Propagandhi, The Firebird, Saint Louis, Missouri (11-4-12)

The radical Canadian gentlemen known as Propagandhi

One of my favorite bands for their sustained radical left politics, street activism, early melodic punk, and more recently, their interesting hybrid metal/prog/punk work.  Propagandhi ran through close to 20 songs with precision, political proclamations (especially about Missouri Senate hopeful Todd Akin’s idiocy), exceptionally tight synchronicity between the drums and guitars, and a fine live mix.  The majority of the 90 or so minute set was comprised of songs off their latest two albums, Supporting Caste and Failed States.  Compared to earlier albums, these later tunes tend to be more progressive and complex both in terms of timing and breakdowns.  It isn’t exactly metal or punk.  Think a super heavy Rush combined with some of the faster and less melodic early Rise Against.  Particularly powerful renditions of Coaches Corner and Night Letters were the highlights for me as far as newer material goes.  Propagandhi did some good service to their earlier recordings by playing excellent versions of Fuck the Border and Less Talk, More Rock, the latter of which is a song that demands some serious reflection to really get the message.

The band lacks ego, comes across as very genuine, and clearly exhibits gratitude to folks in the crowd.  I was thrilled to chat with the main songwriter and guitarist Chris Hannah after the show about my research on punk and politics.  He seemed very interested and we talked about conducting an interview down the road.  We’ll see. More generally, he and the other band members must have spent fifteen minutes or so after the show just greeting people and talking some music.   It was so nice to see that, but then again I sort of expected it given their politics.

Opening bands were Off with Their Heads and the Menzingers, the latter of which was great despite being down a band member for the night.  I found the former too simplistic and boring, sort of like listening to the same song for 40 minutes.

Seth Meyers Standup, 3/21/12, Edwardsville Illinois

Next to Bill Hader, Seth Meyers is my favorite actor on Saturday Night Live.  The Illinois-born Meyers seems witty, liberal enough not to make me angry, and just seems like a guy who has more than a few interesting views on politics and culture.  That he is currently the head writer for SNL is intriguing to me, as about half the current skits are boring and cliché while others are surprisingly poignant.  I could never watch the current offerings of the show without a DVR.  The corporate capitalist commercials in between the show are just as nauseating as with every other television program, and the payoff of the skits has too low of a laugh factor to justify watching the show in real time.

Meyers performed an exact hour of comedy at a sold out Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Morris University Center, and I must have laughed 30 or 40 times.  While 37, Meyers did his best to relate to college students, who comprised the majority of the audience, by offering up joke after joke about college life, from sex on futons, smoking dope, sexting, surfing for porn, and dating.  While most of the punch lines were funny, I couldn’t help but think I was already too old for his humor a couple of decades ago.  I still laughed though.

Disappointingly, he devoted only about a third of his performance to political matters.  But that small percentage of time was quite humorous and witty.  My favorite joke was that Romney must have been thinking to himself during the Republican primary debates “If I just keep my mouth shut people will see that I am the least crazy of all these mothef***ers.”  Awesome stuff.  Meyers also made a number of  clever jokes about his performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner last year, including a hilarious retelling of how he had previously acted like a fool twice with Obama, once in worrying about whether the President could take off a mask of himself for a SNL skit they were rehearsing and the other about inadvertently pushing his girlfriend’s outstretched hand away when Obama tried to shake her hand.  The delivery was great, and the timing very well executed.

Of course, my preference would have been for him to tackle politics the entire hour and to, as he does so well on SNL, make fun of Republican beliefs and conservativism.  These are things I would like everyone to do all day long, but obviously I am not in charge of much of anything.

Circle of Rage

Ah, yes!  Do you like post-Maiden-like guitar riffs, clearly articulated bass lines, occasional groovy breakdowns, active drums, and unusually melodic screaming vocals?  How about songs that speak to political alienation, government corruption, and the need for radical political and social change?  If any of the above, you are going to love what London’s loud and passionate hardcore band Circle of Rage (COR) has to offer.  I’ve been following these guys for awhile, admiring their commitment to making music that is accessible, heavy, and politically significant.  I am currently listening to their tune Unnatural Selection, which gets my already raging brain into a deeper tizzy.   Tommo is a tireless voice, literally and figuratively, that blows away most vocalists’ delivery of energy and profundity.  You can’t help but want to talk with him (which I have done, by the way) about social issues once you hear his vocal rage.  Mark, one of the the guitarists, shows tasty form and substance in this and most other COR tunes.  At times as I listen to his riffs I smile and think of a modern iteration of Glenn Tipton, Adrian Smith, and Dave Murray.  Not bad company!  This is not your typical double picking drop D mindless chord-playing hardcore punk guitarist – his sweet flashes and knack for nailing quick hammer-ons and pull offs are just enough to balance otherwise speedy and funky chords.  The rhythm guitar, bass, and drum work by Scott, Jackson and Xander move the feel of the songs along fantastically (although I’d like to hear wildly beaten open high hats a bit more).

Circle of Rage holds a special place in time and space.  Not many artists I know of can combine melody, heaviness, rhythmic diversity, and political consciousness as compellingly as COR.

Download Unnatural Selection here for free.

Visit their webpage for more music, exceptional videos, and other information on the band.

REBELFEST Volume 1: A Rebel Time Records Compilation

Want a really good Canadian punk compilation filled with progressive and radical leftist songs?  Want it for free?  You are in luck because the awesome Canadian label, Rebel Time Records, has recently released a burning and critical fifteen song album that has had regular rotation on my phone for months.  Rebel Time and their artists always fight the good fight, speak of things that most if not all of the major labels are afraid of, and is run by two awesome dudes.  You are not much of a left punk if you don’t at least give these tunes a listen.

My favorites on this album are Broadcast Zero’s On Freedom, The Decay’s Cigarette Burns, and The Rebel Spell’s It Can’t Just Be Me.    

Get any single or the whole album for free, no strings attached, right here: http://rebeltimerecords.bandcamp.com/album/rebelfest-vol-1

Also make sure to check out the expansive collection of music and merch at Rebel Time’s main website here: http://www.rebeltimerecords.com/

Various Hands, This Party Will Be Fun

Every once in awhile I step outside of the political punk genre for this blog and give some props to independent bands worth a mention.  This week I’ve been treated to two pre-release tunes by the Saint Louis band Various Hands. Their debut EP, This Party Will Be Fun, is being released in a month or so and I was lucky enough to get some advance singles. The tunes, especially Blackout Weekend, stir up my often hidden but still somewhat operational happy and fun sides. Vocalist Jeff Nations has a pleasant and sincere delivery with moments of impressive passion and energy.  The songwriting and musical performances are equally pleasurable.  I especially like the breakdowns, shifting melodies, and guitar parts. For me, the vibe of the songs bring forth a feeling of strolling around a beautiful park on a low humidity 80 degree summer day with the people I love smiling all around me.  Not much music moves me like that nowadays.  Various Hands has a certain happy go lucky aura without all the clichés that makes me want to listen to them more.  They really do deliver the goods.

Like them on facebook and/or check out their debut EP release party at Saint Louis’ The Firebird on November 26.  I just might be there, and I'd be willing to wager that I'd leave pretty happy.

Rise Against, Foo Fighters, and Mariachi El Bronx. Scottrade Center, Saint Louis, September 17, 2011.

An almost sold out Scottrade Center in Saint Louis was very loud for about four hours last night, especially during the almost three hour long set by headliner Foo Fighters.  It is true what they say:  The volume and quality of the mix improve pretty dramatically as you move from openers to headliners.  Mariachi El Bronx, the alter ego band of punk hardcore aficionados The Bronx, opened the night with a tight half- hour set of well written and upbeat tunes (although I think the references to Jesus is dead was lost on most of the crowd).  Throughout the set singer Matt Caughthran showed he has chops, which is no small feat for a hardcore singer.  He smiled, swooned, and left the impression that he couldn’t believe he was playing mariachi music in front of a couple thousand people.  The irony was not lost at all, but it didn’t take away from his presumably genuine delivery.  I did take offense to their suggestion that everyone was here to see the Foo Fighters.  More on that later.

Next was Rise Against, who absolutely killed it in their way too short of a set.  They delivered about nine songs spanning their last three albums, culminating with one of their top singles, Savior.  Lead singer Tim McIlrath was straight on with his vocals all night, as usual, and “lead” guitarist Zach Blair (poorly pictured above) was as animated as ever.  As with the first time I saw the band, drummer Brandon Barnes kept time nicely but is about the worst show person drummer I’ve seen.  He always looks bored, never makes eye contact with the crowd or his band members, and seemed like he needed a nap.  The mix sounded fuzzy for the last couple of songs, like the guitars were peaking out,  which was really disappointing.  Also disappointing is that Tim said nothing political, or even mildly controversial, other than how everyone loves the Foo Fighters (again, more on that below).  Rise Against’s radical left politics were probably lost on most people who listen to their somewhat top 40 friendly songs, and that is just a shame.  Maybe they are trying to code everything too much.

Headliners Foo Fighters emerged exactly at 9 p.m..  Armed with three guitars along with a keyboardist and the usual rock rhythm section, Grohl spastically and enthusiastically showed he loves his music perhaps more than anyone else.  Good for him.  He also took great pains to tell everyone how many songs the Foo Fighters have and how they could play about 120 of them.  Wow, impressive.  Any musical writer over the age of 20 has a hundred songs written.  Anyway, Grohl and his men plunged through several dozen songs representative of their past studio efforts.  The crowd was at times wild with energy at others times sort of confused, especially on some tracks from their new album and some b side tunes from years ago.  I was perplexed throughout the show, mostly because the Foo made about every other song into a boring Bachman Turner Overdrive sort of mess.  Here’s how it went:  Starting a song as the studio version was recorded, then cutting it in the middle, and then Grohl looking around for some support for a major musical tangent, then various cacophonies of substance less instrumental boredom.   None of those dudes are excellent musicians (especially the wildly overrated drummer Taylor Hawkins) – they should leave that hack kind of stuff to those that are. The funniest part of this show was the so-called dueling guitar event.  Grohl,  hamming it up to the tee for yet another hour, was at one end of the venue on a catwalk while another guitarist Chris Shiflett was at the other end.   They went back and forth in a series of pedestrian pentatonic hammer ons and pull offs any second year guitarist could do in her or his sleep.  The crowd went wild throughout all this, despite the fact they could have heard better soloing by musicians at local venues Lemmons and The Way Out Club that night.    And for like five bucks.    Dave Grohl likes his music, likes to ham it up, and likes to show off, even when he isn’t really doing anything.  These are not bad things, but when packaged with lyrics about nothing but his weird feelings (which are narcissistic and uninteresting) and super boring musical tangents reminiscent of old guys in a garage playing the 12 bar blues quite poorly, it is not a good combination.