Archive for the 'Concert Reviews' Category
SLIMMED-DOWN TUBES SPRING FROM NY ON WORLD TOUR – B.B. KING’S 05-31-09
Author: Jeff Boule
(Photo by Lynn Vala)
If you are a bit longer-in-the-tooth as I am, you remember a time when MTV played music videos, those alleged promotional devices that were short-form movies scripted to coincide with the lyrics and tone of the song being promoted. If you consider this time period (from 1981 to about 1992) when we were still recovering from the post-disco era, music that suddenly had images to accompany the sounds seemed like a logical place for this 7-piece-plus musical theater troupe of a band. Since their inception through their last major release, they have been minimally a 7-piece. TWO guitars, TWO keyboardists, bass, drums and vocals with occasionally added female vocals, dancers, roller skaters, actors, sometimes just the guys backstage would walk around on stage and it would be so heavily populated no one would notice.
read comments (0)Last Of Last Of The New-Wave Riders – Utopia Storm Tokyo, 1979
Author: Jeff Boule
Utopia bid adieu after a night on stage. Photo by Coming Age.
It is painfully; finally time to wrap up the on-going series of reviews tackling the Utopia box set Last Of The New Wave Riders. This set features Utopia playing to the American-culture-starved Japanese inquisitive yet reserved audiences. Japanese audiences were the most accepting of the some-time obscure and were willing to hear out the overtly obscure. No better place to play Utopia’s material. Unless you are Todd Rundgren and in your enthusiasm to entertain you do something that mortifies the people in the first few rows.
Acid Mothers Temple for beginners (like me!)
Author: Doctor B
I’d only heard a few of Acid Mothers Temple’s recordings before I saw them last April in Philadelphia. One of them was a seven-inch which sounded much to me like the output of any number of Japanoise bands, such as The Boredoms or The Machine Gun TV. Another was a live recording from 2004 which had them sounding like Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd jamming with Blue Cheer with members of Pere Ubu sitting in. This turned out to be merely a fraction of a fraction of the output of this extremely prolific Japanese psychedelic-rock band One day while I was in Philadelphia visiting friends, I heard on the radio that Acid Mothers Temple’s 2009 North American tour would bring them to a club in Philadelphia called Johnny Brenda’s. So I decided to make the trip and check them out. Read the rest of this entry »
LAST OF THE NEW WAVE RIDERS, UTOPIA LAND ON THE WRONG PLANET
Author: Jeff Boule
Roger Powell from Utopia Photo by Coming Age
For those of you following my blogs, you know that some of my earlier posts were eradicated through the magic of ones and zeros. The reason I am bothering to repost them is that some are referred to in other blogs. Then when the hapless reader looks for those blogs they aren’t even there! This blog is BRAND NEW!!! This section of the box set Last Of The New Wave Riders never made it to press as concerts came first. I won’t be making that mistake this time. We will finish the box set and THEN begin an onslaught of new reviews. Upcoming will be The Tubes from B.B. Kings in NYC and then the Nine Inch Nails FAREWELL TOUR. Yup, you heard it right, Trenty is hangin’ up Nails. At least for a while. New Tori Amos album Abnormally Attracted To Sin will soon be reviewed here, and hopefully some new releases as well, as well as dipping our toes in some literary territory.
It ain’t all about Utopia, but we are going to review two more discs from the box set then we have all new events and music to sink our teeth into.
Utopia’s Last Of The New Wave Riders Hurtles Towards Oblivion
Author: Jeff Boule
Photo By Jeff Boule
Once again, we revisit, review and revise a blog lost to zeros and ones…
As we recover from the last two back-to-back weeks of the Deface Tour, we need to take it easy. With this in mind, we will be doing an abbreviated review (read: not a two-parter this week). We are continuing with our examination of the Utopia box set, Last Of The New Wave Riders. A set of live performance CDs spanning from early in Utopia’s career up to almost the end. This particular show, the Oblivion Tour, is a single disc. The only one in the box set that isn’t a two CD set. VALUE!
BACH BEETHOVEN BROTZMANN
Author: Anthony Medici
It was the second day of a business trip to Phoenix, in the never-more-aptly named “Valley of the Sun,” where the temperature hovered around 100* and the sun and heat felt like a hair dryer blowing in your face. I had used my post-business “happy hour” scouting some local record stores (a story for another post). Heat-struck and foot-worn, I was consoling myself with a pizza and beer, when my cell phone signaled a text message. It was a ten second clip of German free jazz avatar Peter Brotzmann performing that night at D.C club Velvet Lounge, sent by a friend to offer a small degree of consolation for having missed the performance. Opening that little video clip in the desert night was like a visitation from another world, as if an old Norse god, perhaps Wotan himself, decided to offer a glimpse of an unseen world for just a fleeting moment; unlike the place I inhabited at the moment, this one was dark, mysterious, loud, seemingly violent and stormy , yet compelling. It lifted my spirit and increased my expectation for Brotzmann’s next performance at Wind Up Space in Baltimore, this past Saturday. Read the rest of this entry »
Utopia’s Last Of The New Wave Riders Deface The Beatles Music (Part Two)
Author: Jeff Boule
Photo By Jeff Boule
Picking up from where we (mercifully) left off last week, we are smack-dab in the middle of what is part of the box set from Todd Rundgren and Utopia chronicling their Deface The Music tour. To recap, Deface The Music was Utopia’s tribute to the Beatles. Rundgren and Sulton have frequently stated that the Beatles were tremendous influences on them both. Powell and Wilcox are more comfortable in the jazz realm, but also have Beatle-influence (come on, everybody has Beatle influence, even if you didn’t like them, odds are, many of the artists you DO like were influenced by the Beatles so vicariously, you are influenced).
But this isn’t about the Beatles, it’s about Utopia, maybe for this tour we should call them Beatleopia.
The Dead Tear Down the Spectrum
Author: Andrew Overton
I never had the chance to see the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia died when I was 7, but since high school I’ve been a student of jam–the Dead, Phish, Allman Brothers, etc. I not only have admired the musicianship of these bands, but envied their fans for the epics concerts they were able to attend.
My parents, both well aware of this envy, gave me an early birthday present this week: tickets to see the remaining Dead at the Spectrum. Warren Haynes (lead guitar) and Jeff Chimenti (keyboard/organ) were asked to join the original members Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann for an American tour. For most of the tour the setlists have been packed full of hits and Saturday night was no exception. It became almost immediately apparent to me that these old fellas could still play.
Whole Lotta Utopia Goin’ On
Author: Jeff Boule
Good readers I return from the Grand Parade Of Life-full Packaging (to paraphrase Peter Gabriel) where I am triumphant and have all the scars to show for it. Some of the those scars involve taking a thirteen-hundredth look at some previously published blogs that, for some inexplicable reason just, disappeared from the site. If this seems familiar, you are NOT having a Déjà vu, it is repeating the mantra (again from Gabriel) “Man feed machine, machine feed man”.
Punk Jazz: The Thing at Kung Fu Necktie
Author: Anthony Medici
No, not “Thing,” that disembodied hand that creeped you out in “The Addams Family.” No, “The Thing” I’m talking about is the kick-butt Scandinavian free jazz trio, with Swede Mats Gustafsson on tenor sax, and Norwegians Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass, and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums. The band has been touring the U.S. behind its new album, “”Bag It,” and a new CD box set. These guys are as much influenced by the Ramones, Sex Pistols, and The Clash, as they are by Coltrane, Ornette, and Albert Ayler. When you go, you know it is going to be loud, intense and full of high-voltage energy. I could feel that energy traveling way down to DC, enough so to make me drop what I was doing and make the two and a half hour trek to club Kung Fu Necktie (no, I have no idea either what the name means) on North Front Street, in Philadelphia, this past Friday night. Read the rest of this entry »
Going Dutch in Baltimore
Author: Anthony Medici
Seeing Filligar Live
Author: Eliza Varner
Last Friday I had the opportunity to go to a Live Campus show here at Dartmouth. Held in the commonground of Collis (our student activities center), with a minimal donation, we could go see several live bands as well as get pizza, soda, and free beer (21+ with ID). What a perfect way to spend the first Friday night of Spring Term. Read the rest of this entry »
Animal Collective Live In London
Author: Andrew Overton
Last night I finally was privileged to experience the magic of Animal Collective live. The band (less Deakin) has been tweaking many of the tracks that eventually ended up on the brilliant Merriweather Post Pavilion. Since the ground-breaking album dropped on the 20th of January AC has only done four gigs in the U.S. so very few Americans have heard their favorite Merriweather tracks live. I am fortunate enough to be studying in England and was able to catch them towards the end of their European tour at the HMV Forum in London. Read the rest of this entry »
B.B. King’s Latest–Do Yourself a Favor
Author: John Moses
There must be something about the blues that keeps its disciples young. B.B. King turned 83 last September (16th). I saw him last June at the Chicago Blues Festival, when he headlined the festival on a rainy Sunday night. We were getting soaked, but the crowd kept growing, right up until show time. He walked onto stage very slowly and he performed sitting, as he has for a few years. Old age might make walking difficult, but it hasn’t silenced his booming blues growl and it sure hasn’t weakened his guitar skills. Read the rest of this entry »
Right Place, Wrong Time: A Jazz Messenger Comes to D.C.
Author: Anthony Medici
The liner notes to his recent CD, “Sketch,” put it bluntly: “David Schnitter is the jazz world’s forgotten messenger, a marvelous musician who just happened to be in the right place before the right time.” Except I would amend that statement to read: “…in the right place after the right time.” For Schnitter was not just a “jazz messenger,” but a “Jazz Messenger,” one of the members of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, a graduate of Blakey’s famed College of Hard Bop, that saw such other alumni as Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Jymie Merritt, Cedar Walton, Curtis Fuller, and Bobbie Timmons. I went to Twins Jazz last night to hear Schnitter and to see if the jazz message was still being delivered. Read the rest of this entry »
Dance of the Rain Gods: Crispell and Hemingway in Baltimore
Author: Anthony Medici
The rain has played a soggy ostinato to my recent jazz adventuring. A cold, hard rain fell as I set forth for Baltimore Saturday to catch the Marilyn Crispell/Gerry Hemingway duo performance at An Die Musik. The Beltway was choked with traffic and fender benders littered the highway shoulders. “Surely,” my Inner Couch Potato protested, “it would be better to stay home, slumber on the couch, listen to a record.” But I have learned that regret is a stronger motivator than reluctance, and I would have regretted missing this performance by these two Guggenheim Fellows and alumni of Anthony Braxton’s famed Quartet. Read the rest of this entry »
Well here is your intrepid blogger, deep inside enemy territory. I mean crazy deep; I can count at least three laser-sight dots on my flak vest. Firstly, I am sure I have bad-mouthed this venue, as it likes to jerk its customers around. If I haven’t maybe I should now. For one show they offer you luxurious accommodation at a particular price, and then for a next show, you pay that same price and get a barstool. CRIPES!! That was a shot close to my ear! Next, I MUST address some recent King Crimson issues (Wetton was the bass player in the`70’s incarnation): If you all think I am spewing sour grapes as I won’t be able to see the 40th Anniversary King Crimson shows alleged to be taking place on the west coast, I refer you to the August 2008 archive where my review of the August 16th Nokia Theatre performance in New York City lie in state for all to examine. If my ramblings got the Brain and the Bald One to reconsider their heinous acts, so be it! I would be open to ghost authoring the Bald One’s book. He once referred to himself as dumb-as-a-shovel… BAIL OUT!!! That was a concussion bomb, about thirty feet away. I need to interject that should I not make it out of this review alive, please scour the wooded areas of Mount Juliet, TN for my remains. Lastly, I am inside the stomping ground of the Birdwoman, the pipeline to the Bald One. If I fart, she tells The Bald One. DUCK!!!!
Spirits Rejoice! With the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble in Baltimore
Author: Anthony Medici
I was flat, under the weather, not inclined to move from the couch. All week long, co-workers were shuffling about, afflicted with flu, colds, sneezing, coughing- you get the picture. Some of those flu bugs seemed to have jumped ship and joined me. On top of that, even the weather was flat: cold, damp, with rain and sleet in the forecast. Plenty of excuses to stay home. But the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble was playing at An Die Musik in Baltimore, and I knew I had to go. It was a night “wondrous strange.” Read the rest of this entry »
Kasim Sulton, Live In Atlanta… Or live in your living room!
Author: Jeff Boule
When I first heard about Utopia’s new bass player back in 1977, I wondered if he would last. “Who is this Kaseem Sooltan?” I asked. The answer is extraordinary talent, a level-headed sensibility and a close eye on Todd Rundgren have kept him working with industry names such as Mick Jagger, Joan Jett, Patti Smyth and most notably as musical director for Meatloaf, as well as being part of the foundation of the Bat Out Of Hell original album and a right-hand man to Rundgren since Utopia’s evaporation in 1992.
Road Trip!
Author: Anthony Medici
Literally just back from an enjoyable but tiring road trip to New York City; I-95 seems to still be spooling out in front of me as I write this. I decided Friday to take an impromptu road trip to visit my daughter in college in Brooklyn (the new hip place in New York), my brother in Joisey (New Jersey to you), buy a few records, and take in the Saturday Art for Art Show at The Living Theater on the Lower East Side. Left Friday night and was back in DC for lunch on Sunday. The trip is a blur of images, sights, sounds, tastes: delicious pizza at Pompilio’s in Westwood, NJ, traffic jams noon and midnight in NYC; LPs and more LPs; and blasts of passionate free jazz, and the sinuous movement of skilled dancers. Read the rest of this entry »