Despite the continuing boom in corona cases and related deaths across the country (which show everything is “under control,” according to some) my days remain largely unchanged — stay barricaded indoors for almost the entire day? Check. Pass the time with work, some light puzzling, and heavy Rizzing? Check. Scour the intertubes for good music and write about it for an adoring population that could fit in a small minivan? CHECK!
We have started to get some pieces of pre-pandemia back, though — baseball, basketball, and hockey have started up again to varying levels of success, and despite some initial annoyances with fake noise and hokey virtual crowds, it’s surprising how quickly the initial strangeness of the stands being empty wears off. Similar to my question in the last post about whether it’s harder for the band to get going without the fans to spur them on, I wonder if that applies here, as well. You can’t tell it from the quality of play, though, just as with Dr Bob and the boys.
One other return was last weekend’s Lollapalooza, which this year was a four day virtual festival mixing archival performances with new mini-sets from scads of performers. It was an interesting experiment — gone were the cruel collisions with multiple performers going on at the same time. Gone, too, were the 10PM curfews, so the sets stretched well into the early morning hours — as late as 2 or 3AM on Friday and Saturday night! The traditional “headliner” spots were also gone, with several previous headliners scattered throughout the day instead of posting up at the end of the line.
There were minor quibbles, as always — aside from the schedule being larded with a lot of mediocre acts, in my opinion (apparently my days as a flower-crown wearing 20-something who’s more easily impressed are long behind me), the decisions behind how many songs each act got were somewhat inscrutable. (Some — like Pearl Jam and White Reaper, for example — got one measly song, whereas plenty of others got anywhere from three to five, and that determination seemed to have nothing to do with name recognition, album sales, or talent.) Also, for a festival that has four days of no limits programming potential (ie no curfews) and 25 years’ worth of footage in the archives, it seems strange that they a) decided not to use more of it and b) didn’t use anything older than 2008.
If I had a global population largely confined to their houses and a free forum at my disposal like Youtube, I would have filled almost the entire day — or just start at noon like the festival regularly does if you want to be conservative — with material. What’s the downside? While I love that they stretched the back end into the wee hours of the night, they really missed an opportunity to make this a true “must see” event for multiple generations of music fans.
Keep your newcomers like TeaMarrr, Kali Uchis, and Scarypoolparty that are lost on fogeys like me, but why not thrown in classic performances from the early years of the festival from acts like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, and the Chili Peppers? Or more recent sets from headliners like Kanye, Green Day, Radiohead, and Rage? Or what about the legendary performance from the pyramid by Daft Punk — my brain is still recovering from that 13 years later… Hell, even just expanding the sets from the headliners they had in this year’s crowd would have made sense. (The aforementioned PJ, along with folks like the Cure, Metallica, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, for example.)
On balance there was mostly enough to keep you going across the four days (although I’m glad I didn’t have to ride out the long stretches of “meh” in person) and I’m happy they held it vs not, just feel like they really had a chance to make it something special — particularly in these weird, troubling times with such a large captive audience. Oh well — ONE day I will be in charge and get to run Sunshine Fest exactly how I want to. I’m sure the eight of you who attend will enjoy the shit out of it…
Two of the full sets from last weekend got me thinking — LCD’s 2016 set and Arcade Fire’s 2010 performance. (Here’s another annoyance for the list — for some reason they’ve taken some — but not all — of the performances down, so you just get a fan shot of the latter’s closer, the epic exhilarator of “Wake Up.”) Aside from being a nice trip down memory lane, both to when I was there to enjoy them in person and to a time where you were able to be in crowds that large and not worry you were going to die (seriously — remember how great it felt to be in a crowd like that in the Arcade video, singing at the top of your lungs with 100,000 other people? Sigh — see you in 2022…) they reminded me of another favorite act, that of the brilliant Belgian brothers in Soulwax (aka 2 Many DJs).
They’d performed at Lolla before, too (also in 2010, which definitely was one of the better years — look at that fucking lineup!) and had done remixes for both of the bands in subsequent years — two of my favorite, actually, which was what brought them to mind. I’d discovered them years ago when I was living in London and would catch their Friday or Saturday night shows where they’d be spinning as 2 Many DJs before we’d go out on the tiles. This was back when mashups were just becoming a thing and if these guys were not inventors of the genre, they were definitely among its perfectors, as those weekend shows were always packed with ingenious pairings — the Stooges with Salt n Pepa, Destiny’s Child with Nirvana, Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band with Beethoven. Yes, that Beethoven!
It took me years to track down bootlegs of some of those old shows (the coveted As Heard on Radio Soulwax series — check out episode 2 (one of the best) for a taste), but in later years it got easier to enjoy the fruits of their labors. A few years back they released the excellent Radio Soulwax app, which allowed folks to download full sets of either live performances or genre-specific experiments that often sported their characteristic visuals, animating the album covers in time with the music.
The brothers also started doing big name official remixes that were equally ear-grabbing, and the ones they did for Arcade and LCD are two of my three favorites. I’d been slated to see them when they came through town on a rare tour of the states this year (their Lolla set was one of the few trips they’d previously made across the pond, which added to my enjoyment back then), but that’s been scuttled like everything else.
Some of the sets from the old app have disappeared, but a few of my favorites are still out there, including the Under the Covers series (essentially live sets packed with mashups and their killer visuals) and my favorite genre-specific one, the slowed down Belgian house set of Cherry Moon. All of those are excellent, as are the aforementioned remixes that got me thinking/talking way back at the beginning. Check out these two (along with the third favorite I mentioned) as appetizers before diving into the app sets — there’s the woozy “Sprawl II,” the slow burn of “You Wanted a Hit,” and the pure bliss of “Kids,” one of their first (and best):
There were a few singles flying around the past few weeks that were worth noting, too (and not just from my Cubbies’ red hot offense!), the first from National frontman (and Fuddge Pop fave) Matt Berninger. It’s the second song from his upcoming solo album (Serpentine Prison, due 2 Oct) and while the first one (like the band’s last album) left me a little underwhelmed, this one’s a solid return to form. Hopefully there’s more like it to come… Check out the hushed luxury of “Distant Axis:”
We’ll shift gears a bit to catch the latest from Toronto titan Drake, who’s also been on a hit or miss streak of late. His last album Scorpion was a largely bloated affair, but did have a couple killer cuts on it (none more so than the irresistible “Nice for What”) and his recent singles have been similarly underwhelming (the latest “Toosie Slide” didn’t spark the disco inferno it seemed aimed at, but DID light the internet on fire with comments about the video showing his absurd mansion). In times of trouble it’s best to retreat to your safe zone, which for Drake means pairing with the producer of some of his biggest hits, DJ Khaled. They dropped two last week, only one of which is worth your time — check out “Popstar” here:
We’ll close with another quiet one, and make it a concert set to come full circle. This one’s from my all-time favorite — the one who if I was forced to pick JUST ONE (no “in this genre” or “in these circumstances” type qualifiers allowed) would be the one I took with no reservations, the sadly departed Elliott Smith. Yesterday was his birthday — a fact I stumbled on by accident, but which drove me to listen to his first ever show to end the day. It’s a pretty great listen — not only because this was back in the dark ages of the internet so it’s remarkable this thing even exists, let alone with this audio quality, but because it shows how prolific Smith was in his short time here.
The set only has a couple songs from his debut album, which is surprising for a 30 minute debut, and already has several tracks that would appear on later albums. (“Alphabet Town,” the opening strains of “Needle in the Hay”) That Smith was already looking to the next album — before he’d even performed his first one! — and already had this many songs in the can (several from the set would only appear after his passing, in fact — “Some Song,” “Big Decision,” “Whatever (Folk Song in C)”) is remarkable and (as always) tragic that we didn’t get to hear more.
I often think about what someone like Smith would record in times like this — would he turn more insular and try to further find beauty in the sadness or would he turn outward and be more dissonant and overtly angry as on some of his later songs? That we’ll never know continues to sadden — similar to former Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison, whose band came on Sunshine Radio last night and sparked similar feelings of loss and regret. As with Hutchison, though, we’re lucky to have as much as we do to hold onto, finding new meanings and moods with every listen. For Elliott, see where it all started, 26 long years ago:
Until next time, amici — stay safe… –BS