Archives : all posts by Jordan

...but I think Sean and Dan are trying to get rid of me. Every Sunday, Dan and I receive an email from Sean that contains a solution to one previously unsolved problem in mathematics (Goldbach's conjecture is true, btw) and our weekly posting schedule. This Sunday, I received no such email. According to Sean, he sent it, and clearly Dan got it, but I waited all day, refreshing my Gmail every thirty seconds and crying loudly. I emailed Sean to find out when I was supposed to post this week and he barely got back to me, eventually replying with an email that was so vague and hesitant that it made me reconsider my welcomeness here at StG. "If you really want to post, I guess you could post Whensday [sic]. I was going to do it - or failing that, Dan or someone else - but I guess you could, maybe. But, overall, I'd prefer that you didn't." I asked Dan what was up and he replied with a simple but very hateful email, essentially suggesting that I "move back to Israel." But I never lived in Israel, which is weird. Anyway, all this to say: sorry, late post today. Songs and words will be presented by me this evening. Whether Sean and Dan like it or not.

How's everybody's day going? Working hard?

The Langley Schools Music Project - "Sweet Caroline"

1. My grade seven class had a mock trial for Louis Riel in which I played the unenviable role of prosecutor. Needless to say I lost, despite my impressive rhetorical flourishes and nearly comprehensive knowledge of Canada’s early legal system. No stenographer was present, and so no record remains of what is now likely the closest thing to a realization of my mother’s dream: that I become a lawyer.

2. In the mid-seventies a young B.C. music teacher started a program where kids played pop songs en masse/in class. The teacher, Hans Fenger, did well to choose songs such as this one or the Beach Boys’ “In My Room,” whose subject matters seem more appropriate emanating from the mouths of babes than from the adults who wrote them. The songs were recorded in a gymnasium in one take each.

3. Metallophones are great. Name someone who doesn’t like metallophones and I’ll name someone who’s a phoney and liar (you!). Iannis Xenakis and Carl Orff were both huge fans of metallophones. They actually toured as a metallophone duo for a while in the fifties until petty bickering over gas money and who should get the blonde vs. brunette ended their relationship on less than good terms. All this just as Xenakis got really into set theory, and Orff turned his attention to early adolescent education. The latter preoccupation yielded the Orff metallophone, an instrument with removable bars so that kids can play them without worrying about wrong notes.

Playing music involves a constant struggle between thinking and feeling. The otherworldly quality of song that might be described as “feeling it” has great power, but can also - when focused on to the exclusion of all else - alienate the listener and obscure the interactive aspect of the artist-audience relationship. Orff metallophones can help kids (who tend toward the feeling horn of the dilemma) find a balance, or at least feel the music without losing track of its harmonic elements. Rhythm, as can be heard here, remains a problem.

The sound of the Orff metallophone ringing out in the chorus is breathtaking. Three gingerly played notes rise up above the din, fill the gymnasium, evaporate.

4. The kids play with a sort of square wave dynamics. They clearly view dynamics as a binary game, either gentle and quiet or angry and very loud. In the choruses everything goes wrong, the drummer is not close to being in time and the singing is really quite poor, but the song never falls apart completely. The kids hang on to each other and make it through together. The sheer volume of their choir, reverberating in the gym, makes them bigger than they are, which is the best thing a kid can be, and so I really do believe them when they sing that “good times have never been so good.” [Buy]

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Nedelle - "Good Grief"

I arrived at the Destroyer/Magnolia Electric Co. show at 9pm on Sunday. Accompanied by a friend (I don’t want to name drop, but it was my editor, Max Maki), we had to be early because we hadn’t bought our tickets in advance. When I asked what time the show would start, the doorman (I think it was Ernest Borgnine) said that Nedelle would go on at 9:45. Several thoughts ran through my mind:

1. Who’s Nedelle? I’ve never heard of her. I bet she’s no good.
2. That gives me 45 minutes to run down the street, purchase a piece of pecan pie and a chocolate milkshake.
3. I bet Max is going to want some of my pie or a sip of my milkshake. I wonder if there’s some way to ditch her.

I arrived back at the venue after consuming what little pie and shake Max left for me. It was 9:46. Nedelle had already played. Her set lasted under a minute. Unless Ernest Borgnine lied. I really trusted him.

Nedelle is an extraordinary singer. She sounds like Joni Mitchell singing Motown. And her songs are very strange. She has that rare gift that allows one to write piecemeal songs whose parts sound organically linked. Her songs stop and change directions, make about-faces, sonically contradict themselves, but never feel wrong or forced. Too bad I missed her.

Good thing that Destroyer was absolutely mind-blowing, despite what Dan Beirne might have you believe. [Info]

Joseph Spence - "Bimini Gal"

In a book of John Fahey tablature that I once read, I came across a list of attributes that, according to Fahey, all good guitar players share. I think that the first one was something like “a good guitar player is not afraid of his guitar.” I don’t know what Fahey thought of Joseph Spence, but I bet he liked him a lot. Spence is not afraid of his guitar; his guitar is afraid of him. Nor does he really play his guitar; he wrestles it. He holds it down, he smashes it, he eats it, picks up another, eats that, his eyes were bigger than his stomach, throws up the second guitar, gets a good hold on it, a full nelson, tells it if it wants mercy it must say “uncle,” but it’s a guitar and it doesn’t speak English, so instead it makes every noise it knows how to make, hoping it might make the “uncle” noise, it doesn’t, it can’t, and Spence takes pleasure in his guitar’s struggle, in his power over it, and he lets out a hot dry laugh like the Bahamian sun. Which brings me to my second point. Spence doesn’t so much sing as croak like a crocodile (is that what a crocodile does? Bleat? Meow?). His guttural incantations (imagine a zombie-Glenn Gould) provide an intricate counterpoint to his spectacular guitar work.

At the exact moment that I heard this song, the seasons changed, and now I find myself among the grass and blooms, sitting on a lawn chair in white pants, a batik shirt, and a straw hat, alternately sipping a pineapple and rum cocktail and dictating this post through a megaphone so that my secretary - still inside - can take it down. [Buy]

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The Silvertones - "True Confession"

Well this guy sure fucked up. Now, too scared to simply call his ex-girlfriend and apologize for being so mean, he is trying to woo her back by publishing a letter in a magazine. Believe me, buddy, easier said than done. Luckily (for him), what he seems to fail to realize is that this song about his letter of apology acts as a pretty nice apology itself; his girlfriend is now willing to forgive him and take him back. This is a rather unfortunate turn of events for me, since the ex and I had been seeing each other in the interim. I came home after work yesterday to find her gone along with all of her stuff. The only thing that remained was her reel-to-reel which was playing a song she’d written about a letter of apology addressed to me that she was trying to get published in a magazine. According to the song, the letter explained that she was sorry, but that she’d had no idea how easily Mr. Silvertones’s voice slips down into the bass register or how sweetly and playfully he interacts with his horn section. There was also something (which I completely agreed with) about how he must be truly sorry, since the scattered and desperate keyboard line is clearly a representation of his disturbed emotional state. Whatever, man. Plenty of fish in the sea.

I have a great little slender-necked dolphin-head Silvertone, and my editor, Max Maki, has a beautiful sea foam green one with a terrific beefy tone. But rarely do our Silvertones produce music that approaches the quality of that of these Silvertones. [Buy]

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Both songs today come courtesy of Sarah B. Let's all applaud her impeccable taste.

Neko Case - "That Teenage Feeling"

1. This song is dedicated to the house in Ottawa that I grew up in. As Sean has obliquely hinted at in several posts, my parents just got the exciting news that after long and hard-fought careers in Canada’s public service, they will be moving to Italy where my dad will be Canada’s ambassador and my mom will be a happy consumer of Italian food and culture. I was told this week that my parents will sell the house that I grew up in, and a bit of that teenage feeling came over me. Of course, I realize that it’s just a house, just a bunch of brick and concrete, but still...

2. The way “That Teenage Feeling” starts - high up on the neck of a twelve-string guitar - it sounds like it might be the musical accompaniment to a carousel ride. The way it ends up - electric guitar violently strummed, falling in and out of time - it sounds like it might be the musical accompaniment to a carousel ride that spirals outward to infinity. The song is a glass of lemonade with the sugar so gradually drained that, by the end, you hardly realize you’re drinking pure lemon juice.

3. Whereas Nirvana managed to sound minor with major chords, Case manages to sound diminished with minor ones. This diminished quality is part of the song’s augmented quality.

4. Case sings a lot about “that teenage feeling,” but which feeling does she mean? Is she talking about anxiety? Awkwardness? Powerlessness? A sort of begrudging horniness? She answers this question by presenting us with the musical embodiment of her subject feeling at 1:53 when she moves up into her sublime high register and sings “it’s haa-aaa-haa-aaa-haaaaard” with more nostalgia than angst. The teenage feeling Case is singing about is the excitement of first love and the twilit melancholy that comes in retrospect with considering its inconsequence. She then confirms her answer as she matches that high vocal line, now skipping back and forth between two notes, with a dreamy treble run on her piano. [Buy]

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Bettye LaVette - "Just Say It"

What can I say? My parents’ “song” is Joe Cocker’s “You Are So Beautiful”. A little cheese never hurt anyone, except the lactose intolerant, and even then, I don’t think they’re harmed by that smelliest of all cheeses: metaphorical cheese (lactose intolerants, please confirm or deny).

Yes, I wish the production were different, and yes, I feel a certain Norah Jones-style forced intimacy here that means that I can’t listen to the song without feeling at least a little awkward, a problem which is only exacerbated when Bettye addresses the song’s intended listener as “Daddy.” But, still, her voice is as rich as William Hearst and her dynamics and phrasing as strong as those of Newton and Cicero, respectively. [Buy]

Can - "Mushroom"

When I was in high school I had a radio show at CHUO, the University of Ottawa’s campus station. During the station’s funding drive, I offered copies of a friend’s record to those who pledged a certain amount of money. Sean called and pledged at least that amount, and I remember writing his name down on a piece of scrap paper as a reminder that I should give him the record. We didn’t really know each other. I don’t remember whether or not I gave him the record, but I do remember (because he recently reminded me) that he did not come through with the pledge.

A couple of years ago, around the time I first met Dan, I leant him my copy of U and I, Nicholson Baker’s extraordinary chronicle of his love for John Updike. Dan read the whole thing within two years and recently returned it to me. When I brought it home, I placed it in the crib I’d built for it, offered it drink and food - though it stoically refused both - and after what we tacitly agreed had been a mutually respectful period of time, I delicately opened its cover and flipped through its pages, whereupon I found the piece of scrap paper I’d written Sean’s name on when I was sixteen.

I took this coincidence as a sign - but of what, I did not know. At first I investigated the possible significance of the fact that in this particular formation of the StG triangle, I constituted the hypotenuse. This surprised me given that, of the three of us, I am both the shortest and the least prolific. Unsurprisingly, this approach led me nowhere but into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. Moving on, I examined the possibility that my coincidence was a sign of the existence of god, but then, remembering the ontological argument for that same conclusion, abandoned the approach, seeing the absurdity of a redundant sign. Finally, I thought that perhaps the appearance of the note was a sort of (and I’m sorry to mix my metaphors in this way, but I think you’ll see that it’s necessary) temporal road sign, pointing backwards to when I was doing my radio show.

Sixteen, I would say, was the age at which I began my great consumption. It lasted for roughly three years and consisted in buying, rather indiscriminately, many hundreds of albums of very diverse musical styles, and ended with the beginning of a sort of misanthropic hermitage, still currently underway. I was so completely open to and excited about all kinds of music that, thinking back, I’m reminded of Richard Dawkins’s little witticism that, “We must be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.” My brains were everywhere. I ate them on toast.

But still, there was something nice about the world of music seeming so vast and uncharted, with so many undiscovered treasures ahead. I still believe that intellectually, but as my focus has narrowed and as my discoveries have become more infrequent and less independent, it’s sometimes hard to feel it the way I did when I first heard Can’s Tago Mago, sitting on my bed in my parents’ house, thinking, ‘this music is from another world - it is so crazy, it is so unbelievably good, and I found it.’ [Buy]

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Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Tortoise - "Thunder Road"

Two great things can bring out the worst in each other. Listen to “Thunder Road” as you would eat a calamari and sweet cheese danish. That is, try to forget that you’re throwing up a little bit, and enjoy the greatness of each individual element. [Buy]

White Whale - "What's An Ocean For?"

White Whale asks “What is an ocean for but to carry a ship ashore?” - a surprisingly anthropocentric question for such a marine-focused band. One possible answer is that oceans are for housing white whales, those fine and rare beasts. But how then can we explain the fact that White Whale - who is not only a white whale nominally, but also metaphorically - is assuredly landborne? (Scientist readers, please email).

Also:

1. I just took a bite out of the drums, such is the crispness of the production.
2. White Whale has a knack for moving from spartan drive to dense shimmer.
3. If this song is itself a body of water (though I doubt that it is, being that it’s a song), then the keyboard bass is the tide; undulating according to a precise algorithm, above so much and below so much else.

Listening to this song, I was tormented by my inability to put my finger on exactly what it was that I was reminded of. Ephemeral images, words and ideas passed through my mind, failing to solidify: the sea, German Expressionism and cabarets, Ray Manzarek and the Doors, the keyboard bass I almost bought when I sold my alto saxophone, a six line proof of the Riemann Hypothesis that also works well as a joke, etc. Thrust into a cripplingly intense bout of reflection, I sat still and listened for what seemed like a year, but was, in fact, two. At the end of which period I arrived at the conclusion that What’s an Ocean For? reminded me of Kevin Costner’s Waterworld, a film I not only didn’t like, but never saw. Strange. [White Whale's debut album will be released by Merge in September.]

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Pharoah Sanders - "The Creator Has A Master Plan"

Unashamedly, and with a nod to his mentor’s A Love Supreme, Pharoah Sanders makes actual a master plan for such a joyful and exuberant communion, that he requires yodelling and thumb piano to do so. Sometimes, left to his own devices, Sanders wanders into rather fruity territory, but here he keeps it together, blowing his guts out in testament to his faith. [Buy]

Snailhouse - "The Silence Show"

Bertrand Russell rolled over in his his grave when Snailhouse sent him a copy of his penultimate release, The Opposite is Also True.

Upon receipt of his own promotional copy of said album, Frege had a very different reaction. He decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to invoke his favourite rule of logic: reductio.

Reductio ad absurdum is not only Frege’s favourite rule, it’s also objectively the best rule. It allows you to conclude anything and everything from a contradiction. So if, as Snailhouse claims, and as surely is often the case, the opposite is also true, then so too is it true that you’re not reading this right now, or that I’m a 6’10 adonis with impressive pectoral muscles (true regardless, btw).

“The Silence Show” is a lonely song. It’s about how we necessarily experience so much of life alone, about the limited extent to which we can share ourselves. Mike Feuerstack plays guitar with the reverb turned up, and maybe with just a slight chorus effect, and he sings sweetly, shifting easily between his upper and lower registers. The song might have been unbearably desolate if not not for the accompaniment of a fluttering, tape-saturating keyboard. Feuerstack sings of loneliness not alone, but with company. And songs this pure and gorgeous make our lonely times less so.

Because, though life is lonely, the opposite is also true. From which we can conclude that 3 plus 8 is a million and everything else too. [Info]

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Geeshie Wiley - "Last Kind Word Blues"

One should have a blues to sing for any blue situation that one might find oneself in. Here’s a blue situation: your daddy is conscripted to fight in the Great War, and just before leaving, he requests that, if he dies, he not be buried, but that instead you should let buzzards eat him whole. If, god forbid, you find yourself in this situation, I feel that no blues would be more appropriate than the ominous and winding masterpiece, “Last Kind Word Blues.” [Buy]