La vida es eterna en cinco minutos

Dear friends,

You don't need to speak Spanish to feel this story. Victor Jara sings of a woman named Amanda. He is remembering her, her wide smile, the rain in her hair as she runs to spend a short break, 5 minutes to be exact, with her lover who works in the local factory. Those five minutes, "cinco minutos," are sprinkled throughout the song and the joy in those few stolen moments is palpable. When Jara sings the words "con el" (with him) he repeats it three times, going higher and higher with each repetition. It's a quietly sublime moment, for the singer, for his protagonist and for the listener.

Te Recuerdo Amanda/Victor Jara (mp3)



Like the song itself, Jara's story didn't end well. I grew up around his records but only just started listening. Researching online, trying to sort out the facts from the fictions, I learned that the Amanda of this song was his mother. An unexpected and tender detail to an already touching vignette.

Purchase Vientos del Pueblo by Victor Jara.

Love, D

PS For all you cover hounds, Te Recuerdo Amanda has been recorded by Robert Wyatt and Silvio Rodriguez. As good as they are, neither version bests the original.

ATJ @ The Bowery Ballroom Tonight!

ATJ has teamed up with the killer people over at Tankfarm to help sponsor the Shout Out Louds at Bowery Ballroom TONIGHT!

A few of your favourite After the Jumpers will be djing the Bowery Ballroom show, so make sure to stop by and say hello where Pat Pop Tarts, Jeff K and D, Chris Battering Room and Cameron and Abbey will be spinning all night long.

After the show, head over to Lolita Bar on Broome where ATJ will also be presenting the official after-party. The Riot City djs will be keeping the party pumping, don't miss it.

After The Jump @ CMJ!

After The Jump spends some quality time with the CMJ Music Marathon. Taking it to the circus, buying it ice cream, telling it that it's really pretty etc...

Wednesday, October 17th, 7pm at The Music Hall of Williamsburg

66 North Sixth St, Brooklyn, NY

After the Jump teams up with The Bowery Presents to bring you:

8pm Alberta Cross

9pm Yeasayer

10pm Sam Champion

11pm Cadence Weapon

12am Foals

1am A Place to Bury Strangers

COST = $12 advance via ticketmaster and $14 day of.

BUY TICKETS ON TICKETMASTER NOW!

* * *


Friday, October 19th, 1pm at The Annex

152 Orchard St., New York, NY

After the Jump and Indie Outlaw present: North v. South:

Northern Bands:

1:45pm The Antlers

3:15pm Nous Non Plus

4:50pm The Silent Years

Southern Bands:

1pm Dead Confederate

2:30pm Shovels and Rope

4pm The Pendletons

5:30pm Morning State

COST = FREE

* * *

Saturday, October 20th, NOON, at The Yard

400 Carroll St Brooklyn, NY

After the Jump's Fall Fest:

between sets, Two Man Gentlemen Band

1pm The Lisps

2pm Balthrop Alabama

3pm Eagle Seagull

4pm Rock Plaza Central

5pm Old Time Relijun

6pm O'death

7:30pm White Magic (Cancelled)

COST = $5

* * *

Special thanks to our sponsors:

BlogFreshRadio.com

and

Metromix.com

By some miracle, you'd be aware

Or "Yes, I am big fan geek for PJ Harvey"

Dear friends,

The Monkey took me to see PJ Harvey at the Beacon last night. Part of me was having geek meltdown and part of me kept sneaking peeks at J, looking to see if he was enjoying it. It was his first time seeing her. Yes, he liked it very much.

Polly Jean Harvey came on stage, all by her lonesome, looking like a Victorian kewpie doll. Her white puffed sleeved dress scrawled in grand black script; her lyrics and her handwriting she explained later. She picked up her guitar and stood in the middle of a cluttered stage set up. Piano strung in lights on one side, amps in the back, various instruments strewn about. It was almost as if we were a family about to witness an impromptu living room recital by the baby of the family, an intense and terrifyingly talented little girl.

She slinked into the opening lines of To Bring You My Love and man oh man, THAT VOICE. I felt like it was lipsynch 'cause it sounded too perfect, too much like the record. It took a second for my ears to get used to the sound of it. I love her.

Sigh.

I know I'm biased, but really, has anyone done more for Blues music lately than PJ Harvey? I'm not talking wack-ass Eric Clapton retreads, I'm talking updating the sound of lamentation so that it sounds powerful and alive. She is so thrillingly in the moment of her songs that it can be a little off-putting to people not used to such passion in their music. Or if they are, it's a different sort of passion, the flowery kind that's more about me! me! me! than trying to tell a story. She makes you feel her belief. When she sang "You know he's gonna be there..." and stretched the last vowels into a dry death rattle, it wasn't pretty, it was captivating.

Screw the 'fork, I think they missed the point. I love White Chalk. It's gorgeous. Yes, it's sad but in a break from her past work, it's the everyday sadness of loss not a fantasy tale of bad men and shamed ladies. As for difficult, it's no harder than any of her other records, since when has she made muzak? I love the sound of this year's Harvey on the album, feather light and high, high, high. She has always tried to do different things with her vocal sound over the years. It's not so much that Harvey refuses to deliver a sound that is her patently her "own" but rather that she doesn't want to be constrained by a vocal sound that never changes. It was startling to hear the White Chalk songs after the openers from To Bring You My Love, which was the deeeeep, alto voiced record; all sludge and darkness. White Chalk, not so much. The opening, coloratura soprano vocalizations of The Devil seemed even more unreal. How can that tiny little person contain so many different voices and have mastery of all of them? HOW?!?

I'm losing the plot aren't I? It was a great show. I loved hearing Snake, haven't seen her play that in ages. The amazing precision of the final four chords of skronk on Man Size was the bomb. I actually giggled involuntarily and I wasn't alone. Never much of a fan of Down By The Water but last night's autoharp-assisted version, less sing-songy, more fragile and sustained was a revelation. The audience sang all the repetitions along with her; "down by the water/my lovely daughter" etc. and they sang softly, cushioning the number with their hum.

My favorite of the night I think was Silence. I do like the recorded version but the bare bones live version had an authority that was deeply moving and cathartic. I don't know the story behind the song but it sounds to me like someone coming to terms with the loss of squandered time. In her delivery last night, every repetition of the ending word "Silence" got stronger until the number became a kind of hymn.

Silence/PJ Harvey (mp3)


PJ Harvey at The Beacon Theater 10/10/2007 Set List

To Bring You My Love
Send His Love To Me
When Under Ether
The Devil
White Chalk
Man-Size
Angelene
Nina (in Ecstacy)
Electric Light
My Beautiful Leah*
Snake
Shame
Big Exit
Down By The Water
Grow Grow Grow
The Mountain
Silence

---

Rid Of Me
Water
The Piano
The Desperate Kingdom of Love

***

M to da P was a couple rows behind me, check out his thoughts on the show at Fluxblog.

Additional eyes and ears...

Music Snobbery
Sentimentalist

Love, D

PS HAPPY JOHN PEEL DAY!

* The drum looped backed tune that the Monkey was referring to when he told me that he "wasn't feeling the hip hop so much." HA HA HA. Love it.

Now that you found it, it's gone

Dear friends,

Confession time. Back in the day, I used to belong to the Radiohead mailing list, an intense little branch called "The Convoy."* Most of the time I lurked, completely bewildered and petrified by the all-around snark, but I stuck around because sometimes the writing was really fabulous. Not just about the Oxford boys but whatever was out at the time. I discovered some wonderful music because of those faceless, weirdly monikered internet voices.

Haven't thought of those guys in years, but I did today when Nude came on. That's a song that's been floating around the Radiohead ether forever it seems. Hadn't wanted to look at the tracklisting for the new record, I'm not one of those people, so I was surprised as anything when it came on. What would the old skool superfans make of the airy and delicate version on In Rainbows? It makes me want to be ten years younger so I could read their thoughts again. I dedicate today's selection to them.


Nude/Radiohead (mp3)

Purchase In Rainbows by Radiohead.

Love, D

PS I wonder if this means Big Boots (Man O War) will finally show up on a record. Hmmm...(drifts off on another nostalgia trip)

* Street Spirit is supposedly about The Convoy. I don't know if I bought it at the time but it was cool to imagine myself as a one of those row-houses.

There's blood on my hands

Dear friends,

Polly Jean Harvey makes me feel like I'm ten years-old and reading Emily Brontë for the first time. Somewhere, millions* of miles away, there lived a woman and her days were blue-green and white. When she walked towards her home, she strode through wind-blown grass, purposefully, her face an unreadable mask. Inside her there was a whole other world, one where living without your life, without that which you loved was not some irrational, unsubstantiated fear, but a dead certainty.

I'm not saying this is how I wanted to live; with guys named Heathcliff screaming all over the place and hands coming through windows. But rather that I get a thrill out of that type of haunting tale, of reading and seeing it. I listen to the title track from PJ Harvey's White Chalk and it feels the same way. I'm inside a story I don't quite understand but I'm exhilarated to be there because it is just so vivid. A gossamer lament for a lost childhood from someone who sounds like they're already a ghost.


White Chalk/PJ Harvey (mp3)

Purchase White Chalk by PJ Harvey.

Love, D

* This is not intentional exaggeration. I have a very poor concept of distance. I'm not proud of my ignorance, it's just a fact.