I’ve reached my limit, and I’m breaking up with Pearl Jam.
Their New York City lawyers contacted me today, telling me to remove the fan-recorded file of a new song below, which was captured outside the venue door at a recent secret show. This is the thirdtime during the lifespan of this blog that I have been contacted by Pearl Jam or their representatives to remove something from my site that they feel is objectionable — always a live fan recording of something we’re all stoked to hear, and always a post that has come from a place of earnest and enthusiastic fandom. Well, I’m tired of fandom.
Even more disturbing than the crackdown on the live recordings that Pearl Jam has long embraced is the fact that, according to multiple sources, the internet is being vigorously scoured of all forms of even TALK about this new song and the recording session that happened on Thursday. This post vanished, leaving only the Google cache to remember it. This girl deleted hers. Threads on the message board are vaporized. And holy mackerel, I just went to reference the Rolling Stone post and the entire thing from this morning has vanished. 404 error. File not found.
This type of suppression of information seems to be their chosen mode of operating as a band over the last few years, and it is leaving me with a bitter taste in my mouth. I’m not sure what has changed with them. I can’t defend them anymore. I also must say that as one of the few voices in the independent blogosphere that even seems to care about what Pearl Jam is doing with any urgency, their kindness and support for genuine fandom would be most consistent with what I always understood their punk-inspired ethos to be.
The new song is out there, the horse is through the gate, Elvis has left the building — and in 2009 it is futile to undo it. Seize the buzz, Pearl Jam. Acknowledge the fans that have stuck with you for over fifteen years. In ten hours everyone’s gonna have heard the new song on Conan anyways, if you perform it. The only people interested in the fan recording are the passionate uberfans who will follow everything you do anyways. I would stoke those fires if I were you, not run around trying to smother to death everyone who dares talk about it. So few of my generation care passionately about what you are doing these days, and think that you are relevant and potent.
Pearl Jam took to the stage Thursday at Seattle’s famed Showbox to rock a brand new song, while Cameron Crowe (Cameron Crowe!) filmed it. Stealth audio from one of the extras sounds like this:
Something’s Going On – Pearl Jam
(we’re guessing on the title — could also be “The Fixer”)
Soaring, melodic, tightly-wound, and fiercely rocking — color me pleased. Read more details here. Now maybe we know what they will play tomorrow night on the Conan Tonight Show premiere!
Fuel/Friends’ good friend Dainon from Utah went to Sasquatch Festival in Washington with my neighbor from across the street in Colorado. Go figure. I stayed home — but he reflects on his weekend well-spent in a special guest post.
Riffing on Sasquatch
by Dainon Moody
There’s a difference between the casual concertgoer and someone who attends a music festival. Well, several, in fact. Here’s a start. One’s looking for something to bump and grind to on a Friday night. The other has to plan for cheap airline tickets, a steady diet of free Beef Jerky samples and dried cherries for three days, carpooling in the back seat of a cramped Jetta for five hours in a row, overzealous country cops, 82 degree sunshine without the shade and, on top of that big pile o’ goo, which bands to see and which to leave far behind because, let’s face it, you just can’t see them all, no matter how hard you try to manage it.
I’ll go ahead and allow you to decide which is which.
See, the festivalgoer is not unlike a bird watcher in his or her dedication. I mean no offense to those who watch birds. I know little of the sport. I can chalk up my entire bird watching experience to seeing Blue Jays run smack into my grandma’s big Missouri sliding glass door time after time after mostly hilarious time. But, stay with me on this. There’s a real commitment involved in festivals. This is the hobby we have chosen. And there are parallels to consider. We may not be able to manage very believable whippoorwill birdcalls, but we’ll scream our lungs raw in appreciation when the guitar solo hits our ears right. We may not use binoculars to seek out whether or not, say, there are black speckles on a robin’s breast, but we’ll bone up on reviews and listen to your band’s songs weeks ahead of time in hopes of identifying one in your band’s onslaught of the hopefully familiar.
There’s more. We’ll take a barrage of photos of you as you perform, no matter how far away we are, no matter how dark it is; we never give up hope for the one blessed unblurred shot. And, if we’re really lucky, we’ll try to take them with us included and we’ll act as casual as we can manage standing next to you (with varying results, sure). We’ll even go about attempting to grab video of the songs in your catalog that we really, really like, avoiding the sing-a-longers standing nearby and pretending as much as we can that we don’t have shaky hands in the process. It all adds up to dedication. Let’s face it—in another line of work, we’d make for excellent peeping toms. As it stands, we’re simply superfans. We might even take a bullet for you if you catch us on the right day.
The ironic part of this is that, while we do have to commit to a lot and plan like crazy, we never have to commit to a band for very long once we get there. This definitely speaks to the single kids, as well as those adults who can’t make a decision to save our lives. If you’re not as good live as you are on CD (I’m looking at you, Passion Pit), we’ll know in a song or two. We don’t need to stick with you an hour. We can wander off to a new discovery or to a more tested-and-true kinda musicality. TV On The Radio and Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver win our devotion, easy. Santigold in the sunshine? The Gaslight Anthem doing a Pearl Jam cover, from the Singles soundtrack no less? We’ll stick around for gems like that. Nine Inch Nails? Eh, not so much. Hey, it is what it is.
Sadly, not everyone goes for the music at a festival. About half of the guesstimated 75,000 attendees at Sasquatch were using the music as a soundtrack to their $9 beer dranking and hours-long naps and apple bonging (it’s exactly what you think it is). Sometimes they were ingenious enough to sneak alcohol into the festival inside a flask shaped like binoculars or a hollowed-out loaf of bread even. Some just wanted to draw magic marker tats on one another. And still others were just around to see exactly how many sloppy, slobbery kisses and such they could get away with in the midst of wide-eyed onlookers (and it was a whole, whole lot, it really was). The rest of us? We were the bird watchers. We were the grizzled prospectors. We were sifting through the gravel, picking diamonds out of the rough stuff. We sought and found.
I can only speak for these eyes and these ears. For the curious, here’s a smattering of my findings.
_________________________
Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele out of Mississippi? Both a surprise and a revelation. He was like Jens Lekman with an even better sense of humor. Maybe Elvis Costello with more of the boogie woogie infused into his tunes? The glasses and slicked hair cast him as a total geek of a guy, but he found my smiles. I mean, he had background singers manipulating the female doowop sound! He had a ukulele and he knew how to use it! One song was so good, you just wanted to hear what would come next. And then the next after that. It was easy to buy that album. It was one of the easiest sells I can recall.
The Decemberists? Need to buy the new album, pronto. Passion Pit? Need to listen to the album instead of the concert.
M. Ward was solid as a rock, he was. He’s a real pro at what it is he does. He knew he only had an hour to give us a show, so he took just seconds between songs, barreling from one to another so quickly, his set was just a cough away from being one long, beautiful melody. It pains me to write it, but Zooey wasn’t much needed.
It was good to fight for the spot that allowed us to see Bon Iver from just 20 feet away. It’s just unreal how good Justin Vernon sounds live, but he does. He just does. Whether he’s doing songs from his first album, the new EP or even throwing in a Kathleen Edwards cover to appease the pot smokers, he’s on top of his game. I think he knows it. There were sound snafus and it didn’t much matter in the end. He saw past them and showed his stripes. Hearing and watching his little crew do “Creature Fear” with enough ferocity to break his strings at the end of it all? That sealed the deal for me. That set opened me wide and made me a bigger fan than I already was.
VIDEO: Bon Iver at Sasquatch, w/ Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond – “Flume”
Heartless Bastards? I just love you. The Dutchess & The Duke? Thank you so, so much. Grizzly Bear? You done did what I thought you’d do. That band needs a bigger hug from the public, sure, and maybe it’ll happen with the new album. But you can get lost inside their harmonies pretty easily. It’s exactly what the band wants, too, so just let it happen.
There were more, but that ought to do, right? I’m running a bit long as it stands.
Biggest regret? Missing the Builders & The Butchers out of Portland. Scamper away and take them in because you’ll hear something just fantastic in them. Believe it. And The School of Seven Bells! Why’d you have to play while The Avett Brothers were? You intrigue me, but the Avetts stole my heart out from under me. I hope they make and sing their solid brand of country songs for the rest of the years I am alive. Then—and only then—will it be enough.
VIDEO: Avett Brothers @ Sasquatch – “Murder In The City”
You can only take so much festival. Sometimes two-and-a-half days’ worth is your breaking point. And you know it means missing Girl Talk and Explosions in the Sky and Erykah Badu but, you know what? You put your arm around Annie from St. Vincent. You left with an autographed copy of Grizzly Bear’s latest. You saw the lead singer of Monotonix perform so hard, he earned a flesh wound for his art … and, despite the blood coming out of his head, kept on going. You heard enough songs and saw enough good, solid bands to last you, what, a good month or two? Perhaps.
VIDEO: Monotonix drumming in the Sasquatch crowd
The mind wants more, maybe, and the miser in you wants to get the most out of what was a gifted ticket anyway (it’s the principle of the thing!), but there’s a time to retreat to your own bed, stop loving on the perfect 80 degree sunshine and give Sasquatch a kiss on the mouth goodbye. It was good, so crazy good, but goodbyes are inevitable. You can only take so much.
Today I am trying to focus on work in the waning hours of my week, before heading off to play dice, four-square and double dutch tonight in a Denver warehouse, if’n my body remembers how.
Meanwhile, I am listening to The Dead Weather, the latest scathing musical side project of Jack White, along with Alison Mosshart (The Kills), Dean Fertita (Queens of the Stone Age), and Jack Lawrence (The Raconteurs). I haven’t figured out why this song suggests I treat anyone like my mother, but I like the way it sounds:
And, I am also thoroughly entertained with Drowned In Sound’s feature on the indie-rock reconnaissance notes of Grizzly Bear guitarist Daniel Rossen’s mother:
7/19/07
While trolling for GB reviews, I somehow came across Deerhunter at the Bowery Ballroom on Pitchfork or somewhere and was shocked at poor Bradford Cox’s appearance. He just looked positively terminal and that gold dress didn’t help either….
Man, something about these warm summery weeks, or maybe an aural hangover from my driving journey through West Texas, but lately all kinds of down-home music is grabbing me. Something about the authenticity of a good campfire sad song, or a mandolin + fiddle. I mean, sure I’m still going to dance my ass off at Ghostland Observatory this Saturday, but for today, this is hitting the right notes:
Justin Townes Earle (whose name I just learned how to pronounce correctly, because I am retarded) is Steve Earle’s son and a proper heir to that surname. Named partly after Dad’s friend Townes Van Zandt, 27-year-old Justin infuses his brand of Americana with a vibrant, organic streak of youth.
He does a surprisingly great cover of The Replacements’ 1987 classic “Can’t Hardly Wait.” It amazes me how this song is from an album typically thought of as all sloppy punk, but has these sterling country-road roots that Justin brings out so well. Justin’s also got strong strokes of that same off-kilter howl that Westerberg trademarked. Hearing this has made me smile.
Can’t Hardly Wait (Replacements cover, live 9/28/08) – Justin Townes Earle
I’ll write you a letter tomorrow
Tonight I can’t hold a pen
Someone’s got a stamp that I can borrow
I promise not to blow the address again
Lights that flash in the evening, through a crack in the drapes
Jesus rides beside me
He never buys any smokes
Hurry up, hurry up, ain’t you had enough of this stuff
Ashtray floors, dirty clothes, and filthy jokes
See you’re high and lonesome, try and try and try
Lights that flash in the evening,
Through a hole in the drapes
I’ll be home when I’m sleeping
I can’t hardly wait
Listen to the rest of this show over on the Live Music Archive, for a fine sampling of Justin’s original songs interspersed with classic covers of Woody Guthrie, Mississippi John Hurt, dad Steve Earle, Blind Blake, Townes Van Zandt, and Lightnin’ Hopkins.
We don’t bleed when we don’t fight
go ahead go ahead
Throw your arms in the air tonight
we don’t bleed when we don’t fight
Go ahead go ahead
There’s our shirts in the fire tonight
what makes you think I’m enjoying being led to the flood
we got another thing comin’ undone
we got another thing comin’ undone
That’s taking us over
That’s another new song from The National, tantalizing glimpses from their forthcoming album. They played at the 9:30 Club in DC Sunday night, and my sources in the field say that they opened with this evocative song, complete with a “gorgeous layer of horns.”
Alan at SixEyes has ripped the audio into an mp3, for your portable pleasure. I’m on my sixth listen or so, and what Tuesday couldn’t use an added dose of melancholy to it?
Lucero brings their whiskey-soaked cowboy punk to Colorado this weekend, with shows in Aspen Thursday, at Denver’s Bluebird on Friday night and the Fox Theatre in Boulder on Saturday.
Lucero is currently prepping their major label debut, due out this summer with Universal Republic. I came across an acoustic solo version of a new song called, “Hey Darling, Do You Gamble” performed by Ben Nichols, as well as ten full-band Lucero songs from various shows over the last couple of years — all candidates to make it onto the new album. According to a friend who caught their recent San Francisco show at Slim’s, “you’ll hear more piano infused in the new stuff and, dare I say it, an upbeat attitude.”
But listen first to this new song, which tells a story that Nichols teased out of a line from the Townes Van Zandt movie, Be Here To Love Me. I like listening to the raspy-voiced Ben telling of the interview with Townes’ third wife, how she was won over when Townes walked up to her and simply asked, “Hey darlin’……do you gamble?”
LUCERO TOUR
May 26 – The Bourquet, Boise, ID *
May 27 – Urban Lounge, Salt Lake City, UT *
May 28 – The Belly up, Aspen, CO *
May 29 – The Bluebird Theater, Denver, CO *
May 30 – The Fox Theater, Boulder, CO *
Jun 2 – Waiting Room, Omaha, NE *
Jun 3 – Varsity Theater, Minneapolis, MN *
Jun 4 – The Picador, Iowa City, IA *
Jun 5 – The Tupelo Elvis Festival, Tupelo, MS (well heck!) Jun 6 – Wakarusa, Ozark, AR
Jun 12 – NJ Maxwells, Hoboken, NJ
Jun 13 – NY Big Apple BBQ Block Party, NYC
Jun 18 – The Norva, Norfolk, VA
Jun 19 – Friday Cheers at Brown’s Island, Richmond, VA
Jun 20 – The Grey Eagle, Asheville, NC
Via Chicago (live) – Jeff Tweedy & Jay Bennett I’m Always In Love – Jeff Tweedy & Jay Bennett (both tracks live & absolutely gorgeous from the Old Town School of Folk Music Fest, 7/25/99)
…thus read the subject line of an email I got from a longtime-reader, first-time-writer named Jordan. I try to pay attention to the rabid recommendations of folks who have been following enough to know what will grab my ears, and MAN ALIVE did this one. I yelped out loud in elation last night when I watched this:
Patrick Watson is a Canadian artist who I wrote about once before but had recently fallen off my radar. Well, that video is enough to put him smack-dab right on it again — with his goosebump-inducing voice, resonating with longing and swooping with desire.
Watson and his bandmates use bicycle parts and wine bottles for percussion and are “inspired by the foley effects of ’40s cartoons and the Twilight Zone.” Their newest album Wooden Arms came out just a few weeks ago, and was recorded during wintertime in Montreal and Iceland. What I’ve heard is redolent with an unsettling icy beauty.
My full-length copy is on its way to my very eager ears, but SixEyes wrote a wonderful review of it: “Patrick Watson’s 3rd full length is so intoxicating, so magical, that it has pushed every thing I’ve heard since, down a notch, or two. And it’s not just Watson’s voice, one that lives somewhere between the rooted grainy echo of M Ward and the soaring mercurial grace of Jeff Buckley, it’s the music which carries, and is carried by, that voice.”
SOLD. Listen to this off the new album — haunting:
The superb Belfast-meets-alt-country blend of Minnesota’s Romantica comes to Denver tonight at the Soiled Dove. After seeing them at SXSW, I highly recommend this impassioned show.
Here is an extra-gorgeous rendition of “The Dark,” by request, a few nights ago in Salt Lake City.
ROMANTICA TOUR DATES
May 21 – The Soiled Dove w/ Carrie Rodriguez, Denver, CO
May 22 – KTAO Solar Center w/ Carrie Rodriguez, Taos, NM
May 25 – North Music & Arts Festival, Kenosha, WI
Jun 6 – Olde Town Creamery, Maple Lake, MN
Jul 17 – RiverSong Folk Music Festival, Hutchinson, MN
Aug 8 – MN Zoo w/ Alejandro Escovedo, Apple Valley, MN
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California Giving context to the torrent since 2005.
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. Rock on.
JTE’s 
poster art by Denver’s 
Name: Heather Browne
