I think the first third of Widow City is probably peak FF (after Blueberry Boat of course), but I have a hard time listening to the whole thing. On other hand, I'm Going Away probably doesn't reach the heights of Duplexes/Automatic/Guru, but I like it more start to finish. Charmaine Champagne may be may favorite FF song ever.
I've only seen them a few times live, and two of those were their "recital shows" in 2012 or so. But 2010 at the Empty Bottle, they were amazing. Best show I've ever been to. An hour long block of music, no breaks, about a 25 song medley, with key and time signature changes throughout without missing a single note. It was just very, very impressive. Even if you didn't like their music, you'd have to marvel at their precision. And Eleanor, who has always been super nice after shows, commented on my Super Furry Animals t-shirt, which was pretty cool.
This is a nice surprise. I came to X like so many other bands, through my older brother (I was born in 1973, him in 1969). And being from L.A., they always had the few songs I knew that got radio play that I always liked. When the Napster and post-Napster downloading services came along, I reintroduced myself to X, and that was right about the time I moved to Chicago, with a lot of easily accessible music venues very near to wherever I lived at the time, so I got a chance to see them live a bunch, as well as John Doe a few times solo (or playing with Grant Lee Phillips).
Anyway, just spending some quarantine time ruminating on the past. I'm about four songs in now and this is really good. Very classic Billy Zoom era X sounding. Wild Gift/Big Black Sun type stuff.
I think his comments in the interview definitely applied to me. It's a really good song, but if I were seeing them live, it wouldn't be in my hand picked setlist. And I imagine from their perspective, it probably brought out a lot of people who didn't care about the rest of their music. Certainly, at some level, it introduced people to the band that otherwise wouldn't have heard of them, and it definitely made them some money, which is great.
The funny thing is that a lot of their songs could have been considered novelty songs*. This one just hit at a time where it captured the zeitgeist a bit, especially as it came out around the time that the America Pie movies were still very well known among the age range of people who took to the song, so it was probably a bit of serendipity (though that might have also influenced Schlessinger's writing.
*Leave the Biker, Red Dragon Tattoo, Laser Show, Prom Theme, Bright Future in Sales. These are all novelty songs to a certain extent. And they're all great. Hell, I've listened to Red Dragon Tattoo about a million times and it still hits every goddamn dopamine receptor in my brain.
Those have been really great. And he seems genuinely super excited about how it's taken off, which is great, because I've been a huge Charlatans fan since Some Friendly. Even had their poster in my dorm room.
As for Doves, I love this album. They're a band I've never seen live because it seems like every time they came to Chicago, I had tickets for another show on the same night.
I've listened to that FOW a lot, but until the last few days, hadn't listened to it in a long time. And I tend to be an album listener as opposed to a song listener, and most definitely was at the time I was listening that album, since it was mostly on CD. I have some favorites from that album, but I wouldn't call Barbara H one of them. And god damn if I couldn't sing along with almost every word. It's crazy how much FOW lyrics just sort of bury themselves in your head.
Maybe in terms of non-kitsch, just earnest pop. It's a great song, and for those of us there before "Stacey's Mom", probably our launching point. I bought the album on the strength of that song. But in terms of pure pop sugar, Red Dragon Tattoo is pretty goddamn good.
This is terrible news. He's easily one of our best living pop songwriters. A real craftsman. Great interview with him and Chris Collingwood from about 20 years. Seems like a real levelheaded and funny guy. Godspeed.
"You ain't never been no virgin, kid, you were fucked from the start!"
Easily my favorite album of 2010, which was great music year for me (Halcyon Digest, Big Echo, Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night, Lisbon). This was right in the middle of the days when I was listening to a ton of stuff and going to about 50 shows per year, and I think I saw TA at least four times in 2010, once at Pitchfork when it was probably 90 degrees out, and once the night before at Subterranean when it was probably 10 degrees hotter.
Looking back, 2010 was pretty amazing for music. New Pornographers and Spoon both released albums that didn't make my personal top 10, and they're two of my favorite bands of all time. Apples in Stereo, Broken Social Scene, Ted Leo. Free Energy burned out pretty quick but they put out a great album that year as well. Those were the days, I guess.
They might! Unpredictable! That 2010 show, they played like a 25 song medley over the course of an hour, no breaks. Not even for applause or to say thank you and change an instrument or something. Just an hour of continuous music. Key changes, time signature changes, never missed a beat. Then they came and played Duplexes/Automatic/Guru in the same fashion for the encore. Then we left and somehow Eleanor was already at the merch table.
I'm sure we'll be there Sunday. The National is my wife's favorite band. I'd actually prefer to see the Fiery Furnaces and Angels Olsen on Friday. I've been to at least one day of Pitchfork every year they've had it (plus the one year it was the Intonation Fest). Every year is the year I'm finally going to end the streak, and every year, there's someone on the bill that makes me buy a ticker.
Fiery Furnaces put on what is probably the greatest live show I've ever seen (Empty Bottle, 2010), but I'm intrigued and a little scared about how they may transfer to a festival setting.
I don't get it. Did the fans think Frank Ocean was backstage and if they just booed loud enough, he'd come out and perform? I mean, OK, get pissed off and boo and audibly register your disapproval when the act is someone you didn't expect or really want to see, but then, maybe leave before the ninth song? He was the last act. Just go home.
Super Furry Animals had at least one tour where, at the end of the set, Gruff held up a sign that said "Say no to phony encores". Then the band left and didn't come back.
Has anyone ever really seen a legit encore? As in, the band was done, left the stage with no plans to play anything else , and were literally called back to the stage by crowd? I've been to probably in the neighborhood of 500 shows, and I think I've seen it happen only once. The Wrens in 2009 at Schuba's in Chicago. The band left (which is to say they walked outside, since there's no backstage), the lights came on, the music started playing, and about half the crowd just wouldn't leave until the band came back. It was really cool, but it's the only time I've ever seen it.
Ty Segall is gonna have to release like 700 albums in the next decade to make the list. Heck, half of Manipulator could have been here. Also, there's a lot of great stuff in the 2nd 100 that seems to have withered due to age. If Halcyon Digest had been released last year, I can't imagine that Helicopter would be that low.
I have no problem with third party resellers if they act as conduits for legitimate resales and not ticket arbitrage. We've all bought tickets to shows we couldn't go to, and there's no problem with allowing people to recoup their money if something comes up and they can't go. That's not arbitrage. It's not exactly scalpers buying up loads of tickets for the sole purpose of reselling them at big profits.
If bands really want to ensure that tickets wind up in the hands of their fans, then they can either partner with the third party sites, or set up their own, that limits resales to face value (or a slight upcharge so that the original purchaser can recoup fees). No one is going to go buy up a crap ton of tickets to resell if they can't make any money off of it.
Yeah, I've never understood the whole "breaking up" thing. It's not like they're married. They can just say "we're going to stop touring and making music as a group for a while. Someday we may decide to do it again, or not." I prefer the Walkmen "extreme hiatus" approach. They aren't calling it quits necessarily, but they're not going to be a band for a while.
Agree that In It for the Money was my favorite album (always loved Late in the Day). The self titled album was decent, but I thought Life on Other Planets was really good. Road to Rouen has some high points (Sad Girl, Kick in the Teeth, and Low C). Even Diamond Hoo Ha wasn't bad, at least the first half. I saw them a few times when they toured in Support of Life on Other Planets and holy crap I am old! That was like 2003. I was still in my first Chicago apartment when I was the appropriate age to live in Lincoln Park!
There’s no such thing as a bad Cure setlist, unless it somehow consisted of only deep cuts from Wild Mood Swings or something
Counterpoint: I saw the Cure right after Bloodflowers came out. The played pretty much all of Bloodflowers, and not much else. As a casual "play the hits" Cure fan at the time, it was a pretty big letdown. I mean, I'm sure some people liked it, but even my huge Cure fan friends (whose wedding song was a Halo, a Cure b-side) basically said that the setlist sucked. Still a great band though. Wish I still lived where I grew up, about 15 minutes from the Rose Bowl. This lineup was great.
I think racist is usually just a shorthand for bigoted (fka "prejudiced", which you don't hear much anymore). But bigots like to say shit like "Mexican isn't a race!" when people call them racist, as if somehow that deflects from the fact that they're bigots. It's like the gun nuts who think they instantly win an argument if you call an AR-15 an automatic weapon, instead of semi-automatic. Because winning on that technical point definitely means that AR-15s aren't often used to kill boatloads of people in a very short period of time.
No Chicago, either. July and early August are open for either Pitchfork or Lolla, but it would seem weird to be touring Europe, come over here, then back to Europe, then back to the U.S. May need to go in for that Milwaukee show.
I'd throw the Walkmen in there as well if they were still a thing. But four years ago, I'd say those three plus the Walkmen were all in the conversation.
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