Disco Biscuits
The Spirit of the Dead
originally published April 16, 2008
Disco Biscuits
Say "jam band" to a casual music fan and images of grown men playing hacky sack during a 20-minute drum solo and buying laced cheese quesadillas in a parking lot after the concert immediately spring to mind. The one thing that doesn’t immediately pop into the head of the uninitiated is electronic music. Philadelphia’s Disco Biscuits are trying to change all of that.
“We like to think of ourselves as on the edge musically. Using a lot of electronic elements in our sound has caused us to look at what else is out there,” says bassist Marc Brownstein in a phone interview with Flagpole.
The electronic elements that the band adds to their songs and their lengthy jams act as the hooks to reel fans into the Disco Biscuits' world of staggering time signatures, musical virtuosity and a sonic playfulness that many acts on the jam band circuit just don’t have. But the technical ability of the musicians is only half the story.
“[In Disco Biscuits] it’s not really about playing the fastest or the best,” says Brownstein. Sure, audiences can still see the band stretch out the songs for lengthy expeditions into some sort of substance enhanced world, but just don’t expect the standard late '60s country rock vibe from Disco Biscuits. Instead, they blaze a trail with their own style of music, which Brownstein refers to as “trance fusion.”
“A lot of jam bands tend to look back, [but Disco Biscuits] are a band that tries to move forward with our music.” But the blips, pulses and squeaks of the electronic age aren’t the only signs that Disco Biscuits wishes to remain in the forefront of the jam band scene. Recently the band has commenced working with Philadelphia hip-hop producers Don Cheegro and Dirty Harry in an effort to expand their sound even more. To some, the unification of the hip-hop set and the cargo shorts-wearing drum circle set is a rather frightening concept - but according to Brownstein, it’s just part of being a Disco Biscuit.
“Playing electronic music in the jam band world is what we’ve been doing for a while, and now other bands are starting to realize what we are doing. We’ve always [tried to stay] ahead of the pack,” says Brownstein. “The really great bands find a way to stay ahead of the curve.”
While Disco Biscuits aren’t a great band yet, they certainly are an entertaining band. The flourishes of digital noise rise up along with a stormy sea of drums; the guitars cascade; and the bass provides a hint of funk just below the surface in your typical Disco Biscuits song. It’s a sonic ride that even the most adamant jam band hater can find compelling, and it's devoid of the more obvious Grateful Dead influences that plague the rest of the jam band scene.
“The key to being an artist who is in it for the long term is the willingness to change our sound and experiment with that,” says Brownstein.
But just because the Dead’s music isn’t immediately recalled within Disco Biscuits’ sound, that doesn’t mean that their shadow doesn’t loom large over the band.
“We are indebted to the Dead because we're doing the same thing as them - but we don’t sound like them,” says Brownstein.
Brownstein instead sees the Dead’s influence as meaning something greater than the songs themselves. “The bands that sound like the Dead aren’t like the Dead. Their sound doesn’t matter; it’s the idea behind the music. They don’t have the spirit that the Dead had behind them.”
In contrast, the spirit of what Grateful Dead has done is all over Disco Biscuits’ music. It’s a willingness to create, a desire to eliminate musical boundaries and an eagerness to stretch the limits of a live show.
“How we sound isn’t what defines us, the fact that our sound is unique defines us,” says Brownstein.
WHO: Disco Biscuits
WHERE: Georgia Theatre
WHEN: Friday, April 18 & Saturday, April 19
HOW MUCH: $22 (adv.), $25 (door)
Challengers
A New Direction for The New Pornographers
originally published April 16, 2008
The New Pornographers
A little less sugar and a little more protein.
That was essentially the approach to Challengers, the latest record from The New Pornographers. And the shift toward a more understated, yet substantial, rock-pop sound is creating some sharp and varied reactions from fans and critics.
“It seems like there are the people who just don’t think it’s upbeat enough or whatever,” says singer/guitarist A.C. “Carl” Newman. “And then there are the people who are like, 'I’ve never been convinced by them before completely, but this record really makes me like them.' That’s about exactly what I expected. That’s the thing when you change as a band; you know you’re going to lose some people along the way.”
The ironic thing about the debate over Challengers is that if you had asked Newman in 2003, after the release of the group’s debut record, Mass Romantic, how The New Pornographers' sound was likely to evolve, he probably would have laughed off the question. At that point, the group seemed as likely as anything to be a one-off project, considering the lineup featured a couple of notable musicians who were just beginning to make names for themselves with their own careers.
One of those members was Dan Bejar, whose own somewhat off-center pop band Destroyer is highly regarded in its own right. Bejar added a somewhat offbeat songwriting voice to balance the material Newman provides as the band’s chief songwriter. Another featured contributor is singer Neko Case, who in 2003, was in the midst of building an acclaimed catalog of country-noir solo records. Even with his central role in the group, Newman, who had plans for his own solo career, wasn’t looking too far ahead with The New Pornographers.
“When we first talked to Mint Records, who put out our records in Canada, they said, ‘So, are you guys going to put out another record?’" Newman recalls. “I honestly sat there and went: I don’t know. They said, ‘Are you guys going to tour this record?’ I don’t know. All we knew is we had this record and we would put it out and maybe a few people would buy it.”
What’s more, Newman’s main goal for The New Pornographers was pretty simple. As he observed in an interview around that time, some bands have great energy, but not great songs, and some bands write great songs that are basically downers. Newman wanted The New Pornographers to write good, upbeat pop songs with great energy. That’s exactly what the group did on Mass Romantic, turning out a first-rate album with some of the year’s catchiest pop-rock songs (such as “Letter from an Occupant” and the title track).
As time has gone on, it’s become apparent that the group’s musical goals have grown more ambitious and multi-faceted. Challengers, obviously, takes The New Pornographers into slightly more measured musical territory. Even if the record is not as buoyantly catchy as some fans would want, it is still another strong effort from the group, which also includes Todd Fancey (guitar), John Collins (bass/guitar), Blaine Thurier (Fender Rhodes electric piano), Kurt Dahle (drums) and Kathryn Calder (vocals/keyboards).
For instance, “My Rights Versus Yours,” may pull back to a comfortable mid-tempo pace, but its downright pretty vocal melody is one of the strongest The New Pornographers have committed to disc. “Failsafe” takes the record into semi-psychedelic territory with a shimmering guitar line that frames a typically graceful vocal melody. The baroque touches on “Unguided” are also an appealing new dimension in the group’s sound.
And fans of the band’s friskier material won’t go home empty-handed with Challengers, either. “All the Old Showstoppers,” with its dynamic instrumental coda and bouncy keyboard-accented melody and bright harmonies, certainly lives up to past pop glories. “Myriad Harbor” is another upbeat tune with plenty of melodic treats (be it in the unique sonic treatment of the vocals or the song’s nifty acoustic guitar lick). And with “All the Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth,” the group rocks out with frenetic delight.
Newman correctly points out that the band’s excellent third album, the 2005 release Twin Cinema, was already pointing toward a bit deeper kind of pop songcraft.
“I think if you listen to Twin Cinema and then you listen to this record, or even if you listen to all of our records in a row, chronologically, you can see the direction we were heading in. Like, if you took ‘Use It’ and ‘Sing Me Spanish Techno’ off of Twin Cinema," he says pointing out two of the denser pop tracks on the record, "you’d probably have an album not that dissimilar from Challengers. Twin Cinema just has slightly more catchy, upbeat songs.”
For the spring tour, fans will hear the band sounding pretty much the way the band does on record. That’s because Case - who because of her solo career can’t always tour with them - will be on hand for all of the dates. (Bejar, unfortunately, is not on board this time out.)
Newman says the songs from Challengers have been fitting in very well alongside the band’s earlier material in recent live shows, and the band is giving fans a taste of songs from throughout its career.
“We’re trying to dig back and do songs we haven’t played in a few years, like dig out a few Mass Romantic songs that used to be staples in our set, but now we don’t really even play anymore, and even stuff from (the second album) Electric Version," Newman says.
“The majority of the songs, I think, are going to be from the last two records,” he says. “But it also changes. The one time when the set list goes out the window, of course, is when you’re getting into encore material. That’s where we may have only played one Mass Romantic song in the set, but we’ll do four in the encore because people are yelling out for them.”
WHO: Okkervil River, The New Pornographers
WHERE: Georgia Theatre
WHEN: Thursday, April 17
HOW MUCH: $22 (adv.), $25 (door)
Panic in the Streets
Honoring the 10th anniversary of Athens' Infamously Massive Spreadhead Invasion.
originally published April 16, 2008
Hearing that the city of Athens has a vibrant and integral music scene is not the same as seeing it, hearing it and being overwhelmed by it. That’s what happened to me on Saturday, April 18, 1998.
I was 18 years old and in my first year at the University of Georgia. Having lived in town for only about half a year, I had not yet navigated downtown Athens and its art and live music scene which was known to me more by reputation than through experience. I’d been to a few shows once I’d turned 18, sure, and had spent several nights trying to convince dorm friends to go to the Morton for the fledgling film festival I’d read about in a strange and scrappy paper called Flagpole that I’d found discarded on campus, but for the most part if something was going on somewhere, like many students I had no idea how accessible it was.
Jeff Montgomery
The 1998 Panic in the Streets crowd fills West Washington Street and beyond.
Widespread Panic collapsed those misconceptions on that Saturday with what came to be known as Panic in the Streets, a record-shattering outdoor concert held in celebration of the release of the band’s first official live album Light Fuse Get Away.
The group set up stage at the west end of Washington Street, right in front of the 40 Watt Club where AthFest currently takes place every summer. The space had been designed and reworked for large outdoor events prior to the 1996 Atlanta summer Olympics, but this was the first time it’d been used for such a large capacity. Furthermore, the show was free, which brought a whole lot of people to town. Conservative estimates put the turn-out at slightly less than 75,000 people; others say it’s likely there were upwards of 120,000 who came to Athens just for the show, meaning that the population of human bodies within the Clarke County lines more than doubled.
I wasn’t even a fan of the band’s music. But I was a fan of spectacle, and seeing the entirety of downtown overrun by enthusiastic music fans was magnificent. I was working as a resident assistant in UGA’s dorms, and had to be on duty in case the hippie hordes overran our facilities, but I was able to break away every few hours and wander through the madness. West Washington was a weirder area then, with no refined organic restaurants or extensively stocked foreign beerhouses. A lot of what’s there now was boarded up, abandoned. Gravel lots instead of paved outdoor seating. It was all teeming with revelry, a swarming outdoor party to which the music almost - almost - seemed secondary. The ebullient crowds were packed as far back as City Hall, and all the way to Clayton near the Globe the pot smoke, hacky sacks and awful dancing was thick.
It was my first taste of Athens’ relationship with its most valuable economic and cultural export, and if a little misrepresentative (nothing of its scale has happened in the music scene since), it at least told me that this was a town willing to set aside normalcy, easy parking and clean smells to celebrate the art that had brought the town international attention. I saw that this was a town serious about its music!
Logistical Nightmare?
Jeff Montgomery
Law enforcement authorities freaked out at the idea of an unknown number of music fans overrunning the town. Though it’s part of their responsibility to prepare for the worst, according to many the police were overbearing and overeager in their anticipation of trouble. Gwen O’Looney, Athens’ mayor at the time, remembers the sheriff’s office taking advantage of the situation, having used the Olympics in ’96 to justify the purchase of “some kind of Darth Vader equipment” for crowd control, she says. “It was never needed and completely foreign to the kind of feeling we had about the Olympics and the spirit of the Olympics. He pulled out those uniforms and tried to charge Widespread for more of the same, which we didn’t want and which weren’t needed.”
Navigating the space between an apprehensive, at-times combative and opportunistic government establishment and the band’s management team fell to O’Looney, and everyone interviewed for this article repeatedly credited her with making the concert happen. “Despite Gwen’s best efforts, the city really threw up some hurdles for us,” says Widespread Panic bassist Dave Schools. “But I think all the press that that got did nothing but help us out. Y’know, the mayor of Macon said something to the effect of ‘Athens had better let them put their show on, ‘cause if they don’t, they’re welcome to come play in our town for free,’ and that got play in a bunch of papers.”
The band and its record label at the time, Capricorn, also had to pay between $50,000 and $70,000 for the concert, as the city had a “principle” instituted before the Olympics, says O’Looney, that extraordinary events using city resources would have to pay their own way - Athens was one of few Georgia communities not to go into debt after the 1996 Olympics, she adds.
Of course, UGA’s Sanford Stadium held 86,500 people at the time, so it’s not as though the city was unaccustomed to a deluge of visitors. This time around, though, they wouldn’t all be the known quantity of football fans. And without sold tickets, nobody really knew how many people to expect. “This was a new animal,” says O'Looney.
Troublemakers?
Jeff Montgomery
Panic in the Streets took place two months before the very first AthFest, so Athens had yet to establish a steady tradition of outdoor music events (the modest and ever-diminishing Human Rights Festival notwithstanding). The fact is that there were fewer violent arrests that weekend than on most football weekends, and nobody interviewed could recall any serious problems. News reports from the time mention a handful of drug arrests, and the most serious injury came from an out-of-towner who fell out of a tree he’d climbed to watch the band.
According to former Downtown Development Authority executive director Art Jackson (interviewed about this event by Flagpole’s Ben Emanuel in 2005), “The Widespread folks said ‘We don’t have a mean crowd. You know, they don’t fight. They’re mellow.’ And it turned out, they were mellow. I mean, this was laid-back… they came in, enjoyed the music, nobody got mad, no fights, we had no major incidents. Supposedly, the police said there were - and they never showed a video, they had video cameras come in - they had like 36 sex acts that took place or something [laughs]… but of course, they never would show it.”
Cleanup the next day was a challenge for the city and the band alike - everyone had underestimated the amount of trash receptacles necessary, and rubbish covered the streets. It was so deep and so dense that the tires on all the cleanup vehicles blew out from driving over so much glass, and special tires had to be brought in at the last minute.
“It was a very successful show and I remember going down around 7:30 in the morning the next day, just to look at the trash, and it was almost all cleaned up,” says Panic percussionist Sunny Ortiz.
“I wanted to take care of our churches,” says O’Looney, who stayed up the night after the concert, helping with the cleanup. “I did not want anyone to come to church Sunday morning and find their environment polluted by what was an excellent event the night before.”
The economic effect on the town’s businesses was impressive, too, and bartenders who are around now will still occasionally recount that night, when a number of bars, stores and restaurants sold out completely of, well, everything in stock.
Could We Do It Again?
There are five Athens-related acts who could, with the right promotion - it’d have to be presented as a special event, not just any outdoor show - feasibly create a similar massive event in downtown Athens, drawing attendees from across the country as Panic did 10 years ago. It’s up to either the acts to approach the government, or some enterprising elected official or show promoter to take on the monumental responsibilities.
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- Widespread Panic
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Well, they did it once; why not again? “We’re a little bit older now, and we don’t have a record company to help us foot the bill on something like that,” says Ortiz. “But I can’t say it’ll never happen.” The band has steadily released albums and its fans are as committed as ever.
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- R.E.M.
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The hometown heroes just released their most well-received album in more than a decade, and they’ve got a long tradition of involvement in events that’d benefit the community. But they’ve also been reluctant for years to perform anything besides low-key, surprise shows in Athens.
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- The B-52s
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It’s been a long time since The B-52s were technically from Athens, but like fellow scene vets R.E.M., the band has just released a strong new album - recorded mostly here in Athens - after years away. Why not a momentous outdoor dance party?
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- Neutral Milk Hotel
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Unlikely, yes, but if Jeff Mangum were convinced to reunite his iconic band and play a one-off show in the streets of the town that nurtured his artistic growth (and subsequent hermitage), you’d have the entire indie-rock population of this country - and others - convening in Athens.
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- Gnarls Barkley
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Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton - half of the freaky soul-pop-hip-hop sensation Gnarls Barkley - cut his teeth in Athens, learning the ins and outs of performance, deejaying and connecting with crowds before moving on and making it big. The group’s popularity is still high after the release of its second album last month, and marketing a special event based around that would seem to appeal to many.
Whether or not an event like Panic in the Streets - documented on the 2002 DVD of the same name - can be repeated, it was an important moment in the relationship between Athens as a whole and its music scene.
“I think it’s a landmark event,” says the former mayor. “The crowd that came here will never forget that event, and I don’t think that Athens will. I think people were totally amazed, and proud of how excellently their community had executed this huge feat.
“It’s a bad thing when a community is not willing to take a risk every once in a while for an industry or a constituency that is integral to its character.“
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