Wilco at Massey Hall in Toronto

OK, let me start by saying the pictures in this post are a bit of a lie.  I didn’t bring a camera to this show, so the above picture of Massey Hall is actually from May of this year, when I was there to see Neil Young (amazing show, as you’d probably expect).  The below picture of Wilco is from Edmonton in 2007 during their Sky Blue Sky tour.  But, since this post is about Wilco at Massey Hall, at least I gave you pictures of Wilco and of Massey Hall, right?  Yeah.

I’ve seen Wilco a number of times.  Depending on how you count it, that number is anywhere between 5 and 9.  Soundchecks, opening slots, and Jeff Tweedy solo shows are the reason I don’t know exactly – I know I’ve seen 5 actual “Wilco concerts”.  In any case, this concert at Massey Hall on September 16, 2011 was probably my favourite one.

Wilco has a new album, and it’s awesome.  It’s called The Whole Love.  The first two songs are especially awesome, and those are the exact two songs they opened up the show with.  That’s right, they took the stage and immediately went into “Art of Almost”.  It was intense.  The music sounded incredible, and the lights were really fitting.   Hearing them play this music, and being there in person while it was happening, watching them stand there and actually create this music, with the lights behind them making them into silhouettes, I had this nostalgic feeling in my mind that this was history being made, that I was seeing Wilco in their prime.  And indeed I was right.  I am right.  I really like where Wilco is at right now. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was 10 years ago now.  I love it, but nowadays I am more excited about what they’re doing NOW.  And based on their live show, I think the band is too.  I have noticed that their live show seems to be getting better lately, as great as it already was.

Let’s hear a live version of “Art of Almost” right now:

Wasn’t that awesome?  Obviously, that’s not from the Massey Hall show, but the video is of very good quality, so I thought I’d post that one.  Ditto for the next one (the next one they played at the show too)… here it is, “I Might”:

I really love those songs.  The rest of the album, too, in fact.  At the show, after these two songs to start, they played songs from other albums.  Lots of good selection.  As I’ve mentioned in another post, I won’t post the whole setlist, as it’s easy enough to find online (setlist.fm, for example).  Another highlight was when they played “Poor Places” immediately followed by “Reservations” (just like on the album!).  Many of my favourite Wilco songs were played, even if it was for the 4th or 5th time for me.  Like I said, this was maybe my favourite Wilco show that I’ve been to.  The sound, the songs, even the look of the stage…  as well as the beautiful and legendary venue.

To talk about some other live Wilco highlights for me (but not this particular show):

In February 2010 in Edmonton I got to see them do their amazing amazing cover of Neil Young’s “Broken Arrow”.  Here’s a video of that (not the same show, but same tour):

Also, at that same show, I requested (through Wilco’s website) a certain song, and they played it.  The beautiful “Remember the Mountain Bed” from Mermaid Avenue, Volume 2.

Once again, this isn’t from the show I went to, but my goal is to show you, the reader, these awesome songs and how awesome Wilco sounds live.

Back to the Massey Hall show, the opening act was Nick Lowe.  I just wanted to make a quick mention that he was really good.  His songs are upbeat and just make me feel good! He is talented.  His singing is smooth and a pleasure to listen to.  He had a slight echo on his voice that sounded fantastic.  To me, his sound was reminiscent of the Elvis at Sun album.  Very simple – acoustic guitar and singing, with really nice songs.  There was something classic about his performance.  I was there, and I felt excited by the mere fact that I was at a live concert where (good) music is being played.  He was very classy and was very respectful of the audience and the whole idea of live music in general.  Thankfully, the audience was equally respectful of him and Massey Hall served as a nice quiet hall to hear his great music in.  Here’s a video of pretty much exactly that, except without the echo (because this isn’t “live”, it’s only “sort-of live”):

Lastly, as a side note, Wilco played another show the next night, but I already had tickets for a show by another band on the same night, and couldn’t go to both.  In the end I wished that I had just gone to see Wilco both nights, especially since Wilco played “One Sunday Morning” on the second night, which was not played on the first night.

And speaking of “One Sunday Morning”, to close out this post, just as it closes out the new album, for 12 minutes*, relax and enjoy the gentle groove of this song:

*The song is 2 minutes longer on the vinyl version, which I will be receiving in the mail any day now.  I cannot wait!

John Frusciante

Long ago when I started this blog, I knew I would eventually be writing about John Frusciante.  Having been born in the early 80′s, I was at just the right age to be getting into the alternative bands that were becoming ever-so popular in the early 90′s.  Well, not “just the right age”, I guess, since I was about 10 years old, but having older siblings really helps you to get into the cool music earlier than you would otherwise.  The Red Hot Chili Peppers were among these bands rising to fame.  In 1991, you couldn’t really go anywhere without hearing “Under the Bridge” playing.   I started playing guitar a couple of years later, and that was actually one of the first songs I learned.  I didn’t know about the individual band members at the time, but I knew there was something very cool about the guitar part.  In the years after, I became what you’d call a casual fan of the Chili Peppers.  I had a dubbed cassette version of Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and I knew that their guitarist (by then I knew his name) John Frusciante had joined a few years before, and that he had recorded his first album with them, Mother’s Milk, with came out in 1989.  I knew lots of the songs from those two albums, and my favourites were not the funky ones, but the more melodic ones and the softer ones, with gentle guitar.  ”Under the Bridge” aside, there was “Pretty Little Ditty”, “I Could Have Lied”, “Breaking the Girl”, “Knock Me Down” and “Taste the Pain”.  There was just this slight touch of magic in the guitar playing in all these songs.  The most obvious was probably “I Could Have Lied”.  With a soft, mellow, beautiful and sombre acoustic guitar part carrying the song, halfway through the song is possibly the most soulful guitar solo ever recorded.  And I say this without hyperbole (at least in my opinion).  Distorted, but only slightly, there all sort of weird intervals to start out.  It’s the musical equivalent of weeping (maybe?).  There are bends the go slightly sharp, and they sound perfect.  Without getting any more into the mechanics of it, the fact is that it is amazing, and it captures a feeling.  A mood.  A person.  It is music.  It is so far beyond words, that I’m having a lot of trouble writing about it.  Maybe the fact that I’ve written that last sentence helps to impress upon you how intense the feeling in it is.  I guess you’ve just got to HEAR it.  OK, so let’s listen:

The guitar solo I’m talking about starts at around 2:00 into that video, by the way.  There is another guitar solo at the end with some more of this wonderful soulfulness.

So.  Isn’t that amazing?  Yes.  There’s something I can’t put my finger on.  Somehow it sounds.. brown?  Outdoors?  I don’t know which adjective to use.  It’s deeply emotional, that much I’m sure of.

This is only the beginning, however, of the music of John Frusciante.  It goes way beyond this.  I’m writing this under the assumption that you, the reader, have probably heard most of the more recent Red Hot Chili Peppers’ hits, like “Scar Tissue”, “Other Side”, “Californication”, or even more more recently, “By the Way”, “Snow”, and a bunch more, I guess.  Whenever there’s an element of a Chili Peppers song, like the intro to “Other Side”, or the wonderful pretty guitar that starts out “Scar Tissue”, or even the awesome background harmony vocals, that just has that magic in it, you can be pretty sure that John Frusciante is the one behind it.  Yes, it’s not only his guitar playing (which is a big part), but his musical sensibility overall.  Aside from guitar and backing vocals, he was always a huge part of the songwriting process.   With all of this, I would still never call the Red Hot Chili Peppers one of my favourite bands.  They are usually “fun”.  They often have great songs with amazing PARTS in them, but the overall goal is for people to listen to it, and sing along, or groove to it.  I could listen an album of theirs over and over, and enjoy it, but somehow it isn’t quite up there on the same level as my favourites.  It’s not deep meaningful music for the most part, other than a few moments here and there, like the guitar solo in “I Could Have Lied” I discussed above.

I had long known that John Frusciante had/has a prolific solo career, though I had never listened to it.  All of those things I said above, essentially about how John Frusciante is the best thing about the Chili Peppers, I didn’t quite realize it at the time, before I heard his solo music.  I didn’t realize just how important he was to their sound.  I thought it was a band with a good guitarist, and that’s it.  So even though I knew he had solo albums, I never thought to listen to them.

The exploring-John-Frusciante’s-solo-albums phase in my life started with a seed.  A friend had made a mix CD for me and put two songs from John Frusciante (in things outside of the Chili Peppers) on it.  There was “Wishing” from The Will to Death and “The Sides” from the Ataxia album, Automatic Writing.  I liked them a lot.  It started to hit me that this was that THING about the Chili Peppers that I had liked so much, but distilled into one thing, and that thing was always present, instead of appearing only in glimpses, like with the Chili Peppers stuff.  The thing that sealed the deal, so to speak, was when the Red Hot Chili Peppers came to my town on their 2006 tour.   I went to the show, expecting to hear some good songs and all that, but I didn’t realize what was about to happen.

It was September 17, 2006, in Edmonton, Alberta.  The Red Hot Chili Peppers played, and it was all good and fine, but John Frusciante shone so bright (not literally!) it was impossible to miss.  They improvised and he would play guitar solos that had just as much soul as that one from “I Could Have Lied”.  He would change and add parts to the song on the fly.  He sang all the backup, and for 2 minutes, he was the only one performing – he played a solo cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her”.  The guitar was sparkling beautifully, like stars in the sky.  His singing voice was so full, and so full of feeling.  I was totally immersed and entranced by him radiating this music in all directions.  It’s like he was made out of music, and it was so overwhelming, that he couldn’t hold it inside of him.  He was bursting at every seam, with music spilling out.   He breathed music.  I realized it didn’t really matter what song he was playing, only that it was him playing it, and it would be filled with feeling.  And there is also something awesome about how no matter what he’s playing you can tell it’s him playing, just by the sounds he creates with his guitar.  The exact way in which he touches the strings is unique to only him.  He gives his voice (figurative here, I mean the guitar) to everything he plays on.

I was totally awestruck.  I was converted.  I knew what I had to do.  All these solo albums I had been ignoring… I needed to get them, and fast.  I bought The Will to Death from iTunes that night, as soon as I got home, and listened to it many times.   Totally awesome.  Like I mentioned above – it is that elusive aspect of the Red Hot Chili Peppers that I liked so much, but that’s all there is now.  There’s nothing else diminishing that awesomeness.  It’s all just so amazing, and it always has that feeling.  That sound.  That personality.    I quickly got all of his solo albums.  Mostly on iTunes, I don’t know why.. I guess it allowed me to get them so quickly, and I was really impatient (and I feel wrong doing the whole music-pirating thing).  I eventually got them all on CD after that, and now, I even want to get them on vinyl, but they’re out of print on vinyl, and used copies sell for WAY too much (over $100 for a single album) nowadays.  I’m hoping someday they’ll be reissued, or I’ll come across some long-forgotten copy of one of the albums sitting on a store shelf.  A copy that for some reason, got overlooked, and no one bought it.  Maybe someday.  Until then, I’ve got the CD’s.

This post is getting really really long, and I’ve hardly touched the surface of his solo albums, but maybe this is a logical place to pause.  I’ll pick it up with another post about his solo music in particular.  And I’ll do it soon.  Maybe even the very next post I make.  There will be some sentence like “To read the story of how I got to think John Frusciante’s music is so amazing, click here and read this post I made about it.”  Something like that.  I will leave you with those songs I talked about though.  ”The Sides”, “Wishing”, and the live cover of the Simon and Garfunkel song.  Here they are, not-at-all in the same order I just listed them:

Panda Bear – Tomboy

Over the many years I’ve spent listening to music, only a handful of albums have stuck out as something truly and deeply special.  Don’t get me wrong, I love all sorts of music, and music itself is special, but there are some albums that are really meaningful in my own life.  Some such albums, for me, are Neil Young’s On the Beach, John Frusciante’s The Will to Death, a couple of Radiohead’s albums, as well as a couple of Beethoven’s symphonies and piano sonatas (not quite “albums”, but similar enough for me to include them in my list).  The latest addition to my list is Panda Bear’s Tomboy, which just came out earlier this year.  As you may or may not know, Panda Bear is the name Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox goes by for his musical endeavors.

This album appeared slowly.  It was announced a long time ago, and there was a series of singles over several months, containing more than half of the songs that ended up on the album, though in different mixes than the ones that are on the album.  That is, the singles were mixed by Panda Bear himself, but the album was mixed by Sonic Boom, of Spacemen 3 and Spectrum fame.  Mixing aside, by the time Tomboy came out, I had heard most of this music already.  That actually kept my enthusiasm and excitement alive for a long time, leading up to the release of the album this past April, finally.  Now let me get to it.  I’ll start with an overall impression, then discuss a few specific songs.

When I tell friends about this great new album I got, and they said “what does it sound like?” I have a hard time describing it accurately, though I still have lots to say.  I say things like:  ”Imagine some sunny Beach Boys-type melodies, but arranged with more electronic instruments, and with vocal harmonies that sound like something from the 1300′s – some medieval Gregorian chant music or something”.  That’s about as good as I can do.  When I hear this music (the whole album, pretty much), I hear something deeper than *just* music.  There’s a feeling behind it.  It’s uplifting, spiritual, and slightly melancholy at the same time. The album cover really fits the feeling of the music.  The music has a bright-white-light sound to it.  I am not religious, by the way, but in parts, this music does sound like church music of a long long time ago…  the harmonies, and the many layers of voices.  Lots of reverb.  It’s very moving in all the right ways.  It’s funny, I thought this before I knew that Panda Bear has been influenced by such music.  Take, for example “I’m Not”, from his 2007 album Person Pitch.  The whole song is based around a looped sample of something by Machaut.  I’m not super educated with the history of music (I took Music 101 years ago, but I don’t remember too many details, other than the music that moved me), so I won’t go too much further than that.  Suffice it to say it’s chant-y music from the 1300′s.  When I found that song, and found out what it was based around, I had this “I KNEW it” feeling in my mind.  Yes, it is very deep and spiritual music, and Panda Bear has mastered that feeling really well.  I think the song “I’m Not” is a bit of a predecessor to the entire sound of the Tomboy album, which is what I’m writing about in this post.

The first song is called “You Can Count on Me”.  Here’s a youtubed version:

It starts with harmonized vocals, then soon after the instruments kick in.  It has weird timing.  I’m not big on theory, but I know that sometimes you have to count to 10 if you’re counting along to this song.  I’m also pretty sure the time signature isn’t constant throughout the whole song.  There are other parts you count to 4, etc.  The timing makes it interesting, to say the least.  Very unpredictable, even upon several listens.  The song doesn’t flow, it walks.  A few steps at a time, combined with the lines of singing.  Pauses in between.  The lyrics, hard to understand (like most of Panda Bear’s stuff) sound pretty nice and, just as I mentioned about the album’s sound as a whole, slightly melancholy.  “Know you can count on me” is uplifting for sure, but then when he sings “know at least I’ll try”, combined with a bittersweet sounding minor chord, it tugs right at the heart strings.  The chords.  The chords are beautiful.  The chords are actually very simple.  I learned to play it on guitar (you can hear my cover here if you’re interested), and the chords are combinations of D and A and G and Bm.  Things like that.  But they are used in such nice combinations.  If you can remember the first time you heard Pachelbel’s Canon (and try to ignore the 1000th time you heard it), you might remember the feeling.  Some of the chord changes recall that feeling.   A bass (or something) drives those chord changes along.  The guitar has a nice tremelo effect – warbling nervously as the chords ring out.  Did I mention I love the tremolo effect?  It’s subtle in this song, but it’s there.  There are voices, actually sampled from various movies that drift in and out of focus.  You just hear a voice say something quickly, then it’s gone.  A quick laugh in between chords.  It really adds to the emotion in the song.  This is probably my favourite song on the album, and that’s why I’m spending so many words on it.  I’ll talk about some of the other songs too now, but with fewer words.  And of course, in the end, just LISTEN to the music.  It speaks for itself.  I just started this blog because I want to TELL people about how great it is.  The parts that I like best… things like that.

I have some other favourites on the album.  ”Slow Motion” has (as a friend once told me) “a perfect hip-hop beat”.  Lots of repetition in the singing and song structure.  Mostly it’s just got a great groove and overall sound.  The choppy guitars sound more like steel drums.  So cool.  So, so cool.  The lyrics are pretty awesome too.  A sample:  “Some they say practice makes you perfect, some they say you can’t teach an old dog, some they say that an apple a day, some they say better safe than sorry.  Everyone knows what they say.”  The official lyrics are not out, and it’s hard to hear it right, so it might actually say “so they say…” in every line, not “some they say”, but the meaning is still the same.

Another highlight of the album:  ”Alsatian Darn”.  Awesome minor-keyed chord progression (lots of Gm chords), with circular rhythms and timings.  Panda Bear plays around with the timing a lot.  As opposed to the typical 8+8 timing you might expect in a normal song, there is a part near the end with a 7+9 timing, which is fun because it still adds up to 16 every go-around.  There is some great rhythmic stuff going on.  Handclaps.  A really really nice “chorus” (if you can call it that – it happens only once).  I’m talking about the part that says “don’t let it slide, no I won’t let it slip by.”  As usual (for this album), lots of vocal harmonies all over the place.

The song “Drone” is awesome for the mere fact that there is no tempo to speak of.  Just as the title suggests, we just float in a feeling, changing chords and notes at Panda Bear’s whim.  It’s not the most musically interesting song on here, but it’s nice that it’s included.  It is something different.

The last song I’ll talk about (in any detail) is the last song on the album, “Benfica”.  Lyrics aside, the song sounds like a sunny blue sky – bursting through the clouds.  The sound is like basking in the sun.  There’s not a very strongly defined rhythm in this song.  The chords pulse like waves, or like cloud surfaces.  The melody (and harmony) is beautiful and the feeling it starts at never goes away.  It gently fades out, or on the vinyl version, loops ad infinitum.  Unfortunately for me, my turntable has the automatic stop, so it can’t handle the infinite loop in the runout grooves.  But it’s a nice idea!

I love this album so much I bought it on CD (for car and portable listening) as well as vinyl.  I found out that a new 4LP deluxe version is coming out in the fall.  It will feature the entire album, with an extra song, plus the whole album again, but with the original Panda Bear mixes, in a different running order, then some instrumental and a cappella mixes of the songs.  It’s going to be very very cool, and I couldn’t help myself – I pre-ordered it.  I was pleasantly surprised to find this 4LP set was only $25 (plus shipping it ended up costing me around $35).  It’s limited to 5000 copies, so if I were you, I’d order a copy right now.  Well, I guess in fact, I’m not you, I’m me.   And I DID order a copy already.

Here are a couple of more songs:

“Alsatian Darn”:

and “I’m Not”, from Person Pitch (since I talked about it above… great song!)

Animal Collective

 

I’m not sure how to go about writing this post, but I feel the need to, since I find myself listening to Animal Collective more and more these days, and they are slowly and sneakily becoming one of my favourite bands.  The first time I heard about them was around 2004 or 2005.  I had a couple of friends who told me they were awesome, but somehow I didn’t get around to listening to them, until in 2006 a friend put a couple of their songs on a mix CD for me.  She put two of their songs on there, “The Purple Bottle”, and “Banshee Beat”, both from the 2005 album Feels.  My first impression was that this music sounded like Pink Floyd’s “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict”, from their Ummagumma album.  If you haven’t heard that song, it sounds pretty much exactly like you’d expect, based on the title.  I won’t link to it, since it’s a bit of a tangent to this story, but if you are curious, it’s pretty easy to find on youtube.

Like the Pink Floyd song, some of the elements in these two songs I noticed were intense rhythm, weird singing, yelps, and the feeling of being outdoors, in nature (not least because of sound effects that really are from the outdoors, like water splashing and crickets chirping).  In other words, it was pretty awesome.  ”The Purple Bottle” was a little more on the energetic insanity side of things, which was cool, but the song that struck me more was “Banshee Beat”.  Anyone who already knows this song probably understands why.  It is something really special.  As usual, I start out these blog posts without a clear plan ahead, so now I’m thinking I might turn this post into a “Banshee Beat Appreciation” post.  The fact is, Animal Collective have a LOT of great music.  Truly great.  But yes, let me focus on this one song for a little while.

It wasn’t only the song, per se, but the experience of hearing it the first time.  Though I was already 24 years old at the time, it took me back to my teenage years (in a good way), to a time where music was everything, and sitting and listening to it was the most logical way to pass time with friends.  I don’t mean sitting around and talking to each other while having music on, I mean getting together, and saying “OK, listen to this”, and then we’d listen to something all together – we’d all be completely silent and focus completely on the music.  I don’t do that very much these days, as “being an adult” keeps me pretty busy, and hanging out with friends is now usually going out for dinner or watching movies, etc.  Or at the very least, talking to each other.  So back to this “Banshee Beat” thing.  My friend and I had gone out to a concert, and she was driving, and she had just given me this mix CD she made.  So she put it on to listen to in the car while we drove around for the evening.  We listened to lots of it on the way there, and lots more of it on the way back.  Now I don’t remember if we got to the very end of the CD by the time we arrived back where we started, or if my friend skipped to this track (“Banshee Beat” was the very last track on the mix – very fitting, of course), but somehow, we had arrived, and before saying “bye”, “goodnight”, “see you later”, etc.,  she said, “just listen to this one song – put your seat back, lie down, close your eyes, and LISTEN” (paraphrasing of course – it was 5 years ago, so I don’t remember every word).  This was April, in Edmonton, when the air is clean and smells like spring.  It’s still pretty cold at nights, but it’s just getting to that point where you can sense summer around the corner.  And the sky is always beautiful and on this night it was clear.  So she turned it up, I sat back, closed my eyes and listened.   If you don’t know the song, I would suggest you do the same right now.

Clean guitar to start things off.   Drone.  E major, if you’re interested.    Lots of background sounds like something is happening.  I feel like it’s the middle of the night in the middle of the summer.  It’s cool and there’s no one around.  The air around me (in real life) matches the feel of the song.  Crickets in the background.  An almost nervous-sounding voice starts singing.  Gentle piano adding to the chords that guitar is droning.  No beat or anything.  Just floating in one feeling for a while.  Still droning on one chord.  E major, yes.  After about two minutes, the drone gradually reveals a beat.  Then, like an epiphany, the chord shifts, for a moment, to an F#minor (I think).  Not that it matters exactly which chord, but if you can imagine it, you’ll know what I mean.  If you don’t, it’s just that small shift from this bed of that drone for just a moment that takes you out of that world completely.  Like staying in the same place for so long, then suddenly you start moving.  The chord change up and down and up and down between that E major and the F# minor, and then back to E major, then back up, then back down, etc.  I don’t know if I figured out the chords properly, but you get the point.  It’s like floating with the waves, almost.  Like I said, this is where the motion starts, after the stationary intro.  All the while, the beat chugs along.  It’s so beautiful it pulls right at the heart, somehow, almost sad.

The singing gets more intense, and there are some crazy but awesome background vocals.  It doesn’t quite sound like people singing or making the music.  It sounds like the call of some wild animal (not to be punny with the band name or anything – they really do give an animalistic feel to their music).  The whole song is the sonic equivalent of going out into nature in the middle of the night.  It’s a beautiful feeling of being connected to this Earth.

The chord shifts continue to the rest of the song.  Intensity builds, then gradually peters out, with some really nice singing making me feel really comfortable.  The beat that’s been chugging along is what ends the song.  Banshee Beat, I guess.

WOW.

I felt all those things that first time I heard the song, and all these years later, I still do.  It’s a masterpiece in every sense of the word.  Completely focus on the song that night, I was in a daze of awe.  I hope that I thanked my friend that night, because I truly do appreciate her making me hear that song.  It was the kind of moment that only happens once every blue moon, and when it does, you savor it.

After writing all that, and listening to the song at the same time (can you tell?), I feel like it’s a good place to end this post.  I originally intended this to be about Animal Collective as a broader subject, talking about all their wonderful music, but I focused on that one song.  I think maybe I’ll make a post about all that other stuff some other day.  For today, I hope you’ve listened to “Banshee Beat” and enjoyed it as much as I do.

Soundgarden live in Toronto and London

Soundgarden.  They were always sort of in my second tier of grunge bands, growing up.  A band whose CD’s I didn’t own myself, but rather my older siblings had their albums.  I had my own Nirvana and Alice in Chains albums (tapes, actually), but Soundgarden were sort of off my radar.  But not completely.  When Superunknown came out in 1994 (has it been that long?), and my older sister bought it, I really liked it.  “Head Down”, “Fell On Black Days”, and most importantly “Fourth of July” were all amazing songs to me at the time.  I still love them.  Especially “Fourth of July”.  Yes.    Eventually I bought my own copies of some of their albums.  To this day, I have, Superunknown, Badmotorfinger, Louder Than Love, and Down on the Upside, and I find songs I love on all of them.  I’ve written them out in order of my preference, I think.  So here the chance came to see them on this reunion tour.  I live about halfway in between Toronto and London (Ontario), so when Soundgarden announced they’d be playing these cities (and starting off their tour here), I decided to go. Though I don’t *love* Soundgarden, I genuinely *like* them.  Enough, in fact, to see them twice, two nights in a row.  This will not be a specific review of each night, but just thoughts about the concerts, with maybe some of the differences between the nights.  If you’re planning on seeing them this tour and don’t want any spoilers, then don’t read ahead.  Otherwise, do read ahead.

On the first night, in Toronto, the show was at the Molson Amphitheatre.  It’s outdoor, and there was a thunderstorm lighting up the Toronto skyline as a backdrop for the last hour or so.  Pretty cool atmosphere!  The band is in top form.  Musically, they sound as good as ever.  They did their old songs justice, big time, and Chris Cornell’s voice shows no signs of aging (from what I could tell).  It was awesome, I’ve gotta say.  Setlists can be found pretty easily online these days (setlist.fm is a good place to start looking), so I won’t write out the whole setlist(s), but I’ll talk about a few of the songs.   They played lots from my favourite album, Superunknown, and many others I knew.  I think over the whole two nights, there were maybe only two or three songs I didn’t recognize.  An early favourite on the first night was “Gun” from Louder Than Love.  That song is so slow and sludgy, then builds up and speeds up.  I was really happy to hear that one live, and a bit disappointed they didn’t play it the next night in London.  Ditto goes for “Fourth of July”.  Did I mention it was my favourite Soundgarden song?  Maybe only implicitly, but it really is.  It is perfect.  The guitars are so low, the song is so slow, and the octave-separated vocal harmony (drummer Matt Cameron provided most of the backup singing at the concerts, and he did a great job) are fantastic.    Here’s a video I found on youtube of this song from the Toronto show:

In that video you can see Kim Thayil in his trademark STANCE, holding his guitar.  So cool.  So, so cool.  I see that, and to me that is Soundgarden.

Aside from those songs, it was a good night.  They played all the hits:  “Jesus Christ Pose”, “Outshined”, “Black Hole Sun”, “Blow Up the Outside World”, and lots more.  Their set was around two hours each night.   But somehow, the Toronto Molson Amphitheatre experience seems more about “people going to a show” than “people going to hear live music”.  I’ve been to a few shows there and usually that’s the atmosphere.  You can’t really lose yourself in the music because there’s so much commotion of people walking back and forth through the aisles, getting beer, coming back, going to the bathroom, coming back, then repeating the whole process all evening.  And it’s brighter – there’s more ambient lighting.  For the first part of the show, there’s daylight, but even after there is the surrounding city light.

But at an indoor show, like at London’s Labatt Centre (a small hockey arena), it’s just you and the stage.  It’s easier to create an intimate atmosphere.  First of all, it is a lot smaller.  From looking around and estimating, I’d say it was about one third of the amount of people from the previous night in Toronto.   Somehow the crowd seemed more excited to hear these songs live.  Maybe Torontonians are used to big names coming to their town, but the whole thing felt more exciting.  This time, in London, the highlight was “Outshined”.  It was a very communal experience.  I sat there rocking out, listening to this grunge band playing one of their grungiest hits.  I look around and everyone is rocking out, just the same, singing along to every word.  The band played it perfectly.  Full of energy.  Louder and heavier than the studio version.  Just crunching away on this riff, even the vocals, for the “it gives me the butterflies, gives me away, till I’m up on my feet again” part.  Just a pure celebration of riffs and rock and grunge and loudness.  And I think the keyword here is “pure”.  To speak again about the difference between the Toronto and London crowds – I felt like a lot of the Toronto crowd was people who would go just so they could later say “man, I saw Soundgarden and it was rockin’”.  But the people in London seemed unabashedly ecstatic to hear this music live.  And the moment that drove the point home was this song, “Outshined”.  Here’s a clip of the song played in London I found on youtube.

“Jesus Christ Pose” was another song that had this effect.  It was loud and fast and intense.  Especially the driving high notes on the guitars in the prechorus (I think?).

The setlist varied a little from the previous night.  My biggest disappointments were the omission of my two favourite songs from the night before, as discussed above.  When they played them in Toronto, I thought “oh I hope they’ll do these ones again tomorrow night!”.  But even so, the energy of the band and the crowd, and the whole atmosphere made it a bit of a better show, overall, for me.  Another highlight of the second show was the inclusion of “Loud Love”, which they didn’t play in Toronto.

The band is working on a new album, and Chris Cornell told the crowd they had some new songs, but won’t be playing them this time.  Based on the song selection of these shows (i.e., where the band’s attention is focused these days), I have a feeling the new album will be pretty wicked.

I know this review’s a little disorganized, but I told you in the first post not to expect good writing.  Besides, that’s part of the charm, isn’t it?  Yeah!

Neil Young – American Stars ‘N Bars

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ll talk about a certain song.  Well, I will talk about the whole album.  Let me start by saying I am a huge Neil Young fan.  I’ve seen him eight (!) times in concert and I own all his albums (except the Journey Through the Past soundtrack, which isn’t exactly a Neil Young “album” per se).

American Stars ‘N Bars came out in 1977, 5 years before I was born.  I bought it in 2004 or 2005.  I had already known a couple of the songs, like “Star of Bethlehem” and “Like a Hurricane” for a long time, since they were on the Decade compilation that came out the year before, and I had listened to my older sister’s copy many times.  But what made me decide to buy it was pretty much one song.  In 2004, when I was making the transition from “casual fan” to “HUGE fan”, I had downloaded a supposed “lost album”, called Chrome Dreams.  It was never released (I won’t get into it, but you can read all about it here if you’d like), but it features many songs that have since been released, including this one in particular, called “Will to Love”.

“Will to Love” is a whole world of its own.  An inviting acoustic song.  Melancholy and almost spooky.  Neil singing quietly, almost a whisper.  Fire crackling in the background the whole time.  To me it is the sparkling sound of the middle of the night.  Seven minutes of bliss.  There are many layers of singing and extra sounds (including a prominent vibraphone, if my ears are correct).  In one part there is a whole band playing, but only for a fleeting moment, while Neil sings “I’m like a singer on a stage”.  It has a full groove, but for only about one beat.  It fades out as quickly as it appeared.  There are a lot of sounds in this song that seem random.  You can tell there’s more than meets the eye when you hear this song.  The lyrics have a lot of interesting imagery too, about fish swimming upstream.  But me, I’m not much for lyrics – I focus on the sounds usually – so I won’t get into it too much.  I hear the lyrics, and I remember the lyrics, but I don’t focus on them.  As a non-writer, I reserve every right to contradict myself on that in later posts, or even later in this very post.  But for me, “Will to Love” is all about the atmosphere, the sound, and the mood.  And it is perfect.  Perfect.  It’s for headphones in the dark.  Or speakers – played loud to catch all the sonic subtlety.  That is the song that made me buy this album, and speaking of this album, let me talk a little more about it.

If you separate the album into sides, like on the original record (my first copy was on CD, but I have since bought a second copy on vinyl), the first side is some very barn-worthy country rock with Neil’s faithful backing band, Crazy Horse, with a couple of additions – (the late, great, and sorely missed) Ben Keith on steel guitar, Linda Rondstadt, Nicolette Larson on backing vocals, and Carole Mayedo on violin.  The whole thing is good, but my favourites are the first and third songs – “The Old Country Waltz”, and “Hey Babe”.  These songs have such a simple magic to them.  So much feeling.  They are less “rock” and more “country” than the others, but they are beautiful.  It’s not only the songs, but the sound.  Neil’s voice, the bass, the drums, and most importantly, the steel guitar.  The other songs on this first side are good too.  ”Bite the Bullet” has a heavy riff during the verses that wouldn’t be out of place in some 90′s alternative band.  And when I was first getting into this music, I had only recently moved on from exactly that, so “Bite the Bullet” was one of my early favourites (aside from that already mentioned “Will to Love”).

The second side is more of a mix.  Recordings from various sessions.  ”Star of Bethlehem” starts it off.  There isn’t too much to say about this wonderful song, other than the beautiful sound of it, not least because of the harmonization of Emmylou Harris and Neil Young singing together for the whole song.  The overall sound is very similar to something that would have/could have been on Harvest a few years earlier.  I’ve already talked about “Will to Love”.  Once again – it alone makes the whole album worth buying.  Next is “Like a Hurricane”.  I think most people who have heard of Neil Young have heard this song.  It is great.  A simple descending chord progression for almost the whole song, an instant-classic melody, and a (to use an already overused term when describing Neil Young’s guitar playing) BLISTERING set of guitar solos from Neil.  Seriously.  The tone of his guitar is like no other.  Near the end of the song it sounds like the thing is breaking.  He gets all sorts of cool sounds, and I never get bored of it.  Interestingly enough, in the eight times I’ve seen Neil Young live, I’ve never heard him do this song, even though he has played it lots of times at other shows.  The album closes with my least favourite, “Homegrown”.  It’s not bad necessarily, but after all that awesomeness, it is merely average.  Some 20-something guys goofily singing “homegrown” over and over again with some very major chord progression which almost certainly contains a G and some C’s (I’ve never tried to figure it out, but that’s how it sounds).  It’s loud and it’s Crazy Horse, and it’s hard not to love it.  That said, I’m all for albums as single entities, but I have to admit I often turn off the album after “Like a Hurricane” and leave it at that.

I think that’s all I have to say on this album for now.  You can be sure that there will be more Neil Young album reviews on this blog, but since I’ve just done one, I think next time will be a different album.

I’ll leave you with a couple of songs from this album.

“Will to Love”

“The Old Country Waltz”

The Stair Car

Taken from http://daicynotdaisy.wordpress.com (thanks, and hope you don't mind!)

Good morning everyone!  My name is Andrew.  Welcome to my new (and first) blog, The Stair Car.  I will use this blog to write about music that I love.  There will be song reviews, album reviews, concert reviews, and maybe some other things, but I don’t have a very solid plan yet.  But what there won’t be is bad reviews, because I’m writing this out of love for the music – not to be objective or anything like that.  I don’t claim to be a great (or even good) writer.  I tend to ramble sometimes, and I don’t organize my thoughts too well before starting to write.  I repeat myself, and my vocabulary is not very large.  I do try to use proper grammar and punctuation, and I’m usually pretty good at spelling.  The name of the blog comes from the TV series, Arrested Development.  It’s hard to come up with a good name for a music blog, so I finally decided to go with something that has absolutely nothing to do with music.  I love the show (Arrested Development, that is), and to me, the stair car is one of the funniest things from that show.  So here it is, my blog about music, The Stair Car.

And to get us started, it seems my words have accidentally picked a first song to talk about, since I inadvertently paraphrased some lyrics from one of my favourite songs.  Anyone recognize this?

“Sometimes I ramble on and on, and I repeat myself ’till all my friends are gone and get lost in snow and drown in rain, and never feel the same again”

Next time!