The Best Day Of The Year To Live In D.C. (#DCFunkParade)
Posted in Uncategorized with tags 50mm APO-Summicron-ASPH, Leica Monochrom (Typ-246) on May 7, 2016 by johnbuckley100
An Evening With The Brian Jonestown Massacre At D.C.’s 9:30 Club
Posted in Uncategorized with tags 2016, 930 Club, Anton Newcombe, The Brian Jonestown Massacre on May 6, 2016 by johnbuckley100
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On their 2016 tour of these United States, The Brian Jonestown Massacre are doing something they mostly avoided the last time we saw them — they are playing songs from Anton Newcombe’s fairly astonishing recent creative output, and going deep into the back catalogue. It is as if Methadrone and Mini Album Thingy Wingy were recorded by the same band in the same year, not by largely different bands more than 20 years apart.
We’d largely forgotten “Never Ever,” which kicked off the set, but if ever you wanted to steep yourself like a mushroom tea bag in the Velvets’ Factory sound, yeah, good place to begin. And what a thrill it was to hear them play “Goodbye (Butterfly)” or “Pish,” which rank among our favorite recent BJM songs, capturing all the magic of this greatest working band which, not that long ago, may have seemed like their best work was behind them.
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For the initiated, this was a marvelous show, occasionally crystalizing with shimmering layers of guitar, the emollience of the organ, Daniel Allaire kicking the drum kit no matter what else was going on. And there was a lot going on. Anton was as cranky as we’ve ever seen him, twice chiding Ryan Van Kriedt for playing acoustic guitar (on “Anemone” and “Prozac vs. Heroin”), even though in the latter case, Van Kriedt politely informed the mercurial bandleader that he’d actually told him to play it. (“I don’t care, there’s a hole in the middle of the song when you play it.”) Hey, at least he didn’t stab him, like he allegedly did Frankie Teardrop during the 2009 tour.
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Hearing the band line up with Anton, Ryan, and Ricky Maymi each playing 12-string guitars was a treat, a sonic treat. Over the course of their long existence, BJM have grafted their own take on the Velvet Underground’s guitar sound atop Cure-era Power Pop, while somehow harkening to a Summer of Love psychedelic dynamic. When you hear Anton sing and play guitar on a fairly new song, “Days, Weeks and Moths” from 2014’s Revelation, it brings to mind Blind Faith, or maybe Traffic, but nevertheless a band right on the back end of the ’60s. And yet it is completely contemporary, if you’re an oddball like me who thinks psychedelic rock’n’roll is contemporary.
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There were moments when even Joel Gion grew a little frustrated with Anton’s temper. But let’s cut the genius some slack. Since quitting drugs and alcohol, since moving to Berlin and becoming a father, Anton has produced some of the greatest music of his career, which no one, circa 2005, would have predicted. There were moments during last night’s near three-hour set that were magical, less like seeing a band perform than being inside the rehearsal studio when lightning was captured in a bottle. Anton promised not one, but two new albums this year. We can’t wait to hear ’em.
The Marigold Frenzy
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Leica 50mm APO-Summicron-Asph, Leica SL on May 1, 2016 by johnbuckley100
Wire’s “Nocturnal Koreans”: A Band As Relevant Today As They Were In ’77
Posted in Uncategorized with tags "Noturnal Koreans", Bob Boilen, Wire on May 1, 2016 by johnbuckley100
If you had told me in 1981 when I was asked to review Wire’s nominally posthumous Document And Eyewitness that 35 years on not only would Wire still be releasing records, they would continue to be one of my favorite contemporary bands, I would have said you were crazy. But here comes Nocturnal Koreans, an eight-song mini-album recorded at the same time as last year’s gorgeous Wire, which we called one of 2015’s best albums, and even at a moment when there are fine new albums by Brian Eno, Parquet Courts, Woods, and PJ Harvey, among others, we can’t listen to anything else.
Over at NPR, Bob Boilen is clever but not entirely correct to analogize that Nocturnal Koreans is to Wire as 1978’s Chairs Missing was to 1977’s revolutionary Pink Flag. To begin with, these two new records emerged from the same recording sessions, with the the songs on Nocturnal Koreans served up as a different approach to the moment, not an example of the giant leap in ambition and sophistication apparent between Wire’s first and second records.
No band in history ever showed as much growth between its first and second records, not the Beatles, not the Clash, no one. Those first three Wire albums witnessed punk progenitors becoming one of the most tasteful, thrilling art-rock band of all times. (It’s possible the only similar growth pattern, come to think of it, was Eno going from Here Come The Warm Jets to Another Green World — an album that had a profound affect on Wire’s third record, 154.)
Nocturnal Koreans finds Wire slightly less wired than they were on Wire, which while motorik in tempo, played up the warmth of Colin Newman’s voice, the melody of their prettiest songs, minus the cockney and chaos of their most raucous work. These two albums go together, and the whole reveals that the most revelatory, and in many ways, ambitious of the British punk bands, 3/4ths intact 41 years and 15 records on from their founding, is still greater than 99 percent of the bands out there — not to mention the sum of the parts.
Tulip Frenzy Can’t Wait For Alicia Vikander In “Tulip Fever”… For The Purest Of Reasons
Posted in Uncategorized with tags "Tulip Fever", Alicia Vikander, Leica M-240, Leica SL, The Tulip Frenzy on April 29, 2016 by johnbuckley100
Our friend Allen Goldberg, knowing of our mania for all things tulip, sent us news yesterday morning that the lovely Alicia Vikander, fresh off her Oscar win, will soon grace a movie entitled Tulip Fever. A quick look at the trailer reveals her to be a pearl-earring wearing young wife of a 17th Century Dutch burger played by Christoph Waltz, who allows a handsome young Vermeer-type to paint her in private, and of course you knew what happens next even before I tell you Tom Stoppard wrote the screenplay.
Can’t wait. And I must say that we are somewhat relieved that it’s called Tulip Fever, not Tulip Frenzy. You see, even though our staff attorney is ready and willing to protect — and as fiercely as a wolverine — our rights to the name of this site, we kind of like the fact that young schoolchildren — doing research on the phenomenon by which the sane and even-tempered Dutch created the most famous financial bubble in history, besotted as they were with the ephemeral glories of tulips — might be led by Mr. Google to our site on a day when we’re reviewing the new album by, say, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Tulip Frenzy is many things, and at least one of them, we hope, is educational.
We honestly don’t know whence our obsession with tulips comes. It’s a pretty healthy obsession to have, don’t you think? Could be worse, right? It’s encouraged by our family, even as they know that come the first week of April we will be as fixated on area tulip beds as any truffle pig sticking his snout into the ground.
And it’s encouraged by friends like Allen who also sent us yesterday’s post in Atlas Obscura on how “The Most Beautiful Tulip In History Cost As Much As A House.” Jeez, what a day.
Read about the fixation the Dutch had with “broken tulips,” those that are, like the ones depicted above, multicolored. We are grateful to Allen for sending these stories our way, and we couldn’t be happier than we are right now reading up on The Tulip Frenzy, preparing to see Tulip Fever in July.
Well, maybe if we could see these decidedly unbroken tulips all the time.
(Pictures 1 and 3 taken with the Leica M and 50mm Noctilux. Picture 2 taken with the Leica SL and 50mm APO-Summicron-Asph.)
The Azalea Frenzy Beckons
Posted in Uncategorized with tags 50mm APO-Summicron-ASPH, Azaleas, Leica SL on April 22, 2016 by johnbuckley100
Kevin Morby’s “Singing Saw”Cuts With A Well-Honed Blade
Posted in Uncategorized with tags "Singing Saw", Kevin Morby, Sam Cohen, Woods on April 22, 2016 by johnbuckley100When Kevin Morby left Woods right after they produced Bend Beyond, an unqualified masterpiece, it was an expression of confidence as startling as his leaving Kansas City at age 18, heading for the Big Apple on a bus. Why would you leave the most accomplished, ambitious band in Brooklyn unless you had something to say? Kevin Morby had something to say.
On two solo albums, 2013’s Harlem River, followed by Still Life one year later, we got a sporadic glimpse of how charming his urban take on alt.country songwriting could be. Though he later moved from Brooklyn to L.A., on his new one, Singing Saw, he came back east to work with Sam Cohen (Apollo Sunshine, Yellowbirds) and now we know just how deeply a sharp blade can cut wood, or if you’re of a certain cast of mind, cut Woods.
On the title track, Morby and his excellent musicians build to what ultimately sounds like an acoustic version of Talking Heads’ “Stay Hungry.” “I Have Been To The Mountain” punctuates Calexico horns with a Sam Cohen guitar solo that peels the eyeballs. It’s on “Dorothy,” one of those perfect American rock songs that seems to have always existed — Morby just being the medium to wrestle it to tape — that we understand fully why he couldn’t have been content staying within Woods, for as simpatico as he is with Jeremy Earl’s restless musical vision, Morby, like Ron Wood before him, has his own record to do. And now he’s finally done it: as gorgeous, ambitious, and pleasing an album as you’ll likely play this year. (Ha! Ron Wood, Woods, cutting wood, singing saw — this album stirs up more than sawdust…)
We don’t know the geography of Brooklyn well enough to geolocate Morby’s position, but we do know Kings County bands well enough to locate his place. On “Dorothy,” he reveals a debt to Phosphorescent’s Matthew Houk and his brilliance in hijacking the sound of Willie Nelson’s band and applying it to modern Americana. On “Ferris Wheel,” it’s a different Brooklyn band that springs to mind — Damon McMahon’s Amen Dunes. Yes, good company to keep… Woods, Calexico, Phosphorescent, Amen Dunes. Did we mention Bob Dylan?
Placing Morby in the context of these other artists is meant only to give the uninitiated the coordinates of where to place his music on this brilliant album. Given how banner advertising supporting Singing Saw has begun to stalk us on such expensive sites as the NewYorkTimes.com, we get the sense that the uninitiated to Morby will be fewer by weeks end. Don’t wait, don’t hesitate. A young songwriter of impeccable pedigree has produced the work that will make his name.
The Azalea Frenzy
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Azaleas, Leica 50mm APO-Summicron-Asph, Leica SL, The Azalea Frenzy on April 22, 2016 by johnbuckley100Our backyard is in riot. Washington, D.C. Leica SL, 50mm APO-Summicron-Asph.
Hoarse Of Voice, At The 930 Club, The Dandy Warhols Still Have Much To Say
Posted in Uncategorized with tags "Distortland", 930 Club, Dandy Warhols on April 18, 2016 by johnbuckley100
Courtney Taylor-Taylor’s voice was shredded from the back-to-back New York gigs this weekend, part of the price we always pay in D.C. getting first-rate bands on second-rate evenings (Sundays or Thursdays.) With show-must-go-on enthusiasm and a decidedly low-key vibe, the set was still powerful, evenly drawing from the first three albums while — and this was most delightful — showcasing how good are the best songs on Distortland, their first really good new album in some years.
That songs like “Search Party,” “All The Girls In London,” and the Cars-like “You Are Killing Me” more than held their own with faves like “Plan A,” “I Love You,” and “Bohemian Like You” is the best news we can deliver. It has been a while since the Dandys’ new stuff sounded as vibrant as what they launched into space with during their late ’90s rise, and that Distortland has been on near constant rotation on our hard drive is as welcome news as spring’s arrival.
Courtney’s voice notwithstanding, the band played as well as they did when performing the entirety of Thirteen Tales Of Urban Bohemia here there years ago. There’s something remarkably sporting about a band that remains a foursome after all these years, with no calling in the supporting cast to deliver the goods. Brent De Boer remains one of rock’s great unheralded drummers, a timekeeper to be sure, but dynamic when it’s needed. Peter Holmstrom is unflashy in his floppy hat, but hangs the wire holding up the canvas on which Courtney paints the songs. Zia remains the heart and soul of the band, playing one-hand keyboard bass, leaving the other free for tambourine or keyboard frills. If there is a single instrument in the Dandys possession you most want to hear, it’s Courtney’s voice, and though last night it was hoarse, he earnestly powered through.
Some years ago, in frustration, we wrote an obituary of sorts for what has been, and remains, one of our favorite bands. We were struck by how, in contravention of the Dig! dichotomy, it was the Brian Jonestown Massacre that was thriving, the Dandys, on record at least, shadows of their former greatness. Few things give us more pleasure than to report that, Yeah, Zia, you are still great live — and on record, showing new life, new possibilities, new things to say.
Walking On Bubbles
Posted in Uncategorized with tags 35mm Summilux Asph FLE, Leica M-240, Silver Efex 2 on April 16, 2016 by johnbuckley100So close, and so far, from the D.C. neighborhoods P.J. Harvey captures in The Hope Six Demonstration Project, a man walks on the overpass between buildings in D.C.’s Emerald City-like City Centre. Leica M, 35mm Summilux FLE.
Tulip Frenzy 