Category Archives: Punk

Stew just can’t shed his Negro Problem

Posted on January 22, 2012 | Leave a comment

Stew in his breakup show, "Making It," at St. Ann's Warehouse in February 2010. (Copyright 2010, Steven P. Marsh)

Three shows at Joe’s Pub mark Tuesday’s release of Stew & The Negro Problem’s new album, Making It

The cover of Making It features a photo by Stew's daughter, Bibi.

First of all, let’s say “welcome black” to Stew & The Negro Problem.

It’s been 10 long years since Stew (born Mark Stewart in 1961) and his band The Negro Problem made a proper, official album: 2002’s Welcome Black. But on Tuesday, Jan. 24, the wait is officially over when Making It gets its official release.

Thank goodness. It’s long overdue. But you’ll surely find it worth the wait.

It’s a crazy, creative look at the breakup of Stew’s relationship with his longtime girlfriend and musical collaborator Heidi Rodewald. The breakup came in the run-up to the pair’s amazing theater project,  Passing Strange, which briefly thumbed its nose at the Broadway establishment from the Belasco Theatre over six months in 2008. (It also lives on in a Spike Lee film of the show’s final performances.)

Heidi Rodewald and Stew. (Copyright 2009, Steven P. Marsh)

Stew and Heidi managed to survive the breakup and continue their artistic relationship, albeit not without some problems. This album documents the breakup, and in some ways, the promise of their continued collaboration.

This is Stew’s fourth album under the rather provocative name of The Negro Problem, though on  this release on TNP records, the band is billed as “Stew & The Negro Problem.” And even though Stew seemed to abandon the band name in favor of his own moniker, Stew and Heidi haven’t released a rock album since 2003’s Something Deeper Than These Changes, billed simply to Stew. (Yes, there was a Passing Strange soundtrack in 2008, but that wasn’t a Stew record, let alone a Negro Problem record!)

Let’s just say it’s about time! It’s always seemed to me that Stew needs The Negro Problem to fuel his angry-not-as-young-as-he-used-to-be-man persona. (Truth be told, he’s used The Negro Problem name occasionally in recent years, but this seems to be a definitive return home.) Continue reading →

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Posted in Music, News, Pop and Rock, Punk, Recordings, Theater

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No Solid Sound Festival for 2012 — Wilco skips a year

Posted on January 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

Wilco's first takeover at MASS MoCa. (© 2010 Steven P. Marsh)

Band plans benefit concert for MASS MoCA instead

Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? is never happy to be the bearer of bad news. But you need to know that Wilco announced today that the band is taking a year off from presenting the Solid Sound Festival at MASS MoCA, the awesome art musuem in North Adams, Mass.

Jeff Tweedy and his Wilco bandmates have with great success presented the three-day Solid Sound Festival for the past two years, bringing music, art and friends together on the low-key industrial campus in Western Massachusetts.

We’ve been watching since before Christmas for an announcment of the dates of the next three-day music fest. Finally, around 1 p.m. today, came a tweet from @WilcooftheDay listing the long-awaited info:

#SolidSound Update: The next Solid Sound Festival will be held June 21-23, 2013 at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Ma.

2013? Huh? What happened to 2012? Before we could ask the question, almost as if somebody could read our minds, came this tweet:

The 3 day event will take a 1 year hiatus, but Wilco will perform at the North Adams museum this summer in a benefit concert for MASS MoCA.

And when will that concert happen? Came the reply to our unasked question:

not announced yet

Sigh.

Stay tuned for details on why Wilco’s taking a year off and details about the benefit concert at soon as they become available.

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Posted in Concerts, Folk, Humor, Music, News, Pop and Rock, Punk, Recordings, Theater

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Will you be in North Adams for Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival?

Posted on June 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

Last year's Solid Sound Festival kicked off with beautiful skies. (© 2010 Steven P. Marsh)

Are you joining Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? in North Adams, Mass., today for the beginning of the second annual edition of Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival?

If you haven’t decided yet, it’s NOT TOO LATE. So all of you last-minute types should definitely keep reading.

Wilco at the 2010 Solid Sound Festival.

As it did last year, it’s taking over the campus of MASS MoCA, the fantastic contemporary art museum that has made this struggling former factory town a destination for lovers of art and music.

And the best thing for you last-minute types is that passes are still available for $124.50. Unlike last year, single-day tickets are also available at $65 for today or Sunday and $78 for Saturday.

Click through to the jump for more photos from last year’s festival and more info about this weekend’s activities.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Art, Blues, Concerts, Contemporary, Country, Folk, Humor, Jazz, Music, News, Pop and Rock, Punk, Theater, World Music

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Great news: As predicted, Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival returns to MASS MoCA in 2011

Posted on December 17, 2010 | Leave a comment

When Wilco arrived at MASS MoCA last summer, the band even took over the museum's sign. (Photos copyright 2010, Steven P. Marsh)

Fantastic festival can only get better

We don’t like to brag (well, okay, sometimes we do), but Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? predicted that Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival would become an annual event — even before this year’s inaugural gathering wrapped up.

Wilco HQ announced the news with an email this morning:

Greetings and Happy Holidays. We’ve got a last bit of news before heading home for the break. The big story here is that Solid Sound 2011 is officially ON and happening the weekend of June 24-26, once again at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA. if you were there last year, we know you’ll be back. If not, well, this year you should know better. Ticket information and more will be announced on January 18. So keep an eye and ear out.

Safe travels and sweet holidays to you all. Thanks again for another great year in Wilcoworld. We’ll see you in 2011 with what will undoubtedly be a whole bunch of news regarding Wilco tours, records, the festival and so on. Cheers.

the HQ Staff

This years three-day event was held  in mid-August. It gave thousands of fans of all ages the run of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in the Berkshires town of North Adams, Mass. Participants got to hear lots of music from Wilco, the side projects of band members like Jeff Tweedy, Nels Cline, Pat Sansone, their friends, and got to sample comedians and films along with the spectacular art on the gritty former factory campus. It was well run, well curated and surprisingly chill.

The music was great, the scheduling tight without being overwhelming, the facilities were superb and the food and drink never seemed to run out. Everything worked together to make it one of the best and most memorable festivals around.

Wilco perfoms on the main stage in Joe's Field at MASS MoCA.

Museum management was thrilled to have as many as 5,000 well-behaved patrons on site at once, and obviously saw the festival as something worth bringing back. Museum Director Joe Thompson was singing the praises of the event all weekend, and made no secret of the fact that he supported the idea of doing it again in 2011.

And Cline brimmed with excitement about the festival when we spoke with him at Joe’s Pub in New York City, where he and fiancee Yuka Honda were checking out Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl‘s new project, The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger.

Next year’s festival is earlier in the summer — June instead of August. So save the date and stay tuned for an update in a month.

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Posted in Art, Blues, Concerts, Contemporary, Contemporary Classical, Country, Folk, Humor, Jazz, Music, News, Opera, Pop and Rock, Punk, Recordings, World Music

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Buke and Gass: rock and roll inventions

Posted on October 2, 2010 | 1 comment

DIY noise-rock duo, plus Xylos and ArpLine open for Efterklang

Buke and Gass (Photos copyright 2010, Steven P. Marsh)

Buke and Gass.

The name is slightly mystifying. The Buke part not so much, just say it like the second syllable of rebuke. Easy enough.

But Gass? That’s a little difficult, But if you close attention to the cover of the duo’s self-produced, self-released and self-printed EP, +/-, you might notice the horizontal line over the a in Gass. That’s your first clue. It’s not gas, like the voiceover feature of my iPod would have it. It’s a long a.

The band name comes from the duo’s principal instruments — both of them jury-rigged, homemade, crazily honest.

Arone Dyer on buke.

Aron Sanchez on gass.

Arone Dyer plays the buke, a seriously modified baritone ukelele — b for baritone, uke for ukelele.

Then there’s Aron Sanchez on the gass. That’s g for guitar and ass for bass, as in bass guitar. Get it?

They also throw in some foot-driven percusson, with Aron on a juiced-up kick drum and Arone on bells and foot cymbals. Arone also does the majority of the singing, with a super flexible voice that can go from a purr to a shriek in a split second. Although there’s punk attitude and a touch of Riot Grrrl aesthetic in there, this is thoroughly modern music. Everything’s pretty wildly processed and synthesized, in the tradition of other DIY experimental duos like WOOM.

They sound like so much of what you’ve heard before, and yet like nothing at all you’ve heard.

They’re quite a pair. Arone (a bicycle mechanic) and Aron (who builds instruments for Blue Man Group) came onto the radar at Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? at this spring’s Bang on a Can Marathon. We missed their performance at the marathon, but heard such good buzz that we picked up a copy of the EP. And we have been playing it constantly since.

Buke and Gass keep their feet busy.

Their music is celebratory, strangely melodic, enormously cathartic and just plain fun. And now, thanks to Brassland, there’s a full-length album that just dropped, Riposte.

Buke and Gass opened for Danish indie-rockers Efterklang at Santos Party House in Manhattan’s Chinatown on Friday, Oct. 1.

(Click here for a fun, insightful Stereogum interview with Buke and Gass.)

With four bands on the bill, we figured this show could make for a very long night. Luckily, all the bands were quite good — although Buke and Gass was the band we came to hear. And they didn’t disappoint.

More about the other bands, plus more photos, after the jump. Continue reading →

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Posted in Concerts, Music, Pop and Rock, Punk

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Ethel Fair Launches Lincoln Center Out Of Doors

Posted on July 28, 2010 | 3 comments

Crews were making the final preparations to Damrosh Park on Tuesday night for Wednesday's premiere of the 2010 edition of Lincoln Center Out Of Doors. (Copyright 2010, Steven P. Marsh)

The fabulous Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival starts Wednesday night with a bit of Civil Rights Movement street theater at 6:30 at Barclays Capital Grove (the sponsored name for the plaza between Lincoln Center Theater and Avery Fisher Hall and moves into full-bore music mode at 7:30 in Damrosch Park with Ethel Fair: The Songwriters.

Ethel is Ralph Farris (viola), Mary Rowell (violin), Dorothy Lawson (cello) and Cornelius Dufallo (violin).

Ethel is a string quartet like no other string quartet you’ve seen or heard. These four skilled players, who are quite active together and separately on the international contemporary music scene, have been working in collaborative mode over the past several years. Their latest project, which has its world premiere at the Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival,  features the quartet yoked with songwriters who are quite well known on their own. Pop tunesmith Adam Schlesinger (a member of pop bands Fountains of Wayne and Ivy and composer of Broadway’s “Cry Baby”), assisted by Mike Viola (Candy Butchers), has created a work with Ethel. Other collaborators include folk-blues dynamo Dayna Kurtz, punk-New Wave pioneer Tom Verlaine (Television) and folky Argentine singer-songwriter Juana Molina.

Ethel always pushes boundaries with its work. This collaborative effort appears to reach for a broader, more mainstream appeal than some of the band’s more left-of-center efforts, such as its ongoing TruckStop project, which takes the band on the road to work with and celebrate indigenous cultures. But it’s certain to provide a richly entertaining evening.

No Snakes In This Grass is the title of the theater piece, written by James Magnuson and directed by Mical Whitaker, that kicks off the evening. It’s a comedy set in the Garden of Eden that deals issues of race and the Fall.

This is just the first night of a jam-packed schedule of fabulous free music and performance art that runs through Aug. 15. For the full Lincoln Center Out of Doors schedule, read the press release after the jump. Continue reading →

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Posted in Blues, Classical, Concerts, Contemporary, Contemporary Classical, Country, Dance, Folk, Free, History, Jazz, Music, News, Pop and Rock, Punk, Theater

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Liars, Fucked Up, High Places play the Northside Festival in Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Posted on June 30, 2010 | Leave a comment

Liars closed out Saturday night's Northside Festival show. (Photos copyright 2010, Steven P. Marsh)

The Northside Festival in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, seemed an odd affair. The music was presented on a small, chain-link-fence-enclosed patch of blacktop on the waterfront at the apex of Commercial and Dupont streets. It was a very unlikely looking place for a music venue.

Little Liars: Liars singer Angus Andrew's niece and nephew grooved vigorously to the noise rock.

But looks are often deceiving, and this festival, sponsored by L Magazine, proved no exception to that notion. The Saturday night show, only the second rock show ever hosted at the Newtown Barge Terminal Playground, as the site is officially named, featured Liars as headliners with Fucked Up and High Places as openers. It was fantastic.  The only shame was that so few people came out for it. The venue appeared to be at half capacity at best, even if you counted the freeloaders who took in a virtually unobstructed view from just outside the venue’s fence.

The music was great. Although I went to hear Fucked Up, a Toronto band that is one of the most energetic punk units active today, I was pretty impressed by the other acts as well.

Liars kept the crowd entranced for a long set of noise rock with the vocal stylings of Angus Andrew.

Freeloaders: It was easy to see and hear the whole show without paying a dime.

But Fucked Up really blew the place up, with singer Damian Abraham’s crowd-hugging and can-smashing antics in addition to mind-blowingly fast and loud songs.

They say a picture’s worth 1,000 words. With Fucked Up, a picture’s worth twice that. So take in these visuals:

Fucked Up arrives onstage with Damian chewing up and spitting out pages of he Northside Festival program booklet.

Fucked Up on stage.

Damian crushes his first can of the night.

Damian tries a 40.

Click through to the jump for many more amazing photos of Fucked Up and the other opener, High Places.
Continue reading →

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Care Bears on Fire playing Nassau Coliseum

Posted on February 9, 2010 | Leave a comment

Care Bears on Fire, Izzy, Sophie and Jena (from left) rock Cake Shop on Saturday afternoon. (Photos copyright 2009, Steven P. Marsh)

Amazingly fun teen pop-punkers Care Bears on Fire pulled together the second in their series of Saturday afternoon showcases on Feb. 6 at Cake Shop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The tiny basement club is a perfect place for the girls to work on their sound and snarl in front of hardcore fans and with little to distract them from the music.

Things will be very differen this Saturday, when CBoF is on the Pop-Con bill at Nassau Coliseum opening for riot-inducing kiddie pop star Justin Bieber. Saturday’s show is probably one for parents to drop off their children and pick them up later. It’s not the kind of show that even I, a hardcore CBoF fan, will probably be able to tolerate. But it’s a great opportunity for the high-energy trio. And you can catch their next Let Them Eat Cake show at Cake Shop, 152 Ludlow St., on the Lower East Side on Saturday, March 6.

Check out more photos of the Cake Shop show and the other bands that performed at the showcase to benefit Haiti after the jump. Continue reading →

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Posted in Benefit, Concerts, Music, News, Pop and Rock, Punk

Stew sez: The Negro Problem is touring this fall!

Posted on February 8, 2010 | Leave a comment

Stew and Heidi perform as The Broadway Problem at Lincoln Center Out of Doors last summer. (Copyright 2009, Steven P. Marsh)

Deep in his critique of the New York Magazine‘s piece about his upcoming show Making It, composer and bon vivant Stew lets drop a little bomb that is sure to please his fans, especially those outside of New York City: “The Negro Problem will be on tour this Fall.”

Stew, is that a promise? Or a tease? Let’s hope it’s the former.

Some form of The Negro Problem —  with Stew and Heidi Rodewald at the core but under names like The Broadway Problem — has played around NYC in the last year. But fans elsewhere have had to rely on the movie version of Passing Strange (on the big screen, on PBS, On Deman, or on DVD) to get anything resembling a TNP fix. So this is nothing but good news.

More on Making It, which begins its six-show run at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Dumbo, Brooklyn on Feb. 17, will follow. I just wanted to get this tidbit on the table.

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Asphalt comes indoors

Posted on January 7, 2010 | Leave a comment

Asphalt Orchestra debuted at last summer's Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival. (Photos copyright 2009, Steven P. Marsh)

Asphalt Orchestra, my very favorite avant-garde marching band — okay, I admit, it’s the only avant-garde marching band I know — high-steps it indoors tonight at Lincoln Center for a free show.

“We’re playing everything we’ve ever played — plus two new arrangements,” promises Asphalt saxophonist Ken Thomson.That means music by Frank Zappa, Meshuggah, Bjork, Tom Ze, Thomas Mapfumo, Stew and Heidi Rodewald, Goran Bregovic, Tyondai Braxton (of Battles), Charles Mingus and Conlon Nancarrow. Whew!

This is the only show the band — created by Bang on a Can for last summer’s the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festiva — will be doing in NYC until the summer. And, while Asphalt is probably best seen and heard outdoors, marching up and down bleachers and wandering around the Lincoln Center campus, it’s a big plus that tonight’s show is indoors!

The show is scheduled to begin at 8:30 tonight in David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, on Broadway between West 62nd and West 63rd streets, just east of the Plaza in the former Harmony Atrium space. It’s a perfect gateway to the arts center, with visitor information on all Lincoln Center tenants, a ticket office offering day-of-performance discounts, a performance space, a restaurant, free WiFi and restrooms.

Arrive early to get a good seat, as it’s first-come, first-served. For my part, I’m thinking about standing, just to remind me of my first experiences with Asphalt.

Asphalt Orchestra playing the world premiere performance of Stew and Heidi Rodewald's "Carlton."

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Posted in Contemporary, Contemporary Classical, Music, News, Pop and Rock, Punk

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