Medleyville

King Crimson
Nokia Theatre Times Square – New York
Aug. 17, 2008

Flying under the radar of a summer filled with mega-tours (The Police being one) was the definitive progressive-rock group King Crimson, touring in tribute to its 40th anniversary as a group.

The Crimson lineup has changed through the years, but the one constant has been 62-year-old founder/guitarist Robert Fripp (above), who once again assembled a stunning lineup of expert musicians to interpret the band’s catalog of noncommercial songs.

The show turned out to be not a gleeful walk down memory lane, but an all-out attack on the senses.

As a prelude to the opening of the show, Fripp played about 10 minutes of his customary soundscapes (long interlocking waves of digital sound loops), but it was not a portent of things to come.

Except for "Walking on Air," which slowed things down considerably (and was beautifully rendered by Adrian Belew's guitar and vocals), nearly every tune in the set was loud and full of intensity. This was heavy prog-rock of the first order, as the band segued from "The ConstruKction of Light" to "Red" to the infrequently played "Neurotica" and back and forth across the decades.

Anchored by Fripp and Belew, the band welcomed back Tony Levin (noted also for being a member of Peter Gabriel's touring band) to the fold after an absence of more than a dozen years. The addition of a second drummer Gavin Harrison from the band Porcupine Tree gave the band much-needed energy. The drum/percussion solos/duels between Harrison and Pat Mastelotto (a 14-year veteran of the band) were intense and surprising.

There were some improvs in the middle of the set that sounded like they were dress rehearsals for another album. King Crimson is no stranger to improvisation, and it delighted in changing the arrangement of such songs as "Sleepless" and "Three of a Perfect Pair." The crowd was left standing during the encores ("Thela Hun Ginjeet" and "Elephant Talk") and many fans moved near the stage to bask in the final moments of the tour.

All in all, the band sounded as well as they ever did. Fripp was up to his usual weirdness, preferring to sit off to the side of the stage when playing (placed in the shadows behind a stack of amplifiers and other gear) and standing off to the side of the stage clapping as the band took its bows. The only downside was the omission of "21st Century Schizoid Man" and "In the Court of the Crimson King," two of the band’s strongest and most familiar songs.

King Crimson may not suit everyone's taste, but it still manages to amaze its cult following some 40 years later.

-- By Donald Gavron

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She likes to keep busy, and lately, singer/songwriter Juliana Hatfield has been just that.

Her new album, How to Walk Away, arrived in stores this month on her own Ye Olde Records label, which she started in 2005. Produced by Ivy's Andy Chase and recorded at his Stratosphere Sound facility in Manhattan, the 10-song album features guest spots by Psychedelic Furs singer Richard Butler and Nada Surf's Matthew Caws.

In addition, Hatfield has written an autobiography, which is due to be published next year by Wiley and Sons.

Hatfield recently discussed her recent projects, as well as the impact running her own label has had on her both personally and professionally.

Medleyville.us: In the press materials for the new album, there's a quote from you about how your voice has "grown into itself" and that you're not struggling against its "little girl-ness." Did that come naturally or through lessons or something else?
Juliana Hatfield: "I think it's from the passage of time. I took voice lessons starting in my teens, and I went to community college and studied voice, so it was never a question of not trying. I was always trying to make my voice stronger, but I always had this young-sounding quality that drove me crazy for a long time.

"If you listen to my records back to back, chronologically, you can hear my voice slowly lowering a little bit. It’s finally gotten a little bit richer and less childlike."

Given their personal and candid nature, did the songs on the new album go through more or less editing than previous efforts?
Hatfield: "I think probably more. I spent a lot of time writing the songs; I did a lot of work putting the lyrics together. It wasn’' a very quick process, the writing – or even choosing the songs. Me and [Chase] were very careful and meticulous about choosing the write songs for the album."

Did you have a lot to choose from that you had written and recorded?
Hatfield: "Yeah, I had more than ever. Usually when I make an album, I just have enough songs to make an album. But this time I wrote more than I needed. [Chase] wanted me to keep writing because he wanted to have a choice -- he wanted to have 10 really good songs, and because of him I wrote maybe 20, 25 songs."

Did a lot happen in your life where you were able to come up with those 20, or did you find yourself between 11 and 20 maybe struggling a little bit?
Hatfield: "I think maybe with the last five songs I was scraping the bottom of the barrel (laughs). But then again, those kind of songs can be kind of cool – the ones that maybe aren't so deep, but they’re more odd. I really like some of the weirder ones, but we really didn't end up using any of those."

What led you to record at Stratosphere Sound?
Hatfield: "I went there because [Chase] is one of the co-owners, and he's very comfortable in that studio. … we met eight or 10 years ago and did some demos back then. We recorded a couple of songs in his home studio, and for this record we did pre-production in his home studio and then we moved to Stratosphere."

How do you like running your own record label?
Hatfield: "It depends on the day. It's a lot of work. It's basically me doing everything that needs to be done. I hire people to do certain jobs, but on a day-to-day basis, it's just me. So some days it wears me out, but it's really great to be on top of it and to know everything that's going on, to know how many records are being manufactured and sold. To just have control over everything is really great, but at the same time, it's a ton of work."

How has running your own label impacted your artistically? Has it made you a different artist or a better artist?
Hatfield: "I'm not sure. I don't know if it's really affected me at all as an artist. . . . I used to get really restless and depressed when I wasn't working – when I wasn't making an album or writing an album or touring, I would kind of go crazy. I didn't know what to do with myself. I had all this energy, and I didn't know where to direct it. So now I have this label to run, and it's a place to direct my other energies. In that sense, it's probably calmed me down a little bit and given my downtime more of a focus, which is really good, I think."

How far along are you with writing your autobiography?
Hatfield: "The whole thing's written – we're at the end of the editing process. . . . I've always wanted to write a book. Before I was a musician, I wanted to be a writer. But when I started doing music, I put writing prose on the back burner. But it was always this thing in the back of my mind -- 'Oh, I want to write a book someday.'

"And then I had an idea to write a tour diary. So on this tour I did about six years ago, I took very detailed notes with the intention of making it into a book. So it started out as a tour diary but became a memoir, so it goes between this tour and my life in music."

-- Introduction and interview by Chris M. Junior

Juliana Hatfield on tour (schedule subject to change):

* Sept. 9: Iota Club and Cafe -- Arlington, Va.

* Sept. 10: World Cafe Live -- Philadelphia

* Sept. 12: Bowery Ballroom -- New York

* Sept. 14: Brattle Theater -- Cambridge, Mass.

* Sept. 23: The Triple Door -- Seattle

* Sept. 24: Aladdin Theater -- Portland, Ore.

* Sept. 25: Cafe du Nord -- San Francisco

* Sept. 27: Largo -- Los Angeles

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ROLLING OVER FIFTY

Enjoying some much-deserved down time in recent weeks, I for some reason decided to devote several hot August nights to organizing all 1,239 of my Rolling Stones iTune files into handy, CD-ready 70-minute play lists. Arranged not chronologically by order of original release, but by dates actually recorded, you see.

So "Black Limousine"and "Slave," for example, now sit most comfortably right alongside "If You Can't Rock Me" and "Ain’t Too Proud to Beg" rather than with their regular Tattoo You disc-mates. Similarly, the original take of "Jigsaw Puzzle" surprisingly serves as a missed link between the unjustly poo-pooh’d Their Satanic Majesties Request sessions and that (overly?) acclaimed Beggars Banquet.

It was also quite nice to get reacquainted with such "rarities" as the "Satisfaction" and especially "Ruby Tuesday" pre-vocal backing tracks, not to mention the far-superior 45-rpm mono mix of "Street Fighting Man." And have you ever heard Keith Richards singing lead on "Gimme Shelter"? Not to mention the band’s criminally unheard Brussels Affair 1973 live album, wherein the aforementioned "S. F. Man" reaches a near Ramones level of warp-speed intensity?

Anyway, 19 freshly burned home CDs later, I kicked completely back beneath headphones to unspool my very own Rolling Stones anthology, straight through their spring '63 demo tape to the gloriously Buddy Guy-boosted "Champagne & Reefer" from the Martin Scorsese-directed Shine a Light.

And that’s a wrap, I mistakenly thought.

Yet no sooner had I surfaced from my roll down memory lane than it was announced to an incredulous world that Richards, Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts and Ron Wood had, most unbelievably, just finagled the latest in a long, long line of megabuck recording contracts with none other than the apparently unsuspecting Universal Music Group.

Blimey! The Rolling Stones have promised to make three new albums (at least "I think we might make another album," said Richards hopefully, if not exactly helpfully) as well as bequeathing Universal the universal rights to the band’s entire post-'60s catalog for the next five years.

The cost to UMG? An extremely cool 15 million. But, caveat emptor! Their previous employers, EMI, get to keep the Stones' 1970s-on publishing, while the wily Allen Klein's notoriously sticky fingers retain their stranglehold on the real goods: The band’s ultra-lucrative, incessantly income-generating, solidly golden 1960s cache (masters and publishing).

Still, a deal's a deal, especially with what’s left of today's musical industry. And while the press instantly began cackling over the announcement, trotting out the same old paraplegic "Stones Too Old To…"/"…Gather New Moss" quips, Jagger, Richards, Watts and even Wood -- if he's allowed out of rehab long enough to remain upright and onstage -- really will have the last laugh (as they usually do, when all is said and sung).

To wit: "The Rolling Stones were born on the road and in a time when you served record companies and they served you," as no less an authority on the matter as original Stones manager/producer/all-round svengali Andrew Loog Oldham told me last week. "Getting [screwed] and advance gouging came later. Leave downloading to the next generation. We silver strollers still like pretty boxes and browsing."

Indeed, when I first met Oldham at a Hoboken, N.J., recording session years ago, he’d just come from an afternoon spent record shopping. Something he, of all people, still does.

But the most important detail Oldham, UMG and I can leave you with is this: While the band’s pre-"Brown Sugar" treasures may never ever leave the above-mentioned Mr. Klein's grasp, his ABKCO Records label -- which, yes, holds the rights to two dozen classic early Stones albums is distributed by (you guessed it) the Universal Music Group, which really may make that 15-mil payout even more than worthwhile after all.

Why?

"It means for the very first time in that their whole body of work is in one place," Oldham points out. "This could mean creative repackaging and stable pricing."

Not to mention, for starters, a nice big multi-disc, multiple-media box-set bonanza to commemorate the band’s 50th anniversary come 2012, I'd wager my original 3-D Satanic Majesties cover on.

"The Rolling Stones belong on Universal," Oldham says.

And so if the powers that be, from he and Messrs. Klein, Jagger, Watts and/or Richards on down ever need any assistance whatsoever sequencing and assembling their inevitable anthology, I'll gladly lend them my latest 19 CD-Rs for starters.

-- Musician/writer Gary Pig Gold is the co-founder of the To M'Lou Music label.

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The Police
PNC Bank Arts Center -- Holmdel, NJ
Aug. 3, 2008

For the fourth-to-last show of The Police's lengthy reunion tour, 56-year-old Sting (above) looked his usual sculpted self in a skin-tight, long-sleeved shirt, but also sported a scruffy, gray-speckled beard that showed he is a long way from his days as a pinup and movie star.

This image could be seen as a metaphor for the band's compelling and often sizzling 100-minute performance: Nearly a quarter century after calling it quits, the trio proved to be quite muscular, powerful and relatively fit, but there was no masking the concessions age inevitably has taken on the group, especially one with such a physically demanding repertoire.

"Are you ready to sing tonight?" Sting asked the audience after the opening song, a booming and faithfully rendered "Message in a Bottle," which began with Andy Summers' guitar loudly ringing through the stately amphitheater. The overflow crowd was indeed up to the task of singing along, but the real question should have been whether the fans were ready to do so in a much lower key than some of The Police's best-known cuts were recorded in.

Sting was in remarkably sturdy voice, stretching out words and engaging in incessant "oh-yee-oh-oh" shout-outs, but he did not dare approach his high notes of old, particularly on the chorus to "Don't Stand So Close to Me." Still, that flat number was the only track that seemed to suffer in part due to the singer/bassist's now somewhat limited vocal range (there also was a conspicuously missing middle-eight part). The bulk of the performance found Sting, 65-year-old Summers and tireless drummer Stewart Copeland, 56, deftly and impressively churning out a wisely paced set that drove home reasons why The Police were arguably the world's biggest band before dissolving in the mid-1980s: the sharp power-trio chops ("Demolition Man," "Driven to Tears"), reggae-rock meldings ("Hole in My Life" and a re-worked "Roxanne") and even world music leanings, most evident on a slowed-down "Wrapped Around Your Finger," one of several songs that saw Copeland fully utilize the array of instruments enveloping him: a considerable rack of toms, plus chimes, tympanis and even a gong.

Also on "Wrapped Around Your Finger," Sting, long painted as one of rock's ultra-serious frontmen, was seemingly holding back a smirk as he delivered fairly ponderous lyrics like, "Mephistopholes is not your name." It was a welcome light moment, and perhaps another indicator of why the show, and this tour (which ends Aug. 7 in New York), came off so well: It wasn't perfect (it ended on a hiccup with "Next to You," so plodding that it lost its original punkish spark), but it was overwhelmingly impressive, frequently thrilling and, most of all, undeniably fun.

Openers Elvis Costello and the Imposters set the energetic tone even before playing a note. Electric guitar in hand, Costello led his three bandmates out from stage-left a good six minutes before their scheduled start time, let out a hearty "How ya' doin?" to the still-arriving crowd and charged into "Stella Hurt," one of several selections from his solid new disc, Momofuku.

In and around his convincing recent material, Costello delivered reminders that he, like The Police, was once a pretty big star and a darling of MTV in his own right, such as "Every Day I Write The Book" and the chugging set closer "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love and Understanding."

Sting surprised the crowd by joining the 53-year-old Costello, and even taking the second verse, on a rousing version of the classic ballad "Alison," drawing roars from the audience and providing a fitting snapshot for the night: A 31-year-old song was being belted out by musicians nearly twice its age, and nobody in the building seemed one bit weary of hearing it.

-- By George Henn

THE POLICE'S AUG. 3 SET LIST

"Message in a Bottle"
"Walking on the Moon"
"Demolition Man"
"Voices Inside My Head"
"When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around"
"Don't Stand So Close to Me"
"Driven to Tears"
"Hole in My Life"
"Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic"
"Wrapped Around Your Finger"
"De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da"
"Invisible Sun"
"Can't Stand Losing You"
------
"Roxanne"
"King of Pain"
"So Lonely"
"Every Breath You Take"
------
"Next to You"

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Chris Cain of We Are Scientists breaks down Brooklyn's best and more

Coney Island. Nathan's Famous. The Dodgers.

Through the years, Brooklyn, N.Y., has been the home to some pretty notable things. Chris Cain, one half of the Brooklyn-based rock duo We Are Scientists, recently took time from his band's tour supporting Brain Thrust Mastery (Virgin/Astralwerks) to talk about his beloved borough.

Best Brooklyn bar: "The Levee, in Williamsburg, has [the] Big Buck Hunter Pro [video game], a pool table and good drink specials -- although stay away from the Gatorade margarita: Noble experiments do sometimes fail. There are hotdogs, too, and free licorice."

Best Brooklyn neighborhood: "Park Slope. Everyone likes Park Slope, is the thing. People can get into whiny, self-promoting debates about most neighborhoods in Brooklyn, but people agree: Park Slope is fun and exciting. Babies like it, children like it, teenagers like it, [college students] like it, hipsters like it, young grown-ups like it, hardened professionals like it, retirees go in for it, and it's a decent place to get buried."

Best Brooklyn pizza: "Ana Maria in Williamsburg or Pizza Den in Bensonhurst."

Brooklyn musician you're mostly likely to bump into on the street: "Most people have the sense that they're being followed by Annie Marvin of Au Revoir Simone."

Next Brooklyn band/musician likely to break big: "Well, they had five minutes of deserved fame a couple of years back, but Ambulance Ltd broke up and have been gone a long time. They're back now, though, and I think the era of Ambulance is about to begin."

-- Introduction and interview by Chris M. Junior

We Are Scientists on tour (schedule subject to change):

* Aug. 5: The Music Mill – Indianapolis

* Aug. 6: High Noon Saloon – Madison, Wis.

* Aug. 7: Varsity Theater – Minneapolis

* Aug. 8: The Abbey – Chicago

* Aug. 9: Grog Shop – Cleveland

* Aug. 10: Southgate House – Newport, Ky.

* Aug. 11: Diesel -- Pittsburgh

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Medleyville staffers Chris M. Junior and Donald Gavron go over the latest solo album by one of British rock's most respected musicians.

Chris M. Junior: Like most albums with a lot of songs, Paul Weller's latest (21 tunes total) covers a lot of musical ground. And listening to the soul-based material on 22 Dreams made me wonder why modern-day R&B artists don't record versions of Weller tunes or look to him for songwriting inspiration.

Donald Gavron: Eveyone knows who Paul McCartney is, but a lot of people aren't familiar with Weller or The Style Council or The Jam. It's almost as if he exists in his own time continuum. I think Weller during his career has produced some of the great songs in pop/rock/R&B history.

Junior: No argument here -- although the first few songs on 22 Dreams (Yep Roc) aren't among them. "Light Nights" is OK, with Weller in early '70s Rod Stewart mode, and the title track is kind of a throwaway, albeit a rockin' one. He gets into a groove with the steady "All I Wanna Do (Is Be With You)," with a bristling guitar countering his soulful vocal. "Have You Made Up Your Mind" is the first real gem on 22 Dreams.

Gavron: I thought the first song had a Cat Stevens vibe, and I have to disagree: I liked it. "All I Wanna Do" is vintage Weller, though. On the haunting "Invisible," he shows us what he can do with just a few chords on a piano and his voice. 22 Dreams, on the whole, is an ambitious affair, and there are some gems here as well as some downers. I can imagine songs like "Cold Moments" and "Why Walk When You Can Run" sounding great live (as they do on the album), but I don't think anyone will be waiting to hear "Sea Spray" in concert. Weller's vocals are also a little scratchy in spots, but why quibble? 22 Dreams is like a warm, comforting breeze on a starry night.

Junior: I second your thoughts on "Invisible," and add "Push It Along" to the list of new tunes that ought to sound great in concert. And on the subject of his voice -- sure, it's a little rough, but I think that adds so much character to his songs. The instrumentals "Song for Alice" and "Lullaby for Kinder" make for a nice change of pace.

Gavron: On 22 Dreams, which clocks in at more than 68 minutes in length, Weller did a nice job covering a lot of different styles and genres, as he always does. The liner notes ("The Missing Dream") are also a very funny read, and reminiscent of his "Cappuccino Kid" liner notes from the Style Council boxed set. Kudos must also go out to two of Weller's longtime collaborators: Simon Dine (guitar, percussion, mandolin) and Steve Cradock (guitar, piano, percussion), both of whom also co-produced.

Junior: In a recent Spin interview, Weller said he considered going the duets or covers route for his new album -- thankfully, he didn't. 22 Dreams may be a bit long and may not win him many new fans, but it sits nicely alongside his other solo albums.

Gavron: I tend to agree. This album isn't equal to Heavy Soul or Stanley Road, but not many are. Paul Weller is still a considerable force to be reckoned with in the music world. I'd like to hear the covers album
one day, but as long as he's putting out discs Like 22 Dreams, I'll be satisfied.

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