Mike Check

                                                                                 Photos by Eric Layton

Mike Gordon
Wonder Ballroom
Portland, OR
March 19, 2014
Portland is Phish-starved. It's been 15 years since the band performed in these parts (no, the Gorge, five hours away, does not count), so an appearance by one of the principals is bound to sell out. Sure enough, the Wonder Ballroom Mike Gordon show was just that, packed with grooving throngs quite thrilled to get even a taste of the Vermont jam rock kings.

And that's what this show was, for better and worse: a sample of Phish. By any standard, Gordon is a monster bassist, and really likable. But he's not a terribly ambitious songwriter, nor is he reinventing the improvisational rock music wheel by any stretch of the imagination. But he did bring a road-tested posse of players (guitarist Scott Murawski, keyboardist Tom Cleary, drummer Todd Isler, percussionist and electronic noisemaker Craig Myers) and some fresh tunes.

Sonically, very little transpired at the Wonder Ballroom that was unfamiliar to anyone in attendance. To be fair, Gordon served up six palatable new pieces from his new album Overstep, including the folky, falsetto-accented "Jumping" and the mid-tempo, spiraling "Surface." With 21 songs performed, that's under a third of the music. Covers and other solo material, such as "Green Sparrow," which morphed into one of the night's choicest jams, filled out the set. Quite notably, only two Phish songs were offered (and oddball choices at that: "Meat" and the rarity "Spock's Beard"), a miserly decision that could nearly be construed as a slap in the face to Phishheads, particularly in the scope of a lengthy, two-set concert. Would one more Phish song, heaven forbid even one of his signature favorites ("Mike's Song" or "Weigh" for instance), detracted from the fact that this was Gordon striking out on his own? Unlikely. Would it have sent the night's already high audience energy into ecstatic overdrive? Absolutely.

While a spirited, patchouli-scented debate could emerge about Gordon establishing his own brand and identity outside the leviathan that is Phish, the glaring reality is, the guy's been in Phish for three decades and he's dyed to the marrow, irrevocably shaped by that band's idiom. Not a single note played at this gig (outside of Myers' synth accents) would have been out of place at a Phish show. That said, the entire affair might have been exactly what Gordon intended all along: a casual, fun outing for a musician would be bored silly at home otherwise, waiting for the giant machine of his primary gig to fire up again this summer.

                                  

Indeed, several moments at the Wonder Ballroom felt like Gordon had wandered down to his local watering hole and sat in with the Saturday night cover band. Perhaps that's the vibe he was after, and sometimes it worked well (a sharp reading of The Beatles' "She Said She Said" was a nice surprise), and at other junctures, it was totally head-scratching, i.e. the Murawski-sung cover of Alanis Morissette's "Hand in My Pocket." 

That's not to say this night was a loss by any means; people danced, laughed, and one young woman even rocked a huge disco wig, apropos of nothing. It was a nifty, positive outing for the Portland Society of Neglected Phishheads, and Gordon was undeniably engaged and sharing his vastly impressive bass skills. Boiled down to its essence, though, this seemed a mere diversion, a tasty appetizer to the larger Phish meal that is rumored to be hitting the West Coast this fall. (Don't despair, phans... Portland and Seattle are both being whispered about as destinations on the upcoming tour.)

Setlist:

Set 1: Jumping, Radar Blip, Jones, Spiral, Spock's Brain, Twists and Bends, Angatta, She Said She Said, Tiny Little World

Set 2: Surface, Meat, Long Black Line, Peel, Another Door, Mississippi, Morphing Again, Hand in My Pocket, Soulfood Man

Encore: Yarmouth Road, Skin It Back

The Zappa Never Stops...

Zappa Plays Zappa
Roseland - Portland, Oregon
January 31, 2014
Sometimes, you have to slim down to maximize your power. In the case of Zappa Plays Zappa, guitarist Dweezil Zappa's labor of love honoring his dad Frank, where there were once nine musicians onstage, there are now six (and only one founding ZPZ member apart from Dweezil, multi-instrumentalist Scheila Gonzalez). Given the complexity and details of the music being presented, this headcount reduction might have spelled trouble. As evidenced at Roseland, however, less is more: Zappa Plays Zappa is now leaner, sharper, and still confident enough to dive into a dangerous, mudshark-infested catalog that, by any performance standard, is a total "adult swim."

Zappa's a fortunate son. Like his late father, who had a notorious ear for only the finest musicians, he's managed to locate five skilled players game, spirited, and possessed of the needed sense of humor to present Frank's virtuosic, satire-laden music: Gonzales (sax, flute, keyboards, vocals); the easy-to-underestimate Ben Thomas (vocals, percussion, bad dancing); Chris Norton (keyboards); Kurt Morgan (bass); and Ryan Brown (drums). This is a fresh, relatively youthful band, and the momentum and vivaciousness on display at the Roseland was undeniable.

Zappa Plays Zappa, on the road in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the 1974 Frank Zappa & The Mothers album Roxy & Elsewhere (played in sequence and in its entirety at every tour stop) christened this voyage with the instrumental "Filthy Habits," a track from the minor 1979 record Sleep Dirt. It was an exploration of an especially remote corner of the Zappa universe, but that's so Dweezil. After all, this is a man who has dug up such exquisite truffles as "Latex Solar Beef" and "Chrissy Puked Twice" on past jaunts.

Dweezil and the gang were clearly on a mission to win anew the hearts of hardcore Zappa fans (is there any other kind?). They unspooled the knotty Roxy album deliberately and with seeming ease, from the clowning oddity "Penguin in Bondage" (with Thomas chewing the lyrical scenery and mugging) to "Cheepnis," and all the way to "Bebop Tango (of the Old Jazzmen's Church)," which featured an impromptu audience member dance-off onstage.

Fans dancing onstage? What is this, a Flaming Lips show? Careful, Dweezil, some might even slap the label "fun" on all this. Past tours have found D-Zap running through the sets with cool efficiency if not always with apparent enjoyment; on this evening, he seemed to be loose, relaxed, and yet still, crucially, on point. Eight years in, what some dismiss as merely a tribute act has evolved into a pleasantly merciless, shape-shifting venture through difficult compositions, all expressly for a knowing island of misfit fans.

Dweezil's guitar prowess was most strikingly demonstrated at two junctures of the night, first on what was a knockout version of the downward-spiraling phantasmagoria "The Torture Never Stops" and then on "Florentine Pogen," where his soloing was astral and nothing short of commanding. Also deserving extra note is drummer Brown, who pushed through the material with a snappy, flexible energy and held everything together. Gonzales also continues to be a marvel, a quadruple-threat so gifted and in on the joke that she's enlisted to carry the purposefully off-key singing of "I Come from Nowhere" from 1982's Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch. And if the faithful weren't into that obscurity, well, there were the perverse pleasures of Sheik Yerbouti's "Flakes" (Gonzales dropping a nice Eric Cartman impression on this one) and "Broken Hearts are for Assholes," boasting what has to be popular music's one and only usage of the phrase "wristwatch Crisco."

Sparkling wordplay, a representative haul of the Zappa repertoire, and most of all, a scholarly son whose ongoing creative self-actualization, compelled by birthright, has given a global fellowship of outsider music fans a most satisfying refuge. The Zappa never stops.

Setlist:

Filthy Habits

"Roxy & Elsewhere":

Penguin in Bondage

Pygmy Twylyte

Dummy Up

Village of the Sun

Echidna's Arf (Of You)

Don't You Ever Wash That Thing?

Cheepnis

Son of Orange County

More Trouble Every Day

Be-Bop Tango (Of the Old Jazzmen's Church)

The Torture Never Stops

Teen-Age Wind

Teenage Prostitute

The Black Page #1

The Black Page #2

What's New in Baltimore?

Florentine Pogen

Flakes

Broken Hearts Are for Assholes

I Come From Nowhere

Cosmik Debris

Encore:

Stink-Foot

Don't Eat the Yellow Snow

Zomby Woof

Spring(steen)-ing Eternal

Bruce Springsteen 
and the E Street Band

High Hopes

Columbia Records

Times are always tough for someone, and Bruce Springsteen, as durable a lighthouse in rock as has ever existed, is always there to address the struggle and provide reassurance. And when belts are tightened, a "waste not, want not" mentality is adopted. It's this intent behind High Hopes, an album made up of years of outtakes, covers, and live Boss staples refashioned and shined up. This is a refurbished muscle car of sorts, with lightning stripes on the sides slapped on by guitar alchemist/fellow Woody Guthrie and social justice enthusiast Tom Morello. And it's a mostly thrilling and memorable ride, but it can also break down once in awhile.

Two shrill guitar notes are sent out like distress flares at the outset the title track, a cry for help that sums up the thesis statement of the record, as well as the thought behind this widescreen folk rave-up that is the strongest work here. "High Hopes" is a cover from Tim Scott McConnell of the now-defunct Los Angeles-based act The Havalinas, and it's a welcome development that the time-constrained Springsteen is loosening up his controlling tendencies and featuring works by others on a studio album; there are three tunes by outsiders here, including Aussie punk band The Saints' "Just Like Fire Would" and Suicide's meditative "Dream Baby Dream."

Leaning on others is key to hope, and it's also something that happens all over Springsteen's 18th studio release. In a "young man, help me across the street"-type way, the 64-year-old is leaning at practically a 45-degree angle on fretboard pyrotechnician Morello (Rage Against the Machine, The Nightwatchman), featured on no less than eight of the 12 tracks here. It's a good thing that Morello is a mercenary creative force and confident enough to hang with the Boss. He torches, he scorches, he mimics vinyl scratching, he scuffs and squeals, and is given so much leeway in the volcanic, devastating poverty tale "The Ghost of Tom Joad" that Springsteen lets him sing half the verses (to the unsurprising chagrin of some Bruce purists). No matter; this is a torrid bromance forged in the mud of humanism.

Elsewhere, Springsteen lightens the mood, churning out out some let-out-the-slack, "Come on STEVE!" party rock with "Frankie Fell in Love," which could not exist without the shared history and harmonies of his longtime blood brother, mugging TV star/E Streeter Steven Van Zandt. The number is a direct descendant of "Ramrod" and they'd pair exceedingly well together live, just as Bruce and Steve do.

High Hopes demonstrates that Springsteen can still surprise in this late career hour. The pulsating criminal tale "Harry's Place" is a noirish gambit that would have been a terrific theme song to "The Sopranos." Furthermore, it's as Leonard Cohen-esque in lyrics and vibe as Springsteen has ever gotten. Speak-singing like it was a lost track from Cohen's coolly apocalyptic 1993 album The Future, the Boss rasps jaded-wisdom lines like "You need a little shot of something to improve your health/A taste of that one little weakness you allow yourself."

But alas, if only all the material was up to the level of "High Hopes" and "Harry's Place." Buried deep in the middle lies "This is Your Sword," which, for all its encouraging intentions, comes off trite and fit for a singalong children's album, or even better, relegated to a second edition of Bruce's song clearinghouse anthology Tracks. 

The larger disappointment here is "American Skin (41 Shots)" which fails not in its content but in its execution on record. A condemning, quiet song written in response to New York City police shooting Amadou Diallo in 1999, and finding modern relevance with the Trayvon Martin case, this contemplation of injustice suffers because it's backwards engineered. Debuted live in 2000 and brought out again this past year on the Springsteen concert stage, it breathes best in the live moment, charged with immediacy and distinguished by the experience of others hearing it alongside of you. In interviews for this album, Springsteen has said he wanted certain unrecorded live songs to have more authority by being on an official album, but the opposite has occurred; "American Skin (41 Shots)" needn't have been polished and formalized in this way, as a well-produced recent live version of it would have sufficed and been authoritative enough. Springsteen has deliberated about "selling that which can't be bought" in regards to his booming concert business and what brings people back night after night; it's unfortunate he didn't think through that same ethos in this instance. Past emotions are vibrant and real, but they resist being distilled for longevity.

Springsteen's missteps seem to be forgivable overall, particularly when he drops an evocative work like "Hunter of Invisible Game," a weary, cinematic ballad referencing "empty cities," "burning plains," and "empires of dust." Through it all, his voice is resolute. High hopes, for him, spring eternal.