Doctor, doctor, give me the news

Eugene Chadbourne is one of a kind. Oh, sure, there are times when he makes me think of certain other people: Jimi Hendrix, Phil Ochs, Karen Finley, the various mountain musicians on Harry Smith's anthology--but only if they were somehow all mixed up in one big weird amalgamation. Every once in a while I picture someone else following in his footsteps, or walking alongside him, like Hamell on Trial or Bob Log III, but delightful as those other virtuoso one-man bands are, "Doctor Chadbourne" will always occupy a very special place in my heart.

I saw him (at Soundlab) tonight for the fifth or sixth time in fifteen years or so--first in almost ten years, though. Every show's been different (same general ideas, wildly different specifics) and every one has been memorable. Tonight's was the perfect capper to a lousy day: woke up to news of bombs in the London Underground, wrestled with stomachache/headache/toothache combo all day, slogged through a ton of office work that made me miss the evening's other three musical attractions downtown (Sarah Harmer and Hothouse Flowers outdoors, which would have been followed by my pal Leah's kickass Brooklyn-based band Wide Right at Mohawk Place), generally felt tired and weary. And I left feeling... still tired and weary, but uplifted. There's no way to convey this guy's talents in mere words (or even on disc, from what I've heard--that which is transcendent onstage is often grating when captured on cassette, vinyl, or whatever), but let me just tell you that the set list contained heavily tweaked covers of Thelonius Monk (on guitar), the Dead Kennedys (on banjo), and Eddie Rabbit (something resembling heavy metal), among many others, and what I assume to be a few originals. Oh, and for half the show the guy assumed the voice and personality of Jesse Helms' wife, arguing with himself. Then he played his famous amplified rake, using an overturned music stand for percussion. (I've always felt the rake was best appreciated in small doses, but this was easily the best rake solo I'd ever experienced.) IF READING THIS INFORMATION DOES NOT CONVINCE YOU THAT THIS IS A MAN TO WATCH, I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY TO YOU. As my Special Friend said afterward (and this is a crappy paraphrase), he's not just a smart guy, he's an incredibly talented musician. And, I would add, he's very, very funny.

There were under thirty people in attendance, which felt oddly inspiring. Certainly I agree with my SF that the joint should have been packed, but on the other hand I'm just so moved by extraordinary musicians who are in it for the long haul, who spend their entire lives driving around the country playing for audiences of any size. (Flashback to the Mekons packing up their own equipment and dragging out to their crappy van after a Mohawk show, two decades after they helped forge post-punk.)

Now, I would have mentioned the show here anyway, but when Chadbourne played his twisted Jobim cover "Girl from Al Queda," that sealed the deal. Believe me, I'd love to be able to link you to an MP3 of the song, but lord knows where I'd find one, and I just don't have the energy to look. Perhaps one of you younguns will google it or something and post a URL here. Take my word for it: great.

Fourth of July

I've got a few personal music-related annual rituals, like playing Dennis Wilson's and Dave Alvin's songs both titled "Fourth of July" on the big day. Only got around to the first of these this year--and come to think of it, a few years back I added Ani DiFranco's two, count 'em, two 7/4 songs (after she wrote "Independence Day" she remembered she already had one called "Fourth of July"), but I forgot those this time, too.

Other than a lovely party at the new home of pals Susan and Marty, the holiday weekend was a blur of time-wasting, as it so often ends up. Evidently my forefathers struggled for independence so I would be free to:

1) watch all 8 hours of MTV's coverage of the Live 8 concerts (which was probably about 5 hours too many, though I certainly intend to mull over AOL's comprehensive list of clips of every single song by every single performer at every single show, if only to sample Brian Wilson's Berlin show, which was sadly absent from US television.

2) read about that Nike/Minor Threat brouhaha you may have heard about, and then linger over this giant page of hilarious responses to it.

I've got plenty more to say about both of these, but it looks as though I'm not gonna be saying it just now. As usual.

Take it eeeeeeaaaassssyyy....

Those of you who have never spent much time in Buffalo may not grasp just how much goes on here, and the difficult decisions its residents must sometimes make, particularly those who are music obsessives. Today, for instance, I'll be spending most of the day and evening at the Albright-Knox for their unfortunately named annual fundraiser, "Rockin' at the Knox." The headliner is Wilco, and there will also be a virtual marathon of local bands on the bill, but I'm really going for My Morning Jacket and one final chance to check out the Forman Collection, which, while it would make a great band name, is in fact a large exhibition of monochromatic paintings (not normally one of my favorite things, but the group installation of them is perversely fascinating, as if a rainbow had been solidified, dissected, and mounted in a museum).

So where's the difficult decision, you ask? Well, across town at the same time tonight I could be seeing Dirty Projectors at Soundlab. I was not familiar with DP until I read this description:

The new album from Dirty Projectors, The Getty Address, is an epic glitch-opera about Don Henley, leader of the country/soft-rock group The Eagles. It was recorded over the course of almost two years in three different states with more than twenty-five people... Dave Longstreth, the primary Dirty Projector, wrote and recorded arrangements for wind septet, women's choir, and cello octet, digitally deconstructed them, and then sang over the reconstituted parts in order to make these songs. They are in English and a sleepily transliterated gibberish of lyrics from Longstreth's out of print teenage masterpiece The Graceful-Fallen Mango, and the Eagles' Greatest Hits Volume 1.

The Getty Address is about the conflict of Hernan Cortes and the Aztecs in 1519-21. It is also a meditation on the question of what is wilderness in a world completely circumscribed by highways, and what is the meaning of America once the "Manifest Destiny" imperative has expired completely.

This sounds absolutely amazing, and if I didn't already have tickets to one show, I'd be at the other in a heartbeat. I pass this info along to you for three reasons:
1. To invite you to share my pain,
2. For the opportunity to insert a reference here to Elton John: The Rock Opera, a self-explanatory event I participated in (and co-wrote with its mastermind, Steve Griffith) sometime in the late 80s or early 90s, and
3. To steer some of you--and you know who you are--to check out those Projectors yourself, either on disc or on tour. (I've heard not a lick of music yet, but their label's site contains samples, a video, and more.)

I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it...

Excitement reigns throughout the land, for my all-time favorite Buffalo band (leaving out at least one that sorta started here but quickly moved on) is reuniting for a night and collaborating with me on a new spoken-word-plus-music experiment next week.

That's right: Behold the brief return of Treelined Highway, a wonderful instrumental/improvisational trio who played their last show together in 2001 before the original members went their separate ways. (Update: Nick Laudadio now lives in North Carolina and has a terrific project called Gordon Merrick, which I can only describe as electronic covers of 80s power ballads, though I think the idea has changed a bit since I last saw a show. Mike Bouquard is still in Buffalo and is the newest member, I think, of another swell ensemble, Odiorne. And Brandon Stosuy lives in NYC and writes for all manner of music mags.)

A true obsessive, I saw TLH perform many times in their glory days, and bought multiple copies of their recordings to send to friends around the country in hopes of spreading the word far and wide. (I wish I could send you to an active website of theirs, but this is all that's left of it.) It was probably their soundtrack to Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera--performed live at a screening at Squeaky Wheel--that most excited me, but I pretty much liked everything they ever did, which was sometimes noisy and more often remarkably quiet. Reunion talk has been a kind of running joke for many years now, but it's actually gonna happen next weekend--Saturday, June 11 at Soundlab (110 Pearl in Buffalo, NY) at 9 p.m.

The occasion is the latest version of that ever-changing performance I've gone on about here from time to time--"EVERYTHING: AN EVENING WITH RON EHMKE AND HIS OR HER VERY SPECIAL GUESTS." I got the idea to invite them to be one of those VSGs during an earlier Soundlab show, the one by Animal Collective that I keep meaning to write about here. In the opening moments of that amazing performance, my mind sort of drifted (in a good way) and it occurred to me that now was the time to try this thing I've been wanting to do for many, many years: setting a monologue of mine to music, or at least finding a way to work music into a spoken-word performance. The late, lamented TLH seemed like the perfect band to do it, and happily enough Mike B happened to be in the audience at the AC show, and he was open to the concept, then brought it up with the other 2, and one thing led to another, and here we go. We'll have less than 24 hours to rehearse, which only adds to the excitement: 3 people who haven't played together in 4 years, joining forces with someone to do something none of them have done before as a group.

I'll do my own show, including the story with them, and then they'll do a set of their own. (There's even a chance of a Gordon Merrick cameo, but that remains to be seen.) Hey, it's every #1 fan's fantasy, is it not: to be the force who brings a favorite former band back together, even if only for an evening.

Army of She

I've never been the hugest of Bjork fans. From as far back as her days with the Sugarcubes, I admired what she did and thought most of what I heard was pretty catchy, but I never got too excited about any of it.

Then a couple of weeks ago I came across all four volumes of her (fairly) recent collection of live albums, released individually and as a boxed set in 2003, each of which documents a tour linked to a specific studio album. (I keep meaning to write an entire entry about that phenomenon--which also includes the Brazilian tendency to follow up a studio album with a live CD of the same material, and of course the song-for-song live-album version of Pet Sounds--but that particular mini-essay will have to wait.) There's also a surprisingly thoughtful and detailed booklet-length interview (the same booklet in each disc if you buy them separately) which provides some revealing insight into Bjork's creative process, both in the studio and in concert. I had every intention of quoting some of those insights here, then ended up returning the discs to my local library before I could do it. Bad blogger! Shame, shame!

Most of the songs feature radically different arrangements than you find on the studio albums--they're richer, fuller, more surprising. Plus I really like the duo Matmos, who show up as part of the backing band on the later discs. Best of all, the CDs feel fresher than most live albums; they really stand up on their own.

I've been thinking a lot lately about live performance of older work, since that's pretty much what I'm striving to do in my current spoken-word shows (insert self-promotional reference here), and both the interview and the concert recordings have been a great source of inspiration--not that I have the resources, skill, or interest to do anything close to what Bjork pulls off, but at least I like where she's coming from.

Consider me a convert, I guess.

Under cover of the night

Travis singing "Wichita Lineman." Pete Townsend doing the English Beat's "Save it fer Later." Bomb the Bass taking on "I Say A Little Prayer for You." And so on, and so on, and so on...

If you have not yet experienced the addictive charms of Coverville, get your ass over to the site, pronto. Brian Ibbott's half-hour podcast of sometimes silly, sometimes sublime cover versions of songs is too much fun to miss. God only knows how this man finds the time to assemble and record brand-new shows on such a regular basis--it's all I can do to type out 50 words here every three weeks or so. Hell, I'm even too lazy to try and track down who did that amazing version of "A Day in the Life" as it would have sounded if Buddy Holly had recorded it in his signature style--it was on episode, oh, I don't know--I have a backlog of about 25 episodes waiting for me at any given moment. (Note: if you're not into the podcasting lifestyle yet, you can just go to the website and download individual shows, each of which has an accompanying playlist online.)

The premise and execution remind me of various late-night CBC radio programs of years past ("Brave New Waves," anyone?), but mixed in with the staggering range of music he covers (oops, wrong word), there's this ultra-casual home-grown quality that I really enjoy, as when Brian has to ask his 8-year-old son to be quiet while daddy is recording. (Moments earlier, he's just played Cake's version of a Muppets song in honor of the kid's birthday.)

The theme shows are especially cool: 3 versions of the same song in a row, 6 covers of songs about Las Vegas, a night of Irish bands doing non-Irish songs (plus the Cardigans covering Thin Lizzy), "double double cover covers" (ie, covers of two songs at once, like Soft Cell doing their "Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go" medley), etc. Looks like Mr. Ibbott has done 84 shows as of mid-May, and I'm incredibly tempted to check out each and every one.

Partyup

The self-promotion never stops these days, folks. Actually, this one's not really about me at all, but it's certainly about music, and no shortage of obsession. This Thursday, May 12 at 8:30 p.m., there will be a party at the Sphere nightclub in Buffalo, NY to celebrate the May/June issue of the magazine I work for, Buffalo Spree--the first-ever Music Issue. We needed a party because the staff and freelance writers spent about four months working on this one. We'll have two deejays (my buddies Karl Scheitheir, aka "SkaBear," and Paul Szp, aka "Paul Szp," who played in one of my fave Buffalo bands from the 80s, Paper Faces) playing Buffalo-born music from the era of Harold Arlen to the present day. Details on the party are here. Hope you can come!

There is much I could say about the issue, and about music in my adopted hometown, but it'll have to wait. I'm--irony of ironies--late for work.