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!

Cass McCombs Hates Me.

Cass McCombs - Not the Way

Mellow, ya know. It's humid and hot here in Montreal, one of those days where pre-fixing "hot" with "oppressively" makes complete sense. I still want a coffee, though. Here are a couple of tracks to tide you over. If you live near a lake, use it!

Dead Meadow - Stacy's Song

Aaron Maté, my running drunken debating partner on the Israel-Palestine issue, has his hands in another political battle right now... He's organized a Bring Back Dylan petition and is looking for your support to pressure the higher-ups at one of Montreal's two English-language alternative weeklies, The Hour, to allow Dylan to return to writing about music. Considering the current state of their music coverage, (that is, dismal) they might as well give him a shot. Maté knows more about the twisted inner-workings of the cabalistic group that is currently mismanaging and running that publication into the ground, so I don't feel qualified to do more than maintain the same standards of objectivity that have won this blog world-wide recognition and call for the immediate re-instatement of Mr. Dylan Young. With benefits, too! How can you raise kids on that pittance, O'Meara? SIGN HERE

Chrome - TV As Eyes.mp3

Chrome's great.

The unashamed enthusiasm that T.dotters show for music that comes about kinda close to getting it right and then squandering it all in a fit of redundant revivalism n' , that is, the lack of bad conscience they seem to exhibit has always been a bit of a bone of contention between me and the Torontonians. Not that they're aware of it, of course, but nonetheless, I wage the battle in my own mind, paranoid and frantic and concerned. I mean, hey, what will I be like at 32?

Anyway, a little taste of that (not a lot, mind you) can be found here - maybe it's good, maybe it's terrible, I'm not judging, just sayin'.

Are You Familiar Blog

Jetfighter!

There's a rather brief piece on Vancouver's The Book of Lists (real website here) available on the Terminal City magazine website. The EP on Global Symphonic has just been released, I may post a song in the next little while if I can find the damn copy of it I lost a couple of months back. The Montreal Mirror's resident Anglophile, Lauren Carpenter gave it a positive nod in their most recent issue.

And to people who've been searching for Daddy's Hands info to no avail, I've heard a rumour to the effect that Global Symphobic is planning on releasing something by the now Vancouver-based group, and another label might be dropping a 7" at some point. I'll try to confirm that as soon as possible... (Anybody compiling a Dave Wanger box-set? I've got that Moral Decay tape!)

UPDATEAccording to Sean from Global, they aren't putting out anything by Daddy's Hands. Alas!

Warrior Magazine Launch Party

The loveable psychonauts at Warrior Magazine have another issue out, their fourth, and they're launching it tonight with a party in Montreal at the SKOL Gallery (located at #314 - 372 Ste. Catherine Ouest)... Christopher Taylor, who apparently busted his arm up last night on the Victoria ex-pats annual Tour De Beer (bikes and binge drinking, lovely combination) and spends some time plucking strings in AIDS Wolf has a piece in it, and I've even got a terrible interview with the tempermental, but immensely talented Cass McCombs and a brief paragraph about Oneida. It's free! For BC dwellers, the mag's only available at Zulu in Vancouver, though. That needs to be rectified, given the amount of ethneogenic explorer beardos that live in Strathcona, though.

Attendees are encouraged to bring 3 records which will be filed for later playing by resident DJ Mark Slutsky (who helped fill the dancefloor at last night's St. Jean Baptiste night shindig at the Mile End Cultural centre, along with Ghislain Poirer (sp?) and that Sixtoo character).

John Lennon - Remember.mp3 from Plastic Ono Band
The New Pornographers - Jackie, Dressed in Cobras
Here's a track for the Bejarians amongst the Goldkixx readers - from the just released New Pornographers album Twin Cinema, the Destroyer original Jackie, Dressed in Cobras primed up. Listening to this is the aural equivalent of watching an ex-girlfriend work the pole in a strip-club - you recognize that body, but geez, she looks gross and tarty. Get off the stage, Jackie!

Glass Candy: Life After Sundown

Glass Candy: Life After Sundown

This sort of thing has been to death, right? Chic-esque basslines with disco beats and what not, post-punk approach wed to dancefloor shuffles and all that. But being Glass Candy means doing it before a lot of people did it, continuing to do it, and doing it a hell of a lot better. There's something slightly late-70s Yoko Ono about Ida's vocals on this track, and the echo-boxed saxophone and synthesizer bits (fuck ethereal swoop, noodly leads!)... Anyways, I just got this track, and I'm deeply, deeply impressed with it...

I don't know much about the status of Glass Candy right now - a couple of years ago in Victoria I did a show for them and a couple of friends and I formed a band for the occasion, and I missed them the last time they made it to Montreal (their drum machine apparently broke halfway through that tour, putting them in a pretty perilous situation), but hopefully they'll be out this way again sometime soon.

Glass Candy and the Shattered Theatre - Life After Sundown.mp3

Traces. Tracks.

Satisfact Demonstration

from their self-titled album.



Satisfact - Demonstration.mp3

Satisfact was a pre-Mocket band fronted by cherub-cheeked Matt Steinke, who went on to self-made robot-programming with Tassy Zimmerman in Octant. Modest Mouse-r Jeremiah Green handled the drums on this, their debut album, and Dave Schneider of Love As Laughter joined for following albums, The Third Meeting At The Third Counter and The Unwanted Sounds of Satisfact. This is the second track on the album, an upbeat track with those heavily affected vocals, familiar Juno-synth stabs, and great bass work.

Now this stuff seems a bit old-hat - new-wave revival stuff, but when Satisfact and Radio Berlin started, people weren't as keen on Gang of 4 re-issues as they would be a couple years later, and certainly not very much in the Pacific Northwest.

Radio Berlin Aftermath from Glass

Radio Berlin - Aftermath.mp3

I'm sure I've written about Radio Berlin before, Vancouver's oft-o'erlooked new-wave band. They're still around, though members are involved in a
variety of other projects - Jack plays with Primes, Chris is in dream-poppers Book of Lists, Lindsay's a busy, busy filmmaker, and ex-FuckMeUSAer Brad's in Bakelite. Previous members of the group have included Joshua Wells, who's now in Black Mountain, and Warren Hill, who's living in Montreal, DJs old soul and R&b and found a little acetate record that's piqued a bit of interest. The old Black Halos drummer had a brief stint with the group as well.

This is the sixth track from the album, and one of the strongest, starting out strong with Frey's recognizable bass-playing, a memorable synth-lead, and Frey's lyrics all melancholic and regret-filled - far more humanity and less posturing than most of the bands who crowd the genre. And damn, listen to Wells' drumming!

Radio Berlin deserves a lot more substantial of a summary than I'm up to delivering right now, but as they're on hiatus (re-tooling the band, this has happened to great effect before - usually prior to each album's release), I'll put it on hold and come back to assess what their previous releases in light of what they've come up with now. Maybe some of those early demo tape tracks? (Keeners might note that frequent Goldkixx comment-leaver Steven Balogh's mug can be spotted on the back of the Glass album booklet...)


Some gossip: Flaxxen-haired Norwegian sugah-pop sensation Annie will be doing a couple of select DJ gigs in the States (Chicago, Boston, LA, and 2 in New York) to promote her new record Anniemal, which just dropped today. Rumours abound that she might show up in Montreal later this summer, performing, with a backing band...

Weekend Mixed Bag

It's finally enjoyable to be outside in this god-damned city, so I don't have the patience necessary to sit around in front of a computer and type out a proper blog (next week, though), so here's a mixed-bag of mp3s for your weekend listening pleasure. BBQ something, designin' man Jay Delmarr is pushing the backalley BBQ as the hottest summer BBQ trend, hot on the heels of Orchid burgers.

House of Love - Salome.mp3

My girlfriend and I hit up a vernissage at the Skol Gallery earlier this week, and while waiting around for the French theorist to finish delivering his paper, we popped into Mars... I picked up a copy of the self-titled House of Love album for a decent price. I'd listened to the album over and over in Vancouver, but it was Duckworth's copy, so it was great to find a copy of it. This songs a particular favourite.

Sarah Vaughn - The Smiling Hour (Abre Alas).mp3

Last night I came upon some people preparing for a garage sale and managed to snag 15 or so great albums (including Dylan, CSNY, bizarrely a Mike Oldfield album, a tonne of Nina Simone, the Big Top Pee Wee soundtrack, etc.), and one of them was a 1979 Sarah Vaughn recorded called Copacabana that she had recorded in Brazil. The chorus is great! (Factory Records' Kalima did a cover of this that I'm trying to track down, too.)

Nina Simone - In The Morning.mp3

Nina Simone had a magnificent relationship to headwear (particulary wraps and turbans) that must be revived by young women today, and rescued from the gritty and grubby hippies. I found this LP last night, too. The song reminds me of Donovan's Colours. "That's the time, that's the time, I love the best!" wailed the dimunitive little Scot, and that's all good, but Christ, Nina Simone!


NEXT UP: Soft Machine, Etta James, maybe a return to the current decade?

I Have Been... And Returned!

Silver Apples I Have Known Love (1998) & Spectrum/Silver Apples Whirlwind (1998)

New York's Silver Apples duo (made up of drummer Danny Taylor and synth manipulator Simeon Coxe), composers of space-travel soundtracks and unapologetic champions of the banjo. Named after a line in Yeats' Song of the Wandering Angus, the group changed and set the standard by which. There would be no Suicide without The Silver Apples, and without Suicide, there would be no, well, you get the idea... (Seattle's Chromatics covered Program on their Plaster Hounds record (Windy & Carl covered it, too), and numerous groups have done the same, such as Meat Beat Manifesto, John Sims, Jessamine and Spectrum (a collaboration), but not as many as those who've pilfered from them.

Their first album, recorded in a cramped studio for Kapp Records by themselves, with no knowledge of recording technologies, and a producer who bowed out, citing possible mono as a reason for abstaining from the process, they recorded Oscillations, which led to: adding member Eileen Lewellen, an aborted in-store jam session with Steve Winwood (a frightened Simeon, not much of a virtuoso, ran out of the store claiming he was hung-over and going to throw up), sharing bills with The 1910 Fruitgum Company, Blue Cheer, Norman Mailer, Allan Ginsberg, The Fugs, and Tiny Tim, staying with The Dead at their San Fransiscan house (according to Simeon, the Dead didn't do much but smoke dope and noodle on their guitars), the airline Pan-Am suing them for $100,000 for the cover images on their second album, Contact, and having NY mayor Lindsay commissioning them to play and perform a song for the 1969 lunar landing viewing in Central Park. After Kapp Records went belly-up, Simeon returned to Alabama in a sailboat, sold some ice-cream, worked in television and advertising and returned to poetry and painting.

After a couple of one-off gigs throughout the 90s, a transformed and revitalized line-up reprised the whirring and looping oscillations that befuddled as many listeners then as it surprised and enchanted now, with Xian Hawkins (he now records as Sybarite, and has released an album with 4ad) and Michael Lerner flushing out Simeon's unique vision. Simeon dueted with Sonic Boom's (Spacemen 3) Spectrum in Boston and New York, performing the Apple's A Pox On You, which led to a later collaboration with S. Boom, the Apples/Spectrum split A Lake of Teardrops album, released on Space Age Recordings.

Spectrum/Silver
Apples - Whirlwind(1998).mp3

A third album, recorded at the Record Plant while the Jimi Hendrix Experience was recording was lost and disposed of, (probably sitting in someone's garage, waiting for Warren Hill to ferret it out), but a chance encounter with Danny Taylor revealed that he had a copy of those last recording sessions, and it was released in 1998 as Garden. Taylor rejoined the group, but touring was cut short in 1999 after a messy hit-and-run accident in 1999 that left Simeon with a broken neck, ending the Apples' return prematurely. To compound this, sadly, Danny Taylor died in New York on March 10th of this year.

The below track is from their 1998 return Beacon, a re-working of I Have Known Love, written by Eileen Lewellen.

Silver Apples - I Have Known Love (1998).mp3

Unique Cosmos of Sound

Can, Unknown Studio Fragment, 1973

My friend Victoria slags Can off as the quintessential boy band - the appeal of the group being mostly to males, like most other obscure German bands of a certain period of time, or (realistically), any period of time. I can see the argument, it's essentially true, but that's a terrible, terrible reason to dismiss what has to be the best German-Japanese collaboration since World War II!

The date on this song indicates that it probably would have been recorded during the sessions for Future Days, the final Can album to feature Damo Suzuki's vocals, at their own Inner Space studios. The great thing about a Can track like this - jamming, lengthy, is that essentially, one would simply clean up the production, and it could easily appear on a majority of the group's albums. This is what I imagined, before I was introduced to the grim reality of the situation, the Grateful Dead would sound like - 10 minute long songs with psyched-and-fuzzed out guitars, reverbed vocals, LSD freak-out, right? Unfortunately, the Grateful Dead played limp, hayseed boogie rock that only very confused American teenagers (and very stoned) born many years past the eclipse of a youth culture they idolize and pine for could love, and their best song was their only chart-topper, and embarassment to all true deadheads, Touch of Grey. Thurston Moore speaks their praises, though. I have a theory that, given all that time spent in New York at Marc Jacobs' shows and gallery openings, he needed a fairly large stick to weild against the preening and affected elite, and what better than an indigenous boogie-blues ensemble, terrible enough to withstand ironic detournement?

Can - Unknown Studio Fragment 1973.mp3

UP NEXT That new Eno album Another Day On Earth has leaked, we'll take a look!