The Black Keys on "Live From Abbey Road"

For every passion or profession, there's a handful of meaningful places significant to your craft; the sort of place where the hairs of your neck stand on end when you cross the threshold entering into the hallowed ground: artists have the Lourve, architects have Rome, kids have Disneyland, stoners have a strip-mall with a Taco Bell, 7-11 and Gamestop, Christians have St. Peter's (which artists and architects dig as well), rednecks have monster-truck rallies and rock musicians have among other places, the Abbey Road Recording Studio. Most people only know of Abbey Road from the famous Beatles' album (Abbey Road) cover of the band walking single-file across the cross-walk with a VW Bug up on the curb, which the average person would probably assume the album is simply named after the street and not the studio at #3 Abbey Road, St. John's Wood, London UK.

"Her Majesty"
The Abbey Road Studio is stacked in history. From Blumlein's inventions to EMI's recordings of a laundry list of talented musicians: the Beatles, Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”, Fiona Apple, Oasis, U2, Foo Fighters, Mika, Stevie Wonder, et. al. And let's not forget the mixing of such movies as "Star Wars-1, 2, 3, 5 & 6", "The Lord of the Rings Trilogy", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", etc.


Serendipity (aka: "Golden Slumbers")
Just by happen stance, I was up late the other night watching some quite bizarre British series) when I saw the commercial for "Live From Abbey Road" and thought, plenty of room on the DVR, let's see what this show is all about. I cut it on as I was doing some tinkering on some bottling equipment in the brew-house and I heard the Black Keys in the shorts-introductions. Yahtzee! There's Dan Auerbach carrying his kid into the studio, giving a little chat on his way into "work". I immediately wanted to call Dale and every other person I shopped the Keys to when I was back in Ohio (how do people from Akron not know of these guys?) in June, but alas, it was a bit late for a phone call, so this post will have to do.

"Come Together"
"Live From Abbey Road" is split into performances by three different artists, with a bit of filler, "get to know the band" material in between sets. The show kicked off with The Hoosiers (which I think I first heard about on MOKB) a British band who came to the states to ride the colonist's scholarship gravy-train by playing "football" (read soccer) at Indiana University. They thought Indiana was "sofa-king" awesome, they named their band "the Hoosiers". (Dude, there's about 47 states that are so much cooler than Indiana, but to each their own.)

"I Want You (She's So Heavy)"
I digress; as the folks at My Old Kentucky Blog note, "They will more than appeal to all fans of the whole brit-pop/new wave/falsetto lead vocals trend that was in full effect a couple years ago." The Hoosiers' first tune, "Goodbye Mr. A" a bit campy in an ELO type of way, but still good enough to toss on the iPod. Their next tune, "Run Rabbit Run" is a little ditty about spousal abuse and loving a woman who doesn't dig you, instead she wants the guy who treats her like crap and beats her. The singer who still cares for her wants that "rabbit to run" (assumingly back to) him-which appears, despite being in a rock and roll band this is the songwriter's first experience with the unwriten rules of dating crazy women with "Daddy-issues". (Special message to the songwriter: You need to write a follow up to the song, something along the lines of "You're sofa-king crazy and I am running rabbit"). Finally, the guys wrap things up with a cover of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" as if people haven't been doing that one since "the world has been turning". Nonetheless, it's a decent cover. It's not as good as What Made Milwaukee Famous' cover of "You May Be Right" but is gets the job done as covers go.

Mr. Sun
Manu Chao the French-born singer and political activist, performed "Bongo Bong/Mr. Bobby", "Bienvenidoa Tijuana" and "Politik Kills". Pretty easy going jams for songs so controversial-I guess you have to listen to the words. I thought this was my first intro to Manu Chao, but I was wrong, I have his song, "Me Gustas Tu" in my iPod-dang that thing has stuff in there I don't even know about.

"The End"
Something I didn't know was how the Black Keys got their name, to which Carney tell a story about how a his dad had befriended a local artist and the guy would call and leave these bizarre messages (i.e. "Jim Carney pick me up a pound of pipe tobacco and a 2-liter Diet Coke-you're a 'black key' if you don't). Auerbach took in all of the history of the place referring to the Blumlein microphones still around the place, that he thought "Blumlein" was just a name engineers threw around, turns out he's a real guy. (Alan Blumlein invented the stereo system) (Link to Alan Blumlein's bio on Abbey Road's site). The best though was when the guys were in the small room off of the studio and talked about the history of the Beatles going in there to eat "sandwiches". And of course, I can't leave out how the guys make their music-by jamming! Btw, the Black Keys will perform at the following locations near the Holy City: the Orange Peel in Asheville (Oct. 3) The House of Blues in Myrtle Beach (Oct. 4th) and the Disco Rodeo in Raleigh (Oct. 5th). For you folks in Ohio, you can check the Black Keys out at the LC Amphitheater on Oct. 9th.

For more on the Black Keys' performance, click here to go to the Sundance Channel's Abbey Road page.