UWM Post fringe

On March 12 Kevin Smith will be spending an evening in Milwaukee. The writer/director, known for works such as Clerks, Mallrats, and Zack and Miri Make a Porno among others will be hosting a monologue/question and answer show to the Pabst Theater.

Smith has released three DVDs of his tours, the most current of which is titled Sold Out: A Threevening With Kevin Smith. From sharing amusing anecdotes of the film industry to providing shocking insight into his own life, Smith bares all during his signature talks.

Highlights from his previous talks include fascinating insights into the early production on what eventually became Superman Returns along with vivid details of his early relationship with his wife.

Tickets go on sale Friday, November 13 at noon and will be available at the Pabst box office and online at http://pabsttheater.org/kevinsmith . Don’t miss this rare chance to hear Silent Bob speak.

-Jason Kopplin

Let’s face it; the term “supergroup” is getting thrown around pretty loosely these days. Monsters of Folk can’t touch the Traveling Wilburys, and groups like Chickenfoot and Tinted Windows are nothing more than hollow attempts made by rockers in exile trying to collectively reclaim their glory days.

Then along comes Them Crooked Vultures, a project shrouded in secrecy since the first whisper of its existence in 2005. That was until Sunday night of this year’s Lollapalooza festival, when Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters), John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin), and Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) arrived on stage at the Metro, debuting their first crop of songs in front of 1,100 fans lucky enough to score tickets to the instantly sold out aftershow.

Now after playing a handful of gigs overseas, and a performance at this year’s Austin City Limits Festival, TCV has decided to leak its entire self-titled album on their website and YouTube page.

Originally scheduled for a Dec. 17 release, MP3ers can score their digital downloads (with two bonus tracks) via iTunes next Tuesday, Nov. 17. The vinyl junkies will have to wait until Dec. 23 to get their fix.

Preorder all 13 tracks here.

-J.S.

Phish Saturday night at Festival 8

Phish once again elevated its storied career this weekend by hosting its own three-day music festival at the Empire Polo Grounds in Indio, CA.

Featuring eight sets over three days, Festival 8 drew an estimated 40,000 phans to the Coachella Valley Festival site for the band’s first three-day festival combined with their Halloween tradition of performing a “musical costume.”

Past musical costumes include:

• 1994: The Beatles’ White Album
• 1995: The Who’s Quadrophenia
• 1996: Talking Heads’ Remain in Light
• 1998: The Velvet Underground’s Loaded
• 1998: Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon (surprise set two days after Halloween)

After months of speculating what album would be played (MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular and Radiohead’s Kid A among the favorites), handbills were issued onsite Saturday afternoon confirming what many had predicted: Phish was set to play The Rolling Stones’ classic 1972 double LP Exile on Main St.

While the MGMT theory gained some traction after “Kids” was sound checked on Thursday afternoon, smart money was on Exile all along considering the band has been performing “Loving Cup” since 1994.

Phish covering The Rolling Stones “Tumbling Dice” @ Fest 8 10/31/09

Clocking in at just over 100 minutes, the set lasted only about a half-hour longer than the Stone’s original. Not all that much jamming considering that 18 songs were played.

While the four members of Phish traded off lead-vocal duties, a special horn section and back-up vocals — courtesy of Sharon Jones and Saundra Williams – provided for a set oozing of soul flavored  blues-rock.

Festival 8 also featured the band’s first ever all-acoustic set Sunday morning, with coffee and donuts (figure eight shaped) taboot.

Acoustic Setlist:

Water In The Sky, Back On The Train, Brian And Robert, Invisible, Strange Design, Mountains in the Mist, The Curtain With, Army Of One, Sleep Again, My Sweet One, Let Me Lie, Bouncing Around The Room, Train Song, Wilson, McGrupp And The Watchful Hosemasters
Encore: Driver, Talk, Secret Smile

“Bouncing Around the Room” Acoustic 11/1/09

The Phish Handbill also confirmed longstanding rumors of a four-night New Year’s Eve run at the American Airlines Arena in Miami, FL. Well, sort of (see David Bowie below).

In what can only be viewed as a pre-emptive strike on all other concerts being prepared for late June/early July in the Milwaukee area, Summerfest officials have announced that country superstar, Tim McGraw is set to headline the Marcus Amphitheater on the opening night of the Big Gig.

The announcement made Friday, comes an entire month earlier than the revelation of last year’s first headliner, coincidentally another county legend, George Strait.

And while country music isn’t necessarily our forte here at the fringe section, we eagerly await future concert announcements from the fine folks at Milwaukee World Festival, as a means of distraction from the rapidly dropping temperatures upon us.

Tim McGraw plays the Marcus Amphitheater Thursday, June 28 at 7:30 p.m. with opening acts: Lady Antebellum, and Love and Theft June.

Ticket information regarding prices and pre/on-sale dates has not yet been released.

Last week Tuesday during a Pearl Jam performance at the Gibson Amphitheater in Los Angeles Eddie Vedder and the company brought out a few special guests during the encore portion of the show, turning and already great night into an unforgettable evening for those in attendance.

Ben Harper, who’s Relentless7 opened earlier that evening, sat in with his lap-slide guitar on “Mosquito.” Fellow Seattle grunge veteran, Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains joined the boys onstage at the end of “Alive,” (second encore final song) taking Mike McCready’s guitar and finishing the solo for him. Watch Here.

But what really makes this night special is the fact that Chris Cornell (Soundgarden, Audioslave) joined Jeff Ament, Matt Cameron, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready, and Eddie Vedder onstage to perform “Hunger Strike”, thus creating and impromptu Temple of the Dog reunion — The first of its kind since 2003.

Temple of the Dog formed as a tribute to Mother Love Bone’s lead singer, Andrew Wood, who died of an unexpected heroin overdose in March of 1994, just days before their debut album, Apple was set to be released. Cornell, who was Wood’s roommate at the time of his death, began writing songs as a way to cope with his loss.

Later, Cornell approached two members of Mother Love Bone (Gossard and Ament) about the project, as well as future Pearl Jam lead guitarist Mike McCready. Eddie Vedder came into the picture as he was in Seattle auditioning to be the singer of Mookie Blaylock (now Pearl Jam), and Cameron was already playing drums in Soundgarden (now of Pearl Jam) with Cornell.

“Well I don’t mind stealing bread/From the mouths of decadence”

Their self titled album was released on April 16, 1991, four months before Pearl Jam released Ten and six months before Soundgarden released Badmotorfinger. The album peaked at number five on the U.S. charts and achieved platinum success with the two singles, “Hunger Strike” and “Say Hello 2 Heaven,” but not until almost a year after it was released.

By then the both Pearl Jam and Soundgarden were riding high on the success of the Seattle grunge scene promoted by the music industry in the early 90’s. Both bands were content with the direction they were heading and felt that Wood would have appreciated the material dedicated to him, giving them no real reason to pursue the project further.

Prior to last Tuesday, Temple of the Dog had only played a handful of live events in the early 90’s, including two Lollapalooza tour stops in 1992. Aside from those shows and the recording sessions of the album, the only other time the band played together was in 2003 when Cornell showed up at a Pearl Jam gig in Santa Barbara, acting as a one off reunion similar to this most recent event.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this “reunion” is the fact that Kim Thayil and Ben Shepherd were also in attendance with Cornell, while Cameron was onstage drumming, making Tuesday the first time since the band’s break up in 1997 that the four members of Soundgarden had been seen together in public.

Is there a future in store for Soundgarden? Considering the commercial failure of Cornell’s latest album, (the Timbaland produced) Scream, and the fact that the other three members have gotten together as recently as this spring to play select Soundgarden songs; it looks like a reunion could be in the cards.

Now that doesn’t mean it’s time to bust out the flannel and Converse One Stars just yet, In order for a real Soundgarden reunion to occur, drummer Matt Cameron would have to be free. And that doesn’t appear to be happening anytime soon with Pearl Jam  selling out multiple night runs at arenas around the country.

Alice In Chains “Would” Unplugged – Dedicated to Andrew Wood

-JS

Spike Jonze adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are doesn’t hit the big screen for a little over two weeks from now, but the entire soundtrack is already streaming online. Click Here

Produced by Karen O and the Kids, Where The Wild Things Are Original Soundtrack Features performances from Karen’s Yeah Yeah Yeah’s band mates, Nick Zinner and Brian Chase; as well as contributions from Dearhunter’s Branford Cox, and Dead Weather’s Dean Fertita.

Let the wild rumpus start!

Movie Trailer:

-JS

The first season of Heroes remains some of the best network television of the decade.  The show was intelligent and well paced with a cohesive narrative and deliberate pacing.  Since then, the show has barely been good enough to keep watching.  The second season fell victim to the writers’ strike.  As abysmal as the sophomore effort was, it’s not fair to judge a show under such circumstances.  What was originally planned as a full season’s worth of story had to be condensed into 13 episodes.  It’s hard to imagine anything quality emerging from such circumstances.  Still, fans were upset enough that series creator Tim Kring issued an apology.

Season 3 had enough of the old magic to string along the faithful on the promise of the series returning to its original glory.  But there were enough ridiculous plots (and plot holes) to keep everyone weary.  Were they still recovering from the disastrous previous season?  Will season four, dubbed “Redemption” live up to its title?

The villains this season are a group of carnies with spotty Irish accents.  They’re up to… something that is never made clear.  The mystery will undoubtedly unfold over the course of the season, but viewers should at least know why these new characters are villainous.

Heroes was never an original show.  It stole most of its great ideas from better comic book plots.  That was never a problem.  Heroes is often more true to the spirit of monthly comics than most licensed Hollywood movies.  In fact, the more the show strays from its inspiration, the more it suffers.

When Kring created the show, his plan was to follow the format of ensemble stories such as the X-Men or Avengers.  In these serials, the roster changes over time.  Characters quit the good fight, die, or switch sides, making room for fresh faces.  It’s not so much about the individual characters as the stories in which they play a roll.  Kring eventually bowed to fan and studio pressure and the show has kept largely the same cast.

These characters were never meant to be explored this deeply.  Sylar (Zachary Quinto), was an excellent villain in the first season, mostly because he was so mysterious.  His character has been so fleshed out at this point, there’s little left to fear.  The character often feels shoehorned into plots because the producers need to check off that box of fan requests.

The same goes for Noah Bennet (Jack Coleman), aka the Horn-Rimmed Glasses Man.  For the first season, it was difficult to tell where his true allegiances lay.  That makes it all the more rewarding when he prevails as a hero near the season’s end.  Since then, his character has stayed flat and undeveloped for three seasons.

The same goes for his daughter, former cheerleader Claire (Hayden Panettiere).  Every season, she goes through the same plot arc of trying to discover who she really is and her place in the world, only to reset as the resident cute blond and do it all over again the next fall.  But this time she’s not in a new high school, she’s in college.  So that makes it ok to rehash tired plots, right?

That leaves Hiro (Masi Oka) and Ando (James Kyson Lee), the blundering Japanese BFFs.  Again, these two served a crucial role in the original season, exploring the nature and burden of a hero.  They have now been reduced to little more than comic relief.  If any single character needs to die off, it’s Hiro.

Almost all American television, not just Heroes, share one fatal flaw with mainstream comics.  Successful properties will continue to be produced as long as they are profitable.  Venerated series will grow tired and be run into the ground, only cancelled when sales/ratings fall off when the once-great product is a shell of what it once was.

Sometimes, a story needs to be done.  It’s too early to see if Heroes has redeemed itself this season.  To paraphrase Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, you either cancel a show when the story is finished, or stay on the air long enough to see it become tired and redundant.  Unless the creators are willing to stick closer to their original inspiration and shake things up from story to story, it might be time to give up on this once-great show.  This season isn’t very accessible for new viewers anymore.  Existing fans should use this season to decide if the show is still worth their time.

-Jason Kopplin