Tampa Calling

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My buddy Wes Price from Polysound Studios sold me on the fact that this handwritten note was created by Jazz God Thelonius Monk in 1960 as an advice sheet for his new drummer. I think that most of the advice here is valid for anyone in the music business. This is a great companion piece to Quincy Jones’ SXSW Keynote speech. Enjoy!

Crystal Method’s quality of electronica has been hit-or-miss at best since their 1997 debut, Vegas. “Drown in the Now,” the new single from the electro duo’s forthcoming album, Divided by Night (due out May 12), features Matisyahu doing his trademark spooky chanting and rapping. I have a hard time liking the dude, but the video is pretty cool, I guess. I’m a sucker for animation, especially when it looks good. P.S. I apologize for the advertisement.

Aerosmith and ZZ Top are scheduled for the Ford Amphitheatre, LiveNation announced today.

The show is on Sat., July 11. Tickets go on sale this Saturday, April 25 at 10 a.m. at LiveNation.com, Ford Amphitheatre Box Office or charge by phone 877-598-8698.

Tickets are Tickets are $175.00, $89.50 and $59.50 for Reserved Seats and $35.00 for the Festival Lawn.

Man, it’s been a while since we had a “To Do” and, I ain’t gonna lie, the break has been nice. Having done one to two shows a week for a month-plus, I was ready for some time off. Now, having had said time off, I need to go to a fucking show. Luckily for me and the rest of you Tampa/’Burg-ians, we got a weekend loaded with the awesome. So let’s go through it:

Thursday @ New World: The Woodsboss

There is no shortage of people who’ve danced a shit-ton of nights away at New World to the live blessings of The Weary Boys. Those were the kinds of nights that stories are made of. A band without a label relentlessly touring enough to build huge followings, in enough towns they could play packed houses in every state of the union. Then reality came crawling and The Weary Boys disbanded.

Wha? Why? What’s gonna? WTFingF?
Shock, rage, sadness.
Enter The Woodsboss. Which, FYI, is basically The Weary Boys minus Darren and plus Brian’s wife.

So, all you Weary Boy fans needs to get your asses up off the couch and get out to New World Thursday night and we’ll dance again to the fine fine sounds of Mario, The Woodsboss and a few Weary Boys faves.

Mario Matteoli – Hard Luck Hittin’
Mario Matteoli – Sun Keeps On Beating Down

The Weary Boys – Another Song, Another Drink
The Weary Boys – Cruel Corrina
The Weary Boys – Freight Train Blues Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome aboard new Tampa Calling Contributor, Vinyl Fever’s Lee Wolfson, who will taking over on each week’s new music releases and other such interesting music tidbits, from what it’s like running an indie music store, to offering info on the latest in new music, to giving the inside scoop on any special promos or giveaways his store may be offering. Here’s his inaugural post, a list of new releases you may or may not be aware of.

Terry Adams (of NRBQ), Holy Tweet

Maria Bamford, Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome

Buju Banton, Rasta Got Soul

Behemoth, The Art of Rebelling Live (CD/DVD)

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, How Big Can You Get?: The Music of Cab Calloway (ahahahahahaha! yeah, really!)

Brian Blade, Mama Rosa

Booker T., Potato Hole (with Drive By Truckers and Neil Young, too — it’s REAL SWEET!)

The Boxmasters and Billy Bob Thornton, The Boxmasters

Braid, Frankie Welfare Boy Age Five (a re-release of the 1995 debut album comprised 26 tracks, each one named using a different letter of the alphabet.) Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, rumors about a new Pixies album hit the web after this image appeared on ainr.com (Artist In Residence):

Well, it turns out Minotaur will not be a new Pixies studio album, but a box set of all their studio albums, with revamped artwork and extras. The set will be available in both Limited Edition and Deluxe Edition forms and will include the band’s four albums and the Come On Pilgrim EP. Vaughan Oliver and Simon Larbalestier, the photographers who shot the covers for those albums, will be in charge of the repackaging.

Artist in Residence founder Jeff Anderson told Rolling Stone that the albums won’t be remastered because he didn’t want to touch the original masters. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s 420. Another chance for a songlist. This one I think should be kinda special, since there’s been 420 songlists since the dawn of mankind. Or since people started making lists and smoking pot and using “420″ as code for pot-smoking. Ironic that by the time I get this thing up, it will actually be right around 4:20 p.m.

For those who are curious, the origins of the number 420 are smoke-shrouded in urban legend. I found a few things today in honor of the unofficial holiday, but my fave is the thoughtful piece by the Huffington Post on the meaning of 420. Not so surprising that the Grateful Dead were at least partially responsible for 420’s propagation into pot culture. Here’s an excerpt:

It was Christmas week in Oakland, 1990. Steven Bloom was wandering through The Lot – that timeless gathering of hippies that springs up in the parking lot before every Grateful Dead concert – when a Deadhead handed him a yellow flyer.

“We are going to meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420-ing in Marin County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpais,” reads the message, which Bloom dug up and forwarded to the Huffington Post. Bloom, then a reporter for High Times magazine and now the publisher of CelebStoner.com and co-author of Pot Culture, had never heard of “420-ing” before.

The flyer came complete with a 420 back story: “420 started somewhere in San Rafael, California in the late ’70s. It started as the police code for Marijuana Smoking in Progress. After local heads heard of the police call, they started using the expression 420 when referring to herb – Let’s Go 420, dude!”

Bloom reported his find in the May 1991 issue of High Times, which the magazine found in its archives and provided to the Huffington Post. The story, though, was only partially right.

It had nothing to do with a police code — though the San Rafael part was dead on. Indeed, a group of five San Rafael High School friends known as the Waldos – by virtue of their chosen hang-out spot, a wall outside the school – coined the term in 1971. The Huffington Post spoke with Waldo Steve, Waldo Dave and Dave’s older brother, Patrick, and confirmed their full names and identities, which they asked to keep secret for professional reasons. (Pot is still, after all, illegal.)

Check out the rest of that here.

Now, onto the real reason for this post — music about smoking pot. Read the rest of this entry »

Drum rolls please, ladies and gentlemen. It is my honor to introduce you to the one … the only … TADHG COOKE! You all know how much I love telling you how to pronounce artists names, but this one really gets me riled up. Tadhg’s name is pronounced like “tiger” but without the “er.”

Tadhg said “A nurse from Northern Ireland pleaded with my parents not to name me Tadhg, because at the time, the Troubles in Northern Ireland were pretty bad, and the word ‘taig’ (which is how they would pronounce Tadhg up North) was used by the Loyalists as a derogatory term for all Nationalists. The Loyalists would scrawl on Catholic/Nationalist houses slogans like “K.A.T” (”Kill All Taigs”) and “Taig’s Out” (well, that’s more self-explanatory). Luckily for me, the peace process was reaping rewards by the time I was hopping across the border to appear on the BBC in Belfast and Derry. The wounds are still fresh, though, and you always see nice people wincing in anticipation when they attempt to pronounce my name in some unnatural way in order to avoid making it sound like ‘taig’.” Tadhg went on to say “There’s some kid on Nickelodeon according to a MySpace fan of mine who is called Tadhg. He’s only a kid, but I’m hoping that he will be tremendously successful thus negating the need for translators, and decreasing the chances that DJs will have a heart attack when they see my name.” My psychic intuition leads me to believe that Tadhg Cooke, who plays with David Geraghty of BellX1 in his spare time, will become a household name first, thus making life easier for the Nickelodeon kid — not the other way around. Read the rest of this entry »

Allen Toussaint: The Bright Mississippi (Nonesuch)

I’ve long been aware of Allen Toussaint as a New Orleans treasure, a prolific songwriter, magic-touch producer and arranger, and solo artist with a rather middling voice. I knew he played piano, but did not know he was such a bad, bad man at the keyboard.

I do now.

The Bright Mississippi, produced by Toussaint’s friend and frequent collaborator Joe Henry, is nothing short of a revelation, an album of instrumentals (save one vocal) that both honors and reinvents a number of songs associated with early New Orleans blues and jazz: Sidney Bechets’ “Egyptian Fantasy,” Jellyroll Morton’s “Winin’ Boy Blues,” Joe Oliver’s West End Blues,” and traditionals “St. James Infirmary” and “Take a Closer Walk With Thee,” to name a handful.

Toussaint and his dream band — trumpeter Nicholas Payton, clarinetist Don Byron, acoustic guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist David Piltch and drummer Jay Bellerose — play the songs with an expansive ease, rather than employing tightly wound improvisational free-for-alls often referred to as Dixieland. One of the album’s charms, though, is the clattering, march-style drums heard on a number of the full-ensemble pieces (”Singin’ the Blues,” Monk’s “Bright Mississippi”), imbuing them with an antique quality.

Read the rest of this entry »

The house lights went down, synthesizers swelled and the stage oozed dry-ice smoke. This went on for so long that it seemed Seal and his band had experienced a Spinal Tap moment and taken a wrong turn backstage. But the extended buildup was just indicative of a show last night at Mahaffey Theater that was long on pomp and drama and crescendo — and pretty darn good because of it.

I’m pretty sure it was Seal’s first Tampa Bay show, and an adoring sell-out audience turned out to hang on his every note, every pose, every sly reference to his family (he mentioned his three kids but never wife Heidi Klum). An interesting crowd: Lots of MILFs all done up, fashionista fellas in vests, white trash, even an elderly lady wearing plastic wrap-around sunglasses who insisted on dancing directly in my sight line, if you want to call it dancing.

Seal flexed his star power, even though showmanship doesn’t come naturally to him. He’s not a graceful dancer, yet he moved around the best he could.

People came to hear him sing, and that he did very well, more convincingly and soulfully than on his recordings. Whether it was the early dance single “Killer” with Adamski, the big hits, or any of several songs from his current Soul album of R&B covers (“A Change is Gonna Come,” “It’s a Man’s Man’s World” among them), Seal commanded the material, hewing closely to the recorded versions but breaking out from time to time for Big Moments (like a serpentine a cappella line during “Love’s Divine”).

Backed by a three-piece band (guitar, bass, drums and mountains of computer-triggered synths), Seal paced the show beautifully; “Kiss from a Rose” and “Crazy” came back to back just before encore.

At home before the show, I was hit by a wave of Sunday night lethargy and thought it might be a better idea to stay home and watch the NBA playoffs. I’m glad I got my ass off the couch.

He’s been called introverted, intensely private, interview-shy, even reclusive, yet here is singer/songwriter Ray LaMontagne talking to me by phone from a Cleveland hotel room. I’m asking questions, he’s answering. With pauses. He speaks just above a whisper, a sort of gentle murmur that belies the raspy bite in his singing voice.

LaMontagne, who plays Tampa Theatre on Wed., April 29,  attributes much of his social awkwardness to a childhood that was transient and impoverished. His mother, he says, “had a really, really, really, really difficult childhood — horrific, really. She was completely unprepared for life.”

She regularly moved Ray and his sisters to new towns, to Tennessee, Utah, Minnesota, New York, Nebraska, New Hampshire and elsewhere. His father, a musician with a tendency toward violence, left the picture when Ray was very young.

As a result, he was the perpetual new kid, bashful and reluctant. “It was hard,” he says. “I think you just become an observer, always stay on the outside of things. It’s funny how that stuff sticks with you. I don’t like to go to shows ’cause I don’t like crowds. I don’t like festivals. They bring something up. I don’t know exactly what it is, maybe the fact that I’m not the one dancing in the sprinklers with my shirt off. Funny how that stuff stays with you.”

The solitary child did not seek solace and meaning in music. “I was more of a reader,” he says. “I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but we moved so much that we didn’t have a stereo. We didn’t have anything as far as those kinds of possessions go. I was sort of in my own world.”

Read the rest of this entry »

This Monday, April 20 (yes stoners, it’s 420), AES and New World Brewery welcome Omaha’s Beep Beep and The Show is The Rainbow along with Tampa’s own Win Win Winter and DJs Mini Horse and 2C opening. The electro-rock of Beep Beep alone is worth a trip to Ybor, which is now touring in support of its second album Enchanted Islands. Hell, Win Win Winter and the NWB bartenders are worth the drive.

But I have a feeling the second act is going to steal the show. For a sneak peek and some wicked videos, check out TSiTR’s YouTube channel. Last fall, The Show is The Rainbow came to St. Pete and opened for The Faint at Jannus Landing. Here’s what I to say about that particular performance: Read the rest of this entry »

I know.  When you go see a shitty band, shitty concerts usually ensue. Keep reading.

Papa Roach dropped their major label debut Infest in 2000.  Their first and arguably biggest hit to date, “Last Resort,” shamelessly plagiarized various classic Iron Maiden riffs, and along with bands like Korn and Disturbed helped to usher in the nu-metal hey day of chugga-chugga riffs and lyrics so embarrassingly angst-ridden that even grunge bands must be ashamed to have been of influence. Thanks to mediocre ballads like “Forever,” Papa Roach stuck around. Most recently, guitarist Jerry Horton called their new album Metamorphosis, “rock record of the decade.” I’ll at least credit them for the Kafka reference.

This brings us to last Thursday night in Manchester, England. Courtesy of an e-mail to U.K. website Rock Sound, a concertgoer just couldn’t, or perhaps, didn’t care to make it to the restroom.

Read the unbelievable e-mail after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

If the answer to the headline is yes, but you’re referencing the feeling, and not the ’60s-era Los Angeles band, then you may want to head over to the Beach Theatre this Friday night for a special WMNF Film Series benefit screening of Love Story. The documentary tells the tale of the proto-psychedelic mixed-race cult rock band Love, led by legendary frontman/songwriter Arthur Lee. Love stood out from the rest because contrary to its name, the band had a dark musical vision very different from the Utopian ideals of the Flower Power generation. A portion of proceeds from the screening benefit ‘MNF. Fri., April 17, 7 p.m., Beach Theatre, St. Pete Beach, $7, 727-360-6697, beachtheatre.com.

Check out a preview for the flick: Read the rest of this entry »

Every other week I put my iPod on shuffle and write about the first five songs that come up. I’ve been doing this for a few months now and the response has been more than kind and appreciated. However, now that I’m blogging for Creative Loafing I feel the need to change the tiger’s stripes a little and have some audience participation. I will continue writing about the songs that come up on my iPod at the 5SIAR website (5songsinarow.blogspot.com), but I will also post a different and slightly condensed one here at Tampa Calling. This is where you come in.

I’d like to receive some 5 songs in a row from readers. Just put whatever music device you use on shuffle, then leave a comment with the songs that played. Feel free to bend the rules here and there as I’ve done for the new issue due to be posted Friday.  For example, I decided to pick the top five most played songs on my iPod instead of a random five. Every other week before I post a new 5SIAR, I will pick one user’s list of five songs to write about on Tampa Calling. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure it’s random. Every user name will be written on a piece of paper, stuck in a hat, and chosen at random. Eventually, as time goes on, I’ll offer a small prize to the person that is picked — maybe a gift certificate to a coffee shop or record store?

So get those iPods, Zunes, or whatever else you’re using on shuffle and give me five songs. Tell your friends. Tell your parents. Tell your exterminator.

If you’re reading this, a music blog, you probably go to quite a few concerts, and you’ve probably developed some strategies that work for you. Nevertheless, for those less experienced, and for those who might need a refresher course, let me pass along some knowledge that I’ve acquired over the decades. You can think of them as rules, or think of them as suggestions.

Certainly there are more than just these that that popped into my head. Please post yours in Comments. Maybe we can come up with a handbook and split millions of dollars in royalties.

Some of these tips are obvious, some not so much. We’ll start with what I consider to be the Concertgoers Platinum Rule:

+ Don’t get wasted and effectively miss the show. Nothing more needs be said, really, but I’m surprised at how often I see this, and not just from kids. I was at a Tom Petty concert in the old Bayfront Center arena in the early 1980s and I saw a young woman passed out with her head inside the front of a speaker. Miss the concert, brutal hangover. And deaf. She shoulda stayed home.

+ This is one of my biggies: Don’t go to a show desperate to hear one song, especially if that song is a a deep album track that was in the background when you first got laid or something. You’ll end up obsessing about the tune, waiting for it, pining for it, and there’s a really, really good chance you won’t hear it. And you’ll miss the show. You’ll blame it on the act. It’s not their fault, it’s yours.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m pretty sure I was a sophomore in college when this happened.

I was sitting in a friend’s room in the dorm on a weekday afternoon when I heard this music from another room. The stereos, dorm stereos at my college at least, were shit, so the sound was faint. But the song captivated me. I tuned out the conversation, stood up, walked out the door, made a left, went down two, maybe three, rooms and turned right.

A medium tempo sort of folk-rock tune was playing on the shitty stereo. “Who is this?” I asked the guy playing it on the shitty stereo. Daryl Hall and John Oates, he told me. “Never heard of ‘em,” I said, and he handed me the LP cover of Abandoned Lunchonette.

“Ahh-oooo, uh-oooo, woo-ooo, it’ll be all right, when the morning comes,” the male tenor sang. It was Daryl Hall.

So began my long love affair with the music of Daryl Hall & John Oates. I followed them through the glam period, through the quasi-psychedelic period, through the quasi-disco period, through the superstar period of the 1980s, which turned into the set-the-drum-machine-so-it-sounds-like-a-baseball-bat-hitting-a-garbage-can period. I followed them through the “you like Hall & Oates?” jibes from my hipper-than-thou acquaintances, insisting that Hall & Oates were merely a pleasure, not a guilty one.

I’ve seen Hall & Oates six, seven, eight times, but I never heard them play “When the Morning Comes,” the song that first seduced me from another room.

They played it last night at Ruth Eckerd Hall. A lump-in-the-throat moment.

Read the rest of this entry »

This Saturday marks the second annual Record Store Day, a national salute to the more than 700 indie music stores located across the country and the positive impact they make on their communities. In honor of the event, several Bay area stores are offerings specials and carrying limited edition, exclusive Record Store Day releases.

Daddy Kool gives 10 percent off all new albums and 20 percent off all used inventory, and hosts some yet-to-be-announced activities.

Other area stores, like Sound Exchange, Mojo Books & Music and Vinyl Fever, have stocked up on an array of exclusive Record Store Day releases available only at indie stores. Amid the offerings are an array of split 7”-ers, including a double 7” of live tracks from Atlanta and Edinburgh by Tom Waits and Lucinda Williams, and a split 7” featuring covers of songs from Warner Bros.’ back catalog – Flaming Lips with Stardeath and White Dwarfs performing Madonna’s “Borderline,” and The Black Keys doing Captain Beefheart’s “Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles.” Guided By Voices re-releases its Hold On Hope LP with three bonus tracks, My Morning Jacket offers a limited run CD and double 10″ vinyl release recorded live in Louisville at Ear X-tacy record store, and Wilco makes its forthcoming concert DVD, Ashes of American Flags, available solely to indie stores and on its website on Record Store Day. Other exclusive RSD vinyl releases come from Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, Mastodon, Bob Dylan, Radiohead, Jane’s Addiction, The Stooges, Modest Mouse, Slayer, The Decemberists and Black Kids, among many others. Read the rest of this entry »

Leilani joins Stephen and Joran in the studio to welcome Jim Morey and his band as they perform two tracks live and talk about their strange brand of Neo-ragtime, NOLA jazz, stumblin’ roots rock.

Yes, they brought in a monkey, and yes, we got it on video.

Download the MP3s of Gypsy Wind and Wishing Well after the break.

Download

Read Leilani’s interview with the band here.

Watch the Video for “Gypsy Wind”

MP3s:

Read the rest of this entry »

It is currently 4:39 p.m. on Tuesday, April 14 and my freakin’ federal income tax forms have yet to be finalized and postmarked. (Believe it or not, folksingers occasionally earn enough income to warrant filing their income taxes!) This, obviously, is a source of immense anxiety. In an attempt to soothe my nerves (and in the true spirit of tax procrastination), I’ve decided to take a break from my number crunching to post a playlist that is sure to chill me and all of you other tax slackers out. Trust me, this is better than Xanax.  Enjoy!

Nice and Slow, Usher

Money Made You Mean, Indigo Girls

2 Cool 2 Be 4-Gotten, Lucinda Williams

Mercy Now, Mary Gauthier

Pulse, Ani DiFranco

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been raining all day, even before I woke up, making the already problematic feat of getting out of bed doubly difficult. The gray weather is making my brain cloudy and I’m having a hard time focusing on anything other than the soothing pitter-patter of drops on the Creative Loafing office’s metal roof. (If it was raining harder, it’d be near impossible for me to even think.)

Anyway, here’s a list of my top 10 personal favorite songs about rain. I know there are plenty I left out, but there are so many goddamn songs about rain. Makes a person wonder how many songs there are about the sun.

1. “Rain Song,” Led Zeppelin, Houses of the Holy, 1973

2. “Here Comes the Rain Again,” The Eurythmics, Touch, 1984

3. “Why Does It Always Rain on Me?” Travis, The Man Who, 1999

4. “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” written by Burt Bacharach for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969

5. “Dry the Rain,” The Beta Band, The Three EPs, 1998

6. “November Rain,” Guns n’ Roses, Use Your Illusion I, 1992 Read the rest of this entry »

A heavily-pixelated sneek peek of the video for Green Day’s new single, “Know Your Enemy,” has leaked on YouTube. The music itself is pretty mediocre, and I don’t think I get the basketball players-rock band parallels, but maybe it’s just me…

A selection of CDs, EPs, LPs, Digital Releases, DVDs and Box Sets that dropped today.

As I Lay Dying, This Is Who We Are DVD Box Set (Metal Blade)
Beck, One Foot in the Grave 15th Anniversary Edition (Iliad Records)
Bill Callahan, Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle (Drag City)
The Boy Least Likely To, The Law of the Playground (+1 Records)
Day26, Forever in a Day (Bad Boy)
Death Cab for Cutie, The Open Door EP (Atlantic)
Dengue Fever, Sleepwalking Through The Mekong CD/DVD (M80 Music)
John Doe and the Sadies, Country Club (Yep Roc)
Fact, Fact (Vagrant/Maximum)
The Life and Times, Tragic Boogie (Arena Rock)
The Juan Maclean, The Future Will Come (Dfa)
Ida Maria, Fortress Round My Heart (Mercury)
Medeski Martin & Wood, Radiolarians II (Indirecto)
Mia Doi Todd, Morning Music (City Zen)
Mt. Eerie, Live in Copenhagen (Burnt Toast Vinyl, 3xLP)
Papercuts, You Can Have What You Want (Gnomonsong)
Prefuse 73, Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian (Warp)
Scout Niblett, “It’s Time for My Beloved” 7″ (Drag City)
Silversun Pickups, Swoon (Dangerbird)
Jake Shimabukuro, Live (Hitchhike)
The Twang, Love It When It Feels Like This (Arena Rock)
Bernie Williams, Moving Forward (Reform)
Wooden Shjips, Dos (Holy Mountain)
Yonlu, A Society in Which No Tear Is Shed Is Inconceivably Mediocre (Luaka Bop)

A weekly bulletin on musical guests playing late night TV; set your TIVOs or DVRs,

The Late Show with David Letterman, CBS
Monday, April 13: A.C. Newman (pictured) with Nicole Atkins
Tuesday, April 14: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Wednesday, April 15: Neko Case
Thursday, April 16: Rascal Flatts

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, NBC
Monday, April 13: Billy Ray Cyrus
Tuesday, April 14: the Airborne Toxic Event
Wednesday, April 15: Chris Botti featuring John Mayer
Thursday, April 16: Jonny Lang

Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, CBS
Monday, April 13: Dwight Yoakam
Tuesday, April 14: Brett Dennen
Friday, April 17: Martina McBride Read the rest of this entry »

Yeah Yeah Yeahs were the musical guests on Saturday Night Live this weekend. They played Zero, the single from their new album It’s Blitz! (reviewed here) and, rather strangely, an older song, Maps. Old but good at least. here’s Zero:

Watch Yeah Yeah Yeahs perform Maps below the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, the Murray Studio Theater at Ruth Eckerd Hall hosted Karla Bonoff, a Ming vase wrapped in 18th century parchment flown in on gossamer wings. And here I thought she was just a singer/songwriter who had some middling success in the 1970s.

Bonoff put on an embarrassing display of petulance in the first of two sets in the intimate black-box space. The sound setup was not to her liking, so the capacity crowd was subjected to her running complaints about the stage monitors and other glitches. Her on-stage partner, singer/multi-instrumentalist Kenny Edwards, got into the act as well — both performers spent the better part of their show looking perplexed and vexed about the technical problems. Bonoff even stopped one song a couple of verses in to chastise the sound man.

Memo to Bonoff and Edwards: It’s a fucking ACOUSTIC SHOW, a couple of acoustic guitars, a couple of mics, a piano and a bass. Stop whining and play!

Read the rest of this entry »

Ruth Eckerd Hall On The Road presents the entertainment for the Summer Concert Series for select Tampa Bay Rays home games.  The schedule begins May 30 with the first concert of the series to be announced shortly.  The remainder of the concert schedule continues Saturday, June 13 with Grammy Award-winner Ludacris and concludes Saturday, September 5 with the legendary group, The Beach Boys.

The B-52’s
All concerts are free with game ticket and will begin immediately following the baseball games. The following is the schedule:

Saturday, May 30:  Tampa Bay Rays vs. Minnesota Twins, 4:10 pm with TBA.
Saturday, June 13: Tampa Bay Rays vs. Washington Nationals, 6:08 pm with Ludacris.
Saturday, June 27:  Tampa Bay Rays vs. Florida Marlins, 7:08 pm with Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo.
Saturday, July 11:    Tampa   Bay Rays vs.  Oakland Athletics, 6:08 pm with Smash Mouth.
Saturday, August 1:  Tampa Bay Rays vs. Kansas City Royals, 6:08 pm with Daughtry.
Saturday, August 15:  Tampa Bay Rays vs. Toronto Blue Jays, 7:08 pm with the B-52’s.
Saturday, August 22: Tampa Bay Rays vs. Texas Rangers, 7:08 pm with Big & Rich.
Saturday, September 5.  Tampa Bay Rays vs. Detroit Tigers, 7:08 pm with The Beach Boys.

Read the rest of this entry »

Los Angeles Sludge-metal gods Big Business wear their name well. They  deliver a big, low-end, rumble-your-guts sound, and obviously mean business while doing it. That’s to be expected considering that bassist/singer Jared Warren and former Murder City Devil, drummer Coady Willis, are also members in a band called The Melvins. Maybe you’ve heard of them?

Having already gained notoriety for their 2007 LP Here Come The Waterworks, BB are set to release their new album Mind The Drift on Hydra-Head Records come May 12.  They have jumped the gun and set out on a North American tour in support of it that brings them to Czar in Ybor on April 30 and The Social in Orlando on May 1 along with opener Tweak Bird; another L.A. band that judging by their music could be mistaken for a Death From Above 1979 reincarnation.

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My men’s league basketball game ran into overtime, so I arrived at the Palladium’s Side Door club just in time for boogie-woogie piano master Bob Seeley to go on break. I was surprised, and pleased, to see a sell-out audience of 150 lingering around the tables, the crowd made up mostly of retirees.

Seeley, based in Detroit, is 80, but doesn’t look it — and he certainly doesn’t play like you might expect an 80-year-old to play. He’s a firebrand with remarkable technique. After doing brisk CD sales at the merch table, and a set by locals Liz Pennock & Dr. Blues, Seeley took to the baby grand and wowed the joint.

Whereas most jazz piano features the player’s right hand, with the left hand laying out chordal accents, boogie-woogie highlights the left hand, which pounds out a steady stream of eighth notes.

Not to say that Seeley’s other paw was sub-bar; he used it to execute some marvelous runs.

Boogie-woogie, played on solo piano like last night, is one of the most exuberant, joyous sounds to emanate from the annals of American music. Seeley sure proved that.

His show-stopper piece was “Mama Don’t Allow,” an old-time number that Seeley used to strut his skills in boogie, ragtime, stride, Charleston, Ellingtonia (”Take the A Train”), Gershwin (”I Got Rhythm”) and more. He blasted through the piece with supreme confidence and good humor.

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Got an email from State Media with their updated concert announcements and I literally gasped aloud when I saw that Bon Iver (the moniker of Wisconsin singer/songwriter Justin Vernon) will be making his way down to FLA before hitting Bonarroo, and will play State Theatre Wednesday, June 10. Bon Iver’s stunning, austerely beautiful For Emma Forever Ago was No. 2 on my top 10 album of ‘08 list, Vernon a vocalist who takes your breathe away with his delicate, soulful falsetto.

Of course, as these things go, I won’t actually be in town to see the show (and yes, realizing that did make me cry a tiny tear of ultimate sadness). But if you, dear readers, happen to be around, this is a musician you sure as hell don’t want to miss.

Here he is performing “Flume”  in the studios of 89.3-FM The Current.

The good news: if you couldn’t make it to Fort Lauderdale last Thursday for the first Iron Maiden show in Florida since ‘95, frontman Bruce Dickinson swore up and down multiple times Maiden would return to our state in 2011.

The bad news: the classic Powerslave-era stage decor and the old-songs-only mantra of the Somewhere Back In Time tour are now a thing of the past … again.

I waited half my life to see this band in person. Were you to peruse my apartment, you would find no less than three dozen Maiden releases. Multiple copies of studio albums due to varying reissue bonuses. Rare singles.  Multiple live albums — some on both CD and DVD.  Even the ridiculous Eddie’s Archive metallic casket of rarities.  It’s silly and excessive(ly awesome), I admit. Given the band’s lengthy absence from Florida, I’m positive many others shared my situation. But would the British Heavy Metal legends live up to years of expectation?

Before the band could answer that question I had to sit through the worst case of rock ‘n’ roll nepotism since I saw The Poor open for AC/DC at what used to be the Thunderdome (Angus Young’s nephew played drums): the rock star aspirations of Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris‘ daughter.

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Improvisational collective Legatto Staccato has released an exclusive new track entitled “Lemonjello’s Birthday” recorded sometime last year at the International Academy of Design and Technology in Tampa.

This recording is an excerpt from a half-hour session the band recorded using drums, bass, guitar, saxophone, percussion and various analog sound effects (including assorted balloons and toys). No word yet on whether the entire session will be released, but it’s likely. No word yet if this means more performances from the group, but keep checking their site and this blog for updates.

Leg Stac on MySpace

Legatto Staccato – Bounce.mp3

I’ve been listening to Ratatat on repeat lately and am pretty stoked about their show this upcoming Friday night at The Ritz. The Brooklyn-based duo — made up of guitarist Mike Stroud and multi-instrumentalist/producer/synth extrordinaire Evan Mast — produce some top notch rocktronica and have released three solid full-length albums on XL Recordings — Ratatat (2004), Classics (2006) and LP3 (2008).

The duo’s sound is mostly instrumental, save for when they’re remixing someone else’s song (like their sick redux of Bjork’s “Wanderlust”), or when they’re trying to create a mood, like in LP3’s “Flynn,” which has a breezy, tropical feel and ascending, Beach Boys’ style backing vocal samples. Atmospheric layers of sound effects, ethereal guitar solos and warped riffs are scattered throughout, but Ratatat really excels with hip-hoppin’ beats and funkin’ grooves that make you want to bust a move. Even when the music falls into a lazy, melodic, pop-a-Xanax amble, you’ll still find your head bobbing.

Ratatat has earned quite the rep for energetic live shows marked by synchronized lighting and video projections, and if you are a fan of any sort of electronic music, this is a show you don’t want to miss. opening for Ratatat is solo hip-hop artist/rapper Despot and drum-and-bass trio Tussle. Fri., April 10, The Ritz Ybor, Ybor City, $18 in advance/$20 day of show.

This review comes courtesy of Autopsy IV.

Justin Townes Earle: Midnight at the Movies (Bloodshot)

When Justin Towns Earle’s debut, The Good Life, came out a year ago, I hardly paid it any mind. Months later, when I finally got around to listening to it, I wasn’t expecting much — just the son of a legend fumbling through an album he only got to make because of his father’s name.

With Midnight At The Movies I wondered: Could Earle come close to the masterpiece that The Good Life was? Turns out that he may just have surpassed it, if that’s possible.

On the new disc, Justin seems more settled in his resolve to forge his own path and more comfortable with his songwriting. On tracks like “Mama’s Eyes,” Justin shows no hesitation about exposing himself to the listener, warts and all. When you couple that the ragtime hop of the track “Walk Out,” you start to uncover the true strength of this album. It’s somber, introspective and tender at its core, while still managing to maintain a country swagger.

The variety of styles on the album help to offset its greatest weakness: it’s length. Clocking in at a mere 33 minutes, it seems like the album is over almost as soon as it starts. But as Bobby Womack once said, “Leave them wanting more and you know they’ll call you back.”

With 12 tracks of all-killer-no-filler, you’ll definitely find yourself calling Midnight At The Movies back quite a bit this year. I’ll probably be calling it up come time for my year-end best-of list, but for now I’ll just call it Essential Listening.