Karl SO, HOW WAS YOUR WEEKEND?
I GOT A FARMER'S TAN to bring you highly non-exclusive coverage of the Intonation Music Festival held in Chicago, with plenty ‘o’ links to the bands involved. But you'll have to click the “Read More” link at the bottom of today's entry to see it, because the pictures — yes, I took pictures — would slow down loading the home page way too much…
SHAWN COLVIN AND JIMMY WEBB are both lauded at PowerLine. The post recaps a Wall Street Journal piece that contains this tidbit: “Webb has a new CD made for the English label Sanctuary, Twilight of the Renegades, dedicated to three friends who have passed on — Richard Harris, Warren Zevon and Harry Nilsson — 'rebels with a cause,' according to Webb. The CD is already out in England and Australia; it will be released here next month.” Anyone interested in checking out the legendary songwriter could do worse than to start with Ten Easy Pieces, which features Webb performing most of his best “unplugged,” with an assist from Colvin on one track.
THE NEW YORK DOLLS are working on their first new studio album since 1974's Too Much Too Soon. Surviving Dolls David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain expect to release the album next spring.
THE PIXIES are planning to record their first album in 14 years. The Dolls, the Pixies… I think it's so groovy now, that people are finally getting together.
FRANK BLACK'S Honeycomb, recorded in Nashville with people like Steve Cropper, comes out on Tuesday; London's Observer has a preview.
LET IT BE is due for release on DVD in September, with previously lost material and bonus features. Yes, this would be the Beatles, not the Replacements. The movie has not been on home video for over 20 years.
ROB ZOMBIE holds an intense dislike for clowns – and he blames it all on a childhood encounter with a man dressed as Ronald McDonald. I would have said John Wayne Gacy, but whatever.
ROD STEWART apparently has gotten some religion due to 9/11.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN chats with Nick Hornby (aouthor of High Fidelity) about his craft and how his kids keep him current on music.
CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY: Friday's Wall Street Journal suggested that Charlie would face stiffer competition this weekend from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince than from other movies. Charlie still topped the box office with 55 million. However, biz dipped about eight percent on Saturday, and we'll never know how many families went to Harry Potter parties at bookstores Friday night. FWIW, I highly enjoyed it, even though Gene Wilder will always be Wonka No. 1 in my book.
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE: The secret of Harry Potter's phenomenal success lies in the continuing allure of magic and fantasy in a secular society, argues Natasha Walter in London's Guardian.
HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE had a test screening in Chicago recently. Aint-It-Cool-News has reviews from Caone and three others.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH HOLLYWOOD? Economist Tyler Cowen blogs that it is “not just that this year's movies mostly stink.” And he doesn't mention piracy either.
MARTIN SCORSESE lists 20 films– 10 English-language, 10 foreign-language — that he thinks make the best use of color and light.
SANDRA BULLOCK married mechanic and star of the Discovery Channel's Monster Garage Jesse James at a ranch near Santa Barbara.
BRADGELINA UPDATE: Jolie is facing strong criticism over her adoption of Ethiopian orphan Zahara Marley after it emerged the baby has a grandmother desperate to raise the money to keep her. The baby spent a week in a NYC hospital for malnutrition and dehydration, but was released Friday. And Jolie made a good impression with Pitt's parents, according to the ever-reliable Star magazine.
OUTSOURCING: Don't fear it, just do it yourself.
LONDON BOMBING: The Metropolitan Police released a CCTV picture of the bombers, as the investigation expanded to Egypt and Pakistan — where some of the bombers are thought to have gone for religious training. A piece in London's Mirror suggests the bombers may have been duped into killing themselves. Imho, buying round-trip tickets might be a step taken to avoid raising suspicion. Egypt said it is not prepared to hand over Magdy Mahmoud Mustafa el-Nashar, Egyptian security officials said Saturday, as British investigators attended sessions questioning him.
IRAQ: A soldier survives a sniper attack, then gives first aid to the wounded sniper. In Mosul, a sniper and a bomb figure in Michael Yon's latest gripping report. Major-General Jim Molan, recently the chief of operations for the entire coalition, believes the situation began to improve last August and is now “cautiously optimistic” about the future course of the war.
THE MILITARY AND THE MEDIA: James Lacey, an Army Reservist and writer for Time magazine argues that the media coverage of Iraq is overly negative in part because the military has almost totally failed to engage, and where it has engaged, it has been with a mind-boggling degree of ineptitude. However, I think he would also concede that it would help if war reporters knew as much about the military as sportswriters know about sports.
PUNK COMES TO THE PENTAGON: Two Air Force majors, writing in Defense AT&L (acquisition, technology and logistics), think defense program managers could learn a thing or two from the Ramones and the Clash.
OIL-FOR-FOOD SCANDAL: The man who abruptly retired as Kofi Annan's cabinet chief after shredding papers related to the O-F-F program has been shredding still more documents in his new 10th-floor U.N. office across the street from the U.N. Secretariat building, according to a staffer who works on the same floor.
XTINA AGUILERA'S publicist says the singer did not injure her arm in a bar fight, but by picking up pieces of a glass vase knocked over by her dog.
BRITNEY SPEARS may turn her childbirth into a TV show. But it wouldn't show the only part that would interest anyone.
ZACH BRAFF AND MANDY MOORE have broken up; Braff has been spotted with a harem of young women.
FORMER CLINTON ADVISOR AND CNN CROSSFIRE HOST PAUL BEGALA, discussing the Bush Administration's record on and after 9/11, said that Republicans “want to kill me and my children if they can.” The link is to a conservative outfit, but you can check the video — he says it about 50 minutes into the discussion.
L. RON HUBBARD: The science-fiction author and founder of Scientology is profiled in Slate. The adjective “wacky” is used. Aleister Crowley pops up, too. Sadly, no mention of improv comedy giant Del Close.
IT'S NOT THE HEAT, IT'S THE HUMIDITY and more, writes Richard Lawrence Cohen.
EDUCATION: A large majority of high school students say their class work is not very difficult, and almost two-thirds say they would work harder if courses were more demanding or interesting, according to an online nationwide survey of teenagers conducted by the National Governors Association. I'm dubious as to how scientific the online poll is, but interesting nonetheless.
CATS AND DOGS: Diesel, an english mastiff weighing 140kg, might be hostile to people other than his owners, but his hulking frame conceals a big soft spot for the most unlikely of companions – Maggie the cat.
ACOUSTIC KITTY: A blogger taking a class on the History of American Spying taught by the Chief Historian of the CIA claims the Company created a cyborg cat to help eavesdrop on the Soviet Compound in DC during the Cold War. And he links to a document that seems to back it up.
DOGS: A five year-old golden retriever, fought off a 14-foot, 700-pound alligator in a Lake Moultrie canal last month and lived to howl about it.
DOES A TIGER STALK SAN ANTONIO? There are unsubstantiated reports that a tiger is loose in northern Atascosa County, TX, including unusual attacks on other animals.
BLIND MAN ALLEGEDLY HAS SEX WITH HIS GUIDE DOG: But in Florida prosecutors puzzle over the proper charge, because Florida, like many other states, has no bestiality statute.
SPEAKING OF WHICH, King County sheriff's detectives are investigating the death of a Seattle man from injuries sustained while having sex with a horse.
…SO I WENT TO THE INTONATION FESTIVAL at Union Park in Chicago:
AMONG THE HIGHLIGHTS on SATURDAY was a solo set from A.C. Newman, who is perhaps best known these days as one of the main New Pornographers. There are leagl downloads at the links; I'd recommend the title track from the upcoming NP album, Twin Cinema. But I didn't get too many pictures of Newman, as I was delayed at the “Will Call” window for a hunk of his set.
THE BEST SET I SAW WAS FROM Canada's Broken Social Scene. They were a little rawer than on their current release You Forgot It In People, (which you can stream in RealAudio at the link), which scored a 9.2 at Pitchfork. But it worked for me and was a particularly impressive performance given they had to drive 15 hours to get to the show.
Sadly, BSSer Leslie Feist is touring behind her solo disc, but one of their labelmates, Stars' Amy Pillan, filled in admirably.
The size of the band really didn't hit me when reading the liner notes to their stuff, but they were a guitar army with a horn section to boot. Although they featured the current record (with “kc accidental,” “almost crimes,” “cause=time” and “anthems of a seventeen year old girl” standing out), they also played new material that sounded quite good.
THE GO! TEAM, which just signed with a Columbia, is not totally my bag, baby, but Thunder, Lightning, Strike scored an 8.7 on the Pitchfork and the comparison to 70s and 80s TV theme songs is an apt one. So there was enough of a kitch factor for me to enjoy their set. You can hear a few tracks from the Memphis Industries label.
One of the surprising things about their set was the degree to which members would switch instruments. A guitar player might also play keyboards or even a recorder or a harmonica; the drummers also sang or played guitar or even banjo, and so on…
The band was very big on audience participation, exhorting the crowd to do cheers, sing dance or sway their hands. Normally this is cheesy pandering of the worst kind, but it fits in perfectly with their turbocharged sound. Coincidentally, the band's Ian Parton just gave an interview to the Japan Times.
SUNDAY KICKED OFF with Thunderbirds Are Go, which put a little techno frosting on the standard Detroit garage sound. A little ska here and there also. The music didn't really grab me, but they played well and with energy.
Next up was Dungen, which is pronounced “doon-yen” on the fjords of Sweden, where this quartet has been cooking up a brew that draws from the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Led Zeppelein and early Pink Floyd.
Oh yeah, a little Jethro Tull also, though the flute came out for just one number of their too-short set. The band was plagued by some technical difficulties, but largely maintained a good sense of humor and knew enough English to convey it. For example, they announced that “they are on a different voltage” (in Sweden), so they bought a special transformer: “it doesn't work.” And thanking everyone for coming early, whereas they “were on a 24 hour thing” and would be headed off to bed. Or: “We sing in Swedish; if there are questions, we take them afterward — for now, we play.”
I lunched during the gothic set of Xiu Xiu and Techno of Out Hod so that I could get up close to bring you the Hold Steady, who began in Mpls. and have ended up in NYC.
If you've been reading my stuff regularly you know that the Hold Steady is a “bar band,” but not just any bar band. To use the references that pop up in the reviews, imagine a group made up from members of Thin Lizzy, (old) Aerosmith and the E Street Band, with the Boss supplying the lyrics in the style of Greetings From Asbury Park and sung by Bob Mould.
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And while I wish you could hear “Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night,” you can (and should) download “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” from the band's site.
Here's a picture of local boy Andrew Bird doing his own thing with violin and xylophone.
Unfortunately, that's about the time the batteries in the camera died and the festival would not allow re-entry. So I have no pics of the Wrens, who were on of the few bands in the core Pate age bracket and who were the tightest band I saw at the fest. Dang good for a group that hasn't put out an album since 2003's highly-rated The Meadowlands. It ticks me off no end, as there was one spot where they had about a dozen fans onstage playing percussion, which was quite a sight.
Nor do I have pics of The Decemberists, who I've mentioned at this site several times. Not as tight as the Wrens, but the sextet seemed to be enjoying themselves and it came through in the music, whcih takes some of the edge off of material about suicide pacts and WWI trench warfare. Kill Rock Stars has some legal downloads. You can stream a live performance at KCRW. However, this would be killing music.
Fortunately, now that we have the wonderfulness that is the internets, you can see scads and scads of photos at Flickr. Here's one of The Decemberists. UPDATE: Here’s a clearer one of the Decemberists and a apparently rare one of the Wrens. And a whole mess of the Hold Steady. And there's one just for Ken King.
UPDATE: Jim DeRogatis has a review of day one at the Sun-Times in which the pot looks at the kettle and proclaims it black. According to Jim, the indie scene is too pseudo hipster these days, but his main criticism of Broken Social Scene is that they aren’t Olivia Tremor Control…
