Show Review: Tyler Childers @ The Troubador

Tyler Childers performs at legendary Los Angeles venue, the Troubadour.

Show Review:
Tyler Childers
@ The Troubador

  It must be hard for middle aged major label record label executives these days, especially those from the rock era.  I'm not saying that I feel sorry for them, but you can't help but wince on their behalf when you look at the artists who have captured the pop star/rock star label in the internet era.  Take, for example, the micro genre turned chart topper world of internet rap:  drug addicted young adults, funded by gang money, topping the charts without a physical record, let alone an album or a major label backed album campaign.

   I'm pretty sure that there is no coming back from the precipice opened up by the streaming era.  Soundcloud rap provides strong evidence that if one is simply popular enough, you can leverage the rest of it. I'm not sure that really was the case before Soundcloud rap started storming up the actual charts, the model was more that one would bring oneself to the attention of the "real" music industry via promotional tools like Soundcloud, not that one would actually use those formats to become a top 200 most popular artist in the world type person.

  The thing is though, is that all those rock and roll guys are still around.  The way the cultural industrial complex works, if you make a lot of money for a large corporation over an extended period of time, you get to stick around.  If you don't make anyone money, you are out, but if you do, you get to become one of these guys (very few are women).  My point being that there were a LOT of these guys there.   

   Specifically, Ian Thornton, the Huntington West Virginia based manager of Tyler Childers.   When I walked in with Amy (Monotone) he was with Bill Bennett, former Warner Bros Nashville exec and current Hollywood/country fixer.  They were shortly joined by others from Monotone, and label executives from Interscope, RCA and Sony. zero mentions on Stereogum  Also present was Jeffrey Azoff, son of Irving Azoff.  So, to be clear, Ian Thornton manages Tyler Childers.  Tyler Childers does not have a record contract.  Many people are both interested in managing Childers and signing him to a record contract, and it is clear that he a) has a manager and b) perhaps isn't that interested in signing a record contract.

  All of this took place in the front bar of the Troubadour, during the set of opening act Blank Range.  There was also a description worthy mix of fans, guy in an NRA shirt under his denim vest, Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, a guy wearing a "Make Nashville Rock Again" hat. And women! It was not the sausage fest of a Jamey Johnson or Sturgill Simpson concert.  I honestly don't know if Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend is a fan or if he just decided to hang out with his manager Ian (Montone, not Thornton).

  It was a lot of what might be called "feeling out," but there is no question that Thornton is running that ship. The show itself was a triumph.  Not the immortal triumph of his first appearance at the Ryman Auditorium, opening for Margo Price, earlier this year, but a triumph.   The buzz in the audience was palpable.  Childers opened with his hit, Whitehouse Road, which seems like something he didn't have to do.  I sensed that he was nervous, and a little bit unsure of the crowd.  It was different at the Ryman Auditorium, which he owned like he was born to play there.    If I had a chance to say something to him, I would have told him not to worry, that the crowd was with him and that he could do no wrong.

    I would say that his live show is not quite as developed as Stapleton or Margo Price, but that he is better life than Sturgill Simpson, who I've now seen in "jam mode" twice.   I think ultimately it is the quality of his voice, as supposed to his lyrics- which are really good- or the band- which is just ok, that has given him his viral quality.  He is an astonishing internet era story of an artist from the most outsidery of outsider places, who has developed outside any publicized "scene."

  Even more astonishing that he nets a total of zero mentions on Pitchfork, zero mentions on Stereogum, only Brooklyn Vegan has been tracking his unlikely rise.   It is both shameful and embarrassing that Pitchfork has slept so long on Childers.  Certainly, if you are going to cover artists like Willie Nelson, Chris Stapleton, Margo Price and Sturgill Simpson, you have to include Tyler Childers on that list.  He belongs there, unquestionably, beyond debate.

    How incredible, also, that, like Price and Simpson (but not Stapleton) he has come from wholly outside the formidable Nashville music industry.   This really is THE indie/local music scene story of this decade, in my mind.   It is something that is really happening, generating interest among audiences and professionals/corporations alike.  That is the succesful combination that you need. 

Show Review: Lonely Island @ The Rose Dinner Theater in Pasadena

Show Review:
Lonely Island
@ The Rose Dinner Theater in Pasadena

    When I received word that the Lonely Island would be playing a warm up show at a Pasadena Dinner Theater (The Rose: Where Music Meets the Soul (TM)) over Memorial Day Weekend, I leapt at the opportunity to attend.   I've driven or walked past this venue, formerly a Gelson's Grocery Store stuck in the bottom corner of a movie theater/restaurant/shopping complex in Pasadena, across from the convention center, twenty times in the past several years, and always wondered what a venue located in a grocery store would be like to experience.

   The answer is, perhaps predictably, "Laughably terrible."  To accommodate the legions(!) of excited Lonely Island fans the normally present dinner tables had been removed from the floor, leaving the lines of sight of a space not made for standing crowd viewing, and a hugely over crowded, non ADA accessible "VIP Platform," featuring luminaries like JB Smoove and failed sitcom star John Mullaney.  Adding to the moderately oppressive atmosphere was the omnipresent security staff, behaving like the artist performing was Chief Keef or Takeshi69 and not a joke-rap trio featuring three adults from the San Francisco Bay Area.

  I don't have any prejudices against joke-rap or novelty music in general.  If you take a look at the history of the Billboard pop chart, novelty numbers were charting number ones before rock and roll existed as a chart phenomenon.  Acts like Alvin and the Chipmunks and Sheb Wooley (Purple People Eater) have just as much to tell us about the history of recorded music in America as Elvis Presley or The Beatles, maybe more, since the novelty numbers preceded rock and roll.

  The upcoming Lonely Island appearance at a comedy festival in San Francisco, billed as their first live performance, had puzzled me, since I distinctly remember seeing them perform at the Festival Supreme in 2013.  Here is a review of that show from Spin.com.  At the time, Spin said, "Lonely Island snuck a tight mini-set inside Tenacious D’s climactic performance, which included the duo’s giant robot, the Metal, and an oversized alien."   After reviewing the poster for that edition of Festival Supreme, I see that Lonely Island was not billed.  The 2013 appearance was a "surprise" and unbilled, and so, in conclusion, I see why they are billing this performance as their first ever.

   Fans of Lonely Island are sure to love the show, which features bespoke animations for almost every song.  They handle the absence of the numerous guest singers using a variety of techniques.  Sometimes the accompanying visual simply displayed the missing artist.  Other times, one of the Lonely Islanders would take the place of the missing performer. For the Justin Timberlake triptych performance, Asa Taccone used a Justin Timberlake puppet- acquitting himself quite well on the puppetry. As befits their origin as a viral video phenomenon, the bespoke visuals were themselves an attraction of the live performance.  Considering the awful sight lines of The Rose Dinner Theater in Pasadena, watching the screen was more rewarding then watching the stage itself.

  The group itself was, as the saying goes, "tan, rested and ready."  I'm not at all clear at what they've been doing besides Andy Samberg starring on Brooklyn 99.  My understanding is that they have "a deal" with Fox, of the sort where one can sit around and not do anything.  Clearly, some of that time was spent making the videos for this performance, and I suppose puppetry lessons for Taccone.   Only one of the songs came from their succesful(?) movie Pop Star, with Samberg as movie protagonist Conor 4 Real.

 Much of the material reprised their greatest SNL hits, Jizz in My Pants, Lazy Sunday.  Less of the material drew from their non-SNL albums, of which, amazingly, they have two, plus the Pop Star sound track.  A highlight was a new song, about the "Bash Brothers," Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, which has seemingly been written for the San Francisco audience of their upcoming comedy festival.  In Pasadena, in front of a sea of Los Angeles based comedy nerds, the song only got intermittent laughs, but I was hooting.

  The end of the set, about an hour long, had a surprise guest, but I won't ruin the surprise here. The Rose Dinner Theater in Pasadena is a crazy place to have a show.  Wild. 

Show Review: Margo Price & Tyler Childers @ The Ryman Auditorium w/ Jack White and Sturgill Simpson

Margo Price and Sturgill Simpson at the Ryman Auditorium, in Nashville. 

Show Review: Margo Price & Tyler Childers
@ The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville Tennessee
 w/ Jack White and Sturgill Simpson

  The decline of show review on this blog is directly attributable to the fact that I'm usually going to shows as a plus one of someone who either manages or works for or with the manager of the headlining artist.   I now know that rare is the artist who doesn't keep track of their mentions on the internet, particularly when it's a long form/think piece type, even the writer is far from being popular or affiliated with a prominent news source.  There has also been a recent decline in the number of such articles- music blogs have been dead for almost as long as they were alive, and those that survived have morphed into Tumblr style post and link style sites that rarely bother to include critical writing.

  For example, I went to the Jack White show at the Mayan earlier this year, but I wouldn't write about it for fear that he would read the review and not like something about it- even something that was not intentionally negative, and it would get back to my boo.  That's bad form.   Margo Price I consider a friend.  I loudly take credit for being the conduit being Price and her current management team at Monotone on the basis that I saw the first posting on Spin.com about her debut record on Third Man Recordings (Jack White, managed by Monotone) and told my girlfriend, fan of the Stagecoach Festival and the first five seasons of Nashville, the television show.   She drew the attention of her boss, the rest is history.

  It's flimsy, sure, but fortunes are made on less in this town(Los Angeles), where providing an introduction is a way-of-life as specific as court etiquette in 18th century France.   My original thought is that Margo Price had the potential to be a country artist with an audience beyond the traditional country music audience.  At the time I heard of Margo, I had already seen Sturgill Simpson in Los Angeles and so I was far from surprised when the success of Margo played  a role in the description of a new movement of Outlaw Country/Americana artists.  Margo herself hates the label, "Outlaw Country."  She uses "Modern Traditional County" on her Facebook profile, but there is no denying the wave, led by Chris Stapelton at the very pinnacle, and followed by Sturgill, Jason Isbell, Margo, Tyler Childers, Nikki Lane and a host of others, many of whom have lengthy ties to the East Nashville neighborhood.

   For those and many other reasons, Margo Price's three night stand at the Ryman Auditorium, the hallowed "Mother Church" of County Music, and long time home of the Grand Ole Opry, was a special show.  I can't think of any other musical event that I've observed that has been so triumphant.  It certainly dwarfs any of the achievements of my Zoo Music days- with the possible exception of the Dirty Beaches Best New Music designation on Pitchfork.  It also surpasses any of the achievements of the bands that I followed but wasn't involved with- the Best Coasts and Wavves of that time period.   Midwest Farmer's Daughter was released on March 16th, 2016- before that moment, barely more than two years later she was selling out a multiple night engagement at the most hallowed venue in county music- which itself was thought to be improbable down to the moment the second show sold out.

  Night one featured guest spots from Lukas Nelson and Sturgill Simpson, night two featured Jack White.  Both nights featured Tyler Childers, who himself was making his first appearance at the Ryman Auditorium. Childers an amazing story- according to Ben Swank, the head of Third Man Records, his opening night reception was as raucous as any at the Ryman  for anyone, opener or headliner.  Childers has a large and enthusiastic fan base, even though it would be hard to know it from reading the national media press.  His most recent record, Purgatory, produced by Sturgill Simpson, had at least one genuine hit (White House Road) and a half dozen gems.  His half million monthly Spotify plays surpasses that of Price herself.

  The only thing missing from Childers is any kind of acknowledgment of  modern music celebrity culture, where artists are supposed to dress up and prance around the stage in an attempt to engage the audience.   None of that bullshit from Childers.   The Sturgill Simpson guest spot on night one was good but not great- as supposed to the Lukas Nelson duet- which sent chills down my spine.

  Night two was a more relaxed affair-  the crowd was more sedate, and more attentive.  Jack White and Margo did an excellent duet, again, chills, and raucous audience response, and over all the night two vibe was preferable to night one, in my mind.   Hanging back stage at the Ryman was an absolute treat- the only other time I'd been backstage there was literally on the tour, two years ago.  As the kids would say, "Great vibes."

  Truly, a triumphant episode for Margo Price, and surely a rebuttal to any who would claim that Margo Price is anything BUT a mainline country music star in the making, outlaw and americana tags be damned.

Under the Skin (2000) by Michel Faber

Scarlett Johansson did her first ever nude scene for the movie version of Under the Skin.  The movie was a gross simplification of the book.

Book Review
Under the Skin (2000)
by Michel Faber


   Author Michel Faber was born in the Netherlands, moved to Australia as a child and writes his fiction in English.  Under the Skin was his first novel, and it was followed, two years later by The Crimson Petal and the White, which was a smash hit.  Under the Skin got a movie version featuring Scarlett Johannson in the lead role, but the movie bombed, and that has hurt any claim for canonical status.   I've seen the film in bits and pieces over the years, 15 minutes on an airplane here, half an hour on the television there.  I think, unsurprisingly, the movie flattened out the book and in doing so reduced Under the Skin to a monster movie.

  Under the Skin is most emphatically not a horror genre exercise, although the story, about an alien brought to Earth in order to lure humans into a meat processing facility for export to the home planet, is horrific.  The aliens call themselves "human beings," and look something like dogs or foxes, in terms of facial features, being on all fours and being covered in fur. The protagonist has been surgically altered to look human, supplemented with daily full body shaving and huge coke bottle glasses to prevent humans from seeing the small size of her eyes.

  The best parts of Under the Skin involve descriptions of the planet where these aliens come from- dry- people living underground, manufacturing oxygen in giant pits of decaying vegetation.  The alien human hunter- called Isserley - who works by picking up male hitchhikers near the meat processing facility in rural Scotland, is privileged to be the only being from her planet that is free to move on Earth.  This experience is brought into focus when the wealthy scion of the owner of the food processing corporation shows up at the farm and starts asking questions similar to what an animal rights activist would say today about industrial farming techniques.  The visitor reveals that the people on Isserley's home planet think that humans, called vodesels by the aliens, are told that humanity are dumb animals, incapable of communication.

  Under the Skin lends itself to many different readings, whether centered on immigration, gender or class.  I think it works on all those levels, and despite the Scottish locale,  is as generically international as a book can be.