Category: Music

Steve Kimock Band – Eudemonic

steve kimock eudemonic

The first time I saw Steve Kimock play was during the summer of 1998. He was one of two guitarists (the other being Mark Karan) filling the big gap left by Jerry Garcia in the Grateful Dead reincarnation The Other Ones.

Kimock’s stage presence was slight. Sitting on a stool, guitar in his lap, head bent down he looked more like some Buddhist monk contemplating the mysteries of the universe on a lonely mountain than a rock star.

In fact, many Deadheads were complaining about his lack of presence during this tour. This always seemed ironic to me considering that Garcia had spent the last decade of his life, standing motionless on stage, with his chin resting on his chest.

While others complained about how Kimock looked on stage, I was awed by his chops as a guitarist. His playing was both fluid and tight. Technical and yet full of emotion. Much like Garcia himself, in his better days.

Soon after The Other Ones show, I did some tape trading for a live KVHW show. This was a short-lived band Kimock formed with Babby Vega, Alen Hertz, and Ray White. Again I was knocked out by Kimock’s virtuosity on guitar.

For whatever reason, though Kimock’s name was often batted about in musical conversations amongst online groups, I never gained another piece of his music. Various albums, live tapes, and concerts landed on my list of things to get but never managed to materialize into reality.

So, it was with great anticipation that I found myself with the Steve Kimock Band’s newest release, Eudemonic. The dictionary says the title means “producing happiness and well-being.” That’s a lot to ask for in 66 minutes of music. I definitely had a few moments of happiness brought to me by the music on this album, but I’ll leave my well-being to a higher authority.

I have to admit right upfront here, that I’m not a fan of instrumental music, especially instrumental rock music. Sure, I’ve got some classical music, your Beethoven some Mozart, and whatnot. But I generally regulate this to background music; something to play when I’m a little sad, or to back me up during a romantic dinner. But with the music coming out of my car stereo, or pulsating through my home, my music life consists of some lyrics, some singing.

Don’t get me wrong I can totally dig a 10-minute improvised jam in the middle of a song, but in the end, I want it to come back to a melody, a hook, a chorus. Walking down the road, I need a lyric to sing.

Eudemonic, in fact, feels like the middle jams to some really great songs. I just keep waiting for them to go somewhere, to have a crescendo and soar back down to a rousing final verse or a sing-a-long chorus.

The instrumentation is admittedly quite good. I still hear the passion and performance behind the Kimock guitar, and the rest of the band plays extremely well. Alphonso Johnson especially proves his ability to hit the right groove on bass.

The standout songs are the retro groove opening track, “Eudemon“, the moe. inspired “Ice Cream”, and the bouncy “Bouncer”. The songs are often lengthy, averaging about 6 minutes per song. There is plenty of grooves laid down in all the songs, I just wish there was either consistency throughout the entire album or a bigger hook-to-song ratio.

Fans of instrumental guitar rock will have a lot to dig into with Eudemonic. The jams are flowing, and Kimock is a fine guitar player. It is, in fact, my predilection for turning instrumental music into background fodder that gets me in trouble here. There is just too much going on here, musically, to allow it to stay in the background. A person needs to really listen to the interplay between musicians on this album. Because of this, I’m afraid Eudemonic is something that will probably not get a lot of play around my house. But for those of you willing to take the time to dig into a piece of music, there are many treasures to be found.

2 Days in the Valley Soundtrack

2 days in the valle

Once in a while, I’ll leave the movie theatre and head straight to the music shop, knowing I simply must purchase the soundtrack album. I leave thinking the music was just so perfect, so wonderful, that it would simply be a shame to not have it in my collection.

Usually, the soundtracks turn out to be absolutely friggin’ brilliant. To this day I play the Swingers soundtrack and dig nearly every swinging note. When I’m jonesing for some classic 90’s grunge I always turn to the soundtrack to Cameron Crowe’s less-than-stellar film, Singles.

But sometimes, as it turns out, the music on a soundtrack turns out to be better suited for the cinema. The songs fit the scene perfectly but taken outside of the Hollywood lights, the sounds fail to perform. Somehow the mix of images, lights, and sounds gelled, but when left alone, the music falls flat.

The soundtrack to 2 Days in the Valley is one of these disks. I literally walked straight out of the movie theatre and into the record shop and picked up the soundtrack. While watching the film all I could think about is how great the music is.

Truth be told, some of the songs are fantastic. Wilson Picket’s “Hello Sunshine“ and Otis Redding’s “Down in the Valley“ kick out the R and B jams like only they could. One of Lyle Lovett’s greatest and saddest songs “Nobody Knows Me“ is included in the package.

Both Taj Mahal’s “Rolling on the Sea“, and Erin O’Hara’s “Down in the Valley” are very listenable, but fail to be enough to make me want to dig out the album to listen to just them. Other songs, such as Morphines‘ “Gone For Good“, seemed wonderful in the cinema. That song fit the scene perfectly, and brought home the loneliness of the moment, but left playing in my car, or the home stereo, and it just seems rather sappy, kind of silly.

The few bits of the score included failed to gain any interest. And songs like Scott Reeder’s “Gold” are barely palatable. They are the type of songs that go unnoticed in a movie, playing in the background, but get quite annoying when played on their own.

Ultimately I have the Lyle Lovett song on his own album and the two remaining standouts aren’t enough to make me shuffle through the rest to play this album often.

Neil Young – Silver and Gold

neil young silver and gold

Neil Young’s first acoustic album in seven years, Silver and Gold sounds shamefully thrown together. His last acoustic effort (not counting the MTV Unplugged release) Harvest Moon is one of my all-time favorite albums. There is some lovely songwriting in there, with some nice backup singing by the likes of James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt. It was a throwback to Young’s most successful album, Harvest. And it sounded marvelous.

In the time between Harvest Moon and Silver and Gold, he released some seven albums. He paid tribute to Kurt Cobain, rocked live with Crazy Horse, recorded with Pearl Jam, and wrote the soundtrack to a Jim Jarmusch film, all of which were pretty ragged, electric, and very loud.

I was very excited to get some more acoustic Young, but find myself disappointed with this release. That’s not to say it is a bad album, for there are several really good tunes here. The opening track, “Good to See You“ is a fun, jaunty little thing. His ode to his first band, “Buffalo Springfield Again“ is a great deal of fun, and makes me wish that band really would get back together, though I’ve never been much of a fan.

It is when Young decides to sing a ballad that things get difficult here. Eight of the ten tracks on the album are slower numbers. With the exception of “Silver and Gold“ (a song I included in my wedding reception music) and “Razor Love“, the slow songs are boring. There is nothing to set them apart musically, and the lyrics don’t say anything particularly moving.

It is an album worth buying for the standout tracks. But you would be better off importing those tracks onto a mix tape, or your iPod and then selling back the album to someone else.

Blind Boys of Alabama – Higher Ground

blind boys of alabama higher ground

I bought the Blind Boys of Alabama’s 2002 album Higher Ground on one of those whimsical, spur-of-the-moment kind of deals. You know the type; you go into Borders, or Barnes and Nobles, or whatever big chain you prefer to whittle away your troublesome hours amongst the pop culture references. They’ve got various albums on the compact disk sitting in stands around the shop, already cued up in a CD player, waiting for you to press play and then purchase.

This particular album was just sitting there, waiting for me to gather a listen. I had heard good things about the Blind Boys before, and even though I had previously not had any luck enjoying one of their straight gospel affairs, this new disk looked most promising.

Look there, it’s got Robert Randolph on pedal steel throughout, and Ben Harper guesting on a couple of tracks. They cover Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground”, Jimmy Cliff, and even a Prince tune. You can’t go wrong with that.

I was mostly right.

The thing is, and this has happened to me several times before, “Higher Ground” sounded fantastic while I was listening to it in Borders. It’s like how jeans seem to look better while you are looking at yourself in the store mirror, albums sound better while using store headphones. Yet when you take them home, your butt looks too big, the zipper doesn’t go all the way up, and the music sounds like crap.

Truth be told, the album opener, a cover of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” is pretty stinkin’ spectacular. If I must be honest with you, dear reader, I might have to admit that they beat the pants off of the original. It’s the kind of performance that makes me want to raise my hands and shout to the lord of the blind boys,

“Hallelujah!”

There is some nice vocal harmony, with a sweet high part sung by Ben Harper. Robert Randolph and the Family Band add some nice licks, but play for the song and not to show off their musicality.

While certainly, Mayfield’s song is a spiritual one, it is also a political one. Inspired by the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington Mayfield’s lyrics speak out to a generation tired of war, to a race tired of being downtrodden, to a people ready for something to happen.

The Blind Boys cut out the politics and sing it straight as a spiritual. They make it sing. In the final chorus, they nail a raved-up harmony singing,

“I believe”

And you can hear 60 years of faith coming out in their voices. And in that moment, if only for that moment, we all believe, too.

There are other tracks that tread on similar, higher ground. This rendition of “Wade in the Water” stirs me to my very pancreas. The bass vocals are as about as perfect as one could hope to find from a blind, black man from Alabama. “While Many Rivers” to Cross doesn’t quite reach the power, and humility of the Jimmy Cliff version, there is a weary wisdom in the gravely voices that come out of the Blind Boys that make it a classic in their own right.

The album is at its best when the instruments accentuate the strength of the Boy’s singing. An a cappella band for many years, the Blind Boys have an enormous presence, vocally. When Robert Randolph et al, ramp it up as a blues band, the album suffers. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Stevie Wonder classic “Higher Ground”. While Randolph is a fine guitarist, and he shows off more than a fine pair of chops during this number, the Blind Boys seem out of place. The lyrics have spiritual significance, but the song is more of a rock/funk number than down-home southern gospel. The vocals can’t latch onto any significant meaning because the guitar drowns them out.

Yet at the same time, numbers like “Precious Lord”, and “Spirit in the Dark” suffer from a lack of musical interest. The Blind Boys sing it like they are in the choir, but there is no interest in the music, there is no soul in the soul.

When they are able to find a balance in both the vocals and the music, the results, are…well…heavenly.

Buy Jerry Garcia’s Mailbox

From the wide world of weird this just in: you can now purchase the late Jerry Garcia’s mailbox here (link no longer exists).

This mailbox sat in front of the late guitarist’s last home, a custom-made mansion in Nicasio, California. When Jerry died the house was sold and the new owner upgraded the box and put Jerry’s in storage. Apparently, now is the time to bring the thing out and make a profit from the deceased.

In a culture where celebrities are the new deities, even old mailboxes are sacred. The starting bid is $2000 so tighten up your budget if you want to have this one-of-a-kind memorabilia.

The only question I have left is that with all the millions Jerry Garcia was making, why didn’t he buy a better-looking mailbox? That thing looks like it would fit better in front of a beat-up trailer, than a million-dollar mansion.

Fête de la Musique

strasbourg

Yesterday was not only the longest day of the year, but it also marked the date on which Amy and I only have one month left in France. It was a rather busy day for us as well.

Our water, once again, was being shut off at 9 in the AM and so we awoke early, showered, and breakfasted. We then left for the library to return and check out books, CDs, and a DVD. While we were out and about we decided to check in with Air France to see what an extra piece of luggage would cost us.

Amy has about four boxes full of study material here, which she has to have in Indiana when we get back so that she can study for her Ph.D. exams. The German post office (which is cheaper than the French PO) is going to charge us about 60 Euros per box! Air France will charge us 100 Euros for an extra bag. So, we are now looking at cheap, but durable bags in which we can stash at least a couple of boxes worth of books.

After lunch, we spent the afternoon lounging in the shade at the park. It was a very pretty, yet extremely hot day. Without air conditioning, our apartment is rather unbearable, and thus sitting under a tree is preferable to sitting on our couch.

It was also the annual Fete de la Musique in Strasbourg, which is basically a city-wide music festival. At all of the larger city squares, they set up official stages in which the more popular local bands and a few medium-sized names in French music jammed into the wee hours of the morning. Yet at nearly every block in the city unofficial musicians were playing their tunes. This ranged from a 7-piece zydeco/reggae band to one guy playing a flute with another guy playing an old recorder. No matter where we were in the city, we could hear music.

We were meeting with a group from the university around 8:30 but Amy and I decided to wander around a bit first. We caught a fun French group with a terrible Rastafarian sax player in the Place de Zurich. Then we wandered downtown where there was live music playing every 20 yards or so. These street performers were so close together you could hardly hear them apart from each other. Around the cathedral it was madness. An official stage was set up in the Place de Gutenberg as well as nearby, right in front of the cathedral. Non-sanctioned performers were everywhere in between, as well as a throng of people. The poor choir, in front of the cathedral, could barely even be heard even when I was standing but a few feet from them.

strasbourg cathedral Time came and we went to meet the gang. None of us had any idea about where to go, so we began wandering back toward the center of town. The crowds were expanding and it was quite an experience just trying to keep the 12 of us from getting lost. We caught short snippets of several bands before always moving on. As is always the problem with large music festivals, no matter where you are, you always think something better is around the corner.

Eventually we all tired and amazingly found empty seats at a local café. It was a little removed from the live music, but the block was more than making up for this with DJs playing piped-in music. Our café was unlucky enough to be very near two DJs while employing one itself. This created three separate pieces of music blending together into one loud mess. It was so loud we couldn’t really talk to each other and I quickly developed a headache. Our gang seemed content in sitting there drinking beer, but I became discontent and told them we were leaving. It was not only the annoying DJs, but the fact that I was spending my night listening to canned music while live music was literally playing around the next corner, and throughout the city. I guess we might have seemed rude, but I was sick of sitting there.

We caught a punk/metal band in Place Kleber. They covered Nirvana as we were walking by, so we decided to hang out a bit. It has been a long time since I caught a live metal act and I must admit it was fun. The energy was really strong, and the kids were having fun jumping up and down.

Our feet got tired so we wandered away again to another square in which there was grass to sit upon. The band was playing lots of classic American rock and we decided to stay. They played covers of Dire Straights, Elvis Presley, James Brown, Deep Purple, and AC/DC. And let me tell you, you haven’t lived until you’ve been surrounded by a mass of drunken French people screaming “Highway to Hell” at the top of their lungs.

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The music officially ended at 1 AM, but many of the unofficial acts played much later. The street parties didn’t end until much later as well. We returned to our apartment and tried to sleep. Luckily the official places around us had cleared out early which moved the party a few blocks away. I still was awoken a few times by the drunken hordes singing their lungs out as they returned home, but all was well.

Dark Star Orchestra To Tour Again After Keyboardist Death

I’ve decided to post any news-type items that I post on Blogcritics here as well. The following is a little blurb I did on the Dark Star Orchestra.

Dark Star Orchestra will continue their spring tour after the sudden death of founding member, and keyboardist Scott Larned. After canceling numerous concerts to regroup, the band will restart the tour in New York City on May 27. From there, the band will head to Connecticut and continue to tour the US pretty much nonstop until August.

Scott Larned, passed away suddenly of heart failure this past April while touring with the Grateful Dead cover band. Larned helped found the band in 1997, played keyboards, and even did a stint as group manager in their early days. Much like the Grateful Dead, whom Dark Star Orchestra emulates night after night, they have vowed to continue playing after losing a vital member. During their 30-year history, the Grateful Dead also lost 3 keyboardists to untimely deaths, yet continued to be one of the biggest touring acts in the country.

The band’s website (darkstarorchestra.com) has this to say about the decision:

The decision to resume touring was an easy one to make; one that we’re sure would have pleased Scott. He himself had made many sacrifices in order to continue touring and playing the music that he loved. To do anything but continue onward would be a disservice to his memory and to this incredible group he helped nurture for over the last seven years.

The tour schedule is as follows:

May 27, 28 – New York, NY
May 29, 30 – New Haven, CT
June 1 – Providence, RI
June 2 – Poughkeepsie, NY
June 3 – Red Bankd, NJ
June 4 – Philadelphia, PA
June 6, 7 – Teaneck, NJ
June 8 – Chifton Park, NY
June 10 – Somerville, MA
June 11 – Hampton Beach, NH
June 13, 14 – Burlington, VT
June 16 – Buffalo, NY
June 17 – Erie, PA
June 18 – Bluffton, OH
July 10 – Milwaukee, WI
July 14 – Indianapolis, IN
July 17 – Masontown, WV
July 21 – Detroit Lakes, MN
July 27 – Denver, CO
July 28 – Aspen, CO
July 29, 30 – Bellvue, CO
August 13 – Mariaville, NY
August 17 – Springfield, OH
August 19-21 – Garrettsville, OH

For more information on the band visit darkstarorchestra.com

Best Concerts Ever

It has been a while since I posted any top 5 lists. So, I thought I’d do something a little different today, meaning that this one is even more subjective than all the others. So, I present to you, my humble readers, the top 5 Concerts I have personally experienced.

5. Leftover Salmon – May 2, 2000 – Knoxville, TN

Leftover Salmon are an eclectic mix of bluegrass, country, Cajun, southern rock, and boogie. We got front-row tickets at the Bijou and smiled every minute of it. Their music is all about fun, and I danced my little rump off until the last cord. These guys made sounds come out of the mandolin and banjo I wouldn’t have thought possible.

4. Lucinda Williams – September 25, 2001 – Bloomington, IN

Lucinda is one of my all-time favorite musical acts. We got there early and were rewarded with spots right off the stage (there were no seats) and to the left. Dressed in a low-cut, red tank top and tight-fitting blue jeans, Lucinda was dressed to please, and she did just that. I would have preferred it if the band had stretched some of the songs a bit, but what they left out in improvisation, they more than made up for with energy. She sang all my favorite songs and a few that quickly became new favorites.

3. Ratdog – April 10, 2001 – Knoxville, TN

I’ve seen Ratdog several times before, but this was my favorite performance. I decided to go at the last minute, on a whim, and I’m glad I did. It was a mixed setlist, containing both songs I really don’t like and some of my very favorites. But even on the crappy songs they played tremendously.

2. Furthur Festival – June 25, 1998 – Atlanta, GA

Through various circumstances, I was never able to see the real Grateful Dead in concert. What I have to live with is their various incarnations minus Jerry Garcia. In the second year of the Furthur Festival, a touring festival featuring members of the Dead as well as other Dead influenced bands, the remaining members of the Grateful Dead (minus drummer Bill Kreutzman) formed The Other Ones. This was the first time since Garcia’s death that all of them were playing together, and the first time they set out playing the old classic Dead songs. It was not a disappointment. The jams were hot and smooth, in fact, much of the three-hour show seemed like one giant medley of music. It was a perfect time, perfect place and I enjoyed some great music with even better friends.

1. Willie Nelson
I’ve seen Willie Nelson twice: Once at the Brady Theatre, in Tulsa, OK, and again at the IU Auditorium in Bloomington, Indiana. They were completely different types of shows, and yet I cannot claim that one was better than the other. In Tulsa, they took all of the seats out of the theatre to give it a livelier atmosphere. The bar was running plenty of drinks out and the crowd acted like it. Willie’s music was up to the task. He played a huge medley of all of his classic hits without taking a break to say a word. It was loud, obnoxious, and fantastic. I’ll never forget Willie standing on the stage with a wrinkled face, and broken guitar running through “Amazing Grace” and “Uncloudy Day” with about 20 bras having been thrown on the stage and the audience saluting their beer mugs to the gospel music. It was quite a time.

In Bloomington, the atmosphere was completely different. It was an academic auditorium and the people were all dressed appropriately. Willie played his songs as songs, pausing between each one to say thank you. The audience sat politely in their seats, except for a few moments when they gave an ovation to the giant American flag and his tribute with some patriotic songs. It was vastly different than the crazed party scene I had witnessed before, and yet it was still a wonderful night of music.

That was really tough. There are other concerts that just barely missed the top five. The Indigo Girls, Sam Bush, and Jamgrass were difficult to cut out. But that’s what a top list is for, I guess.

Google News

I wrote my first piece for Google News today. Let me explain. I’ve been writing for Blogcritics for a couple of months now. Mainly I’m posting the reviews I write there over there, but there have also been a couple of music essays as well. Many Blogcritic authors also write on current events, such as the Michael Jackson court case, the new Pope, or whatever happens to be going on in the world. A lot of those posts are picked up by Google News which is subsequently picked up by just about everybody.

I’m not really cued into any current situations of the world, thus I’ve stayed away from posting anything. Until today. I just heard that Dark Star Orchestra’s keyboardist recently passed away and felt moved enough to write about it. I must say that I’m not particularly a huge fan of the band, but I know enough people dig them that it is newsworthy. I feel a little opportunistic in taking a tragedy and using it to put my name a little further into cyberspace, but I suppose that’s the breaks. I guess, really, I happened into this information and realized it had not been posted on Blogcritics, so I took that opportunity. Read my post here (sorry the link is no longer valid).

Various Ramblings about U2

In high school, I drove a 1986 Plymouth Reliant. It was a hand-me-downs hand-me-down. From my mother to my brother to me, it had seen more than a few hard miles. But, it was my first car, and for what it was worth I loved it, except when the fan belt made that horrible squealing noise as I was pulling out of school. I had a new tape deck that literally hung in the dash. My father, never willing to spend more than he had to on car repair, decided to install the stereo himself. The new one was a bit smaller than the old one so it left a good half-inch space around the new stereo. I wedged some cardboard underneath it to keep it from taking to many bangs and was good to go.

In those days I had a habit of listening to one cassette over and over again. One month I listened to Paul Westerburg’s 13 Songs nonstop. I had the Doors soundtrack completely memorized, beat for beat, Morrison wail for Morrison wail. There was a several-week period that I listened to U2’s 4 song EP Wide Awake in America and nothing else. Since it is so short it contained the same music on side B as on side A. I didn’t care, I loved every moment of it. It was also just long enough to listen to the entire EP in one drive to school.

During this same period, I began driving one of my sister’s friends, Amy, to school with us. She was a pleasant girl and lived close enough to me that I didn’t mind picking her up. Two or three weeks went by like this: driving Amy to and from school, me listening to the same four songs over and over again. One afternoon we loaded into the car after school ready to head home. At that very moment, I decided I was tired of listening to U2 and ejected the tape after half a verse of Bad.

“That was a tape?” Amy asked.

“Of course, it’s a tape. We’ve been listening to it repeatedly for the last several weeks.” I replied.

“Well, I thought the radio was playing that song a lot.”

“Yeah, and playing it at the exact same moment in the afternoon that we left off in the morning. That’s nice of the radio station to do that for us,” I joked.

I think she was a little more than embarrassed.

————

That particular song, “Bad”, is a particular favorite of mine. It’s got a cool, elevating jam in it on the live version. It sparkles like the stars in the sky. Truth be told, it is the main reason I listened to the EP over and over again. It’s got some great, mysterious lyrics.

There’s a great story about the band playing some awards show way back when, and Bono spends their entire slotted time trying to get a fan on stage with him. The band keeps playing the riffs, and security keeps trying to stop the fan from climbing the stairs. And there is Bono, world savior, persuading the fan to come up with him. Meanwhile, everyone else is begging him to come back and sing the song. Minutes roll by, the band’s time slot is almost up, and they haven’t even finished this one song yet. Something like 8 minutes roll by, their entire time slot, and Bono is still trying to get this one fan on stage. Finally, security lets up and the girl runs onto the stage, into Bono’s arms. There he is, one of the biggest rock stars around and he’s hugging a fan. Bam! Superstardom forever.

The song doesn’t have a proper chorus. There is a repeated refrain, but its lyrics are obscure. I listened to that song a hundred times and I could never figure out what he was saying.

I’m Wide Awake
I’m Wide Awake

But after that, it was just a mumble. I was sure it was a powerful, amazing lyric, but I could never penetrate its meaning.

One day, months after keeping the tape in my deck for weeks on end, I threw the tape back in my player. Cruising the Oklahoma back roads I cranked it up.

If I could, yes I would
If I could, I would
Let it go

Bono sang. The Edge jangling his guitar, the music crescendos higher and higher.

If I could through myself
Set your spirit free
I’d lead your heart away
See you break, break away
Into the light
And to the day

To let it go
And so to fade away
To let it go
And so fade away

I’m loving it. It’s a perfect summer day. My windows are down, my left arm soaring out the window. The road is untrafficked by other drivers, and unwatched by the cops. There are a series of hills we used to call “the Rollercoaster” because they dipped and rose like an amusement park ride. I used to take them real fast and try to get some air between the road and my tires. Life was good.

I’m wide awake
I’m wide awake

And then it hit me. Out of the clear, blue sky, I suddenly knew what he was singing. It made perfect sense, and fit perfectly with the previous couplet. There it is again, this time I can’t help but understand. How could I have not heard those lyrics before? A smile crept to my lips as I sang along:

I’m wide awake
I’m not sleeping
Oh, no, no, no