Category: I Was There

LIVE REVIEW: Members of Portishead and Goldfrapp Present Live Score For ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’ At Lincoln Center

November 1st, 2011 | File Under: I Was There | Leave A Comment

Since we refuse to celebrate Halloween without a proper costume and this year caught us completely off guard, self-titled spent the past weekend avoiding the Ricky’s rush at not one, but two silent films that happened to feature haunting music for the holiday weekend. While one was a patience-testing take on Metropolis (watching a church organ wail for nearly three hours is a tad torturous), Lincoln Center’s fully orchestrated presentation of The Passion of Joan of Arc was as seamless as live scores get, featuring movements that were as melancholic and moving as the images themselves.

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SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: Stream the Songs Portishead Played On Their Fall Tour and Read Our Review of Their Los Angeles Show

October 28th, 2011 | File Under: I Was There, Spotify Playlist | One comment

Photo: John Minton

Words by J. Bennett

self-titled recently made the unconscionable mistake of pouring a pint of shitty vodka down J. Bennett’s gullet before cutting him loose inside the Shrine Auditorium for the first engagement of Portishead’s two-night stand in Los Angeles. The show was “fucking fantastic,” according to our intrepid reporter, who mailed us a soiled cocktail napkin with his review scribbled on it. We’ve included the legible parts below, and dropped the night’s setlist into a Spotify playlist here. (For some reason, the band doesn’t let you stream “Wandering Star.”) Herr Bennett also demanded that we include this note to the Shriners, who ostensibly run the Auditorium:

Gentlemen: According to the Internet, your organization was founded in 1870 as a “fraternity for Masons stressing fun and fellowship.” And, apparently, fezzes. All of which is fine. But I would suggest that many (if not most) concertgoers’ definition of “fun and fellowship” might include the consumption of alcohol. As such, maybe next time you could open up another bar or three so your patrons wouldn’t have to wait in line for 30 minutes to get a drink. By my lights, you have had exactly 141 years to sort this out. Time to get on the stick, don’t you think?

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SELF-TITLED TV: Read Our Review of Amon Tobin’s ‘ISAM’ Tour and Watch the End of His First Encore At Brooklyn Masonic Temple

October 27th, 2011 | File Under: I Was There, Self-Titled TV | One comment

Amon Tobin surveys the damage after his 90-minute set (Photo Credit: Andrew Parks)

Words by Andrew Parks

“It looks like the West Memphis Three is trying to start a mosh pit down there.”

Welcome to the truly groundbreaking world that is Amon Tobin’s ISAM tour; a sensory overload experience on par with the million dollar pyramid set Daft Punk brought to Brooklyn in 2007. Which is quite an achievement when you consider how crowd-pleasing Daft Punk’s music is—bright, bold swatches of filtered house, floor-filling electro and cracked disco— and how challenging it is to consume Tobin’s cold, harsh and undoubtedly heavy approach to interstellar hip-hop and piston-powered electronic music. On record, the Brazilian producer can sound like a pilot who’s knowingly plunged us into a black hole so horrifying we can’t look away as the ship begins to erode in a sea of splintered samples and battering ram beats. In other words, it’s music that’s tailor made for sci-fi movies, or at the very least, video games that feature lots of steely exteriors and explosions. (Sure enough, Tobin scored the game Chaos Theory: Splinter Cell 3.)

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LIVE REVIEW: The Horrors @ Webster Hall Studio, 8.9.11

August 10th, 2011 | File Under: I Was There | Leave A Comment

Words and Photo by Andrew Parks

The Artist & Their Latest Release: The Horrors, Skying (XL, 2011)

The Set In a Few Sentences: The last time we saw the Horrors, they were still straddling the diametrically opposed realms of art rock and pure camp; irrefutably caught in an identity crisis that might as well have been co-sponsored by the NME. Which was really frustrating to witness given how grown up the group’s second album (2009’s Primary Colours) sounded on the first, fifth, and fiftieth listen. (Unlike most of the music that passes through self-titled’s office—records that don’t remain in rotation for more than a week—we still listen to it regularly two years later.)

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LIVE REVIEW: Zomby @ The Angel Orensanz Foundation, 7.18.11

July 19th, 2011 | File Under: I Was There | 3 comments

[Photo via FADER]

Words by Mitch Strashnov

Hell froze over; after four aborted appearances in New York City, Zomby finally showed up and played a private after-party for (capsule) at the Angel Orensanz Foundation. The Lower East Side setting—a former synagogue that looks like it hosted raves in the early ’90s—was relatively strange, yet it made perfect sense for the reclusive producer to make his long-awaited debut among pockets of people who didn’t have the slightest idea who he is or how monumental the occasion was for anyone remotely into electronic music. (One girl actually asked self-titled who tonight’s “special guest” was. When we said Zomby, she just stared back at us blankly.)

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LIVE REVIEW/PHOTOS: Ghost @ Webster Hall Studio, 6.1.11

June 2nd, 2011 | File Under: I Was There | Leave A Comment

Words & Photos by Andrew Parks

The Artist & Their Most Recent Release: Ghost, Opus Eponymous (Rise Above, 2010)

The Set In a Few Sentences: The most telling moment in Wednesday night’s Ghost show had nothing to do with sweat resistant corpsepaint or a hexed pope hat; it was when the Ghoul With No Name led his hooded minions in a slightly demented rendition of “Here Comes the Sun.” While the Beatles hit sends rays of hope spiraling right through the heart of Abbey Road, it takes on a whole new meaning when performed by a band that looks like they’re about to host a black mass and/or sacrifice the hardcore dude who keeps stage diving right into the venue’s tiny lighting rig. Like the rest of Ghost’s thoroughly enjoyable debut album, the devil-worshiping version of “Here Comes the Sun” is disconcerting because it pairs black metal theatrics with pure, unadulterated Top 40 tendencies. Seriously, though—just try and listen to the tracks below without being pulled into their tractor beam of Route 66 riffs, propulsive rhythms, and triumphant hooks. Why, just this morning we were singing “This chapel of ritual/Smells of dead human sacrifices/From the altar” to the horror of everyone else on our subway train, and we…just…couldn’t…help it.

Check out more photos and a couple Ghost cuts that’ll have you reaching for your old Mercyful Fate records below…

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I WAS THERE: Wanda Jackson Battles Laryngitis, Reminds Us Why She’s the ‘Queen of Rockabilly’ At Bowery Ballroom

February 25th, 2011 | File Under: I Was There | Leave A Comment

[Photo by Bill Weisner]

The Artist & Their Latest Release: Wanda Jackson, The Party Ain’t Over (Third Man, 2011)

The Show: Bowery Ballroom, 2.24.11, with The Lustre Kings

A Short Review: “I don’t know about you,” said Wanda Jackson, as she basked under Bowery Ballroom’s soft spotlights, “But I’m ready to rock.”

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I WAS THERE: Our Review of Guided By Voices’ Reunion Show At Terminal 5

November 8th, 2010 | File Under: I Was There | One comment

Words and Photos by Aaron Richter

Guided by Voices, 2003; Columbia, Missouri. One of the greatest concerts I’ve ever seen. It was an entirely ridiculous show akin to seeing Cheeseburger in a sloppy Brooklyn basement; nothing in the venue was left undoused in beer. Touring Earthquake Glue, Pollard arrived in town on a Monday night to play for a sparse turnout of around maybe 50–75 people, most of whom ended up onstage toward the set’s end. The group played for three hours; Pollard drank a full bottle of tequila, at least seven beers and—before the night’s final song, at that point pretty much reduced to a mumbling mess—announced that he was hitting the bars and that anyone was welcome to join him. We left drenched in sweat and beer (and blood, in the case of my friend, who’d gashed his hand open on a broken bottle).

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I WAS THERE: Gayngs Funks Up the Music Hall of Williamsburg

October 7th, 2010 | File Under: I Was There | Leave A Comment

[Photo courtesy of Plesserchick]

Words by Arye Dworken

Legend goes, Justin Vernon went into a wintered forest and found a secluded log cabin home where, depressed and sheltered, he recorded Bon Iver’s debut album For Emma, Forever Ago. It’s a stunning record, but man, it’s a bummer. Guy sounded like he wanted nothing more than to down a bottle of Jack and pass out in his armchair while a Nicolas Sparks novel fell from his limp hand. But a few nights back, Vernon’s blue-eyed soul/funk side project Gayngs—a collective fronted/founded by Ryan Olson—sashayed into town and ostensibly re-branded the part-time folkie into a frontman joker, an Autotuned seducer, and best of all, a realized Kanye West collaborator. And the twelve childhood friends on stage did something pretty uncommon within the confines of the Music Hall of Williamsburg: they had a pretty awesome time.

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I WAS THERE: Yakuza Get Compared To Kenny G At Gramercy, Triptykon Remind Us Why Tom Warrior Should Be Worshiped

October 7th, 2010 | File Under: I Was There | Leave A Comment

Words and Photos by Andrew Parks

“1349!”

“Kenny G!”

Say hello to the childish hecklers who wouldn’t shut up during Yakuza’s Gramercy Theatre set last night, as the Midwest metal vets warmed the stage with such expansive, sax-spiked epics as “Farewell to the Flesh” and “Be That As It May.” While we dug every last note, it’s gonna be a rough run for these guys, as they’re bound to face more impatient/idiotic black-metal purists as their tour with 1349 and Triptykon winds its way through North America this month. That, and some closet converts who can’t help but get pulled in by the underground’s most underrated band.

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