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JAN. 25, 2006
JEFF TWEEDY
at the Abbey Pub

READ MY REVIEW IN PIONEER PRESS.

SEE PHOTOS OF JEFF TWEEDY.

SET LIST
The Ruling Class
Summer Teeth
(Was I) In Your Dreams
Bob Dylan's 49th Beard
Please Tell My Brother
Blasting Fonda
Pieholden Suite
Is That The Thanks I Get? (new song, title uncertain)
Airline To Heaven
I'm The Man Who Loves You
Heavy Metal Drummer
New Madrid
ELT
Someday Soon|
ENCORE 1
A Shot In The Arm
Hoodoo Voodoo
Henry & the H Bombs
Theologians
Spiders (Kidsmoke)
I Can't Keep From Talking
ENCORE 2
Acuff-Rose

JAN. 27, 2006
THE BOTTLE ROCKETS
at Schubas, Chicago

Wow... what a night. I'd only seen the Bottle Rockets once before. Saw them a few months ago at the Beat Kitchen after years of intending to see them. Both of these shows were fun rock shows by a tight band.

This one, the last in the series of Gary Schepers benefit concerts, was extra special because of an appearance by a special guest -- Jeff Tweedy. Standing as I was near the stage, I couldn't help noticing Tweedy and his wife, Sue Miller, slipping in through the side door and standing by the edge of the stage. I always feel a little weird spotting someone like that at a concert. Don't stare. He just wants to have fun like anyone else. So I find myself watching him once in a while from the corner of my eye. He's watching the concert and clapping between songs like any fan.

Of course, it's no surprise when Brian Hennemann of the Bottle Rockets invites Tweedy onto the stage late in the concert. For three songs, the BoRox (as they're known in fan shorthand) become ... WilBoRox? Tweedy picks up an electric guitar and they launch into the Neil Young classic "Walk On," with Tweedy and Hennemann trading lead vocals. Then they do two of the songs that Wilco played on "A.M.," back when Hennemann was playing guitar with the band: "Passenger Side" and "Casino Queen." Tweedy looks like he's having fun.

Henneman said the gaps between his meetings with Tweedy are growing progressively shorter. First, they went, I think he said, five years without seeing each other. Then four. Now it's been three or two. He joked that they'll soon be together on a reality TV show, Henneman and Tweedy hanging out in an apartment and writing songs.

Earlier in the show, Henneman had told a story about touring with Uncle Tupelo and having Gary Schepers come on board as the sound man. At their first stop in Denver, Tweedy lined up sleeping quarters at some fan's house but Schepers insisted, "I don't sleep on any little girl's floor," and so they went to a Motel 6 for the first time -- a life-changing event, according to Henneman.

This story came up again when Tweedy took the stage and they reminisced about eating really bad food on the road.

Henneman gave a nice little intro to "Passenger Side," recalling himself as a kid who could barely cut it in the studio when they recorded that. Tweedy's expression made it obvious not to take the story too seriously.

Concert performances by "special guests" are often superfluous, but this was clearly a perfect example of how well they can work. This was sort of magical Chicago music moment that I live for.

Now, you may be asking, where are the photos? Well, like an idiot, I did not bring my camera with me to this concert. I'll never leave home without it again.

Here's a picture by Chris Constance from http://www.postcard fromhell.com/gallery/v/B-Rox+and+Tweedy/:

SET LIST
Lucky Break
Kit Kat Clock
Alone In Bad Company
Every Kinda Everything
Get Down River
Middle Man
Mountain To Climb
Happy Anniversary
Gas Girl
Smoking 100's Alone
I'll Be Coming Around
$1000 Car
Gravity Fails
Indianapolis
Welfare Music
Walk On (Tweedy & Henneman on vocals)
Passenger Side (Tweedy on vocals)
Casino Queen (Tweedy on vocals)
ENCORE
Slo Tom's (request)
Cartoon Wisdom (request)
Nancy Sinatra
Crossroads

JAN. 28, 2006
BANG! BANG! and HEALTHY WHITE BABY
at the Double Door

Four bands were playing at this showcase organized by a zine called The Crutch (sorry, never heard of it before...), and I showed up in time for the last two bands: Bang! Bang! and Healthy White Baby.

I've seen Bang! Bang! calling its music "sex rock," which seems like a gimmick to me. Like other rock music isn't about sex? Come on. But it's definitely a band with sex appeal (well, at least bassist and singer Greta Fine is sexy, from my standpoint...) And their songs (which I'd never heard before tonight's show) were exciting and energetic. This is definitely a band I plan to check out again.

The club was crowded, and the response to Bang! Bang! was fairly frenzied, so it was a little disappointed to see the audience dissipate before Healthy White Baby took the stage. The crowd was smaller but still appreciative. As the band set up, I was wondering, "Where's Laurie Stirratt?" Later in the concert, guitarist-vocalist Danny Black explained that she couldn't play the show because of some family responsibilities, and rather than cancel the concert, the band brought in a substitute bassist (introduced only as "Jeff").

It was a good performance of the songs from Healthy White Baby's 2005 debut (which has grown on me -- I think I underrated it initinally), plus one goofy cover, Maxine Nightingale's 1976 disco hit, "Right Back Where We Started From." HWB's songs remind me a little of the Black Keys, with their gritty blues-rock riffs.

SEE PHOTOS OF BANG! BANG!

SEE PHOTOS OF HEALTHY WHITE BABY.

JAN. 31, 2006

The results of the Village Voice's critics' poll are out, and not surprisingly, Kanye West's Late Registration finished at No. 1. Personally, I don't think West's music is all that great -- I can hear some innovative musical layers on his record, and some of the songs are very strong, but as a whole, it just doesn't click with me. Then again, I know I'm not the best judge of hip-hop.

For the second year, I got a chance to vote in this poll. Here are the albums and singles I voted for, and the places where they ended up in the overall poll. I knew some of my choices would fall way down on the list, while others would place high. As it turned out, four of my top 10 album choices made the poll's top 20. The singles list is always more difficult for me to decide on. What is a single these days, anyway? Since you can buy practically any song as a download, I consider any track on an album from last year eligible for the singles list. Hence, my list is more like a list of favorite songs than a list of the best radio hits of 2005. That said, I did try to choose a few songs that were the "singles" or videos from albums that I liked. Only one of my choices made Pazz & Jop's top 10 singles.

ALBUMS
1. Sleater-Kinney, The Woods -- 4
2. Amadou & Mariam, Dimanche a Bamako -- 13
3. Devin Davis, Lonely People of the World, Unite! -- 343
4. Sons and Daughters, The Repulsion Box -- 192
5. Andrew Bird, The Mysterious Production of Eggs -- 49
6. The Go! Team, Thunder Lightning Strike -- 19
7. M. Ward, Transistor Radio -- 104
8. Sufjan Stevens, Illinois -- 3
9. Brakes, Give Blood – 254
10. Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Naturally – 77

SINGLES
1. Sleater-Kinney, “Jumpers” -- 112
2. Robbie Fulks, “Georgia Hard” – 536*
3. Gorillaz/De La Soul, “Feel Good Inc.” – 4
4. Devin Davis, “Giant Spiders” – 536*
5. The Go! Team, “Ladyflash” – 183
6. Spoon, “Sister Jack” – 60
7. Sons and Daughters, “Dance Me In” – 235
8. The New Pornographers, “Twin Cinema” – 235
9. M. Ward, “Radio Campaign” – 536*
10. Andrew Bird, “A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left” – 536*

* -- I was the only critic to vote for these songs.

Click here to go to the Voice's Pazz & Jop page, which has the complete list of winning albums and singles, individual critics' ballots and essays. Here's my ballot at the site...

Click here for the Best Albums of 2005 article I posted here earlier, or HERE for the Pioneer Press story I wrote on the same topic.

 

MP3's AND VIDEOS
POSTED FEB. 5, 2006

"ANOTHER SUNNY DAY" BY BELLE AND SEBSTIAN is up at the Matador Records site, from the new album The Life Pursuit, coming out Feb. 7. More sunnily superb music from Belle & Sebastian.

All sorts of cool old video from TV shows and such is up at WWW.YOUTUBE.COM... although the legality is questionable. See them while you can. Just search for Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash or the Sex Pistols for some great old clips of those performers. The quality of the videos and the streaming is hit or miss, and information on where the clips are from can be suspect or altogether absent. Here's a fun one: Tom Waits making an appearance on "Fernwood Tonight" with Martin Mull and Fred Willard.

I was hunting around on the Web for that infamous Orson Welles blooper tape (Orson ranting as he takes part in a TV commercial for frozen foods). It's always been one of my favorites. Even the way he coughs or says "yes" has become funny to me. I once heard an extended version of this with a little bit of additional dialogue, but I haven't been able to find it again. In the meantime, I discovered a funny video clip of Orson Welles drunkenly trying to deliver his lines for a wine commercial. It's at the aforementioned youtube, but it's easier to view the clip at VICELAND, which has a disturbingly humorous collection called "TOUCHING PEOPLE - Our Top 10 Outsider Videos."

Despite some searching, I haven't found any Japanese animations that are quite as bafflingly wonderful as those KIKKOMAN clips that were all the rage a few years ago. But these are suitably weird: "THE SONG OF THE GUITARIST," "KIMISHINE," KIMISHINE (GIRLS VERSION)" and a "NEWS" message of some sort. Click here for the whole menu of YOGATORI films. And here's the ENGLISH VERSION of KIKKOMAN (which does little to illuminate what the heck this is all about) and the other classic, BANANA AND SHRIMP BOAT TIME.

The much-hyped ARCTIC MONKEYS can be seen in a couple of videos over at the Domino Records site.

THE RACONTEURS, the new band with Jack White, Brendan Benson, Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler) has a cool Web site (designed to look like an older computer interface from the days before the World Wide Web got stylish) with two songs available for streaming. The songs can also be downloaded over at SCENESTARS, which also has new tracks from Sufjan Stevens and Morrissey.

WHO OR WHAT WAS THE WILHELM? It's an outlandish recording of a man screaming that has popped up in dozens of movies over the years, a favorite of Hollywood's sound guys, who often stick it onto a soundtrack as a sort of in joke. The public radio show "ON THE MEDIA" recently broadcast a fascinating piece on this. Click here to see the transcript and hear an audio stream version of the story. My favorite use of "The Wilhelm" is its appearance in the middle of a song in the Judy Garland version of "A Star is Born." The original sourcce recording, from the 1951 film "Distant Drums," was labeled " Man Being Eaten by Alligator." (Now that I look at the Web page, I see that this was originally broadcast in 2001. That must have been a rerun I heard lately; in any case, it was new to me -- and well worth hearing.)

MP3's AND VIDEOS
POSTED FEB. 10, 2006

CENTRO-MATIC's new album is one of the year's most anticipated... Well, at least I'm anticipating it with some excitement. The entire album, FORT RECOVERY, is now available through audio streaming at the Misa Records site. And mp3's can be downloaded for the songs "Triggers and Trash Heaps" and "Calling Thermatico."

FEB. 10, 2006
THE WRENS
at the Norris University Center, Evanston

The Norris University Center on Northwestern University's Evanston campus ranks high on the list of the crappiest venues where I've ever seen a rock concert... but sometimes, the most memorable shows happen in these out-of-the-way and less-than-ideal places. The Wrens showed that the limitations of a venue are no obstacle to performing a great rock concert.

The lighting was abysmal -- super dark for most of the show, ultra bright for one song played with the house lights one. (See above photo.) The limited lighting prompted Kevin Whelan of the Wrens to remark sarcastically, "What the hell kind of rock show is this?" And while the sound was pretty bad during the very little bit of the opening bands that I caught (I walked in as the last of three opening bands was finishing up), it wasn't too bad for the Wrens, at least from where I was standing, up near the stage.

While the Wrens have their share of loud rock songs, some of the most remarkable moments came when the room got very, very quiet for the songs played on piano or with just a few notes on the guitar. You could hear the unamplified clicking noise Greg Whelan was making with a little percussion device in the palm of his hand on one song.

The Wrens mostly played songs from The Meadowlands, their last and most familiar album. (This concert was also a great chance to buy their early, out-of-print CDs over at the merch table.) The crowd, mostly college students, knew these songs well and gave the Wrens a very appreciative response. Watching Kevin Whelan leap around the stage and ham it up is truly entertaining.

The Wrens are an interesting live band. Their songs sounded as if they'd been broken down into the simplest of building blocks. At times, a guitar riff or percussion part sounded a little out of synch or a bit off, but then when the rest of the music kicked in, it was exactly right.

Kudos to the student organization NiteSkool for booking this show.

READ MY INTERVIEW WITH GREG WHELAN OF THE WRENS...and the TIMES OF LONDON also an interview with the Wrens.

SEE PHOTOS OF THE WRENS.