My wife and I went to hear Morrissey at the Santa Fe Convention Center last night, Nov. 19th.  The setlist posted here agrees with my recollection: every song on the list was played, and the order seems correct although I wasn't keeping track in real time.  In detail:

I Want The One I Can't Have / You Have Killed Me / You're The One For Me, Fatty / Black Cloud / When Last I Spoke To Carol / Everyday Is Like Sunday / Maladjusted / Meat Is Murder / I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris / Action Is My Middle Name / Speedway / People Are The Same Everywhere / Ouija Board, Ouija Board / All The Lazy Dykes / Satellite Of Love / Scandinavia / I Know It's Over // Still Ill

I'll probably write a lengthier review later; but a quick reaction is that if he's appearing near you later on this tour (check here) and it's not sold out, you should just get tickets and go.  I'm not a seasoned Morrissey fan---my familiarity was basically limited to the two-CD "Best Of" collection by the Smiths---but I'm a big fan now.   Granted I haven't been to a huge number of shows in the rock/pop vein, broadly construed, but his is probably one of the best two such concerts that I've ever been to.  (The other one in this league was Bob Marley at Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, in 1978...the first US date of his Kaya tour.)   The two key things about Morrissey seem to me to be first, honest, emotionally true expression of what he thinks is important about life, and second, doing this through beautiful, melodic songs, beautifully sung.  His voice is clear and sweet, but with just the right amount of richness and resonance.  The result can be downright poetic, whether lyrical, stirring, melancholy, or all three.  The sound at the convention center was excellent, the words were mostly very clear.  A great place to attend a concert---being able to get so near the stage so easily was fantastic (though it wasn't enough for many who jumped the security fence, Morrissey then grasping their hands as he walked the front of the stage).  The band was excellent, tight and rocking hard, equally capable of putting over piano-heavy ballads and power rock.  Overall, they probably come down more toward hard rock than his typical backing, and this was no bad thing.  Morrissey came across as totally committed to communicating with his audience, and to pure, on-pitch, beautifully-phrased, from-the-heart singing.  The songs, including recent ones some of which are not even on record yet, were mostly excellent to great.  I may get around to a more detailed review later, but just wanted to put it out there that this was one truly great show by a man who is the genuine article---a star if I have ever seen one.  Don't miss a chance to hear him.

New album "Only in Dreams" by the Dum Dum Girls is out on Sub Pop records. The quick summary? Doo-wop with fuzz guitars. Worthwhile.  Check it out.

Dum Dum Girls - Only in Dreams by subpop

Choice bits include the driving Always Looking (whose grungish main strain is followed by some even more retro stylings); the garage-fuzz-meets-50s Bedroom Eyes; the snappy, poppy In My Head; Heartbeat with its doowopish verse; Wasting Away; and the slow guitar anthem Comin' Down (with a sound, and chord changes, reminiscent of Knocking on Heaven's Door).  But really, it's all pretty choice.

At the free  AHA festival at the Santa Fe Railyard last Sunday, I discovered that Santa Fe has a first-rate post-punk rock band, Venus Bogardus, originally formed in Bath, England in 2005.  The band includes James Reich, guitar and vocals, and Hannah Levbarg, bass and vocals.   They seem to usually play in a trio, with different drummers over the years...the current drummer seems to be Luke Carr.  They played with an excellent taped drum track on the stage at El Museo Cultural, a very tight, energetic but not overbearing (and not too loud!)  set with plenty of excellent songwriting---e.g. their opener, Research---in evidence.   Their sound and songs reminded me at times of Sonic Youth and the Minutemen---and it turns out they opened for Mike Watt and the Missingmen in 2009.  They have several albums out, but they played quite a few new songs.  Hard for me to see why a band this good hasn't made it bigger yet---their songs, while definitely punk-influenced, are often very catchy, and have plenty of interesting structure and variety.  Perhaps the lyrics are a bit arty, abstruse, and/or political for mainstream popularity.   One of the recently written songs' chorus goes "We got the politics, we got the politics, we got the gender politics".     One of their shoutier, more repetitive songs (I think it has basically two sections, a verse and a chorus, each of which is rather simple, just a few repeated measures), but still catchy.  Then again, I guess I rarely  (to a first approximation, never) hear even the catchiest stuff from Sonic Youth or the Minutemen on the radio....but Sonic Youth and Mike Watt both appear to be able to keep going.  So hopefully there's a way for a band this good to survive without the blessing of Clearchannel et. al.

Unfortunately no-one in the audience of 40 or 50 at the Museo was dancing, though there was plenty of room up on stage and about eight young fans were sitting or standing there nodding lightly to the music.  It really begs for some dancing, or at least more vigorous head-nodding.  Pogo, anyone?

Venusbogardus.com has lots of info and (on the homepage blog) free downloads of three live "bootleg" tracks from a Santa Fe Brewing Company performance, of which my favorite is Permanent Notice.   For more listening (and more up to date concert info) you need to visit their Myspace page, where you can listen to five tracks, including the excellent Spitting at the Glass and Judy Davis Lips from their latest CD, Spitting at the Glass.

Here's a player (from their page at Bandcamp.com) with all the tracks from the CD:

Judy Davis Lips shows the Sonic Youth similarities clearly go a lot further than "post punk band with a female bassist"... the intro, with its chiming, oddly-tuned guitars sounds like classic SY, rhythmically too, and the song itself definitely resembles SY's catchier, poppier aspect, though you could perhaps hear some Dead Kennedys in the verse.  But you can't tell me the voiceover starting at 2'20 was not inspired by Kim Gordon.  The modulation, relaxing into a cushion of harmony, into the chorus is exemplifies their songwriting skill.  But chasing influences isn't the main point---whatever their influences, they have their own sound, and do their own thing very well---as the quirky but very catchy song Spitting at the Glass illustrates.

For more music, you can listen to (and purchase) three of their albums at bandcamp.com.

If you don't mind really bad fidelity, this gives an idea what they're currently like live:

Venus Bogardus, "Jacques Rigaut", live at the Atomic Cantina, Albuquerque

Recently read Chris Salewicz' biography of Joe Strummer (titled "Redemption Song").  Good read.  Long swathes of quotes from Strummer's friends, family, and acquaintances are often illuminating, sometimes repetitive.  Interesting to have different people's perspectives, and insights.  In some ways, this gives a real "you are there" feel of how things really were that would be hard to get out of a more conventionally discursive authorial biography.  On the other hand, this also means that one doesn't get quite as coherent an image of how the man did what he did, and one is left with unanswered questions about, and contradictory perspectives on, some matters.  in some ways, a biography in which the author took more of a position, made clearer statements about the subject, might be more satisfying.  Or maybe just an easier read.  This biography makes you think about who this really was, and what his impact was on the people in his life---clearly intense, as was his impact on our culture and music.  And the choice to write it this way avoids the possibility of presenting a partly-false picture of Strummer as told by the author to himself.

I like to read biographies of artists to see how it's done, how it happens.  And yes, I'll admit that this is in part because I wonder if I can use these lessons to help me do something great, or at least satisfying.  My only real complaint about the book is that analysis of the music and especially, how it was made and the musical interaction between Strummer and the other Clash members, especially Mick Jones, is somewhat, though not totally, lacking.  It's clear Strummer and Jones needed each other artistically, were a fantastically synergetic combination, and it also seems clear that Strummer's decision to "fire" Jones, breaking up the Clash, deprived us of some fantastic music they still could have made.

Listening to the posthumous "Streetcore" by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, mixed by Martin Slattery and Scott Shields in part from guide vocals by Strummer and preliminary tracks.  Really excellent, even so.  Perhaps because some of the vocals weren't necessarily intended as the final versions, Strummer sounds relaxed, to good effect, but still reminiscent of the more discursive, rambling, poetic Clash lyrics at times.  "Coma girl" and "Arms Aloft" feature the kind of 16/8 or 8/8 even guitar chinking out the same chord that is almost an alt.cliche by this point (see Snow Patrol...)... but nice stuff.  Arms Aloft goes into a more bouncy guitar-rock chorus on "..arms aloft in Aberdeen".  No wonder I like this bit... I now realize that this is a close relative to the riff to which the Kinks set the words "I believe that you and me..." [last forever] in "All Day and All of the Night", i.e. one of the catchiest, most insistent guitar riffs of all time.  That in itself is a lesson about how musical creation can work---you don't necessarily need to be afraid when bits of something else find their way, perhaps transmuted, into your work...it happens to everyone, including the best of the best.  Of  course, "Arms Aloft" is no "All Day...", but it's nice, the Kinksy bit is tucked into the song naturally and the song doesn't sound like (and isn't) a Kinks ripoff at all.  Get Down Moses is an excellent reggae-drenched song; "Long Shadow" is like Neil Young and Leonard Cohen channeled through Joe.  Midnight Jam, mellow almost psychedelic, slowly swinging guitar-jam (the main hook reminiscent of a particular song from Jefferson Airplane's "Surrealistic Pillow", with a little dub influence on the vocals.  Silver and Gold is Joe doing an acoustic version of what sounds like a classic country/cowby song.  Nice closer.  Must check out his other albums with this configuration, I guess (there are two).

Another late-career Strummer endeavor was his collaboration with the sui generis kick-out-the-jams rave/soul/house/funk/jam band Black Grape (formed from crucial remnants Shaun Ryder and Bez of the Happy Mondays).  Typified by their hit single for the Euro 96 football tournament, the freaky anthem England's Irie, here live at Top of the Pops (Strummer's first appearance there; the Clash promised never to play the show).

Black Grape's first of two albums, It's Great to be Straight, Yeah! is weird but very good in a loose and slightly cheesy way.  Every track seems to be on Youtube.  Not-quite-randomly dipping into the craziness (warning, expect profanity and irreverence, and even (gasp!) bad taste), here's In the Name of the Father.  Prime candidate for any list of Top Ten Songs with Sitar Intro.  Another top track, the reggae-and-soul tinged Shake Your Money.  The Grapes take on a late 60's/early 70's guitar-jam kind of riff in Submarine (with allusions to A Day in the Life).   (If you can figure out what they mean when they sing "and the boy was so proud / of the crocodile on his sock / someone had to tell him / it was planet Reebok", you're thinking too hard.)  One of their better B-sides is Straight out of Trumpton.  But doesn't compare to It's a Big Day in the North... as near as they get to mellow, Balearic-isles house, a genre that I don't listen to much, but that I'm not surprised is improved by convex combination with something like the Grape's hyper-energetic punk/funk craziness.

On Wednesday (March 24), English cellist Steven Isserlis and Hungarian pianist Dénes Várjon gave a concert at Perimeter Institute.  It was fascinating to hear and compare four major sonatas in a broadly Romantic idiom, in one concert, rather than the usual eclectic mix of styles.  The program consisted of Samuel Barber's Opus 6 (1932); Frederyk Chopin's Opus 65 in G minor (1845-6), Robert Schumann's posthumous Violin Sonata No. 3 in A minor (1853), and Ernö Dohnányi's Opus 8 in B flat minor (1899).  Varjon's playing was excellent, reaching the tempest-tossed craggy heights peculiar to Romantic piano writing at appropriate times, but retaining a certain control and clarity, also a rounded percussiveness that I, probably deludedly, think of as particularly Hungarian (evinced in the piano music of Bartok, or the piano of Sandor Vegh).  Isserlis playing was superb, at times sublime.   His expressiveness, his mastery of phrasing and range of moods lit up music that in the hands of lesser players can seem a bit formless in those passages when the main melodies aren't singing out.  The Barber is a work I've not heard much, and would like to hear again.  This Chopin abounds in delightful, soulful melodies, the kind you recognize when you hear them and say to yourself "I've heard that before...so that's where it's from" but for some reason is not a piece I've sought out outside of concerts, to listen to over and over again.  This performance was the best I can recall, and I'm going to go out and find Isserlis' recording of it.  The slow movement was transcendent and sublime.

Another highlight was Isserlis' own transcription of a Schumann violin sonata.  The last two movements in particular had a lot of the folksy, happy, festival-of-song character that is particular to the brighter (but not necessarily less profound) side of Schumann's music.  Images popped into my head of Brahms staying with Clara and Robert at their country place in the Rhine valley, busts of Classical Greeks and Classical musicians decorating drawing rooms, making music subtly and equally infused with folk tunes and Classical elegance, to honor the muses of the gentle side of Romanticism, who dance, clad in long robes and garlanded with flowers, in verdant fields in paintings on the wall.  That kind of thing, but good.  (And no, I hadn't been smoking anything.)

Not the Leonard Cohen song. The Happy Mondays, from Madchester Rave On:

One amazing thing about this olympics was that most of the athletes' gold medal performances were as enthralling and moving, in their distinct ways, as k. d. lang singing fellow-Canadian Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah at the opening ceremonies.