Bruce and Friends

In what has all the feel of one hell of a victory lap, Bruce Springsteen has had some absolutely fantastic special guests on this leg of the E Street Band's Magic tour.

And what I like best is the fact that aside from the obvious (and gag-inducing) guest spot for fellow Jersey rat Jon Bon Jovi, Springsteen has drawn out some less-likely guests, with fantastic results.

The unquestionable influence of Springsteen (and I'm guessing Dylan and Iggy Pop, probably in that order) is perhaps the only thing that really ties together the likes of Alejandro Escovedo - No Depression's artist of the 90s - and Tom Morello - who thankfully hasn't lost his revolutionary spirit since joining Audioslave.

These tremendous guest performers and the outstandingly variable set lists seem to be well on their way to defining yet another chapter in the history of Springsteen's live performances.

Alejandro Escovedo - "Always a Friend," from Escovedo's upcoming Real Animal record:


Tom Morello - "The Ghost of Tom Joad," which features the two trading verses before Morello turns in a guitar solo that absolutely demolishes the song:


Find more videos from Springsteen's Magic Tour on YouTube and BruceSpringsteen.Net.

Mr. Punk & Folk

Billy Bragg is near the top of my list for bands or artists I desperately need to see live - and soon. I jumped on board - as I'm sure many Bragg fans did - after hearing the Mermaid Avenue album. First was Worker's Playtime on a recommendation, then Back to Basics and anything I could find after that. By the time Mermaid Avenue Two was released, I was fully a Billy Bragg fan.

So now that Billy has a new album - Mr. Love & Justice - coming out later this month, it's time to revisit some old favorites in preparation. Say what you will about the "One Man Clash" comparisons, or the overly political songwriting, but in my mind he's impossible to pigeonhole.

Bragg is a stunningly engaging and captivating songwriter and musical figure and the fact that he is so explicit in tying together the folk of Woody Guthrie and the punk of the Clash as part of the same continuum of working-class music is enough to make him a legend.

He's more than earned elder-statesman status now and sometimes that can shy people away from new records, but I'm definitely going to pick up Mr. Love & Justice on April 22. Anti- is a label that can really do no wrong for established musicians, so I have no doubt it will be a strong record. For a British lefty folk musician who came of age in Thatcher's England, I'm dying to see what insights he can have at the tail end of Bush's America.

Love and justice are themes of Bragg's music through the ages, so I'm hesitant to think the title implies too much about the current times, but I'm far more excited about this record than I was for Enland, Half-English in 2002 or any of the spate of re-releases the last few years.

For proof that his passion as a performer is as strong as ever, check out his updated and reinvigorated Lead Belly cover, "The Bush War Blues" as well as a lyrically updated version.

And as far as some of the classics go, look no further than Catfish Vegas to dig out two great millennial versions of reupdated Bragg classics, as well as a solo version of one of his Woody Guthrie tunes.

DOWNLOAD:
Billy Bragg - She Came Along To Me (Live Hamburg, 2000)
Billy Bragg - Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards (Live Barbican, 2004)
Billy Bragg - The Saturday Boy (Live KEXP, 2006)

Check out this live performance of another early classic - "A New England" - with Kate Nash:



And if you've still got some energy, there's plenty of Billy Bragg on YouTube and over at archive.org.

"They've got too much to lose by printing the truth"

This is 40 years old. And the interview subject just won a Pulitzer Prize. He's kinduv a dick in the interview. But he has valid points to make about the media that ring true today.

I'd love to see some celebrity today have such antagonism to the system. Are there any respectable folks left out there?

Find some more cool Dylan interview footage here.


I'd like to see some indie rocker turn a bunch of clueless press folks upside-down. Of course, no indie rocker is Bob Dylan, the voice of his generation. It's hard to imagine facing up to someone from my generation really mattering on a large scale. Will there be another universally recognized artist ever? Dylan is a crucial part of the America That Turned From Black & White To Color.

Seriously -- there are good points to be made here. Every historical figure you've seen in black & white film as well as color really had something going. Nowadays there isn't such an easy way to indicate someone has been a crucial part of any change.

Want a trip? Check out this next clip, where someone took some Dylan footage from more than 10 years past those press conferences and overlaid it with music from another 20 years later in his career. What can you possibly say that that sort of relevance and longevity?

Ruby Vroom: The Musical

This didn't even remotely pass the smell test. It was just too ludicrous and I'd already been reminded of April Fool's Day by the Gmail Custom Time joke. But what an inspired ruse! The creativity is stunning and all the pieces tie together so nicely.

I can't say much else for an introduction and it's a joke best taken whole, so without further ado, here's the email that popped into my inbox this morning from Mike Doughty's HQ:

This summer, Mike Doughty makes his Broadway debut with Ruby Vroom: The Musical, a stage adaptation of the first Soul Coughing album, with book by Tim Rice and choreography by Twyla Tharp.

Ruby Vroom: The Musical tells the story of Ruby (Scarlett Johansson), a transgendered youth growing up in 1970s Chicago. After a botched, self-administered sex change operation, Ruby enters a series of ill-fated love affairs, all set to the musical backdrop of her caustic avant-punk trio, The 5% Nation. Convinced that one of her lovers is Satan, she travels from Chicago to Kansas, Detroit and eventually Los Angeles, where she is sidetracked by drugs, mad kidnapping plots and the tawdry allure of the Hollywood lifestyle. And just when she is about to succumb to bitterness, an older woman, Janine (Patti LuPone), enters her life and changes everything.

Press previews for Ruby Vroom: The Musical will begin in late June at the St. James Theater on West 44th St., with a public opening in mid-July. Says Mike, currently on tour with his band, "I am immensely excited about the opportunity to work with the fabulous Ms. LuPone. She is the bucket of shoes in my foyer."

For ticket information, see http://rubyvroomtickets.com/

HQ

That would be the strangest musical of all time, by far, no doubt. I'm sure it would net Scarlett a Tony, though.

??? I can almost see the resemblance...

Mason Brothers - The Sun, the Moon & the Sea

This self-released debut record from Richmond, Va. duo James and Christian Mason opens with a beautiful melancholy, driven by carefully fingerpicked guitar notes and verses that draw on battles, ghosts and journeys, all rooted in a lonely sadness. Then comes the soaring chorus, with a breezy harmony to counter the downtrodden imagery:

"If you wait for the sunshine, you might wait for a while
If you hate this feeling, you can hold on to me until it dies
May you rise"

The Sun, the Moon & the Sea is cinematic folk music, rich and deliberately crafted, with guitars and voices woven tightly together. It's something a visionary movie director would do well to notice - think Noah Baumbach in a slightly better mood than he's brought to his last couple films.

The songs are whispery at times, recalling Iron & Wine or perhaps Simon & Garfunkel. The brothers themselves cite Nick Drake among their influences and that's the most accurate parallel. Think also a folkier Elliott Smith, most like the songs on the posthumous New Moon album, or sometimes the less poppy songs of the Pernice Brothers.

The brothers split song-writing credits, with most of the lyrics written by James, who in 2003 released the stark Carnival Sky. The lyrics deal often with mystery and an elemental sort of imagery, run through by ghosts and angels, rain and fire, the night sky and the sunrise, and often things breaking or sinking or crumbling. And the music and vocals fit. Added together there's a power in this collection that reveals itself along the way rather than immediately. The songs are mellow but not slight, and they're weightier than they seem at first.

The arrangements are rooted in acoustic guitars, with spare percussion at most. The songs are most compelling when they're rounded out by organ or mandolin or steel or electric guitar touches.

"In The Canyon" has a bounce that's unique to the album as both the countriest and most strummed song. It still retains the intricacy of the picked guitars and closely tied harmonies, but also brings bit more swagger than most of the other songs. The electric guitar and organ are more pronounced and even without drums it's got a more rhythmic feel. Another stride or two in that direction looks likely for the Mason Brothers, who play live with a six-piece band that will record their follow-up record.

The Sun, the Moon & the Sea is a tremendous debut, stretching 10 songs to 38 minutes, recorded completely analog at Brink Studios in Centreville, Va. and produced by Mike Reina, who also contributes organ and vocals on a few tracks. The Mason Brothers could easily stick to pretty balladry, but there are enough elements in the record to suggest they have a greater versatility that could lead them a number of directions. Just think about the path of Elliott Smith, who found his salvation in the poppier styles that he drew from the Beatles. Or Nick Drake, whose songs had an airy, atmospheric quality, sounding more like night-time than the afternoon or dusk of the Mason Brothers. Or the SoCal songwriters who breezed into country styles. Most intriguing might be the Iron & Wine or M. Ward routes of hooking up with eclectic collaborators who can flesh out their spacious and captivating songs.

DOWNLOAD:
Mason Brothers - In The Canyon
Mason Brothers - Round And Round

Hear and buy the record at MySpace or the band's Web site: www.MasonBrothersMusic.com.

"I'm going to scream if you tell me how to organize my queue one more time."

This blog has been a little low on the funny for a while, so I thought I'd share this short, starring the masterful Arnie Niekamp from Chicago.
The best exchange:
"I don't think that's what I need right now."
"Well, it kind of is."

The Swim - Random Walk

The Swim call their second album an EP, but at eight songs and 36 minutes it doesn't fit too well within that boundary. Nor does it have the sense of being a minor or transitory work as the EP tag might suggest. Random Walk is a fully realized indie rock album, alternately somber and catchy, full of bombast and edgier guitars than the band brought to the debut LP We're Green. On the whole Random Walk is a more powerful album, with a new drummer and guitars that are both more sophisticated and often times more energetic.

The tone-setting lead track, "Heavy Ringer," is instantly captivating, with the band's trademark intricate guitar interplay and catchy, soaring harmony vocals.

"Unravel" follows with a smoother groove, accented by trumpet and organ flourishes before riding out in a fuzzy guitar, while "Reckless" is reminiscent of the Pixies, with a bouncy, thick bass line and surges of distorted guitar melodies and crashing cymbals. The Swim next turn toward an almost straightforward punk sound on "Stan The Man," a lightning fast song that rises and drops in fewer than 90 seconds.

The album closes with its two strongest tracks, the anthematic "Margaret With Comets" and
the eight-minute triumph "Piles on the Floor," which begins as a wistful slow-build before dissolving into a guitar solo that feels both ruminative and exultant.

Even after just a few listens, it's clear that Random Walk is a great companion for two of my favorite albums so far in 2008 - Real Emotional Trash from Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks and Delayer from the Heavenly States - guitars up front and center, with a lot of versatility. There's crunch and chime and distortion and melodic breaks and long, mesmerizing leads.

DOWNLOAD:
The Swim - Margaret With Comets (from Random Walk)
The Swim - Lazy Day (exclusive Catfish Vegas download)

CONTEST: We have two prizes to give away - a copy of The Swim's new EP Random Walk and two free passes to the CD release show Friday at Plush.
Entering is simple: just email catfishvegas@gmail.com with either "Swim CD" or "Swim show" in the subject line. You can enter both, just do it in two different emails. Winners will be chosen at random Thursday.

Interview: The Swim

This afternoon I caught up with Caleb Christopher and Colton Harris from The Swim to talk about their new EP, Random Walk, which the band is debuting this Friday with a CD release show at Plush, along with Blankets, The Deludes and Mostly Bears.
Since moving to Tucson from Prescott two years ago, Chrisopher, Harris and bassist Nate Ziebell have hooked up with drummer Justin Bernard, self-released their first record (We're Green) and quickly became one of the top drawing local bands.
I sat through overtime of the Suns and Pistons game in the wired-for-NBA shed behind Harris' West University house. Anything but casual fans, they exchanged high fives with every Steve Nash three-pointer and I suppose it's good I was there to turn their attention away from the heart-breaking loss.

Q: How does this new EP compare to We're Green? Any new directions or sounds you guys wanted to incorporate?

Caleb Christopher: It's just a batch of songs we've banged out that we're proud of. It's quite a bit more focused than our first album. We didn't spend as much time trying church anything up.
I seems to be all around a little heavier, a little more distortion, but it's still very melodic. We're incorporating some more keyboards and stuff. Andrew (Lane, drummer for Blankets) played trumpet on a song.

Q: What sort of approaches does The Swim have for writing songs?

Colton Harris: I think a lot of it is just that Caleb really writes a lot. That's why it's so diverse. It's almost become and extension of Caleb's life.

CC: In the past it was a lot of me and Colton working together. This album just came from me writing a lot of songs.
It used to be music first, and then lyrics first. Recently it's been more with the lyrics first, or even just the hook or a theme.
Most of the time I just have a lot of stuff written down I like to use, lots of starts of things and when I get something musically that works I can finish it up.
I'd imagine it's going to always be changing. Pretty much every song comes form a different place, a different start, different influences.
Some just start out as a theme that I want to write about. Some of it's an extension of my daily encounters and habits and activities. It's my way of having something so that I can push everything else aside.
This album was kind of a quick thing for us. We had the songs so we might as well record them and keep from being stagnant. I think that with this next album we'll be pushing our selves a little harder.

Q: You played SXSW for the first time this year. How were the crowds? Any other bands that knocked your socks off? Any other highlights?

CC: We didn't really know what to expect, nor did we have he time to research how we were going to do it up because we were hard pressed on the album. But we had a great time and we know what to expect for next year.
We got to see Jens (Leckman) that was awesome. NOFX too. The whole band loves NOFX. We all grew up listening to them

CH: It's really energizing to go on a trip like that and see a bunch of bands and people who are into music. We just kind of just cruised around and had fun. We didn't plan who to see, but we still had a blast.

Q: You guys have done all the recording and producing yourselves so far, and the mixing and mastering as well on this one. How do you guys approach recording and what benefits are there to doing the whole thing yourselves?

CC: The biggest benefit is the cost and considering our budget it was a pretty obvious choice. Also, the fact that we've gotten some good equipment and we all pretty much know what we're doing.
Timing is a big thing too. We wouldn't have had enough time or been able to afford to work out the small details with somebody else.
Nate does most of the engineering and he and I are really quick together. Me and Nate side by side works. We're both on the same page because we've worked on the songs, practiced them together.
Everything moved really quickly once we started tracking. We did the drums with Fernando at OG-7 studios. Colton banged out a lot of his stuff right away and Nate and I are really quick together.

Q: The Tucson Weekly has described your sound as "Equally informed by '60s pop and modern indie-pop/rock, with just a hint of Americana." What are some of the largest influences for The Swim? How do you guys pick which songs or bands to cover?

CH: We all like some of the same bands, for the most part, but everyone takes a different approach to it. Justin has a different take on everything, Nate has a different take on everything. Everyone has got different influences.
Caleb introduced me to a lot of bands that we've covered. He got me really into Ween and the last two cover-ups with Wilco and GBV.

CC: Me and Colton have always shared the DIY bands. Our early guitar influences were based on the Kinsellas (Tim and Mike, of Joan of Arc, et al.)

CH: What we were trying to achieve when we were first starting was a little bit more complicated than we're doing now.

CC: We were definitely interested in pushing ourselves to learn how to play out of time, play different guitar parts and feed off each other. It still shows in our music, but more than that it helped us to bond as guitar players and move forward

Q: How did The Swim form and when did you know the current lineup was really working well?

CH: Caleb and I started off playing guitars together and recording little ditties. We did a few with Nate and that's how he started playing with us.

CC: That's what's cool about the way The Swim started. It was just a fun thing and a way to try recording things we'd never done before. That's what was enticing about it. It was a ton of fun so we thought we'd get it together full time
And moving to Tucson, we wanted to do it and were ready to push ourselves to another level. There's an excellent music scene and touring bands coming through all the time.

CH: We'd come down to Tucson and scouted it out and everyone in our immediate group of friends were feeling a little restless with Prescott and needed to get out. To us, Tucson seemed a lot like Prescott as far as the people go. Everyone is really chill here.
After Justin joined we knew it was pretty solid. We knew that this is the group.

CC: Pretty much after the first practice with Justin, once he confirmed he's a gigantic Ween fan it was pretty much in the bag. We didn't even know his credentials at the time, but we didn't really know anybody else. The guy's solid. He's been playing drums for 50 some odd years. It made us think that it was time to sharpen up.

Q: How did you go about picking other bands to play during your CD release show? What sort of a connection do you feel to other Tucson bands or the Tucson music scene?

CC: It's an array of music that's going to happen that night. Blankets are just crazy, all over the place. You follow it up with The Deludes , a lot heavier and faster, almost punk. Mostly Bears are very progressive.
The people in all the bands are some of the favorite people we've met

CH: There are tons of bands that could have played it. There are so many that we're really close to or good friends with. It just happened that this is what works for all the bands. It's really just a lot of fun.

Q: You guys have been on shows with bands like Ted Leo and Okkervil River. If you could pick any other bands to play with, who would it be?

CH: Ween first of all. But I'd also really like to play with the folks from New Pornographers. Not necessarily the new Porn, but Neko Case and A.C. Newman and Destroyer.

CC: I'd love to play with (Joel) Plaskett. Or Malkmus would be sick.

Q: There was an earlier album (Pretty Good But Hella Rushed) that didn't get finished. Are there any plans for those songs?

CH: I think there are songs that sound good on the recording that don't sound good live and vice versa. There's always a push-pull between those songs. But also there's the fact that we want to keep moving.
There are plenty of songs to play. We have a shit load of songs to play, plus covers we like.
There's no need to rehash those songs unless it's fun for all of us. We're thinking about doing a really old song for our release show.

Q: Do you guys have plans for a tour?

CC: That's the goal - to get a tour going. We're playing CD release shows in Prescott and Flagstaff too, but we're still working out the details for a longer tour.


CONTEST: We have two prizes to give away - a copy of The Swim's new EP Random Walk and two free passes to the CD release show Friday at Plush.
Entering is simple: just email catfishvegas@gmail.com with either "Swim CD" or "Swim show" in the subject line. You can enter both, just do it in two different emails. Winners will be chosen at random Thursday.

Check back tomorrow for a review of the EP and two tracks to download: one from Random Walk and the second a Catfish Vegas exclusive!

I'm there!

Radiohead! Wilco! Beck! Tom Petty! And tons more.

The new spooky

English trip-hop pioneers Portishead are returning with their third studio album, 11 years after their self-titled second record and a full decade after the phenomenal Roseland NYC Live, which is when I actually started to really get them.

Portishead came across as way too spooky for me and I pretty much wrote them off initially. But after seeing the Roseland video and paying more attention to just how the band crafted its soul-spooking sound I came around. After that my only difficulty with Portishead was trying to remember the individual song names.

In a 1997 interview with Rolling Stone, Geoff Barrow described his self-styled anti-sampling method. The band would record original music, press it onto vinyl, rough the records up a bit and then sample that.

Third has leaked and probably isn't too tough to find in full, but just today the band officially released the first video, for the appropriately named "Machine Gun." It's rough and jarring in comparison to their earlier records (and the bulk of Third, at least from what I've heard) but it's hypnotic and compelling at the same time.



I wonder, as I do with a lot of well-established bands, whether or how well Portishead would catch on if they were to debut in this era of hyper blog scrutiny and immediate Internet access. Suffice it to say that while critically acclaimed for the most part, trip-hop never was the broadest sub-genre in alternative music. I don't think anybody who listened to that type of music then or now would rank Portishead any lower than the top two or three bands of trip-hop. And they certainly stand up over the time. Check out "Roads" from their Roseland performance:

Suicide Kings!

I'm stoked to be heading up to Phoenix on Friday to see the Suicide Kings for the first time. The Suicide Kings are led by Valley music legend (perhaps the Al Perry for the folks north of the Gila?) Bruce Connole, whose long string of bands and projects date back to at least the early 1980s.

Hell, Connole was being touted as a long-timer a decade ago, when he made a turn from honky-tonk to bluegrass. Not that he's purely country by any means -- Connole's bands along the way have been everything from new wave to full on metal.

It was Connole's Jetzons who were looking for an opener on their four-sets-a-night, four-nights-a-week gig when Gin Blossoms legend Doug Hopkins first stumbled into a regular gig.

Not that I was remotely around for any of that, but it's a fascinating rock 'n' roll history that demonstrates more than anything how versatile the Arizona music scene has been dating to the early days of punk rock and how talent and commitment can lead to as many different gigs as a musician can think up.

I first came to Connole's music through The Revenants, as pure a honky-tonk band as I've ever heard, no matter what the era. Mr. Chair first introduced me to the Artists & Whores album, with the promise that if I liked Johnny Cash, I'd dig what these Tempe dudes had to offer. And hey, he was right, though I'd throw in that anybody who digs Hank Williams would dig The Revenants as well.

Artists & Whores is pure honky-tonk, ornery as hell. It aint' alt.country, it's country - and also clever as hell. The lyrics are at once a mastery of the genre's themes of heartache and drinking early graves and a winking spin on those same themes. "That Girl's Insane" is my favorite off that record:

"She looks good, just like Hollywood, was a fire in her eye
Makes an entrance like a lady should,
Shoulders back, head up high
Ooh it makes me sad like the pouring rain
Ooh she looks so fine, but you know that girls' insane"

After The Revanants went on permanent hiatus, Connole moved on to The Busted Hearts, who were the one and only band I saw perform at the legendary and now demolished Mill Ave. Long Wongs. The Busted Hearts weren't quite pure bluegrass - there was a spirit of country songmanship that ran through what they did and downplayed the instrumental just a bit. But damn, what a show.

Apparently The Busted Hearts have now gone away and Connole has resurrected the spirit of The Revenants, along with the original band name, The Suicide Kings. I've heard a bit of the demos for their new project and while the honky-tonk remains, there's a roadhouse rock 'n' roll feel that shows up, a rowdier spirit that takes over. Some of the songs are re-recordings of Revenants or Busted Hearts tunes (like "Even Hookers Say Good-Bye" and "Hooker's Lament") that show new life.

Overall it's an incredibly promising set of tunes, a set that is all but certain to surpass what Connole achieved on Artists & Whores and The Busted Hearts single, self-titled record.

I'd hate to even start guessing how Connole has been active and innovative in a backwater (yet still compelling and absolutely unique) music scene for 30 years. But it's the straight truth. And what does that get ya? A gig (not even opening) at Mesa's Hollywood Alley, which can't hold more than a couple hundred (busted-hearted) souls. But I have high expectations and if y'all are in the Valley, go on and check out the show or (no matter where ya are) spend a little time with Connole's music on MySpace.

DOWNLOAD:
The Suicide Kings - Whiskey Row
The Revenants - That Girl's Insane
The Busted Hearts - Hooker's Lament (demo)

Damn

Since I gave short shrift to the Heavenly States myself yesterday I 'spose it's a tough position here to complain about how under-attended tonight's show at Congress was. But damn.

I first saw the Heavenly States almost three years ago - in the same venue, opening for Smog. I clearly remember their energetic brand of keyboard- and violin-laden indie rock. But I never did get any of their records and I'm already regretting that. This band has definitely progressed in that time and I couldn't believe how poor the ratio of great music to crowd presence was tonight.

Don't let the Heavenly States pass you by. I can't attest to the recorded material, having just picked up the latest album myself, but the Tucson Weekly has a good review. But judging from the live show, these Bay Area folks are going to have a great 2008.

DOWNLOAD: The Heavenly States - Lost In The Light

Gas money courtesy of Tucson, aka WXSW

A few years back, somebody in the Ol' Pueblo got the idea to start piggy-backing on the country's biggest music festival.
After all, Austin is a long drive from the West Coast and one extra stop a day's drive away will put that much more gas in the tank.
WXSW isn't the most blessedly scheduled festival - it's split over two consecutive Mondays and Tuesdays - but it more than makes up for the awkward timing with intriguing pairings.
Tuesday at Club Congress check out The Heavenly States (from the Bay Area) and Tucson rockers The Swim.
As for the second half of the festival, I can recommend both Helio Sequence (Portland) and Birdmonster (S.F.), headlining at Plush on Monday and Tuesday, respectively. (Also, the dudes from Birdmonster keep a highly entertaining blog.)

DOWNLOAD:
The Swim - The Beautiful Endeavor
Birdmonster - Cause You Can
Helio Sequence - Keep Your Eyes Ahead

Turning heads

I never did come back and write anything after the Dean & Britta show a couple weeks back, but rest assured, it was fantastic.
The duo is better than anybody out there at reinterpreting the pimptastic sort of late 1960s and 1970s songwriters. They indiefy those sorta lush, French-sounding, loungy pop songs from the likes of Lee Hazlewood and Serge Gainsbourg (who, obviously, is French).

So check out this new video, which features Britta (who Dean describes as "very feminine and gorgeous in a Scandinavian way, with high cheekbones and big, green eyes") on vocals (and bicycle). And Demitri Martin, for some reason...



Dean has a book coming out about his rock 'n' roll days, a memoir of touring and recording in a band that never quite broke through.
It's called Black Postcards, and Men's Vogue has published an excerpt.

Got Malk?

I've tried to avoid reading too much about Stephen Malkmus' new album so I could really come to it more on my own terms. Basically, I really want to taste it first for myself, without the menu descriptions. But I've been sick and busy and only gotten in a couple fractured listens, even after a few days with the album. So some opinions have filtered in and I've gathered that it's considered somewhat of a psychedelic or loopy album. Maybe.

But what I haven't picked up on anywhere is the fact that Real Emotional Trash is the type of guitar album that's paradise when it's played live. And that was my first exposure to the music - a rare album-less tour for Malkmus just over a year ago, when he played six of the album's 10 songs in their road-test mode.

This four-piece version of the Jicks is just right for Malkmus. He's got an absolute crasher on drums in Sleater-Kinney's Janet Weiss, who manages to chip in some backup singing as well. Portland bassist Joanna Bolme has been a recording engineer and longtime fixture in Northwest indie circles. And Mike Clark delivers rock-solid grooves on guitar and keyboards.

I think it would be one of the more fascinating musical time-transportations you could think of to hear Malkmus fronting a 1960s garage band - all hair and moustache and proto-punk spirit, far quirkier than you ever found in that era. I'm by no means a Malkmus or Pavement expert - I picked him up in the Terror Twilight era as part a batch of taste filtered over from my roommate Dr. Chung (a big thank you for all that influence, by the way Doctor, especially Neutral Milk Hotel and Magnetic Fields in addition to the Malk). But Malkmus' music has always struck me as oddly approachable for how weird it can get. And the latest is no different.

This post isn't meant to serve as any sort of a proper review for Real Emotional Trash - really more of a preparatory exercise to really soaking in the album than any thing. But for those who appreciate the album, check out these road-test versions:

DOWNLOAD:
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Real Emotional Trash (live)
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Baltimore (live)
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - We Can't Help You (live)
Get whole show as a zip: Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Live Tucson, 2007-01-09

(The Pictures are part of some wonderful behind the scenes stuff on the Malkmus Web site.)

Glory and tedium

Catfish Vegas is now the thrilled owner of a sweet new Macbook - a classically beautiful machine that seems quicker than Hermes himself after slogging away on a five-year-old Gateway laptop. It was a workhorse to be sure and while it's still running, it was sliding noticeably downhill. Not to mention the lack of any hard drive space whatsoever made the precious acquisition of music a difficult chore.

But not comes the tedium - the slow transferring of files (dating back nearly a decade if you count the already transferred once Word documents that are in many cases priceless). The bulk of the memory space is music files, but there are thousands of pictures there and beyond that, an entirely less well organized mess of written documents.

And not only that, but now it's time to begin the full digitization of my music collection. Yeesh.

But what that all means is I'll have far more music readily available and it will be much easier to dig things out of the vaults at any given time, for any given purpose. So (hint, hint), blogging will become richer from here on out. Plus it will be much easier to make additions to my iPod, like the all-latter-day Dylan playlist I'm working on for the drive to PHX later this week.

Tune in tomorrow for some live tracks from Stephen Malkmus in honor of his excellent new album, Real Emotional Trash...

There's never enough live Wilco

I can't possibly be the only person upset that I couldn't alter space and time enough so that I could live in Chicago's Riviera Theater the last couple weeks or so.
Five nights of every song the band has put on album has got to be the pinnacle of Wilco performances.

And if that isn't enough, the band jets right off to Washington D.C. to play a show tonight that the good folks at All Songs Considered are graciously sending out to all us other folks. It's on as I write this, but perhaps there's still chance to catch it: Wilco live on NPR.
If not, I'm betting NPR keeps up with the trend of podcasting its live performances.

And just because it's the song playing when I tuned in, here's a different version of "When The Roses Bloom Again," a song originally recorded for the Mermaid Avenue sessions that was scrapped after they learned it wasn't a Guthrie-written tune.

DOWNLOAD:
Wilco - When The Roses Bloom Again (live on A Prairie Home Companion)

Open, space

This is the time of year the desert starts bursting. The temperature is in the upper 70s, the sun is bright and clear, everywhere you look people are energized. We don't sit through long harsh winters like most folks, but that doesn't mean that the coming spring is any less enjoyable.

Wildflowers are in bloom. The air smells like life. Spring training is just about to get underway. The temperature swings more than 40 degrees from day to night. You need to be outside, need to feel the simply energy of an absolutely gorgeous day. Take a few moments of glory for yourself - nobody will mind.

When the landscape and the days are this open, you need some music to fill it. You need tunes that sound a bit dusty and a bit breezy. Bright sun-soaked tunes, energetic and laid back at the same time. Tunes that get you singing along. Simple, great tunes.

DOWNLOAD:
Roger Clyne - Fonder & Blonder (live)
Greyhound Soul - Rainer (live)
Dusty Buskers - Sail Away Ladies
River Roses - Forever 17

M. Doughty: The Man

I had a busy week and could hardly get in a couple of listens to my newest album purchase - Mike Doughty's Golden Delicious.

You see, it's a concept album about apples... The narrator is a young German boy in 1920s New York City, and in his playtime stumbles on a magical apple tree hidden from view in a roof-top garden. It lets him hear the music of clouds, and wind, and streetlights, all of which are constantly surging with beautiful sounds heard only by him. As the boy ages, the apples grow fewer and fewer on the tree, until one day the tree itself resembles nothing more than twigs jammed into hard-packed dirt...

That would be tremendously strange. The truth is, I've hardly had two listens to the new record, as I said (don't you pay attention?). But I'm a big Doughty fan from back in the day, when the cassette most frequently thrown into the tape deck while we cruised around in the back of pickup trucks was Ruby Vroom, the absolute paragon of cool in my own personal version of 1994. Somehow, between Nirvana and Radiohead, Soul Coughing was all that really mattered.

Doughty himself described Soul Coughing as "deep slacker jazz," and in writing about the first time I saw Doughty solo, I termed his lyrics "dream-scape beat poetry," perhaps more apt for his earlier solo work, but still something I hear in the latest stuff.

Doughty has a new vision for his music; it's a more organic sound, readily identifiable as music played by a musician. Gone are the samples and drum loops that gave the punch to Soul Coughing's stranger tunes. Doughty terms the new sound and recording method "Dude Theory." It's simple: when the listener sits down with the new tunes, he or she hears five dudes playing music. There aren't any tricks pulled - the layering or overdubs are toned down. And even in the first couple listens I hear the difference. I'm still working my way through Golden Delicious, but it sounds fantastic so far. It's a sparer album than Doughty's Haughty Melodic, but it's better for its simplicity.

"Fort Hood" is the first song that really jumps out at me, with the line "you should blast Young Jeezy with your friends in a parking lot" one of Doughty's most wistful and specific. There's no doubt I'm going to continue burrowing into Golden Delicious for quite a while. And hoping Doughty sticks a Tucson show into his latest tour itinerary...

DOWNLOAD:
Mike Doughty - Fort Hood (live MPR 2008-02-19)
Mike Doughty - I Just Want the Girl in the Blue Dress to Keep On Dancing (live 2007-11-13)
Mike Doughty - Madeleine and Nine (live 2007-11-13)
(Get the MPR whole set, with some really interesting interview segments, here. Check out more live Doughty at archive.org.)

And if you're not following Doughty's blog, you're missing out on a damn good thing.

And if you're into dj stuff, Doughty's been doing some spinning lately. Check out his work in that realm: Dubious Luxury - Soul Power Dry Run

Lastly, props also go out to So Much Silence, who tracked down a promo album of Doughty busking in the NYC subway.

UPDATE:
I just noticed that Doughty's cover of the Magnetic Fields' "Book of Love" is finally recorded as an official release, but it's an iTunes only bonus track. I don't really dig this new trend of digital only extras. I'm not going to re-buy the album for one track. For now, all I could find is a snippet of a live performance:
Mike Doughty - Book of Love (live, partial)

Tucson show alert: Keren Ann, Dean & Britta

The other day I wrote about Dean & Britta, so now here's a quick look at Keren Ann, who opens Wednesday night at Club Congress in what the promoter calls a "double bill from indie heaven."
Overstatement aside, this is one hell of a promising show.

I've been sampling some live Keren Ann I've tracked down from a recent in-studio performance on Minnesota Public Radio and she's an extraordinary singer-songwriter. With Jewish, Dutch and Indonesian heritage, she was born in Israel and raised in Holland and France and aside from being multilingual, her musical influences are varied enough to produce a truly unique artist in a genre that's hardly known for break-through performers these days.

In the immediate aftermath of Amy Winehouse and Feist battling it out for Grammy's best new artist, Keren Ann is all-but-assured to get noticed soon, and big time. At least from the live tracks I've heard, she has the potential to be a jazzier and folkier performer than either. But there are exotic elements that seem to pop up throughout.

Regardless of whether you're struck more by Keren Ann or Dean & Britta, definitely catch both, Feb. 20 at Club Congress.

DOWNLOAD:
Keren Ann - The Hardships of the World (live)
Keren Ann - In Your Back (live)
(Get the whole set, with interviews, here.)

And here's just another little taste of Dean & Britta:
Dean & Britta - Night Nurse (live)

Tucson show alert: Dean & Britta with Keren Ann

Just over three years ago, Luna played Club Congress as part of their farewell tour and it was amazing to see the band members so zeroed in on making those last songs and notes stand as their legacy. The band's ascendancy, through seven albums and too manu tours that never broke through the nightclub level, had finally reached its peak. And then they were done.

In the aftermath, a mellowed 40+ Dean Wareham and his bass playing wife Britta Phillips turned their attention to a different sound, a lusher and loungier cousin to the transcendent mix of soaring guitar leads and fuzzy indie pop. Their two albums mix covers (most fitting are the French pop gems) and originals, with a vocal harmony that's surprisingly excellent and beyond anything Luna attempted.

Dean & Britta are coming back to Club Congress Wednesday and check out the Tucson Weekly for an interview. I'm psyched to see what they bring to the stage and how their new direction influences the live performance. I can't imagine anything less than an excellent show, especially given what I've read about the opener, Keren Ann, an Israeli-born, New York and Paris-based dream folk singer.

Below are a couple tracks Dean & Britta recorded earlier this month for Minnesota Public Radio. The stripped-down "Night Nurse" is a particularly good performance.

DOWNLOAD:
Dean & Britta - Words You Used To Say (live on the Current)
Dean & Britta - Night Nurse (live on the Current)
(Get the whole set, with interviews, here.)
And check back in a couple days for some live Keren Ann, also from MPR.

Lastly, here are two more worthwhile diversions:
* a handwritten interview with Dean & Britta. (an incredibly cool concept)
* And the trailer for "Tell Me Do You Miss Me," a documentary of Luna's farewell tour. (Check out at 2:25 for the top quote of the film, "I'm in a bunk bed in Tucson.")

"One more gift to bring..."

I first heard about the amazing collaboration between Iron & Wine and Calexico long before any official word was released about the In the Reins EP. In late 2004, Sam Beam had been spotted hanging around the Tap Room in Hotel Congress, and he was talking a little about recording with Calexico over at Wavelab. I was immediately intrigued and thought the combination had a lot of promise, though the album wouldn't be released for another nine months or so. Beam didn't have any sort of a band to speak of at that point and Calexico is a band full of seasoned musicians who show tremendous versatility in backing various singers.

After the album dropped they all teamed for a tour, also bringing along Salvador Duran, a Mexican singer-songwriter who's since become something of a Tucson institution. I caught the tour at a very packed Rialto Theatre and later found a free NPR recording of a show from Washington D.C. later in the tour.

The day before the Tucson show, Sam Beam, Joey Burns and Salvador dropped into KXCI for an in-studio session that featured a more subdued take on some of In the Reins top tunes. Most interesting was hearing Burns take the lead vocal on "Prison on Route 41," with Beam providing the harmony. The EP started with Beam songs that he'd written with just vocals and guitar. The bands collaborated in the studio for a much fuller sound, and once the songs are stripped back down for a radio performance, there's somehow something more there.

DOWNLOAD:
Iron & Wine and Calexico - Prison on Route 41 (live KXCI)
Iron & Wine and Calexico - Dead Man's Will (live KXCI)
Iron & Wine and Calexico - He Lays In The Reins (live KXCI)

Grammy love

During commercials while watching tonight's too-close-for-comfort Suns win over the Wizards, I flipped by the Grammys, just checking to see if anything interesting was happening.
And just once out of a dozen or so flipovers, something worthwhile was going on (that would be Beyonce and her wonderfully short skirt joining Tina Turner for a decent enough rendition of "Proud Mary").

I don't like the Grammys and I never really have. The only award I've bothered to follow is Best Contemporary Folk Album, which a shocking number of my favorites have won in the last decade or so (Steve Earle, Bob Dylan, John Prine, Warren Zevon, Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash). The award has become a sort of below-the-radar acknowledgment of who really deserves some props, or maybe a backdoor sort of lifetime achievement prize.

For me, mostly, the Grammy Awards show represents pretty much all that sucks about music and the entertainment industry that surrounds it. It's all show, no passion. It's all mainstream, no creativity. It's all popularity, no room for the fans who don't take their cues from ClearChannel radio. It missed the best and awards the mediocre-est. It's static, monied, unmemorable and mostly worthless. It's further behind the curve than music companies themselves.

And once in a while it's an open forum for some industry prick to attack the very fans who support the whole damn multibillion dollar boondoggle. I remember clearly when good ol' industry shill and recording academy president Michael Greene pulled out his ticket book to call all Internet fans of music criminals. Never mind the blindly accusatory tone that dick-hole took to the podium. I'll call him out on the absolutely blatant misrepresentation of the whole notion of downloading in his preaching. I can't believe that speech was so many years ago, and the "music" industry still hasn't taken step one toward getting its shit together in recognition of the shifts in technology.

Anyway... The one Grammy awards show I can clearly remember watching was 10 years ago, when I wandered across the street from my dorm to some long-since-closed restaurant to watch Bob Dylan take three Grammys (album of the year, best male rock vocal performance and best contemporary folk ablum [see?]) and perform in probably the strangest segments in Grammy history.



(Worth noting here is the fact that the same song that got "Soy-Bombed" was featured in a number of Victoria's Secret advertisements... a fact that makes the term "soy bomb" seem ever so much dirtier...)

So why did I even bother flipping over to the awards show during Suns commercials? For one moment, five years ago, when all the disdain that the Grammys have had for music fans like me washed away in a coup of rock n' roll brilliance.

With a shout of "This is for Joe!" from Bruce Springsteen, an unbelievably awesome group struck into The Clash's "London Calling" as a tribute to the great Joe Strummer, not even two months gone from this realm. Joining Springsteen were Elvis Costello, Dave Grohl and Miami Steve Van Zandt and I was blown away. If it was planned, I didn't know, so I just like to think that somehow that crew of musicians told the suits to fuck off and that they were gonna do a Strummer tribute, like it or not.



It was a great moment and a truly amazing performance because it was obvious that each of those dudes knew they were singing for Joe, singing like it mattered.

And so, no matter who won whatever tonight, or who won whatever whenever, I have a tiny bit of props for the Grammys because of that performance. Plus, I'm one of the very, very few music fans in my age group who say Grammy got it right picking Steely Dan's Two Against Nature over Radiohead's (overrated in every way) Kid A for album of the year in 2001 (though Beck's Midnight Vultures would've been my overall top choice).

So the music industry deserves maybe 1 percent attention during awards season, just in case somebody pulls out something as awesome as that Clash tribute.

DOWNLOAD:
Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Dave Grohl & Steven Van Zandt - London Calling (live Grammy 2003)

The Thanks I Get

Folks keep trickling in to the site looking for "The Thanks I Get," a bonus song from Wilco's latest album, Sky Blue Sky. So why not give 'em what they're looking for?

"The Thanks I Get" is my personal favorite from the Sky Blue Sky sessions and I think it works equally well as a soulful full-band romp and as a plaintive Jeff Tweedy solo acoustic tune.
Tweedy actually wrote the song for Solomon Burke to sing, hoping it would be included on the 2002 project that ended up as the Don't Give Up On Me album. It's an incredible record, full of specially written songs by the likes of Dylan, Tom Waits, Van Morrison, Brian Wilson, Elvis Costello and Joe Henry. The soul legend brought an amazing life and presence to the tunes... what I wouldn't give to hear him sing "The Thanks I Get."

So here are two versions, a solo acoustic one (pay attention to the banter at the end - that's where Tweedy tells the Burke story and talks about the upcoming Sky Blue Sky) and a full band recording from Conan O'Brien.

DOWNLOAD:
Wilco - Is that The Thanks I Get (live Conan).mp3
Jeff Tweedy - Is that the Thanks I Get.mp3

R.I.P. John Stewart

Folk singer and songwriter John Stewart died last month, passing away in the same San Diego hospital where he was born 68 years earlier. For some well-written obituaries about his 50-year career as a musician and songwriter, go here and here.

His career never hit the big time - my guess is he was just too clean cut and harmless to make much of a splash in the turbulent last 1960s and early 1970s when he did the bulk of his solo recording - but I've known his music my whole life.

John Stewart was absolutely my mom's favorite and I can clearly remember hearing his signature records - California Bloodlines and Willard - regularly as a child. I don't remember liking them, but they were there. And later when I branched out musically I gave them another shot.

His voice was deep and soothing like a great storyteller - which he was. Stewart seemed to be wrapped up in some visions of a truly good America, one that didn't exist because it had passed, or because it hadn't come yet. Such nostalgia runs through his songs, but he was no conservative - he stumped for Bobby Kennedy in 1968 after leaving the Kingston Trio.

If nothing else, Stewart had a varied and fascinating career. He got his start in a top-selling combo that seemed to be the safe alternative to all the new groundbreaking folkies led by Dylan. His most well-known song is "Daydream Believer," an impeccably catchy (and well, dreamy) pop gem the Monkees took to No. 1 for four weeks in the winter after the summer of love.

Stewart's run of quality troubadour albums started not long after Kennedy was gunned down on the campaign trail. He brought folk and country together with a storyteller's charm for a certain type of Americana that somehow skipped over Gram Parsons and the rest of the hippies.

Then, whether he was influenced by disco or glossy California rock, he turned once again, donning a white suit and sticking a red rose between his guitar strings for one of the gaudier album covers ever. But Bombs Away Dream Babies would be his biggest hit, with gloss to spare from the guitar, vocals and production (and who knows what else) of Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. But the songs are top-quality, like he finally started writing with night in mind instead of day.

He never stopped touring. I don't know how many times my folks saw Stewart play, but that last time, in December of 2002, they brought us kids along. Stewart was an elder statesman of folk by then, but he never lost his die-hard fans and (I'm guessing, but I think this is a safe one) never put on a bum show.

It kinda hit me when I saw that he died, and it actually felt like weighty news to pass along to my mom. But later I put on some tunes and I don't think there'll ever be a day when John Stewart's music isn't a familiar comfort for me.

DOWNLOAD:
John Stewart - July, You're a Woman (live)
John Stewart - California Bloodlines (live)
John Stewart - Gold
John Stewart - Heart of the Dream

Catfish at the Cinema

Far and away the greatest benefit to being a relatively infrequent movie watcher is almost never watching a bad movie. I tend to get upset and offended at the time wasted to watch your average Hollywood action flick or romantic comedy, so I shy away from films as they hit the theaters, wait for the hype to die down and see what offerings get some props from reviewers I dig and have a little staying power.

Such was the exact process that brought me to Into the Wild and No Country For Old Men these last couple days and I reckon I have little in the way of anything but compliments. Talk about your simple, yet powerful movies - compelling stories, dialog that seems real-to-life as well as insightfully quotable and beautiful camera work. There isn't much more that's similar about the two films, so I reckon I'll move on in the order I saw them.

Sean Penn has been such a powerful presence in the last couple films I've seen him in (Mystic River and 21 Grams) that it's no surprise he's moved over to directing. He seems to be a deliberate detail-oriented director, taking a heavy hand (he wrote the screenplay as well) in the production as a whole, and really drawing the most out of the material. I doubt Penn will be a frequent director; instead he seems drawn to the unique story that plays out here.

Despite having heard a good bit about the film before hand, I was under the impression that it was mostly about the journey in Alaska. I'm glad that wasn't the case - it's more like Into the Great Wide Open than Into the Wild and that's for the best. Whether he's Christopher McCandless or his chosen name of Alexander Supertramp, the protagonist is driven by movement and experience, not simply the need to rush as far as he can from society. In truth he makes his biggest leap away from society not by trekking into the Alaskan wilderness but in that first moment he makes up his mind that he doesn't need money, or a home, or a job, or anything that ties him to anything else. It's that over-the-next-horizon restlessness that defines his character, no matter the horizon.

Emile Hirsch was a great choice for Alex, bringing a believability to his restless idealogue. He didn't spout the nonsense you might expect from a just-barely-on-his own kid. He wasn't constantly coming up with new justifications and rationale for his wanderlust. His philosophy was simple and mostly unchanging - the trappings of society are simply traps and the measure of a life is in the experiences of the individual. But he did - tragically - misjudge how crucial simple fellowship can be. It's something that he came to eventually and it's ultimately the story's greatest sadness that he didn't get to live out his years with that addition to his world view. Alex was no misanthrope, though he may have come across as one. In truth there's really no good word for his take on society. He loved his fellow travelers, the souls more at home on the fringes of society, and ultimately found as much strength in them as he did in the wilderness, though the realization was slow in permeating his restlessness.

On a final note, the music in the film was every bit as great as some friends have said. Eddie Vedder provides another way of reading the character and the action, much in the same way that Badly Drawn Boy uses the language of music to say things in About A Boy that the filmmakers just couldn't get to otherwise. Taken one by one, the songs are all quality, with an acoustic yet full sound that fits the landscapes of the film. But taking note of the lyrics, we see more parallels in Alex's journeys and a new dimension emerges.

Music is such a central part of Into the Wild that it was fascinating to follow it up with a film that had absolutely no music at all. That quietness to me translated incredibly well as space, in a variety of ways. It let the empty Texas landscapes stand even more imposing, more immense. It let the characters' inner thoughts play a role in the film, whether you had a decent guess what those thoughts were (as in the case of Josh Brolin's Llewelyn Moss) or whether they were as inscrutable as the darkness (as in the case of Moss' nemesis-by-chance, Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh).

I didn't even notice the lack of music until one of the film's most suspenseful moments, where the ominous strings should have been. And it was no less suspenseful for the absence. People breathing, floor boards creaking, shadows covering doorways... all of this is real, all of it is in the moment, on the screen, and none of it needs an extra bit of manipulation. Kudos to the Coens for going against the grain there.

I've been a Coen brothers fan for years and years, but for some reason have stuck to just the comedies. There's little in No Country for folks looking for the fingerprints of the geniuses who created The Big Lebowski, et al. But the dialog is the tell. That's probably the greatest strength of each Coen film I dig - a richness of dialog that never seems forced, giving each character a uniqueness, full of lines you want to jot down and remember, with not a bit of it contrived or fake or in any way detracting from the movement of the story.

The story is cut of all fat, and because of that requires quite a bit of trust of the filmmakers. It rattled me at first, left me wanting the back stories of Moss and Chigurh, left me wanting to know who the drug dealers were who got gunned down in the Texas desert. I needed that at first, wanted to dig into each character to learn how to read the angles, but none of it was there. It was simply a mess dropped right in your lap and ultimately I think it was fitting. The $2 million and gun battle fallout just dropped on Moss. Moss just dropped onto Chigurh. And the whole mess just dropped onto Tommy Lee Jones sheriff Ed Tom Bell, just as mess after mess after increasingly larger and alienating mess had been falling on his for his whole life as a Texas lawman.

That slow sense of the world spinning out of control, of events running your life instead of the opposite, of a growing and desperate helplessness, is a theme I'm often drawn to, in movies or books or music. It's Yeats' "Turning and turning in the widenying gyre," rewritten with a homicidal maniac, an in-over-his-head welder and an aged sheriff, all dancing about on a chaotic parquet of drug trafficking, greed raining from all angles and blood lust.

While it's damn good, I can't say No Country is my favorite Coen film. It's abrupt and once you accept its main assertion that the world is fucked, the narrative elements lose a good bit of their significance. But I am pushed to explore the earlier Coen films. And I'm definitely going to start reading some Cormac McCarthy.

Go Get Gone

Start pouring the whiskey, the Fourkiller Flats are back on stage Friday at Club Congress.
The Flats are hard-charging twangy rockers who sound plenty legit singing about waking up in a Las Cruces jail or tossing beer bottles about in one holy hell of a fight. An EP from 2000 and a 2001 set of 10 originals and a cover of Whiskeytown's "Faithless Streets" (so I started this damn country band, 'cause punk rock is too hard to sing) are all the bastards have recorded so far.
It's been a few months since they've played a show, and last time they played nearly all unrecorded songs, so maybe it's time for a new album one of these days.
The band has this curious roller derby video up on their MySpace page and while the connection escapes me, it's a song they haven't released, so check it out:

The Flats are opening up for the Mother Truckers, an Austin-based alt.country combo that I haven't seen yet, but they've been getting a lot of props around here.

Welcome...

Catfish Vegas presents... has seen a surge in traffic lately, almost entirely from people googling about for celebrity deaths. And the untimely departure of Heath Ledger seems to have vastly accelerated that surge.
Mr. Chair occasionally logs what drives readers his way, and it's usually something to do with shaving testicles. Not that he's ever blogged on the subject, but if that's what the public wants, I 'spose he ought to deliver one day.
Aside from searching out a celebrity death pool, it seems like random visitors here are trying to scope out a hot congresswoman. And I did blog about a hot congresswoman, so that's the way it goes.
On Jan. 10 I had a few visitors seeking out Arlo Guthrie. And people regularly stop on by after searching out Wilco's "The Thanks I Get." There are a few other musical inquiries that steer folks here. And one other recurring query is for this see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkey statuette I linked to. Strange.

A fine winter weekend

I was kinda taking a breather there at the end of the year, then I got blindsided by the flu. But now I'm mostly recovered and starting to peek around for stuff to listen to and blog about and do.
This weekend is the Dillinger Days, celebrating the (very serendipitous) capture of the notorious bank robber by Tucson police in 1934. I know it sounds like fame on the order of "Largest Free-Standing Pole West of the Mississippi," but everywhere has to be known for something. Besides, it's a good idea for a downtown party, and screw everywhere else where you can't have an outdoor festival in the middle of January.
But the point of this is to say that the tunes are absolutely first rate.

First up are the aptly named Dusty Buskers, "the band that fits on a bike."

They've actually been pretty regular at booking shows, but the first I ran across these guys they were literally busking, with a fiddle, a madolin and a hat set up between them. I love their cover of Woody's "Hard Travelin'" and the Dead Milkmen classic "Punk Rock Girl."

After the Buskers is Tucson's own British bluesman, the lightning hot harmonica player Tom Walbank and his Ambassadors. I've never been short of amazed watching Walbank and his band jam and I don't think many performers around the world have carved out such a unique musical persona.


Playing last is the legendary Al Perry, who can strum an acoustic, lead an all-star Telecaster jam or honky-tonk it up, depending on the mood. He's been called the Unofficial Mayor of Downtown Tucson and I gladly concur.
Download: Al Perry - We Got Cactus

Happy Arlo Guthrie Day!

It's the 10th of January, and I still ain't had no sleep...

Today we celebrate one of my all-time favorite songs - "Darkest Hour" - and its author - the great Arlo Guthrie. It's a song full of mystery, driven by fleeting images. And if I knew precisely what it meant I'd get further into that, but as Arlo himself has said, the song came to him in a dream. And it truly exists best in a sort of dreamscape. The two lovers in the castle seem completely separate from the pre-battle atmosphere all around them.

Here's a live version from 2006: Arlo Guthrie - Darkest Hour (live in Dublin)


Next we have a treat, an incredibly early version of Arlo's signature opus, Alice's Restaurant. It's essentially more of a prototype than even a first draft. The 19-year-old Arlo is singing in 1966 at Gerdes Folk City and all that exists of the song at that point was the looping guitar pattern and the chorus. But there's no mention of Thanksgiving or the draft or anything that emerged when he recorded the song a later. What's there is the wit that's continued to drive his performances since. What I find most fascinating is how much more he sounds like Woody in those days. His banter is twangier, more Oklahoma than the Brooklyn-born Arlo really had much right to claim.

The main bulk of the song (at just 13 minutes, it's actually substantially shorter than it would eventually become) is Arlo talking about how the words to Alice's Restaurant are going to spread like wildfire - first out of the club and into the Villlage, then the rest of New York and then steadily across the East Coast and the rest of the country ("New Mexico, OLD Mexico") and the rest of the continent ("there's a slight chance it may get into Cuba"). And eventually the song will go over the whole world, and one day everybody in the world, at the same time and in the same key, will sing "Alice's Restaurant."

Download: Arlo Guthrie - Alice's Restaurant (live 1966)

Everybody have a great Arlo Day!

Get your picks in!

The window for participating in the Celebrity Death Pool 2008 is drawing to a close. Get your picks in by Jan. 13!

And as Mr. Chair said about the picks thus far: "If we are any good at this, Fidel, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Phyllis Diller better tie up any loose ends soon..."