Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

I’m reading Shakey, the Neil Young biography, and so far it’s pretty awesome. I’ll say more when I’m done, but for now, here’s a sampling of the index subheadings for “Young, Neil”:

Young, Neil:
        alcohol and,
        attracted to quirky people,
        banjo played by,
        boats of,
        changeability and spontaneity of,
        chicken farm run by,
        corporate sponsorship mocked by,
        disappearances by,
        drugs and,
        as Godfather of Grunge,
        hearse driven by,
        model trains as interest of,
        shyness and introversion of,
        tour buses of,
        vintage cars collected by,
        women and,

Now, does that sound like an interesting book or what?

Uninformed Political Prognostication

I spend a fair amount of time following US politics - much more than Canadian politics. I couldn’t really say why, though maybe it’s just that the villains are just crazier and more obvious. Anyways, with the first primaries a few weeks away, I thought I’d make some predictions. To get an idea of how good I am at this, I’ll say I was sure Gore was going to win easily in 2000, and sure that Kerry was going to win in 2004.

On the Democratic side, I think Barack Obama is going to finish his comeback and win in Iowa, then go on to win the nomination. I’d prefer him over his main two rivals simply because he’s a newer face that doesn’t immediately summon visions of the battles of 2004, or all of the 90s. But really, I think any of the main three Democratic contenders would be alright, in the sense that any of them would be much better than any of the Republicans.

As for the Republicans, it would be funny if it weren’t so scary that one of these guys is going to be nominated to become the President. This video sums up the field pretty well:



As for a prediction, I think Giuliani is going to pull it out - he’s the favoured candidate of the corporate interests that run the GOP, and they usually get their way over the social conservatives.

In the general, I think the Democrat wins easily. So, given my record of predictions, that means four more years of war, climate change denialism, and crazy health care. Awesome!

Saturday is YouTube Day

Alright, back at it on a clear and snowy day in Montreal. First, a quick one for while I’ve been away:



Hey, Radiohead has a new album out. It’s pretty good:



And, keeping with the live music theme, here are some hip young gunslingers covering the Jayhawks:

It Was Christmas Eve, Babe, In The Drunk Tank

Our band of grad students is going to play a few songs at the annual departmental Christmas party, so we’ve been casting around for a few Christmas-themed numbers to play. Here’s what we settled on - if you’re actually going to be there and want to be surprised, maybe skip this one.

First, we have The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York”:



I think the Pogues were a band I’d heard of, but not actually heard, so it was nice to get into them. I really like the song as well, though I hope we get away with the lines “You scum bag / you maggot / you cheap lousy faggot”.

Next up, the Ramones with “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight)”:



I’m discovering that I don’t really have a punk-rock voice. Should be a fun show!

Hmmm

To Know And Feel Too Much Within

Since I wrote a whole post just about the tracklisting of the I’m Not There soundtrack, I should probably follow it up with some comments on the actual music.

On the whole, the album is pretty remarkable, though it’s quite a lot to take in a single sitting. Clocking in at over two and a half hours, it definitely has high and low points. Since the high points are so high though, I’d say the album is well worth the investment.

Bob Dylan’s voice is one of the most often-cited reasons people give for not getting into his music. It’s definitely an acquired taste, though I like it quite a bit. One fair criticism of his voice though, I think, is his fairly limited emotional range as a singer. Turning over the vocal duties to a ton of great singers, then, really lets the emotional variety of his song-writing come through.

Cat Power’s totally sexy take on “Stuck Inside Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again” is one of the highpoints, as is Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs voice on “Highway 61 Revisited”: it’s partly dangerous, partly silly, partly just rocking. Willie Nelson, Jim James, and Mark Lanegan add a lot of sadness and heaviness to their songs, as well.

Sufjan Stevens is insufferable as ever - with a six-minute-plus cover of “Ring Them Bells” featuring multiple orchestral breakdowns. I’ve tried a few times to get into him, and managed to like “Illinois” for a few weeks at one point, but I’ve given up on him for now.

The two backing bands, the Million Dollar Bashers and Calexico, are both outstanding, though the Bashers really only get to show off their full chops on “All Along the Watchtower”.

A few more things I thought were interesting:

- Jeff Tweedy uses a later version of the words to ‘Simple Twist of Fate’, with the totally heartbreaking last verse:

People tell me it's a crime
To feel too much at any one time
She should have caught me in my prime,
She would have stayed with me.
Instead of going off to sea,
and leaving me to meditate
upon that simple twist of fate.

- In the included version of “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”, they use the modified line “Pull up your tent McGuinn, you ain’t goin’ nowhere”. Dylan recorded that version later as a slam against Roger McGuinn, who had messed up the words when he recorded his own version on The Byrd’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Ironically, McGuinn also appears on this soundtrack.

- As excited as I was to see Sam Beam reunited with Calexico, I think their track together is just alright. Calexico is great on the album though - their tracks with Jim James and Willie Nelson are absolute standouts.

Horses of Bands

I finally saw Band of Horses (not to be confused with HORSE the band) last week, after listening to their album Everything All The Time, well, all the time this year. They’re touring on their new album Cease to Begin, and played La Tulipe, upgrading to a larger venue from their last time here (at Sala Rosa in August).

I was introduced to Everything All The Time during my yearly scouring of year-end ‘best-of-the-year’ lists at the end of last year, so a lot of the memories I associate with the album are from that period - skiing to and from work at dawn or at twilight, or through the darkness. Anyways, the album itself is pretty great - sparse folky guitar numbers coupled with a few really energetic rockers, all held together by Ben Bridwell’s amazing tenor.

La Tulipe is one of my favourite Montreal venues - small enough to feel intimate, big enough to not feel cramped. The show was fairly typical for a band on its second album - not too long, with most of both albums being played. We got a few treats near the end though - a half-speed version of “Wicked Gil”, and then a supremely rocking version of Them Two’s “Am I A Good Man?”.

While most of the songs in the main set focussed mainly on Bridwell’s guitar and voice, the closer really let the rest of the band shine. The call-and-response vocals were done brilliantly, with Bridwell and the keyboard player trading lines throughout.

Here’s a few videos:

The new single “Is There A Ghost”:



And a live version of “Am I A Good Man?”:

Lest We Forget

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— John McCrae, 1915

People Tell Me That It's A Sin

There’s a new Bob Dylan movie coming out called I’m Not There which looks pretty interesting. The soundtrack came out today (pretty expensive on CD, $16.99 on iTunes), and the track-listing is pretty stunning:

Disc 1
1. Eddie Vedder and the Million Dollar Bashers: "All Along the Watchtower"
2. Sonic Youth: "I'm Not There"
3. Jim James and Calexico: "Goin' to Acapulco"
4. Richie Havens: "Tombstone Blues"
5. Stephen Malkmus and the Million Dollar Bashers: "Ballad of a Thin Man"
6. Cat Power: "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again"
7. John Doe: "Pressing On"
8. Yo La Tengo: "Fourth Time Around"
9. Iron and Wine and Calexico: "Dark Eyes"
10. Karen O and the Million Dollar Bashers: "Highway 61 Revisited"
11. Roger McGuinn and Calexico: "One More Cup of Coffee"
12. Mason Jennings: "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll"
13. Los Lobos: "Billy"
14. Jeff Tweedy: "Simple Twist of Fate"
15. Mark Lanegan: "The Man in the Long Black Coat"
16. Willie Nelson and Calexico: "Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)"

Disc 2
1. Mira Billotte: "As I Went Out One Morning"
2. Stephen Malkmus and Lee Ranaldo: "Can't Leave Her Behind"
3. Sufjan Stevens: "Ring Them Bells"
4. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Calexico: "Just Like a Woman"
5. Jack Johnson: "Mama You've Been on My Mind"
6. Yo La Tengo: "I Wanna Be Your Lover"
7. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova: "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere"
8. The Hold Steady: "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window"
9. Ramblin' Jack Elliott: "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"
10. The Black Keys: "Wicked Messenger"
11. Tom Verlaine and the Million Dollar Bashers: "Cold Irons Bound"
12. Mason Jennings: "The Times They Are a-Changin'"
13. Stephen Malkmus and the Million Dollar Bashers: "Maggie's Farm"
14. Marcus Carl Franklin: "When the Ship Comes In"
15. Bob Forrest: "Moonshiner"
16. John Doe: "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine"
17. Antony and the Johnsons: "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"
18. Bob Dylan: "I'm Not There"

To put a few more band names in there, that list includes people from Pearl Jam, My Morning Jacket, Pavement, Wilco, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Byrds, The Screaming Trees, and Television. Wow. I’m writing this before listening to the whole thing, since it’s pretty perfect in my imagination right now. The Million Dollar Bashers seem to be a pretty stellar backing band too - members of Sonic Youth, Wilco, Television, along with Tony Garnier, Smokey Hormel, and John Medeski. Wow again.

It looks like you can actually listen to the album online here.

Saturday is YouTube Day

For a rainy day in Montreal, I typed ‘rain’ into the search box in iTunes. Here’s a few of the results:



Leonard Cohen, 1979. I think you can see Jennifer Warnes singing backup there, too!



Neko Case doing my favourite Dylan song - I think she did this cover both times I’ve seen her.



OK, I can’t resist this for a rainy day in November. How come nobody does epic guitar solos on windswept prairies any more? Maybe I’ve been listening to the wrong music.

LATER: As I realized, and Jay pointed out in comments, it wasn't actually November when I wrote this entry. It's not even November now! I think my head somehow convinced the rest of me that November started sometime near the end of last week.

Back in Blue and Grey

Alright, let’s get back to it. Here are some shows I’ve been to recently, with exciting commentary!

Iron & Wine, September 26, Metropolis

I really should stick to my rule of only seeing bands once unless they’re touring on an album I really love. Last time I saw Sam, he was touring with Calexico, and put on a fantastic show. That first show was a bit uneven though - Calexico played first, firing everybody up, so it was a bit difficult settling back down to enjoy I&W. This time around, a Metropolis fully filled with chairs should have led to a setting more conducive to enjoying I&W, but I wasn’t quite there.

I think we saw one of the first shows of the tour, given that the new album was only released a few days before the show. The band was large, tight, and very professional - it included Leroy Bach (formerly of Wilco!), as well as members of Calexico and Califone. But, like on the new album, I found the more complex arrangements detracted from the arrangements, rather than enhancing them. Most, if not all, of the new album was played, and old favourites like “Sodom, South Georgia” were substantially rearranged. In some cases the new arrangements were really interesting, in others not so much.

The highlight for me was seeing Sam perform a solo version of ‘History of Lovers’ - one of my favourite songs, and the only song from In The Reins that was skipped last time. I’ve always loved the idea that, in the aftermath of a knife-fight, the narrators chief worry is whether or not Louise understands the irony of the situation.

United Steelworkers of Montreal / Two-Minute Miracles / The Barmitzvah Brothers / Ox, October 5, Le Gymnase

A full bill of artists from Weewerk Records. Funnily enough, I think I’ve seen or heard almost every band on that label now. I liked Ox a lot - alt-country in the vein of Son Volt, but a little unpolished. The Barmitzvah Brothers seemed to base their whole show around being quirky, which was interesting for about five minutes. Two-Minute Miracles were very interesting - quiet, haunting songs, with lots of space and silence. The lead singer and guitarist had incredibly long fingers, allowing him to play some really crazy chords on his guitar.

The headliners, The United Steelworkers of Montreal, were a real treat. It was a rowdy, hometown show for them, with a great crowd. Their website bills them as combining “country crooners with outlaw rockers”, which sounds about right - lots of songs about waking up with mysterious tattoos.

The National / Doveman, October 7, Le National

The National at Le National! A fairly subdued show in a really nice venue that seems to be getting a lot more good shows recently. Definitely a strong show, with incredible musicianship all around, but their album Boxer is probably better suited to headphones than a concert setting.

Elliott Brood / The Acorn, October 11, Sala Rossa

Elliott Brood (also on Weewerk) have been one of my favourite discoveries this year - dark, dark folk/country music, mainly driven by distorted acoustic guitars and yowling vocals. What’s not to like? The unfortunate thing about this show was that Elliott Brood didn’t take the stage til 11:30pm, so a lot of the audience drifted away during their set. Here’s a video of one of their more upbeat songs:



Katie Loves Pain, October 12, Thomson House

These guys were alright. They seemed a little uptight during their first set, but loosened up a lot in the second as the drink started to flow. Word on the street is that they’ll be playing again in January, after a few of the members finish their qualifying exams!

Creep In Inn

Some young gunslingers are playing a show tonight? Maybe it’ll be good? I think it will be, but I’m biased.

Radio Silence

Apologies for the lack of updates recently. I do intend to return eventually to this blog, but I’m weathering a bit of personal turbulence at the moment.

While I’m gone, here’s one of my favourite bands (My Morning Jacket), with guest vocals from my favourite singer (Mr. Eddie Vedder), singing one of my favourite songs (“It Makes No Difference” by The Band). Things aren’t so bad.

No dejes que!

Well, last Friday was the first-ever performance of the band I’m a part of - Katie Loves Pain. We played at 3 Minots on St. Laurent, for a crowd of almost 100 people! I was really excited, since it was the first time for me playing music in public in a long time, and the first time ever playing in a rock band. We’d practiced enough so that I wasn’t too nervous, though the pre-show tequila from Xoxo certainly helped. And the mid-show tequila, I guess! I also had an excellent new cowboy shirt, thanks to my new shirt-shopping buddy.

We played mostly covers, and took turns with lead vocals and guitar and bass duties. I played acoustic and electric guitars (finally giving my SG its first real live workout), bass, sang, and got to play drums on one song. I don’t really know how to play drums, but the band is very forgiving. Our encore was totally unplanned, which was fun, but maybe a bit scattered - it turned out Volker and I knew less of the words to “Cortez the Killer” than we thought we did.

Nevertheless, from all reports the crowd had a really good time, and we got an invite to play the bar again whenever we wanted. Shawn’s brother took some pictures which are available here. Maybe more photos (and video?) will surface at some point. If you were there, thanks for coming out! Next time around is October 12 at McGill’s Thomson House.

Here’s the setlist, with the original artists (or songwriters from our band) in brackets. Shawn and Volker contributed originals, the rest are covers.

Set 1:

1. For The Turnstiles (Neil Young)
2. Why Be So Curious (The Sadies)
3. Long Prairie Road (Shawn Leroux)
4. Wrecking Ball (Gillian Welch)
5. Cold-Blooded Old Times (Smog)
6. California Stars (Wilco)
7. Chick In Jar (Volker Bahn)
8. Keep The Car Running (Arcade Fire)
9. On The Bus Mall (The Decemberists)
10. Fake Palindromes (Andrew Bird)
11. No Dejes Que (Caifanes)

Set 2:

1. Le Train (Vilain Pinguin)
2. Murray (Pete Yorn)
3. Miserlou (Greek Traditional)
4. Quand Ca Sera Elle (Shawn Leroux)
5. Creepin’ In (Norah Jones / Dolly Parton)
6. Sweethearts (Camper van Beethoven)
7. Catalog (Shawn Leroux)
8. Sweet Jane (Velvet Underground)
9. Cowgirl in the Sand (Neil Young)
10. Wake Up (Arcade Fire)

Totally Unplanned Encore:

1. For The Turnstiles (Neil Young)
2. Cortez the Killer (Neil Young)
3. Sons and Daughters (The Decemberists)

Oh Boy Oh Boy Oh Boy

September The Fifth (Part I)

Here’s an index to the current batch of written (and yet-to-be-written) Gillian Welch posts:

Written:

• Background on Gillian and David

Yet-to-be-written:

• Uncomfortable albums
• Revelator / April 14th
• Legends and little people
• First lovers, Highways dreamt of
• Wrap-up

Watching Waves, Moving Faders

I was having a discussion about music with myself the other day, and thinking something like “well, Time (The Revelator) is obviously Gillian Welch’s best album, but I find myself listening to Soul Journey and even Revival much more often”. That seemed like a bit of a contradiction to me, so I thought I’d try to explain myself to, uh, myself. I’d like to try to write a series of posts about Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, and specifically about the album Time (The Revelator). I’ll start with some background on Gillian and David, and then try to explore a few different aspects of Time.

How do I know Gillian Welch?

Probably from the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. Gillian sings "I'll Fly Away" with Alison Krauss, and "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby" with Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris. She also has a cameo in the film, as the girl trying to buy the Soggy Bottom Boys single!

Who’s this David Rawlings character?

"We're a two-piece band called Gillian Welch". David plays guitar, sings harmony, and helps write the songs.

What kind of music do they play?

Lots, really, but they’re best known for playing stripped-down folk and bluegrass music, featuring Welch and Rawlings singing in close harmony.

I’m a big guitar nerd. What the heck is that thing David Rawlings is playing?

Me too, apparently it’s a 1935 Epiphone Olympic Archtop.

What else have you got?

• Wikipedia links for Gillian and David
• Their discography at all music
• Their official website, with a helpful biography

How should I get into them?

Maybe start with this video:



And if you like that, check out Soul Journey, then Time (The Revelator), then the rest. It’s probably best to avoid reading too many interviews before listening to the albums. A lot of the material on the later albums is pretty autobiographical, and I always like to think about the lyrics by themselves for awhile before reading too much of the backstory. Alright, enough introduction!

I Thought It Was A Metaphor

Oh God, we’re on MySpace now.

There’s one song up there, that was written by our fearless leader Shawn. It’s called “Catalog”, and I always thought it was an extended metaphor about relationships. He tells me I’m all wrong but I don’t believe him.

Also, I may as well say that we’ll be performing live (live!) for the very first time, next Friday Sept. 14 at 3 Minots on St. Laurent. Come check us out, anonymous internet people!

Also also, this is the 100th post on this blog! Hooray! In a sense, I think it's kind of fitting that it's about our first show.

No 'Stairway To Heaven'

Like Mint and Chocolate Chips

I am back from my top-secret mountain hideaway, so maybe some posts will be written again?

Here’s something I came across while away that made me very happy. Like mint ice cream with chocolate chips, or iced-tea powder on Kraft dinner, sometimes things that are awesome by themselves are even awesomer in combination. So here’s one of my absolute favourite artists, Gillian Welch (with partner David Rawlings) performing one of my absolute favourite Radiohead songs, “Black Star”, at Bonnaroo this year. The recording isn’t great, and the guy recording it is singing pretty loudly at times, but I thought it was pretty cool, with a great solo by David Rawlings.



There’s a torrent floating around of the rest of the set, including a visit from John Paul Jones (!), that can be found at etree. The audio quality is much better than the video above.

Another game my friend Mark and I used to play with live recordings is listening for the different waves of audience recognition - some people will get the song from the first notes, while others won't get it til the chorus. There's three distinct waves of recognition in this one - the very start, after the first line, and at the first chorus.

LATER: Actually, you can only hear the first and second waves in the linked audio version, not the video above.

September Girls

I was looking at my calendar, and noticing not only that September is coming quickly, but also that there's a bunch of cool shows coming too! Here's my list so far - I don't know about tickets prices etc., this is just what's down on my calendar so far:

September 6 - Animal Collective @ Le National
September 9 - Bill Calahan (AKA Smog) @ Sala Rosa
September 14 - Great Lake Swimmers @ Sala Rosa
September 19 - Ryan Adams at Theatre St. Denis
September 19 - Rilo Kiley @ La Tulipe
September 20 - Beastie Boys @ Bell Centre
September 22 - Nick Lowe / Ron Sexsmith / Teddy Thompson @ Club Soda
September 22 - Devendra Banhart @ Theatre National
September 23 - Okkervil River @ Sala Rosa
September 26 - Andrew Bird @ La Tulipe
September 26 - Iron&Wine @ Metropolis

        There is also a tentative show by some young up-and-comers called Katie Loves Pain, that you should all totally clear your calendars for. There are some sucky days with two concerts - the I&W v. Andrew Bird choice is probably the worst one, because I've vowed not to pay to see Ryan Adams again.

        I don't think I'll make all these shows, but I'd definitely be interested in any of them if there are posses to be formed. I think I'll definitely try for I&W, Rilo Kiley, Bill Calahan, and Okkervil River.

That's What She Said

Here's a few photos from the aforementioned camping trip. If you're on Facebook, you can find pictures with people's faces in them! But here's some nature shots.

And You Are Starry, Starry, Starry

Just got back from a totally awesome camping adventure. More to say (and pictures) later, but here’s something else in the meanwhile.

When I got back last night, I was thinking about the shooting stars we saw, and listening to Joanna Newsom explain the difference between meteorites, meteors, and meteoroids, when I came across this:



Um, wow.

Here and Now, Not Forever

...And, it looks like I’m not running out the door right away to go camping, so here’s a bit more on the above video. It’s Eddie Vedder and Tim Finn (brother to Neil) performing “Stuff and Nonsense”, from Neil Finn’s 7 Worlds Collide concert DVD. And I’m realizing I don’t have that much to say, except that I’ve always loved the chorus:

And you know that I love you
Here and now, not forever
I can give you my present,
I don’t know about the future
That’s all stuff and nonsense

The Dark Half

Hey, Stephen King and I have the same taste in Ryan Adams albums, but he’s a much better writer:

I think there are really only two kinds of pop music CDs these days. There are the ones you listen to only once or twice, maybe downloading the single good song to your iPod or computer; then there are others that grow stronger, sweeter, and more necessary each time you play them. Gold was that way; Cold Roses was that way; so was Jacksonville City Nights. I won't say Adams is the best North American singer-songwriter since Neil Young...but I won't say he isn't, either.

He liked Easy Tiger a lot, so maybe I’ll try to spend some more time with it.

Last Chance To See

The Yangtze river dolphin, after teetering on the brink for several years, is now officially extinct.

It Ain't No Trick To Get Rich Quick

Here’s something that’s a little fun, but maybe only funny to me. Since I’ve been trying to do more writing and recording lately, I entered the SA Rockstar XX contest. The challenge this time around was to take a Disney song, and cover it as another artist. I picked “Heigh Ho”, from Snow White, and covered it in the style of Uncle Tupelo.

I usually don’t like explaining jokes, but the ‘only funny to me part’ comes in because a) “Heigh Ho” is a very upbeat song about the joys of hard work and getting rich mining while b) the chords and melody I used are from Tupelo’s “Coalminers”, which is also about mining, but has lines like:

mining is the most dangerous work
in our land today
plenty of dirty, slaving work
for very little pay
coalminers, won't you wake up
and open your eyes and see
what this dirty capitalist system
has done to you and me

So, uh, irony, if you will. Anyways, my entry did alright. In one sense, I got 4th place out of 11 entries, and some really nice compliments. In a more realistic sense, I got about 4% of the votes and was basically statistically tied for last with the 4-11 entries. It was a lot of fun though.

Here’s a clip of the original:



And my entry:



As I mentioned above, it uses the chords and melody from “Coalminers”, which I couldn’t find online, but is on the totally awesome March 16-20, 1992 album. It’s in a minor key, which immediately makes the “Heigh Ho” whistling melody sound completely different. In the spirit of March 16-20, 1992 the entry was conceived and written in about an hour, and recorded in one take - vocals, guitar, and whistling all through my condenser mic.

I Know What You Did This Weekend

Three Word Reviews: The Simpsons Movie

Totally exceeded expectations.

Waiting 'Round To Die

A bit late for ‘Saturday is YouTube Day’, but oh well. A friend of mine recently turned me on to Townes Van Zandt, and I’ve been listening to him a fair bit since. Here he is:



And here’s some dudes who can’t be bothered to write decent songs of their own so they just play some of Van Zandt’s stuff instead:

So You Want To Be A Ryan Adams Fan

I mentioned my love/hate relationship with Ryan Adams to a friend the other night, and believe I promised to write a quick introduction to his work. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t, we’d had a few drinks, but I thought it’d be an interesting post nonetheless.

Here’s the short version: Ryan Adams is totally frustrating. His output is wildly uneven, he can’t self-edit, he sometimes writes totally derivative material, he never seems to learn from his mistakes, and he put on one of the worst live shows I’ve ever been to. But then he’ll write something completely beautiful - some gorgeous, broken-hearted country ballad, and then all is forgiven, and I listen to him obsessively for weeks.

If you want to get into him, I’d recommend checking out Gold as a broad overview of the kind of stuff he does, but Heartbreaker and Cold Roses are both much stronger albums.

--

Now here’s the long version, album by album:

Whiskeytown: Pneumonia

This album was recorded before, but released after Adams’ first solo album, Heartbreaker. Whiskeytown usually played fairly straight-up country-rock, but Pneumonia is much more atmospheric - less distortion, more distinct voices, sparser arrangements. The album foreshadows a lot of Adams’ softer solo work, and usually eclipses it. Ryan is almost always better when he has good collaborators, and in this case, Caitlin Cary, Mike Daly, and Ethan Johns (for the most part) add all sorts of great, subtle parts to the arrangements.

This album also has the line that sums up Adams’ “asshole” character the best - “Don’t wanna know why, you like me, I don’t care”.

Standout Tracks: “Don’t Wanna Know Why”, “Reasons To Lie”, “Under Your Breath”

Heartbreaker (2000)

The first solo record, and the one the myth of Adams the tragic romantic is built on. This time his collaborators are Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, which is basically cheating if you want to make a great album. The album is almost completely made up of sad, heart-broken songs of love and despair. It’s a breakup album, and all the songs seem to be coming from the period where the pain is still fresh. There’s no trace of looking back fondly, or moving on, just “why do they leave on the day you want them the most?”.

Standout Tracks: “My Winding Wheel”, “Come Pick Me Up”, “To Be The One”

Gold (2001)

This is the swing-for-the-fences album, the one meant to make Adams a star. Big melodies, huge choruses, great songwriting, all-star collaborators, etc. It’s a great driving album, where Heartbreaker was an album to sit down and listen to. There’s some great swagger in a lot of the songs, as if he’s not really hurt by any of these girls, as long as he gets to play guitar and sing about it. Probably the easiest entry-point if you only wanted to listen to one Ryan Adams record.

Standout Tracks: “Somehow, Someday”, “Answering Bell”, “Harder Now That It’s Over”

Demolition (2002)

A collection of demoes and rarities, mostly from the Gold era. Most of these songs deserved to stay as demoes, but a few great tracks, including “Dear Chicago”, and “Chin Up, Cheer Up” save it. “Dear Chicago” is particularly great, especially in the way it was released. The song alludes to the same series of breakups covered in Heartbreaker and Gold, but from a distance - the moment when, looking back on a failed relationship, you wonder how that person ever drove you so crazy in the first place, when at the time they meant everything. Releasing the song on the same album as the breakup-tunes would be too close, on the next full album too out-of-place, but it’s perfect here as an afterthought.

Standout Tracks: “Dear Chicago”, “Chin Up, Cheer Up”, “Cry On Demand”

Rock N Roll (2003)
Love Is Hell (2004)

A quick n’ dirty rock album, and another record (originally released as 2 EPs). Both are pretty forgettable. This era is memorable though for Ryan’s infamous phone message to rock critic Jim DeRogatis, after DeRogatis wrote a negative review of an Adam’s show.

Standout Tracks: “I See Monsters”, “English Girls Approximately”

Cold Roses (2005)
Jacksonville City Nights (2005)
29 (2005)

2005 saw Ryan release three (3!) albums - two with his new band The Cardinals (both kinda awesome), and one by himself (kinda awful). Cold Roses is classic Adams - alternately brilliant and frustrating, a double album that could easily have been pared down to a really strong single album. To me it’s a great autumn album - I remember listening to it all the time one Fall walking around Parc Lafontaine. Again, he’s much better when he’s got good collaborators, and the Cardinals are a great backing band for him. The writing on this album is often great too, especially songs like “When Will You Come Back Home” and “Sweet Illusions” - still sad, still about breakups, but more nuanced than the directness found on Heartbreaker.

Jacksonville City Nights also features the Cardinals, but is a more straightforward album - playing within the confines of the country genre, just rocking through some really nice tunes. 29 is hard for me to remember, since I think I only made it through the whole thing once, and I felt that was more than enough at the time - it’s Adams at his most mopey and self-indulgent.

Standout Tracks: Tracks 2-4 on Cold Roses (“Sweet Illusions”/“Meadowlake Street”/“When Will You Come Back Home”), “A Kiss Before I Go”

Easy Tiger (2007)

There’s a new album out, and it seems OK. I don’t really have a strong opinion yet, which probably means I don’t really like the album that much. I will say that “Oh My God, Whatever, Etc.” is his best song title ever.

--

OK. That was longer than I thought it was going to be. Anyways, the music can probably sum it up better than I could. Here’s Ryan with the Cardinals playing a song from Heartbreaker:



As a last note, I thought this story on NPR has a pretty good summary of his career - for awhile, it really did look like he was going to be a huge star, but that’s probably not going to happen now. It’s kind of a shame, but totally understandable.

Fruit-Control-D

Alright, here's another type of post that may become semi-regular just because it requires very little effort on my part. One of my favourite features of OS X 10.4 is the inline dictionary. In almost any application, you can highlight a word, hit the shortcut key, and get a quick definition. Very useful for when you're reading along and hit an unfamiliar word.

Bzzzz, Bzzzz

I Won't Make You

Thinking about Elliott, and about covers, I’m reminded about another post I wanted to write. For a little while, I was kinda obsessed with the song “Thirteen” by Big Star. I’d heard Elliott Smith’s cover first, and only much later heard the original. The differences are pretty striking. The lyrics to the song are fairly straightforward - a little adolescent longing, a little teenaged angst. The heart of the song is the last verse:

Won’t you tell me what you’re thinking of?
Would you be an outlaw for my love?
If it’s so, well let me know, if it’s no well I can go
I won’t make you

In the original, it comes across sort of like “I’m here if you want me, but if not, I’ll be OK”. But in the Elliott Smith version, the last verse sounds much more hopeless - as if he knows what the answer is, knows it’s ‘no’, but can’t bear not knowing for sure.

Here’s the original, hilariously enough set to scenes from Harry Potter:



And Elliott’s cover:

Even Though It All Went Wrong

I came across a really interesting article earlier today on the different incarnations of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. The most surprising revelation for me in the article was learning that the version by John Cale appearing in the film Shrek actually pre-dates (and indeed is the model for) Jeff Buckley’s version from Grace. The article is worth reading for the chronology, and the different interpretations the different artists give the song, and also the phrase “reductio ad despairium”.

Another point touched on the article is the use of “Hallelujah” in all sorts of film and television productions whenever a generic sad song is required, or when the main character needs to look pensive and sad. Another song I’ve seen used for a “generic sad song” is Elliott Smith’s “Angeles” - the worst offender in my mind was seeing it turn up on The Girl Next Door.

And it does bug me - “Angeles” isn’t really about just generic angst. I’ve always thought of “Angeles” as pretty specifically Smith worrying about the music business and his place in it. Worrying about “selling out”, getting stuck in a bad record deal, hanging out with phonies in Los Angeles - but also acknowledging how much he wants greater success at the same time. So seeing that song used in a movie when a character is feeling mopey because some girl won’t sleep with him kinda rankles. Anyways, here’s Elliott:

Deer and Pony Shows

Caught the Deerhunter show last night at Club Lambi. Another band that is apparently very popular right now, that I hadn’t really listened to before heading out to see the show. Alright!

The openers were Jay Reatard, and The Ponies. Jay Reatard played, a hard, fast, and loud punk set - screaming the name of each song, bashing it out in two minutes, and moving on to the next one. I always like seeing punk shows, and they’re great for getting a crowd moving, but I’m always mystified that the bands are satisfied with always playing fast and loud. Some of the most interesting aspects of music to me are dynamics and tempo, and lots of punk bands seem to ignore them totally. It’s alright to play fast and loud, but if you sometimes play slowly and quietly, the fast and loud parts seem faster and louder. Anyways, that’s why I find a lot of punk unsatisfying, but it’s great to see a band just let rip as well.

The Ponies played some shimmery indie rock, sort of like the Cure crossed with the Strokes. I really liked the jangly sound of their guitars - I think it’s some sort of rotary amp effect.

Deerhunter played a fairly short (under an hour), but intense set. They describe themselves as “ambient punk”, which seems fairly apt - pounding drums and bass guitar, spacy, echoey, guitars, and high-pitched, ethereal vocals. They wavered between creating lush, feed-back-filled soundscapes, and just rocking out.

I’m starting to really enjoy more ambient music - I’d always shied away from it before, given that the main things that usually attract me to a piece of music are the lyrics and melody, which most ambient music distinctly lacks. And looking up that Wikipedia link, I found a great quote from Brian Eno: ambient music can be “actively listened to with attention or as easily ignored, depending on the choice of the listener” - that’s sort of how I feel about it. I enjoy ignoring it. Or, rather, I liked letting my mind wander while the band played. So maybe the set just seemed shorter than it actually was, since I was a bit checked out, but it was definitely a good time.

One last thing. I really like the venue the show was at, Club Lambi: it’s close to my house, so I can pre-drink there with friends, and stumble home easily after the show. Also, it’s really easy to hang out outside between acts, because you can hear when the bands actually start playing and get back inside.

Gol!

I went to the same soccer game as JB describes here, and also thought it was great - I’ve never seen Olympic Stadium more packed, even for the Expos last game.

One thing I thought was strange was that no replays of fouls were shown on the screen inside the stadium - so we had no idea if the controversial first Chilean goal should actually have been called offside or not. Apparently this isn’t unique to soccer games either - it seems weirdly paternalistic, as if they’re worried we’d storm the field or something after a bad call.

Three Word Reviews: Icky Thump

Oh hell yes.

Saturday is YouTube Day

Hey, three posts so far today and it’s only 11AM. Here’s some other new music I’ve been listening to lately:

I somehow managed to never hear a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club song before seeing them live at La Tulipe a few weeks back, and I was pretty blown away. I think they’re a better live band than a studio band, but their albums are quite good - particularly Howl. They have a great dynamic - a three-piece band with no real front-man, both guitarists take turns taking the lead. They’re also very good at looking cool. Here’s a song from their first album:



Also, The Smashing Pumpkins have a new album, but let’s just all agree that it never happened, OK?

Now I'm A Fat House Cat

Using my time machine, I’ve been visiting the future and listening to the new Iron and Wine album The Shepherd’s Dog. It’s due to be released at the end of September. After the first few listens, I thought to myself “I’m going to have to listen to this a lot more before forming an opinion on it”, but since bandwidth is cheap and so are opinions, here are some first impressions.

The new record is a lot more complex than previous I&W recordings, from the ground up. On earlier releases, most of the songs were built around Sam Beam’s voice and guitar - other instruments usually only serving as ornamentation. This time around, it feels like most of the songs were written with fuller arrangements in mind - there are more instruments, more harmonies, and fewer songs driven mainly by the acoustic guitar line. In a way, then, it’s similar to Wilco’s recent album Sky Blue Sky - the songs are less simple to break down to just “main songwriter brings in a song, other people add their parts on top”. This doesn’t necessarily make for a better album - it certainly didn’t for Wilco, but that’s another post.

In Iron and Wine’s case though, it makes for a more varied listening experience. Previous I&W albums were often fairly monochromatic - lots of slow, whispery songs, occasionally interspersed with swampy stompers. They’re great albums, because the songs are usually gorgeous, but it does seem that the band has been consciously trying to break out of its mold - first with Woman King and now with The Shepherd’s Dog. I’m genuinely curious whether the change has anything to do with the band’s increasing popularity and the difficulty of playing quiet acoustic numbers to festival crowds, or just continued artistic development.

One more thing. The first time I heard Our Endless Numbered Days, I knew immediately it was an album I’d listen to obsessively. That wasn’t the case with this one - it may grow on me, but it didn’t strike me at the gut level in the same way. Until I got to the last song.

“Flightless Bird, American Mouth” arrives at the end of the album like an afterthought, but it’s beautiful, and completely captures what makes this band so great. It’s a classic Iron and Wine song, in the sense that it brings together a lot of the common thematic and aural elements of the bands prior work, but expands on it with the broader palette of the new album at the same time.

It would almost be self-parody if it wasn’t so good: a simple chord progression (I hear D-Bm-G-A, I-vi-IV-V), finger-picked, whispery harmonized vocals, lightly ornamented first with accordion, then with a fuller band. Classic Sam Beam lyrics too: nothing too specific, just a misty, beautiful nostalgia. Here’s a clip of Sam Beam performing it solo, this recording doesn’t really do the album version justice, but it’s pretty good all the same.

Someone once told me that I could get nostalgic about things that happened five minutes previously, and that’s probably a part of why I like Iron and Wine so much. But I don’t think it’s about wanting to live in the past. It’s about remembering all the beautiful things you’ve passed along the way, carrying them with you, and thinking about how much wonder there is in the world.

Lions and Tigers

The Safari 3 Public Beta is awesome. But only because it makes a little orange bubble pop up when you try to find text. That is all.

Three Word Reviews: Transformers

Boring and stupid

Back in the Saddle

Posting from the rejuvenated PowerBook! I took it to a professional to get fixed, since my own attitude of “Well, I think I know how to fix it” was what probably broke it in the first place. The repair-man used the technical description “it’s all fucked up” to describe my old hard disk, so several months of journals, photos, etc. are gone for now. It may be possible to retrieve the data eventually, but will probably be quite expensive, so I think I’ll hold off until I’m rich and/or famous. In the meantime, it’s nice to be back on my old machine, and back in touch with all my music (which lived on an external HD, so wasn’t affected).

As far as my “crisitunity” plan of getting out more, reading more, etc., I’ve been spending a lot of time playing frisbee and softball, reading (finally finishing “The Master and Margarita”), and hosting house-guests. Apart from the usual time spent in the lab, of course! And somehow, I’m mistakenly a member of an A-League Ultimate championship team!

The plan for the rest of the summer is to do lots of lab work, head West briefly in August for camping and a wedding, and maybe even play a show with my band (which I don’t think I’ve discussed here, but is totally awesome). But for now, it’s Friday afternoon, and we’re going to see Transformers tonight.

Me in Springfield

Pretty close I think! I made this over here. This time I'm not even going to promise to update here more often.

Solstice, not Solace

So, not so much for no computer meaning more posts.

But, in my ongoing quest to turn the solstices and equinoxes into major holidays, happy summer/northern/June/Taurus solstice everybody! Today marks the day when the Earth's axis is tilted the most towards the Sun here in the Northern hemisphere. Unfortunately it is very cloudy here in Montreal today, making celebrating the latest sunset of the year more difficult.

And, just so this post isn't totally brief, my favourite ever summer solstice happened in 2002 when my friend Chris bought a pizza at Wreck Beach in Vancouver from a man wearing a fleece vest and no pants.

Crisitunity!

So, my computer is dead for now. What started with a warped DVD stuck in the optical drive ended up with a zapped hard drive and a broken Mac. A bit of laptop surgery later (of course I'm qualified to take apart laptop computers!), the disc is out of the optical drive, but the hard drive seems to be toast.

Failing to take my own advice to everyone, my last backup is about five months old. I haven't lost much actual work, since I've been mainly at the bench these last few months, but I might have lost quite a lot of writing in my journals. I haven't exhausted all the possible ways of resuscitating the hard drive or recovering the data yet, so all hope is not lost for getting the writing back.

In the meantime, while the computer is getting fixed, I think I'll treat this as a "crisitunity" - a chance to do more reading and more thinking, an opportunity to get outside more, get more work done, and to just generally spend less time online. Paradoxically, that might actually mean more blog posts, since those tend to get written in "productive thinking time" rather than "internet wasted time". We shall see!

Get A Haircut

Three of my favourite artists right now are M. Ward, My Morning Jacket, and Neko Case. So combining all those things together should be pretty awesome, right? Well, not so much. It’s OK I guess, but it seems like a bit of waste to put two incredible singers (Jim James and Neko Case) up there and have them just lay low.



My theory is that bands playing one-offs like Letterman or Conan should just play the most rocking song they have, regardless of what their current single or most popular song is. Also, I don’t know what to do now that Jim James has short hair. How will I know when to rock? For reference, this is what he used to look like:

What's that? New Wilco Record?

Watching A Stretch of Road

I got JB to take a picture of me the other day to show off my new glasses, and I thought it would be fun, or at least interesting, to re-create a photo of me taken when I first arrived in the lab. Before:



And after!



I guess I've mostly just become bigger and better-lit.

Meaningless to Almost Everyone In The World

One of the funny things about research is that it’s often really hard to relate to people when you get results. Especially when those results take the form of faint patches of light against a dark background. But for now, I’ll just say that this picture makes me very happy:

Time Flies When It's Someone Else's Son

Four years ago today:

Designed and Directed by His Red Right Hand

Inspired by JB’s triumphant return to the inter-tubes, an actual post! Or at least some semi-connected ramblings.

Facebook has ended up being a lot of fun - somehow it’s easier to get in touch with my sisters via that web-site than by email or even telephone. I think I have a very bad combination of personality traits for Facebook: a good memory for names and faces coupled with the belief that everyone I’ve ever met wants to know that I’m growing a beard again.

The beard is indeed back, so long as the Canucks stay in the playoffs. One unfortunate thing about living out East is that most of the games in this series won’t start til 10 p.m. in my time zone. I used to be a night owl, but in my new place, even with curtains, I wake up a little after 6 a.m. with the sun. It looks like this:



“At Dawn” is also one of my favourite My Morning Jacket songs. I once saw part of a MMJ show when they were opening for Wilco, but I had no idea what they were playing at the time.

Wilco has a new album, not yet in stores but available on the web after a few pre-release online listening parties sanctioned by the band. I was going to write a quick review of the album, but then realized that to get the proper context, I’d want to write a giant story about me and Wilco, filled with sentences like “when I pick up a guitar, the first song I’ll usually play is ‘Far, Far, Away’” and “those two albums, released in the same year but coming to me five years apart, basically define growing up for me”. So I’ll save all that for now, and just say that Sky Blue Sky has some really great moments, but is frustratingly uneven as a whole.

Finally, I have joined a band so awesome that so far I’ve played acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, drums, and cowbell. Our name is Katie Loves Pain.

I Like My New Apartment

That is all!

I Wrote Two Entries Today Just Because I Put A Link To Here From My Facebook Profile

Hello Facebook people, this is my totally exciting blog! It's mostly about the weather in Montreal and taking Peanuts cartoon strips out of context, but also about listening to music, making bad hockey playoff predictions, and speed-metal videos.

I Didn't Sign Up For This

This blog will now be enhanced in new, picture-y ways. Awesome! What’s not so awesome is that, after a brief tease of Spring, it’s snowing again today in Montreal. Here’s a photo from a week ago, after the first “revenge of winter” snowstorm.

Vernal, Not Venal

Tonight, at 7:07 p.m. in my time zone, it’s the vernal equinox! Happy Spring to all, and Happy Birthday (tomorrow) to sister Christie.

Buckets of rain, buckets of tears

I upgraded my journalling / blogging software today, so I need to put something up here to see if it works again! I use MacJournal, which I highly recommend. I use it for my work logbook, my personal journal, my index for guitar tabs, and for all my blogging. Apparently I’ve written 52,000 words in journals so far this year. Uh, yeah.

And while I’m here, I’ll just say that we’ve had two days in a row of rain here in Montreal, and it’s been reminding me a lot of Vancouver. No more skiing for me, but I can go to sleep with the windows open again.

Also, I don’t have much to say about the TV on the Radio show except that it was really good. Heading to see Great Lake Swimmers tonight, and tried to recruit friends by telling them that they’re “pretty good if you're into the whole ‘guys with banjos and guitars singing in quiet voices about how sensitive they are’ thing”. Which of course I am, but maybe isn’t the most enticing way to invite people to a show.

Of Course This Is A Good Idea

"Of course this is a good idea - why wouldn't this be a good idea?"

I Just Want To See His Face

I broke down and joined Facebook, along with seventeen million other people. I was skeptical at first, but it’s really pretty fun seeing old friends and new turn up.

So, if you’re in the presumably miniscule group of people who (a) read this blog and (b) don’t already have me on Facebook - here’s a link where you can add me.

p.s. Hooray for Drew and Cara!

Where Were You?

And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin' you to defy it

Inspired by my Anonymous, Bob-Dylan-quoting commenter, here’s a post after a long hiatus!

The Midlake show was pretty good - the band were obviously all physically ill, but they still put on a good show. Not too much deviation from the album, but a lot of really nice playing - a lot of their songs seemed to be in open tunings for the guitar, which I’m really fond of lately. It was also fun to go to a show again where there’s a delay because the band got stuck at the border, then came and hung out at the Green Room for awhile.

I ended up not going to Sparklehorse, even after describing them to my friends as “the aural equivalent of walking up to an old Southern mansion, only as soon as you enter, it's suddenly twilight, all the leaves have fallen from the trees outside, your friends are gone and there's a rabbit talking to you asking where all the stars went to”.

Last night I went to another show at Main Hall. How did the world know that just what I needed was to see skinny Norwegian dudes in tight pants and sunglasses shimmying around to drum machines and synthesizers? 120 Days were totally awesome. The main act, Shout Out Out Out Out wasn’t quite as good - kind of like a gang of happy robots with bass guitars breaking into your house while you’re trying to read, and playing the same song for an hour. Anyways, I still don’t enjoy dance music that much.

Tonight is TV on the Radio. I saw them before, opening for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, so we’ll see how they’ve transitioned to being headliners and critical darlings. I was initially skeptical about the new album, but I’ve come around a lot today, based on some re-listening, watching them on Letterman, and lyrics like these:

Hold these hearts courageously
As we walk into this dark place
Stand steadfast beside me and see
That love is the province of the brave

Happy Birthday, Charles

Hey, today is Charles Darwin’s 198th Birthday! So happy Darwin Day to all. There’s events all around, including at our own Redpath museum. Meanwhile, I’ll be trying to think of an appropriate caption for this image, and trying to write a review of last night’s Midlake show.

Oh You Yeasties, You Frightening Beasties , Sleep Tight In Your YPD

How easy it is to let half a month go by without adding anything here! Here are some scattered thoughts from a Thursday night in the lab, spent stealing DNA from yeast.

• When I walk to work, it’s about 1.8km. When I ski, which I’ve been able to do just about every day for the last few weeks, it’s around 2km, but seems to take a while longer because of the long underwear involved.

• Note to any roving ninja gangs: please don’t use that information to ambush me.

• My Morning Jacket’s studio albums are great, but are really only just a set-up for their live shows. This is something I hope to come back to, but for now I’ll just say that Jim James really knows the value of a well-placed random scream.

• I’ve started anthropomorphizing my yeast populations, and now sing them lullabies before letting them grow overnight. I’m not sure what this means.

• I picked up Jeff Tweedy’s recent live DVD “Sunken Treasure: Live In The Pacific Northwest” the other day. It’s pretty great, needless to say, but one thing I thought was cool was that the DVD had a special link to the Wilco website that lets you download MP3s of all the songs on the DVD, and some extra ones as well. Cool.

• I’ve decided to steal an idea I first saw at Neil Gaiman’s place, and start giving all these posts labels, which seems to be a newish Blogger feature.

• That is all

Il Neige!

We had our first big snow of the New Year - it snowed last night, and all throughout today.

A small dog came up to me on my way to work, and let me know that he would like it very much if I’d throw a tennis ball into the snow-bank for him. I did, and he followed me most of the way to work.

On the way home this evening, I decided to break out my cross-country skis, since they’d been sitting in the office all year. My new place is just on the other side of the mountain, so I can ski the whole way home. The snow was perfect, and there were already good tracks the whole way back. Just as I got close to home, I ran into a bunch of people sledding and snowboarding down Mont Royal in the fresh powder.

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

What Comes After 'Y' Again?

Something More Productive, Like Roscoe

After a brief bout of actual original and not-so-original content, “Saturday Is YouTube Day” returns.

First up is current obsession Midlake. People should probably judge for themselves here, since I’ll have to recuse myself from this on on the grounds that I’d basically like any band that has 5-part harmonies, and songs about hunting for rabbits and oxen. For any Montrealers, they’ll be at Sala Rossa on Feb. 11.



Next, for something a bit older, here’s some Neil Young - a great acoustic version of “Cortez the Killer” from one of the Bridge School Benefit concerts.



Finally, I just don’t get speed metal, at all.

In Which I Am Immortalized in Prose

One of her hands went to her lips. “I’m Cladis. Jimmy, I have terrible news for you. Someone came through that gate earlier today but he was killed by a rabid Boon almost as soon as he landed.” She lay a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder as she spoke. “I’m sorry.”

Jimmy was silent, stunned. The world seemed to lurch. “Rod?” He asked softly but Cladis went on, confessing.

I came across this story while doing some self-Googling, and wondered if it was coincidental that one of the characters shared my first and last names. It wasn’t, which I think is pretty awesome, actually, especially considering I die a gruesome, deserved death in the story.

Watch Out

Year End Wrap-Up Thingy 2006 (Introduction)

Since this seems to be the season for end-of-the-year weighing and judging, I thought I’d write a bit about some of my favourite music this year. This post has grown a lot more long-winded in the writing, so I’ve decided to separate things into five parts, with the standard caveat that this introduction may be the only thing that actually gets posted.

As in most years, I started listening to a lot more albums not released in 2006 (~90) than actually released in 2006 (~20). This is a bad habit of mine that I have decided to call my “Bob Dylan’s 49th Album” syndrome, i.e. “How can I listen to anything new when I still haven’t listened to Blood on the Tracks?”. I’ll consider the “new” albums (released in 2006), and the “new to me” albums in separate posts. After that, I’ll reminisce about some of the live shows I saw this year, and finish up with some New Year’s music-listening resolutions.

I’ll try to keep this post floating at the top, and new ones will appear sporadically over the next few days, with handy hyperlinks below!

• Sometimes I Do Listen To New Music
• Don’t Tell Anyone You Don’t Own Blonde On Blonde
• You Had Me At Track 1
• Hello Montreal! Merci Beaucoup!
• Hey, Hey, My, My

Hey, Hey, My, My, Year End Wrap-up Part Number 5

Here are some 2007 Music Listening New Year’s resolutions (not to be confused with my 2007 Get My Life Together New Year’s Resolutions, or my 2007 Music Playing New Year’s resolutions).

• Listen to more music

Specifically, I’d like to branch out a little bit more. A lot of the albums from this year’s lists are ones that I pretty much knew I’d like before I started listening to them, given their reputations. And a lot of them are fairly similar in style and approach - guitars, singer/songwriters, “Dude, Why Do You Still Love Her” music as JB calls it. So I’d like to listen a little more outside my comfort zone - more hard rock, more classical, more jazz, more weird.

• See more live music

This one is as perennial as the “exercise more often” resolution on my other list, but this is the year, dammit! Most of the shows I go to are artists I already know, so I’d like to go see more smaller shows, and more awful shows.

• Write more about music

This series of posts was fun, but a bit long to write! So I’d like to write more often about music, rather than let everything pile up til the end of the year.

OK, now to get to breaking these resolutions as quickly as possible.

Bonjour Montreal! Merci Beaucoup! (2006 Wrap-up Part 4)

For part four of the year end wrap-up, here are some of my favourite live shows of the year, in chronological order. Apparently I saw no good shows in the first half of the year.

• Martha Wainwright / Andrew Bird - July 2, Metropolis

Martha Wainwright in a totally packed hometown show, part of the Jazz Fest. The opener was Andrew Bird, who did some amazing things with voice, guitar, and violin - he’d create backing tracks by recording his own performance, then playing it back to gradually build songs.

This was the second Martha Wainwright concert I’d seen. I thought the first time was seeing her opening for Neko Case, but I think it was actually her opening for Cyndi Lauper. And that is a story for another time. But anyways, this time Martha was with her full band, and it was totally excellent - Stones and Leonard Cohen covers, as well as surprise guests the McGarrigle sisters. Out of all the shows I’ve seen at Metropolis, this was probably the most packed, with the loudest audience.

• Calexico / Mariachi Luz de Luna - July 9, Metropolis

My second time seeing Calexico, who fortunately overcame the second-show curse by playing with a great mariachi band for a lot of the evening. A really fun, albeit somewhat sparsely attended show. Calexico played mostly material from their recent album Garden Ruin, and it was nice to see the changes since the last time I saw them (last year with Iron & Wine). All I have left to say is that Joey Burns’ guitar looks like some sort of aircraft carrier.

• Wilco - July 10, Metropolis

Fourth summer in a row for Wilco and me. The first time (2003, Metropolis), they were playing mainly material from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but also the not-yet-released A Ghost Is Born. The second time (2004, Theatre St-Denis), they played material from the then-just-released A Ghost Is Born. The third time (2005, Metropolis), they played mainly material from... A Ghost Is Born.

So this year, with no new album still, I’m not quite sure what I expected for the setlist. What we got (2006, Metropolis) was, lots of songs from A Ghost Is Born! Plus a few new ones. I shouldn’t really complain, because I knew what was coming, but it was a little harder to get excited the fourth time around. Having said that, though, I always enjoy seeing Wilco, and always like Metropolis, so I had a really good time.

The day before the show, I was riding around on my bike, singing “On a Sunday morning sidewalk, Lord I’m wishing I was stoned”, when I passed a dude with crazy hair, an unkempt beard, a walking cast, and a Subway sandwich. As is always the case with me in these situations, it took me another ten seconds to realize that of course, it was Jeff Tweedy, and that I was now too far away to go say hello. I think he did give me a “Is that dude really singing Johnny Cash on his bike?” look though.

• Rancid (twice!) - August 30, Spectrum, and December, Metropolis

Rancid, kings of early 90s punk. I actually saw them twice this year, in two different venues. The first time was much more exciting - smaller venue, first time seeing them, etc. But Rancid definitely realized what most people were there to hear - at least half the setlist each time was devoted to material from And Out Come The Wolves and Let’s Go. Both shows were really high-energy - I’m glad I got to see these guys while they’re still around.

• M. Ward - September 12, Sala Rossa

I wrote about this the other day, but I came in knowing almost nothing, and left a big fan. This was also the show where I realized just how many indie-rock dudes in Montreal were wearing beards (as I was at the time). But I think the Autumn is an ideal time to see M. Ward, as lots of his songs seem slightly spooky.

• Sparta - October 13, Le National

Second time around for Sparta and I. As always, I’m amazed at just how much rock these four pack into each song. Not quite as good as the last time we saw these guys, mainly because it was the second time for me, and because of the venue. Le National is a new club here, and it felt much too well lit and clean for a rock show, with weird spaces off to the side of the show making the place feel emptier than it was.

The first time we saw Sparta, at Club Soda I think, was one of my favourite shows of all time, simply because it was such a communal experience - everyone in the audience collectively lost it. At this second show, it felt like fewer people were really into it.

• The Decemberists - November 5, Metropolis

The Decemberists, perfectly executing almost the entire The Crane Wife album - even the ten-minute-plus “The Island”. It’s hard to describe the Decemberists well, so I’ll just say that this concert featured 4/6 band members re-enacting the founding of Montreal in the middle of the audience, only to be interrupted by a meteor.

• The Tragically Hip - November 10, Metropolis

I’m including this show here even though I didn’t have a spectacular time, because it wasn’t really the band’s fault. They played really well, I just never seemed to get into it. The band adhered strictly to the formula of “quickly follow the unknown with something familiar”, alternating songs from the new album with older material. And while I think Gord Downie’s antics suit the new material pretty well, pretending to be a chicken during “Long Time Running” doesn’t work so well. It also may have been the first time where I actually enjoyed a band more in an arena than a club.

OK! Back sometime with New Year’s Music resolutions.