LOCAL
“THERE’S A FEW ODD CHORDS I STILL HAVE NOT FIGURED OUT.”
BEAT
{BY TYLER MILLER}
UP-AND-COMING ELECTRO
INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
VIA 2015 KICKOFF PARTY feat. ONDO, TOM MCCONNELL, IVIES. 10 p.m. Fri., Sept. 25. Cattivo, 146 44th St., Lawrenceville. $7. 412-687-2157 or www.cattivopgh.com
22
THE
MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE {BY {B BY MI MIKE KE S SHANLEY} HANL NLEY Y}
MISC Records’ first release, MISC-001
On Fri., Sept. 25, local record label MISC Records will be featured at the VIA Festival’s kick-off party at Cattivo, in Lawrenceville. Featuring musicians Ondo, Ivies and Tom McConnell, the night will be not only a showcase for an emerging local label, but an appropriate kick-off for VIA, which aims to present the future of art, music and culture. Founded by Juan LaFontaine — who also helps run the local techno- and house-focused label Detour — MISC records was launched about a year ago as an outlet for music that didn’t seem to fit Detour’s style. Its first release, MISC-001, which appeared as a “name your price” download on Aug. 11 on Bandcamp, features all the artists appearing at the VIA showcase, as well as Good Dude Lojack, Slowdanger, Telavision and Yaeji. “There were a lot of tracks that I thought were great and should be put out there for people to listen to. Unfortunately, since they didn’t fit the sound we were looking for with Detour, we had to pass on them,” says LaFontaine. “There was music being made in Pittsburgh that I really wished to support and release on a label, so I decided to start one.” While Detour tends to be driven heavily by techno and the prominent pulsing of a 4-4 kick drum, MISC leans to the mellower side, featuring styles ranging from minimal techno to hip hop, funk to ambient. With tracks like the ambient “What They’re Playing,” by Yaeji, and the poppier, vocally enriched track “Walking in Circles,” by Slowdanger, the label takes on a sound of its own with a very diverse set of tunes. MISC has already been featured in Chicago-based 5 Magazine, a prominent, publication with a focus on house music, which called Pittsburgh a “hotbed of American electronic music.” LaFontaine is already working to put out four more EPs from artists featured on the compilation, hopefully to be released by the end of the year. MISC Records serves as yet another label to pop up in Pittsburgh that aims to serve the city’s surging electronic music scene.
B
RIAN ENO ONCE said the Velvet Underground sold a minimal number of albums, but everyone who bought them was inspired to form their own band. The implication is that the band’s ripple effect greatly exceeded industry goals and expectations. By the same token, it could probably be said that Television — one of the original bands to put the late New York club CBGB on the musical map — had a similar impact. Between the Ramones’ primal, twominute-or-less power-chord blasts and Talking Heads’ herky-jerky attempts at pop, Television occupied a unique space. While their peers shunned proper “lead” guitars, Television’s Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd not only soloed, they did it incredibly well. They stretched songs past the 10-minute mark, building in intensity akin to jazz musicians, but in six-string voices that fit in with the burgeoning punk scene. “Little Johnny Jewel,” the 1975 debut single, splits a vamp of a song over two sides. Lloyd and Verlaine each engages in a combination of frantic plinking, bluesy bends that touch on Neil Young and — in the second half — a loop that sounds like a spastic version of jazz guitarist Grant Green. While English punks The Clash dismissed the Rolling Stones in their song “1977,” Television wasn’t opposed to encoring with “Satisfaction.” And it sounded much closer to the original than Devo’s rewiring of that classic. Live, the band dug deeper into music history, covering the 13th Floor Elevators and Bob Dylan. Their close friends, the Patti Smith Group, drank from the same musical
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 09.16/09.23.2015
{PHOTO COURTESY OF STEFANO GIOVANNINI/HIGH ROAD TOURING}
Television’s Tom Verlaine
well, but the execution was vastly different. Like any punk band worth its salt, Television released just two albums before breaking up: the astounding Marquee Moon (which even Rolling Stone noticed and included on one of its umpteen “500 Best Albums of All Time” lists) and the intriguing
THE WARHOL: SOUND SERIES PRESENTS
TELEVISION 8 p.m. Fri., Sept. 25. Carnegie Music Hall, 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland. $30. 412-237-8300 or www.warhol.org
Adventure. Verlaine and Lloyd embarked on solo careers, but the original lineup got back together and released a self-titled third album in 1992. Live performances of the band’s first run appeared in the meantime,
building further on its history. A performance in San Francisco from Television’s final 1978 tour shows the group in top form, with songs segueing seamlessly into one another, guitars instinctually weaving together. Lloyd left the group amicably eight years ago, replaced by Jimmy Rip, who has played with Verlaine’s solo group since the early ’80s. With original bassist Fred Smith and drummer Billy Ficca also on board, this local performance has been eagerly anticipated, to put it mildly. Verlaine is no stranger to Pittsburgh, having appeared at The Andy Warhol Museum and the Regent Square Theater in recent years, accompanying films. But this is the first appearance by his band proper. While Verlaine’s guitar work can be expansive and dream-like, his high-pitched vocals always had a great deal of under-