http://slyoyster.com

There’s a place in everybody’s heart that has been blocked off with a wall. It’s a place we don’t let anyone into, the darkness of buried memories and the corner where we hold onto the dissolving optimism that somewhere along the way life is gonna get good. Or decent. It’s a mixed up word.

The Everybodyfields penetrate that wall. They exist in that corner of your heart by making the kind of country music that mainstream Nashville no longer produces. Remember when country was about telling honest, heartfelt stories, sometimes sad, but tinged with the hope that life will be better? Singing about the things that matter like friendships, home, losing a loved one. Somewhere Nashville forgot that and everything became sugary sweet and glossy.

Somehow, armed with only a piano, slide guitar, bass and acoustic guitar, this Johnson City, TN four-piece soar on the backs of their harmonies, tight songwriting, deft instrumentation, funny stage banter and maybe in Jill Andrews the best set of pipes in music.

To reduce her voice to hyperbole is to do her a disservice. I have no idea how she does the things she does, easily swooning from upper octave high notes to low notes. That she does so without sliding between the octaves is a testiment to how amazing she is.

Quinn, on the other hand, has that sort of perfect country twang. It’s not pretty, but it sure is effective and emotive.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, the band made up of Jill Andrews (vox, bass, guit), Sam Quinn (vox, bass, guit), Tom Pryor (slide guitar) and Josh Oliver (piano and electric guitar) held a crowd of 200 or so people in rapture. Half weren’t even there to see the band play, but I’ll sure as hell bet many of them went out and picked up their sublimely good album Nothing Is Okay (2007) afterwards.

They played lots of choice cuts off their 2007 album and several more from their two previous albums: Plague of Dreams and Halfway There: Electricity & The South.

Quinn kept the crowd entertained throughout with his witty quips, deadpan humor and knowledge of local hoops team The Trailblazers, constantly asking if Clyde Drexler was coming to the show. It was the kind of show you might not be telling people you went to in five years, but it was certainly the kind of show that makes you want to grab your friends and have a time and tell them about the band you just saw.

On another note, it’s always great to know that true country music is alive and well, even if we call it alt country to make ourselves sound better, The Everybodyfields are the real deal.

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Mp3: “Don’t Turn Around”
Mp3: “Silver Gardens”

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Myspace: The Everybodyfields
Website: The Everybodyfields
Buy: Official band store
Tour dates: Get out and go see them!

But pretty darn close.  We didn’t have time around here to do much on the Led Zep reunion show at O2 Arena on Dec. 10 for the Ahmet Ertegum tribute yesterday or Monday.  And by now it’s been covered a lot.  There are plenty of YouTube clips to watch (like the one below), photos of the show, live blogging, contrarian opinions, etc.

Regardless, doesn’t it just feel like this should have happened about 15 years ago?  And with the first one out of the way, a tour should in all likelyhood follow.  The question is, how much would you pay for tickets?  $200?  $250?  $500?  How much is too much is probably the more appropriate thing to ask.

Update: Seems Robert Plant will be at Bonnaroo, just not with the rest of Led Zep.  Seems he’s making an appearance with bluegrass legend Allison Krauss in support of their fine album Raising Sand.  Of course, with Plant in tow, is it possible that he could pull double duty at the venerable music festival?  Let the rumor mill churn away.

Sad to think we missed the greatest opportunity to unironically, or post-ironically scream for Stairway at a concert since, well, ever.  Enjoy the rendition of “Stairway to Heaven” from the concert Monday.

Mp3: Led Zeppelin – “Stairway to Heaven (12-10-07 O2 Arena)”

Um, yeah so who’s the big slacker now? That would be me. Lots of stuff has been going on this week, with work and I didn’t anticipate how much it would affect the site. Sorry for the lack of posting lately. Hopefully, we can get stuff sorted out.

Regardless, last Friday I trekked down to White Eagle Saloon, which is a cool place to watch live music. It’s got this old-timey Wild West type of vibe and a little corner stage tucked in the back. Dirty Sweet has gotten our nod for best newcomer this year, narrowly beating out Los Campesinos!, and they brought with them their down and dirty brand of rock’n'roll to this gem of a bar.

The San Diego five-piece (Ryan Koontz on vocals, Nathan Beale on guitar and vocals, Shaun Cornell on bass, Mark Murino on rhythm guit and Chris Mendez-Vanacore on drums) brought the goods, delivering a two-hour set jam packed with almost 20 songs. Their energy practically bowled over the hundred or so in the audience, many of them family and friends. I overheard one person remark that the band reminded him of “that band from the Almost Famous movie,” and he wouldn’t be wrong to compare Dirty Sweet to Stillwater, even though Stillwater was a fictional band.

The duds, the swagger, the guitar licks, even the charismatic front man and mysterious lead guitar player fit. I couldn’t recommend checking them out enough, since it’s almost guaranteed to be a night of hip-shakin’, tamborine thumpin’, arms raisin’ music. Needless to say, it was a fun night of music.

They played a loud and heavy set and I was surprised how much of a heavy metal influence shows up in their music, not to say that it outweighs the blues, but it caught me off guard. They also showed off their versatility with a nasty James Brown cover, “You’re Gonna Miss Me.”

The strangest thing is that I was sitting at a table waiting for the show and it happened to be the same table friends of the band were sitting at, so I was inadvertantly “hanging” with the band before the show and with all their swagger and retro look I was expecting them to be very Gallagher Brothers-esque, but they seemed like generally nice guys.  You know it’s not every day that some band gets up and claps, cheers for the lame opening acts, but these guys seemed to generally appreciate the music and what not.  It was a bit odd to see a band before they make it big and come away with a nice impression of them as people.  I’d be curious to see what happens to these guys in about ten years.

Take the jump for some more photos of the evening. MORE »

A few weeks back the makers behind the Bobby Dylan biopic, featuring the likes of Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Cate Blanchett, etc. etc. all portraying Dylan, held a concert in NYC to celebrate the living legend’s music by having the likes of My Morning Jacket, Mason Jennings, Yo La Tengo, The Roots, Calexico and J Mascis.

It was a vip type of thing and by all acounts one of the concert events of the year.  Haven’t seen the movie yet, but it’s been getting mixed reviews and we weren’t really sold on it after seeing some early footage.  Soundtrack though, is definitely as good as we expected it to be.
The good news is that Wolfgang’s Vault is streaming the concert for your listening pleasure.   Mason Jenning’s performance of “The Times They Are-a Changin’” is one of our highlights for sure.

Sure we all love new music and even more than new music we love live music. There’s nothing like the pure visceral and auditory experience of sweating, holloring, singing along, shaking your body to any band or DJ. It’s that symbiotic relationship between a band and their audience that can only happen at that specific space and time.

Yes, Archive.org has got tons of streaming live shows and with some effort you’ll be able to find some gems over at Phantasy Tour or maybe even find a show from Wolfgang’s Vault. But still you want a site where you can download and save that show to savor, to remember the experience, or even just list to an experience you only read about from your favorite newspaper or blog. Into that void comes a new community site, Gigpedia. It’s very similar in nature to Digg and Wikipedia. In that it’s content is purely user generated and content is voted upon by the community so that the best links and posts goes straight to the top of the charts, so to speak. Okay that was lame, but the website isn’t. In fact it’s pretty great.

All you have to do is create an account, upload any live shows into Sendspace or Mediafire or anyone of a dozen file hosting sites and then submit the file link with a brief description into Gigpedia. The site is currently in beta testing and the site creators David Senior and Eli Wallach hope to roll out many more impressive features.

Here’s the skinny from the site:

The point is Gigpedia is no more us, then it is you. We are all part of one community that together makes Gigpedia what it is. Amazing! Why is it amazing? Because it allows free sharing of media and information amongst a community of like-minded people; MUSIC LOVERS. So what makes us so different? Well, for starters, we are the only web site that currently concerns itself with LIVE MUSIC. Don’t get us wrong we appreciate all of the web sites our there that aim to share indie or underground or new, or however you want to describe it music. We commend them, as new music MUST be heard. Our goal however is different. In fact, we have nothing to do with new music, and everything to do with old music. Live music! Trading live music (commonly known as ‘bootlegging’) has been around for many years. Trading has seen its ups and downs but is still a very vibrant hobby to this day.

So get uploading all those shows you’ve been to and share the great tunes with everyone else! And remember there’s only one rule to abide by:

Rule #2 is why you’ve come here. It’s what makes this site unique. Rule #2 states; if you talk about an amazing live music experience, it is your duty to back it up with a link to where it can be accessed (audio or video). Further, rule #2 states that no news item can be confirmed without being linked to a trusted source.

The dude certainly abides! And because the Dude abides we thought we’d include a link for a bitchin May 6, 1971 Miles Davis show at the Fillmore West we found on Gigpedia.