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Home - Lazy I
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Help Wanted, Rights - |
Omaha World-Herald Gags on 1st Amendment
by Tim McMahan
I write this from Colorado, where trees are dying in the mountains. You can thank the Mountain Pine Beetle, an industrious insect whose entire life is dedicated to boring under the bark of ancient lodgepole timbers that, in their effort to fight off the attack, starve themselves by cutting off the food supply to their limbs. They turn brown; they die and the beetle moves to the next tree. The beetles are winning. From a distance, the forests in and around Breckenridge, Colo., look like a middle-aged man’s salt-and-pepper hair, the gray slowly defeating the color of its youth, until there’s nothing but white, and then nothing at all.
It is from the balcony of a Breckenridge condo while on vacation that I received an email from a member of the band The Good Life with an attached PDF file. It was an editorial from the July 15 issue of The Omaha World-Herald, a parting shot taken at the band a few days after they opened for Feist in Memorial Park.
Flavorlessly titled “Saturday, in the Park,” the editorial is a tsk-tsk indictment of the band’s behavior from the Memorial Park stage during the early evening of Saturday, July 12. The writer (who, like all OWH editorial writers, shall remain anonymous as s/he presumably speaks for the newspaper) was aghast that Good Life frontman Tim Kasher had the audacity the utter contempt to say what was on his mind concerning the upcoming presidential election.
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One Ringy Dingy - |
David Matysiak goes from Bones to phones
by Tim McMahan
I know that The Reader just ran a story last week on David Matysiak’s Telephono project (in the Arts section), but I still didn’t quite understand how the whole thing worked.
Matysiak, the frontman for local indie band Coyote Bones, created Telephono as part of his residency at The Bemis. It’s described as being based on the old telephone game, where one person whispers a secret into another person’s ear, who in turn, tells another person, and so on. What comes out the other end is totally different than what went in.
Telephono worked off that same principle. Matysiak created an audio track, then sent it off to someone who could either add to it, edit it, or record over it entirely. For me, that’s where the confusion came in.
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Audio Polarity - |
Remembering the glory days of the Magnet sampler
by Tim McMahan
It’s been a slow week with little to report, so humor me as I rasp romantically on the past and point out another way that discovering new music has changed forever, thanks to the Internet.
The journey to the family farm in Fort Calhoun is 20 minutes of over-hill-and-dell driving. For this year’s Independence Day, I brought along a CD that arrived in the mail the day before, with the latest copy of Magnet magazine.
Magnet was once the bible of indie rock, the arbiter of all things good in the indie music world, a saddle-stitched signpost that revealed the latest and greatest music you’d never get a chance to hear on radio if you lived in a backwards town like Omaha, where the only thing on FM is Freedom Rock and screamo goon metal. |
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Omaha Spin - |
Another national looks at our scene
by Tim McMahan
It’s been a while since I’ve been able to say this, but the Omaha music scene has made it onto the pages of a national magazine (again). This time it’s the July issue of SPIN, in the form of the rag’s monthly “Rock City” feature.
“Rock City” highlights a town’s music scene by compiling its Local Heroes, Bars and Clubs, History and Bands in a two-page spread tucked in the back of each issue. The Omaha version of “Rock City,” written and reported by former Reader editor Tessa (We miss you) Jeffers, broke it down this way:
In the Local Heroes section, Simon Joyner (troubadour/genius), Marc Leibowitz & Jim Johnson (1% Productions), Robb Nansel and Mike Mogis (Saddle Creek/ARC Studios), Lallaya and Trey Lalley (The Brothers, Capitol Bar & Grill) and true godfather of the Omaha music scene, Dave Sink, were the subjects.
Under Bars and Clubs, the once-active now-fading Sokol properties got the money shot, followed by The Waiting Room, Slowdown, O’Leaver’s and Barley Street Tavern. In the History category, Tessa wrote about the late, great Cog Factory, the Wal-Mart-ed Ranch Bowl and Omaha’s historic jazz scene, while the featured bands included Tilly and the Wall, The Show Is the Rainbow, Outlaw Con Bandana, Sarah Benck and The Robbers and Ladyfinger (NE). |
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Smell Ya Later - |
The first week of the smoking ban
by Tim McMahan
Forget about The Waiting Room or Slowdown or The 49’r. Everyone knows that Omaha’s most famous rock lounge doesn’t even feature live music. The Brothers on 38th and Farnam is recognized as the ultimate musicians hang-out, the Shangri-La of our music scene where on any given night you’ll find a sizable contingent of the city’s most talented rock musicians drinking, talking and smoking.
Smoking was as central to The Brothers’ vibe as booze and the punk rock on its jukebox. The dark, mid-sized club was always enveloped in a haze that hung over the pleather booths like a layer of smog over an LA freeway. Patrons were bent over their stools like little self-contained factories; smoke billowing from thin white stacks held in their yellowed paws. When you got home (or wherever you ended up) after a night at The Brothers, you stripped and tossed your clothes into the hamper (or trash). There was no way to wear those tops again after every fiber of cotton had been permeated in highly condensed tobacco stench.
I couldn’t imagine The Brothers without smoke. The thought seemed strange and alien. So when the smoking ban went into effect seemingly overnight last Tuesday, I had to find out what a smoke-free version of the bar would smell like.
I dropped in on Monday evening along with a handful of people who drank pints and shots, ignoring the College World Series playing on the TV over their shoulders. The ashtrays were gone, but the legacy of years and years of smoking remained. The bar smelled like a hotel room that recently went non-smoking a strange musk of detergent, mildew, nicotine and dirty orange peels.
Owner Trey Lalley, who is as much a fixture of the Omaha music scene as The Brothers itself, was on the phone with his wife, who was out shopping for ashtrays to place out on the sidewalk. Lalley said even after the law supposedly went into effect, The Brothers continued to allow smoking. Why not? Local bar owners hadn’t received notification from the city that anything had changed. The only thing they knew is what they read in the Omaha World-Herald hardly an official city document. |
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Cursive and Creek - |
Cursive hits the airwaves; Saddle Creek Bar hits the skids…
by Tim McMahan
I usually get a chance to hear Cursive’s new music performed live in one of the local clubs before the band heads into the studio to record it. Not this time. Something always has been in the way on the evening of recent Cursive shows.
So, this time I’m getting my first exposure to Cursive’s new material via Sound Opinions, a radio show from National Public Radio hosted by esteemed rock critics Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot. The duo strayed from their Chicago studio the afternoon of May 19 to record an interview with and a performance by Cursive at The Waiting Room in front of a live audience. The completed episode went online last Friday at soundopinions.org. The actual radio show is broadcast Sunday nights at 8 p.m. on 91.5 KIOS FM as part of the station’s block of rock-oriented programming that also includes KCRW’s outstanding Sounds Eclectic series (The only thing KIOS is missing is The Lazy-i Show. Let’s get on that, Mr. Neisler!).
Frontman Tim Kasher and crew (actually, mostly just Kasher) talked about how the band got started, their new album and writing music in their twilight years (i.e., their 30s). Kasher said he and Maginn picked up guitar and bass when they were 13, but only played cover songs before they “realized kids only a few years older than us were writing records,” which “really blew our minds.”
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Parting Shots - |
Andy Norman exits stage left …
by Tim McMahan
And so, we say goodbye to Managing Editor Andrew Norman.
Why, I remember first meeting Andy three years ago, only days after he left The City Weekly to take on the editing chores at The Reader. He was a wee lad, sprightly in stature with pork chop sideburns and a haircut that made him resemble a small, wide-eyed tree monkey or Frodo from the Peter Jackson film The Lord of the Rings. It seems like only yesterday that throngs of tattooed, ebony-haired groupies breathlessly yelled the battle cry “Save Frodo!” when Andy strapped on a bass with his band Jaeger Fight at O’Leaver’s. Writer, editor, rock and roll god. And now … now he’s gone.
Wait a minute: This isn’t an obit. Norman ain’t dead. I mean, his career might be dead, but he’s alive and kicking and living in Ashland … for now.
About a month ago, Norman, who’s been The Reader’s acting managing editor and ad hoc music editor (and, as a result, my editor) announced that he was leaving the paper and headed back to school at Michigan State, where he’s pursuing a master’s degree in “Environmental Journalism,” whatever that is. He’s spending his summer taking on the self-flagellating role of a construction worker, cooking in the hot summer sun, far away from the email and the deadlines that will plague him for the next few years in East Lansing, Mich., where he’ll also be the editor of his program’s publication, EJ Magazine.
But before we let him go, someone had to conduct the exit interview. |
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Slowdown at One - |
Bar or music venue?
by Tim McMahan
Weeks before Slowdown celebrated its one-year anniversary (the public opening was June 8, 2007), the club that is the dream of Saddle Creek Records’ entrepreneurs Robb Nansel and Jason Kulbel enjoyed one of its biggest weeks ever.
From May 18 through 24, Slowdown clocked in with two sold-out Rilo Kiley concerts in its “big room,” along with two more big-room near-sell outs (Tokyo Police Club and DeVotchKa) and two well-attended small-stage shows.
The guys should be happy. But they want more. And they know the only way they’re going to get it is by hosting more big-room shows. Lots of them. More than they ever intended to host at Slowdown.
“We need to have weeks like last week more often to be really comfortable,” said Nansel from the Saddle Creek Records’ Euro-modern conference room. “When we have shows, the bar does well. When we don’t, the bar doesn’t do well. When we set out to open this place, our desire was to have two or three shows a week, and we hoped that we would have a nightly clientele. But the reality is that we’re pretty far off the beaten path, and people only come here when they have a reason to. It’s going to be that way until the neighborhood develops a little more.”
Kulbel, speaking via cell phone while driving across town Sunday morning, agreed.
“The highs are higher and the lows are lower,” he said of the first year. “The highs are when the big room sells out and it’s packed and crazy. The lows are Sunday nights when no one comes in after 10:30.”
Slowdown had the same idea that the other important music venue The Waiting Room when it opened a little more than a year ago. Music wasn’t supposed to be the main thing. The bar was supposed to be filled with customers even when the stage was dark, which they hoped would be at least four nights a week.
“We don’t want people to think of it as a music venue, but as a bar that hosts shows,” Kulbel said a year earlier. |
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Cowardly Traveller - |
The second in a two-part look at Simon Joyner’s just-reissued seminal recording
by Tim McMahan
Continuing last week’s look at Simon Joyner’s The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll, which has just been reissued on Team Love Records …
By 2003, Joyner already had made a name for himself as a journalistic lyricist who painted acoustic snapshots on his first two tape-only recordings, Umbilical Chords and Room Temperature. For his next and what he thought would be his last recording, Joyner dipped his toe into something more autobiographical.
“I had moved away from the sort of journalistic confessional songwriting,” he said. “I was finding that the best approach to deal with things in my own life was by turning them into fictional stories, just like any other writer.”
And just like any good literature, where the reality ends and the fiction begins is never known by the casual listener. Joyner’s lyrics reflected the crossroads where he stood both professionally and personally. Born in New Orleans with parents from Alabama, Joyner was yanked from his Southern roots as a child after his father was stationed at Offutt Air Force Base.
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The Traveller Returns - |
The first in a two-part look at Simon Joyner’s
just-reissued seminal recording
by Tim McMahan
It was sometime in 1994. Omaha singer/songwriter Simon Joyner was opening a show for a band who I’ve long ago forgotten down at the original Howard St. Tavern, the one that was right next to the Old Market Homer’s. Sitting at the table looking up at the stage, I noticed a couple things different straight away. First, behind Joyner who had always been a solitary performer was a guy sitting at a small trap set. Second, the acoustic guitar that had been strapped around Joyner’s fragile frame had been replaced by one with a chord running from its hind end.
Joyner was going electric. No one knew what to think. The occasion was the release of his then-new vinyl album, The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll, a departure both for him and the rest of us who had known Joyner as a solo acoustic folk-punk musician. Cowardly Traveller would change all that.
On the occasion of its long-awaited re-release on Conor Oberst’s Team Love Records the album’s only re-pressing since its second run sold out more than a decade ago Joyner talked about how Cowardly Traveller happened, and what it meant to him all those years ago, and today.
First, let me tell you what it meant to me. |
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Fasciinatiion Street - |
The Faint finally leave Saddle Creek
by Tim McMahan
Billboard.com posted a story on its website Monday afternoon announcing that The Faint the band that taught Omaha how to dance was splitting with its longtime label, Omaha’s own Saddle Creek Records.
The news, which arrived by way of my Google news search tool, caused me to audibly gasp. We all knew it was coming. We had known it for years. Yet, here it was, right in front of my eyes, finally.
The Faint (the article said) is launching its own imprint called “blank.wav,” and its first release will be the band’s fifth album, Fasciinatiion (and no, that isn’t a typo), due out Aug. 5. The story went on to quote sales stats from the band’s past two albums 2004’s Wet From Birth, 117,000 copies; and 2001’s Danse Macabre, 143,000 units, perhaps implying that the downturn in sales had something to do with the band’s decision to go out on its own.
The Faint’s defection comes only a few weeks after Saddle Creek’s first-born son, Conor Oberst, announced that he was releasing a non-Bright Eyes solo album, but that it also would not be on Saddle Creek. Instead, the record is coming out on leading indie label Merge Records, the home to such acts as The Arcade Fire, Spoon and Oberst’s buddy M. Ward. That news seemed like a body blow to Creek, even though Bright Eyes still seems to be comfortably held in the label’s nurturing arms.
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First Quarter Report - |
A glance at some recent releases
by Tim McMahan
Whenever people start asking me what I’m listening to, I figure it’s time for another CD reviews round-up. These are not full, detailed reviews, rather they’re impressions after listening to these albums on and off on my stereo and iPhone over the past few weeks/months. All get the Lazy-i seal of approval. |
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Convo with a Cop - |
Jaws talks Cops and Mt. Fuji
by Tim McMahan
This week we’re catching up with Mike Jaworski aka “Jaws” former Omahan, frontman of Seattle rock band The Cops and majordomo of Mt. Fuji Records, a label whose roster includes Little Brazil, Slender Means, and his own band.
Jaworski chatted via cell from the Fort Green Laundromat in Brooklyn the day after The Cops played at Union Pool in Williamsburg. Just down the street at The Vanderbilt Auto Service, the band’s ’96 Econovan was getting a much-needed tune-up its first after well over 200,000 miles of road duty. Jaworski hoped that new plugs not only would fix that rough, chugging sound coming from beneath the hood, but would boost the van’s 12-miles-per-gallon fuel performance. They’ve got a long way to drive before rolling into The Slowdown this Saturday night for a show with Race For Titles, Little Brazil and special guests Criteria (That’s right, Stephen Pedersen and Co. will make their return after a long absence from stage).
For touring bands, life on the road is getting tougher these days, Jaworski said. “We’re not pulling in guarantees like Cursive. We’re a break-even band who gets by on merch sales. How else can you do this when gas is so expensive?” |
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Public Enemy - |
Hate for the right reasons
by Tim McMahan
Last Saturday night, I high-tailed it over to what is believed (in some circles) to be a den of pure evil The Saddle Creek Bar. There, I consorted with The Dark Lord accused of high crimes and misdemeanors to the Omaha music scene, and retrieved my winnings. As I mentioned in last week’s column, I had a bet riding on the outcome of last Tuesday’s Omaha City Council meeting, a bet I won. I played Randolph Duke to Mike Coldewey’s Mortimer Duke, and he paid up: one dollar.
It was then that I realized that these days, people are hating Coldewey for all the wrong reasons.
If there’s a back story to the city council vote that allows minors into bars for all-ages rock shows, it’s the demonization of Coldewey. But the fact is, before this whole thing stirred, few people who I know in the indie music scene liked the owner/operator of The Saddle Creek Bar or his brash, straight-forward approach. |
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No Poles, No Pasties - |
All ages shows become more legal
by Tim McMahan
It’s been about 20 years since I’ve been to an Omaha City Council meeting, and in that time nothing has changed about the council chambers the paneled dιcor, the dirty upholstered chairs, the institutional fluorescent lighting. The place even smells the same, a mixture of dust, mildewed paper, Brylcreem, toilet bowl deodorant and bureaucracy.
Only the players have changed, but really, is Frank Brown that much different then say, Fred Conley? Is Garry Gernandt a big leap from Bernie Simon? No, not really. It certainly didn’t seem that way at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, which felt like stepping into a time machine, complete with all the usual inane discussions, dumb questions and stripper references that I remember from my days at journalism school.
At stake was the future of all-ages shows in Omaha bars. The council was voting on the so-called “music venue” ordinance introduced by Councilman Jim Suttle that would let bars allow minors onto their premises during live music events as long they were properly identified as minors. The first reading of the ordinance was two weeks ago, and afterward no one thought it would pass. Certainly I didn’t. |
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Minor Threat - |
Arguing for all-ages venue
by Tim McMahan
At issue is an ordinance introduced by City Councilman Jim Suttle a couple weeks ago that would create a new category of businesses called “music venues.” The ordinance would allow these designated bars to admit minors as long as the bars followed security measures, including having wristbands for those 21 and older and serving alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks in different glasses.
The ordinance was discussed at a city council meeting two weeks ago. Among those speaking in favor were Matt Oberst (Conor Oberst’s father), David Jacobson (father of Film Stream’s Rachel Jacobson, and an attorney representing Slowdown and The Waiting Room), Jason Kulbel (Saddle Creek Records executive and Slowdown co-owner) and Marc Leibowitz (co-owner of One Percent Productions and The Waiting Room).
Their arguments are obvious to local music fans: Omaha’s world-renowned music scene was created by a bunch of kids who grew up watching bands perform at all-ages shows. To prevent the next generation from seeing these shows because they take place in bars (rather than halls) would be a tragic blow to the continued growth of the local arts and music scene. |
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New York Minuet - |
Searching for sound in the city
by Tim McMahan
I spent last week in New York, and had intended to write a column about the vast, exciting world of music swaddled within the dark nightclubs of a city that never sleeps.
Unfortunately I never made it to any clubs, which kind of puts a damper on the whole column idea. What happened?
There are dozens and dozens of music venues in New York. The best ones all seem to be located in the once-seedy area called the Lower East Side (LES), just a handful of subway stops below the Empire State Building. When I visited New York a few years ago (on the exact day of the infamous Eastern seaboard blackout) I took the 6 train from the glimmering clean streets north of Times Square and south of Central Park down to LES in search of a club called Sin-ι.
I emerged from the urine-scented subway surrounded by high-rise housing projects and people angrily pushing shopping carts loaded with empty aluminum cans. The cart pushers glared at me with suspicion as I unfolded a subway map, vainly trying to locate Attorney Street, their heads encrusted in dried sweat under wool stocking caps, out of place in the August heat.
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More Punk Than You - |
Omaha’s original punk legends gather again
by Tim McMahan
The idea of the Omaha ‘My Generation’ Punk Rock Reunion Show (this Saturday night at The Waiting Room) began with a couple former neighbors talking about the good ol’ days.
Those neighbors were Tim Cox, drummer for ’80s-era punk rock band R.A.F., and the girls that lived next door, Dee Shelton and Meghan Smith. They lived in an apartment building that came to be known as The Farnam House, a place notorious for its ad hoc punk rock shows.
Here’s the funny part The Farnam House was located right across the street from The Brothers at 38th and Farnam, a building that today is known as Hotel Frank, home of the best house shows in town hosting bands like Capgun Coup and Baby Walrus. |
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Boss Hogged - |
Goodbye, Qwest Center
by Tim McMahan
As I drove aimlessly through the cluster-f***ed streets looking for a place to park, I took solace in the fact that this, the third concert I’ve attended at The Qwest Center, would also be my last.
I now must assume that it’s impossible to get good seats at Qwest. For Fleetwood Mac, we sat lower bowl center, straight back from the stage and couldn’t see shit. For The Who, I joined a Who fan club just to try to get good seats. We got first tier, but too close to the floor and too far back on the side, so we couldn’t see shit. Like every other dumbass who thought Springsteen would sell out in two minutes, I was online right when the tickets were made available and was surprised that I even got through. Hence, I took the first “best seats” offered, figuring if I didn’t take them, I’d never make it through the queue and would lose any chance of getting tickets. When I looked at the seating chart online, I thought they were pretty good section 223 Row N. Heck, second tier, right off the stage I’ll be looking right down at The Boss’ bad haircut!
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British Bird Nests - |
Alessi makes Omaha her second home
by Tim McMahan
This is the story of a girl named Alessi, a stranger from a strange land called London, cast away in a distant world called Omaha to be embraced by natives carrying guitars and glockenspiel. She quickly learned the language, thanks to tribe leader Mike Mogis. And now, after spending only a few months here eating Tom Kha Gai soup and quesadillas, shopping at the temple of Target and hanging out with fried-chicken eating musicians, she’s gone. Back to London. Leaving behind her extended family to pursue a career fueled by global music powerhouse EMI Records, fondly remembering time spent with new friends that she won’t see again for a long, long time.
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