Concert Review: Frisbie, Empty Bottle, June 14

Concert Review: Frisbie, Empty Bottle, June 14

It was a banner week in Chicago for power pop bands beginning with F. Fountains of Wayne headlined the Taste of Randolph Street on Friday, and Frisbie took the stage at the Empty Bottle the night before. Based on how sparse the Empty Bottle crowd was, I hesitate to use the term "local favorites" in describing Frisbie, but they could warrant that designation again with their upcoming album New Debut.

Their set started off displaying more potential than the actual goods. I kept thinking that the new songs would probably sound good on the new album, but I wasn't hearing it yet. The abrupt ending of the title track left the audience confused, especially since the persistent hum in the PA made it unclear if they had only come to a false ending. Then they fired up the early stuff, most notably "Disaster," and everything finally clicked. They excelled at both the power and the pop, rocking out with guitars blazing accompanied by gorgeous vocal harmonies.

After far too long with shows too sporadically scheduled, Frisbie plays the Double Door on July 14 for their record release party.

Concert recommendation: Fountains of Wayne, Taste of Randolph Street, Friday, June 15.

I was feeling lethargic and mopey after getting some bad news at work. However, I also have to-do list that I'm trying to blast my way through while my kids off visiting grandparents. So I finally got around to buying the Robbie Fulks song "Fountains of Wayne Hotline" from iTunes. I had not previously realized that FoW's songs were formulaic enough to merit such an astonishing accurate parody/homage, but leave it Robbie Fulks to humorously hit all the key points. As my toddler is fond of saying, albeit about "Crazy Train," "This song makes me happy."

To hear and see the inspiration in action, head to the Taste of Randolph on Friday night, where Fountains of Wayne take the stage at 8:30 p.m., Randolph & May Streets, Chicago.

Faux Indie Rock Guy

With Veronica Mars ending its run, I'm left mulling over why the depiction of the Indie Rock Guy rang false. Some of it can be chalked up to the acting. Chris Lowell as Piz never made an indelible impression and had nowhere near the chemistry with the title character as Logan, played by Jason Dohring.

But the bigger problem was that Piz was made into the Indie Rock Guy by people who are definitely not Indie Rock Guys. First, he didn't look the part. Jack Black and Todd Louiso in High Fidelity looked like they had been hired for the film straight from actual hole-in-the-wall record stores. A patron at the library where I work looked like he came fresh from Indie Rock central casting: scrawny, clothes just hanging on his lanky frame, slightly greasy hair falling into his eyes, big black glasses. Piz just looked like a generic college student.

More importantly, he didn't sound like an Indie Rock Guy. One recent episode had Piz spouting minutia about a fictitious band, but he never sounded convincing about the real thing. He was giddy about lining up a summer internship with Pitchfork Media's New York headquarters, but Pitchfork is based in Chicago. He sneared at someone's enthusiasm for Matchbox 20 and expressed self-contempt for quoting John Mayer lyrics to his girlfriend, but he should have been quoting, for example, Bright Eyes or the Magnetic Fields, instead. It's as if the writers only know who Indie Rock Guy Guy should hate without any real knowledge of who he should love. In other words, it came across as a persona to slap onto a generic character to make him less generic.

On the other hand, Douglas Coupland's indie rock bona fides are so much a part of him that he used Smiths and New Order song titles as titles for his own works.

Random thoughts that went through my mind during the Bloc Party concert at the Congress Theatre on Friday, March 23:

• The refrain from "Helicopters," "Are you hoping for a miracle?" summed up how I felt about the material from A Weekend in the City. I was way off in hoping that the songs would translate better live than they did on disc.
• Matt Tong's nimble but powerful drumming stood out in ways that it doesn't in recordings.
• After Tong shed a jacket of some variety and then his shirt, was the next step going to be waxing his chest hair on stage?
  
• Are concert venues making less money on drinks now that everyone fills the time between sets texting their friends?
• Does the new Chicago smoking ban not apply to concert venues such as the Congress Theatre, or is just too futile to enforce?
• Is it strictly as a memento that people bother taking cell phone pictures at big concerts? Between the distances and the resolution, they're only getting blurry photos of lights on a stage.
• With the ubiquity and miniaturization of electronic devices, do venues no longer ban cameras and recording devices?
• I used to be concerned that I wasn't listening to any new music. Lately, lots of the new music I've been seeking out sounds like old music. And yet the only two people at the concert who were conspicuously older than I were the sound engineer and a dad hovering at the back, likely chaperoning his teenager at a distance.
  
• Since A Weekend in the City hasn't brought a monumental leap in fame over Silent Alarm, I can't be accused of the cliché of thinking they were cool when they were obscure and shunning them just because they're popular. I merely prefer the first album to the second.
  
• Would all of these thoughts have been going through my mind if the new songs were better?

Album Review: The Kooks Inside In Inside Out (Astralwerks)

In skimming critics' end-of-year best of 2006 lists, I was surprised to spot the Kooks in several lists for best song but not best album. That honor is usually bestowed on ubiquitous radio hits, guilty pleasures acknowledged as much for their pop culture impact as much as their actual artistry. But the Kooks hardly made a splash last year. Still, I was intrigued, if only for their Nuggets-worthy moniker.

Listening to Inside In Inside Out, I can see why individual songs such as "She Moves In Her Own Way," made more of an impression that the work as a whole. The band has hooks hung on a acoustic/electric guitar mix, like a sunny, poppier Strokes. But they are done in by the lack of editing. The album doesn't end so much as peter out. The 70-80 minutes that can fill a CD doesn't oblige a band to fill the whole thing. For a band that sounds lifted from the LP era, they would have been better off working with the LP's time constraints.

Concert Recommendation: Bloc Party, Congress Theatre, March 23

Their sophomore album A Weekend in the City is a disappointment after Silent Alarm, with the angularity and caffeinated jitteriness of their debut giving way to overproduction which renders them generic. But Silent Alarm is still a stonkin' great album. The old songs should be great; I have hopes that they can pare down the arrangements on the new stuff and sound like themselves rather than everybody else.

Bloc Party play the Congress Theatre,  2135 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, at 7:00 p.m., Friday, March 23.

Concert Recommendation: Hoodoo Gurus, The Abbey Pub, Sunday, March 25

When discussing the Greenhornes recently with another garage rock aficienado, I complained that when I saw them live, it just wasn't happening. She defended them as good in the studio but awkward in front of an audience. I wasn't buying it. In my book, the definition of a garage band includes a vibrancy in concert that's hard to capture in recording. Australia's Hoodoo Gurus epitomize that, just one hell of a fun live band with catchy pop hooks, tremendous energy and a sense of humor. For example, at one show they offered a free bottle of champagne, given to the band by their record company, to the first audience member to identify the theme in that night's set list; they were performing the songs in alphabetical order. They haven't toured the U.S. in over a decade, so it'll be a welcome return.

The Hoodoo Gurus play the Abbey Pub, 3420 W. Grace, Chicago, 773-478-4408 at 9 p.m. on Sunday, March 25.

Since I've had the Police on the brain, I finally got around to reading Ian Copeland's autobiography, Wild Thing: The Backstage, On the Road, In the Studio, Off the Charts. Ian, one of Stewart's two older brothers, was booking agent to the Police and many other bands of the punk/new wave revolution. He found success by specializing in fresh young bands, carving out a club circuit to help them find an audience and touring them on shoestring budgets so they wouldn't lose money in the process. He intentionally avoided old school rock, both aesthetically and as an ethical business decision to not raid existing agencies' rosters. Through his own hard work and that of the artists he worked with, they found a great deal of success.

Even before finding his way in the world as a booking agent, he led a fascinating life. He grew up mostly in Cairo and Beirut, the son of a CIA agent stationed there. Irresponsible and rebellious as a teenager, he traipsed back and forth across Europe and scrounged an existence in London rather than submit to his parents' will, eventually enlisting in the U.S. and heading to the Vietnam War. He stumbled into tour management and booking, where he finally found his niche. He also sat at an unlikely cusp in the Baby Boom. An acknowledged hippie who embraced hippie bands, he still didn't reject punk. He recognized that while the snotty punks lacked the chops of his favorite long-haired artists, they had a freshness missing from the the stagnating older music and musicians.

Copeland was not a great writer but definitely an adequate one to tell his unusual life story, including having good sense of choice anecdotes to include, particularly one about being harangued by a veteran agent about why he'll never succeed, the old-timer nodding off repeatedly mid-sentence from heroin before finally going face down into a dish of creamed spinach. The book gets off to a sluggish start, with a chapter that goes on too long into too much detail about his crazy globetrotting lifestyle working and socializing with rock stars; fortunately it is not characteristic of the rest of the book. He is gentlemanly, revealing little of his doomed marriage and offering no ill words about his ex-wife, refraining to name the member of the Go-Go's who failed to seduce him despite her persistence and adding in a footnote that the heroin-addled agent eventually cleaned up and found continued success in the music business. Although he says so explicitly, he also shows repeatedly his keys to success: the road to fame must be trod repeated back and forth across the U.S. and includes stops at roach-infested hotels, stay within your financial means, drugs will greatly hinder one's career and don't be a scumbag. In an industry known for weasels, such advice is refreshing.

Missed Obituaries

Twice in recent weeks I've stumbled upon news of deaths in the music world well after the fact.

I only learned of Ian Copeland's death from the credits for Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out. Ian, one of Stewart's brothers, was the band's manager and booking agent. He served in a similar capacity to a bunch of other bands that helped define 1980s. He died last May. I'm still amused by the names of the outfits of the Copeland brothers, a response to their father's serving in the CIA. Ian's agency was FBI. Miles' record label was IRS. Stewart is in the Police. I was preoccupied with caring for a newborn at the time of Ian's death, but it didn't make much news beyond the music world.

Chalk it up to geography that I missed the news that Aldo Jones died of leukemia in 2001 at age 41. Jones was a member of the Ben Vaughn Combo and worked with many other Philly musicians in the late 80s and early 90s when I was seeing a lot of local Philly acts. On one of my first dates with an old boyfriend, grabbing a bite at Silk City at the end of the night, Aldo walked in. That both of us considered this a celebrity sighting sums up the foundation of that relationship. News of his passing didn't make it to Chicago, and I'm no longer connected to that scene for someone to have tipped me off.

It wasn't until I discovered allmusic and starting looking up my favorite bands that I learned that lots of my favorite music is considered part of the same genre and that it has a name: post-punk. I just thought of it as music I like.

I recently came upon an 80s post-punk archetype: Josef K. The first time I heard the band on the radio, I was confused. They sounded familiar without sounding familiar, in that I knew I'd never actually heard them before although their sound resembled lots that I'd heard before. There were glints of the angularity of the Fall, Gang of Four and early Echo & the Bunnymen, the jangly pop of the Woodentops and the revved-up jangly pop of early Wedding Present. That they had previously escaped my attention, apart from recognizing their name from the 1991 edition of the Trouser Press record guide, is not surprising considering that they only issued one proper album, The Only Fun in Town, before breaking up, and that album never had a U.S. release. Their new compilation, Entomology, rounds up 22 album tracks and singles for a worthy introduction to American ears.

I had merely planned to review Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out when much bigger news about the band broke: Holy crap! They're getting back together. The band announced that they will play at the Grammy Awards on February 11, and a full tour is rumored.

Now back to that movie review. Drummer Stewart Copeland bought a Super 8 movie camera early in his career with the band and managed to document them in their time together, from their early struggles to massive fame. Through wise editing of the 50 or so hours of footage on the road, in the studio, on the stage and pressed up against the fans, he gives a clear view of what it was like living through it all. His narration is insightful, making their eventual break-up a natural conclusion without placing blame. That said, Sting sometimes comes across as an obnoxious alpha male even when they're getting along just fine, and the film reaffirmed my belief that Copeland is not only one of the best drummers of all time, he's also one of the coolest.

One of the most annoying current cliches in journalism is making reference to AARP to say that someone is old. For once, talking about aging and making reference to AARP isn't a cliche. In today's Chicago Tribune, Barbara Brotman catches up with former Buzzcocks bass player Steve Garvey to discuss the cultural meaning of the band's "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" being used in AARP ad campaign. The interview also goes beyond the usual "where are they now" piece since they delve into what aging has been like for Garvey, now a carpenter with a kid in college.

In recent years, Iggy Pop's backing bands have been a lot like the Chicago Cubs. The long-standing complaint about the Cubs is that the owners won't bother investing money in the team itself because they know that Wrigley Field is the real draw for the fans, not how well the team plays. Likewise, Iggy's backing band is usually merely adequate because no one comes to an Iggy show for anything but the man himself, so he has no incentive to hire spectacular musicians.

That is changing. After a handful of tracks together on Iggy's last album, 2003's Skull Ring, and a handful of shows, Iggy and the surviving Stooges are reuniting for a full album and tour. The Weirdness, due out March 20, was recorded by Steve Albini and features ex-Minuteman Mike Watt taking over for the deceased Dave Alexander on bass. They plan to tour, including a stop at the South by Southwest Music Festival in March.

Movie Review: loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies

I'm a sucker for a well-done documentary about a band I like, and loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies fills the bill. It displays the greatness of the music that I already loved. It tells me more about the personalities than I knew previously. Kim Deal is the most gracious with the fans, perhaps because, as a female musician, she's still an anomaly and therefore a role model to teenage girls. Dave Lovering is sad, in several meanings of the word, his career as a magician looking disturbingly similar to Gob Bluth's on Arrested Development. Joey Santiago is the most well-adjusted of the bunch, a committed family man who is torn about touring keeping him away from his growing brood at home. Kim's twin sister Kelley, brought along by Kim for moral support, is a fun, blunt addition, not merely a hanger-on.

The scenes where Black Francis (sorry, I just can't quite think of him as Charles Thompson or Frank Black) gets interviewed, resurrected my range of emotions about my days of doing them. On one hand, I recalled why I enjoyed interviewing him several times, especially when he offered his suggestion that if the band were to start recording again, they should really start from scratch with a new name like Vomit Squad. On the other hand, the footage of his phone interviews showed him just as disengaged as I suspected some of my telephone interview subjects were. During the first phoner, he's fiddling with an eyeglass case while talking. During the second, he's lying on his hotel bed in just his underwear, which caused a collective shudder by the audience at the Music Box.

The concert footage proved insightful, too. It reconfirmed my belief that, as wonderfully original as the Pixies' music is, the band was always short on charismatic stage presence, which may have limited their popularity as much as an inherent weirdness to their sound. But it also showcased guitarist Joey as an underrated talent. As singers and songwriters Black Francis and Kim always garnered more attention, but Joey's unique riffs are a large part of their distinctive sound.

Concert Recommendation: "The Last Show on Earth" A Halloween Rock n Roll Circus!" featuring Sickidz, October 28, The Khyber

All good things must come to an end. Philly band Sickidz (who I'd written about previously) had reunited, but now they're calling it quits again with a Halloween-themed blowout at the Khyber. Among the special guests are Palmyra Delran and Barb Dwyer, who were members of Pink Slip Daddy with frontman Mick Cancer after the Sickidz's initial demise. Mick performs with the kind of charismatic abandon that suggests that the only limit to their fame was that they only toured regionally. This should be quite the party.

Sickidz play with special guests Palmyra Delran, Barb Dwyer and Joe Ankenbrand plus Jukebox Zeroes, King of Siam The Warm Jets at the Khyber, 56 S. Second St., Philadelphia, 215.238.5888 on Saturday, October 28 at 9:00 p.m.

I just learned about Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Two related observations struck me: the writers were trying to out-obscure the readers and each other with their picks, and, not surprisingly, almost none of it was written by women. Yes, folks, it's a High Fidelity movement. Male music geeks are just as competitive as their jock counterparts but on a different playing field.

I mentioned this to a colleague, who tipped me off to the news that High Fidelity, Nick Hornby's beloved novel about obsessive list-compilers who wield their obscure music knowledge as a weapon against the less informed at a record shop, has been made into a musical. And just to get my competitive geekiness out of the way, I'll point out that the NPR story got one of its facts wrong. They called the musical the third incarnation of the novel, the second being the film starring John Cusack. They were unaware of the play The Vinyl Shop that was produced by a small theater company in Chicago prior to the film. The actor who played Barry in stage production was one of the Championship Vinyl customers. (I take particular music geek pride in all things related to the book since I was an extra in the movie.)

Requiem for a Record Store in Three Movements

Tower Records didn't survive bankruptcy. On Friday, their assets were auctioned off. The stores are having liquidation sales.

The Music Fan

As I started to really get into music in my late teens, the record store at the mall just wasn't cutting it. My tastes were turning too obscure for what could be sold in storefront between suburban department stores. Back before you could buy anything on Amazon, Tower Records was record-buying mecca. They had everything cool. They had everything old. They were open until midnight, so I could pick up the new Nine Inch Nails on my way to Dobbs or after a show at the TLA further down South Street in Philly. Going there could be an event unto itself, a date spent browsing for new CDs.

What made Tower different from other chain stores wasn't just their depth of inventory but the depth of knowledge by their staff. Not only did they know and care about music, they looked like they knew and cared about music, unlike the tools at the mall stores who had to wear ties and red vests and looked like they could just as easily been selling smoked cheese logs or personalized golf towels. Members of many bands passed through their ranks of employment. When I suggested to an editor of Pulse, their in-house magazine, that they do a story of former employees who went on to greater fame as musicians, she said there were far too many, although I think Perry Farrell's name was mentioned.

Tower indirectly launched my writing career. While scouting for reading matter for a long plane ride, I hit their magazine section and stumbled upon B-Side. Unlike Rolling Stone, which I was finding increasingly exasperating, it covered nothing but music. It covered the music I was listening to such as Echo and the Bunnymen rather than Huey Lewis and the News. I was shocked to read the masthead and discover it was published locally. The record store at the mall had no interest in 'zines or local publications. B-Side was my first writing outlet.

My experience as a consumer is typical in explaining their demise. I don't have extensive time to browse record stores anymore. Amazon and Tower's own web site have taken away the thrill of the chase, so my only limitation is whether I'm willing to shell out for import prices, not whether I can merely locate an obscure album. I can download songs for instant gratification. No one has bought records at record stores in ages, but no one ever called them CD stores.

The Employee

Until I worked at RollingStone.com, being a sales clerk at Tower in London was my coolest job. Yes, the pay was meager but I was surrounded by music and by people who cared about music. We sneered at those picking up Samantha Fox's record (now mercifully forgotten by most). We lauded the parents visiting from America who could actually name bands their kids liked when asking records that couldn't be found back home. David Bowie shopped there. The place was constructed with a DJ booth, although the position was cut by my second summer on staff. My mother suggested that I should try to transfer to accounting so that I could make more money, but then I would have just been a bean counter in an anonymous office when I wanted to be swimming in rock and roll.

When I returned to Wharton after my first summer at Tower, my classmates were bragging about their summer internships, working 60-hour weeks on Wall Street. I kept quiet, but thought to myself that I probably learned more as part of the working class in a foreign city, supporting myself on 100 quid a week (slang for "pounds" being one of the facts I picked up).

The Librarian

While I no longer have time to spend hours browsing record stores for fun, it is now part of my job, doing collection development for a public library. Tower was our favorite place to do so. I still had the thrill of the chase but more importantly the benefit of serendipitous finds. For my boss shopping for jazz and classical, the staff's in-depth knowledge was an invaluable source of recommendations. There was also the entertaining distraction of things worth a laugh even if we wouldn't buy it for the library.

Unfortunately, Tower's inability to provide sufficiently-detailed invoicing proved the death knell for our library's financial relations with them. I miss the field trips to the store because it meant heading into Lincoln Park instead of the suburbs. I miss being mistaken for Tower staff, even when carrying a baby, because I was marking a list and hauling around dozens of CDs. I miss finding out about the new Cinerama album because they were playing it in the store, even if it was followed by the horrible new Janet Jackson album. I'm saddened that a large chain employing lots of people who are there because they care about music can't survive.

The timing of the auction was particularly depressing because I headed to a conference of music librarians on Friday preparing to give a talk on collection development, and recommending Tower for their selection, staff knowledge and useful web site was part of speech. The information was already outdated by the end of the day.

I can't help but notice how much "Nausea," off Beck's new album The Information, sounds like "Going South" by the Wolfgang Press. Considering how low the Wolfgang Press's profile is, I'll be amazed if any review comments on this. Hell, I'll be amazed if anyone besides me recognizes this.

I had intended to tout the Futureheads show at the Metro on October, but the band has canceled their October tour dates because guitarist Barry Hyde has tendonitis in his wrist.

Concert Recommendation: Little Steven's Rolling Rock and Roll Show, Durty Nellie's, September 13

Little Steven's Underground Garage is sponsoring a national tour. Need I say more than the line-up? (Also known as I don't have time to write more.) The Zombies, The Mooney Suzuki, The Woggles, Gore Gore Girls plus local act Catfish Haven. It all adds up to reason to head to the 'burbs on a weeknight.

Little Steven's Rolling Rock and Roll Show, Durty Nellies, 180 N. Smith Street, Palatine, (847)358-9150 at 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 13.