Beirut/A Hawk & A Hacksaw, I'd pick. Though I'm actually pretty eager to see the Decemberists when they swing through DC.
Is Jesse Emerson really John Emerson's son?
I love you guys. also, I need to eat BRANES!!!!
Several members of the Decemberists as well as my son will be performing as a Pogues tribute band (KMRIA) on Dec. 15 in Portland OR. I'll be there as well as Jesus McQueen.
The actual concert promises to be too chaotic for any real socializing, but JMcQ and I plan to have a mini-meetup around that time, and anyone in Portland at that time is welcome to show up.
Speaking of music, if anyone is in Oxford next week, there's a staging of Brecht and Weill's 'Threepenny Opera' at the Playhouse. Featuring one nattarGcM ttaM on guitar [and in full make-up, they are putting the 'pit band' on stage, in costume] ...
ttaM, I got the "Hittin all Six" guitar-history CDs you recommended, and they're great.
Great. It's an excellent set. Another thing I've been listening to a lot recently are the two 'Julie is Her Name' LPs (with Julie London) -- partly for the fantastic comping from Barney Kessell and Howard Roberts.*
*Can't remember if I've mentioned that already.
The Julie London stuff was a real find for me too. The Barney Kessel story is amazing -- as a teenager off in Muskogee OK, he learned to imitate Charlie Christian before Christian became famous, and then he realized that he was being an imitator so he invented a whole new guitar style of his own.
The Kessel-London stuff is something I never would have listened to even 10 years ago, because it's pre-rock-and-roll, non-avant-garde jazz from my parents' generation. But I'm almost sick of R&R by now.
I'll repost my Christian-Kessel link at my URL in case anyone's interested in that story.
I've been listening to various 'easy listening' or pre-rock'n'roll things of that type for quite a while -- largely because of friends who were into that sort of thing (and various other pieces of 50s and 60s exotica) and who pointed me in the direction of various compilations and 'taster' records.
The London stuff I only heard for the first time a few months back, though, and the guitar playing on it is really great.
Gawd, this is the most depressing thread ever. Crazy Old Man(TM) Emerson isn't just cooler than me, he's several orders of magnitude cooler than me.
So what sort of music are most of these performances? I'm familiar with The Decemberists, but I've rarely known most of the other people you tend to mention, w-lfs-n. Are Upsilon Acrux, Beirut, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, etc. modern jazz, world music (yes, I know, it's an abysmal genre name), or what?
14 -- There is no shame in being less cool than a codger.
Wait, never mind. I realized that Beirut and A Hawk and a Hacksaw were two different bands, and they each sounded slightly familiar. AMG set me right.
The Beirut record is probably among the more overrated records of the year. I heard somebody say it's the equivalent of soulless white boys singing soul, and I'd have to agree. I do think it's better than you would expect from a 19-year-old guy from Albuquerque doing Balkan gypsy music. But it's certainly a far cry from Goran Bregovic (to pick the best-known native Balkan guy doing this kind of stuff) and such. Hipsters seem to flock to all kinds of putatively nouveau things.
"The Perfect Crime" on the new Decemberists record is terrible. Otherwise it's a pretty good record. They're also always a fun live act (even as each of the three shows I've seen in the past three years has been worse than the previous). But The Warfield sucks. That's why I'm not going to that show.
My fave Balkan record of the mo' is Boris Kovac's "Last Balkan Tango" -- which is just beautiful stuff. Balkan jazz, basically, with bits of movie soundtracks and cabaret music stirred in.
http://www.amazon.com/Balkan-Tango-Kovac-Ladaaba-Orchestra/dp/B00005OW6X
1234chainsaw makes a good point re: Beirut (and A Hawk and a Handsaw are basically the same schtick). Nevertheless, I liked it, because you've gotta take what you can get if you don't know about the subject matter.
I saw the hold steady last night. That is a fun band live.
Hi guys. Do you think you could give me some stuff and info on the Decemberists, or maybe a site about them, like an official site or something? I'm making a personal record of artists Id like to know more about, you see (just a recreational project on my part since I'm not doing much these days)... thanks a lot!