The Bad Plus - Prog Preview

The new Bad Plus album, Prog, comes out in a couple of weeks, May 8 to be exact. It is sure to be one of my favorite albums of the year, otherwise it will be a disappointment. Yes, they have raised the bar that high. One thing that sticks out about the tracklist for this one is the 4 covers. After debuting with 3 covers on These are the Vistas, they pared it down to two on Give, and had just one on Suspicious Activity. While their covers are generally very entertaining, the real meat of their music comes in the originals. There are plenty of original pieces they have been playing live that don't show up here, maybe they'll be released as exclusive tracks later on, or maybe we'll get treated to even more covers as they've done in the past. Anyway, here is a preview of the album featuring live versions of all the tracks except "This Guy's In Love with You" (if anyone can send it to me that would be great!)

Everybody Wants to Rule the World
Physical Cities
Life on Mars
Mint
Giant
Thriftstore Jewelry
Tom Sawyer
This Guy's in Love with You
The World is the Same
1980 World Champion
Download all at once

Comment dites-vous '!!!' ?

What do you get when you mix the guitars and synth of the Talking Heads, disco bass, house beats, and a whole lotta punk attitude? I'm not quite sure but whatever you call it you had better punctuate it thusly: !!!. Apparently you pronounce it "chk chk chk," though I prefer to say Three Exclamation Points, or Expo3 for short. I was lucky enough to be in Paris on a trip that wasn't quite for business, and it was quite for pleasure... but, maaaan! when Expo3 just happened to be playing Le Bataclan on my first night in town. I hadn't heard a note of their music before their show but I had read enough reviews of their latest album to have a ballpark feeling for what their deal was. Having arrived in Paris at 8:30 am after a sleepless flight, and spending the day walking around the city, I decided to grab a seat in the balcony during the intermission after the opener. The opener never had announced their name, so I just called them AeroC/DC and I'll leave my review of them at that. I enjoyed the first !!! number from my seat and remained seated as I took a video of the second song.



But then I had to get off my weary ass and join the madness below. The crowd was intensely into the music. The band was intensely into the music. The music was intense. I was in need of some energy and the band was like a shot of danceroids. I left more energized then when I had arrived. The set was a solid 2 hours with little or no downtime and I would have been happy after the hour mark, but also could have enjoyed an hour or so more. The energy in the room increased with every song and by the time the encore came around the room was ready to explode. People could not contain themselves and several jumped on stage. A small dance party broke out on stage before security finally broke it up. It was the perfect end to a long long day. !!! indeed.

Newport Jam Fest?

Following up last week's post, the Newport Folk Fest just let out an early announcement for this year's schedule. Hot Damn! You can check out the official release, but I'll spell it out for you here:

Saturday

• The Allman Brothers Band! (full show!)
• Dirty Dozen Brass Band
• North Mississippi Allstars
• Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
• Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine)
• Assembly of Dust

Sunday

• Alison Kraus and Union Station (with Jerry Douglas AKA The Man)
• Emmylou Harris
• Amos Lee
• Alejandro Escovedo
• Ralph Stanley

and others to be announced soon of course, including some I revealed previously.

Pops on the Edge 07

The new and 3rd edition of Boston Pops' Pops on the Edge was announced yesterday. The Cowboy Junkies will join the Pops on June 23 and 24, and M. Ward (and friends) will join them on the 26th and 27th. A quick check of the calendar reveals that it won't be on 2 consecutive weekends this year and M. Ward will be playing two midweek shows. I like M. Ward a whole lot and may try to attend one of those shows, but neither of these shows intrigue me quite as much as last years sets, with My Morning Jacket and Aimee Mann, both of which I was lucky enough to see. Time for a recap? Letsdoit.



My Morning Jacket with the symphony was simply sublime. My cheeks hurt after the show from smiling so much. Normally my neck would be hurting from getting my rock on with MMJ, but being that this was at Symphony Hall, my ass and legs could only squirm to hold in the inner rock that wanted to escape. The Globe review complained that they didn't experiment or change the music enough. I would agree somewhat that the symphony was underused in some cases, especially the horns!, but with only a week to prepare and rehearse, I'm not sure the results could have been any better than they were and playing it safe and knocking the ball out of the park beats experimenting and striking out anytime. One thing I thought would have been cool is if they didn't try to work the ENTIRE symphony in to every song, and similar to what they did in their little preview performance on Letterman, just pluck a few pieces from the whole so each instrument could be heard clearly. The power of the symphony was great, but on occasion it might have been nice to tone it down a little.



Aimee Mann was more easily suited to be playing with the Pops and contrast was not so stark as with MMJ. It was quite enjoyable and sounded fantastic, but the power of the previous week's show was not there, as would be inherent in the music anyway. The Pops filled in pieces of her music that was in the album but would never translate the same in her live show because she obviously lacked the instrumentation. So it was nice to hear her music played live and fully realized. She also had moments when she really utilized the horn section beautifully, which is when I immediately realized, why didn't MMJ single out the horns at all? Again the Globe was disappointed, but again, what were they expecting?

More festival talk

More Langerado
First, some more thoughts on Langerado. What? More about Langerado? Haven't you said enough? Guess not.
Just wanted to clarify that pervasive negativity aside, I thought the fest was a smashing success. Overall it was a great great time! I'm not a huge festival goer, so I don't have a ton to compare to, but it was run very well, the lineup was great, and the weather was perfect. Florida in March is a whole lot more comfortable than Austin in September and New Orleans in April. And it was as easy in/easy out as the Roscoe Diner, we didn't have any traffic problems all weekend. I'm just glad I wasn't camping out, the campgrounds looked horrid. Just a small fenced in area right off the parking lot with no shade! The tents were set up with practically no breathing room, just one on top of the other.

Newport Folk Fest
The next festival I'll be hitting is the Newport Folk Fest. It will be my 3rd visit in the last 4 years. It is a nice little festival on a beautiful piece of land right on the water. They always attract a few nice big acts, but there are always some great surprises sprinkled in, I have discovered some great music there, from Jim White to the Mammals.
The official lineup won't be announced until next month, but here are some early peeks via Pollstar: Emmylou Harris (she actually had to cancel last minute 2 years ago, but they somehow got Gillian Welch and David Rawlings to fill in which was not a bad replacement at all), Ralph Stanley (another classic guy I'd love to get the chance to see), Alejandro Escovedo, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band (who would probably be better suited for the following week's Newport Jazz Fest). Also, some smaller acts, or at least people I have yet to discover: Carolina Chocolate Drops, Diana Jones, and Sierra Hull. Plus Sound Effects (Boston Globe music blog) is reporting that there will be big headliner news coming in the next few weeks. I'll be keeping my eye out for news and will keep you posted.

Beantown Shows Calendar
Something I'm trying out for the time being, is keeping a Boston music calendar going on the new Google calendar feature. The current week will be updated weekly on Sunday or Monday, and I will try to start filling in some other shows for the future, but that will be kind of spotty for the time being. Any suggestions or show tips would be greatly appreciated. There is a link to the right and also a way to subscribe to it, not sure what that does for you exactly, but its there if you need it.