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Monday, June 11, 2012
In the half-assed juggling act that is my life, the blogging-ball continues to hit the floor. Here's where I pick it up for a second, sharing a trio of cover songs from shows I've seen over the past couple months.  Back on April 21st (aka Record Store Day, for us who mark it), ex-Replacements and current (Axl-free) Gn'R bassist Tommy Stinson rode in a family-filled van from his upstate NY home to the Norwood, MA location of Newbury Comics for an acoustic in-store. He treated an appreciative crowd to a short set, accompanied by his wife Emily Roberts on harmonies & tambourine and his uncle-in-law Sippy on slide, which included this Big Star cover... My RSD haul was relatively small this year - the Richard Thompson 7-inch (I can't resist a live version of "1952 Vincent Black Lightning", one of the best songs ever written), the Now Now / The Lonely Forest split 7-inch, and the new (although non-RSD) double-album from The Figgs. Quality, not quantity, people. You can find more photos of Tommy's appearance over here. That same night, Death Cab For Cutie played Boston's Wang/Citi Center, backed by the simply stunning sounds of San Francisco's Magik*Magik Orchestra. I've always been a sucker for strings, and hearing some of DCFC's best work ("Cath", "What Sarah Said", "Title & Registration", "A Movie Script Ending") with those gorgeous arrangements was at times transcendent. For a few songs after the main set, it was just the foursome, on acoustics and stripped-down drums, and they gave us a nice surprise - their take on a classic Velvet Underground & Nico number (which is, incidentally, the very first cover my very first band ever learned)... The rest of my photos from the show, such as they are, right here. Far more recently, I caught John Roderick's (inevitably) too-short opening set for Jonathan Coulton at the Paradise a couple weeks ago. It's been 5 years since J Ro's last visit (and, um, 6 years since the last Long Winters album... but let's not get into that), but I'll take what I can get. Even a small fix is a welcome fix. A handful of Long Winters' classics, a "new" song (which means it was written in the past, yeah, 6 YEARS), and this reverent Neutral Milk Hotel cover. If you'd asked me before if I ever needed to hear someone cover this song again, I'd have said no. Then I heard Sir Roderick do this... More shots from his set can be found right over here. (And I apologize retroactively for referring to him "J. Ro". It's totally KB's fault.)  |
 neil halstead live in cambridge, ma on november 14th, 2008 previously: joy formidable - boston 2011 recent posts on the 'nac...
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