November 19th, 2009
Happy, Uhh, World Toilet Day!
Yes indeed, today is World Toilet Day, which was established to raise awareness to the fact that 40% of the world’s population does not have access to toilets (and proper sanitation in general). To mark the event — and we shit you not — groups of people all over the country will be organizing and engaging in something called “The Big Squat,” whereby they all get in squat position in public for about a minute or so to show solidarity with people around the world who have to pop a squat sans toilet to expel their bodily waste. We’re not exactly sure if or where or when this will be happening here in Philly today, but you’re more than welcome to squat on your own wherever you find yourself in the city today to celebrate the occasion. Just be prepared to explain yourself.
Meanwhile, here’s a few ditties to mark World Toilet Day:
November 19th, 2009
Skinny Puppy In-Store This Afternoon
It’s true: I’m a Skinny Puppy fan. Perhaps I don’t listen to them these days as much as I did, say, 20 years ago, but as far as industrial music goes, for me it pretty much begins and ends with the veteran Canadian band. In fact, they were the very first band I interviewed for a published article (it was for my college newspaper back in the early ’90s, but whatever). I’ve since chatted with them on a few more occasions since becoming a “professional music journalist,” and while their music has been fairly creepy, scary, and unsettling over the years, its members — frontman Nivek Ogre, multi-instrumentalist cEvin Key, and the late keyboardist Dwayne Goettel (who died of a drug overdose in 1995) — are about the nicest, most intelligent, most personable musicians you’d ever want to encounter. Actually, that’s usually the case with the musicians who make extreme music. In my experience, it’s the people who make the gentlest music who tend to be the biggest assholes. It’s weird like that.
Anyway, if you’re interested, you’ll have a chance to meet the Skinny Puppy guys today — they’re doing a meet-and-greet/signing over at Digital Ferret record store (732 S. 4th St.) from 2:30 pm until 3 p.m., after which they’ll head over to soundcheck for their gig tonight at the Troc, which we highly recommend checking out as their shows are usually quite the multimedia sensory overload. To this day, one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen was Skinny Puppy at the Troc back in ‘92; 17 years later, they’ll hopefully bring the freaky fury back to the room.
November 19th, 2009
Tonight In Shows
Langhorne Slim
9pm, $12. Johnny Brenda’s.
Folksy, fedora-wearing Langhorne Slim puts a slight twist on the troubadour tradition, mostly sticking to gentle folk picking but occasionally breaking into a reedy, punk-infused shout. Whether that’s enough to set him apart from hoards of Dylan-Guthrie-Seeger wannabes is open to argument. His latest album, Be Set Free, set off a debate in Paste Magazine with one reviewer calling it a modern day Tea for the Tillerman and another “mediocre, and sometimes painfully inept.” This latter gibe, though, is how some people feel about Paste itself, so why not give Slim the benefit of the doubt? (Jennifer Kelly)
Also, Baroness, Earthless, U.S. Christmas, and Black Tusk bring the heavy to First Unitarian Church [8pm/$12]; Skinny Puppy brings its industrial fury and killer multimedia show to the Troc [7:30pm/$24-$26]; and Ryan Cabrera drops by Tin Angel [8:30pm/$15].
November 18th, 2009
Velvet Underground Reunion?
The Velvet Underground is reuniting! Well — sort of. Velvet alums Lou Reed, drummer Maureen “Moe” Tucker, and bassist Doug Yule are getting together at the New York Public Library on December 8th at 7 p.m. to “talk about the band’s history and legacy” with Rolling Stone’s David Fricke. No musical performance is planned. It’s already sold out, but NYPL says that there still may be some tickets available at the door. Could be worth a drive up to Manhattan.
Perhaps this is a precursor to some sort of reunion performances or tour? They’d certainly have to get John Cale involved, and they’d have to find a replacement for guitarist Sterling Morrison, who died in 1995. Maybe Dean Wareham would do it? Stay tuned…
November 18th, 2009
Christmas With The Roots
Roots drummer ?uestlove is already helping usher in Thanksgiving next week along with a gaggle of strippers, as we already reported earlier this month. Now it’s been announced that the entire Roots crew (sans strippers, we’re pretty sure) will join in on welcoming the Christmas season as they participate in NBC’s 12th annual Christmas From Rockefeller Center telecast on December 2nd at 8 p.m. They’ll be joined by Alicia Keys, Barry Manilow, Shakira, Michael Buble, Aretha Franklin, and others to help light the iconic Christmas tree and play “current hits” and “holiday classics,” according to the press release. Actually, we’re hoping for a big group singalong in which Barry Manilow and Black Thought wrap their arms around one another as they romp through “Jingle Bells.” Although after seeing the Roots play with members of New Kids on the Block at this year’s Roots Picnic, and with Christoper Cross on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, I guess a jam with Barry Manilow wouldn’t be all that surreal after all. Oh well…
November 18th, 2009
Two Shows At The Marvelous!
Our pals at the Marvelous! Music in West Philly so infrequently put on shows in the store that their back-to-back showcases tonight and tomorrow night are unheard of and tres exciting! Here’s what’s on tap for tonight:
And for Thursday night (this one also starts at 8:30 p.m.):
Now’s as good a time as any to remind you of some of in-store show-going etiquette, as provided to us by the Marvelous!:
- Bring some cash and buy some records.
- Even attempting to urinate on cars will result in getting slapped around a bit. A good friend of mine did it – on the cars parked right there outside the store. Had to beat him up a little bit.
- You’re going to be standing around aisles in a store with shelves, sandwiched in between there. Don’t break anything. The bands can smash records if they want to, but you can’t.
- In addition to bringing cash to buy records from us, you should bring cash to buy records from the bands directly and give them a few bucks for gas and stuff since we can’t pay them like a normal venue. They’re not getting guarantees from us. We always have touring bands – if there’s something going on here, you can bet that someone’s driving a decent distance and they should definitely get a little help with that.
- You should keep in mind that we’ll be really, really mad if it looks like a mess.
- Have fun! It’s real small, everyone’s on the floor real close to the band. It’s like a very, very nice basement – everything’s clean and you can sit on the ground. So it’s the same kind of vibe as a house show, and there’s more to do for a music lover. Once you’re here it’s not like, “Oh, I guess I’ll go to the bar…” There’s plenty of stuff to look at — records and the instruments and stuff.
- Bottom line: Don’t steal anything, don’t break anything, don’t piss on anything – I’d like to think that those are universal values, but you never know…
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.
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