Category Archives: Music

Capsula previews new songs at The Triple Door

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Capsula finished recording their new album, Solar Secrets, at Saint Claire Studio in Kentucky with Tony Visconti producing. While he is mixing the album that is due out in August, the band is on the road as the opening act for Ose Mutantes.

The show was Wednesday night at The Triple Door, Seattle’s dinner-club music venue. It’s nothing like The Funhouse, The Comet Tavern  (de puta madre!), or the Mural Amphitheater – the three venues Capsula has played in past shows.

I’ve seen a few shows at The Triple Door, and I wasn’t sure how Capsula would play to a crowd of mostly older music fans who were all seated at their tables eating dinner and sipping on their drinks as they waited to see the headliner, Ose Mutantes.

Capsula had no problem adapting to the venue. They opened with a song from Rising Mountains, and followed with their cover of “Moonage Daydream” from the Ziggy album and, during his guitar solo, Martin Guevara got down from the stage, jutted back and forth between tables, and then climbed on top of a booth to play out the solo. The band had the crowd in its hands from that point on.

They played a couple of new songs from Solar Secrets, but I don’t recall the titles. I do remember the songs rocked and sounded great. I think it was during one of the new songs when Martin scraped the neck of his guitar across the edge of the stage to start some feedback and then held it above his head and banged on it like it was a percussion instrument. Loved it.

Before the last song of the set, Martin said “I don’t know if you can get out of your seats here, but you should for just this last song, if it’s okay.” Many people obliged.

Capsula Triple Door 1Cory and I were able to talk to their tour manager in the merch booth and later to the band. We found out they’ll be heading back to Europe this summer and hope to return to Seattle during their U.S. tour to support the new album. Martin said he would really like to play the KEXP Barbecue at the Mural Amphitheater this year. (Anybody from KEXP reading this? Make it happen!)

They also did an in-studio performance for KEXP on Wednesday afternoon, and thanks to the magic of the intertubes, you can listen to it right here, right now.

Friday Night Videos – Featuring Richie Havens, George Jones, and Dave Edmunds with the Stray Cats

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This week we lost a couple of legends in the music business. Richie Havens died of a heart attack on Monday at the age of 71, George Jones died today at the age of 81.

Here’s Richie Havens performing the very first song of the first set of music played at Woodstock in 1969.

Here’s George Jones peforming one my all-time favorite songs by him, “White Lightning”, from what looks like an early sixties video.

And here are Dave Edmunds and the Stray Cats performing another one of my favorite George Jones songs, “The Race is On” from Dave’s album, Twangin…

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at The Paramount Theatre, Seattle April 2013

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Nick Cave Paramount marqueeTickets for this show went very fast. The Paramount website says the band requested ticketless sales and a four-seat limit. Fans only. No re-entry. No scalpers. Ticket buyers had to show up in person with ID to claim their tickets. The Paramount staff was very good at getting people through the ticket pick-up lines that were organized alphabetically, so it didn’t take long to get into the venue. (There were paper tickets, but fans didn’t get them until right before they were scanned at the door.)

Sharon Van Etten came on stage at 8:00 p.m. and played a short set accompanied by only her percussionist. She played guitar and sang around six songs, and her voice sounded magnificent. I really like the way she sounds on her album Tramp, but last night she sounded better than she does on her album. Maybe it’s the size of the venue and the charge she got from such an appreciative and respectful audience that made her voice so strong and clear. I hope her producer can capture it on her next album. I wish I had written down the names of the songs she played, but I didn’t, so no setlist. The last song she sang was a new one that she said her boyfriend said sounded like she was ripping off Nick Cave. I thought it was her best song.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds took the stage at 9:01 p.m, and Sharon Van Etten joined them as a backup singer. That’s her second from the left.

Nick Cave 2About these photos: I took all but one of them with a Sony Cybershot using a 10X zoom. The camera has a hard time auto-focusing because of the colored lights, and Nick moves around a lot, so yes they are a little blurry. Best I could do though. Megan Seling posted some much clearer photos by Beth Crook on The Stranger’s “Line Out” blog.

Nick opened the show with three tracks off the new album, Push the Sky Away. First was ”We No Who U R”, a tranquil song with sparse instrumentation. Next was “Jubilee Street” that starts out quiet and gradually builds into a rumbling, almost blues number accented by the very raw and loud guitar playing of Warren Ellis.

“Wide Lovely Eyes” is a happier, more upbeat song from the album, and it was followed by the epic “Higgs Boson Blues” that name drops Robert Johnson and the Devil, alludes to Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Motel, places Hannah Montana in the African Savannah, and ends with Miley Cyrus floating in a swimming pool in Toluca Lake.

During the song Nick moved all around the stage whipping his microphone chord in and out of his way, and Warren Ellis played some wicked loud riffs on electric guitar. Nick did stop near center stage and kneeled down in front of the audience to grab hold of a woman’s hand and hold it to his chest as he sang “Can you feel my heart beat? Can you feel my heart beat?” No doubt she did. So did the rest of us in the form of Martin Casey’s powerful bass playing.

Nick Cave 1For the cacophonous part of the show Nick drew from his catalogue of classic Bad Seeds songs starting with ”From Her to Eternity”, followed by “Red Right Hand” featuring Warren Ellis going nuts on both violin and guitar, then “Deanna” and a short non-introduction to “Jack the Ripper”. (He started to say something but stopped. He’s just not into introductions.)

Nick Cave 3

Following the sonic maelstrom that is The Bad Seeds, Nick sat down at the piano and took off his suit jacket. The crowd cheered the jacketless Mr. Cave, and he responded with “Really? Is that all it takes?” Nick played piano and sang three songs, “Love Letter”, “People Ain’t No Good”, and “No More Shall We Part”.

He eased back into full-band mode again with “The Weeping Song” followed by “The Mercy Seat” delivered to us as a howl from Hell.

The band started into a slow blues groove, and Nick strutted around the stage as he got into character to tell his version of the story of a killer named ”Stag” Lee Sheldon, better known to Nick fans as the bad motherfucker called “Stagger Lee”. The band exploded in shrieks of noise to highlight the end of each verse. Before the final verse of the recorded version of the song, Nick knelt down and wrapped his free arm around a fan at the edge of the stage and pulled him in tight against his body as he sang, ”

Just then Billy Dilly rolls in and he says, “You must be That bad motherfucker called Stagger Lee.”

Stagger Lee

“Yeah, I’m Stagger Lee, and you better get down on your knees and suck my dick because if you don’t, you’re gonna be dead,”

Said Stagger Lee

Billy dropped down and slobbered on his head and Stag filled him full of lead

Oh yeah

Followed by more high-decibel “gun shots” and electric screams from the band.

But that wasn’t the end of the song. The band quieted down and Nick began a new verse:

In come the devil said “I’ve come to take you down Mr. Stagger Lee. I’ve come to take you down Mr. Stagger Lee”.

Well those were the last words that the Devil said, ’cause Stag put four holes in the motherfuckers head.”

That’s right, Stagger Lee is badder than the Devil.

And what better place to end a set? They left the stage and came back after a few minutes for the two-song encore. Nick’s ode to Elvis, “Tupelo” was first, and the show ended with the title track from Push the Sky Away.

Nick Cave 5

Here’s the setlist:

We No Who U R
Jubilee Street
Wide lovely Eyes
Higgs Boson Blues
From Her to Eternity
Red Right Hand
Deanna
Jack the Ripper
Love Letter
People Ain’t No Good
No More Shall We Part
The Weeping Song
The Mercy Seat
Stagger Lee
Encore
Tupelo
Push the Sky Away

And when I find some more reviews I’ll link to them here.

Review for City Arts by Rachel Shimp.

Bobby Switchblade over at Will the Fire described the sound quite well.

It sounded like so much electricity was being channeled through the monitors that it could only process it by funneling it all into one disorienting din that reminded me of films that depict the heavy ringing in your ears that can follow exposure to a bomb blast or gun shot. Despite the array of instruments being played on stage, the sound they created became one giant gong amplifying the song’s sense of simultaneous implosion, explosion and disintegration.

Seattle Post Intelligencer review.

KEXP review.

Back Beat Seattle review and lots of photos by Dagmar.

YouTube videos of the concert: Deanna, Love Letter, Tupelo, Stagger Lee

Friday Night Videos – Featuring Foxygen, Low, and Tom Waits

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Last Saturday night Zippy suggested I buy the new album by Foxygen, We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic, so I did, and I like it.

Zippy and Sporty saw the band live at the Treefort Music Fest in Boise last night. Their field report is:

The lead singer for Foxygen is quite the entertainer. Think Martin from Capsula meets Jim Morrison. They cranked up the reverb to 11 to start the show. Songs take on a more dramatic texture live. Although not what we expected, we loved it.

Here’s the video for “San Francisco”.

Foxygen is playing at The Crocodile in Seattle tonight. Go to the show! And while you’re in Belltown, take a walk across the street for a bite to eat at Pintxo. I highly recommend the Tosta de Boquerones.

Low released a new album produced by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco titled, The Invisible Way. I’ve listened to it a few times, and I must say I am quite impressed. I could not find any official videos for the new album on YouTube, so I putting up a live video of them performing “Plastic Cup” at Milano Shambala in Italy last month.

Low will be playing at The Crocodile in Seattle on Saturday, April 6th.

And for the final video in this Friday’s set, here’s Tom Waits narrating a very short film titled A Brief History of John Baldessari. Watch and Learn.

Nick Cave Kicks off his 2013 US Tour in Austin at SXSW tonight

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Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are touring the US in support of their new album, Push the Sky Away, and their first show is tonight at SXSW at Stubb’s Bar-B-Q in Austin, Texas.

Unless you are in Austin tonight and have a Platinum Pass, or won some sort of ticket raffle, or know someone in the band or a friend of someone in the band, or work at Stubb’s, you aren’t seeing the show. But you can watch it on your computer because NPR is broadcasting the special showcase tonight featuring Nick Cave, Waxahatchee, Café Tecvba, Youth Lagoon, Yeah Yeah Yeas, and Alt-J. Nick will take the stage at 5:45 p.m. PST.

So tune in on your computer, smartphone, or radio and listen to some of what Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds will be playing at their nineteen sold-out shows across the US that are going on through April 21st.

They will be in Seattle at The Paramount Theatre on Sunday, April 7th. Sharon Van Etten will open the show.

There are no paper tickets so I don’t know how you can get in if you don’t have a ticket.

Set List

Higgs Boson Blues

Wide Lovely Eyes

Jubilee Street

From Her to Eternity

Red Right Hand 

Jack the Ripper

Deanna

The Mercy Seat

Stagger Lee 

Push the Sky Away

Only a one-hour set with no encore. I expect he’ll be doing much more during regular gigs.

Patti Smith Live at Seattle’s Neptune Theatre – February 27, 2013

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Patti-Neptune-1

Patti Smith definitely did not have any lingering effects from the flu she had last week that almost kept her from performing at the Concert for Tibet in New York City. She stepped on stage at the Neptune Theatre Wednesday night and rocked the house from start to finish. She always seems to be supercharged by Seattle’s rich history of rock n’ roll – Jimi, Kurt, The Sonics… and in her 67th year of life, she puts many aspiring young artists only a third her age to shame.

Here’s the set list interspersed with some stage banter and poetry:

April Fool

Redondo Beach

“The Killing is the the greatest show on TV and it is coming back for a third season! … They are actual detectives. I know this because I live in their atmosphere. I drink cold coffee and eat stale donuts and I get in a car and I don’t even drive and I stake out people.”

Distant Fingers

Ghost Dance

“I gave Ralph Nader a birthday gift once and he opened it very carefully and saved the wrapping. He’s always trying to do what’s best for the world”.

Fuji-san

Free Money

Dancing Barefoot

Beneath the Southern Cross (This is the song that makes you appreciate just how great her band is.)

Patti-Neptune-2

“Maybe I should host the Oscars. The fashion police would all shoot themselves in the head”.

Lenny Kaye takes the mic for a short set of Nuggets…

Night Time (The Strangeloves cover)

(We Ain’t Got) Nothing Yet (The Blues Magoos cover)

Born to Lose (The Heartbreakers cover)

Pushin’ Too Hard (The Seeds cover)

We Three

Because the Night

Patti-Neptune-3

Pissing in a River

Patti begins a story about Johnny who sees the aftermath of a terrible hurricane and someone in the audience says “supermarket”. Patti takes it, “Supermarket? Supermarket sweep was his favorite show. See man, you can take me in every direction. It’ll fuck one ryhthm and take the whole other. Johnny said ‘supermarket’ hey motherfucker, is that the best you can come up with? Come on, come on, come on…”

Land    “Horses! Horses! Horses!”

Gloria “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not P – U – S – S – Y   R – I – O – T”.

Encore:

Audience member: “That was pretty good. You have a real talent!” Patti: “I know. One of the greatest pieces of music ever written… by me”.

Banga

Babelogue (Seattle version)

…the whole of earth be transformed through music. He had a dream that our rich dicophony; the things that we can resolve, our fight, our strife, our bitterness, our beauty could be melded with the music the land which of peace. He had a Dream! That we could clean up our world, that we could love one another. Jimi Hendrix! This young man stepped from this soil and had a fuckin’ dream that we would have a better world. He, he was the future, and the future is NOW! I haven’t fucked much with the past, but I’ve fucked plenty with the future, and people, rejoice, the future is NOW! And now we will dance on the junkyard, on the top of the hill, on the mountain. We’re gonna rebuild our world!

Rock ‘n’ Roll Nigger

Patti, like Quentin Tarantino, has a lifetime pass to say “nigger”. It works for her.

Patti-Neptune-4

Patti led the band in a guitar-feedback meltdown, then pulled all the strings off her guitar, held it up to the crowd and said, “Behold the only weapon you’ll ever need and it never runs out of ammunition”.

And that’s what I call a rock n’ roll show.

Seattle Times review by Charles Cross

Stranger Review by David Schmader

Seattle Weekly photos

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Push the Sky Away – US Release: 02/19/2013

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nick-cave-push-the-sky-away

From an interview by Alexis Petridis for The Guardian:

The cover was shot in his bedroom, a few streets away from where we are sitting. It features his wife, model Susie Bick, naked, something Cave is at pains to point out wasn’t his idea. He walked in on his wife’s photoshoot for a French magazine, the photographer happened to press the shutter button and that was that: “I was more reluctant to use it than she was, to be honest.”

That shot is in sharp contrast to Cheryl Waters’ image of Nick Cave the reclusive songwriter hunched over a typewriter at his desk in a dim, kerosene-lamp lit room. I remember when she posed a rather ridiculous question to him during a 2008 interview about whether or not he was connected to the modern world of computers and the internet. He responded with something like, “Is this interview live? If not, you might want to go back and edit out that last question.”

Back to the interview…

The city seeps into the lyrics too, on a song called Jubilee Street: the titular home of Headmasters’ hairdressers, the Jubilee Library and a branch of Tesco Express rather improbably taking its place amid what you might call the more classic Cavian lyrical concerns of violence, sex and strikingly drawn visions of Armageddon.

…

He was keen, he says, to “move away from guitar-orientated music and that classic Nick Cave ballad style, to let a little bit of air and a little bit of light in”. Still, as he points out, some things never change. “I don’t think the lyrical concerns have altered particularly.”

The deluxe edition comes with a facsimile of the notebook Cave worked out the album’s lyrics in. “Some of it’s dreadful and painful to read, but I just thought – what the fuck,” he says, before getting the actual notebook out and offering me a brief precis of his working methods. “Pages and pages of absolute shit,” he sighs, turning them over. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. And just every now and then something, little tiny ideas start to come out.”

Here’s part of a review of the album by Stuart Berman on Pitchfork:

Push the Sky Away presents an uncharacteristically weightless, eerily atmospheric sound; in lieu of crossover ballads like “Into My Arms” and “People Ain’t No Good”, we have foggy reveries built upon ominously rumbling bass lines, twitchy rhythmic tics, and hushed-voice intimations. It may not erupt with same force as the Bad Seeds’ stormiest gestures, but the underlying menace fuelling it remains.

…

Cave and his increasingly prominent foil, Warren Ellis, could experiment with textures and loops (to the point of spawning a remix album). These production intricacies form the bedrock of Push the Sky Away, which is less a showcase for Bad Seeds’ powerhouse prowess than a reconstructed fever-dream memory of it, transmuting the familiar into something foreign. There’s a sense of the Bad Seeds expanding their sound and unlearning it at the same time.

I’ve heard three songs off the new album, “We No Who U R“, “Jubilee Street“, and “Higgs Boson Blues” and liked all of them. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to hear the whole album, and until Sunday, April 7th to see him live at The Paramount Theater.

Friday Night Videos – The Duke Spirt, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and Johnny Marr

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Every once and a while a I click on The Duke Spirit link in the blogroll (you should too) to see what’s going on with the band, and this week I found out they have a single out that I had not heard and they have video to go with it. Here it is…

More often I click on the Nick Cave link to see what’s new. He is putting out an album with The Bad Seeds on Februay 19th titled Push the Sky Away. I read a review of the album in Uncut Magazine last night. They wrote:

… a record whose thoughtful tone and drifting, becalmed manner have very little to do with rock ‘n roll and much more to do with the sonic colouration explored by Cave and Ellis in their soundtracks. Ellis is clearly the musical driving force here, particularly now that Mick Harvey has departed the band. His string and keyboard loops hang over the songs like mist, haunting the action with a deep, contemplative melancholy; and freed from the imperative of carrying guitar riffs, the drums and percussion of Thomas Wydler and Jim Sclavunos are able to explore more intimate, subtle rhythms, allowing the songs to find their own pulses, rather than urging them to more explosive efforts.

The effect is transformative: for all the comparative lack of overt activity, there is a much greater expressivity about the songs on Push the Sky Away, even when nothing seems to be happening. It’s as if the new approach were better able to reveal the emotional currents working beneath the songs’ surfaces, rather than be preoccupied with the surface activity. This works wonders with Cave’s songs, as by his own admission he’s more of a voyeuristic, narrative songwriter than an emotional miner: here, the music fills in the unwritten emotional content lurking behind his observations.

Here’s the video for the first single, “We No Who U R” (that looks like a Prince title, but it doesn’t sound anything like Prince).

While you are at it, you should watch “Jubilee Street” too. Uncensored version here (sign in required) and Walmart version here. (Do they sell any Nick Cave albums at Walmart? I have no idea.)

I also read Mojo Magazine. Johnny Marr is on the cover of the February 2013 issue, and it includes a cd compilation featuring Johnny Marr playing guitar on his new album and on tracks by many of the artists he’s collaborated with over the years. Here’s a video for the the title track of The Messenger and, like Nick, he too is walking through the woods.

I had not been a big fan of Johnny Marr, but I think I am now.

The Best Music of 2012

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It’s the last day of the year and I am finally getting around to posting my list of favorite albums of 2012.

The number one album goes to the one I listened to the most during the year, Standing at the Sky’s Edge, by Richard Hawley.

I have no idea how such a great album did not even make it on the KEXP listener’s poll of the top 120 albums. Watch the video. Take minute to request KEXP to play it, and buy the album.

Boys and Girls by Alabama Shakes comes in at number two.

KEXP listeners did approve of this album. It came in at Number 5.

Brian Jonestown Massacre comes in at Number 3 with Aufheben. Inexplicably missing from the KEXP list.

Bruce Springsteen put out his best album in many years. Wrecking Ball ranks Number 4 and it’s a perfect collection of political songs that was my soundtrack for the 2012 elections.

Dr. John put out his best album in decades. Locked Down was produced by Dan Auerback of The Black Keys, and he brought out the best of the Dr on this album.

No videos for the rest of this list. You know where to find them.

6. Banga, by Patti Smith
7. Sweet Heart, Sweet Light, by Spiritualized
8. Sonik Kicks, by Paul Weller
9. In Your Head, by Monophonics
10. Blues Funeral, by Mark Lanegan
11. Tempest, by Bob Dylan
12. Temple Beautiful, by Chuck Prophet
13. Blunderbuss, by Jack White
14. Circles, by Moon Duo
15. Sun, by Cat Power
16. O’ Be Joyful, by Shovels and Rope
17. Elegancia Tropical, by Bomba Estereo
18. Falling Off the Sky, by The dB’s
19. Twins, by Ty Segall
20. Synthetica, by Metric

I could go on but I’ll stop at twenty.

Tulip Frenzy chose Bend Beyond by Woods as the best album of the year. I recently bought it based on the review and it’s starting to grow on me. Other albums that caught my interest are Glad Rag Doll by Diana Krall featuring Marc Ribot on guitar, The House that Jack Built by Jesca Hoop, Tramp by Sharon Van Etten, Psychedelic Pill by Neil Young, Researching the Blues by Red Kross, and I Will Set You Free by Barry Adamson.