Last Week in Live Music: Arctic Monkeys, Blowfly, Tomten, and More

Arctic Monkeys turn on the glam (and the mirror balls). (photo: Tony Kay)

After a long live music drought, I found myself thrown by happy circumstance into no less than five shows last week. It only felt right to share.

Getting out of your comfort zone is essential to shake the dust off of your eardrums, and catching Shemekia Copeland and the Robert Cray Band at their August 10 ZooTunes gig did just that for me. Bluntly put, most modern blues leaves me cold: Too often, the cut-to-the-bone honesty and sweatiness of real blues gets sacrificed to cozy ducks’-ass slickness by modern players. But Copeland and Cray eased my resistance some.

The blues literally runs in Copeland’s blood. Her daddy was the late, legendary Texas blues guitarist Johnny Copeland, and she’s blessed with one powerhouse of a voice, a room-filling and rich instrument that can steamroll a riff with the best of ‘em. Live, her thundering delivery helped dirty up the glossiness of some of her new material, and when the song quality intersected with her singing (as on the smoldering anti-abuse cut, “Ain’t Gonna Be Your Tattoo”), the already-warm Sunday afternoon got ten degrees hotter.

Robert Cray, Sunday’s headliner, became the poster boy for modern blues when he first broke out 25-plus years ago. A spiritual kin to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Cray likewise infuses his blues playing with rock shadings, and he’s a magpie of a songwriter, cherry-picking elements of reggae, ska, and arena rock for his original tunes. That broad range sometimes renders his material homogenous, but Cray’s astonishing playing invigorated every song in his 90-minute set: Each solo he fired off was so hook-laden, he was practically building songs within songs with each lick.

Two days later, England’s Arctic Monkeys played the second of two sold-out shows at the Paramount. Amazingly, almost a decade has passed since the band reinvented the British guitar rock wheel with a speedball of Buzzcocks-tight riffs and wry lyrics, and in the interim they’ve honed their already-assured live shows to near-lethal efficacy. Alex Turner played the Rock Star to the hilt last Tuesday, prowling the stage and combing his well-tended pompadour like some whippet-thin British Elvis. Best of all, his theatrics never detracted from his evocative croon. The rest of the band backed him like champs, and the songs off their latest album, AM, flowered into glittering (literally, given the impressive light show) live arena-disco-glam anthems that sent the mostly all-ages crowd into a surging frenzy.

Blowfly holds court at Barboza. (photo: Tony Kay)

The scale got way smaller—but no less sweaty—Wednesday night, when smut-soul legend/proto-rapper Blowfly turned Barboza into Ground Zero for one ass-kicking house party. DIY before the writers who invented the term were probably even born, Blowfly’s potty-mouthed parodies of classic soul songs provided the raunchy touchstone from which gangsta rap was born, and last week he barked out those tunes in a voice so ragged it coulda taken the varnish off every piece of furniture in the room. Blowfly’s backing bands have been hit or miss over the years, but the players shoring up his superhero-suited antics kept things tight and funky last Wednesday. Major bonus points were provided in the form of two local acts: NighTrain drummer Taryn Dorsey fronted her other terrific band WISCON like a member of the Ronettes being backed by Devo, while The Gods Themselves’ awesome middle set wedded post-punk tautness with some funk snap and lead singer Astra Elaine’s wah-wah pedal sorcery.

In case you’re keeping score, this website is pretty much over the moon for the baroque pop stylings of Seattle’s own Tomten, and their record release show at the Crocodile last Thursday confirmed that they’re more than capable of bringing the dreamy magic of their recordings to a live venue, thanks very much. Bolstered by second guitarist Robert Bennett and a three-man horn section for several tunes, Brian Noyeswatkins and company added just enough live fire to the textured beauty of their tunes to satisfy in a big way during their set, and they executed my favorite encore of the week with a lovably ragged cover of The Velvet Underground’s “There She Goes Again” and an anthemic take on their original, “Jujube”.  I missed middle-slotters Add Ode, but the other opening acts, Spring (a Canadian psych-pop band that sounds like a winning cross between Love and Modest Mouse) and Heatwarmer (a local quintet that married Death Cab indie pop with prog-rock complexity), delivered sharp opening turns.

Marcia Ball at Jazz Alley last week. (photo: Tony Kay)

Friday night saw me ending the music week the way I began it—namely, with some blues. At first blush, Texas-born singer/piano player Marcia Ball cut an incongruous figure during her first Jazz Alley set Friday night (her tasteful dress and short-coiffed hair made her look more like a university professor at a party than a blues belter), but she delivered her set of original jazz-informed blues tunes with unforced grace. Backed by award-winning slide guitarist Cindy Cashdollar and an ace ensemble, the performance felt like a real group effort, almost to a fault (Ball plays a mean set of ivories, but didn’t really break out her own fireworks ‘til the closing number). But that’s just quibbling. As was, she and her band got a sizable corner of Jazz Alley dancing, and that easy Texas-cum-New-Orleans swing took a lot of the financial sting out of my $25 plate of ravioli.

Existential Dread Wants to be Funny

Get ready, Seattle, here comes Beckettfest! Yes, More than a dozen performance producing organizations throughout Seattle will be performing works of Sam Beckett including Waiting for Godot and that one with people in the trash cans. It’s depressing. Nothing happens. It’s inscrutable. It’s slapstick!

Yes, Beckett is funny. If you’ve seen Beckett’s work you know—or at least suspect—that he draws as much from the music hall as the mortuary. Gags abound, but in a rarefied air that makes them as liable to produce tears—or at least existential dread—as laughter. Pulling off such duality takes a light touch.

Much of Life = Play (through August 24th at West of Lenin) has the touch of a toddler petting a cat: halting, forceful, and backwards. Yet it is not without pleasure in acting, in technical design, and in direction—just rarely all at once.

We begin with Act Without Words, easily the most accessible of the evening’s pieces, in which Ray Tagavilla puts aside his usual tough-guy act for full immersion in the life of the silent-movie pratfall masters Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd. His goal is simple survival. Both his obstacles and resources are surreal. His interactions are a stock series of failures.

This is all perfectly Beckettian and in good fun but the pathos is missing and we fail to care about our hero or share his struggle. Tagavilla gives it his all but never admits any vulnerability. Furthermore the ragtime soundtrack distances the action. By reinforcing the association with Chaplin et al., the music sets expectations that the actions fulfill with little surprise.

In Rockaby Susanna Burney rocks a rocking chair as the light shifts over the course of a day and the waning years of her life. AJ Epstein gets the credit, in this piece, for his lighting deisgn. Rockaby reduces the situation to an extreme simplicity evoking both the universal and the quotidian. Burney’s recorded voice lulls us in its insistent recital of text that fills in all the details of the moment in an interior stream-of-consciousness. The words are confused, repetitive, and desultory. The pieces leaves us feeling that we’ve spent a day with an aging person whose mind is prone to drift.

The uniformity and lack of action places our focus on such fine points as the pace of Burney’s rocking, which speeds and slows, rising to a final rush before suddenly ending. That rocking moves her face through the light. As the Georgian window and Venetian blind gobos speed over her features they create a strobe effect in which we catch her alternately lit from behind and below making it impossible to definitively read her emotions. All we trust is her determined demand and only spoken word: more. Even in nursing home monotony she demands “More”. In this we get to the fear and sadness beneath Beckett’s laughter.

A chuckle or two is easier to come by in the light, yet pensive, Come and Go–the highlight of the evening–in which three women share a bench. They are still and silent with similar but distinctly different shades to their waiting. Kate Kraay disapproves. Kate Sumpter begrudges. Rachel Delmar disdains. They present gossip and the bonds and belligerence that define socially active lives in insular communities. We laugh from familiarity. Though their actions are broad and representative the subtlety of the variations gives life to their characters and Beckett even delivers a semblance of hope in the end. In addition to the fine acting Sarah Mosher’s costumes take notice along with Epstein’s lights and sound.

The Life = Play staging of La Derniére Bande (performed and directed by Burke Walker) deviates from Beckett’s writing in small but significant ways (risky in such precise writing) by reviving the original script of what we know as Krapp’s Last Tape. It is performed in French with English supertitles. In fact it is most appropriate to use the promoted title: La Derniére Bande (Krapp’s Last Tape en Français with supertitles). After all, the supertitles are so disruptive that they deserve top billing.

Beckett’s world is subtle. The supertitles mean we are constantly looking away from the physical acting to concentrate on the text and therefore miss Walker’s responses to the text, which, as in Rockaby, is mostly recorded. It is Krapp’s interior world but a distanced one from the past.

Even in the broadly physical comedy of the piece Walker seems to work to subvert the comedy of Krapp’s Last Tape. Relating Krapp’s name, his intestinal difficulties, and their relationship to Krapp’s guilty pleasure of banana binging, Beckett wraps fart jokes inside banana peels. The set up is barn-big and the delivery misses with painful deliberation. There is a slip, and a fall, but Walker shows all the work and still delivers a lackluster product.

Failure is inherent in comedy, but the kind of failure in this production is not Jacques Lecoq’s expert who attempts his signature and fails. It is not the harried go-getter who outsmarts the system only to trip on his own pride. It’s not even just an actor working hard at nonchalance. This goes beyond bad acting to intentional failure, as if it were Walker, the director, performing the failure instead of Walker, the actor. The performance is constantly dying, and at a geologic pace that further subverts any pathos, comedy, or even interest.

The saving grace of short works collections is that anything one dislikes will be over soon. Life = Play offers enough variation from Beckett that most will find something to like.

Tonight: Two “Almost Live!” alums return to Seattle, bring comedy to the Triple Door

I grew up revering the local sketch comedy show “Almost Live!” It was my Seattle education before I moved into the city, and still informs much of how I view the city (for better or worse).

Two of the show’s former cast members, Joel McHale and Brooks McBeth, are returning to the Emerald City for a show tonight at the Triple Door. McBeth is taping a comedy special here.

McHale should be known to most people because of his successful TV roles like as host of “The Soup” and on “Community,” and he’s a big reason why tickets are almost gone, but I think it would be a mistake to discount McBeth. He’s always been a touring, headlining comedian since he left Seattle for LA, and has made numerous TV appearances (see two below). He’s incredibly likable, and he’s from Renton, so you can expect plenty of topical, local humor. If that’s your thing.

Why Scarecrow Video needs to be preserved

(Photo: dailygrindhouse.com)

Sometime yesterday or early this morning, Scarecrow Video achieved their $100,000 goal on Kickstarter, with four weeks to go in the campaign. It only took about a week to get there. The project is for Scarecrow to transition from a video store into a nonprofit.  (Full disclosure, I was one of the earliest backers of the project).

While it’s very clear that there is a demand for Scarecrow, and I don’t feel the need to help further a crowd-funding campaign that has already exceeded its goal, I think there are some misconceptions about Scarecrow Video that should be addressed. Last night, I learned from SunBreak music editor Tony Kay that there was an article from KIRO about why Scarecrow shouldn’t even bother and just admit defeat and close shop. I found the article: it was adapted from a story on the “Jason Rantz Show.” I was actually quite impressed with the level of how short-sided this rant was. It’s also entry-level trolling, but hey, generate those clicks at all cost. It was also sadly predictable. There is always some devotee to the “free market” who seems to think that because video stores are closing, it also means video stores suck and therefore all video stores should close. But I think it also reveals an attitude that relies on misinformation and should be addressed. The article says:

This is a sad story but not because this company doesn’t have the support from the clientele to justify its existence as a for-profit business. It’s sad because these folks don’t realize this is a dead industry.

No one wants to rent DVDs and Blu-rays from brick-and-mortar stores anymore. Certainly not enough to keep a business open. That this place, Scarecrow Video specifically, is going out of business, it’s not any more tragic than a Blockbuster going out of business. Blockbuster went out of business and you don’t see people screaming about how bad that is.

Scarecrow Video is not some shrine of movie cinema that is keeping movies from being lost forever. They want you to think that, but that’s not the case. These films will always exist if people want to watch them. The films will always be accessible, just in a different format, in a digital format. Digital is cheaper and better for pretty much everybody involved. In fact, one could argue it’s more noble to encourage more digital preservation of films on the web.

In a lot of ways, Scarecrow has given up on their business model. It is why they are shifting away from being a video store into a nonprofit. But this rests on the idea that Scarecrow is “just a video store” with a lot of titles and that Netflix can fill the void. Saying “these films will always exist if people want to watch them” is horribly myopic. That’s the problem, because films are important not just as passive entertainment, but to also provide a portrait of their time. They are incredibly important to researchers, for example. Scarecrow Video’s location near the University of Washington reinforces that point.

The people who need, or want, to view films beyond the cultural zeitgeist also need a place where those films are accessible. Relying on the Internet to fill that gap is a recipe for disaster. Netflix hosts a lot of films, many, many thousands of them, in fact. But their catalog is limited (so is Scarecrow’s, obviously) and they only offer what they’re able to license. That’s fine for someone who wants to find something entertaining to watch for an evening, and can choose a “Plan B,” but that doesn’t work for someone looking for a specific title that time that is just outside of our collective memory. Moreover, the access to those items could be limited if access was controlled only by online gatekeepers. That isn’t a concern when there’s a physical copy available (or at least in existence).

Another example. Every year, I’ve covered the Seattle International Film Festival and have conducted dozens of interviews with filmmakers. One question that seems to genuinely puzzle directors is when I ask how I can view their previous films. A common scenario is that a distributor buys the rights to a film, it gets a limited theatrical release, has a small life on VOD and Netflix, and then Netflix declines to license the film after a year to save their bandwidth for something that would attract more viewers. Where does it go from there? Scarecrow, while carrying literally every title available is impossible, is passionate about preserving films that would otherwise be forgotten by time. I’ve constantly been amazed at how I’ve been able to find films in their deep catalog that I haven’t been able to find elsewhere, no matter how creative I can be with Google searches.

Another scenario that would be more than unfortunate is what would happen to the video library that has been compiled and, yes, curated? I’m reminded of a story in the Village Voice from two years ago about the fate of the video library for Mondo Kim’s in New York City when the chain of video stores was forced to close. TL;DR version: It had a collection of somewhere around 55,000 titles. Rather than donating to a local educational institute (NYU and another art school declined to take the collection as a whole, a nonnegotiable point), it was sent to a small town in Italy, where it languished for several years in a storage locker, unknown to most people in the town.

I suppose, though, that this is all moot. That Scarecrow Video has exceeded its fundraising goals in a much shorter time than could be expected. It let the market speak, and the market said it should be preserved (though more as a library than a video store, as we’ve come to know them). But there are some people who don’t think libraries should exist, either. That’s fine, because there are enough people who think they should.

A Whole Bunch of Photos from Pizza Fest

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Friday-Acapulco Lips01
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Saturday-Birth Defects01
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UBU ROI at Pizza Fest (at the 2 Bit Saloon), Thursday 8/14/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

No Grave at Pizza Fest (at the 2 Bit Saloon), Thursday, 8/14/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

No Grave at Pizza Fest (at the 2 Bit Saloon), Thursday, 8/14/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Summer Babes at Pizza Fest (at the 2 Bit Saloon), Thursday, 8/14/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Summer Babes at Pizza Fest (at the 2 Bit Saloon), Thursday, 8/14/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Acapulco Lips at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Friday, 8/15/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Acapulco Lips at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Friday, 8/15/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Big Eyes at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Friday, 8/15/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

The Shivas at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Friday, 8/15/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

The Shivas at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Friday, 8/15/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

The Shivas at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Friday, 8/15/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

The Shivas at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Friday, 8/15/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

The Shivas at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Friday, 8/15/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

"The Black Olives" (La Luz) at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Friday, 8/15/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

"The Black Olives" (La Luz) at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Friday, 8/15/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

"The Black Olives" (La Luz) at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Friday, 8/15/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Birth Defects at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Saturday, 8/16/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Birth Defects at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Saturday, 8/16/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Pony Time at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Saturday, 8/16/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Pony Time at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Saturday, 8/16/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

The Coathangers at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Saturday, 8/16/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

The Coathangers at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Saturday, 8/16/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

The Coathangers at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Saturday, 8/16/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Musk at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Saturday, 8/16/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Musk at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Saturday, 8/16/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

White Fang at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Saturday, 8/16/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

White Fang at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Saturday, 8/16/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

White Fang at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Saturday, 8/16/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

TacocaT at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Saturday, 8/16/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

TacocaT at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Saturday, 8/16/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

TacocaT at Pizza Fest (at the Highline), Saturday, 8/16/2014.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

We sent star photographer Tori Dickson to all three nights of Pizza Fest, the garage/punk extravaganza at the 2 Bit Saloon and Highline. It featured favorites like The Coathangers, The Shivas, and local luminaries like TacocaT, Pony Time, Summer Babes, and a lot more. Enjoy these photos!

Live Show Review: Bobby Bare Jr. at the Tractor Tavern

Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins

This past Saturday night, the fantastic Bobby Bare Jr. and the current iteration of his backing band, the Young Criminals’ Starvation League, came through town, playing one of his favorite venues in town — the always perfect Tractor Tavern. I’m glad I got to see Bobby come through this time, because he’s one of my most favorite acts to see live, and it had been nearly three years since I’d last seen him — the longest such stretch I’ve gone without since I first saw him ten years ago.

The band played a 90 minute set full of songs both old and new. For this go-round, The Young Criminals’ Starvation League had two members in addition to Bobby — Matt Rowland (with a massive beard) on keyboards and backing vocals, and Doni Schroader (dressed in a skeleton costume) on drums — and they played well. Both Rowland and Schroader helped Bobby make his new album Undefeated, his fifth album with the YCSL, and eighth full-length if you include his Bare. Jr. albums and the live album that came out in 2006.

While Bobby proceeded to get drunk on stage, encouraging the packed-but-not-quite-sold-out crowd to drink along with him, the band would play classic rock standards in the background. Per usual, Bobby did a lot of talking with the crowd, and the crowd was more than happy to converse with him, even though his speech grew slurred by the end of the evening. His drunken state didn’t slow down the songs, or Bobby’s ability to absolutely slay them on stage. Bobby’s style is sloppy even when he’s sober — the words don’t roll off with clarity, but with a slight, purposeful off-beat slowness to them. Bobby’s a kind of country/rock n’ roll Snoop Dogg. And it’s brilliant.

He of course played “I’ll Be Around” — arguably his biggest “hit” to date (excepting the grammy-award winning work Bobby did as a kid when singing with his dad, Bobby Bare, Sr.) One of the highlights of the set was “The Cover of Rolling Stone,” which you’ll probably remember from the song’s 1972 version, sung by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show. The song was written in the early 70s by Shel Silverstein (of Where the Sidewalk Ends fame), who has a long history with the Bare family. Silverstein, Bare Sr. and Bare Jr. teamed up on many a song when Bobby was younger. To hear Bobby perform this song here, today, it’s nothing short of pure magic.

The band ended up playing two encores — one of which was entirely faked. “We’re going to pretend we just walked off stage and then came back.” They then played one song, and left the stage for what I thought would be for good. But no, the house lights and music didn’t come up, so the crowd kept cheering, and the band came back out in short order. They then proceeded to get the entire crowd moving with “Rock n’ Roll Halloween” — an awesome, name-dropping sendup of people in famous costumes.

This wasn’t the best Bobby Bare Jr. show I’ve seen. But, at 11 performances logged, there’s bound to be some good ones and some “just fine” ones. This was in the “just fine” category for sure, and I’ll come back next time he comes through town, expecting nothing less than the same.