Archives : all posts by Sean

This lovely incongruity positively made me beam: Ailing teen gets her dream: meeting Queensryche singer. 17-year-old Brittany Woneis suffers from an ugly, painful, debilitating disease - and what gets her through her days? Metal, particularly Queensryche. While I don't have any fondness whatsoever for the band (or the genre), it sounds like the band showed her sincere generosity, respect, and kindness. Music helps her to live - this is why art is so vital, so important, even if god doesn't exist and there's little money to be earned.

FreakyTrigger returns. This is the great UK webzine that boldly, articulately declared that chartpop was good music too. It spawned I Love Music and NYLPM and more. Tom Ewing (plus ILM) is what got me to be able to agree that the "All the Things She Said" kicks ass, and it's largely responsible (i imagine) for Pitchfork's recent acceptance of pop. Yes, the pop-heads are teaching the indie-kids a thing or two.

So Freaky Trigger has relaunched, and it's now a zine with movies and food and stuff, rather than just music. Which is fine. But you know what? There's not one article on there right now that is worth reading. Ie, their inaugural content is boring, indulgent and poorly formatted. sigh.

Better will come, though, I imagine (hope?).

From ILM: things you have learned from Tom Waits.

Look at all these beautiful things:

The only kind of love is stone blind love.

There are diamonds on my windshield.

Current Best Song in the World: "Express Yourself" -- Charles Wright

This song is one of Anne's favourites, and she slipped it into the opening slot of her deliriously great I Know You've Got Soul mix - not only a groovy, heart-swelling pack of organic funk tunes, but one of the very best compilations I own. For those of you who wish to make your own, let me know, and I'll post Anne's careful-and-brilliant tracklist. :)

But it's "Express Yourself" that rules this disc, a king with a crown of gold and jujubes. The bass boop-dee-doops (it's wearing a fuzzy hat and a long poofy shirt. The shoes are beautiful brown leather, though), the guitar rings out a good, open time, horns toot and root and add punctuation marks (! ? . , : !!!!!!1!!). And Charles Wright? Well jesus god, he is simply the voice of that spirit we want living inside all of us, hollering and coaxing and screaming. he throws aside "uh"s like the sun tosses off sunbeams - they're casual, magical things, the pixie dust that gives Peter Pan his air. and that bass just keeps struttin', the horns building to a loose, long cadence that cuts off just before things end, giving Wright another excuse to prove that the baptists have got it right: random warblings are the holy ghost, that glorious pow-pow-powering sound that puts lives together and lets the birds sing.

Who'd have thunk it - well, everyone but me. I'm a record-listening dweeb: Beyonce's Dangerously in Love sounds better outside (in sunshine) than in the dim computer-glow of my room. With sky and cloud overhead, open space around, other people, the pop music sounds like pop music. I'm like the shut-in who discovers real life is fun. I'm the idiot who forgot that fun music isn't for melancholy surroundings.

SARS-fest looks like a good time. Actually, you know what? It doesn't. I mean, I hate enormous concerts - and this one isn't just enormous, the equivalent of like 2% of our whole country is there. Yes, it would be fun to see Kathleen Edwards, Justin Timberlake, Sam Roberts, the Flaming Lips and heck, even the Rolling Stones. But no, it wouldn't be much fun to watch the Lips perform for fifteen minutes on a giant screen several hundred meters from the stage. And the transportation?! It's going to take the TTC ten hours to empty the park (that's if everyone takes public transit. we can assume that, oh, 25% won't. in which case, uh, only SEVEN AND A HALF hours.).

And not only that, a paltry buck (or whatever) from each ticket is going to the SARS charities, while Ticketmaster whips up $4/ticket=two million dollars. Doctors and nurses died, and the vile American beast that is Ticketmaster is dancing on the doubloons.

phew. needed to get that out of my system.

okay, i'm not done.

also: i hate paul martin, and he's going to be there.

also: people keep insulting the line-up, and it's really bugging me. because this lineup is pretty freakin' good. especially for a cheapo festival run by pathetically whitebread interests. i mean, there's the rock (AC/DC, Sam Roberts, the Tea Party), the adult contemporary (sass jordan, blue rodeo, kathleen edwards [sorry kathleen, but it's true!]), the pop (justin, flaming lips), the Big Acts (Rush, the Stones), and a handful of other genuinely-interesting sidemen (la chicane, dan akroyd, etc.). The indie kids are bitching that only the Flaming Lips are interesting (helLO, I would not turn down a justin timberlake or rolling stones concert, myself, and though i despise AC/DC i can't imagine that they wouldn't be a good time on par with watching Paradise Hotel, which is how I spent my evening). everyone else picks a target of scorn (justin, ac/dc, la chicane) and then piles it on. it's like they have no conception that the average $20 show involves, um, like two acts, one of which features that kid who sat beside you in high-school drawing pictures of cheese wedges with legs. (now he plays bass.)

that rant complete, i do realize that i just insulted the lineup several paragraphs above. but as i said earlier, i spent this evening feeling stressed, watching Paradise Hotel (and, in my defense, a documentary on Nixon), and then listening to 'angry' songs (don't ask), which, as I'm a big twee wuss, consist of tracks like Elliott Smith's "Needle in the Hay," Weezer's "Undone," Arab Strap's "Love Detective," Bright Eyes' "Pull My Hair," Cake's "Is this Love" and Radiohead's "You and Whose Army." consequently, i'm feeling a little off-kilter. i could use a drink, but i have a feeling it would only make things worse.

but i'm fine, really. i just need to go to sleep, wake up, and listen to Four Tet.

Beulah and John Vanderslice in Montreal, October 20th. Count me in - I missed John last time he was in town (with Spoon), and won't be so unwise again; especially if he's accompanied by the sunny California popsters. (Beulah is like the Delgados, but tanned.) Too bad the new Beulah record, Yoko, is so lacklustre. They tried to do something "different," and when "run-of-the-mill"="fun fun fun," "different" is bound to suck.

Watched half of the Radiohead documentary Meeting People is Easy last night, before the video cut out. Argh: I wanted to see a breakdown, dammit! All I got was foreshadowing and lengthy art shots!

The new Clientele record is driving me wild. It's everything I was supposed to like in the Eighties (ie, the sad, velvet rock of Felt, The Smiths, a touch of Joy Division), but haven't (so far). If I can spare a few moments, I'll try to whip out a review. Too bad the new Warsawpack is so disappointing: the political fire is still there, but that's the problem. They seem stuck in the same place they were last year - and the rabid anti-globo post-911 stuff, so unabashed and explicit, feels rather belaboured in 2003.

Things I am liking and listening to lotsandlots:
The Clientele: The Violet Hour
Four Tet: Rounds
Ron Sexsmith: Cobblestone Runway
Leonard Cohen: Best Of (yes, it seems I have finally discovered the good Leonard Cohen, the stuff that doesn't make me gag like tepid porridge. This shit is hot!)

I just got some wonderful feedback about my ancient review of Badly Drawn Boy's About a Boy soundtrack:

Some review. Just what one would expect from a twit critic with no talent and no ear.

Good luck in prison.

I have to say; I expected listeners of acoustic, heart-fuzzying music to be a little more, um, nice.