If you’ve never been to a big tech conference, you may not be aware that these things often have big-name concerts, either as part of the actual event, or as part of the private side-parties thrown by various big companies. Though I have not been to one of these, I have come close enough to be able to imagine how little I’m missing (at the Computer Shopper party at Comdex ‘97, I saw Sinbad do a pretty lame computer-oriented standup routine, but I, sadly, did not rate enough to be invited to the Pointer Sisters later in the evening).

I got a pretty big chuckle out of the reports of Lou Reed’s losing it during his performance at the Web 2.0 conference:

Reed took the stage with bassists Rob Wasserman and Fernando Saunders and within minutes it became apparent that the crowd was not going to let the music stop their conversation. After his first two songs, “What’s Good” and “Gassed and Stoked,” Reed declared: “You got 20 minutes. You wanna talk through it, you can talk through it.”

“I can turn the sound louder and really hurt you,” he added. “Frank, turn it up.”

The sound got louder and people looked uncomfortable.

Part of me thinks it was pretty jerky of him; I mean, he knew what he was getting into, and I suspect he was aware of the essential whoredom of taking money to do a show for people who weren’t necessarily paying to see him.

But it’s about time somebody was honest enough to admit that these things are not really fun for either the attendees or the performer, they’re just about big companies demonstrating their bigness by the bigness of the artists they can afford.

Here’s something I’ve had brewing for a while. I’ve had this fascination with the song “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” since I heard it in some WWII-inspired contemporary dance piece my sibs were in back when they were with Boston Ballet. (I unfortunately can’t remember the name of the piece, and the BB website has no archive). It totally got under my skin, and the more I learned about it, the more interesting it became.

It was written in 1932 by Sholom Secunda with Yiddish lyrics by Jacob Jacobs, for the Yiddish musical “I Would If I Could”. Five years later, two black performers named Johnny and George (last names lost in the mists of time) performed what was apparently a pretty rockin’ version of it (still in Yiddish!) at the Apollo. Songwriting team Sammy Cahn and pianist Lou Levy were in the audience, saw the way the crowd went crazy, and bought the rights for $30 from Secunda and Jacobs. Cahn and Levy shopped it around to performers like Tommy Dorsey, but didn’t get much interest in a Yiddish song. They translated it to English (and sort of de-Yiddish-ed the German), and got the then-relatively-unknown Andrews Sisters interested in recording it in 1937. It was released as the B-side to the 78 of “Nice Work If You Can Get It”, but it was what made the single their first huge hit, selling 350,000 copies.

It was also big hit in Germany; I think it’s apocryphal, but Hitler himself was supposed to be a fan until he found out that it was written by two Jews from New York (the only source I could find for this was a 1959 interview with Secunda). Another entertaining anecdote (I’m guessing also propagated by Secunda) was that his mother thought his failure to profit from his song was a punishment from God:

Mrs. Secunda, who speaks no English, does not understand about contracts and the law. She only knows that her son five years ago wrote a song called “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen”, which today is making a fortune for its publishers, J. and J. Kammen. Secunda yielded his rights in 1933, Sammy Kahn and Saul Chaplin put English lyrics to it and revised it into swing tempo early this Summer and the rest is making tin pan alley history…

But his mother believes that somewhere along the years of her life, which began in Russia, she has sinned against God, and her son is being punished. Sholem, who lives at 86 Avenue A, Manhattan, this morning tried to explain laws of copyright to his mother because she planned to go back to the synagogue today and he fears her frail body may not withstand the fasting.

So. Let’s break it down. The song is written by two children of Russian Jewish immigrants, re-invented five years later by two last-name-less black musicians, bought by two enterprising Jews who frequent the Apollo, performed by three squeaky-clean-sounding sisters from Minnesota. In sort-of Yiddish. On the eve of World War II.

If I had to pick one single perfect pop song from the first half of the 20th Century, this would be it. It is just this compact, concentrated fusion of everything that was going on musically, socially, and politically in America at the time. It’s also incredibly catchy.

It’s perfect pop: it takes in all these crazy chaotic influences and reflects them back as this totally new and shallow and perfect thing.

Sources:

• The Yiddish Radio Project: Bei Mir Bist Du Schon
• The non-bloggish Blog: Musical Assimilation
• Bei Mir Bist du Schon:Johnny and George are back down at the Apollo

I’m a bit late on posting about the Mountain Goats show we went to the other night. I feel like I’m really late coming to the Mountain Goats party; I’m OK with that, because it’s not hugely important to me to be an early adopter in the music department. I’m content to let other people filter out the duds and shove something great into my hands. With the Mountain Goats, it was (as it often is) Summervillain and Editrix who put a song from The Sunset Tree on their 2005 sampler, and got me hooked.

We got there pretty early, but we did not get the prime front-row photo perch that Terri had hoped for. She still managed some good shots.

Christine Fellows (the opener) was good, but not someone I’m going to seek too much more of, to be honest. She had a lot of personal, songwritery songs. I don’t necessarily have a thing against songs like that, but if they don’t work for you, you end up feeling like you’re supposed to be moved more than you are, and you end up feeling guilty, because this person has really poured their heart into what they’re doing. I can’t deal with that guilt, so I tend to just avoid the whole thing. Anyway, her songs sure did something for John Darnielle, who was peeking through the stage left doors, sitting on the floor, and just utterly rocking out during much of her set.

If you know their stuff, if you’ve seen them live, if you’ve read about their shows, you have a pretty good idea of what they’re like live. John Darnielle makes a lot of really goofy faces, and really looks like sort of a cartoon character. Peter Hughes is a really good bass player; he kept to the background without being wallpaper (e.g. he talked).

They probably only played 3 songs from the new album (”Wild Sage”, “New Monster Avenue”, “Half Dead”), more than I expected from The Sunset Tree (”This Year”, “Broom People”, “Song for Dennis Brown”, “Love Love Love”, “Dance Music”), none from We Shall All Be Healed, a couple from Talahassee (”No Children” and something I don’t remember), a few I didn’t really recognize, and one from All Hail West Texas (”color in your cheeks”).

The inevitable bandana guy was denied his repeated and loud requests for “Up The Wolves”.

Everybody else at the show was 18. How do 18 year olds get so bitter that the Mountain Goats resonate? Nevermind. I’m not that old yet. I remember. But, damn, if it wasn’t unsettling to hear 600 kids merrily singing along “I hope that you die! I hope we both die!”. It really did feel like a sing-a-long at times.

I forget which of the previously mentioned songs were the first encore, but he played “Going to Georgia” as a second encore.

Yes, a second encore, folks. The lights had come up, and the “go away now” music had started, but he came out, and everybody started cheering, so he picked up his guitar, and said that he’d only come out to retrieve his notebook, because he knew someone would steal it (bandana guy: “I totally would have!”; John Darnielle, justified: “see, he’s admitting it!”), and then felt it would be unfair to make an appearance back onstage without playing something.

Good show.

If you’ve been to Harvard Square in the past two years you know who I’m talking about. He’s the asian guy who saws manaically at his bowed, one-stringed instrument (which I don’t know the name of; probably one of these) while staring off crazily into the distance.

At first I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He’s simply a virtuoso whose art simply sounds cacophonous to my untrained Western ears. But the more I saw him there, with his Kleenex box for donations, I came to a hypothesis that, no, he’s just some crazy guy sawing manaically at his one-stringed instrument.

The hypothesis was more or less confirmed during our recent trip to San Francisco where we saw probably a half dozen guys playing similar instruments on various Chinatown street corners. When they played, it sounded, you know, like music.

The thing I don’t get is that the guy in Harvard Square doesn’t seem to be displaying one of those Cambridge street artist licenses that all the other buskers in the square have. What’s up with that?

The other thing that drives me bonkers: he seems to be  always there, right in front of the Coop. Even those damnable Andean pan flute bands seem to sleep sometimes.

Item. Mountain Goats, at the Warhol Museum, this wednesday, September 20. Go!

Item. We had dinner at The Stinking Rose, an all-garlic restaurant here in San Francisco that Summervillain always talks about, and right next door was this place called “Giordano Bros.” who advertised the Steelers game at 5:30 (that’s when they play Monday Night Football here on the west coast, god love ‘em) as well as All-In-One Sandwiches. Pittsburghers will know that they’re copying the Primanti Brothers, who serve their sandwiches with the fries and slaw on the sandwich.

You know, you just get off from a double shift in the mill, you’re hungry, you don’t have time to screw around with side dishes.

Yes, it’s as gross as it sounds.

I’m bummed that just as I’m really starting to warm up to them, B for Brontosaurus is going on “Total Hiatus”. Doug and I caught their excellent show tonight Lily Pad in Inman Square.

This incarnation had them as a 12-piece ensenble, doing “American Standards”, including some Magnetic Fields, some obscure-ish 60’s pop songs (including a Lennon/McCartney song the Beatles never recorded), “Smile” (you know, the one that goes “Smile, though your heart is breaking…”, which was written by Charlie Chaplin- who knew?), and, happily, some B for Bronto originals.

Yeah, they do remind me of Jonathan Richman and TMBG and The Magnetic Fields, but I think it’s especially unfair in their case to treat them as the sum of their influences. I don’t think they’re trying to sound like anyone or be anyone other than themselves, but I bring up the comparison, because they do have a similar way of making short, heartfelt, simple-ish songs that have a deep melancholy streak, but that make you smile and feel like a kid in spite of yourself. I think it’s something that couldn’t be pulled off without an overabundance of enthusiasm and originality, and I very much think they pull it off.

So while I’m throwing out he comparisons, I will also say that as a big ensemble, they also remind me a bit of the early Belle & Sebastian albums and EPs, where there are some ambitious arrangments pulled off with a kind of Andy Hardy lets-do-the-show-right-here!-in-the-barn! kind of optimism. I am sad that they’re going on hiatus, too, because I think that if the large ensemble version would get more used to playing together, they’d really be fantastic.
Another thing I like about them: despite the small, simple songs, they think big. The whole “American Standards” thing had its own kind of ambition. Also, Ben Morse helped organize the very fun Jonathan Richman tribute show at PAs Lounge this past March.

Update: correction: It was a Rooney/Garland vehicle (and a Busby Berkeley one, too!) where they put the show on in the barn, but not an Andy Hardy movie. Also, sorry, Doug, I corrected the spelling of melancholy.

Terri and I watched the extremely inspirational Gigantic tonight. I was an enormous TMBG fan in high school, and while I had to eventually let go during their long drought of sub-par records on a major-label, I still carry a torch. (Actually, the best stuff they’ve done in recent years is perhaps the Dunkin’ Donuts commercials that are currently playing).

Anyway, I came to talk about the movie. Perhaps the best part were some of the extras, like them doing “Birdhouse in your Soul” in 1990 with Doc Severinson and the Tonight Show Orchestra (!). Some interesting fans were interviewed, too, like Sarah Vowell, who talked about how they’re an alternative to “Bacchanalian” rock music (”you can listen to They Might Be Giants and not have to pretend to be more messed up than you are”), and Ira Glass who had some quirky comments. (Dave Eggers shows up without managing to say anything insightful).

The concert footage that seemed shot for the documentary was fine, but I would have liked to have seen more old footage (maybe very little exists? maybe much belongs to Elektra?).

But I found it inspirational tonight in the way I found TMBG inspirational as a teenager, hearing “Ana Ng” for the first time, on “Modern Times”, the radio show that ran from midnight to 6am on WYEP in Pittsburgh, DJed by Harry the Wire. I heard it and I just thought “what in the world is this?!“. I didn’t know you could just make a song stop when it was done, even if it was only a minute and a half long, instead of pummeling the chorus into the ground and fading out. (I still hadn’t heard The Minutemen or The Ramones; of course, I still despise The Ramones, who, despite the short songs, are all about pummelling dumb ideas into the ground, and then picking them up and using them again in the next song).

TMBG were just so unabashedly smart, which was refreshing to me. They broke rules that you didn’t know were rules until you heard them breaking them. And they were so optimistically sad (which is expounded at length by many in the film).

The title of this post comes from a bit in the movie where Flansburgh mentions that they were reviewed in People magazine before they even had an official album, just cassettes that they made themselves and sold at shows.

The only bad part of the film is that like many documentaries, it suffers from the desire to over-inflate its subject; after nearly two hours of hearing about great John and John are, and how they, like invented music, I felt like I just ate five bowls of frosted sugar bombs.

Bradley’s Almanac has a recording of the great Camera Obscura show we went to a couple of weeks ago.
Yes, that is me and Terri down in the front row in the main picture.

Terri did such a good job of giving the low-down on the Camera Obscura show at Great Scott last night (not to mention taking lots of good pictures) that I feel compelled to add very little, except for this little video that I shot of the first couple of minutes of “Hey, Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken”. I’m very happy with how it turned out; the sound isn’t inaudible or too blasted out, and since we were right smack up front, it looks pretty OK for being taken by a teeny digital camera. And, it includes an intro spiel where Tracyanne Cambell mentions that Lloyd Cole’s wife and kids drove 90 miles to the show, but Great Scott wouldn’t let them in because the kids were under 18 (you can hear someone audibly gasp when she says this in the video; we’re not sure if it’s Terri or not).

PS: If you’re from the band, or their label, I honestly, honestly tried to see what the band’s policy on recording/sharing is, but could find nothing. I will happily take it down at your request.

I forgot to mention that my cousin Margaret called me from the free Andrew Bird show at the Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago, just to taunt me. I caught a couple of bars of “A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left” before the signal cut out. Or she hung up, I couldn’t tell which.
I love her, but it was mean, especially because we’re not going to end up seeing him in Montreal over the 4th of July weekend.

A thank you, six months belated, to Miss Trix and Mr. Villain for their ‘welcome to 2006′ mix 2-CD box set. If only for introducing me to The Mountain Goats. I unofficially made “This Year” my theme song for the year early on (”I am gonna make it through this year, if it kills me!”), and now that I finally got around to buying the disc, I can’t get “You or Your Memory” out of my head.

(PS: I bought it via eMusic, so “disc” should be in “air quotes”. If you are thinking about signing up for eMusic, let me know, so that you can give me the kickback 50 mp3s. Shameless, I know. But how many kickback BMG Music Club CDs did you get out of me over the years, Stephen???)

Also in music news, is Jeff Mangum back?

I finally bought the new Belle and Sebastian album. I thought this would be the first one I didn’t even bother with. I was wrong. Last album was pretty much a write-off, except for the sublime “Piazza, New York Catcher”. Anyway, I’m not sure that I would have bought this album if not for the strength of that one song and, it’s pathetic, but if the leftmost cover model didn’t look uncannily like my sister April, especially with her new short un-ballet haircut.

B&S were so much better when they just sounded like themselves. “Song for sunshine” sounds like the worst Sly and the Family Stone song ever. “The blues are still blue” sounds like T. Rex. “White Collar Boy” sounds like “Spirit in the sky” for the first 15 seconds, down to the reverb.

If you crave new B&S without all the faux Partridge Family BS, just buy the live version of If You’re Feeling Sinister. Or re-listen to the 1996-7 series of 3 EPs.
(*Thanks to Terri for coining the ‘partridge family’ line).

No raging fanboy posts about Andrew Bird lately, so here goes. Margaret points out in email that he’s playing a free show at the Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh on June 7. I’d like to make the trek, but we’ll have to see. Billboard points out that he’s recording an album that may, someday, be done, and may, somday after, be sold in stores.

It’s Friday afternoon, I need some cheerin’ up, and Ed’s post about dream reunions reminded me of the Yo La Tengo video for “Tom Courtenay”, ca. 1995, in which our heroes are invited to open for the Beatles.

The whole thing is so darn clever, but the part that always slays me is the reference to the press conference in “A Hard Day’s Night” where someone asks Ringo if he’s a Mod or a Rocker, and he says “I’m a mocker”.

Well, Shane made it through the whole show and two encores. When he was singing, it could have been 15 or 20 years ago. When he wasn’t, he staggered around in circles on the stage or swung his microphone around and tried to catch it (and only knocked the mic stand over once). Early in the show, I got the distinct idea that he’d be dead within a year.

The thing is, on the three or four songs that they did with one of the other guys singing, the band sounded great. Almost better. I definitely understand why they tried to make a go of it without him numerous times. But when he was on, and you weren’t distracted by the “is he going to be able to keep standing” thing, it really was magic, as advertised.

But by the end, I was pretty sure I was wrong, and Shane will be around for longer than a year. I suspect people have been saying he’d be dead within a year for a decade or two.

Terri has a good write-up, too. Not listed there are “The Broad Majestic Shannon”, “A Pair of Brown Eyes”, “Boys from the County Hell”, “The Old Main Drag”, and a few more that I didn’t know.

Update: Two other things I forgot. I heard a rumor that their original bassist Cait O’Riordan was touring with them. This turned out not to be true. Also, presumeably as a tribute to the late Joe Strummer, the pre-and post-show music was “Straight to Hell” and “Should I Stay or Should I Go” respectively.