the go! team w. operator please @ edinburgh university, 9/25/07

i had a rough morning today. i could barely turn my neck, there was a dull ache in my right arm and a shooting pain in my left, and even though my ears are still ringing, i didn't mind in the least, because the go! team put on a great show last night. it was the third time i had seen them in a month (the other two being connect and abc), so there weren't any surprises, just pure, sweaty pleasure. i'm not going to bother with a full review, just a few thoughts i had about the gig, some pictures, and a bit of video.

you might be aware of how strongly mr. mammoth dislikes big venues. well, potterow (one of edinburgh university's student unions) was certainly not big. in fact, it was a pretty sweet space. its short, arched ceiling, nice wide stage, and bar at the back made for a great show, as the crazy-as-shit crowd proved. i had initially been disappointed to find out it was an all-ages show at the door, but the crowd seemed anything but. though it was the first night of the nme freshers tour (hitting up universities all over great britain), there was a strong post-student presence, which made for a less reckless drunk and more informed and energetic crowd. i was right at the front, and got pushed around constantly, but it was more activity than i've seen from a go! team crowd before, and everybody was into it. after the disappointing show at abc, it was great to see the go! team one last time on their home turf in such a good environment.

for their freshers tour, nme handpicked two bands that have received virtually no press attention - the satin peaches and operator please. the two bands are taking turns opening throughout the tour, and the satin peaches kicked the show off last night. the detroit foursome play rabid, screamy rock that, really, just sucked. frontman george morris spent most of the set proving that you don't need to be able to sing to be a singer, especially when your grating yells are backed by an inarticulate sonic mess. the sheer awfulness of their half hour set meant that a good twenty foot buffer was kept between the stage and the closest fan. not a band to watch (yet somehow, they're already signed to a major label...)

so when operator please came on stage, they could've played meandering space jams and i would've been happy - or at least happier than the satin peaches made me. but my interest was actually piqued when operator please came onstage with a keyboardist and violinist, and a drummer who couldn't have been older than sixteen (and that's being generous). and no space jams either - the quintet rocked quick and tight with songs as spastic and ferocious as anything le tigre has ever made, no mean feat for a group with half its members still in high school. though frontwoman amandah wilkinson was obviously unhappy with the sound (frequently motioning for more violin and commenting that her guitar sounded "like a gremlin"), operator please rocked the house and made many heads turn, especially mine.

operator please have commanded much attention in their home country of australia despite their young age, having won themselves a major label (boo) contract less than two years after forming. their history is quite dramatic - operator please came about as a battle of the bands experiment, but found their sound to be so compelling that they stuck it out even after winning the prize (a box of donuts). after releasing their debut ep, cement cement, to native praise, operator please have moved on with a new single "just a song about ping pong," which has completely sold out. after their rotating stint as a go! team opener, operator please is playing at least one show stateside, with land of talk and film school at mercury lounge. don't forget your dancing shoes and/or booty shaking ability.

which brings us, of course, to the go! team itself. since i've said pretty much everything a person can say about the go! team ("supercharged schoolyard funk" is probably my favorite), i don't think i should say any more. they were great, especially in the small space, and i've certainly gotten my fill of their live act, so i'm not upset about skipping their bowery ballroom show later this year. ninja had some great moves, ian parton wore the same shirt we saw him in at abc, it was the same set that we'd heard before with the same videos, and i was totally happy.

here are some mp3s and videos to keep you just as happy as me.

operator please - "just a song about ping pong." you can buy the single online.
the go! team - "milk crisis," from the proof of youth bonus disc. buy the album here.

operator please - "ghost"

the go! team - "the power is on"
(there was a security guard blocking my view of half the stage. sorry.)

the go! team & caribou @ abc, 9/14/07

well, this has just been the week for supercharged schoolyard funk and neo-psychedelic melodic effervescence, hasn't it? the week was bookended by two caribou sets, one as a headliner in a small club in glasgow, and the other as an opener in one of the biggest clubs in glasgow, and the release of the go! team's sophomore proof of youth, and a set as a headliner in one of the biggest clubs in glasgow. overkill much? ...perhaps.

abc is not only one of glasgow's biggest clubs, but also one of its most prestigious. it has two spaces, abc 1 and abc 2, where some of the finest names in independent rock have played - i myself have been three times, and saw the decemberists w. two gallants, slint, and the go! team w. caribou. tearknee has has seen the decemberists, guillemots, and art brut. definitely a respectable list. but for all that, abc is a pretty shitty venue. abc 1, that is. abc 2 is great, a tiny little shack of a room with a short ceiling and comfortable stage, a space that doesn't murder your ears or make the band feel like its drowning. tearknee and i agree that the best shows we've seen at abc have been at abc 2. abc 1 is another story entirely.

abc is quite proud of their main space, which holds up to 1250 people and features what they call "the best in house lighting and sound systems of any similarly sized venue in europe." well, if that is the case, then whoever is operating said light and sound is an idiot. besides being crushingly loud, abc 1 has the laziest and least-flattering lighting i have ever seen. you might think i'm being a little obsessive about lighting, but i have a reason: in my non-mammoth life, i'm a theatre tech and lighting designer, so i do know a bit about how lighting works. however, whoever does it for abc clearly doesn't. less than one week before the show, caribou headlined a show at the arches, a small space (the room we were in was max capacity 120), yet the lights were excellent, not only for caribou, but for their opener as well, an extremely unknown local artist. yet abc 1 couldn't be bothered to show even the basest courtesy to caribou, drowning them in hideous pink/blue light for the entirety of their set - all 40 minutes, saturated in repulsive light. i felt sincerely ashamed for caribou, but the indignity of their set didn't end there. you might recall how much i liked caribou's visuals when i saw them on monday, how fluidly they became an essential part of the show. despite the presence of an enormous screen behind the band, there were to be no caribou graphics - that honor was reserved for the go! team, and only the go! team. needless to say, that was extremely disappointing for me, who had seen how impressive caribou was in the right space, and just a tragedy for the rest of the crowd who missed out on their great multimedia display. too bad that wasn't the last of abc's sins.

abc is the type of venue that has club nights after live gigs, and insist that said gigs must be out by 10 pm, so their security literally kicks you out the door when the show is over. so, in their great wisdom, they deemed it a good idea for caribou to go on at 7.45, when doors had been at 7 pm. last time i had been to abc, we had arrived when doors opened, and waited over an hour for the opener, so we thought it was safe to do the same this time. not only did we arrive late to caribou's set, we missed the whole set of the first opener, the suzan. i suppose it was foolish of me to expect doors to be an hour before the show started (disregarding, of course, the fact that such is the practice of hundreds of venues), but i was not alone in my assumption. abc 1 was nearly empty when we arrived, as late as we were, but had at least quintupled in size by the time the go! team went on at 8.50. i assume the idea behind having caribou (a headliner in their own right) open for the go! team was to create excitement and buzz about caribou, who are relatively unknown compared to the go! team. yet by putting them on so early, abc swiftly defeated that goal, simply because so few people had arrived to hear their set. in addition, caribou is not a band i would normally associate with the younger crowd (there's a reason the arches show was 21+, after all), yet the promoter felt that caribou would be an appropriate opener at an underage show. it didn't really work out well.

deprived of their immaculate visuals, cursed with a lazy, colorblind light operator, and pushed on far too early to a meager, young crowd, caribou's performance reflected the clear obliviousness and lack of respect abc offered them. and though their set lacked the vibrancy and enthusiasm that monday's had, the blame for these shortcomings lies entirely at abc's feet. robbing caribou of anything approaching a regular stage presence, abc literally murdered any chance that caribou had at performing well. in a proper space with a proper crowd, caribou is excellent. on friday night, caribou was a victim.

the disgraceful way abc had treated caribou left me with a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach for the rest of the evening. even the strutting confidence and boundless enthusiasm of the go! team couldn't right that wrong. but it did cheer me up a whole lot.

hurtling on to abc 1's ginormous stage (seriously - you could put the whole polyphonic spree on stage and still find space for a good jackie chan fight), the go! team were psyched, pumped, and ready for action - unfortunately, the crowd wasn't. it took at least four songs for the team to get the crowd moving, in spite of ninja's constant entreaties to sing, dance, or visibly enjoy the music. in fact, despite front-loading their set with some of their best/most famous songs, the crowd seemed stiff and generally unresponsive to the go! team's charms at least until the set's midpoint. rattling through material drawn from both thunder, lightning, strike and proof of youth - including a detour to "a version of myself," a b-side from the new album, the go! team overpowered the crowd's initial standoffishness and had me worried about the integrity of abc's flooring by the show's end.

that's not to say that their set was without fault. as they had with caribou, abc 1 proved itself to be without a competent soundman or light operator, botching the team's mix and refusing to give them anything remotely approaching front light. ninja was nearly unintelligible throughout the show, while their piped-in samples often drowned out the live instrumentation - often, the only clear sound was that of ian parton's harmonica, which he played with hugely satisfying enthusiasm (how often do you see someone headbang with a harmonica in their face?). the lack of front light (and tired use of the same yellow light program in the back) meant that the go! team was only marginally illuminated, bathed in light similar to that which had so ruined caribou's set. the blue tinge infected the entire stage, a shade so boring and nauseous that it nearly ruined the show, not to mention the go! team's carefully assembled visual display. backed by a screen taller than my ceiling, the go! team's projections varied from the bizarre to the mundane, sometimes thematic (like monkeys riding bicycles) but generally not, and were always entertaining.


on the whole, the go! team were great, throwing themselves into the performance and firing up a mostly dead crowd to one that screamed itself hoarse and danced till it got stitches. their set was played at breakneck speed, racing from the mostly instrumental "flashlight fight" (sans chuck d) to the set ending "titanic vandalism," though the crowd was most excited for the final encore, "ladyflash." as always, one of the best parts of the show was ninja' inspired dance moves, ranging from the athletic to the laughable, and, while her repertoire seemed inexhaustible, she kept asking the crowd for some new moves for this tour, and they seemed happy to oblige (at least by the end of the set). i'm looking forward to their show at potterow in a week, where they (hopefully) won't be plagued by bad lighting and terrible sound.

caribou - "melody day"

the go! team - "huddle formation"

worth spendin' money on, volume the fourth!

in spite of the shockingly low rating it received from pitchfork earlier in the week, music is rallying this week around the mother of all pointless showdowns - 50 cent's curtis versus kanye west's graduation (apparently, kenny chesney is also a contender). i'm actually stunned at the extent that this has taken over, even making headlines in the associated press. what about the independent albums that have been released? even the usually reliable largehearted boy only gives a handful of 9/11 releases, completely skipping over figurines, simian mobile disco, and what is undoubtedly this week's best album, proof of youth by the go! team. here are my thoughts on the media's collective ignorance of this album: what. the. fuck. here's what they missed: the jump-kick-to-the-face return of the one of the most original bands around.

as with their debut thunder, lightning, strike, the go! team's second album is packing heat - proof of youth is filled with roundhouse punches, car chases, and all the pg-13 violence you can fit in your headphones. after their triumphant explosion into the scene in 2004, the go! team went from being a kitchen recording project to an internationally known headlining band. in order for this to happen, creator ian parton had to find some bandmates. well, the sextet spent some time together on the road, had deep & meaningful discussions, and rocked some parties. then they decided it was time for a new album. but this album would be different, sort of. it would still be as spastic as a yuppie after doing blow in a bathroom, it would be still have crazy funk samples from the 1970s, and it would definitely still make even the most frigid hipster aesthete dance uncontrollably. the big difference? this time, the whole band was invited to the studio. what they came up with, basically, is thunder, lightning, strike: part deux, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

the go! team obviously had one hell of an off-season in recording proof of youth. the album literally crackles - with energy as well as with their endearingly lo-fi, over the top production. proof of youth is 36 short minutes of aural ecstasy, from the opening track (and first single), "grip like a vice" to "patricia's moving picture," a sunny, sample-heavy bon voyage. both "grip like a vice" and "doing it right" sound like singles, and, appropriately, they are. but they aren't proof of youth's best tracks, and you have to dig a little into the meat of the album to find those.

it is generally rare that an album's middle tracks are its best; most albums are top-heavy, packing their best songs into the first ten or fifteen minutes, so you don't realize it's not that good until too late. not so with proof of youth. the album takes off with its fourth cut, "titanic vandalism," a cheer-led funky bass adventure, complete with ninja's requisite demanding "are you ready for more?," to which we can only reply "OH GOD YES! MORE MORE MORE!," while dancing spastically, oblivious to the staring passerbys and baffled policemen (it was a mistake to listen to proof of youth walking to the grocery, i admit it.). "keys of the city" is unmistakably the best cut on the album, three minutes of aural crack. it opens with a rather complacent guitar riff, introducing the jump rope chants of the double dutch divas, before launching into a exultant horn breakdown. the high speed chanting plays best as an instrument, a counterpoint to the angular guitar that reminds you of the best routines of bring it on, sans kirsten dunst and eliza dushku, and avec a bad ass marching band. "the wrath of marcie" is another excellent track, featuring new guitarist kaori tsuchida on backup vocals, an essential melodic counterpoint to ninja's verses. filled with the high-energy horns and clatter of drums that we expect, "the wrath of marcie" is fulfilling in the sense that it makes you want to dance as much as the go! team's other songs, doing exactly what it is meant to.

there's been a lot of noise made about the go! team's chosen collaborators for proof of youth, (including marina ribtaski from bonde do role, the rappers' delight club, and the aforementioned double dutch divas) with the consensus that, except for chuck d's raps on "flashlight fight," they don't really matter. well, they need to get themselves some hearing aids (or study the press material a little more closely). my money says that most reviewers couldn't actually distinguish which tracks the non-chuck d guests were on, and therefore declared their contributions null and void. mid-album cut "universal speech" clearly benefits from ribatski's vocal contributions, as well as the happy-go-lucky elementary school raps of the rappers' delight club (i heard that, and i don't even HAVE press materials.). i guess you do have to listen a bit closely to hear the difference between ninja and ribatski or a bunch of 8 year olds spitting verses... even if some of the go! team's collaborators on proof of youth occasionally get lost in the mix, we should still reflect for a moment - they got chuck fucking d to do a guest spot on what is unmistakably an indie rock album. how bout some fucking props for that? and "flashlight fight" is a great track as well - if the go! team may have buried their other collaborators too deep, "flashlight fight" holds back just the right amount, giving chuck d the perfect amount of room to spit over blaring horns, paranoid sirens, and "gonna fly now" progression.

for all of the criticism it has received, proof of youth is essentially a simple album by a simple band. the go! team aren't necessarily interested in artistic progression and maturing their sound - they want to send listeners into a frenzy, and that's exactly what they do. we don't need to critically analyze how little they've changed since 2004. what we need to do is remember why they make the music they do, and why we listen to it - because it's enjoyable. let loose a little. turn off the interpol. put on your dancing shoes and kick it with the go! team. you can always be young enough to dance - all you need to do is prove it.

the go! team - "doing it right," "keys to the city."

buy proof of youth from sub pop or memphis industries.