Here I was, backstage with Calvin Harris and his band at the Bowery Ballroom after climbing up to the tippity-top of the steep winding staircase where, in spite of the the humidity, he was chilling with his bandmates sipping a brewski in the dressing room before the show. Hmmm. No, there was no party back here.  No posse of arm candy, no illicit substances, no dancing or none of the wild merry-making the 24-year-old Scotsman sings about.

Harris cultivates the persona of a "playah," a heartbreaker and a hipster, getting all the girls, and even creating disco. During his interview he claims it's all part of his act. "I'm not like that at all," he told me, though I wasn't totally convinced. In one of his most popular hits, "Vegas," Harris proclaims, "I've got my car, and my ride, and my wheels (when I go to Vegas), I've got my drugs, and my stuff, and my pills (when I go to Vegas), I've got my girls, and my boys, and my girls (when I go to Vegas)."

Still, they seemed like just regular blokes, a bit shy and polite, standing around in the bright lighting, Harris wearing a goofy pink Fruit Loops T-shirt, another band member in a bright green T-shirt with cartoons of some primeval wolf man and the third sporting a glitzy Ramones shirt, all of them with adorably raffish mops of hair. Harris addresses me with a tentative grin. "Hallo! Right, New York Press.  We spoke on the telephone," he said, recalling his recent interview with me from his hometown, Dumfries, Scotland. "Sorry, my battery went dead," referring to our being cut off. 

"Yes, guys always use that excuse," I joked. Did I mention Harris is 6-foot-5 and, according to his MySpace page, wears a size 12 shoe? Then there's his self-deprecating style flavored by his British accent. Sigh!

Harris, 24 years old, is the newest success story on the electro-dance music scene. Harris and his band had just flown in after a couple of gigs on the West Coast, including the triumphant set prior to Prince's at Coachella. His eponymous CD came out in 2007, and he has another in the works that will be released later this year. The press has labeled him a MySpace sensation, with more than 4 million plays and 2.5 million page views.

"It's not true, I'm not a MySpace sensation – it was just a stroke of luck," he told me. So far, his colorful YouTube videos are approaching 400,000 views, among the top 50 in the UK. Back in 2005, while he was out of work, he put up a few songs on MySpace. Unable to get anyone to listen to the demos he'd sent out, he began staying up all night "friending" everyone in sight, including (luckily) an EMI Publishing executive, who loved his tunes and signed him up, allowing him to quit his job. That was the happiest day of his life.

One of Calvin Harris's most appealing traits is he makes it all look so easy. He claims to have no special talent as a singer nor as a musician and only used his own voice because he couldn't find anyone else at the time. As a teenager, and recuperating from a year-long illness, he spent many hours messing around on his brother's low-tech Amiga music sequencer, creating the sounds which have since made him famous. He considers himself more of a producer and has collaborated and remixed songs with the likes of Kylie Minogue, The Mitchell Brothers, Dizzee Rascal and Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

Harris is proud he's acquired a huge following among pre-teen girls, tweens and teenyboppers.  "They have just as much right to like music as a banker or anyone else," he says, loyal to his fans. Only a few years ago, he himself was stocking shelves in a department store and when he was 17, he actually packed fish into tin cans for a while. "My hands smelled awful," he confided.

Harris is the model for gawky youth everywhere with a dream, a synthesizer and a video camera. Did he create disco? No, but he has created a danceable blend of electro-funk with simple lyrics his fans chant in the "mosh pit," jumping up and down and singing along with Calvin for the entire two-hour show. Alongside the glammed up girls were many teenaged and early-20-something boys. And there I was, twice their age and mouthing the words to "I Created Disco," as I leapt into the air in my Frye boots.

The kids love him because he's unpretentious, and he's one of THEM, a loser who makes good. He mentions his girlfriend and how he enjoys knocking about at home, but in one of his most popular songs, especially with his female audience, "The Girls," he confesses how he can't help playing around and gets all the girls, but whether it's true or not, there's something very appealing about his all-inclusive taste in women:  "I like them black girls, I like them white girls, I like them Asian girls, I like them mixed-raced girls, I like them Spanish girls, I like them Italian girls, I like the French girls, And I like Scandanavian girls, I like them tall girls, I like them short girls, I like them brown-haired girls, I like them blond-haired girls, I like them big girls, I like them skinny girls, I like them carrying a little bit of weight girls."

In his video, he's shown with a bevy of beauties, all of whom are slender and Caucasian. "Calvin, what's up with that?  I thought you liked all the girls," I asked. "And what about the older girls." Characteristically diplomatic, he replies, "Well, you're white, and you're blonde, so I've included you, too." Was he also thinking I was one of those "carrying a little bit of weight" girls? I didn't ask, but said goodbye since they needed to start the show.

After a brief stop in Glasgow, Harris & Co. are off to Berlin where the band opens for Hot Chip on May  8th.


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When Greg Burgett, one of my music writers, mentioned he wanted to write about the song of summer, I immediately told him it had to belong to Hercules and Love Affair. The group's debut LP is one single after another, strange enough with Antony's vocals and upbeat enough to get me dancing anytime I put it on (which is a lot, and I've had interns and other editors wonder aloud when I'd tire of listening to the tracks). Of course, I'm a sucker for "Blind" and think "Raise Me Up" is amazing. But I seem to find something different to love about every track (for example, Athene reminds me of 80s Spanish pop star Alaska and tracks that appeared in old Amoldovar films). Greg made a strong case that Gnarls Barkley changed the summer song landscape with 2006's "Crazy", and now Hercules and Love Affair is set to open for Gnarls in August (unfortunately in D.C.)

Thing is, I also know that disco is a little too much for most music fans to stomach: too gay, too black and too much fun. But hopefully a few more will find their way to some of the most danceable music of the summer. Also, if you're looking for a more authentic read concerning Andy Butler, the guy behind Hercules, beyond the mainstream press, check out the latest issue of Butt magazine. In it, he strips down and tells (nearly) all, including his fun NYC club days, the tons of K he took while out clubbing and that he was never interested in Michael Alig and the whole Disco 2000/Limelight crowd. As well as posing for this triptych...



But it all seems to come down to the music for him. As he explains in the interview, "As much as drugs or glitz or sex has driven me to places, nothing has ever driven me like music." And that folks, is what should drive you to listen to this, not if it's been anointed by the fashionable set as cool enough to listen to. Just follow the beat.



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In their heyday, The Butthole Surfers were the craziest band on the planet. Under the influence of heavy drugs and insanity, their concerts were legendary events of unpredictable madness.

In 1986, they first met Lynch (a.k.a. Kathleen, a.k.a. Ta-Da the Shit Lady), who was then working at a strip club called Sex World in New York City. Though never an official member, she became the Surfers' famous "naked dancer," performing intermittently with them through 1989. One show in Washington D.C. with G.W.A.R. saw Kathleen take the stage to dance in nothing but gold body paint and antique wooden snow shoes. And at another particularly wild concert in 1986, Haynes and Lynch reportedly engaged in sexual intercourse while on stage, as Leary used a screwdriver to vandalize the club's speakers. This came after only five songs, during which time Haynes had started a small fire. —Wikipedia

With all of their core and most consistent members along for the ride, Webster Hall's Butthole Surfers reunion concert last night promised to be an entertaining one. It was the last night of the tour, and Paul Green's School of Rock All Stars were also contributing to the Butthole Surfers lineup.

I arrived late, missing all but one song of The School Of Rock's set. MC Trachiotomy & Th' Terribleness  followed The School Of Rock All Stars. The were so terrible that when MC Trachiotomy announced "this will be our last song," the crowd roared with applause.

The Butthole Surfers took the stage around 10:15, and for the first 60 minutes, they were really pretty tame. Then, late into the set, Haynes' frustration with the stage-side sound engineer turned into spectacle. He persistently motioned to turn the monitors up. Pissed off, Gibby gave him the middle finger, walked over to him multiple times and according to fans threw a bottle at him, and/or punched him in the face. From my angle from the balcony, I could see none of this action, and when security came on stage mid-song to remove Haynes, we were all left pretty dumbfounded. The inebriated Haynes made a comical gesture and made his early exit. The rest of the band managed one more song with guitarist Paul Leary handling the vocals.

Leary and the remaining members left the stage, never to return, after handing out some hi-fives. The house music was turned on and the band was obviously not returning for an encore, especially with Gibby having been kicked out of the venue.

The crowd then became angry, chanting for "Gibby," then chants of bullshit!" and finally chants of "refund!" followed. Upset fans hurled whatever they could at the stage and at the security staff, who tried to settle them down. The infamous Genesis P-Orridge walked out onto the littered stage, and after attempts to speak into the dead mics, and to silence the crowd, she was pulled from the stage by security as well.

One fan was mauled by a security guard after jumping onto the stage to receive a set list, but despite a room filled with disappointed, angry, drunken Butthole Surfers fans, riotous hysteria was avoided.

The sound mix was far from perfect, but it was still a good show, and it's questionable if Gibby was justified in whatever actions he took (punching, bottle throwing...etc). It would have been nice to see the band finish the set, but what would a Butthole Surfers show be without at least a little unhinged bedlam?




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I missed the Hercules and Love Affair show at Studio B earlier this summer, but wasn't going to miss the return performance of the fab dance band that has somehow infiltrated the drudgery of the indie music ranks and caused folks to dance. I especially wanted to see how the eight-piece live band was able to adapt the electronic tunes and Nomi, et. al. handled vocals that I'd grown to know as Antony tracks.

I shouldn't have worried. I first heard Nomi's album a couple of years ago and assigned a story based on the strength of her vocals and confident manner. The transgender performer, who looks damn near amazing in her bright and shiny dresses and bulging bosoms (something easily overlooked in the Pitchfork press), has an incredible stage presence and knows how to wow.

Friday night's show was late enough (beginning around midnight) that those APW folks could have dragged themselves in if they weren't too starstruck from Radiohead. But no worries: we were enjoying the dance party, watching the black vogue dancers on strange amidst the brass and keyboards. Sure, someone's bound to come along and start hating on such fun music, and it may be hard to maintain past this season, when people are ready to anoint the next new thing. But I'm not such a fickle music fan. Hercules and Love Affair deserve to stick around and maybe now Nomi will be able to get a gang to dance at one of her solo shows.


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David Berman said, after passing through the crowd to get to the stage, that Maxwell’s is the only place he requested to play at on the whole Silver Jews tour. The tiny, 300-person venue in Hoboken has a lot of history, and one of the best sound systems around. It’s also the perfect place to see a band you really love because the stage is small and low to the ground. Everything is very personal in a room that size. It seemed to fit Berman well—his austere and slightly hunched over body roaming the small stage like a panther.

The Silver Jews started out in the 1990s, and had never toured until recently. It was clear from the die-hards in the crowd that this was a very welcomed performance. (I was standing next to one guy who said he’d gone to the previous 2 performances as well. And he was making notes in a tiny Moleskin journal, too.)

Berman’s voice, if you can imagine for a moment, sounds something like a mix between a stern lecture from a respected professor and a bedtime story told by a beloved uncle. In other words, it’s both pleasant and jarring. Oratorical and operatic. He talks rather than sings a lot of the time, though the sounds he emits are melodic. Only his deep, baritone voice can deliver lyrics like, “In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection.”

The band, circled around Berman and with two guitarists battling it out for the best riffs, played many songs off the Silver Jews’ new album, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea. A few classics were thrown in, including the song from which the above lyrics were taken, “Random Rules.”

Berman is one of the most interesting performers I’ve seen. And his appearance cannot be overlooked—he was wearing his own band’s shirt (a member of my party was offended, I thought it was probably the only clean shirt around), plastic yellow sunglasses and had two black Sharpies in his pocket.

It was refreshing to see a band that isn’t obsessed with image. Berman is not a stud. He’s a person with a penchant for quirky lyrics and storytelling. In a song from the new album, “Strange Victory, Strange Defeat,” he sings: “What’s with all the handsome grandsons in these rock band magazines? What have they done with the fat ones, the bald and the goateed?”

Berman was said to have attempted suicide some years ago and has had trouble with drugs. But watching him last night, all that couldn’t seem farther away. His wife Cassie plays a powerful bass and sings backup on songs, most notably “Suffering Jukebox” from the new album. The lively onstage relations between the husband and wife—he would lovingly-stare as she played and would often stand behind her—made their love palpable.

The band played for well over an hour and the energy never dropped.

Opening for the Silver Jews was Chris Brokaw a performer who also got his start in the ’90s indie scene. Brokaw played solo guitar with his signature tambourine attached to his foot for percussive accompaniment. Brokaw is a skilled guitar player, and I don’t think he hears songs and melody as much as he hears sound. Everything he plays is a sort of challenge to the ear.

Even Berman acknowledged the high-caliber of Brokaw. During the Silver Jews set he said he was happy to play with him and if he had known Brokaw was available he would have brought him along for the whole tour.



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In 1979, not long after the cremation of John Simon Richie—better known as Sid Vicious—a suicide note was found. The note read: " We had a death pact. I have to keep my half of the bargain. Please bury me next to my baby. Bury me in my leather jacket, jeans and motorcycle boots. Goodbye."

Even in death, the punk rock fashion-plate wanted to look cool.

But he wasn't the only one that made wearing the leather jacket cool. From James Dean to Arthur Fonzarelli, the leather jacket has become a fashion choice that often defines cool. Rock stars are probably the biggest supporters of the leather jacket industry outside of bikers.

Albert Hammond Jr. was sporting a black leather jacket when he opened up his special invite-only performance at Mercury Lounge on Tuesday night. Standing on the side benches of the small club, Hammond Jr. was struck with a series of camera flashes so persistent that they acted as strobes, as he played an acoustic rendition of "101." As distracting as those flashes should have been, he seemed unfazed, and it was a pretty magical moment.

Soon after, Hammond Jr. was on stage with his backing band under the heat of stage lights, but that jacket wasn't coming off. And he wasn't the only one sporting the leather. The only member of the five-piece that had on a T-shirt was the drummer, but drummers simply can't play while wearing leather jackets, so he's forgiven.

Albert, who has always been a bit of a fashion-plate in the rock scene, has been said to be the most influential on the style of The Strokes (for whom he plays guitar). Much of the time, he's decked out in a three-piece suit, but looked no less stylish in his black leather.

Why is it so necessary to point out the band's outfits? Well, it was really, really hot inside Mercury Lounge. The crowd, mostly sensible enough to be wearing short-sleeves, was sweating bullets, and the stage had to be at least another 5-10 degrees hotter. Albert Hammond Jr., under the most direct light, was dripping in sweat, constantly needing to wipe his face. He seemed uncomfortable and jokingly asked about the club's air conditioning. Fans yelled for him to remove the jacket, but the frontman was unwilling.

After rolling a bit more than halfway through an energetic set, playing a lot of new songs off his promising upcoming album Como te Llama?, Hammond Jr finally unzipped the jacket. But he went no further.
 
What was it that forced Hammond Jr. to put himself through such discomfort just to maintain a look? This wasn't a fashion show, it was a concert. It's as if the rock star was hiding something absolutely hideous beneath the jacket, but when he finally did unzip it, no frightening green goblins jumped out of his chest. Perhaps he has record label execs and stylists grooming him so fastidiously about his image he doesn’t want to mar it by acting like any natural guy would and throw the jacket down. Ol’ Albert must know he’s a star and if he doesn’t look his best, someone’ll snap a pic of him looking less than his self-styled brand of cool. So instead he’ll suffer—and sweat.

This is in no way a knock on leather jackets. I love leather, so much so that the word Leather is written on my birth certificate.

Photo by Dave Caplan/Bumpershine.com


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As if born from the soundtrack of as-yet-unreleased popular movie, Uh Huh Her’s debut album, Common Reaction, has all the necessary components to become big. Part of the reason for this predicted success is due to the profile of front woman Leisha Hailey, who plays the sexy and spunky Alice Pieszecki on Showtime's lesbian drama, The L Word. Despite her celebrity status, this isn’t a case of “actor makes record,” Hailey’s history includes, while not the best bands out there, playing with the Murmurs and Gush.

The other half of Uh Huh Her, classically trained pianist Camila Gray, has also been in the music scene for a time and worked with Indy rock band Mellowdrone and various other artist like Kelly Osborne and Dr. Dre. Both Hailey and Gray sing on the album, their pretty voices weaving in and out of mellowed out dance beats laced with heavy electronic bursts and echoing melodies. Producer Al Clay, who worked with Blur, the Pixies and Pink, exerted his magic with the songs, helping to make them feel smooth and polished.

The name Uh Huh Her comes from the 2004 PJ Harvey album of the same title, but that is where the similarities stop. Instead of Harvey’s throaty, anger-driven songs, Uh Huh Her’s music consists of romantic lyrics and smoothly mixed synthesized notes from the keyboard.  The resulting 11 tracks are a cross between the dance pop groups Everything but the Girl and Frou Frou. The song “Everyone” is an emotional epic emitting electronic bubbles of sound around wistful vocals. In the song “Dreamer” the singing sounds like it is pouring from above and slowly raining down beautiful words on the listener.  The music also has an underscore of 1980s, Depeche Mode-like beats, especially in songs like “Away From Here” and “Common Reaction.”

Based in Los Angeles, Uh Huh Her sold out shows in London and New York after the release of an EP, I See Red, in 2007. While Hailey has said she considers herself as much a musician as she does an actress, it will be hard to separate the two and many girl-happy fans will flock to see the band on tour this fall, if for anything, to see her. Of course, in a world of connections and names, Hailey’s popularity can only help the band come out more.



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"People change" sang Nick Lowe yesterday. And so, apparently, do media festivals. Giving the intimate crowd at the Canal Room, a snappy 30 minutes of solo acoustic pop, veteran musician Lowe kicked off the upcoming week of music presented as part of the currently-under-way Tribeca Film Festival. Considerably more modest than, say, SXSW's foray into film (Tribeca, in logical collaboration with song-licensers ASCAP, has just four daytime shows at Canal Room this week and a Hold Steady gig at Webster Hall on Friday), and the afternoon line-up is a concentrated dose of high-profile singer-songwriters.

Lowe, now close to 60, is perhaps more of a cult figure than an outright star, but when he tore through his more famous-than-him-number "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love And Understanding?" yesterday to close his set, sporting spiffy Chuck Taylors on his feet, it offered a potent argument for rock being more than a young man's game.

On the youth end of things, though, former Nickel Creeker and virtuoso Mandolin player Chris Thile (pictured) managed to more than hold his own a little later on. Shifting between clever pop songs ("Will you set me up with one of your friends?" one number asked a soon-to-be ex) and some serious small-neck fretwork, Thile presented work from his current group, Punch Brothers, with the same earnest manner that he offered some bluegrassed-up Bach. Making Johann Sebastian sound like some regular Saturday night fun at the 'holler was a feat in itself, but after turning the White Stripes' "Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground" into a mandolin anthem, the crowd was sufficiently convinced that he could managed big things from a solo performance on a small instrument.

It'd be hard to argue that the big-ticket for day one at Canal wasn't Regina Spektor, as the chance to see her in such a small space had the crowd packed in tight by 5:30 PM yesterday as she took the stage. The Bronxer, clad in a blue dress, started out things on the piano, offering simple wisdom: "You're young until you're not; you love until you don't." She was in more than just polite chanteuse mood, though, as, apart from switching to a '50s-diner blue electric guitar, she also played the piano one-handed while pummeling a chair with a drumstick for percussive effect. She did ultimately return to the piano for her final song, crowd-pleasing immensely with "Fidelity," stretch-singing the word "heart" into an impossibly long and pretty succession of syllables as she accompanied herself on the keys. She'll be young until she's not—that's for certain—but if she caught Nick Lowe earlier in the day, she might not be afraid of getting a little older.


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What a great week of music—much of it outdoors, with unseasonably mild weather to make it that much better. The two-man storm-of-sound Black Keys flooded McCarren Pool last Thursday; Radiohead and a bunch of amazing-in-their-own-right-but-superfluous-in-the-moment openers pleased the masses at All Points West (which I missed, but with good reason); that bright Conor Oberst and his new Mystic Valley Band were pretty dang good at the Bowery Tuesday night and, bringing it full circle, Wilco put the icing on the cake at McCarren last night.
 
Word apparently got out that their set would start at 7 pm sharp, because it looked like nearly every one of the 3000 or so people who showed up had the same idea—“I’ll get there at 6:55”—which meant twenty-plus minute waits at the gate. Which was probably the reason the set didn’t actually get under way till closer to 8.
 
Jeff Tweedy’s band of Windy City slicksters, looking dapper as ever, opened up with “Via Chicago,” coaxing that cataclysmic ruckus they do so well, then braking on a dime into you-could-hear-a-pin-drop silence they do so well too, then returning to Brobdingnagian cacaphony, and then back again into a black-hole vacuum. It’s a tactic they’ve mastered, and no one else executes it quite as beautifully.
 
Wilco continued to slip seamlessly from their softer, gentler roots into their distorted proggish noise-scapes, showing off their range of ability and diversity of style. They gave equal attention to every album in their catalog including their Mermaid Avenue collaborations with Billy Bragg. I was repeatedly blown away by how they can take songs that sound so exquisitely produced on their studio recordings—such as the quasi-anthem “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”—and pull them off in concert with the same degree of precision , exacting just as much of a visceral effect, if not more.
 
After fifteen songs, the sextet busted into the rave-ish extended dance mix, “Spiders (Kidsmoke).” I think that it’s safe to say that the crowd, which was dense with Wilco’s cultish devotees, would have been more than satisfied if that had been the end of things. But Wilco wasn’t done with Brooklyn just yet. They returned to the stage for an hour-long, eleven-song double encore that amounted to a surprise second set. This sequel included a lot of personal favorites—like “I’m the Man Who Loves You,” “The Late Greats,” and “Kingpin”—many of which were complemented by a trio of horns (referred to by Tweedy simply as the “Total Pros”) that had joined the band intermittently throughout the night.
 
Although Wilco initially held the mantle of alt.country pioneers in their early days, last night proved that their evolution—which shifted into high gear around the turn of the millennium—has brought us one of the best rock bands alive today. And, to answer Tweedy’s question that he howled last night, “Do you still love rock and roll?” Yes. Very much.













Photos by Jonny-Leather


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Morrissey fans, stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but our beloved Moz is headed for Vegas. At least, that’s the idea I couldn’t shake as I watched him on stage last night at Hammerstein Ballroom. As he whipped his microphone cord, pulled his hands through his pompadour and sweat through his electric blue slacks and blue silk shirt (with just enough chest exposed), it was images of lounge-singer Elvis or Wayne Newton that continued to surface.

The band of boys in white shirts and bow ties added to the overall effect. And drummer Matt Walker's incredible percussion skills included repeated gong hits that made for some sort of fabulous, over-the-top demonstration of masculinity that seemed perfect for a big, glitz and glamour Las Vegas review.

But wait. Perhaps it’s not such a bad future but an answer to your dreams. Instead of waiting expectantly for another mega-tour so you can bring your gladiolas to throw on the stage when he finally sings a Smiths song (last night’s “How Soon is Now” still made me tingle), it’ll be five shows a week—and the possibility of white tigers and gold lamé.

It was when I saw the throng of young men fight over the black T-shirt that read “Je suis Morrissey”—the one he had first wiped over his body and brow for full sweat effect—that I knew it would happen. Why continue to tour the world when he can take up residence, like an aging James Dean, in the land of desert dreams?

Photo by Jonny-Leather. See more photos of last night's show here.



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