Battling (or enabling) shitty sound, the indie-rock provocateurs still manage to pull it off for a hard-boiled Beantown audience at the Middle East Downstairs on March 25.

By Wyndham Lewis

First, a disclaimer: the two most fun, unpredictable, dynamic, chaotic and enjoyable sets I witnessed in 2009 were courtesy of the Black Lips. So the bar was set high for a recent show at Middle East Downstairs. For the uninitiated, the Black Lips are a Nuggets style garage band attitudinally reminiscent of the young, mid-eighties Beastie Boys, always ginning up a riot, but withholding the option of jumping in or running away. Punks, not in the allegiance to a particular political stance or musical dogma, but united in their shared faith in minor vandalism and snot-nosed brattiness. Basically, four guys who've just lit the bag of dog shit on fire, rung the door bell and are crouched in the bushes exploding with anticipation.

Although they occupy completely different genres, even musically they have something of the same all-in, gang mentality, executing their musical and vocal parts together, three and four deep, both because it sounds optimally trashy, and it insures that someone is there to pick up the slack should any of them get too fucked up, distracted or bored during a given song. Increasingly, lead vocal chores tend to be spread democratically and when a song ends, any of the four is likely to count off the next. On this particular evening they pulled nearly evenly the best tunes from their last two records, 2007's Good Bad, Not Evil and last year's 200 Thousand Million.

As the band "progresses,"  Jared Swilley appears to be emerging as the foreman, exhibiting just enough adult supervision to ensure forward progress. Armed, as always, with his violin bass, Swilley manned center stage, backed by drummer Joe Bradley and flanked by double-grilled guitarists Ian St. Pe, and Cole Alexander. All Black Lips members give full effort, but Alexander, in particular, is a dervish on stage who appears to be desperately searching for the costume that best suits his mustache, with tonight's salty seaman having pulled rank on last summer's favored bandelaro get up.

Black Lips shows have historically provided a showcase for bodily fluids: barf, piss, sweat, spit (expectorated and swapped). But for a brief make-out session between guitarists Ian St. Pe and Cole Alexander, which felt obligatory, this show was played pretty straight. Antics aside, this show was hurt significantly by aggressively bad sound. The Middle East, with its subterranean room and low ceilings, is notoriously challenging and it inevitably takes a few songs to right even the most perfection driven bands. Though not privy to any such discussion, I couldn't help thinking that there was some disagreement over sound that resulted in the band simply cranking up the volume in revolt.

There is a popular viewing area elevated and situated to the left of the stage between the bar and band. Ordinarily, this is where you'll find couples and others who, stopped competing for position and graduated from the pit. This is not to say that it is a senior center or a place for fair weather fans. There is a large, powerful wall of amps that divides this section from the ME's backstage area. This Black Lips show was the first I can remember when volume prohibited anybody from standing in this area. Ordinarily, this might be a strength, but sadly, it just sounded unintentionally crappy.

The live stand-outs are predictably the album's best songs. The Troggs/Thirteenth Floor Elevators slop of "I Saw a Ghost, I'll Be With You" or "Drugs," along with the raucous cranked doo-wop of "Bad Kids" and the clamorous classic "Oh Katrina" (with its extended intro) all come across more spirited in the live setting. Familiarity with the tunes was more important than usual given the sound quality, and new material was not easily judged as a result.

The bottom line: the Black Lips have sounded better and been more entertaining than they were at the Middle East, but they remain one of the few can't-miss shows on the calendar. Even plagued, the Black Lips are a better show than most.

One can't help but think, like the Beasties successfully did, the Black Lips will, for better or worse, at some point evolve. It will be interesting to see if what has been cute, for several years, in the kitten remains so in the cat.

[Live photo via Vice Records]

On April 3 at the Wellmont Theatre in Montclair, NJ, Tweedy & Co. pulled out all the stops for a marathon performance that left cynics and fanboys alike scraping their jaws off the floor.

By Ron Hart

Ever since the sad and unexpected death of former Wilco multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Jay Bennett in 2009, there has been a bit of a bad taste in my mouth for Jeff Tweedy. I can't really pinpoint what it is exactly, but somewhere between the totally phoned-in statement the Wilco frontman posted on the band's Web site and the cocky, innocuous way he declares, "Wilco will love you, baby" on that ridiculous song from the group's underwhelming self-titled seventh LP, the man just kind of lost me in translation.  Call it a case of bad timing if you will, but in my estimation, it was more of an instance of bad taste.  A lot of people like to compare Wilco to the Band, and it seems as though Tweedy fits right into the role of Robbie Robertson like a Totes glove. I think a friend of mine on Facebook put it best when he said, "He looks like he knows he sold his soul."

For someone who continues to perform many of the amazing songs Bennett had contributed to this otherwise amazing rock band's canon night in and night out, one would think that Jay's death merited far more gravitas than the flat three sentence sympathy note Tweedy seemed to hastily dish out in order to save face (not to mention a rather obtuse response to Bennett's death on Chicago Public Radio (http://www.spinner.com/2009/07/06/jeff-tweedy-opens-up-about-jay-bennetts-death/).  Regardless of the public bitterness that had fallen between these two former songwriting partners since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Jay Bennett was as instrumental to the creation of the Wilco sound as Tweedy or John Stirratt, the only two members of the band who appeared on every work from AM through Wilco (The Album,) and seeing the group's arguably lackadaisical reaction to Jay's death proved to be disheartening enough for this veteran fan to step away from the Wilco catalog and reassess my allegiance to the group many consider to be America's best rock band.

However, having said that, the concept that everybody deserves a second chance rings mighty true in my particular case against Tweedy and co. And on the second night of their two-night stand at the Wellmont Theatre in beautiful Montclair, NJ, I was once again reminded me exactly why this group's music is important enough to transcend my petty opinions of Jeff Tweedy beyond the stage and fully appreciate the amazing body of work he and the rest of this current incarnation of Wilco presented over the course of three whirlwind hours in the heart of North Jersey.

Billed as "An Evening With Wilco", this current tour finds the Chicago sextet delivering sets that pull from every era of the band's career trajectory. And on this particular night, I'm not quite sure if it was the cosmic vibes of skepticism I was sending their way or something, but this second night at the Wellmont was loaded with beautifully performed versions of Bennett-era material, including a heavy helping of tracks from 1999's Summerteeth, considered by many Wilco fans as Jay's finest hour with the band.  It was almost as though Tweedy was paying a penance of sorts for the shallow way by which he addressed the death of his old friend and partner by paying tributes to his massive contributions to the band via transcendental versions of such Teeth nuggets as "A Shot in the Arm", "Summerteeth", "I'm Always In Love", "Candyfloss" and "When You Wake Up Feeling Old" played over the course of this two-set, half-electric/half-acoustic show.

Yet the concentration on Summerteeth material wasn't the only reason for longtime fans of Wilco to express joy on this night.  Sure, those who attended the first show of the Wellmont stand might have gotten such choice selections from the outer perimeters of the Wilco galaxy as "Pot Kettle Black", "Forget the Flowers", "More Like The Moon" and "Passenger Side". But those of us on hand for the Saturday show, however, scored mighty handsomely in the deep cut department as well, as the band busted out their ace pair of A.M. hits-"Box Full of Letters" and "Casino Queen", respectively-not to mention an incredibly rare performance of the boisterous, rootsy Being There coda "Dreamer In My Dreams" during the group's "acoustic" set (I put it in quotes because it seemed like Tweedy was the only one playing anything acoustic), not to mention a lovely reading of "Hesitating Beauty" from the first Mermaid Avenue album.  And, as they did on night 1, they even broke out the Loose Fur chestnut "Laminated Cat" (from Tweedy and percussionist Glenn Kotche's celebrated side project with producer Jim O'Rourke), to the exult of the particularly geeky fanboys in attendance. Other highlights of the evening included the band opening their set with a downright epic version of "Ashes of American Flags", an unplugged run through the Krautrockist boogie of "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" and an equal parts celebratory and solemn double shot of Big Star that closed out the second set, as Wilco played loving, lively covers of "Thank You Friends" and "In The Street" to the thrill of the packed house still trying to come to grips with the sudden passing of Alex Chilton.

And dare I forget to mention the gigantic stage presence of guitarist Nels Cline, the real star of Wilco's stage show. Now in his seventh year as the band's lead guitarist, the elation by which this avant-garde great soars from stage right is nothing short of mesmerizing.  With the exception of maybe Thurston Moore and Jimmy Page, no guitarist can touch Nels' finely balanced ballet between microtonal improvisation and maximal grandiosity quite like he. His acrobatic embellishments enhancing the power of such established Wilco crowd faves as "Misunderstood", "California Stars" and "Poor Places" blew minds from the golden circle seats to all the way up in the nosebleeds.  Onstage amidst a capital ‘L' of effects pedals, the fiftysomething-year-old musician, who has a stellar new double album with the Nels Cline Singers entitled Initiate due out this month on Cryptogramophone, plays guitar in Wilco like Jeff "Skunk" Baxter trying to jockey for a position in the Glenn Branca Ensemble based on the way he walks that fine line separating grace from chaos. 

Then I tore my eyes away from the happenings on the stage, scanned my surroundings and soon realized why it has been about seven years since I last saw Wilco perform live-the fans. I was making fun of my cousin-in-law for driving down to Atlantic City that weekend to go see Nickelback, goofing on him about what kind of people he was going to have to contend with in that audience down there. But then I surveyed the scene encompassing my eyesight, an old theatre filled with snooty, aging hipsters, dirty hippies, bespectacled blogger types from Williamsburg and professional-looking white guys who danced around like 13-year-olds at a Justin Bieber concert to "Bull Black Nova", and soon realized that the joke was indeed on me. (There's a reason why I rarely go to concerts these days...lol. Oh man, I mean seriously. Hey, My Old Kentucky Blog just called, they want their demographic back, lol.)

But in regards to the fans, one would have to be a true blackheart to not feel the love beaming Wilco's way from that crowd of hippies and hipsters as just about everyone in the Wellmont sang the entirety of "Jesus Etc." in unison while the band delivered a lovely instrumental rendition of their mid-tempo Yankee Foxtrot gem.  In Jersey terms, it was the group's "Hungry Heart" moment, and definitely put a smile on this cynical bastard's face.

In spite of the fact that they did wind up playing that annoying "Wilco (The Song)" on this night (seriously, keep the braggadocio shtick to the hip-hop world, Jeff), Wilco's stand at the Wellmont Theatre served as a token, if only for a moment, of a time when these Chicago greats were not some lionized chunk of egocentric hype thrown to the wolves of hip, but rather the humble band who sprung from the rib of Uncle Tupelo looking to bring American roots music into the 21^st century.  And regardless of where you stand with Jeff Tweedy, his between-song obnoxiousness and the way he handled the death of Jay Bennett, you cannot deny this man and his incredibly skilled band knows how to put on a show, even over 15 years later.

SETLIST:

Ashes
Wilco
IATTBYH
BBN
Face
One Wing
Shot
Muzzle
Deeper
Summerteeth
Misunderstood (36 "nothings")
CA Stars
Impossible Germany
Poor Place

acoustic:
Spiders
You & I
Kamera
Hesitating Beauty
Laminated Cat
When you wake up
Dreamer (*I may be splitting hairs here, but technically, Jeff was the only "acoustic". Nels on electric.)
Outtasite

*back to electric
Airline
Always in Love
Candy Floss
Jesus Etc.
(*irrational crowd participation banter: boo-ya & Arsenio dog pound)
Box of Letters (Pat solo)
Can't Stand It
Hate it Here
You Never Know
Walken
Man Who Loves You
Thank You Friends
In the Street


Encore:

Casino Queen
Outtasite
Hoodoo Voodoo

[Photo Credit: Autumn de Wilde]

Drag City's resident iconoclast-among-iconoclasts charts love's humblest pleasures on her newest record, due April 20.

By A.D. Amorosi

Baby Dee has a history as long as your tattooed arm and more queerly dramatic than a Sondheim musical. The Cleveland native was a church organist, a circus act, an avant-garde harpist, a go-go dancer, a tricycle rider, a performer and bar keep of Manhattan's famed Pyramid Club, a contributor to Antony and the Johnsons' catalog and, once-upon-a-time, a man.

The panicky confessional cabaret of 2008's Safe Inside the Day, her Drag City debut, was rich and jittery - an autobiographical picture of a street scene she recalled with tears and cool hysteria. The new Book of Songs for Anne Marie (also Drag City), though, takes its time and has, at its heart, the tales of Johann Sebastian Bach and the tiny book he wrote for his wife Anna Magdelena as well as Rembrandt's golden paintings of his sweetheart. In a voice resembling the mannered wizened sing-speak of Mabel Mercer's, Dee allows love's humblest pleasures to trickle through eleven of the sweetest steadiest songs with but a softly prancing chamber-classical arrangement of harp, piano and fleeting few wandering strings and French horns to announce Dee's delights.

Former Sex Pistols manager succumbs to cancer. He was 64.

By Blurt Staff

UK paper The Independent reports that Malcolm McLaren, best known as the former manager of the Sex Pistols, died today after a long battle with cancer.

"McLaren had had cancer for some time," reads the obit. "His condition recently suddenly worsened and he died this morning in New York. His body is expected to be brought home to be buried in Highgate cemetery, north London."

McLaren's spokesman, Les Molloy, told The Independent that despite the cancer McLaren had been "full of health, which then rapidly deteriorated."

The always quotable Johnny Rotten just issued a statement on the death of his former manager Malcolm McLaren...

"For me Malc was always entertaining, and I hope you remember that. Above all else he was an entertainer and I will miss him, and so should you.”

--Johnny Rotten (4/8/2010)

Allison Moorer and Steve Earle welcome into the world their first child, John Henry Earle.  John Henry was born on April 5th at 10:07am, weighing eight pounds, two ounces and measuring 21 inches long. The Greenwich Vilage-based Moorer and Earle were married in 2005. This marks Moorer's first baby.

The Young@Heart chorus to perform musical theater piece at St. Ann's Warehouse April 21 - May 1.

By Blurt Staff

"Cover band for the ages" the Young@Heart Chorus will perform End of the Road, a musical theater collaboration with experimental company No Theater, at St. Ann's Warehouse NYC from April 21-25.

The group, whose members range in age from 73-90, came to fame performing "a set list of rock's greatest hits-including songs by Joy Division, Wilco, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, The Clash, and Outkast-in the 2008 Fox Searchlight documentary Young@Heart (see video below). With End of the Road, the group continues to explore "the power of music to transcend age" as they take audiences on "a journey through the 20^th Century, with ballads giving way to songs of sexual love and hardcore rock n' roll." Tunes featured in EOTR include The Pixies' "Monkey Gone to Heaven" and The Traveling Wilburys' "Handle With Care" as well as interpretations of Bruce Springsteen and the Buzzcocks.

"End of the Road is moving but unsentimental, honors life and death,
creativity and vitality, and challenges what happens on the life continuum when old people co-opt ‘youth' culture," reads the press release. "The piece concludes serenely, with a sense of wisdom that can come with age. A core value for Young@Heart can be summed up in one of its famous program notes: ‘We all have to die. Some of
us are lucky enough to grow old first.' They are having a ball and so are their audiences."

Show dates:

April 21-24, 8pm

April 25, 3pm (official opening)

April 27-30, 8pm

May 1, 2pm and 8pm

Tickets are $32-$65 online at www.stannswarehouse.org, by phone at 718.254.8779 or 866.811.4111, and in person at the St. Ann's Warehouse Box Office at 38 Water Street in NYC. See website for box office hours.

VIDEO:

Bouncing back from double-bypass heart surgery, the singer-songwriter announces new album due June 29.

By Blurt Staff

It's time to go back to work for one of rock's most talented songwriters-and since musicians famously lack health coverage, Peter Case is wiggin' out.

"I'm what you'd call ‘very extremely overcommitted' at this point," jokes Case in a Yep Roc Records press release announcing his 10^th studio album, Wig! A 2009 double-bypass left Case with a six-figure medical bill (a chunk of which was defrayed by benefit shows by friends Dave Alvin, Richard Thompson, Joe Henry, Loudon Wainwright III and Van Dyke Parks) and lots of time on his hands. He says he killed time maxin' and relaxin' to jazz records but as he prepared reissues of albums by his bands The Plimsouls and The Nerves, he began to feel like rockin' again.

"I had to do the mastering and spent quite a bit of time listening to the old records," he says, and "it really got me going, hearing those guitars." After an "especially rocking" sold-out comeback show at favorite venue McCabe's where he debuted the new stuff, Case went into the studio with drummer DJ Bonebrake (X) and lead guitarist Ron Franklin (Gasoline Silver, Jack Oblivian, Arthur Lee). The trio had Wig! "mainly finished" five days later. The press release describes the album as "full-on electric and loaded down with dirty, raw blues riffs... recorded largely live and definitely straight to analog tape."

"It felt really good to rock again," says Case.

It's good to have you back, man.

The beloved singer-songwriter's debut Roman Candle and penultimate release From a Basement on the Hill, remastered and reissued on Kill Rock Stars.

By Blurt Staff

Heads up, folks: they're ready. Elliott Smith's 1994 Cavity Search debut Roman Candle and penultimate release, 2004's From a Basement on the Hill (originally on Anti-), have been remastered and reissued by Kill Rock Stars.

For those of you who haven't been waiting in slobbery suspense, here's the skinny on the reissues campaign from Kill Rock Stars:

Roman Candle had quite an impact on Slim Moon, Kill Rock Stars' founder. "In 1994, I had been asked to be on this five-person solo-act tour called Pop Chord with Tammy Watson, Carrie Akre, Sean Croghan and Elliott Smith. The first night at the Crocodile in Seattle, I didn't pay too much attention and people talked all thru Elliott's set. Sean Croghan got up next and said, ‘All of you people who just talked through Elliott's set are bummed because you just missed something very, very special.' The next night of the tour, at The Bottom Of The Hill in San Francisco, I listened very closely to Elliott's set, and it was basically one of those life-changing moments. Instead of watching the rest of the performers, I went out to the tour van and popped Roman Candle into the player, and listened to it on endless repeat for the rest of the evening and beyond. It completely blew my mind. I have never heard music as heartwrenchingly, gut-checkingly honest, intimate, and wise - before or since."

Roman Candle has been remastered for the re-release by Roger Seibel and Larry Crane, editor of Tape Op Magazine and archivist for Elliott's family.

Larry explains, "The intention that I had was to make the album more listenable. I felt that a lot of the guitar "squeaks" were jarring and very loud, and that many of the hard consonants and "S" sounds were jarring and scratchy sounding. I felt by reducing these noises that the music would become more inviting and the sound would serve the songs better. When I went to Roger Seibel's SAE Mastering, he proceeded to equalize the tracks a small amount and to make the volume slightly louder.  We never tried to make this CD as loud as current, over-limited trends, but just to match the volume of the rest of Elliott's KRS catalog in a graceful way. Please note that none of this album is "remixed" from the master tapes - it is still composed of the mixes Elliott created himself."

Kill Rock Stars will also be releasing Roman Candle on vinyl for the first time in the U.S.

With the addition of these two records Kill Rock Stars is now the home for all of Elliott Smith's independent releases: Roman Candle, Elliott Smith, Either/Or, From a Basement on the Hill, and New Moon.

Life affirming therapy from the crew that needs the therapy the most.

By Blurt Staff

The names are Jon Spencer & Cristina Martinez (a/k/a Boss Hog and assorted other scum-rock combos) and Elisabeth Esselink (a/k/a electronic mistress Solex), and the name of the game is Amsterdam Throwdown, King Street Showdown! It's a project the three mavericks cooked up and are aiming to unveil it May 18 via UK label Bronzerat.

They already have debuted a single from the album, "Galaxy Man," described as "2 minutes and 40 seconds of life-affirming therapy - a reanimation party with Link Wray's corpse on the decks." Whew.

Check out the MP3 of "Galaxy Man"

And the rest of the hype on the rec is just as colorful. To wit:

As we stand united, let us shake our collective ass. Amsterdam Throwdown, Kingstreet Showdown!  is back-to back with it, kicking off with the sugar-fix that is "Bon Bon": a dirty, funky bastard of a concoction, complete with strings. "Dog Hit" is a tale of irresponsible pet ownership, as if told by sexed-up and AWOL philharmonic orchestra members on mephedrone! "Aapie" is a tribute to our ancestry and invites us to unleash our inner monkey!  As you can see, there is something for all tastes. Throughout, Elisabeth Esselink has ingeniously fattened up a rich tapestry of cool, the perfect canvas for Cristina and Jon, who pepper-spray it with personalized lunacy whilst shrugging off the wannabes scrambling for their plinth.  

Yes indeed. Let us shake our collective ass. See ya on May 18,