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Magnetic Fields - "Strange Powers"

Stephin Merritt (the creative force behind the Magnetic Fields) cites Abba as his favourite band. I do not. I do, however, cite The Magnetic Fields as one of my favourite bands. Can I not hear ABBA in the Magnetic Fields? I can. I hear elements of ABBAESQUE gaudiness and saccharine poppiness. But the Magnetic Fields set these elements in a wholly (and holy, mind you) Merrittorious context. ABBA does not have lyrics like these:

"In Las Vegas where the electric bills are staggering,
the decor hog-wild and the entertainment saccharine.
What a golden age, what a time of right and reason,
the consumer's king and unhappiness is treason."

And Merritt isn't just channeling ABBA, he's turning the sound on its head. He creates from the pop showiness of ABBA and the dense harmonies of the Beach Boys, as well as the simple and melancholic melody of Joy Division, something entirely his own. He creates his own world of seedy Ferris Wheels, cotton candy, electric lights. And he manages to pull off that most difficult of feats: to mirror the whimsy of his lyrics in his music. This is all perhaps best exemplified by the triple album 69 Love Songs but is also present on the more easily swallowed Holiday from where I pulled this track.

"Strange Powers" also kind of feels like a contemporary pop "I Wanna Be Your Dog," but that might just be me.

***

Flying Saucer Attack - "In The Light Of Time"

Let's say some people on a ship off the coast of Blackpool had been sailing around for maybe a few hundred years and lo and behold discovered a four track cassette recorder. And let's say one of the sailors was a sage. Then I guess they probably would have fashioned some guitars and harnessed the music of the seas, as well as the spheres, and recorded "In The Light of Time."

Or let's say some flying saucers came down from the skies and attacked the Earth not with beams, but sheets of snail-paced, pastoral and delay-drenched drone-folk, then that would be a Flying Saucer Attack.

OK?

Polvo - "Fractured (Like Chandeliers)"

Guitars careen off in all directions, particularly towards the east where Polvo has clearly picked up a melodic trick or two. The sound is heavy and squished into the foreground, immediate and visceral. Albini's production adds monumental force to the sound of the bass drum. The lyrics are articulate and sung with an easy sense of dynamics and melody; the vocalist is not intimidated by the power of his band. All of this in combination with the scream at 2:52 makes this song inappropriate for babies and the weak of heart/mind.

***

The Spinanes - "Kid In Candy"

It's appropriate that the lyrics of "Kid In Candy" revolve around "West Coast weather" and "sun," as the music is most definitely evocative of those two phenomena.

The programmed clicks and castanet claps are blindingly bright reflections on the straight highway that is the bossa nova bass line. The highway disappears into the horizon, collapsing into the guitar line slithering up the middle of the road like painted white lines. In the distance, the impressionistic keyboard is the setting sun.

***

I have the flu. Soon I will give in and die.

The No Shirts - "Don't Come Any Closer"

The first time I saw The No Shirts, they were called the The No Shirt Motherfuckers and they played stilted mathy bizzareness about owls for something like an hour and a half. It was one of the first indie-rock shows I had ever seen and I wanted it to stop. Being perverse and prone to asceticism, I saw them often after that. To my great disappointment, then, they kept getting better. Their sound became more focused and began to display a heavy Wooden Stars influence; tight guitar dialogues and increasingly confident, expressive vocals.

And then they released the highly unexpected Damn American Cars!, a collection of love songs about those most Beach Boysy of subject matters, girls and cars. Besides singing about cars, they must also have been listening to the Cars, because added to the Wooden Stars math, was an eighties artpop sensibility and some unnatural sounding synths.

"Don't Come Any Closer" is, despite being wrought with affectation and obscurity, a tender examination of unrequited love:

Lyrical muted guitar and singing organ accompany a jilted voice:

This hope is so real
Your heart I will steal
Wanna whisper in your ear
Make my vulnerability clear.

Eminently listenable and catchy, The No Shirts, unfortunately, broke up after the release of Damn American Cars!, freeing up the name No Shirt Motherfuckers for your own band's use. Think about it.

***

Moebius and Plank - "Missi Cacadou"

If George Lucas was a German scientist and reggae aficionado (and I'm not saying that he's not), then he would have indubitably recorded this song (and I'm not saying he didn't). Whether or not George Lucas wrote and performed this song, Conny Plank and Dieter Moebius certainly did. They were just two bad German dudes who decided that this was the kind of music they wanted to make. And I guess that's OK?

In grade eleven, some friends and I decided to write a play. We met at my house and Joel (one of the friends) asked whether the rest of us would mind if he put on a cd. This is the cd that he put on. No play was written.

The Feelies - "High Road"

It's like the Velvet Underground, circa The Velvet Underground, but in a really, really good mood. Or like an interested Beat Happening.

The Feelies advocate following the high road, whether moral or literal.

After brief explorations and adventures, it is time, the Feelies suggest, to return home. And that is just what they do in their music: tentative explorations and a comfortable, satisfying homecoming. The Feelies like home, and as they approach, their growing anticipation and excitement is mirrored by the increasing density of percussion: more bass drum and then shakers. Sounds like New York country.

***

Eno - "Needle In The Camel's Eye"

The drummer plays as if this is a normal rock song, even though he knows that it's not. The guitars are completely haywire; electric shocks flying off in all directions. Eno's voice is urgent, sprawling and multi-tracked (there are Enos everywhere).

Sounds like an out of control subway heading straight for us. "Bye bye bye."

***

Happy Birthday to my editor, Max Maki. You are so old, it boggles the mind.

(Note: Please send gifts via Jordan to 3622 Durocher, Apt. PHB, Montreal, QC, H2X 2E8. My birthday is on Sunday, so please keep that address. I don't want to have to repeat it.)

In last week's installment: Stranded in the Swiss countryside, perhaps on my way to a Cat Power show, I spotted what was either refuge or mirage and if the latter, a further indication of my deteriorating mental health.

***

Emerging in the distance was a big white tent, growing as I approached it. Cat Power was supposed to play later that evening, so I was surprised that there were maybe only ten cars parked nearby. When I reached the giant tent, I noticed a small cabin beside it. I went inside and found five or six large, pierced and tattooed gentleman.

"Hello," I said cautiously.

They turned to me but did not speak.

"I was hoping to see Cat Power tonight."

One of the men - the biggest and most intimidating of the lot - turned to me and struggled in his thick German accent to say:

"Wait."

He left the room and I took a seat in the corner. It was very dark and I was afraid. The sun shone in through the window directly above my head and focused its light on me. I removed myself from the solar spotlight, hoping not to call attention to myself.

Evidently, I was successful, as some of the Germans (German speaking Swiss, technically, I guess) started doing illegal things that I assume they would not have been doing had they been in the least bit concerned with my presence. I became eager to leave.

It seemed to me that it was very unlikely that this was the location of a festival. But instead, that I had been the subject of an amusing hoax, propagated by my editor, Max Maki and the country that you call Switzerland (I call it France, but that's my mistake). I thought that maybe I would be murdered by the Teutonic ruffians so that Max and Switzerland could have a good laugh. And just as I reconciled myself to this fate, an indie-rocker (just like you or me) walked into the room. He approached me.

"You are looking for tickets to the festival?" He was soft spoken.
"Yes."
"I'm sorry, we're sold out."
"Oh."

That hurt.

"I'm just kidding," he said dryly without breaking a smile.

Not funny.

I was wearing a Ui t-shirt and he commented that he liked that band and that he hoped that they would come and play the festival some time. Then he grew tired of me and explained that I could stay and wait there for the show to start in a few hours, or return to Dudingen and come back later - there would be no shortage of tickets. I did not relish the idea of walking all the way back to Dudingen proper, but as I was deeply frightened and had nowhere to stay for the night, I decided to make the walk and arrange for a hotel.

When I arrived back in Dudingen, haggard and sweaty, I went to what I believed to be the only hotel. No one was there and I heard the barking of wild dogs. I left and went to a restaurant.

True story: I ordered a salad (which I have since dubbed, "4 primary colours salad") and listened to a polka quartet comprised of three accordions and one stand-up bass. They all yodelled. They switched instruments and each played all with ease.

Full of something like vegetables and a thick-crusted bread, I returned to information to ask whether there was another hotel.

There was someone in front of me in line. A lovely woman, who I recognized as Cat Power. My heart stopped beating. Reborn, I decided not to speak with her. What of interest could I say? I stood behind her and listened silently while she tried to determine, with the help of Informant 2 (remember her from last week?), how she could best get to Berlin for the following day. Informant 2 went to check something in a filing cabinet in her corner and Cat Power's eyes searched the room finding mine (love). She saw that I was carrying a guitar and asked if I was playing at the festival.

"No, actually, I came to see you."
"Wow, really? That is so strange. That is really strange," she said, seemingly genuinely perplexed.

Unfortunately, I can not remember anything about the five minutes of conversation that ensued after that tid-bit and before the next, but I can assure you that it was something very near to God and The Good.

Then:

Me: Are you looking forward to tonight?
CP: No. I've had a very bad few days and I was forced to leave my boyfriend.
Me: Romantically or geographically? (that is seriously how I phrased the question. I was in a state, I assure you.
CP: Both. (I believe was her answer)

At which point a cab driver arrived and said that she was there to drive Cat Power to the show (doing something like interrupting what was about to be our first kiss).

CP: Would you like a ride to the festival?
Me: No thanks. I think I'll take a nap.
CP: What's your name.
Me: (Hello, my name is) Jordan.
CP: I'll put you on the guest list.
Me: Thanks, Cat Power. You are a friend.

That's ok. We can't all be heroes. I decided that instead of taking a fifteen minute car ride with Cat Power, I would go find a hotel, alone, and take a nap. So, that's what I did. I dreamt of lost opportunity (a lifetime of ecstatic domestic bliss with my wife, Cat Power) and the life of loneliness I would lead. Of science and entrepreneurship as well, but that was unrelated.

I then walked all the way back to the festival and upon my arrival, found that Cat Power, true to her word, had put me on the guest list and saved me something like sixty bones. Nice lady.

The show was a travesty, as I understand sometimes happens. Even though she is just as astoundingly brilliant a vocalist in person as she is on record, she wouldn't play her songs all the way through and kept stopping and complaining about her new guitar (an Epiphone Les Paul, for those of you who just need to know, no matter what the cost to my story).

There were, however, two good aspects of the show:

1. It was the first time I heard "I Don't Blame You" - such a simple and clear showcase for her voice and the best song on You Are Free. I will always associate this song with the sort of disorientation one experiences when traveling/touring alone for extended periods.

2. During her playing of "Satisfaction", I was nodding along with the music. She caught my eye and mocked me with mimicry. Felt good.

I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that I didn't try to find her after the show. Because I did. But couldn't. And ultimately I returned to my hotel room dejected and desperately trying to etch into my memory each aspect of my experience over the preceding several days, because there was no one there to discuss it with or to remind me about it later.

I still maintain that You Are Free is actually about me. It's hard to meet me, I think, and not write an album about me. Watch out!

Not to be outdone by my archrival, Sean Michaels, I have prepared my own true story of European travel. But mine is much longer than his (and far greater in quality) and therefore requires a telling in two parts.

***

I was really hoping that Cat Power would release an album during my tenure as author of Said the Gramophone, but as that now seems unlikely (I've heard nothing about it), I've found another excuse to tell this story:

Not last summer, or the summer before, but the summer before that (my antepenultimate summer, if I were to die today), I took a trip through some Mediterranean countries. I went to Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and Morocco. I came (via Geneva), I saw (Macy Gray at a bar in Madrid, among other interesting things), I conquered (all of the Mediterranean countries simultaneously (I'm a military genius)), I ate, I danced, I drank and fell asleep in public. I met my friend Vanessa in Geneva and my editor Max Maki in Spain. The latter of whom I traveled with for a while. Then I met up with my sister in Florence where she was studying for the summer. Everything was going just as I had planned. But as my plans ran out, so, too did my money and my Eurail pass. As I left my sister and Florence, I had two days to kill before my flight out of Milan, and no money or friends to kill it with.

I got an email from Max about a Cat Power show at a music festival in Switzerland. Now, I'm no different from anyone else (and you can take that to the bank), which means that I love the music of and the lady that is Cat Power. I had never seen her perform, so I decided I would make it a pilgrimage, give my last few days in Europe a purpose.

There was, however, a major snag:

I knew the name of the festival and the address for its (entirely unhelpful) website, but had no idea where specifically within Switzerland the action was to take place.

So, being a logician by trade, I ventured to the nearest thing to the middle of Switzerland that I could think of, its capital, Bern. At the train station's information booth, I asked if anyone knew anything about the festival. They did not.

From a Bern internet cafe, I watched Ronaldo and Rinaldo and other men with similar names destroy the German soccer team in the finals of the 2002 World Cup. I emerged from the cafe and ran through the streets waving a Brazilian flag and chanting "Brazilia" along with the rest of the hordes (there were actually hordes chanting "Brazilia" in the streets of Bern), and when I came to my senses, returned to the cafe to double check the festival website. On this particular perusal I noticed the number of a ticket hot line, which I called, yielding the suggestion that the festival might be near Fribourg.

Fribourg sounded good to me, so I hopped on the next Fribourg bound locomotive. When I arrived, I again asked at information whether they knew anything about the festival. Never heard of it.

Hope began to fade. A pervasive melancholy took hold and as I was overcome by a sense of loss and purposelessness I decided to board the next train, wherever it headed. Such is the way of the traveler. Such is the insousiance of me, The Traveling Man.

Dudingen was my destination; disconsolation, my mood.

When I arrived in the tiny (TINY) Swiss/German bordertown of Dudingen, I made one more pathetic grasp for glory at information.

Me: Do you know anything about the festival?
Informant 1: Sorry, no, never heard of it.
Informant 2 (hidden low and in the corner): Oh, yes, sure. The music
festival. It's just down the street.

It took only 45 minutes of walking in Informant 2's suggested direction for me to determine for sure that she was lying. I mean, it was nice. Huge fields of tall flowers and cows rolling around like it didn't even matter, real cowbells clanging at their necks. In the distance I saw what I can say with certainty and without hyperbole was (and is to this day) the tallest peak I have ever seen. Though, at this point I realized that I would die within a week in the Swiss countryside at the foot of what I can only imagine is the summit of the entire Swiss Alps, I decided to keep walking. Because why not.

Then something strange happened. The mountain started singing to me. It was a good song, and one that I recognized. The mountain was covering "I'm Waiting For The Man," off of The Velvet Underground and Nico. So, I realized I wasn't so much walking deeper into the Swiss countryside as I was walking deeper into the darker recesses of the pathological human psyche. Or, wait... What was that in the distance?

***
Moby Grape - "Naked, If I Want To"

Sunny, but completely off-kilter. Pay special attention to the "Fourth of July" harmony. A great musical moment.

***

Cat Power - "Naked, If I Want To"

Sounds like Cat Power: languid and pared down.

Elvis Costello - "New Lace Sleeves"

As if Costello has a problem with language - mumbling, babbling, failing to make any sense - the song starts with the band gently trying to coax him into articulating his point, careful not to disturb him, not to get in his way. Then his story is born fully realized, completely cogent. The drums untighten, the bass and guitar unmute. Everyone relaxes. It opens up, unfolds sideways. It develops and builds in ways never expected but always satisfying.

And as Costello's vocal performance becomes more and more soulful and expressive, the organ and the rest of the band become increasingly enthusiastic. "Yes, this is what we wanted."

Like a classic soul cut, but not.

***

Roxy Music - "Re-Make/Re-Model"

After the party and the Elton John piano intro, the song starts in earnest. The instruments are full-out from the start (the earnest one) and don't co-operate, but play against each other; the sax, guitar and electronics battling it out for supremacy in the backwards polity that is this song.

Brian Ferry sings like a cabaret Lou Reed; raising his eyebrows and bouncing his shoulders. Sometimes he praises, but mostly he admonishes.

Then everyone gets a solo. And we get the sense that whereas after every other instrumentalist solos, the band smiles and quietly applauds, after Eno's blazing electronic assault, there is only stunned silence and confusion. But they play on, anyway. Because they're abnormal.