Goodnight Sweet Writer.

Wow. My earliest literary hero and guide has died. Rest in Peace Kurt Vonnegut. Play some shuffleboard with your mom and siblings. Thanks for everything, especially all the help with being a teenager.

love and gratitude always,

jep

Might As Well Go For A Soda.

I will talk about the hero of my youth, Kim Mitchell, in some future post or a comic or maybe as the centre of my autobiography someday… For now, just let me share this awesome take on the early 80s Canrock Classique Go For Soda by Dave Clark, mad drummer about town, former Rheostatic, member of The Dinner is Ruined. I bought his album from Zunior for under ten bucks, inspired by seeing him sit in with the Rheos during their final show. He has three, and I think I will get them all – very cool.

This is from his album Sketchbook, which is available at Zunior: Go For Soda

And here’s mister Kim doing his own: Go For Soda

I’m off to Amsterdam and then Iran (opposites?). Back at the beginning of May. Peace out.

Goin Out East.

In about four days Marjan and I are heading off to Iran! I’ve never been – she spent her first decade there. I’m hoping to find a bunch of new music to check out – and that the US doesn’t bomb the place. Dicks.

Here’s a track from a collection called King Records World Music Library: Music of Iran. I’m not sure at all, but I think it might be part of a four-song suite called “Dastgah-e Mahur”. That could also be the name of the performer – but I don’t think so.

Serre ‘eshq – Tashif

That’s the downside of listening to music from other places … Which isn’t much of a downside. Check it out, it’s right on. I’m sure I’ll be sharing more after the trip. If I can possibly find any local young people’s rock and roll or hip hop, I’ll be pleased as punch; apparently they only play in house parties – where a lot of the secret culture happens there, so it’d be a great thing to witness some.

He Destroyed Her Image

Again with the filesurfing on Soulseek, again with the innaresting finds. I don’t have anything much to say about this track, except that I really dig it. The collection is really interesting and listenable, except for the occasional track of high pitched noises that made my ears fold up.

This is Charles Dodge, from 1972.

He Destroyed Her Image.

Wild Years: the Music and Myth of Tom Waits (a book)

Been reading this book about Tom Waits… Initially I worried it would turn out to be badly written, which is frequently the case with artist-specific books, but this is pretty good. Certainly not bad. With an artist as private as Tom Waits, it can be difficult to get The Story. This book, by Jay S. Jacobs, delves nice and deeply into the story without getting all paparazi-invasive. Not a ton to say about it, but it explains a seriously interesting career and dude well, and is worth reading.

Course, that got me all Listeney again, and led me back to my favourites – Bone Machine is one, as are Swordfishtrombones and Small Change. That led to me some surfing, and then to youtube. I’d seen very few Tom Waits videos – maybe just In The Neighbourhood – but there are plenty to see on YouTube, and they’re pretty great. Here’s a couple of the older greats:

For the young and uninitiated: Tom Waits is worth your patience. When I first heard him (MuchMusic was showing Big Time) at 19, I told Kro that I thought anyone claiming to dig him was pretending – and I was reasonably open minded about music. A couple years later, I was completely immersed – Waits has a long and varied career, and is fun to explore. Lessons learned? Don’t be a dick. Also, don’t be 19.

And here’s a reason to keep paying attention:

I thought Tom Waits was sort of done, wrapping up, as an artist. The last couple of records have been retreads of things he’s already done, and while it’s nice to see him getting his props, I haven’t listened to them much. But last year he released the three CD Orphans package, and the song above (Lie To Me) sold me on it. We’ll see what comes next!

How Can You BE So Fuckin Funny?

I was burning copies of the four excellent Steve Martin records from the seventies for my sister Joy … Back when she was like 12 I made her a tape of them (dirty bits removed). Now she’s 30, and thusly ready for the full thing. So I wound up listening to them again while I worked, and almost 30 years after I first heard them, I was still laughing out loud. Steve’s delivery and viewpoint fully infected my family and friends, and when I listen again now, I realize how many of his lines have been incorporated into our lives. Delicious.

Here’s one song:

Grandmother’s Song.

And here’s another – this’d go into my lifelong top 50, I’m sure. It’s Steve and Bernadette Peters, singing on the beach in The Jerk.

You Belong To Me.

After they finish the song, they’re sitting by a fire, and he says to her wistfully that he had been fantasizing about how he’d love to float up into the air, into the bell of her trumpet, down through the valves and pipes, out the mouthpiece, and give her a kiss… When she asks why he didn’t do it, he replies, “Well, I didn’t want to get spit all over me…”

Oooh, That Sound.

Let’s stick with one realm for two days in a row! The Nails fit in with that post-punk sound I was drooling over in the Messthetics series. Plus, this song… It just works. I’d rather know all the words to this than to It’s the End of the World.

88 Lines About 44 Women! by the Nails. 1984.

Love is Ephemeral, I Confess

From the brilliant Messthetics compilations put out by Hyped To Death records – discovered, again, via filesurfing on Soulseek. Hyped To Death have four series on the go: Messthetics, Homework, Teenline and Hyped to Death – which, much like Sublime Frequencies (see Don’t Let My Girlfriend Tickle Me) release things that have been previously released and then lost. Messthetics collects +/- 10 CDs worth of British post-punk gems, all by one- or none-hit wonders, all with (most importantly) that delicious sound they had then. I am sure to share more of this stuff, and to spend some dough supporting a weird, great series of projects.

This morsel is called Love Is Ephemeral I Confess, by Divert Off Centre.

Curses!

Ahoy! Toronto devil-sign waggers CURSES! sent me a CD back when I was doing the bad monkeyx, and then I killed it bad monkey, so I’d like to give it some attention now.

CURSES! first CD is called I Am Legend, and it’s big fun. Unwinking, but not unknowing, they deliver a sort of oldschooly Dio/Maiden/Sabbath sort of Heavy fuckin Metal with titles like Never Trust an Elf. Nuff said.

Check this one out:

Curse of the GD Wendigo

and go visit their myspace page to find out more.

Don’t Let My Girlfriend Tickle Me

I’ve explained my love of filesharing before – especially the Soulseek model. In Soulseek, you can search for single tunes, but the emphasis is on albums. When you find an interesting item, you can browse the public folders of other people, and those are always organized by records. It’s a really nonlinear thing, like digging in a bin – or rather, like having the opportunity to dig in the collections of your friends as if it was a bin. If you like something unusual, searching for it and then browsing the collection of someone else who digs it, you’re going to find some innaresting stuff, as Neil Young would say. He might say that. Shutup.

So, I also mentioned this course I’m taking (“taking”) in English Folk music, and the searching for Alan Lomax that came out of that – guaranteed you’ll see more of that if you stick around. Well, that searching led to my finding this gem – one among many on a recording called the Cambodian Cassette Archives: Khmer folk and pop music. It’s by a little label, Sublime Frequencies – and this seems like one of those situations where I’ll go buy this now, to support this sort of endeavour: the songs collected here were “Culled from over 150 ageing cassettes found at the Asian Branch of the Oakland Public Library in California”. Here – I’ll just let them explain themselves.

SUBLIME FREQUENCIES is a collective of explorers dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers via film and video, field recordings, radio and short wave transmissions, international folk and pop music, sound anomalies, and other forms of human and natural expression not documented sufficiently through all channels of academic research, the modern recording industry, media, or corporate foundations.

I’d've never heard of them – never – without using the open-field for learning that the internet can be.

Anyway, I find LOTS of stuff, but not all of it blows my mind. This one does:

Don’t Let My Girlfriend Tickle Me
by Sim Sisamouth

Much of the rest of the collection is that good, too. Really fun stuff – probably because it’s so familiar and so strange.