Highlights
Ken Stringfellow
Thurs., July 29
Soft Commands is the kind of gorgeous country-pop album that you'd expect from an auxiliary member of Big Star-with a few experimental touches like you'd expect from a touring member of REM, and maybe a few steely moments worthy of a member of the Posies. There are probably also hints of all the other bands that can claim Ken Stringfellow as a member/producer/whatever. He's been a really busy guy ever since the Posies left Geffen in the 90s, which is why Ken's fans have been waiting since 2001 for another solo album. He's even found time to tour, with a Maxwell's show in Hoboken on Thursday-and he's become a new dad, the jet-setting pop act reports via a transatlantic phone call.
Are you a pop expatriate in Paris, or are you there for the free medical care? I'm actually on an island off the coast of France. My child was born in Paris. Nothing's free, as it turns out, but it was incredibly cheap. We even went to a private clinic instead of a hospital. I was working on records-mine, plus Big Star and REM-up until the beginning of May, when I knew the baby was coming. Then I cleared my schedule for a couple of months. I've spent maybe a total of seven days in the studio over the past couple of months. Mostly, I've just been here to bring the baby into the world, until it's time to go on tour.
It's been three years since the last solo album. Are you surprised that you're surviving? There hasn't been a single moment when I wasn't working on something, either with REM or the Posies or some production work. I would've put out an album a lot sooner if I hadn't been so busy. I didn't give it much thought when we left Geffen. We left for a good reason. We thought it would bring in more money down the road, and we were right.
There always seems to be somebody ready to release a Ken Stringfellow project. It seemed that way with this record. I was hoping somebody would be interested along the way. I met the people at the YepRoc label through my Minus Five connection on the REM tour. It's a perfect home for the record. Their catalogue is more rootsy, in general, but I can see some crossover from their other acts.
It's been kind of overdue for you to make a vaguely country album-as compared to that desperate record from the guy who used to be in Weezer. I suppose. I'm not sure what he's capable of. For me, the music is a distillation of all the things that I love-and I love a lot of things. Some people are better as part of a band. I can't judge myself. I'm certainly not making records for any other reason than I need to get these songs out. Some people might be trying to prove something. I'm just trying to prove I exist.
Maxwell's, 1039 Washington St. (11th St.), Hoboken, 201-653-1703, $10, $8 adv.
J.R. Taylor
Eddie Bobe
Tues. & Weds., July 27 & 28
Ringleader of the Central Park rumba scene for most of its 30 years, hot-handed ace on jazz and Latin records and those of the inventive downtown scene, percussionist Eddie Bobe brings his band and some special guests to the Jazz Standard for two nights of fiery New York groove.
Puerto-Rican born with Cuban heritage, Bobe's been making the Nuyorican scene since moving here as a kid. Expert in the spectrum of Caribbean rhythms (ceremonial bata drums; Haitian voodum; the bomba y plena of his Puerto Rican home), Bobe has taught master classes at Juilliard and the New School. But his sound lives in the street, and Bobe was instrumental in keeping it there for years. The Giuliani administration eventually pressured the Central Park drummers to disband, but rumba comes from deep roots and knows how to persist (authorities in Havana were banning street rumba a century ago). Invited in 1999 to record the incredible amalgam of those Sundays in the Park, Bobe hand-picked his rumberos from the fluxuating Puerto Rican, Cuban and African American participants to produce the loose, exultant Central Park Rumba (Piranha).
His own recording history as a key sideman ranges from jazz dates with Art Pepper and Steve Coleman to major Latin leaders like Eddie Palmieri and the great Chico O'Farrill big band. Authenticity is best acknowledged by one's own peers, and Bobe plays on recordings by master percussionist Steve Berrios (founding drummer of the Latin jazz juggernaut, the Ft. Apache Band) and timbalero Bobby Sanabria's Quarteto Ache.
Rumba's always digesting new influences, and Bobe swings wide as well as deep, playing on recent Medeski Martin and Wood discs like The Dropper and Uninvisible, as well as Marc Ribot's Los Cubanos Postizos project. Ribot joins in for the Standard gigs, where he'll trade six-string licks with tresero Edgardo Miranda. Bobe's also thick in New York's Latin groove scene, guesting on Batidos' Olajope (Six Degrees) by Groove Collective's sax man Jay Rodriguez (who's also with Bobe at the Standard) and Giant Step's DJ Ron Trent-a recording that features another stellar guest, Cuban piano phenom Chucho Valdez.
"Eddie is one of the hard core of real musical intellectuals who keep New York strong," says author Ned Sublette, whose recent Cuba and Its Music is evidence that he can recognize another musical presence of that stripe.
Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th St. (betw. Park & Lexington Aves.), 212-576-2232, 7:30 & 9:30, $15.
Alan Lockwood
Jaojoby
Fri., July 30
You are dancing to a 6/8 beat, one that feels more impossible than improbable. You are crooning and chanting along with a singer who sounds as if he's caused this sort of swooning in cruiseship bars by shouting at the top of his lungs. What you're listening to is Jaojoby.
Eusebe Jaojoby to be specific-the king of Madagascar's native "salegy" dance music. Like a jittering Fela Kuti infused with the bewildering jumpy funk of James Brown topped by the twittering inspiration of Sweet Honey in the Rock, there is a caramel coating to the vocal harmonies of Jaojoby, his sing-songy wife, Claudine, and their large band. But make no mistake. This music is neither lilting nor sugary. This tough, electric guitar-flickering folk music comes from an old, hypnotic sound-the 15th-century, a time when the French first settled on "Red Island."
As a former hotel lounge singer, Eusebe Jaojoby knows how to provoke a sedate audience into revelry, using this ancient-made modern groove. Yet, in its current form, Jaojoby has made "salegy" as revolutionary as Dylan gone electric, only with a form of subtle percussion as supple and elastic as old leather.
Joe's Pub, 425 Lafayette St. (betw. E. 4th St. & Astor Pl.), 212-539-8778, 9:30, $20.
A.D. Amorosi
Pete Rock
Tues., Aug. 3
During his pairing with MC C.L. Smooth, producer/spinner Pete Rock came up with a fat liquidy mix of organ, looped reed and brass, dense drums and cymbal rides nearly without comparison in the hiphop world. Unlike some of the genre's most eccentric sonic reducers (the genius Prince Paul), Rock and Smooth sold records. Listen to Mecca and the Soul Brother, or its singularly most dynamic track, "They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)," and you've heard all that hiphop could do when it wasn't concerned with money, guns and lawyers.
For Lost and Found-a two-disc package recorded in the wake of Soul Survivor, a solo effort that went out largely unnoticed on the Loud label-contributions from Large Professor and Q-Tip fill out an album that's plush with bliss-hop and moody melody. So much so that the Rapster/BBE funded the making of Soul Survivor II, a better record than its predecessor. Unconcerned as always by commercial cool, Rock makes the melodies subtle but catchy and leaves enough room within the shuttering rhythms and the ambient rubber-soul for the likes of Pharoahe Monch, old pal C.L. Smooth, his pals in Wu-Tang and Dead Prez to ruminate. It won't hurt that hiphop's sexiest siren, Truth Hurts, opens the show. With Mr. Cheeks.
S.O.B.'s, 204 Varick St. (Houston St.), 212-243-4940, 9, $25, $20 adv.
A.D. Amorosi
The Nein & Volcano, I'm Still Excited!!
Sat., July 31
If I tell you North Carolina's the Nein is made up of men affiliated with the geek-noise of the White Octave and the fuzzed-out found sound of Steel Pole Bathtub, it won't help you. Not much. Because, while there are indeed bits of Octave's hungry, hollow-flanged metal and SPB's bash-about rhythm within the Nein, these guys find themselves united by lean, cringing rock. Despite the fact that SPB were a symphony of borrowed, basement kitsch and ripped-amp ambience, and White Octave a minor-key Weezer (full-blooded and devoid of all pop inclination), both acts kept their music tight to the vest and without fat. So too does the Nein.
Not everyone has discarded their kitsch for cool linearity. On Volcano, I'm Still Excited!!'s eponymous first CD, souped-up syn-organist/songwriter Mark Duplass does the blushing, urgent early-80s new-pop better than most, better maybe than even Spoon, the band to which his Volcano is oft compared. The round-robin harmonies and incessantly charming vocals of songs like "Trunk of My Car" and "2nd Gun" have the whoosh of Nick Lowe or Clive Langer productions; mixes that heated the chill of England's dreamiest driven-hard New Waver à la Costello, Scritti Politti and Madness.
Northsix, 66 N. 6th St. (betw. Wythe & Kent Aves.), Williamsburg, 718-599-5103, $10, 9.
A.D. Amorosi
SunnO)))
The wholly original, wholly doom-laden and lonely, groaning, power ambie-drone ensemble of Sunn0))) have, with each sludgy yet achingly alive CD, alchemically forged epic tracks into slow, bludgeoning dirges that roar and rip like thunder and hail onto a dirty, rock-and-pebble-strewn field. Real hammer-of-the-gods stuff. From 00 Void to White 1-with the Merzbow-mixed Flight of the Behemoth in between-these instrumentalists, unlike anyone else in the doom-morass metal stakes, have grown beyond pudgy operas (tunes can go up toward 20 minutes) and slurring orchestrated chainsaw (literally) soliloquies into emotive groans of gear-grinding guitar that'd make the Melvins sound like they're merely meowing.
Without drums, without even the hum or hope of mere melody, Sunn0)))'s heartbroken, mauling mess of a sound is thick with drones and extended eerie interludes, lost in a void of self-release. The hypnotic horrorcore of White 1 (a lean, mean symphony of shame) and its follow-up, White 2, manage to fit vocals into a brutal, self-absorbed and nihilistic sound. Crawling through the wreckage of booming sonic doom, the tracks take on feedback and noise as if caught in a desert firestorm. Beyond warring death metal, this is genocide-drone; an expansive groan made all the more rich by its frenetic-less moments of unearthly silence. John Cage is rattling in his grave.
Weds. at Northsix, 66 N. 6th St. (betw. Wythe & Kent Aves.), Williamsburg, 718-599-5103, 9, $10; Thurs. at Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St. (betw. B'way & Church St.), 212-219-3006, 9, $10.
A.D. Amorosi