one from the vault: deer tick
Tattoo artists may just pocket the money without a comment, but there must be some occasions when their kinder, wiser natures surface, and they ask the client: are you sure? You do know this is permanent? Like, for example, when John MacCauley, aka Deer Tick, decided to get a tattoo of the California Raisins on his upper arm. What do we make of this? Is it a youthful mistake? Or a sign of a healthy sense of humor? All I can say is he makes better decisions in the studio. His new one, Born on Flag Day, will be out on June 23rd, and it would make great sense to talk about it here, now (it’s good) but…you know how sitcoms, during a writer’s strike, or when they’re just lazy, or when one of their stars has recently been arrested for possession, will cobble together a ‘flashback’ episode? Well, things have been crazy here at the Blue Trenchcoat lately, so we’re digging out something from long, long ago that I never ran, and it is…
A Review of Deer Tick’s War Elephant, in 10 Parts
1. I’d heard the name Deer Tick from a student of mine, and also just generally burbling around in the persistent music promotion babble-sphere. Deer Tick. I realize now that I made an unconscious connection to the band Deerhoof, and so assumed Deer Tick would be difficult and celebrated and not much fun. This was wrong. Inevitably I make all kinds of assumptions about an artist before actually hearing the product, the primary one always being that he/she/they won’t live up to the hype. This is usually a good bet, because the chatter is constant and constantly stoked by the promoters. Most CDs arrive in the mail accompanied by a one-sheet that says three things: 1) This band sounds like someone you absolutely love combined with someone else you absolutely love, all filtered through the imagination of someone else you absolutely love, 2) This band actually sounds like no one other than themselves, because they’re out to change the music world, and 3) Everyone already loves them anyway, so you’d better jump on board, or you’re going to be behind the times, idiot.
2. So there is skepticism. This is dispelled by the first twenty-eight seconds (give or take) of the first track, “Ashamed,” which reminds me again how confidence manifests in patience, and (later) what an invaluable talent it is to know when a song is over. And man, is he going to get sick of “The Next Dylan” type comments. (In fact, he has said that he hadn’t heard much Dylan before recording War Elephant. His friends have since bought him some Dylan. He likes it.)
3. The hype problem isn’t just due to hype professionals, though – after all, if you read six or seven hundred of those promotional one-sheets, it does dawn on you that they’re not informative. The other problem is of course us, people like me, who either under- or overrate everything, because the dispiriting, dull truth is that most CDs fall into the all-engulfing Not Bad but Not Great category. So we try to spice it up, and in doing so sometimes we seize on a pretty good band and call them the next Bob Dylan.
4. So expectations remain low. Too often these days I hear so much about the artist before actually hearing the artist, and the listening experience is disappointing. This is partly due to allmusic.com, a website that I rely on, that I love, but one that also tends to treat anyone who has ever recorded a note as a misunderstood genius. I read these essays about Pere Ubu and Art in Manila and gear myself up for music that will change my life. And for the most part it doesn’t – it sounds like Pere Ubu. But this, this Deer Tick guy, he seems good.
5. Here we are, only on track 2 “Art Isn’t Real (City of Sin)”, and this still seems good. Of course, many artists frontload their CDs, and if these are the best two tracks on the album, I like them, but this is not lightning striking my stereo and granting me super powers.
6. It occurs to me that, because of my title here, some readers may want an actual description of the album. Singer-songwriter-ish, raspy, honky-tonky, a little raucous, accessible, etc. Another one of the problems out here in music appreciation land is that so many of us love to do this that we burn up all the descriptives. And then we try to Original Metaphor each other into submission, so Deer Tick’s new album becomes the letter Q on fire, or France’s medical system as imagined by a fresh plate of zucchini. I like this stuff and it’s still worthwhile to attempt an effective description, but sometimes you have to throw your hands up. If it were possible to say what it sounded like, why would he record it?
7. I can’t avoid mentioning that Pitchfork provided a typically snarky review, which brings us back to the fact that no matter how well-spoken a critic is, sometimes he’s useless, because his experience is not yours. When I read that review, I’m convinced – he sure sounds like he knows what he’s talking about, and I feel naïve for liking Deer Tick. But the thing is: I like Deer Tick.
8. Here we are on track 4: Ok, this is great. This is where I expected the tail-off in quality, and instead, this is where the album really starts. He just placed himself into an entirely different mental category, that is, moving from He’s Got Promise to Who Cares What I Think? Judge Not, Let the Man Work, Etc.
9. There is no part 9.
10. The moon is full, the air is warm, WHAT IS THIS GUY’S TOUR SCHEDULE? I feel like eating the earth – granted, partly this is because I got a good parking spot at Ralph’s, partly this is because I had a full day of work & I’m done, but partly this is because our man Deer Tick has reminded me that I like music. Music fun.
Now, after all that, here’s a track that isn’t on the album - it’s from the Splice Today compilation, Old Lonesome Sound, which, I mean, wow, and stuff.
Jeff Hanson 1978-2009
News broke today that Jeff Hanson died. There are certain artists who somehow don’t catch the wave of indie press & love, or else ride it only shakily, of those, some of my favorites: Dan Reeder, Headgear, Jeff Hanson. I don’t know what happened - the press release says only ‘tragic accident,’ and a story from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune indicates that it may have been a fall. Whatever happened, it’s a shame. As you will agree after you hear this. And yes, he sounds like a girl. R.I.P.
oh girl, I’d be so sorry if you gave me a root canal: the chi-lites
Others have pointed to more obviously dramatic instances of ‘music-changed-my-life-and-made-me-see-the-light,’ the most common type of which would be where the person, despondent, possibly suicidal, hears Huey Lewis and the News and realizes it’s time to pull it all together and go on. William S. Burroughs claimed, in Junky, that he kicked a heroin habit with the help of some Louis Armstrong records. But I can’t think of a higher compliment to a song than what happened to me this morning: I was in a dentist’s chair, peering up at the boxed fluorescent light, with my dentist and dental hygienist leaning over me, doing horrible things to me with their shiny instruments, and I was feeling genuinely grateful to be alive, feeling that feeling associated with both uplifting films about terminal patients and also excellent hallucinogenic drugs or the lord’s spirit, because “Oh Girl” by the Chi-Lites was playing. I am not suggesting that we replace modern anesthetics with smooth seventies soul. But these are good songs.
suspended in our masquerade: bruce springsteen & the e st. band, frank erwin center, austin, texas
To see Bruce Springsteen - who will turn 60 this year - live in concert is to call into question the intensity of your life: what have you been doing? Are you committed to it? Are you so committed to it that you’ll push yourself and your colleagues to the breaking point every night for forty years? No?
That’s what, in part, keeps the whole Bruce shtick from being laughable: it would take someone truly small and mean-spirited (not to mention delusional) to feel superior to Bruce Springsteen in the middle of his show. You can’t maintain it. He’ll overwhelm you with the first few bars of “Badlands”. You could try to be cooler than all the aging joyous white dorks around you, but you paid for tickets too. You’re one of them.
We were all out in force on Sunday night at the Frank Erwin center in Austin, Texas, and it was all silly, it felt silly beforehand and in retrospect and any time you could pull away for a second to think, but it doesn’t feel silly when you’re in the arena with Bruce, singing “The night is dark but the sidewalk’s bright/And lined with the light of the living” and meaning it, man.
Also helping to make it all seem less frivolous is the fact that the era and the mood Bruce has always been singing about is actually here now, in a way that it maybe has never been in his career. A Springsteen concert is always powerful, but there’s a little extra resonance now in some of the lines from “Seeds” or “Johnny 99” (I had debts no honest man could pay/The bank was holdin’ my mortgage and they was takin’ my house away) …or at any rate the audience feels there should be; it’s still a little blurry whether Bruce is about a romantic notion of hardscrabble America or about the real thing.
But again, that kind of critical nitpicking feels sour in the face of this man’s energy: how on earth does he do it? He’s a total ham; the jittery shoulder shrugs, the hip shakes, the audience callouts, every pause and pose and strut are all played to maximum theatrical effect, and yet there’s also a feeling of overwhelming sincerity to the whole thing. He looks, onstage, both like a professional on top of his game, and like a conduit for something holy. He plays the preacher only a little bit tongue in cheek, and some of the fans would readily handle snakes or speak in tongues.
His band, meanwhile, looks exhausted. They look like normal humans trying to play at Bruce’s intensity late into their 50’s, which is basically impossible. I thought Max Weinberg was going to stroke.
Anyway: what else is there to say about Bruce Springsteen that hasn’t been said a thousand times? He has the best “1-2-3-4” in touring rock and roll, and I say the second best ever (Ramones). Maybe he’s not as important for every American to see as, say, the Grand Canyon, but he’s a phenomenon; even if you can’t stand the whole scene, just as a student of life you’re falling down on the job if you don’t get out and see the man in concert.
Here he is, not from Sunday, but from a Zevon tribute:
there is no methadone for the blues
White blues guitar blowhards are really not in fashion these days - see George Thorogood - so it seems especially tricky that Austin decided to tie its identity so closely to Stevie Ray Vaughan. For reasons having something to do with music, something to do with sales, and something to do with aviation mishaps, we have a bronze statue of Mr. Texas Flood down by the river. It crops up in all kinds of brochures and murals, and seems to me only a couple of steps away from a bronze of Erik Estrada, or Steven Seagal. Philadelphia, we feel your pain.
But I do have to give Stevie Ray thanks, and credit, and an unseen raise of the coffee cup, for bringing me into blues music. He was truly a gateway musician for me: as Jack Nicholson said in Easy Rider, he led to harder stuff. My friend John had Texas Flood in our NYC apartment, I played that thing over and over, and listening to that and the Great Tomato Blues Package
The first articles I published on music (thanks, Southland Blues!) were about a local (L.A.) bluesman, J.J. “Bad Boy” Jones (R.I.P.). And a J.J. show was, in turn, the first place I heard “Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody’s Home”, and come on now, things are all pretty good after you hear that song. You could say, in fact, that if not for Stevie Ray Vaughan, I might be doing something useful, contributing to society, earning a decent living, building a haven for battered cats. Yes: let’s blame him for that too. It is partly his fault that I’ll always come back to blues music - if I ever feel a little shaky about what I’m doing out here, in the blogosphere, talking endless crap, I can always listen to any of the aforementioned artists, and it all makes good sense again.
So, thanks, Stevie Ray Vaughan. And now here’s some of the harder stuff:
*in fact, Steve Buschemi modeled his character in Ghost World after me. Well, he could have. Incidentally, J.J. ‘Bad Boy’ Jones actually was in Ghost World, playing, basically, himself, which made the whole film into a strange overlapping parallel universe for me, and left me deeply confused. But I’m ok now.
elvis is everywhere: sxsw wrap-up
The full list of bands I wanted to see but missed would make a killer festival all on its own - so let’s not spend too much time in that half-empty world. Friday afternoon I headed to the east side with the intention of catching the unfortunately named Deer Tick at Ms. Bea’s; instead I got one of the best surprises of my SXSW: Rafter, so amped up that his stage patter bordered on incoherence, but his act, absolutely lights-out fantastic.
Deer Tick, it was announced, was a “hungover, flaky motherfucker” and they bumped him from his slot. I found the people of Alarm over at the Scoot Inn, where Zoroaster easily destroyed what was left of my eardrums. Then we all either suffered from a collective fever dream about Japanese game shows, or else Peelander-Z took the stage. All I know is people were jumping off of the rooftops, dressed up as bowling pins, and shouting “Medium Rare” in thick Japanese accents. You know: another one of those bands.
There is plenty of goofy acreage in my heart, and I always reserve part of it for Denver’s Dressy Bessy. They were at the Jackalope, one of the few bars on Sixth that can claim something resembling atmosphere. Dressy Bessy are campy without being wimpy. Imagine a Phil Spector-era Rocket to Russia Ramones on ecstasy. Or imagine all the people, living life in peace, but Dressy Bessy is here now, and on tour. (As a wise man once said, I’d rather have a beer with Tammy Ealom than Thom Yorke any day - but maybe this is faint praise.)
This is when I hit the wall, or, said HST’s way, this is when I got The Fear, and scrapped most of the rest of my night. Across the river for Alejandro Escovedo at SXSanJose (that hotel probably wins the Best Free Showcase award; they also had Billy Joe Shaver on Thursday). My feeling is, when you’re watching Alejandro Escovedo and able to appreciate him only dimly, it’s bedtime.
Final day: another attempt at Deer Tick, another failure. This time he was slated for Homeslice Pizza, and he finally cancelled about a half hour after his start time (”ill”). The romantically self-destructive thing ends up Chuck E. Weiss much, much more often than it does Tom Waits. I’m just saying.
White trash punkabilly hero Mojo Nixon (pictured up top) was once surprised onstage at Austin’s Hole in the Wall by Don Henley, who joined him for an impromptu duet on “Don Henley Must Die”. Where else could that kind of thing happen? Mojo Nixon, who has the best name in the business*, played the Continental on Saturday, and it was the best show I’ve ever almost seen. I was on the sidewalk watching through the open door - it was packed. No sign of Don.
A series of mostly unremarkable punk/metal shows followed, up and down Red River. SXSW went out, for me, not exactly with a whimper - the final act I caught was Ty Segall at, I don’t know, Red 7 maybe, one of the endless blur of Sixth Street spaces, and he/they impressed - but not with the over-the-top glory of Phosphorescent, the Gourds, or T-Bird and the Breaks, or what I’m sure would have been an excellent closeout show, The Mother Truckers at the Continental. There is no deeper meaning here. Maybe just that I had about eighty hours of stamina for a ninety-six hour event.
Ty Segall, Rafter, and Efterklang: sounds like an intergalactic law firm, but they’re the bright spots out of those bands I saw with zero expectations. There were no real disappointments; Gurf Morlix and the Delta Spirit maybe didn’t quite do what I thought they might. The ones I missed that hurt the most? Okkervil River, who I seem destined to never see, and T-Bird and the Breaks, who I’ll see in April, so how can I complain? All said and done, I do feel a little like a kid on December 26th; on the other hand, South Congress is almost peaceful now, and we can start bracing for next year. I’ll be honest, I’ve got nothing for you in terms of conclusions. SXSW wore me out. Please insert some central Texas pithiness of your own devising.
*apologies to Sleepy LaBeef.
my own ode to sunshine: sxsw at the french legation
Even at its present massive size, SXSW can still sometimes feel like a little community picnic, sun-dappled, idyllic, with cold cans of Lone Star and paper plates of food - that type of thing. Or anyway it felt that way up at the French Legation on Thursday afternoon. (It helps to get away from 6th street.)
According to the dictionary, a legation is the official residence of a diplomatic minister - the French sent one of those bad boys to Austin back when Texas was a republic, and they built him a lovely home, which is now, apparently, the oldest frame structure in town, and demonstrably the best place to spend a sunny afternoon watching indie pop. The northern europeans invaded the Legation on Thursday; I caught the end of the Danish band Efterklang, and loved them, stuck around for the scots Camera Obscura, who even at half-vocal strength (one was ill) were damn good. In fact I should not have left - an important SXSW lesson is the old bird in hand. Another important lesson: do not attempt to bike up the hill to the French Legation. You will not make it.
Out at dinner our waiter was, naturally, a member the local band Great Nostalgic. If I get this post up in time it will be useful for you to know you can catch them (for free!) at Uchi, 801 S. Lamar, at 1:15 Saturday. If I don’t post in time, let’s expect to look back on it all fondly.
Blue Trenchcoat favorite M. Ward at Auditorium Shores was even better than we all had reason to expect - that guy puts on a surprisingly fiery show; he even duck-walked a little for his cover of “Roll Over Beethoven,” and closed out with his stellar version of local brilliant oddball Daniel Johnston’s song “To Go Home”: “I’ll be true to you/you know I will/I’ll be true to you/forever or until/I go home.”
Based on their excellent album Ode to Sunshine, I would have placed money that Delta Spirit were going to rip the roof off wherever they played. I saw them at the Courtyard St. Cafe; the architect ripped the roof off years ago (where are his groupies?), and maybe for that reason Delta Spirit didn’t quite match my expectations. Still, they were good, and I highly recommend the album.
There followed a period of wandering. I met two members of the Manhattan Love Suicides at the Driskill Hotel; they’re Jonathan Richman fans and must be good people.
I don’t think there’s a better club in Austin than the Continental, and I don’t think there’s a better band to see at the Continental than the Gourds - except maybe the Mother Truckers, who will be there tonight at 1:00 - so once again, I closed well. “Whoever said sleep is a thief just ain’t right in the head,” they sang, and I thought, amen, and went home to bed.
night one winners: the besties and phosphorescent at sxsw
A frontman is a frontman is a frontman, as I believe Gertrude Stein said, and the Besties have got them a frontman. Rikky Walsh rocks the Billy Crudup-as-Prefontaine 70s ’stache, and he’s comfy onstage, flanked by the two Besties ladies, and backed up by their absurdly happy drummer (even for a drummer, this guy was happy) and topped off with a trumpet player who makes the word ‘gangly’ seem inadequate. What the Besties don’t have, in Austin anyway, is much of a following, so I found myself in a sparse crowd at Maggie May’s to start my night on Wednesday. But who cares? They’re a great show, weird sugary fuzzed out rock, like the B-52s without being, you know, annoying. I hope to hear more of them. My advice to them would be to drop the graduate school humility and go ahead and be a rock band: follow that front man. Play the game. (And let the Lady Stage Right sing more…)
Otherwise my Wednesday started to shape up like a wash: I wandered around, ate bad pizza, waited in line at Paradise with all the beautiful people to hear Harlem Shakes, although after a few songs it was still unclear why we were all so excited to be there. Maybe the beautiful people are more prone to group psychosis than the rest of us.
I dragged my dispirited self to Club De Ville, and thanks be to the lord that I did so, because Phosphorescent tore the night apart. His whole band seems to be engaged in a beard-growing competition, which makes them all look terribly glum, but you can’t argue with the music. I had forgotten that of course he was going to play tracks off of To Willie, his Willie Nelson tribute album, and sure enough, he played nothing but. This goes over well in Austin. He closed with a raw and wild version of The Party’s Over: “Let’s call it a night/the party’s over/and tomorrow we’ll do the same thing over again…” He left the stage, stepped into the crowd, threw his arm around some dude, and cheered on his own band as they ripped through the crescendo. Never seen that trick before. Phosphorescent wins night one.
I wasn’t on board that early with Phosphorescent; he was already on his way when I threw my all-powerful support behind him, but I was early enough that I feel a certain amount of pride seeing him make good. He’s on top right now. Go see him if you can.
Anyone checking in here for Who To See Next, these are some of my ideas: many of these day shows are free…
yo adrian: let’s kick off sxsw with gurf morlix
Running doesn’t really fit with the musical hipster image, but then neither does changing diapers, (unless they’re skull diapers as designed by Shepard Fairey), and I’ll be doing plenty of that this week, and very little sleeping, so I’m thinking, considering the marathon nature of not only this event but also now this sentence, I had best abandon any pretense of sleeve-tattooed, dangerous, cancer-ridden cool, and train like Rocky*. We don’t have a walk-in freezer, or sides of beef, but I like to cram myself into the Kitchen-Aid and swat at frozen packs of Pedialyte. Don’t kid yourself: this is how De La Hoya does it.
gringo starr vs. ringo deathstarr: best band names of sxsw
SXSW is here, and what you really need, what you can’t get anywhere else, the thing that will put the jam in your jelly roll, is, naturally, a carefully planned schedule of the best SXSW band names.
*best of luck with your google search for that one.