Florida Times-Union — Bridesmaids since 1998, Lynyrd Skynyrd finally soars into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a Monday night induction ceremony in New York City. A report from the ceremony, held at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. “We were actually the one band tonight that seemed to get along OK,” cracked guitarist Gary Rossington.
Category Archives: Florida Times-Union
Lynyrd Skynyrd in the Rock Hall: Turn it up, or turn it down?
You know, it did take the Rock Hall seven years to admit these guys. Which brings up the question: Is Lynyrd Skynyrd a Hall of Fame band that jump-started a musical genre, or are they overrated good ol’ boys with a history of troubling content? An argument from both sides; I report, you decide.
Live review: Wilco (the band) in Jacksonville
Florida Times-Union — You gotta be careful with the music media, a gang of credibility-seeking snobs with an often irrational obsession with new wavers, obtuse indie kids and whichever bunch of mop-topped treble-rockers have bedazzled the British press that week. They (and by“ they” I mean “we”) serve up superlatives like hanging curveballs too often, assign greatness way too quickly and are forced too regularly to correct themselves later. Happily, with Wilco, they sort of nailed it.
For a decade now, the Chicago band has spent its days raising its own bar, taunting it, then raising it some more. They’ve matured with grace, gliding from alt-country saloon guys to dark popsters to art-rockers, always with a sure touch. And as they did on last fall’s live record “Kicking Television,” they proved to a sold-out Florida Theatre on Friday night their skill and unwavering interest in using their stage not to recycle past glories, but to cast their songs in an immediate, insistent and endlessly inventive light.
“Kicking” worked because it sanded off the studio trickery of Wilco’s studio material and replaced it with rock, one of the few words that didn’t often come up in reviews of the band’s records. I’m a big fan of the sterling but polished “A Ghost Is Born,” but tracks like its oddly sinister “The Late Greats” sound fresher and fuller when allowed to roam the stage.
Take for instance “Handshake Drugs,” which rests on a deceptively comfortable bed of roots-pop before Tweedy and the super-caffeinated Nels Cline go nuts on their guitars, conjuring up walls of dissonance and distortion and exploding the song from inside out. On stage, the band turns whispers into roars, tiny piano riffs into screaming bursts of feedback, tentative moments of intimacy into more of cathartic release.
Wilco these days is all about that sonic sleight-of-hand, both on big-ticket songs (“I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”) and their more intimate and accessible material (“Jesus, Etc.”). The broken ballad “At Least That’s What You said” started soft, built to a bridge of staccatos that sounded like railroad spikes being pounded into sheet rock, and broke into a sprint for the finish. “War on War” opened with a twinkling piano riff before escaping from the stage and running smack into a large pile of tricky electronic effects. This is what Wilco does: uses simple parts – a few innocent-looking guitar strums, some lullaby verses – to assemble full-blown epics, giant songs that generally end with a great messy crashing of guitar, noise and melody. But they’re also ones that, thanks to Tweedy’s fragile and expressive voice, never lose their sense of closeness.
That’s newer Wilco, anyway. Happily and surprisingly, the last third of show was turned over to those seemingly long-lost saloon rockers. They first popped their heads upon a new song, a ragtime-y number called “ Talkin’ To Myself About You” (according to the blogs, anyway, which also call the song “Walken” – guys, I beg you, go with that second one) that’s the most country-leaning thing they’ve written since the alt-country days. But they kicked the door in for good on a set that dug into “Being There.” Tweedy ripped into the top-down rocker “Monday,” the sweetly melancholy “Forget the Flowers” and the hammering “Kingpin,” as well as “California Stars” and “Airline To Heaven” from the band’s “Mermaid Avenue” collaborations with Billy Bragg.
Without those chaotic storms of sound around them, these songs were campfire singalong of a throwback variety, songs that reminded you that underneath all that praise Wilco’s just a coupla guys in a rock outfit. This is one of America’s best bands. Let’s get them back soon.
Wilco’s Jacksonville set list:
Muzzle of Bees
Handshake Drugs
The Late Greats
A Shot In The Arm
At Least That’s What You Said
Hell Is Chrome
Spiders (Kidsmoke)
Jesus, Etc.
War on War
The Good Part
Talkin’ To Myself About You
Theologians
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
I’m The Man Who Loves You
Monday
Was I In Your Dreams
Hummingbirds
Forget The Flowers
Airline to Heaven
California Stars
Kingpin
Live review: Both sides of Ben Harper in Jacksonville
Florida Times-Union — Ben Harper is the missing link between human and mix tape, a shuffle button that can walk. His set is the jam-band counterpart of the menu at the Cheesecake Factory: nearly every style is readily available (as long as you don’t feel like anything too weird), and if you think you can trump it, you just haven’t turned enough pages. Feeling like reggae? Try the “Steal My Kisses/Pressure Drop” medley, wash it down with a crisp Red Stripe. A little wah-wah funk? Might I suggest the “Excuse Me Mr.” Some sensitive-guy singer-songwriter stuff? Ah, the “Another Lonely Day” is excellent tonight. A review of Harper’s sold-out show at the Florida Theatre.
Live review: This thing, called Queen + Paul Rodgers, I just can’t handle it
At worst, Queen + Paul Rodgers comes off as an adequate cover band, one made only a little less creepy by the participation of two original members. At best, it comes off as a marginally more- than-adequate cover band. This is Queen like I’m Lou Rawls. A review of the band’s sparsely attended Arena gig.
Interview: Roger Taylor and Queen, plus and minus
“We’re not gonna look too much like old men [on stage],” says Queen drummer Roger Taylor, of the band’s first tour with Bad Company singer Paul Rodgers and without, notably, Freddie Mercury. “Thankfully we still have our hair and are not enormously overweight.” (It is important to note that talking about bands who still have their hair carries extra weight when said band includes Brian May.) Taylor on why Queen wants to continue to rock you.
Live review: Keith, country’s Urban legend in Jacksonville
Florida Times-Union — I drive a Honda mini-SUV, couldn’t pick Tony Stewart out of a crowd of two and never once had anyone find my tractor sexy, and I’m still about twice as country as the fantastically popular Keith Urban.
Only the music business’ obsessive need to fragment itself puts Urban anywhere within miles of country; bizarrely, his meat-and-potatoes rock n’ roll no longer has much of a place on rock radio, MTV or VH-1.
The only safe harbor for a guy of his constitution – equal parts Seger, Garth and the Goo Goo Dolls – is the land of Music Row, where the word “rock” does not automatically conjure up thoughts of Nickelback.
But country is in desperate need of a personality and star-power transfusion, and Urban provides it to remarkable degree. Here’s an Australian dude who woos Nicole Kidman, whose shows possibly boast country’s lowest hat-to-section ratio, who covers Tom Petty and who arrives on stage to a friggin’ Jesus Jones song.
Supporters say those are the sounds of country’s long-standing walls being torn down. But a more cynical sort might say they’re the sounds of maximum crossover appeal, and that Urban is just merging marketable styles from all decades, authenticity be damned (watch how often the word “covers” appears in this review). iPods play Jesus Jones next to George Jones, so why can’t he? Somewhere, Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash do loop-de-loops in their graves, while somewhere slightly warmer, accountants do them in corner offices.
Urban’s sound is pure comfort food, musical fuzzy slippers, a sonic Super Target. His titles go like this: Days Go By, Better Life, These Are The Days, But For The Grace Of God. His riffs soar where eagles dare. He’s obsessed with the images generally attached to conservativized country — blue jeans, blacktop, sunshine, ol’ buddies at the corner bar – but, as usual, they prove little more than stock art (when Urban sings Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’, you get the sense his emotional investment ends after the first verse, the one about the girl who’s crazy ‘bout Elvis, before all the bad stuff happens). He’s Bon Jovi with an occasional banjo and, somehow, fewer emotional gray areas; he sees a million faces, and gently rocks them all.
But all that said, Urban proves a performer of irrational likeability. Sure, Urban strains for the maximum potential audience (look at ya with the Sweet Home Alabama cover, ya big lug), plays crowd-yelling games and congratulates himself on his extended set times (Keith, I like you, but lots of bands play two hours, buddy). But his easy charisma, anthem-ready voice and above-average guitar chops make him an unfailingly engaging fella, even when he’s indulging in plodding monster ballads like Rainin’ on Sunday, his cover of Garth Brooks’ cover of Billy Joel’s You May Be Right, or You’ll Think of Me, a massive hit about breakups that clones much of Bruce Springsteen’s One Step Up. The end result is often potent but strangely detached. The place is packed and jumping when the lights go down, but plenty of folks scoot by encore time to beat traffic.
This is country in 2006 – pure, easy accessibility.
One of country’s biggest superstars never wears a hat, spins Prince on the P.A., covers Brooks and Dunn and grants himself a solid Eddie Van Halen-sized guitar solo 15 minutes four songs in. Lays down on the floor and everything. The ladies text dreamy notes to their friends, the guys nod appreciatively. Urban’s out to take mass appeal to new heights, and it’s working.
Mostly-INXS and Sort-Of Queen in: Rock Parts
Florida Times-Union — Coming soon to Jacksonville: Queen, Sort Of! And INXS, In a Manner of Speaking!
Both acts are household names, both were superstars in their respective eras, and both are curiously enjoying lively tour schedules in 2006 despite the fact that their original singers have, for years now, been dead. “Brian [May] and I were not expecting to go on the road at any time,” said Roger Taylor, original drummer for Queen, which hasn’t toured the States since 1982. “It’s hard for anyone to walk into a wealth of history and experience that we’ve had,” INXS drummer Jon Farriss said of replacing Hutchence (who’s been replaced in the band and photo illustration by the improbably named J.D. Fortune).
And yet, in just a few weeks, you can welcome INXS — or whatever they are. And Queen has re-emerged to totally rock you. A Sunday feature on how some bands have fared with replacement parts. And a sidebar that breaks bands down into cold hard numbers.
The Hold Steady Kills Me: An interview with Craig Finn
"Tramps like us, and we like tramps"
Florida Times-Union (2.06) — If rock ‘n’ roll has always been the soundtrack to restless, confused adolescence, Craig Finn and The Hold Steady have taken its most romanticized elements — escapism, nervous love, frequent bursts of lively panic — and put a killer twist on them.
A storyteller whose words stream out in sentences rather than verses, Finn writes stories about growing up with as much sharp-eyed nostalgia as the Beach Boys, Replacements or Bruce Springsteen. In fact, though he represents the suburbs of Minneapolis, Finn proves himself a devout Bruce disciple on Hold Steady’s 2004 debut, The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me, and its 2005 follow-up, Separation Sunday. Both are layered with variations on youthful, Boss-ian themes, both below the surface and well above it (from Charlemagne in Sweatpants: “Tramps like us, and we like tramps”).
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But if Springsteen’s legacy is in perfecting the rock-as-redemption thing, Finn’s may be in hanging it upside down by its heels and shaking out its change all over the boardwalk.
“There’s a lot of teenage nostalgia in rock ‘n’ roll, and Sunday is a teenage album,” Finn said last week. “And it’s a suburban album. When I was 16, I was able to get my driver’s license, and growing up the suburbs, that means you suddenly have this amazing new freedom.”
Sunday also boasts more overt Catholicism than any secular album in recent memory. Finn, who was brought up Catholic and attended Boston College, doesn’t go to church, but he can’t consider himself lapsed, either. “When people used to say, ‘Are you Catholic?’ I’d say no,” he said. “But then I thought that might not be entirely accurate. I certainly do not go to church, nor do I subscribe to some of the beliefs of the Catholic church, but it was such an important part of me becoming who I am that it was a big part of the genesis of the record. Redemption, salvation, forgiveness — those are beautiful, profound things you can always come back to.”
That said, despite never once advocating Satanism or gayness and assigning a starring, reverent role to the big man, the crises of faith conveyed in Sunday may alarm anyone who put forth any effort to, say, cancel The Book of Daniel. “I’m sure there are Catholic priests who would find it really blasphemous, but the chances of them hearing the Hold Steady record are slim to none,” he said with a laugh.
The Hold Steady formed in 2000 from the ashes of Finn and guitarist Tad Kubler’s previous outfit, Lifter Puller. It now includes bassist Galen Polivka, drummer Bobby Drake and keyboardist Franz Nicolay. The band spent much of last year absorbing accolades (including dueling love letters from the New Yorker and the Village Voice) and materializing on most of the known world’s year-end Top 10 lists. “I feel critically acclaimed,” Finn said. “But we still haven’t sold that many records. A huge step in being in a band is getting to the point that you have actual fans. I think that’s where we’re at, which is exciting.”
But if those fans see Finn as the ignition, the Hold Steady’s fuel is its arena-ready sound, which probably gets closer to Aerosmith than anyone who’s ever recorded under the vast indie umbrella ever has. Kubler sounds like he’s scanning the want ads for openings in Thin Lizzy, and Nicolay’s piano gets positively jump-swinging on tracks such as Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night. In two albums, they’ve captured the Replacements’ sloppy swagger and Warren Zevon’s gift for being at once graceful and dust-mouthed and sort of sad.
“People assume that songwriters are talking about personal experience, but no one ever thinks of a filmmaker in the same way,” Finn said. “The record is certainly influenced by my life, but I write songs as a cinematic means of telling a story.”
Stories that have proven accessible both to the kids still inhabiting various personas in search of one that fits, and the older folks who haven’t forgotten how hard that is to pull off.
Interview: John Prine, standing by peaceful waters
John Prine’s sterling show at the Florida Theatre encompassed what Prine’s so skilled at conveying: discovery, pain, peace, the primal, therapeutic power of music and the impossible mess all these things make when handled by us humans.
A review of Prine’s Jacksonville stop, as well as an extremely enjoyable talk with the singer-songwriter.
