Gang of 4 -- Live in LA 2005

What a party. Avalon on a Thursday night, packed room, killer sound system. Opening act "Morning Wood" delivered an interesting performance and great promotional posters strung up all around the joint. But no one was here for the openers...

Gang of 4 is one of those bands that you either caught the first time, or you didn't. I'm not talking about "catching them live" back in '79-'83; what I mean is, were you on the wavelength back in the day or did you miss their boat? After all, it's one thing to get into a band whose music is interesting but ultimately pretty minimal post-punk/pre-new-wave British bar-bandism; it's another to do so where the band is a handful of cats in their early 20's lyricizing philosophical about the romance of Marxism. Seriously doctrinaire stuff, and pretty amusing in retrospect. "Good to be young" and all that crap...

It's yet another thing again to bear witness to the same handful of cats, 25 years later in a large, posh venue, performing with the same unpolished degree of tuesday evening bar band musicianship, singing those Marxist lullabies. I mean jeezus, these guys are all probably in their 50's now: after the "End of History" a few years after their career peak, and the years of global prosperity that followed communism's collapse in the Soviet sphere, can these guys really still believe this bloat? I don't know, and frankly, that wasn't the problem, as the hordes of fans singing along with every song would surely attest!

The musicianship thing was more than a little annoying, though. All I ask for is the bare minimum competence on one's instrument, especially in a venue like that. Their set would've gone over much better in a place like the Whisky; not that I'm slamming the Whisky, but it has a rougher, dirtier edge that would've made things come together better, all things considered. As it stood, hearing the band butcher the riff on the only later-period song of the night (and their biggest hit), "I love a man in a uniform", I could only think, "What am I doing here?" and wish I'd stayed home, poured a drink and listened to their albums. At least they were recorded at a time when the band could claim at least a modest mastery of their instruments.

So, a couple of days ago I went to Tower Records to see about some new releases (why are records still released months apart in the UK and USA?) and saw a "new" Gang of 4 record, "Give back the Gift". Song listing is a bunch of their old material -- the set list of Thursday night's show, pretty much -- so I threw on some cans and had a go through the tracks at the listening post. It's not often you get a chance to hear the anthemic "To Hell With Poverty" anymore... All was well on that track, but when I checked the songs that I'm more familiar with, I realized that this album is a collection of newly re-recorded versions of their oldest material, thereby giving the listener the benefit of "let's just hang a single mic over here" production quality (v. their original records, the later of which are fairly well-produced and decent sounding) and the aforementioned deteriorated musicianship. C'mon guys, why bother?

At least Hugo Burnham can still lay down a beat like a metronome. He's like clockwork, he really is. As for the rest of them, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Blooming Delight

Someone needs to tell my why "Stoppage Time" by Guy Gerber isn't the greatest song of 2004. The only reason I could think of is because WOW's "Don't Forget Me", "Killa" and (most of all) "Melt" all came out in the same year. But damn! This Gerber fella's kicking my ass!

I had it wrong in the Nick Warren post; the song that smoked the evening was in fact "Stoppage Time", not "Glimmer of Dope". I new it was the last track on one of my zillions of mix comp's, but didn't realize it was the final on disc 1 of "Bloom" by Gabriel & Dresden, rather than Nick's exceptionally trippy and typically wide-ranging tour-de-force, "Reykjavic GU 24" (and yes, I'm conscious of the ruination I'm wreaking with my spelling of that fine city's name. Tell you what: when I've visited it, I'll begin spelling it properly (and that's a promise)).

So, while Stoppage Time rips through my brain for the third time in a row (I'll listen to the rest of this disc again, eventually), I'll tell you a little more about the disc. There are several points in Stoppage Time where the beat pauses and the ambient/echo portions of the track are allowed to just... build. And keep on building; it's almost as though they're delayed just a tad beyond what an ordinary listener would consider reasonable, and then the beats/track are brought back in, instantly blowing the lid off any dancefloor, living room, car, *mind*!!! I can't get enough of this.

Well, if you're looking for the disc that will keep you satisfied for awhile, Bloom is probably it. G&D have done an interesting thing here, interspersing their own new original material and a few of their remixes of third-party stuff with other tracks with which they have no involvement, creating what's at once both an exemplary mix cd and a great showcase of their own originals. Nice things abound: track selection is very strong, including on disc 2 the highlight G&D remix of Dido's "Don't Leave Home". I've never heard the original mix of this track, and if it is to G&D's remix what the original of "Dirty Sticky Floors" is to Junkie XL's masterpiece remix thereof, I'm not sure I ever need to! In addition to excellent tracks, the sequencing is really well done. They begin with what is probably the ultimate "compressor heavily ducking the reverb being keyed by the kick drum" track, "Arcadia", followed by a few other originals, including one called "Lament" that really goes into some wonderful moodiness and atmospherics. The first disc continues its build, pausing for the refreshment of Andain's wonderfully pure voice at about the 33% point of the side. Side one finishes with the consciousness-demolishing nirvanic bliss of Stoppage Time.

Side two picks up the pace with a different attitude, kicking it off with "Voices", a vocal-sample stack reminiscent of 80's records buy guys with access to a Fairlight CMI that blows into some powerful, pounding 4-on-the-floor boogie, leading into the aforementioned Dido remix, serving as the side's centerpiece. They pull out a few more stops to bring the disc to a nice, solid conclusion, which fades into an acoustic guitar and voice version of "Imagination" by Motorcycle. Nice stuff altogether.

Avalon on a "Clifton High"

Shanghai'd in Hollywood!

Well, my friend stiffed me for the avalon gig last Saturday night, leaving me high and dry for companionship; my bro wasn't into it, my other 'clubbing friends' weren't either, as they had all been out on friday night and, as those who know, know, a night at the Avalon is something that requires a certain degree of preparation and conditioning... so i went with 2 tickets, hoping to pawn one off on a walk-up, and got there so early that the only other people there were guest list! Well, there was also a dude flyering for a show by Ima Robot: "Ima Robot this Thursday night (gee, it sounds weird when I say that, doesn't it?" Whatev, dude.

Anyway, there was a live gig by Esthero in the club before the Avaland thing got started, so we had to stand around for awhile before the club was emptied and they began letting the Nick Warren crowd in. His tour bus and immense trailer pulled up in front of the awning, creating a nifty closed space into which to bellow bus exhaust for about 20 minutes, which was none too comfortable. Soon enough, it was over and i was inside, listening to "Kazell", a local star who opens for just about everyone. And he was amazing. Twisted the vibe around and again fantastically, going from cool dance music into these swaying half-time-seeming heavy electronic jams - like an electronic "Sabotage" or something. There was a huge
white curtain/screen hung filling the opening of the stage for his set, which was lifted when Luke Fair, the opener, came on for a few hours. behind the screen was additional floor space and the stage.

Fair was excellent. He's currently promoting his new cd on digweed's bedrock label, 'original series os 0.3'. Good disc, great set. Bravo. And what a fine complement to the headliner. After hearing how well Sander K.'s opener's set matched his own, I've gotta hand it to these guys and the promoters for putting together the kind of bills that Sunset Strip rock promoters long ago lost the art of creating, namely, a solid evening of the stuff you want to hear, the way you want it. Why show up for one guy when you can go for 3 and get a triple-dose, and you know it'll get better and better leading up to the headliner, after all?

When Warren came on, a huge matrix of what appeared to be vertical fluorescent tube lights suspended on a backdrop was lowered onto the wall behind him; turns out each tube was really comprised of 5 or so individual spotlights, all of which had multi-color capabilities and were being run by a computer. The effect was that of a gargantuan lite-brite being driven like the "visuals" program in itunes. Wow. Like a church stained-glass window or something.

But he gave the game away that the evening was going to be a special one by wearing a black "Motorhead" logo t-shirt. Classic.

His set was again so transcendant it practically brought tears to one's eyes -- like the set he and wisternoff threw down at that way out west gig with Omi last July, although I have to say that this was even better. He brought in everything from "I feel love" by Donna Summer, "She sells sanctuary" by The Cult (!) and some of the great stuff he's played on some of his other mix cd's, including a peaking "Glimmer of Dope", all put together in such an excellent way...

Midway through the set, the lighting backdrop was raised out of view and the lights came down a bit, making way for some of the greasiest disco and hardest house sounds to hit the hallowed halls of Avaland in its short but storied lifespan. Just as the sweatiness of the floor's trancers and the euphoric liberation of the music was taking us all to higher heights of ecstatic rumblings, the backdrop snuck back down the wall and Nick subtly changed gears yet again, into the third stage of the rocket ride he was directing from his Houstonian mission control onstage.

Before I had left the house earlier that night, I spun a few rockers like "Unglued" by STP and "Where the freaks go" by Dust for Life, followed by the just-released 12" on vinyl only "w.o.w.'s clifton high remix" of "DFM", hoping Warren would spin the latter. Sure enough, I could see it coming a mile away in his set (I may have been the only one there who knew the track) and then, there it was! In fact, he spun an unreleased dub version of the clifton high mix (which in itself is radically different than the album version of the track).

As for the new GU mix set, Nick is at it again, possibly besting the Icelandic masterpiece he put together a couple of years ago. The big jams of the night made it onto the album, including an old Hardfloor 303 jam from a decade plus ago and the aforementioned "Don't Forget Me" dub. The tune that's currently bunching my panties is something called "Pillow" by a group whose name escapes me at the moment. Nice, touching melancholy with a killer groove.

Saturday night was one of the best shows i've ever been to, without a doubt. I didn't regret going alone for a minute; in fact, there's a handful of folks who were offered the extra ticket and couldn't do it for whatever reason, who do have regrets now that they know what they missed, including my scheduling-impaired friend who blew this companionship crisis up in my lap on saturday afternoon, my "dude, we've gotta start going to clubs together; just call me, I'm down for it anytime" friend that waits three days to return my calls when I leave word offering him a ticket like this one (and we've all got one of those, haven't we?), among others. No hard feelings; in fact, better them than me! This was one of those "I'll never miss one of his shows" kind of events for me personally. After having been thrown out of a club (well, my friend was, but I left with him out of friendular courtesy) on a similar type of evening - one of my favorite dj's was in town and we got punted b/c my friend passed out about an hour before the headliner arrived (and I spent the following 3 hours watching and listening as my friend dry-heaved into a trash can behind the club) - I was kind of relieved to be able to go and hang for as long as I could take it, which in this case was until about 4:30 a.m. A good time was definitely had by all who were hip and fortunate enough to be at the Avalon for the Nick Warren mindbender!

Kraftwerk 24/7

So, last night saw the final date of Kraftwerk's "minimum - maximum" tour 2005. Boy, did they ever deliver the goods to the packed Greek Theatre above LA. My friends and I were caught up in the parking situation, followed by a brief pause that refreshes in the forest on the way to the theatre, so we missed the first number. It was nice and loud, booming all around us, as we descended the hill towards the gate; very cool sensation to be walking around and hearing pretty loud, somewhat muffled electronic dance music in the air. Then, when the track ended and the crowd exploded into applause, we realized how loud and how close this spectacle really was. Impressive.

So we headed up to our seats and proceeded to be blown to bits by Kraftwerk's awesome catalog of crisp, cool tracks. Some of the melodic and lyrical content is such that you have to accept it as a joke (even though stuff like the b-side of "Elektrik Cafe" makes me doubt that these melodies are anything other than sincere) and enjoy the ride. They delivered an unabashedly honest performance. The fidelity of the audio system was breathtaking; I've never heard anything that loud and clear in an outdoor space so large, across the entire spectrum. Wow.

The show's pieces featured excellent visual accompaniment on film projector behind the band. The screen was a triptych (I know I spelled that incorrectly) but also consolidated into a single, ultrawide backdrop. Superb resolution. Tour de France featured some wonderful vintage black and white footage of bicycle races in the French countryside, towns, etc. Likewise Trans Europ Express had excellent film of the pretty 50s/60s TEE trains cruising through Germany; there was also a healthy serving of track-level footage filmed by a camera mounted low on the front of a train cruising through switches, etc. Wonderful. There was also some good "bahnhof" footage to bring back many memories of the Germany I visited in my youth. Of course, that wasn't the end of it... Autobahn provided footage of the German freeways, circa the 60's or thereabouts. Very nice. One could really appreciate the architectural purity of the system in those films. And the vintage computer graphics featured in the "Computer World" tracks and the closer, "Music Non Stop" were excellent.

These guys are great designers. They have command over the experience, fashioning as aesthetically pure an audiovisual experience as can be imagined. At their seasoned age, they are still capable of completely demolishing an audience, as they so deftly did at the packed Greek last night. It was cool, though; the four of them were clearly doing, on their Ableton Live-equipped laptops, something very similar to what Sasha's been doing with his Ableton/"maven" kit at his Fundacion parties in LA and NYC these past several months. As someone who attended every LA Fundacion night, I oughtta know.

But back to Kraftwerk: expect a DVD by Christmas if not sooner. It's already been announced on the band's record label web site. I think they were filming and recording the show last night for possible use in such a product... It was a flawlessly executed show, and under the stars, so unless they've already put together all the footage for the DVD, there's no reason not to use some from the Greek.

However, I had one gripe about the show: why change the title to "Music" non stop, rather than the old "Muzik" (or was it "Musique"?); wasn't the latter so much more satisfying, and more "Kraftwerk"? Not to mention truer to the pronunciation of the word by the computer-generated voice...

So today, the "minimum - maximum" 2CD set came out. Live recordings from the 2004 world tour. Pretty much what I heard last night (listening to it as I write). The booklet has stage shots for most all of the major theme tracks, including the "Tron"-like Music Non Stop. Yeah, I can't wait to see the DVD... Apparently, the group also released tracks from the CD on vinyl in Europe. And this stuff really does drop right nicely into any amalgam of new stuff, particularly the more prog-house material out there. Should be interesting to see whether any of these tracks find their way into any of the superDJs' boxes this summer or the compilations that will inevitably follow. Would've fit right in on Digweed's recent 'Fabric20' disc, for example...

I guess we'll have to be content to listen to the unmixed source for now, and cherish the memories of an excellently-spent evening under the stars.

Kraftwerk's web sites are www.kraftwerk.de and www.klingklang.de.

Kraftwerk @ the Greek Theatre

There will definitely be more on this later, but man... total mastery of the digital domain on those guys. Some wouldn't be all that excited about the prospect of watching 4 guys standing in front of laptops all night, while films play in back of them, but that wasn't the point: Kraftwerk are designers: they design an experience for listeners/show attendees. Their show's music and visuals were so pure it becomes difficult to put into words. The idea of witnessing their spectacle in the forested environs of the outdoor Greek Theatre only made it that much more invigorating.

CMJ Compilations Redux

In the course of searching for an old recording on an unlabeled cassette tape in my bin of roughly 600 tapes, I came across and just finished listening to a homespun tape I made in '95 of the best stuff off of the first CMJ Music Monthly compilation cd that I ever bought. Fantastic stuff, even (or, especially?) after a decade's passed. There's something for everyone on these CMJ discs; this one from 95 has Korn, Stereolab, Radiohead, Dee Snyder's band Widowmaker (great song, "Long Gone" is), Massive Attack feat. the creamy-voiced babe from Everything but the Girl, and a host of others, like "Shudder to Think" (a guilty pleasure).

One of the most interesting things I've noticed in 30 years of record buying is that all the stuff I used to think was losing the thick, creamy sound of all the records I was weaned on (try "Barracuda" by Heart as the epitome of what I mean, mixwise - those drums!!!) inevitably sounds fabulous 10 years later. Jeez, I mean even Faster Pussycat "Where There's A Whip There's A Way" sounds bombastically phat by today's standards, and it clearly sounded hollow and overly-swathed in SPX-digital reverbs in its day.

I bought a lot of those CMJ's throughout the mid 90's, up til around 98/99; I'm tempted to buy one now just to see whether I like anything on it, now or in 10 years.

I also had cause to include some studio cuts off Genesis "3 Sides Live" on the other side of the tape, and that's a treat, too. It's only fitting that those guys found a way to share their out-takes from "Abacab" with the world, since that was pretty much the middle of their songwriting apex; and a broad bell-curve that was, wasn't it? I mean, when you can't find room on an album for songs like "You Might Recall" or "Paperlate", your writing is "on pure", as they say. I loved the sound of that "Abacab" album, too. The drums had air and roominess without being small, and the omnipresent TR-808 is among my favorite things on record. The programming of the 808 in "Lonely Man on the Corner" is especially endearing and really makes the song -- until the middle eight, that is, when the song turns around and kicks you in the pants. And then there's the 808 handclaps in "No Reply". If you like your 808's, you've gotta hand mega-props to Phil Collins for bringing the noise early and keeping that thing close at hand. I mean, he's a drummer, after all -- aren't drummers supposed to hate drum machines? What about all those doofus bumper stickers around Hollywood that implore onlookers, "DRUM MACHINES HAVE NO SOUL". O.k., then; takes one to know one, or something? I mean, where's the love?

I've been a drummer forever and got my first kit when I was 3, but around '84/85 I bought my first drum machine, a Yamaha RX 11 (yeesh) and never looked back... I've owned and used the crap out of several Alesis, Yamaha and other machines; I even had a 909 for awhile back when they were new, but I never liked the sound of it. It looked pretty, though. And I'm perfectly aware that most, but not all, intelligent world-wise drummers embrace machines and electronics as the tools they are, and not the enemy some imagine them to be. But that ain't my stone to roll, so I'll leave it for someone else's shoulder.