Though the school's got negative fashion sense, very little social normalcy and entirely too much emphasis on academics, Carnegie Mellon University sure knows how to pick its live bands.
While Pitt will be aurally bludgeoned to death by the likes of The Academy Is... and the insufferable Secondhand Serenade for its free spring concert, CMU bagged Ted Leo & The Pharmacists and The New Pornographers.
I knew there was a downside to attending a state school.
Nonetheless, the show is going down at 8 p.m. on CMU's large lawn in the center of campus on April 17.
And it's free. Did I mention that?
If you're not a fan already, it'd be a marvelous idea to familiarize yourself with either of these two truly great bands. Here's a start:
In a world where most bands struggle to get a record deal, Amanda Palmer is struggling to get out of hers.
The sometime Dresden Doll and sometime solo piano basher's been playing a new live song that mirrors her real life. It's called "Please Drop Me," and it's quite literally a plea to her label, Roadrunner Records, to do just that.
Apparently, Roadrunner attempted to cut a shot of Palmer's surely lovely midriff from an upcoming video because label reps thought she looked a bit overweight.
First of all, Palmer's tummy is a lot different than the rest of her body, I'm quite sure it's damn fine. And secondly, people don't listen to Amanda Palmer's theatrical, dark cabaret pop because she's hot.
With lyrics like "I'm tired of sucking corporate dick," it seems that Palmer's coming back swinging. It's the perfect instance of an artist - a respectable, talented artist - bucking the suits, saying "fuck you" and doing exactly what she wants to do. It's more rock'n'roll than any of the other artists in Roadrunner's band collection (including Slipknot and Deicide and some other dick-rock bullshit) could muster in even the heaviest breakdown.
And speaking of dick-rock, scrolling through Roadrunner's roster is like listing the lineup of the worst festival never created. Seriously, Soulfly, Biohazard, Madina Lake, Dragonforce, Megadeath, Dream Theater, Theory of a Deadman, Sammy Hager, Stone Sour, Slipknot and, my personal favorites, RATT and Nickelback.
In a musical climate where the biggest tours roll around the country with dozens of massive buses, trucks and planes further blasting the environment to damnation, it’s refreshing to hear about an act like Blind Pilot. The acoustic folk band spent last summer on tour, just like countless other bands — but these guys did it all on their bikes.
“We went from Washington to San Diego. From just below Canada to just above Mexico,” said Blind Pilot’s singer Israel Nebeker. “And it wasn’t the first time. We’d planned a bike tour before but didn’t make it so far. We got our bikes stolen in San Francisco.”
Nebeker’s freewheeling, almost whimsical spirit carries through perfectly in his music. His high, airy voice taps out melodies like The Shins’ James Mercer over his own gently strummed guitar and college buddy turned bandmate Ryan Dobrowski’s lightly splashing drums.
The two Oregon natives began playing together amid the rush and stress of college, but never quite as much as Nebeker wanted. As it so often does, school simply got in the way.
“It was hard to do both — college takes a lot of time,” said Nebeker.
The two rejoined shortly after leaving college, and with no more pesky classes to worry about, Blind Pilot finally began to take shape. With only a handful of acoustic gems, instruments strapped to their backs and a pair of bicycles, Nebeker and Dobrowski set on the first Blind Pilot bike tour, albeit one stunted by theft.
But the first show wasn’t exactly what the two flighty folk post-grads could’ve ever expected.
“The first show on that tour — our first show ever — was booked with a punk band called, I think, F**k Me Dead. We found that out when we got to the venue and kids poured in with Mohawks, studs and leather. It was our first show, and I thought we’d be eaten alive,” said Nebeker.
Surprisingly, the punks had a soft spot for Nebeker’s utterly heartfelt folk.
“Our music didn’t fit in with the rest of the night at all, but it was cool. A guy with an orange Mohawk came up to me afterward and shook my hand. And he had the softest handshake ever,” said Nebeker.
After rebooting in Portland, Ore., getting new bikes and adding bassist Luke Ydstie and banjoist Kati Claborn, Blind Pilot was ready to head out for round two last summer. Dragging along a homemade upright bass trailer (“There are no companies making bass trailers. Luckily, Luke is a good woodworker,” said Nebeker) and a cache of instruments including a ukulele and dulcimer, the quartet biked through a lot of West Coast civilization.
“There were tons of small towns that we didn’t even know had music venues. We basically showed up and asked around where we could play. Those turned out to be some of the best shows,” said Nebeker.
With the band’s music gaining popularity through online avenues and consistent touring, Blind Pilot’s no longer traveling without a motor. Riding in style in a van nowadays, the band has even booked it’s biggest tour ever — with prog-folk heroes The Decemberists, a band whose humble sound on its first record wasn’t unlike the unassuming beauty of Blind Pilot.
Blind Pilot’s debut album, 3 Rounds and A Sound, collects the flowing vibe of life on the road, weaving in and out of ethereal melodies just like the band weaved in and out of California towns. Tracks like the nothing-short-of-lovely “The Story I Heard” find Nebeker’s voice soaring with melodies that’ll stick with you all day — and likely put a smile on your face.
Shades of Iron and Wine, Neutral Milk Hotel and even Simon & Garfunkel show up throughout 3 Rounds, all with a tinge more urgency and carried by steady shuffle beats and rhythmic guitar.
But if you hear something completely different, said Nebeker, that’s just fine. Much like his sentiment toward touring, Nebeker’s feelings on his fans are free and easy.
“I think it’s important to remember that when people are hearing my songs, it’s a two-part process. I’m writing the songs, but the process isn’t complete until they hear it,” said Nebeker. “So if they hear something there, it’s there.”
But whatever fans hear, only one thing matters to the Portland crew: Just hear it.
There’s nothing to pick up sullen spirits quite like a dance party, and that’s exactly what N.E.R.D. brought to a crowd of totally-bummed Pitt students in the Fitzgerald Fieldhouse Saturday night.
Local hip-hop powerhouse Formula 412 opened the show, sponsored by Pitt Program Council, to an audience slowly filtering in during the commercials of the basketball game. It’s a shame the two events coincided, too — the band plays the kind of juggernaut funk that’s best appreciated live. 412’s MC, Masai Turner, had a thumping, rhythmic flow that rode perfectly atop guitarist Nasty Nash’s jackhammer riffs and Young D’s impossibly tight percussion.
Rhythm is Formula 412’s strong suit, and like an more vicious version of The Roots, the band’s live set hit with machine gun precision. Definitely a local band to watch out for.
PPC beamed the last minutes of Pitt’s game against Villanova on the two jumbo screens in the Fieldhouse as the N.E.R.D. crew set up the show and the tension in the room was stifling. And with the last-second loss, the energy of the crowd deflated like a popped balloon.
Luckily, N.E.R.D. front man Pharrell Williams knows how to work a crowd. And the “F**k you ‘Nova” chant didn’t hurt either.
Led by Williams, MC Shay Haley and producer/synthesizer maestro Chad Hugo, N.E.R.D. hit the stage bolstered by a live band including two drummers, two keyboardists a guitarist and a bassist, making for a gigantic sound that immediately got the crowd shaking booties and all semblance of appendages.
“Brain,” a highlight of N.E.R.D.’s debut record In Search Of… was a full-on funk assault, the staccato guitar riff reverberating through the entire Fieldhouse and shaking up even the most depressed of Pitt kids.
In addition to controlling the bounce of the crowd, Williams also seemingly likes to control the crowd itself, laying down the rules of the show.
“Here are the rules. There are no more inhibitions tonight. You will totally let go,” commanded Williams. “Second, if you punch someone, you leave. Three, respect the security guards. And four, when you go back to class, you will tell everyone what the fuck they missed.”
Yes, sir.
After a punchy and energetic “Kill Joy,” Williams dove back in on the crowd instruction, actually attempting to teach the crowd proper crowd-surfing techniques. Teaching when he could’ve been busting out another funk blast, Williams’ insistence on hearing his own voice talk, not perform, was a bit of a kill joy.
Nonetheless, the music took center stage again with the smoothed out drug ballad “Provider” and the sublimely explosive “Sooner or Later,” easily two of the band’s best songs.
Though the lady-heavy audience often seemed there solely to be in the same room as Pharrell Williams (can’t blame them, dude is adorable), the front man wanted to play fair to both sexes. For the fuzz-bass blowout “Rock Star,” he invited a line of guys onstage to have their own rock star moment, resulting, predictably, in said guys jumping up and down, playing air guitar and generally wishing they were Pharrell Williams.
But the self-love didn’t stop there. For a six-minute slinky soul jam, the N.E.R.D. crew invited a veritable entire floor of Holland Hall onstage for Williams to dance with and sing to. The guy and girl stage overpopulation played more like an episode of the surely in the works MTV reality series “Who Wants to Fellate Pharrell?” than a hip-hop show.
Thankfully, all was not lost.
N.E.R.D. dove head first into the thumping coke workout “Everybody Nose” and the extraordinarily funky “She Wants to Move.” When the band spliced in the guitar riff of Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out,” the show finally came full circle, ending with the infectious and intense energy it started on.
Pitt might not have won Saturday night, but for the few hundred students packed into the Fitzgerald Fieldhouse, N.E.R.D.’s show of wild and live hip-hop made the loss an easier pill to swallow.
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