White Plains’ 4th Best Personal Blog

Merry Christmas from Vail! On this holiday, I humbly offer the latest in my series of extremely tardy show reports…

After my latest jaunt to the West Coast and before my family’s annual Christmas week ski trip to Colorado, I set up a concert endurance test for myself. A week’s worth of shows, to be exact. I hadn’t planned it that way, but before I knew it, there I was with tickets to seven shows in seven days.

I almost made it.

Actually I did make it to seven concerts in seven days, but I have to admit that I got lazy and didn’t trek out to Hoboken for my first planned show of the week (which also happened to be the seventh of eight Hanukkah shows by Yo La Tengo). Those shows have become known almost as much for who shows up to play with Yo La Tengo as the band’s own performance — as one of my favorite music writers, Rob Harvilla of the Village Voice wrote in his entertaining account of this year’s Hanukkah shows, “The night before you showed up, the Jackson 5 reunited onstage and covered The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety! You totally missed it!” — so I should have known that skipping out on the show would probably mean missing something good. And as I later found out, the New Pornographers sans Neko Case and Dan Bejar opened the show and Roy Loney of the Flamin’ Groovies was among the special guests that night.

I would have been more annoyed at missing that had I not made it to the New Pornographers’ free in-store the following night at the Apple Store in SoHo. Neko did make an appearance this time, and I was fortunate to snag one of the 90 or so seats in the small theater. Probably no more than 200 people made it in, so it was definitely an intimate set. They mostly played stuff off Challengers, as expected, but we did get a rocking cover of ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down” that sounded great with the NP’s boy-girl harmonies. And I was glad to see Neko, who had been absent when I saw the band in Dublin a few weeks earlier.

After the in-store, I hustled over to Hoboken to catch YLT’s eighth and final Hanukkah show of the year. I missed opener New Times Viking, a recent Matador signee with a promising record due out next year from what I understand. I did make it in time to hear (though not see, since I was by the bar in the back), David Cross do a pretty funny routine as the rabbi of YLT leader Ira Kaplan. Finally it was time for YLT, a band I’ve caught glimpses of at festivals and tribute shows but whose music I’m embarrased to admit I don’t really know that well. Because of that — not to mention that I couldn’t really see the band from my usual perspective — I couldn’t say whether this show was exceptional, fair or middling. This I know: There were two really long, almost-psychedelic numbers that bookended the set. And the rest showed the kind of versatility that I love in other bands. During the encore, Howard Kaylan of 1960s psych band The Turtles came out and sang a few songs and helped YLT closed out its Hanukkah run with some good, old-fashioned garage rock.

The next night, I went from garage rock to classic rock as I headed way uptown to the United Palace to catch the first show of Neil Young’s six-night New York run. To my surprise, I found a chaotic scene outside the theater when I arrived. Apparently there was some sort of minor fire code violation that the organizers were still trying to remedy at show time, so thousands of people were just sort of milling around outside. There was some question as to whether the show would even go on. But after about 30 to 40 minutes, we were all finally let in. Young’s wife, Pegi, who was supposed to open the show, stepped aside and it wasn’t too long before the man himself took the stage. The format of this tour for the Chrome Dreams II album was a solo acoustic set, followed by a mostly electric set with a band. Neil cracked a couple of jokes about the pre-show confusion during his acoustic set, which I surprisingly enjoyed more than the electric one. Of course, it was great to hear classics like “Cinnamon Girl” and “Like A Hurricane,” but I had forgotten what wonders Mr. Young can work with just his voice, an acoustic guitar and a harmonica.

As much as I enjoyed Neil, I wound up selling my ticket for the following night’s show and tracking down a ticket to see Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s show at Mercury Lounge. I had wanted to go to the show all along, but hadn’t bought an advance ticket because I already had a ticket for Neil and didn’t expect the Margot show to sell out. But thank God for Craigslist, right? Anyway, I loved Margot’s 2006 debut record The Dust of Retreat and wanted to see what the Indiana band was up to. I don’t know what it is, but their brand of sad, almost haunting pop struck a chord with me. So it was a pleasure to hear a lot of familiar songs, but also a handful of new ones. I can’t really say the new songs sounded a whole lot like the older ones. I don’t know what they sounded like exactly, but I definitely left wanting to hear them again.

It was back to classic rock again the next night when I went to see Ian Hunter at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. It was my first time at the club formerly known as Northsix, which was taken over by the people who promote shows under “The Bowery Presents” banner. After a renovation, the club reopened as the Music Hall and I was struck by just how much it resembled the Bowery Ballroom. You enter into a downstairs bar area very similar to the Bowery and then go upstairs into the music space. There’s also a U-shaped balcony area with tables like at Bowery. Even the stage area looked like a reasonable facsimile of the Bowery’s. I hadn’t seen Hunter before, but had long wanted to knowing his influence on Jeff Tweedy, who has covered a couple of Hunter’s songs both solo and in Wilco. I was easily the youngest person in the place, which seemed to be full of aging Mott the Hoople fans, but I didn’t mind. Wearing a striped polo shirt and jeans, a relaxed-looking Hunter played acoustic guitar almost exclusively and left the rocking to his five-piece “Rant Band” (which included guitarist and mandolin player James Mastro of The Health and Happiness Show, who I recognized from several guest appearances with The Jayhawks). I was pleasantly surprised, though probably shouldn’t have been, at the depth of Hunter’s catalog. Obviously I knew hits like “Once Bitten Twice Shy,” but such songs as “Michael Picasso” (about former Mott guitarist Mick Ronson) and “Soul of America” (off his latest Shrunken Heads record) showed that there’s a lot more there than just the old 1970s standbys. Although Hunter, joined by his wife and son on background vocals, did leave us with that classic “All The Young Dudes.” Which is always a good thing in my book.

Following a healthy dose of testosterone, it was nice to shift gears a little the following evening — and see a show in my neck of the woods for a change. That show was Aimee Mann’s Christmas shindig in Tarrytown (or “T-town,” as Aimee jokingly called it). I had seen the show in San Francisco a couple of weeks earlier, so I wasn’t expecting a drastically different structure. And indeed the comedic elements were almost identical, although special guest Ben Lee was a change from the SF show. Early on, Aimee told us that she was “sick as a dog” and had to modify the setlist a bit according to what she could “croak through.” Perhaps as a result, we got to hear a couple of new songs off her next record — “31 Today” and “Little Tornado” — which I hadn’t heard before. There was also a “quiet” rendition of “I Was Thinking I Could Clean Up For Christmas” with virtually no percussion lest it drown out her weakened voice. Poor Aimee. I obviously felt badly that she was sick, but she was a pro. Despite being “really worried” about the show, I thought she was a little looser than I’ve seen her in the past and that made for a fun night.

A long week of showgoing finally drew to a close with a return trip to the United Palace for the fourth of six Neil Young shows there. For the most part, the set was similar to the one I saw earlier in the week although the acoustic portion does allow for some variety and Neil obliged with “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” and “Old King,” among others. (Part of the variation could also have been due to illness; Neil said he had been battling a head cold.) I was fortunate enough to score killer seats for this show, second row just off center — don’t ask — so naturally I was a bit more invested in the performance than I had been earlier in the week. It was a treat, especially, to watch Neil during the acoustic set. At one point, he put a particularly loud, annoying fan in his place. And when he took a sip from a beer and another crowd member yelled out something to the effect that we the audience couldn’t bring beers into the theater, Neil deadpanned, “We can up here.” Just seeing him up close and the effort he invested in those songs was special. Again, the electric set didn’t blow me away. But I’ll chalk that up as much to the fact that he was playing mostly new material as anything else. My only real disappointments were missing “Out On The Weekend” and “Cortez The Killer,” both of which I saw had been played at other shows. On the flip side, though, we did get a rare second encore in which Neil played “The Sultan,” the first song he ever recorded. It’s an instrumental surf-sounding number that features a gong. Appropriately, a guy dressed up like a sultan came out and handled the gong duties.

One quirk of the Neil shows was that, during the electric set, someone would come over between songs and put a different painting corresponding to the subsequent song on a huge easel at stage left. When I saw the painting for “The Sultan” come out, I knew it was going to mean a special end to a memorable week.

The New Pornographers//12-11-07//Apple Store (SoHo), New York, NY//support: none

All Of The Things That Go To Make Heaven And Earth/Use It/All The Old Showstoppers/Challengers/My Rights Versus Yours/Adventures In Solitude/The Laws Have Changed/Unguided/Sing Me Spanish Techno/Don’t Bring Me Down [Electric Light Orchestra]//e: The Bleeding Heart Show

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Yo La Tengo//12-11-07//Maxwell’s, Hoboken, NJ//support: Times New Viking, David Cross

Night Falls on Hoboken/Eight Day Weekend [actually Seven Day Weekend-Gary "U.S." Bonds]/Double Dare/Cone of Silence/Shadows/The Weakest Part/Mr. Tough/Paul Is Dead/Stockholm Syndrome/I Should Have Known Better/Autumn Sweater/Watch Out For Me, Ronnie/Blue Line Swinger/Love Power (Herb Hartic/Norman Blaoman)//e: [w/Beth Murphy of Times New Viking on keyboards] Hungry Heart [Bruce Springsteen]/[w/Howard Kaylan of The Turtles] ???/One Potato, Two Potato [The Crossfires]/Love Song in the Night [Michael Brown]/Metal Guru [T. Rex]/She’d Rather Be With Me [The Turtles]

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Neil Young//12-12-07//United Palace, New York, NY//support: none

[solo acoustic] From Hank To Hendrix/Ambulance Blues/ Sad Movies/A Man Needs A Maid/No One Seems To Know/Harvest/Journey Through The Past/Mellow My Mind/Love Art Blues/Old Man/Heart Of Gold//[electric band] The Loner/Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere/Dirty Old Man/Spirit Road/Bad Fog Of Loneliness/Winterlong/Oh, Lonesome Me/The Believer/No Hidden Path//e: Cinnamon Girl/Don’t Cry No Tears/Like A Hurricane

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Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s//12-13-07//Mercury Lounge, New York, NY//support: Bridges and Powerlines, The King Left, Le Loup

new song (“carnival”)/new song (“when all the liquor is gone, gone, gone”)/Paper Kitten Nightmare/Vampires In Blue Dresses/new song (“I want to gouge your eyes out”)/On A Freezing Chicago Street/Broadripple Is Burning/Quiet As A Mouse/new song (“this is how you teach someone to drive”)/Skeleton Key/Bookworm//e: A Child’s Crusade On Acid/Barfight Revolution

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Ian Hunter and the Rant Band/12-14-07//Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY//support: none

Ballad of Mott/Once Bitten, Twice Shy/Twisted Steel/Knees of My Heart/Wash Us Away/Michael Picasso/Soul of America>/I Wish I Was Your Mother (interlude)>/Shrunken Heads/I’m Gettin’ Nuttin’ For Christmas [Sid Tepper/Roy Bennett]/23A Swan Hill>/Angeline/How’s Your House/All The Way From Memphis/Cleveland Rocks>/We Wish You A Merry Christmas (fragment)//e: Irene Wilde (fragment)>Roll Away The Stone>/Saturday Gigs>/All The Young Dudes

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Aimee Mann’s Second Annual Christmas Show (w/Paul F. Tompkins, Morgan Murphy and Ben Lee)//12-15-07//Tarrytown Music Hall, Tarrytown, NY//support: none

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (intro)/Jacob Marley’s Chain/new song-31 Today/[movie, pt. 1]/Baby, It’s Cold Outside (duet with PFT)/[PFT on pot smoking]/I’ll Be Home For Christmas/[BL-Numb]/[BL-Surrender]/[movie, pt. 2]/[MM - Hannukah Fairy rap]/Wise Up/The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)/[BL-Love Me Like The World Is Ending]/[BL-What Would Jay-Z Do]/[movie, pt. 3]/You’re A Mean One Mr. Grinch (duet with PFT)/I Was Thinking I Could Clean Up For Christmas/new song-Little Tornado/Deathly//e: [ensemble-Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)]

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Neil Young//12-16-07//United Palace, New York, NY//support: Pegi Young

[solo acoustic] From Hank To Hendrix/Ambulance Blues/Sad Movies/A Man Needs A Maid/No One Seems To Know/Try/Harvest/Journey Through The Past/Don’t Let It Bring You Down/Love Art Blues/Old King/Heart Of Gold//[electric band] Mr. Soul/Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere/Dirty Old Man/Spirit Road/Bad Fog Of Loneliness/Winterlong/Oh, Lonesome Me/The Believer/No Hidden Path//e1: Cinnamon Girl/Like A Hurricane//e2: The Sultan