Monday, January 26, 2009

A Brilliant Thriller to Say the Least

According to Rollingstone.com, talks are underway to bring Michael Jackson's Thriller to the stage. To which I say: Brilliant!

What's not to love? There be zombies, werewolves and a stunningly nubile young woman at the heart of it all.

So, without further delay, here are my ideas on how to make it not suck:

1)Use all the music from Thriller. It's one of the best albums ever. Ever. Justin Timberlake goes to bed dreaming about how to remake this album. To say that the producers would be sitting on an embarassment of riches is an understatement. And any writer who really just wants to tell a great story could find a way to make it work.

2)Along those lines, the story is simple. It's a boy who versus the world sort of story but a boy versus himself story as well. Boy meets girl. Boy has to compete with other boys for her affection. But boy also has to control the beast within or all is lost.

3)Thinking about putting new music in to pad the time of the piece? That's dicey. MJ has a huge catalog of great music to dig from, so I'd start there. But if you're gonna produce new music, go to the source. Get MJ. Get Quincy Jones. See what they can do before exploring any other options.

4)Three words: Zombies, Zombies, ZOMBIES. Man!

Monday, January 19, 2009

sure, it smells like teen spirit, but what is it really?

Yeah. I'm a thirty year old, grown man who likes to write about pop music. Not necessarily the Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake vein of pop music (which is not without its validity), but pop music nonetheless. Pop music that's simply an artist following their own vision, even if that vision means *gasp!* being accessible to normal people. People who like to sing along.

Music is a young man's game. No doubt about it. Everybody from Little Richard right on up to My Chemical Romance has started their careers writing music about being young and, more often than not, disenfranchised. What would the Beatles have been without the mass hysteria of the screaming young masses and the global parental freakout that followed? Great damn songwriters, really. But sometimes it's hard to see past those moptops or the drugs.

Somewhere after that magical age of twenty five (i.e. not a college freshman but really shining off adulthood), you have to acknowledge that your taste in music is probably veering far off the course of the musical mainstream. And that, in its own way, is a golden thing. No longer bound by the tastemakers of modern corporate (or should I say conglomerate) radio, you're free to find your real muse. You're free to find music that is what it is, as opposed to music that plays like a pantomime of teenage rebellion and disenfranchizement. You're free to find yourself somewhere that is, preferably, far away from Nickleback.

And that's where I found LCD Soundsystem and their wonderful album, Sound of Silver. Initially, I'd read about them in a glowing write up at Slate.com where the author of the article raved about the song "All My Friends." An anthem for the aging disenfranchised, "All My Friends" sang about what it was like to grow up: putting on the favorite albums of your youth, staying up way too late, regretting the things that you said and realizing that you don't do it nearly often enough. Poignant, moving and funny, its underlined by an unalarming sense of dread as opposed to the sunny, cheerier feelings invoked by most summer time pop.

I was twenty eight when I found this. Certainly, the chorus of "You spend the first five years trying to get with the plan and the next five years trying to be with your friends again" certainly hit me as I watched friends move away, settle down into careers/relationships or all of the above. I couldn't help but feel like I'd found the self help seminar I'd always needed. I should be with my friends tonight. Dammit!

My girlfriend at the time, in one of her typical and frequent outbursts of kindness, bought the album for me. Possibly because she was tired of me cranking Franz Ferdinand's cover and raving that it was so New Order! What I found inside that cd case was nothing short of a musical leviathan in my life. Filled to the brim with songs of melancholic glee, it touched on the empty promises of nostalgia ("Sound of Silver"), death ("Someone Great") and even such adultly concerns as gentrification ("New York, I Love You"). I felt like I'd even found my anthem as a pub crawling twenty something in the song "North American Scum." Screw the Lost Boys. I'm part of the Lost Generation and we drink our way in.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

super taranta-ta! at the 9:30 club with gogol bordello

Shirtless, sweaty and sporting more facial than I've accumulated in my entire life, Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hutz sighed as he prepared to drop some knowledge on his faithful audience.

"The economy is down," he frowned and huffed, "But good music is up."

With that he shrugged his shoulders and blitzed into another fierce gypsy punk masterpiece with his band. The audience, ever faithful and devoted, jumped, danced and slammed along as they did to every number the band played that night. One would never have known to look at them as the doors opened earlier that evening.

Congregated towards the front of the stage, the hardcore fans waited patiently for the band to take the stage. Looking around the rest of the club, one could find everything from teenyboppers decked out in the latest mall wear to club kids resembling those of the ska-daze of yore. Even the demographic of a certain age were going to be accounted for as evidenced by the guy to my right discussing his organic diet with his date. Looking to the back of the club, one could even find the sound guy, looking bored in his fuzzy Elmer Fudd headwear.

Eventually, a dj takes the stage and starts to mix dub for the patient and the faithful. The audience mills about in some sort of half appreciation. Because tonight is Gogol Bordello's night and they create their own unique brand of ruckus; a heady dub that owes as much to the Clash as it does traditional Romany music. Most of the audience seems curious, at best. But if Gogol Bordello's reputation for chaotic and unpredictable live shows is to be believed, one can rest assured, that won't last long.

And as the dj leaves the stage, one can feel the audience start to catalyze. It's like the tension on a rubber band as its strained to its breaking point. Draped over the stage is a large Gogol Bordello banner adorned with the black and yellow logo of a slingshot and its hard to imagine a better metaphor for this increasingly impatient audience: they need to shoot and they need to shoot now.

Fortunately, Eugene Hutz (clad in a Ramones 3/4 tee) and Gogol Bordello takes the stage, acknowledges the audience and the proceeds to rip directly into Sally, the opener from their first album, Gypsy Punk. Nothing less than completely and totally psyched, the audience starts to dance as Hutz starts with his scat and is then followed in by the violin and guitar work. What follows can be described as nothing less than a molotov cocktail of a show. The audience sings along with every chorus, pogoing and slamming as they go. Refusing to lose momentum, the band rips into Not a Crime as they keep the audience moving like an unstable gas molecule.

The danger of forcing Gogol Bordello upon those closest to you is one of misconception; that somehow Eugene Hutz' thick Ukranian brogue and lunatic demeanor is played up for commodity, for gimmick. But watching this band play live should allay all those fears. For those that only know Hutz as that guy from Everything is Illuminated or that guy that hangs out with Madonna, have no doubt, this is a BAND. And what a band they are.

There is, of course, the typical constraints of a modern rock band: the singer with his guitar, the underappreciated guitarist off to the side working dutifully as he lays down the real monster riffs of the show, the bassist who moves as fluidly as his basslines and the drummer holding it all together in the back. But Gogol Bordello is not a modern rock band. They also keep both a violinist and accordian player who bring the more traditional elements of their music to the band. And then there's the percussionist, a delightful suprise to anyone who hasn't seen the band live. Acting as a true Flava Flav hype man to Hutz' Chuck D, he jumps to the front of the stage to supply backing vocals as well as toasting the audience when the song calls for it. A true showman, one can tell that if he weren't so busy keeping Hutz on his toes, he'd easily be fronting his own band and killing at will. Some are born for the stage and in a strange way, he balances Hutz' goofy aloofness with an indomitable force of will to just have fun, man.

And then there are the dancers. At times, they seem like the most gimmicky aspect of Gogol Bordello but their connection and appreciation for the audience is never in question as they bang their cymbals and drum. In fact, few bands have ever come off as more grateful in front of the crowd. At more than one point, everyone save the drummer could be seen at the front of the stage connecting with the audience.

And how the audience responded in kind. Through every number, they jumped when the song called for it and slammed knowingly as the songs kicked into high gear. They danced when the band decided to bring it down a bit and play the instrumental number Mishto! And by bringing it down, I mean making every ass in the house shake. When the chanting parts of the songs came up, every fist in the house pumped the air as voices shouted along.

Taking the stage for their encore, Hutz appeared in a big fuzzy bear hat as the band strolled through the opening chords of Start Wearing Purple. Teasing the opening of the song (and not for the first time that evening), they stretched it out into one long gypsy punk jam. Eventually tearing into the song, voices carried as everyone in the audience sang along. To finish the evening, they lauched into the opening chords of Think Locally/Fuck Globally, but instead Hutz and his hypeman chose to exchange toasting verses in what eventually became a cover of Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall. With that madness done, they really launched into Think Locally as the audience clapped along with every overpunctuated beat. Whipping up a maelstrom of a ruckus at the end the song, Hutz put his trademark fire bucket on top of his mike and drummed out his own little solo. Building to crescendo, Hutz removed the bucket and held it out over the audience as the band teased out the end of the song. Reaching out to the audience, Hutz mimed the action of picking as he plucked energy from the audience to fill his bucket with. Adding a dash of red wine and the microphone, he ended the show much like his music starts- taking a little bit of everything he likes and shaking, not stirring.

your bitchin' mixtape (setlist)

sally
not a crime
supertheory of supereverything/immigrant punk
dogs were barking
wanderlust king
mishto!
60 revolutions
american wedding
ultimate
tribal connection
santa marinella
oh no?/sally/underdog world strike/forces of victory
Intermission
start wearing purple
? (feat. another brick in the wall)
think locally/fuck globally