Jon Gitchoff

Black Francis at the Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, 11/20/2009

​Last Friday night in Chicago, the Pixies managed to make the gimmick of playing an entire album from start-to-finish feel fresh. The amount of fun they appeared to be having had a lot to do with this: All smiles, the band members bounded onstage - seriously, bassist Kim Deal half-marched, half-skipped to her stage left position - and launched into three b-sides from 1989's Doolittle, the album in question.

The packed general admission crowd greeted these tunes warmly, but exploded in ecstasy at the searing bass melody which begins Doolittle's first tune, "Debaser." Deal piped up with her spoken-word background vocals as frontman Black Francis demonstrated that he can still hawk-scream just like he used to. The album's hit-loaded front half was solid; standouts included the hissing twang of "Tame," the playground-pop of "Here Comes Your Man" and lite-metal "Monkey Gone to Heaven." The latter song especially spawned a loud sing-along: The entire place chanted the counting-off portion of the song, including Francis' throat-shredding yells at the end.

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All credit goes to Jaime for tipping me off to this show: Beach Boy Brian Wilson is kicking off his U.S. tour tomorrow night at the Sangamon Auditorium in Springfield, Illinois. Tickets are still available, believe it or not. Although Wilson just signed to DIsney Records and plans to record two solo albums (one of Gershwin covers, one of Disney classics), this show is going to feature Beach Boys and solo hits. Power-pop fans take note, too: Wilson's backing band features members of beloved cult act the Wondermints.

At 11:15 p.m., just before Leonard Cohen left the stage after performing nearly three hours of music, he locked arms with his six-piece band and trio of female singers. The packed Chicago Theatre crowd stood rapt as he started to say his farewells. After an a cappella reading of "Whither Thou Goest," a Bible-inspired song popularized by Guy Singer, he imparted some wisdom of his own. It went approximately like this:

"I hope in your life you are surrounded by friends and family," the white-haired, suit-clad Cohen said, his gravelly speaking voice not far from his baritone vocal intonations. "And if you aren't, I hope that you are happy in your solitude."

Making reference to the torrential rains that plagued Chicago earlier in the evening, he warned patrons to be careful, adding "and if you fall, I hope you fall on the right side of luck."

The 74-year-old Cohen finally seems to be after a tough few years, which found him fighting in court with an ex-manager over missing funds, a battle that halted his musical momentum. But he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, and this current U.S. tour, his first in fifteen years, is drawing rapturous reviews.

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(Earthworms and Fresh Heir are currently touring around air force bases in England and Europe. Mathias from Earthworms is keeping a diary for us while he's away. Read on below for the fifth and final installment. The first one is here, second one is here, the third one is here and the fourth one is here.)

The next morning, we had to get up pretty early for breakfast with the staff before we hit the road to Mildenhall, UK. The bus ride to Mildenhall took about eleven hours. The bus was more than comfortable, so we didn't have any issues with that. Fresh Heir had a band meeting in the front of the bus, while Earthworms were in the back writing a new song over a Splitface beat. It's called "Down By The River" - look for it on the new album. We watched a few skate videos, and eventually made a stop in Genk, Belgium to stretch and stock up on supplies. If you hang out with us, you know of course that "supplies" means "beer."
 


There was a street market near where we stopped and some cool shops as well, so a few of us went for a stroll and checked it all out. When we got back to the bus, the group as a whole went on a bender for the ages on the way to Mildenhall. The first beer was popped open sometime around 1 p.m. It was 9% alcohol, as were many of the rest. I stuck to the 5% Jupilers, as I was the tour manager and had to keep my wits about me. We drove through Belgium and part of France on our way to England. In France, we went through Dunkerque.. a bigger city than I had expected. I am infatuated with WWII history, so it was cool to see a place where some historic shit went down.
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(Earthworms and Fresh Heir are currently touring around air force bases in England and Europe. Mathias from Earthworms is keeping a diary for us while he's away. Read on below for the fourth installment; the first one is here, second one is here, the third one is here.)

Greetings from... Soulard. It's true, we're back from Europe. I didn't have any good opportunities the last few days of tour to write the last blog, so I am doing it now. Not quite as sexy, I know, but there are stories to be accounted for yet.



After a very informative lunchtime meeting with General Jones at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, it was off to the Netherlands. Our plane landed in Brussels, Belgium, and we proceeded to get back into the comfortable confines of our tour bus and drive to Brunssum, Netherlands. We met with our contact Harvey, and settled into our rooms in the Eisenhower Hotel -- where we proceeded to get drunk in Frank's room before we all passed out. The next day, we had a few hours to kill before sound check, so we hopped on the bus and rode into a town called Heerlen.More >>

(Earthworms and Fresh Heir are currently touring around air force bases in England and Europe. Mathias from Earthworms is keeping a diary for us while he's away. Read on below for the third installment; the first one is here, second one is here.)

Greetings from Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo!
Kosovo... is bananas. It is very difficult to know where to begin. In the two days we have spent here, we have had a week's worth of experiences. It has been unbelievable. We flew in from Frankfurt after our show in Schweinfurt, Germany, via a short layover in Budapest, Hungary (chalk another country off the list). We were met by our contact, Renee, and our on-base liaison, Lt. Jessica Felix. Both ladies have been extremely resourceful and extremely awesome. 

As soon as we got off the plane in Pristina (the capitol city), it was apparent that we were not in Kansas anymore. The airport was very basic, and we all stuck out like sore thumbs. We boarded a bus that took us across the city and a series of smaller villages, until we got to Camp Bondsteel. The bus trip was nothing short of eye-popping. This is a country that has seen a lot of brutality in the last ten years, and the evidence is still here. We didn't see missiles sticking out of buildings, but we did see the destruction that they caused.

Serbia really did a number on Kosovo (before the US did a bigger number on Serbia), but the people here are strong. The country is in a process of rebuilding, and a lot of the destruction has been replaced with new houses. There is no real industry other than agriculture in Kosovo, so the economy is in shambles. People deliberately don't put windows and doors on the upper floors of their houses in order to not get charged taxes for them, and the electric company expects everyone to pay an equal amount, no matter how much electricity they use. Street signs often have the name of the street or town in two languages, Albanian (the official language of Kosovo) and Serbian. More often than not, the Serbian pronunciation is crossed out with spray paint. There are still a lot of hard feelings here.

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(Earthworms and Fresh Heir are currently touring around air force bases in England and Europe. Mathias from Earthworms is keeping a diary for us while he's away. Read on below for the second installment; the first one is here.)

Good people of STL,
After a few days of wall-to-wall crazy, I am finally able to take a few minutes here on the tour bus to write some more about our adventures in Europe. Since we last spoke, Earthworms and Fresh Heir have played two shows and traveled from the German Alps to the German countryside. All of it is beautiful. Our first show in Garmisch at the Edelweiss resort was at a spot called Zuggy's Base Camp. The crowd wasn't huge by any means, but the 40 or so people who were there showed us a lot of love. Shouts to Sylvia and Mark.. a couple who hung out with us after the show and bought us some very tasty and potent Bavarian beers. Sylvia is a beautiful German lady who is approaching 40, but looks 30.

Mark is a career military man - 35 - who has one last tour of Iraq to look forward to. We had some great conversations. They look forward to retiring to Oklahoma in nine years when Mark's time in the military is up. We also met a great guy named Trevor who works with kids and spends most of his free time skiing. Trevor is a hip-hop head who completely appreciated our set, and knew every word to our A Tribe Called Quest cover of "Scenario." The marketing manager of Edelweiss is a really good guy named Brad -- he showed us a fantastic time and made sure we were given the rock star treatment by the resort.

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Technological difficulties have prevented video from being beamed to us, but the Monads have checked in from Europe with some photos showing that they're alive and well. Well -- mostly: Their blog has some photos of injuries they've sustained. Reassures Matt Shivelbine: "Don't worry though, nobody punched anyone. We're all getting along fine - we just keep losing fights with inanimate objects."

Below, here are some snaps of the band in happier, non-injured times. Here's part one of their tour diary.



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Speaking of bands traveling overseas: Starting April 9, Earthworms and Fresh Heir will be embarking on a tour of U.S. military bases in Europe. The trek will take them to bases in Germany, the Netherlands, Kosovo and the U.K. (Full dates here.)



"We hope to bolster our resume with this tour, and afford ourselves more opportunities similar to this one as a result," says Earthworms member Mathias."Also, we hope just to have an eye-popping, life-changing experience going to all of these places. Kosovo is a war zone. I look forward to this show the most, because those troops are deployed in a dangerous place and will really appreciate it when an American hip-hop band shows up to make their heads nod for a couple of hours. None of us have toured outside of the US -- visited yes, toured, no -- so this is a big deal for everybody."

Mathias said the trek came about after AFE (Armed Forces Entertainment), an organization dedicated to bringing American entertainers overseas to entertain those in the military, found Earthworms via CDBaby and liked what it heard. The tour was booked by Lt. Jarod Trujillo, who has a radio show on the Armed Forces Radio; Mathias says Trujillo is going to be promoting the concerts and playing Earthworms music on his show. Questions emailed to Trujillo weren't returned as of yet, but in a separate press release sent out by the band, he said, ""The Earthworms have a fresh and original hip-hop sound that reflects influences from across the entire spectrum of music. What's more, they put on an amazing live show that is like one big party."
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(Last week, we told you that the Monads were going to be invading Europe. The band is going to be kind enough to send along some dispatches from the road. Here's the first installment!)

Hey all, it's your good friend Patthew writing you from far across the Atlantic Ocean in a country called Belgium.You can look it up on your map if you like.

Wikimedia Commons

So let me give you a brief account of what's occurred so far. So we get to the airport Wednesday morning, all of our stuff in hand, having done a walkthrough and getting the okay on everything -- and they won't take the bass and the enormous case we had for it. So we had to leave ole blue back in the states.

Traveling a little lighter, we get to the gate only to find that our first flight, the connection in Newark, has been delayed an hour. Originally we thought we had an hour and a half window, suddenly we didn't. So after a cramped couple of hours to Newark, we make a frantic rush through the Newark airport to make the flight to Belgium. To get an image of what it may have looked like, watch the scene in Home Alone when the family is trying to make their plane, not realizing poor Kevin has been left at home...alone, much like the title of the movie.
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