Live: Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
(with Les Aus and the Duke Spirit)
At the Blind Pig, Ann Arbor - March 8, 2006
A few weeks ago, the Sex Pistols answered their inevitable nomination to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with what many fans trumpeted as an especially "punk" gesture: an open letter, hand-scrawled and atrociously spelled, declaring their contempt for the corporate institution and vehemently declining to appear at the ceremony. And it was pretty punk of them, insomuch as our concept of "punk" in the 21st century has been informed by mass-produced bondage pants, vague notions of "sticking it to the man" and one too many screenings of The Filth and the Fury. But that doesn't mean the Pistols' quintessentially Rotten grandstanding should be interpreted as a glorious display of punk-rock attitude. No matter how you or I or John Lydon feels about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, punk has never been just about not giving a fuck; not when so many originators and innovators of the movement, from Joe Strummer to Bad Religion's PhD-educated Greg Graffin, have made passionate involvement the equal of acts like the Sex Pistols' manufactured nihilism.
For me, at least, punk rock has always been more interesting when it refused to cave to its worst tendencies - when it felt more like the emergence of a modern troubador, an electrified neo-folk tradition rather than an eternal vomiting of three-chord teenage disaffectment. Remember, there was a time when Patti Smith, Paul Weller and Elvis Costello were considered "punk" just as much as the Damned, the Ramones and Sham 69; the decline from such eclecticism into generic commodification was arguably what doomed punk in the first place, the first step on the way to repulsive, necrophilic exercizes like the Warped Tour. Thank god, then, that we still have Ted Leo: an artist who, whether intentionally or not, embodies the energy, charisma and above all passion of early punk rock in a time when punk "culture" has long since become a parody of itself.
(See? Those second-grade recorder lessons really do come in handy.)
And on top of that, the dude can put a pretty decent bill together, too. Last week's show began with Les Aus, a duo from Barcelona, Spain who specialize in the kind of hotwired noisy drone-rock that's about the last thing you'd expect to see at a Ted Leo show - and I mean that in the best possible way. Their setlist alternated between wiry, overdriven thrashers and sprawling, quasi-psychedelic epics, with singer Arnau Sala wailing on some kind of flutelike instrument on the latter and just letting out throat-rending screams on the former. Sure, the "songs" ran together, coming off like one long exercise in extension and contraction; however great they might sound live, you'd be pretty hard-pressed to accuse Les Aus of craftsmanship. But at that moment, standing with a beer in my hand at the back of an already-crowded Blind Pig, they were perfect: unwieldy without straying into pretentiousness, they did their noise rock right, without any of the hackneyed Velvet Underground-lite posturing so many bands of their ilk seem to favor. And from the looks of their Myspace page, I think a lot of other people on the Ted Leo tour have been having their own perfect moments with Les Aus, too.
(Chairmen of the bored - the Duke Spirit)
Perhaps surprisingly, though (given my proclivity for songs with hooks and resolutions, not to mention the Internet buzz that's been spreading over the past year), second opening act the Duke Spirit just didn't do as much for me. And it's even more confounding because all the right ingredients are there: powerful, sexy female vocals, twin guitars, flattering press comparisons to the likes of PJ Harvey, Patti Smith and the Kills...shit, they even had a guitar tech with a striking resemblance to Rikki Rockett of Poison. But something about their muted Anglo cool, their mannered stage presence, the way those twin guitars tended to just overlap rather than synthesizing into something monumental - it didn't click. Watching singer Liela Moss' statuesque poses and Jagger struts was a surreal experience: I kept feeling like there should be something rocking here, something which I had clearly missed. In fact, it wasn't until the very last song when the rest of the band sprang to life, engaging in a kind of bizarre, quasi-animatronic reenactment of various classic British rock poses, from Pete Townshend's guitar-on-the-ceiling trick to the machine-gun pose favored by Wilko Johnson of Dr. Feelgood. It was a nice little tease, and by no means did the Duke Spirit put on a bad show...but I couldn't help but think, if this is what the indie zine crowd gets off on, then it's no wonder they never get laid.
(The Pharmacists are in)
Still, there was never any doubt that Ted Leo was the evening's main attraction, and he lived up to expectations charmingly. As a persona, Leo is as unassuming as he is charismatic; equally likely to discuss the Project Runway series finale with the audience as he is to crack self-deprecating jokes or accept baked goods from fans in the front row (just as long as they're vegan). But he also happens to be a kick-ass performer as well, with the ability to fire off lead and rhythm guitar simultaneously, all while singing some of the more verbose lyrics in modern indie rock. No slouches themselves, the Pharmacists are easily the tightest live band I've seen in months: a good-ol'-fashioned power trio who seem like the culmination of all your wildest supergroup fantasies (What if Elvis Costello had fronted the Clash instead of the Attractions? What if the Who had formed in 1977 London and not 1964?).
All the chops in the world don't mean much without songs to back them up, however, and Leo has himself some songs. Or more accurately, he has a song...but what a fucking song. Sprightly and melodic, with passionate vocals and hints of Billy Bragg's roughed-up British folk, Leo's formula is a foolproof one, an alchemical wonder with just the right proportions of punkish energy, righteous anger and power pop tunefulness. For my money, that sound is still probably best sampled on his radio hit from 2003's Hearts of Oak, "Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone," and Ann Arbor was lucky enough to hear that particular nugget on Wednesday; but I must say that the set's featured highlights from Leo's last full-length, Shake the Sheets, went down pretty easy as well (then again, when doesn't a song like "Me and Mia" go down easy?). It's an unfortunate side effect of any songwriter as stylistically consistent as Leo that by the end of an hour-long set, all those sterling choruses and sunlit chord sequences are going to start bleeding together. But Leo lent his tunes such boundless energy - wailing into the microphone during the verses, bobbing around the stage during the solos - that what his performance lacked in variety, it more than made up for in plain old excitement.
(Packed house)
Finally, he took the stage solo for the encore, armed with just an electric guitar and bashing out a blend of Irish folk songs and his own spirited popcraft, and that's when it struck me: this guy, more so than pretty much any Rotten old codger with a woeful dye job you might care to name, is the real carrier of the mantle early British punk rock left behind. So what if he's a Yank? Hell, who even cares whether his music can actually be described as "punk?" The soul with which Ted Leo invests his songs, the earnestness he applies to these disparate threads of folk, pop and mod rock'n'roll, evokes the halcyon days of London Calling, In the City and This Year's Model in spirit - and frankly, spirit is what counts. I don't know whether Leo has a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with his name on it (give me one more classic album and I'll be convinced), but I do know that his Ann Arbor date will be resonating in my memory long after the Pistols' latest rock and roll swindle has vanished from the popular consciousness. And people, that's rock and roll.
Photos by Zach Hoskins
Ted Leo
The Duke Spirit
Les Aus
Buy Shake the Sheets
and Hearts of Oak on Amazon
See Also: I love you, Rikki!!!
At the Blind Pig, Ann Arbor - March 8, 2006
A few weeks ago, the Sex Pistols answered their inevitable nomination to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with what many fans trumpeted as an especially "punk" gesture: an open letter, hand-scrawled and atrociously spelled, declaring their contempt for the corporate institution and vehemently declining to appear at the ceremony. And it was pretty punk of them, insomuch as our concept of "punk" in the 21st century has been informed by mass-produced bondage pants, vague notions of "sticking it to the man" and one too many screenings of The Filth and the Fury. But that doesn't mean the Pistols' quintessentially Rotten grandstanding should be interpreted as a glorious display of punk-rock attitude. No matter how you or I or John Lydon feels about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, punk has never been just about not giving a fuck; not when so many originators and innovators of the movement, from Joe Strummer to Bad Religion's PhD-educated Greg Graffin, have made passionate involvement the equal of acts like the Sex Pistols' manufactured nihilism.For me, at least, punk rock has always been more interesting when it refused to cave to its worst tendencies - when it felt more like the emergence of a modern troubador, an electrified neo-folk tradition rather than an eternal vomiting of three-chord teenage disaffectment. Remember, there was a time when Patti Smith, Paul Weller and Elvis Costello were considered "punk" just as much as the Damned, the Ramones and Sham 69; the decline from such eclecticism into generic commodification was arguably what doomed punk in the first place, the first step on the way to repulsive, necrophilic exercizes like the Warped Tour. Thank god, then, that we still have Ted Leo: an artist who, whether intentionally or not, embodies the energy, charisma and above all passion of early punk rock in a time when punk "culture" has long since become a parody of itself.
(See? Those second-grade recorder lessons really do come in handy.)And on top of that, the dude can put a pretty decent bill together, too. Last week's show began with Les Aus, a duo from Barcelona, Spain who specialize in the kind of hotwired noisy drone-rock that's about the last thing you'd expect to see at a Ted Leo show - and I mean that in the best possible way. Their setlist alternated between wiry, overdriven thrashers and sprawling, quasi-psychedelic epics, with singer Arnau Sala wailing on some kind of flutelike instrument on the latter and just letting out throat-rending screams on the former. Sure, the "songs" ran together, coming off like one long exercise in extension and contraction; however great they might sound live, you'd be pretty hard-pressed to accuse Les Aus of craftsmanship. But at that moment, standing with a beer in my hand at the back of an already-crowded Blind Pig, they were perfect: unwieldy without straying into pretentiousness, they did their noise rock right, without any of the hackneyed Velvet Underground-lite posturing so many bands of their ilk seem to favor. And from the looks of their Myspace page, I think a lot of other people on the Ted Leo tour have been having their own perfect moments with Les Aus, too.
(Chairmen of the bored - the Duke Spirit)Perhaps surprisingly, though (given my proclivity for songs with hooks and resolutions, not to mention the Internet buzz that's been spreading over the past year), second opening act the Duke Spirit just didn't do as much for me. And it's even more confounding because all the right ingredients are there: powerful, sexy female vocals, twin guitars, flattering press comparisons to the likes of PJ Harvey, Patti Smith and the Kills...shit, they even had a guitar tech with a striking resemblance to Rikki Rockett of Poison. But something about their muted Anglo cool, their mannered stage presence, the way those twin guitars tended to just overlap rather than synthesizing into something monumental - it didn't click. Watching singer Liela Moss' statuesque poses and Jagger struts was a surreal experience: I kept feeling like there should be something rocking here, something which I had clearly missed. In fact, it wasn't until the very last song when the rest of the band sprang to life, engaging in a kind of bizarre, quasi-animatronic reenactment of various classic British rock poses, from Pete Townshend's guitar-on-the-ceiling trick to the machine-gun pose favored by Wilko Johnson of Dr. Feelgood. It was a nice little tease, and by no means did the Duke Spirit put on a bad show...but I couldn't help but think, if this is what the indie zine crowd gets off on, then it's no wonder they never get laid.
(The Pharmacists are in)Still, there was never any doubt that Ted Leo was the evening's main attraction, and he lived up to expectations charmingly. As a persona, Leo is as unassuming as he is charismatic; equally likely to discuss the Project Runway series finale with the audience as he is to crack self-deprecating jokes or accept baked goods from fans in the front row (just as long as they're vegan). But he also happens to be a kick-ass performer as well, with the ability to fire off lead and rhythm guitar simultaneously, all while singing some of the more verbose lyrics in modern indie rock. No slouches themselves, the Pharmacists are easily the tightest live band I've seen in months: a good-ol'-fashioned power trio who seem like the culmination of all your wildest supergroup fantasies (What if Elvis Costello had fronted the Clash instead of the Attractions? What if the Who had formed in 1977 London and not 1964?).
All the chops in the world don't mean much without songs to back them up, however, and Leo has himself some songs. Or more accurately, he has a song...but what a fucking song. Sprightly and melodic, with passionate vocals and hints of Billy Bragg's roughed-up British folk, Leo's formula is a foolproof one, an alchemical wonder with just the right proportions of punkish energy, righteous anger and power pop tunefulness. For my money, that sound is still probably best sampled on his radio hit from 2003's Hearts of Oak, "Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone," and Ann Arbor was lucky enough to hear that particular nugget on Wednesday; but I must say that the set's featured highlights from Leo's last full-length, Shake the Sheets, went down pretty easy as well (then again, when doesn't a song like "Me and Mia" go down easy?). It's an unfortunate side effect of any songwriter as stylistically consistent as Leo that by the end of an hour-long set, all those sterling choruses and sunlit chord sequences are going to start bleeding together. But Leo lent his tunes such boundless energy - wailing into the microphone during the verses, bobbing around the stage during the solos - that what his performance lacked in variety, it more than made up for in plain old excitement.
(Packed house)Finally, he took the stage solo for the encore, armed with just an electric guitar and bashing out a blend of Irish folk songs and his own spirited popcraft, and that's when it struck me: this guy, more so than pretty much any Rotten old codger with a woeful dye job you might care to name, is the real carrier of the mantle early British punk rock left behind. So what if he's a Yank? Hell, who even cares whether his music can actually be described as "punk?" The soul with which Ted Leo invests his songs, the earnestness he applies to these disparate threads of folk, pop and mod rock'n'roll, evokes the halcyon days of London Calling, In the City and This Year's Model in spirit - and frankly, spirit is what counts. I don't know whether Leo has a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with his name on it (give me one more classic album and I'll be convinced), but I do know that his Ann Arbor date will be resonating in my memory long after the Pistols' latest rock and roll swindle has vanished from the popular consciousness. And people, that's rock and roll.
Photos by Zach Hoskins
Ted Leo
The Duke Spirit
Les Aus
Buy Shake the Sheets
and Hearts of Oak on AmazonSee Also: I love you, Rikki!!!
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