That Not So Fresh Feeling

Note: I’m writing this while watching Game 4 of the World Series. The Sox have already gone up 1-0 in the 1st. If this entry ends up poorly written, full of nonsense, grammatical errors, and insanity, it’s because I’m distracted by the possible 2nd World Series title in 4 years. I also have ridiculously bad hiccups.

Note 2: I also realize that I put punctuation outside of my quotes. I mostly do it when I’m quoting song titles, since I think it’s lame to make it looks like the punctuation is part of the song title. I also make up words. Wanna fight about it?

On Tuesday, I made my first ever trip to the Roxy in Boston to see The New Pornographers live. TNP are one of my very favorite bands (#2 on my last.fm profile) and I’d never had the opportunity to see them play live. I wasn’t expecting to be completely amazed, because I know they often tour without Dan Bejar and Neko Case, who’ve got their own bands to tour with. But, lo! there they all were on stage in front of me. The band played a bunch of stuff off of Challengers, the latest album, which I’d previously been underwhelmed by. But seeing the songs live added some new element to them that I hadn’t noticed before. Going back and giving the album a more critical listen has definitely caused me to have a new appreciation for the album. It’s not Twin Cinema, but it’s really good — and some of the quieter songs (and the Dan Bejar led “Myriad Harbour”) are the best on the album and just required me to look past my hopes of a super indie pop album to just a great all around pop album.

The band mixed in songs from all 4 albums, and played every song I really wanted to hear. I was really, desperately hoping to hear “My Slow Descent Into Alcoholism” off of Mass Romantic and as we headed into what was surely the last song, I had come to the realization that I wouldn’t get it. And then they busted it out and the mostly knowledgeable crowd bounced a bit and enjoyed the pure pop goodness. Highlights were easily the always phenomenal “The Bleeding Heart Show”, the aforementioned “Alcoholism”, the crowd faves of “Sing Me Spanish Techno” and “The Laws Have Changed”, and then the most surprising of all “Adventures in Solitude” — a song that I didn’t love on the album but have gained a whole new appreciation for after hearing it live.

As usual, there was some less than goodness: the 6′4″ guy with the giant block head who pushed his way in front of us so that we could see stuff only over his shoulders; the sound mix was mediocre at best, approaching atrocious; the layout of the Roxy not being nearly as good as the Paradise or TTs for a show.

Normally, that’d be the highlight of the week. But then on Friday, I got to see my favorite band Dear Leader play (#1 on my last.fm profile) play at the Paradise. This came only mere hours after Dear Leader lead singer Aaron Perrino friended me on Facebook (thanks! you rock!). So I was pretty pumped. We got there in time to catch the end of Boone and the entire set by The Russians. The Russians were pretty great, with a pretty strong Beatles vibe. And not in an annoying pretentious way, but in a good way.

But, of course, it was all about Dear Leader. And they didn’t disappoint. Playing with probably the most energy I’ve seen them play with in a long time. They blew through just a great opening of “Nightmare Alleys” and “My Life as a Wrestler”, immediately getting the crowd into the show. Making it better, for the most part, this was a Dear Leader-knowledgeable crowd. So when the band busted out “Rivarly”, which I haven’t heard live in a very long time, the crowd new it was special and reacted accordingly. Everyone was into it straight on through to “Raging Red” (featuring a nice Hall & Oates interlude) and “Labor On” with the crowd on backing vocals. The band came out for a first encore, then a second, which was started off with an aborted, joking attempt at “Give a Little Bit” and the now customary rocking version of “Born to Run”.

Other than the group of underage hoochies (scientific term) who proceeded to grind on each other in front of us (and gave new meaning to the DL song “Everyone Looks Better in the Dark”), it was pretty much a flawless show.

Topping it all off, during the show, Aaron Perrino dropped the news that his original band, The Sheila Divine, is reuniting again on December 28th. And I’ve already bought myself some tickets.

So, it was pretty much a great week (aside from work, which was less great). Two great concerts, the Sox winning the first 3 games of the World Series (and currently leading Game 4 1-0).

So, I’ve decided I’m going to try to capture every show I get to this year. On Wednesday, Kay Hanley and The Antisocialites played a fun earlyish show. I always try to catch Kay Hanley when she comes around since her shows just tend to be fun (since she’s been pretty much playing here for like 15 years now or something).

I met my friend Liz at TTs and we headed in and hung out by the bar while The Antisocialites played. They sounded pretty good, though I’ll admit, I didn’t pay as much attention as I usually do. It was a surprisingly large crowd for 9pm, so there wasn’t a whole lot of room to sneak over towards the stage. So we chatted while The Antisocialites played their rock. It was your typical local, indie rock band, but with the twist of having a female lead (and bassist, I think). I tend to like female-fronted rock bands (hence being at a Kay Hanley show) more than I should, so the sound definitely caught my ear. I’d probably check them out again.

Next up, of course, was Kay Hanley. Her shows are always fun. She knows half the crowd, and basically plays like she’s at a small party and you’re hanging out in the living room. The setlist had a bunch of older Letters to Cleo stuff, and a handful of unreleased songs. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a ton off of her two solo albums, which was a little disappointing, but easily compensated for when Kay had to get instructions on how to play one of her new songs. Completely ridiculous (but quite funny). We also got a good view of some new tats on her arms, which were both scary and impressive. It was a pretty subdued night, but decent all-around.

Yes, this may be the least interesting thing I’ve ever written, but it’s like 3 days later and I’ve forgotten some of the nuances. You smell like fish.

Kay at TTs (from Flickr, via Teddy K)

Next up, if all goes well, Bleu at TTs towards the end of the month.

I likes the rock music. I likes to go to the rock shows from time to time. Every once in awhile, I go through the local listings and ID some shows I want to take in. There’s some good shows coming up.

Kay Hanley at TT the Bear’s! (1/3)
Bleu at TT the Bear’s! (1/27)
Dear Leader and Taxpayer at the Paradise! (2/9)
Stellastarr* at the Middle East Downstairs! (2/16)

That’s four really good shows! I bet they all cost $10 or less! How can you go wrong?

You can keep track of cool shows by watching this Google Calendar link. It’s the “Shows I Want To Go To And You Would Be My Bestest Friend In The Whole World If You Took Me” link.

As I mentioned earlier, last night I headed over to The Paradise to see Dear Leader have their “CD Release Party”, which, as you know, is really just a concert where you can buy their CD. As such, I know own the CD. More on that later.

It all started off with a wonderful T ride from Davis, where I watched 6 Outbound trains go by, then an Inbound train zoom right by the platform, before finally, my chariot arrived. Oh, glorious T, it’s no wonder everyone hates you! Further complicated by a 20 minute wait on Park Street, waiting for the B line to arrive, I finally got to The Paradise at about 9:15.

I met up with a couple of my friends and we headed in, making a stop before it got crowded to pick up the new CD.

The first band was Mohair. It’s always a bit disorienting to walk into a venue and get slammed by huge waves of rock music coming from a guy dressed in a ruffled shirt and tight Freddy Mercury tights, and with the hair of the dude from The Darkness. But, damn, did they rock the 50 people who showed up early enough to see them. I highly advise checking out “Keep It Together” on their Myspace page.

The Plain Janes played second. I’d heard of them many times, but never actually heard them. The first half of their set was, sadly, a little boring. A little too mellow after Mohair had just napalmed the place with style and charm. They finished up strong enough, and given that they’re a local band that (like Dear Leader) features a member of the now defunct The Sheila Divine, they’ve got a loyal following who seemed entertained.

Finally, Dear Leader took the stage. They started out with a bunch of tracks off the new album, including the fantabulous “Nightmare Alleys” (which I featured on my last podcast). They mixed in some older songs, including “Ready the Brave”, which I hadn’t heard them play in a little while. The band was completely on, the crowd was completely into it, and it was probably one of the more fun shows I’ve been to in a while, with only one drunk person falling down near me. Sadly, however, as they finished the set, they had yet to play “Monuments and Shrines” which is a balls-out rocking song live (and on CD!). Given how much energy it takes to sing it, I figured it was going to be a no show.

Oh, but I was wrong. The band came out for an encore (naturally) and wrapped the show up with the kicking live version of “A Nation Once Again” and a really really good take on “Monuments and Shrines”.

I left with my ears ringing, my new CD, and a ride back to my car in Davis (since my friends are awesome).

“But, Ryan,” you might say, “was it a good show?”

Yes. Yes, it was.

After two listens, the new CD is also ridiculously awesotastic. So go to Newbury Comics and buy “The Alarmist” from Dear Leader. It makes a great stocking stuffer. I’ve also gotten a little motivation to hopefully throw together another podcast, probably focusing on the show (or maybe just a Dear Leader-centric one, to spread the love a little further). Hopefully that will be coming tomorrow.

I’d also love to add some pictures, except my camera takes awful pictures and no one has posted any pics on Flickr yet. But when someone does, I will find them. Oh yes, I will find them.

In the meantime, here’s a picture of Mohair from another show (thanks Flickr! and thanks nevbrown, who ever you might be):

In just a few hours, at The Paradise, Dear Leader.

Awesome.

It’s a CD release party for The Alarmist (which you can listen to here). I heartily recommend “Nightmare Alleys”, “Monuments and Shrines”, and “Bleed”, but the whole thing is really good. Really good.

Really.

I got a decent response to the first podcast, so here it is, the “long awaited” second episode of the podcast still yet to be named where I bring you music that has caught my ear in the past week or so.

This week you’ll hear an artist I mentioned in passing last week who may have my favorite pop song of 2006, a band with what I think is the album of the 2006 (so far), a band that will be releasing a contender for album of 2006 in a couple of weeks, a guy who played in Boston just a couple of days ago, and a pint-sized MC who might have the single of 2006. Sure, it’s two months early to be naming off the top anything of the year, but it’s a theme and everything needs a theme.

Speaking of themes, Brett’s got a pretty cool theme on his podcast over at the Wicked Pissa Podcast. And he threw me a link, so how can I not return the love?

On this episode, you’ll hear:

• Ain’t No Other Man — Christina Aguilera, Back to Basics
• Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then) — The Decemberists, The Crane Wife
• Nightmare Alleys — Dear Leader, The Alarmist
• Commerce, TX — Ben Kweller, Sha Sha
• Love Me or Hate Me — Lady Sovereign, Public Warning

That’s it. 5 songs. A few minutes of me rambling.

Get the feed from here or from iTunes. Yes, I’m in iTunes.

 

 PTBNL: Episode 2 [25:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’m so funny. Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. Timely, and amusing.

Yes, I made a podcast. I’ve been fooling around with it for a while, never really zeroing in on what to do. Some folks were encouraging me to do a basketball podcast (which still might happen). But, I realized that I spend the bulk of my time here writing about the music I’m listening to and shows I go to, but I don’t really expose anyone to that music, other than a few mp3s or links here and there.

So now I can force my music upon the four or five people who actually come to the site.

For now, I think the podcast will live as an off-shoot of my blog. If I keep it up, or people like it, maybe it’ll get its own place to live. Or, maybe I’ll get a cease and desist long before that happens.

On this show:

• Old Hat — Harvey Danger, Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone?
• Carousel — Harris, The Light Is Seeping Through The Cracks
• Meetings With the Remarkable Men — Harvey Danger, King James Version
• Progress — So Many Dynamos, Flashlights
• Moral Centralia — Harvey Danger, Little By Little

Here’s the feed to just the podcast (in case you don’t care about my ramblings).

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve setup a little Amazon affiliate thing so if you like a song and go buy the CD from Amazon, I get like 5 cents.

 

 Podcast To Be Named Later: Episode 1 [25:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

For a while now, I’d been keeping in the back of my mind that Harvey Danger was coming to Great Scott on a Thursday night. I was all jazzed to see them, but I also knew that I might have a basketball game that night, when we’d already be short players. So I didn’t buy a ticket ahead of time.

Thursday rolls around, my game is at 7pm, and the show is at 9pm (which means HD probably don’t go on until 11:15 or so). I get out of work and fight traffic to get down to Waltham on time for the game. It’s the first game of the season, so it’s always a bit of an adjustment to get back into the flow. I also have a tendency to be overly critical of my own play. However, I rocked. Probably the best I’ve played in a few years, which I think was directly related to the fact that the other team constantly kept throwing passes that I could just rip and start running the other way for easy hoops. So, it’s probably a whole lot less my good than the other team’s bad. But whatever. I’ll take what I can get.

After our victory (a narrow 1 point win because we were short players and played 4 on 5), I drove home and checked out the Great Scott website just to make sure the show wasn’t sold out. Of course, they just can’t tell me, so I call them and the fellow answering the phone is nice enough to let me know that they’re definitely not sold out yet, but it looks like the crowd is starting to get there. So I should hurry.

I hop into the shower and remember that I’m out of shower wash or body wash or whatever you call it. So I squeeze out a couple of handfuls of the anti-bacterial hand soap that’s on the bathroom sink and use that. I’ll smell like hand soap, but I’ll be germ free. I throw on my rockin’ Dear Leader tee and my nerd glasses and get into the car, realizing that I’ve yet to eat dinner and I’m certainly not going to eat it at Great Scott. Needing money, I stop at Walgreen’s to hit the ATM and grab some quick food. I buy a fruit punch Gatorade, some weird caramel nut balance bar, and a bag of Jelly Bellys. Quite frankly, if I pass a bag of Jelly Bellys, I have to buy them.

Guzzling Gatorade and eating something that passes as chocolate, I head down Fresh Pond towards Soldiers Field Road. My normal route takes me up Market St. then back down Cambridge St., but only because I’ve never figured out which road crosses the two (I now know which one!). I turn down Harvard Ave. for parking, before realizing I’m about to park to go into Harpers Ferry. It is just now, right about 9pm, that I realize I don’t remember exactly where Great Scott is.

Making my life more ridiculous, it’s at this moment that I crack open the bag of Jelly Bellys and pull out the first one … which I get into my mouth only to realize it’s plum, the bastard child of all Jelly Bellys. I hate plum.

Thankfully, I notice some people walking and realize that I’m not insane and Great Scott is just another block down. I slide down, hang a left on Comm Ave., just hoping I can luck into a parking spot.

And I do. About a block from Great Scott. Things are looking up. Haven’t hit another plum bean and I found free parking in a great spot like a block away.

I head up to the door, walk in, pay for my ticket, and get a Sam Adams Octoberfest. It’s a decent crowd, though when you’re in Allston and school is in session, it’s hard to gauge how many folks are there for the show versus how many just decided they wanted to hang out for the evening. As I’m looking around, Sean Nelson, the lead singer of Harvey Danger, walks by. He’s not a small man. Probably 6′2″ or 6′3″.

The opening band, Harris, is just getting ready to start, and I find myself a nice spot on the wall where I can lean and not be too much in the way. Harris starts off and their guitarist closest to me is just all over the place and really fun to watch. As local bands go, these guys were pretty good. They obviously have a little bit of a base, as they had some folks there singing along with them. They had one song, “Carousel“, that stuck in my head and could easily be on the radio. The rest of it still seemed a bit rough around the edges. But, apparently they’d had a shakeup in the band and people were playing different instruments. They seemed like nice guys, too. A pretty decent opener and the set break allowed me to go get another Octoberfest.

So Many Dynamos followed up Harris. They’re out of St. Louis and they play music that I don’t generally find enjoyable. Except they rocked. They are an indie rock/pop/electronic band; it’s not really my genre, so I wouldn’t even know who to compare them to. And, quite frankly, if I heard that album, I’d probably be pretty disinterested. But they were just so fun on stage, bouncing around, bantering wittily (”We’re halfway through the set. I’m feeling pretty good: I only feel like we’re a third of the way through”), and just having a good time. It was infectous.

If you’re wondering, most reviews seem to compare the band to The Dismemberment Plan and as a punkier Hot Hot Heat. I’ve sadly never heard the former, and can sort of see the latter comparison. Very “sort of”.

Smartly, I took a moment between songs to go grab another beer and hit the bathroom (except in reverse order). If you’ve ever been to a show at a place like Great Scott or TT the Bear’s, you know why.
When So Many Dynamos finished, things got crowded fast. All of the folks who were only there to see Harvey Danger, sort of stormed to the front. I don’t mind so much when it’s people who seem to actually dig the band (in this case, it was mostly those type of fans). I do mind when it’s people who’ve heard one song and think that entitles them to push their way to the front. Which always reminds me of the night at a Fountains of Wayne show when I saw two college aged girls try to push their way to the front, bitching at people left and right. One of them tried to push past the wrong people and got laid out (right in front of me!). It made my night.

I digress.

I had my spot, had a beer, and was ready for Harvey Danger. I have a tendency to check out band sites before a show to get an idea of what the set might be like, and I’d learned that the aforementioned Mr. Nelson had been having some throat/voice issues. As he took the stage, he acknowledged as much and said they were going to start out with a quieter song to get warmed up. He breaks into “Pike St./Park Slope”, which is a fantastic song and helps to illustrate some of the, shall we say, verbose lyrics that Harvey Danger utilizes.

Maybe we could run away and start a little repertory moviehouse or something.
She said, “sorry but I think you might be just projecting on to me. Why don’t you try LA?”

Repertory. Awesome. I mean, come on, this is a band that can work the word interminable into a song. How can you not dig that?
After that, I don’t really remember the setlist. They played a great mix of stuff off of all 3 CDs, and sounded pretty amazing for a band that hadn’t toured in 5+ years. They turned a song off of the re-released version of Little by Little called “Picture Picture” into a crowd sing along, which was lead into by a very funny 60 second or so monologue describing the “sacred covenent between an audience and performer” in a call-and-response chorus. There were even helpful cue cards to make it easy. That sounds like it could be very pretentious or even cloying, but it wasn’t. It was really cleverly done. The band worked into “Little Round Mirrors”, which I enjoy a lot, neatly working the chorus from Guns-N-Roses “Paradise City” into it.

At some point, I can’t remember if it was during the normal set or as part of the encore, they pulled up a woman onto the stage (she was a friend of the band, it seemed) and she did the female backing vocals to “Old Hat”, which is probably my favorite Harvey Danger song. Just an all around great set, with no discernable voice problems, no discernable jackasses, no problems at all.

They finished the set with “Flagpole Sitta”, which is the song that they’re most famous for, but, as you’d expect, has a tendency to bring out the douchebags. And bring out the douchebags it did, as someone decided it was a good opportunity to start a mosh pit. But, my faith in humanity was restored when his girlfriend yanked him down to the floor by the back of his shirt. Ah, I loves the rock.

After that, I made the quick walk back to my car, and headed home. I had some Jelly Bellys on the way home, and even the plums tasted ok.

(Image from Flickr via splunkton who I don’t know, but I found the image then followed to his website which is ridiculously awesome. Seriously. Check it out.)

I’ve seen Dear Leader a whole bunch over the past few years. I’d say they’re easily my favorite local band, and I’ll pretty much see them whenever they play. But, after playing the Best Music Poll earlier this year they headed into the studio to record a new album and didn’t play any dates in the US.

When I saw them show up on the TT the Bear’s Calendar, I knew I’d be there. The fact that Campaign for Real Time, the latest winner of the Rock ‘n Roll Rumble, and apparently a pretty amazing live band, would be opening, it made for an interesting bill.
So, fighting a little bit of sleepyness, I headed out to Cambridge to catch the show. I got there a little after 9:30 to catch the tail end of Boone’s set. There were moments of good here, but it just didn’t resonate with me. They, honestly, sounded a bit noise rocky to me (though, it could have just been the mix at TT’s last night, which was atrocious), but it just didn’t work. I like my songs to be a bit tighter.

The second band was the New Idea Society, which features Stephen Brodsky of Cave In fame. I’ve never been a big Cave In fan, but I’d seen him play a live solo show where he showed off his musical tastes, covering Brian Wilson and a bunch of great little pop tunes. Some of that pop goodness bleeds into the New Idea Society sound, and there were a couple of songs that had me nodding along and wondering how I had missed these guys before. Then they’d break out a song so excrutiatingly navel-gazing that the crowd literally didn’t react. They finished a song, stopped, and there was just no reaction from the crowd. Just sort of stunned silence. At this point, I was dreading having to wait another 75 minutes for Dear Leader to arrive.

Then Campaign for Real Time took the stage and pretty much owned the place for the next 45 minutes. I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s a rock/funk band with some smattering of the new wavey sound featuring some Moogs and organs, and then the occasional drop of some hip-hop. All topped off with more energy then anyone should be allowed to display. Ever. It was impossible not to be drawn in. Just a great show, even if the mix was so bad that I really had no clue what they were ever saying. Given that Dear Leader’s sound is a bit more straight ahead and driven than the manic energy of C4RT, I was a little curious how they’d follow up this act.

Well, they did it by just playing straight ahead balls out and blowing the doors off the place. It’s not always a good thing when a group takes the stage and basically plays all of the songs from their new album, right in a row. But Dear Leader’s been working on some of these songs for the last 6-9 months, so most of the crowd had heard them before. Starting off with the amazingly anthemic “Nightmare Alleys” and moving right into “Radar”, opened the show fantastically. They just blew through songs from the new album, one after another, with little more than a couple of sentences to the crowd, instead just milking in the fact that pretty much everyone there knew most of the words to a bunch of unreleased songs.

Finishing off the set, they broke out the crowd favorite (and my personal fave) “My Life as a Wrestler” with crowd participation, segueing nicely into “Raging Red”, including the chorus from The Pixies’ “Monkey Gone to Heaven”. They walked off stage leaving a pretty raucous crowd behind, before coming out to blow through two high energy versions of “Corroded Anchor” and “Billions Served” before the rest of the band bowed out while Aaron Perrino finished with the newish tune “Lead the Way”.

We got one more Aaron solo encore, and is was well worth it, as he came out and broke into the opening riff from The Sheila Divine’s “I’m a Believer” and it was pretty much crowd singalong time, which seemed to amuse Aaron to no end, and finished off a tight 75 minute set. Well worth the 10 bucks to get in and has me pretty amped to get the new album (in November) and hoping that they start playing more shows to continue to show off the new stuff.

Remember you can keep track of the shows I’m interested in my checking out the Concert Calendar.

I’m always forgetting what concerts are coming up, and then remembering too late to get tickets, or too late to actually go. I’m also trying to use Google Calendar more and more, since I think it works pretty well for my particular lifestyle (i.e. I don’t have to keep track of a ton).

Oddly enough, it only took me a few weeks of thinking before I realized “Hey, calendars let you track things with dates! So, I can put concert dates into Google Calendar and then I can keep track of them!”

No one has ever accused me of being swift on the uptake.

So, I started poking around some websites, and came up with a list of shows I’d like to see that are coming up. I probably missed some, but I checked out TT’s, the Middle East, the Paradise, Great Scott, Harpers Ferry, Avalon, and the Orpheum. Then I poked around some band sites (check out my last.fm profile to get an idea of what I tend to listen to).
I threw it all into Google Calendar, made it public, and now I can share it with you:

The Cool Shows Ryan Wants to See in the Next Few Months Public Calendar
Now you can curry favor with me by offering to take me to shows! Or you can stalk me and find out why I’ve had people tell me I look like Maynard from Tool, or Moby, or Michael Stipe (can you guess the trend?!).

—————

Recently, I also came across The Decemberists‘ new album The Crane Wife, which is scheduled to release sometime in October. I’m a pretty big fan of the The Decemberists and their interesting brand of folky, orchestral, verbose, literate, indie pop/rock. I wasn’t prepared for just how great the new album would be. It’s poppier, without losing the trademark Decemberists’ sound. And, outside of FNX, you probably won’t hear it in Boston. So, go buy it when it comes out. Or ask me nicely and I’ll play it for you and then you’ll go buy it.

I also picked up (legally) The Long Winters new CD Putting the Days to Bed. After a single listen, I had 3 or 4 songs stuck in my head. Each Long Winters album gets hookier and poppier and just generally awesome. Go download “Pushover” from their site and tell me it’s not stuck in your head all day.