Elvis Costello at Regency Park

Elvis Costello brought his ace Americana backup band to the Koka Booth Ampitheatre in Cary tonight to do songs from his latest recording "The Secret, Profane and Sugarcane."
This crack band included the Dobro Ace Jerry Douglas, fiddler deluxe Stuart Duncan and the ever-talented Jim Lauderdale on vocals and guitar. The mostly acoustic set included some unusual covers and some Costello standards along with songs from the new album.

Predominantly material from "Profane" and "King of America" along with plenty of songs from "My Aim is True" stuck in the set as well. The dapper and energetic Mr. Costello set up the songs from the new record with jaw-dropping stories about the not-quite-courtship of Hans Christian Anderson and the Barnum Singing Sensation Jenny Lind set in time around the 1850s. The songs from this song cycle are brutal in content. "Red Cotton" for instance about selling scraps of a red (metaphorically soaked with the blood of antebellum slaves) dress in souvenir lockets. The song "She Handed Me a Mirror" being about the time Hans Christian asked Jenny Lind why she could not return his love (and HCA being so unattractive) she handed him a mirror.
Leave it to Elvis to take songs intended for an opera about a Swedish singing star and convert them into an Americana influenced song cycle.



Set List:

Mystery Train
All Time Doll
Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down
Down Among the Wine and the Spirits
Blame It On Cain
Our Little Angel
Femme Fatale
I Felt the Chill Before the Winter Came
The Delivery Man
The Butcher's Boy
Indoor Fireworks
Hidden Shame
New Unpublished Song
Wicked Wine
Friend of the Devil
She Handed Me a Mirror
Everyday I write the Book
She Was No Good
Chocolate Town
Brilliant Mistake
Red Cotton
The Crooked Line
Red Shoes
Sulfur to Sugarcane
The Race is On
Allison
What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding
Changing Partners
Five Small Words (thanks D. Menconi!)

X at the Cats Cradle June 9th 2009

X is still a band to be reckoned with, judging by last night's scorching-hot set at the Cat's Cradle. Billy Zoom still has the Zen calm to go along with his classic metal-flake Gretsch Jet guitar and classic guitar licks (and an eye for the ladies), John Doe sweating profusely, grinding hypnotic rhythms and almost knocking his mic stand down, Exene was calm and aloof center stage as the cacophony of break-neck rhythm droned all about her and enthusiastic fans called her name and sang along. The band sounded as fresh and exciting as they did 27 years ago when I last saw them in Raleigh at the Pier and the punk generation in attendance got a long awaited fresh infusion of the real thing. This band and their music is timeless.

Notable Songs in a terrific set included We're Desparate, This House is Not a Home, Breathless (!), and Los Angeles...

Set list to be posted.

Geez, What Have I Been Up To?

Been to see lots of local bands including a terrifc show by The Old Ceremony at the Cat's Cradle for the release of their new excellent record "Walk on Thin Air." Great moments from this show included the new song "Plate Techtonics" and the old chestnut "Reservations." The Love Language opened up this show and were polished and very enjoyable. Other bands I've seen lately include Wye Oak, who did a super Sunday night show at the Local 506, the quirky and very original Americans in France, and the Raleigh trio Gray Young. At Reebus Fest on Sunday this past week I caught Kenny Roby and the Mercy Filter's tight, melodic, rockin' set in the 90 degree sun. Let's just say it was so good I didn't run for the AC until it was over. Lots of songs from his last release which sound as fresh now as when this great recording came out a couple years ago. There is alot of great local music out there we are so lucky to have such good bands.

Out of town bands I've seen lately include an excellent Tim Easton show at the Berkley Cafe in support of his terrific new recording "Porcupine." All the Tim Easton standards were thrown in for good measure, "Lexington County Jail," "Let Me Be Next to You" among others. Tim did have a nice rhythm section with him that was somewhat remindful of the Crickets of Buddy Holly fame. Another band I've seen recently is Australia's own An Horse. This powerful man/woman duo band kept the rhythms tight and the songs focused. Their single "Postcards" from their first EP was a real highlight.
Also seen at the Local 506 recently were the energetic and superb Pains of Being Pure at Heart. This quintet of rockers from NYC are destined for great things with their atmospheric arrangements and hook-filled choruses.

Photography wise I have been shooting and printing like crazy. Attended a superb lecture by noted local photographer David Simonton titled "Time Served: The Evolution of A Documentary Project." A presentation of David's work photographing the deconstructing Polk Youth Center beside the Raleigh Art Museum. As the buildings deteriorated and nature took over Simonton's skilled photographic eye made gold from them decaying hills. Also I recently bought a superb book called "Celebrating the Negative." No, its not an anti-positive thinking tome. But a cool book filled with images of negatives of famous photographs. You can see how the image was cropped or the fact that alot of them are 4x5 or 8x10 glass plates. Bresson's famous jumping man negative is a fraction of a cropped frame of 35mm. Fascingating stuff....

A taste of the book can be found here...
http://www.ethertongallery.com/html/specialprojects/negative/portfolio.htm

Mid Century Moderns

This building and I go a ways back and were born in the same year 1961. From the News and Observer - "The National Trust for Historic Preservation's magazine calls the Garland H. Jones Building an 'eye-catching landmark.' Local architects say it's one of the best examples of Modernist architecture left in downtown Raleigh." As a boy my step father worked in this building so I saw it often. It was all shine and reflective chrome, glass and marble. The building it replaced was a lovely double arched victorian wonder of an corner building. And in our never-ending race to seem less provincial we have now torn this building down to the ground as well. But here it and I are one and reflected each to the other...

Wendy and Lucy

Kelly Reichardt's meditation on the fringes of economic life "Wendy and Lucy" makes for good cinema as well. Wendy is a young someone searching for a way to make more money, and clearly someone who's been down on her luck for a while that decides to head for Alaska where the standards for getting jobs are not related to resumes and office casual styles. Simple enough story, she sets out with her only real possession/relationship, her dog Lucy, and after traveling across country from Indiana to Oregon breaks down in a small town. The loss of the car stops everything. Wendy has had the gift of a song she hums as her major pastime and it ultimately winds up to be all she has left. When you are on the economic margins small catastrophe's loom large (like the fact that it costs $50 to tow a car 30 yards because "that's what it costs"...) Emotionally played by Michelle Williams, Wendy is a quiet study of the inner thought process writ large on her face inspite of her stoicism. In Wendy we see a yearning for independence and simple aspiration that we are left feeling will be seen through regardless of circumstance...

Kathleen Edwards at the Art Center

Canadian songstress Kathleen Edwards brought her angst ridden oeuvre to the Art Center last night with the impact of a 10 ton truck. From the first note the room was drifting on her amazing world weary vocal sound and the orchestral magic that came from the guitars of Kathleen and her husband/bandmate Colin Cripps. The show included all the favourites including a great renditions of "Six O'clock News" and "Asking for Flowers." A poignant moment in the show was when she did the song "Alicia Ross." About a woman who had her child abducted in Canada. She acknowleged that "this goes on every day." Edwards went on to say "You know, how could a parent get up out of bed every morning after knowing that that's the fate that their child met?" The meat of the program was made up of material from the superb "Failer" record as another highlight of the show was the moody "Lone Wolf." She recounted the first tour she did was the last time she was in Carrboro and that that was 7 years previous. She was clearly glad to be back and the audience was clearly glad to see her.

Richard Thompson at the Art Center

So raconteur, songwriter and guitar genius Richard Thompson played a sold out show for the second night in a row at the Art Center in Carrboro on Monday, March 9th. I won't recount the proceedings in their entirety (it was superb!) but want to emphasize two things. First that the man is a true artist. As always in the middle of his set he starts taking requests and someone calls out "Vincent Black Lightning." No surprise there, he must have played this song a million and a half times. He could just stand there and do a rote repitiion of the song in a spiritless way or he could just say "no way I'm ever playing that song again - ever!" Instead he travels all the way back to the spark of excitement that generated that song for him and he *brings it* one more time. The rendition of this song always sounds fresh and its because he re-finds the creative energy that generated it.

The other thing I want to mention is during the request taking segment of the show he said "how about lets do a Fairport song." And he proceeded to listen to requests and took an audience poll of what to play. Luckily the audience (and I) went for the elegant "Where does the Time Go." The amazing part was that as he was introducing this song he began to muse about Sandy Denny and her place in songwriting history and he got a bit whistful and slipped out of his normal bravdo into some other zone and had a moment of sorts himself that he effortlessly shared in a quiet, understated way with us how much he missed and appreciated his friend. A truer soft side, never seen before and shared with a full house. Now thats a man who's comfortable in his own skin.