Caveman

Caveman will be performing tonight at The Drunken Unicorn at 9:00 pm (I better get going!).  Portland''s Pure Bathing Culture (featuring members of Vetiver) open.

Wadada

You may not have heard of him, but Wadada Leo Smith is probably the greatest living jazz musician today.  His interpretations of electric, Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis (1926-1991) were impeccable, and now he's taking on another hero of mine, Don Cherry (1936-1995).

I don't blog about jazz much, mostly because so much of the genre has become so moribund, and also because the few remaining innovators tend not to tour much. But this track, Don Cherry's Electric Sonic Garden, is freaking awesome.

Pickathon

So the questions here is how do I get to Happy Valley, Oregon on August 2 through 4 for this festival?  It's too far from Bumbershoot (August 31 - September 2) to fly out and stay, and yet it's too close for two separate trips.

I need sponsorship, or a job out west to tide me over.  Anyone need a Zen Buddhist environmental consultant anywhere in the Pacific Northwest for the month of August?  We can work out reasonable rates.

(In case you're wondering, the song is Foxygen's On Blue Mountain.)

Deerhunter

Bradford Cox as Atlas Sound at Verizon Amphitheater, July 8, 2011

Last night, Atlanta's Deerhunter unveiled the title track of their forthcoming album, Monomania, on the Jimmy Fallon tee-vee show.  I hadn't realized that Deerhunter had a new album coming out, so there's that.

Things appear different this time around, though.  Bradford Cox, wearing what appeared to be an outrageous fright wig, didn't play any guitar but handled vocals only, handing guitar duties over to new band member Frankie Broyles, formerly of Atlanta's Balkans.  Don't know at this point if this change is just for the song Monomania, or just for this one live performance (perhaps to allow Cox his dramatic, burned-out exit from the stage starting at the 2:54 mark?), or if it's a different direction for Cox and for Deerhunter.

Name-dropping:  don't know if I ever got the chance to mention it, but I saw Bradford Cox in the audience at The Goat Farm, watching Atlanta's Carnivores open for Thee Oh Sees.  

Here's the studio version of Monomania:

Update:  Groupthink.  I composed the post above after coming across two separate notices on Facebook, one about the Fallon performance and the other about the new single streaming.  Then I saw that CMJ posted an article about the same thing, including the same two videos, throwing in a tweet from The Roots and a publicity photo from Late Night.  Their review said,  

It’s hard to make much of a splash on a late-night talk show—even the best performances tend to be pretty by the book—but last night Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox brought a touch of the theatrical to Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. Sporting a ratty black wig, a flashy spotted shirt and some bloody gauze on a few of his fingers, Cox led his band in a spirited rendition of the title track to Monomania, the group’s highly anticipated new record. As the dreamy garage-rock song built to its tape-loop-filled climax—nice “cut to the tape recorder” moment at 2:50—Cox makes his grand exit. It’s a pretty great moment.

Brooklyn Vegan ran the same story, too, including both videos.  They put it this way:

As mentioned, Deerhunter will release their new album, Monomania, on May 7. The title track has just been released for streaming and it's definitely on the grittier side than anything we've heard from them lately. Not sure if the song is in mono or not, but the "mania" part comes across loud and clear. . . Bradford Cox, looking very much like a late '70s New York punk, and the rest of the band stopped by Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night (4/2) to perform "Monomania" which took the track in some new directions -- like into the studio's hallway. 

Pitchfork was able to provide a little more of the backstory:

Deerhunter introduced the world to Monomania last night on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. While getting dressed for the performance backstage, frontman Bradford Cox referred to himself in character as "Connie Lungpin," donning a wig and bandaging his fingers as a tribute to his father who recently lost two fingertips in a tablesaw accident.  Cox also orchestrated the clip's final moment in advance: He walks out of the studio while the band continues playing behind him, grabbing a styrofoam cup out of a crew member's hand, and waits for the elevator.

StereoGum posted the same media, and wrote:

Credit Bradford Cox with knowing how to seize a moment. Last month, Cox’s band Deerhunter announced the impending release of their new album Monomania, recorded on eight-tracks in Brooklyn earlier this year. Last night, they posted a stream of the album’s title track, a supremely catchy piece of dessicated but jangly garage rock that devolves into a feedback tape-loop freakout before sputtering to a close. And soon afterward, the band played the song on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, turning in the sort of performance that’s going to linger around in our collective brain for a while. The band dressed in a slightly degraded take on what an early-’60s rock band might wear on TV, and Cox performed in a new persona, which he’s apparently calling “Connie Lungpin,” in a shaggy wig and bloody bandaged stump-fingers and Dracula mouth, wandering off through the studio catacombs while his band was still playing the song. It was a stunt, sure, but very few late-night performances have that sense of instability, that we can’t quite be sure what’s about to happen. Very few have me this excited about what the band’s going to do next. 

Arctic Monkeys enthusiasts We All Want Someone To Shout For wrote:

Deerhunter’s new album Monomania drops May 7 via 4AD. They have dropped the title track which just happens to also be the first single. It’s a raw, less produced version of Deerhunter that is slightly more punk, more reflective of the bands earlier days. It’s something fierce. What’s even more fierce is their performance of the song yesterday on Fallon. Be sure to watch the video all the way through, it’s worth it to see how Bradford ends it.

RCRD LBL.com only posted the studio clip, but provided a link to the Fallon performance:

Monomania seems like the moment where Deerhunter, clearly one of the best bands of the era at this point, enters their '90s Sonic Youth phase where things become crunchier, scuzzier and every move is a grand comment on rock spectacle. They unveiled this one on the Jimmy Fallon program last night, and it was one of the more subversive and exciting late night performances in recent memory – all 4:30 am gore and rotting rock 'n' roll. Highest recommendation.

No videos were included, but Atlanta's Creative Loafing might have scooped everyone when they posted their story at 7:58 am, stating, with tongue firmly in cheek and under the eye-catching headline, "Deerhunter hire new lead singer":

In case you missed it, (WHY DID YOU MISS IT? NO THAT IS NOT A GOOD ENOUGH EXCUSE) a bloodied and bandaged Connie Lungpin & The Deerhunters debuted a brash and bratty brand new tune called Monomania (click for wiki, ya bum) last night on "Lil' Jimmy's Late Nite Dog 'n' Pony Show."

So there you have it - possibly the most widely reviewed rock performance on network television since The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan.

Thao in New York

Thao and The Get Down Stay Down live at WNYC on Thursday, March 28, 2013.

Meanwhile, here's the fourth installation in her video shorts series:

Seapony

Seapony at Bumbershoot 2012

In a startling change of direction, Seattle dream-pop band Seapony have decided to go metal.  The first single, Easter Island, from their forthcoming album, Death By Seapony, features heavy guitar riffs with no vocal relief in sight, signaling their dark, new attitude.

In related news, it was later revealed that this was just an April Fools Day prank by Seapony and their label, Hardly Art.

American Game Of Thrones

A look back at the 2012 season . . .

Next in line
Weird-ass religion
Nobody wants him

Pint-sized lump of pure evil
Strong on Second Amendment
Terrible husband

Popular in Midwesteros
Wears perpetual smirk
Obsessed with gay sex

Wants to go back to the Iron Standard
Thinks handouts make you weak
Ignored by main-stream bards

Good-faith outreach to political opponents predictably fails
Probably better at winning than ruling
Ultimately the least evil of the bunch

Often underestimated as a joker
Too cool for the job
Would probably freakin' rock at it

Former ruler
Legendary fondness for women
Married to an ice-cold blonde





Comes from a land far away
Wants to rule despite lack of qualifications
Uses her children to further rise to power

Right hand of previous ruler
Throne stolen
Always going on about climate change

'nuff said . . .