It's Getting Colder!

Swervedriver - 99th Dream.mp3

There's a new overview of Swervedriver's Creation Records output floating about that I'd recommend to anyone checking out. Oxford was more than a city of scholars and lawyers and Ride and Radiohead, apparently. I'd heard the name bandied about a bit, Olga from The Besnard Lakes was rumoured to worship the group, and having a more than unhealthy interest in the back catalogues of The Jesus & Mary Chain, The House of Love, Ride, My Bloody Valentine (not as unhealthy as JRC on that one - that boy's suffering from a deep-rooted obsession with Kevin Shields), and the other brighter and lesser lights of the shoe-gazing scene (keep your Sigur Ros, Ambulance Ltd. post-shoegaze recommendations to yourself if you have them, though you probably don't - thanks) made it only a matter of moments before
I found myself struck dumb by a track like 99th Dream, with its Ventures-lifted guitar-slide intro and whirlpool of effects-laden guitars and Anglo moans. A pre-cursor to Dylan's 115th Dream, and set to appear on their Geffen debut, before their A&R guy got canned, and they settled for Zero Hour. A great song for bicycles!

This is the internet, the 21st century, a new age, so I'm far too lazy to try and contextualize any of these tracks in terms of the albums they appeared on, and, hey, I don't have to - there's All Music Guide for that!

Swervedriver - The Other Jesus.mp3

The Other Jesus, our second selection, comes alive with hammer-on guitar leads, slightly similar to MBV's tremolo drops, and that's one hell of an unfortunate bass-line intro, preparing you for some high school band's rendition of a Rage Against The Machine song, or maybe Helmet. (Songs about Jesus seemed pretty de-rigeur in the 90's, huh? Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus, Ministry's Jesus Built My Hotrod (with Butthole Surfer Gibby Haynes on lead vocal), Jesus Jones, and who
could forget the pride of New Berlin, Wisconsin, Housecat Sized Fennec, with their chart-raging number Do The Jesus? Anyone remember that song Bigger Than Jesus Now? I can't recall the band's name, but in the video, the lead-singer/guitarist was wearing a THIS IS NOT A FUGAZI T-SHIRT shirt.)

Swervedriver - Son of Mustang Ford.mp3

Heads-up to T.Dot's Are You Familiar blog with the early song Son of Mustang Ford, an early song that convinced Alan McGree of Creation Records (now svengali of single-lovin' Poptones) to sign the group. Allegedly he first heard this song while driving in a limo, and woah, it's a song about driving!

Swervedriver - The Birds.mp3

Here's a song that's the genesis of my "BUffalo Tom but way better" brainwave. There's an April Wine reference in here. Listen to the snarky drawl on these lyrics, huh? Disaffected generation Xers, who were "born on an aeroplane."

Swervedriver ended tragically as a result of Adam Franklin revealing an affinity for bearded Christian rockers Pedro The Lion in a post-humous(???) interview.

As you've just heard, the 1990s was a boom decade for production that accented the ride cymbal. Colin Stewart, bearded studio guru at Vancouver's The Hive, related a story a
couple of years ago about Ride playing in Victoria in the early 90s. Being a gigantic fan of theirs, (though, and this is a strike against him, not a fan of Carnival of Light) he struck up a conversation with them and they ended up all skipping out on co-headliners Lush's set to go to a movie. Uhhh, I have no more Brits in Victoria anecdotes, though, I should, that's the city's whole schtick, isn't it? Hence the double-decker buses, tea-houses, Wax Museum, and old ladies in weird hats. Quaint!

Daddy's Hands

Addenda to a previous post, via the well-worn and controversial comments box...
"The other track is called Granny's gotta eat. Anybody want to see us, we play Victoria at the Fifty Fifty this Friday.
Hope to see you there.
MTR"

Friday, July 29th
10pm. $7.
2516 Douglas St. Victoria, BC . Canada V8T-4M1
Daddy's Hands (Vancouver)
The Shapes and Sizes (Victoria)
Dante Decaro (Victoria/Montreal)
...and film shorts from The Secret Schoolyard Collective. Plus The Firearm Arts Opening.

Volare, Voltaire, Volatile!

Dean Martin - You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You.mp3
Dean Martin - Return To Me.mp3
Dean Martin - Volare.mp3
Disclaimer: It should be noted that I have recently discovered shamelessness, and now, favour the maudlin, kitsch-laden and slightly nostalgic in all things. Pity me and my lack of taste. Thanks!

For a couple of weeks prior to my friend's Derek wedding, I had brushed on my Dean Martin - his nuances, his sleeves-rolled-up handling a highball charisma, his eyebrow positioning, his unique sense of humour and carefree attitude towards life, and those damn roasts (which were, apparently, filmed in over 12 hour shots - sometimes roaster and roastee weren't even on the same coast, much less the same room, and everyone just acted drunk after the booze wore off) - in preparation for delivering a roast for the reception. The night before the wedding I took a chlonazepam to put myself to sleep, heeding not my co-workers warning that half of one made her drool out of the side of her mouth and miss her metro stop, and awoke to find that, not only was I completely unstressed, I was also stumbling a lot. 'Perfect,' I thought to myself, 'this is like a god-damn Dean Martin pill.' The wedding came to pass, a lovely event, planned perfectly by Jessica (the bride) and Derek (the groom) - as inviting to their friends as their family, and enjoyable.

Twenty minutes prior to my stage-moment, I realized, after questioning by the groom's youngest brother, a terminally-hyper and a shade nerdy 14 year old, that I had nothing at all prepared. I sat down, a bit tipsy from actual booze this time, penned something, and ended up delivering an anecdote about a shared birthday party of mine and Melissa (who did duty as half-best man at this wedding) a couple of years back when Derek boozily faced up to the police and ended up in the drunk-tank. I compared him to some famous civil rights warriors and what not and finished the anecdote with a toast, to what I assume was nervous laughter from the crowd, realizing, in hindsight, that my speech was a lot more Stuart McLean (CBC's Vinyl Cafe) than Dean Martin. Oh well, shouldn't be much more of those in my future!

In honour of that wedding and Dean-o, here are some tracks to tide you over until the Swervedriver's up.

Trapped In The 1990s With Two Tall Men.

Pavement - Spit On A Stranger.mp3

I never had any interest in Pavement during the years that they were around - I think Jawbreaker's Dear You album was about the only indie stand-out in a record collection dominated by political pop-punk and screamo releases from Goleta's Ebullition Records - and I'd probably call myself a Pavement "fan," though it's hard to maintain that when I'm only really interested in the later albums, specifically Terror Twilight. I've yet to meet a Pavement fan who actually likes that album, but I loved it, and was delighted to find that Stephen Malkmus' solo debut carried on in the same manner. That Wilco (the roots & Americana, self-mythologizing, barely-disguised jam band) tried to re-create with their dopy and yawn-inducing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot? Well, I didn't like the Preston School of Industry album that much either, thanks any. (Maybe the Wilco version of Terror Twilight sounds best in the middle of a field in Maryland, the scent of patchouli, body odour and dreadlocks wafting about...) Was it Nigel Godrick's production that turned off old Pavement fans? No Spiral Stairs songs? Well, of little concern to me - this is the first track from that album, and it's a spacey and beautiful, nay!, sublime composition complete with occasional falsetto jumps and wonderful production that opens up ONE OF THE MOST CRITICAL ALBUMS OF 1999.

Archers of Loaf - Scenic Pastures.mp3
Archers of Loaf - Form & File.mp3

And, on the topic of the 1990s and indie rock bands with later albums not-so-beloved by their good-for-nothing turncoat fanbase, I will direct the reader's attention to an album put out in 1996 by Archers of Loaf, All The Nation's Airports. Fronted by the soft-spoken preacher-man Eric Bachmann, a gangly gentleman with a great fingerpicking technique, and like Stephen Malkmus, a lover of stripclubs (inferred, not confirmed), Bachmann and Black Mountain's Stephen McBean obviously attended the same vocal training school. This album pointed the way to the sparseness of their final album White Trash Heroes, while still maintaining some of the guitar squelches and squeals that dominated previous works. The above track, Scenic Pastures, is probably the most palatable to long-time fans of the group - a heavy bass-tone, a delayed-lead guitar, and those stop-start dynamics. The rest of the album sounds like Neu. Well, no, not really. But it's quite a bit different - looped and piano ballad Chumming The Ocean foreshadows Bachmann's current project, Crooked Fingers, the equivalent to McBean's Jerk With A Bomb song Summertime. Pathos! Piano! I haven't included that here, (the later song Form & File is above) but it's a strutting little number (uhh, okay, mid-tempo shuffle bordering on dirge, maybe?) that ends in a tidal wave of vocal overdubs. Get the album!


Welcome to Jay Watts' 1995 Bedroom *
In a similar vein to this post and a couples ones prior, that is Alienating Any Of The Four People Who Read This, I'm going to do a Swervedriver post tomorrow! It's everything I remember liking about Buffalo Tom's song on this 411 skateboarding video I had in grade 9, but without being terrible when I went back to listen to it. (Did anyone else discover bands through 411's video skateboard magazine? More often than not the soundtracks avoided the double-time kick-drum poppa-punk criminals that dominated most of the other skateboarding videos at the time... And is Ed Templeton the Stephen Malkmus of skateboarding?)

* Or rather, an approximation of what I want the cultural contents of my 1995 to be, looking back at it with selective memory and a healthy dose of revisionism.

CRIME! Tonight! w/ Nicholas Diamonds

Tonight's Tuesday, so I'll be DJing at The Green Room (5386 St. Laurent - just below St. Viateur) - the usual mix of kraut-rock, neu!-wave, Yoko Ono bits and bites, rock, shoegazing bands, electro, soul and uhh, whatever seems interesting. This week I'll play a track or two from the yet-to-be released Daddy's Hands record, some Jersey-specific stuff (see post below), and what not. As well, special guest Nicholas Diamonds will be guesting... There's air-conditiong, drink specials, and (of course) no cover. It's like a live mp3 blog with booze!

Chris Leo

Not Paul Simon

I don't know if Chris Leo is notoriously difficult, or I've just taken one and built him a reputation in my mind up around it. The former frontman for New Jersey's Gern-Blandsten-ians Native Nod, hype-manipulators The Van Pelt, "project band" The Lapse, might receive a little more attention for his last name now that his older brother Ted Leo is prescribing an over-the-counter double-dose of mod-beat n' Costello to audiences with some help from his Pharmacists (oh fuck, I'll stop that messy metaphor), but he's got things on the
move - a novel, White Pigeons, published by Fifth Planet Press, a solo project that flys under the moniker Vague Angels,
and a slot playing guitar with Scottish group Pro Forma (who, it must be added, count Paul from Franz Ferdinand as a former member).

Chris' distinct err, ahh, "talky" manner of singing, coupled with his insistent and sometimes too-clever lyrics have certainly won him a fair share of invictives throughout the years, Pitchfork's Ryan Schreiber delivering a nasty little ear-boxing in his review of The Lapse's Heaven Ain't Happenin', claiming that each song on the album was "crammed with Chris Leo's self-important rants" and accusing him of maintaining a "crass superiority." (Pfft to all that, man - Dylan's Like A Rolling
Stone was a self-important rant, certainly a bit crass, and if Argumentum ad Hitlerum is the final word in political and/or historical discussion, Argumentum ad Dylanum is the final word in rock n' pop discussion.)

I don't find Leo's lyrical stylin's, flourishes or his eloquence as offensive to my sensibilities as Schreiber or any number of others, and while I'm not going to deny the similarities in some bits to Nada Surf's Popular (Jesus, I'm really not doing him any favours here, am I?), Leo pre-dates that, and he's too clever by half to be manipulating the listener in such a painfully blunt and obvious manner, it's just his voice warbles sometimes, right?

The Van Pelt - His Steppe Is My Prairie.mp3

Welcome to the 90s! Listen to the production on that ride cymbal, the palm-muted break-down about 50 seconds into the song. Wait, don't go! Don't leave! Hear him out! This is the opening track from The Van Pelt's debut album, Stealing From Our Favourite Thieves, released by Gern Blandsten and, more than likely, still available from them. Chris Leo drops some folky touchstones: banjos, bluegrass,
the Sengalese, Injuns : "Fire, retire, and wipe your hands on your company seams! Cold, gold, they built a fortress on the weakest of stones" and then talky-part, scream, breakdown, and out! Chris Leo crafted a fantastic pop-song,
replete with insistent Pentecostal speaking-in-tongues tone, but as penance for having written this song during that dark period of musical history (the mid-90s), he has to include some dated-sounding production and guitar harmonics. Fine, I'll accept it!

The Lapse - Buffet.mp3

Toko Yasuda, Japanese ex-pat and formerly a member of Blonde Redhead came to more prominence with The Lapse, which functioned as a project between Leo and herself and a rotating cast of drummers and other musicians who played with them throughout two albums: 1998's Betrayal and
2000's Heaven Ain't Happenin'. Her voice pops up in this song Buffet from the second album, augmenting Leo's diatribe on "meals out of condiments," which is, you know, a strong metaphor for the malnourishment and impoverishment of human existence, natch. Built on a strong guitar riff, it takes even longer than it did for him to start singing on the track I posted above, almost two whole minutes!

The Lapse project crashed and burned prior to their signing to Matador and working on their third full-length as visa problems sadly caused the band and Chris and Toko's relationship to dissolve. Subsequently, Chris took off to South America, where one assumed he gathered some material for his novel. Toko now plays in Enon (who leave me flat), and as I mentioned above, Chris performs with Pro Forma and on his own, as Vague Angels. Rumours that drunken school-teacher Robert Pollard (of Guided By Voices) got The Lapse dropped from Matador after a fistfight with brother Ted Leo at a gig are possibly true.

Melancholic Mondays!

I'm going to keep on recycling this image...



Otis Redding - I've Got Dreams To Remember.mp3

Spacemen 3 - So Hot (Wash Away All Of My Tears).mp3

Spiritualized - Lay It Down Slow.mp3

Goldfrapp - Deep Honey.mp3

Four melancholic Monday songs for your (dubious) listening pleasure. The last pick reveals me to be a secret trip-hop obsessive, I suppose. Now, I never got into Portishead, I've only own one Tricky album (because I found it on the street), and the last time I heard Massive Attack put me off of them for some time. I was driving up with a friend and his friend to Nanaimo, halfway up the Malahat highway, and me very intoxicated at this point (I had thought a bottle of wine would be a necessary accompaniement to the car-ride earlier in the afternoon), gigantic plumes of smoke began billowing from the hood of his car. We pulled to
the side of the road, had it towed and ended up in some small-town inn, complete with Wings night. My friend ended up getting picked up by a friend, but I opted to carry on. The gentleman's brother picked him up in his sports car, we smoked some intensely strong marijuana and I became paranoid and scared, immersed in the
claustrophobic environment of Massive Attack's 1000th Window album. They dropped me off at a parking lot in Nanaimo that I thought was close to my host's place, and it took me about an hour to cross the parking lot to get to the Dairy Queen on the other side, which seemed a suitable end to the hell that I had just endured.

I had the chance to get out last night and see some of the Fantasia Festival. The film was called One Night In Mongkok (unfortunately the
soundtrack didn't feature a re-working of that Abba/Andrew Lloyd Webber stick o' dynamite from Chess), and was described as a "taut, psychological thriller." I left the theatre pretty shaken - it's been a while since I've been subject to that much misery and violence on the large screen. The characters were well-drawn,
if a little stiff in their roles (this was somewhat of a genre film, I guess) and the thematic concern seemed to be one of conveying a message of "stay put, country bumpkins! The shining island of hope that you think Hong Kong represents is a charade - it's a violent and blood-stained place where grannies rot to death and your good-nature will be perverted by the dark forces of urban existence. Don't overstay your visa!"

Daddy's Hands! Again!

Dave Wanger is not female.
Daddy's Hands - Incest At Best.m4a
Daddy's Hands - Granny's Gotta Eat.m4a

The first track is an abrasive version of Daddy's Hands' Incest at Best from their forthcoming album, with a lovely introduction from velvet-voiced front-man Dave Wanger. The second track I don't have a title for yet (anyone out there?), but I'll speculate that it's titled Dirty Ways. As somebody mentioned in the comments below, the album is fucking awesome (as spectacular as it is damaged and abrasive), the artwork's by Jeff Ladouceur, and if a label doesn't pick this shit up and force-feed it to the populace, (according to an article in last week's Globe & Mail, mp3 blogs are a new and innovative method of doing it!) there's no justice left in this damn planet. I'm going to point to Dave Wanger as the Godhead of the multiple number of interesting bands associated with the Garden City (Frog Eyes, Frankie Sparo, Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, Atlas Strategic, and more) and wait for someone to contradict me.

Voz vet zayn, vet zayn...

C R I M E

Tuesdays / The Green Room / 5386 St. Laurent
23h / no cover / drink specials / air-conditioning
Kraut-rock, John Cale, Yoko Ono, Sun Ra, Electro, Neu!-wave and depending on my mood, sucky indie-esque nonsense.

* Amon Duul II - Eye Shaking King
* Ash Ra Tempel - Darkness: Flowers Must Die
* Ashla Bhosle - Dum Maro Dum
* Bango - Inferno No Mundo
* The Black Angels - Bloodhounds on My Trail
* Bruce Haack - Electric To Me Turn
* Can - In Calcutta
* Chrome - Eyes On Mars
* Cluster - Sowiesoso
* Daddy's Hands - Bastard You're A Hard Man To Love
* Dead Meadow - Stacy's Song
* Dr. John - Danse Fambeaux
* Eno & The Winkies - Totalled
* Faust - Sad Skinhead
* Flying Saucer Attack - Space 1999
* Harmonia - Gollum

Come by, or stay at home and download all this shit yourself...

Popsheep has a new mp3 up from Pride Tiger, featuring ex-3 Inches of Blooders Sunny Dhak and Bob Froese...

Afternoon Delight

Paul Simon - Kodachrome.mp3
Broadcast - I Found The F.mp3

A couple of tracks for the lazy and too-humid afternoon. Paul Simon reveals a predeliction for product placement way before McDonalds was paying hip-hoppers to mention Big Macs, and the Broadcast song is the first cut from their forthcoming album, Tender Buttons.

I have this theory that the perfect daycare record is Paul Simon's Graceland. I'm sure there's a whole whack of issues surrounding cultural appropriation and exploitation, that maybe some Sowetto sopranos were paid peanuts and are now dying penniless in some shanties on that, the sketchier side of Johannesburg, and I can take or leave the title track, preferring the bombast of You Can Call Me Al and the accompanying video starring Chevy Chase, but that's all irrelevant to the main point - that children, good children who grew into responsible and sensible adults have been raised to this album, and many more should be.

Fire Fire Fire!

I was walking up Mont-Royal earlier this morning when a kooky looking fellow, similar in many ways to Christopher Lloyd, pointed towards Drolet and yelled in French. It turned out that the back of Cinquième Péché was on fire. I called 911, stuck around and watched the firefighters and TQS camera-man deal with the situation. I hope none of you had reservations!

The Impossible Shapes - Florida Silver Springs.mp3

A meandering and strutting sort of song, a decent enough morning tune with some guitar work that brings to mind that juggernaut of all 1970s rock groups, a Hells Angels' favourite, and Steely Dan side-project (?), The Doobie Brothers. The Impossible Shapes are from Bloomington, Indiana.

It's Hot In The Gasolina, The Dogs Are Crazy In Love.

There are certain things that pass me by completely - I consider myself pop-culture savvy - I read the Globe and Mail at least two or three times a week, peruse the weekly newspapers here in Montreal, spend more than my fair share of time on the internet, but it's becoming more and more apparent to me that I'm missing some crucial bits of information. Like, for example, what is the 2005 summer song? In past year's we've been Crazy In Love, noticed that it was, indeed Hot In Herre, and asked Who Let The Dogs Out?. Is it Daddy Yankee's La Gasolina? And the yellow and white bracelets - as far as I can gather these little silicon strips have something to do with ending poverty or abstaining from pre-marital sex? WWJD?

Deja Voodoo - Bound For Glory.mp3
Deja Voodoo - Jungle Out There.mp3

I was never big on the Constellation Records scene - the melodramatic crescendos and dirges and drab colour schemes, the played-out politics and sensible shoewear, I mean, that Sofa record had some real promise, but they
followed another path altogether, so prior to my moving to Montreal, the most enjoyable band I could think of from la belle province was Deja Voodoo, the two piece comprised of drummer Tony Dewald (now living in Vancouver) and guitarist and vocalist Gerard Van Herck (now a linguistics prof in Ottawa). Bo Diddley + VU + Cramps + Bauhaus with nary a soothsaying First Persons voice-over in sight, thank God!

I'm having problems coming to terms with Danny Finkleman's departure from CBC Radio, especially after hearing that Randy Bachmann is slated to be (or already has been put in as) his replacement. This is about as crushing a blow to my faith in the CBC as Brent Bambury's departure from Brave New Waves was. The CBC is becoming a haven for the rejects of Moses Znaimer's crystal palace and the stale halls of Cancon, for Christ's sake, and even Ross Porter's gone! Anyone who has any copies of Finkleman's 45s on cassette please get in touch.

Elixirs of Life

Brenton Woods - Gimme Little Sign.mp3

I scammed my roommate's CD the other night. He's pre-maturely old, and proud of it, preferring the golden apples of yesteryear to the lead uhh crab apples of today, which almost goes without saying when you find out that he's a long-time Mojo Magazine subscriber. Anyway, In Honour of Danny Finkleman (and his 45s), who has departed the CBC, sadly, and my roommate, who exhibits some of the curmudgeonly aspects of Mr. Finkleman (though with a little less banter)... "#9 on the charts in 1967, here's a thick slice of soul."

Mr. Wood's homepage is one of the better designed ones I've seen in a while. There's an earnestness whose appeal is difficult to deny - "hey, I'm floating in a zoot suit amongst 3-D musical notes!"

Madeleine Chartrand - Ani Kuni.mp3

My friend JR sent me this mp3 a couple of days ago in hopes that I might be able to track down some of her records, it's from a compilation put out here in Montreal titled Freak Out Total Volume 3, and it's a thumping, marching rendition of a traditional Indian song, beloved by youthful campers, tastefully accentuated with sitars, guitars and maybe xylaphones. This one's for my people!

Silver Canines, Bronze Lupids.

The Golden Dogs - Bird Song.mp3

Just a quick post today, things are busy. This is a short, sweet and sugary blast of power-pop from Our Nation's Capital. The band's called The Golden Dogs, which makes me think of duck-hunting, but on the strength of this track I'll put my reservations aside. Birdsong is the first song from their most recent album, and though the album's focus is a bit murky (some strange genre-jumping), what with all these
iPod shuffles hanging around, that shouldn't irritate the modern music fan. Incidentally, the day after I got all excited about this band, I saw an acquaintance on the bus and she mentioned that she had seen them play with The Lovely Feathers at the Green Room here in Montreal, and that they were quite good. Maybe they'll play Pop Montreal? (YES! - ed.)

STRANGELY ENOUGH: I just found out that The Golden Dogs will be playing tonight in Montreal at... The Green Room, 5386 St. Laurent. Creepy!

Eno Re-Vue

Farflung - The True Wheel.mp3

Eno's being re-considered by the youngsters again (I'm sure this happens every two years or so) - James Murphy honours him in song, Exclaim! chronicles his career, his albums are re-mastered and re-issued, he's got a new (and sadly mediocre) album out, and my obsessive searching for the relics and off-cuts from his back catalogue have lead me down some stranger paths. At some point some years ago, space-rockers Farflung covered The True Wheel from his Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy album. The only band on Cleopatra Records that I've ever liked, fronted by Tommy Grenas, a gentleman who's worked with most of the leading luminaries of the rock kosmische scene, ya know...

Vue - Child For You.m4a

San Francisco's Vue, formed out of members of somewhat forgotten drop-tuning (C, dude, it naturally compliments E!) emoters Portraits of Past (check out that classic Scallen photo on the back of the Ebullition LP) and Bauhausian damaged art-rockers Das Audience made a lot of promises on their debut EP for GSL Records. The EP was initially supposed to be an Audience record, but the band faced a legal challenge from a German group. The first track, Child For You, an organ and tambourine with shaky and frantic guitar made such a strong statement coupled with the rest of the tracks that the subsequent albums seemed something of a disappointment (moving from GSL to Subpop to RCA), despite the presence of some strong material. I saw them two or three times in Victoria at Logan's, and their stage presence was beyond compare. Their manners as guests (ask host Adam Benzan) left a bit to be desired, but what more could you ask for out of a visiting rock band than a pepper spray attack and confusing towels for toilet paper? If you get a chance to pick this EP up, and I'm sure it's still in print, do so. The last track The Voyeurs is a natural compliment to the track above.

Tam & The Vampires

Not associated.

If Daniel Johnston was not an overweight and lonely man, but nay, instead a refugee from a Django Reinhardt jazz band, amateur cartoonist, he would be a she, and her name would be Tam, of Tam and the Vampires, who will soon be known to Byron Coley/Thurston Moore fans when some of her music is released by their Ecstatic Peace label. Below are a couple of tracks...

Tam & The Vampires - Incest At Best.mp3

Tam chooses to open the album with a cover of Daddy's Hands Incest At Best, heard on their last release Tutankhamun. Not the first Daddy's Hands cover to reach, that other Victorian Dave, David Barclay managed that feat on the Diskettes' split cassette with the Port City All-Stars. This actually isn't that terrible, even if the production and some of the vocal emoting owes a bit more to a portion of a decade everyone would rather not hear about right now (hey, early 90s!), Tam does have a strong voice, and it's a great song. Hopefully this will tide you over until the newest Daddy's Hands album comes out.

Tam & The Vampires - No Cars Go

There was the Vitaminsforyou remix, an mp3 blogger favourite, and now there's Tam's rendition of The Arcade Fire's No Cars Go... According to a story I heard, Tam presented a tape to Thurston Moore, who spoke enthusiastically of this song, unaware at the time that it was an Arcade Fire song.

---------------------------------------

I headed to the Dandi Wind / Gentleman Reg / Final Fantasy show at Sala Rosa a little late tonight, only managing to catch Final Fantasy's set, which was enjoyable enough, though truthfully I liked his stage banter more than the performance. Not feeling it, I suppose. Apparently Dandi Wind wasn't as eagerly received as they deserve to be. The place was, as Szam remarked "full of bearded bloggers." I don't have a beard.

I also missed Gentleman Reg's set, which somebody (no names) told me was music crafted specifically to appear on the soundtrack to teen-dramas. I don't know if that was a crib from Lorraine Carpenter's Mirror article on Owen from Final Fantasy, where a side-project he was involved was described as having similar intentions.

Speaking of which, upstarts S.L.U.M. have told me that the Dandi Wind record's gone out for print, and Duchess Says should be finished their recording for their SLUM debut by the end of next week. Given the amount of time they've been able to put into updating their website, they must be somewhat busy. There's a good chance that there will be a SLUM event later this fall with the aforementioned bands and Vancouver's own DJing dynamo MY!GAY!HUSBAND!