The Calder Quartet vs. Airborne Toxic Event

ONE of my favorite LA bands is the Calder Quartet, who accompany another of my favorites, the Airborne Toxic Event -- yes, the name comes from DeLillo -- Friday night at Disney Hall.

I met the Calders soon after they graduated USC's conservatory, and caught up with them a few weeks ago  to discuss their latest travels. They've stretched outward, into rock and experimental music, as well as inward, intensely studying Haydn in Berlin, and they've begun to play internationally.

HERE is my piece in today's LATimes: I talk to members of the band as well as Mikel from Airborne Toxic, who has become one of my favorite indie rockers.

Part of what I like about these guys is their commitment to the art of chamber music -- not an easy way to make a living, for reasons having to do not just with economics but with the strange personal bonds and tensions. I also admire their ability to keep their eyes -- and ears -- trained on the outside world and the larger swim of pop culture. They're both regular guys, in a sense, and something extraordinary.

Very much looking forward to this show.

Photo courtesy Calder Quartet

The Legacy of Morrissey

THIS year's coachella festival is filled with all kinds of major historical figures -- not just paul mccartney but leonard cohen, the jam's paul weller and shoegaze pioneers my bloody valentine (who i had the ear-blasting pleasure to see play last fall in santa monica). 

one of the most influential is morrissey, the former smiths leader whose solo career finally started getting interesting a few years ago, and who has managed to generate a devoted latino fanbase  in the whitest of all musical genres.

all kinds of unlikely figures -- ryan adams, jk rowling, bono, outkast -- sing his praises.

HERE is my story in today's LAT on mozz and his influence. i hear him or the smiths everytime i hear the shins, the pains of being pure of heart, belle & sebastian, of montreal, the clientele, many others. and here is a live take of "first of the gang to die."

i had the fortune, or misfortune, to be in high school right in the middle of the '80s. tho i am neither gay nor latino nor a recovering catholic, the smiths spoke to me like no other contemporary band during that dreadful and jingoistic time. (okay, maybe r.e.m.) in college i would sometimes go to halloween parties dressed like him.

i am such a zealot i went to manchester, england -- one of the world's most important rock cities and mozz's hometown -- two years ago to walk in the footsteps of the smiths, buzzcocks, stone roses, etc. HERE is the ensuing travel piece, and here the top-10 manchester albums sidebar.

mozz celebrates his 50th birthday with a big concert in manchester on may 22... were it not my anniversary (that was an accident -- really) and were i not quasi-employed i would try to be there.

Photo credit: Flickr user gussifer

Airborne Toxic Event and Indie Rock

last night i saw the L.A. band Airborne Toxic Event at the henry fonda/music box here in L.A. (i probably should have posted on this the day >before<, rather then the day after, but i got distracted reminiscing about old girlfriends.) airborne is well known to local indie watchers -- they take their name from a phrase of don delillo's (in "white noise"), the lead singer, who is also a nabokov-loving writer, went through a series of terrible trials, etc.

here is my story on the band from a few months ago.

the show was even better than i'd expected. for a veteran of the '90s indie scene like myself, they come across as a throwback -- they are indie without being smug, ironic or too cool for school. in some ways they remind me more than anything of 80s british bands like new order or echo and the bunnymen who were into drama and big explosions of earnest passion and weren't afraid to dance now and again. (some of their songs, with their mix of noise and tunefulness, recall the pixies, as well, tho they have none of that menace.) steven chen, the band's kickass guitarist, told me he's very interested in E+B guitar player will sergeant.

i think, though, that all too much has been made of how grounded the group is in other, older music. indie rock is a circumscribed language, one that now has 25 or 30 years of roots if you begin in the early "alternative" or post-punk years, and a band dedicated to an indie aesthetic is going to echo other bands. they are not nearly as deritivative, say, as the strokes.

in any case, they are among the smartest, most down to earth musicians i've interviewed and it's nice to see the show as strong as the record. bonus points: they brought out the calder quartet, which has a family relation to airborne. here is my piece on the young chamber group, from several years back. sometimes a classical/rock fusion doesnt work (see: art rock) but this mostly did.

Photo credit: Flickr user 22