One of the all-time greats, dead at 79. He was a gunslinger. His obituary is here. Here's a mid-'60s clip from The Big TNT Show of Ellas McDaniel singing out his favorite song title: "Hey Bo Diddley." The Duchess is playing electric guitar on the far right.
In 2005, Keith Richards talked about Diddley's impact with Rolling Stone: "Muddy and Chuck were close to the straight electric blues, but Bo was fascinatingly on the edge. There was something African going on in there. His style was outrageous, suggesting that the kind of music we loved didn't just come from Mississippi. It was coming from somewhere else."
Dr. Bruce Klauber, biographer of Gene Krupa, wrote me this morning with this story of interviewing Diddley in 1980: "He was playing at a fondly-remembered, Old City venue called "Stars." Bo was a true rhythm guitar player and nothing more--actually more of a percussionist than anything else-- but he really made the instrument work for him in many ways. He did not use effects pedals, rather, every guitar effect--distortion, echo, reverb, wah, etc.--was actually built in to Bo's various triangular, fur-covered and rectangular guitars. Bo told me he felt that effects pedals detracted from what he was trying to do on stage, and that in order to even lift one of his instruments, he said, "You had to be a man. " There was a very, very obscure LP Bo made with Chuck Berry, when both were under contract to Chess/Checker, called "Chuck Berry Meets Bo Diddley." It is absolutely awful, but is a must-have. When I asked Bo about Chuck, he could only reply, "He don't play s---."
Excellent quote from Jack White of The Raconteurs - who are touring this summer, but for some reason not playing anywhere near here - in the Boston Herald, via the music blog Large Hearted Boy, on the subject of unending music industry angst: “I’m so tired of all the fears in the industry. The fears of first-week sales or of free, leaked music, or music stores closing, or of the whole music industry collapsing. The White Stripes have been dealing with all these fears ever since we came above ground in 2002. I just wish whatever everyone’s so afraid of would happen already.”
The Waco Brothers sing about the "The Death Of Country Music" in order to bring it back to life. Welshman Jon Langford and his band of merry Chicagoans will do their The Clash meets Johnny Cash damage at the North Star Bar tonight.
M.I.A.'s show at the Electric Factory last December was as electrifying as anything I saw in 2007. At the time London-raised, Brooklyn based global street beat Queen was having visa difficultites, but she's back in town tonight, with the Holy F--- and the Broadzilla DJs, at the 33rd Street Armory on the Drexel campus. It is highly recommended.
Here's the video for "Paper Planes," the Diplo-produced, Clash-sampling cut from the Sri Lankan rapper's inconsistent but often absolutely brilliant 2007 album Kala. Keep your eyes peeled for a couple of Beastie Boys. There's also a clip of her doing the song, from the Electric Factory show, on her My Space page.
Below, as an added treat, is a quite amusing clip of stand-up comedian Aziz Ansari - the Human Giant indie funny man known to YouTube viewers for his role as Clell Tickle, the Suge Knight of indie-rock - explaining how, and why, he loves M.I.A. As well he - and we - should.
Not so big, bigger, biggest: I caught three acts near and dear to my heart on a pre-Roots Picnic spree on successive nights this past week, in escalating levels of hugeness: The Waco Brothers (who have never been and will never be huge), M.I.A. (who quite possibly is on her way to being huge), and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (who are as huge, if not huger, than ever). Only two of the three did Bo Diddley covers.
The Wacos played the North Star Bar on Wednesday, to a crowd of maybe, 50 people. That's typical for Jon Langford, the Welshman who's been making galvanic, highly amusing, intellectually challenging Hank Williams informed rock and roll for decades, with the Mekons, Wacos, Three Johns or all by his lonesome. At the North Star, the swaggering Wacos were as good as they always are, kicking high like middle aged Rockettes, and closing with successive medleys of Diddley and George Jones. One regret: They didn't do "See Willie Fly By," which my friend Molly calls "the second best song ever."
On Thursday, M.I.A. - that's short for Maya Arulpragasam - played the 33rd Street Armory at Drexel. I don't mean to brag, I don't mean to boast, but back in the day, I saw both Nirvana and the Notorious B.I.G. there. That was a long time ago, however, and there haven't been any shows there in a good long while. The barrel vaulted room is spacious, the sight lines clean, it should be a pleasant place to see a show. But for M..A. on Thursday, the sound was terrible. M.I.A.'s percussive street beat agit-pop percolates and explodes in all sorts of fascinating ways, and her show last December at the Electric Factory was thrilling, a complete package of day-glo pomo visuals and a riotous coming-out party for her multiculti audience. But at the Armory, the echoey sound mix was so fractured and diffuse that it was simultaneously too loud and not nearly loud enough. Unless you pushed up to the very front of the stage, you felt like you were watching from a serious remove. I never thought I'd miss the Electric Factory so much.
As Petty pointed out, he's been coming to Philadelphia since 1976. He's never been all that of energetic performer, and there are only a few truly great songs in which he sings like he actually has something at stake - among them, "Even The Losers," "The Waiting," "American Girl," which Molly, perhaps correctly, says is "the best song ever." But if there's a dearth of truly great ones, there are more really good ones than you can count on your fingers and toes. Plus, he's got an excellent band, and his reach never exceeds his grasp.
On his second night at the Wachovia Center - in front of a crowd that's considerably more youthful than that commanded by contemporaries like Bruce Springsteen (that's what having radio hits will do for you) the 57 year old Petty did lots of them, plus covers of Them's "Mystic Eyes," and "Bo Diddley's A Gunslinger," and rarities of his own called "Sweet William" and "Girl On LSD." Plus, for the first time on their current tour, he brought out Steve Winwood for a pretty darn combustible version of "Gimme Some Lovin'," in which Winwood, at 60, sounded as much like a gruff middle-aged soul man as he did when he first sang it with the Spencer Davis Group in 1967 when he was 19. Doug Wallen's spot-on review of the previous night's show is here.
Bob Dylan hasn't exactly endorsed Barack Obama. The always elusive, often obfuscating songwriter has been fleeing the Spokesman of a Generation tag ever since it was pinned on him in the 1960s. He once said: "I've never written a political song. Songs can't save the world. I've gone through all that." But he was uncommonly direct when asked last week about American politics by The Times of London. He said this: "Poverty is demoralizing. You can't expect people to have the virtue of purity when they are poor. But we've got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up — Barack Obama. He's redefining what a politician is, so we'll have to see how things play out. Am I hopeful? Yes, I'm hopeful that things might change. Some things are going to have to."
Dylan talked to the Times because he has an art show opening in London, so there's not much music discussed, though he does say "the music world's a made-up bunch of hypocritical rubbish," though he probably actually said "garbage," not "rubbish." And when asked about what future painting projects he has in mind, he says he's interested in “the idea of a collection based on historically romantic figures. Napoleon and Josephine, Dante and Beatrice, Captain John Smith and Pocahontas, Brad and Angelina ... " Dylan's back at the Borgata on Aug. 16th.
Those waiting for Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III with baited breath can finally exhale. The album is out today. My review is here. The "Milli" video is below, and the sweeter, auto-tuned "Lollipop" is here.
The Coldplay concert at the Wachovia Center on June 29 has been rescheduled for July 25, due to "production delays." All tickets will be honored for the new date. The show, which is not sold out, was to be the first paid date of the Chris Martin-led band's U.S. tour, after a free show at Madison Square Garden slated for June 23th. Here's the video for "Violet Hill," the first single from the band's fourth album, Vida La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, which comes out Tuesday. The review will be in the Sunday Inquirer A & E section.
... goes a long way. Or so believes Jamie Lidell, the British electronica artist turned blue-eyed soul man who plays the World Cafe Live on Wednesday. Here are two videos from the quite excellent Jim. "I used to scream, when a whisper would do," he sings on "Another Day." Now he knows better.
Brooklyn violinist Jenny Scheinman straddles the New York avant jazz and roots-pop music scenes. She plays with guitarist Bill Frisell and guests on albums by Norah Jones, Lucinda Williams and Sean Lennon. Last month, she released two albums that encompass her yin and yang: The jazz instrumental record Crossing The Field, and Jenny Scheinman, her debut vocal album, which is an eye opener. It begins with "I Was Young When I Let Home," a trad folk blues arranged by Bob Dylan, and mixes in tunes by Williams, Tom Waits and the great Mississippi John Hurt with originals like the haunting narrative "Newspaper Angels" that hold up quite nicely, thank you. Scheinman's still coming into her own as a singer, but she knows how to wield her transparent voice with understated subtlety, and Jenny Scheinman's a graceful, gorgeous record. She'll be singing at the Tin Angel tonight.
"A-Rod, Zito, Posada, Tejada, Johan, Manny, Maddox, Mussina," Steve Wynn calls out on "Gratitude (For Curt Flood)," a song about the guy pictured above. "You call that gratitude?"
For the uninitiated, Flood is the late St. Lous Cardinals centerfielder who changed sports history and ultimately helped make a lot of guys - like the multi-millioniare ballplayers Wynn names in song - really rich, by challenging baseball's reserve clause after the 1969 season. (His motivation? He didn't want to be traded to the Phillies.) And Wynn is the former leader of L.A. Paisley Undergound standouts the Dream Syndicate, who's been carrying on a semi-popular career as a superb rock songwriter for over two decades.
Like Flood - and unlike his namesake casino owner - Wynn has never been renumerated to a degree commensurate with his talents, but that doesn't stop him from producing excellent work at regular clip. He's got a hand in two new albums. One is his own new Crossing Dragon Bridge, which was recorded in Slovenia with Chris Eckman of The Walkabouts, and marries Wynn's typical forceful, intelligent writing with lush, at times delicate backdrops.
And the other is The Basball Project: Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails, which comes out July 8 on Yep Roc. It's a collaboration with Scott McCaughey (of the minus 5, Young Fresh Fellows and R.E.M.'s road band) and includes assistance from R.E.M.'s Peter Buck and Linda Pitmon of Wynn's Miracle 3 (pictured above). It's a garage rock hoot, full-up with four-baggers like "Broken Man" (a McCaughey-sung tale of a steroid-ruined sultan of swat) and "The Death of Big Ed Delahanty," about the hard-drinking dead-ball era 19th century Phillies first baseman with a lifetime .346 batting average who died when he was swept over Niagra Falls in 1903.
Wynn is upstairs at the World Cafe Live on Saturday night. The video for Crossing Dragon Bridge's "Manhattan Fault Line" is here.
Or on second thought, maybe not. British pop singer Natasha Bedingfield, who's playing the Theater of Living Arts tonight, had a European hit last year with a song called "I Wanna To Have Your Babies." I first heard it on the radio last spring while on vacation, and as I was barreling down the autostrade I almost dropped my doppio macchiato. This would never fly in America, I thought. Pop music (that isn't country music), is about the chase, the hook-up, and maybe endless undying love. It's not about consequences. It facilitates baby-making, but as a rule, doesn't risk spoiling the mood by overtly discussing the creation of complicated creatures prone to inopportune upchucking, who, cute and cuddly as they may be - and indeed are, in Bedingfield's "Babies" video - before you know it will require a college education that'll cost you a fortune.
The cute premise of Bedingfield's song - which led Blender to call her "the hottest baby-craving stalker ever" - is that she knows full well she needs to keep her procreating aspirations to herself, less she induce a male panic attack. "Trust me it would scare you, if you knew what was going on in my brain/That I've picked out the church, all the schools, all the names." Turns out, she was right: Bedingfield's American label, Epic, issued the singer's bouncy new album with a new name. In the UK, it was N.B. Over here it's the more determinedly cheerful Pocketful of Sunshine. Bedingfield explained to Nicole Pensiero in the Inky on Friday, she's disavowed her Euro hit in pursuit of U.S. success. "If I'm going to get attention, I want it to be for something great," she said. "Not for something silly." So breathe easy, prospective papas in fear of creating unplanned offspring: On Sunshine, any mention of making "Babies" has been conveniently removed.
The title of the old Elton John song was redeployed by Michael Stipe of R.E.M. at the Mann on Wednesday to describe what happens when you have "an ice tea, and a flask in your back pocket. A girl on one arm, and a guy on the other. Philadelphia freedom." Whatever works for you. As a frontman, and as a songwriter, what works for the suit-and-tie wearing Stipe is operating like an old fashioned burlesque dancer. He knows the power of leaving a little something to the imagination.
And, oh yeah, besides focusing on the revitalized Accelerate, Stipe brought out Eddie Vedder, whose band Pearl Jam is playing in Camden tonight, for Fables of the Reconstruction's "Begin the Begin." And Johnny Marr, who used to be in The Smiths and now plays in Modest Mouse, joined Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey on guitar for "Fall On Me," and stuck around for "Man On The Moon." It was a regular '80s and early '90s alt-rock dance party. Sam Adams' review is here. A video for "Hollow Man" is below.
Bruce Springsteen paid tribute to Tim Russert, who has risen in death from regular guy hard-nosed journalist and Buffalo Bills fan to citizen-saint in a week in which his only competition as most celebrated cultural personage is the indomitable-even-when-injured Tiger Woods. Like Woods, Russert is being extolled for a dependability achieved by dint of hard work and determination at a time when journalistic honesty and impartiality is regarded with as much suspicion as the achievements of performance enhancing athletes. Here's the clip of Springsteen doing "Thunder Road" that was played at Russert's memorial at the Kennedy Center in D.C. yesterday.
The ever-growing West Oak Lane Jazz Festival, in its fifth year, has been warming up with pre-fest jams since Tuesday, but the main action gets underway today and carries through Sunday evening. There's an impressive array of mostly homegown jazz, R & B and funk acts, all unabashedly old-school. "Even the youngsters might leave their hip-hop and rap behind and break a move to the genres that started it all," reads the mission statement. Friday night headliners are Pieces of a Dream, and The O'Jays close out Sunday evening. But the four stages of West Fest along Ogontz Avenue get seriously busy on Saturday, with Tonight Show bandleader Kevin Eubanks, R & B duo Ashford & Simpson, jazz sax men Odean Pope and Benny Golson (pictured above), Latin funkateers Mandrill, New Orleans flavored horn ensemble Jeff Bradshaw's Brass Heaven, and the incomparably unclassifiable Sun Ra Arkestra. It's free.
The full schedule is here. A tour around last year's Fest is below.
The second annual Popped! Music Festival was a sunny second day of summer in University City, a Saturday afternoon slate of eight bands bookended by two of the bigger buzz acts of the past year in Afro indie pop band Vampire Weekend and banging Brit duo The Ting Tings.
Vampire Weekend and the Ting Tings are two prime examples of new-model audience-building in the ever shifting nuevo music industry. VW got where they are - which, on Saturday, was at 33rd and Arch Streets, playing a set of breezy, bouncy set of crisp pop songs just as night was falling on the Drexel University campus - by setting off a blogging frenzy last summer, and then withstanding the inevitable who-do-these-Ivy League-twits-think-they-are? backlash after their debut album came out in January.
The Ting Tings were first up because their slot was booked back in March, before they snagged an iPod commercial with "Shut Up And Let Me Go," a shot of neo-New Wave, juiced with a dash of disco. Drummer Jules De Martino and singer-guitarist Katie White kicked off Popped! - which had actually had an opening night party the evening before, with rapper Slick Rick - with an exclamation point. Their songs are all springy shards of
rhythm, with percussive guitars, bass lines triggered by foot pedals, and White shaking her blond hair about and banging on a bass drum, or a cowbell, Will Ferrell style.
The Brits were followed by the two local acts on the bill, on both sides of the Popped! fence. First, raucous acoustic hillbilly gospel hellraisers Hoots & Hellmouth. There was enough hair waging going on to think you were watching a metal band. Next, alt-rapper Mr. Lif, the dreadlocked MC who wove together dense rhymescapes with the assistance of his DJ, Sonny James, and New York guest rapper Metro.
Baltimore electronic music party starter Dan Deacon was next, breaking through the fourth wall from the get go. He set up his Casio keyboard sound system at the foot of the stage, went straight into the crowd, and turned Popped! into his own personal indie geek pep rally. Not much too look at if you were standing towards the back, but a fine frenzy if you were in the middle of it.
The bigger crowd would gather later for Vampire Weekend, who impressed with a clutch of new songs, including one that featured singer Ezra Koenig cooing like a cockatoo. But the day's true crowd slayers were Gogol Bordello, the gypsy punk yo-ho-ho-and-a-bottle-of-wine marauders fronted by mustachioed mad man Eugene Hutz. Shirtless in skin tight lime green trousers, the Ukrainian bandleader had a bit of Joe Strummer in his voice and the words "Drum Machines Have No Soul" scrolled on his acoustic guitar.
His multi-generational, multi-ethnic band features an Ethiopian bassist and Russian violin and accordion players; an Ecuadoran percussionist, and Thai and Chinese backup singers, along with a white guy in a Bad Brains t-shirt playing drums. Hutz, who stars in Madonna's new movie Filth & Wisdom, tore up the place with his band's raging two-step polyglot rhythm, and declared himself the "Wonderlust King" before the band finished their set, and jumped on a bus to catch a plane to a gig in Turkey, leaving the Popped! crowd wondering what hit them.
After that, the chilly electronica of Crystal Castles seemed pleasant but inconsequential. Sorry, Mates of State, but I took a dinner break and missed your set. Vampire Weekend was worth coming back for, though, and closed an impressively programmed day in style.
I took all kinds of photo all day long, but for reasons beyond my control - or at least, my feeble technological understanding - I haven't been able to upload them here. Arrgh. Hopefully, that'll get corrected tomorrow. Meanwhile, here's a Gogol Bordello video.
The Seven Words Words You Can Never Say On Television will always hold a special place in my heart. But George Carlin, who died on Sunday at 71, keeps it clean here. In his own words, he was "a diversified postmodern multicultural deconstructionist, New Wave but old-school, behind the 8 ball but ahead of the curve, a street-wise smart bomb, out of rehab and in denial." You couldn't shut him up, or dumb him down.
At the Popped! Festival on Saturday, this T-shirt identified Barack Obama as The New Black. On the contrary, Stephen Colbert contends, it's John McCain who is really The New Black.
Rickie Lee Jones plays at the Painted Bride tonight, and again next Wednesday. My interview with her from Tuesday's Inquirer is here. The video below of her doing "Last Chance Texaco," the song she closed her set with at the Bride last week, is from Paris in 1985.
Ira Tucker, the Philadelphia gospel great who sang with the Dixie Hummingbirds for seven decades, died on Tuesday at 83. To pop fans, the Hummingbirds are best known for backing up Paul Simon on "Loves Me Like A Rock." But besides a career as among the most enduring of gospel acts, Tucker's gruff style helped shaped soul singers like Otis Redding and Stevie Wonder. Here he is, singing tenor on "Standing By the Bedside Of A Neighbor."
The Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, screening in bowling alleys, parks and cafes around Northern Liberties this weekend, is chock full of music documentaries.
There are a lot of intriguing titles. Nerdcore For Life (below) focuses on proud hip-hop geeks in the hobbit of rapping about their Lords of the Rings and computer science obsessions.
I'm a little suspicious of Bob Marley & Friends (above), which promises to be "an extravaganza of sight and sound bringing Bob Marley to life in a unique giant screen concert experience," because "& Friends" implies we're going to get less of Marley, and more of co-stars like Tracy Chapman.
I'm hoping Record Store, a 34 minute short by former Temple grad student turned Towson University prof Matthew Durington is sexier than it's academic self-description as an "ethnographic video" that "explores a number of topics including discussions of the relative value of material culture, issues of addiction and collection and how the world of popular music and DJ culture relate to larger social issues such as race and gender in the United States."
George Manney's Pipes of Peace explores the music and life of late Philadelphia jazz bagpipes player Rufus Harley. Salvation Blues is a half hour film about former Jayhawks country-rock singer Mark Olson, in solo mode after the breakup of his marriage to Victoria Williams.
And What's Left Behind is a tour doc that follows the Atlanta indie band Manchester Orchestra out on the road. There are schedules for Friday through Sunday screening at the Fest web site. Here's Tirdad Derakhshani's Philmadelphia story. The trailer for What's Left Behind is below.
