Punk rock taught us tons of things. It taught us how to draw logos on leather jackets, how to put Elmer’s Glue into hair and make it stand, it taught us about independent music, and it taught us stupid stuff like the ZOMG ANARCHY DUDE~! aspect of the sound- all of these are important (yes, in a way, even the last one). But the most important thing that punk showed us was that we are all fans of music, and that the enthusiasm that a music fan feels for a band can be infectious. Last Friday night at Asheville NC’s The Grey Eagle, that infection was an epidemic.

The bill was pretty promising: Dinosaur Jr. bassist/Sebadoh leader Lou Barlow being accompanied by The Missingmen (who are on loan from the imitable Mike Watt) along with wunderkinds Wye Oak. The melding of late eighties underground independent music and an independent band whose label just released the Number one album in the country (Arcade Fire’s Suburbs) was an interesting contrast. In this corner, young Wye Oak, trying to eek out a name for themselves, and in this corner Lou Barlow balancing the bleery-eyed nostalgia of people like me with his new material.  On paper it all looked great.

But upon the show’s ending, I was ready to call it the best show that I’d seen all year. It was that good.

Wye Oak took the stage just after 9:00 PM and the ruckus that the band created between its two members was something to behold. The band’s drummer, Andy Stack, somehow balanced playing drums with one hand and his feet with playing bass and melody lines on a small keyboard with the other hand. That, coupled with the great guitar playing of Jenn Wasner made the band a pleasant surprise for a lot of the nostalgia craving aging hipsters that made the trek to the club that evening.

As much of a spectacle as Stack’s multi-instrumentation was, Wasner’s vocals and guitar playing were the real driving forces behind Wye Oak.  She pounded out each song with authority, and never once did her delivery or playing seem monotonous. Instead, she kept the set moving with strong playing and banner that showed the band’s excitement at being on tour and their reverence for Barlow.  To use a proper baseball analogy, Wye Oak hit it out of the park- not just for an opening band, either.

Next up, Lou Barlow appeared on the stage. At first he played alone, barefoot. The club that was once clanging with beer bottles and the conversations of those in attendance stood in an awkward silence as Barlow played a mini acoustic set featuring songs from his current solo work, his Sebadoh days and even some material he’d written for Dinosaur Jr.  Working with J Mascis and playing ear-shredding rock may be Barlow’s day job, but you can tell his real passion is for doing what he’s doing now- playing his songs on his own.

When the Missingmen joined Barlow on stage, the music shifted from soft acoustic noodlings to a jerky, telecaster-soaked rock sound. It wasn’t quite punk, and not quite the disjointed Pavement-sounding college rock. Instead it was Barlow- part noise, part punk and part skewered pop. This wasn’t a nostalgia act: this was a vital artist throwing down in front of us.

Barlow shifted effortlessly from playing guitar along with bass pedals with his feet to a baritone guitar and finally to a bass guitar, each time amplifying the intensity of the set.  He seemed like a blood pressure cuff squeezing a little tighter with each song.

After a punk rock-feeling sendoff to the Missingmen, Barlow dropped the cacophony and picked up first an acoustic guitar and later on a ukulele, taking requests from the audience and even telling the stories of a few of his songs.

Barlow’s show wasn’t pretty. Songs and equipment malfunctions permeated the set, but each time Barlow acknowledged them and shrugged them off. If anything, it fit his homemade credo perfectly. These were perfect little songs played imperfectly, balanced perilously on a gilded ledge and ready to teeter off into the muck and mire at any given moment, and if that didn’t happen, Barlow threatened to push them into a noisy freefall himself.  In short, it was a Lou Barlow show.

And it was perfect.

I admit, I might be a little biased in my love for the show, but judging from the response of the other people there, those intimately familiar with Barlow’s music and a scattering of first-timers, Barlow still had it, and Wye Oak only amplified an already great show.

Back to the punk rock thing: the first photo that you see in this entry is Barlow singing and to the right, Jenn Wasner watching the show from the front row, like any other fan.  It brought a whole new perspective on the evening to me, as it showed that Wasner was there to not only work, but to enjoy herself also. She stood near the stage all night bobbing her head to the tunes provided by Barlow and company. She’s good people, and punk rock as fuck for actually liking the band she is touring with.

As a special treat, here’s a video I took from the show. It’s Lou during his encore doing “Soul and Fire”. Enjoy.

Nearly twenty years after I discovered Sebadoh, I’m getting another chance to see Lou Barlow in concert tonight.  I wish that I could explain what it is about a loveable stoner with great hair, a penchant for noise and a Jackson Browne-like quality for making sweet and mellow music (only unlike Jackson Browne he doesn’t suck) that makes me adore his music so much, but I can’t.

I guess Lou Barlow is just honest. He isn’t afraid to make big and bold proclamations about love, hope, and masturbation and once he’s made the proclamation he doesn’t need to wrap it up in some sort of smug cool. Instead, he stands by his word.  He’s not a heart on his sleeve emo douche. He’s a guy who writes heartfelt songs on an oddly tuned guitar.

And for that, we love him.

Check back later this weekend for some live video and photos from Lou’s show at The Grey Eagle with The Missingmen.  It should be great.

Gospel music is a difficult thing for an atheist like myself.  On one hand, you have the subject of the music- God. Or Jesus. Or sometimes both. But on the other side there’s the music, which when done correctly is music done with fire and passion.  I suppose the peril of the modern day aging hipster/atheist has to run together at some point.

I’ve reached my point by acquiring the Like a Ship…(Without a Sail) album by Reverend T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir. This music is awesome. It’s deep late 60s/early 70s funk done right. There’s no bullshit about this music. Every note is wonderful, and the drumming just lazily chugs the beat along. It’s easily one of my favorite albums of the last year.

Do yourself a favor and check out the album from Light in the Attic Records.

So I broke my vow of steady updates until September. I put an honest effort out there to do it, and I’m going to keep putting forth the effort to update the blog everyday.

Last night I played with my old band Glaze (notice the link) at Stella Blue. The show, from what I have been told, was pretty good. My bass sounded about as good as I’ve ever heard it last night. It had this nice deep thumb with just enough Mike Watt-like growl to it.

Now that the show is over, I honestly feel like crap. I think I over extended myself yesterday with stress, adrenaline and a pretty overwhelming and uncompromising amount of heat and my body still hasn’t recovered. I feel nauseous, tired, and my knee and ankle are swollen up. I don’t know what is wrong with me, but it is seriously ruining my weekend.

I have a mountain of photographs and video to pour through so to post here, so check back later on and hopefully it’ll all be up.

Until then, be good.

Music biographies (and to an extent, biographies in general) are kind of masturbatory if you know a bit about the subject. I know about Sam Cooke- gospel singer, switched to pop, huge star, “Bring It On Home to Me”, shot in a hotel room, the dominant force in soul music, and hero to Bobby Womack, Lou Rawls and Rod Stewart. But then I read Peter Guralnick’s excellent Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke and was completely blown away by the man.

I’ve loved Sam Cooke for a long time (specifically since I found out that he was the singer of “Wonderful World” and “Cupid”), but recently with the help of this book I was able to really get a grasp of what made him so special.

Musically the guy was gifted. He simultaneously took the black Gospel experience, melded it with a little Harry Belafonte-like calypso and some light rock and roll and created out of thin air a form of black music that was in an attractive enough package for white America to digest.  To read about this happening and also to hear it in his music is grounds enough to count him as an all-time great, but to read about what Cooke did away from the spotlight is pretty damn Herculean.

Segregation was a horrible thing. But one of the things that happened as a result of segregation (to an extent) was a simultaneous black culture in America that existed independently of white America. Dream Boogie showcases this.  There was a Afro-centric news wire (the ANP- Associated Negro Press), black operated newspapers in every major city, and the much vaunted black club scene across America and Sam was in the middle of all of these.

In fact, Sam seemed in the middle of most of black culture in America in the 1950s until his death in 1964. He bubbles up with Little Richard, meets the Beatles, tours with Aretha Franklin and a very young Gladys Knight, and even cuts a single with Cassius Clay (he wasn’t Muhammed Ali just yet).  The guy was, as Reggie Jackson said about himself a decade later, the straw that stirred the drink.

So today I decided to share with everyone a Sam Cooke song. It’s not “Bring It On Home to Me”, or one of his bubblegum smashes. Instead, it’s “Nothing Can Ever Change This Love”, which might be as good a song as “Bring It On Home to Me”.  Listen to Sam’s voice as he sings it- it’s barely tethered to Earth, and yet there is still a little dirt and grit around the edges. He belts out huge whoa-oh-ah-ohs that take your breath away and holds other words and phrases inside of his mouth, almost chewing on them until the right timbre is hit. I’ve never seen a Picasso, I’m not able to watch land being formed as lava reaches the sea, and I’ve never seen life created in front of me, but I have heard Sam Cooke’s voice, which is as close to the creator as an atheist like myself will ever get.

Sam Cooke- Nothing Can Ever Change This Love

Until tomorrow, be good.

I live a quiet life that is made easier by turning the radio off. Occasionally something of merit will bubble up from the mainstream and force me to listen to it, and more often than not I find it interesting. The latest thing I’ve heard is Lady Gaga.

From what I gathered before I actually heard Lady Gaga was that she was a wacky singer who hung out with wonderfully gay men, dressed in outfits that made for silly looking pictures and did it all in the name of “art” or “shocking people” or something. I heard the Madonna comparisons, and read the interviews in Rolling Stone.  But nothing prepared me for the veritable shit sandwich that I ingested once I finally heard the Lady who is Gaga.

Don’t get me wrong here: I’m not a Madonna fan. In fact, I think she has always fucking sucked and came across as less a singer and more of a slightly more talented proto-Kim Kardashian minus the looks. Madonna exists to shock and titillate those around us who don’t have to courage to find actual shocking and titillating things.  So if Lady Gaga is deliberately lifting from this no-talent hack, imagine how untalented she seems to me.

The song I heard (“Alejandro”) was entirely forgettable and rather dumb, but much like Madonna, Lady Gaga seems to let the “controversial video” tail wag the “shitty song” dog. The video isn’t shocking at all- it features gay guys writhing around a rather ugly nun (who is portrayed by Lady Gaga). It was then that I realized how truly worthless she is: Madonna out-shocked Gaga 20 years before with the “Like a Prayer” video.

Remember that video and the shitstorm that followed? Madonna fucked Black Jesus! People were freaking out. She lost a Pepsi ad because or it. She wasn’t a nun coyly arousing a group of soccer players; she was a runaway fugitive getting nailed by the Negro from Nazereth. That shit was hot.

If anything, I think this shows us not the shittiness of Lady Gaga, but how far to the right this country has swung. We’re scared. We no longer push boundaries. Instead, it’s just comical horseshit that I’m tired of. We have a black President; couldn’t we instead get Lady Gaga to fuck a Puerto Rican Buddha or something? Draw a friggin’ cartoon of Muhammad and then pee on it?  We shock too easy and Lady Gaga tries to hard.

While doing some research for this post I found an entry on another blog that summed up Lady Gaga’s desperate attempts to be controversial much more succinctly than I ever could:

“Lady Gaga performed on the Today Show this morning as part of the Toyota concert series, because nothing says shocking nonconformist like performing on the Today Show in between commercials where Toyota apologizes for their brakes not working and killing a bunch of people.”

Remember kids, if something made, manufactured and produced by a multi billion dollar company shocks or arouses you it’s a surefire sign that you suck and should do something productive with your life.

“Give it a good review” he says, adding later on for me to compliment his band’s musicianship. I download the un-mastered version of his album and prepare myself for it.

These days I hardly listen to a lot of rock and roll. My life (and musical habits) seem to dwell upon old-school soul testimonials by long dead black dudes and newfangled noodlings by white men nerdier than I am in all sorts of jangly, though sometimes distorted and vaguely jazzy post-punk outfits. Rock and roll- and especially punk rock is something best left to the masses. Sure it gets your heart racing and your head bobbing, but its so fucking populist, and populism (as we all know) is for everyone else. Musical douche bags such as myself like stuff arty or less white, and we love using cuntastic phrases like limitations of the genre when talking about rock and roll.

With that long-winded and highly pretentious qualifier out the way, I can honestly say that despite my self-righteous leanings I loved We Have a Meth Lab’s The Meth Lab for Cuties LP. It’s good shit.

What Bob and his band (whose names I can’t immediately find) do well is play honest-to-goodness drunk punk rock. Fugazi or Refused this isn’t. Instead, We Have a Meth Lab are closer to the fast, loud, and rude sounds of the Meatmen.  The guitars are over distorted and the bass is overdriven to a near fuzzy sound and the drums are full of spastic and wonderful rolls and fills that were either created by a thirteen year old or a highly skilled thirtysomething who is just remembering what made drums fun.

That’s the thing about The Meth Lab for Cuties LP, the band has ignored what makes music feel important or significant. Instead, they are just playing stuff that is fun. Laughs are had listening to this music and laughs were probably had making this music.

Despite the band’s Atlanta ZIP code, old-school Asheville fans will recognize some of the tunes as holdovers from the BFO. But these songs’ inclusion (along with covers of tracks by Asheville bands like Choking Victim and The Mathmatics) isn’t because Best and company are creatively tapped out, instead the songs sound tighter, heavier and better than they did in their Asheville heyday (although “Julie Song” could really use Milton Carter’s backing vocals).

Another great moment on the CD is the cover of “Summer Breeze”, which isn’t exactly a rehash of the Isley Brothers’ version of the song. It’s tougher, funnier and drunker.

For fans of “serious rock” or whatever we call it these days, We Have a Meth Lab might be a bit too fun, and a bit too sloppy, but for fans of visceral, warts and all punk rock, it’s just like the epic Compound parties in 1996 never ended. Best is there with you, drunk as fuck and hitting on your girlfriend, and his band is playing some kick ass tunes the entire time.

Like most people (I hope), I’m pretty influenced by the things I choose to read, listen to and watch on television or DVD.  Recently, Jessie and I have been on a Ken Burns kick, watching all of his films via our Netflix subscription (we’re married; those things come with the license now). As of right now we are headlong into watching The National Parks: America’s Best Idea and I’m utterly inspired to experience the great outdoors as a result.

Wait, what was that?

That’s right, I’m starting to get into the idea of being outside (something I have hated my entire life).  I want to go on hikes, long walks, camping trips and even to a few of the National Parks that I’ve seen in the first two discs of the documentary.

I don’t know if this is a passing interest or something that will sustain itself inside of me, but for the last two nights Jessie and I have taken our dogs on the three mile Occanalufte River Trail at the base of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and I’ve loved every minute of it.  I’ve watched the river cut thought the mountains and seen trees form a canopy over our heads. I’ve seen giant mountains that create their own weather, and stood for just a moment with my mouth agape, as if I were some flatlander who has never seen these things that actually were around me for all of these times. There’s something about all of this wonderfulness around me that is startling and makes me regret never noticing it before.

Tonight was a normal walk on the trail. Jessie and I were walking a bit fast because we were losing daylight, but just off the trail in the river a solitary old man stood fly fishing. He was new at the sport, according to Jessie who pointed out his neon orange fishing line skimming the water, but it looked so tranquil. I can’t imagine ever doing something that seemed so calming. I decided then and there that I needed to attempt this one day. I could imagine the water surrounding me, alone out there in the midst of the river, flicking my wrist and flinging the line. Just me and the water, first the line goes to the bank of the river and then rides the current down to the front of me. I hold the fly in the water, and then I repeat. It’s freaking zen watching it, and I am dying to attempt it.

But the real highlight of the walk was just as we came off the trail- there was a giant elk standing a little over 15 feet away from us. Our older dog Chili stood in front of Jessie, the new puppy and I and watched the elk quietly eating grass. He posed no threat, but my dog wasn’t taking chances because he’s a good boy. I couldn’t believe that it was standing that close to me. The closest I’ve been to an elk previously was watching Chevy Chase punch the Wally World mascot in National Lampoon’s Vacation. Needless to say, it was amazing.

I think (and hope) the great outdoors and I are like country music for me. When I was a kid, my grandpa always listened to WWNC (long before it was a bastion for right wing morons like Matt Mittan) and sang along with the country music that was played on the station. I remember making fun of him about how hokey the songs were. I vowed to never listen to country music. But now I play the stuff every day (along with a lot of other things). I have a soft spot for most country music that happened between 1950 and 1987. It’s never amazing music, but it is always fun.

Maybe mountaintops, waterfalls and vistas could be Randy Travis for me.  I certainly hope so.

Until tomorrow,

Be good.

A few years ago, mix CDs were an obsession of mine. I was constantly working on a compilation for someone, scheming of rare tracks and strange cover songs. I guess that this blog is an extension of that same compulsion. I can’t help it. Maybe it’s because I want to feel musically superior to someone else- oh you haven’t heard that? I’ll make you a CD- but I love people hearing songs for the first time. I love when they like it and I really like arguing with them if they hate it. It’s a compulsion that doesn’t go away.

That’s why I’ve assembled Beard Music 2010.  It started out as a continuation of a few CDs I made for Bort a while back. It’s a collection of songs featuring acoustic guitars, guys with bears, soul brothers with soul patches, some intermittent goatees and even a few lusty little Van Dykes. It’s all about dudes singing about freedom and taking it easy, and it’s something that I’m hoping will become a yearly tradition. I originally wanted to do this at Christmas, but now the idea of the CD being released during those hot summer months is exciting to me. A beard in the summer is a pretty amazing thing.

While I can’t tell you everything that is on the CD in this blog entry, I can tell you that there are songs resembling the works of Broken Social Scene, Elvis Presley, My Morning Jacket, The Isley Brothers and even a little ditty by a group of acoustic guitar strumming dudes known as America thrown in for good measure.  But I’m not entirely sure what is on the CD. I guess you’ll just have to download it for yourself.

So here it is, and feel free to check it out. Beard Music 2010. It’s like soul, man.

Beard Music 2010

Until later, be good.

Holy shit, The Hold Steady, you sure know how to work a guy over.  Last Wednesday night Jessie and I made the drive from Sylva to Athens to catch your show at the 40 Watt Club and I was completely blown away by the show.

I knew what to expect walking into the concert- I own all of the band’s albums and had seen the band two times previously. But this show might have been better than the first time I saw them in 2006 at the Grey Eagle.  Guitars played big open chords and bluesy leads, the bass and drums locked into a solid AC/DC-meets-Springsteen groove and lead singer Craig Finn ran about the stage doing his twitchy weirdo thing.

The highlights of the show for me personally were the songs from the band’s latest album Heaven is Whenever. I think it shows that the band has moved into a classic rock-ready machine that constantly turns out solid tunes.  The songs from the band’s first two albums have always been decent to me, but have always felt like long rants instead of songs. Once the band figured out how to right great choruses, it was on.

Another big moment was talking to a couple of older guys at the front of the stage. They were in their late forties and in a band- but they weren’t all about recapturing their glory years. Instead they were playing music for the same reasons that I am- it makes them feel vital, and it helps them tap back into what rock and roll meant to them, and what it meant was on display at the show last week: sweat pouring, beer drinking, arms and legs flailing and still hitting the power chords on cue rock.

This is rock and roll, people.