Yep, more old Old 97s

Upcoming: Old 97s at Boulder Theater - 07/16/09

I don't try to hide my bias when discussing the Old 97s, who probably stand as my favorite band of all time. Too Far to Care may be the album that had the greatest impact on my perspective on music, and I still consider it the best alt country album of all time.

(image courtesy of Paste)
I'll never forget the first show of theirs I ever saw, at the Gypsy Tea Room in Deep Ellum in 1999. I didn't have a ticket, so I showed up at 7 p.m. to stand in line and proceeded to wait about 4 hours before I finally got to see them. I can also still remember basically being mesmerized as the entire room sang along with Rhett to "Wish the Worst." But I digress...I have way too many Old 97s stories.

The band has somehow withstood the test of time, maybe even benefitting from the fact that they never really got huge. They've got an amazing catalogue of songs that probably couldn't be covered in two full nights, much less one. Today's Colorado Daily interview with Rhett Miller reports that the band will be taking requests for the Boulder show on Twitter. This is the type of thing that could lead me to overload the Twitter system singlehandedly. I'd better not get greedy though. Hmm - don't think I've heard "Hands Off" more than maybe once live. But then there's "If My Heart Was a Car," "Crash on the Barrelhead," and "House that Used to Be" also. Decisions....

Did I mention how awesome it is that Rhett and Murry are opening the show each with their respective solo material? I may not be able to drink enough to make this make sense.

Bon Iver - Fox Theatre (Boulder, CO) - 07/12/09

Bon Iver could do no wrong on Sunday night. After a sold out show in Denver and a sold out show this night in Boulder, they continue to ride the wave of popularity after only one LP and one EP. And they ride this wave exceeding well, as opposed to other acts with similar rises to stardom that have not ridden that wavve so gracefully. If you don't know the back story on Bon Iver, let me fill you in - Justin Vernon made an amazing album by himself a few years ago and now everyone knows about it. Now he is touring behind that album and his recent Blood Bank EP and doing an outstanding job of it. If you can put on a great live show, and you're in a position where almost every song you have as a band is good, you get an end product that only comes around so often (If you're from the mainstream 90s, think 3eb on tour after their first album came out).

As with any show review I do, I end up giving my people watching report as much as I talk about the music. And let me tell you, this sold out show gave me more than enough examples, of which I'll pass along the best.

The setting:

Thinly bearded man and female companion standing on stairs, with 2 slightly older dudes and a woman behind them. One of the dudes is wearing a plaid shirt and the other has aging 90s rocker dude hair.

Skinny dude with thin beard (SDWTB): (turns to dudes behind him) Could you guys quit talking so I can hear the music?

90s rocker dude: (loudly) What?

(SDWTB turns back around and pinches fingers together with international sign for "shut it," which incidentally is also the international sign for "I'm probably a pretentious jerk")

(time passes, tension visually grows)

SDWTB: (not directly to dudes behind him, but uttered vaguely so as to implicitly address them) this is an amazing show.

Plaid shirt dude who would clearly win should the altercation turn physical (PSDW...TP): yeah, sure is.

SDWTB: would be even better if we could hear the songs over you talking.

PSDW...TP: (pretentious voice) We paid just the same as you.

SDWTB: (sheepishly, voice almost cracking) Maybe you should take a walk man.

PSDW...TP: (more confident, less sheepishly) Maybe you should take a walk.

SDWTB: Dude, do you even know this band? Can you even pronounce the name?

PSDW...TP: (in a mocking grade school argument voice, you know the one) Can you even pronounce the name? (returning to pretentious voice, and also conveniently avoiding saying the band name, for fear of actually mispronouncing it) Dude, I made the f-c-ing domain name for this band.

Annnnnd scene.

Whether true or not, plaid shirt dude played the indie nerd card that was pretty much the end of the interaction. I seriously doubt this guy created the domain name for Bon Iver, but whether he did or didn't is far from the point, as the entire interaction was an awesome display of the indie pretension one finds at a Bon Iver show, involving not only who "really knows" the band's music, but also who can correctly pronounce the band's name. And thankfully for you as much as me, this was a much better summation of the crowd in general than my typical ramblings about silly hats and headbands.

Oh right, I guess I should mention the music too. The overall show was flawless and went above and beyond my expectations in regard to regurgitating more than the recorded versions. In spite of the completeness and strength of For Emma, the band nonetheless finds just the right places in the live show to add harmonies, percussion, dissonance, whistles, bells, feeling and emphasis that elevate the live show to an experience that you won't find on youtube. Perhaps most notably of all, Bon Iver does the unthinkable by taking a packed house of people who are too cool to sing along and somehow gets almost all of them to participate in a singalong during "The Wolves (Act I and II)." Throughout, Vernon was quite the gracious host of the night's music, speaking with the audience in a very friendly manner, no doubt in such a way that he may unintentionally spur further insiderism from the indie crowd, as was displayed in the above interaction.

Given that I lean more toward the fan end of blogging than the journalist end, I don't have pictures from the show, but you can check out a close approximation of such (that is, from the Denver show) at I am Fuel, You are Friends, through her review of the previous nights' performance at the Ogden Theater.

Opening the show in both Denver and Boulder was The Wheel, a Denver band I was previously unfamiliar with. I've since come to find that they are a side project of sorts from a more long-time Denver act - Born in the Flood. (Admittedly, I never had a great familiarity with that band either.) In short, the Wheel performs at a level that I would say makes it hard to call them a side project. As is often the case with openers, I basically went in with the mindset that they were going to have to prove something to me if I was to like them, i.e. do something well above mediocre, and I think they did an impressive job of that. I know I spend as much time talking about how blogs already overload you with music and how none of us have time for that much new music, BUT if you're feeling adventurous, give "Early Spring Till" a try on their myspace. It takes a certain mood to get into this, but if it happens to catch you at the right time, it's a worthwhile listen.

Whether or not you could accurately pronounce Bon Iver or correctly spell the name of The Wheel frontman Nathaniel Rateliff turned out to be immaterial last night, as the music was everything a good indie fan could ever ask for (besides maybe a new silly headband).

Update: You can also check out the Denver Post's reviews of the Denver and Boulder shows, and also Wyoming Beat's review of the Boulder show. You know, if you like pictures and stuff.

Not like funny ha ha

For those of you who get around in the blog world (don't worry, I'm not judging), there's little doubt that you have largely become immune to the many raves about the next hot band. Given the commodization of blogs, I think many have become forced to throw multiple bands at you every day. Besides maybe 5% of music industry people, bloggers, and a few people in silly hats, how many of us really have the energy to check out a new band or 5 every day? Personally, I find that I am lucky to feel like listening to one new band each week, and probably don't buy music from an artist I previously knew nothing of more than once a month.

All that being said, I still have trouble filtering out who I think are the most trusted sources of music recommendations, and even at my favorite blogs, the new music recommendations tend to be too much to handle. Amazing how bands find their way into our playlists really, given the number of options out there.

Why you needed to hear all of that, I don't know. Nonetheless, the latest band that has begun to catch my attention is Ha Ha Tonka. I was initially turned off by the name (the same reason I have not taken the time to listen to Ra Ra Riot, despite having heard they are good), but given the credibility I attribute to Bloodshot Records, I fought through my initial disinterest and listened to their myspace. In recent years, I had lost interest in Bloodshot's releases for no specific reason, but they have regained my interest as of late due to my recent discovery of Justin Townes Earle.

I still need some time to soak in exactly what they are up to, but I do have some first impressions - they seem to be a bit more rockin' than the typical Bloodshot band and they've got good harmonies. They've still got a slight country element to their sound, but it's very cleverly woven into their indie rock sound. Also, they are coming through Denver in a few weeks, so hopefully I'll have a chance to hear their albums and see a live show.

If you so choose to check them out, try "Falling In" and "Caney Mountain" from their myspace. I've found those two tracks to be pretty strong. Alternatively, you can file this in the "more recommended music from a blog that I will probably never listen to" file.

Here's one of them fancy music videos for "Caney Mountain," courtesy of the Bloodshot youtube page:

And while you're at it, check out the relatively new Justin Townes Earle "Midnight at the Movies" video:

This isn't really new, but...

Sleepercar "A Broken Promise"


Bands from West Texas just make me feel good about the world. I love it that Jim Ward has been to rock stardom and back, but continues to live in El Paso, and is apparently helping some friends of his get a new bar started there. I understand he is also helping to produce the new Lusitania album, which will no doubt add to the legacy of El Paso music.

I've not had the chance to see Sleepercar live yet, but am hoping to make a point of it next time they come through town. In the mean time, he has recently released the second of three solo EPs, this one entitled In the Valley, On the Shores, that from what I can tell, are only available here.

I wish I still had the article, but I remember years ago, just after the break up of At the Drive In and subsequent formation of the Mars Volta and Sparta, there was an article detailing the best selling albums by Texas artists over the calendar years. What I remember was that the Dixie Chicks were first, and Sparta came soon after them on the list. They were a band most people hadn't heard of, but it turned out the ATDI fans were so rabid I think basically every single one of them bought a copy of the first Sparta album (and probably the first TMV album as well). Okay, maybe that's not a good story, but I thought it was pretty cool at the time.

From Nonesuch to Jeff Tweedy with love

Dear Jeff,

We wanted to take a moment to write you a letter of praise in regard to your band’s new album, Wilco (the album). It has been a genuine pleasure to release your albums over the past 8 or so years, and we take pride in the fact that our relationship with you and Wilco has lasted so long. We hope you love the artistic freedom we give you as much as we love the money you make us.

While you were not on our label for Being There (well, you were sort of, on a subsidiary of our parent company), I think we all know that Wilco was on the verge of going the way of the Jayhawks. However, given your big label affiliation at the time, you rode it out and made Summerteeth, which no one understood at the time, but importantly, it gave those of us in “the biz” a sign that Wilco might actually be far from finished. Thank goodness WB put out that album, or you very well could have fallen through the cracks before you found direction and began to hit your stride.

At that point, you still weren’t that big of a deal, but oh man, the Woody Guthrie business was the beginning of great things to come. The great things just got better when we got the opportunity to pick you up after our parent company dropped you. (Still not entirely sure, but did you really get paid twice for that album?) Anyway, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot really broke ground because it was so experimental (seems like a tiny bit too much noodling at times now, but that’s neither here nor there), and was coming from what people had previously thought was an alt country band. And then there was the documentary about all the drama in the band…a better script could not be written for an American rock band.

After you reinvented the Wilco wheel, we have to say we couldn’t be more pleased with the direction things have gone since then. A Ghost is Born worked to push the envelope just a bit more, but not enough to scare away any of your ever expanding fanbase. And honestly Jeff, when you listen to some of the musical shenanigans on Kicking Television, don't you wonder how you get away with some of that stuff yourself? Whatever the case, you can take a song like "Via Chicago" and play the skillet and wooden spoon on it in your live show, and the crowd just eats it up. After that, Sky Blue Sky continued the path of changing things up just enough to make people still feel like it was cool to blast "Impossible Germany" out of their Subaru factory speakers. The addition of Nels brought such an amazing dimension to the band, and thankfully, the rest of your personnel changes have never been so drastic as to alienate any substantial segment of your fanbase. Remember when you included one of John Stirratt's songs on A.M? It's almost funny to think about now.

Sure, you have never gotten much radio play over the years, but it just hasn’t mattered. You’ve steadily grown into one of the most respected American rock bands, with virtually complete control over your artistic integrity, and we just couldn’t be happier that you’re going stronger now than ever before. The pleasure is all on this side of the table, trust us.

More adeptly than most bands of your kind, you have found a way to stay relevant enough to your fans that they stick with you. All those hipster kids in 2001 who fell in love with YHF are mostly out of college and/or have families and good jobs now. And as you well know, those are the same people who pay to download songs from their favorite artists like nobody's business. Downloads basically cost us nothing, and we don’t even have to go to the bank to cash in on them, since the money just drops straight into our (and your) offshore accounts. Turns out your fans aren’t quite as hip as they used to be, but the key is, your music is just far enough out of the mainstream that they still believe they’re listening to cutting edge music. Good for us, and doubly good for you, since they pay $35 & up (plus typically $25 in service fees) to see you live at huge venues across the country. Hipsters would rather spend that money on PBR and silly hats, but they aren’t vital to your success anymore, so no reason to change what you're doing now.

In fact, what better to keep your fans energized than to make your 7^th album such a tongue-in-cheek affair by naming it Wilco (the album), with “Wilco (the song)” as the lead off track? Whether intentional or not, you’ve created a blogger's dream, as blogs have already begun to proliferate the internet with clever titles such as “Wilco (the review)” and “Wilco (the blog post).” This has prompted those of us around the office to refer to the album in-house as “Wilco (the cash cow).” Can we also say that the Feist guest appearance was a brilliant move that we think will see you continue to gain new fans in the ITunes demographic? We’re actually in talks with Toyota to have “You and I” preprogrammed into every new Prius sound system. Just as expected though, this album is not a one trick pony, given that "I'll Fight," "Country Disappeared," and "One Wing" are likely to become instant Wilco staples as well, because after all, you're the one making the rules. The album is accessible, but appropriately, not instantly accessible to the casual listener. After a few listens, your core fans will start reminiscing about the days when they listened to really cool music, and remember why they got that "I am an American aquarium drinker" ankle tattoo. Admittedly, we get a little sentimental too, when we think about how much money we were making off of you back then. Let's keep this gravy train going, why don't we?

For future reference, we’d love it if Spencer is ready to put out an album in the next few years, so please keep us in mind. Otherwise, we'll leave you alone for now, as we've got to get back to our layoffs, but please let us know if there's anything we can do for you.

Sincerely,

Nonesuch Records (the label)

Warner Brothers Records (the parent label)

Warner Music Group (the corporation)

I realize there's no reason you should care about this...

but I've really been impressed with the playlist of Denver's Indie 101.5 FM. Sure they get bogged down in some music I'm not terribly enamored with, but just when you're about to get fed up, they'll play Band of Horses or DeVotchKa, and all is right with the world again.

The real problem I've found is that reception is horribly spotty, and are almost reminiscent of my youth in west Texas, where I affixed all sorts of wires and tinfoil to my radio antenna with the hopes of picking up a decent radio station, and only then if the weather conditions were just right.

I don't understand how a Denver radio station can go entirely to static in...Denver. Not Castle Rock, not Loveland, not Golden, but Denver. Reception in Boulder ranges from great to not worth waiting for the signal to come back.

But here's the kicker, for anyone still with me. Yesterday, I was driving up Boulder Canyon to Nederland, with probably 500 feet of rock on either side of me, absolutely no cell phone service, and as I turn on my car stereo planning to put in a CD, what do I hear? Well, Indie 101.5 of course. Not a faint signal or an intermittent snippet of music, but just solid, clear radio. I hope you weren't expecting me to give you explain this phenomenon, because I haven't the foggiest. If nothing else, I guess now the canyon has got that much more rock...just don't plan on calling in a request on your cell phone.

Weakly stuff

If you remember my Wovenhand acoustic show review:
You’ll recall the mention of Elin Palmer. Just ran across a live show recording from her Westword Music Showcase set here, so check it out.

Only in Boulder:
Newspaper headline – “Police return marijuana clinic's drugs”

New Fleet Foxes song:
here.

Remember when news (usually) involved verified sources?:
It seems now that news institutions are really taking a hit from celebrity blogs, who take the approach of “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.” Or “throw every possible rumor at the wall and wait to see which ones are actually true.” Case in point has been TMZ being the first to break the MJ story. Quite an advantage they have to be able to print things before they know if they are true.

What does this mean?:
I don’t have a clue, but I'm pretty glad I'm not a journalist.

New Wilco tomorrow:
if you're into that kind of thing.

I'm sure this is old news to all the cool kids:
but I was just told about this amazing Tiny Desk Concert performance by the Avett Brothers. Now they are saying September for their new album release. Please don't push it back any further guys.

Finally:

saw True Stories all the way through and am afraid I'm now on the search for the Talking Heads' album True Stories, and also the version of "People Like Us" sung by John Goodman, which apparently exists. I'm not sure if it's just a B-side on a record, or if it's more widely available than that, but I'll keep you posted on all the uninteresting details.