Feast or famine - I’d never been to the Greek Theater and this week, I’m going twice. Tonight was Joss Stone with C. and he’d gotten cool pre-show cocktail party tickets via his cool connections.
I left work a little early to beat the traffic and as I was coming off of a busy weekend and exhausted (not the best Monday scenario), I booked a room at a seedy little Hollywood hotel for the night, where I promptly crashed, only to become beset later with bedbug paranoia.
She put on a great show and the Greek is an excellent venue, as were the cucumber martinis pre-show. My little hotel turned out to be clean and quiet and I had a BATH, all hot water and white tile and bliss, and drove home in the pre-dawn hours, watching the eclipse.
Big breakfast with Little Miss Bossy (and you thought that I was kidding when I called her that)
after which I bought the sparkly hoop earrings that I’ve been coveting forever and she bought an ultra glamorous shirt.
Big day in LA with MisAdventure (although we never did find that perfume shop!), Bad Voodoo Daddy at the Bowl with dancing and fireworks.
In between, I met up with the Native Hyepinay, a very old and dear friend, for delicious Indian cuisine. All Fridays should be this good.
the ocean is sparkly, much like my mood.
Met J in Long Beach for dinner at the Starling Diner,
then headed up to LA for the Beastie Boys @ the Wiltern. I’d never been and it’s beautiful - exactly the sort of place that I like and the band was great. This was one of their “gala” events, so they’d put out the call to dress up, which I’ve never in my life turned down, especially since it gave me a reason to wear one of my Trashy Diva dresses. No pictures, unfortunately, so you’ll just have to take my word that I was entirely appropriate.
(in case you couldn’t tell)
I’m not so up on the musical scene, but particularly liked Sly and Robbie. They had that deep and dirty sound that gets in your bones (at least, in my bones and makes me want to go back to New Orleans)
got to the show last night, went to take the requisite photo of the sign and whoops! no memory card in the camera. So this will have to do:
* photo courtesy of Vahalla Studios
I bought one of these and have it framed and hanging on the wall (it’s super-cool), so this isn’t entirely a cheat. Great show, too. And, to give you a sense of the show, this is what 15,000 people (a sold out show) looks like.
* photo courtesy of delsoir
This is a whirlwind weekend for Café Tacuba, the cutting-edge band from Mexico City that spearheaded the rock en español revolution of the 1990s. The acclaimed quartet plays Central Park’s SummerStage in Manhattan today as part of this year’s Latin Alternative Music Conference, then jets cross-country to appear Sunday at the Hollywood Bowl for KCRW’s World Festival hosted by Nic Harcourt.
Phew! A little hectic for a group of Mexican rockers on the cusp of middle age. It makes you feel old just to think that some of today’s teenagers may not have been born when Café Tacuba was formed in 1989 by two suburban college friends, a brother and a neighbor, a group that is still intact.
Some of those hip teens will no doubt come out to see the band considered the Beatles of Latin alternative music, the only Latino act to headline the Bowl this summer. Such exclusive billing is a testament to the continued creativity and international appeal of Los Tacubos, as the band is affectionately nicknamed.
But it raises the question: Where is the new generation of Mexican rockers?
The very fact that this 18-year-old group remains the marquee name in Spanish-language rock speaks volumes about the state of the genre. Their wave of roqueros (rockers) whose vitality and vision promised to transform Latin music has receded since the turn of the millennium. Nobody has come along to seriously challenge the stature and influence of Café Tacuba.
Not that there are no new groups in Mexico. The capital has a busy indie rock scene that is finding outlets on the Internet, partly through Mexico’s new MySpace site, mx.myspace.com. But the new generation has abandoned the fundamental principles that gave rock en español its power and broad appeal.
Today’s Mexican bands reject the concept of fusing rock with native forms of Latin American folk music, a concept articulated in the early ’70s by pioneering producer Gustavo Santaolalla, who has worked with Café Tacuba and other major groups in the field. The upstarts don’t care to incorporate Mexican music or reflect Mexican reality in their songs, as bands such as Café Tacuba and Maldita Vecindad did in their very names.
Nowadays, Mexican bands often pick names that disguise their identity and country of origin. They call themselves Allison, Los Dynamite, hummersqueal and Motel. In fact, some don’t even care to sing in Spanish anymore.
“I feel kind of bummed about that because it’s what I’ve been fighting against all my life,” Santaolalla told me this week. “I think it’s an example of cultural dependency and many sad aspects of globalization.”
I caught the famed producer by cellphone Wednesday as he ferried from Naples to the Italian island of Ischia, site of a film festival where he was to be honored for his work, including Oscar-winning scores to “Brokeback Mountain” and “Babel.” He had just performed the night before in Copenhagen with Bajofondo Tango Club, his innovative fusion band that blends tango, milonga and other South American styles with electronica and rock.
The band is based on the same vision that has guided the guitarist since he was 16 — to make music with an identity that shows “who we are and where we come from.” The formula is still working for him, as evidenced by the packed houses Bajofondo has been playing on its current European tour.
Santaolalla’s slogan: “Pinta tu aldea y pintarás el mundo.” (“Paint your own village and you’ll paint the world.”)
It’s a good lesson for young rockers still stuck in their MySpace pages, because the world isn’t waiting for a Mexican version of My Chemical Romance or Nirvana. Imitation is just a form of flattery, not creativity.
These groups could also take a cue from the U.S. and British bands they emulate. Original rockers don’t look to other countries to see what they can copy. They believe in themselves and their culture.
Some have hailed the arrival of the latest wave of Anglocentric indie bands in Mexico City, citing forces from globalization, NAFTA and the Internet. The fact is, the trend is as old as colonialism itself.
When I was a student in Mexico City in the late ’60s, my classmates at the preparatoria in Coyoacán played guitar and sang songs by the Lovin’ Spoonful, mouthing mangled lyrics they probably didn’t comprehend. The Internet didn’t exist, but they were keenly attuned to the latest in English-language rock and pop.
The desire to be something other than Mexican has long been the cultural curse of the Mexican middle and upper classes, whose kids are called fresas, or strawberries. Many slavishly follow American and European fashion, hairdos and dances, while looking down on their own culture. But self-hatred makes for lousy music.
Café Tacuba’s guitarist José Alfredo “Joselo” Rangel is not so judgmental. He’s trying to give the new generation a fair hearing and points to bands that have impressed him, such as Bengala from Mexico City and Porter from Guadalajara.
It’s all a cycle, he says. When the Tacubos were starting out, it was revolutionary to incorporate Mexican music into rock and they were criticized for that. Now, it’s old hat, and the kids push the pendulum the other way.
“I don’t get the need to sing in English, but I’m not going to demonize a trend just because I don’t understand it,” Rangel said from the Mexico City studio where the band is working on a new album, due in the fall. “Because if I did, it would feel like people treated me when I was young, just because I was doing something different.”
Café Tacuba performs with Groove Armada as part of KCRW’s World Festival, 7 p.m. Sunday, Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Avenue, Hollywood. Tickets $7-$95. For information call (323) 850-2000.
LOVE the Bowl. Love the picnics and the wine and the crowds.
OK, this was early. It got way more crowded.
For all their literary references and interest in forgotten fables, the Decemberists are essentially a theatrical band.
So, it was no surprise that the crowd drawn by the Portland, Ore., quintet’s appearance Saturday night at the Hollywood Bowl, where they were accompanied by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was more demonstrative than the usual no-frills indie-rock audience.
There was the guy dressed in a seersucker suit and straw hat, as if headed to the Kentucky Derby circa 1952, and the couple in shiny evening jackets, dressed, maybe, to hold a seance. And that’s not even counting all the shades of punk glamour — a ’50s flamenco dress crossed with pomegranate hair — and the strong showing of pointy and retro eyeglasses.
The show was the latest in a new Phil tradition that began last year with the appearance of the Scottish group Belle and Sebastian: Take the latest brainy band with an obscure sense of humor and fondness for antiquarian instruments, with a fan base exploding from cult to something large enough to almost fill the 17,000-capacity Bowl, match them with a few up-and-comers and position the orchestra to give rock songs a new dimension.
It may be less formulaic than that, but whatever it is, it seems to be working: Both times, these shows have produced near-sellout crowds — Saturday’s turnout was just shy of 14,000 — and roars of approval from the audience.
It seemed to work for the band too: A few songs into the set, lead singer Colin Meloy, who sipped tea with what appeared to be a cinnamon stick instead of pounding beers, mentioned how much better this was than the “hour after hour of trying to reconstruct orchestras in the studio out of one string player.”
The band, whose songs show an interest in sea shanties, Victorian pirates and Celtic mythology, has been developing a fan base since its 2002 debut, “Castaways and Cutouts.”
The highlight of the group’s almost 90-minute set was probably “Los Angeles, I’m Yours,” a backhanded paean to the city, dedicated to Meloy’s recently wed sister Maile, an L.A. novelist. The crowd cheered while he sang of a city whose “hollowness will haunt you” and the orchestra surged with Burt Bacharach-like touches.
Other times, Meloy seemed less comfortable, as when he ran, with an exaggerated gait and a big, embarrassed smile, across the catwalk in front of the stage while singing “Perfect Crime #2.” It was hard not to think that the contract of every band that plays the Bowl includes the clause: “You have to do this, at least once.”
By show’s end, after songs such as “We Both Go Down Together,” “I Was Meant for the Stage” and “Odalisque,” the band collapsed, ironically, under guitar, keyboard and double bass.
The Decemberists would encore with the Dickensian “The Chimbley Sweep,” with Meloy again approaching the catwalk, this time to “mime” a monster behind-the-head guitar solo actually played by another member of the band because, as he noted, “my cable’s not long enough.”
At song’s end, Meloy asked audience members to hoist their cellphones aloft to light up the dark night, saying it reminded him of his ceiling when he was in sixth grade. “You’re free to keep doing that,” he said. “But if you have to make or receive an important call, we understand.”
The two openers were no less eccentric. Band of Horses is an up-and-coming group, based in Seattle and signed to Sub Pop, that sounds one part Built to Spill, two parts Southern rock in songs well-suited to the Bowl’s open setting, which isn’t always the case.
Andrew Bird, a Chicago-based singer-songwriter who played as the sun set, offered a performance that made even the Decemberists look pedestrian.
Performing shoeless before a spinning sculpture of a gramophone, the lanky, violin-playing Bird offered an unlikely pastiche of Appalachian folk, John Zorn and Sergio Leone.
“Sometimes playing for this many people,” Bird said, right before a world-class twitch, “gives you more energy than you can possibly manage.”
Fine, OK, but I didn’t think that it would apply to me and my premium, specifically, my music that I want to hear NOW.
Patience is a virtue. I’m not complaining (much), but I do check the mailbox first thing when I get home/
1) Gorillaz - Demon Days
2) Thievery Corporation - Cosmic Game
3) Beck - Guero
4) Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place
5) The Chemical Bros - Push the Button
6) Royksopp - The Understanding
7) Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
9) MIA - Arular
10) Doves - Some Cities
11) Death Cab for Cutie - Plans
12) LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem
13) Feist - Let It Die
14) Tom Vek - We Have Sound
15) Mylo - Destroy Rock & Roll
16) Jamiroquai - Dynamite
17) Imogen Heap - Speak for Yourself
18) Lewis Taylor - Stoned
19) Tosca - J.A.C.
20) Coldplay - X&Y
21) Beck - Guerolito
22) Moby - Hotel
23) DJ Mark Farina - Mushroom Jazz 5 compilation
24) Sounds Eclectico - KCRW live session compilation
25) The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan
Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase
Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs
Bell Orchestre - Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light
Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have It So Much Better
Brazilian Girls - Brazilian Girls
Carla Bruni - Quelqu’Un M’a Dit
Six Feet Under, Vol. 2: Everything Ends
- the Ditty Bops
- the Shins
- Federico Aubule
- Ozomatli
- Brazilian Girls
- Dolour
- Rilo Kiley
One of the benefits of other blogs is that you can talk about the music to which you are currently listening and they give you little faces and stuff. I could be posting to one of my aborted blogs there, but I’d rather complain about it here. Besides, I’ve made this one all purty.
