Last week Blend manager Idan Eckstein regularly used the club’s “mixing it up” tagline while talking about about his Rosemary Street space. That was a tad distracting. You know, blend, mix it up, see what he did there and all? But he’s holding true, after all: Dead Kennedys frontman and Alternative Tentacles frontman Jello Biafra will do his spoken-word set at Blend on Sunday, May 6 at 7 p.m. Totally weird. This Biafra video is great. Also, our own blogger Rich Ivey hit the road this past week as the lead singer of one of his favorite bands, Order of the Dying Orchid. Here they are in Raleigh, doing “Wooly Bully.”

Seriously, get your instrument out of my face.

The penultimate sentence in Artsplosure’s April press release for its 28th annual Spring Arts Festival (May 19 & 20 in Moore Square) reads with this proud fact: “Each year, the Spring Arts Festival attracts 70,000 people over the course of the weekend.” That makes Artsplosure’s decision not to allow buskers to ask for tips at this year’s festival especially surprising. After all, according to Executive Director Michael Lowder, “only five or six people” have complained about the buskers, who are contracted by Artsplosure to travel to Raleigh for the festival. That’s 0.008571% of one year’s attendees.

For the past four years, the musicians have been given a stipend, room and board. This year, they’re getting paid only with a guarantee from Artsplosure, a decision Lowder says has cost the festival several of their preferred buskers, as the festival couldn’t afford to pay them all higher outright.

“When we told some of the performers what our plan was, they demanded more money,” says Lowder. “For that type of money, I could get a lot from the local talent poll, which I’d rather spend it on, anyway.”

According to Lowder, the street musicians who are performing will be cordoned in an area on Martin Street and not allowed to roam the festival as they have in previous years. Part of the issue, Lowder says, is that the moving musicians often blocked the sightline of and access to the rows of visual art vendors who pay a small fee to sell merchandise at Artsplosure.

“[The street performers] have been wildly popular, but there’s a balance between these visual artists…and the street performers,” says Lowder. “We’ll see how it goes. If it’s a real loss, we’ll see what we can do.”

Meanwhile, main stage musicians at this year’s Artsplosure include Groove Collective, Terrence Simien, Mission: On Mars, Rozlyn Sorrell, Esperanza Spaulding, Carey Bell and Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk.

Total summer music heroes.

Here’s the first draft of Raleigh Downtown Live’s summer concert schedule:

June 2: Everclear
June 16: TBA with Weekend Excursion
June 30: Firehouse
July 14: The Romantics and Will Hoge
July 28: Night Ranger
August 11: Soul Asylum
August 25: Warrant

Yeah, this still applies. But, hey, Soul Asylum! And Raleigh Convention Center is still on notice.

=
281-330-8004.

It starts at work with the new-ish Mike Jones. I’m listening to those g-fab piano chords and that daycare refrain, when the girl I share an office with swings around in her swivel chair intent on saying something B.I.G.: “You know, it’s weird that a whole generation of kids are growing up thinking this is what hip hop is actually about.”

Can of worms officially opened, right? I should have demanded she scatch a bit more than the surface, tell me exactly what hip hop is and was about, tell me how Mike Jones is a rich man’s John Brown (she rooted for Sham) and deserves to get the eternal ether, how Jurassic 5 is, like, totally dope, how hip hop was better before it was co-opted by consumerism. Instead, I said, “You could say the same thing about emo…”

Ugh. Sometimes I hate myself. Still, you can’t even Kevin Bacon your way from today’s My Chemical Romance (emo?) to Rites of Spring (emo!), let alone Heroin or Honeywell or Mohinder or Ordination of Aaron or any of the other bands I geeked out for Napster-style in high school. Here, I’ll spare you the postulating about emo’s increasing resemblance to hip hop in the ‘07 (new Good Charlotte video “featuring” Avenged Sevenfold, a frightened establisment, bands turning entrepreneur, Jay-Z opening the new F.O.B.). Instead, I’ll just reminisce about THAT REAL E-MO, in all of its late 80s, early 90s glory: (more…)

I keep thinking that Science sticker is weirdly significant.

The wall at Kings Saturday night said, “FUCK THE CONVENTION CENTER,” not fare, fans (of), favor, fame, frequent or (look) fondly (upon). “FUCK.” I mean, just in case you were wondering.

No, I’m not being flip, and I never said I didn’t like the songs. This live, subdued version of “Get Up, Get Out,” recorded on an isolated stage in Austin during SXSW, is fantastic. Kelly Crisp sounds great on the grand piano, and Matt McCaughan keeps things suitably reserved behind is kit. Recommended.

My smile will be bigger than his.

Seems like there is one every year, a record that comes out of nowhere by an artist I hadn’t heard of and ends up a year-end top tenner. In ‘99, crime reporter/former band leader J.P. Olsen put out an album of fascinating character sketches, each with a totally different musical backdrop, under the name Burn Barrel. A couple years later it was Joe West, a guy who’d bounced around from NYC to Austin and eventually landed in New Mexico. His South Dakota Hairdo featured a similarly engrossing narrative songwriting style coaxed along by keyboard- and guitar-led folk rock with a honky-tonk heart and a satirist’s soul. West’s follow-up, The Human Cannonball, was equally swell, but, by that point, he was coming out of Santa Fe for me, not nowhere. Richard Ferreira, Joel Plaskett and Graham Lindsay are a couple more names from this list.

In 2006, the artist was Jersey-raised, Memphis-based music vet Dan Montgomery. His Rosetta, Please (A Love Story) is a concept album of sorts about an ex-con who falls for a prostitute. It was inspired by a tale told to the singer/songwriter in a low-rent bar, and, appropriately, by record’s end you’ll be able to taste the whiskey and the desperation thanks to Montgomery’s knack for scene setting and his way with the selling detail. As you might expect, the relationship depicted is of the love/hate variety, and Montgomery nails it. “Baby, baby, when you coming home?/Baby, baby, are you coming home?” his protagonist asks in a voice that damn well knows the answer. This is the same guy who, bitterness somehow coexisting with affection, later offers, “She’s not exactly the girl next door, unless you live next to the local whore.” Montgomery’s most brilliant stroke is also giving Rosetta a voice on a pair of songs that recall Alejandro Escovedo at his most brooding, down to the interplay between cello and violin. “Long Long Night” is especially effective, its “I work for the money, the money’s for the drugs, the drugs for the pain” one of the most succinct definitions of vicious cycle ever put to record. And throughout, hooky roots rock imagined at varying speeds drives the story, with guests shots from musicians out of my personal heroes book such as Peter Case, Ben Vaughn, and Duane Jarvis adding to the appeal. It also doesn’t hurt that Montgomery’s voice brings to mind Chip Robinson.

The reality is that I rarely get to see these out-of-nowhere artists play live. I’ve been lucky enough to see Ferreira and Lindsay once each, but none of the others in the first paragraph. Turns out, though, I will have a chance to hear Rosetta’s songs brought to life from about 5 feet away when Montgomery and his band, the Professional Badasses, visit the Cave on Monday, April 23. Come on out; I might even buy you a beer. (Not one of those fancy expensive things, maybe a Mickey’s Big Mouth.) I’ll be the tall, lanky guy in the Stax t-shirt, in honor of Montgomery’s adopted home city. And unlike Rosetta’s fella, my smile will be unwavering.

Man oh men.

Stephen Stills played Lincoln Theatre last night. The first thing that I thought of when I saw the show listing was, “Hmmm, Stephen Stills is playing out these days?” The second thing I thought of was the band Orleans. I’ll explain that a little later.

I saw Stephen Stills at Binghamton, N.Y.’s Broome County Veterans Memorial Arena in the early ‘80s. I had first heard Stills in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and then backtracked with the help of a good friend w to Buffalo Springfield and Manassas and the Illegal Stills record, so I was looking forward to the show, or “concert,” as such musical events were called in those charming times. (It was also, as it turned out, the first prong in what I consider to be an interesting four-pronged concert-going personal tidbit: I’ve seen David Crosby, Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young in non-CSNY mode but have never seen any of them perform together in any combination. But I digress.)

Some people think this guy is a dick. Spencer Griffith, who took this photo, does not.

YOU: Leaning heavy against the stage left side of the balcony, ten feet from the end closest to the stage. Blue coat tied around your waist, belly button poking from below a tight pink and white cotton-blend shirt. When The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne railed hard on George W. Bush and homophobia and the war in Iraq and anti-pot legislation, you looked exactly like you had paid $35 ($36.50 with service charges) for a lights-and-pop-and-balloons extravaganza when actually you’d been herded into the hot-as-fuck balcony of a terrible tinny rock club where the lead singer of a famous rock band had just pulled down his pants and taken THE BIGGEST SHIT IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD right in front of you It stunk, didn’t it? I could tell you hated it by your frown and disdain for smiling people, and how—when 2,000 others were going “Yeah yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah” and smiling for the bright lights and the girl dressed like Yoshimi and the boys dressed like Spiderman and Captain America—all we got from you was this:

ME: Standing just beneath you, laughing steadily for 15 minutes at your caput contortions. I loved you for your earnestness and maybe that belly, and—later—I wanted to sit in the parking lot and read you books. You left before the encore. What the fuck? 919-286-1972. You know what to do.

P.S. The Flaming Lips: Still one of the best spectacles in music, repetitive and staged or not.

Two new The Nein videos on YouTube: Here or there.

The next pop step in the Merge signing spree: You know you love this song. I do, too. Also, nice work on “Silja Line.”

Don’t you remember that Superchunk song, “New Low?” Well, maybe not a new low, but, uhh, really? Least it’s not Junior Boys!

MALAKAR IN ‘12!

Maybe you keep up with American Idol. Maybe you don’t.

One way or the other, you’ve probably heard of Sanjaya Malakar: He’s the 17-year-old Indian American contestant with a voice like a wilted flower, a head full of beautifully conditioned hair, and a lucky streak that’s left half of America puzzled (and the other half going on hunger strikes until he‘s sent on his way or printing t-shirts with slogans willing him off the show). Byebyea Sanjaya, J in Buffalo is getting hungry.

Still, the kid lasts much to the chagrin of the judges (it’s rumoured that Simon Cowell has vowed to quit if he wins), who, in recent episodes, have wondered aloud whether or not their opinions even matter anymore. They certainly didn’t this past week. Even after botching a version of Gwen Stefani’s “Bathwater” while sporting a “ponyhawk”—that’s right, seven ponytails lined crop-style into Mohawk formation—Malakar managed to stick around.

Ashley Ferl, the crying 12-year-old in the audience two weeks ago, suggested the tweens were keeping him alive. But, even before the results aired, news of producer-tampering and selective editing crept around the web. Ok, ok, ok, so maybe it’s the Stern-endorsed Vote For the Worst campaign, in which voters are encouraged to keep the shittiest pipes coming back, that‘s saving our boy week in and week out? That seems to be the only logical explanation, UNLESS: America ACTUALLY sees something in Sanjaya. The folks at Sub Pop seem to. Ugh. Welcome to 2007, the year where forecasts predict record high shark jumping! Well, unless this week says othewise.

“If you can find a better steel guitar player, call me.”

“Tess and I designed the Breakdown to be a regional coming together that can celebrate North Carolina music and culture much in the way that a show like ‘Prairie Home Companion’ iconically defines Minnesota,” explains John Hubbell about his new radio show “Carolina Breakdown,” which airs every other Fridays at 4 p.m. on UNC-Chapel Hill’s WXYC 89.3. Finishing that thought, Hubbell’s tongue is somewhere in the vicinity of his cheek: “We aim to be younger, more hip and more eclectic than Garrison Keillor, God bless him, and our show has a comparable absence of Lutherans.”

The Tess in question is Tess Mangum Ocaña, Concerts & Facility Director at The ArtsCenter and co-creator of “Carolina Breakdown.” When Hubbell and Ocaña met last fall at a Beausoleil concert at The ArtsCenter, they quickly decided to give the airwaves thing a whirl. “There are great radio shows that devote themselves to Southern musical traditions—’Back Porch Music’ is one of them—but we saw room to create something more interactive, explanatory and eclectic,” says Hubbell. They agreed that the fastest way to get the show moving would be to record acts who were appearing at the ArtsCenter that, in Hubbell’s words, “already fit a Southern or regional motif,” which has led to music from and conversation with the likes of Durham-based roots music hero Alice Gerrard, fiddle and accordion stars the Gavin Brothers from County Galway (apparently that would be south County Galway), southern soul queen Bettye LaVette and country-rock pioneer Chris Hillman.

Sharing airtime with Hubbell and Ocaña are Jessica Klinke and Brendan Greaves, who, like Hubbell, are graduate assistants in the Curriculum in Folklore. (Hubbell is quick to acknowledge the guidance of Curriculum in Folklore Director Glenn Hinson and others from the Folklore program.) The backgrounds of the hosts—Hubbell is a former reporter and editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, Klinke is experienced in theater and the nonprofit world, and Greaves came to the Folklore program from museum curating—add yet another dimension to the mix, and those involved are looking to further expand the show’s scope. “It started, as we say, as a show simply about ‘Southern music and the people who make it,’” offers Hubbell. “But we’d like to see it become something more of a radio magazine that explores life and traditions in the South.”

On Saturday, April 21, the Carolina Breakdown concert at The ArtsCenter featuring the Tony Williamson Band, the Branchettes, Laurelyn Dossett, and the Allen Boys will continue the move in that direction. “The bill speaks to the concept of the Breakdown overall, and will allow the audience to see and hear overlaps in a variety of musics,” Hubbell says. “Our generation is a turntable generation, reaching back as it moves forward, discovering and mixing everything from old soul to big band. The Breakdown’s bill—bluegrass, gospel, new country, and sacred steel—stays within a regional tradition but explores its interconnectivity and its outer reaches at the same time.”

Carolina Breakdown specifics after the break. (more…)

Derrick May in High Tech Soul.

Dig into the fertile compost of Black American music and you’ll find familiar tubers still growing up from the soil: blues, jazz, and the JB-RIP free-footedness of funk, among others. Shove your trowel over to the left of , and there’s Detroit techno’s ornery urban throb, pulsing now like an exposed artery.

One documentary you won’t see at Full Frame this weekend is Gary Bredow’s High Tech Soul, an encapsulation of the triumvirate of techno in the Detroit suburb of Belleville known as the Belleville Three: Derrick May, Juan Atkins, and Kevin Saunderson. May will be here for the opening event of this year’s Signal electronic music fest in Chapel Hill (which runs from the Thursday, April 26 event through Saturday night), speaking on the topic of  techno as another great Black American art form, then cranking the faders alongside other disciples for the rest of the night.

The film goes into the heart of this music’s formation through blow-by-blow interviews with its central characters, all delving into how it was fused from soul’s heart and early electronica’s precision. Nods to Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, P-funk, James Brown, Afrika Bambaataa and each other are requisite and present. May should know: He coined the film’s title term, and is largely seen as techno’s contentious father figure. Seeing this film gives one a good idea of how a formative player like Nico Marks of the Underground Resistance group, Jeff Mills, or Richie Hawtin (who took it to the rave crowd) were riffing on what they saw as a new art form coming from the post-industrial landscape of Detroit. Hearing May talk about techno as an African-American creative tributary in person at UNC’s Student Union, especially with his outspoken personality, should be compelling and serve as a reminder as to why the Triangle beat-heads who put together Signal are still driven by that pulse in some form.

5 p.m.

After a day filled with workshops and opportunities to hang out and relax, Signal fest-goers like myself started amping back up for a long night with a meet-and-greet at Blend. Sponsor-donated food calmed the nerves while some funky lounge music was spun in the background. Then, it was off to the races with again.

8:30 p.m.

Nightlight has a sampling of different flavors tonight, so I ventured there first to catch DJ Mothersbrothers warming up the room. But time is tight tonight, so I jumped down to Blend for Richard Chartier’s high-concept, high-reward sound sculpting. Within a quadraphonic arrangement of speakers fore and aft, he sent out washes of drone and spiraling waves crashing down onto a room completely darkened and silent, save for the neon light in the window and the occasional clanging from Bub O’Malley’s Pub upstairs. Sublime.

10 p.m.

Then it was another hop back down to Nightlight for a peek at the Pykrete Percussion Unit, a project wherein Chuck Johnson live-processes a set of drumming partners. Organic and synthetic simultaneously, and great.

11 p.m.

Back again to Blend, for pulsoptional’s warm set of electronics and treated guitar and reeds, that rotated from Terry Riley, Poppy No Good undulating to a jungle-breakbeat-ridden passage that banged, plain and simple. They peaked with a noise-storm of electronics and reed overload, then receded gracefully like a drying lake. A gorgeous and ambitious set from one of our local treasures.

Back at Nightlight, Datahata was banging out some acid-y techno, mixing in sample vocals to good effect, and now we’re off and running again.

Hey, a rock band. The Nein at the Cradle Friday night.

9:25 p.m.

My second day of Signal started at the Cat’s Cradle, where Montreal’s Tomas Phillips was laying down a dense, billowing wall of dark ambient matter that was embedded with cricket-like crackles and eerie chirps that makes music like his not ambient in the true sense, but a sometimes sinister affair, not unlike some of the more mildly industrial work of contemporaries like Christian Fennesz. And what a treat to hear a computer musician’s work blasting out of the Cradle’s powerful system. Nice.

10:15 p.m.

After his set, I hopped over to Nightlight where the first of several members of the Broken Fader Cartel were revving up some left-of-center pastiche. Speaking off-center, The Nein were starting back at the Cradle, so it was back there quickly. They screed through a set of scrambled, world-conscious, po-mo funk, and this night it was particularly coiled tightly. Being led by percussion, the electronics side of the band makes them fit in with Signal’s oeuvre better than many of the so-called glitch artists. Keenly aware they were one of the few rock bands playing the festival, singer Finn Cohen joked in a bit of self-promotion, “We have electronic music for sale over there; it requires electricity to play.”
11 p.m.

And hey, who knew the Cradle has strong wireless? Not that many folk carry their laptops in there for a show. On a break, I was able to jump on and work some before the other Canadians, Toronto’s Crystal Castles played an abbreviated set in the dark, their only stage-lighting a pulsing strobe. They’re certainly the closest to the electro scene to play the fest, bouncing and screaming to some basic beat programming; parts punky spirit and angst and new wave blurp, peppered with video game noise. Their short set through off the schedule some, so they came back after a bit for some more songs, which pleased the jumping crowd. They were a hit. Back in a bit.

Around midnight

Audio collage pranksters Negativland have been around since the late Seventies, pinpricking the parameters of fair use, culture jamming and often-sardonic audio play with only a few real peers. Since they’ve been doing this a while, it’s reasonable to expect that they have a structure to their performances and tonight was no different. Mark Hosler, decked out in tails, half-jokingly instructed the audience that for the night’s world premiere of “Booper Symphony, No 1” people should turn off their phones, refrain from talking or taking pictures, and uh, dancing.

The theme of classical concert started with orchestra pit samples playing while the stage was set up, then a peppering of classical piece samples throughout the long piece, samples that were brief enough to be nearly unrecognizable, but demonstrating their pointed use of copyrighted and public domain works. While it seemed they were mostly working on the fly, there were periods of lull and more excitation, while one observer quipped to me, acknowledging the sometimes overbearing noodling that he “didn’t expect them to be so much of a jam band.”

The trio’s weaponry for such high-concept work wasn’t all digital, as one might expect. A bank of Cart machines, the olden playback method of radio DJs up until the mid-Eighties, were used for various samples and patchwork replays. There were various tweaks from devices like a mini-Theremin, which was activated by tiny pieces the size of Christmas tree lights, all spitting out a dizzying whir of noises from squeaks to oddball voice-overs and frogs chirping. Another onlooker pointed out to me that one particularly scratchy sound was a recording of a member rubbing a microphone on his chest.

1:15 a.m.

After Negativland’s heavy thought, my associates and I decided we just wanted to dance, and poke around some things we might not usually encounter. First, we caught a beer and some eclectic electronica from Doofgoblin, over at Nightlight. Trying to squeeze in as much as we could before the end of the night, we pushed onward to the center of student-land: Franklin Street and Players, where Brad Lee had been dishing what they call hard techno. It was a total scene, with a mob crowd of undergrads mixing with Signal attendees, who were popping and grooving to a pounding, monochromatic beat. We hung at a booth, marveling at the beautiful view of Franklin Street and the church tower across the street.

2 a.m.

But we wanted to see who was over at Blend, where it was a drum and bass and jungle blowout. The place was packed, with video screens all over the place and a diverse crowd that seemed to have spilled over from the goth and industrial show over at Local 506. People were going crazy for DJ Odi, a very well-respected junglist. We hung out until it was quitting time, walking the length of downtown to recoup for another day.

By himself.

Imagine a country church, rather nondescript but the scene of much God-fearing, with pews made out of Ryman Auditorium floorboards and weathered, lonesome pine. Now imagine that those pews could sing. They might sound a bit like Charlie Louvin on his new self-titled release.

Louvin will be 80 in July, so it’s no surprise that his voice lacks a good bit of the low-tenor power it once carried when tangled with his brother Ira’s high tenor. But there are still intangibles at work, things like authenticity and miles and history. You can feel like you’re in the presence of something ancient and knowing, but it’s also the sound of grace at your grandfather’s dinner table.

Then why have guest stars crowding the table? I don’t have a problem with guest stars, mind you; I’m just genuinely curious. And it’s certainly an impressive, multi-generational list, with the likes of George Jones, Tom T. Hall, and Bobby Bare Sr. contributing to that spirit of authenticity and history, and Marty Stuart’s this close to being a member of that club. Elsewhere, Jeff Tweedy provides backing vocals on “Great Atomic Power,” a nod to the fact that many folks who buy this album will have first heard the song via Uncle Tupelo. Paul Burch, David Kilgour (!), and Kurt Wagner lead the Merge parade, with the connection being co-producer Mark Nevers and his Lambchop/Merge affiliation. Tift Merritt and Joy Lynn White each take a verse on “Grave on the Green Hillside,” while Eef Barzelay’s haunted voice, a quiver always lurking just below the surface, is arguably the one best suited for verse-swapping with Mr. Louvin. On the other hand, Will Oldham’s cameo on “Knoxville Girl” is the definition of superfluous (The Perm & The Skullet has it here).

But again, why the guests? You’d hope the name Charlie Louvin would be enough of a draw on its own, but the reality could be that a Tweedy spotting earns you an extra 5,000 sales. Interestingly, or perhaps wisely, the guests don’t engage in Louvin-trademark close harmonizing. They mostly just step in for a verse.

“The worst was losing you and singing all alone,” Louvin offers on the gorgeous, loving tribute “Ira,” the only song, appropriately, without a costar. So maybe that’s it: Charlie Louvin doesn’t necessarily want folks to sing with him, just alongside him. For the company.

There’s another Merge guest, Mac McCaughan, who contributes organ and guitar on one track. “Marky knew that I was a huge Louvin Brothers fan and asked me originally to sing and play on the album,” McCaughan says of Nevers. “’When I Stop Dreaming’ was the song I requested as it’s one of my favorite Louvins songs ever.” Unfortunately, McCaughan’s schedule didn’t allow him to travel to Nashville for the sessions, so he recorded his parts in Durham.

Things didn’t work out for his vocal contribution either. “My singing slot eventually got taken by Elvis Costello,” he explains, adding, “Can’t really complain about that choice.” I can. Costello is becoming a legend hog. I mean, c’mon, he just got to make a whole record with Allen Toussaint. I would love to hear how local hero McCaughan’s voice sounds bouncing off the walls of that rustic country church, alongside—but not too close to—Charlie Louvin’s.

The king of Hotlanta and the princes of Pitchfork collide. Also, a legal notice: This photograph has been modified to fit your dreams.

When the musically oblivious meet fat wads of alumni cash, University-driven concerts are prone to magnificent failure. Look no further than N.C. State’s last two Homecoming jokers, Crossfade and Daughtry, for proof. Both poorly attended embarrassments, they only paraded the sheer aural incompetence of Raleigh’s biggest university and the conservative arts moves of our Capital City. Fortunately, UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke students have activities boards with a bit more concern for the well-being of the ears, and—while Death Cab for Cutie, Kanye West and Common are predictable collegiate concert options—they still beat the shit out of the radio-rock rednecks booked by their own Triangle cohorts.

Duke’s latest offering—presented by Major Attractions, a committee under the Duke University Union—follows suit, but even steps that up a bit. Not only does the university get a Grammy Award-winning rapper in T.I. at Cameron Indoor Stadium Saturday night, but it also welcomes the biggest indie rock success story of the past several years in Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. This is one of the strongest bills presented by an area university in quite some time, sales aside. These are the acts clogging college students’ iPods, and they’re the ones people will actually pay to see. I bet a few more people will pay to see them, too. N.C. State, take notes.

(more…)

When Stacey Pullen started playing some CDs of his revered second-wave Detroit Techno tracks in the Cabaret room in UNC’s Student Union, you could see heads bobbing and a sense of building excitement among the attendees of this kickoff event for this weekend’s Signal Fest. Pullen may not have the immediate name recognition of the other speaker at this event, innovator Derrick May, but he damn sure wowed the crowd, teasing everyone sitting in a lecture hall until he and May would play full sets in the adjacent Great Hall. There was talk of the film on this scene, High Tech Soul, a great starting point for beginners. Pullen pointed out bringing their music overseas was the big push that allowed the scene to last. Looking at his and May’s schedules, it’s hard not to recognize that; Pullen just got back from Mexico, while May was late to the lecture due to missing a connection from a string of dates abroad.

When May entered the room, luggage in hand, he blurted out a hello, and after some greetings, launched into a pivotal point of their talk with, “Most people have no fucking idea some brothers made this shit!” to uproarious laughter matched with nods in agreement.
As I was taking notes and moving across the Union’s lobby, filled with UNC students preparing for an upcoming finals week, the incongruities of the night set in. Here were two world-class professionals of electronic music, making probably some of the loudest music that will be played all weekend, and because it is a campus event, no alcohol or smoking are allowed, and there are people on the other side of a wood-paneled divider trying to study for their Hindi final. Was it taking away from the pulsing sets these guys (along with warm-ups from $tinkworx and JaMaul Redmond) dropped? Hell no.

May described Detroit techno as a “beautiful mistake” in his talk; to he and many of the music’s first purveyors, it seemed impossible it could reach as far or last as long as it has. Pullen pointed out a brutal truth of electronic music today, that bears this out: “One thing that’s hurt is that everybody has a record label, but nobody has a record company.” That’s a lesson most independent musicians know well.
The company Signal attendees kept this night bodes well for some of the cross-pollination the scene needs, both here and around the country. Judging from the diverse crowd—black, white, male, female—Signal is attracting a core of folks who simply love this music, and can hopefully keep changing its mis-perception from what May feared as “white boys with their shirts off,” then humorously making an Eww face. And the skin-shearing volume delivered at this particular event in an acoustic room armed with what a friend described to me as “probably a $25,000 sound system” made for a booming start to this weekend’s activities. There were flowing-pop b-boy dancers, punctuating loud screams of praise, and even a few glow sticks. Huzzah. More to come, as we live-blog the festival through the weekend. Stay tuned.

Whole lot of buttons

When making your plans for Signalfest next weekend, please pay attention to a new feature they’re putting in, uh, the mix: education. The wise ones organizing the festival are going out of their way to instruct those less familiar with the ABCs of the 909 synth or what a “liquid pop” means to a dancer. They’ve designed several workshops and lectures to supply folks with a little insight into the scary world of dance floor mechanics, sampling, and the music biz. It’s all free and happening on the afternoon of Saturday, April 29, right in the middle of the festival.

Featured speakers include, of course, techno innovator Derrick May, with what can be see as his keynote address “Techno: A Black American Artform” on Thursday night. Negativland’s Mark Hossler presents a film and talk called Adventures in Illegal Art—Creative Media Resistance and Negativland on Saturday. Many more listed here and below the break. (more…)