Aidin Vaziri | Interviews, Reviews and More: February 2009

15 February 2009

Review: Morrissey, 'Years of Refusal'

Morrissey, 'Years of Refusal': Aidin Vaziri | Morrissey is now on the same label as Willie Nelson, Lucinda Williams and Ryan Adams, which is cause for concern. But hours of searching for a slide guitar and/or beard on the former Smiths singer's ninth solo album reassuringly came up empty. Instead, the sorrowful British indie icon continues to become more muscular in sound and appearance. "Years of Refusal" follows the glam-rock rush of 2006's "Ringleader of the Tormentors" with loud guitars, rollicking drums and sharp lyrical barbs. It doesn't always work, but there are a lot of great moments - from the acoustic guitars and mariachi horns on "When Last I Spoke to Carol" to the furious bite of "All You Need Is Me." And in the lovelorn "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris," he's got something for the next inevitable best-of compilation.

25 Random Things About Celine Dion

Aidin Vaziri | As Celine Dion prepares to return to the Bay Area for a Friday concert in San Jose, we take inspiration from the "25 Random Things About Me" lists that are exploding across Facebook and offer some little-known facts about Canada's favorite goblet-shattering pop juggernaut.

1. Everything changed on March 30, 1968. That's the day Celine Dion was born, the youngest of 14 children in Charlemagne, Quebec, a small town outside of Montreal.
2. Her first word was most likely "Heaaaaaaaaaaart!"
3. Named after the song "Céline," which was released by French singer Hugues Aufray two years before she was born, Dion clearly had no choice but to become a singer herself.
4. Her family owned a piano bar called Le Vieux Baril, where Dion and her siblings would regularly perform.
5. Sadly, the family never formed a band called the Dion 14.
Continue reading.

Pop Quiz: Duncan Sheik

Aidin Vaziri | Broadway saved Duncan Sheik from a fate worse than VH1: becoming a one-hit-wonder. After the sensitive singer-songwriter's 1996 single "Barely Breathing" spent 55 weeks on the pop charts, he quickly discovered that there was no way to compete with all the racket on the radio, let alone his own past. So, after meeting lyricist Steven Sater through a Buddhist group in 1999, he started composing music for "Spring Awakening," a rock musical based on Frank Wedekind's 1891 coming-of-age play of the same name. Seven years later, the production hit Broadway, earning Sheik multiple awards, critical acclaim and a whole new fan base. The 39-year-old's latest album, "Whisper House," features songs from his next original stage musical, due later this year.

Duncan Sheik
Q: Instead of writing new songs, why didn't you just turn your old songs into a musical like that one by Queen?
A: I'm not a huge fan of jukebox musicals as a form. You're taking these disparate songs that are narratives in their own right and structuring them into a larger story. It seems like the wrong way around. You need a great story and then to write songs to deepen the emotional resonance of that story and its characters.
Q: You met Steven Sater through your Buddhist group. Do you think that's how Elton John met Bernie Taupin?
A: I don't think either one of them is Buddhist. I don't know how they met, but they wrote so many amazing songs together, so I would be curious to know.Continue reading.

Stevie's Not So Wonderful Duets

Aidin Vaziri | Stevie Wonder's performance with the Jonas Brothers was one of the most cringe-inducing moments of this year's Grammys - which is saying a lot. But it wasn't the first time the Motown veteran has paired up with a dubious musical collaborator. Here are some of Wonder's worst offenses:

-- "Ebony and Ivory," with Paul McCartney
-- "My Love," with Julio Iglesias
-- "Used to Be," with Charlene
-- "Just Good Friends," with Michael Jackson
-- "For Once in My Life," with Tony Bennett
-- "Deuce," with Lenny Kravitz
-- "Been Through the Storm," with Busta Rhymes
-- "Canzoni Stonate," with Andrea Bocelli
-- "Sir Duke," with Neil Diamond
-- "If I Were a Carpenter," with Bobby Darin

Grammys 2009: What's New Is Old

Plant, Krauss' collaboration takes top Grammys: Aidin Vaziri | At Sunday's 51st Grammy Awards, broadcast live on CBS from the Staples Center in Los Angeles, there was less room for error. The show was packed with more than 30 live performers from tantalizing young pop stars like the Jonas Brothers and Katy Perry to industry warhorses Paul McCartney and Neil Diamond, along with wild cards M.I.A. and Radiohead. Better yet, just about everyone in the running for the big prizes more or less deserved to be there. That didn't mean conservative tastes didn't win out. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss won the album of the year award for "Raising Sand," a record of sepia-toned country and rockabilly standards released two years ago. They beat out Lil Wayne's "Tha Carter III" and Coldplay's "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends," the top-two selling albums last year. "I'd like to say, I'm bewildered," Plant said. "In the old days, we would have called this selling out." Continue reading.

08 February 2009

Review: Lily Allen, 'It's Not Me, It's You'

Lily Allen, 'It's Not Me, It's You': Aidin Vaziri | So far, Lily Allen's tabloid shenanigans have proved far more interesting than her music. With her second album, "It's Not Me, It's You," the 23-year-old British pop singer thinks she can fix that by tackling all the world's problems at once: drugs, politics, fame, religion, even her relationship with her father, Keith Allen, an actor back home. But her observations rarely get deeper than "I am a weapon of massive consumption/ It's not my fault, it's how I'm programmed to function." The music hardly helps, pairing Allen's barely there voice with tinkling synths, breezy disco rhythms and floating melodies that make it easy to ignore not only most of her eye-rolling revelations but also her musical presence altogether.

Under The Covers: Andy Warhol

Aidin Vaziri | Andy Warhol may be most famous for silk-screening soup cans, making boring home movies and getting shot, but some of the late artist's most popular work probably resides in your record collection. Warhol's iconic images grace no less than 50 album covers, ranging from obscure jazz and spoken-word titles to seminal pop albums by the Velvet Underground, the Rolling Stones, Diana Ross, the Smiths and Aretha Franklin. To celebrate the "Warhol Live" retrospective that opens Saturday and runs through May 17 at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, we have a look at some of his finest forays into the LP rack.

The Rolling Stones: "Sticky Fingers"
(1971) Probably Warhol's most problematic album cover, in that 1) Each copy contained an actual zipper attached to the front that basically killed any other record that touched it in the record store racks; and 2) The crotch area featured is especially well defined, causing several store owners to refuse to carry the album. Never mind the underwear shot inside. Either way, combined with the raunchy music it helped the Stones reinvent their image from hapless Altamont burnouts to sexually charged rock demigods.
Continue reading.

Pop Quiz: NOFX

Aidin Vaziri | To celebrate 25 years of making independent music, playing dive bars around the globe and railing against the establishment, San Francisco punk band NOFX is playing a bunch of shows around the city this week: Tuesday at Slim's, Wednesday at Great American Music Hall, Friday at the Fillmore, Saturday at Thee Parkside and next Sunday at Slim's. If that's not enough, the group also plans to release its Fuse TV series documenting its last world tour, "Backstage Passport," on DVD next month. We spoke to front man and bassist "Fat Mike" Burkett from his San Francisco home.

'Fat Mike' of NOFX
Q: Why are you playing every venue in the city?
A: Well, there are certainly ones we're not. Last time we played, we played four nights in the same club and it just gets kind of boring and weird. It's like some "Groundhog Day" movie. So doing it this way is just more fun. All the shows sold out in advance, and the clubs are happy to have us because they make a killing at the bar, too.
Q: Did you consider throwing in a free show at the Dumpster behind Safeway for the people who didn't get tickets?
A: Well, you know, the shows didn't sell out instantly. They were on sale for months. So we're not going to play a show for lazy people. We did enough free shows on the world tour. Continue reading.

01 February 2009

Live Review: Katy Perry at The Fillmore

Pop phenom Katy Perry rocks the Fillmore: Aidin Vaziri | Even on a stage crowded with enormous pieces of inflatable fruit, a giant cat's head and svelte young musicians wearing illuminated white suits, it was impossible not to notice Katy Perry make an entrance at the Fillmore on Wednesday. Bounding out to Queen's "Killer Queen" with a new black bob and spangled burlesque top, the 24-year-old pop phenom made the sold-out crowd let out a collective gasp. A scientifically engineered cross between Gwen Stefani and Dita Von Teese, her pin-up looks were matched only by her wild exuberance as the band fired up the irresistible new-wave riffs of "Fingertips" and Perry started doing crazy jumping jacks. She is best known for "I Kissed a Girl," a hit that topped the charts in 20 countries last year and makes MySpace a more exciting place every day. Perry's fans came to the concert brandishing homemade T-shirts celebrating the song's message of sexual experimentation and posed for tongue-touching photographs in front of the stage, furiously uploading the images during the ballads. Continue reading.

Digging In The Crates: Bargain-Bin Finds

Aidin Vaziri & Peter Hartlaub | The economy may be in shambles, but the Bay Area has entered a bull market for fans of Bruce Springsteen solo albums, obscure punk rock bands and the Van Halen/Sammy Hagar years. If you haven't looked in your local used-record store bargain bin in the past six months, it's time for a visit. It's difficult to explain why there are so many more great deals now than before our 401(k)s imploded - we only know it to be true. To prove this point, five Chronicle arts writers and critics spent an afternoon at their favorite local record stores (plus one memorable trip to Goodwill), picking up as many great albums as possible for less than $20. Look for our finds accompanying this column.

Aidin Vaziri's Picks:
The store: Goodwill (820 Clement St., (415) 668-3635).

Joni Mitchell, "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" ($1.19): Despite the preponderance of poetry, jazz and African rhythms, a worthy companion to "Blue."
Yes, "Fragile" ($1.19): Not only does it contain prog-rock classics "Roundabout" and "Long Distance Runaround," but gave me a free contact high.
The Style Council, "Introducing the Style Council" ($1.19): Score! The import copy of Paul Weller's foray into blue-eyed-soul for less than $500.
Michael Sembello, "Maniac" ($1.19): The single from the "Flashdance" soundtrack, with an instrumental version so you can make up your own Weird Al-style lyrics.
Elvis Costello and the Attractions, "Get Happy!!" ($1.19): This didn't even have the actual vinyl in it and it was still the best thing they had in the whole store.
Continue reading.

Review: Animal Collective, 'Merriweather Post Pavilion'

Animal Collective, 'Merriweather Post Pavilion': Aidin Vaziri | What happens when Deadheads discover drum machines? Animal Collective's ninth studio album may offer a best-case-scenario answer, mixing kaleidoscopic "Pet Sounds" harmonies with droning computer blips, chaotic dance beats and hypnotic tribal rhythms. It's the most accessible thing the Baltimore band has done, but that doesn't make "Merriweather Post Pavilion" easy listening (you should hear the other eight albums). This sprawling album aims to find the middle ground between cosmic Disney soundtracks and calculated Krautrock, offering just a few conventional tunes amid the wash of blissful white noise. But when exceptions such as "My Girls" and "Summertime Clothes" break through the surface, it can be fleetingly marvelous.

Pop Quiz: Social Distortion

Aidin Vaziri | Social Distortion is taking time out from working on its seventh studio album to welcome back the renovated Fox Oakland Theater with a one-off show just for the occasion on Friday. Naturally, the veteran Southern California punk band has a huge fan base in the Bay Area, thanks to enduring radio hits such as "Ball and Chain," "Story of My Life" and an unparalleled cover of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire." Calling from his Orange County home, front man Mike Ness tells us how the group managed to stick around this long without self-destructing and why it didn't even think twice about agreeing to play at the venue's grand unveiling.

Mike Ness of Social Distortion
Q: Did you think you would be doing this for 30 years?
A: No. We weren't really supposed to live this long, but I'm glad I did. Death is so permanent.
Q: You almost didn't. The band broke up in 1985 because of your drug addiction. How did you manage to survive the past 23 years without drugs?
A: My life was definitely better, of course. I went from the gutter to becoming a somewhat productive member of society.
Q: Did you have a good backup plan in case things didn't work out?
A: Well, yeah, because in the very beginning I didn't know if I could stay clean and do music, too. I had to get in a halfway house, and I had to get a job and make my bed and had a curfew. I painted houses for the first five years and at the same time did my first show at 30 days clean. I bought a tattoo, leather jacket and high-waisted pants. That's when I learned I could do it. Continue reading.