Click to enlarge

Much to my chagrin (and embarrassment),  before today I’d never (to my knowledge) heard any of Working For A Nuclear Free City’s music, but a recent press release about the Manchester band caught my eye, primarily because I totally love the cover of their upcoming album, “Jojo Burger Tempest.”

So I gave the single, “Silent Times” a listen, and loved it. You know I hate comparing bands to other bands, so I won’t do that: you’ll have to listen for yourself.  Thankfully, there’s a streaming version available right here in this post, and I’ve posted a link to a free MP3 of the song, so you can go ahead and listen to it way too much in anticipation of the October CD release.

I’ve marked the release date of that upcoming 2 CD set on my brain, but I’m confident I’ll forget that shortly, so hopefully I’ll get my hands on a review copy before then.

If I do, I’ll be back with a review. In the meantime, take a listen here, or download the MP3 from the link below.

Download the free MP3 of Working For A Nuclear Free City’s single, Silent Times

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Working For A Nuclear Free City Free MP3 Download

All this for a lousy $2.99 from amazon.com, and the files are all DRM-free, very high quality rips.

Deal of the year, period. Buy it NOW.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Dear New Orleans Benefit Album – Buy It Now

Julian Cires

I’ve written about West Palm Beach trio Lavola before; my article about them appears here, and I’ve posted links to videos of them playing live (like this one that involved officers of the law) as well.

Full disclosure: A little while ago (but well after I wrote the article, just so you know), they approached me and asked if I’d consider getting back into the music industry to manage them, and I said yes.

Matt Hanser

So I’m not going to pretend to be on the fence about them, and I’ll refrain from telling you how great they are (but they’re great). I will NOT, however, keep from mentioning that last night they killed it at Propaganda, a bitchin’ club in Lake Worth.

And last night, it mattered. Because last night was a showcase put on by AEG and The Honeycomb to pick a band to open for most excellent Silversun Pickups at their upcoming June 16th gig at the Sunset Cove Amphitheater in Boca Raton.

So slaying the show last night, which they did, which they always do, worked out well for them: they won the gig.

Brian Weinthal

But you know, I’m biased. So here’s a link to write up by Reed Fischer (my old music editor at New Times and a gen-u-ine music dude – though he’s wrong about one thing: there was little bombast). And here’s a link to get tickets. Because even without Lavola, this will be a great show.

With Lavola, though, it’s the balls AND the shaft.

You can keep up with Lavola (and you should, because then you’ll be able to tell everyone you knew about them before anyone else) at at iamlavola.com or the Lavola Facebook page. You can also follow @iamlavola on Twitter (twitter stream starting any second… really…).

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Lavola FTW!

To make life extra easy for you (because after you’ve watched one, you’ll want to watch ‘em all – like collecting Tony the Tiger swizzle sticks or something), I’ve embedded the other two currently available videos from that show as well.

The next two are for “Leaving Paris” and “The Queen is Dead” respectively (the latter being the encore interrupted by local law enforcement).

You can find out more about Lavola at iamlavola.com, or email them about bookings at booklavola@iamlavola.com

And Joanna just reminded me of what a douche I am to not mention that Lavola plays tonight (Friday, May 7) at Respectable St. in West Palm Beach – five bucks gets you into a show better than pretty much anything else you could be doing (excepting some sort of sex, drugs, and whipped cream thing).

They’ll also be at the Dewar’s mega house party with like 400 other bands, two stages and constant music tomorrow afternoon (I know they aren’t listed – it’s a frigging secret, ok?  Now you’re in on it).

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

More Lavola Videos From the Indiantown Road Bridge Show

At any rate, the show was at 8 and I had, of course, gotten there considerably later than I’d intended and it was packed. No way it was I making it to the front. I settled for stage left, behind Mike’s basses, but I was bummed: this was one of the shows I was most excited about catching in Austin this year, my photo pass meant next to nothing at venues without a photo pit, and here I was arriving too late to get up front.

Yeah I know. This is the kind of photo you get when you show up late. Clicking on it makes it bigger, but not better.

Totally my fault of course. I’d been staying with friends on the other side of town, and earlier that day had made the mistake of grabbing a cab back to their house to take a shower after an aborted Rogue Wave interview.  When it was time to head out again, I couldn’t find my phone, which I needed to contact exactly everyone I had to meet at SXSW.

“Oh no,” I whinged to myself (yes, even I have to listen to me), “I had too much stupid Fat Tire beer at stupid Lance Armstrong’s stupid bike shop during the stupid Rogue Wave show and I spaced the phone in the cab.”

With no land line phone in the house, and no neighbors answering my door-pounding and yelling, I was sure I was boned. And then the dude hanging out in the park next to my friends’ house chucked me a cell and said “just bring it back to me when you’re done” and went back to his conversation.  So thanks, beer-drinking, dog-walking, talking-with-friends guy-from-park.

Going back inside and calling my phone located it right on a table out in the open, which makes me 100% the idiot I feel like most of the time, but at least it let me stop whimpering.  Plus, I was on my way the Crash Kings show.

“No way to catch a cab,” I thought.  ”I’m hitching.”

Here’s my thinking: it was Austin, it was the middle of SXSW, and I don’t have the face of a rapist.  Much.  So someone will give me a ride.  Except they didn’t.  Not the hot blond in her Porsche convertible, not the VW busload of hipster-assholes with NY plates, not anyone.  I ended up walk-run-walking with my thumb out for about a mile and a half before I found a cab.  I got to the show with one minute to spare, but no time to stick my head into the Clavinet to see its guts, an activity that Tony had promised me, and one that I was hella-excited about.

Because, see, it has a whammy bar.  A keyboard, with guitar strings and pickups, and this one with a frigging whammy bar. Which makes it one of the single coolest keyboards ever.   Ever, I tell you.  Here’s a taste of the proof:

The first day I sat down to talk to the band, Tony told me the story of how he got his hands on that Clav. He’d been looking for an old Roland, a Juno 106 I think (or was it a 60?).  At any rate, someone he knew thought he might have one in a storage facility, took Tony down there and they looked around.  Turns out there wasn’t a 106, but they did come across the old Clav, beaten up and needing help, but complete with whammy bar.  And the dude gave it to him.

So it’s like that Porsche in the barn thing, the kind of story almost too good to be true, the kind of story that usually makes me jealous as hell of the person that got lucky. This time though?  Not so much jealousy. Because it’s not sitting in a studio somewhere with a “Do Not Touch” sign, it’s being lugged all over the country in the back of a Ford van, dragged onto stage night after night, and banged on like a muh-fucker at every show, just like it should be. And Tony gets that, and he can play the hell out of it, which is why I can’t think of a son of a bitch deserves to have it more.

Anyway, as cool as that video is, it’s almost unnecessary.  What I mean is that their music, that shit stands on its own, very cool whether you catch it live or listen to their eponymous album. In fact, the only knock I’ve got on the record is that it doesn’t last long enough.  The opening cut, Mountain Man is a grind-it out chuck of rock goodness (clavcore?) that features the whammy-Clav (as I’ve now decided to call it – or should that be a Clavi-wham?).

Mike Beliveau at the Rusty Spurs show in Austin, SXSW 2010. No, I wasn't planning on just shooting picures of his ass.

From then on out, Crash Kings deliver nine more tunes, each of which has its own identity, but which still hang together beautifully.  You could cop out and claim that’s due to the slightly uncommon lineup, but that’s only a small part of it.  The album works so well because of the great writing, Tony’s unique voice, and the production from Grammy award-winner D. Sardy.

From the slick pop greatness of “1985″, to the kind-of-a-ballad-but-not-remotely-boring “Come Away”, from the huge arrangement on “Non-Believer” to the distorted-base awesomeness on “14 Arms” and “Raincoat,” then right up through the closer cut, “My Love,” this record doesn’t have a throw-away, phone-it-in dog anywhere.

But that’s only half the story.  Because aside from being able to write and record music well, aside from being able to bust out guitar sounds on a vintage Clav, these bitches can play. Really, really play.  It’s actually kinda shocking how many people can’t you know, how many can’t even play their own damn album, and it’s always a big relief for me to find people that can. So after running halfway across Austin, then elbowing my way to a spot alongside the stage, I was hugely happy that they blew the doors off the joint.

The crowd knew it, too.  Crash Kings got one of the most prolonged and boisterous rounds of applause I saw the entire time I was in Austin, and that includes all the bands I caught that came into SXSW with a hell of a lot more buzz around them than Crash Kings had.

Crash Kings were supposed to play another set on Saturday, but the weather didn’t cooperate, and they canceled it, much to my chagrin.  But even that worked out, because Tony decided to do a simple set, just him and a keyboard (not the Clav this time, so still no sticking my head in it), in a tiny room lit dimly by red lights.  I grabbed a bit of video with a less than stellar camera, but it demonstrates that the dude’s got skills, and balls too: there’s no where to hide here.  Either you deliver the vocals or you don’t.  First up, “Non-Believer”:

After his set, Tony and I were talking outside while he waited for the van to come by and load up before heading to Colorado.  We’d been talking about his set, when all of a sudden he says:

“There was someone singing harmony on ‘Come Away.’ What was going on with that?”

“Oh – that was this crazy gray-haired cat lady-looking broad that was standing behind me,” I told him.  “I asked her to quiet down, but she was determined.”  Before the set started, she’d regaled me with stories of helping her husband move his gear around to gigs, back in the hippie days.  She seemed to have a real thing for Tony now, though.  Last up, a rare duet, Tony Beliveau and the Crazy Cat Lady:

By the end of the week, it was clear: Crash Kings are coming.  Their record is great  (and you can score the MP3 version for six bucks on amazon.com), they’re really good guys, and they actually know how to play their instruments.  If you get the chance to seem them, you must: they’re a great, great show.  Plus, I’m fairly sure that you aren’t going to have the chance to see them in small clubs for much longer, so I’d advise you to grab yourself some tickets if they roll by within driving distance.

Look, I’ll admit that being a bit of a vintage keyboard geek, I’m probably predisposed to liking a three piece with a keyboardist that favors a whammy-Clav, (or Clavi-wham).  But even without that prejudice, I’d still be calling the Crash Kings record one of my favorites of 2009, and telling you that their live shows are worth running across town and fighting through a crowd for, any time.

—————————————–

For those of you in South Florida, they’ll be playing SunFest in West Palm Beach on Wednesday, April 28th. I’m planning on dealing with that crowd just to catch their show (and hopefully finally get my head inside that Clav – I’ll let you know).  For more about Crash Kings, visit their site.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Crash Kings Rule OK

While they did get their entire set in without interruption, during their last encore, in the middle of a hyper-speed version of “The Queen Is Dead” (which kills) local police arrived and ended the show.

Note the flashing blue and red lights that go unnoticed by singer/guitarist Julian Cires, followed by the kid bolting across the frame.  Which isn’t exactly the lowest profile behavior if you’re trying to avoid the cops.  Plus, the kid was heading towards the water, which would have meant a swim for freedom.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Lavola Plays, Cops Come, Kid Bolts

I don’t usually like to simply post links to other blog posts or videos – I’ve always felt like that makes the entire blogging thing a big stupid circle jerk – but occasionally I’ll swalllow my pride along with 15 mg of hydrocodone and post something particularly excellent.

Like this video from Reggie Watts, who was totally unknown to me until Joanna sent me a link to this video. It’s yet another one of those things I look at and think “damn, I wish I’d made that.”

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Fuck Shit Stack

It’s close to midnight, and I’m driving through a deserted commerce park in Jupiter. I’m trying to follow sketchy directions on my phone’s voicemail that end with the phrase, “Call me when you’re lost.” Not an issue: I head towards the wall of sound coming from a unit in back, and I’m at Lavola’s practice space.

Julian Cires, Brian Weinthal, and Matt Hanser (yes, he's out of focus, fuck you) are Lavola.

I tap on the tinted glass when it quiets down a bit, and Julian Cires cautiously open the door.   “We never know who’s wandering around out there,” he says.  Entry wins me an immediate offer of ear protection from bassist Matt Hanser.  ”Do I look that old?” I think, then see singer/guitarist Julian’s Orange amp head and Matt’s Ampeg bass rig and accept, hoping to keep my eardrums from being pushed into my brain.

I’m struck by the distinct lack of beer cans on the floor or pot smoke in the air, and there’s not an enormous saucer-like pupil in the room.  These guys are here to play music, not to fuck around like a bunch of high school kids that just discovered how bitchin’ weed is.

I settle onto a crappy Peavy amp someone left over in the corner, the band starts to play, and the room transforms.  It’s not that the music is just loud, it’s hella-loud.  It’s a hugely physical experience: I’m getting it in the stomach (no brown notes, thankfully), the chest, the head.  It’s so immersive that it’s like tripping, which is fun for a while unless the music sucks.  But it doesn’t: it’s really, really good.

Cires and Hanser had played in bands together when they were in high school, but that ended when both left for college. Hanser headed to Colorado to study business, “I was a train wreck,” he says of his time there, Cires to Tallahassee to study creative writing. “It was a compromise,” he says of his major, “A great compromise, but a compromise.”  During his time at school, though, Cires began pursuing what he really wanted to be doing.

“I didn’t have many friends in Tallahassee, maybe one or two. It was mostly playing guitar, night and day.” And songwriting, he says, which “was the first thing in my life that I can remember actually being proud of.”

Lavola formed after Cires sent Hanser an email one spring that read: “Hey, I got a Vox. Wanna play this summer?”  They got together and recorded a four song EP, but weren’t a full band until drummer Brian Weinthal, of “call me when you’re lost” fame, arrived this winter via an ad in Craig’s list. “I called Julian and said there was a kid that was planning on moving to New York, but that he’d stay if we let him join the band,” says Hanser. “And he rocked,” adds Cires.

Adding a second guitarist, though, didn’t go quite as smoothly.  No one that they auditioned fit; most sucked out loud. “I shoulda known from the mullet,” Cires mutters after one particularly talentless douche departs.

A moment came during one of those practices that pretty much said it all.  Lavola were trying out guitar player number four (or was it five?), who was sitting down noodling with his Telecaster, trying to find something to play. Matt and Julian slowly moved towards Brian’s kit, the group of three closing up together, the fourth outside the circle.

The process had turned out to be positive.  It had helped push the core three together, crystallize who Lavola were, build chemistry between band mates. Ultimately they dropped the idea of adding a fourth. And that’s a good thing, because it’s that chemistry, combined with their huge sound and singer Cires’s emotional connection to the material that make Lavola so worth seeing.

I dug out my notes from the first practice I sat in on and I found the following scratched on page one: “British Sea Power, J. Mascais, Peter Gabriel, Jeff Mangum, Pixies,” and also “fucking cool.” I also found: “Rhythm section needs to lock up better.  Focus on listening to each other. Build chemistry.”

When I stopped by a practice a couple of nights ago though, things had changed. The three guys playing music in a deserted commerce park in the middle of the night had become a band.  And they played like monsters.  That night, I even skipped the ear protection.

—————————–

FREE MP3:

If you want to hear Lavola for yourself, visit their MySpace page, or make it easy by grabbing this free download of Lavola’s song, “The Philosopher’s Daughter.”

Fair warning: Lavola has grown.  If you catch an upcoming show (and you should) be prepared for something much, much bigger.  Personally, I’d love to drag their asses into the studio and get some recordings of the new line up…..

Live Show: Lavola play tonight, Friday, Feb 26, at Respectable Street Cafe in West Palm Beach. Doors open at 9 PM, opening act is Now Breathers.  And it’s free, so you have no excuse for missing it.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

West Palm Beach’s Lavola: The Best Band You Don’t Know

I love writing my weekly column for New Times.  But there’s more to life than meat (not much more, but more).  Which explains why I’ve cracked open my American Express points-bank and cashed in for a ticket to Austin next month: I’m covering SXSW, bitches!

If you know what SXSW is, I’m guessing I don’t need to explain why covering it for the paper is awsomeness incarnate (if you don’t, then go check it out), but I will anyway.

Imagine five days of great music, great food, and margaritas. Now add in spending time with bands like Rogue Wave, Karnivool, and a bunch of others, then writing about it.  And since I’m not really a traditional, boring interview kinda guy (but you knew that already, didn’t you?) it’s going to be about hanging out, then telling the story. Which is good for me, for the bands, and for anyone reading my stuff (do we really need yet another flurry of boring, cliched, cookie cutter reports from a music festival, written by people who’s primary goals seems to be proving that they know more than you?  No, my brother, we do not).

So all that’s great.  But it gets better: because not only will I get to see bands I already know are great, I get to discover worthwhile bands that I didn’t know a damn thing about, then tell everyone who will listen to check them out. And that starts here, now, with Crash Kings.

The publicist for Karnivool turned me on to them (yeah, yeah, she’s their publicist too, but you can’t fault the chick for doing her job), and they just do not suck.  First of all, they’re a three piece with no guitar:  like the brilliant Joe Jackson album Rain (which, I should note, Crash Kings do not sound like) it’s a piano/bass/drums thing.

And at times, it’s a huge piano/bass/drums thing.  If you’re looking for a list of sound-alikes though, sorry, I’m not really into playing that game (and you can hear what they sound like for yourself on their site).  There’s something inherently great about a three piece, and the fact that singer/keyboardist Tony Beliveau rocks one of the coolest Clavinets I’ve ever seen (see video below for more on that) just makes the whole thing better.

Second, they’re really good song writers, and they have that whole written-on-a-keyboard-not-a-guitar thing going for them, which is tits. Plus, Beliveau can actually sing without using Satan’s tool (that’d be Auto-Tune, not devil dick), so fuck you, Taylor Swift.

Third, well, just check out the video below.  Beliveau is playing that Clavinet I mentioned before, according to the band one of only 12 in existence with a whammy bar.  But it’s not just about the Clav: according to their publicist, they really dig vintage gear in general (apparently the studio they tracked in is filled with it), which earns them huge points (redeemable for exactly nothing, but points nonetheless).

I’ll get back with the full story of hanging out, and how they were live (though if the videos on their site are any indication, they’ll be great) once I hit Austin.  I’ll also be filling in the spaces between my pieces for New Times with reviews, stories and updates right here (you’ll note the new SXSW category in the header)

In the meantime, enjoy the video and go grab their album.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

I’m Getting All SXSW-Y Next Month

Ashton Kutcher, well known social media junkie and hugely irritating waiter actor, hosted Saturday Night Live this weekend in an attempt to combine two hacky, talentless products of pop culture in the hope that something good will result.

No such luck. When they decided to try for a parody of Kutcher’s Twitter success, SNL’s writers couldn’t come up with anything more creative that fart humor: a new social media site “Tooter,” that not only broadcasts when Special K farts, but sprays artificial fart scent into the the faces of Tooter subscribers.

The only highlight of the video, watching the great John Paul Jones of Them Crooked Vultures saying simply “I was in Led Zeppelin,”  was tempered by the fact he’d agreed to be in the car wreck at all (the video, not the band).

But I’d guess that Them Crooked Vultures provided the only redeeming moments of a show that stopped being worth watching over two decades ago (I certainly didn’t watch it Saturday night).  Which is no surprise, really, because how can you lose when you combine Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), John Paul Jones (Zep), and Dave Grohl (Scream)?

You can’t – which is why I’ve chosen to embed THOSE video instead of the stupid fart bit.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Ashton Kutcher on SNL: Can’t Even Make Farts Funny

Here’s the deal: it’s tough to take it seriously when someone raps “I’m a ninja,” even if the cat goes by the name Ninja.  But it’s still worth catching these two videos from Die Antwoord (The Answer) a zef-rap-rave band from South Africa. What’s zef? Open to interpretation it seems: some say it means common, some say it means fucking cool, but I don’t really give a shit.

Whatever it means, the music is very fucking cool, the rapping in Enter The Ninja is kick ass, and the video for Zef Side has Crazy Swinging Penis in it, which is always hilarious (just try to ignore the silly posturing). Plus, that albino-ey chick is awesome.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Die Antwoord from South Africa

I stopped watching the Grammys a long time ago; before I started earning a living as a recording engineer, before a label insider told me what I had long suspected: that the entire thing was rigged like a Cuban election. I stopped watching simply because it was too painful to see what was so obviously a giant marketing event that bore little resemblance to what it was supposed to be: an awards show for musicians that deserved to be recognized.

Taylor Swift Feigning Surprise

I was reminded of all that last night, when I tuned in three times, for about 5 minutes a shot. The first time I tuned in, Taylor Swift was accepting one of the four awards she was assigned by the labels won, and actually thanked her record company for letting her write every song on her album (uh, yeah, thanks).  I suppose that it shouldn’t surprise me that music has become so formulaic and machine-driven that singers actually feel it’s necessary to thank their record company for “letting” them write music on their own album, but it still makes me want to puke.

But then we learned that not only are the songs she writes a hearty pablum/Velveeta blend, she’s also a really shitty singer (at least not without, I suspect, a copious application of Auto-Tune). She proved that the second time I tuned in and found her on screen again (supporting my atheism), this time performing with Stevie Nicks on the old Fleetwood Mac song, “Rhiannon.” To say she was a bit pitchy would be like saying downtown Baghdad is a bit fucked up.

If you can stand listening to it, you’ll see that she butchers what I assume is one of her own songs first, then finds complete disaster in the second, with Nicks (fair warning: if you have any cats in your home, I’d suggest you lock them in a room with no humans or other objects you don’t want clawed up).  The last song she sings proves that not only is she a crap singer, her voice, when not treated with effects, is incredibly annoying.

Then I made the mistake of tuning in one last time (actually, this one was by accident; while I was popping in the DVD of Deadgirl the TV blipped to CBS).  Lionel Richie was introducing the 3-D presentation of Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song” performed by a whole bunch of singers, the entire list of which I’m too lazy to look up (I do remember that horrible Celine Dion being among them though).

I doubt anyone else will say it, so let me: that song, in fact the whole presentation, sucked.  It was silly, it was trite, and it was boring.  It was also grammatically incorrect:

“What about all the dreams that you said was yours and mine?”

Please. But when Usher bore down with every bit of love, and soul, and drama he could dig up and delivered the lines:

“What about the elephants?
Have we lost their trust?”

That was about it for me.  Because if we’ve lost the trust of the elephants, we’re fucking used.  They never forget you know, and we’ll never earn that shit back. Never.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Taylor Swift Sucks Out Loud on Grammys

If you like the combination of black leather, German bands, pornography and the objectification of women (and really, is there a better combo to be had anywhere?) you’ll love the video for “Pussy,” the new single from the German band Rammstein.

I even like the song.  Much of it is sung in German, which I don’t speak, but it’s still hilarious. Of course, it’s tough to go wrong with phrases like “bratwurst in mein sauerkraut ” and lyrics that include the word “fahrvergnügen” (which you’ll remember from VW ads is German for “driving pleasure”).

And of course, there are bits in English, like the chorus:

You’ve got a pussy
I’ve got a dick-e
So what’s the problem
Let’s do it quick

There’s more, but I’d be spoiling the fun.

But it’s not just humor that sets “Pussy” apart from every other synth-heavy German sex song, it’s the video they shot for it. Because the video is hardcore porn. There is, of course, a kinder, gentler, less porny version of the “Pussy” video, which I’ve embedded below.  It’s got all of the humor, most of the leather, and none of the fucking.  But if you want the hardcore version you need to go see the uncensored version here.  Be warned though; due to the lyrics, even the version below probably isn’t work safe (unless you work at Juggs magazine).

Although they don’t sound alike, Rammstein reminds me of another German speaking, leather wearing band, the weird, minimalist, electropunk-pop Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft, or DAF (I still have the copy of their 1981 album “Alles ist gut” that I bought when I was in college).  I loved DAF because pretty much everyone that heard it was bummed out by songs like “Der Mussolini” (I went to Sarah Lawrence, you know). Maybe it would have gone over better with a little porno.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Rammstein Gets Hardcore

Here’s the basic fact: I can’t think of a single band anywhere that comes close to being as irritating as this bunch of pompous musical douchemonkeys.   I’m not saying every song that band has ever done completely sucks, but most of them, yeah, pretty much.

And that’s only half of the problem: you’ve got to take into account the horrors of Matthews’s smirky, pudgy, Vince-Vaughn-that-ate-too-many-pizzas look, his spastic dancing, and the horribly contrived, aw shucks, humble-man-of-the-people patter he tosses in between songs. And as if that weren’t enough, you’ve got that incredibly irritating violin player, the annoying gloved-up drummer, and interludes of cheesy pan flute-like music that make me feel like I’ve been mainlining ex-Lax.

How am I so familiar with them?  Well, let me say this about that:  maybe it’s just the masochist in me, but every time I see they’re going to be on a late night show, or, as I did tonight, I notice that a concert of theirs is going to be broadcast (some big outdoor fest from 2008 on PLAHD in tonight’s case) I tune in, try to ignore those irritating high pitched “heeeyyys,” that he seems to toss into every other tune, and see if I can figure out why people come out by the millions to listen to them.

And every time I do, I feel like I’m being held down by Ricardo Montalbán’s minions in the Wrath of Khan, and he’s forcing one of those creepy space insects into my brain through my ear canal.

Except in my case, the pain just doesn’t fucking stop.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Dave Matthews

I have a soft spot in my heart for the Psychedelic Furs.  Back in the early nineties, I was on staff at the recording studio in which they cut “World Outside,” and I thought the lot of them were just peachy.  So when my buddy Alec told me he was friends with Mars Williams, the sax player for the Furs, and we were comped for their recent show at Revolution, I was all “cool” and he was all “yeah.”  So this past Thursday we drove to Ft. Lauderdale to have dinner with Mars and catch the show.

Happy Mondays opened, and a sadder bunch of shitty hacks I haven’t seen in ages.  I was never a fan of theirs, so I may have been biased, but they truly sucked.  The lead singer was phoning it in, the mix was horrible, and the songs were crap.  Enough said.

The Furs, though, were really fucking good. Richard Butler’s voice sounded just about the same as it did three decades ago (no small feat), and, more important, he looked like he was having a great time.  Even after all these years, the guy gets up and really enjoys making the music, and he gets that across to the audience, and they loved him for it.

Now, those of you that have read me before may know that in my opinion the saxophone has fucked up more good songs than overuse of the cowbell and vibraslap combined.  With a few notable exceptions (the Psychedelic Furs most certainly one of them), every time some douche bag launches into a sax solo I think of that horrible Brat Pack movie St. Elmo’s Fire with Rob Lowe as saxophone-playing bad boy Billy Hicks, with his shitty haircut, sleeveless shirt, and Let’s-Get-Physical headband, whaling away on sax solos that felt like drain cleaner being poured in my ears.

Everything horrible about the 80’s, saxophones, and Rob Lowe:

But with the Furs, it’s all different.  Many of Mars’s saxophone lines feel like they’re sung as much as played, and he and Richard work together perfectly.  That, combined with the facts that he has great tone, his parts never feel cheesy, and the guy can fucking play, give the Furs a lifetime pass on my “shoot the sax player” policy.  Plus, Mars pulled off a fucking genius James Chance-style lead at one point, which I thought was the balls and the shaft.  So in their case, the sax (particularly when being wielded by Mars Williams) is a necessary part of the whole experience.  Something I thought I’d never say.

There was a downside to the night though (aside from the horrible Happy Mondays set): the entire experience, from dinner right through the show, made me realize how much I miss being around the music scene.  Making records, going to clubs, getting guest listed (yes, I’ll admit that I love being on the guest list as much as anyone): way too much fun, and way too far back in my rear view mirror.  It was almost offset by an unexpected upside though: the incredibly entertaining crowd that showed up, from the Boy George double with long hair, makeup, and black gloves, to the guy with a goatee, diamond earing, silver rope chain and “Journey 2009″ tour shirt, to Mr. New Wave with dark sunglasses and the Ramones tee-shirt that danced with his little clenched fists pushed together in front of his chest, incorrectly mouthing the lyrics and looking like he’d danced like this to the Furs quite a bit before, albeit at home, naked, with his penis tucked back like the Silence of the Lambs guy.

All in all though, I had a fucking great time.  If you have the chance to catch the Furs on this tour you really won’t regret going out and seeing them.  The band is tight, Butler sounds great, and the only thing missing is Molly Ringwald.   MMMM.  Molly-ey.

Four out of five bones.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Psychedelic Furs And Happy Mondays At Revolution