What happens when a pair of white boys from Akron, Ohio…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0U8eDocbG8]
…meet one of the killingest MCs around?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3BpnT1C4QA]
http://assets.delvenetworks.com/player/loader.swf
That’s right, just another excuse for me to post more Black Keys and GZA.
(Dan looks positively giddy to meet GZA. Can’t say that I blame him.)
It’s been a while since NTSIB has expressed feelings of blog crush-ness, but we have been admiring Rubber City Review from afar for a while. Based out of Akron, Ohio, RCR covers a wide range of classic music: rock, blues, funk, soul, country, jazz… if it’s good, RCR is feelin’ it. Hallmarks of RCR posts include myriad song samples, mini music history lessons and personal recollections/reflections.
Run by Tim Quine, RCR also comprises contributions from Kevin Swan, Andy Moore, Jack Quine, photographer James Quine and Dan Auerbach. What? Oh yeah, did I fail to mention that Tim is Dan’s uncle? Maybe that’s because, even though I was led to Rubber City Review through a post to the Black Keys’ MySpace, I would be crushing on RCR even without Mr. Auerbach’s involvement.
It’s good, people. And while RCR doesn’t spotlight much new music, you will find a lot of great music that is probably new to you. Check ‘em out.
This week, Jennifer hangs out with familiar friends: loud guitars.
Looking back over my previous entries, I’ve been talking about a lot of pop music. This week I’m changing it up a little bit, and swinging the pendulum back towards my old familiar friend, rock and roll. Ladies and gentlemen, please meet Empires:
They are from Chicago, but last week their tour stopped in New York, at the Studio at Webster Hall. The light was really, really bad; I actually got most of my best pictures while they were setting up.
They have two records out — Howl and Bang — and they are both excellent. While I was watching them play I was thinking about how, exactly, I was
going to explain their sound to the Internet. The phrase that came back to me over and over again was “punch drunk love-affair” which, all right, that might be kind of insufferable (again – sorry!) but it’s the best I can do. To me they sound like afternoons spent wandering amid dark shelves covered in whispery plastic contemplating past misdeeds (My Poor Lover), hot summer nights punctuated by fireworks (Under the Bright Lights) —
— the point where you realize you’ve gone down the rabbit hole for someone (and don’t even care) (Voodooized), a bad love affair or a love affair gone bad (Damn Things Over), and post-disasterous romance roars of defiance and survival (Bang and Hello Lover). Their noise is a big noise, a solid one, like a big wave, but it’s also melodically interesting. And it doesn’t sound like anything else out there, on the radio right now. So if you want something new and big and raw and daring, you should check them out.
Finally, a special note for photography enthusiasts: the deluxe digital edition of
Bang comes with a “making of” video and over two dozen fabulous digital
photographs taken by Tom Conrad .
I finally watched Cadillac Records this weekend, and while I did like it (I’m a sucker sell for a movie like this), the part that effected me most was one frame of text at the end of the film in the run-down of what happened to the major players in the film. It was about Little Walter, who was Muddy Waters’ harmonica man (who also had some solo success), and it said simply that he was buried in a grave with no headstone, and that a headstone was purchased by fans years later.
This hit me so hard that I just sat there with the credits paused and tears welling up in my eyes. I know by now that reciprocity, people getting “what they deserve”, is not, and has never been, an operational law in this world, but it makes me so angry that someone who was as talented and influential didn’t even have the money for a proper funereal and burial while people who didn’t have a fraction of Little Walter’s talent have had hugely elaborate, hell, downright gaudy funerals with all kinds of hoopla and pouring out of sympathy from hundreds, thousands of strangers.
What makes me angrier is that Little Walter’s case is not an isolated incident. So many of the stories of the finest blues musicians end with “he died in poverty”. And some of them would also have died in obscurity if it weren’t for people like John Fahey (who, himself, was an influential musician who died in poverty and near-obscurity) who tracked down men like Bukka White and Skip James and brought them to that amazing Newport Folk Festival of 1964 that kick-started the “blues revival” of the ’60s. Sure, part of the reason these men died penniless was that they squandered much of their gains (but compare this to modern musicians who do the same thing – Pete Doherty, for an obvious example – who indulge in the same habits and aren’t hurting) , but these musicians were also taken advantage of in a time when black people were still viewed as somehow being subhuman (though plenty human enough for recording labels to make a buck off of – “race records” were a hot commodity in the time of segregation). The majority of the legendary blues musicians came up poor in the Mississippi Delta (even those considered “Chicago blues”, like Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson), and when these golden egg record contracts were handed to them – or what seemed like a golden egg to these impoverished people who were often being bilked by the same hand that was handing them the golden egg – many of them didn’t realize these fortunes would not last forever. They didn’t know rock ‘n’ roll was right around the corner, the child of the blues that would, essentially, shoot the blues in the back.
I’m grateful for the funds that have been established to help the old bluesmen who are still around (though there aren’t many left – keep holding on, T-Model Ford!) and other musicians, but it doesn’t help me feel any less angry about all the musicians who died before those funds existed. And it doesn’t make my heart ache any less for musicians today who work their asses off for fear of losing it all the next day.
mr. Gnome: best band to come out of Cleveland or best band to come out of Cleveland? Those sexy-ass kids played a little loft gig in Seattle on their recent tour. Here’s some footage from Jonathan Houser.
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=11415989&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=f09400&fullscreen=1
Mr. Gnome 1 from Jonathan Houser on Vimeo.
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=11412856&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=f09400&fullscreen=1
Mr. Gnome 2 from Jonathan Houser on Vimeo.
Nicole and Sam are back home and working on their next album (or will be if Nicole can lure Sam back from going feral – it’s best not to ask). They’ve also added some massively cool shit to their already massively cool online store, like a spectacular vinyl “bag” set and the regenerated “Better than porn.” shirt.
When you’re a fan of a band who have more than a couple of albums, there will inevitably be an album in the discography that doesn’t hit you quite like the others. Maybe there are a couple of songs that make you groove, but this album usually gets relegated to the bottom of the pile, given only an occasional spin. You probably even have this with your favorite band, the band you would give blood for. For instance, my excessive-to-the-point-of-being-obsequious apologies to the Afghan Whigs, but 1965 is the Whigs album I pull out the least. Even less than Up In It. There, I said it.
The Black Keys have put out six full albums and three EPs, not including BlakRoc or Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney’s side projects, and Thickfreakness kept sitting at the bottom of my stack. Thickfreakness, their second album and the first released on Fat Possum Records, has some very strong tracks, undoubtedly (and one of the best titles of all time). The title track, “Set You Free†and their cover of “Have Love, Will Travel†are fan favorites, and deservedly so. And their Junior Kimbrough covers are always excellent, represented here by “Everywhere I Goâ€. But, overall, this album left me feeling uninspired. It didn’t have the immediacy of The Big Come Up and did not yet show the desire to open up their sound and evolve that would begin to assert itself on Rubber Factory. So, when I would put Thickfreakness in the player, my attention would tend to drift off about four songs in.
Then the other day, I realized “I Cry Aloneâ€, the minimalist closer of Thickfreakness, was playing in my head, demanding that I put the album on. This song is essentially all rhythm, with a heavy bass line following closely over Carney’s languid percussion, Auerbach’s vocals providing the melody. This song feels so thick and humid you’d think they recorded it down in Fat Possum’s homebase of northern Mississippi.
After a couple of listens to “I Cry Aloneâ€, I realized there was another song with a great rhythm to it on this album. “Hold Me in Your Arms†opens with a boot-heel drag rhythm that starts out so slow and low that it turns muscle to jelly, only to build anticipation and speed as the song kicks off. As it stands, this sliding drag is my favorite part of this entire album and makes me wish for a collection of songs with this same kind of sleazy, oozing pulse.
http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fnow-this-sound-is-brave%2F10-hold-me-in-your-arms&show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=ff8700 Hold Me in Your Arms by The Black Keys
Tracking back earlier still on the album is “Hurt Like Mineâ€, with a see-saw guitar line and a beat that sounds as if it grew like a vine from beneath the floorboards of a run-down juke joint out in some Southern swamp. The sweaty buzzsaw of Auerbach’s guitar requires hips to grind along. If you can’t get lucky to this song, you might as well just barricade yourself in your room now with enough old episodes of Oprah and volumes of Chicken Soup for the Sadass Soul to get you through until death comes to call.
http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fnow-this-sound-is-brave%2F06-hurt-like-mine&show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=ff8700 Hurt Like Mine by The Black Keys
With this new-found appreciation of Thickfreakness, the Black Keys may be the only multi-album band I listen to who doesn’t have a least-played disc in my rotation, a feat not even accomplished by my most beloved Afghan Whigs or could-do-no-wrong-in-my-eyes Morphine.
The Black Keys will be playing the Nautica Pavillion – with Jessica Lea Mayfield opening – in Cleveland on July 24.
This week, Jennifer takes a break from shutterbuggin’ to give a run-down of some of the music she’s digging on currently.
Summer House, the first LP from Gold Motel, incorporates songs from their self-titled EP, which was released earlier this year. Perfect in My Mind and Don’t Send the Searchlights have been in heavy rotation on my iPod since then, and having now heard the new songs, I expect We’re On the Run will be joining them in the future. Led by Greta Morgan (formerly known as Greta Salpeter, when she was with The Hush Sound) Gold Motel specializes in bouncy pop fun, though if you listen closely some of the lyrics have a bit of a melancholy edge. Still, this record is like summer camp for your ears, including both daring sun-drenched adventures and doomed summer romances.
Tour Status: Their tour with Skybox is currently winding down, but they will be playing two festivals in Chicago in July: The Great Illinois Performers Festival (July 10) and the Local Music Revolution Festival (July 11).
Travie McCoy, Lazarus
Travie McCoy is the front man for Gym Class Heroes, and in the video above, he’s the one driving the car. This is his first solo effort, and is the record he made after a particularly rough year. Some of the songs are joyful and fun (Billionaire, We’ll Be Alright), and some of them are frankly kind of wrenching and hard to listen to (Don’t Pretend); so far my personal favorites are Need You and Superbad (11:34). I’m also developing a growing affection for Akidagain which includes references to G.I. Joe, the Wu-Tang Clan, and Groundhog Day. Overall I think I like it because it really does reflect the internal chaos of pulling yourself together after your life has been upended: some days are good, some days are bad, some days you just would like your most complex decision to be about what kind of ice cream you want for dinner.
Tour Status: Starting in July, he’ll be hitting the road with Rihanna and Ke$ha as part of the Last Girl on Earth tour.
When I went to their New York shows in April , they only had two songs out. They released several more through the late spring, and then the full record finally dropped earlier this month. (It’s currently streaming on their MySpace as well.) It is just under 30 minutes of 1960s-inflected beach rock-flavored tales of love and other misadventures. It’s actually kind of difficult for me to narrow down only one or two favorites, but new tracks I’m particularly fond of include Maybe I Will, Maybe I Won’t, Heart of Mine, and the iTunes bonus track, a cover of the Everly Brother’s Nothing Matters But You, which Ryan Ross and Z Berg (The Like) sing as a duet.
Tour status: Currently wending their way across North America with Black Gold and Rooney.
