Recently in Music Category

I know, I know. I'm terribly behind on these pix, but I am trying to catch up. This show was on the night of March19-20 at the Playboy Rock The Rabbit party during the SXSW Music, Film and Interactive Festival and conference. It was their first show with their original lineup in, well, a long time! I'm not a big fan of the band, but I have to say, it was a blistering 45-minute set and the crowd left on a serious high! I'm posting a few pix here and after the jump, with 50+ more on Flickr, here: Jane's Addiction Reunion

All I have to say is: Rod Blagojevich, Elvis impersonator. No shit.

This might just be the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Read the New York Time blog piece by Robert Mackey, here.

Musical genius and former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr became an official member of Sheffield, UK brothers act The Cribs (twins Gary & Ryan Jarman and younger brother Ross) last year and the band have now released their first single. "We Were Aborted" is now available for free download at thecribs.com until 10am GMT on July 8th. It's fantastic, go get it!

One of my favorite new artists from the past couple of years is Nicole Atkins who, both with and without her band, The Sea played several sets at SXSW over the past couple of years and who I've seen live 4 or 5 times in the same time span. Her song "The Way It Is" gives me shivers every time I hear it. The first time I heard her excellent debut CD (which I wrote about back in November of 2007) I compared the sound to long time David Lynch collaborator, Angelo Badalamenti and what do you think I saw when I just perused Nicole's Wikipedia entry?

"Atkins also feels a kinship with Angelo Badalamenti, who has scored many of Lynch's films. She once emailed an mp3 of "The Way It Is" to Badalamenti, who is said to have replied, "I think our Sicilian great-great-great-grandparents must have laid down on a picnic blanket in the park and done something together, if you know what I mean." Atkins subsequently received an invitation to Badalamenti's home in Morristown, New Jersey to talk music."

All I have to say to that is "Ha!" At any rate, I saw Nicole at SXSW 2008 and it was a typically fantastic set and she was wearing an absolutely stunning dress. See?

More pix on my Flickr stream, here.

Last year's Spin Magazine show at Stubb's BBQ was pretty amazing, with the lineup of The Raveonettes, Vampire Weekend and X, among others. Talk about a super bill. Last month I posted some pix from this show and others and now.....X! Here's a few pix of X from the Spin show and the rest can be found on my Flickr stream.

Billy Zoom. Is there anyone cooler?

Exene Cervenka can still bring it!

As I load up hundred of pix onto Flickr, I figure I should post some samples here, too. Below are some pix of the bands mentioned in the title, plus Liverpool's The Rascals. Click on any one of them to get to my SXSW 08 Flickr set, which is still growing.

Soon to come: X, Nicole Atkins, White Rabbits, The Wombats, Tift Merritt, Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong and more We Are Standard!

First off, Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend at the Spin Magazine party at Stubb's BBQ

My hero, Billy Bragg, performing at the concert for Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue's Body of War at Stubb's.

To hell with machine guns, these bikini girls got trombones!
This is one of the craziest things I've seen in quite some time, but what are you gonna do? You gotta stand out somehow, right? I give you:

Futomomo Satisfaction and, believe it or not, a cover of the Ramones!! Catch them this March at South by Southwest!

The Scouse trio (one by way of Norway) has a new single on the way and as per usual, it's a bouncy pop tune that belie the rather deeper lyrics within. "Can't wait to wallow in self pity In my circuit board city tonight," goes the catchy refrain and having seen the band live quite a few times, I doubt any of them have a digital alter ego. Doesn't seem their style, really!

Matt @ SXSW, 2008After the jump, some more pix (and even a video) from various Wombats shows at SXSW.

On December 1st, 2008 Guess where I'll be? I'll give you a hint:

No, don't be silly. Not at a Bowie show. (I wish. The man's been virtually hidden for 5 years!) But instead at New York's Museum of Modern Art for the Thurston Moore-hosted program of Bowie videos as part of MoMA's Looking At Music exhibition. While I am excited to check out the exhibition and the other artists involved (Devo, The Beatles and John Cage among them) it's really Bowie that has me chuffed. The videos were co-organized by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and Barbara London, Associate Curator, Department of Media, MoMA.

The complete list of the program after the jump, along with some videos I'd have programmed, if I were the curator....

Sorry for the late notice, but have you got an couple hours to kill and some dollars rattling around in your wallet? Then you could do a damn sight worse than going to see The Wombats at the Blender Theatre at the Gramercy.

I've written on more than a few occasions that the Wombats are a fantastic band and dammit, everyone who takes me at my word and gives them a listen, agrees. So why not try them out?

Come on down to the show and hear Murph:

Tord:

and Dan:

Ooooh and Aaaah their way into your hearts!

And don't forget:

NOTE: This entry has been updated to clarify the beneficiary of the Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards and to complete a sentence I, uh, forgot to finish last night.

So I'm a little behind in my blogging... Well, I have an excuse or two. First of all, I have a new gig! That's right, the Rabbi has gone and gotten hisself some legitimate employment. Or at least some legitimate part time employment with a really cool start up. It's a company called Cinelan and we're a short film distribution and syndication company. Check out the website and you'll see what I mean. It's really cool!

The other reason is that I went and got myself sick with the influenza. That's right. The good money I paid for a flu shot this year did me diddly since I went and got sick, anyway. Not only that, but I got sick at the exact worst time. Smack dab in the middle of SXSW. Lovely. Thanks are due, however, to my angels of mercy Mike Tully and Agnes Varnum, who both came by with soup and medicines!

Add to that getting stuck overnight in Fort Worth on the way down due to snow in Dallas and this has been a rocky trip. (Stay tuned for pix of the rattlesnake cakes that SXSW Film Festival producer Matt Dentler and I ate, though!)

Not only that, I am trying to get my apartment in shape to be sold. HUGE job. So to paraphrase Crash Davis, I'm dealing with a lot of shit!

Due to the aforementioned snow, I missed what was apparently a pretty amazing party at Lance Armstrong's house. This, I was not happy about. It was a pre-party for the Texas Film Hall of Fame awards ceremony, which I was able to attend the following night and it was a dandy of a night. An annual benefit for the Austin Film Society (and not an official SXSW do), the cocktails, dinner, ceremony and auction are held each year at Austin Studios, a couple of miles north of the downtown Austin area. This year's honorees were ZZ Top, Morgan Fairchild, Mike Judge, Jayne Mansfield (accepted by her daughter, Mariska Hargitay) and Urban Cowboy (accepted by Deborah Winger) and the night was hosted by non other that former CBS anchor and new legend (and born/bred Texan) Dan Rather. He's way cool!

The evening went far more smoothly than most events of this size and it was actually pretty fun. Not only that, they served their pre-show cocktails in actual glassware, something some film companies should think about (I'm looking at you, Miramax!).

Here, John Person and Eugene Hernandez have a chat before the ceremony. That's variety.com managing editor Michael Jones' hand on the left.

Mariska Hargitay's speech in honor of her late mother was genuinely touching and towards the end she teared up pretty good. So did I.

More pix after the jump.

And Then There's The Music...

After 5 days of Film and Interactive screenings, panels and assorted mischief, there's music. Last year my feet hurt so badly I could barely walk in the mornings. I was under the impression that it was simply a matter of me being too old to pogo (mosh, skank, slam) but it turned out to be Plantar Fasciitis, which has now gone, so this year, I'm in the pit! (Yeah....right.)

The latest big news to come out of the SXSW camp? R.E.M., baby! They will be playing in support of their upcoming album Accelerate which, as its name implies, is apparently chock full of rock-pop goodness. That alone should be a reason to do the Snoopy Happy Dance for R.E.M. fans who are less than thrilled with their recent "adult contemporary" sound, but wait! There's more:

Also confirmed this year:

To some of my friends, people like Matt Dentler, I can be a little behind the curve, music-wise. Of course he works at possibly the best place on the planet to get the jump on new music, so I don't feel too bad about that. Then there's my nephew Michael who used to be one of the people I looked to, to learn about new music, but he went and got himself a "real" job and now he doesn't have enough time to follow these scene as closely as he used to, so now I tell HIM about new tunes. That said, for the great number of people out there, I am still what you might call "ahead of the curve" when it comes to new tunage, so without further ado, here's a pair of new CD's that actually have more in common than one might think, while being decidedly individual, too.

Nicole Atkins & The Sea - "Neptune City"

Oh lord. I have to say that not since Antony & The Johnsons have I been bowled over by such a voice and such a debut CD and to think it's all because of an email from concert promoters Live Nation. Seriously. I got the email, looked at the picture of Ms. Atkins and thought My god, she's hot. (Yes, sometimes I'm that shallow.) Then I went to her MySpace page and heard "Party's Over," "Maybe Tonight" and "Brooklyn's On Fire" and I was completely hooked.

The best thing about this CD? As fantastic as those tunes are, they aren't the best on the disc. That honor belongs to broken heart ballad extraordinaire "The Way It Is." Opening with a sensuous mix of breathy vocals, bass, strings and guitar, it evokes mid-90's Siouxsie sharing a martini and a good cry with Angelo Badalamenti, but not without a healthy dose of self-respect. For 2 verses it slinks along, threatening menace and then Atkins' voice opens up and the heavens are laid bare. Maybe I'm a little biased (genders reversed, this song is eerily appropriate to my current state of mine, in parts) but I'd like to think I can still recognize a special song when I hear one, personal emotions aside.

And in my ears, my blood is just roaring,
'cause he's the only one I've ever wanted.
I suppose that's just the way, it is.

This song shivers my timbers more than any in a LONG time.

The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963-65
Directed by: Murray Lerner

Us hipsters living in such edgy NYC neighborhoods as the Lower East Side or Prospect Heights have sunk a lot of dough into our music collections over the years and while we periodically weed through our CDs and LPs, tossing out the odd Terence Trent D'Arby or Linda Rondstat album, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who has loosened their grips on their copy of Sgt. Pepper's or Back in Black. And then there's the ubiquitous Dylan collection which necessarily includes Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. [My personal favorite is Nashville Skyline but that's getting off topic.] It's no coincidence that any serious Dylan collection includes those particular three works for it was during that seminal period when Bob Dylan folkie, became DYLAN, Spokesman of a Generation. Nowhere is that transformation more vivid than in the new documentary, Murray Lerner's The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at The Newport Folk Festival, 1963-1965. All the footage --70% of which has never been seen before-- is lovingly pieced together from those three summers and Lerner, wisely, allows the footage to speak for itself. There are no talking heads, no aging rockers' waxing philosophical, mostly just Bob Dylan playing Bob Dylan songs. Oh, there are some terrific moments with Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul & Mary, but mostly it's just Bobby Dylan, singing into the microphone while strumming away on his guitar.

Dylan had emerged from the NYC folk scene in the early 60's and had already caused quite a stir but not many of us aforementioned hipsters were around back in those days, or at least not old enough to remember just what a sensation this punk folk singer caused back in the day. Folk music was such a huge phenomenon at the time, its fans such die hard purists, that any modifications to their songs were often met with outrage and while Dylan was initially met with a certain amount of skepticism and even derision, it was impossible for anyone with a mind of their own to ignore the obvious: this skinny Jewish kid was the shit. As portrayed in the new Todd Haynes "biopic," I'm Not There, Dylan was all about persona and his particular brand of shape shifting left everyone enthralled. Over the course of The Other Side of The Mirror, we get to witness one of these morphings right before our eyes; that of a shy self-conscious folkie into a cocky rock star. It's worth the price of admission, I can assure you.

It's quite possible that Of Montreal is the best live band in the history of live music. Yes, I am fully aware of how hyperbolic that is. Sue me.

I'm also aware that this clip isn't live. It's on account that the band is so amazing live that no human can accurately capture the genius on any current recording medium.* Perhaps sometime in the future there will be a way.... Pray that there is.

*Or it could just be that most live clips of them have lousy audio.....

Ok, I lied. This one's pretty damn cool: