The Night Porter - Mark Lanegan at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

The Night Porter.  The Beast in Me.  Oh, how long I’ve waited to see Mark Lanegan solo and acoustic.  Here comes that Weird Chill. Twenty years after my first Screaming Trees show.  In a cemetery, no less.  What a night!

            It was dusk when I arrived, but the moon was up and full already, shining down between the palm trees and headstones.  The famous Hollywood sign greeted me as I turned the corner and traced the path from the parking lot back to the main gate.  This was truly an inspired choice of venue and it set the tone for a rare performance from one of the most haunting voices in music.  It’s been six or seven years since Lanegan has played solo in the states, though he toured Europe with guitarist Dave Rosser last year, and played the El Rey with Isobel Campbell as recently as last October. As great as that was, he was in a support role.  These solo shows are a much more low-key affair and they are all about Lanegan.   No time for solos or guitar noodling.  This is the man: stark, raw and naked.  I have nearly worn out the bytes on my bootleg copy of the Glasgow show, so it was a great relief to have scored tickets for this before it sold out.       

            The venue was located upstairs in the Masonic Lodge.  A line some 200 people deep curved around the interior of a large anteroom near the merch table and a makeshift bar selling beer and wine.  Openers Sean Wheeler and Zander Schloss were on hand to greet some friends and when the opened the doors to the hall I spotted Eric Erlandson (guitar, Hole) posing with a fan for a pic.  The other Gutter Twin was also spotted; on my way out I bumped into Greg Dulli.

            The hall was narrow and long, and well suited for film screenings as the vintage posters from Chinatown, Easy Rider and Star Wars indicated.  Two mikes on stands fronted the shallow, low rising stage and along the back wall where five what I would have to call ‘thrones’ of various height and ornamentation. A five tiered candelabra stood stage left. One could easily picture the Knights Templar (or the Stone-cutters) conducting their rituals and ceremonies in this somber chamber.  I doubt they could have pictured Sean Wheeler and Zander Schloss.

            They were an unlikely seeming duo, coming from disparate backgrounds but with deep punk roots, the self-effacing Wheeler was intimidated by the crowd’s rapt silence and mentioned as much to the amusement of the audience.  This weren’t no punk rock dive bar. His raspy demeanor and playful stage banter reminded me of a cross between Chris Isaak and Iggy Pop. Schloss looked like a punk-rock David Lindley, in his polyester suit and fat tie. They had some great tunes with a Palm Desert / Meat Puppets vibe going and killer harmonies.  During Schloss’s bouzouki (which he later informed me was the Greek and not the Irish version) driven “Song about Songs” Wheeler draped himself across one of the thrones before rejoining on harmonies for the last chorus.  Their road-, world-, love-, life-weary lyrics were heartfelt and humorous and their CD kept me awake throughout the 90 minute ride home. 

            Then it was time for Mark.  Guitarist Jeff Fielder, whom I recognized from Isobel Campbell’s band, took the stage first to tune up.  Then the lights dimmed and up the right side aisle came Mr. Lanegan, slouching, sullen and with his hands deep in his pockets.  After the perfunctory greeting to end the applause Fielder began the measured arpeggio of “When Your Number Isn’t Up” and Lanegan took the mike with one hand and with the other grabbed the stand in the middle like it was the only thing holding him down to earth.  Eyes closed, scowling for the night porter.  Then one after the other they poured out, “No Easy Action”, “One Way Street”, “Don’t Forget Me”.  Similar set-list to the European shows from the beginning, and if you don’t have those releases get them.  Fielder definitely studied Rosser’s work in arranging his sparse accompaniment to fully compliment and bring The Voice to the fore.  His handling of the Screaming Trees chestnut “Where the Twain Shall Meet” from 1989’s Buzz Factory stripped back the psychedelic veneer of the Conner brothers squalling guitars and laid the song bare, receding to almost to nothing under the whispered recitation of the verses and then swelling up again to crash upon the chorus.

            Then came a real treat; new material.  While it was a bit more rickety and less rehearsed and polished than the other numbers Lanegan offered up a solo arrangement of “Burning Jacob’s Ladder” recently released as a download with the video game “Rage”.  It seemed like the bridge went a little long as Lanegan missed his cue to come in a with the final verse, but it made witnessing their interaction all the more exciting as he tried to recover.  While it seems like a smile would crack his face, his sheepish shrug was an endearing moment of levity.  Before ending the set he also included the Johnny Cash sung / Nick Lowe penned “Beast in Me” from the Hangover 2 soundtrack.  While it was great to hear him step into the Man in Black’s shoes for a moment, I don’t feel he added as much of his own stamp to it, as he has with other covers (Dylan’s “Man in the Long Black Coat” for example).  Still great that he is getting major soundtrack work.  That should pay the rent between shows for awhile.

            The show ended and there was no where to hide onstage, so after a brief pause behind the stage right curtain, Lanegan and Fielder stepped up for a five song encore, beginning with the early Pink Floyd cover “Julia Dream”.  Then the haunting lament of “Bombed” stretched like Bubblegum across the room, 90 seconds of confession that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.  He closed with a long, raga-esque “Halo of Ashes” another Trees’ tune from 1996’s Dust.  Once again, during the bridge he went off into outer (or inner?) space and at times it seemed like Fielder was trying to coax him into returning, accenting his notes at the top of each four bar turn-around to compel him back into the song, but Lanegan would just close his eyes and sway, and let him take another lap.  Finally he came to and both belted out a final chorus, harmonizing the last note and letting it float over the crowd.  As he exited I swear that note was still there somewhere high above us while we rose to our feet and applauded.  And in typical Lanegan fashion, he was offstage and gone before it was finished.

Chris Robinson Brotherhood at SoHo

Chris Robinson at SoHo

A friend and I were sitting in my car passing a pipe back and forth during the set break for the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, the Black Crowes singer's hiatus project, solo vehicle and Dead cover band, when he handed it back to me and said "I'm good" two hits into it.  "Oh yeah," I said, "you don't want to be too high for Chris Robinson," in faux sarcastic admonishment.  He looked at me in mock shame and nodded.  "Maybe one more toke."

Nobody could be as high as Robinson.  Not only is he as high as a kite (we watched him take his own little toke break as well) but he rides a pretty high horse and isn't afraid to tell you how he feels about anything.  Maybe it's the elevation in Topanga, which is referenced often in his lyrics as some kind of hippy Mount Olympus.  He is taking his little band of brothers, which includes Crowes keyboard player Adam MacDougall and former Ryan Adams Cardinal Neal Casal on a rotating residency of California roadhouses from March through May.  He plays every other Tuesday at SoHo in Santa Barbara, where I caught him on a recent stop.

Comparing the Black Crowes and the Brotherhood is easy.  Just take the songs about heroin and whiskey and replace them with songs about weed and hippy girls.  Musically, it's a stone groove, mellower and more effortlessly danceable than some of the monolithic riffs cooked up by brother Rich.  The Crowes have always been a musical melting pot, a sauce with a rich Stones base, a little Zeppelin for texture and a dollop of Faces-era Rod Stewart.  The Brotherhood is equal parts Gram Parsons, Harvest-era Neil Young and blue-eyed southern soul recalling the seveties solo output of that other famous brother, Gregg Allman (check out "Girl, I Love You").  And a whole lotta Dead.  Three tunes of the set actually, with New Minglewood Blues showing up early in the first set, Viola Lee Blues to open the second and Mr. Charlie to close the show.  After his tenure with Phil Lesh, this may be the one of the best Dead cover bands on the planet.

As for the rest of the set, the solo material filled in the spaces between the covers, and while they are able to establish a pretty good groove,  it doesn't really lift off in flight like the Crowes can and do.  In fact, despite how obviously he wears his stoner tendencies on his sleeve, the songs seem grounded in their subject matter: love, family, fatherhood.  Some of the imagery is hippy-dippy ("Eagles on the Highway", "Tubleweed in Eden") and doesn't really resolve into much of a narrative, other than an exhortation to follow Robinson's messiah-protagonist on a "ride, "drive" or "to the other side", mining the same psychedelic themes of deliverance from the corporeal world as Jim Morrison, but without any of the darkness, death or apocalyptic imagery that made that material resonate so powerfully. 

If you want to shake your ass, you will not be disappointed.  But don't expect anything to shake up your world view.  In fact, it's when he addresses the crowd and rambles and digresses about life on the road, the superficial nature of Los Angeles audiences or the insular obsessiveness of video phones and those who insist on viewing him through a two-inch screen instead of enjoying the concert that Robinson is at his most revealing: the epitome of the self-righteous, condescending hippy.  I'm sure his rants allow him to blow off a little steam, but he often comes perilously close to revealing a deep lack of respect for the audience and disdain for the people that paid to see him, bought his records and paid for his mansion on the hill.  Each time I have seen him, with and without the Crowes, there have been moments where I felt that we lacked his approval as an audience.  Of course I have never been pilloried in the press, or had a very public cuckolding by Owen Wilson, but his assumptions that we can all relate to him and his complaints are a bit misguided. 

Definitely check him out; his band is tight, the covers faithfully renedered and his voice is world class.  He has after all played on the biggest stages in the owrld, inhabited the role of Robert Plant on tour with Jimmy Page and has a long pedigree of affiliations with the Dead and the Allmans.  But if you want to take the wheel and drive his ride to the other side, you better take another hit first and smoke it to the roach. Can you feel me now, brother?

NIN/JA 2009

Hey guys, I am no Lester Bangs, but here is a review I wrote for the Jane's show I worked in Santa Barbara last night.  I know they are coming your way soon.  NIN alternate with them as to who cloese the show, and I lucked out and caught them on a Jane's night.  Enjoy.

 

Three Days
Whores
Ain't No Right
...and She Did
Mountain Song
Been Caught Stealin'
Ted, Just Admit it
Ocean Size
Summertime Rolls
Stop
Jane Says

In 1988 I was fifteen and my two favorite bands were Guns'N Roses and Pink Floyd. When "Nothing's Shocking" came out I found it in the Record Town at Aviation Mall and bought it without ever hearing a song, just on the strength of the cover art and a review I had read in Rolling Stone. The vast sense of space, the atmospherics and the primal urgency seemed to me the perfect marriage of psychedelia and sleaze.  In the next year I smoked my first joint and lost my virginity: Jane's was the soundtrack for both events. I distinctly remember the sensation of floating while listening to "Summertime Rolls" and then coming down the mountain. The songs on the album melded together seemlessly and had such power and depth, blending together an Appetite for Destruction with the Delicate Sound of Thunder.  And the subject matter: these were not only lyrics but poems printed on colorful sheets of sound. Rock and Roll's "Leaves of Grass."
In 1991 I was in college and had the chance to see them on the Ritual de lo Habitual Tour, and then again later that summer for Lollapalooza, their farewell.  Too much time has passed for me to recall many details of either performance, but I do remember that being there and being a fan, being in that crowd and into that music made me feel a part of something bigger than myself, not so much of a movement, but that there were others out there like me and together without knowing it we were fomenting a change.  Jane's made bands like Nirvana and The Flaming Lips possible and ushered in a new sense of music as something redemptive and artistic, far beyond the party soundtrack hair-metal that had been the mainstream MTV and radio staples of the time.  But enough has been written about that time and Jane's significance.  Let's fast forward twenty years:
Lollapalooza is no more. Perry's Porno for Pyros and Satellite Party, his solo vehicles, lacked the "sum is greater than the parts" combined power that JA was able to summon. Navarro took over the guitar duties in RHCP for a little while, but we all know that that is the real-life equivalent of drumming for Spinal Tap.  Jane's had a few "relapses" in the late nineties and early 2003, but again it was more like celebrating an anniversary than breaking new ground. Eric Avery left for a long time, occasionally to be replaced by Flea (who played horns on Nothing's Shocking's Idiot's Rule).  Stephen Perkins had no shortage of work, but never transitioned into anything as high profile, like Matt Cameron was able to do with Pearl Jam after Soundgarden broke up.  Navarro has married and divorced Carmen Electra, hosted two seasons of "Rock Star" and written a book about his addiction to heroin.  Perry turns fifty this year.
The NIN/JA tour came to Santa Barbara, reuniting two of the highlights from the original Lollapalooza lineup.  I was never a big NIN fan and completely missed their set.  When I got to the venue for my 9:30 union call Jane's was plowing through ..And She Did, the companion piece to Ritual's epic Three Days. The band was flanked by two towering silhouettes of headless naked women, obscured occasionally by a marine layer of thick fog and then illuminated by more lights than a high-school football field.  A shirtless Navarro, with nipple rings resplendant, worked the crowd at stage right, often stepping out over the line of monitors to play from the lip of the stage, mouthing the words along with Perry, tossing picks into the crowd in the most magnamimous of Rock Star gestures and chatting up every lithesome female in the orchestra pit.  With his Toreador pants, tattoos and a succesion of snap shot worthy stage poses, I found it hard to picture these guys ever playing dingy bars like the Roxy with the same arena rock bombast.  But it was always Jane's (or Perry's) mission to bring their music to a larger audience, so perhaps "sell-out" is not an appropriate term, but you really can't call them "indie" or "alternative". I guess I was just surprised at the level of "professional showmanship" that Farrell and Navarro seemed so eager to provide. 
I entered from the back rows and watched them finish and then launch into Mountain Song. The crowd seemed to really come alive at that moment and I saw a man my age with a son who was about tweleve hug each other and then begin a two (or one and a half) man mosh pit.  Avery and Perkins were locked in, with the droning no-frills bass line establishing a rock solid foundation for Navarro to (sigh) exactly duplicate every single note on the record. Not that you could ever accuse Jane's of being a Jam Band, but one thing that always disappointed me about thier live shows was the tendency to slavishly echo their recordings.  I always felt you went to a see live music to watch the artists push the envelope and expand upon the progressions and structures of the studio version: not so with these guys.  The only indication that you weren't watching a very expensive karaoke show was Farrell and his fifty year old pipes.  While he danced like a stripper and whirled like a dervish, when it came time to sing he couldn't seem to reach the notes in his original phrasing, and often strayed into a lower register seeming to be strugling for the breath to pierce through the din of his band mates. Sometimes he seemed even content to let the audience carry the tune.
But carry the tune they did, for regardless of the obvious passage of years, these songs had lost none of their power, nor their emotional resonance with the audience. Drawing only from their first three albums, completeley ignoring 2003's Strays - an elongated soundtrack to a Ford Explorer commercial - each one was an anthem to be savored and celebrated, a prayer that was being recited en masse. I took a position behind a monitor on Navarro's side of the stage and looking out into the crowd, every face was painted with rapture and every mouth was singing along. Perry spoke to the audience, expressing his appreciation for the great surf in Santa Barbara and then asked for every one to join him in counting "three, four!" As Navarro snuck in with the opening chords of "Ocean Size" I felt every hair on my body stand up and my eyes begin to tear.  As we all began to sway and nod our heads to the pulsating replication of a breaking wave, with the twinkling lights of oil rigs in the Santa Barbara Channel visible in the distance, one of the most powerful and life affirming sensations came over me.  It was the feeling of being completely in the moment, of thankfulness and appreciation for every circumstance, positive or negative, that had brought me in my life's journey to this place, this time.  In that instance I was able to rescind any complaint, forgive any greivance and transcend any transgressions I had felt up to now, for at that moment all my wishes had been fulfilled and I was Ocean Size.  After twenty years it was great to have that feeling back.  I would like to thank my wife for watching the kids for night and giving me the opportunity.  It's hard for me to believe that I even got paid to be there (easier when I think of the eight tractor trailers we loaded until 1 AM) because I would have done it for nothing.  Would I have paid to go?  No, not for only ninety minutes.  But if you like NIN, too, then you won't be disappointed.

Mudhoney at the Echoplex

Mudhoney is the older brother I never had to buy me alcohol in high school.  Mudhoney is a jean jacket with a Motorhead patch on the back.  Mudhoney is cheap beer in cans.  Mudhoney is spilled bongwater.  If listening to Jack Johnson is like standing under a Hawaiian waterfall, Mudhoney is like flushing your head in a toilet. If Pearl Jam is Curly, Mudhoney is Shemp.  If Soundgarden is Gallant, Mudhoney is Goofus.

I drove to the Echoplex in LA on Sunday night, an hour and a half to see Mudhoney.  I couldn't find the entrance on Sunset (found it for the upstairs lounge, Echo) so I had to ask some people on the street and they pointed me to an overpass bridge and told me to take the stairs.  Kind of appropriate to step through puddles of piss and homeless refuse to get to the venue, which I found tucked in an alley on the other side of the street.  After getting my wristband (without even being asked for ID, Touch Me I'm 37) I headed to what passed for a box office to collect my will call ticket.  I was impressed by how disaffected and bored the girl at the desk was as she crossed out my name and told me to go in.  I asked if I could also grab a few tix for the upcoming J Mascis show, a request that seemed more annoying than if I had asked her to clean her room. Tickets online only, was the terse response, delivered without eye contact. Ah, one day my own kids will regard me with such scowls, I'm sure.

When I got inside the singer for The Adolescents who looked like a fat Mitch Hedberg was pacing back and forth, complaining that even though he was a punk, that he just couldn't celebrate murder even of a terrorist mastermind. The lukewarm response from the crowd indicated that perhaps current events was not this crowd's strong suit.  Or maybe he just lacked the gravitas of a Bono or Vedder.  Anyway, they finished up with a cover of Who is Who, which got the mosh pit stirred up for about 90 seconds and then left the stage. 

Twenty minutes and a PBR later, I staked out my position up front for Mudhoney. Mark Arm, in t-shirt and jeans looked skinnier than I had ever been twenty years ago, and had the sparkle-jet Gretsch that Chris Cornell used in the Black Hole Sun video.  Steve Turner had a Pearl Snap shirt that looked like it was ripped off a scarecrow. He had a sweet ES-335 and loped into the opening riff from You Got It. This was my first time seeing new bassist Guy Maddison, who looks like a puffier, stouter version of Jim from The Office. By the time Dan Peters ended the snare roll that kicked the tune into gear, my feet were off the ground and didn't return for the next forty minutes.  Sludgy classics like Suck you Dry, Into the Drink and This Gift poured out like Jagermeister from the freezer and the crowd jostled and jumped in a thronging pit that was more like a group hug than a threatening melee.  They let us catch our breath for a moment with the hypnotic sway of "When Tomorrow Hits" before launching off into the barely restrained cacophony of In'N Out of Grace. How great to scream along with the crowd through the classics.  My absolute favorite was Good Enough, a song that for me captures everyrthing that is fun about Mudhoney and about being a fan.

Arm put down the guitar and took the mike off the stand for a trio of tracks from 2008's stripped down The Lucky Ones and did his best Iggy Pop, leaning his head and torso way over the monitor into the crowd and cantilvering his back foot until you could see the bottom of his shoe, balancing on one leg like some kind of pose from Yoga for Stagedivers.  The band left the stage with the announcement "Paging Dr. Keith to the operating theatre" and returned five minutes later with Sonic Infusion, a gurgling, swirling psychedelic opus that made heavy use of Turner's wah pedal.  Hate the Police closed the show, the screaming refrain of "Mommy, I had a bad day" reverberating in my ears as we filed out in to the balmy, Santa Ana swept evening. I was amazed that these guys were still together, still tight and still as energetic in 2011 as they were in 1991. Hope they still rock as hard in 2031!