Posts Tagged ‘ David Lowery ’

Cracker: January 19, 2013 Stage 48 – Flac/MP3/Streaming

February 8, 2013
By

cracker keim
[photo by Dean Keim]

On their annual co-tour with Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker usually gets the anchor spot. I guess this is because David Lowery, who gets double duty each night, sings louder and more vociferously for Cracker’s style of music than he does for CVB, and if the bands were reversed he’d have no voice at all for the Camper set. For the Stage 48 show a few weeks back, this was again the case. Lowery was his usual more animated Cracker self for a very energetic show. But on that night, we were doubly impressed with the work of Johnny Hickman whose energy, humor and guitar work always makes a Cracker show more entertaining. At the Stage 48 show however, Johnny seemed especially moved by the recent loss of a friend Mac Shingleton and the dedication to Mac of “Another Song About the Rain” ignited something special in that song and the moving version was the highlight of the evening. We’re streaming it below.

I recorded this set in the same manner as the CVB set and the sound is superb. Enjoy!

Stream “Another Song About the Rain”:

This Recording is now available to Download in FLAC and MP3 and to Stream at Archive.org [HERE].

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

Cracker
2013-01-19
Stage 48
New York, NY USA

Digital Master Recording
Recorded from Inside of Soundboard Booth

Soundboard + Sennheiser MKH-8040s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge (level adjustments, EQ, mixdown, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and Tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper
2013-02-07

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:21:01]
01 Low
02 Teen Angst
03 The Good Life
04 Useless Stuff
05 I Could Be Wrong
06 Friends
07 Forever
08 [banter – tuning]
09 Turn on Tune in Drop Out with Me
10 Eurotrash Girl
11 Big Dipper
12 Guarded By Monkeys
13 Seven Days
14 Another Song About the Rain
15 [encore break]
16 Gimme One More Chance
17 I See The Light

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Cracker, visit their website, and purchase their official releases directly from the Store at their website [here] or from the 429 Records website [here].

Cracker: January 14, 2011 Highline Ballroom – Flac and MP3 Downloads + Streaming Song

February 13, 2011
By


[photo by Lynn Kestenbaum of the excellent lynnguppy blog]

This recording is submitted by our newest nyctaper staff recorder, mrsaureus, who we hope will become a regular contributor!

Please refer to the Camper Van Beethoven post below for mrsaureus’ very entertaining review of this show.

Stream “Sick of Goodbyes”:
[audio:http://www.nyctaper.com/C0109Camper9002/07-Sick%20of%20Goodbyes.mp3]

This Recording is now available for Download in FLAC and MP3 at Archive.org [HERE].

Cracker
Highline Ballroom, NYC
January 14, 2011

Lineage: Recorded and minimally produced by mrsaureus, standing center floor five feet back from the stage, Core-Sound High End Binaurals to Sony PCM-M10 (48 kHZ, 24 bit), WavePad Sound Editor to chop and FLAC only. Some crowd noise but sounds nice.

Cracker set:
01-Low
02-Movie Star
03-Get Off This
04-Kerosene Hat
05-Take Me Down to the Infirmary
06-Nostalgia
07-Sick of Goodbyes
08-Sweet Potato
09-I Want Everything
10-Lonesome Johnny Blues
11-Let’s Go For a Ride
12-Loser
13-Meth Lab – Eurotrash Girls
14-I Ride My Bike
15-Interstellar Overdrive
16-I Sold the Arabs the Moon (aborted)
17-Friends

If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Cracker, visit their website, and purchase their official releases directly from the Store at their website [here] or from the 429 Records website [here].

Camper Van Beethoven: January 14, 2011 Highline Ballroom – Flac and MP3 Downloads + Streaming Song

February 13, 2011
By


[photo by Lynn Kestenbaum of the excellent lynnguppy blog]

This recording is the first submitted by our newest nyctaper staff recorder, “mrsaureus”, who we hope will become a regular contributor!

by mrsaureus
“Like an old testament prophet, or a Morman elder, or (all right, what do I know about it?) like that guy on Big Love, our favorite openly practicing musical polygamist David Lowery brought both of his bands to NYC for back to back performances at the Highline Ballroom on January 14. I’ve been reading the Keith Richards book, which has me all in a lather for rock and roll tell-all, so I couldn’t help but wonder what the dynamic on the bus is. One big happy family? Hmm. Maybe, but the mind is inevitably drawn to the sordid. Is it Cracker in the front, wearing their greater commercial success like a warm parka, loud and cheerful game of 20 questions, Camper Van Beethoven in the back, sullen and pissy, answering in monosyllables? Or is it CVB the first and truest love, despite Cracker’s headline position on the bill, serenely confident of favor, irritatingly aloof in the face of drunken, bitter Cracker histrionics? I guess we’ll have to wait for the Immergluck book to find out. In the meantime, I marvel at what an absolute delight this pair of shows proved to be. I liked so many things about them I hardly know where to begin. I should say that I was a fan back in the nineties but I’d completely lost touch with this music: all I knew is that I used to like it. As often as not, things you used to love come back to embarrass you (just give me a second to queue up this episode of Lost in Space on Hulu . . . OK, I’m back now), and so I was gratified and relieved to find that in this case my taste was vindicated by strong performances of a jaw droppingly rich musical smorgasbord. It’s a brilliant format, playing consecutively as CVB and Cracker, and it gives the concert goer some real insights into the different approaches taken by these two successful projects. I found myself about to use the word “evolution” back there, but that isn’t it: CVB didn’t evolve into Cracker anymore than the Beatles evolved into Wings. Two bands. Some similarities. Some differences. Both draw on a rich California compost heap of musical influences (the Dead, Bakersfield, Cali ska) and have a sound founded on solid musicianship and terrific guitar work. I was struck by how really well both Greg Lisher and Johnny Hickman played. CVB is fermented longer and a little bit tangier and is in some ways more interesting musically, where Cracker is more buffed up alpha pop, steroids sure, but hits the home runs fair enough. Both bands sounded absolutely fresh: no taint of the nostalgia act here despite playing sets consisting almost wholly of albums recorded 20 years ago.

So, yeah, this show was constructed around the “play the whole album” gimmick, which is becoming increasingly common, and about which I have a certain shallow ambivalence. Upside, you know you’ll hear songs you like. Downside, it panders to a lack of faith in the fanbase. It’s the same impulse that’s turning Broadway into a recycling center for popular middlebrow movies. It seeks to assure the public that even if they are disappointed, at least they won’t be surprised. A concert can be a revelation. A live show allows a band to play their songs reworked in interesting ways, to add intros and codas and fool with the mix of instruments and the tempo, to play covers and obscure tracks. They can petulantly refuse to play their big hit, or play it so flaccidly it’s like a big contemptuous finger to the audience (this I don’t like), or going the other way they can play their big hit twice: once early and once again at the end. I’ve seen all that and every time it makes me glad I didn’t just stay home and listen to the album. Or they can just play the album, which in general teaches me less. Gosh, I’m whining and I don’t like it, and it strikes me that in this case at least, I’m being a bit of a bad sport. Having to listen to Key Lime Pie and Kerosene Hat, both in my top ten list of all time favorites, is really nothing to complain about.

Final interesting tidbit. All the CVB musicians come back onstage to stage to join Cracker for an incendiary, orgasmic “Interstellar Overdrive”, except that Cracker bass player heads backstage. Then it hit me: I’ve never seen a band with two bass players. I actually had never thought about it before, but there it is. Every single other instrument is often doubled or tripled. CVB used four guitars on some songs and southern rock bands have two or three of everything except . . . bass guitar. So it’s my assumption that there must be a reason that two bass guitars simply undoes a rhythm section. There would be no reason in the world not to have everybody in the (OK, the evidence points to it) big happy CVB/Cracker family onstage at the end, no reason to send poor Sal off to a lonely backstage exile with nothing but scads of coked up matchstick model groupies to keep him company (whoa, I think that’s the Keef book talking), except that having two bass players is musical suicide. I’d like to hear peoples thoughts about this.”

Recorded and minimally produced by mrsaureus, standing center floor five feet back from the stage, Core-Sound High End Binaurals to Sony PCM-M10 (48 kHZ, 24 bit), WavePad Sound Editor to chop and FLAC only. Some crowd noise but sounds nice.

The Cracker recording will posted shortly in a separate post, with reference to the same review.

Stream “All Her Favorite Fruit / Interlude”:
[audio:http://www.nyctaper.com/C0109Camper9002/09-All%20Her%20Favorite%20Fruit-Interlude.mp3]

This Recording is now available to Download in FLAC and MP3 at Archive.org [HERE].

Camper Van Beethoven
Highline Ballroom, NYC
January 14, 2011

CVB set:
01-Key Lime Pie Opening Theme
02-Jack Ruby
03-Sweethearts
04-When I Win the Lottery
05-Laundromat
06-Borderline
07-The Light from a Cake
08-June
09-All Her Favorite Fruit – Interlude
10-Flowers
11-The Humid Press of Days
12-Pictures of Matchstick Men
13-Come on Darkness
14-Eye of Fatima 1 & 2
15-Take the Skinheads Bowling

If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Camper Van Beethoven, visit their website, and purchase their official releases directly from the store at their website [HERE].

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