By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Hanson “Snowed In'' (Mercury) Christmas is a kids' holiday, right? So tune into the true spirit of the season with this exuberant pop album from Tulsa's own international sensations. Granted, most of Hanson's covers of Christmas classics — written scores before they were born — are frequently cloying and don't necessarily improve on them, but these are carols for the Spice Girls' Generation Next; they ain't s'pposed to be reverent. A handful of originals keeps the spirit bright, like the sincerity of “At Christmas'' and the frenzied funk of “Everybody Knows the Claus'' (“Ridin' down the air highway in his sleigh / Bringing all the presents for the next day — don't forget the donuts!''). Taylor continues exploding with soul, while Isaac shows signs of becoming Bolton-esque. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Dwight Twilley Band "Sincerely" "Twilley Don't Mind" (The Right Stuff) Tulsa's own Dwight Twilley has more lives than your average alley cat. The latest reissue of the Dwight Twilley Band's first two albums is the fourth reissue for both since their original pressings in '76 and '77, respectively. Every few years, someone at an indie label discovers the records, their eyes grow wide as 45s and they begin asking everyone they know, “Why isn't this stuff hugely popular? Why isn't radio saturated with this guy?'' They think they've found a pop music gold mine. They have, of course. Trouble is, bad luck and delays caused people to miss these records the first time around and, well, it's hard to convince the masses of a second chance. Pity, because these two records, particularly “Sincerely,'' are examples of everything that is great about pop music. The songs are immediate but timeless. They spark with youthful energy without being base. They are utterly accessible but remain smart. “I'm on Fire,'' the opener to “Sincerely'' and Twilley's greatest hit with partner Phil Seymour, was recorded the night Twilley and Seymour first set foot in the Church studio here in town — their first time in a studio, period. “Let's record a hit record,'' Seymour said, and they did. The chugging guitars, the layered vocals, the infectious attitude — it's irresistible. “Sincerely'' brims with that immediacy and remains one of the most exciting records of my lifetime. “Twilley Don't Mind'' starts with that same eagerness (“Looking for the Magic,'' featuring Tom Petty's ringing guitar, is truly intriguing and unique) but slows down before the flying saucer “Invasion.'' (This “Twilley'' reissue, though, features the best bonus tracks.) Still, these records are more than mere echoes of Abbey Road — they are diamonds lost in the rough, but they still shine. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World The bands that best uphold the traditions of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll are those that don't holler about it. Your basic '80s hair metal band was no doubt a staunch purveyor of that triumvirate of debauchery, but how subversive can your fans feel about the experience when you're waving your fist in the air at every opportunity and giving away the game with a whooping, "Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roooooooooll!''? The warm, wily wash of the Dandy Warhols' trippy roar is more comfortable — and truly subversive. The sex in the feeling of these songs isn't employed as a domination strategy. The rock 'n' roll has less noise, more melody and, as Tom Wolfe might write, O! the kairos! the vibrations! The drugs are, well, definitely a factor — though the Warhols' hot single, "Not if You Were the Last Junkie on Earth,'' and particularly its garish, "Price Is Right'' kind of video, presents a more poignant case against heroin than anything the Partnership for a Drug-Free America could stick on your television. This is, after all, a band that takes its cues from the Velvet Underground and T. Rex — and they may be the first band of the '90s to claim those influences and genuinely deserve the prestige they transfer. Last week, Eric Hedford got on the phone to shed some light on the Dandys experience. Hedford is the band's drummer and occasional Moog noodler, and he cleared some of the haze surrounding the band's talent for mooching, its troubled effort making the current album ("The Dandy Warhols Come Down'' on Capitol Records) and its chance defiance of categorization. Thomas Conner: You're in Portland (Ore.)? How did you score this rare moment at home? Eric Hedford: Three weeks in sunny Portland, then we go out for another three months ... We'll be concentrating on the South, because it's winter. Smart, huh? Last winter we were touring the north, and we broke down in 70-below weather outside Minneapolis. We fired our road manager on the spot. We plan to hit Florida this winter in bathing suits. TC: How's the tour been going? EH: We put 30,000 miles on our van. Someone told me that's once or twice around the whole planet. We've played with Blur, the Charlatans, Radiohead, Supergrass, Spiritualized ... TC: Those are all British bands. I thought you were trying to avoid being called Brit wanna-bes. EH: There aren't too many American bands we're compatible with right now. Our mission is to find an American band to tour with. The closest we got is this Canadian band we've got with us next. I can't remember their name. (Note: It's Treble Charger, the opening band for the Tulsa show.) TC: Do you enjoy life on the road? EH: It's a trippy way to live. We've got a contest we play called Guess What the Date Is. I never win, and I've got a watch with the date on it. TC: What's different about this tour and your first jaunts with the debut album, ""Dandy's Rule OK''? EH: Well, since we just went around the world cramped in a van, not much. For this next leg, though, we've got a big, rock tour bus. I'm hoping it's going to have some big, cheesy eagle painted on the side. TC: Courtney (Taylor, lead singer) frequently confesses to the band's winning ability at mooching. Isn't that one of the great fringe benefits of being a rock star? EH: All I know is that people are always giving us stuff. I don't know if this happens with every rock band in America. Maybe we just attract people doing this. The people who really count are the ones who give us things like clean socks or fresh food. Those people become our friends. They'll get invited onto the bus. We get plenty of beer and stuff, but it's those things we don't get from home that win us over ... Someone actually gave us socks once after a show. We thought that was the coolest thing. We threw away our old ones. TC: Is there an art to mooching? EH: Don't take advantage of the small people. Go after the corporates, the ones with deep pockets. When we started getting courted by the record companies, we took full advantage of the thing. We didn't say no to a single person. Every label in existence was flying us back and forth to L.A. and New York, buying us these ridiculous dinners and trying to impress us. You have to jump on that because once you get signed the label doesn't give you anything. Then you have to sell a bunch of records before they even send you a bottle of champagne on your birthday. TC: Wow, a spirit of hedonism in a band — how refreshing. What happened to that hedonism in rock 'n' roll? EH: A lot of bands just turned into a big bunch of pansies. I can't figure it out. But then, we think we party a lot and you look at someone like Fleetwood Mac — and, man, we're nothing compared to that. People back in the '70s, like Elton John, they were crazy. They knew how to live. We work hard, too, though. We're pretty good at rehearsing, and we play relatively sober, saving the fun for afterward. TC: How responsible of you. Well, if this reckless spirit is creeping back into rock 'n' roll, does that mean grunge is dead? EH: The mentality lives on, though, as far as that do-it-yourself spirit goes. I mean, the grunge people were pretty good at not being pretentious at first, and I liked how most of them had a good sense of humor. Those are the things we stole from it, and we grew up around it in Portland. We just never dressed like that or tried to think we were cooler than everyone else. TC: Did you consciously try to avoid being like the then-hot grunge bands? EH: We started when grunge was still around. It was the opposing force for us, and we just tried to distance ourselves from it — not because we didn't like it, really, but because it just wasn't us. Grunge died out and then we realized that the rest of the world thinks that if you're from the Northwest, you're a grunge band. They don't realize that there were a lot of different styles going on here. TC: There was some trouble in the making of the new record. What happened? EH: We had a false start. We got done with a big tour (after the first record) and didn't have enough material prepared. We thought we'd just go into the studio and do an experimental record. It didn't work. Some of us were stoned all the time, and some of us didn't care. Capitol heard the record and didn't think it had any songs on it, so we basically canned it. We still have the option of releasing it. I don't know if we will. We went on tour again and wound up focusing on writing good songs. We still used some of the experimental things we'd learned and just applied them to the new songs for this record. It worked out well. It's got new angles -- it's not just 12 pop songs. The video helped make the single ("Not if You Were the Last Junkie on Earth'') pretty big, but now we've got all these people coming to shows expecting them to be all pop. We usually start a show with a trippy, psychedelic jam, and those people stand there not knowing what the hell is going on. We like to take people on a trip — bring them up, bring them down, make it move a bit. We don't have a set list. We just get a feel for what mood the crowd is in and start picking songs. Sometimes that (screws) us up, and sometimes it's incredible. TC: You're a club DJ there in Portland, too, right? EH: Yeah. I was doing that Halloween night. I'm still hungover from that. TC: How does DJ-ing relate to what you do in the band? EH: When I'm a DJ, I don't have a set list, either. You just read the crowd. Also, a lot of my drumming comes from a DJ perspective. I like that monotonous kind of groove. I'm not a big rock drummer who likes to do big crashes and solos; I like just sitting in the background and grooving out. As a DJ, I got into that monotonous thing. And everyone's saying that electronic music and stuff is going to be this next big thing, but I don't like seeing the bands live. They're boring. I do, however, love seeing a DJ live. TC: Does the monotonous groove come from the Velvet Underground influence? EH: I haven't listened to them a lot myself. Courtney and Zia (McCabe, keyboardist) listen to them. It's that same idea, though: the three-chord mentality and not a lot of changes in the song. You just sink into that trippy groove. Plus, a lot of it comes from the fact we're just not good players. We're quite basic, and we admit that, but there's a lot you can do with the basics and still have fun. That way, we're not up there worrying about the big, complex chord change that's coming up. TC: And the Andy Warhol allusion in your name? EH: It's just a cool name. That whole pop art scene was amazing, though. We're notorious for nicking things out of other decades and throwing them together, and that's what the pop artists were doing -- taking what people recognized and presenting it without pretension. You can steal everything and put it together and say it's a brand-new creation. Then sit back and watch people run around trying to categorize you. TC: Been there, done that. EH: What, the categorizing? TC: Yep. It can't be done anymore, though. I don't think there are categories anymore, at least not on the scope for mass culture. EH: Wow. See? You just come to our show and let all that fall away. Fall, fall away. Dandy Warhols With Treble Charger When 7 p.m. Sunday Where Cain's Ballroom, 423 N. Main St. Tickets $5 at the door By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha -- which is to demean oneself. David Byrne, it seems, is a machine. He's moving around the stage like a plastic doll in some art student's stop-motion short film, like two successfully fused halves of the mechanized mannequin parts in Herbie Hancock's "Rockit'' video. He stepped onto the Cain's Ballroom stage Thursday night upholstered in a pink, feathered suit, thick and bulky like the white one in the quintessential video for one of the disaffected anthems of his former band — the song he's opening the show with, Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime.'' His voice is clipped and cold, same as it ever was, and this old, cyclical lyric spews forth the same questions — where does that highway go to, and, my God, what have I done? — that none of us gathered for this otherworldly, Harlan Ellison kind of display have found time to answer. He must be a machine. He hasn't aged. By the time the programmed jungle rhythms for "The Gates of Paradise'' (from his latest album, "Feelings'') begin tsk-tsk-tsking out of the timid speaker stack, Byrne has stripped down to a baby blue jumpsuit that outlines a very svelt and fit 45-year-old. Grasping his guitar as the chorus riffs, he plants his feet firmly just inches from the front row of wide-eyed, cautious onlookers. He's so close that the peghead of his guitar nearly smacks the hat off the head of Don Dickey, the cheshire-grinning singer of Tulsa's own Evacuation of Oklahoma. Byrne is right there in front of us. Two nights previous, barricades and burly security goons kept a crowd of fanatics a safe distance from Morrissey, a performer claimed by fans to be coursing with real, palatable passions and, thus, to be esteemed as utterly human. This David Byrne model requires no protection. He is a machine. He must be replaceable. The five people on this stage are machine components, anyway. The keyboard player is merely pulling stops and turning knobs to allow the samples and programs to speak. The drummer plays a live snare and two cymbals; the rest are computer pads. The plucking and strumming of the bass and Byrne's guitar are only the beginnings of the sonic impulses, which — after numerous devices have encoded the frequencies — are emitted as wholly new and unreal wavelengths. Even Christina Wheeler, a dancer and backup singer, takes her turn playing not an instrument but a portable station of sound processors and compressors that capture her voice and utilize it as the breath of a larger, more layered sound. The machinery is co-opting the energy of humanity for its own artistic goals, the kind of live-vs.-Memorex dichotomy we've seen this year mastered by Bowie and muddled by Beck. But this is Byrne, and he doesn't seem to let the technology control him. If I dashed back to the sound board right now and severed the power cables with a quick hatchet chop, I'm convinced Byrne would still be able to make his music. He wears a headset microphone and dresses his new songs in doo-dad drapery, but there is a deeper and more fluid sense of art in this display than in Beck's synthohol or Bowie's ice crystals. Of all the classics to revive, Byrne starts playing the Al Green song that gave the Talking Heads the first sign of a human face, "Take Me to the River,'' and the cold, jerky Devo concert atmosphere begins to thaw. For "Daddy Go Down,'' a roadie who had just been adjusting microphone cables reappears on stage with a fiddle and balances the martial drum machine with Circean sawing. For "Dance on Vaseline,'' Byrne bops back to the stage wearing a black T-shirt and a red, plaid kilt (his third costume change thus far and, for many, the most titillating — a young woman shrieked, "He's wearing tighty-whities!'') and chuckles about the, um, slipperiness of love. People are bellowing, People are bouncing. People are bobbing. Byrne, the efficient showman — show-man -- smiles and shakes and sweats. Machines can't do that. The music swells and glows, like oceanic phosphorous — pouring through the sensual balladry of "Soft Seduction,'' foaming with the borderless joy of "Miss America'' and flowing swiftly through the righteous riffing of "Angels.'' Finally, the set ends with a song based on that live snare drum, another Talking Heads anthem -- "Road to Nowhere'' — recorded at the dawning of the derision of the post-boomer generation and written as a reductio ad absurdum argument against the prophesies of our detachment and cyberization. No, we may not know exactly where this highway goes to, but with Byrne running in place and the rest of us unconsciously jumping up and down on the Cain's spring-loaded floor, it's clear that the road leads somewhere and that Byrne is as good a piper to follow as any. In fact, he raises us to such cheer and wonder that we won't let him go. We call him back for an encore. He returns, this time in the most astonishing costume I've seen on a public stage: a full-body skin-tight suit, with only eye and mouth holes, illustrating the body's underlying muscles and bones. Like an alien child of the gimp in "Pulp Fiction'' and educational television's Slim Goodbody, Byrne sings a slow, eerie version of "Psycho Killer'' while climbing across the stage in slow motion. After folding himself into a yoga posture, the band bows, exits, and the crowd demands more. Byrne returns in another tight jumpsuit featuring flames from toe to chest. The rhythm festival cranks up for "I Zimbra.'' After a shouting, dancing frenzy, the band bows, exits, and would you believe Tulsa demanded a third encore? Exhausted and hoping to settle us down so that we'll let him leave, he returns and plays the new lullaby "Amnesia.'' In our newfound calm, we discover we are at peace. It feels good to be alive and to be human. David Byrne, it seems, is very human. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World The only logical place to go after Tuesday night's Morrissey concert was the Fur Shop, a downtown watering hole just blocks from the Brady Theater and owned by several fellow Morrissey fanatics. One of them, Mike Aston, floated through the bar wearing a dumb grin and one of his dozens of Smiths T-shirts, boasting that he actually touched his hero at the edge of the stage. The stereo attempted to play Morrissey's "Kill Uncle'' album, and the crowd just glowed. Collegiates and curmudgeons alike maintained airy, blissful faces as they guffawed about the particular moments of the show — "Did you hear him introduce the band as a Tulsa band?'' "He couldn't stop touching his hair!'' and "Look! I got a piece of a stem from the flowers he threw out!'' Complete strangers stopped at our table to discuss the concert. These were Morrissey fans being ... gregarious. Bring on the millennium. The show was short but stunning — and I say this not solely because I am a lifelong fan of the former Smiths leader. I had entered the Brady Theater with trepidation, steeling myself for a letdown. He's so pompous and so British, he'll hate Tulsa and make fun of us, I thought. He's pushing 40, he's been looking tired — the publicity photos for the current album have been nothing short of embarrassing — and he'll have lost his spark, I thought. By mid-show, I thought, I'll be throwing back into his face his own lyrics from a song called ""Get Off the Stage'' ("You silly old man, you're making a fool of yourself, so get off the stage''). But from the first song, ""Boy Racer,'' when he licked his palm and criss-crossed his chest with it, all fears were allayed. Clearly, the man who introduced sexual ambivalence and ambiguity to the mainstream of popular culture maintains a surprising sex appeal. The spark is still there, and as the show progressed it grew hotter and hotter. The crowd, estimated at 1,800 and from throughout the region, was putty for the next hour. For a tour that is intended to support the new album, "Maladjusted,'' he nearly ignored that batch of songs, performing only the single, "Alma Matters'' (which has more much-needed umph in concert), and the laborious street-crime dirge "Ambitious Outsiders.'' Instead, Morrissey and his crack band tore through material from his last three solo albums, concentrating on 1994's "Vauxhall and I'' (seven of the 11 tracks). And then came the Smiths songs. Having not performed the songs of his old band in several years, the appearance of one Smiths song — let alone two — was reason for intrigue. Perhaps Morrissey simply missed singing some of the old standards. Perhaps the recent royalties lawsuit against him from the Smiths rhythm section — a case that he lost and is none too bitter about — inspired the brief retrospective. His lone encore, "Shoplifters of the World Unite,'' alludes to the former possibility, but the other choice, "Paint a Vulgar Picture,'' surely indicates the latter. This was the moment midway through the show in which Morrissey's real passion surfaced. Until then, he had been dashing and suave, but his much-revered noble chin had been twisted in more than a few smirks and possibly derisive comments to the audience ("Thank you for pretending to know any of these songs''), which screamed and trembled with as much mania as any Morrissey audience I have encountered. For "Paint a Vulgar Picture'' (which he introduced as a Glen Campbell song), though, any provincialism fell aside and we watched the Morrissey of our heady days of youth — mildly bitter, endlessly clever, worthy of pity and simultaneously biting and flip. "Paint a Vulgar Picture,'' from the 1987 posthumous Smiths album "Strangeways, Here We Come,'' was the first song in which Morrissey abandoned his lyrical ambiguity and went straight for the jugular. Its ridicule of the entire music business, as well as the fanatical fan adoration that feeds him, still rings alarmingly true after 10 years — and it still backfires, turning the ridicule more on himself than others. But if the lawsuit was indeed the catalyst for the kind of passion he poured into this old invective Tuesday night, perhaps he should be dragged into court before every tour. But the substance of this show wasn't as titillating as the style, particularly for a majority crowd that likely had never seen him live before. (This is Morrissey's first-ever appearance in the Sooner state, and on this tour he's strangely avoiding Texas, far more populated with Morrissey fans.) The mere presence of the godhead before the masses incited the usual frenzy. Beefy security men fought a hard battle to tear away desperate young men and women who had managed to crowd-surf onto the stage and wrap themselves around their hero. It happens at every single Morrissey show, and he hardly misses a note anymore. After one particularly boisterous girl had been pried off his person, Morrissey sat down on the stage and actually seemed to marvel at the occurrence — amazed that it still happens, even in Tulsa, Okla. At least he still marvels. When he takes it for granted, that's when I start singing "Get Off the Stage'' in earnest. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Let's take a song from David Byrne's latest CD, "Feelings,'' as an example of our post-postmodern everything-and-the-kitchen-sink era of art. Knitting together the unabashed, knee-slappin' country-and-western chorus are delicate, jittery jungle techno rhythms. Sounds absurd, but it works beautifully. Or "Daddy Go Down'' — a Cajun fiddle see-saws on a playground of droning sitars and tell-tale scratching. Walk into your local record label office and pitch that to a talent scout. See what kind of looks you get. David Byrne is used to strange looks. In the 20 years since the debut of the Talking Heads' first album, he has led that band and his own solo career through a series of unbelievable and harrowing stylistic twists and turns, and every time he pitched one of his art-student ideas, he met numerous odd looks. He's racked numerous successes — personal (a wedding — at which Brave Combo played -- and a daughter) and commercial (you know the hits — "Once in a Lifetime,'' "Wild, Wild Life,'' "And She Was,'' etc.) — in those 20 years, though, and there's no good reason to stop now. "I'm used to the look of bewilderment,'' Byrne said this week in a telephone interview from a tour stop in Florida. "I just have to explain that I'm from the same planet you are — you just don't realize how strange it is out there. You're living in some TV dream world.'' Fortunately, Byrne has reached a position from which he can act on his whims with relative freedom. For instance, his record label, Luaka Bop (a subsidiary of Warner Bros.) signs and produces artists from around the world that normally wouldn't get looked at twice by American labels. It cuts out the middlemen and those looks of bewilderment. "Look at the new Cornershop record. It looks like it's making some kind of impact, but if you went to someone and said, 'We have this band with an Indian singer and their single is about Asha Bosley, this woman who stars in Indian musicals, and we think it's a hit record,' they'd look at you like, 'What planet are you from?' But it worked. Every now and then one of them clicks,'' Byrne said. Cornershop found success for the same reasons Byrne continues to astound listeners: they both realize the patchwork potential of pop music now. They mix styles. They bridge the gaps between musical genres. They play to our expanding awareness of the world. It's not intentional, of course. Byrne doesn't hunker down next to his wall of gold Talking Heads records and plot ways to better communicate with today's collage minds. His consciousness is a collage, too, so the music comes out that way. Upon the release of "Feelings,'' Byrne explained it this way: "We all seem to have these musical styles and reference points floating around in our heads, things we've heard at one time or another that rub off on us — sometimes in small ways, as a feeling in a melodic turn of phrase, other times in the overall style of a song. There's a subconscious cut-and-paste going on in our heads that doesn't seem strange at all. It seems like the most natural thing in the world. It's the way we live now ... borrowing from the past and future, from here and there.'' It's the way Byrne lives, anyway, and he said the ideas for style-melding sneak up on him. "It doesn't come when you have your forehead furrowed, figuring out what to do with a song. It comes when you're not paying attention, when you're making coffee late in the afternoon and there's a record playing in the background,'' Byrne said. " 'The Gates of Paradise' is an example of that. I had a jungle record playing while I was in the kitchen, and my ear caught something. I realized that the rhythm I was hearing was the same basic beat of the song I had just been working on.'' In the making of "Feelings,'' those moments came with greater frequency, Byrne said, because of the way the album was made. The songs were recorded with musicians and producers all over the world — the dance trio Morcheeba in London, the Black Cat Orchestra in Seattle, Devo in Los Angeles, Joe Galdo in Miami and Hahn Rowe in New York City. No big studios, either — everything was economical, in home studios. That contributes largely, Byrne said, to the natural, relaxed gait of the songs. Nowadays, with advancements in technology and lower prices, home recordings sound as good or better than those from big, complicated studios. This is not breaking news to musicians, but it's a new dynamic to the musical marketplace. "All artists have gone through this — you make a demo at home that sounds great, that has this intensity and feel and spontaneity, and it gets scrubbed clean in the studio. They listen to the final product and go, "There's something missing here. Why doesn't this sound as exciting as the demo?' That's an old story,'' Byrne said. "Now we're coming around to where if you take a little more care when recording the demo, you can release that as the record.'' That's what Byrne did this time around. The result is an album that packs a suitcase of musical styles that ordinary musicians wouldn't be able to carry across the room, but the disc holds together with a surprising fluidity and coherence. It may be the most enterprising effort Byrne has tackled since the heady days with his old band. "In the beginning, the Talking Heads were always kind of beat-oriented. Always in the living rooms and the loft there was R&B in the air as well as experimental music and rock stuff. That resulted in the same fusion that I think I still capture from time to time,'' Byrne said. "It's a natural tendency to end up putting together the different things in your experience. You act out what you love. That's how different music comes into being. What we call rock 'n' roll is a patchwork of many different things. It's not like Elvis Presley had no roots.'' Byrne prefers continuing on his own path, too. The other three members of the Talking Heads reunited last year without him, calling themselves simply the Heads and using different vocalists for each song on the resulting CD "No Talking Just Head.'' Bad blood still exists between Byrne and his former bandmates, so his part in the reunion was never an issue. "Years earlier I had tried to talk to them, and they didn't want to even talk to me,'' he said. "It's been going on for a very long time. It just finally got to the point where I realized I was not in this as a masochist and that I don't need to be whipped and berated. Music should be a joy. It was time to move on.'' Even when Byrne gets venomous or angry, though, his music somehow maintains an air of cheer, optimism and hope. Even with a foreboding lyric like that in "Daddy Go Down,'' the song's rhythmic momentum instills a crucial air of confidence. In fact, it's that rhythmic element that pulls off that trick, Byrne said. "You can dance to it,'' he said. "For me, you can say something very bleak and pessimistic, but if you counter it with a groove, it implies that the human being is going to persevere and survive. At least, that's what it feels like. Despite what ominous clouds gather, the groove and the life force is going to pull you through.'' David Byrne with Jim White When: 7 p.m. Thursday Where: Cain's Ballroom, 423 N. Main St. Tickets: $20 at the Ticket Office at Expo Square, Mohawk Music, Starship Records and Tapes, the Mark-It Shirt Shop in Promenade Mall and the Cutting Edge in Tahlequah By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Rick James' career never stopped — how could it, what with all the rappers sampling his songs? — it was just put on hold for a couple of years. “I wasn't dead. I was just in prison,'' James said in an interview from his Los Angeles home this week. “I was still in the minds of the people — I just wasn't functioning. Now I'm back, and I did an album and I'm on tour. That's all I've ever done.'' Since the 1960s that's indeed all he's ever done. James' career spans the whole of modern R&B, from his beginnings in a Toronto band called the Mynah Birds (which included rocker Neil Young, of all people) through his steady stream of hits in the late '70s and early '80s — most notably, “Super Freak'' — to his most recent reincarnation as a slightly more humble but no less powerful Mack Daddy. It's a life to reckon with, for sure, but James had more to reckon with in the '90s, making more headlines than music. After some problems with drug addiction, he wound up jailed on assault charges and served nearly three years in a California prison. Fortunately, James emerged from his sentence a sober man -- literally and figuratively. “Jail was rough. It was like being in the middle of a Ku Klux Klan meeting,'' James said. “I've never been one for people to be telling me when to eat and when to shower and how to walk, and that (stuff) went on for three years. It was a very degrading state, but it was a curse that turned out to be a blessing. “The experience brought racism into my life all over again. I grew up in a working-class town (Buffalo, N.Y.), in the ghetto, and I knew about racism then, but I became successful and never encountered that anymore. I was totally removed from that. Prison slapped that back in my face real quick. There are some racist, sadistic, ignorant (people) in the world.'' James was bitter about the experience at first, but that soon gave way to hope. During his incarceration, he wrote nearly 400 songs — “some political, some spiritual, some sexual, some introspective.'' Fifteen of those new songs are on James' newest release, “Urban Rapsody'' from the Mercury and Private I record labels. (Private I was launched by Joe Isgro, a former indie record promoter whose 1986 arrest on payola charges shook the music business. The charges were dropped last year, and both men are eager to put their legal entanglements behind them.) The first single, “Player's Way,'' features Snoop Doggy Dogg. Throughout the record and its liner notes, James emphasizes his desire to return to his “urban roots.'' Roots, though, are just what many in the current crop of R&B kingpins are lacking, James said. Despite a slight debt to many for keeping the idea of Rick James alive through samples of his riffs and phrases, James is not at all impressed with the state of R&B today. “I think it's pretty ... weak,'' he said. “I'm not thrilled with what the young kids are doing. How can I be? I miss the melodies in the songs, the lyrics — all these kids are doing is sampling other people's (stuff) and trying to sound like Stevie Wonder or Charlie Wilson. I can't appreciate that ... Most people I grew up with had a vast knowledge of music, lyrical structure and melody, and they played instruments. These kids have licks but no melodic sense. But they're making money, so where do you draw the line?'' Case in point: M.C. Hammer's “U Can't Touch This,'' a 1990 hit built on the sampled riff from James' “Super Freak.'' The sample was legit, and James made a nice chunk of change when the single hit No. 1, but he's not thrilled about it. “(Heck) no I wasn't impressed with that (garbage). I was impressed with the money I made, and I was baffled that that song could come back and make so much money, but I was shocked more than anything. Hammer didn't come to me, he went through my company. If he'd come to me, I would have refused him. After that, I told my people that I didn't want anymore rappers using my stuff. The (rappers) should come up with their own material.'' James launched his own career by trying to come up with his own material — something new and innovative. He recognized from the beginning that infusing R&B with other genres would not only create that new sound but open him to a much wider audience. Working with a base of Parliament-Funkadelic groove, James began adding rock, soul, jazz and even classical elements to his songs. The result was a long and varied — if not always as innovative as he'd hoped — career featuring numerous hits in addition to the “Super Freak'' smash, songs like “You and I,'' “Give It to Me Baby'' and “Fire and Desire,'' a duet with Teena Marie many consider one of the finest love ballads in R&B. Other songs showed James deftly applying his hybrid techniques. “Fool on the Street,'' for instance, is a smooth R&B number with a decided Latin influence. “Dance With Me'' uses vibes to create a clear jazz mood. “Mary Jane'' — a song about marijuana which James said he still sings (“I Still sing it, I just won't smoke it'') — mixes R&B with rock 'n' roll, a formula that brought James most of his success. “George Clinton was always an inspiration to me, and we're very close,'' James said. “He was always experimenting with new sounds, new textures, and it always enthralled me the way he could mix, like, sci-fi with funk. “I always wanted to take that groove to a new level. Like the Beatles took rock to a new level, I wanted to do the same to R&B ... I didn't want to be stereotyped into the R&B genre. I'm not a funk artist, and I don't like being labeled a funk artist. That's too small a world. I want to do more than that.'' It must have worked. Most R&B stars today speak reverently of James as the original bad boy. Even the late Marvin Gaye once said of him, “I studied Rick's writing and stole some of his licks. We all did.'' By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Relax — our three little cherubs are alive and well. A rumor is making the rounds that Zac Hanson, the youngest of the Tulsa-native hit trio Hanson, was killed in a bus accident in Europe. It's not true. Of course, he is the barefoot one on the album cover, and “MMMBop'' played backwards does sound like, “Zac is dead.'' (It's a joke, kids. Ask your parents.) Sources at Hanson's record label and management group confirmed on Friday that the rumor was just that — and not a very funny one, either. “You must be a star when rumors like this start floating around about you, even if it is kind of sick,'' said Jolynn Matsamura, publicist at Mercury Records. Students at Jenks East Middle School were crying in the halls on Friday morning when the rumor reached the Tulsa circuit. A Jenks counselor said the rumor created “quite a stir'' and that students were “all in a twit'' upon arriving at school. “Everyone was freaking out,'' said Jenks seventh-grader Mary Ellerbach. “We were all crying.'' Most students said they had been told that someone else had heard the report broadcast on KHTT, K-HITS 106.9 FM. However, the station denies reporting the rumor. “We never announced it. After a lot of calls about the news, though, we called Hanson's agent in Los Angeles, found out it wasn't true, and reported that,'' said KHTT operations manager Sean Phillips. A Jenks student's mother who knows the Hanson family verified the rumor as false and relayed the information to the school. “Then all the kids chilled,'' a counselor said. The rumor apparently originated in Europe and came ashore via the Internet. It was in Oklahoma by mid-week; callers to a Thursday night radio show on KSPI in Stillwater (which featured the Tulsa band Fanzine) already were asking, “Is it true?'' BY THOMAS CONNER
© Tulsa World Hanson songs aren't so thick on radio anymore, but this is just the eye of the storm. Get ready for TV and more hype as the Christmas season draws nigh. Here's a round-up of Hanson news for the giddy Hanson fans and their exhausted parents: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus: How do you capitalize on a No. 1 smash debut record and avoid the sophomore slump? Make a Christmas album, of course. The trio has been stashed away in a recording studio outside of London, hurriedly recording a full-length disc of Christmas tunes called “Snowed In.'' Look for the elves on shelves Nov. 18. Read All About 'Em: An unauthorized paperback biography, Hanson: MMMBop to the Top, is already on bookstore shelves, and it was written by a woman who clearly has never set foot in Tulsa. Rest assured, all will be righted when the official bio is released by Virgin Press, also on Nov. 18. Written by Hanson family friend and Urban Tulsa writer Jarrod Gollihare, the book, tentatively titled The Official Hanson Book, has the blessing of the Hanson clan. Gollihare said the book will stand out from others simply because he's the only author granted interview time with the boys. Not-So-Candid Camera: Also in November, look for a feature-length video documentary of the Hansons titled “Tulsa, Tokyo and the Middle of Nowhere.'' Cameras followed the kids around on their recent world tour and put together footage of the wild and crazy antics. The film's director, David Silver, told Entertainment Weekly: “Despite their busy schedule, Hanson found time to participate in the editing process. Their analysis of the footage was absolutely right on.'' After all, they do have to figure out what to do when they grow up. But Wait, There's More: If a Spice Girls feature film wasn't bad enough, the Hansons, too, are working on a theatrical-release film likely due sometime next year. Word is that they plan to spoof the Beatles' “A Hard Day's Night'' (Beatles fans, start writing letters now). The project is in development now, and the writer signed onto it is Morgan J. Freeman, who shepherded the acclaimed “Hurricane Streets.'' He promises a light comedy, not a biography. It Always Snows in My Hometown: Superteen magazine, in an interview from its October issue, asked the Hansons if they took anything on the road to remind them of home. After Isaac mentioned a turtle (??!!), Zac said, “Our friends gave us a big globe of Tulsa.'' Isaac: “Ya know, one of those balls you turn upside down.'' Hanson Prank of the Month: Rhino Records mailed out an advertisement for its Christmas season slate of boxed sets. In it, they included some joke sets. Along with “Mista Rogers: What a Wonderful Day in Da Hood'' and the 50-disc “Titanic: The Box Set,'' they listed “Hanson: The Early Years,'' billed as “three volumes of pre-natal hits.'' The cover art was a sonigram of a fetus. It's just a joke, kids! I Sat Through “Sabrina'' for This?: ABC wrapped up its TGIF Hanson appearance PDQ. The boys were due to “host'' the network's Friday-night sitcom line-up on Sept. 26. After sitting through two hours of hype about this allegedly momentous occasion, fans were treated with a far-too short and pointless little performance. Rumors are flying now of an ABC Hanson Thanksgiving special. Stay tuned. Internet Geeks, Part 1: There are more than 150,000 Hanson web pages on the World Wide Web. Among those teens with all that time on their hands, one has formed the Hanson Internet Alliance. It's mission: “To protect Hanson webmasters from cyber-thieves'' who steal photos, banners and ideas. If you are discovered ripping off a fellow Hanson fan, the alliance will spread your site address around and urge all fans to boycott it. Shiver me timbers. Internet Geeks, Part 2: By far the most bizarre juxtaposition of cultures appears on the page for Hanson Addicts Anonymous (http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Stage/7608/index.html), which uses a quotation from Kierkegaard to introduce its page full of typical prepubescent hysteria. The page even offers a 12-step program for Hanson addicts. Step One: “Place all Hanson CDs in the trash can next to your computer. Close the lid and forget about them.'' Step Two: “What were you thinking? Open the lid! Open the lid!'' All I'm Askin' Is for a Little Respect: In Britain teen mag Live and Kicking this month, Zac stated the band's motto: “Judge us for our music, not our age.'' Then he expanded it: “Think of us as old people with high voices.'' By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World It took an Englishman to resuscitate the heart of an Oklahoma legend. A few thousand miles from his native Britain, folksinger Billy Bragg explored Green Country this week, visiting various remnants of Woody Guthrie's legacy, from old friends to the site of his Okemah home. It's part of Bragg's effort to understand Woody and his music completely and in context, to sweep up whatever memories remain of the Dust Bowl days that inspired America's greatest folk singer, and to investigate evidence of the political climate that nurtured a left-wing unionist almost as staunch as Bragg himself. That perspective will be necessary when launching the next great Woody Guthrie project: at the request of Woody's daughter, Nora, Bragg is writing music for several dozen long-lost Guthrie lyrics that have none. The Woody Guthrie Archives in New York City maintain more than a thousand “unfinished'' Guthrie songs — lyrics with no chords or musical notation written with them, only vague notes about the feel of a particular song or Woody's mood and location when he wrote it. Bragg, along with Jeff Tweedy and his Americana rock band Wilco, is gracing several dozen of these songs with new music for an album to be recorded in January and released next spring. “It seemed to me that if we were going to get in close to Woody then we needed to come and at least see Okemah and Pampa (Texas), these places where he lived. You can read so much both of what Woody wrote about Oklahoma and what subsequent biographers have written, but we wanted to actually come down here and see what it looks like now — take that contemporary feel away with us — and to go out to Okemah and walk the streets that Woody walked and talk to the people about how they feel about him ... We're just trying to get a feel for it.'' Part of the history Bragg wanted to visit was Tulsa's Cain's Ballroom. He sat down on the Cain's stage this week and spoke with the Tulsa World about his trip, the Guthrie project, the immortal legacy of Guthrie's music and politics, and why exactly it's taken a Brit to get a firm handle on a crucial piece of American history. The pairing is actually quite perfect. Bragg might as well be the Woody Guthrie of England. Spin magazine referred to him as “a cross between Woody Guthrie and Wreckless Eric,'' and writer Gary Graff said “his fiery mixture of the Clash's energy and Woody Guthrie's political fervor (is) ... irresistible.'' Rock journalist Ira Robbins describes Bragg this way: “Playing a solitary electric guitar and singing his pithy compositions in a gruff voice, Billy Bragg reintroduced the essence of folksinging — not the superficial trappings, but the deep-down Woody Guthrie activist/adventurer type — to the modern rock world.'' From his 1983 debut through last year's mature “William Bloke'' album, Bragg has used utterly simple musical tools to create enormous strength and depth in warm love songs (“Love Is Dangerous,'' “A Lover Sings'') and trenchant, socialist political commentary (“From Red to Blue,'' “Help Save the Youth of America'') alike. Sound like any folksinger you know? An Okie leftist (his guitar bore the legend, “This machine kills fascists''), Woody Guthrie was an activist whose politics were anything but theoretical; he had suffered the wrongs he strove so passionately to correct. His stated goal was to raise people's consciousness and esteem every time he sang. “Woody's kind of activism is still going on today, but it's being done in different ways,'' Bragg said. “A band like Rage Against the Machine is making ideological and political music in a non- ideological society. It's not easy. There's not the popular front organizing now that there was in the '30s and '40s that Woody was feeding off. You can't make political music in a vacuum. “I made political music in the 1980s because Margaret Thatcher was the prime minister, and she was forcing everybody to take sides and manifest their ideas in a more political way. She was a great inspiration to us.'' He nearly betrayed a smile. “I'm accomplishing the same thing as Woody inasmuch as I'm taking information from one part of the world and moving it around to another part — that kind of balladeer tradition. I feel I am very much a part of that and that Woody and I at least have that in common.'' Politics aside The two troubadours also share political perspectives — views from the left. Bragg began his drive to Oklahoma immediately after a Sept. 24 concert at an AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh. During this interview, Bragg wore a T-shirt for the Detroit Sunday Journal, a newspaper that was published by striking union employees at the Detroit Free Press. He's well-acquainted with union politics and is well-equipped to perform and shape the music of the man who wrote, “Oh, you can't scare me / I'm sticking to the union.'' Still, Bragg acknowledges that the lack of ideological polarization in the '90s makes Woody's music seem, perhaps, quaint. So much of Guthrie's songs were topical, they must be viewed in context and in light of how that context has altered over the years. “The important thing about Woody is that he represents one of the few periods in American history when there was some kind of left-wing cultural agenda,'' Bragg said. “When you listen to his stuff you can see that that was pretty important at the time. He gives us a sort of pre- McCarthy vision of America. So much of American history was rewritten around the time of the McCarthy witch hunts, and I think Woody suffered a lot from that.'' Indeed, Bragg said that during his visits last week to Okemah, he noticed that people still bore some shame over Woody's socialist affiliation. “I'd like very much to ask the people who feel that way what they think a communist is. I think you'd find that their definition of a communist was not what Woody stood for at all ... He was right at a time when the ideas of popular-front communism were very relevant to the working people of America. Here in Oklahoma, the socialists were the third party before the war. But because of McCarthy, people have forgotten about that or simply left it out of history. "But when you listen to Woody today, you understand that this did exist. If he has a message for us today it's simply that once there was a different political agenda, and it was more left- leaning, and that despite what the media tells us these days the left in America and the idea of unions and organizing and working people having a say is actually as American as mom and apple pie.'' Woody's rarities The current working title for the album of new songs is “Union,'' chosen by Nora Guthrie. “She thinks it fits with the union between our generation and Woody's, as well as the strong relevance to what Woody wrote about,'' Bragg said. Some of the unheard Woody songs are “what we think of as typical Woody protest songs,'' but many have little to do with politics. Bragg said he's trying to include a broad range of lyrics — “songs that perhaps you wouldn't expect Woody Guthrie to sing.'' For instance, there's one about flying saucers. There's also one about Joe DiMaggio. Bragg said that Nora Guthrie's goal for this project is to use these lyrics to bring a new dimension to Woody. Bragg already has tried out some of the new songs. Last fall, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame hosted a week-long seminar, “Hard Travelin': The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie,'' culminating in a star-studded tribute show. On a bill including Bruce Springsteen, Ani DiFranco, Indigo Girls, Pete Seeger and Woody's son Arlo Guthrie, Bragg performed three songs, one of which was Woody's “Farmer Labor Train'' to the tune of “The Wabash Cannonball.'' Then came the two new ones. “The Unwelcomed Guest'' is the tale of a Western Robin Hood explaining — to his horse — why he robs from the rich and gives to the poor. Bragg then applied a shuffling rockabilly groove to a lyric called “Against the Law,'' in which Woody bemoaned that everything, even breathing, seemed to be illegal. In collaborating with Woody, Bragg has to rely heavily on intuition and the notes Woody scribbled in the margins of these manuscripts. “For instance, on the one about the flying saucers, he actually wrote on the manuscript, ‘supersonic boogie,' '' Bragg said. “It's a short song, only a couple of verses, and I found myself playing it kind of like Buddy Holly thing — not the same kind of chords but that same sort of rhythm. It fits because, a) it was written during the '50s and, b) Buddy Holly was from Lubbock, not far from Pampa. “The music I'm trying to write for these songs is like a frame. I don't want to put modern rock on these songs, though I'm sure that, playing them with Wilco, there will be that angle to them. But that's not the point. The point is to cast these songs — frame them, if you like — in the music of popular America, in the music Woody was listening to while he was alive. You have to remember that Woody didn't die until 1967, so being in New York, he would have heard Beat poetry; he would have heard electric guitars, Chuck Berry, everything that was on the radio in the '50s; he would have heard R&B, as well as Bob Wills and Will Rogers.'' Welcome reception Bragg said he feels no great weight about “collaborating'' with Woody. There are, after all, still a thousand lyrics available for other artists to interpret if Bragg's take on his dozen or so don't meet with popular approval. Plus, Bragg said he received a lot of encouragement after his Hall of Fame performance. “It was a good opportunity for me to try out these songs on a very critical audience of Woody scholars and friends and see what the reaction would be, see if they'd come up to me and say, ‘Forget it, son. You're wasting your time.' They very kindly didn't, and they gave me a lot of encouragement.'' Enough encouragement that Bragg dove headlong into the project and made this trip to Oklahoma to see some of the places Woody mentioned in his lyrics and life. It's a trip Bragg felt compelled to make if he were going to approach this project with respect. “I could have just sat in England and read the manuscripts, but I do feel I would have left out a very important aspect,'' Bragg said. “Woody Guthrie is a quintessential American character, and he began here in Oklahoma, which isn't in the West, isn't in the Southwest, isn't in the South or the North; it's this giant crossroads. He ended up in New York, but he took his roots with him. He never really left Okemah and Pampa behind. So to do this project without coming down here, I wouldn't have been doing the full monty.'' By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World In France, they're lauded with headlines like, “Hanson ... groupe de l'heure!!!'' In Germany, the boys show up on shows like “Geld Oder Liebe.'' In Portugal, it's, “Hanson!! Hanson!! A banda que e sucesso no mundo inteiro!'' In Tulsa, the hometown public hasn't laid eyes on them in nearly a year. That's because once the Hanson album hit the shelves in the spring, these three youngsters hit the road (well, boarded the plane) and haven't looked back. With “Middle of Nowhere'' and its hot-agent single “MMMBop'' still resting comfortably in the Top 20 in a majority of the world's time zones, who needs to go home? Europe is absolutely batty for them, and this week the boys are sowing the seeds of their adoration on the western edge of the Pacific. Indeed, these three tykes from Tulsa have gone from zero to hero faster than Disney's Hercules himself, and while Tulsans shouldn't get their hopes up about a hometown performance probably in this century, the boys' bubblegum sounds are certainly taking over the world. Here are some curious bits of news about Hanson's international impression: It Ain't Me, Babe Early in July, the Tulsa World received this desperate plea through e-mail from a teen-ager in Australia: “I have had mounting annoyance at the people that think I am Jordan Taylor Hanson. I have been receiving faxes, e-mails and so forth at all times of day and night. Due to this I am totally distressed and hope that Hanson go away! Nothing personal, but I'm furious. What do you suggest I do???'' His name is J. Taylor Hanson. Not only does he share the name with Hanson's soulful, androgynous, 14-year-old singer, but this Hanson also happens to hail from Tulsa. He's in Australia for six months, and the rabid fans have tracked him down via the Internet thinking he's the famous Taylor. When J. Taylor left Tulsa, the Hanson touring schedule was still a list of private parties in south Tulsa. Now the group is an international phenomenon, much to J. Taylor's dismay. “The trouble really began when "MMMBop' went to No. 1,'' J. Taylor said through an Internet interview last month. “It was really weird. People would ring — mostly of the female gender -- and I'd be like, "Who is this?' and they would be going, "Is this Taylor Hanson?' and I'm like, "Yeah. You are?' but they'd usually hang up. I had no idea what was happening.'' Then his e-mail address was mentioned in Hanson online circles as the famous Taylor's personal address, and the messages began pouring in “hundreds at a time,'' he said. Messages like this one: “Hi! Oh my god, i can't believe this is your e-mail!!! I love u sooooooo much, you're sooo SEXY!!! I LUV ALL OF UZ!!! I LUV your music 2!!! So yeah, if you're not 2 busy E-mail me!!! I luv u babes!!!!'' J. Taylor has had to change his e-mail address twice and his phone number once. “When I'm in a good mood, I just laugh at most of them, although there were a few insulting ones which I found scary,'' he said. It Ain't Me, Babe, Part II Last week a woman phoned the Tulsa World also pleading for help. She claimed that MTV had broadcast the wrong phone number for the local Hanson hotline. Instead, Hanson fans from around the world were dialing her parents' west Tulsa home at all hours of the day and night. Lackeys at MTV could not confirm whether or not they had ever broadcast a phone number in relation to Hanson, and officials at Mercury Records said they were 99 percent sure that a phone number — correct or incorrect — had not been given out. The phone at the Hanson home in southwest Tulsa features a regularly updated recording with information on the trio's current events. Kids may be misdialing the number and getting this woman's parents instead. “It's been going on for two weeks,'' she said. “They've got Caller ID, and they're seeing numbers flash up with area codes from around the country and all over the world. I had no idea.'' Happy Birthday, Tulsa Organizers of the city's “Take Me Back to Tulsa'' centennial homecoming festivities originally had Hanson inked onto the big weekend's schedule. They were going to do a show Sept. 20 at the River Parks Amphitheater, but the boys have backed out in favor of yet another jaunt to Europe. A friend of the Hansons' father contacted the homecoming committee and proposed some kind of live satellite remote for the day while the band was in Ireland, but according to Paula Hale, the centennial coordinator, the project would not be feasible for the event. “It's unfortunate because we really wanted to have something for the younger kids to enjoy during this celebration,'' Hale said. “We've got something for every other age group, and we were trying to different things. This just wasn't feasible.'' Perhaps they'll drop us a line for the state's centennial in 2007. Happy Birthday, Sis Ah, the life of a superstar. Ever the close-knit family, the Hansons still manage some quality time while touring the world. It just requires a bit of cloak-and-dagger to pull off. While in Australia last week, the Hansons stole away to a private room at the Sydney Planet Hollywood so they could celebrate Hanson sister Jessica's ninth birthday. In order to divert the wild throng of fans, an announcement was made that the boys would be visiting the Sega World theme park that day. Psyche! Taking Tulsa to the World They may not come home much, but simply being from Tulsa has helped spread the city's name around the world — a nice treat for our centennial year. Tom Dittus, owner of the Blue Rose Cafe in Brookside — site of a Hanson patio performance that helped secure their record deal -- has been basking in the glow of Hanson's stardom. “We've gotten a lot of mileage out of this,'' Dittus said. “Entertainment Weekly did a big story on them and mentioned us, and we were mentioned on Casey Kasem's "Top 40 Countdown' show. The story gets embellished a little bit each time, but I'm not worried.'' Feature stories and photos of the boys in Tulsa media, from yours truly to several Urban Tulsa stories, have been reprinted in fanzines — online and otherwise — across the world. Urban Tulsa's Jarrod Gollihare and I now have the creepy distinction of having our work appear without permission on a Danish web site dedicated to Hanson drooling. And everywhere they go, in every other breath in every interview, the boys say “Tulsa.'' After they went on at some length describing Tulsa as an oil town in a recent interview for French radio, the translator piped in with this: “The only real attraction in Tulsa are the Hanson now. You are the new oil.'' What was that Dittus said about things getting embellished? Taking the World to Tulsa With Hanson causing major prepubescent hysteria in Europe, journalists from the mother continent have begun taking an interest in writing about every possible detail of the boys' existence and history. That means coming to Tulsa to check out the hometown and report the local color. How Tulsa will translate through, say, the Dutch media is anyone's guess. Last month, a German journalist showed up out of the blue in the Tulsa World newsroom. Claiming to represent a series of publications with a circulation of 6 million, he was after all the information he could scrape up on the boys — knocking on the door of their house, quizzing locals who knew them and some who didn't, and snapping photographs of Tulsa World editors, for some reason. Five other European media organizations have called to determine whether it would be worth their time and effort to travel here and write about Tulsa. Be prepared to give directions to someone with a European accent. Teen Beat Think this talk of Hanson's international hype is just that -- hype? Here's where the boys' product stands on international charts this week, 14 weeks after the first release, according to Billboard magazine: “MMMBop'' single No. 3 in Germany No. 20 in the U.K. No. 9 in France No. 7 in the Netherlands No. 1 in Australia No. 3 in Sweden No. 3 in Denmark No. 5 in Norway No. 1 in Japan No. 11 in the United States “Middle of Nowhere'' album No. 6 in Germany No. 5 in the Netherlands No. 6 in Australia No. 5 in Finland No. 14 in Japan No. 4 in Malaysia No. 7 in Canada No. 6 in the United States The second single, “Where's the Love,'' has begun its climb, too. Also, watch for the boys on a CBS broadcast Aug. 24 and in a milk advertisement this fall. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Up, up and away ... yada yada yada. There are lots of reasons to check out the Gatesway International Balloon Festival this weekend, but one of the best barely has been mentioned in the advertising and the hubub: the festival features a fantastic line-up of local music acts. For all those harping into thin air about how much Tulsa would benefit from a music festival of all-local rock acts, this is it. On Friday evening and all day Saturday, two stages at the festival will be packed with the creme de la creme of local bands — from hot pop and rock on the Z-104.5 FM “The Edge'' Stage to more down-home and bluesy sounds on the KVOO Stage. Rocker Dwight Twilley is scheduled to headline the festival on Saturday night, and it's a rare opportunity to see this underappreciated pop master burn up a stage. Twilley, whose top 20 hits were 1975's “I'm on Fire'' and 1984's “Girls,'' currently is enjoying the revivalist crest of the power pop movement. Those two hit singles are popping up on compilations around the world, solidifying Twilley's importance in rock 'n' roll history. “It's great. It kind of let's these songs take their place in history in the pack with all the ones being remembered,'' Twilley said this week. The first two albums from the Dwight Twilley Band, “Sincerely'' and “Twilley Don't Mind,'' are scheduled for rerelease in October from The Right Stuff record company. Twilley, though, is no nostalgia act. Saturday's show will feature a good chunk of new material, songs that Twilley has been writing since he moved back to Tulsa last year and then raised eyebrows with his showcase at the South by Southwest music festival in March. “We've got a lot of new songs that we'll be doing this weekend, stuff we'll be trying out before the centennial show in September,'' Twilley said. Twilley and his band will open for Leon Russell on Sept. 19 as part of Tulsa's centennial homecoming celebration. Twilley's band includes guitarists Pat Savage and Tom Hanford, plus the rhythm section that doubles for two other Tulsa bands (Crown Electric, Brian Parton), bassist Dave White and drummer Bill Padgett. “I came back (to Tulsa) because I wanted to create another band of Tulsa musicians,'' Twilley said. “I think this is the best band I've had since the Dwight Twilley Band,'' which included the late Phil Seymour. Also on the bill, the Mellowdramatic Wallflowers have a full set of shimmering new pop songs in advance of a new CD due any time now. Jenny Labow, formerly of Glass House, is still supporting her solo debut CD of breezy acoustic pop, and Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey once again steer their ever-winding wandering around the country for another hometown gig. Jify Trip is returning to form, too, after some juggling of guitarists. After losing their original axman, Steve Francen -- formerly of Mellowdramatic Wallflowers — sat in with the band, but his current project, Flapjack Cancer Co., didn't allow the extra time. A sharp, award-winning player from Oklahoma City, Tony Romanello, will be playing with the band for the balloon festival. He's a great player, worth checking out. The styles run the gamut, too, from the slightly wacky rock of the Cactus Slayers to the intelligent jazz of the Jazzbos. The festival's music schedule offers a fine sampling of what's going on around town every weekend right under your nose, and the event benefits the Gatesway charity. What's to lose? Gatesway International Balloon Festival When 3-10:30 p.m. Friday, 6 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Saturday and 6 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday Where Occidental Center, 129th East Avenue and 41st Street Tickets Admission is free Parking Available near the sight; plus a shuttle bus will be running from the sight to Expo Square and Broken Arrow High School This post contains my complete running coverage of this annual festival ...
© Tulsa World Brush off the black coat and polish the white shoes. This year's Reggaefest lineup is gonna get you skankin'. By Thomas Conner 06/27/1997 Each year when Interfest organizer Tim Barraza brings over the schedule for Tulsa's annual Reggaefest, the list of acts he has booked for lil' ol' Tulsa raises brows around the newsroom. It's that ""Wow, they're coming to Tulsa?'' look, and it instills the respect for this festival it so richly deserves. This year's line-up, when you stop to look at the roots of these acts, is nothing short of jaw-dropping. Friday night is particularly astonishing, a night set aside for several of the finest contributors to ska music — if not the founders themselves. A couple of local favorites introduce the Saturday vibe before DJ pioneer Tony Rebel and the Queen of Reggae herself, Rita Marley. Pack your sunscreen and take a look here at who's gracing the River Parks stages this weekend: The Blue Collars Aside from being the only ska band in town, the Blue Collars are amazingly adept. Since wowing the crowd two months ago at an outdoor festival show, they've been landing gigs in clubs all around Tulsa — at least, the ones that will admit these thoroughly under-age players. (The keyboard player is in the eighth grade, and the rest are high schoolers.) The septet fell into playing ska when, still playing punk, they signed on keyboard player Charles Halka who showed the others the magic of synthesized horns. ""We decided, hey, let's give this ska thing a try,'' said drummer JoJo Hull, and soon three live horn players were added. ""It's amazing how this stuff gets to people,'' Hull said. ""Ska seems to be easier for people to listen to than straight punk or reggae. Most of our songs, too, don't have truly deep meanings. They're about girls and being in love and stuff in life that's not so important.'' The song ""Bros. Before Hose,'' for instance, sprang to life after Hull lamented the demands of a girlfriend who complained he spent too much time with his bandmates. He chose the bros. over the hose, get it? The Toasters The Toasters grew out of ska's third wave in the early '80s, the years 2-Tone Records created such a revolution in Britain with acts from Madness to the Specials. With their own record company, Moon Records, boasting such strong new ska talent — including the Scofflaws, Skavoovie and the Epitones (in Tulsa earlier this week), and the Dance Hall Crashers — they're poised as ushers for the latest ska craze. The Toasters released their first single in 1983 and have been touring pretty much ever since — occasionally knocking out clean studio albums, some produced by Joe Jackson — tirelessly preaching the salvation of ska to audiences that are consistently surprised by the music's energy and history. ""I think a lot of people are surprised to learn that reggae came out of ska music and not the other way 'round,'' said guitarist Rob ""Bucket'' Hingley. The band is supporting its latest album, ""Hard Band for Dead.'' The Skatalites Whether or not you've heard of the Skatalites — and, believe me, every serious ska fan out there had a small cow when they heard this bunch was on the bill — the one thing you need to understand is that the presence of them on this festival's line-up was the bait that lured in the other ska acts. The Skatalites, you see, might as well have — and perhaps did — invent this form of music, the precursor to reggae itself. The influence the Skatalites have had on ska and so much music beyond it is incredible considering the original band was only together for 14 months and made pitiful few records during that time. The first 10 members came together in 1963 when ska was just taking off in Jamaica. They were left rudderless in 1964 when the embodiment of the band's spirit and energy, trombonist Don Drummond, murdered his wife and was committed to a sanitarium. After that, the Skatalites fell apart, and ska's laid-back child, reggae, came ashore in America and Europe. Those 14 months were exciting enough to attract the attention of numerous future rockers like the Clash's Joe Strummer and the Toasters' Rob ""Bucket'' Hingley. The influence of the Skatalites started showing up in their work in the late '70s and early '80s. Madness brought black-and-white checks back to the mainstream, and the Specials scored a hit with a Skatalites cover, ""Guns of Navarone.'' The new interest in ska led the remaining Skatalites to reunite at the 1983 Reggae Sunsplash festival in Jamaica, and the fresh energy in the band kept them together again. A new studio record, ""Scattered Lights,'' was out on the Alligator blues label the following year, and a cassette issue of a live show soon followed. The magic was back, and by 1995, the Skatalites won a Grammy nomination. The Long Beach Dub All-Stars Eric Wilson and Bud Gaugh ran into each other on Big Wheels when they were kids, and they've been hanging out together ever since. As the rhythm section for singer-guitarist Brad Nowell in Sublime, they pushed reggae-drenched music to the top of the pop and alternative charts, where two of those songs still linger. After Nowell died last year of a heroin overdose, Wilson and Gaugh wisely chose not to wallow, to instead ""keep it positive'' and continue moving the music forward. Sublime was never really a ska band, but pinning down the new Wilson-Gaugh project is even more difficult. With nine people in the band — drawn from the session players who helped round out the one and only Sublime record and some of the shows — the sound of this group is definitely textured. The tight reggae grooves are embellished with plenty of scratching, hip-hop beats, horn riffs and the attention-getting toasting of leader Opie Oritz. The bunch came together last year for a benefit show to raise money for Nowell's son, and the musical concept has held them together for a few more shows since. But the cohesion is likely not strong enough to make this the next touring and recording outgrowth of Sublime. This line-up has performed only about five shows together. "This show should be a rare treat for the audience out that way. It'll probably be the only show we do anywhere near the Midwest,'' member Michael Happoldt said. Tribe of Souls Talking with the members of Tulsa's own Tribe of Souls reminded me of one of the joys of Reggaefest: talking to musicians who are so incredibly sincere about all those peace and love messages in this kind of music. It was difficult to get a word in among bass player Al Hebert's proselytizing, and that's OK by me. "Love is a learned process,'' he would say. ""There is goodness out there. Love is definitely something you fight for, whether in yourself physically, mentally or spiritually. We get out there with that message and encourage people to find the best in each other and themselves.'' I don't get to print things like that from other bands. Only in June. That Tribe of Souls is appearing at this year's Reggaefest is a bit of an accomplishment considering the band formed about three months ago. Hebert had been languishing in town after the club gig he moved in for collapsed. He'd worked on some songwriting with then-Local Hero guitarist Brian Simmons and Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey drummer Sean Layton, but with the demands of each player's other bands, nothing materialized. Then Simmons and Hebert auditioned an unknown drummer named Charles Butler. Despite never landing a professional gig before, the two agreed that Butler was the kick they were looking for. Soon Simmons amicably departed Local Hero and the trio became Tribe of Souls. Local Hero We ran a story last weekend about one local band's growing nationwide acclaim, as usual overlooking one of Tulsa's most impressive exports: Local Hero. This straight-up reggae band has played all but one or two of the 12 Tulsa Reggaefests and have been offering their powerful peace to audiences around the country for almost as many years. This summer is another busy one for the local heroes, playing festivals in Colorado and Iowa as well as regular gigs across the country. If you didn't catch them at Mayfest, this may be your first chance to see the band with original guitarist Kelly Campbell back in the fold. After Brian Simmons left the band to form Tribe of Souls, Campbell drifted back in, mostly as a result of Local Hero member U-E Flannery occasional sitting in with Simmons' other project, Bubble. Flannery said that a final mix for a third Local Hero CD could be finished this week, meaning it could be on shelves by Labor Day. The Reggae Cowboys Now here's something an Oklahoma audience can get into: a reggae band with a fixation on the American West. Their fliers actually read, "Y'all come forward and check the riddims!'' "One in seven cowboys was black,'' singer-guitarist Bird Bellony is quick to point out. "Bill Pickett actually invented the sport of bull-dogging.'' The West Indies meets the Wild West! The group's latest CD opens with a version of "Hang 'Em High'' that conjures images of tumbleweeds rolling down the beach, spaghetti westerns filmed in Trenchtown, dusty loners meeting in the middle of main street to toast each other instead of drawing guns. The album closes with a take on ""Hotel California'' that shimmers with an eerie vibe with its epicenter somewhere near Roswell, N.M. Tony Rebel Mainstream audiences might know Tony Rebel from his hit with Queen Latifah, "Weekend Love.'' Reggae fans know him from his most recent album, "Vibes of the Times,'' which lingered on top of the reggae charts for months. He's an influential DJ — sometimes referred to as the Bob Marley of DJs — and the leader of a new movement in dancehall music. His first hit was the song "Fresh Vegetable'' in 1989. Since then, he has maintained an unbroken string of reggae hits while developing and producing the work of other reggae stars like R&B-flavored reggae sensation Diana King. Billboard magazine called him "an awesomely gifted toaster ... unmatched in the dance hall.'' Rita Marley What Reggaefest would be complete without a Marley on the bill? (Paging Ziggy: Please phone in.) This year, it's Bob's wife, Rita — the woman who dried her tears after Bob's death ("No Woman No Cry,'' after all), picked up the banner of his music and message and kept the procession marching forward. Rita Anderson, born in Cuba and raised in Trenchtown, Jamaica, met young Robert Nesta Marley in the ghetto, and their similar musical callings bonded. They were married in 1966, and by the early '70s, she had formed the I-Threes (Rita, Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths) to harmonize behind Bob, who had become the first reggae act to land an international record contract. From that moment on, Rita was at Bob's side throughout his triumphant career. She took the stage with him at the Smile Jamaica Concert in 1976, three days after both were injured in an ambush at a rehearsal studio (56 Hope Road, now the Bob Marley Museum). She was part of the One Love Concert when Bob symbolically joined the hands of the leaders of Jamaica's two opposing political parties. She was there at the end when Bob died of cancer in 1981. She carried on and organized the World Music Festival in Jamaica in 1982, a concert featuring every huge name in reggae plus leading crossovers from the Grateful Dead to Joe Jackson, and that's where she received her official title as Queen of Reggae. Reggaefest '97 Dishes Up River Parks Groove By Thomas Conner 06/30/1997 The Friday night crowd at the 12th annual Reggaefest was pumped up. People were packing in close to the stage, and the heat of the day along with the concentration of bodies was adding to everyone's giddiness. The Toasters had gotten everyone's blood pumping, and now they were chomping at the bit for the night's big name: the Long Beach Dub All-Stars, remnants of the hit-packed band Sublime. So when drummer Bud Gaugh slipped on stage to test his drums for the sound check, the frenzied crowd went even wilder. Engineers were still on stage, bewildered at the response. The crowd thought the band was beginning, and the band decided to go ahead and gratify them — about 40 minutes early. Since they got such a head start, flustered-but- amused Reggaefest organizer Tim Barraza told the band to drag out the set. And they did, particularly at the beginning. This eagerly awaited supergroup started off slow and lazy, with nine band members haphazardly wandering around the stage listlessly tossing off riffs and confounding the spotlights. Frankly, for a while they were pretty boring. However, once they offered T-shirts to any women who would flash their gratitude and scores of women hopped onto their boyfriends' shoulders to, um, show their wares, the band suddenly found inspiration and began seriously dishing up the groove. The All-Stars — featuring the rhythm section from Sublime, left adrift after the death of guitarist-singer Brad Nowell — are an unfocused bunch with occasional moments of brilliance. Gaugh has got the most powerful left arm of any drumming circle, and he uses it to pound a tight snare rhythm for the rest of the band to follow. Vocalist Opie Oritz recalls some of the rapid-fire toasting of Cypress Hill's B-Real but with less cartoonish oafery. The jewel of the whole bunch, though, is sax man Tim Wu, a player who can honk a fat ska line as well as pull pure silk out of his battered horn. His versatility, in particular, colored the few Sublime songs (except the hits — legal problems, no doubt) and a surprise cover of the Grateful Dead's “Scarlet Begonias.'' The Skatalites had started Friday off, just as they helped launch the ska genre that eventually gave birth to reggae itself. Sporting six of the original members from 1964, the Skatalites seemed to be showing their age, playing overly extended and surprisingly mellow instrumentals that had more to do with jazz than ska. Veteran alto sax man Lester Sterling and new trumpeter Nathan Breedlove are fine, competent players, but the way they traded off noodling solos over the steady reggae rhythms of keyboardist Bill Smith (and, please, the James Bond theme?) — it was like listening to David Newman and Al Hirt at the Jazz on Greenwood festival, not the booty-shaking party for lazybones they used to be. Jack Ruby saved the day, though. Jack Ruby Jr., that is, son of the celebrated Jamaican DJ and now the lead vocalist for the Toasters. This band ripped through an hour-and-a-half set of, well, everything — reggae, rap, the third-wave ska which they uphold so valiantly, even a swinging jazz number called “Mona'' led by trumpeter The Sledge. Guitarist “Bucket'' Hingley sang quite a bit, too, but Ruby was the showman, jumping all over the stage and dousing the crowd with innumerable bottles of Aquafina (for which he was fiercely scolded by a stage manager after the show — that was the All-Stars' water). Everyone picked up the traditional “skanking'' dance and wore out the amphitheater grass from beginning to end. Tulsa's own Blue Collars served up the most potent shot of ska between Friday's main-stage acts on the second stage. In fact, they drew a crowd comparable to that gathered for the Skatalites. Their original songs are well-composed and hotter than the River Parks asphalt. Charles' Halka's manic trance over the keyboards is the heartbeat for the entire combo to pump out rollicking ska, namely a song called “Purposeless'' with an irresistible “hey! hey!'' chorus. The festival returned to the more laid-back vibes on Saturday, focusing on more traditional reggae, like the easy beats and firm convictions of Tulsa's own Local Hero. Few acts — even reggae acts — maintain the kind of musical integrity and social importance that this band has held together for more than a decade. When singer-bassist Doc James asked everyone to reach out and hold the hand of someone next to you as he sang “Yes I Remember,'' he wasn't pandering or merely trying to wake up the audience; he was simply a shining reminder of what this music is all about. It's religious music. Its messages and its very rhythms are about peace and harmony, and when the band is as attuned and adept as Local Hero, it's very exciting. Later, after a lively preface by Sugar Black and LeBanculah with the Sane Band, Jamaican toastmaster Tony Rebel pushed that vibe forward even further. Sometimes jabbering clearly over a parade march, sometimes toasting with the sense of melody Buju Banton hasn't yet grasped, Rebel talked about God, goodness and love in his songs, even slipping in a verse or two from “Onward Christian Soldiers.'' Before kicking off his encores of “Don't Give Up'' and “Love One Another,'' he sermonized about his love for children and his desire for family units to be stronger. Why does reggae reach people with these messages where Christian music so often fails? Before Rebel came on, the Reggae Cowboys provided an opportune time to wander off to the vendors lining the edge of the festival grounds. This Canadian band's shtick is playing covers (“Hotel California,'' “Hang 'Em High'') and original songs about the American West with reggae rhythms. Five Rasta players in cowboy outfits overusing the word “y'all'' is just odd enough to catch your eye, but the music was too bland to hang an ear on. Tulsa's own Tribe of Souls held down Saturday's second stage with its fat, funky sounds — more funky than Reggaefest has seen in a while. Al Hebert uses his bass wisely as much more than a mere rhythm instrument, walking funky lines in rings around former Local Hero guitarist Brian Simmons' flashy guitar work. Hebert also plays the tambourine with his foot. Ten points for ingenuity. The great fanfare leading to the appearance of Rita Marley included a few songs by her sister, Tahina. Festival organizers got wind that P.J. Allen, the youngest survivor of the Oklahoma City bombing, was in the crowd with his family. They were offered to appear on stage, which they did, quite coincidentally during Tahina's song “Save the Children.'' Goosebumps all around. After an inordinate string of performers from Rita's Tuff Gong label, the queen of reggae finally took the stage before an ecstatic and loving crowd. She returned the love throughout her 45-minute set. During a cover of “To Love Somebody'' (that's right, the Bee Gees), she said, “I love you, Tulsa'' repeatedly while blowing kisses to audience members. Late in her set, she asked, “Do you love Bob Marley?'' Enormous whoops. “Me, too,'' she said, and began singing Bob's “No Woman No Cry.'' Again, goosebumps all around. She plowed through a lengthy medley of Bob's songs, a gracious and dignified part of his legacy. During her encore, she tried to say hello to some of the audience, and she either handed her microphone to the crowd or it was snatched from her. Before she could grab it back, we were graced with whoops and shouts from the frontline crowd. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World The pages of a thesaurus easily could be worn thin trying to find the appropriate words to describe Saturday night's Hanson concert at Frontier City in Oklahoma City, but none would better sum up the show's madness and frustration than these two: seven songs. The No. 1 musical sensation in the country finally returned to its home state in a swath of glory, they packed thousands upon thousands of ecstatic young girls and their dumbstruck parents into a venue meant to hold hundreds, they stayed cloistered in their bus before showtime listening to the crowd chant, “Hanson! Hanson! We want Hanson!'' — and they graced us with only seven songs. That's a pile of gall for three kids who were begging for a public gig this time last year. Other bands in their position (with older, stronger audiences) would have been dragged back to the stage — particularly by the sizeable Tulsa contingent that traveled 200 miles round-trip for the Big Event, not to mention paying up to $20 a head to get into the park. Heck, the Mellowdramatic Wallflowers — another Tulsa band more seasoned and deserving of the rocket to superstardom than our young heroes -- opened the show with maybe twice that number of songs. How quickly they forget. They were certainly seven fantastic songs, though, and during that fleeting half hour, the crowd of sardined fans adored their triumvirate of pubescent blonde ambition with the kind of power-drill-in-the-ear screaming that hasn't been heard since the You Know Whos came ashore. The crowd was so huge and so eager to get a decent vantage point on the stage that they were squeezing into the tiny field and crushing the front lines of girls against the barricades. Ten minutes before Hanson took the stage, extra manpower was called in from across the park to reinforce that line of defense and keep the hysterical young'uns from rushing the stage. More than a few were led away for heat exhaustion, despite the afterthought of park officials throwing handfuls of ice into the crowd. When the Fab Three finally jogged onto the stage, they started off with a couple of songs by themselves, letting their a capella foundations show a bit. For “Madeline'' and “Man From Milwaukee,'' Isaac strummed a guitar, Taylor slapped a tambourine and Zac shook a shaker. The harmonies were sweet as ever and further testament to the boys' whopping vocal and performance talents. For the remaining five numbers, the boys went electric along with several other musicians, each of whom lurked discreetly on the back of the stage. For the legions of cynics who wonder, the boys actually do play their instruments, even if they're not always playing the most significant parts of the songs. Every song was hard-hitting and tight, more than thrilling the crowd. The bulk of the signs held up in the crowd were announcing various carnal desires for Taylor, but interest in the young Hanson singer and keyboard player runs far deeper than mere teen-age lust. This boy has soul, and it's evident from the first instant he slouches into a microphone and beats a tambourine. If the boys' career outlives the here-today-gone-tomorrow projections prone to such young acts, Taylor Hanson looks like he's equipped to lead dedicated fans through a lifetime of great and possibly forward-thinking music. It's been a long time since rock 'n' roll had a great white soul man, and I'm sure Tulsa would be proud to say they knew him when. Before any of that happens, though, the kids have got to hook themselves up with a decent tour manager. They played this Oklahoma City gig for free, meaning that each $20 admission from the several thousand fans didn't go to the artists who deserved it. But then again, for seven songs, maybe they didn't deserve a penny. If they are indeed headed straight for Madison Square Garden, they'd better work up a set that offers our money's worth — no matter how adorable they may be. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World My head is splitting in two and my eyes feel swollen. For about two hours, I've been staring at several dozen web sites dedicated to Tulsa's own sugar-pop export, Hanson. It's an exercise that, while eventually mind-numbing, is actually quite funny and sociologically telling. The World Wide Web is a sticky wicket in which the ratio of trivial nonsense to actual useful information fluctuates around 9 to 1. Where Hanson information falls into that equation is a bit subjective. But these days, young fans of pop bands do more than create a fan club and titter together at slumber parties. They learn HTML programming and set up a “tribute'' site on the web. The Hanson album hasn't been out for two months, and there are easily 100 Hanson sites ready for search engines to snag. Most of them have the same photographs and the same, misspelled pre-teen gushing about how cute the boys are, and a few are informative, entertaining and goldmines for any sociology student studying mass hysteria. Vicky, a youngster in New York, gets things rolling by swooning all over her page, Vicky's Salute to Hanson (http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Academy/1384/index.html). Along with the ritual photo of the boys on the grass, she introduces her page with this statement: “I dedicate this page to the greatest band in the world (Hanson!). Even though they are already very special, hopefully this page makes them recognize it even more! Luv ya guys!'' If you're brave enough to click on her dedication page, you'll see several paragraphs of unmitigated groveling, including a sentence found on most Hanson sites: “I just wanna say I LOVE YOU GUYS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH!!!'' Actual number of o's varies from page to page. Vicky's site includes some important FAQs (frequently asked questions) about the boys, including “Are any of the Hansons looking for a girlfriend?'' The answer — sorry, girls — is no. Isaac already has one, she reports, and Taylor and Zac say they're too busy to bother. Vicky says that “millions of girls would get down on their knees to go out with one of the AVAILABLE Hanson brothers,'' and, well, I'll leave that one alone. One of many sites titled The Unofficial Hanson Page (http://www.geocities.com/NapaValley/5657) coordinates a running poll of your favorite Hanson brother. As of Tuesday, Zac was ahead with 128 votes, Taylor had 110 and Isaac had 102. Perhaps some of these voters should tune into Lisa's Hanson Page (http://members.aol.com/LMW3/lisa/hanson/hanson.html) and read some of her biographical information, which goes beyond the basic favorite color blather and includes things like “hidden talents.'' Isaac's hidden talent is an ability to imitate Kermit the Frog, Bullwinkle and Butthead. Zac's hidden talent is an ability to speak while belching. Taylor is a cartoonist. That probably explains why, despite that one poll, Taylor is the clear choice for young girls' hearts and web sites. He has numerous sites dedicated strictly to himself. The Taylor Hanson Page (http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/7320) features a spot where you can post your own declarations of Taylor's cuteness for all to read. The site's author herself writes that when she first heard “MMMBop'' on MTV, she thought “the music was like nothing I had ever heard before.'' In addition to her comparison of Taylor to a young Kurt Cobain, this site serves as a painful reminder of just how old the rest of us are. There's also a Taylor Hanson Fan Club (http://members.tripod.com/~Hanson161411/hansonHITZ.html) and a Taylor Hanson Cult (http://members.aol.com/Shelly737/TayCult.html). If it's actual information you want, look to the official Mercury Records site (http://www.polygram.com/polygram/mercury/artists/hanson/hanson—hom epage.html) or the officially sanctioned Hanson site, where the boys receive most of their e-mail (http://www.hansonline.com). Another fan site, Weird's Hanson Page (http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/1307) also has daily updates on the band's media appearances (a thorough listing of magazines — Tiger Beat, Teen, Sixteen, Seventeen, even Bop) as well as some current articles and tour information. This site even has its own Hanson theme song. A Bartlesville fan put up a Hanson site, Landon's Tribute to Hanson (http://users.aol.com/nadaace/hanson.html), which includes a few choice tidbits about Landon's family's vague connection to the Hanson family, something including a wedding appearance and a handmade wall hanging. The site even features a constantly updated picture window showing the view of Tulsa from a camera atop the KJRH Channel 2 tower. L.A.'s Hanson Reviews Page (http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/9792/hanson.html) features numerous reviews of Hanson appearances written by fans. One writer describes the mayhem at the group's mobbed May 7 appearance at a mall in Paramus, N.J. The scene is summed up when she says, “I do not believed(sic) that I have ever screamed so much in my life.'' Other pages feature aimless nattering about the boys and the girls who love them. Ruby, for instance, is a tad defensive about her love of Hanson on Ruby the Droogster's Hanson Page (http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/4936/hanson.html). She writes, “If any assholes want to make fun of me, I don't give a crap. I can like whoever and whatever I want.'' Other girls are in such a lather they just out-and-out babble. Lisa, for instance, informs us that her guinea pig is named Melody “from the way she bounces around in her cage to ("MMMBop').'' Christine, a 13-year-old in Tuscon, Ariz., on her page, My Hanson and Me Page (http://members.aol.com/TeenAZ/index.html), tells us the fascinating features of her life: “I play soccer and the violin. I like to listen to Hanson and be with friends. I collect a lot of things such as rocks and stickers.'' If you still want more, the Ultimate Hanson Links Page (http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/6540) has links to 86 different Hanson sites, including a Hanson page run by KISS 101.9 FM — a station in Valdosta, Ga. (http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/8156). Wouldn't it be nice if the boys' hometown radio stations gave as much, if not more, such support as a radio station in Valdosta-freakin'-Georgia? (Must this city's print media do everything for local bands?) Not everyone adores Hanson, though. Plenty of anti-Hanson pages are out there, like the Hanson Haters Page (http://www.toptown.com/NOWHERE/fatpo/agree2.html). This site is under construction — photos are being digitally sliced and diced as you read this — but the page's homophobic creators urge anyone to e-mail them various fantasies to “kill, maim and then desecrate the bodies of the Hanson sisters.'' The Marilyn Hanson Page (http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/7936/mh.html) is actually run by a fan, but anyone can enjoy the gallery of Hanson photographs here all made up so that each Hanson looks like Marilyn Manson. There's also another site, whose title I can't print in this general newspaper, which contains adult language and situations concerning the digestion of a particular part of the Hanson brothers' anatomy. Find the other two anti-Hanson pages and you'll find this one. Whatever your take on the three Tulsa young'uns, there's a mountain of gunk out there to view. And it's got Excedrin written all over it. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Hanson "Middle of Nowhere" (Mercury) Say what you will about these three well-scrubbed rich boys -- they're going to be big. They'll take the unique sound of south Tulsa to the world! Oh, I, too, thought I was having acid flashbacks when I heard that these cherubic, largely ignorable local whinsies had not only landed a major-label deal but hooked up with the Dust Brothers to produce it. I thought, it's a wonder anyone could turn a doorknob, what with all the greased palms. But however it came to be, “Middle of Nowhere'' is just the kind of tight, slick record that will beat us over the head for years to come. Over each track's hurried, lite R&B and incessant record scratching, 13-year-old Taylor doesn't just sound like 1967-vintage Michael Jackson, he also sounds like 1996-vintage Michael Jackson. Sometimes his thin coo melts your childlike heart (“Weird''), and sometimes his roar is both “Dangerous'' and “Bad'' (“Look at You''). The one thing that will rescue Hanson from the inevitable oblivion of acts of their ilk, i.e. New Kids on the Block, is that they play instruments (11-year-old Zac is a maniac on the drums) and participate in their writing of their songs. Yes, Mercury hauled in some bigwigs to pen hits for the album, but the first single, the frighteningly catchy “MMMBop'' (from their Tulsa indie record of the same name), and a couple of the most interesting tracks are the ones with Hansons in the credit lines. These kids grew up listening to classic soul records, and when those influences show up through their young, modern rock-saturated filters, the result is some surprisingly fresh music. Maybe, just maybe, youth is not wasted on the young. Regardless, though, “MMMBop'' debuted at No. 16 last week, and it will be drilling into your head around every corner in no time. Meanwhile, the Tulsa sound still resides peacefully in Tulsa. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World The Hanson album isn't due on record store shelves until Tuesday, but the buzz leaked out months ago. By mid-March, e-mail was already arriving in the Tulsa World queue from people around the world wanting more information on the fab three. “They are sooooooo cute!'' wrote one young woman. “Do you have any pictures of them?'' Another fan wrote, “Hi, I'm from Australia and ... Tulsa is about to be put in the global spotlight in a MAJOR way by none other than your very own local band, Hanson.'' The smart money is on that prediction. While legions of Tulsa kids try to put Tulsa on the map with still more groaning modern rock, along come the three Hanson brothers (Isaac, Taylor and Zac) with the slickest, sweetest pop sound since the Jackson Five — and they're better poised than anyone to win over the world. The album isn't even available yet, but the single, “MMMBop'' has drenched radio and thus debuted at No. 16 on the Billboard singles chart this week. The most recent band to pull off that kind of buzz was U2, and they had the luxury of resting on the laurels of a nearly 20-year career. All Hanson has are three cherubic faces and numerous glossy grooves. That was plenty to get Mercury Records excited enough to sign them and back the Tulsa trio with unheard-of support. When we caught up with the Hanson family last week, they were in London, still traveling across Europe to promote the new album, “Middle of Nowhere.'' Oldest brother Isaac, 16, was blase about his travels. “We're just back from Germany. We spent 10 days in the U.K., five days in France, three in Germany, doing interviews with different magazines, TV and radio,'' he said. “We've lived all over the world, so the travel we get to do now is fun, but it's not like we've never done it before.'' Walker Hanson is head of the clan (in addition to the singing trio, there are three younger siblings), and his job in international finance moved the family from Tulsa to Trinidad, Ecuador and Venezuela before returning home. He encouraged the boys to sing together one evening after a dinner blessing, and something serious began. “I never dreamed it would lead to this,'' Walker said last week, proud but slightly exasperated. The Hanson brothers debuted their act in 1992 on one of the Mayfest stages. They sang a capella, doo-wopping to standards from the '50s and '60s, and enough people gushed about how cute they were that they were encouraged to continue. Three years later, guitars and drum kits were purchased, and an independent record of lite R&B, “Boomerang,'' quickly followed. “We had all each played keyboard, but we'd been very interested in other instruments. We wanted to make our own music instead of singing to a background track all the time. Playing guitar gives you a whole different inspiration than the keyboard, and we needed that different inspiration,'' Isaac said. Zac, 11, took to the drums, and he's a maniac behind the kit. He offered a humble explanation for his choice of instrument. “I'm not that great a drummer, but everybody says I can play, so I'll take their word for it,'' he said. “The secret is, nobody else's arms are as long. I couldn't play guitar or piano, so I went to the drums because I've got long arms.'' By the time a second album, “MMMBop,'' had been recorded locally, the phone at the Hanson residence was ringing with serious business calls as well as the usual blather of giggling girl fans. Mercury Records signed the band last summer after seeing the kids perform on the Blue Rose patio — at 16, 13 and 11, they aren't allowed inside the bar — and the big wheels started turning. In February's Billboard magazine, the Hanson brothers appeared in a photograph next to two Mercury execs and the Dust Brothers, John King and Mike Simpson, who produced Hanson's debut disc for the big label. (Steve Lironi, of Black Grape and Space expertise, also produced parts of the record, and the Dust Brothers' last project was the Grammy-winning “Odelay'' album for Beck — whose last name, oddly enough, is Hansen.) When Billboard runs photos like that, boring shots of people just staring right into the camera, it usually means the corresponding label has made quite a fuss about the upcoming project. The record, fortunately, is worthy of the fuss. Both sets of producers found a sturdy balance between the brothers' latest pop leanings and their original soul-flavored sound, a sound that developed during those years living far away from home. “Before we left, we bought a bunch of these tapes of old '50s and '60s rock 'n' roll,'' Isaac explained. “We had no radio to listen to, and it was just coincidence that we picked this particular style to take with us. But it was very inspirational in our minds. It's just great music, all that Chuck Berry, Bobby Darin, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, old Beatles. These people are the origins for what all music is today. They're the ones that started it all out.'' This week, Hanson will take that reverence for rock's roots and debut their chirpy songs on national television. They're on “The Late Show With David Letterman'' on Monday (10:35 p.m. on KOTV Channel 6) and “The Rosie O'Donnell Show'' on Tuesday (4 p.m. on KTUL Channel 2). They're not even nervous. “Nah. If you get nervous, you don't act like the natural you,'' Taylor said. “It's Letterman! It's like, whoa, why would Letterman want us? But if he wants us, I'll go,'' Zac said. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World My friend Adrienne and I would stay up all night in her dorm room, smoking and playing guitar. She had already learned nearly every song on the Indigo Girls' debut indie record, and somehow I always got saddled with singing the high part in a wavering falsetto. We'd venture off into other tunes — wheezing through Melissa Etheridge and mumbling through R.E.M. — but we'd always come back to the Indigos' “Strange Fire,'' “Make It Easier'' and my favorite, “Crazy Game.'' “They're so beautiful and so easy to play,'' Adrienne would say. “I mean, I could write this stuff, but think about how great they're going to be in a few years when they've got 1,000 performances and some cynicism under their belts.'' Nearly 10 years later, with several thousand performances and a vital, sincere activism instead of mere cynicism under their belts, the greatness of the Indigo Girls — Amy Ray and Emily Saliers — has matured and aged like good wine. But they haven't mellowed. In fact, the newest record, “Shaming of the Sun'' (due in stores April 29) finds the Indigo Girls bolder and louder than ever while remaining in the tag-team folk-rock form that nurtures the duo's inviting harmonies and easily approachable social sensibilities. As the pair wound its way across the Midwest collegiate circuit last week, I caught up with Amy Ray — the growling, passionate yang to Saliers' studied, introverted yin — after a show in Davenport, Iowa. She talked about the new album, the pair's approach to writing songs and the Indigo Girls' constant challenge to maintain an activist integrity while safely inked into a major-label recording contract. Thomas Conner: I'm really taken with the new record. As the two of you get older, you're getting louder — both in the music and your political voice. It's usually the other way around. Why the reversal? Amy Ray: This is a loud record, isn't it? We'll probably do a soft one after this to show our true colors. We keep planning a straight-up folk record, and then this happens. This time around when I was writing, I was kind of reverting to when I was younger and finding my way again. The lyrics are very literal on this record. We're more comfortable that way now. I've always been fairly outspoken, and Emily's gone through some politicizing in the last two years. We're becoming more aware of how to speak on certain things we're involved in, from Native American issues to gay rights. We went into the studio and just let it all hang out. TC: The song “Shame on You'' is the most radio-friendly song as well as the most overtly political. Is that by design? AR: No, I just wrote it and it ended up that way. It didn't start to be about politics. I was hanging out with my friends in a park. There's a lot of immigration and illegal alien concerns in my area, and a lot of the poultry industry that hires these Chicano and Hispanic workers. They're not only underpaid and mistreated at work, but they are hassled all the time. That just all came up while I was writing the song. TC: I always think of the Indigo Girls as politically important musicians, yet I'm hard-pressed to think of a bona fide protest song in your repertoire. AR: Hmm. Well, “This Train'' from the last record (“Swamp Ophelia'') is a pretty good social commentary on the Holocaust and genocide in general. It's not like we're Billy Bragg, though, with a history of writing labor songs. That's part of the thing. We just write what we write. In my life, everything I see is through a political lens. As a gay woman — or just as a woman — everything I do is more political. So even the songs about relationships, even though they're not written with some agenda in mind, have some political stake. TC: You've never necessarily denied your sexuality, but you've never grabbed at the cover of The Advocate to tell the world about it, either. Why choose the low-key approach? AR: Emily was less concerned with it early on than I was. I did a lot of interviews for gay publications by myself when we were starting. I remember doing one with this journalist from Hits! and he asked, “Are you gay?'' and I said, “Well, yeah,'' and felt so good that the question had finally been asked and was done with. Then he didn't even print it. I was so miffed. They give musicians such hassle for not coming out, but then they don't care when you're forthright about it. They usually only care unless you don't want it known. We've never made a big issue of it because it's not a big issue, but we feel it's worth sacrificing some of our personal life to talk about it when we need to. TC: What are the differences between the way you and Emily each write songs? AR: Emily's more disciplined about it. She can make space and time for herself and sit down to write and really craft the song and the lyrics. She has a very large chord vocabulary ... and a very large word vocabulary, too. I'm not articulate that way. I write whenever it comes to me, wherever I am. I feel I'm hard-pressed to take it when it comes. TC: Both of your songs tend to be intensely personal. I know it's sometimes easy to write a very personal song but that performing and recording it tend to be a burden. Have you experienced that? AR: The sharing of things doesn't bother me. We both feel a certain amount of protection because of the music, and in the spirit of the music we're willing to bear that. We're protected by its good energy — by the good witch of music. (Laughs.) The problem I have is having to relive it every time I sing it. Sometimes it's painful. I write something to get it off my chest, and when I relive it, it's like, "Oh, jeez, I'm gonna have to sing this every night for a year. How am I going to do it?' The songs have to take on an esoteric meaning for me to get through it. TC: I was warned to prepare myself for a drastic difference in the sound of this album, but I wasn't really that shocked. The presence of more electric instruments really doesn't sound so out of place. The difference I noted was that the songs and their arrangements are more ... tortured. Am I getting it? AR: Oh yeah, you're getting it. The sound really isn't that different. I had a couple of hard years during our time off. There were some hard things I had to deal with. They were hard but I learned a lot. My songs and the arrangements of them are more tortured, and there's a reason for it. Emily's lyrics aren't as tortured, but there's something going on in her musically that's intense. She expresses anger well through music — very dignified. For instance, the song “Scooter Boys'' was recorded completely off the cuff. She doesn't even know what tuning she was in. We were jamming on something completely different, we moved into this song idea I had and what came out of her was from a completely different place. I don't even know if she knew what I was singing about. TC: When you were on the “Politics and Music'' panel at last month's South by Southwest conference in Austin, some panelists made a point I was glad to hear voiced: that the argument over major labels vs. indie labels is irrelevant. Do you agree with that? AR: I think that's right on some level, but I don't agree on another level. Logistically speaking, a major label is bigger and there are more people, so it's more bureaucratic and you automatically lose some quality control except for the niche of people close to you. The people close to us at Epic are great, but when you look at the whole company, you know there are probably people there with questionable integrity. In an indie, you can spot those people quickly and get rid of them. As a person who has an indie label, I agree with the capitalism argument. An indie is selling a product just like a major is, and they'll screw you just as quickly as a major will. People who cut down major labels as being more capitalistic than indies are lying. But an indie is a different spirit. It's harder for a major label to have a grassroots effort, but it's easy for an indie. TC: How has Epic responded to your activism? AR: Epic's very cool about the poltics. Rage Against the Machine is on Epic, and so is Pearl Jam. Those two bands are constantly pushing the boundaries with the label. Every chance they get to express their opinions, they do. We just went on a trip to Chiapas, Mexico, with Zach de la Rocha from Rage. The Epic publicist worked really hard for that event, and the label donated video cameras and equipment so we could document the work down there. This wasn't a project that would make anyone a lot of money or even make the label look better; they did it to support our interests and because they feel our politics have a certain amount of importance. TC: Was the idea for the upcoming (in June) Pay-Per-View special yours or Epic's? AR: It was theirs, and that's the kind of thing I would totally shy away from. But Epic helped us keep the price low and are allowing us to hook up with politically correct sponsors, like The Advocate. They said we've got three hours of air-time to do with however we please. So we're like, “Great! What bands do we want to push? What politics do we want to talk about?'' Still, it's frustrating at times... But you have to fight things from the inside out. We'll stay with Epic until we need to go. Indigo Girls With the Scud Mountain Boys When: 7 p.m. Wednesday Where: Expo Square Pavilion, 17th Street and New Haven Avenue Tickets: $19.50, available at The Ticket Office at Expo Square, call 747-0001 This post contains my complete running coverage of this annual conference and festival ...
© Tulsa World Go SOUTH-West Young Man By Thomas Conner 03/23/1997 AUSTIN, Texas — Shortly after I checked into the Lazy Oak Inn in Austin, I met Flash Gordon. This should have clued me into just how far out this weekend would be. Flash sings and plays flute in a basic Florida bar band called the Pundits. They didn't make the cut for one of the nearly 750 showcases at this year's South by Southwest music conference, but Flash and his wife, Jo, came anyway. When your band gets rejected from SXSW, the conference offers you registration at half price, which we determined was reason enough to apply each year. We sat on the porch, soaking in a warm Austin evening and watching Molly, the inn's resident pooch, chase imaginary squirrels around the inn's massive namesake tree. Everyone had their SXSW booklets out and was making notes, circling band names, highlighting times in the schedule. You have to plan your attack carefully. At the top of each hour, about 40 musicians and spoken word artists will begin a new set in clubs all over town. Just as any sage would advise, you first must accept that you will not be able to see it all. Then you plan your route, lace up a comfortable pair of walking shoes, and hit the bricks. It's all highly subjective. Wednesday, 7:55 p.m. The music part of the conference (film and multimedia kick off the week) always begins with the Austin Music Awards on Wednesday night. Storyville, the rootsy band that's been through Tulsa (and will be back April 4), dominates the awards, winning Band of the Year, Song of the Year (“Good Day for the Blues''), Best Rock Band, and so on. Ian Moore lands Musician of the Year. Junior Brown, of course, wins Best Country Artist. And everyone is obsessing about the January death of local hero Townes Van Zandt, who is inducted into the Austin hall of fame. Wednesday, 10:15 p.m. Always on the cutting edge of cowpunk/twang-core/alt-country/whatever it's called now, Jason Ringenberg of Jason and the Scorchers tears up Liberty Lunch in a flurry of fringe and wins the Michael Stipe lookalike contest with a freshly shaven head. Warner Hodges remains one of rock's most overlooked and electrifying guitar masters. Wednesday, 11:45 p.m. Decked out in shiny silver space suits and flailing around far more than keyboard players should indeed flail, Roger Manning and one of his partners from the Moog Cookbook dazzle a slovenly audience of media registrants at the Iron Cactus restaurant. It's the first performance of the all-Moog “band'' outside of L.A. or Japan. Thursday, 12:10 a.m. As Tito and Tarantula start their set at Steamboat, film directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarrantino are refused admittance to see the bunch that played the vampire bar band their film, “From Dusk Till Dawn.'' The fire marshals had been ticketing club owners for overcrowding their establishments, and the film moguls had to get over it like everyone else. Thursday, 10:30 a.m. Carl Perkins delivers the conference keynote address in the Austin Convention Center. Certainly one of the most surreal experiences of the week, Perkins noodled on the guitar while speaking, mostly about Jesus but he did demonstrate the difference between Bill Monroe's version of “Blue Moon of Kentucky'' and that of Elvis Presley. Thursday, 3:15 p.m. Tanned, rested and ready, Tony Bennett sits down for a Q&A and talks about his “comeback'' and his irrepressible love of singing. When talking about getting booted from Columbia in the '70s, he told the story of Duke Ellington's similar fate years earlier: “They called him into the office at Columbia and said, "We're going to drop you from the label.' Duke said, "Why? What's wrong?' and they said, "You're not selling records.' Duke said, "Oh, I thought I was supposed to make the records and you were supposed to sell them.''' Thursday, 5 p.m. Tulsa modern rock band Epperley takes the stage at the Voodoo Lounge for a “pirate'' show — one not officially part of the SXSW showcase. Perhaps that officialdom has its advanatages because the quartet plays its heart out for an audience of about 12 listless club rats. In whatever setting, though, Matt Nader is a thoroughly entertaining live guitarist. Thursday, 9 p.m. Fulflej plays a subdued but affecting set at Liberty Lunch, including a cover of Sinead O'Connor's “Nothing Compares 2 U.'' Guitarist and singer MC No Joke G uses the lingo (he actually said “homies'') like he's the hippest dude around, but the music is more deeply rooted in arena rock and power pop to allow his thick, dark curls to become dreads anytime soon. Thursday, 10:30 p.m. Now that his original power pop band 20/20 has resurfaced, Tulsa native Ron Flynt tried out his solo chops in the tiny space of Bob Popular's Headliner's Room Upstairs. With fellow 20/20 member and Tulsa native Steve Allen adding lead guitar flourishes to Flynt's acoustic strum, the two rolled easily through a warm set of 20/20 classics and new Flynt originals. Flynt's soft, childlike voice is better suited to this folkie setting, but Flynt is still concerned with his primary (and unabashedly pop) lyrical topic: the love and loss of chicks. Thursday, 11 p.m. Dwight Twilley takes the first step in his, what, fourth comeback? Safely rooted in Tulsa once again, Twilley and his new band lean into the set of power pop gems they'd been trying out on small crowds at Caz's last fall. The large patio of Austin's Waterloo Brewing Company is nearly SRO for this gig, and Twilley looks as young and sounds as fresh as he did in 1975. He plays a classic like “I'm on Fire'' right next to something brand new, and no one knows the difference. He isn't slumming for the nostalgia addicts; he's just doing what Twilley does — rocking with more melody than the radio has played in 10 years. Susan Cowsill, a former Twilley sweetheart, backs him up at the mike for three songs. The set is flawless and exciting. Friday, 12 a.m. 20/20 follows up Twilley at the Waterloo with more stripped-down and direct rock 'n' roll. Fresh from his solo gig, Ron Flynt now wears shades and Allen's finesse on the electric guitar proves that's his real forte. Opening with the classic “Remember the Lightning,'' they charge into last year's “Song of the Universe,'' a driving melody that gets better every time I hear it. The crowd cheers every solo from drummer Bill Belknap. Flynt introduces “The Night I Heard Her Scream'' as “a song from our second album, or is it third? We've got four or five. I don't know.'' Someone from the audience shouts, “I bought one!'' Flynt looks relieved and says, “Thank you.'' Friday, 1 a.m. Justly introduced as “one of the great songwriters of the universe,'' Okie-born songwriter Jimmy Webb slides behind a grand piano in the Driskill Hotel Ballroom and pounds out several of his touching, smartly arranged songs. He sings with much more power than he gives himself credit for (“These songs were made famous by others who can actually sing''). Sure, Barbara Streisand wrapped her silky voice around Webb's “Didn't We,'' but when Webb sings it, the nuances of each original emotion are wrenchingly vivid. He pounds the piano with a confidence that's built up for 30 years, but his voice still caresses the yearning for that 21-year-old woman on a Galveston beach. There is indeed magic in the Webb of it. Friday, 2 a.m. La Zona Rosa is offering “breakfast shows,'' featuring non-SXSW acts whooping it up next to a spicy buffet line. Tonight it's Oklahoma City's Red Dirt Rangers. Someone always dances at a Red Dirt Rangers show, and one woman was so eager to get to the dancefloor that she beaned me in the head with the Miller longneck in her grip as she ran by. No problem, though, the slow laments like “Blue Diamond'' and the male bonding of “Dog on a Chain'' had already knocked me out. Multi-instrumentalist Benny Gene Craig absolutely wails on the steel guitar. Friday, 4:10 p.m. Thomas Anderson, a spaced-out folkie (a native of Miami, Okla., now based in Austin), finally goes on at ABCD's and once again proves the strength of his songwriting skills. Anderson, exactly like Elliott Murphy, writes intricate and intriguing character sketches — songs that are too big for his timid, thin vocal chops. In trademark shades, doo-rag and blazer, he sings of Bill Haley's tragic death in Mexico and a freaked-out killer named Nash the Slash. Even with subjects that could easily have been far too precious — the admiration of Deadheads in “Jerry's Kids'' and the touching “White Sands'' — Anderson boasts a tenderness that's usually hard to find in songs of this intellectual caliber. Friday, 5 p.m. This time, Epperley drums up a teeming crowd at a skate shop called Blondie's. They sound better, too, playing mostly new songs — “She's Like a Marine,'' “Jenks, America'' and “You're So 1988.'' The crowd whoops it up and cheers without the prodding of the band's rep from Triple X Records. Friday, 6:20 p.m. Just as every public establishment in New Orleans has a cocktail lounge, every place in Austin books live music, especially this weekend. As we savor the Mexican food at El Sol y La Luna, one of those South American bands with the drums and pan flutes fills the place with tropical ambiance. Greg Brown, the guitarist for Cake, is at the bar. “I see guys like this everywhere I go now,'' he says with a hint of boredom. “Better not go to Tulsa's Mayfest,'' I advise. Friday, 9:10 p.m. On that note, there's even a band scheduled to play at the inn where I'm staying. Scheduled at 8 p.m., Seattle's urban-folk progenitor Caz Murphy arrives late. His excuse? He was taken to the hospital after being bitten by a bat on the Town Lake bridge. I love this town. Friday, 10:05 p.m. I could bypass the lengthy line and get into Stubb's with my snooty press badge, but I opt to watch from outside the fence with the cheapskates; the sardined crowd on the Stubb's lawn is wallowing in mud from the previous week's rains. Supergrass plays a solid set of very British Invasion rock 'n' roll, looking a great deal more mature than the superb but spastic debut album that spawned what fans feared would be the band's wondrous one hit, “Alright.'' New songs from the album due this May included “Cheap Skate,'' “Richard III'' and the Who-ish “Silence the Sun.'' Friday, 11:20 p.m. It's Japanese Night at the Tropical Isle, and I wander into the adorable screech of Lolita No. 18. Fliers on the tables declare that the band “captive (sic) the heart of both punk rock fan and cartoon fan immediately.'' True enough — the all-girl thrashers are, to our Western sensibilities, cute as cartoons, and any punk fan would enjoy their racket. Singer G. Ena squawks with a smile over the band's quirky time signature shifts. Suddenly I recognize one of the choruses — my God, it's “Hang on Sloopy.'' Saturday, 12:30 a.m. After an interminable delay, Spring Heel Jack finally begins their set, only you can't really tell. They remain in the dark on Bob Popular's inadequate stage, and the ambient techno the London duo begins punching out of a huge bank of machines is not discernable in quality or style from the tape that was filling time between showcases. Techno of any kind is simply unsuitable for environments outside a dancefloor. Saturday, 1:05 a.m. The Mysterious John pleads for quiet through a bullhorn at the start of the Asylum Street Spankers' show, declaring that “we make music the way God intended — without the use of de-e-e-mon electricity!'' When some patrons continue talking, the elder ukulele player jumps out of his chair and shouts, “Don't make me cut a switch!'' The bawdy songs — played with clarinet, ukuleles, guitars, banjos, kazoos, washboards and a little soft shoe -- highlight the roaring part of the '20s (“Roll Me One of Those Funny Cigarettes''). As homespun and rollicking as bathtub gin. Saturday, 1 p.m. Art Alexakis, leader of Everclear, is the first hungover musician to take the Daytime Stage for a string of sets benefitting Artists for a Hate-Free America, which Alexakis helped to found. With just an acoustic guitar (he obviously writes with an electric — listen to those strings buzz!), the songs about trying to kick yourself out of the gutter are somehow more ostensible. I must have been hungover, too, because I swear he introduces one song as being “about my dog.'' The lyrics make sense: “You know I'm never home / I call but you don't talk on the phone.'' Later I'm told he said “daughter.'' Saturday, 2 p.m. Back to the Daytime Stage for my hero, Mark Eitzel, former frontman for American Music Club and a patron saint to all who drink for reasons other than escape. He knocks out five of his gems, getting lost in every song, flailing his body awkwardly and with abandon (so much so that during “Firefly'' he hits the mike with his head). He finishes a new song, with a chorus of “Why can't you leave my sister alone,'' this way: “That song's about my sister. She's a pro-rights kind of person. Her brother-in-law banned her from seeing the kids because he said she was from Satan. My sister is not from Satan.'' Despite that conviction, Eitzel momentarily retreats into an unusually potent moment of pessimism: “They told me to say lots of nice things about a hate-free America. Is there such a thing? No. This country is finished.'' Someone in the crowd asks, “Then where are we going?'' “We're going to hell, man,'' Eitzel replies. Saturday, 4 p.m. About 2,000 people cram into the second level of a downtown parking garage to hear the Car Radio Orchestra, an experiment led by Wayne Coyne of Oklahoma City's Flaming Lips. Lips manager Scott Booker says they had expected about a fifth of this crowd. “I'm just trying to keep people from destroying my car,'' he said. “I wish I'd used a rental.'' (Though, in a Dallas Morning News note about the event, Coyne had advised that most rental cars “won't have adequate sound systems for the experiment.'') After an hour of positioning 28 vehicles and running two tests, the real music begins. Coyne gives each driver a pre-mixed cassette and instructs them to press play and blare it on cue. Soon, soothing synthesizer parts are swelling from various auto systems, and then the sound of a gasping, moaning woman begins building from Coyne's car in the center of the fray. The sounds build to a, well, climax, whereupon the ecsatic female cries are sped up, manipulated and squelched and begin rapid-firing from every car. The piece is called “Altruism,'' subtitled “That's the Crotch Calling the Devil Black.'' The second piece uses more looping drum sounds, but the ending fizzles because the principle sound was on tape no. 16 -- and that car had blown a fuse. Saturday, 10 p.m. My one and only personal indulgence — Paul K. and the Weathermen play at the Atomic Cafe. Even though he wears a turtleneck tonight, the darkness of his tales of a criminal past are not blunted. The fiddle player is superfluous, and the rhythm section only adds spine to the brooding, mythical post-punk-blues Paul pulls from his surprisingly powerful acoustic guitar. “30 Coins of Gold'' tells the spooky story of a beggar who posed as Judas for da Vinci's rendering of “The Last Supper.'' Saturday, 10:45 p.m. A Ryder truck is parked on the edge of Red River Avenue, and there's a big film screen in the back door showing a director's reel of film and video clips produced by L.A.'s Underground Media, which has provided videos for everyone from Marilyn Manson to David Bowie. This reel is dominated by videos for Cottonmouth, Texas — a group from Dallas featuring musicians from the New Bohemians providing a backdrop for the clever spoken musings of an ex-junkie. The work is more accessible than that sounds. Watch for the Virgin Records debut this summer. Saturday, 11:20 p.m. Who knew Fred Sanford had given up the salvage business and launched a hip-hop career? Endlessly toying with his voice effects, Mike Ladd slops through some captivating rants. The crowd was paltry but enthused, and Ladd will probably get used to that because his raps are about topics that matter, not sex and guns. When he gets furious, as he does in his lambaste of Richard Herrnstein's race-and-education theories in “The Bell Curve,'' he sounds like he's about to clutch his chest and have “the big one.'' Sunday, 12:05 a.m. Deborah Harry may not be aging gracefully, but her vocal chops are juicy in her latest project, the Jazz Passengers, a sharp jazz outfit that sidesteps the latest retro-lounge fad in favor of stream-of-consciousness, almost avant garde compositions led by sax and trombone. Harry's role as singer is well-suited to her dynamic voice, purring one moment and roaring like a tiger the next. Sunday, 1 a.m. Figures. The best punk show I've seen in years is by the three nellie queens in San Francisco's gay punk pioneers, Pansy Division. Venting about kinky boyfriends (“James Bondage''), the men north of the border (“Manada'') and right time alternatives to night time (“Horny in the Morning''), this trio puts out the most entertaining and energetic set of the week. Bassist Chris Freeman is in a skirt and flaming out all over the stage while guitarist Jon Ginoli (wearing a T-shirt that reads, “I Dream of Weenie'') this time plays it a bit more, uh, straight, offering an unexpected moment of seriousness in his solo tale of “Denny.'' What Is South by Southwest? By Thomas Conner 03/23/1997 The South by Southwest Music and Media Conference takes place each March in the remarkably hospitable city of Austin, Texas. It could take place in no other city, really — Austin is, per capita, the live music capital of the world. Conference organizers book about 750 acts (solo musicians, singers and bands) to perform one-hour showcases during five nights in 36 clubs around the city, mostly concentrated on Sixth Street downtown. (Every other club in town, though, books “pirate'' shows.) The purpose is to provide one-stop shopping for music industry talent scouts and journalists (and, oh yeah, fans) looking for the Next Big Thing. Among the scores of up-and-coming bands are scheduled shows by well-established artists — it helps draw the crowds. The event calls itself a “conference'' because it also includes panel discussions of music industry issues and a trade show, all of which helps to justify a week of listening to rock 'n' roll in bars. El Vez vivos // What Started as a Dare Has Become a National Pastime. El Vez Is in the Arena!1/10/1997
By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World So hush little baby, don't you cry You know that your Elvis was bound to die but as just as long as there are Elvis fans who are paying we'll keep playing! — El Vez's "Mexican-American Trilogy'' It's Elvis's birthday week, and El Vez is a busy man. This week and the whole month of August — around the anniversary of the King's death — keeps El Vez hopping like a crate full of Mexican jumping beans on the back of a bucking burro. "This time of year is full of business to care of,'' he said in an interview last week. There are many Elvis impersonators out there — men, women, children, pets — but few pack a punch quite like El Vez, the Mexican Elvis. Merging the hysteria of Elvis worship with a fierce Hispanic pride, El Vez reinvents Presley's power and mystique from a socialist Hispanic perspective. His shows are entertaining and empowering, regardless of your cultural background. As El Vez is fond of saying, "When you come to an El Vez show, you walk away proud to be a Mexican. Even when you're not.'' It all started innocently enough. A struggling musician in San Diego and Los Angeles, Robert Lopez was an accident waiting to happen. After stints with noted California bands like the Zeroes and Catholic Discipline, he wound up working in a Melrose art gallery. In 1988, the gallery produced a show of Elvis-related folk art, and Lopez — having conceived similar themed openings for other artists — came up with the idea of an El Vez performance to kick off the show. "It was a full, intense month of Elvis,'' El Vez recalled. "We were showing art and films all about Elvis, and those were my first steps of my submersion into Elvisness. That was the turning point.'' On a dare, Lopez took the new persona one further. He booked passage to Memphis during the King's birthday celebration week and landed a slot at Bob's Bad Vapors — the Mecca of Elvis impersonators, a club where a different Elvis performer is on stage every 20 minutes. "It was just a one-shot thing. I figured I'd go out there where nobody knew me so nobody would see me,'' he said. No such luck. When Lopez returned home, a story of his appearance was in the Los Angeles Times, and his phone was ringing. El Vez's second public appearance was on national television, NBC's "2 Hip for TV'' kids' show. A career as the Mexican Elvis slowly took shape. "I started out doing this book tour for I Am Elvis, a directory for Elvis impersonators. There were several of us on the tour, and I ended up being the ringleader. The lady Elvis, the mayor Elvis, all the kid Elvises — they were all attracted to me because I was getting notoriety,'' El Vez said. The career fumbled along. Lopez asked various friends to be the Elvettes, his backup singers, and the Memphis Mariachis, his muy caliente band. Somewhere along the line, though, it ceased being purely a knock-off romp and became a more serious venture. Lopez realized there were people listening to him, so he started saying something he thought was worth hearing. "I started getting into social commentary because I thought I could get some points across about things like Chicano culture, history, safe sex, politics. With an agenda in mind, it became more interesting and more of a challenge,'' he said. El Vez songs are rarely mere covers and are never apolitical. His rendition of "Mystery Train,'' for instance, became "Misery Tren,'' an all-Spanish ditty about the train to liberty for Pancho Villa and his Zapatistas. "Viva Las Vegas'' became "Viva La Raza,'' trumpeting a Chicano empowerment group. Both songs are from El Vez's latest album, "G.I. Ay, Ay! Blues,'' which is subtitled, "Soundtrack for the Coming Revolution.'' The revolution El Vez is championing — at least initially — is one of conscience and of ethnic understanding. "I'm heralding the Chicano point of view,'' he said. "You don't have to be a white man to be part of the American dream. I'm taking songs and superimposing Latino culture on them, showing people that it works. "I didn't think many people would get it when I started. I thought it would be at least a southern California thing, but then I got pretty popular out east, and I figured it was just the Peurto Rican population in New York doing that. But then I played this show in Denmark, and they loved it. I went to Berlin and these Turkish kids came up to me and said that they loved (my song) 'Immigration Times.' They said, `It's about us.' These ideas that I thought were just this southern California experience became something new, took on this global idea. That's what I mean when I say my show can make you proud to be Mexican, even when you're not.'' That kind of mestiza consciousness is evident and aided by Lopez's vast knowledge of American musical history. Most El Vez songs make direct references to other pieces of music, if not fusing them together completely to make his uniquely skewed point about his Hispanic heritage. The latest album includes hilarious allusions such as these: — A crowd-charger, "Say It Loud! I'm Brown and I'm Proud,'' with all the energy of the James Brown tune — Lennon's "Power to the People'' starts with the riff from "Jailhouse Rock'' and peaks with the solo from Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love'' — In his earnest and fuzzed-up tribute to labor leader Cesar Chavez, El Vez cries, "Well, I ain't gonna pick grapes on Maggie's farm no more,'' echoing one of Dylan's signature tunes — "Taking Care of Business'' is a faithful cover of the Bachman Turner Overdrive original, save the lyrics that bemoan the low pay of menial jobs ("Takin' care of business, we're the maid / Takin' care of business, and getting underpaid / work out!'') — "Si I Am a Lowrider (Superstar)'' is an hysterical hybrid of "Jesus Christ Superstar'' ("Lowrider, superstar, are you as cool as they say you are?'') and "C.C. Rider'' ("Oh si, I'm a lowrider'') to sing the virtues of custom cars. "It's the end of the century, so there's a lot of looking back at and borrowing from the past,'' El Vez said. "I steal licks here and there and put them into a collage that works. One bit makes you think of something else; it helps link the ideas.'' The bonus is, it works on any level you want it to. If you don't tune into the revolution rambling, an El Vez show is still one of the most entertaining around. It's a big show — Elvis is the focal point, after all — with numerous, jaw-dropping costume changes, from the bright orange bell-bottomed jumpsuit made of Mexican blanket fabric to the red-white-and-blue one with the Mexican eagle and serpent to the traditional and obligatory gold lame. By Thomas Conner
© TULSA WORLD Johnny Cash is cool. Johnny Cash is a rebel. Johnny Cash is an American myth. Johnny Cash is back. Again. Forging through his fourth decade of recording, Cash has once again fired boosters in his career no one would have guessed he had. After hooking up with hip, young rock and rap producer Rick Rubin and signing to the rock label American Recordings, Cash turned out one of the most phenomenal albums of his career, 1994's “American Recordings.'' This year, he's back with another expectations-breaker. “Unchained'' finds the legendary Man in Black singing better than ever before and covering everything from old Cash originals like “Mean-Eyed Cat'' to songs by Beck and Soundgarden. Like Tony Bennett, Cash has found himself a fatherly icon amongst the MTV crowd. “Unchained'' debuted this week at No. 26 on the Billboard country chart. Not bad for a country artist of any era, but particularly great for someone who's been counted out of the game as many times as Cash has. “I haven't had (a record) that high in a long time,'' Cash said in an interview last week. “It feels good. It feels like the '50s all over again.'' Cash was let go from Columbia Records in 1986 and moved to Mercury, where things just didn't blossom like he expected. Once free of Mercury, Cash wondered what path he would take next. That's when Rubin called. “Rick came looking for me,'' Cash said. “I was playing a show in California, and he called my manager and asked if we could talk. Once I found out who he was, I said, 'Why in the world would he be interested in me?' And I asked him that. He said he knew my work and that he wanted to sit me down, give me and microphone and a guitar and let me sing everything I wanted, and then he'd find a way to make an album out of it. We let the idea sit a while, and he was still serious about it months later. He made me believe I could do what I really wanted to do.'' See, even American legends need a little encouragement. Rubin's devotion to the project convinced Cash to sign up, and the result was “American Recordings,'' an astonishing guitar-and-voice affair that revived Cash among his two generations of fans and added a third — a new group of young admirers, lured by the vogue “Unplugged'' nature of the record and by the historical awe that surrounds the figure of Cash. On “Unchained,'' which features Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as the backing band, Cash keeps up his balancing act between the old and new fans. For the longtime fans, he covers another Carter Family tune (“Kneeling Drunkard's Plea'') and finishes a Cash original that wasn't finished the first time he recorded it (“Mean Eyed Cat''). For the new fans, Cash covers a couple of modern rock pioneers and does so with the power and grace that has tamed all musical influences around him these 40-odd years. The new disc opens with “Rowboat,'' a plaintive love lament written by the cutting edge's boy wonder, Beck. “I used him as an opener a year and a half ago in L.A., and he sang some Carter Family Appalachian things. He also sang 'Rowboat,' and I really liked it,'' Cash said. The Soundgarden cover, “Rusty Cage,'' didn't come to him so easily. Rubin asked Cash if he'd heard the song; Cash said no, so Rubin played him the Soundgarden album. “Right away I said, 'That's not for me. No way. I can't record that song.' But Rick said, 'What if we work up an arrangement that feels comfortable for you,' and I thought about it. The lyrics really fascinated me. It's like the Beat look at a love affair -- very mystical, interpret-it-your-own-way kind of lyrics. But I just didn't think there was any way. They worked a long time, and it worked out. Now it's my favorite song that I perform,'' Cash said. The choice of new material is more than mere kow-towing to the current hip couture, but Cash said it's nice to have more young fans. The monumental legacy of Cash's career doesn't seem to be daunting to the new fans, either, and Cash said there's really no prerequisite for understanding his music. “You know, the 'American Recordings' was really what I wanted people to hear from me — just me and my guitar. That's why I like any country artist.'' And what's next for this cornerstone of country music, and how many more boosters does he have to fire in his career? For now, Cash said he's just taking one show at a time, entertaining his fans — from each generation — as his highest priority. “I've been around twice now. This is my third time around,'' Cash said. “Everything else from now on is gravy.'' By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Out at the Tulsa airport, there's a woman who runs a little booth called "Minute Massage,'' or something like that. One buck equals one minute of massage — a nice back rub and your feet on one of those vibrating bumpy pads. I'm thinking of making the drive out there today with a wad of cash. I wonder if she would understand my aches and pains if I just collapsed in her chair and murmured, "George Clinton.'' Clinton and his P-Funk All-Stars played (and shook the foundations of) the Cain's Ballroom on Thursday night. They played and they played and they played — for three and a half hours they played, and I jumped up and down the whole time. I had no choice. The funkmeister made me do it. I can't say he didn't warn me. After the first "song'' — a juggernaut medley that began with "The Bomb'' and kept exploding for 30 minutes — Clinton and his tag-team of a few dozen musicians launched into "If Anybody Gets Funked Up (It's Gonna Be You),'' a track from Clinton's latest album, "T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M. (The Awesome Power of a Fully Operational Mothership).'' The word "funk'' frequently substituted for another f-word, but in these hands it was effective either way. You couldn't ask for a more amazing show. Every era of Clinton's four-decade career at the helm of two of music's most influential and interwoven bands — Funkadelic and Parliament — was represented, as was each generation of the Clinton family. The show started off with the sexy R&B of the Parliament players. They came on one by one — drums, then add the bass, then the keyboards, then cycle through the horn players, then The Man. Clinton walked on stage like the king of the tribe, wearing a multi-colored knit hat over that mass of multi-colored hair that looks like the mop used to clean up the spills in a kindergarten classroom. (And was that a simple bed sheet he wore, patterned with planets, stars and spaceships?) In no time, the band had the crowd jumping to Parliament classics like "Tear the Roof Off the Sucker (Give Up the Funk)'' and "Flash Light.'' Later in the show, the harder-rocking Funkadelic side of things was showcased — the yang to Parliament's yin. An enthralling, 15-minute instrumental jam spotlighted guitarist Mike Hampton as one of the most scorching players alive. Later, when Star Child led the rapping (wearing only a huge diaper with a "P'' on the front and the word "Booty'' on the back), the capacity crowd became one very large backup chorus. Funkadelic tunes such as "Can You Get to That'' and "Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow'' fired up the joint, as did the appearance of Louis "Babbling'' Kababbie. He's a rapper Clinton produces, and he's a middle-aged, balding white guy. He looks like he just came in from Miami Beach and left his leisure suit in a backstage locker. But when he starts rapping — leading the crowd in shouts of "Booty!'' — he rips it out like Cypress Hill's B-Real. All in all, 29 musicians paraded around Thursday night. At one point, there were 22 people jamming on the Cain's modest little stage. (Actually, not all of them were musicians. The Nose, for instance, is simply a handsome man wearing an 8-inch plastic nose and a Cyrano hat, and his job is just to dance a bit and be noticed. Nice work if you can get it.) Clinton's son and granddaughter both came out to rap their own songs. By the end of the show, the stage was filled with women. Listening to this music, from the high-jumping funk to the smooth and jazzy grooves, it was clear that all roads in black music and beyond either lead to George Clinton or at least pass through the P-Funk metropolis. Everything that's come out of Prince, even his latest guitar-drenched rock album, was born of Funkadelic. Every hip-hop and rap artist had to be influenced by this early beat and Clinton's astonishingly poetic raps about the folly of drugs and the CIA ("It is more profitable to pretend that we're stopping it than it is to sell it''). Even drag queen extraordinaire RuPaul put together a dance track on his first record with a chorus that changes only one word from a Clinton original: "Free your mind, and the rest will follow.'' All that history made for one killer party Thursday night. Half of the delightfully diverse, capacity crowd was still in the ballroom when the band finally left near 1 a.m. If everyone's feet are as sore as mine, here's to you all. How does Clinton — granddaddy Clinton — pull this off every night? See you at the masseur. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey "Live in Tokyo" (Jacob Fred) Norman Vincent Peale would be proud of these guys. They think so positively. They envision their future. At least, we can only hope this is their future. "Live in Tokyo'' — a title slightly more ambitious as this funk-jazz band's debut, "Live at the Lincoln Continental'' — starts with the roar of a Tokyo stadium crowd and an announcer that introduces the band in Japanese. They may not have come close to playing Tokyo yet, but if their ambitions play out and this great groove holds up, these guys will be on a world tour any day. The world wishes, anyway. At heart, the MC5 was nothin' but a party, and Jacob Fred lives that ideal better than any fusion knock-off that's come along since today's thrift store clothes were new on the racks. These guys meld jazz, funk and rap with the fluidity of shamans so that you're making weird snake movements with your limbs long before your ego chimes in with how silly you look. "Live in Tokyo'' is a quantum leap forward form the debut disc. The sound is better, the songs are better and the whole band is more assured. The atmospherics on such dreamy swirls as "Hymn 1008'' are the epitome of control, and the rap — a highlighted element — is heavy. "Captain Funk'' is literally a scream; never has praise of local eateries sounded so unbelievably righteous. Say amen, buy the thing. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Beck looked out at the pogoing, crowd-surfing bunch gathered at the Cain's Ballroom on Saturday night and asked, "What would Bob Wills think of y'all smashing each others heads?'' Then he and his ace band — two of whom sported cowboy hats — eased into the country-fried "Lord Only Knows.'' Wills was smiling down on the party from his crusty portrait over the stage, and the smile could have been somewhat genuine. Back in the '30s, he was throwing parties like this on the very same wooden dance floor almost every week, and at times things got just as crazy, if not crazier, as "these kids today,'' smashed heads and all. Wills probably would dig Beck, not only for his frequent dips into prairie-born strum and twang but for his exceedingly populist campaign of good, good fun and music. Beck is the ultimate entertainer. His recorded music is one thing — a brow-raising and astonishingly fluid synthesis of funk, country, rock and blues — but his live show illustrated to a sold-out Cain's Ballroom this weekend what that music is all about. "It ain't about all that (bull),'' Beck repeated throughout the evening, it's about rocking the beat and having fun. Rarely has a performer connected with a Cain's audience the way young Beck did Saturday night. Actually, there was no connection to be made; Beck took the stage and launched "Devil's Haircut'' with the link already established. He was clearly a peer, not an artist high on yon pedestal. Just because there were squads of beefy security men keeping us from joining him on stage did not mean Beck was going to exclude us from the party (say par-TAY). He spoke to the crowd freely and in earnest, frequently referring to Wills and not mumbling "Hey, it's good to be in (tonight's city here).'' He broke into a few spontaneous dance moves, his favorite being the stop-motion, Herbie Hancock robot dance. He led the audience through every vibe, every nuance of the exciting songs. He was with us, and nothing spoke to that fact more than the absence of projectiles hurled at him. When bands are on those big stages at Edgefest or wherever, or if they themselves establish the barrier between performer and audience as a line not to be crossed, then the reckless audience tries to make that connection by lobbing lighters and cups and anything else at the players. When someone like Beck mirrors a jumping good time, then the only thing to throw is the funk. That is success in art, especially the debatable art of pop music. Beck's range is as amazing as it is entertaining. He rolls out sharp hip-hop, like "Devil's Haircut.'' He pushes the funk in hit singles like "Where It's At,'' which he played halfway through Saturday's set. (His music is so in debt to black styles, so why was the audience so uniformly white?) He screams frightening songs with vocals so distorted they sound like four minutes of, "I am the God of hellfire!'' He plays cool, traditional country, with a woeful steel guitar, in songs like "Road Hog'' (Wills was smiling for that one, surely). He even plays sincere guitar folk. He let his band take a break after "Pay No Mind'' so he could play a solo acoustic number and one that was simply him and his wailing harmonica. By the end of the set, when he declared that "tonight, Tulsa is make-out city,'' the whole ballroom was dancing, even the shy ones back by the bar. Definitely a good time had by all. Dirty Three — my personal raison d'etre at Saturday's show — opened the bill with a stunning performance of incredibly evocative instrumental music. By my earlier conclusion, we could say that this trio was perhaps not as successful at connecting with an impatient audience because they did dodge a few cups, ice cubes and what-not. (One more flying bit and drummer Jim White may have surrendered to his rage, leapt over his kit and walloped a few brats.) For those who listened, this performance was unparalleled in emotional fervor. Warren Ellis announces songs with quips like, "This is a song about waking up thinking you're Elliott Gould, but you're really Burt Reynolds, so you're (screwed).'' Then he hunches over his violin like a troll from the family tree of Robyn Hitchcock, playing much of the time with his back to the audience so that all we see is a black T-shirt, a disheveled mass of brown curls and the whipping hairs of a frayed bow flailing about one shoulder. With a kick from White, the jerky tempo of a Dirty Three song can suddenly go to warp speed, and then we see more of Ellis. He jumps up and down like a maniac, sawing at his violin as if it just won't die, and in a fit of pique — like a startled cobra — he spits at the ceiling. This was the greatest entertainment for the bored pre-teens waiting for Beck. During such a frenzy in "Hope,'' one particularly juicy loogie was flung at the ceiling and then, unbeknownst to Ellis, who was lost in his art perilously underneath the spot, gravity began to pull the syrupy substance back down. It stretched about two feet before breaking off and falling next to Ellis, much to the audible dismay of the crowd. When the song was over, Ellis realized what had happened and said, "Well, I'm glad we can provide some entertainment for you.'' He spit again during "I Remember a Time When Once You Used to Love Me,'' and this time it hit the mark, dripping back into his hair, and one wondered if Ellis hadn't positioned himself just right that time. If that's how he must suffer for his art, so be it. His music, although unfortunately placed on a tour with the wrong audience for it, is some of the most interesting of its kind. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World A few violin players might complain of the occasional bad back, but a very select few complain of severed nerves as a result of jumping off a drum kit. Warren Ellis is among the select few. When we caught up with Ellis last week, he was nursing an old war wound, aggravated again by another animated performance a few nights before. "I took a fall off a monitor up in Boston,'' Ellis said. "I fell on my knee and brought back an old injury when I dove off a bass drum and severed a nerve. I'm nursing that a bit.'' You might not expect such madness from a violin player, especially when his band is an instrumental setup, but Ellis shatters every stereotype with his music and performance. His band, the Dirty Three, plays the most evocative instrumental music currently in the rock idiom. Ellis' violin breaks your heart, and if you can listen to the band's latest disc, "Horse Stories,'' without tearing up at least once, you have no heart. This is not chamber music, mind you, unless your chamber happens to be a garishly decorated boudoir full of lonely hearts brooding and reminiscing in the twilight. Jim White's astonishing drums and Mick Turner's manic-depressive guitar gives breath to the songs, and Ellis uses his violin to sigh — sometimes harsh and scraping like John Cale's most frenetic Velvet Underground moments and sometimes sweet and weeping like the most masterful Stephane Grappelli ballads. (Turner's history delves into the scummiest of Australian rock, from the Sick Things to Fungus Brains, and White emigrated from The People With Chairs Up Their Noses — a band name I could not resist printing.) It still rocks, and Ellis' off-the-handle live shows are not the stuff of stuffy concert halls. He often lightens the mood with long, rambling stories of lost love involving such characters as Meatloaf, Siouxsie Sioux and "that little chap from New Order.'' The concert reviews from around the country have been paragraph after paragraph of gaping jaws. All this from an instrumental band — and they're opening for Beck. What will the restless young ones in that crowd think of instrumental music? "Some people think instrumental music is a bit of a chore,'' Ellis said, "but you can never tell, really. When you're doing support spots, people came to see the main band. It's much nicer that way because then I can just go out and play and let completely loose. It's different than playing in a club where all the people came to see you and are expecting a certain thing. This way nobody's really expecting much from us, and we really divide the audience. They either love us or hate us.'' Like any youngster with a burgeoning interest in rock music, Ellis started playing guitar. Meanwhile, he was studying classical violin for eight years. About four years ago, he'd been hearing about electric violins, and he decided to try it out. He attached a guitar pickup to his violin with a rubber band and began playing. "People began bringing me different effects pedals to try out. We just sort of plugged them in and turned out this music and saw what happened,'' Ellis said. Dirty Three formed shortly after that. Ellis' reputation as a startling musician spread quickly, and he began working with other artists, as well. Most notably, he worked with Nick Cave on the music for the film "The Passion of Joan of Arc'' and a recording of the dark theme to "The X Files,'' which opens the television show's tribute disc, "Songs in the Key of X.'' One reason for the expressive quality of the songs may be the result of one of Ellis' rules: no practicing. "We never practice,'' he said. "I've never understood bands who practice for 18 months in a rehearsal room. It probably destroys any intuitivity about the thing, you know? Music is about communication. You should be out playing it to people.'' Ellis communicates quite well. When he drizzles his bow over the strings in "Sue's Last Ride,'' you can almost picture Sue as she looked to Ellis's character the very last time he saw her. You don't have to see the title of "At the Bar'' to know that here Ellis and the other players are exploring the depressant qualities of fermented grains. These melodies and countermelodies communicate just as much as a fluid line of poetry if you listen carefully. "The kind of music that inspires this is stuff with really common themes — having a bit of a broken heart and such — things that are very basic to our experience. That's our sort of medium for communicating. We don't have fireworks or pyrotechnics to draw people in, and we don't wear makeup ... "I guess whatever you do is an extension of yourself, a way of expressing yourself that maybe you can't do verbally. I guess that means I'm kind of squawky and out of tune inside.'' |
Thomas Conner
These online "clips" reproduce a self-selection of my journalism (music etc) during the last 20+ years. It's a lotta stuff, but it only scratches the surface. I do not currently possess the time or resources to digitize the whole body of work. These posts are simply a bunch of pretty great days at the office. Archives
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