Blinq

Elegance To Be Heard

There was a track I put on a compilation in Berlin called Abie The Fishman, after the scene in Animal Crackers when Marx Brothers taunt some poseur they recognize from the old country. And toward the end of the mix the mood changes, the power pop blissfully surges -- Owsley, NRBQ, Fountains of Wayne, the Pernice Brothers -- capped by this winning song no one I played it for had ever heard: "Red Balloon" by Buzz Zeemer.

Old hands will know who they were: A now-disappeared Philadelphia favorite fro the late '90s that included songwriter Frank Brown, formerly of Flight of Mavis, and '80s guitar hero Tommy Conwell, who I once interviewed at his day job teaching third graders in Springfield, Montco., long before Jack Black and School of Rock.

But did you know they're getting back together this weekend?

They'll be at the Grape Street Pub tonight. Shoe's at 9 p.m. It's billed as a reunion. Apparently, getting together to record a song for the Record Cellar compilation didn't go so badly. They have a My Space page as of last month, and there they offer a couple songs for download, including the irresistable "Crush." On that page they even call "Red Balloon" jangly power pop, but I swear I didn't steal the description. I think I was once one of about 50 people to see them play on stage at the Free Library.

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Another talent on display this weekend will be at the World Cafe Live Saturday night (and Free at Noon, Friday). Hear the guy championed by no less than Paul McCartney, Elton John and Elvis Costello (who said that he'd be listening to his 1995 debut for the next 20 years.) We're thinking out about Canadian singer/songwriter Ron Sexsmith.

He's got a new CD, called Time Being, some of which you can grab here, on IndieBlogHeaven. You can go deeper, listening to a 2001 "Fresh Air" profile here.

Or check out some of his lyrics from "Jazz At The Bookstore," which is getting some airplay on 'XPN:

Leadbelly’s in the background
Being drowned out by the grind
He’s singing ‘bout “Rock Island Line”
Nobody seems to pay him any mind

Bestsellers and bookshelves
Full of self-help printed word
Some faint elegance is heard
Now was that Ellington or Bird?

And has it really come to this?
Can ignorance be bliss?
I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop
Jazz at the bookstore
And Blues in the coffee shop

Used To Be One Of The Rotten Ones ...

One tip for the weekend - something for the whole family. By that I mean, I'll be listening to a Broken Social Scene song with Emily Haines' voice haunting me ("Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl" in particular), and one of my teenage sons will walk into the room and grunt, "yeah, I know her from Metric."

The Canadian singer, daughter of poet Paul Haines and over-the-border tv journo Avery Haines comes to the First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and will play an all-ages show in the sanctuary Sunday at 7:30 p.m. Tall Firs open.

Attention must be paid to the lass whose Wikipedia entry notes her early influences were Carla Bley and Robert Wyatt, then P.J. Harvey. R5's Production's describes the show this way:

Metric chanteuse Emily Haines is gearing up to take her solo show on the road. In January, Haines will support her debut Knives Don't Have Your Back with a few weeks of touring in the U.S. and Canada. She'll be backed by members of her Soft Skeleton band (drummer Scott Minor of Sparklehorse and bassist Paul Dillon). The shows will also feature film projections by director Guy Maddin.

Go to R5's site for three free songs: "The Lottery," "Our Hell" and "The Maid Needs a Maid." Or you can watch a real performance here, on a clip of Metric playing "Hustle Rose" at Fearless Music in NYC. 

Alejandro

A weekend of worthy music - Marah at the TLA and Graham Parker at the Tin Angel Saturday, then We Are Scientists at the First Unitarian Church Sunday - but I'm going long with one man - Alejandro Escovedo returns to the World Cafe Live Saturday. With his string quintet.

"Only Al rocks with strings," wrote the Austin Chronicle last November, when Escovedo released the live "Room of Songs." How does one rock with strings?  Visit his MySpace page, which streams video selections from an Austin City Limits appearance. The violin and double cello intro to "Put You Down" is electric.

Nerd Litter nailed it when the San Francisco music blogger wrote of the former member of Rank and File and the True Believers:

Alejandro Escovedo has the kind of trajectory meant for a Behind The Music episode. He produced great albums in relative obscurity, earning industry respect but little fanfare. For his ‘90s genre-defying output, No Depression named him the Artist of The Decade. Then after the commercial break—bam! life sneaks in with its pivotal ... twist of the knife—he collapsed onstage in Phoenix in 2003. He had Hepatitis C and his body had given up. Dosed with a drug regimen, an uninsured Escovedo got weaker and more broken down. He had gotten to a lower point than most people ever reach.

Escovedo talked to me for a piece that ran in March 2005 (this version, from the Anniston Star, was published nearly a year later):

"I was completely unmoored," he says. "I had no anchor whatsoever. The thing that I had done every day of my life — play music — I did not enjoy. Playing wasn’t something I had done for a living. It was my life."

For months after he was stricken, Escovedo would toss in bed, battling both sickness and the treatment, a battering combination of interferon and ribavirin that turned his muscles into putty. He couldn’t sleep. He lost his hair. His skin felt as if it were on fire. He wasn’t sure if the drugs had made him dark and depressed, or if he was meeting some new part of himself. Without health insurance, he was beat financially. He wondered if he’d ever want to pick up his guitar again.

He got better, on the strength of new meds, support from a very good benefit album, stronger and stronger live performances. By this summer, he was smoking.

His show at XPN's All About the Music Festival on the Camden waterfront is posted on the XPN site - here. And NPR has this concert from the World Cafe Live, recorded in June - eight songs upon the release of his most recent CD, The Boxing Mirror. It's pretty much the same set list as in Austin and Camden.

When you read on his MySpace profile that he has 3,193 friends, you can actually bank on it.

Damien Rice

 Damien Rice leaned into the mic and mumbled, "This one is about messing it up even more than the previous," and he was into another delicate song about a broken love. Bed hair and all, he arrived on stage at the World Cafe Live a good half hour late - transportation troubles, they announced. He said he was a little disoriented - just awakened at 12:30 p.m. - his bus having traveled all night from his last gig, in New York City. You wonder what route they took.

It didn't matter. The eight songs he picked out to play for the full lunchtime house were spell-binding, whether it was Rice on the Rhodes electric piano, or gently picking his guitar, backed by a cellist, percussionist, bassist and Lisa Hannigan on vocals. This was really lovely stuff, even if he stuck to the "low songs," as he called them. He said he wasn't sure he could hit any of the high notes, given the indelicate hour. When he had to, though, he soared.

"A skinny, young,  Gentile, Leonard Cohen," my English-prof pal observed, adding Irish and dreamy.

Before ending with "Volcano" and "The Blower's Daughter" from O, the slight, blue-eyed Rice addressed the adoring crowd once more:

"Thanks for accepting us straight out of bed."

And then they walked off the stage. Presumably to get some sleep.

They play tonight at the Tower Theatre, 8 pm. Can't make it? Try here. Or here.

Holding It Down

 Before we go dumpster diving for some weekend tunes, attention must be paid to the bow-tied gentleman holding it down on our left.

Butch Ballard will be picking up a Mellon Jazz achievement award tonight before the Sonny Rollins concert at the Kimmel Center. Butch told Suzanne Cloud, president of the Jazz Bridge Project, that the $5,000 prize will go to a favorite charity.

Does the name sound familiar? Maybe you remember Butch Ballard from playing with both Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Catch him with Charlie Parker or Nina Simone? Trane? Maybe you know the Frankford-born drummer, now 87, from a wedding or a bar mitzvah. Ballard's kept time for them all.

Karl Stark wrote a closely observed profile of the man six years ago. I can't find it online in linkable form, but here's the nut:

Ballard is one of the Philadelphia jazz scene's most storied elders. Still playing local jazz clubs and private parties, he remains sought after for his unique resume, upbeat attitude and a scintillating rhythmic style forged in two of the greatest big bands.

"He's a chosen one," says Philadelphia-based singer Evelyn Sims, a frequent collaborator. "The last of the legends. "

Ballard would never describe himself that way. But he does claim to know a thing or two about jazz's essential elements.

"I always knew how to swing the band, and I always did it with the bands I worked with," he says. "That's my legacy - that's what I teach my students. `Make the band sound good. Don't sit back and entertain yourself. If you're not swingin' the band, it don't mean nothin'. "

The All Music Guide described him as one who "could make a snare drum sound as if it was being hit by a ball bearing."

Butch Ballard will be playing Dec. 7 at the Collingswood First Thursdays Jazz Concert Series. It's a party for his 88th birthday. (for info: 856-858-8914)

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Tunes time.

The first performer I ever saw in concert, Tom Rush, comes to the World Cafe Live Saturday. I wanted to find a classic clip of him playing "The Circle Game" or "No Regrets." Instead, and beginning this weekend tunes with a most mondo link, I came up with a video tribute to Clay Aiken, to the tune of Tom Rush (thank God) singing "Glory of Love."

Johnny Winter electrifies the Colonial tonight. Best seen and heard, here's the Texas blues guitarist in a YouTube clip from a late '60s gig at the Beat Club with his brother Edgar on piano. Look for Tommy Shannon on bass. It's "Johnny B. Goode," of course, from that great, three-sided Second Winter.

Think you've seen everything from My Morning Jacket? How about them playing "Into the Woods," backed by the Boston Pops? Lotta freaks. They hit the Electric Factory tonight.

 Finally, someone who's on Dan Deluca's bedtime playlist: emoriffic power popster Jeremy Enigk, who plays the North Star Bar Saturday. After a 10-year solo silence, the former Fire Theft frontman has released World Waits. His MySpace page features more to listen to. Mainstream Isn't So Bad serves up an mp3 of "Been Here Before."

(photo of Butch Ballard by Ben Johnston)

Mergers & Acquisitions

It's the weekend in Warsaw, so let's get going. If I weren't already booked -- two nights of the fall play, where Blinq Spawn B tries on his Irish accent -- I'd be thinking about seeing a couple merged acts with promise.

Like Spencer Dickinson tonight at the TLA.

This is a hybrid band, Jon Spencer (minus his Blues Explosion) and hill-country brothers Luther and Cody Dickinson, stepping away from the North Mississippi All-Stars to support an album that was long a rarity -- a 2001, Japan-only production that was released here in August by Yep Rock Records with seven extra tracks. What happens when you mix New York City and Mississippi blues? Nick Cristiano calls it "a slab of primitive, ultra-greasy rock-and-roll tinged with blues and swamp-soul, and more than a little backwoods hoodoo." You can download "That's a Drag" here.

Saturday brings another alternative pairing - guitarist John Scofield joins John Medeski, Billy Martin and Chris Wood for a jazz-funk-groove jam at the Electric Factory.  Yes, the name might suggest a law firm now - Medeski, Scofield, Martin and Wood - but a listen to their music at their MySpace page shows the jazz guitarist sounds like he belongs. That page also reminds how this is not a new meeting of chops -  the four played together on Scofield's 1998 A Go Go. You can stream four songs from the new CD here. Or acquire some here.

Of course, Steve Wynn's back in town - his fourth appearance this year - playing the World Cafe Live Friday. The former Dream Syndicate front man delivered a solo set this summer in Santa Monica, from which this was culled: "Tell Me When It's Over."

Hear This, Robert Zimmerman

 The All The Same Tour rolls into town, and attention must be paid. The Raconteurs open Saturday night at the Spectrum for Mr. Robert Zimmerman and his seasoned band of brothers. We devote the whole Weekend Tunes to the return of the sage, the reluctant prophet, with the voice like sand and glue.

Philebrity's sipped the most Bob Aid on this one, devoting much promotional space to pushing the show. Haven't seen commercialism so startling since Dylan's own Victoria's Secret turn a few years back. I bet Phileb's got a cushioned seat in the press box. He's linked all sorts of YouTube moments and odd-ball cover versions of Bobby Z's canon. Philebrity's Dylanology page is an essential stop on the tour.

But there's lots of low-hanging fruit left for us to share.

Being outsiders, we can link the good stuff, like The Big O, a Singapore Mp3 magazine that's posted most of The Rolling Thunder Review's Oct. 31, 1975 show at the War Memorial Auditorium in Plymouth, Mass. (I've listened to all of the Desire-era concert. Might want to start at the start to hearing the troupe, from Joan Baez to Roger McGuinn to  T-Bone Burnett, Ronee Blakely, Mick Ronson, etc.... find its groove.)

 Something to read while you're listening? Ever see the Dylan Pool's closer look at the 1965 press conference in San Francisco where the cranky one was promoting five shows? Great exchange over his affect. This page dips deep, from pictures and newspaper clippings to features on the press of the day, with their tacked ties and hair tonic. Then there's Allen Ginsburg. And a pre-"WKRP in Cincinnati" Howard 'Dr. Johnny Fever' Hesseman from the Committee.

Philadelphia blogger Pound for Pound puts up a variety of "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" performances, as he builds his ark. We wish Jack the best.

Maybe some Dylan and Johnny Cash outtakes from a 1969 ABC special?

Speaking of rarities, Stereogum stops by Wolfgang's Vault to raid a 1975 sing-a-long featuring Dylan and Neil Young with the Band and the Stray Gators backing up, singing "Knockin' On Dragon's Door." (What do you want, it was 1975, Stereogum writes of the altered lyric. Son, I remember 1975. We were out in the streets, but to protest tuition increases. It wasn't that freaky.)

 No longer a total rarity, just history on tape -- Bob Dylan and the Hawks, "Like a Rolling Stone," from the Royal Albert Hall, (The real Albert Hall show of May 26, 1966, not the Manchester show that's just called the Albert Hall show. Locust Street got it right.)

As the man says, wearily, "They're all poets, you understand?"

Music You Can Stand a Spoon In

 You hear a Black Keys song, and you can be forgiven if your first thought is, "I could play that." Yeah, but would you think of that? Elemental riffs, fuzzy chords, and a voice that exudes heaviosity drive this Akron-based, lo-fi, blues-rock duo that plays the Electric Factory Saturday night.

These childhood neighbors get as much sound from their guitar and drum attack any band this side of the White Stripes. You can stream a load of Black Keys songs at their Web site, and it's worth it just to launch their music player, a vintage reel-to-reel tape deck. More at their MySpace page, including some smoking video. Literally.

The band - guitarist/singer/sometimes Vox player Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney - recently opened for Radiohead on their U.S tour, and have released the full-length Magic Potion, recorded in Carney's basement studio. Paste Magazine calls it the band's best. Pop Matters gave it an 8/10:

the Black Keys continue to go down the only road they’ve ever known, and that is one filled with bluesy bumps, rocky ridges, and soul-saturated potholes that you can’t really get sick of.

The winning description comes from the music blogger Bon Ton:

The Black Keys’ve somehow created a stadium sound in my headphones, and if you add in the bluesy vocals and the bangin’ drums, you have music that hearkens back to the days when music was more than just how many people could be in the band and whether bandmembers are wearing wings or singing about the Napoleonic era. This music is strong and black, like coffee you could stand a spoon in.