My service as a rock and roll journalist was met, as with most things, technical difficulties, and a few items got lost through the cracks. Upon doing some spring cleaning this autumn, I found a couple gems from last year worth sharing.
Here are reviews of The Dresden Dolls Live at the Roundhouse DVD, and the Rentals live at the Great American Music Hall, August 1, 2007.
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Dresden Dolls Live at the Roundhouse DVD
One rainy April night in the Boston suburb of Chelsea, where I was housesitting for a friend who was kind enough to leave porn in the VCR, a dear friend named Jason came to visit for the night armed with a bag of goodies stocked to the brim with pot, scary movies, chips and CDs. One of the first things he said to me upon walking through the door was "Oh my god, the Dresden Dolls' first CD finally came out today. We have to listen to it." He'd talked to me about them a couple times, a local duo known for their "punk cabaret" scene of which Jason was fan numero uno. I vaguely recalled seeing them opening for the B-52's at a high school in one of South-Eastern Massachusetts grimiest cities, Brockton, about a year earlier. I was too distracted trying to mentally digest the idea of seeing the B-52's at a high school in Brockton to really even notice Amanda Palmer (the duo's piano maiden) was female until the end when I moved away from the speakers blocking my view.
"Sure thing. Let's spark it up."
And so we did. We smoked pot and listened to The Dresden Dolls self-titled debut on repeat all night long.
Now, I'm easily frightened off by high concept rock production, any hint of Broadway, and association with the word "goth." The Dresden Dolls have qualities that inhabit all of that. Combined with the fact that the B-52s picked them up to play at a high school made the record a hard sell. Perhaps it was around the fifth or sixth spin of the record (which may have also included an interruption or two for their live record, A Is For Accident, released simultaneously), that somehow the music took me out of my body and into the sound waves filling the room. Maybe the billowing bong that flowed between Jason and I had something to do with that as well.
Regardless, I was lost in the forest of Brian Viglione's mercilessly twisted and precise drumming punctured only by Amanda Palmer's raging rapids of vocal, piano, and theater which tell the tales of a person whose mantra is probably "dive when you're falling." Suddenly the repressed memories from the year before of a mime-faced Amanda straddling her rose-covered piano, and a shirtless already-sex-symbol Viglione hitting the drums so hard the strikes would propel him out of his seat, violently closing their set with a castrating number about a hermaphrodite victimized by a botched corrective surgery, "Half Jack," done with "Bohemian Rhapsody" execution.
And I was hooked.
The next morning, I peeled myself off the couch, wiped the Lays grease off my hands, and stumbled on to work, which involved a bus and two subways. Considering myself lucky to get a seat on the bus in the early morning commute, I looked up over my shoulder to find a beautiful Latino boy standing right next to my seat, crushed in between some unhappy bussers, but content inside the world of his headphones and radiating a special smile.
I could start to overhear the music he was so entranced by.
...before they had these pills to take it back
I'm half Jill
and half Jack
Of all the things a random commute bus-boy could be listening to while smooshed up against me, it was the Dresden Dolls. Bam, back to the Viglione forest, and a high that lasted me through the day.
Allow me to quote Twin Peaks, David Lynch's seminal 90's murder-mystery series famous for the line "Who killed Laura Palmer," here for a second:
As Special Agent Dale Cooper once said, "When two separate events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry, we must always pay strict attention."
I've been paying attention ever since.
And as I've watched this band grow from big Boston band to big world-wide band, the thing that has kept me impressed beyond all the make up and hyper-sexual quips, is their dedication to the very act of creativity itself.
Their current DVD release, Live at the Roundhouse, highlights that very idea. It shows the Dolls deeply fostering the creativity that inspires them, with all sorts of performers, including a super-mammaried Margaret Cho, engaging the audience, engaging the band, engaging each other. The DVD, like the band itself, is a party of the strange, campy and indulgent, whose ultimate victory is happiness.
The thing that worried me upon first hearing the Dresden Dolls that first night was the idea that it might all be just a shtick; their unashamed tribute to cabaret, complete with stage make up and sexy moves. Lyrically, it's easy to see how Amanda Palmer's words could be the bible to 15 year old goth girls with low self esteem ("I'd like to do more than survive I'd like to rub it in your face," Good Day). But to dismiss them on image is to miss out on what one should be playing close attention to.
Already seven years into their gig, with two albums and a lot of touring under their belt, if it were just a gimmick, this DVD would show the band's age as a one trick pony dying from a lack of originality in the way that once you got over Marilyn Manson's "A Portrait of an American Family," his follow-up, "Anti-Christ Superstar" seemed like a meek publicity grabber.
But the way Amanda Palmer copulates with her keyboard, drenching the audience clamoring over the rails, suggests they're just at the tip of the iceberg. When a dance troupe emerges out of the middle of the audience to perform during one song, and other random singers come up on stage to sing some of the songs with the band, you get the sense they see their audience like islands, and the concert is a way to bring them all together to create a giant continent. The Dolls' ability to foster life on this continent is only just beginning to be recognized, and judging by how much back pulling work they've put into it this far, their efforts can only become more amazing and wonderful.
In one of the final numbers from the show, "Sing" off their current CD "Yes Virginia," Palmer makes the astute observation "After the show you can not sing wherever you want." In thinking of rock and roll careers as a type of bird cage; since we can't sing whenever we want, we have recordings of people singing that we can listen to whenever we want, like ordering a caged bird to sing a pretty song at your whim. Here the image of the Dresden's as "dolls" comes into view; dolls given a house to run about and play in, a stage, a record deal, PR, but a house, nonetheless. And while people are admiring the pretty trellises and detail in the woodwork, Palmer and Viglione will summon the listening to "pretend we're all gonna get bombed. So sing."
This is the perfection that the Dresden Dolls have captured. "Live at the Roundhouse" captures that and delivers it to your TV screen.
Next up, Amanda's solo record, "Who Killed Amanda Palmer?"
David Lynch is always right.
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The Rentals
Great American Music Hall
San Francisco, August 1, 2007.
I don't ever again want to see a picture of a bloated Matt Sharp, stubbly, long hair, with a gun pointed to his head. That was the picture Matt posted on the website for his band, The Rentals, after their second release, the mostly "I'm a rock star living in Spain"-inspired Seven More Minutes, received nearly zero reception, and Madonna's label, Maverick, kind of lost interest.
That was 1997. And now in 2007, we are blessed to have the real return of the Rentals firmly upon us.
With his nerd glasses still planted on his nerd cropped face, the bouncy soul who gave Weezer that unforgettable falsetto voice and bass punch on their first two records (when most kids were busy learning Zeppelin and the Stones on their Christmas six-strings, I was tuning my bass to E-flat and learning "Only In Dreams"), Matt Sharp finally seems ready to unleash the power that is The Rentals. At the first stop on an American tour to celebrate the release of "The Last Little Life" EP, Matt and his band of Moog-ers smiled and danced San Francisco's Great American Music Hall into blissful ecstasy.
Sadly though, the lessons the long break between the end of grunge and the revived Rentals have taught us, is that, in the "real world," it's all about hype. When Sharp splintered off from Weezer to form The Rentals, Weezer was catching all sorts of mainstream attention for their "MTV Buzz Clips" like "Undone," "Buddy Holly," and the one that caught my eye for the bleach blond hacky-sack playin bassist, "Say It Ain't So." The news of an almost "all Moog" band became instant media buzz, and you couldn't help but find The Rentals all over 120 Minutes (MTV's long running "alternative" music show), pop culture magazines like Details, Rolling Stone and Spin, and indeed all over the radio. "Friend of P" was, without a doubt, the summer song of 1995. Today though, finding any person doesn't say "Friends of who?" is a rarity indeed. Judging by the number of tables brought in to fill the dance floor at the Great American Music hall, those numbers are dwindling still.
Between Weezer records, Matt found himself and his band on tour with Alanis Morisette, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Blur. The latter proved to be a perfect match, highlighted by The Rentals adding the Blur song "Tracy Jacks" to their set, and Blur performing "Friends of P" with Matt on French TV. The Gary Numan inspired sounds on the record even created buzz about a "synth revival" and possibly inspired a Moog tribute record, The Moog Cookbook, which recreated alt-rock hits using only Moogs (including Weezer's "Buddy Holly").
After his split from Weezer, and delay after delay on Rentals record number two, a picture of a desperate Sharp emerged, and the one with the gun pointed to his head was the one that stuck with most of the fans patiently waiting for a sign of life. Reports that "he'd been spotted at a club, fat and depressed" only fueled speculation of his status, and even prompted websites like whereismattsharp.com to be created in hopes of showing some kind of support for the man whose brand of nerd-schlock still appealed to teenage-loners who never stopped rocking when everyone else did.
The beauty of Matt Sharp is that he's willing to show he can (or at least try to) overcome all of that without skipping a beat. Even though, by mere default of the fact there hasn't been any new Rentals material in ten years, most of the songs they played were culled from the band's repertoire of now-classics, Sharp set out to prove that beyond the hype, beyond the magazine covers and radio interviews, you have to be willing to touch people and coax them out of their shells to cultivate any sort of compassion for what matters in the world. Not worried about what the press might say, or what a not-capacity crowd might look like in a small club, from beat one of The Rentals performance, Matt was eager to say what matters most is that he believes in the music. The energy with which he sang each one of them could level houses, and clearly rubbed off onto all his bandmates who couldn't stop smiling the entire time they were on stage. Infectious was the key word. It had clearly worked for his bandmates, and worked for everyone soaked in sweat down on the floor.
By stark contrast, the night's second opening act, which seemed to be the main draw of everyone in the audience not yet sprouting facial hair, Copeland, relied heavily on image and cool to lure their audience into frenzied submission. Clearly, in today's high stress market, cool is what counts. "I've never heard of The Rentals before tonight. I'm surprised they're not opening," remarked one gal with a fake ID who hustled her way to the front to make dreamy eyes with the singer who couldn't stop making Thom Yorke/Coldplay moves. It was all very "My Space" packaged, and for those who were there for that, it seemed a perfect fit. Those who dared to stay on for the Matt pack were treated to something a little more auspicious.
If there's a general idea that a "Moog band" is a one-trick-pony, then Matt Sharp is ready to break out of that box. Clearly still heavily stylized by the Moog and vintage synths, the Rentals are one stop short of being on Phil Spector ground, with glorious harmonies set forth by a staggering array of beautiful women, perhaps the real "front men" of the band. With gleaming smiles and the myriad of instruments they pick up (swapping between Moogs, acoustic guitars, basses, and just their voices), they become the flowering buds of Matt Sharp's rare orchid.
If this show was a hint of what Sharp and company are preparing for what every rock journalist is salivating to call the Return of the Return of the Rentals (in reference to the ironic title of their 1995 debut, The Return of The Rentals), then all the power of the music that Sharp finds so endearing will surely transcend anyone who doesn't mind being a lonely nerd and get them to dance like no one is watching.
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