Whartscape 2008
July 17 – 20, 2008;
It’s hard to believe that Whartscape is only in its third year. The DIY festival, organized by Baltimore art collective Wham City, originally started out as an alternative offering to Baltimore’s largest outdoor festival Artscape, but has since become an institution unto itself. This year’s festival featured nearly 80 performers and spanned five venues. The majority of performers ranged from established to new Baltimore musicians, including Dan Deacon, Celebration, Wzt Hearts, Double Dagger, Thank You, Matmos, Ponytail, Video Hippos, the Death Set, and Cex as well as a number of out-of-towners like: Mark Hosler (of Negativland), Parts & Labor, Trey Told ‘Em (Girl Talk and Hearts of Darknesses), Ninja Sonik, and Grand Buffet.
I took some time to ask performers and attendees a few brief questions about Whartscape and their vision of the future of music.
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{Performers Video Interview:}
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{Attendees Video Interview}
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Whartscape this year was particularly impressive, with the majority of performances starting on schedule. Highlights included the Oxes first show in nearly three years and Dan Deacon's mind control powers to organize what may have been the largest crowd at the festival to run laps, and, well, the video speaks for itself:
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Also of note was Mark Hosler’s lecture on mass media that detailed the exploits and hoaxes of his band Negativland, including viewings of the experimental group’s multimedia work and an “illegal” screening of their video to accompany their infamous parody of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”
Unfortunately, Black Dice didn’t get the opportunity to play due to rain that occurred during Sunday’s outdoor performance, and the last set of performances including Who Is the Tunafish Man?, the much talked about collaboration between Dan Deacon, Greg Gillis, and Spank Rock, didn’t happen due to police shutting down the last venue of performances. However, Wham City has made an announcement that the bands that weren’t able to play are being rescheduled and that passes or tickets will still be honored.
Nonetheless, Whartscape 2008 was impressive. I'll end this with a couple sweet performances.
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- The Death Set:
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- Double Dagger:
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R.E.M.
Mann Center; Philadelphia, PA
I bought a copy of Green when I was 14 years old. It was the time when most of the country began the inevitable switch from cassette to CD, and I thought junk like “Havin’ a Roni” and “Unskinny Bop” were shining examples of complex songwriting. I took a long trip across the American West that summer, seeing a landscape so different than the subdivisions and wooded patches of my suburban Philadelphia. As I hunched over my Discman, songs like “World Leader Pretend” and “I Remember California” surging through my headphones, I could tell my understanding of good music had begun to change.
Flash forward 17 years, and I am sitting in the second row of the Mann Center in Philadelphia. It is a mild summer night, the temperatures dipping into the ’50s. I am 10 feet from the stage. Today, my musical tastes are a full palette: everything from the Beach Boys to Portishead. The band I give credit to for shepherding my musical predilections in the right direction is about to take the stage.
There has been a lot of talk lately about R.E.M. being “back.” Journalists are always looking for a good story, and with the release of this year’s Accelerate, writers act as if the band has returned from a decade-long hiatus. Granted, the last few albums did not garner the critical kudos of their I.R.S. and early Warner Bros. output, but there were still enough choice tracks on Up, Reveal, and Around the Sun to keep me interested. The band never went away; they did tour and record. The general perception of R.E.M.’s last decade is that they put out crappy albums but still put on crackerjack shows. Critics are right about the last part.
The band burst onto the stage with “These Days,” an old chestnut from Lifes Rich Pagaent. Michael Stipe, dressed in a black-striped suit and tie, looked dapper and lithe, eschewing the blue face paint that he had applied for most of the last tour. Up close, I could see his piercing blue eyes and his dance moves perfectly. Since I catch most of my shows these days in clubs, it was strange to see a performer so famous so close. The same goes for when I stood feet away from Bono. These guys are beyond musicians; they are performers. Each movement is big. Stipe worked the crowd, dancing spasmodically, hunkering down and staring us down, leaping about with a megaphone. It’s hard to look away from him.
For an R.E.M. enthusiast, the setlist was a profusion of songs old and new. Hits like “Turn You Inside-Out” and “Imitation of Life” mixed with fans-only tracks like “Wolves, Lower” and “Life and How to Live It.” Also on display were the high energy tracks from Accelerate, blending well with the fiery older songs like “Ignoreland” and “The One I Love.”
But it wasn’t just Stipe’s show. Peter Buck prowled the stage with his black Rickenbacker, a small fan blowing his hair about as if a personal breeze followed him. Though not as thin as in his youth, Buck still pulled off some pretty impressive leaps and kicks. On bass, Mike Mills has refused to return to his mousy looks of the ’80s. He wore a green suit, bleached locks replacing the bowl cut. Mills is also the band’s secret weapon. His sweet harmonies really flesh out Stipe’s more corrosive vocal stylings. If there is one thing that’s “back” on Accelerate, it’s Mills’ backups in more of a featured role like in the old days.
The music sounded fantastic. When the band played a requested version of “Find the River,” the sonic clarity of Buck’s acoustic guitar and Stipe’s voice sounded sharp and clear. It is obvious these guys are professionals and the amount of precision that goes into making such a big show somewhat intimate is an art they have mastered, and that is what sets R.E.M. apart from some of the other bands of their stature.
There is a point when a group gets so big, they become a caricature. When I saw part of Metallica’s set last week at Bonnaroo, it was almost cartoonish the way these personalities melded on the stage. I honestly felt like I was watching an episode of the The Simpsons. But R.E.M. still appears to be a working band. Sure, they played “Losing My Religion” and “The One I Love,” but the set was not engineered for only the casual R.E.M. fan. “Stand” and “Everybody Hurts” did not arrive. “It’s the End of the World As We Know It and I Feel Fine” seems to have been retired. This is not the Annual Steve Miller Band Farewell Tour.
At one point, Stipe asked the audience members to raise their hands if they’ve never seen R.E.M. before. Most hands around me stayed down. It’s the quality of the show that keeps people coming back for more. It’s that good, and Stipe knows it.
Two special guests joined the band for the encore. Eddie Vedder, looking like a literate truck driver in a cap and glasses, traded verses with Stipe on “Begin the Begin.” Johnny Marr joined Buck -- with a twin version of the black Rickenbacker -- for the divine “Fall On Me” and show closer “Man on the Moon.” During the last song, Stipe and Mills stepped out along a partition that separated the pit from the rest of the audience. As the final notes of the song fled into the night, the three remaining members of R.E.M. hugged with what seemed to be genuine friendship. Stipe promised they would be back soon. I hope so.
Setlist:
Jonathan Richman Four-Night Album Release Party
Make-Out Room; San Francisco, CA
{When We Refuse To Suffer}
It is possibly simpler to feel invulnerable by being cynical and worldly and jaded. Jonathan Richman, though, thinks that it’s better to suffer.
I know this because of his new song, "When We Refuse To Suffer."
"When We Refuse To Suffer" is nice to hear, because I have been sleeping on my friend’s floor for two months and am now sleeping in a sublet bed. After that, I’m cat-sitting for a friend for two weeks, then another month’s sublet in another friend’s room. I am unemployed and peanut butter has begun to taste like loneliness. So hearing Jonathan sing "When We Refuse To Suffer" reminds me of why I moved to San Francisco.
So does Jonathan, which is what I am going to call him because that’s who he is, like how the dude in The Big Lebowski is The Dude. I first heard "I’m Straight" and "I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar" at a time when I was not straight at all — straight-edge I mean, which is what the song is about. And as for lesbian bars, the only ones in South Carolina... oh wait, nope, no lesbian bars in South Carolina.
I have still never danced in a lesbian bar, even though I live in San Francisco. I have, however, been to Jonathan’s favorite place to perform in the city. That place is the Make-Out Room, a night club with old-school class and new-school swank: red velvet curtain on the stage, deer heads of glittering metallic behind the bar. I see him the second and third of the four nights he plays.
He performs it at the Make-Out Room July 16 through 19, a four-night album release party.
The album is called Because Her Beauty Is Raw And Wild. It is his 23rd.
I am a little shocked to be seeing him, which is what I need. I have been suffering. I mean it is just that I am so very unemployed, coffee costs $3, I miss my family, my sweater smells like cat pee, and other stuff too. But that is life, my friends. So it’s reassuring to hear Jonathan sing
When we refuse to sufferThat’s when the Prozac wins
As my +1 Peter says, it is impossible to be depressed when watching Jonathan perform. He smiles from within like how a yogi stretches from the core, connecting physically to his instrument like a jazz or blues musician does. You know, a sort of abandonment. So maybe he does have a song that encourages us to go through pain so we won’t get numb. The mood he induces though, with warm classical guitar licks as Tommy Larkins provides a mellow outpouring of drum beats, is pretty painless.
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{TIME HAS BEEN GOING BY SO FAST}
Jonathan would be boring to see if I didn’t like his back catalogue of the past 35 years. (He’s 57.) But in a friend’s roach-infested, crayon-scrawled apartment in Columbia, South Carolina last summer, I first listened to the song "I’m Straight" and got excited. The song is an answering machine monologue to a girl he likes, a girl who keeps running around with these perma-stoned hippie johnnys.
Jonathan isn’t the hot young thing with the guitar and blue eyes who wrote "I’m Straight." He’s now playing classical guitar, singing in French and Spanish; his taut face is creased the way leather creases; and he plays songs like Pablo Picasso with a glazed, even nostalgic attitude.
I wonder what it is like for him, looking out at a crowd 20 and 30 years younger than him. He plays "Time Has Been Going By So Fast" from the new album at both of the shows I see. It is a damn charming song. He actually attempts to carry notes, revealing a flawed baritone. The jangly guitar and subtly raucous cymbal clanging of Larkins are pretty upbeat, even though the message is that
"Time has be going by so fastSo that I can foresee the day we’ll say goodbye
We’ve been having fun all these yesteryears
But time keeps going by"
I think that this song is about the music community. Jonathan is still at the party, but he won’t always be.
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{GIRLFRIEND}
"Girlfriend" has the feeling of a song like "My Girl" or an Al Green song, except with more of a slow ’70s groove. The song is like he is at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and that’s fine, but something he really understands is a girlfriend. One line of the chorus is, "I’d have a G-I-R-L-F-R-E-N," which of course everyone sings with him at the show.
That song was released 37 years ago. Fast-forward to the title track of the new album. Here’s some of the lyrics:
"Because her beauty is raw and wildShe is at the core of the stars we see
Because her hair is curly and wild
She don’t need nothing in it to transcend"
Raw and wild? Core of stars? Hair transcending? What the fuck? He plays it both nights, and both times I wish that I was still a heavy drinker.
He does play a new love song that I like, "The Lovers Are Here And They’re Full Of Sweat." It is about young love, which apparently encompasses being smelly, youth hostels, trains, not changing clothes, being no good at business, writing bad checks, and making sterile places live.
“So what if they owe you five dollars,” he says during the bridge. “They’re lovers.”
Modern lovers.
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{HERE IT IS}
"No One Was Like Vermeer" is one of those songs off Because Her Beauty in which Jonathan’s sense of humor ruins his attempt to be serious. It gets as deep as
"Vermeer was eerieVermeer was strange
He had a more modern color range "
What I really get out of this song is the classic rock sense of paranoia, maybe like you would expect from Jim Morrison had he gotten out alive.
He also nods to Leonard Cohen in his cover of "Here It Is," which is a dark song that comes off as not so much — he sings some lines about life and death, then busts out a shaker and starts dancing.
He’s funny, see. The best joke of the second night comes when it’s time for intermission, during which he says that “Smokers can eat cigarettes, you can put on deodorant — anything can happen!”
Jonathan appeals to me the way that pewter cookware and vintage dresses do. He brings out a nostalgia for the middle age I want to go home to one day, when I’m not too broke to get my teeth cleaned and assimilating myself constantly to the smell of urine in the street. It is perhaps indeed best to suffer. Better still if you can do it with a smile and a hip swing and a wink to the pretty people on the flanks of the stage. Life is good, according to Jonathan Richman — even when it’s not.
Robert Belfour
Red’ s Place; Clarksdale, MS
Fueled by a hankering for authenticity, my father and I drove across Mississippi a few weeks ago in search of something (anything) that wasn’t a fast food chain, a home or structure wrecked by Katrina, or something too foreboding for our Northeastern psyches. We had just left Greenville, MS, a blues town with a resolute urban blight that called to mind mid-’90s Johannesburg. After tentatively checking the local haunts for any music, we left the next morning for Clarksdale, the home of the crossroads and a slightly more welcoming music scene.
Wandering around the town, we ended up in a homemade rock ‘n’ roll museum owned by Theo Dasbach, a Dutch native transplanted to the Delta. His collection was impressive, and after a tour I asked him if he knew of anything worth seeing that night. He told me he’d call Red’s Place, his favorite in town. After a short conversation consisting mostly of Dasbach saying “you gotta tell me about these things, man!” he hung up the phone and told us that Robert Belfour was playing. He explained that Belfour was as talented and experienced as any of the greats but, partly due to his intense lack of promotion, had never hit it big.
After some later research, I found out that he was right; Robert “Wolfman” Belfour may be the most under-appreciated blues musician still alive. Belfour studied with legends like R.L. Burnside and is one of the last surviving masters of the original Hill Country blues (as opposed to the Delta blues). In an unfortunate and ironic accident, Belfour was mentioned in a recent Boston Globe article as Robert Belford, another small step in the great man’s push to the obscure reaches of blues history. Nonetheless, his use of eccentric tunings, forceful vocals, and long, grizzly vamps has earned him his nickname and a heroic place among his group of dedicated supporters.
Figuring an hour and a half after the start time would be safe, we got to the outside of Red’s at 10:30 to find a rusted boiler and a closed door. I slowly opened the door to a dead-silent room of ten people and Red gazing just over my forehead. I handed him $10 and quietly took a seat at a table on the right side of the room. Belfour, fiddling with his guitar tuning, sat in a chair surrounded by an improvised merch table and a few amps. He pulled out a small bottle of gin, took a swig, and in a simultaneously heartbreaking and comedic way, shuddered violently. “I just can’t drink this stuff anymore!” he grimaced, and then asked Red for a Bud Light.
Watching Belfour tune his guitar was almost as engaging as listening to his music; his maddeningly percussive test strokes of strings that seemed impossibly out of tune would have made a great Stockhausen study. This continued for a few minutes and somehow segued into a introductory vamp, which I didn’t even realize had started until I saw Red bobbing his head from behind the bar.
Belfour took no time to demonstrate his virtuosity. His ability to separate parts, from the bassline to the drifting countermelodies, was astounding and nothing short of trance-inducing. After five or so minutes of this, he leaned in close to the microphone, closed his eyes, and howled four octaves lower than a wolf in the wild. Somehow, his vocals stole the spotlight from his guitar playing, cutting through the room with ineffable lamentations about life in a way that I couldn’t even pretend to relate to.
It was difficult to divine Belfour’s setlist, not only because many of the songs he played were mixed and matched, but also because there were only a few breaks between each piece, which averaged about 10 minutes each. This long form, deeply rhythmic style contrasts with the more concise Delta style, and at least in this setting filled with starry-eyed visitors, seemed more powerful than the local tradition.
After an hour of this soulful music, the small crowd began to saunter out into the cool, 85-degree, muggy evening, dropping money in the bucket on the way out. Belfour made sure to personally thank everyone and engaged in a conversation with two visitors from Portland. “Y’all have a safe trip back to Po’ land!” Belfour offered on their way out. The couple then proceeded to explain that they were from Portland, not Poland, to Belfour’s wry smile and raised eyebrow.
Mutek 2008
May 28 – June 1, 2008;
Driving 500 miles!? Haven’t you heard of peak-oil crisis? Oh wait, I’m going to Canada? It’s like America, but better, according to Michael Moore. They don’t have guns, I can break all the bones I want, and they don’t have that whole Puritan mentality in their public consciousness! That is basically my thought process before attending Mutek, which consisted of five days of partially government-funded electronic music goodness. With nearly 100 DJs, knob-tweakers, and audio engineers from 20 countries talking about production techniques, creating ambient soundscapes, and playing sets way past my bedtime, how could I refuse?
We arrive in Montreal, Quebec a few days into the festival, and we’re surprised to find most nearly everything is in French. Uh oh -- I thought Canada was like America, but people peppered their sentences with an occasional “aboot.” Kids who look like they are 16 are running around on the streets after midnight (I’m informed the drinking age is 18); I see signs for “Sexoteques” next to fusion Pho restaurants in commercial districts; and the majority of pan handlers are crust punks with signs asking for “4:20” (I later find out that Critical Mass is occurring). So this is the metropolis that birthed Vice Magazine... To top it off, the combined taxes on food purchases equals almost 10%! Canada, or Montreal rather, is not like a Rick Moranis movie. Be warned!
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{Ben Frost (Theatre du Nouveau Monde)}
Unfortunately, I had eaten a large amount of poutine, French fries covered in gravy and topped off with cheese curds, before I settled into the seats here. The theater was completely covered in darkness, save for some occasional moments of brief soft light that covered the Australian-born composer Ben Frost. In some respects, this really enhanced the performance. It’s said that people who are deficient in one area of sensory perception have developed heightened senses in others; a blind person might have exceptional hearing, like Dare Devil, the blind Marvel superhero with super hearing, for example. In this case, the music was literally all that the audience had to focus on, Frost’s compositions gained an added layer of hypnotic intensity.
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{Modeselektor & Pfadfinderei (Metropolis)}
Sometimes bodily injury is unavoidable and even a welcome part of the show-going experience, like a shirtless, 300-pound guy stage-diving onto your head at an Earth Crisis show, or falling off a stage during a Dan Deacon gig and cutting your leg on broken beer bottles. The next day, I noticed an intense pain in one of my knees from dancing so hard. All I have to say is, "Thanks Modeselektor, Hello Aleve!" This was the most all-out, totally in-my-face performance of the festival. The visuals from Pfadfinderei, a multimedia collective, perfectly complemented the Berlin duo’s nearly 2-hour-long set. The audience was bombarded by everything from neon punk elephants to a glowing hypnotic HAL-like orb. If you have any mortal enemies that have epilepsy, this is the event to invite them to.
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{Fennesz (Theatre du Nouveau Monde)}
By the time Fennesz’s set began, my struggle with the poutine was over and I was feeling the boost of pure energy that only grease, fat, and an accumulated amount of Octane 7.0 (a Canadian equivalent of Red Bull), could provide. Fennesz was accompanied by video artist Lillevan, who was responsible for the visual landscapes that were projected over the duo and on the screen behind them. The visuals reflected a new-age-y water theme, which was appropriate for the set, as the music and visuals transitioned from the feelings of drowning to a slow elemental ripple.
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{The Field (Metropolis) }
Axel Willner kept it simple during his North American debut, translating his studio project as The Field into a live instrumentation trio, which I had doubts about. I love 2007’s Here We Go Sublime; it’s just that it seems more suited to non-focused listening, something that gets put on before bed or when you’re behind on a deadline and staring at a blank MS Word document. I was wrong, and this is one of those times when I’m happy I’m wrong -- not, I’m wrong and I just walked ten blocks in the wrong direction.
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{Radio Slave} (Metropolis) }}
Radio Slave isn’t so much of a DJ as a master of mind control. Just when the feeling in my feet returned and the dancing crowd slowed to a zombie-like sway, he would mix in a slow build-up that would result in much fist-pumping and lighter-waving (I’m not kidding). The audience also liked to clap their hands to the beat of the music, A LOT. Sometime around 3 AM, I ran out of dance moves and resorted to cheesy candy-raver moves (think the running man). At this point, a pair of high school-looking kids come over to me and ask me where the pills are. I shrug, and they walk over to the girl who is rubbing her face into one of the speakers. His set didn’t end until around 6 AM, at which point, like a drunken fairy tale, the spell was broken and we were released outdoors to the sounds of birds merrily chirping.
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There’s nothing like traveling to shatter your pre-conceived notions of the world, pieced together from ’80s movies and Nickelodeon horror series. Would-be visitors, my only piece of advice is to check out Casa Del Popo -- it’s a venue and eatery run by members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and the sandwiches won’t punch you in the gut.
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone / Datagun / The Western Front
The Mill; Iowa City, IA
I woke up. It was Sunday, I think, but I felt unfamiliar in my surroundings and wasn't sure of anything. I could’ve been alone but wasn’t, instead accompanied by the kind of hangover that makes you reconsider your place in the universe. What. The. Fuck. Today was going to be a long day. I grumbled myself out of bed and onto the street and somehow wound up stumbling and stammering through a brutal six-hour coffee shop shift. In a cruel twist of fate, the gods of lattes and double-skim-mochas-to-go punished my Saturday night indiscretions with a steady stream of Sunday afternoon traffic. Lulls in this siege were nothing more than fleeting opportunities to sit in the office and cradle my head in my hands. It was bad.
Six o’clock rolled around, and while on a typical day I would be experiencing what’s colloquially known as a second wind, this was no ordinary day. Thus, seven hours into my day I was only getting my first wind. And were this a typical Sunday, I would probably sleepwalk through my grocery shopping and then go home, make dinner, and pass out with Sportscenter on, but this was no ordinary Sunday: we had Casiotone For The Painfully Alone coming to town on this day.
And thus, going through the motions, I found myself once again at the local watering hole, in this case the Mill; and though I felt like death, I found myself feeling better because I wasn’t alone. I was amongst friends who were far less hungover than I -- and that plus a Bloody Mary helped ease the pain. The Bloody Mary segued to beer to conversation to music, as local trio The Western Front began their set. Until very recently, this band wasn’t even a blip on my radar. I don’t know where they came from, but they’ve quickly become my favorite local band. Their setup is daunting for a three-piece, revolving around a multi-instrumentalist who plays drums, synths, samples, and just about everything else all at once. I found myself watching and thinking, “How is this band not signed to Barsuk and touring the country with Menomena now?”
Up next, Datagun, a trio of three of my closest mates, but I would be down with this band regardless. I think it’s fair to say that they’re still working everything out, but this night was the tightest I’ve heard them. Datagun is a clusterfuck of vocals and keyboards and some other shit, meeting at the place where pop meets noise and delivered by three dudes running around, switching instruments and singing into different microphones and each doing a little bit of everything. A turntable and a drum machine provide the panorama on which the screeching guitar and haunted vocals occur. You haven’t seen them yet if you haven’t come to Iowa City lately, but maybe you should. Or maybe someday they’ll visit your town, and you’ll get it, too.
Then Casiotone For The Painfully Alone took the stage, just one man and his digital setup on a night that featured a veritable bevy of digital setups. I was now in the perfect place, where my lack of sleep and beer consumption were meeting up and sparks were flying. I didn’t need to talk to anyone, finding myself beyond content to just stand and sway as I watched this surprisingly tall bearded man twiddle knobs and soothe my tattered state. I pulled the brim of my cap low over my eyes and lit up one last cigarette and allowed the fullest waves of synthesizer sound to wash over me.
Owen Ashworth was witty and affable, moreso than I expected, considering he’s made a career out of being Painfully Alone, or at least associated as such. and being in a one-man digital band made me assume for some reason that he would be reclusive and standoffish. Instead, he filled spaces between songs with tales of Swedish ‘pandas’ and being caught in electrical storms in Arkansas and so on. Highlights included “Bobby Malone Moves Home,” a blistering take on “Young Shields,” and “New Year’s Kiss.”
More than anything, I was left with the impression that, for a dude who pretty much just stands there and nonchalantly messes with some keyboards, he’s way radder live than on record. I’ve enjoyed his records, particularly Etiquette, but have never found myself getting totally lost and immersed in them like I did this performance. After he was done, my friend Andre and I stayed at the Mill long past everyone was gone and enjoyed more beers, rapping about this and that and how good it was to be able to host a show like that on a Sunday night. Around 2:00, well past the time it made sense for me to crash, I made the brisk walk home, over the river and across the train tracks. I was happy, just being blissfully alone.
