|
in search of kid serious
by Sean
Please note: MP3s are only kept online for a short time, and if this entry is from more than a couple of weeks ago, the music probably won't be available to download any more.
Well, if it isn't already Monday. I passed a fine weekend with my friends Anne and J, up from Virginia/Montreal and NYC. We oohed at totem poles, watched a little english boy play catch, ate beaver-tails and poutine. You know, Canadian stuff. Graeme Downes - "Hammers and Anvils". A song to fill sails, to blow ships across straits. Downes sings like Billy Bragg or Greg Macpherson; like someone who gives not a shit for discretion or noise pollution laws, like someone who simply wants to sing their fucking heart out. An electric guitar rumbles and rings, Downes opens his mouth wide. As frontman for NZ's The Verlaines, he learned to demand attention. And now he's stamping his foot on a bare black stage, his voice a blare: "I didn't do it, the moon did / but just for a minute or so / my head started raging / she was laughing with slaughter-house eyes." Does anyone hear his confession? Or is his only audience the stars, with their unwavering silver stare. (From Downes' 2001 solo debut. Clare = awesome.) [buy] Kid Serious - "Armageddon Girls". Annette sent me this drowsy, mysterious song, but neither of us can ascertain where it really comes from. Google can't tell us anything about artist or track, at least as far as I can tell. It's possible the song is mislabelled - if anyone has insights, please do pass them on. The tune's nebulous origins make it all the more appealing. A lonely, phased guitar repeats over and over, 80s-echoing drums like the nighttime flyby of telephone poles. The singer has a cigarette rasp, a voice of warning. It's like a movie's nighttime drive, gas-stations crumbling to dust. When the backup singers begin their chant, it's a memory quickly dismissed. "She got road-signs in her eyes / waiting for the lights to change." It's a song to get lost in - the compulsion of the glimmering guitar, of the headlong drift. Posted by Sean at July 26, 2004 12:10 AMComments
Thanks...beautiful paragraph on the Kid Serious. For me, you summoned images of the solitude and repetition of Edward Hopper's paintings. Haunting. Posted by canowine at July 26, 2004 10:44 AMtwas wonderful to see you and experience the wonders of ottawa; i hope it can be reciprocated on my turf at some point in the future. Posted by anne at July 27, 2004 12:42 AMAh...I sent you the Graeme Downes song. But my name is not Tim! I demand the fame and glory I deserve! I'm glad you like the song, anyway. Posted by Clare Nesmith at July 27, 2004 7:15 AMack! so sorry, clare! Posted by Sean at July 27, 2004 11:19 AMi didn't know bruce springsteen had a new album. Boy that kid is serious(ly) awful... Clare Nesmith = awesome. That's the word on the web. Also, she digs rock n roll. Posted by Rory K at July 28, 2004 8:07 AMClare rules. And she's my sister. Posted by wood at July 29, 2004 5:40 AMKid serious sounds oddly liek Bob Dylan circa early 80s, right down to teh female backing vocals Bob favored during taht period. I would think it was actually from that period, but then the lyric about "grungeheads in Seattle" would be oddly presicent... Posted by ryan at July 31, 2004 3:11 AMprescient - august 30, 2002 - word of the day. Thanks for keeping this one alive! (Remember prescience for the spelling) Posted by jhrantl at July 31, 2004 2:14 PMThe vocals sounds spookily similar to someone I used to know, who's always been an active musician and is prone to using pseudonyms. I'll have to get in contact with him, and see if it's his doing... Posted by father_jack at August 9, 2004 8:01 AMGood to see Graeme Downes getting some attention. I've always loved his songwriting--the Verlaines sounded like no one else. Posted by rodii at August 15, 2004 1:04 PMOh, and hey, hi Sean. Posted by rodii at August 15, 2004 1:07 PMI first heard Kid Serious on mp3.com back before the crash. His CD was named Gravity Spill. There are other songs - The Vein, Spaceman - that are as good. No clue about his identity or whereabouts. Posted by Unbathed at August 20, 2004 3:24 PMIn 1998 I downloaded his stuff on mp3.com. "Spaceman" is amazing--I remember reading the lyrics to my eighth grade classmates on poetry day. Posted by eesa at March 21, 2005 9:06 AMArmageddon girls is done by a band called Gravity Spill. It used to be available on MP3.com Posted by Duke Steele at January 4, 2006 5:19 PMKid Serious here. I have been out of the This Kid Serious is the greatest artist since Hendrix. His recordings are not the highly polished wax the record cos. commonly fill our ears with and that turns most people off, but he is a great writer and singer and a poet of the first order. I have never heard better lyrics, ever. Not hookish--profound, displaying a great experience of life. Surely someone knows something about this fellow? Posted by the Cave Reverend at November 23, 2006 12:45 AMI'm assuming Kid Serious won't mind, but I've uploaded a "video" of Armageddon Girls overlayed on a still from his unfinished Web site. http://youtube.com/watch?v=pCSx5326XMk Posted by Tim Quan at July 5, 2007 2:03 PMPost a comment |
 about said the gramophone
this is a daily sampler of really good songs. all tracks are posted out of love. please go out and buy the records!
to play a song in-browser (flash required), click the  . to download a song, right-click the link and choose 'Save as...'
all songs are removed within a week or two of posting. said the gramophone launched in march 2003, and added songs in november of that year. it was one of the world's very first mp3blogs. if you would like to say hello, find out our mailing addresses or invite us to shows, please get in touch: montreal, canada: sean toronto, canada: jordan montreal, canada: dan please don't send us emails with tons of huge attachments; if emailing a bunch of mp3s etc, use a service like MailBigFile. if you are the copyright holder of any song posted here, please contact us if you would like the song taken down early. please do not direct link to any of these tracks. please love and wonder. "and i shall watch the ferry-boats / and they'll get high on a bluer ocean / against tomorrow's sky / and i will never grow so old again." we are a member of MBV.
about the authors
Sean Michaels lives in Montreal, where he is writing a novel. His work also occasionally appears at McSweeney's. Follow him on Twitter or reach him here.
Dan Beirne is an actor and writer living in Montreal. He writes fiction fiction fiction on here. It may feel true, but it is never True. He is most proud of his most recent project The Bitter End. Email him here Jordan Himelfarb lives in Toronto, where he is editor in chief of The Mark. Jordan's posts appear at Said the Gramophone only on the last Wednesday of every month. Email him here. Site design and header typography by Neale McDavitt-Van Fleet. The header graphic is randomized: this one is by . 
search
Archives
elsewhere
our favourite blogs
(◊ means they write about music) Back to the World La Blogothèque ◊ Fluxblog ◊ Weird Canada ◊ Juan and Only ◊ Passion of the Weiss ◊ Destination: Out ◊ A Grammar (Nitsuh Abebe) ◊ Ill Doctrine ◊ Petites planètes ◊ LPWTF? ◊ Endless Banquet Torture Garden ◊ Gorilla vs Bear ◊ Herohill ◊ Clouds of Evil ◊ The Dolby Apposition ◊ Awesome Tapes from Africa ◊ Molars ◊ Mile Endings Daytrotter ◊ Matana Roberts ◊ Pitchfork Reviews Reviews ◊ i like you [podcast] Musicophilia ◊ Freedom Blues ◊ Nicola Meighan ◊ radiolab [podcast] plethoric pundrigrions Wattled Smoky Honeyeater ◊ The Clear-Minded Creative Hungry Oyster Horses Think White Hotel Then Play Long (Marcello Carlin) ◊ Uno Moralez Coming Up For Air (Matt Forsythe) ftrain my love for you is a stampede of horses It's Nice That Marathonpacks ◊ Song, by Toad ◊ In Focus AMASS BLOG Inventory Waxy WTF [podcast] Masalacism ◊ The Rest is Noise (Alex Ross) ◊ Goldkicks ◊ My Daguerreotype Boyfriend The Hood Internet ◊ things we like in Montreal eat: st-viateur bagel café olimpico Euro-Deli Batory le pick up lawrence au pied de cochon mamie clafoutis tourtière australienne la paryse ripples bilboquet vices & versa + paltoquet, cocoa locale, idée fixe, patati patata, qin hua dumplings, momoi, meu-meu, romodos, patisserie guillaume, patisserie rhubarbe, kazu, maison du nord, cuisine szechuan &c shop: phonopolis drawn + quarterly + bottines &c shows: casa + sala + the hotel blue skies turn black montreal improv passovah productions le cagibi cinema du parc cinérobothèque (maga)zines The Believer The Morning News I (Heart) Music McSweeney's State The Skinny community ILX |
