I may not be a father, but I certainly wasn't the only husband in the greater New York City area left at home on Father's Day while their wife snuck out to see The Package tour, the 90's boy band event of the year at Brooklyn's preeminent rusty bird's nest, the Barclays Center.
When I was a fourth grader just tryna get by at the height of the Hangin' Tough era, seeing the overpowering effect it had on the bedroom walls of the few girls I vaguely associated with at the time, I gave no thought to the quintet's temporality one way or the other. As perception of time goes at that age, it seemed fair to assume that they might be around for a long, long while. Given another year, of course, it appeared the opposite was certain. Now, it looks like my first impression might have been closer to the truth, not counting what we'll refer to as their "wilderness years" of 1995 - 2007, during which one can safely assume they were all living off the land together in the Massachusetts wilderness. If such a place exists(?).
There we were, on the Bolt bus coming back from Philadelphia on Sunday morning, when my wife, J, got a text from her friend, A. A had won tickets to the NKOTB/98 Degrees/Boyz II Men concert, and needed a cohort to brave the spectacle with. J was reluctant at first, but, after some "Are you kidding? Don't let a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness crazy badness like this pass you by!" goading on my part, she was persuaded. We checked the internet and found a somewhat troubling abundance of $5 tickets for the concert. We guessed that not just her friend had won tickets, but also everyone who entered the contest. (Also, just to note, there's no real reason why I'm half-assedly protecting J and A's anonymity here other than trying to keep them from becoming internet-search-affiliated with 90's boy bands.)
Once J and A finally made it to the arena, J's encroaching fear of sad old men singing to a sad sparse audience was quickly squashed by what she later described as the "frenetic energy" pulsing through the very crowded stands. As J's photo reports from the front began to trickle in, the captions went from distanced observations like "crowd is 99% women, some preggers" (leaving me shocked that a full 1% of the crowd could be comprised of men) to, eventually, what I had been expecting all along at some point: "OK, I'm glad you made me go." Really though, my powers of persuasion are nothing compared to that of NKOTB's hits like "You Got It (the Right Stuff)," which are, apparently, now and forever.
Also, as mentioned, 98 Degrees performed. They happened way too late in the 90's for me to actually know any of their songs, but that's them on the left with their custom-built blue-light-special mic stands. Boyz II Men were, unfortunately, too punctual, and J missed them. This was a sincere disappointment. Boyz II Men were the bee's knees in the way-back-when, and remain the top selling R&B group of all time. I'm pretty sure they still get a commission off all bear skin rug and Duraflame log sales in the contiguous United States. Poignantly, while in Philadelphia earlier that weekend, I enjoyed my first official Philly cheesesteak.
So, yeah, how about the big Tim Tebow news, amiright? No matter how you feel his signing does or doesn't affect the Patriots' douche-factor, one thing seems clear: the NFL loves messing with this dude. Granted, the totes-Catholic Boston area (why do you think they named it MASSachusetts?) has gotta be more churchy than the den of iniquity that is the New York metropolitan area, but this new chapter in Tebow's ongoing saga in the secular Northeast only gives further support to any notion that these are his "wandering in the wilderness" years. (Yes, we know we're inconsistently mixing all sorts of Bible-y stuff here). Maybe the whole thing is intentional missionary work, but it feels like an intentional punishment that the poor man can't get transfered somwhere below the Mason-Dixon line.
Anywho, this ordeal reminded us of a beloved old Giant Steps-era b-side by The Boo Radleys. Unfortunately, YouTube came up empty handed, so the best we could do was find it on Grooveshark. Enjoy!: http://grooveshark.com/s/i+Wanna+Be+Touchdown+Jesus/3ZnfOD?src=5
Start practicing your Funky Chicken and speak now or forever hold your peace, because wedding season is here to yank tears of happiness out of your eyes and devour your weekend plans. In fact, we love weddings so much that our very own Kyle decided to get one himself last weekend! He's the one on the left, with the antlers:
(Those two deer made it through fine, but the delicious cake they were perched on did not survive the night.)
Weddings have been a rich source of inspiration for songwriters as long as there have been both weddings and songs, which we're pretty sure is a long time. However, one must be careful when compiling their playlist for the reception, because a song about a wedding is not necessarily a "wedding song." If you have been assigned DJ duty this year and are currently shopping around, buyer beware: listen closely to those lyrics before you download...
11: Billy Idol - "White Wedding"
Let's just get this one out of the way. Yes, Billy Idol's greatest hit is surely played at many weddings, because some folks can't leave a bad joke alone.
10: The Swords Project - "Shannon's Wedding Song"
Solid live performance found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWwOH8aUB8E
(Fun fact: we were at the show this video was taken at, because we're not very young.) Disqualifying lyric: There are no lyrics, and it's actually a beautiful song, but it is also a long GYBE-gone-delicate instrumental, one that will probably not go down well when your relatives want to get sloppy on the dance floor.
9: The Wrens - "I Won't Come to Your Wedding"
Not that Wrens, but a 1950's doo-wop group also called the Wrens. Seriously though, that would also be a perfect title for a song by the other Wrens. Disqualifying lyric: See title.
8: Outkast - "Dracula's Wedding"
Disqualifying lyric: "...but I'm terrified of you," repeated ad nauseum.
Disqualifying lyric: "All of the headlines said "Passion Crime: Newlywed's Groom Shot Dead" should give you an idea of what's on Ms. Bush's to-do list.
6: Radiohead - "A Punchup at a Wedding"
Disqualifying lyric: Take your pick! This song is essentially "I Gotta Feeling" played backwards; aimed at ironic wedding receptions instead of Bar Mitzvahs.
5: Mark Lanegan - "Wedding Dress"
Disqualifying lyric: The most disqualifying aspect of this one is possibly Mark Lanegan's inimitable voice, because typically you don't want to play songs with "haunting" vocals on joyous occasions...but a line like "The end could be soon, we'd better rent a room" comes to mind.
4: The Wombats - "My First Wedding"
Disqualifying lyric: "She's my heartless bitch that I just can't seem to get enough of" is one of many.
Disqualifying lyric: There are basically two lines in the whole song, but it is Smog, so both of them.
2: Guided by Voices - "Big Boring Wedding"
Disqualifying lyric: As to be expected, the lyrics for this one are a bit random/esoteric, but there are enough darts like "It's hard to imagine that you just wanna leave," that you shouldn't take the risk. And don't play "Game of Pricks" either, no matter how much you love it!
1: Damien Jurado - "Wedding Cake"
Disqualifying lyric: Well, the chorus is "It was clearly never meant to be," but the whole thing is a domestic tragedy set to an upbeat strummy backdrop, and would surely bring anyone's big day to an awkward, upsetting halt. Nice tune, though.
And one more picture of Billy Idol, for symmetry...
If the Ramones had broken up in 1976 right after their debut came out, the world would never have been blessed with Rocket to Russia, but it would still know what the Ramones sounded like. All the same adjectives would be used to describe them in either case. Liars are not such a band. “Mr. Your on Fire Mr.” did not clearly set the stage for everything to come after it. Liars are the Liars we know because of a decade's worth of evolution and hindsight, and what they are now will be different after another decade passes. The self-appointed folks piecing together the truth about Liars on the innacuracy minefield that is Wikipedia can’t even decide what kind of band they are from album to album. In the page on their first record they are “dance-punk band Liars.” For the follow-up, they are “noise rock band Liars.” For their third, “experimental rock band Liars.” After that they are simply “the band Liars,” before being pegged more specifically as an “experimental rock trio” for their most recent two albums, including WIXIW, which probably should have been made by “experimental electronic trio Liars.”
Funny as it may be, that progression of descriptions actually illustrates well the notion that a band has to earn, or grow in to, the distinction of being “experimental.” Aside from the long song titles (which read a bit more like Piebald than Amon Duul) and the awesome half-hour closer “This Dust Makes That Mud,” there wasn’t much that was truly out-there about They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top. You can almost hear Monument as Liars bluffing their way into the right early-00’s NYC clubs with the first eight tracks, and then ripping off the masks with the last one: “Gotcha! We were art the whole time!”
After that, they seemed to make all the right 'experimental band' moves. They got on Mute Records.Then they released an album (They Were Wrong, So We Drowned) that was widely disliked upon its release, but which will ultimately be recognized as ahead of its time in one way or another, likely receiving positive reevaluations when its tenth anniversary rolls around next year. Then they moved to freaking Berlin. Then, in said art capital, they chose not to make an even-more-difficult record than Drowned, but instead made a widely-enjoyed, vaguely-conceptual album that has possibly the best known Liars song on it (“The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack,” or ‘the one from that movie’) and cover art that looks like a hamburger made out of words, at least if you squint.
From there, naturally, it was the self-titled, stripped-down record. At this point, it’s difficult to say if history will ultimately view Sisterworld or WIXIW as the “transitional” album. It probably depends on whether Liars stick with the path they’ve gone down on WIXIW, which points to one surprise in the Liars story: they took over a decade to make their “electronic album" -- if this is even necessarily that record; it depends on how much more (or less) “electronic” their next record is.
We won’t fully know where WIXIW stands for some time to come, but, in the Temple of Dendur last Saturday night, it made a lot of sense. Liars have by now more than earned the art-stripes required to play a 7:00pm gig adjacent to an old Egyptian temple at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was hard to tell if the blazers and short-ish haircuts were intentional for the show or not, but looking cleaned up works in a room with ancient relics and a fifty-foot-tall glass wall.
WIXIW is Liars' most accessible record since take-your-pick, and almost definitely the most danceable since their debut. The band have noted in interviews that they like how the palindromic nature of the title suggests a returning to the place one started. Go figure. The perfectly understated tension of "No. 1 Against the Rush" makes you wish they'd write another dozen songs just like it, even though you know that's not how they work. A friend at the show mentioned that the last time he saw Liars they were incredibly loud. At this show they swapped abrasiveness for refinement, volume for rhythm, battery for beats. This newest suit fits them nicely, whether they wear it for long or not.
Apropos of nothing, we saw this sign on Park Ave after the show. This reads like a Liars EP track list, though.
If you thought that Dear Jerks was the only music enthusiast site that was also giving big props to National Arbor Day (see our previous two posts), you have probably been right...until today. As of this morning, Pitchfork has also stepped up, reviewing not just one, but two albums with trees on the cover -- side by side, no less! Witness these tastefully artistic images of nature that grace the covers of the Appleseed Cast's Illumination Ritual (left) and Blackout Beach's Blues Trip (right):
Not only that, guess what? Both of these bands of bonafide tree aficianados came away with pretty darn decent reductive numerical appraisals of their life's artistic pursuits! The Appleseed Cast got a 6.9, which is pretty much the sexiest gymnastics score you can get, amiright? Blackout Beach got a slightly less sexy 6.1 (though maybe it is sexy, if you use your imagination?), but they are almost surely going to get a rave review, in the form of five or six paragraphs of excellent esoteric musings, from Cokemachineglow, so it's all good.
Our two-week-long celebration of National Arbor Day continues with a photographic stroll down recent-memory lane. Last month we had the good fortune to be on vacation in Berlin at the same time as Yo La Tengo were swinging through the city on tour. What does that have to do with Arbor Day? Well, if the cover of the band's latest album isn't enough to convince you that Hoboken's finest are a tree-friendly bunch, then witness their stage props...
A different tree for each member of YLT.
The band played the Volksbuhne, an architecturally imposing theater in Mitte, the center of Berlin. Having never been, we assumed the Volksbuhne would be a space like Terminal 5 or Irving Plaza, not a century-old national treasure. We also assumed there would be an opening act, and so we hung around sipping German wine in our hotel room until the new Pope was announced live on television. Thus, we walked in to muted capacity crowd, and took a seat on the stairs just inside the theater door. Ira, Georgia, and James sat close to one another not too far from the lip of the stage, playing quiet renditions of some of their favorites, including a gorgeous rendition of "Tom Courtenay." They took their leave for a break not long after, and we lamented missing such a significant chunk of their set. It turned out we had little to lament.
Kaplan making some serious squall; Hubley and McNew keeping it cool.
Yo La Tengo played for the better part of three hours that night. There was the first set, the "quiet" set, followed by a "loud" set, followed by a sizable encore, followed by a second encore. There were hits, classics, and favorites. There was one fifteen minute jam followed by another fifteen minute jam, giving guitarist Ira Kaplan all the room he could want to do some improvisational sprawling out. There was their cover of the oldie "Who Loves the Sun" so bassist James McNew could take a turn on lead vocals. Kaplan and drummer Georgia Hubley -- one of the most endearing of the enduring indie rock royalty couples -- played a hushed and beautiful "Center of Gravity" (which is possibly in every YLT fan's 'Top 10'), allowing them a chance to sing together.
Killin' the keyboard freakout on "Moby Octopad"
If Yo La Tengo aren't planning to retire soon, you could be forgiven for thinking that some of the signs point to 'yes'. Beyond naming their new album Fade, a thorough and engaging biography of the group was published last year. (How much does the band love barbecue? Possibly more than you think.) More or less indicative, the setlist that frigid March night at the Volksbuhne (not to mention the length of the combined sets) seemed designed to provide as cohesive a retrospective as possible while still keeping the on-stage energy vital and inspired. In the rare times he did speak, Kaplan at times seemed almost wistful. Mentioning how much they always love to play Berlin, he noted that they'd been coming to the city for twenty years. The city and the venue's own history (the Volksbuhne is located in what was the former East Berlin) gave the anecdote a touching significance: twenty years is about as long as any foreign band could possibly claim to have been coming to this part of Berlin.
Night falls on Yo La Tengo's departing audience in Berlin.
Even if Yo La Tengo seemed to be playing the Volksbuhne like it was their last show there, we're holding out hope to catch them in town again the next time we're in the Berlin area. Which will probably be in no less than another twenty years...
Happy Arbor Day!
Some more shots from the very back of the theater (naturally) follow, or you can go here for far superior pics of the show.
Now that SXSW has come and gone, and an oddly Britpop-reunion-tastic Coachella is mere hours away, it can only mean one thing: Arbor Day is here!Well, technically, it depends. National Arbor Day is the last Friday in April, which is when New York, along with many others, observes it. However, every state is allowed to set its own Arbor Day, because yeeehaw states’ rights. In Washington State, for instance, Arbor Day already happened this past Wednesday. Therefore, we will be personally celebrating Mother Nature’s ladders-to-nowhere for the entire two weeks in between. In our hearts, at least.
What better way could there be for Dear Jerks to proclaim their love for our lanky-and-leafy friends than with a good old-fashioned list of albums with trees on the cover, you ask? You make an excellent point. In fact, Rateyourmusic.com already thought about your point, and subsequently scoured the last ten years of their unwanted promo copy bins for albums of that sort. What they found is irrefutable: indie bands have much love for the timber. Rateyourmusic's supposedly thorough survey may have even proved that, collectively, the indie music world's fondness for trees knows no canopy. In the process, though, Rateyourmusic inadvertently tipped their hand, showing how much they themselves hate them.
Confused? Good. So are we. If Rateyourmusic truly loved the baums, how in the world could they have made so many glaring omissions? Putting in the first Bon Iver album but not the second might have just been them taking a passive-aggressive stance against "Beth/Rest," but there's no excuse for not including all of the below. At this rate, they might consider changing their slogan to “Rate Your Music, Hate Your Trees”...
14: Sonna - Smile and the World Smiles with You
The bulk of Rateyourmusic's list seems to come from 2006 and afterward, but let's look at 2003. They include some random compilation from that year called Heat & Birds, but not this album from Baltimore's finest instrumental post-rock quartet, Sonna (now long on hiatus) from the same year. Smile was recorded by Steve Albini in roughly three days. What did you do that weekend?...
13: Edaline - I Wrote the Last Chapter for You
...Rateyourmusic probably spent that weekend brainstorming ways to attack trees. At some point, they must have decided that a good way to do so would be to drown them. Maybe they didn't put this album on their list because they thought people would catch on to their evil plan...
12: Traindodge - On a Lake of Dead Trees
...Which would also explain why they omitted this one.
11: Dodgy - Free Peace Sweet
This, on the other hand, must be Rateyourmusic's worst nightmare: a big, aggressive tree with a badass scarification piece getting right up in its face. Don't let the hippie message of the trunk-tat fool you, it's like when huge dudes are nicknamed "Tiny"...
10: Yo La Tengo - Fade
...Speaking of, here comes Tiny now. He looks pissed that he didn't make Rateyourmusic's list, but he shouldn't be, because it seems to be an arboreal hit list of sorts.
9: The Eagles - Hotel California
Did someone say "hit list"? Oh right, us. Hits don't come much hit-ier than this. So why no love from Rateyourmusic? Surely because they despise the palm tree above all others. Need more proof?...
8: The Gun Club - Miami
...Even this pair of scrawny palm trees lurking behind this band is enough to raise Rateyourmusic's hateful hackles...
7: The Cure - Boys Don't Cry
...Make that a drawing of some scrawny palm trees. Is there nothing worse to Rateyourmusic than a drawing of a palm tree? Why yes...
6: The Silver Jews - Starlite Walker
...A drawing of many trees in their natural habitat. And what could be worse than that?...
5: Chad VanGaalen - Skelliconnection/Diaper Island
...Two of them. VanGaalen is the undisputed champ of putting drawings of weird forests on album covers. In fact, there may only be one man out there who loves putting forests on his album covers more...
4: Mount Eerie - Lost Wisdom/Mount Eerie Pts. 6 & 7/White Stag/Wind's Poem/Song Islands Vol. 2
...To Rateyourmusic's credit, they did remember that Mount Eerie's No Flashlight has trees on the cover (which is why it's not included here). However, they forgot the part where almost all of Mount Eerie's albums have trees on them. Phil Elverum's love of forests makes John Denver look like Joseph Aspdin.
3: Eluvium - Talk Amongst the Trees
If there's one thing Rateyourmusic hates more than trees, it's metaphorical trees. Those are people, you say? Think on it. Seeing trees equated with humans must have driven Rateyourmusic bonkers. "What's next?!" They surely shrieked. "Trees getting married?!"...
2. Oneida - The Wedding
..."Well, now I've seen everything!" But even that isn't the worst offense to Rateyourmusic...
1: U2 - The Joshua Tree
...No, the worst offense is creating the impression of trees where there are none. Sure, the back cover does have a picture with an actual tree in it. But how many of you, when conjuring this album cover in your memory, remember that tree being on the front? Such is the persuasive, mind-effing power of Mr. Bono's vox and The Edge's hypnotic stereo-delayed arpeggios.
Dishonorable Mention: Jurassic 5 - Quality Control
Seeing this tree-atrocity exhibition must have made Rateyourmusic's day. For all of the J5's good vibes, their posi-core attitude apparently didn't extend to some stupid plant that just provides humans with oxygen. It's like Jarvis Cocker said: "Yeah, the trees, those useless trees/produce the air that I am breathing."
There we were, on the Bolt bus coming back from Philadelphia on Sunday morning, when my wife, J, got a text from her friend, A. A had won tickets to the NKOTB/98 Degrees/Boyz II Men concert, and needed a cohort to brave the spectacle with. J was reluctant at first, but, after some "Are you kidding? Don't let a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness crazy badness like this pass you by!" goading on my part, she was persuaded. We checked the internet and found a somewhat troubling abundance of $5 tickets for the concert. We guessed that not just her friend had won tickets, but also everyone who entered the contest. (Also, just to note, there's no real reason why I'm half-assedly protecting J and A's anonymity here other than trying to keep them from becoming internet-search-affiliated with 90's boy bands.)
