go see the last waltz. it’s been re-released to theatres now that scorsese has finally recovered from the high we was on during the filming. if it’s not playing at a theatre you can get to, rent it. wait for the dvd if you can, though; it’s out may 7.
one of the best rock documentaries ever made, without a doubt. it’s worth it just to see muddy waters show the world how blues and rock are children born of a common mother.
‘one of those bands you just have to see live’ is the tag assigned to spiritualized. armed with frequent spins of the last two albums (ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space and let it come down) and a review from my brother of a show a few weeks back in the uk, i set out for the opera house to catch the travelling jay spaceman show, wondering if the talk could be true.
the dears opened for them…i only caught a few songs, and i wasn’t paying attention to anything other than the bartender next to me, and the logistics of the route to the bathrooms at the opera house. if there were ever a fire, all those relieving themselves would die. so i’ll not say much about the dears. sorry dears.
spiritualized hit the stage around 10:25, bless ’em. i was out taking part in drunken foolishness the night before and i was a bit tired, so i was glad they didn’t wait ’til midnight to get on with it. thanks opera house. they opened with “electricity”. boy did they ever. good, punchy song to get it off the ground, and the light show came right along with it…that song kicked off the trend for the rest of the evening (which i was expecting, given what tim’d told me) of the back-lighting making the guys silhouettes. jason just stood on one side of the stage, near the front but facing back toward the centre, ninety degrees to the crowd. that seemed a bit odd, but i knew they weren’t big on connecting with the audience like that. in fact, not one word was spoken into a mic other than lyrics.
i actually didn’t recognize the next song, nor a lot of what they played for the rest of the set. a lot of the material came from pure phase and lazer guided melodies and even spacemen 3 i guess. but song #3 showed me why jason was standing like that; the song was instrumental and started off slowly and very, very gradually (like, 6-minutes-later-gradually) sped up – very hard to do – and they seemed to be watching jason and letting him control the tempo and acceleration. he was conducting.
now then, i’d like to point something out, to anyone who may read this: no matter how cool you think it is, and how very traditional and deep-seated in your concert-going psyche it may be, holding up your lighter during a slow song (i don’t care that is was during “shine a light”) is idiotic. don’t do it. ever. not even if you’re wearing a tank top and mesh hat at a creed concert and the toilet brush next to you is doing it. not even then. rise above your breeding, toilet brushes. jason believes in you, even in that state. repent, toilet brushes.
i really wish i could remember the set list. i remember “on fire”, “out of sight”, “i think i’m in love”, “walking with jesus” (a spacemen 3 song), and a kickass rendition of “come together”, one of my most favouritest. that was the second-to-last song, i think. i didn’t recognize the last song, but it built up with the lights and we were left winded. they came out for one encore – “lord can you hear me”, which couldn’t have been more perfect – and then they disappeared for good. they played for 1:45, plus the encore; not bad at all.
listen to spiritualized. i didn’t even get into the biggest (studio) appeal of the band, which is observing pierce’s dichotomous relationship with himself and the drugs he keeps ingesting…he loves them, but they kill him. he knows it, but he doesn’t really want to stop. or he does, but not enough. either way, it’s a fascinating thing to hear put to music, but it’s not why you see them live. live, they stand stock-still and appear otherworldly on the stage, wreathed in strobe and holding forth from their stacked marshall pulpit. it’s the power in their preaching that gets you, the force of their bible-thumping. i know, somewhere in that crowd last night, was a kid who didn’t know much about spiritualized and just went to a concert with his buddies not expecting to hear this. not expecting to get religion. and when he went home he probably set aside $20 to go buy let it come down the next morning. or maybe he just got really high. both would be fitting.
thanks spiritualized.
i miss the sun.
i just got back from a week in barbados, and not only is it cold outside, it’s quite grey. yuck. i miss waking up at 8 AM and walking straight to breakfast in shorts and sandals, then hitting the beach or the pool or a 50-foot catamaran with a drink in my hand. i don’t miss the 5-hour flights there and back, nor the inevitable sunburn.
the silver lining: the raptors and the habs both made the playoffs, and i’m back in time to watch them.
jesus, marney’s married.
jesus, marney’s moving away.
13 hours from now, i’ll be boarding a plane for barbados. some suggestions for anyone reading this (as if anyone ever does…):
i’m listening to mp3s from modulate by bob mould. bob! what’re you doing, man? c’mon! you’re brilliant, you helped completely change punk and you nearly invented ‘alternative’ music…so what the hell are you doing? black sheets of rain? now that was brilliant. last dog and pony show? brilliant. workbook? brilliant. every sugar cd? brilliant. your self-titled cd from a few years ago? ummm, not bad. but this?
i can’t do it. i can’t go see you at the phoenix next month. sorry, dude. i saw you last time, it was tremendous, a concert to end all concerts, but…i just can’t stomach the idea of watching you roll this big hunk of manure off the stage and onto the crowd. i can’t.
sorry.
get well soon.
hold me.
this is a riot, right?
let’s all riot, riot,
let’s tear this place to shit,
commit pact suicide.
these were words of inspiration …and you will know us by the trail of dead send us along into the night with. useless words, really, since they’d already done most of it themselves. i’d listened to the new cd source tags + codes countless times in the 10 or 11 days since it arrived in the mail. i’d seen them before. i’d been to lots of shows in general. i knew what to expect.
kind of.
jason reece disappeared. much of the crowd was hit with water. jason and conrad keely got into a wrestling match. danko jones tried to push us out of the way (’cause he’s really short). but i’ll start at the beginning.
we got there just as raising the fawn was finishing up. i was a bit perplexed; during the final song the singer began singing, “young hearts…be free…tonight”, a rod stewart lyric that the constantines use in one of their songs, and they opened for trail of dead last time they played here. don’t know if there’s a connection there. anyhoo…
explosions in the sky was up next. they were good enough the first time i saw them (also opening for trail of dead last time they were in town) that i bought the cd and loved it. long instrumental quiet-loud songs, like mogwai with a simpler song structure. they opened with a song that i didn’t recognize, but it kicked my ass. let’s hear it for foreshadowing. they then ran through a few songs from those who tell the truth shall die…, closing with another crusher during which the tall among us could see the bass player kneeling over his bass and bashing it with a tambourine. that was about as much emotion as they showed all night, but they’re just about pushing the music off the stage and onto the crowd, letting them put it on and try it out. the word i always think of with their music is “lush”. always. it punched up a notch or two, though; at one point i could see neil busch (i think) stick his head through the curtain and rock along. also, it was during their set that i noticed danko jones standing next to us. the man is fucking short. he was trying to see over the crowd; he left partway through the set…i think he was looking for a chair to stand on.
trail of dead came on right after i saw (i think) hawksley workman on his way into the calcutta of a washroom, around 12:15. first of all, i’d just like to point out that they opened with “it was there that i saw you”, just as i predicted. thank you, thank you. next, just to get the technical stuff out of the way, the sound was better than at the horseshoe (clearer mix of the instruments, and you could actually hear the vocals), and it wasn’t as mercilessly loud, but they were having a lot of problems with feedback and broken strings. this frustrated them. which, i think, worked out in the long run really.
the set list…they ran through four songs from madonna (the obvious ones…”mark david chapman”, “mistakes and regrets”, “aged dolls” and, of course, “a perfect teenhood”), one from the first self-titled cd (“gargoyle waiting”), but only three from the new one: “it was there that i saw you”, as i mentioned, “baudelaire” and “homage”. they might have played “another morning stoner”, i can’t remember. it was near the end, as they pummeled us with “aged dolls” that you could really see them letting us have it. much, much moreso than back in the fall at the ‘shoe. they were pretty reserved then, just punishingly loud. this time they were playing to get it into the end zone, not just tackle us solidly. we held on.
early into “aged dolls”, jason reece — conrad keely had switched to the drums again for this one; as good as he is out front with the guitar and vocals, the guy is an even better drummer — got fed up with his guitar and just tossed it onto the stage. this wasn’t the first time; he done it during “gargoyle waiting” or “homage” as well. he’d gone on a little walkabout too…up onto the speakers (during which he started shaking and leaning on one of the stacks that hangs from the ceiling and, well, had it fallen it would’ve taken some patrons through the floor with it) and precariously along one of the railings. he finally managed to make it back onto the stage in one angry little piece. this time, though, he went straight into the crowd screaming, “i am…a motherfucking god!”. we lost sight of him (he’s only marginally taller than danko jones), but he made it all the way to the back of the pit before returning to the stage. he crawled up to the drum kit and took conrad’s place. “a perfect teenhood” came at us.
now, they usually close their shows with ‘teenhood’. not tonight. it fucking killed us, it did. conrad really let it fly, jumping onto the crowd at the end screaming the “fuck you! fuck you! fuck you!” that ends the song, and the crowd was thrashing around at the foot of the stage in a way i haven’t seen since grunge. everyone was expecting the guitars to drop, the lights to come up. they didn’t. we were expecting to be sent home with a scolding. instead we got another whipping. jason and conrad began flinging bottles of water — some open, some not — into the crowd. they announced their final song: “richter scale madness”. madness indeed. they played the song in such a way to make it almost unrecognizable; conrad spent most of the song dropping the mike or taking mouthfuls of beer and spitting it onto the front rows, using the bottle for a slide. the only verse i made out was the one seen above; fitting, really, since this preceded the four nice boys of …and you will know us by the trail of dead demolishing the stage in the manner to which we who read their press have become accustomed. the bass went sailing into the far corner by the fire exit; jason tore the drum kit apart and threw it around the stage. conrad keely just let his guitar fall off, eyed it like a bullet that had been removed from him. kevin allen didn’t do any damage but, then again, he’s the john entwhistle, the john-paul-jones-with-two-extra-strings of the band. jason came to the microphone and apologized for “sucking”, for which conrad keely tackled him and a wrestling match ensued. neil busch thanked us from the bomb crater of the stage and told us they’d be back in a few months.
jesus.
i may as well make it official now: this is the best rock n’ roll band the world has to offer.
i’ll be there.
this is a riot, right?
the two funniest scenes in moviedom, i have decided, both feature john cusack and jeremy piven.
it’s almost enough to make me watch serendipity, just to see if another scene like that occurs. the fact that kate beckinsdale is in it, though, just puts me right off the idea.
10. mobilize by grant lee phillips
yes, this guy used to be the singer of grant lee buffalo. yes, you can tell by the name. yes, you can also tell by the music. you my have heard “spring release” pop up on the radio once or twice, but you won’t hear the better songs like “mobilize” unless you get the cd. alternative rock lite. michael stipe loved glb (he sang backup on their last release, jubilee, also definitely worth picking up), and they sound a lot like rem would if they’d never gotten greedy and recorded “stand”.
9. girlology by the kim band
a canadian entry! actually, you needn’t get too excited, there’s another one up the list a bit. ever seen the video for david usher’s “alone in the universe”? notice the hottie guitarist? this is her. kim bingham used to be in a toronto band called mudgirls, now she’s doing her own thing when she’s not in usher’s oxymoronic solo band. imagine matthew sweet with (ironically) more balls…smart lyrics and a good crunch make this unique and almost interestingly boring.
8. love and theft by bob dylan
i don’t know how he keeps doing it. his last disc, time out of mind, was one of the best he ever did, 40 years after he started out. the album switches between old-style folk jazz/blues and the darker, harder stuff that made time out of mind so great (although this one doesn’t compare to time out of mind…that’s one the three best he’s ever done, along with bringing it all back home and oh mercy). the banjo on “highwater” kicked my ass. not the best dylan, but bob at 60% is still better than most musicians can ever hope to be. see ‘tom waits’ under songwriting for more details.
7. brmc by black rebel motorcycle club
i hated the big 70s arena-rock revival you saw in the last year or two, bands like supergrass and sloan and thrush hermit trying to impress on us that the bay city rollers pushed through a fuzzier amp is worth a listen. bullshit. listen to this, or the dandy warhols. it strays into the land of cheesy sometimes, but the dark stuff (“love burns”, “spread your love”, “salvation”) is worth it.
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/b/black-rebel-motorcycle-club/brmc.shtml
6. hot shots ii by the beta band
i can’t tell if their lyrics are supposed to be cleverly intelligent or just clever. all in all, the music isn’t something i’d call brilliant, but rather so solidly good that the whole cd (with the possible exception of an odd last track) becomes a big 8 out of 10 the whole way through…which actually makes it quite exceptional.
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/b/beta-band/hot-shots-ii.shtml
5. dilate by bardo pond
one of the leading members of the psychedelphia music style, these guys are trippy with a capital t. the singer sounds like hope sandoval after taking a handful of the red ones and being punched in the throat. one of their earlier cds, lapsed, is terrific as well, but this one has “inside”, which floored me. if you like instrumental-ish, psychedelic-type stuff, you’ll love this.
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/b/bardo-pond/dilate.shtml
4. mass romantic by the new pornographers
the other canadian contribution on the list. this is sort of a supergroup, for lack of a better term, made up of members from other bands like limblifter and destroyer, and with neko case singing on a few songs. while there are one or two skippable songs, there are some really great ones as well: “mass romantic”, “the slow descent into alcoholism”, “centre for holy wars”, etc. it’ll probably take you a few listens to really get into it, but believe me, you will. “letter from an occupant” is one of those songs i listen to over and over again when i’m having a bad day. with the possible exception of the rheostatics (i’m biased; saw them live again last weekend), this is the best canadian band going.
http://pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/n/new-pornographers/mass-romantic.shtml
3. amnesiac by radiohead
no doubt i’ll take some flack for depositing this one at #3, just as i did for leaving kid a midway down last year’s list. i actually think amnesiac is a better disc…they’re pretty comparable as far as number of really good songs and throw-aways, but “pyramid song” is the reach advantage that amnesiac has over kid a. as i said, the guys do their usual thing here with spots of brilliance (“Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box”, “You & Whose Army?”, “Knives Out”, “Dollars And Cents”, “Spinning Plates”) and some rot (“Morning Bell / Amnesiac” — the destruction of a perfectly good song, “Hunting Bears”), but the good is *so* good that they get away with more. see bob-dylan-60% rule for more details.
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/r/radiohead/amnesiac.shtml
2. asleep in the back by elbow
take radiohead. extract thom yorke and replace him with rob dickinson from catherine wheel. add jordon zadorozny from blinker the star to do some guitar canoodling and maybe even a little bit of gomez‘s pseudo-latin influence, mix well with a bunch of anti-rockstar pixie dust and you have elbow. this was another cd i bought blind, just on a recommendation on some website (hmv.com’s magazine, i think) and manoman, was i impressed. when the first song (“any day now”) started playing, it was as if i was hearing what would’ve happened if radiohead had kept the weird-meter on 4 after ok computer instead of putting it to 9 and producing kid a. if you’re looking for creativity and long, loud rock songs in the same box, get this. now.
1. agaetis byrjun by sigur ros
i don’t know what i can say about this cd that i haven’t said already. most of you have read my review of the concert. it’s the most brilliant band i’ve come across in…well, maybe ever. i check the website every day for news about the next cd. i’ve downloaded every song i can find from their earlier albums which aren’t available here. i’ve used the words ‘brilliant’ and ‘miraculous’ more than once when describing them. this disc still crushes me every time i listen to it, and it’s surely one of the greatest arguments for rock music to be held up as a true art form.
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/s/sigur-ros/agaetis-byrjun.shtml
***should be on the list, but didn’t really qualify***
madonna by and you will know us by the trail of dead
it came out last year and i didn’t get it until a few months ago, dammit. it’d be at #2 for sure.
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/a/and-you-will-know-us-by-the-trail-of-dead/madonna.shtml
my father my king by mogwai
an ep, so i didn’t feel right including it, especially since it’s just one song (albeit 20 minutes worth). it’s far better than mogwai’s full-length offering earlier in the year, rock action. the song, or at least the central theme, is based on an old jewish hymn. classic mogwai: no lyrics, whispered, savage, rambling, more than we deserve.
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/m/mogwai/my-father-my-king.shtml
***honourable mentions***
a silver mt. zion (born into trouble as sparks fly upward)
eels (souljacker)
perry farrell (song yet to be sung)
the matthew good band (audio of being)
tool (lateralus)
explosions in the sky (those who tell the truth will die…)
guided by voices (isolation drills)
varnaline (songs in a northern key)
buddy guy (sweet tea)
crystal method (tweekend)
(update: I can’t believe I left Explosions In The Sky down in the “honorable mention” category. If I’d done this list over again after I’d really gotten into the CD I’m sure it would be 4th or 5th. Mass Romantic would likely move up as well.)
i wish i could explain to you what happened to me 12 hours ago. i’m still not fully recovered from the two-hour rite that occurred on-stage at massey hall last night; to borrow a phrase from a friend, i’m emotionally hung over. i apologize for how long this e-mail will undoubtedly be.
first of all, rumours that they play nothing from agaetis byrjun during their shows were false; they played 3. they also played another song that i recognized (“nyjalagia” from the svefn-g-englar ep, i think); the rest were songs i didn’t know.
secondly, the details: they didn’t go on until 9:00, they finished at 11:00, no encores (short of a few bashful bows), and they didn’t say a word the entire time (for all i know they don’t even speak english). the bassist, drummer and guitarist switched instruments frequently, using synths, pianos, flutes, glockenspiels. one song involved the drummer and guitarist playing a keyboard each while the bass player played an 8-note pattern on the glock, and the singer (who normally plays his guitar with a violin bow) sat cross-legged with his back to the audience, almost hidden behind a monitor. i swear, i thought at that point that they were scared of us. that didn’t last.
i went from being thrown backward in my chair near the beginning (during “olsen olsen”, i think) to lapsing into something approximating sleep. there were songs that lulled you into a suspended awareness of what was going on. i had to remind myself a few times that what was happening on the stage is what was doing this to me. and then…the ping.
let me just say this: the laws of physics may not have been broken last night, or even bent, but they were leaned on awfully hard. sounds like that (i won’t say “sounds that beautiful” or “notes that clear” because trying to assign adjectives to the sounds does them a disservice) simply should not be able to come out of one so small without signs of effort. i realize people say the same about fellow icelander bjork, but bjork has never realized this emotive quality, and any power she manages is by dint of physical exertion. no, this sound caused disbelief. i was convinced at times that it was coming from a sampler, but then you’d see the throat move or hear his thought coming through the note. this band is not made up of people who are experts with their instruments. instead, they do whatever they can to drag you to the 40th floor of your conception of how music is supposed to happen to you, and rather than kicking you off the top, the voice, this phenomenon that sets them apart from whatever else you know, picks you up and drops you over the edge, and all you can think about on the way down is how lucky you are to be seeing this. the voice stops, you hit the ground. another song. you’re being dragged up again.
anyway, the ping. anyone who has heard svefn-g-englar (the first song on agaetis byrjun) knows what “the ping” is. it was programmed into a sampler on his keyboard, and it sounded once as a test. a lot of us in the audience recognized it, and knew what was coming. i was nervous. i was dead fucking nervous. all night i’d been praying they’d play that song (since it’s quite possibly the most gorgeous thing i’ve ever encountered); meanwhile i’d been silently pleading with them not to. i had several reasons for not wanting to hear it, not the least of which was because i couldn’t fathom how they could expect to pull it off live. the voice had to have been done with effects. the bow work had to have been done with more than one person. those words couldn’t possibly come when standing in front of thousands of dubious onlookers lying prostrate at the feet of one singing a language we couldn’t understand, all of us dreading a substandard offering of a song we had accepted as pristine. the ping grabbed me by the waist and fixed me to the chair. i leaned forward to put my head in my hands. support. they started playing it, and i felt sick. the long intro, the first verse…then the chorus. he hit it. he hit the notes, and it sounded more beautiful than ever, because you could see this heroin-addict-skinny kid making it. his mouth hardly moved. his body remained completely still, slightly bent to accommodate the bow on the strings, and his eyes closed. he sang upwards, as if he expected someone walking by outside massey hall to hear it and wonder what on earth that sound could be. whales. aliens. a children’s choir. anything but him. my body shivered, as it would later during the second chorus. i fell backward in my seat and stared. he lifted the guitar to his mouth and started singing into it, far back form the mic. the voice sounded like it was coming from a cave, echoing through the guitar and over the microphone. my mouth fell open. my hands were freezing for some reason. the song ended with the fading organ notes, ping after ping, and that voice. i wanted so badly to know what he was saying, but it can’t possibly be as numbing as the sound. it can’t matter.
the next two songs were their revenge. i honestly think they were mad at us for having to play svefn-g-englar, and the next two songs were their way of giving some back and making sure we didn’t forget it. i didn’t recognize either song, but both involved some serious aggression. i won’t even try to describe them. we’ll just say that i jumped more than once, as did the girl next to me. the closing measures of the show left bruises. standing ovation. curtain calls, two of them. no more songs. we couldn’t have handled it. i think they were showing us mercy. what sweet young boys.
ohmigod, it’s 11:00. i’ve been writing this on and off for 2 hours.
this wasn’t a concert, it was an upheaval. to me, the sign of a good concert is that i leave feeling as though i’d had my ass kicked. last night, i didn’t get my ass kicked. last night a siren made me crash on her shores, and i fell down and thanked her for it. this changes everything. i’m sure it’s unrelated, but last night i got more sleep than i’ve had in weeks. i fell asleep with svefn-g-englar traipsing through my head, and woke up with it still there. in the shower, on the subway, even listening to the new pornographers…it’s all i can hear. i’m not sure what to do.
i’ll be in my room if anyone needs me.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 
