The date of Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson’s appearance at Duke University as part of Duke Performance’s Soul Power series has been changed: Thompson will now speak on sampling in hip hop on Wednesday, Feb. 20, instead of Friday, Feb. 22. The Roots got asked to play Apollo Theatre, and—good for them—they agreed. 9th Wonder won’t make the new date, but Mark Anthony Nealwill. Mark Anthony Neal will also join the conversation, and 9th Wonder—who it appeared would not make the rescheduled date—will be on hand, too.
The videos show both Durham bands at their finest: Red Collar opening their set with “The Commuter,” another (unreleased) jam for the working class that whipped the crowd into a frenzy [after the break]; Megafaun closing theirs with the backwoods stomp of “Beloved Binge” (see one of my previous posts for the backstory on that one) before taking to the floor to enlist some help from the audience on the last couple verses. Enjoy!
Did anyone see Branford tonight with Stephanie Jordan and Jonathan Dubose before the All-Star game? Pretty neat. Allen Iverson was totally ready to play, though.
Last-minute show announcement by Tres Chicas: They’ll play an old-fashioned acoustic set Sunday, March 2, at Deep South The Bar at 8 p.m. “We promise to play your favorite song (assuming we wrote your favorite song, that is),” they write. Sounds like a plan.
On April 5 at Greensboro Coliseum as part of the Heart of the City tour. Shame: Best thing I’ve ever seen at the RBC Center was the Jay-Z and Friends show in 2004, which featured MJB.
The fifth album from Durham’s The Mountain Goats for 4AD hits store Feb. 19, followed two months later by the release of Master of Reality, the first book from sole constant Goat John Darnielle on April 15. It’s an examanation of the Black Sabbath album of the same name, presented as the journal of a teenage boy in a California psychiatric hospital in the ‘80s. The second half of the book is a series of letters from the same boy as a man, struggling with that past exactly 10 years later. Darnielle and the Regulator in Durham just sealed the deal on a local reading: May 14 at 7 p.m. More to come on both topics.
Soul Power: Hip-Hop Sampling Soul—the symposium including Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson and 9th Wonder—was phenomenal, a pitch perfect blend of hip hop and academia. First, condolences to Duke professor Mark Anthony Neal, who wasn’t on hand to host the discussion due to the sudden passing of his father over the weekend. Aaron Greenwald, Director of Duke Performances, stepped up from behind the scenes, adroitly moderating, switching back and forth between the two panelists as if working the cross fader.
Twin projectors broadcast 9th and ?uestlove’s Macbook and Serrato rigs. As they spoke, you could see them scouring their hard drives for supporting evidence. The DJ demonstration/after party was itself a revelation: In Nasher Museum’s expansive Great Hall, the DJs became a performance art installation, flanked by a screen showcasing the evocative artwork of Barkley L. Hendricks. 9th and then ?uest not only rocked the crowd, but they also unearthed the share strata of hip hop and soul music’s common history. They played “originals,” spinning their raw source materials like precious ores before seamlessly interspersing the finished and familiar products to hip-hop ears. They brought the night’s lessons full circle, at 33 and a third. —Derek Jennings
Star of it all. [Photo by Derek Anderson for Independent Weekly]
Duke’s sometimes-sterile Soul Power series got scrubbed with grit Friday night: In front of a sold-out Page Auditorium crowd, Mavis Staples worked her powerful contralto with a guitar-bass-drums combo. Swampy and full of grit, they were the ideal backing band, recalling a power-trio Creedence Clearwater Revival even before Staples led them through a workout of the Creedence hit, “Born on the Bayou.” Even the obligatory instrumental interlude did more than give Staples a break: It actually made listeners forget (albeit for a moment) they were there to hear Staples sing.
But when Mavis took center stage again, there was no question whose show it was. We were held hostage by her stage presence, enchanted during the narrative “Down In Mississippi” (from 2007’s Ry Cooder-produced We’ll Never Turn Back) and swept up by what Staples called Martin Luther King’s favorite, “Why Am I Treated So Bad?” Packing a whole lotta punch into a too-brief set, Staples took turns at Buffalo Springfield (“For What It’s Worth”) and The Band (“The Weight”, giving a nod to her performance on The Last Waltz) before closing with the Staples’ own No. 1, “I’ll Take You There.” And that encore of “We Shall Not Be Moved”? Beautiful. (more…)
Sherwood is exactly the kind of band you’d expect to discover while working at a summer camp in California. The San Luis Obispo-based group’s 2005 debut LP, Sing But Keep Going, offers up sunny, Beach Boys-influenced pop-rock perfect for teenage summer soundtracks (or maybe I was 20?). After putting out an EP with the help of scene heavyweight Absolutepunk.net, the band graduated to MySpace Records for 2007’s A Different Light, which was even poppier with cranked synths and hellogoodbyed beats. While solid within the genre, it was a step back for a young band whose early maturity and classic pop set it apart from scores of similar bands.
Performing Monday at Vintage21, a new Raleigh venue that shares their space with a nondenominational church (check the paper in a few weeks for the full story), Sherwood unfortunately leaned too heavily on its more recent, more lightweight fare, barely distinguishable from tourmates Houston Calls, The Higher, and We Shot The Moon (three bands that probably have more MySpace friends than Tom): Sherwood traded in on its pop sweetness to emphasize the latter half of pop-rock. The blunt attack of loud guitars and synth stole the dynamics, burying the backing harmonies that make the band’s hooks work. Although Mike Leibovich was entertaining, flailing about on the keys, and the cover of The Get Up Kids’ “Holiday” was a fitting tribute to one of Sherwood’s forefathers, the band spent most of the set playing down its strengths. Still tight performers and still quite good at what they do, Sherwood’s problem is that it’s now surrounded by bands doing the same thing. Count dudes down, but not out.
In the meantime, check two videos from the show—”Traveling Alone” and “Never Ready to Leave”—after the break: (more…)
Radiohead confirmed its May 9 date at Charlotte’s Verizon Wireless Amphitheater yesterday. And today, Pollstar reports Kanye West’s tour with Lupe Fiasco, N* E* R* D and Rhianna will pull through the same amphitheater on May 8. Kanye’s tour will also stop in Raleigh on May 9 at Walnut Creek, but he’ll have some competition back in the Queen City. So, which will you see? And would you trade R.E.M/Modest Mouse/The National for Radiohead in Raleigh?
The Chapel Hill location of Schoolkids Records on East Franklin Street is closing its doors for good at the end of March. After more than 30 years of business in the town, owner Mike Phillips says foot traffic virtually died at the store in the last 16 months. “As much as I would like to keep the store open as a national landmark, it’s not worth losing money,” Phillips says.
He plans to liquidate most of his stock and transfer what’s left to the Raleigh location, which will remain open as long as the store makes a profit. “We’ll lower things to cost to get rid of them,” he says of the Chapel Hill stock, “but that’s not exactly any savings for anybody because the damn things cost a fortune.”
Phillips blames rising CD prices and widespread music downloading for the Chapel Hill location’s quick decline in sales. “Our bread and butter has always been college kids, but these kids are savvy,” Phillips says. “If you can download these things free of charge, there is no reason in most cases to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a hard copy. The record companies these days are basically run by CPAs. ... [They] don’t realize when a list price on a compact disc is $19, people are not going to pay that.”
Independent music distributor Redeye, based in Mebane and partly managed by former Schoolkids employees, approached Phillips to purchase the store, Phillips says, but the deal fell through. “Everyone hates to see a landmark like this close and they felt that way too, but they just have too much going on to deal with this.”
“One of the guys who works here used to work there, and he personally was very interested in seeing what the possibilities were,” says Redeye co-owner and label manager Glenn Dicker, adding that no official offer was ever made. “We have so many different initiatives on our plate that opening a physical retail store seemed like a very difficult thing to take on.”
Schoolkids Records music stores have been in most major college towns on the East Coast. The chain started in 1972 in Athens, Ga., and the Chapel Hill store, now at its third location on East Franklin Street, opened in 1975. A second storefront in Chapel Hill opened in 2005 but closed last year.
“Many of our sister stores have moved toward being half-music, half-lifestyle stores,” says Ric Culross, manager of the Chapel Hill and Raleigh locations. “They’re also selling black lights and T-shirts—current trends—because the markup is huge.”
Still, Phillips says the days are gone when independent music stores can make a large profit. “No one will ever make any money doing this, but there are those who still love doing it. They will have to be very shrewd business people and really know what they’re doing.” —Mosi Secret
Raleigh’s DJ Forge will be behind the turntables tomorrow night for the Love is Local hip-hop showcase at the 506. He put together this exclusive mix for the Independent Weekly. It’s streaming over at 8 Days a Week, but you can download it by clicking right here.
Nick Petersen’s long-standing Track & Field studio and rehearsal space leaves the backside of The Reservoir in Carrboro at the end of the month, but not before a holy-hell! two-night stand of shows. Here’s the lineup:
New Bellafea jam: “No Shrouds, No Veils,” during a headlining set at Nightlight.
A lunar eclipse had just occurred when Valet—Honey Owens + Brian Foote and Bradford Cox on this night—took the stage. “Keehar,” this tune off of Valet’s second Kranky album, felt just right for the occasion: Spooky but so pretty. To hear it, hop past the jump, dawgz.
This one really stings. When John Howie, Jr., announced last month that his country band the Two Dollar Pistols was closing up shop, it meant saying farewell to a group that I’d been following for over a dozen years. The Pistols’ earliest shows at the Cave were treasures—part residency, part workshop, and all joy. John unveiled his heartbroken and hungover originals (“I’ll Tell the Bottle” was an early fave) among classics from Harlan Howard, Roger Miller and other country tunesmiths. I caught the Pistols everywhere, from the usual suspects like The Brewery, Cat’s Cradle and Local 506 to that short-lived club in the formerly abandoned hotel by the Bulls ballpark. I’ve even seen them from six feet away at WXDU.
This type of bond between band and fan generally remains unspoken. In this case, I was lucky enough to write about the Two Dollar Pistols numerous times, review their records, probably leaning on a John quote—he likes to think of the Pistols as “a country band that likes R & B, that likes rock ‘n’ roll, that likes rockabilly, that likes The Beatles, but not a rock ‘n’ roll band that likes country music”—a little too much. It was the perfect go-to line and the perfect description of an outfit that could deftly transform the Replacements’ “When It Began” into top-shelf country-rock and then follow it with an original that sounded straight out of Bakersfield.
John was generous enough to reciprocate in kind. During a Cat’s Cradle show, he sent out the band’s take on Z.Z. Hill’s country-soul nugget “This Time They Told the Truth” to me. (It was a fitting choice because a mix tape from John sent me down the country-soul and Southern-soul path, a journey that’s brought me much enjoyment and my wallet much misery.) And in March 2003, a month after I lost my dad to cancer, I sat at one of the Cave’s booths with a group of friends and listened to John, in one-man Pistol mode, swap songs with a couple other local musicians. Near the end of the night, he dedicated Merle Haggard’s “Shopping for Dresses” to his father who had passed away the year before and who had introduced him to the music of Haggard, Johnny Cash and other country artists. He also dedicated the song to my father. Gestures like that you don’t forget, just like you don’t forget the first time you heard John and the fledgling Two Dollar Pistols launch into “Pick Me Up on Your Way Down” in the low-ceiling confines of the Cave. (more…)
Somewhere, somebody just said, “More like 4.20, amirite?” Then, someone else said, “More like 4.28Diagrams, amirite?” Actually, I just did both. Ghostface, Raekwon, Method Man, GZA, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa, Cappadonna, Street Life come to Raleigh at last.
