Wednesday, December 31, 2003
Tonight I'm going to the hippest, most exclusive party on the East Coast. If you see me, you know you're there. If you don't, well, there's always next year. posted by Alex 12/31/2003 02:15:41 PM Link Tuesday, December 30, 2003
What I do believe is that it is a healthy and constructive exercise in making sense of the onslaught of modern life. My laziness is really avoidance based in a fear of my own mediocrity and numbness spawned by the previously mentioned onslaught. So, fuck it. Here goes. Top 10 + All-Time Shows 1. Sonic Youth, CBGB Friday, June 24,1988 Daydream Nation debut material Knees pressed up against the low CB's stage, it was 75 minutes of perfection. This was the third or fourth time I saw SY. I was well obsessed with everything they had released. Standing mere feet from Lee Ranaldo's famous guitar cabinet with the target on the front. The sound was molten. I had chills. It was a ride. It was everything you could ever want a live rock show to be: personal, yet completely new, ecstatic, sublime. It was one of those moments where you knew you were right in the middle of it. This was birth. It was new. It was great. No one who wasn't experiencing it right then could know. It was brand new information. New sounds. New feelings. New heights. The band debuted the Daydream nation material, which I believe was written during the first part of 1988. I don't recall hearing any of it before that show. The amazing thing was that they played nothing but new material during this performance and it was so good and immediately connecting that you didn't need to be familiar with it to be taken in by it. Here's the set list from SonicYouth.com The Wonder Hyperstation Rain King Teen Age Riot 'Cross the Breeze Hey Joni Candle Kissability Eliminator Jr. Silver Rocket 2. The Ex with Tom Cora, Scrabbling at the Lock tour, Maxwell's, late 1989 or early 1990 A life changing performance. Devoid of cliche, The Ex and Tom Cora were able to prove that music can be a force for change. The performance was a clear demonstration of the role of creativity, music and art in a world outside of marketing and consumption. The Ex's European folk-tinged punk and smart bold anarchist message was a perfect marriage with Tom Cora's avant-jazz cello playing. The best recorded record of this, "Scrabbling at the Lock," is brilliant but still falls short of the power of their combined live performances. Through it all it was Cora's haunting cello playing tag with the didactic vocals of Jos/G.W. Sok. At times the drums took center stage with an almost narrative melodic line, contrapunto with Cora, while the guitars hammered out a percussive base. Almost beyond words. Drove me to paint the band's logo on my leather jacket. 3. The Jesus Lizard. Goat Tour, 2 consecutive nights Maxwell's, then CBGB, 1991 Steve Albini described them as "the world's greatest rock band" about this time. I would have to agree that at that moment they held the title. Nirvana was waiting in the wings, having only released Bleach. The Jesus Lizard were unquestionably masters of the small club performance in a way no one else has surpassed. David Yow looked like a broken, wasted imp off stage both before and after the show. But during it, he was alive in a way most of us can only dream about. At the show I remember, the band starts in, probably with Here Comes Dudley. Yow is off stage or crouching behind David Wm. Sims' bass cabinet. The drums and the bass are churning. Duane Denison's guitar line arcs in, a comet on an Earthbound collision course. Yow appears, shirtless, knees bent, legs wide. His body thin and defined from malnutrition and constant exercise--the true form of the rock god. Only Iggy looks better/worse. He is grinning. Both middle fingers come up, taunting the audience, taunting the music, taunting the expectations. He knows what's coming. The audience thinks it does, but is mistaken. "That woman's crayzzyyyyyyy," Yow howls into the hand-cupped mic, further distorting his tortured voice. At the same time he launches himself from the stage into the audience with such ferocity the people lurch back and away in a primal fear response. Yow hits the grimy Maxwell's floor and hooks himself around the leg of a girl, who is truly frightened. Yow is gross, dirty, and he won't let go. "She's the mistress of a man who's crazy too," Yow continues. The girl is the mistress, unwilling but trapped. And my name is Dudley. Yow hangs on for way too long, probably a full minute. He's pushed performance into assault territory. The girl's friends pull him off her leg. He staggers into them--and they are way more willing to engage in his tableau, allowing him to smear his now sweating form all over them. Yow retreats to the stage, not yet willing to push the edges of homoeroticism and rock audience interaction--a place he was more and more willing to go later in his career. He did expose himself during the set, pulling his scrotum and dick from his pants in a truly infantile display that would have been pathetic had it not been set to the gorgeous cacophony of the band. Every move he made, every guttural squawk from his throat, was elevated by the vibrant incantations of the band. Serrano's Piss Christ on stage. 4. The Cure, Pier 54 1986 Head on the Door tour This show was The Cure poised on the doorstep of mega-stardom. A huge show, with legions of fans, the band in top shape. The stage was backlit with the NY midtown skyline, lit windows and buildings etched against the darkening sky. A lighting scheme fit for Magritte. To the left of the stage was/is the USS Enterprise, her decks filled with naval warplanes strung with lights and shimmering, a psychedelic depiction of US military might. I don't know if it really was the first song, but I seem to remember the band opening with Shake Dog Shake. Killer. There was a huge sampling of songs from Pornography, The Top, and Faith/Seventeen seconds mixed in with possibly the entire Head On the Door collection. This show was also at the peak of my Cure fandom. The timing between my psyche and the Robert Smith zeitgeist was never better matched. 5. Radiohead, Liberty State Park, NJ, August 16th 2001 Outside. The stage back open to frame the Statue of Liberty. Less than a month before the September 11 attacks. The world seemed a different place, but it wasn't. Brilliant performance. Not flawless, but inspiring. Radiohead proving you can experiment with scale and still perform for an audience of thousands. You have to be good enough. At one point, Thom Yorke and bassist Colin Greenwood performed a new song with Greenwood stumbling along sight-reading music on a stand and Yorke's voice cracking as he played piano. But the fact they were willing to risk it in front of 10,000 made every point you can think of. They didn't care. They were comfortable. It's not about perfection. They suck like everyone at times. They're great in spite of themselves. They are willing to risk. 6. Fugazi, Rutgers Athletic Center, 1989 Pretty much Margin Walker defined. Bad crowd. Most didn't know what they were witnessing. But I got it, and a few others did too. Later everyone else did. Fugazi had well-distanced themselves from the stupid, bloated hardcore scene. But they were still new, and most people who hadn't heard were still connecting the state of hardcore at the end of the 80s with the vision of it's birth eight or nine years earlier. Ian MacKaye was in full effect. Commanding the audience with a word. Admonishing them into listening instead of slamming. Brilliant. Pure guitar tones. The sound was so new then. 7. Black Flag, City Gardens, Trenton, 1985 Shitty Gardens had already banned slamming and stage diving due to being sued by the parents of some jackass who threw himself off the stage and busted his collarbone on the floor. We spent three hours patiently waiting, not moving a muscle, through sets by three or four other hardcore acts. Probably Agent Orange or Adrenaline O.D. or both were there. No one moved. Frustrating the bands. When Black Flag came out and crashed into their first song the crowd erupted. T-shirted "security" thugs with too much beef waded into the middle to eject whoever they thought were the instigators. The crowd closed in around the thugs. The could not move. The band kept playing. The meatheads were forced to let go and retreat from the crowd. The band was not shut down--probably for fear of a riot, which would have surely ensued. The club would have been destroyed. As it was, everyone had a great time. Unreal heavy slamming. Which it was. No one said "mosh" yet. Though there was a "pit." Everyone was happy. Angry and happy. The only time I've ever seen anarchic theory work in practice. 8. Buzzcocks, The Ritz, 1989 The Buzzcocks hadn't played for nearly a decade. They hadn't been in the US except once before. This was the first night of their return. The first song, I don't remember what, sounded tentative. I thought, "Uh oh, it was a bad idea guys." But something happened at the end of the song or the start of the second--maybe it was just the sound engineering improving, but the group snapped into perfection and blazed through almost their entire catalog. Ecstatic. For 90 minutes it was 1980. 9. Glenn Branca, Symphonies #8 & #10, The Kitchen, 1995? 1996? Not his best work but this symphonic guitar performance is unmatched by anyone else. Live sound by Wharton Tiers. Terrifying. Compelled me to write about music like nothing else. Huge slabs of heavy thick-gauge strung guitars and pounding drums. Shrieks of soprano-strung guitars cutting over, defining the end of music. The death knell of the century. The best melding of classical form and pure industrial noise ever. 10. Bruce Springsteen, November 1978, Jadwin Gym, Princeton University The first concert I ever went to. With my friend Peter Spiro whose parents got him/us tickets for his birthday. I think this was the tour for "The River." I wasn't a big Springsteen fan then or after, but I sure got it that night. We stood the entire time. The show was incredible. It was the coolest spectacle I had ever seen. No doubt colored by my lack of experience, but there's no arguing with the man's talent. This show put the last paragraph in the first chapter of my life-long love with rock 'n' roll. From some kind of primal connection with the guitar as a toddler, through experiences in early grammer school with seeing people play guitars and hearing amplified music--at a performance of Godspell, hearing Beatles covers live at an Easter sunrise service--this concert marked my personal recognition that I had to be at the center of this feeling, this movement, this sound. posted by Alex 12/30/2003 11:17:25 AM Link
Top 10 is still in works. Have a snack. posted by Alex 12/30/2003 10:25:22 AM Link Tuesday, December 23, 2003
The Wizard of Oz recast from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West. I loved this. The fact that he's done the same thing to three other "fairy" tales makes me look somewhat askance on his talent for invention, but I'll probably read at least one other. Sometimes formulas really are worth repeating for reasons other than money. A Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Genius - Dave Eggers OK, I discovered this later than the rest of you. It's still a great book. All Over Creation - Ruth Ozeki I liked My Year of Meats and l loved this more. She may make a vegetarian out of me yet. posted by Alex 12/23/2003 01:18:25 PM Link
Fimoculous Stay tuned for the Top 10 live shows of my life. At least that I can remember off the top of my head. It's actually kind of depressing to think about what I've missed. posted by Alex 12/23/2003 10:32:02 AM Link Monday, December 22, 2003
12/22/2003 09:21:08 AM Link Sunday, December 21, 2003
Ableton Live I'm still using Logic Platinum to record audio and do the more "live" instrument arrangments. But the more bent the sounds get, the more Ableton live is the choice. If it wasn't such a processor hog I'd probably use it for live audio recording as well, but I can't keep it from mangling the input tracks running it on my G4. Time for a ram upgrade. posted by Alex 12/21/2003 12:15:54 PM Link
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