The Schizophrenic Coffee House

Just a quick one today. Lately my posts have dealt with music in culture or reviews or some such nonsense. There are a few reasons for this. Number one, I tend to get more random Google hits by talking about bands that people actually care about, which more often than not are not the bands that I play with. Number the second, I haven’t been playing that much lately. Critical Mass’ regular drummer is back from baby-hiatus, my audition with that other band still has to happen (got an email the other week assuring me that it will happen, perhaps not any time soon) and I haven’t had any calls from any of my other musical suitors.

This past Saturday, however, was officially one of the weirdest shows I ever played. The Runaway got asked to play a coffee house in Hamilton and asked me along, which I obliged. It was going to be a little more chill than usual so we put together more of a stripped down set: two songs with beats, one with guitar and one with djembe.

What made it bizarre was the other acts. I don’t know what the advisor’s concept of the evening would be, but here are the acts in the order I may or may not remember:

-- My friend Sara playing some folksy stuff, starting with a song about lemon meringue pie set to the tune of “Leavin’ On A Jet Plane”

-- A spoken word poet who did poems about, and backed by classical symphonies

-- A trio of Spanish youth singing songs in Spanish and “other historical Hispanic languages”

-- A stand up comedian who hated public transit

-- A woman singing songs in Serbian

-- A diminutive Asian tenor in a tuxedo singing opera in Italian

-- Another spoken word poet whose final piece centered on a pair of talking shoes that he owned

-- Us!

The show itself was decent. I absolutely maimed a few chords in one song, but got it back by the end.

OK, OK, enough of my meager musical existence. Something funny where I (something small) make fun of something in the music industry (something big) on Friday.

Review: Christopher O'Riley's True Love Waits and Hold Me To This

I'm almost embarrassed to be writing this review. Nothing says trend follower more than loving gimmicky albums, and this is about as gimmicky as they come.

Christopher O'Riley is a classical pianist who hass a deep appreciation of Radiohead. So much so that he, like Finnish all-cello Metallica cover band Apocalyptica, decided to merge his classical skills with his modern appreciation.

O'Riley and Apocalyptica. So alike...yet so, so different.

The first fruit of this genre-melding was 2003's True Love Waits: Christopher O'Riley Plays Radiohead. On it, O'Riley picks a little bit from every album up until that point (excluding 2003's Hail To The Thief). What impressed me right off the bat was his song selection. It would have been easy to do Radiohead's greatest hits, but there are a few popular songs evident by their absence (the most obvious being Pablo Honey's "Creep"). O'Riley chose songs based on their evocative merit, including lesser-known tracks like "You", "I Can't", Black Star" and so on.

That isn't to say that this is a catalogue of b-sides: even casual fans know "Fake Plastic Trees" and "Karma Police". And while it's true that some tracks work better than others, you never get the sense that O'Riley felt he should include something that people will know. His credibilty as an arragner and as a music appreciator grows track by track. He evokes all the fury, hopelessness and navel-gazing that Radiohead is famous for while ably absorbing each melody and harmony into the medium of classical piano. Personal favourites from this album include "Airbag" and "Exit Music (For A Film)".

O'Riley followed up in just under two years time with 2005's Hold Me To This: Christopher O'Riley Plays Radiohead. The album focuses much more on Radiohead's modern era, taking nothing from Pablo Honey and only "(Nice Dream)" and "Street Spirit (Fade Out)"from The Bends. It's evident that O'Riley has hit his stride by this point; he seems more willing to take chances with the material, adding in crescendos and decrescendos and even sprinkling in his own counter-melodies. Fortunately, any tendencies O'Riley has towards aggressive arrangement are tempered by a nigh-reverence for his source material, resulting in an almost perfect blend of styles. The only fly in the ointment is "2+2=5", specifically the bridge. A one-note dischordant bridge is fine in experimental rock, but on the piano it's going to sound like your finger slipped no matter how many times you do it on purpose. With that aside, however, everything else is gold. I especially love "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" and "The Tourist".

I don't think anyone can go wrong on these albums. It's great music for background at dinner parties, to study to, or to listen to intently. Fans of Radiohead are especially encouraged to pick this up, as it adds a whole new dimension to the songs while maintining their original flavour.

Here's a clip of Mr. O'Riley in action:

I should also mention that there is a jazz pianist named Brad Mehldau who does some Radiohead covers. Here's him doing the same song:

Mehldau also covers "Paranoid Android" and "Knives Out". His covers outside of Radiohead include Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun", Oasis' "Wonderwall" and the Beatles' "Blackbird".

Peace!

Best Music Movies II

2. That Thing You Do! (dir Tom Hanks, 1996)
Four kids from Erie, Pennsylvania (not Eerie, Indiana) write a hit song in the 1950s and embark on a whirlwind tour with other acts on their record label. In between times, the drummer falls in love and the guitarist falls in lust.

I really think every drummer in the world must love that movie. The drummer adds the part that makes the song a hit. The drummer impresses everyone on tour. The drummer gets the girl. What's not to like? The cool thing about this film is that they hired actors to play all the parts and then trained them to play their instruments...which they all do very, very well. I couldn't see through any of their performances and their characters are even evident in the way they play their instruments: Guy's jazz/rock hybrid drumming, Lenny's cocky lead guitar moves, Jimmy's stay-at-home brooding rhythm guitar.

Best Song: "That Thing You Do" (The Wonders)

Best Dialogue: PHOTOGRAPHER: Hey, you in the Linettes [sunglasses]. Are those prescription or are you just trying to look cool?

GUY: Uh, well, I am the drummer.

Star Spotting: Where to begin? Lots of actors I love in this movie. Liv Tyler and Ethan Embry of Empire Records fame are reunited here. Tyler plays the smart yet somewhat naive Faye in a departure from Empire's smart yet somewhat naive Rory. Embry does a total 180 from Mark's goofy stoner vibe as the nameless and quiet bass player. Tom Hanks is fantastic in his role as the Wonders' manager. I have a serious man-crush on Steve Zahn, mostly because of this movie. I would never watch him in a lead role but he never disappoints in a supporting role. A pre-Monster Charlize Theron plays Guy's soon-to-be ex girlfriend, while Giovanni Ribisi has a small role as the Wonders' ex-drummer. The only other major cameos of note are Tom Hanks' wife as a cocktail waitress who flirts with Guy, and his son Colin in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it apppearance escorting Faye into the television studio.

1. Once (dir. John Carney, 2007)

I have yet to find anyone who didn't love this film, but since I hang out with mostly musicians and this is definitely a musician's film that isn't surprising. Once details the creative synergy and budding romance between two unlikely and unremarkable people -- a busker in Dublin, Ireland and an eastern European expatriate who plays piano. The audience never finds out their names, but we do get to watch them write and record some fantastic songs.

What's really interesting about this film for me is how the movie was shot. The two leads ar eeplayed by Glen Hansard (remember The Commitments?) and Marketa Irglova, neither of whom are actors (if you saw The Commitments, you know of what I speak). In order to create as natural a space as possible for them to feel comfortable, Carney uses mostly long shots (like, across the street long shots) and it gives the film an odd voyeuristic quality.

The songs are fantstic. After seeing this movie on a Thursday, my fiancee and I went to the mall early Friday to pick up the soundtrack for our road trip the net day, even though it made us late for our soundcheck (sorry Jon!).

Best Song: "When Your Mind's Made Up" (Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova)

Best Dialogue: Actually, it's hard to remember any. Lyrics maybe? "The little cracks, they escalated/And before we knew it was too late/For making circles and telling lies".

Star Spotting: None. None whatsoever.

And that's it! Honourable mention has to go to A Mighty Wind.

If you feel I missed one, let me know.

Best Music Movies

In the spirit of my Nick and Norah's review, I thought I would post my top five music-related movies of all time (in no particular order).

5. Empire Records (1995, dir. Allan Moyle)
Ah, the 90s. What a time to be alive. Cell phones were the size of surfboards, The Simpsons were funny, and people bought their music in disc-or-tape form. This day-in-the-life record store movie is wildly unrealistic (case in point: when I worked in a record store one of our first questions was “why do you want this job?” If the interviewee even mentioned this movie, they were shown the door), but so much fun to watch. The plot careens between ridiculously corny to ridiculously overdramatic, the characters are more like caricatures and you can totally tell that guy doesn’t know how to drum, but in spite of its deficiencies it’s extremely endearing.
It also suffers from that interesting mid-90s disease where the soundtrack was so much better than the movie: Gin Blossoms, Better Than Ezra, Evan Dando, Cranberries, and so on. It’s a perfect period piece, and I like to think it would be made the exact same way today if someone was making a movie about a mid-90s record store.
Best Song: "Sugarhigh" (Coyote Shivers)

Best Dialogue: MARK (answering phone): Empire Records, open til midnight. (pause) MIDNIGHT!
Star Spotting: Renee Zellweger and Liv Tyler are the two biggest names associated with this one. Second tier names include Ethan Embry (credited as Ethan Randall) and Rory Cochrane. GWAR cameos. Tobey Maguire had a part but requested during filming that he be released for health reasons, so all his scenes were cut.

4. DiG! (2004, dir. Ondi Timoner)
This is a documentary detailing two “brother” bands, the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. They start out being pals and doing shows together, but the Dandies ascend to international rock stardom while the BJM repeatedly fail to reach the same heights, usually as a result of drug-induced meltdowns from their lead singer and musical hub, Anton Newcombe.
I have watched this movie over and over. I watched it with my fiancée a few months ago and she enjoyed it, but she couldn’t understand why I’d want to see it more than once. It’s the same reason I don’t ask a certain band who I haven’t worked with in months to take me off their email admin list: I love observing the inner workings of bands, and to see to stark contrasts in styles of band management is very interesting.
For the record, Newcombe has distanced himself from and attacked DiG! at every opportunity, calling it “"at best, a series of punch-ups and mishaps taken out of context, and at worst, bald-faced lies and misrepresentation of fact”. Of course, this is the guy who also said “people talk about Eric Clapton. What has he ever done except throw his baby off a fucking ledge and write a song about it?” and called Chris Carabba “the poster child for legalized abortion”, so find truth where you will.
Best Song: "The Ballad of Jim Jones" (Brian Jonestown Massacre)

Best Dialogue: ONDI: Is that blood on you?
ANTON: Yeah.
ONDI: From where?
ANTON: From other people’s FACES!
Star Spotting: Not a lot. There's a quick sequence at the Glastonbury festival with a bunch of performers talking to the Dandies, including Kim Deal of the Breeders and Scott and Patrick from Weezer. Harry Dean Stanton also shows up at a BJM house party. And, uh, Mercury Rev? Yup.

3. The Commitments (1991, dir. Alan Parker)
Based on a Roddy Doyle novel of the same name, The Commitments traces a group of 20-something Dubliners in the mid-80s as they decide to form a 60s-style soul band. That was alot of decades in that last sentence. They play, they suck, they get better, they fight…it’s a pretty honest representation of being in a band. The acting is somewhere between passable and awful (they decided to get musicians who could kind of act instead of actors who could learn how to play: the opposite of That Thing You Do) and the dialogue is pretty rigid in parts, but it's still fun. Espcially if you're Irish. And in a band. You can see why I like it.

Best Song: "Try A Little Tenderness" (The Commitments)
Best Dialogue: OUTSPAN: Where'd you get the piano?
STEPHEN: It's me granny's.
OUTSPAN: That was nice of her.
STEPHEN: She doesn't know I took it.
OUTSPAN: Won't she notice?
STEPHEN: She doesn't use the front room much.
Star Spotting: Colm Meaney, better known as Chief O'Brien from Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space 9 plays Jimmy's father ( or "da" in the local parlance). 18 year old Glen Hansard plays Derek "Outspan" Foster; he would later go on to form the Frames and the Swell Season. He later starred in the movie Once (more on that later). And Bronagh Gallagher, who plays Bernie, later played the starship captain who gets blown up in the first 10 minutes of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.
Andrea Corr of the Corrs got a small part as Jimmy's sister. Her siblings, who form the rest of the Corrs, also cameo as musicians auditioning for the band. The relationship they established with the music coordinator on The Commitments later helped them secure their first record deal. Finally, the skateboarding kid who tries to audition from the street is the same kid on the cover of U2's Boy and War albums.


Wow, that's a lot. I'll save my other two for next time.

News of the Week

Tokyo Police Club Heart Housewives
From the “who said who to what?” file, Tokyo Police Club will be appearing on an episode of Desperate Housewives in November. Huh? Where’s the connect here? Do people who like TPC like that show? Does anyone like that show (besides Mr. Eva Longoria)?
I understand market synergy. Veronica Mars and the Dandy Warhols made sense, since the show and the band have similar audiences and would cross-promote well. Feist on Sesame Street is a bit more of a stretch, until you consider that she appeals to 25-40 year olds, many of whom have small children. Imagine what this cross-promotion can do! I can’t wait until my next TPC show so I can rub shoulders with velour-tracksuit-havin’, large-jewelry-wearin’, faux-martini-drinkin’ moms. IT WILL HAPPEN. THE TELEVISION WILL MAKE IT SO.

Noel Gallagher Hearts Bono, Hypocrisy

Noel Gallagher probably talks trash in his sleep. The most recent victim of the mouthy Briton is Keane, whom he branded “shit” in a recent interview.

Know who he does like? Bono. "People will not accept that Bono is sincere - in this cynical age, they think he's really just a cunt. But he's not."

You damn skippy, Noel! Screw cynicism! Screw people who say stuff about Radiohead like “Thom Yorke sat at a piano singing ‘this is fucked up’ for half an hour. We all know that, Mr. Yorke. Who wants to sing the news? No matter how much you sit there twiddling, going, ‘we’re all doomed’, at the end of the day people will always want to hear you play “Creep”. Get over it”. Or people who say stuff about Bono himself like “play “One”, shut the fuck up about Africa.” Or people who are all cynical about stuff like Live 8:

“‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but are they hoping that one of these guys from the G8 is on a quick 15-minute break at Gleneagles and sees Annie Lennox singing “Sweet Dreams” and thinks, “Fuck me, she might have a point there, you know?” And Keane doing “Somewhere Only We Know” and some Japanese businessman going, ‘aw, look at him…we should really fucking drop that debt, you know.’ It’s not going to happen, is it?”

Wait, who was that cynical bastard? Oh, right, it was Noel Gallagher. Oh yes it was. Hey Noel, how many faces do you have again?

Tom DeLonge Hearts Not Talking (Finally)

Tom DeLonge, currently of Angels and Airwaves and formerly of Blink 182, has made a rare trip on the logic train. On the subject of Barker’s horrific plane crash and subsequent burns, DeLonge said: “Everyone wants to know what I think and it’s not about me. It’s not about Tom at all. It’s not about Blink at all. It’s about Travis and his family, you know, so stop worrying about what I feel or what I think or what I say because at this point it doesn’t matter.”

I once read a great interview with Mark Hoppus on Blink’s breakup that made DeLonge come off like a total space cadet. I then read a rebuttal interview with DeLonge, where he STILL came off like a total space cadet. This quote is one step towards restoring my opinion. Which I’m sure is important to him.

Review: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

What can I say? I get a couple of blogs under my belt and suddenly I’m rife with ideas to post.

I’m a sucker for movies about bands and music, so much so that I’m probably going to do a post on it sometime soon. So when I heard about the premise for Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, I was immediately interested. Two people running all over new York City looking for a band, while sharing their favourite music with each other along the way? One of them is Michael Cera? And he’s playing bass? Sweet!

You could tell that whoever wrote the movie has watched a lot of Linklater stuff, specifically Dazed and Confused. Very similar setup, with the characters and their respective roles (the bitchy ex, the drunken flirt, the moody loner, the heartbroken good guy, etc.) coming into focus within five minutes. The plot? Two groups of friends chasing a legendary band to a secret gig in New York City. The first group is Michael Cera’s band in New Jersey, who are two-thirds gay (Cera being the lone hetero). The other group is three upper-class high school senior girls, one of who is Cera’s ex named Tris who cheated on him consistently during their 6 month relationship (not that he knows). Cera’s Nick is the focus of his group, and Kat Dennings’ smarty-pantsed-alt-loner-misfit-etc. Norah is the focus of hers.

The premise is fantastic, but the execution is awful. What could have been a well-paced love letter to the New York indie scene becomes a frat-pack party movie. Norah’s best friend drinks herself stupid and spends the remainder of the film stumbling around New York at night by herself, throwing up in ice cream coolers and following pantsless strangers into buildings (of course I’m not kidding). She makes a ton of ridiculously dangerous decisions, and it’s kind of hard to laugh at the possibilities of a drunk, flirtatious teenage girl talking to strangers in the bus station. This unease is accented after Nick is accosted by homeless people (Andy Samberg in a somewhat amusing but pointless cameo).

The meat of the film is supposed to be Nick and Norah’s romance. Norah is half in love with Nick because of all the amazing mix CDs he made for Tris after their breakup. After a chance meeting at a bar, Nick’s bandmates decide he and Norah should be together and arrange it so the two of them spend the night together looking for Where’s Fluffy, a fictitious New York band famous for their guerilla-style show promotion. Of course, spending time together makes them fall in love. Or makes them realize they’ve always been in love. Or something. I’m not quite sure. I do know that sometimes they like each other, then sometimes they hate each other, and sometimes one of them punches the other in the throat, and I was never quite sure why.

None of the performances stood out for me. Michael Cera is either a one-note actor or he’s being typecast, early-Jim-Carrey-style. Baffingly, the director chose to use the most base parts of Cera’s trademark persona (the nervousness, the don’t-hurt-me smiles) and denied us the best parts: namely, those improved stream-of-consciousness rambles that always seem to become his most quotable lines.

Denning’s character is what it is. The script doesn’t allow for the characters to follow their emotions logically (not even teenage drunk/hormonal logic) so it’s hard to know wheterh the suck started at the acting, the directing or the writing.

This might be one of those Romeo and Juliet things where you buy the soundtrack even though the movie is terrible. I picked out Vampire Weekend and We Are Scientists during the show. Further research indicates that Shout Out Louds, the Dead 60s, and Takka Takka will also be on the soundtrack (Tapes n’ Tapes will not be on the disc, although I swear I heard them at one point).

So yeah, I give Nick and Norah a 2 out of 5.

News of the Week

Item 1: Chris Martin Hearts Nickelback, But Not Coldplay
You read that right. I’ve been hating on Coldplay for years, a stance which I’ve softened a bit over the last little while due partially to my cheerful, sunny disposition and due to the fact that my fiancée loves them. Fortunately, Chris Martin has done me a solid by admitting in an interview that his band is “less shit” than they used to be, proving that there is a shit-to-not-shit ratio in effect in Coldplay currently, and it used to be higher. I’ll guess somewhere around the 200:1 mark, but that’s just hypothetical.

In the same interview Martin admits to liking Nickelback, giving me further proof that he knows very little about music. It’s too bad it’s to late it’s too bad it’s too WHOOOAAAA-OOOOOHHHHH.

Oh, AND he proved that he’s a bit of a jerk by saying that people who don’t like Nickleback have done “fuck-all” with their lives. We can’t all be in the Nappies, Chris.

Truthfully, Chris Martin seems to be a nice enough guy and I'm sure he was just standing up for a band who get trashed by everyone. Saying that Nickelback haters haven't done "fuck all" with their lives, however, is pretty nasty. I like to think I've done a lot: I started this blog, I once saw'r a blimp, and I started this blog. But even I cannot lay claim to travelling backwards in time to the mid 90s to buy my wardrobe and get my hair cut:

I bow to your superiority, Chad and co.

Item 2: Thieves Don’t Heart Elton John
According the the CBC, a bunch of cars were broken into during an Elton John concert in Newfoundland. Two men were arrested for theft and “malicious damage”, which leads me to believe that there was some serious hate-on for Sir Elton that went beyond simple "let's see if we can get a copy of Candle In The Wind 2001 for free" thievery. I’m guilty of Elton John hating as well, but I didn’t break into any cars when he was in Kitchener.

Music confounds me sometime. I find Sir Elton’s songs to be banal at best, annoying at worst, but to read the comments of concertgoers as they left the venue you’d think that God hisownself had stepped down from the clouds to play “Rocketman”. I guess it takes different strokes to move the world.

Item 3: People I Kind Of Know Heart The Polaris Prize
The Polaris Prize was decided this week, and two artists I have very slight connections to were nominated. Shad, who I opened for last November, was up for The Old Prince. Caribou, who is friends with my ex, was up for Andorra. Ultimately Caribou won, proving that the closer you are to knowing me the more likely you are to win Canadian music awards. Or something.

Item 4: New Kids Heart Meaningless Words
The New Kids On The Block (yes, THOSE New Kids On The Block) have released a new album called The Block. Is it the same Block that they are on? Or is it a different Block altogether? No one’s quite sure.

It’s getting diced up in reviews, and having listened to some of the tracks I can see why. At the end of their run in the 90s they tried te be more sexually explicit to appeal to the most desperate members of their fan base mature, which got them laughed out of the industry for a decade. Have they learned? Noooooooo. The Block is rife with sexual innuendo, imagery and out-and-out audio foreplay. My favourite track (read: track I laughed at the most) is “Sexify My Love”. Sexify? I may hate myself later for asking, but what does it mean to sexify something? Can anything be sexified? Sandwiches? Lawn rakes? Stress balls? (OK, maybe that one…)

Not content with putting a ridiculous non-word in the title and chorus, in the first verse the Kids reveal that they want to “conversate“ before getting’ it on. You know, instead of conversing.

Man, those hats are so....sexified.

Concert Stories: Five Iron Frenzy

OK, so I was driving home from basketball last night (we lost, 60-48) and 102.1 was broadcasting live from the Weezer/Angels and Airwaves/Tokyo Police Club show. The DJ was telling a story about this 19-year-old kid who had been buying beer for his underage buddies and was caught and removed by security. He was arguing all the way out and spied a couple of cops outside the venue who he started pleading his case to. He apparently got so hysterical that he started crying and wound up being led away in cuffs. Call me a jerk, but that story makes me laugh!

So I thought I would start telling some awesome concert stories that I witnessed or was part of.

Probably my favourite one is back on October 5, 2003. Five Iron Frenzy was on their “Winners Never Quit” farewell tour and the closest they were coming to Ontario was Grand Rapids, Michigan. I really don’t know why it took so long to decide we wanted to go, but on the morning of the show myself, my friend Justin (bass player from Token Glory), and Justin’s friend (whose name I can’t remember but will refer to hereafter as Bob) decided we wanted to go. Well, to be specific, Justin and I decided we wanted to go, and Justin told Bob about it and he invited himself, which annoyed me a lot. More on that later.

So we hopped in my Taurus and hit the road for Grand Rapids, which is 5 hours away (what are a Google Maps? I am a good for to be at distances). I was not super psyched about the long drive, because Bob was on my “Top Five People To Give The Broken Face To Should The Opportunity Arise” list at the time. I was less well-adjusted in 2003. I was also in man-love with FIF and decided that if a five hour ride with Bob was the necessary evil to get me to the show, then so be it.

As it turned out, Bob was possibly the most unnecessary evil of all time. He told us that he would take care of all the internet detectivery necessary to ensure a smooth ride to the show. Mostly, that meant getting directions. He jumped into the car with the directions in his hands and off we go. About two hours into the drive he tells us that he wasn’t able to find directions to the club (FAIL!) but he WAS able to get directions to the Town Centre, which was some sort of information kiosk in Grand Rapids that should surely have what we were looking for. Super.

So we get to the border and it is further determined that Bob has failed to bring anything resembling a passport or birth certificate along. After a search by customs it is agreed to let us through on his driver’s license. So we go the rest of the way and find our way into Grand Rapids about 45 minutes before showtime a-twitter with anticipation.

That is, until we discovered that Bob’s directions weren’t to the Town Centre: they were to the centre of the town (EPIC Fail!). Our journey ended abruptly in the parking lot of a random convenience store in an extremely Mexican part of town. Justin gassed the car up as I tried to explain to passerby in my meager Spanish what we were after; no dice. We eventually managed to get directions to the downtown, from which we hoped to navigate our way to the show.

After hitting up bar after bar and trying to find concert listings in the local indies, we were 15 minutes late for the show and still had no idea where to go. As we were driving past a Taco Bell I thought to myself “You know what? Punk rock kids go to Taco Bell” and pulled in.

The Bell was deserted except for the staff and a preppie woman and two men in their late twenties sitting in a corner booth. With nothing to lose, I approached the booth and asked if they had ever heard of Five Iron Frenzy (which had been getting anything from a “no” to a smirk in all previous attempts). Surprisingly, they said yes! I asked if they knew where they were playing, and they said yes! I asked for directions, and they didn’t know how to get there – but they took us to their office and let us in to scour the internets. Turns out they were at Taco Bell getting food for the one guy’s wife who had just had a baby. Meeting those guys was almost enough to make up for Bob’s trip on the monoFAIL. We started driving, and 20 minutes later we were in the parking lot of a huge church.

There we saw a trio of teenage girls who informed us that the show was sold out. Justin wanted to drive home, as he had had enough trouble for today. But I was all like “forget that noise” and we walked into the church where there was still a lineup of 30-40 ticketholders waiting to get in. I went to the front of the line and talked with the ladies working the ticket tables, one of whom went inside to talk to security after I explained that we drove five hours from Canada. We then walked up and down, flashing our passports (or licenses) for sympathy and asking for extra tickets. Amazingly, a youth pastor who had bought a group package had exactly three extra tickets with him that kids had bought but didn’t show up for…and he gave them to us. Another example of providence shining on us, despite Bob being the captain of the FAILboat.

The show itself was amazing: we got to meet Dennis, the trombone player, and buy the limited edition of The End Is Near that was only available on that tour (it was later released with a live disc of the band’s final show as The End Is Here, but with slightly different packaging). The crowd was great, the sound was great, and bob slept the whole way home so I didn’t have to talk to him. Actually, Bob and Justin slept the whole way home, breaking one of the cardinal rules of concert-going: you never fall asleep on the way home unless the driver says it’s OK. Bob also never paid me for gas or the dinner I bought him and thus owes me $50. At prime plus 1 for 5 years, he owes me $73.47.

Somebody misses me...

So I was hanging out last night, minding my bweeznass, when it was commented upon that I haven't updated this blog in a month. And I had actually been kind of OK with that. I felt like I had said a lot of stuff I wanted to on subjects of interest in the music industry, and musically nothing very exciting has been happening to me personally lately. Not a lot of shows, no recording, no jamming. Blame it on having a Clark Kent job, school, and not a lot of desire to search out bands to play with.

So maybe just some random musings on music and something more coherent later this week:

* Thank goodness chartattack has revamped their new-look site. I used to love CA because I could go and there were news pieces right in fornt of me, headline after headline. They changed about a month ago and it became really frustrating trying to sort through tiny, tiny thumbnails and story previews to find, you know, stories, so I gave up. Now they've tweaked again and you have only to click on "news" to get some headlines. They're still running pieces on Amy Winehouse, which devalues them a bit, but you can't have everything.

* The Police apparently cleared $115 million with their reunion tour this year, and that doesn't include what they're going to make from the associated CDs and photo books that are coming out. I can only hope the Token Glory reunion tour does the same bank if we ever get back together. I'm guessing not.

* Mitch Clem, my favourite web cartoonist/internet celebrity, has started a story arc about music piracy. Click here for the first installment. Currently there are three chapters available. Quality~!

Bye for now.

On the road again II

Well, hello there!

So what’s new with you?

I am fine.

Yeah, so actually, I’m really busy. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks music wise. Let’s run down the insanity:

So last week I was due to audition with a band. Long story short, I put a lot of time into learning some songs, and then the audition got postponed due to a sudden emergency. So that’s on hold.

THEN, last Saturday I had a gig with My 2 Sense at the Zurich (Ontario) Beanfest. Those of you who pay especially close attention to my musical exploits (uh, which I guess is me) will know that I played Beanfest two years ago with Monica Joy, the highlight of which was the septic truck coming in and emptying the portapotties mid-set to the delight of no one.

This year was different: the septic tank showed up while we were soundchecking, to the relief everyone. This truck was not to be outdone, however, and managed to run over the cabling and disconnect all power to the stage. As a result we went on SUPER late and only got to play about half of our songs. The set itself went very well, though. I got to have a really cool conversation with a cancer victim who was really struck by the song “Destiny Rides” which is about a girl dying of cancer (who likes to ride horses and is named Destiny, hence the title).

Perhaps my favourite part of the day was interacting with the “headlining” band. This was some local C&W band with an obscenely long name who were playing three sets throughout the day. We had been told that we could use their drummer’s kit in order to minimize stage setup. Thursday before that he was getting “itchy” and would rather I bring my own kit. Hauling a drumkit 2 hours across the province isn’t high on my list of favourite things to do, so I already have an intense dislike for this guy, but am resolved to be professional.

So I get there and am glad I brought my kit ‘cause his was AWFUL. Must have been around 20 y/o, with a warped 24” x 12” kick (yes, the kick was half as long as it was around). All the toms had only batter heads (no resonant heads to make them sound like anything other than tarps over cooking pots) and the bass pedal had a strap instead of a chain. Oh, and he had ROTOTOMS!!!!! Yikes.

The drummer himself was this 40+ guy with a feathered blond dye-job and grey roots. He was wearing a button down shirt with nothing underneath wide open and it was one of those crazy print-style button downs that you always see kids wearing with Spider-Man, except this one had Snoop Dogg on the back. I so wish I was making this up. He told me he wasn’t “interested” in moving his kit, so I would have to set mine up at the side of the stage. You have to understand that this stage is basically an open side-view of a trailer, so there’s barely room for one kit, let alone two.

The funny thing is, I had visions of this exact same thing happening while I was driving up and I had all these grand ideas about how I would just start grabbing his kit and taking it offstage, all rebel-like. But by this point I had already been in the sun for an hour and saw that there was a crown of 20 pensioners and a couple of families. In short, it really didn’t seem worth it to kick up a fuss. I hope Feather-Haired-Snoop-Dogg-Country-Drummer has a long and successful career as a Rototom solo artist.

Sunday I made the trek to Hamilton to lead worship with Jeremiah’s Big Day Out at Philpott church. It was a lot of fun. A LOT of fun. There’s something to be said about playing with people you’ve been playing with for five years. Everything was smooth bordering on precognitive: I can anticipate where Graham’s going now to the point that he turned around to call a structure change mid-song and I said it at the same time as he did. Doesn’t make a great story, but it makes me happy to be playing, so that’s the main thing,

Have a good week! I’ll check in Friday.

News and such

OK, missed Friday's post. You'd thinkin a week where Isaac Hayes died I could find something to post about, but not so much. So here's what's new with me.

So this past weekend Krista and I got to rokk out with Garner. TheG-men are a three piece, but were leading worship for a conference which necessitated a bigger band. So Krista sang, I percussed and Christy Bloemendal bass'd. We called ourselves the Adherents and we rocked. We did a session Friday night and two sessions on Saturday and Sunday. In between we went to Starbucks, ate thai, played Settlers of Catan, and made general merriment. The coolest part was seeing Garner do a show Satrsday night for the conference. You have to check these guys out -- they're great. I'll post some pics later if Krista sends them to me. :)

So this week I am:

1) Auditioning for a new band (Tuesday)
2) Rehearsing and playing a show with My 2 Sense (Thursday/Saturaday)
3) Leading worship with Jeremiah's Big Day Out (Sunday)

So yes, I'm insane. Will ty to remember to take pics and I hope you'll forgive me if i miss this Friday as well. :)

K

The RIAA Took My Baby Away II

Part one was last Friday (just below) talking about why the RIAA's continued legal action against private citizens is ridiculous. According to a semi-succesful drummer who's never worked full-time in the industry but cares about it, here's what they should do.



CD prices need to PLUMMET. CDs are now an outdated medium and their price needs to reflect that. No one should EVER have to pay more than $15 for a CD, and if it's one disc with a two-page insert it shouldn't be over $10. CDs started their rise to popularity in 1985, and by 1993 they had overtaken tapes; this with everyone having to buy new equipement to play them! If MP3s move that much quicker, why hasn't the price of CDs dropped more? Because the industry is holding on to their money card instead of trying to develop a new one.

After CD prices go down, hopefully CD sales will stabilize and even climb a bit. Sure, the industry will still lose money, but at least people will be buying from the industry again instead of just file sharing. The assumption here is that people would rather buy in physical form rather than online, which isn't always the case; but even as a show of respect for the MP3 and a sign of deference to the customer, it helps.

Next, understand that "copyright" is not the same as "ownership". Copyright is meant to encourage the creation of new, original works while simultaniously affording some protection for the creators of said works. It is NOT meant to give you unending rights to everything you make forever. Once I bought my car from Ford, it's MINE. Once I bought my shirt from Old Navy, it's MINE. RIAA, please stop trying to tell me what I can do with something once it's mine.

OK, I am now off my high horse. Something funny about musicians or something on Friday, promise.

The RIAA Took My Baby Away

Yup, a Ramones reference. I'm sure old!

Found this blog today. It provides updates on current file-sharing lawsuits the Recording Industry Associaton of America (RIAA) has launched against private citizens who uploaded music onto peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, allegedlly infringing on the copyrights of the RIAA. As you might have guessed from the title, Recording Industry vs The People (RITP) is very anti RIAA.

Most people who know me know that I'm not a big fan of P2P downloading. Yes, I make CDs for friends, and I receive CDs from friends too. Word of mouth has always been a necessary component of the industry, one that the record companies can't eveer seem to get their heads around (remember the attempted levy on blank cassettes in the mid-90s?).

Now, had somebody gone ahead and created 4,000 tapes and distributed them to anyone he or she could find, I would have had a problem with that. And we all know that there are at least a couple of more than 4,000 people downloading not only entire albums but entire discographies every day, with not a whit of money going to the companies that, as much as it sucks to say it, deserve the money.

Believe it or not, that's not what I wanted to discuss today. I'm actually pretty tired of arguing the ethics of downloading (SUPER SECRET HIDDEN MESSAGE: NOT INTERESTED IN THAT TODAY, SO LET'S MOVE FORWARD, MMMMMMMMMKAY?). What I WANT to talk about, and have hopefully provided adequete background for, is what I think of the RIAA's lawsuits.

Would you believe me if I said I thought they were a bad idea?

Please note that I didn't say I thought they were unjustified or even illegal (although some of their tactics are pretty frightening, according to RITP). What the lawsuits are, however, is a bellow and a swipe from a dinosaur going down into a tar pit: a scary and potentially damaging threat, but one you know can't last too long. (Oh, and the dinosaur part shows that the RIAA is behind the times. Wanted to make sure that's obvious.)

For one, let's look at general perception. Even before the lawsuits, record execs were considered to be evil parasites digging their claws into the backs of the artists, altering records to attract more sales and signing and dropping artists on a whim. You never, EVER heard someone outside speak well of execs: opinions from the general public were either neutral or negative. And it wasn't even the public they were screwing (much; when average CD prices climbed above the $20 mark in the early 2000's, the protest was so great that one company marked all their new product back to $15, and the rest followed suit. Only know that 'cause I was working at a record store at the time).

So now, already holding (at best) a -25% rating with the people, the RIAA is going after the people. Yep, that's going to encourage a LOT of people to stay on their side and keep paying them for music. My favourite was this case , where the RIAA accused a private citizens of file sharing a few songs. Not many, just a couple. Turns out the person was a disabled single mother who, through the untraceable wonder that is an IP Address, was registered as downloading/uploading such family friendly tunes as "Hoes In My Room" despite the fact that nothing was on her PC indicated she had EVER shared ANYTHING. So of course, the RIAA pressed forward, of course, the case got thrown out, and OF COURSE, the mother is countersuing and the RIAA looks like a demon. An incompetent, foolish, somewhat amusing demon. The RIAA looks like a demon played by Curly of the Three Stooges.

Wow, maybe I should get back to the dinosaur simile from before before going to a demon metaphor. OK, so why a dinosaur? The RIAA is acting just like the recording industry always does when faced with something it can't control immediately; grinding its heels an calling foul. It did it in the 90s with blank tapes, too. And as long as it keeps this up, it's going to be behind the 8-ball.

Think about it: the first MP3 encoding program came out in 1994, creating a fourth media family for audio (vinyl, tape, disc and digital). Difference is, the industry does not control the device needed to play the medium: everyone already has a computer. Seven years later came a file sharing program, Napster, that took control of the MP3s right out of the industry's hands. Where was the industry in those seven years? Why were they not the ones developing and testing this BRAND NEW MEDIUM, making it work for them, creating a SALES system that they could control? Searched the interwebs, couldn't find an answer. I guess they were boosting CD prices, signing boy bands and girl singers, and thinking that everyone was going to have CDs forever.

What I would really like the RIAA to do is stop trying to scare us. RIAA, you can't get it back. You just can't. It's like holding sand: yes, some is going to slide through your fingers, but the harder you squeeze, the more you lose. So what do you do?

I'll tell you on Tuesday.

Sesame Street

OK, so I am sick with...something. Not sure what, but my body isn't really responding to my requests for movement without dizziness and nausea right now. So you get random Sesame Street videos from Youtube. Enjoy.



Many props to my man Mike Morrice for sending me this one. Gotta love Feist. Can't wait to see her ex-roommate Peaches on there. [WARNING -- Peaches is pretty crass).

This one you might need earphones for if you're at work:




And finally, this isn't from Sesame Street per se, but it embodies the spirit. A blast back to 90's:



That is all.

Sales

So after having a pretty slow June (by choice) and a really slow July (not so much by choice) things are picking up again!

I mentioned all kinds of stuff in the last post. Stuff I’d like you to remember. Stuff like the August 14 show in Milton with the Runaway. Please remember that. I won't be doing the BCR album, by the way: practiced with the boys last night and it didn't feel super good for me. I'm not so good at the metal stuff. They were still interested, but they wanted to get in the studio ASAP and I don't have the time to rehearse twice weekly for a band I'm not technically joining in the first place. So an amicable parting of way ensued.

But yeah, I forgot to mention the funnest stuff! Mainly, that I’m getting the chance to rock out with Garner soon. Remember them? Remember when I said I’ve never wanted a band I wasn’t in to succeed so badly? Well, that’s a half truth, because for three awesome days I am IN like FLYNN with Garner. They’re playing a worship conference in Waterloo and their drummer can’t make the last day, so I’ll be filling in. For the rest of the weekend I’ll rocking the djembe and shakers and so on. I even bought a djembe stand for the occasion, but after our first practice last night I’m kind of annoyed with it and may take it back.

Having worked in the sales part of music for a while, it’s always weird going into a store and having people sell me stuff. Not for the reason you think, though. For some reason, and I wish I knew why, I have this urge to make sure that the person knows I used to be in sales. I used to think that it was so they didn’t try to snow me on stuff that I knew better about, but I think it’s an esteem thing. It’s important to me that the sales person re-welcome me to the (non-existent) Fraternity of Sales. “I WAS ONCE LIKE YOU, SHINING IN THE STORE!! WE ARE CONTEMPORARIES, YOU AND I!” Yep, Weird guy.

Oh, and I also found a bunch a stuff I want to buy. A derbouka, for one,. And we saw an ocean drum. It’s a drum usually around 16”-20” around and around 3 inches wide. It’s completely enclosed, with one end clear plastic and the other head fabric. There are a bunch of ball bearings inside. You hold the drum flat with the fabric side down and gently swoosh the bearings inside to create the sound of the ocean (much like a rain stick). Sweet. Absolutely useless, but sweet.

I’m writing this on Thursday and I have my first practice with BCR tonight, so we’ll see how that goes. Have a rocktastic weekend and we’ll talk soon!

Back

“So what’s up with you? Three months and you’re already missing updates?”

Yep. Much like a squirrel saving nuts, I had saved up a bunch of random posts to get me through the droughts of nothing to write about/no time to write. But I ran out of nuts. And posts. And since I can’t buy posts at Zehrs, my readers (both of you) are the ones who must suffer. But not me. I bought more nuts.

ANYWAY!!! I am back, and I should hopefully have some good stuff to write about in the coming weeks.

For example, last Thursday the Runaway Jam played Maxwell’s Music House in Waterloo. Maxwell’s is a new venue owned and operated by Paul Maxwell, who you may remember as the keyboardist for the Tyler Schwende band. It’s a really cool concept and you should check it out.

ANYWAY, it was a great show. Titus was our first opener, followed by Relic, and then we hit the stage. It felt like we were a little under rehearsed: I finally got to spit my own lines in a verse and I messed them up, and there were a couple of other small not-necessarily-noticable-to-the-crowd-but-noticeable-to-us snags, but it went well.

We now have a big push towards August 14, which will be a huge show in Milton featuring ourselves and some very special guests (due to some necessary discretion we can’t say who will be there but trust me, you won’t want to miss this). It’s happening at 7 PM at 200 Main St. in Milton. You should come, and bring everyone you love.

I’ve also been in contact with a band called Black City Ruin and they’ve asked me to fill in for their recently departed drummer on their upcoming album. Sounds like fun, so I’m going to do it.

I also recently did my first photo shoot as a musician. My friend Blythe is a fantastic photographer and she was kind enough to do a shoot pro-bono for me (pro bono means “for the public good”, so maybe it’s not as appropriate as just saying “free” but I’d like to think pictures of me sitting on a train with a guitar case benefit the public). I’ll post some of them later and you can choose which ones you like.

I think that covers it for now. I still have a bunch of reviews I haven’t done yet and they’re getting so old as to be pointless, but what the hey. See you Friday.

Promoter's Commandments III: Thou Shalt Not Book More Than Four Bands Per Show

hey all!

This was set to run on Friday, but for some reason didn't. So here it is. I'll update again THIS Friday, for realsies.

This is the third in my “Promoter’s Commandments” series. Click here for the first and here for the second. All caught up? Good!

So let’s assume that you’ve accepted losing money, and gone ahead and promoted yourself silly to get a crowd in the door. You haven’t won yet. You still have a lot of room to screw the pooch with your show. And in my experience, nothing does it better than Band Overload.

There are a few reasons I think people shoose to turn what should be tiny shows into the NEXT-next coming of Woodstock. Sometimes people are googly-eyed running their first shows and want to include as many of their favourite bands as possible. Other times, people think that by booking the most acts possible they’ll draw more and make more cash. Both semi-logical theories, but ultimately ridiculous.

My housemate Luke has an awesome story about this. He used to play with a band called A Moment’s Embrace who did reasonably well in the indie Christian screamo scene. They once got booked for this huge show where the promoter had done everything right and there were around 500 people there, and AME were headlining. The only concern was that the promoter had overbooked and made a massive beast of the show, with seven (!) bands on the bill. Of course the openers went waaaay over their time allotment, so AME didn’t get on until well after midnight, when the crowd had dwindled to maybe 100 people. To add insult to injury, one of the openers sold out all their merch, while AME, who were supposed to be the “stars” of the show, were forced to pick up the scraps after their truncated set.

So to review: EVEN IF you book a band people actually want to see, and EVEN IF you manage to pull enough people to make money, and odds are they’ll leave after the third band of 10. There’s no better way to piss off your headliner than by thinning the ranks of the audience before they get on, and even you’re paying them a handsome fee to be there it’ll be tough for them to justify coming out for you again when you delivered an audience to someone else at their show.

Now, some people will undoubtedly say that if the headliner is big enough people will stay to the end. You’re right, but generally they won’t be there for the beginning. I know that if I see more than two openers on a flyer I make sure to get to the venue an hour and a half after doors. I’m all about finding new bands, but I’m also about seeing what I paid for and not wasting my time. If people show up late and miss the opening acts nobody gets the exposure that you (presumably) wanted them to have. A good general rule is to think about your own concert experiences before making decision about your own show. Does anyone enjoy hearing more than two openers before the headliners?

Why I Love: Five Iron Frenzy

Welcome to another edition of Why I Love. Today we’re going back deep into the recesses of my musical mind and unearthing one of the first bands I was totally geeked on: Five Iron Frenzy .

I’m still kind of puzzled as to how I got into FIF in the first place. Here are the facts: When I was 18 I started going to Waterloo MB church. I was from a Catholic family and didn’t know much about Contemporary Christian Music (CCM), but had gotten into a little bit thanks to some of the people I was hanging around. I remember early favourites being Audio Adrenaline and Johnny Q. Public (who, according to the best searches the Interweb can offer, disappeared sometime in 2000). Sometime during winter of 1998 I was in the Carpenter Shop (now the Gospel Lighthouse) in Waterloo and I saw this CD:



Before I knew it I walked out with the disc. I have no idea how I knew who they were, or what they sounded like, or why I thought I would like them: I just bought it and stuck it in my discman (ten years ago, gimme a break).

At the time I had just started listening to ska, so it was the right time for me to jump on board. FIF started as a “pure” ska band, all upstrokes and quickness and horns. But over the course of their career they branched away from ska, rooting themselves in rock sensibilities with an edge.

FIF is among the few bands to successfully swing between manic, silly humour and serious introspection and anger. They wrote an entire rock opera based around losing their pants (this is on the tail end of Quantity is Job #1 ) but also explored the nature of grace, personal failure before God, and more. Most importantly, they were attuned to many social issues, most notably native rights (“Banner Year” from Our Newest Album Ever is still one of my favourite songs).

Quantity is Job #1 was, is and continues to be my favourite FIF recording. I especially love “Dandelions”. It’s written around a metaphor that’s simple to the point of childishness: God sees us the way little kids see Dandelions. That is, He sees flowers where everyone else sees weeds.

I was lucky enough to see FIF twice, both times in Michigan. Their live shows were phenomenal, and their two live albums (Proof That The Youth Are Revolting and disc 2 of The End Is Here) are testament to that. Nobody could walk away from an FIF show in a funk – they were too much fun. It’s interesting to see how the Christian youth music scene is dominated mostly by screamo bands these days. There’s not the same sense of joy fused with reckless abandon there that there used to be, and I think FIF were one of (if not the last of) the generation of bands that embraced that side of culture.

FIF broke up in 2003, which still feels like it was yesterday for me.

I’ll admit that by the end of their run I was buying albums more out of completism than I was out of love for the band. There were a lot of tracks I liked on The End Is Near/The End is Here , but none that I abjectly loved. If you want to look up what I think reflects the best of FIF, here’s my top ten list:

1. Dandelions -- Quantity is Job #1
2. Handbook For The Sellout (live) -- The End Is Here (Disc 2)
3. World Without End -- All The Hype Money Can Buy
4. Every New Day -- Our Newest Album Ever
5. On Distant Shores -- The End Is Here (Disc 1)
6. Pre-Ex Girlfriend -- Five Iron Frenzy 2: Electric Boogaloo
7. Banner Year -- Our Newest Album Ever
8. All That Is Good -- Quantity is Job #1
9. Oh, Canada -- Our Newest Album Ever
10. Giants -- All The Hype Money Can Buy

Bigger, yes. Better...?

I mentioned before that I had bought an 80GB iPod. This has allowed me a certain amount of freedom in uploading. With my 4GB Nano, I had to weed through albums, find my favourite four or five songs and upload those. That meant that I had to predict which 400 songs I wanted to listen to in any given day, which sounds easier than it was. Like two weeks ago, when I wanted to listen through Tokyo Police Club’s Elephant Shell but couldn’t because I had only picked my top five songs. Or those random times in July when I really want to listen to Christmas music, but can’t because it didn’t make sense to load Christmas songs on my iPod. The most irritating thing was having two or three album’s worth of material that I have to learn for a freelance gig taking up space from music that I actually want to listen to.

Now I’m at the opposite end of the spectrum, where my iPod is filled with songs I haven’t listened to in years (or in some cases, ever). For example, there’s an artist I met a few years ago who gave me his CD and asked me to send it to whoever I wanted in hopes that he could score some shows. I dutifully uploaded it onto my compy (and therefore my iTunes) and sent it around and haven’t listened to it since, because it’s not the best (I won’t give you the name because this person has since released an excellent album and is doing well in Toronto right now, so you don’t need to know that they sucked once upon a time. Also, I don’t want them to think that I thought that even though I did). This album is now on my iPod, even though 60% of the songs have a play listing of zero.

There’s also a bunch of songs I found on there from a years-old attempt to make a 90s mix for my friend Amanda (did I ever finish that, Manders?). I’ve got I Mother Earth, Glueleg, Sandbox, Tea Party ( Edges of Twilight and Transmission era, a-thank you very much), Smashing Pumpkins (no Zeitgeist) Moist, Fun Lovin’ Criminals, and so forth. It's actually quite fun to listen to all of this stuff next to the new music I've been listening to and see how my tastes have progressed and how music itself has progressed, but I won't lie: it's kind of depressing that my iPod spans 20 years. Anyone's go longer?

So now I think I have to do a music-buying moratorium. If I have roughly 20 songs on my iPod that haven’t been heard in years, I should weed those out before I get onto anything new.

A$hley MacI$$ac

Saw this article on chartattack and thought it was very interesting. Ashley MacIsaac posted an ebay auction for half of his own musical income over the rest of his life. The auction has since been removed due to an eBay terms of use violation, but I thought it was interesting to think about.

As I hope has been made clear throughout the course of this blog, most artists spend 50% of their professional time making music and the other 50% trying to figure out how to make money from doing it. Since most record deals screw the artist horrible in terms of CD sales (more on that in a later blog) merch is traditionally the way to do it. I’ve seen bands sell everything from the more traditional T-shirt and hoodie to bracelets, necklaces, shoelaces, shoes, and so on. I once even saw a band selling email addresses based on their domain name.

MacIsaac is definitely thinking outside the merch box, but it seems a little fishy to me. Either he’s in dire financial straits and he needs some cash fast or he just really wants others to share in his grand wealth.

My guess is the former.

Let’s not forget, this is the same Ashley MacIsaac that declared bankruptcy back in 2000, so you can be reasonably sure that he’s not super solvent to being with. And what does the fine print say on the eBay sale? Nothing is guaranteed. Not his $5,000-$15,000 per gig, not his royalties, not even the principle you put in. That is to say, whoever wins this bid wins the right to give Ashley MacIsaac their money and hope that they break even on the proposition. Doesn’t this sound like a record company’s job?

What Macisaac is really looking for here is someone to act as his record company without having a record company, which I can understand. It’s the lack of responsibility to the investor that turns me off. Record companies are set up as checks and balances, meaning that one artist can fail while another succeeds, so the company on a whole breaks even. Please don’t misconstrue that as saying record companies are fair or even helpful to the artists; that’s just how they are set up. MacIsaac wants some no-strings-attached cash that he doesn’t have to worry about paying back, and I think it’s ridiculous.

With MacIsaac’s history of “ironic statements” (accusing Asian women in his audience of spreading SARS, etc., etc.) there’s a chance that this is a goof and I’m playing into it. I’d say there’s a better chance of it NOT being a goof and MacIsaac labeling it as such when it fails, but that’s just my opinion (which is immunity from being told I’m wrong, or so Relient K says).

______________

IN OTHER NEWS!

Nope, nothing. My stupid palm pilot broke so now I have no idea when I’m playing shows in the next little while. I’ll let you know when I know.

Bytes, Blue Jays and Bios

Long weekends throw me off. Not to say that I don’t like being off work for an extra day, but my body is used to a five-day rhythm and will invariably wake me up early on the Friday or Monday that I’m off. Never mind having a day of work BEFORE the holiday. Friggin’ Canada Day. So blame Canada for me missing the post on Tuesday. I had this whole thing worked out where I was going to write about the different versions of O Canada we used to play in the hallways before school, but without the actual songs it would seem pretty lame. So if I ever find them I’ll write that blog. But just for my own edification, would people know what I meant if I wrote “ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba DOO-DOO-DOO…DOO-DOO-DOO…ba-Ba-BAHHHHHH…O Canada”?

So random music stuff from this week!

* I bought an 80GB iPod Classic cause my tiny 4-gig Nano was getting pretty useless (unlike Relient K, who have told me through rousing song that they are a little more than useless). As it turns out, buying an 80GB after having a 4GB is like running out of room on a 100-CD rack and buying an ENTIRE OTHER HOUSE to store your CDs. I have 1200 songs and five videos on the thing and I’ve barely filled 20GB. I may have to start loading up some viruses or something just to justify it. The annoying thing is that if I want something with a more reasonable size I have to get a 32GB iTouch, which is twice as expensive as the 80GB iPod, which makes me pretty iPissed. The nice bit is the price tag, which was $272 after taxes. I’m told that the 30GB Classics were going for more than that two years ago. Considering this whole gas crisis thing is expected to drive up electronics prices by next summer I may have gotten a steal.

* I just finished listening to The Con by Tegan and Sara and will try to post a review next week. Suffice to say I really dig this album and am thankful to my friend Brielle for turning me on to it. Brille made me a “Sexy Dance Mix” with all these bands I really like, so you may see more of that soon.

* I went to see a Blue Jays game last week with Krista and thought it was cool that each batter gets his own theme music (one guy even used Stone Cold Steve Austin’s theme, which would have been cool if he had a hit that night). It got me to thinking what my top 5 entrance themes would be if I were a baseball player (stick with me here, this is a flight of fantasy).

1. “Big Brat”, Phantom Planet (maybe it could be renamed Big BAT!!! HA…heh…um, right).
2. “It’s A Hit” We Are Scientists (so clever)
3. “So What’cha Want” Beastie Boys
4. “Time To Dance” Panic At The Disco (they dropped the “!”)
5. “Juicebox” The Strokes

* One of the best things about being in bands is writing your bio, at least for me. So I was tickled when I found my bio posted at Critical Mass’ website this week! Their main link is to the right, but click here for the bio section.

L8r sk8r b01z AND (at Steph's urging)GRRLZ

Canada Day

Im having a holiday! See you Friday.

Why I Love: The Golden Dogs

So this will be another regular (read: space filling when I have no shows) feature on drummerthoughts called Why I Love. I tend to follow bands more than genres or record labels, so there are a core of six or seven bands that I am listening to incessantly at any given time (just ask Krista, she will confirm this). So in the hopes that I will be educating the masses I am going to tell you today Why I Love the Golden Dogs

When I was reviewing CDs for Echo I was given the Dogs’ Everything in Three Parts by my editor because I had professed a passing interest in ska. “They do a little bit of ska,” he said, and he was right: exactly one song (“Elevator Man”) on that album could be considered ska, and I would hesitate to place it in that genre at all. It seems that when white dudes play summery guitars with horns in the background it’s considered ska (unless you’re Sloan).

Anyway, I fell in love with the disc almost immediately. The I said in that review that the Dogs “convey that rare sense of having listened to a lot of bands but not wanting to be any one of them”, and I stand by that today. They dip their toes in so many genres that you honestly wonder where they find the time to listen to all that music. Everything in Three Parts runs the gamut from summery rock to waltz to alt-country to acoustic indie and seem utterly comfortable in each of those places. I was super excited for a follow up.

In summer of 2007 Big Eye little eye was released. I remember being so excited that I kidnapped my friend Meagan, who I was supposed to be driving home so show could study for an exam, and dragged her to Sunrise so I could pick it up sooner (don’t worry, Meagan got into med school. I’m not that bad a friend). I had already heard two tracks: a Paul McCartney cover called “1985” (not to be confused with the craptacular Bowling For Soup song) and the first single, “Never Meant Any Harm” .

Right off the top, I was disappointed. Very little caught my ear that first time through, which I’ve only just come to realize is pretty consistent for me when listening to sophomore releases. I didn’t listen through Big Eye little eye again until almost a month later and the disc started making sense to me. It’s a more focused effort: rather than wildly jumping genres, which was admittedly attractive, the Dogs had anchored themselves in fuzzy indie-pop and reached out in different directions from there. They have such an excellent sensibility for building songs and making everything (lyrics to melody to rhythm to structure) mean something.

The final piece was seeing them live. At present I have seen the Dogs three times: at the Starlight in Waterloo, at Call the Office in London and at the Student Life Center on University of Waterloo campus. I can tell you for sure that the Dogs are one of the best live shows I’ ever seen. If you don’t believe me…

So that is why I love the Golden Dogs.

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IN OTHER NEWS!

Musicwise, nothing much happening, at least from a performance perspective. I've been working on some stuff for a fun Runaway show we have coming up in July. I'm writing some hip-hop rhymes for the first time and it's awesome. The process, I mean; I hesitate to say the rhymes themselves are awesome. Although I'm the first MC I know of to do a verse about a car with teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles references. That's right.

I'm also starting to brainstorm about this year's Indie/Acoustic Christmas show. Assuming it happens, I have some big ideas. BIG, says I.

This is all.

Hommephobia

Some random stuff happening in music. For example, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age was caught on tape calling a show-throwing concert attendee the f-word (the homophobic f-word) and of course later had to post a statement about how he's not homophobic (whilst making sure everyone knows that he didn't say anything wrong, everyone else interpreted him wrong). You can read about it here.

I'm consistently shocked when I hear about this kind of stuff because I always expect artists to be more progressive in their thinking. If Homme had come out and said he made a mistake that would be one thing, but check out part of his response: "see, it's not the words, it's their intent. I never said, nor suggested, that being gay is wrong, but apparently, based on your outrage to my flu-infused rant, you do!"

I'd like to know what Homme intended the f-word to mean there. Because what it seemed like he intended to do is infer that since this person was cowardly assaulting him, that person must therefore be a homosexual. I'm sure in Homme's mind his use of the f-word is different than a gay-hater's use, but is that really helping the cause? No, it's reinforcing stereotypes and creating excuses for using words that reinforce them.

What also surprised me was that no one seemed too upset by Homme's use of the p-word as an insult as well.

OK, honestly, I don't think Homme had thought through his comments that much before he made them. He'd just taken a shoe to the face (which sucks) and was understandably more than a little pissed off about it it. But what he did do was resort to childish name calling and reveal what is ultimately a grade school mentality.

IN OTHER NEWS!

_________________

So that really wasn't music related. I'll also add that I'm currently at a bit of a crossroads. I've been pursuing music for around 10 years right now and it's gotten to the point of either needing to poop or get off the pot, so to speak. I'm on the verge of doing something I think could be great, but I'm not sure I can do it with my current schedule. So I'm thinking and planning and planning and thinking and wondering if I can be happy being a full time something else and doing music as a permanent side thing, or if I need to go into this full blast so that I'll never wonder what might have been.

Stay classy!

I'm Like Yoda In Tight Pants

The musician part of me had a really fun week last week; specifically, he (it? How do I refer to the musician part of me?) had a fun three days.

I was invited to Bluevale Collegiate Institute to be interviewed by a student I know there for his music class. I was not the first choice: I received the invite after randomly running into this student a week before the class. Also, when I mentioned this to my worship team, they simultaneously said “oh, so YOU’RE the one he got to do it,” since they all apparently had stuff to do. It’s a sad life, being the last option.

ANYWAY, I got interviewed about being a musician and how I got started and all that for about 12 students and it was fun. I got to go off about downloading, tell stories about poorly attended shows and well-attended shows, and so on. I felt like I spent too much time stressing how un-fun the life of a musician can be. I was trying to make sure they knew that even if you “make it” (i.e. tour, release CDs, etc) the odds of you effectively supporting yourself through music are very slim. Unfortunately, I think I might have come off as a little bitter and unsuccessful, which I surely am, but I try and save that part of myself for my friends and family. You have no right to my bitterness, children.

They also asked for my best advice, which I gave by quoting Dandy Warhols frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor: “If it’s good, it’s fun, if it’s bad, it’s funny” which isn’t really advice per se but it kind of sums up the only healthy way to view indie band life. At one point I mentioned the hip-hop, to which some girl said “yeah, but do you do REAL hip-hop or ‘I’m gonna get some’ hip hop?” which struck me as pretty savvy for a 17 year old. So I rapped a little for the children from the Runaway disc and that was my time with them. I am now a sage to the next generation of rock stars.

Saturday was worship practice, Settlers and Prince Caspian. Head over to the hlog in the next couple of days, I’ll probably review the movie there.

Sunday I played worship in the morning and then drove feverishly to Burlington to make the Sound of Music festival. I was playing with My 2 Sense, who I’d only had one rehearsal with previously. There’s nothing like playing a festival (in a major city, sorry Madoc) to make you feel like a rock star: dudes opening doors for me, dudes, getting me water, dudes carrying my gear, Mike “Pinball” Clemons speaking before we went on. It was a decent set, too. M2S is comprised mainly of Russ Denison, who used to lead worship at WMB; Duane Boles, who currently leads worship at WMB, and a guy I always love playing with, Kevin Ramessar. Besides being the most talented guy I know (seriously, no hyperbole) he’s also a lot of fun and is really easy to vibe off of during shows. I’ve been lucky to play with him twice in the last couple of months (this show and a conference) and would love to keep doing it.

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IN OTHER NEWS!

Uh…so, what up? Nothing really new to report. I deliberately backed off of more shows in June so I probably won’t have anything to report until July. So more reviews, yes? And perhaps musings about the awful music industry? Toomy lee and Pam Anderson are apparently living together again – maybe I could write something on that? TOPICAL!

See you Tuesday.

Review -- Will Currie and the Country French's A Great Stage

OK, so first off – this is not going to be a fair review no matter how hard I try.

I’ve been listening to Will Currie and the Country French (WCFC hereafter) for about a year and half. For those unfamiliar with WCCF, they’re a piano based outfit in the vein of a swingier Ben Folds. I first met them in November of 2006, when I was participating in a competition called Last Band Standing with the Tyler Schwende Band. We made it through the quarter- and semi-finals and ran up against WCCF in the finals. There were two other bands there but I don’t think there was ever any doubt that it would come down to the two of us. In the end we wound up winning (a decision that was hotly contested, as I’m sure it would have been either way), but more importantly I had found an amazing new band to be excited about. WCCF was so danceable, so fun, so talented, so easy to listen to. I picked up their four-song EP the next show we played with them in (I think) September 2007 for $1, and caught them live as often as I could, whether I was on the bill or not. Then they got signed to Murderecords and released A Great Stage.

Intially I was very excited to hear their full length. I had assumed that there would be an immediate re-recording of a couple of the songs on the EP with a bunch of new material. Not so: all four songs from the EP are here (“Surprising Me”, “Centerfold”, “Thunder Bay Coastguard Radio”, “Honest People”) and while they definitely have been remastered there isn’t much different aside from the odd cymbal shot. There are technically five new songs, but when you eliminate the brief bookends “A Great Stage” and “A Grand Reprise” there are three: “Maybe”, Mannin Veen” and “Friendly Fire”. So my enthusiasm dimmed a bit.

For me personally, WCCF is at their best when they’re driving fast and dancing. So this includes “Surprising Me”, “Honest People”, “Thunder Bay Coastguard Radio” and “Friendly Fire”. You might notice that only one of the newer songs is included on that list. “Mannan Veen” is a mid-tempo swaying love song, and “Maybe” is a straight up piano ballad. They are both incredibly well done and are totally re-listenable; the only reason I mention this is to highlight why I was personally somewhat disappointed in the disc. If you have a bigger fetish than I for piano pop, then you aren’t going to have this problem.

A Great Stage is quite good, in fact. Had I come into it fresh I would have enjoyed the majority of the songs, and I think most people will. I like the use of “A Great Stage/A Grand Reprise” to open and close the disc. WCCF do all the big things that makes songs great (melodies, sharp musicianship, quality lyricism, etc.), but also have a great ear for smaller touches (vibraphones, shakers, whistling, etc.).

I’ve been telling anyone that would listen about WCCF for a year and a half, and will continue to do so. I really can’t wait to see what’s next for them. If you don’t have it already please go buy A Great Stage.

On the road again

So I feel like I was somewhat deceptive in my last post. I said I had played a bunch of shows, but in reality I only played 2 last week: Wednesday in Hamilton with The Runaway and Saturday in Maple with Critical Mass. Sorry; when you work full time, take courses and have a girlfriend, 2 shows seems like a billion.

Wednesday was straight up awesome. I always love playing shows with the Runaway, and even more so with the Runaway Jam, which is the full band consisting of myself on drums and backup vox, Josh McFadyen on bass, Andrew Karram on keys, my awesome girlfriend Krista on vocals, and of course the Runaway himself on rhymes.

We were playing something called The Artist’s Roundtable at the Freeway Café in Hamilton. The idea is that 5 bands each do a 15-20 minute set. At the end of the night all the bands sit down onstage in front of the crowd and break down each others’ sets, mention what they liked or thought needed improvement. Then there’s a Q and A period with the crowd.

I hope this doesn’t come off as arrogant, but it’s been a long long time since I played a show where I wasn’t in at least the second best band there (In my opinion). This is mostly a result of playing a lot of Christian shows, where bands tend to be a lot younger and therefore not as good. But my goodness, every single band was amazing. The first act was 2x The Mono, which is an experimental indie project consisting of one guy named Randell Neudorf working guitar, harmonica, keyboards, and percussion. He uses a Jam-Man like repeater to build sequences on each instrument until a song is there. He only had time to do two songs, but they were both really great and interesting. Not something you hear every day.

The second act was my favourite: Brielle Goheen. Brielle is a singer-songwriter on piano who is training in classical violin out at Trinity Western. She has this incredible dynamic range and her songs are very intricate and counter-intuitive, but never sacrifice melody for the sake of “newness”. You can hear a melding of pop, classical and theatre influences in her style. Alas, she has nothing recorded and is only in the province until the end of the summer, so I may have to run a show (and therefore lose money) to hear her again. She did say she’d be open to coming to Waterloo, so keep your eyes peeled.

Third up was Garner! I don’t know what I can say about Garner that hasn’t already been said: they write great pop songs, they have an amazing songwriting range, they’re super fun to watch, and they are all really amazingly nice guys. I’ve never wanted a band that I wasn’t in to succeed so much. They’ll be heading out on tour starting June 20, and the lovely Krista will be doing some backups for them at that show. More to come on that.

We went on fourth, so I’ll skip to fifth: McKenna. This is a brother duo who look very out of place with each other: their guitarist is kind of clean cut, not jocky but very much a “dude” you could have a beer with. I mistook their singer for a homeless man when I met him (to be fair, the Freeway is a downtown mission that always brings in member of the homeless community, but still). Like so many family duos they have rice, tight harmonies which are accented by some furious guitaring and an incredible knack for storytelling.

Wow, that was quite a preamble. Anyway, our set went really well, considering the five of us hadn’t been in a room together since we opened for Shad in October (seriously, we did this show without a practice). Because of the set length we only got to do five songs, but they all went well. I got an impromptu drum solo in the middle of “Soul Raise” that I felt like I flubbed, but people responded positively after which means it either a) went way better than I thought or b) went way worse than I thought, to the point that people needed to console me.

Saturday I drove solo to the thriving metropolis of Maple, ON. The day started off poorly: I had to be in Maple for 8 AM for soundcheck, so I hit the road around 7. The 401 was closed off in Milton, meaning all the traffic first backed up huge and then had to find alternate routes. I took the milk run to end all milk runs and wound up arriving around 9:30.

One thing I hate about Christian shows (especially those with lots of bands) is they usually tell you not to bring your own kit because they have one and want to keep changeover time down. Then they saddle you with a terrible kit. This one was a mirrored (!) Pearl Export kit from roughly 2000 with some of the worst hardware ever. I of course brought my own cymbals, kick and snare, but I couldn’t even unclip the hi-hat they had on because the clip was stripped. The hi-hat was awful, too, like two garbage can lids.

Enough whining. We were acting as the “senior band” at this contest for 14 other bands who were hoping to win. We did a short set off the top at 10:45, and then had to wait until 4:30 for our second set. The bands were all young and some were just starting to get a feel of what they like to do and what they’re capable of, so I won’t go into detail here as I think they’re all very much a work in progress. I thought he eventual winners were called the Mac Band, but I could be wrong, as I tried to find them on Google and the only Mac Band I found were R&B darlings from Flint, Michigan.

Our second set went well, too, although after a day of music no one really seemed in the mood to see us. We’re performing a mix of old stuff and stuff that’s coming up on the new Critical Mass album, some of which I recorded. It sounds like it’ll be an interesting disc – I’ll keep you posted.


IN OTHER NEWS!

Not much to report. I’m backing off of taking more shows in June, just because I’ve been really busy and am starting to wig out over my lost sleep. I’m gigging at the Burlington Music Festival next Sunday with My 2 Sense, so come check that out if you’re in the area.