Selfish Dickhead Commits Suicide at Swell Season Concert

OK now this is just weird. I saw the Swell Season last Friday at the Portland Zoo and didn't hear a thing about this at the time, although I imagine the band would not say anything from the stage about it, obviously. But the night before, someone had killed themselves at their concert by jumping from the roof of the theater, landing onstage on a speaker. Holy shit.

The Huffington Post reported:

A man jumped at least 20 feet to his death onto the stage of a Northern California concert in front of hundreds of horrified music fans, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office said Friday.

The Swell Season was playing an outdoor show at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga in front of a crowd of about 1,900 when the jump happened Thursday night.

Sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Rick Sung says authorities are treating the death as a suicide. Sung said the man's identity will not be released.

Sung says the man left a friend in the audience around 10 p.m. and soon appeared on a roof that covers the stage. Witnesses say he jumped off the roof and landed on stage near the band's lead singer, Glen Hansard.

Witnesses said Hansard removed his guitar and walked over to the man's body.

The jumper was pronounced dead by a doctor in attendance who spent an hour trying to revive him.

So, what the hell? I guess if someone is that fucked up either emotionally or on drugs, it is irrelevant where they decide to off themselves but I guarantee there were loads of kids at this show (there were in Portland) and come on - The Swell Season? Not exactly music you want to kill yourself to.

Suicide is so selfish but in this and all other cases it outa be private too. Why do this in front of thousands of people trying to have a nice evening? Bullshit.

The person who posted the below video on YouTube wrote: I filmed this about two minutes before a man jumped from the roof behind the stage and killed himself. I hope it conveys some of the intense beauty of The Swell Season's music and the type of evening that was taking place when it ended abruptly with a thud as the man hit the stage roughly where the violinist is standing in this video. It went from such an emotional high to a tragic low in an instant.



Oh and the song they were about to go into? Falling Slowly, from the movie Once. Bizzaro...

CD Review - The Swell Season - Strict Joy

I picked up the new The Swell Season CD today, called Strict Joy. I got the deluxe edition, which has a second CD of live tracks from the last couple of tours. A total of 32 tracks - 13 make up the new CD and 19 are live tracks.

A quick glance at the writing credits of the new songs betrays that this is more of a Glen Hansard album. Marketa Irgolva only has a couple of writing credits. But her voice and piano are very present, and the harmonies are still sweet.

The album opens with a couple of good, solid upbeat tunes (Low Rising and Feeling the Pull). Not until the third song (In These Arms) do we get a song that sounds like the Once soundtrack, with Irglova harmonizing with Hansard over soft acoustic progressions. These three songs were released over the last couple of months as singles on iTunes but this is the first time I had heard any of them.

The fourth song, The Rain, comes back up in tempo with full band and impassioned relationship-based lyrics from Hansard.

In fact, relationships seem to be the theme of this album and there doesn’t seem to be any effort to hide the fact that it’s a very Fleetwood Mac-ish break-up album. The songs are loaded with references to the on-again off-again nature of Irglova and Hansard’s relationship. Lots of songs about longing, people.

But where the Once soundtrack and The Swell Season CD are mostly softer, acoustic based discs with a couple of rockers, Strict Joy is a better balance.

Not knowing anything at all about these two (except for the movie) when I saw them the first time live, they were mostly acoustic and quiet, which is what I kind of expected. The second time through, however, Hansard had most of his band The Frames with him, and they did lots of really upbeat, rocking numbers. Some of The Frames tunes like Fitzcarraldo were fairly face-melting. That rocking side of the band comes through more on this disc.

A good example is High Horses, which starts out as an arpeggiated, repeating piano riff but really takes off at the end with full band coming in and bringing the energy level waaaaay up. This one will be on par with Fitzcarraldo live. The Verb does something similar structurally, with some very nice call and response vocal trade offs and a great build at the end with a nice use of strings.

Irglova’s two songs are strong. Fantasy Man is pretty obviously about Hansard and is well done, with dare I say an Eastern European vibe to it (it would make sense, since that is where she is from). I Have Loved You Wrong is the standout here. I remember seeing this one live and thinking, what the hell is this song? It’s a very trancy song, with a repeating bass line and very tasty piano noodlings. But the repeating vocal bit that takes the song out was mind blowing live, and although it is understated on this version, the song is done really well on this disc. Might be her best song.

Suffice it to say, if you like the music from the movie Once, and/or the first Swell Season album, you’ll love this. And if you dig The Frames, you’ll probably like it too. I am still discovering that band, so I don’t have a ton of insight there. But the new material picks up where the last left off, with enough familiarity to link it to the previous work but also with enough of an evolution so that you don’t feel like you are listening to a re-hash.

There really isn’t a bad track on the CD although the last two songs are a bit sleepy, although very pretty - especially the outro to Somebody Good, which closes the CD with some gorgeous vocal harmonies between Hansard and Irglova. A nice way to wrap up the CD.

And of course you get what amounts to a full live CD as a bonus of you get the deluxe edition. Which is nice.

Once Artwork - A Lesson in Hollywood Bastardization

All of this Swell Season fever led me to a few interesting posts on how Hollywood messed with the poster/DVD cover of the movie Once.

It's a pretty telling evolution. The artwork went from an artsy, rootsy design to the final version that has the couple holding hands on the cover, walking on a guitar neck.

The problem with this holding hands thing is that they never get together in the movie. Also, according to an interview with Glen Hansard, the final version has his head pasted onto someone else's body, and they have made Marketa Irglova taller! Totally Hollywood crapola. The whole interview is great by the way - from right after the Oscar win.

Here is the part addressing the artwork:

Pitchfork: Speaking of changing the cover, am I imagining things, or did they change the Once poster when it got released on DVD? They changed what you're wearing.

GH: Oh, man. They fuckin' killed it. You're right. They have us holding hands, which we never do in the film! Those legs aren't mine. Those legs are like three times longer than my legs. It's a completely new body. They literally just used my face. I'm wearing a hat in the original picture, so they Photoshopped my head. If you look at my head, my head looks totally weird, because whoever did the Photoshop job was shit. My head looks really weird, they took my hat off, and they gave me an entirely new body. It's completely bizarre. And they made Mar much taller than she really is. You can look at the original cover and then what they did to it and spot all the crappy differences. It's awful. It's a real shame. But at a certain level you've got to let this shit go. I designed the original poster and the cover of the DVD myself. Myself and John like to do things ourselves, and I do a bit of design for the Frames. I designed all the Frames album covers. So I put together the DVD cover and the poster originally. And then they took it and fucking bastardized it. Instead of walking down a street, they stuck us walking down a big guitar.

Pitchfork: Again, it's a different world. The music industry is sketchy enough as it is, but the movie industry is 100 times that.

GH: Yeah, it's just blatant. They don't give a fuck. They want you to look at the DVD cover and get everything from that. It's the opposite of what someone like Criterion would do. They create wonderful art. With a Criterion DVD, you just want to buy it for the box. They do it right. With the bigger-time DVDs...they could have done such a nicer job. But I'm just complaining from a design point of view.

The original poster:

The evolution to the Hollywood version:

Swell Season YouTubes from Portland Show

On the heels of my last post, I was made aware of various YouTube videos from Monday's Portland show. Here are some gems. Thanks to Claire for doing whatever she needed to do to get these up on YouTube!

Fitzcarraldo (an old Frames song):


When Your Mind's Made Up (still my favorite song of theirs)


Into The Mystic (Van Morrison tune)


Say It To Me Now - sometimes he opens he show with this without amplification. At our show, he used the PA...

Concert Review - The Swell Season

Caught The Swell Season last night at the Keller in Portland. This is Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova from the movie Once, augmented by three side musicians and guest appearances by the opening act and even a kid Hansard and Marketa met on the riverfront earlier in the day (yes – I will get there).

I saw the two last year before their Oscar win for best song, at the Crystal Ballroom – a much smaller venue than the Keller. I reviewed that concert here, and the movie Once here.

I was wondering if I would like the show last night better than the pre-Oscar big-time-fame show last year. My gut told me I’d prefer the last one better, but I gotta say, I really enjoyed last night. They were a bit more confident (especially Marketa) but the down-home feel was just as present.

By being a street performer in Ireland from age 13 through 18, Hansard honed his skills for getting an audience involved and is now translating that skill to these newfound BIG audiences.

For example, he’ll have the whole audience whistle a tune, or whisper a line over and over – well beyond the usual ‘clap alongs’ that most performers will try to get out of their audience. It made for some pretty cool moments. You wonder if they are on the bus thinking, “what can we get the audience to do for us tonight?’ Reminds me of Jim Morrison from The Doors where he would try and purposely get the audience angry in his own bizarre live ‘social experiments.’

This tour has been reviewed elsewhere on the Web with full set lists and the names of who exactly were onstage, so I am going to bypass that part. I will say, though, that the addition of Rónán Ó Snodaigh and Liam Ó Maonlaí (founder of Hothouse Flowers) as the openers was a smart idea. These two were Hansard’s “mentors” when he was a street musician and having them open, and join the rest of his band off and on throughout the night, was like having his teachers perform with him. And they were fantastic, adding a very traditional Irish bend to the whole thing, in both what songs they performed and what instruments they played.

Then there was Joseph the guest star. If the story is to be believed, Hansard and Irglova were strolling through Portland before the gig and ran into this kid who for some reason clicked with the two. Long story short, Hansard tells the tale and has the kid come all the way down from the nosebleed orchestra section to sing a song onstage. He does Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl) by Looking Glass (one hit wonder from 1972) to the first standing ovation of the night.

The evening was full of these moments, as well as the great music I expected. We got all the Once music, a few solid new songs, and older songs by Hansard’s band The Frames, done in new ways with this lineup and format. There were even a couple of covers – one of the best was a version of Into the Mystic by Van Morrison that closed the set, before an encore that was about two songs too long. We also got the obligatory long, rambling, funny song intros by Hansard that in some cases were about as long as the songs he played after the intro!

The thing that is most cool about Glen Hansard is that after winning the Oscar and obtaining the level of success he now has, he could have gone in a glitzy direction. You know, a whiz-bang stage design; Some top name hired guns onstage; Expensive clothes, new equipment.

But what the guy decides to do is call up his old busking friends and bring them on the road. Not only as the openers, but to join him onstage to augment his band. He also gives everyone in his band a spotlight – from a violin solo spot to the bass player singing a verse to a song.

No, the only new trapping I noticed was a bigger, nicer bus outside. The guy seems to have maintained his humble nature and is taking advantage of the new success to spread it around instead of hoarding it. He and Irglova understand that sometimes the sum is much bigger than the added value of all the parts and having talented musicians around doesn’t detract attention from the main stars, but rather augments the spotlight and – really – just makes for a much better show overall.

Hansard and Irglova Win the Oscar (and The Police)

Unlike the Grammys, where all of my top choices LOST, the only category I was paying attention to in this year's Academy Awards went to the folks I wanted to win - Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova for "Falling Slowly " from the movie Once in the Best Song category. Cool. I've posted about them and their movie a few times, here, here and here.

Hansard said, "We made this film two years ago, we shot it on two handy-cams, it took us three weeks to make, we made it for 100 grand and we never thought we'd come into a room like this and be in front of you people... This is amazing."

Sometimes the good guys win! Right on.

Here is the vid of them doing the song, and below that the speech:





But I am not watching the Oscars right now. I have VH1 Classic on and am watching The Police play a concert for the BBC that was filmed the week before they went to America for the first time. This was the tour where they would play to three people at a crappy club, get in the van and hear Roxanne on the radio. They were young and hungry and so they are rocking the hell out of this show.

Needless to say, they were on the map by the end of that first US tour. On the VH1 Classic concert, they just got through Message In A Bottle, which hadn't been released when this thing was filmed. That second album, Regatta de Blanc, may be my favorite Police album.

Anyway, I bring all of this up because I got tickets to The Police at the Clark County Amphitheater yesterday. Rather, my buddy Pat got them for me, using my Ticketbastard account because I was at my kid's basketball game when they went on sale. (Pat, if I see a bunch of UFO tickets billed to my account I will know you did not delete my password!)

Looking to be a great summer of live music for me. Got tickets for Rush, Mark Knoplfer and now the Police with Elvis Costello opening. Sweet!

And Now For Something Completely Different - The Oscars

OK, with The Grammys behind us, now is as good a time as any to put in a plug for the only Oscar nomination I am going to bother to track this year. I blogged twice about this before - the movie Once, and a live performance I saw by the two main actors, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova.

The song Falling Slowly from the movie Once is up for Best Original Song and they better win it, because, well, they deserve it! It is not only a great song but the scene of Hansard teaching Irglova how the song goes in the music store is one of the best parts of the movie.

And I also hear they will be performing the song at the ceremonies, which means they will probably win it. They never seem to have the artist perform at these shows if they are not going to win. Just a peanut gallery observation not based on any type of actual fact! Good luck to them on the 24th.

Concert Review - Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova

OK, who went out and saw the movie Once after my glowing review? No one? That’s what I thought. Well, if you didn’t, you are missing out. It’s a great movie.

Last night I got to see the two main characters from Once, as played by Glen Hansard (from the Irish band The Frames) and Marketa Irglova, perform live at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland. I was not sure what to expect. I knew that Hansard is mega-talented just from the movie but I didn’t know if they would bring a band or what, or if anyone would care.

We got there literally a minute before they went on. Which means we missed the opener Martha Wainwright. The place was sold out – more than 1,300 people. Wow. I was not the only one who thought this movie and its music was something special.

Hansard came out by himself with his beat to shit Takamine acoustic to a huge swell of enthusiastic applause. But then the mooks at the Crystal couldn’t get his guitar through the PA so you know what he did? He asked everyone to be quiet, stepped to the front of the stage and did the damn song by himself with no amplification. To 1,300 very, very quiet people. It was amazing. The song he did was “Say it to Me Now” which is a real screamer. It’s the song that opens the film, for the two of you who took my advice.

Once they got his guitar fixed up, Irglova came out and did a song. She was much less confident but was still cute and captivating, like in the film. Over the night she got better and they actually closed the show with one of her songs. But generally she was better as an accompanist, adding excellent harmonies and piano throughout the night. Would not be the same without her but she was not the star.

They had a bass player (also from The Frames), a cellist and violinist who accompanied the two off and on and that was it. So it was a pretty intimate night. They got all of the movie songs out of the way and the last part of the set was stuff I had never heard and it was more upbeat.

Generally the songs are slow, quiet and a tad morose. But this guy Hansard is funny as hell and his banter in between songs was hilarious. He told great stories, was very genuine and funny. No idea if he tells the same stories every night but it seemed pretty real and it made for a really enjoyable hour and a half show, despite the ‘relationship’ theme of most of the music.

For example, Hansard said they went to Japan to promote the movie, and the president of Takamine guitars gave him a brand new top of the line acoustic. He was pretty flattered until he realized they wanted him to play it because they were embarrassed by the beat to crap cheapo Takamine he used in the movie and uses live (he had it last night – there are huge holes worn into it from years of busking on the street. It’s worse than Willie Nelson’s nylon string if you can believe that). Classic.

A show highlight was when he let the violin guy take a solo spot and he did some crazy pattern, looped it with an effects box and played along with his looped self. The dude was great.

When I reviewed the movie, I couldn’t find any clips of Hansard or Irglova on YouTube but now there is a ton. That goes to show what a promotional tour will do for you! Here are a couple of good ones.


This is the song he did, with no amplification, to open the show. You can see why 1,300 people could hear it regardless.



Note how someone is out of tune at the end of this and blows the ending as well and they all laugh. I love how much emotion Hansard packs into his delivery of this song.


One of the best quality clips I could find...

Movie Review - Once

So, to kick off my family vacation in Ireland this week, I thought I'd post a recommendation of this pretty cool movie I saw last month, called Once. It's set in Ireland (hence the connection) and revolves around a busker singer songwriter guy who falls for this girl. It's basically a romantic movie - no Jedi warriors or drunk dudes screaming "Fill it AGAIN!"

But it's a really unique film and it stayed with me after I saw it. This was because of the way it was filmed and put together, pretty much. That plus the music.

Very much a low budget, indie film, the thing was shot in two weeks with a crew of six who all agreed to work for free after the funding fell though. The actors are not really actors at all, but are friends of the director. It makes the whole thing feel very organic and home grown, which is my favorite type of movie after big budget over the top weirdo movies like Brazil.

Anyway, the other thing is that there is a lot of music in it. I would almost call it a "musical" but it's not. However, when the lead character, played by Glen Hansard (from the Irish rock band the Frames) breaks into a song on his beat to shit guitar on the street corner, you hear the whole song. All 3 or 4 four minutes of it. Good thing he's talented as hell because there are six or seven songs throughout the movie.

This makes for a slower pace, so be ready for that.

But this is also a musician's movie. For example, when the character played by Hansard (we never learn his or anyone else's name), finally pieces a band together and hits the studio, it's very realistic. The way the musicians interact, the way the for-hire producer is totally blase until he realizes that the band is good...it's all very true to life.

The main woman character, played by newcomer Marketa Irglova, is also very believable. She has a great spirit and really drives the Hansard character to realize his potential. It made sense when I found out afterwards that the two knew each other before agreeing to the project. It's almost like the movie captured their budding relationship.

The songs are great too - they are a departure from what I usually blog about, but I got the soundtrack afterwards and they hold up. These songs are sung from the soul. This guy has music pouring out of him. He's incredible. But again be warned - even the upbeat ones are pretty melancholy.

Go to the movie's MySpace page and check out the song "When Your Mind's Made Up" and you will see what I mean. Make sure you listen to the whole song, past where it picks up. I wish I was uninhibited enough to sing a song like this.

Hansard and Irglova are also in a band called The Swell Season, on tour playing songs from the movie, plus others. They are playing in Portland in November and I am going to try my best to make that show.

Not sure if Once is on video yet but if you want something earnest, heartfelt and different, check it out and let me know what you think.