So the San Diego Reader is reporting rumors that the House of Blues here is in trouble, and if they don’t start bringing in better numbers the venue may close within nine months or so; reportedly, the San Diego HOB has the worst attendance of any of the chain’s locations. I can’t say I’m terribly shocked, based upon my own experiences there seeing maybe four or five shows. It’s far from the worst place I’ve ever been, but I also wouldn’t really call the experience of being there enjoyable or pleasurable — it’s like seeing a band in an Applebee’s, and a very overpriced one at that. Drinks there are a complete ripoff (though comparably priced to many downtown venues), the food is okay but not great for what you pay, and between the cost of parking downtown and gas as evening at the HOB can easily run double the cost of a night at, say, the Casbah or the Belly Up, where I generally actually have fun and don’t get half as douchey a vibe.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t actively dislike the SD HOB, but I definitely don’t consider it a great place to see a show. Generally, when I see someone is playing there my reaction is similar to this: “Hey, Motorhead is coming to town…mmm, but it’s at the House of Blues…I don’t know, do I want to deal with that? Maybe I’ll hold off and see if they drop the tickets to half-price (which they very frequently do — apparently their lack of consistent attendance figures is not a new thing) and then I’ll go, but…” So while fewer performance venues in a city is never a positive thing in my book, I can’t say it seems likely I’ll really miss the San Diego House of Blues if and when it should happen to close.
It’s been an embarrassment of riches lately for fans of the Replacements what with the spurt of expanded reissues packed with outtakes and rare tracks, but despite issuing a couple of decent newly-recorded tracks on their “hits” collection the ‘Mats themselves haven’t made the obvious full-fledged reunion move since bassist Tommy Stinson seems firmly stuck in the solo band Axl Rose likes to call Guns ‘N’ Roses. Fortunately, in his absence, Paul Westerberg hasn’t just been sitting and biding his time. Here, Westerberg reinvents the album form as a single mp3 file the length of a single side of a cassette tape — despite the title, 49:00 comes in at 43:55 precisely — which is appealingly homebrewed and packed with tantalizing Guided By Voices-like snippets and fragments in between the more finished-sounding tunes, dropped on the listening public with little advance notice or fanfare suddenly last weekend. Westerberg’s rudimentary drumming continues to be the main downfall of his recent solo work, but he’s succeeded in recapturing a significant amount of the ragged spirit of fun that once seemed so effortless within the context of the Replacements but which drained quickly out of Westerberg’s major-label work. Even the Mats’ predilection for unrehearsed cover tunes is back in the form of brief clips of Westerized versions of tunes like “I Am A Rock”, “I’m Eighteen”, “Born To Be Wild”, “Rocket Man”, and “Hello Goodbye”. Word is Paul has been working on a mountain of new material, a rumor that seems far likelier to be true considering he’s selling this solid album-length chunk of new stuff for a mere 49 cents. No, this isn’t the world-shaking type of attention-grabbing gesture made by such as Radiohead and Trent Reznor, nor should it be expected to be, but this only makes 49:00 even easier to like. I’m not gonna expect all of Paul’s future work to hit this price point, but as long as it all hits this level of quality I’ll be satisfied.
Lots of great stuff coming up, with dates as far in advance as November…if only more shows were like that it’d make keeping up on everything a heck of a lot easier. Note that the Joseph Arthur show at the top of the list below is coming up very soon — I’m going to be checking that one out for sure. Haven’t ever been to Anthology before, so I’ll be interested to see what that’s all about.
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Motley Crue - Saints of Los Angeles: Listening to this record is like listening to a recovered alcoholic blather on for 44 minutes about how badass he used to be and all the crazy shit he used to do. Motley Crue’s latest attempt to recapture the chart-topping action Motley Crue enjoyed around the time of Dr. Feelgood is a self-conscious look back at the band’s early days intended to tie in with the filmed version of their youthful exploits, but the dearth of memorable, hooky songs kills the party quickly. The awful spoken intro attempts to echo that of Shout At The Devil but just comes off as embarassingly bad, and from there things don’t look up much. The Crue’s style of by-the-numbers manufactured teenage rebellion is so ossified now it’s almost quaint, especially considering the band’s audience is mostly in their thirties and forties, but the nostalgia shot through this record is just a pretty insufferable attempt to self-mythologize and manages to make even tales of misadventure and debauchery sound mind-numbingly tedious. Everything about this album from the overly-processed sounding guitars to the dull tattoo-design album cover (give up on that theme, guys) to the forgettable lyrics without an ounce of wit makes Saints Of Los Angeles an utter chore to get through. Where a good pop-metal record (like, well, Dr Feelgood) makes you want to raise your fist and yell, this one just makes you want to hold your head and groan.
So as anyone who remotely cares probably already knows, nine purported tracks from Guns ‘N’ Roses’ long-promised Chinese Democracy leaked all over the online world the other day. This isn’t the first time this has happened during the album’s long gestation period by any means — I know “Better” more intimately than most anything they did during the real band’s actual existence outside of Appetite For Destruction by now — but it’s the first time a substantial enough chunk of mostly finished-sounding tracks has appeared to make the album’s imminent completion seem plausible. After listening, I’m not entirely convinced these are in fact finalized versions, though with minor tweaks here and there they’d mostly certainly be releasable. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to come to any conclusion other than that Axl definitely lost the plot long ago: this music shares none of the primal rawk grit that made Appetite For Destruction the “last great rock album” of its time — you know, until the next one, which I guess was probably Nevermind if one goes by popular thinking. These songs have obviously been through several layers of Pro Tools tweaking and the production detritus that has accumulated around them is often enough to obscure their merits by offering an endless parade of irritating distractions: here a skittering drum and bass loop, there an obviously sequenced section, here another drum loop, there odd sound effects, here a clumsily pitch-corrected vocal, there another damn drum loop. Nothing against drum loops and loop-based music, but Guns ‘N’ Roses is ostensibly a rock band, and here the clumsy obviousness of the loops’ integration just highlights the fact that there’s no “there” there. The greatest failing of this music is the most obvious: there is no band sound or feel whatsoever. It’s fully the Axl show and while it’s not all bad by any means, when you break it down it doesn’t really sound much like Guns ‘N’ Roses, even at their least coherent. Some of these songs vacillate between pretty decent and head-cockingly odd; others are really pretty dire. In the end, these tracks convince the listener of the possible existence of Chinese Democracy — but not Guns ‘N’ Roses.
This new documentary covering the brief history of the incredibly influential Joy Division should really come in a two-pack with Control, the fictionalized treatment of the same material, as the two films contain a strikingly small amount of overlap. Control, based on Ian Curtis’ widow’s book Touching From A Distance, covers the internal stresses brought about in the perfect storm created by Ian’s marriage, work, sickness, and ambitions, while Joy Division (really, couldn’t we just have snagged another JD song for the title to make it less confusing and more search-optimizable?) fleshes out the story with a surprising amount of actual performance footage of the band and lengthy interviews with the surviving band members and hangers-on, including Curtis’ former mistress — probably accounting for Deborah Curtis being represented here only by quotes taken from Touching From A Distance. Still, it hardly matters, knowing that side of the story is aptly covered in Control. Director Grant Gee (Radiohead’s Meeting People Is Easy) even makes many similar stylistic choices as Anton Corbijn did in Control — no shortage of black-and-white images of crumbling industrial Manchester here, kids! While it’s a shame producer Martin Hannett was unavailable for comment due to premature decease, Tony Wilson’s lively presence here belies the rapidity with which his own mortality was approaching, and sleeve designer Peter Saville lightens up the proceedings markedly with his self-effacing, amusing commentary. While one might wish for a slightly more complete film to tell the entire story, it’s somehow fitting that the Joy Division story is split between the two incomplete halves of Control and Joy Division, and it’s hard to imagine anyone who enjoyed one not also appreciating the other.
Also newly issued to coincide with the recent spurt of interest in the band is the new compilation The Best of Joy Division. In the wake of the multiple rounds of collections of the band’s work that have come out over the past 25+ years there’s obviously not much new here (this is a band that only put out two actual albums during their existence, after all), but it’s a pretty unassailable 14-track selection and a good starter for anyone not already familiar with the band’s work — although it really could have been sequenced by simply putting Unknown Pleasures, Closer, and Substance into a CD changer and pressing ’shuffle.’ The UK edition does come with a bonus disc collecting the band’s complete recordings for the BBC, including both of their Peel Sessions, but if you’ve already got everything on disc one and don’t feel the need to buy it again for the nice package you could simply get the single-disc collection The Complete BBC Recordings instead, as the contents are identical.
The Warlocks do one thing and they do it well: droney psychedelic rock that often recalls Spacemen 3, and alternates between heavy Velvet Underground, the Rolling Stones, and Stooges influences. This evening’s set was no exception, although judging from the audience one suspects the concurrently-timed Cure show may have drawn off a certain amount of the core demographic. The Warlocks never failed to deliver, though, pounding out a solid set filled with glorious guitar noise.
Iron Maiden - Somewhere Back in Time: The Best of 1980-1989: Although Iron Maiden has churned out any number of compilations and collections over the years, this may just be the perfect single-disc distillation of their oeuvre. While their early records with vocalist Paul Di’Anno are great for what they are, the years with Blaze Bayley singing weren’t entirely useless, and the material the reunited classic lineup has produced since regathering has been largely exemplary, it’s hard to argue that the years covered by Somewhere Back in Time document their strongest and most fertile period. While to a Maiden fan the idea of doing without the full albums from this period is sacrilege, many among the less devout can probably get by with only the unassailable selection here. Perhaps best of all, the band is offering the chance to download Somewhere Back in Time at 
