In a world filled with dub step, remixes, remixes of remixes and remixes of dub step remixes of 80s power ballads, it’s always refreshing to see a real rock band to their thing live. Even more so, when said rock band, can pull off their repertoire note-for-note but decides that even that’s not good enough, it’s safe to say that the band’s a keeper. This rings especially true for California band Local Natives, who put on a mind blowing show this past Saturday at the Paradise in Boston.

Following the release of their debut album Gorilla Manor, the boys in Local Natives have toured the country relentlessly, including three stops in Boston alone in the past year. Their music’s unique blend of gloom and lust – in addition to a full band of guys who can not only play their instruments, but nail their harmonies – provided this humble music snob with one of the most enjoyable concerts I’ve seen in quite some time.

Playing to a sold out crowd, the band owned the Paradise that night from their first note. Playing just about every song on their album (including their cover of The Talking Heads’ “Warning Signs”) it became increasingly clear to me that there is still such a thing as an honest, hard-working band.

It’s hard to pick out a single defining moment of their set, as everything was pretty darn spectacular. As a testament to how truly diverse and expansive their sound can be, they offered up a few gems that deserve special recognition. An already mellow song, “Cubism Dream” was truly taken to new heights. Swapping out the brush technique on the drums for swelling harmonies and illustrious instrumentation, the Natives showed everyone in the tiny Paradise how to take something that isn’t broke and make it better (yup, it’s possible).

Lastly, for what I will from this point forward consider to be one of the greatest encores ever, they pulled out “Stranger Things.” So often is the case that bands create these vast arrangements on record and fail terribly when they try to translate it to a live setting. What could possibly take the place of a full string section in a song like “Stranger Things?” Better vocals than the proverbial fat lady could ever belt out. Truly a life changing experience.

As their tour begins to wind down, one could wonder where the band will go with their sound next. I live in constant fear that many of my current favorite bands will die out before they have the opportunity to release their sophomore slump. Take this as my solemn word: Local Natives will take the aforementioned slump and dropkick it off of the San Francisco Bay Bridge. There are huge things on this band’s horizon. Huge things. And that’s just a fact.

(Photo credit: The timeless picture phone skills of Scarlett Wilson)

Peering up from a table full of electronic gadgetry, Pablo Díaz-Reixa, the Spanish musician behind the recording alias El Guincho, asked, “Do you like my music?” This still being the beginning of the show, the ambivalent crowd responded with scattered applause, lightly affirming the lead man. “I like my music,” he jokingly responded. In retrospect, this stood as a defining moment for the night. Díaz-Reixa, joined by a similarly bearded guitarist and bassist, jettisoned the slow-moving, mid tempo songs off his new album, Pop Negro, for frantic, loop-driven jams off of his masterpiece, Alegranza. While Pop Negro often clarifies the loose, repetitive nature of Alegranza, the latter moves bodies far more effortlessly than the former. However, each showcases Díaz-Reixa’s talent for channeling a distinctly Spanish sound into exotic yet familiar dance music. It is this unique talent that drew a near capacity crowd to the Mercury Lounge on Tuesday night.

El Guincho’s set began with Pop Negro‘s most catchy tunes, “Bombay” and “FM Tan Sexy,” a song that evokes “hearing a top single on the radio.” Díaz-Reixa, manning a drum pad, keyboard, and sampler, appeared quite busy controlling the flow and tempo of the show. The other members contributed with excellent harmonies and balanced the otherwise heavily electronic sounds with live instrumentation. “Palmitos Park” and “Buenos matrimonios ahí afuera,” both off of Alegranza, came toward the end of the set and exemplified the groups’ cohesion. And, as the crowd finally matched the frenzied state of the music, El Guincho’s energy amplified to levels uncontainable within the confines of the Mercury Lounge. Those closest to the stage, danced, jumped, and moshed to the last song “Antillas” like it was the last song they would ever hear.

So, now do you believe that we like your music, Pablo?

You can find this piece, along with additional pictures, and many more of my music and/or philosophy musings at Playtonic Dialogues.

Tuna is a crazy overfished…fish.  It’s enormous.  Way bigger than the little tin can or convenient foil pouch you scratch the flakes out of, this fish has dominated American life from cradle to grave.  As a kid, I loved eating the sandwiches on hikes with my Dad and at home for a change from PB&J (a life partner) with my mom.  High school provided the warm cat-food smelling tuna casserole that I actually adored and devoured.  At college, Middle Ground Café made a zesty refresher course of traditional mayo/celery/chicken of the sea by replacing mayo for vinaigrette and opting for ginger instead of celery.

Coming back from the whirlwind of graduation, I found myself sleeping for a week, watchingRomy & Michelle’s High School Reunion and listening to 90’s songs.  But I also was eating a lot of tuna.  Was it the protein I was so lacking at school for 4 years or a shameless wallowing in nostalgia for the good ol’ days?  Frankly I don’t care, and I can’t stop eating the stuff.  It’s become my on-the-go snack on my road trips to Chicago so I don’t have to kill myself with McDonald’s or the incredulity of the KFC Express/Pizza Hut.  I love it plain from the pouch with a fork, in salads, in lettuce wraps, on English Muffins, in a bowl with Miracle Whip and a hefty portion of mace or on a sandwich with my own arugula/radishes/blueberries and cheese.

Whichever way you cut it, the world and I are going to have a hard time if this great fish disappears and yellowfin isn’t going to be the answer.

Eat up,

A Hoppy Pipper

Thank you for reading. Its in all caps so you have to do it. Here’s why:

1. Kids love skateboarding and look up to their idols. Tony Hawk built a park for kids in Lewiston, ME. It’s a huge success, already yielding skateboarding celebrities like himself. I went there once and saw Hawk skate. I, too, am now a celebrity.

2. The skatepark will be a living, breathing public art installation. Mass MoCA will commission an artist to design the park with input from local youth and skatepark engineers. A giant frame will also be purchased and permanently suspended above the park by hummingbirds.

3. North Adams is almost in Vermont, which is my home state. It will inspire us to build cool art skateparks, a trend which will then spread to neighboring states like New Hampshire and Canada.

The Northern Berkshire Community Coalition, the City of North Adams, and Mass MoCA have partnered and are currently running to win $250,000 in the national Pepsi Refresh Everything contest. $180,000 will go toward construction and materials, while the remaining $70,000 will go toward administrative and staffing fees. A nice park lasts forever, people. Get into it and vote this project to the top two in Pepsi Refresh Everything.

Vote in 3 ways:

1. Text 102522 to 73774

2. Vote HERE on the Pepsi Refresh site

3. Vote on Facebook

The waiting room looked like an advertisement for a diversity campaign; brown, black, white, and yellow skin surrounded the young man. Trying not look outwardly uncomfortable, he avoided the others’ eyes. A younger-looking mother and her pre-teen daughter huddled together peering over a fashion magazine, commenting on how skinny some actress is, or how good her nose and chin look. They looked more like grade-school friends than mother and daughter, but with all the beauty products people bought because of magazines such as the one they were admiring, it was hard for the young man to guess anyone’s age anymore.

A middle-aged, over-weight couple, both with thick lenses covering their eyes, both there with stomach pains from a diet of fast food and TV dinners, were sitting poor-postured, reading travel magazines containing photographs of places they’ve never been and will never go. The nurse came back with some test results for the wife and says they need to do more tests with more machines in a different department two floors down. The nurse asks her, noticing her girth and poor fitness, if she’d like to take the stairs or use the elevator.

Looking annoyed, the wife gets to her feet as quick as she can manage, saying she’ll use the stairs of course, and without waiting, ambles down the corridor towards the stairs with the nurse in toe looking embarrassed and regretful for asking. The husband smiles with amusement. He didn’t see her like everyone else did – by the pounds around her waist. He was only concerned with the way she pursed her lips when something frustrated her, or how she tilted her head to the left slightly when she wrote. These things the husband loved most about her.

To Be Continued…

Join us next week for part two of Waiting Room. Thank you and goodnight.

With less than a month remaining in the summer, many of hip-hop’s living legends and cunning contemporaries assembled on South Island Field at Governor’s Island for the seventh annual Rock the Bells. Thousands dressed in Wu-Tang Clan T-shirts and tank tops took the short ferry ride to the festival grounds where thousands more crowded around two stages to share in the American pastime of hot dogs, lemonade and blunts. With so many great acts to see and ridiculous people watching, the following is a list of the best moments at this year’s festival:

Best Underdog: Brother Ali, the self-proclaimed, “Fat-ass Muslim, albino rapper,” used his competing set time with KRS-One to captivate his loyal audience. Although the sun’s unforgiving rays seemed to deep-fry the MC, Brother Ali fought back with fierce rhymes, preaching tolerance and thoughtfulness. You came for the Minnesota rapper but you stayed for DJ Snuggles, the multitalented 22-year-old who spun, beat-boxed and even rapped on Brother Ali’s beats.

Best Looking Tent Food: Sweet corn cakes with mozzarella. I didn’t get them but I’ll be damned if I didn’t ogle the precarious sounding treats every time I walked past the tent.

Best Extended Breakdown: More than a decade after The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Ms. Lauryn Hill played Rock the Bell’s main stage with a full band, backing singers and an outfit somewhere in between Little Miss Muffet and a church lady. It was a treat to see her perform such songs as the Fugees’ “Ready or Not” and “How Many Mics,” however the best moments came when versions of “To Zion” and “Fu-Gee-La” spun into a pageant for friends and family members. Highlights included Hill calling all her children to the stage as well as Chris Rock, Jay-Z and a very pregnant Alicia Keys.

Best in Show: A Tribe Called Quest and Wu-Tang Clan (tied). Call me biased, but how can you top New York City’s two legendary hip-hop groups playing their classic albums? You can’t, and that is why the Queens and Staten Island natives drew the largest and most devoted crowds at the festival. Q-Tip and Method Man played frontman to their respective group’s sets, both coming out into the crowd for their go-for-broke performances. Personally, I give the slight edge to A Tribe Called Quest solely for Busta Rhymes’ ground-shaking cameo during “Scenario.” However, the late ODB’s son Boy Jones’ flawless impersonation of his father during Wu-Tang Clan’s set is a very close second.

You can find this piece and many more of my music and/or philosophy musings at Playtonic Dialogues.

(Photo courtesy of Jen Macchiarelli | www.jennylow.com)

THE ACTS

The Gay Blades, from New York, rocked.  Hard.  In every way possible, which included one of the best freestyles I’ve ever heard.

Biz Markie, from another planet, is the most entertaining, quirkiest, weirdest, goofiest, dopest rapper I’ve ever seen.  If you’re not familiar with his idiosyncratic style, its like Gift of Gab meets Lyrics Born meets Deltron meets Weird Al (with a touch of Rahzel).  Some decent beatboxing accompanied freestyles and verses about things like picking one’s nose and of course a giant You Got What I Need singalong.  We were laughing to ourselves the rest of the night.

The next night started off with a whole slew of small-medium and moving onto larger acts, most notably Bad Rabbits (Boston), OkGO and ATL’s B.o.B.  Bad Rabbits were awesome.  Super-energized frontman rapper rocked the stage with high-pitched hooks and seamless verses, while the band cranked out some serious funk.  They danced, they jammed, and they even nailed an I Want You Back cover which obviously had everyone smiling.

OkGO, in my opinion, put on the best performance of the night.  These guys have it on LOCK.  It was the OkGO variety show: crowd participation in which one lucky dude got to play Damian Kulash’s guitar during Here It Goes Again, some energizing call and response, some Kulash playing in the middle of the crowd, a seamless and beautifully executed hand bell rendition, LOTS of confetti, and finally an amazing performance of This Too Shall Pass with crowd chorus singalong.  Amazing.

B.o.B.’s performance was not the gunshot SFX ridden southern money tossin’ bousss show I expected, but rather a tight, perhaps over-synced repertoire involving backup singers, dancers, and a live band.  B.o.B.  himself is a regular looking young dude rocking red Supra’s, wayfarers, a red flannel and skinny jeans, or in other words, a clean cut hipster who’s killing the pop-R&B scene right now.  Not on Drake’s level, but certainly not the same genre either.  Regardless, the kid’s got swagger, talent, and pretty soon the great state of Maine will be bragging that “we got B.o.B. before he was big”.

Unfortunately I couldn’t snag any good pics of Bobby Ray doing his thing, but here are more shots from the weekend:

It wasn’t an eco-village. It was an awesome village with a borrowed eco-village tent.

Photos courtesy of Matt Homer.

I made a promise to myself this summer. I was going to try and listen only to songs that had either RAC or dubstep versions of themselves. All of that was going fine (for a solid 3 days), until Tennis popped up on the radar. They seemed to have hit, with only (at the time) two released songs, the target that every other low-fi band had been missing for so long. Listening to them reminds me of the beach, the water and sailing. Wait . . . did you say sailing? That’s right. The band are a married couple that spent 8 months out of the past year sailing around the United States, basing the song lyrics off of their ship’s log.

They have only released a few songs on 7″ and cassette and have embarked on a short US tour to support them. Aside from the especially bad sound at Great Scott last night, the band put on a phenomenal show. At first, it was an adjustment hearing the band’s songs without the singer harmonizing with herself as she does on record but this, however, did not detract from the overall sound. They played a short, but energetic, 45 minute set to a crowd that really couldn’t have cared less.Well, other than me. It’s always a shock when I get real pumped to see a band play and then when I show up, the crowd’s indifferent. I guess this is just me coming to terms that not everyone share’s a superior sense of what music is good and what music sucks. Set highlights for sure were “Marathon” and “Baltimore,” the two songs that started it all. New songs like “Seafarer” gave promise of an outstanding full length, which I was told would be out as soon as possible. For the uninitiated, check out the MP3s below. Welcome to the circus.

MP3: Tennis – Baltimore

MP3: Tennis – Marathon

MP3: Tennis – South Carolina

Check out this post and many others at The Record Crate

Double check this new track from Cee Lo Green, aptly titled “Fuck You.” He’s been impressing the junk out of me lately. Try to put aside that the video is nothing more than animated song lyrics (a new trend in music videos that I don’t quite understand or particularly enjoy) and get down to this new jam.

Additionally: If you’re into Cee Lo and Band of Horses, check out his cover of BOH’s “No One’s Gonna Love You.”

MP3: Cee Lo Green – No One’s Gonna Love You (Band of Horses Cover)

MP3: Cee Lo Green – Fuck You

Stay Up. Always Stay Up.

Check out this post and others over at The Record Crate.

Both physically and symbolically, Madison Square Garden represents the center of entertainment in New York City. Elongated posters of iconic images remind visitors of the venue’s historic past in sports, music, and, yes, the Westminster Kennel Club dog show. By the sheer force of its name, Madison Square Garden sanctifies all events it houses. So, when Arcade Fire booked not one but two headlining dates this August, expectations regarding their performance  abounded.

The Canadian-based indie rock band is responsible for two transcendent records, Funeral and Neon Bible, and recently released their third album, The Suburbs. While this is a relatively small discography for a band scheduled to sell out “The World’s Most Famous Arena,” songs such as “Wake Up” have permeated the mainstream. Many may know them as the band whose song is featured in Super Bowl commericals or the trailer for Where The Wild Things Are, but this is hopefully the beginning of a growing legacy. On Thursday night, against any and all doubts, Arcade Fire delivered an unforgettable performance, driving toward rock immortality.

Supported by openers Owen Pallet and rock veterans Spoon, the group filled the venue with their triumphant songs, boundless energy, and wholly transfixed fans. All nine members of the touring band dressed like an advertisement for individuality. In addition to frontman Win Butler’s internet-fawned-over haircut, Regine Chassagne wore a sequined dress and Richard Reed Parry dawned a floral jumpsuit. Their appearance as well as Terry Giliam’s simultaneous live webcast acted as a show within a show. This, however, was secondary to the band’s colossal renditions of anthems “Rebellion (Lies),” “Keep The Car Running,” and “Intervention.” There was an urgency and awareness to their performance, which reflected in the joyful expressions and exuberance of the crowd. At the end of their encore, which featured “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” and new song “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains),” it felt as if MSG wasn’t big enough for Arcade Fire.

You can find this piece and many more of my music and/or philosophy musings at Playtonic Dialogues.