August 2008

The presence of His Royal Highness T.I. may be responsible for the pomp and circumstance that a lot of today's bands have achieved. It could also be the weather--the sun is defying predictions of cold temps and rain. Whatever it is, performances have been uniformly strong so far.

Nine-piece L.A. band Orgone opened the indoor KEXP stage with feel-good afro-disco funk, a potent eye-opener for Bumbershoot's hump day. Driven by percussionist Stewart Killen on timbales and conga, they were strongest as an instrumental ensemble. Their female vocalist hit all the right notes and certainly writhed the part but inevitably grounded music that yearned to fly.

Seattle mutton-chop rockers Shim leveled the massive stage within the Paul Allen-owned Experience Music Project. Unironically named the Electric Skychurch (tm) and backdropped by a super-mega-JumboTron screen, the venue is usually a difficult for bands to fill. Shim, however, were up to the task, semi-seriously channeling equal parts Spinal Tap and Steel Dragon. From the first note the packed room reeked of smoke machine smoke and testosterone, and the band's Muppet-like hairdos were an appropriate counterpoint to the pyrotechnics. "This next song is called 'You Walked in Like You Own the Place but You Don't'," singer Ragan Crowe (possibly not his real name) crowed. "I'd like to not dedicate it to Paul Allen."

Surprise of The Day came from a band called Manhoogi Hi, a genre-bending group of Seattle locals plus a key import. With a name that screams "avoid me" (and is apparently a Hindi nonsense word), they played to a meager crowd at the Fisher Green stage, but man, what a fascinating sound. Imagine the emotional grandeur and dramatic composition of Wolf Parade fronted by a female Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. I know I'm treading all over the proper ethnicity of singer Mehnaz, who is apparently a former teen pop queen from Mumbai, India; she sang in English and Hindi, in a style called tabla boli, a scatlike patter that imitates the sound of tabla rhythms. The fact that she's playing with a crack indie trance-rock jam band from Seattle is dizzying.

Listening to Manooghi Hi's MySpace--like Shim, they're unsigned and have nothing up on Rhap--reveals a difficult truth: This music can go either way. In a sunny festival setting, drawing in a first-time listener from across the Fisher Green lawn, it was exotic and potent. At the same time the potential for swishy, hula-hoop-happy noodliness is perilously great.

Anybody else notice Beck is looking a little like fictional fiction writer JT Leroy these days?

Local faves Throw Me the Statue kicked off day one of Bumbershoot in the shadow of the Space Needle with a disarming, self-deprecating set of pristine indie pop. Not their most consistent, but their imperfections are part of their guy-next-door, drinking buddy charm. "I love how we build up twice in the exact same way," keyboardist Aaron Goldman said after "Young Sensualists." They brought out a three-piece horn section for "Yucatan Gold," their most salacious track, the one that goes "She's a crazy animal when she screams." Fellas, please--it's an all-ages festival.

Which is obvious from the crowd. Seattle's nightlife scene caters minimally to minors (though it does cater, thanks to the Vera Project, a non-profit venue and community center located here at Seattle Center), so local kids live for this annual opportunity to see their favorite bands. A posse of tweens lined up at the front of the stage after TMTS's set waiting for autographs.

The crowd for Nino Moschella and Darondo was of a more dignified age. Moschella began the set with his six-piece band, cranking out spirited, horn-driven Bay Area funk. Dude has a daredevil voice and rides his songs hard, though it's hard to surrender to a bandleader encamped behind a keyboard.

A half-hour into the set he introduced Darondo, who stole the band, the show, the stage, the crowd, the wardrobe, and perhaps the entire festival. Here's a man of indeterminate age dressed in a high-waisted suit, fat tie tucked into his pants, suspenders, fedora, and gold lame Adidas. First impression: Mack Daddy. And then he sang...

Dardondo's voice veered from husky warble to soaring squeal. His subject matter ran the gamut. He sang a song about the application of whipped cream to titties--"don't forget about the titties"--while doing hip-thrust push-ups to the stage and then sang a song with the chorus that went "I love my mama and papa." He danced like a teenage pole dancer without a pole. During his final number, "Let My People Go," he grew gravely serious and counted off countries and cities, offering himself to the world in the name of love. Then he collapsed onto the stage, heart and soul completely relinquished to the audience. Only an elder statesman can get away with being so unabashedly "lacksivious," as Darondo put it. "What am I trying to say?" he asked the band. "Lacksivious," Moschella affirmed. 

The days most recent highlight was UK superstar-in-training Estelle, who proved her status to a massive Fisher Green crowd. Girl's a born performer. With an eight-piece band that included three backup singer/dancers and a DJ, she smoothly translated her hiphop inflected soul music to the live setting. Her songwriting gifts were evident in "Just a Touch," the opening banger from her debut. Barring any errant Winehousing, she's got a bright future.

(Estelle photo by Kelly O, the rest by JZ)

 

This week I caught up with Michael Goldman, who booked the Jandek show at The Acedemy of Medicine in Atlanta back in February of 2007. Much like most of Jandek's sporadic live performances, the show is being prepped for release on Corwood Records, but no release date has been set.

In the meantime Corwood recently released a live Jandek show fromGlasgow Scotland in October of 2005, titled Glasgow Sunday 2005.

Thursday night (Aug. 28th) wasn't quite business usual at Kirkwood Ballers Club. The regular cast and crew of local yokels twiddled knobs, bowed cymbals and plugged away to the sounds of vintage videogame consoles on stage.

Headlining act Hungry Bodies from Baltimore ended with a show of hypnotically amorphous beats and textures that melted-down the bass elements of hip-hop, drone and maximized minimalism into pools of liquid noise.

Naming your band after a flavor of tea may not seem like it would offer much zest or zing, but Wild Sweet Orange's name steeps deep into a longtime friendship and creative bond.

Formed in Birmingham, Ala., the four members of WSO were all friends in high school. Preston Lovinggood (yep, that's his real name), Chip Kilpatrick and Garret Kelly started playing in bands together in middle school, while Taylor Shaw was "always around."

"We've changed a lot," Lovinggood says by phone before a recent gig in Memphis, Tenn. "We were all really close in middle school. The thing about this group of gentlemen -- our strongest bond is our creative bond. Sometimes we don't have a lot to say to each other, but when we're writing a song, we have a lot to say. We're getting to be friends again and there's definitely a 'us four against the world mentality.' As much as we are different, I think we're a lot the same."

The gates to Seattle Center open tomorrow at noon, beginning the three-day musical smorgasbord that is Bumbershoot. Some of the main stage headliners are new-school impressive: Band of Horses, Black Keys, Neko Case, T.I. Others are old-school confounding: the Offspring? Stone Temple Pilots? Superchunk? Does anybody care? There are far more interesting '90s holdouts to bank on (Beck, for instance, who headlines tomorrow). Such divergent quality is the nature of the music festival that tries--and mostly succeeds--to be all things to all people.

As usual, it's the densely-packed undercard that holds up the rest of the hubbub. One of most interesting performances of the weekend happens tomorrow afternoon. I've never seen Darondo or Nino Moschella, but friends who have, including Rhapsody hiphop guru Sam Chennault, can't rave enough.

Darondo's backstory is fascinating. The man born William Pulliam touts a resume that includes cable TV host, physical therapist, import/export, and opening a San Francisco show for James Brown in the mid-'70s, from which he drove home in his custom white Rolls Royce. (Some would add "pimp" to that litany, but Darondo denies ever working in The Business.) It was during that era that Darondo was a minor fixture on the Bay Area R&B scene. He recorded three 45s that ranged from string-laden Al Green-ish love ballads to syncopated, sinuous floor-fillers a la Sly Stone. Then he retired from music to live the rest of his life.

That kind of mythology is hard to come by today. As unique as his story is, Darondo's music speaks loudest. Peep "Let My People Go"--a dark, reverb-drenched stab of minimalist funk, a liberation manifesto wrapped in a dead-on slinky groove. In 2006, L.A.-based vinyl archaelogists Ubiquity Records reissued the track and nine other '70s Darondo tunes as an album of the same name. It's unbelievably hot stuff.

Somehow, Nino Moschella is not the household (ok, warehouse loft) name that Jamie Lidell has become. Moschella trades Lidells' techno-noise pedigree for a California hippie upbringing, but the end results are similar: wicked, blue-eyed electro soul. Moschella's stellar Ubiquity debut The Fix came out the same year as Darondo's record. Both remain largely unknown.  

These days, Moschella and his band the Park back Darondo, though they play very rarely, and usually only in California. It's a super-special, cross-generational funky thing that stands as one of Bumbershoot's most unique offerings.

When the Robert Moses-built (and Works Progress Administration-funded) McCarren Pool -- tucked to the eastern corner of Brooklyn's McCarren Park-- ceased to be a pool in 1984, Sonic Youth was still scurrying about the scuzz of the Lower East Side, blasting out "Death Valley '69" at Danceteria and at Maxwell's. nearly twenty-five years on, things have changed. The decrepit pool grew weeds and housed junkies, Polish drunkards from neighboring Greenpoint, the homeless, and skaters, while Sonic Youth grew to become ageless purveyors of cool.
The Warriors-esque red-brick walled cement pit that is McCarren Pool re-opened three summers ago and instantly became a bastion for Brooklyn's emaciated and pasty fashionistas in the summer. Sunday afternoon free concerts from the likes of Blonde Redhead, TV on the Radio, and M.I.A. instantly achieved legendary status. Meanwhile, all around the pool and park, up went glimmering glass and steel luxury condos. Now, NYC's Landmarks Preservation Commission plans to restore this landmarked spot to all of its chlroniated glory by 2011, meaning: everyone out of the pool.
As is their status as godfathers of the alternative milieu, Sonic Youth have returned to soundtrack one last adult swim here, the last concert to be held here. For some curious reason, SY are now renowned for closing other venerated venues (such as Liberty Lunch down in Austin, Texas), not to mention saying Goodbye 20th Century. The band packed the walls last year as they recreated their much-feted masterwork, the double album Daydream Nation in its entirety. No doubt the band will have no such straitjackets tonight as they draw from their back catalog (maybe even all the way back to 1984) to bid adieu to summer and the driest pool of a generation. With Vivian Girls, Wolf Eyes, Times New Viking.
Saturday 8/30 @ McCarren Park Pool Lorimer Street & Bayard Avenue 4pm, All ages, $35

Is there anybody in the District who's aged better than Chuck Brown? He got his start 40-some years ago, at a time when the local music scene wasn't the easiest place to break out of. There were plenty of clubs back then--just very few labels and a whole lot of schemers. But Brown kept at it, wringing blues from his guitar in backyards for beer and barbecue. Graduating from the barbecue circuit to soul covers to inventing that go-go beat should have been enough.

According to an Associated Press report federal authorities say they have arrested a blogger suspected of streaming songs from Guns N' Roses' ridiculously long over due unreleased album, Chinese Democracy, on the website www.antiquiet.com.

FBI agents arrested 27-year-old Kevin Cogill (A.K.A. Skwerl) on Wednesday morning (Aug. 27th) on suspicion of violating federal copyright laws. Federal authorities say Cogill posted nine unreleased Guns N' Roses songs on his website in June.