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nofatclips · 1 year

Audio

Sadist Lament by False Figure from the album Castigations

#music #false figure #ian mcdonnell #andrés ruiz #transylvanian recordings #andres ruiz #transylvanian tapes #greg wilkinson #great american music hall #chris dugan

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sweetdreamsjeff · 4 months

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Soul Coughing/ Jeff Buckley Rock the House

Great American Music Hall on Thursday

night (May 4, 1995)

By MTV News Staff

May 6, 1995

12:00 AM

Editor's Note: We found a pile of notes on the recent Jeff

Buckley/Soul Coughing concert scribbled by our business manager, Steve McConnell. They were almost unintelligible, but after hours and hours of deciphering, we were able to piece together the following report.

Listen to Soul Coughing's debut album, Ruby Vroom, and you'd think the New York-based quartet were beat poets messing around with samples. See them in person however, and it is clear that they are from the New York white-boy school of rap (think low-keyed Beastie Boys). That was the most surprising thing about their terrific hour-long performance at the Great American Music Hall on Thursday night (May 4).

"You all don't have to get up," said leader singer/rapper M. Doughty, as Soul Coughing took the stage. "I was kinda digging that campfire thing." He was directing his comments to the nearly 100 people sitting cross-legged on the floor of San Francisco's Great American Music Hall.

Ruby Vroom has received some remarkable (and well deserved) reviews. The New Yorker called it "one of the best records of 1994"; Details noted that "this is some serious boho, Dada shit." Live, the group more than lived up to such praise.

Soul Coughing is comprised of Sebastian Steinberg on upright bass; Yuval Gabay, drums; M'Ark De Gli Antoni, keyboards/samples; and Doughty on guitar and vocals. They emerged from the New York avant garde jazz scene (John Zorn gets a word of thanks in the album credits). Live, the group brought together elements of Morphine (the driving bass and narrative style), Digable Planets ( rap set to jazz samples) and the Beasties. But where Digable Planets come from the rap world and the Beasties arrived via punk, Soul Coughing bring a distinctive bohemian jazz sensibility to the mix.

At the Music Hall, they performed nearly the entire album. Highlights included "Casiotone Nation," "Mr. Bitterness," "Down To This" and the amazing "Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago," which included the line "San Mateo is in the house." After performing that song, noting the enthusiastic response, Doughty said, "I guess San Mateo is in the house."

Headliner Jeff Buckley was in fine form, performing one of the most rocking sets of his current tour (at least according to a fan who saw the last four shows), stretching out many of the songs and improvising. Buckley played a taped-up red Rickenbacker six string guitar; his voice sounded even more beautiful and emotional than on his debut album, Grace. At one point someone from the audience yelled, "Shonen Knife?" "OK," replied Buckley, then played two minutes of a Shonen Knife song while the rest of the band smirked. Half way through the set Buckley played a loud and raucous version of the MC5's "Kick Out the Jams."

#jeff buckley #jeffbuckley #soul coughing #great american music hall #san francisco #may 5 1995 #May #1995 #mtv #catnip dream #shonen knife

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sinceileftyoublog · 6 months

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Oxbow Interview: Falsely Simple

Photo by Phil Sharp

BY JORDAN MAINZER

I get the sense that after all these years, the artistic collaboration among members of Oxbow is all but intuitive. The San Francisco experimental rock band, started as an offshoot from Palo Alto hardcore band Whipping Boy, has been making genre-averse noise music since 1989. Starting with the abrasive and bleak Fuckfest and culminating with the comparatively subdued and soulful Love's Holiday (Ipecac) released earlier this year, the Eugene Robinson-fronted band have developed an artistic voice over eight records that's cohesive in spirit and approach even if not always in sound. Whether they're working with no wave poets like Lydia Lunch, legendary vocalists like Marianne Faithfull, or full-on orchestras, Oxbow toys with space and raw emotion, focusing on the oft-uncomfortable relationship between silence and screams. All the while, Robinson sings about life, love, addiction, death, suicide, and violence, inspired by moments in his life but left ambiguous enough for listener interpretation.

Yet, it's that second in the list--love--that upon a surface listen, you might not hear on many Oxbow records. Sure, you can't really understand what Robinson is saying at all on early albums, let alone singing about. The band's longtime label Hydra Head did not, in their early pre-Internet days, send lyrics books along with the records themselves. But according to Robinson, love's always been a key component of Oxbow. What's new on Love's Holiday is the sonic and thematic clarity with which Robinson and the band dive in. "It's falsely simple sounding stuff," bassist Dan Adams told me over the phone earlier this year, "especially for people expecting Oxbow to be dirty and grimy and noisy." At the time of our conversation, before the album was released, Adams was unsure how fans and critics would receive it. It's gotten rave reviews from both per usual, and it seems like it could even be a gateway record for people not used to Oxbow or abrasive music in general.

The band put together and recorded the basic tracks for Love's Holiday just before the pandemic; they wouldn't see each other for a year and a half before returning to the record. During the pandemic, guitarist Niko Wenner suffered an injury, joblessness, and the death of multiple family members, including his father. He also had his second child. While Love's Holiday is by no means about these events or even directly inspired by them, you can hear the confused interplay between grief and joy throughout, as manifested by the instrumentation. Robinson's quintessentially pained bellows, Wenner's slurred blues guitars, and Greg Davis' pummeling drums rub elbows with elements with traditionally lighter timbres, like orchestral instrumentation and choral vocals. Kristin Hayter (fka Lingua Ignota) lends her voice to "Lovely Murk", embedding itself among Davis' deliberations, Adams' wiry bass, and shimmering synthesizers. A 15-person choir features on piano ballad "All Gone" and "Gunwale", the perfect juxtaposition to Robinson's baritone and Wenner's distortion, respectively. Don't get me wrong: Love's Holiday is an Oxbow album through and through, with a song like "The Second Talk" and its choppy rhythms and back-and-forth vocalizations reminiscent of back catalog highlights. But it feels like by being forthright, Robinson and company have become the truest versions of themselves.

Oxbow are in the middle of a West Coast tour celebrating Love's Holiday, playing San Francisco's Great American Music Hall tonight and finishing Sunday at Mohawk in Austin. When I spoke to Adams earlier this year, the band was rehearsing, figuring out how they'd adopt the songs to the stage. Their approach wasn't much different this time around: "Practice them a bunch, get on stage, and play them," Adams quipped. In reality, the challenge is stripping down the songs, "taking advantage of the space and sparsity," according to Adams. "It really is a fairly stripped down record in terms of what's going on," Adams said. In essence, they're doing to the studio recordings what Love's Holiday built on from previous Oxbow records: emphasizing the subtleties and the depth of Robinson's voice.

Below, read my conversation with Adams, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: How do you think Love's Holiday is unique as compared to your previous albums, and how do think it's a continuation of them?

Dan Adams: We were freer to give in to the sparsity and simplicity more than we have ever in the past. Yesterday, I listened to a couple of more recent records, and these are cleaner, simpler songs. One thing I really enjoy about that is they put the voice so far up front in terms of the quality of voice and the timbre and emotional content. It's much more exposed than the records have been in the past. I think that's a great thing.

It's very consistent with what we've done in terms of being a fairly transparent expression of emotional material. It's intense. It's complex, I guess, but...in ways that are much more subtle. It's a sensible trajectory from The Narcotic Story and Thin Black Duke. I don't think any of us in the band feel like our trajectories are a one-way pass. [laughs] I think we've always enjoyed doing what feels right at the time we made the music and following our whims and where we are in life, and so on. It's the music we were making at the time, as Niko was writing songs and we were hashing them out in the practice room. It's impossible to predict what the next round of material will be like, although in this particular session, we recorded a whole bunch more music at the same time, so we probably have another record using the material from the same process, which will also be pretty fun. Some of those songs are kind of similar, and some are very different even though they come from the same genesis.

SILY: Does the voice being more upfront on Love's Holiday place a greater emphasis on the lyrics?

DA: That's an interesting question. I think the lyrical content has always been extremely important and a driving factor. I also know Eugene has said quite a bit that he's intentionally written much less, much sparser lyrics for this record. In a way, you could say that's emphasizing what is there. On the other hand, I think it comes down to how the lyrics are delivered, and how well you can hear them. How clearly they're delivered by Eugene [and] how much space the band leaves for those lyrics. I think it's really up to the listener how much work they want to do to find out what the lyrics are about. In some of the older records, it was hard to figure out. In some cases, there were records that came out years before our lyrics books were published where people couldn't figure out what the lyrics were. In this case, they're both available and easier to hear.

SILY: In the lead up to the release of Love's Holiday, Eugene has talked about how the band has always written "love songs," so these themes shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. But in the context of what you just said, that the lyrics in the past were less physically accessible, it might seem like a newfound theme to a lot of folks.

DA: Yes. I think that's right. Eugene's described it as trying to lay it out there and make it obvious after so many years of people not getting it. My interpretation is that because the music has at times been pretty strong, noisy, loud, big, and dissonant, things we've enjoyed and continue to enjoy folding into it, it's almost like typecasting. People hear that and assume that's the element being conveyed in the lyrics. There's complexity and subtlety. These are not simple topics, and Eugene [was frustrated] that people weren't doing the work to understand and find it. So this is a time to make it a little bit more obvious and tell people in advance what we're doing. That's what Thin Black Duke was about as well: short-circuiting people's assumptions about what our record was going to be like and explaining to people what we're doing rather than having people use the old simplistic interpretations of what we're about.

SILY: During the making of Love's Holiday, Niko had a child but also suffered the loss of multiple family members. Can you recall a time when something familial that has happened in a band member's life has contextualized a record as much as his life changes did for this one?

DA: I think so. We've been at this a long time. Everybody's had major things happening in their lives that have directly affected records. First marriages for several people before the seconds, kids at various stages showing up, parents dying, and so on. What's probably more important is how as everybody's gone through this and gotten older, we've interpreted [life events] as they come. Similar [events] might mean different things to you at different phases of your life. It's a continuum.

Certainly, if you hear Eugene talk about the first record, that was very much about very intense things going on in his life. That was part of the whole reason for the existence of the band. It shows where our heads are at the time: If we're in a different place, we're going to make different music.

SILY: You've talked about how working with Joe Chiccarelli for the third record in a row has provided a consistency to allow you to be freer. Do you have specific examples of where the continuity allows for that freedom?

DA: We've felt the freedom to trust Joe more to make decisions and follow his lead. On the first record with him, there was a lot more tension. We weren't as comfortable relinquishing control of certain things. We've always had a pretty heavy hand on everything we make. It's been a great thing to allow what we make to be shaped more by his reaction to it, to allow him to be contributing ideas and getting the hell out of the control room and letting him do his thing. [laughs] He's learned a lot more about what we're about. For some reason, he's been very interested in what we do and very respectful of it. He's internalized it more and been able to take it and run with it. That doesn't mean he's written half the songs and done a whole bunch of stuff like a lot of producers do. If you listen to our rehearsal recordings as we've figured stuff out, it's fairly similar. But some of his little ideas about what sounds [good] here and what sounds [good] there, where to change the mix or drop a beat or cut a section out, he's got great sensibilities. We were very happy to follow his lead in a lot of cases.

SILY: At what point during the process did you decide to hone in on what I hear as one of the main sonic trends in the record, the choral singing?

DA: Our drummer Greg suggested we use voices instead of the orchestration we had been using on some of the earlier records. It was after a show we played at Supersonic Festival in Birmingham in 2017, where the promoters had talked with Niko and had the idea. They've always liked Oxbow doing special things for that festival. Niko had been thinking about choir stuff, and they asked us to put one together and perform with a choir. It was very difficult but very fun: a really great experience and interesting show. I think it made it clear that would be something very fun to explore. It wasn't a huge leap to decide to put choir back in the songs. It had been brewing for the past 4-5 years.

SILY: How did you come to work with Kristin Hayter on "Lovely Murk"?

DA: That's a good question. I don't know who got in touch with her or don't remember. Either Niko or Eugene, I think. [Maybe] Joe suggested it.

SILY: Were you aware of her before working with her?

DA: I was not. I find myself disappointingly out of touch with a lot of great music happening right now. I need new avenues to find this stuff. I don't search for music a lot on the Internet. When I explore, I usually listen to a couple really good local radio stations, but it's up to what they play and what I hear.

SILY: The band includes many instruments on "Dead Ahead" that contain interpersonal context or tributes to people that have since passed: instruments from loved ones who have passed, guitars Niko uses to play for his kids, even a toy piano you gave to Niko's kids. Were these inclusions a conscious starting point for that song, or was it something you decided on after the fact?

DA: I don't think there was any conscious thought. I'm guessing [Niko] was just playing around with it and happened to be using it at the time and went back to it. It's very consistent with how we've approached sounds we make: immediate inspiration, not too deeply thought out, grab something that's there because it seems like the right thing. If I had to guess--I'm interpreting how Niko works, since we haven't talked exclusively about this stuff ever--he envisions a lot of sounds in his head, sound qualities, timbre. He might be consciously aware there's a certain instrument he has in mind he wants to use, or it might be a subconscious thing to pick up the same instrument. He has a couple guitars he's had for years he still uses when playing in his house and working on new ideas. Nothing new there, I think.

SILY: Can you talk about the visual identity of the record?

DA: It's been a great process. The last record was the first for which we made any videos, because it seemed like they were getting more important for how people consume and find music. In that case, we contacted a few people and basically said, "We'll buy you a plane ticket to come over, we don't have much other money to support it, but pitch us an idea, and if we like it, we'll make a video." That worked with the videos with Chris Purdie. This time around, Eugene or Niko--I can't remember--felt it would be important to make videos for everything. We needed to figure out how to do it without bankrupting ourselves more than we usually do. We sent enquiries out to a bunch of people and asked them to propose what they might do for songs, and if we thought there was a chance it would turn out well, we said, "You're on." We paid people what we could, which wasn't a lot, but we let the directors drive [the entirety of] the content. They're very different. As all of them come out, it will be apparent how different they are. It was a great experience to see people give us finished products that were really surprising. It's been a really wonderful added creative process to participate in, to get that kind of feedback from others to see their visions.

SILY: What about the cover art? Did you give Aaron Turner the same leeway?

DA: Yes. He's worked with us enough where he understands our process and is willing to keep us in the process. In this case, he developed quite a few proposals, and there was too much back and forth as we tried to settle on what we wanted to use. He was extremely patient. Sometimes, our process is convoluted, inefficient, and painful. But he hung in there and developed a bunch of ideas till there was something we all thought was cool. All of his ideas are great. He's a very broad thinker as a visual artist and comes up with great artwork. In this case, the variety in ways made it harder to choose, so it took us a long time to settle on one piece of art.

SILY: What's next for the band?

DA: Trying to stay alive and keep doing what we do. We're always working in the now even if the now is a span of five years. We're focusing on what's on our plates. There's no grand elaborate scheme for where it's all going to go. Time changes all of our lives enough between records that it's probably good that way. Following, rather than leading, I guess, is a good way to put that. Circumstances drive what we do rather than setting a path.

youtube

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iamconcert · 1 year

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20230502 iamamiwhoami | ionnalee Great American Music Hall, San Francisco

(photos: Olof Grind)

#iamamiwhoami #ionnalee #BHS tour #great american music hall #san francisco #usa

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nonesuchrecords · 2 years

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The time has finally come for Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder's two nights at Great American Music Hall with Joachim Cooder! Nearly sixty years after they first played together, Taj & Ry perform music from their new album of music from two Piedmont blues masters who’ve inspired them all their lives: GET ON BOARD: The Songs of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee.

#taj mahal #ry cooder #great american music hall #joachim cooder #blues music #get on board #sonny terry #brownie mcghee #nonesuch #nonesuch records

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thehappywun · 3 months

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youtube

Pylon Reenactment Society - 2024-01-25 - Great American Music Hall SF [full show]

Great spot / full gig recording of Pylon Reenactment Society playing both new songs and old, be sure to pick up "Magnet Factory" from finer outlets or online.

#youtube #live #indie #sf #postpunk #pylon #pylon reenactment society #gamh #great american music hall

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belovedindierock · 3 months

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YOUNG FATHERS

Instagram | Spotify | Facebook

Their recorded music can be dark, dense and the lyrics ambiguous, but when you watch them live that kinetic energy is unmistakable. Apparent, visceral and highly addictive.

Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and G. Hastings met as kids and set their bodies against the tide. From the beginning they were obstinately not going to do what was expected.

Under disparate influences that ranged from Enya to Suicide, they began to create the unique sound of their early albums, Tape One, Tape Two, the Mercury Award winning DEAD, and then the face slap to the world, White Men Are Black Men Too and their second SAY Award winner, Cocoa Sugar, where the sound was refined and almost bent back, like a disjointed thumb, into an unnatural position.

Their latest album is entitled, Heavy Heavy. The title could be a mood, or it could describe the smoothed granite of bass that supports the sound… or it could be a nod to the natural progression of boys to grown men and the inevitable toll of living,a joyous burden, relationships, family, the natural momentum of a group that has been around long enough to witness massive changes. This new album nails together a collage of influences, ideas, ages and scenes, all bound together with unrestrained energy, passion and soul. And it seems, right now, the most radical thing to do is to have some Soul.

Noted by Pitchfork as perhaps “the band’s best yet”, Heavy Heavy has resonated with a magnitude of listeners. It garnered raving reviews and glowing features from the likes of The New York Times, Pitchfork, Stereogum (Album of the Week), Billboard (Indie Artist of the Month), PopMatters and The Needle Drop, who lauded Heavy Heavy as “The trio’s most exciting studio album yet, so well worth the wait”. The record received stellar radio support from the likes of KCRW and KEXP, charting on each stations' respective top charts. It was also among the most played records across college and community stations across the US.

A truly enigmatic band with a fabulously hard to define sound, fighting definition.No dress code required. Dancing, not moshing. Hips jerking, feet slipping, brain firing in Catherine Wheel sparks of joy and empathy. Underground but never dark. Still young, after some years, even as the heavy, heavy weight of the world seems to grow day by day.

Heavy Heavy was released on 3 February 2023 via Ninja Tune.

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charlestillman · 4 months

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The legend, Renée Scroggins (of pioneering South Bronx-born, post funk/punk band, ESG) takes the stage ahead of ESG’s performance at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, California. The event opened with a special screening of Renee’s documentary, “Are You Serious? The ESG Story”.

January 6th, 2024.

#Renee Scroggins #ESG #Great American Music Hall #San Francisco #Emerald Sapphire Gold

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ticketstubs-and-pits · 12 years

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Fountains of Wayne

Sky Full of Holes tour @ Great American Music Hall, SF

i remember the crowd was not quite into it, except for this one other guy possibly there with his dad? anyways he was the only other one really getting into it so i went over and danced by/with him. i vaguely remember his dad possibly thanking me? so maybe he had a disability or something idk but he made my night just as much.

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/fountains-of-wayne/2012/great-american-music-hall-san-francisco-ca-13dc99dd.html

RIP adam schlesinger, your songwriting and lyrics were so good, the storytelling in the songs was something i still look for in other artists

added 9/26/2023

#fountains of wayne #power pop #pop rock #indie pop #great american music hall #sky full of holes #concert

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rockinshots · 1 year

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Twin Temple kicked us into the New Year's last night at Great American Music Hall. Alexandra & Zachary James captivated the crowd with their Satanic doo-wop, Rockabilly music. So much fun!! 👹💀💥🔥

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santaclaralocalnews · 2 years

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SANTA CLARA, CA – Summer officially begins at California’s Great America with the return of Red, White and Brews, a hometown celebration of American music, food, and fun. Back by popular demand for the fourth year, the signature event will come to life in the Hometown Square area of the park from noon until closing on select dates, May 27 – June 19 (see schedule below). Guests can savor gourmet foods and locally sourced craft beer and wine while enjoying live entertainment, outdoor games, world-class thrill rides, and fun activities for the whole family. Read more information at svvoice.com

#Santa Clara #great american music hall #California #celebration #American food #American fun #San Jose #News #latest news #daily news #weekly news #bay area news #community news

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exsqueezememacaroni · 5 months

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i'm sorry, i was gonna make a serious caption, but the real reason why i giffed this is because Mike just bouncing away with his stupid hand inadvertently waving goodbye in the last gif fucking cracks me up every time

#i have different feelings about the first two gifs #mike patton #dillinger escape plan #dep at ipecac new years at great american music hall #edit: sayonara you weeaboo shits

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iamconcert · 1 year

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