“The Robot” doesn’t cover this kid’s moves.

Then he goes all Björk on it. Then all Shakespeare on it.

Talk about flower power…

Super awesome electronica song playing over the sound system pre-concert at the Radiohead show last night. 

I wonder if the pre-concert playlists are hand-picked by the band.

Radiohead totally blew my mind last night. This is probably not news to you who have seen them, but it was so amazing to get to witness their thing live.

It was the normal five-piece they’ve always been plus an extra drummer (Portishead’s Clive Deamer) playing live drums and/or any loops via a Roland octo-pad of some sort. It was super bad-a. 

Peter and I were right down in the pit, too, which was such a gift. If we would’ve wanted to push through the few people in front of us, we could’ve literally touched Thom, Ed or Johnny.

Four things especially struck me (in no particular order):

• Thom Yorke is an amazing singer. His voice may have to grow on you, or you may hate it, but he’s righteous. The studio cuts are definitely not just studio magic covering weaknesses; he’s totally awesome. 100%. Nails.
• They don’t use tracks. They used a loop track on “Idioteque,” and a few vocal track things here and there on (two?) tunes w/multiple layers of vocals, but overall, everything we were hearing was being physically played by someone on stage. So great.
• Related to that, the subtle changes they did to the arrangements to make the no-tracks thing happen were an A+. Tasteful. Everything made sense. Everything just fit so well together. “Everything in its right place,” I guess. 
• They appear to still genuinely love playing as a band together. It was the stage presence of guys who are still interested in what each other are doing and how it’s coming across as a whole. That was so cool to see. I understand appearances can be deceiving, but I’m going to put any cynicism aside and say that they still love being a band. And it shows. 

Setlist (w/two encores):

1. Bloom
2. 15 Step
3. Kid A (yeah…totally awesome)
4. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
5. Staircase
6. I Might Be Wrong
7. The Gloaming
8. Separator
9. Like Spinning Plates (just Thom on live piano and Colin on bass)
10. Morning Mr. Magpie
11. Climbing the Walls
12. Identikit (new, and awesome)
13. Lotus Flower
14. There There
15. Feral
16. Idioteque
17. House of Cards
18. Mixomatosis (HEAVY!)
19. Supercollider
20. Reckoner
21. Give Up the Ghost (Thom & Johnny only w/a few vocal tracks layered)
22. Exit Music for a Film
23. Paranoid Android

So, as you can see, it was most of the newest record (King of Limbs) plus a fantastic smattering of many of their other records.

I will hopefully (and excitedly) be able to see them again sometime. If not, this was an amazing show, and certainly ranks as the best rock show I’ve ever seen, bar none. 

Bucket list moment: a series of fortunate/unfortunate events has led to me being able to see Radiohead tomorrow night here in Ohio. To say I’m stoked is an understatement.

I’m sure some sort of report to follow.

For anyone still subscribed to In Earnest for all-things-Asian-trips like I took and blogged about last year here, head over to Earnest! Asia! for this year’s trip. I archived all of my Asia Trip 2011 posts over there and will be using that blog as my trip(s) blog.

For anyone definitely not interested, feel free to ignore this. More music posts to come.

FYI.

Wilco on Austin City Limits. Full concert. This is so great.

Matt Johnson with St. Vincent. Notice the “womp” synth sound on the up beats that he triggers through the whole section of the tune. Really cool arranging between the live drums and the triggers.

If you haven’t listened to St. Vincent (lots of videos on that page), and you like A) creative pop music, or B) listening a total Bad-A guitar player blowing up the pop paradigm through deconstructionist arrangements, tones and textures all while holding up actual songwriting (i.e. the tune) supreme, then please give her a listen. She’s incredible. 

St. Vincent, stage name of Annie Clark, came through Columbus last night with a 4-piece. Herself on vocals and guitar (righteous guitar player), two synth players, and Matt Johnson (of Jeff Buckley’s Grace fame, among many others) KILLIN’ it on drums.

As you can see from the picture, Matt’s set up looked a bit nuts. Two kicks, a main snare, a side snare way to his right, another to his left. Triggers. Two sets of hi hats (one set on top of the other), and one lonely two crash-rides.

I traveled closer to his side of the stage (stage right, people, stage right) for a closer look, and his set up was actually really cool, especially when St. Vincent’s sonic landscapes are taken into account. In fact, I became more and more impressed as I realized what he was doing for the tunes throughout the show.

His “main” kit was a 24” kick, I think, and he had it tuned big, low and open, and it sounded so great. The other kick was smaller (22”? 20”?), and he had it tuned really dead and punchy. He played the “aux” kick with the left side of a double-pedal extension which was mounted right next to his “main” kick pedal. In other words, his right foot on the main kick pedal would move to the right a couple inches and be on the aux kick pedal, which lead over to the aux kick beater (a la Dave Weckl’s set up in the late 90s when he was doing two kicks). 

His main snare was tuned lower and open with a subtle ring to it, and the aux snare to his right was higher and tight. He had a 16” or 18” floor tom between the two kicks.

Basically, he had a wide-open kit on one side and a tight, punchy kit on the other. Same with the stacked hi-hats. One set was crisp, and the other was trashy sounding. And he often used his hi-hats as a crash. 

And everything was exquisitely tuned. Just awesome. And he played with finesse and lightness. Didn’t bash the guts out of the drums. Great touch.

I never saw what he was using for the trigger “brain,” but I presume it was a laptop based on the variety of sounds he was switching through from song-to-song and even section-to-section. Sometimes he was triggering a snare, sometimes electro hi-hats or big fake toms. Other times, he was triggering synths from St. Vincent records, or bleeps and bloops (I’ll post a video in a minute with that). It was VERY cool. 

And I didn’t even realize who he was until towards the end of the show. Great drummer. GREAT show. And probably every guy (and probably girl) in the place ended the night with a little bit of a crush on St. Vincent. 

Don’t settle for crap music, everyone. Keep it interesting. Keep it deep.

Japanese rockabilly gangs breakdancing to an awesome Peter, Bjorn and John tune? Yes, please.

I love Jack White more every day.

This is his all-male band called Los Buzzardos.

He also has an all-female band called The Peacocks. 

Can’t find this drummer’s name anywhere, but I’m diggin’ him. Anyone got a name? 

Update: Mr. Goold comes through, yet again. This is Daru Jones on drums. Link to Daru’s blog.

Loved her first record. Glad to be able to check this one out!

Spring cleaning.

This guy rules.

And that kick drum sounds killer.

That is all.

My friend Jared has started a great blog about his rediscovery of music. From his blog:

I haven’t seriously listened to music since 1995. Or maybe it was 1996—-whatever year was the year of Hootie and the Blowfish—-I stopped listening to music and it didn’t have a thing to do with Hootie. It’s like I just turned off the music. That’s it.

That is, up until about a year ago when some song came across my way that brought tears along with it and a realization that I’m missing out on something fundamental—-something more raw than the books and thinking and staring out the window are able to do.

About the same time as I stopped listening to music, it seems I also stopped writing. I stopped journaling. I stopped with the poetry.

Maybe they’re connected.

The link above is to a post I found very great, and you can read a response I gave in the comments as I began thinking through how different Jared’s inner life must feel than mine on a daily basis. (No good or bad distinctions—it’s just different. It’s super interesting to me!) 

Then stick around his blog to read the process. I’m so glad he’s being open enough to put this in a public forum, as well. This is just great!