Sonic Parthenon TV Insta-Clips

Ta Da!

Presenting a series of short clips, taken mostly from Mr. Pennypacker's mobile cellular device. These clips are, for the most part, utterly horrible - not because of the bands obviously, but because of the nature of the device used to take them. But nevertheless, they stand as a record of Sonic Parthenon giggage, and also they stand because Mr. Pennypacker does not know how to use Bluetooth.
As a sample, here is a little of Camera Obscura (yes, I know, I can't stop writing about them!) from their intimate performance at Sound Fix:

Also, the DirtBlanche clips have been moved to this playlist.

Sonic Parthenon Expanding

...but not without some hiccups.

The collection of videos on YouTube is now the Sonic Parthenon TV channel, located at
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=edk620

The Camera Obscura clip I put up yesterday is the first full song performance clip up but you can also check out terribly made clips of Blanche and the Dirtbombs from a couple years ago as well as something else that I myself did not make.

Blogger now has a video upload feature that also allows for podcasting (!) but either it's broken right now or it just won't accept my videos which means the Sonic Parthenon Video Podcast is on hold for now. But considering I didn't even know I could have one until this morning, that's alright.

Concert pictures now have a home on Flickr at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonicparthenon/

Currently up are photos of Camera Obscura, Last Town Chorus, the Dirtbombs, Be Your Own Pet, Les Sans Culottes, and Blanche.

The "Williamsburg" Confession

First a link to the piece that got me started on writing this - the toxic brew that it is there is something I haven't given much thought about, even after remembering this Lopate show about the decades-old oil leak in Greenpoint. But anyway...

This is the story of Williamsburg. Actually it isn't. It's the story of "Williamsburg". It's the story of me and my relation to this Brooklyn neighborhood not just as a location but as a concept, in the context of what I knew growing up, what my experience has been in the last few years, and what it all means now. So it's a story of my life with Rock N Roll and another city - Detroit - but it's really best to just call it the story of "Williamsburg".

When I first planned on writing this story, I thought the moment I would talk about happened in 2001 or 2002. But I was wrong. According to this, it happened in 2003 which means I must have known about it sooner. That link is good because it brings up the other city in this story.

But there I was - apparently in 2003 - sitting on the can, as I usually am, reading Maxim's Blender magazine when I discover that Williamsburg is the "Most Rock N Roll City" in the USA. What? I must have thought one of two things, depending on what I knew at that point. It was probably "A bunch of trendy hipsters have made a notorious Brooklyn neighborhood the Most Rock N Roll City in the USA?". But initially I thought this was the moment I discovered Williamsburg to not be a slum at all, let alone that the hipsters made it number 1. Let's backtrack:

Growing up on the complete opposite end of Brooklyn, I had always been told by my paranoid, enclosed, and hateful family that Williamsburg and Greenpoint were two of the many bad neighborhoods in Brooklyn and we would never ever go there for any reason ever. But I recall going once in the 80's or early 90's, and it did live up to those characterizations. As self-hating Jews, we felt uncomfortable around the Hasidim that lived up there, and as a bunch of racists, my family hated the dark skinned half of the population there even more. And that's talking specifically about Williamsburg. We never ventured to Greenpoint but we thought of it as the same.

Plow ahead to the early 2000's. Very early. I helped chaperon a trip for my old high school to Greenpoint. I was stunned. It was a nice, safe, clean long time Polish neighborhood. The irony of this was that my family comes from Poland. But since this wasn't Jewish Polish, it didn't count. For all my family knew, it was a ghetto. So this was the first stunning moment.

Now let's enlarge the story. It's 2002. After doing some reading, I learn over a short period of time that there is some sort of rock revival going on in the independent music scene. I see the same bands mentioned over and over - The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Hives, The Vines. Reads cool. So I checked 'em out and except for the Vines, I got into it. Suddenly I was - music wise but never in dress or attitude - Hipster Numero Uno. This was in college down in Philadelphia where most of my friends were peaking in their rock interests, primarily stopping at the mid-70's. Some moved on to other things, some of which I latched on to (Ween) and some things I did not (thrash metal). So my thing was the new garage rock.

In addition to seeing and hearing these bands, I learn about their friends and associates and I see that there are actual little scenes going on. Scandinavia seemed the biggest scene outside the USA (England was surprisingly lacking - having only produced The Libertines and later on the gimmicky but fun band The Darkness). In the USA, two cities seemed to be popping up again and again as scenes. New York and Detroit. And specifically in New York, the Lower East Side and Williamsburg.
Hold the phone. Detroit? That run down little Rustbelt relic? There are white people still living in Detroit? And they play rock n roll? I thought Eminem and Kid Rock were all that came out of the Motor City at that point. But nope, there was a whole cadre of garage bands that the Rock World was spying on after the impressive start of the White Stripes.
Hold the phone again. Williamsburg? What the....Williamsburg? Ok, I knew Greenpoint, right next door, was not what I thought it was but Williamsburg? Hasidim and ghetto thugs? Abandoned industrial factories (perhaps not surprisingly, it's own little Rustbelt Riviera)? A band called the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were "from Brooklyn". There are rock bands from Brooklyn? Since when? Certainly not while I was there. Right...? Right...? I thought all the artists and hip people were still in Soho and Chelsea. Holy cow!

So that's how it started. Before moving back from Philadelphia (which itself has/had a small but very immobile garage rock scene), I reacquainted myself with my hometown (and if you're wondering why Detroit matters in this story at all, just hold on). I learned about a lot of these good New York bands - the Strokes, YYY, the Mooney Suzuki - and I learned that not only was the Williamsburg/Greenpoint section of Brooklyn all the trendy rage, the Lower East Side was the twin city on the other side of the river. So I guess by the time I read that Blender article, I had known but was still stunned. And for the record, I still object to the designation of "city". It's a neighborhood.

I have a love and hate affair with these current crop of hipsters. I like a lot of the look (especially on the girls, and I myself am a sucker for a good blazer with slacks and a messenger bag) but it feels forced. The exorbitant amount of money flowing underneath felt obscene and made the scene feel false. But alas this is how many scenes happen. Someone has to have the money. Back over in Detroit, no one had the money, and that's why people left - to go to places like New York.

So back to Detroit. By late 2002, early 2003 - before I even moved back to New York to have more time experiencing this music scene - I fell in love with the White Stripes. More so than any other band. This was THE band. And it was only 2 people. The ability to change the sound and style without changing the aesthetic really appealed to me. But obviously it was the ability to sound good and write good songs in each different style that really made it work. I annoyed my friends with constant talk about them. On the day Elephant came out in 2003, I made a biiiiig stink about it. I was like a little fanboy. I was a little fanboy. Sue me. It felt good to be into something like that. And I had nothing to be ashamed of. Instead of being derided by my rock snob friends, I had done them one better. Now I was the snob. But I digress.

After moving back to New York that summer, I really got into the scene. And I started making trips up to Williamsburg. I had ONE friend who liked to go up there but not for live music. He did it just to feel trendy and get drunk, and he introduced me to some good bars there and on the Lower East Side and East Village. Live music was another matter. My first gig back in NYC was actually The Sounds at Club Luxx in Williamsburg. It couldn't get any more garage hipster than that folks. I even had an Ac/Dc shirt on (remember a couple years ago when all those bastards started wearing Ac/Dc shirts? I STARTED it. Ok I probably didn't - but as an actual fan of Ac/Dc for several years running by that point, it felt like I did).
I was totally blown away by the idea of the Village Voice doing an annual festival in Coney Island. Who would have thunk it? Coney Island was (and still mostly is) dreck. But there it was. A festival just a few stops down. What a time to be alive.

So that was almost four full years ago now. A lot has happened. As per New York, the scene never died. But it shifted and changed. The Strokes' rock n roll gave way to the Yeah Yeah Yeah's art rock. Art rock gave way to dance rock (and that went national and international - and this time, the Brits DID show up to the party, Franz Ferdinand and all their sub-par peers). For a brief period, the hipsters tried to engineer a new sound "electroclash" but it failed. After dance rock, came the return of indie pop. And nowadays, it appears what would have passed for mainstream bar band rock in the 90's is now the current hipster flavor (The Hold Steady). I like some of it. I don't like some of it. That's how it is and always will be. We're almost at the point of this story, let me just switch back to Detroit for a moment because things will start to come together now.

The White Stripes began to disassociate with their hometown sometime between Elephant and 2005's Get Behind Me Satan. Artistically, aesthetically, personally - the association that Jack White had with his hometown was draining away and eventually snapped completely. Why does this matter?
Because the whole time I was reveling in the New York scene, I had increasingly become obsessed with the Detroit bands. I liked other bands and other styles - but the Motor City garage thing was tops for me. A good dozen to two dozen (maybe even more, I hope not) bands were my biggest interests. It was obscene. And the perk of being in New York was that this was the one town that most of these bands would eventually come to.
Though while I was still in Philadelphia, I went to two shows at the little venue called the Balcony that had some significance in the long run: First was Mondo Topless, Philadelphia's own garage band. I loved them and still do. But the headliner that night was an Ohio group called the Greenhornes. Now, as I was an arrgoant jerk (and still am) but knew even less then, I said to myself "who are these White Stripes ripoffs?"). But I would come to know the Greenhornes better later on. The second gig was Electric Six. I went to see this band purely on a White Stripes-related reason. Jack had sung on one of their songs. It was a great damn show and the beginning of a mostly-love affair with the Six that still goes on to this day. And to help bring in some kind of full circle story, while the band is technically still based out of Detroit, the lead singer who essentially IS Electric Six, lives in Brooklyn (or at least he did the last time I heard).

So let's bring in some context now (thank you for sticking with me this far - YOU are crazier than I am for reading this, so take heart!). The Greenhornes would play important roles later on - particularly their bass player, Jack Lawrence. The Greenhornes were openers or playing on the bills at a LOT of shows that came to the Northeast that almost always featured Detroit bands. Two of these bands were the Dirtbombs and Blanche (the aforementioned Jack Lawrence became a member of Blanche right before I got into them). About a year after the Philly shows, I got into both bands heavily, far surpassing the other Detroit bands and rivaling if not even surpassing at many times, the White Stripes.

So there was my life. A New York scenester mostly interested in bands from Detroit. But particularly those 2 bands. Over the course of 2005, I started up MySpace pages for the bands on their behalf after I schoomzed 'em at gigs. This was my hobby, my break from my work life, and I enjoyed it. And I still enjoy it.

Ironically, Williamsburg played less and less a role. It was out of the way for me, and I only had 1 friend who lived in the neighborhood (not the same friend mentioned above, that one actually became a born again Hasidic Jew). So I focused on the Lower East Side, the bigger venues in the city, and Hoboken - if only for Maxwell's, the best venue in the metro area. But this is still the story of Williamsburg.

So let me quickly dispense with something I alluded to in a previous post. For the last four years I have spent a good deal on a White Stripes messageboard. Decreasingly talking about the band (which is natural) I became friendly with many people but also stirred lots of conflict due to my combative nature as I got into other topics.

The board matters for a few reasons: It held the nexus of the Stripes fan community together, it served as a hub for fans of other bands (including the Dirtbombs and Blanche), and it also resulted in affecting my actual physical real world social life in major ways (I.E. a relationship with someone I met from the board). As per the pathetic-ness of the internet, there was lots of needless drama, and a lot of unhealthy things going on. As the Detroit "scene" fell away, I was able to look at things with a fresh perspective. People were waaaaay too obsessed with the Stripes and anything related to Jack White. And I mean anything. Thankfully, the contingent of Detroit obsessives faded and shrunk (that included me as my interests expanded again and I moved on from a lot of the growing musical inadequacy and stupid gossipy drama coming out of that town onto the board) but those that remained gave me a wake up call. People have to move on. People have to expand their lives.

As I also mentioned in that previous post things got hairy for me at the time the Raconteurs opened shop (and once again there was Jack Lawrence in the band). I had some choice, hasty words for some "band policy" regarding wristbands and a free gig. Little did I know at that moment the reality that multi-millionaire rock star Jack White spent some portion of his free time on his fans' messageboard and fought with them (namely me) over multiple things. The wristbands were apparently the last straw and I raised the ire of his nephew, who is also the damn drummer for the damn Dirtbombs, which by that point was (and still is) my favorite band. AWKWARD CITY. I alienated everyone who already had tired of my confrontational attitude and I even lost some friends along the way.

Now people move on - or at least they should, but as pointed out in that previous post, said nephew drummer hasn't let it go (either in jest or seriousness, I can't tell).

At this point, I am done with the board. Just as well. My life has changed and moved on in other ways, including related ways. Whatever anyone wanted to think of Detroit in 2002, 2003, 2004 - is long over. Only Williamsburg remains. And by that, I mean only New York City remains. And that's where I remain, hipsters and all, god bless 'em and their Chuck Taylors.

I never got to my point. I just wanted an excuse to babble an odd personal and insanely written post on this blog. Forget politics and rock reviews for once (or twice now). But if I did have a point, it would be to say that I always feel like I missed out and then I feel like I don't move on. Though the scene in New York always changes but also never really dies, I feel like I missed out on it. I should have been here before the Strokes pissed off all the old fashioned purists out there who hated anything scenester. I should have been here when the Yeah Yeah Yeah's opened up for the Dirtbombs (years before it became the other way around). I should have been here when the Dirtbombs played the Siren fest. I should have been here when the White Stripes and the Strokes played the Bowery. I should have been where the Stripes headlined four nights at the Bowery. I should have been here when the Stripes played with Loretta Lynn at the Hammerstein and in the process, introduced Blanche to the world.
I came in at just the right moment and it peaked early. The apex night was not a Dirtbombs show funny enough - and it was not DirtBlanche back in 2005). It was October 2004, a CMJ show - Blanche, Greenhornes, The Sights, the Paybacks, Holly Golightly (aha! There's some England for ya!), Mr Airplane Man, and the Shout Out Louds at the Mercury Lounge. It was a host of great bands and it was everything. It was the Lower East Side hosting Detroit, the USA at large, and Europe. That was the only period of time where I felt I was actually with it, and not still learning and not living in the past. It was perfect. And I guess I just felt like reliving that moment one last time at the end of a long, pointless post.

So yeah that was it. I rarely felt like I was with it. I didn't quite get that I hadn't figured out all of New York, or other parts of America. And I still don't quite get it right now. I feel like I am always playing catch-up when I am not getting off the closed playground. Except for that one night at least.

And oh yeah, I will most likely be at the Hard Lessons show tomorrow night. That's the band who's style, quality, and performance were at the genesis of the nephew drummer's blog that included the swipe at me that caused me to post my post then, and in some ways is why we're here now. The Hard Lessons are a Detroit band that is young, and late to the "scene". They are good kids who work hard, love what they do, and don't take no guff. At the should-have-been-over period of my schmoozing days, I met them and they are great people but we have lost touch as these things happen. I hope to go tomorrow night and cheer 'em on. Someone still has to have a good time out there, even if it means we're a little late or a little too long at the party. "Williamsburg" will still be there.

DirtBlanche 2005

DirtBlanche 2005: The Dirtbombs;Blanche;Mike St. Jude & The Valentines
@ Beachland Ballroom
Cleveland, OH – November 26, 2005

How can it happen that two fairly unknown bands with small followings manage to turn a Saturday night after Thanksgiving in Cleveland into the biggest event of the year? By the small followings spreading the word and pumping up the energy for the most deliciously unexpected musical gig in recent memory. In the interest of full disclosure, I co-run two fan pages on My Space.com, one for the Dirtbombs and one for Blanche. In a limited tooting of our own horn, me and my partner in crime run fairly respectable websites, not simply sugarcoating the bands with praise but actually keeping up to date and serving as the unofficial resource for all things Dirtbombs and Blanche in the My Space.com universe and as a summary of news and info from the official sources.

Blanche and The Dirtbombs have very few things in common and none of them seem to be musically: They are part of the same, fairly small, Detroit Rock N Roll community. They play their different sounds with the same old-fashioned recording ethic as their Detroit cohorts. Dirtbombs leader Mick Collins and Blanche leader Dan John Miller are two of the more established rockers in this community, known to a significant number of Rock n Roll fans worldwide. And both bands happen to share a good deal of the same fans, not just in Detroit, but from without, spanning generations and the continent, and yes, even the globe. And, as already mentioned, they share the common authors of their unofficial My Space.com pages.

So how did the small following get this thing off the ground? The gig had already been announced in late August by those who do those kinds of things. But the small following did its part. For my part, I came up with, as far as I know, with the title of DirtBlanche. And when my partner came up with the first official poster, the year was slapped on it, giving off the hope that this would become something of an annual event. Other members of the small following starting using the phrase “DirtBlanche” in all their music communique. And sure enough, not too long after the DirtBlanche moniker was thrown out there, the official Blanche website used the term.


So now we come to Cleveland. Why Cleveland? Again, that is for those who do those kinds of things, but there is at least a couple good arguments for Cleveland: It is not too far from Detroit, and shares that same blue-collar Rock N Roll love…so much so, that the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame (which is kind of a disappointment for reasons not to be gone into here) is in Cleveland. And so DirtBlanche came to the Beachland Ballroom, a long time respected venue off the beaten path. A simple hall in a simple building, Beachland offered the exact simplicity and lack of hoopla that DirtBlanche needed to not become over hyped. Don’t ask me what I mean by that, I am not even sure that means anything. But I know it makes this paragraph fuller and helps emphasize that I thought the venue was damn good.

Opening act Mike St. Jude & The Valentines offered up gentle countryish pop-rock. Advertised as a new version of Squeeze and Nick Lowe, the band is actually more along the lines of Ryan Adams meets Credence Clearwater Revival. And that’s a good thing. But the sad fact is, no one cared about the opening act. No one was going to care unless the band was known to the small following that dominated the healthy but not overstuffed crowd.

Blanche came out to officially kick DirtBlanche off and boy did they ever. Dan welcomed everyone to DirtBlanche 2005 and throughout the set proceeded to call the night as such, tying it to the idea of it being a Saturday-After-Thanksgiving event, and giving the hope that this will indeed become an annual event. That set the buzz off into overdrive, and the fans loved every minute of it. Blanche introduced even more new songs than they had done all year, just one week off from recording the follow-up album to 2004’s Best Album of the Year, If We Can’t Trust The Doctors. Some of the very new stuff came off a little rusty but the band made up for it with skillfully playing their gorgeous old timey-country rock. Whether it was the now classic balladry of “Do You Trust Me?” or the newer Western Swing of “At Least I Didn’t Quit”, Blanche remains the most charmingly haunting band in America.






If Blanche was the concert, the Dirtbombs were the party. Starting off with “Trainwreck” before the now requisite “Start the Party/Get It While You Can”, Mick and company did what they always do, what they seemingly can only do, play funked-up, soul-driven punk garage rock. And even that term doesn’t do justice. Seeing the Dirtbombs for the fifth time this year, I expected the same set as all year long, but the band surprised this old dog with new songs and refurbished energy. It was a fitting culmination for a Dirtbombs year that included the ultimate compilation experience, If You Don’t Already Have A Look. As of right now, the next round of Dirtbombs touring, for the upcoming New Year, begins in Hoboken and Brooklyn next February. Start the party over again.






All night long, before, during, and after their performances, Dan and Mick kept the crowd involved, through jokes and conversation. It could have been an empty echo-filled hall, or a packed, sweaty crowd, but either way or in between, the Dirtbombs and Blanche emphasized what DirtBlanche and Detroit Rock n Roll is all about. It’s about a community. It’s a community of fans and accessible down to earth artists. Though much of the praise from the bands’ following may sound like making these folks larger-than-life figures, the truth is these bands are beloved because they play their music so well and don’t let it get to their heads. It’s like if your own friends played music that should be on the radio. Even when it happens that a certain leader of a certain band has a major role in the Hollywood film about Johnny Cash’s life, Walk the Line, currently in theaters, you’d have no reason to think anything other than the truth: this is a community, almost a family, that loves to do one thing: get together and have a damn good time. The Dirtbombs are a little more well known than Blanche, and a lot harder, and they’ve garnered enough buzz that there are more reports of moshing at shows (the pattern repeats itself…if you know what I mean). So the future may be a little shaky, but the DirtBlanche community, the good time Rock n Roll community, will stay strong. A good community does that. That’s the spirit of DirtBlanche, and that’s why it’s fitting to have it on Thanksgiving weekend, and that’s why it needs to be an annual event.

Dirtblanche 2005 & The Rest of the Year

Well with Thanksgiving less than a week away, it's the first sign of yet another year of our lives coming to an end. And what a year for rock n roll. Yours truly has gone to a personal-best 36 gigs this year (blowing away last year's record setting 21 gigs). And we're not finished.

First up is the big one. The unbelievable one. Dirtblanche 2005 at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland. It will be my first time in Cleveland, and the first time I am seeing a gig in a place that isn't the New York City or Philadelphia metro areas. And I am taking a 12 hour 770 mile road trip to get there from little ol' Springfield, Missouri. I will be seeing the American Heartland for the first time...Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio. Or as I call it, Red State, Blue State, Red State, Fucked Up State. Ok no politics in this post, I promise.

So why is Dirtblanche so big? Not just because of the eclectic nature of the Dirtbombs playing the same gig with Blanche...but because these are the two bands I care so much about that I started My Space pages for them with my Roxxan of Freshgigs and Blanche Manual. I am glad to say both those pages have been well-received and are doing well. Dirtblanche 2005 will be a culmination of this Dirtblanche year (and who knows what next year will bring with a new Blanche album, and even more Dirtbombs shows).

As for the rest of the year, New York will be hopping straight through New Year's. Immediately after Dirtblanche, the Dandy Warhols will close out November at Webster Hall. Let it be said that I hate Webster Hall. It's hot, stuffy, and fucking expensive.

December is packed. Southern Culture on the Skids make their triumphant return to the Big Apple with two shows (Maxwell's and Southpaw). Iron & Wine will soothe the soul for 3 nights at Webster Hall. The Deadly Snakes will play Mercury Lounge then Maxwell's 3 days later with the Black Lips. And X - that's right - X....I will say it again....X....is playing Roseland Ballroom. Everyone and their grandma better be there. And all of those shows are within the first 10 days of the month!

The middle of December does not let up. The Sights are back to play Maxwell's before opening up for the Donnas at Irving Plaza the next night. I have never really been sold on the Donnas but having Eddie Baranek around will help the night out for sure. I won't be there because on the same night in Southpaw, Reverend Horton Heat returns to New York. The week finishes off with the Lemonheads playing two nights at Bowery Ballroom and Brooklyn heroes Living Colour playing their biggest New York date in a long time at Irving Plaza.

The last week of December, and the year, feature a week-long residency at Maxwell's for Yo La Tengo. It's a Hoboken Hanukah this year! Also, not a bad way to spend Christmas Night, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Night too. Also on New Year's Eve so far, will be in their hometown of Brooklyn to play Northsix and They Might Be GiantsClap Your Hands Say Yeah is doing it at Irving Plaza (wow talk about a meteroic rise eh?).

And just to show you, things are still ticking into the New Year's, The Yarrows - who should be getting a My Space page if they listen to their smart, sharp drummer (yeah yeah, he's a long time friend of mine, ok?)...are playing the Charleston in Williamsburg on January 28. And just a few weeks after that?....you guessed it....the Dirtbombs.

Those of you in the New York area, if you can't make any of these gigs, or want something else to do in the meantime, go to Terra Blues on Bleeker St. by Laguardia Place, and catch hot, jumpin' blues nightly.