Shaky Knees Schedule

And so it has been announced . . .

Blind Pilot at Centennial Olympic Park, Atlanta

It seems fitting on so many levels that the Final Four championship, aka March Madness, is being held in April. Southern March weather didn't really arrive until this month, and my March Madness series of concerts didn't really turn out exactly as I had anticipated, although it looks now as if the real madness is going to occur in April.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Yesterday, as part of it's Final Four celebration, the NCAA promoted a series of concerts, really a mini-festival, in downtown Atlanta's Centennial Park.  They kept this one quiet, and I didn't even hear about it until I learned at about 7:17 pm on Friday that My Morning Jacket were playing the park starting at 7:00.  I didn't make that one, but while I was at the Caveman show on Saturday night, I was told that Sunday's lineup was going to open with Portland's Blind Pilot

I love this band and wanted very much to be a part of the audience, not so much for my own enjoyment but to show some support and appreciation for the band.  I was worried that their often quiet brand of laid-back folk-rock wouldn't be well received by the audience, most of whom were probably there just for Sting and Dave Matthews later in the day, or at least for Grace Potter and the Nocturnals who were on right after Blind Pilot.  But Blind Pilot are the kind of band with whom, after you've seen them in the right setting, you form a deep emotional bond with, and I wanted to get close to the front and send out some appreciative vibes as they played.

Turns out that getting to the front of the stage was tougher than I had anticipated.  By the time I got to the park, 30 minutes before show time, there was already a line stretching around the block.  It was a free show, but access to the park was tightly controlled for security reasons (all bags were inspected as the audience came through the gates).  By the time I made it through the checkpoint, there were already about 15 rows of people standing in front of the stage, not to mention acres of people stretched out on blankets.  However, I was able to work my way up to about the seventh or eighth row without too much difficulty or being too aggressive.  

On stage, a d.j was working the crowd, and won me over when he threw Duck Sauce's Barbara Streisand into the mix.

Blind Pilot took the stage as scheduled right at 2:30 and almost immediately won over the audience.  We last saw Blind Pilot at The Earl, where someone was blowing soap bubbles toward the band from stage left, but the really memorable performance was their record-release party for We Are The Tide at Portland's Crystal Ballroom during MFNW 2011 (on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 at that!).  I've even got a podcast recording of a show of theirs earlier that day (thanks, KEXP!), a show I missed to go see The Joy Formidable at The Wonder Balllroom, and, yes, I'm listening to that MP3 right now even as I write this.

The weather was perfect, a sunny spring day with comfortable temperatures and low humidity.  The crowd was reasonably attentive, except for a bunch of bros trying to jockey for a stage-front spot so they could see up Grace Potter's skirt during the next set and some frat boys behind me who were there simply to par-ty.  But Blind Pilot was putting out such a warm, friendly vibe that none of this bothered me.

Whenever the Jumbotron projected the audience onto the screen behind the band, the crowd cheered jubilantly, confusing the band until they realized the reason for the sudden and unexpected bursts of enthusiasm.  At other times,. the band seemed dwarfed by giant projections of their own performance.

Blind Pilot ended their set with their traditional closer, a triumphant rendition of We Are The Tide, the title song from their album.  

Overall, it may not have been one of those perfect performances that would form one of those aforementioned deep emotional bonds for someone in the audience hearing them for the first time, but it was as fine and wonderful as one could hope for a show whose real purpose was merely to entertain basketball fans between games.

So, yeah, now this was the real March Madness, and the madness will continue through this week.  Tonight (Monday), Chad Valley is playing at The Earl, and tomorrow night, Savoir Adore and On An On are playing at The Drunken Unicorn.  Wednesday night, Scotland's Frightened Rabbit play at the god-forsaken Masquerade, and Thursday night, New Orleans' Hurray For the Riff Raff are at The 529.  The weekend will bring jazz-rock guitarist John Scofield to Variety Playhouse, and Saturday there's the third annual Buddhapalooza up at the Barking Legs Theater in Chattanooga.

After Blind Pilot's performance on Sunday, I headed back home.  I've already seen Grace Potter live, so I've checked that one off my bucket list already, and I wasn't going to hang around for Sting because it's not 1983 or for the Dave Matthews band because it's not 1993, either.

But, yeah, Blind Pilot on a really big stage in downtown Atlanta.  For free.  Now that was way cool.

Caveman and Pure Bathing Culture at The Drunken Unicorn, Atlanta

It actually happened.  Brooklyn's Caveman and Portland's Pure Bathing Culture put on a terrific performance last night at The Drunken Unicorn.

PURE BATHING CULTURE

Pure Bathing Culture, featuring members of Vetiver (whom we saw at Smith's Olde Bar and Bumbershoot), played a lovely set of delicious dream-pop.

CAVEMAN

Caveman, who we last saw at The Earl opening up for Here We Go Magic, played their own brand of simultaneously sparkling and fuzzed-out, slightly psychedelic yet harmonic rock

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.