Aww. Suzanne Toon -- a.k.a. the younger sister of RFT contributor Jason Toon and ex-Bureau keyboardist Jamie Toon -- made it to Hollywood last night on American Idol Randy Jackson called her voice "seductive," while all judges called her "interesting." The clips of her and her young daughter are just precious.
-- Annie Zaleski
All by Roy Kasten.
If a generation of Pitchfork and Stereogum readers, who otherwise care squat about soul music, have been turned on to Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, you wouldn't really know it from the under-dressed crowd at the Duck Room on Wednesday night. Old heads from KDHX, the mature staff of Vintage Vinyl (who got the night off plus tix courtesy of their overlords) and other sundry silver foxes and foxettes (some of who briefly attempted to build a blockade of chairs at the front of the stage; yeah right) dominated the sold-out room. Good for us. And good for whoever persuaded Beatle Bob to do his thing far off in a dim corner of the room.
According to my poll, no one knew anything about designated opener The Ivan Milev Band. Milev, turns out, is the Jimi Hendixocov of the accordion, and his band was fiddler Entcho Todorov. And if you're thinking "WTF?" then you have the picture just about right. The two play Bulgarian dance tunes at Mach 7 speeds, with humor and dexterity, as if they relish the absurdity of making opaque, math-folk, freak-scale music before a crowd who came for funk. But the juxtaposition somehow worked. By the end, when Milev was biting, sucking or blowing into some part of his black Scandalli squeeze box, tossing in an "Oh Susannah" lick, and then mashing and needling his keys in full free-jazz showmanship, the audience pretty much got it -- whatever the hell it was.
How do you know when it's show time at a Sharon Jones concert? It's not when the horn section -- trumpet, tenor sax and baritone sax -- set up; nor when bassist, songwriter and band leader Gabriel Roth (aka Bosco Mann) adjusts the angle of his wrap-around shades; nor when emcee and rhythm guitarist Binky Griptite checks the crease in his slacks. No, it's when the reefer smoke from the green room engulfs the room like invisible fog-machine mist. How a band that high can play so tight is a mystery no critic is prepared to answer.
And what's tight, anyway? It's a responsiveness that could pass for martial training if the locked rhythm -- driven by young drummer Homer Steinweiss and conga player Bugaloo Velez -- didn't drip funk. It's a simple signal tap of Mann's polished shoe toe that sets the band to a collective forward and backward and side-to-side that could be a dance of pure cool if the results weren't pure heat. It's eight band members in-tune, on-time, of-nothing-but-the-groove, which only begs another question: What is groove?
Griptite's fast and finely rehearsed blipster intro and immediate merch plug is groove. The synchronized chonka chinka chinka chonk of two electric guitars is groove. It's the certain Clyde Stubblefield thwack-tone of a snare and congas together like a pop corn machine driven by an atomic clock. It's Dave Guy, Neal Sugarman and Ian Hendrickson-Smith knowing their horn lines as they know to breathe. It's eight parts and one sound, no matter that the band is just warming up.
It's also Augusta, Georgia native Sharon Jones, dressed tonight in a casual (for this band) black and grey sheer skirt and blouse, hair in tight pigtails, feet tight in tiny stiletto heels, and more tight sexuality in the mole above her left eye than all the runways in New York, the band's home. Jones used the Duck Room stage like a runway, stalking it end to end, checking the sound, the lights, the space, and with her first number, she proved her genius for rhythmic singing—she's not the most overpowering soul singer alive, but she may be the most tuned to time—and for finding the most irredeemably dorky white dudes to dance with, not that there were any shortage of those.
To call Jones a powerhouse or a force of nature doesn't quite get it. There's something about the space her band creates, the kind of soul-funk fusion, that makes the most of her gospel-trained gifts and her love of spectacle and dance. With the Dap-Kings behind her, she uses that sonic space for own agenda, her own story. On a tune like "Be Easy," one of the night's many selections from the gospelly 100 Days, 100 Nights, she can invoke Carla Thomas and Bettye Swann at the same time, and still retain her own relation to the blues both unholy and holy (Jones has plans for a full on gospel album). When she asks for a towel (she's drenched in sweat by the third number), Binky brings her a dozen.
While the devastating finale of "It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World" (not to mention the best band introductions ever) drew a straight line to the James Brown source, the rap-dance-preaching she merged with "100 Days, 100 Nights" found and freed the source of the source: African and Native American culture and history. With her body and voice, she recounted the middle passage, the struggle, the blood, the betrayal, the endurance and the moves that run through all of American soul music regardless of (but not without) race. This night was an "old school" spectacle, in the best sense of that word, but obviously not a seminar. All the same, Jones schooled every last soul in the room.
-- Roy Kasten
Courtesy of the RFT's Bob Westerholt. Review by Roy Kasten coming ASAP.
-- Annie Zaleski
Ooh, good news for this chilly day. Mark Kozelek, late of Red House Painters, will be releasing a new Sun Kil Moon record on April 1, appropriately titled April. Right now you can stream a new song, "Moorestown," at Caldo Verde Records. The song embodies Kozelek's musical m.o.: Melancholy strings sway in the background like a sad lullaby, matching the chilly acoustic guitar and his hypnotic, evocative voice. Think fleshed-out shoegaze-folk, or hymns for those people whose idea of religion is an acoustic guitar.
From the press release:
April is a collection of songs recorded between March and August 2007 in San Francisco (Hyde Street Studios) and Seattle (Well Recording). In the spirit of Sun Kil Moon’s Ghosts and Tiny Cities, Mark was joined by the same players as before, including drummer Anthony Koutsos (Red House Painters), bassist Geoff Stanfield (Black Lab), violist Michi Aceret, and percussionist David Revelli. April also finds Mark in the company of guest vocalists Bonnie Prince Billy, Ben Gibbard, and Eric Pollard (Retribution Gospel Choir). Mark will play select solo dates coinciding with the release, and will tour with Sun Kil Moon later in the year.
-- Annie Zaleski
Keegan sends along this link, featuring a mix of snowy songs.
01. Teenage Fanclub - "If I Never See You Again" (Howdy!)
02. Frida Hyvonen - "Djuna!" (Until Death Comes)
03. Pavement - "Spit on a Stranger" (Terror Twilight)
04. The Love Letter Band - "New Lover" (This World Be My Church)
05. Math & Physics Club - "Darling, Please Come Home" (Math & Physics Club)
06. Yves Montand - "Rue Saint Vincent" (Souvenirs)
07. Jens Lekman - "The Cold Swedish Winter" (When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog)
08. The Halo Benders - "Snowfall" (God Don’t Make Junk)
09. Sambassadeur - "Sense of Sound" (Sambassadeur)
10. The Lucksmiths - "Stayway Stars" (Naturaliste)
11. Au Revoir Simone - "Sad Song" (The Bird of Music)
12. Nico - "The Fairest of the Seasons" (Chelsea Girl)
13. Badly Drawn Boy - "Donna and Blitzen" (About a Boy OMS)
14. Voxtrot - "This Place Has Got No Soul, Kid" (Demo)
15. Goldenboy - "Twenty Months in a Hailstorm" (Blue Swan Orchestra)
To that list, I'd add anything by Belle and Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister, something by Yo La Tengo's ...And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out and anything by the Cardigans.
What's yours?
-- Annie Zaleski
On February 5, Hot Chip is releasing its third record, Made in the Dark. By far its finest work yet, the album manages to be danceable while appealing to those who don’t like dance music – mainly because of its nods to post-punk, British power-pop, cheesy top 40, old-school funk, new-school R&B, minimal techno, rave-y electro and more.
Hot Chip recorded Dark in various locations in its home base of London. The quintet self-produced/recorded tracks in guitarist/ percussionist Al Doyle and percussionist Felix Martin’s studio, holed up in vocalist/percussionist Joe Goddard’s bedroom (where it constructed much of 2006’s The Warning) -- and even entered a real studio with professional engineers, something it had never done before.
Vocalist/keyboardist/guitarist Alexis Taylor says the aim of this nomadic process was “not to let [Dark] sound like it’s all of one mood or of one acoustic space." Mission accomplished: The album works as a Friday-night warm-up, as fodder for a rock-music DJ and as something for funk/hip-hop DJs to slip into their sets.
Many of Dark's songs were already debuted at live shows -- which helped the recording process evolve.
"We wanted to make this album sound closer to our live sound," Taylor says. "[Usually] we write at the recording stage. With this album, we wanted to go against that, do something that would be unconventional for us – that actually is probably more conventional for most bands.”
Dark is unconventional for dance music, but distinctly Hot Chip, because it’s entirely thoughtful, from the carefully stitched-together music down to the emotional vocals.
Annie Zaleski: When you read about people who make music with keyboards and stuff, they don’t tend to use that word -- thoughtfulness.
Alexis Taylor: Why would anyone want to make something that didn’t work for a long time – or maybe could be played in a very different context? Recently, we played a show in London, and two members of the band [Joe and Felix] weren’t around. We decided to play the show, and it wasn’t really about dancing at all. I was just speaking to someone last night who happened to be at that gig, and she was saying how she was really quite amazed by it. She was expecting one thing but got a completely different thing. I suppose that’s someone saying that the songs still stand up, even if they’re performed only with a keyboard or an electric guitar -- rather than a full band trying to make people throw their hands in the air or whatever.
As an artist, I bet it’s so gratifying. It’s like, “Oh right, totally. They get it!”
I’m not for a minute saying everyone gets it, but if people can see these different sides to us and appreciate that, then that’s the best thing really. If you’re trying to make music, you’d like people to be open-minded, and you’d like to be able to do very different things. If you’ve got anything of your own to say, it’s not like it could be a very narrow scope. That’s just how I feel anyway. I like to be able to make minimal, experimental music, and also make pop music, and also make music that’s hip-hop influenced and also make heavy-metal-influenced music. All different sounds are interesting to me. If you can get to the point where people still are interested in it – and they’re not just turning away as soon as you change your sound – it’s great.
The Batman-influenced video for Hot Chip, "Ready for the Floor":
Taylor says he was listening to a diverse selection of artists while making Dark – including Willie Nelson, Donnie Hathaway, Terry Riley and even R. Kelly. (The slow jam “Wrestlers” is a hilarious – and successful -- attempt at aping Kelly’s “I’m a Flirt.”)
How did these things influence your writing at all?
That’s just me talking about the things that come to mind for me; I’m sure for the others in the band, they were listening to completely different things. Joe is a big U.K. garage fan, and also [likes] house and techno music. We’re all interested in different polyrhythms and things and trying to set songs in an interesting context – not necessarily just leave them as they are when they’re first written. Sometimes a song is simpler in its original form, but we sort of take it and put it in a new context. I’ve listened to quite a lot of Black Sabbath over the last few years as well. Funkadelic -- the first Funkadelic album, I was going back to and listening a lot. I don’t think we were listening to these things and then consciously thinking about them. They’re just sort of in the background, you know? Listening to music for pleasure…
How did all the remixing influence the songwriting? Has it at all?
The remixing hasn’t directly influenced the songwriting, in my mind. But what has influenced it has been DJing. All of us put together this compilation album, DJ-Kicks [last year]. We did a lot of DJing around the release of that. Al and Felix found a particular area of dance music that they wanted to DJ, German minimal house and techno music, on the Traum label and Kompakt, things like that. There’s a lot of influence from those labels and that Cologne-based music scene coming into the rhythms on this record. Things like the track “Hold On” started out as a minimal-techno thing, but I guess by me singing over it, it kind of takes it into a slightly different place. And also, Joe was trying to make more of a disco groove, it’s kind of a battle between being disco and minimal house, and being a song with live distorted Fender Rhodes all over it as well. The DJing will have brought a minimal techno feel to the record in a way that we haven’t really explored before.
When people listen to the record, what do you want them to take from it?
I’d like them to be enthralled by it, and be confused by it, and disoriented by it, and be able to listen to what’s happening in the lyrics -- as well as how those are going against the music sometimes. I want people to find all the depth in it that we hope they’ll find in it, you know? I want them to have fun listening to it, but also there’s a lot to be found in the record, I think.
In this week's paper, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jane Wiedlin of '80s pop-rockers the Go-Go's. I've been a HUGE fan of the band since high school, so getting a chance to talk to someone in the quintet was a thrill. They're playing at 7:30 at the Bottleneck Blues Bar at the Ameristar Casino in St. Charles on Thursday night (January 31). But sadly enough, it's sold out!
Soothe your sadness with some MP3s at the bottom of the post, but in the meantime, here are some interview outtakes from my chat with Jane. She now lives in Madison, Wisconsin, but continues to write, perform and create music. (Image courtesy of janewiedlin.com)
Are you working on any more solo stuff?
I’m currently producing a band here in Madison called Whore du Jour. When I’m through with that, I plan to start my solo record. It should’ve been out already, but things keep getting in the way, so I keep pushing it back. But I am going to get there.
All of your old solo records go for insane amounts of money on eBay, I don’t know if you know that.
I didn’t know that. That’s really funny. Nahhh, I don’t believe you.
Swear to God, I’ve seen the greatest hits CD go for $35.
Oh my God! That’s so flattering.
I’m just like, "I didn’t even realize it was out of print."
Everything I ever did is out of print – well, that's not true. The Go-Go’s records you can still get on CD. But all my solo stuff is…there’s just no copies. And I'm such a dork that I don’t even have my own copies.
Really?
Yeah, I’m going to have to track those down someday, really.
So what is the biggest misconception about you, that you've heard from other people?
People always think I’m tall -- and I’m not, I’m really short. People often think I’m stupid because I have a cartoon voice – but I’m not! [laughs] I guess those would be the two biggies.
Sometimes I just don’t want to know what people think about me. I’d rather remain blissfully ignorant.
Oh I know, it’s horrible. I made the mistake of Googling myself once. I’ll never do it again. It was so horrifying. The first thing that came up was a white supremacist site, and they had me on one of their hate lists.
What?
Yeah, I’m on a white supremacist hate list site. And it’s for being Jewish – and I'm not even Jewish! So it’s like, God, not only do these people hate me, but they hate me for something I’m not even! I mean, I would be happy to be Jewish, but I’m not. [laughs] It's really bad.
Actually, my life is really fun and easy and nice. I look at young women now that are just getting famous in this century, and what a nightmare that is, with all the paparazzi and everything. I never could have handled that in the ‘80s when we were popular, if that's how life was. I would have lost my mind.
People seem a lot meaner, too. Because of the Internet, people seem like they can say anything, because they’re hiding behind a different voice. I’m the same way. It’s like, you gain five pounds, all of a sudden you're fat.
When I heard that people were calling Jennifer Love Hewitt fat, I’m like, "Are you guys on drugs?" One thing that I love about the Midwest, is -- [and] I didn’t really even notice it until I left, but in L.A. literally if you’re not a size two, you’re fat. And here, people are just normal. There’s even – shockingly – people that have a little bit of weight on them. And people don’t make a big deal about it.
What's your hair looking like thse days?
Well, I’ve been trying to grow it, and I'm just getting to that point where I’m fed up and I’m probably going to cut it all off again. It’s chin-length, but even when it gets chin-length, it feels so weirdly long to me. I guess I’m just a short-hair girl.
MP3: Jane Wiedlin, "Rush Hour"
MP3: Jane Wiedlin with Sparks, "Cool Places"
MP3: The Go-Go's, "Johnny, Are You Queer?"
MP3: The Go-Go's, "Our Lips are Sealed"
MP3: The Go-Go's, "Skidmarks On My Heart"
Yacht Rock Episode 11: The Story of Kenny Loggins Writing Footloose. Online below.
Electronic ice queens Ladytron are playing the Pageant on Monday, June 16. No ticket info yet. Datarock is opening.
John Vanderslice is also returning to the Billiken Club on April 16. Thanks, commenter Chris!
w00t!
MP3: John Vanderslice, "Numbered Lithograph"
-- Annie Zaleski
Anyone visiting Justice's MySpace today may have seen this:
But alas, the listing is wrong, because the Royal Oak Music Theatre is in Detroit, not St. Louis. The French dance-funk duo -- which is headlining this spring's MySpace tour -- isn't coming to town. Bummer.
BUT! To ease the pain, download a free Justice mix HERE. It was supposed to be for a Fabric Live release, but Fabric for whatever reason didn't like it. So Justice called it the "Xmas Mix" and unleashed it for free.
Tracklisting:
01 Sparks: “Tryouts for the Human Race”
02 Rondo Veneziano: “La Serenissima”
03 Goblin: “Tenebrae”
04 Daft Punk: “Ouverture”
05 Surkin: “Next of Kin”
06 Symbolone: “Love Juice”
07 Korgis: “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometimes”
08 Midnight Juggernauts: “Ending of an Era”
09 The Paradise: “In Love With You [ft. Romauld]”
10 Justice: “TTHHEE PPAARRTTYY (Acapella)”
11 Chic: “Everybody Dance”
12 Frankie Valli: “Who Loves You”
13 Das Pop: “Underground”
14 Julien Clerc: “Quand Je Joue”
15 Daniel Balavoine: “Vivre Ou Survivre”
16 Richard Sanderson: “Reality”
17 Zoot Woman: “Grey Day”
18 Fucking Champs: “Thor Is Like Immortal”
19 The Rave: “Mother”
20 Fancy: “You Never Know”
21 Frank Stallone: “Far From Over”
22 Sheila: “Misery”
23 Todd Rundgren: “International Feel”
-- Annie Zaleski
Hey, remember when I made that awesome, comprehensive concert calendar last year? And it disappeared for awhile, because it was too unwieldy to keep up with? Well, the amount of shows coming to town has become so ridiculous, that to help my own sanity, I’m bringing it back. Behold: Your concert guide for the next few months (as always, a work in progress). Don’t ever say there’s nothing to do in St. Louis.
-- Annie Zaleski
God bless the Dutch. The following Web site features three hours of vintage, 1983-era MTV via Google Video. (Thanks, Paul.) Check out the videos at this link here. ZZ Top! Mark Goodman's 'fro! Madness! Bowie! I love it! My little retro heart just exploded with joy.
That site's almost as good as the 120 Minutes video aggregator, which compiles alternative videos which aired on the channel's excellent underground-music show. (Aside: I have a ton of vintage VCR tapes; can anyone help me digitize them?)
-- Annie Zaleski
St. Louis faves Rogue Wave are playing the Gargoyle on April 20. Tickets are on sale February 1.
Here's a video for "Publish My Love," one of the best songs on the Bay Area band's LP, Descended Like Vultures. I couldn't embed a new video, since now they're on Universal Records imprint Brushfire Records (and those labels don't like blogs ganking their videos).
(This post will be tagged at the top of the blog until the deadline, FYI. For new posts, see below.)
Heads up, local DJs: Start constructing your best mixes to submit to the RFT's annual DJ Spin-off. During this event, some of the area's best wheels-of-steel masters compete to win a free trip to the Ultra Music Festival, a two-day extravaganza held on March 28 and 29 at Bicentennial Park in Miami, Florida. The festival (which is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year) traditionally features the most talented artists in dance music — including local Scotty Mac, who won the Spin-off last year.
This year's RFT DJ Spin-off will be held Thursday, February 21, at Atomic Cowboy. A talented panel of to-be-determined judges will determine the winner by judging each DJ on song selection, crowd interaction, style and skills.
To find out how to enter, click below...
