I saw Kayo Dot, Birds of Maya, and Earth at Johnny Brenda's bar last night (May 5 2008) here in Philadelphia.
My experience during Birds of Maya's set was wonderful. They played beautiful heavy, fuzzy psych in the vein of early Sabbath. While they played, I closed my eyes and opened my mind to free associations across the blank black canvas of my lids.
Images built off of what I saw just before I closed my eyes. The images started with something in the room--- the shape of the singer/bassist hunched over his instrument or the arm of the person in front of me-- but with eyes closed and no outside visual stimulation for minutes on end, things morphed. My eyelids became a playground for my subconscious: images of my family's 1st home in Piscataway, NJ (1979-88), old lovers, abstract blobs.
All this came and went, shifting like a collage or a montage while I rocked back and forth with Birds of Maya's music washing over me. Every time someone accidentally bumped into me in passing, this trance, these visions would be broken. My eyes would open and I'd be rudely returned from the clouds and dropped back down into a Fishtown hipster bar.
At one point with my eyes open, I saw the singer/bassist crouched on the floor with his boom mike pushed down low and his bass propped up on his knee. I thought he'd been bowled over by the power of his band's own music , but after the set I learned from my friends that his guitar strap had simply broken, apparently while my eyes were closed, necessitating his awkward position.
BoM's set seemed to end too quickly. I think they actually played for 30-35 minutes, though it felt more like 20. But my perception was altered---- self-altered in a way, aided by good strong music.
As many of you know, I don't do drugs and I never have. But I like trying to experience something analogous to drugs through my own mental and sensory power. I like the idea of temporary "mind alteration." but I don't like the idea of the cost of drugs, the side effects, the possible physical and psychological addictions, the frequent injustice involved in their preparation, and the inability to "come down" at will when under the influence.
Drugs play off of the chemicals and circuitry already in place in the brain. I like seeing how far the brain can take itself just through internal and sensory stimuli. This seems to be a life-long experiment. And I take comfort knowing that I can come down nearly immediately if a situation around me requires a "level-headed" response.
Music doesn't always have such a powerful effect on me as it did last night. This was my 4th or 5th time seeing Birds of Maya and the first time I had a near-psychedelic experience. With my anxieties and racing thoughts it's infrequent that I can actually just let music wash over and have a drug-like effect on me. But I'm grateful that I CAN have this experience at all, without any "supplementary" substances, even if only happens occasionally.
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Here's a clip of Birds of Maya, also recorded at Johnny Brenda's, late in 2006. I think they also opened with this song at the show last night. This video is choppy (as if half the frames are dropped) giving the band the appearance of dancers beneath a strobe. But the blurry, altered natured of the visuals suggests the altered nature of my own colorful closed-lid experience as the band played.
And the fuzzy sound is pretty spot on document of how the band sounds live.
Though Birds of Maya was the unexpected highlight, Earth was the headliner.
Earth's set, which came all (or mostly) from their newest album, was dark and beautiful--- doomy, instrumental country played at a heavy-hitting molasses pace. But by the time Earth hit the stage, it was nearly midnight and I was very aware of my tired legs. This made it difficult to fully lose myself in the music.
The standout of their set was the closing piece. Guitarist/mastermind Dylan Carson announced (sans microphone) that it would be a bonus track on the upcoming vinyl release of the most recent Earth album ("And the Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull.) This bonus track had a jagged trombone(!) line and a glacial yet catchy guitar riff.
I'm glad I haven't bought the album yet and have just been tiding myself over with a pirate download. Now I will certainly hold out for next month's release of the (inevitably) beautifully-packaged LP edition.
Here are two clips of Earth from the European leg of their tour earlier this year. The pieces accurately characterize the dark yet slow and relaxing flavor of the band's set last night
This second clip is the trombone "LP bonus track" tune that I enjoyed so much:
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
994 words about an impromptu Patti Smith performance 4-15-08 at the Philly Film fest.
I wasn't expecting to see a Patti Smith concert on Tuesday night. But sure enough, I did. It was intimate, acoustic, and impassioned
Well, maybe "concert" gives the wrong idea. Patti Smith can easily perform an hour and half to two hours of songs, covers, and improvised poetic rants at one of her scheduled concerts. But this was just an impromptu few songs. It happened at the Prince Music Theatre as part of the closing-night festivities of the Philadelphia Film Fest. After a screening of the documentary film she did with Steven Sebring, "Patti Smith: Dream of Life" she came out and did a Q&A. And after the Q&A she said "well I might as well play a few songs."
Guitars and her guitarist-son, Jackson, were brought out. For me this was a bonus on top of a bonus on top of a bonus. I slept on getting tickets for the "Dream of Life" screening and it got sold out. But last week, a friend said she had an extra ticket and invited me to come along. Then at the theater, just before the film started, the emcee announced that Patti would be coming out after the screening for a Q&A. Apparently her Q&A appearance had already been announced, but since I wasn't following the Fest closely and it wasn't announced on Patti's website, I was ignorant. Once it was announced that Patti was in the building, I knew a performance of songs or poetry was a possibility but I wasn't really sure it was gonna happen until the guitars were brought out.
As Patti and Jackson came out there was a moment of discussion as they decided what to play. I shouted out for "Beneath the Southern Cross," my favorite of her acoustic songs. But my request went unheeded. Instead she refreshed Jackson on some chords and the they did "Grateful," a song that Patti had previously said was inspired by the smiling grey-bearded face of Jerry Garcia.
The venue and both of the Smiths on stage seemed only semi-prepared for the performance. The house lights were kept on and it didn't seem as if Jackson's guitar was mic'ed for the first song and Patti's guitar seemed slightly out of tune. And by her own admission Patti can't really play guitar despite having attacked one on stage from time to time for the last 30 years. But I enjoyed the ragged nature of it. After appearing larger than life on the big screen for two hours as part of a film that seemed to be aiming to increase the myth of Patti's mystical, goddess nature here she was just a hundred feet from me stumbling through a song with the child she had in the 1980s with Fred Smith (yes, Fred "Sonic" Smith of the MC5)
After the first song, I was hoping Patti would decide to honor my request for "Southern Cross," but then someone shouted out for "Because the Night." I groaned. It's undeniably a great song, but I think it's very over-played. Patti has dozens of great songs, but still "Because the Night" is the only song of hers that ever gets played on classic rock radio. It's her only hit single and it's the only song that the average non-fan knows (either through the original or the successful 10,000 Maniacs cover.) For such a rare, intimate performance , I was hoping for a rarely-played gem.
But "Because the Night" IS a great song, so I wasn't going to groan too much. And after checking with Jackson that he could actually play the song and acknowledging that the song was hard to pull off without drums, Patti launched into a near-definitive version of the song. Her voice, perhaps a bit tentative for the opening song, soared!
And the crowd took up the invitation to join her on the chorus. I felt a great feeling of community. The hardcore fans, the casual fans and the unknowing curious were united. Because everybody knows "....the night belongs to lovers, because the night belongs to lust." For a moment I shed my elitest super-fan attitude and was freshly swept up into the beauty of the song.
Patti then acknowledged the upcoming Pennsylvania primary and gave subtle support for the divisive Ralph Nader. Fittingly, she then launched into "People Have the Power" from the Dream of Life album. The song has a anthemic fist-in-the-air quality. It was relevent when she wrote it at the tail-end of Reaganism and it's still relevant at the tail-end of Bushist. The sentiment of the song seems a bit too dreamy and optimistic for my cynical "Darkly" self but every time I hear it live, I get swept up in the song.
The album version, ironically, lacks power. Its late-80s production is too smooth. It dilutes the raw righteous joyous anger of the piece. But on-stage the song really soars. The melody is simple enough to be carried effectively by a single acoustic guitar. The simple repetitive chorus lends itself to singing along. And "People Have the Power" sounds more POWER-ful when the People in their seats sing along.
And that was it. After 3 songs, the mini-concert was over. Patti simply walked off the stage through the crowd and out the door. I left feeling lifted.
Apparently Patti went to use the theater's public restrooms, just one of "the people" acting on universal necessity. Acting on that same urinous necessity, I passed Patti in the hallway. I was hoping she'd just get a few pats on the back with people saying "that was a great performance." But instead she immediately got surrounded by an autograph-hungry crowd wielding sharpies and LPs. She didn't seem enthusiastic. The bathroom hallway was a small space to start with. And with a starstruck mob it quickly turned into pure claustrophobia. Patti humored the crowd for a moment, signing a few things. She told people to back off and give her some space. I could see the anxiety in her eyes. Then she just gave up and with the help of her associates (friends? guards?) she pushed through the crowd and was gone.
It was a slight blemish on an otherwise wonderful event.
You probably noticed I didn't write anything yet about the actual documentary "Patti Smith: Dream of Life." And that's because the actual live performance was far and away the highlight of the evening. Steven Sebring's film was a documentary in the loosest sense. It was non-linear, non-chronological. It was a collage of performance, backstage, home, and travel footage spanning from Patti's mid 90s return to the stage and recording studio and onward to the mid 00s. I actually looked at my watch twice during the film, a sure sign that I found it less than enthralling.
I wanted a film that made Patti seem real. I wanted someting that got me inside Patti's head, and past the myth of her as a witchy mystic. But there was too much footage of her walking in graveyards and dancing in flowing dresses on beaches. It seemed more like an extended music video. It seemed like Patti acting out the narrators of all her songs. In grainy black and white, there was too much "art" and not enough "life."
I love Patti's art. That's why I have her poetry books, all her albums, and have seen her in concert 5 times. But the documentary, fitting to its title gave us just a dream of Patti and not enough of her real life.
There were a few really gratuitous moments that dragged. Towards the end, she and Flea (yes, of the Red Hot Chili Peppers) were shown a beach playing trumpet and clarinet respectively. They then went on to exchanging awkward peeing stories.
Perhaps this was supposed to show her a a real, fluid-filled person. But it provided no insight and only a few cheap laughs.
Short of providing insight into her life, I'd hoped the film would at least include a lot of great performance footage. But there was surprisingly little of that. What was included was fragmented and interspersed with other sounds and scenes. The on truly great on-stage piece was a joyous excerpt of her and her band playing the feisty, controversial "Rock and Roll Nigger" during her first tour after 16 years. Everyone on stage was smiling and moshing with one another as they all huddled around the microphones shouting the song's chorus, "OUTSIDE of SOCIETY!"
The film's most sweetly insightful segment was of Patti with her parents in their humble South Jersey abode. Patti's mom said her favorite piece by her daughter was the "Horses/Gloria" medley. Patti's mom served burgers and coffee as she showed her collection of cow trinkets and she and Patti's dad talked about going to see their daughter perform at one of her sound checks at the Troc. Patti's mom (and maybe her dad now too) recently died and the segment was a candid tribute to a family that was earthy and "normal" but loving and highly supportive of their firebrand, arty, iconoclast daughter. Seeing Patti's parents at home made me think of my own normal yet very supportive parents in their own humble abode (also in New Jersey.)
I also enjoyed the inclusion of a few haunting clips of lo-fi home recordings of Patti and Fred "Sonic" Smith working on songs not long before his death.
The most overall moving, powerful part of the documentary was the audio of Patti performing the Declaration of Independence. She read the document, which seems eerily fitting for current times under the tyrannical rule of another George. And this reading morphed into her direct indictment of Bush's crimes against the environment, war crimes, crimes against civil liberties, and crimes against flooded New Orleans. Different points of this indictment got loud cheers from different sections of the crowd.
When I saw Patti perform at UPENN in the Fall of 2003, she performed a segueing "medley" of the Declaration>Indictment of Bush>People Have the Power that got me all riled up, cheering, and singing along with my fist in the air. And hearing it again as part of the film was nearly as powerful.
Here's the one clip of the documentary that I could find on youtube. It's not particular insightful and in that way it's sort of representative of the film.
Also, for anyone looking to recreate the experience of my evening as closely as possible. Here's the nearly complete Q&A session with Steven Sebring and Patti Smith.
part 1:
part 2:
Well, maybe "concert" gives the wrong idea. Patti Smith can easily perform an hour and half to two hours of songs, covers, and improvised poetic rants at one of her scheduled concerts. But this was just an impromptu few songs. It happened at the Prince Music Theatre as part of the closing-night festivities of the Philadelphia Film Fest. After a screening of the documentary film she did with Steven Sebring, "Patti Smith: Dream of Life" she came out and did a Q&A. And after the Q&A she said "well I might as well play a few songs."
Guitars and her guitarist-son, Jackson, were brought out. For me this was a bonus on top of a bonus on top of a bonus. I slept on getting tickets for the "Dream of Life" screening and it got sold out. But last week, a friend said she had an extra ticket and invited me to come along. Then at the theater, just before the film started, the emcee announced that Patti would be coming out after the screening for a Q&A. Apparently her Q&A appearance had already been announced, but since I wasn't following the Fest closely and it wasn't announced on Patti's website, I was ignorant. Once it was announced that Patti was in the building, I knew a performance of songs or poetry was a possibility but I wasn't really sure it was gonna happen until the guitars were brought out.
As Patti and Jackson came out there was a moment of discussion as they decided what to play. I shouted out for "Beneath the Southern Cross," my favorite of her acoustic songs. But my request went unheeded. Instead she refreshed Jackson on some chords and the they did "Grateful," a song that Patti had previously said was inspired by the smiling grey-bearded face of Jerry Garcia.
The venue and both of the Smiths on stage seemed only semi-prepared for the performance. The house lights were kept on and it didn't seem as if Jackson's guitar was mic'ed for the first song and Patti's guitar seemed slightly out of tune. And by her own admission Patti can't really play guitar despite having attacked one on stage from time to time for the last 30 years. But I enjoyed the ragged nature of it. After appearing larger than life on the big screen for two hours as part of a film that seemed to be aiming to increase the myth of Patti's mystical, goddess nature here she was just a hundred feet from me stumbling through a song with the child she had in the 1980s with Fred Smith (yes, Fred "Sonic" Smith of the MC5)
After the first song, I was hoping Patti would decide to honor my request for "Southern Cross," but then someone shouted out for "Because the Night." I groaned. It's undeniably a great song, but I think it's very over-played. Patti has dozens of great songs, but still "Because the Night" is the only song of hers that ever gets played on classic rock radio. It's her only hit single and it's the only song that the average non-fan knows (either through the original or the successful 10,000 Maniacs cover.) For such a rare, intimate performance , I was hoping for a rarely-played gem.
But "Because the Night" IS a great song, so I wasn't going to groan too much. And after checking with Jackson that he could actually play the song and acknowledging that the song was hard to pull off without drums, Patti launched into a near-definitive version of the song. Her voice, perhaps a bit tentative for the opening song, soared!
And the crowd took up the invitation to join her on the chorus. I felt a great feeling of community. The hardcore fans, the casual fans and the unknowing curious were united. Because everybody knows "....the night belongs to lovers, because the night belongs to lust." For a moment I shed my elitest super-fan attitude and was freshly swept up into the beauty of the song.
Patti then acknowledged the upcoming Pennsylvania primary and gave subtle support for the divisive Ralph Nader. Fittingly, she then launched into "People Have the Power" from the Dream of Life album. The song has a anthemic fist-in-the-air quality. It was relevent when she wrote it at the tail-end of Reaganism and it's still relevant at the tail-end of Bushist. The sentiment of the song seems a bit too dreamy and optimistic for my cynical "Darkly" self but every time I hear it live, I get swept up in the song.
The album version, ironically, lacks power. Its late-80s production is too smooth. It dilutes the raw righteous joyous anger of the piece. But on-stage the song really soars. The melody is simple enough to be carried effectively by a single acoustic guitar. The simple repetitive chorus lends itself to singing along. And "People Have the Power" sounds more POWER-ful when the People in their seats sing along.
And that was it. After 3 songs, the mini-concert was over. Patti simply walked off the stage through the crowd and out the door. I left feeling lifted.
Apparently Patti went to use the theater's public restrooms, just one of "the people" acting on universal necessity. Acting on that same urinous necessity, I passed Patti in the hallway. I was hoping she'd just get a few pats on the back with people saying "that was a great performance." But instead she immediately got surrounded by an autograph-hungry crowd wielding sharpies and LPs. She didn't seem enthusiastic. The bathroom hallway was a small space to start with. And with a starstruck mob it quickly turned into pure claustrophobia. Patti humored the crowd for a moment, signing a few things. She told people to back off and give her some space. I could see the anxiety in her eyes. Then she just gave up and with the help of her associates (friends? guards?) she pushed through the crowd and was gone.
It was a slight blemish on an otherwise wonderful event.
You probably noticed I didn't write anything yet about the actual documentary "Patti Smith: Dream of Life." And that's because the actual live performance was far and away the highlight of the evening. Steven Sebring's film was a documentary in the loosest sense. It was non-linear, non-chronological. It was a collage of performance, backstage, home, and travel footage spanning from Patti's mid 90s return to the stage and recording studio and onward to the mid 00s. I actually looked at my watch twice during the film, a sure sign that I found it less than enthralling.
I wanted a film that made Patti seem real. I wanted someting that got me inside Patti's head, and past the myth of her as a witchy mystic. But there was too much footage of her walking in graveyards and dancing in flowing dresses on beaches. It seemed more like an extended music video. It seemed like Patti acting out the narrators of all her songs. In grainy black and white, there was too much "art" and not enough "life."
I love Patti's art. That's why I have her poetry books, all her albums, and have seen her in concert 5 times. But the documentary, fitting to its title gave us just a dream of Patti and not enough of her real life.
There were a few really gratuitous moments that dragged. Towards the end, she and Flea (yes, of the Red Hot Chili Peppers) were shown a beach playing trumpet and clarinet respectively. They then went on to exchanging awkward peeing stories.
Perhaps this was supposed to show her a a real, fluid-filled person. But it provided no insight and only a few cheap laughs.
Short of providing insight into her life, I'd hoped the film would at least include a lot of great performance footage. But there was surprisingly little of that. What was included was fragmented and interspersed with other sounds and scenes. The on truly great on-stage piece was a joyous excerpt of her and her band playing the feisty, controversial "Rock and Roll Nigger" during her first tour after 16 years. Everyone on stage was smiling and moshing with one another as they all huddled around the microphones shouting the song's chorus, "OUTSIDE of SOCIETY!"
The film's most sweetly insightful segment was of Patti with her parents in their humble South Jersey abode. Patti's mom said her favorite piece by her daughter was the "Horses/Gloria" medley. Patti's mom served burgers and coffee as she showed her collection of cow trinkets and she and Patti's dad talked about going to see their daughter perform at one of her sound checks at the Troc. Patti's mom (and maybe her dad now too) recently died and the segment was a candid tribute to a family that was earthy and "normal" but loving and highly supportive of their firebrand, arty, iconoclast daughter. Seeing Patti's parents at home made me think of my own normal yet very supportive parents in their own humble abode (also in New Jersey.)
I also enjoyed the inclusion of a few haunting clips of lo-fi home recordings of Patti and Fred "Sonic" Smith working on songs not long before his death.
The most overall moving, powerful part of the documentary was the audio of Patti performing the Declaration of Independence. She read the document, which seems eerily fitting for current times under the tyrannical rule of another George. And this reading morphed into her direct indictment of Bush's crimes against the environment, war crimes, crimes against civil liberties, and crimes against flooded New Orleans. Different points of this indictment got loud cheers from different sections of the crowd.
When I saw Patti perform at UPENN in the Fall of 2003, she performed a segueing "medley" of the Declaration>Indictment of Bush>People Have the Power that got me all riled up, cheering, and singing along with my fist in the air. And hearing it again as part of the film was nearly as powerful.
Here's the one clip of the documentary that I could find on youtube. It's not particular insightful and in that way it's sort of representative of the film.
Also, for anyone looking to recreate the experience of my evening as closely as possible. Here's the nearly complete Q&A session with Steven Sebring and Patti Smith.
part 1:
part 2:
Friday, April 11, 2008
The First Attack of the Rising Sun (1040 words about Philly all-night techno parties)
There were no good youtube clips available that were applicable to this blog. Kate Simko's music was the inspirational force behind my writing this. Her set of minimal techy housey goodness was the highlight of the March 8th party. But all I could find of her online were poor-quality 30-sec bass-distorted cellphone video clips. So instead, while reading this, listen to this mix. It's Kate Simko spinning a great 3 1/2 hour set in Philly at Inciting HQ from this past summer:
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"The First Attack of the Rising Sun"--- this is the name of a bootleg of Led Zeppelin's first ever concert in Japan (Sept 23, 1971 in Tokyo.) "Rising Sun" refers to Japan's "Japanese" name ("Nippon.") Nippon translates to the "Land of the Rising Sun," acknowledging Japan's extreme position in the far east. By itself, taken apart from the wonderful recording of a classic Zep show, that title, "The First Attack of the Rising Sun" is poetic yet ambiguously sinister. Sunrises are a universally accepted example of natural beauty and a sign of hope, yet "attack" brings with it is a violent negative destructive image. And I like this contrast of images.
That "first attack" could reference the deadly 1941 strike on Pearl Harbor. Or the "first attack" could refer to an unwanted dawn--- something dreaded by vampires and attendees of all-night dance parties.
Last month, I was an all-night dancer. It was 5 or 6AM depending on whether one factors in the daylight "spring ahead." I came home just as dawn was breaking. It was so quiet after the warehoused bass receded. I could hear the creaking of my bike's little imperfections as I pedaled home. The passing buses were empty except for what looked like some brutally early morning commuters working the Lord's day of rest.
Minimal techno was the musical menu for the party I'd just left. MNML isn't very sexy music. I think that's part of why I like it. It's not sexy, but it moves the shoulders, arms and legs. It's played usually when people are gathered--at parties--but its minimal nature creates a spacious atmosphere. People dance to it together, but there's an introspection to it. Each person lost in his/her world. There's dancing in close proximity to one another, but the beats are generally too fast and clipped for bump and grind.
"Minimal" means no more than necessary; no full kit sound when a simple snare click will do. The rhythms are still strong and at times there are even little looping melodies. But the music is less dense than the kind of techno you might remember from bad high school parties in echoing gymnasiums and Jock Jams CDs.
The minimal nature gives the music a consistently propulsive yet often floating nature. There's none of the slap-in-the-face snares and punch-in-the-gut 4/4 bass kicks. That more heavy-handed techno has a tendency to make me feel pummeled into the ground. It was that sort of aggressive techno that turned me off to the idea of electronic dance music for so long.
In MNML the bass often cuts out, giving it more emphasis when it drops back in. In MNML there are peaks and valleys. There's a continual tension between repetition and change. The music will start repeating a phrase, one begins to think "is the vinyl/CD/mp3 skipping?" And then at the last moment, as one is just resolving to go to the DJ booth and say "WTF?!"---bam!---the music changes. The click is filled out with funky bass rolls, briefs pockets of density, vocal fragments, fists in the air.
And in MNML there aren't any "songs." There's just a continuous evolving rhythm lasting for hours on end. In the crowd there's no anxiety of "Oh they better play THIS song, THAT song, etc." Michael Jackson doesn't exist in a MNML set. There's are no lovers of Billie Jean here. There are no requests. Even techno tracks that one might have at home are cross-faded, combined, and re-EQed. Tracks are remastered in real time, looped, sped up, and slowed down so they are often virtual unrecognizable.
The police showed up 3 or 4 times at the LAVA party in March. They were polite from what I witnessed. They're probably aware of fire code violations, illicit substances, and under age drinking going on in the laser-lit darkness just past the metal door. But they also seemed to realize that the people were well-behaved. There was no shouting on the streets, or curbside vomiting. The party was self-contained except for the bass which oozed through the loose mortar for a block around.
The cops said they were there because neighbors complained. They'd show up and the volume would be cut accordingly. Then as soon as they left the floor shaking-bass would be dropped back in again with a rebellious cheer from the crowd. The cops had gone but the neighbors hadn't. They still had to suffer as 3 o'clock became 4 became 5.
Ironically the venue, LAVA, is subtitled "a radical community center." But here we were with our techno, primarily sweaty white kids dancing in the dark in the middle of a primarily black low-income neighborhood fucking over whatever community is at 42nd and Lancaster Avenue. The image of poor black folks with paint-peeling walls and cotton balls in their ears compromised my enjoyment of the music.
I don't listen to much techno off the dancefloor. I used to think that techno not making good music for kicking-back with the high-fi and a cup of tea back at the homestead made it intrinsically bad music. Insubstantial, not durable. But I now like that techno is so linked to the dance floor and body movement. The fact that it only works with one's body in motion is actually a testament to its strength as what it sets out to be-- DANCE music. Even off the floor, it's difficult to listen without at least twitching or head-bopping a bit.
People (mostly) come to Philly techno parties to dance, or at least enjoy the full body experience of standing around and soaking in the deep clitter/clatter/pow of a surround sound sub woofer PA. As I previously stated, the music isn't sexy. And it doesn't seem that people come to hit on or be hit. It seems people tend to leave with the same people they came with.
I take comfort in this. Sexually-repressed me doesn't have to deal with grinding. If I make physical contact it's with my friends. I come alone and just before dawn I leave, alone. Just as I expected. [Deep even breaths]
People don't dress up much for Philly techno. There's a come as you are, let it all hang out mentality. There are some tight dresses , shiny shirts, and sharp outfits to be sure. But one is more likely to see a Black Flag t shirt than a dress shirt at these parties. A good warehouse party will bring out 100, 200, 300 kids max. The scene is too small to be elitist. Philly is not Berlin. It's not London. It's not even NYC.
There are a few people I accept but don't quite understand at these parties-- the DJ watchers. These are the people, always men, who stand inches away from the DJ booth/table almost still as statues watching every knob turn, fader slide, and cue. Maybe they themselves are aspiring DJs, hoping to learn something about mixing from watching the DJ. Maybe they're crushing on the DJ. Or maybe these DJ watchers just feel awkward, drawn to the music but too self-conscious to dance.
But techno DJs rarely do anything showy. There's none of the scratching behind the back of hip-hop turntablists. The DJ is there to keep the dance floor going, not to be a focal point. Though sometimes the DJ has a pleasing and contagious time-keeping wiggle going on and sometimes there's a bit of an engaging micro-drama when the DJ uses both hands, quickly turning two knobs in unison, to dramatically and immediately change the sound.
These little motions are an added visual bonus for the dancer, but they never seem like enough to hold attention by themselves and stop someone dead in their tracks.
But at every party there's always a contingent of these statue-standing floor-blocks, reducing space for the dancers.
I DO like to keep looking over at the DJ every few minutes, trying to catch their eye when they're not too concentrated on the mix, hoping they see me dancing and know that whatever they're doing on the decks is working for me and keeping me moving.
I try to make eye contact because I want the DJ to feel connected to the crowd he's spinning for. From my own amateur DJing experiences I know how motivational, inspirational and satisfying it can be to have eye contact with happy dancers in motion.
I feel like I dance like a lead-footed handicapped person on every other dance floor in clubs and bars. But in the MNML tchno wrhse I feel a tad graceful. I feel I'm holding my own. And best of all, I often don't even think about how I feel. I'm just in the moment, dancing. At the best parties I lose my self-consciousness. I slide in and out of the beats and ascending and descending notes as if I were part of the sound, as if I were birthed from the speakers. And with all my anxieties, I most value things that kill my self-consciousness, even if for only a little while.
The phrase, "The First Attack of the Rising Sun" looped in my head riding my bike home from two all-night techno parties in the last month. Despite my oft-nocturnal ways I'm no vampire, but I am certainly a frequent all-night dancer. Seeing the sunrise, alone after no sleep at all, is both beautiful and sad. The solar "attack" is the punctuation on a unrelenting night of beats. The period. The final shimmering cymbal crash that fades to light. As daylight creeps through gaps in thick curtains, the empty bottles, cigarette butts, and baggies are revealed on the now empty dance floor.
Meanwhile I'm half across the city and exhausted. I'm at the limits of my unnatural extension of conscious through caffeine and sheer willpower. I'm very susceptible to strong emotional responses. My guard is down. The happiness feels happier and the sadness sadder. Things stop making sense. I'm filled with frightening confusion. And then I collapse and lose all consciousness as the sun, now risen, continues its attack.
------------------------
"The First Attack of the Rising Sun"--- this is the name of a bootleg of Led Zeppelin's first ever concert in Japan (Sept 23, 1971 in Tokyo.) "Rising Sun" refers to Japan's "Japanese" name ("Nippon.") Nippon translates to the "Land of the Rising Sun," acknowledging Japan's extreme position in the far east. By itself, taken apart from the wonderful recording of a classic Zep show, that title, "The First Attack of the Rising Sun" is poetic yet ambiguously sinister. Sunrises are a universally accepted example of natural beauty and a sign of hope, yet "attack" brings with it is a violent negative destructive image. And I like this contrast of images.
That "first attack" could reference the deadly 1941 strike on Pearl Harbor. Or the "first attack" could refer to an unwanted dawn--- something dreaded by vampires and attendees of all-night dance parties.
Last month, I was an all-night dancer. It was 5 or 6AM depending on whether one factors in the daylight "spring ahead." I came home just as dawn was breaking. It was so quiet after the warehoused bass receded. I could hear the creaking of my bike's little imperfections as I pedaled home. The passing buses were empty except for what looked like some brutally early morning commuters working the Lord's day of rest.
Minimal techno was the musical menu for the party I'd just left. MNML isn't very sexy music. I think that's part of why I like it. It's not sexy, but it moves the shoulders, arms and legs. It's played usually when people are gathered--at parties--but its minimal nature creates a spacious atmosphere. People dance to it together, but there's an introspection to it. Each person lost in his/her world. There's dancing in close proximity to one another, but the beats are generally too fast and clipped for bump and grind.
"Minimal" means no more than necessary; no full kit sound when a simple snare click will do. The rhythms are still strong and at times there are even little looping melodies. But the music is less dense than the kind of techno you might remember from bad high school parties in echoing gymnasiums and Jock Jams CDs.
The minimal nature gives the music a consistently propulsive yet often floating nature. There's none of the slap-in-the-face snares and punch-in-the-gut 4/4 bass kicks. That more heavy-handed techno has a tendency to make me feel pummeled into the ground. It was that sort of aggressive techno that turned me off to the idea of electronic dance music for so long.
In MNML the bass often cuts out, giving it more emphasis when it drops back in. In MNML there are peaks and valleys. There's a continual tension between repetition and change. The music will start repeating a phrase, one begins to think "is the vinyl/CD/mp3 skipping?" And then at the last moment, as one is just resolving to go to the DJ booth and say "WTF?!"---bam!---the music changes. The click is filled out with funky bass rolls, briefs pockets of density, vocal fragments, fists in the air.
And in MNML there aren't any "songs." There's just a continuous evolving rhythm lasting for hours on end. In the crowd there's no anxiety of "Oh they better play THIS song, THAT song, etc." Michael Jackson doesn't exist in a MNML set. There's are no lovers of Billie Jean here. There are no requests. Even techno tracks that one might have at home are cross-faded, combined, and re-EQed. Tracks are remastered in real time, looped, sped up, and slowed down so they are often virtual unrecognizable.
The police showed up 3 or 4 times at the LAVA party in March. They were polite from what I witnessed. They're probably aware of fire code violations, illicit substances, and under age drinking going on in the laser-lit darkness just past the metal door. But they also seemed to realize that the people were well-behaved. There was no shouting on the streets, or curbside vomiting. The party was self-contained except for the bass which oozed through the loose mortar for a block around.
The cops said they were there because neighbors complained. They'd show up and the volume would be cut accordingly. Then as soon as they left the floor shaking-bass would be dropped back in again with a rebellious cheer from the crowd. The cops had gone but the neighbors hadn't. They still had to suffer as 3 o'clock became 4 became 5.
Ironically the venue, LAVA, is subtitled "a radical community center." But here we were with our techno, primarily sweaty white kids dancing in the dark in the middle of a primarily black low-income neighborhood fucking over whatever community is at 42nd and Lancaster Avenue. The image of poor black folks with paint-peeling walls and cotton balls in their ears compromised my enjoyment of the music.
I don't listen to much techno off the dancefloor. I used to think that techno not making good music for kicking-back with the high-fi and a cup of tea back at the homestead made it intrinsically bad music. Insubstantial, not durable. But I now like that techno is so linked to the dance floor and body movement. The fact that it only works with one's body in motion is actually a testament to its strength as what it sets out to be-- DANCE music. Even off the floor, it's difficult to listen without at least twitching or head-bopping a bit.
People (mostly) come to Philly techno parties to dance, or at least enjoy the full body experience of standing around and soaking in the deep clitter/clatter/pow of a surround sound sub woofer PA. As I previously stated, the music isn't sexy. And it doesn't seem that people come to hit on or be hit. It seems people tend to leave with the same people they came with.
I take comfort in this. Sexually-repressed me doesn't have to deal with grinding. If I make physical contact it's with my friends. I come alone and just before dawn I leave, alone. Just as I expected. [Deep even breaths]
People don't dress up much for Philly techno. There's a come as you are, let it all hang out mentality. There are some tight dresses , shiny shirts, and sharp outfits to be sure. But one is more likely to see a Black Flag t shirt than a dress shirt at these parties. A good warehouse party will bring out 100, 200, 300 kids max. The scene is too small to be elitist. Philly is not Berlin. It's not London. It's not even NYC.
There are a few people I accept but don't quite understand at these parties-- the DJ watchers. These are the people, always men, who stand inches away from the DJ booth/table almost still as statues watching every knob turn, fader slide, and cue. Maybe they themselves are aspiring DJs, hoping to learn something about mixing from watching the DJ. Maybe they're crushing on the DJ. Or maybe these DJ watchers just feel awkward, drawn to the music but too self-conscious to dance.
But techno DJs rarely do anything showy. There's none of the scratching behind the back of hip-hop turntablists. The DJ is there to keep the dance floor going, not to be a focal point. Though sometimes the DJ has a pleasing and contagious time-keeping wiggle going on and sometimes there's a bit of an engaging micro-drama when the DJ uses both hands, quickly turning two knobs in unison, to dramatically and immediately change the sound.
These little motions are an added visual bonus for the dancer, but they never seem like enough to hold attention by themselves and stop someone dead in their tracks.
But at every party there's always a contingent of these statue-standing floor-blocks, reducing space for the dancers.
I DO like to keep looking over at the DJ every few minutes, trying to catch their eye when they're not too concentrated on the mix, hoping they see me dancing and know that whatever they're doing on the decks is working for me and keeping me moving.
I try to make eye contact because I want the DJ to feel connected to the crowd he's spinning for. From my own amateur DJing experiences I know how motivational, inspirational and satisfying it can be to have eye contact with happy dancers in motion.
I feel like I dance like a lead-footed handicapped person on every other dance floor in clubs and bars. But in the MNML tchno wrhse I feel a tad graceful. I feel I'm holding my own. And best of all, I often don't even think about how I feel. I'm just in the moment, dancing. At the best parties I lose my self-consciousness. I slide in and out of the beats and ascending and descending notes as if I were part of the sound, as if I were birthed from the speakers. And with all my anxieties, I most value things that kill my self-consciousness, even if for only a little while.
The phrase, "The First Attack of the Rising Sun" looped in my head riding my bike home from two all-night techno parties in the last month. Despite my oft-nocturnal ways I'm no vampire, but I am certainly a frequent all-night dancer. Seeing the sunrise, alone after no sleep at all, is both beautiful and sad. The solar "attack" is the punctuation on a unrelenting night of beats. The period. The final shimmering cymbal crash that fades to light. As daylight creeps through gaps in thick curtains, the empty bottles, cigarette butts, and baggies are revealed on the now empty dance floor.
Meanwhile I'm half across the city and exhausted. I'm at the limits of my unnatural extension of conscious through caffeine and sheer willpower. I'm very susceptible to strong emotional responses. My guard is down. The happiness feels happier and the sadness sadder. Things stop making sense. I'm filled with frightening confusion. And then I collapse and lose all consciousness as the sun, now risen, continues its attack.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
1400 words about seeing the Boredoms in Philly last night (April 2nd 2008)
i saw the Boredoms at Philly's Starlight Ballroom last night. It was the most intense show I've been to all year
I actually went to the show with very little knowledge of the Boredoms. I knew they were Japanese. I knew they'd been around since at least the early 90s. I knew they made experimental music and that they were well-respected by many left-field musicians and indie music fans. I also knew they'd staged a huge event in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge on July 7th last year (7/7/7) with a total of 77 drummers known as "Boa Drums."
But before last night I'd only heard a few minutes of their music.
A friend in Portland had played the Boredoms through his laptop speakers at a moderate volume while we were hanging out earlier this year. I remember it being spacey and droney. It was music you could probably fall inside, but music that could also serve as a background (as it was serving in that Oregon living room.) We were able to hold a conversation while it was going on. What I heard must have been their most recent record, "Seadrum/House of Sun" which mood-wise allmusic.com characterizes as "trippy, hypnotic...detached, spiritual, soothing, reflective, ethereal, circular, calm, [and] peaceful."
This was not the mood at the Starlight Ballroom last night.
One couldn't be bored in a traditional sense during Boredom's set. The music overwhelmed the senses to such an extent that the feeling of boredom wasn't possible. But a possible reaction to the music was analogous to being bored: standing in place, paralyzed, mouth half-open, jut at the edge of drooling.
The set last night was unrelenting. The band played for nearly an hour and a half with no break. I expected a set full of peaks and valleys, maybe one with percussive freak-outs but also one with a lot of lushy, pillowy buzzy drones. But what I got was far from this.
I don't know exactly where my expectation came from. Part of it was surely based on what I'd heard on tinny laptop speakers in Portland, part of it was probably based on my most recent live experience with ANOTHER experimental Japanese experimental band: Acid Mothers Temple, and part of my expectations were probably just based on what I wanted to hear.
On another night, in another state of mind the Boredoms' set might have sounded beautiful to me. Sometimes the right music comes to you at the right time. And sometimes it doesn't. I was (and at the time of writing, still am) feeling a bit down. Going to the show, my mind was full of thoughts of failure, social anxiety that comes from being in a space with hundreds of other people and my coexistent contradictory loneliness, sexual frustration, creative blockage,anxiety and frustration that my income tax paperwork still wasn't done with just over a week to go. I could go on. But that'll give you the flavor of what was looping in my head walking into the Starlight.
I really wanted narcotic music, something I could listen to lying on the floor tucked into a sleeping bag. Something that was weird for sure, but something dreamy. Perhaps Flying Saucer Attack's Further--- a weird, droney album with some darkness and mystery for sure, but one that gives me an overall soft and peaceful feeling.
If you're not familiar with the music on that album, I think the beautiful cover photo captures the music's essence.
I have that cover shot as one of my profile pictures on my page on a certain online social networking site. I captioned it "I want to live inside this picture." And I kind of wanted to live inside that night time drone/dream last night too. But I got a nightmare instead. And drums...lots of drums.
Given the 77 drummers/"Boa Drums" event from last summer, I shouldn't have been surprised by the 3 full drum kits being played together on stage last night, but it still caught me off guard and pummeled me to a ringing pulp.
The drums started before Boredoms even took the stage. The two openers (Soft Circles, and Black Pus) were solo acts centered around drum kits. Both acts came from the same spastically percussive parent duo, Lightning Bolt, and both Soft Circles and Black Pus did sets that experimented in the same beat-heavy vein.
I couldn't see exactly what equipment the openers used, since I stayed towards the back in a booth chair to the side of the floor, but both acts seemed to augment their live drumming with percussive and tonal loops and effects-laden vocals. The PA was up so loud that the music was a physical experience. The low tones and bass drum and tom hits vibrated my bones and the seat below me. I couldn't see the performers clearly but I could see lights near the front and above me that lit up in time with the music. I think they were a (new) permanent part of the venue. I think these lights were beat-activated, operating in the same way as those "dancing robotic flowers" did that were popular in the late 80s. I found the repetition of these lights hypnotic and soothing, taking a bit of the edge off the evening's harsh music.
At times the music of the openers created a physically uncomfortable atmosphere. The bass drum kicks felt like a gut punch. And the beats went from a "tribal" drum circle feel, to disco breaks and bad "4 on the floor" techno. I like a far amount of techno too, but I gravitate towards (and dance to) more minimal varieties. I like techno filled with spaces, peaks and valleys, tension and release. The occasional techno-flavored beats of Soft Circles and Black Pus had no spaces. There was just the unrelenting "uh-uh-uh-uh."
Starting with the openers and all night long, there was tension, and it was unrelenting. There was never any release. I went into the evening feeling tense, even before the music started. Ideally, I wanted that cathartic release that the best live music events can bring. I never got it.
The music made me wish I'd brought my earplugs. It also made me wish I could go outside for a moment for some fresh air and quiet. Then maybe after a moment away- like a side break on a tumultuous vinyl album - I could come back and better appreciate the music with fresh ears. But unlike ever other show I'd been to at the Starlight there was no re-entry at this one. I wondered if this new "no-reentry" policy was a result of the shootings that had taken place outside the Starlight late last year, at an event unrelated to the R5 promoted concerts I attended. The thought of the venue as a site for a violent crime made me uncomfortable. And I since couldn't go outside. I could only sit there and take in the discomforting music.
The only drone and respite from the drums that I got during the evening was between the groups. Between acts, the PA played a most-vocal CD that sounded ceremonial and Indian or Far-Eastern in origin.
Boredoms took the stage around 10:30 and played continuously until midnight with only a few minutes break before the encore. The set started spaciously enough. The dreadlocked leader of the 5-piece ensemble kept knocking two wired glowing orbs together. They seemed to create some sort of a field akin to a theremin and when he banged them together, there was a violent electric sizzle that sounded like dueling light sabers making contact. I didn't quite know what sort of circuitry was really at work behind the showmanship so this was a suitably magical, other-worldly opening. It seemed like a invocation. In between sizzling contacts of these "electric orbs" the crowd cheered wildly. And this was really the last time one could clearly hear the cheering for the rest of the set. Soon enough, the three full drum kits on stage kicked in and let up very little over the next hour.
My senses got overwhelmed around this point. The VU meter in my head hit red at this point and stayed there. Behind the dreadlocked leader there was a "guitar sculpture"--- 7 electric guitars stuck together vertically. But they were never played like traditional guitars. This too was a percussion instrument. The strings were hit with drum sticks, making this "wall-of-guitars" an electrified version of chimes. There was one "non-percussion" member of the ensemble at the very back of the stage. In between retuning the strings of the 7 guitars, the guy in the back created tones on some sort of electronic set up. I couldn't see it at all. Occasionally there was a noticeable squelch or bassy growl, but the percussion up front was always in domination.
The Boredoms' drummers didn't create noise in the common sense of the word. There was little random clatter. The drummers played polyrhythmically, but certainly as a unit. They shifted, stopped, and started precisely together. There was obviously composition and practice involved. The drummers all wore headphones. I couldn't tell if they were substitutes for stage monitors or if they played a "click track" to keep the drummers together. Or maybe the headphones served both purposes. Their kits were set up in a semi-circular facing Dreadlocks.
The fact that no one in the band really faced or acknowledged the crowd during the performance added to the tense, discomforting, monolithic feeling. I felt distant from the band and pretty much everyone else in attendance, even though were all in relative close proximity. It was all drums, all night long without even a rhetorically "hey how ya doing out there?" to lighten the mood. The mood was somber and ceremonial. There was only a terse "thank you" before the encore.
And except for the brief respite between main set and encore, the band was so loud I couldn't think straight. I've been to loud, experimental performance many times before. But usually each performer's set will run less than a half hour. The sheer volume of the Boredoms' performance (both sound level and temporal quantity) made all the difference. I didn't feel particularly connected to the band and yet their pervasive drumming permeated my mind. All I could think about was "wow, the band is really loud!" And while not particularly pleasant, the hijacking of my mind through sound was an interesting event. It was remarkable enough to inspire this lengthy description of said hijacking that you've been reading. Many more pleasant shows have warranted very little or no written descriptions whatsoever from me (umm...tonight I saw Beach House at the Barbary Bar). The fact that I've gone on for over a thousand words about this ugly experience says something.
I could've left the show at any time (and not come back) but I stayed until moments before the end. There was something spell-like to the performance. I couldn't leave. The drums had me pinned inside the door. Also, I kept thinking "any moment now this has to resolve itself. There has to be a release after all the tension." But there never really was, except debatably during the encore when the drummers played a lighter disco-flavored beat. It was a little less dense than what had come previously and was more traditionally danceable. But even this "disco" beat was loud as all hell. And by the time of the encore, my ears hurt. The physical impact of the loud drums made me a bit nauseous. I already had my jacket on, ready to bolt. I hoped there wasn't going to be a second encore. I hovered by the exit and actually walked out with a couple minutes still to go in the final piece.
I also stayed until nearly the end because, perhaps masochistically, I wanted to get my $16 worth even it was apparently $16 worth of ringing ears. I'll often go to a show knowing it'll be a crap shoot whether I'll like it or not. And even if I don't like it, I still stay because I paid money. The ticket makes it seem like fate that I should stay. And also I often believe and hope that the unlikable music could shift at any point to something I might actually enjoy.
And often at these unenjoyable shows there are people dancing, singing along, shouting in jubilation. I start thinking something is wrong with me for not enjoying the music and I start thinking that maybe if I stay long enough I'll catch the fever of enthusiasm that people all around me are sweating through.
I'm not complaining about the Boredoms' performance. In hindsight, I'm glad I went. Even now, as the specifics of the music are evaporating from my mind, the memory of its intensity remains. I can still practically feel the performance. The feeling it gave me is something I've rarely (if ever) felt before. It put me in a unique state of mind. It was intense in a neutral sort of way. I'm glad I saw the performance in the same way I'm glad I saw Schindler's List and Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain. Those movies aren't fun in any traditional sense. But they're both powerful and worth seeing in their own ways.
The Boredom's last night wasn't a great show. Great isn't the right word. It was a POWERFUL show. My reaction to this power was strong and yet neutral. The performance was neither good, nor bad. It was simply overwhelmingly intense.
Here's a clip from a 2006 live set that illustrates some of the elements of last night's performance. The drumming is a lot more palatable when played at the moderate and listener-controlled volume of computer or headphone speakers:
I actually went to the show with very little knowledge of the Boredoms. I knew they were Japanese. I knew they'd been around since at least the early 90s. I knew they made experimental music and that they were well-respected by many left-field musicians and indie music fans. I also knew they'd staged a huge event in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge on July 7th last year (7/7/7) with a total of 77 drummers known as "Boa Drums."
But before last night I'd only heard a few minutes of their music.
A friend in Portland had played the Boredoms through his laptop speakers at a moderate volume while we were hanging out earlier this year. I remember it being spacey and droney. It was music you could probably fall inside, but music that could also serve as a background (as it was serving in that Oregon living room.) We were able to hold a conversation while it was going on. What I heard must have been their most recent record, "Seadrum/House of Sun" which mood-wise allmusic.com characterizes as "trippy, hypnotic...detached, spiritual, soothing, reflective, ethereal, circular, calm, [and] peaceful."
This was not the mood at the Starlight Ballroom last night.
One couldn't be bored in a traditional sense during Boredom's set. The music overwhelmed the senses to such an extent that the feeling of boredom wasn't possible. But a possible reaction to the music was analogous to being bored: standing in place, paralyzed, mouth half-open, jut at the edge of drooling.
The set last night was unrelenting. The band played for nearly an hour and a half with no break. I expected a set full of peaks and valleys, maybe one with percussive freak-outs but also one with a lot of lushy, pillowy buzzy drones. But what I got was far from this.
I don't know exactly where my expectation came from. Part of it was surely based on what I'd heard on tinny laptop speakers in Portland, part of it was probably based on my most recent live experience with ANOTHER experimental Japanese experimental band: Acid Mothers Temple, and part of my expectations were probably just based on what I wanted to hear.
On another night, in another state of mind the Boredoms' set might have sounded beautiful to me. Sometimes the right music comes to you at the right time. And sometimes it doesn't. I was (and at the time of writing, still am) feeling a bit down. Going to the show, my mind was full of thoughts of failure, social anxiety that comes from being in a space with hundreds of other people and my coexistent contradictory loneliness, sexual frustration, creative blockage,anxiety and frustration that my income tax paperwork still wasn't done with just over a week to go. I could go on. But that'll give you the flavor of what was looping in my head walking into the Starlight.
I really wanted narcotic music, something I could listen to lying on the floor tucked into a sleeping bag. Something that was weird for sure, but something dreamy. Perhaps Flying Saucer Attack's Further--- a weird, droney album with some darkness and mystery for sure, but one that gives me an overall soft and peaceful feeling.
If you're not familiar with the music on that album, I think the beautiful cover photo captures the music's essence.
I have that cover shot as one of my profile pictures on my page on a certain online social networking site. I captioned it "I want to live inside this picture." And I kind of wanted to live inside that night time drone/dream last night too. But I got a nightmare instead. And drums...lots of drums.
Given the 77 drummers/"Boa Drums" event from last summer, I shouldn't have been surprised by the 3 full drum kits being played together on stage last night, but it still caught me off guard and pummeled me to a ringing pulp.
The drums started before Boredoms even took the stage. The two openers (Soft Circles, and Black Pus) were solo acts centered around drum kits. Both acts came from the same spastically percussive parent duo, Lightning Bolt, and both Soft Circles and Black Pus did sets that experimented in the same beat-heavy vein.
I couldn't see exactly what equipment the openers used, since I stayed towards the back in a booth chair to the side of the floor, but both acts seemed to augment their live drumming with percussive and tonal loops and effects-laden vocals. The PA was up so loud that the music was a physical experience. The low tones and bass drum and tom hits vibrated my bones and the seat below me. I couldn't see the performers clearly but I could see lights near the front and above me that lit up in time with the music. I think they were a (new) permanent part of the venue. I think these lights were beat-activated, operating in the same way as those "dancing robotic flowers" did that were popular in the late 80s. I found the repetition of these lights hypnotic and soothing, taking a bit of the edge off the evening's harsh music.
At times the music of the openers created a physically uncomfortable atmosphere. The bass drum kicks felt like a gut punch. And the beats went from a "tribal" drum circle feel, to disco breaks and bad "4 on the floor" techno. I like a far amount of techno too, but I gravitate towards (and dance to) more minimal varieties. I like techno filled with spaces, peaks and valleys, tension and release. The occasional techno-flavored beats of Soft Circles and Black Pus had no spaces. There was just the unrelenting "uh-uh-uh-uh."
Starting with the openers and all night long, there was tension, and it was unrelenting. There was never any release. I went into the evening feeling tense, even before the music started. Ideally, I wanted that cathartic release that the best live music events can bring. I never got it.
The music made me wish I'd brought my earplugs. It also made me wish I could go outside for a moment for some fresh air and quiet. Then maybe after a moment away- like a side break on a tumultuous vinyl album - I could come back and better appreciate the music with fresh ears. But unlike ever other show I'd been to at the Starlight there was no re-entry at this one. I wondered if this new "no-reentry" policy was a result of the shootings that had taken place outside the Starlight late last year, at an event unrelated to the R5 promoted concerts I attended. The thought of the venue as a site for a violent crime made me uncomfortable. And I since couldn't go outside. I could only sit there and take in the discomforting music.
The only drone and respite from the drums that I got during the evening was between the groups. Between acts, the PA played a most-vocal CD that sounded ceremonial and Indian or Far-Eastern in origin.
Boredoms took the stage around 10:30 and played continuously until midnight with only a few minutes break before the encore. The set started spaciously enough. The dreadlocked leader of the 5-piece ensemble kept knocking two wired glowing orbs together. They seemed to create some sort of a field akin to a theremin and when he banged them together, there was a violent electric sizzle that sounded like dueling light sabers making contact. I didn't quite know what sort of circuitry was really at work behind the showmanship so this was a suitably magical, other-worldly opening. It seemed like a invocation. In between sizzling contacts of these "electric orbs" the crowd cheered wildly. And this was really the last time one could clearly hear the cheering for the rest of the set. Soon enough, the three full drum kits on stage kicked in and let up very little over the next hour.
My senses got overwhelmed around this point. The VU meter in my head hit red at this point and stayed there. Behind the dreadlocked leader there was a "guitar sculpture"--- 7 electric guitars stuck together vertically. But they were never played like traditional guitars. This too was a percussion instrument. The strings were hit with drum sticks, making this "wall-of-guitars" an electrified version of chimes. There was one "non-percussion" member of the ensemble at the very back of the stage. In between retuning the strings of the 7 guitars, the guy in the back created tones on some sort of electronic set up. I couldn't see it at all. Occasionally there was a noticeable squelch or bassy growl, but the percussion up front was always in domination.
The Boredoms' drummers didn't create noise in the common sense of the word. There was little random clatter. The drummers played polyrhythmically, but certainly as a unit. They shifted, stopped, and started precisely together. There was obviously composition and practice involved. The drummers all wore headphones. I couldn't tell if they were substitutes for stage monitors or if they played a "click track" to keep the drummers together. Or maybe the headphones served both purposes. Their kits were set up in a semi-circular facing Dreadlocks.
The fact that no one in the band really faced or acknowledged the crowd during the performance added to the tense, discomforting, monolithic feeling. I felt distant from the band and pretty much everyone else in attendance, even though were all in relative close proximity. It was all drums, all night long without even a rhetorically "hey how ya doing out there?" to lighten the mood. The mood was somber and ceremonial. There was only a terse "thank you" before the encore.
And except for the brief respite between main set and encore, the band was so loud I couldn't think straight. I've been to loud, experimental performance many times before. But usually each performer's set will run less than a half hour. The sheer volume of the Boredoms' performance (both sound level and temporal quantity) made all the difference. I didn't feel particularly connected to the band and yet their pervasive drumming permeated my mind. All I could think about was "wow, the band is really loud!" And while not particularly pleasant, the hijacking of my mind through sound was an interesting event. It was remarkable enough to inspire this lengthy description of said hijacking that you've been reading. Many more pleasant shows have warranted very little or no written descriptions whatsoever from me (umm...tonight I saw Beach House at the Barbary Bar). The fact that I've gone on for over a thousand words about this ugly experience says something.
I could've left the show at any time (and not come back) but I stayed until moments before the end. There was something spell-like to the performance. I couldn't leave. The drums had me pinned inside the door. Also, I kept thinking "any moment now this has to resolve itself. There has to be a release after all the tension." But there never really was, except debatably during the encore when the drummers played a lighter disco-flavored beat. It was a little less dense than what had come previously and was more traditionally danceable. But even this "disco" beat was loud as all hell. And by the time of the encore, my ears hurt. The physical impact of the loud drums made me a bit nauseous. I already had my jacket on, ready to bolt. I hoped there wasn't going to be a second encore. I hovered by the exit and actually walked out with a couple minutes still to go in the final piece.
I also stayed until nearly the end because, perhaps masochistically, I wanted to get my $16 worth even it was apparently $16 worth of ringing ears. I'll often go to a show knowing it'll be a crap shoot whether I'll like it or not. And even if I don't like it, I still stay because I paid money. The ticket makes it seem like fate that I should stay. And also I often believe and hope that the unlikable music could shift at any point to something I might actually enjoy.
And often at these unenjoyable shows there are people dancing, singing along, shouting in jubilation. I start thinking something is wrong with me for not enjoying the music and I start thinking that maybe if I stay long enough I'll catch the fever of enthusiasm that people all around me are sweating through.
I'm not complaining about the Boredoms' performance. In hindsight, I'm glad I went. Even now, as the specifics of the music are evaporating from my mind, the memory of its intensity remains. I can still practically feel the performance. The feeling it gave me is something I've rarely (if ever) felt before. It put me in a unique state of mind. It was intense in a neutral sort of way. I'm glad I saw the performance in the same way I'm glad I saw Schindler's List and Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain. Those movies aren't fun in any traditional sense. But they're both powerful and worth seeing in their own ways.
The Boredom's last night wasn't a great show. Great isn't the right word. It was a POWERFUL show. My reaction to this power was strong and yet neutral. The performance was neither good, nor bad. It was simply overwhelmingly intense.
Here's a clip from a 2006 live set that illustrates some of the elements of last night's performance. The drumming is a lot more palatable when played at the moderate and listener-controlled volume of computer or headphone speakers:
Saturday, March 22, 2008
1884 words about seeing Iron Maiden at the Meadowlands 3/14/2008
It's 4:18AM and I have to work in less than three hours. There are probably a few typos still left (that I'll clean up soon), but I wanted to get this online ASAP because today Maiden tickets for the summer at Madison Square Garden go on sale. And I wanted to give you all that extra push to do yourself a favor and see Iron Maiden this summer!
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The text came Thursday afternoon: "My date for the SOLD OUT Iron Maiden show tomorrow had to cancel. Do you want to go?"
Hell yes! I had to work here in Philly that day til 5 and again the next morning at 8AM. But there was nothing that was gonna stop me from hoping on a train to New Jersey right after work, meeting with E, driving to the Meadowlands right across the river from New York, rocking the fuck out, and then getting the first train at 6AM Saturday morning to get back to Philadelphia in time for work. This was do or die...and I knew they were gonna open with "Aces High"!
I'd wanted to go to this show from the first moment i heard about it. But without a car, getting to the Meadowlands is difficult at best. None of my Philly friends had cars or the money to spare to go to the show. And at least originally, E's date was supposed to be a romantic one (does it get much hotter than taking someone to a Maiden show? I think not!) So I would've been the third wheel, if I'd tried to go with her and her date.
But fortunately, for me at least, the date fell prey to unfortunate circumstances so a ticket and a ride suddenly appeared and I jumped at the chance to see the world's greatest metal band.
This Meadowlands show was at the venue formerly known as the Brendan Byrne Arena. It has since gone through a number of corporate names which I don't want to utter. Maiden had played the Meadowlands many times before. And this particularly show was actually one of only 2 US dates on this leg. On this "Somewhere Back in Time" tour, the band was hopping the globe in a custom 757 ("the Ed Force One") with singer Bruce Dickinson in the pilot's seat, the band's named painted on the sides, and their "mascot" Eddie painted on the tail. Seriously, when he's not being a rock star Bruce pilots charter jets. The itinerary went San Juan, one night to East Rutherford New Jersey two days later. . From the warmly exotic to the cold industrial garden state wastes.
Up until show time, no other East Coast dates had been announced. They'd be back in the US in June playing the shed-n-lawn circuit. I figured they'd probably include Philly on this unannounced itinerary, but I couldn't be sure. But I WAS sure I needed to see Maiden. And seeing Maiden in a dirty old venue where they'd been playing since the 1st half of the 80s was more appealing than seeing them in a 90s-era shed-n-lawn that was interchangeable with 50 other venues in the country. And of course I'd ALSO go see them in the shed-n-lawn if given the opportunity in the summer months.
When we arrived in the Meadowlands parking lot, we saw exactly what you'd expect: a lot of men from early 20s to middle age huddled around their cars, drinking beer and blasting Maiden from their stereos. And of course about 70 percent of everyone in the lot and inside the venue was wearing a Maiden t-shirt.
Getting to the arena was quite a trek. From the lot we were funneled on foot into a corrugated metal tunnel that was as wide as a two lane road. I don't know what it took us over. A highway? A new stadium under construction? In hindsight, this quarter mile tunnel was odd. But I was too focused on the light at the end of the tunnel to think too much about it.
(The light being Maiden, of course.)
The show was opened by a set by Lauren Harris, this singer daughter of Maiden bassist/founder Steve Harris. I think she only got the slot by pure nepotism.
She ran around the stage for 30 minutes barefoot wearing black latex pants that looked painted on. Her set was upbeat power-pop. A bit of hard rock, but no real metal. She might have been pretty, I couldn't tell from our middle-distance seats. So being up front, there might have been some....um...visual stimulation for the hetero males against the rails. But I missed out on all that. All I could see was the exaggerated movements of her string-men. They all seemed very high on imaginary rock star status. Though she did fall off-key more than once, her set wasn't painful. But I'm still glad it was brief.
Before Maiden came out, a New York DJ for a rock station came out to plug his show and get the crowd warmed up. His microphone was up painfully loud. I prayed it wouldn't be up that loud for Bruce's patented "Air Raid Siren" vocals. We'd all have bleeding eardrums if it was.
This DJ started a Maiden chant that got pretty loud, but then some non-descript rock music was turned back up on the PA, killing the momentum. I really wanted to be a part of 5 minutes of "Maiden! {clap clap] Maiden! [clap clap]" leading up to the band's entrance. But some forgettable CD made this impossible.
In the interim, I went out into the hall and laid down $35 for the only official concert t-shirt I've ever bought at any show. It was steep. It kinda hurt. But the graphics were great- the front is the cover of my favorite Maiden LP, "Somewhere in Time" with the 2008 dates on the back and a very vividly colored Ccyborg Eddie. I knew I'd kick myself if I didn't get one. So I instead got to kick myself for spending so much money. Sometimes you can't win.
Around 9, the house lights dimmed. The PA started playing UFO's "Doctor, Doctor" a 70s hard rock song that was very influential on Maiden. It's served as the "get ready" music for every tour I've seen.
From my seat, Janick's side (stage left) even with the end of the stage I could see some of backstage. I could see the band in the wings as the song played. Janick jumped up and down, dancing, loosing up. He probably ties with Bruce for putting on the most athletic show during a Maiden set. And since 1999 with 3 guitars in the band, Janick has been freed up to be even more athletic, twirling his guitar around and using it as more of a prop than an instrument. Dave Murray and Adrian Smith are there so Maiden can still hold down the patented dual lead guitar attack. And the near constant below it all is founder Steve Harris' galloping bass.
After the UFO song, the two video screens to the sides of the stagelit up with footage of screaming fans against the rail and footage from the aforementioned Ed Force One. The band all seemed to be having a great time in the video clips. I'm sure they come away from every tour with a chunk of change, but I still get the feeling that they honestly have a blast doing it.
The footage then turned black and white, showing British WWII newsreel footage. Just as at the beginning of the "Live After Death" album Winston Churchill's voice came on, giving us all the pep talk for Britons to hunker down and support the effort against the Nazi's. "We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be." And just as Winston said "We shall never surrender!" the first note of "Aces High" hit.
With a blast of light and the show was ON!
"There goes the siren that warns of the air raid!" screamed me and 16,000 other rabid fans along with Bruce. For about the next two hours solid it was all fists in the air and singing along. At the end of "Aces," Bruce did a high jump at the end of the stage that was worthy of a Youth of Today show! He showed that despite being middled-aged, he's in great shape.
This was the "Somewhere Back in Time" tour. As the name suggests, this was a retro tour. The setlist focused on mid 80s classics. In the past, Maiden has always played a lot of material off whatever new album they were supporting. This bias towards new material peaked with their previous tour. When I saw them in 2006, they opened the show by playing their entire 70-minute "A Matter of Life and Death" album from start until finish.
I love that album and thought it was a great show. But there were a lot of fans who shouted "play some old stuff!" and seemed to wish it could be eternally 1985, 86, 87, 88. And honestly, I'd have loved to see Maiden back then too. And this 2008 tour was the next best thing. With one exception every song played at the Meadowlands saw its original release on a 1980s album. And the stage set was mostly made up of element of the "World Slavery-Powerslave- 84-85" tour that spawned the Live After Death double LP.
The setlist was designed to make the entire crowd hoarse the next day. There were no clunkers. It was all-pleasing. And Bruce didn't miss any opportunities to encourage the crowd between (and during) songs. As with nearly every Maiden tour I've seen, there was a raised platform in a U shape behind the band with its wings jutting out on both sides of the stage. With a wireless mic, Bruce went all over the platform, acting as the ultimate cheerleader, pointing to different sections and raising his arms to get them all riled up.
Despite being the front man, Bruce had the worse fashion in the band. His look on this tour is kind of post-apocalyptic, ll patched together. As he has for the last few tours, he wore horrible black pants that looked like they were made from a hundred trash bags woven together. The many flaps of his leggings hung like the feathers of an oil spill seagull.
The only time I liked was he was wearing, was when he donned a redcoat uniform and grabbed a Union Jack for "the Trooper"
Bruce was also the only one in the band not wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt and the only one in the band with short hair. Despite the trends within the ranks of the elder statesmen of metal, everyone else in Maiden has kept his mane.
Janick was the only one in the band with white sneakers and he also was wearing the tightest pants, not counting the spandex shorts of Nicko the drummer. With the exception of Bruce, everyone in the band looked "conservatively metal"--- simple black--- t shirts and jeans. No cod pieces, spikes, or make-up.
Adrian Smith on guitar seemed to have lost a little weight since the last tour looking a bit more like his thin 80s version. While Maiden has never been a bunch of lookers, in my book Adrian still maintains the title of "most handsome Maiden." And Nicko is still dead last in the running.
Adrian also had a peace symbol sticker on one of his guitars. Despite its incongruity within a metal band that has a repertoire made up mostly of songs about war and battles, I thought it was a great statement. Below all the belligerent graphics, runs a lyrical theme of the futility of war. And as Bruce said on the "A Real Live One" album "just to make a mental note...war is bullshit. The people who make people go to war are usually politicians and the people that get killed are usually ordinary people." But Maiden has never been a very political band. They just aspire to be a fun band that taps into the testosterone and aggressive impulses of men. But in the end, they don't mean anyone any harm.
Maiden taps into something inside me. And I stayed riled up for the whole show. I didn't think once about sitting down or using the restroom. I knew almost every word uttered from the stage and I sang/screamed along about 70% of the time. And fortunately, I had a seat on an aisle, so I had an extra little bit of rock-out room. A few times I did almost rock out TOO hard and tripped back against the concrete step behind me.
The sound from our seats was a bit echoey. But that's to be expected at a 16,000 seat sports arena made of concrete and steel.
With our seats to the side of the stage near the front corner we got a bit of sound from the PA stacks facing forward and the ones to the side of the stage. The high volume bouncing off the floor, the ceiling, and the metalhead bodies made for a bit of an aural mess at times. Occasionally elements of the music seemed to fall out of time with one another. Listening back to the sound on amateur videos of the evening that are posted on youtube, it seems this occasional lack-of-togetherness was the fault of our seat positions and the uncomplimentary acoustics of the venue. The videos proved the band to be totally together at every moment captured.
The bad acoustics are kind of part of the fun, though. The continual awareness of the cavernous expanse of the venue reminded me that this was a huge show. And a huge show feels like an EVENT, a ceremony, something important. It's a whole different feel from seeing a band in a small, intimate venue that holds only a few hundred and has better acoustics.
I'd love to see Maiden in a tiny club, where I could hear and see every element clearly, but it takes 16,000 fans singing along to the "woah-oh-oh- woah-oh-oh-oh-ohhh-oh-oh-oh-woah-oh..." part of "Heaven Can Wait." to make it seem like an EVENT. I take pride in my idiosyncrasies and individualism but I love being a part of a huge unison mass from time to time. And Maiden provides a great opportunity for it.
A Maiden show is always light-hearted. Bruce also exhibits a self-deprecating humor between songs. This time around he kept doing a forgetful old man routine that got a little old after a while: "What? You're still here? Oh...where are we again?" etc. I was glad though that near the show's beginning he called the name "Izod Center" silly and simply called it "the Meadowlands" for the rest of the set.
A few times, the screens on the side of the stage caught Bruce looking out of it. He spent a lot of the show in a gray t-shirt that was soaked through with sweat. A few times he seemed out of breath. But running the length of an arena stage while singing and being nearly 50 is no easy feat. With the less than perfect acoustical conditions, it's difficult to say whether Bruce is fully living up to the hype that his voice is "as good now as it was in the mid 80s." At the Meadowlands, there seemed to be a few times when Bruce screamed words that he used to annunciate clearly at high pitches. But over all I'd say it's safe to say that Bruce has at least 80% of the range and power he had in 1985. And it didn't sound like the band had to drop pitches down to accommodate voice changes (unlike another British band that recently got together in another arena to play a bunch of old songs...)
If Maiden did the "classics" setlist format MY way, there wouldn't be any of the classic yet overplayed songs that were scattered throughout the Meadowlands show: "Trooper," "Run to the Hills" "Iron Maiden" "Number of the Beast" and "Hallowed Be Thy Name." They're all great songs but I've heard them at every other Maiden show I've been to. But nothing is ideal, and I sound like an ungrateful bastard saying oh "couldn't the best metal band in the world have played something OTHER than the 'Trooper.'" They may be over-played but can you ever go wrong with any of those songs? No.
And of course, this wasn't everyone's 5th Maiden show. If you're seeing Maiden for the first time (as I'm sure a lot of people at the Meadowlands were) you probably really want to hear all those songs that the veteran hardcore fans deem "overplayed."
And there were plenty of rarities to balance out the set: the "Aces High" opener, "Wasted Years," the epic "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (complete with dry ice and firework-explosions above the stage in time with the beats and "Moonchild" in the encore. And during the oft-played "Iron Maiden" theme song, a robotic cyborg "Eddie" came on stage straight from the Somewhere in Time album cover to battle Janick
Janick responded to the "threat" by switching to a wireless guitar that apparently was designed to take a beating. He thrust it continually at the robotic monster Eddie as part of a brief and deliciously cheesy melee.
Despite the sinister nature of most of their graphics, a Maiden show is really uplifting fun for everyone involved. Maiden is a surprisingly catchy sounding band. A lot of people unfamiliar with the band don't know that. I think the band gets judged a lot by their many dark and violent designs (courtesy of artist Derek Riggs) for record covers, posters, and t-shirts. Until the age of 14, all I knew of the band was their graphics and the song "No Prayer For the Dying" that I had on a 1991 Epic Records promo compilation that I got from sending in cereal box tops.
I was both afraid and intrigued by the image of Maiden for my entire youth even though I'd barely heard them. I was surprised
when I bought my first Maiden album, out of curiosity, that they were so melodic. I expected guttural, indecipherable vocals, breakneck velocity, and bone-crushing heaviness. But I was even happier with what I actually got from the band. (And soon enough I was able to find other avenues to satisfy my semi-articulated desire for truly evil-sounding music.)
Iron Maiden have a lot of songs that you can hear the first time and be singing along by the final chorus. A lot of their songs have an anthemic quality to them. Their 90s and 00s material is a bit darker and more introverted but at the Meadowlands they only did the 80s, with the exception of 1992's "Fear of the Dark"--- the most recent song that it seems ALL Maiden fans can agree is a classic. It's also very anthemic and conducive to singing along both in words and "oh"'s.
I could run through a song by song analysis of the set, but that would probably be too tedious. It is worth noting that with 3 guitars in the band now, the subtle off-stage keyboard parts that have crept into the repertoire since 1986 were often played at the Meadowlands on a 6 string by one of the guitarists. I couldn't tell for sure if "Heaven Can..." and "Fear..." stillused keyboards, but the prominent keyboard opening of the "Moonchild" encore was definitely done by a guitar.
Perhaps after 25 years Maiden could again live up to the promise they made on the inner sleeve of their Piece of Mind LP: "no synthesizers or ulterior motives."
For the fifth time since 1999 Maiden provided me with a loud night that was the perfect balance of heavy-yet-catchy songs, musical skill, clever lyrics, theatrics, explosions, and athletic "put your hands in the air!" showmanship.
Here's the set list. And posted below it are clips of every single song from the show (about 2 hours if you watch it all!) Since it's all covert amateur footage, the clarity isn't optimum, but the shaky, grainy, crowd-noise-filled clips capture the excitement of the night.
They're coming back again in June.
tickets for Madison Square Garden 6/15 go on sale today (3/22)
and tickets for Camden 6/17 go on sale 3/29
Get excited.
Up the Irons!
set list from the Meadowlands 3/14/2008:
1. Churchill's Speech / Aces High (from 'Powerslave' – 1984)
2. 2 Minutes to Midnight (from 'Powerslave' – 1984)
3. Revelations (from 'Piece Of Mind' – 1983)
4. The Trooper (from 'Piece Of Mind' – 1983)
5. Wasted Years (from 'Somewhere In Time' – 1986)
6. The Number of the Beast (from 'Number Of The Beast' – 1982)
7. Run to the Hills (from 'Number Of The Beast' – 1982)
8. Rime of the Ancient Mariner (from 'Powerslave' – 1984)
9. Powerslave (from 'Powerslave' – 1984)
10. Heaven Can Wait (from 'Somewhere In Time' – 1986)
11. Can I Play With Madness? (from 'Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son' –1988)
12. Fear of the Dark (from 'Fear Of The Dark' – 1992)
13. Iron Maiden (from 'Iron Maiden' – 1980)
Encore: 14. Moonchild (from 'Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son' – 1988)
15. The Clairvoyant (from 'Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son' – 1988)
16. Hallowed Be Thy Name (from 'Number Of The Beast' – 1982)
video intro>Churchill>Aces High:
2 minutes to midnight
Revelations
The Trooper
Wasted Years
Number of the Beast
Run to the Hills
Rime of the Ancient Mariner pt 1
Rime pt 2
Powerslave
Heaven Can Wait
Can I Play With Madness
Fear of the Dark
Iron Maiden
Moonchild
Clairvoyant
Hallowed Be Thy Name
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The text came Thursday afternoon: "My date for the SOLD OUT Iron Maiden show tomorrow had to cancel. Do you want to go?"
Hell yes! I had to work here in Philly that day til 5 and again the next morning at 8AM. But there was nothing that was gonna stop me from hoping on a train to New Jersey right after work, meeting with E, driving to the Meadowlands right across the river from New York, rocking the fuck out, and then getting the first train at 6AM Saturday morning to get back to Philadelphia in time for work. This was do or die...and I knew they were gonna open with "Aces High"!
I'd wanted to go to this show from the first moment i heard about it. But without a car, getting to the Meadowlands is difficult at best. None of my Philly friends had cars or the money to spare to go to the show. And at least originally, E's date was supposed to be a romantic one (does it get much hotter than taking someone to a Maiden show? I think not!) So I would've been the third wheel, if I'd tried to go with her and her date.
But fortunately, for me at least, the date fell prey to unfortunate circumstances so a ticket and a ride suddenly appeared and I jumped at the chance to see the world's greatest metal band.
This Meadowlands show was at the venue formerly known as the Brendan Byrne Arena. It has since gone through a number of corporate names which I don't want to utter. Maiden had played the Meadowlands many times before. And this particularly show was actually one of only 2 US dates on this leg. On this "Somewhere Back in Time" tour, the band was hopping the globe in a custom 757 ("the Ed Force One") with singer Bruce Dickinson in the pilot's seat, the band's named painted on the sides, and their "mascot" Eddie painted on the tail. Seriously, when he's not being a rock star Bruce pilots charter jets. The itinerary went San Juan, one night to East Rutherford New Jersey two days later. . From the warmly exotic to the cold industrial garden state wastes.
Up until show time, no other East Coast dates had been announced. They'd be back in the US in June playing the shed-n-lawn circuit. I figured they'd probably include Philly on this unannounced itinerary, but I couldn't be sure. But I WAS sure I needed to see Maiden. And seeing Maiden in a dirty old venue where they'd been playing since the 1st half of the 80s was more appealing than seeing them in a 90s-era shed-n-lawn that was interchangeable with 50 other venues in the country. And of course I'd ALSO go see them in the shed-n-lawn if given the opportunity in the summer months.
When we arrived in the Meadowlands parking lot, we saw exactly what you'd expect: a lot of men from early 20s to middle age huddled around their cars, drinking beer and blasting Maiden from their stereos. And of course about 70 percent of everyone in the lot and inside the venue was wearing a Maiden t-shirt.
Getting to the arena was quite a trek. From the lot we were funneled on foot into a corrugated metal tunnel that was as wide as a two lane road. I don't know what it took us over. A highway? A new stadium under construction? In hindsight, this quarter mile tunnel was odd. But I was too focused on the light at the end of the tunnel to think too much about it.
(The light being Maiden, of course.)
The show was opened by a set by Lauren Harris, this singer daughter of Maiden bassist/founder Steve Harris. I think she only got the slot by pure nepotism.
She ran around the stage for 30 minutes barefoot wearing black latex pants that looked painted on. Her set was upbeat power-pop. A bit of hard rock, but no real metal. She might have been pretty, I couldn't tell from our middle-distance seats. So being up front, there might have been some....um...visual stimulation for the hetero males against the rails. But I missed out on all that. All I could see was the exaggerated movements of her string-men. They all seemed very high on imaginary rock star status. Though she did fall off-key more than once, her set wasn't painful. But I'm still glad it was brief.
Before Maiden came out, a New York DJ for a rock station came out to plug his show and get the crowd warmed up. His microphone was up painfully loud. I prayed it wouldn't be up that loud for Bruce's patented "Air Raid Siren" vocals. We'd all have bleeding eardrums if it was.
This DJ started a Maiden chant that got pretty loud, but then some non-descript rock music was turned back up on the PA, killing the momentum. I really wanted to be a part of 5 minutes of "Maiden! {clap clap] Maiden! [clap clap]" leading up to the band's entrance. But some forgettable CD made this impossible.
In the interim, I went out into the hall and laid down $35 for the only official concert t-shirt I've ever bought at any show. It was steep. It kinda hurt. But the graphics were great- the front is the cover of my favorite Maiden LP, "Somewhere in Time" with the 2008 dates on the back and a very vividly colored Ccyborg Eddie. I knew I'd kick myself if I didn't get one. So I instead got to kick myself for spending so much money. Sometimes you can't win.
Around 9, the house lights dimmed. The PA started playing UFO's "Doctor, Doctor" a 70s hard rock song that was very influential on Maiden. It's served as the "get ready" music for every tour I've seen.
From my seat, Janick's side (stage left) even with the end of the stage I could see some of backstage. I could see the band in the wings as the song played. Janick jumped up and down, dancing, loosing up. He probably ties with Bruce for putting on the most athletic show during a Maiden set. And since 1999 with 3 guitars in the band, Janick has been freed up to be even more athletic, twirling his guitar around and using it as more of a prop than an instrument. Dave Murray and Adrian Smith are there so Maiden can still hold down the patented dual lead guitar attack. And the near constant below it all is founder Steve Harris' galloping bass.
After the UFO song, the two video screens to the sides of the stagelit up with footage of screaming fans against the rail and footage from the aforementioned Ed Force One. The band all seemed to be having a great time in the video clips. I'm sure they come away from every tour with a chunk of change, but I still get the feeling that they honestly have a blast doing it.
The footage then turned black and white, showing British WWII newsreel footage. Just as at the beginning of the "Live After Death" album Winston Churchill's voice came on, giving us all the pep talk for Britons to hunker down and support the effort against the Nazi's. "We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be." And just as Winston said "We shall never surrender!" the first note of "Aces High" hit.
With a blast of light and the show was ON!
"There goes the siren that warns of the air raid!" screamed me and 16,000 other rabid fans along with Bruce. For about the next two hours solid it was all fists in the air and singing along. At the end of "Aces," Bruce did a high jump at the end of the stage that was worthy of a Youth of Today show! He showed that despite being middled-aged, he's in great shape.
This was the "Somewhere Back in Time" tour. As the name suggests, this was a retro tour. The setlist focused on mid 80s classics. In the past, Maiden has always played a lot of material off whatever new album they were supporting. This bias towards new material peaked with their previous tour. When I saw them in 2006, they opened the show by playing their entire 70-minute "A Matter of Life and Death" album from start until finish.
I love that album and thought it was a great show. But there were a lot of fans who shouted "play some old stuff!" and seemed to wish it could be eternally 1985, 86, 87, 88. And honestly, I'd have loved to see Maiden back then too. And this 2008 tour was the next best thing. With one exception every song played at the Meadowlands saw its original release on a 1980s album. And the stage set was mostly made up of element of the "World Slavery-Powerslave- 84-85" tour that spawned the Live After Death double LP.
The setlist was designed to make the entire crowd hoarse the next day. There were no clunkers. It was all-pleasing. And Bruce didn't miss any opportunities to encourage the crowd between (and during) songs. As with nearly every Maiden tour I've seen, there was a raised platform in a U shape behind the band with its wings jutting out on both sides of the stage. With a wireless mic, Bruce went all over the platform, acting as the ultimate cheerleader, pointing to different sections and raising his arms to get them all riled up.
Despite being the front man, Bruce had the worse fashion in the band. His look on this tour is kind of post-apocalyptic, ll patched together. As he has for the last few tours, he wore horrible black pants that looked like they were made from a hundred trash bags woven together. The many flaps of his leggings hung like the feathers of an oil spill seagull.
The only time I liked was he was wearing, was when he donned a redcoat uniform and grabbed a Union Jack for "the Trooper"
Bruce was also the only one in the band not wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt and the only one in the band with short hair. Despite the trends within the ranks of the elder statesmen of metal, everyone else in Maiden has kept his mane.
Janick was the only one in the band with white sneakers and he also was wearing the tightest pants, not counting the spandex shorts of Nicko the drummer. With the exception of Bruce, everyone in the band looked "conservatively metal"--- simple black--- t shirts and jeans. No cod pieces, spikes, or make-up.
Adrian Smith on guitar seemed to have lost a little weight since the last tour looking a bit more like his thin 80s version. While Maiden has never been a bunch of lookers, in my book Adrian still maintains the title of "most handsome Maiden." And Nicko is still dead last in the running.
Adrian also had a peace symbol sticker on one of his guitars. Despite its incongruity within a metal band that has a repertoire made up mostly of songs about war and battles, I thought it was a great statement. Below all the belligerent graphics, runs a lyrical theme of the futility of war. And as Bruce said on the "A Real Live One" album "just to make a mental note...war is bullshit. The people who make people go to war are usually politicians and the people that get killed are usually ordinary people." But Maiden has never been a very political band. They just aspire to be a fun band that taps into the testosterone and aggressive impulses of men. But in the end, they don't mean anyone any harm.
Maiden taps into something inside me. And I stayed riled up for the whole show. I didn't think once about sitting down or using the restroom. I knew almost every word uttered from the stage and I sang/screamed along about 70% of the time. And fortunately, I had a seat on an aisle, so I had an extra little bit of rock-out room. A few times I did almost rock out TOO hard and tripped back against the concrete step behind me.
The sound from our seats was a bit echoey. But that's to be expected at a 16,000 seat sports arena made of concrete and steel.
With our seats to the side of the stage near the front corner we got a bit of sound from the PA stacks facing forward and the ones to the side of the stage. The high volume bouncing off the floor, the ceiling, and the metalhead bodies made for a bit of an aural mess at times. Occasionally elements of the music seemed to fall out of time with one another. Listening back to the sound on amateur videos of the evening that are posted on youtube, it seems this occasional lack-of-togetherness was the fault of our seat positions and the uncomplimentary acoustics of the venue. The videos proved the band to be totally together at every moment captured.
The bad acoustics are kind of part of the fun, though. The continual awareness of the cavernous expanse of the venue reminded me that this was a huge show. And a huge show feels like an EVENT, a ceremony, something important. It's a whole different feel from seeing a band in a small, intimate venue that holds only a few hundred and has better acoustics.
I'd love to see Maiden in a tiny club, where I could hear and see every element clearly, but it takes 16,000 fans singing along to the "woah-oh-oh- woah-oh-oh-oh-ohhh-oh-oh-oh-woah-oh..." part of "Heaven Can Wait." to make it seem like an EVENT. I take pride in my idiosyncrasies and individualism but I love being a part of a huge unison mass from time to time. And Maiden provides a great opportunity for it.
A Maiden show is always light-hearted. Bruce also exhibits a self-deprecating humor between songs. This time around he kept doing a forgetful old man routine that got a little old after a while: "What? You're still here? Oh...where are we again?" etc. I was glad though that near the show's beginning he called the name "Izod Center" silly and simply called it "the Meadowlands" for the rest of the set.
A few times, the screens on the side of the stage caught Bruce looking out of it. He spent a lot of the show in a gray t-shirt that was soaked through with sweat. A few times he seemed out of breath. But running the length of an arena stage while singing and being nearly 50 is no easy feat. With the less than perfect acoustical conditions, it's difficult to say whether Bruce is fully living up to the hype that his voice is "as good now as it was in the mid 80s." At the Meadowlands, there seemed to be a few times when Bruce screamed words that he used to annunciate clearly at high pitches. But over all I'd say it's safe to say that Bruce has at least 80% of the range and power he had in 1985. And it didn't sound like the band had to drop pitches down to accommodate voice changes (unlike another British band that recently got together in another arena to play a bunch of old songs...)
If Maiden did the "classics" setlist format MY way, there wouldn't be any of the classic yet overplayed songs that were scattered throughout the Meadowlands show: "Trooper," "Run to the Hills" "Iron Maiden" "Number of the Beast" and "Hallowed Be Thy Name." They're all great songs but I've heard them at every other Maiden show I've been to. But nothing is ideal, and I sound like an ungrateful bastard saying oh "couldn't the best metal band in the world have played something OTHER than the 'Trooper.'" They may be over-played but can you ever go wrong with any of those songs? No.
And of course, this wasn't everyone's 5th Maiden show. If you're seeing Maiden for the first time (as I'm sure a lot of people at the Meadowlands were) you probably really want to hear all those songs that the veteran hardcore fans deem "overplayed."
And there were plenty of rarities to balance out the set: the "Aces High" opener, "Wasted Years," the epic "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (complete with dry ice and firework-explosions above the stage in time with the beats and "Moonchild" in the encore. And during the oft-played "Iron Maiden" theme song, a robotic cyborg "Eddie" came on stage straight from the Somewhere in Time album cover to battle Janick
Janick responded to the "threat" by switching to a wireless guitar that apparently was designed to take a beating. He thrust it continually at the robotic monster Eddie as part of a brief and deliciously cheesy melee.
Despite the sinister nature of most of their graphics, a Maiden show is really uplifting fun for everyone involved. Maiden is a surprisingly catchy sounding band. A lot of people unfamiliar with the band don't know that. I think the band gets judged a lot by their many dark and violent designs (courtesy of artist Derek Riggs) for record covers, posters, and t-shirts. Until the age of 14, all I knew of the band was their graphics and the song "No Prayer For the Dying" that I had on a 1991 Epic Records promo compilation that I got from sending in cereal box tops.
I was both afraid and intrigued by the image of Maiden for my entire youth even though I'd barely heard them. I was surprised
when I bought my first Maiden album, out of curiosity, that they were so melodic. I expected guttural, indecipherable vocals, breakneck velocity, and bone-crushing heaviness. But I was even happier with what I actually got from the band. (And soon enough I was able to find other avenues to satisfy my semi-articulated desire for truly evil-sounding music.)
Iron Maiden have a lot of songs that you can hear the first time and be singing along by the final chorus. A lot of their songs have an anthemic quality to them. Their 90s and 00s material is a bit darker and more introverted but at the Meadowlands they only did the 80s, with the exception of 1992's "Fear of the Dark"--- the most recent song that it seems ALL Maiden fans can agree is a classic. It's also very anthemic and conducive to singing along both in words and "oh"'s.
I could run through a song by song analysis of the set, but that would probably be too tedious. It is worth noting that with 3 guitars in the band now, the subtle off-stage keyboard parts that have crept into the repertoire since 1986 were often played at the Meadowlands on a 6 string by one of the guitarists. I couldn't tell for sure if "Heaven Can..." and "Fear..." stillused keyboards, but the prominent keyboard opening of the "Moonchild" encore was definitely done by a guitar.
Perhaps after 25 years Maiden could again live up to the promise they made on the inner sleeve of their Piece of Mind LP: "no synthesizers or ulterior motives."
For the fifth time since 1999 Maiden provided me with a loud night that was the perfect balance of heavy-yet-catchy songs, musical skill, clever lyrics, theatrics, explosions, and athletic "put your hands in the air!" showmanship.
Here's the set list. And posted below it are clips of every single song from the show (about 2 hours if you watch it all!) Since it's all covert amateur footage, the clarity isn't optimum, but the shaky, grainy, crowd-noise-filled clips capture the excitement of the night.
They're coming back again in June.
tickets for Madison Square Garden 6/15 go on sale today (3/22)
and tickets for Camden 6/17 go on sale 3/29
Get excited.
Up the Irons!
set list from the Meadowlands 3/14/2008:
1. Churchill's Speech / Aces High (from 'Powerslave' – 1984)
2. 2 Minutes to Midnight (from 'Powerslave' – 1984)
3. Revelations (from 'Piece Of Mind' – 1983)
4. The Trooper (from 'Piece Of Mind' – 1983)
5. Wasted Years (from 'Somewhere In Time' – 1986)
6. The Number of the Beast (from 'Number Of The Beast' – 1982)
7. Run to the Hills (from 'Number Of The Beast' – 1982)
8. Rime of the Ancient Mariner (from 'Powerslave' – 1984)
9. Powerslave (from 'Powerslave' – 1984)
10. Heaven Can Wait (from 'Somewhere In Time' – 1986)
11. Can I Play With Madness? (from 'Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son' –1988)
12. Fear of the Dark (from 'Fear Of The Dark' – 1992)
13. Iron Maiden (from 'Iron Maiden' – 1980)
Encore: 14. Moonchild (from 'Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son' – 1988)
15. The Clairvoyant (from 'Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son' – 1988)
16. Hallowed Be Thy Name (from 'Number Of The Beast' – 1982)
video intro>Churchill>Aces High:
2 minutes to midnight
Revelations
The Trooper
Wasted Years
Number of the Beast
Run to the Hills
Rime of the Ancient Mariner pt 1
Rime pt 2
Powerslave
Heaven Can Wait
Can I Play With Madness
Fear of the Dark
Iron Maiden
Moonchild
Clairvoyant
Hallowed Be Thy Name
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
a brief, yet heartfelt, 242 words about Gustav Holst's "the Planet," opus 32
I'm very psyched about seeing the Philadelphia Orchestra performing Gustav Holst's "the Planets" tonight at the Kimmel Center. It was written in the early 19 'teens (first performed 1918)
Contact me if you're interested in coming along. The performance is at 8pm. You'll need to meet me at the kimmel box off by 5pm to get $10 rush tickets (one per person allowed.)
Here are my two favorite sections of the 7-part piece
Mars, the Bringer of War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NeQ1h6lzLI
after the Japanese intro, the music starts at 0:53
This is one of the most tense, angry pieces of
orchestral music out there. I love the insistent
rhythmic phrases first tapped out by the low strings
(it begins with the triplet) and the apocalyptically
doomy end with time almost standing still as the tempo
slows to a crawl and the orchestra crushes the
listener
Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity:
In contrast to the cathartic anger of "Mars" Jupiter
is one of the most joyous orchestral pieces I've heard
(as the subtitle implies.) My favorite part is the
very "stately" slow waltz that starts at 1:43 with the
melody played by the lower brass and then soon
speeding up as the melody becomes lighter and more
staccato, literally flying away into the high
register. That part around 1:43 (and the reprise of it
near the end) is one of the few pieces of music that
often makes me cry. Happy tears. Flooded with emotion
tears.
And this section of "Jupiter" is the source for one of
my favorite "over taken" by the music stories. It was
reported that during the 9/28/1918 premier of the work
"the effect upon the small audience was intense---and
in the halls, during the playing of 'Jupiter,'
char-women were said to have set aside their scrubbing
to dance with each other."
The image of these working class downtrodden
cleaning women in Cheltenham, England throwing down
their mops and saying "fuck it, let's dance!" is so
beautiful. I think of it every time I hear this
section and I think it's what prompts the waterworks.
I think that music is the most powerful spiritual
force in the human world. And this is an example of
its power, at least to my non-denominational ears.
And at 6:47 in "Jupiter" the tambourine technique is
great. I'd actually never seen a close up of how the
sound was achieved until I saw this clip.
I enjoyed the Japanese characters and slight
out-of-sync nature of the video/soundtrack combo. It
gave the clips an otherworldly exoticism.
The other 5 sections are great too, but I'd be lying
if I didn't say they don't quite live up to the
intense rhythmic and melodic power of "Mars" and
Jupiter."
Contact me if you're interested in coming along. The performance is at 8pm. You'll need to meet me at the kimmel box off by 5pm to get $10 rush tickets (one per person allowed.)
Here are my two favorite sections of the 7-part piece
Mars, the Bringer of War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NeQ1h6lzLI
after the Japanese intro, the music starts at 0:53
This is one of the most tense, angry pieces of
orchestral music out there. I love the insistent
rhythmic phrases first tapped out by the low strings
(it begins with the triplet) and the apocalyptically
doomy end with time almost standing still as the tempo
slows to a crawl and the orchestra crushes the
listener
Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity:
In contrast to the cathartic anger of "Mars" Jupiter
is one of the most joyous orchestral pieces I've heard
(as the subtitle implies.) My favorite part is the
very "stately" slow waltz that starts at 1:43 with the
melody played by the lower brass and then soon
speeding up as the melody becomes lighter and more
staccato, literally flying away into the high
register. That part around 1:43 (and the reprise of it
near the end) is one of the few pieces of music that
often makes me cry. Happy tears. Flooded with emotion
tears.
And this section of "Jupiter" is the source for one of
my favorite "over taken" by the music stories. It was
reported that during the 9/28/1918 premier of the work
"the effect upon the small audience was intense---and
in the halls, during the playing of 'Jupiter,'
char-women were said to have set aside their scrubbing
to dance with each other."
The image of these working class downtrodden
cleaning women in Cheltenham, England throwing down
their mops and saying "fuck it, let's dance!" is so
beautiful. I think of it every time I hear this
section and I think it's what prompts the waterworks.
I think that music is the most powerful spiritual
force in the human world. And this is an example of
its power, at least to my non-denominational ears.
And at 6:47 in "Jupiter" the tambourine technique is
great. I'd actually never seen a close up of how the
sound was achieved until I saw this clip.
I enjoyed the Japanese characters and slight
out-of-sync nature of the video/soundtrack combo. It
gave the clips an otherworldly exoticism.
The other 5 sections are great too, but I'd be lying
if I didn't say they don't quite live up to the
intense rhythmic and melodic power of "Mars" and
Jupiter."
Thursday, February 14, 2008
707 words about 8mm of Led Zeppelin May 18th 1977
For months now I've been working on an epic Led Zeppelin blog piece. And this isn't it, quite yet.The piece in-the-works is epic, but still fragmentary. But this here hints at what's to come.
I've been a big Zep fan since age 11. Through the years Led Zep has come and gone from the forefront of my most-listen-to bands, but they've always been somewhere in my regular mix.
Well, Zep, and especially live bootleg Zep, has been in the forefront again since last summer. The rumors, confirmation, and playing of a great Led Zeppelin reunion show in December rekindled the all-consuming passion for Zep in my life. LZ are again a current event, of sorts, and it's been fun following the play-by-play as the reunion show happened (and now rumors of a Fall reunion tour are happening.)
I've also download about 50 full Zep shows via torrent shares in the past six months. There's no more paying $25-a-disc for poorly-labelled "Italian import" CDs of dubious sound quality. They're now all free, maintained by super-fans and equally accessible to anyone with a hard drive and a decent high speed connection.
And even some unreleased video footage has been floating around, such as this
Yes, the sound quality is awful from a technical standpoint and the band is fuzzy and distant.
but this is IT, a homemade fragment of the pinnacle of Zeppelin's popularity: the United States Tour Summer of 1977: 44 dates of sold out shows in arenas and stadiums holding anywhere from 15-76,000 with the shows stretching for 3- 3 1/2 hours every night!
And going by the amount of "United States Tour 1977" shirts on the backs of college dudes last summer, a quarter of early 20-something Americans were at one of these shows from April-July 1977. But of course they're all about 20 years too young to have really been at any of the shows. And I'd be willing to bet that very few of them have actually heard a Zep '77 show, since nothing from the tour has ever been officially released, with the exception of one song as a submenu background on the Led Zeppelin "DVD."
Of course even most of the hardcore Zeppelin fans of today (including yours truly, the typist) were too young to be at any of these shows 1977 filled with:
Double neck guitars
white satin bellbottomed suits worn shirtless, embroidered with dragons and poppies.
Drugs, and groupies
bare chests and sock-lumped trousers
Firecrackers and fan riots.
25 minute drum solos
John Paul Jones playing a 3-necked acoustic 26-stringed monstrosity: mandolin, 6 and 12 string guitar all together.
I wish I could've been there ,though. And with headphone-plugged ears and the laptop in full-screen mode i can at least pretend. The hot fuzziness of this amateur Birmingham film gives me that "I'm there!" feeling in a way that the sharp clarity of the officially released material cannot. What it loses in clarity, it gains in raw excitement.
The cavernous boom gives an idea of the magnitude of the venue. And the roar gives an idea of the magnitude of the crowd.
To be exact what we're looking at here is Birmingham May 18th 1977 at the Jefferson Memorial Coliseum.
To be exact this was Led Zeppelin's final US tour. Within a couple months, the death of Robert Plant's young son would grind the tour to a halt and put a cloud over the band's sunny, cocky nature. This cloud would remain overhead until the band's end.
And that end was to come about 3 and a half years after this fan-made
film was shot. And in that time heroin and alcohol would work their dark, isolating magic on half the band (the White Stripes-esque half.) And It was just a day before my 1st birthday, Sept 25, 1980 that the band would hit their vomitous rhythmless end.
But that's all darkness.
Though, as Jimmy Page said back in the early 70s, the mission of the band was to create both "light and shade."
And this echoey, jittery film is the manifestation of that lightness. It's 8mm of pure joy, with Jimmy glowing in in his white costume, flying around the stage on twinkling toes, and seeming thin enough to be blown away by a moderate wind. And the huge collective excitement of the evening is channeled through Jimmy Page's continually-moving feet .
"The Song Remains the Same" is in the first fragment of this Birmingham clip. The song opened every single Zep concert in '77. And to my ears it's a perfect opener. It could be the soundtrack for a chase scene or for the Indy 500. It showcases speed and intensity. The band comes out of the gate charging with it. There was no easing the crowd into the show. From the first moments the band is going right for the teenage throat. And they're drawing blood too.
And if you pick threw all the noise and boom and jump cuts, you can hear they're all playing very well, here in Alabama.
For the whole time, Jimmy Page gives no quarter. All the while this motherf*cker has restless leg syndrome. I love how Jimmy's flared trousers accentuate this dramatic footwork. And I think cocaine trumped heroin for the white wizard on this night.
He falls to his knees at the end of a drum roll 0:33-0:37
He marches to the stage front to take a bow 1:05-1:11
He kicks imaginary soccer balls off of stage right 2:02-2:07
He spins around in a full circle between slow bluesy phrases 3:22-3:25
His hand goes up to cast a spell to increase the band's speed and intensity 4:01-4:07
He makes a crotch-forward lunge 4:23-4:26
He makes a dramatic turn in time with a cymbal accent 5:32
He goose steps, raises his hand to cast more spells and dances like a maniac, a maniac for sure. 6:12-7:20 (The previous month in Chicago on April 10 he wore jack boots and a Nazi SS officer's cap on stage, so militaristic moves were not unprecedented for this tour)
He drops to his knees to praise the Lord (of this self-professed band of Over-Lords) 8:28
He duck-walks and dances with Robert Plant 9:22-9:30
Meanwhile, as his toes are twinkling, he's shadowed by the OTHER string man in white who mostly hides in the darkness behind Jimmy's right shoulder. Naturally, Bonham can't really go anywhere and is stuck near the back of the frame. And Plant mostly just stands looking pretty: bare-chested, tight-trousered, and perfect-haired.
note: the clip is credited on the tube to "the Nobs" to avoid getting pulled for copyright reasons. For those not in the know, the band played one show in 1970 under the alias "the Nobs" to avoid legal action against them by the heiress of Graf von Zeppelin while playing near her home turf in Denmark.
I've been a big Zep fan since age 11. Through the years Led Zep has come and gone from the forefront of my most-listen-to bands, but they've always been somewhere in my regular mix.
Well, Zep, and especially live bootleg Zep, has been in the forefront again since last summer. The rumors, confirmation, and playing of a great Led Zeppelin reunion show in December rekindled the all-consuming passion for Zep in my life. LZ are again a current event, of sorts, and it's been fun following the play-by-play as the reunion show happened (and now rumors of a Fall reunion tour are happening.)
I've also download about 50 full Zep shows via torrent shares in the past six months. There's no more paying $25-a-disc for poorly-labelled "Italian import" CDs of dubious sound quality. They're now all free, maintained by super-fans and equally accessible to anyone with a hard drive and a decent high speed connection.
And even some unreleased video footage has been floating around, such as this
Yes, the sound quality is awful from a technical standpoint and the band is fuzzy and distant.
but this is IT, a homemade fragment of the pinnacle of Zeppelin's popularity: the United States Tour Summer of 1977: 44 dates of sold out shows in arenas and stadiums holding anywhere from 15-76,000 with the shows stretching for 3- 3 1/2 hours every night!
And going by the amount of "United States Tour 1977" shirts on the backs of college dudes last summer, a quarter of early 20-something Americans were at one of these shows from April-July 1977. But of course they're all about 20 years too young to have really been at any of the shows. And I'd be willing to bet that very few of them have actually heard a Zep '77 show, since nothing from the tour has ever been officially released, with the exception of one song as a submenu background on the Led Zeppelin "DVD."
Of course even most of the hardcore Zeppelin fans of today (including yours truly, the typist) were too young to be at any of these shows 1977 filled with:
Double neck guitars
white satin bellbottomed suits worn shirtless, embroidered with dragons and poppies.
Drugs, and groupies
bare chests and sock-lumped trousers
Firecrackers and fan riots.
25 minute drum solos
John Paul Jones playing a 3-necked acoustic 26-stringed monstrosity: mandolin, 6 and 12 string guitar all together.
I wish I could've been there ,though. And with headphone-plugged ears and the laptop in full-screen mode i can at least pretend. The hot fuzziness of this amateur Birmingham film gives me that "I'm there!" feeling in a way that the sharp clarity of the officially released material cannot. What it loses in clarity, it gains in raw excitement.
The cavernous boom gives an idea of the magnitude of the venue. And the roar gives an idea of the magnitude of the crowd.
To be exact what we're looking at here is Birmingham May 18th 1977 at the Jefferson Memorial Coliseum.
To be exact this was Led Zeppelin's final US tour. Within a couple months, the death of Robert Plant's young son would grind the tour to a halt and put a cloud over the band's sunny, cocky nature. This cloud would remain overhead until the band's end.
And that end was to come about 3 and a half years after this fan-made
film was shot. And in that time heroin and alcohol would work their dark, isolating magic on half the band (the White Stripes-esque half.) And It was just a day before my 1st birthday, Sept 25, 1980 that the band would hit their vomitous rhythmless end.
But that's all darkness.
Though, as Jimmy Page said back in the early 70s, the mission of the band was to create both "light and shade."
And this echoey, jittery film is the manifestation of that lightness. It's 8mm of pure joy, with Jimmy glowing in in his white costume, flying around the stage on twinkling toes, and seeming thin enough to be blown away by a moderate wind. And the huge collective excitement of the evening is channeled through Jimmy Page's continually-moving feet .
"The Song Remains the Same" is in the first fragment of this Birmingham clip. The song opened every single Zep concert in '77. And to my ears it's a perfect opener. It could be the soundtrack for a chase scene or for the Indy 500. It showcases speed and intensity. The band comes out of the gate charging with it. There was no easing the crowd into the show. From the first moments the band is going right for the teenage throat. And they're drawing blood too.
And if you pick threw all the noise and boom and jump cuts, you can hear they're all playing very well, here in Alabama.
For the whole time, Jimmy Page gives no quarter. All the while this motherf*cker has restless leg syndrome. I love how Jimmy's flared trousers accentuate this dramatic footwork. And I think cocaine trumped heroin for the white wizard on this night.
He falls to his knees at the end of a drum roll 0:33-0:37
He marches to the stage front to take a bow 1:05-1:11
He kicks imaginary soccer balls off of stage right 2:02-2:07
He spins around in a full circle between slow bluesy phrases 3:22-3:25
His hand goes up to cast a spell to increase the band's speed and intensity 4:01-4:07
He makes a crotch-forward lunge 4:23-4:26
He makes a dramatic turn in time with a cymbal accent 5:32
He goose steps, raises his hand to cast more spells and dances like a maniac, a maniac for sure. 6:12-7:20 (The previous month in Chicago on April 10 he wore jack boots and a Nazi SS officer's cap on stage, so militaristic moves were not unprecedented for this tour)
He drops to his knees to praise the Lord (of this self-professed band of Over-Lords) 8:28
He duck-walks and dances with Robert Plant 9:22-9:30
Meanwhile, as his toes are twinkling, he's shadowed by the OTHER string man in white who mostly hides in the darkness behind Jimmy's right shoulder. Naturally, Bonham can't really go anywhere and is stuck near the back of the frame. And Plant mostly just stands looking pretty: bare-chested, tight-trousered, and perfect-haired.
note: the clip is credited on the tube to "the Nobs" to avoid getting pulled for copyright reasons. For those not in the know, the band played one show in 1970 under the alias "the Nobs" to avoid legal action against them by the heiress of Graf von Zeppelin while playing near her home turf in Denmark.
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