Tag: Music and Sound

Joe the Train

From the brother of the yellow press comes this item:

LONDON, England (AP) — Joe Strummer, lead singer of British punk band The
Clash, has been honored with a train named for him. Strummer, who died in 2002 at age 50, was remembered at a naming ceremony Saturday at a railway station in Bristol, southwest England. The Strummer train, a diesel locomotive built in 1965, follows a 200-year-old tradition of British trains being named after famous people. It will be operated in England by Cotswold Rail company. Strummer’s influential punk band rose to fame in the 1970s with hits including “London Calling” and “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” Originally born John Graham Mellor, Strummer died of a heart attack at his home in Somerset, southwest England, in December 2002.

So will Thomas the Tank Engine come out with a version of Joe the Spitting Angry train?

Paul Weller: Studio 150

The brother must read the old blog once in a while as, after posting about The Jam back in December, I received a copy of that band’s lead singer Paul Weller‘s latest CD, Studio 150 for my Christmas pressy. A covers album, more Style Council cool than the anger of The Jam, it’s dandy dandy dandy. Weller covers “The Bottle” with a backing of 1974 Jethro Tull art-rock flute with some of the left over waa-waa guitar from Shaft that are floating around the universe: [wma, 3.0 MB]. His voice is perfect for this style and sounds about two decades of two packs a day from his pissed teen sound of “Eton Rifles” or “A Town Called Malice”. Recall thinking every time a new album by the Jam came out how his voice got closer and closer to singing. He’s pretty much there now.

Thinking about the voice of someone covering a Gordie Lightfoot tune is a bit strange for anyone exposed to CBC’s weekness for him but Weller’s approach to “Early Morning Rain” [wma, 3.6 MB] is right, not so much reverential as honest. I’ve always thought that Lightfoot’s 1960s Canadian camp keener voice made some of the good liquor and fast women ideas a little fake. Weller’s got crap on his boots and a hangover when singing this one to me. Nice touch on the pretty authentic Ontario folkie fiddle for a Londoner’s set recorded in Amsterdam. In fact, the instrumentation is some of the best stuff about this album. The organ in “Early Morning Rain” at the end, the clarinet in “One Way Road”, the flute and waa-waa in “The Bottle”, the disco strings in “Thinking of You”. The Modfather, he cleans up well in a three piece suit and is the only human who could get away with wearing a canary yellow Faire Isle sweater in the presence of Pete Townsend.

Hans really needs to buy this one.

The Pixies in Hull

In the late 80s there was an echo of punk that came to be grunge. Nirvana and Pearl Jam came out of Seattle and the Pixies came out of Boston. Like 70s punk with its intellectual anger, these bands spat loud about the question “why?” or rather “WHY????“. Of them all, the Pixies were the most surreal but also presbyterian. At one and the same time the world is not as it is and not as it ought to be.


I know them only through their most popular record Doolittle but I knew a part of my younger life would be renewed by hearing Frank Black scream “and if the Devil is six, then God is seven, God is seven”. I was right.

Some admissions. We sat at the back, my older brothers and I. I wore ear plugs. We left a little early to beat the rush. These were the accomodations of the years and I was not about to go through five days of ear ringing like I dealt with after last year’s Sloan concert. Plus, given the hockey rink setting, the concrete floor and the metal ceiling, it was all distortion falling over itself. Probably the worst venue for a band I have ever been at. The opening acts – one whose name we didn’t even bother catching as well as a quite respectable The Darkness-esque (with out the irony) called The Datsuns – did not get the idea of controlling the wall of sound to meet the venue. They were just loud. The Pixies were loud, too, but sometimes at moments not loud.

It was at first something of a wait for their hits “This Monkey’s Gone to Heaven”, “Debaser” and “Here Comes your Man” [6.9 MB 19 second short] – perhaps waiting most of all for the spectacle of a throat ripping yell from Frank Black (not nee but was Black Francis). But I was struck by the sharp needling guitar of Joey Santiago and the pounding red-hot bass of chain-smoking Kim Deal.

They were very tight and discomforting. Here are some murky photos from the show, including one of the incredibly busy beer vendors right in front of us.

One Ring Zero

I heard the band One Ring Zero earlier this month on NPR’s Fresh Air. Regular readers will recall my affection for the full range of plinky-plink music from the products one can receive in plain wrapped packaging from Electron in Toronto to the works of They Might Be Giants. What fits attacted me to the band during the interview was the attention to instrumentation – indeed members of the band met at the Hohner harmonica warehouse and instrument repair facility in Richmond Virginia and formed the band after the utter market failure of the claviola, an instrument which was reproduced only 17 times. Adding theramin, toy piano and other freaks at the back of the music closet, they sought to both preserve and explore.

Getting the CD As Smart As We Are in itself was a smal task as it is not a CD according to Amazon but a book as it is hard bound. I don’t know why in 20 years of CDs whether anyone has placed one and the lyrics in a small hardbound book before but it is neat. Then there is the short intro, a recording of a 1980s shortwave identification signal [300 KB .wma file] – a sound loop shortwave stations played over and over before their half hour broadcasts so that you could find them on the dial easily. I think this is Deutsche Welle from West Germany. I knew I was among friends. The CD is described as “Lit Rock” in the liner notes being a collection of the setting to music of 17 poems. It is good. Here is the treatment of one haiku entitled “Honku” by Aaron Naparstek [441 KB .wma file]. Its only 27 seconds long but it will give you an idea.

As always with my reviews of the art of others where I pinch off a bit of their copyrighted interest and share it among you, I implore you to buy this CD, run it up the charts and make the late summer of 2004’s Billboard charts look weird forever.

Cross-posted to the-growing-but-needing-more-authors-Canadian-music-blog Switching to Glide.

Best Song

On Go this past Saturday, Brent was asking the question what is the best song ever. “London Calling” by the Clash was given much respect from the outset and I once again was amazed listening to the lyrics in the chorus:

The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in
Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin
Engines stop running, but I have no fear
Cause London is drowning – I, I live by the river

My grade eleven adoration of this song and the entire double lp was intensified by the title being a reference to the post-colonial relic which was the BBC World magazine London Calling which I happened to have a subscription to, nerd that I am was.

But that is not my pick for best song. It is up there as silver medal winner with “Redemption Song”, “Happy Family” by the Ramones, and every ska tune ever recorded. The winner of first prize has to be Elvis Costello’s “(The Angels Want to Wear My) Red Shoes” which begins:

Oh I used to be disgusted
and now I try to be amused.
But since their wings have got rusted,
you know, the angels wanna wear my red shoes.
But when they told me ’bout their side of the bargain,
that’s when I knew that I could not refuse.
And I won’t get any older, now the angels wanna wear my red shoes.

While The wheat is growing thin is a great line and nuclear fear was the rumbling undertone to my teens, the prospect of the Almighty’s henchmen needing a hand and getting it from a loser who can’t get a date is perfect. Besides, Elvis and me had breakfast for some reason in my last dream this morning (I dropped his toast as I passed it over) and ever since he became a Canadian-in-law I have felt some greater kinship than that of a mere somewhat lapsed fan what with the knowledge that there is a chance one day of him sitting on a sofa sitting eating pork roast and mashed spuds off a TV tray with brothers in law on Grey Cup Day staring at the tube and asking why they are Ti-Cats and what is an oskeeweewee between sips of 50.

Alternative suggestions?

The Sound of Clinton

So Bill has a book coming out next week that runs 1,000 pages. The

full audio release — running 41 CDs — will be released with actor Michael Beck doing the reading and Clinton providing the prologue and epilogue, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.

41 CDs! I hope it come with a forehead shaped sticker with the word “nerd” on it.