Main Stage

No Irony, No Snark, Just an Appeal to Donate to the Haiti Disaster

Feb 012010

Fellow Townspeople:

I won’t take up valuable RTH time to tell you how much Haiti needs your help. What I will tell you is that I and my recording studio have been working with some amazing, talented, generous musicians and other folks to put on a benefit show in Washington, DC on Feb. 2. If you’re in town, please join us — 100% of your $15 admission will go to Voice Of Haiti, a charity founded by a couple of DC-area film-makers who run an incredibly tight non-profit ship.

If you can’t make the show — there are still ways you can help. One: head out to Voice Of Haiti right now to make an online donation. Two: wait until after the show, then donate at Indie Music for Haiti, a site we’re building to host high-quality video files from the event for folks who couldn’t make it. Beyond that, here are some details:

The basics:
Feb. 2, DC9, 1940 9th St. NW, Washington DC
Doors open at 8:30
Show starts at 9:00
$15

Lineup:

Tommy T (of Gogol Bordello) and the Abyssinia Roots Collective, in their debut public performance, delivering the Ethiopian jazz/dub goods
Sitali — one of DC’s best-kept musical secrets, featuring Sitali Khumalo, a featured performer with the Thievery Corporation
DC’s premier old-school ska orchestra, Eastern Standard Time
DC’s fave retro-mod, garage-soul groovers, The Ambitions, featuring Caz Gardiner
Spoonboy, the lead singer for the amazing Max Levine Ensemble, doing his agit-prop, solo Billy Bragg thing

…and here are a few details about Voice Of Haiti, for those of you who are healthily skeptical about charities with which you are unfamiliar: according to the IRS, Voice Of Haiti can honestly claim that 90% of all money raised actually goes to work “in country” — and they’ve been working through local volunteers there for many years. God bless the charities that are rushing to the scene to help in the country’s hour of need, but VOH has been there for years, focused on projects related to long-term agricultural/economic sustainability, trying to give Haitians a good reason *not* to live in the squalor of Port-au-prince.

For Those Who Really Like Tom Waits OR Captain Beefheart BUT Are Lukewarm About the Other…

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Jan 312010

The title of this thread is more specific than it needs to be, but in an All-Star Jam comment on the current SHOWDOWN poll (ie, SHOWDOWN: Tom Waits or Captain Beefheart?), Townsman geo began to get at some of the issues I’m hoping we can explore:

I voted Captain Beefheart in the current poll, but I also really like Waits. Despite their apparent surface similarities, big, deep hollering voices and a tendency toward the aggressively harsh sound, they really come from different places. Waits is much more of a traditionalist. He brings a junkyard’s worth of musical detritus to what is, at heart, a traditional approach to songcraft. Beefheart, at his best, almost completely obliterates the most basic conventions of the electric blues based music that he started out in.

I’ve been revisiting Tom Waits recently, through his new live album, Glitter and Doom. The song selection is pretty good, the band sounds great, the recording is nice and live sounding… There’s a lot to like about this as a live album, including a second CD entitled Tom’s Tales, which I’ve yet to spend time with and which I suspect may be the best part of the concert. However, I can’t help but thinking that, compared with Captain Beefheart, an artist I love and an artist who must have been influential in Waits’ early-80s refashioning of his musical arrangements along “junkyard” lines, I am lukewarm on Waits.

For me, as geo notes, Waits is still a traditionalist at heart. I find his vocal style and all the junkyard trimmings to be a little distracting. “You don’t have to work junkyard,” I want to tell him.
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Metal Machine Music: As It Was Meant to Sound

Posted by BigSteve

Jan 302010

Lou Reed is reissuing the Metal Machine Music album, remastered and in a variety of formats.

The Amine B Ring

Details are available at Lou’s website.

I hadn’t remembered that it was originally quadrophonic, and the quad mix will be available. There will even be a Blu-ray version. I’m fine with the CD version I have.

Pitchfork is also reporting that there will be a European tour where he will be accompanied by a couple of fellow traveling noiseniks. One of them, Ulrich Krieger, was the man behind the rerecording of the piece done mostly with acoustic instruments and excerpted here, with the master sitting in:

I will report back if I hear of North American dates, because this is one you wouldn’t want to miss.

My “Dream Band” Played Last Night On the TEE VEE

Posted by jungleland2

Jan 292010

Elvis Costello & Bruce Springsteen together with just about the best band I could ever put together (Nils Lofgren, Steve Nieve, Roy Bittan, Davey Faragher, and Pete Thomas).

Seriously, this would be my dream band right here. (Or at least my dream back-up band.)

99% of the time this kind of thing is a train wreck, but EC and Bruce have bands that actually know their place as back-up musicians.

Having the balls to play a Sam & Dave song at The Apollo to boot!

Imagine a Sober Keith Richards

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Jan 282010

I’m sure you’ve heard this story by now: Keef has been sober for the last 4 months. Can you handle this, Stones fans and general fans of vicariously living through any “Bad Boy?”

I say, from all accounts the guy has partied enough for a few lifetimes. If he decides to stick with this, he’s got nothing to lose. Imagine how much work it takes for him to get a buzz after all these years of saturation?

What really should be at issue is what this means for Keef’s creativity. Can there be a Rolling Stones led by a sober Keith Richards? Do The X-Pensive Winos become Ex-Pensive? Will passing around a bottle of root beer suffice while gathered around a mic, doing backing vocals with Mick and a couple of backing singers? Will Keef remember that it takes two hands to play guitar?

Free your mind, Townspeople, and share with us your thoughts on a world with a sober Keef. Thanks.

Dugout Chatter

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Jan 282010

The following questions are meant to elicit a sense of your rock ‘n roll values and experiences. As you know, not all questions are directly related to rock ‘n roll or even music. Your candid answers to them may open new avenues of rock dialog. Let’s get it on!

When you think Still photograph from a rock concert, what’s the first photograph that comes to mind?

What’s the most recent band you’ve had to consider you may have dismissed for the wrong reasons (eg, Look, their legion of numbskull fans, a particular fan in middle school who kicked your ass while wearing their three-quarter sleeve concert t-shirt)?

Have you ever been at a concert and then, as the band too the stage, been immediately turned off by one of the musician’s choice in gear only to find that the aesthetically offensive piece of gear was played beautifully by said musician?

Cobra or mongoose?

Example: Too much of Tom Waits’ vocal schtick annoys me, but when listening to his music I imagine the satisfying possibilities membership in his band would afford me as a supporting musician (guitar, in my case). Question: Is there an artist you don’t fully embrace that you imagine might nevertheless afford you a satisfying role as a supporting musician?

Is any constantly praised musician less interesting than Sade?

I look forward to your responses.

Billy Gibbons and ZZ Top Call Bullshit On Mr. Moderator!

Posted by hrrundivbakshi

Jan 272010

In a press release issued today, Billy “Reverend Willy G” Gibbons, Dusty “the Pleaser” Hill, and Frank Beard countered assertions published on popular rock and roll blog “Rock Town Hall” that the band had never actually toured with live animals during their celebrated “World Wide Texas Tour” in 1976.

“As far as I’m concerned, this ‘Moderator’ character needs to step out from behind his momma’s skirt and present himself for a good old-fashioned truth-whuppin’,” said ZZ Top’s long-time lead guitarist Billy Gibbons. “Not only did we tour with bison, buzzards, rattlesnakes, and long-horned cattle way back in ’76, we recently secured a full menagerie of African wildlife for our upcoming ‘BBQ Safari’ World Tour — and we’ve got the pictures to prove it. Until and unless Mr. Moderator delivers photographic proof that he in fact exists, we’re issuing a cease-and-desist notice on all this tomfoolery. In conclusion, let me just say to Mr. Moderator and those who care about his half-baked conspiracy theories: do yourself a favor, son: bear down on the meat, and ease up on the potato salad.”

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