Before a sold-out crowd in Cleveland’s House of Blues on Tuesday night, Billy Corgan loped around the stage waiting to begin, his head down and his long body making careful movements, as if to check that everything was in place — the show was, after all, Corgan’s second with the newly formed incarnation of Smashing Pumpkins.
Without a word, the band unassumingly launched into ‘Astral Planes,’ a twisting new jam from Corgan’s proposed 44-song project, ‘Teargarden by Kaleidyscope.’ It wasn’t likely a track most of the crowd wished for, but Corgan, drummer Mike Byrne, bassist Nicole Fiorentino and guitarist Jeff Schroeder tore through it with as much or even more vigor as any Pumpkins classic. Continue reading
Alone in his huge, Antebellum house built in 1853 in Holly Springs, Miss., Paul MacLeod is living his vision of the American dream. He’s a 67-year-old former assembly-line worker, and it shows—his face slumps like a wet towel. He subsists on two cases of Coca-Cola a day. His wife, Serita, left him years ago, and he hasn’t seen her since. His son, too, left long ago . But MacLeod doesn’t mind living alone: He’s got Elvis Presley.
For 20 years, MacLeod has operated his own live-in Elvis museum called Graceland Too. Every corner, wall and inch of ceiling in his two-story mansion is covered with Elvis memorabilia, from The King’s high school report card (he failed music) to plush tigers (in honor of Elvis’ martial-arts name) and thousands of posters, clippings and photographs. MacLeod keeps Graceland Too open 24 hours a day, every day of the year. If he’s slipped into a light sleep at 4 a.m., knock loud enough and he’ll give you a tour. Only five bucks.
Graceland Too isn’t really about Elvis Presley. It’s about creating another world, one in which Paul MacLeod is king, slap-happy and in love with his favorite rock star, blissfully unaware of the faster, meaner, grimier world beyond his property. “I’m prepared to die right now if I could bring that guy back,” he tells me with a voice that sounds like he’s gargling maple syrup. While outisders—368,000 people since 1990, by his count—stop by and see him as an oddity, an old man gone batty, MacLeod says he’s “doin’ just what makes me happy.”
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Wild Smile begins with the words:
Save your body. Save your mind. Save your love for me.
On paper, it sounds like a plea. Almost desperate. Please, it reads. Please don’t go anywhere. Stay with me. Save your soul for mine – they got along so well, didn’t they?
But put to melody, the lines take flight. Simple, repetitive, honest. Sincere, but playful. The meditative melody inflates the words like a hot air balloon. And right there, found in the first minute of Suckers’ debut album, lies what will become the band’s trademark, the quality that distinguishes it from every other kinda arty, kinda pretentious, kinda danceable new band that’s popped up in the last year. It’s Suckers’ sincerity. Wild Smile is often weird as hell, but we believe it, because it sounds like the band really believes it too. It’s the type of sincerity most often seen in children playing: they’re warriors on a cross-the-globe mission (while running around the backyard), they’re creating the Mona Lisa (out of finger paint), they’re building a giant castle (out of pillows in the living room). Wild Smile is the sound of Suckers playing — it’s serious fun. Continue reading
What’s in a name? For Rodef Shalom Congregation, the answer is quite a lot — especially come June 27. That night, the Shadyside congregation will give Bishop David Zubik, of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the first ever Pursuer of Peace award, named after the translation of Rodef Shalom. It’s an honor that’s a full year in the making.
As its annual major fundraiser, Rodef Shalom long recognized a deserving congregant with a dinner. “The time was right,” for a change, said Rabbi Aaron Bisno. “I had been speaking with our leadership about creating an award we could provide to somebody in the wider community beyond the finite membership of Rodef Shalom, using the congregation’s profile to recognize good works in the community.”
The June 27 event will feature a dinner, followed by an address given by Bishop Zubik. A portion of the night’s proceeds will be split between the diocese and synagogue and donated to immigrant and refugee aid organizations chosen by each group. Michelle Bisno, the Pursuer of Peace tribute chair, said she expects 300 people for the meal, but that Rodef Shalom’s 1200-seat congregation will fill to capacity for Zubik’s address. Continue reading
John McCauley III is lying on a couch in the basement of Cleveland’s Beachland Tavern, looking equal parts hungover and still-drunk. It’s 8:30 on a Saturday night in early May, and in a few hours, his band Deer Tick will electrify a sold-out crowd, thrashing through a vigorous set of fast, loud, country-leaning rock songs. For now, though, his mind is on more pressing matters. “You can’t charge two drink tickets for one cup,” he says, staring down at a double vodka on the rocks he ordered from the bar upstairs.
He rises from one couch and relocates to another, joining his bandmates around a glass coffee table littered with bottles and cigarettes. Deer Tick is playing in Ohio tonight on a short respite from a cross-country tour with Dr. Dog; nights off are for the weak, it seems. The band has a new record to push, called The Black Dirt Sessions, and there’s no sense in not playing, weary or not.
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Janelle Monáe’s long-awaited debut album opens with the sounds of an orchestra tuning and some polite applause, then a sharp jab of strings, the rise of an ominous choir and flittering woodwinds. If you’re sitting in front of the computer you just bought the record on, dressed in sweats and a t-shirt, you might feel underdressed.
And rightly so: The ArchAndroid is a fully immersive, theatrical experience. It’s a near-perfect R&B album; hell, it’s a fantastic hip-hop, psychedelic, neo-soul, dance and orchestral album too. It’s hard to classify but harder to ignore, matching Monáe’s massive stylistic scope and ambition with endless melodies, can’t-help-but-smile jams and an all-star cast of guest artists, including Big Boi, Saul Williams, Deep Cotton and Of Montreal. The 18-track epic brings to mind Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life; its stunning, sophisticated tunes spanning styles, speeds and sentiments, all tied together by a smorgasbord of artistic personalities.
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Considering how friendly Dr. Dog’s music is, it’s hard to believe the band has proved so divisive. Hating on the Philadelphia quintet is like beating up the neighborhood kids who spend all summer riding bikes and building forts—you may feel older and wiser, but who’s having a better time than them? The band’s sun-drenched, feel-good vibe belies songs as full of personal conviction as those of any acoustic-strumming bleeding heart. If anything, Dr. Dog’s edge is that they don’t have one—this is unabashed, love-each-other pop from a band that once named an album We All Belong and filled it with music proving just that.
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The Segel household in Squirrel Hill was full of sound.
Ken was in the dining room talking with his oldest daughter Isabel, 9; she was pacing with her clarinet in hand. Across the hall in the living room, 7-year-old Abigail was halfway through a violin lesson.
In fact, the only Segel not making a sound was Naomi, 4, but her mind was clearly racing. Splayed out in her mom Sarah’s lap, her eyes scanned the pages of “Today is the Birthday of the World,” the beautifully illustrated book in Sarah’s hands.
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To call OK Computer a great album is an understatement on par with “Jesus is a pretty popular guy.” Especially around Christmas. The album, ranked by many as the best of the distant, now seemingly archaic decade of the 1990’s, was the culmination of a band putzing around its own creative potential for a few albums, then, each member at once, pouncing on that potential, ripping it to shreds like hyenas and emerging from the fight with scratches and cuts and one of the most gorgeous, haunting and classic rock albums of all time. Is there a song in the rock’n’roll canon that’s more of a mental-musical tapeworm than “Karma Police”? Is there a guitar riff as ragged and tearing and high-beams-blinding as that of “Electioneering”? I dare you to find one. And if you did, it’d likely also be by Radiohead.
Thing is, OK Computer was almost too good, because it effectively cast Radiohead into the spotlight as “Best Band in the World,” a title that, until only recently, with SPIN Magazine’s ballsy and long overdue article busting rock myths, was even questioned. In this decade, so very nearing its close as you read this, appreciation for Radiohead has been elevated so high it can be summed up with one simple phrase: “Well, of course you do.” Continue reading
Has a supergroup ever lived up to its classification? The best (Traveling Wilburys, Dead Weather) have been great at times, but to say that they were ‘super,’ better than the bands from which they came, would be foolish. “Handle with Care” was good, but one of those Wilburys wrote Blonde on Blonde all by himself. And another one was a Beatle.
So could we really expect Them Crooked Vultures—the rock spaceship helmed by Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age and Dave Grohl—to be greater than the sum of its parts? No way, especially when a third of the band played bass on “Dazed and Confused.”
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