#schneider solo gig

[notafraidofredyellowandblue]

Schneider will participate in the Europe Drum Show 2025 in Friedrichshafen

Good to see he has a gig of his own too (not with the Rammsteins i mean..) ❤️

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

William Tyler - Primavera Sound, Barcelona, Spain, June 2, 2017

I caught William Tyler and Luke Schneider in Denver a week or two ago, performing both solo and in glorious duo format. And, by some extremely fortuitous twist of fate, I'll be seeing both of these dudes again in Los Angeles in a couple day — if all goes according to plan!!

However! In LA, William and Luke will be playing with the full Impossible Truth band ... which is amazing news for me. Ever since the Whole New Dude EP from way back, I've wanted to catch William in complete rock gawd mode, but the chance has never presented itself. Until now! It is going to be radical — come out and join me?

To get in the right frame of mind, here's a great trio performance from a few years ago. A big festival gig with William, drummer Joe Westerlund and bassist Brad Cook sending endlessly positive vibrations out into the Barcelona night.

[singeratlarge]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my friend and keyboardist Steve Adams, Roy Buchanan, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Danielle Dax, Ani DiFranco, Jermaine Dupri, Charles M. Gehr, Don Grolnick, Buddy Holly’s 1957 single “That’ll be the Day,” Julio Iglesias, Cush Jumbo, Tim Keller, Tom Lester (“Eb”), John Lomax, the discovery of Neptune (1846), OMC, Paul Petersen, Walter Pidgeon, Mary Kay Place, Aubrey “ Po” Powell (Hipgnosis), Mickey Rooney (good to have met you), Tim Rose, Romy Schneider, the 1994 film SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, the late Rolf Smedvig (good to have met you), Neil Smith (Alice Cooper), Bruce Springsteen, Jeremy Steig, Soulima Stravinsky, and Steve Boone of The Lovin’ Spoonful. Starting in 1964, The Lovin’ Spoonful rose out of the Greenwich Village folk/jug band scene. Their sound diversified into chamber pop (“She’s Still a Mystery”), country rock (“Nashville Cats”), and the chart-topping hard-edged psychedelic “Summer in the City”—songs penned by their main songwriter, John Sebastian (who later embarked on a long and notable solo career). Beginning in July 1965 with their debut single “Do You Believe in Magic,” the band had 7 consecutive singles reach the Top 10, including “Daydream,” “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?” and “Rain on the Roof.” By the mid-60s, The Spoonful was among the most popular groups in the world, and their music and image influenced many rock acts of their era—it is believed that John Sebastian’s wearing of “granny glasses” inspired John Lennon to follow suit. The band migrated from NYC to the Laurel Canyon (Los Angeles) music scene, intersecting with Crosby Stills & Nash, Love, The Mamas & Papas, The Monkees, Frank Zappa, etc. After 1967, The Spoonful went through various line-ups (including a short reformation in the 1979 Paul Simon film ONE TRICK PONY). The current iteration features Steve and long-time members Joe Butler and Mike Arturi. We crossed paths on road gigs a few times—check out this recent clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isTJ3VBL18Q  Meanwhile, HB SB and thank you for your years of giving us lovin’ spoonfuls of great and joyful music (photo of the band at a brick wall by Henry Diltz).

#lovinspoonful #steveboone #johnsebastian #joebutler #mikearturi #birthday #johnnyjblair #wildhoney #henrydiltz

[herrlindemann]

Q Magazine -  January 2002

They like beer in Holland. The floor of the Heineken Musik-Halle is awash with lager, and so are the audience, red-faced and rat-arsed every single one of them. At many gigs, beer is thrown from the balcony; at this gig, beer is thrown back at the balcony.

The highly fueled crowd are here to see Rammstein, the world’s first multi-million selling techno-influenced East Berlin metal band. Rammstein sing in German, write emotive lyrics about hearts and desire (interspersed with Perry ones about “doing it”) and set them to fantastically brutal music. At their poppiest, they are like Erasure in a very bad mood indeed, but at their rockiest they are something like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath fighting each other in giant flying stone heads.

Rammstein are named after an air show crash disaster (well, it’s better than being called Travis). They hit controversy on the metal scene (the same scene that routinely ignores Kiss’s SS letters and AC/DC’s lightning flash, and, well, Lemmy) for sampling Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi move Triumph of the Will.

Now, as the crowd hand over beer tokens decorated with the logo of Muse, Air and The Deftones, Rammstein take the stage.

Imposing and shiny in fireproof overalls, they look like a gang of Keith Flints made to work in a 12 Monkeys factory. Singer Till Lindemann is a scary giant, while keyboard player Flake Lorenz looks like a mad professor gone haywire on diet pills.

They begin the set with Mein Herz Brennt, the first song on their recent, superb, thirst studio album, Mutter. Aptly, flames are prevalent. Lindemann’s arm is on fire within seconds, as guitars map out a version of Kashmir as played by giant Frankie Goes To Hollywood robots. Huge discs are lowered and giant sparkles fire downwards at the band. This is Guy Fawkes metal at its most terrifying: at times, the guitarist and Lindemann shoot fire from elongated facemasks like burning tapirs, fireworks go off at random, and Lindemann comes onstage actually on fire. It’s an incredibly exciting show that loud bang-fearing dogs will never see.

The songs themselves stomp along mightily. There’s the emotive Mutter which features an immaculate pomp rock solo. And then there’s Links 2 3 4. The title refers to both marching and being left wing: Rammstein’s reply to the Nazism critics, its chorus is roughly, “They want my heart to be on the right, but when I look down it beats on the left”. Live, the song erupts like unattended lava and seems, oddly, to have an added “HEIL!” chorus.

The show climaxes, as it were, with the super Buck Dich in which Lorenz does bend over in front of Lindemann, showing some razor-like buttocks, and Lindemann stands over him waving a large fake penis which spurts water all over the place. It’s spectacularly rude and stupid, and does suggest that Rammstein are not about to annex Austria. This is confirmed when, as the encore concludes, Lorenz leaves his keyboards to surf the crowd. In a dinghy.

After the show, the air acrid with the smell of gunpowder and dope, it is time to talk with monastically tonsured guitarist Paul Landers and splendidly-named drummer Christoph Doom Schneider, the chatty Rammsteiners. Influenced by AC/DC, Ministry and German rocker Udo Lindenberg, Rammstein’s members were part of the underground punk scene in East Berlin and evolved their music slowly in isolation. Rammstein are contrary types. “We said, if every metal band has long hair, let’s cut our hair. If every metal band has short trousers, we will have long ones,” says Landers, who memorably describes Rammstein’s sound as “monotonic stupid music with very clean corners”.

Links 2 3 4 is mentioned, and Schneider says, thoughtfully, “We are not a right-wing band. We’ve always said that. We make music that sounds dangerous and military-like, and the lyrics are completely opposite.”

Landers says: “We don’t try to make things too easy. It’s our job; people have to think.”

It’s time to go. Landers grands a handful of Gummi Bears sweets from a bag and says goodbye. Schneider smiles. “We think it’s fun to have a German band in the world,” he says. “Even Germans can have funny bands!”

[hanhan156]

Hanhan’s October writing challenge: Rammstein Halloween pt #10

The prompt: While spending some time at the beach at night, the character comes across something else moving near the shore, something that may or may not be human at all.

The setting for this story is somewhere at the beginning of the ‘90′s.

-

#10 Reptiles

Till knew it right from the start: tonight’s gig was going to be a disaster. His singing - as well as the whole band - were out of tune. Flake froze in one of his keyboard solos, Schneider’s other drum stick broke in the middle and Richard and Paul didn’t seem to be interested in playing in general when they had realized as well that the whole concert was ruined. They just goofed around and tried to entertain the audience.

As a whole, they sucked and couldn’t hide it from anyone.

As a farewell, they got loud booing and if Till saw it correctly, somebody even tried to throw rotten tomatoes at them, but they managed to escape before.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m getting wasted tonight,” their singer announced when they were backstage. Everybody joined him - tonight was worth forgetting. Till grabbed a couple of vodka bottles and beers. “Let’s go to the beach, I can’t stand to look at their disappointed faces anymore.”

A lady, walking his dog in the midnight, tried to ignore the cacophonous, drunken singing she heard from the beach:

“Neunundneunzig Luftballons, Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont. Hielt man für UFOs aus dem All, Darum schickte ein General. 'Ne Fliegerstaffel hinterher, Alarm zu geben, wenn's so wär. Dabei waren dort am Horizont, Nur neunundneunzig Luftballons!”

Till, Schneider, Flake and Ollie were singing their lungs out - they didn’t care at all how they sounded or looked, they just desperately wanted to forget the disastrous evening. Paul had decided it was warm enough and had gone swimming naked - the alcohol warmed him up nicely even though the night in the beginning of the summer was still cold. Richard wasn’t attending to their joy: he was disappointed by the gig and even though it was nobody’s fault particularly, he blamed himself for it. Now, the guitarist wanted to blur his brain as fast as he could. He looked at the stars and thought for a while that maybe their career was here, maybe they weren’t meant to be musicians after all.

Sigh. So, this is what became of us: a bunch of drunks, he thought and took another sip from his vodka bottle.

From the distance, Paul waved at him and shouted: “Reesh, come to swim! It’s not so…cold!” He splashed the water and laughed. “Summer party is here, where are all the sexy ladies…”

But Richard wasn’t in the mood of celebrating. What was worth partying now, their failure? Instead of merrymaking, he wanted to pout and be dramatic.

Without answering anything to Paul, Richard stood up and with trembling steps, started to disappear as far as he could from his bandmates.

The millionth cigarette was lighted up as he proceeded along the long beach. There were beer cans and trash here and there: seemed like the place was popular amongst other young drunkards as well.

Richard reached cliffs and there, he had a sudden urge to throw pebbles to the ocean - for letting his frustration out. He was sure he’d remember the booing audience for the rest of his life.

As he started to dig stones from the ground something odd caught his interest: there was a round, green and glowing object amongst the stones. What the hell? Even though a silent voice in his head tried to say that this could be something dangerous, Richard took the glimmering neon-green object into his hand. He had never seen anything like that: it looked like an egg, but not from any animal he knew. And why was it glowing like that?  

He took a look behind him: the guys were so drunk and so far away that they couldn’t see him - Richard was sure he was safe from their curious gazes so he hid the egg, or whatever it was, into his pocket. If his bandmates would have seen that they would have either lectured him how dangerous it was to take something unknown to your home or even worse, they would have wanted to steal it.

Richard threw a couple of rocks to the ocean but was so distracted by the weirdness of this all that he couldn’t concentrate properly. He wasn’t sure, was it just because he was so drunk or was the egg really warming up his pocket.

When he got fed up with the mindless throwing, he climbed up the cliffs, looking at the distance. He secretly hoped to find more glowing objects - this was one of the most fascinating things in ages. He had almost forgotten the bad gig.

As he proceeded, to his joy, he saw more eggs appearing. They were forming a pathline that he couldn’t resist following. Eventually, the eggs lead to an entrance of a cave. Richard had to rub his eyes. What in bloody hell was in that vodka Till gave me…

What he saw was like a scene from a science fiction movie: the ground was full of green eggs and even more spooky, there were small lizards everywhere.

Richard was so stunned he didn’t even notice the tiny reptiles climbing up his body before something tickled his ear - one of the creatures had come on his shoulder and whispered: “My warmest welcomes! Come in, join us, Richard.”

Now, he startled. “W-what, y-you can talk? A-and how do you know my name?”

“Now it’s not the time for questions. Come visit us, our king is waiting for you.”

“King?” Okay, seriously, this is not only the alcohol’s fault anymore…

“Yes, just come. Your friends can wait.”

Richard turned to the lizard who was inspecting him with his yellow eyes. “How do you know about my friends? And what else do you know about me and them?”

“I assure you that all your questions are answered later, but now, it’s not the time. Just trust me,” the reptile said.

Richard’s wasted brain didn’t know what to do now. Perhaps, if he would have been smart enough, he would have escaped and forget this whole incident – to go back drinking with his buddies and wake up tomorrow laughing at his delirious visions.

But as usual, his curiosity won over in the end. “Okay, what the heck, it can’t be that bad,” he said and entered the cave. At least he would have a juicy story to tell afterward to his friends.

[jefferyryanlong]

Fresh Listen - The Squids, The Squids (Bankshots Music, Inc. and Oto-Songs, Inc., 1981) and Duganopacalypse Now (A Fan Compilation, circa 1981)

(Some pieces of recorded music operate more like organisms than records. They live, they breathe, they reproduce. Fresh Listen is a periodic review of recently and not-so-recently released albums that crawl among us like radioactive spiders, gifting us with superpowers from their stingers.)

The first band I ever loved was the Beatles, and John Lennon was dead years before I had any idea of who they were. It wasn’t until Kurt Cobain died that I had any interest in Nirvana--I recall an eighth grade classmate looking at mw with contempt after I told them I was unfamiliar with their music, when “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was already an MTV hit. The chemical composition of my brain was dissolved and reconstituted over the course of two weeks when, at twelve years old, I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Cool Hand Luke on late-night television, but both films were about twenty years old by then. I just heard of Herbie Hancock’s V.S.O.P. album, featuring Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams, about two weeks ago. I’m 42 years old now and I’ve only just come to realize how cutting and prescient Claude McKay’s novel Banjo is. 

All this to say that I wish I’d been around when Honolulu’s The Squids were playing around town. (Much thanks to Roger and Leimomi from Aloha Got Soul for pointing me in the right direction.) The Squids were so odd and varied, a New Wave outfit with the muscularity and venom of the truest punk rock, able to invoke the B-52′s in the same gig as Talking Heads or the Ventures or the Specials, all with the same veracity, but much weirder and crueler. They married a sunny, breezy synth sound with an aesthetic that I can only describe as joyously psychopathic, spraying smart-ass malice on the unfortunate subjects of their songs.

Though the band only officially released a 7-inch EP in 1981 (currently unavailable on Amazon) Comrade Motopu, the mysterious archivist who, through digitized vinyl and cassette tapes, as well as donated photos, scanned liner notes, flyers and news releases, has painstakingly agglomerated Hawai‘i rock music and associated miscellany on a magnificent pre-Y2K looking website, has not only shared the Squids’ EP (featuring “Tourist Riot,” “‘Love Theme’ From Surfer Boy,” “In,” and “Rio”), but what is also listed as Duganopacalypse,  a fan compilation with even more twisted tunes: “Medicine,” “Sexy,” “Head in the Sand,” the ska-soaked “New Girl in Town,” their partially awful, mostly spectacular “Cool Clear Water,” and “Pretty Vacant (with Dugan),” the Never Mind the Bullocks classic with a seemingly hated fan on the inarticulate vocals. I only pray that Comrade Motopu continues documenting this underhand era of Pacific rock music of the late Seventies to early Nineties--the site is a treasure, and more words about the bands highlighted on comrademotopu.com (the Vacuum and Yahweh’s Mistake, for instance) will be coming soon.

The Squids began as a concept by guitarist Beano Shots in 1979, later to take shape as a full-fledged human/cephalopod music group with members Kit and Gerry Ebersbach, Dave Trubitt, and Frank Orall. Those of us who sweatily flailed our way through a booze-and-drug bender on the strobe-lit (at least, as it appeared then) dance floor of the Wave Waikiki between the hours of 2 AM and 4 AM when all the other bars closed down would be surprised to learn that the now-demolished former nightclub, a hub for the scraped-out, after-hours husks operated by the residual combustion of chemicals in their blacked-out reptilian brains, once hosted the edgy Squids as the house band, presumably when the going-out crowd still had an affinity for fun, strong music, and did not simply seek to propel themselves upon the the mechanized beats and soulless zombie tracks initiated by a faceless button masher, in hopes that they would be manipulated, by the end of the night, into some loveless fuck with a nobody. 

Of the Squids’ stage show, we have but one recorded example of the band live in concert: a faithful interpretation of the Sex Pistols’ “Pretty Vacant,” in which the players serve as back-up band for a loyal heckler known only as “Dugan.” Having taken (jokingly) enough shit from Dugan, the band harasses him into sing-shouting the song. The performance captures the “fuck you” sentiment of “Pretty Vacant” with a primitive abandon that almost makes the original seem like a Monkees’ tune. It also portrays a punk rock scene less enlightened to the diverse lifestyles it later engendered, when “dick sucking” was applied exclusively as a pejorative.

The same pissed-off adrenalin leads off the the 1981 EP in “Tourist Riot,” an apocalyptic narrative of that species of traveler compelled to hammer a new experience into a predetermined mold that will establish an appropriate backdrop to their social media posts. The tourists here burn hotels and smash out windows when their expectations aren’t suitably met--a bad vacation in which they are pushed around and mistreated leads the tourists to murder and mayhem.

“Tourist Riot” lays out the Squids’ music aspirations right away, especially in the interplay between Beano Shots’s electric guitar and Kit Ebersbach’s keyboards, which morph from forbidding electronic warning tones to psychedelic ghost notes to the replicated sirens of a city on fire, collateral damage in a war between locals and tourists. Following a surprisingly effective bridge that concludes with a shouted “Fuck it, I’m going to New York City!” is an atonal guitar solo reminiscent of Nels Cline asleep at the wheel, redeemed by a more fluid keyboard exploration.

When Jimi Hendrix claimed that “you’ll never hear surf music again” in 1967, he was, through the example of his own transcendent playing on “Third Stone from the Sun,” burying the corpse of that elementary, improvisationally unimaginative rock instrumental with the axe with which he had slew it. To that end, after hearing Jimi Hendrix and all the musical manifestations that took shape from his cosmic residue, it is sometimes hard to take surf music seriously. “‘ Love Theme’ from Surf Boy” comes across as the Squids’ winking parody of the genre, with its reverb, its whammy, its overall melancholy, and its simplicity. That said, there is some sophistication in the song’s structure, as if the wordless tune was more an exercise in technique, an attempt to take stock creatively before reaching out to a farther and stranger place.

On “In,” the guitars and keyboards snarl rabidly toward the same explosive destination, barely kept in check by the talents of the players. Lyrically minimalist, the song’s non-sequiturs slice through the instruments like assembled cut-up style by William S. Burroughs. “Are you losing sense of humor, could be Jesus was only kidding” followed by “are you losing sense of humor, could be Jesus was just a salesman.” These pieces of thoughts unfinished resonate in my head like something close to catchy--to what end, I don’t know. Where the keyboards overmatched the guitars on “Tourist Riot,” on “In” the guitar is locked in and dirty, climaxing in repetitive harmony between the instruments to close out the song.

When I first read the track listing to the 1981 EP, I thought the final song “Rio” would be a rough rendering of the hit video single by near-contemporaries Duran Duran (whose synth-guitar arrangements, though undoubtedly smoother, find relation in the Squids’ overall aesthetic). Instead, “Rio” is an acid commentary on the American Capitalist, represented as a white suit soaked in sweat, and his compulsion to foster vice and iniquity to exotic locales.

I’m not sure whether the fan compilation Duganopacalypse, also available for listening through the Comrade Motopu website, was recorded before, after, or  during the sessions of the 1981 EP. A few tracks lead me to believe that the songwriting and arrangements are from a wiser, more sophisticated band, while other songs seem so apelike in their imitations as to come through as pointless satires, or maybe the explorations of a band trying to find its identity.

In “Medicine,” for instance, the Squids operate under an overpowering B-52′s filter that washes out their uniqueness. Whereas on previous tracks this influence existed only at the fringes of their sound, the singer on “Medicine” channels Fred Schneider on the verse and switches to David Bowie during the bridge. The role-play, though, doesn’t kill the the more interesting aspects of “Medicine”--its guitar lick is inventive and so wormy as to be slightly irritating, and the song’s themes, that one must willingly imbibe “the medicine” to accept the hypocrisies of this “downer world,” resound strongly to anyone who casts their eyes around a crowded room.  

Where the B-52′s references go deep in “Medicine,” Talking Heads emerge in “Sexy,” from David Byrne’s vocal tics to the subtle and swampy “Take Me to the River” vibe. It goes beyond straight homage to cover band territory, but it does emphasize the band’s technical ability to lock into a groove. “New Girl in Town” is a heaping serving of not-completely-warmed-up ska leftovers, a bit misogynist (of its time, but still). “Head in the Sand,” regrettably, could have been the Squids’ crossover pop hit. I say “regrettably” because, even though the song has a point--that the ability of humans to maintain a semblance of happiness is to carefully cultivate the warm fuzz of obliviousness, sacrificing will to fate in the belief that nothing we could do to change anything would matter anyway--the effort seems more calculated than organic, a plastic approximation of the closest this band, given their specific set of skills, could get to a pop crossover hit. The work put into it seems to drain away at some of the dirty magic. It‘s self-conscious in a way that the other songs aren’t.

Finally we have “Cool Clear Water,” what would have been the band’s masterpiece if they’d spent a little more time recording a decent take (the version on the Duganopacalypse almost sounds live, though it could have been laid down in a rehearsal space). This is not the country classic performed by Marty Robbins and Johnny Cash. The Squids’ “Cool Clear Water” is the frightening confession of a soldier recently returned from the war in Vietnam, directed by an angel spirit to mass murder with a shotgun from a tower in town. When the killer is set to be executed, the angel spirit comforts him, tells him his spirit will be redeemed in heaven for “setting the people free.” The unnerving subject matter of “Cool Clear Water” is given sinister shape by the relentless horror-notes of Kit Ebersbach’s organ, the guitar holding down the song’s march toward inevitable nothingness because the bass (normally played with elan by Gerry Ebersbach) is a complete mess (I’m not sure if she hadn't learned the song or if she just showed up at the gig drunk).

As Marc Maron frequently says on his podcast, “there’s no late to the party” anymore, given the the amount of content available to all of us via the digital consciousness that we are now more plugged into than not. But I’ve waited all my life to lose myself in something vital, of the moment, with my eyes and ears and heart present while the thing is taking shape, at its most temporal. I feel that way listening to the Squids. I wish I could have seen them at one of their Wave gigs. I wish I could have had a beer with them afterward, and gushed in the embarrassing way I do about things I love.

[riffsstrides]

Anat Fort

And If

ECM, 2010

Anat Fort: piano;

Gary Wang: double-bass;

Roland Schneider: drums.

Pianist Anat Fort's ECM debut, A Long Story (2007) may have featured her "dream team"—and was all the better for it—but there's something to be said for the comfort and chemistry of longtime collaborators. Bassist Gary Wang and drummer Roland Schneider may not have the cachet of Ed Schuller or Paul Motian, but having worked with the Israeli expat since 2004, they clearly get what she's about, making And If a fine follow-up to A Long Story that, in many ways, is even more indicative of Fort's intrinsic strengths and undeniable charm. Motian's spirit continues to loom large. As on A Long Story, Fort uses two readings of the same song—in this case, the aptly titled "Paul Motian"—to bookend another set of original compositions. The drum icon's textural breadth and suggestive temporal elasticity imbue both takes, though Schneider's softly rolling toms lend a more orchestral feel to the opening version—his sticks foreshadowing the stronger trio performance to come—in contrast to his brushes on "Paul Motian (2)," which help close the album on a more gently conclusive note. And If could only come from a group that has spent time together rehearsing and gigging. The neoclassical leaning of the buoyantly beautiful "Clouds Moving"—with stops and starts, shifting meters, and harmonic changes—transcends mere interpretation, placing greater demands with its more complex construction. Wang plays a purely supportive role, as Fort moves gradually towards greater extrapolation, always keeping her eye on the thematic ball and working in and around its relative confines. Some comparisons could be drawn to ECM label mate Ketil Bjornstad, but Fort largely eschews the Norwegian pianist's rubato predilections for a more direct approach and different kind of freedom. And If may possess more structural immediacy, but the album's longest track and positional centerpiece revisits A Long Story's "Something 'Bout Camels," proving Fort's working trio capable of looser, more open-ended contexts, albeit with less jagged angularity. Beginning in near-silence with Wang's delicate arco harmonics, a Middle Eastern-inflected modal vamp insistently builds to a soft climax, and a rare bass solo that ultimately comes full circle, as Wang returns to his bowed harmonics and a gradual fade to black. "If" follows; a miniature where Fort's thematic structures are bolstered by Schneider's firmly defined yet strangely sideways pulse to pianist's implicit emphasis. The back-to-back "Lanesboro" and "Minnesota" turn from Mid-East to Midwest; a hauntingly beautiful ballad followed by a tune of greater insistence, as Wang becomes an economical, folkloric foil for Fort's profound melodism. With a set that runs the gamut from delicate balladry ("En If") to more assertive, idiosyncratic stance ("Nu"), Fort doesn't completely desert A Long Story's more intrinsic structural freedom. But with the empathic interplay of her longstanding working unit, she's able to explore more detailed writing, more direct rhythm, and a more satisfying confluence of her cultural upbringing and relatively newfound American home.

JOHN KELMAN  in All About Jazz

[struwwelzeter]

Weisses Fleisch

It took the cartwheels for me to realise there used to be alot less pyro.

I’m like “lol Paul trying to look grim” but actually - I like him alot more when he’s pissed, he’s more relatable like that. That’s the place where all the sarcasm comes from and I love that. Good Paul. Want to raid his jewlery box even then.

God Richard. Moving on.

Schneider really moves like he is causing himself tendonitis in his entire body and I’m not sure if I am in awe or deeply concerned.

I want to overhear every single conversation the band had over the years about Flakes dancing. Each. Of. Them.

That stage set is epic btw. Possibly my favourite.

Sehnsucht

I love that song so much.

And that crowd!!! Look at those 90s goth kids going wild how can you not adore every single one of them. I’m jealous of their social media free childhood not gonna lie.

GOD THAT SONG!!!

Till owling 💜

Oh Paul switched with Oli!

God, you know when you’re in the middle of a jumping crowd and jumping doesn’t even cost energy because evryone is doing it and you just get carried up? I MISS THAT SO MUCH IT HURTS!!!

Everything about this is so, so so achingly good. I can’t put it in words...

SEHNSUCHT IST SO GRAUSAM!!!

Asche zu Asche

Asche zu Asche is in my top 3 Rammstein songs. That Riff. Damn you. This is why there are jealous naysayers, it’s stupidly simply but so, so, so good, oof. Whiplash.

Look at those guitar babes, just doing magic.

Uhm. Richards voice isn’t quite there, is it.

Yes, baby. Make that thing squeal.

Flake doing his thing, like literally how that fuck would that band exist without him doing that magic. Sorcery.

Ugh. I love Olis solo bit here. He’s the embodiment of slightly scary stickbug in this and I just ... I look at him all the time but I have no idea how to describe the sheer level of alien.

The thing with Till’s forehead, I kinda love that. I saw an Airbourne gig once and the singer gave himself a concussion with a beer can, and it seemed less natural and in tune with everything than this does, and trust me, at the time that seemed very reasonable. I miss self destructive hazes on gigs too.

I JUST MISS LIVE MUSIC ALLRIGHT AND THE GOOD OLD DAYS WHEN WE DIDN’T GIVE A SHIT SORRY FOR SCREAMING SO MUCH

The burning microphones might be my favorite effect they did of all time.

Ooh I love that transition. Good Schneider silhouette shot there.

Live aus Berlin Liveblog

I’ll tag it with liveblog so you can skip it if you want to.

Goodness grief they are young. Weird to think they’re about my age there. I don’t understand Paul’s style choices up until Reise Reise era, and that pharao make up is something else.

Very dramatic intro. God they’re weird huh

Spiel mit Mir

That descending thing is good tho. I wish they’d do that more now, it’s always good. Paul looks like he’s swallowed something he can’t get out now, and Richard looks bored.

God Flake is so good isn’t he. I wonder how big their backline was at this point. Schneider’s headphones make me think it was already alot but hmm. Would be interesting.

I love Till owling on that high note.

Herzeleid

God look at that unhibited pre-smartphone crowd, is the world ever gonna see something so wonderful again 🥺

It’s so great to see how they have grown tho, isn’t it? Like yeah, that unabashed grim energy is gone a bit but Schneider has grown into himself so much, like here he constantly looks like he is fighting something, which yeah, but doesn’t he look so much happier now.

Herzeleid is such a gutsy song. Like the nerve to do that when there was literally nothing remotely like it at the time.

Lol Paul trying to look grim.

Bestrafe mich

Ooff, getting out of that carpet outfit must have been such a relief.

It didn’t really occur to me for a long time how much the whole felf flagellation thing actually predates the Rosenrot video. The fact it’s part of older R+ iconography slightly softens me toward the video.

Schneider is the hardest working person on that entire stage.

Also interesting: Paul and Richards tones blend alot less than they do nowadays. They’ve gotten more precise and probably just better/more developed production, but I love hearing them so seperatly.

God wiggely Flake. Dude makes the band I swear. I miss this more elecutonic take.

Richard’s hair is starting to come loose - unseelie prince is emerging.

[jazzworldquest-blog]

USA: Alex Sipiagin & Dave Kikoski-Bonnie and Clyde(2017)

Bonnie And Clyde, a set of original music inspired by ten unique pairs of characters, is the latest accomplishment in the very productive and creative career of arranger-composer-trumpeter Dave Lisik. A Canadian who taught high school in Winnipeg, Canada and college in Memphis, Tennessee, Lisik has been a resident of Wellington, New Zealand since 2010 where he teaches at the New Zealand School of Music and has been a very active part of the jazz and creative music scene. While Lisik has written for many larger ensembles, symphony orchestras and his own quintet in his career (with over 450 compositions), Bonnie and Clyde features the duo of trumpeter Alex Sipiagin and pianist Dave Kikoski interpreting his music. Sipiagin, along with Bob Sheppard, had been the principal soloist on Lisik’s 2011 jazz orchestra record Walkabout – A Place For Visions. In 2014, Lisik’s quintet recording Machaut Man and a Superman Hat featured Sipiagin and tenor-saxophonist Donny McCaslin along with the rhythm section of the Mingus Big Band which included Dave Kikoski. “Alex and Dave are both incredible players, technical masters and artists on a really high level,” says Dave Lisik. “As a trumpet player I have a particular appreciation for Alex's ability on the instrument but his inventiveness really stands out for me, even when compared to some of the other top trumpeters playing today. Music just flows out of both of these guys. Alex was in New Zealand for the national jazz workshops in January 2016 and he was already planning some duo gigs with Dave Kikoski. Rather than just writing random tunes for them, it seemed more interesting, given the two-player format, to create a collection of new tunes based on famous pairs from history.” The adventurous music on Bonnie and Clyde was a challenge for the two players but they quickly came up with fresh and inventive ideas that perfectly fit the pieces. “A few of the tunes start with chord progressions like standards, others are more modern harmonically, and a few are based on ostinatos with melodies and no harmonic progression. It is easy to worry about there not being enough variety with only two instruments but then, as always happens with players at this level, they took the music to places that I had not imagined. The improvisations and interplay are so interesting that it is fun for me to hear what they did with my pieces.” Bonnie and Clyde begins with “Kourke ‘N Spock,” named after Captain James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock from Star Trek. “The odd spelling of Kourke is a nod to the way that Alex, with his Russian accent, pronounces Kirk. It’s identical to how the Russian Star Trek character Pavel Chekov said it, which I found humorous.” The wide intervals played by Sipiagin somehow sounds effortless and relaxed, giving this piece a futuristic feel. “Samneric,” the twin boys Sam and Eric from Lord Of The Flies who were so close that they melded into one character. This dramatic performance has Alex Sipiagin and Dave Kikoski engaging in dramatic interplay as they play off of each other’s ideas throughout the piece. “Antony and Cleopatra,” historic figures who were immortalized by Shakespeare, are musically portrayed by Sipiagin (who hints at the melancholy of Miles Davis on this piece even during his faster runs) and Kikoski, who takes an extended solo filled with twists and turns. “Porgy and Bess,” the lead characters in George Gershwin’s famed folk opera, are saluted in a thoughtful piece that is a bit nostalgic. “Henson and Oz” celebrates the creative partnership of Jim Henson and Frank Oz who together created Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy and Ernie and Bert. This high energy romp has Sipiagin and Kikoski engaging in playful moments and fiery stretches that jump around with the energy of a children’s television show. About this track Lisik says, “Jim Henson and Frank Oz were one of the most important modern comedy duos. Henson passed unexpectedly in 1990 and Frank Oz eulogizing Jim Henson at his memorial service is one of the most touching moments I’ve seen and a wonderful tribute to the relationship between these two men. “Bonnie and Clyde” is for the Depression era criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow who were depicted in a colorful movie of the same name. Lisik’s music is worthy of a memorable chase scene. “Arwen and Aragorn” is dedicated to two characters from the Lord Of The Rings, a saga that is particularly popular in New Zealand where the films were shot. The particularly lovely chord progression of this romantic jazz waltz is borrowed from “Fairy Tale” by Bob Washut, Lisik’s former teacher at the University of Northern Iowa. The cat and mouse interplay throughout “Holmes and Watson” is perfect for a tribute to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The whimsical yet mysterious piece conjures up the image of a Sherlock Holmes tale. “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” are Shakespearean characters from Hamlet. On this performance and briefly elsewhere, Dave Kikoski is heard on Fender Rhodes, sometimes playing electric and acoustic pianos together with one hand on each. The unisons and general theme on this original are quirky, witty and difficult to predict. Bonnie and Clyde concludes with “Fred And Ginger,” a warm ballad dedicated to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Too much praise cannot be given to the two musicians who interact spontaneously throughout the ten pieces with the same confidence and relaxed creativity that they would have displayed if they had been stretching out on much more familiar standards. Dave Lisik became involved in music early in his life. After playing organ for five years, he switched to trumpet in sixth grade, performing regularly in his school bands. “Both of my junior high and high school band directors were trumpet players so I'm sure that helped me.” Lisik developed quickly and, while still in high school, he performed for two years in the big band at the University of Manitoba. Always interested in writing, he experimented with electroacoustic music while in high school and mostly wrote classical music while in college, but gained experience writing jazz before and during his doctoral study at the University of Memphis. “I wrote for the guest artists who came to the school including Marvin Stamm, Bill Mays, Luis Bonilla, Paul Hanson, Carl Allen, and Kirk Whalum. Once my dissertation was finished, Luis was particularly encouraging and helpful in getting players to record my first big band CD.” Among those jazz composers and arrangers whose music inspired him early on were Bob Brookmeyer, Jim McNeely, Maria Schneider and Thad Jones. In addition to teaching at the New Zealand School of Music in Wellington, Lisik co-directs the New Zealand Youth Jazz Orchestra, founded and produces the NZSM Jazz Festival, and is a trustee of the New Zealand Jazz Foundation. During the past year he has co-written with Eric Allen the book 50 Years at the Village Vanguard: Thad Jones, Mel Lewis and the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. He has also recorded many inventive CDs of his music with several new projects scheduled to be coming out in the near future. For the future, Dave Lisik says, “I hope to keep writing music for inspiring performers, both in classical music and jazz. I want there always to be some urgency to evolve and keep getting better rather than having my projects be too similar.” Bonnie and Clyde, which is unlike any of Dave Lisik’s previous recordings, succeeds at being fresh, new and full of inventive music. Scott Yanow, jazz author/historian and author of 11 books including Trumpet Kings and Jazz On Record 1917-76 via Blogger http://ift.tt/2pPSHwe

[newyorktheater]

Just one Broadway show is opening this month,  but January is as usual one of the most robust months for theater in New York, thanks in large part to the January theater festivals.

See January 11

See January 18

See January 13

See January 8

See January 8

See January 19

See January 13

See January 21

See January 14

Together these festivals offer more than 100 shows; most are experimental, often hybrids that redefine what theater is; many are difficult to describe; some run only for one or two performances

Below is a selective list of Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway and festival offerings in January, organized chronologically by opening date (or, for a festival show, the first performance), with each title linked to a relevant website. Color key: Broadway: Red. Off Broadway: Black or Blue.. Off Off Broadway: Green. January theater festival*: Orange

Below that, links to the home pages of seven of the festivals.

    January 4

After (Under the Radar)

by Albert Schneider, the creator of the trickster theater piece YOUARENOWHERE (which is all I have to know)

Margarete (Under the Radar)

An artistic reconstruction of the life of a Polish woman based on 8 mm film reels found in a market near Poland.

Re-Member Me (Under the Radar) 

Dickie Beau as a human Hamlet mix-tape

January 5

 The Gates: An Evening of Stories with Adam Gopnik (Under the Radar)

Ninety minutes of true personal stories by the writer for the New Yorker magazine

How to Be a Rock Critic  (Under the Radar)

A solo play about the late Lester Bangs

  January 6

Thunderstorm 2.0 (Under the Radar)

A modern take by a Beijing-based company on an early twentieth century play

  January 8

Disco Pigs (Irish Rep)

Twentieth anniversary production of Enda Walsh’s play about two life-long friends who on their 17th birthday spiral violently out of control. The first of two plays by Enda Walsh this month. (See January 14)

Mankind (Playwrights Horizons)

Robert O’Hara’s play imagines a future society where women are extinct and men can get pregnant.

Antigonón, un Contingente Épico (Under the Radar)

A Cuban company’s over-the-top adaptation of Sophocles tragedy, incorporating figures form Cuban history.

January 9

Acquanetta (Prototype)

An operatic version of a 1940s horror movie. (Prototype is a festival of modern opera.)

  January 10

The Echo Drift (Prototype)

Convicted murderer Walker Loats is trapped in a timeless prison.

January 11

John Lithgow: Stories by Heart (RTC’s American Airlines)

The actor tells personal stories mixed with short stories by Ring Lardner and PG Wodehouse.

The Hendrix Project (Under the Radar)

Fans in the balcony during a Jimi Hendrix New Year’s Eve concert in 1969.

Black Inscription (Prototype)

A diver descends into the depths of the ocean, never to resurface. As her terrestrial ties dissolve, she embarks upon an Odyssean journey

Pillowtalk (Exponential)

One night in the lives of Sam and Buck, a recently married interracial  gay couple.

January 12

Fellow Travelers (Prototype)

An illicit love story between two men set during the anti-gay “Lavendar Scare” the McCarthy-Era .

Jupiter’s Lifeless Moons (COIL)

A one-man “romp through nocturnal America” by Dane Terry, recounting his gig working in an Ohio zoo.

  January 13

Pursuit of Happiness (Under the Radar)

National Theater of Oklahoma (an acclaimed downtown theater company) collaborates with a Slovenian dance company for a dance-theater hybrid that examine American individualism and our “unalienable right” to happiness, starting in a Wild West saloon and ending in an Iraqi battlefield.

Secrets (Prototype)

setting to music hundreds of anonymous testimonies from the general public

January 14

Bally Turk (St Anna Warehouse)

Enda Walsh’s new play about the lives of two men who unravel quickly

January 15

IYOV (Prototype)

The story of the Biblical Job, told through a new sound

January 17

The Undertaking (59 E 59)

A piece about death by Steve Cosson of the documentary theater company The Civilians, based on interviews with “a near death experiencer, a prominent philosopher, and a cancer patient on a psilocybin trip among others”

January 18

Until the Flood (Rattlestick)

Dael Orlandersmith’s solo show in response to the death of Michael Brown.

Hindle Wakes (Mint at Theatre Row)

Revival of a 1912 play unsentimentally depicting two young people seeking pleasure without commitment

The Thing with Feathers (The Barrow Group)

A play about an underage teenager who is seduced by an older man on the Internet.

10-Minute Play Festival (The First This Time)

A program of six short plays by early-career playwrights of African and African American descent

January 19

X: Or, Betty Shabazz v. The Nation (Theatre at St. Clement’s)

The Acting Company’s production of Marcus Gardley’s play about the assassination of Malcolm X

  January 21

Party Face (City Center)

Hayley Mills stars as  a woman who brings her own food to her daughter’s party—and also the “right” person to be her daughter’s new best friend

Miles for Mary (Playwrights Horizons)

A comedy from The Mad Ones directed by Lila Neugebauer. Set in 1988, the play tracks the meetings and politics of the planning committee for Garrison High School’s ninth annual Miles For Mary Telethon.

January 30

He Brought Her Back In A Box (TFANA at Polonsky)

Adrienne Kennedy’s first new play in a decade is set in Georgia and New York City in 1941,  and “braids together the indignities of Jim Crow, rising Nazism, sexual hypocrisy, Christopher Marlowe, and the lingering shadow of a terrible crime.”

January 31

Cardinal (Second Stage)

Greg Pierce’s new play about a rivalry in a Rust Belt town, directed by Kate Whoriskey , who directed Sweat.

—

For a complete list of Theater Festival offerings, check them out individually

Under the Radar (Jan 4-15)

The Exponential Festival (Jan 4-31)

Prototype (Jan 7-20)

American Realness (Jan 9-16)

COIL (Jan 10-Feb 4)

Special Effects Festival (Jan 11-15)

The Fire This Time Festival (Jan 15-28)

  January 2018 New York Theater Openings Just one Broadway show is opening this month,  but January is as usual one of the most robust months for theater in New York, thanks in large part to the January theater festivals.

[notafraidofredyellowandblue]

credit to ig rip_sync, found on ig tanya.ivanna

Although i hope fondly for a return of the Ausländer outro duet, i almost forget that Richard's guitar solo is really great, and he has a variation each time i think, certainly in Vienna (this is from 2023-07-27)

i want to find a video of an earlier gig where he blew Schneider an airkiss at the end 🥰

[larryland]

“What you see is what you get!”

That was the catch phrase of Flip Wilson’s Geraldine, one of America’s favorite drag characters, and it perfectly embodies drag as an art form. Geraldine both did and did not exist, she was Wilson and she was not.

In the Dorset Theatre Festival’s production of The Legend of Georgia McBride, Matthew Lopez’ new comedy about a young straight man whose discovery that he is a drag queen literally saves his marriage, what you see – a spectacular ninety minutes of very moving comedy brilliantly performed and directed – is exactly what you get.

The minute you enter the theatre in Dorset you are greeted by an air of excitement. Strings of colored lights swoop across the ceiling down toward the stage (just the start of Zach Blane’s dazzling lighting design.) A sign upstage welcomes you to Cleo’s in Panama Beach, Florida and songs like “One Night in Margaritaville” and “Tequila Sunrise” set the scene for the tacky booze-fest that occurs in such clubs. The opening minutes of the show introduce the central character, Casey (Joey Taranto), doing a mediocre Elvis impression on Cleo’s stage. The fact that he can’t earn enough to pay the rent from this gig is immediately obvious. His wife Jo (Vasthy Mompoint) is exasperated with his lack of responsibility and his oblivious optimism, and reality socks them both in the gut when, a few minutes later, a home pregnancy test reveals that they are expecting.

Cleo’s owner, Eddie (Denny Dale Bess), is as desperate as Casey for the club to turn a profit, and so he calls on his cousin Bobby to bring in his drag act. Bobby arrives in his drag persona, Miss Tracy Mills (David Turner), with her partner, the erratic and seldom sober Miss Anorexia Nervosa aka Rexy (Jon Norman Schneider), and Casey is demoted to bartender. Until one night when Rexy has one too many and passes out…and a new drag star is born.

Casey’s transformation into Miss Georgia McBride occupies the center slice of the show and offers a fascinating glimpse into what it takes to develop a new identity physically and psychologically. I say a glimpse because Casey’s transitions in and out of drag are lightning fast. When I read the script I was terrified that Lopez had written a play that would literally be impossible to stage because he had not built in enough time for the costume changes, but director Stephen Brackett has choreographed them to the last second, and thanks to Bobby Frederick Tilley’s flexible (and stunning!) costumes, a drag-savvy cast (shout out to Judy Bowman Casting), and expert dressers, they all go off without a hitch. The dressers to appear on stage occasionally, briefly, and inconspicuously and it seems perfectly normal that Tracy and Georgia would have assistance with their changes.

“Drag ain’t a hobby, baby. Drag ain’t a night job. Drag is a protest. Drag is a raised fist inside a sequined glove. Drag is a lot of things, baby, but drag is not for sissies.”

– Matthew Lopez

Still, Taranto’s first appearance as the fully formed Georgia is gasp-inducing. She is gorgeous!  (There are no production photos of his full transformation so you will just have to go and see for yourself.) And Taranto is unrecognizable, even though you watch him remove her and turn back into him right before your eyes, they remain two distinct people. Taranto performed in drag on Broadway in the original cast of Kinky Boots, so he is completely comfortable sprinting around in towering stilettos that would break my ankles in a second.

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Equally gasp-inducing is the brief scene in which Tracy appears as Bobby. This huge presence is suddenly this small, quiet man. (Again, no production photos of that moment but Turner can be seen out of drag in the rehearsal cast photo.) While Casey is billed as the lead role, as far as I was concerned Turner’s Tracy was the star of the show and it’s heart. He handles the majority of the lip synch numbers (kudos to Ryan Rumery for the excellent sound design) and an astonishing number of costume changes.

As I watched Turner perform his first big number – “Hey Big Spender” from Sweet Charity vividly choreographed by Patrick McCullom – I realized that I have only been exposed to nice safe sanitized G-rated drag, and that watching what was definitely merely PG-13 was quite shocking to me. I have definitely got to expand my horizons and go see a real drag show. Which way to Cleo’s?

Bess is ideal as the sleazy middle-aged club boss with the heart of gold, and Mompoint is warm and relatable as Jo. For a variety of reasons Casey finds it impossible to say to Jo that he is performing drag, and she finds out by accident on a chance visit to the club when she is six months pregnant. Her struggle to come to grips with her husband’s duplicity and his new identity as Georgia is slightly truncated, but ultimately winning. The one thing that makes me sad as a cisgender straight woman like Jo is how marginalized we are in the drag world. Women do drag too, adopting both male personae – three cheers for Melissa McCarthy! – and drag queen identities – Madonna and Cher are excellent examples. I was glad Brackett gave Mompoint a dance solo in a snazzy outfit in the final number because drag is also a celebration of the universal feminine.

Schneider is equally impressive both in drag as Rexy (I seriously covet those hot pink fishnets with the barber pole swirls and the poison green patent leather heels!) and in a dual role as a straight dude named Jason, who is Casey and Jo’s beleaguered landlord. Lopez has given both characters some of the most important lines in the show – Rexy’s ferocious defense of his identity as a drag queen, and Jason’s confession that, before his marriage, he was deeply in love with a trans woman.

I can’t think of a production where the vital importance of each and every member of the company is so apparent. While standing ovations are nauseatingly ubiquitous these days, when the audience I attended with leapt to their feet at the curtain call the impetus was genuine and the accolade well-earned. I would have been delighted to keep cheering if the set , costume, lighting and sound designers had bounded out on stage, along with the director and the choreographer and the stage manager and the dressers and…and…and… Talk about your well-oiled machine! This production is firing on all cylinders.

I attended a matinee, performances generally patronized by older theatre goers, and as I walked out I heard many interesting snippets of conversation in which people unused to discussing drag and gender identity and such struggled to find the words to describe their thoughts while maintaining their own facades of genteel propriety. This is good. These are things we need to think and talk about more. We need to recognize the common humanity underneath whatever persona we are wearing today.

What you see may be what you get only because that’s what you’re expecting. What you see is usually only the tip of the iceberg.

The Dorset Theatre Festival’s production of The Legend of Georgia McBride by Matthew Lopez, directed by Stephen Brackett, runs August 3-19, 2017, at the Dorset Playhouse,��104 Cheney Road in Dorset, Vermont. The show runs 90 minutes with no intermission. Choreography by Patrick McCullom, set design by, Lee Savage costume design by Bobby Frederick Tilley, lighting design by Zach Blane, sound design by Ryan Rumery, stage manager Will Rucker. CAST: Denny Dale Bess as Eddie; Joey Taranto as Casey; Vasthy Mompoint as Jo; David Turner as Miss Tracy Mills; and Jon Norman Schneider as Rexy and Jason.

The box office may be reached by calling (802) 867-2223 ext 2 Tuesday through Saturday 12-6pm (8pm on performance days). For more information, or to purchase tickets online, visit Dorset Theatre Festival’s website at dorsettheatrefestival.org.

REVIEW: “The Legend of Georgia McBride”at Dorset “What you see is what you get!” That was the catch phrase of Flip Wilson’s Geraldine, one of America’s favorite drag characters, and it perfectly embodies drag as an art form.