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Live: McCoy Tyner & Marc Ribot @ Yoshi's, San Francisco

About halfway down the half page of scrawl I took home from last night’s performance of the McCoy Tyner trio with Marc Ribot is a note that made perfect sense at the time. It says, “This is the difference between what is and what should be.” In the clear light of the morning, the stoner epiphany of that sentence seems exactly like the kind of thing you write down during a drug experience -- something so urgent, that life’s needle comes scratching off the record and you have to write it down immediately, fearing that your square, sober self will let the newly discovered answer to life’s mystery slip away. When you wake up the next day, head pounding and tongue thick, it’s happened again: the sagacious wisdom has melted into a bit of nonsense like “this is the difference between what is and what should be.”

He Said/She Said: R.I.P. TRL

Rachel: So, MTV's Total Request Live is set to end its 10-year run, airing its final episode this Friday and a good-bye bash on November 16. In honor of the long-running request show, Rhapsody's Rock editor, Nate Cavalieri, and our Pop editor (that would be yours truly, Rachel Devitt) decided to have a little conversation about its legacy, which I, poptimist that I am, think is fairly significant. Nate is a bit more cynical, however. And off we go.

OK, yes, one of TRL's most significant "gifts" to the world has been Carson Daly (seriously, can we regift that one?), but I also think the show has carved out -- and deserves -- a special place in music history. It's been host to lots of important pop cultural events: the beginnings of the boy band phenomenon; Mariah's popsicle-laden meltdown/striptease; the first official report of Britney Spears's split from K-Fed. For a good chunk of its run, TRL was an important barometer of popular culture. Not to mention it's been one of the only places you can actually see, uh, music videos on the music video network (even if they aren't full clips).

Nate: Rachel, if I wake up on Christmas morning to find a wobbling refrigerator box that stinks of Axe body spray, I'm re-regifting Carson right back to you. I'll go along for the ride that TRL deserves a special place in the annals of pop culture, but, at the risk of coming off like a curmudgeonly fishing buddy of Walter Matthau, the cancellation of the show was a mercy killing after so many years of TRL hobbling along like a crippled old nag. Sure, it made waves during its short and juicy peak, but, like the cast of twits that dominated its charts – the thrill was quickly gone. Its place in the pop-culture scrap heap is somewhere near the Star Trek franchise – enormously popular, increasingly wretched and ultimately unwatchable. As for it being the only place on MTV to see actual music videos, sure, maybe if the video was number one. But if it wasn't number one, they only played part of it! I know but slogging through an entire three-minute video is rough, but, sigh, I want the M back in MTV!

CMJ '08: Cory Chisel & the Wandering Sons

A few years ago, I interviewed the Dodos, a San Francisco duo who was, at that time, trying to keep their heads during the disorienting situation that befalls a band who's being vigorously courted by record labels. We parked on the sidewalk of a café in the Mission District as the singer, Meric Long, spoke about the most bewildering gig he'd ever played, a few weeks prior, in the board room of a Manhattan skyscraper, to an audience of record industry decision-makers. For a musician of Long's pedigree -- a vet of San Francisco's indie songwriter scene who pens unapologetically nervy, decidedly un-commercial songs -- his obvious discomfort about the situation was evident then, and even more so when they issued their first LP on a reputable small independent label, French Kiss. The situation with the Dodos office gig was on the brain yesterday, sitting in a conference room on the 48th floor of a building near the chaotic center of Times Square (where Rhapsody's New York office makes its home) when Ryan Star strode in, guitar in hand, dressed in faded black, buttressed by a small trio of nervous, doting label operatives.  

R.I.P. Levi Stubbs (1936-2007)

Fans of any '60s icon share a similar gripe: the legacy of too many great artists is inextricably tied to too few of their songs in heavy rotation on oldies stations. These select tracks get played and played out, and eventually even the lifelong Beatles fan reaches for the dial during the third daily course of "Yellow Submarine." Today, I cued up the Four Tops after reading about the passing of the band's leader, Levi Stubbs, who died in his sleep in his Detroit home at the age of 72, and was reminded about how this predicament is particularly hard on the stable of artists from '60s Motown: The Jackson 5 is relegated to "I'll Be There"; Stevie Wonder, a Motown artist with as deep and wide-ranging catalog of any, is on three times an afternoon with "For Once in My Life." For the Four Tops, the heavy-rotation hits come between 1964's "Baby, I Need Your Loving" and their final Top 10 in 1973, "Ain't No Woman (Like the One I've Got)." Of the handful of stuff between these bookends, some, like The Big Chill-approved "It's the Same Old Song," represent Motown's streamlined mainstream operation. Others, like "Reach Out, I'll Be There," speak to the group's power in the studio. But it's the outlying, oddly successful hit "Bernadette," a tune that is among their most popular and their most enduring, that best demonstrates Stubbs' power as a performer. It's the rare example of a heavy-rotation hit that lives up to its responsibilities. 

Jay Reatard: Viva Memphis

You can have your Dirty South and maybe even your DC Hardcore -- but when it comes to most rank and file rock 'n' roll, American regionalist associations are pretty dicey. There's Seattle of the '90s or Detroit of the '00s, and sh*t, even sniveling Omaha. Yet, when it comes to similarities in the way things actually sound? It rarely comes out in the wash (heard Screaming Trees and Alice in Chains lately?). It was on the brain a lot last week when the long-withheld digital release of Kid Rock went live in Rhapsody. Even if his late career more resembles the beer-bloated aggrandizing of Southern rockers like .38 Special than the MC5, Kid Rock makes much of his Michigan roots.

In scenes with, well, a scene, the glue always seems to be influential figureheads -- something that might be more embodied these days by hip-hop producers. In that way, the recent collection of singles by Memphis garage-rock riser Jay Reatard firmly proves the exception of Memphis' rock legacy. It’s a record that's not only sonically, stylistically concordant with the city's vibrant underground rock scene, but one that shows the long-lasting influence of the people who built it.

[Click the "Continue Reading..." link to listen to a playlist featuring the music discussed in this post.]

Live: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival

It’s Friday at rush hour, and the show has only begun on the N Judah train line. Regular commuters clutch their briefcases, terrified, as a crowd of rowdy interlopers -- many in cowboy shirts, many in no shirts at all -- pack the car. The route is headed toward Golden Gate Park, where the eighth annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival commenced this afternoon, and two of the car's more enthusiastic riders are stone-giddy about the opening day headliner: "Robert f*ck*ng Plant, man," one says to the other in the blown-mind inflection that's the universal dialect of the three-day event. San Francisco might host a slew other open-air music festivals, but Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a multi-stage festival of roots rock, country and bluegrass (paid for by San Francisco venture capitalist Warren Hellman) is probably the one that most accurately reflects the eccentricities of its host city. Starting with Robert f*ck*ng Plant.

Jose Gonzalez and the Death of the Album

At a glance, last night's performance by Argentinean/Swede folk phenom Jose Gonzalez wasn't much to see: the final set of a two-day, sold-out stand at Yoshi's in Oakland, CA, mostly featured Gonzalez at center stage, hunched over a nylon-string guitar. Sitting between a heavy red curtain and a curious mix of the jazz club's typical chardonnay-and-maki crowd and reverent doe-eyed fans, he was occasionally buttressed by singer Yukimi Nagamo and percussionist Erik Bodin. There was almost no banter ("This song," he said in the honeyed shush of a yoga instructor, "is about tribalism") and few frills beyond those inherent in Gonzalez's faux-traditional Brazilian finger-picking and melancholic evocation of Joao Gilberto. Even the setlist -- drawn from his similarly elegant, bare pair of albums and scattered with new material -- didn't raise eyebrows, save for a forceful cover of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" that was trotted out for an encore. But, Gonzalez demonstrated that he's one of the most commanding songwriters of recent years by achieving the difficult task of what architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe called "an interesting plainness." The set also made it plainly apparent, and never more serenely unobjectionable, that Gonzalez, is also someone who thrives in an industry that's seen the death of the album-based career. He could be the poster child of its passing.

The Jayhawks: Hollywood Town Hall Meeting

It seems like everyone has one of those records, the album that caught them in crosshairs, at just the right moment. Usually the providence of 15-year-olds, it's some piece of music that connects in a nervy, serendipitous, oversized way to become not only a favorite, but a bellwether for life itself -- from personal style and social appointment. In a recent interview with Brian Wilson we talked about his, the Ronettes' "Be My Baby," a tune that he listened to obsessively as a youth and claims changed his life. For me, the moment came standing in (now defunct) Blue Moon Records, Traverse City, Michigan, with the Jayhawks' Hollywood Town Hall on the earphones. Taking in the sleeve -- black and white photos of a band that oozed nerd-tough, corduroy-sheathed Midwesterness, liner notes by Joe Henry (brilliant in themselves, you can read them on a similarly obsessed fan's Myspace profile here) -- I was no longer doomed to the fate of a rudderless, pimple-crusted teenager at the insufferable whims of the program director at Z-93 "Rock of Mid-Michigan."  I was born again. All I needed was that record and a new (used) corduroy jacket.

Brian Wilson Has Never Heard Dennis Wilson

by Nate Cavalieri

An interview with Brian Wilson is best likened to a rickety thrill ride at the county fair: approached with some apprehension, experienced in a jarring haste and over in a blink. I recently had the chance to dial up Wilson and chat about the record he released this week, That Lucky Old Sun, a portrait of the southern California of Wilsons' youth. For the devoted, it's a sight better than most of the elder Beach Boy's late-day fare thanks to the heavy hand of arranger Van Dyke Parks and the carefully calibrated sentimentalism of Scott Bennett's lyrics.

Give Us the Dennis Wilson Re-issue!

by Nate Cavalieri

Some information about Beach Boy Dennis Wilson's lost and lone solo album Pacific Ocean Blue popped up in January in Rolling Stone, and for a brief moment, there was even a video of one of the record's tracks, "River Song," floating around YouTube. Even so, we didn't really understand the full-bore, imminent radness of the re-release until hearing a couple of tracks on Buddyhead (they were swiftly removed). The post justly gushes about the reissue and features an interview with the record's producer Gregg Jakobson. In any case, the anticipation is reaching a fever pitch, and we have the re-release date of June 17 circled and underlined in big, bold marker on our calender.

Kill the oppressive boredom of the days between now and then by observing hirsute MTV personality Mark Goodman interview Brian and Carl backstage at Live Aid in 1985, or listening to Shuggie Otis' once-lost now-rescued classic Inspiration Information.