Om, Daniel Higgs at 529, Atlanta

On Monday night, the 26th of November, the band Om played at the 529 club in Atlanta, Georgia.  Daniel Higgs opened.  The warm-up act was Atlanta band High Bias, but unfortunately I arrived too late to catch them, which is really saying something given the late hours of the 529.  I usually don't go out to hear music on Mondays due to my obligations to Monday Night Zazen, but when the truly worthwhile band comes through, like YACHT for example, one just has to make exceptions. The price one pays, however, is a late arrival and the probability of missing the warm-up act.

How can one describe a Daniel Higgs performance?  I thought a solo acoustic musician was an odd choice for a drone-metal band like Om; actually I still do, even though it clearly worked.  Higgs, probably best known as the singer for Lungfish, played alone, accompanied only by his banjo, on which he played hypnotic arabesque runs and almost flamenco-like passages, while occasionally singing what sounded like improvised lines ("I work on the Sabbath every day of the week").  The spell-bound crowd, and it was probably the most crowded I've seen 529, was hear-a-pin-drop quiet as Higgs descended further and further down a rabbit hole of his own imagination.  The applause on the rare occasions that Higgs paused to calibrate his trajectory was warm and sincere.

Om's set was plagued by some manner of technical problems that I didn't quite understand, but it took them a long time and many stage visits by their roadies to get started, and even then microphones dropped out during vocal performances and the band seemed pretty ticked off at times.  Not that it got in the way of an excellent performance, however.  

Om recently expanded from a duo to a trio, and in concert it's hard to imagine how they could ever have been anything but the lineup on the stage.   Their music is every bit as hypnotic as Higgs', although they employ different techniques to achieve that state.  Their usual method of attack was to layer Eastern-sounding synth lines and samples over a throbbing, fuzzed-out bass pattern, and then pin the listener to the floor with an unexpected drum attack.  But they had many variations on this theme, which kept the whole show very interesting.

Photography was near impossible during the show for several reasons, chief among them being the fact that I forget my camera, without which it's hard to take anything more than a mental impression.  But I did have the camera app in my little Droid, but the next challenges was the crowd of tall young men pressed toward the front of the stage, between and above whom one had to jockey for position in order to take any kind of picture.  Then there were several "Absolutely No Flash Photography" signs taped to the walls around the stage, further limiting one's options.  So crappy as these pictures are, it's actually amazing that I got anything at all.

The exceptionally attentive and quiet audience remained exceptionally attentive and quiet during Om's set.  During one long drone composition at the end of the set, as keyboardist and effects man Emil Amos was wailing some sort of Arabic-sounding chant, several people toward the rear of the club began hooting and hollering along, until someone near the front of the club turned around and shouted "Shut up!"  Surprisingly and  somewhat uncharacteristically, they did.

One other note:  it must be mentioned at some point that the side wall in the tiny performance space at 529 had apparently been demolished, and the club has expanded to two or even three times its former size, which was tiny so even with the wall gone it's still a small club.  But this expansion would still be a major improvement, and if they reconfigure the stage so that more than five people can stand abreast in front it, it will be a much needed and much appreciated improvement of a club that increasingly is getting some of the best bookings in town, even giving the nearby and redoubtable Earl a run for its money.

Happy 70th Birthday, Jimi Hendrix

Today would have been Jimi Hendrix 70th birthday, if not for the CIA-sponsored  assassination back in 1970 (no, I'm just kidding, he died of drug-related asphyxia over in London - there was no disappearance by any government).

His recording career, which only produced four albums during his lifetime, was too short by far.  In  tribute to one of the 20th Century's most singular musicians, I offer this performance clip from 1970.  Sorry about the abrupt ending (not my editing).

Crayon Fields

Lo-fi Australian pop band The Crayon Fields (Mirror Ball) have a new song out, the summery sounding So Do I (remember, it's the start of summer now Down Under).

The Crayon Fields play intricate, atmospheric pop music recalling the minor key majesty and close-knit harmonies of 60s maestros the Zombies, the Byrds, and the Beach Boys. After forming in the last year of high school in 2002 and releasing two independent EPs, their unruffled, dreamy debut Animal Bells was released in 2006, followed by 2009's All the Pleasures of the World.  They've reportedly been working on their new album for the past year and So Do I is being debuted as a part of a 20-song compilation (20 Big Ones) by their label, Chapter Music.

No word yet on any tour plans.

Poor Moon

Out with the old and in with the new: modern music continues to advance, and surprisingly (or not) often winds up back at its roots again.  Here's a video from an October 18 set at New York's 2012 CMJ festival by the Seattle band Poor Moon, a side project of members of Fleet Foxes, that builds on the vocal tradition of past generation bands like the Beach Boys and the Moody Blues.

The Poor Moon tour brought them to Atlanta on October 25, where they played  a warm and wonderful late-night set at 529.  Photos of that show, below.

Poor Moon's music is defined by their sense of harmony and inventive instrumentation.  To give you more of an idea of that sound, here's a video of Poor Moon that I found on the band's Facebook page performing their song Bucky Pony at Vancouver's Media Club back on September 22.

Dylan

In Thursday's interview, William S. Burroughs talked about visionaries and forward thinkers such as Galileo, Cezanne, and James Joyce, and how their work and vision was not only initially misunderstood, but attacked, censured, and ridiculed until the shock of the new had finally worn off, and how, once the public's eyes had been opened, the creative process marches on.

Here's Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, "delivering rock n' roll to the dissident soul of folk music and poetry."  Note the booing at the end of the set, as the audience was not yet capable of understanding the new version Dylan was presenting of their beloved protest music.  As Thurston Moore noted years later, "For many it was already a viable meeting, but Dylan set it on fire for the world to see."

It's easy now to dismiss those who were booing the "electric" Bob Dylan as being short-sighted and provincial, but one has to understand that they legitimately believed they were defending and preserving the purity of their cherished folk music.  Rock music fans today who react in a negative way to hip-hop, to electronic dance music, and to other cutting-edge forms of music are really no different from that critical audience of 1965, and rather than ridicule Dylan's hecklers, they should recognize them as their aesthetic predecessors.

Like A Rolling Stone has been hailed by many critics as the single most important American song of the 20th Century, and while that's certainly debatable, it's delivery and impact on arrival was unquestionably one of the most revolutionary.  According to NPR, Dylan had finished recording the song just 10 days before the Newport festival.  "As usual, he didn't bring arrangements or charts to the recording session. He came in, taught the musicians the song and then they recorded take after take, experimenting with different tempos. The version of Like a Rolling Stone that ultimately got released was six minutes long, almost twice as long as most standard pop songs. That made it difficult for radio disc jockeys to program, but they did." 

Well, some did.  AM radio station WABC, the dominant Top 40 station in New York at the time, didn't play it, and I never heard the song, or any Dylan for that matter, on the radio, although I was familiar with Dylan's name and the reputation.  I didn't actually hear his music until sometime around 1967 or '68, to the best of my recollection, when I purchased a copy of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits unheard, based solely on reputation and the press.  I was only 13 or maybe 14 years old, but I can still remember putting that record on for the very first time and hearing that nasal voice on Side 1, Track 1, singing "Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so good. they'll stone ya just like they said they would",  and thinking to myself, "What the hell is this?"  I had never heard anything like that before and his sound took some time for me to get used to, but I stuck with it and by the end of Side 2 (Just Like A Woman) it had become my favorite album and I was forever changed.

Very shortly after that, around '68 and '69, FM radio came to my attention, first WABC-FM, a more album-oriented version of it's Top 40, AM sister, and then later WNEW, which departed even further from the commercial mainstream into what was then called "underground rock."  The FM stations played Dylan, as well as the Beatles and the Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and The Who. It was the start of a musical exploration for me, a journey which I'm still on to this day. 

Not to get too far ahead of myself, but it was on WNEW where I first heard King Crimson (In the Court of the Crimson King), which led me even further down the rabbit hole. Over the next five or six years, the voyage took me away from the radio altogether and to the import bins at the back on the record stores, where King Crimson led me to Robert Fripp, and Robert Fripp led me to Fripp and Eno, and Fripp and Eno led me to Brian Eno, and then things really began to get interesting.

But that's another story for another day.

Local Natives

I hadn't expected the first two posts at this new blog site to be quite so focused on the past.  Let's fast forward to the 2010s for at least a day and enjoy some contemporary music.   

LA band Local Natives, who have a new album, Hummingbird, coming out in January, apparently spent their Thanksgiving performing a Soirée de Poche (evening pocket?) in a Paris apartment for La Blogothèque web site.  Local Natives played Atlanta twice while touring behind their previous album, 2009's excellent Gorilla Manor, performing both times at the god-forsaken Masquerade, first in May 2010 and later that year in October (the first Rocktober).  Their current tour schedule does not bring them to Atlanta - they're taking the tour de ville through Nashville and Asheville, but there are plenty of open dates on their schedule before and after those two shows for them to book a gig in either Atlanta or Athens.

Local Natives at The Masquerade, May 2010

The Soirée de Poche will apparently be posted soon, if my French is correct (the Google English translation isn't much help). However, La Blogothèque has already posted Local Natives performing A Take Away Show (Un Concert à Emporter) on the streets of Brittany, bringing their trademark harmonic acrobatics to Who Knows, Who Cares, a favorite from Gorilla Manor.

And here, simply because it's so much fun, is the video for World News, their breakout song from Gorilla Manor:

Burroughs

I know that I'm skipping ahead by more than a few chapters, but there is a direct lineage from the music of the Velvet Underground to Thurston Moore's Chelsea Light Moving, and in honor of my Thanksgiving tradition, I want to post CLM's Burroughs.

A little William S. Burroughs goes a long way, of course, but this being Thanksgiving and all makes me want to indulge in a just a little more.  Director Gus Van Sant cast Burroughs as a character in his brilliant 1989 movie Drugstore Cowboy, but the role was really more of a elegiac tribute to the man than any element of the film's plot.  Someone stitched all of his scenes together into one clip, presented below.  With his Kansas accent and odd cadence and rhythms, Burroughs talked like almost no one else before or after, but he was also about the most honest, direct, and insightful individual you'd ever want to meet.  Just listen to his prophesy starting at about the 3:56 mark in the Drugstore Cowboy clip, and the wisdom evident in an excerpt from an interview with journalist Jurgen Ploog after the Cowboy clip.

Finally, here's a fascinating clip in which Burroughs explains not only his cut-up technique but also hints at possibilities for time travel and also foreshadows Steve Reich's early phasing experiments.  There's a direct  path from this spoken word piece to Reich to My Life In The Bush of Ghosts and to all of hip-hop.