Okay, so I pathetically missed your post about the other night. It's pretty
obvious you didn't enjoy it as much as I did. O well. I still think that it
was one of the best local shows i've seen recently which may mean that I
need to get out more often.

Still hope everyone has a great night, sigh.

ashley
>
>But so: Brewery. 
>
>this is what I want to say: WAtching Whiskeytown slog their way through
>what was, for them, another in a long line of fucked-up half-assed shows
>which was still more entertaining than most shows by most bands I've
>seen lately, I thought about Pop Muzik. And it occurred to me that one
>of the primary weapons of great pop songwriting is the ability to
>unselfconsciously repeat word or words about 100 times more in a row
>than one's common sense would normally allow.
>
>This is of course Ryan Adams's great strength, or one of them. He
>recognizes, whether consciously or not, the music which comes pouring
>out of words once some of the meaning has been beat out of them.
>
>see also Van Morrison, of course.
>
>So that explains some part of it in some abstract sense. The thing,
>though, which kept a bad night for Whiskeytown still above a good night
>for another band was this: they know what drives a song. Last night they
>took some song or another (and sleeplessness has taken specifics from
>me, dammit), a slow slow one, and they rocked it up, made it swing.
>These three chords, that particular chorus remain. The rest is mutable.
>
>I was watching this process, thinking about so many bands I know who
>learn songs linearly: first comes the intro, then we perform these chord
>changes and sing, then so-and-so solos, then we finish. Somebody writes
>this down or memorizes it, and then shows the rest, and it gets
>practiced until everybody's playing the same thing.
>
>What Ryan has done, ever since I've known him, is to remember most of
>the words, and the chord change, and then over the course of six months
>or a year he'll try a half-dozen different arrangements out. Mostly,
>he'll try 'em out onstage without really giving the rest of the band
>much warning.
>
>So yr average Whiskeytown show will consist of 2/3ds songs which have
>been played the same way for long enough for the band to really know how
>to rock on them, and 1/3 songs that are being altered in progress.
>
>Usually, actually, it's either a set of rockers or a set of experiments
>or, like last night, a couple of each plus about half just general
>fucking up. Like I said, it wan't their best.
>
>But it makes for fun fun listening when it works out.
>
>The Backsliders have pretty much perfected the songs on their records,
>plus a half-dozen others. Of course, they've been playing most of them
>for going-on three years now. I myself would like more new ones. And
>please, can we retire "dead flowers," all of us, collectively, forever?
>
>Hey I've seen C. Wiley Riser cover that song, non-ironically,
>non-po-mo-ly, non-pine-stately. We all make mistakes.
>
>Six String Drag, though my legs literally gave way beneath me halfway
>through, are one of the five best live band experiences in the state of
>North Carolina. There's a category for you, Jenno, and all the rest of
>you as well. Who consistently, time after time, blows yr head off in a
>live setting?
>
>Or: if X band were playing 2 shows 2 weeks apart, would you go to both?
>
>Six String Drag. My Sunday morning began with The Band, courtesy of L&S
>brunch (ohmygawd Brunch, just go, okay), and ended with Kenny Roby,
>onstage with his leg-kicks and his inexplicable gulf-coast-ness. There
>is much of the New Orleans and the Sir Douglas and the, yes, The Band in
>that young man, and it shows up in the cadences.
>
>Or, as I was trying to explain to Kenny in my dream last night (no
>shit--I fucking critique in my sleep. How did I reach this lamentable
>state?), he writes songs with lots of stops in them, a lot of blats in
>unison, as if he's hearing horns in his head even on those songs which
>don't receive horns in real life.
>
>Last night no horns at all. I'm hoping this is a temporary phenomenon
>and not some newly-congealed permanent hornless lineup. Also new to the
>lineup, relatively, is what appeared from across the bar to be Scott
>Miller, who has led a half-dozen short-lived Raleigh rock combos in the
>time I've lived here, including most recently Econoline but also
>Available Jones (with Chip Robinson on vox, no less) and, um, some band
>called the Sundowners or the Landlubbers or something. On guitar. Big
>fat hollowbody electric guitar.
>
>Anyway. Six String Drag. Have an EP in the can with their label honcho,
>one Steve Earle (memo to the Into the Groove guys: that's the big news
>in country this year, Steve Earle's current comeback), producing. Watch
>for it.
>
>Kenny Roby writes gospel songs called "When you Reach the Top of the
>Mountain Keep Climbing to his Side," which is (now that I think about
>it) the tune which segues effortlessly, non-cornily, into "When the
>Saints Go Marching In." And you'll have to see/believe that one with
>your ownself.
>
>Me, I'm going to bed.
>
>Ross
>-- 
>HOT!! The alt.music.chapel-hill Guide to the Triangle:
>http://sunsite.unc.edu/grady/ch-scene/
>The alt.music.chapel-hill FAQ and archive:
>http://sunsite.unc.edu/grady/ch-scene/amchhome.htm
>
>
>
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