The problems with Green Day's 'Kill the DJ'

Green Day's "Kill the DJ" starts promisingly enough. The choppy, stop-and-start guitars use the riff-as-groove in much the same way as the Clash's "Magnificent Seven." A little homage to Joe Strummer's socio-political dance-rock anthem is never not warranted, especially during an election year, and the title of "Kill the DJ" holds the promise that Green Day is again entering the culture war, a battlefield it visited on 2009's "21st Century Breakdown." 

"Kill the DJ," the second video (adult content) from Green Day's upcoming trilogy of albums, continues the bass-first approach used by the Clash as it unfolds, but the similarities soon evaporate. Strummer painted the picture of a sad sap stuck in an office cubicle and in desperate need of the revolution the Clash liked to promise was coming. Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, on the other hand, drops some cursory nods to war and religion in the opening bars, but soon brings the imagery of waterboarding and torture straight into the dance club.

Yet, if the song is a metaphor, it isn't a very well-developed one.

It's all played rather straight. "I'll pick up what's left in the club," Armstrong sings suspiciously, and the video released Tuesday doesn't do much to present the song as a statement. Armstrong and his band stroll tiredly through a dance club while half-naked, neon-accessorized participants go nuts around them. When the club revelers start throwing punches at one another, any hope at a message is forever lost. If there's an establishment Green Day is questioning, surely it's more than one with a $20 cover and blue drinks?

So what, perhaps, does Armstrong have against DJs? Nothing, likely, and the song shouldn't be seen as a takedown of the EDM-craze sweeping the nation. The band isn't one for cheap genre shots, and Green Day rose to prominence during the last mainstream boon for DJ culture (see Moby, Fatboy Slim) without care for the movement. Also, "Kill the DJ" is a bit of a dance song in and of itself, therefore making it more trend-hopping than trend-tackling. Finally, Green Day's embrace of Broadway on "American Idiot" and use of rock 'n' orchestra suites have long proven that the band has a love of musical adventurousness. 

The most-quoted defense of the song comes from Armstrong's Q&A with Rolling Stone's David Fricke. Asked who is the DJ Green Day wants to kill, Armstrong responded, "It's about static and noise." We've heard this before from Green Day. We're living, the band sang on "21st Century Breakdown," in "the Static Age," and that song was a foaming-at-the-mouth guitar rant that everyone -- pundits, politicians, celebrities -- should stop babbling and shut up. 

"Kill the DJ," meanwhile, buries such a message. "We are the vultures," Armstrong warns, and there's bullets, fatal drownings and the oft-repeated chorus of "someone kill the DJ." Again, it's not about an actual DJ -- for real, promise. Armstrong told Rolling Stone that the song had political ambitions, inspired by how "this government cannot, will not, agree with itself. They refuse to make it work. Right, left -- it doesn't matter."

So what's an artist to do except "write a song about being drunk, going through this chaos" Armstrong said in the same Rolling Stone interview? Well, the Clash wrote that song, too, but theirs, "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais," was presented as a challenge, a disappointed survey of halfhearted musical attempts at rebellion that were little more than excuses to get drunk and get down.

Green Day wants the person who has the floor to disappear. The Clash, blissfully idealistic as the band may have been, simply wanted the person with control of the audience to have something to say. With a trilogy of albums on the horizon -- "¡Uno!" arrives on Sept. 25, while "¡Dos!" arrives Nov.  13 and "¡Tré!" will round out the threesome on Jan. 15.  -- here's hoping Green Day does more than simply add to the static. 

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R. Kelly announces fall U.S. tour

R. Kelly is ready to put the vocal issues that have delayed his performance schedule behind him: The Grammy Award-winning singer announced Tuesday that he's hitting the road for a U.S. tour this fall.

Kelly will launch his Single Ladies tour on Oct. 13 in Columbia, S.C.,  joined by R&B songstress Tamia. The 22-date trek stretches until December and is scheduled to roll into L.A.'s Nokia Theatre on Nov. 2.

The singer has had a rough year after vocal issues sidelined him. Last summer, he was forced to take a hiatus from the stage after undergoing emergency throat surgery for an abscess on one of his tonsils.

Earlier this year, complications from that surgery put a major dent in promotional appearances for his June album, "Write Me Back," when he canceled a trip to New York and returned to Chicago for additional treatment.

"Write Me Back" continued the more genteel style of R&B he perfected on 2010's 'Love Letter,' which garnered critical acclaim when Kelly traded in his salacious brand of R&B and knocking hip-hop beats for a disc brimming with retro throwbacks.

The album opened to positive reviews and middling sales -- it debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 after selling 68,000 copies in its first week (less than half of what the disc's predecessor pulled in), according to Nielsen Soundscan.

Kelly didn't allow vocal troubles to completely sideline him, however. He worked on additional 'Trapped in the Closet' chapters to run on IFC later this year; released his memoir, 'Soulacoaster: The Diary of Me';  and wrote and produced music for Whitney Houston's final film, 'Sparkle.' He did, however, cancel his 'Love Letter' fan cruise after he claimed the cruise's promoter, Concerts Cruise  LLC, failed to pay him.

Ticket information for the upcoming tour will become available on the singer's official website, with tickets for select dates going on sale Friday.

 

 

No Doubt to play six shows at Gibson Amphitheatre Nov. 24-Dec. 4

Following the release of No Doubt's first studio album in 11 years, 'Push and Shove,' the long-running band will settle in for a hometown stand of six shows later this year at the Gibson Amphitheatre.

No Doubt will headline Nov. 24, 26, 28, 30 and Dec. 2 and 4 at the theater, with priority tickets becoming available first to members of the group's ND2012 Club. There will be a limit of four tickets per person, and prices are set at $115 all inclusive, according to the group's website. Ticket presales begin Thursday, with a general on-sale date still to be announced.

In preparing to write and record 'Push and Shove,' No Doubt played 58 dates in 2009, primarily at sports arenas and large amphitheaters, and drew an average of more than 15,000 fans per show, according to Pollstar. That tour grossed almost $34 million and was among the Top 25 grossing tours of the year.

The No Doubt website states that there is no membership fee for the ND2012 Club, and that tickets purchased through the club will include not only priority seating but also early entry to the amphitheater and a commemorative pin and postcard set with each ticket.

Presale information is available at nodoubt.tickets.musictoday.com

A full profile of No Doubt is coming in Sunday's Arts & Books fall preview section.

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Review: FYF Fest matures along with its musical acts

This post has been corrected. See below for details.

Between songs during Baltimore band Future Islands' simultaneously jarring and hypnotic late-afternoon set at the weekend FYF Fest near downtown Los Angeles, lead singer Sam Herring took a moment to highlight his wardrobe. Wearing a fitted black T-shirt and wrinkle-free brown pants, he motioned to his outfit and said proudly, "I tucked in my shirt for you!"

[For the record Sept. 3, 10:07 a.m.: The original version of this post incorrectly identified Future Islands' home base as Chicago.] 

The charismatic Herring smiled like a salesman, knowing that the stylishly unkempt young crowd at the annual festival might have a snarky thought or two about the relative squareness of his Don-Draper-on-vacation look.

The FYF Fest brought thousands of teens and twentysomethings ' what the "2012 Field Guide to Stereotypes" might describe as "L.A. hipsters" ' to the Los Angeles State Historic Park adjacent to Chinatown for a two-day roster of underground punk, electronic dance music, post-punk, post-disco, techno, electronic rock and many combinations thereof.

PHOTOS: FYF Festival 2012

For an event whose original two-word festival moniker was a cuss word followed by "Yeah!," Herring's brag about his spiffiness felt symbolic. The FYF Fest, now in its ninth year, has shed the sloppiness in favor of the clean creases of a fresh outfit.

Over nearly 24 hours of music on four stages, the FYF Fest showcased a narrow-cast roster of a young but maturing underground music scene struggling to perfect the art of performance in the YouTube age. At its best on Day 1 on Saturday, the event highlighted artists willing to take risks. This ranged from Future Islands' showcasing a nuanced mix of rhythm and drama on "Inch of Dust" to Chromatics' analog-synth wanderings of "Night Drive," which inspired rhythmic head-nodding. Sunday's early afternoon set by White Fence, the excellent L.A. project of Darker My Love's Tim Presley, set the tone for Day 2.

Veteran Scottish guitar pop band the Vaselines' wry, catchily bawdy love songs on Saturday included two cuts made famous when Nirvana covered them, "Molly's Lips" and "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam," jarring thirtysomethings' memories and confusing the teenagers who thought Kurt Cobain wrote them. Young L.A. funk impresario Dam-Funk built Prince-like bridges to 1984. And M83 proved why it is music's current Most Likely to Graduate to the Arena Rock circuit with its savvy mix of electronics and drama rock.

By 5 p.m. Sunday, German duo Tiger and Woods had the Broadway Street tent moving, its plywood floor bouncing with dancers re-engaging with the thump of deep house music that had driven many of the festival's electronic acts the night before.

Florida punk band Against Me! provided sunset angst a few hundred yards away. Singer-guitarist Laura Jane Grace, in her first L.A. festival appearance since the former Tom Gabel announced he was a pre-operative transgender, was typically ferocious, of course. "I was a teenaged anarchist," she sang as anthemic power punk rang behind her.

The FYF provided a glimpse of the most magnetic and buzziest artists of the so-called Pitchfork generation, but it also revealed the razor-thin line that separates blog hype and true artistic inspiration. This "Best New Music" world in 2012 is ruled by bands such as the Cloud Nothings, Sleigh Bells, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Atlas Sound, Beirut and Yeasayer, all of which were booked during the two days. At its least impressive, as with Sleigh Bells' shallow bombast and preference for shock and awe over texture, or with the Pains of Being Pure at Heart's thin take on 1990s shoegaze pop, you can see the use-by date fast approaching.

PHOTOS: FYF Festival 2012

In addition to those guitar-based sounds, the roster featured British electronic dance music stars Simian Mobile Disco, whose transcendent set of minimal house and techno closed the Spring Street stage; young New York electronics prodigy Nicolas Jaar; and minimalist Brit crooner James Blake. And in their first Stateside appearance, Spanish electronic duo Suicide of Western Culture shot walls of abrasive feedback riddled with hard beats, like My Bloody Valentine smashing into a beatbox. It played alongside hard-core punk bands such as Ceremony, Lightning Bolt and the unprintably named Canadian group otherwise known as "Messed" Up," whose rise has mirrored the FYF Fest's.

This seemingly inclusionary bent can be deceiving, though. The closest thing to a Latino act was Nebraskan singer Conor Oberst's band Desaparecidos, and Dam-Funk was the only African American artist represented. Despite the rise of a new generation of punk-inspired rappers, none save early 2000s vet Aesop Rock was at the FYF.

[For the record Sept. 3, 12:49 p.m.: An earlier version of this post incorrectly described Conor Oberst as an Oklahoman. He is from Nebraska.]

But the FYF has seldom highlighted hip-hop (though last year Odd Future made a memorable appearance). The once-renegade FYF Fest started as an Echo Park community punk event in 2004, rising from a cobbled-together day party to a serious music concern. It's had to blunt a few of the edges along the way. These compromises include booze sponsorships from Budweiser and corporate beer brother Shock Top (whose mohawked logo would seem to represent everything FYF is against) and Sailor Jerry rum (ditto the tattoo community); a backline production agreement with Coachella promoter Goldenvoice (a subsidiary of conglomerate Anschutz Entertainment Group, one of the largest owners of sports franchises and arenas in the world); and a security team that could wrestle even the most furious mosh pit into submission.

But the bouncers didn't have much wrestling to do. The vibe at FYF, other than moshing and body surfing, was well behaved, and parts of the park throughout the days and nights looked like a Georges Seurat pointillist landscape. The small hills, many of which featured trees nearly tall enough to provide shade, rolled with lounging groups of fans catching up, tossing blades of grass, while above them the frequency of beats from four stages collided in midair.

randall.roberts@latimes.com

An Appreciation: Burt Bacharach remembers Hal David

It was my great good fortune to have met Hal David, who was introduced to me by Eddy Wolpin ' the man who ran Famous Music in New York's fabled Brill Building at 1619 Broadway.

I had been out on the road conducting and playing piano for the Ames Brothers and had decided to quit and come back to New York City to try and write pop songs. In those days, the Brill Building, also known as the Music Factory, was filled with songwriters playing musical chairs, writing with different partners each day. I worked with Hal maybe two afternoons a week.

Hal had been writing for a while and he had had some hits, whereas I was just starting out. Our early songs were rather ordinary. Musically, I gave Hal material that I thought was very commercial ' nothing like what we would later write. We wrote some bad songs, songs you have never heard and never will. Songs like "Peggy's in the Pantry" and "Underneath the Overpass."

WATCH: 10 iconic Hal David songs

Even when we had our first two hits, "The Story of My Life" and "Magic Moments," we were well under the radar of where we would eventually go.

Our writing process was very interesting. We would sit in a room in the Brill Building and maybe Hal would have an idea ' a couple of lines, a title ' or I would have a music fragment. And we would go from there. It wasn't like we would sit in that room and finish a song. That never happened. Hal would take his story, get on the train, and go home to Roslyn out in Long Island.

And I would take whatever music I had and go back to my apartment. Then we'd meet a day or two later, or maybe talk it through on the phone.

VIDEO: Celebrating iconic songwriter Hal David

Those two early hits gave me the courage to start taking some chances with the music that I was giving Hal. It helped to have an extraordinary vehicle, our muse, Dionne Warwick, to make the most difficult things seem easy. Hal's real genius was that he could take these meaningful words and make them sound and fit so great on my musical notes.

Hal's instincts were so often on target. I remember playing "What the World Needs Now Is Love" for Dionne. Dionne was our main artist and she usually had first priority on songs. Dionne didn't like the song and took a pass on it. I put too much weight on Dionne's opinion and put the song in a drawer to be forgotten about.

Within the year, Hal and I were going to record Jackie DeShannon. And when Jackie came into the office, Hal said, "Why don't you take that song 'What the World Needs Now' out of the drawer and play it for Jackie?" When she started to sing it, I knew that Hal had made the right move. I would have left it in the drawer.

FULL OBITUARY: Hal David, Burt Bacharach's music partner, dies at 91

Hal and I never really socialized, except for going to the bar at the local Chinese restaurant to celebrate a particularly good recording session. Basically, we did our work and didn't hang out.

Like many relationships ours had its bumps. The big bump ' a disagreement that arose during the failed attempt to remake the film "Lost Horizon" as a musical ' was most unfortunate. Hal and I didn't speak for 10 years except through our lawyers, and I will take the count for that one ' my fault.

What we might have written in those 10 years we'll never know. Hal could write story lyrics like a miniature movie ' just listen to "24 Hours From Tulsa."

Hal, we had a great run and I'm so grateful we ever met.

Hal David and Burt Bacharach wrote the hits "Walk on By" and "Do You Know the Way to San Jose" for Dionne Warwick. In 1970, they won the Oscar for original song for "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," which became a No. 1 hit single for B.J. Thomas.

Bacharach is currently working on his memoir, titled "Anyone Who Had a Heart," to be published by HarperCollins in 2013.

For Richie Sambora, a hard-won road to 'Aftermath of the Lowdown'

The lowest moment of Richie Sambora's life was the night in 2008 when he was arrested for DUI with his then-10-year-old daughter Ava in the car.

Only a year after the Bon Jovi guitarist had left rehab for alcohol and pill abuse, he was pulled over in Laguna Beach after police saw him weaving on the highway in his Hummer. They booked and released him, and the Laguna Beach police described him as "quiet and cooperative and he didn't cause any problems."

The arrest capped a brutal year of personal trials: his divorce to actress Heather Locklear was finalized, his new relationship with Denise Richards faltered and his father died of lung cancer.

Most famous musicians would go out of their way to hide a night like that, or at least couch it in some traditional narrative of redemption on record. But on Sambora's new, unexpectedly bloodletting third solo album, "Aftermath of the Lowdown," he tackles that time in his life with plain-spoken, unsentimental rock music that doesn't whitewash or over-dramatize his failings.

"When I fell off that cliff, I realized who I was, unrelated to the band," Sambora said while on a sofa in the Palihouse lounge in West Hollywood. "I'd started to clean up five years ago, but I slipped, and made those amends. I'm lucky I wasn't a guy who lost his family or relationships."

It's a hard-won record from a very famous guitarist, one now recording for a scrappier, independent label ' Silver Lake's Dangerbird Records. Their pairing is exceedingly unlikely, but "Lowdown" could show both parties in a new light: Sambora, the ferocious instrumentalist and tough-skinned songwriter, and a Dangerbird Records unafraid to follow its instincts all the way to the doorstep of '80s arena rock.

The first question about "Lowdown" ' a collaboration that both Sambora and Dangerbird admit was unexpected ' is how the two parties ever crossed paths at all. Dangerbird's Jeff Castelaz, better known for signing the shoe-gazey snarl of Silversun Pickups and the cosmopolitan soul of Fitz & the Tantrums, first heard about the record through Phil Cassens, a mutual friend and fellow cyclist who used to helm A&R at Virgin Records.

Though Sambora actually had a history well before Bon Jovi ' he played the CBGB circuit and an earlier band, the Message, was signed to Led Zeppelin's Swan Song imprint ' Castelaz acknowledges that a personal connection was probably necessary to deflect his natural skepticism about the album.

"Phil told me about his friend Richie who had a fantastic record, and that he hoped we'd have some common ground," Castelaz said. "But growing up, I was a janitor and swept garbage at an arena where Bon Jovi played. They were a rock 'n' roll hit machine, and my generation railed against those guys."

But slowly, the recordings started to win him over. And though much of Dangerbird's cool-kid audience will run screaming for the fire exits at the thought of buying an album from a Bon Jovi side project, it's easy to hear what turned Castelaz into a believer. "Burn that Candle Down" kicks off with a psychedelic fuzz barrage that the Black Keys would be happy to call their own. If the piano-plaintive yearn of "Every Road Leads Home to You" got misfiled under Coldplay or Arcade Fire, radio programmers would salivate to play it.

"This is nothing like Bon Jovi," Castelaz said. "They make quality rock music, but this is vulnerable and real about his travails. When he first played 'Every Road Leads Home to You,' it blew my ' mind."

The album's not a contempo-indie rip-off, though ' bluesy swaggers like "Sugar Daddy" and power-pop such as "Nowadays" definitely bear Bon Jovi DNA. Sambora's in-studio band comes with a rock pedigree: Members of Paul McCartney and Beck's bands played all over it.

Some song titles like "Learning to Fly With a Broken Wing" and "Taking a Chance on the Wind" are almost defiantly un-self-aware of their author's stadium-rock heritage. But one pass through Sambora's dark-night-of-the-soul ballad "You Can Only Get So High" shows a rare skill among today's self-conscious songwriters ' singing about one's mistakes without glamorizing or wallowing in them.

Gossip rags have detailed Sambora's DUI, his divorce and his rehab stint after slipping in his Jacuzzi and succumbing to painkiller addiction for his shoulder injury. But when he sings "Empty bottle, preach the gospel / another shot ain't coming close to saving me," over a classic-country slide guitar, it's a reminder that those things happened to a real person, one with a story a lot of regular fans can relate to.

"I had cleaned up my act about 85% five years ago," Sambora said. "But I was naive. I just wanted to drink as a stress reliever, and I slipped again. When I write, I'm speaking about me, but I'm sure that's a lot of people's [problem] as well."

"Lowdown's" abject sincerity ' from a guy who has every right to go on hot-tub autopilot at this point in his career ' is a big part of its re-inventive, trends-be-damned sincerity.

Sambora's still committed to Bon Jovi, a day job that he describes as a "mothership ' you just get on and it goes." But after the band wrapped up its 2011 arena tour and is currently between album cycles, it's clear that "Lowdown" is his passion project and he can't wait to play it out live. After a few of the worst years of his life, Sambora feels like "Lowdown" is a song of experience ' and innocence as well.

"I'm still learning; I still have a guitar teacher and a vocal teacher," Sambora said. "I've tried to maintain my innocence as a musician and be able to tell my story, and I'm realizing it's kinda everyone's story."

august.brown@latimes.com

FYF Fest: Afternoon sets by White Fence and Nick Waterhouse

After Saturday's marathon day and night at the FYF Fest, which stretched until 1 a.m. and continued long thereafter with surprise sets by Decline of Western Culture and Lightning Bolt at the Smell, fans on Day 2  of the downtown Los Angeles festival are straggling in. 

 The sun is hot and beer is sweating out of many people's pores, but the Sunday artists are nonplussed. The evidence was there a few hours past noon, when Los Angeles four-piece guitar band White Fence took the Hill Street Stage. The band, led by talented singer and songwriter Tim Presley, offered catchy, smart rock songs that suggested the more melody-laden end of the late 1960s psychedelic underground. Presley is best known in Los Angeles for his work with Darker My Love, and is also member of an underrated Austin, Texas, guitar band, the Strange Boys. 

But he fully owns White Fence, and it showed on his band's final song, 'Harness,' from his 2011 album 'Is Growing Faith.' 

PHOTOS: FYF Festival 2012

Competing for attention on the stage next to him was the updated throwback pop of Nick Waterhouse, a well-dressed young man with Don Draper hair and an obsessive affinity for late 1950s and early '60s rock 'n'  roll. The affection would feel more anachronistic if Waterhouse and his six-piece band weren't so tight and focused, and his songs weren't so catchy. On the main stage at 2, he brought two saxophonists, who pushed through songs with the confidence of a Stax horn section -- albeit with less precision. 

Unlike many bands at the festival, who use effects pedals and looping devices to beef up their impact, Waterhouse's power came only from the convincing runs on his Epiphone and the Fender amp it was plugged into. 

In the hours to come my agenda will include sets by, among others, Sub Pop Records recording artist Father John Misty, Florida punk band Against Me!, minimalist techno producer the Field, Providence art punk band Lightning Bolt and, well, about six others later into the evening. I'm hoping Black Dice will destroy my brain for 45 sweet minutes. Check back Monday (or Tuesday) to see if I survived. 

Follow Randall Roberts on Twitter: @liledit

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