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Pop Rock Nation

Category: Reviews

music-and-concert-reviews-you-wont-see-anywhere-else

  • Matt Keating Plays a Show Just For Me…

    …well, me and six other people.  Or seven. 

    Matt Keating at The Frequency in Madison
    Matt Keating at The Frequency in Madison
    A particular blessing and curse of living in a city like Madison which is just big enough to occasionally attract a really great national “indie” act, but small enough that, in all likelihood, very few will have heard or even heard of that really great “indie” act, is that occasionally, you might stumble into a show like the one Matt Keating put on at a new downtown club just off of Madison’s Capitol Square called The Frequency. 

    Blame it on the Brewers, who are right now closer to a World Series appearance than they’ve been since Ronald Reagan was president, who happened to be playing on home turf that night (the game was showing on the TV in the bar, and the bartenders kept flipping back and forth between that game and the just-as-crucial and far-more-suspenseful Cubs/Mets match-up).  Certainly, piss-poor promotion was a factor.  I hadn’t really seen any ads for the show (or any other Frequency show) in the local weeklies until last week when I chanced upon a not-entirely-flattering blurb in The Onion’s AV Club – and I’d been looking!  

    But then again, there’s something about Matt Keating and his music that almost seems to invite and even welcome a small turn-out.  And this, indeed, was the smallest turn-out for a live music event I’d ever witnessed as a participant (topping even ABC featuring Martin Fry’s matinee on the Country Stage at Taste of Waukesha in 2006).  And of the half dozen or so in attendance, I was almost certainly the only one who wasn’t hearing Matt Keating’s unassuming folk rock – an intimate, genuine, unfailingly melodic and endearingly unpretty variety which calls to mind Tom Petty just as easily as latter day singer-songwriter saints like Elliot Smith.  

    But it was okay.  With a crowd that small, Keating and his able backing group seemed to have a fine enough time playing for themselves as much as anyone else; and the evening had a pleasant tinge of what-the-fuck nihilism to it.   Still, the songs ruled, and Keating and crew gave the few of us who showed up the show we paid for.  Actually, given that the price of admission was a paltry five bucks, they gave us way more than the show we paid for.  (And if you got to the joint an hour or so earlier, you could hear their sound check, which included covers of Tom Petty and the Byrds as well as Keating’s own “Runaway Clowns”, from the bar)

    In person, as on record, Matt has an effortlessly self-deprecating sense of humor, and he peppered the show with a few stories, a few jokes (mainly on himself), and a shout-out the soundman.   Before playing a song called “They Came In May” about how grief sometimes takes us by surprise, he offered a touching tribute to singer-songwriter Chris Whitley who died of lung cancer in 2005, Matt recalled how the two of them lived on the same street and just sort of hung out together, until one day Chris didn’t show up.  

    Drawing mainly from his latest album, the double disc Quixotic – easily the strongest record of Matt’s career, and probably my favorite new record of this year so far – along with a couple of new songs that you might find on his MySpace page, the show was alternately raucous and tender and, like the record itself, just a really damn good time.  One of my personal favorites of the new songs “Between Customers”, about a humiliatingly unrequited crush he once had on a girl with whom he worked a Baskins & Robbins counter as a teenager.  In the song, she asks him to give her a ride up to the local cruising spot to see if the guy she has a crush on is there – ouch!  

    A song called “Daddy’s On the Roof” was as goofy and sweet and it’s title might suggest, a remembrance of Keating’s dad who’s favorite hobby, according to Matt, was to get drunk, and sing Irish songs from the roof of their house.  (I want that dad!)  Other highlights included “Louisiana” and “Sorry Son”, both powerful singalong rockers that hint at politics without really being political, and “Lonely Blue”, a song from his first album, Tell It To Yourself, released on the Alias label in 1993. 

    It was one of the songs that made me fall in love with Keating’s music when I was a frustrated 20-year-old college art major, and it sounded fantastic on a night when I’d snuck away from my partner and kids and our big yellow house in the suburbs after dinner to catch a show downtown.  What a weird, strange, embarrassing, wonderful night it was.  And it was nice to thank Matt in person for stopping by. 

    The new record is not to be missed and if you buy it from Matt’s Personal Music Store, “all proceeds go directly to Matt Keating”. He’s also got the album’s terrific opener “St. Cloud” available as a free mp3 download on his website.

    Matt’s set list:

    St. Cloud
    Who Knew
    Sorry Son
    Do in the Dark
    Between Customers
    Daddy’s on the Roof
    Confidential
    They Came In May
    Little By Little
    Lonely Blue
    Louisiana

  • Yup, You Read it Right-Wayne Brady Made a Good Album

    The cover of Wayne Brady's new album, "A Long Time Coming".
    The cover of Wayne Brady

    Of course you know who Wayne Brady is. Whether you watched him on the improv show “Whose Line is It Anyway?”, were a fan of his talk/variety show, caught him as the host of “Don’t Forget the Lyrics” or checked him out in an unforgettable “Chappelle’s Show” sketch (which is where I got the title of this review from…I’m not being vulgar just for the sake of vulgarity), you’re aware of the dude, and you might also know that the guy can carry a tune. He’s utilized his singing chops in every assignment he’s had.What you may not have known (until now, anyway), is that Wayne Brady has put out an album. And unlike fellow actors-turned-musicians like Don Johnson and Bruce Willis, Brady’s debut, Long Time Coming, is GOOD. I don’t say this sarcastically or facetiously, and I am not drunk or on drugs (today). If you are a fan of smooth, grown-folks style soul music, you will find plenty to enjoy here.I would never have given a solitary thought to picking this album up if not for glancing at a Billboard magazine one day and noticing the name Wayne Brady loitering near the bottom of the R&B singles charts. “Nah, it can’t be,” I said initially. A little more research revealed that he had an album on the way, so my curiosity got the better of me and I checked YouTube and then iMeem for the song. After I hit paydirt on the latter site, expecting a cheesy pop song or a show tune/standard, my ears were blessed with the easygoing, smooth sound of first single Ordinary. After debating whether to spring for the whole album, I parted with my money just a couple of days later. I figured if it sucked it would just gain a place among the many other crappy albums in my collection.

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  • The Block is Back! New Kids Light Up New Jersey!

    New Kids on the Block. Photo by socialitelife.com
    New Kids on the Block. Photo by socialitelife.com

    Last night, I found myself some place I never thought I’d be…at a New Kids on the Block concert. Not because I’m ashamed to be a NKOTB fan, mind you, but because I thought the boy band would never get back together. 20 years after the success of their breakthrough album, “Hangin’ Tough”, the still (relatively) young New Kids have reunited and I was fortunate enough to see their first show on American soil in fourteen years.

    The crowd was, as expected, about 90% women.  Somewhat surprisingly, the cavernous Izod Center (formerly Continental Airlines Arena, capacity 20K) was about 90% full. While I overheard a bunch of guys in the men’s room complaining about their wives or girlfriends forcing them to come to the show (one guy said that he said he’d come to this show if his wife went to Cruefest), there were also a handful of dudes sporting NKOTB tees, coming out of the closet, so to speak, after (like me) being embarrassed to be a New Kids fan during their high school (or younger) years. Hell, I even spotted one creepy Deadhead guy in the audience. Either he was looking to score some from one of the many single ladies in the audience, or he was mighty disappointed when he realized that the NKOTB aren’t little boys anymore.

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