well, I sure feel D.U.M.B.er... (part 2)

Welcome back to the next installment of the thrilling, chilling tale of our crazy little weekend mini-tour!

(To read the first part of the story, head here.)

After we bailed on the latter part of the Umphrey's McGee we worked out way into the inside room of the club, known as Heaven. What a bad choice of a name! First of all, the entire place was painted black, and all of the staff were semi-freaky looking goth kids. It was only slightly cooler inside then it was outside, except there was a humidity level of about 99 percent; if you went into the restroom it got considerably worse. Luckily the bars were cash only or I'd still be hungover today; I drank some seriously stiff vodka/sodas up in that place.

Perpetual Groove needed to bring their A-game to this show, and they definitely delivered. I stopped by the merch table to chat with my favorite band manager/generally nice guy Ben (thanks for the t-shirt) who told me that they were ready for the Ruckus.

Perpetual Groove
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

When the band came out it was immediately evident that he was right. Over the PA a majestic fanfare played, and the quartet from Georgia came out and took their places on the small stage. Here's what went down:

I: Teakwood Betz, A Day the Way, TTFPJ*, Save for One, Suburban Speedball, Pepper**, Two Shores, Robot Waltz

Set II: Speed Queen, Diggin' in the Dirt, Occam's Blazer, Under Lock and Key, MOTA, Out Here> Space Paranoids

E: Crapshoot

*With Allen Aucoin on drums and Aron Magner on keys, Disco Biscuits
**With Joel Cummins of Umphrey's Mcgee on keys

The show started strong with Teakwood Betz, one of the group's major tunes that always pleases. Next up was A Day the Way, which is one of their newer songs and one that I have yet had the chance to fully appreciate, perhaps due to its late placement in the two shows I have seen it at. Plus, it is a tad on the slow side. But when they dropped into the funky dance party of TTFPJ the crowd returned to get down mode.

And that was before the special guests took the stage. Aron Magner and Allen Aucion, the keyboardist and drummer from the Disco Biscuits, respectively, joined the band for an extended electronic jam in the middle of the tune. Magner even gets to drop his "wish I was a gangster" line in the middle. There's so good stuff going on here, take a listen:

Perpetual Groove w/Aron Magner & Allen Aucoin - TTFPJ - 6-30-07

After the first guests left the stage pGroove played two of my favorites: the relatively new rocker Save For One and the hauntingly beautiful Suburban Speedball. Next up, they invited Joel Cummins, keyboardist of Umphrey's McGee, onstage for a rousing rendition of the Butthole Surfers' "Pepper". Two Shores followed up before a massive Robot Waltz closed the set.

Disco Biscuits' drummer Allen Aucoin fills the drummer's seat for a tune
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

I would have probably left at this point thinking that the show was over if the keyboardist's lovely wife didn't let me know that they were coming out for a second set. I'm pretty glad that the rest of the crowd did not receive this same heads up, as the crowd thinned out nicely during setbreak.

Bassist Adam Perry celebrates his birthday with some rock star moves
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

When they came back on they wasted no time dropping into the rocker Speed Queen. I could hear some faint teases of Peter Gabriel's "Diggin' in the Dirt", so I has happy when the played the song as their next tune. It happens to be one of my favorite covers that they play, and I haven't heard it for while, so I was happy. Next up was Occam's Blazer, another one of the group's instrumental monsters. Sometimes when the band locks into a good psychedelic groove I lose track of time, and this Occam's could have been 5 minutes long or a half an hour long as far as I could tell. Under Lock and Key is another new one I can't talk to much about, but it gave me a chance to catch my breath before MOTA--another trippy tune--started. Next up the band dropped into the fist-pumping ballad Out Here, which segued into the old school favorite Space Paranoids.

That sexy Matt McDonald
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

A quick Crapshoot encore, I said my hellos and goodbyes, and we were out the door. All in all, a great performance from Perpetual Groove, the late addition to the lineup who actually got the opportunity to play longer their either of the more popular bands on the bill. Food for you guys; it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of dudes.

I said a quick goodbye to my lovely lady before jumping in the back seat of the car for the ride back to South Florida. I'm not embarrassed to say that I slept nearly the whole way back.

Next time, the shocking conclusion of the story!

the zombie food pyramid...

...or, influences made apparent.

Here is t-shirt design that was recently submitted to t-shirt competition web site Threadless:

click on the shirt to get to the product page

And here is a the graphic from a story in the satirical newspaper the Onion from 2002 entitled "Zombie Nutritionist Recommends All-Brain Diet":

the Onion's Zombie Food Pyramid

Inspiration?

Rip off?

You decide...

getting a little bit D.U.M.B. this weekend

Last night, one of my favorite bands and a band that has gone from intolerable to one that I kinda like sometimes began a co-headlining tour which is plagued with the worst name ever:

the D.U.M.B. Tour.

The two bands playing are the Disco Biscuits and Umphrey's McGee; if you mix the four words up and form an acronym, you get D.U.M.B. Pretty dumb, don't you think?

Check the logo, which is a combination of UM's four-leaf clover and tDB's odd little circle logo:

To me, it looks like some brilliant promoter came up with a D.U.M.B. idea, and this is the result.

I kid. Seriously, I've been advocating these double bills for years as a way for small- to medium-sized bands to cross-pollinate their audiences. My first pick to do something like this was Brothers Past and Perpetual Groove. One northern band, one southern band, both with pretty fanatical (though small and virtually nonexistent outside their home territory) fanbases. Set an early start time, alternate headlining spots in clubs around the country, watch fanbase grow exponentially.

Well, it didn't quite happen like that.

Instead, let me tell you the tale of two bands that fell in love with each other so deeply that some of their respective fans got sick of the other group's music. I don't know when or where it happened (though I believe it was in Amsterdam for the first Jam in the 'Dam), but this is the situation with the Disco Biscuits and Umphrey's McGee.

Umphrey's McGee and the Disco Biscuits stumble around Amsterdam.

Thanks to PT's SleekLazy for hooking up the photo for me

Some people are sick of seeing the two bands packaged together: they are playing this five show southern tour and Trancegression, a co-headlining festival in mid-July in Colorado (a trip I had to unfortunately cancel). Together, they're also the main attractions for Caribbean Holidaze, a destination festival (that I am happy to be attending). Others know that creatively the musicians play off of each other rather well. Many (myself including) hope for a return of the Brain Damaged Eggmen, a hybridized band featuring members of both groups that plays Pink Floyd and Beatles' covers, exclusively.

Umphrey's McGee has grown on me since I first saw them. My opinion echoes the complaints of many others: technically, they are extremely talented musicians, but much of their music lacks soul. Also, I find that a majority of their jams sound like they were ripped straight out of a Phish setlist. But sometimes they rock pretty hard, and some of their podcasts featuring soundboard recordings of crispy material get regular playback on my work computer.

I really like the Disco Biscuits, and I kinda like UM. But that combination wasn't going to get me to drive to Atlanta on Saturday to see them. However, the D.U.M.B. promoter had a good idea: add a solid Georgia band to the lineup to play a late night show. The fact that the band is Perpetual Groove, one of my top three groups to see live, made the decision to collect the crew and trek to Georgia a no-brainer. Of course, the fact that I have a lovely lady whom I can't wait to see doesn't hurt, either.

What will hurt is leaving Perpetual Groove's late night show (starting at 10 p.m. and ending at 2 a.m.), getting in the car and driving right back down to South Florida in time for the hometown D.U.M.B. show at the Pompano Beach Amphitheatre. Normally the ride back home after a show is brutal, especially if you leave immediately following an eight-hour rage-fest. I'm not saying that this one won't be brutal, but the fact that there is a show the next day is a bright light at the end of a long tunnel.

Tickets for all the D.U.M.B. Tour shows, including tonight's in Portsmouth, VA and tomorrow's in Raleigh, NC, are available here. Hope to see you out.

sometimes it really is hard to tell the difference...

This is just too funny not to share:

jam band fan or taliban

I only hope that this guy keeps up with posting photos. What with the proliferation of both Islamic jihadists and the growth in popularity of jambands (it seems like you can throw a rock from anywhere in the Continental United States and hit a music festival this summer), I bet he'll have quality material for a long time...

Jam Band fan or Taliban... you decide.

Battles crush my skull... in a good way.

Last night I volunteered to be designated driver and hopped in the car with a moderately-sized crew. We were heading down to Studio A in Miami, home to overpriced drinks, beautiful hipster-chicks and dudes in over-ironic t-shirts aching to be noticed (some crew members included).

Why would we head into the god-forsaken 305 on a Monday night? It had to be a good reason to get me off of my couch on a Monday; so it had to be a great reason to get me to drive down to Miami in the rain on a Monday, the night before my weekly longest day ever (I have HUGE meetings on almost every Tuesday).

This was a good reason, New York avant rock (or if you want to be genre-specific, math rock) group Battles' first show in South Florida, and I was gonna see it. I first heard of the group a few months back when they announced that their first full-length LP, Mirrored, was going to be released on Warp Records. I found some of their tunes online and was immediately floored. The intricate layering of manipulated sound left me wondering "how did they do that?" and the driving oh-so-hard drum beats rattled my brain and made my neck cramp in anticipation of some serious head-banging.

I did a little bit of research and discovered that Battles were a super group, of sorts. I could go into the detailed back story of the group and its' members, but I think that this video will do much better justice as an introduction:

Suffice it to say that all four members are virtuosos in their own right, both technically in how they play their instruments, but also creatively, in the type of music they write. I've listened to a lot of music, and I've never heard anything like Battles before.

Anyway, back to the review.

After taking some half-baked advice on getting to the venue and getting lost in the ghetto twice and spit back onto the highway once, we made it to the venue as the final opening band was setting up their gear on stage. They're called (according to the same person who gave me the above mentioned directions) John Hancock and the Founding Fathers, and 'id give you a link to their site but I can't find out anything about them. They were actually pretty good, with a sound ranging from ! ! ! -esque dance punk to a more 80s new wave/pop sound. Their outfits had an unexplained jungle theme to them, and they all wore face paint for no good reason. But they had a song with the refrain "My girl is part Italian and I am part Mongolian," and I was glad that I saw them.

After the set ended, they cleared the stage completely and the guys from Battles started setting up their gear on in the empty space. It was actually rather cool to watch as the took the black space and completely constructed their setup. The stage was bookended by two similar setups. On each side a table held a laptop computer (gloat, Madpercolator, it was a Mac) and more effects pedals then I could count. A guitar leaned against each table. In the middle of the stage was drummer John Stanier's unmistakable yellow drumkit, complete with the high hat symbol on a stand that was about six feet tall. Behind the kit their sat various stringed instruments that would be played by Dave Konopka when the show finally began.

They came out around midnight, and we were ready. I stood about three rows back looking directly at the afroed Tyondai Braxton. When the double bass drum kicked, I did what I did at most concerts: I started dancing and dancing hard. I looked around to survey the crowd and discovered that out of the relatively meager size showing for the venue (but relatively good for a rainy Monday night) there were exactly seven people exhibiting any kind of body motion at all, and that they had either ridden in my car to get there or we met there.

Why is it that people don't dance at hipster shows? I really want to know...

The band kicked ass during their hour-and-fifteen minute set. It was pretty impressive how they would take something as simple as a guitar riff and then loop and manipulate it until it was indistinguishable from its' original form. Add to that the ability to layer on top of layer on top of layer until it sounded as if their were sound coming from a dozen different players instead of the four onstage and the brutally punishing intensity of the drums and you can imagine how intense this show was.

Battles play loud, aggressive rock and roll that is obtuse and angular in its melodies and rhythms, but at the same time danceable (to those of us who do that kind of thing, anyway). It is definitely the kind of music that not everyone can get into, but if you're into it you understand how good this band is at playing it.

My buddy Billy-B took some photos last night that I'll post up when he has a chance to send them my way.

And here they are:

Battles in motion

drummer John Stanier reaches up to hit his high hat

Daft Punk kick off summer tour in Scotland

So I spoke too soo when I claimed that Daft Punk's summer tour starts tonight: it actually began this weekend with an appearance at Scotland's Rock Ness Festival. The duo convinced the promoters tha they needed their set to be in a tent rather then on the main stage, and it seems that a bit of chaos resulted. From a story in the Lochabar News:

But the good news was that dance pilgrims lured up the North road with the promise of a genuinely special event – the return of Daft Punk to Scotland after a 10-year absence – were not disappointed. They just had to be very, very patient for their treat.

A 50-minute delay in the appearance of the masked duo as the climax for many people’s festival on Sunday night tested the faith in the masked Frenchmen. The queues to get into the tent had begun up to six hours before the scheduled start in the 10,000 capacity tent. And even with the side lifted to allow the thousands standing around the tent to get a view of the genuinely jaw-dropping light show planned by da funksters, it was still almost certain that very few saw the show as it was truly intended by Daft Punk.

And the more cynical among the fans might have wondered if the duo shouldn’t just have settled for the chance for everyone to enjoy the spectacular from the main stage in the gloaming, rather than the darkness of a tent they insisted their show needed.*

Emphasis added by me... holy shit, that's just crazy. I would have went insane if that were me waiting...

Regardless of the wait, these lucky folks got to experience Daft Punk in much the same way I did back in November. I wondered if they changed their stage setup for this tour: some photos searching showed me that theat they were using the massive pyramid/grid system from last year.

during the show (taken at the Tim Festival 2006, São Paulo, Brazil)

during the show (taken at the Bang Festival 2006, Miami, FL, USA)

after the show (taken at the Rock Ness Festival 2007, Scotland)

So the stage set is the same (no complaints here); I can only wonder if they changed up their musical set at all. Last year's performances all featured a similar setlist, though the mixes for each performance were distinct to my ears.

*when I saw Daft Punk last year at the Bang Festival in Miami, the stage was setup outside.