Concert Review: Sunfest Part V — Sly and Robbie, Gin Blossoms

 

The Riddim Twins (photo credit: Daniel Miller)

 

Day 4, Sat. May 2, 2009 — Sly & Robbie: Reggae’s most famous rhythm section took to the stage in the middle of a sunny afternoon and immediately transported the audience to an atmospheric dimension of mysterious dub.  Accompanied by a spare horn section, consisting of trumpet and sax, with the trumpet player doubling as a vocalist for a number of the songs, drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare ran through their thirty-year catalogue of hits produced either for their own label’s band (The Taxi Gang) or for other artists. Songs like “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot”, “Ballistic Affair”, “Arlene”, “Shine-Eye Gal” and “Revolution” highlighted the duo’s heyday of the late ’70s and early ’80s when they dominated the Jamaican singles charts.  The second half of most of these songs would essentially be the dub version of the track; Dunbar, almost hidden behind his cymbals, would crouch down while tapping out intricate reverb-drenched rhythms, while Shakespeare stood in front of the drum kit in a long, black leather coat, playing what can only be described as lead bass. For the Dawn Penn hit “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)”  the bassist even took his frontman pose to the surprising next step by handling the lead vocal. This was reggae at its best, and Sly & Robbie demonstrated quite ably why their reggae skills are in demand to this day.

Gin Blossoms:

Guitarist Scotty Johnson of the Gin Blossoms is the only band member naive enough to bring his instrument to a bad neighbourhood

 

 

The afternoon set from this Phoenix band was actually the second half of a touring collaboration with fellow ‘90 rockers Tonic. The Type Writer only caught the last few songs of the Gim Blossoms’ performance but it was still worth seeing. This group made its reputation with laid-back, jangly numbers such as “Alison Road” and “Until I Fall Away” but that didn’t stop frontman Robin Wilson from injecting some doses of high energy into the show from time to time. During one song, he stood on top of the kick drum while belting out his vocal; later during the hit “Hey Jealousy”, he left the stage to go sing in front of the lawn-seat audience, even cheerfully yelling into cellphones. The Type Writer also got to hear “Till I Hear It from You”, the group’s hit from the Empire Records soundtrack that was written with pop songwriting legend Marshall Crenshaw. All in all, listening to the Gin Blossoms was a pleasant way to decompress after the intense dub of Sly and Robbie.

Concert Review: Sunfest Part IV — Paul Green School of Rock, Collective Soul

 

 

Paul Green School of Rock: Saving Rock’n'Roll One Kid at a Time

 

 Friday May 1st, Day 3

Paul Green School of Rock: Sunfest has always had activities and music geared towards the younger set during the weekend portion of the festival, and this year was no exception. Set up near one of the festival entrances was an area called Youth Park. And it was on its stage that students of the Palm Beach franchise of the Paul Green School of Rock reigned supreme all weekend,  drawing on their varied repertoire of classic-rock hits. In the weekends prior to Sunfest, the SOR put on a pair of concerts covering material by AC/DC and The Beatles respectively,  and selections from this material featured prominently during their Friday performance. Highlights include “Come Together” and “I Am The Walrus” from the Fab Four’s catalogue, and “Dirty Deeds (Done Dirt Cheap)”, an early AC/DC classic. Also noteworthy was the SOR’s performance of Deep Purple’s “Hush” to close out that evening’s show.

Rock 'n' Roll means never having to have good table manners

 

Collective Soul: This Georgia-based quintet began its performance on with a couple of relatively obscure tracks, so they seemed compelled to sell this material with a lot of cliched larger-than-life stage gestures. All that fell away, however, once the band moved into its first big hit “Shine”. As the audience sang along with this ’90s rock hit, the band finally seemed to relax and enjoy the moment, and other hits such as  ”December” and “The World I Know” quickly followed. The band also featured a couple tracks from its upcoming release, and if this material is any indication of the album as a whole, it should be a good one. This concert was also a good reminder that the band has continued to enjoy airplay well past its original heyday in the mid ’90s, as the latter part of the performance featured hits such as  ”Run”, best known from the soundtrack for the film “Varsity Blues”, and 2004’s uptempo “Better Now”. All in all, an entertaining show for the crowd gathered by the Intracoastal.

The Anniversary Type

Nothing says "Happy Birthday" like some ugly free clip art

Where does the time go: has it really been a year since The Music Type first came to life? On June 1st of last year, the first real post of this blog, an article on the closing of Lake Worth’s premier live-music venue,  The Bamboo Room, was published.  (I don’t really count “What’s Your Type” as this blog’s first post, since it was basically a welcome-message/place-holder.)

 

Since then, over 1900 readers have viewed the posts contained within. While that’s not the biggest of blog audiences, the first year of The Music Type’s existence  did include an inadvertent four-month gap stretching from the late-November post, “The Original Music Type”, a tribute to my late father’s taste in music, through to the most recent installment of Bill’s Postings, a Palm Beach Post column by music journalist Bill Meredith about the songwriters’ night I host at Lake Wort’s best-known shabby-chic-restaurant Havana Hideout. And The Music Type has attracted over three times as many readers as its parent, Type M for Music, in half the time, which is why our ancestral webzine will be moving from the soon-to-be-defunct Geocities domain to join TMT on WordPress very shortly…

 

But thanks to all the readers who have made this venture into the blogging realm a worthwhile exercise. And thanks to all of my fellow bloggers who welcomed me with open keyboards; the Type Writer salutes you. I hope I will continue to be your Music Type during Year 2 of this blog’s existence; feel free to continue to comment on the posts being published here. In other words, Enjoy The Typing…

 

TW

p.s. Unfortunately for South Florida live-music fans, the Bamboo Room remains dark. But diagonally across from it on the other side of J Street is a new live-music venue called Propaganda. I’ve mentioned it in passing during a Pretty Faces post, but it is well deserving of its own post, and that it will have shortly. Also I keep hearing rumours that the Bamboo Room will re-open, so the minute that is confirmed, I’ll be sure to let you know…

Concert Review: Sunfest 2009, Part III — James Taylor

Sweet Baby James covered all the bases during his Sunfest appearance

Day 2, Thursday, April 30th: Surprisingly for a singer-songwriter with a 40-year career, James Taylor chose to start his Sunfest set with two songs not written by him and unfamiliar to most of his fans. But these songs (including The Silhouettes’ “Get A Job” and the spiritual “Wasn’t That A Mighty Storm”) were actually selections from his recent cover releases,  entitled, appropriately enough, “Covers” and “Other Covers”.

But after the supportive nod to his latest releases, Taylor immediately plunged into the material the festival audience had come to hear: his impressive catalogue of hits, drawn mostly from his releases in the 1970s. And his versatile eight-person band was more than up to the challenge of supporting him in great renditions of these hits. At the end of ”Country Road”, for example, background vocalist Andrea Zonn from Nashville pulled out a violin and transformed the quiet ballad into a bluegrass fiddling jam. Bluesy electric guitar solos by Bob Mann added Claptonesque touches to songs as disparate as “Mexico” and “Steamroller”. And the ballad “Shower The People” was the beneficiary of an passionate improvised vocal coda by Arnold McCuller.

But even without the sterling support, chances are the audience will still have loved this set, simply because of the sheer familiarity of the material performed.  Taylor’s version of Carole King’s “You’ve Got A Friend” is so beloved, the crowd turned it into a spontaneous singalong. And “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) performed during the first encore, had the entire audience clapping along the lanky guitarist’s rendition. Taylor also engaged in gorgeous versions of signature tunes such as “Sweet Baby James”, “Up On The Roof”, “Every Day”, “Carolina on My Mind” and, of course, his best-known ballad, the autobiographical “Fire and Rain.”

One more encore, featuring the haunting “You Can Close Your Eyes” capped off a concert that was, at various times, surprisingly energetic, undoubtedly inspiring and unbelievably warm. Unquestionably one of the highlights of this year’s festival.

Concert Review: Sunfest 2009, Part II — The Pretty Faces

The Pretty Faces at Sunfest: (l-r) Phil Dunne (bass), Tom Thorslund (drums/vocal), Jeph Thorslund (guitar/vocals), Hannah Thorslund (guitar/vocals)

[Typist Notes: Here's where we jump ahead to the final day of Sunfest in order to showcase some local artists with significant gigs this weekend. First up in the out-of-order sequence, The Pretty Faces from Boca Raton;  they open for Boston band Pretty & Nice at Propaganda in Lake Worth, Friday May 8th at 9:00]

 

Day 5, Sun. May 3rd – The Pretty Faces: The New Wave garage-rockers were the first to perform on this stage that day, which apparently led to their enduring a longer-than-normal set-up/sound-check period, since, despite the advertised 12:30 start time, their set didn’t kick off till 1:00. But whatever nerves band members might have exhibited while hurriedly setting up had evaporated by time frontman Jeph Thorslund stepped forward to the mike to intro the performance.  The band immediately launched into tracks from its latest release, Another Sound, including the Costello-esque “Inch By Inch” and  ”Rib”.  The lengthy sound-check period turns out to have worked in the band’s favour, since in at least one instance the live sound actually bettered the recording.  Whereas the kick-drum intro for “Right On The Money” was somewhat low-key on the CD, here it was rendered as a thick, meaty thump.

 

The band also played tracks from its previous release, 2004’s Lipstick Kiss: “Don’t Let Me Down” and what is fast becoming my favourite of the older songs, “English Rose”.  Midway through its set, the group played its only cover, “Jessie’s Girl”, Rick Springfield’s best-known hit. This succeeded in drawing in a few more 0f the early-afternoon festival-goers to hear their performance.  The band then reverted to their own material by hammering through the explosive “Sweet Sixteen”.

 

Before proceeding to perform her composition “Elephant”,  Hannah Thoslund gave the Type Writer a pleasant suprise by dedicating the song to him.  (The Type Writer assumes that his singling out  this song during his CD Review might have had something to do with this.) At the moment, Hannah appears to be more confident about her guitar playing than her lead vocals, as a trace of nerves came through on her vocal here, but these will probably disappear over time if the number of requests shouted for this song at the group’s CD release party are any indication.

 

 

Overall,  the occasion of  The Pretty Faces’ large-stage debut did nothing to unnerve the band, as its performance was as tight as ever. The only pity was that the crowd who witnessed it was not larger, but something tells me that won’t be the case the next time the band plays this festival.

 

 

Concert Review: Sunfest 2009, Part I

Sunfest, West Palm Beach's outdoor music and arts festival

Day 1, Wed. April 29th — 311:

311 (Photo by Myriam Santo-Kayda)

This was the only band the Type Writer saw on opening day, but really there didn’t seem to be a crowd for any other band. This reggae/alternative-rock band might very well have been the loudest artist  ever to play at Sunfest, as the music could be heard quite clearly some distance away from the stage area where 311 was playing. TW admits to a preference to 311’s reggae material over the alternative rock, so every time the band switched away from hits such as “Amber”, he kind of lost interest. But the band did play most of its hits, with the exception of its reggae version of The Cure’s “Lovesong”.

Day 2, April 30th: Risa Binder

Country artist Risa Binder

Risa is exactly the kind of country singer Nashville can’t get enough of: pretty, pleasant and with enough pop appeal to cross-over to non-country audiences.  The blonde singer took to the stage in a low-key manner, with only a drumstick count-in as an intro, launching into her song “Just Like That”, a mid-tempo song punctuated by a harmonica solo. Other highlights of her set include “Nashville”, an ode to one of the two cities she calls home (the other being New York City), and “That Kind of Day”, a light, jangly guitar number. Overall, though,  Risa comes across better in recordings than onstage; as her set,  while not unpleasant, was not particularly memorable.

Back to Typing M

"What key is this in? Wait, what key is this in?"

 

Proof positive that the Wordless Winter is really over: after months of languishing, Type M for Music, our parent webpage, was finally updated, just in time for its second anniversary and for Sunfest, West Palm Beach’s waterfront music and arts festival. Included in this return to publishing is an article on The Pretty Faces, one of the great local bands that appeared at Sunfest this year. (Coming soon to this space: concert reviews for most of the bands mentioned in the current Type M issue). The Pretty Faces’ article isn’t very long, but it’s illustrated with a great rock-star photo, so check it out…

Review: “Another Sound” by The Pretty Faces

Pretty In Pink: members of The Pretty Faces pictured on the cover of their latest release, “Another Sound”.

Boca Raton might not seem the likeliest of locales for a garage-rock band, but these Canadian transplants have called South Florida home since 2004, the year of their debut release, Lipstick Kiss. Having already developed a following in  Fort Lauderdale, playing at venues such as Alligator Alley, the group has been steadily raising its profile in Palm Beach, with gigs at Brogue’s Irish Pub in Lake Worth and at West Palm’s venerable Respectable Street Cafe.

The album opens with  “Right On The Money”, a title that could be described as truth in advertising, since it is one of the gems of this collection. The track starts subtly with Thomas Thorslund playing a four-to-the-bar kick-drum beat for the first few bars, followed by the guitar and vocals of  his brother Jeph. (Reminiscent of early Beatle recordings, the guitar is panned toward one speaker and the vocals towards the other.)

The arrangement builds up steadily, with the bassline making its debut during the chorus, and the guitar of Hannah Thorslund coming in on the second verse.  The gradual layering throughout the track is very effective, and the results are nicely contrasted by a quieter passage at the end of the bridge when the insistent bassline drops out for a few bars.

In general, the Pretty Faces sound seems to be a mix of influences both old and new. The steady rhythm guitar of “Pistolera” accompanied by a high-energy drum accompaniment seems reminiscent of The Killers but also harkens to the sound of early-’80s bands such as Cheap Trick and Split Enz. Similarly, the track “Rib” exhibits the musical influence of newer garage-rock bands such as The Strokes, but the sharp wit and clever wordplay of its lyrics (”Hold your tongue and stop the clamour/Don’t correct my English grammar”) owe a huge debt to New Wave pioneer Elvis Costello.

Costello’s influence is also evident in Jeph’s vocal for “Sweet Sixteen”, even down to the slight wobbles in its opening lines.  The track seems arranged to showcase the band firing on all cylinders, with the vocal starting almost immediately and the instruments quickly building up to a full-on attack. The Costello influence is even stronger on the follow-on track, with Jeph sneering his way through the vocal for  “Inch By Inch”.

The following track, “Elephant” is Hannah’s sole songwriting contribution (and lead vocal), but the composition and performance makes an exceedingly strong case that more of her work should appear on future albums. From its catchy guitar intro to a vocal that starts airy and gradually becomes more powerful, all while floating over a tapestry of power chords,  throbbing bassline and explosive cymbal crashes, this track is, simply put, one of the best of this collection. Even its lyrics are clever (the chorus reads: “And I try to push that black behind/But I have been cursed with an elephant’s mind”). Like the perfect dinner guest, the song departs long before the listener grows tired of it, a quality exhibited by this album as a whole.

Coming after that, the midtempo rocker “Halfway There” clearly had a tough act to follow. And while the track develops nicely, becoming more appealing with each new verse, it seems somewhat victimized by the album’s track sequencing. Perhaps it would have been better served by appearing earlier in the running order; its position could have been better occupied by the title track, a song that gets right down to the business of giving as good as it gets.  Similarly, while the acoustic ballad “Yellow Highway Lights”  serves as the biggest departure sound-wise for the album, the track with a nod to the softer side of Crowded House seems to be held back by a rhythm track that perhaps needed to be brighter or more prominent in the mix.

The closing track “Sinking Ship” starts with a pulsing bassline that is, to borrow the parlance of the Beatles-era Liverpool music scene, “mean, moody and magnificent”. This is the perfect track to which to stomp around the dance floor, and a wonderful way to end a dynamic, fun album.

(For further information, please the band’s website at www.theprettyfaces.com

Can Any Good Come From Karaoke?

Inspirit's Big Fund-raiser

For the members of the Inspirit Idol planning committee (of which I am one), the hope is that the answer is yes.  This karaoke fund-raiser takes place  on the evening of April 25th at the Players Club in Wellington, FL from 7-11.

 

So what is Inspirit Idol, anyway?  It’s the major fund-raising initiative for the music non-profit Inspirit. Founded in 2000 by my friend Ginny Meredith, Inspirit provides live music and other performances free of charge to institutions such as hospitals, nursing homes and rehab centers. Inspirit Idol is a karaoke singing competition in which all the contestants will have raised money for Inspirit.

 

Ticket prices are $15 per person or $25 per couple; this includes a drink ticket and free hors d’oeuvres for the first 90 minutes. As a venue, the Player Club is exceptional, as evidenced by its popularity with the equestrian crowd that descends on Wellington during polo and show-jumping season. Raffle tickets will also be drawn for prizes that include a big-screen flat-panel tv. Prior to the start of the karaoke competition, the evening will kick off with a performance by local country singer-songwriter and Inspirit performer Suzanne Cannon.

     

The first-prize package for the karaoke competition includes a six-hour recording session at Lake Worth’s Elegbaland studio with noted area engineers John and Bill Storch, and a two-night stay at the Jupiter Beach Resort. Celebrity judges for the competition consists of Frank Cerabino, Palm Beach Post Local columnist;Andy Preston, radio personality for 98.7 Gater Rocks;  Gin Weintraub, singer/songwriter and founding member of  noted area band INHOUSE; and everybody’s favourite local music columnist, Ginny’s husband Bill Meredith.

   

The Players Club is located at 13410 South Shore Blvd. in Wellington, Florida. For further information on Inspirit Idol, please consult its webpage at the Inspirit website.

Music Hits Its Limits

City Limits reaches the end of the line -- again

As Yahoo! figured out a long time ago, you can learn a lot about what’s going on based on what information people are searching for. In checking the stats for my newly-awoken blog, I happened to notice a number of searches in the last day or two for info on “city limits closing”. City Limits is a music club in Delray Beach that closed for a few months last summer when gas prices were at their zenith. But since the club had re-opened last September,  I wondered why the sudden interest in this topic. And when I saw that City Limits is the subject of  the cover story for the Palm Beach Post’s Friday magazine, I was even more convinced that someone was behind the information curve.

Then I turned to the Post’s Local section and realized that that  someone was me. City Limits was indeed closing — again. The article holds out hope that it may re-open once more, but probably not by the same owners.

Very rarely do you get to read a celebration and eulogy at the same time (written by the same journalist, no less) but thanks to varying deadlines for the news and the entertainment sections, today I could. Given how much of a live-music fan I am, I know which article I preferred to read. The topsy-turvy economy continues to affect the music-club scene adversely, so go support your local venues while you still can.