I’m not sure how their label hasn’t found this on YouTube and taken it down yet (and maybe after my posting it they will), but here is one of the best live concert films ever made. It’s from U2′s 2001 Elevation Tour, live from Boston.
To me, this was U2 in its prime. They were at the peak of their career and influence, they had just put out their album All That You Can’t Leave Behind which was chock full of classics from beginning to end, they had a creative new stage layout and HD and multi-camera recording technique in place. Socially, Bono was in the midst of his big ONE Campaign against poverty and his global influence was booming. Historically, it was a significant moment as well because the albums popularity and the Elevation Tour took place around the tragedy of 9/11 and for many living in NYC at the time, myself included, the album became a soundtrack to the healing process.
This video was certainly an all time favorite of mine and I urge you to watch it in its entirety, especially when he sings “With or Without You” and ruins the night for whatever guy came with the girl he brings up on stage! hahaha
You ever discover, or rediscover, an older song and then become obsessed with how good it was/is? That is me right now with this 10 year old Nada Surf song “Inside of Love”.
It’s an absolute beautiful track chronicling the yearning to be the person in the good relationship when you seem to always be standing on the outside of that. I bet we’ve all felt like that at some point right?
I think the most pointed lyrics in the song come when lead singer Matthew Caws sings “I know the last page so well, I can’t read the first, so I just don’t start.” What a great metaphor for that feeling you get when you just don’t want to even deal with starting a new relationship after having gotten out of one or more that didn’t work.
Anyway, lie down or lean back, close your eyes, and enjoy this great song!
One of the most beautiful soul performances Ive ever seen has to be Maxwell’s cover of “This Woman’s Work” on MTV Unplugged in 1997. The song was written by legendary songwriter Kate Bush, and Maxwell took it to the next level with this performance at Brooklyn Academy of Music. One of the interesting things about this Unplugged is that prior to taping this, Maxwell had only released one album which was “Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite”. Typically Unplugged status goes to well established performer. Nevertheless, this song made its rounds on R&B and adult contemporary radio, appeared on the Love & Basketball movie soundtrack and college mixtapes across the country.
Enjoy this live performance from the MTV Unplugged and tell me he doesn’t suck you in with song…
The mid 2000′s produced some great singer/songwriters and one of the best voices to come out of this period was Regina Spektor.
Her career really took off in my old stomping grounds of the East Village in NYC, and the video below is a deep dive into her archives with a 2004 performance of her song “Hero”, recorded at the famous Knitting Factory. This song was made more popular in recent years as it was featured in the film (500) Days of Summer, but I like this video because its raw and shows her talent and uniqueness before she really blew up.
The other interesting tidbit about her is that she shares managers with my 2AM Club crew. Maybe thats not interesting to you, but there it is nonetheless
I remember when The Strokes were blowing up in NYC in the mid 00′s and they were the absolute darlings of the music industry. Everyone praised them like there were gods gift to music and they certainly were talented and in many ways elevated the East Village/Lower East Side New York vibe which in turn really ramped up what we now call the hipster culture. These guys were rockers and in many ways earned the praise they received.
While they’ve released a few albums now, they havent been able to duplicate their early success to date. I enjoyed Julian Casablancas solo effort as I wrote in an earlier post, but the folks that were drooling over them a few years ago have definitely moved on it seems. Last year they dropped another album and it didnt make much noise, but I really enjoyed the title track called “Under Cover of Darkness” which to me is a classic indie rock song that really captures some of their early brilliance. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Robert Glasper Experiment — which has a new album out on Tuesday, and a feature in this week’s Arts & Leisure — specializes in deep, immersive grooves, nourished as much by hip-hop and R&B as any known species of jazz. On the album, “Black Radio,” the band’s sprawl is contained by the dimensions of its songs; that’s not necessarily the case in concert, where a single woozy vamp can often last half an hour or longer.
(Having sold out a Tuesday night show at the Highline Ballroom, the band has added a second show on Wednesday night, with Lupe Fiasco and other guests.)
There’s plenty of improvising in these shows, by Mr. Glasper, on Fender Rhodes and acoustic piano, and by each of his dangerously proficient band mates: Casey Benjamin on saxophone, keyboards and vocoder; Derrick Hodge on electric bass; and Chris Dave on drums. And yet it’s worth posing the question at the top of this post, especially in light of an album with clear crossover designs. So: is it jazz?
Mr. Glasper would answer that question a few different ways. “My whole thing is just getting a new audience to the music,” he said during the first part of our recent interview, in his Brooklyn apartment. “My purpose is not to get everybody to like Charlie Parker. Because the realistic thing is, everybody’s not going to. Everybody’s not going to like jazz, let’s just be honest about it. Everybody doesn’t like everything. There’s a disconnect in generations and some people just aren’t going to feel that music. But there is a modern take on certain things you can do that, to me, is still jazz.”
The last sentence in that quote is a key to understanding Mr. Glasper’s appeal, both in and out of jazz circles. As a close collaborator to so many artists in hip-hop and R&B, he understands what drives that music; he’s no dilettante. And as noted in the article he has made a point of honoring the memory of J Dilla, a producer who was highly regarded well before his death (in 2006), and has since become enshrined in legend. This happens not only with the Robert Glasper Experiment, but also with Mr. Glasper’s trio. Here’s a bootleg recorded at Yoshi’s, the upscale Bay Area jazz club, in 2007:
After the band fades out of “F.T.B.,” an original tune, there’s some stage banter followed by a segue into the J Dilla track “Thelonious,” which was released by Common and Slum Village. Obviously “Thelonious” is J Dilla’s nod to Thelonious Monk — and hardly an idle one. There’s a reason so many young jazz musicians have followed the example of Mr. Glasper (and his partners, especially Mr. Dave) and started incorporating J Dilla beats into their music. Mr. Glasper, among others, would still call it jazz.
But he really doesn’t care whether you would agree with that. Or so he maintained later in our interview, over lunch at the General Greene.
So I think it was 2007, but I was in NYC and got invited to go to the Linkin Park concert at Madison Square Garden. I saw them once at the LA Coliseum when they opened for Metallica and they crushed it, so I was really excited to see them again.
I went to the show with two friends, one of whom was the VP of Music and Talent for MTV and the other who was the label rep for Linkin Park at Warner Brothers. Before the show the 3 of us decided to grab a drink at a bar underneath MSG so we headed down there a little before the show was to start. About 15 min into drinks, a guy walks into the bar named John Meneilly who is Jay Z’s business manager and someone we all knew and had worked with, so he stopped over to join us for a moment. We were shooting the breeze and lo and behold who walks in a few minutes later is Jay Z himself, who also stopped by and said hi. That was all really cool in itself, and then we all walked in to see the show and got to our seats just after Linkin Park’s first song. I didnt put two and two together at the moment because I was so excited about seeing Jay and being at the show, but soon something amazing was about to happen…
After Linkin Park finished what was an incredible set, totally reaching and exceeding my expectations, they went offstage as the crowd cheered for them to come on and perform an encore. Did they ever! Not only did they come back, but who walks on stage with them but Jay Z! He ended up performing with them the ENTIRE “Collision Course” album that they did together, and I think it ended up being the only time they did that whole set together outside the time they originally performed it at The Roxy in LA for our MTV show. At the end of the day it ended up being one of the best live shows I ever saw.
Here is one of the classics from that partnership, “Numb”.
Damien Rice is probably my favorite import from Ireland since my family
His music has a classic Irish sound to, but mixes with it an indie rock edge. His first album “O” in my mind is a must have for every music library, absolutely beautiful from start to finish and this track entitled “I Remember” comes off of it.
The reason for the “beautifully bipolar” subject line is that this song is actually two songs, and two emotions for that matter, rolled up into one. One of the first times I saw Damien was at Radio City Music Hall in NYC, and it was an absolute incredible performance. At that show he told the back story to this song which is this. He was at a pub, met a girl and kind of fell for her right away. Im not sure that they actually engaged, but he fell in love from afar and went home and wrote the first half of this song which is sung here by another great Irish singer Lisa Hannigan. A few days later he returned to the pub only to see this girl with her boyfriend, thus crushing his fantasies of their life together and leading Damien to write the second half of the song which he sings and is full of anger about the failed beginning.
Check it out, and knowing the back story now I think it gives an interesting lens to listen to this track from…enjoy!
A lot of songs have great lyrics, melodies, beats and so on, and that is why we love them. I often gravitate towards songs that either have a complexity to them and/or I really connect with the songwriting. In the case of MGMT, I think its the former that drew me to them. Their songs are irreverent and often complex, but not over done. Lyrically though, I must admit that in many cases I remain confused. Check out two of my favorite MGMT songs, “Time To Pretend” (which to me was a theme song of sorts to life in the East Village/Lower East Side of NYC) and “Weekend Wars” (whose lyrics are included on the YouTube page for the video and offer a glimpse as to why I simply dont get their lyrics at times). I saw them play a show in NYC before I moved which was a blast. It included the 2AM Club gents and sitting in the grass in Prospect Park in Brooklyn on a nice July night catching the show. Not much better than the outdoor summer concert in NYC. Check em out, and enjoy!
If there is a band that defined the year of my life when I moved back to NYC from LA in 2005 it has to be Brazilian Girls. I used to see these guys (actually 3 guys and 1 girl lead singer, none from Brazil) almost weekly at one of my favorite speakeasy clubs in the East Village, Nublu, whose entrance was marked by a blue light which was the only distinction between it and an old alleyway.
Their music will bring you somewhere, where that is is up to you. For me, it was this small dark venue where they performed without a stage, so you literally would walk almost through them to get from the bar to the dance floor. The crowd was either European, South American or the NYC music/arts crowd. The unifying factor in the crowd was a desire to disconnect, dance and appreciate the art of music and dance. On countless occasions I saw people join in with their instruments to play along, or conversely you may see their lead singer Sabina join the patrons on the dancefloor. No matter what, you were transported to a place where music and dance ruled and nothing else mattered.
I had the good fortune of spending New Years Eve 2005/2006 with this crew and it proved to be a night of epic proportions. Enjoy the song and check out the others from their self titled debut album.
label hasn’t found this on YouTube and taken it down yet (and maybe after my posting it they will), but here is one of the best live concert films ever made. It’s from U2′s 2001 Elevation Tour, live from Boston.
