Category Archives: Review

My friend Steve will only send in reviews via iChat. This is his review of last night’s Northern State and Tilly show:

Steve: i’m the 3rd oldest person at the show, i’m alone, and it’s raining, so already i was ticked.
Steve: opening band, 9 pm: Arbor Day.
Steve: guitars and trombones.
Steve: and that’s the most you’ll ever hear of them.
Steve: 10pm: Northern State
Steve: ROCKED.
Steve: couldn’t get enough
Steve: totally under-appreciated by everyone but me.
Steve: 11pm tilly came on.
Steve: here are the 3 thoughts that went through my head during their 1st song:
Steve: “Hey, wait a minute….this doesn’t rock.”
Steve: “What the fuck am I doing here?”
Steve: “I wonder how the Sabres did tonight.”
Steve: PS they beat the Flyers 9-1.
Steve: tilly fans are annoying
Steve: fuckin really annoying
Steve: tilly fans are the new tori fans.
Steve: teenyboppers that grew up and are now in their early 20s…..twennyboppers.
Steve: the girls in the band are indeed cute, but the annoying fan adoration was just too much to take
Steve: the music did nothing to make up for it
Steve: 9:05 AM
Steve: so i did the unthinkable.
Steve: I set a suicide clock……………….without your permission.
Steve: i said okay, they play “Bad Education” or 11:35pm. whichever comes first. then I’M OUT.
Steve: 11:35 comes.
Steve: BOUNCEY BOUNCEY
Steve: what a relief.
Steve: a live show made me un-llike a band.
Steve: now i need to build a time machine
Steve: and go back and make myself leave after northern state
Steve: moral of the story: Northern State is awesomely awesome, I need a yearly reminder not to go to shows alone in the rain, and always opt to watch the hockey game in the comfort of your home where your girlfriend is.

Bunch of folks in the donewaiting.com message board were at the Tom Waits shows in Cleveland and Akron the other day. Some funny stuff found in the thread including:

With all the yelling, the desperate “notice me” cries directed toward the stage, the singing along with key lines as if to say “TOM, I GET IT!” (why else applaud a lyric reference to Little Anthony & The Imperials in a song?), I can only say that die-hard Tom Waits fans are as annoying as any. Apparently, the need to “WHHHHOOOO-HOOOOOO!!!!” transcends all.

Read more (and add your own input) over here.

Okay, so there’s this band Teddybears that’s just been popping up everywhere over the last few weeks, particularly on the MP3 blogs. People keep posting the same track over and over (and I am going to as well, with a twist) and the buzz is predictably building. There’s one thing that strikes me as really weird about the whole thing.

Teddybears isn’t exactly a new band.

Not by any stretch of the imagination!

They’re better known everywhere else in the world as Teddybears STHLM — the STHLM is for their home of Stockholm — and they’ve realeased quite a few albums over the last, oh, fifteen years. In fact their U.S.A. debut, Soft Machine, is filled with previously released songs. A few have been re-recorded to bulk up / update the sound and now feature vocals from instantly recognizable voices like Neneh Cherry, Iggy Pop and Annie. For the most part there isn’t anything new so I’m not sure why people are only now going gonzo over the band.

Heck, their actual lead singer is also the voice of The Caesars (though I can’t figure out if it’s Teddybears or the Caesars that one would consider his side project,) so it’s not exactly like his own vocals are exactly alien to the American ear!

Anyway, I’ve enjoyed the bands last two albums so I’m pleased to see them getting some exposure over here finally. I guess my only gripe is reading all the blogs that go on and on about them but get so much of the information about them so wrong.

To give you an idea of what I mean by the songs being re-worked (and how i’m not 100% sold it was actually always necessary) here is “Yours To Keep,” the lead-off single (I presume, though it may be “Cobrastyle,”) off Soft Machine. Compare it to the song’s original incarnation on 2000’s Rock’n’Roll Highschool.

Teddybears STHLM “Yours To Keep” (with Paolo)

Teddybears “Yours To Keep” (with Neneh Cherry)

See? The new version with Neneh Cherry is rather bulked up, and I dig it, but the original with Paolo just has this sort of wistful air that is so timeless I’m always in the mood to hear it.
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Last night I drove up to the Cleveland area for the first Kuyahoga Festival, a radio-station event that copped a lot of bands on their way to Lollapalooza. The festival features smaller, local bands (The Six Parts Seven), buzz bands (Wolfmother), and was headlined by The Flaming Lips.

I was only able to catch the last two bands, Death Cab for Cutie and The Flaming Lips. Death Cab played a pretty good set, highlighted by Flaming Lips joining the band onstage for a cover of R.EM.’s Cuyahoga (it was the town we were in, after all).

The Lips were great, as always, but I think their set was cut a bit short due to a curfew. The stage show continues to add little new elements here and there, making it for one of the most entertaining live bands around. I can’t wait to see them again in Columbus in a few weeks.