When we got to The Anchor Inn last Friday evening, one of the translucent openers currently touring with Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band was finishing a set of run-of-the-mill indie rock, followed by another in a series of droning bands fronted by women who sing like Cat Power.
Checking out the sparse crowd, I wondered if the show was going to be a bust. But it was early. Only about 50 people were crowded around the stage, while the rest meandered between picnic tables, carrying Bud Lights and pulled-pork sandwiches, or wandered down to the river that is a backdrop to the Anchor Inn’s massive stage.
Conor Oberst “isn’t doing interviews” these days, at least not with me or other small writers at small publications like The Reader.
The slight isn’t a personal thing, it’s just the way he’s handling the press for this Mystic Valley Band project. If you’ve seen One Of My Kind, the hour-long documentary about the making of the band and their first album, you know that Mystic Valley was a spur-of-the-moment attempt to break free from the way he’d been doing things for years as Bright Eyes. The results are obvious to anyone who’s followed both bands. Mystic Valley is looser, more direct, less introspective. It’s like a long drunken weekend spent with your old high school buddies vs. Bright Eyes’ trip to the confessional where Oberst’s sins are spoken to a stranger through a mesh screen while his family stands right outside the door.
Let’s start by clarifying that I don’t really have anything to do with this weekend’s can’t-miss event, Lincoln Invasion. We’re talking two nights of top-flight musical entertainment — 22 bands by way of Lincoln, Nebraska — at three of Benson’s finest clubs. For just $5 each night you’ll get into all three clubs all night. It’s a musical smorgasbord from the Star City to you — the easiest way you’ll ever have of experiencing the best of Lincoln without having to truck 50 miles south by southwest on I-80.
My only role in this amazing extravaganza is coming up with the idea. Years ago, before there was an OEAA Showcase or a Mid-America Music Festival, I was chatting with Jeremy Buckley (a Reader contributor), who’s organizing this weekend’s event along with Duffy’s booker Jeremy “Dub” Wardlaw. Buckley had just held his first Lincoln Calling Festival (which you’ll hear more about in coming months), and I suggested that instead of me having to drive my lazy ass down to Lincoln, he pull together a handful of Lincoln bands and have them play in Benson, where folks could walk from club to club all night.
I hate to say “I told you so,” but … My guestimate of the attendance at last Saturday night’s Gomez concert in Memorial Park: fewer than 1,000. It was hard to say since people were so widely scattered across the enormous park bowl. The number was probably closer to 600 or 800.
You can’t blame the weather. It was gorgeous despite weathermen warning of storms for the few days prior. You can’t blame the Taste of Omaha festival going on at the same time downtown. The food orgy didn’t really target “area youth” — and this was promoted as a “youth concert.”
Actually, “promoted” is the wrong term. Part of the problem was that the city did such a terrible job promoting the concert that started at 4 p.m. and ran until around 9 p.m. I saw one commercial for it on cable a few days prior to the event, and nothing — no posters, no billboards — around town. I think there were a couple mentions in the Omaha World-Herald, but no one (certainly not “youth”) reads that anymore.
Friday night It was my first live rock-show experience at The Sydney. I’d been warned that despite lowering the stage to near floor level, the room still sounded like a noisy ball of shit. Ah, but the crowd was mostly tough guys that embrace such dissonance. It was the first time in a long time that someone tossed a “Nice earplugs” barb at me. I just smiled and adjusted my foam nubs — I knew I’d get the last laugh.
I like the laidback feel of The Sydney. The room has a good, friendly drinking vibe it previously lacked. The folks running the place are super-nice and everyone seems to be in a good mood — what a concept! (Of course, everyone seems to be in a good mood at O’Leaver’s every night, too, but that’s because they’re lost in a NyQuil-like daze after mainlining Rumple Minze since four in the afternoon).
If you saw a show at Mick’s, you were probably sitting. If not, you were trapped in the crawlspace by the front door, likely in someone’s way but still able to see the band on the crazy-high stage. At The Sydney, tables play a secondary role. There’s plenty of space near the pseudo-stage, which is so close to the ground it encourages people to get off their asses and stand right next to the band like any respectable punk and soak in the full force of the amps.
Before writing this, I figured it would make sense to see the club I had been hearing so much about for the past couple of years. So, last Sunday night I drove to Lincoln to see Box Awesome for the first and probably the last time — at least at its current location.
For a guy who rarely drives to Lincoln (I’m not a huge Husker fan), finding the club wasn’t easy — 815 O St. appears to be an off-ramp when searching on Google maps. It took some mindless wandering to discover how to get to the Haymarket and Box Awesome.
Once through the door, you’re met with a choice — the main club or downstairs. The main club is flat-out swank — oak floors, cool artwork, vivid colors, a funky modern big-city vibe. The stage is oddly located in the center of the long, narrow room. There are no sight lines to the stage from the tables along the front of the building where the stage used to be when Box Awesome was The Chatterbox.
Almost didn’t have a column this week. These are, indeed, the doldrums, my friends — the time just before summer when nothing “musically” is going on, no CDs are arriving at my door (or in my email box). Everything is on hold, waiting for something to happen.
In these times of uncertainty, when I’m clawing for an idea for this column, I do what I normally do. I check out S.L.A.M. Omaha to see what the chatter’s all about.
People have asked how I manage to go to shows during the week and maintain a “regular job” that commands I be in the office by 8 a.m. The Slowdown’s policy of starting shows at 9 p.m. sharp helps immensely, because it means I’ll probably be home by midnight.
And that schedule was kept at the Mogwai concert last Monday. Opening band, ironically named Women (no skirts in sight), hit the stage at the stroke of nine. I’ve heard their highly lauded debut album, and wasn’t feeling it. Their live performance, however, made me shuffle through my iTunes library afterward, looking for the tracks.
The Calgary four were the most un-rockstar looking dudes I’ve seen — they looked just like you and me, like nobodies — no style visually at all, just a bunch of guys you’d find shopping at the Slowdown Mall. But musically, they were the reincarnation of the classic ’80s-era 4AD band, with a minimalist, rhythmic style that was much more interesting than what I heard on their Jagjaguwar release.
It was some time last week that I got a call from a pal who makes money on the side as a record dealer, asking if I knew anything about a 7-inch by a band called Polecat.
I recognized the name immediately. Polecat was a band from Lincoln in the early ’90s that consisted of Ted Stevens, Boz Hicks and Oliver Blaha. Stevens, as regular readers of this column know, went on to form chamber-pop group Lullaby for the Working Class, and today plays guitar in Cursive. Hicks joined Her Flyaway Manner, and today is in Domestica, a trio featuring ex-Mercy Rule rockers Jon Taylor and Heidi Ore.
But was there more to the story of that red-vinyl single, titled “2500 ft of our love,” and the role it played in the history of the Omaha music scene?
My broker pal was headed to a record show Sunday with the Polecat single, unless, of course, it made more sense to sell it on eBay, where it could ignite a bidding war. There are stories of how copies of Conor Oberst’s cassette-only early recording, titled Water, have fetched hundreds of dollars on eBay. Could the Polecat single be as valuable? It seemed doubtful, but I said I’d ask around.
Here’s another one of those what-have-you-been-listening-to-lately columns to stave off readers dying for music suggestions as we head toward summer. I realized after rereading these that they’re written in a sort-of shorthand — you have to know something about these bands or this style of music or else these caplettes will read like someone with Tourette’s barking out an iPod playlist. You’ll figure it out.
Record Store Day afterglow, park life and benefits
by Tim McMahan
Records Store Day has come and gone and now we wait another year for the next one.
Discussion in the Twitter/Facebook-sphere afterward: What did you score? Among my haul from the Old Market Homer’s — only one RSD exclusive: The Flaming Lips with Stardeath and White Dwarfs / Black Lips split 7-inch on luscious foam-green vinyl, bought on the recommendation of a local record label honcho. As I type this, I’m listening to Wayne Coyne’s spacey whisper-love cover of Madonna’s “Borderline.” The rest of my Saturday booty was CDs: Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone, Pete Molinari’s A Virtual Landslide, Thin Lizzy’s Still Dangerous: Live at the Tower Theater, Philadelphia 1977 and Art Brut’s 2007 release It’s a Bit Complicated. Most of these were recommended by Homer’s staff — the number one reason I shop at record stores is staff recommendations.
Alas, the two things I specifically came to pick up weren’t available. The Cursive/Ladyfinger 4-song 10-inch split picture disc sold out immediately (The aforementioned label honcho said it’ll be available on the Saddle Creek website for purchase, eventually), while I was told the Neil Young Sugar Mountain Live at Canterbury House 1968 two-LP set was never in stock. Disappointed? Yes.
A day before the sold-out Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley concert at Slowdown last week, I got an email from an editor at Spin.com, asking if I could review the show for their site. I guess the fact that Oberst was kicking off a national tour in Omaha — and playing new material from his upcoming album, Outer South — was newsworthy. So out of that came a review, which is still online and linked from the Spin.com homepage.
The “hook” to the write-up: That Oberst and his pals are this generation’s Eagles. Each member of his band took the helm for at least one song during the concert, while Conor played the role of enthusiastic sideman. Guitarist Taylor Hollingsworth was Joe Walsh on a short Beatle-esque pop song, bassist Macey Taylor was Timothy B. Schmit singing a twangy number that could have been off Oberst’s last album, while drummer Jason Boesel did the Don Henley thing behind the kit as Oberst sang along, off microphone.
About a 100 years ago, I was asked to be part of a panel on the music industry, representing (I guess) the perspective of a music journalist. The panel was part of a conference for up-and-coming musicians, designed to give them “tips” to succeed in an industry where success often results from a fluke or a curious aligning of stars rather than talent or hard work.
The discussion — consisting mostly of the moderator barking out her personal viewpoints rather than referring to a panel that included some actual music business professionals — eventually got around to the subject of self-promotion. Specifically, artist promo packages. Specifically promo CDs and the supporting documentation. Specifically, one-sheets.
It’s only been a week since the South By Southwest Festival ended and it already seems like it never happened. We’ve all gone back to our little corners of the world, wrote our post-coital summations in blogs and columns and articles and podcasts, told our stories at our respective bars and hang-outs and begun planning for next year with Austin in the rear-view mirror.
From a music journalist’s standpoint, not only is SXSW a blast, but also a real opportunity to see and hear new music in a condensed, compressed setting. But what about the bands and labels who actually participated in the festival? Was it worth their time to drive or fly cross country, figure out (or actually pay for) lodging and then perform in the center of the cyclone to 15 or 50 or 500 or 5,000 strangers?
Case in point: After seeing our very own Box Elders play at punk wonderland Red 7 on the last day of the festival, I tracked down Jeremiah McIntyre to congratulate him. The first words out of his mouth after saying “thank you” were “Buy us some beers, man, we are so broke right now.”
I have seen the future of rock and roll, and it’s _______.
That’s why someone like me goes to the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin. Right? To discover tomorrow’s Next Big Thing, the band we’ll all be talking about the following year, the one that will blow the lid off the Mercury Lounge next September when Bowie and Lou “just show up” with guitars and microphone and jam alongside them, the band that played here in Omaha last year to 50 people, and we now know that band will never be back. The next Arcade Fire. The next Interpol. The next Animal Collective. The next Bright Eyes.
I’ve been watching SXSW from the sidelines for years, never dreaming of actually attending. The lead-up to mid-March has always been the same: “You goin’? You’re not? Dude, you’re really missing out, especially you. It’s a four-day f***ing party, man, and you never know what’s going to happen or who’s going to show up. Dude, seriously, you need to go next year.” And so on.
Late last week I wrote an entry on my blog (lazy-i.com) about bands playing free shows. The touchstone was the benefit concert for the Young Professionals Council held at Slowdown. I assumed it was a benefit, since none of the bands that performed were paid even though just about everyone else involved — the Slowdown and its employees, the door guy, the sound guy, the vendors that sold the liquor to Slowdown, OPPD who’s supplying the power, heck everyone who played a role in the program — got paid. Just not the bands.
And whose fault was that? Why, it was the bands’ fault, of course. They accepted the gig believing that they’d make money on merch sales and would gain exposure. My take: It’s a free country. If you’re in a band and you want to play gigs for free when everyone else is getting a paycheck, well then by god you should. Certainly accepting those kinds of gigs helps define you and your band — just maybe not the way you want to be defined.
Who doesn’t want to help out a charity that they believe in? I’ve even kicked around the idea of organizing a charity concert for the Nebraska Humane Society, which I’m told is struggling these days. And what band doesn’t want to open a show for one of their favorite touring bands coming through town? They may not get a red cent, but it’s an honor and it’s fun. And yeah, there are those bands that “just want to play” and have no interest in making money. We all have our hobbies.
I’ve been watching local bands rise and fall for more than 20 years. The trajectory never fails to inspire or disappoint, depending on the circumstances.
Seems like every week another band pulls its rocket ship onto the launching pad in the form of a CD release party. All of their friends show up along with the curious others who were coaxed to the event by the endless hype. The celebration feels like the conclusion of every rock ‘n’ roll movie — the big finale where a yearning crowd leans forward, desperately stretching over the edge of the stage to touch the rock god before he leaves his little town for better things, bigger things, to a world seen through funky, dark sunglasses aboard tour busses filled with sexy groupies and drugs, a world of jaded inconvenience and ever-growing expectations.
But real life almost never ends that way. After the CD release show, while the hourly guys sweep the floor and pick up empty beer bottles, the rock god returns to his life as a mere mortal. He’ll never see a crowd like he just saw until a few years later when he calls it quits and all his friends show up one last time for the farewell engagement. He’ll tell them he has no regrets for not taking the time to schedule a tour, no regrets for merely playing weekly gigs at the local bar or coffee shop or steak house. No regrets for giving up on his dreams.
I had to clean out my office over the weekend, or at least begin to clean it out. Endless clutter is one of the by-products of being a music critic.
As I’ve said before: I got involved in writing about music for one reason and one reason alone: To get free CDs. When I started writing reviews over 20 years ago, compact discs were still sort of a novelty. Working my way through college at K-mart, I remember flipping through bins of albums and seeing the racks of cassette tapes. CDs had just begun to arrive, displayed in large cardboard boxes, which later were replaced by impenetrable plastic containers. The odd, oblong contraptions were designed to prevent thieves from sticking discs down their pants, but they also kept buyers from getting their CDs opened. I remember struggling with a pair of industrial-strength scissors, desperately trying to cut through the thick plastic CD holders, often cutting my hand in the process. I once had the brilliant idea of melting the container with a lighter, only to have it catch fire along with my copy of Billy Idol’s Whiplash Smile.
Adam Hawkins has lived through some bad shit. It was self-inflicted shit, it was some dumb shit, but it was shit nonetheless and he lived through it. And maybe too much has been made of it, at least to me.
When I first heard about the singer/songwriter/band leader, it was only in the terms of this: “Man, this guy’s been through it,” they said. “He’s seen it, he’s lived it and now he sings about it in his music.”
Lived through what? I had this picture of a junkie, bunked out under an Interstate off-ramp in a cardboard box, or on his knees shaking a stained Dixie cup begging for dope money.
I was feeling just fine about everything until Barack decided to join in with his “Let us set aside childish things” rant during the inauguration. What exactly was he saying? Who was he talking to?
After awhile, it does begin to pile up. The whole age thing never occurs to me unless someone else mentions it — directly or indirectly.
Last week a friend who works at The City Weekly pointed out that Mike Fratt “went after me” in his column. Really? By name? No, he never used your name, my friend said. He merely referenced “Omaha’s own aging indie-hipster blogger street weekly writer … ” I was flattered that Mike would think anyone would even know who he was talking about (and without that knowledge, a reader would think Fratt was being self-deprecating instead of just snarky — he is, after all, considerably older than me.)
A week earlier, at a local watering hole listening to a band, one of the city’s better musicians said, not off-handedly, “Why would a 20-year-old want to know what a 40-year-old guy thinks about new music?” He was making a point about himself, of course; about how he thinks no one cares what his favorite music was from 2008 (but we do). I’m sure the fact that I’m in my 40s and still write about indie music never crossed his mind. Did it?
