FILM REVIEW: The Icarus Line Must Die

     “Everybody in your band has been psycho,” Joe Cardamone’s wife, Charlotte, reminds him in the new film, The Icarus Line Must Die, released to streaming services last week by Dark Star Pictures. Encouraging words with subtle derision as Cardamone, singer and headmaster for the Icarus Line, stresses over getting a band together for an upcoming show.

    The Icarus Line, out of Los Angeles, most often are compared to The Stooges. Both groups share the same manic scuzz thrashing and raw power anchored by spastic frontmen. But, if the Stooges were the cavemen crawling prehistorically and thumping the ground in lost sexual pursuit; the Icarus Line are those same cavemen generations later gobbling tangy psychoactive plants and then turning on each other.

    The Icarus Line Must Die was shot in black and white and feels like an early-90s lost indie. They were never going to find the Big Time, but they were going to leave every stage like a tornado of whips and dynamite had hit. After what starts off as a seemingly straightforward rock band documentary, the narrative shifts to a quietly problematic conversation about money with Cardamone and Charlotte. The film finds its emotional center early. As the two sit in a cafe, we see the hurt on Cardamone’s face as he hears of the toll his music career is having on his wife. Her patience starting to bend, he knows he needs to make this work.

     In 1998 the cringing began with Cardamone and the original line-up of Aaron North and Alvin De Guzman on guitar, Lance Arnao on bass and Aaron Austin on drums. Their first two full-length albums, Mono and Penance Soiree, are two of the great releases of the last thirty years. The music can be unforgiving; a knife jacked into your ear drum. Real nightmare shit to play in record label offices and predict sales for. Sadly the group’s career suffered fits and starts and unofficially folded the night Scott Weiland overdosed in 2015. They were the opening act for the reunited Stone Temple Pilots and dissolved with the tour. Around this time, De Guzman became ill with bone cancer, pushing the future of the band into even murkier terrain.

     The camera follows Cardamone as he embarks on turning a profit on the studio and finding a distributor for what would become the Icarus Line’s final album, All Things Under Heaven. Cardamone is left to run the studio he built with the last morsels of record label advance money and is hilariously encouraged to record a group of snotty rich kids for their dough. Cardamone squirms in his seat at the thought. When the “band” does come in for a session they treat Joe like room service and he righteously cuts the cord.

     Cardamone walks the streets of Los Angeles in contemplation and anguish. He is searching for the spark. He runs into a number of characters. Singer Annie Hardy and musician Ariel Pink bring comedic relief. Pink as the overly sure guitar virtuoso with more pedals than hours of practice and Hardy as the girl who asks the universe for guidance (herself). Keith Morris from Circle Jerks, Black Flag and OFF! worms into a few scenes to offer advice to Cardamone about recording, music, life.

     The few scenes with De Guzman are heartbreaking as Cardamone offers dry humor to an untenable situation. The old friends share some laughs. De Guzman seems to have reached some level of contentment with his coming demise as he remarks on the absurdity of church’s holy comfort. He would pass on in 2017. The relationship between Cardamone and Charlotte is most powerful. His every move hinges on her opinion. She supports him even as his career hits a stagnation point. Utterly patient, with a gleam in her eyes, they slow-dance in the kitchen with the cocker spaniel watching, knowing they’ll get along.

     The Icarus Line Must Die looks at the real world difficulties of maintaining a musical establishment in the shit-slide streaming era. The focus is on a less-praised chapter in the life of a musician and doesn’t simply recant past glory. There is no washed Behind the Music formula at work here. Joe Cardamone chases his beloved band’s quiet fade into obscurity revealing life as it all comes apart.

 source: http://imp

REVIEW: Celebrating David Bowie March 7

When planet earth lost its Starman David Bowie in 2016 the landscape went dark. The man was gone. But, for the rest of us, thankfully, his music remains locked in digital space and in our heads.

     Celebrating David Bowie, the touring tribute, features some of Bowie’s closest collaborators and friends. The concert is a reminder of the musical reach Bowie had, working with numerous musicians over his career to realize his creative concepts that would help define rock and roll’s kooky androgynous side.

     Each show on this tour has had its unique lineup making this far different from a cakewalking tribute band with no real connection to the star. The group that performed in Mesa, Arizona at the Mesa Arts Center on March 7 in the Ikedea Theater had representation from many of Bowie’s colorful eras.

     Mike Garson started playing piano for Bowie with 1973’s Aladdin Sane and acted as host of the night’s festivities. Earl Slick played guitar on Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station to Station, Heathen, Reality and The Next Day. Guitarist Gerry Leonard worked with late-career Bowie and bassist Carmine Rojas toured with him in the eighties.

     Filling out the rest of the stage was British musician Mr. Hudson and Joe Sumner, who fronts Fiction Plane (and is very clearly the spawn of Sting). They traded vocals on a few songs and added extra guitar and percussion. Holding down the drums throughout was Lee John Madeloni, Slick’s son.

     But the big surprise, sauntering from the back shadows of the stage, after the first song, “Disco King” began, was Bernard Fowler. (above) Longtime Rolling Stones fans will recognize him instantly as part of the back-up team to Mick Jagger’s melodies the past few decades. On this night he took on a majority of the vocals. Fowler stepped out and proved his strength and agility as a front man. He moved with the music, rose his hands into the air, shook hips and leaned down into the front row to kiss a girl who’d been standing.
     Fowler then blasted through “Rebel, Rebel,” “Fame,” and “Moonage Daydream,” during which he leaned far over the stage, pointing to his eye like a manic soothsayer. “Keep your electric eye on me, babe,” he screeched, “put your ray gun to my head.” He milked the spotlight and performed every lyric. Yeah, Fowler got his Jagger on.
     It’s telling that it took three accomplished singers to match the vocal range of one man. But, each found their niche in Bowie’s scale. Sumner had the operatic power of eighties Bowie holding notes for entire sheets of music. Hudson nailed early, very British, coy Bowie on “Starman,” “Changes,” a heart-stopping “Five Years,” and others. Fowler had the power to reach Bowie’s full-throated emotion and lower register and at times sounded eerily like the man himself.
     At the midway point the group dropped in “Win,” the only track from 1975’s Young Americans. Fowler sang syrupy and charged lurching into the depths of debonair Bowie. Masterfully representing Bowie’s cocaine era, Slick (below, left) took the lead on “Station to Station” with a crumbling wall of feedback that oozed into the crunching stomp of what was the introduction of a new persona. “The return of the Thin White Duke,” Fowler sang, low in the sound, “throwing darts in lovers’ eyes.”

     A real treat was Garson getting candid, adding insight into songs and telling stories, humanizing the icon. For example, the time, 1973, when Bowie fell on stage leaving the band to wonder if it was part of the act, or decades later, when a rare brush with backstage nerves from Bowie saved the show from electrical misfire and sure embarrassment. Pride and sadness weren’t far from each other when Garson spoke these stories of his friend.
     For “Aladdin Sane,” Garson explained, Bowie wanted something extra out of bounds. He then went into the whirlwind piano that weaves through the song. This version, played decades later, was spot on and warped into a long batty outro with every other musician winding to a halt to witness Garson pound on the keys in hypnotic isolation. Then came “Ziggy Stardust” with Mr. Hudson (above, center) on vocals and the crowd went to their feet for the rest of the night.
     Sumner powered a chunk of the crowd to take over the front rows with “All the Young Dudes” to end the set. Then they returned and hit us with an encore of “Andy Warhol,” “Life On Mars,” “Diamond Dogs,” and “Heroes.” The idea for Celebrating David Bowie first sprouted in January 2017 with a one-off show to celebrate Bowie’s 70th birthday and to mark one year of his passing. The loss of icons doesn't come easy, but at least with David we now know for certain, there's a starman waiting in the sky.

**
"Disco King"
"Rebel Rebel"
"Moonage Daydream"
"Fame"
"Changes"
"Space Oddity"
"Conversation Piece"
"Starman"
"Win"
"Rock and Roll Suicide"
"Five Years"
"Let's Dance"
"Jean Genie"
"Station to Station"
"Lady Grinning Soul"
"Aladdin Sane"
"Ziggy Stardust"
"Suffragette City"
"All the Young Dudes"

encore
"Andy Warhol"
"Life on Mars"
"Diamond Dogs"
"Heroes"

REVIEW: "Volume 1" by Bogie, Kaufman & Mann

Volume 1 is an unpolished gem of improvisation. Released last month by Figure & Ground, Volume 1 is the first in "An Archival Series of Live Instrumentals," an ongoing collaboration of off-the-cuff recordings from the threesome. 

     The musicians, Stuart Bogie, Josh Kaufman and Geoff Mann, have all etched their own spot in the wax of recent records. Bogie fronts the group Superhuman Happiness and has performed with Arcade Fire, TV on the Radio, Wu Tang Clan, and Iron and Wine. Kaufman has produced for and been involved with the Hold Steady’s Craig Finn, Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, The National and The War on Drugs. Mann drums for the group Here Lies Man and has done film and TV scoring. Bogie and Mann also perform in Antibalas.

     Volume 1 was recorded at the end of 2015 over the course of two days, tracked in real time in a cramped room. What the speakers play back is the beauty of free-thinking musicians interlocked by the mind, discovering a new dance as a primal response. Bogie, Kaufman and Mann unravel the ethos of jam to find a subtle dynamic, minimalist and in the moment. Each song time stamped and irretrievable like smoke blown into the air. 

     "Hodges," the opening track, finds a saxophone, some drums and a guitar coming awake for a nine-minute-plus morning stretch that lingers into a yawning pipe flute and sun-rising feedback. It is the sound of a new beginning, of wormholes opening into new possibilities, the summoning of something undefined. Like the possessed brooms from Disney’s Fantasia cleaning up Mickey Mouse’s mess, the instruments are dealing with a mad hangover, rolling over the studio to reaffirm their stance. “Hodges” quells into a unified crescendo setting Volume 1 in motion.

     The next song, "Lawrence," moves like a single picked leaf in a post-storm breeze with a sleepy guitar moving along. "Palmer" hops around with sturdy drums, video game keyboards and some munchkins ya-da-da-da-ing over the top with barbecue glee. The pan flute returns on "Ping," hovering over picked acoustic guitars in an empty field. "Taylor" finds a muddy sax milling around drunk talking to the drum beat until falling out into a low wandering street groove. By the final song, “Zox,” the listener should be wide awake and running out the door to the dirty stomp of the drum beat to start the day.

     Bogie, Kaufman and Mann have found an enticing bond. What you’re hearing on Volume 1 is the sound of talented, able-bodied musicians listening to each other in a room lacking natural light, entangled in looped black cords. What they reveal on Volume 2 can be the path to a whole new sonic realm.

source: https://imp