Tribeca Film Festival: We're Not Just Movies

Thanks to the Tribeca Film Festival (and my awesome friend Gretchen), Friday was one insane day of music for me. From 3 in the afternoon to nearly 3 in the morning, I saw 9 acts. I hadn't seen any of the performers before, so I was pretty psyched to finally catch some bands I've only heard about.

My day started off with another trip to the Tribeca/ASCAP Music Lounge at the Canal Room. When I arrived, people were lined up around the corner to get in. It was quite a change to Tuesday's laid back show with only about fifty people but then again, Elvis Costello wasn't playing that show, he was today. I was hoping Robert De Niro would be in the crowd but the only person I recognised was Illeana Douglas sneaking in the back door.

The first act was Englishman David Ford. He started his set by telling the audience that he was told he had to perform so here is was. Way to butter up the crowd Davie. For all of his songs he used a sound looping system, the same one that KT Tunstall utilizes on 'Black Horse and the Cherry Tree.' When KT does it on the one song it's endearing, when Ford did it on every song, it was annoying. It even elicited snickering from the crowded as he shouted into the special mic set up for looping over and over again. So, um needless to say, David Ford wasn't my cup of earl grey. Lucky for him though, he was performing right before Elvis Costello so he had a packed audience. The bands after Elvis weren't as lucky.


And next up was Elvis. I felt privileged to be in such a small space with him, it was quite the experience. He performed with Allen Toussaint, a legendary jazz singer and pianist. They performed songs from their upcoming cd, River in Reverse, containing Allen's classic tunes with a few they wrote together. The film Putting the River in Reverse is about the making of the cd- which was the first major recording session in New Orleans since hurricane Katrina. The director, Matthew Buzzell, stood right behind me screaming Allen's name during the entire set.


Costello is amazing live. He sounds great and is incredibly charismatic. He went way over the set time, he was so enthusiastic, and that ended up pushing back the entire event an hour but no one cared. With an open bar and comfy leather sofas, I think some people could have stayed there all night. All of the songs were honestly fantastic. They were bluesy with a bit of rock and soulful country.

The setlist looked something like this (a few of these titles I may have made up): The sharpest thorn/ Freedom of the stallion/What you want the girl to do (not on the record)/?/Ascension Day/One another/Nearer to you/International Echo/Greatest Love.


Next up was Martin Luther. His sound is a bit of funk, soul and a little R&B all rolled into one. He premiered the song 'NYC Girl' by Julie Taymor, written for her upcoming movie Across the Universe and sang a bunch of songs from his new album, Rebel Soul Music.


You can download the song 'Prodigal Son' here. I highly recommend checking out his passionate and soulful music.


The fourth group was Kazi and the Hip-Hop project. The Hip-Hop Project was started to help inner city kids who are living on the street or about to drop out of school. It is meant to help them gain control and face the issues in their life by expressing themselves through hip-hop. The performance was incredibly powerful. The girl on stage is talking about an abortion she was forced to have at 15 while another boy rapped about taking care of his wheelchair bound mother at the age of twelve. It was amazing to think that these people are only high schoolers but can rap with such polished eloquence and emotion. The movie about the project is called Word.Life: The Hip Hop Project and premiered at the film festival. Unfortunatly, I can't find that it is playing anytime soon.


Ending the afternoon were the Brazilian Girls. I've had their album on my ipod for a while now, it's great for a sexy evening. I was pleased to see that in person, their music is even better. Singer Sabina sings in five languages brilliantly and looks as if she shares a closet with Karen O. I would describe their sound as trip-hop, latino, french disco at a 60's tropical lounge. Their new album comes out in September. They ended the set with their famous 'Pussy' song. Sabina had all the boys shouting "I want pussy", berating them for not sounding like they wanted it all that much, and had the girls yelling, "I have pussy." It was the perfect group to end the show with as day turned into night.

You can download 'Don't stop' here.


At 10:30 that evening, the doors opened at Don Hill's for an indie rock smorgousborg called Breaking the Band hosted by the O.C.'s musical supervisor Alexandra Patsavas.


Matt Pond PA opened the show. I've only ever heard their name around but have never listened to their music. I enjoyed their set. I can't say that they made a great impact but I would put it in the pile of stuff that I need to give another listen to. The whole show was a bit awkward I felt. Since it was a lot of young industry people, there was a whole lot of talking during the sets and I think it threw off the performers a bit. Matt Pond especially seemed a bit bewildered as to what they were actually doing there.

You can download 'Grave's disease' here.


Next up were Nada Surf (I apologise for the crappy pictures but I was too tired to be arsed to go up front). I got to hand it to these guys, they've been around since 1995 and are still going at it. I can't say that I've ever been the biggest Nada Surf fan, but their performance was really tight and got a fair few people bopping their heads.

Download 'Blankest year' here.


Ben Gibbard came on around 12:30am for a surprise solo performance. I don't think many quite knew who he was and I heard a fair few mumblings of people trying to figure out if it was that guy from Death Cab for Cutie or not. Apparently Chris over on Music Snobbery saw him the same night at the party for the new Death Cab DVD and had a wee chat with. Ben was a busy boy Friday night.


Next, the group everyone is talking about: Mates of State. Mates of State comprise of husband and wife Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel, a former school teacher and cancer researcher. By this point in the evening, we were running over an hour late at it was already past 1am so both the band and the audience were obviously tired. In fact, the room only looked to be at half capacity. Despite that, the group put on a great show. Their music is intellectual pop, it's a refreshing sound amongst the many dull and derivative bands doing the blog circulation at the moment.

Download the hot track, 'Fraud in the 80's' here. The group will be doing a free outdoor show on July 6th at Castle Clinton in Battery Park New York.


To close the show was Ted Leo and The Pharmacists. He started out by asking the audience if it was time to rock and after the applause told us that, no it wasn't. At midnight it was time to rock, now it was time for tivoed Law and Order. I agreed. After four songs, at 2:30am, I hit the road. I don't think he played for very long after that as after each of the four songs I saw, he seemed to be contemplating whether to go on or not.


I've been hearing about Ted Leo forever now, so I was glad to finally say that I have now seen him. I don't know if Ted Leo and the Pharmacists will ever be one of those bands that will hit mainstream, but he does put on a great rocking show. I can just imagine how much better it would have been if it was a few hours earlier.

Download 'Biomusicology' here.

And I think that about wraps up this absurdly long post. My apologies.