Crowded House to reform and play Coachella festival.
Hello, I’ll be buying tickets the second they’re available…
Category Archives: Tunes
In Concert: Peter Mulvey & Clive Barnes.
Really hilarious byplay between these two: they’ve obviously become quite good friends as they play the US and Ireland together. I felt almost like I was at another “Boy Least Likely To” concert (where the two lead singers – or the lead singer & the number two, who knows – poked fun at each other all night).
Barnes is the “only lap slide guitar player in Ireland”, among other things (according to Mulvey). He’s got a gruff, low voice he uses sparingly. His guitar playing is crazy. Mad skillz. Mulvey was in very high spirits and absolutely bouncing during some songs. At the end, they did five or six songs together, most of which they had never played together before, and Mulvey wouldn’t even tell Barnes what song it was before he started — only what key it was in. Not that it made a damn bit of difference!
Truly talented musicians yet they will likely live in obscurity for years, given their place in the “folk” singer/songwriter small world.
In Concert: Prairie Cartel
Nan’s brother’s band’s latest incarnation. Formerly Caviar, formerly Figdish. It’s quite amazing to watch the transformation of Mike and Blake’s music together as the years go by. I started going to Figdish concerts…let’s see…1995 maybe? Figdish was pure rock. Caviar added in a little bit of sampling, a little bit of electronica, more pop than rock. Prairie Cartel is solid rock with a big dose of electronica. Like Beck and The Glimmer Twins thrown into a blender together with a little dash of Snow Patrol on top. Anthemic choruses.
Whether you like these guys’ music that much (as much as me) or not, they’ve been playing together for so many years, they KNOW how to put on a show. Compared to the three or four 12-teen bands that went on before them, the contrast was remarkable. You might not become their biggest fan, but you’re not going to walk away from the Prairie Cartel without feeling that these guys played their hearts out and completely harmonically so.
Making Plans / Buying Tickets
First half:
Jan 19 – Prairie Cartel (nan’s brother’s latest band) @ Schuba’s
Jan 21 – Peter Mulvey (amanda’s crush) @ Schuba’s
Mar 3 – Pete Yorn / Aqualung @ Riviera
Mar 10 – Crooked Still @ Old Town
Apr 13 – Low @ Metro
Apr 14 – Josh Rouse @ Old Town
February feels a little sad. We’ll have to work on that.
Second half:
Aug 3-5 – Lollapalooza, baby.
À la Super Eggplant, currently, I am…
Making: Just a binding away from finishing the first Strippers of the Orient quilt (finished ALL the free motion quilting on Sunday. woot!). And maybe 20-30 stitch in the ditch quilting seams away from finishing a baby Log Cabin I made ALL IN ONE (mon)DAY thanks to Eleanor Burns’ Log Cabin in a Day book (I would have finished it entirely had I not gone out to dinner). Also have 8 of 21 pieces sewn together on another Dear Jane block.
Reading: “Beasts of No Nation” by Uzodinma Iweala. It was a Christmas gift.
Watching: Rewatched (or listened to and occasionally looked up at) entire fourth season of Everwood during the Sunday/Monday quilting extravaganzas. Waiting not very patiently for the next new episode of Friday Night Lights which I think isn’t on until next week (you are KILLING ME, NBC). Watched the last half hour of the Globes. Booooring. And hello has Warren Beatty completely lost his mind?
Listening: The Long Blondes, picked up in London. LOVE IT. Paolo Nuttini’s full length. Also UK. Also love it. (It’s even better than the EP I told you about before.) Jim Noir “Tower of Love”. He might be TOO HAPPY for me.
Lyrics of the Day.
And some have said that true love is something we are sure of.
But my only hope lies in your being confused.
-“Vote” from the Submarines “Declare a New State”
Jen recommended this album to me ages ago; I bought it, liked it, but (for who knows what reason) didn’t wind up listening to it that much at the time. I am really digging it these days.
Paste Culture Club 12/19 Edition.
This is a great introduction to Joseph Arthur, if you’re not already on his bandwagon (I am). Really good live performances of a bunch of songs, including a new one not even on the most recent album. Pretty funny guy and does not seem nearly as religious as some of his lyrics make you wonder. (As opposed to say, Josh Ritter, who talked a LOT about “spirituality” when he appeared on the show.)
Also a pretty interesting conversation with the guy/girl that make up the Weepies. But oddly no performance / just a song (or maybe two? can’t remember?) played off the last album. So interesting, but not as satisfying as the Arthur segment.
Best of…2006
Best CDs: I already posted an extensive list of my favorite tunes from 2006. My top 3 albums were Gnarls Barkley “St. Elsewhere”, Gomez “How We Operate” and Golden Smog “Another Fine Day.”
Best Gigs: I saw a lot of great shows in 2006, including Lollapalooza. Trying (desperately) to narrow it down, I’d say the two tied for “funnest” were Gnarls Barkley and Beck (hello, puppets!). The best was Joan Baez. And runner-up was The Raconteurs on December 30. Sadly I did not keep a list just by 2006, but you can see a (supposedly) comprehensive list of what I’ve seen live here.
Best Books: [Limiting myself MOSTLY to books published and read this year, as opposed to all the books I read this year.] The best NON fiction books I read this year were “Guests of the Ayatollah” by Mark Bowden and “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion. The best novels I read were “Black Swan Green” by David Mitchell, “Sharp Objects” by Gillian Flynn and “Towing Jehovah” by James Morrow [that one was not pub this year]. The best short stories I read were “In Persuasian Nation” by George Saunders and “When the Messenger Is Hot” by Elizabeth Crane (not from this year either). The best poetry was “Strong Is Your Hold” by Galway Kinnell. You can view the entire list of what I read here and you can read my last mini-reviews here (reviews will be posted to Snip from now on).
Best Films: By far, the best film I saw this year was “The Departed”. For drama, I also highly recommend “Inside Man” “The Queen” and I personally loved “Marie Antoinette”. For a smaller film “Come Early Morning” was very well done. For comedy “Scoop” and “Clerks 2” were both quite funny, in their own ways. “Casino Royale” was the Best Bond, perhaps ever. And “The Prestige” was a good movie about just how horrifically awful human beings can be. So you’d have to keep that in mind, should you choose to see it. There were other movies I liked also.
I’m pretty good at not going to movies I can tell I’m not going to like, in my old age. I’d have to say “Last Kiss” (yuck) and “Match Point” (“Scoop” is so much better!) were my least favorite movies in the theater this year and “The DaVinci Code” was about how I expected: not good, but not as bad as I had heard. Average. Middling.
For Keanu lovers like myself, there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with “The Lakehouse.” You can see the whole list of what I saw here or you can view Snip by category “Flicks”; although I oddly forgot to write up a LOT of the concerts I saw, I pretty consistently reported back on movies.
And I’ve already seen my first movie of 2007 although I haven’t written it up yet. Soon! 🙂
Concert: The Hold Steady
New Year’s Eve show, band all in tuxes. Some technical difficulties at the beginning created large breaks between songs / they must have changed the wire to Craig Finn’s guitar several times. But once that was fixed, it was a great show, probably the best I’ve seen them play (this was third time I’d seen them).
Odd concert in that it was one of the very few concerts I’ve been to where it appeared that the boys in the audience knew the lyrics better than the girls. Definitely a crowd pleaser, lots of singing along, pumping of fists, etc.
Pretty rockin’ show.
*The small downstairs stage at the House of Blues.
Concert: The Raconteurs
Really intensely rocking out. Raucous. Riotous. Very, very awesome. But occasional dips into jam-band territory (if your songs have words, I prefer those parts).
However insane Jack White is, or wants to be thought of as, he’s a consummate musician and clearly surrounded himself with other very talented guys. I could feel my pulse throbbing along to the beat and the bass, but it was a damn good concert.