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Jeff Leppard
I wasn’t sure how good Tweedy would be playing by himself, because that requires the kind of personality that can carry the whole show without the help of either other people or volume. As a solo performer, you can’t just play the songs without saying anything, the way you could if you were playing with a band. The silence would be awkward. And my experience with Tweedy in the past is that he is none too chatty and plenty awkward. Some years ago, my roommate brought Uncle Tupelo up to ktru for an interview. This was when they were touring for Anodyne, and while the drummer came to the interview, he disappeared pretty much as soon as he got there, so it was mostly the Jay and Jeff show. Having a missing drummer led to a few jokes at the expense of him and his dreadlocks, but overall the interview was humorless and kind of painful. Getting either Jay or Jeff to say anything was impossible. They would answer questions with a single sentence. This makes for a bad interview. And after a few minutes, a certain station manager who also writes for this blog and whose show we were interrupting for the interview pulled the plug and started playing music, without warning. It was a particularly dry interview, so it’s hard to blame her (still…). So it was a big surprise to me to find out that Jeff Tweedy is funny—not just kind of funny, but really stand-up comedian funny*. He has all timing and the imitations down. I submit this bit as evidence: He held up his guitar and winced, making the “singer in action” photo that you do indeed see in every newspaper. Then as he plugged in a new guitar:
And he struck the singer pose for a second time.** This being the second night, he also complained that the reviewer of the previous night’s show had called him surly in that day’s column***. “What show was he at? I love you people and I can kid like that because we have that kind of relationship. I think he just wanted me to be surly. He paid to see me be surly.” Then an audience member pointed out that this writer wouldn’t have paid.
Okay, so he was funny, you say, but how was the music? Every bit as good. You wouldn’t know how good he is by just listening to the albums, but when you hear Tweedy play all the songs by himself, you can really see how good both the songs and his playing are. To further prove he doesn’t need any of the rock star trappings to make him look good, he finished up the show by playing “Dreamer in My Dreams” and “Acuff Rose” without the benefit of the P.A. He just stood at the front of the stage and belted them out. Impressive. *Possibly Jeff has been taking pointers from Robyn Hitchcock. The Minus 5 opened and Scott McCaughey mentioned that he had written some of the songs with Jeff. McCaughey also plays in Hitchcock’s Venus 3, so there’s no need for a Kevin Bacon stretch there. 9 comments to Jeff Leppard |
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Thats pretty funny about the band names. Though it does seem like almost any band name can be interpreted as some sort of scat reference – Led Zeppelin, April Wine, Air Supply, Run DMC, B-52s, Butthole Surfers (well this one i’m sure IS a scat reference), Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Nirvana, Green River, The Wailers, Pearl Jam, Dinosaur Jr, Mudhoney, The Offspring, Green Day, Rolling Stones, Cream, Bad Company, Deep Purple, the Kinks, Journey, Dead Boys, Big Boys, Runaways, Kajagoogoo, the Stranglers, the Alarm, Art of Noise, Can, Rush, Motorhead, Black Sabbath, Skid Row, Simply Red, Tears for Fears, Til Tuesday, the Stooges, Canned Heat, Lovin Spoonful, Three Dog Night, Velvet Undergroundm, Blind Melon, Celine Dion, you get the picture. The subject is ripe for a book – the Encyclopaedia of Band Names Re-interpreted as Scatological References. With a special food section – Vanilla Fudge, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Meatloaf, the Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Chocolate Watchband, Black-eyed Peas, Gread, Hot Tuna, etc etc etc
Carlos, what’s the scatological connection to Celine Dion? Please elaborate.
Justin, I’m very sorry to hear that you were interrupted by a station manager who obviously lacked all of the social graces. I can’t imagine how rude she must have seemed to not only yourself and the band members, but also to the listening audience. Obviously, she’s the type of person who would never be able to understand how profound a thunderous silence can be.
heids, i’m dissapointed in you, after all the discussions we’ve had about celine dion in this blog and you still have to ask how one gets from Celine Dion to crap?
Oh, right.
Carlos, many of those names did come up. Once he got started, people in the audience were yelling more. I remember Air Supply, Mudhoney, Canned Heat, Three Dog Night, Vanilla Fudge, and Meatloaf. Later when the topic came up again, somebody shouted out “Pearl Jam” and he pointed and shouted right back, “You’ve been sitting on that one!”
Lovin’ Spoonful did come up at one point when he was substituting other band names for “Kiss” during “Heavy Metal Drummer,” but that was a different context.
Nice write up Justin and I’m glad you covered Tweedy because living in the land of Wilco I kind of felt obligated to get around to them but didn’t really want to (just cause they get so much coverage here). Anyway the are real nice guys to boot so I could think of worse living legends to live in the city of their legendom.
Anodyne is a great record. Too bad Heidi had to go ruin it just because of some ancient radio rule about not having silence on the airwaves. Jeesh.
Some more skat bands…
The Jinkies
dry nod
rusted shut
The Keenlies
Spain Colored Orange
the Wholesome Rollers
Turmoil in the Toybox
manhole
Project Grimm
Bleach Bath
and from Austin
squat thrust
brown whorenet
noodle
pong
Scratch Acid
and from Chicago
cococoma
Headache City
Broad Tosser
the Camero Rouge
the submarine races
the Ponys
Love Story in Blood Red
the Handsome Family
and the big poopers
Medeski Martin & Wood
I met Jeff twice during the early 90’s. The first time was at the place down the street from Francisco’s rehearsal warehouse…Axiom, Catal Huyuk? Was it both those names? I can’t remember…anyway, it was an Uncle Tupelo show, right after the release of “Still Feel Gone”. I remember there was absolutely no one there, less than 20-30 people, and for some reason or another Jeff and I ended up playing pool. I also remember getting a sort of “punky kid” feeling from him…he didn’t seem to be all that countryish…I even remember he had on an Urge Overkill T-shirt. Wow, this is weird…I haven’t thought about this in a long time…Anyway, the next time they came through, they played at Fitzgerald’s, and I’m thinking that this must’ve been when your interview took place, because the tension onstage was fairly palatable…it just didn’t seem like anybody was really having much fun, and then at the end, some extra guys came on…the road crew or somethin’, and they played some old standard like “Pay Me My Money Down”, something like that…it was funny, because the roadie that was playing bass ended up in Wilco, so in hindsight you could sorta see how the change was already taking place. Afterward, they were just hanging around, and Jeff remarked “Hey, your that guy I played pool with once, right?” So, we had a nice time, and talked about Chicago, music and stuff. He seemed like a good guy, so ultimately I sorta felt bad because honestly, I think Wilco is a big bag of shit. But, hey…scat’s the way it goes, huh?
possibly, another scat reference: the soil and pimp sessions. they’re japanese, so maybe i’m not understanding that phonetically ’soil’ means something in their language.
Hey, I was at that show too man! You really nailed the writeup, that’s exactly my experience of the show. He was f’n funny, and really nailed it musically, too.