On September 11, 2001, Brian Hugh O’Neill was at home with his wife in their Hell’s Kitchen apartment, getting ready to begin another regular Tuesday morning, when he first heard the news. “My mother-in-law called to inform us that she had just seen on the news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center,” O’Neill recalls. “I ran up on the roof to see if I could see anything, then went back to my apartment, never thinking for a moment that we might be under attack. When I saw, live on TV, the second plane hit, I knew then what was under way.” The actor (Law & Order, The Good Wife) and singer-songwriter (Free World) reacted the best way he knew how: He picked up his guitar and tried to deal with the tragedy through his music. “I wrote the song ‘Rise’ in the small hours of the morning of September 12,” he said. “After the horror of that day, as an artist and composer, I knew I needed to create something to express my confusion, heartbreak, and rage.” The beautiful track features a haunting synthesizer behind O’Neill on acoustic guitar, singing such lines as “It’s calm tonight / on Twelfth Avenue the sirens / and the red, red lights / have surrendered to the silence” and “Because these days / (I can’t explain it to myself) / I used to face it with my usual grace / That is before the sky fell / the sky fell.” The song is a family affair, featuring a closing aria sung by his wife, actress Tracy Sallows, and both Sallows and their daughter appear in the video, which was directed by Skipp Sudduth and timed to honor the tenth anniversary of the attacks. “The song was literally triggered by the smell of smoke from the burning towers finally making its way uptown that evening when the winds shifted, and it came very, very quickly after that,” O’Neill remembers. “Rise” can be downloaded for free here.
this week in music
BARN OWL: LOST IN THE GLARE
Barn Owl should soar to transcendent heights at Glasslands and Shea Stadium this month
Sunday, September 11, Glasslands Gallery, 289 Kent Ave., $10, 8:30
Saturday, September 17, Shea Stadium, 20 Meadow St.
www.myspace.com/barnowlband
San Francisco psychedelic trance duo Barn Owl’s new album might be called Lost in the Glare (Thrill Jockey, September 13, 2011), but there’s nothing blinding about it. Instead, it’s a forty-two-minute journey through gorgeous, ambient dronescapes. Influenced by everything from Neil Young and Popul Vuh to black metal, Middle Eastern ragas, and experimental jazz — as well as the Bay Area’s ocean and fog — Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti guide listeners across a subtly mesmerizing cloudscape on a succession of guitars and synthesizers (and Farfisa organ), with Jacob Felix Heule on drums, Steve Dye on bass clarinet, and Michael Elrod adding tanpura, Roland Juno-60, and gong. The follow-up to last November’s full-length Ancestral Star and this June’s three-track EP, Shadowland, the new record features such slow-paced, layered mini-epics as “Turiya,” “Temple of the Winds,” and “Devotion II” that both soar into the transcendent and delve into the ominous. The centerpiece is “The Darkest Night Since 1683,” a seven-and-a-half-minute minimalist masterpiece that nearly explodes in the middle before heading off into more calming windswept terrain. Barn Owl, who never play a song the same way twice, will be at the Glasslands Gallery in Williamsburg on September 11 with Helado Negro and Jonti and at Shea Stadium in Bushwick on September 17 with Gunn-Truscinski Duo and Noveller.
THE JIM JONES REVUE
The Jim Jones Revue will be burning the house down in Brooklyn and Jersey this month (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Saturday, September 10, Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 North Sixth St., $16, 9:00
Sunday, September 18, Maxwell’s, $12-$15, 9:00
www.myspace.com/thejimjonesrevue
Nominated — with good reason — for Best Live Act by Mojo magazine, England’s Jim Jones Revue knows how to rip it up. When we saw them last summer at the Mercury Lounge, they nearly tore the place down with their pulse-pounding energy. And they’ve now captured that inextinguishable passion on their latest album, Burning Your House Down (Punk Rock Blues, August 2011), thirty-three frenetic minutes of electrifying rock and roll. The record explodes out of the gates with a fiery machine-gun-like fury of scalding vocals, scorching guitars, sizzling piano riffs, and smoking drums. Songs such as “Dishonest John,” “Premeditated,” and “Killin’ Spree” whip by at a near-suicidal pace, while “Elemental” blows up bigger than July Fourth fireworks, reaching an earth-shaking “9.9 on the Richter scale,” as Jones shouts. “Shoot first,” he sings on another song, “ask questions later,” and that could stand as the band’s motto, especially when he adds, “Make sure it’s loaded!” Also featuring Rupert Orton on guitar, Gavin Jay on bass, Nick Jones on drums, and new keyboard player Henri Herbert, the Jim Jones Revue will be igniting the crowd at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on September 10 (with Kid Congo Powers and the Pink Monkey Birds and Des Roar) and then setting Maxwell’s ablaze on September 18 (with Kid Congo Powers and the Pink Monkey Birds again). We have to admit, we have drunk the Kool-Aid, and we strongly advise you do the same.
THE WHATEVER BLOG SEPTEMBER PARTY: AMY’S B-DAY BASH
The Rock Shop
249 Fourth Ave., Brooklyn
Friday, September 9, $10, 7:00
www.therockshopny.com
http://wwwwhatever-amy.blogspot.com
One of our favorite music bloggers, Amy Grimm, who runs the Whatever…. site, hosts monthly concerts at Brooklyn venues featuring up-and-coming local bands as well as hot indie groups from around the country. Her September show at the Rock Shop should be extra special, since it’s also her official birthday bash. To help her celebrate, she’s got five Brooklyn bands, followed by a very hot Chicago duo. First up is Backwords (7:30), who just a few weeks ago wrote and recorded a special Hurricane Irene EP as the storm made its way to New York. After that comes the progressive Afro-Cuban stylings of Afuche (8:15), touring behind their most recent release, Highly Publicized Digital Boxing Match. There’s no telling what might happen when Rachel Mason leads her intergalactic experimental Little Band of Sailors to the stage (9:00). The difficult job of following them goes to Sleepwalk (9:45) and twi-ny fave Shark? (10:15), who can wish Amy a musical happy birthday by stringing together such songs as “Hey Girl” “Hip Hip Hooray” “Let’s Roll” from their True Waste album, which they made with legendary bassist Tony Maimone. Closing out the night is redheaded Chicago brother-sister garage rockers White Mystery (11:00), consisting of Miss Alex White and Francis Scott Key White and some very fine coiffure. Happy birthday, Amy!
FASHION’S NIGHT OUT: A GLOBAL CELEBRATION OF FASHION
Joss Stone will be performing live as part of the Fashion’s Night Out celebration at Macy’s
Macy’s Herald Square
151 West 34th St. at Broadway
Thursday, September 8, free, 5:00 – 9:00
www.macys.com/fno
During Fashion Week, Macy’s might not be quite the posh place you had in mind, but the Herald Square flagship store is celebrating Fashion’s Night Out in a big way. Among the fashionistas who will be making appearances (and signing and selling their various wares) are Tommy Hilfiger, Rachel Roy, Derek Warburton, and Bobbi Brown, joined by such celebrities as singer Kelly Rowland, Pretty Little Liars’ Shay Mitchell, America’s Next Top Model’s Miss J Alexander, New York Knick Amar’e Stoudemire, and supermodels Karolina Kurkova and Coco Rocha. The evening will also feature live performances by the cast of Chicago, DJ Samantha Ronson, and Joss Stone. Forty percent of all proceeds from the sale of items from the FNO Collection will benefit the New York City AIDS Fund. There will also be FNO events at the Queens Center Macy’s and on Staten Island as well as in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, and other cities.
WYE OAK: HOLY HOLY
Take a ride with Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack through Coney Island in Wye Oak’s latest video, “Holy Holy,” from their excellent album Civilian (Merge, March 2011). Directed by Jeremy Johnstone and shot by Andrés Cardona, the video makes stops on the Cyclone and the Brooklyn Flyer, among other rides, before going for a dip in the Atlantic. The Baltimore-based band is in Philly and Boston this week and will make their way to Rochester on September 24 with Okkervil River and Albany on October 5. Wye Oak has no current NYC gigs scheduled, so the closest you can come is watching the duo having fun on the Coney Island boardwalk until they return.
GREASE SING-A-LONG
Clearview Cinemas Chelsea
260 West 23rd St. at Eighth Ave.
Thursday, September 8, $7.50, 7:00 & 9:30
212-691-5519
www.clearviewcinemas.com
www.greasemovie.com
Each of us at one time or another has suddenly found ourselves belting out a song from Grease for no apparent reason. Well, you can do that and more at Thursday night’s Grease Sing-a-long at Clearview Cinemas Chelsea, where fans will be showing up in costume to join in on such unforgettable classics as “Summer Nights,” “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” “Greased Lightning,” and “You’re the One That I Want.” Based on the 1971 Broadway musical, Grease stars John Travolta as tough-guy Danny Zuko, who falls for the prim and proper Sandy Olsson, played by Australian superstar Olivia Newton-John. The cast also includes the late Jeff Conaway as Kenickie, Stockard Channing as Rizzo, Didi Conn as Frenchy, Dinah Manoff as Marty Maraschino, Kelly Ward as Putzie, Michael Tucci as Sonny, and Barry Pearl as, yes, Doody. Director Randal Kleiser also throws in some great cameos by such legendary 1950s icons as Eve Arden, Frankie Avalon, Sid Caesar, Dody Goodman, Joan Blondell, and Edd “Cookie” Byrnes, with Sha-Na-Na as prom band Johnny Casino and the Gamblers. Believe it or not, the film is not quite as white bread as you might think, with plenty of clever and dirty double entendres. It’s been said that you can learn a lot about yourself based on which character you choose to dress up as for the costume contest; we wouldn’t dream of telling you who we’re going as.