Noise: Archive for August, 2010

“Oh, yeah, I remember this place,” Debbie Harry told the Pier Six audience Sunday night. “Right over there on the waterfront is where we had the wrap party for that film I made with John Waters and Divine. I got the worst mosquito bites of my life.” It was a night for memories as...
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After his quintet had finished an exhilarating version of Chick Corea’s “Humpty Dumpty” at An Die Musik Friday night, saxophonist Tim Green explained how each of his bandmates had come to join him on stage. He and vibraphonist Warren Wolf, he noted, had been friends since they were kids growing up in Baltimore; Wolf...
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Back in April, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s The Retriever published this handy guide to “the portal to hell,” or the Copycat Annex. In it you will find the most bizarre bit of conservative/boring youth student writing this side of a Young Republican e-mail blast. Future stars of cultural criticism Becky Hunter and...
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It’s been 25 years now since British pop group Tears for Fears released its second album, the transatlantic blockbuster Songs From the Big Chair. And though the band’s core duo of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith have faced diminishing commercial returns with subsequent albums, split up, and then reunited again, it feels like their...
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Jackson Browne reached the peak of his artistic powers on Aug. 27, 1977, in Columbia, Maryland. The previous fall he had released his last great studio album, The Pretender, and now he was bringing the songs from his first four albums and most of the musicians who had played on them to the Merriweather...
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While it is true that almost all American music has roots in the blues, it doesn’t follow that every American musician is a blues act. So it was more than a little strange that the headliner for this year’s Hot August Blues festival at Oregon Ridge Park was Lyle Lovett and his Large Band,...
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Carl Finch led Brave Combo through the classic, swinging beginning of the jazz standard “Body and Soul” at Blob’s Park on Saturday night. The Texas band’s grizzled eminence in a pork pie hat then stopped abruptly and said, “That’s a cool tune, right? You’re probably asking how could anyone, even Brave Combo, the coolest...
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Shelby Lynne has such a big, tough soprano on record that it’s always a surprise to see her on stage and remember she’s just a small slip of a thing. At the Rams Head Tavern Friday night, she wore a purple T-shirt and her red hair chopped short but for a swirl of a...
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The guitars of Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman interlocking in sequin-sparkle shimmer or sinuous smolder; Jenny Lee Lindburg’s bass notes pacing thoughtfully at melody’s edge; Stella Mozgawa’s keyboards adding depth and texture to the whole even as her drumming propels it. This is the intoxicating sound of Warpaint , an Los Angeles-based foursome whose...
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Ray Wylie Hubbard cheerfully admitted at the Rams Head Tavern Wednesday night that the title of his new album, A. Enightenment b. Endarkenment (Hint: There is no C), might be the worst album title of all time. He also volunteered that the album cover (a picture of a decapitated Hubbard holding his head in...
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The brand new Los Lobos album, Tin Can Trust, is a recession record, a reflection of an America learning to get by with less. When the East Los Angeles sextet played the album’s title track at the Rams Head Tavern Monday night, lead singer David Hidalgo needed the lyrics on a stand because the...
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Several years ago when the City Paper first profiled two young, white local rappers named Height and Bow N’ Arrow, they seemed like a couple of renegades on the outskirts of the local indie scene, dabbling in their own brand of hip-hop. Six years later, Height and the MC that now goes by Mickey...
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You wouldn’t expect Beth Orton to be the strongest act by far at this year’s Lilith Fair at the Merriweather Post Pavilion Tuesday. She’s never had the commercial impact of festival founder Sarah McLachlan, the Dixie Chicks (two-thirds of who performed this year as the Cort Yard Hounds), or Lilith first-timer Sara Bareilles. Nor...
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If you missed the quickie bursts of Oxes on Howard Street during Whartscape, never fear: the rock trio is giving a full show late this Saturday night at the Windup Space. Doors at midnight; $8. The venue would like to emphasize that this is happening at midnight and not a minute earlier. New video...
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Baltimore’s growing indie-rap army once again performs in the round, with Mickey Free, Jones, Height with Friends, Food For Animals, PT Burnem, Rapdragons, Plural MC, and King Rhythm taking turns at the mic Saturday, Aug. 7 at Floristree. 9 p.m., $7.
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The Bmore Musically Informed blog got confirmation from guitarist Dustin Wong yesterday that, “The set at Whartscape would probably be the last show in a while. Everybody is off going about their own endeavors, which is really exciting, I think. Ken’s writing his own music and Molly is on a journey to find...
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The Red Room Collective kicks off a new series tonight dedicated to four-channel sound works. Titled “130% Surround Sound” and curated by musical chameleon Tom Boram, the series capitalizes on the Red Room’s recent upgrades and refurbishment. “The Red Room bought a new PA last year and we decided to keep the old one,”...
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J-Roddy Walston and the Business have been packing big, enthusiastic crowds into the Ottobar for years, so in a sense, this was just another Saturday night for the Tennessee native and his backing band. In another sense, however, it represented a big moment for Walston: a release party in his adopted hometown for the...
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