Doom & Gloom Dispatch #42: Paradise Found
Bong Wish, Dollar Bin, Prairiewolf, Fania All Stars, Sonic Youth
With a band name like Bong Wish (and an album title like Hazy Road), you might think you’re in for something spectacularly stoner-ific. And I’m not saying you couldn’t get nicely toasted while listening to this LP, but it is actually quite sharp and alert. Led by Mariam Saleh, the Boston-based group has put together a stellar collection of perfectly jangly folk rock, calling to mind the west coast sounds of The Byrds and Love (as well as their Paisley Underground spawn Opal and Rain Parade). I also get a little hint of vintage Barbara Manning in Saleh’s vocals — always a good thing. Maybe even a little Talullah-era Go-Betweens?! Whatever — each tune here is a little gem whether Bong Wish is choogling mightily on the title track (who plays that awesome guitar solo?!) or drifting dreamily on the autoharp-led “Moon For You.” Very very nice.
Hot new blog alert! My brother Nathan has launched Dollar Bin, a fearless journey into the dusty/musty record store crates we all know and love, highlighting the underrated and under-loved LPs from the days that used to be. So far he’s tackled Joan Baez, Jerry Jeff Walker and Fairport Convention! Can’t wait to see where he goes next …
You may not know it, but you owe a lot of what makes up Doom & Gloom to Nathan — he was the one who got me going on this whole music trip, whether it was playing me classic albums or letting me tag along with him and his friends to shows when we were kids. He’s a great writer and has plenty of interesting and unusual (maybe even controversial???!) takes on the dollar bin mainstays of yesteryear. Like, subscribe, live, laugh, love!
Prairiewolf - Paradise Found Records, Boulder, Colorado, July 1, 2023
Given what goes on most of the time here on Doom & Gloom — the constant sharing of bootleg-y live recordings — I’ve been hilariously hesitant about sharing bootleg-y live recordings of my own band. Prairiewolf! “Aren’t there too many imperfections here?” I think to myself. But imperfections are part of the deal, right? One of the reasons I love this shit is that it’s a moment in time captured, the proverbial lightning in a bottle. Sometimes it’s transcendent, sometimes it isn’t. The moment is always magic, though.
Anyway! Last month, while Dead & Co. were soundchecking up at Folsom Field, Prairiewolf played an afternoon in-store at Paradise Found, Boulder’s finest record shop. Is a record store Prairiewolf’s natural habitat? Maybe! PF’s Patrick Selvage was expertly twisting dials and gave us a great SBD recording of the whole thing; and Erik “Detroit Lightning” Heath had flown in just to make an audience recording (kidding, he was there for D&Co., but it was a happy coincidence).
Now, you can experience it all over on Archive.org! With a little bit of time between now and the gig, I’m not hearing the imperfections anymore; the ‘Wolf sounds great, if I do say so myself. A bunch of tunes from our debut LP (did I mention the vinyl is back in stock???), some covers (Kraftwerk, Alice Coltrane, Don Cherry, etc.) and even a sprinkling of new material destined for LP #2. Check it out!
And hey, we’ll be back at it again next week, up at the very groovy Jamestown Mercantile. I think this will be our highest elevation gig yet, but don’t worry, the band is fully prepped — we rehearse even higher. If you’re anywhere on the Front Range of Colorado, come howl with us at the Merc.
The Fania All Stars - Yankee Stadium, New York City, August 24, 1973
For your hot August nights in 2023 — a very hot August night in 1973 … in more ways than one! This Fania All Stars extravaganza must’ve been an incredibly fun night in the Bronx, a half-century ago this week. A double LP of highlights came out a few years later, as did this somewhat hard-to-come-by documentary. The transfer here on YouTube is not the greatest (it deserves a high-tech cleanup a la the Summer of Soul footage) but that’s OK, the footage itself is phenomenal. And hey, we get Geraldo Riviera popping up occasionally to give us some of the finer points of Latin music … thank you, Geraldo.
Things got fairly wild towards the end of the night, as detailed in Will Hermes classic Love Goes To Buildings On Fire:
“By the time the Fania All-Stars get into their own set, the crowd, which has been prohibited from going onto the field, is getting restless. The band launches into [Larry] Harlow’s fire-spitting ‘Congo Bongo,’ and by the end — with Ray Barretto and Mongo Santamaría dueling furiously on tandem congas, and Billy Cobham, wearing a football jersey, thundering beneath and between the beats, lifting everything skyward — the crowd erupts. They burst past the barricades and swarm out over the field, dancing, cheering, and waving Puerto Rican flags. Jerry Masucci’s brother Alex, one of the co-producers, is freaking, because he knows he can kiss that $50,000 deposit on the field adios. He tries to get the orchestra to stop, but they keep pounding it out, Johnny Pacheco conducting wildly in an unbuttoned white dress shirt and stacked heels, hair flying like a crazed Caribbean Beethoven.”
Sonic Youth - Shoreline Amphitheater, Mountain View, California, August 18, 1995
Weird times in the summer of 1995! Sonic Youth was facing the Alternative Nation as the headliner of Lollapalooza, sharing a bill that included Beck, Pavement, Cypress Hill, Elastica, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Jesus Lizard and — most notoriously — Hole. Throughout the tour, Courtney Love grabbed the lion's share of the attention thanks to her chaotic antics, both onstage and off.
Lee Ranaldo sets the scene:
“There was this slightly strange pall hanging over the whole tour, like, this is the spawn of Nirvana. . . . For a lot of people in the indie community, there was a bit of ambivalence. People wondered, is this good for our community, that these bands we've come up with are now on this big, high profile tour? Is this the beginning of the end? Or the end of the end?”
Here in Mountain View, we’re at the end — of Lollapalooza ‘95, at least. Following what was an especially crazed/truncated Hole performance, Thurston takes to the mic to dedicate their set to “one of the great hippie punk rock geniuses”: the recently departed Jerry Garcia, who had just played Shoreline a few short months later. (Interestingly, former Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten hung out with Sonic Youth backstage this evening at Lolla!) Does SY then break into a Jerry-style “Expressway To Your Heart”?! No, but they do float into a massive “Expressway To Your Skull,” joined by Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus, howling along on vocals. Incredibly fun.
What follows is equally fun, with the band dipping into the back catalog for excellent renditions of “Mote,” “Brother James” and “100%” in addition to a heaping portion of Washing Machine, which wouldn't be released into the wild for a few more weeks. The title track is a motorik marvel, with Steve Shelley surging and soaring, Kim Gordon delivering an impossibly cool/enigmatic vocal.
The peak, of course, is “The Diamond Sea,” a nightly ritual that boils over into a seething cauldron of beauteous feedback, stormy clangs and ineffable noise. Is this the end of the end? For some other bands, it might have been ... but it’s inspiring to see that even at this midpoint in their career, Sonic Youth was forging forward, making some of the best music of their lives. Time takes its crazy toll ...
Bandcamp | Merch | Concert Chronology
From the Doom & Gloom Archives
Joan Shelley & Nathan Salsburg - The Wilcox House, Longmont, Colorado, September 26, 2019
This year has been full of live music highlights for me, but Joan Shelley and Nathan Salsburg playing in my living room is definitely the highest of lights. It was magical and I wish you could’ve been there. But hey – lucky for you, the mighty Matthew Simonson made the trek up to Longmont with his recording rig and captured the show in very high quality. Thank you, Matthew! Check out more of his excellent work at http://matthewsimonson.com.
Thank you to James Adams for a little tech assist, too. Thanks are also due to Wry Press, who made the extremely cool letterpress piece pictured above. More thanks to my wife, who dealt with the details of hosting this thing. And thanks to Mike over at No Quarter for helping to organize (and for being the best damn record label in the biz). Thank you, friends.
Of course, the most thanks are due to Joan and Nathan. Both together and separately, these two have made some of my favorite music from the past 10 years or so and being able to host them at my house was an incredible honor. They’re also just wonderful and nice people. This show kicked off a long tour for the pair – check out upcoming dates over yonder and go see them. And for your health, go get Joan’s latest/greatest LP Like The River Loves The Sea. It is perfect.
Currently Reading: LUIGI TEN CO N.3 / SUMMER 2023
Speaking of The Go-Betweens (sort of), have you seen this astonishing cover?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i76J4kO8eCA
I’ve been listening to Sonic Youth’s 8/12/2011 show, a beautiful sonic tapestry. Thanks for highlighting the 95 gig, will check that out.