rock and roll eclectricity
Another great one from Branden Town – a video for Friday Man. For a guy who’s often put out records and then not really told anybody, it’s great to see Pye promoting this one over the course of a year. I have a hunch its new musical partner Tessa pushing this – wonder if I’m right? check it out, and if you get a chance to see YJA play live (so far only in Quebec and Nova Scotia), do. Can’t wait for a visit to TO.
M found this on Facebook – I overheard it from upstairs and got excited. I love the Santoor, and it plays beautifully in a trad jazz band. Also love that the second player is a woman.
Marjan shared this site with me – she’s always finding me cool shit on the internet: It’s called Audio Pollination, and it’s a series of improvised musical performances over near Trinity Bellwoods. The blogsite shares the music and the names of performers, upcoming performance dates, and some of the pieces are downloadable. I’ll be gorging myself today on this. Yum.
Hey faithful reader –
I’m moving! All posts that might have appeared here will now appear at misterjep.wordpress.com. Hopefully, it’ll help my post productivity.
See you there.
Love
j.
I was not excited to hear Kate Bush had a new record out this winter. I’ve gotten excited and then disappointed by her releases since The Red Shoes, and the lameness of The Director’s Cut (an appealing premise, an appalling result*) had convinced me that she had nothing left to offer.
So 50 Words For Snow was the first album by her I didn’t run out and pick up. I downloaded it from somewhere to sample. Irony: it’s brilliant, and I can’t stop listening to it. (I’ve gone out and bought it – a nice vinyl package.)
It’s meditative and enveloping and deep, and really effective. I’m impressed. I don’t hold it against an artist when they run out of gas – it’s almost inevitable. But it is genuinely exciting to find out that an older genius still has it. If Joni Mitchell has one record left in her as good as this, I’ll be a very happy man. I’m not holding my breathe, but it’d be nice.
Go somewhere else to read about the record. Click here to hear a sample – Snowflake. The almost-Kate voice (“my fabulous dancing…”) is, interestingly, her son.
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* The Director’s Cut was her reworking of about half the songs on The Sensual World and half of The Red Shoes. If you haven’t heard it, and care, go hear the original version of Deeper Understanding to see why the new version is even more awful than you think. The Sensual World‘s version was musically so interesting and warm that I easily forgave the silly-ish premise. This new version is terrible, and the decision to suck-it-up is questionable in a George Lucas sort of of way.
That being said, the whole Director’s Cut thing is a great reminder that the records we love are often happy accidents – of pleasing writing, players, performances, production values, choices, plus context and timing in our own lives all matching up at once – and that it is luck/fortune that brings us those great records.
Here: if you don’t know she was once unbelievable, and care, listen to this, from her best record – brutally dismissed at the time – Night of the Swallow (plays on youtube).
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog…
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,800 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
From the magical Land of Sarnia, a trio of brothers (Mike, Mutt and Marco!) who all work in their parents’ pizza shop and create really well-crafted new-wave-flavoured super pop songs with visuals the Flaming Lips would enjoy. There’s a touch of that Violent Femmes wry teenage lust to the songwriting.
Their record, Pizza Face, is available on bandcamp (also on vinyl from Cheeky Monkey). Both videos have a brilliant, contagious sense of celebration – I rarely watch a whole video, and these kept me in. I really dig this. Right on to the Chocolate Robots.
The Info Pusher sent me this article, which announces that major labels are going to stop manufacturing CDs next year! I assumed this would happen, but not this soon. While I stopped buying CDs about 5 years ago, and always preferred the LP, I feel oddly stricken with a strange panic. What will my mother do? My sister who has never downloaded anything? What will happen to the CD shops that remain? How will we give music as a gift (to those majority who don’t have a record player)? Will blank CDs fade out too? It’s another great shake up in an industry that’s been trembling and shuddering for a famously bad decade.
Just wanted to mention it. Big news.
Here’s something that would not exist without the CD (for better or worse):
The Jello Fund – Lemonheads (from Come on Feel the Lemonheads)
I’ve been on a little bit of a Prince kick lately, for no particular reason. But the timing has lined up VERY well, as the World’s Luckiest Slave announced a Canadian Tour last week with two Toronto dates. The Info Pusher and I never go to the big shows – they’re too expensive and tend to resemble awful Broadway shows more than real concerts. But inspired and excited, we purchased two tickets to see Prince at the ACC for two hundred and fifty bucks (a sixth of which went to the evil, evil Ticketmaster).
I saw Prince in 88 on the Lovesexy tour, and it was wunderbar. I haven’t really listened to any new Prince material in 20 years, but I doubt it’ll matter. I’m pretty stoked.
Just wanted to tell you. (Let’s see if I can post a Prince song and not get in shit..!)
(bad) monkey X 