Sunday, December 19, 2010

Silence

Well that's a damn shame.

I'm observing a moment of silence for all the amplifiers that roar no more. I've been a member of this community for five years, and a fan of the music a lot longer than that. Fortunately, the distribution site, All That Is Heavy, and the label, Meteor City, are still around to soothe my troubled mind.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Academic

It's grad school application time. This is a paper I wrote about a year and a half ago that I am going to submit as a sample with my applications. My thesis proposal will be to perform academic study of popular music and its effect on historical events, particularly in the United States in the second half of the Twentieth Century.

It's more academic than what I would post here, and I may amend it yet. I just felt like I should put it up here at some point.

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It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding
American Music and the Vietnam War

The study of American music as a historical resource provides valuable insight into the American public’s reaction to the Vietnam War. The use of music enhances the historian’s understanding of the war as a social and cultural phenomenon, making it an extraordinary tool for the study of American youth culture during this time period. However, it is important to bear in mind the nature of the music industry as a whole, specifically the concerns and biases of the artists themselves and those of their audiences when utilizing music in this way. Musicians and songs must be subject to the same modes of critical thinking as other historical documents.
Taken as a whole, American music produced during the Vietnam War is an enormous body of historical information on musicians’ and fans’ opinions about the war and other contemporary political issues. Historian Jerome L. Rodnitzky argues that music is absolutely essential in order to fully understand the youth movement during the Vietnam War. Taking the years of Richard Nixon's first term as an example, he offers his opinion that popular music provides a better historical document for analysis of government policy than the official word of the American government. Briefly weighing the options against each other, he asks, "Would we learn more about the nature of American society and culture by listening to excerpts from that era's presidential speeches or by considering parts of a dozen popular songs? Having tried both sources, I would pin my hopes on the music.” While this is a rather obvious observation that popular criticism of the government is a more reliable measurement of its performance than the government’s own assessment, it certainly addresses the serious credibility gap suffered by the White House during the Vietnam years. Unfortunately, Rodnitzky fails to discuss the possibility of any disparity in quality between individual pop songs. Certainly they are not all equal in their usefulness to the historian. The nature of music and popular taste is such that some songs convey a great deal of information about an event or a space in time or a set of values, and some do not do any of these things. For this reason it is crucial to approach each song in the same manner that one would examine any other historical document; by critically analyzing it for biases and for its efficacy in communicating a point of view.
There are important limitations to the medium which must be acknowledged if one is to seriously consider music as a historical resource. The most important of these is that music, particularly pop music, is not suited for conveying the mass amounts of information necessary for the study of history. At least half of the impact of any given song is purely auditory. Therefore, to be completely effective, a song must be heard and not simply read. Analyzing popular music on the basis of lyrics alone completely ignores instrumental songs or passages in songs which can convey a certain mood or invoke an emotional response in the listener. This is important to consider in relation to the time period in which the Vietnam War took place. As rock ‘n’ roll became the dominant idiom of the anti-war movement in music during the later years of the war, it subverted that position from the traditional protest song in the style of the folk singer-songwriter. Meanwhile, the emphasis in the music itself likewise shifted to the rock and roll beat and sound, and away from the traditional focal point of the lyrics. Compounding the problems caused by the shift away from emphasis on lyrics is the difficulty inherent in forming an effective argument in the form of lyrics. The focus of lyrics according to the conventions of songwriting is on the overall sound of the song, rather than forming a coherent statement or providing evidence to support an idea. On the other hand, the power of music without any lyrics at all is purely emotional. This emotional impact is also ambiguous, and may be interpreted in any number of ways by the listener. Taking as an example Jimi Hendrix’s performance of his song “Machinegun” with the Band of Gypsys (sic) on New Years’ Eve 1969 at the Fillmore East in New York, we may demonstrate how the emotional impact of Hendrix’s guitar playing can convey any number of ideas to different listeners. In his introduction to the song, Hendrix makes clear that the song is a response to the war in Vietnam, as well as the turbulence and unrest in American cities. The song’s simplistic lyrics are sung, mantra-like, in a hypnotic fashion which emphasizes the sound of the lyrics and soulful wail of Hendrix’s voice, rather than the words themselves. It is the tone of his voice and the expressiveness of his guitar playing that convey to the listener the chaos of this turbulent period for a young black man in America. To a contemporary listener however, the music itself could mean something entirely different when divorced from its historical context. The power of the music remains the same regardless, but what it signifies is left to the individual listener’s imagination.
One must bear in mind at all times that musicians, like any historian, are subject to biases. The most crucial of these is the musician’s eternal struggle between their artistic desire to create something which will impact culture in a meaningful way, and the demands of an industry which requires from the artist a marketable commodity. For any musician to make a living off of their craft, a certain degree of popular taste must be taken into consideration. The more successful a musician becomes in an industry designed to make money off of an image, the more that musician becomes dependent upon their ability to exploit that image. There is also the distinct possibility that the musician’s attempt to ingratiate himself or herself into an already-converted audience by aligning with a certain fashionable trend or political cause is merely a cynical grab for mass appeal which may result in a backlash between the artist and former fans or “true believers” in the cause. Of course, it is imperative that the musician is never at any time seen to be acting in such a way, for to do so would mean a loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the public, which would then shatter the musician’s carefully cultivated image. Musicians must strike a precarious balance between mass appeal, uniqueness and credibility with their core audience. The ultimate consequence of this dilemma between commercial concerns and unfettered creativity is a paradox. To paraphrase rock historian Peter Doggett, when subversion becomes commercialized, how can it remain subversive?
According to some historians, the spirit of the rock ‘n' roll explosion during the mid to late 1960's was self-deluding in the lack of acknowledgement by its practitioners that the corporate behemoth that is the music industry was implicit in the dissemination of rock music to the masses. Commercial concerns drive every aspect of the music business. Quite simply, if there were no potential to make money off of artists, even those that were the most politically and musically radical, none of their recordings would have been financed by the record companies in the first place. David James, in his examination of the effect of commercial concerns within the context of an increasingly homogenized mainstream from the late 60's onward bluntly argued that, "only naively collusive journalism and advertising itself has been able to ignore what has become an increased, and increasingly overt, accommodation of rock to corporate priorities." Writing during the late 1980's, contemporary trends would bear James's opinion out. However, the luxury of hindsight allows musical scholars in the digital age to view the period in which James was writing as the peak of the mega-conglomeration of the record industry, followed by the implosion of the major labels in the post Mp3 age. Concerning the Vietnam era however, James' analysis applies to recorded music and its various channels only. What it ignores, however, is the proliferation in certain markets of non-playlisted, non-formatted FM radio during a time when mainstream music was dominated by rigidly formatted Top-40 AM radio. Clearly, in an area like San Francisco, which was already a hotbed of anti-war protest activity, musicians were being heard on their own terms, either on the radio or live at various nightclubs and “happenings” around town. James' analysis also does not acknowledge the oldest aspect of the music business - live performance. In the 1960's, as at any time in music history, musicians could perform material without regard to corporate entities, so long as there was an audience willing to show up and listen to a performance. Even artists and bands that did have record contracts made far more revenue from touring and gate receipts than any royalties earned from radio play. In this respect, commercial concerns are less important to a successful touring band, but the prospect of mass appeal remains a necessary component of a musician's career.
Contemporary historiography takes a more favourable view of the use of music as a historical resource. Music combines traditions of oral history with the artistic and cultural values of its creators and performers to form a unique and extremely useful historical resource. As is pointed out by Shirli Gilbert in her article on this subject, music, primarily the activity of singing, is a communicative and participatory activity which requires no training or instruments beyond the human voice. Although her article is primarily concerned with examining the songs sung by Nazi concentration camp victims as a source of historical information regarding their experiences, aspects of her discussion of the use of song as a historical resource are relevant to music produced about the Vietnam War as well. For instance, the creation and recording of original songs demonstrates an explicit urge to document opinions and experiences for future historians. Personal accounts such as memoirs or interviews which are recorded long after the events in question have taken place are frequently unreliable due to the malleability of personal recollections. A song written at the same time as a historical event can accurately convey the emotional reaction felt by the songwriter towards that event through a unique combination of lyrics and music, which may be preserved over time through the recording of the song. In an essay on the merits of utilizing music as a method of teaching in the classroom, Jarl A. Ahlkvist points out the usefulness of music as a way of connecting one with the values of another culture. Although Ahlkvist’s primary discipline is sociology, the historian may note the parallels. The use of music allows a historian to connect with the cultural values of people in the past in a way that resonates with contemporary society. Therefore, the analysis of music as a historical resource, in concert with thorough examination of the songwriter's biases, can offer insight and enhance the historian’s understanding of class, race or gender concerns as they pertain to the time period in question. Gilbert also reveals in her essay the potential difficulties involved with the use of music as a historical document, pointing out that the format provides little room for analysis of the main causes or overarching themes of major historical events, focusing instead on the immediate and limited experiences of the songwriter. By necessity, the historian must keep such limitations in mind when utilizing music in order to better understand a given time period or event.
The vast majority of music produced about the Vietnam War articulated a negative response towards American policy in Vietnam. During the height of the conflict between 1964 and 1973, American artists as diverse and popular as Arlo Guthrie, Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds, Bob Dylan, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Country Joe & The Fish, The Fugs, Grand Funk Railroad, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, the MC5, Parliament Funkadelic, Phil Ochs, The Pink Fairies, Sly & The Family Stone, The Stooges, Ten Years After and other artists and bands produced music which was overtly critical of American policy in Vietnam. As public opposition to the war increased, so too did the number of artists and songs which were openly in opposition to the war. Though the correlation between the public outcry against the war and the preponderance of protest music on the charts may easily be established, it is more difficult to determine whether pop music was shaped by public opinion or vice-versa. What is clear is that contemporary rock and roll, being the most visible and important genre of American music during this period, reflects better than any other form of music the opposition towards the war which was felt by America’s youth during these years. Due to its position as the most powerful cultural force among youth during the 1960’s, rock ‘n’ roll became inextricably tied to the anti-war movement, in large part due to its fundamentally anti-authoritarian nature. Themes of rebellion, primarily sexual, are inherent within the music. In order to adequately assess the usefulness of this music as a historical resource, it is necessary to understand how the Vietnam War came to be addressed within the medium.
In the early 1960’s rock ‘n’ roll was still seen by the mainstream media either as a simplistic teenage fad or else a dangerous conduit through which messages of promiscuity and rebellion were transmitted to the nation’s youth. Soon after its explosion into the popular consciousness in the mid 1950’s, rock and roll eclipsed all other forms of music in popularity, including blues, classical, country, folk, gospel and jazz. There were a number of reasons for this. Rock ‘n’ roll was the first form of popular music to develop directly from the electrification of instruments and the amplification of sound that this allowed. As a result, music became louder, simpler, and more direct. The post-war economic boom also played a role, as the creation of a youth-oriented consumer culture created a greater market than ever before for popular entertainment targeted towards young people. New forms of media such as television and the transistor radio combined with the greater availability of records and record players to raise the level of exposure enjoyed by musicians to a much greater height than ever before. In contrast to the types of music that rock and roll grew out of, the musicians were generally white, making them more easily mass-marketed to the white middle-class consumer than black entertainers.
By the mid 1960’s, certain trends within music at large combined to fundamentally alter rock. Prominent folk and jazz musicians such as Bob Dylan in the former camp and Miles Davis in the latter began to incorporate rock instrumentation into their own styles, bringing them closer to rock musically and enhancing the style’s artistic credibility. At the same time, a generation of musicians who had grown up listening to early rock and roll began to expand upon the sonic possibilities of the basic rock song. Previously, pop music had been written by teams of professional songwriters who produced hits for groups of performers and kept the royalties. Under this model, the performer was merely a face used to sell the songs, nearly all of which were under three minutes long and dealt with the traditional pop song subjects of crushes, unrequited love or heartbreak. The impetus for change came with the arrival of the Beatles, whose insistence on writing and recording their own songs would trigger a paradigm shift within the music industry. The enormous success of the Beatles caused the major record labels to scramble to sign rock groups who wrote and performed their own songs. At the same time, rock musicians realized the creative possibilities that were available to them if they wrote their own songs, not to mention the royalties. Rather than focusing on traditional “pop” subjects and restricting themselves to writing conventional three-minute love songs, musicians began to address issues that had not previously been discussed in youth entertainment, and doing so in ways that drew upon other forms of music and broke with previous conventions of what rock could be. While other musical styles would continue to play an important role in the American music scene, rock basically swallowed everything whole and continued to mutate into new and diverse forms throughout the coming decade.
The rise of the rock festival during the late sixties exemplified the growing identification of rock and roll with the anti-war movement. Starting with impromptu anti-war demonstrations at which protest singers and rock bands provided entertainment, the scope and scale of such events began to grow to an enormous size by the late 1960’s. Reaching its nadir with the disastrous free show at Altamont in 1969, the rock festival offered the prospect of live music, usually accompanied by open drug use and promiscuity which attracted ever-larger crowds and antagonized the authorities. Such results quickly overshadowed whatever political overtones the events originally had. The question that bears consideration is how many of the fans and musicians themselves were actually committed to political causes such as civil rights or the anti-war movement, and how many were simply enjoying the hedonistic, utopian atmosphere common to rock festivals. It is important to consider this question when examining the role that music played within the anti-war movement.
Rock festivals were not the only scenes in which musicians and anti-war activists came together in song to help end the war. A number of classical composers did openly protest the war. On January 20, 1969, American composer Leonard Burnstein held a concert at the Washington Cathedral at which was performed Haydn's "Mass in time of War." The concert was attended by at least 12,000 people, four times as many as could fit inside the venue and forcing thousands of spectators to stand outside in the rain and listen. This was in stark contrast to what was happening across town at the Kennedy Centre, were Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture was performed as part of Richard Nixon's inauguration ceremony. Clearly, it would be a mistake to assume that rock ‘n' roll musicians were alone in creating music intended to have an impact on the war. The classical music world, not usually seen as a bastion of nonconformity by hippie radicals, became increasingly anti-war as American involvement began to escalate after 1965. According to American musical historian Ben Arnold, even modern classical composers were overwhelmingly opposed to the war. In previous wars, up until the early 20th century, composers had written classical pieces which glorified warfare. Even as recently as World War II, composers such as Aaron Copland and Roy Harris wrote music intended to bolster American war efforts. To illustrate the sea change which took place following the Second World War, consider that between 1945 and 1965, only 57 classical compositions specifically dealing with the subject of war were written and performed. However, between 1966 and 1974, a period less than half as long, 60 such pieces were composed. The composers of these pieces include Roger Hannay, Lou Harrison, Gail Kubik, William Mayer, Elie Siegmaster, Robert Fink, David Noon, Richard Wernick and John Downey, all of whom wrote compositions which were overtly critical of the war. Additionally, there was a massive increase in the number of pieces calling for peace during this period, at least 30, while only about 8 had been produced worldwide during World War II. Although most of these compositions were relatively unknown outside of classical music circles, the direct result of this common ground found between rock musicians and classical composers would eventually contribute to artists on both sides of the divide experimenting with each others' sounds in the coming decade, with experimental composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Glenn Branca serving as notable examples of rock’s ability to break down genre barriers and assimilate musical styles. What this flurry of activity within the arts community indicates to the historian is that musicians of disparate and even conflicting backgrounds and levels of training showed a consistent tendency to oppose the war.
Not all music produced during and about the Vietnam War was anti-American. Particularly early in the war a number of hit songs such as Pat Boone's "Wish You Were Here Buddy" and "The Ballad of the Green Berets" by Barry Sadler carried distinctly pro-American messages. Though there was a distinct decline in the number of songs featuring pro-American sentiments as public support for the war waned, there still were a number of songs written and recorded which maintained these messages throughout the war. Even as late as 1971 following the trial of Lt. Calley for the My Lai massacre, Terry Nelson's "The Ballad of Lt. Calley," set to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," gained popularity as a pro-American tune. In the world of country and western music especially, there was a relatively high percentage of conservative pro-American songs, with songs such as "Okie from Muskogee" and "The Fightin' Side of Me" by Merle Haggard providing notable examples. Another common theme among music which was not anti-American is the lament for the fallen soldier, in some cases referring to the dead on both sides. Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" was a popular elegy for the deceased performed by countless folk singers throughout the war. Likewise, American composers such as John Baell with "Lament For those Lost in War" and Donald Lybbert and his "Lines for the Fallen" used the mourning of American war dead as the theme for their respective pieces.
An often-overlooked facet of American music during the Vietnam War concerns music made and listened to by the troops themselves. Music was broadcast to the troops in Vietnam on the radio either on the American Forces Vietnam Network or on the “bullshit net,” illegal troop-operated stations broadcast via field radios. The listening preferences of troops largely broke down across age and racial lines, with young white troops listening predominantly to rock music and the older whites listening to more country and western, while most black troops preferred soul music and Motown. Many soldiers even wrote and performed music themselves. Some were experienced musicians before coming to Vietnam, and a number brought musical instruments with them and wrote and played covers as well as their own original songs. These songs could be sung for small groups in barracks, or performed by bands made up of members of a unit. Original songs could run the gamut from parodies of popular songs such as "Where Have All the Field Reps Gone," "I Fly the Line" or any number of parodies of "The Ballad of the Green Berets," to completely original compositions. Exactly how many of these existed cannot be known, as an enormous number were never recorded. Due to the rapidity of troop movements, popular troops’ folk songs could often spread quickly. Similar to the traditional folk and blues songs developed in America, the unique songs of the troops in Vietnam emerged as a response to the hardships of life in a combat zone. These could serve any number of purposes. Troops used songs as a way of coping with the stress of combat, to ease the longing for home, to build camaraderie with one another, to vent frustration with incompetent officers, or simply to have a laugh. Those songs that have been recorded and preserved provide a valuable historical document for those studying the experiences of American troops in the war.
American music provides the historian with a wealth of information concerning youth culture and the anti-war movement as a social phenomenon during the Vietnam War. The major cultural and political trends of the Vietnam years were indelibly linked to one another through the medium of music, which had a profound impact on the actions and attitudes of the youth. However, as with any historical document, it is crucial for the historian to consider the artist’s biases as well as those of the audience in order to obtain a better understanding of the role of music in relation to the war.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Standards

John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats on working with former Morbid Angel and current Hate Eternal member Erik Rutan: "I'm a good indie rock guitarist, but there's hardly any guitarists in all of indie rock that are fit to carry the shoes of a second-string metal guitarist. Those people are the real deal..." (taken from pitchforkmedia.com)

RECOGNIZE!

When did it stop being cool to play your instrument really well? I've never thought that technical wizardry was a prerequisite for making good music (in some cases the opposite is true) but anyone that can achieve a high level of musical proficiency deserves respect in my book. Seems like very little attention is paid in modern rock to actually being able to play. I want to hear musicians challenging the limits of their abilities, whatever those limits may be. Too much of modern rock is content with tears in its music, minus the sweat and the blood. Metal is the exception.

In another note, if you ever want to REALLY freak someone out, throw on Side 4 of Can's Tago Mago. It's the sound of gifted musicians running wild and losing their minds.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Nomenclature

This post was inspired by a conversation yesterday about Vancouver thrash-metal stalwarts Excruciating Pain. Not be confused with the other bands that go by that name, these dudes have added the catchy prefix "The Almighty" to their name. The footage is a poorly recorded sprint-metal thrasher from one of their frequent shows at the hippest place in town, East Hastings' very own FUNKY WINKERBEAN, home of the $1.50 water-beer combo pint. Come soak up some local colour on the down town East Side. Bet they get a lot of Grindcore shows.

Anyways, the point of this post: It exists. The Metal Band Name Generator. The bastards beat me to it! Just goes to show, if you've ever had an original idea, don't bother because someone has already done it.

But all is not lost. Because I'm a fan more specifically of the Thrash Metal genre, here are a few examples of made-up thrash bands I can think of off the top of my head. I could come up with these all day:

Eternal Agony
Ruthless Destruction
Endless Oblivion
Gruesome Slaughter
Paralyzing Terror
Mental Crucifixion
Terrible Violence
Satanic Possession
Repulsive Visage
Shocking Brutality
Nuclear Holocaust
Biological Genocide
Ritual Dismemberment
Horrifying Atrocity
Insane Bloodlust
Hellfire Overlord
Pagan Sacrifice
Chemical Immolation
Barbaric Torture

If you ever want to use any of these names, go ahead. I've got hundreds. If you already have a band using one of these name, fine, you thought of it first and you are smarter than me.

Think of your own. Go nuts. It's fun.

Addendum

As promised, I return! My girlfriend and I missed the start of the Black Angels' set, which started at the unreasonably early time of 9pm, so what follows is not a complete account. The show was also ear-shatteringly loud, so loud that we could hear the band playing as we walked down Granville street. We entered to the strains of a patented Black Angels' death song, which worked itself into a steamy lather as we visited the merch table and then found a suitable vantage point. The Commodore is a wonderful old room if you get there early enough to secure one, and a creaky death trap if you are forced to settle for a partial view from behind the ancient wooden pillars that hold the place up. Someday it's going to burn down and kill everyone inside, a la Great White. Ah, but I digress. The show.

The Angels quickly launched into a vicious rendition of Passover favourite "Hellhounds on my Trail," complete with slide guitar and culminating in an explosive noise freakout. The band was bathed in psychedelic light throughout the show, fluorescent greens and oranges often giving way to spirals of blue and deep red. Previously, the Black Angels have been known to project Vietnam-era stock footage on the stage during performances, but none was to be seen on this night. The warped 'summer of '68'-style jangle-pop of "Yellow Elevator #2" and the tribal pounding and arching feedback of "The Sniper At The Gates of Heaven" provided other early highlights to the set. The sound was punishingly loud, but the instruments were all clear and the band was powerful. Throughout the ensemble's playing was tight and varied, with members switching up instruments and songs frequently being stretched out to treat the audience to a particularly tasty groove or mind-expanding improvisational section. Depending on your opinion of jamming, this kind of thing can be anathema, but none of these digressions ever lasted too long, they were simply embellishments which re-interpreted old and new material in a free-form live context. The songs were all still very much recognizable as such, but it was not a rote recital of the recorded versions. Christian's voice was clear and powerful throughout, and his energetic hollers and whoops in mid-song lent a spontaneity and energy to the performances. Stage banter was almost non-existent, not really a bad thing for a band of the Angel's talents.

The set list was well-chosen and varied, hitting the necessary high points of all three of their albums without focusing too much on any of them. The band's second and weakest album, Directions To See a Ghost was represented by only a handful of its very best songs. Among these were "Mission District" which boasts a tasty buildup and a riff as crushing as anything in the catalog, and "Science Killer," a classic death march which rides a snaky groove through the murk and is spiced up with some maracas. At a psychedelic rock show, where the line between transcendent and monotonous can easily become blurred depending on your own preferences or even quantity of drugs taken, it is important to craft a set which maximizes the dynamics of the performance. This is especially crucial for a band like the Angels, whose mandate dictates that they play droning Velvet Underground-inspired trance rock which strips the listener's senses and scrubs the mind of all earthly perception through sheer volume and repetition. Although there was a bit of a lull mid-set, the band did pull off the difficult feat of balancing these conflicting ideals.

The band continued to go from strength to strength over the course of an almost 90 minute set, as excellent cuts from 2010's Phosphene Dream album such as "Entrance Song," "The Sniper" and the title track were given powerful and exciting live renditions. The album is easily the band's most dynamic and song-oriented to date, and the material was equally vibrant and hard-hitting from on stage. These poppier numbers were alternated with vintage Angels mind-melters like the propulsive anti-war anthem "The Second Vietnam War" and the corrosive fuzz-bass stomper "Black Grease."

The set was brought to a powerful conclusion by a hammering one-two punch. First, the garage pop of "Telephone" was stretched far longer than the album's 1 minute and 59 second runtime and turned the band's poppiest and most memorable song to date into a methanphetamine-laced White Light, White Heat jam far more in line with the band's murky aesthetic. That is a compliment. Finally, the band closed its set with their best ever song, the incredible "Young Man Dead." The first half of the song was a little bit more up-tempo than the recorded version, which did not particularly suit the song at all. Fortunately, it was a bait-and switch, because the song's tripped out false collapse halfway through soon exploded into an absolutely massive half-time riff which brought down the house. All in all a very good performance from a great rock band, and one that will hopefully win them some new fans from among the sea of hipsters and beardos which populate Vancouver's concert halls.

Black Mountain took the stage to a triumphant reception some time later, but since I didn't stay for the whole show I won't review it here. Suffice it to say, the Mountain is a titanic force live, but on this particular night they were merely ground-shaking instead of earth-shattering. A glut of mediocre material from the disappointing new album is to blame. Amber Webber's warbly vibratto-obsessed vocals, which have previously detracted from what have been some of the greatest rock shows I've ever been to, were slightly less irritating than they have been in the past.

Also, for what it's worth, I picked up my own copy of Passover on vinyl from the merch table. Now I own all three on wax, and I can tell you that the Black Angels and Light in The Attic records do a fantastic job with the packaging of their products, putting everything on extremely high-quality 180 gram vinyl and providing lyrics and artwork in all their albums. I feel this extra effort is worth mentioning, and I wish more record companies shared this commitment to superior quality.