Old Crow Medicine Show, caught in the wild.

Words by Andrew Parks

Remember when ‘alt-country’ was kinda cool? Must have been the month in between Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot—not quite alt-country by definition, but we’ll take it—and Ryan Adams’ first public meltdown involving “Summer of ‘69″ and a heckler who thought it’d be brilliant to mistake “Ryan” for “Bryan.” In the years since, Wilco records have suffered from Jeff Tweedy’s sobriety (sorry, but we’ll take the creeping noise-pop paranoia of “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” and “Handshake Drugs” over a defanged/dull Wilco any day) and Adams’ blog-based rants have become more interesting than his music, as if he left Whiskeytown for crazy town. 

Meanwhile, some names you might not know have been churning out consistent platters for anyone who genuinely enjoys boot-scooting across dusty barroom floors while listening to weeping pedal steels and deftly-plucked banjos. Roots-rock revivalists like Justin Townes Earle—a former addict who looks like a Hee Haw extra and sounds like a sub-Mason time capsule—and Old Crow Medicine Show, which is essentially an R-rated version of Emmet Otter’s Jug Band. (Sans the jugs, but you’ll see what we mean in the videos above.)

Both acts brought their best honky-tonk attire to the Beacon Theatre last night in a “Big Surprise” bill that also included The Felice Brothers, Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch. To be honest, we were not thrilled about seeing a show clearly aimed at Paste readers and people who really think Budweiser is the King of Beers. We went with an open-mind, though, and ended up bowled over by the bizarreness of the crowd (older folks who came to PARTY, Beacon renovations be damned) and the music itself. Here’s why…

The Top Five Reasons Why “The Big Surprise” Was the Strangest Show We’ve Seen in a While

1. Someone in the balcony slung a full cup of cold beer at the crowd below not once, but twice. Apparently, he didn’t spray enough people the first time…and no one told him this wasn’t a Mötley Crüe concert during the band’s “Dr. Feelgood” days. He wasn’t alone, either. Thursday night was easily the rowdiest evening we’ve witnessed in a while. And in an Upper West Side institution, no less. Williamsburg neighbors, we need to step our game up.

2. Rawlings sucked the life out of Bright Eyes’ “Method Acting” single (Cassadaga features him and Welch),  emphasizing how dull he is and how exhilarating Conor’s original was when we first heard it. Speaking of, note to Conor: please ditch your current direction and get back to bitching about the world and everything around you in yelps and vinegary free-verse.

3. Wow—Greg Farley of the Felice Brothers. Dude, did you spend years studying Carlton’s uncoordinated moves on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? Whatever the case, it was quite entertaining watching you gallop across the stage while attacking your fiddle and whacking a washboard so hard it must have left a mark. Interestingly enough, the biggest fan in tonight’s crowd looked just like Farley, too—like an over-sized homie doll who dances like no one’s watching.

4. Old Crow Medicine Show spent most of their set singing about dope-pushers and coke-sniffers—like the Velvet Underground without  distortion or a sense of imminent danger. That said, they were also eminently enjoyable and way better than sitting through a Tim McGraw concert.”Tell It To Me” = a certified jam.

5. Justin Townes Earle came off like a lovable beanpole of a country singer, but that doesn’t change his back story: the guy was once such a ticking time bomb he got kick out of his dad’s band. That’s an accomplishment. And so is making us want to check out bad boy country that isn’t Johnny Cash.

And finally, here’s a video from the night, via Ephman:

[Photos/Text by Andrew Parks]

Bless the girl in the above photo and her undying devotion to Fatboy Slim despite the unfortunate frat-party approach of his New York ‘performance’ last night. Playing to a not-quite-full Terminal 5, Norman Cook started off strong with swift “Praise You” snippets and speaker-rattling sheets of acid techno and big beat, but overall, his rare 105-minute (!) set suffered from severe peak/valley problems. In other words, nearly every time he led the laidback crowd down a path of potentially-losing-their-shit, Cook lost his momentum somehow, either by wearing out a song’s welcome (do we really need to hear DJ Kool drops for six minutes?) or not ratcheting up the tension of the few familiar Fatboy tracks that made the mix (“Right Here, Right Now,” “The Rockafeller Skank,” the aforementioned “Praise You”).

Which is really surprising given Cook’s level of experience (he’s been around for decades and is in his mid-40s), and top-dollar reputation for transcendent DJ skills. Think what you will about the Brighton icon based on the more-played-out-than-Moby nature of his key You’ve Come a Long Way Baby singles; there’s no denying the influence of his back catalog on crossover dance music in the states. Especially his highly underrated debut Better Living Through Chemistry, one of the enduring templates for electronica’s early days.

So yeah. Maybe Cook wanted to really retire his Fatboy Slim alias by publicly shunning some of his best songs for “Jump Around” and bits of his BPA album. Speaking of, what’s up with Iggy Pop not providing some guest verses after two nights of nailing “He’s Frank” on live TV?

Anyway, here’s what Cook did play last night (we shot two epileptic videos), along with an S/T Five countdown of cuts that should have been selected at some point.

The Top Five Songs Fatboy Slim Should Have Dropped In His NYC Set Instead of a Six-Minute “Let Me Clear My Throat” Edit

Download audio file (11%20-%20Michael%20Jackson.mp3)

1. “Michael Jackson”

Download audio file (10%20-%20Sunset%20(Bird%20Of%20Prey).mp3)

2. “Sunset (Bird of Prey)”

Download audio file (03%20-%20Brimful%20Of%20Asha%20(Norman%20Cook%20Remix).mp3)

3. Cornershop, “Brimful of Asha (Norman Cook Remix)”

Download audio file (05%20-%20Gangster%20Trippin%27.mp3)

4. Gangster Trippin’

Download audio file (09%20-%20Going%20Out%20Of%20My%20Head.mp3)

5. Going Out Of My Head

What we saw/heard instead:

Conrad Keely leads Midnight Masses in a cuddly lil' chorus line.

Photos/Text by Andrew Parks

We’re not sure how it happened, but we’ve seen …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead more than any other band of the past five years. As in enough times—8? 11? 15?—to say we’ve witnessed the Texan transplants at their worst (the SxSW ‘06 gig where frontman Conrad Keely sat in front of keyboard racks for the entire set, clearly indulging his prog-rock fantasies instead of what we really came to see: genuine mayhem) and absolute best (a roots-revisiting, one-night-only collaboration between Keely and …Trail co-founder Jason Reece).

Last night’s Century of Self gig was caught somewhere in between, although it erred more on the side of …Trail’s better shows. One award it did win was the prestige of being the most oppressive-sounding gig we’ve experienced outside of a buzz-stirring Source Tags & Codes set at Bowery Ballroom in 2002. Maybe it was the fact that the night’s soundcheck lasted a good 45 minutes, but every element of …Trail’s mix (the gut-punching percussion of Reece and Aaron Ford, the clanging chords of Keely and Kevin Allen, the wobbly low-end of Jay Phillips, the smothered synth lines of keyboardist Clay Morris) rang out loud and ridiculously clear—enough to knock us back a few inches during such time-tested jams as “Totally Natural” and the hardcore-esque “Homage.”

And what does this all add up to? Why, another edition of “The S/T Five,” of course …

The Top Five Reasons We Still Give a Damn About …Trail of Dead

1. The undying patience of Kevin Allen.
See the guy lurking in the shadows, with a smug look caught somewhere between abject terror and downright disgust? That’s guitarist Kevin Allen, a.k.a. the only …Trail of Dead member that’s consistently avoided the ax-grinding, bottle-breaking bullshit that used to get in the way of the group actually finishing their live songs. (Memorable TOD moment: Watching them coat the Five Spot—a former Philly venue that typically hosted jazz shows—in stale beer and mounting piles of debris.)

Except for that one time where he was so drunk he couldn’t stand up straight—a problem Keely remedied by plowing the poor guy over. You know, a few years ago we’d say Kevin’s in it for the money or the C-list fame. But now that the band is free from Interscope and paying their own way through Richter Scale Records, it’s clear that …Trail of Dead is a dysfunctional bromance on par with the Pineapple Express DVD we just finished watching.

2. The “mama, I wanna be a rock star” moves of Conrad Keely.
While devil horns  and Townshend-like windmills aren’t exactly fresh forms of stage expression, there’s something endearing about the effort Conrad Keely has put into every …Trail of Dead show we’ve ever seen, including the bad ones. By now, we can mimic it all, from his squinty eyes and “I’ve really got to take a shit” poses to the fist-pumping and arm-swinging that punctuates his latent guitar heroism.

Jason Reece at Village Voice's SxSW 2008 party

3. Jason Reece is crazier than a wild chimpanzee.
Don’t let the oh-so-emo appearance of the above photo fool you … Jason Reece is out for blood every time he hits a stage. Most of the time, he takes his aggression out on a rickety drum kit, but on the rare occasion where he steps out front and assumes the mic position, we can understand how such a short guy once survived a tussle with the Tower of Black-Hearted Power that is Mark Lanegan.

Beyond that, Reece’s one-liners are pretty priceless and, well, odd, especially his completely random rants about various psychedelics. (Last night, he mumbled something about DMT.)

4. Aside from a few missteps and unfair Pitchfork reviews (a 4.0? really?) here and there, …Trail of Dead’s back catalog tends to get our blood boiling and make us feel young again.
Shall we count the songs? “Relative Ways”; “Totally Natural”; “It Was There That I Saw You”; “Clair de Lune”; “Another Morning Stoner”; a particularly venomous “Will You Smile Again For Me”. All of the above and a healthy hour of other evergreen standards and future classics held …Trail of Dead’s set together better than any of the other semi-agrro acts that’ll cross the Music Hall of Williamsburg’s path this year.

5. …Trail of Dead: “Making Geeks Feel Good About Themselves Since 1994.” (Us included, of course.)
Scan the above crowd shot. Looks like a video shoot for “Boys Just Want to Have Fun,” right? As mixed as Friday’s male/female breakdown was, we couldn’t help but smile—and, okay, laugh a little—as 10-20 little dudes pretended the floor was their very own Woodstock ‘99 (minus the mud and the sexual assaults). Nowhere near as vicious as the Kylesa chaos we endured last month, last night’s Revenge of the Nerds display was quaint and cute. Like the time we almost died upfront at a Converge show.

And now, for a few bonus photos [slideshow available here] …

The Top Five Reasons We Sat Frozen Upfront At Antony’s Town Hall Gig For 90 Minutes

Photos/Text By Andrew Parks

1. First and foremost, Antony is a funny motherfucker. No, really. As deadly serious as the guy’s torch songs  are, he knows how to cut through a stiff, New Yorker-cribbing crowd like a knife. Aside from nailing a priceless cover of “Crazy In Love,” Antony filled Thursday’s awkward pauses with bizarre, often brilliant stage banter. That includes his semi-coherent ramblings on the State of Things (“I’m like the Huffington Post, telling you everything“) and quite a few wide-eyed tales of what New York was like, pre-Giuliani.

According to Antony, we’re about to go back there, as evidenced by the homeless people selling freshly-stolen luggage on Avenue C. Thanks for the tip, buddy!

2. He makes us all address gender issues whether we’re ready to or not. Take the lines “One day I’ll grow up/I’ll be a beautiful woman/One day I’ll grow up/I’ll be a beautiful girl” from “For Today I Am a Boy.” A couple sitting next to self-titled couldn’t help but giggle uncomfortably the first time said trans-curious verses were uttered, yet Antony had both of them in the palm of his bear-like hand—practically weeping—by the end.

3. Black tie attire aside, the Johnsons can wail when they want to, from the sax spasms of “Shake That Devil” to the sweeping, downright debilitating melancholy of the forthcoming 7-inch single “Epilepsy Is Dancing.”

4. As hinted at in such Hercules and Love Affair standouts as “Blind” and “Free Will,” Antony has one hell of a twisted house album in him. Or on the other end of the spectrum, a noisy, nasty post-everything meditation on just how meaningless all of this is. In other words, we were constantly reminded of how versatile his voice, leaving us wish he’d play something as informal as Glasslands next time.

5. Because we get it now—finally—from the beguiling, alien beauty of Antony’s jazz bar melodies to the prickly, knee-knocking power of a song like “Fistful of Love.” (The guy sitting next to us had his eyes wide shut during Antony’s stunning rendition of this old favorite. We found it creepy at first, but then we remembered how rare it is to see someone so transfixed by a live performance these days.)

Now, for some more swiftly-shot photos, taken in rare instances where you couldn’t hear a pin drop  …

Top Five Thinly-Veiled Vagina References in Music

By self-titled reader Claire

1. Soft as snow, but warm inside (My Bloody Valentine)

2. Heart-shaped box (Nirvana)

3. Little red Corvette (Prince)

4. Bell…as in “ring my” (Anita Ward)

5. Umbrella ella a a a (Rihanna)

We want to hear your best Top Five lists. Leave them in the comments, and we’ll publish our favorites. Get creative!

In honor of our new feature The S/T Five, we’re looking for your best music-related Top Five lists. Top Five outfits worn by Prince? Top Five things from a Guided by Voices song that you’d like to actually see in real life? Top Five lead singers who could beat other evenly matched lead singers in arm wrestling? Top Five foods enjoyed while listening to twee pop? Write your hilarious/awesome/mind-blowing/earth-shattering/coke-snorting Top Five lists in our comments section. We’ll select our favorites and publish them on the site. Get creative people!

The Top Five Moments From Bruce Springsteen’s Super Bowl Halftime Show

By Aaron Richter

1. Steven Van Zandt yelling “It’s Boss time!” Pure cheese. And we love it.

2. Bruce sliding on his knees and slamming into the cameraman. Pete Townsend, he is not, but a damn fine effort, nonetheless. 

3. The choir that emerged during “Working on a Dream,” thus transforming a sub-mediocre single into palatable entertainment.

4. The Boss dropping to his knees and popping back up at the beginning of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.”

5. self-titled sitting on the couch and remembering how awesome Prince was when he performed two years ago at halftime. And subsequently watching that performance online rather than the first 15 minutes of the game’s second half. 

Watch Springsteen’s performance in its entirety after the jump.

The S/T Five is a new recurring feature at self-titled. We’ve always loved Top Five lists, and we know you do, too. So leave your own Top Fives in the comments section (whatever you want, but keep them music related), and we’ll post our favorites. Get creative!