Dueling banjos
As I sit here waiting for my students to email me thesis statements for their big midterm paper -- about a third are now an hour late -- I can't help but think about banjos. I really like banjos (this is an example of a very, very weak thesis statement). This week I saw two back-to-back concerts involving banjos: Tuesday night's stellar Crooked Still show at the Freight and Salvage; then Wednesday night's exceptional Sufjan Stevens show at Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall.Crooked Still is a bluegrass band that really rocks out at times, and on Tuesday their ever-strange cellist was wearing a flaming pink suit and speaking in an Indian accent. The banjo player was a sub from their normal banjo player (who has a delightful 'fro), but he sure knew how to pick a tune and tame a fret.
Sufjan Stevens is difficult to characterize, although I've heard him referred to as "folk rock," which is probably about right. His 30+ piece band (including strings, a saw, horns, a celeste and the Pacific Mozart Chorus) all wore enormous butterfly wings. Sufjan is the banjo player, and in the middle of all that orchestration, the banjo just floated above, tying the whole spectacle together.
Now that I think about it, Crooked Still and Sufjan Stevens aren't all that different. Any genre of music can only be enhanced by a banjo player's prowess. Now that's a strong thesis statement.
Labels: I pontificate therefore I am
posted by SJB at 8:08 PM
6 Comments:
I think I'm the only person in the United States -- nay, the world! -- who is baffled by Sufjan. Just don't get it.
This is of some concern. You've listened to Illinois? What is it you don't get -- or don't like?
Perhaps it's a latent aggression toward so-called concept albums?
We've got to get to the bottom of this.
I've listened. And I like concept albums, though I lean more toward "Tommy" or "Separation Sunday" than "Operation: Mindcrime."
I'll be honest: A lot of the songs sound pretty samey to me. Not only that, I think they sound pretty samey in comparison to Michigan, too. Now, I dig the tune about John Wayne Gacy from Illinois, and I dig "Holland" and "Romulus" from Michigan, but I find my attention drifting through a lot of the rest of those albums.
Jeez, everybody's a critic, huh? Oh wait...
Maybe you should blog about your SS ambivelance, ed002d, and then me and my folk rock gang'll throw down.
Way ahead of you, sort of:
http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2006/07/a_case_against_.html
On the Phoney Sufjanmania (that, some hope, is biting the dust):
Ms. Mattsie usually refrains from joining these debates, at least since an unfortunate ruckous erupted over one of her comments about herring at Pickledmackerelblogspot, but when one member of the folk-rock gang is challenged, the others must fulfill their Warsaw Pact obligations.
I don't know about the Stevens hype, and I can only imagine how cloying it is. But the albums are, for me, consistently interesting. The tracks are very much "samey," but I think the writing and production are consistently powerful, and that the sameness-effect is itself just that -- an effect, deliberate. (My first thoughts after hearing the opening moments of Illinois were "Glass" and "Reich.") Illinois and Michigan are not London Calling or the White Album, but the guy can write a mean song and orchestrate it, and can pound the suckers out at a rate that, to my reckoning, would make both John and Paul AND Strummer and Jones grin. Stevens isn't a revolution in music the way they were, but he's a talented guy and far better listening the virtually all the crap that is now around.
Ignore the hype! Listen to Ms. Mattsie!
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