First SummerStage of the Year

With warmer weather beckoning to outdoor activities I always look forward to the live music in Central Park and Prospect Park that begins in late May. For one of the first SummerStage perfomances of this year, it was Portugal the Man and Cage the Elephant. It was a bit windy during the show and the sound guys had some problems getting the sound right. At most outdoor shows I think the sound guys just blast the lows and highs but there are definitely regulations against doing so given the amount of residential buildings closeby.

The sound got better for Cage the Elephant, who strongly resembled the British Invasion groups of the Sixties and Seventies despite being from Knoxville, TN. Their singer was one of the most energetic frontmen I'd seen in a while, resembling a young Mick Jagger at times. Take a look.

Their songs were a bit ecletic, the majority sounding like Sixties revival songs but a few sounded very Nineties like the Weezer-esque song above. They had an Oasis-sounding song as well as one that sounded just like their opener, Portugal the Man.

Okonomiyaki and Jazz

I finally got a chance to taste one of the most popular eats in New York right now: Okonomiyaki. Originating from Okinawa, Japan, it's a flour pancake with meat/seafood, scallions, veg and sometimes cheese, topped with shredded bonito fish that dances around on the hot plate when it is served. The pancake was bursting with flavor (the extra sauces were a bit much!) and I wished I'd had an ice-cold beer to wash it down. We sat at the bar at Izakaya Nomad and watched the chefs prepping tataki over a grill that they occasionally seasoned with a big slab of fat. Of special mention were the purple sweet potato fries that were in a lighter-than-tempura batter and came with a mentaiko aioli that had been blended with marinated cod roe, really unique.

Afterward, we rode our bikes a mile South to Small's Jazz Club in the Village where we arrived just in time for the 7:30 set. Fukushi Tanaika, one of the most well-known contemporary Japanese jazz artists, was on the skins with his quartet. Joining him were his countryman Hide Tanaka on bass, Texan Marc Devine on piano and Seattlelite Chris Johansen on tenor sax. Their set was an impromptu tribute  to Hank Mobley, a tenor sax composer well known for hard bop and soul jazz.

The venue is a basement with a small bar and a couple mirrors allowing you to see behind the musicians. The intimate setting was perfect for the quartet, who got everybody in the joint jumpin' to the beat. It was incredible to have Fukushi gush about how big of an influence Hank Mobley was for himself and Hide while they were growing up in Japan. The existence of the Fukushi Tanaika quartet had to certainly be influenced by some of the U.S. Jazz Diplomacy and VOA Radio that disseminated the uniquely American music around the world during the Cold War years.

Rx Bandits' last show (in Seattle)

Rx Bandits have always been one of my favorite bands to see live. Coming out of the short-lived 3rd wave ska movement with heavyweights such as Reel Big Fish and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, one would have expected them to suffer a similar fate once the music world decided it didn't want to hear ska anymore.

Instead of folding, Rx Bandits worked to develop a more progressive sound, while maintaining the brass hardware (trombone, sax, trumpet) indicative to the ska genre. The horn-inspired prog rock was fantastic to see live, with the music lifting the crowd off their feet to dance, clap and sing along to the music. I made a point of seeing RxB every time they came to Los Angeles. Unfortunately, I think the horn players weren't happy with the direction the band was going because every year I saw them, they seemed to have one less horn player.

I saw them in Seattle at El Corazon, which is a dive reminiscent of OC's Chain Reaction. The crowd was good, but pretty young and not that up on all their old numbers. The oddest thing was that at this show, they had forgone their last horn player, leaving the guitar players to play out the melodic horn lines. Not the best RxB show I've seen but a proper sendoff for a band that had been one of my favorites to see live over the last 5 years.

Here's a great vid of them doing a little cultural diplomacy in Venezuela:

Big Fela

For my first Broadway show, I made a point to check out FELA! The musical about the life of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, a pioneer of Afrobeat music and activist who brought the suffering and injustice of 1970's Nigeria to mainstream media.  Already nominated for 11 Tony Awards, I knew this musical had to be good based on Fela's compelling life story and spectacular music of his group, which got the audience moving about in their seats the whole show. If you want some good rump-shakin' politically charged funk (think James Brown meets-Hugh Masekela and Public Enemy), check out some of his singles, such as Army Arrangement.

Coachella 2010

Still feeling a bit out of place in the LA metropolis, I figured I'd accelerate my immersion back into US culture by attending one of the biggest music festivals in the country. I'd to Coachella way back in 2003 when you could buy individual tickets to each day but a lot had changed since then, mainly the sellout crowd of 70,000+ per day which meant herding music fans through long gates and lines.

The heat and traffic kept many potential fans at the numerous day/pool parties going on during the day, though on average, our group showed up around 5pm to enjoy the music for each day that lasted til 1 or 2 in the morning. I was exposed to a lot of new music I'd missed by spending the last 9 months out of the country and can honestly say that the quality of the performances was the best of any music festival I've ever been to. Coachella is quickly becoming the must-see music event of the year in the US and I'm hoping to be able to come back as often as I can.

Some highlights:

-With mostly indie and electronic names heading up the festival, Jay-Z had the most to prove and delivered by incorporating a live band and putting on one of the best stylistic performances I've ever seen. Much to my chagrin, Jay-Z did not hop on a NY-bound helicopter directly after performing and stuck around to support some of the lesser-known indie bands. Here's Mr. Carter doing one of my faves, check out the killer set design:



-MUSE incorporating Once Upon a Time in the West themes into their set and outright rocking my face off:


-Thom Yorke paying homage to the electronic nature of the festival, playing some music that Radiohead would never play, really upbeat and dancy.

-Jack White jumping around to every single instrument for the Dead Weather.

-2Many DJs putting together a hilariously creative audio portion to accompany their hard and heavy mash up of eletro and dance music.

-MGMT kind of sucking but bringing the crowd together with their singles

-Discovering amazing new acts like Miike Snow (who stole the show on Sunday for me), The XX and Passion Pit.

-Biggest letdowns for me were Gorillaz, Infected Mushroom and Orbital who just couldn't really contend with the caliber of the other acts sharing the stage.

-seeing Them Crooked Vultures with John Paul Jones (of Zep fame) on bass and Dave Grohl, who is a MONSTER on drums. They were the first act I caught on Friday and to see a band having that much fun on stage is something so entertaining and nostalgic for me:

Radio Bemba Buenos Aires

"Tonight I dream about fraternity
 Tonight I say: one day!
 One day my dreams will be reality
 Like Bobby said to me
 Hey Bobby Marley
 Sing something good to me
 This world go crazy
 It's an emergency.”   –Manu Chao, Mr. Bobby

Never have I seen someone enjoy themselves on stage like Manu Chao and his band. He seems to let the music take him to a place only performers like Bob Marley and Marvin Gaye seem to have found while on stage. I will admit that many the songs sounded a bit similar (reggae/folk with punk/ska breaks), making the concert at times sound like one long Manu Chao song. But I’ll give it to him, the man knows his audience and he knows how to work ‘em.

From a Public Diplomacy perspective, it’s remarkable to see how a Parisian who also claims Barcelona as home can have such a powerful influence in Latin America. While he does have Peruvian heritage, his credibility is enhanced by his songs’ focus on indigenous movements and against foreign exploitation in Latin America. Singing in 4 languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, English), is another way he has been able to win over Latin American publics.

While Manu’s “Third World Solidarity” may not have as large an impact in Euro-centric Argentina, he was able to make time for announcements from two Argentine civil society groups during the concert. He closed out the show by bringing them all back onstage for a 30-minute encore, praising the Pachamama (Mother Earth).

When I was in Uruguay, the owner of my hostel showed me this video of Manu in Cabo Polonio helping to raise awareness about government destruction of some of the houses there; and it must have helped as it was just made into a national park 3 months ago:

The Uruguay Round: 1

"Sleepy, tranquil, quaint and relaxing." These are the words that describe Montevideo in travel books about Argentina. All because pobrecito Uruguay doesn’t even get it’s own book; forever condemned to a “S. America On a Shoestring” chapter or even worse, a few pages in an Argentine travel guide.

The three-hour Ferry across the River Plate put me in Montevideo with just enough time to enjoy the sunset. The Ciudad Vieja juts out into the Atlantic, presenting an ocean view from almost any angle in the old city. Structurally and aesthetically, it doesn’t look any different than a city in Argentina, though there’s something different about the onda(vibe) here that I still haven’t put my finger on.

I met up with my 5 college friends from Buenos Aires and we headed out to ready to embibe whatever Monday in Montevideo could muster. To my surprise, the pub we ended up at had an enormous selection of beer (Chimay, Paulaner and local micros to name a few), which I had been longing for in wine-dominated Argentina.

To top it off, there was a guitar player banging out cover medleys of pop songs. He went from Bob Marley to Oasis to The Police without pause, I think he did 6 or 7 songs successively. He knew how to work it and had all the foreigners in the bar clapping and singing along. I chatted with him afterwards while he was chowing down free pub food (staple of playing bars) and he told me he only gets one gig a week so he has to work as a street cleaner to pay the bills. No one ever said being a musician anywhere was easy, even if you can win over 30 NorteAmericanos with 40 minutes of nonstop classics.

129 and doin' fine

Yesterday was the birthday (129th) of the City of La Plata, which meant only one thing: TONS of music and celebration in Plaza Moreno. This is the second all-day fiesta I've seen in two months here, the other being the first day of spring.

The sweet smoke of chorizo wafting through the crowd as they sip on their fernet y colas and maté; there is something distinctly carefree and Argentine about blowing off a whole day of work just to hang in the plaza. I checked out a couple pop/rock groups who weren't really that catchy before returning later at night for the fireworks. When I came back, the night vibe had changed, as well as the crowd. There were some folk-type bands playing tributes to some of the greats like Mercedes Sosa and Victor Jara. These didn't mix well with Metalero Oscar, who was quick to label them as "yanqui hippy music." Still trying to figure out the difference between "Folk" and "Folklorica," but I'll get back to you on that...

Metaleros de La Plata

"Freaking Yanqui Metal!" My Colombian friend Oscar yelled, "you love this stuff!" While I couldn't condone the current travesty of a "metal" band we were viewing, in truth, it was probably closer to the melodic type of stuff I do listen to.

My friend Ihintza had brought us to the North end for a metal show that goes down every couple of months. The venue was cozy and reminded me of venues I'd played during my punk rock days. The first band took the stage and was a mix of "hardcore, metal and prog." The singer couldn't sing but had an amazing penchant for the dramatic. Halfway through a song, he throws down the mike and runs off stage. The music continues to crescendo to its most epic moment, when suddenly, he appears ABOVE the crowd in the rafters, screaming down (sans microphone) onto the audience. It was a cool moment. Though the band's songwriting abilities were questionable, their stage presence was great. They won me over when the singer started a song by stomping in the middle of the crowd, who soon followed suit until the whole venue was shaking.

The second band continued some of the stage antics by having the singer jump and mosh into the crowd during their set. But they were all over the place with their songs. The guitar player, who was wearing a Misfits shirt announced "Les gustan los Misfits??" before launching into a cover of "Saturday Knight," the Misfits WORST song and Danzig's obnoxious crooner ballad. To make matters worse, this was one of two covers the band played, the second being a Limp Bizket-type version of Britney's "Hit me baby one more time" with screaming on the Choruses.

The third band was decidedly most metal on a night that didn't really have any metal but by then (3 AM), everybody had already left the venue. Ihintza and Oscar were not the only ones disappointed. About a dozen other goths and metaleros congregated in the lounge during the screamo/hardcore bands, drinking beer and complaining about the lack of "brutality." Regardless, we had a fun time and on the walk home, I even got a train to toot its horn for metal by throwing up the horns of "rawk". All in all great night, as any night with live music usually is.

The Train Shed, La Plata, Argentina, Planet Earth

“The railroad sharpened the umbilical destiny of Buenos Aires: progressively and irredeemably it made it into a head severed from the body. The iron ways were a dream of the metropolis, and they stretched out its predatory tentacles across the pampa.”

-Ezequiel Martinez Estrada “X Ray of the Pampa” 1933


While the Argentinean train system may have been at its peak during the 30's, privatization and poor management resulted in the miles of unused track and ghost stations that can be found across the country. There are tons of abandoned stations here in La Plata, which are in the process of being converted into cooperatives or craft stores.

The "Galpón de Tolosa" (Tolosa Train Shed) is a perfect example of the La Plata community taking things into their own hands. Abdandoned for decades, it has been a year and a half since students and neighbors have converted the old train shed into a community center hosting everything from gardening to yoga classes.

Walking towards the center Sat. night, I could see several bonfires burning around the center; the scent of youth and anarchy was in the air. We huddled around a bonfire sipping on wine before going on a tour of the center's "self-sustained" vegetable garden. I was honestly impressed with the center itself, though repainted, it still maintained a very bohemian vibe. Cheap cover and cheap drinks weren't too shabby either. The first band we was sort of a bluesy/indie type group (John Spencer Blues Explosion with better harmonies) which I dug. The second band ended up driving most of my entourage outside, as it was bad indie noise rock (anything where I can't make out the melody is rubbish!).

As we were leaving, I saw spray painted on a wall: "Galpón de Tolosa, La Plata, Argentina, Planeta Tierra" which seemed fitting for our exit, as well as the title of this post.

Peña La Salamanca

Tonight, while in the hunt for live music, I stumbled upon this folklore Peña. I was familiar with Peñas from my time in Peru, where most of the "legit" flute and folkorica bands would play. My friend Ali and I peered in the window and upon seeing 6 of our friends rocking out to some 4 part harmonies, we had to go in.

The first group was traditional Argentine folklorica: flutes, lots of drums, guitars and even a xylophone-type instrument. The experience was enhanced by my friends Ihintza and Narua, who broke out their songbook and launched into some folklorica from their Basque homeland. The second group looked like a family project, complete with the weird wacky uncle on bass. They were sloppy to start, but ended up rallying behind their super talented frontman who could play pan pipes, flute, guitar and every other indigenous instrument he could get his hands on.

One of my frequent criticisms of bands are the ones that try to cover too many genres within one set, which was exactly what happened here. We had Peruvian flute ballads, Mapuche Andean sonatas, Guaraní galaguetzas, you name it. The venue Salamanca had a great vibe however, very cozy; reminded me of a Native American longhouse, will definitely return before my time here is up.