You're Always at the Wrong Party

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New Pornographers with Okkervil River at the Cannery Ballroom

For a Friday night, this one already had one strike against it. It was pouring rain like the monsoon season of some remote island country, and me without my umbrella. Then we arrived at the Cannery only to find out that Neko Case had dropped out of the tour due to a foot injury a day or so before the Nashville show. That was strike two.

Like a band with some place else to be, Okkervil River took the stage right at 9:00, and the big disappointment began. Will Sheff turned out to be one of the least engaging front men I've ever seen. It wasn't so much that he wasn't trying, but rather that he was trying too hard to convince me he was worth my attention. The thing is, I didn't need to be convinced, and all he succeeded in convincing me of was the exact opposite. His movements were unnatural and forced at best, and down right absurd at worst. At no point did I actually believe Will Sheff felt his own music.

Fortunately for Sheff, the rest of Okkervil River seemed to be more concerned with actually playing their instruments, but unfortunately for the audience, Sheff's antics only prevented his band from successfully supporting their singer. Their performance did manage to get better as it went on, but the damage had already been done. Sheff's overcompensations not only hurt the band's performance as a whole, but actually managed to change my opinions about Okkervil's 2007 album, The Stage Names. The best thing I can say about Okkervil's performance is that the unexpected support of guitarist Greg Whelan of the Wrens for the duration of Okkervil's half of the evening actually seemed to add strength and balance to the band's performance. Too bad it wasn't enough.

I can't explain how grateful I was when the New Pornographers took the stage. Here was a band with no misconceptions of their role as entertainers. A.C. Newman, wearing the shirt and beard he probably woke up in, led his band through song after song of nonstop, high-energy, indie rock. This was exactly what I came to see. As a matter of fact, the band performed brilliantly, even without Neko Case, and her presence was hardly missed. I mean, she wasn't there, and you certainly noticed that, but from the moment the band kicked off their first song, you suddenly didn't care. This certainly speaks volumes for Kathryn Calder, who more than filled the gaps left by Case's absence. Highlights included epic performances of "Electric Version," "Testament to Youth and Verse," "Twin Cinema," "Sing Me Spanish Techno," "Use It," "The Bleeding Heart Show," which many people will recognize as the song from the Phoenix University commercial, and an unexpected but well-received cover of "Don't Bring Me Down," which sounded EXACTLY like ELO's original studio recording.

There was certainly a suprising lack of material from the Pornographers' most recent album, Challengers, but that really didn't matter much. The band's energetic, no-nonsense performance more than made up for any complaints anyone might have had about the set list, as well as the poor weather and the lackluster performance of the night's openers, Okkervil River. No hard feelings, though. Near the end of the night, A.C. Newman admitted to enjoying Okkervil's presence and invited Sheff on stage for a brief collaborative effort. With The New Pornographers as his backing band, Sheff was actually slightly less irritating, but only slightly.

It was certainly a night of highs and lows, but for the most part it was money well spent. Especially considering the Cannery Ballroom is one the worst sounding venues in Nashville. Overall it was a good night. If you've got a chance to catch the last leg of this tour, do it. Maybe Okkervil will have their shit together when you see them. One can only hope.

Soap Box

First let me say that there are political forces at work all the time in just about every issue imaginable trying to sway your opinion one way or another. 99.9% of the time money is the motive behind all of it. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. The very nature of capitalism nearly demands things be that way in order for an economy to be successful.

However, when that principle is applied to environmental issues, it only complicates things. This is why millions of Americans either believe global warming is a myth, or are completely confused about the issue all together. Everyone has an agenda to push and everyone wants to get paid for what they do. Don't be fooled by car and oil companies who are already congratulating themselves on a job well done. When you see that sign at the gas station saying "all octanes contain some ethenol" you should be angry. Ethanol is NOT a cleaner burning fuel.

The following video is a message about liquid coal. The people who made it have an agenda to push. So do the people trying to get liquid coal cleared as a viable replacement for gasoline. It's not the agendas that matter, what matters is preserving life as we know it on this planet. It's no longer about our children's children's children. It's not even about our children. At this point it's about us, right here and now. Don't get caught up with agendas and ulterior motives. These are merely distractions from the real issues at hand.



then go to We Can Solve It and read more. The more educated you are, the greater your chance of making an informed decision about all of this.

I'll get down off my soap box now. Keep a close eye on the Farm Team this week as I'll be working overtime with updates, starting with a review of the Okkervil River/New Pornographers show the other night.

Sea and Here: Part One

Summer is fast approaching and that means many things, but most important among them is more shows. Here is a list of upcoming shows to catch if you are willing and able. For those of you in the Bowling Green, it's time to put down that remote, get up off your ass, and support some local music. There's life outside of Lost and Adult Swim, I promise.


Bowling Green (Bread & Bagel)

• Ocelots — 04.18
• Sound and Shape/Victory at Last/Bossa Nosferatu — 04.19
• Brooks Ritter — 04.25
  
• The Cash Wilson Band/Hue Deaf — 04.26
  
• Via Audio — 04.30
• Chainsaw Red — 05.02
• Aron Wright/Daniel Elsworth — 05.08
• Derik Hultquist& Redbeard Rattlesnake — 05.16
• The New Whole Usuals/Miss Umbrella & Josh Preston — 05.17
• Dancing with the Lion/Pineapple Explode — 05.23
• Micah/The Lasting — 05.24
• Von Guarde/Justin Weatherbee — 05.30
• Pokey LaFarge/Jordan "Funky Pants" Pendley — 06.03
  

Nashville

• Okkervil River/New Pornographers — Cannery Ballroom — 04.18
• Spoon — Vanderbilt — 04.18
• Aaron Robinson — The Groove Record Store — 04.19
  
• The Early Evening — 425 Chestnut Art House — 04.19
  
• Murder By Death — Exit/In — 04.20
• Sonic Youth — City Hall — 04.25
• Cory Branan — Douglas Corner Cafe — 04.25
• Pelican — Rocketown — 04.25
• Brooke Waggoner — The Basement — 04.25
  
• Destroyer — Mercy Lounge — 04.29
• Jay Reatard — Mercy Lounge — o4.30
  
• Lou Reed — Ryman Auditorium — 05.02
• Aaron Robinson — The End — 05.02
  
• Motion Decay — Springwater — 05.02
  
• The Dynamites — City Hall — 05.03
• British Sea Power — Mercy Lounge — 05.03
• Holy Fuck/M.I.A. — City Hall — 05.05
  
• The Sword — Exit/In — 05.11
• Sea Wolf — Exit/In — 05.23
• Silver Mt. Zion — Mercy Lounge — 05.26
• The Roots — Andrew Jackson Hall — 05.27
• The Kills — Mercy Lounge — 05.27
• Nada Surf — Mercy Lounge — 06.05

More dates in more places to be posted soon. For now, I must to go to work.

Chart Watch: Spin Doctors

Title: Pocket Full of Kryptonite (1992)
Label: Epic
Genre: High-energy folk

Pro-Social Content: None

Objectionable Content: "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" bids good riddance to a "b—ch" who totes a shotgun ("I hope you heard this song and it p—ed you off"). Superman's sidekick propositions Lois Lane to dump the Man of Steel on "Jimmy Olson's Blues" ("Come on downtown and make love to me... I got a pocket full of kryptonite"). "Refrigerator Car" refers to alcohol as a means of escape.

Summary/Advisory: Weird, bizarre stuff. This 5-million-selling album's dismal tone is accompanied by lyrics that devalue meaningful relationships and the establishment in general. In addition, Spin Doctorism has become a psychedelic cultural phenomenon with fans traveling across the country to take in concerts, an appeal due mostly to the group's high-energy, R&B-inflected funk. Spin past this downer of a disc.


Let me just start by saying that if you needed a reason not to buy this album it's because if you've heard any one of it's ten tracks, you've heard the entire album. If you feel the need to exert more energy than that on an album as repetitively mundane as Pocket Full of Kryptonite you're not just wasting your time, you're insulting the intelligence of your readers. That is of course unless you're writing for an audience of bible-humping fascist parents who fear the world around them and completely misunderstand and constantly misrepresent their own religion...

Now that's off my chest I think I can say with some degree of certainty that the Spin Doctors are not the first band in the history of Rock n' Roll to condone alcoholism. They also are certainly not the first band to be stalked from city to city by a horde of zombie-like cultists wreaking of Patchouli and burnt cannabis. Actually, I'm more shocked that anyone would want to see the Spin Doctors in concert ONCE, let alone an entire tour. Finally, "weird" and "bizarre" are just about the last two adjectives I would use to describe Pocket Full of Kryptonite; mediocre and derivative maybe, but never "weird" or "bizarre."

Films Greg Wood Should See

Today's post is a bit of a departure from my normal subject matter, i.e. it is not directly related to music. It is however, directly related to a man who is closer to my heart than any other fellow heterosexual male not directly related to me by blood: Greg Wood.



For those of you who don't know Greg, he writes Kick the Amp Over, which is also linked in the Label Mates section of this blog. I have known Greg since the dawn of civilization, which by my calculations happened sometime in the early part of 1998. Throughout our friendship Greg and I have shared women, drugs, needles, sewing materials, underwear, drinks, sweaters, a ridiculous sense of humor, and an unhealthy love of music, among other things. OK, so really only the last three things in that list are true, but you'd never have known that if I hadn't told you so just forget this sentence all together for the purposes of this post.

One thing I know about Greg is that up until the past couple of years, he wasn't a big movie fan. Outside of a bizarre love for Owen Wilson, Zoolander, the collected works of Wes Anderson, and Cameron Crowe Greg always told me he had trouble sitting through movies and thus didn't really like them. All of that has changed now. About two years ago Greg expressed to me a new found desire to watch films and become more familiar with the language of the cinema. Well today's post is dedicated to films that Greg Wood should see. This may or may not become another reoccurring section of the Farm Team similar to Chart Watch, I haven't yet decided. Regardless, today's selections are of relevance to Greg because they had direct influence on Cameron Crowe, and more specifically influenced Crowe's film, Almost Famous.


The Apartment

Directed by Billy Wilder and winner of a whopping five Academy Awards including Best Picture in 1960, The Apartment stars Jack Lemmon as C.C. Baxter, a young entry level business man who's found that he can quickly climb the corporate ladder by allowing his multiple bosses to use his apartment as a safe haven to freely cheat on their wives. All is going according to plan until he falls for CEO J.D. Sheldrake's own mistress, Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLane). The film, at first a more or less straightforward screwball comedy, suddenly takes a dark and genre defying turn when Baxter comes home to find that Kubelik has attempted suicide by swallowed a bottle of Baxter's own sleeping pills. From this point on the film is about Baxter's desire to set things right and stand up for both himself and the woman he loves, meanwhile Kubelik must battle between her troubled relationship with Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) and her new feelings for Baxter.

Parallels can be drawn between Baxter and Crowe's Almost Famous protagonist, William Miller as Miller naively allows the members of Stillwater to push him around in hopes that it will eventually get him the story he is desperately trying to write. Also similarities can be seen between Kubelik and Penny Lane, as Lane finds herself the object of affection of both Stillwater's lead guitarist, Russel, and the young Miller. Lane's suicide attempt is actually a direct reference to the scene in The Apartment. Even Lane's memorable fur coat is a reference to a coat worn by MacLane at the end of the film. Crowe was actually such a fan of director Billy Wilder that he wrote a book entitled Conversations With Wilder.

The 400 Blows

The first of five films by director Francois Truffaut to feature actor Jean-Pierre Leaud in the role of Antoine Doinel, The 400 Blows is a fictional story about a troubled adolescent boy's attempts to make sense of a world that rejects him at every turn. More or less an autobiographical piece taken from Truffaut's own childhood, The 400 Blows was instantly hailed by critics and quickly defined Truffaut as France's leading New Wave director, also helping to define the genre and the use of Camera-stylo or the "Camera-as-pen" style of narative. Cameron Crowe did this exact same thing with Almost Famous. Taking another cue from Truffaut (who cast the then unknown Leaud as his lead), Crowe also cast an unknown actor, Patrick Fugit, to play his fictional childhood self. Like Doinel, Fugit's character finds himself in a world where no matter how close he gets to someone, he is inevitably doomed to remain an outsider.


Greg, you love Almost Famous as much as I do. You must see these films to truly see that Cameron Crowe is a bigger genius than we ever previously gave him credit. For everyone else, If you haven't seen any of these three films please do, and then come argue with me about them at great length.