club.kingsnake.com - TV Reviews

TV Review: Foo Fighters on Austin City Limits

nospam@example.com (Jeff Barringer) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 19:50:21 -0600

Foo Fighters
Hometown: Seattle, Washington
http://www.foofighters.com
Taped Monday, September 29th, 2008
KLRU Studio(Austin, Texas)

As I sit here writing this I am watching Dave Grohl and Co. rip through their Austin City Limits performance, this time on a small screen rather than real life, and the show has lost none of the impact that it had live. The best set I saw in all of 2008, the video is a slightly abbreviated and cherry picked version of the set list below, starting with Young Mans Blues.

Best of all, this time there wasn't a packed studio with everyone straining to see over the crowd, the cameras literally putting you in Dave's lap. I can't wait to get the Blu-Ray of this show to watch it again.

Check out when the Foo Fighters Austin City Limits set is playing on your local PBS station at http://www.pbs.org.

No, I didn't see myself in it.

Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters at ACL Fest 2008

Austin City Limits Taping Set List

Times Like These
Cheer Up, Boys (Your Make Up Is Running)
Learn To Fly
Young Man's Blues
Long Road To Ruin
Let it Die
Stacked Actors
Skin And Bones
Marigold
My Hero
Cold Day In The Sun
But, Honestly
Everlong
Monkey Wrench
All My Life
Aurora
The Pretender

Lucky Foo Fighters ticket holders lined up to enter the KLRU studio

TV Review: Kanye West Dances With Himself On SNL

nospam@example.com (Jeff Barringer) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:20:23 -0600

I wasn't surprised that my request to review Kanye West when he came to town a few months back was turned down. Kanye has a notably rough relationship with journalists and you virtually have to sneak in. No one I know was allowed to cover the performance. I was surprised when he signed on to do Bonaroo this spring, since there were so many journalists in attendance, but not surprised that it turned into a debacle. I was absolutely shocked when I found out he was slotted to perform on SNL. I have watched SNL since season 1 and over the years SNL has had the ability to make or break not only artists but entire genres of music into the main stream based on a single appearance. You gotta be packing a set to play SNL.

It's too bad that Kanye didn't have the stones to pull it off.

In what ranks as possibly the worst performance I have ever seen on SNL, Kanye danced around in front of a video screen, by himself, while he caterwalled a Capella and off tune, missed words, and botched his national TV appearance. Not even burying the vocals with all that vocoder Autotune was able to mask his shaky performance. The whole thing reminded me of a bad home made hip hop video from the 80's shot in the local high school gym and run at 4 in the morning on the local cable access channel. It's no wonder that Kanye needs a huge stage setup for his road shows, the crowd won't notice how bad the vocals are if they are too busy watching a spaceship land. Lip syncing could have only helped his performance, at least right up until he started dancing with himself. Even American Idol would have sent him home. Why is this guy important again?

Video: Live at Raul's (almost)

nospam@example.com (Jeff Barringer) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 00:19:00 -0500

The Skunks

the Huns

F-Systems

Standing Waves

The Big Boys

A few days ago a friend of mine, Jesse Sublett of the Skunks, sent me an email letting me know he had uploaded a few band videos from his archives, playing at Austin's infamous and long dead Raul's niteclub down on the Drag. The grainy distorted videos, not helped by the YouTube process, were definitely not MTV worthy. In fact, at the time they were filmed there was no MTV. Despite the limitations of 70s home video technology, it still brought back memories of a club, and bands, long consigned to the history books, yet still having an important impact on Austin's music scene today.

In the 70s, long before Austin, was known as a live music town, there were few live music venues, and even fewer willing to risk their beer license by booking punk rock acts. No wonder; Raul's itself made national news AND Rolling Stone and was almost closed down after the Hun's lead singer, Phil Tolstead, was arrested onstage. Charged with inciting a riot during their debut performance after he tried to kiss a cop while singing the song "Eat Death Scum," the stage was bum rushed by undercover officers. For more on this boisterous period, and the band that made Austin a "scene,"check out "The Improbable Rise of Asshole Rock" by Tom Huckabee, the Hun's former percussionist.

The Huns were psychodramatic chthonian performance art; and the gauche and vulgar, spectacular meaning of it all could only be fathomed live. On the eight or nine occasions when the alchemy really worked, we bore a hole to hell and stole the devil's own fire. Otherwise, we sucked.

â€” Tom Huckabee - The Huns
Hollywood Hills, February 1995

The good old, bad old days in Austin are gone, Raul's is gone, Phil Tolstead found god, the cops have found better things to do with their time like shooing away the homeless guys holding parking spaces hostage downtown, and the only musicians getting arrested in this town now are doing so for their off-stage antics rather than anything you could consider a performance. There seem to be no more envelopes left to push. It was an interesting time to live in Austin but one we won't see again.

Jesse's email sent me on a hunt to see if I could locate any more Raul's footage. After searching YouTube prodigiously and coming up with very little, I then started to look for bands that played Raul's in its heyday instead. I did find a number of videos by some of the bands of the period. Some of videos are downright awful, others are watchable, all of them are enjoyable and in a way each offers a little slice of time from Austin's musical history.

The Dicks

Sharon Tate's Baby

The Psychedelic Furs

TV Review: The Henry Rollins Show

nospam@example.com (Jeff Barringer) — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 21:18:04 -0500

Henry Rollins has something to get off his chest; lucky for us IFC has given Henry his own weekly show. With a sardonic wit that is as dry as it is cutting, Henry keeps us up to date with world events, politics, and entertainment, saying the things that Jon Stewart wishes he could get away with.

This week he has a no-holds-barred conversation with controversial musician Peaches, and has Ringside as his special musical guest. Upcoming shows include guests like club.kingsnake fav Slayer, and the New York Dolls. Un-cut and un-censored, Henry's show is definitely not for those who have an aversion to either profanity or truth. Hats off, Henry, for telling it like it is. You can catch the show on Saturday nights. For a look at the full show schedule and to download clips check out the web site at http://henryrollins.ifc.com/.

(BTW - Henry - help a bro out man, hook me up with your band intro girl ;) )