142 posts tagged “hcoiro (dc)”

We all know that concerts at outdoor venues totally suck ass.  But we also all know that Lyle Lovett is one of the coolest motherfuckers who has ever lived.  And on a night like tonight - currently still eighty degrees with low humidity in the cloudless and waning sunlight - an excursion to Wolftrap to see Lyle Lovett and his Large Band sounds like not quite the worst idea in the world.  Granted, the venue is inherently inferior to the 9:30 Club (or more appropriately in this case - the Birchmere), but we won't deny that the notion of pretending we aren't sitting in the dirt while surrounded by a horde of mouth-breathing half-wits as a miniscule Lyle Lovett and his teeny Large Band perform their particular brand of wry adult-contemporary music several hundred yards away sounds like it could be moderately pleasant.  You know, given the proper mindset.  I can certainly see how some people might enjoy that.  I'm an optimist that way.

None of that applies to me, though, because I am a total deadbeat who allows work to interfere with everything.  Not that I couldn't have gone at all, mind you.  But I've been so focused on other things that I completely forgot about the show until it was too late, even with a reminder from Emma last week.  On the upside, I guess, Lyle will be back through town next year - just like always.  Of course, with my luck his '09 show will be scheduled for mid-August and it will be a hundred and five degrees in the shade with ninety percent humidity.  Good times.  I can hardly wait.

Her First Mistake

Lyle Lovett

Anybody who's even halfway been paying attention around here knows I enjoy the music of the Old 97's.  They don't do anything groundbreaking, but that's okay.  Not every band has to change popular music, and there's nothing wrong with liking those that don't.  I realize this is an awkward concept for the post-ironic hipsters to grasp, but if more of them were as enlightened as I, the world would be a much happier place.  We'd immediately eliminate a ton of pointless bickering. Jodi wouldn't have to pretend that the Replacements have some sort of continuing influential legacy.  Dabysan wouldn't mistakenly use words like "vital" and "important" when describing the Libertines.  U2's entire fan base would cease to exist.  The Old 97's craft airtight pop songs and rock the shit out of them in their live show.  Like I said, it's not groundbreaking, but it really is enough.  Not everybody gets to be an astronaut when they grow up.

So yeah, I dig the Old 97's.  But the irony is that I haven't immediately liked a single one of their records since Too Far to Care, probably not coincidentally the first one I bought.  Their newest release - Blame It On Gravity - is no different, and like most of the others, I've come around (so to speak) in the three weeks I have spent with it.  I can quibble with details like the Killers-esque vocal effects on the lead single "Dance With Me," but I can't argue that its menacing surf-rock vibe would be out of place on their sophomore record (and second-best effort), Wreck Your Life.  The other, this time lilting, beach-flavored tune "She Loves the  Sunset" reminds me of "Dancing With Tears" off of their debut.  In short, they really have gone back to their roots and turned up the amps a bit.  I guess what bothered me most initially about this record was that it's a departure from the Kinks-inspired pop sensibility of their later work to which I'd grown accustomed.

One of the reviews I read recently described Rhett Miller's lyrics as having "one foot in the bar and one foot in the library."  I won't deny that I wish that foot was still planted a little bit more firmly in the bar these days, but then Rhett's basically the same age as me and my foot isn't in the bar as much as it used to be either.  There are still more than a few great lyrics that seem simple until you realize you never thought of them.  ("You've got to be a fool to be a fool in love.")  Ken remains a solid journeyman guitarist, despite some highly unfortunate facial hair.  Philip is the Old 97s' secret weapon; he's got that Johnny Cash freight train drum beat down cold, and the record doesn't really begin until his drum fills a minute into the opening track.  His work is so solid that I won't even complain that his part on the rocker "Early Morning" is recycled from "Four Leaf Clover."  Murry's songs are, however, unfortunately and disappointingly sub-par and his bouncy bass line on "Ride" makes me think the song would be better suited for Rhett's next solo outing, but his backing vocals are - as always - exquisite.  If Philip is secret weapon number one, Murry and his harmony vox are a very close second.

Blame It On Gravity is by no means a perfect record, but then it's probably too much to ask any band to deliver more than one perfect record in their career.  An outing like Too Far to Care - to say nothing of the aforementioned kick-ass live show - is enough to buy a lifetime of credibility.  The Old 97's cashed in on some of that credibility over the past six years, but it's nice to see - and hear - them try to recapture some of what made them so interesting in the first place.

Here's To The Halcyon

Old 97's

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I'll be honest: yesterday's post was mostly filler.  I was marking time and padding the archives on the way to this post - post #504, for those keeping track at home - which was to be my review of the new Old 97's record Blame It On Gravity.  This confluence would have amused me.  (And only me, because I hadn't planned to mention it and I highly doubt even the other Old 97's fans among us would have registered the tenuous reference without some sort of cue.  Never let it be said I am not a huge nerd.)  But I find today there are more pressing matters.

The last few times Built to Spill has been through town, I've bailed on the shows.  I'm not proud of this.  I'm not especially sorry either, but still I am not proud.  That sort of behavior is mostly inexcusable regarding a beloved band.  However, I don't feel it's entirely unjustified.  One of the things I appreciate about Built to Spill in general and Doug Martsch in particular is their/his embrace of 1970's arena rock.  But it's one thing to name-check Neil Young; it's quite another to perform twenty minute covers of "Cortez the Killer."  Doug has become sort of an indie-rock guitar god - and rightly so - but I still don't care to stand through eons of wankery.

That said, there ain't nothing - and I mean nothing - that will keep me away from the 9:30 Club on September 23 of this year, when BtS is slated to perform in its entirety their masterpiece (and desert island record) Perfect From Now On.  I might even consider going to Baltimore to see them the following evening.  I mean, they're bringing the cellist with them on tour.  I haven't seen them perform with a cellist since they opened for Superchunk at the Black Cat back in '95.  And yes, I am fully aware that last sentence makes me sound at least thirty-aught-six years old.

And since I let the cat out of the bag, here's that tangentially relevant Old 97's song.

504

Old 97's

Pitchfork: Even to this day, when somebody says a band is influenced by the Replacements, often times they're just talking about alcohol intake. Certainly, no other bands sound quite like the Replacements.

PW: Yeah. It's the label they put on you if you don't come up with one. The bands we toured with-- R.E.M., every band I ever knew-- drank and took their share of substances. They just weren't known for it. I guess we were the first-- Christ, we weren't the first band to get up there loaded.

There you have it.  Proof - once and for all - of the Replacements' legacy in the musical pantheon.  The interviewer suggests that they're famous primarily for ingesting intoxicants.  Paul agrees, then mentions that they were hardly pioneers in that realm either.  Children by the millions sing for Alex Chilton.  THERE'S a guy who was influential.

I have more CD's than ninety-nine percent of America but fewer CD's than forty percent of my friends.  Those aren't my words; Chuck Klosterman wrote them in Killing Yourself to Live.  And I'm not sure I even identify with them.  I mean... except for Soo, I suspect I actually do have more CD's than most of my friends.

I've given discs away, but I have never sold any back to any record store.  I find it dishonest, in a way, to purge one's collection.  Anyone and everyone can sift through the strata of my collection and formulate any hypothesis they wish about my musical development from the fossil record.  My standard response will be that Jesus placed those incriminating discs in my library to test the faith of the believers (or non-believers; I'm not really sure how that concept is supposed to work), but we all know that I - like everyone else - used to listen to some seriously uncool music.  As I've grown older, I have found this policy has - perhaps unfortunately - influenced my buying habits.  I'm less tolerant now than I used to be of the more flash-in-the-pan bands (See: The Fratellis.  See also: everything else to which Dabysan listens.) that come down the pike.  But I still have plenty of older material that rarely, if ever, finds its way into my rotation.  I can hardly be blamed.  Hell, there are records I truly love that I forget about if I go a few weeks without listening.

So with that we begin a musical odyssey, of sorts - an exploration of my back catalog; a re-visitation of those discs which haven't been spun in years.  Here's how it works: I pick a CD early in the week and give it four or five serious listens.  And then I post a completely objective and unbiased review on a day to be determined by whenever I get around to posting my first installment.  Hopefully, that will be Thursday.  Thursdays are a good day for a regular feature.  I think we'll get things started this week with the Replacements' craptacular debut Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash.  Like I said, objective and unbiased.  Totally.

I screwed up.  There, I said it.  I know what you're thinking, but there's a first time for everything.  There was a grave oversight in the "desert island record" list I posted a week and a half ago.  And  was reminded of such this evening by a song M-----l posted.  I don't know how I overlooked the Wrens' "Meadowlands" CD, but I did.  And it belongs on my island.  I have edited the post accordingly.  Suck it, Uncle Tupelo.

I'm not so much a fan of homemade videos (let's be honest - most of them blow), but the band seems to like them.  So who am I to disagree?

This past week most certainly did not go as we had anticipated.  After several weeks of near-constant scrambling down at the lab, we thought on Monday we might actually be able to relax a little.  As it happened, this was our busiest week in a while and we didn't have any time even to manage the ol' blog.  On behalf of the entire staff of hotrod.vox.com, we apologize and offer an overdue and abbreviated glimpse of the week that could have been.

hotrod's birthday (observed):  Many, many thanks are due the organizer and attendees of our birthday festivities, which transpired Sunday evening.  Our official birthday is in September, but we didn't celebrate then.  We never do.  It usually takes people about six months to remember that they missed it.

challenged:  The New Pornographers played two sold out shows at the 9:30 Club this week.  We didn't attend either performance, but we did read with some glee the interview with Carl Newman in which he stated that DC is the best town for music but that despite that fact the New Pornos always play shitty shows here.  And that he's a hack.  Get your shit together, Post Express.  We already knew all that.

mum's the word:  Some losers at our college started a movement (of sorts) to paint their fingernails red on the first anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre as a way to honor the victims.  For the record, Virginia Tech's colors are orange and puce.  We suspect these guys were just looking for an excuse to wear nail polish.

holy shit:  The Pope seriously fucked up our morning commute.

hungry heart:  Danny Federici - multi-instrumentalist and original member of the E Street Band - died this week.  Rest in peace, and cue the video.

seven-inch:  Today is Record Store Day, so get out there and buy some CD's from somebody in your neighborhood.  Steve Jobs is killing music.  He's evil incarnate.  And we realize this item could have stood on its own now that we've got some time.  But fuck it, we're on a roll.

I'd been thinking for a while about moving into the city, and I'm glad I finally did it.  I really dig my new apartment above the 9:30 Club.  And the best part is I learned last night how to sneak into the auditorium from the residential entrance.  I'll never have to pay for a show aga-  Wait.  Whaddya mean there's no residential entrance?