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Home - Lazy I
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Under Moon & Stars - |
By Tim McMahan
The best thing about outdoor concerts: Even if you can’t stand a single note of the music, all you have to do is look up and there’s something worth seeing.
Of course that wasn’t necessary this past weekend at two of the summer’s most anticipated indie concerts, both held under the black ocean of night, lit only by streetlight, stage light, star light and eventually, moonlight. |
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Sonic Youth - |
Tapping the mind of a 17-year-old
by Tim McMahan
Out of the blue last week I received an email from Molly Misek. Ms. Misek had read my column/review of Concert for Equality and wanted to interview me for an article for The Network, the highly esteemed Marian High School newspaper. I said sure, but to be fair, there’d have to be an information exchange — she could interview me, if I could interview her. |
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Odds and Sods - |
By Tim McMahan
As we step back for a moment from the ongoing music festival season, let’s look in the mailbag.
Filmmaker Lindsay Trapnell emailed me recently about a film she’s trying to finance via Kickstarter.com, the fundraising website where project owners search for “backers” to reach a pledge goal. Pledges aren’t charged to backers unless that goal is reached. Digital Leather recently used Kickstarter to raise more than $1,700 to purchase recording equipment. |
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Love and Records - |
Dynamic Young Love duo
By Tim McMahan
Oliver Morgan of local indie band Landing on the Moon described Gary Levitt and Erica Quitzow this way (I’m paraphrasing because it was after a long night at O’Leaver’s): They each do their thing, completely, separately, and it’s obvious when you listen to their bands, but there’s no mistaking they’re together in everything — their music, their business, their lives. |
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Live Review: Concert for Equality - |
Breaking down another language barrier
by Tim McMahan
Concert for Equality was supposed to be a protest concert, but it will likely be remembered as a Saddle Creek Records music festival with an underlying, almost subliminal message about the evils of local laws designed to discriminate against immigrants.
A good message, no doubt, but how could it compete with the lineup? When was the last time the three crown jewels of Saddle Creek Records played in Omaha in the same week? A decade ago? Ever? |
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Live Review: MAHA Music Festival - |
Better the second time around
by Tim McMahan
Year two of the MAHA Music Festival was already a success by the time the first band took the main stage, even though things had gotten off to a rocky start.
A giant bitch of a storm named Bonnie took its toll on the airlines. Main stage artist Ben Kweller tweeted at 2 a.m. Saturday that his flight had been cancelled, drawing a loud, low groan from everyone involved with the festival. Cell phones lit up like hand grenades, and Kweller found himself driving by car from one airport to another, desperately trying to find a connection to Omaha. He made it, as did fellow main-stager Superchunk, which also got caught in the same shit storm of flight cancellations.
As a result, the entire MAHA program was pushed back more than an hour. City officials gave an OK to let the party run until midnight. Kweller and Old 97’s swapped stage times and everybody won.
When I arrived around 2:30 p.m., It’s True was on stage, playing to a smallish crowd that was downright monstrous compared to last year’s tiny gathering for Appleseed Cast’s afternoon set. |
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Goodbye, OEAAs - |
It’s better than beating a dead horse
by Tim McMahan
I just finished writing a 1,000-word critical review of this last weekend’s Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards showcase in Benson, and threw it out.
It dawned on me after adding the -30- (a traditional, outdated way of ending news stories) that I should take the same approach that I take for bands that I don’t care for — just don’t write about it. There’s no point in tearing down the OEAAs. The bands that participate aren’t indie bands, aren’t bands that I cover in my column and website, and aren’t the kind of bands Nebraska has become nationally known for.
In truth, the OEAAs don’t target any specific “type” of band. The organization’s showcases are open invitations to anyone willing to play for free, with apparently no criteria that eliminate anyone from consideration. As a result, the showcase has become a two-day open mic night, where truly talented performers like Ember Schrag, The Ground Tyrants and a couple others, get lost in the overwhelming fog of mediocrity. |
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Attack from Star City! - |
by Tim McMahan
Another Lincoln Invasion has come and gone. And so the question begs to be asked: Which city — Omaha or Lincoln — has the better band roster?
But before we get to that, Lincoln Invasion organizer Jeremy Buckley chimed in to say that last Friday night’s “festival,” featuring more than 20 Lincoln bands at six Benson venues, was a moderate success. “The attendance numbers will be impossible to calculate completely accurately, but if we assume that every patron paid $8 to attend ($5 got you into one venue) then we had about 326 paid,” he said. “So that would be the low end for overall attendance. For last year I’d have to guess but I’d bet we had about 300 paid over the course of two days. So yeah, better all around. Here’s to hoping next year we have even better luck, though this year was more than we could’ve expected.” |
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The Brutal Truth - |
by Tim McMahan
Good thing I submitted that review of the “new” It’s True album last week instead of holding it. The night that the issue hit the racks — only moments after the ink dried — It’s True unceremoniously announced from stage that the band was breaking up.
An hour earlier, a member of the band walked up to me at the bar while I awaited my Rolling Rock and said, “Thanks for the review. Don’t tell anyone this, but we’re breaking up.” I thought he was joking, and why wouldn’t I? The debut album had only been out for two months, and the band had just returned from a West Coast tour that included shows with The Good Life. They were a “band on the verge.” Or so it seemed. |
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A Modest Proposal - |
by Tim McMahan
Here was the problem: Everyone knows somebody in It’s True, and very likely is friends with that person.
Maybe it’s affable keyboard player Kyle Houfek, the veteran of a thousand bands (or at least a few). Or frontman Adam Hawkins, who seemingly greets everyone with a warm miss-me? hug. Then there’s bass player Kyle Harvey, the George Washington of the Benson music scene whose bartending gig at Barley Street Tavern — including “soup and song” night every Monday — has kept the place alive. Not to mention good-guys guitarist Andrew Bailie and drummer Matt Arbeiter.
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Gary Coleman's Posse - |
Omaha’s outlaw street artist strikes again
by Tim McMahan
A terrific documentary opened last weekend at Film Streams called Exit Through the Gift Shop. It explores the guerilla street artists of the past decade — people like Shepard Fairey, who now is famous for the iconic Obama campaign poster, and the film’s director, the elusive, mysterious artist known as Banksy, whose satirical pieces of stenciled street art on topics such as politics, culture and ethics have adorned walls throughout London and beyond. |
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Goats and Astronauts - |
by Tim McMahan
First a bit of sobering news in these drunken days: Worker’s Takeout, the sandwich shop next to O’Leaver’s owned and operated by Chris Machmuller of Ladyfinger, shut its doors for good last week. On the door, written in Sharpie, was a “Closed” sign that said, “Thanks for the memories.” I haven’t had a chance to ask Machmuller what happened; though I’ve been told by those close to the business that the closure isn’t the end of Worker’s Takeout, only a temporary condition while the search begins for a new location. |
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Bold Statement - |
by Tim McMahan
Nobody likes the idea of competition when it comes to art and music. And yet … whenever “Omaha invades Lincoln” or “Lincoln invades Omaha,” it begs the question as to which scene has the strongest roster of bands — maybe only to me and a few other a-holes, but the question does come up.
And it’s becoming harder and harder to defend Omaha, especially when you look over the lineup playing the second annual Lincoln Invasion festival July 9 in Benson: The Amalgamators, Amy Schmidt, Diamond Kazzoo, Dirty Talker, Ember Schrag, Husbands, Kris Lager Band, Machete Archive, Manny Coon, Masses, Mercy Rule, No One Conquered, Wyoming; Once A Pawn, Orion Walsh, Pharmacy Spirits, The Power, The Renfields, Ron Wax, Shaun Sparks and the Wounded Animals, Shipbuilding Co., Smith’s Cloud, South Of Lincoln, Tie These Hands, and The Vingins.
Very solid. The only bands missing (that come to mind) are High Art (The latest project by Darren Keen of the Show Is the Rainbow), For Against, UUVVWWZ, Son of 76 and The Watchmen and Ideal Cleaners. Event organizer Jeremy Buckley said High Art is playing the night before at The Waiting Room; and the rest simply were unavailable. “I think we were able to balance a lineup of established acts with a good number of newer bands that have made waves in Lincoln, but haven’t had much exposure in Omaha yet,” Buckley said. |
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About Last Thursday - |
by Tim McMahan
Here’s my report from the Thunder Power album release show last Thursday at The Waiting Room:
Of the three bands, the opener, Ft. Worth’s The Burning Hotels, was the most professional, the tightest, the hardest rocking and, song-wise, the least interesting. Their publicity compared them to The Stills, French Kicks, The Strokes, The Killers and Hot Hot Heat, among others. Someone in the crowd compared them to The Walkmen.
That list hits pretty close to the mark, reflecting the shiny-penny quality of the just-past-indie-headed-toward-Chrysler-commercial rock the young four-piece captured on a stage lit only by four naked fluorescent shop lights standing on end, casting enough white-blue glare to make their silhouettes discernible, but not enough to really see who they were. It was a convenient metaphor for their formulaic music; all of it played at the same quick-step pace and sung with the same lilting champagne vocals by either of the two frontmen/guitarists. Their songs had melodies — you could hear them outlined in the hyper-aggressive powerchords — but you couldn’t quite make out the details, and certainly weren’t going to remember them after the show. It was perfect background music for lifestyle TV commercials selling products to gullible youth that still think life’s “winners” are the ones with the perfect abs who drink low-carb beers. |
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Late Entry - |
Ben Kweller, It’s True round out MAHA line-up
by Tim McMahan
My apologies for the brevity of this week’s installment. The Reader moved up its deadlines three days due to a printer scheduling issue that has something to do with the production of 11 issues of Neighborhood News — the shopper that arrives in your mailbox periodically. The Reader produces Neighborhood News along with El Perico and the Spanish Language phonebook and a handful of other secret projects that only publisher John Heaston and in-house staff know about. You didn’t know this? That’s because like every other newspaper, The Reader does a lousy job of reporting on itself. But it’s opportunities like Neighborhood News and the Spanish language publications that keep this weekly afloat during tough economic times and an era when Omaha’s newsstands are crowded with four competing “alternative weeklies” — The Reader, City Weekly, Shout! Weekly and Go! (The Omaha World-Herald’s stab at a weekly, but it doesn’t count because it lacks horoscopes, “News of the Weird” and ads for 1-900 porn services). |
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The Return of Criteria - |
by Tim McMahan
Criteria frontman Stephen Pedersen has a problem most of us would die for: He’s completely content.
His search for contentment began in 2005, when he quit a posh lawyer job at prestigious Omaha law firm Kutak Rock to hit the road with his band Criteria under the proud banner of Saddle Creek Records. But, as the story goes, things didn’t quite work out as planned. And Pedersen returned from the road, put his guitar away, pulled the suit out of the closet and returned to his leather chair and desk and daily lawyer grind — but with full knowledge that at least he tried to make it as a rock star. How many of us can say we took an honest stab at following our dreams? |
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Second Quarter Report - |
Twenty, from best to the rest
by Tim McMahan
You can’t go wrong with any of these, but some are better than others. Hence, they appear below in order from best to the rest.
Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, I Learned the Hard Way (Daptone) — Everything you’ve heard is true — as pure a throwback as you’re ever going to find — a modern-day Etta, Aretha, Gladys and Marva all rolled into one, backed by a band that James Brown would be proud to shimmy to.
Local Natives, Gorilla Manor (Frenchkiss) — What you expected from MGMT’s follow-up to Oracular instead of that un-listenable shit-storm that is Congratulations. Infectious, deep-rhythm indie pop.
Frightened Rabbit, The Winter of Mixed Drinks (Fat Cat) — They continue to hone their indie-rock anthems, cutting the melodies with just enough brogue to remind you they’re Scots who grew up listening to Arab Strap. This is the one that breaks them big. |
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Battle of the Blahs - |
by Tim McMahan
The fine folks at the MAHA Music Festival announced two summer band showcases at Slowdown (May 24) and The Waiting Room (June 24). Through these free events bands will be selected to play the festival’s Kum & Go local stage at the July 24 concert at Lewis & Clark Landing. The showcases are battle of the bands competitions where you — the concertgoer — choose the winner. A third band will be chosen (again, via public vote) from those performing at an OEAA summer showcase July 16-17. The fourth local band, Satchel Grande, was already selected by the MAHA Committee.
If there’s an obvious flaw in MAHA it’s this democratic approach toward selecting the local bands. Waitaminit, how could something democratic be bad? It starts with the nomination process. Only bands willing to play for free at the three showcases can be considered in the “election.” That immediately eliminates some of the area’s best bands. |
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The Reluctant Rockstar - |
by Tim McMahan
It was pure, unbridled serendipity that I ever discovered Jeremy Messersmith’s music. As you can imagine, I get quite a few CDs in the mail — most of them by anonymous-sounding bands with bad names and poor taste in art. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: Album artwork (even on CDs) is very important. If your art is bad, bland or just poorly conceived and printed, it’s going to get lost in the shuffle/pile/mountain of discs that stack up (or under) an editor’s desk. And if your band name is offensively stupid, it’s going into the trash.
There was nothing particularly interesting about Jeremy Messersmith’s name or the packaging and artwork for The Silver City, his second album that came out on tiny label Princess Records a couple years ago. There was no reason that — instead of throwing the disc on “the stack” — that I took it with me and listened to it in my car on the way to wherever. But I did, and am better for it. |
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Identity Crisis - |
by Tim McMahan
I look back at my list of favorite albums from last year and it stands out as a glaring omission: Digital Leather’s Warm Brother.
It’s not entirely my fault. I don’t think I actually bought a copy until late in the year, and then never gave it the time it deserved. I now listen to the CD more than any on that best-of list. Its strength comes from its songs — an obvious statement I know, but there are no less than six that are absolute killer singles (but which, of course, will never actually be singles): “Your Hand, My Glove,” “Kisses,” “Photo Lie,” “Hurts So Bad,” “Gold Hearts” and centerpiece “Modern Castles,” the latter a breathy, disturbing synth-pop gem, dense and throbbing and gorgeous. |
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