Deer Tick played Saturday night at the El Rey Theater on L.A.’s Miracle Mile as part of their two-and-a-half month tour, their longest to date, to support their new album "Divine Providence." And while the jury’s split on their latest effort — Pitchfork calls it "self-absorbed and even downright hateful," Paste deems it "a celebration of music by a band who likes nothing more than to have a good time," NPR describes the music as "pickled in alcohol" and Rolling Stone gives it three and a half stars out of five — the quartet may have restored some cred’ with their Los Angeles fan-base.

During a meaty set that clocked in at more than an hour, this raucous country hick-rock band from Rhode Island played their top iTunes downloads in near succession. "We don’t make a playlist," commented John McCauley III, front-man of the group. "When you come to a Deer Tick show you know you’re going to get something different."

Different was not what concertgoers got out of this particular Deer Tick show, but none seemed disappointed. Everything was per status quo: the group opened with their song, "The Bump," a ditty about cocaine that opens with a nod to former addict but now recovered Iggy Pop ("I got a lust for life/") and closed the night with a timely and appropriate tribute to Beastie Boy MCA (Adam Yauch), a la an encore performance of "Fight for Your Right (To Party)."

As if on cue — as alcohol-related injuries are a hallmark of their live performances — two thirds of the way through the evening a girl was taken whisked off to the emergency room in an ambulance. "Sometimes shit gets fucked up at our shows," mentioned McCauley. "Sometimes we play really proper and it’s fine. But we’ve had to pay fan’s medical bills before.

"(Management) will happily pay for hospital bills if something like that happens and it’s our fault," he added.

From beginning to end the group seized on tracks from all their albums — "Easy," and "Baltimore Blues No. 1" and "Twenty Miles," to name a few — and played their latest EP, "Tim," in near entirety.

Unlike their most recent previous local performance at the Echoplex, this outing did not reach an abrupt ending with the band’s singer crashing to the floor below and cracking his pelvis.

"I’d like to publically apologize for how drunk I was our last L.A. show," McCauley professed to Variety. Asked before the El Rey gig if he was planning on drinking on Cinco de Mayo, the day of the show, he replied, "maybe not as much."

I had the pleasure of interviewing Carly Simon some weeks back, which had to do with her receiving the Founders Award for career achievement from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and so naturally I asked her about the process of songwriting.

Perhaps the song most associated with Simon is "You're So Vain," the subject of which, to Simon's credit, has never been revealed but has been most commonly identified as Warren Beatty or Mick Jagger. In Sheila Weller's impressively researched "Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell and the Journey of a Generation," Simon is tied, if briefly, with both lotharios, at a time when Kris Kristofferson and eventual hubble James Taylor were also vying for Simon's attention.

I didn't ask Simon to reveal the subject of the song, knowing her steadfast discretion would not allow it, but I did ask her about its construction.

As it turned out, it took a year or so to put together, and is included on Simon's strongest album, in my opinion, "No Secrets," from 1972.

Here's what Simon had to say:

Simon: "In the case of 'You’re So Vain' I had the chorus: 'You’re so vain/You probably think this song is about you.' I had that written on a piece of paper a year before I got the rest of the song. I thought, 'that’s kind of funny, it’s sort of a nice twist' so I put it down in my notebook. And then about a year later I was at a party at my sister’s apartment and a man walked into the party with a big long scarf and he looked at the mirror, which was right as you entered the front door, and he whisked his scarf around his neck as he saw himself and he tilted his hat slightly to the left. I thought, ‘wow, he’s really vain...’

I then asked Simon about the meaning of gavotte as it applies to the phrase "You had one I in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte."

Simon: "A gavotte is a French dance. I thought I would use a word that was slightly presumptuous. It rhymed with what I needed it to rhyme with. He’s gavotting because that's what a pretentious, vain man would do. But he’s not at the French court, he’s at my sister’s house.

"A friend of mine who was standing next to me said 'he looks like he’s walking onto a yacht. So I put the two together -- the line that I wrote with this very vain person whom I knew. So I started writing the song about the vain man.

"And it replaced a melody that I was already writing that had nothing to do with 'You’re so Vain. 'It was called "Bless You Ben.'

"It was (Simon starts singing into the phone):

'Bless you Ben/You came in/When nobody else left off

There I was/By myself/Fighting up in my loft

Talking trouble/Took my time/Singing some sad songs

I had some dreams they were clouds in my coffee...'

"That last line was the one that stayed but I liked the melody. So I started replacing the melody with 'You walked into the party...' It went with that phrasing exactly."

Here is the apologia issued by Mr. Grohl in its entirety (and can anyone in their 40s other than a popular Grunge-based rocker get away with "stay frosty"?)

Oh, what a night we had last Sunday at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards. The glitz! The Glamour! SEACREST! Where do I begin?? Chillin' with Lil' Wayne...meeting Cyndi Lauper's adorable mother...the complimentary blinking Coldplay bracelet.....much too much to recap. It's really is still a bit of a blur. But, if there's one thing that I remember VERY clearly, it was accepting the Grammy for Best Rock Performance...and then saying this:

"To me this award means a lot because it shows that the human element of music is what's important. Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that's the most important thing for people to do... It's not about being perfect, it's not about sounding absolutely correct, it's not about what goes on in a computer. It's about what goes on in here [your heart] and what goes on in here [your head]."

Not the Gettysburg Address, but hey......I'm a drummer, remember?

Well, me and my big mouth. Never has a 33 second acceptance rant evoked such caps-lock postboard rage as my lil' ode to analog recording has. OK....maybe Kanye has me on this one, but....Imma let you finish....just wanted to clarify something...

I love music. I love ALL kinds of music. From Kyuss to Kraftwerk, Pinetop Perkins to Prodigy, Dead Kennedys to Deadmau5.....I love music. Electronic or acoustic, it doesn't matter to me. The simple act of creating music is a beautiful gift that ALL human beings are blessed with. And the diversity of one musician's personality to the next is what makes music so exciting and.....human. 

That's exactly what I was referring to. The "human element". That thing that happens when a song speeds up slightly, or a vocal goes a little sharp. That thing that makes people sound like PEOPLE. Somewhere along the line those things became "bad" things, and with the great advances in digital recording technology over the years they became easily "fixed". The end result? I my humble opinion.....a lot of music that sounds perfect, but lacks personality. The one thing that makes music so exciting in the first place.

And, unfortunately,  some of these great advances have taken the focus off of the actual craft of performance. Look, I am not Yngwie Malmsteen. I am not John Bonham. Hell...I'm not even Josh Groban, for that matter. But I try really fucking hard so that I don't have to rely on anything but my hands and my heart to play a song. I do the best that I possibly can within my limitations, and accept that it sounds like me. Because that's what I think is most important. It should be real, right? Everybody wants something real.

I don't know how to do what Skrillex does (though I fucking love it) but I do know that the reason he is so loved is because he sounds like Skrillex, and that's badass. We have a different process and a different set of tools, but the "craft" is equally as important, I'm sure. I mean.....if it were that easy, anyone could do it, right? (See what I did there?)

So, don't give me two Crown Royals and then ask me to make a speech at your wedding, because I might just bust into the advantages of recording to 2 inch tape. 

Now, I think I have to go scream at some kids to get off my lawn. 

Stay frosty.     

Davemau5

Marking their first live performance, Sucre debuted nine ethereal tunes Monday night at Hollywood’s Hotel Café.

Accompanied by a live four-person string quartet, husband Darren King on drums/piano and Jeremy Larson on piano/strings, lead singer Stacy King performed a half-hour set to a standing crowd. Other guests included Dan Brigham and Vince Schuerman from Canon Blue on guitar and additional percussion.

Sucre, which at times recalls Florence and the Machine and Leona Lewis, just completed their freshman album. Finished over the course of two years, the record was produced, mixed and mastered by Larson, a classically trained musician who layered harp, cello, mandolin, bass and other string instruments to create the group’s celestial sound.

But that said, I thought the unstated theme for this particular telecast was settling old scores: Katy Perry customized her jab at soon-to-be ex Russell Brand with new lyrics for "Part of Me"; Taylor Swift targeted the haters who criticized her past Grammy performances with "You're So Mean"; Rihanna asserted her independence with "We Found Love" ("in a hopeless place"); Grammy queen Adele cleaned up with what she described as "a breakup album," "21"; and, finally, this Tweet from Chris Brown: "HATE ALL U WANT BECUZ I GOT A GRAMMY."

Talk about high school...

Leave it to Paul McCartney to upstage his own tribute, breaking tradition for a MusiCares honoree on Friday night by opening the show with a rousing rendition of "Magical Mystery Tour," a fitting introduction to the McCartney songbook that would assume new definition with every artist who appeared onstage. Alicia Keys, accompanying herself on piano, turned "Blackbird" into a personal anthem of empowerment; Coldplay performed "We Can Work It Out" as if it were a plea for world peace; and Katy Perry tapped her inner torch singer with a breathy version of "Hey Jude."

The pre-Grammy MusiCares Person of the Year event raised $6.5 million for musicians in need, eclipsing the record $4.7 million established by Barbra Streisand last year, and the adoring throng of showbiz heavyweights who crowded into the West Hall of the L.A. Convention Center were not disappointed. With McCartney laying down the gauntlet, the Foo Fighters flexed some hard-rock muscle on "Jet";  Neil Young and Crazy Horse downshifted to a loping, grungy gate on "I Saw Her Standing There"; and Norah Jones' smokey delivery on "Oh Darling" helped prompt McCartney to comment later about "all these fantastic artists putting nuances on songs that I didn't know were there."

Eddie Izzard, the MC for the evening, proved characteristically irreverent, crafting a fancifully absurdist bio of McCartney that involved the singer-songwriter playing the xylophone "upside down because he was left-handed" and Muhammad Ali as the fifth Beatle. McCartney bookended the marathon evening by closing with material from his latest LP, "Kisses on the Bottom," about which Elvis Costello, in a filmed comment, said "could be the alternative title for this evening's festivities."

Among those spotted in the house were Stewart Copeland, Jeff Lynne, Ringo Starr and wife Barbara Bach, and industry power players like Irving Azoff, among many others. But Walsh was clearly the attraction, mixing a live performance of new and classic material with anecdotes about his hard-partying ways, life on the road and a highly amusing deconstruction of his 1978 hit "Life’s Been Good" — perhaps THE definition of art imitating life.

Recalling the time he toured as an opening act for The Who, Walsh shared that "one of the most terrifying things that happened to me was when Keith Moon decided he liked me."

In describing his observations that led to the writing of the new album’s title track, he compared the time when there were three networks that shut down their broadcasts at 10 p.m., and now, when in the wee hours of the morning there’s "500 channels and there’s nothing on, unless you want a Brazilian butt lift or you need a cure for your acne."

But the highlight was seeing Walsh on stage with a crew of crack session players, exhibiting the kind of licks on guitar that served as reminder that he’s one of rock’s unique stylists and showed why the James Gang was one of the first great exponents of jam rock. And his falsetto vocals have lost none of their cracked charm.

The new tune "Wrecking Ball" revealed a debt to Crazy Horse, while vintage tunes like "Turn to Stone" and "Rocky Mountain Way," with Ringo helping out on traps, proved that classic rock never dies; it just needs to be watered now and then.

But in my opinion, the biggest Oscar music oversight of recent times was Eddie Vedder’s music for “Into the Wild,” either because the Academy eliminated the “song score” category or didn’t feel the music advanced the drama enough. In fact, the soundtrack was better than the movie, which was maybe part of the problem.

I think the Academy should simply vote for the best use of music period – whether it’s adapted from other sources or not – i.e. Carter Burwell’s use of traditional music in “True Grit,” Clint Mansell’s Tchaikovsky-inspired score for “Black Swan” or Howard Shore’s Wagneresque score for “A Dangerous Method.” In all three cases, the composers beautifully underscore the drama with unique orchestrations and tonalities that only they could pull off.

Was the soundtrack for “West Side Story” the best of its year? Absolutely! Did it win an Oscar? Deservedly yes. Would it win today? No, because it wasn’t “original.”