Love Goes To Buildings On Fire

Blondie cover Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” 1979

Will Hermes — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:15:56 +0000

To continue the tribute…

Here’s a 7-minute live version of “I Feel Love.” Chris Stein’s guitar lines sound like he’s about to segue into “Black Magic Woman” or maybe “Riders On The Storm.” And Debbie Harry totally nails it.

Happy Birthday David Byrne

Will Hermes — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:51:37 +0000

And on a more upbeat note: David Byrne turned 60 on Monday. I like the pose with the chef’s knife; very Psycho Killer. Best wishes, dude!

Donna Summer 1948 – 2012

Will Hermes — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:26:21 +0000

I just heard that Donna Summer has died, at age 63, after a battle with cancer.

She was known as a disco diva. But you could just as rightly call her an r&b, pop, or experimental-music singer. I write about what was arguably her greatest recording in Love Goes To Buildings On Fire

On May 13, 1977, Casablanca released Donna Summer’s I Remember Yesterday. A concept album about musical evolution, it ends with a song that is ostensibly the future: “I Feel Love.” She cooed, “Love To Love You Baby” style, over a chugging track made up entirely of synth beats and arpeggiated chord washes, a yin to Kraftwerk’s yang. New York DJs loved it instantly. As unprecedented as “Trans Europe Express,” it became just as essential, an electronic dance music template. Blondie covered it live, faithfully, with Chris Stein adding Santana-style guitar licks. In Berlin, Brian Eno rushed into the studio where he and David Bowie were working on Heroes with a fresh copy of the record, raving that it would change the sound of club music “for the next 15 years” (Eno was fond of grand statements). One can imagine the record spinning while the two Philip Glass fans listened to its hypnotic repetitions, the sonic possibilities blooming in their minds like flowers in a stop-motion film.

Above, she performs “I Feel Love” on The Midnight Special television show in 1977. RIP.

Grateful Dead: Ithaca, NY, 5/8/77 – the band’s greatest live show ever?

Will Hermes — Tue, 08 May 2012 21:04:08 +0000

As The New York Times has documented, some have made that claim.

As far as I can tell from bootlegs I’ve heard, the show — which took place 35 years ago today — comes close. But my judgement might be colored by sentimentality. As I wrote in Love Goes To Buildings On Fire, I missed that particular concert:

In March the Voice ran a cover story titled “Why We Hate The Subways,” and everyone had their own tales. Me, I’d been mugged on trains a few times, twice at knifepoint, coming home from Manhattan shows alone at night. But the worst was in May, when I was stuck on a broken-down E train for an hour en route to Port Authority to meet a girl I was cross-eyed crushed-out on. She had tickets to see the Grateful Dead five hours north that night, at Cornell University’s Barton Hall. When I finally arrived, the girl and the bus, the last of the day, were gone. At the time, I was more upset about missing the girl. But in time, via magnetic tape, Barton Hall 5/8/77 would enter Dead lore as arguably the single greatest show the band ever played.

Fucking subway.

You can stream an excellent recording of the show I missed here.

Springsteen plays “The Weight”

Will Hermes — Sun, 06 May 2012 21:26:01 +0000

In memory of Levon Helm…

The crowd sing-along is pretty remarkable. And it’s a surprisingly good fit for Bruce lyrically, doncha think?

The shows have been so moving on this tour, to judge from the one I saw in Albany, New York; the reviews; and the video clips. I feel really fortunate that Springsteen decided to keep touring with the E Street band after the death of Clarence Clemons.

By the way, here a piece I did for NPR about Levon Helm, who was a neighbor of mine here in the Mid-Hudson Valley. He will be missed. It’s been a rough year.

New York City Punk + New Wave Family Tree

Will Hermes — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:20:44 +0000

Couldn’t resist posting this: Pete Frame’s amazing family tree for the Patti Smith Group, Blondie, Talking Heads, Television, The Ramones, and The Heartbreakers, with links to The NY Dolls and The Modern Lovers for good measure.

Too bad he couldn’t fit in Arthur Russell, who led a band with The Modern Lovers’ Ernie Brooks and played cello on “Psycho Killer.” He was one of the era’s great musical polyglots.

Lost television recordings

Will Hermes — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 12:41:30 +0000

You may recall the video links I posted a while back of the band Television rehearsing in 1974.

Well, the good folks at Doom & Gloom From The Tomb (yes, that’s a Richard Thompson reference) have been posting more crucial documents of the era. The first was titled Kingdom Come: The Lost Television Album. It’s a compilation of songs captured between ’74 – ’78 that never made it onto the band’s two Elektra releases.

Last week, they posted Television: A Season In Hell – a set of recordings made when the band still featured punk conceptualist Richard Hell on bass. Download both while you can: they are the best-sounding and best-annotated sources I’ve found for this stuff. Thanks D&GFTT!

Below: a flier for the very first Television gig, which in fact did not take place at CBGBs, but at the Townhouse Theater in Times Square, an old movie theater that the Modern Lovers had rented out for a show around the same time, as I mention in Love Goes To Buildings On Fire.

Subway Salsa

Will Hermes — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:29:26 +0000

Back in the ’70s, the most remarkable record shop for Latin music in New York City was literally underground: Record Mart, in the mezzanine level of the Times Square subway complex. It was operated by Jesse Moskowitz, arguably the most important Jewish dude in NYC salsa after Larry Harlow. The shop closed in 1999, but reopened in 2007 about 50 feet down from it’s original location. Jesse was still there the last time I checked.

He also ran a small but important label, Montuno, which operated out of the back of the shop. It’s the subject of this hot, beautifully-documented collection on Spain’s excellent Vampisoul label, out this week. Sample it by clicking on the speaker icon here at Descarga, a very cool e-shop which also seems to have the best price on it. Or stop by Record Mart the next time you’re in Times Square.

As the set shows, NYC’s Afro-Caribbean mix was informed by more than just Puerto Rican, Cuban and Dominican salsa sounds. One of the hottest tracks is “Ensem’…Ensem’…” by the local Haitian compa crew Scorpio, below. Check the sick electric keyboard squeals (or is that Robert Martino’s guitar?) around 01:05. Makes me wonder if the Grandmaster Flash + Furious Five crusher “Scorpio” was a nod towards these guys.

Bjork @ The New York Hall of Science

Will Hermes — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:04:00 +0000

Bjork will be playing another concert at the New York Hall of Science–located on the old World’s Fair grounds in Corona, Queens– this Sunday, after cancelling yesterday’s show due to “health issues,” according to The New York Times. The final shows of the run will be 2/15 and 2/18.

Read my NPR review of last Friday’s remarkable concert here.

Below are some of the instruments Bjork employed for the show. In order: a four-unit iPad array, gravity harps, Tesla coils, remotely-triggered pipe organs, the Reactable, the Graduale Nobili choir (w/ DNA projections), and the Queen Bee. And finally, the 2/3/12 setlist.

Luc Sante on Patti Smith

Will Hermes — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:26:19 +0000

Sante is one of our greatest cultural critics and historians, especially with regard to New York City. (See his essential Low Life, for starters.)

If there’s a sharper and more succinct piece on the life and art of Patti Smith than his recent essay in The New York Review Of Books, I haven’t read it. You can read it here.