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2006:09:29:08:00. Friday. NO!: MATES OF STATE (#161, SEP 22 2006).
Toward the end of the set, the songs began to take on a more rocking tone and some dudes climbed up onto either a corner of the stage or something to perform air guitar. The reason this is worth pointing out is that Mates of State do not employ any guitars -- it's just keyboard and drums. And yet, there he was, having a great time with this tune, the terrific opener from their third album. Also worth pointing out -- I recorded this song partly because I was getting low on disc space and it's kind of a short one, but I also could've recorded the short breakdown they did in the middle of "Like U Crazy," covering part of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy." It would've made an interesting contrast to the Of Montreal cover at the very least.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:28:08:00. Thursday. NO!: MATES OF STATE (#160, SEP 22 2006).
The morning before the Mates of State show we found one of our parakeets dead. We're not sure exactly what happened and it doesn't really matter: She's gone whether or not we know just why. Later in the day Emily found herself tearing up over the Bring It Back two-fer of "Nature and the Wreck," a lullabye to the Mates' baby daughter, and "So Many Ways," an anthem to love, loss and return. I wanted so badly to record them at the show, but the former they didn't play and the latter isn't recognizable enough to me that I could quickly pick it out to record. When they played it, I wouldn't say it felt somber, but it did feel like a waning, waves of undifferentiated pressure rolling off and away. Part of it was Lassie, our bird, and part of it was just the toxic build-up of life since the last application of music this lovely and sweet.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:27:08:00. Wednesday. NO!: MATES OF STATE (#159, SEP 22 2006).
The biggest surprise, to me, about Mates of State selling out the Stage Door was that I wasn't all that surprised by it. How is it that they've gotten so big without it ever seeming weird? Almost exactly a year ago they sold out the Annex, now this, and the next time they come to Madison it'll almost certainly have to be in... the Barrymore. That, of course, means that we probably won't be seeing them again very soon. If that turns out to be the case, they played a pleasantly wide range of material to leave us with. The early part of the set focused on their newest (and in my opinion, weakest) record, Bring It Back. I like this tune, which was the lead single, quite a bit, but some of the stuff that comes later on is a bit dodgy. In the live context, interspersed with just about everything short of their debut 7", it was hard to notice the weak stuff, though.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:26:08:00. Tuesday. NO!: STARLIGHT MINTS (#158, SEP 22 2006).
Starlight Mints are the touring opener for the current Mates of State tour, but you wouldn't know it from watching them. From the lowered stage lights, to the K-Mart fancy set design, to the extended orchestral intro, everything about their set made it feel like they forgot they weren't headlining. Maybe they get a little slack for being Mates' labelmates, or for being the indie version of the Flaming Lips, with whom they share a hometown, but it did seem a little much at first. On the other hand, Emily slept through most of their set, since she's used to going to bed early on Friday nights in order to get up for the farmers market, so maybe they could've gone a lot bigger. This song is my favorite one from their new album, rendered here in a much more organic way than it is on record. Their set as a whole wasn't life-changing, but was fun to see, and that's a lot more than can be said for many of the tag-along bands that have come through here lately.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:25:08:00. Monday. NO!: MOLITOR (#157, SEP 22 2006).
The Orpheum Stage Door was the only "big" venue in Madison that I hadn't visited before this show. The very strange thing about it was that the doors opened about five minutes before the scheduled start time of 8:00, with the sell-out crowd lined up along Johnson St. waiting to get in. A few minutes after 8:00 -- with most of us still on the sidewalk -- the first opening band, Molitor, began their set. Unfortunately for me, they opened with my favorite two songs from their new EP, Sometimes I Get Like This, and we only got to see about half of the second song. They also included some unrecorded songs on the set, such as the one heard here, and I'm anxious now to hear their full-length. They have a good, strong, old-school emo sound, and I think they're a real credit to the Milwaukee scene right now.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:22:08:00. Friday. NO!: THE GOSSIP (#156, SEP 8 2006).
The real surprise moment of the show -- which wouldn't have been a surprise if I'd listened to their new remix EP beforehand -- was Erase Errata singer Jenny Hoyston joining the band to duet on a cover of Aaliyah's "Are U That Somebody." It worked surprisingly well and gave both singers a chance to show off; after the show I couldn't help but imagine Beth Ditto quitting the Gossip to become Missy Elliot's new protege. This all has nothing in particular to do with this clip, except for the fact that Beth introduces it by noting that one of her bandmates has "Sexyback" as a ringtone.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:21:08:00. Thursday. NO!: THE GOSSIP (#155, SEP 8 2006).
I'm a pretty obsessive-compulsive person when it comes to things like properly tagging all my MP3s, using correct full titles, etc., so I was quite surprised to notice at the merch table that only one of the Gossip's albums actually says "The Gossip" on it. Arkansas Heat, Movement and Standing in the Way of Control all just say "Gossip." I really couldn't believe I'd never noticed that before. Now, I'm still pretty sure that they're actually called "The Gossip," but it's kind of embarassing how much this discovery rattled me. Please, bands, use the proper full constructions of your names on all album covers; it's really important.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:20:08:00. Wednesday. NO!: THE GOSSIP (#154, SEP 8 2006).
I was very much unsure about going to this show, to the extent that I made sure to buy a ticket in advance to force myself to follow through on it, but I'm so glad I went. My familiarity with the group before the show consisted of only this year's Standing in the Way of Control, which is great, and 2003's live album, Undead in NYC, which is not. Neither one prepared me for the awesome stage presence of singer Beth Ditto, who has maybe the best white-girl blues-rock voice since Janis Joplin. She also has a smooth physicality while singing that belies her short chubbiness. I assumed there would be some dance in their set -- they are part of the early 2000's wave of "dance-punk" acts, after all -- but I didn't think it would be such a captivating study of the singer's ability to direct a crowd. It really left me with a greater appreciation of the rhythm underlying most of their songs.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:19:08:00. Tuesday. NO!: ERASE ERRATA (#153, SEP 8 2006).
Erase Errata have been getting some decent buzz lately, but I've gone up and down several times on their new album, so I was eager to see how they went live. I was also really tired, so I tried an experiment that didn't really pan out: shooting from the raised (and sparsely populated) rear area of the Annex. As it turned out, the stage was probably not lit brightly enough for this to be a good idea, but you can still pretty much see everything. As for their set, I don't know, it was a little lacking in energy. The material was mostly good but they seemed to be kind of overwhelmed by both the crowd's anticipation for them and the nascent excitement for the Gossip's set. Or maybe I'm just unconsciously comparing them to that set and finding them coming up short. Judge for yourself.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:18:08:00. Monday. NO!: MIKA MIKO (#152, SEP 8 2006).
Handling the first opening slot at the Gossip's recent Madison show was a band of LA noise punks called Mika Miko. How noise were they? One of their singers sang through a telephone. How punk were they? Their set lasted 18 minutes and they played about 300 songs, and they have no talent. I appreciated their energy, but like most bands that reject the ethos of talent, they could use a bit of it. These two short songs are not on their debut full-length album, and presumably are drawn from their ultra-punk underground-only cassette releases.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:15:08:00. Friday. NO!: 1090 CLUB (#151, SEP 2 2006).
What really struck me as interesting about these guys was not just their odd instrumentation (piano + guitar + violin + drums + triple vox) but that they used it in such an against-type way. Strings in the indie rock world usually mean ballads, or at least soft pop sound; the same goes for prominent vocal harmonies. 1090 Club, on the other hand, manages to organically incorporate those things into a disjointed and edgy rock sound that's most commonly heard accompanied by three guitars, a fleet of distortion pedals and screaming. I'm quite eager to hear how it translates to the CD. By the way, if you missed them, they're back in town at the King Club on October 24.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:14:08:00. Thursday. NO!: 1090 CLUB (#150, SEP 2 2006).
In their Party in the Park set, 1090 Club only played, I think, six songs, saving their full set for the evening show at the High Noon. The songs are all from their upcoming debut LP ("upcoming" meaning next Tuesday in this case) and while I liked the set opener the best ("Business End," which I didn't record) the whole thing was really solid. I encourage people to buy the record if they like what they hear, or at least go see them live if you're in the vicinity of Montana.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:13:08:00. Wednesday. NO!: BAGHDAD SCUBA REVIEW (#149, SEP 2 2006).
Sometime this past summer, on the way out of a show at the High Noon, we saw a stack of free stickers that said "Baghdad Scuba Review" on them, with a clipart picture of a scuba diver. Naturally, we each took one. It wasn't until Party in the Park that I actually noticed by this name on any schedules, however; when I saw that they were scheduled to play early in the afternoon I made a point of seeing them. First realization: They are a jam band. I gathered this not, at first, from the fact that they have a bongo player, but from the fact that several people in the small crowd were hula-hooping, including one guy with three hoops going at once. So this, it must be acknowledged, is one quick strike against them. But for the potential traps they could fall into, they really don't -- and they manage to skate by with some prog tendencies, too! Their songs go on forever, but they don't really meander; it's pretty much all in the service of a clear song structure. So while I'm not terribly likely to run out and see these guys again, I'm glad I saw them at the park and I enjoyed what I heard.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:12:08:00. Tuesday. NO!: THE BOX SOCIAL (#148, AUG 20 2006).
I wouldn't normally post a song I'd already recorded at a past show -- this one was also recorded at a show at the Journey last May -- but in this case something happened that made the clip post-worthy. Before I quite realized that this was a duplicate, one of the more raucous (and wasted) members of the audience was making his way to the stage, pants around his ankles, sporting a bulge in blue briefs. The band knew him, and didn't seem terribly surprised by what was going on, but still, that's a lot to just keep playing through. Especially once he started dancing on them.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:11:08:00. Monday. NO!: JUNIOR REVOLUTION (#147, AUG 20 2006).
After their recent tour of the west, Madison's the Box Social came home to a show at the High Noon. Opening were a new local act called Coup de Foudre and this band, Junior Revolution, from Cincinnati. I was pleasantly surprised to be impressed by them. Their sound reminded me a lot of late-model Get Up Kids. The one problem is that they're just in love with false stops. Almost every song had a point at which the band came to a full-stop, but then continued on for another couple minutes -- their final song did this four times. Other than that a solid set, though; hopefully they come back soon.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:08:08:00. Friday. NO!: 1090 CLUB (#146, SEP 2 2006).
How about a sneak peek at my Party in the Park clips, which will be going up next week (and by that I mean that I have one too many to make them fit nicely in the calendar)? I didn't get to stick around for much, but I made a point of seeing 1090 Club and I'm glad I did. They've got an interesting and exotic take on the indie/college rock sound, borne out of their use of strings and vocal harmonies. Their debut record comes out in a week and a half, on the same label as Charlemagne's records, and I recommend checking it out. If you go to their web site, or download the rest of their clips next week, you can hear a few more songs from it.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:06:08:00. Wednesday. NO!: CRACKER (#145, AUG 31 2006).
Cracker was, of course, part of the wave of alternative rock bands that arrived in 1993 following the success of Nirvana and Pearl Jam. They, along with the Breeders, Belly, Soul Asylum, the Lemonheads and various others seemed to be getting their due for being such important parts of the college rock scene of the 80s -- in the case of Cracker, it was via their genesis in the demise of Camper Van Beethoven. I didn't know that at the time though, all I knew was "Low" and that video with Sandra Bernhard boxing. This was my freshman year at college and I was a commuter. One morning, on the 15-minute drive to school, I heard "Euro-trash Girl" on the student radio station and it blew me away. It was like what I'd felt hearing "Lithium" and "Sweetness Follows" for the first time -- a new dimension in Cracker's sound was revealed to me, which helped me better understand a wide swath of the rock landscape. It also made me desperately want a copy of Kerosene Hat. Last Thursday night, it was one of a number of highlights from a two-hour set. They played Camper Van's "Take the Skinheads Bowling," which was amazing and preceded by "Ain't Gonna Suck Itself," the fuck-you to Virgin Records they included on their covers album, Countrysides -- their cover of "Duty Free," also from that album, was incredible. In the middle of the encore they finally did "Sweet Thistle Pie," and everybody somehow still had the energy for it. The stunning thing was really what they didn't play. They've got probably at least two hours worth of great material in their catalog, and something is always going to get left out. If they come back touring a different set list, I'll be there in a heartbeat. (BTW, the audio of this show is available for download in several formats via the Internet Archive. Enjoy!)
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:09:04:08:00. Monday. NO!: CRACKER (#144, AUG 31 2006).
It's not really a surprise, but Cracker really packed the High Noon 13 years after the height of their fame. Their set was pretty low-key -- reflecting the sound of their non-commercial years, which you can hear on their latest, Greenland -- but was quite well received by the audience. Most songs, including this one, were slightly extended jams on the studio versions, all of which built up to a more than two-hour set. I wasn't quite sure what I was getting when I bought my ticket for this show -- they haven't made a record I've really liked in about ten years -- but the career-spanning and creative set they played was well worth it.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra |
