Le Bon Weekend

New Order Procession
Belle & Sebastian Electronic Renaissance

Don't Fear The Reaper

photo by Madrid-based photog, more info ici...

Blue Oyster Cult (Don't Fear) The Reaper
Belle & Sebastian (Don't Fear) The Reaper (Live)
Van She (Don't Fear) The Reaper

At the beginning of this decade, I was living in Victoria, BC and playing in a band called Ghosts that (at times) picked handily from various sources, mostly if my hand was involved. Things That Will Never Be, one song that popped into my head shortly after waking up, I initially attributed to a dream, but looking back, was more than likely the result of falling asleep with Hot Snakes' Automatic Midnight in my Discman...

During a semi-disastrous tour of Canada, we stopped at one of the numerous truck-stop gas-stations that, along with grain silos, amount to the Prairie's only contribution to Canadian architecture. Whereas in Ontario, the truck-stops mimic the stately pleasure domes of their southern counterparts in the United States, with showers, full-service diners & entertainment lounges, their Prairie counterparts prefer a shabby, one-level take on the rancher-style house. Such was the case with one in Saskatchewan where I, plopping down $10, bought Blue Oyster Cult's Greatest Hits. The long drive in the moonlight from then until Wawa was made all the better thanks to that, I think. And the hood-rat skate kids hanging out in Wawa's donut store parking lot who told us how rad the Warped Tour was gonna be.

It should be noted that Wawa is one of those very Canadian places - it's frustrating (the gas station closes at 11pm, so you have to stay at one of the over-priced motels), it's boring, and there's some sort of absurd giant thing, in this case a 28-foot statue of a Canadian Goose, that constitutes its only claim to distinction.

Okay, so I'm obviously bitter about Canada as a nation to drive across. I'd never make it as the Governor-General: I'd make sure that every official visit to some crappy rural town to dub their their cultural privation 'quintessentially Canadian' was thwarted. Young Canadians, if any of you are reading this, heed my warning: when some chipper young kid you went to school with, with more enthusiasm than wit, more studiousness than sarcasm, encourages you to drive across Canada before you hit up your first year of university, tell him to get lost. If you want adventure and excitement, the vast spaces and wasteland of Canada are not the place to find it. If, on the other hand, you are inspired by the Group of Seven painters: go with God.

Ghosts finally broke up this year, after an 8 year run, and, uh, one Canadian tour. It's a stupid, stupid country, my friends.

Festival du Nouveau Cinema: All Tomorrow's Parties

In The Nursery Iskra

Colin Newman Alone

I stopped by the FNC last night, and nothing against the festival itself (at all!), but The All Tomorrow's Parties' movie, (contributions by Jonathan Caouette and Vincent Moon (of Blogotheque and the wildly popular Takeaway Shows)) was an abysmal train wreck. It started promising enough - the title sequence juxtaposing the dancing marionettes and the Battles performance, and the archival footage had some quick and interesting editing, with at least a tentative attempt to contextualize the festival and the movie (started as a Belle and Sebastian gathering, okay, cool). But whatever the high-points, they were frustratingly brief against a back-drop of the erratic filming of stoned idiots, contrived taking-it-to-the-streets walking parades (yeah, yeah, joie de vivre, we get it), that, rather than capturing the manic excitement and exuberance of a festival (I assume this was the intent), had me looking at my watch about twenty-five minutes in.

The majority of the film was a patchwork of minimally-filmed performances combined with behaviour that was predictable and boring when it came from the usual quarters (loutish music fest attendees) and just plain annoying from 55 year olds in Marc Jacobs trapped in their bizarre posturing personae* (Thurston Moore & Kim Gordon, ahem). I'm sure the film-makers intended it to be both a document of the energy of this precious festival, and a musing on the leisure past-times of the self-marginalized underclass of white people (hence that archival footage - pensioners on summer holiday by the sea, northern soul dancers in those over-sized pants), but it could have been called White People Acting Like Idiots and made more thematic sense.

Michael Haneke's most recent film, The White Ribbon, will be playing on Sunday, October 18th at eXcentris as part of the FNC. Good to know that there are more horror of personality films that portray Europe as a festooning mess of hypocritical people who hate each other, are eager to inflict misery upon each other even though they know it to be meaningless, and are vastly ignorant of wave after wave of immigrants hitting their shores. Is all of modern European cinema beholden to Fassbinder and Pasolini's Salo? Find out for yourself, or just skip the whole nihilistic affair and settle in for some at-home misanthropy and self-loathing, from both sides of the ideological spectrum, courtesy of Colin Newman of Wire and crypto-fascist Euro-alienation wavers In The Nursery. (I first came across this song on the From Torture to Conscience compilation LP, which I picked up many years ago while on tour in Ottawa, and also features Current 93 and Death In June).

Lea Rinaldi, when you come across this while self-Googling, please accept this as an apology for erroneously thinking that your film Behind Jim Jarmusch was a by-the-book behind the scenes look at the director. It wasn't!

*I have nothing against 55 years old wearing Marc Jacobs.

Soundalikes

Jens LekmanThe Opposite of Hallelujah (MP3)
The Chairmen of the Board Give Me Just a Little More Time (MP3)

Jens, meet The Chairmen of the Board. Gentlemen, meet Jens. Oh, wait, it appears you've already met. Our Swedish friend Jens is, of course, no stranger to the curious desire and pull that influences, conscious or not, can exert on one's work. In previous songs, he's graciously lifted from The Left Banke, Belle and Sebastian, and The Mamas & The Papas, and in deference to our esteemed corporate friends above, Mr. Lekman has often launched into a cover of Give Me Just A Little More Time during his performances. Pop!




Sinbad Richardson directs a new video for Think About Life's Sweet Sixteen.

The Friends & Fellow Travelers at Pop Montreal are putting on the Passion Pit show this Thursday at Sala Rosa. It's all sold out online, and I imagine the last 10 tickets available at Casa del Popolo will be gone by the time it opens its doors in 45 minutes.