Music Tonight: Handsome Furs is the Electro/Post Punk/No Wave project featuring Wolf Parade's Dan Boeckner and his wife, keyboardist and short story author Alexei Perry. On the road supporting its latest release, Sound Kapital (on SubPop), the duo comes to Newport's Southgate House tonight. The Furs aren't fighting for positioning on the Synth Pop bandwagon, nor are they flirting with contemporary Dance music styles, as seems the case with many acts dependent on electronics. Though they hardly sound retro, the Furs have more in common with Suicide, early OMD and the raw Electro experiments that marked the bridging of Joy Division and New Order. Fittingly, Cincinnati's Eat Sugar, another Electronic act forging its own non-pandering vision of tech-driven musical adventurousness, opens up the show at 9 p.m. Tickets are $13 at the door. Read Brian Baker's preview from this week's CityBeat here. Below is Handsome Furs' video for Sound Kapital's "What About Us." WARNING: Unless you work at a Hustler store, this clip is VERY NSFW.
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Handsome Furs - "What About Us" from stereogum on Vimeo.
• Breathe Carolina, the Electro/Dance/Rock/Pop based in Denver that has managed crossover success by appealing to Rock, Pop and Dance music fans, was supposed to bring its Scream It Like You Mean It tour to Covington's Radiodown (next to The Mad Hatter) tonight. But the club announced last night that the show is cancelled. A post on the Mad Hatter/Radiodown Facebook page says "due to unforeseen circumstances we must cancel" the Scream It tour stop, and mentions the tour picks up tomorrow in Indianapolis (for superfans up for a road trip). Ticket refunds are available from wherever they were purchased.
(Leave your suggestions/promote yourself or your favorites by telling everyone about your favorite music event recommendations for the day in the comments below.)
Momentous Happenings in Music History for Aug. 22
On this day in 1992, Sting celebrated his wedding to longtime girlfriend Trudie Styler (they married two days earlier) with a reception featuring The Troggs ("Wild Thing") and a special guest act even Sting probably never imagined he'd be able to book. Egged on by the well-wishers (and, undoubtedly, the always eager drummer, Stewart Copeland), Sting joined Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers onstage for the first performance by The Police in six years, playing "Roxanne" and "Message in a Bottle." As shown in VH1's Behind the Music, the bickering began the instant they started playing. But it didn't stop them from cashing in 15 years later with a massive, global 30th anniversary tour. As they say, bags full of money heal all wounds. Below is a Police clip from better days, taken from a 1980 episode of Don Kirschner's Rock Concert.
Born This Day: Musical folks sharing an Aug. 22 birthday include legendary Blues singer/guitarist John Lee Hooker (1920); guitarist/singer/songwriter for ’80s New Wave/Pop group Tears for Fears, Roland Orzabal (1961); singer/songwriter Tori Amos (1963); late frontman for rockers Alice in Chains, Layne Staley (1967); and innovative guitarist Vernon Reid (1958).
Reid is best known for his band Living Colour, which scored a huge hit in the late ’80s with the Soul Metal anthem, "Cult of Personality." But Reid isn't your typical one-hit-wonder-type, the kind who VH1 finds working as an accountant somewhere and gets featured on one of the channel's dismissive "Remember That Crap?" programs talking about the neon and spandex the group pimped early on.
Reid got his start in NYC's Jazz and avant garde scenes in the early ’80s and co-founded the Black Rock Coalition — a collective of black musicians who helped each other navigate their way through the not always welcoming world of Rock — around the same time Living Colour started taking off. Even with all of Living Colour's success — Grammy awards, Gold and Platinum records and an opening slot on The Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels tour — the group still had difficulty finding enduring traction in the white-dominated Hard Rock/Metal scenes.
Living Colour still gets back together for touring and recordings every now and then, but Reid seems content with following his rich artistic career outside of the band. Reid has produced albums for Blues guitarist James Blood Ulmer (among others), done extensive work for film and TV and collaborated with everyone from DJ Logic and Pharoahe Monch to famed choreographers to pioneering multimedia/turntablist/collagist Christian Marclay. Here's Vernon, Logic and others doing some freestyle Fusion jamming in NYC recently.
