Petty Fest 2010

Tom Petty's 60th bday, celebrated in style with the likes of Adam Green, Nikolai Fraiture, Norah Jones, Will Forte and Jason Sudeikis, and more. John Hamm was hiding in the back, Catherine Pierce was gorgeous, and someone in the crowd kept yelling "sexy drummer" to none other than Matt Romano (looking less Guido than usual w/out his mustache.) Evan Dando sang an old fave "A Face In the Crowd" and I almost died. I recommend any Petty fan to go next year because every song kicks ass when a packed house sings with you. Best time I've had in a long time, thanks dudes.

HELP THE DEAD TREES

If you read my blog, then you already know that I LOVE the Dead Trees and have for quite some time. Dudes are recording an album right now, and they need your help! Please visit their Kickstarter page and pledge $$$ to help them make their album. These guys not only kick ass musically, but they are also genuinely NICE. The 3rd time I saw them live, they gave me a copy of their EP just cause I asked for one. And did I mention how CUTE they are? They have every flavor of hipster going for them: cherub in flannel, tattooed quiet guitar god, motorcycle mustache man, and quirky smiley drummer. How could you not want them to succeed? Watch the video below to get more info and watch out for cameos from all your faves: Fabulous, The Whigs, Wade from The Virgins, and everyone's favorite freak attack Adam Green.

I pledged my $$ today. Did you? DO it! Also catch them opening for AG at Bowery Ballroom April 23 and 24.

no one should ever hold me up

Adam Green's new album Minor Love came out in North America on Tuesday, and I bought it on Wednesday. Side note: the photos that make up the album artwork (including cameos from the Jahhhman brothers) are AMAZE CRAZE. I've listened to the album a few times, and I'm really happy with it. Much happier than I ever will be with his last studio album Sixes and Sevens. Maybe divorce has done Adam some good? Whatever the case may be, his creativity and willingness to indulge in various musical stylings still dominate his artistic output. A song like "Oh Shucks" sounds super lo-fi, almost as if it could come off of Garfield. "Cigarette Burns Forever" makes use of a vocal echo and classic AG guitar strumming and surreal rhymes about private parties and "magic sandals." "Give Them a Token" sounds a little like "Losing on a Tuesday" and makes use of one of my favorite Mexican slangs: cabron.

As always, though, in the middle of Adam's soundscape of feigned ridiculousness, the existential gems of truth and sadness that populate his songs stand out and make him truly great. In "Breaking Locks" Adam sings about checking into a hotel for some solitary contemplation, calling someone to cure himself of confusion, and going out into the streets to find some "blood." (Metaphor for whatever it is that we all feel compelled to find to ensure our own personal survival?) In the chorus he sings, "No one should ever hold me up," calling himself out for being guilty, "awful" and basically un-back-up-able for his dirty deeds of the past. But "No one should ever hold me up" speaks to Adam's autonomy as a human as well, and one can read it as a (tired, though it may be) refrain that AG uses to remind himself that he can get through it all alone.

You can too.

Homeboy will play Bowery Ballroom on April 23 and April 24. I suggest getting tickets and getting there early if you want to be in the front for some microphone singing with the man himself, but be sure to wear sturdy shoes and a helmet if you don't wanna get one of Adam's Capezio flats in the face when he ambles into or launches himself onto the crowd. He's deceptively dead weighted, that skinny fucker.

adam green and the dead trees open up for the cribs

So, last night the Dead Trees and Adam Green (supported by DT) opened for The Cribs at Irving Plaza/The Fillmore. Because I love both opening acts so much, they deserve their own post. The above pics are in opposite of chronological order from top to bottom. Dead Trees (now from LA?) started out with early songs "Television" and "Shelter." They played tight, clean Pavementy songs as usual, and I can't say enough about how underrated these guys are! (And sexy... my friend once called lead singer Michael a "fucking cherub," but my heart stops for guitarist/keyboardist/gray tee-shirt wearing skinny dream of a man Matt.) If you can't spring for their excellent album King of Rosa, then d/load their latest Daytrotter set.

Now, onto Adam Green. I kind of want to talk about him in the context of Julian Casablancas. My first exposure to AG happened at the Central Park Summerstage show The Strokes did in 2003. Adam opened up, and I was like, who is this freaky, skinny little Jules-Woody-Dave Grohl mix singing like Jim Morisson and dancing like a toddler? And I quickly learned and devoured his at-the-time tiny oeurve. Over the years, Adam has acted as the Hyde to Julian's Jekyll. As Julian's productivity petered out over the decade, Adam's spiraled to new heights (Garfield, Friends of Mine, Gemstones, Jacket Full of Danger, Sixes and Sevens, and the upcoming Minor Love). While Jules and Co. played bigger venues and became recluses in their own right (AHJ has a fucking cabin in the woods, people) Adam Green played free shows at Sidewalk Cafe, opened for pal Ben Kweller @ Southpaw, and made himself generally pretty accessible and friendly in real life (he'll always shake a hand, take a picture, or just smile like a happy little kid) and on the internet (Twitter, his blogge, etc.) And while Julian quit smoking and drinking and generally calmed down his early twenties antics in the favor of better health and family happiness, Adam Green has increasingly increased his increasingly increasified drug-fueled crazy train craziness.

I won't lie. I enjoy a freaktastical AG show just like everyone else (Santos Double Kokomo after his "Just a Friend" duet with Lissy Trullie kicked ass), but last night he kind of scared me a little bit. In the wake of people dropping dead from prescription painkillers and drugs all over this town (Dash Snow, Jay Reatard...???..., Brittany Murphy, Heath Ledger, M.J., etc.) I just want him to take care of himself. Yes, Adam always seems like he's one of the crowd, the joker, the class clown, and semi-in control of himself, but I would absolutely hate to lose him in the long list of (local) celebrity deaths that have plagued such young visionaries (I believe he is one) in our Generation. So I won't say more than that, just take it easy on the coke and what have you, and keep making music for my life. You kick ass, you're so much fun, and I want to see you play for a long, long time.

my favorite albums of 2000's

This list doesn't mean anything except that I loved these albums because they integrated themselves into my life like living beings, and sometimes they acted as stronger friends to me than my actual friends in the way they listened to the silent yearning and raging of my heart and body, like we were connected by some invisible magnetic thread, and the way they spoke to me and for me when I had no power to use my own voice to sing. It's been a really hectic 10 years! So fuck Pitchfork and Rolling Stone and Spin and Fader and NME. These ten albums mattered most to me.*

*Honorable mentions: The Libertines: The Libertines, Myths of the Near Future: Klaxons, Oracular Spectacular: MGMT, Fever to Tell: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Amnesiac: Radiohead, The Marshall Mathers LP: Eminem and anything else recorded by the 10 acts below.

10. Back to Black, Amy Winehouse, 2006

I'm surprised too. But the more time I spend with this album the more I feel like Amy Winehouse knows what she's talking about, even a little bit more than Pete Doherty and The Libertines who she kicked out of my top 10. A song like "Love is a Losing Game" perfectly describes the futility in trying to find a trustworthy and permanent partner. "Five story fire as you came/Love is a losing game" means you can find yourself floored by a man and want to start new with him and give it your all (like, know, meeting the love of your life in a frat house basement) but ultimately you will wind up alone and heartbroken again (4 years later). "Back to Black" is a beautiful, bittersweet reminder to watch your own back in the dirty dealings of love and sex because everyone's out for himself in this world. You should be too.

9. We All Belong, Dr. Dog, 2007/Takers and Leavers EP, Dr. Dog, 2006

Dr. Dog opened for The Raconteurs on tour in 2006, and I kinda fell in love with them due solely to the fact that Toby Leaman looks like a short hipster version of my favorite professor and the gut-wrenching, Bob Dylan-leaning Beatness of "Die Die Die," quite possibly one of the best songs ever written.

8. '07, The Virgins, 2007/Self-Taught Learner, Lissie Trullie, 2009

I highly prefer The Virgins' EP to their full-length debut because Donald Cumming's the kind of boy who deserves to keep it simple and dirty. He does better with his sinus infection vocals and rough, homemade 8-track production. (He does best naked in photos by Ryan McGinley or on stage in telephone-patterned red skintight leggings.) Songs like "Fernando Pando" and "Radio Christiane" made me feel at home in a big city like New York, and seeing the Virgins as much as possible from NYE 07 to the present has helped me to love this place more than any other. Not to mention, Donald's kinda my dream man, after Julian Casablancas, of course.

I put Lissy Trullie into the same position because she's friends with the band, and I found her thru loving The Virgins. In reverse, though, I like her full-length better than her demos because she collabs with everyone's favorite crack addict Adam Green on a poignant cover of "Just a Friend" and she includes the song that got me into her, "You Bleed You." Also "Don't to Do" was pretty much my anthem during my break-up over this past summer, and I love love love Lissy's man fashion-influenced style.

7. Little Joy, Little Joy, 2008

Fabulous Moretti doesn't let us down with his "solo"-ish debut with Rodrigo Amarante and gf Binki Shapiro. Songs like "With Strangers" and "Play the Part," with their quiet acceptance of failure and sadness, made me feel okay this summer when I ate anxiety for breakfast and swallowed disappointment like anti-depressants (in lieu of health insurance and its over-medicating benefits.) "Unattainable" sung by Binki with her innocent, assured voice makes me want to love a man that deserves it. Out of all the Strokes' solo/side efforts, Fab and Little Joy take the cake.

6. Album, Girls, 2009

I can't help it; I'm obsessed. I listen to this one non-stop because it's so damn good. Christopher Owens could come into my apartment and stay for 56 weeks without paying rent, or I would cook casseroles for him and leave them outside in a dog house beside baggies of weed that I personally bought (shock!) and sew him a delux set of sheets and pillows so he could sleep all day long. Or he could curl up in my bed in a ratty thrift-store sweater knitted circa 1972 and sing with his Elvis Costello croon into my ear all night. I don't do drugs, but I'd drop a Valium or 2 with him and let him cry over my naked body all night long. Some people say sex is the motivation behind all creative endeavors, and I kind believe it because Owens and his band mate JR White made this awesome awesome awesome sunshine-in-hell breakup album on pills of all kinds, and you know a breakup hangover is really just the sick realization that you'll never get to fuck that girl (or boy) again. This album makes me happy that I'm sad and sad that I'm happy in spite of myself. It's like the record that spins me round, round, baby, right round, like a record baby round, right round, round, which must explain why this sucker's been on repeat since I bought it.

5. Friends of Mine, Adam Green, 2003

I've sung his praises on this blog before. The guy's the sad song writing maestro, and with his unpredictable antics he puts on one of the most entertaining and ridiculous live shows. Adam Green, I bow to you. Your drug-addled craziness belies your musical seriousness and talent. But if you can write a song like "Bungee" that has become an actual component of my soul I will follow you down whatever roads your music takes you for the rest of my life.

4. The New Fellas, The Cribs, 2005

The Cribs came to me by accident; I'm pretty sure I found them while cyber-stalking Misshapes protege Jackson Pollis, aka Kids Meal while I was living in Tremont. I fell in love with their bad vocals (especially Ryan Jarman's) and lo-fi-ish production. "I'm Alright Me" became my nihilistic anthem and made me feel okay when I over-imbibed and over-caffeinated and didn't care and didn't sleep. Seeing the Cribs for the first time made me fall in love for life, and with each album they've grown consistently, showing that hard work pays off and bad teeth and bad hair and bad fashion in general make for the output of some damn fine songs about living young and fast in a tour van.

3. Favourite Worst Nightmare, Arctic Monkeys, 2007

They might be young and they might have been hyped up the wazoo in 2006, but Alex Turner can write inner anger better than anyone I've yet to find (except for Kurt Cobain.) His relentless use of Matt Helders' immaculate and powerful drumming over atmospheric guitars and 1950's obscure rock song loops make music so haunting and potent and dangerous that you just want to stab yourself in the face. I hold anger in my body for years, and it takes me a long time to get over anything, so to have this album confirm the rightness of such an unhealthy and wrong harboring of negativity makes me feel like it's a little bit okay, or at least like I'm in good, hot company. "Do Me a Favour" and "505" make me die a little bit every time, and when I finally make my movie (you know, a neo-New Wave crazy train semi-autobiographical coming of age flick featuring a blonde with a chic haircut and black-lined blue eyes) the music from this album will pretty much take over the entire soundtrack.

2. White Blood Cells, The White Stripes, 2001

Jack White's a force of fucking nature, and I could listen to this album for the rest of my life. "The Union Forever" starts with a flippant, fuck-you guitar riff and says, "It can't be love, for there is no true love." How true, Jackie, how true. The song then devolves into a grunge-tastic, bitter, slightly out-of-control reinterpretation of Citizen Kane... Egomaniacs must love each other, I guess, and Orson Welles and Jack White will surely meet each other in Hell or wherever geniuses go when they die.

1. Room on Fire, The Strokes, 2003

Duh! What did you expect? Oh, yeah. Is This It? Like every other countdown on the planet. Well I'm no first album lover. I like sophomore efforts, and while Is This It? changed my life and personality and goals and dreams (I stopped worshipping fuck face Billy Corgan's melodrama and traded it in for sleek, magnetic structure; I let my neurotic nature and demands fly; I decided I would one day move to New York City and make out with drunken bed-headed dirty boys; I would see the Strokes LIVE ONE DAY) Room on Fire solidified all that. When Julian Casablancas wrote "12:51" he wrote the perfect pop song. When he wrote "Under Control" he wrote the song of my life. When he wrote "I Can't Win" he wrote about the failings every artist faces at the hands of his own worst enemy: himself. Some people say that they like all music and all songs and all things, but I'm the kind of girl who loves ALWAYS one of whatever it is the best, and Room on Fire is not only my favorite album of The Aughts, it's also my desert island album, one of my best friends, and pretty much the only thing that can make me close my eyes and sob for sheer amazement and gratitude when I'm not absolutely wasted. So thank you, Jules and Co. for this little gem. You've made my decade and life worth living, and that's a cliche and an overstatement (classic Brittany hyperbole) but it's also very true (classic Brittany doesn't lie.)

quiero sus zapatos

Check out Adam Green's blogge (scroll down for a classik photo with Fabulous). I think it might be a bad idea for this guy to hold a gun, but I also think I totally covet his jazz flats. Man fashion=my style.

Adam Green: Master of Sad

Say what you will about crazytrain Adam Green, but the boy can write sad songs better than anyone else. His surreal (and sometimes disgusting/disturbing) lyrics manage to perfectly describe existential pain. Sometimes when I feel like I wanna get all Emo, I play 3 killer tunes from AG's 2nd album Friends of Mine, 2003.

1. I Wanna Die

"I wanna choose to die/and be buried with a Rubik's cube/and sleep inside the big blue buildings/as the sweet disease drives through." Yeah, I think this means he wants to make a choice to die without having to actually do anything about it himself... instead he'd want to just die in his bed in some big blue building without exerting any effort. But to want to be buried with a Rubik's cube? I guess that means he wants to know there is a solution to the problem and hopefully he'll finally fucking get it once he's dead. I feel that!

2. We're Not Supposed to Be Lovers

The opener alone is enough to make you want to cry. "Picture a place that's far from danger./A nicer place to cash your chips/I'm not the one holding you hostage/squeezed in between my lips./We're not supposed to be lovers/or friends like they'd have us believe./We're not supposed to know each other/accept my apology."

But it's the end that gets me every time. "Picture a person you've forgotten/kissing your brother or your friend./Picture a wounded entertainer/cutting his hair again." While we can all get what he's talking about in the first part: you'd want to kill your brother or friend for making out with one of your old lovers, it's the last lines that I find most poignant. Everybody knows that one of the best things to do after a heartbreak is to go crazy, cut and dye your hair, get a whole new "look" and get on with it. Poor Adam.

3. Bungee

The most gut-wrenching of all is Bungee. I don't know why. Adam talks about incest and the Clap and Indian chiefs and priests, but there's something so disorienting and devastating, almost as if it's straight out of a nightmare, about "she went bungee jumping/one fine day/off the cliffs of our friendship/and at the bottom she stayed./when they told me/that her body was found/an astronaut drowned/in the long island sound/i tripped down the stairs/in my basketball shoes/and paddled downstream/in my father's canoe." I think it's the juxtaposition of something so tactile like "basketball shoes" with the metaphorically dead body of the girl and the dreamlike strings of the music.

The video below is pretty bad, but unfortunately Adam doesn't usually perform "Bungee." So instead watch and see how fun he is and how much German people are obsessed with him.

brittish 6/19/09

Week #3. So much for summer happening. At this date, these tunes should make you want to go swimming in the freezing cold Atlantic, but I'm afraid they're a little less joyous than that. June's been a bust, but there's another week and a 1/2 so maybe something will change. Until then... try to listen to as much Japanese Motors as you can to get that California fresh feeling, and throw in a little bit of Adam Green's Kokomo (double Kokomo if you can stand it) to get your summer started.

Self-Taught Learner: Lissy Trullie

My Mistakes Were Made For You: The Last Shadow Puppets

Unattainable: Little Joy

Devil Inside: INXS

Meeting Place: The Last Shadow Puppets

Don't Watch Me Dancing: Little Joy

Shoot the Poets: The Cribs

Fernando Pando: The Virgins

Regrets a Paradise: Japanese Motors

Rocket: Albert Hammond Jr.

Love Is A Losing Game: Amy Winehouse

Under Control and Salty Salute (Live in Santiago): The Strokes

Va Va Virgins (Daytrotter Session): The Virgins

Be My Man: Adam Green

Oh Brother: Japanese Motors

Wasted Little DJs: The View

Misery and Profits: Japanese Motors

Turn It Up: Young Lords

When It Started (Live in Toronto): The Strokes

Spendin' Days (Acoustic): Japanese Motors

Lawn Boy: Phish

Kokomo: Adam Green and Ben Kweller

failin can be quite a breeze

Just logged into Myspace to check out tour dates, and I find this piece of candy in my inbox. UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. These things always happen on the wrong continent.


Date: May 28, 2009 12:12 PM
Subject: Adam Green is touring in the UK this fall w/ The Cribs!
Body:
Check out Adam's fall tour dates in the UK with the cribs!!Adam is so stoked to be touring again!! See you at his shows!!9.25.09 Cambridge Junction w/ The Cribs9.26.09 Oxford Academy w/ The Cribs9.28.09 Norwich UEA w/ The Cribs9.29.09 Glasgow Barrowland w/ The Cribs9.30.09 Newcastle University w/ The Cribs10.02.09 Manchester Apollo w/ The Cribs10.03.09 Liverpool University w/ The Cribs10.04.09 Cardiff University w/ The Cribs10.06.09 Exeter University w/ The Cribs10.07.09 Southhampton Guildhall w/ The Cribs10.08.09 Leamington Spa Assembly w/ The Cribs10.10.09 Leeds Academy w/ The Cribs10.15.09 London Forum w/ The Cribs

xxx

team ag





In other news (and this is mostly for John)



"---- - Luke Rathborne is 21 YEARS OLD. He moved to New York from the deep woods & shallow waters of Brunswick, Maine in August, 2006, staying on his brother's couch deep inside the upper burroughs, before moving into the darkness of the Charlie Pineapple Theater Company on North 8th, an abandoned theater loft in Brooklyn - he's since left for higher ground and has been living in and around Brooklyn ever since."

Check out his myspace.

classic Adam Green

From Dylan Fest 09.

birthday mambo

Adam Green.

There are no words. (image from bbc.co.uk)

baby youuuuu you got what i need

So I saw Lissy Trullie on Monday night at Santos Party House. Lissy was wearing the Sophomore skirt I want and her huge high heels. The band played tight and clean through their usual set, and I had a great time singing along. Pleeeeease come out with an album soon.

Speaking of new merch, the band finally has a tee shirt for sale, in collabs with Sophomore. It's a pretty sweet iron-on tee.
So it turns out that Adam Green came out to play a duet ("Just a Friend," holler!) with Lissy. Let's just say he wore silver patent-leather jazz flats, and a Jewish star on plastic "beads." The duet was cute, and then Adam had the chance to play some songs of his own while Mark Ronson manned the DJ booth.

Adam started with "Jessica," but forgot his lyrics mid-song. He seemed pissed off at the non-commital hipster crowd, so he busted out "Kokomo."

(Aside.) Adam recorded his infamous cover of the Beach Boys' "Kokomo" with Ben Kweller on the B-side of the "Jessica" single. In April 2005, at his Bowery Ballroom solo show, Adam took requests from the crowd. One brave soul wanted "Kokomo," and Adam gave it so good he gave it twice. I believe his words were, "I'm hazing your asses with a double 'Kokomo.'" Scott couldn't handle it, and he left the concert early, but us true AG fans knew we were watching history, or something like it...

So Adam made his way to the very center of the stage and stood on top of some speakers, right where I was standing with Scott, Callia, and Arinn. He started singing the song and tried to dive into the crowd, but this crowd wasn't close, nor ready, so he kind of toppled to the ground, while trying to grab my friends' heads on the way down for support.

No worries, Adam got back on stage and began a new song. After 30 seconds, he stopped, and said he'd do "Kokomo" again, this time acapella, with help of Ronson's sound effects. Some kind person posted this video on youtube... so check it out for the awesomeness that followed. Scott threw out his back holding up Adam's deadweight 100 lb. body, and I couldn't use my camera for fear of Adam kicking it out of my hands, or worse, him plummetting to the ground and smashing his head open.

After that, Adam debuted his "Birthday Mambo." My favorite part of the whole night was when A-ron "the Downtown Don" came out to tell Adam to stop with the ceaseless mamboing because, you know, the show must go on, and Adam said something like, "Aaron, where's my beer? Bring me my beer," as he shoved him off with a limp wristed gesture.

Such a rebel........................................... love it!