This looks interesting


http://www.home-room.org/

what is it?

8 minutes till I leave for my Peter Brotzmann Concert

I don't have time to post a full review right now, but I went to the show. I met Peter Brotzmann. I met Ken Vandermark, and other members of the Tentet. Peter is quiet, he ran our of the builidng quickly to smoke a small cigar, he doesn't talk much, and he smells funny. Nevertheless I was glad to meet and talk to him. The show was FUCKING INCREDIBLE, I'll post a more detailed review soon (and I will actually do this one, unlike the Cecil Taylor show ).

You know it is like broad daylight in Manhattan right now. I also drove by all the morons waiting in line for the new Star Wars movie. I was tempted to open my window at yell "Startrek Sucks!!!" as I sped by...I love New York City.

Here is what I have written at the Jarboe show I saw Monday -

I went to the show Monday night. My mom and I got to the the Knitting Factory at about 8:15 and learned that Jarboe wouldn't go on until 11. We watched some of the Unto Ashes set and then left to get something to eat and walk around.

We got back at the beginning of Amber Asylum's set. I stood up in front of the stage for awhile and then went up to the balcony. I didn't know Amber Asylum was an all girl group. Anyway, the show they put on was great, the drummer was great and it was very cool that they could use double bass alongside with a violin and a cello (and a bass guitar, the bassist was really hot). The singer also had great vocal range, the set was intense for what it was.

Once they finished I went back downstairs (my mom stayed in the balcony) and got a chair near the stage (which was taken while I was talking with the other members of the audience). I was able to stand very close to the stage though. Jarboe performed with a pianist only for the beginning of the show, and later on they were joined by the cello and violin players from Amber Asylum. The show was very dramatic. I don't think Jarboe even needed a microphone, her voice was very powerful and was more impressive than anything I could have expected. Toward the end of the show she got down from the stage and walked around in the crowd while singing. She was about a foot away from me, and we made eye contact for what seemed to be at least 30 seconds while she continued to sing. She sang while she walked aound in the crowd and in she lied down in the center of the floor on her back while she finished the last song. Finally she kind of crawled back to the stage.

She only performed one Swans song . I thought it was a great show though, her singing is great although her lyrics can't touch Michael Gira's.

I might see Do Make Say Think at the Bowery Ballroom on July 9th, here are the dates for their North American Tour -

[i] Dates:

06-29 Cleveland Heights, OH - Grog Shop
06-30 Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
07-01 Detroit, MI - Magic Stick
07-02 Buffalo, NY - Soundlab
07-03 Harrisburg, PA - Underground at Stage Two
07-04 Binghamton, NY - Club RaNelles
07-05 Wallingford, CT - Wallingford American Legion
07-06 Montreal, Quebec - Club Soda
07-07 Cambridge, MA - Middle East
07-08 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church
07-09 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom
07-10 Ottawa, Ontario - Ottawa

Ahh never posted my Brotzmann review...

I saw him at The Tonic, and the room they played in their was decent acoustically I guess, but it was quite small, crowded, and thus uncomfortable. Musically, the performance was very intense of course. The majority of the show was high pitched dissonant chaos (not that that is a bad thing ) but there were also some quieter moments leading up to and between the more chaotic parts. Many times in the show

Seeing two drummers performing was interesting. There was one point where one of the drummers somehow made a a very high pitched sound by scraping something (couldn't see very him very well where I was) against what sounded like a snare drum. Other than that most of the percussion was quick with a few LOUD fills here and there.

At one point in the show only Brotzmann and the cellist played for a few minutes. Brotzmann shifted between high pitched fast notes and lower more drawn out sounds while the cellist played very staccato and remained playing fairly fast for that part. For the most part they played at the same time, but there was also a bit of call and response here. During the rest of the show, the cellist played slowly compared to the rest of the group, which helped to put together a more controlled atmospere.

The brass and woodwind also alternated between fast high pitched sounds and low slow sounds for the most part. It may come off as dull the way I am describing it, that the performance had a great deal of changes in pitch and speed, but the way that it was played was riveting. The brass and woodwind instruments really seemed to lack repeated phrases, but closer to the end of the show Ken began to play some more obvious riffs, this was around the same tim he started to rock back and forth...like a mental patient... One part of the performance I really enjoyed was when out of a chaostic section of the entire group playing intensely stopped suddenly, unexpectedly and Per-Ake Holmlander (tuba) played something very slow, which lead into Ken (again out of nowhere) interrupting and resuming the way he and the rest of the group were playing earlier.

In general I really enjoyed the show, the noisier moments were jsut as enjoyable for me as the more subdued ones.

i missed a john zorn and terry riley concert about a week ago, due to my graduation. very disappointed

Haha, yes it's the same mom. She really doesn't have any problem with alot of he music I listen to anymore. I mean she is discouraging about some of the more "absurd" music I listen to (The Residents, Merzbow, Boredoms, Mr. Bungle, Peter Brotzmann, etc.) but she doesn't mind any where as much as she does with metal. She doesn't know I still listen to metal though.

She said she enjoyed the concert, but she was obviously turned off by all of the "goths" there. Considering it was a concert of 4 goth bands, I was expecting it to be much more questionable but it actually turned out to be fairly wholesome Jehovah's Witness standards. She definitely doesn't have the "if you can't beat em join em" attitude though, or at least not yet .