Two Songs, Late Night, at Work

It’s the first warm night of the year and it’s getting late and I’m alone in the office. The most painful part of my job is done for another month and the window’s cracked so I’m breathing in some of the night air and it’s filling up my lungs just fine. Two songs are quietly making me very happy. One is old and one is new. Both of them have strong playful rhythms. One of them, the older one, has hauntingly weird echoing multi-tracked vocals. There are refrains but no real chorus or verse; it discovers its own shape as it goes along. The other one, the newer one, is downright majestic, its chorus a beautiful ship gliding from the darkness into the light of the harbour. Also there are childlike singsong verses. Both of them are covered with little doodled curlicues but they don’t sound busy because they have strong playful rhythms. They are quietly pleasing.

• Les Paul & Mary Ford, “Bye Bye Blues” (buy here)
• CocoRosie, “Rainbowarriors” (preorder here)

Too Much Confusion Here

(Possible spoiler re Battlestar Galactica ahead, so stop reading now if you’re nervous. Though if you haven’t seen it I think the “spoiler” will just be garbled & incomprehensible. Like, even more than this blog usually is. Ba-dum-bum.)

I reviewed Joshua Ferris’s debut novel, Then We Came to the End, in the Star this week. Not sure what’s up with that headline – “Survival is so relative” seems rather gnomic to me. But what the hey.

In the Friends of Bury Me Not department, a painter has a painting blog. Really nice stuff. If we were both on MySpace we would be each other’s Friends, but we’ll have to settle for being real friends in the real world.

Moistworks, which is one of the very best mp3 blogs out there, is having its annual week of guest posts by authors. It kicks off with a candid personal essay about motherhood stress by Jenny Offill. Other contributors lined up for the week include not one but two who wrote great novels based on the Patty Hearst story – Susan Choi & Christopher Sorrentino – so I’m all aflutter already. (See Hearst, Patty: DW obsession with.)

Battlestar Galactica finale: holy crap! Is Bob Dylan the fifth and final Cylon? (That might explain a lot, actually. Ba-dum-bum.)

When Character X muttered “there must be some kind of way out of here,” my ears perked up in a vague recognition, and then when Character Y was ranting and said “[pause] there’s too much confusion [pause]” I actually recited the first verse of “All Along the Watchtower” to my fellow TV watcher (who, wisely, more or less ignored me). Even then, though, I figured I must surely be imagining things. Right? Nope – the sleeper-agent Cylons were actually activated with a classic rock anthem from Earth. I shit you not.

I’m still wrapping my head around that one. Could be the most audacious move yet, and this in a show that’s already jumped forward in time more than a year in the middle of an episode, for God’s sake. The general reaction to the insertion of Earthling pop culture has been furious revulsion, it seems, but the jury in my head is still out – I’m dying to see how it plays out. I mean, they are clearly en route to an Earth that’s likely close to our own, right? So maybe the song is a message from Earth. What’s the relationship of the Cylons to Earth? What kind of Cylons are these, anyway, that apparently age and have kids? Is Starbuck a Cylon or what? Is Roslin? She was seizing up at the same time as the other four, even though she seemed to never hear the music and wasn’t summoned to the landing bay. And there were those communal dreams she was having with the two other Cylons.

Holy cow am I a nerd. But so be it.

Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart

Saw David Fincher’s new movie Zodiac and thought it was tops. Not so much a serial-killer film as a rumpled, patient period procedural with little to no payoff, which is definitely cool by me. (I wanted it to be even more go-nowhere than it was – to end in the state of ignorance & existential agony that much of the movie seems to point toward. But instead it’s a tad more comforting: it ends up arguing that the cops pretty much know who the Zodiac Killer was, but just couldn’t prove it.)

Anyway, getting back to that rumpled & patient vibe, I think some reviews have compared the movie to All the President’s Men, which seems bang-on to me. But Zodiac also has real visual style. The opening sequence, with the camera gliding through a suburban California neighbourhood at car level while 4th of July fireworks go off, made me swoon; likewise a shot of a mail cart moving through a newspaper office.

Everything in the movie is fact-based – Fincher was apparently much more scrupulous about that than the director of a typical Hollywood production would be – and Robert Downey Jr. plays Paul Avery, a flamboyant San Francisco crime reporter. I poked around afterward & discovered that Avery was also the co-author of The Voices of Guns, the definitive book about that other classic Bay Area crime story of the 1970s, Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army. I’ve read the book but didn’t put the names together when watching the movie; when I did later, I got all giddy. Because, um, I’ve maybe been obsessed with Patty Hearst for years. Perhaps.

So here’s “Tania” (Patty’s nom d’guerre, y’know) by Camper Van, from their 1988 album Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart. I liked this record a lot when it came out and still kind of do – there are a couple stomping Led Zep rewrites, and “She Divines Water” has a lovely lilt, and I dig all the David Lindleyesque world-music instrumentation. But looking back, it seems painfully clear how ill-served the band was by the sparkling ’80s production. Everything here cries out desperately for a little dirt.

• Camper Van Beethoven, “Tania” (buy here)

white / shining / silver / studs / with their nose / in / flames

Well, of all the official online synopses of all the Hot Docs movies, the one for Zoo has got to have the grabbiest opening sentence by a longshot:

In July 2005, a group of “zoophiles” living in the shadow of Washington's Mt. Rainier were brought to national attention when a Seattle family man died of a perforated colon after engaging in intercourse with an Arabian stallion.

Ordered my Hot Docs tickets last week and did indeed sign up for the one about The Love That Dare Not Snort Its Name. (Also one about Warhol’s Factory, one about the space program, and one about the font Helvetica, all of which I suppose will be interesting in their own way even if nobody’s screwing an animal in any of them.)

Still can’t get enough of YouTube, so here’s Patti Smith doing that great horse song “Land” on TV in the 1970s. This song (like the whole album, Horses) was a real touchstone for me when I was young, and unlike other touchstones of my youth (R.E.M., say), it still fills me with fire & awe.

And it’s startling how much she looks like Mick Jagger.

There Are Some Bands I Like to Namecheck

Thanks to Gary B. for mentioning yet another little joy of YouTube that I had yet to discover myself. It’s R.E.M.’s first national TV appearance, on the Letterman show in the fall of 1983, doing “Radio Free Europe” –



– and then “So. Central Rain,” which at that time was as-yet-untitled. The cringe-inducing band interview segment (from which Michael Stipe has the good sense to absent himself) reminds me uncannily of The Who on the Smothers Brothers show in The Kids Are Alright.



The whole RnR Hall of Fame thing has got people asking the hard questions about the R.E.M. legacy, as in this piece on the Onion AV Club, which I found mostly dumbass – say what you will about the albums, they are not all interchangeable; the insistence that it ain’t real rock & roll unless the band is raising hell & looking stupid is, well, dumbass; and anyway, who in the world thinks Michael Stipe has never looked stupid?

However.

R.E.M. was one of my favourite bands all through Those Important Teen Years and beyond. (As an aside, I can tell you that in the mid-1980s, the letters “R.E.M.” placed on a T-shirt were meaningless to almost everybody & therefore were generally taken to mean “Please make fun of me in shop class.”) I have stood in the abandoned Athens church – long since demolished, I think – where they played their first gig. And yet I can hardly bring myself to listen to their records any more. This is true not just of the recent ones, which I never had any interest in checking out in the first place, but even the old ones that I allegedly loved; the only ones I still listen to with any regularity are Reckoning and (weirdly) New Adventures in Hi-Fi, the latter of which came out when my interest was already well on the wane. And the only song that really rekindles the original thril I felt on first hearing them, the feeling that hey, pop music can sound like this too, is “Harborcoat,” with its fantastically garbled rhythms & rainy harmonies. Too often, though, the records sound dated, played-out, obvious at times & half-baked at others. I tried to listen to Murmur recently & shuddered.

And yet, a couple years ago when I walked up to the bar at the Horseshoe during an El Vez show and found myself standing between Peter Buck & Mike Mills, I was all goshdarn starstruck.

• fIREHOSE, “For the Singer of REM” (buy here)
• Pavement, “Unseen Power of the Picket Fence” (buy here)

Anyway, speaking of bands on Letterman, check this out, this is funny.

I Only Do It 4 a Worthy Cause

It’s only a year or two old, but I can’t imagine life without Robyn’s “Be Mine.” When I hear it once I want to hear it again. And then again. At one point a few months ago I listened to it on the iPod, like, 12 times in a row, extending my walk home to ridiculous lengths, lapping the block around the library branch over & over.

That was the dance version, and if I had thought about it at the time, I probably would have assumed that the song’s appeal was 99% thanks to the track’s electro-bop-bop arrangement. But actually the arrangement is pretty unobtrusive. Thanks to Eric for recently setting me straight by mentioning the “ballad version.”

• Robyn, “Be Mine” (ballad version)

I’m usually pretty aloof to torch songs, but this one warms my stony heart. The sparse piano chords at the outset utterly convince you that this is serious stuff going on, even if the words might sound like simple teenage bullshit. And as much as I loved the original version, I think I’d underestimated both the durable genius of the song and the Swedish diva’s vocal skills; her singing here is underplayed but really sells the heartbreak. (Anyway, teenage bullshit never really goes away, does it? It just recurs & gets more complicated, like a wiggling, subdividing fractal.)

The remake is on The Rakamonie EP (buy here), which also includes an icy-sharp cover of the Teddybears’ “Cobrastyle” (known to most people as That Dang-Diggy-Diggy Song in the Heineken Commercial). Not to mention a hilarious piano-only take on Prince’s “Jack U Off” that sounds like it’s being performed in some Klondike saloon circa 1890. Oh, all right:

• Robyn, "Jack U Off"

I tell you, little odds & ends EPs like this are some of my favourite things; the Fiery Furnaces’ EP, f’rinstance, is the only thing of theirs I ever listen to anymore.

Branded

I recently got a tattoo. Reaction from friends & loved ones has been varied: some people really dig it, while some are clearly bewildered. (My fave comment so far: “Keep your existential angst to yourself!” My second-fave: “I thought only young people got tattoos.”) Anyway, rather than get into too much rigmarole on an individual basis, I thought I’d put something up here by way of explanation.

So here goes.

My relationship with my own body has pretty much always been an adversarial one. There are health issues lifelong & recent, bothersome problems, etc. Doctors got files on me that bulge, man. Sometimes in particularly bleak moods I think that if I woke up one morning as a head floating in a jar, about the only thing I’d miss would be the sexytimes.

(Holy shit, how did this get so awkwardly confessional so fast? Jesus. If you’re quietly making your way to the exit at this point, I’ll pretend not to notice & I won’t blame you a bit.)

I don’t really know why most people get tattoos – novelty? lark? body as canvas? message to the world? But anyway I know I got mine mainly as an act of defiance. I wanted to engage this treacherous renegade in some way, to remind it that it has to deal with me. And also to remind myself that this flawed, frayed skin I wear is mine for good. That this is what I have to work with, for better or for worse.

Plus I had an epiphany recently that a tattoo doesn’t have to be an image. I’d wanted one for many years, but was always stymied trying to imagine a pictograph that I’d want to carry around for the rest of my life. But then – words! One after the other, arranged in a particular order! That got me going.

After that it was a no-brainer: a mad Irishman’s line that’s extremely famous & admittedly crazy overused, but that nevertheless, well, resonates a lot for me. I had it put on my inner left forearm, since it’s a message to myself & nobody else. Which is what I mean when I refer to it as “private,” as I have a few times in conversation. But when I say that I don’t mean “secret” or anything. After all, I’m writing about the thing right here, aren’t I? So:

Cheesy, for sure. But hey, it was either that or “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

(I knew I couldn’t get through all that without a dumb gag.)

• Link Wray & the Raymen, “Branded” (buy here)

Wishful Thinking

• Change of Heart, “Winter’s Over”

It has a metallic glisten, but it’s light on its feet and the vocal melodies shimmy. Makes me feel like I’m breathing deep & shaking sweat out of my hair – always a nice feeling. Except it’s a cold day & the sweat is probably about to give me pneumonia or something, but who cares because it’s beautiful & bright even if it is cold.

(They were from Toronto, so they know about winter.)

(I think Soapbox (1989) is out of print, which is a damn shame.)

In the Mist of a Memory

Sometimes you just want to tell yourself everything’s going to be OK after all at some unspecified time in the not too distant future. And when this song is playing you might just believe it, at least for a few minutes.

• Nino Tempo & April Stevens, “Deep Purple” (buy here)

It was a big hit in 1963, and they were a brother-sister act, which is maybe why it sounds so … sweet or something. (I mean, it’s an old song and there are probably other versions that sound … sexy or something.) The record is like someone who says sugar instead of shit and you realize they’re not bowing to anyone else’s sense of propriety but their own, and you find yourself staring at them & feeling this surge of affection and even a weird kind of admiration.

Yes, actually, this blog has become an experiment in “automatic writing.” Why do you ask?

Anyway, there’s a lot to like: the way the rhythm section keeps things gently rocking back & forth, the harmonica wheeze that moves things along like a train engine, the aforementioned sweet vocals, and the when-in-doubt spoken-word section that turns out to give the song a tiny bit of eccentric, exotica-style edge. And sounds darn pretty too.

News For Which You Have No Use: Dean & Britta at the Mod Club on Monday

I kind of lost interest in Luna over the last few albums – though I never stopped enjoying them live – and haven’t paid much attention to the whole Dean & Britta thing. That said, I liked the show more than I thought I would, & not just because the back end was stacked heavily with Galaxie 500 and early Luna numbers. Dean Wareham is still an unusually expressive guitar soloist, I think, and Britta has the pipes, man – she really showed ’em off on the highwire chorus of the Lee Hazelwood cover, “You Turned My Head Around.”

Plus their newer stuff has its moments – “Words You Used to Say,” from the new album, seems to have a typical airy drift, but you soon find it’s drifted right into the centre of your brain & stuck there. Their newer stuff also has plenty of wispy & samey moments, alas (which is what I had started to feel about Luna’s records), but the set was mostly a lean, hour-long cherrypicking of the more memorable tunes.

But getting back to those Galaxie 500 and early Luna numbers: “Strange,” “Tugboat,” “Chinatown,” “Tiger Lily,” “Bewitched,” “Bonnie and Clyde” (which, yes, is a cover, but it’s still Luna-identified, right?). That part actually felt a little weird/sad, like a tacit admission that nostalgia is a big part of the draw at this point. Though to be fair I guess it was, for me, anyway, since seeing Wareham sing “Strange” – for what I’m pretty sure was my first time ever, despite having been to six or seven Luna shows over the years – was definitely the highlight.

And while I’ve never been a fan of Wareham’s lyrics, “I stood in line and ate my Twinkies” is a pretty great one.

• Galaxie 500, “Strange” (buy On Fire here)

Oh, and I saw the Pipettes on the weekend. Seven-word review: the Pipettes have got it goin’ on. (And I don’t mean that in some salacious or lecherous way.)

Also at the show, apparently, were people with cameras. In the near future, all human existence will be accessible immediately on YouTube.

Oh, Those Germans

A quick folo to the comment on the previous post re videos in Krakow.

A few years ago S and I were in Germany and between sightseeing were utterly bewitched by MTV Europe. They played lots of familiar American stuff, of course: Xtina & Timberlake et al. But there was also fascinating indigenous material; we learned, for example, that A-Ha and Nena had apparently continued to create and find audiences in or closer to their homelands. Some pleasant, wet-noodle Irish band whose name escapes me now was all over the airwaves. And there was some act called Sodastream that purveyed compelling-enough melancholia.

And tons of Eurotrash dance-pop, too. Some of it, I must say, startlingly good. Like this one, which I am still happy to listen to any time. Just try and sit motionless when that synth/bass line kicks in, I challenge you. You cannot. Or if you can I’d prefer not to know you.

• Tok Tok vs Soffy O, “Day of Mine” (buy here)

And then there was this, which was unquestionably the most memorable viewing experience of the trip.



Band’s called Deichkind, which I assume means “Godchild,” [ALAS, IT DOES NOT. THANKS TO COMMENTER.] which is, I’m sure we’re all in agreement, perfect. My favourite parts are – of course – the scenes of the three heads floating in space. Especially when the samurai dude’s floating head turns toward the other floating heads and nods its support & encouragement.

Letters from Krakow

Well, I reckon a trip to Poland or two is in my future. A close friend of Bury Me Not is in the process of moving to Krakow for a couple years for work & I’m bummed already. (And happy for her, too, of course, yeah yeah.) She’s now launched one of those so-called “weblogs” devoted to the experience – here – and she’s quickly learning that in Eastern Europe she will have to suffer for her vegetarianism.

I would say this calls for some Eastern Bloc rock, but sadly, my background knowledge of the Poland music scene past or present is minimal nonexistent. (A little quick research on that so-called “information superhighway” turned up a compilation of garage rock that sounds great, but I haven’t been able to ensnare anything from it.) And I really don’t feel like posting that “death for no reason is dinner murder” Smiths song.

On a completely unrelated note, here’s the oddest Google search query to bring a reader to this site in a while (it’s not the substance that’s so odd but the phrasing):

bad evil dude took over uganda in 1971

Let Us Entertain You

For a few months many years ago I worked at a large educational publisher with a small trade division. During slow periods we liked to go check out The Bin: the dumpster in the warehouse where about-to-be-discarded, up-for-grabs books were, well, dumped. My one real score at this time was a large-format photo book documenting the CBGBs scene; the project had apparently done poorly, because I was able to dig out copies for myself and about 20 of my closest friends.

But one day I also found some kind of guidebook called Running Your Rock Band. I leafed through it, bemused, and came across one little bit that made me laugh hard enough to take the book home, and I’ve never gotten around to getting rid of it. This is it:

Standard Stage Patter

How’s everybody doin’? We’re the Nomads and we’ll be here until closing time. So make sure your car’s legally parked, check your weapons at the door, and don’t forget to tip your waitress. We’ll take care of the rest.

Everybody having a good time?

Let’s hear it for couple number two!

Put your hands together!

We want to take a minute to thank [club manager, concert promoter, sponsoring organization]. Without [him/her/it/them], we wouldn’t be here having fun.

If you’re having a good time tonight, you might want to catch our act at Billy Bob’s this Thursday night …

I’d like to introduce the members of the band …

Last call, folks. [Always popular with club owners.] And don’t forget: TIP YOUR WAITRESS!

And now, here’s the Standard Stage Patter guide as written by Lou Reed, circa 1978.

Like going to bed with a brontosaurus, man, it’s out of style. What’s in style? Nothing is in style, man. Haven’t you gotten into nothing yet? Why not? Cause it’s nothing. It’s Saturday night, man, what do you want? Watch me turn into Lou Reed before your very eyes! Aaah! I do Lou Reed better than anybody, so I thought I’d get in on it.

Springsteen is alright, by the way. He gets my seal of approval, I think he’s groovy. You notice the way the critics turned on him like after they were on him, right? When he needed ’em they weren’t there [indistinct]. Critics. What does Robert Christgau do in bed? You know, is he a toe-fucker?

I had walked out just when I made an album called Loaded, for loaded with hits, right? Cause I saw it coming and I said, “Oh-oh, get lost.” So I walked, right? Cause we were going to be very successful and there could be money there [indistinct]. So I became a typist for my old man, $40 a week.

And those aren’t even the choice bits.

• Lou Reed, “Walk on the Wild Side” (live 1978, 16:44, large file)

It’s from Live: Take No Prisoners, aka “the standup album” – doesn’t seem to be widely available these days but there’s a pricey Japanese import here.

An Eye for an Eye and a Tooth for a Tooth

I was all set to post Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds doing a 33-minute pisstake of Leonard Cohen’s “Tower of Song” – after threatening all week to burn a copy for a Leonard-loving co-worker – but I finally listened to the whole thing again and realized I could not inflict that either on her or on you good people. (And I think the circulating 33-minute version is itself only an excerpt – at one point Cave groans, “We’ve been doing this for an hour.”)

So instead here’s an acoustic version of “The Mercy Seat” with some chilling piano chords. The Tender Prey version has all the razzmatazz, sparks flying & blood splatter everywhere, but this quieter one seems just as intense. And I’m willing to wager this is the one Rick Rubin played for Johnny Cash.

• Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, “The Mercy Seat” (acoustic)

(Buy Tender Prey here and B Sides and Rarities here.)

Things Go Better

So my pop e-mailed me a list of songs that he’d like me to locate & burn for him. He wrote, “It’s nice to put a CD in the machine and only hear songs that you like.” Which I took to be an extremely polite way of saying, “No little surprises this time, OK? Keep that Devo shit off this one.”

This is one of the ones he asked for.

• Joe Tex, “Ain’t Gonna Bump No More (with No Big Fat Woman)” (buy here)

I love Joe Tex and all, but let’s face it, this is not one of his prouder moments.

It is the first Joe Tex song I ever heard, though, since Dad had and probably still has this on 45. He had boxes full of 45s when I was growing up and I listened to them all, which I imagine explains my lifelong weakness for trash pop, or, put more generously, my refusal to acknowledge cultural hierarchies. Today I think of his collection as a poignant memorial to the anything-goes spirit of Top 40 radio – I don’t think people realize how many kooky songs have found a place on the mainstream airwaves. Now, though, everything’s been scrubbed & sorted & separated into Soft Rock or Classic Rock or Modern Rock or EZ Lite or Urban Flow. I like it better when everything’s scrambled together. As good old Huck Finn would say: “In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.”

Never Getting Anywhere

Was in a Hüsker Dü mood today and was reminded that side 2 of Candy Apple Grey is a song-suite that can stand up to any lofty Concept Album. And then there’s this one, from Warehouse. A song about futility (“poor bird flies up in the air, never getting anywhere”) but delivered with a rousing suckerpunch chorus. And though it’s Bob Mould’s tune, that chorus really soars on the wings of Grant Hart’s backing vocals. Which is kind of touching when you bear in mind that those two basically couldn’t stand each other by that point. To make something beautiful, you gotta rise above.

• Hüsker Dü, “Up in the Air” (buy here)

I’ve Been Bad, and I’ve Been Worse

Trudged into a walk-in clinic after work yesterday and took my seat in the waiting room for a long wait and noticed that several people were wearing little yellow paper face-masks. It seemed to be an optional thing – I didn’t notice any posted directions to put one on or anything – so I figured I’d do without, already being sick and all. And then I soon realized that what the masks really protect you from is 20 people shooting you filthy, angry looks every time you cough. So I went and found one and took my seat again. But my coughing must have been pretty horrific-sounding, because even though the dirty looks more or less stopped, every time I coughed it renewed a general exodus away from my corner of the waiting room, until finally it seemed like all the empty seats in the room were the ones closest to me. And I had bathed yesterday and everything.

• Mudhoney, “Touch Me I’m Sick” (buy here)