Category Archives: Live Music

25 Years of Boy Band Love

by thesisterj

In the movie Fever Pitch, during an argument following the only Red Sox game he did not attend in 23 years, Jimmy Fallon’s character said to Drew Barrymore’s character: “Do you still care about anything you cared about 23 years ago? How about ten? How about five? Name me a single thing that you’ve cared about for 23 years.”

This quote came to mind after I recently attended my 4th New Kids on the Block concert in 4 years. I never was lucky enough to see them in concert as a child, so the fact that I’ve seen them so much in such a short period of time suggests I’m trying to make up for lost time. Or maybe I’m hanging onto my childhood by a thread—the same way I honestly think the majority of my fellow concertgoers were.

 
Most of the attendees were my age (give or take 5 years in either direction). Many were clad in neon clothing or oversized buttons depicting their favorite New Kids that they’ve treasured for more than two decades, whereas I had simply dug through my drawers and pulled on the first non-baby-related-stained shirt I could find to wear on my first night out in months.

 
But anyway… the reason the Fever Pitch quote popped into my head is that I have loved the New Kids on the Block not for 23 years…but for 25 years. After consulting my calculator, that is approximately 80% of my life. I can’t think of anything (except, perhaps for the Red Sox, like Jimmy Fallon’s character but NOT Jimmy Fallon himself) that I’ve loved for that long.
I knew it had been a long time but the actual number of years I’ve loved them became scarily apparent when Joey McIntyre paused while belting out “Please Don’t go Girl” (as beautifully as he had before he hit puberty!) and mentioned that it had been 25 years since he had gotten together with the other members of the band. I was shocked that it had been that long. Throughout the rest of the tune, while listening and swaying back and forth in the awkward way only a white girl from Maine can, I reminisced about the last 25 years and remembered how much the New Kids on the Block impacted my life! Before I get too much into detail about the New Kids’ performance itself, I must discuss the two opening acts.


New Kids on the Block were touring with Boyz II Men and 98 Degrees. The name of the tour, amusingly enough, was “The Package.” I attended the concert with a dear friend from law school, and when we bought the tickets several months ago, her boyfriend referred to it as “the BIG Package tour”, a name that we quickly adopted ourselves.
Boyz II Men was the first group to take the stage, with 3 of the 4 original members. They were, to put it simply, amazing. Their voices were beautiful, the harmonies were perfect, and it seemed to me that no time had passed from many years ago when I first heard them. Now their dancing skills left a little to be desired—but they did break into the running man during their closing song which was, naturally, “Motown Philly.” Who doesn’t love the running man!?!?!

The most chilling moment during Boyz II Men’s act was when they requested a moment of silence for Boston. Now anyone who knows anything about the city of Boston or anyone from the city knows that Bostonians have a hell of a time keeping quiet. But in that vast arena where the Celtics and Bruins play, you could hear a pin drop. The members of Boyz II Men were a class act by making a tribute to the place most people in the region of New England agree is the best damn place in the world.

Ask anyone—ANYONE—in the 6 states of New England and they will tell you that Boston is THEIR city and they won’t put up with anyone or anything fucking with it. Immediately after the moment of silence concluded, Boyz II Men broke into “It’s so Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday.” Perfect song to commemorate the victims of the Boston marathon bombings almost 2 months ago. I can’t say enough good things about Boyz II Men—it was seriously as if their voices had never even changed. I must say it would’ve been nice if all 4 members had been present, but hey, you can’t have everything, right?

98 Degrees came on after Boyz II Men. 98 Degrees was never my favorite boy band. They were popular around the same time as N’Sync and seriously—who would ever pick the Lachey brothers over Justin Timberlake? I used 98 Degrees’ set to make notes on my phone for this entry and to brave the very long bathroom line.

Now, as you can probably imagine, there were thousands of women at this concert and not a lot of men—a few significant others here and there and a few hardcore gay men who have loved Donnie Wahlberg for as long as I have. So, the staff of the Boston arena decided it was socially acceptable in this situation for all the females to have access to the men’s restrooms, which moved things along more quickly than if they hadn’t allowed women access to the men’s areas. I made some friends in the bathroom line, which was inevitable—after all, it’s a special kind of person to attend a concert of New Kids on the Block, 25 years after they were actually “kids.”
I sort of half-listened to 98 Degrees through the doors and I was nonplussed. I enjoyed hearing the few songs I knew by the group, (Because of You is my favorite of the few I know) and yes I will admit that Nick Lachey looked smoking hot. But their performance overall didn’t leave much of an impression on me. The one part of their performance that stuck with me was when they asked the crowd if we remembered “TRL” on MTV…how could TRL be forgotten? I long for the days of TRL in the age of Teen Mom and Jersey Shore crowding MTV’s airspace.

When 98 Degrees finally finished, of course there was a break prior to the headlining New Kids taking the stage. I used this break to text my husband and check in on my daughter, who, by the way, is only 14 months old but I would’ve done anything to have her with me at this show! The woman behind us had her daughter with her who looked to be about 10 years old and all I could think about was how much I would LOVE to bring my own little girl to see the guys I grew up loving. But you know, one day I just may be able to do that, because it doesn’t seem like the New Kids are hanging up their sequined Sox jerseys anytime soon…

After a very brief break, the lights went out and on came the New Kids! Their opening number was a song from their newest album and they went on to play for TWO HOURS STRAIGHT! That was the longest they’ve played without stopping in all the times I’ve seen them. They played several new songs and then launched into a medley of their older tunes. Obviously some people come to hear the classics they grew up with—not everyone keeps up with the New Kids and their albums released this century!

My concert buddy and I were totally judging the women next to us, because they didn’t know any of the new songs. But maybe my friend and I were the totally whacko ones—we sang along with all the songs, new and old. In addition to their own songs, the New Kids paid tribute to Prince, Queen, Nelly, George Michael and the Isley Brothers. My friend and I were both horrified at Jordan Knight’s ability to do an AMAZING impression of Prince—she and I simultaneously looked at each other and said “he’s way too good at that!”

As you can imagine, since the members of the New Kids on the Block are from Boston, several times, they made their hometown pride quite clear. Donnie (my favorite New Kid since 1987!!!!!) shouted things like “it’s great to be back in the greatest fucking city in the world!” and “Nothing breaks Boston!” and of course the New Kids ended up playing Boston’s unofficial anthem “Sweet Caroline” toward the end of their set, to the utmost delight of the crowd.

The boys paid a hell of a final tribute to Boston by closing out the show singing “Hangin’ Tough”, wearing Red Sox jerseys with “BOSTON STRONG” surrounding area code “617” on the back. (As a brief side note—I realized during this number that I have seen the New Kids on the Block during every sports season—I’ve seen them wear Bruins jerseys, Celtics Jerseys and Red Sox jerseys! Not sure if this is something I should be proud of?)

By the end of the night, my throat was sore, my feet hurt and I was exhausted because I had stayed up later that evening than I had in months and I knew I still had an hour-long drive out of the city ahead of me. But every second of the night was worth it, from the dinner in Faneuil Hall to seeing thousands of women in the streets of Boston ready for the show, to listening to Boyz II Men, to suffering through 98 Degrees and finally seeing the New Kids come onto the stage! The members of the New Kids may be in their 40s…but to me they are still those young guys from Boston that touched the hearts of millions of girls in the late 80s. They continue to touch the hearts of their original fans and I sure hope they continue touring for the next 25 years!!!!!

Cover Songs: Pink Moons and Psycho Killers

by theelderj

In the past, I have spent a good deal of time talking about cover songs. I have mused about what it means to call a song the same song in different performances; I have tried to provide a typology of a cover-song; I have even dabbled in ‘arranged-marriages’ of sorts as I have tried to pair impossible, dream combinations of songs and performers.

One thing I have not talked about is the fact that certain songs should never be covered. Now, I know that such wide-open generalizations are inevitably proved false (you know, with all those monkeys working away on all those typewriters….), but I think there are songs that are so indelibly and unalterably bound to their performers that they should never be assayed by someone else.

What got me thinking about this? Last night my children politely requested their nightly dance party (at almost 3 and almost 1.5 years, they actually screamed for it, but I digress). I turned on the television to Music Choice’s (sadly and pathetically) default Adult Alternative station and the following abomination filled the air:

I don’t really know who Teddy Thompson and Krystle Warren are and I am so incensed that I will not even bother to check them out Wikipedia. (How’s that for some false indignation?) Here’s the thing: “Pink Moon”, Nick Drake’s brief, ethereal and ephemeral anti-anthem, works because of its (1) simplicity, (2) beauty, and (3) brevity, all of which are made possible by the solo combination of Drake’s eerie/breathy voice and his iconoclastic finger-picking.  When the spare piano notes come in, their vibrattoed-brevity brings that solitary sense into relief like the light of the moon in a darkened sky.

This cover is earnest—the performers obviously love the song, but they just do too much. The two voices deprive the song of its solitary space; the extra instrumentation clutters up the sound; and the repetitions lengthen the time past its key feature: the almost orgasmic (if subdued) brevity that leaves you wanting more.

And isn’t that the central story of Nick Drake’s music and his life? The lack—the wanting, and the ultimate space of hope and disappointment left at the end?

The next morning, my good friend and sometime-commenter on this blog (who keeps threatening to write a post…) asked me about a song we used to cover when we were in a band, “Psycho Killer” by the talking heads. See, the band just released an earlier version of this song with a damn cello in it.

This version, I must admit, actually seems to reside somewhere between the 1977 version and the live version–it doesn’t seem to have the same stilted pace of the album version. It also seems to anticipate a little bit of the life of the much later live performance. When it comes down to it, though, the cello isn’t that noticeable or radical.

Now, here’s the problem with “Psycho Killer”. (If it is really a problem at all.) The version I grew up knowing (and ultimately the one our band covered) was actually from the live performance that became the sensation Stop Making Sense. In that live version, David Byrne walks on to the stage and presses play on a sound machine to produce the beat—he performs the song at a pace much faster than the album version for the most part alone.

The band slowly integrates into the music as the concert builds on. By the end of a few songs the stage is filled and the air vibrates with some of the most dynamic and symphonic sound to ever come out of lower Manhattan.  The album version of the song, however, is slower, almost sloppy even though recorded, and ultimately unsatisfying if you heard the concert version first.

Now, in between the original recording and the performance was over half a decade. Anyone who has performed the same song for a year, much less seven, knows that songs develop as if they are in fact alive: they mature and become more complex; sometimes they lose vibrancy and urgency. But what is important is that they, like the performer and the audience, change.

So, perhaps some of my resistance to hearing another version of this song and part of our cultural attachment to individual versions of songs is that they offer us the false promise of sameness—the recorded song stays the same, it doesn’t develop, it is like a photograph or a video: it is a fossilized version of something that once was. The song lives on forever. Psychologically, isn’t this an attractive flouting of the fact that we will not do the same?

Still Killing?

Still Killing?

The trick of this, though, is that the experience of the song has changed because we as listeners are no longer the same and we live with the earlier experiences of hearing the song as part of our memory and our associations with that piece.

Now, “Psycho Killer” is a song whose power rests not in its particular beauty or in the simplicity of its articulation but in its message and structure, does lend itself to different reinterpretations. One of our favorite bands, Bishop Allen, does a fine and light job of it here ( I do appreciate the nearly manic pace of this cover and the humorous intro-patter; the slight change in phrasing isn’t as effective; the overall effect, though, seems to channel more of the punk-era aesthetic that the Talking Heads came out of). And the original version of the song above shows us some of the surprising depth that can be plumbed merely by adding in new instrumentation or varying the pace.

The lyrics of the song also lend themselves to pointed reinterpretation—where one version of the song is plaintive protest, another is mocking jest. What would this song be in the mouth of someone more earnest? What if a Bob Dylan or Bright Eyes performed this song? (There’s my impossible recover request: Bob Dylan, performing “Psycho Killer”,  five years before it was written in Washington, D.C. during the unfolding of the Watergate Scandal. Don’t ask. Just imagine.)

Of course, it is not only a simple song that is hard to perform. At times, the more complex a song gets, the more it depends on a dangerous tension between execution and failure. One of my favorite Talking Heads songs, “Nothing But Flowers”, works only when performed with a paradoxical severe levity.

I love this song. And, when I heard it performed live by another one of my favorite bands, Guster, I thought I was going to die of happiness. And, for at least a minute of the song, I was filled with joy. But, slowly, the sound started to wash over me and I realized how it seemed only half-way there, like something essential was missing.

So, the moral of the story? (Wait, there was a story?) Cover songs are hard and delicate work. An artist needs to make the song his or her own without losing whatever is essential to the song’s core.

I think. Maybe. While I figure it out, here’s another cover to mull over:

Fender Precision Bass

by theyoungerj

I have talked a lot about the band I am in and my recent learning of the bass. It really had to do with the aftermath the untimely passing of my father because it hit me very hard.  My situation was different from my siblings because I lived in the home we all grew up in so I didn’t get to leave the whole scene after the funeral. I was right in the middle of everything that was my Dad and it was not easy.

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Lucky Tubb: Preview

by theyoungerj

So, as we know from my procrastination post, I slack but this week is even worse. It’s for a good cause though because my band is playing a big show on Friday with everyone we know coming and us making actual money. Good money too. It’s been a crazy week of practice and I sat down to write tonight when a message popped up that none other than Lucky Tubb is in the nearest big town tonight for one night only. This guy is true blue country and I am working on a honky tonk defense playlist right now to explain to all our readers why I love this music so much. I have to go see him now so I am yet again going to slack on my writing. But you can be damn sure you will be getting a review in the am or soon after.  He’s the son of the famous Ernest Tubb by the way so here is one of his famous ones for this quick post. Sorry Brother, I will post something longer as soon as possible.

Leon Russell: Master of Space and Time.

by theyoungerj

Leon Russell took off his ever-present sunglasses the other night at a very small show in a barn in the woods of Maine and he looked right at me. I felt like something close to God stared directly into my soul. Very few musicians are as important to me personally as well as to popular twentieth music in general. His ideas and style have influenced everybody from George Harrison to Elton John and, at the golden age of 71, he can still melt your face playing piano. His name is Leon Russell and he is the Master of Space and time.

Leon is a piano player from Oklahoma who first captured my attention on a hazy day in the summer in about 2006. I haven’t mentioned him much before, using one of his Bob Dylan covers for a piece a few weeks back. My hippie neighbor Fred, who is about eight feet tall and the subject of an upcoming entry of his own, picked me up in his rusty old Subaru outback with a 12 pack of  Miller High life and a bunch of cds he had found in an old trunk.  I got in the car under the context of going to move some wood from one side of his driveway to the other but ending up driving very slowly in a large field nearby, drinking most of the beer, and listening to tunes. I learned a lot about Frank Zappa and Emerson, Lake and Palmer that day, but I want to focus on the major find which was Leon Russell. It was this song that sucked me in.

It didn’t hurt that we were having a few beers and driving in the woods, but this song bowled me over. I must have listened to it twenty times that afternoon/evening,  amongst many of Leon’ s solo songs on a retrospective disc Fred dug up somewhere. I then got the Fred version of the legend of Leon Russell.

The guy is basically a jack of all musical trades, from songwriter to producer to musician to singer and so on. He started playing music as a kid in Tulsa and at some point, moved to Los Angeles and eventually became part of the group known as “The Wrecking Crew”. These “fuckin bad asses” were supposed to be the best studio musicians in town and played on hits from the Beach Boys to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass Band. Eventually, Leon started writing songs with some pretty good success, such as the following.

Everybody from Christina Aguilara to Ray Charles has covered this song and it’s also where he gets the name “The Master of Space and Time” . The excellent lyric states “I love you in place where there is no space or time” and this is around the same time Leon got perhaps his best known gig, as band leader for the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour backing Joe Cocker.  According to the liner notes of that best of disc, this tour was nuts and everybody was on drugs, but watch the video beneath. Leon looks like he is in his prime, the rest of the band is killing it, and Joe Cocker is his typical arm flailing awesomeness. More on that top hat shortly,

As things go, Leon got pretty big on his own right and split from Joe Cocker to start making his own records. His first had the track “A Song for You” which would go on to be a huge hit for so many along with one of my personal favorites, “Shootout on the Plantation”. Take the time to google this  self titled first album and you will be amazed at the line up of players, with Cocker, a few Rolling Stones, and even two Beatles in attendance on the sessions. This guy clearly had come clout back in the day and from this performance at George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh, he also had the chops to keep all these famous folks around. Just look at the guy, Fred is right when he says he’s a bad ass.

Unfortunately, his own records never sold like the ones he wrote and played on so sometime in the mid 1980′s, he kind of went obscure. He played gigs to pay the bills and it got pretty destitute to the point where his tour van was almost not functioning. I got all of this post 197o’s info from a great movie called The Union which tells the story of the making of the album with the same name by Leon and Elton John. If your watch these live videos  that I have included, you can see the gigantic influence and Elton does acknowledge it a lot. He does say some things that I think make Leon look a little bad, but all in all it is an immensely powerful movie about a musician  who is absolutely amazing. Here’s a great track which Leon wrote for Elton.

So why do I like Leon Russell so much? There is nobody like him, from his style of playing piano to his lyrics to his distinct singing voice. While he can play in any genre, it’s almost like anything he plays on just becomes it’s own Leon genre. Although I have heard many of his studio parts, as I am sure you have if you ever listened to Oldie’s radio, I prefer his solo work.  Nobody does all the work he does on a track anymore either, like “Out in the Woods” where Leon did everything except play bass. He has a distinctive style that has already stood the test of time.

I think his music also represents a certain time in my life, the college years they’d be called if I were to write a memoir. I listened to his music hard when I lived with my ex-girlfriend in a tiny apartment, one time buying a bunch of his records instead of saving money to cover rent. I never once introduced him to somebody who didn’t become a fan and one friend texted me the night after I saw him at like the crack of dawn. In short, it reminds me of a certain time that I really enjoyed but will never return to. The ex, who once told me listening to Leon Russell made her like me more, is long gone but I hope that she can still enjoy the music. That was the biggest thing we had together and although we ended badly, I look back on most of my time with her fondly. Here’s a good jam.

When I got the chance to see him the other night, still incredibly impressive at age 70, I obviously was thinking of my history of being a Leon fan and how quick things change. Watch that movie with Elton, the same goes for Leon, barely getting by one day and getting Grammys the next. I am very lucky for the show I saw as it was basically in a barn in Maine and I was probably twenty feet from one of my most revered musical idols. Check out the venue, it’s very cool. I also go to attend the show with two old friends whom I introduced Leon to years ago. In fact, the tickets were a wedding present to one of my friends whose wedding I was actually the best man for, so that was a cool experience in itself.

He played every song I’d want to hear except “Shootout on the Plantation” and had an amazing young band backing him. He is moving pretty slow and he has a laptop to remember lyrics, but don’t let this take anything away from him. He is amazing and I would pay a hundred bucks to see him again, Leon Russell is the Master of Space and Time and if you have a chance, discover it yourself.

The Worst Concert Ever

by theelderj

“Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks.” Michael Bolton (Office Space)


While many of our comments on and anecdotes about music have to do with music merely as sound, as the score for charged moments in our lives or the cue to dial up vivid memories, music also surrounds us in tactile and physical ways. The Younger J and I have, at different points in our lives, attended many and varied concerts (and too few together). Seeing an artist live and as part of a community of listeners can drastically change the way you engage with music. The live performance returns music to the breathing pulse of the living from the frozen state of recorded sound.

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Unreal Shows

by theyoungerj

Unreal(istic) Live Shows

To complete a trilogy of entries on live music, I want to write about some shows I was not able to attend because of not being alive. I won’t wax poetic on about how music in my generation isn’t as cool and all that(….but it isn’t). Maybe it’s because it actually it isn’t as cool or more aptly, there hasn’t been the time to create the mythology around the music. Oh yeah, and I cannot forget the fact that the bands of today are alive and generally still perform while all of these bands do not or can not. We all want what we can’t have.

The first show I will never be able to see is easy: Hank Williams Senior, sometime in the mid 1940’s and with a good pedal steel guitar player. Old timey honky-tonk music may be the music closest to my heart for a myriad of reasons that warrant their own entry. But, to sum it all up, I think that type of music is as real as it gets and Hank is the godfather of it all.

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The Shows We’ll Never See

by theelderj

The Younger J and I are true believers in the live show—when it is possible nothing matches the experience of seeing a band perform. Now, while at times the experience is sublime, at other times, it can also have a deleterious effect on your view of a band. Despite the outcome, however, the experience of witnessing a musical performance and, more importantly, absorbing the reaction of other audience members as well, alters your relationship with the music irrevocably.

(I was not a Bare Naked Ladies fan (back in the Gordon days) until I saw them live; their energy and improvisation made me respect a band I would have otherwise ignored. Conversely, my heart was broken at a Dandy Warhols show, but that is a story for another time…)

These days, I leave most of the concert going to my brother. I am old an ornery: most good shows start after my bedtime . (Old, Old Man.) But I do have some experience to draw on: my first show ever was Jerry Garcia; my last concert was the Austin City Limits. There are many and varied acts between.

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Missed Shows

by theyoungerj

The Shows That Could Have Been

I’ve already written an entry about live music and two shows that really blew my head apart. I will surely get to shows that sucked, but what about those shows you never got to for whatever reason? I got some serious musical letdowns due to a wide spectrum of issues ranging from nobody to go with to sheer stupidity. Let me share some of these with you.

I have two that are in the same mold, both of equal importance in the loss I felt when I fucked up and didn’t go to these shows. Both also were missed because I knew no one else who wanted to go to the concert so I’ve vowed not to do this again. Hell, it’d probably fun to go to a concert alone; maybe I could pick up random women. Alternately, I think the live music experience is best when with someone you like and who has an at least passing interest in the music at hand. It is fun to introduce somebody to a band they eventually love.

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Live Music

by theyoungerj

I have been very lucky in the amount of live music I’ve seen over the years. It had something to do with my siblings, my choice in friends and my choice in college. All three linked to give me the opportunity to see a wide variety of shows in a wide variety of places.

My first show besides seeing my brother’s band, as far as I can remember, was Guster at a bar in Portland, Maine when I was in seventh grade. They still rocked the bongos and at my young age, anything with older people was cool. I remember being very tired but enjoying it nonetheless. The opening band was called “Smokin Grass” and I didn’t understand what the lead singer of Guster meant by saying “Only seven more hours to 4:20” before the first song. Everyone laughed so I pretended to get it and followed suit.

Both my siblings took me to many shows over the course of my teenage years and I am a very lucky man because even if you don’t love the band, it is always an experience that you learn something from, even if it’s as simple as not ever buying food from a bar with dirt on the walls.

My brother brought me to many of his various bands shows and smaller local acts in Boston where he went to college. My sister brought me to singer/songwriter type of music and white boy reggae type stuff like Dispatch, the first and only show besides George Clinton in 2009 that I have walked out on. To Dispatch’s credit, they are a really good band, I just wanted to smoke cigarettes out front and the venue would not allow you to come back in if you chose to do this. Lame.

As for the Atomic Dog himself, it just got really boring after the twenty minutes of “Maggot Brain” and George was barely moving. He little just flapped his hands up and down. Christ, I know he’s not young and apparently very fat, but at least have the decency to go to rehab or quit touring. I will get into worst shows ever at a later date.

 

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