Photo Essay-Los Lobos at the Sacramento Music Festival

Once in while in this business, one is lucky enough to get up close to watch an all-time favorite. That was the case Sunday night at the Sacramento Music Festival, when the Beet Seeking Missile was able to hang in the photo pit for the entire two-hour plus Los Lobos set. And what a set it was!

 One of America's finest rock bands (and a Beet Seeking Missile favorite!) played a memorable show. Los Lobos are going strong in their fourth decade of touring, recording and blending cultural heritage with psychedelic rock, folk and blues. In a set list that spanned their 40 years together, they played favorites like "Dream in blue,"  "I got loaded," "Volver Volver," "Mas y Mas" and a great cover of the Grateful Dead's "West L.A. Fadeaway."
The greatest part of the show was while looking around at all the dancing, happy, singing people giving their pure , unabashed love to this band, I would look up and catch the band having fun too; joking with each other between songs, inviting a fan onstage to sing and generally being the consumate pros and great multi-instrumentalists that they are known to be all over the world.

Talib Kweli-Spanning the globe to bring you a variety of sounds

  I knew there was something unique about Talib Kweli when I first saw him in the fall of 2004. He was opening for the Beastie Boys at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. Baseball season was in full swing and out comes this Brooklyn kid with a t-shirt, jeans.... and an Oakland A's cap. Not only did he get the Beet Seeking Missile's attention with his choice of head gear; his high-order vocabulary and quick-segue delivery were absolutely mind-blowing.

What topped it off during his short set, was his impromptu freestyling. During the great song "Get by," he incorporated an episode from the previous night's A's game into the song. Like the best rappers, who are reporters on the mic, Kweli improvised a short rhyme about the incident: a Texas Rangers pitcher, in a fit of rage and frustration, had thrown a chair into the stands and injured a fan. It was just a brief moment in time, but it was also a quick glimpse into this young man's lightning-quick style.

The next time i saw Kweli, it was two years later at a rock club called the Boardwalk in Orangevale, a Sacramento suburb known for it's fondness for late model Camaro's (and about a mile's walk away from the Beet Seeking Missile's home at the time). 

It was a Tuesday night,  and the turn-out was low- maybe forty people in the house. Yet the rapper performed as if we were 40,000. It was epic fun, as he stormed the place with only a turntable and two back-up singers. He even hosted a white-boy dance-off onstage(I think there was one black kid in attendance.)

 But as I looked around the sparsely attended show, all I could think was: Why don't more music lovers,  regardless of where they're from, know about this guy?

Much has developed since that night. Despite relatively low record sales, Kweli's fan base has grown steadily through word-of-mouth buzz. He is hardly what one would consider a rap star, but he prefers it that way. Kweli has built his following in a steady, hard-working fashion.

 Touring constantly, he circles the globe playing big and small venues everywhere. Kweli has the rare ability to deftly straddled the fine line between thought provoking lyrics and being an entertaining party emcee. He is atonishingly gifted at both.

That larger success has eluded him, is part of that choice.  Jay Z summed it best in his song Moment of Clarity-"If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably be, lyrically Talib Kweli." Unlike many big box rappers, Kweli has managed to retain his creativity and keep his integrity intact throughout a 15-year career.

His latest, the long-awaited Prisoner of Conscious, may be where his perseverance finally pays off. It's his first release that combines the elements of great production and the feel of his live sound. It's also the first release that marks his complete financial independence as an artist, after disbanding his last record label and reorganizing things so that he has complete artistic and financial control of his music. In many ways, it's a new peak for the artist.

Prisoner of Conscious contains a variety of sounds. The album's biggest two production triumphs are capturing Kweli's live verbal cadence and adding a wide range of guests, who exceed expectations. Kweli keeps the listener engaged with little idiosyncratic commands that are so customary during his live performances. It's a repetitive process where Kweli squeezes these into the smallest spaces of each song and they fit like small puzzle pieces that make the picture clearer as his high-speed vocabulary washes over you in this age of distractions.

Likewise, the artist has utilized guest appearances in the past, but never to this extent. Sometimes that's a recipe for failure, but Kweli gets the best out of each performer. The list is impressive, featuring up and coming artists like Miguel and Kendrick Lamar along well-known names like Buster Rhymes.

 "I love music/I'm complete in my devotion," intones Kweli on the autobiographical "Turnt Up," the album's third track. Here, Kweli alludes to the cerebral influence of his mother, an English professor at Medgar Evans College in New York City.  His love for music oozes from each track. The next song, "Come here," which features rising star Miguel, is a lyrical sauna. It has a sensual Marvin Gaye fell to it . In a perfect world, you would hear this song drifting smoothly from car speakers all summer long,

Kweli also documents his constant travels around the world on the record. On "Favela Love," Kweli recounts some memorable thoughts on a balcony in Rio de Janeiro with the help of Brazilian singer Seu Jorge. "A feeling of panic engulfin' the whole planet/Yet my words are slow dancin', my language is romantic." Elsewhere, he drops a reference to a show at Sacramento's Ace of Spades on the whirlwind "High Life," a song that has the flavor of Ghanian style hip-life music.

He calls out phony rappers and has fun trading boasts with Busta Rhymes on "Rocket Ships." On the quirky "Upper Echelon" he says "Rap been laughable over the last year or two." However, he says it best on "High Life"-"I'm fishing with dynamite/now I got a freezer full of rappers." Part of the reason this album is so refreshing, is that Kweli doesn't mince words when being critical about the genre that he loves so much-or anything else.

Kweli returns to his biggest strengths-challenging the everyday perceptions that keep many in our country so stuck in the same place. He calls out the whiners that pollute the internet and airwaves with lyrics like "Stop it. With all the soap operas and the soap boxes" and "They're saying that we need a revolution, but their passion is reduced to all-caps on a computer."

All of this is set to a variety of uptempo beats, catchy hooks and notebooks full of thought-provoking metaphors. Chances are this will be his biggest album to date. But no matter what happens, Kweli will make out well, especially now that he has become a completely independent entity.

And don't forget that he sometimes pairs with Mos Def (now Yasmin Bey) in the legendary Black Star. Lesser known, is Idle Warship, an amazing electronica/rock/rap project with longtime collaborator Res.Some nights he just drops in and DJs at clubs to keep his feet to the ground. It's called creativity people. Keep goin' Kweli!


Here is the video of "High Life"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvTNj5--a9o

 Or a live version of "Turnt Up"
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTnxCmDXBsU

And finally, the GREAT Kweli classic "Get By"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2ou1Yh1IVY

When we were Kings

The Beet Seeking Missile was saddened to hear of the passing of the great Slayer guitarist/songwriter Jeff Hanneman earlier today. The musician had been suffering from a terrible flesh-eating disease called Necrotizing Fasciitis that he contracted from a spider bite a couple of years ago while on tour in South America. He perished from liver failure related to the condition. Hanneman was 49 years old.

Born in Oakland, California, the young Hanneman was fascinated by his father's tales of World War II as well as his older brother's experiences in the Vietnam War. Much of this influenced his songwriting, which often portrayed the starkness of war and other dark aspects of the human condition. Additionally, he was raised by these men to become a huge Raiders fan. It was no great irony, when years later, the first full-length Slayer concert video was shot by NFL Films. 

He met guitarist Kerry King in 1981 and after forming Slayer together, the two quickly became the twin demons of thrash in a band that was the epitome of speed metal with a punk attitude. The band became a favorite of both punks and metalheads with their no holds barred approach, propelling them on a similar tangent with Metallica, to become the twin kings of the thrash ranks.

 Much of their music was characterized by big, fast, memorable riffs and Hanneman's chaotic phrasing, that always contained an element or two of beautiful, twisted melody. He was a fan favorite who went all out onstage every night, sporting Dead Kennedys stickers on his guitar and a Raiders jersey on his person.
Hanneman wrote or cowrote many of the band's most recognizable songs including "Angel of Death," "Seasons in the Abyss" and "Behind the crooked cross." Although his health had kept him off the road for the last couple of years, at the time of his death, he was reportedly working on new Slayer material.

The Beet Seeking Missile first saw Slayer on the Reign in Blood tour in 1986 at the El Dorado Saloon in Sacramento. That album, still the best 29 minutes of metal ever recorded, was played in it's entirety in front of the kind of fierce crowd that came to define the band's fan base for the next 25 years. I was completely blown away by the aggressive attack coming through the Marshall stacks and once made the mistake of wandering too close to King's stack-and still have a decent amount of ear damage to show for it.

I don't recall the final count of Slayer shows I've been to over the years but it's probably about fifteen. Every one of those shows became a great place to meet up with some of my dearest music following friends over the years. Slayer continues to inspire an unparalled tribal passion amongst the lovers of their music.

As a writer, my personal highlight occurred near the beginning of the Seasons in Abyss tour at the Henry J. Kaiser in Oakland. The band had just returned from Egypt, where they had shot the video for the title track and had ridden all night by bus to get to the venue after getting off a plane in L.A.

I encountered a drowsy looking Hanneman walking toward the dressing room and introduced myself . I asked him if I could have an interview. He said he wasn't really awake yet, but to hit him up after the show and he'd be glad to talk. At that, he sat down, cracked open a St.Pauli Girl and started a video game (Super Nintendo).

After an epic set, I waited backstage as the band entertained a huge entourage of well wishers and starstruck folks. When Hanneman had signed his share of autographs, he sought me out and we sat down for an interview where he was glad to answer any and all questions that I had for him. Very polite and professional and a hell of a nice fellow. It amazed me that this writer of so many dark classics was so affable in the way of The Dude from The Big Lebowski.

The last time I saw Slayer was at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium was a few years back and the band was still bringing it with the same fierceness as their early days. The bloodlust "Slay-er! Slay-er! Slay-er!" chants of their fans were filled the air with the same passion as the early days. I recalled how fighter pilots in the Gulf War had requested Slayer's "War Ensemble" to be blared on the runways of Kuwait before they took off on missions over Iraq.
 I had recently seen a great documentary about Muhammad Ali's 1974 "Rumble in the jungle" with George Foreman in Zaire called "When we were Kings." The locals despised Foreman because he had traveled to Zaire with a German Shepard. Little did he know, when he got off the plane with that dog, that the Dutch Imperialists who controlled the country had used that breed to viciously control unruly crowds who had the audacity to rise up against them. Thus the locals would chant "Ali boma ye, Ali boma ye" which translates to "Ali, kill him" as Ali went on training runs on the rural roads of the country.

Naturally, I had to try out a little "Slayer, boma ye!" on this rabid crowd of loyalists. It seemed to click. Fitting, since like Ali, the band remain kings to many of their fans all over the world.
Jeff Hanneman, you will be sorely missed.

Long Live Slayer! And Long Live the memory of the great Jeff Hanneman! Feel free to share your Slayer and Jeff Hanneman memories with The Beet Seeking Missile.

Chemical Warfare '85

 Seasons in the Abyss-The Video

 

She don't love me, she loves my automobile

ZZ Top in the pre-"Sharp Dressed Man" days

"With my New York brim and my gold tooth displayed, no one will give me trouble because they know I've got it made."-I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide
During my 14th summer, my parents made the wise choice to ship this precocious Greek/Italian lad off to the podunk town of Lincoln, California. The gig was to go wash dishes at a restaurant owned by some Greek friends. Being from the sticks myself, I quickly acquainted myself with Main Street. Not much there to do or see. Lots of pick-ups being driven with one arm crooked at a sun-baked 90 degree angle out the window.
It was on one such ride, with the son of the couple who owned the restaurant, that I became acquainted with ZZ Top. At the time, the band had been together for almost a dozen years.Currently, they are the longest touring group with the same line-up, followed by Golden Earring and Rush. This summer will be their 44th together as a trio.
Back in the early 80's, rock radio actually rocked and Sacramento's KZAP was a great example of that. Naturally, it was just out of range in Tracy, where I had originally embarked on this Greyhound journey. Or at least it wouldn't come through on my dad's radio dial, which was always stuck on sports talk. Anyways, here I was, riding in this root beer brown Chevy step-side and suddenly "Party on the patio" comes blaring out of the speakers and cracks me across the head with it's guitar and whips hook. I had never heard anything quite like it.
The basic premise of the song was that these locals would find a vacant house with a hot tub, proceed to have an impromptu party where anyone was welcome-as long as they brought booze or a bikini, and raise hell.The only standing rule was to jump the fence and run for it if the cops showed up. The song blazes with infectious bearded boogie- vocalist/guitarist Billy Gibbons vocals an urgent staccato cadence. The whole thing races by in under 3 minutes. But what a ride!
I had to find out more for myself about this Texas barroom band and immediately immersed myself in the album from which the song had come- El Loco. A little while later, I was introduced to it's predecessor Deguello, on my friend Frosty's Hi-Fi. I was immediately smitten and it remains a top ten favorite to this day.
Those of you familiar with El Loco, know it contains such lascivious gems as "Tube Snake Boogie" and "Pearl Necklace," both considered modern day double-entendre standards. Overall, it's a solid record with some fine bluesy gems like "I wanna drive you home" and the synth experimentation on the trippy stomper "Groovy little hippy pad" is kinda cool too. However, the defining moment of utter weirdness on this record is "Ten foot pole." The song starts off with a shuffling, mumbling scat of a vocal, then the breakdown section switches gears to a bluesy vocal rasp and a guitar part that is kind of a jagged blues meltdown. Great song. Someday I'll figure out what the hell they are singing about on that one.
Deguello, on the other hand, is the nadir,* or high point of the band's career.  Prior to the making of the album, the band had been on a damn fine roll with early albums that were rooted in the dirty blues like Rio Grande Mud and Tres Hombres. Those records had spawned gems like "Francine," "Waiting at the bus stop/Jesus just left Chicago" and "La Grange." But the group went on a three year hiatus due to the after effects of their Worldwide Texas Tour that had followed.This excursion had featured live animals onstage-including a longhorn steer, a buffalo, rattlesnakes and two vultures. Also traveling with the band were a saguaro and prickly pear cactus or two. This two year undertaking had driven them to the point of exhaustion and insanity. The buffalo needed a rest as well. They took three years off before going back to the studio.
When the group gathered in the studio again, recharged and full of life, they kicked-off Deguello with the beautiful "I thank you," a soul classic that Isaac Hayes had penned for Sam and Dave in the late 60's. In fact, Deguello teeters wonderously between blues power and freak power like no one ever has heard before or since.There's a cover of bluesman Elmore James' "Dust my broom" and "leopard skin tights" and a call and response in "Lowdown in the street." There's the great funky soloing on "Cheap sunglasses," one of the band's most identifiable tracks, that demonstrates a fuller sound for the groovin' thump of bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard.
 But the powerhouse of this record is the back to back pairing of "I'm bad, I'm nationwide" and "Fool for your stockings."  The former summarizes the ZZ Top philosophy: Hot rods, hot broads and bad-ass attitude.Gibbons plays a wicked guitar on the track as his phalanges effortlessly slide up and down the neck, dripping with emotive finger grease.
On "Fool for your stockings," a slow, steamy number, Gibson makes his intentions clear, in a subtle way. The jazzy blues licks that propel the solo on this song, are some of the finest he's put on record. In fact, the whole record is tracked almost perfectly, moving seamlessly blending between sounds from different eras that are all fused together by a vision to make a great rockin' record that pushes the boundaries of blues and strange, funky weirdness.

Rocking out on the World Wide Texas Tour

*We all know that the band's history doesn't end with those two albums. Eliminator, which followed El Loco, made them MTV darlings. With it's catchy hooks and slick outlaw imagery, the band saw success like never before. After continuing to veer further into pop territory, they steered back to their bluesy roots about fifteen years ago.
This summer ZZ Top will be opening for Kid Rock. I could stop there but I won't.
 I continue to be mystified by Kid Rock's appeal. I just can't find anything all that interesting or worthy in the guy's music.His biggest hit is a straight-up rip-off of two extremely recognizable songs with a few words changed?
But then that horror was topped when I saw the concert flyer for the show, and Uncle Kracker, the third band on the bill, was given nearly the same font size as the second seeded bearded bunch.Uncle Kracker?! It's amazing what passes for southern-fried groove with suburban white folk and other light beer drinkers these days. Rodney Dangerfield rolls in his grave at the lack of respect.

So for now, when the weather is heating up and the feeling is just right, the Beet Seeking Missile will open a beer, put on his sunglasses and some ZZ Top on the hi-fi will more than likely get his mojo correct.

"And the choice is up to you 'cause they come in two classes/Rhinestone shades or cheap sunglasses."
Cheap Sunglasses


*Example of the Beet Seeking Missile going a little haywire with the thesaurus.

Coachella Smoachella!

Over the past weekend, hipsters have been flocking in droves to the high desert to see the latest electronic dance crazes, college radio chart toppers and countless others. There's no mistaking it, there are always lots of really great bands at Coachella, but lately the big festival has been angling towards becoming the music industry's top itunes sales tool.

But there was no need to travel all that distance and sleep in the dirt-plenty of time for that later. You could have just ventured out to the Blue Lamp on Alhambra last Saturday night and had your world rocked all kinds of ways.We had a double-dose of madness and magic all in one little room last night.

First, the highly anticipated debut of Brubaker, named for the 1980 Robert Redford film. To describe the show, I'll attempt an analogy from another 80's movie-"Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Do you remember the scene where the kids leave Cameron's dad's babied 61 Ferrari 250 GT Spider with the dubious looking valet, who says "You guys have nothing to worry about, I'm a professional?" Then, instead of parking it, he proceeds to go for a roaring joyride through the streets of Chicago. Brubaker was the sound of that car and the attitude of the valet. There was no pussy-futting around. They took that thing out on the road, punched it up to high speeds and drove it like it was supposed to be driven. Brubaker nailed it! Fasten your Goddamn seatbelts and hope they play near you soon!!


Ironically, headliners Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, had just played Coachella the previous day and were in fine form as well. They blasted through a great set, sounding punk as hell, with Jello occassionally indicting everyone from Ba"Rock"Star" Obama to the greedy money addicts running the Wall Street. Wonder if the eletctro dance kids in the desert knew that "California Uber Alles" was originally written about Governor Jerry Brown??

See what a finski can do to a guy's attitude?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVACbEHkV2Q

Brubaker

One band against a cruel system.

Years ago, the Sacramento band Kai Kln were playing a show in the Bay Area with Victim's Family, the legendary hardcore band on Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles label. Biafra, the former Dead Kennedy's singer was in attendance that night. After Kai Kln finished their set, he approached drummer Neil Franklin and complimented his drumming. After a pause, the punk provocateur wryly added, "But, your music is a little too Woodstock-ish for me."

Flash forward and ironically, the two are on the same bill at the Blue Lamp in Sacramento this Saturday night. Or maybe not so ironic. Franklin is playing as part of a supergroup that features his old Kai Kln band mate Gene Smith along with Victim's Family/Triclops bass monster Larry Boothroyd and the gifted guitarist Christian Riley of Blu Chunks/Walrus fame.

Meanwhile, headliners Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine feature Victim's Family guitarist Ralph Spight and the amazing bassist Andrew Weiss of Ween/Rollins band fame. The rest of the band includes drummer Paul Della Pelle, formerly of  Helios Creed and guitarist Kimo Ball. Given Biafra's agitprop bent, the group's music is about many things political-including torture policies and austerity. Their album titles include-"The audacity of hype," "Advanced methods of questioning" and their latest"White people & the damage done."

 The Brubaker bandmates, along with Spight,  have been close friends for quite awhile. Riley has most recently played with Franklin and Smith in the Ricky and Del Connection, a bluesier infusion of Kai Kln.

Smith, who wrote and sang most of both Kai Kln's and Ricky and Del's music, is doing the same with Brubaker. Smith is a natural writer, with a proclivity towards the bombast of 70's power chords and melodies, albeit revved up to a tempo that some have called "Cream on 78 rpm. "Gene has been on a writing tear lately," said Franklin of the singer/guitarist. "We have five new songs that we would love to record." It will be interesting to hear the contributions of Boothroyd and Riley, considering their combined jazz, punk, funk and metal influences. Propelling it all will be Franklin, who in addition to being one helluva drummer, is also the band's onstage spokesman, wise cracker and all-around talent at keeping things loose. If he were a baseball player, you'd want him in your clubhouse.

Since both Boothroyd and Riley reside in the Bay Area, the group has been going between practcing in Franklin's Sacramento garage and Smith and Franklin heading over to Emeryville. Franklin feels that things are getting tighter and better with every practice. "We're getting back to really crushing it with electric guitars!" he chirped."Hopefully, we're a little heavier than Woodstock these days."

As the famous line from Brubaker goes-"Mess with me now, you're gonna regret it later."

Come out and see for yourself. It's going to be a night of beautiful madness at The Blue Lamp.And if you're on your best behavior, you just might hear a little Dead Kennedy's too.

Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine
w/ Brubaker
@ The Blue Lamp, Saturday, April 13
9pm   21 and over

                                                     The cast and crew of Brubaker:

 Kai Kln rocking in Cesar Chavez Park in 2007
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrneFRpSHYM

New venue, new headliners

Last Friday night brought The California Honeydrops to Sacramento's newest venue-The Assembly. The Honeydrops are an up and coming band from the Oakland, while the Assembly is a new space near K and 10th.

The Honeydrops started slowly, but once they got it going they drew the crowd on the dance floor with their accessible sound, a funky blend of blues, R & B, and most notably Second Line New Orleans jazz. The five piece group is led by vocalist/guitarist/trumpateer Lech Wierzyski. Wierzyski is a versatile talent, with a great singing voice and advanced skills on the trumpet. The apex of the band's performance was when all five members left the stage and hit the floor Second Line style, with drummer Ben Malament shining on the cowbell. Malament also plays a mean washboard.

The band have great potential as a live act, but need to figure out a way to consistently boost their sound a bit, particularly with the great variety of instruments that they play. If they plan on headlining medium venues like this, they need to play closer attention to this factor. Their sound was much crisper when they recently opened for ALO at the Fillmore and also at Harlow's. Look for them to have a breakout summer though, after their new album "Like you mean it" hits the streets. From there, they go on to play big festivals like the High Sierra Music Festival, where their "hit the floor" approach will go over big .

The Assembly is the size of a small school cafeteria. There is a spacious floor, a very large stage and a small section of two-tiered lounge seating in the balcony. High utilization is the key word here. The space doubles as a stage for the B Street Theater, which does 7pm improv shows on Friday and Saturday and clears out prior to the music starting. The venue has good sight lines and an impressive looking  lighting rig mounted to the ceiling. The stage is backlit and the curtain is set far to the rear of the stage, giving bands an immense space in which to set up their equipment.

While the facility is nicely set up, it could use a few tweaks over time. Their needs to be more color added to the side walls and the area near the front of the stage to create more warmth in the room. The bar service was pretty slow, so one or two bartenders would be a welcome addition as well. There didn't seem to be much utilization of the big lighting rig on the ceiling, it would be nice to see what that can do. However, the biggest tweak needs to be figuring out how to fill the room more completely with sound. All of these things can be improved over time. And just like the aforementioned band, this venue has big potential. 

The California Honeydrops doing their thing in Sacramento

 And for some live sounds, check out The California Honeydrops recent live performance at the Fillmore:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Os8JOx6WxJY#!