2
30TH ANNUAL TWILIGHT CONCERTS
TWILIGHTSERIES.ORG
30TH ANNUAL TWILIGHT CONCERTS
TWILIGHTSERIES.ORG
Rock on TWILIGHT CONCERT SERIES RETURNS TO THE SANTA MONICA PIER W
hat are you doing every Thursday night of the summer? Santa Monica Pier officials have announced the lineup for the 30th annual Twilight Concert Series. The free shows will be held Thursday nights — as always. Executive Director of the pier Jay Farrand is happy they scored up-andcoming Australians Jagwar Ma. He's also excited about the back-to-back August Thursdays headlined by classics: Lee Scratch Perry and The Zombies. HERE ARE YOUR THURSDAY NIGHTS. July 10: Cults, a popular indie rock duo, will headline the first show. Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin have been lauded critically for their dreamy and dark, vintage sound. James Supercave, an L.A.-based indie pop quintet, will open the show. July 17: The U.S. was late to the Yuna party but they're catching up. The Malaysian singer-songwriter has more than a million Twitter followers (the most of any
TCS act this year) and nine Malaysian Grammy nominations. Her song “Live Your Life” was produced by Pharrell. King, an R&B trio, will set the stage. July 24: The Cayucas are coming home! The Santa Monica natives don't hide from their beach rock label. Papa, an L.A.based rock group, is the opener. July 31: Described by pier officials as “Arabic Electro” Omar Souleyman, hailing from Syria, is in the running for TCS band with the greatest world news hook. The opener for this show hasn't been announced yet. De Lux is the opening act. Aug. 7: Jagwar Ma, an Australian alt rock band, mixes psychedelic rock with guitarpop, which should also mix nicely with a Pacific Ocean sunset. Fascinator opens. Aug. 14: L.A.-based Grammy winners La Santa Cecilia combine cumbia, afrocuban, and bossa nova. Their openers, Sergio Mendoza, a mambo big-band, are chock full of horns. Aug. 21: Almost exactly 50 years after their chart-topping single “She's Not
There,” The Zombies can't be killed. The classic '60s psychedelic rock outfit had two other big singles, “Tell Her No” and “Time of the Season.” They'll take the stage in the heat of the season. Leading off will be the Mystic Braves. The young Angelenos sound like they could have opened for The Zombies back in 1964. Aug. 28: Classic reggae free-spirit LeeScratch Perry will bring his dub to the pier. Perry's played with Bob Marley and innovated the genre on his own. All 13 members of the afrobeat orchestra, Mexico 68, will make the trek from the eastside of L.A. to open the show. Sept. 4: Indie night with Ok Go & Allah-Las. Sept. 11: TCS comes to a soulful conclusion with Charles Bradley. Bradley has a storied past and plays soul and funk that brings you back to the '60s and '70s but he's relatively new to the scene. King James & the Special Men, a New Orleans R&B group, will open the final show.
2014 TWILIGHT CONCERT SERIES SCHEDULE JUL 10 - INDIE POP: CULTS W/ JAMES SUPERCAVE, HOSTED BY MARION HODGES JUL 17 - HEAVENLY VOICES: YUNA W/ KING, HOSTED BY ANTHONY VALADEZ JUL 24 - PCH TOP DOWN SOUNDS: CAYUCAS W/ PAPA, HOSTED BY CHRIS MUCKLEY JUL 31 - SYRIAN ELECTRO STYLE: OMAR SOULEYMAN, HOSTED BY AARON BYRD, DE LUX OPENS AUG 7 - AUSTRALIA ROCKS THE PIER: JAGWAR MA, HOSTED BY JASON BENTLEY, FASCINATOR OPENS AUG 14 - LATIN WAVES: LA SANTA CECILIA W/ SERGIO MENDOZA, HOSTED BY RAUL CAMPOS AUG 21 - THE ZOMBIES W/ MYSTIC BRAVES, HOSTED BY DAN WILCOX AUG 28 - DEEP REGGAE: LEE “SCRATCH” PERRY W/ MEXICO 68, HOSTED BY JEREMY SOLE SEPT 4 – OK GO & ALLAH-LAS SEP 11 - 100% SOUL: CHARLES BRADLEY W/ KING JAMES & THE SPECIAL MEN
3
4
30TH ANNUAL TWILIGHT CONCERTS
TWILIGHTSERIES.ORG
2014 Twilight Concert Series bios WEEK 1
JULY 10
Cults WITH
JAMES SUPERCAVE
“Static” is a breakup album. Just not in the way we think of a breakup album. That cold knot in your stomach when you lose someone? That is not longing for a person. That is dread, uncertainty of what comes next. Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion of Cults are both 24 years old. Today most people of that age, if not all of us, carry this cold knot inside. “There’s a feeling our generation has. The feeling there’s always something better around the corner, that everyone is born to be a star,” Brian says. “The feeling that life is waiting for you, and yet it’s not happening. All of that is static.” Static. The white noise that comes when a signal is lost, or when there are too many signals. What causes an electric shock when two people touch. But also, immobility, distortion. Television is a heavy influence on Cults. Before the first Cults show, Brian ran to the Salvation Army to pick up old TV set to decorate the stage. Brian Oblivion, his stage name, is lifted from a professor in the movie Videodrome, a guy who only appears as a face on a television. Brian has five televisions in his house. Brian says, “I was thinking about the idea of static being all possible frequencies at once-the everything. I could just stare at it forever.” The final track on this new Cults record, “No Hope,” opens and ends with the sound of broadcasting static. “Burn down the bridges…forget tomorrow,” Madeline sings sweetly on the song. Cults has always been a band to look to both past and present. When the young duo arrived on the New York scene in 2010 with the perfectly formed debut single “Go Outside,” it was described as Phil Spector with hip-hop sensibilities, glee soaked in reverb. Sometimes, when Madeline’s friends heard the song, they asked her how they got little boys to sing on it. “That’s just me!” she told them. In fact, if you ask Brian to name his favorite album, he’ll name Home Schooled: The ABCs of Kid Soul, a compilation by the Numero Group, a collection of lost, old R&B recorded by children. Brian adores the crate-digging Chicago reissue label and its dusty, forgotten music. “Whenever we make songs, I picture imaginary bands,” he says. What make-believe bands can be heard on Static? “I Can Hardly Make You Mine” is Petula Clark pounding a “Downtown” piano beat while fronting a Jesus and Mary Chain maelstrom. The bouncing, shimmering “Always Forever” and “We’ve Got It” rocket girl-group doo-wop into the shoegazer dream-pop stratosphere. “High Road” gallops through a spaghetti western soundscape in a sandstorm of strings and organ, like Morricone teaching us how to walk like an Egyptian. Though such fantasy might be too shallow for the record’s emotional centerpiece, “Were Before,” a duet that is
CULTS
quintessential Cults. “We both needed our own world, just the way were before,” Brian and Madeline sing at the same time, though not necessarily together. Static is funkier and denser than its predecessor, something immediately apparent from the cool strut of “High Road.” “I started out as a bass player,” Brian says. “That’s how I write songs, on bass.” Oblivion then fleshes the songs out with drums, guitar, piano, farfisa, strings, layers and layers. He plays just about all of the sounds on Static himself, save for slide guitar. “Everything today is party, party, dance, dance nonstop,” Brian says. “There’s room for more moody and introspective dance music. We wanted to make a groovy record.” There’s a cliché that claims you have your whole life to make your debut album and one year to make your second. The immediacy of Internet fame has killed that. Brian and Madeline were raised in San Diego and both attended film school in New York City. At 21, the two moved in together in Manhattan. Cults began merely as apartment hobby, with Brian fiddling with fragments of tunes and Madeline trilling on top. They put songs online. In a matter of days, the two were receiving fan e-mails and gig offers. From there, the blogs quickly sniffed them out. Soon, a contract with Columbia. A tour that lasted nearly three years. A self-titled 2011 debut recorded in schedule gaps. Lollapalooza, All Tomorrows Parties, Bonnaroo, Pitchfork. Malmö, Singapore, Buffalo, Melbourne. By the end of the cycle, Cults were exhausted and separated. Brian and Madeline began recording Static with friend Shane Stoneback, who co-
produced their debut. The process was the same as ever. “I’d be in one room working on lyrics. Brian would be working on finishing a song. We’d come to the point where we couldn’t get any further and switch places.” Madeline enjoyed having a set schedule. She stopped having panic attacks. The former couple found they worked better than when they were together. “We were not as afraid to speak the truth.” Despite any newfound ease with internal criticism, Cults were bursting with ideas-and recordings. The group found itself with six different versions of songs. “It was my fault,” Brian admits. “If you’re working with a friend, it’s easier to forget you’re spending money.” So the two decided to finish the record with someone they have never worked with before. Cults took the tracks to Atlanta and producer Ben Allen. They worked in a studio filled with vintage lunch boxes and a control room made of an abandoned boxcar. The fun part in Georgia was hacking away. That string part they worked on for two days? Screw it, throw it out. Slashing at the songs felt invigorating. Because really, that is the question lying beneath Static: What can you live without?
WEEK 2
JULY 17
Yuna WITH
KING
In a remarkably short period of time, Yuna has risen from regional D.I.Y. notoriety to full-on international stardom. In the
process, the charismatic young singersongwriter from Malaysia-who makes her Verve Records debut with Nocturnal-has become the first artist from her homeland to conquer the American market. The ease with which Yuna has transitioned to border defying mainstream success shouldn’t be surprising, considering the effortlessly universal appeal of her organic blend of contemporary pop, acoustic folk and soulful R&B. The artist’s personally charged songs are deeply felt yet melodically irresistible, combining her engaging voice and expressive songcraft with imaginative production to create wholly distinctive music that’s won her comparisons with the likes of Feist, Adele and Norah Jones. Recorded in Los Angeles, Nocturnal marks a major step forward for Yuna, expanding upon the achievements of her self-titled 2012 debut album and its Pharrell Williams-produced breakthrough hit “Live Your Life.” Nocturnal’s 11 sparkling new originals include the warmly intoxicating first single “Falling,” produced by Robin Hannibal of Quadron and the soul-pop group Rhye; the effervescent, uplifting “Rescue,” produced by English pop auteur Chris Braide; the breezy, upbeat “I Wanna Go,” produced by Michael Einziger of Incubus; and the hauntingly bittersweet “Someone Who Can,” produced by Chad Hugo of the Neptunes. “I feel like I get to show a more mature side of myself on these songs,” Yuna states, adding, “I’m a different person than I was when I made the last album. I’ve seen and experienced a lot of new and exciting things, and I was inspired to write SEE BIOS PAGE 5
30TH ANNUAL TWILIGHT CONCERTS
TWILIGHTSERIES.ORG
BIOS FROM PAGE 4
about those things. “I also got to explore a lot of different genres and different sounds on these songs,” continues. “We did a lot of experimenting, doing things like working with traditional Malaysian instruments and making them work in the context of a pop song that sounds current. Because I come from a folkie-singer-songwriter background, in the beginning I was really stubborn about trying new things. But I learned to enjoy the beauty of what can happen when creative people get together and come up with something new. I love mixing all these genres together, and I was fortunate to have all of these really talented producers to help bring these ideas to life.” Yuna’s North American breakthrough in 2012 saw the artist winning widespread acclaim while achieving several significant career milestones. Rolling Stone praised her combination of “certified indie cred and massive pop potential,” while The New York Times described her music as “gorgeous.” She performed high-profile sets at the Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo festivals, and appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Yuna’s music was also featured in several films, including her stellar cover of The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” in Oliver Stone’s Savages and her collaboration with Owl City on “Shine Your Way” for the hit animated feature The Croods. Growing up in Malaysia’s capital city of Kuala Lumpur, Yuna Zarai was exposed to a wide variety of homegrown and western music, thanks in large part to her father’s wide-ranging tastes in American rock, pop, blues and jazz. She began writing her own confessional songs, most of them in English, at the age of 14. She was still in her teens when she began performing her compositions in public, initially accompanying herself on acoustic guitar and later forming a full band. Yuna experienced success early on, with a quartet of popular indie releases in
Malaysia, beginning with her self-titled 2008 EP. That debut disc became a major seller at home, producing the hit single “Deeper Conversation.” The following year, Yuna won the first of several Anugerah Industri Muzik awards, Malaysia’s equivalent of the Grammy. During the same period, the artist also found time to attend law school and open IAMJETFUEL, a successful women’s clothing boutique. Thanks to a powerful online fan base and international word-of-mouth, news of Yuna’s talents reached the United States, where she signed with the American management firm Indie Pop. She also took her first steps into the American marketplace, releasing the five-song sampler EP Decorate on the Fader label in 2011. “Live Your Life” and the Yuna album arrived on the American scene the early months of 2012, establishing her as a popular stateside presence. She performed “Live Your Life” on the late-night TV shows Conan and Last Call with Carson Daly. She was also featured on NPR and the CBS Evening News, and in such notable print outlets as The New York Times, Billboard, Elle, Vibe, Allure, Seventeen, Marie Claire and even National Geographic, which described as being “as fresh, honest and deeply personal as anything by Bon Iver or tUnEyArDs.” Having traveled extensively and absorbed a wide array of English-language music early in life, Yuna was able to make a comfortable transition to creating music in America. “Coming to America was a lot of fun for me, because it’s an amazing working atmosphere for musicians and artists,” she says. “I had fun when I recorded in Malaysia, but America is so big and so inspiring, and there are so many talented people to work with. “I don’t really like the idea of putting myself in any category now,” she concludes. “But as a pop artist, I feel like it’s easy for me to maneuver from one thing to another and try different things. To me, it’s all just music, and if you have good lyrics and good melodies and good production, people won’t care what you call it. I think that people are looking for music
CAYUCAS
that’s real and honest and that they can relate to emotionally. I think we’ve created that with Nocturnal. The whole project was a challenge for me, but I’m very happy with the way it turned out.”
WEEK 3
JULY 24
Cayucas WITH
PAPA
No one knows summer like Santa Monica’s Zach Yudin, a man of leisure who recognizes “the epic” in something as simple as a twilight bicycle ride or a short drive up the coast. As Cayucas, Yudin has set about creating an impressionistic portrait of summer’s long, bittersweet dazzle. An avid bird-watcher, Yudin majored in both Music Theory/Production and Japanese. He spent a post-grad year living and teaching in Tokyo, then taking the past couple of years to hone the sound of Cayucas. He posted a couple of songs online, picking up a lot of love and attention, but it was only when he entered the studio with producer/multi-instrumentalist Richard Swift last year that Cayucas was truly defined - sun-inspired jams that touch upon The Animals, Harry Belafonte and the surfer-folk mysticism of the Northwest.
WEEK 4
JULY 31
Omar Souleyman WITH
YUNA
5
DE LUX
Omar Souleyman — the Syrian artist who not only changed the vibe of weddings throughout the Middle East with his Shaabi street sound but also brought it to the West through his notorious late night festival slots — has finally recorded an album. After three compilations and a live release, Wenu Wenu is his first album to
be recorded in a studio and was produced by Kieran Hebden (Four Tet). Born in 1966, Souleyman grew up in Ra’s al’-Ayn, a Syrian town in the northeastern region of Jazeera. That’s where he first heard Syrian folk music played on a longnecked lute called a bozouki and rebab, a single-stringed fiddle. He enlisted Rizan Sa’id from a local Kurdish combo in 1996. The pair electrified Souleyman’s acoustic music - playing it harder, faster, louder, and more thrilling than ever before. He became an increasingly prominent act on the local wedding circuit, eventually generating an estimated 500 bootleg recordings and plenty of wild YouTube videos. Dabke is a foot-stomping circle dance popular throughout the Middle East; in Syria, men and women perform it together. The one-time mason has been updating his native land’s traditional dabke dance music since 1996. Speaking in Arabic through a translator from his - let’s hope - temporary home in nearby Turkey, Souleyman describes Wenu Wenu as being “nearly live.” Clearly delighted by the results, Souleyman tips his keffiyeh to Hebden for capturing the singer and his longtime musical partner, the keyboardist-composer Rizan Sa’id, at their purest, with very little overdubbing. Although he’s received many impressive recent offers, Souleyman says wedding gigs are a thing of the past for him, due in part to the situation in Syria, and that he now prefers to perform in concert. His international audience is expanding, thanks to projects such as his wellreceived remixes for Björk’s Biophilia, and he’s seen his influence spread around the Middle East. Souleyman characterizes his dabke style as particularly flexible. Where as localized, rural dabke known as baladi is inflexible, Souleyman’s dabke can be played faster or slower, with different words and tunes. “It works with everything,” he says. SEE BIOS PAGE 6
6
30TH ANNUAL TWILIGHT CONCERTS
TWILIGHTSERIES.ORG
BIOS FROM PAGE 5
Title track “Wenu Wenu” is relatively new and, according to Souleyman, a real crowd pleaser. It’s a four-on-the-floor dynamo, with brain-melting synthesizer accompaniment reminiscent of a space ship landing in the desert. “Ya Yumma,” on the other hand, has been in Souleyman’s repertoire since 1995. According to Souleyman, the hard-charging “Nahy” refers to an older style of poetry in which each stanza contains six lines. And “Khattaba” became a much-covered Arab-world hit after airing on TV in 2006. With words by the poet Madmoud Harbi, Souleyman describes it as a sort of “remix” and points out that the rhythm is baladi rather than shaabi. Souleyman sings in Arabic and Kurdish on the traditional Kurdish song “Warni Warni,” which contains some nifty electronic percussion on top of its technofolk beat. In the mysterious “Mawal Jamar,” Souleyman sings about being willing to walk over hot coals for his beloved, adding that “mawal” is a form of Arabic improvisation. And, finally, “Yagbuni” (a term of endearment from Souleyman’s Jazeera region) ends the album with an electro-shaabi bang. Often described as “Syrian Techno” and recorded primarily live in the studio, Wenu Wenu distills Omar’s live performances into a fireball of Middle Eastern passion and excitement.
WEEK 5
AUGUST 8
Jagwar Ma FASCINATOR
Jagwar Ma is a musical project, est. Nov 2011 by Jono Ma and Gabriel Winterfield. It all starts with the single “Come Save Me”. A celebration of love and loss, lifted by human harmonies only to be sliced apart by the sharp contemporary programming of the song acting as dagger to the tale. This juxtaposition of voice and electronics being a signature of Jagwar Ma. Their collaboration started in 2010 at a performance by FLRL, the Sydney based kraut-experiment that was “a band without members” and a stage of revolving musicians. Their musical history already well known to each other at the time,
Jono from the band Lost Valentinos and Gabriel from Ghostwood. Those shared stages at FLRL shows gave way to studio jams and home recordings, radio frequency manipulation, TR808 patterns, MPCs loops, vintage amps and a treasured 7 inch collection. Jagwar found a soul in and amongst all that electricity. Described as sounding like J-Dilla playing Primal Scream covering the Beatles. In Australia “Come Save Me” has been embraced by Triple J who spun it to the #1 most played spot on the station. In the UK it was released through a new 7’s label started by two A&Rs from the legendary XL Records. In the US the song finds high rotation on airwaves of the lauded KCRW and the bands signs with the Windish Agency. Currently the band is ensconced in a castle in France bouncing beats through the dungeons, singing through its hallowed hallways and breathing life into their debut album for the summer of 2012. The first ever festival appearance in Australia for Jagwar Ma will be the 2013 Big Day Out!
WATCHING THE SHOW from the beach tonight?
WEEK 6
AUGUST 14
La Santa Cecilia WITH
SERGIO MENDOZA Y LA ORKESTRA
La Santa Cecilia consists of accordionist and requintero Jose “Pepe” Carlos, bassist Alex Bendana, percussionist Miguel Ramirez, and lead vocalist La Marisoul, whose captivating voice sings about love, loss and heartbreak. Their influences range from Miles Davis to The Beatles, Led Zeppelin to Janis Joplin and Mercedes Sosa to Ramon Ayala. Their common love of music and openness to all genres led them to the concept of La Santa Cecilia in 2007 named after the patron saint of musicians. In 2013, the band released their major label debut Treinta Dias (30 Days), which featured a captivating collaboration with fan Elvis Costello on “Losing Game.” Now, just after their GRAMMY win for Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album, the band presents their new album Someday New. The album features seven new tracks, which include a heartfelt Spanglish rendition of The Beatles iconic “Strawberry Fields Forever”,plus the unforgettable new Mexican classic “Como Dios Manda”; as well as a fresh new radio-edit of their single “Monedita” and the full version of their moving, and militant “ICE - El Hielo.”
WEEK 7
AUGUST 21
Don't forget to recycle your glass bottles and aluminum cans.
The Zombies
Aluminum Plastic Glass Bi-Metal Newspaper CardboardWhite/Color/Computer Paper Copper & Brass 2411 Delaware Avenue in Santa Monica
(310) 453-9677
MICHIGAN 24TH
Santa Monica Recycling Center
CLOVERFIELD
WITH
LA SANTA CECILIA
X DELAWARE AVE.
10 WEST
WITH MYSTIC
BRAVES
The second UK group following the Beatles to score a #1 hit in America, The Zombies infiltrated the airwaves with the sophisticated melodies, breathy vocals, choral back-up harmonies and jazzy keyboard riffs of their 1960’s hit singles like “She’s Not There” and “Tell Her No”. Ironically, the group broke-up in 1968 just
prior to achieving their greatest success the chart-topping single “Time of the Season”, from their swan-song album “Odessey & Oracle” (recently ranked #100 in Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”). In the intervening years, while lead singer Colin Blunstone went on to develop an acclaimed solo career, and keyboardist/songwriter Rod Argent rocked ‘70’s arenas with his eponymous band ARGENT, the legend of The Zombies took on a life of its own. Generations of new bands have cited The Zombies’ work as pop touchstones, including such artists as Neko Case and Nick Cave (who have recorded “She’s Not There” for the popular HBO series True Blood), She & Him, Beck, Belle and Sebastian, The Black Angels, The Fleet Foxes, Beach House and The Beautiful South. Decades later, Blunstone and Argent have resurrected The Zombies, recruiting bassist Jim Rodford (formerly of ARGENT and The Kinks), Rodford’s son Steve on drums, and renowned session guitarist Tom Toomey. 2013 marked a major year for the band, with three U.S. tours (which included six SRO performances during the SXSW Music Conference in Austin, plus stops at NYC’s Central Park SummerStage, Seattle’s Bumbershoot Festival and Milwaukee SummerFest) … the American release of their new album, “Breathe Out, Breathe In” the debut on RollingStone.com & VEVO of their first-ever music video for “Any Other Way"… and the announcement of their nomination to the 2014 Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. The ten songs that make up their new album, “Breathe Out, Breathe In”, are impeccably crafted; the harmonies are rich, the melodies full, the arrangements exquisite, the organ and piano fresh and the production intuitive. The Huffington Post’s David Wild called the album “inspired” and said “some songs recall the haunting melodic heights of the group’s 1968 masterpiece Odessey and Oracle.” SEE BIOS PAGE 8
TWILIGHTSERIES.ORG
30TH ANNUAL TWILIGHT CONCERTS
7
8
30TH ANNUAL TWILIGHT CONCERTS
TWILIGHTSERIES.ORG
BIOS FROM PAGE 6
WEEK 8
AUGUST 28
Lee “Scratch” Perry WITH
MEXICO 68
The man who long ago named himself (and his record label and his band) The Upsetter knows whereof he speaks. As a producer, mixer and artist, Lee “Scratch” Perry has been overturning tradition and confounding conventional wisdom for more than five decades. In the process, the widely acknowledged father of dub reggae became a major player in Jamaican music and international pop. Born in Jamaica in 1936, Perry began in the music business in the late 1950s, working with the island’s mobile sound systems and such artists as Prince Buster, best known for the ska hit Ten Commandments. Subsequent work assisting famed producers Coxsone Dodd and Joe Gibbs prepped him for his professional coming-out. In 1968, he formed Upsetter Records and, throughout the early ‘70s, issued a profusion of recordings (under his own name and various pseudonyms), pioneering a radical form that utilized reggae rhythms and the loping instrumental “spaghetti Western” style of music featured in Sergio Leone’s neocowboy movies, on cuts like Clint Eastwood and The Return of Django. Concurrent with his own releases, Perry produced numerous reggae artists,
LEE “SCRATCH” PERRY
including, early on, Bob Marley and the Wailers (Duppy Conqueror, Small Axe). By the mid-’70s, the myth of Lee “Scratch” Perry was commanding as much attention as his innovative productions, as spats with artists, lost tapes and a mysterious
fire that burned down his Black Ark studio occupied ardent scene-watchers. Still, Perry continued his onslaught of atmospheric dub releases, next capturing the attention of Britain’s punk movement; Perry even produced tracks for The Clash,
who’d covered his production of Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves on their 1977 debut album. Numerous post-punk bands, most notably John Lydon’s Public Image, SEE BIOS PAGE 10
TWILIGHTSERIES.ORG
30TH ANNUAL TWILIGHT CONCERTS
9
10
30TH ANNUAL TWILIGHT CONCERTS
TWILIGHTSERIES.ORG
BIOS FROM PAGE 8
created music based on a template first fashioned by Perry. By the mid-’90s, his legacy had spread into rap and hip-hop; the Beastie Boys gave Perry a shout-out on their Ill Communication album and sparked yet another revival of interest in his work. Not slowing down after the turn of the century, Perry won a Grammy for Best Reggae Album in 2003 with the album Jamaican E.T.. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Perry #100 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. He teamed up with a group of Swiss musicians and performed under the name Lee Perry and the White Belly Rats, and toured the United States in 2006 and 2007 using the New York City-based group Dub Is A Weapon as his backing band. After meeting Andrew W.K. at SXSW in 2006, Perry invited him to co-produce his album Repentance. The 2008 album featured guest artists including Moby, Ari Up, producer Don Fleming, drummer Brian Chippendale, and bassist Josh Werner, and received a Grammy nomination for Best Reggae Album on the Narnack Records label. In 2008, Perry reunited with Adrian Sherwood on The Mighty Upsetter. Between 2007 and 2010, Perry recorded three albums with British producer, Steve Marshall, at State of Emergency Limited in England. The albums featured performances by Keith Richards and George Clinton. Two of these albums, End Of An American Dream (2007) and Revelation (2010), received Grammy nominations for Best Reggae Album on the MEGAWAVE Records label. In 2009, Perry collaborated with Dubblestandart, on their Return from Planet Dub double album, revisiting some of his material from the 1970s and 1980s, as well as collaborating on new material, some of which also included Ari Up of the Slits. Dubstep collaborations with New York City’s Subatomic Sound System included Iron Devil, Blackboard Jungle Vols. 1 & 2 featuring dancehall vocalist Jahdan Blakkamoore, and Chrome Optimism featuring American filmmaker David Lynch. In 2011, Perry recorded Rise Again with bassist and producer Bill Laswell, with the album featuring contributions from Tunde Adebimpe, Sly Dunbar and Bernie Worrell, and released on Laswell’s M.O.D. Technologies label. In 2012, Perry teamed with The Orb to produce The Orbserver in the Star House. Perry remixed the Thor’s Stone single by UK producer Forest Swords in November 2013. Perry recorded an album with Daniel Boyle in London, due to be released in April 2014 as Lee “Scratch” Perry – Back on the Controls. Currently, there are two films made about his life and work: Volker Schaner’s Vision Of Paradise and The Upsetter by American film-makers Ethan Higbee and Adam Bhala Lough and narrated by Benicio Del Toro. In 2010, Perry had his first ever solo art exhibition at Dem Passwords art gallery in Los Angeles, California. The show entitled Secret Education featured works on canvas, paper, and a video installation. Perry is featured as the DJ on the Dub and Reggae radio station Blue Ark in video game Grand Theft Auto V. The station includes a number of dubs by Perry and the Upsetters including Disco
OK GO
Devil and Grumblin’ Dub. In August 2012, it was announced that Perry would receive Jamaica’s sixth highest honour, the Order of Distinction, Commander class, and in October 2013, it was announced that he was to be awarded a Gold Musgrave Medal later that month by the Institute of Jamaica. Perry now lives in Switzerland, where he continues to create unique, categorydefying music. He remains one of the world’s most imaginative sonic architects.
WEEK 9
SEPTEMBER 4
OK Go WITH
ALLAH-LAS
Formed as a quartet in Chicago in 1998 and relocated to Los Angeles three years later, OK Go (Damian Kulash, Tim Nordwind, Dan Konopka, Andy Ross) have spent their career in a steady state of transformation. The four songs of the allnew Upside Out EP represent the first preview of Hungry Ghosts, due out in the fall on the band’s own Paracadute. This is the band’s fourth full-length and the newest addition to a curriculum vitae filled with experimentation in a variety of mediums. The band worked with longtime producer and friend Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Weezer, MGMT), while also enlisting a new collaborator in Los Angeles, veteran Tony Hoffer, (Beck, Phoenix, Foster the People) to create their most comfortable and far-reaching songs yet. Building on (and deconstructing) 15 years of pop-rock smarts, musical friendship, and band-ofthe-future innovations the EP, Upside Out, offers a concise overview of forthcoming Hungry Ghosts’ melancholic fireworks (“The Writing’s on the Wall”), basement funk parties (“Turn Up The Radio”), IMAXsized choruses (“The One Moment”), and
space-age dance floor bangers (“I Won’t Let You Down”). Drawn from the same marching orders issued to big-hearted happiness creators as Queen, T. Rex, The Cars or Cheap Trick, and a lifetime of mixed tapes exchanged by lifelong music fans, Upside Out is a reaffirmation of the sounds and ideas that brought the band together in the first place. The four songs provide an assured kick-off to a new sequence of interconnected performances, videos, dances, and wild, undreamt fun. “As the band has evolved over the last 15 years, the creative palette we work with has expanded in so many unexpected and gratifying directions,” says frontman Damian Kulash. “This record feels like it’s the musical manifestation of that — like we can speak in a clearer voice when we are playing in a bigger sandbox. Just as the band’s whole project became clearer to us as we learned to find more homes for our creativity — we triangulated it from more directions. And, I think the music itself has gotten more focused for similar reasons. We went in with fewer preconceptions of who we are or what our sound is, and came out with a record that sounds much more uniquely our own because of it.” Continuing a career that includes viral videos, New York Times op-eds, a major label split and the establishment of a DIY trans-media mini-empire, collaborations with pioneering dance companies and tech giants, animators and Muppets, OK Go continue to fearlessly dream and build new worlds in a time when creative boundaries have all but dissolved.
WEEK 10
SEPTEMBER 11
Charles Bradley WITH
If you’re looking for a story that best summarizes the last year in the life of Charles Bradley, you’d be hard pressed to find a better one than the night he and his band showed up in Utopia, Texas to play an outdoor show in the middle of a thunderstorm. “It was just raining, raining, raining,” Bradley recalls. “I walked out onstage, and there were about 800 people there - maybe more - all of them just standing out there in the rain and the mud.” The band settled in and fought their hardest against the elements, but - for a moment, anyway - it seemed that nature was too much for even the mighty Charles Bradley. About halfway through the show, the power went out, leaving both the band and the drenched fans in total darkness. At any other show, that would be understood as the meteorological signal for “Quittin’ Time,” but if there’s one thing the last year of tireless touring before enrapt audiences has proven, it’s that Charles Bradley does not put on typical shows. “I could hear them screaming, ‘Charles Bradley! Charles Bradley we love you,’” Bradley smiles. “And so when the lights came back on, I said, ‘If all of you can stand out there in the rain and get soaking wet because you want to see me perform - to see me do something that I love to do then you know what? I’m gonna get wet, too.’” And with that, Bradley jumped off the stage and into the crowd. “They went completely crazy!” he laughs. “We were laughing. We were hugging. We were getting muddy. It was just love.” That’s his whole persona in a single tiny scene: Charles Bradley, victim of love. Other artists appreciate their audiences, just as many are grateful for them, but few artists love their fans as much and as sincerely as Charles Bradley. By now, his remarkable, against-all-odds rise has been well-documented - how he transcended a
KING JAMES & THE SPECIAL MEN SEE BIOS PAGE 11
30TH ANNUAL TWILIGHT CONCERTS
TWILIGHTSERIES.ORG
BIOS FROM PAGE 10
bleak life on the streets and struggled through a series of ill-fitting jobs - most famously as a James Brown impersonator at Brooklyn clubs - before finally being discovered by Daptone’s Gabriel Roth. The year following the release of his debut, No Time For Dreaming, was one triumph after another: a stunning performance at South By Southwest that earned unanimous raves; similarly-gripping appearances at Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits, Newport Folk Festival and Outside Lands (to name just a few); and spots on Year-End Best Lists from Rolling Stone, MOJO, GQ, Pasteand more. Victim of Love, Bradley’s second record, is a continuation of that story, moving past the ‘heartache and pain’ and closer to the promise of hope. “The first record taps into maybe two or three feelings,” explains Thomas Brenneck of Menahan Street Band, Bradley’s producer, bandleader and co-writer. “But the range of emotion on this record is huge. The last record was written by a man living in the Brooklyn projects for 20 years. This record is more than just a poor man’s cry from the ghetto. This time, he’s grateful.” Bradley agrees. “I was singing about all these hardships that I’ve been through. I wanted people to know my struggles first, but now I want them to know how much they have helped me grow.” Drop into any moment of Victim of Love at random and that message is immediately apparent. Where the last record opened with the apocalyptic “The
World (is Going Up in Flames), Victim begins “Strictly Reserved For You,” a track that sees Bradley grabbing his girl, jumping in a car and hitting the highway for a romantic getaway. In “You Put The Flame on It,” Bradley sings “My life is gold - you put the flame on it,” backed by a horn chart that sounds like it was lifted from a lost Four Tops single. And on “Victim of Love,” the song that gives the album its name, Bradley sings, “I woke up this morning, I felt your love beside me,” over the kind of gentle acoustic guitar that wouldn’t sound out of place on a classic Neil Young album. Which brings up another point: with the new subject matter comes a broader musical scope. Where Dreaming hewed close to the rough-and-ready R&B sound Daptone has become known for, Victim is stylistically more restless, edging closer into the kind of psychedelic soul The Temptations explored in the early ‘70s. “I’ve been calling it ‘New Direction Daptone,’” enthuses Brenneck. “People are not going to expect this. There’s a lot of psych influences on this record, a lot of fuzz guitar. I’m pushing the band & the arrangements further out, which in turns has to make Charles go further out.” That new direction is most apparent in “Confusion.” Opening with the kind of echo-drenched vocal and charging rhythmic cadence that characterized Curtis Mayfield’s “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go,” Bradley calls down fire on crooked businessmen and duplicitous leaders. “That song is about a lot of those big politicians who think they can make everybody’s decisions
11
CHARLES BRADLEY
for them,” says Bradley. “The higher class think they can make up the rules for us. But a lot of those big wigs have never really been down to the harsh life. They don’t know how it feels. So I’m trying to talk to people who are going through those hardships.” As is typical of Bradley, the song comes off not as a roaring jeremiad, but as a deeply-felt note of sympathy for the oppressed and beaten-down. But if the album has a summary statement, it’s “Through the Storm.” Over a deep gospel groove, Bradley expresses his gratitude - to his fans, his friends and to God - for their support, their dedication and their devotion. “When the world gives
you love,” he sings, “It frees your soul.” This is the new message of Charles Bradley, the Bradley who has emerged from the heartache stronger and more confident, overflowing with love to share. This is Charles Bradley, victim of love — gratefully returning the joy that has been given to him.
12
30TH ANNUAL TWILIGHT CONCERTS
TWILIGHTSERIES.ORG