Lordy, Save Me: Legendary Shack Shakers and O'Death at 31st Street Pub

One part Southern nostalgia, three parts punk energy and two parts genuine showmanship made up the stacked bill of last night’s Legendary Shack Shakers, O’Death and The Red Western show at the 31st Street Pub.

The pub supposes itself as the place in Pittsburgh for cutting edge rock, but is music cutting edge if it smacks of, say, Alabama in the 1930’s? The bands, as well as the 75 people in the crowd, would say yes. And so would I. The music may’ve been more crazed-tent-revival than avant-garde Brooklyn art-punk, and the feverishly energetic assault on the crowd’s bodies and ears did feel a lot like a spiritual reckoning, but there was nothing old or rehashed about the show.

Pittsburgh’s The Red Western opened with some amped up songwriter-country put to a punk beat, and front woman Lauren DeLorenze rocked like a spunkier version of Silver Jew Cassie Berman.


O’Death, Southern macabre enthusiasts from Brooklyn, looked more like a maudlin group of college philosophy majors than a country-revival band, but looks proved deceiving. Lead singer Greg Jamie’s creaking voice (think Isaac Brock singing Johnny Cash) crawled through the songs, exploding in psych-ward hysterics when the music called for it, but never left his calm, almost possessed countenance.

Jamie played the perfect foil for the rest of the band, who played like madmen dancing, stomping and shaking around him like the hurricane to which he was the foreboding eye. O’Death plays music with the same unsettling, jittery quality as, to pull this card twice, Modest Mouse at that band’s most wild and flailing.

The songs are about being lost at sea or buried or dead, all sang over caffeinated funeral dirge music of acoustic guitar, bass, banjo and the occasional ukulele.

And if you’ve never seen someone shred on the ukulele, you’re missing out.

Here's O'Death's sublimely creepy "Low Tide."



The set’s high point was “Down to Rest” — about, you guessed it, burial — which actually got the crowd stomping, and one poor soul attempting a solo mosh pit.

Speaking of souls, O’Death like to air theirs out. The band plays like they’ve got the devil inside them and they want him gone — faces contort, bodies shake and voices quiver. It’s no surprise the music could be the soundtrack to the drunken after party of a Southern gentleman.

That is, the Southern gentleman who shared the bill.

“We’re lucky to be on this tour with the Shack Shakers,” Jamie said. “They’re dicks, though. Really mean people.”
Who says there can’t be humor after the funeral?

The Legendary Shack Shakers’ biggest claim to critical fame has been Jello Biafra’s call that singer J. D. Wilkes is the “last great Rock and Roll frontman.”

Well, maybe not the last, but he’s certainly a leader of a dying breed.

Whereas O’Death could DJ your next funeral, The Shack Shakers could own your county fare. Wilkes dresses like a carney, with giant horn-rimmed glasses (held around his head with an elastic strap) and striped pants. He’s wire thin. His voice, hollered into a 50’s-era microphone, sounds like he should be saying “Step riiiight up!” through a loudspeaker, and he may be downright insane.

Here's a peak at the madness, in a song about "Chicken, chickens and poultry," topics criminally underrepresented in rock:


The Shakers played like they wanted to level 31st Street to its foundation — Mark Robertson’s bass is a standup and thunderously tears across the room and the double-bass drum drilling comes right out of a Slayer song.

But the centerpiece of the show is Wilkes, a front man I’ve never seen the likes of before.

As he stripped much of his clothing off, Wilkes grabbed the audience members and shook them, spit into the crowd (more up-and-over than at anyone) and playfully smacked people in the head. He jumped around, bent in all sorts of athletic ways and often put his fists up, ready to brawl.

But that’s the point — the band’s rockabilly gone insane thrashing is meant to get the crowd moving, moving away from the notion of “I’m in a club in Pittsburgh” and towards “My spirit is being exorcized by the sublime power of Rock’n’roll,” as well as moving physically — for such a small, unpacked club, bodies jumped and stomped and swung around limbs and heads.

The band’s groove was undeniable — thick, syrupy chugging rhythm churning under fast rockabilly guitar and punched-in-the-face bass lines.

The Legendary Shack Shakers play at the altar of Southern gothic. They are the energy you picture in a 1930’s tent revival, with ladies in summer dresses holding fans screaming about the power of the Lord, oh Jesus, please save me.

If Sufjan Stevens Was Japanese...

...He'd be Shugo Tokumaru.

I caught wind of this multi-instrumentalist (and by multi- I mean many. Dude plays almost 50 instruments) from Paste Magazine's Rachael Maddux's Shugo Sleep Experiment.

According to the post, good old Shugo wrote most of the lyrics to his new album (relatively, that is. It was released last year in Japan) called Exit based on dreams he had and miraculously remembered. I have a hard time remembering what I had for lunch or my dad's birthday (Which is today. Happy Birthday, Steve!), let alone what I dreamt about.

Regardless, he's the musician and not me, so I digress.

Of all the music I've come across in, say, the past month from bloggers and publicists, this might damn well be the most original.

Remember how blown away you were after hearing Sufjan Steven's Illinoise album? That how-the-hell-did-he-write-that type of amazement?

Swap in Japanese lyrics in a voice just as lofty and ethereal and you've got Shugo. The sounds of a whole playground of instruments dance around in these songs like drunken lovers spilling out of the bar and into the streets.

The melodies (instrumental and vocal) are playful little aliens and they'll creep into your brain and keep on dancing.

The twang of traditional Japanese music (or, rather, the sounds I'm used to hearing in Japanese restaurants) are sprinkled gently on top of the whole carnival. The Sufjan comparison comes not so much in the sound, exactly, but rather the creativity and orchestral lushness of the whole thing.

While Sufjan's work sounds like it was recorded with a whole symphony of flower children on call, Shugo's could've been laid down in a big kitchen with a whole array of oddball tools, bells, whistles and plenty of counter space to bang on.

Anyway, here's the moral: If you check out one new artist this week, make it Shugo Tokumaru. To whet your whistle, here are some of his videos:

Three Views on Lil Wayne's Stupifying New "Prom Queen"

Yeah, we're confused too.

Every so often, an event tears through the world of hip-hop with the force of a level five tornado or Fat Joe sitting down.

Maybe it’s global warming, but recently there’ve been too many of these game-changing events to count — the stability of hip-hop as we know it is melting as artist after artist experiments with their tried and true sound. First Snoop Dogg abandoned rap for cheesy, irresistible late ‘70’s funky coke-disco with “Sexual Eruption.”

Then Kanye West left his lady of hip-hop and began making rabbit-paced love to an auto-tune machine, giving birth to 808s and Heartbreak last winter. But the most recent tremor in hip-hop has been by far the most staggering.

Dr. Weezy F. Baby, or Lil Wayne to the squares, abandoned rap to make a rock’n’roll record. What in the hell is he doing? Didn’t he just release the most successful rap album of the year? Didn’t he just release the most successful album of the year in any genre? The answer to the second two questions is yes, but the first one is a good bit harder to answer. The simplest way to do it, though, would be this — whatever the hell he wants to do.

On January 27, Lil Wayne debuted “Prom Queen,” the first single off of his upcoming rock record called Rebirth. The track sounds like the result of the guitarist from System of a Down, the drummer from Linkin Park, the rapper from, um, Lil Wayne and the auto-tune machine from every rap song in the last six months drinking lots of Redbull, smoking a joint then trying to be poetic. Sound confusing? Well, it is. Check it out:

To separate the song from its source is simply impossible, as it would both mean that approximately 99% of the people who’ve listened to it never would’ve and it would negate the gigantic force Lil Wayne has had on the music world in the past year and a half.

So we’re left at an impasse, as the most successful and talented (arguably most talented… I’m still waiting for Lupe Fiasco to get his due praise) rapper of the MySpace era just dropped a big bomb of what-the-hell-is-this on our collective laps. It’s like our probably reaction to a Coldplay rap record — the band is known for doing what they do well, but how could we transpose that sense of guaranteed quality to a completely new genre?

Then again, maybe that’s a bad example. A Coldplay rap record would most assuredly be even weaker than a smack from Chris Brown.


That said, the only way I see fit to review “Prom Queen,” and thereby predict how the next record from the year’s biggest artist will be, is to do so thrice.

First, we look at “Prom Queen” as a rock song. Compared to most rock songs that most rock fans would consider good, “Prom Queen” is pretty decent (Note: not indie. For our purposes, rock means mainstream Linkin Park-type business). Wayne’s guitar sound is sharp and cutting, if not overly complicated, and is certainly reminiscent of the minor key tinkering of System of a Down. The percussion packs the same punch as the best of the late-90s rap-rock bands, sounding surprisingly in timbre as those Christian metal dudes P.O.D. I know, I think it’s weird too.

In the chorus, Wayne’s non-auto-tuned shriek of “Prom Queen!!” is a genuinely awesome bratty punk squeal, and the whole thing is really quite catchy. So we’ve got one thumb sort of up.

Next, we look at “Prom Queen” as a Lil Wayne song. This category is a lot tougher, as Wayne has got some seriously fantastic material. From his mixtapes to his guest appearances and studio albums, the guy has a quality average of near-stellar. Lyrically, Wayne has certainly tackled a lot of tougher topics than in “Prom Queen,” which is mostly a bout sitting behind a girl with sexy underwear in class. You know, to take a peak. Though that’s an admirable cause, we know he could’ve done better because he has so often. Thumb down.

Last, we look at the song as a Lil-Wayne-doing-a-rock-song song, a category that’s trickier still. Genre crossovers do deserve some respect when done well, as “Prom Queen” is. The man’s got to get credit for playing and writing his own guitar part, which isn’t half bad. And the shock value of the song (“That’s Lil Wayne?!”) lasts for awhile — through about 15 plays. Ultimately, though, by 18 plays (when I’d finally finished this column), the shock wore off and I was left with a song that was just alright. Thumb sideways.

There you have it — results inconclusive. Then again, maybe that’s what Wayne wants — a holdover record until he drops his next atom bomb on us. We can only hope.

Grammy's Most Awkward Moments: Even More Than Middle School!

You probably watched the Grammy's, and that means you were at the edge of your seat for several hours, your emotions pumping like an overworked steam engine and your heart palpitating, your knuckles ghost white and your mouth dry as you witnessed music history go down right before your tearing eyes.

Wait, that wasn't you? Of course not. It wasn't anyone (except for a probable constituent of Kenny Chesney fans who think he is a man-god), and the night was like it usually is: filled with promise, and delivering on very little of it.

Overall, I thought the night was filled with some seriously awkward moments. Like middle school dance awkward, and you're the adult chaperone watching pre-teens stand on opposite sides of the gym. So here we go:

1. Whitney Houston A Bit Rusty: Remembered to brush off her nose! In a mostly incoherent presentation, a rather dysfunctioning robot-like Whitney Houston stammers through several sentences, mostly without opening her eyes. For a woman who we know can emote (remember that hit, what was it called, um, "I Will Always Love You"?), Houston might as well have been a cardboard cutout propped onstage with a voice dub. Bummer.

2. Blink 182 Reunite, Crickets Chirp: Presenting an award, the estranged members of Blink 182 were waiting for that perfect moment to - bam! - reunite. I'd imagine they expected a moment of silence, then booming applause during which "All the Small Things" would blast from the PA, Blink-logoed balloons would drop from the ceiling and everyone who was 13 in 2001 would promptly pass out on their couches. Welp, it didn't quite happen like that. Travis Barker said, "We used to play music together, and we decided we're going to play music together again." Mark Hoppus yelled, "Blink 182 is back!" Then, um, they presented the award like nothing had happened.

3. Dwayne Johnson - Still Not Funny!: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson attempted to make a joke about Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl." Something to the effect of "The first thing I did today was kiss a girl too! It was Katy Perry! (Pause for laughter) But then she made me stay 50 feet away from her (Pause for laughter)!" Needless to say, said joke falls flat. Not even the dude's arched eyebrow's could save this dud of a monologue.

4. Kid Rock - Still Sucks!: Kid Rock is such a gentleman. Not only does he steal and rewrite (see: ruin) the songs of two perfectly dead rock stars, but he also includes the lyrics "Guilty of being white" in his performance, cementing belief that, aside from his brief stint as a rapper, Kid Rock is among the whitest people ever. Bravo, sir. A true artistic gem.

5. John Mayer - Clearly, Better Than B. B. King: In a tribute to Bo Diddly, a pack of guitarists including John Mayer, B. B. King and Keith Urban (really?) trade some blues bars. Guess who plays the most. Nope, not the arguable best living blues guitarist (Keith Urban, of course. Yea...), but John Mayer. Way to go, bud. Lucille is pissed.

6. Katy Perry, Also Kissed a Robot: Continuing the trend of females acting particularly robotic, Katy Perry's dancing during "I Kissed A Girl" was more like subtle swaying. And the occasional slight hop.

7. Morgan Freeman and Kenny Chesney - Totally Bros: Morgan Freeman introduced country bumpkin Kenny Chesney as his close friend. Seriously? Do they go fishing? Talk for hours on the phone? Or, more likely, say four to five words to each other backstage? Words like, "Wait, what's your name?"

8. T-Bone Burnett - Not Important!: After winning Best Album, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss thank some folks, then make room for producer T-Bone Burnett to talk. CBS, on the other hand, makes no such room. Dude made the Album of the Year! Cut off the 'Get the hell of the stage' music!

9. Stevie Wonder as The House Band: Wonder plays a solo joint as the crowd disperses. Is it not mildly offensive that one of the night's biggest stars gets to play as people leave? Is it not ironic that he couldn't see them do that?