New Order at Tempodrom, June 21, 2012

New orders coming!

get ready

I love auto correct, I wanted to say that New Order IS coming to Berlin, and look, it’s a double entendre. You see what I did there.

beginning

So as I shelled out 70 euros for two tickets to see a band, what, 20 years past it’s prime? I’m thinking of an entry where I can enumerate the many faceted genius of NW. While in my heart of hearts my deepest love goes to Joy Division, with New Order I find tracks that constantly surprise and refresh me. First, lest we forget, they had a great “comeback” with the album Get Ready in 2001. From the opening of “Crystal”, which begins with the signature New Order beats and a soul sample followed by the unmistakable voice of Bernard Sumner.  After watching Carlos the Jackal and the brilliant pairing of "Age of Consent" (that scene when he’s getting out of the shower)

Set List

Crystal

-

Ceremony

(Joy Division) Isolation

Age of Consent

-

-

Bizarre Love Triangle

586

-

-

Perfect Kiss

Blue Monday

Temptation

(Joy Division) Transmission

Love Will Tear us Apart

Gaps represent gaps in my memory, or where I couldn’t place the track list. Thanks to these guys for filling in some blanks.

As you can see, they played all the hits from a golden age. Check out the recent interview in ElectronicBeats , notice no mention of Peter Hook.  Thoughts that went through my mind during the show, after I sold my ticket to a solider in the Bundeswehr (errrr) was:

-incredible as yet unidentified opening DJ provided by sponsor, Electronic Beats

-what is it like when you just hold out your guitar and someone takes it, no questions asked?

-is drinking your water out of a wine glass some kind of nod to previous rock and roll excesses, like smoking tobacco out of an old bong?

Grandaddy, For Noise Festival, Pully, Switzerland, August 25th, 2012

"and dogs are dead/

with broken hearts/

collapsing by/

the coffee carts"

Dreams come true in Switzerland when Grandaddy plays "Crystal  Lake" 

Well well well, this long awaited moment was finally upon the chosen few, with concert tickets purchased in April and finally, after plane, train, and a steep uphill walk, I am in Pully (pronounced like the first half of a 3-year-old saying "Pwease" without the "s," not like "pulley," a tool used to lift an object of equal or greater weight), standing in the rain and mud, discovering that my fancy-pants North Face jacket is no longer waterproof, and wondering what it's all for.  22 CHF later, I have a Grandaddy t-shirt  (yes I was that guy)  emblazoned with the quote "Now it's on....again" and a cheap plastic poncho protecting me for all it's worth as I wait to see a band I have loved since my early twenties days as a tragic art student.  This is what we do for rock and roll.  Considering my first Grandaddy co-fan in San Francisco was a Frenchman, I am not so surprised at their considerable popularity in Europe, but I am surprised at the age of the crowd, good to know our favorite Modesto rockers are reaching ever younger and impressionable audiences.  Almost as satisfying as hearing the guy behind me requesting "Jeez Louise" which, with the accent, sounds like "Jeez-he Louise-eh."  Ah, adorable.

pedals fuzzy with anticipation

The crew comes out to the opening theme song to Welcome Back Kotter, an appropriate choice after a 7 year break-up-now-hiatus. They opened with "El Caminos in the West," and I now I am sure the song is about this kind of El Camino, not the historic highway in California. The stage setup is reminiscent of classic Grandaddy, so a big screen playing assorted films, my favorite being the video for "Now it's On," where a group of girls, replete with fake beards and trucker hats, play the band members and get up to all sorts of awesome cliched rock star antics, like chugging root beer, fighting, and storming/escaping from of a press conference. A b-side gem that was resurrected, amidst mostly songs from Sophtware Slump and Sumday, was "My Small Love," a short and sweet paen to the lovelorn some of you may know from rarities Concrete Dunes album.  In a tribute to another great California band, also from the Central Valley, Grandaddy covered "Here" by Pavement, during the encore, in a faster, more crunchy guitar/feedbacky version.  Funny, didn't Pavement just reunite in 2010?  So, unlike so many other disappointing and pathetic reunions (I can't even talk about the Codeine show in July, it's still too fresh) where lights and and effects and tired songs mask burned out and compromised musicians, I am happy to report that Grandaddy still has you, crying into your keyboard with your big headphones on, getting on the outside of 12-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, next to your mixer and laptop, dorking out on midi mixes, while the lawnmowers going and the crickets chirping and methane hangs over the farmlands and air conditioners get abandoned in forests and you wonder where he/she went and why you screwed up so bad. 

So we could analyze the Pavement lyrics: "I was dressed for success/and success it never comes," harkening back to the point where Grandaddy almost-but-not-quite broke big time, but let's just go straight to the end, where "Last time, last time was the best time." Indeed.

documenta13

Solakov at the Brothers Grimm Museum

-->documenta13, Part 1

Freshly back from two art and action packed days in Kassel, and I want to give the mind-bogglingly big art show the proper writing treatment I hoped for, but first I just want to tell about my two favorite pieces while they are fresh in my mind.

free jukebox and comfy headphones

The first was Susan Hiller’s Die Gedanken Sind Frei. 100 songs, in 5 jukeboxes located throughout documenta13, completely free of charge and with an accompanying songbook. The book reads like the text of a mixed tape for the world. The songs all tend toward the protest and social change theme, but are really varied from Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” to the American Indian Movement Song to “Clampdown” by the Clash.   The title refers to a German protest song, translated as “Thoughts are Free” (Thinking is Free).  In the songbook, Hiller relates how inmates in a concentration camp were ordered to put on a show to celebrate Hitler's 46th birthday and the Jewish lawyer Hans Litten sang this song, and was executed 3 days later (other sources claim he committed suicide after the incident). The first song I listened to was The Mothers of Invention “What is the Ugliest Part of Your Body” and I have to admit, providing headphones and a big comfy bench to sit is an excellent way to capture your audience in a sprawling art show. 

songbook

listen closely

and read those lyrics

The first and central jukebox of the piece is in it’s own room at the Neue Galerie, with the lyrics of the 100 songs plastered up on the walls. I sat and listened, reading the lyrics and getting emotional at Hiller’s anecdotes and stories after each one. At one point, “Die Gedanken Sind Frei” came on and the room changed, people who knew it sang the words and as the song ended everyone clapped and it brought several in the room to tears, including me.  Hiller has captured the essence of what attracts me to music, the “it”, that unnameable and intangible thing that makes songs ours, something that, while we maybe didn’t write it or create it, hearing it and participating in it makes it our own, and something that we share with others.  Hiller writes, referring to the songs she chose “Whenever I hear one of these songs, a gap opens up in ordinary everyday-ness and a past abruptly emerges.”  I made it my goal the rest of the weekend to find the other 4 jukeboxes and play both “War” by Edwin Starr and “Gimme Hope Jo’Anna” by Eddy Grant.

The other pleasant surprise was Bulgarian artist Nedko Solakov’s multi room installation a the Brothers Grimm Museum.  I saw this on Sunday when I had only two hours left to see the last pieces I wanted to, and that museum was not on the list but I figured there was no line so a quick look couldn’t hurt. What I found was a hilarious and absurd series of works with a distinctively Slavic (read: about mortality) bent. Solakov begins by telling us about childhood obsession with knights, and also a long held dream of being a hard rock drummer, and lastly, about owning remote control helicopters.  I wont’ give too much away when I say the video that made me laugh the hardest was Solakov dressed up as a knight while three gifted drummers played and he had a remote control helicopter land on his arm.  The best was the last video where he goes on a ride on white horse in a snow, dressed in a complete suit of armor, with a bendable unicorn toy (his daughter’s) wrapped around the horse’s halter. It was a patently ridiculous, Solakov fulfilling childhood dreams in his 50s, but that it was made it great, the ability to look back on your dreams and joyously still participate in the them.

a painting he commissioned combining all his long held dreams

on TV with the drummers

more hilarious videos and paraphernalia

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Jack Beauregard, Nias and Retro Stefson at Bii Nuu, August 16, 2012

  it is not rock and roll if you don’t get sweaty

There will be a moment when I get to say I told you so, and it may or may not center around one of the three bands I saw tonight.

This evening saw me and a lucky plus one trying something new: a first come, first served guest list. Part of Intro magazines Introducing series, tonight’ lineup at Bii Nuu (the club under Schlesisches Tor U-bahn Station, club name more easily pronounced than station name) was Hamburg favorite Jack Beauregard, followed by Nias, and ending with a rousing set from Iceland’s own Retro Stefson. I saw the first band open for Gotye at Franz last winter and I knew Retro Stefson from an amazing performance at the 2011 Berlin Music Festival.

Okay, so the first thing with a guest list like this (tickets could not be purchased, you could only sign up online, giving your email address and a plus one) is that lining up outside, in Barbara’s words, is like an Easyjet flight, everyone is eyeing to get in first. We made it in (5^th in the door thank you!) and secured a nice spot right up at the stage.  I have to say while the sound was decent, by midpoint the club felt like dancing inside the sun, but (brace for cliché) the bands were so good I barely noticed awww.

Jack Beauregard

First, Jack Beauregard, who (and this is a flattering comparison) do at points remind me of Pink Floyd if they sang about love and girls instead of space type things.   Three guys that craft pop melodies layered with sweet vocals reminiscent of the kind of love notes and thoughts you scribbled on your English notebook in high school, but not in that saccharine, obnoxious way.  If any of you remember the Philadelphia space pop scene that brought us Mazarin (now defunct) you’ll definitely dig Jack Beuaregard.  Male harmonizing worthy of the latest all male vocal groups (Fleet Foxes, Midlake). 

Nias

Next, Nias, a band I didn’t even know was on the bill until 3 strapping young lads took the stage. I know nothing about them (and later learned they are from the Czech Republic, offshoots of a post core band, this info brought to you direct from the facebook page yes), but musically, I would give the trio the honor of buying the CD. Vocals reminded me of The Walkmen, while the music was mix of early Flaming Lips (like the Punk Rockers are Finally Taking Acid era FL) and the Psychedlic Furs. No kidding, there were some riffs that were obvious synth 80s throwbacks.

Retro Stefson

And finally, my somewhat ancestral Icelandic brethren take the stage like Beowulf taking down Grendel (let no Scandinavian studies Phd be reading this please.)  The best thing seeing an Icelandic band may be the intros, everyone has names that are like 10 syllables long.  7 barely legal musicians: Logi Pedro Stefánsson, Haraldur Ari Stefánsson, Unnsteinn Manuel Stefánsson, Þórður Jörundsson, Þorbjörg Roach Gunnarsdóttir, Jon Ingvi Seljeseth and Gylfi Freeland Sigurðsson. What the fuck I love Icelandic names! Anyway, it’s a large group of keyboard. drums, girl on digital synth/keyboard, 2 guitars, 1 bass, and Harald, who plays tambourines and the crowd. Now, this band has what rock and roll is lacking, and that is stage presence. That they can rock a crowd as big as the daytime crew at Berlin Festival or as cramped and crowded a teeny show as at Bii Nuu, should encourage ALL bands to get a sexy, dancing tambourine man. The point when he took of his shirt and showed the lovely six pack that I guess Icelandic winters give you, made it all worth it. And let no one ever tell you Northern Europeans can’t dance, because the boy has moves. Retro Stefson owes a lot to the metal and hardcore coming out of that portion of the planet (I know, it is still going very strong).  Over some repetitive and deep beats that reference reggae, pop, electro and smattering of Latin American beats are incoherent lyrics (what a xenophobe says because maybe it’s another language) that worm into your brain, and fill you with the desire to chant back when the band asks that of you (and they ask a lot, we are taught no less than 5 dance moves, and instructed to do them in unison).  So if you want a show that leaves you sweaty, happy, and reaffirmed that the future of rock n roll is being shouldered by young 'uns from a tiny island nation, then follow these guys. Band to watch, band to watch.

 

Three Shows in Three Weeks

April 17^th, 2012 Boy and Bear – Roter Salon

April 23^rd, 2012 Manel – Lido

May 2^nd, 2012 Foster the People – Columbiahalle

Like any well rounded person, I try to include a variety of cultural offerings and the previous three weeks were no exception. Within the boundaries of Berlin I heard a band from Australia, Cataluña and Los Angeles. Let’s begin

Boy & Bear / Boy & Guitars

Boy and Bear – okay the Roter Salon is a lovely venue and reminded me of San Francisco places like the Great American Music Hall and the Regency Ballroom. Off to the side of Volksbuhne, it had decent acoustics and that small, living room feel that makes for a great indie show. The crowd was about 99% Aussie, and so therefore loudly drunk. I didn’t realize I knew this band (Bronwen invited me and I excepted on the “free ticket” premise) until they played “Mexican Mavis” with was featured on the SXSW 2011 sampler which you can download on itunes.  Let’s call them very very Fleet Foxish.  They are also a non-encore band, who just announces they don’t do encores and play another song without leaving the stage. Lead singer told the story of people waiting around for ages at their last show waiting for an encore and he felt bad…well obviously not bad enough to play a few more songs! I thought it was old when the Supersuckers did that.

I have no idea what he's singing

Manel – Heard about this band from an Andalusian coworker, who sent me these links to entice me, note the awesome Pulp cover.  And also, he told me “Estos chicos cantan en Catalan, pero son majos! Yo tampoco los entiendo!!” so off to see a Catalan band that I most certainly won't understand. Now Lido was packed with more Spaniards per square meter than I’ve ever seen in Berlin, and I’ve been to Gorlitzer Park on a Sunday. What impressed me most was the mandolin and (no shit) an oboe incorporated into their version of melodic folk pop. Reminds me a bit of my favorite bit of 70s psych folk, Secos e Molhados.  Not-annoyingly-earnest vocals backed by sweeping melodies and solid musicianship.

ohmygod is it really you mark?

Foster the People – At the pinnacle of my recent show experiences. Now I was pretty bummed when they moved it from Astra Kulturhaus (leaky concrete box) to Columbiahalle (sweaty concrete box with crap acoustics). Now about fifty critics described their album Torches as the soundtrack to summer…but it is! Beautifully danceable electro-pop with catchy-as-hell lyrics. but the band live, oh live… the frontman, Mark Foster, has that break dancing, all over the sweaty stage charisma that makes live shows 10 million times better than listening on your ipod.  The most touching moment was when he brought a brace-eted skinny teen girl on stage, who was brandishing a sign that said “We love Mark!” (there are two in the band). He asked her how many people she was with, and brought her 3 girlfriends and one guy friend onto the stage too.  He asked the to stay on stage and dance with them to this song, and she just kept mouthing “Ohmygod!” while awkwardly keeping time. I’m sure it was the highlight of her 13^th year, just as pogoing crazily to “Call It What You Want” was the highlight of my May.

Beirut – The Rip Tide

 Oh my God what Zach Condon does with horns…

I saw Beirut at the Berlin Festival 2011 where their set was a highlight. Another arrival in the multi-instrumentalist style band like Arcade Fire & Camera Obscura, Beirut is distinguished by three things: distinct vocals & lyrics, nontraditional instruments, and a brilliant, non annoying use of horns. I chose to see them at the festival because of a song called Brandenburg, off the first album, Gulag Orkestar, and I currently work in Brandenburg, so that seemed a good a reason as any (well thought out I know). The brainchild of an Albuquerque, New Mexican, Zach Condon, Beirut is anchored by unique instruments that are played in a modern way. So a ukelele that is rocked more than strummed, and keyboards that oscillate between traditional organ and modern day electronic.  And some truly beautiful use of strings.  Apparently Condon dropped out of high school and traveled around Eastern Europe, where he gathered inspiration for Gulag Orkestar.  That sort of bleak, melancholy vibe runs throughout the album., Condon’s vocals are the most distinguished, which rise stories above the sea of recent man-going-on-about-sad-things that is popular at the moment (think Bon Iver, Iron & Wine, Fleet Foxes).  There is no wheedling or yearning, just pure pain of “She’s waiting for the night to fall/Let it fall, I’ll never make it in time.” (East Harlem).  Another gem is the “Rip Tide”: “and this is the house where I, I feel alone, feel alone now/ and this the house where I, where I could be unknown, be alone now”  So walk out to where the sea meets the debris, drag your sad-sorry-bastard long face to some promontory overlooking something, think about youngWerther & his sorrows, and let the violins play.

Music from Trees

[The motto of this is you should never give up. Or 5 out of 6, then you can give up]

You know we all belong to various email updates that send you constant suggestions for things to do in Berlin, and while I’ll read them and think “Oh that sounds so cool!” often attending some cutting edge art show and seeing groundbreaking performance art will get superseded by watching Flight of the Conchords and drinking beer in flip flops. So when both Bronwen and I hear about the Sounds of the Forest put on by rreeaallllyy records, we were both “keen” (see future blog post: North Americans unnecessarily adopting British slang.)  The premise: a new album is released track by track at various spots in the forest, you plug in your USB receptive device and copy the song onto it. The label has provided a not so detailed map with photos and descriptions of where the upload points are, but basically you are walking in the woods looking for USB cables (note: some were black and some were gray, I kept looking for white apple cables which betrays my over dependence on THAT brand).

[affect Aussie accent] "Those are definitely dingo tracks"

We started at Grunewald S-Bahn and began our quest armed with a smart phone, laptop, and a printed out clues (which, halfway through, we realized we were looking for 6 spots and had only 5 clues, and also that the clues were NOT IN THE ORDER YOU WOULD FIND THEM.) I’m not sure what this says about our amazing detective skills, but throughout the walk I kept referencing the Internet generation and how we lacked the ability to creatively solve problems. More on this theme later.

a big sand dune in the Grunewald

We couldn’t find the first spot, so we went on to the second, which turned out to be in this magical part of the Grunewald, by a huge sand dune. Before descending into what is essentially a sand pit in the forest, let me note my enthusiasm: “I ain’t walking down no f**king stairs” but then with some coaxing I did (“Where would Lewis & Clark have gone if they refused to walk down stairs?”). We didn’t find any tree stumps with USB cables down there, although we saw lots of families and one guy taking a piss. I begin to lose faith and compare the reedy pond to the Dead Marshes in Lord of the Rings, and started to feel a bit like Frodo. Then Bronwen asks if that makes her Samwise Gamgee, and I said she could be Frodo if she wanted to. "I don't want to be Frodo because he's a pussy."  Dork fantasy movie references dealt with, we have a brief rest and philosophical discussion over the whole likeliness of this needle in a haystack musical scavenger hunt even working ( “To be honest, I didn’t think it would be this hard”) we hiked out of the sand pit choosing a steep, tree root strewn trail, during which my co-searcher made a Romancing the Stone sliding-down-a-muddy-hill-and-taking-someone-else-with-you-reference, which just goes to show that all really great movies have alligators. Strangely, sandy trails are easier to climb up than to climb down.

romancing the sand

 As we emerge onto another trail, we saw some people with laptops crowded around a fallen tree, so yay, track one, by Duererstuben, called “Verspaetete Errinerung.” At this point, I’m sensing Bronwen is not “keen” on sharing the whole discovering spots with others, especially when a friendly (American) comes over to look at our printed out map and clues.

So we soldier on looking for the next track, and for the first time in our walk the picture matches reality and we find the hunters hut. Let’s just say someone had a bit of that childlike Christmas morning glee as she scrambled over brush and pine needles toward the elevated hut. We clamber up the ladder, search around inside, but no USB cable, and the cryptic clue tells us something about looking for a neon yellow square, and the track is called Tree of Life. Which proceeds me to declare a specific tree in the vicinity a crucial tree (“That’s the most tree of life looking tree I’ve ever seen”) which is what happens when you see with your heart not your GPS. 

Tree of Life

 As we search an ever widening radius of the hunters hut and my Tree of Life, Bronwen dejectedly mentions “I just don’t know what else to do” and I again flog the topic of the internet generation and poor attention spans and how hopeless we are, like after we asked the internet and tried a smartphone app what else can you do? Really? Maybe there’s a wikipedia page we can reference?

We realize the Others (Lost reference!) are closing in on us, so we start walking south and again Bronwen has a moment of eagle eyed clarity and sees the stupid neon yellow square that is supposed to demarcate a loaded trunk. We successfully acquire track 2, Re-Drum “Tree of Life”  at this location (and also track 3, Josh Winiberg “Tweety”, which was the one we were hopelessly looking for in the sand pit was combined for some reason). Now using our ever sharper skills of orientation, we keep walking and our looking for five logs next to a path. You know it’s a good walk, when, mid-sentence, someone grabs your arm and says “Look! Five logs!”.  

(Sixth & seventh logs not pictured)

Happy to report I spotted this one, and we acquired Track 4, “Night Owl” by Trigoney.  At this spot we meet a helpful British girl who explains that by the first stump there is another station literally two meters from the first, so we walk back there to acquire Track 5 (“Wildwald” by Afromatik). At this point your loyal searcher realizes she has lost her sunglasses and has to race back to the hunters hut, where the same helpful British chick is puzzling about the tree of life and thankfully hasn’t taken my shades. I hustle back to the first stump and help some people with laptop incompatibility get the tracks and we share tips of whether or not the location by the pond exists. Bronwen and I are happy with 5 of 6 songs, we walk back to our start point and try once more to find the last one, with no luck, so we still don't know what Dogboy's track sounds like.. A group of German guys is also searching, we found a bag of books (one Dostoyoevsky) hidden in a tree trunk, and one fellow looked in the inside covers to see if they were part of the unofficial Berlin street library (kind like http://www.bookcrossing.com/), where people inscribe paper backs and leave them for others to read, with the only request being that the book keeps getting passed on. So I guess that scavenger hunt will have to be for a later weekend. Reviews of the record to come soon.