Category Archives: night music

Night Music: Jeremy and the Satyrs, “Mean Black Snake”

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When I was in college, my friend Robin lived in an apartment in the village. Her neighbor was a guy named Jeremy Steig, one of those guys about whom there is a lot to know.

Jeremy’s father, the New Yorker cartoonist William Steig, is famously known at this point as the creator of Shrek. (Jeremy played the Pied Piper in the movie Shrek Forever After, Wikipedia tells us.)

Jeremy had a motorcycle accident long before I met him, which left him half paralyzed. He had to teach himself again as an adult how to play the flute, and uses a special mouthpiece in order to play.

In 1968 he formed Jeremy and the Satyrs, an early jazz-rock fusion band, with the bassist Eddie Gomez, the pianist Warren Bernhardt and others that made the eponymous record Mean Black Snake is from.

He later made a number of jazz albums, and one of his songs was used as a sample in the Beastie Boys single, Slap Shot (I know this from Wikipedia, too).

He was, when I met him a hyper man, constantly up and down, in and out of his, Robin’s and other apartments, working on ideas musical and artsy (he drew the cover art of the album), as well as taking care of the details of life. He was dramatic that way, but also a generous man, inclusive, engaged, funny, helpful, even if sometimes troublesome. It seemed, if I recall, that like a Satyr he was always horny, too, and talked about everything always.

At this time, in the late 70s, Jeremy had a girlfriend (Diana?) who was a belly dancer, and we went to shows in disco ballrooms in the Village, Jeremy and Eddie Gomez and a drummer or a machine backing up the belly dance with wild free-form jazz that sometimes morphed into a disco groove. It was nutty stuff, Jeremy passed his flute through a series of pedals that added delays and echo and looping, but it was not pretentious or hifalutin. Like Jeremy, the music was affable and soulful and handmade, very likable if you value more the exploration and the courage to do that in public than some preformed idea of what things should be.

Night Music: David Bowie and the Spiders From Mars, “Hang On To Yourself”

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I did not know about DA Pennebaker’s Ziggy Stardust movie until yesterday. Poor me.

It seems that Bowie had plans to retire the The Spiders from Mars as his backing band after these very shows, as well as Ziggy Stardust as his stage persona. He invited Pennebaker to record a couple of songs, for posterity, but the legendary director of music films (Don’t Look Back among others)ghby saw a bigger chance, and recorded the weekend of shows at the Hammersmith Odeon.

With word out that the Spiders were done, many took that to mean that the willful Bowie was retiring from the stage himself. I watched half of this today and it is so fine, a mixture of fab musical performance and just enough verite color to make it all feel immediate and up close.

There is a DVD of the whole show that surely has better pictures and sound, but this clip will give you an indelible taste.

Night Music: David Johansen, “Frenchette”

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I loved the Dolls, but I also loved David Johansen’s first album after the Dolls.

Part of the difference was that Johansen lived in NY (just like the Dolls), and I did too. The Dolls had lived in NY, but at that point in time I still lived in the suburbs.

I didn’t and don’t know anyone who loved Johansen’s first album as much as I did, but it is full of great songs and performances. Judge for yourself with this:

New Rock: Japandroids, “The House That Heaven Built”

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I like everything about this song, the frenetic drumming, the twinned rhythm guitars, the barked vocals, the propulsive force of the tune. And not unimportantly, something of a melody (though it might be better described as a hook).

But when I listen to it the second time the surface pleasures start to seem less like a real story and more like a soundtrack to a TV show on the CW. That may not be fair to them, or maybe it is the key trap that any band has to navigate.

These guys could play music I liked, they sound lots like Everclear come to think of it, but this isn’t Everclear. This could be (should be) playing in the dressing room at Hollister. If they wanted my vote they would be bolder, but they don’t give a fuck about me. Or at least won’t until no one else gives a fuck about them.

Night Music: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, “Tune Grief”

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I like this song because Malkmus barks more like a punk rocker than a lyricist who has been overexposed by the New Yorker crowd. I think he has a terrific bratty rock sense, a quavery but tuneful (and conversational) voice, and a pretty solid band behind him always.

But I also like the Malkmus tunes (with Pavement, with Jicks, and solo) when he brays like a word-drunk poet with an aversion to following the melody too closely. Again, because the band behind him is always solidly creative. Nobody is phoning it in.

Which isn’t to say that they’re dedicated to tight.

Night Music: Thin Lizzy, “Dancing In The Moonlight (It’s Caught Me In Its Spotlight”

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At lunch today with Mike S., in the Village, our waiter mentioned this song, which is a nice one as the Polar Vortex swoops in and we’re threatened tomorrow with close to a foot of snow.

The waiter mentioned that while Phil Lynott loved Van Morrison and wrote the song in (obvious) tribute, the rest of the band didn’t care for it and they never played it live (making this fake live performance even more fake). I don’t know, when I heard the name I immediately thought of Van Morrison’s Moondance, which did not contribute to the conversation at all.

Night Music: Camper Van Chadbourne, “I Talk To The Wind”

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Sometime in 1999, probably in May or June, I saw an ad for a show in the Village Voice. Or more likely it was a show listing, for a group called Camper Van Chadbourne. This was at least part of Camper Van Beethoven playing with a visionary and reclusive guitarist and banjoist and instrument maker from North Carolina, Eugene Chadbourne, at a place called something (and I’m making this up but I think it fits) like The Marxist Hall. Or the Center for Marxists. You get the idea.

So, a Marxist concert hall in Chelsea NY in 1999? A block from our house was the People’s Party book store, downstairs from the headquarters of the Communist Party USA. I expected an auditorium.

My forebearing wife agreed to stay home with our infant, and I went to the show of Camper Van Chadbourne with my longtime friend Sheryl, who has always been a game and adventurous soul. But this didn’t seem adventurous until we got there.

The so-called Hall was small. Maybe 50 folding chairs in an office waiting room. The stage was small, but replete with Chadbourne’s guitars and banjos, but also his handmade instruments. He’s famous for putting pickups on a rake. For instance.

Small room, one of my favorite bands, playing with an eccentric guitar/banjo genius, in a space the size of a doctor’s office. It was weirdly intimate and fantastically odd, in other words unforgettable.

Afterwards, Sheryl did not mock me. I hope she remembers the night fondly. I remember the music more than fondly, it was wild and odd and aggressive, except when it bowed toward pretty. But that is what made the other stuff seem more powerful.

For educational value, and my own memory, here is the King Crimson version of this song: