Putting the War in Warfield: PJ Harvey live in S.F.

She came, She saw, She conquered...
PJ Harvey, backed by longtime cohorts Mick Harvey & John Parish, laid the ground for their Coachella appearance with a warmup date at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco.

True to her lightly touring form, this was one of only four US dates supporting this record. (White Chalk from 2007 was honored with only NY & LA dates.) The crowd seemed to savor the rarity of the occasion, and were primed and ready to go. As the time approached, the intensity at the edge of the stage was near unbearable.
(Sacrificing cigarettes and restroom for pole position had no impact on this, of course...)
It's always interesting to see what tweaks Harvey has made in her sets, always striving to move in a different direction, setting up new challenges and fearlessly staring them down. This time, like her current LP Let England Shake, she primarily wielded an autoharp, ditching it occasionally for a guitar. Vocally, she remained mostly in the higher register, making the impact of her guttural vocals on the older material all the more jarring.

She managed to perform the new album, not in order, but in it's entirety, dipping into her back catalogue to break it up, including songs from Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea and To Bring You My Love, among others.

Final observation: perhaps the most enjoyable part of the show was the transformation of the new songs to a live setting and the integration of the band, (Parish in particular), giving an added measure of power, and highlighting the strengths of their lasting collaboration.

Let England Shake, for the uninitiated, is a sutite of sometimes seething, sometimes claustrophobic lullabies on the horrors of war, set to simple tunes, kept off kilter by thoughtfully chosen samples or lyrical references, ranging from Niney The Observer to Eddie Cochran. The force of her personality stamps it all unmistakably as her own.

One of the more prescient reviews on the LP by Ann Powers (for the LA Times...she's now with NPR), noted the singalong qualities of the songs as a strength, and the stage brought those words to life.

NPR has kindly made the show available as "Let San Francisco Shake: PJ Harvey In Concert"

Neko Case & 826: Last Chance!!!

Neko Case's co-star on the cover of her last LP, Middle Cyclone, is today's topic of interest. To benefit the good works of 826 National, Neko has donated her beloved wheels, (which she named "Angie Dickinson"), for the raffle that has been dubbed the "Mercury Cougar-Rama Muscle Car ‘Splosion".

Today is your very last chance to obtain this bitchin' 67 Mercury Cougar...That would be 5pm Pacific time on 17 March, 2011. Operators are standing by.

A game of chance is always a risky thing, and some of you are more daring than others. The main thrust of this piece, and the raffle, is to sound the horn for the work of the 826 family, and its increasing importance in this time of shrinking education funding.

To wit, the foundation focuses on kids writing skills through workshops, tutoring, student publishing, field trips, and more. Spurred by author Dave Eggers, (A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius, etc), 826 Valencia in San Francisco was the original outpost, funded in part by the adjoining pirate supply store!, that has grown into a nationwide organization. If you do nothing more than hit the links, learn about them, and maybe even do the 'like' thing, for those of you who are Facebook inclined, then I would consider that a victory.

Me, (vroom vroom), I'm a gambling man...