Keepaway, who were everywhere during this year’s CMJ, fit the NYCTaper Unofficial CMJ Day Party into their schedule, and to great results. Their tribal sound can veer from jangly rock to trippy sonic freakout rapidly, at times within the same song. This band sometimes gives you the feeling that they might be fucking with you; they’re in on the joke and ready to party – the question is whether you are. Part of an emerging group of artists that continue to challenge the already-hazy boundaries between dance and rock music, Keepaway are likely to keep attracting interest, especially if they continue landing prime opening gigs like their slot in front of Yeasayer at Governor’s Island this summer. This four-song set included some songs from their FREEWilliamsburg showcase this June at Brooklyn Bowl, as well as a new song we were not familiar with.
I recorded this set in the same manner as our other CMJ sets. The quality is excellent. Enjoy!
Keepaway
2010-10-21
NYCTaper CMJ Day Party
Cake Shop
New York, NY
An acidjack master recording
Recorded and produced by acidjack for nyctaper.com
Equipment: DPA 4021+Stereo soundboard feed>Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) (24/44.1)
Position: Mount above and slightly in front of stage, ORTF
Mastering: 2×24bit/44.1kHz WAV>Audacity (mixdown, set fades, tracking, slight EQ, amplify and balance)>FLAC ( level 8 )
01 100
02 Royal Jelly
03 unknown
04 Sideways Smile
If you download this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Keepaway, visit their MySpace page, and purchase Baby Style(available on vinyl direct from Lefse Records, or on iTunes and other retailers for download).
Before there was Drive-By Truckers, there was Drivin’ N Cryin’ — unabashed country rock with identifiable punk influences. When Kevin Kinney left his punk band in Milwaukee and moved to Atlanta in the mid-80s, he and Tim Nielsen would ultimately go on to establish a group that melded divergent genres to create a sound that would influence a generation of southern rockers. Now celebrating their 25th year as a band, Drivin’ N Cryin’ continues to make excellent music and still wears its punk pedigree on its sleeve. 2009’s Great American Bubble Factory contains everything from country-tinged working class odes to a cover of The Dictators. The album opens with “Detroit City”, a live show-stopper that references Iggy and the Stooges and MC5, and closes with “This Town”, a poignant Guthrie/Dylan styled folk number. On Saturday night at Mercury Lounge, both songs were performed in key spots in the setlist, along with nearly two hours of the best of the band’s extensive catalog. Other highlights included a huge “Fly Me Courageous” (streaming below) and the show-closing epic twelve-minute “Straight to Hell”.
Kevin Kinney will perform a series of solo shows at The Living Room for three consecutive Tuesday nights in December.
I recorded this set from my standard location in this venue, at the front right corner of the soundboard. I utilized the DPA microphones and mixed them with a feed from the soundboard. The sound quality of this recording is outstanding. Enjoy!
Stream “Fly Me Courageous”:
[audio:http://www.nyctaper.com/D6011DrivinNCryin1020/Drivin%20N%20Cryin%20FLY%20ME%20COURAGEOUS%20Live%202010-11-06.mp3]
This Recording is now available to Download in FLAC and MP3 at Archive.org [HERE].
Drivin’ N Cryin’
2010-11-06
Mercury Lounge
New York, NY USA
Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix
Setlist:
[Total Time 1:49:04]
01 [introduction]
02 Honeysuckle Blue
03 (Whatever Happened to The) Great American Bubble Factory?
04 Scarred But Smarter
05 Preapproved, Predenied
06 The Innocent
07 Build A Fire
08 I Stand Tall (The Dictators)
09 [banter]
10 Midwestern Blues
11 Peacemaker
12 [banter]
13 Back Roads And Rainy Days
14 With The People
15 Let’s Go Dancing
16 Detroit City
17 Fly Me Courageous*
18 [crowd/banter]
19 Blues on Top of Blues
20 [encore break]
21 This Town
22 Which Jesus
23 Straight to Hell**
24 [outro]
*with a verse of Smoke On The Water
**with a verse of Why Don’t We Do It In The Road
If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Drivin’ N Cryin’, visit their website, and purchase their official releases at the Store on their website [HERE].
Brooklyn’s She Keeps Bees positively oozes authenticity. Singer/guitarist Jessica Larrabee’s delivery is all heartbreak, grit, and grace, with a stiff shot of bourbon in the mix. She and drummer Andy LaPlant’s elegantly rustic songs need no extraneous flourishes – witness this nearly a cappella rendition of “Ribbon”. Some bands keep fans coming back with ridiculous gimmicks, but She Keeps Bees are the type of band you want to see again and again because of subtler, better things: for the way that Larrabee’s voice curdles into a scream every so often, for stage banter that is unpracticed, unabashed and often hilarious; for the the way the chorus of a song like “Release” is always delivered perfectly even if it is not, technically speaking, perfect. For the way that, even at mid-afternoon in the darkness of Cake Shop’s basement, it makes you grateful that you decided to be precisely there, precisely then. We are truly grateful to She Keeps Bees for playing our CMJ show this year.
I recorded this set as with our other CMJ sets, and this recording is, similarly, outstanding. Enjoy!
She Keeps Bees
2010-10-21
NYCTaper CMJ Day Party
Cake Shop
New York, NY
An acidjack master recording
Recorded and produced by acidjack for nyctaper.com
Equipment: DPA 4021+Stereo soundboard feed>Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) (24/44.1)
Position: Mount above and slightly in front of stage, ORTF
Mastering: 2×24bit/44.1kHz WAV>Audacity (mixdown, set fades, tracking, amplify and balance)>FLAC ( level 8 )
01 Release
02 Gimme
03 banter
04 I Don’t Believe You
05 Ribbon
If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT She Keeps Bees, visit their website, and purchase their excellent releases from their Bandcamp Page [HERE].
I saw Pierce Turner at Joe’s Pub a couple of weeks back, and it was the first time I’ve seen him in two years. The show was a delightful performance that proved that although he may have slowed a bit, Turner is still capable of charming an audience and energizing the fans. The aftershow conversation steered towards the past, and I was reminded of the archive of outstanding Pierce Turner performances that I have recorded over the years.
Throughout the 90s, Pierce did a series of “residencies” at local Irish clubs. In the early part of the decade, his Friday nights at Nevada Smiths were legendary and led to the release of the live album Manana in Manhattan, recorded at Smiths on a crazy Monday night in 1994. Later, his “Sunday mass” at Swift Hibernian Lounge drew an eclectic Sunday afternoon crowd and continued from 1996 until early 1998. When the Swift residency ended, Pierce moved the Sunday shows to Fiddlesticks, which is an enormous Irish pub on Greenwich Avenue that had recently opened back in ’98.
The recording posted here was the very first night of Sunday’s at Fiddlesticks, a series of shows that would continue for about six months. On this opening night, Pierce brought out all the stops, and played a nearly two-hour show packed with all of his best material and several rarities. The band consisted of the regular string quartet and drummer Michael Dawe, although regular cellist Tomas Ulrich was unavailable on this particular night. Pierce opened the show with “I Set You Up to Shake” from US version of The Sky and the Ground, accompanied only by backing tapes as he walked on top of the bar and the tables. It was a song he had not performed live in several years. “Groovy Hearts”, a song that appeared on Turner’s first album but was originally recorded for the final (never released) Major Thinkers album was a special rare treat. Five encores and a couple of hours later, the show ended with promises to return, which Pierce honored for months.
I recorded this set with a feed from the soundboard into my Sony M-1 DAT deck. Pierce’s live sound at the time was mixed by a talented engineer named Scott Whitney with whom I’ve unfortunately lost touch. Scott mixed the show superbly on this evening and the result is an excellent recording and listening experience. Enjoy!
Stream the entire concert:
Direct download of complete show in MP3 files (HERE)
Direct download of the FLAC files available at Archive.org Link (HERE)
Pierce Turner
1998-02-15
Fiddlesticks
New York, New York USA
Master Digital Soundboard Recording
Soundboard > Sony M-1 DAT
DAT Master > Panasonic SV-3800 > digital coaxial > Audigy 2 ZS Platinum > Soundforge (level adjustments, set fades) > 16 bit 44.1 wav > CD Wave (tracking) > Flac Frontend (level 7, align sector boundaries) > flac
Recorded by nyctaper in 1998
Produced by nyctaper 2010-11-08
Setlist:
[total time: 1:55:59]
01 I Set You Up To Shake
02 Thunderstorm
03 Moonbeam Josephine
04 Don’t Want Her To Feel That Way
05 [banter]
06 Say You Don’t Mind [Colin Blunstone]
07 You Can Never Know
08 [banter]
09 Ball and Chain (Snakes and Ladders)
10 Who’s Your Advisor
11 [banter]
12 Groovy Hearts
13 Oh Ireland
14 Mr. Smith
15 Lithium [Nirvana]
16 [banter]
17 For No One [Beatles]
18 [banter]
19 Manana In Manhattan
20 Not A Bad Day For A Wednesday
21 [band introductions]
22 Wicklow Hills
23 [encore break]
24 God Only Knows [Beach Boys]
25 [banter]
26 Band Of Gold [Freda Payne]
27 Musha God Help Her
28 [second encore break]
29 Big Big Bruise
30 [banter]
31 Orange Coloured Sun
If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Pierce Turner, visit his website, and purchase his releases directly from the online store at his website.
[Photo by acidjack. Apologies for the quality – it was quite dark, and it would have been rude to use flash]
The band 47.5 is an experimental duo comprised of the outstanding Japanese musicians (and longtime Brooklyn residents) Yusuke Yamamoto and Yoshio Kobayashi. Yamamoto and Kobayashi are students of the technical and gear-related side of music as well – the band’s name refers to the running speed of an old-school cassette tape. The band’s sound relies on electric and conventional drums, synths, vibraphone and loops, densely layered to create a sound that lies at the intersection of jazz, rock, dub and electronica. For an easy reference point, think Tortoise, with less of a musical focus on percussion. This living room-style show at Studio BPM provided an excellent introduction to this fascinating duo, who were playing the show with Lymbyc Systym to celebrate the release of 47.5’s first record, Warm Sea. Although they indicated to me early on that they were still getting comfortable with the material, this tight melodic journey belied none of that, as the band recreated their intricate tracks in the live setting perfectly.
I recorded this set in the same manner as the Lymbyc Systym set, with a stereo soundboard feed and the DPA microphones in the center of the room. The sound quality is among my best of the year. Enjoy!
Assistance with the setlist for this show would be appreciated.
An acidjack master recording
Recorded and produced by acidjack for nyctaper.com
Equipment: DPA 4021+stereo soundboard feed>Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) (24/44.1)
Position: FOB, DFC, 8? up, DIN
Mastering: 2×24bit WAV>Audacity (mixdown, set fades, EQ, tracking, amplify and balance, downsample to 16bit)>FLAC ( level 8 )
Tracks [Total Time 54:54]
01
02
03
04
05 Chin Don
06
07
08
09
If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT 47.5, visit their MySpace page, and purchase Warm Sea from MeMeAntenna here, on iTunes or at your favorite retailer.
I was enamored with the music of the late great Ponytail, Baltimore’s art-rock collective that came to an unfortunate and untimely demise earlier this year. Dustin Wong’s work with Ponytail was breathtaking — intricate and hyper guitar lines that propelled the swirling melodies. As a live performer in Ponytail, Dustin yielded the front spot to Molly Siegel’s spastic vocal yelps, but fans in know understood that he was the band’s leader. As a solo performer, Dustin has literally taken a seat, taken a deep breath and now focuses on creating multi-layered musical tapestries. At Monster Island last Tuesday, he performed solo and seated to a smallish but rapt crowd. The set began with “Sisters” from his excellent new Thrill Jockey release Infinite Love but moved onto a series of new and developing melodies. The material is instantly recognizable as Dustin’s guitar style, but with the looping and layering takes on a unique character. The crowd did not utter a peep until the short set was over, but showered Dustin with some well deserved praise at its conclusion. We will continue to follow this extremely talented artist as he weaves his way along an interesting and compelling career path.
This set was recorded with the Neumann mics mounted ten feet from the stage and mixed with a well balanced soundboard feed. The sound quality is superb. Enjoy!
Stream an Excerpt from this set:
[audio:http://www.nyctaper.com/P6621Ponytail2121/Dustin%20Wong%20LIVE%20EXCERPT%202010-11-02.mp3]
Direct download of complete show in MP3 files (HERE)
Setlist:
[Total Time 30:23]
01 Track
(songs included “Sisters” and a series of new melodies)
If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Dustin Wong, visit his artist page at the Thrill Jockey Records website, and purchase his official releases from the Merge Records website [HERE].
nyctaper.com is a live music blog that offers a new paradigm of music distribution on the web. The recordings are offered for free on this site as are the music posts, reviews and links to artist sites. All recordings are posted with artist permission or artists with an existing pro-taping policy.
All recordings and original content posted on this site are @nyctaper.com as live recordings pursuant to 17 U.S.C. Section 106, et. seq. Redistribution of nyctaper recordings without consent of nyctaper.com is strictly prohibited.
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