Music

Photos: Regeneration Tour

CARINA MASTROCOLA — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:58:15 GMT

Belinda Carlisle, the Human League, ABC, and Flock of Seagualls, Bank of America Pavilion, August 20, 2008

Belinda Carlisle at the Bank of America Pavilion
Photo credit: Carina Mastrocola

Rebirth of a prince

CHRIS FARAONE — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:59:20 GMT

Digging RZA in 36 steps
I recently took the Greyhound to Montreal for a RZA concert.

WU GOES THERE: As a producer, MC, and entity, RZA introduced architecturally underground hip-hop to mainstream audiences.

I recently took the Greyhound to Montreal for a RZA concert. In fact, my lust for Wu-Tang has led me to endure even fouler things than eight hours of lavatory stink: since the Clan usually bypass Boston, I’ve had to roll to Worcester for some shows. So when three weeks ago it was announced that RZA had booked a solo gig next Thursday at the Middle East, it seemed appropriate to spread some flower petals. In honor of the sacred Clan number 36, here go that many memorable moments from the career of a producer, MC, and entity who introduced architecturally underground hip-hop to mainstream audiences.

“GRITS” | BIRTH OF A PRINCE [2003] | Born in 1969, Robert Diggs grows up poor in Brooklyn, Pittsburgh, and Staten Island. According to the song “Grits”: “A one pound box of sugar, a stick of margarine, and a hot pot of grits kept his family from starving.”

“YOU CAN’T STOP ME NOW” | DIGI SNACKS [2008] | 1979: RZA and his cousin Ol’ Dirty Bastard begin hitting kung fu flicks on 42nd Street. An imagination blooms.

“LITTLE GHETTO BOYS” | WU TANG FOREVER [1997] | Around 1990: RZA, GZA, and Ol’ Dirty Bastard collectively call themselves Force of the Imperial Master, but they change the name to All In Together Now after their song by that name blows up around New York.

"OOH I LOVE YOU RAKEEM" [1991] | 1991: Before the RZA is born, Diggs signs to Tommy Boy records as Prince Rakeem. His lead single, “Ooh I Love You Rakeem,” hardly demonstrates his genius.

“IN THE HOOD” | IRON FLAG [2001] | Wu-Tang are born from a rivalry between Staten Island’s Park Hill and Stapleton projects. RZA lives on the borderline between the two, and he pumps music from his basement studio to lure potential MCs on both sides.

“DRAMA” | DIGI SNACKS [2008] | Even with his career popping, RZA remains handcuffed to the block. Soon after the Rakeem video and EP drop, he does a short bid for gun possession.

“BACK IN THE GAME” | IRON FLAG [2001] | 1993: Following the success of the newly formed Clan’s jump-off single, “Protect Ya Neck,” Wu-Tang sign with Steve Rifkind’s soon-to-be legendary Loud Records.

“BRING DA RUCKUS” | ENTER THE WU-TANG (36 CHAMBERS) [1993] | Dropping the same year as Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready To Die and the Nas classic Illmatic, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) emerges as the grimiest, most eclectic of the three iconic releases.

I think I’m gonna throw down

MICHAEL BRODEUR — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:55:23 GMT

The Motion Sick make us feel all woozy
Wanna get in on the music-licensing boom? Be smart like the Motion Sick.

Perhapst

SAM UBL — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:07:30 GMT

Perhapst | In Music We Trust
To say he’s not a leading-man type is an understatement.

Roll credits

MATT PARISH — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:14:26 GMT

Mad Man Films finish what they started
“Boston has a way of being a little too comfortable for bands,” says Zak Longo as he sits in his Brighton kitchen.

MIXED MEDIA: The band’s melding of warring sensibilities made them tough to pin down.

“Boston has a way of being a little too comfortable for bands,” says Zak Longo as he sits in his Brighton kitchen. “It’s easy to get caught up in things and forget where you stand in the rest of the world.”

Flyers are spread all over the table for Mad Man Films’ party at Great Scott this Saturday for the release of Project Manors — their first record, which pulled itself over the finish line a full year after the band crossed it themselves. The other two members — singer/guitarist George Lewis Jr. and drummer Joe Ciampini — have long since moved to New York, and Longo’s been busy wrapping up an English degree from UMass. A second show at O’Brien’s on Sunday will wrangle the gaggle of side projects sprung from Mad Man Films: Longo’s Before Lazers, Ciampini’s Death to the Weird, and Lewis’s solo project.

For his part, Longo’s been dealing with the real world more than the fantasyland of bandhood lately, spending his summer mentoring disadvantaged high-schoolers in a program to prepare them for college application and hitting the gym with them in the evenings. He takes a square-shouldered approach to conversation, like an assistant football coach; it’s hard to reconcile this Longo with the guy I once saw cover the Residents’ “Sinister Exaggerator” in a sheer white nightie.

At the heart of these efforts is Longo’s younger brother, Sean Robert Killian, who’s currently in a Florida prison trying to scrape up the funds to get back into a courtroom. Both Mad Man shows will serve as benefits toward a fund to cover mounting legal fees.

“My parents already sold their house and everything else they own for the first defense trial,” says Longo. In 2005, Killian was convicted of murder in a touchy case on the campus of the University of Central Florida. But police later convicted a second man of the same crime after getting a recorded confession. The matter would seem to be cut-and-dried but red tape runs thick. Three years later, Killian remains in jail, though he’s completed a paralegal course and has filed his own writ of habeas corpus.

“We’re just trying to build up a good foundation in hopes that Sean can get a fair trial like he deserves,” says Longo.

Guitar solos?

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:01:06 GMT

Obits go back to basics
“It actually feels really liberating, like a moment where you’re like, ‘Boy, am I glad to be an adult!’"

SOLO PROJECT: “Coming from a hardcore/punk-rock background, the guitar solo is the first thing that gets left at the door,” says Sohrab Habibion.

“It actually feels really liberating, like a moment where you’re like, ‘Boy, am I glad to be an adult!’ It’s like walking into a room and you’re not worried if your fly is unzipped. We just don’t care.” Obits guitarist Sohrab Habibion is pontificating about his new band’s exotic sound — and their break with old-guard indie-rock orthodoxy.

“We’re not young guys, so this band has definitely benefitted from our involvement in bands before. I think both in terms of how we write, what kind of music we’re trying to write, and also in terms of how we communicate, since we’re not 25, there’s as little ego as you could possibly get in a band scenario — which is pretty great.”

Habibion (singer/guitarist for early-’90s Jawbox associates Edsel) and singer/guitarist Rick Froberg (former singer for San Diego emo progenitors Drive like Jehu and garage punks Hot Snakes) have a lot of indie-guitar history to be liberated from. Obits has been, until recently, a long-gestating rehearsal-space project with a goal to, as Habibion puts it, “really crack the kind of music that we want to listen to, inasmuch as we can actually play it.”

“We are making music for our own pleasure,” he continues. “There’s no paradigm that we have to hold ourselves to. I come from the DC hardcore scene, and there are so many great bands, and I learned a lot about music and how musicmaking can be a very beneficial social and socially activist thing. And yet there were a lot of unspoken rules, and I’m glad to have nothing to do with that anymore. It feels really good to just sort of say, ‘Hey, let’s play something that sounds like a fucked-up Chuck Berry song,’ and have everybody else say, ‘Yeah, let’s try that!’ ”

The irony is, the gentlemen of Obits are stepping out of their comfort zone by exploring sounds that would normally be considered pretty “trad” — and by rediscovering their love for the buh-lazing guitar solo. “You listen to a million records and you’re like, ‘Man, I wish I could play that Tom Verlaine solo!’, but we’ve all been in situations where that sort of thing is verboten. And you know, coming from a hardcore/punk rock background, the guitar solo is the first thing that gets left at the door. So part of it, for us, is to try to, in as tasteful a way as possible, reintroduce that in our music. It’s actually taken us a long time to figure out how to do that in a way that doesn’t feel cheesy.”

In and out of fashion

BARRY THOMPSON — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:23:12 GMT

Paradosaurus Wreck invades the Dilboy VFW
Something felt eerie about scruffy, squirrelly Rhode Island trio Deer Tick as they entertained the bleep out of the densely occupied VFW.

Smokin’ rock

BARRY THOMPSON — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:09:34 GMT

Leftover Crack at Club Lido, August 7, 2008
With an all-star cast of Choking Victim, Morning Glory, and F-Minus alums, NYC’s Leftover Crack have a sometimes problematic knack for jacking adrenaline levels.

The Big Hurt: Reconstructive criticism

DAVID THORPE — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:48:46 GMT

How music can be better
The job of any great music critic (e.g., me) is to provide useful suggestions to musicians, thus advancing the art.

The job of any great music critic (e.g., me) is to provide useful suggestions to musicians, thus advancing the art. Critics have always been the guiding force behind music; calling us “muses” might be going a little far, but I think everyone would agree that we’re a million times more important than musicians.

Here’s an illustration of how it works. Imagine it’s 1915 or so, and a critic is at some classical-music waltz concert or something. He hears an okay song, but he has the distinct sense that it could be better, so he writes a review saying that they should add more trumpets and shit and maybe start calling it “jazz” instead of “classical,” because that sounds more hip and modern. Upon reading this review, some musician (whose name is lost to history) decides to take the critic’s advice and invents jazz.

These major upheavals have occurred three times throughout the history of music: from classical to jazz, from jazz to rock, and from rock to rap. What with all the flagging record sales and overall music boringness lately, I propose that it’s time for another one, and I now proudly take my place in history as the critic who instigates it. Musicians, please consider these suggestions for making music better:

How about some new instruments? We’ve been stuck with the same basic crap for centuries: guitars, pianos, harps, etc. Maybe a combination of two instruments would be good, like a pianjo, or a guitar you can blow into to make extra bonus notes. Also, it should be like a video game, where if you play a bunch of notes really fast, you unlock some sort of high-score “achievement” and the blowtar company sends you a special pin you can wear.

Or, we could invent a completely new and better type of instrument. I’m not exactly sure what it should sound like (that’s for the musicians to figure out), but you should be able to play it with one hand so you can wave at the audience while you play, or simulate sex acts. Virtuoso types could even impress everyone by playing two at once. An important aspect of this instrument is that it should be relatively simple but extremely difficult to play, so the operator can make wild, sexual grimaces of effort while performing. Maybe the instrument would just be a sort of lever, and you’d have to pull it really hard to make a sound.

Interview: Shane West

JIM SULLIVAN — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:20:15 GMT

Too late to stop
The actor discusses the Germs . . . and ER.

Born in Baton Rouge in 1978, Shane West was raised by punk-rocker parents. His earliest memory of punk is humming along to a Jam song at age three. At 18, he picked up a guitar and moved to Los Angeles. Around the same time, he started auditioning. In 1998, he formed a band called Average Jo, later called Jonny Was; at present, it’s on hiatus. The acting was more successful — he played Evan Rachel Wood’s brother Eli Sammler in the ABC-TV show Once and Again from 1999 to 2002. In 2004, West signed on as the lead actor and executive producer of What We Do Is Secret, a bio-pic of the late-’70s LA punk band the Germs and its bi-sexual, nihilistic, and ultimately suicidal lead singer, Darby Crash. The indie film — titled after a 44-second Germs song — started, ran out of money, stopped, and restarted. Last year it played the LA Film Festival; now it’s finally getting national release. West plays the antagonistic, confrontational Crash, who overdosed, Sid Vicious–like, on December 7, 1980. Further mixing real and reel life, he sang lead with the Germs on tour (they played Axis in 2006), and he’s still a Germ, whenever guitarist Pat Smear is off from his other gig with the Foo Fighters.

These days, however, West is best known for quite a different role: On ER, he plays Dr. Ray Barnett, a double-leg amputee during this final season, whose job includes tending to bloody wounds. In What We Do Is Secret, as Crash, he slashes his bare chest, Iggy-like, in concert. And so . . .

Do you prefer to bleed or be the guy who stanches the bleeding?
You mean be a victim or taking care of someone? Being the victim’s a lot more fun when it’s pretend. It was fun to do it in What We Do Is Secret and put on fake gashes. But as to being the caretaker, I’ve always been that with my friends and family. It’s kind of bred in me.

It’s hard to think of more-opposite roles.
Honestly, ER fits in wonderfully. The first year I started with the Germs, we were trying to raise money and learn songs, I wasn’t on ER, and then ER came along and gave me this opportunity. It helped me out financially, and also career-wise. It helped me get acknowledgment that I can play an adult. It was a blast to join a very successful show. During those three years of hell, when I was trying to put together What We Do Is Secret, eight months out of the year I was able to go to the finely run machine that was ER to relieve my financial worries and help me stay sane.

Fans cheer; earth weeps

WILL SPITZ — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:17:38 GMT

Radiohead at Comcast Center, August 13, 2008
It’s a bummer that the four-plus hours I spent in my car feeling guilty about barfing loads of carbon into the air is most salient in my mind, because, as always, Radiohead delivered an awe-inspiring show.

Blues juniors

TED DROZDOWSKI — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:25:08 GMT

Back Door Slam rejuvenate a British tradition
A guitar howls through the streets of downtown Chattanooga just as the sun begins to set, pealing out an elaborately improvised solo pasted onto the end of “Red House.”

YOUNG GUNS: Back Door Slam have been at it since they were 16, and Davy Knowles confesses that they’ve even covered “Free Bird.”

The (other) British invasion: Five great bands from UK blues' back pages. By Ted Drozdowski.

A guitar howls through the streets of downtown Chattanooga just as the sun begins to set, pealing out an elaborately improvised solo pasted onto the end of “Red House.” The six-stringer, Back Door Slam’s Davy Knowles, has his wah-wah pedal pushed way down to make his Strat sing at the slightest flick of his pick.

Although plenty of bands have covered this Hendrix staple, Back Door Slam — who will open for Kid Rock and Lynyrd Skynyrd Saturday at the Comcast Center — are investing it with rare power and authority. Besides, the tune’s a perfect closer for the “Bike Night” street fair they’re playing, and Knowles’s notes bounce off nearly as many parked Harleys, BMWs, Indians, and other bikes as they do bricks.

“Red House” and “It’ll All Come Around” have become the favored epic closers for the hundreds of sets the rocking blues-inspired trio have played across America since the release of their debut, Roll Away (Blix Street), in June 2007. The disc rambles as much as the band and their cramped van have, criss-crossing from heavy electric blowouts like the Cream-y “Outside Woman Blues” to the acoustic title track to the shimmering romantic ballad “Too Good for Me” to the bonus cut “Real Man,” which blends the kind of pick-and-strum chitlin-circuit licks that Hendrix perfected with the melodicism of Robert Cray.

Roll Away — which was recently followed by the release of several live covers on iTunes including “Red House” and the Cray tune that gave the band their name — sounds like the work of musicians from the Deep South, guys who grew up drinking the same muddy water as the Allman Brothers and the Skynyrd boys. But Back Door Slam are actually the latest scions of a British lineage that goes back to the ’60s, when John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, and a clutch of other groups squeezed the pulp of their American blues idols to produce a distinctive musical juice.

“It’s not like we consider ourselves saviors or anything,” says Knowles, who is modest for a 21-year-old guitar monster with the voice and looks for pop stardom. “But if somebody hears us and then goes out and buys a Muddy Waters record, well, that’s fantastic.”

Going on sale: August 22, 2008

GOING ON SALE — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:20:36 GMT

Breaking news from the concert ticket trade
Kaki King, The Hold Steady, N.E.R.D., Dungen, Deerhunter and more.

Refuse Resist

BARRY THOMPSON — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:20:31 GMT

Mind: Yourself | Rodent Popsicle
With almost every song making its point and ending in well under three minutes, Mind: Yourself isn’t out to waste anyone’s time.

Death Vessel

RICHARD BECK — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:06:07 GMT

Nothing Is Precious Enough For Us | Sub Pop
My only criticism of Death Vessel’s second LP is their trouble with slow songs. Otherwise, it's an astonishing forward leap for this Brooklyn-based folk group.

Black Affair

GUSTAVO TURNER — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:04:13 GMT

Pleasure Pressure Point | V2
Mason’s off-kilter lyrics and psychedelic sense of melody overpower the thrift-store Gary Numan and Depeche pastiches and the trite S&M vibe.

Jeff Hanson

MICHAEL PATRICK BRADY — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:12:24 GMT

Madam Owl | Kill Rock Stars
Hanson has augmented the sparse, acoustic folk of his previous albums with a backdrop of strings and horns, thus giving these songs greater depth and body.

Three 6 Mafia

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:02:39 GMT

Last 2 Walk | Sony
Last 2 Walk is a club-banging record, but it’s hard to recommend something so by-the-book.

Audiophiles unite!

SUSANNA BOLLE — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:16:11 GMT

The New England Phonographers Union + the BSC
This Tuesday marks the debut of the New England Phonographers Union.

Slideshow: Grizzly Bear at the MFA

TIM BUGBEE — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:45:39 GMT

August 14, 2008 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

Grizzly Bear
August 14, 2008 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Photo credit: Tim Bugbee