Dean Browell
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Roo 2008.
This is mostly a music post... We had a great time in our crew, and of course Jamie and I had a fabulous partners-in-crime time running about destroying (drinking) everything in our path.
A few non-music points just to get out there:
- Sweetwater's "Hummer" beer, despite the horrible name, is a delicious Hef variation
- Bonnaroo is seriously one of the most incredible annual communities; it constantly proves to me things can be all right with such a diverse group; Cor & I ate lunch with a 60+ couple, I pogo'd with a cavalcade of tweens, we saw democrats, republicans, every race and every fashion represented
- I consider my Roo-casting a success; over 300 people followed my Roo experience through Twitter or BrightKite and over twenty wrote me directly to thank me or comment through the weekend
- Can't wait to take Addy next year
I could go through every set I saw, complete or otherwise, but it'd take too long and I just don't feel very articulate. I've documented my being there enough I feel through the Brightkite (http://brightkite.com/people/dbrowell) & Twitter-casting (http://twitter.com/dbrowell), so I'll just hit some significant points...
B.B. King was fabulous, hilarious, and if I'm even half as coherent at 82 I'll be doing fine.
Ozomatli was so much fun I nearly passed out from dancing in 90 degree heat. Always a treat, Corri got me a father's day present of a drum head used during that show that was signed by all the band members!
Charli2na, who was incredibly humbled by the size of his 3:30am crowd (this being the first solo tour away from Jurassic 5) gave a slick performance with the band Galactic as his backing band. With Charli's voice, I could listen to that guy read the back of a cereal box. I nabbed a setlist and actually a chance to speak with the guy after the show. Oh did anything else happen of note? Sure. I was three feet from the Olson twins, who were there at his show, just beyond a simple metal gate to stage left. Not sure if I care or not, but it was a funny thing to witness at 5am, still slightly drunk, as Charli's set ended and the sun was peaking around the corner.
The Raconteurs stole my soul. Seriously. I was on the rail for this and I was happy to read that my immediately-twittered assessment was echoed by media outlets like Rolling Stone and others: this Bonnaroo performance was nothing short of a career-high for this band. Moreover, I've begun to really try and parse the weird charisma Jack White exudes. He may very well be the Elvis that bridges the low-X'ers and the Millenials from a music standpoint-- he has the chops and draw and both try to claim him (despite his cherubic expressions, he's firmly in Gen X-- but don't tell the legion of 15-something girls in the pit with the 30 year olds that). And he makes an even stranger appeal-play to widely divergent categories of fans like awkward goth girls, cock-rocking fratguys, slightly countryfied classic rock mavens and more. There's some more thought and maybe an essay to come of this yet.
My Morning Jacket deserve some sort of medal. I'm not sure what it should be for, but they should get it. In the sometimes torrential rain they managed to make believers out of any skeptics of the new material and play old favorite "One Big Holiday" with Kirk Hammett of Metallica (foreshadowed in Jim James' interview in that day's Bonnaroo Beacon, the festival daily newspaper). After an entire set of their work they returned to play James Brown, Curtis Mayfield and even a Motley Crue cover.
Pearl Jam's set was an emotional mess of good vibes and an urgency for social change. From Daughter played among a sea of actual lighters (not the now-common cell-phones in lighterless arenas), to an ernest plea for change after relayed news that the young veteran in the Body of War documentary has taken a turn for the worse health-wise. If you're a Pearl Jam song/bean-counter, their 3-hour performance was like a bizarre circus-of-the-stars ranging from most of the album Ten to the first time one B-Side had ever been played live, the first time in 13 years W.M.A. had been played and several other relatively rare live cuts.
Metallica played it safe by not playing any song newer than 1991 in their long set. They win points from me for playing my favorite song to play D&D to when I was 12, "Seek & Destroy" in a massive closing rendition. James Hetfield pioneered a new drinking game wherein one takes a drink for every time a headliner mentions their at Bonnaroo; you'd have been drunk by song 3 during their set. Hetfield was clearly trying to justify and fit in in an awkward way but it was sort-of cute of him to be trying so hard. But he shouldn't have worried. James should send Kanye West a check to thank him for distracting everyone from pondering whether it was appropriate they were at Roo. Kanye fucked up bad, was an asshole to those who waited until 4:30am for his set, and has been called on it by every major news org. including a lead AP story (proving once again that celebrity tantrums make the news-- war in Iraq, not so much anymore).
Jack Johnson was Jack Johnson. News at 11. Good, normal. Thankfully pianist Zach Gill, now a full member of the band and leader of ALO, (and one of my family's favorite musicians) was there to joke around with Jack, crack up during songs and generally make the rest of Jack's statuesque-studio-band-on-tour look even more lifeless. Then Eddie Vedder came on stage to sing a song with Jack, dedicating it to Jack's soundman (formerly Pearl Jam's). With Zach, Eddie and Jack on stage, Jack's drummer and bassist found now jumbotron camera time for the rest of the set.
SuperJam this year was gypsy band Gogol Bordello, Les Claypool (Primus) and Kirk Hammett (Metallica) playing Tom Waits songs. It was as fucked up as it sounds.
It was also a Roo for a crop of some of the more interesting up-and-coming bands I've been following. Vampire Weekend was outstanding and worth every drop of hype; they were so tight there was almost a Rush-like precision to their math-rock (and they're nice guys). What Made Milwaukee Famous, besides having the most difficult name to Twitter, played an average set but were also super-nice to meet. Newton Faulkner, who Corri liked more than I going into the day took away my "biggest surprise" award with a really fun set. Rogue Wave kicked fucking ass, being our "little Euro-Americans" and probably stealing this year's title of "band that if you didn't hear their banter you'd think were British and more popular somewhere else" award. Serena Ryder was also great to hear-- I advise Indigo Girls fans to give her a listen, but be prepared for her more husky voice.
Death Cab for Cutie closed the show with a truly beautiful, pitch-perfect performance that also showed a spontaneity and livelihood I hadn't seen in their previous Roo performance; a gorgeous set as the sun went down on the last day.
I saw far, far more than all I've mentioned here, and much of it is worth mentioning (Sigur Ros, Ghostland Observatory, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Tiesto...). Probably more later.
There is no last Roo, only the next Roo.
Twitter thoughts:
Compare the vacuum music lovers used to exist in & space between artist albums 10 years ago vs. now; consider the new NIN albums of Apr/May
Compare the vacuum music lovers used to exist in & space between artist albums years ago vs. now; consider even http://missionmetallica.com about 18 hours ago from web
Space between artist albums years ago vs. now; artists can now reinvent themselves as periodically as their fans do about 18 hours ago from web
http://www.twitter.com/dbrowell
Comments
Good call -- I've been frequenting the Funky16Corners for quite a while now and I love it.
So, it's here if you want to read it, but I don't recommend it.
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/49274-ghosts-i-iv
Not that I care whether he recommends the actual album or not... And not that the album was even the subject of most of the review. By discussing the album's distribution model and his own base hang-ups Tom manages to distract from whatever valid opinion he might have. I can't wait to read his reviews of CD's in the 90's, where he no doubt complains that there weren't enough one-sheet posters available for free at his local indie record store and that Tower Records didn't receive enough copies. Distribution model affects aesthetic, right?
Tom did such a bang-up job of glancing furitively through the Wikipedia entry of Nine Inch Nails before writing another angsty missive on a band someone told him he might like, you'd almost forgive yet another case of a blogger blogging the bloggers.
Speaking of blogs, he backs into the review by snarkily swiping at Reznor for having whined about Saul Williams' digital distribution numbers: "Then, when not enough people paid actual money for the thing, he bitchily blogged about it." Good one! Except that the blogging, bitchiness and unhappiness actually didn't happen. It is true that on NIN.com Reznor bared information on how the Saul Williams digital experiment was faring, a few weeks after release. He mused openly about whether it was considered a success (Saul was certainly making money) but did point out that more people downloaded it for free than paid for it. He didn't pass judgement, just commented. Several low-rent music and tech news sites ran with the "news" that Trent was unhappy. Apparently the ever-dutiful Pitchfork stopped their research bunnies at the Much Music forum.
Sigh. Many more mistakes are made, regardless of his opinion. He suggests that Aphex Twin was commissioned for NIN remixes (um, look at more than that Wiki track listing Tom-- Aphex didn't remix anything NIN on that EP- that was an Aphex Twin track from a forthcoming album put in the center of the disc to raise their profile). But hey, Tom's too busy creating nu-hipster tags like "IDM OGs" to actually speak eloquently about his subject. The fact that he even refers to NIN post-PHM as being devoted to hooks and song form shows his memory is fuzzy at best, or perhaps his entire memory is only comprised of PHM and With Teeth.
He does use the word "reptilian" though, which shows he might have heard that radio hit, "Reptile."
Tom almost manages to find the word "motif" but fails to fully grasp it, even though Reznor's had piano signatures for nearly as long as Tom claims to have been paying attention, "Every once in a while, he'll use a riff or a bassline that I could swear he's used before but can't quite place."
Oddly enough, when he finally does try and review Ghosts I-IV, I don't completely disagree. In fact, on a very shallow front he's spot on. But he doesn't even try to consider the volumes I, II, III, and IV on their own. He's too in love with his initial assessment to do any more homework. He's got Wiki open in one tab, Google in another and iTunes is playing the copy he paid $5 for (or the free first 9 songs, it's hard to tell if he listened past that since he doesn't reference anything specifc). And yet without specificity, and for the most part without credibility, he ends with: "If I were one of those early deluxe-pacakge customers, I'd want my $300 back." If you were. But since you only (maybe) paid $5 - what then? You certainly were enamored with your own opinion of the distribution model, so why not give us more detail at how that reflects your opinion of the music? I can think of lots of albums I wouldn't pay $300 for.
And I can think of reviews that aren't worth the zeroes and ones they're printed on.
-Dean
P.S. . But hey, don't take my word for it! Tom's been hoppin' about other genres, misappropriating cultural and aesthetic environments for his own status. Such as hip-hop: http://dallaspenn.com/weblog/?p=1331
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Comments
ncredible annual communities: i agree with you completely. had the best time this year...have a feeling Lollapalooza isnt going to live up...
i am embarrased i have not been back since the very first year