Frank Stewart/Jazz At Lincoln Center

A Celebration of the Wonderful World Of Phoebe Jacobs
Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center
Thursday, May 24

The voice that filled Rose Hall first at the Thursday afternoon memorial for Phoebe Jacobs was Jacobs's own. There was her face, too, projected on a large screen in a first-tier box. It all might have seemed off-putting had any of the several hundred people who mostly filled the auditorium felt as if Jacobs, who died on April 9 at 93, was no longer present.

Just before critic Stanley Crouch kicked things off, Jacobs, via video, was recalling how Ella Fitzgerald once remarked that no one had ever thrown her a real birthday party—and how she took it upon herself to quickly organize one for Ella, with celebrants including Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Mickey Mantle and Richard Nixon. Jacobs's was a life in and of jazz that touched all other worlds. Jazz has its heroes and heroines, some of whom make their marks behind the scenes and off in the wings. Their glory is measured not just in deeds, in how well they carried the culture forward, but also in how they carried themselves. "If there was anybody who embodied the idea of swing better than Phoebe," said Crouch, "I haven't met that person." Later, Mercedes Ellington—who was neither the first nor the last speaker to claim Jacobs as a "surrogate mother"—described Jacobs's long relationship with her storied family. "Phoebe was not a singer or an instrumentalist," she said, "but Phoebe approached life and friendships and solved problems like a musician."

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I've never been happier to be wrong about something. Two weeks ago, the last line of my column read: "Probably won't happen. But wouldn't it be fun if it did?"

The event I didn't think could happen was Adam Lambert scoring a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 album chart with his second disc, Trespassing. But I sure was wrong, and it sure is fun: By reaching the penthouse, Adam becomes the first out gay artist to have the best-selling album in America. Trespassing did this by selling roughly 77,000 albums last week.

What my early-May column revealed was that every prior well-known gay musician to top the big chart—Elton John, Freddie Mercury, George Michael, Ricky Martin and Clay Aiken, among others—only came out of the closet later. Since I chronicled this odd statistic, I've been (happily) inundated with comments, challenges, debates, rejoinders, retweets and attaboys. And questions—lots of questions.

Since this has been my most-read and most-commented chart column by far, I thought I might address a few of these questions, as best as I can. Some of the most heated questions I received regard issues better addressed by cultural critics like Camille Paglia or Wayne Koestenbaum, not some lowly chart columnist; but I'll do my best to wade into them.

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JedRoot.com

A few weeks ago I was perusing the Billboard Rock Songs chart, which at present shows a genre in crisis—its ranks are split between the staggering dinosaurs of the nu-metal era, a few poppier rock outfits like Gotye and fun., and a bunch of bands that sound like slight variations on the old-timey-hoedown template laid down by Mumford & Sons. (Foxy Shazam's problematic yet utterly catchy glam-rock stomp "I Like It" was there, too.) But one thing really stuck out: The presence of four acts fronted by women, who have, with a few exceptions, been pretty much exiled from that particular radio format since the '90s. Adele was there; so was Garbage, and so was Norah Jones. Then there was a band called Dead Sara, who had a song called "Weatherman" in the chart's lower reaches. I clicked play, and oh man, was I blown away from note one.

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Samuel Gursky

During my high school years in the early 2000s, I wanted to be in a ska-punk band. This fantasy could have been sparked by an Operation Ivy record, Save Ferris's prom-night concert in 10 Things I Hate About You, the genre's sartorial trappings, or the sound of trumpets. But one thing's for sure: Anything I would have hypothetically done would have probably ended up sounding like the Arrogant Sons of Bitches.

ASOB, as they're called by de facto leader Jeff Rosenstock, trace their origins to October 1995—the same month No Doubt released Tragic Kingdom, and one year after the Mighty Mighty Bosstones issued Question the Answers. They made a bunch of records that are still exhilarating in their energy and self-aware smart-ass-itude. They toured a bunch without much success, playing wherever they can. Anxiety, rising debt, and shifting ambitions created tension, though, and they broke up in 2004, with Rosenstock moving onto the equally seditious and fun Bomb the Music Industry! (Rosenstock has penned a lengthier account of the band's existence.) This weekend, they're playing a pair of reunion shows in New York City.

Sound of the City recently chatted on the phone with the good-natured Rosenstock, who was listening to Electric Light Orchestra before he picked up.

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That Dog. are proof that the '90s were a very different time, one when an alt-pop band with three women, one guy, extraordinarily catchy songs ("Never Say Never" and "Long Island" were every bit the equal of "Buddy Holly" and "Say It Ain't So"), and a cool gimmick (full-time violinist Petra Haden) could have full major-label backing and still fall between the cracks. They released three albums before parting ways in 1997, including the great Totally Crushed Out! and the absolute classic Retreat from the Sun. After various projects and solo ventures in the 2000s, they've finally reunited for a handful of shows (and, one hopes, a second shot at improving rock radio playlists). Frontwoman Anna Waronker spoke to Sound of the City about the future of the band, the influence of her biz-legend dad Lenny Waronker, and why she prefers After School Specials to Sweet Valley High.

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"There are two pigeons right there, so if I threw some bread and scared them off, I could turn that flutter sound into a Mannie Fresh snare roll." With that, Hot Sugar claps his hands and, as if on command, the two pigeons stop their strut through Tompkins Square Park to flap and flutter off. For a moment, the rapid sound their wings make seems like something you could happily hear Lil Wayne or Juvenile rap around.

Hot Sugar is the alias of Nick Koenig, an artist whose associative music technique is hooked around sampling the sounds of the environment and objects around him and, through some sort of technical processing wizardry, turning them into original samples and melodies. It's a technique he's been perfecting since the age of 13, and has recently found some wider recognition: The Roots' opening number on Undun is produced by Koenig, and Das Racist affiliate rapper Big Baby Gandhi included four of his productions on his recent No1 2 Look Up 2 mixtape.

He released an EP, Moon Money, on the Ninja Tune label last week, and is celebrating it with a release party at Littlefield tonight. SOTC sat on a park bench with Koenig and got him to reveal all about his disdain for rap's lazy approach towards sampling, a rumored supergroup with Michel Gondry and MC Paul Barman, and how he came to work with the most famous rat on the Internet.

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Camilo Fuentealba

"Before today was yesterday and tomorrow is the future," but this is what happened in between. In a very short period of time, Boston party starters Soul Clap splashed down onto the international scene in their quantized spaceship of funk. Eli Goldstein and Charles Levine were pulled up and into the superstar DJ world by the animal hands of Wolf + Lamb (the duo, the label, the idea) and funked their way to the top. They started with an unprecedented string of absolutely stellar R&B edits and quickly moved to the upper echelon of a new breed of pitched-down househeads, taking their game on the road with their pals to all corners of the world. With their debut album EFUNK (Wolf + Lamb), they've come into their own as producers as well. We sat down with the affable brotherly-like duo at The Marcy Hotel, Wolf + Lamb's East Coast headquarters/office/party bunker.

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Tonight at the Bowery Ballroom, the Afghan Whigs—the Cincinnati torchbearers for damaged soul music—return to the stage after 13 years on hiatus, and if their performances on last night's Late Night With Jimmy Fallon are any indication, tonight's sold-out show will be full of the band's trademark self-lacerating fury, with Whigs frontman Greg Dulli leading the charge as he spits out twisted tales of love gone spoiled. In advance of the band's return, which includes a Whigs-selected lineup at this fall's I'll Be Your Mirror festival in Asbury Park, I spoke with Dulli from his home in New Orleans shortly before he left to rehearse in Cincinnati with his bandmates; the parts of our chat that didn't make it into last week's Voice are below.

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Evans The Death.

In this week's Voice I offered up a midseason report of sorts, listing 12 particularly outstanding tracks from this year. Here, for your listening pleasure, are the 12 songs in streamable form (via a combination of YouTube and Soundcloud so as to not lock anyone—or any songs—out). Happy listening, and if you'd like to share a 2012 song that's particularly tickled your ears, by all means do so in the comments.

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Sex! Drugs! Video games! Nope, that isn't the hedonist's new trifecta—it's the title of Mississippi rapper David Banner's new free album, which you can cop now. The project in question might not go all-out on the salacious tip; Banner says, "The title is used to draw people in to think that it's about sex, drugs and video games, but it's about why people shouldn't regurgitate those things and if life was a video game who would control it?" Which is a virtuous stance, but one that didn't stop us from pestering Banner to take a quick trip through his own hip-hop-related sex, drug and video game annals.

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