out as he was, he always had this big blues thing that was very traditional. It was different than, say, the Zappa prog thing - that was fusion. His way, his vision, was very personal, but it was grounded in Howlin' Wolf and stuff. You can hear it big time. We always thought that was a trippy thing. It's like writing a book where you don't have to invent new words. But it was really original.

Talking of unique artists, you recently played with Jandek at my old school, UC Irvine.

That was a trip. Mr. Jandek - or the Representative from Corwood Industries - is a very interesting cat. All black clothes and, for the gig, he had maybe a Stetson. Not a total cowboy hat, but it had a big brim. That was one of the wildest live gigs I've done. It was me and a younger drummer, BJ Miller from HEALTH. He said to the drummer, "You ever hear of Ginger Baker? Maybe you should play like that." He was giving no real direction! I just met him there the day of the gig. In fact, at one point, he asked me, "So what are you gonna do?" [laughs] So I said, "Maybe you want something like a Jack Bruce thing?" And he said, "Yeah! yeah!" Then I said to him, "I gotta tell you, I'm way into doing this, but I'm a little bit scared." And he said, "Don't worry, it's gonna be right up your alley" [laughs], and we went into this 100-minute song that went to a lot of places. I kept trying to change the motifs, and the drummer stayed in this one kind of thing - he'd never done anything like that before.

        His music is very interesting. He used effects at this gig on his guitars. He'd never used effects before. He's got a trippy way of playing - a lot around D and G - and that was really interesting to follow. It wasn't like a guy wanking at the Guitar Center. It kind of reminded me of some of that Pop Group guitar by Gareth Sager. Also, he said, "You know, usually I don't do lyrics live," but he ended up doing some lyrics. The people there dug it big time, but he never really spoke with them. He never introduced us or said thanks or anything - just started playing. Then, when we were done, we were done. I hugged him at the end and told him, "Man, any time! I'm there for you." ‘cuz I really dug it.

Without wanting you to betray any confidences, what did you guys talk about? Did he say anything about why he'd suddenly started playing live after all these years?

Well, we never talked about any of that stuff. He talked real regular, not weirded out at all. He didn't come across like a total hermit in the mountains. He knew about stuff. I talked to him for maybe three hours, about playing gigs, about going to Russia. He did know about our scene. He didn't ask me about much current stuff, but mainly about the old days. He knew about Black Flag and the Minutemen days, and he asked me about a Bad Brains documentary. The closest I got to it was when the drummer was talking about writers, and I brought up Mr. Pynchon. I mentioned Pynchon on purpose, saying, "This guy doesn't like getting his picture taken," to see if the Representative would say anything, but he didn't. You know, I never even heard his name. He never said it. But if he doesn't want to say, then he doesn't want to say it. I only knew him from the records, and instead of laying some trip on him, I just wanted to check out the music. He just seemed like a guy who was into music.

You're sure it was really him?

[laughs] Well, it seemed like the same guy from the records, ‘cuz Jandek did have his pictures all over the records, of all different ages...actually, he looked like Thurston [Moore] a little bit.... But I thought, if that's the way he wants it, then that's good enough. He didn't wanna talk about that stuff, and I was there to play with him. That was quite enough for me. Look, I got in trouble once with Richard Hell on my radio show. He was my first punk hero, and I asked him about the clothes - ‘cuz I was way into those clothes - and he was all pissed off. He didn't want to talk about it. I don't know why. I felt really bad, too. So maybe I learned a bit from that. These guys, they'll let you know what they wanna talk about.

Getting back to hyphenated-man...for this album, you've started up a label again (clenchedwrench).

We had New Alliance in the '80s, and we put out some Minutemen records, the first Hüsker Dü album and three Descendents albums, so I feel like I've gone full circle. I've got so many projects coming out, and these times are more copasetic to doing stuff like this yourself. In the old days, we kind of had to do it ourselves because no one else would put it out. So now I've got like 12 or 13 projects in the pipeline, and I wanna get 'em out and not have to play the game or anything. I just want it out. They're all different. They're not me just doing the same old thing with different people. They're shaped by the people I play with. My trios are my trios, and they're my link to my past, but when I do these collaborations it's a whole different thing - now you can trade files with people over the internet, and you don't even have to be playing with 'em in the same room. So I can do that more now and not be the one-trick pony. I can make these things have their own lives and give respect to the people I collaborate with.

You seem to gig endlessly but, in comparison, you haven't been so prolific in terms of recordings.

I've tried to address that by doing more collaborations, starting in 2007 with Funanori [a project with the Go! Team's Kaori Tsuchida]. Up till then, apart from the operas, I did some Unknown Instructors records, a couple of Banyan records, the Stooges record. There's not a lot of recorded works, but thousands of gigs. I wanted to get that more in balance, so I've been on a tear recently.

Did you used to place more value on live performances than recording?

I used to think that, big time. The punk thing was so profound on us. We thought the gig was everything. Me and D. Boon, we divided the world into two categories: there was gigs and flyers. Everything that wasn't a gig was a flyer. Fuck the recordings! We never thought of them as being here after you'd gone. But I think of 'em more like that now, like children or something. I never had children, so this is the closest I get. With gigs, life-in-the-moment is very important, but they go out there and dissipate into the ether or in people's minds, or whatever. But that's it. If Bosch had just talked about those little men instead of drawing 'em, I wouldn't know about 'em. So the work as a concrete entity is more important to me now. The songs get lives of their own: when people hear 'em, they get their own ideas about what they're supposed to be, away from me.

You don't feel over-protective about them once they've gone on their way?

People have so much control over their lives anyway, so I don't wanna put more out there. I don't wanna put a chain and collar on 'em. I've done it to other people's songs - I've got my own meanings for 'em, and then, when you talk to the people who wrote 'em, it turns out they weren't about that at all! [laughs]

You're about to embark on another epic tour, doing the bulk of the driving yourself. Do you ever get tired of being on the road and gigging?

If I didn't have Pedro to come back to, maybe I would. The bungee cord snaps you back and you roost, then you roam, and then you roost. And I've always had good guys to tour with, so I don't have the dramas to deal with: they know it's all about doing the gig. It is a little harder now. My hands get sore from playing, so the vibrations from the steering wheel help me out a lot. The body ain't as strong, but I like playing for people. I can still manage. I ain't totally lamed out. My knee's still all stiff, but, fuck, it could be worse. It could be sawed off!

        Gotta keep it in perspective.

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Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By Fred Mills / Interview by A.D. Amorosi

BLURT hasn't exactly been coy about our excitement over the second album by Swedish chanteuse Lykke Li; the followup to 2008's Youth Novels was recorded in Sweden and Los Angeles and features Björn Yttling, of Peter Björn and John, producing, and as early tracks began rolling out last fall along with provocative videos, it was clear that the young lady was building up to something unusual.

Wounded Rhymes is finally out this week (it's also still streaming online) and in addition to a review coming soon at Blurt-online, we also have an extensive feature on Lykke Li in the new issue of BLURT (our 10^th) that will hit newsstands in two weeks. Contributing Editor A.D. Amorosi sat down to talk with the singer, and among the tidbits he obtained:

On finally getting started on a new record after two years of touring and promotion: "I guess I'm happier in the beginning of a project than the end. It's only then that you have all these possibilities in front of you. When you can dream and everything is ahead of you, that's really something. I like being done as well. There's mystery that lies ahead in that next step. It's just that middle time, when things are the most painful, where I go over the edge."

On swapping the frigid cold of Sweden for the sunny clime of California for a portion of the recording: "The desert and nature is so overwhelming-in a good way. It was just so fucking hot it was great and radically different than my usual experience. It wasn't so much sensual than it was magical."

On the album's singular rhythmic-psychedelic vibe: "The type of sound where five minutes has passed and you don't even know what's hit you or how long you've been hit by it: I like that. I also think a lot of blues inspired me. The repetitive thing where you don't need to change a melodic or rhythmic line."

On why first single "Get Some" isn't about sex (despite containing lines such as "I'm your prostitute" "It's about empowerment and motivation over someone - to avoid more problems."

On her uncanny ability to look positively smashing in all her photos, no matter the setting or occasion: "I got the ability of being photogenic from my photographer mother as she took a lot of photos of me. That's not about the vanity of looking good. I don't think that I am. It's just that I don't want to die when I see the photos snapped of me."

No problem in that regard, we suspect. Read the full interview with Lykke Li in our new issue....

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Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By Blurt Staff 

American Laundromat Records just aqnnounced plans to release a Smiths tribute CD titled Please, Please, Please: a tribute to The Smiths. The CD will feature newly-recorded covers by The Wedding Present, Greg Laswell, Doug Martsch (Built To Spill), William Fitzsimmons, Trespassers William, The Rest, Katy Goodman (La Sera, Vivian Girls), The Leisure Society, Joy Zipper, Tanya Donelly and others. The CD is slotted for Autumn 2011 worldwide release. 

Confirmed Artists Thus Far / Track Covering 

Cinerama / London

Class Actress / Ask

Dala / Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me

Doug Martsch (Built To Spill) / Reel Around the Fountain

Elk City / I Know It's Over

Greg Laswell / Half A Person

Joy Zipper / What Difference Does It Make?

Katy Goodman (Vivian Girls, La Sera) / track to be announced

Kitten / track to be announced

Mike Viola / How Soon Is Now?

Sara Lov / track to be announced

Sixpence None the Richer / I Won�t Share You

Tanya Donelly w/Dylan in the Movies / Shoplifters Of The World Unite

The Leisure Society / That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

The Rest / Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before

The Wedding Present / Hand In Glove

Trespassers William / There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

William Fitzsimmons / Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want

For the album cover, American Laundromat Records secured rights to use a Sandie Shaw photograph (Shaw famously covered te Smiths' "Hand In Glove" and later collaborated with the band) and tapped rock-poster designer Lonny Unitus (Apples In Stereo, The Decemberists, Willie Nelson) to design the cover art and eco-wallet packaging. 

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Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By Tim Hinely

I had never seen Sweden's Concretes before and couldn't tell from vocalist Lisa Milberg's comments that whether it was their first time in Portland or first time in the States (I'm assuming she meant the former).  While the rest of the band was silent, the friendly Milberg chatted up the crowd about our fair city, how happy they were to be here and what there was to do tomorrow since they were going to stay here rather than head to Seattle early.

The band hit the stage as a 6-piece with guitar/bass/drummer, two keyboardists and the striking, icy cool Milberg up front on vocals (and occasionally shaking her money-maker on the dancier cuts). The band has been through quite a few changes the past few years with former vocalist Victoria Bergstrom going solo (as Taken by Trees) and one member apparently leaving the band to join the circus (!!??). Their latest record, WYWH, lacks the spark of earlier records, with a more sophisticated, groove-oriented dance pop sound, and while it didn't sound bad on headphones, on stage it seemed to lack that specialness of the earlier records (or what I'm guessing earlier gigs would have been like), and it seemed the set was made up mostly of songs off WYWH. They opened with "Good Evening" and sifted into other new cuts like the title track, "My Ways", "Crack in the Paint", "I Wish We'd Never Met", "Knck Knck" and others. They saved the single, "All Day' for last and then came out for a so-so encore and called it an evening. 

Memo to the Concretes: time to regroup and decide on ways to spruce up the live show.

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BY WILSON NEATE 

If you're going to suffer an excruciating knee injury, you want disaster to strike in the least public of circumstances, when you're engaged in something that involves no major responsibilities so you can collapse discreetly and writhe largely unnoticed. Mike Watt wasn't so lucky. Last year, the man from Pedro went down with a major blowout onstage in front of thousands of people whilst working "the thud staff" in France with the Stooges. Worse still, it happened during the opening song of the set ("Raw Power"). 

But Watt soldiered on, finishing the gig and the remaining dates. Still not fully recovered - but now operating without crutches - Watt's just returned from Stooges dates in Australia and he's got a new album out, hyphenated-man (ORG Music/clenchedwrench). Rather than put his feet up, he's heading out on the road again for a marathon North American tour in support of the record: 50 shows, 52 days, 31 states, two countries - and he's doing the driving. 

Following on from Contemplating the Engine Room (1997) and The Secondman's Middle Stand (2004), hyphenated-man is the third in a series of thematically unified, multi-part works that Watt describes as "operas." Recorded with the Missingmen, Tom Watson and Raul Morales (pictured above, with Watt), this is his most ambitious and idiosyncratic project thus far. Consciously returning to the super-short song format that was a Minutemen trademark, Watt's new 30-track opus draws inspiration from an array of sources: the composite figures (or "hyphenated-men") who populate Hieronymus Bosch's paintings, the experience of middle age and even The Wizard of Oz are all grist for Watt's creative mill. 

Watt's not only one of the hardest-working men in show business these days; he's also one of the most decent, and it's always a genuine pleasure to talk to him. In what follows, the "man in the van with a bass in his hand" spiels in his inimitable, wide-ranging way about the new record, about jamming econo with the Minutemen, jamming not-so-econo with the Stooges, and even jamming with cult legend Jandek. 

***** 

BLURT: Your new album is the third one you've described as an "opera." In what sense is it an opera? What is it about that format that attracts you?

MIKE WATT: We got the opera idea from the Who's "A Quick One, While He's Away" - the idea that you could have one big song be made up of different little ones. I never really envisioned doing this form at all. I never thought I'd get into that stuff. With Minutemen, I come from a tradition of making short, little songs - we got that idea from Wire - but it seemed like I didn't have the talent to get what I wanted to say into just one tune, a regular smaller thing, like D. Boon did: it had to make a journey. That opera structure - one big song made up of lots of parts - makes it easier for me to get across the things I'm trying to talk about. I couldn't really do it another way. So the first opera was kinda talking about Minutemen [Contemplating the Engine Room], the second one was about the sickness that almost killed me [The Secondman's Middle Stand], and now this one is about midlife. So I call hyphenated-man an opera ‘‘cuz it's all supposed to be parts of one song. I've got an album coming out with the Black Gang - Nels Cline and Bob Lee - and that's about the idea of autumn. I'd call that one more of a concept album. 

And when you play hyphenated-man live, you perform it in its entirety, with all the parts in sequence.

Yeah, from start to finish. It's one piece. But it's hard to perform the operas because they're like 45 minutes to a fuckin' hour! It's like a life, so I live the life of the thing when we perform it. The first one was really tragic; the second one had a happy ending but with big hell parts that I actually lived through, and so when I did these things, I'd have to go through 'em. And hyphenated-man is hard because of all the small parts. There's a lot of fuckin' parts and stuff to remember, but it's kind of neat to challenge myself like that, I think. Technically, this one's the toughest of the three because it's got so much stuff to remember. Or maybe my memory's just worse ‘cuz I'm less young now [laughs]. I did a tour in Japan of the album last autumn, and that was the first time I did it, and it was tough, man - especially the first gigs. I think the more I do it, the more I'll get the hang of it. 

So you're using the short songs like you did on the Minutemen records, but the difference here is that they make up a more thematically unified whole.

I hadn't really listened to Minutemen that much since D. Boon got killed, ‘cuz it's heavy and stuff, but when the We Jam Econo documentary was being made, I had to listen to the music again. They [director Tim Irwin and producer Keith Schieron] wanted me to drive around Pedro and spiel about it, and hearing it again, it was like, Whoa! This is kind of interesting - the idea we had of distilling it all down to little things like that. Like I said, we originally got the idea from Wire, but then the idea of Bosch making one big thing out of a bunch of little things also struck a parallel with the Minutemen. 

Did you find it difficult making that documentary?

You just have to deal with it. I was thinking, "You know what? If people see the Minutemen story, maybe they'll realize that anyone can start a band." ‘cuz that was the whole idea: if these bozos can do it.... So, in a way, I got fired up on a mission - if I tell 'em the thing the way it really was, it can be empowering, and it'd be part of the debt I feel I owe the punk movement. ‘cuz I don't know if we'd ever have done any of what we did if it wasn't for the punk movement. I've always felt a debt, and it was a way of giving back, by telling the story of these guys making a band out of nothing, like a lot of people did. I wanted to show people that it wasn't just about one time and one place - it can happen any time. So I got into it like that. Also, those cats who were making the film never saw Minutemen, and they were learning about us too. That kind of made it interesting also. They were younger, and they'd seen fIREHOSE, but they didn't really know about Minutemen. So it wasn't like they were coming with an agenda or trying to put it all into their own context. They were actually just listening, trying to learn about us. 

You wrote the new record on guitar, not bass, which is unusual for you.

Part of this thing was to confront myself musically with some weird stuff, and I hadn't written on guitar in a long, long time, so that was kind of a fresh way to do it. Most of the time, I like writing the bass first because it gives the other guys a lot of room, but in this case, for this piece, because of the little songs, I thought, fuck it. ‘cuz one thing about going back to the little song thing was that I was very concerned with giving respect to Georgie [George Hurley] and D. Boon. So I thought that to keep it from being too Minutemen-y, I'd get rid of the only Minuteman. So I didn't want to write the bass parts first, and I did some kinda extreme things: when I taught it to Tom and Raul, I didn't let 'em hear the bass. In the second song, "beak-holding-letter-man," there's one little guitar solo, and that's Tom's. All the other things, all the little melody lines and stuff, he follows the things I wrote.

Playing with D. Boon, he wanted the assertive bass, and I kind of developed that thing - although some of the great players, like Jack Bruce and John Entwistle, a lot of those guys had an intense influence on me. But I just wanted Tom and Raul to play together and make the relationship that way, so they'd be playing to each other and not be so much pulled by the bass. I actually wrote it all on D. Boon's black Telecaster. He got it in Kent, Ohio. It's the only electric guitar I have - I'm a bass player, I don't play guitar that much! You can tell if you hear the demos with just me. They're pretty palsy. I had to get Tom on there. I can't even hold a pick. I learned the guitar off D. Boon, so he's in there kind of, but maybe not as strong as if I'd put the bass out there from the start - although Tom does have some D. Boon influence. 

And the recording process itself was different from previous ones, with the guitar and drums being done first and then the bass and vocals much later.

Yeah, so I had those guys learn the thing without any bass or singing, and then when we were in the middle of a tour in May 2009, we recorded guitar and drums for three days at Tony Maimone's studio in Brooklyn. Then, a year later, when I had some time off from Stooges touring, I went back to finish it with the bass and the vocals - which is kind of hard to do, waiting a year for the bass. 

You mentioned Hieronymus Bosch. His paintings provide a sort of frame for this record. You're drawing on his major triptychs, with their characters and composite figures - what you call his "hyphenated-men."

Yeah, it's The Garden of Earthly Delights, The Last Judgment and The Temptation of St. Anthony - the main ones. I saw The Garden of Earthly Delights at the Prado, in Madrid, when I was touring with the Stooges. That's when I got the idea of making a piece about it. Actually, I've now been there three times to see it. Each time I go to Madrid, I go see it. I like the little creatures made of different parts. We don't really know what Bosch was saying with those paintings because he didn't write anything, so we don't know his thoughts. Some people just thought they were visualizations of proverbs and aphorisms and stuff. Some of it's really obvious, like the guy blowing his own horn, but I didn't know 500-year-old Dutch, so I just made up my own shit, my own meanings.

In the songs, most of the amalgamations - the men made out of different parts - they're the bad guys; there's hardly any of the good ones. But my point wasn't to make character judgments about the amalgamations. I used it all for inspiration, for the motifs, music-wise and subject-wise. It helped me focus things. You know, when I wrote songs in the Minutemen days, and ever since those days, when I write songs I start with titles because I need some kind of focus - or I end up just repeating myself. So Bosch helped me like that, but it wasn't really about his big statements, it was more about his studies, his little creatures and little men made out of different parts. 

So most of the imagery derives from Bosch's depictions of torment and damnation, but it's not as if the album is literally "about" the paintings.

The way I used Bosch was kind of pragmatic and nuts and bolts-y, even though it's all psychological, based heavily in the realm of the imagination, which I like. But I did get caught up in it a little bit. That was something I never envisioned until I was sitting there in the studio at the very end. The record was supposed to end with the track called "man-shitting-man," and I told Tony, "Man, I can't end this thing with this song." I got too caught up in the Bosch Last Judgment shit - and that's just not for me. It wasn't supposed to be like that, but I don't know how that happened. So I took [a more positive song] from the middle of the record - "wheel-bound-man" - and I put that one at the end. 

Have you always liked Bosch's work?

I was intrigued by his little guys as a boy, because it just looked trippy - like dinosaurs, it was the same kind of thing. It was otherworldly. 

OK, to sum up so far, hyphenated-man is an opera inspired in different ways by midlife, by Minutemen, by Bosch....

And the other part of it is the Wizard of Oz and Dorothy thing, with the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Lion - the farmhands. The way I take that story is that Dorothy is just trippin' on what dudes do to be dudes, and even the Man Behind the Curtain says stuff about that, like, "Oh, you're smart, where I come from you'd get a diploma!" or "You're brave, where I'm from they'd give you a medal" - so he's implying that those guys always had the things they want. 

You're thinking specifically about masculinity, from the perspective of middle age?

I hadn't really thought about it until recently. People always talked about old and young, and I'd never really thought about the middle. It seems to me that a big chunk of the middle age thing - what they call a crisis - is about this kind of thing, this questioning, which I think is kind of healthy. People should do it all the way, but I guess you start doing it because your body starts getting worse, and you start adding up things, asking what it's all about, asking what's your journey, your mission. 

Is this Watt's midlife crisis album, then?

Well, in a way, my work is a kind of Peter Pan world, but on this record there is the thing about being older, middle-aged.... I don't know if it's so much a crisis ‘cuz I think it's healthy to look at it. It's more of a crisis when you try to be a 20-year-old again, get a convertible, a young girlfriend and all that stuff - and try to act like a young guy. That's more like hitting the panic button, whereas I was just trying to confront myself on certain things. I probably always had a crisis! You understand this as a writer: every time you have to go to the plate and reinvent yourself, that's a crisis, no matter what age you're at. We have to do this all the time when we come up with new pieces. Sometimes the work does come a little easier, but you always feel, "Whoa, what am I gonna do?" But maybe it's like that for all humans when they come up to the middle part and say, Yea, what is to be done?

 I guess this is also about our mortality and crap like that, too. I feel my body's not as resilient as it was, but on the other hand I have experiences that I didn't have; I don't know if I'd trade that to be all stupid and go through all that fuckin' shit again - just for a more resilient body [laughs]. So there's really no crisis on that end of it. I accept it. I'm very reconciled with the fact that I'm no longer a younger man. But, hopefully, I'm not at the end of the road either. Being in the middle's okay, in a way. It's not such a nightmare. 

What advice would a middle-aged Watt give to a younger Watt?

Life's for learning! That's the one thing that I really wish would get out from the new piece - and why I put "wheel-bound-man" at the end [the last lines of the song are: "I think I've learned that life's for learnin' as I'm goin' through my trips - me on the wheel as it's turnin' "]. I really think that everybody's got something to teach, and it's kind of hard ‘cuz you know everything when you're younger! Everybody's got something to teach me: somebody who's starting out, somebody who's done it a long time. I think this is a good thing to learn. I don't know if you can tell somebody that. They have to realize it for themselves.

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Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

Review and Photos by Logan K. Young

Any review of Gang of Four, now, has to consider the Gang of Four then.

Alas, such is the case when Britain's leading post-punk Marxists decide to get the band back together. Ideally, a new GoF record like Content - their first since 1995's surprisingly relevant Shrinkwrapped - would be judged on its own merits. And as good as Content actually is, really, the fact matters naught whenever that Kinect 360! advert featuring 1979's "Natural's Not In It" comes on the tube.

Gang of Four shilling for Microsoft? Say it ain't so, blokes!

Then again, in a world where PiL plays late night talk shows and Steve Ignorant assembles a tour to perform vintage Crass music sans Penny Rimbaud, perhaps it's petty to beg discretion of nostalgia -- especially for a band so of its time. For starters - ding-a-ling dong! - Thatcherism's dead. No longer do Brittany's downtrodden have to suffer the vestiges of her trickle-down syndromes. Closer to home, though, in a U.S. capital where Henry Rollins isn't scooping Georgetonians ice cream, Inner Ear has moved to Arlington and the new 9:30 is one OK Go show away from Live Nation hegemony, we the Whigs have never needed Jon King's voice and Andy Gill's guitar more.

Yes, that is a partial swipe at the present GoF rhythm section -- bassist Thomas McNeice and Mark Heaney on drums. Just as Chairman Mao was nothing without his full quartet, this gang is certainly lacking the verve and insistence of the original, reunited lineup that ripped it up and started again back in 2004.

It has little to do with the material, too. Set opener (and recent Letterman feature, itself) "You'll Never Pay for the Farm" is about as classic Gang of Four we're gonna get, now that founding drummer Hugo Burnham is firmly ensconced in the ivory tower of academia. Followed by a song like Entertainment's "Not Great Men," however, and it's readily apparent that McNeice and Heaney possess neither the chops, nor the context, that Burnham and original bass player Dave Allen could replicate in spades.

And honestly, that's why you go to a Gang of Four gig here in 2011. Not that newer cuts late in the set list like "Do As I Say" or "A Fruitfly in the Beehive" don't cut deep. They do. It's just that, for those of us who missed them in their prime (or maybe had a problem letting them go in the first place), it's the encored numbers like "Damaged Goods" or "At Home He's a Tourist" or, in spite of the BBC, "I Love a Man in Uniform" that cut the deepest. And it's for precisely this same reason that I have Wire tickets for April 7. And it's also how Peter Hook can charge thirtysomething quid to hear him and his son's friends play Unknown Pleasures back to front. But when the songs are good enough, and their message remains potent, it hardly matters -- not in the long run of rock 'n' roll anyways.

To be fair, Gang of Four mattered much more then, than they ever can now. And as everyone from Alphonse Karr to G.B. Shaw to Kurt Russell himself have noted, the more things change...the more they only stay the same. To wit, some thirty-odd years later for these post-punk proles, God save the queen is still not what she seems.

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Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By Blurt Staff

Fresh off his and musical partner Atticus Ross' Oscar win last night for the soundtrack to The Social Network, Trent Reznor has indicated that he's "finished" laying down tracks for the next How to Destroy Angels album. Speaking to Billboard, he's quoted as saying all that's left now is the mixing.

"I just finished recording a How to Destroy Angels project with my wife [Mariqueen Maandig]," Reznor said. "We have to mix it. [It will be out in the] early fall, most likely."

The record will be offered up as a free digital download as well as a higher-quality physical release (for pay), as was done with the first HTDA EP.

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Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By Jud Cost

For Yo La Tengo to play live twice on the West Coast within an eight-month span is a rare treat. When they headlined San Jose's Left Coast Live festival last summer, they were pretty much ducking flak from anti-aircraft ack-ack guns, flying under the radar and searchlights of Bay Area publicity.

Tonight, kicking off the 2011 Noise Pop mini-season at Oakland's palatial Fox Theater, the storied Hoboken, N.J. threesome were preaching to a near full-house of longtime fans who had, perhaps, seen them more than 20 years ago at hip San Francisco nightspots the I-Beam or the Kennel Club. "This is a nice place. The first time we played in the East Bay, it was kind of like this...at Berkeley Square," deadpanned band leader Ira Kaplan, referring to the microscopic University Ave. punk joint that held about 75 people, max.

Over syrupy canned background music that could have been the theme for The Merv Griffin Show, Kaplan, in his milkiest talk-show-host voice revealed how the band's set would be determined tonight. Someone rolled out an extra-large Wheel Of Fortune-style spinner with all the set-list possibilities painted on an oversized clock face. Kaplan, as Pat Sajak, chose an audience member to try his luck and the arrow landed on "Dump." Which meant the first set would consist solely of psychedelic guitar-laced numbers from bassist James McNew's long-running side project of that name.

It was an extraordinary "coals to Newcastle" treat to hear the hulking McNew (who usually plays bass in Yo La Tengo), featured in a 60-minute, fuzz-laden, guitar freak-out in the backyard of such fabled "summer of love" stringbusters as John Cipollina, Barry Melton, Jorma Kaukonen, James Gurley and Jerry Garcia. McNew, with a little help from drummer Georgia Hubley, did all the singing, too. Kaplan played bass and rested his pipes for the second set which I, alas, had to miss so I could catch the BART train home.

Besides, I'd already scratched a 30-year itch by getting to the Fox early for a heroic 40-minute set by legendary Los Angeles punk trio the Urinals. Arising phoenix-like from the affluent surroundings of UCLA in 1979, the Urinals took out their comfortable upbringing on their classmates by waxing punk gems like "Salmonella," "Ack Ack Ack Ack" and "I'm White And Middle Class." Bassist/songwriter John Talley-Jones, guitarist Kjehl Johansen and drummer Kevin Barrett somehow fit into a loose-knit, Velvet Underground-influenced, intercontinental scene that also included London's Wire, New England's Mission Of Burma and New Zealand's the Clean.

Regrettably, I missed the Urinals if, indeed, they ever did play San Francisco's punk citadel, the Mabuhay Gardens. Growing tired of their Moms-unfriendly original name, the trio adapted and morphed into 100 Flowers around the time the Paisley Underground bands were venturing north in the early '80s. 100 Flowers were slotted to play the Old Waldorf in early 1983 with Green On Red and the Bangles, but their last-minute cancellation was turned into a bonanza when Rain Parade took their place on the bill.

And now, 28 years later (with guitarist Rob Roberge on board for Johansen), here they were, about to ignite a crowd of about 100 of the curious, rattling around in a room that could hold about three thousand. Barrett banged his sticks together, one, two, three, four, and they were off to the races as though they'd never left: real, honest-to-god, two-chord punk rock as it was meant to sound. They must have exploded through 20 songs in 40 minutes with a blast-furnace intensity, like the day your Mom turned up the vegetable pressure-cooker too high and splattered the ceiling with broccoli and zucchini.

"It's been great seeing Yo La Tengo every night on this tour. We're not used to being the second best band onstage," said a grey-haired Talley-Jones, breathing hard between songs. "Yeah," cracked Roberge. "We usually play with three bands."

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Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By Blurt Staff

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds reissues are is in the wings for May 17 via EMI. Let Love In (1994), Murder Ballads (1996), The Boatman's Call (1997) and No More Shall We Part (2001) -- their eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh studio albums, respectively - are en route as separate deluxe double-disc Collectors Edition.

These latest releases are the third set of reissues from a series that will ultimately see Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' entire album catalogue digitally re-mastered and remixed for 5.1 Surround Sound for the first time since their original release.

Each deluxe double-disc Collectors Edition contains the re-mastered stereo album, the new surround mix, a specially commissioned short film made by UK artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, plus b-sides from the singles, videos and exclusive sleeve notes.

The first three consecutive albums in the re-mastered deluxe edition series -- From Her to Eternity, The Firstborn Is Dead, Kicking Against the Pricks -- were released in 2009. The next four in the series -- Your Funeral...My Trial, Tender Prey, The Good Son and Henry's Dream - were released last year.

Tracklistings:

Let Love In [CD/DVD; digital audio]

CD

Do You Love Me?

Nobody's Baby Now

Loverman

Jangling Jack

Red Right Hand

I Let Love In

Thirsty Dog

Ain't Gonna Rain Anymore

Lay Me Low

Do You Love Me? (Part 2)

DVD

Let Love In (re-mastered album in DTS Surround Sound 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and stereo)

Additional Audio Tracks (in DTS Surround Sound 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and stereo)

Cassiel's Song

Sail Away

(I'll Love You) Till The End Of The World

That's What Jazz Is To Me

Where The Action Is

Videos

Do You Love Me?

Loverman

Red Right Hand

Short Film: Do You Love Me Like I Love You (Part 8: Let Love In)

Murder Ballads [CD/DVD; digital audio]

CD

Song Of Joy

Stagger Lee

Henry Lee

Lovely Creature

Where The Wild Roses Grow

The Curse Of Millhaven

The Kindness Of Strangers

Crow Jane

O'Malley's Bar

Death Is Not The End

DVD

Murder Ballads (re-mastered album in DTS Surround Sound 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and stereo) 

Additional Audio Tracks (in DTS Surround Sound 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and stereo)

The Ballad Of Robert Moore And Betty Coltrane

The Willow Garden

King Kong Kitchee Kitchee Ki-Mi-O

Knoxville Girl

Videos

Stagger Lee

Where The Wild Roses Grow

Henry Lee

Short Film: Do You Love Me Like I Love You (Part 9: Murder Ballads)

The Boatman's Call [CD/DVD; digital audio]

CD

Into My Arms

Lime Tree Arbour

People Ain't No Good

Brompton Oratory

There Is A Kingdom

(Are You) The One That I've Been Waiting For?

Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere?

West Country Girl

Black Hair

Idiot Prayer

Far From Me

Green Eyes

DVD

The Boatman's Call (re-mastered album in DTS Surround Sound 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and stereo)

Additional Audio Tracks (in DTS Surround Sound 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and stereo)

Little Empty Boat

Right Now I'm A-Roaming

Black Hair (Band version)

Come Into My Sleep

Babe, I Got You Bad

Videos

Into My Arms

(Are You) The One That I've Been Waiting For?

Short Film : Do You Love Me Like I Love You (Part 10: The Boatman's Call)

No More Shall We Part [CD/DVD; digital audio]

CD

As I Sat Sadly By Her Side

And No More Shall We Part

Hallelujah

Love Letter

Fifteen Feet Of Pure White Snow

God Is In The House

Oh My Lord

Sweetheart Come

The Sorrowful Wife 

We Came Along This Road

Gates To The Garden

Darker With The Day

DVD

No More Shall We Part (re-mastered album in DTS Surround Sound 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and stereo)

Additional Audio Tracks (in DTS Surround Sound 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and stereo)

Good Good Day

Little Janey's Gone

Grief Came Riding

Bless His Ever Loving Heart

Fifteen Feet Of Pure White Snow (Westside Session)

We Came Along This Road (Westside Session)

God Is In The House (Westside Session)

And No More Shall We Part (Westside Session)

Videos

As I Sat Sadly By Her Side

Love Letter

Fifteen Feet Of Pure White Snow

Short Film: Do You Love Me Like I Love You (Part 11: No More Shall We Part)

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Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

BY RON HART 

For nearly 35 years, Gang of Four from Leeds, England, have pressed on - albeit in a fit of stops and starts (much like their music) - as one of the true purveyors of the sound commonly known as post-punk. Alongside the likes of Wire, Liliput and The Fall, they helped create a unique strain of eardrum buzz that piggybacked off the momentum of the success of fellow Brits The Clash and The Sex Pistols.

However, in the case of the Four, the group pole-vaulted the genre to such dizzying heights of Trotskyist confrontation that they simultaneously challenged their audience to dig a little deeper within the premises of their politics and social standings in the world. And in a modern age where governments have been diluted to just another commodity to be traded on the global financial market, blind consumerism and detached social networking are usurping the life's blood from the soul of the human race and people are forming united fronts to rise up against the tyranny of their longtime oppressors across the Middle East, the quartet's incendiary strain of funk-informed guitar polemics is as timely as ever.

It's a notion that had made Gang of Four's new album, their first collection of new material in 16 years, one of the most anticipated releases of the still-young year of 2011. Content (Yep Roc), a record that was funded through online donations via Pledge Music, is the follow-up to Return The Gift,  their 2004 re-recording by the original lineup of their greatest hits as a calculated strategy to divert money away from the group's original label EMI. It finds the foursome of vocalist Jon King, guitarist Andy Gill and new members Thomas McNeice and drummer Mark Heaney (replacing classic members Hugo Burnham and Dave Allen, respectively) taking aim at the personal and economic struggles of maintaining a functional way of life in the Internet era and stands tall as their strongest set of songs since 1981's Solid Gold (still in dire, dire need of a reissue).

BLURT recently caught up via electronic mail with Mr. King to talk about the new album, politics, the MP3 revolution and the group's questionable decision to go against their anti-advertising ethos to have one of their songs appear in an Xbox commercial, among other topics.

***

BLURT: In hindsight, how do you feel the PledgeMusic campaign went for the funding of Content?
JON KING: It's been an interesting exercise and raised a useful amount of money to help fund the album. We've always said that musicians should get reasonably paid for what we do.  But the new model - where music is shared and downloaded for nothing, where traditional record companies are doomed but where technology based intermediaries - like Apple, who don't invest a cent in talent [yet] are making almost all the money - means that it's no longer  possible to earn any money from recorded music. So everyone's been trying to find an alternative way to do things.  This almost always ends up embracing advertising or sponsorship, which is weird for musicians to want to do so wholeheartedly. It's a collective act of desperation.  

        If you want to know how a society is going, follow the money.  And the money doesn't go to creative talent or their support networks but to advertising. This is what filesharing has led us to. I'm with Jaron Lanier on this, whose recent book, You Are Not A Gadget, makes the case very persuasively.
 
Did skirting the whole record industry machine in the creation of Content inspire a desire to record more?
We didn't want to waste our energies looking for a patron or a record company. We wanted to concentrate on the music.  The record industry's a busted flush and boring to engage with; we wanted to do things on our own.  Musicians have to think differently about their craft if they want to make a living or publish our recorded music now that music has become effectively worthless due to illegal file sharing. The fans who do this are killing the bands and their support networks.

Why did you choose to go with Yep Roc to release the new album?
It's a great label who loves what we do and knows how to get non-commercial music like ours out there in a professional and commercially sound way. I trust them. This is very important to us . Yep Roc's passion is what we wanted, not their money.

In the actual recording of Content, what were some of the different approaches you took in contrast to your last set of all-new material [1995's Shrinkwrapped]?
We wanted to make music where every segment plays an equally  important part, but has a relentlessness that took you somewhere else, like a train falling off a cliff. It was intentional. I'm so bored by endlessly layered, over-produced commercial music. Stops and starts feature as much on Content as back in the day. It's much sparser and raw than our last set of new records, like Shrinkwrapped, which had grown as a project from soundtrack music we'd written for an indie film directed by Peter Hall called Delinquent; the songs had an atmospheric feel that were quite worked up to as a result.

Was there anything you were listening to casually as a fan that had a creative effect on the outcome of Content?
Sometimes you hear a tune that mixes up rock guitar, pop and hip-hop in an interesting way. I like PLAN B for example. But a big reason to make Content, as for Entertainment!, was that we couldn't hear things out there that hit the spot. This is when you have to do it yourself.
 
Where do you stand in the argument of digital music vs. physical product (CDs, vinyl)? How do you keep your own collection these days?
I hate the sound of MP3's. It's shit. But, like everyone else, I can't live without portable music so I put up with it. It's a shame there's nowhere to buy a 20-20 recording online that's as good as on a CD. But my iPod would explode with the noughts and ones.  I have a superb old Linn record deck that makes every piece of vinyl feel like a luxurious and erotic sonic massage that's superior to CDs. We live through times when every audio technology advance makes the music sound technically and emotionally worse.
       Physical things allow us to play with words and imagery (and smells).  It's obvious we really value artwork, which can make an album richer; we spend a lot of time on this, as you can see in the special edition metal box and on the early records. It adds to the music.  
 
How does the integration of Thomas McNeice and Mark Heaney as permanent members of Gang of Four affect the dynamic of your sound, in your opinion? What do you feel this new rhythm section you have brings to the table that sets them apart from original members Dave Allen and Hugo Burnham?
There've been many versions of the band. The first founder members were Hugo, Andy and me, and our first bass player was a guy called Dave Woolfson. He's the bloke referenced by an audience member ("Who's the hippy on the bass?") on the cassette tape of our first ever show in Leeds.  Hugo, a good friend, was a magnificent drummer and had his own style.  Dave Allen was great, too. But after he quit very early on, we hired Busta Jones (ex-Remain in Light Talking Heads), my personal early days favourite; then we hired the wonderful Sarah Lee (ex-Robert Fripp's League of Gentlemen,  later in The B-52's and Indigo Girls). Sarah was great, too. And after her, Gail Anne Dorsey, who left us to play with the Stones and Bowie. Mark Heaney is currently one of the world's top five drummers. He's a genius: solid, talented and inventive. It's wonderful to play with him. Thomas combines elements of Dave Allen and Busta Jones' style and brings an intensity and attack to it. The guys are world class.
 
What were your initial thoughts when the Xbox people approached you to use "Natural's Not In It" for a TV commercial?
We thought it was fantastic.  Ten out of ten! If we'd ever been asked to define a dream scenario for this song, the first lines of which are "The problem of leisure/ What to do for pleasure", this would be it. Superb. Just like, back in the day, when we decided to sign to EMI, the ugly, corporate beast of a record company. Some people were outraged, saying we should be with an indie, but our music really made sense with a major at that time.
 
Are there any plans to reissue the rest of your catalog following the great re-release of Entertainment! from Rhino in 2005? What album of yours would you most like to see revisited and why?
There aren't any plans to do this. I do love Solid Gold and Songs of the Free, however. 
 

The title of your new album is Content. What meaning of the word were you thinking of when you chose it?
Well, the album is full of content. So the title's good as a descriptor. And creative people are all "content providers". Journalists, writers, musicians, artists, filmmakers etc. We collectively grovel to the technology intermediaries who suck us dry, like the evil Apple Corporation, who don't invest a cent in music but charge a massive percentage for every track sold on iTunes, worse than the worst record company. Worse, even, than EMI, I might add. Another meaning is to be content, which is hard.
 
What do you think of the idea that some people believe Barack Obama to be a Communist?
They're crazy. He's not even left wing. In Europe he'd be seen as a centre-right politician. The people who say this know nothing of ideas or of history, especially U.S. history. It was President Eisenhower, the war hero who helped win World War II who warned us all to be wary of the military-industrial complex, and the conspiracies in the right.
 
What are your thoughts on David Cameron as Prime Minister of England?
He's a millionaire aristocrat who has 22 millionaires in a 30 man cabinet. He represents the interest of the rich against working families and the poor.
 
What do you think about WikiLeaks and its place in the world?
Our rulers depend on silence for compliance and that their secrets are never revealed.  
 
Since Gang of Four has been a band, you have seen six American presidents sit in office, from Jimmy Carter to Obama. Who do you feel was the best president of those six and why?
I liked Bill [Clinton]. America had a balanced budget, the rest of the world thought highly of the USA, a country I profoundly love.
 
What are your thoughts on the American Tea Party?
They should read some more books and get out more!

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Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By David Downs

An arctic blast of wind, rain and cold descended on San Francisco Thursday night, but inside the packed Bottom of the Hill club, down in front, at Ted Leo's second solo show this year - the vibe was warmly defiant.

Damn the brutal conditions outside, the New Yorker played over an hour-long set of songs from his huge back catalog, marking another intimate highlight from Noise Pop 2011, the 19 year-old week-long indie music festival featuring about 100 bands at around 20 venues, including Death Cab's Ben Gibbard, Yo La Tengo, No Age and Wavves.

Called a "goddamn national treasure" by Noise Pop writer Kevin Seal, the New Jersey native has been in the game for 25 years, morphing from punk rocker to indie rock to his current, stripped down and plugged in act - featuring just him, a mic, his guitar and amp.

He's sort of adrift in 2011, he says, and looking to reconnect. So he's struck out without his backing band The Pharmacists for one of his longest solo stints ever. Whip smart and powder dry, Leo kept his rock talk terse late Thursday night and focused on song after song of amped up singer-songwriter storytelling - a less emo Elliot Smith. Reflecting on his career crossroads, Leo said simply, "Honestly, there are very few things I'd do differently."

Tracks like "Bleeding Powers", and "Six Months in a Leaky Boat" came out forceful, confident and raw. The forty-year-old's voice was both thin and tight from winter travel and a cold - yet another reason why bands tour in the Summer. He said he might lose his voice Thursday, screwing his Seattle audience out of a show.

"Don't worry, I'll leave it gasping and bloody on stage. Seattle can deal with the aftermath," he said. Then later, "Don't tell Seattle I said that."

Cue: "Bottled in Cork", "Colleen", "The High Party Lyrics, "The Gold Finch and the Red Oak Tree" and numerous others. The crowd of Leo die-hards - some grizzled and bearded, others still in braces - lapped it all up.

He concluded with a thank you to his opener Kevin Seconds, who nearly missed his set time after his car died in Southern California Thursday morning.]

No matter how long artists tour, they remain one breakdown away from a shitstorm of problems, Leo noted.

"It's inspiring to see Kevin's performance after all that crap. And it's a privilege to get to do this."

Tonight: The legendary Kid Koala does things with vinyl records that no one else can do. And darkwave rock act Tamaryn takes us to a sinful place.

Read more at http://blurt-online.com/

Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By A.D. Amorosi

That sinking feeling that R.E.M. seem to be on about in their new album's title doesn't manifest itself within their most sonically diverse body of work since 2001's Reveal. Mind you, it's not that this is a positivist manifesto for the new decade. The now-ness is simply about shaking loose the head fuzz that marked their last 15 years.

This R.E.M. sound present-or at least as much as they did on 2008's Accelerate. When Stipe croons through the grungy ring of "All the Best" the line "it's just like me to overstay my welcome," you're not looking for something sarcastic to say back to him. Stipe's got a lot of shopworn platitudes and attitudes used as lyrical motifs here: he's "never felt so calm" ("Discoverer") and he "earned his wings" ("It Happened Today"). Luckily these are some of Collapse's brightest moments, the former borrowing its crusty melody and guitars from PIL's "Seattle" and the latter, one of the trio's chillier anthems.

The album is at its best on the piano-driven "Walk It Back" and the raveup "Alligator Aviator Autopilot Animator." Both benefit from Patti Smith's influence, the previous track a Smith-attack on her Phil Spector period, the second actually featuring punk's godparents Patti and Lenny Kaye attacking their instruments and R.E.M.'s melody like rabid dogs. (Eddie Vedder and Peaches also guest on the record.) While most of its soft ballads are on the OK side, their finest moment is the twinkling Velvets-like lullaby "Everyday is Yours to Win."

Funny, that. I think R.E.M. won this round, big time. Welcome home

Read more at http://blurt-online.com/

Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By Fred Mills

It's an old story: a respected, revered, beloved or otherwise influential musician pens a hit song (or several), but ultimately gets screwed out of his royalties, either due to youthful carelessness (particularly back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, when artists were notoriously un-savvy about the way the music biz works) or by falling prey to an unscrupulous manager or record label head. In recent years, there have been the occasional efforts by individuals or organizations to help musicians or their surviving family members finally receive a just and equitable payment, and once in awhile there has even been the notable person willing to step forward and do the right thing by the artists even if specific legal technicalities didn't require him to do so.

Apparently that ain't the case for the late Sky Saxon, frontman and chief songwriter for ‘60s garage legends The Seeds. Saxon - born Richard Marsh - passed away in 2009 (read our obituary here), but long before then he'd passed into the realm of the iconic, a genuine godfather of the Nuggets generation thanks to such Seeds hits in the mid ‘60s as "Pushin' Too Hard," "Can't Seem to Make You Mine," and "Mr. Farmer," tunes often covered by young artists coming up through the ranks, as well as his subsequent journeys in rock ‘n' roll, from his involvement with the Source Family in the ‘70s to his latterday appearances at garage rock festivals such as Cavestomp.

Now we learn that Saxon received no royalties from record sales or music publishing for most of his career, a matter that his label and publishing company attributes to his selling his artist's and producer's royalties for $350 and his music publishing royalties for $250 back in 1973. Apparently both Saxon, while he was living, and his widow attempted to recover royalties but were repeatedly turned down, so the matter has now landed in L.A. Superior Court and a hearing is scheduled for March 8. Here are the details, provided by the Saxon camp:

***

Saxon signed a record deal in 1965 with GNP Crescendo Record Co., Inc., a Los Angeles-based company that specialized in jazz recordings, run by Gene Norman, a former concert promoter and disc jockey. At that time, he also signed a music publishing deal with Neil Music, Inc., which is a sister company of GNP.  But for 37 years, since 1973, GNP and Neil Music have stubbornly refused to pay Saxon, or his heirs, any royalties whatsoever. These companies maintain that Saxon signed away all of his royalties, forever, based upon three minor transactions:  A $500 payment for "Pushin' Too Hard" in late 1972, a loan for $250 in mid-1973 (that Saxon did not pay back), for all of Saxon's other songs, and a loan for $350 from late 1973 (that Saxon also did not pay back), for all of Saxon's record and producer's royalties.

The Estate of Sky Saxon (represented by Evan Cohen, and S. Martin Keleti and Sommer Issaq of Cohen and Cohen) has brought a lawsuit against GNP and Neil Music for rescission of Saxon's record and publishing deals, and for royalties for the past four years.  In response, the companies (which are now run by Neil Norman, son of Gene Norman) have taken the position that the three petty deals from 1972 and 1973 are "buy-outs" of any and all royalties forever.  The Estate has asked the court to set aside these three transactions, on the grounds that they are so oppressive and unfair that they should be void, as a matter of public policy, that is, "unconscionable." "Unconscionable" contracts are deals that are so oppressive and one-sided that they literally "shock the conscience" of the court and of civilized society, or which have no place in the legitimate business world.  In that the alleged "buy-outs" fit that description exactly, the Estate has asked the court to set them aside.  The Estate has also asked that on account of the 37-year failure of GNP and Neil Music to pay any royalties, that the original 1960s deals be rescinded, and the Estate be given back all of the musical properties.

In recent years, GNP and Neil Music have exploited Saxon's songs and recordings to a substantial extent. "Can't Seem to Make You Mine" has recently been used in a commercial for Axe Body Spray. "Pushin' Too Hard" has been used for numerous film and television projects, as have other songs by The Seeds.  The songs have been covered over the years by numerous artists, including The Ramones, Johnny Thunders, Billy Corgan, Garbage, Alex Chilton, Murder City Devils, and Yo La Tengo.

The motion to determine the issue of unconscionability will be heard on March 8, 2011.

Read more at http://blurt-online.com/

Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

BY LEE ZIMMERMAN

Cayamo. The word itself conjures up a celebratory sound. It even leaves a rather indulgent impression, especially if said in the midst of a chorus of fellow revelers. Cayamo! Witnessing it firsthand, it becomes a veritable call to party hearty. CAYAMO!

That was certainly the case most recently as the fourth Cayamo cruise embarked from Miami, setting its sites for the Caribbean. Yet, it wasn't the destination that mattered; rather it was the journey to get there. Ensconced onboard, in the midst of over 2,000 partying passengers, were nearly three dozen of the finest Americana artists modern music has to offer, much less the finest contingent of musicians one will ever find on the high (at times) seas. BLURT was fortunate to be there for the third year in a row, documenting all the high (at times) lights over the course of an entire week. BLURT's own participation in a pair of seminars is also duly noted during the course of these proceedings, but it's the artists themselves, both singularly and in a seemingly unending parade of guest appearances and cameo occasions, that make Cayamo the most exhilarating experience a music lover could ever wish for.

To overuse a tired cliché, it rocked! Then again, words, ordinary or otherwise, don't do this event justice. Nevertheless, we'll try. What follows then, is our day-by-day rundown of Cayamo 2011.

[Ed. note: to see our photo gallery from the 2011 Cayamo! please go here.]

***

DAY ONE, Sunday, February 13

The first introduction to any cruise is always somewhat disconcerting. There's much to learn about the ship's layout, and this year it was especially challenging as the ship of choice had changed to the Norwegian Pearl after the last couple of years spent on Norwegian's Dawn. With a music cruise as intensive as Cayamo, however, preparation becomes even more of a necessity; since several concerts occur simultaneously, it's essential to thoroughly plan a personal schedule so that one can catch as many acts as possible, while contending with conflicting performances at the same time. Some of the shows are set in stone; each passenger is given assigned seating to one of three main stage shows that take place every night in the Stardust Lounge, an onboard theater with a seating capacity in excess of 1,000. In addition, there are special "hot seats" that allow a repeat ticket to one of the headliner shows with upgraded seating. Plus, the special alumni perks allow entrance into special performances that are apart from general admission. The opportunity to trade tickets made this location the most flexible of all in terms of planning a course of concert action, and passengers posted notes at a central bulletin board offering to exchange tickets for a show more to their liking.

In general however, Cayamo cruisers are responsible for setting up their own schedules, and in our case that often meant darting madly between shows on the pool deck, in the atrium, in Bar City, the Bliss Lounge and more consistently, the Spinnaker Lounge, where the majority of the must-see acts made repeat appearances. The latter venue often became a particular challenge; with an array of artists that included Richard Thompson, Loudon Wainwright, Allison Moorer, Scott Miller, Works Progress Administration, Ellis Paul, Shawn Mullins, Lucy Wainwright and ex-Men at Work mainstay Colin Hay, demand often exceeded seating capacity. Some shows were wisely moved; tickets to Loudon Wainwright stretched from deck five to deck 13 at one point, but nevertheless, the rule of thumb was first come, first served, and grab your seat as quickly as possible when inside.

Once the boat set sail, the music began in earnest. Shawn Mullins, a perennial Cayamo favorite, kicked things off on the pool deck with a set of songs that included highlights from his excellent new album, Light You Up. The crowd, already stoked, greeted the set warmly, and when Brandi Carlile, another icon adored by the Cayamo crowd, made the first of several cameo appearances, the audience predictably roared its enthusiasm

Later, it was off to Bar City (a strange name for a lounge, I reckoned, in that this particular city had no police or fire department or other internal governmental workings as far as I could see) to catch a talkative and charming Lucy Wainwright with a special guest appearance by dad Loudon, followed by Shannon Whitworth, one of the more promising newcomers on the cruise. The night ended with a performance by Work Progress Administration, or WPA, the indie super group that made its bow on Cayamo 2010 with mainstays Glen Phillips (Toad the Wet Sprocket), Sean Watkins (Nickel Creek), and Luke Bulla (Lyle Lovett). As a bonus, last minute special guest Dan Wilson sat in and played a couple of his spectacular songs as well. It made for a perfect cap on a day that was exceedingly satisfying, to say the least. Astonishingly, this was only day one!

Star sightings: Richard Thompson, with wife Nancy Covey, standing idly by during the boarding ritual; the aforementioned Glen Phillips, chatting at the service desk onboard; and Shawn Mullins, responding to a fan's inquiry about his general state of being by affirming, "Man, I've had a great year!

DAY TWO, Monday, February 14

Being Valentine's Day -- by any standard, an ideal day to cruise and listen to music -- the ship was festooned with streams of hearts and plenty of references to romance as well. I co-led a seminar on pop music's greatest love songs, sharing the spotlight with another journalist and playing samples of songs that we felt fit the occasion. My choices included Van Morrison's "Have I Told You Lately," the Beatles' "Here, There and Everywhere," "To Love Somebody" by the Bee Gees and "Unchained Melody" from the Righteous Brothers. I worried that my selections might seem a bit pedestrian to this sophisticated crowd of music aficionados, but when my partner offered Olivia Newton John's "I Honestly Love You," I figured my own hipness factor couldn't take too bad a beating. In truth, she did trump me with a song from Ani DiFranco and this very cool band from Seattle whose name I can't recall. She also knew how to program her music via IPod while I was forced to rely on a mix CD. Hey, just saying the words "mix CD" makes me feel kinda cool anyway.

Besides, by this point, everyone was in ecstasy, not the least of which the stars themselves. "It's invigorating to play for so many new people," remarked David Ryan Harris, a supremely gifted singer/songwriter and another holdover from a couple of years before. "It's also great to just sit and watch the other artists and be a fan. It's great to be stuck on a boat and casually observe all these other artists I love and respect."

Sam and Ruby, first time performers on Cayamo, echoed Harris' enthusiasm. "I can do this!" Ruby affirmed. "It's like band camp. You make friends right away and they become friends for life."

Much of the afternoon was spent crowded into the Bliss Lounge with several hundred other new friends, witnessing the end of Kevn Kinney's set as he sang, "This one's kinda like you... A little bit lost, a little bit blue." With his cowboy hat, hefty girth and long black hair, he created the impression of the stereotypical cosmic cowboy, but his amusing stories suggested he could also be everybody's best buddy if they and he were so inclined.

Scott Miller and Will Hoge, two excellent Tennessee singer/songwriters shared the stage next, swapping songs and stories for a session recorded for World Café. Both men boast a terrific catalogue of original material, and a good reservoir of wit as well. Miller, who is originally from Virginia, remarked that his wife is from neighboring West Virginia, adding, "When you get married you always have to give something up. In my case, it was half my jokes." However, despite his jocular personality, Miller's songs are infused with heartrending pathos, particularly "Lo Siento, Spanishburg, West Virginia," a tale of transformation in small town America, and "Freedom's A Stranger," an affirmative anthem even the Boss would likely love to call his own.

Our first show in the Stardust occurred that night, with John Prine taking the spotlight, accompanied at one point by the ever-present Brandi Carlile. Looking older and grayer than I had recalled, he nevertheless put on a great show, with the weary ballads "Angel from Montgomery" and "Hello In There" providing the emotional highlights. The crowd roared its approval, fully cognizant of the fact that they were witnessing a venerable old master at work.

Ellis Paul, up in the Spinnaker, provided another tender touchstone, his expressive vocals and tight two-piece backing band adding poignancy to a remarkably revealing set of songs. Damn if I didn't have tears welling up in my eyes from the first song on. The man's a treasure, as surely as James Taylor or Jackson Browne, and one can only hope someone recognizes that fact and clears him a passing lane on the road to the big time.

Keith Sewell, another one-time member of Lyle Lovett's touring band and a former foil to Ricky Skaggs, provided the musical nightcap with a rousing set of Bluegrass revelry. "Man, this is the best festival in the U.S.," he proclaimed. "Hell, it's the best festival in the world!"

We couldn't agree more.

Star sightings: Hanging with my new best friend Scott Miller, introduced in absentia by Mic Harrison, a Knoxville pal and Scott's onetime band mate in the late, great V-Roys.

DAY THREE, Tuesday, February 15

There was clear indication that overindulgence has already set in. My wife Alisa and I spot a semi familiar face on the stairwell. "You were terrific yesterday," Alisa enthuses. He thanks us and scurries away as I turn to her and ask, "So who was that?"

"I don't really know," she replied. "He did look kind of familiar though."

I run into the Steep Canyon Rangers at an interview session as they slowly, sleepily drift into the conference room. A group of best buddies who happen to be adept at old fashioned bluegrass, they've become stars of a genre that's become more and more popular with mainstream audiences in the past decade or so, a trend they attribute to the crossover acceptance of artists like Dolly Parton, Elvis Costello, Steve Earle and Robert Plant. The band's own jumpstart to fame and fortune coincided with a fortuitous partnership with Steve Martin, a subsequent world tour and a string of television appearances that has swept them into the late night and early morning talk show circuit over the past several months. Their new album with Steve Martin is scheduled for release in March, and with a cameo vocal by Paul McCartney, it's likely to bring them even more well-deserved attention.

Colin Hay proved a no-show for our interview session when it's disclosed that he's complaining of a stomach ailment and has been confined to quarters. I suppose that made him a Man from Down Under (the weather), although fortunately that would prove momentary.

A few songs with Glen Phillips solo in the Bliss Lounge led into a much-anticipated Richard Thompson show in the Spinnaker, another of the undisputed highlights of both the day and the week as a whole. Droll as always, Thompson charged into a string of classic works from his repertoire - "Misunderstood," "Turning of the Tide," "Walking on a Wire," "Wall of Death," "Feel So Good," "Misfortune," a searing take on "Vincent Black Lightening" and an emotional "Who Knows Where the Time Goes," penned by his late partner in Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny. Once again, I catch myself batting away a glistening tear. Thompson likened being on a boat to a Jimmy Buffett moment, but happily decided a traditional sea shanty will suffice instead.

An hour in and its over, and RT clears the stage for the first formal set by Scott Miller, who, in his usual aw-shucks country boy way, charms the crowd, which is rapidly warming to him after only a couple of songs. "It's one thing to make fun of the beast," he offers as he trades on some homespun philosophy. "It's quite another to try to outrun him." Fortunately, there's no need for any sprinting. By the end of the trip, he will have sold out of all his CDs at the merch store and raised his profile considerably among the Cayamo crowd. I go over to congratulate him afterwards and find him surrounded by admirers, a good thing and well deserved.

We'll take in a double header in the Stardust tonight, beginning with a rousing show by the Indigo Girls, who seem to have brought their own contingent of fans with them. Brandi Carlile makes another obligatory appearance with her two gal pals and they end their set with an anthemic "Galileo." As the fans exit the theater, it's impossible to spot anyone who doesn't have a smile frozen to their face.

Steve Earle follows and he proves as incendiary as ever with a band that includes wife Allison Moorer, dBs drummer Will Rigby and a husband/wife duo dubbed the Mastersons. They offer riveting renditions of "Copperhead Road," "Guitar Town" and the incendiary "The Revolution Starts Now." Yet, despite the high energy, Earle seems notably less insurgent and lots more accessible, casual and almost offhanded. "I've gotten a lot of second chances," he allows.

The night concludes with a hilarious set by a rubber-faced Loudon Wainwright, now moved to the Stardust to accommodate an overflow crowd shut out of his earlier show in the Spinnaker. "I'm Steve Earle's half brother," he declares, eliciting a roar of laughter. He references his role in the film Knocked Up, generating further hysterics when he announces, "You're looking at Katherine Heigl's gynecologist. Man, we just had to do that scene 30 or 40 times." Songs about over enthusiastic fans, prescription medications and the inevitability of aging, as well as ongoing pleas to snatch up his offerings at the merch table provided further reason why the crowd to convulsed with laughter. Wainwright redefines the entire concept of being laugh out loud funny.

Star sightings: None today really, but after colliding with waiters repeatedly for days, I actually witnessed two servers crashing into one another. Still, I love those guys and gals. The plea for "washy washy" as they sprayed my hands with disinfectant is destined to become my mantra.

DAY FOUR, Wednesday, February 16

We make landfall in Tortola, take a wonderful private tour, briefly hit the beach and enjoy a relaxing lunch before making our way back to the ship. We miss sets by Will Hoge and the now fully recovered Colin Hay, but do make our scheduled show with Brandi Carlile in the Stardust. Sixthman's head honcho Andy Levine, the founding father of the company that launched these theme cruises some ten years prior, intros her with a cryptic reference to her unbecoming behavior that afternoon, suggesting that her return next year may be in doubt. The crowd's baffled, being that she's been a Cayamo staple since the beginning. Nevertheless, there's growing suspicion it's all an inside joke, and as she takes the stage following a thunderous drum solo, she's clearly nonplussed about any idea of a conflict. As always, she incites the crowd with her rock ‘n' roll posturing and proves herself the ever-enduring star. She then briefly turns the stage over to "The Twins," the gawky, baldheaded Hanseroth brothers who are at the core of her backing band. They perform a note perfect rendition of "Sounds of Silence," after which Brandi asks, "Isn't that the creepiest, most beautiful thing you ever heard." The audience roars in agreement.

We catch a reprise of WPA in the Spinnaker and stick around for Kevn Kinney's Truck Stop, which, its banner aside, proves to be a surprisingly tender slate of rotating performances from Will Hoge, Shawn Mullins and Ellis Paul. By now it's late, and after an active day of sightseeing, we're clearly ready for bed. But what a way to wrap things up!

Star sightings: Brandi Carlile on her way to an excursion, holding her niece's hand; and Dan Wilson, unrecognized until it was too late, as he hurried off to catch a tour bus. Also, chats with Ruby of Sam and Ruby, and the ever-amiable David Ryan Harris. 

DAY FIVE, Thursday, February 17 

The morning arrives in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, and we awake early to catch a catamaran for some sailing and some soaking up the sun. An abundance of rum punches makes us oblivious to the sun's rays and I return to the ship looking like a lobster. I'm not bothered by it at all - at least not at this point - and opt to catch the Celt combo Enter the Haggis, who are stirring up a storm on the pool deck. Indeed, the waves are rising and the boat is rocking - literally as well as figuratively. Patty Griffin, the evening's headliner, makes note of the rolling motion during her set that night, declaring, "If I fall over, I'm going to keep on singing." Having just been accorded a Grammy the previous Sunday, she doesn't allow her serious stature to get in the way of some silliness. "Whenever I find myself in a precarious situation," she says, referring to the tossing and turning, "I find it helps if you just go ‘wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee'." The crowd takes the cue, and from that point on, her show is punctuated by "wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee's" throughout. 

Exhausted, we opt for an early evening retreat. But the ocean keeps on pounding. 

Star sightings: Steve Earle and Allison Moorer having lunch with baby John Henry at the next table. They took turns taking their meal from the buffet line, but when the baby starts getting antsy, they opt to leave. "The baby tells us when it's time to go," Earle explains. Also sighted: Luke Bulla, on our sailing excursion, accompanied by a lady friend who kindly buys Alisa a drink; and Sam, of Sam and Ruby, who's made his way over to the beach and now wonders how he'll get back to the ship. Take the catamaran back with us, I suggest. "I'm not brave enough to be so bold," he replies. Presumably, he got back safely anyway.

DAY SIX, Friday, February 18

Or maybe not. Sam was to have been the special guest for my Bob Dylan seminar this afternoon, which would find him strumming his guitar and doing a Dylan song. Then again, the seasickness bags that draped the entrance to the elevators was not a good sign so he could have been a casualty of the motion. The waves rocked the boat and the passengers were finding it hard to keep their balance... and in some cases, their meals. Fortunately, nobody lost their lunch during my presentation or I might have taken it personally. Of course, encapsulating Dylan's 50-year career into less than an hour of talk time is a major challenge, but the crowd seemed pleased. I was stopped several times by those who had attended my seminar, and I got to stretch my fifteen minutes of fame throughout the rest of the cruise. For once, people weren't gawking only because my fly was unzipped. Heck, I even got to sign an autograph. (Note to editor: I also got in plenty of plugs for our beloved BLURT.) [Ed. note: Ya done good, kid. You can keep your job for another year.]

 One perk of doing a presentation in the Spinnaker was the assurance of great seats for the concert that followed, which happened to be by none other than Allison Moorer. With hubby Steve Earle's band in tow, she put in a blazing set that included the stunning "Alabama Song," Crows" and "Hard Place to Fall." As Earle waited in the wings, she clearly couldn't help engage in a bit of one-upmanship. Recalling her Oscar nomination for her contribution to the soundtrack for The Horse Whisperer soundtrack, she noted that at the time they weren't married. "Who's that little bitch?" she remembers him saying. "He's still waiting on his nomination," she said ruefully, and with no small amount of glee. 

Other shows of note that day included a now fully recovered Colin Hay, accompanied by his wife and the Steep Canyon Rangers for some stripped down renditions of his newer songs, as well as old Men at Work standards. Chuck Canon proselytized in Bar City, singing, "God doesn't hate Muslims, God doesn't hate Jews, God doesn't hate Christians, but we all give God the blues." A second Steve Earle show, possibly even more stirring than the first, followed in the Stardust. A reprise of Shawn Mullins took place soon after. The evening was capped by Buddy Miller, a Cayamo constant, accompanied by a band that featured Cody Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars on drums, Joel Guzman on accordion and the lilting harmonies of Patty Griffin.

Star sightings: Seeing Loudon Wainwright in the Stardust, I jokingly mentioned to him that I was also his biggest fan, but I wouldn't harass him like the stalker in his song. I also got opportunity to speak with Will Rigby, who not only graced me with my first autograph of the cruise, but also promised that a new dBs album would make it way to store shelves by year's end.

DAY SEVEN, Saturday, February 19

The last day of any event, especially one as grand as this, is always bittersweet. Knowing that in 24 hours, you'll be back to an ordinary life, bereft of the camaraderie of the other Cayamo passengers, the magic of the music and the superb hospitality afforded by the Sixthman staff, makes a return to reality all the more difficult.

Fortunately, our final day was a full one, beginning with an afternoon spent at the beach at Norwegian's private island, Stirrup Cay. The music was, as usual, plentiful that evening as well, particularly the pair of Alumni Shows that began with the teaming of Richard Thompson and Loudon Wainwright, who were cleverly billed for the occasion as "Loud and Rich."  The duo leaned heavily on covers - "You Ain't Going Nowhere," Sloop John B," and "Love Hurts," which Loudon introduced by remarking, "Now that Valentines Day is long gone, let's get negative about love." These two were indeed an odd couple, and for their first show ever as a duo, they worked remarkably well together, a kind of musical take on Martin and Lewis as it were. Prefacing one of Richard's songs, Loudon suggested it might be older than most of those in attendance and then asked that the lights be turned up in order to get proof. Seeing the crowd, most of whom were well into their 40s, 50s and 60s, he shrieked with horror. "My people!" he exclaimed. Later, after asking Richard what it was like to meet the Queen, from whom he had received the Order of the British Empire honors, Loudon suggested he'd be lucky to meet the surviving members of Queen.

You had to be there.

We took in a second Buddy Miller show immediately after which Miller, a clear Cayamo Cruise favorite, noting that it had been two years since his heart attack onstage and the subsequent triple bypass surgery which prevented his Cayamo appearance in 2009. He humbly offered thanks for the cards and emails he received from well-wishers and then noted that among those urging his speedy recovery was guitarist Steve Bruton, who sadly succumbed to cancer only a short time later.

Afterwards, we hightailed it to the Spinnaker for a standing room only performance by Scott Miller. Scott had really worked his way up to the Cayamo hierarchy in a very short time it seemed. There was then a scramble for seats for an encore performance by Richard Thompson, forcing me to sit on the on the floor and crunch myself in a compact position that precluded any possibility of comfort. Midway through, someone whispered, "Lee, behind you," as they prepared to exit and graciously give me their seats. I'm not sure who it was, but if you're reading this - thanks!

Star sightings: There were a plethora of farewells after Thompson ended his set. He autographed my album after I had taken the opportunity to chat with his wife Nancy, who, by the way, organizes Festival Tours, a jolly trip to the U.K. for Fairport Convention's anniversary gigs at the Cropredy Festival. It was also picture taking time with Buddy Miller, who played on Thompson's encore; the aforementioned Mastersons; Cody Dickinson, to whom I paid complements for the North Mississippi Allstars' latest album, and, finally, my new pal Scott Miller, who repaid my affection with a solid kiss on the cheek. The sentiments are mutual, Scott, I assure you.

*** 

So that's it. Another year with a wonderful Cayamo adventure. As my friend Dan reminded me on Friday night, there really is no way to aptly describe this cruise to those of have never been on it. I've attempted to do so of course, but if you're swayed at all, I'd also suggest you partake in it yourself next year. As stated earlier, it rocks... even when the seas are calm.

Read more at http://blurt-online.com/

Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

BY JENNIFER KELLY

"When we started the Luyas, the concept was that there were no rules about what it had to be or what it had to sound like," says Luyas singer Jessie Stein. "The band was conceived as a band for fun."

The Luyas have been keeping it fun for roughly half a decade now, playing secret shows in and around  Montreal, relying on non-traditional rock instruments like French Horn, strings and a 12-string, three-bridged lute called a Moodswinger, and recording two albums. The first, Faker Death came out as a self-release in August 2007 and was reissued the following January on Pome Records. The second, Too Beautiful To Work, arrived this week on the much larger, much more visible Dead Oceans label.

Stein says that the record's title, which is also the name of its opening song, is partly a reference to a girl she knows who seems to get by solely on her looks. But it's also an observation about her band's languid, dreamily gorgeous sound, which proved to be a surprisingly hard sell when she went out to pitch it to labels. "People kept saying that they loved it, but they didn't know what to do with it," says Stein.  

The Luyas began with Stein and her friends Pietro Amato and Stefan Schneider, all living in Toronto as part of the Blocks Recording experimental music scene. Stein was in an indie pop band called SS Cardiacs. Amato and Schneider had a three-piece instrumental outfit called Torngat. Their sounds could hardly have been more different, but they became fans of each other's work and embarked on a lasting friendship.

Later, when Stein turned up in Montreal, she began to think about collaborating. "I thought, it would be awesome to just take my songs and hand them over to somebody whose aesthetic sensibility was so different from mine," she says. "To let another set of ears and another style of musicians arrange it. I guess I got that inspiration from the record Destroyer did with Frog Eyes."

By then Amato and Schneider were both in Bell Orchestre and Amato had toured as a horn player with Arcade Fire. Stein began playing casually with Amato, in the process incorporating one of the Luyas more unusual elements, the French horn, into her songwriting. "It was more because of the fact that he's Pietro than because he plays French horn," she says. "He was my friend and he was a musician. There has never been any notion that, ‘Oh, we need a player who plays this.'  So it's a really organic band. Everything happens for some natural reason."

Schneider joined next, and the band began playing live as the Luyas in December 2006. They released Faker Death on their own in 2007. In 2010, McSweeneys  writer Sean Michaels documented a secret show in Montreal, where would-be concert goers were summoned to a meeting point, blindfolded and led by rope to the show venue. Michaels' called the Luyas music "an art-pop that's supple, gold and silver, with messy choruses wedged between swells of scattered sound." A week or so later, Stein was at SXSW, taking meetings and trying to find a label for her band.

For Too Beautiful To Work, the band added a new member Mattieu Charbonneau.  This first album for Dead Oceans also has string arrangements by another old Blocks Recordings friend, the composer Owen Pallett, who was once Stein's roommate.

 "Owen's a really good friend of mine. I met him when I was maybe 18 and living in Toronto," she says. "He was writing the first Final Fantasy record when I was living with him.  We've gone through a lot together through the years, eight years."

The mutual confidence built up in that long-term relationship allowed Stein to simply hand over her tunes and allow Pallett to realize them more fully. "I really trust Owen. He's known every piece of music that I've made since I started recording music, basically. So I know that he has a very good sense of who I am."

For Too Beautiful to Work, Pallett arrived at the studio one day and took over. "He just walked in, and he said, these people are coming today. How much time do I have?  He called a bunch of his friends, and just told them what to do.  It was amazing."

"Owen's an incredible conductor," she adds. "He's very good at getting people to do a very specific thing that he wants them to do."   

The full palette of instruments transforms the Luyas' dream-like songs into lusher, more complex compositions, as on the album highlight "Canary," where a wash of strings adds tension to Stein's languid vocals. The Moodswinger plays a role on that song as well, first in its traditional guise as a strummed, stringed instrument, and later in a giant crashing sound as Stein moves the third bridge mid-cut.

"The third bridge on a Moodswinger is a sliding bridge, kind of based on the concept of a screwdriver under the strings. It slides on two metal bars pushed up on the strings at different positions on the neck to create different overtone structures," says Stein. Normally, a musician would set the third bridge at the beginning of a song and leave it there, but it is possible to reposition it on the fly. "You can do that, yes, but it makes a big, loud scary noise," says Stein. "In ‘Canary,' that happens. When it goes to the instrumental section, there's a big crash." It was no accident, and Stein would do it again in a heartbeat. "It was a total move," she adds impishly.

That sense of play is maybe the central think about Luyas. This is a band that's always willing to try something new. For instance, the song "Too Beautiful to Work," was one of the last ones to be recorded for the second album, after new member Mattieu Charbonneau had joined Stein, Pietro Amato and Stefan Schneider. Along among the CD's tracks, it has an antic, manic, dance-friendly vibe, with careening piano lines and a percolating electro beat. "We never made a song that is remotely like that one before, but that's the spirit of our band," she says. "To do whatever... to follow our hearts."

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Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By Fred Mills 

Yesterday we took a look at music industry douchebag, er, veteran Steve Stoute's recent open letter to the Grammys and how, among other things, he floated some vague notion of a conspiracy theory surrounding Arcade Fire's Best Album win (at the expense of Eminem, of course, who clearly "deserved" to win). Stoute clearly stirred up some shit, as it was juicy watercooler talk for several days, and among the commentators who weighed in was industry watchdog Bob Lefsetz (of "The Lefsetz Letter"), who seemed to echo Stoute's suspicions when he wrote, in part: 

"Obviously NARAS knew Arcade Fire was gonna win.  Otherwise, why would they close the show?  And they got two numbers.  If there was gonna be extra time couldn't there have been another performer, or one of those legendary Grammy love-ins featuring Stevie Wonder and a whole host of legends, maybe playing a classic with Arcade Fire?" 

This apparently caught the attention of the Arcade Fire camp, for today Lefsetz (who is nothing if not fair about allowing both those who agree AND disagree with him have their say) published a letter from the band's manager, Scott Rodger, who very firmly insists that there was "no big plot" whatsoever, and that in particular the fact that the band played a second song, at the end and as credits began to roll, was merely because there was enough time for it. 

Rodger's letter read, in part: 

"Arcade Fire had the final slot on the Grammys as the ratings are low at the end of the broadcast. It really is that simple. We were one of the least known acts on the bill for a network audience. Don't you think I wanted a better slot for the band? The reason we got a second song was also simple. No big plot. We had no guarantee of air time, but it was simply to play out the end credits of the show, if we're even had that much. The show never runs like clockwork to an exact time so the end is always loose. As it happened, the broadcast was covered by sponsors messages and the end credits."

Rodger added that the international broadcast of the show not only cut the band's main performance earlier in the evening, the end-title performance was "bastardised."

Continuing, Rodger noted, "Arcade Fire deserved the win this year. They made the best album. If the award was named "Album Sales Of The Year" award, there would be no discussion. Stoute's letter was a nice piece of self publicity. Did he see Kanye's tweets when we won and the praise he gave us?? He needs to tune in. Eminem made a big selling album but it was far from being his best work. Katy Perry made a big pop record that simply didn't have weight or credibility. Gaga's repackage, great album but it was a repackage of the main release. I think everyone felt it was going to be Lady Antebellum's moment having won 5 out of 6 awards to that point. We all felt that way too."

Rodger additionally pointed out that the band "didn't lobby any organisation for [the Grammy win] and that they had to pay their "own overhead to do the event, thus the lack of onstage gimmicks. No label picked up the tab."

Amen. So much for the conspiracy theory. Once again, hats off to Arcade Fire. You can read all about this and more at the Lefsetz Letter.

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By Fred Mills

Greying musos (such as yours truly) can do a merry arm-in-arm jig with younger freak-folkers at the recent news from venerable archival label Light In The Attic: they've reissued the legendary British folkie Michael Chapman's 1970 classic Fully Qualified Survivor, a platter that has long eluded fans on these shores for a good time now (to date it had only been reissued overseas), and one which the original vinyl has no doubt been wore thin from constant spins over the years. The album's stature is indeed justified; Chapman, a peer to the likes of John Martyn and Roy Harper, recorded early on for the Harvest imprint and was championed by no less than BBC maestro John Peel, who helped make the track "Postcards From Scarborough" a minor hit in the UK.

Chapman's four-album run for Harvest earned him a rabidly devoted following, and although his profile was considerably lower from the 1980s onward, he remains a much-loved icon in the roots and folk community and continues to record and perform to this day.

And because we feel like LITA's official product description for Chappo's album is absolutely stonkin', we're gonna share that with you. Check it out:

Oh yeah! Are you ready to get qualified??? Fans of John Martyn, Roy Harper, and Bert Jansch get ready for a little trip back to England in 1970 when the Harvest label was playing mother hen to the psych-folk-rock scene. First time ever on CD in North America, and the first vinyl reissue in decades, this reissue of Michael Chapman's classic 1970 album Fully Qualified Survivor sports re-mastered audio, old school tip-on gatefold jacket, 180-gram vinyl, rare archival photos, and notes by Mick Houghton (Uncut). And for you CD lovers, better put on your shades when picking this one up, as the silver foil deluxe Digipak is a real shiner! Like other Harvest artists, Chapman's music contains a slightly drugged out feel, sublime guitar playing and intense lyrics. What makes Fully Qualified Survivor such a special album (besides being a vehicle for a young pre-David Bowie Mick Ronson's mind-blowing guitar heroics) are the layers of beautiful acoustic guitars, deranged vocals, floating conga drums, and the cello of Paul Buckmaster, all floating along in a slightly druggy haze.

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Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

BY NANCY DUNHAM

Think of Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion as living in something akin to a snow globe, where musical influences scatter down upon them.

As the daughter of Arlo and granddaughter of Woody, Sarah Lee has always embraced her royal folk heritage. After the two married, Johnny - well known in rock notably for Queen Sarah Saturday - joined in the family's folk endeavors through such projects as "The Guthrie Family Rides Again" tour and even riding with the family on a Thanksgiving Day float in last year's Macy's Day Parade.

"I've played loud versions of rock and roll and put out some solo records," says Irion, "This was a turning point for Sarah Lee and me."

Irion is referring to Bright Examples, the new album from the pair that some label as country rock, others label as alt-country and still others just call indie. Whatever the assigned musical genre, reviewers agree the songs - nine written by Irion, two by Guthrie and one written as collaboration - charmingly swirl the duo's many musical influences. That's just what the two were going for as they approached the album as a way to set a musical soundscape for their work together.

In a way it was a move from South Carolina to Massachusetts, near where Guthrie grew up, that prompted the pair to write what they now call the album they were always meant to record.

"We left South Carolina and I just started maniacally writing," Irion says. "At the end we had about 50 songs."

Some tunes, such as "Never Far From My Heart," are examples of Guthrie and Irion embracing a shared experience, while others ("Target on My Heart") are Irion's more solitary musings. Suffice to say the songs are richly textured, which is no doubt why U2 guitarist the Edge expressed interest in producing the album.

"I was thinking that the Edge has worked with [great producers and musicians] and learned from each of them," says Irion. "He was really interested but he's crazy busy right now and we didn't want to wait. I'm so glad he didn't [produce the album] because we ended up with all kinds of great stuff on this album we might not have gotten."

Although the stars didn't align to work with the Edge, Irion and Guthrie knew they wanted a producer who was also a player, not just a technician. The duo's creation process is quite organic, and producers who aren't players don't add a lot to the mix.

Enter the production dream team of Vetiver's Andy Cabic and Thom Monahan (who in addition to Vetiver has worked with Devendra Banhart and the Black Crowes' Chris Robinson), who had first introduced Sarah Lee and Johnny. Almost from the first time, Cabic and Monahan heard the 50 odd songs the duo sent them, the match seemed ideal.

"We sent [the songs] to Andy and Thom, and they wrote back and says, 'We have two records here. Here is the record we can make with you guys,'" says Irion. "I'm still looking forward to making that other record though."

Perhaps now more than ever, because of the magical process that surrounded the recording and production of Bright Examples.

"Thom is one of those guys, he is maniacal," Irion continues. "He is there and in the moment and if he thinks one way, you're going to have a hard time changing his mind. Thanks to him for that. We owe a lot of the way the record turned out to that."

Consider the track "Butterflies" that Irion and Guthrie had envisioned as an ethereal, floating tune: Monahan heard the song as something else and convinced them to record it with plenty of bluegrass sounds that the duo is convinced ultimately brought it to life

"It's one of those 'clean your palate' songs," says Irion. "It really works for the record." Guthrie agrees, noting that the entire process was an act of faith in many ways. "I am often of the thinking if there are too many chefs in the kitchen, it might come out fragmented," she says. "In a way, you have to sacrifice and learn from everything. That was the pool we were swimming in with Andy and Tom. We loved the experience and we learned a lot from these guys who make great music. That's why it sounds complete and beautiful."

Adding to the mix were flavors of several guests, including Gary Louris and Mark Olson of the Jayhawks who brought their own style of harmonies to the tune "Seven Sisters."

"Without the Jayhawks we wouldn't have Wilco," says Irion. "Those two, when you blend their vocals together it is like blending Sarah Lee and me. It just worked on that song and that's why you have something of a Jayhawks' feeling."

In fact, the entire album has the laid-back Laurel Canyon vibe of friends that are comfortable enough in their own musical skins to team together with such disparate instrumentation as lap steel guitar and Hammond organ and lovingly knit what seems to be a one-of-a-kind sound.

Irion says that it was the careful choosing of the producers, the guests, and others involved in the album that made the songs work. "It all harkens back to a great team. When you listen to all the great records, obviously, Paul McCartney made great records [as solo albums] but he also had to rely on a lot of other people to get there."

Many songs on the album were recorded live, resulting in a spine-tingling immediacy, such as when the vocals of Irion and Guthrie swirl together on the aforementioned "Seven Sisters." Take some Neil Young and a dab of Tom Petty, mix in touches of Tori Amos and Stevie Nicks, put in a dash of country - and you have Guthrie and Irion.

"This is a turning point, absolutely," says Guthrie, "We have been waiting for this for a long time, preparing for it. It's what we have always wanted to do. This has been the ultimate experience for me and now we'll take it from there."

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Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By Fred Mills

By way of introduction: Paper Tiger is an Asheville, NC, -based duo, vocalist Molly Kummerle (of well-known regional jazz/pop outfit Ruby Slippers) and Isaac Gottfried (aka MINGLE, noted deejay and remixer). Since joining forces a couple of years ago, Kummerle and Gottfried have quickly amassed a reputation for crafting brainy electronica that dips equally into hypnotic trip-hop and danceable, pop-tilting sampladelica; they were among a handful of local acts selected to perform at last fall's MoogFest, which featured such heavy-hitters as Massive Attack, Big Boi, Jonsi and MGMT. Me Have Fun (Boy Girl Recordings), their debut, more than reaffirms that reputation - in its quietly compelling, get-under-your-skin brand of understatement, it actually winds up saying more than 99% of the new releases that have appeared so far this year.

First and foremost, Kummerle brings her jazz-trained pipes to the party with such seductive grace that you half expect her to step out from behind the stereo speakers wearing nothing but a sheer silk robe and a coy smile. Yet there's also a palpable vulnerability to that voice. The first time you hear her clearly is in the second song, the title track, cooing "ahh-ahh-mmm" softly, but with purpose, and as the smokey, loungey tune gradually unfolds, the singer confesses her lust and her confusion and to how her "rules start to come undone" as she confronts that desire. In her voice, one hears echoes of Dusty Springfield, Billie Holiday, Beth Orton and Beth Gibbons - fire and ice, ice and fire.

The Gibbons comparison isn't a stray one, by the way; Portishead is the contemporary act that Paper Tiger most closely resembles, along with fellow Bristolians Massive Attack. Gottfried's fertile trove of samples and liberal deployment of keyboards (by both Gottfried and Kummerle, plus guest Chuck Lichtenberger from stephaniesid) all synch organically to cast a widescreen, cinematic glow. From the sweeping strings and noirish vibe of "Hibiscus" and the chilly orchestral minimalism of "Softly" to the eerie-yet-lush "Hugo," whose Beach Boys sample is guaranteed to permanently alter the way you hear "Good Vibrations," these compositions push beyond merely "compelling" to become insistent, the transformation occurring on an almost subliminal level. Another band simpatico with Paper Tiger's crate-digging aesthetic: Saint Etienne, particularly on the surreal, flute-and-horns flecked "Paper Tiger" and the dreamy, yearning "Freezer" (with its suite-like arrangement that slips deliciously into breezy ‘60s pop mode, then back again, this song is destined to find its way onto a movie or TV show soundtrack with the right marketing push).

Seamlessly sequenced, with Gottfried supplying brief (under 30 seconds) instrumental interludes between each proper song to lend an additional filmic heft to the proceedings, and remarkably diverse for a quote/unquote "downtempo" project, Me Have Fun is the type of record that pays dividend after dividend with each new spin. It's the sound of late-night romance, of early-morning musings, and of all the refracted beauty of the daylight that falls between.

Incidentally, don't bother Googling the band's name; it'll just drive you crazy, as there is also a Dutch indierock band called Paper Tiger, a rock/funk outfit from Wisconsin called Paper Tiger, the Doomtree hip-hop collective producer who calls himself Paper Tiger, some teenage band that goes by the handle of My Paper Tiger, and assorted non-musical Paper Tiger entities. If you want to chase down this Paper Tiger and hear assorted album tunes and remixes, go directly to the official website or to the duo's MySpace page. But be careful: the music may be atmospheric and dreamy, but it's hardly toothless. Once it gets you in its maw, it doesn't let go. Rrrrowwrrr.

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Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

By Fred Mills

Aaaannnnndddd the post-Grammys Arcade Fire backlash rolls on.

You may have heard that the Merge band won a Grammy last week; something about the best album of 2010. And you may recall that in the wake of that win, a lot of creeps - most of them hip-hop fans, plus Rosie O'Donnell - came out of the woodwork to rain on A.F.'s parade, spouting claims how Eminem (and in some instances Justin Bieber - now THERE's a juxtaposition) wuz robbed.

Add Translation marketing company CEO Steve Stoute, apparently a 20-year music biz veteran (who?), to that chorus of nattering nabobs of naysayerdom. In a story published at Billboard.com, the record industry bible takes a look at Stoute and the full-page ad he ran recently in the New York Times that was essentially an open letter to the Grammys for this year's "snubbing" of Eminem and, you guessed it, Justin Bieber, along with Kanye West.

Said Stoute, "The awards show has become a series of hypocrisies and contradictions, leaving me to question why any contemporary popular artist would even participate. We must acknowledge the massive cultural impact of Eminem and Kanye West and how their music is shaping, influencing and defining the voice of a generation. [And] how is it that Justin Bieber, an artist that defines what it means to be a modern artist, did not win Best New Artist?"

Stoute singled out Arcade Fire's "surprise" win as proof of the Grammys having tin ears, writing, "What truly inspired the writing of this letter was that this most recent show fed my suspicions. As the show was coming to a close and just prior to presenting the award for Album Of The Year, the band Arcade Fire performed "Month of May" -- only to... surprise... win the category and, in a moment of sheer coincidence, happened to be prepared to perform "Ready to Start." "

Hmmm, that's a real smoking gun, ya know? Read the full article here, and you can also read Stoute's own commentary over at the Huffington Post.

Meanwhile... hey Stoute - go fuck yourself, you constipated nitwit.

Incidentally, I'm not the only one who took note of Stoute and decided to point out how far up his ass he's lodged his head. Music industry observer Wayne Rosso, in his latest "Wayne's World" blog, penned his own open letter, this one to Stoute, and swiftly dismantled most of Stoute's core contentions (adding that Justin Bieber is an "irritating little snot").

Writes Rosso, to Stoute, "I think that you may have to go back to school. Your impassioned defense of Justin Bieber, Kanye West and Eminem, accusations of NARAS members' collective pop culture ignorance and intimations of chicanery may be misguided or at the very least uninformed...The implications of some sort of bizarre Grammy conspiracy sounds more like the single bullet theory or a Glen Beck rant."

Indeed.

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BY STEVEN ROSEN

Willie Wright's Telling the Truth, the latest reissue/rediscovery from the archivists at Chicago's Numero Group, gets off to one strange start. A jivey voice, which sounds like it's introducing a live-radio broadcast from a glittery nightclub, cheerily says, "Hello, music people of the world. Hotel Records and Variety Recording at 130 West 42^nd St. in New York City, we proudly present Mr. Willie Wright." There's a slight New York accent to the voice and you wonder what kind of dated, hipsterish hokum you're in for. But then Wright starts to sing a laid-back, introspective, lilting jazzy-folk number - " Nantucket Woman" - pushed gently forward by the expansive, Allman Brother guitar licks of the fine Harry Jensen, and you're taken aback. This sounds intimate, personal, real. What gives?

That's all part of Wright's unusual story - this album was originally (and barely) released in 1977, when Wright was just shy of 40. An African-American born in the South who moved early to New York, discovered his relaxed, mellifluous, honeyed voice (with a touch of Lou Rawls) and spent a peripatetic career traveling between New York, Boston and points between.

He could have had a career in the 1970s to match Bill Withers, O.C. Smith or Terry Callier. And he seems to have tried. But he also seems to have been infused with quite a bit of the countercultural spirit. According to the copiously detailed liner notes accompanying this reissue, he and a partner once ran a head shop in Allston, Mass., but broke up when he wanted to shift all the contents vertically by 90 degrees. That meant the counter and clerks would have to be suspended from the ceiling, which struck the partner as a bit impractical.

Maybe that kind of spirit is why Telling the Truth was released on Wright's own barebones Hotel Records. And in order to afford its production, he cut a deal with Variety Recording, a studio. It halved its rate and got a plug on the album's first cut. Wright pressed just 1,000 copies, selling them himself in Nantucket where he was a popular club draw.

All this makes Wright seem like a total eccentric, a flake, but he doesn't sound like that at all. True, the production limits the dimensionality of the recording, so his voice isn't as dynamic as it could be. But nevertheless, it is friendly and unpretentious, romantic but never melodramatic - it finds the groove and works intuitively with the limited accompaniment (he, himself, plays rhythm guitar and flute). At times, the songs have a solid Southern rock-and-soul dimension. These are tunes Van Morrison would love - quietly trying to push the romantic into the mystic. Greg Allman, too, would have admired the funky-rock fatalism of "It's Only Life, That's All."

The songs are often quite touching lyrically. Wright seems to know his dreams of musical success are slipping from him, and he expresses it with wise resignation. He seems badly to want love - a good relationship - and to need it to get by. (Apparently he found it on occasion. the photo above depicts Wright with his "one-time muse" Susan Hayes.) In "Dressing for the Occasion," he finds solace from job-hunting frustrations in his woman's love. On "In the Beauty of the Night," a ballad that Wright prefaces with flute and some dreamy "la la las," he sings, "Searching through our sounds, for our favorite LPs/There isn't anywhere on earth I'd rather be."

According to the liner notes, Wright had a troubled family life. And that seems to bother him. The ballad, "Son, Don't Let Life Pass You By," which has some gorgeous minor-key chord changes to highlight its generous lyrics, is directed toward a resentful offspring. The piano wisely plays off of Jensen's guitar - at key moments the voice is double-tracked. On the carefully pulsating groove of the celebratory "I'm So Happy Now," Wright is joined by a daughter on back-up vocals: "Finally decided, we can't be divided."

The reissue includes three extra cuts, two of which are also included on a CD-45. One is a version of Curtis Mayfield's powerful "Right On for the Darkness.

Wright, now just over 70, lives in Providence and fights  Parkinson's disease. Numero Group doesn't dwell on this, but the liner notes do have a recent quote from him: "I'm trying to do something comfortable with my life. It's not really about the money. I want to contribute something...something timeless."

He's a little late getting discovered, but with Telling the Truth he just might have done that.

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Originally published on http://blurt-online.com/

Last Sunday, no one could shut up about how this year's Grammy award had turned the tide around for the music industry. For once the Grammys got it right, right? But the Arcade Fire and Esperanza Spalding had less than a day in the spotlight as the industry's beacons of hope before Radiohead completely stole their thunder by announcing that their eighth record The King Of Limbs would be released five days later. By the time anyone actually came to some sort of conclusion about the relevance of those Grammy wins, it was a moot point.

For four days following the album announcement, Radiohead captivated the minds of fans worldwide with their cryptic secrecy with no supporting hype machine, virtually no record information, mysterious Japanese Tweets about potential secret performances and an earlier than expected release date. As a result, The King Of Limbs became a blessing and a curse for the British rockers. On one hand, Radiohead's unsurprising surprise had no pre-formulated expectations attached due the fact there were only a few days between the initial announcement and actual release date. At the same time, however, this short notice made everyone pay all the more attention when the record dropped a day earlier than its announced target of Saturday, on Friday morning. ("It's a full moon," quipped the band, via a note on their website, by way of explanation.)

So what does The King of Limbs hold in store for Radiohead four years after their brilliant In Rainbows came out?  For starters, it's an undoubtedly a challenging record - the closest thing to Kid A that the band has created since. It makes senses given that some of these songs have been performed live dating back to that period of time. With that in mind, The King of Limbs seems like a patchwork of the band's musical journey from Kid A, Hail To The Thief, In Rainbows and beyond.

The new record offers a varied collection from the group, surveying the modern electronic climate. Jumping around from dubstep to ambient, The King of Limbs is not Radiohead's most cohesive effort, but still offers an abundance of moments exemplifying their brilliance. "Bloom" opens the record with a seemingly solo Thom Yorke effort, as the frontman's voice and frenetic drum samplings showcases the band's return to left-field experimentation. Radiohead provides a more than ample supply of previous examples from the bands previous repertoire. "Morning Mr Magpie" resonates as a Hail To The Thief offering, while "Little By Little" sounds like a B-side to Amnesiac's  "I Might Be Wrong."

While the first half of The King of Limbs is a scattered assortment of songs that may or may not work together, the second half of the record resonates with several of Radiohead's most delicate moments thus far. In particular, "Codex" glows as an absolutely stunning, heartrending gem, surpassing the group's haunting trio of melancholic ballads found on In Rainbows. "Codex" is downright brilliant, echoing as one of the most beautiful tracks the band has ever coined. "Separator" closes with an intriguing combination of Yorke's floating vocals and Phil Selway's crisp drumming, recapturing some of the haunting magic found on the band's Grammy-nominated track "House of Cards." 

Once you get past all the hype and flash-in-the-pan hoopla surrounding the record, The King Of Limbs ultimately emerges as an album filled with shimmering glimpses of what Radiohead could have done if they created a new record, rather than revisiting much of what they have already accomplished. With that in mind, the album still carries plenty of weight and reason to listen. While this record only holds a few transcendent moments, at the end of the day all Radiohead is good Radiohead--an easy thing to lose sight of amidst the enormous amounts of current musical skepticism and judgment surrounding The King of Limbs.

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By Jud Cost

Sometimes you think crazy things when you start to feel trapped. About halfway into Godspeed You! Black Emperor's opening 12-minute aural assault, I began to wonder if a person could die from listening to music - just sitting there while all your systems completely shut down from sensory overload. Or possibly whether the old Warfield Theatre, an ancient structure built in the 1920's that has seen better days and survived recent attacks by the Stooges and Motorhead, might give up the ghost tonight and implode.

A rafter-rattling bass drone had filled the dusty old hall for the entire 40 minutes it took the band to set up tonight. As the scrawled word "HOPE" flickered on a large screen behind them, the first selection by the notorious Montreal-based octet started out extremely loud (even with earplugs), then just kept getting louder and louder and louder. As someone who had survived Blue Cheer, the '60s poster boys for premature audience deafness who once roamed San Francisco's hippie ballroom scene, Godspeed was on a totally different arc of magnitude tonight.  

There were guitars, keyboards, a drum kit and, oddly enough, a standup bass being played onstage by members of the band but, for all you could distinguish from any one player, there might just as well have been a platoon of department-store dummies seated behind the gear. The upright bass is hard to hear on some vintage jazz records. It didn't have a prayer in hell of making a dent in this sonic explosion. The band's sound at full throttle was something akin to being ferried to the space station while strapped to a NASA rocket full of liquid oxygen. At the conclusion of round one, some people screamed and applauded, a few got up and departed, and most sat there stunned as though they'd just witnessed the annihilation of a heavenly body.

When one of the players spoke to the full house in a distinct New York accent after the band completed a second harrowing trip to outer space, it took me back to the good old days of the Terrastock festivals, held in various U.S. and U.K. ports of call more than ten years ago. "When I was a kid, I used to love to go to Coney Island. My parents would take me there, and I even got lost on the beach, but they found me. We used to go there at night sometimes and sleep on the beach. But you can't do that anymore. They've shrunk Coney Island almost down to nothing." It was the perfect intro for one of those Alastair Galbraith-style mind-expansion gems. And GYBE obliged with a perfectly rendered, slow, almost acoustic-sounding coffee and scones number. And then, after a few minutes, it started getting louder and louder again.

As the one-hour mark fast approached, it was plain to see the Godspeed experience had shown most of its portfolio. This had been the triple espresso after last night's bottle of house Cabernet (Beach House and Papercuts at the Fillmore).  On the way home, I stopped off in San Bruno to get a cup of decaf and a doughnut to restore my chemical balance. Since the wind was blowing pretty hard after a week of torrential rain, the air traffic for San Francisco International had been re-routed to its alternate takeoff and landing pattern. A 747 jumbo jet flew directly overhead, very low, just as I walked across the parking lot. And it didn't really sound all that loud (even without the earplugs).

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By Tim Hinely

Sold out crowd for this Yo La Tengo tour (last time here, a year or so ago, they played the larger Crystal Ballroom) but let's not forget about the openers The Urinals, for whom the place was only half full by the time they went on at 9:00 PM. The first word that comes to mind when describing this longtime L.A. band is "seminal," since that is the word that critics use most often to describe them. They'd been around since the late ‘70s but morphed into 100 Flowers in 1980. The band now is two-thirds of the original lineup (vocalist John Talley-Jones and drummer Kevin Barret) and then a newer guitarist (original member Kjehl Johansen quit some years ago to go solo but was also in underrated SST band Trotsky Icepick).  The trio played an energetic, punchy set of fairly short tunes (and surprisingly melodic) that really seemed to win the crowd over. Don't think we heard "I'm a Bug" but they definitely played "Sex," "Surfing with the Shah," "Ack Ack Ack Ack" and more.  Well done, gentlemen.

Yo La Tengo hit the stage about 10:15 PM and for this tour the band is doing a little spin-the-wheel for song selection. What is that, you ask? It is where they have a big wheel on stage, bring out an audience member to spin it (in this case a preppy looking blonde gal) and then whatever it lands on they will play that for the night, or at least for the first set. It could have landed on several different things: songs that begin with s, a set of Condo Fucks songs (YLT's alter ego), or a set of Dump songs (bassist James McNew's solo project) or even on where they act out an episode of Seinfeld for 20 minutes (sitcom theatre, we ALL wanted that).

But when this gal spun it landed on The Sounds of the Sounds of Science. This was the one thing many people in the crowd didn't want it to land on (including myself), as it was an instrumental record (released on the band's own Egon Records) that was moody and atmospheric and definitely not everyone's favorite. A few moments got quite frenzied, but all in all many folks were relieved when it ended (two of my friends walked out and went home mid set). After taking a short break the band came back out and reversed any unhappiness by playing "Sugarcube," "Autumn Sweater," "Tears are in your Eyes," "Stockholm Syndrome," "Can't Forget" and others. This second set was the Yo La Tengo I know and love; one treat for me has always been watching Georgia Hubley on drums, truly one of the underrated drummers of our time.

In a live setting you're never sure what band is going to show up, and while a few of these live performances over the years have sent me away scratching my head (or occasionally bummed out), one must give credit to a band that does what it wants and not necessarily what the fans always want. It probably keeps being a band fresh and interesting for these guys and thus, explains at least part of their longevity.

The Yo La Tengo/Urinals tour continues this week on the West Coast. Dates can be found here. Also, there will be a live Ustream broadcast from Eugene, Oregon, tonight, with show time approximately at 8pm (Pacific time) - go here to watch the webstream.

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BY MAX BLAU

Last Sunday, no one could shut up about how this year's Grammy award had turned the tide around for the music industry. For once the Grammys got it right, right? But the Arcade Fire and Esperanza Spalding had less than a day in the spotlight as the industry's beacons of hope before Radiohead completely stole their thunder by announcing that their eighth record The King Of Limbs would be released five days later. By the time anyone actually came to some sort of conclusion about the relevance of those Grammy wins, it was a moot point.

For four days following the album announcement, Radiohead captivated the minds of fans worldwide with their cryptic secrecy with no supporting hype machine, virtually no record information, mysterious Japanese Tweets about potential secret performances and an earlier than expected release date. As a result, The King Of Limbs became a blessing and a curse for the British rockers. On one hand, Radiohead's unsurprising surprise had no pre-formulated expectations attached due the fact there were only a few days between the initial announcement and actual release date. At the same time, however, this short notice made everyone pay all the more attention when the record dropped a day earlier than its announced target of Saturday, on Friday morning. ("It's a full moon," quipped the band, via a note on their website, by way of explanation.)

So what does The King of Limbs hold in store for Radiohead four years after their brilliant In Rainbows came out?  For starters, it's an undoubtedly a challenging record - the closest thing to Kid A that the band has created since. It makes senses given that some of these songs have been performed live dating back to that period of time. With that in mind, The King of Limbs seems like a patchwork of the band's musical journey from Kid A, Hail To The Thief, In Rainbows and beyond.

The new record offers a varied collection from the group, surveying the modern electronic climate. Jumping around from dubstep to ambient, The King of Limbs is not Radiohead's most cohesive effort, but still offers an abundance of moments exemplifying their brilliance. "Bloom" opens the record with a seemingly solo Thom Yorke effort, as the frontman's voice and frenetic drum samplings showcases the band's return to left-field experimentation. Radiohead provides a more than ample supply of previous examples from the bands previous repertoire. "Morning Mr Magpie" resonates as a Hail To The Thief offering, while "Little By Little" sounds like a B-side to Amnesiac's  "I Might Be Wrong."

While the first half of The King of Limbs is a scattered assortment of songs that may or may not work together, the second half of the record resonates with several of Radiohead's most delicate moments thus far. In particular, "Codex" glows as an absolutely stunning, heartrending gem, surpassing the group's haunting trio of melancholic ballads found on In Rainbows. "Codex" is downright brilliant, echoing as one of the most beautiful tracks the band has ever coined. "Separator" closes with an intriguing combination of Yorke's floating vocals and Phil Selway's crisp drumming, recapturing some of the haunting magic found on the band's Grammy-nominated track "House of Cards."

Once you get past all the hype and flash-in-the-pan hoopla surrounding the record, The King Of Limbs ultimately emerges as an album filled with shimmering glimpses of what Radiohead could have done if they created a new record, rather than revisiting much of what they have already accomplished. With that in mind, the album still carries plenty of weight and reason to listen. While this record only holds a few transcendent moments, at the end of the day all Radiohead is good Radiohead--an easy thing to lose sight of amidst the enormous amounts of current musical skepticism and judgment surrounding The King of Limbs.

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Can we all agree that 2008's Walk It Off was not as disappointing as the backlash would suggest? Tapes ‘N Tapes' first album was certainly better, but Jesus - Walk It Off would barely rate a footnote in "The Illustrated History of Sophomore Slumps." Which leads us to an album clearly meant to generate its share of press declaring Outside Tapes 'N Tapes' return to form. And it probably is -- a slight return from a slight disappointment.

Not much of a headline, is it? Any way you slice it, the self-produced Outside is a good deal closer to the spirit of their celebrated, blognoscenti-courting coming-out, The Loon. That much is clear from the opening track, "Badaboom," the first of several numbers where the arrangement just keeps taking unexpected turns. Highlights range from the Libertines-esque leadoff single, "Freak Out," to the soulful, post-Bob Dylan swagger of the Hammond B-3 organ-rocking "The Saddest of All Keys." And while they clearly put their share of thought and effort into making this as interesting as possible, it's just as clear that these guys know their way around a pop hook and you'll find no shortage of those hooks here.

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By Fred Mills 

The BLURT staff put our heads (and ears) together and we have the latest pick for our Blurt/Sonicbids "Best Kept Secret": it's Preachers Son, from Dublin, Ireland - our 15^th  BKS since commencing the program of spotlighting new and under-the-radar artists back in 2008. 

Preachers Son comprises multiinstrumentalist/vocalist Brian Hogan (also bassist with Meteor award-winning Irish band Kila) and drummer/vocalist Emmaline Duffy-Fallon (late of Engine Alley, who notched considerable acclaim in the early/mid ‘90s).. The name refers to Hogan's father, who was a singer and a preacher, incidentally. They got together in 2009 and quickly started picking up press for their hi-nrg, at times atmospheric, at other times rootsy, sound, which the musicians themselves describe as being "like a David Byrne, Scott Walker collaboration, or Queen's greatest hits circa 1980 vs Morrison Hotel. A Led Zeppelin / Leonard Cohen crossover sort of Johnny Cash, Duane Eddie, Bowie doing Talking Heads kinda thing." 

It's a truism that one should never trust an artist to describe his or her music, but in this case - wow. Boy howdy: among the key tracks dotting their spectacular Dave Bascombe-mixed debut Love Life and Limb (released last October) are "26 Years," which does indeed suggest the improbably Led Zep/Cohen blend (due in no small part to Hogan's impossibly deep, resonant voice); first single "X For Sandra," which marries Bowie drama to a kind of Exene/John Doe vocal parry-and-thrust vibe; "Should Have Been Gone," a minor-chord, strings-powered country twanger which taps the aforementioned Johnny Cash influence; and "Lipstick," a moody, swampy slice of gothic noir featuring guest vocals from Gavin Friday. And wait'll you hear their raucous, street rumble of a cover of Dusty Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man" (Duffy-Fallon takes lead vocal on that one, natch).

The band is reportedly a dynamo in concert, frequently joined on stage by guest musicians including Tabby Callaghan (X-Factor), Kieran Kennedy (Black Velvet Band, Hothouse Flowers) and Shane Fitzsimons (Lisa Hannigan, Damien Rice, Paddy Casey). Here's hoping we can get them over to these shores in the near future.

We'll have an interview with the band posted to the site shortly in which we let them fill you in on all this and more. Meanwhile, check out their official website as well as their MySpace page and Facebook page for additional details as well as song samples. They're one of the good ‘uns, trust us.

***

Bands, go to www.sonicbids.com/blurtonline to submit and have us review your materials for feature consideration.

>Our November ‘08 Best Kept Secret: The Handcuffs, from Chicago.

>Our December Best Kept Secret: Black Swan Green, from Brooklyn

>Our January 2009 Best Kept Secret: stephaniesI­d, from Asheville

>Our March Best Kept Secret: Polly Mackey & the Pleasure Principle, from England

>Our June Best Kept Secret: Wiretree, from Austin

>Our August Best Kept Secret: Bulletproof Vests, from Memphis

>Our November Best Kept Secret: The Vivs, from Boston

>Our January 2010 Best Kept Secret: The Public Good, from D.C.

>Our February Best Kept Secret: Dirty Dancing, from Austin

>Our April Best Kept Secret: Jenny Dee & the Deelinquents, from Boston

>Our June Best Kept Secret: The Rebel Set, from Phoenix

 >Our August Best Kept Secret: Alice Austin, from Los Angeles

>Our October 2010 Best Kept Secret: Doug McCurry, from Charlotte 

>Our January 2011 Best Kept Secret: Drunken Prayer, from Portland

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BY ANDY TENNILLE

20 years ago, Patterson Hood packed his shit and left Muscle Shoals, Alabama, distraught following the break-up of his band of six years - Adam's House Cat - and disillusioned with the small town in northern Alabama that his father - David Hood - and his colleagues at FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound helped put on the map in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s recording classic hits with Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and the Rolling Stones.

Like any good teenager who grew up in the late ‘70s listening to The Sex Pistols, The Clash and Elvis Costello, Hood rebelled, choosing to leave behind his hometown, his family's business and his father's music for life on the road chasing the rock ‘n roll dream.

"I didn't really intend to rebel against Muscle Shoals as much as I feel like Muscle Shoals rebelled against me," Hood says. "When I started trying to play music, I was viewed as this snotty-nosed loser, fuck-you kid that it made me rebel further. I mean, I wrote ‘Buttholeville' as a response; I didn't come out punching. I felt like I was punched and so I punched back. There are still some people in that town who are mad about that song, and that was in 1988. I tried for a long time to stay there and finally just left after Adam's House Cat broke up with a lot of frustration and anger, feeling like I had to leave."

Searching for a more welcoming music scene, Hood relocated to Athens, Georgia, founded the Drive-By Truckers with former Adam's House Cat bandmate Mike Cooley and the rest is history. Over the next 15 years, the band would go on to make eleven albums, record with Booker T. Jones and Bettye LaVette and tour the world, earning a reputation as one of rock's road warriors. All the while, Hood formed a musical family in Athens that interestingly mirrored what his father's generation developed in Muscle Shoals. David Barbe came on board for Southern Rock Opera and quickly became the band's close confidant and de-facto producing partner. Wes Freed was tapped to illustrate the band's album artwork. Scott Baxendale met the Truckers when the Decoration Day tour hit Denver and has built custom guitars for them ever since. Last year, Hood and company moved their band office and warehouse to Chase Park, the same complex that houses Barbe's studio and Baxendale's new guitar shop. Every January, the Truckers host three nights at the fabulous 40 Watt that benefit local non-profit Nuci's Space and serve as a reunion for their friends, extended family and the entire Athens music community.

"Everyone who has an extended relationship with them are just really quality people, from the folks at Red Light to Traci Thomas at Thirty Tigers to Matt, Damon and the road crew," Barbe says. "It is like a big family, and now that they've moved their headquarters over here next to my studio and Scott's guitar shop is here as well, we're all here next door to one another. We all work together, and there's a lot of love and a lot of loyalty, and that starts with the band."

With Go-Go Boots, their new album out this week on ATO Records, the Truckers have once again turned to their hometown for inspiration, tipping their hat to the country soul made famous by Muscle Shoals while covering two songs by the late Eddie Hinton, one of the town's greatest talents. It's perhaps their most well-rounded effort since The Dirty South and further solidifies their place among America's best rock bands.

*****

BLURT: Well, congrats on another fine album. Lots of people are saying Go-Go Boots is the Truckers finally embracing the more soulful, Muscle Shoals side of the band. In looking back over the last three albums, Brighter Than Creation's Dark was almost an extension of the Dirt Underneath tour, a more intimate, acoustic side of the Truckers. The Big To-Do - a big rock record - seemed like a reaction to that, like the pendulum swinging back in the other direction. What is Go-Go Boots?

PATTERSON HOOD: I think it's probably a little of all of the above. We certainly didn't go in the studio and say, "Well now we're gonna make the Truckers soul record." Any talk of that was more after the fact, when we realized this was the most Muscle Shoals-sounding record that we've ever made. At the same time, it doesn't sound like any particular record ever made at Muscle Shoals. It sounds like a Drive-By Truckers record to me. It's a little heavier on the storytelling aspects than anything we've done since The Dirty South, and in some ways, it's kind of a follow up to that, except musically it moves in different directions.

You recorded Go-Go Boots and your previous album, The Big To-Do, during the same sessions. Why is this band suited for that approach?

 Our band is not economical. We're not aerodynamic. We're a big, gas-guzzling dinosaur of a road hog. We're made of big heavy steel, we're hard to parallel park, but if you get us out on the open road and gun it a little bit, we're good on a nice long trip. That's just who we are. There have been times when we've gone through periods where we've tried to be a little more agile and it's just not what we do best, unfortunately. So there's an inherent bigness that comes with what we do, and recording two albums at once was a way of embracing that without putting out another two hour-long record like Brighter than Creation's Dark. I personally have a real strong soft spot for that record, but I didn't want to do another one like it, not any time soon.

I don't know if we'll ever choose to or get to do a project the same way again, but I'm really glad that we got to do it this time and that it turned out the way it did. In a lot of ways, doing two records at once really, really worked for us; the way we operate and the way we record. I wish I could do it that way from now on, but the reality is that to do it that way, you've got to put both of those records out in a relatively timely fashion, which means having two records out in eleven months. As cool as that sounded on paper, that's a lot of work.

I need to follow up on something you said a little bit earlier. You said this could be considered the follow up to The Dirty South. I find that interesting because to me that record represented the peak of that particular lineup. Now you've had a couple of records with this band. Is this record a good representation of the potential of this band?

 I have no idea where this band will go next or could go next. The lineup is so stellar right now, and I feel like in some ways we're running at the peak of our potential, but in another way I feel like we're almost just now scratching the surface and getting to the good stuff underneath. It's a really fertile band in a lot of ways, and there's plenty of the good kind of dynamics that can make something interesting without any of the troublesome dynamics. I've never had a band that's played just like the sound in my head, only way better. The band in my head is the same as this band, and that's really a good feeling.

Let's talk about Go-Go Boots. How did you differentiate the songs for it versus the ones for The Big To-Do?

I knew that there was a record somewhere in my head that I really wanted to hear, and that became Go-Go Boots. When we went in the studio, there was a very clear-cut idea of what The Big To-Do was, and then there were these other songs that I felt just as passionate about, maybe even more so in some cases. I knew it was gonna take a little more time than we've ever really had the luxury of having to find that record, so we went about it at our own pace while taking care of the business at hand, which was making The Big To Do. As we wrapped that record up, we knew that we weren't gonna be shut out of the studio for the next two years like it used to be between records. We knew that we had this ongoing thing that we could work on at our leisure. So we'd do a leg of the tour, and I'd be listening to what we had so far on the Go-Go Boots stuff and thinking about what's next. We'd book a little studio time when we got home, go in there and apply what we worked on or talked about on that tour and then go back out on the road some more. It was really enjoyable to have this ongoing thing. I tend to write more if I've got a project I'm writing for. That was the thing about the two-year gaps between working on records in the past - I would tend to just not write during that time. It's an easy thing to put off when there's nothing looming. With this record on the horizon, I pushed myself to keep writing because I knew that we had this record that had the potential to be as good as anything we've ever made, but it still hadn't found its identity yet. We had these really great songs, I thought, but there wasn't that thing that makes a collection of songs a great album, that unifying thing that ties it all together.

In the midst of all this, we were asked to record a song for an Eddie Hinton tribute. That turned out to be kind of the missing piece. That opened a creative door that was like, "Wow, this really ties in with these Go-Go Boots songs we're working on." Once we decided to include those songs on the record, this other running theme emerged in the record that inspired me to dig out "Mercy Buckets" and turn it into something that we could use. I'd had an earlier version of that song for many, many years that actually predates the Truckers. If someone asked me to play at their wedding, I'd play it, but it wasn't a song I really heard on one of our records. Hearing the Eddie Hinton songs on there changed my mind, so I went back and rewrote the song and made it a much better song. We knew as soon as we recorded it that it was the way the album should end.

The last thing I wrote was "I Do Believe," which I wrote right as we were finishing the record. Originally, we were gonna begin the record with "Go-Go Boots", but then once I wrote that song, it became pretty clear that it's gotta be the first song. Having that as the first song, "Mercy Buckets" as the last song and the Eddie Hinton songs in the middle gave the record this arc that counterpoints all of the darker killing songs in the middle.

You've chosen family as the source of inspiration or song subject matter many times throughout your career, "I Do Believe" being the latest. Tell me who that song is about?

 "I Do Believe" is about my grandmother, Sissy, on my mom's side. She's the person on earth that I was the closest to, as far as a child and as an adult. As long as she was alive, she was the person I was the closest to. I really haven't written about her much. Some aspects of her have popped up in "Old Timers' Disease," which I definitely count as one of my family's songs even though it's a fictional story. My granddaddy used to talk about walking down the street with her when they were young, and cars would just about start colliding because whoever was driving would be so busy staring at her butt that they'd run into telephone poles. She was a really stunning woman, so I used that imagery in "Old Timers' Disease." She's in "Little Bonnie," too, but I'd never written specifically about her or our relationship.

I've been writing since '73, since I was eight years old, and I've written a shitload of songs, but it's still as much a mystery to me now as at any point in time as far as how it all happens. I can tell you where specific things in a song came from, but I can't tell you what made me think of it at that moment. We were riding down the road in our van and we'd been to Europe, and then Colorado, and we were on our way home, and everyone's exhausted. We were driving home from the Atlanta airport, and I was sitting in the back of the van and that song just hit me. I wrote it down right there on a little notepad I had in my bag. I was no more thinking about Sissy or any of the stuff that's in that song...it was as far as anything could have been from my mind, and yet, in about a ten-minute period of time, I wrote that song. It was a very vivid snapshot of a moment in time when I was about my daughter's age, five years old or so. It wasn't until after I finished writing it that I realized I'd just written about Sissy. I can't remember the last time I'd thought about that day, but it's all there in that song.

Does that happen a lot for you, where a song just comes out of the sky like a lightning bolt?

 Almost all the good ones. In a lot of cases, it's an idea I've had for years, but the actual writing of it happens like a lightning bolt. For years, I've wanted to write a song about the cop that "Used to Be A Cop" is about. I had the basic idea for that song when we were writing The Dirty South, but the song never got written. I have no idea what caused me to write that song out of the blue one night a couple of Novembers ago when I was just sitting in my office. I wasn't thinking about it then, I wasn't thinking about any of that. It just came out. I had my acoustic guitar, and I pretty much played what I play on the record, just that four chord little circle that plays throughout the song. I demoed it as soon as I finished writing it, and it already had the jagged staccato, psycho thing at the end, which was definitely borrowing kind of a Bernard Herrmann feel, ‘cause I love Bernard Herrmann.

As far as the disco beat and all of that, that all happened when the band got a hold of it. The song's set in the late 70's, early 80's, so that's the music that would have been playing at the bar when the former cop's watching his ex-wife dancing with some dude and thinking about following her home. It's so weird. It's 7 minutes long, and it's already gotten more radio play than any song we've ever put out. We've always said if we ever have a breakthrough hit, it's gonna be from the outer edges of what we do. It's not gonna be the hit version of the thing we do, it would be from a different direction. I've always thought that. It has gotten more radio attention than any song we've ever put out, and it's seven fucking minutes long. It's funny. The studio version's even longer than the version live. It's a minute longer on the record than the live version. When does that happen? (Laughs)

So what's the story behind "Go-Go Boots?" When you see these things on the TV, hear them on the radio or read them in the paper or online, what's the first reaction?

 When I was a little boy there were two things I wanted to do; I wanted to either be a rock star or a film director. I always wanted to make movies and always wrote stories and outlines for a number of things. Southern Rock Opera started off as an outline for a screenplay me and Earl (Hicks, former producer and bass player) were gonna write, and then it made more sense to just make a record. That was when it first dawned on me to merge those two worlds, so that's been a big part of what I've done over the years.

The murder that inspired "Fireplace Poker" and "Go-Go Boots" was a real event that happened in my hometown in the late 80's. It went down over a week or 10-day period of time and was pretty much the front-page story every day. It was all unraveling before your eyes, and just watching it all happen, I thought, "I wanna make a movie about this." I thought it would make an incredible Southern gothic, Night of the Hunter-style movie.

I wrote the song a long time ago, over the course of a number of years. I probably wrote the first draft of it in the late 80's and wrote pretty much the version that we have now in the mid-90s. I had it in mind for the album I referred to as "the Heathens record," which was the album that morphed into Decoration Day, so it was definitely on a list of song titles leading up to making that record. By the time we finally made the record, we had so many songs and it was already going in so many directions that it got shelved and put aside. It just wasn't the time for it, but I was still drawn to that story, so I wrote "Go-Go Boots" a little later as another attempt to tell that story, just in a different form. That ended up being one of the first songs we recorded for this album. It was a magical take, and we knew early on that that was definitely gonna be on the album and that it was like gonna be the title cut for this darker, weirder second record we were working on as we did The Big To-Do.

As we were finishing the record last summer, the same weekend we did "I Do Believe," "The Fireplace Poker" reared its head one more time. We were about to finish the record, we didn't really need another song, and we sure didn't need a nine-minute long narrative about a murder that we already had another song about, but if we didn't do anything right now with, I knew we'd never do anything with it. So we gave it a stab to see what we could get, and we very quickly ended up with a magical take. So once again, I've got two songs about the same thing from different perspectives on a record, and I guess that's just another one of those things we do.

I'd like to talk about "Ray's Automatic Weapon." How often does it happen that you write a song and by the time you start playing it out, or it comes out on a record, it's taken on a whole new meaning? I'm talking about the recent shooting in Arizona and the whole debate right now about gun laws.

 I honestly hadn't even thought about that until you said it just now, about "Ray's Automatic Weapon," but it's very true. Southern Rock Opera happened that way, too, in that it came out on 9/11 and ends with a plane crash. Playing that album the first time in New York was on October 11th of that year, and Ground Zero was still smoldering. It was really weird stepping up on stage to play that record knowing the closeness of all of that, even though that record was set in a different time and place and was about something totally different. People did come up to us after the show and they would talk about "Angels and Fuselage" and the relation to what had just happened in their lives. Nothing could have been further from our minds about what we intended when we recorded that song, but none-the-less, those things happened. That's part of the beauty of this art form. Songs do take on new meanings that were never intended, and that's a great thing, particularly if it helps somebody deal with something they're suffering through.

Let's talk about Eddie Hinton. It isn't as if the Muscle Shoals scene lacks folks who had all the talent in the world but never made the spotlight. Why Eddie Hinton? Why not Donnie Fritts, Tony Joe White, or countless others?

 With Eddie, it always seems to go one step further. Eddie's story is a tragic narrative. He was such an amazing talent in a town that had so many amazing talents, but Eddie's talent might have transcended one step further even. He was a writer on the same level with Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham.  He was a guitar player of the caliber of Duane Allman. Extremely underrated, but a fantastic guitar player, a great studio musician who could pretty much play whatever they put in front of him. He played the harmonica, he could play drums, and he wrote string arrangements. He wrote a string arrangement that he took to the London Symphony Orchestra to play ‘cause he heard strings in his head on the song. He wrote the arrangement on the plane ride over.

When he got there, those classically trained symphony players couldn't believe that this guy from Alabama had written these parts. They were in awe of it. He was this vocalist on the level with Otis Redding, but you can't find his records. They're almost all imports. He lost his mind and spent a lot of time in and out of mental institutions and was known to be a little deranged, maybe a little violent. He slept on a park bench for about a year in Decatur, Alabama. It's just a very tragic, sad, sad story, but if you listen to his records, they're just beautiful. So we were definitely drawn to his story. I wrote "Sandwiches for the Road," which is on Gangstabilly, a couple weeks after he passed away in '95. We've had this ongoing relationship with Eddie's music over the entire history of this band. It's been the music that plays between sets at our shows for at least eight or nine years. So it just made sense.

I had wanted in the past to record one of his songs, but it was vetoed from day one because we were scared we wouldn't be able to do it justice. But then we got asked to do the tribute thing, and it was really then just a matter of talking Cooley into it. He was always a little skeptical of the idea of covering an Eddie Hinton song, for very good reasons. But at the end of the day we were all very happy with what we did on that. And we're glad we did it. I think in doing that, it was a nice boost for our confidence in pursuing some of the loftier things we were trying to do with this record.

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By Fred Mills

Arcade Fire didn't just win a Grammy for Album Of The Year last night - the band also picked up a Twitter page and accompanying Tumblr aggregator of related tweets from other sources dedicated to random disses/insults, outraged comments over the Grammy award, and outright (and grammatically challenged) ad hominem attacks.

Called "Who Is Arcade Fire," the Twitter/Tumblr pages actually may turn out to be a stunt, but no matter - it's pretty funny, or annoying, depending on how much you love the band and how, uh, refined your sense of irony is. Per the latter: on the Tumblr page, the person who set it up has a tagline that reads, LOL EMINEM GOT ROBBED. Indeed, a slew of the tweets that have been reproduced on the page have a distinctively pro-Eminem flavor (plenty of urban and hip-hop dialect mingles with the more overtly adolescent phrasings), such as:

"Never heard of Aracde [sic] Fire. Don't do hippie shit. My boy Slim had that locked up. It's like Smirnoff winning vodka of the year or something." - @GooseDouche

"Man whose Dick did Arcade Fire suck? #grammys. Who the fuck are these canucks anyway?" - @CoonAffiliated

You get the idea. A number of Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber fans weigh in similarly.

What's interesting is that among the recognizable names, celebs including aging, big-boobed '80s hair metal video vixen Tawny Kitaen and aging media boob Rosie O'Donnell offer their own idiosyncratic takes on the band.

 Kitaen, apparently sucking the bong and watching old Whitesnake videos during Grammy commercials, tweeted, "Ok, Im not THAT old but whos Arcade Fire? & worse, who the HELL thinks their good? Did I just lose all my followers? Cuz they sucked, sorry." (@Tawny_Kitaen)

Meanwhile, O'Donnell weighed in with a pithy, "album of the year ? ummm never heard of them ever" (@Rosie)

(Both tweets appear to be from the actual personalities, unless they are from accounts set up by fakesters.)

Bottom line: Arcade Fire's now playing in the big leagues, haters and all. Industry pundit Bob Lefsetz even felt compelled to weigh in despite his lack of enthusiasm for the band. Once again, congrats to one of our favorite bands.

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By Fred Mills

The indie world got a delightful - some might say, "shocking" (and someone did; see below - early Valentine's gift last night when Arcade Fire won the 2011 Grammy for Album of the Year. The significance of the Canadian band besting commercial behemoths Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Eminem isn't lost on anyone (the fact that this makes the second time Arcade Fire has tweaked Eminem: upon its first week of release The Suburbs bumped Em off the top of the Billboard charts), and as such, it's no hyperbole to suggest that it represents a win for more than just A.F. - it's a victory for their label, Merge; for bands everywhere who now realize they don't have to go multi-platinum to have an impact; and for the overall health of the independent music sector, which can take deep satisfaction from the knowledge that even while the major label plantation system of doing business has been steadily crumbling, the smaller-is-better-and-more-efficient model has been quietly proving its worth in a troubled economy.

Back to the band, though: as we pointed out back in December, in our 2010 wrap-up and list of the Top 50 Albums of the Year, "Simply put, Arcade Fire has worked as hard as any combo out there, while at the same time not allowing its musical imagination to stagnate or grow complacent, remaining artistically hungry and unwilling to compromise. Those are qualities that should be celebrated beyond matters of record sales, chart placings and awards ceremonies."

After accepting the award and performing what may have been an unplanned version of key Suburbs track "Ready To Start," Arcade Fire repaired to the Grammys media room where, according to Billboard.com, Win Butler told reporters that their win was "shocking."

"The idea [that they would win] never even entered my mid, even the slightest bit, until when they said the name of the album," said Butler.This award is for our record. We really believe in records. When we make a record, we really put all of our soul into it. To be recognized for that [by] this group of people, in the age of the iPod or in the age of the single or whatever it is, we still really care about records so it means a lot to us."

Amen to that. Watch the band do "Ready To Start" from the Grammys last night, below. The grin on Win Butler's face is utterly priceless. Those are some happy folks. Congrats, kids.

Go to the official Grammy website for details on all the winners.

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By Fred Mills

Nine years ago yesterday, on Feb. 13, 2002, country legend Waylon Jennings passed away from complications related to diabetes. He left behind an immense musical legacy, and he was larger than life on a personal level, too, having helped boot-kick, as a key architect of the "Outlaw Country" movement (the ‘70s progenitor to the ‘90s alt-country/y'allternative scene), an aging, increasingly tepid musical format back into relevancy. Just the names he was associated with - Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Jessi Colter, among others - is testimony to his artistic stature.

You can find plenty of Jennings appreciations on the web. Here's mine.

I don't recall listening to country music at all growing up, other than hearing the occasional tune on the radio or catching someone on TV, and after the British Invasion hit, it was twice as unlikely that I'd hear any. Many, many years later, though, I realized that my dad must have been a closet country fan, because after he died I found tucked in among his Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman big band albums a number of country compilations and some titles from Jennings and Nelson, including the classic '76 LP Wanted! The Outlaws that featured both men. I suspect that my mom thought country was too redneck for our "refined" household, and that he only listened when she wasn't home, but there's a good chance I got to hear some of those records in the process and some of the music crept into my being through osmosis. At any rate, as an adult I've come to have a healthy appreciation for country and its myriad offshoots, and Jennings definitely ranks as one of the greats in my book.

In January of 1990 I got to meet Jennings. It was in Charlotte, NC, while working as the Music Editor of weekly Creative Loafing, and it happened purely by chance as a result of me attending the cast and crew wrap party for the Tom Cruise-Robert Duvall racecar flick Days of Thunder, which was filmed at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Some friends of mine, roots/rockabilly combo the Belmont Playboys, had been hired to play at the party, and they smuggled me in as roadie to document the occasion.

From my original story:

Just before the Playboys' first set at 9 p.m., who should walk in but Cruise's co-star Robert Duvall, accompanied by an entourage of Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash, Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter. Jaws dropped. People gawked. Once they were all settled in at their table I had to go speak to them.

I first approached Duvall. Shaking his hand, I told him I enjoyed his singing in Tender Mercies, the 1983 film in which he played an alcoholic, down-and-out country musician. He grinned and pointed at Cash. "Well thanks, but there's the real king right there." I asked him how the Cashes and the Jennings wound up here this evening. "They're friends of mine, so I invited 'em, figured we'd have some fun." I went over to Cash. I shook his hand. His wife smiled graciously at me and accepted my handshake as well, as did Jennings and Colter.

During the set the Playboys did a spirited cover of a very early Cash tune, "Rock ‘n' Roll Ruby," and afterwards Cash walked over to the band to thank them, saying, "I just wanted to express my appreciation to you for doing my song. You guys sound great, just like we did forty years ago!" Jennings introduced himself as well, and before anyone realized what was happening both men were onstage, guitarist Jake Berger handing his instrument to Cash and bandleader Mike Hendrix passing his to Jennings. After a quick conference with the band the pair launched into "Folsom Prison Blues," followed by "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" and several other tunes.

The evening progressed from there, with Johnny and Waylon swapping off on lead vocals - Jennings let rip some impressive guitar solos to boot - and both June and Jessi getting up onstage to sing. Duvall too - the show concluded with Duvall leading an entire room of awestruck dancers and revelers (Cruise among them) in an extended version of "Will The Circle Be Unbroken." The looks on the performers' faces were as priceless as the ones on the crowd members, and both Cash and Jennings were still grinning ear to ear when they finally left the stage. One abiding memory, among many, is of the two men settling back into their chairs, smiling and nodding at each other as if to say, wow, that was the most fun I've had in a long time.

Thanks Waylon, for being part of a story I've told proudly many times, and one I hope to be able to tell my grandchildren one day, too.

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BY JOHN SCHACHT 

In the wake of the January 8 shooting rampage that claimed six lives and seriously wounded 13 in Tucson, AZ, the nation briefly paused and took a step back from partisan brinksmanship - Sarah Palin notwithstanding - to refocus on the fragility of life and what really unites us. 

Nowhere was this sentiment more visceral than in the downtown arts community of Tucson that singer/songwriter, filmmaker and poet Marianne Dissard has called home for the past 16 years. From out of the dark madness of that morning, commiserating musicians and artists gathered later that night at The Rialto Theatre, which canceled its scheduled event and opened its doors for an impromptu musical vigil for the victims. 

Playing songs and celebrating the victims' lives, including wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a long-time fan of Tucson's fertile music scene, the evening turned out to be a somber but cathartic reaffirmation of community for Dissard, her fellow musicians and the audience. 

"It was a really solemn and quiet and reflective moment where we all came together and did what we do - usually in a more riotous way, I suppose," says Dissard, who still retains the rich accent of her native France. "But it was also life-affirming -- it was really a great moment to be there and to be with people we usually work and interact with and just to perform." 

A small irony of that night is that Dissard could not play "The One & Only," a love song to Tucson from her marvelous brand new album, L'Abandon, whose sentiments were now freighted with unintended meanings for its author. That night, however, Dissard deemed the slinky, shout-along blues song too ebullient, and stuck with more appropriately melancholy fare. 

"I can talk no end usually when I'm on stage, just babble on, but this time I was like, ‘I don't have anything to say -- I'm just going to sing,'' she says, remembering that she dropped her laptop to the ground that morning upon hearing the news, as though punishing it for the news it brought. "It was a pretty solemn moment." 

There are musical moments on L'Abandon that might've fit the somber occasion - the rueful piano-and-pedal-steel waltz "Fondre," the minor-key mystery of "Le Gros Chat" -- but the record mostly lives up to its title. Dissard likens it to "a wild embrace, abandoning myself, losing myself, letting go." 

The 11 French-language songs are speckled in international colors from French chanson and mariachi to roots-flavored rock, hints of the avant garde and even cabaret. Like its studio predecessor, 2009's L'Entredeux, which she co-wrote with Calexico's Joey Burns, L'Abandon is a collaborative effort, this time with Italian composer Christian Ravaglioli's music put to Dissard's earthy and lyrical imagery. 

In fact, emblematic of the record's - and Tucson's - culture mash-up, Dissard assembled a mini-U.N. for a band, including the likes of Canadian guitar whiz Luke Doucet, Mexico's Sergio Mendoza (Y La Orkesta, Calexico), Mexican-Americans Salvador Duran (Iron & Wine, Calexico) and Brian Lopez (Mostly Bears), and Denmark's Thøger T. Lund (Giant Sand), among others. (For her current European tour, Lopez, Mendoza, Olivier Samouillan and longtime BLURT fave Gabriel Sullivan are Dissard's backing musicians.) 

That international cast overcame the potential for Tower of Babel incomprehension - Dissard doesn't speak Italian, Ravaglioli speaks neither French nor English - by relying on the universal language of music. 

"You have that certain innocence of the ones who don't know," Dissard says of the process. "You don't know what you're getting into, and therefore you're not afraid to try it. It worked out. We just spent hours and hours just being next to each other, him on the piano and me trying to make sense of what he was going for." 

Dissard turned to her directorial experience - she first visited Tucson in 1989 to interview filmmaker Alex Cox (Repo Man, Sid & Nancy), and in 1994 directed Drunken Bees, a film chronicling Howe Gelb's Tucson fixture Giant Sand - to marshal this disparate crew. (She plans to include a bonus DVD, a film remake of Andy Warhol's western, Lonesome Cowgirls, with her latest release). 

"Hopefully you've cast your crew well enough that things will happen the way you think they should," she says, breaking into the smoky, infectious laughter that seems to embody her album title. "I remember being very conscious in the studio of having to have a certain type of energy, almost being in a state of performance in the studio itself so that everyone would just go, ‘well, we know this is the energy we need to give to this album.' It really is the same thing as being a director on the set and conducting people's intentions." 

That was most likely made easier by an outstanding batch of songs, rich in the romance of French chanson and delivered in vibrant rock shades. While some may blanch at pop songs in a language they can't understand ("who pays that much attention to lyrics, anyway?" she asks), Dissard's connection to one key element of the rich chanson tradition virtually makes that a moot point. 

"There are a couple of trends to that tradition," she says, citing the lyric content, and the need to hear every word of the story being told. "There's also, to me, another very important strain of that which is the body, the theatricality of it. I mean, Edith Piaf has great lyrics, she's got great tales, but she's also like a body singing, and Jaques Brel will sweat through his songs, and bleed from every pore of his body. 

"So, to me, those two are as essential in what I'm doing. The irony of it is, is that I sing in French, so it doesn't really translate into other countries when I sing. But the incarnation of a song is something that does translate; again, another ‘universal language.'" 

That's comes across in L'Abandon's songs even without seeing them performed live. These stories -the language is immaterial - translate the full conviction of the writers and players, of the experiences that conceived them and the recording process that brought them into this world. You can hear it in the Left Bank-dusky noir blend of the accordion-powered "La Peau du Lait," in the border-trumpet blasts that buffet "Almas Pervesas," and the galloping twang - as sung by a growling female George Brassens -- of "L'Exile." 

But unlike those tracks and L'Entredeux, which Burns and Dissard crafted into a straightforward French chanson-meets-Americana record, L'Abandon songs like the early P.J. Harvey-flavored rocker "Ecrivain Public," the whispered space-out of "Ete Hiver" (which Dissard attacks with the drama of a modern Brel), or the polyglot samples and soulful, Tindersticks-like "Neige Romaine" expand Dissard's vocabulary into all kinds of intriguing directions. Yet throughout, downtown Tucson's vibrant eclecticism and the storied history of chanson permeate the record - two things we can be grateful Dissard decided not to abandon. 

"The thing that attracts me to (these musical strands) is that I like my music to be living - I like, here in Tucson, the people that are all working together, are all in each other's bands and are basically making sure that music is something that's played live, that's part of the community." 

And in the long shadow of the Jan. 8 tragedy, that's more than just a nice perk of living in Tucson - it proved to be a life-affirming necessity. 

[Photo Credit: Scott Christensen] 

Marianne Dissard on the web: 

OFFICIAL WEBSITE - mariannedissard.com

FACEBOOK - facebook.com/pages/Marianne-Dissard/87460442223

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BY ANNAMARYA SCACCIA

"How do you tell the truth about how inspiration feels like? How do you tell the truth about how magical it can feel to meet new people, to be inspired by a culture, and to go to a place to work, like Detroit, which is crazy and crumbling? How do you tell the truth about that stuff, like in some weird nihilistic way, that really does anybody any good?"

On the face of it, these questions are purely rhetorical. But for Miles Seaton, bassist for experimental folk-jam three-piece Akron/ Family and supplicant of these ruminations, they're more emblematic of the outfit's bewitched experience shaping ST II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT, their latest effort for Dead Oceans, than they are simple musings.

They are, in a way, also a response to the peculiarity of a note the Portland/New York band sent with an oversized cardboard box to the label, containing equally peculiar items like "a sincere but poorly made diorama of futurist swirling spaces filled with toy astronauts and dinosaurs." It's shrouded in obscurity, composed with perplexing fragments and deconstructed retrospectives that can either signal truth or metaphor. Birth of early adulthood ideal tribalist experimentation before belief of the best better ways..., the three - Seaton, Dana Janssen, and Seth Olinsky - wrote, A dream roll of visions and bulldozers organized by Future Librarians unemployed. Intoxicated. Artistic-bent. Roving Aimlessly Free of expectation 100 years later.

"It's all true and it's all symbolic," the 31-year-old explains over the phone from his home in Manhattan. "The reality is that it sounds kind of fantastic because it was. The whole experience of making work and the creative process and traveling and having the feeling of inspiration is not something that really translates to paper. If we really wanted to tell the truth, we should have been even more fantastical than maybe we were.

"It may be somebody's job to try to be factual and nihilistic, but the reality is that's just not the world I want to deal with."

ST II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT is a record ripe with verve and mysticism - a 48-minute exploration of transcendental folk-rock expressions that heave with atoms of sagacity and revelation. But when you think about the places where the record was conceived and formed throughout 2010 - written in a cabin built into the a side of an active volcano in Japan and recorded in an abandoned train station in Detroit - it makes sense that such a supernal yet primal soundscape would result. Sure, they have "direct" influences, like the Boredoms or William Parker, but what they are most reactive to - what they are really after - is the energy (in addition to referencing their 2005 self-titled album, the record's handle is reflective of that "boundless sense of creativity").

"When we made the record," Seaton says, "we were at a place where we really wanted to just get to a really inspired and basic place with ourselves creatively as a group."

According to the musician, who feels most alive when he begins noticing music everywhere, from radiator spurts to chirping birds, Japan was "one of the most amazing experiences" Akron/Family has had as a band. It was an incomparable place where remarkable artists and kindhearted people were befriended, and the audiences were "so present," so much so that it felt like "this palpable sense of magic." And it's that enchantment, he says, that the band drew on when conceptualizing and visualizing the album, invoking it as their "guidepost and the lighthouse in our journey."

As for Detroit, their stay at the deserted post was more by design than decision. It's the home base for their producer/engineer Chris Kotlay (Liars, Women, Deerhunter, Holy Fuck, No Age), an individual who Seaton describes as a "crazy, gregarious character." Still, the bassist says, the Michigan metropolis was entirely impactful, an almost definitive influence on the record's sound.  

"There's a feeling of inspiration of Detroit in [where] nature is kind of reclaiming that place because everything catches on fire and burns down and then the grass grows," says Seaton. "It's almost like natural is becoming feral through the bones of the architecture there and it's a really inspiring situation.

You can say the mystery and fascination of being is much of the reason why Akron/Family is also releasing the new record on cassette. Along with vinyl, it's a format the trio grew up listening to, and one they harbor a fondness for.

"There's something about the format of cassettes that's really special and unique," says Seaton, excited to hear what their new bestowment will sound like on tape. "I feel like it needs to be acknowledged."

[Photo Credit: Ian McNeil]

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BY AARON KAYCE 

Have you ever woken from sleep and wondered if you were still dreaming? Momentarily stuck between worlds where time is suspended? This is the music of Cotton Jones. A beautiful place where it could be dusk or it might dawn. Where guitars feel more like fractured rays of sun and vocals waft in a haze of echo and reverb. 

"I think a lot of the songs are kind of dream sequence sorts of songs," says bandleader Michael Nau. "I feel like a lot of it's [the new album] written that way where it's not too specific to our everyday encounters." 

Tall Hours in the Glowstream (Suicide Squeeze) is the second full-length from Cotton Jones. Originally called the Cotton Jones Basket Ride, the band features guitarist/vocalist Nau along with keyboardist/vocalist Whitney McGraw and is essentially an extension of their previous band Page France. No one, including Nau, is exactly sure why Page France was rechristened Cotton Jones, but in 2009 the change was solidified with the band's woozy lo-fi Americana debut Paranoid Cocoon.  
Though Nau references as influences Harry Nilsson, Bob Dylan and the gospel songs his mom and dad used to sing, he says this album was informed more by his home in Cumberland, Maryland, than any artist or specific style.  

The glowstream alludes to a rolling body of water on the border of Maryland and West Virginia. "It's a place like nowhere else where everything sort of slows down. It's kind of a sentimental title for me" says Nau. "[It] represents a couple places where friends and family always go to hang out and spend their evenings." 

In October of 2009 Nau and McGraw got married. They met long ago in their tiny hometown and have been together for as long as anyone can remember. And though there's a loose collective of regular musicians who help flesh out Cotton Jones, most of them participants in Page France as well, if anything defines the band it's the duo's ethereal harmonies that often call to mind Johnny and June Carter Cash.   

Getting hitched not only affected their personal lives, it created a new space for their music to breathe. Sort of like seeing the forest through the trees: by taking a step back, the band's music came into focus. 

"Whitney and I have always worked together, but it's changed since we've been spending every day in the same house" reflects Nau. "Having two or more parts to my life, where music is not all consuming, I was able to feel certain things more than I've ever been able." 

One thing Nau is feeling appears to be tranquility; marrying your true love will do that for a man. It's not that Paranoid Cocoon was particularly depressing, but even the name hints at something dark and ominous. "I feel that Glowstream is a lot more of an upper, it's a positive record" he says, with a hint of pride. "It's hopeful and I've been trying to really practice patience in my life and not get so down on myself about the way things are going." 

Somewhere in the glowstream Michael Nau and Whitney McGraw have found their voice as Cotton Jones. The music they make is an open invitation to float along with them and let the spirit carry you away. All it takes is for you to press play; don't get left behind.

Cotton Jones kicks off a North American tour this week with Nicole Atkins. Check tour dates at their MySpace page. 

[Photo Credit: Todd Roeth]

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BY NICK D'AMORE 

The album's title seems so charming and innocent. Mondo Amore, Nicole Atkins' huge expression of love in the form of her second album, coming out a week before Valentine's Day, no less. 

Or not. Not after the year (or two) she's had. 

In the years following her 2007 debut full-length, Neptune City, Atkins' career had been ascending steadily. She had a critically claimed album and was receiving wider recognition. She shared stages and recorded with David Byrne and A.C. Newman. 

Then, in 2009, came upheaval. She and her record label, Columbia Records, parted company, for reasons that have befallen many an artist on a major label in the past decade. The people who had originally signed Atkins were gone and now there were haggles and discussions about singles and even the tempos of her songs. So, in the beginning stages of crafting a new album, the search was on for a new home. According to Atkins, the split from the label that had released her first records, 2006's Bleeding Diamonds EP and the following year's Neptune City, was a positive step for her. She soon found a willing partner in Razor & Tie, a company initially known for releasing compilations such as Monster Ballads, but that in recent years has amassed an impressive roster of artists, including Joan Baez, Dar Williams, Richard Ashcroft and Zappa Plays Zappa. 

"Once I left, I felt a lot freer to make the music I wanted to without having to worry about hits," Atkins says. "Razor & Tie are super-into what I make and give me the freedom to do my thing. It's fun again." 

The record label change was not the only huge musical hurdle Atkins would have to best. Around the same time, she also split with her longtime backing band, The Sea, a group of talented players who excelled at the tight arrangements of Atkins' songs. Similar to her change of label, the change of supporting cast seemed to come at the right time. She was writing darker, moodier and looser material that would require players with a more spontaneous and harder feel than The Sea had brought. She aptly dubbed her new band, The Black Sea, reflecting the sounds with which she was now experimenting. The band as it currently exists is your basic rock setup, guitar (Irina Yalkowski), drums (Ezra Oaklan), bass (Jeremy Kay); Yalkowski and Kay are both on Mondo Amore, while Chris Donofrio held down the drum seat for the album. 

Probably the most difficult challenge for Atkins in the run-up to her new album was a bit more personal than leaving behind her old bandmates and record label. She also ended a years-long relationship with her boyfriend, the heartbreak of which can be heard throughout the album in songs like "Hotel Plaster," "Cry Cry Cry" (not a Johnny Cash cover; both that and "Hotel Plaster" were co-writes with Austin musician - and longtime BLURT fave - Robert Harrison of Future Clouds and Radar) and "You Were the Devil."  

The moral of the story might be that with big love sometimes comes big loss. The result of all the chaos is a menacing and melancholy mosaic of her journey set to a soundtrack of intriguing new sounds from Atkins. But, starkly present above it all is her powerful voice that retains its flair for the dramatic, with perhaps a touch more grit and edge behind things now. 

Ironically, it was during one of the more difficult times in her life that Atkins found the confidence to create an album that sounds more like what she hears in her head. "I trust myself more to write what I would want to listen to: blowout music mixed with crooner ballads," she says. "I made a conscious effort to write more dramatic and heavy songs." 

That confidence spread to the studio, where she took more of a lead role in the production of the album, particularly with the string parts. "I wrote the string arrangements to be more of a lead melody than as padding as they were on Neptune City," she says. "Making this record was a lot more mellow and off-the-cuff than making Neptune was." 

With an anything-goes vibe during recording, Atkins and producer Phil Palazzolo tossed around ideas and called any and all musicians they both dug to guest on the album. They brought in Salt & Samovar and fellow Jersey Shore natives Atlantic, Atlantic, as well as Jim James of My Morning Jacket. James lent his distinctive pipes to the song "War is Hell" by recording his part in a hotel room and emailing it to her. The looseness surrounding the recording carried over to the mixing phase, which was done during Fourth of July weekend at the Carriage House in Connecticut. During a huge party on the lawn of the place, Atkins became suddenly inspired. "I got drunk and redid the vocals to half the songs in one night. Shit sounded sweet with a little bourbon on the throat." 

During the recording of the album, Atkins toured with her old friends the Avett Brothers, which included a stop at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, and also made a quick jaunt to the United Kingdom to open a concert for Regina Spektor at O2 Academy Leeds. Both the tour and the one-off Spektor show were exciting for Atkins, who had come up with both artists from some inauspicious beginnings. 

"We [Atkins and Spektor] used to play together in the back of a buffalo wing restaurant I used to work at," she remembers. "Me, her, the Avett Brothers and Langhorne Slim playing for maybe seven people. It was a trip to open for her in front of a few thousand." 

The Mondo Amore promo tour will begin in earnest this month, with a record release show at Bowery Ballroom in New York on Feb. 9 that will feature a string section and a guest appearance from her keyboardist from The Sea, Dan Chen. The subsequent North American tour, featuring openers Cotton Jones (recently profiled at BLURT), will stretch into early March. Along the way there will be an appearance on Conan O'Brien's TBS show on Feb. 17, then next month, a slot at SXSW in Austin. 

This tour will be more directly supported by Atkins' fans than just buying tickets, thanks to her Kickstarter campaign. She began the campaign barely a month ago to help offset the rising costs of touring, including getting a touring van, gas, lodging and having a stage setup. In the short time the campaign has been established, Atkins' fans have donated more than $17,000 to her cause, with donations starting at $1. In addition to helping her be able to actually tour, donors of specific amounts will receive certain perks for their generosity. Give $15 and get the album and a monthly newsletter. Give $60 and get seasonal mix tapes from Atkins for a year. Give $500 and she'll write you a tune. 

But, really, Atkins is just looking forward to going back on the road with her new band, new tunes and fresh start to 2011.  The musicians will be bringing their darker, harder sound to Atkins' old songs as well. ("They all sound more surfy and romantic and dark. All of the old songs are sounding new again.") And she predicts that the new material and new band might leave lasting memories ringing in their ears of her audiences for a while. 

As she proclaims, "Shit is loud!"

[Photo Credit: Lucia Holm]

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