79 -- Jeff Tweedy -- Tuesday, December 7, 2010 -- The Lincoln Theater -- DC

I should state up front that this was not my favorite Wilco show. It did not earn an 'A'. The biggest issue with the performance was that everything was acoustic. Stripping songs of instrumentals can be powerful, but that power is diminished when you’ve stripped every last one. With electric guitar, “Impossible Germany” is a triumph: a few odd lyrics held together for six minutes by an irresistible rhythm. Without the guitar, all you have are the lyrics – which don’t seem to connect. Another, less serious issue was the fact I didn’t know a lot of the songs – even though I’ve heard all seven studio albums multiple times. Including one or two obscure tracks is intriguing; including five or six is obnoxious.

Despite these problems, it was a Wilco concert, so I enjoyed it. I was still able to rely on “Jesus,” glide on “Hummingbird,” and fall in love in the key of C (“Shot in the Arm.”). There were also numerous songs which we­­re actually better at this show than previous shows. This version of “Via Chicago” had special significance considering the couple next to me flew in from Chicago for the show. This version of “One Wing” was especially haunting considering how fully it was stripped down. This version of “Spiders” was not the best I’ve heard, but it was daring. Starting a show with a low-key rendition of your most famous high-energy song is pretty bold.

Beyond the songs, what made the concert enjoyable was Jeff Tweedy’s wit. Like Ben Folds, Tweedy consistently wins over crowds with charm, gently chiding fans who shout out, ‘harshly rebuking’ himself for miscues, etc. This time it was funny to hear him lacerate himself for writing the lyric “you better turn your frown upside down,” and then qualify it by saying, “I can’t take it out though. Then I’ll get people saying, ‘Oh, but you see, that perfectly evoked what you need to overcome grief in modern society.’ Thank you for being nerds! J” It was also amusing to hear him tell the audience, “Feel free to join in any way you want – except with rhythmic clapping. That never works. How about rhythmic calling? [A few seconds later] Yes -- I think you’ve got that down!”

Overall, it may not have been a perfect show, but it did have a perfect ending. Tweedy had played with acoustic guitar the whole night, so the stripped-down style had long since lost its appeal. For the final song, though, Tweedy played “Acuff Rose” without an amp or a mic! To hear all 1200 people in the theater dead silent for three minutes was incredible. If Tweedy does something daring like that next show and throws in some electric guitar, I’m sure they’ll be right back up to an ‘A.’

Grade: B+

78 -- Rock and Cole -- Thursday, December 2, 2010

Note: In a few weeks, my students will read this entry as part of an SOL review project. That is why some of their achievements appear in it. ;)

There are many perks to being a teacher: working with hilarious students/colleagues, creating meaningful lessons, seeing students improve, etc.

One specific perk I get every November is participating in Rock and Cole. In the Rock and Cole project, students create their own mixed CD, matching five characters from the novel Touching Spirit Bear to five songs. (The project gets its name from Spirit Bear’s central character, Cole Matthews.) In the days leading up to the in-class concert, students scour book passages and song lyrics to find things that connect. On concert day, each student analyzes another student’s CD, trying to match the characters, songs, traits, and quotes. It’s also a pretty entertaining day, considering the desks are filled with 30-plus CD players, boom boxes, and headphones, and several students rock out as they work.

The best part for me is that I get to listen to all the CDs. New discoveries this year were B.O.B. / Rivers Cuomo’s “Magic,” Mike Posner’s “Cooler than Me,” Bruno Mars’ “Just the Way You Are,” and Disney’s “Colors of the Wind.” (Ok, so the last one wasn’t a ‘new discovery.’ I had, sadly, heard the Pocahontas song 300 times before.)

Student award winners for this year included:

-- Star Performers CH, LG, AK, AC, MP, NS, SS, IL, ZH, SS, RT, JW, CR, DE, FW, AC, SS, JM, JK, DR, AM, BH, and MV. These students proved they did not need a band or stage to perform. They could rock out in a DESK!

-- Star Reviewers JK, TP, DB, AM, SK, SJ, JK, DM, MS, CL, KW, KM, AG, HT, and ES. These students reviewed their CDs with the precision of professional rock critics. Wonder if Rolling Stone magazine is in any of their futures…

-- Rock Survivors AK and NH. AK and NH should be commended for making it all the way through their CDs, despite multiple CD / headphone debacles.

-- Rock Comics TK, SS, AL, CU, JT, CT, VJ, JW, FO, and CJ. These students should be recognized for filling the concert with funny moments. VJ, TK, AL, and SS, got amusingly angry at how many songs matched Spirit Bear’s main character. All of them asked the same basic question, “I get that Cole is a round, dynamic, three-dimensional character, but does EVERY song have to fit him?” It was also funny hearing CU shriek “most intense string ­­orchestra ever” in the middle of one of his songs, hearing JT shriek “I hate country” after every one of his, seeing CT try to get a addicting out of her head, and seeing VJ and JW flip out after each song on FO and CJ’s CDs. FO and CJ’s CDs prompted further amusement days later when each of the classes heard parts of them at the end of the period. (They were each played on GM's awesome Spongebob boom box.) After hearing all of them play, few students would argue that “I’m a Little Teapot,” Frank Sinatra’s “Happy Birthday,” and “I’m a Gummy Bear” weren’t among the year’s most memorable songs.

-- All students, for making this Rock and Cole the best one in four years. Each year’s concert has been successful (last year’s earned a B+), but this year’s was by far the best. More students submitted full folders than ever before, all students were able to find classmates’ Favorite Word on their folders, and very few students encountered logistical problems. In the end, I think SS and RT said it best: “Couldn’t we listen and learn from music every day?” If only…

Grade: A

77 -- Interpol -- Wednesday, November 3, 2010 -- DAR Constitution Hall -- DC

Ok, so this is going to be a very short review. It was great to see Interpol with Mike Vance and Jack Rollins. It’s great that Mike Vance and Jack Rollins really like Interpol. I, sadly, do not. I listened to all of their albums and tried to remain open minded during the show, but I just couldn’t get into it. “C’Mere,” “NYC,” and “Slow Hands” all have a moody indie appeal, but overall, Interpol’s not for me.

Grade: C-

71 72 73 74 75 76 -- POTUSOA / Live / Naughty by Nature / Everclear / Third Eye Blind / Billy Idol -- Sept. 18, 2010 -- Merriweather Post Pavilion

HFStival was fun because it was different. The lineup was all late 80’s / early 90’s bands (not exactly my genre), so it was a nice change of pace. I had also gone to the more modern Virgin Mobile Festival the past two summers, so I was ready for something new. The first band on stage when I arrived was Presidents of the United States of America.

Presidents of the United States of America

It’s hard to imagine a better opening band than Presidents. They played to a pavilion that couldn’t have been more than a third filled, and they walked off hours before Third Eye Blind approached the parking lot, yet they played like they were the main event. Frontman Chris Ballew slid up, down, left, and right on stage, practically daring the audience not to get into it. It was hard to miss the upbeat vibe: band members were dressed in blue, pink, and yellow pastels, resembling three human party streamers! Highlights of the party included “Peaches,” “Lump,” “Kitty,” “Boe Weevil,” “Video Killed the Radio Star,” and “Kick Out the Jams.” (I especially liked this “Jams” line: “I solemnly swear to uphold the constitution / Got a rock and roll problem? Well, we got the solution.” Catchy!)

Beyond the actual songs, though, what impressed me was their showmanship. Ballew played his guitar literally to the ground one song, jumped on top of a speaker for another, and timed a stage drop exactly for the last note of a third. I also enjoyed the ‘invisible’ harmonica solo and the playful shots at their old age: “We’re gonna have to take a deep breath and relax after the next song, considering all the lines of coke we’ve been doing…” In the end, Strike himself said it best: “You’ve gotta love everybody and make them feel good about themselves.” Mission accomplished.

Grade: A

Live

Initially, Live was a rough transition. Presidents bounced up and down and made you want to party. Live swayed, mumbled, and made you long for Nickelback.

Fortunately, after a song or two, things improved. There was still a lot of self-serious mumbling, but the audience started to recognize more of their songs: “I Alone,” “All Over You,” “The Dolphins Cry,” “Run to the Water” among them. The audience also seemed to appreciate the gallons of sweat frontman Ed Kowalczyk was pouring in. Midway through, Kowalczyk cracked me up when he said, “Y’all may have noticed that I use a lot of water imagery in my songs” a minute after I’d written, “Man, could you get any more water?!”

Live’s clear best song was the last one, “Lightning Crashes.” It had a slow build and a number of well struck power notes – a perfect ballad to end on.

Grade: B


Naughty by Nature

Naughty By Nature was hilarious. Initially, it seemed like they would not connect with the audience because their rap sound was nothing like the other bands’. They made up for this, though, by including every possible musical genre in their performance. Initially, there was also the issue of their hip hop style...not quite fitting the lily white Merriweather crowd. They made up for this by openly embracing the awkwardness. In one absurd 35-minute set, they sampled Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” DMX’s “Up In Here,” Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida,” 50 Cent's "In Da Club,” The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army,” their own “O.P.P.,” and whatever else they felt like at the time. It was bizarre…and incredibly funny.

Undoubtedly the funniest moment occurred at the end of the set, when they had the audience out of the seats, jumping and dancing to a vocal version of the guitar riff from “Seven Nation Army.” Mid jump, lead rapper Treach shouted, “Where my white boys at? Where my white girls at?” Gotta know your audience!

Grade: B+


Everclear

In Everclear’s favor: the lead singer, Art Alexakis, could have been a rocker on American Idol. Against Everclear: there are almost never good rockers on American Idol. Pawn certainly looked the part, covered in tattoos, earrings, and black clothing. He sounded terrible though. Half shouting, half mumbling, he sounded like Lee Dewyze’s drunken uncle. When he stopped in the middle of a song because he’d flubbed a lyric, it was pretty funny: the audience would never have noticed…

Grade: C-

Updated Grade: C [Moves up a little because “Volvo Driving Soccer Mom” is hilarious and “Wonderful” is appropriately named.]

Third Eye Blind

Everclear was a minor disappointment. You want all bands to sound good live, but their subpar performance wasn’t a huge loss since I hadn’t connected that strongly to any Everclear CD. Third Eye Blind, on the other hand, was a major disappointment, considering their Greatest Hits CD is one of my favorite pop-rock albums.

So many of their songs seem suited for the stage: “Never Let You Go,” a breezy, sing-along romance; “Graduate,” a euphoric rebel yell; and “Semi-Charmed of Life,” an upbeat tongue twister everyone in the audience would have known. It also would have been funny to hear “Crystal Baller” live considering the word “baller” has another meaning it did not have the decade it was written. Moreover, I cannot imagine a more powerful end to a festival than “Slow Motion,” a haunting drug tale that would make you swear off Ibuprofen, let alone anything illegal.

So there were all the ingredients for a great concert. That concert never happened, though, because frontman Stephan Jenkins had a HORRIBLE voice. On CD, he sounds earnest and soulful. There are rough edges, but those edges make him sound more natural and believable. Live, it seemed like there was nothing but rough edges. He slurred melodies, shouted choruses – it was a mess.

I felt bad because he gave this inspiring speech about driving across the country to be “among friends…We’re all screwups; we’re all Third Eye Blind!” The friends comment was appropriate because I had written in my notes “the lead singer looks like a bit like Chandler.” The next note, sadly: “sounds more like Phoebe”...

Grade: D

Billy Idol

Technically, Billy Idol was the second-to-last group to perform at HFStival; Third Eye Blind was last. I decided to flip the order, though, because Billy Idol was better than Third Eye in every conceivable way. His performance felt like the festival’s true end.

When the performance started, I assumed Idol would sound as mediocre as he did on his albums. None of the sixteen songs on his Greatest Hits CD suggested this would be a memorable show. Also against him was the fact that he looked ancient. James Porter commented beforehand, “Wait, Billy Idol’s still alive?” and it was true. He looked like a randy nursing home resident who had ducked out of bingo just in time to make the show. All of it seemed to point to a train wreck: a 74-year-old with half-open shirts and frost tipped hair singing “Flesh or Fantasy” – yikes!

Incredibly, though, ALL of it worked. His command of his body, the stage, and the crowd was impeccable. And unlike the previous two performers, he could actually sing! His voice showed power, tone, precision – everything you look for in a vocal. He was such a pro that you even accepted the outfits: half-buttoned shirts, quarter-buttoned shirts, unbuttoned shirts, three-piece suits – everything fit!

The best songs were, admittedly, the most famous: “Dancing with Myself,” “Cradle of Love,” “White Wedding,” and “Rebel Yell.” Idol tore into them with the greatest fervor, and audience members followed his lead – pumping their fists, shaking their hips, and shouting “more, more, more” whenever prompted. It’s hard to pick the overall best part of the show. The moment in the first song when I realized Idol was the real deal was memorable, and Stevie Stevens’ behind-the-back guitar solo was, as Idol described, “pretty bada--.“ In the end, though, the top moment would have to be midway through the concert when Idol stopped a song a few notes in. “We were about to play a slow song here,” he explained, “but whaddya say we rock out instead?” Awesome.

Grade: A