Buzz Rant & Rave

What do you call Russian Roulette played with dynamite?

2010-03-10T04:42:03Z

or Able was I ere I saw Elba

Lost - "Dr. Linus"
(season 6, episode 7)

What would Lost be without Michael Emerson? The man has a talent to deliver any line with a creepy smarminess (See him in a 1992 prison guard training video), but also for conveying deep and genuine emotion. Benjamin Linus killed his father and let his adopted daughter be killed in service of Jacob and the Island. And what for? Why did he make those sacrifices? What was Jacob's plan? Emerson just killed the scene confronting Ilana. He manages to show the depth of Ben's grief and also show the possibility that Ben is, as always, spinning the wheels in his head to figure out a plan to keep himself alive and try to get an advantage.

On an Island where people are very likely to be killed by either natural or human causes, it's certainly useful to have someone like Miles, who can confirm a corpse's cause and method of death. That skill proves to be a useful deus ex machina that keeps Ben from being able to continue lying to Ilana, Sun and Lapidus about the circumstances of Jacob's death. As a result, Ilana forces Ben to contemplate his role in Jacob's death.

In the flash sideways, Ben and Roger left the Island and Ben went on to get a doctorate in European history to end up teaching high school alongside Leslie Arzt and new substitute John Locke. We happen to see him teaching about Napoleon's exile on the island of Elba, which the French Emperor eventually escaped and marched on Paris, although his second reign only lasted until the Battle of Waterloo later that same year.

In this timeline, Ben helps his father and tutors Alex Rousseau, who is applying to Yale. Ben has the opportunity to blackmail his principal in exchange for more personal power, but at the cost of killing Alex's chances of getting into Yale. In the alternate timeline, Ben has a plan, but tries his best to save Alex's future.

Elsewhere on the Island, or the first time, we see Richard as a man who is lost and out of his element. He's always seemed to be close with the Island and in the know-- if not the same confidence of being few steps ahead of everyone else that Ben could exhibit. But without Jacob, Richard is directionless and hopeless.

Ben is not the only one confused by his place in Jacob's plan. Richard confirms that he came to the island on the Black Rock, has been serving Jacob, and Jacob granted hiim a sort of immortality. Jacob had a plan; he could convey the gift of longevity, if not immortality. Was he a Cylon?

Is the crazy smile after surviving a dub stick of dynamite, proof that Jack has become a man of faith. Are Jack, Hurley, Sawyer, Sun and Jin protected by Jacob's touch in the same way as Richard, while they are on the Island? Did Jacob's touch fail to protect Locke once he left the Island? Was part of the loophole that the Man in Black found luring Locke off of the Island?

While this episode was filled with good elements, the last few feel like they've kept too many pieces off of the table. Sawyer hasn't been seen since The Substitute. This week, Smokey's band of followers-- including Sawyer, Claire, Sayid and Kate-- were completely out of the picture. Jin didn't appear at all this week, either. But the episode closed with a brief appearance of a character coming back who has yet to be seen at all this season, bringing more of the pieces of the puzzle into the picture.

The last scene on the beach let Oscar winner Michael Giacchino's score take the forefront and be a more effective substitute for some dialog. As a visual medium, a picture can be worth a thousand words, and sometimes pictures alone are more effective without words. The writers, director and producers deserve credit for trusting the actors and Giacchino to deliver without feeling the need to explain everything.

Monday TV

2010-03-09T04:28:02Z

Chuck vs. the Beard

Chuck is a fundamentally silly show. Its version of international espionage involves many more "missions," "secrets" and "being a spy" in 44 minutes than actual undercover operatives might use in their entire careers. But as the closest spiritual successor to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it uses spy movie tropes to set the stage for stories that are allegorical. Buffy brought vampires, monsters and hellmouths to high school; Chuck brings James Bond to mid-20's malaise.

Chuck's second season paralleled stories in spy world with stories in Buy Moria, but the best episodes brought the two together. Just as Joyce Summer eventually learned about her daughter being the Slayer, this episode serves to further integrate Chuck's spy life with his real life. While Chuck has become more of an ass as he's used the Intersect 2.0 to become more of a spy (in particular, breaking up with Hannah), he's fundamentally still a good person, who needs to talk about things with his friends and family. Unlike Sarah, Chuck has people close to him from whom he doesn't want to keep big secrets (there's that word again.)

One of the things that the show fixed from its first to second seasons was the character of Morgan. Josh Gomez dialed his performance down closer to human. Unfortunately, Morgan largely reverts to some of the overbearing nerd. Perhaps this was a conscious choice by first-time director Zachary Levi, or perhaps this was the character just freaking out when he learns that the Buy More is a cover for a joint CIA-NSA task force.

Although Office Space alumnus Diedrich Bader plays a twisted version of The Bobs and gives Chuck and Morgan a chance to have their biggest bromantic moment of the third season, it also plays against Jeffster performing CCR's "Fortunate Son," hand to hand combat and a Buy Moria take Iwo Jima.

How I Met Your Mother, "Of Course"

The second act of "Of Course" may have been this show's single best act of the entire series. Realizing that breaking up Barney and Robin couldn't just be a return to the status quo, HIMYM finally realized that the relationship did have an effect on the characters and that they couldn't just go back to hanging out at McLaren's together without consequences.

Fully integrated the heart and the funny. The emotional beats were cut properly with laughs, like Marshall's song getting more involved each time we revisit it. And how can you not like an episode where Marshall punches the head off of a Stormtrooper and adds, "frankly, I'm still angry at the Empire"

Vinyl, CD and MP3

2010-03-04T20:18:16Z

Now that I've ripped all of my CD's into compressed digital formats in iTunes, I've acquired a turntable and started listening to more music on vinyl. As a listener, it's nice to have a more active and physical connection with music. Hard disk-based libraries are wonderful for depth and variety, but for listening to the great albums that you love as albums, the album-centric listening experience is rewarding and engaging.

Instead of building a multi-hour playlist of digital music spanning dozens of genres, artists and albums across hundreds of songs, an LP listener has to flip after each side and can't easily skip ahead from song to song. The medium forces more engaged listening.

But the LP is also an inferior medium to the CD and even compressed digital formats. The CD has tremendously more dynamic range. Dynamic range is the amount of sounds that can be reproduced from a recording-- from the lowest note and softest volume to the highest frequency and loudest volume.

But today's recordings are mixed and mastered to push the average levels as high as possible, using less dynamic range than the CD medium is able to deliver. Robert Levine published the definite take on the so-called loudness wars in a 2007 article in Rolling Stone, The Death of High Fidelity, "Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology has changed the way albums are produced, mixed and mastered — almost always for the worse."

Pete Bilderback, Yo! Turn It Down!

"Dynamic range compression is not new. Producers of popular music have been using it for decades, and--used in moderation--it is actually an essential tool in producing good sounding pop and rock recordings. But over the past several decades producers, mastering engineers and recording artists have engaged in a race to create the loudest possible sounding CDs (the so-called "loudness wars") and in doing so have severely restricted the dynamic range heard in today's popular music recordings."

Most modern music is seemingly optimized for listening in a 128 kbps MP3. Below about 192 kbps, MP3 files sound washed out, but above that are close enough to CD to be intistinguishable, except perhaps on truly audiophile equipment.

Music recorded earlier than the mid-1980s was not only mixed, mastered and produced to fit within the limits of the medium, but also recorded to sound best on the medium. While 2" analog tape has a much wider dynamic range than an LP, did any artists not seek to make the best sounding LP possible?

Bob Speer, What Happened To Dynamic Range?

"What happened to dynamic range? That's a question that should be asked of record labels, producers, artists, and last but not least, recording and mastering engineers. The question needs to be asked because we're the ones responsible for what's happened to our music. Much of the music we listen to today is nothing more than distortion with a beat. Great music is suffering because it lacks dynamic range. When music lacks dynamic range, it lacks punch, emotion, and clarity."

Mastering for vinyl can be more artistic than mastering for digital because of the limitations of the medium. Kevin Gray, Producing Great Sounding Phonograph Records

Comparing the waverforms for the CD and LP versions of Bob Dylan's Eyolf Østrem looked at the amount of dynamic range used by the different masters of the same album and concluded, Someone Please Fire Jack Frost. Even though the CD is capable of delivering a more dynamic representation of the music, it's often end up delivering as loud of a delivery as possible with less dynamic range.

Given that digital formats are using less dynamic range than LP's, and that analog distortion is warmer, more musical and more natural than digital clipping, the vinyl record is remaining relevant, because the inferior medium is used in a superior manner. The loudness wars are making modern digital recordings sound worse than records. Which is a shame, because properly recorded and mastered digital recordings are more dynamic. The deepest lows and highest highs that a CD can reproduce are higher and lower than those on vinyl, but for albums that don't use all of that dynamic range, the warm sound and focused experience of listening to albums is more compelling for music fans.

Smoke in the temple, fire in the sky

2010-03-03T16:44:53Z

109 episodes in, and only now am I going to start trying to write about individual episodes:

Lost, "Sundown" (season 6 episode 6)

"Sundown" certainly did not lack for action (or body count.) Sayid and Dogen fought in Dogen's office, Smokey had some issues with the temple Others, Sayid settled some differences with Dogen and Lennon, while Ilana, Ben, Sun and Lapidus made it to the temple to save Miles from Smokey.

But while this episode had a lot of action, much of it was set in motion for reasons that are still opaque to us as the audience. While we now understand that the flashes to the alternate timeline differ in ways that go far deeper than flight 815 landing safely at LAX, but not yet what relationship they have to our characters on the island. The original flashbacks from seasons 1 and 2 showed how the characters were shaped by the events that led them to the island, that gave the characters new shape and demonstrated some of the motivations (or put twists on those motivations) for why they acted in the way they acted on the island.

So far, season 6's vignettes in the parallel universe have echoed season 1's flashbacks. Like "Tabula Rasa," "What Kate does" was a Kate story, like "Walkabout," "The Substitute" was a Locke episode, and like "White Rabbit," "Lighthouse" featured Jack. But whereas the sixth episode of the show, "House of the Rising Sun," was a Sun flashback, tonight's "Sundown" was a Sayid story.

In parallel 2004, Sayid travels to Los Angeles to see Nadia, who is married to Sayid's brother. In the original timeline, Sayid was working with the CIA to infiltrate a terrorist plot in Sydney in exchange for information on Nadia's whereabouts, as he had not seen her since letting her escape torture and capitivity in Iraq. In the parallel timeline, Sayid was an interrogator in the Republican Guard, but had not lost track of Nadia.

At this point, it's frustrating not to understand more about the mirror universe. We know that despite some major differences (e.g. Jack has a son, Locke has a good relationship with Helen and his father), the characters are largely the same-- Rose still has cancer, Jack still had a difficult relationship with his father, Claire is still having a baby, Kate is still a fugitive, Locke still got rejected from his walkabout, Keamy still makes a mean plate of eggs. In this episode we see that Sayid is still trying to make peace with having served as a torturer for the Republican Guard. Despite that, he wants to be a good man and find some measure of redemption. But he keeps getting sucked back in to torture and murder -- whether it's to extract information from Sawyer, os a hired gun for Ben, or trying to extract his brother from a bad business arrangement in the alternative timeline. Naveen Andrews does a very good job of selling Sayid's understanding that he has done some terrible, unforgivable things in both timelines and wants redemption.

But what's the relationship between the mirror universe and the original one? We don't yet know what the glimpses of the characters' lives in the parallel universe show. Is this what their lives would have been like if they hadn't been influenced by Jacob or the island? (But still were traveling from Sydney to LA on the same day.) Are the two timelines going to come together at some point?

My theory is that despite the differences, the characters are going to largely end up in similar relationships and doing similar actions, because their characters are the same whether they were brought to the island or not. It's not a matter of having a destiny or being played as puppets by Jacob, but that these people use their free will in ways directed by their personalities that bring them to similar places. I worry that if this in fact the relationship between the island and alternate timelines, it will be patently unsatisfying; in the original timeline, we had about 100 hours of story to get the characters to where they were by the end of The Incident, and we're only going to see a few hours of the alternate timeline by the end of the series.

Of more interest in the parallel world, Martin Keamy (originally Widmore's lead mercenary on the freighter who killed Alex, among others) is a gangster (and cook of eggs) who was extorting Sayid's brother. Oh, and he has Jin bound in a freezer. Is Keamy working for Widmore in the alternate timeline? Or does he just have competing interests with Jin (or Jin's employer) and Sayid's brother?

I think part of what I'm finding so odd with this season is the pacing of the various threads. Not only have the relationship between the island and the Others who have been exiled off the island (Eloise, Widmore)

Two episodes ago in The Substitute, we followed Sawyer and Smokey climbing down Jacob's ladder to retreive a Horcrux (or something) and learning the candidate-Numbers connection, but we haven't seen Sawyer since (except for a brief appearance as part of Smokey's entourage). Last week, we followed Hurley and Jack wandering old-school through the jungle to the Lighthouse, but didn't see them at all this week. The show isn't so much juggling these disparate plot threads, but holding them and then throwing them up in the air, letting them fall to the ground, and then picking them up again.

So on the one hand, this episode was effective at moving the story forward, but didn't reveal much of the overarching structure of the story that's being told. If there's some conflict that spans hundreds of years, involves shadowy organizations in the world like Widmore Industries, the Hanso Foundation and the Dharma Initiative, a conspiracy of Others who had some kind of access between the island and the outside world, a frozen donkey wheel, time travel, and a smoke monster, the stakes of season 6 have felt smaller than earlier seasons. Not that it may ever be possible to explain all of those elements-- or that it will be unsatisfying if these questions are never answerd-- but the prior seasons have been effective at raising the stakes with new questions. So far, season 6 has introduced new elements, but hasn't manage to either make these new elements more compelling than those from prior seasons that always appeared to raise the stakes or expand the scope of the world.

At this point, season 6 feels like it's struggling to connect the story that it's been building week to week, much less with much of the foundation laid in the last five years. I suspect that this section of the season will play much better in tighter sequence than one episode per week.

Review and Reaction Roundup
Alan Sepinwall, A history of violence ""Lost" is all about eternal struggles - good vs. evil, science vs. faith, free will vs. destiny - and fundamentally about man vs. his own nature. John Locke wants to be a big man but can't overcome his own smallness. Jack Shephard tries to fix everything and usually winds up destroying it. And Sayid Jarrah wants to be a good man free to enjoy the love of his good woman, but instead he's always the man brought in when people need killing."

James Poniewozik, Time, "When season six started a month ago, fans who had endured a long hiatus expected quick answers. It's the last season, after all; the show ends just a few weeks from now, on May 23. But instead, during the first four weeks of this season, we got new characters like Dogen and Lennon, an elaborate new set at the temple, and SmokeLocke insisting to Sawyer during a long jungle trek that his questions (and, presumably, ours) would be answered if we just keep following. It was a little annoying: it's way past teasing time."

Noel Murray, The AV Club, Sundown "Like “What Kate Does” a few weeks back, I thought “Sundown” was pretty shaky at times, though it ended so strongly—and offered so much to ponder along the way— that I didn’t mind that it was light on incident and heavy on Temple moping. I also didn’t mind that “Sundown” was a Sayid episode that defaulted back to the same set of questions and concerns that have driven nearly every Sayid episode lately: Is this dude a stone a stone-cold killer or what? I didn’t mind it because I thought “Sundown” was one of the most bravely unforgiving episodes yet when it comes to dealing with the question of free will versus fate."

Jeff Jensen, Entertainment Weekly, 'Lost' recap: The Measure of the Man "Last night's episode of Lost, 'Sundown,' reminded us that for all his spirituality, and for all his protest-too-much bleating about being a 'good man,' Sayid has never been able to make peace with his past as a torturer for Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, as well as the CIA. He's more than mired in his quagmire; he feels like he deserves it. To quote Joseph Conrad, Sayid is a man infected with a self-mortifying, self-corrupting 'fascination with abomination.'"

Maureen Ryan, Chicago Tribune, Let's talk 'Lost': 'Sundown' "What an excellent episode. We got some interesting forward movement on the island, not to mention some wonderfully creepy atmospheric moments on and off the island. Sayid asked a lot of good questions, some of which even got answers We had Sideways and island timelines that were linked thematically and emotionally and thus quite a bit more interesting in tandem than some other Sideways trips."

Todd VanderWerff, LA Times, 'Lost': Sayid loses himself in the dark " Sometimes you watch "Lost" and think about the philosophical conundrums it presents or the way the characters interact. Sometimes you watch it and come away impressed by the show's rock-solid direction or great acting. But sometimes, oh, sometimes, you watch the show and end up feeling that there's just nothing else like it on TV, nothing quite so, well ... awesome. When "Lost" is on, there's nothing quite like it for bringing big, epic moments, and there's never really been anything like it in the history of the medium. It's a big, bold show when it wants to be, and when it pays off a whole bunch of setup with a big, action payoff, it usually delivers."

Myles McNutt, Cultural Learnings, Lost – “Sundown” "The Flash Sideways structure this season has been taking a lot of criticism from those who think that its opaque intentions are obscuring any meaning that it might have, but I think that in terms of its immediate function it has actually been quite clear. As the show confuses the question of identity through the Man in Black and his various influences, the Flashes offer a glimpse at characters in a far less confused universe who are still just as confused as they were before."

Emily Nussbaum, NY Magazine, Tortured Logic "Sorry to go all Lori 'Settle!' Gottlieb on you, but must every character have a soul mate? Desmond, Sayid, Jin, Sawyer, Jack — always mooning, mooning, mooning! And look where it leads them, into whining and, in more extreme cases, blood-soaked evil.

Mike Hale, NYT Artsbeat, Sayid Goes Off, "For all the hyperventilating in other forums about Sayid as a born killer, the show has made the case in the past for his essential goodness, and he’s being manipulated now by Fake Locke. Do we really think that any of the show’s central characters won’t, in the end, find some kind of redemption?"

Isaac Spaceman, A List of Things Thrown 5 Minutes Ago, Kate, Separated From The Group Again, Wishes She Had Not Scoffed At The Idea Of A Line Buddy

The Legend of the Mustache

2010-02-05T16:12:24Z

Fun promo video for Parks & Recreation:

Return to Craphole Island

2010-02-03T23:06:48Z

Lost may not be the most popular show on television, but it may the most popular show with the highest percentage of extremely engaged fans. In other words, the product of the size of Lost's fan base and their intensity has to be the largest for any television show. Dollhouse or Breaking Bad may have a higher percentage of extremely engaged fans, but a smaller audience. American Idol or CSI might have a larger audience, but their fans are less likely to know who the showrunners and producers are.

Is there any other show (aside from perhaps NBC's promotion of The Marriage Ref from Executive Producer Jerry Seinfeld) where the showrunners would be giving interviews on late night television instead of anyone from the cast?

Or that EW refers to by their first names only? Doc Jensen, EW PopWatch, Confused by the 'Lost' premiere? Never fear! Damon and Carlton explain a few things about the start of Season 6 (SPOILERS AHEAD)

Lost may be the most thoroughly analyzed show on TV. Here is an incomplete collection of some of the reviews and analysis of the season 6 premier, LA X, parts 1 and 2: Alan Sepinwall Doc Jensen (EW), jOpinionated, Televisionary Mike Hale (NY Times), Noel Murray (AV Club), Drew McWeeny (HitFix), Mary McNamara (LA Times), Todd VanDerWerff (LA Times), Myles McNutt (Cultural Learnings), Isaac Spaceman (A List of Things Thrown 5 Minutes Ago), Maureen Ryan (Chicago Tribune), James Poniewozik (Time), Linda Holmes (NPR).

Time keeps on slipping

2010-02-01T21:15:18Z

Now that President Obama gave the State of the Union address, the host chair of the Tonight Show is settled, Chuck premiered and Steve Jobs announced Apple's new iPad, the Internets can finally fully devote attention to preparing for the most important media event EVER: the final season of Lost.

The Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan interviews showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof in an epic three part interview.

As only he can, ALOTT5MA's Isaac Spaceman recaps to this point: Welcome to the Hanso Island Resort and Spa

I've been re-watching season one, and I'm amazed at how different the show has become since then. Initially, this was a show about the characters who crashed on Craphole Island. As important as the various situations they encountered was how their reaction to those situations is affected by (or how the crash has forced them to reconsider) their actions in their lives before the crash. Since then, it's gone on to be a time-bending show that's grown in scope and added new characters with a connection to the island, who were not on Oceanic Flight 815 (and generally more compelling than many of the original characters.)

What most of the shows that have since attempted to be the next Lost seem to have forgotten is that Lost's mythology is something that was introduced gradually over the course of the first two seasons. The first season was all about the characters from the crash; each episode focused on one character. If the show didn't evolve from the first season, it would have become stagnant (like the early part of season 3.) If it started as the mythology-heavy show of later seasons, it may not have been around long enough to explore the mythology.

But over 5 seasons, the show has asked so many questions, that the final season will probably answer some questions that shouldn't be answered and leave others open.

Myles McNutt, Cultural Learnings, The Scourge of Fandom: Why Lost Owes Us Nothing, "I tend to view fans who are basically threatening Lindelof and Cuse that they have to answer particular questions as the scourge of fandom. Lost is a show that very much invites fans to make their own theories, and I like that Lindelof and Cuse respect the audience enough to inspire their obsession. That’s why I find it disrespectful for fans to then take their theories and push them back on Lindelof and Cuse, as if the reason Lost’s mysteries exist is for us to solve them and then force the show to adhere to our ideas."

James Poniewozik, Time: Tuned In Blog, My Favorite Episodes, and Yours

While Lindelof and Cuse expect to bring a satisfying conclusion that will end this show, Disney may want to do more with the franchise than just sell Dharma jumpsuits. What happens then? AfterLost? Lost: The Next Generation? Michael Schneider, Variety, Is 'Lost' here to stay?

Finally, Lost recapped by an extended Italian family:

Heavy Indicia

2010-01-19T15:46:37Z

Igot invited to see a taping of The Late Show with David Letterman at the Ed Sullivan Theater last night. And aside from Dave being more engaged and energized by another situation involving the Tonight Show and Jay Leno over at NBC, this was incredibly worthwhile to attend, because The Heavy were the musical guest and rocked the house. As soon as the show wrapped, I was looking for their tour schedule to see if they were playing a full set later. Unfortunately, the Late Show wrapped up their US tour.

How often does Dave ask the musical guest to keep playing the song for another go round with the CBS Orchestra then vamping on the riff after the band finishes?

According to the Late Show website, it was "unprecedented." They also have the full and complete encore performance

But sometimes when a band is just setting up, you get a feeling that you're going to like them. If they've set up a four piece Gretsch drum set, Rickenbacker bass, Telecaster guitar through a Fender amp, baritone sax, tenor sax and trumpet, you get a sense of the sound they're going to have. Combine with a British flag and before the band is even on stage, that's a pretty solid indicator of the kind of sound they're going to have. Borrow the Dap Kings horn section and execute well and there you go: a recipe for awesome.

The Heavy [theheavy.co.uk]

WXPN: The Heavy, Recorded Live In Concert (Jan. 15, 2010)

NPR: The Heavy: Dirty Basement Soul "Like the early White Stripes, The Heavy sometimes threatens to cross the line between reviving and archiving. Also like the early White Stripes, it's good enough to get away with a lot, and smart enough to take full advantage."

The House That Dirt Built: Vinyl CD MP3

Julian Casablancas at Terminal 5 - January 14th, 2010

2010-01-15T19:39:14Z

"I'll be honest, I was a bit nervous before playing this show," said Julian Casablancas from the stage Thursday at Terminal 5 before thanking the packed house again for the warm reception. Artists gain and lose popularity fast in music, so it may not have been too crazy for him to think people might not care about him or his old band The Strokes that much anymore. But an excited Terminal 5 audience dispelled any doubt. Perhaps music tastes can change, but New Yorker's always welcome back one of their own.

Doors opened at 8 PM and by 9 PM opener Tanlines was keeping the growing crowd well entertained, mostly with their intense on-stage gyrations. Tweaking computers and keyboards they presented an aggressive dance sound. In contrast, Telepathe, who followed, emitted an intense racket that sounded like a wash of sound rather than finely crafted music. The duo's similar sounding voices and monotonous songs barely excited the crowd, and a few of their offerrings ended with just a spattering of applause. The group looked a little dejected as they left the stage, but after 35 minutes of without much musical or visual excitement (they barely tried to engage the crowd), it was hard to feel guilty about the audience's poor reaction.

The reaction was much different when the lights went down for the headliner. With his backing band hitting the stage first, Julian Casablancas strolled out in a slim black leather outfit to the jubilation of everyone in Terminal 5. Although it's only been a few years since The Strokes played New York, the excitement of the moment was palpable, as was the moment when he began singing in his distinctive croon.

The band started off with "Ludlow Street," one of the album's slower tracks, and though it lacked some of the old world instrumentation of the recorded version, it came across well, as did the next song, the more up-tempo "River of Brakelights." Casablancas took the chance to talk to the crowd a bit, spouting out a stream of expletive-laden thanks-yous to everyone for the warm reception. The casual banter would continue throughout the night, and flew off into such side roads as Casablanca's admiration of Alicia Key's contribution to Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind" (he would later sing a snippet of it as a ten-second final song of the night, backed only by drums).

Launching into single "11th Dimension," the band was fully warmed up and the crowd was soon bopping up and down. Every once in a while throughout the night (in "River of Brakelights" and Left and Right in the Dark," for example), the band hit a chugging groove and Casablancas voice hit that sweet spot towards the higher, more desperate part of his range. The effect recalled what was so great about the Strokes, and the crowd reacted as you would have expected (see the video below). But the other sounds Casablancas has explored proved popular as well. The crowd sang along with "Out of the Blue" and "Left and Right in the Dark." Casablancas and company played a new, untitled song which felt energetic and a lot more raw than the album material.

Reports from L.A. told of an elaborate stage show, but there were no visuals or fancy costumes at this gig, just the band and Casablancas with minimal lighting effects. Still, the crowd ate it up, especially in the encore when Casablancas and his keyboard player came out to play a stripped-down "I'll Do Anything Once," a Strokes b-side (which he announced as a cover). A bigger surprise was the inclusion of the Kings of Leon song "Velvet Snow," though admittedly it was one of the weaker songs of the night. Still, the singer seems happy to playing live in NY again, whether this solo tour is a diversion before a Strokes reunion or a long term gig.

Late Shift 2: Electric Boogaloo

2010-01-15T17:38:48Z

In the New York Times today, Bill Carter finds NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol clearly on Team Jay, saying,
"What this is really all about is an astounding failure by Conan." Executive Leaps to Leno’s Defense.

But how much of Conan's woes at the Tonight Show are caused by the creative failure of the Jay Leno Show at 10 PM?

Tucked away in this story from Joe Adalian at The Wrap is the one fact that I've been looking for, that Conan's Tonight Show is actually outperforming Leno's Tonight Show, when you account for the massive fall-off of lead-in: Ebersol: Conan 'Chicken-Hearted, Gutless' | The Wrap: "O'Brien's down from the Leno era in the adults 18-49, losing Leno's 15 percent advantage over Letterman. But local news numbers have dropped between 20 and 30 percent since Leno shifted to 10, which means O'Brien is actually not dropping as much as his lead-in."

Even though Leno hosted the Tonight Show on a low-rated network last year, NBC's slightly more creatively interesting 2008-09 schedule provided a much stronger lead-in to the late local news and The Tonight Show than the 5 night per week black hole of suck that is the Jay Leno Show.

But why do we care so much about The Tonight Show?

Firstly, it is the most established late night show and during the Carson era, it was the only late night talk show that mattered. Viewers have a relationship as much with the tradition and establishment of a show. Millions of Americans find something comforting about routine and being able to watch The Tonight Show while settling in to sleep. And given Leno's popularity, we can only assume that for many people funny isn't a necessary component of a comedy show.

Secondly, even though NBC is by far the least popular network of the four, it may still be the one with which television viewers have the most personal connection. NBC has a much more specific nexus with its location at 30 Rockefeller Center. Because The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, Channel 4 News, Saturday Night Live, Late Night and (fictionally) 30 Rock are all based there, there's a feeling that NBC is an actual location with physical place and staff that all works together rather than a bunch of shows that happen to occupy the same frequency allocation on a transmitter. Secondly, more of its shows are long-running brands that have maintained the same core identity for so long that they have become institutions. Meet The Press is the longest running television show in worldwide broadcasting history, having been on the air continually since 1947. The Today Show has been on since 1952. The Tonight Show has aired continually since 1954. Saturday Night Live has aired since 1975 and Late Night since 1982. Only in two areas (evening news on CBS) and newsmagazine (60 Minutes)) do any of its competitors have longer running institutions than NBC.

Conan put his talk show up for sale on Craigslist.

What happened the last time NBC threatened to replace a Tonight Show host with another host from its network? In 1992, Bill Carter reported for the New York Times, Jay Leno Criticizes NBC On 'Tonight' Cliffhanger. We all know how that turned out.

It seems that Jimmy Kimmel is not a Leno fan. He did his Tuesday night show as Leno and then went direct as a guest on Leno's show:

Myles McNutt, Cultural Learnings, Betrayal at NBC, Colon, What REALLY happened with my Late Night Show, Question Mark, by Conan O’Brien

Anne Helen Petersen, celebrity gossip, academic style, Team Conan: Nice Guys Finish First. Okay, well, kinda.

Lawrence Ebert, IP Biz, "The Tonight Show" controversy: do trademarks have a temporal dimension?. I'd say that since it has always aired after the late local news, The Tonight Show has come to mean NBC's leadoff flagship and least-late of its late night shows.

James Poniewozik, Time Tuned In, Jay Leno: Seabiscuit or War Admiral

Network News and Music

2009-11-02T21:39:05Z

With the internet, network newsmen have the opportunity to publish more journalism than fits in the 30 minutes at 6:30. And they're using that opportunity to blog about music.

NBC News anchor and managing editor Brian Williams blogs about music at BriTunes.

Over at ABC News' Dan Harris writes Amplified.

Brief Thoughts on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert @ MSG

2009-10-30T16:44:04Z

So this little venue in NYC, Madison Square Garden, hosted a small concert last night in celebration of the 15th anniversary of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The bill featured Bruce Sprinsteen & The E-Street Band, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Simon & Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills, Nash and friends. Perhaps you may have heard of some of these artists?

So yeah. That was some bill. And the show lasted until 1:30 AM, as all of the performers brought out special guests, which included Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Dion DiMucci, Little Anthony and The Imperials, Smokey Robinson, BB King, Sting, John Legend, Jeff Beck, Sam Moore, Darlene Love, John Fogerty, Tom Morello and Billy Joel.

Some of the collaborations seemed superfluous, such as Sting playing bass on "Higher Ground" with Stevie, with an awkward segue into a tepid cover of "Roxanne." Others didn't have any flow-- the two acts who played with Simon and Garfunkel (Dion and Little Anthony)-- were obvious influences on Simon and Garfunkel, but didn't really bring any new shadings to the set, which probably would have been more musically memorable if Art Garfunkel and his awesome hair sang with Simon on one of Simon's solo hits. Or just if they dug deeper into their catalog. But Crosby and Nash offered backup vocals to Simon's cover of "Here Comes the Sun." And "Bridge Over Troubled Water" was just tremendous as Garfunkel's voice was more than up to the task of filling the Garden. (Of note, according to the image projected behind the stage, the East River is apparently troubled water.)

Some of the collaborations made up for the extraneous or boring ones. Half of Stevie's guests were teh awesome. Jeff Beck came on stage to wail on the guitar for "Superstition." And it was tremendous. John Legend sang a competent version of Marvin Gaye's "Mercy Mercy Me" with Stevie. (That's a case where a competent version is a tremendous complement. Not an easy song to pull off, and while it didn't reach any higher ground, the song worked.) Legend also sat in on piano with Stevie to cover Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel" for an emotional performance.

Aside from an opening trip to "Woodstock," the Crosby, Stills and Nash set felt lightweight and superfluous to the rest of the night. All three were in fine form vocally, but I could have used another hour of Stevie and Jeff Beck jamming.

Springsteen's choices of guests revealed much about his influences. Sam Moore showed how much of an influence he had on Springsteen as a performer and frontman. It also demonstrated that (with some extra horns) the E Street Band make for a solid soul revue show band. John Fogerty and Tom Morello showed a bit of the continuity of politically oriented rock music. By far, the highlights of Springsteen's set were the songs that Morello sat in for. I'm not a huge fan of Rage Against the Machine, so I had no expectations for Morello's playing (unlike, say, Jeff Beck.) His blistering solo on "The Ghost of Tom Joad" brought the song to a new level and helped elevate a cover of "London Calling" from acceptable to great.

Less musically interesting and successful was the summit meeting between NJ's Springsteen and Lon Gisland's Billy Joel. Unlike the other guests, Joel's appearance wasn't announced on the event's website beforehand, so it was a surprise for me until Bruce started talking about the similarities between NJ and LI and the stagehands brought a second piano on stage. The contrast between Springsteen and Joel is interesting. Both came up in the 70's in the New York suburbs writing and performing music mainly about disaffected teens in the suburbs. While Springsteen's is somewhat more influenced by the soul and folk traditions, Joel's is more directly descended from Tin Pan Alley. Although Sprinsteen himself is a guitar player, his best album, "Born to Run" is as much of a piano-driven album as anything by Joel. But even as someone who is unashamed to own Billy Joel albums, the juxtaposition of the two on the same stage showed me how much more

The interesting contrast between the two is where they took their music after their initial success. Springsteen became an outspoken advocate for the working class through song as stagflation gave way to Reaganomics. He delved deeper into the folk tradition with Nebraska and The Seeger Sessions. He released one of the most relevant and timely albums of this decade with "The Rising" and has continued to write new music. In contrast, Joel evolved from singing about disaffected teens to singing about disaffected middle age adults. His music remained personal, while Springsteen's evolved to add activism and politics to the personal. Joel may have said everything he has Perhaps that's why Joel last released an album of new rock music in 1993, Springsteen has released 6 new albums (3 with the E Street Band and 3 folk albums).

And Springsteen still leads the biggest and baddest rock and roll carnival to roll through town. As a 60 year old, the Boss has more energy than most 25 year old indie rockers.

Via The Star Ledger, Setlists for the show.

Rolling Stone: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Turns 25 With All-Star Sets From Springsteen, Wonder and More, Epic Moments at the Rock Hall 25th Anniversary Concert, Morello, Raitt, Crosby Pay Tribute to Fellow Legends Backstage at First Rock Hall Concert

The CMJ Band Name Index, 2009

2009-10-20T17:35:32Z

This is now an annual tradition! For the second year in a row, we're going to look through the big list of bands coming into town this week for the CMJ Music Marathon and see if we can divine any trends in band naming.

Numbers

Two is by far the most popular number referenced in band naming. 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 12, 28, 69, 70 and 1,000,000 are also represented among this crop of names:

Jupiter One
Once
2am Club
Mystery of Two
Twin Atlantic
Twin Berlin
Two Fresh
Two Tears
Mother Of Three
Mighty Five
School of Seven Bells
The Middle Eight
12th Planet
28 North
69 Eyes
Expo 70
A Million Years

Other Quantities

Some quantities aren't expressible in discrete numbers

So Many Dynamos
So Many Wizards
Super Extra Bonus Party

Speed

Surprisingly, fast and slow are equally represented

The Fast Romantics
Slow Country
Tempo No Tempo

Directions

Go west, young man! All four of the compass directions are represented, but west is the most prevalent.

28 North
Far East Movement
Mark Knight and Dirty South Live
Smith Westerns
Western Civ
The Western States Motel

Geography

Planets and Satellites

12th Planet
Hooray For Earth
Man on Earth
Jupiter One
Moonbabies
Moondoggies
Under The Sherry Moon
We Landed On The Moon!
We Are The World

Continents

Antarctic

Oceans

Pacific Theater
Twin Atlantic

Countries

The Brazil Show
Casino versus Japan
Electro Morocco & Dreams in Static
Japandroids
Japanther
Look Mexico
The Maldives
Portugal. The Man
French Miami
Spanish Prisoners
These United States
Volcanoless In Canada

States

Arizona
The Gulf Of Michigan

Cities

Appomattox
Brighton MA
Capital City
David Dallas
French Miami
Invade Rome
My Jerusalem
NYCSmoke
River Phoenix
Twin Berlin

Neighborhoods

Bel Air
Diamond District
Harlem
Robbers on High Street
The Bowery Riots

Geographical Features

Beach Fossils
Best Coast
Black Bay
The Frontier Brothers
The Frontier Ruckus
The Gulf Of Michigan
River Phoenix
Spiral Beach
Valley of the Shadow of Death
Vertical Horizon

Buildings

The Emergency Room
Home and Garden
The Library
Uninhabitable Mansions

Time

2am Club
A Million Years
All The Day Holiday
Black & White Years
Love In October
The Minutes
Overnight
The Past Times

Seasons

Eternal Summers
Winterpills

Deoartment of Redundancy Department

Bands so nice they named them twice:

Bang Bang Eche
Beep Beep
Blip Blip Bleep
Champagne Champagne
Die! Die! Die!
Dum Dum Girls
Fra Fra Sound
Future Future
Kill Kill Kill
Motel Motel
Runner Runner
Santino Santino
The Seedy Seeds
Shout Out Out Out Out
Still Life Still
Takka Takka
Tall Tall Trees
Tempo No Tempo
Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger!
Veil Veil Vanish
Voices Voices
You Scream I Scream
You, You're Awesome

Transportation

Air

Aeroplane
Aeroplane Pageant
Denney and the Jets
Flying Machines
Hospital Bombers
In-Flight Safety
Jets Overhead
Paper Airplane
Still Flyin

Land

Army Navy
Bridges and Powerlines
Brit and the Cavalry
Broadfield Marchers
Delorean
The Motorcycle Industry
BLACK TAXI
Unicycle Loves You

Sea

Army Navy
Floating Action
Sugar Plum Ferry

Space

Spaceships are Cool
We Landed On The Moon!

High vs. Low

The High Dials
The High Strung
Higher Giant
Highlife
The Hi-Risers
Robbers on High Street
Skyzoo
Jets Overhead
Low Frequency In Stereo

Stereo/Mono

Stereo is exactly twice as popular as mono!

Stereo Skyline
Low Frequency In Stereo
Monogold

Color

Black is again the most popular color represented, followed by gold.

Black & White Years
Black Anvil
Black Cherry
Black Diamond Bay
Black Holes
The Black Hollies
Black Swan Green
BLACK TAXI
Black Tie Party
the black watch
Black Whales
Cruel Black Dove
Dan Black
Red Wire Black Wire
Small Black
Soft Black

Gold Streets
The Golden Filter
Golden Silvers
Golden Triangle
Goldhawk
Solid Gold
Sugar & Gold
Monogold

Hi Red Center
Red Collar
Red/X
Red Wire Black Wire

Bobby Brown
Bosque Brown

White Tie Affair
Black & White Years

Blondes
Blood Orange
Blue Scholars
The Bronzed Chorus
Greycoats
Pink Noise
The YellowDogs

Light vs. Dark

Light is slightly more popular than dark and shadow.

Headlights
Lightning Love
The Lights Out
Lights Resolve
Dark Meat
Dark Room Notes
Valley of the Shadow of Death

Animals

Bears, birds, whales and dinosaurs, oh my!

Bears

Angry Vs. The Bear
Bear Hands
Bear In Heaven
Care Bears on Fire
Mama Bear

Birds

Common Loon
Cruel Black Dove
Black Swan Green
An Albatross
Fearsome Sparrow
Hawk and Dove
Heavy Birds
Rainbird
Slang Chickens
Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt

Whales

Black Whales
Freelance Whales
Vulture Whale

Cats

The Jaguar Club
Japanther
Kittens Ablaze
Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger!
Spring Tigers
Tigercity

Wolves

Julia Wolfe
We Are Wolves
Whistling Wolves

Other Dogs

Coyote Eyes
Pitbull
Moondoggies
The YellowDogs

Dinosaurs

Claymation Velociraptor
Dinosaur Feathers

Insects

Beehive
Annie And the Beekeepers
Deer Tick

Chimeras

Dinowalrus
Dragon Turtle

All Others

The Antlers
Batrider
Cobra Skulls
Crystal Antlers
Fox Jaws
Goat Whore
Kate Bradley & Goodbye Horses
Mussels
Pig Destroyer
Skibunny
The Telepathic Butterflies
We Are Country Mice
Wild Yaks

Food & Drink

Bamboo Shoots
The Beautiful Taste
Black Cherry
Blood
Coconuts
Cookie Martini
Dark Meat
Drink Up Buttercup
Hank & Cupcakes
Heavy Cream
Hungry Hands
Hungry Hungry Ghost
Lemonade
Mussels
Pomegranates
Sugar & Gold
Sugar Plum Ferry

Weight

Fat Tony
Fatkid Dodgeball
Heavy Birds
Heavy Cream
Heavy Trash

New vs. Old

New and modern are much more popular than old, vintage, classic or historic.

Awesome New Republic
Future Future
Miracles of Modern Science
Modern Science
Modern Skirts
The New Collisions
The New Loud
New Villager
The Past Times
Old Canes
Linc with Old Soul

Government and International Relations

Republic is by far the most favored form of government and the Senate is the preferred representative body by this year's crop of bands. Surprisingly, no fans of direct democracy in the bunch.

Awesome New Republic
Great Republic of Rough and Ready
Senator
The Senate
French Horn Rebellion
International Espionage!
Invade Rome
The Surrender
Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt

Blood

A surprising number of bands are either vampires or decided to use blood in their band names for some other reason.

Blood Orange
Blood Warrior
Bloodgroup
The Bloodsugars
Surfer Blood
Type O Negative

Gender

Male

Best Man
The Boy Bathing
The Brothers Frank
Brother Joscephus & the Love Revival Revolution Orchestra
Dead Men Dreaming
Frat Dad
The Frontier Brothers
Gentleman Auction House
Holy Sons
The Lives of Famous Men
Madison Ave Boys
Male Bonding
Man Like Me
Man on Earth
Natureboy
octoberman
Papa
The Protomen
The Queen Killing Kings

Female

Bodega Girls
Kleenex Girl Wonder
Little Girls
Mama Bear
Metermaids
Mother Of Three
Priestess
Screaming Females
Sister Hazel
Sister Sparrow and The Dirty Birds

Young vs. Old

Chris Young The Rapper
Choir of Young Believers
Grandchildren
Bodega Girls
Holy Sons
Kleenex Girl Wonder
Little Girls
Moonbabies
My Teenage Stride
Natural Child
Teenage Bottlerocket
The Teenage Prayers
Young Boys
Young Prisms
Youth Group
Baby Monster
Kid Color
Kid Theodore
Kidz In Space
Kidz In The Hall
Jim McTurnan and The Kids that Killed The Band
Mother Of Three
Dead Men Dreaming
Frat Dad
The Neanderthals
Old Canes

Instruments

Does French Horn Rebellion have a french horn player in the band?

The Bongos
Cymbals Eat Guitars
Erin and Her Cello
French Horn Rebellion

Sports

Boogie Boarder
Fatkid Dodgeball
Hockey
Let's Wrestle
Surf City
Surfer Blood
Swimclub
The Swimmers
Tennis Pro
Unicycle Loves You

Teams vs. Bands

Surprisingly, this roster features slightly more bands that are teams than there are bands that are bands.

Team Facelift
Team Genius
Team Robespierre
Team William
Math the Band
Menahan Street Band
Mia Riddle & Her Band

Body Parts

The Idle Hands
Hungry Hands
Hammer No More The Fingers
The Naked Hearts
No Eye Contact
Shaky Hands
The Unsacred Hearts

Temperature

Cold Cave
Cold Flamez
Hot Lava
Hot Panda
HotChaCha
Spit Hot Fire

Life and Death

Dead Heart Bloom
Dead Leaf Echo
Dead Men Dreaming
Dead Sexy Inc.
Dead Stars
Deadbeat Darling
Die! Die! Die!
Diehard
Kill Kill Kill
Kill Krinkle Club
Ringo Deathstarr
Valley of the Shadow of Death
We Should Be Dead
Highlife
Still Life Still
Mammoth Life
Jonny Lives!
The Lives of Famous Men

Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll

Drug Rug
drugdealer
Drunken Barn Dance
Dirty Sexy Soca
Dead Sexy Inc.

Love

Enemy Lovers
The Fast Romantics
Unicycle Loves You
Love Heist
Love In October
The Love Language
LoveLikeFire
The Lovely Feathers
Lovemakers

Volume

Not surprisingly, loud is more popular.

The New Loud
Quiet Loudly

Shapes

The Elusive Parallelograms
Goes Cube
Golden Triangle
The Octagon

Rank/Title

Filthy Dukes
General Fiasco
I Was A King
Jess King
King Chango
The King Left
Sgt Dunbar and the Hobo Banned

The Four Elements

Man on Earth
Air Waves
The Fire & Reason
Fire Ex
Care Bears on Fire
Kittens Ablaze
Last Tide
LoveLikeFire
Quest For Fire
Spit Hot Fire
Sure Fire
Rain Machine
Rainbird
The Sea

Size

Big and small are tied at 5 apiece.

Giant Cloud
Gigantic Hand
Nomadic Massive
Big Sean
The Big Takeover
Little Fish
Little Girls
Little Teeth
Small Black
Beautiful Small Machines

Complete sentences

We Are Country Mice
We Are Enfant Terrible
We Are The World
We Are Wolves
We Have Band
We Landed On The Moon!
We Should Be Dead
Jonny Lives!
We're Pregnant
The Whore Moans

Exclamation points!

Die! Die! Die!
Gunfight!
International Espionage!
Jonny Lives!
We Landed On The Moon!
pow wow!
Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger!
Zo! & The Els

Other Snazzy Names

These are some names that I couldn't build a cateogry around, but are entertaining nonetheless:

Meeting of Important People
Phil & The Osophers
Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers

Names in bold are bands we can definitely recommend seeing. Band names in italics are bands we would consider seeing just because their names are awesomely clever or ridiculous.

See also Ear Farm's CMJ preview, which provides recommendations and information about silly little details like time and location.

Two hypotheses of live music

2009-10-16T17:22:03Z

1. The better the venue is for the performer, the worse it is for the audience.

2. Hearing songs for the first time is a very different experience than hearing them a second, third, sixteenth or 64th time.

Last night, I caught Them Crooked Vultures' debut NYC performance at Roseland Ballroom. Prior to the show, I had not heard more than a 30 second clip of any of their music. But a few factors convinced me to buy tickets for the show. The rhythm section comes from two of the greatest rock bands of all time (Led Zeppelin and Nirvana) and the guitarist/lead singer from a band that I appreciate and enjoy (Queens of the Stone Age). Aside from hearing a single, I went to The Raconteurs first appearance in New York with no more information than knowing the prior work of Jack White and Brendan Benson, and caught a great show. But I was only appropriately whelmed by Them Crooked Vultures. I suspect that the venue and familiarity kept this show from reaching the next level.

Venue & Comfort
Roseland is a pretty terrible place to see a concert. The sound is muddy and booming in the cavernous room. Any precise and dynamic bass playing just gets lost in the mud of Roseland's acoustics. Fortunately, John Paul Jones plays with a fairly distinctive sound that helps emphasize the attack at the beginning of each note. The sightlines from the floor are atrocious. There's not enough traffic flow for the capacity this room can handle to make entering and exiting easy or quick.

New York's other venues of similar capacity, including Hammerstein Ballroom, Webster Hall, Terminal 5, also present similar compromises to concertgoers, with boomy sound, crowded feeling at capacity, poor sight lines and insufficent bar staff to handle peak rush without queues. Which leads me to propose the hypothesis that there is an inverse relationship between a venue's quality of experience for performers as for audience. At a large hall like Roseland or Hammerstein, the artist has a proper dressing room, large stage, a dedicated sound engineer for the monitor mix, and space for a big lighting rig. But the audience has to deal with the hassles. At a small club with capacity of up to a couple of hundred, bands may lack a dressing room, someone to run lights, inadequate monitors and have to deal with the hassles of loading gear on and off stage through the crowd rather than directly back to a dedicated back-stage location, but the audience benefits from good sight lines and decent sound. The larger the artist is of a draw, the more the artist needs to be pampered and the audience will be willing to put up with more hassles. The smaller the artist, the more the audience needs to be made comfortable.

Here's an approximate graph of the relationship between venue size and comfort level for artists and their audiences:

At the intersection of the audience comfort and artist comfort curve is Bowery Ballroom along with other clubs of similar size. Big enough to have enough resources to put on a top-level show, but small and intimate enough to offer a good experience for the audience.

Familiarity
There's a certain level of familiarity with a piece of music that makes it more enjoyable for a listener. The brain needs to do some amount of work to process music at first that listening to a song that one's heard before is a very different experience from listening to a new song. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was so different and difficult, that the audience rioted at the piece's debut. Seriously, they rioted.

And I can think of a couple of concerts I've seen the familiarity phenomenon in full effect. At the Raconteurs first show at Irving Plaza, The audience became significantly more engaged once the Raconteurs played the one single they had released to date, "Steady as She Goes." When U2 played a free concert in Empire-Fulton Ferry Park in 2004, the first 7 songs of the set were all songs from their new, yet-to-be-released album. It was very obvious to see who downloaded the album in advance from the internet and who hadn't. But the energy level of the crowded raised dramatically when the band broke into older singles, "Beautiful Day" and "I Will Follow." The audience was much more engaged and energized by hearing familiar material that U2 played the new single, Vertigo, again to feed off that energy to get a better performance for the film crew.

By not releasing more than snippets of music, Them Crooked Vultures gave the audience something new, but not anything especially engaging. And because it takes mental energy to process new music, the crowd was sapped of a lot of its energy. The last time I went to a concert at Roseland was to see Radiohead nine (!) years ago. And all of the drawbacks of the venue were there, but the crowd had more energy, in part because Radiohead played a couple of days after their album dropped and also had old fan favorites to mix in with their new material.

The first few songs of Them Crooked Vultures' set were all huge, riff-heavy energetic tracks that, as expected, combined the bombast of Nirvana with Zeppelin's grounding and Queens of the Stone Age sludgy grit. The last song featured an epic and heavy jam. But neither the songs themselves nor Homme's singing helped make the performance more than the sum if its parts. The biggest influence on the group's sound was Queens of the Stone Age. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing-- unlike some other groups assembled from members of other well-known groups, the parts here add up to something good and coherent. But it also lacked Nirvana's skill for songwriting and Zeppelin's heft and showmanship.

As expected, Grohl is a formidable drummer. But you also see just how Jones' style works with Grohl's to give the rhythm section a taste of Zeppelin, but not attempting to mimic or ape the Jones/Bonham sound.

NPR's Bob Boilen was very enthused with the band's show at the 9:30 Club, "It's been a while since I've been to a show that I'd call 'balls to the wall,' but Them Crooked Vultures aren't holding back. From their first song, 'Elephant,' to the song playing right now, called 'Highway 1,' nuance has left the building. Granted, I'm only four songs into the show, but good lord, this rocks." I suspect that at a club the size of the 9:30 Club as opposed to Roseland, the room didn't swallow up much of the show's appeal, which helped the audience enjoy the show that much more.

Don't get me wrong: this was a very good show. Unfortunately, with a couple of tweaks, it could have been an epic show.

See also, Rolling Stone: Them Crooked Vultures Blast Through Jams at New York Debut

Barbra Streisand at the Vanguard

2009-09-29T17:51:17Z

As a jazz fan, I always love going to the Village Vanguard. Sitting in the club, you can feel the room's connection with Miles, Coltrane, Sonny, Evans, Dolphy and all of the jazz past, present and future. The club's pedigree elevates the level of performances on its stage. And so when I got invited to see Barbra Streisand there, how could I refuse?

Playing to a jam-packed house filled with contest winners, Streisand's family and friends (including President Clinton and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton), and film crew (and their lighting equipment), the show was as much an intimate gathering of friends as it was a film session as it was a concert. Streisand performed a mix of standards, tracks from her new album and her signature hits.

Eschewing an opening act for introductions by Vanguard owner Ruth Gordon and some of the other people who helped Streisand first break into success as a performer at various clubs (of a now-bygone era) in the Village kicked the evening off with the special feel. The audience was part of a small intimate party and performance.

Once the show started, however, from one perspective, we were taken out of the immediacy and intimacy of the show. Sitting on the side of the room towards the front, the view of pianist Tamir Hendelman was blocked, but the view of Streisand's teleprompter was clear. So we could read the script that Streisand followed. To one extent, this took away from any sense that the set was a loose, improvised and breezy little set in front of a group of friends, but was a reminder of the major film production part of the hybrid nature of the evening.

On the other hand, having a sense of that a good deal of the banter was scripted gives one a tremendous appreciation of why Streisand is in such high regard as a performer, because you could see how much meaning she puts into every phrase. And though the teleprompter cues were used more as reminders of the points she wanted to discuss rather than a script, Streisand's voice is so expressive that she could (as the trope goes) read the phone book and make it engaging, dynamic and interesting. Whether Streisand's performance is impeccably rehearsed or spontaneously improvised, I doubt you could tell the difference, because her dynamics are so precise and expressive.

Unlike most broadway-style performers, nothing about Streisand's performance felt artificial or calculated. It all felt natural, heartfelt and authentic. And it's not to say that the show was perfected to within an inch of its life. There was enough of a rough edge to the set that Streisand walked off stage to close the set one song earlier than she intended. As a result, the audience got an encore twice as long as intended.

The backing quartet, led by pianist Hendelman, was impeccable, but also unobtrusive and rarely featured. Hendelman played one well constructed and melodic solo and tasteful segues and vamps between songs. But for a album intended to be more of a jazz album at the country's premier jazz club, there was no swing to the set until the final encore, "The Way We Were," where the drummer switched to sticks from brushes for the first time in the set and the guitarist added interesting and tasteful soaring lines.

But since Streisand's voice was the top-billed star of the show, in impeccable form, that's what carried the show. Anthony Tommasini interviewed Streisand for the New York Times and discussed her vocal technique. Streisand’s Fine Instrument and Classic Instinct

"[Streisand] revealed herself as a vocal artist with powerful, if innate, insights into phrasing, legato, vibrato, interpretive nuances and, most important, the art of singing as an expression of words.… Opera singers might learn from Ms. Streisand’s way of treating singing as an extension of acting. In working so hard to cultivate the beauty and carrying power of their voices, too many opera singers compromise with indistinct diction and generic expression. Ms. Streisand sings as if she is speaking to you."

That's what carried the show. Not the songs, not the dynamic interplay between the singer and her band, but her voice. Which is not to say that there weren't moments where the arrangements came together to propel, as in "My Funny Valentine," which was one of the high points of the night. But on other songs, such as "Make Someone Happy," where Streisand's voice conveyed deep emotions and forged a connection with the audience, and she embodied all the pathos of the song and earned a standing ovation. And despite a lack of songs at anything faster than a ballad, the set did have an arc and momentum that carried it to the end, culminating with classic standards ("Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered") and her own signature hits ("Evergreen" and "The Way We Were.")

All in all, a tremendous performance, and an encouragement for all major musical artists to play rooms a few sizes smaller than they ordinarily would, to try material in more intimate arrangement and less stage-managed settings.

The Village Vanguard Set List

The New York Times, Lucky Streisand Fans Were A-Listers for a Night

NPR, Barbra Streisand, Live At The Village Vanguard?

The Barbra Streisand Forum, An Evening with Barbra Streisand at VV (The Show)