Del Fuegos Rock Brooklyn

You might not know it from this occasional blog, but for the past 7 or 8 years I've been reliving the '80s in the '00s, or something like that. Even though I played at CBGB's twice in the early 80's (with my band The Vegetables) I kind of felt like I missed the whole punk/new wave scene when it was hot. Other than the Gang of Four and the Talking Heads it all just kind of slipped by. Well, I don't think I'll get a chance to see The Clash or The Sex Pistols, for some reason. But I have made a point of getting to every reunion or contemporary continuation I could. This got me a ticket to The Psychedelic Furs, the Meat Puppets, Camper Van Beethoven, Wire, The Ex, Blondie, and maybe a few others if I think about it.

The Del Fuegos at The Bell House in Brooklyn

So it seemed like a natural to check out the Del Fuegos on the next to last stop of their why-did-we-stop-touring-again? tour, at Brooklyn's Bell House. Beats me why the place wasn't packed; maybe after Dan Zanes' second musical career people were expecting a night of children's songs. Or is it that spring training just started and these guys are from Boston? That origin immediately marks a band as suspicious, in my book, not just because of that city's eponymous entry in the stadium rocker catalogue but because when I try to think of bands from Boston that I like, it kind of goes Aerosmtih... Aerosmith... Aero..... Okay, The Lemonheads, aka Evan Dando & Friends, had a couple of decent albums. I had a friend who tried to convince me that the Mighty Mighty Bosstones were a great band. Guess I'm picky.

I frankly knew nothing about the Del Fuegos other than that they were yet one more post-punk band that I'd never seen live. I still know only as much about them as Wikipedia has to offer. Can't even give you a list of the material they played. But "I Still Want You" was in there, and I assume "Don't Run Wild" went by at some point. The band was tight both vocally and instrumentally, notwithstanding some technical problems with Warren's axe that marred a couple of numbers.

Dan Zanes is visually interesting on stage, in addition to having a voice that doesn't seem to have lost much over time. Inbetween lines he moves about like a flesh and blood gumby figure, as if he had his joints replaced with rubber bands. That and a harido straight out of a Tim Burton film tend to grab your attention.

Tom Lloyd upends the stereotype of the reserved bass player, bouncing around the stage with movements as liquid as Zanes', a kind of R. Crumb figure with his Groucho strut. Ph.D. or not, there's nothing overly intellectual about either his solid bass lines or how he gets around on stage.

Professor Tom Lloyd demonstrating his knowledge of Environmental Engineering... or at least, Fender engineering.

Warren Zanes is the straight man in this ensemble, laying down simple but clean and effective lines with his Epiphone, which (after some research) I'm guessing is a mid-60's Riviera (you can see the Frequensator tailpiece that Epiphone often used on these ES-335 knockoffs at that time). Warren temporarily switched to what looks like a Gibson Firebird Non-Reverse axe when his Epi stopped talking to him. He didn't seem too happy about it. I hear this Firebird has a fat neck that takes some getting used to.

Warren with drummer Woody Giessmann at right.

 

Warren on the Firebird

The main thing that came across from the performance was how much the band was digging the idea of being back on the stage doing their classic stuff after all these years. That comes across a lot in reunion tours and concerts, when it is not a purely commercial venture to court aging Gen X nostalgia bucks. These guys are playing small clubs, and Zanes even professed deep appreciation for the Brooklyn audience of maybe 150 people, saying they had been playing to half that or less. They had better be loving it since they ain't getting rich with those attendance figures. Looks like they are pretty happy up there:

Okay, Del Fuegos de Beantown, great show, and welcome to Brooklyn! And seriously, sorry about the Super Bowl...

Mahanthappa Does Manhattan at the Standard

"Guggenheim fellow and 2011 Downbeat International Critics Poll 'Alto Saxophonist of the Year'" reads the Jazz Standard's promo blurb for Rudresh Mahanthappa,who played at the club tonight with an ensemble consisting of guitarist David Gilmore, bassist Rich Brown, and drummer Damion Reid. The Italian-born, Indian-influenced Berklee graduate and his band cooked up an evening of wild riffs, electronics and complex rhythms. The band often swerved from the harmonic scales of Eastern music directly into bluesy solo lines and back to your basic modal jazz, with significant touches of fusion from time to time. Indeed, if I had closed my eyes at certain moments I could have believed I was at a Mahavishnu Orchestra concert, especially when Gilmore took over, which was often. If they were not covering tunes from Inner Mounting Flame or Visions of the Emerald Beyond they might as well have been. But no sooner did that impression take hold than they landed squarely in some other mode, or explored electronic echoes (apparently mediated by a MacAir notebook that almost had the role of a fifth performer).

Overall this was not revolutionary stuff - few if any moments of pure atonality, no dissonant free jazz free-for-alls, but an idiom that was a bit more contemporary than post-bop without getting carried away. Mahanthappa seems content to play the instrument, without exploring the tonal possibilities of screeches, screams, reedy harmonics or tortured glissandos. None of which I missed very much, in case you were wondering. On the other hand, while he cannot be accused of lacking variety, by about halfway through the set I felt I had heard enough notes for two sets, and wished he would just slow down and dwell on something - that is, something other than the machine-gun repeated-note motifs that popped up from time to time. A little too much of "that saxophone thing", as I once heard someone express it. The effect was that of listening to someone run through his exercises as rapidly as possible - the musical content often seemed vanishingly thin, as the notes poured out in waterfals of sound that seemed as if they could have dwelled in a hundred different pieces equally well.

About the same was true of the very talented David Gilmore, whose style could not contrast more sharply with that of his near-namesake from Pink Floyd. The latter Gilmour has one main virtue - the ability to unfold a slow, intense, profoundly melodic lead line at crucial points in the music. The present Gilmore is all stabs and jabs, skips and amazingly technical runs. Though his stylistic range seems more strictly modal and traditional jazz than that of Mahanthappa, he jumps around the fingerboard and pulls off sequences that, if they are basically finger-training exercises, are still too complex for even a standard guitarist (I guess I can call myself that) to understand just what he is doing. Sometimes he trades lightning-fast riffs with Mahanthappa; sometimes he cross-picks and sounds like Pat Metheny or McLaughlin in his more meditative moments; sometimes he pops out jagged rhythmic lines that suddenly manage to converge on what the band as a whole is up to. It's fascinating stuff, but to haul out the old saw, perhaps technique was so front and center as to overshadow basic musicianship.

Rich Brown, the bassist, plucked a six-string instrument and managed to keep a solid bottom in music that shifted styles as often as it did rhythms. He stood out in one piece, performing several minutes of more or less solo bass that involved some fingerstyle fretwork with an almost classical sound. Damien Reid tore through some impressive solos when he was not keeping the rest of the band on course during their eastern rhythmic excursions and extended solos.

This was a fun evening, with a lot of impressive playing. It could perhaps have been improved by a steadier focus of one sort or another: I would have been interested to see a deeper exploration of the Indian classical connection, or a concerted effort to bring 1970's fusion into the 21st century in a coherent way, or even more development of the electronic elements. As it was, there were a lot of satisfying moments, but a somewhat diffuse evening overall. These are brilliant musicians who just need a little more self-control - they've got the architecture of a solo down pat, but the architecture of a concert is a taller order.

Paul McCartney at Yankee Stadium (Friday July 15 2011) - Revised, with photos added

Mac pretty nearly sold out two nights at Yankee Stadium, with a capacity of more than 50,000, not counting these added seats on the grounds. No lack of consumer confidence in this sector.

Many years ago I had an Irish girlfriend. Once, when we were visiting her parents' house for Christmas, her grandfather gave us a taste of an old Irish tune Grandpa, a former Bayonne, NJ, fireman, was  86 years old at the time, and allegedly smoked a pack of Camels a day and went through sixpacks of beer on a regular basis. Be that as it may, Grandpa McMahon could not just sing, he could belt. Maybe the highest notes were not quite there, maybe the intonation was not perfect, but I'm telling you, it was quite a performance. My girlfriend also had an uncle who was merely in his sixties, by my guess, and when he sang it was more like the smooth operatic performace of... well, Placido Domingo, say, who I saw at the Met a couple of years ago. He was singing at the Met at 69. So it's not only the Irish, but Domingo is Domingo. We're talking about regular folks.

Age does not always not always correlate to vocal ability, not perfectly anyway. Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan had pretty much lost their voices by their early sixties. Pete, at least, had an admirable singing voice but used it incorrectly. Dylan could push it out, if not exactly elegantly, but he made a trademark of his style nonetheless. Both of them, sadly, lost whatever gift they had not because of age but because of strain on he wrong parts of the vocal apparatus. ("Keep your epiglotis down!" my vocal coach used to insist. Thank you; I followed the advice as well as I could, and sing about as badly today as I ever did.)

I say yes, you say no... he say don't stop for another 36 songs

Then there's Sir Paul. If they hadn't knighted him already, they should do it for his concert Friday night. He sang 36 songs, played the bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, mandolin and ukelele, and exited after 2 1/2 hours sounding just about as good as when he came on stage at around 8:45.

Aside from the overall quality of the concert, there were a number of moving moments. One came after the band finished its 6th number, and McCartney announced that they were going to do a song he had never before performed in concert. Some obscure number from one of his solo albums, maybe? No - the band launched into "The Night Before", one of the best cuts on the Help! album.

McCartney performing Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance"

Two others were when Paul gave moving tributes to John Lennon and George Harrison. He opened the Lennon tribute with a short morality tale about waiting too long to say something to someone and then finding it is too late. That is presumably the sentiment behind "Here Today", released in April 1982 on the Tug of War album, a year and a half after John's death. His reminiscence of George centered on a story about George having been an excellent ukulele player (Paul said he studied with some famous ukelele teacher). Paul related that he showed up at George's apartment one day and announced that he had learned one of George's songs on the ukulele. The band then went into "Something", with Paul initially carrying the rhythm part on uke (a routine they have apparently done since the Concert for George after Harrison's death).

Among the other highlights was a spot early in the show when, after performing "Let Me Roll It", the band launched into an instrumental that was essentially the music to Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady". Paul subsequently said that it was done as a tribute to Hendrix, and related that only a few weeks (days?) after the release of Sgt. Pepper Hendrix had opened a show that the Beatles attended by playing the title track from that album.

The band did two sets of encores after a show that already exceeded two hours. One of them was "Helter Skelter", complete with a wild video of roller coasters "coming down fast.

Paul allegedly wrote "Helter Skelter" to demonstrate his rowdy side. It has more than accomplished this goal.

But nothing matched the excess of his performance of "Live and Let Die", which was accompanied by frequent explosions of red flares and fireworks from the front and behind the stage.

Paul hammed it up afterwards, miming deafness and disapproval.

Yankee Stadium proved to be a reasonable venue for a rock concert. The band was set up in the back, near the bleechers, with the most expensive seats arranged in front of the stage. All the stadium seats were so far away that the band looked about the size of toy soldiers, but of course the obligatory video screens on either side gave everyone a live feed of the goings on, and supertitles on either side of the stadium provided slightly delayed transmission of not only the song lyrics but most of McCartney's banter.

A small sampling of the mayhem during "Live and Let Die"

The venue also provided Paul with his best one-liner: "Who's this guy Jeter? They say he has more hits than me!" Yes; a few... though with 22 post-Beatles studio albums McCartney probably has more records.

My only serious criticism of the concert is that Paul never announced the band members. It was not until the second set of encores that he gave tribute to the lighting and sound crews, and then mentioned almost incidentally "my wonderful band" or something of that sort. There's no excuse for that, really. These folks have careers too and deserve individual recognition. They were Abe Laboriel Jr. on drums, Rusty Anderson on guitar, Brian Ray on bass, and Paul "Wix" Wickens on keyboards. They have all played with McCartney for many years, and are an impeccable group of musicians.

It might seem that slavishly imitating George Harrison's or Denny Laine's guitar lines or Ringo's drum parts is no great way to spend your musical career. For me, on the contrary, it seems like knocking off "Something" or "Band on the Run" in Yankee Stadium, on a huge state-of-the-art sound system, to a capacity crowd of over 50,000 people, is about the biggest high I could imagine. The band never seemed for a second like they felt as if they had played this stuff one too many times. And with McCartney's hundreds of composition credits and a few noteworthy covers, I don't suppose they are in much danger of getting bored.

Though it is a little ridiculous to be disappointed about anything after a concert of 37 songs, I did miss a few post-Beatles favorites. There was nothing from Ram, still my favorite of his post-Beatles recordings; none of the great stuff on Venus and Mars and very little from Wings at the Speed Of Sound (I would have loved to hear "Beware My Love" or "Wino Junko"). I was also nourishing a slim hope that he would do "Lonely Road", one of his best recent songs (from Driving Rain, supposedly his "Heather album"). No such luck. But if you had asked me if a year ago whether I thought I would ever hear Paul McCartney play "Day Tripper", "All My Loving", "Band on the Run" and "Jet" live, the answer would surely have been that that was an idle fantasy. So, some fantasies come true at the new Yankee Stadium.

Here's the set list (Mac's instrument as noted stays the same until the next note):

"Jet", with aeronautical imagery

1. Hello, Goodbye (Paul on bass)

2. Junior's Farm

3. All My Loving

4. Jet

5. Drive My Car

6. New song(?) (Mac announced this as a song from the "new" album, but the latest album I know of is the 2007 Memory Is Full. Perhaps it hasn't been released yet? The song was a rocker and didn't sound like any song on the 2007 disk. A little help, anyone?)

7. The Night Before (world premiere live, according to Paul)

8. Let Me Roll It (Paul on a Les Paul electric guitar)

9. Foxy Lady (instrumental)

10. Paperback Writer (Paul on a semi-hollow electric, maybe ES330)

11. The Long and Winding Road (I have no note about him switching to keyboard here, though it would make sense given the next few numbers. I think Wix must have carried off the keyboard parts.)

12. Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five

13. Let 'Em In

14. Maybe I'm Amazed

15. I've Just Seen a Face (Paul on acoustic guitar)

16. I Will

17. Blackbird (unaccompanied, as you would expect)

18. Here Today

19. Dance Tonight (Mac on mandolin)

20. Mrs. Vanderbilt (Mac on acoustic guitar)

21. Eleanor Rigby

22. Something (Mac on ukelele, then acoustic guitar)

23. Band on the Run (Mac on bass)

24. Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da

25. Back in the USSR

26. I've Got a Feeling (Mac on a Les, including an extended jam with him playing some lead guitar)

27. A Day in the Life (going directly into...)

28. Give Peace a Chance

29. Let It Be (Mac on piano)

30. Live and Let Die (with extensive fireworks on and off stage)

31. Hey Jude (this closed the regular set)

32. Lady Madonna (Mac on piano)

33. Day Tripper (Mac on bass)

34. Get Back (this closed the first set of encores)

35. Yesterday (Mac on acoustic)

36. Helter Skelter

37. Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight (Paul preceded this with a little speech about it being time for everyone to go home, apparently anticipating the line 'Once there was a way/to get back homeward... etc.) 

One of the Beatles tribute songs - "Here Today" or "Something".

Bronfman Nails Prokofiev, Tuner Sharpens Piano

Why should I tell you this? Obviously I shouldn't. Still, out of a sense of moral obligation.... When I was in my teens or early 20's I sometimes used to attend concerts at Washington Irving High School. I particularly recall seeing the Guarneri Quartet, one of the greatest, several times. Don't know when I stopped going; maybe when I moved to Brooklyn in the early 80's, which is not really a reason, just a coincidence I suppose. I pretty much forgot about these concerts after a while, and certainly did not know that the series had a name, and has been ongoing for over a century (not always at Washington Irving). In any case, I sort of got priced out of the classical music market at some point, and stopped looking. I go to a couple of paid classical concerts a year, now, and as many free or very cheap performances as I have time for (i.e., not many).

But the WIHS series does go on to this very day; it's called the People's Symphony Concerts. Now, with all the classical concert series in NYC, why am I making noise about this? Well, first take a look at their artists. This season alone they've had or will have several of the top string quartets in the world (the Takacs may be my favorite, but I haven't seen them live), pianists like Richard Goode, Peter Serkin, Leon Fleisher, and (last night) the great Russian-Israeli virtuoso Yefim Bronfman, the outstanding new music ensemble Eighth Blackbird, and a host of other great musicians. What's the angle? Catch any of these artists at Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall and expect to pay $60 for an orchestra seat on a good day. You can pick up a prime orchestra seat for Bronfman at Carnegie on April 12 for a neat $93. And guess what it cost me for a prime orchestra seat at WIHS last night? Stop guessing when you get down to ten bucks. Yes, you got it, $10.00 tax and shipping included. Actually, there was no tax or shipping, because I picked the tickets up at WIHS a couple of hours before the concert. Uh-huh. It was not sold out. I did not have to sit on a cold, stone floor for 3 hours as I do at the Met when I want one of their Varis rush tickets; instead, I stood on line for about 5 minutes. Better: order a series ticket by mail and get the 6-concert series for... $32! As I overheard a college student telling his girlfriend, "That's like... free!" So, in short, concerts by top classical artists, for about the same price I paid in 1973. Now you know. Here comes the catch.

Actually, no catch. It's totally true. You just have to, um, put up with some stuff. WIHS is a magnificant old building with original wood details, impressive murals, bas reliefs and a great auditorium with skylights and excellent acoustics. But the building and the auditorium definitely show their age. This is not Lincoln Center (which also shows its age, in a different sense). The seats in the auditorium, which holds over 1,500 people, are hard wood, no padding, which was a particular problem tonight. The men's room has two toilets, no urinal, and one sink. There is no concession stand, of course, nor a box office. Practically everything looks in need of renovation. And that's the easy part. Through the entire concert tonight, no one dimmed the lights; it was bright overheads all over the auditorium for the whole evening. A huge array of fresnels and stage lights above was never used. Don't ask me why. Next, most of the seats are general admission. Reserved seating is only in the balcony, and it does sell out. Costs you an extra two bucks, too (OMG). This is not really a problem; we got there well after 7:15 when the doors opened, and we still got center orchestra seats a little more than halfway up the aisle. But don't plan to show up 5 minutes before the concert unless you bought the reserved seats. And the next-to-last thing I must tell you is that I'm not young, but if I ever want to feel young, my ticket to a People's Symphony Concert is good for that too. The average age of this audience must be a good 20 years above that of the LC or CH crowds. Again, I have no idea why this is. But it is. And it means, among other things, that this resounding hall echoes with the sound of throats being cleared for a good part of the concert.

To really give you the sense of why this is not the LC/CH experience, let's talk about the piano tuner. When I picked up my ticket at 6:15 I heard Bronfman rehearsing in the auditorium. That's an hour and 45 minutes before showtime. You would think that any problems with the piano would have been discovered and fixed in good time. So why is it that at 8:00 p.m., instead of our illustrious performer, a young man who looked nothing like an old school Russsian piano virtuoso walked on stage carrying a black bag? At first I thought he must be a page turner and was bringing out the sheet music. But the first piece on the program was Beethoven's 32 Variations on an Original Theme. Highly dubious that a world class pianist is going to perform Beethoven from the sheet music. Well, instead of removing a score, this fellow who looked to be not much older than a recent graduate of WIHS walked up to the Steinway, sat down, pulled out a screwdriver, and promptly began removing the keyboard! Nice, huh? We all thought he would be a few minutes sharpening a C or something like that. But by the first time he walked off (to a round of applause) he had already taken 15 minutes trying to adjust the action on one key. Yes, I said the first time. Bronfman came out, began to play Beethoven's Variations, stopped after about a minute and looked around for a stage manager. While somebody was running to get the young tuning genius before he went on his merry way, the maestro demonstrated that even he could not make a nice sound on the offending key; it was basically stuck, muted - thunk. The tuner returned for his encore performance, and was before us on stage long enough to learn one of the pieces on Bronfman's program. By that point people were rising out of their seats, some had left, and it seemed like a serious possibility that the concert would be canceled. Bronfman had already come out again, and explained in good English that since Beethoven had written the piece for an 88-key piano, it just would not do to play it on 87 keys. (I could barely hear him from midway down the aisle, and I know he said a bit more than this, but let's say that great as he is, he certainly is not ready to sing at the Met.) It was nearly 45 minutes past start time when the fire-haired prodigy packed up again.

Bronfman came out and once again launched into the 32 Variations, this time not stopping until the 32nd had ended. It was a marvelous performance, especially given the circumstances, which would have thrown a curve at the most seasoned performer. He made a great case for understanding the variations as a continuous piece. With little pause he then launched into Schumann's Faschingsschwank aus Vien, new to me, and I suppose to the rest of the audience, for we all broke into applause after the first movement - with good cause, as it contained plenty of room for the expression of virtuosity - not realizing there were two more movements to come. Since the audience did not make this mistake anywhere else in the program I assume that people were just not familiar with the piece. The sockdolager was Prokofiev's Sonata #2 in D Minor, a powerhouse that showcases the Russian school of tone production to maximum effect, containing many beautiful passages even amidst the electrifying speed and complexity of much of the piece. It must be said that in light of the lengthy delay, Bronfman raced from one piece to another with little pause, and possibly raced some of the tempi as well. This tended to put a probably undesired focus on the fact that this great Russian pianist, like others before him, tends to assimilate the sound of the earlier Romantic works to the manner of the later Russian school, with its thunderous, pedaled bass and emphasis on thick sonority. This is not to say that Bronfman was heavy-handed in the lighter passages; one could point to numerous beautiful episodes, performed with the delicacy of angels dancing on ivory. That said, rushing from piece to piece tended to bring out the heavier side of the palette.

There were worries that due to the delay, the one piece remaining after the intermission would be cut, and we could all pack up and go home. But no such thing occurred. The intermission was shortened, and we all returned for Tchaikovsky's rarely performed Grand Sonata in G Major, Op.37. This, I must say, was a treat, as it always is to discover a major work by a major composer. Still, I think it was fairly clear why the work is not the warhorse it might have been. Basically , the thematic material of the first movement, though melodically appealing in the manner of a folk-music theme (I don't know if it is, but it is at least influenced by the Russian folk idiom), is rather pinched rhythimically and harmonically. The effect of this is to lead to a development that is rather too obvious and predictable, and seems to support virtuosity for its own sake rather than in support of truly inventive writing. This is true of much of Tchaikovsky's music. An orchestration teacher of mine once said that studying one of Tchaikovsky's symphonic scores was as good as another, because he always solves the same problems in the same way. It is true of his composition in general, as well as his orchestration. So he needs to begin with themes of some melodic and harmonic interest or his development ends up sounding monotonous, if not gratuitous. The genius of his greatest works is that the great beauty of the thematic material is given its full measure of development. Such is not really possible in the Grand Sonata - no one can say it is not attractive or fails to deliver some lovely keyboard writing, but it does not really stand out as a work of great depth. In any case, it is necessary that even works such as this have some champion, for it is hardly deserving of being shelved completely. Bronfman delivered the goods, and it was hard to imagine a more sympathetic or authentic performance, much less a more technically accurate one.

Delay notwithstanding, Bronfman actually played two encores. I believe the first was a Chopin Nocturne; the second was his "Revolutionary" Etude, delivered with the panache he had shown himself capable of throughout the program. Without whining about it, I would have to say that this was certainly the Brailowsky style of Chopin performance, not taking much liberty with the rhythms and dynamics, and in this Etude if anywhere I must admit I prefer the "grand style" of Artur Rubinstein. But one could not have asked for a more appropriate encore to cap this concert.

Bronfman is, in a way, in a class by himself. Though his biographies say nothing about his training in the USSR, he was born in Tashkent in 1958, and made his debut two years after he moved to Israel at the age of 15. Whether by training or by personality, I hear Russian School all over his playing. Phillip Roth has referred to him as "Mr. Fortissimo" (in The Human Stain), and that is just how it is. Shura Cherkassky, another Russian emigre with a big Russina sound, died in 1995. Lazar Berman passed away 10 years later. Bronfman and Vladimir Feltsman, who emigrated at a much later age, are about the last exponents of the true Russian style. Evgeny Kissin is equally Russian by birth and perhaps moreso by training, but he is a different kind of pianist. (I don't want to start trouble, but I would say, for example, that Gil Shaham is more of a Russian violinist that Maxim Vengerov, though the former never lived in Russia and the latter was born and studied there. The influence of the old Russian school of violin playing spreads far and wide, so that by mid-20th century or so one did not have to be Russian to be trained in or influenced by the Russian school.) In the 20th century, pianists of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian schools (a loose term - "style" would be more accurate) more or less dominated classical music until the 1980's. The Russian milieu produced Vladimir Horowitz, Alexander Brailowsky, Emil Gilels, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Sviatoslav Richter, for example; from the Austro-Hungarian side came Artur Rubinstein and Rudolph Serkin, and several other notables. Perhaps the influence of Franz Liszt and his students on Anton Runinstein, who founded the St. Petersburg Conservatory, is what draws them together. There were differnces, of course (who could fail to notice the difference between Brailowsky's Chopin and Rubinstein's?) but broadly speaking, this was a kind of approach to the piano, emphasizing tremendous sound and technique in the more vigorous passages, offset by a singing style with some interpretive freedom in the more melodic parts. With the great outpouring of musical talent from the U.S., Japan, China and Korea, and the continuing if not increasing presence of French, German and British classical musicians, this tradition is pretty much history. If you want to have something like an authentic experience of this style, you can see Bronfman or Feltsman, and that's about it.

Anyway, after a false start and a few bruises on the posterior from sitting in unpadded chairs for an extra 45 minutes, in the end it was a brilliant evening of music for little more than the price of a deli sandwich. And if you decide to partake and some of the septagenarians who have been keeping this series going for decades can't get seats, don't say I sent you.

Collective Animals and Antisocial BRICs

The Animal Collective concert in Prospect Park on Saturday, a fundraiser for the Celebrate Brooklyn free concert series, was not quite sold out, though the previous night was, and I actually stood on line and considered buying tickets. But at $30 a pop for two people (and my wife, born in China, is not exactly out buying artrock CD's in her spare time), standing room only, I thought I'd explore the perimeter as a potential alternative. As I perambulated about, I quickly realized what was going on: the promoters had lined the 8-foot fence that surrounds the bandshell with opaque plastic sheeting, in an explicit effort to prevent people from seeing the concert even from a considerable distance.

Excuse me? Let's be clear about something. BRIC, the sponsor of the concert series (as far as I can tell the initials stand for Brooklyn Information and Culture) is a largely publicly funded organization. Outside the income they receive from events, about two thirds of their revenue is from government and foundation grants. Their 2008 Annual Report lists numerous New York City institutions and public figures as supporters, as well as federal entities like the National Endowment for the Arts. More locally, the people of Brooklyn have supported this group's forays into many different art arenas. You really have to wonder about the mindset of a publicly funded and city-supported organization that sits down to figure out a way to cut off visual access to an outdoor concert in a public park. It is nothing short of mindboggling, in fact outright insulting.

Up until recently BRIC was not even granted the right to hold these pricey, ticketed fundraisers at the bandshell. But for the last couple of years they have gotten more and more daring, sending us Bob Dylan and other luminaries at up to $100 a seat; er, stand. Most of the concerts are still pay-what-you-want pricing, but the fundraiser idea has obviously been condoned by the Parks Dep't. It is a dubious proposition that any organization, for-profit or not-for-profit, should be permitted to use public space for its fundraisers, but lets just imagine that Propsect Park or some other public institution is getting enough out of this to justify it. Still, the blatant "fuck off, freeloaders" of slapping black plastic sheeting around the entire hillside around the bandshell is in incredibly poor taste.

People will pay to see a concert by a known band from the inside whether they can see from outside a fence or not. The sound beyond the barricades is actually very good, but even without the obnoxious blackout paper you need binoculars to see much of anything. So what is the point? In all the years I attended the Schaeffer Music Festival (later Dr. Pepper Music Festival) at Wollman Rink in Central Park, there was never any effort to close off visual access from the rocks and hillsides (not that that would have been so easy). I saw many concerts from out there, as did thousands of other people, and yet many if not most of them were sold out. And in fact, in spite of BRIC's earnest efforts at exclusion, there were actually one or two places where you could get a full stage view from outside the Prospect Park bandshell arena, at least with a pair of binoculars. So, yeah, I saw and heard the whole concert for free. Tough nuggies. (I'm sure our BRIC friends can translate that - you are from brooklyn, aren't you, folks?)

BRIC needs to rethink their attitude here, and remember who made them what they are today. Cutting off the view from hundreds of yards away is, well, shortsighted. The next time I attend one of their regular concerts I will pay 1 cent per person, with a note explaining why. I encourage others to do the same.

I don't know too much about Animal Collective. I heard their latest, Meriweather Post Pavillion, which I thought was interesting, listenable prog-rock with an art-rock twist. The group was formed as a gathering of various artrock types, originally from Baltimore but now living in NYC. With names like Panda Bear and Geologist, stage props that light up like jack-o'lanterns and ocean wave cutouts that move back and forth with little fishies on them, they do seem a little precious; "Teddy Pre-school" might be an equally appropriate name. But the music is by no means from Romper Room. On the contrary, it challenges the listener with repetitive streams of keyboard-driven sound, to which the vocals seem almost accompaniments. The group is about sonic experience and how rock can be a medium for the expansion of that.

If I had to describe what they do relative to other genres, I might call them a cross between Yes and Phillip Glass (Genesis and Terry Riley?). They build these incredibly thick textures and stick with them for long periods of time, the vocals choosing a few notes to bounce around on, the bass (always, as far as I could tell, produced by a keyboard) thumping continuously and moving minimally or not at all. The result is not always pleasant, but never jarring; there are points at which it draws you in and others at which you are kind of waiting for them to move on to something else. There are few if any such things as breaks, even for the keyboards, and a guitar was brought out only occasionally to deepen the texture. There were just three performers (the group has four members but they perform in various combinations) yet the sound was more orchestral than almost anything I have heard since the late 1970's.

Whether this is a good thing or not depends on your perspective, and perhaps on where it leads. Rock went through a heavily orchestrated phase in the 70's with groups like The Moody Blues, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer making the synthesizer and an array of keyboards a primary component of their sound. There were groups like Supertramp for whom guitars seemed to be an afterthought. This was a great era for music, but it also led to a host of imitations that were far less inspired and gave the Synth Sound a bad reputation. A counterreaction was inevitable, and it came in the form of the Sex Pistols and the Ramones and the punk/new wave explosion that followed. Perhaps Animal Collective is a sign that the synthesizer is fair game again. The members of the group certainly come from that post-post-punk milieu that has rejuvenated rock and roll, after the dull fin-de-siecle thrashing of the last decade. The Seattle Sound and alt-country were about the only decent things that happened then (I'm exaggerating, but not much); but suddenly, along come The Strokes and Death Cab for Cutie and a lot of (slightly less promoted) bands that now constitute "alternative" rock, which is to say, more or less the living soul of rock. What Animal Collective shows is that the essence of this music can be presented in a format that fuses rock with much of what happened in "alternative classical" in the last 30 years - the downtown New York school of Glass, LaMonte Young, Steve Reich and John Adams, all of which was fueled originally, not from rock, but from jazz, specifically Terry Riley's A Rainbow in Curved Air. The curve has turned back on itself, and we now have an alt-rock form of this musical rainbow.

So once again, is this a good thing? Anything that opens up new possibilitiies is a good thing, because there is no way forward if you don't. The Strokes were commercial enough, but whether or not alt-rock was threatening to degenerate into commercialism from the beginning, with groups like Coldplay and The Killers making overt thrusts at Top 40 radio play it has perhaps rounded a corner. Art rock may come to the rescue. Or it may lead down a blind alley, with compositions more aimless and hermetic than anything Animal Collective produces. We'll see. Meanwhile, I can only say that even if no one moment gave me anything like the intense joy of sitting in the Garden listening to Yes perform "I Get Up, I Get Down", the overall impact of the concert was that of a kind of perverse pleasure - the pleasure of just experiencing something different, something not too dressed up for consumption but not too far gone to be taken in. And that is one positive kind of musical experience. Go see them if you get a chance, and if you don't like what you hear, at least consider yourself richer for having tried.

Post-Punks and Heavy Divas: Blondie and Pat Benatar at Seaside

So, I know your questions already, and I intend to answer them. (1) Can they still sing? (2) Are they still hot? (3) Which was the better band? (4) Whose material holds up better after all this time? Not necessarily in that order.

Actually, the answer to all four is "Marty Markowitz", Brooklyn's official Seaside Summer Concerts prima donna, who does not hesitate to use the platform as, well, a platform, for friends who are running for office. At least he didn't use it as an opportunity to promote the Atlantic Yards boondoggle. Or did I miss that part?

In any case, once Marty and various people who were there for political playdates decided to vacate the premises, and after The Donnas, a decent rock band to whom I will not devote much attention (having already paid attention to the prima donnas) finished their set, in this 40th year since the iconic Woodstock gathering, Asser Levy park turned into Classic Rock alley as Pat and Debbie plied their trade. Thus I return to my original questions.

Okay, who can still sing? That's a trick question, since only one of them could really ever sing. Or, if that's unfair, let's put it this way: Pat Benatar can sing. She can belt. She can croon, she can wail, she can scream. She can hit the notes she needs to hit with the tone she wants to hit them. She's 56 and I'm sure she knows what she can't do that she used to do, but there isn't much that comes across to an audience as lacking. Deborah Harry surprised me. She was never a brilliant vocalist, but she could sing and she could put a song over in such different styles as the guttural "One Way or Another" and the disco-slick "Heart of Glass". On Thursday night, though, she started off very weak, sounding like she didn't have much left of what was only a modest vocal talent to begin with. But as the set moved along she seemed to get more and more confident, until towards the end she was letting loose like the punk diva she used to be. So, the answer to question one? Overall, Pat Benatar wins the vocal contest. But don't rule Debbie out just yet, she can rise to the occasion even if it takes her a few tunes to get going.

So what about the boys in the band? Let's start with this: Chris Stein should not be too concerned that Neil "Spyder" Giraldo blows him away as a performer, technician, and creative player, because he blows away most guitarists who are not in the guitar hero pantheon. Indeed I suspect he is more impressive than quite a few of Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time - but then, so are a lot of the guitarists who never made it into that ridiculous list. His sound did a lot to make Pat Benatar the hard rock queen she was, and he was in fine form at this concert. One kind of guitar "hero" plays a lot of notes and bangs out power chords. Another kind of guitar hero plays one note, or better yet, no notes, just picking away on a dampened string, but makes the entire sound and rhythm of a song revolve around what he does. The latter is the kind of guitar player Spyder is. When he plays two notes he could be an orchestra. It's all done with effects and amplification and guitar controls, which makes it look and sound easy, but it ain't. And for the few who have mastered it, it is incredibly effective. I should add that Blondie has another guitarist in their present incarnation, and he appeared to be doing as much or more work than Stein. It was hard to tell who was doing what from where I was, but Paul Carbonara seemed to be very good, if not necessarily hewing to the erstwhile punk sound of the band.

Okay, drummers. Clem Burke of Blondie is not a drummer, he's a freakin' machine gun, and he's got the band's back. Last drummer I saw play like that was Corky Laing. Or not even. Burke was the force that kept every song driving forward, no matter how subtle it was. Myron Grombacher (I assume that's who Pat's drummer was - never heard an announcement) was perfectly decent, but if I were a small craft and I saw Burke coming I'd cede the right of way quickly. And that's about it for comparisons - neither band is prominently bass or keyboard driven (though there are important keyboard parts in some of Blondie's material), and those personnel are not all original band members, so I will pass on it and move onto the next critical question.

Of these two rock powerhouses of the 1980's, whose material holds up better after all these years? Tough one, though I know the answer. (Right, modesty, modesty - I know what my answer would be. See, I can do it... against my will.) Some of Pat Benatar's hits I still find very powerful, particularly "Hell Is for Children" (maybe her best performance of the night) and "Heartbreaker". These, especially the first, came off as enduring rock anthems beyond the limits of style and era. But most of her material never really moved me beyond the average top 40 song, in which area she had tons of competition from the standard 80's FM hitmakers - Foreigner, Journey, Styx, Rush, Steve Miller, et al. "Hit Me With Your Best Shot", "Love Is a Battlefield", etc. just kind of sat there in my consciousness as okay songs floating around in a decade's worth of okay music. (And I have been known in less charitable moods to refer to okay music as "garbage", which may be a little harsh... or not. Okay, modesty period is over.) Blondie, on the other hand, I thought of as a kind of fallen angel of post-punk, but where they fell was not necessarily all bad, similar to the Police. (Cheap Trick is an example of a former punk outfit that had gone way too far toward the Journey end of the spectrum to interest me much.)

After this concert I must say that if I didn't know these two bands beforehand, I would be running to the store to buy Blondie albums. Okay, maybe "album" - Parallel Lines has almost all their most popular songs, a killer album that has sold 12 million copies and made them the band they're now known as. But what actually impressed me the most was how much I liked the Blondie material that I had not heard before. Which is plenty, since they released eight albums over a period of about 27 years, and I haven't heard much more than Parallel Lines, a little bit of their early material and a couple of later hits. Now I'm inspired to discover some of the Blondie material that I sort of ignored in favor of more hardcore punk and a variety of other stuff.

Okay, last question. How can I be tactful about this? By not discussing it at all, probably. Such sound judgment has never been my style, though. So first of all, Pat Benatar was never an icon of sensuality for me, so not too likely that she is now, even with her long blonde (yes!) locks. (Will the real Pat Benatar please stand up?) Joan Jett could have tied me up and abused me, as long as she wore those black leather pants and other emo gear. But Pat always seemed a little too girl-next-doorish by my lights. Deborah Harry, on the other hand, was everybody's idea of a sex symbol, and did not go to great lengths to hide it. Which brings me to the subject of reggae, and the movies. Why? "Because the harder they come, the harder they fall, one and all!"

I do wish they would improve the sound at Seaside. It may be okay from up close, but from the outer banks where they keep the riffraff (oh, I get it riff raff, rock concert, OMG) it pretty much sucks, both in terms of quality and volume. The volume may be a compromise to keep the neighbors happy, but the quality can't be. Compared to the sound at Celebrate Brooklyn (see my next review) it is like listening through wax paper. Hey Marty, maybe for some of those hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks you favor for Downtown Brooklyn and Atlantic Yards developers you could get one of them to pony up for a decent sound system?

Fresh Meat Puppets

In a small room behind a bar on East Houston St. in Manhattan, a.k.a. the Mercury Lounge, one of the legends of rock pumped out tunes from several of their albums for over an hour. I got a ticket at the door the night of the show, and someone in front of me complained that he could not even sell an extra ticket he had. Everyone was next door at some gig or other. None of my rock and roll afficianado friends could make it. (Lame excuses, like "I'm in Newfoundland right now" or "I've already seen them, about 25 years ago."

So, something must be wrong with me, right? Guess I'm old, and probably in the way of the 20-somethings who were standing behind me. (Actually there were a few pre-generation-X'ers there to keep me company.) To my way of thinking, seeing Cream try to jam after a 40-year hiatus is not worth a $100 ticket; but seeing the guys who influenced everyone from post-punk hardcore to alt-country to contemporary acid-rock, in a small venue where I could practically cough on them, was worth far more than the $18 I paid.

Curt Kirkwood and his brother Chris can still rock the house, of course, and Curt is like a walking manual of guitar technique, pumping out everything from rockabilly solos to blues-tinged acid rock. But that is not even the point. I know some people are saying, "Oh them, I saw them in 1983." That's great. Wish I had too. But the point is, in 1983 they were not the guys who had influenced everyone from Pavement and Soundgarden to Nirvana and Pearl Jam; they were not the natural predecessor of Green Day, who resemble them more than anyone (power pop trio with tight harmonies over guitar-driven folkish melodies); they were not the guys who were doing alt-country when Uncle Tupelo was not even a thought and a Jayhawk was just a bird. They are now. Playing in the kind of venues that they started in, but with a dozen albums to draw material from.

And so they did. Aside from the first two albums I know they played stuff from Up on the Sun, Too High to Die, and Golden Lies. Chris, as I guess everyone knows, has had a major issue with drug addiction, and anyone who didn't know it before would know after one look. But he can still play the bass in his aggressive style that beats the instrument into submission - quite literally at some points - and also manages to keep up with Curt's pace and sound. The new drummer, Ted Marcus, lacks nothing in energy, and though true Pups fans may be nostalgic for Derrick Bostrom, I can't see that this would make a tremendous difference in the quality or authenticity of the show. As for the vocals, the Kirkwoods famously recorded most of Up on the Sun out of tune, intentionally, so asking if they can still handle the vocals is a bit of an odd question. I do wish they had a little more gain on the mikes, but the vocals came through pretty much as you would expect if you were familiar with their albums.

I've seen quite a few reunion concerts. The first post on this blog covered a concert by Wire. I saw Nektar do their best show ever in 2003 - some 30 years after I first saw them. I heard the Psychedelic Furs a few years ago at Town Hall - by coincidence they were playing again the day after the Pups, but I didn't go. Not every revival is a good idea; the Furs seemed to lack real enthusiasm for what they were doing, and the change in personnel seemed more damaging for them. I cannot compare this Meat Puppets show to what they did in 1983, since I wasn't there, but in the intimate (stuffy, crowded, overheated, post-adolescent...) atmosphere of the Mercury Lounge it felt like the real deal.

Note to long-haired neo-hippie speed freak types: This is not 1980. There is no mosh pit at the Mercury. There were not enough people to catch a 6-foot guy leaping off the stage. You injured someone and nearly yourselves. This is not Never-Never Land. Grow up.