Maybe Get Out To The Starting Line

Just the two on the right, thanks.

Given that Eno's newest album is to be his first stab at lyric-based pop music in 25 years or so (according to him), it's an appropriate time to resurrect what might have been if not another stab, at least a slash!

In 1990, Brian Eno and John Cale collaborated on the Wrong Way Up album, ostensibly a Cale solo album that led to a co-credit because of Eno's hijacking, or so some people might have you believe. (I'm suspicious, it wasn't James & Eno Laid, ya know). The album's 10 tracks of varied pastiche-work - music-box melody here, Hawaiian rhythm there, gospel harmonies punching in and out - tends to muddy the waters, but that's both strength and weakness.

The midi-rock vibe hard was to ignore on a couple of the tracks - they'd be better served as bumper music for a campy sit-com, or the more flaccid elements of the Talking Heads (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! chose to appropriate their feyness), but I got past that, justifying it as Eno Experimentalisationalism, and discovered a surprising album that I'd previously passed over. I'm chosen Spinning Away here, but Lay My Love and One Word are standouts, too. (Check out Eno's MS Paint-style album artwork for an extra treat)

The song is a little overwrought: the presence of aching strings and doubled-up vocals on the chorus atune the listener to the deep pathos and longing of these balding geniuses, and the repetition of the phrase "Pale Moonlight" fulfills some hidden 90s schmaltz quota. The rhythm of this song is calling out for an interpretative reggae version. (Oh Christ, I've just found out that Sugar Ray did a calypso version on The Beach soundtrack!) Anyways, mp3 below!

Brian Eno & John Cale - Spinning Away.mp3

Tomorrow night in Montreal (that's Tuesday), myself and Michelle Adelman will be DJing at The Green Room (5386 St. Laurent). Another fairly incoherent smattering of whatever you might download from this blog, plenty of surprises, drink specials, Yoko Ono, Can, and Michelle's extensive record collection are all on the plate. No cover, 'f course... 11pm-3am!

A bit of gossip: I've heard through the grapevine that Shepard Fairey, he of Andre The Giant Has A Posse, is now living Montreal.

NEXT UP

FINALLY, that CAN I've been promising!

Up on a hill, as the day dissolves!

My girlfriend and I went and saw Woody Allen's Melinda & Melinda last night, which wasn't the film that the critics in Cannes were surprised by, some of them actually enjoying it. I enjoyed it, but truthfully, I have enjoyed every single Woody Allen film on some level, and I find it very difficult to seperate the immersive experience of seeing a film at a theatre from the merits of the film. It's big! It's loud! It's dark! It usually takes a couple of days before I realize whether the film was actually bad or not. Sure, I'm some sort of noble savage - raised without television or movies until I reached the double digits, I'm still expecting the train to come out of the screen and run me over.

If it seems like I've turned into a fourty-five year old British punter in my absence (Keith West, Faust and what not), the blame is to be placed at the foot of my new roommate. He's got an extensive collection of old Mojo magazines that I've been thumbing through in my spare time. Thankfully that hasn't led to any unreasonable lusting after books chronicling the very minute details of The Beatles early days in Hamburg, or Lennon's holiday in Spain with his rumoured homosexual lover.

Sandie Shaw - the British square-jawed pop chanteuse, rose to prominence with 1964's There's Always Something There To Remind Me, won Eurovision in 1967 with Puppet On A String, and was an unqualified success in the rather tame world of bubblegum pop.

In 1969, EMI released Shaw's Reviewing The Situation album, comprised of remarkably prescient material for a pop singer at the time - it's hip, in other words. Nary a jazz crooner's ill-advised rendition of Eleanor Rigby to be found (Love Me Do stands in for that), and the ultimate cut-bin find. Dylan, The Lovin' Spoonful, The Beatles, and, as wel'll see below, a song from Oliver! and Led Zeppelin!

REVIEWING THE SITUATION

That's one Tull-like introduction, for Christ's sake! The title-track of the album - shimmies and shakes, staggering attitude, easily the best. Composed by Lionel Bart for the musical Oliver!, which my grandmother made me watch as a child, this is a swinging and rocking rendition, and her voice betrays none of the "slightness" and "wispyness" attributed to her by that intolerable arbitrator of music history's crimes and successes, The All Music Guide.

Sandie Shaw - Reviewing The Situation.mp3

YOUR TIME IS GONNA COME

The very first Led Zeppelin cover to appear on an album! A straight-ahead arrangement of the original, another dimension added by the song being done with a female voice. The production is remarkably tasteful, too. A true story: A couple of weeks ago, preparing to DJ at a local bar called the Green Room, I started cueing this song up, but couldn't get to it in time. The next song on the CD that was left in the other tray began, and it was the original Led Zeppelin version. Woah.

Sandie Shaw - Your Time Is Gonna Come.mp3

Smiths fans will probably be aware of her owing to Morrissey's championing of her and appearance on the second version of Hand In Glove, after which she returned to recording, graduated as a therapist from Oxford (!), works in television production, amongst many, many other accomplishments. (A regular Louise Brooks!) She recorded a song penned by Morrissey, too: Please Help The Cause Against Loneliness, and in 1986, released a song for the pompadoured Mancunian, Steven (You Don't Eat Meat), in which her voice adopts more of a Debbie Harry meets Siouxsie tone with some interesting
octave jumps. The chorus is, as one would expect, somewhat embarassing. You Don't Eat Meat, But You Eat Your Heart Out, Steven.

NEXT UP

Rare CAN, and Eno rediscovers Pop with a friend's help!

Lying On Your Back!

"Count the days into years
His eighty two brings many fears"

This particular excerpt being Grocer Jack (what's with British groups and songs about men named Jack?), sung by Tomorrow's vocalist Keith West and a precocious child chorus, and penned and produced by Mark Wirtz, who also produced Tomorrow's ode to the free ride, My White Bicycle. Named in homage to a habit of uber-creepy Kim Fowley, it's one of those lost psych-pop classic, and despite rocketing to the top of the charts, the recording session was so extraordinarily expensive, even in the context of Swingin' Sixties Spector-like vanity projects, that the label's enthusiasm quickly fizzled out (never there to begin with, a certain amount of hoodwinking was necessary to get the start-up money anyway) and decided not to fund the completion of the album. (Cherry Red issued an somewhat ramshackle compilation of related material from the Teenage Opera a couple of years back.) Those "lush" strings, choir, timpany, brass cost more money than EMI was willing to shell out. The introduction , the more sophisticated arrangements and changes, the tale of an unappreciated grocer stumbling and dying, a town only appreciating him in his passing, all of this places Excerpt in the same league as The Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow album (clandestinely recorded at Abbey Road Studios during the night, after The Beatles were done their White Album sessions for the day, pinching George Harrison's sitar, or so the legend goes). Like its title character, Grocer Jack, Excerpt From A Teenage Opera is honoured and beloved post-humously, and it's a shame that Wirtz was never even given a fair chance to at least fail.

Keith West - Excerpt From A Teenage Opera.mp3

"It's a rainy Day, Sunshine Baby
It's a rainy day, Sunshine Girl!"

Beloved by Julian Cope, collaborators with Tony Conrad, and German. A great song despite feeling too topical (Montreal's sadly not rushing into summer), this song is from Faust's second album Faust So Far. It builds with a great guitar bit (the tone sounds similar to the guitar used in OMD's The New Stone Age), 4/4 tom beat and piano repetition, adds Schulz-ian synths and a harmonica, before a superb saxophone bit carries us into the fade-out. Someone was taking note, perhaps? Faust also did a number of seperate versions of this song, some titled Stretch Over All Times and Ice Rain.

Faust - It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl.mp3

NEXT UP

: Sandie Shaw, rare Can!

Like an English Summer...

COLDPLAY + BLACK MOUNTAIN UPDATE The Black Mountain / Coldplay tour is for 17 dates including the show at the White River Amphitheatre near Seattle, no Vancouver show.

Mary-Catharine introduced me to the French group, Konki Duet, after a copy of the album came into the office a couple of weeks ago. The tricky bit about writing about Konki Duet is avoiding mention of The Lapse and Blonde Redhead, given the shaded vocals of Japanese ex-pat Kumi (formerly of Crazy Curl), but that's a bit of laziness on my part: the group is as capable of speaking about the influence of Robert Wyatt as converging disparate aesthetic threads of aging Europe and the perceived dilettantism of Japanese sensibilities.

The album strikes deeper than the cabaret-pop revisionism or space-lounge of the previous Franco-Japanese collaborations that we've had a glimpse of in North America. It's as whimsical as anything by 60's baroque-poppers Left Banke or American duo Puerto Muerto, delicately constructed and playful without the silliness or affected daintiness of any myriad of artists who might meet the previous description. (More Vashti Bunyan than Joanna Newsom, say...)

Truthfully, there are some moments that fall flat or drag: the instrumentation is poorly served by the inclusion of a drum machine on a few tracks and those low moments could be resolved with a different production approach, but the songwriting is unimpeachable and thestand-out tracks resonate strongly. Album-closer Do! Family, for instance, begins as an organ and guitar lead surrounded by a trio of airy harmonized voices before a lifted arpeggiated motif (courtesy Philip Glass?) arrives and paints the song a sinister shade. The title track Il Fait Tout Gris, available below, is a cover of Visage's euro-synth hit Fade To Grey. (Listening to it, keener folks will probably notice that Visage is owed some unpaid royalties from Ladytron) Extracting a morose subtext from the original, Konki Duet amplifies the humanity of the song by replacing Visage's icy synth and programmed drums with violin and acoustic percussion. Their version is also mostly in French, and therefore, far more humanistic!

Additionally, Konki Duet are members of the Toxic Girls All Stars ensemble, along with members of The Very Ape, Noak Katoi, and Tam. More info on their various projects at wwww.thekonkiduet.com!

Konki Duet - Il Fait Tout Gris.mp3

Visage - Fade To Grey.mp3 Original Version



Tomorrow Faust vs. Keith West!

Mile Envy in Montreal

TUESDAY, MAY 24th

Tonight, DJ Prions en église guests at Mile Envy, with your hosts Luke Bradley and me, now known by my summer DJ name The Jah Watts Soundsystem. It's at The Green Room (5386 St. Laurent). 10pm, no cover, drink specials...

neu-wave / post-punk / manchester bullshit / hip hop summer jams / kosmische rock / etc.

Yellow Mountain?

I'm coming out of retirement to announce that, according to hearsay, grumbling and rumour, Coldplay have asked Vancouver's psych-kosmische kollectif Black Mountain to tour with them. You heard it here first!

Also, Victoria's Chet, who I wrote about a couple of months back, are halfway through their Canadian tour. If you're around when they're around, I not only highly recommend, but implore, that you go out and see them for yourself. The album's going to be released to stores (through Scratch Distribution) at the beginning of June, but they have copies of it available right now. It just came in at #39 on the Canadian campus charts!

Sunday, May 22
Montreal, QC @ Casa Del Popolo (w/ Courtney Wing)

Monday, May 23
Ottawa, ON @ The Manx (w/ The Flaps)

Wednesday, May 25
Peterborough, ON @ Grassroots Café (w/ Jay Spectre)

Thursday, May 26th
Guelph, ON @ The E-Bar – (w/ Selena Martin, Wayne Omaha)

Friday, May 27th
Toronto, ON @ Rancho Relaxo – (w/ The Great Lake Swimmers and Wayne of Cuff the Duke)

Sunday, May 29th
Thunder Bay, ON @ The Apollo

Monday, May 30th
Winnipeg, MB @ Music Trader – In store performance

Tuesday, May 31st
Saskatoon, SK @ The Basement

Wednesday, June 1st
Edmonton, AB @ Sidetrack Café – (w/ Fractal Pattern)

Thursday, June 2nd
Calgary, AB @ TBA

Friday, June 3rd
Nelson, BC @ The Royal

Saturday, June 4th
Vancouver, BC
9:00 pm at the Tahitian Twilight Lounge in the fabulous Waldorf Hotel with The London Apartments and Blackout Beach (Carey Mercer from Frog Eyes)

Saturday, June 11
Victoria, BC @ Hermann's with Great Aunt Ida



P.S. Deja Voodo.

Pre-Purim

Tonight at KOROVA (3908 St. Laurent), DJs Dan "Manachem" Seligman and Jew Watts III (that's me) celebrate the third day before Purim starts with a Pre-Purim Party... Gobble some hamantashens... Doors @ 10:30pm, no cover.

As well, it'll be a going-away party for Guillaume Decouflet, as he returns to Paris...

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As well, the POPMontreal website is up, with some minor scabs and scrapes... I've been busy on that, hence the lack of posts 'round these parts, but as Dylan "The Gambla from Nambla" Young reported in his last column in The Hour, the blog component there is ready to go, with contributions coming up from the finest French and English blowhards in the Montreal music scene...

DUCK YOU SUCKER!

I wrote about the Warrior Magazine launch last week, so I'm just giving everyone in Montreal a heads up about the event... It's tonight and Jean-Richard, described by R. Simpson as "man of 6000 songs" will be performing along with Raf Katigbak's Bold Saber duo... DJing by Polish non-homosexual duo Sons of Warsaw and the pride of Concordia University, Prions en Eglise.

1845 Ontario E. Which is not sadly, Pub Jacques Cartier...
9pm-3am, $4

Into The Impossible!

We Are Wolves are launching their debut album tomorrow night, at the split-level basement hell known as Le Local Musical guests include The Demon's Claw, franco troubadour Call Me Poupée, with DJing by KinKajou, Why? Alex Why?, 1 Speed Bike, and Cherry Cola. Ladies, fret not, bathroom lineups will be cut in half, as they've rented a porta-potty for the event!
Doors @ 8:30, 7154, St-Urbain, $8...

Warrior's Newest Issue

The erudite, handsomely-designed and journal of transcendent alternative music and arts culture, Warrior Magazine, which is more developed and impressive than its youth should allow, has just received it's third issue painter Pablo Amaringo, artwork by Michael Doerksen, Matt Moroz, Andrew Taggart, Aaron Maté's article on Haiti, more missives from the San Fran Psych Underground, a morning album list from Black Mountain's Matt Camarind*, and plenty more text and uneasy pop-cultural surveillance for the slacker grad student in us all...

This Saturday, while Montrealers are busy taxi-ing and metro-ing out to Le Locale to catch the We Are Wolves CD release show, Vancouverites will be formally introduced to Warrior Magazine with a launch party at the Butchershop. Montreal residents, being a couple of time zones to the right, will celebrate along with Warrior the following Saturday, 9pm at 1845 Ontario E, with performances by Bold Saber and DJing by Sons of Warsaw & Prions en Église.

*In the interests of full disclosure, I wrote the rather convoluted introduction...

"I'm sure the new unit is going to make great items for traditional CBC audiences, but they're not going to be attracting a new audience. And now you have this whole community of freelancers [at Radio Three] who were making really interesting art and stories and editorial positions on everything from Kyoto to new music and they will be gone. They'll be picked up by new-media companies and ad agencies and the whole vision will be lost. ... The private sector is totally into this stuff now and it makes me sad that the CBC doesn't realize the gem they developed. They could carry it so much further, but that would require a vision outside of their traditional fence."
-Outgoing CBC Radio 3 head, Robert Ouimet

Carl Wilson comments today on the CBC Radio 3 re-organization, and two paragraphs in and I'm already laughing out loud over his mentions of Mitsou and Nardwuar. The loss of Brave New Waves will hit hard not only because a valuable outlet for culture will have been lost (etc. etc.), but also for those who have Patti Schmidt as a landlady, who may face both rent increases and her, boozier and grumpier than before.

NONEWNEXTNOWWAVE

Robin Simpson, Pavilion Projects guru and a hotelier's "favourite dandy", resisted the siren's call of the lucrative life of blogging for some time, until recently. Nonewnextnowwave tackles the tough as nails, back-alley milieu of contemporary art and culture, pulling no punches and slogging his way through all of the smoke n' mirrors and esoteric vocab, a tarnished sash draped about his frame... There are mp3s, too.

Jordan Robson-Cramer

Jordan Robson-Cramer, left

Jordan Robson-Cramer's had his hand in a number of honey-jars (both musical and otherwise) over the last couple years, despite being only 20. My earliest recollection of him is a 2001 performance as a precocious 15 year old, fronting a group vaguely reminescient of Sonic Youth at an outdoor summer concert in Centennial Square in Victoria. From there he improvised the music for Dilemma Dilemma's first and only release, a 3" CD proclaimed to be "better than Black Dice" by Jesse F. Keeler, now of DFA1979 fame. He also recorded Fuck Me USA's first songs in his mother's basement, played in Victoria's Short Pants Romance, and stayed with them through their transition into the watershed psychic group Lakeboat. 21st Century Fox was another solo project of his, and he's been tinkering around non-stop in basements and apartments from Victoria to Montreal (where he now resides), without any of Daniel Johnston's nasty body-odour problems or messianic complex... Despite him telling me that he was somewhat unhappy with it, and that it doesn't represent what he's interested in doing right now, I'm posting an mp3 I got from him a while back...

XY Lover - In The Skull.mp3

Witness The Return.

To start off, I'll do some catching up. Below are links to mp3s that have been missing from this sight for the past two weeks or so, indexed with links to the posts that they originally appeared in...

Black Mountain - Tyrant.mp3 Unreleased!
Pink Mountaintops - Erected.mp3
ORIGINAL POST

Chet - Track 1.mp3
Chet - Pillow Talk In The Flames.mp3
ORIGINAL POST

Sunset Rubdown - I'll Believe In Anything, You'll Believe In Anything.mp3

ORIGINAL POST ...Some supplementary information, the Sunset Rubdown album, Snakes Got A Leg, will be released by Global Symphonic on June 21st.

Goldkicked

Hey all, first off, I'm looking into the server issues that I've been having right now, so it will be a little while before I return to posting mp3s, which is unfortunate, because I've got quite a few I'm really excited about coming up. However, when the space issue is fixed, all of the past mp3s I've posted (including the unreleased Black Mountain, Daddy's Hands, Sunset Rubdown mp3s and Wolf Parade, Atlas Strategic and Chet will be back up... At that point, I'll make one post referring to all the mp3s and previous posts, so you can sweep in and grab what you've been waiting for (and I know a bunch of you have) without having to endure jerk-off critiques by me, that is, unless you want to. So, once again, you will be able to come and download all of that stuff you've been pestering me for! Okay, hope you're all well...

goldkicks@gmail.com

YeShakingKing.

Yikes, it's been quite a while since I updated this... Unfortunately something happened with the server space that I had been storing mp3s on, which put me into a deep funk, because I wasn't going to be able to have any Daddy's Hands songs for you guys, or anybody else's songs, for that matter.

Duchess Says who systematically destroyed every other band at last Saturday's bill, including (in my opinion) New York's Japanther, return to the stage tonight to perform with Memphis' Lost Sounds. I recall picking up their album Black Wave out of curiousity in a bargain bin a couple of years ago in Victoria, and it was nothing if not embarassing and rightly relegated to the bargain bin, but perhaps they've improved (they did put out a split with The Vanishing)...
Duchess Says, Lost Sounds and Moustache at The Toc Toc, 6091 Ave. du Parc. Doors @ 9pm.

Alright, I downloaded the Johnny Boy single You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve off of another mp3 blog a while back, and despite the uncomfortable similarities between Johnny Boy's and U2's schlocky basslines, and the weird feeling that I get that if they ever manage to get over here they're going to be about as successful as Chumbawamba... Yes, despite all that, I'm really enjoying it - it's a pretty good morning song, damned epic enough not to bring you down but layered with enough studio trickery to keep you interested... It slipped into Pitchfork's top 100 singles of 2000-2004 at #95.

Johnny Boy - You Are The Generation... (XFM Version).mp3

Above is a low quality version of the single that Johnny Boy recorded at the British radio station XFM...

Ahhhh yes, I've just recalled that I initially downloaded that song off of Fluxblog, and it's still up there, so I'd recommend downloading it...

Ex-Dead Teenager & Black Mountain

Prior to Stephen McBean and Joshua Wells' involvement with the underappreciated touring troubadours Jerk With A Bomb and just after the demise of Gus, the two were members of Ex-Dead Teenager, a post-punk mish-mash of disco beats, synthesizer and tremolo-clipped guitar that pre-dated much of the revivalist stuff that would climb above-ground a couple of years later (much of it in the region, such as Hot Hot Heat, Radio Berlin, The Detroit Deathwatch and The Red Light Sting with close ties to the group). Victims for being either too ahead of the curve, or too unconcerned to care, probably the latter, the group put out two self-released cassettes (appeared on the infamous Go! compilation, which featured Danko Jones, the worst Filipino in modern rock music) and faded into the background, spoken of highly in certain areas in BC, the releases and videos of the band coveted by nerds such as myself. The song below is from the second self-released cassette, passed on to me by my friend Rick O'Dell.*

Ex-Dead Teenager - Bon Scott.mp3

And now the zeitgeist has caught up to Stephen McBean's current position on the astral plane, as lead songwriter for Black Mountain and Pink Mountaintops, both. Below's an unreleased Black Mountain track, and no, it's not a Judas Priest cover.

Black Mountain - Tyrant.mp3UNRELEASED


* Ex-Dead Teenager also spawned S.T.R.E.E.T.S. and Mercury The Winged Messenger.

Wolf Parade!

CBC Radio 3's most recent online edition, which will be replaced by a new one tomorrow, has a story on Wolf Parade to accompany the In Sessions tracks they recorded a little while back. It's also revealed that they've recorded a Blackout Beach song for an upcoming compilation to be released by the folks at The Believer magazine. (Blackout Beach being the solo vehicle for Frog Eyes frontman Cary Mercer...) Coupling this news with Dave Eggers adoration of The Arcade Fire and Tracy Maurice's design & illustration skills, means only one thing - a McSweeneys special "Montreal" issue is in the works. Hardy har har.

Victoria's Chet

The heart & soul of Victoria's Chet are Ryan Beattie and Patrick Beattie: brothers and professionally polite gentlemen-about-town... Ryan (guitar, vocals) works as a bartender at Logan's (formerly Thursdays), the only licensed venue of note in Victoria, and Patrick (organ/vocals) has recently been signed on to work at Ditch Records, the only record store of note in Victoria, and for the past two years they've pursued a . There are similarities in Ryan's voice to both Ron Sexsmith and Will Oldham, but Ryan pushes his voice to soaring falsetto heights, a more tuneful contrast to Cary Mercer of fellow Victorians Frog Eyes. Hank Pine plays cello and novice Alison Therriault (per)cusses...

Chet - Track 1.mp3

This is the first track from their forthcoming album - a dynamic and explosive charge out of the starting gates...

Chet - Pillow Talk In The Flames.mp3

The 8th track on Chet's second album Kauai, named after a Hawaiian island, will be released later this year by Vancouver's Hive-Fi Recordings, the label associated with recording studio juggernaut The Hive. Ryan knocks off solo sturm-und-drung stuff in his spare time, and Patrick spends some time with Bird Sounds of Canada and psych-all-star-ensemble Lakeboat. Their first album was self-released.
Chet's New Music Canada site
April 2004 interview with Chet, Discorder Magazine

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Also, thanks for the kind words from GreenIdeas and Said The Grammophone both... I suppose I'll have to start spell-checking now!

Panties. Boys. Shorts. Boys.

A couple of years ago, a Victorian cartoonist prodigy released a handsomely packaged CD of lo-fi bedroom bumps and grinds layered with Casio spread, effectively kick-starting a one-person campaign of hype in the area. At the time, I heralded Pantyboy as the third or fourth coming of the Messiah (at least the last one since the 19th century, not including the Jehovah Witness' close-calls and also rans), regarded his melodies as sublime and his lyrics as the whisperings of heaven. And then I saw him perform with a backing ensemble at Thursdays. With a gentleman in a poncho, who hogged the microphone and made uncomfortable jokes. I left, disappointed, ridiculed by my friends for my false prophecizing. And now, looking back on it, the first Unicorns performances in Victoria were somewhat disastrous, or at least, characterized by stop-start dynamics with more of an emphasis on the "stop", too. Pantyboy just had to harness that nervous energy, bundle it up and spurt it out like church picnic mustard. And he might just have done so at this point, but I'm on the other side of the country and I can't tell.

Pantyboy - Razor Sharp, No Brakes.mp3

This song's from that album Orgy of the Senses, the first thing I heard before the magic died. More information and MP3s are on his website, including a preview of his new video-game, as well as links to associated projects like Elephant Island and the only private eye alligator comic around Strange Journey.

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ADDENDA: Regarding yesterday's posts, I stumbled upon the newest S.T.R.E.E.T.S. website, which is quite a bit more advanced than their previous "flaming eyeball" and bloody font website... There are 4 mp3s up there, too.