Two Nights At Webster Hall: Dismemberment Plan’s Reunion / Wavves & Best Coast “Summer is Forever” Tour
Dismemberment Plan Reunion Tour: 1/30/11
With Barsuk’s re-release of their 1999 album Emergency & I, the Dismemberment Plan announced a reunion of two nights at Webster Hall. D-Plan spawned out D.C.’s post hardcore scene, issuing a sound that breeds the slow punk progressions of late Fugazi with the heartfelt digital dance of the Postal Service. They achieved moderate success touring with Death Cab for Cutie and Pearl Jam, but nothing to quit their day jobs. When tickets went on sale, I don’t think I’m the only one who couldn’t believe it. To most fans they had fell off the face of the earth a few years ago and never had much of a following to begin with.
Needless to say, the show was surreal. I really never thought I would ever see this band, and here there they were, replicating their recordings with a precision that proves them far more than studio artists. There’s something to be said about drummer Joe Easley, who not only completes the band’s sound with his jazzy fills and hip-hop beats, but shows up wearing gym shorts, an oversize t-shirt, fingerless gloves and headphones. You know this guy is serious.
Frontman Travis Morrison was very uneasy about his co-worker’s presence in the VIP section, making sporadic comments about office parties and the sweaters he had accumulated. When returning for the encore he stated that “Things are only starting to get weird” before pulling up a tap dancing groupie for a b-side, and then the entire crowd for a sing-a-long rendition of Ice of Boston. Things did get a little weird toward the end, but all-in-all it was a good night.
Wavves & Best Coast “Summer is Forever” Tour: 2/2/11
My favorite element of Wavves isn’t the way they perfectly sum up a summer day spent in the Rockaways: cut-off shorts, five dollar Ray Bans, local creeps, cops in jeeps, gang activity, cheap beer and/or tequila, pissing in the ocean or on the side of some tenement building, your best friend on LSD half naked and screaming at the water, catching the Broad Channel bound shuttle all sunburnt and covered with sand, garbage everywhere. I really like that element, but my favorite part of Wavves is bassist Stephen Pope.
Stephen Pope and Billy Hayes (percussionist) used to back Jay Reatard (Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr.) before they quit in late 2009. Lindsey went on to die a few months later, and his ex-patriate duo joined Wavves frontman Nathan Williams. They went on to co-write and record the 2010 album King of The Beach, which was produced by Dennis Herring (who has worked with names like Modest Mouse, The Hives and Elvis Costello). King of the Beach managed to redeem Williams’ tarnished reputation and is easily one of the year’s best rock albums, that is if you’d enjoy Brian Wilson/Blink 182 mash-up.
Although Hayes has since left the band, Pope is still killin’ it up on stage with his overgrown mowhawk and muppet-like facial expressions. Nathan Williams may be a great songwriter, but he isn’t exactly the most exciting stageman, making Pope’s crazy darelict vibe a much needed element of the show.
Best Coast couldn’t compete with Wavves. simple as that. Bethany Consentino worked the stage in a charming, straightforward manner that meshed well with Guitarist Bob Bruno’s shaggy Dinosaur Jr. vibe, but it just didn’t get the adrenaline pumping. They managed to bust out some nice covers, Loretta Lynn’s Fist City & Lesley Gore’s That’s The Way Boys Are, but it took all of fifteen minutes for the crowd to become a floor of wailing girls. I guess most of the men in the audience weren’t down with foot tapping to Best Coast’s dreamy boy songs. Things got really awkward, real fast. The trio ended on a heavier note, but the overall set dragged like Lucky Cheng’s.
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Static Mind Erasure, Epiphany Reprise // Northampton Wools ft. Thurston Moore, The Rock Shop, 11.12.10
Scott Townsend, a friend from high school, invites me to see Northampton Wools this past Friday. As usual my girlfriend and I show up an hour late. The trio is well into their set, Thurston Moore and Bill Nace are sitting at either end of the stage, communicating with signals of escalating feedback. Chris Corsano’s drumming is pretty much the only thing that bears semblance to music, and it holds the groaning guitars together in a post acid jazz hailstorm. A plane of terrorized pachyderms plummets in slow motion for another 45 minutes before it crash lands in the red sea, the wave washes over and everyone begins to hoot and clap.
I can only wonder to myself why Noise is my generation’s answer to Jazz. It bears the same elements, but the final product is chaos.
The crowd disperses, I find Scott and we retreat to the bar for a drink. We start to make small talk with a woman several years my elder and in a few minutes a member of her company joins in. She’s fiery drunk and she stares at Scott like he’s the neighborhood sex criminal.
“You’re Scott Townsend!” He doesn’t recognize her. She gets really upset and tries to steal my girlfriend’s beer.
“I used to sell you oregano and you thought it was weed, we went to high school together. I can’t believe you don’t remember me. We were looking to kick your ass!”
She runs to find her boyfriend. Her friend looks to me and says “That’s Gabby. She’s ten years older than you so keep your dick in your pants.”
Back comes the intoxicated instigator, this time with a guy who is quite bigger than us and looking equally pissed off.
“Julian look, I found Scott Townsend.” She points in our direction and I prepare for whatever violence is about to ensue.
Julian gets real close to Scott, face to face, and asks him if he remembers his brother, and Scott does. Julian’s brother had a heart condition and passed away in the locker room after a Football game. Today was the anniversary.
After a brief pause the anger begins to fade. Apparently there has been a mistake. Scott Townsend is still Scott Townsend, but not the one who deserves a proper ass kicking. The stranger’s entourage begins to gather around, all of whom grew up in the same alcoholic railroad town. We begin to share stories, coming to find that we all somehow know each other. We used to throw rocks at the same trains. We used to skateboard, steal and raise hell off River street. We used to drown our sorrows in the same dark taverns. As children we played basketball at the boys club. We recall how our teammate was stabbed to death decade later. We remember the drunks and the junk, those who died and those who live on. We may have left that town, but it never left us.
Thurston Moore in all his height and intensity lugs an amplifier through the crowd. The iconoclast who co-created Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation, the album that changed the face of contemporary music, still has no roadie, nor the exigency to hide in the back room. He just wants to play his guitar to death and nothing more.
The epiphany seizes. Generation X, the millennials, we are the children of the Baby boomers. These self-proclaimed proponents of social change stood for rebellion and progress, peace and love. They laid their foundation, made babies, and then they got divorced. Now they wonder why their spawn is the most apathetic group of individuals this country has ever seen. They wonder why their children register on Facebook but not at the ballots. Today’s young people don’t care about the abysmal economy, the changing climate or the war in the middle east. It makes perfect sense that they’ve traded jazz for the sound of god-awful beauty.
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24 Hours of Ringing Ears // Yvette at Death By Audio 11.11.10
I’m up to my second Modelo and admiring for once the smoke free air when Yvette starts to warm up with a pulsing bass that makes my lungs vibrate and the overflowing pedal board glows like a digital Noah’s ark in a sea of filth while the drums beat faster and the guitar makes sounds that no steel string could make and it crushes my ears like an industrial can opener over Brian Wilson’s vocal daydream in a post-opiate field of fury where the sun rises and sets again while the music keeps crawling as army ants in a rainforest where nothing lasts more than a day once it’s dead flesh falls to the jungle floor and high above the bird of paradise screams it’s lover’s call for the world to hear and it becomes so loud that the pigeons rise in great clusters, falling in unison toward the aluminum roofs that guard our heads from the elements of mother earth who never ceases to chant her chorus and clash in the clouds like the gods of ancient Greece who were carved into precious stones and stolen away to other lands where they could be admired by the masses who sit before two pistons that bounce and ignite and keep the engine endlessly churning, spitting out smog and coughing to a stop and the crowd starts to applause but is cut short by the whine of a dying fawn over the rip of a dirt bike and the bass bellows from far below the ocean where baleen whales brave longline nets and the infinite waste of man that plagues the sea like a biblical prophecy ringing through my ears and it’s over and I’m still breathing.
Check it out for yourself: http://www.myspace.com/yvetteyvetteyvette
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Fashion Tip, A living Museum / Belle and Sebastian at the Williamsburg Waterfront 9.30.10
This blustery evening promises rain as I make my way through East River Park. The sun dips in the west and the heavy troposphere softens the city skyline, carrying a spectrum of light uptown. Gleeful attendees wander the grounds, most uninterested by the sound of Teenage Fanclub. The band seems to be doing something of worth, but a day spent inside the putrid mouth of the subway has left me craving some skull crushing metal. A part of me wonders why I even bought the tickets.
Teenage Fanclub ends with a J Macis-esque outro, leading me to believe that they’re more than indie mushballs. Not much. For the most part they were every aspect of Jets to Brazil that I don’t like. It was a surprisingly underwhelming set for the band who’s Bandwagonesque won Spin Magazine’s best album of 1991 (beating Nirvana’s Nevermind, Bloody Valentine’s Loveless and REM’s Out of Time). Gabe Kastner hands me a pint of Woodford and concludes: “Well, that’s British power pop.”
My company and I leave our picnic table and wander into the crowd. Empty condominiums stand awkwardly about the perimeter of the park, reminding me of a time when this place was no more than a toxic briar patch aside the river. After some deliberation Stewie Murdoch and ensemble take the stage. He makes a tongue in cheek comment about the neighborhood’s fashion sense, poking at the exponentially spawning breed on Bedford’s north end.
The band has a large presence, numbering seven on stage with wind and string accompaniments. Everything sounds more immense than their studio albums, the separation of the elements bringing their music a new life. Stewie’s torso bounces about his static hips, furthering the stereotype that Scottish people can’t dance. Sarah Martin pinches a violin with her giant breast.
Following a cordial applause Murdoch says a few words that leaves the crowd giggling. A man behind me informs his date that Murdoch is gay, and he isn’t, but I’m sure he’s not the only prick in the audience who thinks only a homosexual could compose songs of such buoyance. I brush him off and wade into a land where Morissey, Donovan and I abuse local anesthetics on the set of Chris Noonan’s Babe.
Throughout the show Murdoch throws rugby balls to the Little Belles, or children in the audience whose parents have possibly procreated while listening to their songs. He later pulls up seven members of the audience who dance about the stage and are anointed with gold medals for their hard work. My mellow is harshed as a drunken Asian man pushes into my girlfriend, holds his iPhone between our faces and begins to text. It never rains and we end our night with po’ boys at The Charleston.
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Teenage Fanclub // The Concept // Bandwagonesque // Geffen Records
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Belle and Sebastian // Judy and the Dream of Horses // If You’re Feeling Sinister // Jeepster Records
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I’ve been dreamin’, traced out but dreamin’ A Reunion With Pavement, Sept. 23, 2010
On the horizon, the nature is dry. The leaves of Central Park’s prized elms are browning with the coming of winter. Helicopters buzz about the sky, ensuring the safety of the tuxedoed UN conference leaders who dine tonight in Manhattan’s midtown hotels. The child of a man ten years my elder runs about the astroturfed Rumsey Playfield, its head trailing behind its speeding legs and flopping about like a windsock. I’m sipping a seven dollar limeless can of Corona, cursing the Brooklyn Flea for highway robbery.
In the final moments of sunlight Endless Boogie emerges on the stage. From afar frontman Paul “Top Dollar” Major appears to be a woman underneath his shaggy banged mullet that wags in the breeze about his belly button. He barks something concerning about boogie and begins to shred on his guitar like Johnny Winter’s illiterate cousin. The band rolls on an fuzzy pump, something akin to sex on the hood of a dusty Mustang. “The Governor,” Jesper Ecklow appears to have spent a good portion of his life traveling by bus. His face left unshaven for days, he chain smokes under a baseball cap. Marijuana smoke mingles with a barrage of dirty psych solos, Major intermittently grunting to the tune of John Spencer, staring concernedly at his fellow musicians in effort to keep the Boogie alive. Malkmus appears from the back of the stage guitar in hand, offering up to the cascading mass of sound. To my dismay the Boogie ends after two songs.
I’m sipping whiskey out of a stranger’s flask who’s girlfriend beckons news from Philadelphia and complains about overabundance of men in the audience when Pavement takes the stage. The inklings of “Grounded” fill the stadium and so begins a half-drunk and bouncing sing-a-long that courses 27 songs. Three songs in Malkmus seems exhausted by the crowd’s unsolicited vocal arrangements and the mic is handed to Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg for a riveting version of Date With Ikea. Towards the middle of act the crowd begins to settle down and the music becomes more audible. I begin to have fade back to the seventh grade, twanging out Stop Breathin’ on my guitar, trying to convince my friends that indie was cooler than punk, to no avail. Nearly a decade later I’m still alone, the heroes of my foremost years preforming songs that have quite literally changed my life, and it’s beautiful. The crowd is ecstatic and the band genuinely happy to be together again. The legends end with four song encore featuring the only version of We Dance that I haven’t hated. I wander out in the flood of dispersing fans, crunching over cans and smiling like a fool. //
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