jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Mike Gordon’s solo album is groovy, layered, and appropriately weird. I dig it. Plus, very gordo liner notes.

This summer began and ended with 28 people in white robes saluting the sun: the Polyphonic Spree at the Central Park Summer Stage wasn’t quite the end of summer yet, I suppose, but there they were again, as joyful as they were back in June at Bonnaroo. We were very close up this time, and Tom DeLaughter is a charismatic man, even when he stumbles over the monitors and literally serenades the sun — that’s how full of love he is. Or ecstacy. Or something.

The Spree brought out John Cameron Mitchell for the encore, that “Hedwig” tune about taking the wig down from the shelf. You’d be surprised how well that worked.

It remains to be seen which direction DeLaughter will take this band, which is still very young but already sold a song to Apple and VW. The Spree could pursue more mainstream success (although most of them need a shave for that to happen), or they could get a lot weirder and push the glorious noise that is their strength to even more demented heights. Because when you start the show with the finale, where is there left to go? Even higher, that’s where.

I’ve been listening to 2003 shows exclusively for weeks — Bonnaroo shows, Dead Summer Tour and current Phish. 2003 Dead is very tasty music, and what I’ve heard from this Phish tour sounds daring and reckless, so I may be excused for neglecting the good ol’ Grateful Dead.

At any rate. This is just to say, holy shit. That Garcia, he could play.

PHiSH SMaSH (Or: George 7below Destroys the Patriot Act)

You know what really bugs me–how in the mainstream, hippie culture is portrayed as negligible because its saccharine messages of peace and love are naive. Anybody who’s ever furthered the cliche of the Phish fan as good-natured doofus with tie-dye socks and toothless perma-grin deserves to have their brains fisted by the absolutely atrocious twenty minutes of soul-searching noise that is the Gorge “Seven Below.” Holy shit: this fully reinvigorated Phish is droning, wailing, shredding, and Trey is bending notes to hell and back with wicked glee like the devil made him do it. This is Phish for the dark, dark days of the Bush administration.

Don’t make my band angry. You wouldn’t like my band when it’s angry.

The first album by Bob Marley and the Wailers, reissued without the studio-mandated overdubs, is immediate, spare, and very pleasing. Stir it up, little darling….

Soulive at Irving Plaza. Maybe I’m getting old, finally — I couldn’t take it. Too many frigging notes. I realize these guys have oodles of talent, and the bass/keyboard player is amazing, but man. It sounded like they have no faith in any one note, no trust in their own music, so they just keep pumping this stuff out and none of their grooves ever hit me in a sweet spot. Everything that’s bad about Medeski Martin Wood — they’re like the anti-Sector 9. Plus it was loud, I was tired and exhausted and stuffed with Indian food and I just couldn’t take it. Left early. Damned shame.

Somehow in last weekend’s debauchery, I forgot to blog this. Loud retro fun that reminded me of No Means No shows of yore. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a mosh pit, or a performer who actually performs anything but music. Karin O does finger gestures, kicks her legs, does the spazz dance, pours beer into the rowdy stage-diving crowd. I liked the guitar player — I thought they’d stopped wearing their guitars that low sometime in the 70s, and what’s with the muscle shirt? Fun.

I wonder if there’ll be any crowd surfing at Soulive tonight?

Say about him what you will, Prince’s first live set is funky as hell. I’ve been stealing his last five years worth of creative output, and the volume alone is staggering. Orchestral work, solo piano stuff, three CD box sets, four CD box sets, bonus tracks only available to fan club members, stuff released under the N.P.G. name — Prince is as prolific as ever, and some of this copious new material is anything as good as his classics. The third disc of “One Nite Alone” is a serious hour-long permagroove that’s just about as good as it gets.