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2007:09:28:08:00. Friday. NO!: TESTA ROSA (#321, SEP 21 2007).
Most of Testa Rosa's album fuses 60's pop with 90's/00's indie influences, but this is song is probably the purest example of the former. The girl-duo harmonies recall a lot of simple, pre-British Invasion pop, and make for a sweet closer -- it's just a little sad that it had to come only four songs into the set.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:09:27:08:00. Thursday. NO!: TESTA ROSA (#320, SEP 21 2007).
I discovered after the show that Testa Rosa contains most of one of my most-missed Milwaukee bands, the short-lived Mustn'ts. I don't think they were around long enough for their EP to make much of a splash outside Wisconsin, but I hope that if Testa Rosa's album finds the success it deserves that they get another look. They're not terribly similar, but they're similar enough to be worth checking out if you like these guys.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:09:26:08:00. Wednesday. NO!: TESTA ROSA (#319, SEP 21 2007).
Something kind of weird happened during the two opening acts, which I figure must be a result of the usual bad mixing at campus shows. Le Loup, who started things off, have an album that I just can't get into, but their set sounded much better than the record. It wasn't just that the songs they played were the better ones from it, but the sound itself was better. By contrast, Testa Rosa, whose album I like, were really ill-served by the sound of the room. Although their record doesn't sound big by any means, it's not nearly as thin as they sounded in the Rathskeller. It's probably most noticeable on this song, which has a little spoken word interlude that you may not be able to make out. More volume and more reverb next time, please!
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:09:24:08:00. Monday. NO!: TESTA ROSA (#318, SEP 21 2007).
Weird night; weird weekend. I caught something late in the week -- might have been a stomach bug or minor food poisoning -- that had me in bed most of Thursday and Friday. But what, I'm going to let that keep me from seeing Maritime and Charlemagne touring new albums? Well, as it turned out, yes. But it didn't keep me from seeing the openers of the Maritime show, including their terrific Milwaukee compatriots in Testa Rosa. Let's start at the beginning, though. This show was scheduled for the Terrace, but the rain came in the evening and it was clear things would be moving inside. Having not eaten in over a day and wanting not to exert myself, I figured on arriving late. The first opener, Le Loup, I don't much like and wouldn't have minded missing. A bit before 10:00, I get to the Union with rain falling again, and there are hundreds of people milling around outside while a fire truck idles on Langdon St. Many of these people are all dressed up, having come from either a wedding reception or some formal Greek event. With the delay of moving inside, plus the ultimately false fire alarm, the show didn't start until about 10:30. Le Loup played for 15 minutes, and were followed by Testa Rosa for about the same amount of time. It turned out to be just four songs, all of which I recorded. This one, the lead track from their self-titled album, is representative of the set's focus on harmony and slight pop melodies; they're a welcome and interesting addition to the Milwaukee landscape, to be sure.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:09:21:08:00. Friday. NO!: THE GERMAN ART STUDENTS (#317, SEP 8 2007).
The character studies continue on the most recent G.A.S. record, but they tend to be a little more contained musically. This song and the others that come with it are much more the "nimble-witted new wave pop" that they describe themselves as in "Dick Clark" than their earlier, wilder but less musically developed material.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:09:20:08:00. Thursday. NO!: THE GERMAN ART STUDENTS (#316, SEP 8 2007).
Another self-consciously quirky song from the G.A.S. Tunes like this make it seem weird that I've seen them so often outside, on sunny afternoons, when clearly the more appropriate place would be somebody's living room around bartime. Their early material is so silly for the most part that you kind of expect it to be a drunken dream.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:09:19:08:00. Wednesday. NO!: THE GERMAN ART STUDENTS (#315, SEP 8 2007).
The German Art Students' first real album -- their first two albums, if you count their demo that was largely remade as Kissing By the Superconductor -- is full of oddball character studies like this one. The lyric "You drink the whiskey/I'll cut your leg off" was simply made to decorate a t-shirt, and it does -- buy one if you see them live!
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:09:17:08:00. Monday. NO!: THE GERMAN ART STUDENTS (#314, SEP 8 2007).
The other big event of September 8 was the Snake on the Lake Fest, the horribly renamed version of WSUM's Party in the Park, transplanted from James Madison Park to the Terrace. Lucky for me, given my recent recording mishap at their High Noon show, the German Art Students were the first band of the afternoon, early enough to get home, collect Emily, and head over to the big show. This track, the opener from their first full-fledged album, kicked things off with a bang, getting the surprisingly big crowd going early.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:09:14:08:00. Friday. NO!: COLD WAR KIDS (#313, SEP 8 2007).
Compared with the Jack Daniels show we saw in March, the pitch put on by Southern Comfort was almost non-existent. There were logos everywhere, of course, and there were no other liquors available, but there was also no free swag for those of us who didn't get into the VIP section. There was a really bad MC, but he didn't get up there to pimp the brand, so much as to fail at ingratiating himself to the local crowd. Some of bands made pretty heavy-handed thanks to the company, but nothing that pushed the product in particular. There's another one of these shows already scheduled for next year, and if they can get someone of the caliber of the Flaming Lips to headline, it should be pretty great again. The one band who seemed a little irked by the corporate setting was Cold War Kids, but even that only showed in a couple of off-hand comments. Their set was as driven as the set we saw at the Annex last year, and their reputation as a terrific live band was certainly validated. I wasn't sure if they had any new material yet, but they gave the old stuff all they had and seemed to win over the bulk of the crowd.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:09:13:08:00. Thursday. NO!: COLD WAR KIDS (#312, SEP 8 2007).
When last we saw Cold War Kids, they were an up-and-coming young band opening for an even upper-and-coming young band, Tapes 'n Tapes. In the intervening 15 months, they've become a minor phenomenon, and I was eager to, perhaps, re-evaluate my initial feeling about them, which is that they have three of four good songs that they play over and over in different configurations. I still kind of think that, but I did generally like them a lot more this time out. It could be just because they were following the awful Cowboy Mouth, I guess, or it could be that they took a few pointed jabs at SoCo™ during their set. In this clip, frontman Nathan Willett actually apologizes to the crowd about the price of drinks, which he said they'd been told were free. Somewhat more subtly, they introduced their first song as being about the dangers of alcoholism. It was hard not to appreciate that while drinking $5 drinks with about as much alcohol as a medicated cotton swab in them.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:09:12:08:00. Wednesday. NO!: THE FLAMING LIPS (#311, SEP 8 2007).
An autobugle looks almost exactly like a regular bugle, unless you're looking right into the bell. If you do, and the light is right, you'll see two little LED's, and if you look closer you'll see a speaker. The autobugle is a bugle that's had a machine inserted into it, which automatically plays a recording of "Taps"; it was invented because there aren't enough buglers in the military to cover all the military funerals going on these days. At any given service the bugler off in the distance may just be pressing a button and standing there until the thing stops playing. I don't know how Wayne Coyne got hold of one of these things, but he did, and its incorporation into the show was one of several extremely touching moments. He'd brought it out earlier, playing it -- without explanation -- over a partial cover of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir," which is not the easiest thing to hear "Taps" through. Later in the show he pulled it back out and explained what it was. While his bandmates played an unresolved dirge, he pressed the autobugle to his third eye and turned it on. After an earlier extended riff on George Bush and the sudden provenance of "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" as a protest piece (really?), I think the audience appreciated this gesture a lot more. It was showing, not telling, and it's something that I think a lot of us have a reflexive reaction to. In my high school years, I played "Taps" at a number of military funerals -- on a trumpet, not a bugle, and when they couldn't get a real bugler to trek up to the UP -- and it means something. As symbolism, it creates a reality that literalism couldn't. The shows other best moments were in many ways symbolic as well. This version of "Yoshimi Pt. 1" came courtesy of a synthesized toy piano sound and the voices of thousands of people acting as one. Drummer Kliph Scurlock's gigantimous hands extended the dream-state a bit, and along with the set-closing and widely tear-inducing "Do You Realize??" and encore of "She Don't Use Jelly," made for a communal experience that belied the capacity crowd and half-hour we spent waiting in the parking lot afterwards. That they have made bringing this from town to town into a successful commercial enterprise is testament to the occasional awesomeness of us all.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:09:11:08:00. Tuesday. NO!: THE FLAMING LIPS (#310, SEP 8 2007).
It's kind of weird to realize what an immense back-catalog the Flaming Lips have -- they've been together since the early 80's and have released 11 albums, plus a ton of non-album material. But for their first 15 years or so, they got only a glimpse of the big time, peeking through as part of the Summer of Alternative Rock in 1993 with "She Don't Use Jelly." Imagine if there were an episode of TRL where the bands being counted down were the Flaming Lips, Belly, Soul Asylum, the Breeders, the Lemonheads, 4 Non Blondes, the Proclaimers, Porno For Pyros and Green Jelly, all of whom were beat out by the new Dinosaur Jr single. Some of us who were 14 at the time actually thought it would go on forever. The Lips' encore was announced with ancient footage from the old Jon Stewart Show on their big backdrop screen, an introduction for a TV performance of "She Don't Use Jelly" from half a lifetime ago. That they would close on the type of song that many bands in their position would try to bury -- can you imagine Foo Fighters encoring "Big Me"? -- and do it in a totally earnest way says a lot about their approach. Nonetheless, tracks from records other than their last three were few and far between; just "Jelly" and this one, from their last indie record, 1990's In a Priest Driven Ambulance. It felt a bit like an unearthed fossil, an epic batch of fuzz and streamers as Wayne Coyne tried valiantly to fire his confetti blaster through a cymbal, and then closed the song out with a series of massive gong strikes. That they could construct a stage show so intertwined with, in particular, their last two albums' worth of music, but also seamlessly drop in a 17-year-old album cut, was really impressive.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:09:10:08:00. Monday. NO!: THE FLAMING LIPS (#309, SEP 8 2007).
So Madison is now party central for these free liquor marketing shows, and this was the biggest one yet. I'll get into the details throughout this week's posts, but suffice it to say that the Southern Comfort marketing part of this event was much more low-key than the Jack Daniels-sponsored OK Go show we saw last March. I actually started the day seeing the German Art Students at the other big free fest, while Emily took a post-market nap (and I'll have clips of that set up next week). We arrived at the Willow Island grounds probably a little after 5:30, in the middle of what we later discovered was Cowboy Mouth's set. And boy, let me tell you, they sucked something fierce. Watching (or more accurately, listening to) their set was like being at one of the Summerfest rock stages at 2:00 in the afternoon, when some band nobody cares about is putting as much energy into convincing you that you love them as they are into playing. The singer/drummer did not miss an opportunity to note how wonderful it was here in "the great state of Wisconsin," or to thank Milwaukee -- yes -- for their hospitality. Also, he told us they were from New Orleans at least half a dozen times in the half-set we saw. Most of the detail is kind of irrelevant, since bands suck all the time and it ain't gonna stop the world spinning, but the first thing you're going to see in this clip is the SoCo™ MC bringing that self-same singer/drummer out to introduce the Flaming Lips for some reason. You will then hear the guy next to us, who was pleasantly mock-happy throughout the intermission, mocking the poor SOB for his many New Orleans callouts; you may also be able to pick up on some boos. I could go on about how bad Cowboy Mouth and this guy in particular were, but it was fleeting, and anyway, what an opening! From a plague of dancing, floodlight-bearing Santas, Wayne Coyne and his hamster ball emerged and began to float across a thousand raised hands. The first bit of this clip, with Coyne rolling over the crowd, is an instrumental piece, and I suspect it's called "The Mothership Descends," or that it's at least the track with that label on the Lips' recent live DVD release. As it ended and Coyne emerged from his bubble, they dove into the first track from The Soft Bulletin, amid a storm of confetti blasts. The enthusiasm from the audience upon recognizing it was something I haven't seen in Madison since... well, the last time was probably when I first saw Nine Inch Nails about seven and a half years ago, and that was before I even lived here. It's the ferociously blissful energy of a Big Show, and I don't know anything else like it.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:09:05:08:00. Wednesday. NO!: THE GERMAN ART STUDENTS (#308, AUG 22 2007).
So this was the one working clip I got from the German Art Students' recent High Noon appearance -- frustrating since they've been on hiatus for so long, but not that frustrating since they're local and will be out again this Saturday at the newly christened Snake on the Lake Fest (formerly Party in the Park) at the Memorial Union Terrace. This song is the closer from their most recent album and features the same playful pop and theatricality that they bring to most of their material. They're well worth seeing live, especially when it's free, as Saturday's show is. They play at 3:00, which leaves plenty of time to get over to the free Flaming Lips extravaganza by early evening.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:09:01:13:19. Saturday. SUV-TARDS.
Firstly, we're actually using the "U" part of "SUV" -- the main reason we wanted this vehicle was to more easily haul Emily's stuff to craft shows. Loading it all into her Jetta worked, but she was restricted in how much she could take and the car itself was significantly affected by the load. Still, we'd planning to stick with it until it gave out, which finally happened last week. Perhaps the biggest concern with this car is the gas mileage. Since we've yet to take it on the highway or fill the tank, I don't know what we'll wind up with exactly, but according to the official reports I think we'll be right around where the Jetta was, maybe a little under it. Also, I can drive this car, which wasn't really the case with the Jetta. That car was a manual transmission, which I can drive but am not comfortable with; it was also really small and didn't have cruise control, which meant I physically couldn't deal with more than an hour in the driver's seat. The new one is an automatic, it's bigger and it has cruise. If we need to drive home after Emily would be tired, or if she's had some drinks, we don't have to worry about whether my beat-up Grand Prix can make it. Still, I find myself continuing to sneer at other SUV drivers and occasionally sneering at myself. So it's a bit weird.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra |
We got a new car this week -- NEW new -- and it is... an SUV. A "crossover" SUV, but an SUV nonetheless. How do two people who think so politically about their consumption justify such a choice? Well, a few things.