evanevanevan

I just discovered a song on my hard drive seemingly written just for me and my superb sartorial statements.

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The Majorettes - White Levis [mp3]

And yes, I do find lampshades to be the best dance partners.

When rock bands play free concerts in Millennium Park, generally a bunch of old people and tourists will wander in and populate a good number of the seats near the front. Though unfamiliar with the band playing, they are excited to relax looking at Frank Gehry's beautiful design, their dogs barking after a full day of meandering at Navy Pier and the Harley Davidson store. After sitting uncomfortably for two songs, they shuffle out.

Last night, however, as The Feelies played their first show in Chicago in eighteen years, the tourists were bobbing their heads, asking their young neighbors, "What's the name of this group? The Feel-whats?" My point isn't that the reunited band now only appeals to geriatrics. It's that they appealed to everyone.

I expected to enjoy myself; I did not expect to be blown away. I expected the crowd to enjoy it; I did not expect them to go nuts. The Feelies are of course a revered band, but I don't think there's that broad of a popular awareness of them, comparatively. They only put out four albums, none of which sold well, and probably it's only their debut Crazy Rhythms that the majority of people are familiar with. Unlike the similarly reunited Pixies, they haven't had a Nirvana or, dare I say it, a Fight Club to really elevate their status among the masses. So how can you account for the response last night? My best answer: they just fucking tore it up.

They were the coolest looking old dudes and chick ever. They're the kind of band you look at and think, "I wish those were my parents." Lead singer/guitarist Glenn Mercer maintained a deadpan cool as he rattled off fiery lines on his Telecaster, but from the way he came to downstage and postured in front of the crowd, you could tell he was loving it. Bassist Brenda Sauter seemed genuinely appreciative as she thanked us for waiting twenty years. And it's amazing how much a traditional four-chord lead gtr-rhythm gtr-bass arrangement can be enhanced by an auxiliary percussionist.

The other thing about Millennium Park shows is that the audience generally sits in their seat or on the lawn quietly appreciating the music. There was a palpable tension as this show; I think everyone knew that sitting down wasn't right, but we were powerless to do anything about it. Then, during set-closer "Crazy Rhythms," a lone kid went up to the front of the stage and started spazzing out. A security guard slowly walked toward him to ask him to sit down, but the kid danced away as the guard approached, before suddenly turning and bolting. He apparently did a lap around the seats, and reemerged at the front from the opposite side, to applause from the audience. Then, spontaneously, the whole crowd got up out of their seats and rushed the front of the stage, dancing. It was glorious. They demanded two encores, and got them, including covers of R.E.M.'s "Carnival of Sorts," The Velvet Underground's "What Goes On" (the second this month I've seen!) and the Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black."

As they were leaving the stage, drummer Stan Demeski came down to the front and shook the hand of the spazzy dancing kid who started it all. A+, spazzy dancing kid.

Update: Looks like I'm not the only one...

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The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms

[photos by robert loerzel]

His finest hour. I just happened to be watching this last night too. Spoooooky!

The WXRT DJ introducing bizarro supergroup Tinted Windows at this weekend's Taste of Randolph festival recounted the incredulous moment of discovery of the band. A group of girls in their late 20s, apparently unfamiliar with the band, listened in as he named each member of the band. With increasing confusion, the girls accurately identified the act each musician was normally associated with ("Bun E. Carlos!" "...From Cheap Trick?" "Adam Schlesinger!" "Wait, from Fountains of Wayne?" "James Iha!" "Woah, from the Smashing Pumpkins?!") Oddly enough, they couldn't figure out what band lead singer Taylor Hanson was from. Much of the rest of the crowd made up for them, however.

So that's where all the aging (at 23-years-old) Hanson fans went. They still can hit those high-pitched screams, but the years have taken a little bit off of the dynamics. Some had Hanson tattoos on the back of their necks. In April, when Tinted Windows played in Chicago for the first time, it was at the 21+ Double Door. I was told that the promoters expected a healthy crowd this time around for all the young Hanson fans who couldn't go before. I didn't quite understand this, as I didn't see how there could possibly be new fans of a group whose last hit single was in 1997. It seemed like my predictions were largely correct, though I did spot a few high school age fans there, which I announced with the unfortunate remark, "Look! Those girls are under 21!"

The Hanson devotees near us were impressed that we were able to name all three of the brothers' names (we admitted that "Zac" was just a lucky guess, as it's the default '90s boy's name). They were pleased with the makeup of the crowd. At a typical Hanson concert, they explained, the audience is about 95% female. Though the Hanson fans were the most audible contingent at the Tinted Windows show, the audience was more accurately a fragile alliance that also included old Cheap Trick fans in Sturgis Rally tank-tops and curious Pumpkinheads like myself. My attempts to identify and characterize Fountains of Wayne fans failed. The Hanson fans suggested, however, that perhaps there was a stronger connection between Pumpkins fans and Hanson fans than we might expect: "A lot of people at Hanson concerts are actually goth girls."

The show itself was a pleasant way to spend an evening. It's hard to analyze songs from the nothing-but-overtones sound systems that are standard at outdoor festivals, but it was energetic and the hooks were there. From the way Taylor expertly worked the crowd, you'd have thought he'd been doing it since he was thirteen. He's grown up into a pretty snazzy dresser, sporting a silver tie against a bright orange shirt with the sleeves rolled, tucked into fitted black pants. Maybe I just say that cause his stage attire is rather like....well, mine.

Though Taylor and Iha were certainly the most recognizable band members on stage, it seems like Schlesinger and Carlos are the more likely architects of the band's power-pop sound. The set even included a cover of a song by The Knack! And, to make the line-up even more WTF? worthy, Evan Dando of The Lemonheads came out as a surprise guest to sing The Velvet Underground's "What Goes On." Well, a surprise for most people, but not for me. I already knew, because Taylor had tweeted about it minutes before the show, and one of the Hanson girls next to me had gotten an automatic text message notification from his Twitter. Adorably, Taylor posted it to the Hanson account by mistake instead of the Tinted Windows account:

To his credit, from the timestamps you can see it only took him a brief mmmbop before he realized his error. I don't know how I feel about abbreving Chicago to "chic" though. At least he didn't say Chi-Town.

[photos by dan m parker]

My Viennese friends introduced me to Rainhard Fendrich's moving ballad "I Am From Austria," a kind of unofficial national anthem, which apparently is also a classic and inevitable party foul. At some point during any given Austrian party, someone is guaranteed to put it on, bumming everybody out. I particularly like the line, "I am your apple, and you my stem."

As a counterpoint, here's Die Prinzen's slightly more irreverent tribute to their homeland, "Deutschland":

Last night I moved from my longtime rehearsal space (dubbed The Holodeck) into a more proper, amazing studio a floor above. Finally, we actually have both a live room and a control room, with pretty good isolation. We're getting an amazing deal on it. Now that I have the space, the key thing is for me to actually make some music. It'll happen. I can feel it.

It's also next door to the nicest space in the whole building, which is generally rented out by touring musicians to rehearse in temporarily. In the past, it's seen Billy Corgan, The Black Crowes, and Sting, among others. And you know who my next-door-neighbor for the next few weeks is going to be?

R.
Kelly.

Here are a few crappy pictures of the closet I will be trapped in. They don't really give a very good sense of what it's like, and please excuse the terrible no-name drumset that's in there right now, but here it is:

Jay Bennett, the incredibly talented multi-instrumentalist / songwriter / producer and former member of my favorite band, Wilco, passed away yesterday in Urbana, where his studio Pieholden Suites was located. He was Jeff Tweedy's main collaborator in the band until he was famously fired in 2001 shortly after finishing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, as documented in Sam Jones's film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. He was in the news recently for suing Tweedy, which at first seemed like a bitter swipe at his former band's success, but soon looked instead like a move of desperation to pay for the hip replacement surgery he needed to have but couldn't afford due to lack of health insurance.

A lot of people are under the opinion that the band went to shit after Jay left. I don't totally agree, as I really love the dense, layered guitar-based turn they've taken with the incredible Nels Cline in the band now. But I think Jay Bennett can take a lot of the credit of elevating Wilco from a pretty good alt-country band to one of the most innovative bands of the last fifteen years. He was a brilliant instrumentalist and was responsible for the blissful Brian Wilson-esque pop sound of Summerteeth and its noisier followup YHF, which for my money stands alongside Pet Sounds as the most perfect record ever committed to tape.

I re-watched I Am Trying to Break Your Heart last night, and it's not particularly kind to Bennett. He comes across as passive-aggressive, arrogant, and at times even delusional. But I looked at him much more sympathetically on this viewing, perhaps because I saw so much of myself in him. In the infamous argument shown between him and Tweedy about the mixing of "Heavy Metal Drummer," his frustration at not being able to verbalize his thoughts, his resistance to an approach other than the one he had planned, his desperate desire to have his argument be understood and accepted as rational — it all feels so very familiar. While of course I'd love to have the lyrical ability of Jeff Tweedy, musically it's Jay Bennett's pop wizardry I most want to achieve.

Here are a couple of songs Bennett and Tweedy collaborated on during the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sessions which were never officially released on a Wilco record. I remember spending a long time as a 15-year-old trying to transcribe the lovely Jay Bennett chord progressions of "Venus Stop the Train":

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Wilco - Venus Stop the Train [mp3]

And here's Jay and Jeff together working through "Cars Can't Escape," from the I Am Trying to Break Your Heart special features:

The Uke Cabaret here in Chicago is always the highlight of my month when it comes around. On May 9 was the latest installment — titled Uke Zoologica, this time around all of the songs had to be animal themed. There were some really great acts, as always. Cabaret organizers Mike, Heather, and Tony tore it up with renditions of "Bungle in the Jungle," "Apeman," and "Barracuda." There were also some nice uke covers of David Bowie, Neko Case, Nick Cave, Duran Duran, and more.

Unfortunately, Melanie wasn't able to make it to Chicago because she had to finish up her schoolwork, as she finally graduated yesterday(!). Without her around, I had to rethink what I could do at the Cabaret. I seriously considered gathering a huge band with a choir and devoting my entire set to a full-length version of Meat Loaf's "Bat Out Of Hell," but alas, it was not to be.

But even though we were halved, The Heavy Boxes went on, with help from Kimberly and Stuart. Thanks to Alan for the videos of our set:

"Somewhere Out There" from An American Tail

"Simon Smith & the Amazing Dancing Bear" by Randy Newman

"Karma Chameleon" by Culture Club

See also: Uke Valentino

Monica sends me this censored-for-television version of the most famous line of 21st century cinema:

Though it's not even three years old, I'm already gripped with nostalgia for Snakes on a Plane. More accurately, it's not the actual film that I think fondly of so much as the anticipation that led to it. It had all the makings of one of the greatest feel-good stories of movie fandom. Seizing on the total absurdity of the plot and its perfectly straightforward title, it became a cult sensation before a trailer was even out. It was all set to be the finest example of fan influence on filmmaking to date. The (uncensored) line from the above video was not originally in the film, but when online fans demanded that Samuel L. Jackson say it, the filmmakers actually went back after the movie had already wrapped to shoot additional footage, including that line. According to legend, when the producers were about to rename the movie, Samuel L. Jackson balked, claiming the title was the only reason he had agreed to do the movie.

As you recall, after months of hype, the actual release of the movie was a total dud at the box office. So what went wrong? Well, New Line Cinema made two fatal errors. The first mistake was not moving up the release date to capitalize on the hype, instead waiting till everyone was already sick of hearing about it. The second, far graver error was in not putting my song on the soundtrack.

You see, the studio sponsored a song contest where fans were invited to write snake-related songs and submit them to be voted on online. The top ten vote-getters would be sent to the producers and director who would ultimately choose one to go on the soundtrack.

The song I wrote, "Two Snakes on a Plane," ended up getting the most votes of them all. My lyrics were quoted in an AP article that was reprinted, among other places, in the Redeye. I saw various bloggers refer to the song as the song they wanted to hear at their wedding. Oh, to be a D-list internet celeb again!

Ultimately, though, the filmmakers chose a song by Captain Ahab, a legit duo from LA, crushing my dreams of having the jam of the summer. I still have hopes that in the future, SoaP will be rediscovered and have a long life on the midnight circuit, at which point a Restored Version will be released with the proper soundtrack.

The song itself was written and recorded within a couple days. I wrote the lyrics—which alternate between disgusting and just nonsensical—about half an hour before we recorded the vocals. And then we literally only had time to record one take of the vocals before the singers had to rush off to Bloomington. I listen back now and hear so many imperfections I wish I could fix. Among other things, it's probably about 45 seconds too long. But still, it is what it is, and people seem to enjoy it enough to ask me about it about once a month, so here it is.

The musicians on the recording are credited as The Guesstimates and include Stuart Seale and Nola Richardson on vocals, Bart Pappas and Nicholas Krause on guitar, Paul Kusper on drums, and myself on bass, Rhodes, synth, and Vocoder.

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The Guesstimates - Two Snakes on a Plane [mp3]

From Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147:

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Margo Guryan - Someone I Know [mp3]

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The Byrds - She Don't Care About Time [mp3]

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Apollo 100 - Joy [mp3]

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The Beach Boys - Lady Lynda [mp3]

See also: Pop songs that are vocalese takes on classical works