Andre Williams, Archie Bell, Roy Head, and Little Joe Washington descended upon Houston's Continental Club on Sept. 3 and proceeded to tear some shit up.

By Steven Rosen

At age 74, Andre Williams (pictured above) is just coming into his own as a Great American Singer. He's part Leonard Cohen and part James Brown, capable of expressing in the most impassioned way possible his primal needs of the moment, yet also willing to step back with cool romantic, poetic demeanor and consider the effect his words of love have on his enthralled audience.

Take, for instance, the version of "Let Me Put It In" he performed, with backing from Allen Oldies Band, at Houston's funky, spacious Continental Club, where he headlined a "Wild Men of Rock" revue. Looking dapper and calm in a white double-breasted suit, wearing a smiling Buddha-like countenance as well as a fine mustache, he introduced the song to his fans, many college age or just modestly older, with an aside about past trouble with police trying to perform it.

Then he intoned the song's title pleadingly, softly promising that "I'll buy you a car" to his imaginary subject. And then, WHAM! He screamed out the title line, again and again, as if it was the only thing that mattered in the world. He dropped to his knees as the band slashed out its supporting rock with all the power it could muster. It was soul music, raw and unpretentious, and the crowd pushed forward to the stage as if pulled by a giant magnet. And then Williams let up, returned to his quiet pleading, looking slightly amused at his power over the masses. And then he did it all again. It was pure dynamism and he knew it.

He was the headliner of this show, and was treated like royalty. When he eventually left the stage, after "Mustang Sally," the band offered him shouts of "Hallelujah." Williams has been around rock and soul's edges for a long, long time. He recorded for Michigan's Fortune Records in the 1950s, his songs having enough of a naughty edge ("Jailbait") to not get much airplay then but to appeal to collectors today. He wrote a couple 1960s classics ("Shake a Tail Feather" and "Twine Time") for others, fell into hard times in the 1980s, and then started to find his way back in the 1990s.

Often working with bluesy punk-soul acts on songs that sometimes had sexually explicit lyrics, he developed a cult following. He has used that to grow in popularity, through a series of fine Bloodshot albums and even a book, Sweets and Other Stories. What's critical to know about Williams is that, unlike Blowfly or Clarence Carter vamping through "Strokin,'" Williams "dirty" material isn't a smutty joke. It's his take on the rawness of real life and sexuality's place in it. He just omits the jive and politeness. As a result, the tunes he performed in Houston, like "Agile, Mobile and Hostile," "Bacon Fat" and Goin' Down to Tijuana," come off as serious as a heart attack. They're soul tunes without compromise.

But, then, there's also a detachment that lets you know he's the artist working the crowd. For example, with a smile on his face, looking cool, calm and collected, Williams stood on stage while the band ("four of the best motherfuckers I've ever played with," he announced) worked through a pleasant instrumental turn. At the right moment, Williams stepped forward, hands gesticulating like a serene conductor, and sang "Pussy stank/but so do marijuana," It's beyond criticism.

Of the others on the bill, the diminutive, gray-dreadlocked and -bearded Little Joe Washington, who opened, is a Houston favorite, a blues guitarist who slowly works up his energy to show off some dazzling, tricky guitar work. And Archie Bell, a Texan whose Drells had a couple classic dance-tunes-with-attitude-hits in the 1960s like "Tighten Up", does a solo act now where he doesn't mind letting you know how hard he's working. His voice wasn't the best, but he handled the crowd well and was proud he can still do it. "I'm 67 years old and I still know how to ‘Tighten Up,''' he announced at one point, and the words were inspirational to the older members of the audience who were there because they "Can't Stop Dancing" (the title of another Drells hit). And he also did "Mustang Sally."

One of Houston's favorite sons and a soul-shouting wild man, Roy Head of "Treat Her Right" fame, supposedly was appearing to perform from a new album - his first of new material in decades. He was the night's second act. But he did nothing to promote it nor were copies for sale, so it remains a mystery if that album is out there or not. Head, at 68, obviously is a little older and slower (and bigger) than the thin gymnast who memorably did splits and tossed and turned about like a jumping bean on television appearances in 1965, when "Treat Her Right" was a hit. He wore a green paisley shirt and sweated as much as he smiled, apologizing for a frog in his voice between songs. But it didn't noticeably diminish his volume as he squealed and roared his way through the likes of "Lucille," "Just a Little Bit" and "She's About a Mover" as the Allen Oldies Band pushed him on.

He also did some scary-thrilling microphone-twirling toward the band and crowd - scary because an advance in the local arts paper warned he's been known to have faulty control and once almost robbed a watching critic of his family jewels; thrilling because he kept control. Considering that Head's forte is rootsy, sweaty, roadhouse rock, it was surprising he tackled Bob Seger's "Turn the Page." It wasn't maybe the best kind of song for his persona, but there was honesty when he sang "Here I am, back on the road again." You felt for Head. He was still doing it.

By the way, Head took a break before finishing with a no-holds-barred "Treat Her Right," and his son Sundance came out to sing a few blues-rock standards with the Allen Oldies Band behind him. And wouldn't you know it? One was "Mustang Sally." Three times in one night. That's wild, indeed.

October and December for fans everywhere...

By Blurt Staff

With his Glyn Johns-produced Ashes & Fire album due to drop Oct. 11, Ryan Adams has announced a string of October and December tour dates. Prior to that, on October 10, he'll be appearing on the Conan O'Brien show.

He's also got the album streaming over at NPR Music right here.

Tour Dates:

10/11 San Diego, CA - Balboa Theater

10/13 Big Sur, CA - Henry Miller Library

10/14 San Francisco, CA - Herbst Theater

10/15 Napa, CA - Uptown Theater

10/17 Santa Cruz, CA - The Rio

10/18 Sacramento, CA - Crest Theatre

10/20 Eugene, OR - The Shedd

10/21 Seattle, WA - Benaroya

12/2 Philadelphia, PA - Academy of Music

12/4 Baltimore, MD - Lyric Opera House

12/6 New York, NY - Carnegie Hall

12/8 Boston, MA - Orpheum Theatre

12/10 Toronto, ON - Winter Garden Theatre

12/11 Chicago, IL - Cadillac Place

12/13 Minneapolis, MN - State Theatre

Nick Lowe's opening set also will be broadcast.


By Blurt Staff


With Wilco's awesome new LP The Whole Love set to drop next week, the band is on the road and, on Sunday night, Sept. 25, will broadcast a concert live over the web.


NPR Music is the host, and you can tune in to the concert being aired direct from Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD, near D.C., staring around 7pm ET. That's when opener Nick Lowe is slated to perform, followed by Wilco around 8:20.


Full details at NPR Music.

The Whole Love is currently streaming at NPR Music as well.

Over the years, PJ Harvey has had a host of gifted collaborators, literally and spiritually. Here are a few. (Read also: our interview with Harvey.) - Fred Mills, editor

Rob Ellis

As drummer, backing vocalist and string arranger on Harvey's first two albums, Ellis was a key component of her early sound. Since then they've intersected frequently, including Harvey guesting in '96 on Ellis' debut release under the Spleen name and he appearing on several of her records. Ellis has a knack for the distaff: most recently he produced stellar albums by Dot Allison and Anna Calvi.

John Parish

Since 1995, the producer/multiinstrumentalist has been a Harvey mainstay both live and on album, including the new Let England Shake; the duo also has two jointly-credited records, 1996's Dance Hall at Louse Point and 2009's A Woman a Man Walked By. He's got three solo releases, while his list of scoring, production and collaboration credits is extensive. Among them is...

Howe Gelb

...and Gelb's Arizona band Giant Sand. The Parish connection led to an introduction at a 2001 U2 concert (Harvey was the opening act), and upon accepting an invitation for a brief desert vacation she not only wound up on 2002 GS album Cover Magazine, she also was the surprise guest at a show, leaving gig-goers (yours truly included) gobsmacked as Gelb and Harvey's blitzed through X punk classic "Johny Hit and Run Paulene."

Nick Cave

He's not the only Bad Seed in her life; Mick Harvey has appeared on various albums since 1995's To Bring You My Love. But Cave was Harvey's paramour in the mid ‘90s, and she also made a star turn on Bad Seeds classic Murder Ballads. No word on whether the romance and break-up directly inspired any subsequent PJH releases, but her ghost is all over Cave's 1997 release The Boatman's Call.

Captain Beefheart (pictured at top)

Trainspotter alert: references both overt and veiled to the late Don Van Vliet may be found on Harvey albums, in the sonics, lyrics and even album titles (there's an ‘85 DVV painting named Woman and a Dog Walked By). In interviews she's never been shy about her admiration for him, and it's known that the two corresponded and spoke on the phone, Beefheart reportedly offering feedback on her songs.

That's one murderous fish-bitch....


By Blurt Staff


Directed by Alan Tanner is "Bug," from the new Wavves EP Life Sux. It., uh, appears to have a storyline, so dig it.

Debut album arrives Oct. 25 on True Panther Sounds.

1x1x1 (preferably pronounced one by one by one) is the debut LP from Wet Illustrated, conceived slowly and methodically over the past two years in San Francisco. After playing and touring in various Bay area bands for years Robbie Simon (drums/vocals), Tim Hellman (guitar), and Chrys Nodal (guitar) decided to start a group committed to celebrating the legacies of weirdo pop outsiders like the Soft Boys, Guided By Voices and the Swell Maps- writing jagged pop songs imbued with skewed hooks and personal yet playful lyrics.

After self-releasing their first 45 on freshly minted Corvette City Records they conceived, accumulated and eventually recorded an LP in Portland, OR with Justin Higgins (Hunches, Exit Dreams) in the summer of 2011. Enthralled by the amount of sound that could be packed onto the 2″ reel-to-reel tape at Higgins' Old Standard Sound studio adorned their songs with spiraling and playful guitars and ancillary sounds. The end-result is an ecstatic 13-song collection that is both is explosive and littered with hidden subtleties and textures. The often hard-panned interplay of multi-tracked guitars evokes the guitar heroics of early Sonic Youth. The song structures which at first appear straightforward unravel to reveal sophisticated arrangements and evocative lyrics in the tradition of homespun pop-ists like The Homosexuals or Cleaners From Venus, all channeled through Wet Illustrated's own idiosyncratic punk/pop visions.

The Bay Area is currently in what seems like a bit of a creative explosion with guitar-led garage/punk music. Wet Illustrated comes from this world, but doesn't exist solely inside of it...1x1x1 does not rely on aping familiar relics from bygone eras or manufacturing new genres. Wet Illustrated use a familiar sonic pallet to project a layered and natural sound...distinctly Californian, psychedelic, shambolic, heart-felt and unique.

October 15 & 16 in San Francisco, plus additional "special shows" 14th, 15th & 16th.

It's the annual festival's fifth anniversary, featuring headliners Death Cab For Cutie and Empire of the Sun, as well as sets by the likes of Death From Above 1979, Explosions in the Sky, Chromeo, Beach House, Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, St. Vincent and more. The confirmed performance schedule for the fifth annual Treasure Island Music Festival is now up at the fest's official website HERE.

(Photo above taken by David Downs at the 2009 event. Go here to read his recap, or here to read his coverage of 2010.)

Saturday, October 15th

Bridge Stage

9:35 - Empire of the Sun

7:55 - Cut Copy

6:15 - Chromeo

4:35 - Dizzee Rascal

3:00 - The Naked and Famous

1:30 - Shabazz Palaces

12:00 - Geographer

Tunnel Stage

8:45 - Death From Above 1979

7:05 - Flying Lotus

5:25 - Buraka Som Sistema

3:45 - Battles

2:15 - Yacht

12:45 - Aloe Blacc

Sunday, October 16th

Bridge Stage

9:20 - Death Cab For Cutie

7:40 - Explosions in the Sky

6:00 - Beach House

4:20 - Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

2:50 - St. Vincent

1:25 - The Antlers

12:00 - Thee Oh Sees

Tunnel Stage

8:30 - The Hold Stady

6:50 - Friendly Fires

5:10 - The Head and The Heart

3:35 - Wild Beasts

2:05 - Warpaint

12:40 - Weekend

Cites music piracy, the current state of the economy and a lack of consensus among music lovers.

By Fred Mills

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the idea is to have MORE voices, not fewer. While I've usually deployed that statement to refer to the music print media, it also applies to indie record labels. Even though one might argue in a certain context that there are far too many labels and not enough quality control - a lot of music gets released prematurely and indiscriminately - that's not the case with long-running Berkeley label Absolutely Kosher, which has been responsible for classic titles from the Mountain Goats, the Wrens, Xiu Xiu and others over the course of its 13-year run.

That run comes to an end on Oct. 11, however, when Absolutely Kosher releases Hard Times from Canadian band Himalayan Bear. After that, founder/owner Cory Brown will be shutting the doors of the label.

According to the SF Weekly, the label's finances have become increasingly shaky, partly due to the current economic climate and largely due to the internet which has not only made music piracy commonplace but has also led to a number of record stores and music magazines to go under. "The decision to stop releasing new records was made so that [Brown] can focus on repaying debts the label owes."

"My resolve has been slowly chipped away to the point where I really am left with no choice here," Brown told the SFW. "I'd love to continue, but I can't.... We're out of vogue as far as labels go right now. No matter how hard we try, no matter what publicists we work with, we just seem to be outside of people's focus."

"There's more variety for more people to find stuff [with blogs], but that had a really strange effect on consensus. There's an incredibly tight consensus on a small group of records, and then very little consensus on the rest. So it's great if you're Neon Indian or somebody like that ... But if you're not, it becomes exponentially more difficult."

On the Absolutely Kosher website Brown added, of his decision, "We should've been celebrating the label's bar mitzvah this year, but it's not to be. I wish I could tell you there's a grand plan, a new chapter waiting to be written, but the truth is, we've been struggling for years and the only thing on my plate right now is to eliminate our debts and rejuvenate my spirits."

Read the entire (depressing) story at the SF Weekly "All Shook Down" blog. Good luck, Cory - your label will be missed.

Dig that awesome poster art, too.

By Blurt Staff

With this year's All Tomorrow's Parties bash coming up quickly - it's being held next weeken, Sept. 30 - Oct. 2, in Asbury Park - the organizers have compiled a neat little gift for fans: a free downloadable 2.5 hour mixtape featuring nearly every artist on the festival line-up as chosen by Portishead & ATP. It can be streamed or downloaded now from www.illbeyourmirror.com/mixtape

Meanwhile, take note of Shepard Fairey poster art, above. Fairey will be having a gallery showing of his album cover art at ATP, and he will also release a limited edition print of the poster he designed for the event, featuring the iconic Paramount Theatre and Convention Hall. Limited to an edition of 500, the prints will go on-sale Friday September 30th at doors at 4pm from the merchandise stand, exclusively available to ATP ticketholders, and strictly limited to one per person.

Raise your hand if you still have copies of the man's classic protopunk fanzine Teenage Wasteland Gazette...

By Blurt Staff

Seminal NYC proto-punk Andy "Adny" Shernoff will be inaugurating a regular Wednesday night residency at Manhattan's Lakeside Lounge starting Wednesday October 5 and continuing weekly through December. He'll be performing at 7PM sharp with a regular backing band, featuring a rotating cast of special guests. He will also be releasing a new 7" vinyl single "Are You Ready To Rapture" c/w "Tremble" - latter featuring the late Joey Ramone guesting.

 "Are You Ready To Rapture" will be accompanied by an animated video created by world famous cartoonist Brian Musikoff.

Queens-born Shernoff is a musician, songwriter, record producer and oenophile.  He is a founding member of The Dictators, one of the seminal New York proto-punk bands, for which he composed the lion's share of the material, played bass guitar, keyboards, sang back-up and occasional lead vocals. He has been involved with a variety of other musical projects over the years, most notably the heavily Dictators-populated Manitoba's Wild Kingdom and Joey Ramone's sole solo studio album, Don't Worry About Me.

In the fall of 2009, he embarked upon a series of solo shows playing songs he wrote or co-wrote and telling the stories behind them. In the spring of 2010, those shows would become "When Giants Walked the Earth - A Musical Memoir by Adny Shernoff," with several tour dates scheduled in the Eastern U.S. and Canada. Shernoff sang "California Sun" in the official Major League Baseball promotional video for the 2010 All-Star Game. Other projects include garage-rock band The Masterplan, featuring members of The Fleshtones and the Waxing Poetics.