Praise for the Take Away Shows By John Peabody, Sweet Talk’s West Coast Correspondent (contact at www.johnpeabody.com)

Luke Pritchard of the Kooks starts strumming his guitar and singing the band’s “Ooh la”. He and guitarist Hugh Harris stroll up a tight street in Paris. They keep playing as a car drives by before encountering a gaggle of teenage girls on the sidewalk who, with camera phones aimed, welcome them into a breezeway. The girls scream and sing along with Pritchard, “Ohh la, she was such a good girl to me. Ooh la the world just chewed her up, and spat her out.” Vincent Moon, swings the camera behind the musicians, the song ends, Pritchard thanks the impromptu crowd and emerges with a smile spilling off his face. “That’s the most insane thing I’ve ever done,” he says.

This insane rock star moment and many more are courtesy of French filmmaker Vincent Moon. Over the last year he’s made some fifty mini-documentaries of bands playing in unusual scenes for the Take Away Shows project.

Moon’s project is intensely good. It’s required viewing for any music fan with Internet access. Each show is shot off-the-cuff in Moon’s distinct grainy style, usually with Paris as the stage. There’s no shine, no gloss and the unexpected is embraced. He catches musicians distilled to their most natural form - no stages, no amps - just musicians and music, and he usually has just an hour or two to film them.

“I think it’s very important about the project that we have this kind of time limit,” he says. “Which is kind of okay let’s do this one shot, we don’t have a choice. I don’t like to have a choice.”

The concept is so simple, it’s surprising that it hasn’t been done before. Moon, whose given name is Mathieu Saura, says the idea, to catch bands playing in unordinary places, came after he and his friend/partner Chryde saw Arcade Fire play in Paris. When the band played part of their concert outside, the crowd circled around and the energy grew to a palpable force. They set out to capture that same intensity.

So instead of getting boring interview tape while bands made brief stops in Paris, they asked bands to play impromptu concerts. They put the shows on La Blogotheque, which is home to the Take Away Shows.

Moon, a photographer as well, says the still camera has inspired his video work. He says sees himself as a documentary filmmaker not a director. But building up some kind of electric moment to catch with his video equipment is crucial to a good show.

“The very, very important part of this project is when I meet the band, when I go and talk to them a little bit about the project. I must give a very energized moment,” he said recently from Paris over Skype. “If I give enough energy, so the band will feel confident about it, they will try. The most important thing is in that human exchange.”

That energy can be difficult to conjure. To put the artists at ease, he offers to preview the videos for them before they go up online. If they don’t like it, it doesn’t go up. So far only one band has taken up this offer.

And sometimes Moon utilizes the moment to challenges bands, like Brooklyn-based Grizzly Bear, who ended up doing an a cappella version of the melodic “Knife” while strolling a sidewalk. Some members of the band can hardly hold back their laughter during the shoot. They seem to be surprised at how good they sound.

Other filmmakers have started to contribute to the Take Away Shows, emulating Moon’s grainy technique. “I just want people to go out and people to do the same thing,” says Moon. “That’s all I want. I just want people to copy this.”

To catch these pure musical acts, Moon uses a barebones crew. It’s usually just him and Chryde. They clip a wireless mic to the singer. Chryde holds an ambient mic and Moon films using a basic video recorder with an attached mic. This minimal approach allows them to catch bands casually walking tight streets, or for the Arcade Fire show, stuffed in a freight elevator playing “Neon Bible”.

Since that Arcade Fire Take Away Show things have been crazy for Moon. The website started getting a lot more hits (more than 3000 a day not including YouTube or MySpace views). Labels have been contacting him to do promo work for bands, and even though his videos are usually shot during promo time, he says nothing repulses him more than tainting his work with bad public relations juju.

“I hate to think about it as a promo music thing,” he says. “Of course we use the labels, we use that promo tool to film people. So of course I’m in that kind of weird situation. I just want to be free. We don’t get any money on this. We’re not paid at all.”

“In a way,” he says.” I don’t want to [get paid] because it will kill something. It will make things very difficult.”

It’s art inspiring art and Moon wants to keep it that way. The Take Away Shows are like bootleg tapes, raw recordings that catch life’s, and art’s, natural imperfections. There’s no plastic here, just reflections of musicians playing music, that’s it. Links to mentioned shows Take Away Shows are available as podcasts or at http://www.takeawayshows.com The Kooks Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8DRxQATErY Embedded YouTube Link:Arcade Fire Link: http://www.blogotheque.net/article.php3?id_article=2868 Embedded YouTube Link:Grizzly Bear Link: http://www.blogotheque.net/article.php3?id_article=2577 Embedded Link:

So I just read this right off the wire....if you need a reason to go to UK this summer… here’s the best so far:

Spinal Tap Wants A Sidekick
Updated 05:03 PDT Sun, May 20 2007
Spinal Tap wants British funny man Ricky Gervais to appear with them at this summer’s Live Earth London concert, “This Is Spinal Tap” director Marty DiBergi revealed on U.K. airwaves.
DiBergi (Rob Reiner) said he has a plan to get Gervais, star and co-writer of top British TV comedy shows “The Office” and “Extras,” involved in the July 7 Wembley Stadium show.
DiBergi told London’s XFM radio station that (surviving) band members David St. Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel and Derek Smalls were planning some surprises for their return to the live stage.
“I think they’re gonna do ‘Stonehenge’ and ‘Big Bottom’ and then we’re going do the new number ‘Warmer Than Hell,’ he explained.
“I’m hoping that Ricky Gervais is gonna be there. We’re trying to convince him right now, but Marty DiBergi is definitely going to introduce Spinal Tap.”
Other acts on London’s Live Earth bill include Madonna, Genesis, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Keane. It’s one of seven global gigs taking place to raise awareness of climate change.

If not I have provided a teaser below.  If after watching this you don’t believe The Flaming Lips to be the most outrageously FUN band on the planet you are in the wrong solar system and should consider shock therapy.  The snippet of Wayne kissing a seal at the Zoo is priceless. 29 days and counting until the mothership lands in Manchester.

The management

This is a great little visual reminder of where our hard earned money goes when we hand it over to those “in charge”.  I found this because it features Javelin’s “Oh, Centra!” which I found on OurStage.com many moons ago and still can not get out of my head.  It’s one of those rare tracks that is gut busting funny if you listen to the lyrics while having a Beck meets Atari beat that actually busts a move.

Anyway enjoy

(THE ABOVE PHOTO WAS TAKEN BY MR. DOOLITTLE WHILE I WAS SINGING BEYONCE"S “CRAZY IN LOVE” INTO A LAMP)

Here’s what the schedule would look like with the appropriate beverage and heavy rotation track

Try it you’ll like it and don’t forget to tip your enabler:

Monday - Cowboy Junkies - End of Paths Taken - a good box of Chilean Red - “Brave New World”

Tuesday - Kings of Leon -Because of the Times - a Russian freeze with Kettle One and Ginger Beer - “Fans”

Wednesday - The Old Ceremony - Our One Mistake - Double Dirty Martini on the rocks with a full clip - “Papers in Order”

Thursday - American Babies - American Babies - Jack and Ginger in a chilled pint glass - “Swimming at Night”

Friday - Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger - A sixer of pull tab PBR’s - “Goodnight Rose”

Saturday - Earl Greyhound - Soft Targets - A Redbull and Schlitz boiler maker - “I’m the One”

Sunday - Adrian Bourgeois - Adrian Bourgeois - Club Soda, Bitters fresh lime juice shaken and stirred - “Clown Review”

Mon-Friday Stroke of midnight - Hem’s cover of Springsteen’s “Valentine’s Day” recorded live for PASTE’s party at the Knitting Factory - two fingers of Olan single malt

Sat/Sun When the time is “right” - Magic Number’s cover of Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” from KCRW’s new covers compilation Sounds Eclectic - whatever’s left in the cabinet

“Get busy living or get busy dying”

I love it when people stop living someone else’s life and start living their own.  It’s always inspriring and I hold these people in the highest regard.  Halsey Burgund is one of these people.  Burgund woke up one day and decided his tech job was paying the bills but not the soul.  He had been dabbling in experimental music for some time, but one day he had a lightbulb moment and decided to combine his love of music and art and create what he calls the Bring Your Own Voice project.  The basic idea is that there is music in the way we talk, a certain lilt, twang, unique pattern, etc, so Burgund records people’s musings and then re-packages them as pieces of music.  It’s part spoken word, part music and all unique. We live in an increasingly sampled world and Burgund’s original approach underscores the belief that we are all capable of making art but when teamed with others the interpretations are boundless.

I was fortunate enough to have been one of the very first people to read for Burgund several years ago, and it’s amazing the extent to which he has taken this “installation/experiment”.  He has been in the hallowed halls of Yale and Harvard, museums such as the ICA, MOCA, and even the Boston Science Museum.  He’s also appeared on NPR, World Cafe Live and even ABC: ( CLICK HERE )

If you still don’t get it after watching the ABC video link here’s Burgund’s artist statement:

My inspiration to write music comes from a fascination with the human voice and language. We each have a unique voice that we use to communicate (and miscommunicate) each day, and our society relies on these language-based interactions to function. The human voice is clearly a powerful instrument when singing, but I use the voice as an instrument when simply speaking, as each of us does in our unique way every day. I create aural collages of people as represented by their own individual voices, while collectively representing my own voice.

I gather spoken voice recordings in the field primarily using a specially designed and built portable voice-recording booth. I call this booth the Bring Your Own Voice (BYOV) booth and am able to set it up in a wide variety of locations and situations including music clubs, outdoor fairs and art galleries. The booth acts as a private space, muffled from the rest of the world, where participants can read out loud pre-determined text or answer questions that I ask via a ‘reading sheet’. I use these recordings, in combination with traditional instruments, electronic instruments and singing voices, to create my music.

I explore the nuance of language in my pieces. The same word can be used in numerous ways and the context a word inhabits can be vastly influential on the resulting meaning. I like to play with words and rearrange them with each other into phrases, sentences, stanzas, etc. in intended and unintended ways. I also like to explore how each individual speaks. The way one intones words, the speed one speaks, the inflections one uses are all part of a unique aural fingerprint that identifies each person as an individual. I am fascinated by the variety and expressive capacity of the human voice and am often amazed at how musical this speech can be if treated as such.

I don’t feel that one needs to be a trained musician to be able to make an important and exciting contribution to a piece of music. There is music around us everyday - the music of communication, the music of human existence - that when processed and arranged by a musician, can emphasize to everyone who listens that there are beautiful and lyrical moments surrounding us all the time.

To check out more go to:

http://www.halseyburgund.com