CRAPPY IPHONE PHOTOS FROM RECENT ROCK SHOWS
Here's a pic of the Bonnie
Prince Billy Band, with Will's dome as shiny and majestic as ever.
That's
Cheyenne Mize in the middle: no words can describe the clarity of her voice,
the sensuousness of her skin, the angelic eyes worthy of old-timey portraiture.
The band was just fantastic, that is really what I think, and by the way,
Jim White of Dirty Three is on drums, obscured in this pic by Ms. Mize's
bum. The set ranged from earliest Palace
(the opener was a long and loud, churning, qawwali-like
rendition of "I
was Drunk at the Pulpit") to the latest off Bonnie Prince's "Beware."
Will
and Cheyenne sang together like Johnny Cash and June Carter, eyeing
each other just enough to suggest real tensions beyond the songs. Will's
voice sometimes couldn't get over the band when the band got loud. When
the band got loud and Will gestured and bugged
his eyes and shook his head, it'd've been great to have heard more
of a voice than my own singing along. Anyway, always awesome to see Mr.
Oldham, always a memory
lane of the last 15 years or so.
What we have here is Sir
Richard Bishop of The Sun City
Girls, performing pretty much the entirety of his latest album. Sufi
surf guitar. An absolute virtuoso. Controlled and precise and liable to
free
jazz at the drop of a fez. Not sure about the woman on the left with
the two-tone hair. She and the rest of the backing band opened up and played
evil-hippie drone rock. This was the fourth time I'd seen SRB or SCG in
Philly. Always different: first time was SCG, the intact electric trio,
at the Khyber in 2004 at a particularly trying time in my life -- they
provided more than enough catharsis, opening with Radar
1941, the first song of theirs I'd heard (at a party at 3 am in 1995
in Austin, all lights off, it played over and over). Then SRB
solo acoustic in the 50 person max side room of The Church. Then The
Bishop Brothers, acoustic, playing all the greatest SCG hits. And this
time SRB on electric.
Polvo! Back again after years in limbo. Better than ever. Opened
with Fast
Canoe! I once stood in line with Ash Bowie (guitarist on right) at
CVS in Jamaica Plain, a Boston neighborhood, in 1997. There was some problem
at the register. He was in front of me. I was buying toilet paper. I said,
"You're Ash from Polvo, right?" We talked for ten minutes or so. After
the show in Philadelphia this summer, we talked again and I asked if he
remembered talking in line at CVS. He said he definitely remembered that
CVS. I doubt he'll remember our conversation years from now. He asked what
I thought about the new arrangements of some of the songs and some of the
new lyrics. I said everything sounded awesome and I didn't notice the new
arrangements or lyrics, that I never really came to Polvo for the lyrics,
more for good
ol' GTR action.
Ash's gtrs.
This is the stage before The
Boredoms' show on September 9, 2009 in NYC. Nine drummers on 9/9/09.
In the middle is a seven-necked guitar on a stand, next to another five-necked
guitar, also on a stand. If you haven't heard about the first Boadrum show
on July 7, 2007 by the Brooklyn Bridge, featuring 77 drummers, we highly
recommend you
watch this and get
this.
The show started and after
a few incantations, the lead guy, Eye, sat at the empty ninth drum set
as one of the two official Boredoms drummers was carried through the crowd.
I'm not going to try to track down his name -- it's almost better for me
that everyone remains nameless, it being such
an ecstatic drum major-led marching band tribal purification ritual sort
of event.
Here you can see Eye in the middle there addressing his drummer
friend. Eye
reminded me at times of a Japanese Bob Marley, shrieking, chanting, leaping,
directing the drummers like James Brown, sometimes smiling and cupping
their volume in his hand and turning it up and down. He also played
the multi-necked guitars
behind him, banging them with colored rods, especially on Super Going.
This is a particularly crappy iphone photo. Much better pics
are here.
This was one of one of the most intense, original, inventive, energetic,
ecstatic, driving shows I've ever seen. Like the sound of serotonin. Solar-powered.
Reminded me at times of
Can,
Terry
Riley, Sun Ra,
on and on. See them if you can.
Forevermore at http://eyeshot.net/rock.html
*
Recent Eyeshot Activities
Another Quaquaversalist
Puppycat
(9/5/09)
The Most Recent (&
Most Likely Final) Rejection
Letters From the Eyeshot
Outbox
(8/22/09)
Michael Vick & Some Serious
Carnivorous Action Every Sunday
(8/16/09)
Werner Herzog: Conquest of
the Useless --
A New Addition to the Readerly
Resonance Chamber
(8/14/09)
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