Weekend Roundup Pt: 2 - The Toadies @ The Palladium - 8/22/08

My (over?)-analysis of the appropriateness of venues continues with my take on what I'm calling the biggest homecoming of the year. Biggest, because I might as well apply a superlative to a show I got to attend, and because I don't think Sam the Sham has planned any forthcoming reunions.

Dallas is not well-suited to homecomings. The city's combination of a transient populace and me-first ethic make loyalty a bygone virtue in North Texas. But alterna-rock memories are still burned into the consciousness of Big D show-goers from the early 90s. A good lot of them have spouses, houses, and kids in suburban school districts now, but, as I saw Friday night, a Toadies reunion can still draw them back to the Dallas epicenter.

Let's be honest, once the early 90s buzz wore off, Dallas was not overly kind to The Toadies. A period of seven years separated their much-lauded Rubberneck (1994) from their unfairly derided Hell Below/Stars Above (2001) and people lost interest. The local radio didn't help. When I spent my first summer in Dallas in 1997, there was still a Q102, and plenty of Toadies on the airwaves. Four years later, Q102 had been replaced by a Clearchannel sinkhole and the Toadies could not buy local radio support. The low point of summer '01 had to be the 97.1 sponsored "Big Freakin' Deal," a festival name that was no doubt brainstormed by two middle-schoolers with a bag of whippits. The festival offered a foul lineup of butt-rock bands--Staind, Saliva, Cold--all of which received ample pre-festival promotion, and the Toadies. At a hometown show that should have been The Toadies' prodigal triumph, the band was relegated to opening for Rammstein. Despicable.

When The Toadies released Hell Below/Stars Above, They were still trying to build on the success of Rubberneck and establish themselves as an important, current band. As I said, interest and loyalty waned and the band imploded. The band is more grown up in 2008 and have fewer illusions about themselves. Lisa Umbarger has been replaced by Doni Blair of Hagfish, another longsuffering Dallas musician, and band members still have other ongoing musical projects. They do have a new album, but The Toadies know that they exist in people's minds primarily as the group from 1994, evident by the Rubberneck-heavy setlist from Friday night. The band is reformed undoubtedly for making cash, but I believe they are also back for that synergy they once had with fans, something that time, corporate radio, real-estate developers, and disloyal fans have eroded. Something that came back to life again at the Palladium last Friday.

The Palladium is the wrong place for any band with a soul and especially for a band like The Toadies. The place has a dozen flat-screen TVs piping images from the stage, $6.00 beers, and bartenders dressed in uniforms. Rock and roll shouldn't be allowed in the same building as a uniform. But even the Palladium with all its plastic luster couldn't diminish the effect The Toadies had on the place. It was a case of "My musical chaos can beat up your grabby capitalism." And it did. The unsavoriness of the place vanished as soon as the band opened with "Mister Love."

I still don't have an official setlist, but I counted in my head nine songs from Rubberneck, four from Hell Below/Stars Above, four from the new album No Surrender, and a show-closing standard from the unreleased Feeler. What I do know is that the energy never subsided. They ripped through all the classics with aplomb and won us over with all the new material. Dallas, a city with a normally fractured music scene, exhibited a heartening solidarity, shouting back every word of "I Come From the Water."*

Drenched in sweat, the crowd left The Palladium in a renewed euphoria. Members of Deep Ellum's old guard--easily noticeable by their sun-faded tattoos, camouflage shorts, and beer bellies--were reveling in the nostalgia of the moment, in the way it used to, and should be. Younger fans were dumbstruck at having witnessed a moment they had theretofore only experienced on their ipods. It would be hyperbolism to say The Toadies embody what everyone remembers and misses about the music scene we used to know in Dallas and took for granted. Some of Dallas' snarkier inhabitants even have the gumption to call them "overrated."** But one has to assume that there at the Palladium, something was revived in the audience at having seen a band that everybody rightly wrote off as dead. It was the memory of all the reckless fun Dallas used to have and a renewed hope that it can still have it.

*I was so personally overcome with excitement at one point, that I, like many others that night, made an attempt at crowd surfing during the song "Hell Below/Stars Above." I often forget how light I am. I was thrown forward with much violence and little effort, making the stage in what must have been world record time. I apologize for all the people I unintentionally kicked in the head.

**Send Jesse much hate mail.

Weekend Roundup Pt: 1 - Sarah Jaffe @ The Cavern - 8/21/08

I cannot imagine a venue more appropriate for Sarah Jaffe than the Cavern. The venue's brutally understated stage lighting has a single point of failure: one solitary lightbulb. The walls seem to crowd in on audience and artist alike. The Cavern is built and lit as a virtual confessional booth for musicians. No other site is better suited for Sarah Jaffe's tuneful vulnerability, a woman for whom, perhaps obsessively, nothing may be kept secret.

Sarah Jaffe's tendency toward dark honesty is well-known by now in local music circles. Jaffe has even achieved national levels of recognition, having been selected as NPR's Song of the Day on 8/21. Sarah is known for her Dostoevskyish brand of self-consciousness, persistent as she is in exploring her more ignoble motivations. Her threadbare compositions provide the perfect backdrop. Assembled from small bits of guitar and cello, you can almost seem them bend under the gravity of her penitential voice.

Jaffe's fragility in verse is held in tension by her abilities as a performer. Her voice is as insistent and flawless as her guitar work. Meekly resting behind her large-framed glasses, her downcast gaze is somehow as arresting as a direct stare. Sarah can command even those segments of the audience that hadn't planned on listening, the ones who willingly hush their conversations when Jaffe pulls back the sound to a whisper. The effect at The Cavern felt like you were dropped into film noir or a T.S. Eliot Poem, like you were having a cigarette with Tom Waits. I have enough confidence in Sarah to believe someone like him would have been there last Thursday if he had the time and requisite anonymity. With any justice, that's just the sort of recognition Sarah Jaffe will one day receive.

http://www.myspace.com/sjaffe

Hump Day Vinyl: Alice Cooper

This is me back in form following a week that included a 12 hour workday, so I completely understand the significance of my own hump day institution. I would love to add some more local music commentary, maybe even garner an extra reader or two, but this is about the only silly writing habit for which I have the time now. Still, this week is a fun one.

I first heard "Clones (We're All)" on the Smashing Pumpkins box set The Aeroplane Flies High. Its anthemic, boot-stopping gait made the song instantly appealing. I knew it was a cover and its feel had so much in common with the glitter of someone like Slade or T-Rex that I never would have guessed it to be first committed to tape by someone like Alice Cooper. That's right, Alice Cooper had a new wave phase and it was called Flush the Fashion, though this track was written by someone other than Alice. My friend Mr. Perkins did a little research on the songwriter and even dug up two additional covers for me, by Bile and Penal Colony. The one below is the Alice Cooper original. Enjoy.

Alice Cooper - Clones (We're All)

Hump Day Vinyl: Dion

Finally, I'm uploading a hump day vinyl on the appropriate day. This week's edition comes from the same spiral-patterned box of 45s given to me by a friend. Dion was one of my childhood favorites. Before I was buying my own tapes and CDs, I mostly listened to my Mom's copy of "Oldies but Goodies." I distinctly remember a lip-synched performance of "Runaround Sue" in our living room with my mom as audience. The version of Dion on this Jimi Hendrix cover is much more subdued than his early hits: a lackadaisical half flower child, half crooner backed by a flute riff. Surprisingly, Dion's cover feels much more like an acid trip than Hendrix's original. Enjoy, you're work week is 3/5ths over and we only have three more months of summer in Dallas.

Dion - Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix cover)

Man Factory: Prepare to Street Fight!

I made the most wonderful discovery last weekend at the Cavern: Man Factory. The Arlington quintet has composed a six-song rock opera about Street Fighter II. This is an apt addition to the late-Gen-X -and-slightly-after encyclopedia: an ad hoc generation whose most telling artifacts are popularly consumed media. Given that the songs themselves are well-written, with a perfect mix of levity and sincerity, I highly recommend you get yourself a copy, particularly since you can download the six tracks free here.

p.s. Red Monroe capped off their slot with a relaxed, country-fied take on the long forgotten "She Waits on a Tidal Wave" that was...just...perfect.

Wednesday (ish) Vinyl

This is the first attempt at Wednesday vinyl, made on a Thursday. Initially, I wanted this to be a blog about DFW music. In particular, I wanted it to be about my subjective experience of that music. I still do, but I think that category can be expanded beyond just the local gigs I happen to catch. In addition to scouring Deep Ellum, lower Greenville, and Denton for the best local sound bytes, I'm also very often pent up in my too trendy loft, sitting cross-legged in front of my new turntable, digesting bits of my own vinyl collection I still have never heard.

I started buying vinyl in the last five years. The majority of my 12" collection comes from lazy afternoons at Half Price Books and is not very large. I may have 30 full albums in total. But I also came into owning several dozen 45s very quickly. The biggest portion of that cache I got from a friend named Gary who gave them to me in a vintage 45 carrying case. The rest I found in a secondhand shop in Kanab, UT on a trip to the Grand Canyon. It was like the depleted copper-rich veins of Arizona metamorphosed into vinyl deposits to the north. I dug through it like a greedy prospector: Tears for Fears, The Go-Gos, Falco, R.E.M., most of them scratched to hell, but quite a few were salvageable. Whoever dropped all that stuff off was the coolest girl in her high school.

Still, the best stuff comes from that vintage mystery box, because I have no idea what's in it. I pulled this little number out just a few days ago and rocked out in my boxers. The real tragic thing about Elton John is that people my age know him as the paunchy sell-out who gave us the Lion King soundtrack. That's an object lesson for any current pop singer: don't sell your rock n' rollin' soul to Disney. Phil Collins did it to, though the prior existence of his soul is debatable. But anybody under the age of 45 is liable to forget that Elton John was capable of smacking you in the face with stuff like "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting." Elton does all the stuff here that the Arctic Monkeys, et al wish they could do. It's riff, Elton's growl, the hyperactive hi-hatting, everything about it is iconic rock and roll. Use the link below to download the track, strip to your undies, punch a Chelsea fan in the face, and enjoy "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting." The crackle and pop is mine, the rest is Elton's.

Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting

Another Mulligan for the Despot

The absence was shorter this time around. I'm attempting to teach myself that this is a blog and that sprawling essays need not be the order of every day. Today was supposed to be the day that I began something new. My best intentions were to post a ripped vinyl track to reward all you laborers who successfully scaled the week's hump. Alas, the necessary technical measures have not yet been taken. But look for this early next morning, or perhaps the next week.


And only one addendum for now. It turns out my mother's childhood was not nearly as music-deprived as I supposed. The truth turned out to be much more interesting. First, my mom availed herself of the latest pop hits whenever she could: at the houses of friends or in the back seat of a boyfriend's car. Yes, I was unaware that my mom had such boyfriends. The music wasn't explicitly prohibited by her folks either, though certainly not encouraged. Whatever their stance, my mom found it necessary to listen to the hot 100 through her pillow, the portable radio murmuring beneath it, just loud enough to hear in the dark. Unfortunately, my mom left the radio on one day and went to school. 1960s electronics being what they were, the insides melted from the lack of ventilation beneath the pillow and my mother's late-night music appreciation sessions were canceled thereafter.