The Bagel And The Rat – Page 20 – A Reviewer-at-Large Goes 15 Rounds with New York City and the World

Music Review: Indie Round-Up for Jan. 11 2007

The French band Tahiti 80’s latest CD is chock full of sunny disco-soul, with lead singer’s Xavier Boyer’s ethereal voice soaring like a sleepy Smokey Robinson above graceful retro dance-pop arrangements. The best songs, like “Big Day,” “Changes,” and “Chinatown,” get the blood flowing, while the gentle “Take Me Back” shows the band can do a spare little ballad just right. “Matter of Time” harks back to Motown. So does “Give It Away,” which leads off the extra four-song EP that’s been included with the US release. “Cherry Pie,” by contrast, leans heavily on techno drums. Both sounds work for this inventive band.

The bonus EP also includes a reverent version of the Turtles’ classic “Happy Together,” which makes explicit the band’s obvious (yet strangely little-noted by the press) debt to bubblegum pop.

There are a couple too many songs on the main CD, but Tahiti 80’s curious, light, highly danceable and newly mature sound is very appealing. Listening to it one might think – just for a little while – that we don’t live in such a troubled world after all.

You can hear several tracks at their Myspace page.

Carey Ott, Lucid Dream

Listening to Carey Ott’s debut on Dualtone Records, I get that feeling of deja vu that often accompanies first exposure to a singer-songwriter. But what am I hearing, exactly?

Are his high notes a little like Thom Yorke’s? Yes, I suppose. Do the slow songs tinkle and droop like Tom Petty’s? Yeah, but…

Oh, right. Of course. The Beatles!

In some songs, it’s George Harrison, who I suspect might just be the most influential Beatle of all. In others, it’s John Lennon. The CD opens with the highly hooky “Am I Just One,” which is followed by “Daylight” in which a Radiohead influence is apparent, as it is in the gently insistent “Virginia.” Vocally, Ott often suggests Ray Davies singing in tune, and his “It’s Only Love” is clearly Kinks-inspired (in spite of having taken a Beatles song title).

“I Wouldn’t Do That To You” is another top-notch song. Indeed Ott’s knack for setting fine wordcraft to snappy melodies is evident throughout the CD. In “Shelf Life” he puts a Lennonesque effect on his voice to sing some of his most poetic lyrics: “Warsaw in winter, flowery graves/Can you still hear them whisper your name?/Afraid of the cold spots, caught in the tree tops/Love is a dogfight.” He closes the lovely “Kickingstones” with a succinct declaration of the power of song: “Isn’t love what you play for?/Don’t you have all that you need?”

And – there it is! The McCartney side of Ott’s Beatletude shines out in the powerful pop of “You Got Love.”

The only weak point – though it may be a significant one – is the lack of a distinctive sound. The only thing even mildly unusual about Ott’s arrangements is the tasteful but prominent use of keyboards, including a Fender Rhodes. His singing voice is pleasing and assured but he sounds like a million other singers. Breakout artists tend to be those who have that little something extra or different.

Despite this reservation, I recommend checking out Carey Ott if you appreciate well-crafted and emotionally charged songwriting delivered with talent and class.

Red Wanting Blue, Live: The Warehouse Sessions

Heartland pop-rock, heavy on acoustic guitar and piano – that’s Red Wanting Blue. It’s fine in small doses. But excessive earnestness and melodic sameness consign this long, live CD to the boredom bin.

Its companion DVD contains much of the same concert, but, unlike in the similarly packaged set from The Clarks, this band seems to be playing for the recording engineer and not for the fans, who supply energy and enthusiasm that the bored-looking musicians don’t reflect. The recording quality is good and the DVD authoring excellent, with several amusing extras, all of which will perhaps make the set desirable to the band’s fans. But the concert itself is not an impressive introduction to Red Wanting Blue.

Listen at their Myspace page.

Elizabeth and the Catapult, self-titled EP

This EP opens with the nifty pop-jazz tune “Waiting for the Kill,” a galloping 5/8 number with acid-sweet vocals from singer-songwriter-keyboardist Elizabeth Ziman and hopping acoustic bass from Jordan Scannella. The smoky jazz flavor carries through to the lush ballad “Right Next to You,” but Ziman’s feathery vocals work better in the quirky “Momma’s Boy” and the vampy verses of “Devil’s Calling.” Overall the music is interesting and pleasingly arranged but hurt by a lack of vocal heft. Precision songcraft lets Norah Jones get away with this, but with music that doesn’t quite hit that bullseye, more oomph is needed at the music’s focal point, which in this case is the singing.

Don’t miss Ziman’s ethereal keyboard work in the closing ballad, “Golden Ink.”

Available, with extended clips, at CD Baby.

Book Review: The Means – A Literary Journal, Issue Two

I have in my hands Issue Two of The Means, a new literary magazine. Purple Post-It® notes flap out from certain pages, but I’ll get to the journal’s choice bits in a minute. First let us reflect on the meaning of The Means.

The Internet has drastically changed our relationship to knowledge and information, but for literature we still turn to books. I suspect that having a solid object to hold and read from is integral to the way we want to ingest long works. Though millions of us happily read newspapers on the Web, looking at a computer screen is not a comfortable way to read for a long period, nor is it conducive to the state of absorption that we usually want from a book.

The continuing popularity of printed magazines, for their part, can be largely attributed to convenience. In a waiting room, or taking the train to work, people want to flip through short, easily digested articles in something that’s disposable.

Whither, then, the literary journal? Can a printed book-magazine hybrid maintain readership in the digital age? Old brands and habits die hard, and I wouldn’t expect venerable titles like The Paris Review and Poetry to vanish anytime soon. The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses lists hundreds of members. Still, it might well be seen as folly to be starting a litmag in the age of Google and Wikipedia. So when a new journal publishes its Issue Two, one can’t help being a wee bit impressed.

Co-editor Tanner Higgin declares that while The Means is “labeled a literary journal, our editorial direction has no allegiance to mere fiction and poetry. Rather, we read everything sent to us and choose what’s good. It truly is as simple as that… interviews, lists, essays, humor, art, comics, and anything else that can be slapped onto a piece of paper are fair game.” Alas, he goes on to abuse the language he has implied that he loves: “The truth is that most [literary] publications are running on a shoestring budget with no readership and thus function as poorly compensated, careless behemoths with little to no interest in costly innovation or the acceptance of risky writing by unproven writers.”

That’s what not having an editor for the editor gets you. But out of a sense of obligation I soldier on, and there turns out to be a lot of good work between the pink covers. A sharp little short-short story by Joelle Renstrom captures the sense of fascination a young person can have with a larger than life, tall-tale-telling relation. Poignant stories by Mike Magnusson and Jennifer D. Munro illustrate how connecting with other humans can pose awful difficulties whatever the state of one’s love life. Christopher Monks’s story “Lloyd: New and Improved” brings to mind both the gloom of Raymond Carver’s depressing slices of life and the sticky-sweet grittiness of Updike’s sexual tales.

Arthur Salzman contributes an engrossing essay on juggling as a metaphor for life, with imagery that goes to some unexpected places: “And sooner or later the juggler stumbles and grows sullen, the bowling ball having crashed through the breakfront, the hamster having tumbled and scuttled under the refrigerator, the hacksaw having become embedded in her husband’s neck.” Michael Nowacki reports on the Iraq War with an unusual slant, while Andrew Michael Roberts’s metafictional dialogue with his computer illuminates the human-machine interface circa 2006:

I delete nothing. I send each received message – each documenting a lived moment – to the “saved messages” file. To where, any time I choose, I can return and re-live. In this way, I, myself, am “saved.” I am multiplied in the re-living. So that out amid the cosmic swirl of time and being swirl innumerable, “saved” me’s.

Imprecise language, to be sure, but evocative.

Filling out the volume are some poetry and curiosities of varying merit. I haven’t mentioned everything, but you may fairly infer that while Higgin and co-editor Christopher Vieau are themselves but fledgling writers, their energy and taste are having good results. The contents justify The Means.

Theater Review: The Country Wife by William Wycherly

Banned for 170 years because of its licentious plot and language so bawdy it would have made Shakespeare blush, William Wycherly’s 1675 farce The Country Wife – a favorite of Charles II – has, in our post-Victorian age, returned to popularity in all its dirty glory. HoNkBarK!’s ambitious new production eschews sociological analysis in favor of playing it mostly straight, which, in this case, puts the focus squarely on the play’s bent zaniness.

Based loosely on several earlier plays, including Molière’s more mannerly School For Husbands and School For Wives, Wycherly’s intricately plotted comedy weaves together three strands. The title character (Kristin Price), a young, sexually ripe naïf, is seduced by the profane charms of city life, much to the consternation of her jealous middle-aged husband (Ray Rodriguez). The object of her affections is Horner (Richard Haratine), a libertine gentleman who has spread a rumor that he’s become impotent, so as to be trusted alone with London’s desperate housewives. Meanwhile Horner’s pal Harcourt falls in love with the principled Alithea (Linda Jones), who is, alas, betrothed to the outrageously foppish Sparkish (Brian Linden).

How it all turns out isn’t important; it’s the wit that counts. Indeed Horner and his friends are self-conscious Wits, out-flowering each other’s similes and engaging the audience in panicky asides as they get entangled in their own absurd tricks. Linden is hilarious as the ridiculous but ultimately sympathetic fop who only thinks he can match wits with the smarter gentlemen, Price charms as the innocent but surprisingly resourceful country wife, and Haratine commands the stage as Horner, the hyper-confident cuckold-maker. The fast pace and continuous barrage of flamboyant dialogue demands close attention, but the play would be too long if paced more slowly. Crisply directed by John Ficarra and extravagantly costumed by Karl A. Ruckdeschel, the able and enthusiastic cast dances through the complex plot with the precise timing of an OK Go video.

The production, on this preview weekend, was still a little rough around the edges. The live baroque-style music suffered from weak wit and imperfect performance, while the lovely scenery, which consisted entirely of paintings – some cleverly applied to window shades – balked now and again. But as the production is quite ambitious for off-off-Broadway, with complex material, a large cast, and spectacular costuming, I found these flaws mostly forgivable and the play a nearly unqualified delight.

The student of theater will detect the influence of both Shakespeare and Molière in Wycherly’s flowery language and precise dissection of human foibles, and in turn find echoes of The Country Wife in farces and comedies of manners down to modern times – from Wodehouse to Ayckbourne, Monty Python to Gilligan’s Island. But this play is a good time in and of itself. No special knowledge of Restoration England is needed, for the human comedy, as captured by Wycherly’s barbed quill, has changed little since his time.

Through January 27 at the McGinn Cazale Theatre on Broadway & 76th St. in New York City.

Music Review: Lee “Scratch” Perry, Panic in Babylon

Unrighteousness, go backward. Unholiness, go backward. The 70-year-old voice of Lee “Scratch” Perry goes straight to the spirit-jugular. One of reggae’s pioneer artist-producers, Perry helped invent not only reggae itself, but also its dub subgenre, in which vocals became peripheral or absent while studio tricks, samples, and effects both limned and exploded reggae’s hypnotic off-beat.

This new CD is an album of reggae songs, with no pure dubs, but the arrangements have a fundamentally dub sound: deep and wide, spicy and spacey, and also funny. “Have a Perry salad, for this is Perry ballad,” invites the master. But he’s already treated us to a pointillistic autobiography in the title track. Perhaps no other artist can convey such generosity of spirit in so few words. It doesn’t matter if he’s claiming to be “Doctor Dick” or the “King of Africa” – “I will set you free with my music key” doesn’t feel like an idle boast in Perry’s voice.

Especially in “Purity Rock” and “Voodoo,” Perry and his musicians distill this style of music to its perfect essence. Perry’s discography is extensive, and I’m no expert in his career or his music. All I know is I haven’t been able to stop listening to this CD for three days.

Although the disc ends with a live version of the classic “Devil Dead,” with its celebration of ganja, the new tracks are evidence that – as Perry has found – it wasn’t the weed that endowed this now clean-living survivor with his genius. Who can blame Perry for this appropriate celebration of ganja? After all, the first time I listened to this song I was researching how to make shatter. It certainly was a very fitting song!

A bonus disc contains a painfully noisy remix of “Panic in Babylon” by Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio and two remixes of “Purity Rock” by New York public-radio darling DJ Spooky. These would probably work well in a dance hall, but only the “Purity Rock” instrumental interested my ears, as an example of how the raw and the slick can harmonize when good material passes through the hands of a good mixmaster. It’s also a reminder of what dub, strictly speaking, is all about.

Panic in Babylon is a treat for the ears, a tease of the funnybone, and a festival for all four chambers of the heart. (I’d wager it would beat CD101 for seduction purposes, too. Let me know if you try it.) Rating: four puffs out of four.

Available at Amazon.com.

Music Review: Indie Round-Up for Dec. 28 2006 – Best of 2006

Once again it’s time to look back over the past year and try – and fail – to think of a clever or original way to introduce a best-of list.

Hmm…

Presenting Indie Round-up‘s Best of 2006.

The Artist of the Year for 2006 is Mofro, who, conveniently for my critical credibility, was just signed to the prestigious blues label Alligator Records. Lead vocalist JJ Grey and his band evoke all at once the gritty funk of James Brown (RIP), the blue-eyed soul of Beck and Leon Russell, the bayou twinkle of Dr. John, and the shamanistic stage presence of Jim Morrison. The latest CD is a good one, but in-concert is the only way to fully appreciate the spell woven by Grey, guitarist Daryl Hance, and whoever else happens to be on their stage at the moment.

Album of the Year goes to Gregg Swann‘s sparkling Everybody’s Got To Be Somewhere, a spot-on power-pop set without an ounce of filler. The artist himself seems to be somewhat reclusive – the gigs page at his minimalist website is empty as of this writing, and his Myspace page – where you can hear three full tracks (go there now) – has been little visited. Swann emailed me a thank-you note when I published my review, so, fortunately for fans of exceptional songwriting, it appears that he does exist.

International Album of the Year goes to Kobotown‘s Independence. Look for this Toronto-based, Caribbean-rooted band-with-a-message on festival stages in 2007.

Two releases share Instrumental Album of the Year honors: guitar wiz Vicki Genfan’s Up Close disc from her two-CD set Up Close and Personal (reviewed here), and the newly honored Grand Master of the shakuhachi Elizabeth Reian Bennett’s Song of the True Hand, which I covered here. In very different ways, these two releases exemplify the way a single individual with a musical instrument can wordlessly conjure the human spirit out of thin air.

Acoustic Song of the Year: Melissa Ivey, “No Ties to Break”
Mainstream Pop or Country Song of the Year: Laura Vecchione, “Fool’s Gold”
Guitar/Hard Rock song of the Year: Burden Brothers, “Still”
Cover Song of the Year: Joe Rohan, “Ring of Fire”
Best Song Featuring a Tuba: The Animators, “The Senator Goes to Hell”
Stupidest Band Name: Hinder (what is that, a butt? a verb? either way, lame, lame, lame.)

And that’s it. If you didn’t win this year, better luck next time. By the way, I like dark chocolate.

Of Virgin Births and Virgil Goode

As we approach Christmas – a celebration of a singular instance of human parthenogenesis – George W. Bush is threatening to start World War III (if he hasn’t already). This confluence is producing a series of strange and portentous events. First, an otherworldly fog has enveloped the UK and induced a komodo dragon in a British zoo to conceive offspring without male contact. Also in England, a woman with two wombs has given birth to two babies from one womb and a third baby from the other – apparently the first such instance ever observed.

The rest of the world, meanwhile, has gone topsy-turvy. Students in Iran are protesting against their hardline President because they want more freedom of speech, while presumed US presidential candidate John McCain wants to stamp out blogging as we know it (although he’s done it himself when it helps to make him look good). Meanwhile a Virginia congresscritter with the unlikely name of Virgil H. Goode, Jr. (perhaps himself a product of parthenogenesis?) has come clean with his views on religious freedom in the US. (Hint: he’s against it. The Huffington Post’s take is direct and to the point.)

What would Jesus do? I wasn’t sure, but the Deciderer knows. “I encourage you all,” he said during his news conference yesterday, “to go shopping more.” Caveat emptor!

Best Indie Artist and CD for 2006

The editors of Blogcritics have asked me for a 200-word description of my Best-Of (artist and/or CD) for 2006. Here they are, freshly minted.

Indie Round-Up‘s Artist of the Year for 2006 is Mofro, who, conveniently for my critical credibility, was just signed to the prestigious blues label Alligator Records. Lead vocalist JJ Grey and his band evoke all at once the gritty funk of James Brown, the blue-eyed soul of Beck or Leon Russell, the bayou twinkle of Dr. John, and the shamanistic stage presence of Jim Morrison. The latest CD is a good one, but in-concert is the only way to fully appreciate the spell woven by Grey, guitarist Daryl Hance, and whoever else happens to be on their stage at the moment.

Album of the year goes to Gregg Swann‘s sparkling Everybody’s Got To Be Somewhere, a spot-on power-pop set without an ounce of filler. The artist himself seems to be somewhat reclusive – the gigs page at his minimalist website is empty as of this writing, and his Myspace page – where you can hear three full tracks (go there now) – has been little visited. Swann emailed me a thank-you note when I published my review, so, fortunately for fans of exceptional songwriting, it appears that he does exist.

Music Review: Indie Round-Up Focus on Fionn Ò Lochlainn – Spawn of the Beast, and live at Joe’s Pub

Versatility. It comes in handy in many walks of life, but may be most essential of all in the performing arts.

It’s easy to laugh at actors straining to become singers and models desperately trying to become actresses. But they do such things not for our ironic amusement, and not (though it often seems this way) out of pure vanity, but because they want lasting careers in a field where popularity is fleeting. It’s not easy.

For the independent musician, versatility is just as important. Burning cooler, he’s less likely to flame out quickly, but he pays for his store of potential energy by not making much money. Versatility for him means being able to front his own band today and work as a sideman tomorrow; to perform solo, to write, to play covers or traditional music, and to play multiple instruments – all while self-marketing and hustling. It’s not easy.

Yet a performer, whether star or journeyman, needs to make it look easy. The singer, songwriter and virtuoso string player Fionn Ò Lochlainn and his acoustic ensemble did just that last night at Joe’s Pub, celebrating the release of Fionn’s first solo CD, Spawn of the Beast. A fine artist on guitar, mandolin, piano and vocals, and with a batch of powerful original songs, he will be touring with Billy Bragg in the coming year. Right now, settled in New York, he’s promoting his new disc with a January residency at Rockwood Music Hall, which in its brief existence has become New York musicians’ favorite small room to play.

For the CD release party, a bigger venue was needed, hence last night’s packed show at Joe’s Pub. Fionn is one of those wholegrain performers whose work and presence can’t be separated. Celtic soul, singer-songwriter acoustica, and Frampton-esque rock star magnetism fuse in his stage persona, a mix that’s surprisingly well captured on the CD.

In concert, Fionn’s piping rock tenor occasionally plays second fiddle (so to speak) to his zooming handiwork on guitar and mandolin when the latter requires him to look down and away from the microphone. But his generosity as a performer makes you root for him no matter what. Able to masterfully steer a tight band that, amazingly, has only rehearsed once, while at the same time pulling in an audience much of which doesn’t know his music, Fionn makes a virtue of multitasking.

Happily, Fionn’s songwriting and interpretive ability can keep up with his devilish musicianship. The CD opens with three of his best originals: the dramatic “Walk My Way,” the lovely “Waterside,” and the insistent “Racing Against the Time,” the last of which in concert became a mesmerizing, accelerating train ride. Drummer Cindy Blackman (of Lenny Kravitz fame) and bassist Orlando Le Fleming (Jane Monheit) propelled the more rhythmic songs, while a powerful string quartet that included fiery cellist Natalie Haas and her violinist sister Brittany (who played on Danny Barnes’s Get Myself Together CD, which I reviewed last year here) provided added shots of soulful, sinewy musicality.

Fionn played a couple of songs by himself, including an a capella version of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” which is becoming a signature tune for him. Other non-originals included a delicate version of Stevie Wonder’s “Big Brother” and the exquisite “Green of the Grass,” written by Fionn’s father, Ruan Ò Lochlainn (who worked with Roxy Music, Ronnie Lane, and Jethro Tull among others). Fionn’s large talent enables him to make a big, rock-influenced sound and an equally substantial artistic statement using only traditional, acoustic instruments and keening, crystalline vocals. His original music leaps off the stage, and the CD reflects that energy as well as a studio recording can be expected to. He plays traditional Irish music around town as well, and plans to host a variety of guests at the upcoming Rockwood residency, Thursdays in January.

Song samples are available here; the CD is available at shows, and online here.

Weblog Award Nominations

Blogcritics, the online magazine where I cross-publish nearly all of the articles you see here, has been nominated for several Weblog Awards, including in the Best Music Blog category. As one of the regular music contributors, I’d just like to say that I couldn’t have done it without all the little people.

Voting starts tonight, and you can vote once a day for ten days.

Congratulations will be accepted at any of the upcoming Whisperado gigs, including tonight at Banjo Jim’s.

Book Review: Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry: the Untold Story of an American Legend by Scott Reynolds Nelson

Not long ago, the fake-news rag The Onion cleverly updated an Industrial Age tale for the Digital Era: “Modern-Day John Henry Dies Trying To Out-Spreadsheet Excel 11.0.”

Fitting the tale of a nerdy number-cruncher into the framework of a mythically strong folk hero, the Onion made at least one reader laugh uncontrollably. When he had recovered his breath, that reader – OK, I – recognized that the story was so funny precisely because the parallel was so apt. The original, legendary John Henry had also died in a battle of man vs. machine.

I first heard the story of John Henry in a book of folk songs my parents kept by the piano and sang from often. “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” was actually the biggest family favorite. I never made the connection that the two songs came out of the same historical experience, and in any case I imagined such songs to be mere fanciful stories, no more “real” than the hole in the bottom of the sea or poor Charlie who could get never get off the subway for want of a nickel. (If his wife could pass him a sandwich through the train window, couldn’t she just as easily pass him the darn coin?) These songs were about tall tales and humor, not logic and reality.

Later I learned how the American folk song collections I’d grown up with in the 60s and 70s owed their existence to the socialistic, unionizing movement that came out of the Great Depression. “Working on the Railroad” referred to actually working on the railroad; it was the working man, not the rich man, who was hurt by subway fare increases; and John Henry symbolized the worker for whom hard labor meant a life cut short.

But John Henry himself, of course, was a myth, a made-up person, a symbol, like Paul Bunyan, or Superman.

Funny thing, though: turns out there really was a steel-drivin’ man named John Henry, a convict at the Virginia State Penitentiary who was conscripted to help dig the railroad tunnels that would connect the South with the West. He and his fellow workers did drive steel by hand alongside newfangled steam drills; he, with many others, died on the job, and was buried, just as the song says, in the sand by a “white house.”

Scott Reynolds Nelson, a history professor at the College of William and Mary, used cultural clues and dogged research to track down this real-life John Henry, and tells the story in this fascinating new book. A well-balanced combination of scholarship and popular history, the first part of the book vividly, if swiftly, re-creates life in the Virginias during and immediately after Reconstruction.

Blacks, freed after the Civil War, remained subject to a separate justice system. When convicted of minor crimes they received disproportionate sentences. John William Henry, far from the mythological giant, was a short New Jersey teenager who became Prisoner 497 after he stole something from a grocery store outside Petersburg, Virginia in 1866. The prison needed to support itself. The railroads needed strong workers who couldn’t strike for higher wages. Though seen by some reformers as a way to transfer prisoners out of terrible prison conditions and into healthy outdoor work, the resultant convict lease system turned out to be a death sentence for whole populations of inmates.

The invention of dynamite had made it feasible to tunnel through the hard, ancient rock of the Allegheny Mountains. But men still had to drill the holes for the explosives. In the early 1870s, railroad contractors were testing unreliable new steam drills alongside their teams of powerful, steel-driving men. Apparently, competition occurred. A legend was born.

Along with a concise history of Southern railroads and Reconstruction justice, Nelson traces the musical forms out of which different versions of the John Henry song evolved, explaining how songs and chants – often misinterpreted by whites as indicating high spirits – were really tools to prevent injury while working in teams. The new stream drills, for their part,

lacked the flexibility found in the skilled two-man hammer teams that had been tunneling through mountains for centuries. The hammer man swung a sledgehammer down onto the chisel. The shaker shifted the drill [the chisel] between blows to improve the drill’s bite… Song coordinated the movements… humorous songs, sad songs, religious songs, all rhythm and meter and intonation but without an obvious melody – phrases, really… Theirs was a finely tuned instrument that a manufactured steam drill could not match. [C&O Railroad mogul Collis Porter] Huntington imagined that a steam drill could replace the skilled labor of miners, that he could work without their rock and roll. He was wrong.

So, the next time Grandpa complains that “kids’ music these days” is all beat and no tune, remind him that “rock and roll” got its backbeat, and its very name, from the motions and songs of black railroad diggers who toiled in the mountains long before he and Grandma were jitterbugging to the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.

Nelson’s evidence for identifying John William Henry, Prisoner 497, as the source of the “John Henry” legend is inconclusive, though tantalizing. Biographical information on Nelson’s John Henry is, and probably will remain, too skimpy for certainty. The song “John Henry,” however, probably is, as Nelson claims, the most recorded American folk song. There are more, probably many more, than 200 versions. (It appears on two recordings discussed in my Indie Round-up column just in the past six months: the Big Bill Broonzy Amsterdam Live Concerts 1953, and Hillstomp‘s 2004 debut CD.) It exists in many versions and has taken on many meanings. “Among trackliners who lived by their strength, [it] found its home as a story of heroism, one tinged with anxiety about the future,” Nelson says. Though the story of John Henry’s death may have originally been told in the form of a relatively tuneless “hammer song,” it

“was carefully folded into the familiar and disturbing horrors of the ballad tradition. Coal miners, black and white, made John Henry one of their own…a Moses who gave the South the Promised Land of the West, but could not live to see it. For prisoners, the song suggested the questions about loved ones: Would they be true, and would prisoners ever live to see them again?

Nelson seems ambivalent about the “English professors and sociologists” through whose agency the song was transformed from a “complex and unsettling story” to “a fabulous, impossible legend” that had, by the twentieth century, come to serve as “a historical commentary, its performance carefully calibrated to recall a bygone era.” He seems to lament a loss of purity, while recognizing that songs belong to the people and are forever developing and mutating. Placing “John Henry” in context at the nexus of what became American blues, folk, and country music, he closes with a section that includes a description of how the song spread after its “rediscovery” early in the twentieth century, from earliest recordings to popular interpretations by white artists – among them Burl Ives, Pete Seeger, Johnny Cash, Drive-By Truckers, and Bruce Springsteen – and black artists such as Harry Belafonte, Mississippi John Hurt, and Cephas and Wiggins (though he does not mention all of these).

Nelson’s focus on the development of American musical forms through the lens of “John Henry” will prove enlightening to musicians and to fans of roots music. He does, however, fly quickly through this history, and some of his declarations seem a little pat. Was Carl Sandburg really the “first American folk singer?” Did Fiddlin’ John Carson “invent” country music? The book contains occasional inconsistencies and editorial or factual errors. No German or American city had a population in the “tens of millions” during the years 1871 to 1921 (or ever), and that’s a 50-year span, not 40. The band They Might Be Giants titled an album John Henry but did not record the song.

Equally important was the use of John Henry’s image and story by the labor movement. There were plays about John Henry, children’s books about John Henry (I remember one of those), and comic book heroes like Superman who evolved (in Nelson’s analysis) from the John Henry strongman character as depicted by artists of the early twentieth century. Several examples of that impressive John Henry artwork are reproduced in the book.

Few things are more interesting than when folklore and history dovetail. This book is a valuable contribution to both studies, and a fascinating read. It’s not flawless. The writing is occasionally awkward, and some errors have slipped through the editorial process. There are extensive notes, but an appendix pointing the reader to at least some of the recordings mentioned in the book would have been welcome. And Nelson, while an acknowledged railroad expert and a credible folklorist, is not a musicologist. Nevertheless he is well-qualified to tell this story, and it’s a good one.

Cross-posted at Blogcritics

Music Review: Indie Round-Up for Nov. 30 2006 – Burden Brothers, Caddle, D’Haene

With stellar songwriting, crisp but heavy production, and roadkill vocals, the Burden Brothers prove that rock can still rock.

Burden Brothers, Mercy

The Burden Brothers are the creation of one of modern rock’s great voices – Toadies’ Vaden Todd Lewis – and drummer Taz Bentley, formerly of the Reverend Horton Heat. With a supporting cast of guitar-slingers, they’ve put out a nearly hourlong CD that, unlike many such productions, doesn’t get tired halfway through.

Opening with the spooky, Beatle-esque “It’s Time,” the CD charges ahead with the Foo Fighters-style screamer “Shine” and the infectious, almost old-fashioned melodiousness of “Still.” The angst-laden “Everybody Is Easy” is superior, catchy rock despite its vague lyrics.

The polyrhythmic “Trick of Logic,” the ballad “Life Between,” the Nirvana-inspired “Good Night From Chicago,” and the grim “Daughter of Science” all further the story – each song has its own flavor, so the ear never gets tired. The titanic “I Am a Cancer” plunges into heavy metal gloom, and when, in “In My Sky,” Lewis grammarlessly screams, “You and me can slip away at last tonight/I can see your stars are shining in my sky,” the combination of primal yell with romantic words lays bare the heart of the album. “On Our Own” then tells the other side: “Just wave as you roll past my cloud/Weâ€™re all on our own now.” But our hero is still wishing on a star. The song has an elegiac quality to it, and seems a natural end to the CD – but two of the best tracks remain.

The thrumming, roiling love song “Oh, Cecilia” couches sentiments of longing in alternately warbling and harsh guitars. “Liberated,” a memorable declaration of freedom (with a caveat about high gas prices), is a near-perfect midtempo rock song, earning its full six minutes with a muscled vocal/instrumental hook.

Every track on the CD is worth hearing. Stellar songwriting, crisp but heavy production, and Lewis’s roadkill vocals make this one of the year’s top rock albums. Its fifteen tracks make a major statement: rock can still rock.

Caddle, Raise ‘Em High

Alt.country? Dixie fried roots-rock? Southern boogie-rock skullabilly? Whatever you call Caddle, the Birmingham AL band’s debut CD is spring-loaded with southern-rock energy. Think back to the Georgia Satellites, or even Lynyrd Skynyrd, but add a bit of punk crunch and a touch of Big-and-Rich buffoonery.

A chinkling banjo enlivens the humor in the hard-rocking “Better Bad.” (“She’s got a wiggle and walks with a grin/Where she stops I begin…When she’s good she’s really bad but when she’s bad she’s better.”) The openers, “Mississippi Doublewide” and “Work,” are raucous, defiantly high-spirited blue-collar anthems whose minimalist choruses represent the bleakness of the working man’s life. “Stay With Me” shows that the band is handy with a sad love song too.

But Caddle’s overriding theme is much more serious: drinking in bars. The narrator of “Afternoon Lies” is a bar owner, in fact: “The sun never shines on the inside of this bar of mine/The beer is cold and the stories told are sure to blow your mind.” The title track says it best: “Money’s leavin’ but I’m staying/Sling another drink to me/Party till it’s morning/Baby what’s your sign?/Daddy’s got a brand new bag/Livin’ on a dime.”

The CD is a very enjoyable ride. It might have one power ballad too many, although “Give Me A Dollar” is a fine one – guess what he needs the dollar for? (Hint: it has flashing lights, it’s often found in a bar, and it plays music.) So, in spite of a slight sag in the center, Caddle’s debut – unlike the protagonists in most of the songs – comes up a big winner.

Extended clips can be heard here.

D’Haene, Brother Man

D’Haene merges soulful, lived-in vocals with funky guitar and hard rock riffs. In spite of a 70s classic rock influence, the mixing of genres and the wry, intelligent lyrics make the disc sound modern.

One minute you’ll be reminded of Randy Newman, the next of Blue Oyster Cult, then you’re grooving to some funk-jam band at a hygiene-deficient festival in upstate New York. Sometimes these shifts occur within a single song. “Feelin’ Human,” which, at just over five minutes, is of average length for this CD, is a mini-sonata, something like the early Who or Elton John might have done.

Bob D’Haene’s voice isn’t always up to the ambitions of his music, but the CD has a number of strong points. Extended clips can be heard here.

NEWS ABOUT NOTES: Copeland, a band Blogcritics has been all over (here, here, and here, at least), has signed with Columbia Records. The band’s new CD, Eat, Sleep, Repeat, entered the Billboard Top 200 best-selling albums chart at #90. The band is currently on tour with The Appleseed Cast.

When a band we’ve covered here at the Indie Round-Up jumps to a major label, we have to stop talking about them. So let’s listen to some Caddle while we break open a six-pack and send Copeland off into the world of, we hope, bigger and bigger success.

Cross-posted at Blogcritics Magazine

Book Review: All You Need To Know About the Music Business: 6th Edition by Donald S. Passman

A classic of music industry literature, this title has been a must-have for aspiring and working music industry pros since it first appeared in 1991. But with all the new ways music is being made, discovered, and acquired, Donald S. Passman, a practicing music attorney for 30 years, has, not surprisingly, updated the book a number of times. This new edition retains his knack for explaining tricky legal and financial concepts in plain English. Its near-encyclopedic coverage of the music business’s many aspects makes it as valuable as ever, while a goofy sense of humor helps lighten up the proceedings.

Notable among the book’s virtues, the author takes pains to explain both sides of contractual matters that commonly need to be worked out among artists, songwriters, record labels, merchandisers, managers, agents, movie producers and others. Rather than just “Here’s what you should ask for,” Passman also describes the argument against the artist’s position and what he or she should realistically expect based on level of accomplishment (starting-out, midlevel, or superstar).

Passman is a practicing attorney who works with major clients, like R.E.M. and Janet Jackson. Reading through the long section about record deals, the typical musician could be forgiven for wondering whether the book might have been better shelved in the fantasy aisle. The percentage of aspiring musical artists who will ever need the bulk of Passman’s advice in this section is minuscule.

The sections on publishing, touring, and TV and film, however, contain much important information about areas in which the lowly beginner is most likely already working (or thinking seriously about). Many of the issues covered, like what kinds of arrangements band members should make among themselves, do need to be thought out at the beginning, before any major success occurs, even if the chances of that success are low. Anyone making a serious go at a music career will find valuable and necessary information and advice in at least some sections of this book.

Unlike most people I know in the music industry, Passman doesn’t think it’s broken. Noting its history of ups and downs, he believes big music’s current woes are just another downturn, a period of adjustment to new technologies. Such optimism is so unusual today as to seem almost wacky. One suspects that Passman’s own success as an entertainment attorney has stranded him in the rarefied atmosphere of the very top, where artists still sign (or dream of signing) major deals. Other than some rappers, I don’t know any artists who still think signing a major label deal is a good thing (though there must be some out there).

Passman does explain how such deals have changed in recent years, what the trends are, what realistic numbers are for deals with independent labels as well as majors, and so on. He covers current issues like digital downloads, and he gets all the way down to the nitty-gritty of t-shirt sales and other practical matters that come up as artists move up (or sideways). Since in its details the book remains realistic, I recommend it for anyone who wants to climb on the big scary jungle gym of the music business at any level. Not only artists – also pure songwriters, managers, promoters, lawyers, and anyone who aspires to those positions – will benefit. Read through the part about the label deals to learn how things used to be. Read through the rest, substituting – if you’re an artist – “you” for “your label,” and Passman’s advice and inside information remain invaluable.

Music Review: Indie Round-Up for Nov. 16 2006 – Copeland, Wolfkin, Jason Vigil

Copeland, Eat, Sleep, Repeat

Copeland‘s third CD is a sharp turn towards the brooding sound of Radiohead. On first listen it seems self-conscious, as if the band had deliberately set out to make an Important Record. Aaron Marsh’s distinctive tenor is as full of passion as ever, but individually the songs (with a few partial exceptions, like “Control Freak”) aren’t melodically memorable. The intention seems to be more to make an album-length statement, almost a concept composition, and in this the CD succeeds, with numerous interesting twists, lush and sometimes unusual instrumentation, and a bit of rhythmic experimentation. I liked it very much as a whole. Fans of the band’s earlier, harder, more hooky rock are, understandably, having a variety of reactions.

Is Eat, Sleep, Repeat really an Important Record? In the sense that no one else is filling the void Radiohead left when they went deeply experimental, I’d say yes. Certainly Copeland could end up an important band. On the other hand, with the major labels no longer in the business of putting out innovative rock, what gets seared into the musical consciousness of new generations is up to the tastes and the clout of countless smaller labels and their use of new methods to promote and distribute their music. Signed to The Militia Group, Copeland is certainly positioned well. But only time will tell.

Wolfkin, Brand New Pants

If you think Scandinavian pop is all shiny-happy Ace of Base stuff, this Danish band will show you otherwise. Wolfkin‘s debut CD uses plenty of synthesizer sounds along with guitar, bass and drums, but it’s in the service of a smart vision. They filter elements of rock, pop and dance music into a strong, dark modern brew. Sung in English, the music is creative, fun, and sometimes funny, but the lyrics are often visceral and grim: “The Devil knit the shirts we’re in we choose to call it skin/That shrunken little thing you call your heart.” At the same time, being not-quite native English speakers, their syntax makes for interesting verbal curiosities: “When you walk barefoot through the room/I instantaneously enter my bloom like deliberately.” They run a bit low on creative steam on the second half of the CD, where playfulness gives way to a certain sameness, but overall the disc makes a musical statement that, after several listens, may worm its way into your own shrunken little heart.

Jason Vigil, Heart Gone Sober

Jason Vigil’s hybrid of anthemic alt-rock and heartland howling seems at first to have too much bluster, but by the end of the CD it has earned its drama. Though Vigil and his band are very good at sustaining moods (and playing their instruments), many of the lyrics are just strings of relationship homilies set to run-of-the-mill melodies. Yet at his best, as in “So Tell me,” Vigil evokes the gravelly passion of an Ed Kowalczyk.

At other times he sings breathily (as in “Hurts To Be Without”), or pronounces things strangely (as in “Safety’s Gone,” where you have to look at the lyrics to know that he’s singing “I don’t want to be down” and not “I don’t want to be dead”), for cheap effect. But then comes the icepick-powerful “Looking in the Sun” and the unique bolt of lightning “Come To Me,” and it all seems worth it.

When all is said and done, this CD is a pleasure to listen to, but, hook-wise, after three listens, nothing has stuck in my head. Your mileage may vary; it’s worth a try because it’s good stuff in many ways. Extended clips can be heard here.

Arizona First State to Reject Gay Marriage Ban

My article on anti-gay marriage amendments is prompting some energetic commentary over at Blogcritics.

Theater Review: Love, Death, and Interior Decorating (two one-act plays by Keith Boynton)

Though not long out of college, playwright Keith Boynton has a marvelously clever and pointed way with words. “Stoppardian” has become a cliche, but there is a pithiness and playfulness in his dialogue that suggests happy inspiration from the great wordsmiths of the modern stage. Boynton puts this facility in the service of two stories, on the surface quite different, but underneath betraying parallel narrative flow and concerns. The result is a resonant evening of theater, although the two approaches – one story quotidian, the other mythically grand – do not, ultimately, succeed equally well.

The first play, Walls, is a taut, tense and funny two-character dramatization of what would seem a rather unremarkable situation. An old flame returns, complicating the life of a woman who is trying to get over her father’s recent death by throwing herself into renovating his house. Carter (Mike LaVoie), the clean-cut interloper, hides his emotions behind a wit that’s too ready for his own good, but as the dance of words progresses we begin to see the fragile nobility that made Gail (Joan Kubicek) like him so much in the first place. With their sturdy, snappy performances these two robust actors fully inhabit the aggressive dialogue, compacting its larger-than-life directness and its writerly cleverness into refreshingly homey art. Thus the magic of theater. These two characters deserve each other – in a good way. Just the right length, the story ends with a satisfying punch. Directed fluidly by the author, the play is a small gem.

Mike Lavoie and Joan Kubicek in Walls. Photo courtesy of DARR Publicity

The second play, The Quotable Assassin, is a period drama in which the life of a condemned revolutionary, Simon (Boynton), is spared temporarily through the influence of Lucia (Roya Shanks), a popular novelist who wishes to base her latest work on his life. During a series of prison-cell interviews, defenses break down on both sides. Shanks is utterly convincing as the hyper-cultured, emotionally pent-up celebrity author who, Capote-like, bonds fatefully with her murderous subject. Her inner struggles play out in her every expression and gesture. She’s an absolute joy. Boynton, however, makes his character rather too self-consciously charismatic, embracing his own elevated language so lovingly that instead of living through the words he turns speech into an end in itself. While this makes for an entertaining character, sometimes fascinating and always fun to watch and listen to, we don’t see in his idealistic smartass the likeable side that Lucia sees.

There’s also a late plot twist that seems unnecessary (and makes the play too long). Like the perfectly paced Walls, The Quotable Assassin is fundamentally a painfully human story of self-discovery that ends with a sad but hopeful departure. Unlike Walls, it suffers from overreach, outgrowing the confines of its one-act format. There’s a wonderful, tight little play in it, but Boynton and the director (his mother, the cartoonist-writer-musician Sandra Boynton), haven’t quite teased it out.

Nonetheless, this is a very worthwhile evening of theater, enlivened by inspired performances, sharp dialogue, and depth of thought.

Through Nov. 18 at Altered Stages in NYC. Tickets available at TheaterMania.

Music Review: Indie Round-Up for Nov. 2 2006

The Ratchets, Glory Bound

This angry, melodic, Clash-inspired punk-and-roll with a message is so perfect in its way I can’t help wondering if it’s an act, and I don’t mean in the sense that all bands are acts. But how can you not like a band with lyrics like “Money makers are coming in their Cadillacs/To watch us eat our lunch/Sloganeers are here with their assholes shined/To beat us to the punch”? In four quick lines they establish both working class cred and clear-eyed political realism.

Their second, endearingly old-fashioned main theme is “rock is our salvation” and they seem to mean it both symbolically and literally: “We’re human amplifiers/Together they can’t deny us;” “it doesn’t matter how firmly you are wound/There’s plenty of people who will try to water you down/Don’t let them drown you.” Sophisticated guitar layering, keyboard touches, and relatively slow tempos contrast effectively with hoarsely shouted vocals.

Harsh, Jimmy Page inspired guitar work livens up the funny, minimalist “Irritated,” while a pop-reggae beat churns through “Ration,” a frustrated love song to someone who’s overly scheduled. The CD’s centerpiece is “Skyjack Sunday Starts,” an ambitious if somewhat confused bass-driven reflection on terrorism in the skies. It’s followed by a return to the regular-guy blues in “Don’t Wanna Go” and “Cathedral Bells.” The latter links a sweet island-music flavor to a catchy rock chorus and is my favorite song on the CD, next to the anthemic “Born Wrong” that closes it.

The straight-ahead reggae “Proclamation Time” reinforces the band’s political stance. They never exactly identify their enemy, but revolution’s clearly in their air they’re breathing. If they mean it, that is. In the age of irony, these things are hard to read. But the inspired lyrics of “Born Wrong” argue strongly for sincerity:

Could you send the word out on scrape-faced Jake?
He lost it all in a burned out wreck
He was a wild card till he hit the floor
Noon tomorrow we’ll bury Jake in the ground
So let’s roll this steel convoy with the pedals down
Mile line glorybound payin’ last respects
We’re born wrong senorita
All along senorita
We’re born wrong.

The band has taken the smart step of streaming the entire CD at their website.

Aaron Comess, Catskills Cry

Aaron Comess, best known as the Spin Doctors’ drummer, has a new CD that can perhaps best be described as ambient rock. On these eleven tracks of thick, richly imagined instrumental music Comess collaborates with guitarist Bill Dillon (Sarah McLachlan, Marc Cohn, Joni Mitchell) and legendary bassist and Chapman stick player Tony Levin. It suggests what might have happened if some pioneering prog-rock band of the 60s or 70s had matured and mellowed. The music is certainly more colorful and expressive sans vocals than a lot of sung music. Underpinned by Comess’s chunky drumming, Dillon’s guitars and guitorgan cook up dense atmospheres, leaving much of the melodic work to Levin. Unconventional time signatures (“Seventy-Six,” “Ode to Attila”) and titanic polyrhythms (“Africa”) give way to devilish gloom-rock (“Future,” “Sky”) and meditative stuff that could almost be smooth jazz (“Zapped.”)

Extended clips can be heard here.

Breaking Laces, Astronomy Is My Life, But I Love You

Breaking Laces makes essentially acoustic-based pop-rock that’s strong and assured, sweet and sometimes funny. One could say “Bowie meets Live,” but there’s also a singer-songwriter aspect to this talented trio that harks back to 1960s folk-rock. There’s nothing new under the Sun (or the Chess or the Motown or the Bomp), but these guys are very good at putting their own twist on the basics. It’s suburban chill music for the post-American Beauty generation. “Promise me that you won’t believe/All the reasons they say you cannot leave/Let’s go, we’ll prove that love is blind/To their holy suburban dividing lines.” Echo and Narcissus, Romeo and Juliet, Buffy and Angel – these stories never get old, and neither will we as long as we have good, grown-up, rock-charged pop like this to listen to.

Extended clips can be heard here.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned from John Hiatt Lyrics

Listen up, all you womenfolk! Do you want to understand what drives the human male? Do you wish to comprehend the vastness of his emptiness and grok his strange ways? Do you just maybe want to know what’s eating him? Then look no further than the works of The Man himself: Mr. John Hiatt, whose song lyrics explain it all.

Now, women, it’s nice when you love us, but after a certain point we become perplexed (and even begin to resent you) at your seeming failure to understand what a bastard we actually are. (Actually, what we don’t usually realize is that you knew it all along, but can’t act upon the knowledge because of some female-specific constitutional defect that remains a mystery to us.) Anyway, The Man explains it in “Angel Eyes”:

So tonight I’ll ask the stars above
How did I ever win your love?
What did I do, what did I say
To turn your angel eyes my way?

There’s no answer. Or if there is, the guy in the song sure doesn’t find it. He’s asking rhetorical-like questions, see. (Hiatt even has a song called “She Loves the Jerk.”)

The flip side of the “What the hell are you doing with me?” theme is “I swear I’ll always love you and be faithful, and by ‘swear’ I mean I’m gonna try.” Women and men are from the same planet, but words can mean different things to them. The Man sums it up in “Cross My Fingers”:

Baby when I put my mind to it
I slip into another gear
And I travel in another syncopation
When all I wanna be is here with you, and
I’ll be true to you – cross my fingers
I’ll be good to you – cross my fingers

See? He’s trying his best, which is all he can do.

Often it’s a futile effort, as in “Little Head”:

I’m loyal as a dog but I’m a hog for that sexual attraction
It starts up in my mind and makes a bee line below the belt
No consequences just satisfaction
Baby in my heart I’m faithful
This two headed monster is so distasteful
Forgive me when my instincts start stinkin’
I’m just so easily led when the little head does the thinkin’

Even you probably realize that when it gets right down to it, what makes you dig a guy isn’t his little head so much as his brain – expressed, usually, through his words. So who better than a master songwriter-dude to lay all this out so that even your confused female minds can understand it? In “Loving a Hurricane” The Man casts a cold clear eye on the process of courtship, and you’d do well to take note:

You [the man] answer questions like a natural disaster
Voices in the wind – you let ’em call her out
The whole foundation just went flying right past her
She puts her heart into it – and you just yank it out
You pulled her love out through the window pane
That’s what she gets for loving a hurricane

Let’s look closely at that. The song’s very first line establishes the importance of language in the process of love. “Answer[ing] questions like a natural disaster,” he’s using the power of his words to overwhelm her, to take away her sense of control over life – just as happens when nature rises up against us, except this is a form of surrender which she may like and encourage. The “voices in the wind” are the poetic tradition, which he draws upon to whip away her whole foundation, to “call her out” and “pull her love out.”

Traditions are everpresent in Hiatt’s lyrics. In “Your Dad Did,” Hiatt’s workingman hero, though no poet, also recognizes his debt to those who came before: “You’re a chip off the old block/Why does it come as such a shock/That every road up which you rock/Your dad already did?” Even this everyday married-with-children guy finds grace in what came before:

Well the day was long now, supper’s on
The thrill is gone
But something’s taking place
Yeah the food is cold and your wife feels old
But all hands fold
As the two-year-old says grace…
You love your wife and kids
Just like your dad did.

By contrast, a man not armed with at least the homiest wisdom of the ages is a lost soul, as in “Native Son”: “Running through the woods/And the burned out neighborhoods/Looking for someone/A member of your tribe/A place you can hide/’Til the war has begun.” Such a man’s loves can end only in something explosive (like a war) or in a quieter failure, as “Cry Love,” told from the woman’s point of view, shows:

The trust of a woman in his hand
But he was a little boy, not a man
You loved him stronger than he could feel
Yeah he was wrapped up in himself like an orange peel.

What looks to her like an stubbornly uncommunicative man is really a man paralyzed by his own thoughts, like the poor guy in “You Must Go”:

Love is in the air
You can smell it everywhere
It’s in your clothes, it’s in her hair
Ah, you better get out of there
It’s gonna take a midnight train
To straighten out your winding brain.

A lot of perfectly decent guys are caught up in this kind of situation and don’t know how to get out. Some are too smart for their own good, but for many it’s because they didn’t pay attention in school, don’t read books, and don’t know how to use their male brain as intended. The nerd gets the girl in the end, but not, as the Al Bundys of the world might think, because he’s rich; no, the nerd gets the girl because he does know how to use his male brain.

Sometimes the trapped man breaks out, as in “Feelin’ Again”:

I thought I had to curl up from my head down to my toes
But heaven knows that I was wrong, I’m feeling again
Holding my breath and holed up in this cheap motel, I feel like hell
I’m holding my own heart, I’m feeling again

Maybe he had to go through “alcohol fire,” like the guy in “Paper Thin,” but he escaped from inside himself. Still he feels “like hell,” because it’s overwhelming to be feeling so much: “When I get that feeling like a bass drum/Pounding til my head is numb/Electric onion peeling within…” He may have gotten the girl, but that awesome brain of his still can’t satisfy his craving for understanding. (Why did I get the girl?)

As you can see, Hiatt’s lyrics illustrate all the important iterations of the male condition:

1. I don’t know exactly who the hell I am, but I seem to be an asshole. Why do you love me?
2. I’m only my father’s son, so it ain’t my fault. Wait a minute, how did I get here? What is the meaning of – hey, you’re sexy!

“Only the Song Survives” distills this male confusion into a story in which a man dreams of a terrible car accident with a woman who may or may not be his wife. She explains:

Now don’t you remember they put a patch on your eye
Like Dread Pirate Roberts, you looked so unplanned
They cut off my wedding ring and you started to cry
A one-eyed Niagara Falls man

“But I never married,” objects the man. So is this injured woman with the wedding ring his wife? “Faces were changed… faces get strange,” goes the refrain – as they are wont to do in dreams. The dream-man looks “unplanned” because he is. What could be more unplanned, more emblematic of losing control, than a car accident?

But I woke up sweating to breakfast in bed
And there were my children, and there was my wife
Post-traumatic stress, or just a bump on the head?
Or maybe the ride of my life

It’s the ride of his life, all right, a ride of confusion, statelessness, and knocks on the head. Yet somehow his domestic life is still there for him. And he’ll never figure out why. Woman, to him, is magic, like the

woman sawed in half, her legs in Tijuana
She was a bodyless head and trapeze artist in a circus in Bombay
Now a woman’s gonna do exactly what a woman’s gonna
Yeah, some bad magicians wouldn’t have it any other way
She holds on to that trapeze by the skin of her teeth, or so they say

With images of a woman in two places at once and possessed of magical survival skills, Hiatt has now universalized his depiction of the split human condition. The passive (female) subject of the magic trick somehow finds her power and makes do even after she’s been cut in half. Meanwhile the “bad magician,” the songwriter, the caster of spells with words, feels his power, yet ultimately doesn’t understand it any better than the average joe of “Buffalo River Home” does:

I’ve been circling the wagons down at Times Square
Trying to fill up this hole in my soul but nothing fits there
Just when you think you can let it rip
You’re pounding the pavement in your daddy’s wingtips
As if you had some place better to go…

Although domesticated, and walking in his father’s footsteps, he’s still listening for that “Something Wild,” believing in the promise of “It’ll Come To You”:

Now you’re happily married with a wife and kids of your own
But sometimes in the closet at night you can hear them rattlin’ bones
Takin’ bets on your future and your current postal zone
It’s a spooky equation, but check out yourself, Jack, you’re the great unknown…
[but] in the middle of the night, with your covers pulled up tight
It’ll come to you

The understanding that will come to him, and the something wild that he both desires and fears, are two halves of the same nature. All of us have these dual natures. Now you know where to find out all you need to know about the particularly frustrating male version of this internal, eternal conflict: the lyrics of The Man himself, John Hiatt.

Music Review: Indie Round-Up for Oct. 19 2006 – Special Happy Music Edition

This week we cover only happy music. I said: Only happy music. Only. Happy. Music. Shut up.

Nicola, Don’t Take It Personally

Latin-tinged soulfulness and a unique mix of hard pop and polyrhythmic complexity have always characterized Nicola, but she and her band (also called Nicola) inch towards the progressive edge of alt-rock with this, her third CD. As on her earlier releases, Nicola’s catlike alto and spidery, sensuous acoustic guitar meld with the funkiness of her tight-as-leather-pants band to create an original but accessible pop sound. This disc is not as replete with hooks, however, as her past work. The songs, while strong and frequently striking, have more of the rock landscape about them and less of the portrait.

The title track is quite catchy, however, as is the power ballad “Crazy.” “Lighthouse” is a nifty mix of heavy rock and melodic soundscape, and “In Your Own Backyard” is a surprisingly convincing rap-metal experiment featuring Tah Phrum Duh Bush.

From “(5,6,7,8) Hot Date,” a hilarious blast of relationship anger punk, to its opposite extreme, the soul ballad “Combustible,” Nicola’s work continues to express one of pop music’s more creative musical visions. And their live shows are a party and a half. The New York release party for the CD will be at the Bowery Poetry Club on Nov. 17.

Extended clips here.

Brian Simpson, Postcard From L.A.

When an artist is so closely imitative of one inspiration as Brian Simpson is of Tom Petty, the listener can have two possible responses: take it entirely on its own terms, or put it in context. In context, there’s a certain lack of originality. Simpson sings like Tom Petty (crossed with Huey Lewis), he writes like Tom Petty, and most strikingly he arranges like Tom Petty. But on his own terms, he’s pretty darn good, making well-crafted, sunny California pop-rock with engaging vocals and a happy vibe.

The main disadvantage of aping someone’s sound is that your songwriting tends to suffer by comparison. But while Simpson doesn’t match his idol in that regard, few do, and these songs have much going for them on their own. This is well-made, feel-good music, and we always need more of that.

Extended clips can be heard here.

The Brightwings, Stay

Equally sunny sounds come from the Brightwings. The California lilt of their shimmery folk-rock is a tribute to their devotion to their artistic vision and to modern heating (or maybe global warming) – the band is from Boston. “All I Need” is highly catchy, and “Many Miles” and “Mallory” are fine pop baubles as well, while the wispy “I Want You To Stay” harks back to 1960s pop. The only weakness is that some of the lead vocals lack heft, though the lustrous harmonies in the choruses make up for that somewhat. The CD closes with a lovely version of “Please Come To Boston,” an inspired choice.

Melissa Ivey, Lovers and Stars

The title track of powerhouse Melissa Ivey’s new EP is getting a lot of airplay in her home state of Colorado. It’s a fine pop tune that suggests a younger Sheryl Crow combined with a smarter Avril Lavigne. But I like the first of the two collaborations with The Knack‘s Berton Averre even more: though it adheres less closely to pop conventions, “Eye on the Door” fits Ivey’s sultry voice like a wet, torn t-shirt. Her voice, and the CD’s smoky production, polishes the dark cores at the songs’ hearts, digging deeper into the soul than one expects from such a young singer.

The dramatic climax of the other Averre co-write, “Everywhere and Nowhere,” comes as an almost Bowie-esque crescendo, while the fun, punked-out “Far Away” owes more to the riot grrl bands. On the evidence of this limited sample, Ivey has a touch that makes whatever she tries work for her, including the sophisticated folk-pop closer, “No Ties To Break,” whose gorgeous little melody grabs on and won’t let go. Ivey is a big talent we should be hearing a lot more from soon.

Extended clips here.

The Beautiful Girls, Water

Australia’s Beautiful Girls follow up last year’s international success with a new compilation of songs from their earlier releases. Those CDs didn’t get wide notice outside their native country, so the songs will be new to North American and European audiences. The Caribbean influence is subtler on this disc than on 2005’s We’re Already Gone, and there’s more stress on the funky acoustic skeleton that holds up their liquidy melodies. The sound, reminiscent of the Chili Peppers’ soft underbelly, depends on the band’s ability to serve their songs (all written by singer-guitarist Mat McHugh) by holding back rather than pressing forward. Indeed, it’s music that makes you lean back – at least mentally – as you tap your feet and bob your head.

The band depicts a variety of moods using a small palette. The dreamy reflectivity of “Periscopes” slides into the sly “Morning Sun,” whose positive lyrics jostle effectively with tense minor chords. The raw “Water” flows into a barely-there instrumental called “First Sign of Trouble.” The centerpiece of the CD is the joyous “Music”: “‘Cause I got music and it makes me feel all right… and I got it every day.” That’s true wisdom, y’all.

In a few of the softer, more contemplative tracks like “Freedom” and “I Need To Give This Broken Heart Away” the tension drops out and, with it, too much of the musical energy. But the reggae-ish “Weight of the World” points ahead to the band’s lively, mature style. In sum, this compilation has its weaknesses, but fans of We’re Already Gone and of McHugh’s shades-of-grey writing and carefully thrown-away vocals will probably like it – at least to tide them over till a release of really new material.

Vicki Genfan, Up Close and Personal

The Jaco Pastorius of the acoustic guitar? Ellen McIlwaine squared? The Pat Metheny of New Jersey? Vicki Genfan may be a little bit of all those things, but primarily she is herself: a guitar wizard with jaw-dropping technique and gushing creativity. Her new double CD consists of an instrumental disc and a singer-songwriter disc. The former is a revelation. In it Genfan provides a guitar clinic that’s not in the least clinical. With her acoustic six-string front and center, and tasteful backing here and there from other top musicians, she takes us through an eleven-song odyssey through the workings of a scarily brilliant musical mind.

By comparison, the best that can be said about the singer-songwriter CD is that it’s a solid folk-jazz album that presses Genfan’s awesome guitar technique into the service of material that isn’t going to blow too many people away. That’s not to say it’s not a pleasure to listen to, if you’re in a contemplative mood. Genfan’s vocals are calming and assured. “Don’t Give Up” and “Love Thing” with their smooth 70s-style soul-charged choruses owe more to Stevie Wonder and George Winston than Joni Mitchell, and the pretty jazz ballad “When You Are Winter” gets a nice lift from Gil Goldstein’s Debussy-inspired piano runs. The jazz strain continues with an ethereal cover of Marvin Gaye’s classic “What’s Going On,” dreamily decorated with an udu drum and a Wurlitzer solo by Goldstein.

On the other hand, neither Genfan’s spot-on but laid-back delivery nor the stalwart contributions of her excellent backing musicians can bring the weak Chris Jones song “Ain’t Got Love” to life; “Living in the Country” is a potentially nice song that suffers from a creative hesitancy you never hear in her instrumental work; and the cover of The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” is too new-agey for my taste, although its melody – one of the most beautiful ever written, n’est-ce pas? – comes through without damage.

I confess that even the best smooth-jazz stylings have never floated my boat much, so your knottage may vary. About recommending the instrumental CD, I have no reservations whatsoever. You can listen to extended clips of both discs at the release’s CD Baby page and decide for yourself. Then, whatever you think of what I think, I’ll wager you’ll agree that the amazing Vicki Genfan is a guitar-playing force of nature.

OUT AND ABOUT IN NYC: Kirsten DeHaan and Jodi Jett heated up the basement performance space at Club Midway on Tuesday night. Jett’s set was spoiled by an unpracticed and out-of-tune backing band, but on her new CD Revelations an easy wryness harks back to Lou Reed and Patti Smith while low-tech, moody arrangements read like early Jefferson Airplane channeled through Liz Phair and the Cowboy Junkies. (How’s that for cramming multiple comparisons into one sentence? Just wait, I’ll be reviewing the CD in a future column, one not devoted to happy music.) DeHaan, by contrast, is a nineties-style punk-pop dynamo. Her new 3-song EP is drawing comparisons to Belly and U2, which is fair enough, but her live set is rawer and more punked out. This dualism may simply be in the nature of the pretty, driven, biker-haired Indianan-turned-New Yorker, or it may be smartly planned – or both. In any case it makes her recorded music potentially radio-friendly in more than one circuit – grown up Gen-Xers, college rock, maybe even the Avril LaTween set. A combination of talent, personal intensity and looks might soon turn Kirsten DeHaan into a major indie player… Last night the music stage at Mo Pitkins belonged to neo-folk singer-songwriter Meg Braun, whose stage presence is becoming rapidly more assured as she gets closer to releasing her debut CD. Aviv Roth provided inspired acoustic fills and solos. Braun incidentally proved the value of musical collectives by filling the room with her Maggie’s Music Salon compatriots and their friends. If a bunch of musicians provide mutual support by going to one another’s gigs, they can fill a small room and help earn that night’s performer additional bookings. It’s not a new idea, but it seldom succeeds in practice, musicians being a self-interested bunch. Kudos to Maggies.

Theater Review: The Heart of My Mystery: The Hamlet Project

With The Heart of My Mystery: The Hamlet Project, Barbara Bosch and Mark Ringer have pulled off a neat trick: giving a fresh twist to Hamlet, while presenting a true, cathartic, and very good production of Shakespeare’s most iconic and psychologically complex play.

Interrupting the action of the play with quotes from four centuries of Hamlet commentary sounds like it would be awkward or too cerebral, but turns out to have been a small stroke of genius. Delivered by the actors (who step out of character at opportune moments) from sources as diverse as Voltaire, Freud, and Stephen Greenblatt’s excellent recent biography Will in the World, the commentary, far from coming off as a self-conscious meta-theatrical device, is interesting and often just plain funny. The idea, according to the program notes, is to place the play “in juxtaposition with the critical response it has inspired” and create “an irreverent and scholarly study of Hamlet.” That it does, but the result is not a dry experiment but a first-class entertainment.

The cast of nine, solid from top to bottom, is the foremost cause of that success. It seems almost unfair to single out any performance. Bosch pushes her actors to find the conversational rhythms in Shakespeare’s poetry, and they do so with amazing success. The few exceptions to the naturalism, like Rand Mitchell’s herky-jerky Ghost and Antonio Edward Suarez’s mugging Guildenstern and Osric, provide satisfying doses of oddity and broad humor.

Natasha Piletich’s heartbreaking Ophelia deserves a special mention, not because she outshines others in the cast, but because what she does with her part is unusual. Often the heroine’s madness is played as a result of weakness of character; she becomes a fluttery, ghostlike lunatic. In this production, by contrast, over-the-edge Ophelia is just a tiny step from sane Ophelia; from her dark eyes the exact same person looks out. It seems natural to witness such a spirited, dangerously emotional person – a type we’ve all met in real life – addled by extreme grief. Piletich’s performance makes this difficult character more real than any recent interpretation that comes to mind.

Can one review Hamlet without saying something about the lead? Suffice it to say that Peter Husovsky is thoroughly convincing as Shakespeare’s haughty, tragically troubled, and in this case surprisingly funny prince of indecision. He gets able support from Maeve McGuire, who plays Gertrude as a real mother rather than a psychological construct, and Bob Adrian as a gangsterish but desperately tormented Claudius. Bryan Webster holds down the story’s emotional center as the loyal Horatio, and co-adapter Mark Ringer fulfills the comic promise of the blowhard Polonius even without the benefit of the “Neither a borrower nor a lender be” speech – one of the more obvious of the many cuts.

Those abbreviations, and the fast pacing, allow the play to clock in at under two hours even with the commentary. I highly recommend this production for all ages and tastes – except, perhaps, for someone unfamiliar with the play, who should to see an uncut (or less cut) version – sans knowing commentary – first. This clever and lively adaptation with its capital cast deserves to be filling a much larger theater than the tiny off-off-Broadway space in which it plays until October 29. If you’re going to be in New York any time this month, get thee to a phone or a computer (you’re already on your computer, aren’t you?) and get a ticket.

Tickets ($18, students $10) for The Heart of My Mystery: The Hamlet Project are available at TheaterMania or by calling 212-352-3101.

Music Review: Indie Round-Up for Oct. 5 2006 – Singleton, Knight, Kobo Town

Anya Singleton, Not Easy to Forget

Anya Singleton is equally comfortable singing jazz, blues, R&B and even rock; her new EP could be described accurately both as a small smorgasbord of styles and as a delicious, sultry concoction of well-crafted original material perfect for her style. Her voice is passionate but knowing, more warm than cool, and she puts her excellent technique in the service of the song – not the other way around, as jazz singers sometimes do.

However, to my ear, the most enjoyable thing about this EP, along with Singleton’s delivery, is how the original songwriting (by Singleton, guitarist Michael Aarons and keyboardist David Sherman) is so heavily indebted to classic R&B and soul. “I’m Just Fine” is a timeless kind of song in the classic soul tradition, while the title track sounds like one Aretha Franklin could easily have recorded in the 60s. Sherman’s “Slow Man” brings to mind Carole King, while his “Silver and Gold” has an silky Elton John sort of melody. But with all that, the jazzy flavor of the arrangements gives the songs an earthy, acoustic edge they might not have otherwise. The group breaks into more traditional jazz with a solid but unexciting version of Hoagy Carmichael’s “The Nearness of You.” It’s the originality on display in the other songs that makes this short set special.

Extended clips can be heard here.

Chris Knight, Enough Rope

Like an angry John Mellencamp, Chris Knight blasts the unfairness of life through stories of small-town and (especially) rural hopes, and the dashed dreams that too often bring them down. Knight lacks the subtlety of some similarly character-driven songwriters like Springsteen and Dylan, but subtlety isn’t his aim; hoarse passion and evocative imagery give this pissed-off holler of an album its force. Knight’s originality, in the context of heartland rock, lies in his advocacy of the small farmer rather than the suburban hard-luck case or union laborer. His axe hits squarely: “I watch them tear it all to hell/What used to be my church/Tearing up my Grandpa’s land/Treating my Grandpa’s land like dirt.” But there’s defiance, too, in grainy tales like “William’s Son,” a highlight of his powerful live show: “And every now and then I kneel and pray/That things will get better one of these days/But I’ll spit in your eye and stand my ground/Just to keep my head from hanging down.”

Producer Gary Nicholson, who has worked with everyone from Etta James to George Jones, makes the CD sound both perfect and real, and he and others have some co-writing credits. But this is Knight’s show, the product of one man’s skilfully honed, often damning vision.

Kobo Town, InDependence

Photo by Matt Howe

Toronto-based reggae-calypso band Kobo Town, brainchild of Trinidadian singer, songwriter and bandleader Drew Gonsalves, is named for the old Port-of-Spain neighborhood that birthed traditional calypso. Though the band’s sound is best described as pan-Caribbean, its inspiration and subject matter have firm roots in the history of Gonsalves’s native land, of whose turbulent history he speaks with poetic specificity and force.

In “Trinity” he looks down on the land from an airplane: “Her clothes were torn, and her shirt was all tattered/Her eyes downcast, every hope and joy scattered/Dream of my past, bright memory shattered/but I adore her still ’cause I know that all that don’t matter.” In other songs (“Abatina,” “Beautiful Soul”) he focusses closer in, examining the lives of individuals. And in “Blood and Fire” he casts his eye on the wider stage of the whole suffering world: “From Gaza to Jaffna, blood and fire/Soweto to Rio, blood and fire…What must fall to be free, blood and fire.”

But Gonsalves and his able eight-piece band couch the messages in bouncing beats that elevate the spirit. Flute and violin lines slither through the clever arrangements; Gonsalves himself handles the guitar and cuatro; and Kellylee Evans contributes some laserlike guest vocals. Fans of Caribbean music, world music in general, and meaningful songwriting should grab this CD when it’s released next month (check this space for an announcement) – it’s a beauty.

OUT AND ABOUT: You can read a little about my trip to Nashville here. Since then I’ve been more out like a light than out and about. Zzzz… wake me up when the Foley scandal is over.