by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The highlight of my weekend was attending the closing night of Omaha Fashion Week, which I’ll be writing about in detail in this week’s column. One piece of music trivia from that event: Organizers played Icky Blossoms’ chick-mantra “Babes” during one of the walks proving (if there was any doubt) that it’s perfect runway music. Take note organizers of New York’s Fashion Week.

BTW, Icky Blossoms’ debut was sitting at No. 10 on last week’s College Music Journal top-20 radio chart. Check it out.

InDreama, self-titled (Team Love, 2012)

And speaking of bands that Nik Fackler is in, last Friday the folks at Team Love announced that they’ll be releasing the debut album by Nik’s other band, InDreama. You can pre-order the purple vinyl today for $16. Street date is Oct. 23. The entire album is currently being streamed at SoundCloud here or at the Team Love website.

Congrats to Nik, Dereck Higgins and the rest of the band, and to Team Love for putting this out…

Check out the album’s first “single,” Exodus,” below:

InDreama, “Exodus”

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/57425834″ iframe=”true” /]

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Sounds like Desaparecidos blew up Seattle last Saturday night, at least according to this review in the Seattle Weekly. Quotes of note: “So when a band incorporates politics into their songs, we may find ourselves driven to further reading or action–as Oberst directed show-goers to a table for more information about immigration rights–but we ought to still evaluate those songs as stand-alone works of art. And Desaparecidos’ songs fucking rock.” And, “Overall, though, it was a raggedly exhilarating show, with a set list covering all of sole album Read Music/Speak Spanish as well as new material. It should have been a sold-out crowd.”

Indeed. And it looks like (according to their website) that there’s still tickets available to tomorrow night’s Desa show at SF’s Bottom of the Hill.

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Desaparecidos, from left, are Conor Oberst, Matt Baum, Denver Dalley, Landon Hedges and Ian McElroy. Photo by Zach Hollowell.

The Politics of Thrashing

Desaparecidos is back and angrier than ever.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Also published in The Reader, Aug. 9, 2012.

In the on-again off-again world of indie rock band Desaparecidos, when Conor Oberst calls you drop what you’re doing and run to his side, right?

Not at all says Desaparecidos guitarist Denver Dalley. “Well, maybe to some extent, but it’s not like anyone abandoned any commitments.”

Over the phone last week, Dalley quickly ran down what the rest of the band’s been up to. Guitarist/vocalist Landon Hedges is busy with his band, indie powerhouse Little Brazil. Keyboard player Ian McElroy has been in New York working on hip-hop project Rig 1 “but I don’t know how close he is to releasing new material,” he said.

Drummer Matt Baum has been vacant from the drum kit. “Before we started back up again he said he had an itch to make music,” Dalley said. “He’s done a lot of podcasts for his comic book world (called The Two-Headed Nerd).”

As for Dalley, he’s been bouncing between homes in Omaha, Nashville and Los Angeles. When not touring as part of dance-rock project Har Mar Superstar, he’s been finishing recording his own project, Statistics, as well as a score for a feature film about the Joplin, Missouri, tornado. “I also went to massage therapy school last year,” he says, though he doesn’t know if he’ll ever actually apply those new skills.

And then there’s Conor Oberst. But we all know what the Bright Eyes frontman has been up to.

“Marikkkopa” b/w “Backsell” 7-inch, Desaparecidos (2012, self released)

Just two years after the last time Desaparecidos got together for the Concert for Equality concert, all their schedules have aligned and the boys are back in town. And judging from their new single, “Marikkkopa” b/w “Backsell,” they’re better than ever.

The single’s A side continues the band’s attacks on anti-immigration xenophobes by taking on Arizona’s Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa County, the king of racial profiling who has earned the title “America’s Worst Sheriff” by the New York Times. If you’re wondering what Arpaio is all about, just listen to the song’s lyrics, which paint the portrait of a racist rounding up illegal immigrants in a style that recalls the worst of Nazi Germany or The Klan.

Oberst has never been one to pull punches when it comes to his politics, so it’s a good thing the rest of the band shares his beliefs. “Fortunately, we all agree on these things,” Dalley said, “but we do discuss them ahead of time.”

For example, Dalley said there was some back-and-forth over the use of the word “spic” in “Marikkkopa,” in the line “These spics are brave and getting braver.”

“The whole song is written from the perspective of this person who is really anti immigration,” Dalley explained, “but we didn’t want it to come across in the wrong way. We thought about it and decided there is a time and a place and a context where (that language) is appropriate. This song is supposed to be controversial and make people think. Not to compare ourselves to them, but songs like Lennon’s ‘Woman is the Nigger of the World,’ and Dylan’s ‘Hurricane’ prove that there’s a point in using that kind of language.”

Considering that most of Desaparecidos’ fans already share their politics, isn’t the band merely preaching to the choir? Dalley said songs like “Marikkkopa” stoke the flames when the fire dies down after the headlines are forgotten. “It gets the conversation going again,” he said. “After we started streaming the songs yesterday (Aug. 2), we watched the Twitter feed and some people thought it was dead on while some said we’re lumping too many things together.”

Then there’s that sizable portion of the audience who doesn’t care about the lyrics, the ones who just want to rock out. “I’m guilty of that myself at times,” Dalley said, adding that he loves it when the crowd gets revved up over the message “but there’s a line you don’t want to cross. There’s a way to bring (issues) up, and a point when someone gets carried away.”

So when Oberst spends too much time on his soapbox, whose job is it to tell him to shut up and play? Dalley laughed. “Knock on wood we haven’t had to deal with that,” he said. “Maybe one night he’ll get on a tear and we’ll have to play him off, like on The Oscars.”

Good luck with that one.

Despite the politics behind the band’s message, Dalley said Desaparecidos (for him at least) is more about having fun, just like it was when the band first started in the early part of the last decade. Though 10 years have passed since the band’s only album, Read Music/Speak Spanish, was released, little has changed.

“It’s shockingly the same in the best possible way,” he said. “I was excited about the idea of practicing and the hi-jinx and laughing with the guys, and it really has been like that.”

There is a nostalgic way in how Dalley describes not only the band’s reunion, but the entire Omaha music scene. He compares the heyday of Saddle Creek Records circa 2001 like being in high school.

“There was a point afterward where everyone went off to college and got married or whatever,” he said. “Now it’s like people are returning from college and going back to their old stomping grounds, where they find a new, younger generation. I could go to a Cursive show back in 2000 and name everyone in the crowd. Now I only know a handful, and that’s great. I still feel like part of something. It’s different, but it’s the same.”

Desaparecidos is slated to play only a half-dozen shows after this Saturday’s Maha Music Festival. Dalley is unsure what will happen after that.

“There’s no plan as of now,” he said. “I think Conor has a handful of solo dates this winter, so as of now there’s nothing scheduled, but we’re all kind of open to whatever and hoping something happens.”

But only “as long as it’s still fun,” he added. “One of the reasons we went on hiatus was because there was starting to be expectations and it was getting stressful. It got away from being dudes having fun playing the music that we love. We’re all focused on that now.”

* * *

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Seems like only yesterday instead of 11 years ago that I was drinking coffee with Denver at the 13th St. Coffee Shop where he broke the news about his new band for this story. We all expected big things from Desaparecidos, and we got them. Desa was destined to be Saddle Creek’s counterpunch to Cursive’s uppercut — a brash, in-yer-face punk band pissed off at the suburbia that would become its fan base. Oberst was and is at his best when he’s political, and Desa provides that outlet in a time when this country desperately needs his voice. It would be a shame if he and the rest of the band put away the boxing gloves after this brief reunion tour.

Speaking of which, Desa kicks off that tour tomorrow night at the infamous 400 Bar in balmy Minneapolis before they head back to town to co-headline the Maha Music Festival at Stinson Park Saturday night. Tix are still available for $35 at mahamusicfestival.com, where you can also check out the full festival line-up, schedule and other pertinent info. I’m told this is the fastest selling concert in Maha’s brief history.

* * *

Tonight at Slowdown Jr., it’s the return of Big Harp with Gus & Call and Field Club. $7, 9 p.m. Get your weekend started on Wednesday!

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Simon Joyner (the one in the hat) and his band. Photo by Zach Hollowell.

Simon Joyner: The Ghosts in the LP

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Also published in The Reader, Aug. 2, 2012.

Singer songwriter Simon Joyner would very much prefer that you listened to his new double album, Ghosts, as it was intended to be heard: Played on a record player.

Unlike other artists who over the past few years have made their recordings available on vinyl as a sort of kitschy gimmick or nod to a hipster scene that prefers analog over digital, Joyner wrote Ghosts, which comes out Aug. 14 on Sing! Eunuchs!, as four sides contained in a one gatefold sleeve, its dark themes ebbing and flowing from the dissonant chaos of Side One to depths of guilt, confusion and regret on Side Two to the grim, bleak darkness of Side Three to a deceptive pop relief on Side Four. The time it takes to get up and turn the record over gives listeners a brief respite between waves of desolation.

“There’s a lot of death on this record,” Joyner said. “Our guitarist, Mike Friedman, said that it was so heavy that he listened to the first record and then took a couple hours off before he listened to the second one.”

Simon Joyner, Ghosts (Sing, Eunuchs! 2012)

It’s hard to imagine listening to a digital version of Ghosts on an iPhone in shuffle mode while jogging, and stumbling across a song like the piano-and-guitar dirge “Swift River, Run” with its lines: “I’ve seen the levee burst / Seen fences devoured by the sun / Should the giant redwood burn / The ash will darken everyone.” Taken out of context sandwiched between, say, KC and the Sunshine Band and a Twin Shadows track, the slow, dismall song could seem almost comical. Taken in its proper place with the rest of the album, and it’s sobering darkness before the dawn.

Is it too much to ask a generation of distracted iPod-slinging youth to listen to and experience all four sides of Ghosts in their entirety? “I don’t think so,” Joyner said Saturday over the phone.

“I really don’t appreciate what that convenient form of listening has done to the album as an album. It’s kind of ruined it in a lot of ways,” he said. “There’s been some damage done to the album as a work of art in the new media, but I think there will always be serious appreciators of music who want the whole experience and not just convenient and quick entertainment. But it’s always been comparatively few.”

Joyner said he created the song arc on Ghosts in an attempt to make the listeners feel like they’ve “been through something and come out on the other side, whatever it may be.”

“Especially with a double record, the middle can get really deep into it. The songs work in a way where you’re kind of getting through the mess of what’s being worked on thematically.”

Side One opens with “Vertigo,” a violent, psychedelic, psychotic blues song that’s a crash of noise and fear. “(The song) announces some of the (album’s) themes: Escape and entrapment,” Joyner said. “Musically speaking, it sets the tone as far as the jagged, dissonant qualities of a band doing jagged, dissonant songs. It lets people know that this is going to be something different.”

“Different,” as in a change from Joyner’s usual style, though there’s nothing “usual” about a Simon Joyner album. Joyner began playing intelligent, personal coffee-shop-style folk back in early ‘90s, releasing his first cassette of songs, Umbilical Chords, when he was just 17. Since then, he’s recorded a dozen albums that range from the static folk of his landmark 1994 release The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll to the droll, bleak Heaven’s Gate (1995) to the afternoon balladry of ’99’s The Lousy Dance to the midnight acid blues of ’06’s Skeleton Blues to the somber beauty of ’09’s Out Into the Snow. Though the albums vary in their own ways, the common thread always has been — and continues to be — Joyner’s personal lyrics that provide dark and sometimes uncomfortable glimpses into the way he views life and death and all the stuff in between.

Ghosts continues those themes, but with more death than usual. It’s not so much a collection of eulogies as much as elegies to his own life and the lives of friends now gone. Side Two highlight, “Cotes Du Rhone,” for example, is about singer songwriter Vic Chesnutt, an old friend and musical influence who took his own life on Christmas Day 2009.

“I wrote (the song) in a Vic way, describing things in sort of a goofy, poetic way that I associate with him,” Joyner said. “I tried to write a Vic Chesnutt song about Vic Chesnutt’s death.”

The rock incantation “If It’s Alright With You (It’s Alright with Me),” which bridges Sides Two and Three, also is a tribute to Joyner’s friends who have passed. One verse, for example, repeats “If it’s alright with Jessica / It’s alright with me.” Joyner said he’d read a book about the Viet Nam War with a section about soldiers marching through the jungle chanting a similar recitation for their fallen comrades.

“It was a way of preparing themselves for death, trying to strengthen themselves for what’s going to happen,” Joyner said. “It got me thinking of the people I had lost over the last couple years and how it was weighing on me, and this idea of cataloging them as a way of respecting the dead. The more you deal with and interact with the difficult things in life, the better you will be in actually confronting these things. It’s not always a celebration.”

If it sounds depressing — and it certainly can be — there are plenty of breaks in the clouds, like the Side Four gem “If I Left Tomorrow,” which could be mistaken for a pop song. “It’s hopeful in its own way lyrically,” Joyner said. “It’s saying even though this thing is probably going to end, it’s not just wasted time, we didn’t compromise anything.

“Sometimes a tornado will take a house and will leave a staircase, that’s a hopeful thing,” Joyner said, referencing a line from the song. “There are disasters and rough stuff we go through, but there’s usually some exit, something provided that allows you to make it through another day. And whether it’s in a relationship or just whatever various things that life presents, that’s where the hope comes through.”

Simon Joyner and his band will celebrate the release of Ghosts with Solid Goldberg, Lightning Bug and Sun Settings Friday, Aug. 3, at The Sydney, 5918 Maple St. Showtime is 9 p.m. Admission is $5, or purchase the album for $20 at the venue and admission is free. For more information, call 402.932-9262 or visit thesydneybenson.com.

* * *

There’s a second part to this interview with Simon Joyner that appears in print as this week’s column in The Reader. It talks about record labels and Kickstarter and that sort of thing. I’ll link you to it tomorrow.

* * *

Conor Oberst picked The Huffington Post to debut and explain the new Desaparecidos single “MariKKKopa,” which you can read and hear right here. It’s a darn good punk song laser focused at Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz. Once again, Conor proves he’s not afraid to name names to give his message some teeth. The single and its b-side “Backsell” (streamed at Alt Press) features (as the article says) “Oberst adopting the voice of anti-undocumented immigrant groups.”

Also from the article:

“As far as paying for public services for these new Americans — although I believe their participation in the economy would do so — I’d recommend cutting our military budget in half. We’d have more than enough money for all the basic public services we all require. I’ll never understand how we allow public health and education to suffer here at home while we spend endless amounts of money overseas fattening the purse of defense contractors.”

Tell it like it is, Mr. Oberst. Something tells me he’ll have even more to say when he takes the stage at The Maha Music Festival next Saturday night at Stinson Park.

* * *

Tonight at The Waiting Room it’s Manchester UK producer/DJ Star Slinger with LOL Boys and Touch People (Darren Keen, ex-The Show Is the Rainbow). $12, 8 p.m.

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Conor Oberst of Desaparecidos at Slowdown Jr. April. 23, 2012. Photo by Dan Thompson III.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Based on email/text logs, word started spreading at around 10 last night that Desaparecidos finally was getting around to that secret show that never happened last week, moving the venue from O’Leaver’s to Slowdown Jr. This one was, indeed, kept a secret almost up to the moment they hit the stage. Thankfully I was deep in the Land of Nod when all this was going down, saving me the guilt of not going due to a 4:30 a.m. wake-up call this morning.

That said, Kevin Coffey was in the house and filed this review for the Omaha World-Herald, as was Hearnebraska.org’s Steve Ashford (here’s his review). And so was local shooter Dan Thompson III, who shot the above image of Conor in full rage. The biggest news of the night: The band played two new songs, furthering speculation that this reunion is more than a series of one-off shows. I would not be surprised if a new album is in the works, along with a formal tour. Desa fever is definitely catching. Memo to the MAHA Music Festival guys: If the amount of internet buzz (and traffic to my site over the past two days) is any indication, they better start printing more tickets for this year’s festival.

* * *
Tonight at The Hideout, 320 So. 72nd St., it’s the opening night of the annual Big Al Free Music Festival. Now in its fifth year, Al will be hosting shows all week long featuring four to five local bands per evening. The gigs are free, the merch is free (In fact, Al’s goal is to distribute 1,000 local CDs this week). Check out the full schedule here.

* * *

Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2012 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings at The Concert for Equality, July 31, 2010.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Here’s my “official review” of last Saturday’s Concert for Equality that runs in today’s issue of The Reader, presumably with a handful of photos (Pt. 1 ran here Monday). The whole day felt like a small-town street dance, a gathering of a community for what will be remembered as one of the most important indie music concerts in Omaha history. If you missed it, well, you can always relive it on YouTube.

Column 282: Live Review: Concert for Equality

Breaking down another language barrier.

It was supposed to be a protest concert — the Concert for Equality — but it will likely be remembered as a Saddle Creek Records music festival with an underlying, almost subliminal message about the evils of local laws designed to discriminate against immigrants.

A good message, no doubt, but how could it compete with this concert’s line-up? When was the last time that the three crown jewels of Saddle Creek Records played in Omaha in the same week? A decade ago? Ever?

With The Faint playing the previous Saturday at the MAHA Music Festival, and now Bright Eyes and Cursive playing at the Concert for Equality, we were seeing it happen again. Add performances by Desaparecidos and Lullaby for the Working Class, and you’ve turned the clock backwards 10 years, to a time when Omaha music mattered to the nation.

But even that line-up wasn’t enough. The buzz in the crowd all day was that Neil Young was going to drop by for a couple numbers at the $50-per-ticket concert at The Waiting Room following the outdoor show. Yes, Neil Young. Why stop there? Why not Bono or Springsteen or a reunited Led Zeppelin or the ghost of John Lennon? If there ever was a secret special guest lined up, it probably was Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy or another of concert organizer Conor Oberst’s music buddies like M. Ward or Jim James, who had showed up unannounced for the Obama rally at the Civic a few years back. But even those two seemed like a long-shot now that the Fremont anti-immigrant law that got the ball rolling was unlikely to be enacted anytime soon.

For every line of copy and sound bite in the local news that amplified Oberst’s message of both indignation and tolerance, there was a hate-quote from cave-dwellers like NAG (Nebraska Advisory Group) calling Oberst a racist and suggesting that he be deported. The media was bracing for a protest, but if there was one, no one saw it on Maple Street. Word spread that a handful of flag-waving crazies had set up camp near the Walgreens on Radial Highway. They might as well have been in Lincoln.

Nothing was going to stop this concert, anyway. After three warm-up bands — Flowers Forever, Vago and The Envy Corp — Bright Eyes took the stage exactly at 7:15 and played a too short set that included “Bowl of Oranges” and “Road to Joy,” along with new Oberst number, “Coyote Song.” The Bright Eyes line-up was core members Oberst, Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott, along with Clark Baechle on drums and Cursive’s Matt Maginn on bass. Like the MAHA second stage, it was hard to watch their performance while a blinding sun burned just above the lighting rigs, forcing everyone’s left hand in front of their eyes, while their right held a cold tall-boy.

After years of watching a sullen, almost depressed Conor Oberst scowl throughout his concerts, it was a pleasure to see him smiling and energized, as if the crowd of mostly like-minded fans had lifted the weight of the world from his tiny shoulders. He seemed almost… happy.

The sun retreated behind one of Benson’s broken buildings as Gillian Welch and David Rawlings began their set of acoustic finger-picking folk that wound up being a highlight of the day. When Cursive launched into pain-howl ballad “The Martyr” it didn’t matter if any Benson resident had bought a ticket — they heard Tim Kasher screaming in their living rooms. I cannot understate how loud it was — earplug loud from down the street at Benson Grind. Cursive matched the volume with an intensity that was violent, angry, amazing.

And then came Desaparecidos — Landon Hedges, Denver Dalley and the rest of the crew all on stage, all growed up playing the best set of the band’s disjointed history. Watching Desa brought on a wave of both nostalgia and lost opportunity. If ever there was a project that Oberst needed to be part of right now, or for that matter, during the Bush years, it was Desa — the perfect vehicle for his bitter temper tantrums, a rallying cry against cynicism for a disinterested, privileged suburban generation. A pity that the Desa set would only be a one-off.

As would the Lullaby for the Working Class reunion. Ted Stevens and his crew countered a day of anger and noise with an evening of acoustic serenity — soothing, soaring melodies that have aged well over the past decade.

In the end, Neil Young stayed home. There would be no “special guests” at The Waiting Room for the “Deluxe” ticket holders. The “hootenanny” consisted of Welch and Rawlings, joined by members of Bright Eyes followed by more Desaparecidos, and then the finale — everyone joined in on a song by David Dondero with a chorus that ran close to the tune of Bright Eyes’ “Land Locked Blues,” but with the lyrics:

They’re building a new Berlin Wall
From San Diego to Texas, so tall.
Don’t they know that they can’t stop us all?
But they’re building a new Berlin wall.

Oberst did his best to rally the troops behind a sentiment that I’m still not sure any of them clearly understood. I know I didn’t. The message sounded like: We don’t need any borders… at all. Would the suggestion still make sense the next morning, after the sing-along fever-buzz wore off? Oberst and his followers could work to get rid of all the localized, backward-thinking immigration laws that are destined to pop up like kudzu across the country, but they still had a federal crisis to deal with. I wonder if Conor or Dave can figure out a lyric that rhymes with “feasible, sensible national immigration policy.”

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The official review of Concert for Equality goes online Wednesday as this week’s column. For now, here are pictures and some general impressions of the show, some of which you already saw if you followed me on Twitter.

The first hint that there might be trouble was eight blue porta-potties standing in a row along Military Ave. That, I thought, would never be enough for 2,000 serious beer drinkers. Would the lawns of Greater Benson glow with a sickly-sweet odor on Sunday morning? Then there was the crazy-long line just to get into the metal-fenced compound. And then there was the burning sun and heat. But in the end, it all worked out, almost perfectly. The only fuck-up was the 45-minute wait forced upon those who had purchased “Deluxe Tickets” to see the hootenanny afterparty, and its “special guests.”

The crowd looking back from near the Concert for Equality outside stage.

Military Ave., it turns out, is the perfect place to hold this kind of concert — the street is wide and the buildings create a natural barrier. Booze tents were set up in a couple places, and there was even a temporary taco/burrito restaurant thrown together in one of the building’s garages (that would make a great permanent addition to Benson). People crowded the ACLU information booth where they were giving away t-shirts when they signed up for their literature. So did the kids learn more about the issues? Who knows? Maybe, probably.

From a performance standpoint, the biggest surprise (for me) was Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. I’d never heard them live before or own any of their records, and was blown away by their music — really incredible stuff. We got a double-dip of the duo when they showed up for the hootenanny later that night.

Bright Eyes at The Concert for Equality, 7/31/10.

As for the rest: The Envy Corp played a set of generic indie rock to an already sizable crowd at 6:30 consisting mostly of people jockeying for position for Bright Eyes. The outdoor stage had the same problem that hampered the MAHA Festival’s second stage — the setting sun was painful, and probably at its worst during Bright Eyes’ set, as you can see  from the above photo. Depending on where you stood, you couldn’t see a thing on stage without shielding your eyes, but the sound couldn’t be any better. BE’s setlist was a best-of selection:

Trees Get Wheeled Away

Bowl Of Oranges

We Are Nowhere And It’s Now

Four Winds

Old Soul Song (For The New World Order)

Lover I Don’t Have To Love

Coyote Song

Road To Joy

He played “Eagle on a Pole” and “Lua,” (with Welch/Rawlings) at the Waiting Room after party. The set list looks longer than the actual performance felt. I guess Oberst was saving it for the Desaparecidos set later that night. While Oberst did spout some issue-based rhetoric from stage, he wasn’t preachy — after all, he would have been almost literally preaching to the choir.

Cursive at The Concert for Equality, 7/31/10.

We left the compound right after the BE set to get something to eat. I stepped outside of Benson Grind to be assaulted by the opening chords of Cursive’s “The Martyr” — like a bomb going off. It was earplug loud, and if there were any complaints about this concert this morning from the locals, it’ll be about the noise level. Cursive was over-the-top loud, especially when you consider the concert was essentially being conducted in a residential neighborhood. That said, for us concert-goers, it was pure bliss. They rolled out some of their most brutal material, and the shear anger level couldn’t have been higher.

The Casualty

The Martyr

Some Red Handed Sleight of Hand

Art is Hard

The Recluse

Butcher the Song

Driftwood: A Fairy Tale

A Gentleman Caller

Sierra

Big Bang

Staying Alive

I’m told at one point Kasher jumped into the swarming crowd. I couldn’t see it from my vantage point behind the soundboard tent. But even from that distance I could see that he was locked inside some sort of manic adrenaline-fueled zone.

Dave Dondero at The Concert for Equality, 7/31/10.

Meanwhile, inside the Waiting Room, David Dondero, in a sporty Tommy Bahama shirt, was playing a solo acoustic set backed by Craig D on a snare drum in front of maybe 100 people who were taking a respite from the noise and heat. Dondero would be back again later that night with what would end up being the concert’s signature song.

The dueling stage concept — while a good idea on the surface — didn’t work out, for me anyway.  The sets overlapped too often. I wanted to see So-So Sailors, for example, but didn’t want to miss Bright Eyes. Going back and forth wasn’t a problem from a security standpoint — your bracelet got you right back into the compound. The problem was that I had a full Bud Light tallboy that I didn’t want to toss away and couldn’t bring with me (and couldn’t slam — those days are over).

Desaparecidos at The Concert for Equality, 7/31/10.

Desaparecidos was the last “outside band” of the evening, and who were what most people I spoke to came to see. Back in the day, Desa played every few weeks and each show was train wreck of sloppiness. I never saw a good Desa show (and who remembers their debut at that echo chamber of a high school auditorium?). Years later, on a serious pro stage, we got the Desa set that we’d been waiting for — easily the best they’ve ever sounded, performed in front of their largest crowd. If this is their swan song, it was at a peak. Maybe it’s because everyone in the band is older and wiser, but other than a few glitches (a couple songs sounded like half the band was in the wrong key), it was powerful stuff. The setlist:

Greater Omaha

Man And Wife, The Former (Financial Planning)

Mañana

Man And Wife, The Latter (Damaged Goods)

Mall Of America

Happiest Place On Earth

Survival Of The Fittest

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Hole In One

As I say in Wednesday’s write-up, it was good to see Landon Hedges and Denver Dalley and the rest of them on stage again, and it’s a shame that this is probably a one-off because Desa is the perfect place for Oberst to spit out his pent-up venom. Instead, he’ll probably head back to the more passive, FM-friendly confines of Monsters of Folk after the next Bright Eyes album is released sometime in the future.

Lullaby for the Working Class at The Concert for Equality, 7/31/10.

We’d been told that we were going to get our money’s worth buying the $50 deluxe ticket instead of the $20 general admission. For fans of Lullaby for the Working Class, the statement may be true. Ted Stevens and company (including Mike and AJ Mogis) played a flawless set in front of a few hundred inside The Waiting Room. I never saw this band in its heyday, and now I’m sorry I missed them back then. It was gorgeous stuff, backed by some of the area’s finest musicians.

As for the hootenanny, well, there were no special guests that we hadn’t already seen earlier in the day. Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings came out for a few quiet songs. Then Conor joined them before being joined by the rest of Desaparecidos. And then came the finale with David Dondero singing a song written especially for the occasion, apparently called “They’re Building a New Berlin Wall,” whose chorus follows the same melody of Oberst’s “Land Locked Blues.” Oberst led the audience singing the chorus before saying goodnight at 2 a.m.

So ended the Concert for Equality. A success? Depends on how you define it. They certainly raised a lot of money. Did people walk away energized about the issue of immigrant rights in Nebraska? Probably not. Did they see what will be considered an historical show from a Nebraska-music standpoint. Without a doubt.

More Wednesday…

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Conduits at Slowdown Jr., July 30, 2010.

I don’t want to forget another show that happened this past weekend — the debut of Conduits at Slowdown Jr. Friday night. The band, fronted by vocalist Jenna Morrison and featuring Roger Lewis and members of Eagle Seagull are equal parts punch and drone, a chiming, building sonic adventure like nothing else around here. Morrison, who was anonymous as a member of Son Ambulance, owns this frontwoman position with grace and power that I frankly didn’t think she had. She’s got an amazing voice that is only going to get stronger the more this band performs. She had the strength to keep her voice above the waves as the slow-build ambient rock hit tidal-wave crescendos. They don’t play pop songs, more like cinematic set pieces that would work well played in succession with no breaks — a sonic experience. You’ll be hearing more from this band.

We also said goodbye Friday night to Our Fox. Frontman Ryan Fox is headed to Portland, and though they won’t say they’re breaking up, their future is obviously uncertain. All dressed in sailor whites, they did themselves proud. I’ll miss these guys.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

A reminder and a warning for anyone interested in attending the Concert for Equality July 31 in beautiful downtown Benson: Tickets are scheduled to go on sale online at 10 a.m. this morning at onepercentproductions.com — and tickets are, indeed, limited. Only a few thousand of the $20 general admission tickets will be available; and only a fraction of that number will be available of the $50 tickets that will get you into The Waiting Room for a special “concert after the concert.”

Last night, One Percent Productions announced that Gillian Welch and David Rawlings has been added to an already crowded bill that includes Bright Eyes, Cursive, the long-awaited reunion of Desaparecidos, and the even longer-awaited reunion of Lullaby for the Working Class. And that’s not all. More artists could be announced that will make this an even bigger event. News of the concert has been burning up the blog-o-sphere over the past week, and you better believe an army of out-of-towners has decided to make the pilgrimage to Benson.

All money from tickets sales will go to ACLU Nebraska’s fight against Fremont’s “Anti-Immigrant” Law. In late June, by a 57% to 43% margin, Fremont voters approved a city ordinance that seeks to limit the renting of homes and apartments to people who are not in the country legally. It also seeks to require employers to verify the legal residency of people they hire in the city.

According to WOWT.com, Nebraska State Senator Charlie Janssen, whose district includes Fremont, said he will push for immigration reform at the state level. Janssen says the “lopsided” vote in favor of the immigration ordinance is a signal that immigration is an important issue that voters want addressed.

The law is a bookend to Arizona’s SB1070, which allows police in Arizona to challenge any member of the public who they suspect of being an illegal immigrant to prove their status officially. That’s right, folks, “Show me your papers.” Oberst has written a number of “open letters” — including one that was published in the current issue of The Reader — that explains how he believes such legislation will only lead to the creation of race-centric police state, or as he put it in a letter published on billboard.com: “The only thing, clearly, that these people care about is Money and Power, that and the creation and preservation of an Anglo-Centric Police State where every Immigrant and Non-White citizen is considered subhuman. They want them stripped of their basic human rights and reduced to slaves for Corporate America and the White Race. They are engaged in blatant class warfare. It is evil, pure and simple.”

This is a divisive issue even in a liberal enclave like Benson, which maybe ain’t so liberal after all. When the dust settles from this concert, there’s a story that begs to be written about Midwestern youth’s attitude toward race, immigration and city and state rights.

Anyway, get your computers primed in ready for 10 a.m. CT. Good luck.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Landon Hedges of Little Brazil confirmed that the Desaparecidos reunion July 31 at the Concert for Equality will be an old-school full band event featuring all five original Desa members: Hedges, Conor Oberst, Denver Dalley, Ian McElroy and Matt Baum. For fans and followers of the Omaha indie music scene, this will be an historic event, especially when you factor in the Lullaby for the Working Class reunion.

I can think of two other bands that also are ripe for reunions — Commander Venus and Slowdown Virginia. Why not? They’re all going to be there…

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Column 278 is a rehash of recent blog fodder, including the Concert for Equality announcement (that news broke right at deadline), and the It’s True break-up announcement (with one added comment: I don’t think you’ve heard the last of It’s True’s songs. Hawkins isn’t going to stop playing music; but he may stop playing it with other people, and what started out as a solo project could end up that way).

And one other thing: I was at Westroads Saturday afternoon picking up a new pair of flip-flops when I had a brush with this generation’s Donnie Osmond. As Teresa and I were leaving the DSW we heard high-pitched screams — a cross between fear, pain and orgasm — coming from the second floor of the mall. The cause of the turmoil was gliding down the escalator right in front of us, surrounded by an entourage of bodyguards and white-shirt security — teen heartthrob Justin Bieber and his bangs, looking like any other 16-year-old spending an afternoon at the mall.

Bieber looked bored and disinterested as flocks of teen-aged girls clustered just out of arms’ reach snapping photos with their cell phones. Yes, there were tears.

As the screams faded down the hallway I imagined a distraught Conor Oberst walking through the crowd, hands covering his ears, headed in the other direction, lost in thought trying to solve the problems of Arizona, Fremont and the state of civil rights in these United States, the whole time being completely ignored. Ah, Conor… it could have been you.

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Tonight at Slowdown Jr., it’s Maps & Atlases with Drink Up Buttercup and The Globes. M&A’s latest, Perch Patchwork (Barsuk), is uptempo indie-pop with an acoustic flair, though it in no way resembles modern folk. Nothing twangy about these guys. Seattle’s The Globes plays trippy math rock that can slide into psychedelic. Mesmerizing. $10, 9 p.m.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Kansas at Memorial Park, July 3, 2010.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The above photo isn’t of the main stage at Friday night’s Grampa-rock-fest at Memorial Park. In fact it’s a photo of the south side of the park — the overflow crowd that couldn’t find a place to stand in the park’s west bowl where the main stage was actually located. The organizers wisely set up a large, high-def screen that projected live footage of the bands playing just over the ridge, and even that area filled to capacity. The published crowd estimate was 80,000. How someone came up with that number is a mystery. I will say that the crowd was larger than the estimated 50k supposedly on hand a few years ago for 311 (and about 79k more than were there for last year’s Gomez concert). Omaha does love its arena rock, even if the bands are 40 years old.

We walked to the park at 6 to see Kansas with the intention of turning around after their set, walking back home for dinner than returning for the fireworks. We ended up seeing most of Styx and more than enough of Foreigner’s set. Of the three bands, Kansas sounded the most authentic, pulling out songs that I haven’t heard in 20 years. Other than “Carry On Wayward Son” and “Dust in the Wind,” Kansas isn’t heard much on your favorite classic rock station these days. Styx got the best crowd response because Styx had the best songs. Without Dennis DeYoung, Tommy Shaw has become the band’s ad hoc frontman, for better or worse (mostly worse). Looking like a bleach-blond, bearded trailer park woman, Shaw has managed to maintain a pretty good voice over the years. But despite Styx having one of the larger catalogs of hits from the ’70s, the crowd was subjected to at least one Damn Yankees song, I’m assuming on Shaw’s insistence — proof that he could make it without Styx, even though that was the band he was fronting that evening. The guy filling in for DeYoung wasn’t awful — he certainly could win a karaoke contest — but songs like “Lady” underscored his, um, lacking abilities. Foreigner got the headliner slot, and was the weakest band of the evening. Without Lou Gramm the band has become a glorified tribute act, and a weak one at that. Hits like “I Want to Know What Love Is (the dangling participle song)” and “Hot Blooded” sounded limp and old. The whole evening was very casino, and so was the crowd. It was a white trash fantasy camp, where shoes were most-definitely optional despite a sidewalk littered with broken glass, snot and other bodily fluids. The crowd in front of the stage seemed genuinely focused on their arena heroes, and to be fair, even a large portion of the rest of the audience had their head bobbing to “Sweet Madame Blue.” As the sun began to set, out came the glowsticks-on-a-string, like carny jewelry lighting up an army of unwashed, tattooed necks. The next morning, small piles of the milky-plastic cartridges gathered along the curbs like empty drug vials. Their glow was fleeting, and you could say the same thing about these bands, except in Omaha where decades after their fame has passed, they continue to burn brighter than any other star, 80,000 fans strong. Either that, or everyone was there for the fireworks.

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Well the big show that everyone was talking about last week is now official. One Percent this morning announced the “Concert for Equality” July 31 in Downtown Benson. And it’s a Saddle Creek Records all-star line-up featuring a reunited Desaparecidos, Cursive, Bright Eyes, and a reunited Lullaby For The Working Class, and that’s just for starters. Don’t be surprised if a gaggle of Conor Oberst’s pals also show up. All proceeds go to the ACLU Nebraska’s effort to repeal Fremont’s “Anti-Immigrant” Law. Tickets for the Concert for Equality will be available July 10 — this Saturday — at onepercentproductions.com. General admission is $20. There also is a limited number of Deluxe Tickets available for $50 that includes access to an additional show inside The Waiting Room the night of the event.

I’m not sure how something like this sells out, but if it can, it will.

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Speaking of big shows… there’s one going on tonight at The Slowdown when The Hold Steady take the stage with The Whigs. Their performance the April before last was rather flat (see review), but I’ve been told by a number of their local mega-fans that it was just an off night. Too bad I won’t find out if that’s true (as I’m not on the list this time!). $18, 9 p.m.

Also tonight, Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers are playing at The Waiting Room with Brad Hoshaw and Vago. $15, 8 p.m.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.