POSTS FROM APRIL 14-17, APRIL 22, APRIL 23, APRIL 26, 2006
APRIL 26, 2006 Hogan (and that is how she prefers to be called, for some reason -- last name only) was in a countrier than usual mood tonight, playing some tasty and twangy covers of obscure Nashville songs as well as a few of her originals. Less jazzy than she has been in recent years. Either style is fine with me. I just want to know: WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO PUT OUT ANOTHER ALBUM???? WE NEED IT!!! Scott Miller is one of the nicest and funniest musicians I've interviewed, with a cool combination of rural Southern frankness and a sharp intellect. He's also quite a good songwriter, though I have to admit I haven't kept up on his music lately. (My copy of his Inside/Outside disc was stolen from my car a couple of years ago, and I haven't gotten around to replacing it... And I just picked up his new CD at this show.) I played his old album Thus Always to Tyrants in preperation for this show and found myself thinking, "Home come I don't listen to this more often?" The show featured several songs from that disc, which sounded great, especially the should-be-a-classic "Is There Room on the Cross for Me." A couple of songs Miller played solo acoustic sounded good, too. The new songs I was not so familiar with... They seemed fine, but I'll need to hear them on disc before I decide how they hold up. Some nice covers, including Neil Young's "Hawks and Doves." SEE PHOTOS OF SCOTT MILLER AND THE COMMONWEALTH.
APRIL 23, 2006 READ MY REVIEW FOR PIONEER PRESS. APRIL 22, 2006 I wonder how many of the Northwestern students at this concert know how lucky they were. The double bill of MMJ and the New Pornographers was already so good that it was hard to believe these bands were coming to Evanston to play in a gym. And then it turned out that the "special guest" would be Stephen Malkmus playing a rare solo acoustic set. And then it turned out that the New Pornographers would be playing with Neko Case in the lineup -- a rarity these days, since Case has been busy with her own solo concerts.
Malkmus was a little awkward at first, having some trouble with guitar tuning and guitar effects (the loud bursts of noise he threw into a couple of songs, including Silver Jews' "Blue Arrangement"), but awkwardness is part of what Maklmus' music has always been about. Reduced to one voice and one guitar, his songs are still pretty quirky. It was nice to hear him doing that great Pavement quasi-hit, "Range Life." The set was abbreviated, ending after just 35 minutes or so, since the concert was on a tight schedule. Or as Malkmus put it, "The Man is everywhere." SEE PHOTOS OF STEPHEN MALKMUS.
The New Pornographers sounded very good at the recent show opening for Belle and Sebastian, but they sounded great tonight. That's the difference that the presence of Neko Case makes. Sure, she's ostensibly just a backup vocalist and occasional lead singer in this band, which is Carl Newman's vehicle. But her vocals are so strong that they transform many of the tunes into double-lead-vocals. SEE PHOTOS OF THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS.
My Morning Jacket opened with "At Dawn," which used to be their standard opening song but had fallen out of recent MMJ tours. Really nice to hear that again. (The album At Dawn is still my favorite by these guys.) Jim James is still buried under hair, though better groomed than the "Cousin It" look of a few years ago. Other members of the band looked like they had actually been in a barbershop recently. MMJ didn't do anything especially new or different tonight, but they excelled at what they also do so well -- long, passionate and powerful jams. SEE PHOTOS OF MY MORNING JACKET. Kudos the Northwestern student organization A&O Productions for booking such a great show. READ MY REVIEW FOR PIONEER PRESS. APRIL 14-17, 2006
My first visit to New York since August 2001 (yes, just a couple of weeks before 9/11) began with walking around the former site of the World Trade Center. In fact, I walked past this fenced-off vacant space several times over the course of four days… until it became almost routine. Still, how strange to see all that emptiness where the towers used to be. The closest thing to a shrine is actually across the street from the WTC site, over at St. Paul’s Chapel, a church that’s been open since 1766, with centuries-old tombstones in the churchyard. The inside of the chapel remains decorated with 9/11 banners.
The Chelsea galleries had plenty of big art installations, which were also dominant at the Whitney Biennial. This major show of what’s happening in contemporary art had its share of interesting works, but it also had too much mediocre video art. Give an artist a video camera, and too often you get a half-baked bit of badly filmed and badly edited (or totally unedited) movie… projected onto a wall in a dark room, where it becomes “video art.” That being said, I do like the way the presentation of video art changes your expectations – narrative is no longer the thing. Other works in the Biennial followed in Duchamp’s and Warhol’s footsteps, appropriating other objects and turning them into “art.” OK, I get the concept… and now I’m bored. I did like plenty of the art at this show, however. My highlights were the works by Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Kenneth Anger (taking on Mickey Mouse as his latest icon) Troy Brauntuch, Carter, Peter Doig, Pierre Huyghe (the best of the video artists) Daniel Johnston, Liz Larner, Marilyn Minter, Jim O'Rourke (yeah, the same guy who records with Wilco and Sonic Youth, featured here as a video-installation auteur) Ed Paschke and Nari Ward.
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SXSW PHOTOS (Artists marked with an asterisk have one photo; others are photo galleries.) ART BRUT 2005 RECAP
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ALL CONTENTS © 2006 BY ROBERT
LOERZEL. PLEASE CONTACT ME FOR PERMISSION TO PUBLISH PHOTOS OR OTHER MATERIAL.
No New York trip is complete with a stop at the 
I caught a performance of Peter Morris’ play 
Some highlights from walking around the gallery scene in the Chelsea neighborhood: 
David Hare’s 
The 
