168 words about 42 bands at Bonnaroo

Here are all the four-word reviews I wrote at the Bonnaroo festival, including a few that didn’t make it onto ArtsBeat. Many of these shows — but not all — have been archived by NPR.

Once again I acknowledge the inspiration of Coolfer Glenn (now Billboard Glenn). But of course nobody’s making any claims about originality here; it’s just fun to work in miniature.

The sets I enjoyed the most are in bold.

• Non-Commissioned Officers: Shouty kickoff, afternoon steam.
• The XX: Cold, beautiful, boring mask.
• Manchester Orchestra: Scale, grandeur, pathos. Songs?
• Fanfarlo: Proof ArcFire’s more’n fiddles.
• Entrance Band/Baroness: If hippies hate Slayer, is heavy’s success failure?
• Neon Indian: Didn’t really chill me.
• Blitzen Trapper: No longer simply derivative.
• Needtobreathe: Pushing Southern groove buttons.
• Calexico: Mariachi horns = soothing refreshment.
• Jamey Johnson: Deadpanned, rehabbed soothsayer. Understood?
• Regina Spektor: Charms multitudes like friends.

• Zac Brown Band: Skynyrd + Dave + Daniels + “Margaritaville”?
• John Fogerty: Indelible songbook; confusing riffage.
• Kris Kristofferson: Stark, strong, wise, silly.
• Weezer: Caustic, candied pop. Antijam.
• Thievery Corporation: Globalist blockrockers. What chillwave?
• Norah Jones: Soundbleed obscures her grace.
• Lissie: Her Gaga tender, raw.
• Mexican Institute of Sound: Ambassadorship served hot, booming.
• Clutch: OCD riffing, insistent barking.
• Deadmau5: Appropriately cartoonish hau5. Ka-pow!
• Stevie Wonder: True jamming, humanism. Magnificent.
• The National: Ennui too complex here?
• Tori Amos: Rhapsodic psychocabaret: unscary entertainment.
• Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Conservative, but right on.
• Les Claypool: Worst dancers (so far).
• Kings of Leon: A carnal sorta homecoming.
• Black Keys: Trying open-mindedness. Trying.
• Daryl Hall & Chromeo: Jukebox dancealong: Bonnaroo gold.
• The Flaming Lips: Dull side ofthe ’Roo.
• Galactic: Aggressive, phattish Nawlins funk.
• Conan O’Brien: Smaller stage, bigger love.
• Umphrey’s McGee: Oh, so thaaat’s “jamming.”
• Local Natives: The mustaches speak louder.
• Nneka: Drowned by Bud logos.
• She & Him: Muggy vibes’ perfect breeze.
• Lucero: Bruce > Gaslight > Marah > Lucero.
• Ween: Strangely flaccid. What’s wrong?
• Martin Sexton: Quite lovely, if tame.
• Bomba Estéreo: 2010’s Bonde (that’s good).
• Phoenix: Non-DMBers’ effervescent closure.

120 words about 30 bands at SXSW 2010

• Tanlines: Afro-enabled synth bacchanal.
• Best Coast: Buoyant, Deal-y melodic grunge.
• We Were Promised Jetpacks: Masculine emo road untaken.
• Frightened Rabbit: Jangly Scots Duritz mutation?

• Wye Oak: Heart-piercingly honest alto.
• The Boxer Rebellion: U2 > Radiohead > Doves > TBR
• Thee Oh Sees: Roadhouse paddywhacks; enticing stink.
• The Drums: Joy Division again? Really?
• Anita Tijoux: Chilean memoirist, Bronx language.
• Ben Gibbard: Alone, narrative bleakness underscored.
• Total Abuse: Brutalist hardcore, unintentional vaudeville.
• The Coathangers: Cavegrrrls squeal, shake, roar.
• Garotas Suecas: Carefree groovicália, young hearts.
• Hole: Aged into “scary” character.
• Real Estate: Rollin’ downriver, beery haze.
• Golden Triangle: Lily Munster meets B-52’s?
• Surfer Blood: Workin’ hard, hardly workin’.
• Besnard Lakes: Credo in rockum sacrum.
• Robert Francis: Never left Hotel California.
• Nas/Damian (Junior Gong) Marley: Surprise! Bob samples galore.
• L’Orchidée d’Hawaï: Surfin’ Rhône-Alpes. Absolument charmant.
• Sharon Jones: “Soul phenom.” Time machine?
• Broken Bells: Dreamy comfort, sleepy pace.
• Spoon: Effortless lordship, small kingdom.
• Freelance Whales: Could be Lemmy’s breakfast.
• Scorpion Child: Feelgood retro heshercore, re-retro’d.
• Free Energy: Wholesomely sleazy, courageously dumb.
• XYX: Freakout duos: universal language.
• Los Amparito: Sunbaked, pan-Latin laptopism.
• Dark Castle: Guttural roars, cavelike shadows.

CMJ, MJ, obits

I’m covering CMJ like a chicken with his head tweeted off, including the four-word reviews that in the past people seem to have liked, though I haven’t done in a while.

The reason last night was my first out for CMJ instead of Tuesday: my report today on the Michael Jackson movie.

In other news: Alberto Testa, the Italian lyricist who wrote “Quando Quando Quando,” died on Monday at age 82. (Made famous in the U.S. by Pat Boone, in translation; Connie Francis did it in Italian.)

This follows news of the death of singer Carli Boni a few days ago, at 84. She did a lovely Italian version of “Johnny Guitar.”

‘Here Comes Your Man’ stage video, and Pixies news

With visual reference to the original videos of both “Here Comes Your Man” and “Head On,” this plays as the stage backdrop while the Pixies do “Here Comes Your Man” on their current Doolittle tour, which has been going through Europe this month and arrives in the U.S. via Los Angeles in two weeks, with opening acts.

Pixiesmusic.com “has been attacked by hackers in China,” and apparently as a result, the band has changed its official Twitter account from @pixiesmusic to simply @pixies. UPDATE: Now they say that Pixiesmusic.com is unhacked and “running clean as a whistle,” but they’re still on the new Twitter account.

Black Francis is eating fancy sandwiches.

Joey Santiago has ... “hamtrhax”?

Black Francis tweets new song titles

Ok...titles for songs on new record...in no particular order:

LAKE OF SIN

O MY TIDY SUM

RABBITS

WHEELS

DEAD MAN’S CURVE

CORRINA

SIX LEGGED MAN

THE WILD SON

WHEN I GO DOWN ON YOU

NON STOP EROTIC

CINEMA STAR

Lately he’s “recovering from Arles” (on tour), and feeling “sexual” and “sensual” while indulging “mindblowing” apple tarts, cheese and Valence Royale sandwiches (“goat cheese honey walnut chervil”).

F’ing enlightening

I’ve been enjoying Jesse Sheidlower’s daily updates promoting the new edition of his new book The F-Word, which he describes in appropriate OED deadpan as “in effect, the Oxford English Dictionary of fuck, listing hundreds of words, compounds, and phrases, each one supported by numerous real examples from sources throughout history showing how the word has been used.”

A page on his website devoted to this — inexplicably titled “The F Word,” without hyphen, which to me seems the dictionary editor’s equivalent of a nuclear scientist not carrying the 1 — is here, and his “FWOTD” Twitter feed is here.

I admire his rigor and specificity in definitions and etymologies for words like “fucktard” and “motherfather” (“One of many, many euphemisms for motherfucker, this one was popularized as a characteristic exclamation of comedian Redd Foxx on the TV series The Royal Family”). But the best stuff is actually in the comments, where various learned people make observations and engage in the minutiae of fuck. For instance, we learn that “in the 2009 movie ‘G-Force,’ the cute guinea pigs reference ‘Die Hard’: ‘Yippie-ki-yay, coffeemaker.’ ” [Actually, it was Die Hard 2. See comment.]

And there are priceless moments like this one in the comments to the fourth definition of “ratfuck,” from Sheidlower himself:

Oh, there’s no question that rats ‘rations’ has been around since the Vietnam War at least. The point is that ratfuck itself is attested (in various senses) since the 1920s.

So at best, we’d have [rat(ions) + fuck, modeled on earlier ratfuck] or something like that. Since fuck doesn’t have any sense that is really appropriate here, an independently created ratfuck ‘to pilfer’ would be somewhat inexplicable.

Motherfather!

Andrew W.K. ❤’s Winnipeg

‘World War III propaganda’

Via this person. Original here (and soon to be on my wall, actually).

Oh, forgot to mention

Tweeting Coachella here.

Four-word reviews from SXSW

So. Despite the new Twitterific agony of deadlines every 10 seconds, SXSW was very good this year. It’s getting harder to select a single “breakout” band, or even a dozen of them. Partly that’s because the festival gets bigger every year — there were 1,958 official bands this time, and who knows how many more unofficial ones — but also because the “breakout” itself was an effect of a more monolithic media era when a handful of critics and publications created a consensus.

It wasn’t an illusion, exactly: there really was a consensus. That no longer seems to be possible, although I would love for a new band to be so great that they steal the show for real. (That would also be a great excuse for getting out of the other 1,957 shows, which get tiring.)

Herewith, all the four-word reviews I wrote for the ArtsBeat blog. There were maybe 10 or 11 more bands that I either didn’t see enough of to form even four words of an opinion, or didn’t think they were worth it. Wow, the introduction to a list for four word items is nearly 200 words long.

• Daniel Francis Doyle: Spasmatic, atonal, yet precise.
• Micah P. Hinson: So pretty, twangy, relaxing.

• Gomez: Groovy ... whoa, double-kick!
• Decemberists: Want opera? Must wait.
• Crocodiles: Stylish wall of throb.
• Wavves: Another duo bashes away.
• Thermals: Sweaty; thanks for Nirvana.
• Motel Motel: Yowling, exuberant Band-isms: emocana?
• Two-Way Radio: Homely, cute. Metal disrupts.
• Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers: That scream is primal!
• Department of Eagles: In church, harmonies envelop.
• St. Vincent: Graceful, ambitious. Odd banter.
• The Wheel: Stark, eloquent Cash echoes.
• The Donkeys: Mellow; sitar’s potential unrealized.
• K’Naan: Schooled me re Mogadishu.
• Dirty Projectors: Omigod omigod omigod omigod!
• Blitzen Trapper: Lo-fi Americana doesn’t translate.
• Pains of Being Pure at Heart (at Malverde): Childlike bounce brings smile.
• Pains of Being Pure at Heart (at Opal Divine’s Freehouse): Too loud; intimacy lost.
• Telepathe: Tribal futurism? Futuristic tribalism?
• The Soft Pack: Prefer former name, Muslims.
• Matt and Kim: They swear too much.
• King Khan and the Shrines: Unabashed sleaze = rock’s origin?
• Mi Ami: Tight like a fist.
• Earthless with J. Mascis: Cathartic waves of electromagnetism.
• Tinted Windows: Non-obvious supergroup actually works.
• Crystal Antlers: Overcame double-drummer skepticism.
• Silversun Pickups: Metallica opener. Shortest straw?
• Metallica: Slayed. Surprisingly, didn’t overshadow.

Next list: all the bands I didn’t get to see.

SXSW blog, tweets, and actual articles

For all the South by Southwest news you could ever want, and more, I direct you to the extensive, mutli-platform coverage by myself and my colleagues at the Times.

We’ll be blogging at ArtsBeat, and I’ll be popping my Twitter cherry there too, to get you all those 140-character bons mots that just can’t wait for a full blog item. (Or full copy-editing.)

And, as a special bonus, we will also be writing actual articles for the paper — we’re talking thousands of characters here, allowing for things like quotes, ideas and narrative. You’ve already read some by David Carr and Jenna Wortham (right?), and over the next several days you’ll get more by me and Jon Pareles.

Thank you for your kind attention.

New Sonic Youth has John Fahey painting

Matador, Sonic Youth's new home after two decades with Geffen/DGC/Universal/etc., announces the cover art and other details:

The band has been Twittering like mad recently about the recording of The Eternal. Typical entries: “mixing a secret ‘something’ for Matador early shoppers”; “ ‘no, i wanna see the hairy gonads hanging fr yamaha spkrs.’ ”

If I were the type to twitter ...

... I’d say that I just shook hands with every member of Metallica. VERY cool story coming soon.