November 18th, 2009

INTERVIEW: Jesus Lizard Guitarist Duane Denison

Mighty, legendary noise-punks the Jesus Lizard — which, after breaking up in 1999, has temporarily reunited this year for a string of shows — come to the Starlight Ballroom tonight. We recently caught up with immensely friendly and gracious guitarist Duane Denison for a lengthy chat:

So I guess you’ve been doing a ton of interviews this year, huh?
Oh, you know, a few here and there!

I imagine it’s kind of crazy at the moment.
To be honest, it was kind of nice to step away for a while. I noticed this: When I was at my busiest, even with the Jesus Lizard and also with Tomahawk, it almost becomes a routine where you record, release, tour, do interviews, and after a while you take it for granted. And so around 2005, 2006, 2007 I was doing other things. I was staying home and got a family started and this and that, and I didn’t do any [interviews] for a while, and so now I’m doing interviews again, I feel like I have more to say. I’ve had a few years to sit back and think about things, and you kind of appreciate it more. It’s like, wow, someone’s actually interested in my opinions or someone actually wants to talk to me! I think more musicians should do it – step off for a while a realize just how lucky you are.

So you had moments recently where you sat back and reflected about your career and all the things you’ve done. Is it weird to look back?
Maybe so. I don’t know if I consciously did, or a lot of it was more practical based. Touch & Go reissued all the albums and so we all had to go back and listen to stuff to make sure it was okay, and then in the process of rehearsing I had to go back and relearn songs and listen to it, and it’s surprising what goes through your head. I hadn’t listened to that stuff in well over ten years. It was just funny to me how jarring some of it still sounds, and how abrasive it sounds, and how some of the vocal and lyrical things made me laugh out loud. Like the song “If You Had Lips” — “Hey shitmouth, I love you!” [laughs] We need more of that!

Absolutely!
And I started listening to other stuff from around that time, it made me wanna hear other things — Butthole Surfers and Husker Du and Black Flag and I thought, “Goddamn that was good music, we could use more of that right now.”

When you were first starting out playing guitar, did you have a vision of the kind of guitarist you wanted to be?
I did, and it was so far removed from where I ended up, it was funny. But that was so long ago. That was in the ’70s when I was a teenager and progressive rock was still kind of around, glam rock was still around, and punk rock had just started. So I was sort of, like any kid, impressionable and very changeable. One week it was this and the next week it was that. To me, it takes a long time to find your voice. If you want to be original, it takes …I was in a band called Cargo Cult that did an album on Touch & Go back in about 1987, and you can almost song by song hear, like, okay, this guitar part sounds like the Birthday Party and this one sounds like Billy Zoom from X. Basically whoever I was listening to. Even the Jesus Lizard, the first couple things we did, to me it’s fairly derivative and you can tell if you go song by song.

You think so?
Head, are you kidding? You can go song by song and go, “Well there’s a Big Black-style beat and a Big Black riff, and here’s a Public Image kinda sounding thing…” And honestly I don’t think it was until Goat, and from there out we sounded like the Jesus Lizard. That’s where to me, let’s put it this way, it didn’t sound like anyone else.

November 3rd, 2009

Strike Songs

Like I’ve often said, SEPTA’s service is usually so crappy that it seems like they’re on strike even when they’re not. But now that Philly’s transit system is truly crippled — and for who knows how long — we hope you’re able to get where you need to go.

November 2nd, 2009

PHOTOS: Bad Religion At The Spectrum

[Click twice on any photo below for full view.]

Sat., October 31. Spectrum. All photos by Michael Alan Goldberg.

November 2nd, 2009

PHOTOS: The Spectrum Corridor

On Saturday night, I was at the Spectrum to photograph Pearl Jam playing the final-ever concert at the venue for Spin magazine (PW’s Jeffrey Barg wrote the review). While waiting backstage for Pearl Jam to come on, I snapped a few shots of the memorabilia-laden corridor that musicians (and athletes) have traveled down over the years to get to the stage (or the court, or the ice):

[Click twice on any photo below for full view.]

[All photos by Michael Alan Goldberg.]

October 30th, 2009

Halloween Tunes!

Happy (almost) Halloween! I think I might go as “zombie Cliff Lee” this year ’cause dude looked like a zombie when he stuck out his arm to catch that pop-up the other night (and it’ll be Game 3 of the Series and the first one back here in Philly). Anyway, here’s 10 of our favorite Halloween tunes to get you in the mood for tomorrow night:

October 29th, 2009

INTERVIEW: A Fine Frenzy’s Alison Sudol

Tomorrow night, Alison Sudol — who makes terrific piano-centric pop under the moniker A Fine Frenzy — comes to World Cafe Live with her four-piece band in support of their sophomore album Bomb in a Birdcage. As I noted in this week’s PW: “AFF’s 2007 debut, One Cell in the Sea, had a dreamy, whimsical, romantic quality about it—it pulled off the neat trick of being charming without being dainty or cloying—and Sudol’s clarion voice and clever lyrics spoke to love and loss in simple but wise ways. On the group’s new Bomb in a Birdcage, Sudol and company expand their palette, adding a tad more complexity and texture and, gasp, even a bit more aggression to the mix.” We caught up with the always friendly and gracious Sudol over the phone last week as she was kicking off her U.S. tour:

Feeling good about the new album?
Yeah, I am, actually! I don’t have full perspective on it for sure, it still feels pretty new. But I do feel like it’s definitely different than I thought it would be when I was making it, and I like it. And it always surprises me when I put it on. Something happened when we were in the studio and it was more than just musicians coming together and making music — something just kinda happened that wasn’t planned or controlled or anything and I feel that when I listen to it, more now even than when I made it.

Are there one or two moments from the recording sessions that stick out for you now?
Yeah, you know, there definitely are. There were a lot of very special moments. But one was the very beginning. I wrote “What I Wouldn’t Do” far before we went into the whole album process, and funny enough, I never get sick but I was actually sick when I wrote that. I was stuck inside and I wrote it in an hour and a half or two hours, and I was sick again when I recorded it. And I just remember it coming together, and I did that vocal and I was literally kinda propped up on a pillow feeling awful, and then I was like, “Oh, I feel like singing,” and there was something so joyful and free in it.

Do you sit down before you write the songs and think about overall moods or themes for an album, or do you just write and record all the songs and then see what you’ve got and what works together?
I guess it’s a conscious effort to try to make something of a piece. There are songs I’ll write that won’t go on the album because they just don’t fit in, but I think there were subconscious themes that I didn’t realize until afterward. There’s a lot of, like, elemental themes, and there’s a lot of birds and flight and sort of mythical struggles and stuff like that on this album. Just like One Cell had a lot of fairytale elements, and I didn’t really realize that too much until afterward.

October 28th, 2009

PHOTOS: Pearl Jam & Social Distortion At The Spectrum

I shot the Pearl Jam show last night at the Spectrum, the first of the Seattle band’s four dates to close out the venue for good. Social Distortion opened. Here’s a few photos — you can check out my full galleries of both bands over at the PW multimedia page.

PEARL JAM