Tortoise recently announced some upcoming dates to their slowly-building tour. One date of particular interest to us here at playbsides is the September 27th show at the University of Madison’s Memorial Terrace.
When I inquired about the availability of tickets the Student Union said that the show is part of the “Snake on the Lake Festival” which runs from 3PM to Midnight. The event is free but is intended for UW-Madison students, faculty, staff and Union members and their guests. This festival is put on by the Union and WSUM.
So, if you aren’t any of those or know anyone who is, you can join the UW Union as a member for 1 year for $50. You’ll need to bring your membership card to the show and you can bring guests. So, I’m thinking of joining and splitting the fee with a couple of friends who are big Tortoise fans.
According to Muzzle of Bees, other acts that have confirmed are Damien Jurado, Awesome Color, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, El Valiente, and Pistols at Dawn.
Tortoise has been playing three new songs in their setlists which appear to be the same songs they debuted at the Thrill Jockey 15 show last December. The titles are “Korg”, “Glow,” and “Coffin.” It remains to be seen whether these will be the actual titles when these are released or if they are just what they’re calling them on the setlists.
In the last couple of years Cedar Rapids has had some disappointments when it comes to national touring acts wanting to stop by our fair city. Acts that had planned stops but backed out or had changes included Black Eyed Peas, Willie Nelson (this year anyway, he did stop by with Dylan a couple of years ago), and Kid Rock to name a few that I was paying attention to. Unfortunately, the US Cellular Center– formerly the Five Seasons Center– is getting a bit long-in-the-tooth when it comes to mid-sized arenas. In some cases acts can’t perform there because their stage or rigging might not fit, in other cases there are newer and nicer arenas cropping up in the area. It seems that Council Bluffs is really getting a nice run of acts through their new facility. To add insult to injury, the center was designed with sports in mind, so backstage ends up being not much more than a locker room. Certainly not very appealing.
So it is with some hopefulness that we hear that Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails are planning a stop at the US Cellular Center as part of his very extensive “Lights In The Sky : 2008 Tour.” The sale date for the tickets have not been announced, yet, but if you sign up with nin.com, you have the opportunity to buy the tickets pre-sale.
The line-up of opening acts for this tour is impressive and includes Crystal Castles, Deerhunter, Does It Offend You, Yeah?, and personal favorite the shoegazy distortion festival known as A Place to Bury Strangers. The opening act is TBD, but the website is offering for download a free sampler of all of these bands and a couple of tracks from NIN.
I’ve seen Nine Inch Nails three times. The first time was for the first Lollapalooza in 1991 at the World Theater in Tinley Park. This was a daytime show– Nine Inch Nails was one of the afternoon acts along with the Butthole Surfers as I recall. I saw them twice for the Downward Spiral tour. They played Carver Hawkeye in Iowa City on 11/6/94. They were supposed to play the Mark of the Quad Cities (now called the iWireless Center) in Moline on 1/19/95 but it was cancelled due to a snowstorm. I saw them again on 2/4/95 at the Target Center in Minneapolis. I think that Marilyn Manson opened the two shows I saw. Pop Will Eat Itself was supposed to open in Moline. In 1995 I was a very big fan of NIN and had all of the “halos” (“Halo” was a catalog designation for the NIN releases including albums and singles). I stopped listening to NIN some time after The Downward Spiral and hadn’t really followed Trent’s career closely until last year with the Year Zero release. If the ticket prices aren’t crazy, I would like to see the show.
I’ll update this article as I get more information about the show, so stay tuned.
After the two“teasers” from Quarterstick, we are provided the full length video for “Two Silver Trees” which seems to be the first single from Calexico’s upcoming Carried to Dust album due out September 9th. The video includes footage that was used in both of the teasers– Joey and John play in the Hotel Congress Tap Bar as well as the on the amazing Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) aka the “Airplane Graveyard” on Davis Monthan AFB. The video is interspersed with other landmarks from Tucson. A very cool video that makes me want to take a road trip to Tucson.
My last business trip to Boston was happily full of music between seeing Sheryl Crow and getting to run to Newbury Comics before dinner the next night. Thankfully, the restaurant we were going to was just down the street from Newbury Comics. I had hit their website before we went out and they had listed in their Top 100 Vinyl Records sale that Beck’s new album Modern Guilt was on sale as was Endtroducing by DJ Shadow. I was disappointed to find out that these were apparently on-line only, and not in-store. I still picked up a couple of records, though.
Beck – Modern Guilt (LP, DGC Records B0011630-01, 2008) ($14.99) This album just begged to be released on vinyl– from its retro Blue Note-looking sleeve, to the production by Danger Mouse– so I was happy when they announced its release. The record is a hefty 180g slab, and there is a sheet included with lyrics and credits. In addition there is a code to download 320Kbps mp3’s of the album that were ripped from vinyl! I downloaded them promptly and compared them to my other 320Kbps rip from CD. Before the first track “Orphans” you get a needle drop sound and after the last track of side one “Youthless” sound of the needle lifting again. This is repeated for “Walls” and “Volcano” on side two. Cute. The coupon says “This higher quality sound has been taken directly from the vinyl playback — offering a broader sound spectrum to enhance your audio experience.” Well, I don’t know about that. It’s a pretty good rip, but even 320Kbps is compressed. They should have offered .wav’s if they wanted to maintain the fidelity. I read a lot of reviewers complaining about Modern Guilt dismissing it as Beck fronting Gnarls Barkley and other really clever criticisms. This is probably my favorite Beck album next to Sea Change which was another misunderstood Beck album.
Arbouretum/Pontiak – Kale (LP, Thrill Jockey Thrill 201, 2008) ($12.99) This is an interesting release in that the only physical media will be vinyl. Thrill Jockey, consistant with all of their vinyl releases in the last year also includes a coupon for a free mp3 download which is great. BTW: all of the mp3 downloads from the Thrill Jockey store are 320Kbps, so there is someone there who gets it. This is a split release between Arbouretum and Pontiak. This is the third release for both bands. I saw Arbouretum at the Thrill Jockey 15 shows last December and was floored by their live performance and their 2007 release Rites of Uncovering is in regular rotation for me. Both bands try their hand at covering John Cale songs in amongst original songs. Arobouretum tackles “Buffalo Ballet” from Cales very influential and groundbreaking 1974 album Fear. “Buffalo Ballet” is a beautiful song and Arbouretum’s take on it leaves it pretty much in tact other than adding some sludgy distortion goodness to it. (Note to self: go buy Fear) Pontiak takes on two songs “The Endless Plain of Fortune” from Cale’s brilliant Paris 1919 album from 1973 and “Mr. Wilson” from the 1975 follow up to Fear, Slow Dazzle. The original tracks for both bands are great and stand up well against their recent releases. I especially dig the track “Green Pool” from Pontiak in which the slapback echo vocals ride the wave of a circular guitar line and slinky bass to a crest that fits nicely next to their very delicate take on “Mr. Wilson.” “Green Pool” ends waaaay too soon. I hope they jam a bit more than the 3:27 lets them do in a live setting.
I’m still bummed that Pontiak didn’t make their show in Iowa City due to the floods. I’m hoping they’ll be back soon.
Backyard Tire Fire is a band I’d heard of, but never searched out. So, it was cool that the band’s manager reached out to me via MySpace last week to be a friend. I gave a listen to some of the songs on their page and checked out the streaming songs from their upcoming album on their website, too.
The guys from Backyard Tire Fire are from Bloomington, Illinois which is next to Normal, where I spent part of my childhood and one of my brothers was born there in the early Seventies while my dad worked at General Electric. Not that this makes them my neighbor, but they might be the only band I’ve ever heard of from there.
I bought and downloaded from mp3.rhapsody.com Tire Fire’s 2007 release Vagabonds and Hooligans in an acceptible 256K rip. The band delivers a confident mix of Americana-leaning rock with Indie sensibilities. Across the album we are offered glimpses of the bands influences– “Green Eyed Soul” comes off like an early Wilco track, “Tom Petty” draws a bit from Tom Petty. The Black Crowes could stand to write a soulful ballad like “The Wrong Hand.” But, to break Backyard Tire Fire down to comparisons misses the fact that it is a strong album from a band that is growing with every release.
In a time when bands that tour as much as Backyard Tire Fire does tend to wait a while between releases, it’s a bit surprising to see that they are releasing the followup to Vagabonds and Hooligans at the end of this month (August 26th) titled The Places We Lived. The three songs streaming from their website and MySpace page shows the promise of another great release. According to the press info on their website, the band holds true to an analog asthetic preferring to record with tape over ProTools. The logical The There will be a vinyl version of this album as well!
The band is getting ready for a run of late-summer Midwestern dates in support of the release that will run through the end of September. Here are the dates as of today from their MySpace page.
The band will be in Iowa City at the Picador on September 10th. The show is at 7:30PM so maybe it will get over early enough for me to do a mid-week show. Opening is Ha Ha Tonka who did a Daytrotter session in July. Tickets are $7 and if you order them in advance you get a signed poster of the album art you can pick up at the show.
There are a lot of places to stream or download content for Backyard Tire Fire.
While I was doing some research on the Johnny Cash POV documentary that was on PBS this week, I stumbled upon this video of Everlast doing a cover of the Cash classic “Folsom Prison Blues.” It’s pretty true to the original version really only adding the beat and scream from “Insane in the Membrane.”
I’m not sure what to make of the use of Johnny Cash as sort of a duet a la “Unforgettable” (as one of the people comments on this video). Apparently Everlast has a new album coming out September 23rd called Love, War, and the Ghost of Whitey Ford and this will be on it. This will be his 5th solo album and will come out on his own Martyr, Inc. label.
If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I recently completed my search for Tortoise vinyl over the last couple of years. One of the first LP’s I got was Standards, Tortoise’s 2001 release.
Yesterday, Thrill Jockey announced that due to popular demand they have run a second pressing of Standards in RED vinyl! The first pressing is in black. Like the first pressing the LP and cover art will be encased in a silk-screened clear vinyl sleeve. In the picture of my copy to the left the words “Tortoise” and “Standards” are the silk-screened part.
This will be– of course– in a very limited pressing of 1000 and available through the website at $13.99 plus shipping. This will include for the first time a coupon for free downloads of the mp3’s too. Typically these mp3’s are a lush 320Kbps.
I think that next to TNT, Standards is probably Tortoise’s most popular release with the two live performance staples of “Seneca” with it’s epic guitar distortion intro and recent development of audience clapping the beat at the end, and the vocoder-and-synth electro love of “Monica.” Standards is a must-have and, of course the audible meal of Tortoise is best served on vinyl.
Does this mean we will see other reissues of the Tortoise catalog? With the promise of a new Tortoise album– they’re already playing some great new songs live– there will likely be a renewed interest in the back catalog.
I was in Boston this week for business and had the opportunity to see Sheryl Crow live at the very nice Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. It was a beautiful evening and the chance to see a show outdoors at night was great. The seemingly largely female audience was entertained by James “You’re Beautiful” Blunt and legendary Reggae/Ska act Toots and the Maytals. Overlong dinner plans caused the group I was with to miss all of Toots’s show and mercifully most of Blunt’s show. I did get to hear “Beautiful” as well as his newer single “1973” which seemed unexpectedly full of energy for the weepy folkster. He was standing on his piano and running through the audience. BTW: “1973” quotes “I Can See Clearly Now” which Crow drops in a song later in the evening.
In a fashion similar to the Detours album, Sheryl opened the set with a solo acoustic performance of “God Bless This Mess.” The band joined and provided a rocking set of Sheryl’s catalog– covering a good balance of her big hits and songs from her new album.
Admittedly, I was a bit skeptical about this show. I knew she put on a good live show but her last two albums– the country influenced Wildflowers and her latest Detours which is a personal account of the last three years of her life– have been a departure from her typical releases and certainly from the sunkissed C’mon C’mon. I had downloaded her last two albums but never really got past a cursory listen.
Any reservations I had about the show were cast away as Sheryl and band started working the stage. She was clearly enjoying herself and the crowd was returning the positive vibe she was delivering. My wife thinks that most men are only fans of Sheryl because they want to sleep with her. While I agree that Sheryl is holding up very well for 46, she is a very confident live performer that delivers as entertaining a live show as I have seen with any seasoned live act. In fact, it occurred to me watching the show that her no-nonsense blend of American rock reminded me of Tom Petty’s live shows.
I was pretty impressed with her (and her band’s) ability to carry off some covers and cover teases. It is with a knowing wink that they carried the bluesy Fender Rhodes and bongos driven “Gasoline” from Detours into “Gimme Shelter.” Her tease of Gary Wright’s “Love is Alive” in “There Goes The Neighborhood” was unexpected (at least by me, I don’t know if she does this at every show) and appreciated. The cover of “Higher Ground” by Stevie Wonder was very good and a fun way to wrap up the encore.
The hits were mostly in attendance: “Leaving Los Vegas,” “Strong Enough,” “My Favorite Mistake,” “If It Makes You Happy,” “Soak Up The Sun,” “Everyday Is A Winding Road,” and “All I Wanna Do” enough to keep some of the others in my group who weren’t as familiar with Sheryl’s catalog happy and they commented about how surprised they were that they knew so many songs.
She performed no less than six songs from her new album, and they fit in very well alongside her very intimidating run of hits since 1994. Before performing the title track of this year’s Detours Sheryl made reference to her recent life-altering events by saying that “it’s the detours that really teach you about who you are.”
On the flight home from Boston I decided to give Detours another listen. At times its honesty is a bit shocking and not at all what I expected. The brave portrayal of raw emotion in songs like “Diamond Ring,” “Make It Go Away (Radiation Song),” and “Lullaby For Wyatt” actually reminds me of John Lennon’s laid-bare biographical approach to songwriting during his solo career. The album and likely this tour is a cathartic exercise for Sheryl and one she evidently needed. This show and review of her latest album changes Sheryl for me from the “beer-drinking in the morning party girl” to a woman who is bravely sharing a close look at herself at a time of change. It will be interesting to see what is next.
Setlist (thanks to the boards at sherylcrow.com)
God Bless This Mess
Shine Over Babylon
Love Is Free
Leaving Los Vegas
Strong Enough
Can’t Cry Anymore (including I Can See Clearly)
Motivation
My Favorite Mistake
Gasoline (Gimme Shelter)
There Goes The Neighborhood (including Love Is Alive)
Detours
Redemption Day
Out of Our Heads
If It Makes You Happy
Soak Up The Sun
Everyday Is A Winding Road
Encore:
All I Wanna Do
Higher Ground
Click Here for my flickr photoset of the show with more pictures
It’s with slight trepidation and risk of any “cred” that I may have gained over the years that I write about this purchase. Limited Warranty is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me and is probably tainted and tinted by the gathering fog and mist clouding my memory of this band.
Limited Warranty was a band from Minneapolis that won the Star Search bands competition in 1985 which landed them a big cash prize and a single that was pushed for radio play. That single “This Is Serious” b/w “Never Enough” was recorded with former Psychedelic Furs drummer Vince Ely producing. The single enjoyed lots of airplay in the Midwest and toured extensively. They were eventually approached by ATCO, a subsidiary label of Atlantic to record their first album released in 1986.
This album, produced by Brian Tench who also worked with Orchestral Manoevers in the Dark, Bow Wow Wow and other New Wave Acts, along with its first single “Victory Line” seemed to do really well. The album certainly got a lot of play in Dubuque on KLYV-105. Some of this, I believe, was because one of the member’s uncle was the station manager. Limited Warranty played in the Dubuque area quite a bit as I recall. I saw them play the Dubuque County Fairgrounds for a M.A.D.D. benefit with a couple of other bands. My brother Steve used to have the poster for this show “Fun-Tacked” to his bedroom door. We also saw them play the Circle in East Dubuque in the winter.
According to this very informative site on Limited Warranty, the band was recording demos for its follow-up album on ATCO when they were dropped from the label. Some of this material was included on their self-released EP called Domestic 7. They came to Dubuque around this time and made an in-store appearance at TJ’s Music World and did an interview on KLYV around this same time telling their story and pushing the EP. I bought the EP on cassette, and I still have it. I also picked up the album on cassette out of a cut-out bin at Musicland in Dubuque. I had always intended to rip these two releases to CD or mp3 but never got around to it.
Listening to it now, it certainly brings back a lot of memories. It is the pop hook-laden album I remember it to be. I had a co-worker listen to it, and his comment was that while it was pretty good and well-done, it was missing something that would have pushed it to the levels of label-mates INXS. I think it has something to do with the missing teenage angst or some level of darkness. It sounds as good as some of their contemporaries like the Psychedelic Furs, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Duran Duran, or OMD would have been turning out. The closest they get is the song “Domestic 7” about old folks homes with its samples of old people talking. The production is a bit thin, unfortunately, but very clean. I think this is a result of this album never having been released on CD so we are getting the limited bandwidth of the cassette or vinyl master. So, it could stand a remastering. Nevertheless, it’s cool to hear these songs again.
Thanks to Brian’s World for his Limited Warranty website— complete with mp3 samples of all of the releases!
The Del Fuegos – The Longest Day (CD, Wounded Bird WOU 5174, 2008) ($7.33)
This was the week where I revisited my favorite music from the 80’s in my purchases. I was reading the very helpful Monday post from Largehearted Boy that lists the Tuesday CD and DVD releases and was surprised to see that the first three albums from 80’s roots rock band The Del Fuegos were listed as being reissued! WTF?
In 1985, probably watching Night Tracks on WTBS or Night Flight on the USA Channel, I encountered The Del Fuegos and their breakout single “Don’t Run Wild.” We didn’t have MTV in my hometown so these shows in addition to Radio 1990 and Friday Night Videos were the only music video sources available to me. “Don’t Run Wild”‘s opening muted guitar and bass riffs and snapping fingers made me a believer and this little band from Boston became one of my favorite bands and is still one I listen to.
In the summer of 1985 I discovered R.E.M. during a family vacation in California which triggered in me the desire to search out bands that other kids in my hometown of 1200 people hadn’t heard of. That summer I was 16 and with driver’s license clutched firmly in hand I would cruise around town with friends listening to a lot of bands that had this retro Midwest 60’s garage sound– The Smithereens, The Del Fuegos, The BoDeans, Los Lobos, Violent Femmes, R.E.M. and others– and this would be the sound that would carry me to the “alternative” college rock bands after high school.
The Del Fuegos were a hard-working, hard-rocking, and apparently hard-drinking bar band from Boston who were signed to indie label Slash Records which at this time was being distributed by Warners. Their first two albums The Longest Day and Boston, Mass were well-regarded critically, but it wasn’t until they were approached by Miller Beer to appear in a commercial representing a hard working blue collar band that they grabbed national attention to the din of longtime fans’ cries of “sellout!” In 1987 they followed up with Stand Up, their third album with the winning partnership of Mitch Froom at the boards.
That summer my family and my best friend Kurt went to Chicago to see The Del Fuegos along with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and The Georgia Satellites as part of Petty’s “Rock and Roll Revival Tour” at Poplar Creek on June 20, 1987. The Fuegos, the band that didn’t have a hit on the charts at the time– unlike the Satellites was made the opening act. We were really excited to see the band and to see Tom Petty. Unfortunately, dwarfed by the huge stage in the hard light of the afternoon and possibly seventeen dates into a 33-date long summer tour their abbreviated opening slot seemed to lack the magic we’d expected from the band we listened to regularly over the last two years. I was also hoping that Petty would have joined the band to reprise his harmony vocals from the album on “I Can’t Take This Place” but that wasn’t meant to be, either.
According to this biography of lead singer and founder of the Del Fuegos Dan Zanes, following that tour Warren Zanes and Woody Giessmann quit the band and the band was dropped from Slash. That Fall I went to College and focused on other bands I was being exposed to by new friends I was making there.
In 1989 Dan and bass player Tom Lloyd attempted to revive the band– this time with members replacing brother Zanes and Giessmann with a new guitarist and drummer and new label RCA. I didn’t purchase Smoking In The Fields initially– my brother Steve had a copy of it and listened to it quite a bit as I recall. Producer/Engineer Dave Thoener provided a more lush, updated version of the sound of three previous records and it yielded a rocking first single in “Move With Me Sister” which got to #22 on the Modern Rock charts. However, it died quickly with a lack of support from the label or it’s A&R army– a record out-of-time in some respects. It sadly made its final rest among the cut-out bins which is where I got my copy. Listening to it today as I write this article, it is a solid record from beginning to end and sounds as good as some Tom Petty records in his catalog and shows Zanes as the strong songwriter and frontman that he was. Smoking in the Fields is as deserving of a reissue as the other three albums in my opinion.
In 1994 he came out of a period of retirement during which he started a family and quit drinking by providing a very short instrumental titled “Moon Over Greene County” to the soundtrack to “Natural Born Killers.” This was followed in 1995 by his first solo album Cool Down Time which was released on short lived Private Music which was bought by BMG the following year and has been out-of-print since. (There are a bunch of copies for under $5 on Amazon, BTW). This record was a return of Mitch Froom at the helm and brought his clank-and-rattle percussion and odd keyboard sounds he developed in the Latin Playboys to Dan’s trademark roots sound. I love this album and it’s shared production style with the Latin Playboys, 99.9 Fahrenheit Degrees from Froom’s ex-wife Suzanne Vega, and Colossal Head from Los Lobos is an interesting mix. Dan provided an e-mail address in the CD booklet and he and I exchanged a few e-mails which was cool.
The story has been told a number of times elsewhere on the net about Dan being disappointed with the children’s music available and how he has reinvented himself as a children’s/family-friendly artist and this path gave him a Grammy in 2007 for Catch That Train! in the Best Musical Album for Children category.
In 2001 Warner Brothers sort of righted a long-standing wrong by providing The Longest Day on CD. The two following albums had existed been released on CD, but not Day. They did this strangely by including the whole album as part of an import Best of the Del Fuegos : The Slash Years which also had tracks from the subsequent two albums. I hadn’t gotten around to purchasing this album and now I don’t need to since it has been reissued by a label I hadn’t heard of called Wounded Bird.
Wounded Bird is a reissues label that has been in existence since 1998 and has a pretty impressive catalog of releases including most of Bread’s catalog, Marshall Crenshaw, the solo work of the Cars and many others. It appears based on the two CD’s I bought so far that they are licensed and manufactured by Rhino Entertainment. So, this implies that they have access to the original masters to make them. I have read some reviews on Amazon that people have been disappointed with some of the releases’ sound quality. So, I think releases from this label come with a bit of buyer beware in that they aren’t re-mastering these recordings, so if there hasn’t been a CD transfer done these are coming from LP/Cassette masters. In the case of The Longest Day the production sounds great, so I’m assuming they are using the masters that were used for the 2001 Best of release. In the case of Boston, Mass and Stand Up they would be using the CD masters.
It’s great to have this on CD, finally and completes my collection. I have the Slash catalog of the Del Fuegos on vinyl as well so I feel that my collection is pretty complete with this band.
Tortoise recently announced some upcoming dates to their slowly-building tour. One date of particular interest to us here at playbsides is the September 27th show at the University of Madison’s Memorial Terrace.
If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I recently completed my search for Tortoise vinyl over the last couple of years. One of the first LP’s I got was Standards, 
and 