Tag: concerts

video review : Live At Webster Hall ( concert ) … Paul Simon

video review : Live At Webster Hall ( concert ) ... Paul Simon

Not a whole lot of people were lucky enough to attend a Paul Simon concert on the “Evening” of June 6, 2011. The legend performed in New York City on the main stage of Manhattan’s Webster Hall for about 1400 fans; the culmination of a two-month tour to promote his album, So Beautiful Or So What. The rest of us have to settle for this concert video, a PBS exclusive.

It’s his first solo release since You’re The One from ten years ago and it was worth the wait, especially considering the fact that his band, a collection of top instrumentalists, includes most of the same faces. There’s Mark Stewart, Tony Cedras and a seemingly more subdued Vincent Nguini. They’re getting older; Paul Simon himself is 70; but they don’t miss a beat.

The Beautiful album, Simon’s worst, offers one decent song. The rest are duds compared to the older stuff, the newest of which stops at Rhythm Of The Saints as if You’re The One and Surprise never happened. When an artist who’s spent decades in the pop music world performs a handful of songs though, albums are going to be ignored and Simon isn’t one for medleys.

His songs are less about catchy hooks and more about overall structure, so they’re performed from beginning to end, sometimes with a few minor revisions or jam-time extensions to keep them fresh. Paul Simon is like a chef, so when he talks about making a chicken “gumbo” with “cayenne” pepper, his words aren’t to be taken literally. They’re meant to be taken metaphorically.

Poetry, in the form of song lyrics, is what Paul Simon does best. Even if the new songs don’t make you clap your hands or make you dance like Kodachrome, Mother And Child Reunion or this surprisingly fun version of That Was Your Mother; I never really liked the original version; you’re still left pondering what he has to say and how he chooses to say it.

my rating : 4 of 5

2011

audio review : Live At The Olympia ( album ) … REM

audio review : Live At The Olympia ( album ) ... REM

It’s REM, one of the most popular rock bands in the world, at The Olympia in Dublin, but they insist it’s “not a show”. What they mean is that it’s not an official concert. It is a show. That’s evident by the way Michael Stipe addresses the crowd; a selection of people with “impeccable” tastes. It’s a rehearsal show; a 2007 practice performance of songs from Accelerate and the tour that would presumably follow.

Fans of Around The Sun and Reveal might be disappointed with this album. The setlist, a special selection of the songs they performed, spends most of its time on the old stuff. There are six songs from Reckoning, for example, and five from Fables Of The Reconstruction, but none from Up, probably my favorite REM album. How cool it would have been to hear Sad Professor raw, unpolished and Jacknifed.

That’s a relatively minor complaint though. My major one is the talking the band does during some of the breaks, specifically the one that ruins the album’s conceptual flow; Stipe mentioning to his very appreciative audience that it’s the band’s “fifth” of five nights before magically going back in time to perform songs from the previous nights. With just that, this comes across as a random compilation rather than a proper set.

My favorite song here is Until The Day Is Done, which, like other Accelerators, had yet to been released. It sounds a lot like the album version though, unlike Disguised, which is a demo version of Supernatural Superserious. Other highlights include On The Fly; its absence from the Accelerate album baffles me; and Pretty Persuasion. I like the way Michael Stipe says the word “confusion” on that one.

my rating : 3 of 5

2009

audio review : Michael Jackson Immortal

audio review : Michael Jackson Immortal

I can appreciate homage, especially to an icon like Michael Jackson. He’s my favorite song artist and performer, but I might turn down even a free ticket to see other people perform medleys of his songs. That makes Cirque Du Soleil’s Immortal World Tour; a stage show that sends dancers, acrobats, mimes and such around the globe to do just that; more of a negative than a positive. At least they’re not singing. Apparently director Jamie King had sense enough to leave that part up to the icon himself, which makes listening to this soundtrack album more tolerable than it should be.

What it presents, rather bombastically, are original Michael Jackson songs snipped apart and blended together to form what may as well be a glorified mixtape. The main difference and one positive thing the album has going for it is that many, if not most, of the songs are mixed in a way that would be impossible for the average DJ. Producer Kevin Antunes was given access to the individual track recordings of these songs. That allows him to make full-on remixes, shuffle vocals from one song to another and resurrect studio outtakes that weren’t included in the original album versions.

It makes for an interesting, sometimes surprisingly enjoyable, listen for those of us who are fanny enough to notice the often subtle differences. What ruins it is the conceptual context in which it’s presented, of which there seems to be none. The album, which puts Working Day And Night not after but before the Intro and teams Speechless with Human Nature, goes from song to song, and sometimes back to song, seemingly at random. So even though this new-age version of Wanna Be Startin Somethin sounds funky, it does nothing to cover that massive and ultimately dooming artistic flaw.

If this album were a general music review or perhaps the DJ’s setlist at a Michael Jackson party, I’d be inclined to praise it. One of my favorite Michael Jackson songs; Is It Scary; is included in the mix. It runs dead into Threatened, which serves as a notable promo for The King Of Pop’s final and largely underrated Invincible album. My main gripe with Michael Jackson compilations in general is that they tend to overlook his newer songs. As an album; a decision I’m willing to bet had a lot more to do with making money than creating art; this Immortal project stumbles and falls flat on its face.

my rating : 2 of 5

2011