Lucid Culture

From the absolutely essential Lefsetz Letter, http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

Bob Lefsetz is the most honest person (maybe the only honest person) in the music business. His sometimes 4X daily updates are as close to infallibly right as you can get. And just when you’re about to say that everything he has to say about music itself is infallibly wrong (he’s a sucker for 70s top 40), he hits you upside the head with something brilliant, and always straight from the heart. If music is important to you, you should be a subscriber. Here’s his take on itunes’ most recent devilry:

 In case you’ve been out of the Net loop, when you buy an UNRESTRICTED track at the iTunes Store, it comes with your NAME and E-MAIL address EMBEDDED! Why is it these fucks think we won’t catch on, that we’re ignorant and won’t spread the word how fucked up they are.  Don’t they understand this is how they got in trouble in the FIRST PLACE?  The INTERNET! Just like Lindsay Lohan can’t cover up the fact that she crashed her car high on coke, Apple and EMI can’t cover up the fact that they’re fucking with us.  This is WORSE than restricted/DRM/copy-protected music! They’re trying to SCARE US back into the last century.  Trying to trip us up, trying to keep us playing on their terms.  EMI hasn’t given up on copy protection, they’ve just instituted a NEW ONE!  Wherein they can trace your track if you choose to do anything untoward with it.  Yup, if it’s your track that’s being traded P2P, you’re FUCKED!  You’d better not open your music folder to P2P trading, your NAME might get out! How fucked up is THIS?  Why don’t you put a camera in my bedroom while you’re at it.  Why don’t you require a list of every girl I ever fucked before I get into the gig.  What’s next, SAT SCORES? I thought the music was supposed to be your friend.  But now it’s just part of the endless scamster scene populated by spammers and thieves looking to gain information, to strip us of our identities or beat us into submission.  Yup, this is exactly what John Lennon had in mind when he made his music, a private FBI, that could fuck with you just like the U.S. government fucked with him, tried to get him deported.  Lennon fought for years.  There was an emotional cost.  As for the FINANCIAL COST?  He could afford it.  Can YOU?  If you’re sued by the RIAA can you even mount a DEFENSE? In the future, the music will float freely, or be so abundant and cheap that you won’t need to trade/transfer/steal.  But YOU’RE gonna have to sacrifice your rights now, along the way. Where do they come up with this shit?  How could they think they could get away with it?  Are they really this afraid, this desperate, willing to do ANYTHING to protect their old business model? As for 256kbps files…  I’ve got thousand dollar speakers (http://www.auxout.com/Shop/) and I can barely hear the difference between the version of McCartney’s “Letting Go” I downloaded from iTunes and the 160kbps MP3 rip I made from the original CD.  On cheaper speakers, on earbuds?  NO DISTINGUISHABLE DIFFERENCE! In other words, EMI just wanted to find a way to charge thirty cents more while RETAINING the copy protection.  FUCKERS! http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070530-apple-hides-account-info-in-drm-free-music-too.html  

http://www.tuaw.com/2007/05/30/tuaw-tip-dont-torrent-that-song/

posted by Lucid

I first encountered Peter Apfelbaum when I was approached by a friend of long time Trombonist Josh Roseman to record a show of theirs in 2001. I was happy to do it, as a jazz head and an amateur recordist. I loved the show & cherished the recordings. For reasons inexplicable, I hadn’t gone to a Peter Apfelbaum date since then… until this past Saturday.

Peter has not only expanded the scope of his writing, but he has expanded the scope of his band. From Berkeley in 1977 when he first made a name for the ‘Hieroglyphics’, Peter has always shown a flair for blending African, Middle Eastern and American jazz idioms into a festive stew of riveting tunes, tonalities, idiosyncrasies – and extending them in his live shows with solos nodding to everyone from Zorn to Ponty.

This band, in its current configuration, surpasses anything I’ve heard in the past. It’s a 12 piece – traps, bass, 2 guitars, violin, 6 horns [with some reeds], and Peter. The night I saw them, it was all new material – no song names, with the only pauses to introduce band members. Peter has truly become a band leader. While in the past resting on the chops of his band to execute far simpler songs, with the complexity his writing now achieves, he comes into his own directing an ensemble of formidable musicians.

For me, the high point was the amazing violin solo in the third song by Charlie Burnham. From a traditional violin sound he transformed into a Jan Hammer/John McLoughlin screaming cat with a simple use of the wah – and a facial expression that left me wandering between sex, death and ecstasy.

Peter’s new music starts from tropes similar to his older material. He is a fan of a groove that encompasses anything form North African folk to McCoy Tyner piano idiomatics, but with his expanded line up, the veritable ‘wall of horns’ produces a symphony of harmonic & rhythmic ideas that cross paths, play in their own sandbox, and come back for a dive at the public pool. The band plays polyrhythms, odd time signatures and added measures with a tightness one would expect from an orchestra.

 Peter Apfelbaum and the NY Hieroglyphics are a must see when they’re in town - and it’s a very reasonable ticket for jazz this good.

A deliriously fun, hot, sweaty show. It was late on a Monday night, but the place was packed. The crowd sang along, and when they weren’t singing, they were laughing at all the subtle and not-so-subtle double entendres the band was harmonizing on. Because (other than great musicianship and gorgeous 4-part harmonies and stone cold authentic acoustic blues playing), sex is what the Roulette Sisters are all about. Lou Pearlman couldn’t have come up with a better marketing concept: four attractive women singing innuendo-laden oldtime music -  an impressively wide-ranging mix of blues, country and 1920s/30s pop – playing their own instruments, singing beautifully and writing a lot of their own material. They opened with Coney Island Washboard: guitarist Mamie Minch explained how it was an instrumental from the early 20s given lyrics by a popular pop group, the Mills Brothers, about ten years later. Lead guitarist Meg Reichardt added a typically suggestive postscript, telling the audience about a co-worker who was walking around the office all day wearing something akin to the “brand new suit of easy breezes” in the song’s chorus. A little later they did another original, inspired by the Carter Family, that wouldn’t be out of place on the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack.

Minch had just asked her bandmates whether they should do a pretty song or a dirty song when she was suddenly interrupted. “Fuck!” She’d just gotten a jolt of electric current from her mic. Her bandmates grinned at each other, and the question was answered: they launched into the hokum blues classic Keep on Churnin’:

Keep on churning til the butter comes

Keep on pumping, let the butter flow

Wipe off the paddle and churn some more

The crowd roared for another in the same vein, so they obliged, with heir most popular original, Hottest Girl in Town. The song is a hoot: each band member takes a verse laden with Freudian imagery, some verging on X-rated, detailing how their boyfriends like to please them. Viola player Karen Waltuch, who played incisive, somewhat dark solos all night long,  took her most intricate one of the evening after her verse and the crowd loved it.

Then was Reichardt’s turn to bring the house down with an outtake from Dolly Parton’s first album, a deliciously righteous tale of a jilted woman wanting to get even with the woman who married her man: “I feel like tying dynamite to her side of the car.” After that, Minch delivered an especially sly version of the Bessie Smith hit Sugar in My Bowl.

The excellent Al Duvall – who’s quite the master of thinly veiled dirty lyrics himself – accompanied them on banjo on their last four songs, ending with a brand-new composition about a sheet music plugger (plugger: get it?) which Minch sang off a lyric sheet. She began the song as a talking blues but by the end she’d written a vocal melody and had it down cold.

You heard it here first: this band is going places. We picked their cd Nerve Medicine for best debut album of the year. Good to see a prediction come true, with this fantastic band getting some real momentum.

I came across this quote in a Wapo article via Angry Arab:

Bush said the split in the Palestinian territories is purely the fault of Hamas. “It was Hamas that attacked the unity government,” the president said. “They made a choice of violence. It was their decision that has caused there to be this current situation in the Middle East.”

Uh huh. Backtrack a few days as linked at OG&P.

In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas elections, last January, Abrams greeted a group of Palestinian businessmen in his White House office with talk of a “hard coup” against the newly-elected Hamas government — the violent overthrow of their leadership with arms supplied by the United States. While the businessmen were shocked, Abrams was adamant — the U.S. had to support Fatah with guns, ammunition and training, so that they could fight Hamas for control of the Palestinian government.

We continue to ply our trade worldwide - the assassination of democracy. Wherever there are leaders we don’t like, sell someone some guns to take ‘em out. Then we can turn on the ones we install and double our money selling guns to the other side… After all, the global arms trade is all that is left of the American manufacturing base.

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Meanwhile, our friends in donklephant land are frontpaging scientifically baseless fear propoganda and taunting those seeking the truth with juvenile savagery…

Priorities, priorities. Sigh.
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update 1:19. Just came across a rather fascinating, if far fetched article over at narconews on plans for “Atlantica” and other mini-states mirroring the Balkanization of Mexico post NAFTA that readers of both LC & OG&P will enjoy. A snippet for New Yorkers:

Maybe, kind reader, you are still in New York City. Do you think you escaped the invasion of the spoiled brats by moving out to Williamsburg? Think again: the fauxhemians have arrived to offer your landlord more rent than you can pay at your New York shitty job, and the NYU or Colombia student’s dad is offering him six months rent in advance. (The landlord, and not the immigration officer, has thus become the new government.) Are you thinking of leaping farther out into Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Long Island, Northern New Jersey, or have you already done so? Those places, too, are becoming dumping grounds for the wealthy parents of the world to send their little darlings, not to mention the Euro-trash tourists lined up around 34th street to see the Empire State building from its roof deck, and spending $200 a night (six grand a month) at even the seediest of run-down hotels. Meanwhile, where did all the fun people go? The ones you see in Hollywood movies about New York? Where are those legends that inspired you to visit there? They either left… or they are simply trying to survive, having a lot less fun.

And what rough beast slouches toward dystopia to be born?

The FBI will be contacting you soon about your computer. Here’s a link to today’s article on the BBC site: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6752853.stm

Under the guise of ferreting out email spammers who surreptitiously take control of scores of other peoples’ computers, the FBI will be contacting a MILLION (sic) computer users. One can only wonder what they’ll be looking for. Suffice it to say that now is the time to safeguard your most important data, ESPECIALLY financial stuff.

The good news is that the sweep is so wide that there’s no way that they’ll be able to personally peruse your entire hard drive. The bad news is that their computer software is extremely fast and sophisticated. Typically, they look for code words, including such easily misinterpreted terms as “bomb” and “drugs.”

 According to the FBI, if your machine is running slowly, you are more likely to be contacted than if you aren’t having any trouble with it.

Obviously, spam is annoying, but is it getting rid of it worth compromising everyone’s privacy? Isn’t this akin to demanding that everyone take their curtains down so we can make sure that nobody’s watching child porn?

posted by Lucid

As some readers of Lucid Culture may or may not know, I post regularly at a wonderful political blog hosted by Marisacat called Opera Glasses & Popcorn. In light of a number of circumstances, Marisacat is taking a much needed hiatus. With her permission, I have elected to invite the Vagosphere to come hang out in our living room for the time being. I’ll do my best to throw up a thread a day amidst Delarue’s excellent reviews of the NY music scene that will be dedicated to OG&P style politics, humor, and BBB critique. I think Mcat’s attracted a great group over at OG&P, & while she’s taking a much needed break I invite all of the regulars to stop in and share links, articles, insights & all things VAG - keep the repartee going. I won’t have the pictures & might be a bit slower in snagging you from moderation or SPAM, but I’ll try to be a competent substitute host.

So, have at it vipes.

New stuff just added for this weekend: surf music, the Stay-At-Homes doing their sick Runaways cover set, and more… 

Mark your calendars for this Thursday! It’s Make Music NY day, when literally hundreds of artists will be playing outdoors throughout the five boroughs from noon to 10 PM. It’s a great day to check out new acts, see your favorite bands and just have random fun! We’ve listed the best acts we know of on the calendar here: you’ll note that there have been some time/venue changes for some of these acts, check the website

http://www.timeout.com/newyork/static_content/makemusic/index.php?submit=Submit

for last-minute updates.Otherwise, it’s a good, diverse week of shows:

Mon June 18 Secretary, which is Moisturizer baritone sax player Paula Henderson’s soundtrack composer project, plays Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Avenue at East 2nd Street as part of a production with short films and dance. Henderson’s solo work in this project is as brilliantly witty and smart as her band and gives her a chance to explore a quieter, more reflective, cinematic side. The excellent Apollo Heights are headliners. Since this is a theatre the bands want you to know that you should be in your seat, snacks safely concealed in your pockets at 8 sharp.   

Also Mon June 18 Barnacle Bill plays Arlene’s, 8 PM. Led by former Rake’s Progress lead guitarist Stu Klinger, they’re a pop band. 20 years ago, they could have been signed to a major label, which is a compliment. Uncommonly smart, funny, catchy, with Klinger’s trademark incisive, fast fretwork.

Also Mon June 18 Girl Friday plays Lakeside, 9 PM. Casually catchy, melodic female-fronted janglerock band. Subtlety defines them. On the quiet side, midtempo, thoughtful and they get under your skin before you know it.

Also Mon June 18 the Roulette Sisters play Barbes, 10 PM. Four women, two guitars, viola and washboard, playing sex songs from the 1920s and 30s with four-part harmonies. Their originals are arguably better than their covers, which says a lot. You must see them sometime. This is Barbes, so, early arrival a must.

Tues June 19 Dina Dean and band play Cave Canem, 24 1st Ave. under Lucky Cheng’s, 8 PM. Brilliantly melodic rock/soul storyteller with a fondness for the weird and obscure. The last time she played Pete’s Candy Store she walked in listening to a Jerry Butler mix, which tells you a lot. She’s a lefty guitarist, meaning you can expect a lot of interesting, incisive chordlets and fills.

Tues June 19 Maynard & the Musties play Lakeside, 9 PM. Frontman Joe Jerry Maynard is one hell of a country songwriter, part David Allan Coe, part A.P. Carter, alternately funny and haunting, and this band rocks a lot harder than his old outfit the Millerite Redeemers did.

Also Tues June 19 the 2 Man Gentleman Band plays Pete’s Candy Store, 11 PM. Ukelele and bass. Old-timey as you can get, frequently funny and surprisingly energetic for just these two instruments.

Weds June 20 it’s Songwriters from Hell at the Parkside. This is Paul Alves aka Sousalves’ quarterly event where a bunch of NYC’s best and frequently darkest songwriting denizens do half-hour sets. The incomparable, velvet-voiced Randi Russo at 8 PM. Also playing: Erika Simonian and Sousalves, among others.

Later Weds June 20 Moisturizer plays Sputnik in Fort Greene, time TBA, as part of their annual Gemini birthday party. 262 Taafe Place, Brooklyn (between DeKalb & Willoughby), you can get there via D train to DeKalb or G to Myrtle/Willoughby and some walking. Worth the trip.

Thurs June 21 – all day long – here’s the best Make Music NY shows we know of, feel free to add your own if it fits:

No Police State Girl (hip-hop), who claims to be “everything No Police State” plays at noon at the garden on E 8th between Ave. B and C

Alash Ensemble (Tuvan throat singing) – wow – 1 PM at the Rubin Museum of Art, 150 W 17th St (between 6th Ave and 7th Ave)

Jack Grace (excellent, funny country band), 4 PM, 27th and 3rd. Ave., outside of Rodeo Bar

System Noise (brilliant guitar-driven art-rock with a dynamic frontwoman) at Bway/3rd St., 4:30 PM

Lianne Smith (uniquely intelligent, counterintuitively funny rock songwriter playing solo electric) at Abingdon Sq. (that triangle at Hudson and Bank Sts), 6 PM. Another smart songwriter, Marykate O’Neil plays afterward

Gretchen Witt (acoustic, nice voice, thoughtful singer/songwriter) in front of the Westside Yaffa Café, 6 PM, Greenwich Ave at Harrison St

The NY Ukelele Ensemble on 1st Ave between 8th and 9th Sts., 6 PM

Sonic Uke (another ukelele band – gotta love that name), 6 PM, 130 W 10th St

at Greenwich Ave

The Sacred Harp Singers  (real old time, i.e. Revolutionary era country gospel) 6 PM,

2nd Avenue F train stop, Houston at Forsythe.

M Shanghai String Band (bluegrass/oldtimey), Brooklyn Bridge entrance in Dumbo, 6:30 PM

Num & Nu Afrika (roots reggae), 7:30 PM, 127th St Playlot, 127th St. between 5th Ave and Lenox Ave.

Brookland (charming oldtimey folk duo) followed by Pinataland (oldtimey accordion band with smart, historically rich lyrics), 37th St at Fort Hamilton Pkwy, Bay Ridge (right tony?), Brooklyn 7 PM (NOTE NEW TIME AND VENUE)

And also at 9 PM legendary Video Music Box host Ralph McDaniels shows vintage & classic hip hop videos at the Tobacco Warehouse, Fulton Ferry State Park, New Dock St

(at the East River) in Dumbo, F train to York St. and a short walk toward the water. Expect a draconian police/rent-a-pig presence.

If you want to see the free Ollabelle/Richard Thompson show at Prospect Park and want a seat, you have two options: you can ditch work early and get there at 5 sharp, join the line, wait a couple of hours; blow off the actually decent opening act and try your luck at around 7:30, when he’s scheduled to go on; or walk around the space and get behind the fence in back of the stage area. F train to 7th Ave., walk uphill, take a left at the park and follow the crowd. In case you don’t know Thompson, he’s arguably the greatest rock guitarist ever and maybe the greatest rock songwriter ever. And his forthcoming album is brilliant even by his standards.

Also Thurs June 21 Amy Allison plays Banjo Jim’s (the old 9C at Ave. C and 9th St.), two sets, 9 PM with brilliant guitarist Pete Galub. At the absolute peak of her power. If you liked her country stuff with the Maudlins you have to check out her new songs. Dark and mesmerizing. But she’s still one of the most hilarious people you’ll ever see onstage.

Also Thurs June 21, genius uncategorizable guitarist Matt Munisteri plays Barbes, 10 PM. He cut his chops on bluegrass, became a jazzcat who played with a bunch of legends, has a passion for the offbeat and twisted. Great musical wit. Get there early if you’re going.

Fri June 22 bluegrass cats James Reams & the Barnstormers open for the legendary octogenarian Ralph Stanley at Prospect Park, showtime 7:30 PM. See above for suggestions on how to either get in or hear the music: this might not be such a good idea to go to unless you’re prepared to wait forever for a seat since the sound probably won’t carry well. Stanley doesn’t sing as much, play hardly at all but, what can you say, he’s all that’s left of the Stanley Bros. and that’s pretty special.

Also Fri June 22 songwriter Linda Draper plays Cake Shop,  8 PM, back from her national tour. See our reviews page for a look at her superb new one Traces of.

Also Fri June 22 the Stay-At-Homes play the Runaways obscure live-in-Japan album all the way through at the Magnetic Field on Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn Heights, 8 PM. This is the amazing Tammy Faye Starlite backed by all-female garage punk rockers Sit N Spin plus Steve Wynn’s amazing drummer Linda Pitmon. The joke is that these are excellent musicians covering songs originally done by a teenage band from the late 70s (Joan Jett was the frontwoman) who could barely play. Light on the stage banter, but the musical jokes abound.

Also Fri June 22 Pal Shazar plays a career retrospective with a full band at the Living Room, 9 PM. Ordinarily this would be a place to avoid at all costs on a Friday night, now that the Lower East Side has pretty much become Los Angeles stripmall hell. But she’s worth it. Sort of the Left Coast Patti Smith: lyrics, check. Tunes, check. Politics, doublecheck.

Also Fri June 22 it’s Moist Paula’s Birthday Throwdown with her incomparably fun baritone sax/bass/drums instrumental trio, Moisturizer, groovemeisters Chin Chin & surprise guests (probably half of Antibalas) at BPM, 137 Kent Avenue  in Williamsburg, 10 PM. What an amazingly good night. See you there. You will be dancing unless you’re in a wheelchair and in that case you’ll be popping wheelies.

Also Fri June 22 Coffin Daggers spinoff Brainfinger play at 10:30 at Guero, 9 Avenue A, free. If you like the Ray Manzarek Balkan funeral music side of the Coffin Daggers - or, hell, the Doors - you should check out these dark, macabre, rhythmically nimble instrumentalists.

Also Fri June 22 Tandy plays Lakeside, 11 PM. Louder, janglier, more melodic and crescendoing than ever. Their mid-period Wilco days are just a distant memory. Good band.

Sat June 23 a good doublebill at Freddy’s on Dean St. in Brooklyn: fiery pub rock revivalists the Larch open for the politically charged, sometimes deliriously psychedelic Liza & the WonderWheels, 9 PM. It’s drummer Tom Pope’s birthday show and he’s playing with 4 band but not the Wheels.

Also Sat June 23 the Moonlighters, now with Ken Mosher of the late, great Squirrel Nut Zippers on guitar play Barbes, 10 PM. Remember, get there early. Bliss Blood’s charming yet politically potent Hawaiian/retro unit has been through a bunch of band members, but every incarnation we’ve seen has been superb.

Also Sat June 23 (actually the wee hours of June 24), half past midnight, cover band hellions Rawles Balls play upstairs at the Living Room. See our reviews page of their alltime worst/best show here a little while ago. When they’re on, they are the absolutely funniest band in town and when they’re not they’re still worth busting your way through the throngs of limo-riding fratboys and sorority girls from the adjacent states.

Sun June 24, 3 (three) PM  Les Chauds Lapins play the cd release for their new one at the Temporary Museum, 118 N.11th St, 2fl. in Williamsburg. Word on the street aka the band’s website indicates that there will be OPEN BAR for those nursing a hangover from Friday night. The band is sort of the French equivalent of the Roulette Sisters: French songs from the 20s and 30s, which are all about sex. Kurt Hoffmann (ex-Ordinaires) and Meg Reichardt (Roulette Sisters) front the band on banjo ukes; they will also have strings and a rhythm section. What fun.

Mon June 25 Girl Friday finishes their Monday residency at Lakeside, 9 PM.

Also Mon June 25 Mamie Minch of the Roulette Sisters plays with Andy Cotton on bass and Peter Kohman on guitar at Barbes, 10 PM. Minch’s solo stuff is very funny and very authentic – she’s a huge Rev. Gary Davis/Jorma fan

 Weds June 27 keyboardist Greta Gertler plays Barbes, 8 PM with a full band. See our reviews page for a look at her tremendously good new one.

Also Weds June 27 the Sloe Guns play the Slipper Room, 9 PM. An unusually sedate venue for this fiery, Steve Earle-ish twangy rock band. Maybe they’ll do some of the quieter, more acoustic stuff. See our reviews page for a look at their hubristic but successful Sun Sessions cd.

The fourth and possibly final cd from this long-running New York “cemetery and western” unit. This isn’t a country album by any means: it’s a dark, desperate, angry rock record. Aside from some of the songwriting (frontman/bassist Mark Sinnis continues in this promising direction in his solo work), the only concession to Nashville is that the vocals are mixed noticeably louder than the instrumentation, in the style of country records from the 1930s and 40s.

Ninth House bridge the gap between Joy Division and Johnny Cash. The production values are strictly punk/new wave: layers of distorted and watery electric guitars, ominous string synthesizer and organ, and melodic bass, usually set to a fast 2/4 beat. The cd opens with a roar, on the magnificently ferocious chorus of the single Long Stray Whim (a deliriously good live take of this song was previously issued on the band’s sadly out-of-print Aerosol album). It’s a transcendentally powerful escape anthem:

This morning I stopped

It’s boring, I strayed

I’m on a long stray whim

It started

For a moment I fought it

I couldn’t persuade me

I’m on a long stray whim

In a dark, passionate baritone, Sinnis – one of the greatest male singers in all of rock – builds his case for getting away from it all. It’s ELO’s Eldorado for a new generation. The band follows this with the wickedly anthemic Burn, about a cremation. Ninth House frequently get pegged as a goth band, and while they’re much more diverse, this song makes it easy to see how they got that label. The next two tracks, Stretch Marks and Quiet Change could easily have fit onto a mid-80s Cure album like Head on the Door, although they crunch rather than jangle.  After that, the slow What Are You Waiting For builds to a soaring crescendo of vocals and guitars.

The following cut Mistaken for Love is one of two straight-up country songs on the album, although the band – particularly guitarist Bernard San Juan, who has since left – gives it a rock treatment. It’s a savage look back at a failed marriage: Sinnis’ cold ending will send chills down your spine. Similarly, the next track Skeletons has country swing but an 80s rock sound. The tempo picks up even more on the relentless, minor-key Out of Reach, a concert favorite. Then it’s back to Nashville gothic with When the Sun Bows to the Moon, a gorgeous, catchy country anthem, a broadside fired at point-blank range at somebody who can’t get over herself:

You live in your own atmosphere

You create your own demise

Breathe your own tainted air

It’s taken on a particularly poignant significance in the wake of 9/11. The next song Cause You Want To is a slow, crescendoing, death-obsessed number that belies its catchy, major-key melody. The album closes with a blistering rock version of perhaps the original Nashville gothic song, Ghost Riders in the Sky and then the epic title track, which builds from a catchy, thorny major-key first section into a hypnotically dark, crashing, descending progression. And then it’s over.

Sinnis’ lyrics are terse and crystallized, the band is tight and the overall intensity of the album never lets up. This is serious stuff, a good album to blast at top volume after a rough day at work or school. Definitely one of the best half-dozen albums of the year to date, as consistently good as Ninth House’s two previous studio records. Five shots of bourbon, no chaser. Albums are available online, in better independent record stores and at shows. Ninth House plays the cd release show on July 7 at Galapagos at midnight.

http://www.myspace.com/ninthhouse

Oldtimers will tell you about the time they saw Springsteen here in 1974. Back then the concerts were held on the 72nd St. playfield. The sound was so loud that Eastsiders would routinely call the cops and complain.

Another generation will tell you triumphantly how their college buddy can be seen in the crowd on the cover of that awful Simon & Garfunkel album recorded here in the early 80s. Chances are that even if they don’t like the band, they bought the album as a vicarious souvenir. Willie Nile’s blazing 1981 set here was also recorded and released several years later on cd.

In the 90s, corporate creepiness settled in, with the Summerstage series’ pompous producers subjecting crowds to a litany of commercial announcements before every show. But it was still a destination that just about every New York music fan made it to at least a couple of times a year. The Master Musicians of Jajouka, immortalized by Brian Jones on their 1968 cult album, played their first-ever US show here on an unseasonably cold, drizzly afternoon. Reggae fans still speak in awe of the Ernie Ranglin/Monty Alexander show here in the late 90s. Whatever pretentious vibe the producers gave off, there can be no disputing their legacy of imaginative, eclectic and occasionally transcendent shows.

It wasn’t 9/11 that changed things so drastically, although that doubtlessly contributed to the series’ rapid decline. Ecstasy was the culprit. Although this had traditionally been a music series with the occasional dance performance or poetry reading, in 2000 they started booking non-musical acts where dj’s would plug in their equipment and blast computer-simulated percussive noise. After a couple of highly publicized overdoses, a labyrinth of wire fences that doubled as holding pens was built. Prospective concertgoers would have to cool their heels there, packed in tightly for sometimes for hours on end before being allowed to finally enter the concert space. There were ways to beat the system: you could show up precisely at showtime, or wait for a rainy day when the turnout would be predictably light, but if you wanted to see a popular act, you either had to show up a half-hour before the gates opened, or, most likely, you simply wouldn’t get in. Not that you’d want to; the early zeros were a wasteland of boring, trendy indie rock, the occasional NPR-style world music act du jour, and of course the non-music events that all the druggies went to.

This afternoon I decided to check to see how viable Summerstage is this year and the bad news is that it’s not. It’s over, folks. I got there at five on the nose. The back bleachers, which are now reserved seating for corporate sponsors, were completely full (by the way, don’t forget that this is your tax dollars going to pay for free shows for corporate bigwigs and their spawn, most of whom could afford their own private show by whoever’s playing here). The standing-room area was visibly about half-full. And the rent-a-pigs who do security here weren’t letting anybody in. There was a line 500 deep, virtually all well-dressed white people. A little incongruous, since it was  Ivory Coast reggae act Tiken Jah Fakoly who was scheduled to play next. And then it hit me: the Ivoirians were hip to this. They stayed home.

If this had been the 70s, the hippies would have bumrushed the stage. If it was the 80s the punks and hip-hop kids and West Indians would have done the same thing. Was it the Reagan era that changed things, that turned the crowd completely docile, oblivious to the fact that they were being treated like cattle? No. It was the crowd itself. As recently as a few years ago, people came here because it was free, quite possibly because they couldn’t afford to plunk down, say, $60 to see Monty Alexander at the Blue Note, or $35 for the Master Musicians of Jajouka at Town Hall, or if they liked David Poe but didn’t feel like shelling out for the $10 cover plus a two-drink minimum at stuffy, overcrowded old Fez.

Those people aren’t coming to New York anymore because they can’t afford to. It’s a new paradigm and a new crowd, suburbanites from across the nation who’ve never experienced the great times New Yorkers could have here til recently.  If you remember those days, hold onto those memories because you won’t be making any more of them.   

A clinic in good guitar and good fun. Besides being Lakeside head honcho, producer of note, Steve Earle’s lead guitarist and member of the Yayhoos, Eric “Roscoe” Ambel sometimes finds the time to play in this self-described “party band.” With an open date on the Lakeside calendar, he’d apparently had enough of a break in his schedule to pull a show together. This was a pickup band of sorts, Phil Cimino on drums and Allison Jones on bass. It didn’t seem that anybody had the chance to rehearse much for this, but Jones is a quick study and Cimino can pretty much play anything. Tonight they played a lot of blues, but it wasn’t lame whiteboy blues, a bunch of aging fratboys hollering their way through Sweet Home Chicago and similar. “Craft” is a favorite word of Ambel’s, and tonight was a chance to watch an artisan pulling good stuff out of thin air and making it work every time.

Ambel is one of the most dynamic, interesting guitarists out there, a four-on-the-floor, purist rock guy at heart but equally adept at pretty much any Americana genre. In Steve Earle’s band the Dukes he plays a lot of wrenchingly beautiful stuff along with his usual twang; this band gives him the chance to parse his own back catalog and cut loose on some covers. Tonight he was in typically terse, soulful mode: he can solo like crazy when he wants to, which is hardly ever. This show was all about thoughtful, sometimes exploratory licks and fills with a few tantalizingly good moments of evil noise. With Ambel, melody is always front and center, but he’s a hell of a noise-rock player  - think Neil Young in a particularly pathological, electric moment - when the mood strikes him.

We arrived to find the band burning through Merle Haggard’s Workingman’s Blues. They then did a quietly captivating take on the old blues standard Ain’t Having No Fun, followed by J.J. Cale’s eerie The Sensitive Kind, which began with a long, darkly glimmering Ambel solo. A little later, they played an obscure Steve Earle tune, Usual Time of the Night, a cut from Ambel’s most recent solo album Knucklehead. It’s Earle’s attempt at writing a Jimmy Reed song, and tonight they did justice to the old bluesman, calmly wringing out every ounce of sly, late-night seductiveness.

They also played a really cool, slow surf instrumental; an amusingly upbeat, chromatically-fueled theme called How ‘Bout It (an expression, Ambel told the audience, that he used to death for a couple of years); the angry, blazing indie rock tune Song for the Walls (the opening track on Ambel’s Loud & Lonesome album); and closed the set with a rousing version of his classic song Garbagehead, written in about five minutes for a Lakeside New Year’s Eve show a few years ago. They wrapped it up with a completely over-the-top, heavy metal finale. Fucking A, fucking right. Fucking A, fucking A, Friday night, gimme five more beers and a snootfull of garbagehead. Who needs garbagehead when you can go out and see a show like this instead. For free.

 Even though it was past midnight by this point and therefore past Lakeside’s strict curfew (they’re trying to be good neighbors), the audience wasn’t about to let them go without an encore, so Ambel obliged them with the soul-inflected Hurting Thing, from the Yayhoos’ most recent album.