Oh Yoshimi

I saw the Flaming Lips last night at the Station Square Ampitheater in Pittsburgh. Overall, it was a pretty enjoyable show (and thank you very much to Catharine for buying me a ticket as our anniversary present). I hadn't seen the Flaming Lips before, and I'm glad I have. As the picture indicates, their shows are pretty big spectacles: lots of multi-colored balloons, tons of confetti, and singer Wayne Coyne in an inflatable plastic "space bubble" which he uses to walk across the stage and the first few rows of the audience.

There were a couple of problems with the show. First of all, the venue is absolutely terrible. Basically, it's just a parking lot by Station Square. No permanent stage or structures of any kind, no grass, just a big slab of concrete. It had nice views of downtown Pittsburgh, I'll grant it that, though. The band started shortly after 9 and played until about 10:45, ending with "Do You Realize??"--but no encores. That was sort of surprising. They also really didn't play that many songs, preferring to do looooooooong versions of the songs that they did play. There usual mode was to play a song, come to a false ending, and then play the chorus two or three more times in a big audience singalong. This works well if you do it once or twice, but any more than that and it wears a little thin. I mean, come on guys, let's hurry this thing up and play "Waitin' for a Superman," "What is the Light?," and "It's Summertime." But, perhaps because they spent so much time doing other stuff, they didn't get to any of those songs, which happen to probably be my three favorite tunes of theirs.

I shouldn't complain so much, because there were some definite highlights. I was surprised that they played "She Don't Use Jelly," but they managed to breathe some life into this song, even if it's about 17 years old by now. "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1" sounded great in the acoustic version of it that they played, and it was nice that the entire crowd sang along to the whole song. "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" was somehow far less annoying live than it is on record--in fact I actually kind of liked it live. They ended with the obligatory "Do You Realize??"--which is apparently the official state rock song of Oklahoma. They took a bow, left the stage, "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong came on the PA, and people started to leave. But Wayne kept coming back onstage to wave to the crowd. He faked a good number of us out, who thought that they must be coming back to play an encore. But after about 4 or 5 curtain calls and waves, they turned on the audience lights and we all filed back to the parking lot.

Overall, I had a great time. But I've gotten to like The Flaming Lips quite a lot and I was expecting their live show to be pretty incredible. Visually, it was pretty great. But it wasn't quite up to snuff musically.

It Has Begun

This year's academic job search, that is.

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
DEPARTMENT OF PERFORMING ARTS

Assistant Professor of Music (Ethnomusicology), tenure track

The Department of Performing Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences at American invites applications for a tenure track position in Ethnomusicology at the rank of assistant professor to begin in Fall 2011. Responsibilities include: continuing professional scholarly activities, teaching undergraduate courses for majors and non majors, new course and curriculum development, student advising, mentoring, and participating in departmental and university service. A strong commitment to research and demonstrated excellence in teaching are expected. Successful applicants should hold a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology; ABD with projected completion date within one year will be considered.

To apply, please submit a letter of application and curriculum vitae, along with three letters of recommendation. Please describe research interests and teaching experience as part of the letter of application. The committee will begin its initial review of applications on September 22, 2010. Send to: Ethnomusicology Search, Department of Performing Arts/Katzen Ctr, AmericanUniversity, 4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20016-8053 or e-mail materials to: duncan at american.edu.

American University is an accredited institutional member of the National Association of Schools of Music. American University is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer committed to a diverse faculty, staff, and student body. Women and minorities are strongly encouraged to apply.

Yes, about a million people are going to be applying for this one, I'd imagine. Including me.

Obviously, Leaving Your Lover and Going to Graceland

Allow to me briefly interrupt this summer heat wave for some music-related thoughts.

I think I've figured out something about Paul Simon. He certainly isn't always a great lyricist, but he has put out pretty consistently compelling records for about 45 years, no small feat. I've figured out his secret, though. He just works with really great musicians who supply him with absolute grooves of doom that would be impossible for any musician to mess up.

He talks about this in the excellent documentary about Graceland. I'll skip going into a full lecture/rehash of that album, but suffice it to say that much of that record consisted of Simon "jamming" with South African musicians, laying down backing tracks, and then writing his lyrics and vocal part later. (It seems likely that the South Africans were responsible for many of the most important musical elements of his songs, but didn't receive writing credits or royalties.) For the title track, he even says in the documentary something to the effect of, "I didn't even want to write a vocal part for it, the track was so good, I thought we should just put the track out--no way to improve on that." Nevertheless, he did write lyrics for the song, which are OK, at least. (I think the song is about driving to Tennessee, Catharine thinks it's about redemption. I'm sure one of us is right.) But, to me at least, the lyrics really still feel quite incidental. I think he was right, he could have just put the backing track out.

Same deal with a song from about a decade earlier. "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover" features a brilliant snare drum groove from master percussionist Steve Gadd. I mean, really, it's one of the great drum grooves in history.



In comparison, Simon's lyrics and his vocal performance seem rather, um, wimpy. And I'm always disappointed when the song goes to the chorus (the "Slip out the back, Jack" part) and the groove changes to kind of a lame attempt at funk. Thankfully, the main groove always comes back.

The other example of this is "The Obvious Child," Simon's collaboration with samba-reggae extraordinaires Olodum. The groove that they cook up is so compelling that Simon could have written nearly anything for the lyrics and chords and it would have been a hit.

Perhaps it's telling that these are my three favorite Paul Simon songs and the parts that I like the best seem not to have really been created by Paul Simon. I'm not sure that I would rank Simon among my favorite pop musicians of the last 45 years. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't. Still, there's something to be said for getting musicians together, letting them fall into a nice groove, and staying (mostly) the hell out of the way. There's definitely a kind of genius in that.