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One On The Books For October…

Posted on October 21, 2010 by Max Sidman

Last year I didn’t post to this blog for an entire month (May, to be exact), so there’s a giant, soul-sucking 30+ day hole in this site’s archive, and I promised myself I would never let that happen again because…well… I have no idea why, but I keep coming back to the words of Lord Finesse: “Me take a loss? That shit don’t even look right.” (I know, totally not applicable here, but whatever…)

I’m actually working on a handful of other things, and a couple of them are actually pretty close to being done, but given my current schedule there’s just no guarantee they’ll hit in the calendar month. So, just in case, in the interest of avoiding another post-less month, I give you Sasha Grey, hilariously not fucking some guy…

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Words: Anthony Bourdain

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Max Sidman

“Too much respect for your elders is, historically, almost always a bad thing. I want my daughter to love me. I don’t necessarily want her to share my taste for Irish ale or Hawaiian bud.”

— Anthony Bourdain, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

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SLEEP, Regency Ballroom, SF CA, September 2010

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Max Sidman

In the pantheon of stoner rock, SLEEP reigns supreme. Anyone fortunate enough to witness their live performance, especially on this month’s brief reunion tour (with Neurosis’ Jason Roeder sitting on drums in place of Chris Hakius), surely stands in agreement…if they weren’t knocked on their asses by the sheer force of the band’s sound.

At the Regency Ballroom in SF on Sunday September 12, SLEEP ran through nearly all of the seminal Holy Mountain album, and played some choice passages from Jerusalem / Dopesmoker — over two hours of music. I stood with my head on a swivel the whole time, nodding with the waves of sonic massiveness, controlled by the pulse of the riffs’ ebb and flow. The thick haze of weed smoke hanging in the room helped too. If there’s such a place as stoner metal heaven, this was it.

You can see my best photos from that night at full size over on Flickr (they look much better when viewed large), or scroll through the set here…

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

PS: For the gear nerds out there, Matt Pike was playing his High On Fire rig: custom First Act 9-string (see a video I shot of Matt talking to my friend Rob about this guitar in Austin, TX in March ’09) through a Marshall stack (I think it was the Kerry King Signature model) and a Soldano stack. Al Cisneros was on a Rickenbacker (I’m guessing a 4002), playing through two full Ampeg rigs (two SVT VR heads and two SVT 8×10 cabinets) and a full Marshall stack. Crushingly, devastatingly, deafeningly awesome.

PPS: Check out some great video of SLEEP’s Denver show (with Pike on a totally different guitar rig — Les Paul and Orange amps) over on Blabbermouth.net.

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You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me: The Imps at Duffy’s Tavern, Chico, CA, Sept. 3rd 2010

Posted on September 12, 2010 by Max Sidman

I don’t get out of town on my own much these days unless it’s for work, but last Friday I went to Chico, CA (where I went to school and subsequently began a career) to see the annual reunion show by The Imps (a band I used to live with) at Duffy’s Tavern (a bar I used to be a bouncer at). It was fun, super nostalgia-y. Take a look (or see the photos in their larger-than-impish original size over at Flickr)…

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Incidentally, The Imps have been known to play a cover of the Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam Tejano-infused California country classic “Streets of Bakersfield,” which they did last weekend, and it’s been ringing in my ears ever since. (“Hey you don’t know me but you don’t like me / say you care less how I feel / but how many of you that sit and judge me / ever walked the streets of Bakersfield.”) I wish I had the forethought to to take my field recorder and capture the Duffy’s show. I’ve had to make do with listening to the original on YouTube, which just isn’t feeding my craving for The Imps’ stripped-down, amped-up rock version. Dammit.

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The View from Up Here

Posted on September 11, 2010 by Max Sidman

I’ve been busy lately. Busier than usual. In addition to everything else I’m wrapped up in — which essentially boils down to working and being a father to my daughter — I went back to school, which has turned out to be sort of time consuming…I know, shocker.

Got a few other things in the works, including a new musical project (think low and slow) and a return to a semi-regular mix / podcast thing (maybe). More on those soon. In the meantime, click that picture up there to see a goddamn big ass version of the view from near the top of Tilden Park over Berkeley / Oakland. It’s one of best views in, and of, the Bay Area.

The panorama is a composite of four photos taken with my Canon S90 and stitched together.

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Al Cisneros of Om / Sleep / Shrinebuilder on Percussive Bass

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Max Sidman

I don’t write professionally much anymore — no seriously, I used to earn a (meager) living at it — but from time to time I’ll pick up some freelance work if the subject interests me. I recently did a brief e-mail interview with bass player Al Cisneros of Sleep / Om / Shrinebuilder. He’s one of my favorite heavy bass players, an icon of the low end, largely unsung by mainstream music and the bass community, whose playing is heavily rhythmic, full of awesome subtlety, and uniquely percussive.

The piece hasn’t run yet (it’ll be in a future issue of Bass Player magazine, I don’t know which one), but in anticipation of the upcoming US Sleep reunion tour, and because I’ve recently started playing slow and heavy music with plenty of low frequency modulation, and listening to a lot of Om as inspiration, here’s a little teaser quote from the interview, and an awesome video of Om live at Amoeba Music in San Francisco from a few years ago:

“For me the bass is essentially part of the drums, it’s a melodic percussion instrument. You have to be able in some degree to play drums if you are going to play bass, otherwise its role is reduced to a downtuned guitar. Breathing and spacing in flowing time are totally essential in the bass approach. You’re not just playing a riff, you’re bridging the meter of the drums to the riff. For this you have to find the intervals in space between beats and melodies, and then know how to push them or hold them back depending on what the song is saying.”

Case in point…

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Revisiting Cannibal Ox: A Summer Jam?

Posted on August 11, 2010 by Max Sidman

As far as seasonal association, I always thought of Cannibal Ox‘s The Cold Vein as a New York City winter rap record, but it’s recently found a spot in my summer rotation — maybe it’s the Bay Area’s less-than-summer-like weather, or maybe it’s just my shitty weekday disposition these days (I mostly bump this real loud, early in the morning at work). Whatever the reason, it’s been striking a chord with me lately.

Produced by El P, the music is a dark, heavy-hitting swirl of brooding synth washes and squeals, laid over ominous drums tracks, sometimes thunderous and discordant, other times understated patterns at rolling gaits. Add to that sound the slightly echoed vocals and lyrics slathered in harsh realism, if not a (un)healthy dose of fatalism, of emcees Vordul and Vast Aire, and you’ve got an instant classic.

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Cannibal Ox, “Iron Galaxy,” The Cold Vein [Def Jux 2001]

It’s too bad these guys never put out another full-length studio record…then again, sometimes I wonder if one wasn’t enough. There’s something sublime about the monolithic singularity of this record…no matter the season.

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Shellac, “Steady As She Goes”

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Max Sidman

I saw Shellac in May of 2009 at the Great American Music Hall in SF. I recently thought about that show and how awesome it was when this song came up in iTunes’ shuffle mode. Turn it up. Way up.

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Shellac, “Steady As She Goes,” Excellent Italian Greyhound [Touch & Go, 2007]

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