extended drum solo

My favourite band is Spiritualized

2011-02-17T16:46:00.000-08:00

I started studying Christianity because I started going to church.

I know, I know:
“Who goes to church?”
“Naw man, Who Sings My Generation.”
(Ba, dup, bup, chsh!)

I started going to church because I wanted a teaching job,
and to work for a Catholic school
you need a letter
FROM A PRIEST.

So it only made sense that I should study Christianity.

Studying is one of my hobbies.
I do it for fun.
I do it for pleasure.
I do it when I run.
(Level 1- rhyme.)

(Things I have studied for fun, pleasure, and while I run, include:

Professional Wrestling
Rock and Roll
The Beatles
The Who
Keith Moon
Spiritualized
The Existence of God
Calcio
Ancient Rome.)

I read John (God Jesus),
Then Matthew (Jewish Jesus),
Then Mark (Confusing Jesus),
Then Luke (Joyful Jesus).
I read Acts and got bored.
I read Paul and gor bored.
I read chapter summaries
of the Old Testament books
in my Catholic Bible
from St. Norbert's Elementary School
and was like,
“Shit, man. I don’t know shit about the Old Testament.”

I read some of Jesus and Yaweh
by Harold Bloom
but he used
too many words
I don’t understand.

I listened to some of Christianity: The First Three Years
by Diarmaid MacCulloch
but he lost the iPod battle
to Rainbow Dome Musick
by Steve Hillage.

I’m reading God: A Biography
by Jack Miles.
It’s going slowly
but it’s also kind of blowing my mind.

I re-read “What Did Jesus Do?”
by Adam Gopnik
and felt jealousy
because I am a sinner.

Over Easy, Feb. 18

2011-01-17T06:44:00.001-08:00

Poster by Carrly Gooding

Musical Screenplay: "Secret Meeting" by The National

2011-01-13T17:20:00.000-08:00

Instructions: Start the song. Read along.

[Twinkle Guitars/Half Disco 1]
(Low, despondent.)

I think
this place
is full of spies.
I think they’re onto me.

[Voice/Drums 1]
“Didn’t anybody? Didn’t anybody tell you?
Didn’t anybody tell you
how to gracefully disappear
in a room?”

[Twinkle Guitars 2]

I know you put in the hours to keep me
in sunglasses.
I know.

[Voice/Drums 2]

And so and now,
I’m sorry I missed you.
I had a secret meeting
in the basement of my
brain.

[Edge Guitars 1]
(Hint at tears.)

It went the dull and wicked ordinary ways.
It went the dull and wicked ordinary ways.

And how,
I’m sorry I missed you.
I had a secret meeting
in the basement of my
brain.

[Twinkle Guitars 3]
(With more feeling.)

I think this place is full of spies.
I think I’m ruined.

[Voice/Drums 3]

“Didn’t anybody? Didn’t anybody tell you?
Didn’t anybody tell you
this river’s full of
lost sharks?”

[Twinkle Guitars 4]
I know you put in the hours to keep me
in sunglasses.
I know.

[Voice/Drums 4]

And so and now,
I’m sorry I missed you.
I had a secret meeting
in the basement of my
brain.

[Edge guitar 2]
[Enter Shouting Chant, Slow Crescendo]
(With more life.)

It went the dull and wicked ordinary ways.
It went the dull and wicked ordinary ways.

(Gaining confidence.)

And how,
I’m sorry I missed you.
I had a secret meeting
in the basement of my
brain.

[Shouting Chant Gets Slightly Wilder]
(With conviction.)

It went the dull and wicked ordinary ways.
It went the dull and wicked ordinary ways.
It went the dull and wicked ordinary ways.
It went the dull and wicked ordinary ways.

[Shouting Chant Adds Higher Pitches. Loose and Free.]

It went the dull and wicked ordinary ways.
It went the dull and wicked ordinary ways.
It went the dull and wicked ordinary ways.
It went the dull and wicked ordinary ways.

On Phil Kessel

2011-01-12T15:40:00.000-08:00

The most popular explanation for the general suckiness of the Maple Leafs since the 2004* NHL lockout goes something like this: “Leafs fans are so dedicated to the team—so faithful—that MLSE has no incentive to ice a winner.

“The only way we’re going to win,” the theory implies, “is when the fans stop showing up.” Leave it to Torontonians to turn loyalty, the greatest virtue of sports fandom, into a cause for self-flagellation.

It’s those loyal fans, though, who never hesitate to lash Leaf players and management when things go wrong. This season, the whip has often landed on the back of a 23-year-old Madison, Wisconsin-native by the name of Phil Kessel.

To acquire the speedy right-wing sniper from Boston, Leafs GM Brian Burke traded two first round draft picks, a much-maligned move amongst the talk radio and message board chattering classes, who always seem to favour a “slow rebuild,” until the team actually hits the ice, where boo birds chirp at every lacklustre period. (I realize this "Monolithic Fan" is a straw man , let me spear him anyway, OK?) Kessel despite his undeniable technical and physical skills, is streaky, a deficiency magnified greatly in a city where Leafs post-game analysis gets more media space than the Jays, Raptors and Argos combined.

A winning franchise needs a franchise player; basically, a guy who makes the all-star game every year. Kessel has to be that player for the Leafs. Dougie Gilmour** knows he has the the talent. He skates swiftly and rips it in into the top corner. He hasn't had linemates*** all season yet still netted 19 goals.

He displayed his class to me very early this season at the ACC: With the home team up 2-1 late in the third period, the Florida Panthers pinned an exhausted Leafs first line in their own zone; and, just as a tying goal seemed inevitable, Kessel stripped the puck from a Panthers forward, sprinted past his former Bruins teammate Dennis Wideman, and whipped the puck into the top corner with his trademark quick-release wrist shot. It was an all-star play from an all-star player. And in a hockey-obsessed town that hasn’t seen the playoffs in half a decade, Kessel can’t afford to be anything less.

*Some of you will think, “Haven’t the Leafs sucked much longer than this? Like, since 1967?” This isn’t true. The Leafs before the lockout were strong--they finished fourth overall. And I how could you ever, EVER say the Gilmour-era Leafs sucked? If it not for Wayne Gretzky’s NHL Mafia, we totally woulda won the Cup that year.

**I apologize for using the Lord's name in vain.

***Come on, Joey Crabb!

On Roger Daltrey

2010-12-22T11:30:00.000-08:00

I think Pete said it best:

"As soon as Keith joined the band, we became four people vying for the audience's attention, and I think in the end, Keith and I won over Roger and John. Well, actually, John never bothered to join the fight and Roger just lost, really."

On music

2010-12-20T17:21:00.000-08:00

I play it
usually with drums
sometimes with other people
sometimes for money.
I sing and bang piano, too,
but no one’s offered to pay me
for that.

I listen to it
through headphones
through my computer speakers
and sometimes
when people in the room with me are playing it
through a P.A.
I prefer headphones, but the big ones make my ears hot and the buds
give me wax.

I read about it, daily
and my favourite critics right now
are Sasha Frere-Jones, Mark Richardson, and Carles
from Hipster Runoff.

I think about it
with my brain
probably too much.
Lately, though, I mostly think
about math.

I write about it.
Then I dance about architecture.

On John Entwistle

2010-12-09T15:34:00.000-08:00

John Entwistle, bassist for The Who, will be remembered by rock historians for four things: his superior playing skills, his skeleton suit, his cocaine-and-hooker induced death at 57, and his statue-like performance style, the final piece of The Who’s much-imitated, impossibly awesome on-stage aesthetic.

When we were kids, my sisters and I would often play Band. Our role-plays involved costumes (such as head bands and leather vests), make-up (for mascara beards and mustaches), and props (tennis racket guitars, chair drumsets, desk keyboards etc.) I have two sisters, leaving us one member short of the full Who line-up, so when we played The Who, an ironing board would stand in for Mr. Entwistle. After viewing a particularly blistering performance, my mother, in her review, described the board’s performance as “spot on.”

I first became aware of Entwistle’s still style while watching the epically awful film version of Tommy. He first appears, wearing a religious robe, as a musician in the entourage of Eric Clapton, who plays the part of the head preacher at a church where Marilyn Monroe is idolized as a god (as I said, the movie is epically awful). As he’s walking down the aisle behind Clapton to kick off mass, Entwistle, with impeccable posture, keeps in perfect step while ripping some absolutely deadly bass licks during a bluesy version of "The Hawker." I found this approach really, really funny. I still do.

What made the whole minimal motion schtick work, of course, was Entwistle's ridiculously, hilariously mad bass skillz. Where the rest of his body barely inched, Entwistle`s fingers raced up and down the strings like a flurry of wild rhinos. And where Pete, Keith and Roger appeared more than willing to bleed for rock and roll, with their windmills, orgasm faces, and swinging microphones, Entwistle never broke a sweat, though he did occasionally crack a grin. He was the quintessence of effortless cool playing in the hottest live band of the 60s and 70s. May Marilyn bless his soul.

Isolated bass from "Won't Get Fooled Again" in 1978. The little breaths he takes before the big runs are hilarious.

Entwistle's piece de resistance, "The Real Me," from The Who's 2000 comeback show at The Royal Albert Hall. Don't love the bass tone, but wow could the dude wail on that instrument.

On Keith Moon

2010-11-29T15:19:00.000-08:00

"I'm the best Keith Moon style drummer in the world." - Keith Moon

***

Godwin’s Law-“As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”

Moonie’s Law-“As an online discussion about The Who grows longer, the probability that an argument about Keith Moon’s position as the greatest drummer of all time approaches 1.”

***

Literary critic and world class finger drummer James Wood has written a wonderful piece on the immortal Who skin basher Keith Moon in the this week’s issue of The New Yorker (sub required).

Here is the best quote from it:

"On...'Behind Blue Eyes,' you can hear him do something that was instinctive, probably, but which is hardly ever done in ordinary rock drumming: breaking for a fill, Moon fails to stop at the obvious end of the musical phrase and continues with his rolling break, over the line and into the start of the next phrase. In poetry, this failure to stop at the end of the line, this challenge to metrical closure, this desire to get more in, is called enjambment. Moon is the drummer of enjambment."

I believe the moment Wood is referring to begins when Daltrey sings "And if I swallow anything evil/put your finger down my throat."

Best comment: "Keith Moon plays so good it appears hes not even moving in the video."

On 27 dead rock stars

2010-11-22T08:52:00.000-08:00

Back in 2005, with a little help from my friends, I launched an online pop culture magazine called White Noise, named after the Don DeLillo novel. You can still read a good chunk of what we published on the Internet Archive, but since this blog serves as my de facto online writing portfolio, I thought I'd re-publish some of my pieces (with footnotes!) here. This one was written for our List Issue and I'm rather proud of it, since it basically distills everything I'd learned about rock and roll up to that point into a single article.

27. John Entwistle
On June 27, 2002 in Las Vegas, Nevada, the night before The Who were set to launch their umpteenth reunion tour, bass wizard John Entwistle invited a prostitute up to his room and snorted some cocaine, thinking he was still a 20-something rock star. His body disagreed and shut down that same night. You've got to admire the rock star stupidity of it all. Entwistle was 55.

26. Karen Carpenter*

Karen Carpenter began seeing a psychiatrist in 1982 to help her in a long battle with anorexia nervosa. Carpenter began putting on weight but the strain was too great for her badly damaged body and on February 4, 1983, she died of a cardiac arrest. The Carpenters' singing drummer was 32.

25. Nick Drake
Listening to Nick Drake's bleak masterpiece, Pink Moon, it's hard to imagine that his overdose on antidepressants on November 26, 1974, was an accident. Posthumously Drake has become one of rock's most revered singer-songwriters, inspiring artists like Jeff Buckley, who drowned on May 29, 1997, and Elliot Smith, who stabbed himself on October 21, 2003. Drake was 26.

24. Gram Parsons
Former Byrd and Flying Burrito Brother Gram Parsons overdosed and died on September 19, 1973 in Joshua Tree, California, but more interesting is the story of what happened to his body afterward. Parsons was set to be buried in Louisiana but former road manager Phil Kaufman and a friend managed to steal the body from the Los Angeles International Airport and burned Parsons' remains in Joshua Tree, resulting in a $700 fine for Kaufman and the friend. Parsons was 26.

23. John Bonham
The hard-hitting Led Zeppelin drummer drank far too much and slept the wrong way on September 25, 1980, which resulted in him choking to death, simultaneously killing Led Zeppelin. He was 32.

22. "Mama" Cass Elliot
One of rock's strangest legends is that Cass died by choking on a ham sandwich. It's not true. She died of a heart failure on July 29, 1974 and was 32.

21. Bon Scott
The gruff-voiced AC/DC vocalist was asphyxiated by his vomit after a night of heavy boozing on February 19, 1980. He was replaced by Brian Johnson, who sounded exactly like him. Scott was 33.

20. Paul McCartney
Ever notice that McCartney's back is turned on the back cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band? Or that he's barefoot and his eyes are closed on the cover of Abbey Road? Or that John Lennon says "I buried Paul" duing the coda of "Strawberry Fields Forever?" All proof that McCartney had died in a horrible car crash on a Wednesday morning at 5 o'clock (as they day began) . This is, of course, rubbish, but it's fascinating rubbish and the website Paul Is Dead** does a great job of documenting the whole legend. McCartney is 63, alive and well and adds to his reputation as the Lame Beatle a little more every day.

19. Ronnie Van Zant
Three members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, including singer and primary songwriter Van Zant, were killed when their plane crashed outside of Gillsburg, Mississippi, on October 20, 1977. The rest of the band was seriously hurt but survived and eventually reformed, but they shouldn't have. Van Zant was 29.

18. Marvin Gaye
Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his father, Rev. Marvin Gaye Sr., on April 1, 1984. The two had never got on well and the murder was the end result of an ugly argument. Gaye was a day away from his 45th birthday.

17. Duane Allman
On October 29, 1971 the Allman Brothers Band's lead guitarist went out for ride on his motorcycle in Macon, Georgia, was forced off the rode by an oncoming truck and crashed to his death. Almost a year to the date, Allman Brothers Band bassist Berry Oakley died in a crash just a few blocks away. Allman was 24.

16. Sam Cooke
No one knows exactly what happened at the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles on December 11, 1964. The only thing that's certain is that by the end of the night the inventor of soul music, Sam Cooke, was dead, shot to death by motel manager Berta Franklin, who says she was defending herself. Cooke was 33.

15. Keith Moon
Pills, alcohol, prostitutes, broken bones, exploding drum sets, and driving cars into swimming pools are all part of the legend of Moon the Loon, so it's actually surprising The Who's maniacal drummer lasted as long as he did. On September 6, 1978, Moon returned to his London home after attending a party hosted by the not-dead Paul McCartney. He ate a steak and took 28 Heminevrin, a drug prescribed to help him combat alcoholism, which toxically combined with the alcohol in his system and killed him sometime the next afternoon. The Who still perform live, but no one knows why. Moon was 32.

14. Ian Curtis
The morose Curtis, whose epileptic seizures often blended seamlessly with his spastic on-stage dancing, remains one of pop music's greatest enigmas and rock historians still speculate as to why the Joy Division vocalist hanged himself on May 18, 1980. The remaining members of Joy Division went on to form New Order. Curtis was 23.

13. Otis Redding
Soul music lost its greatest voice when Redding's plane crashed into a Wisconsin lake on December 10, 1967, killing him and four members of his band, the Bar-Kays. He was, remarkably, only 26.

12. Bob Marley
Doctors conducted tests after the King of Reggae's toenail fell off, and they discovered a form of skin cancer. They suggested amputation, but Marley, a devout Rastafarian, refused on religious grounds. He quietly suffered for nearly four years, before succumbing on May 11, 1981 in Miami, Florida, robbing the world of an extraordinary and unique talent. Marley's former Wailer bandmate Peter Tosh died seven years later, shot in his Jamaican home by burglars on September 11, 1987. Marley was 36.

11. Sid Vicious
If Sid Vicious was still alive, most of us wouldn't know his name. A man with only tenuous connections to music, Sid Vicious is referred to as the Sex Pistols' bassist, but most of the songs on their one and only album were recorded by a session musician. Vicious was punk rock's poster-boy, a self-destructive hedonist who lived his life fighting, fucking, and getting fucked up. His heroin overdose on February 2, 1979 in New York didn't surprise anyone. He was 21.

10. Tupac Shakur
9. Notorious B.I.G.**
One of the great hip-hop myths is that rapping provides an outlet for black urban youth to escape the ghetto. But for Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., the fame and fortune provided by their careers in hip-hop only sunk them deeper into the violence plaguing America's inner-cities. The end result: premature deaths for both men.

At 11:10 p.m. on September 7, 1996, as he was making his way home after a Mike Tyson boxing match in Las Vegas, Tupac was hit by four bullets fired from a white Cadillac while his car was stopped at an intersection. He died six days later at the University of Nevada Medical Center. He was 25.

On March 9, 1997, Biggie Smalls sat in the passenger seat of his SUV after attending a party held by Vibe magazine in Los Angeles, when a vehicle pulled up beside him at a stoplight and the men inside opened fire. Biggie was rushed to hospital, but it was too late. He was 24.

Both cases remain open, will likely never be solved and the scars of these murders will stay with hip-hop and black America.

8. Brian Jones
7. Jimi Hendrix
6. Janis Joplin
5. Jim Morrison
It began with the tossing of a Stone and ended with the slamming of a Door. In between there was the end of an Experience and the cracking of a Pearl.*** In the span of just two years, rock and roll's liberating ideals of a free mind, free body and free soul came crashing down in a storm of drug-related deaths, adding "dying young" to the maxim of "Sex, drugs and rock and roll."

It began on July 3, 1969, when Brian Jones, the founding member of the Rolling Stones was found dead in his swimming pool in Essex, England, just one month after he'd been kicked out of the band. Jones, who already had a long history of drug and alcohol abuse, drowned while drunk and stoned on sedatives.

Next was the man who, when he made his American debut at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, embodied all that was good about the psychedelic rock movement: idealism, fearlessness, and a desire to create unity through music. But by 1970, drugs, money problems and an inability to decide on a musical direction left Jimi Hendrix in a purple haze. On September 18, 1970, Hendrix took nine Vesperax sleeping pills at his London apartment and died choking on his own vomit.

The next casualty came just weeks later. She was the queen of Southern blues who couldn't resist a bottle of Southern Comfort, rock and roll's first heroine who met her maker in a needle filled with heroin. Janis Joplin wasn't the most consistent performer but when she was on, no one could come close to matching her unhinged passion. On October 4, 1970, Joplin shot up a large dose of extremely pure heroin in Los Angeles and never recovered.

Finally, the man who once said: "I see myself as a huge fiery comet, a shooting star. Everyone stops, points up and gasps 'Oh look at that!' Then--whoosh, and I'm gone... and they'll never see anything like it ever again, and they won't be able to forget me--ever" made good on his words. For some, he was rock and roll's greatest poet, an explosive combination of raw talent, moody good looks, and leather pants. For others, he was a leather pants-wearing drunken lout who spewed juvenile babble over cheesy organ riffs. On July 3, 1971, Jim Morrison died in the bathtub of his Paris home, reportedly from a heart attack, surely caused by drugs and alcohol. His Paris grave remains a popular tourist attraction for baby boomers and stoners.

They were all 27.

4. Kurt Cobain
Like any proper rock and roll death, Kurt Cobain's passing is a mystery. Those who suggest Cobain was murdered (at the behest of Courtney Love) have a decent case to go on. But suicide fits the Cobain mythology so much better.

Kurt Cobain played the role of tortured rock star better than anyone before or after him. It was a role he desperately wanted to escape, but it was the role everyone needed him to play. He spoke to that generation of long-haired kids in flannel who felt just as disaffected, bored, angry, and helpless in the plastic, soulless, hopeless society they lived in as he did.

But those kids had Kurt Cobain, and Kurt Cobain had a bad stomach, heroin and Courtney Love. And those kids, the ones who loved Kurt most, had inadvertently made him a part of that same society they railed against. Kurt Cobain, the Anti-Superstar, had become the Anti-Superstar Superstar. In his note, Cobain famously quoted Neil Young's "Hey Hey, My My", writing "it's better to burn out than to fade away." In rock and roll, that's the truth. But it's still really fucking sad. Kurt Cobain, dead of a gunshot wound to the head on April 5, 1994, was 27.

3. Elvis Presley
2. Buddy Holly
On February 3, 1959, a plane went down during a snowstorm near Clear Lake, Iowa, killing all four passengers, including 17-year old Ritchie Valens, the 29-year old Big Bopper and 22-year-old Buddy Holly.

If the hip-swiveling Elvis, with his raw, sexed-up baritone and country boy good looks was the brawn of the rock and roll revolution, Buddy Holly was the brains. He was rock and roll's first singer-songwriter and the first artist to combine the creative and performance aspects of the form, but will forever be remembered as the skinny, bespectacled kid with the disarming smile, an innocent genius immortalized by that fateful plane crash on the day the music died.

Holly's death marked both the end of one era in rock music history and the beginning of the next. The '50s, the decade that spawned rock and roll in America, were ending and the early revolutionaries were disappearing. Elvis had joined the military and Holly was dead. But on that rainy island across the Atlantic, kids everywhere were picking up guitars, inspired equally by Elvis' raw sexuality and Holly's musical creativity, and the seeds of an even greater revolution were planted.

But Elvis would not be a part of this revolution. After finishing his military service, the King returned with a series of weak films and even weaker songs. Easily manipulated by his manager Colonel Tom Parker and blinded by his own desire for wealth and fame, Elvis became everything rock and roll stood against. The Elvis of old briefly re-emerged at the end of the '60s but it was already too late**** and The King would soon descend into a haze of prescription pills, bad jumpsuits, shotguns, and fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. He was found dead in his Graceland home on August 16, 1977, but was gone a long time before that. Elvis was 42.

1. John Lennon
On December 8, 1980, around 11 p.m. local time, John Lennon stepped out of his car outside his New York City apartment and was shot four times by Mark David Chapman, a deranged fan who that same day, had Lennon sign one of his albums. Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

Lennon's death is more closely related to Buddy Holly's than to the deaths of his '60s rock contemporaries, because it was completely innocent. Lennon did indulge in his fair share of rock and roll excess in the late '60s and early '70s (he had a particular affinity for LSD and was briefly addicted to heroin) but spent the last part of his life at home raising his son Sean, eating fish and baking bread. In 1980, Lennon was in the early midst of a dramatic comeback that was cut short by Chapman's madman murder. Although conspiracy theorists suggest Chapman was brainwashed by lunatic right-wingers, the truth is even scarier: John Lennon was killed because he was famous.

For Beatles fans-come-lately like me, there is no memory of where we were the day he was shot. For us, John Lennon was always dead. But that doesn't make it any easier to understand. He was 40.

*I have no idea why I included Karen Carpenter.

**Way to tokenize, Ursi.

***Way to overwrite, Ursi.

****I think I glossed over this 1969/1970 Elvis revival too quickly. The records he made in Memphis in this period are deadly.

On bands that sound like The Beatles

2010-11-06T15:14:00.000-07:00

Paul: Is it fair to talk about bands that sound like other bands?

George: “Watchu talkin’ bout Willis?”

Paul: We should be talking about songs, not bands.

John: Keep going...

Paul: How many Beatles were there?

John: Four.

Paul: No, but I mean, how many versions of The Beatles were there?

John: Thirteen?

Paul: One for each studio album?

John: Yes.Paul: I like it. But think of “Tomorrow Never Knows,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Taxman”; greater, individually, as songs, than Revolver as a whole. Nick Hornby once wrote, “Oasis spent their whole career trying to achieve what The Beatles achieved with ‘Rain.’” It’s an exaggeration--maybe I’m misquoting... But it’s kind of true, no?

George: They should put everything on the Internet.

John: It's true enough.

George: True-ish.

Richard: “Truth-y.”

Paul: So The Beatles aren’t thirteen bands—more like 130 bands, a different band for almost every song, in terms of influence.

John: Seen.

On my favourite songs of all time

2010-11-05T12:50:00.001-07:00

“Tender” by Blur is my favourite song of all time right now. I first heard it about a month ago and I listen to it twice a day. It's a beautiful campfire singalong that lasts over seven minutes and never gets boring for even a second. I especially love the part when the gospel choir comes in and sings “Come on come on come on, get through it,” and I also really love the part when Damon Albarn puts on his Ringo voice to sing, “Love’s the greatest thing we have,” and the part when the guitarist who is not Damon Albarn sings “Oh my baby! Oh m baby! Oh why? Oh my.”

“Good Intentions Paving Company” by Joanna Newsom was my favourite song of all time last month. I first heard it again two months ago and I now listen to it once a day. There’s no harp on it, but there’s lots of piano, clicky clacky drums and percussion, some strings, some banjo, a trombone solo, and multiple Joanna Newsoms singing cool, warbly harmonies. Some people don’t like Joanna Newsom’s voice, or the fact that she looks like Jean Chretien when she sings, but those people probably voted for Rob Ford. Also, they don’t know anything about music or haven’t actually listened to Joanna Newsom very much, because she basically sounds like Joni Mitchell, and if you don’t like Joni Mitchell, you hate Canada and are possibly a terrorist.

“Over and Over” by MC5 was my favourite song two months ago. I now listen to it once every two days. I didn’t realize how awesome this band was until I got their second and third records this year--they’re like Live at Leeds with more tambourine, more politics and less drum fills. This is the kind of raw, unhinged tuneage that kind of makes me rue the fact that the computer is now our most important musical instrument. The singer, who is extremely ugly, has one of those great screaming white soul voices that would have no chance in the auto-tune era and his slightly less ugly band plays with that classic early seventies tight-but-loose feel that’s all but impossible to pull off in the click track-dominated, cut and paste musical world of 2010.

“Stylo” by Gorillaz was my favourite song of all time three months ago. I now listen to it once in a while. This is the kind of perfectly constructed, perfectly produced track that kind of makes me delighted about the fact that the computer is now our most important musical instrument. I especially love the part when the backup singers start to chant “Overload! Overload! Comin’ on to the...”, and I also really love the part when Bobby Womack (who is probably not Damon Albarn) sings “If this love is electric, it’ll be flowing on the streets. Night after night, just to get through the week. Sometimes it’s hard. Right now!" I also really love that Gorillaz is now a real band instead of cartoons, because Damon Albarn is a genius.

On Black Mountain and the importance of originality in evaluating art

2010-11-01T16:41:00.001-07:00

Is an unoriginal band an uninteresting band?

Black Mountain is an entirely unoriginal five-piece rock band from Vancouver. You can easily trace everything the band does—the songs, sound(s), schtick, and singing—back to 1970s psychedelic-, prog- and proto-metal-rock acts like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, King Crimson, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, often right down to particular keyboard tones and/or drum fills.

Black Mountain also offers a far more straightforward pastiche than an act like, say Grizzly Bear, who, while drawing inspiration from The Beach Boys, also filter and fuse that influence to create something that’s at least partly original. One critic I just read described Black Mountain’s music as “timeless” but I think he musta been an idiot, cause this is seventies music through and through.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m a Black Mountain fan and I find their work interesting. I grew up listening to a lot of the same bands they’re influenced by and believe they have the skills and talent to write and perform this type of music in a satisfying way. For example, Steve McBeard is a sick guitarist, Joshua Wells is a sick drummer, Jeremy Schmidt is a sick keyboard player and Matt Camirand is a competent bassist. Amber Webber, though, who co-sings lead with McBean, is probably the most important band member. First of all, she’s almost certainly a better singer than you are. Secondly, she’s a woman, so when she wails and moans, it makes us think of “The Great Gig in the Sky” instead of Ronnie James Dio, and her powerful piping provides a perfect contrast to McBeard’s Reed-inspired deadpan (though The Bearded One does emote a lot more on the band’s latest album).

Black Mountain has so far produced three albums that, despite their rooting in traditional genres, cover a lot of musical territory, from Zeppelin-inspired Englishcottagefolk to Zeppelin-inspired monsterriffage to Zeppelin-inspired swampbluesrawk. Also, they’re a really cool-looking band. A lot of other people, including “serious music fans” and “music critics,” share my opinions. So Black Mountain has “cred.”

Still, I would argue that Black Mountain’s traditionalism holds their work back from entering the realm of Great Art. Timeless, groundbreaking, risky, important; their work is none of these things. It’s like this: I’m a huge Group of Seven fan. I think those dudes made some important and timeless and groundbreaking and risky paintings. Also, I like the way their paintings look. Now if some young artist came along today and started painting stuff that looks like Group of Seven, I’d go, “I like the way this looks.” But I wouldn’t argue that dude is making important or timeless or groundbreaking or risky paintings. I certainly wouldn't argue that dude was making Great Art. So while completely unoriginal bands might be interesting, they’re never going to be important.

On Writing Workshop

2010-10-22T15:56:00.001-07:00

To teach writing to grade 7s and 8s, I use Writing Workshop, an instructional style invented by American middle school teacher Nancie Atwell, who outlined the strategy in the hugely influential In the Middle, a book I read in teacher's college. In the Middle is all over the Ontario Language Arts Curriculum.

These are the basics of writing workshop:

Students select their own topics for writing and their own books for reading.
Throughout the year, they write and read in a variety of genres, about a variety of topics, for a variety of audiences.
The teacher does not provide prompts for writing, does not set hard deadlines, and does not assign books.

The teacher must:

Conference with students one-on-one, daily.
Respond to student writing and provide editing suggestions.
Show students examples of excellent writing.
Share his/her own writing with students.
Teach mini-lessons.

The student must:

Produce at least three to five pages of rough draft each week and bring at least two pieces of writing to completion every six weeks.
Produce, by the end of the year, a finished piece in the following areas: short story, three to five poems/songs, a profile of local citizen or an op-ed piece or essay about an issue that matters to them, a book review, and a memoir.
Attempt publication.

I love Writing Workshop, so I'll post some of my own mini-lessons over the next little while.

Why Black Mountain is cool

2010-10-14T17:35:00.000-07:00

Watch to 1:40, at least.

On bands that sound like The Beach Boys

2010-09-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

Draft One

"I have an important question for you."
"OK."
"Do you like The Beatles?"
"Yes."
"Do you like bands that sound like The Beatles?"
"Like?"
"The Beach Boys?"
"Well, I actually like a lot of bands that sound like The Beach Boys. And I love 'Good Vibrations.' But I kinda hate The Beach Boys."

Microsoft Word Thesaurus Version

"I have a momentous query for you."
"OK."
"Do you take pleasure in The Beatles?"
"Certainly."
"Do you indulge in groups that are musically reminiscent of The Beatles?"
"Such as?"
"The Beach Boys?"
"Well, I actually revel in a large number of bands that are musically reminiscent of The Beach Boys. And I venerate “Good Vibrations.” But I kinda feel odium toward The Beach Boys."

On The Globe and Mail

2010-09-25T07:47:00.000-07:00

When the French arrived in North America, they brought guns, giving them a huge military advantage over the natives, who waged wars with bows, arrows and spears. When battles broke, guns won. The natives, needing to adapt, had two options:

1) Attempt to build the best damn bows, arrows and spears ever seen;
2) Get guns.

Unlike The Globe and Mail, they chose the latter.

***

The Globe's brass believe they will save the brand by spending $1.9 billion on a print redesign. This is not shocking, since deluded people tend to sit in the front offices of most media companies. But as someone who still kinda cares about journalism, I find it disappointing.

That the Internet is better than the newspaper has been obvious for at least half a decade. The newspaper’s only advantage—portability—is being eroded by the iPad, Kindle and SmartPhones. Soon enough, all reading fans will carry these devices, the same way that today's music fans all own iPods. Then old people will die, and newspapers will join bows, arrows and spears in the museum of history.

With the kind of money it's spending, the Globe should have gone for the guns.

On my ten favourite soccer players

2010-09-01T08:08:00.000-07:00

10. Andrea Ranocchia-Genoa

The new great Italian hope at the back, this six foot five monster formed a mean partnership with Leonardo Bonucci at Bari last season before a knee injury knocked him out for the rest of the season. Great on the ball, beastly in the air and a good looking bastard to boot, he’s essential to the Griffone’s European ambitions this season.

9. Sebastian Frey-Fiorentina

I mostly like him because he’s fat. Pretty good goalie, too.

8. Daniele De Rossi-Roma

He’s been struggling since the end of last season, which is painful to watch because no one tries harder than the Giallorossi and Azzurri’s future capitano. One of the few box-to-box men left in the game, he’s equally adept at long range shooting and tackling. The beard he’s been sporting of late, meanwhile, is on par in terms of awesomeness with Paul McCartney’s Let It Be era facial hair, and he seems to have sparked a trend, as evidenced by the vast number of Serie A players who didn’t shave for week one.

7. Lucio-Inter Milan

Tremendous in the air, a fine last ditch tackler and sly on the foul, he’s still kind of overrated (you rarely see a mistake-free game from him). Nevertheless, the Brazilian remains one of my faves. Love the over-the-top tackle celebrations and trademark-but-somewhat-nonsensical forages forward with the ball. Where are you going Lucio?! IT DOESN’T MATTER WHERE HE’S GOING.

6. Gennaro Gattuso-AC Milan

Ugly, short, dirty, bearded, passionate, moderately skilled, ridiculous, hilarious, crazy. Also, a World Cup, Scudetto and Champions League winner. If Don Cherry liked soccer, Gattuso would be his favourite player.

5. Antonio Cassano-Sampdoria

The boy wonder from Bari Vecchia isn’t really a boy anymore; a good thing, too, since his newfound maturity has allowed his undeniable talent to shine through, though the lovably animated persona and occasional pantslessness haven’t completely disappeared. Along with Gianpaolo Pazzini, carried Samp to an unexpected fourth position last season.

4. Diego Milito-Inter Milan

The Argentinean striker is the reason I’m a Genoa fan today, as his performances in 2008/2009 for the oldest team in Italy lifted the team into a fifth placed finish. I actually haven’t found a player currently on the team I like nearly as much as him. He’s a complete forward in the truest sense: Back to the goal? Run onto the ball? Divine creation? Composed finishing? The man can do it all and he makes it look easy. Also stronger than most horses.

3. Andrea Pirlo-AC Milan

Never temperamental and oh so composed on the ball, the deep lying playmaker’s long forward passes and pinpoint through balls were essential to Italy’s 2006 World Cup and Milan’s 2007 Champions League victories. Works hard, never loses his cool, and takes a pretty mean long free kick. On the decline, but still one of the peninsula’s classiest talents.

2. Kaka-Real Madrid

Man do I miss this guy! I know this list is overpopulated with Rossoneri players past and present (I am not a Milanista!) but anyone who dislikes Kaka should just stop watching this sport. Everything about his playing is just so gorgeous. I mean, most of the time I don’t really believe in the “beautiful game”, but, in those fleeting moments when he’s running with ball from the half way line, laying off a no-look pass, or launching the ball into the back of the net, Kaka gives me faith.

1. Gianluigi Buffon-Juventus

I played goalie in both soccer and hockey, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that my all-time favourite player is a keeper. In his prime, Gigi stopped shots better than any other netminder in calcio history while his defense management remains unparalleled. A wonderful presence on the pitch, I particularly enjoy the stylish neck scarves he dons during the cold winter months. God-like.

On teaching Brave New World

2010-07-14T16:24:00.000-07:00

First time I read BNW, I was in OAC. It wasn’t assigned, but we had to write a comparative essay for ENG and I chose two books not on the syllabus: the one by Huxley & the one by Orwell. Why?

The teacher pissed me off;
When I rocked my Gatsby essay
He cried plagiarism.

(I taught haikus in week one.)

The teacher was way off Gatsby, mystified by my literary magic, probs. Still, I had to show the dude I was legit: I read and LEARNED two books I chose myself; I prewrote, drafted, rewrote, revised, edited, and proofread (and this was before Joan taught me about The Writing Process); and thesaurus-ed the shit out of every paragraph. I got a 90. (The bastard had never even seen the term Dystopia before my essay!)

(Somehow, we never discussed the Piss the Kid Off Motivational Strategy in teacher’s college Psych.)

I re-read BNW recently cause I’m teaching it to grade 11s. IT’S AWESOME and if you’ve never read it, oh, man, come on, JUST READ IT.

Here’s some of the stuff we’ve been doing in class:

1. Here's the opening lesson, basically:
I played “Imagine” by John Lennon, i.e., Das Kapital in C Major.
I said: “No countries. No possessions. No religion. Nothing to kill or die for. No greed or hunger. All the people, living life in peace, for today, as one. You like?”
They said: “Yeah, we like.”
“How about, 'A brotherhood of man'?”
“Sure.”
“How about if I say,'Everyone belongs to everyone else.’”
“We can dig that.”
“Brave New World presents a world where everyone is happy. All they’ve given up is truth and freedom. Let's begin.”

2. We’re using a Literature Circle format. Yes, it works for Grade 11, too.

3. I summarize every chapter, orally, every day, checking for understanding the whole time. This is basically my version of Differentiated Instruction.

4. The final project is an essay. I woulda gone for something more creative, but these kids have never been taught how to write a Five-Paragraph (School) Essay With Thesis Statement, and I found the Five-Paragraph (School )Essay With Thesis Statement useful when I was being educated.

5. I did a lesson on Developing Essay Topics. At the end, a kid asked, “Are we going to get to choose our own topics, or are you going to give them to us?”
“You’re going to choose your own.”
“Yes!”
Go Nancie Atwell.

6. We read an article about genetic engineering in today’s world and then I asked the kids to write about whether or not they would modify their own kids. Two said yes, two said no.

7. I asked the kids to consider whether or not the World State is ethical, using Utilitarianism and the Categorical Imperative as their lenses. Dunno if they found the topic interesting, but I sure as hell did.

Marco: The Mix Tape (Tracks 6 & 7)

2010-05-31T12:35:00.000-07:00

7. Spiritualized-Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space

8. Wilco-I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

I consider myself a serious student of rock and pop music and my favourite kind of study involves individual artists or groups. When I reached university, I finally dropped my somewhat rigid “all music made after 1975 sucks” stance and got really into these two bands.

First of all, let me explain that they’re not really bands: Spiritualized is Jason Pierce, who goes by the stage name J Spaceman, and Wilco is Jeff Tweedy, who goes by the stage name Jeff Tweedy. I have listened to every record Spaceman and Tweedy have ever officially released, including their solo projects and work with the bands Spacemen 3 and Uncle Tupelo. I’ve also listened to a ton of bootlegs by both men. I’ve read interviews, biographies, and reviews of each artist. I’ve watched their videos (official and non) on DVD and on YouTube. I’ve even written essays (see below) and numerous blog posts and columns about them.

When I get into a band or an artist, I want to learn everything there is know about them. I want to understand their methods, their backgrounds, their strengths and flaws. I am, in short, intensely curious. And it’s this kind of intense curiosity, not just about art, but about life in general, that I want to pass on to my students when I become a teacher.

Here's a longer, kinda humourless piece I wrote on J Spaceman, for those who might be interested:

There’s a genre they call “blue-eyed soul.” It refers to white artists who play and sing music that sounds like black music. Think of Dusty Springfield, Van Morrison, Amy Winehouse, Hall & Oates, etc.

There’s a genre they call “psychedelic soul.” It generally refers to black artists that incorporated elements of sixties psychedelic rock into their R&B and soul sounds. Think of The Temptations under Norman Whitfield, Sly & the Family Stone, Funkadelic, Curtis Mayfield, etc.

Though his eyes are blue and his music draws much of its inspiration from gospel, blues and soul, J Spaceman, founder and auteur of Spiritualized, is not a blue-eyed soul artist. His rhythms are never syncopated, his singing is never gritty and his songs are never danceable.
Consider this quote from a 2003 article in Playlouder magazine, referring to Spiritualized’s most acclaimed record, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space: “For all the horns and gospel choirs and Dr John piano licks, it's a fundamentally classical, funk-free sound: one need only compare

Spiritualized's Stay With Me to the shuddering Lorraine Ellison classic on which it's loosely based to gauge the difference between Pierce's white light/white heat ‘Spiritualization' and the choked agony of black soul.”

To call Spaceman a psychedelic-soul artist would be stretching the definition of the label. His use of the wah-wah pedal, for example, shares nothing in common with the Hendrix-ian style that all the acts mentioned above borrowed from.

Instead, Spaceman has turned that definition of psychedelic soul on its head and created something we might call space-soul.

Spacemen first recorded “Shine a Light” for Spiritualized’s 1992 debut, Laser Guided Melodies, but that version is rather limp and tepid. Over the years, though, Spaceman has transformed the song in live performances and on his most recent tour, in 2008, he performed the definitive arrangement, that seamlessly blends the power and majesty of the best gospel music with the transcendental noise and feedback first pioneered by The Velvet Underground. Here it is, from the Pitchfork Music Festival.

Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, from 1997, saw Spaceman take his earlier experiments with soul and gospel to their logical extent. Speaking about his writing, producing, and recording method, he told The Varsity newspaper, “But it's normal for pop music to have backing singers, strings, a horn section and then a rock n' roll band—it's like Elvis In Memphis, it's Captain Beefheart on Clear Spot, it's Sly and the Family Stone's There's A Riot Goin' On. But we didn't want to do a regular session. We wanted to make something that was as unique as those records, but I didn't want to make the same records.”

On the album’s second track, “Come Together,” Spacemen mashes the dirty, explosive rock of Detroit’s MC5 (who, not coincidentally, recorded a song with the same title on their famous debut) with Phil Spector’s classic Wall of Sound production style. The effect, seen here on the Live with Jools Holland show, is mind-blowing.

Lastly, we end with “Lay Back In the Sun,” possibly the finest song in the Spiritualized catalogue. Spaceman has recorded at least four complete versions of the track but this version—accompanied by a decent mash-up of other Spiritualized videos—is by far the best, giving great prominence to the blowing Stax horns and the deeply soulful backing vocals.

Marco: The Mix Tape (Track 5)

2010-05-24T11:18:00.000-07:00

Stevie Wonder-Uptight (Everything’s Alright)

My friend Daniele (better known as Jim—don’t ask) and I got really interested in making videos in high school. It started when our Grade 11 English teacher let us film a scene from Lord of the Flies as part of our unit on that book. We filmed and edited it using analog equipment. I haven’t seen that video in a long time but I’m sure it’s equally terrible and hilarious.

Still, we were very proud of the accomplishment and over the next couple of years, we made a series of films as class projects under our unregistered company named, Uptown Films (An Infinity Production), eventually getting our hands on a digital camera and editing software. These films included an anti-drinking public service announcement for English Media (set to Steppenwolf’s Magic Carpet Ride and featuring our friend Marco simulating vomiting in a toilet), a bizarre series of sketches for Paul’s philosophy class (including a slow motion scene of a rook taking a pawn), and a short movie about John Gotti’s rise to power (titled The Family and featuring a soundtrack strangely similar to the one used by Martin Scorsese in Goodfellas). One of the many highlights was our preview for The Family, which aired before another video we made for a law class.

In OAC, Jim and I decided to create our piece de resistance, a commemorative film of our class’s final year in high school. I had my video camera with me every day that year and compiled hours and hours (and hours) of footage, covering everything from the boys’ soccer team championship run to Variety Night to Paul locking the DeCiantis brothers in the girls’ washroom. When Jim and I sat down to edit the thing, the only music we had with us was a four-CD Motown box set I’d recently purchased from Columbia House music club. The film opens with an in-car view of a drive up to St. Basil-the-Great College school, with the backing soundtrack provided by Lil’ Stevie and the Funk Brothers playing this track. We showed the video to our class on the last day of school and offered copies for $15. We sold out. One person also asked if he could also have a copy of the soundtrack.

Marco: The Mix Tape (Track 4)

2010-05-22T09:43:00.000-07:00

Pink Floyd-The Great Gig in the Sky

Grade 11 was pivotal: I failed my driver’s test three times, I joined my first band, and I got my first copy of Dark Side of the Moon. I also launched Rock Is Dead-Long Live Rock, a website dedicated to reviewing albums from my collection. Looking back on them today, some of the reviews were actually pretty well-written; some (perhaps most) were dreadful, even for a teenager. But I put myself out there, I got a small audience and I practiced my writing, active listening, and research skills. And my rating system was kind of funny: I gave albums a score out of 11, a nod to Spinal Tap’s famous amplifiers. Only five albums ever received that score and Dark Side of the Moon was one of them. At the risk of serious embarrassment, here’s the full review:

Dark Side of the Moon
Best Song: Time, or Breathe, or Money, or The Great Gig in the Sky...pretty much anything except Any Colour You Like

This is the smoothest album I've ever heard. It's also one of the best. Yes I know that the cool thing for critics to do is to find faults with the albums that get proclaimed as "the best of all-time", after all I did it with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. But I really can't find any faults with this masterpiece.

Everything about this record appeals to me. Roger Waters' simple but strong lyrics about the meaninglessness of everyday life; the cool and crazy special effects like the cash registers playing in 7/4 time in the intro to "Money" or the orchestra you can faintly hear playing at the end of the album (apparently they're playing the Beatles "Ticket to Ride" but I can't really tell); David Gilmour's rich vocals and smoother than silk guitar playing; and the gorgeous melodies throughout the album. There's a rumour that this album can be synced with The Wizard of Oz and I've checked out some sites which claim its true. I haven't really got the time to try it out though. (Note: I have since confirmed this rumour.)

Marco: The Mix Tape (Track 3)

2010-05-14T04:47:00.001-07:00

Led Zeppelin-No Quarter

A common Zeppelin fan’s narrative goes something like this: 14-year-old boy discovers Zeppelin through dad’s old record collection, obsesses over Jimmy Page’s guitar tone, John Bonham’s thick drumming, John Paul Jones’ mysteriousness, and Robert Plant’s tight pants for three-to- five years, occasionally writes “Zeppelin Rules” on his notebooks and binders, then moves on to more mature adult bands and artists. It’s true that Led Zeppelin were a lot of things for me in high school: a musical inspiration, a substitute for girls, an excuse to play air guitar. And it’s true that at one time I thought I was so over Zeppelin. But like any addiction, a teenager who falls for this band never fully recovers , and these days, I feel no shame in getting the Led out. One of the great things about Zeppelin is that they were never afraid to try something new; they didn’t have a Sound, so much as they had Sounds. I demand creativity and risk-taking from my artists, and Zeppelin, despite their occasional cock rock tendencies, was never afraid to go somewhere strange and dangerous.

(P.S. I really hate the way Robert Plant sings this version of the song, which comes from the generally awful The Song Remains the Same film. However, if you can get past that, the keyboard and guitar solos (with a ridiculous fantasy sequence featuring JPJ!) are sick.)

Marco: The Mix Tape (Track 2)

2010-05-08T13:09:00.000-07:00

The Who Young Man Blues

I didn’t really get into music until my intermediate years. Before then, my love was sports, hockey in particular. As a die hard Leafs fan and four-times-a-week Downsview Beavers goalie, I spent most of my waking hours thinking about ice, skates, pucks and sticks. One day, when I was about 12, my dad came home with a CD called Who’s Missing by a band named The Who. For some reason, I kept playing this album over and over and over and a few weeks later, my dad came home with another CD called Who’s Greatest Hits. The hockey affair was over the first time I lifted my stick to use as an air guitar, though I continued to play the game for another year or so. In my final season, I had a pre-game ritual of listening to The Who’s Live at Leeds (on tape!) prior to every game. This track, a cover of an old Mose Allison blues tune, was always a favourite and the fact that its lyrics resonated so deeply with my 13-year-old self is probably not a coincidence.

Marco: The Mix Tape (Track 1)

2010-05-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

The Beatles The End

For the Ursis, The Beatles are The Bible. My father and mother were huge fans of the band in their youths and passed on The Passion of the Fab Four to me and my two sisters, Danielle and Lisa. We know every record. We know most of the dialogue in A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, and even The Beatles Anthology by heart. Danielle, the most devout believer, has probably purchased more than $1,000 worth of lunch boxes, buttons, mugs and bootlegs from the now defunct Beatlemania shop in downtown Toronto. And where many kids played House, we played Band, and more often than not, the Band we played was The Beatles.

Many family dinners were spent on Favourite Beatle debates and though I remain partial to John, I do hold a soft spot in my heart (and my hands) for Ringo; after all, the Big Nosed One was my first drum teacher. Around Grade 7, I decided I wanted to play the skins. Only trouble was I didn’t have any. To alleviate this minor snafu, I arranged some chairs into something resembling a kit, put on one of my dad’s workboots to replicate the booming bass drum sound, and started banging along with The Beatles. When my Grade 8 music teacher asked me to play a solo for our spring concert, I duplicated Ringo’s solo from this Abbey Road track and got a massive ovation. As for my lack of drumset problem, I played the chairs for two whole years before Nonno Joe—sick of my banging on the table every time I visited his house—decided to buy me my first kit for Christmas.

On becoming literate, part two

2010-05-02T16:11:00.000-07:00

In my teen years, I became addicted to rock and roll. I bought CDs by the handful. I took up drums. I started collecting band discographies--first The Who, then Led Zeppelin, then Pink Floyd. I’d visit the library to borrow and read every rock and roll history book they had. Rock music even infiltrated my hockey world - I developed the superstition of listening to Live at Leeds before every game (goalies being the superstitious type). The time and energy I'd once spent on Doug Gilmour, Damien Cox, and developing my butterfly technique was now being spent on David Gilmour, Dave Marsh, and developing my drum roll.

When my family got an Internet connection, I spent most of my web time reading three websites: Mark's Record Reviews, George Starostin’s Music Reviews, and CosmicBen's Record Reviews (at least when I wasn't as updating my wrestling column). As their titles would suggest, these websites were one-man operations, dedicated to reviewing albums both past and present. Prindle, who still keeps at it, had the wackiest style of writing I'd ever seen: off-the-cuff, stream-of-consciousness reviews that somehow always seemed to pick out the soul of an album. Starostin, a Russian writing in English, was amazing for his productivity; at one point, the guy seemed to be churning out multiple 1,000-plus word reviews daily. And CosmicBen was an insightful and intelligent critic with none of the pretentious, holier-than-thou attitude that still occasionally plagues more widely read music sites. These idiosyncratic and passionate writers gave me an education in rock music and music writing that I couldn't get anywhere else.

So I decided to be one of them. Sometime late in 1998, when I was seventeen, I launched my own personal music review site: Rock Is Dead - Long Live Rock. At the time, I owned about 100 CDs. Over the next five years, I published over 120 album reviews, sixteen concert reviews, five shorts stories, six short essays, and a series of fast food restaurant reviews. I updated inconsistently, my prose was riddled with typos and grammatical errors, and some of the opinions I spouted were just plain stupid. It’s painful for me to read some of what I wrote then now. Still, I had the occasional bit--a paragraph, a sentence, a word--that I can look back on with pride. I took the site down from the Internet when I got my first full-time job in journalism. This time, though, I backed up the files.

On becoming literate, part one

2010-05-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

When it comes to literacy, I, like many men, owe professional sports a great debt.

My earliest reading memories involve the sports section of the Toronto Star. I was cursed from a young age with a passion for this city’s sports teams, and the Star, delivered daily to our front step, was like a sacred text, offering not just scores and stats (though those were very important), but also news, photos, and analysis. As soon as I could make out the words, I read the sports section from cover-to-cover every morning. And as soon as my grade one teacher told us to write something in our journals, I began composing tales about my beloved Maple Leafs and Blue Jays, as well as the Tour de France and World Cup.

I don’t remember being a particularly voracious reader in my primary/junior years, but I did tell myself a lot of stories and pretty much all of them had to do with sports.

I would hit a ball against the wall and play out matches in the World Tennis League, a fictional, professional competition divided along international lines. In the WTL, John McEnroe had defected to Canada and led the league in “jacks” – unreturnable serves that weren’t quite aces. (N.B. There is no such thing as a “jack.”)

Other times, I’d pull out a piece of paper and write out the tournament bracket for the World Cup of Freeball. (I was, and still am, a great lover of tournament brackets.) In my imaginary world, Freeball began as a once-a-year competition between the United States and Japan, but it soon caught on in other places and eventually, the Irish, Italians, and yes, Canadians, were amongst the world’s top nations. Wales always posed a threat because of their terrific keeper, who stole more games than Dominik Hasek. I never quite figured out Freeball was played–I imagined it as a sort of cross between football, soccer, and rugby (though it wasn’t Aussie Rules Football) – but flipping through my dad’s atlases to pick out World Cup nations taught me a lot about geography. (I was obviously all about integrated units from a very young age.)

For a while, I used my hockey cards to develop an expansion NHL team – I’d lay the cards out on the floor, arranged by forward lines and defensive pairings. Then I would make trades with other, strangely generous general managers, to bring in better players and take my team to the Cup. (This little game probably accounts for my minor addiction to Football Manager 2010.)

This sporty imagination reached its apex with the WWO, or the World Wrestling Organization. Unlike the WTL and Freeball, the WWO went beyond my mind. The WWO was, in fact, my first major writing project.

I began it in the sixth or seventh grade. To begin, I used all the boys in my class as the basis for wrestling characters. Stefano was Tank, Jonathan was John Rocker. Jimmy was Viper, who later became The Punisher. Matthew was The Man in Black, Fernando was The Olive King (his own idea, actually), and I was Marco Marciano. Some of the girls acted as managers and often figured prominently in storylines.

Like the WWF and WCW, the WWO was built around a weekly television show (Wild Wednesday) that built up to a monthly pay-per-view and for every Wild Wednesday, I would write a match-by-match, interview-by-interview recap. I didn’t describe every move or write out the interview line-by-line, but dealt more in generalities. (E.g. “The Olive King came out for an interview and proceeded to insult Marco Marciano’s girl, Melinda, in his typically bizarre way. Marciano appeared with a steel chair and a brawl ensued.”)

I put a lot of time, effort and thought into the WWO. I enjoyed developing my characters and my plots, my conflicts and my resolutions. I’d even occasionally tell my friends about the goings on in the WWO, only to hear the inevitable complaints about the fact that their characters had lost to mine.(Marco Marciano was undefeated in his WWO career, though I never gave him the belt.)Then, about 80 pages into my story, I popped the disk I had it saved on into the drive, only to hear a strange, skipping noise. Nothing appeared on the screen. Having been trained on the original 8-bit Nintendo, I tried blowing on the disk, but to no avail. The WWO was lost forever.

You’ll be pleased to know that I don’t watch wrestling anymore. I’m kind of embarrassed I ever did. But it got me writing and reading (I religiously picked up Pro Wrestling Illustrated from my corner store every month). And for my first couple of years of high school, I even had an online wrestling column, though I can’t remember what it was called.

Then my dad brought home a CD called Who's Missing and everything changed.

The Four S's of Musical Success: An Introduction

2010-04-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

The Songs.

The Singer.

The Sound.

The Shtick.

If you get these four things right, you are likely to find some success in music.

I’ve been playing with this theory for over a year and I hope to outline some of its tenets on this blog over the next few months. They come from my experiences as a semi-professional musician, as an amateur music critic and historian, and a casual-but-interested observer of the North American and European pop music industries.

The theory is aimed at people in music; artists, in particular, but also those who work with artists, such as musicians, producers, managers, label runners, bar owners, bookers, etc. I will try to be as practical as possible in my analysis and with my advice. I’ll try not to let my own tastes and biases interfere with my conclusions, though they will greatly inform the discussion.

On my most important teacher

2010-04-22T11:24:00.000-07:00

Nonno Joe, my grandfather, was probably the most important teacher in my life. Nonno Joe didn’t speak English very well, but that didn’t stop him from delivering long lectures to me after our Sunday family lunches and a few glasses of wine. (We’ll have to forgive Nonno Joe, a working class Italian immigrant who didn’t have the benefit of an OISE education, for not using a wider variety of teaching models.) Nonno Joe’s sermons typically focused on three subjects: 1) The difficulties and challenges he’d endured in his life; 2) The dangers of drugs; and 3) The importance of education.

Nonno Joe had very little schooling himself; he broke his back as a construction worker and was forced into retirement before he turned 40. For Nonno Joe, education represented the only path to success. He’d often say things like, “The school is important,” “No forget the school,” “If you want to be a man, you need the school,” and “People who don’t go to the school are the bums.” I believed him and I took school seriously because of it.

Two months into my first year as a journalism student at Ryerson University, Nonno Joe died of an aneurysm. At Nonno Joe’s funeral, my godfather, Peter, told me that the last time he’d spoken to Nonno Joe, my grandfather had said, “Marco is now a man.” I never felt so proud.

On learning

2010-04-22T11:22:00.000-07:00

Adults like to ask children what they want to be when they grow up. When, during my second practicum, I posed this question to a bright and mature grade 5 student who also happened to be the slowest runner in a class of 34, he replied: “Either a fireman, or a professional athlete.” When you’re teaching elementary school, it’s really important to remember that children have a lot to learn.

My grandfather, Nonno Joe, never asked me what I wanted to be when I got older. Instead, he gave me options: “You ‘ave tree choice. Un dotore, una lawyer or a priest.” Then he narrowed those options down. “Lawyers is da crook and you are no a crook. A priest no can get married and can no have kids. You maybe want to find a wife. Ma un dotore...aaahhh...un dotore make a the lots of money. Un dotore helps the sick people. Un dotore has the respect.”

The choice was clear. My 10-year-old brain, with a little help from Nonno, had made a firm decision. I was going to be a doctor.

Children have a lot to learn.

On the end

2008-07-25T13:21:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed, this blog is no longer active. I hope you enjoyed reading it; I certainly enjoyed writing it.

On the oboe busker

2008-02-13T12:21:00.000-08:00

The buskers at Eglinton subway station almost always impress me. There’s the duo who dress up like characters from O Brother Where Art Thou? and do bluegrass and country songs; the black man with sunglasses who freely plays soulful alto sax solos; the African marimba man who is never without a smile; and the old Chinese man whose melancholy musical laments on what I think is an erhu always blend nicely with whatever melancholy indie rock I’m playing on my headphones.

Then there’s the oboe guy. Prior to today, I’d caught his act twice and on both occasions, he seemed to be doing nothing but tuning. While the oboe is a bizarre instrument to busk with, I didn’t feel he was offering enough.

Today, however, I caught him just as he completed the looped bass line (he’s got some electronic looping thingy) and started laying down a melody. I recognized it immediately but couldn’t place it. Mingus? Miles? Coltrane?

Then the lyrics popped into my head:

It's all good girl turn me on
'Til the early morn'
Let's get it on
Let's get it on 'til the early morn'
Girl it's all good just turn me on

I was impressed.

On picking a side

2008-01-09T13:43:00.000-08:00

When it comes to club-level soccer, I have never been able to support any specific team.

I don’t have this problem with the international game. All four of my grandparents were born in Italy. So was my father. When the World Cup comes around every four years, I bleed Azzurri blue.

Unfortunately, geographic ties don’t provide any basis for club support (other than the fact that I want to cheer for an Italian club). My mother’s side of the family comes from a small town in Abbruzzo called Roccamorice. The closest major city is Pescara, which has a team that’s middling in Serie C1. My father is from Bari, the tenth largest city in Italy. That club is struggling in Serie B.

For a lot of Italians, club allegiances are passed on from generation to generation, but my papa has never followed soccer closely enough to have an allegiance to pass on.

A few months ago, I had an e-mail discussion with some friends about this subject. At the time, I suggested throwing my support behind AC Milan. Some of my favourite players (Cafu, Kaka, Andrea Pirlo, Gennaro Gattuso) suit up in the red and black, and the team is usually a serious contender for both the Scudetto and the Champions League. My main gripes with the side are owner Silvio Berlusconi (the right-wing media baron and former Prime Minister of Italy) and dreadful Brazilian goalie Dida. As a keeper myself, I just can’t support a team with such a poor stopper. (There’s also the fact that Milan have been awfully inconsistent in Serie A this season—though to not choose a team because they’re struggling would kind of defeat the thick-and-thin mentality of true fandom.)

I have always disliked Inter for no rational reason besides the fact that the hardcore supporters have right-wing allegiances. From some recent reading, I’ve gathered that a lot of intellectual, left-wing types also support the club (my cousin Michele being one of them), but then there’s the disturbing fact that Marco Materazzi is one of their star players. (When it comes to the World Cup, I have no problem with Materazzi’s antics, so long as they help Italy win. In the club world, I’m far less tolerant of his shenanigans.) I feel like Juventus is the kind of team you need to support your whole life and I haven’t done that (although keeper Gianluigi Buffon is probably my favourite player in the world right now—you gotta love those winter toques he’s been sporting lately). Earlier this season, I flirted with the possibility of supporting Roma, but while I enjoy watching them play, I don’t feel a bond with the squad.

For a brief moment late last year, I was seriously considering supporting Atalanta. After viewing a documentary about Italian Ultras that prominently features the Atalanta group, I found it unbelievably hilarious that people could be so passionate about this unstoried side and decided to join their brigade of hopeless fanatics in spirit. Later, I realized that their games don’t appear on Canadian television enough to make support worthwhile. I’m faced with a similar problem with regards to teams like Fiorentina, Udinese and Sampdoria—why support a team when I can only see, at best, five to ten of their games a season?

And so at the end of it all, I’ve decided to remain a proud neutral. I cheer not for a specific team, but for fairness, hard work, quality play, and exciting matches.

P.S. Go Pescara and Bari!

Favourite albums of the year

2007-12-21T09:00:00.000-08:00

Released in 2007:

1. The National-Boxer
2. LCD Soundsystem-Sound of Silver
3. Spiritualized-Acoustic Mainlines (live bootleg)
4. Panda Bear-Person Pitch
5. Wilco-Sky Blue Sky
6. Grizzly Bear-Friend EP
7. Radiohead-In Rainbows
8. The Besnard Lakes-We Are the Dark Horse
9. Deerhoof-friend opportunity
10. Caribou-Andorra

First time heard in 2007 (but released earlier):

1. Staples Singers-Uncloudy Day
2. The National-Alligator
3. Grizzly Bear-Yellow House
4. Jeff Tweedy-Sunken Treasure: Live in the Pacific Northwest
5. Dr. John-The Sun, the Moon, the Herbs
6. Mike Oldfield-Tubular Bells
7. Ryan Adams-Heartbreaker
8. Can-Ege Bamyasi
9. Joel Plaskett-La De Da
10. Grizzly Bear-Horn of Plenty

Brazilian soccer stars and Led Zeppelin

2007-12-07T06:35:00.000-08:00

This is from an essay comparing AC Milan and Barcelona, found on a blog I discovered this morning called Treasons, Stratagems & Spoils:

"Barca's lush, spread-out, unpredictable spontaneity and pace contrasts markedly with Milan's engineered, stately, textbook precision. If you want a reductionist argument, look at their figurehead Brazilians: Ronaldinho is pretty much the Jimmy Page to Kaka's John Paul Jones in the flair stakes."

On a Beatles ban

2007-11-28T07:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, in the guise of making excuses for a lack of recent updates, Jordan Timm at Taste Police, made the case for a five-year, global moratorium on music by The Beatles.

Can we have any perspective on this music when we're saturated with it? How can I really appreciate "A Day In The Life" or "Saw Her Standing There" when my brain switches off upon hearing them, because I've been beaten over the head with them so often? I know the words, I know every note by heart, and so I don't listen anymore. My brain absently sketches in the song for me. Greatest rock'n'roll band ever? I don't know! I don't even know how to hear them anymore. Blame a combination of the Boomer cultural hegemony and a society that abhors an aural vacuum.

Jordan follows with an anecdote about a recent viewing of the re-released Help!, where, after nodding off ten minutes into film, he awoke to the opening bars of “Ticket to Ride” and found himself enthralled by the melancholy Lennon classic.

I don't have the technical vocabulary to describe what's happening musically at the start of this song, with that chiming six-note guitar figure and the drumming and the harmonies, but I loved it. For once, it all sounded fresh and beguiling–when I was disoriented, on my way out of a nap. Which sucks. To appreciate this song properly for the first time in about 15 years, I had to sneak up on it.

Jordan’s observation reminded me of the essay on The Beatles’ “Rain” in Nick Hornby’s 31 Songs. In a culture oversaturated by The Beatles, Hornby writes that through this psychedelic B-side, he is able to hear The Beatles in a new and fresh way, giving him a fleeting sense of what it was like to hear them for the first time.

If you can hear Dylan and the Beatles being unmistakably themselves at their peak — but unmistakably themselves in a way we haven’t heard a thousand, a million times before — then suddenly you get a small but thrilling flash of their spirit.

I don’t have the book with me (I found that quote online), but I remember Hornby’s ending, where he expresses certainty that his excitement about “Rain” would soon pass. This struck me as being one of the truest things I'd ever read about the band, and pop music in general.

Whether a half-decade ban of The Beatles music would actually allow me to hear the Fab Four in a new way, I’m not sure. The Beatles were a huge part of my childhood, a big part of teenage years and a medium part of my early twenties. One of my sisters has a wall unit of collected Beatles memorabilia, from magazines to lunch boxes to buttons to terrible live bootlegs. The other sister painted the Yellow Submarine cartoon versions of John, Paul, George and Ringo on her wall. I’ve seen The Beatles Anthology a least a half dozen times and have read countless biographies on the band and its individual members. I’ve played Beatles covers. I’ve listened to the albums sober, drunk, and high, on headphones and on speakers, on the radio and on vinyl and on CD.

I’ve had similar experiences to the ones described by Jordan and Hornby, moments when, suddenly and strangely, a Lennon/McCartney composition fills my brain and my body with the kind of excitement that’s more likely to come from the discovery of a new artist I’ve been longing to listen to all my life than from a dead band I've heard a thousand times before. There’s nothing that’s going for me at the moment, but my ears are always open. And who knows? Maybe this time it will be a Ringo song.

On No Country For Old Men

2007-11-27T12:37:00.000-08:00

My thoughts on the film, as told by Anthony Lane of The New Yorker.

On Euro 2008 qualifiers

2007-11-22T13:03:00.001-08:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again: England sucks.

On J Spaceman

2007-11-20T06:44:00.000-08:00

After attending the Spirtualized Acoustic Mainlines show at the Phoenix on Saturday night, I tried to write an essay on Jason Pierce, my musical hero. It wasn’t any good, so all you get is the thesis.

“Acoustic Mainlines has established Jason Pierce as the most important and accomplished psychedelic rocker of his generation—even perhaps, of any generation.”

Bonus! Embedded YouTube clip:

As I wrote in the comments section of this video, "Jason always wanted to be Pop Staples. He's finally living the dream."

A response to 'On social order'

2007-11-12T10:51:00.000-08:00

Amber of "Notions from the Bathtub" has written a thoughtful response to my essay, 'On social order.' In her piece, Amber explores areas where democracy has failed in Canada, citing a number of examples, including autocratic behaviour by the Alberta government and union-busting at the Rogers Centre.

I have posted a response to Amber in the comments section of her post.

On fall music

2007-11-08T07:56:00.000-08:00

Radiohead–In Rainbows

Phil Selway is amazing. I don’t know of any drummer who combines electronic beats with his own bashing as perfectly and intelligently as Radiohead’s bald guy in the back. “15 Step” is only the most obvious example of his proficiency, but a good one, considering it’s also the best song on this excellent album. Some these songs have been gestating for years but this loosest sounding Radiohead album in over a decade.I haven’t read a review that’s commented on the fact that at least two of these songs (“Weird Fish/Arpeggi” and “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”) sound a hell of a lot like Broken Social Scene. So I guess I’ll be the first.

Radiohead-15 Step

The Staple Singers–Uncloudy Day

I’m not religious, but listening to this album, released in 1959, almost makes me want to believe. The lo-fi-before-lo-fi-was-cool recording snaps, crackles and pops like a Baptized bowl of Rice Krispies. The songs—Christian, Southern, sad—are mostly just four voices accompanied by a single electric guitar with the reverb cranked to otherworldly proportions. Pop and Mavis trade leads in making pleads to the Lord, while the call-and-response harmonies will make you cry. If someone asked me to define musical “conviction,” I’d play this.

The Staple Singers-This May Be The Last Time

The National–Boxer

According to the iTunes tracker on Carley’s computer, I’ve listened to this album in its entirety 15 times since I downloaded it. “Fake Empire” has been played 37 times. These numbers doesn’t include iPod listens, of which there have been many. Considering how rarely I play entire albums in these mix-and-shuffle days, that’s damn impressive.

The National-Apartment Story

Panda Bear–Person Pitch

Writing about music is tough. It’s even tougher for pop music critics than their jazz or classical peers, since it’s assumed the readership won’t understand technical terms. Because of this, many hack pop writers rely on references to similar-sounding artists to describe what albums and/or songs sound like. Person Pitch by Panda Bear sounds like The Beach Boys and Phil Spector, but better.

Panda Bear-Comfy in Nautica

Farewell to Stylus

2007-11-05T13:04:00.000-08:00

Stylus, one of the best online music magazines around, ceased publication last week. Founder, publisher and editor Todd Burns has collected some of the publication's best work here.

Last summer, I sent an application to Todd in the hopes of being allowed to contribute to Stylus. He rejected me. Twice. I don't hold it against him, though. And to prove it, I'll link to this, which to the best of my knowledge, is the first "best of 2007" list published this year. (Not including Sasha-Frere Jones' ongoing list, which I won't link to—I'm still mad at him for ragging on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.)

On Spoon at the Kool Haus (with Daniel)

2007-10-16T08:10:00.001-07:00

Me: What did you think?
Daniel: It really picked up during the second encore.

Coolness is having courage

2007-10-13T09:20:00.001-07:00

Available upon request.

1. Grizzly Bear - He Hit Me
2. Elvis Presley - Wearin' That Loved On Look
3. Spiritualized - Good Times
4. The Staples Singers - This May Be The Last Time
5. Panda Bear - Comfy in Nautica
6. Caribou - Melody Day
7. The Besnard Lakes - Disaster
8. Beach House - Master of None
9. The Staples Singers - Will The Circle Be Unbroken
10. Jeff Tweedy - Sunken Treasure
11. Blood Meridian - Kick Up The Dust
12. Kevin Drew - When It Begins
13. The Staples Singers - Uncloudy Day
14. Dr. John - Craney Crow
15. Captain Beefheart - Too Much Time
16. Elvis Presley - Long Black Limousine
17. The Staples Singers - Don't Drive Me Away
18. The Crystals - He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)

On Dida

2007-10-11T13:29:00.000-07:00

AC Milan goalkeeper Nelson Dida has been suspended by UEFA for two Champions League games following an incident at last week's game against Celtic.

After Celtic's game-winning second goal was scored in final minutes of the match, a fan rushed onto the pitch and lightly slapped Dida in the face. The Brazilian stopper chased his "attacker" for a couple of steps before dropping to the ground like he'd been punched by Gennaro Gattuso. He was then taken off the field in a stretcher, holding an ice pack against his cheek.

Dida is easily the worst starter in the Milan line-up and possibly the worst number one goalie in Serie A. Not only is he weak on crosses, he gives up too many rebounds (see the Celtic goal, for example) and lets in too many soft goals. Milan should consider themselves lucky that they don't have to bother him for their next two matches.

Instead, they're complaining loudly that the ruling was "disproportionate" (Celtic received a 25,000 Euro fine) and appealing. This is shameful. Milan should have suspended and fined Dida on their own. What he did wasn't just theatrics—it was a deliberate attempt to affect the outcome of the game. By falling to the ground and leaving on a stretcher, Dida was giving his club the opportunity to challenge the result of the match (Milan chose not to). This is cheating.

Non-soccer fans complain that there is too much diving in soccer. They're right. They also complain that players spend too much time on the ground after receiving minor injuries. Here, they're missing something important. When a soccer player receives a minor injury, staying on the ground gives his team an opportunity to rest. It also gives the player time to heal. If the injury is legitimate, then so is staying on the ground.

But what Dida did was not legitimate. My friend Paul suggested that what the goalie did will blight all Brazilian players, but I don't think that's true. Cafu, the legendary Brazilian defender and Dida's Milan teammate, has a reputation as one of the fairest players in the game. He has a tendency to shake the hands of referees after they hand him a yellow card. Kaka, another Brazilian Milan star, often gets bad calls from referees but never complains. He just sets up and scores goals for retribution.

Dida deserved what he got.

On "I'm Movin' On" by Elvis Presley

2007-10-06T17:03:00.000-07:00

Elvis Presley-I'm Movin' On

At first, it’s all country: Acoustic guitar strumming, pedal steel twanging, bass bouncing on a classic two-step figure, and Elvis—the baritone, cocky, arrogant Elvis—singing, “That big eight-wheeler runnin' down the track/Means your true lovin' daddy ain't a comin' back/'Cause he's movin on, he's rollin on." Soon we realize he’s singing in the third person, and we're not surprised. “You were flyin too high for my little ol' sky/So I'm movin' on,” he sings on the melodic turn, dripping cool.

The rhythm picks up here—just a touch. Not too nasty, yet, but it’s grooving, alright. “But some day baby when you've had you play/Your gonna want your daddy but your daddy will say: Keep movin' on, keep rollin' on,” Elvis sings, before repeating himself, just to make sure he's understood. ”You were flyin too high for my little ol' sky/So I'm movin' on.”

“Move on baby!” The drummer takes this as a cue to introduce himself with some sharp, crisp whacks of the snare, which cues the bassist to TAKE OFF, and man does that guy go, right out front in your left ear, clear and clean and totally terrific. Things are happening now—an electric guitar picks out high note melodies and gospel ladies sing “move on!” in the name of glory. Everyone’s ready to rave, but it’s not time, not yet. A low horn blast signals for quiet. Shhhh.

The drummer hangs around, but he’s alright, just tapping out a quiet rhythm on the snare and the hats. The pianist comes in sweet and lazy, like he’s been playing this song for days. “Mr. Fireman-Fireman won't you please listen to me,” Elvis pleads to Mr. Fireman-Fireman, “'cause I gotta pretty momma in Tennessee.” This isn’t easy, you know? But he's not turning back: “Keep rollin on, keep movin' on.” He’s gotta keep going. “Please listen to me, let this rattler free, and keep movin' on.”

Another command: “Move on, son.” The cue is no doubt for the bassist this time, and he TAKES OFF AGAIN. The rest of the guys do their thing, the electric guitar heating just a little. If you listen carefully, you can hear Elvis booming along vocally with the bass, it's got him excited and he's not afraid to show it. The horns pierce through—already on fire— and Elvis starts “tah tah”-ing with the drums. The man can barely contain himself.

Even the pedal steel player is feeling it after that one and he plays a couple of late, excited notes, but they manage to get it quiet one more time. Elvis doesn’t have too much more to say, but they let him say it because, well, he’s Elvis. ”But you just wouldn't listen or pay me no mind/And now I'm movin' on, I'm rollin' on/I'm through with you, too bad you're blue/But I'm movin' on”

Chorus again and everything starts cooking, getting nice and grilled. Elvis jumps in with the gospel ladies. His choice is made. “I said move on! I said move on! I said move on! I said move on!” The horns are burning and the guitar player catches flame. Elvis won’t let it go—he repeats the phrase over and over and over and over, but now his words are mush. “Ah sai- moveon!” “Ah heh movon.” Maybe he’s crying, but it’s not for her. “Well I'm through with you, too bad you're blue.” Meanwhile, that bassist has gone MAD, he's way up on that thing, tickling the high notes with the glee of a three-year-old. The drummer’s ringing on the ride like nobody’s business, the horns keep spinning faster and faster, and the electric guitar blazes in the whirlwhind. They’re movin’ on.

A random and hilarious quote from The Simpsons

2007-10-05T11:41:00.000-07:00

"You have selected regicide. If you know the name of the king or queen being murdered, press one."

On social order

2007-10-04T14:01:00.000-07:00

When humans come together in groups, we have a better chance at survival than if we live as individuals. Survival is the primary goal of any living being on earth, and this Darwinian necessity forces humans to behave as pack animals.

When animals live in packs, rules are necessary. Rules maintain social order. If social order is broken, we are forced either to live individually—lessening our chances for survival—or to create a new pack. This new pack will eventually need a set of rules. With no rules, there is no order. With no order, there is no survival.

What are the rules and how are they determined? “No killing” would seem like an obvious one, considering that survival is the ultimate goal of the pack. Yet when a pack has been formed, there is often a greater incentive to protect the social order than the individuals within it. Maybe killing is necessary for survival? After all, if the social order is broken, everyone’s survival is in jeopardy.

Because of this, various social orders have had wildly different interpretations of the “no killing” rule. In some situations, killing is a tool used by the dominant members of the group to maintain order through oppression of subordinate members. In other situations, killing is permitted as a "deterrent" against those who wish to disrupt the social order. For example, in the certain American states, individuals who break certain rules (such as the rule not to kill) are killed by the state.

Still, in every social order, there are rules about who may kill and who may not. If everyone in a pack is free to murder, anarchy will result. So the rule always becomes: “only those with permission may kill.”

Who determines permission to kill? Here, we must divide social order into two sub-categories:

1.Social order that is imposed by a dominant group on a subordinate group, usually through violence (dictatorship)
2.Social order that is based on consensus (democracy)

Dictatorship is the simpler model, but democracy is better. Democracy, ideally, considers the concerns of all members of the social order. A dictatorship, meanwhile, inevitably favours the concerns of the dominant group over others. Democracy is fairer.

Now, consider again the question of “who may kill?” In a dictatorship, the answer is simple: the dominant group may kill while the subordinate group may not. This is easily enforced. If a subordinate member breaks this rule, perhaps by trying to kill a dominant member, he will be killed as punishment. It’s probably also a good idea to kill his friends and family, to show everyone else that deviations of this sort will not be tolerated.

In a democracy, the answer isn’t so simple. There may be those in the group who believe certain members of sub-groups (ie. police officers, soliders) should be given the right to kill in certain situations; for example, when they witness a violent crime being committed. Others may argue that all citizens should be given the right to kill in certain situations; for example, if they are attacked.

How to reach consensus? Generally, most democracies rely on two mechanisms: elected-governments and courts of law. (There are possible alternative methods, such as holding referendums on every disputed issue, but these tend to be inefficient.) The rules eventually agreed upon must then be enforced. It generally follows that a military and police force are created to do just that.

Those who favour disorder and chaos over order and organization fail to understand that these latter two elements are essential to our survival as a species. To favour anarchy over order is to be anti-human. And that’s just ridiculous.

On Seymour Hersh

2007-10-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

Seymour Hersh, the legendary American journalist who uncovered the My Lai Massacre and reported extensively on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, recently published “Shifting Targets,” his fourth New Yorker article about Bush Administration plans to bomb Iran.

In his reporting, Hersh relies a great deal on unnamed sources. Yesterday, White House press secretary Dana Perino mentioned this in an attempt to undermine Hersh’s work. “Every two months or so, Sy Hersh writes an article in The New Yorker magazine, and CNN provides him a forum in which to talk about his article and all the anonymous sources that are quoted in it,” Perino said at a press briefing. (Dan Froomkin of the Washinton Post did a great job covering this and the ensuing dab-and-dodge discussion that took place between Perino and journalists.)

Perino’s sneaky critique of Hersh’s use of anonymous sources is ill informed and dishonest—but then again, what else would you expect from one of George W. Bush’s press secretaries?

Hersh’s work gets thoroughly fact-checked, just like everything else The New Yorker prints. As New Yorker editor David Remnick told the Columbia Journalism Review in April 2003: “I know every single source that is in his pieces. To "every 'retired intelligence officer,' every general with reason to know, and all those phrases that one has to use, alas, by necessity, I say, 'Who is it? What's his interest?' We talk it through.” But you have to wonder: Who the hell fact-checks Seymour Hersh’s articles? And how the hell do they do it?

A note from Carley

2007-10-02T08:46:00.000-07:00

"flip-flop: 1. esp. N. Amer. an abrupt reversal in policy (Canadian Oxford)"

On the religious schools debate

2007-10-01T13:17:00.001-07:00

Isn't "flip-flop" kind of a loaded term for an "objective" news report about politics?

Good Reads: Rock-critically correct

2007-09-28T10:47:00.000-07:00

I spend most of my days thinking, talking, reading, and writing about magazines, so I'm always pleased to find good stories or features related to the medium. Today, I came across rock-critically correct, a regular feature on the Idolator blog, where an anonymous music journalist critiques the latest issues of the big American music mags. The reviews are lively and meaty, and the writer seems to recognize that magazines are both an art form and a business.

On manners, part three

2007-09-21T15:25:00.000-07:00

Grizzly Bear, a four-piece art-rock group from Brooklyn, New York, are one of the most interesting and best live acts performing today. I’ve seen them twice: once in Seattle, once—last night—in Toronto.

One of the most appealing aspects of Grizzly Bear’s music, especially in a live setting, is dynamics—in the space of one song, they’ll shift from a single voice accompanied by guitar to lush, four-way harmonies to a throbbing, bass-heavy groove with enormous drum fills. Then they’ll bring it back down to a single voice.

Last night, certain people in The Mod Club decided it was acceptable to talk through the band's otherwise flawless performance. As you would expect, this, to a certain extent, spoiled the quiet parts. Why people feel it's OK to talk at a rock concert is something that has always puzzled me. The only answer I can come up with is that because audience members at a rock club are standing and drinking, they feel like they're at some kind of party and the need to socialize overwhelms them. Either that, or they don't give a shit about music and are just there to be seen.

People who talk at movies are policed by fellow moviegoers, who will inevitably tell them to shut their useless traps. At plays and symphonies, the policing is even tighter—you talk and you'll be dealing with THE USHER. At a rock concert, there's no policing. You could argue this has something to do with the anarchic spirit of rock and roll, but then you'd be making excuses for people who obviously care very little about rock and roll. It’s supposed to be about the music, man.

There was a poignant moment last night, when Ed Droste spoke candidly, but coyly, about the talking. One day we're going to play a seated venue in Toronto, he said, somewhere where there's no long bar, and no booze buzz. Then, not wanting to harsh anyone's buzz, he added: "But I like booze."

So here’s my advice to those who feel the need to yak when they go to see live music: shut your yap. I don’t want you to go elsewhere—I want you to listen. You might find yourself swept up in something special.

If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe this guy.

Grizzly Bear - Little Brother (Daytrotter Session)

On manners, part two

2007-09-21T13:48:00.000-07:00

That there is serious decline in manners in modern society should be plain to anyone who has traveled on the Toronto subway during rush hour. The simple courtesy of waiting until others have exited the train before entering is apparently far too onerous for some people. Maybe they are trying to get a seat. Maybe their feet are aching. Maybe they are just jerks. Whatever the motivation, the act is rude and disruptive.

Not nearly as rude or disruptive, however, as those passengers who play their music over loudspeakers. In general, this is an act reserved for teenaged males, who for some reason feel the need to share their inevitably dreadful hip-hop with the rest of us. The lack of respect for other people’s space shown in these situations is astounding.

There’s also the far more prevalent problem of passengers playing music so loudly through their headphones that they may as well be using loudspeakers. This act has no age or gender barriers. Whether they are unaware that they are polluting the train with noise or just don’t give a damn, I don’t know. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Ignorance and insolence cause the same damages.

What troubles me equally is the passivity of others—including myself. Here we see Canadian politeness (read: meekness) at its worst—no one wants to say anything, either because we’re afraid of being perceived as rude, or (more often) because we don’t want the hassle.

The decline in manners will continue unless we do something about it. The only solution is through social enforcement. This kind of rude behaviour needs to be admonished and corrected by those of us who know better, and by those of us who care about the quality of our public spaces and social interactions.

On manners, part one

2007-09-21T10:53:00.000-07:00

When someone says "thank you," the proper response is "you're welcome." "Yup" is not acceptable.

On Bob Dylan

2007-09-20T13:54:00.001-07:00

Through my classic rock high school years and through most of my indie rock university years, I generally ignored Bob Dylan. I purchased Highway 61 Revisted, Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks, but never paid them much attention. Bob Dylan generally doesn’t write pop songs—he generally writes blues, folk and country songs. For a long time, I found blues, folk and country songs boring. Dylan almost never bothers with bridges and this annoyed me to no end. I also didn’t like that Dylan was lyrics-based songwriter. I didn’t consider myself a “lyrics guy.”

In my final year of university, I spent about four months listening to Dylan’s entire discography up to Slow Train Coming, his first Christian record, which I like. I also read a Dylan biography and watched Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home. I did this out of respect for other people’s taste—if so many people, people who generally share similar musical taste with me, love and respect this guy, who was I to reject him before giving a fair listen. This decision marked a major shift in musical consciousness for me—I became more interested in liking things than hating them. And I really liked Dylan.

It’s true that the meaning for most Dylan tunes lies in the words—the backing tracks are mere accompaniment. Because of this, Dylan demands close attention—leave him on in the background and all you get is monotonous, whiny noise. But the attention is worthwhile. The man turns a phrase like no one else in the business. That said, if Dylan were just a poet, I wouldn’t have bothered. I still don’t consider myself a “lyrics guy.”

The key to Dylan, for me, lies in his delivery—when he’s trying, there’s no better singer in the world: the subtle inflections, the ability to shape and fit rhymes into tricky meters, the sheer number of words he crams into the simple melodies, those aching, creaking high notes on songs like “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” Of course, one thing anyone listening closely to Dylan will discover is that there are a number of occasions when he just doesn’t try. That’s the case for pretty much all of Another Side of Bob Dylan, by far the weakest Dylan record of the golden, pre-motorcycle accident era (1962-1966). Then there’s the ridiculously put on “soul” voice he uses on the mediocre New Morning and Planet Waves. Sometimes it feels like he's making crap on purpose.

Still, the fact that there are weak records in Dylan’s expansive catalogue is part what’s so appealing about him. Dylan, like very few others, is a pop musician whose career should be examined from all angles—musical, biographical, historical, personal. He made a point of presenting his work as art and so it should be treated as such. With artists, you take the good with the bad, and give equal attention to both. Watching how Dylan changed, grew, and struggled as an artist is what makes the listening experience fascinating from the audience perspective. It took me a long time to figure this out. But when I did, I was greatly rewarded.

Culture

2007-09-19T16:16:00.000-07:00

Reading:
The New Yorker, The Style Issue
Modern Drummer, The Prog Rock Issue
The Rebel Sell (Second reading)

Watching:
Arrested Development, Season Three
Battlestar Gallactica, Season 2.5 (Second viewing)

Attending:
Grizzly Bear at the Mod Club
The Hives at The Phoenix
Black Moutain at The Horseshoe Tavern
The Besnard Lakes at The Horseshoe Tavern
The National at The Phoenix
Spoon at The Kool Haus

Listening to:
The National discography
Caribou Andorra
The New Pornographers Challengers
Elvis Presley The 1969 Memphis Anthology (Second obsession)
Ryan Adams Heartbreaker
Songs from Rolling Stone magazine's Top 500 songs of all-time I've never heard before
Homemade "History of Psychedelic Music" mixes

Album ratings

2007-08-31T07:57:00.000-07:00

About halfway through my Rock Is Dead - Long Live Rock days, I changed my rating system. Originally, I scored out of ten. I then decided to add an extra point for albums I considered perfect. In other words, my ratings went to eleven.

The following list is a great sample of my taste circa-2000. For your benefit (but mostly to show how much I've grown out of The Doors), I have included a modified score in brackets beside albums I've changed my mind about since keying the original review.

11

Abbey Road by The Beatles (9)
Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd
Tea For the Tillerman by Cat Stevens (10)
Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Webber (10)
Live at Leeds by The Who

10

Beginnings by The Allman Brothers Band (9)
Rubber Soul by The Beatles (8)
Past Masters Volume Two by The Beatles (8)
The Constantines by The Constantines
The Doors by The Doors (7)
All Mod Cons by The Jam (9)
Days of Future Passed by the Moody Blues (7.5)
Led Zeppelin by Led Zeppelin
The Plastic Ono Band by John Lennon (8)
The Wall by Pink Floyd (7)
Reggatta De Blanc by The Police (8)
The Bends by Radiohead (8)
Sticky Fingers by The Rolling Stones (9)
Graceland by Paul Simon
Navy Blues by Sloan (9)
Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy by The Who
Quadrophenia by The Who
Innervisions by Stevie Wonder (9)
Fragile by Yes (8)
Simple Things by Zero 7

9.5 to 9

Idlewind South by The Allman Brothers Band (8)
Eat A Peach by The Allman Brothers Band (7)
Revolver by The Beatles
The Beatles (White Album) by The Beatles
Past Masters Volume One by The Beatles
Chicago Transit Authority by Chicago (8)
A Rush Of Blood To The Head by Coldplay (8)
Strange Days by The Doors (7)
L.A. Woman by The Doors (7)
All Things Must Pass by George Harrison
Are You Experienced? by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
In The Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson
Led Zeppelin III by Led Zeppelin
BBC Sessions by Led Zeppelin
Exodus by Bob Marley
The Final Cut by Pink Floyd (5)
O.K. Computer by Radiohead (10)
Let It Bleed by The Rolling Stones (8)
One Chord to Another by Sloan
The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus by Spirit
Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space by Spiritualized
Live at the Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997 by Spiritualized
Let It Come Down by Spiritualized (8)
The Who Sings my Generation by The Who (8)
The Who Sell Out by The Who (8)
Who’s Next by The Who (7)
Live at the Isle of Wight Festival by The Who (8)

8.5 to 8

Brothers and Sisters by The Allman Brothers Band (7)
The Fillmore Concerts by The Allman Brothers Band (7)
Music From Big Pink by The Band
With the Beatles by The Beatles (7)
A Hard Day's Night by The Beatles
Help! by The Beatles
Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles
Blind Faith by Blind Faith
The Modern Sinner Nervous Man (EP) by The Constantines
Wheels of Fire by Cream (7)
With a Little Help From My Friends by Joe Cocker
Parachutes by Coldplay
Pop Noir Orchestral Romantique by The Dears
Morrison Hotel by The Doors (7)
Rumours by Fleetwood Mac
Axis: Bold As Love by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Band of Gypsies by Jimi Hendrix (7)
Led Zeppelin II by Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin IV by Led Zeppelin
Imagine by John Lennon (7)
Natty Dread by Bob Marley
Unplugged in New York by Nirvana (9)
(What's The Story) Morning Glory? by Oasis
Obscured by Clouds by Pink Floyd (7)
Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd
Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd (7)
Animals by Pink Floyd (5)
Outlandos D'Amour by The Police
Kid A by Radiohead (9)
Beggar’s Banquet by The Rolling Stones (7)
Exile on Main Street by The Rolling Stones
Between the Bridges by Sloan
Pretty Together by Sloan (6)
Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen
Is This It by The Strokes
Legalize It by Peter Tosh
Urban Hymns by The Verve
Burnin' by The Wailers
Poses by Rufus Wainwright
White Blood Cells by The White Stripes
Tommy by The Who
The Who By Numbers by The Who (6)
Soundtrack from the film "The Kids Are Alright" by The Who (7)

7.5 to 7

The Allman Brothers Band by The Allman Brothers Band
Please Please Me by The Beatles
Beatles For Sale by The Beatles
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles (9)
Let It Be by The Beatles
Fresh Cream by Cream (6)
Disraeli Gears by Cream (8)
Deja Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
End of A Hollywood Bedtime Story by The Dears
Free Peace Sweet by Dodgy
Absolutely Live by The Doors (6)
Jimi Plays Monterey by The Jimi Hendrix Experience (6))
Electric Ladyland by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Down on the Upside by Soundgarden
Selling England By The Pound by Genesis
K by Kula Shaker
Houses of the Holy by Led Zeppelin
In Throught the Out Door by Led Zeppelin (5)
Band On The Run by Paul McCartney & Wings
Definitely Maybe by Oasis (8)
Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants by Oasis (6)
Relics by Pink Floyd (6)
Meddle by Pink Floyd
Zenyatta Mondatta by The Police
Ghost In The Machine by The Police
Amnesiac by Radiohead
Their Satanic Majesties Request by The Rolling Stones
Black and Blue by The Rolling Stones
Tatto You by The Rolling Stones
Twice Removed by Sloan
Rufus Wainwright by Rufus Wainwright
De Stijl by The White Stripes
A Quick One by The Who
Odds and Sods by The Who
Who's Missing by The Who
Substitute: The Songs of The Who by Various Artists

6.5 to 6

Waiting For The Sun by The Doors (5)
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly (5)
Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin
Be Here Now by Oasis (4)
Atom Heart Mother by Pink Floyd
Lazer Guided Melodies by Spiritualized (7)
Pure Phase by Spiritualized (7)
Second Coming by The Stone Roses
Toxicity by System of A Down
The White Stripes by The White Stripes
Face Dances by The Who (4)

5.5 to 5

Goodbye by Cream
Presence by Led Zeppelin
Coda by Led Zeppelin (4)
Mind Games by John Lennon
Pablo Honey by Radiohead
Rainbow Rising by Rainbow
December's Children by The Rolling Stones
Got Live If You Want It! by The Rolling Stones
Smeared by Sloan
A Saucerful of Secrets by Pink Floyd
Synchronicty by The Police
Who Are You by The Who (4)

4.5 to 4

More by Pink Floyd
System of A Down by System of A Down
It's Hard by The Who (3)

3.5 to 3

The Soft Parade by The Doors

1.5 to 0

Silver Side Up by Nickelback

On Graceland by Paul Simon

2007-08-30T07:57:00.000-07:00

This was one of the last album reviews I wrote for Rock Is Dead - Long Live Rock. It's far from perfect (I hadn't yet been taught about the evils of clichés), but I like the way my enthusiasm for the album shines through in the writing and there's a couple of amusing one-liners. What's especially nice is that I feel the same way about this record now as I did when I wrote this.

Graceland by Paul Simon (1986)
Rating: 10
Best Song: Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes

Paul Simon has written some crappy, sappy songs over the course of his musical career. None of those songs are on Graceland.

Graceland was Simon’s dip into the relatively uncharted waters and it’s quite amazing how naturally he blends his pop songwriting with the chunky South African grooves. Much of the record was recorded in South Africa with native musicians and there’s no denying the impact their playing has on the record. Bassist Baghitti Khumalo’s playing would make John Entwistle blush and the rest of the band tightens around his bubbly lines. Despite the funkiness, the grooves are full of breathing room.

And this is where Simon’s songwriting takes over. Lyrically and melodically, Simon is at the high point of his career. The lyrics shun Live Journal-ish emo rants in favour of poetic imagery and catchy hook-lines. This is particularly evident on the title track, which is full of lovely lines such as “The Mississipi Delta was shining/Like a National guitar/I am following the river/Down the highway/Throught the cradle of the civil war.” What makes the track particularly special is the way Simon intertwines American history with South African imagery, something he continues to do throughout the album.

“Boy In The Bubble” opens the record with a tremendous fusion of cajun and South African musical styles, kicking the album off with a deep, powerful accordion lick. “I Know What I Know” has a great chorus which features General M.D. Shirinda and The Gaza Sisters singing bird-like backing vocals. On the surface, “You Can Call Me Al” is a simple, catchy hit single but there are layers upon layers of complex musicality underneath: Two basslines running side by side, a forward-thinking rhythm, chunky guitars and a wonderfully hooky horn line.

The Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a South African vocal choir, add incredible richness and depth to the accapella “Homeless,” and the way their harmonies blend with Simon’s emotionally detached vocal style makes for a stunning contrast. The LBA are also featured on the intro of “Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes”, a personal favourite that has one of the most unpredictable melodies on the album.

There have been several runs at blending “world” and pop music before and after Simon’s first foray. None, however, are as ear-pleasing and appealing as Graceland.

On fast food

2007-08-29T07:43:00.000-07:00

While this certainly wasn't the best-written piece on Rock Is Dead - Long Live Rock, it was definitely one of the most original. This goes out to Chris Willie Williams, aka Disclaimerwill, who mentioned these reviews in his kindly write-up about my site, writing: "I love the way he puts the word vegetables in quotation marks when describing the Whopper. Punctuation jokes always make me laugh. Because I'm a dork."

Fast Food Reviews
****DISCLAIMER****By writing and posting these reviews, I am not condoning the eating of fast food. Fast food is generally bad for you and considering that most North Americans are fat, I recommend you avoid fast food places as best you can. Me, I’m allowed to eat whatever I want. I’m a teenager and I have a six-pack. Of abs, I mean. Being an 18-year old male who is constantly on the go (or just trying to kill time on the weekends), I’ve become quite the connoisseur of fast-food restaurants. So I’ve
decided, for the benefit of my loyal readers and fans, to design a little page to direct those of you in need of a quick hunger fix. I’ve rated 5 of the top fast-food chains in North America based on the following three criteria: quality of food, cost, and menu variety. The score is out of 5 stars. So enjoy the reviews and happy artery clogging!

McDonald’s ***1/2
The most recognizable and profitable fast-food chain in the world, McDonald’s has built its reputation on being the “family restaurant”; the comfortable, friendly fast-food chain. The speed of service at McDonald’s is usually quite good although the fact that the customer can’t look into the back always makes me feel a little uneasy. There are normally 10 combos available (almost all based on the burger,-fries- drink format) plus things like McFlurries (ice cream), apple pies and vanilla cones. Cost is actually quite good. The most expensive combo is the Crispy Chicken which will go for around $5.35 (CDN.) while the Big Extra combo is the bargain of the menu, costing a low $3.99. The option of purchasing a Big Extra and McChicken for $1.50 each is a nice bonus when you’re low on cash and late for band practice.

As for the food, McDonald’s strength lies in its french fries. Thin, nicely salted and crisp, the golden fries are the best in the world; when served hot. I recommend you wait for a new batch rather than rush to your meal with cold potatoes soaked in oil. As for the burgers, well, I doubt there is much nutritional value in there and served without condiments, they are horrendous. Imagine a Big Mac without the sauce. Wait! No! Don’t! You’ll ralph! Then again, the sauces are all quite tasty. The mac sauce is for those who like a tang while the more conventional burger eater is better off with the ketchup/mustard combo of the Quarter Pounder or the mayo, lettuce, and tomato on the big extra. Overall, McDonald’s offers a decent tasting, filling and generally cheap meal although I wouldn’t recommend it for someone looking for a quality meal. Best for those on the go.

Burger King **1/2
Burger King has risen in popularity over the past few years and for a while there were actually looking like they could be gaining on McDonald’s. Then people realized that the food sucks and the abundance of mayonnaise has a tendency to make the eater feel a little queasy once he’s done scarfing. I believe there are 8 combos at BK, based on the typical burger, fries, pop formula. Of course, in the end, almost everyone goes for the Whopper, either the junior or the senior. The predecessor to the aforementioned Big Extra, the senior Whopper offers a fairly large burger topped with mayo, ketchup and some “vegetables”. Pretty decent except for the fact that the meat is often burnt. And of course, the extremely cheap Jr. Whopper (an unbelievable 99c(why don’t they have a cents sign on the keyboard) here in Canada) opens the door to the deadly sin of gluttony.

BK does offer some other burger options, including a chicken burger that’s on par with the McChicken and the “Big King”, which is definitely not on par with the Big Mac. Also, the fries suck quite a bit being oily and way too crunchy for my tastes. The pop is good though. And you get free refills, which is always nice. Service is kind of slow, especially based on the weakness of the food and in comparison to McDonald’s. Best for the days when your rushing over a friend’s house to do a project after work and want to stuff your face with four Jr. Whoppers.

Harvey’s ****1/2
A Canadian franchise that prides itself on serving charbroiled hamburgers and offering a variety of side dishes. The best thing about Harvey’s, though, is that after watching your burger being cooked (yes, you can see into the back), you’re asked what you’d like on your burger and they dress it right in front of you. The burgers are tasty, thick and meaty, and when loaded with everything, it’s like there’s a party in your mouth and everyone’s invited. And not only are the beef burgers great, the health conscious among us can order a veggie burger (looks good) or a chicken burger minus the batter (there’s a name for those but I forgot). On the side, you’re given the choice of regular fries (not the best), home fries (much better), onion rings (good), or a salad with your choice of dressing (lovely).

Being that the food is of a higher quality than at most fast food joints, one would expect the price to be a bit higher. And one would be right. Your normal burger combo goes for around 4 bucks with the prices going up from there. But it’s worth it. So is the wait, which is generally longer than the other places. The main problem with Harvey’s is that the food is almost too good to be “fast food”. And therefore, this is not your best choice on the move. But if you’ve got the time to sit down and enjoy a good burger with your girlfriend, come to Canada and enjoy!

KFC **1/2
We move away from the burger places now and on to a couple of variants on the fast food concept. KFC, formerly Kentucky Fried Chicken, is not the most popular fast food chain here in T.O. but I know it does very well in the Southern U.S. and also does well enough here to sustain it’s Canadian chains.

KFC originally did most of its business as a take-out place, offering buckets of battered chicken, a box of fries and a little bowl of coleslaw in mayo. In recent years, KFC has done a good job of maintaining its standing as a great place for take out while moving into the fast food race. For the solo eater, several types of combos are offered. The 2-piece or 3-piece meal, with fries and “salad” on the side seems to be a popular choice. Of course, the chicken is fattening as fat and the “salad” is absolutely ridiculous and the fries are extremely oily. But that doesn’t seem to bother most people. I’d rather go for the chicken burger with the French Canadian specialty “poutine” (fries with gravy and cheese, tasty but very, very bad for you) and a sperm count reducing (it’s better for me at this age!) Mountain Dew. Prices are on par with most fast food places and service is quick. Of course, seeing the chicken legs sit out under the heater is not very appetising. Avoid KFC as often as possible.

Mr. Sub ****
A submarine, or hogey, or hero sandich place. I’m not sure whether it’s Mr. Sub or Subway that is an American company (or maybe neither one is) but Mr. Sub is the better choice.

Submarine sandwiches tend to be expensive and for a 12-inch turkey sub and a Nestea, the price totals $8! You could go the cheaper route with the assorted sub, but I’m not a fan of strange meats. Mr. Sub offer abotu 15 different subs, including tuna, cold cuts, seafood, pizza, chicken breast, and BLT. There are both 6-inch and 12-inch subs plus the oppurtunity to “super-size” your sub with extra meat and cheese. The toppings are varied and there are a few condiments that will make your sub much tastier. Gotta love secret sauces!

Mr. Sub sandwiches are generally worth what you pay, in that they are filling, relatively healthy (especially compared to the other crap out there) and tasty. Mr. Sub also offers baked fries which are rather sucktacular and really big cookies, which I’m assuming are good, if you like sweets. I don’t. Making a good sub takes time and therefore don’t expect to be in and out within two minutes. Expect a pretty good North American sandwich though. Oh sure, it’s no veal on a panino but it does the job.

***

Well that’s it. Five of the more popular fast food chains here in Canada. Obviously your best choice is Harvey’s here in Canada but I recommend you try and find yourself a nice, small, family-run hamburger place. There might be rats in the back but at least the food will taste really good and you won’t be supporting heartless multinational corporations. Feel free to comment on these reviews or even add your own fast food reviews!

On Nickelback

2007-08-28T07:13:00.000-07:00

This anecdotal review of Nickelback's Silver Side Up was written while I was interning at NOW magazine during my final year of high school. Nickelback might be the easiest target in all of modern rock. For that reason, they should be hit over and over again.

Silver Side Up by Nickelback (2001)
Rating: 1
Best Song: None

Susan Cole, the entertainment editor for NOW magazine, calls me over to her desk and makes me an offer I can’t refuse: “Make me a list of upcoming shows you’d like to see and I’ll let you review one of them.” I look through the latest edition of NOW and make my list. I mention Stereophonics, Charlatans UK, Rufus Wainwright, Alicia Keys, CSNY and for sucking up purposes, list Nickelback with the caption: “I don’t like this band but I’m willing to review them.” On my next visit to the office, music editor Tim Perlich informs me that he put me on the list for the Nickelback show. Lovely.

Doing my best to be an objective critic, I ask Tim for a copy of Nickelback’s latest CD, which he kindly provides for me. The concert was one of the most revealing experiences of my critical career, proving that most people have awful musical taste because all they did was jump around and cheer and say “these guys fucking rock.” I gave the concert 1 “N”.

This CD is awful and I could go on listing superlatives to denigrate this album but let’s avoid the cliches and talk the aesthetics of a rock band. For you see, Nickelback’s disgraceful appearance is just as band as their music. Vocalist Chad Groeger has a beard, the guitarist is bald and the bass player wore a cowboy hat. NO, NO and NO! And the drummer is blonde. Dear God, NO! Only singers are allowed to be blonde, and that’s only in special cases. It’s just wrong. Screw objectivity, I don’t give good grades to ugly bands. Except for Britney Spears, who is able to transcend her whore-like appearance with some of the most heartwrenching soul music since Otis Redding.

Reader Comments

Cole Bozman
that's the best thing I've read all week. though I think it should tell you a lesson about sucking up. (only do it when there's no risk involved) as for Nickelback, I've heard their song on the radio -- to me, they sound like a less-talented Bush, as impossible as that may sound...Cole

Steven Knowlton
What's wrong with beards? I remind you that none other than CHRISTOPHER CROSS wore a beard!!! The cowboy hat is simply unacceptable, unless they're playing in Alberta.

On The Rolling Stones

2007-08-27T06:41:00.000-07:00

One feature of Rock Is Dead - Long Live Rock that I took from other review sites was the way I tried to cover a band's entire discography as opposed to individual albums. The band pages all featured introductions to the artist(s) covered - short overviews of their work and my take on it. With The Rolling Stones, never one of my true favourites, I went for a laugh. Unfortunately, one of my readers, Raul R Gonzalez, didn't find it very funny and made his opinion known in a nasty e-mail. Luckily, "Frizz" came to my aid.

***

The Rolling Stones are ugly. Mick Jagger's mouth is bigger than his face. Charlie Watts looked like he was 60 when he was 20. Keith Richards should technically be dead with a face like that. Brian Jones is dead. Ron Wood looks like Keith Richards(!) Only Bill Wyman looks half-decent but he's not part of the band any more. Yet for some reason, the girls screamed back in the day when the Stones were the second biggest band in the world and they still scream today. Except the girls are now women with a husband and 3 children.

Reader Comments:

Raul R Gonzalez
you have got to be the dumbest critic in the history of music. the stones didn't copy the beatles, i never heard lennon sing a blus or paul. why? they beatles were a replica of the beach boys. The Stones on the other hand are attitude, soul, rawness, rock and roll. Not pop, Did you hear exile, let it bleed, bengar's? But with your ears or with your beatles loving ass. The stones didn't sing "help i need somebody" they sang "i can't get no satisfaction. And who's to say and artist should look good, if music was based on that then sync or the backstreet boys would be a great band. The beatles=nice, cute, neat POP (NOT ROCK) music, or the Stones, raw, drunk, bluesy, powerful, ROCKAND ROLL. tell me which one you prefer?

"Frizz"
Hey Raul guy who likes the Rolling Stones: The beatles=nice, cute, neat POP (NOT ROCK) music, or the Stones, raw, drunk, bluesy, powerful, ROCKAND ROLL. tell me which one you prefer? Can I ask you a question... have you listened to any Beatles albums past 64? Also, The Stones sang the same old songs until 1967! They didn't have a great album until 1968! The Beatles had 5, count them, 5 revoultionary albums by 1968. I spit on the Stones, wait I like the Stones, I spit on Raul Zach S.

On Rock Is Dead - Long Live Rock

2007-08-26T08:26:00.000-07:00

"The key moment in my life came when I realized that a hockey stick can be used to play air bass."

I wrote this cryptic self-description on a whim. But in twenty-one words, it says a lot. Until I was thirteen, my obsession was sports, especially hockey. I played hockey four times a week (goalie for the Downsview Beavers). I watched every game the Toronto Maple Leafs played (in 1993, when the team was eliminated by the Los Angeles Kings in Stanley Cup Playoff conference finals, I cried). I read the sports section of the Toronto Star daily. I liked music, sure, but until I reached my teens, songs and records never meant much to me. Music was mere entertainment. Hockey was where it was at.

When my dad brought home a record called Who's Missing, everything changed.

I became addicted to everything to do with rock music. I bought CDs by the handful. I took up drums. I started collecting band discographies - first The Who, then Led Zeppelin, then Pink Floyd. I read rock and roll history books. Rock music soon infiltrated my hockey world - I developed the superstition of listening to Live at Leeds before every game. The time and energy I'd once spent on Doug Gilmour, Damien Cox, and developing my butterfly technique was now being spent on David Gilmour, Dave Marsh, and developing my drum roll.

A hockey stick morphing into a bass guitar seemed like the perfect metaphor for the shift in consciousness I experienced around the time my voice started cracking and hair started appearing in odd places. But it's not entirely true. We'll call it bloggerary license. Most air bassing, and air guitaring was done on a tennis racket. But boy, did I do a lot of imaginary bassing and guitaring then. (As my girlfriend will attest to, I haven't entirely given up the habit.)

Then the Internet happened. The first website I started was dedicated to wrestling. I honestly don't remember what it was called. I basically wrote an infrequent column about wrestling. We're not going to get into that today. I actually spent most of my web time reading three websites: Mark's Record Reviews, George Starostin’s Music Reviews, and CosmicBen's Record Reviews. As their titles would suggest, these websites were one-man operations, dedicated to reviewing albums both past and present. Prindle, who still keeps at it, had the wackiest style of writing I'd ever seen - off-the-cuff, stream-of-consciousness reviews that somehow always seemed to pick out the soul of an album. Starostin, a Russian writing in English who recently retired from the Web Reviewing Community (WRC), was amazing for his productivity. At one point, the guy seemed to be churning out multiple 1,000-plus word reviews daily. And CosmicBen, who also seems to have retired from the reviewing game, was insightful and intelligent with none of the pretentious, holier-than-thou attitude that still occasionally plagues more widely read music sites (though it should be said that these guys all had huge readerships).

I soon discovered more sites through links (Disclaimer, Wilson & Alroy, Music Junkies Annonymous, Creative Noise), and others soon popped up (John McFerrin, Steve and Abe, Adrian, Cole, etc.). These idiosyncratic and passionate writers gave me an education in rock music and music writing that I couldn't get anywhere else.

So I decided to be one of them. Sometime late in 1998, when I was seventeen, I launched my own personal music review site: Rock Is Dead - Long Live Rock. At the time, I owned about 100 CDs. (Today, my hard copy collection sits at about 500 - my digital collection, about 2000.) Over the next five years, I published over 120 album reviews, sixteen concert reviews, five shorts stories, six short essays, and a series of fast food restaurant reviews. I updated inconsistently, my prose was riddled with typos and grammatical errors, and some of the opinions I spouted were just plain stupid. Some of the stuff I wrote then is painful for me to read now. Some, but not all.

I took Rock Is Dead - Long Live Rock down last week. I have a new, relatively high-profile job and my name is bound to be Googled on occasion. I decided it would be best that those who do look me up not get their first impression from music reviews I wrote in my late teens. But as I mentioned, it wasn't all bad - some of it was actually DECENT. So over the next five days, I will re-publish five of my favourite pieces from Rock Is Dead - Long Live Rock, the second great writing project of my life. Enjoy.

Rock is Dead - Long Live Rock is dead. Long live Rock is Dead - Long Live Rock.

Good Reads: "Spreadin’ Rhythm Around" by Mark Richardson

2007-08-24T06:44:00.000-07:00

Mark Richardson is my second favourite Pitchfork writer (just behind my e-pal Chris Dahlen) and his monthly Resonant Frequency column always offers an interesting take on how meaning is created in music. This month, he explores the legacies of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone and their recontextualization through the Remixed and Reimagined record series.

The ideas around both, as wildly different as their musical output was, are similar, and they're often compared. Simone must have felt something of Holiday's legacy, because she recorded her share of Holiday tunes, being particularly inspired by Holiday's renditions of "I Loves You Porgy" and "Strange Fruit. Both were serious about reinvention and careful cultivators of image. And then there are the names: both changed their plain-Jane givens for monikers suggesting elegance and sophistication. Eleanora Fagan became Billie and Eunice Kathleen Waymon became Nina.

Read the full column here.

A correction

2007-08-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

In a recent post titled On Sky Blue Sky by Wilco, I attacked Eye Weekly music critic for what I saw as a backhanded shot at one of my favourite bands. I also accused him of getting a Jeff Tweedy guitar solo confused with a Nels Cline solo. Paul, who seems like a nice guy, commented on the post:

"Hey Marco, I loved this album! I didn't mean to be sneaky. Or get the guitar player's name wrong. =)

To be honest, it's the only Wilco album I've really enjoyed (all the way through, at least) since Being There and the Mermaid Avenues.

Paul I"

Paul did not get the guitar player's name wrong. I did. Nels Cline does indeed play the solo on "You Are My Face," as Paul asserted in his review. I assumed, wrongly, that the solo was Tweedy's doing, since it's similar to the Neil Young crunch he employs on "At Least That's What You Said" from A Ghost Is Born. My apologies, Paul.

On God (with Andrew Potter)

2007-08-17T12:40:00.000-07:00

This morning, Maclean's blogger, philosopher and Rebel Sell author Andrew Potter posted an item related to the deaths of three mining rescue workers in Utah. His final paragraph include this line: "The fact that six men were trapped is horrible, and the three deaths yesterday are simply further evidence that God either does not exist, or he’s a dickhead." I decided to challenge Andrew on this statement:

Hi Andrew,

I was surprised to read this statement in your latest blog posting: "the three deaths yesterday are simply further evidence that God either does not exist, or he’s a dickhead."

It misses a fundamental "fact" about God: He's mysterious, and we, mere mortals, can't expect to understand His mysterious ways. What we see as tragic deaths are part of a greater plan, a plan which He has laid out for us. It assumes that death is the ultimate evil in God's eyes. We can never truly understand God's ways while here on earth. In God's world, everything happens for a reason.

Not that I believe in God or anything like that. I'm just saying that tragedy on here earth is not a very strong argument against his existence.

Peace,

Marco Ursi
(former Macleans.ca guy, now the new editor of Masthead magazine)

Andrew responded:

Dear Marco,

Sure, this is Understanding God 101: "Who knows?"

But the point is, if every theodicy is equally compatible with the
thesis that God is a dickhead, then we have no reason whatsoever for
worshipping the guy.

I challenged again:

Right, there's that question of whether God is good or a dickhead. But just because there is tragedy on earth doesn't necessarily make him a dickhead...we just don't understand the larger purpose of his dickheadery. And this power of mystery makes him all the more worship-worthy.

Andrew retorted:

And this power of mystery makes him all the more worship-worthy.

Or not.

That's the problem, there is simply now way of ajudicating it. But given that christians have spent the better part of the past 1500 years trying to come up with an explanation of God's goodness that is convincing to humans, I suspect that they realise that "God is mysterious" doesn't really cut any ice. It's a classic instance of the usefulness of occam's razor. Given three possibilities -- God does not exists, he's a dickhead, or he's completely mysterious -- the most parsimonious is that he doesn't exist, that he's a dick is the next, and clearly the "mystery" line is the most complicated (see: Leibniz).

I gave up.

From Maclean's to Masthead

2007-08-08T11:26:00.000-07:00

My summer internship with Maclean’s ends tomorrow. It’s unfortunate that I have to leave so soon, considering the kinds stories I’ve been allowed to write and publish on Macleans.ca. Links below to some of my favourites, for anyone who cares to read them.

On Russia
On wrestling
On record stores
On rereading Harry Potter
On Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
On Harry Potter conferences
On professional cycling
On Wilco
On salvia divinorum
On The Sopranos
On The Simpsons
On Canadian soccer
On teachers

On Monday, I begin a new job, as editor-in-chief of Masthead, where I will get the opportunity to write about something else I love: magazines.

Musical goodies

2007-07-24T19:12:00.000-07:00

I'm playing Amerie's "Gotta Work" for the tenth time tonight. From what I understand (which, I'm afraid, is very little), I'm not the first indie rock* fan to proclaim fondness for this song. Nevertheless, I thought I'd share it with you. Amerie doesn't have a particularly original singing style - though it's nice to hear a mainstream R&B vocalist who's more Mavis than Aretha. Really though, it's all about the sound. The big funky pop in those drums, the richness of the horns, the bluesy back-up vocals - it will lift your soul.

I thought Christina Aguilera's version of John Lennon's "Mother" would infuriate me, but I rather like it. Aguilera has an undeniably powerful voice with great flexibility and range. On an intimate song like this, those kinds of assets can easily turn into liabilities. I believe the word is "histrionics." Christina avoids this by only occasionally varying from Lennon's phrasing, tucking in a well-placed melissmas and "mmm mmms" hear and there. She doesn't get mad enough at the end, but the wrenching way the first beat of the "Daddy come home " part stretches makes up for it.

Then there's this Buddy Rich drum solo. Very few people can claim to be the best in their chosen field. Buddy was one of those people.

*Indie rock fans like R&B and soul music that was made in the 60s and 70s, so we tend to go for this kind of retro thing.

On the beautiful game

2007-07-20T05:19:00.001-07:00

Canada may not have scored any goals at the FIFA Under-20 World Cup, but last night, we truly arrived as a soccer nation.

Somebody's Sins (But Not Mine)

2007-06-23T06:45:00.000-07:00

1. Anthony and the Johnsons - For Today I Am A Boy
2. Nina Simone - Feeling Good
3. Feist - Sea Lion Woman
4. Spoon - You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb
5. Peter Bjorn and John - Let's Call It Off
6. Smith - Baby It's You
7. Wilco - One True Vine
8. The National - Fake Empire
9. Rufus Wainwright - Slideshow
10. Leonard Cohen - Everybody Knows
11. Bob Dylan - It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
12. Grizzly Bear - Little Brother
13. Joel Plaskett - Love This Town
14. Patti Smith - Gloria
15. Anthony and the Johnsons - Fistful of Love

On Sky Blue Sky by Wilco, part two

2007-06-05T13:35:00.000-07:00

We all want something different from music. Some of us want danceable beats and bottomless bass to get our booties shaking. Some of us want catchy melodies and relentless hooks, songs that get in our heads and refuse to leave. Some of us want something we can identify with, an attitude, a social position, a culture, or even a look. Some of us, and I include myself in this group, want music that gets better over time. In other words, we like albums that sound and feel OK on first listen, very good on fifth listen, and classic the twentieth or fiftieth time through. Albums that grow with time.

Which brings me, like a lot of my thought-trains, to Wilco. The Chicago-based band’s latest album, Sky Blue Sky, received mixed reviews when it was officially released a couple of weeks back. Some critics derided the lack of experimentalism of earlier records like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born. Some said it showed that the experimentalism was a fraud all along. Others just said it sound like The Eagles.

I respectfully disagreed. I loved it as soon as I heard the opening, Nico-esque guitar plucking of “Either Way.” I loved Jeff Tweedy’s newly discovered upper vocal range. I loved Nels Clines’ mad, Hendrix-ian guitar solos. I loved the warmth of the arrangements and the directness of the lyrics. I loved how it differed from the previous two records.

The critics who said the record wasn’t experimental enough missed the point. Jeff Tweedy and Co. set out to make a simple, clean, direct, roots-rock album that both pays homage to and builds upon the late-60s and early-70s classic rock they all love. If an album is to be judged by how well its authors achieved their objectives, than Sky Blue Sky is a perfect ten. (This by the way, is NOT how critics judge albums. But that’s a discussion for another day.)

As much as I admire it, though, I’m all but done with the record. And I suspect this has something to do with how much I loved it when I first heard it – there wasn’t a lot of room left for “figuring it out.” I kept returning to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the first Wilco record I fell for, months after I first played it (and fell asleep about three songs in). Yankee kept many of its treasures sunken, where Sky Blue Sky had them on display in glass cases. In the end, gold is gold. But digging for it took a lot longer. For music fans like me, digging is where the fun lies.

And yet, by making Sky Blue Sky, Wilco have tapped another group of music fans of which I'm also a part: the fans who obsess over bands with large, ambitious, stylistically varied discographies (The Beatles, Radiohead, Modest Mouse if they were listenable, Spiritualized). In other words, the kind of band you can make "Best Of" mixes for.

On Marco Ursi

2007-05-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

In the odd event that there are readers of this blog who don't read this blog, may I direct you there for Elvedin Terzic's weird, wonderful posting about yours truly.

I downloaded Muse's Absolution immediately after reading Elly's piece, and listened to it in its entirety for the first time. Not bad.

On Sky Blue Sky by Wilco, part one

2007-05-16T10:53:00.001-07:00

Can you hear it? I can hear it. It’s the sound of jaded, cynical, bloodthirsty critics laying the lash to the back of Jeff Tweedy and Wilco. Whoopah!

Can you hear it? I can hear it. Tweedy asked for it. They were all prepared for a deconstructed, noisy, messy album of abstractions both lyrical and musical. What was he thinking making a straightforward, mature, polished record, defying expectations yet again? Whoopah!

Can you hear it? I can hear it. Jeff pretends it doesn’t hurt. "People seem to be disappointed with every record we've ever made.” He makes jokes. “You know what the crazy thing is there are some of the same people who've stuck around to be disappointed each time. It's really unique. Wilco has fans that stick around to be really pissed off." But it’s got to hurt. Whoopah!

Can you feel it? I can feel it.

The long-time Wilco-haters jump out from behind the bushes and get the first shots in, smiles and smirks all around, they know they’re not alone this time. They have him for sure.

The sneakiest ones offer water and fill the cup with vinegar. Paul Isaacs of Eye Weekly is one of them. “Take a listen to the second track, ‘You Are My Face,’ when Nels Cline's oddball Steely Dan-goes-Neil Young guitar solo kicks in at around one and a half minutes. That's the surprising but thoroughly welcome sound of Wilco doing something interesting for a change. Enjoy it while it lasts.” Nels says, “That’s a Jeff solo,” but Isaacs obviously isn’t listening.

“To all the people who like this band: Fuck you!” someone from Vice shouts. No one pays attention.

But here come the backstabbers. Some of them deny ever knowing the band at all. “Sky Blue Sky nakedly exposes the dad-rock gene Wilco has always carried but courageously attempted to disguise,” Rob Mitchum says, prodding with his Pitchfork.

Some of them express feelings of betrayal and sadness. “Anyone who thought Wilco were interested in the future of Americana will be profoundly disappointed,” says The Guardian’s Dorian Lynsky.

Some, like Adrian Pannett at Delusions of Adequacy, tell us we’ve all been fooled – and he knew it all along. “It was hard not to smell the hype and dismiss the cynical feeling that Jeff Tweedy and co. were merely going through a mid-career chameleon phase to keep themselves and the critical intelligentsia interested, whilst the Americana boom turned to slump after the turn of the Millennium,”

Ian Cohen of Stylus just shouts dirty words. “70s!” “Jackson Browne!” “Starbucks!” “California AM gold!” “The Grateful Dead!”
When Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly come to Wilco’s defense, the lashers laugh. They don’t need to say anything else.

The true believers, meanwhile, trudge on, preaching the word to all who will hear it. Michael Metivier of PopMatters stands tallest among them. “I can understand a lot of the present and future complaints with Sky Blue Sky, because at various points I’ve shared them: the album is too slick, oddly unexperimental, straightforward, sentimental, embarrassingly direct. But lately I’ve had to face the awkward truth that despite my initial misgivings, I’ve listened to the album more than any other released in 2007 thus far, and there’s no stopping in sight.”

Though the voices of the lashers may be the loudest and their positions of power the highest, they are outnumbered.

Some side with the leaves. Some side with the seeds.

Maybe the sun will shine today. The clouds will fall away.

With the sky blue sky, this rotten time wouldn’t seem so bad to me now.

On and on and on, we’ll stay together yet. On and on and on, what’s next?

On blue and green cash machines

2007-05-15T15:18:00.000-07:00

Ever since online distribution drove sales of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to the point where it became their best-selling album, Wilco have never been shy about giving their music away for free on the web. So it’s not surprising that everyone and their father has already heard the band’s new album, Sky Blue Sky. Nevertheless, today marks the official release of their sixth full-length studio recording and to celebrate, Like Handclaps and Bacon., Tomorrow Never Knows and Extended Drum Solo are collaborating in a “Best of Wilco” debate. We’ve each spent the past month or so deliberating over which tracks to include and which to painfully cut, and today our choices are finally revealed. Dedicated to all the American aquarium drinkers whose goal in life is to be an echo.

Pure Bug Beauty: Marco’s Wilco Mix

1. I’m the Man Who Loves You, from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - 3:58
2. I’m Always in Love, from Summerteeth - 3:41
3. Monday, from Being There - 3:33
4. Hate It Here, from Sky Blue Sky - 4:33
5. Company in My Back, from A Ghost Is Born - 3:46
6. Heavy Metal Drummer, from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - 3:08
7. Venus Stop the Train, fromYHF Demos - 4:29
8. Side With The Seeds, from Sky Blue Sky - 4:16
9. California Stars, from Mermaid Avenue - 4:57
10. What’s the World Got in Store, from Being There - 3:09
11. A Shot in the Arm, from Summerteeth - 4:19
12. Misunderstood, from Kicking Television: Live in Chicago - 6:08
13. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - 6:58

There are a thousand different ways to make a Wilco mix. I’ve done my best to include something to represent all the elements that make them such a special band – lyricism, musicianship, songcraft, deconstruction, reconstruction, soul, country, rock and roll, pop, ballads, barnstormers. Even Jay Bennet.

Like a lot of people, I entered Wilcoworld through Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, slowly, carefully, not fully understanding what was happening until I was too far in to ever find my way out. I’ve tried to return the debt I owe to YHF by giving it prominence on this mix. One thing I particularly love about that record is the way repeated melodies, lyrics, themes are sprinkled throughout, foreshadowed briefly before dissolving into white noise. I have attempted to replicate that effect here by opening with “I’m the Man Who Loves You” and closing with “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” which reprises the chorus. I also included “Heavy Metal Drummer,” because it proves Jeff Tweedy can write catchy pop songs whenever feels so inclined, and the quiet, sad “Venus Stop the Train” from the YHF demos to showcase Tweedy the balladeer.

At one point I joked about using Sky Blue Sky in its entirety, a bit of beer-soaked hyperbole to flaunt my fondness for the near-perfect new record. I somehow managed to whittle it down to the two tracks that showcase Tweedy’s newly discovered upper vocal range -- Tweedy soul singin’ -- a little bit of McCartney from this very Lennon-esque figure.

Elsewhere, for the most part, I’ve gone with the band’s most straightforward and direct, song-ish songs, from the barroom stomp of “Monday” to the keyboard-drenched pop of “I’m Always in Love” and “Shot in the Arm,” with “What’s the World Got in Store” and the Woody Guthrie-penned “California Stars” here to accent Tweedy’s country roots. The live version of “Misunderstood,” meanwhile, is by far the most intense, scary thing this band has put on a record. It may just be the best of the lot.

On jacks, freeball and the WWO

2007-04-27T08:42:00.001-07:00

Until I discovered rock music, all of my childhood imaginations involved sports. I would hit a ball against the wall and play out matches in the World Tennis League, a professional tennis competition divided along international lines. In the WTL, John McEnroe had defected to Canada and led the league in “jacks” – unreturnable serves that weren’t quite aces.

Other times, I’d pull out a piece of paper and write out the tournament bracket for the World Cup of Freeball. (I was, and still am, fascinated by tournament brackets.) Freeball began as a once-a-year competition between the United States and Japan, but it soon caught on in other places and eventually, the Irish, Italians, and yes, Canadians, were amongst the world’s top nations. Wales always posed a threat because of their terrific keeper, who stole more games than Dominik Hasek. I never quite knew how Freeball was played – I imagined it as a sort of cross between football, soccer, and rugby (yet it wasn’t Aussie Rules Football). Still, flipping through my dad’s atlas to pick out World Cup nations taught me a lot about geography.

Then there was my fixation on playing professional hockey – in Finland. Or pulling a hockey card out my collection to predict which NHL team I would be drafted by. (If I drew a team like the Hartford Whalers or the Buffalo Sabres, I’d usually have another go.) For a while, I used my hockey cards to develop an expansion NHL team – I’d lay the cards out on the floor, arranged by forward lines and defensive pairings. Then I would make trades with other, strangely generous general managers, to bring in better players.

This sporty imagination of mine reached its apex with the WWO, or the World Wrestling Organization. Unlike the WTL and Freeball, the WWO went beyond my mind. The WWO was, in fact, my first major writing project. And unlike my second major writing project, it no longer exists.

I began it in the sixth or seventh grade. To begin, I used all the boys in my class at St. Norbert’s elementary school as the basis for wrestlers. Stefano was Tank. Jonathan was John Rocker. Jimmy was Viper. Matthew was The Man in Black. Fernando was The Olive King (his own idea, actually.) I was Marco Marciano. Some of the girls acted as managers and often figured prominently in storylines.

Like the WWF and WCW, the WWO was built around a weekly television show (Wild Wednesday) that built up to a monthly pay-per-view. I also kept track of house shows (non-televised live events where nothing of importance to the story happens).

For every Wild Wednesday, I would write a match-by-match, interview-by-interview recap. I didn’t describe every move or write out the interview line-by-line, but dealt more in generalities. (“The Olive King came out for an interview and proceeded to insult Marco Marciano’s girl, Melinda, in his typically bizarre way. Marciano appeared with a steel chair and a brawl ensued.”)

The feud between Marco Marciano and The Olive King was one of the best and most brutal confrontations in WWO history. Olive King was based in large part on the WWF’s Mankind character, a sort of deranged madman with a propensity for extreme violence and unpredictable attacks. Marciano was a classic technical wrestler who was strong, tough, and very difficult to beat. (Marciano remained undefeated but I never gave him the title, or even a title shot.) Their long-running battle culminated at the World War III pay-per-view, in a bloody submission match, where Marciano managed to squeak out a victory.

My favourite storyline involved John Rocker, Viper and The Man in Black. Rocker and Viper were a successful face (good guys) tag team known as Hit ‘Em High. The Man in Black was a heel (bad guy) martial arts master who was rarely seen without his black baseball bat. The MIB somehow brainwashed Viper, who turned on his partner and became the almost unstoppable Punisher. This led to the formation of The Men in Black stable, which terrorized its opponents with n.W.o.-style, gang-like attacks. The Punisher destroyed Rocker in their brief follow-up feud, eventually took the World Heavyweight title from Tank and reigned as champion until the organization’s untimely demise. (Jimmy and Stefano, ie. Punisher and Tank, were the two biggest guys in my class. Like WWF/E promoter/owner/dictator Vince McMahon, I liked to push the monsters.)

The World War III pay-per-view was the WWO’s last. It involved a series of specialty matches, including the hockey arena battle between Ice Man (Matthew C.) and Beefy (Alan) and a subway match, perhaps my best wrestling idea ever. The subway match was an elimination contest involving fifteen competitors. It began inside the subway station, where the combatants would fight it out with various “foreign objects.” After ten minutes of this, the subway would arrive and the wrestlers had two minutes to get onto the train. The rest of the match would take place in the subway cars. Eliminations took place at each stop, where the wrestlers had one minute to throw their opponents onto the platform. I don’t remember who won.

The WWO came to an end one day, when I popped the disk I had it saved on into the drive, only to hear a strange, skipping noise. Nothing appeared on the screen. Having been trained on the original 8-bit Nintendo, I tried blowing on the disk, but to no avail. The WWO was lost forever.

Soon after, I began obsessively listening to a CD called Who’s Missing that my father had recently brought home. A whole new fantasy world opened up. The tennis racket became a guitar. The tournament brackets became album covers. And the WWO became Rock Is Dead – Long Live Rock. It was probably for the best.

On cycling, doping, and The Rebel Sell

2007-04-25T13:50:00.000-07:00

Professional cycling is in shambles. Too many cyclists cheat. They use dope, or they use their own blood as dope. Then they deny it. It’s a vicious cycle.

On Monday, French newspaper L’Equipe reported that “followup tests on samples given by 2006 Tour De France champion Floyd Landis have found traces of synthetic testosterone.” Landis is contesting these results.

Yesterday, Ivan Basso, winner of the 2006 Giro D’Italia, was suspended by his team after the Italian Olympic Committee reopened an investigation into the rider's involvement with the Operation Puerto blood doping ring.

Basso was part of a group of cyclists that included former Tour winner Jan Ullrich and contender Francisco Mancebo who were barred from riding last year’s Tour de France for suspected blood doping.

Some commentators have blamed the doping on the difficulty of the twenty-stage Tour de France, which sees riders climb the Pyrenees and the Alps and race up to eight hours a day for three weeks.

Others say the desire to win trumps all other concerns for the professional athlete. The athlete is willing to risk everything, including his physical health and the chance of being caught and disgraced, to taste the glory of victory.

These are interesting arguments. But they do not get to the core of the problem. Doping in cycling is a collective-action problem.

No professional cyclist wants to cheat. The ideal situation for everyone involved in the sport would be a dope-free environment, where talent, skill, fitness, and form determine who wins and who loses. But as Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter write in The Rebel Sell, we shouldn’t “assume that because a particular group of people have a collective interest in securing a certain outcome, each individual in that group will have an individual interest in doing what is necessary to achieve that outcome.”

Consider the rush hour drive home on the highway. The group’s collective interest is to get home as quickly as possible. But the individual who sees the opportunity to move past other cars by using the merging lane opts for personal gain at the expense of the group’s interest. This slows down the entire process, as other cars must slow and stop to allow the selfish individual to re-enter.

When other drivers see this and begin to emulate each other in the destructive pattern, we have what’s called a “race to the bottom.” The desired result – a quicker drive for everyone – is in direct opposition to the actions of individuals, who feel they are acting in their own best interest. The classic example of a race to the bottom is the arms race between the Soviet Union and United States during the Cold War, where neither side desired an escalation in nuclear weaponry, yet felt compelled to build up their arsenal due to the worry that the other guy was doing the same thing.

This is what’s happened to cycling. Your opponents don’t necessarily have to be using dope – all that’s needed is the fear that they are to compel you to use it yourself.

This problem isn’t going to be solved by any “shift in the culture” of cycling. The onus is not on the athletes to be good little boys and play fair. It’s not in their interest. Like any collective-action problem, this situation can only be resolved through strict enforcement of rules. Rigorous testing and unflinching punishments are the only solution.

Tomorrow: The history of the WWO.

On YouTube, Gennaro Gattuso, and Malcolm Gladwell

2007-04-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

YouTube is filled with soccer player highlight packages, usually homemade, and almost always bottomed by spirited debates in the comments section about whether or not the featured athlete is “the greatest in the world.” The majority of these highlight packages feature speedy stikers, like Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Alessandro Del Piero, or crafty playmakers like Zinedine Zidane, Luis Figo, and Ronaldinho.

Watching these kinds of players, with their stupefying dribbles and rocket shots, it’s hard to imagine how a player like Gennaro Gattuso, who scores few goals and even fewer impressive goals, could fit into any discussion about “the greatest player in the world.”

He certainly isn’t the most spectacular. Gattuso’s role for Italian club A.C. Milan is to command the midfield, making important tackles, creating turnovers, chasing loose balls, and carrying the ball downfield – pretty unglamorous stuff. Yet Gattuso is very good in this role. He is quick, strong, and a fine tackler. He routinely covers over 10,000 metres of ground every game he plays. He also argues with referees, encourages him teammates, brings fans into the game, and annoys and frustrates opponents, usually by delivering hard fouls or drawing them through dives. If Gennaro Gattuso played hockey, he would be Don Cherry’s favourite competitor.

In a New Yorker book review published last May, Malcolm Gladwell argues that sports fans, analysts and commentators, too often use their eyes to measure a player’s worth. “All we learn is to appreciate twisting and turning and writhing,” he writes. “We become dance critics.” In a game like soccer, the dancers are the players who put the ball in the net, and the finest dancers are the ones who do it with flash and flare. So we elevate the Messis, the Ronaldos, and the Zidanes and underrate the Gattusos, the Emersons, and the Claude Makélélés, who are often equally, if not more essential to a team’s success.

Gladwell’s solution to this problem is statistical analysis. He writes about a book called The Wages of Wins by economists David J. Berri, Martin B. Schmidt, and Stacey L. Brook, which uses stats to calculate the merit of professional basketball players. “Weighing the relative value of fouls, rebounds, shots taken, turnovers, and the like, they’ve created an algorithm that, they argue, comes closer than any previous statistical measure to capturing the true value of a basketball player. The algorithm yields what they call a Win Score, because it expresses a player’s worth as the number of wins that his contributions bring to his team.”

Soccer, like basketball, is a team game. An individual’s contributions are only valuable in relation to how much they help his team win. Unlike basketball, soccer is not a game where many statistics are gathered. It is therefore impossible to do for soccer what Berri, Schmidt, and Brook did for basketball. But we should at least understand that awe-inspiring runs and fancy footwork aren’t the only, or even most important assets a player can have. We should give Gennaro Gattuso and players like him their due respect.

Maybe someone has already figured this out. Last year, Fabio Cannavaro was the first defender named FIFA World Player of the Year in the award’s fifteen-year history.

Tomorrow: The dope on cycling.

On pasta, scandals, and violence

2007-04-23T14:11:00.000-07:00

Today's post marks the beginning of Sports Week here on Extended Drum Solo. I'll be using the next five days to comment on issues and ideas in the sporting world that have caught my attention over the last few months. Enjoy.
***
Mario Batali, the New York-based chef, repeatedly reminds cooks at his Babbo restaurant: “It’s about the pasta, not the sauce.” It’s fair to say that over the last twelve months, Italian soccer has been way too saucy.

In May 2006, there was the revelation of the calciopoli scandal, which found teams including Juventus, A.C. Milan, Fiorentina, Lazio, and Reggina guilty of match-fixing. Juventus were stripped of their 2005 and 2006 titles, and demoted to Italian soccer’s second division, Serie B, for the 2006/07 season. The remaining teams were given point deductions.

In early February, fan violence at a game between Catania and Palermo led to the death of a police officer and the cancellation of all league games scheduled for the following week.

A brawl erupted between Inter Milan and Valencia players after a March 6 Champions League fixture, leading to suspensions and fines. On April 4, eleven visiting Manchester United supporters were taken to hospital after clashes with police and rival fans before the Champions League match between United and hosts AS Roma.

Even Italy’s win at the 2006 World Cup was tarnished by the actions of neo-Nazis who painted swastikas in Rome’s Jewish neighbourhoods following the victory over France.

No one should have been surprised by these events. Match fixing is nothing new to the Italian game, with a similar scandal having taken place as recently as 2005, when Genoa was dropped to Serie C/1. Fan violence is a constant threat. At a Champions League match between Inter Milan and A.C. Milan in 2005, Inter fans through flares and debris onto the field after a goal was disallowed, and in March of 2006, three visiting Middlesborough fans were stabbed by Italian thugs prior to a UEFA Cup match between the English side and AS Roma. And Swastikas and neo-Nazis show up all too often in Italian stadiums.

Fan violence is not going away. The nature of club ownership in Italy means things will probably get worse. So what is the Italian soccer fan, the fan who is interested in the excitement and drama of the game to do? I can only offer you this piece of advice: Focus on the field. Admire Kaká’s dazzling footwork, Luca Toni’s unstoppable drive, Francesco Totti’s golden boots, Cafu’s agelessness, and yes, even Marco Materazzi’s, um, willingness to win at any cost. Even with all the nonsense off the field, these guys are proof that when it's played well, this game can still be beautiful.

Tomorrow: A close look at Gennaro Gattuso, the rugged midfielder and unheralded star of A.C. Milan, who take on Manchester United in tomorrow’s Champions League semi-final first leg.

Recipes

2007-04-10T14:32:00.000-07:00

Minced Meat Sugo

Pork and veal minced meat, half pound each
Half onion (cut in half not chopped)
Olive Oil
Garlic salt
Salt and pepper
2 cans (28 oz) of tomato sauce
Mix the two meats well and add salt, pepper and pinch of garlic salt. sauté with onion until brown, then add the tomato sauce. Add salt to taste and simmer until it tastes like it’s cooked. Serve with pasta.

Pasta Al Forno

1 box (500 g) Barilla Penne, Fusilli, Ziti Tagliate, or any similar cut pasta
Grated Mozzarella cheese
Grated Romano/Parmeggiano cheese
Minced meat sugo

Preheat oven to 350. Cook the pasta until it’s a little more than half cooked (don’t forget to salt the water) and put it in big bowl when it’s ready. To keep from sticking, put a ladle of sugo and stir. Put one ladle or so of sugo on bottom of baking pan. Place half the pasta in and spread evenly. Sprinkle with the two cheeses (amount depends on how cheesy you want it) and put more sugo on top. Repeat with another layer. Cover with foil and put in oven.

Chicken with Artichokes

Chicken breasts
Flour
Salt and pepper
Pinch of garlic powder
1-2 cans artichokes
Sliced Cremini Mushrooms
White wine
Red chili pepper flakes<

Combine flour, salt, pepper and garlic powder and dredge the chicken pieces. Heat oil and brown chicken on each side. Remove the chicken pieces and place in a baking pan. Add the artichokes, mushrooms and sautée for about a minute. Add some salt, pepper and chili flakes to taste. Put a splash of white wine and set on high until alcohol evaporates. Remove from heat. Pour mixture on top of chicken pieces and put in 350 degree oven until cooked.

Sheppard’s Pie

5 or 6 medium sized potatoes
Minced meat
1 carrot chopped
2/3 cup frozen green peas
Half onion diced
½ cup chicken or beef broth

Boil potatoes; mash them adding salt, pepper, butter and milk; set aside. In a frying pan, sautée meat with onion; when browned, add veggies and broth until veggies are tender (add more broth if it’s drying out).
Put this mixture at bottom of baking dish. Spread the mash potatoes on top until smooth. Bake at 350 for approx 30–35 minutes or until you see the meat underneath start to come up the edges.

Recipes courtesy of Grace Ursi

On the media

2007-04-02T11:23:00.000-07:00

Sources Say, a media blog I am editing for PopMatters, launched today. We are looking for additional contributors. If you're interested in writing for us, please e-mail me.

Sailing away in the morning

2007-03-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

1. The Besnard Lakes - Devastation
2. Deerhoof - +81
3. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! - Underwater You and Me
4. The Beatles - All Things Must Pass
5. Wilco - Impossible Germany
6. Grizzly Bear - Knife
7. Jim O'Rourke - Prelude to 110 or 220-Women of the World
8. Bob Dylan - One Too Many Mornings
9. Low - Dinosaur Act
10. Brightblack Morning Light - Wildshiney Stars
11. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Brokedown Palace
12. Rod Stewart - Amazing Grace

On dream bands

2007-03-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

Vanity Googling often leads to finding one's name in strange places.

Sadly, I'm in last place.

On winter music

2007-03-14T09:56:00.001-07:00

Arcade Fire Neon Bible
We were in Elly's bedroom when I first heard this. Seconds into the opening track, the word "overproduced" jumped from my mouth.

I listened to it twice more in more isolated settings and sent my thoughts to Aaron: "It's dark and dense. I don't like the big strings - one of the best things about Funeral the whole makeshift orchestra thing with banging tambourines, snare drums, a couple of violins, some bells, and an accordion. Neon Bible has the real thing, and it's far less interesting and exciting. There's not enough shouting and not enough Renee back-up vocals. 'No Cars Go' is by far the best song and that's a big problem. The songwriting is simply not as strong - where are the hooks? The sound is big, the singing is as tragic as ever and there are a couple of strong tunes, but the highs of 'Rebellion' and 'Wake Up' and 'Crown of love' are nowhere to be found."

Looking back at this, I'm kind of embarassed by it. Kind of, but not entirely. I was certainly wrong about the shouting and Renee - there's plenty of both throughout the record. I've also changed my mind about the strings - the arrangements are actually quite gorgeous (listen to them swell at the end of "Ocean of Noise") and it was silly of me to criticize a band for moving forward. But I still, for the most part, feel the same way about the songwriting. Besides the too obvious lyrical gaffes (Win Butler ripping the thin veil off his Nickelback-esque "father's house" metaphor to sing "I don't want to live in America no more" being the most egregious example), the melodies just seem to come and go, rarely sticking in my head or my mouth. "Keep the Car Running" is the obvious exception, but something like "Intervention," for all it's pipe organ drama and rising tides of sound, doesn't have a hook to rest on.

I think this is a very good album. But I don't expect to listen to it very often anymore.

Arcade Fire - Ocean of Noise

The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horses
Last week, I was driving a couple of friends home and playing this album.
"So, do you like this?" asked one friend.
"I love it," I said. "This is my music."
"What? Like reverb-y, soulful, psychedelic stuff?"
"Yeah. Psychedelic soul-rock. Like Spiritualized."
"Phil Spectorish stuff? With big production?"
"Yeah man. This kind of music is my passion."

The Besnard Lakes - Disaster

Peter Bjorn and John, "Young Folks"
I don't know how much radio play this song has received, but in the New Musical Order of the Internet, it's essentially a huge hit. This is the kind of song that gets file transferred to everyone you know, ends up on every mix CD you make, gets played at all the college rock clubs, shows up on all the hip Last.fm pages, and gets approval from both art-rock snobs and more populist listeners. The gooey boy-girl harmonies, the easy to replicate whistling hook, the slight-but-definite lift of the chorus, the danceable tempo, the spare arrangment driven by that incessant shaker, the falling in love on the dancefloor lyrics - what's not to like?

Peter Bjorn and John - Young Folks

Herman Dune, "I Wish That I Could See You Soon"
This tune, with its sweet vocals and clever lyrics, reminds me of classic Paul Simon, but it reminds me even more of my friend Aaron's car, picking oysters on the beach and NPR. This song showed up on the same mix CD where I first heard "Young Folks." Four of us were on a road trip to Seattle, the mix was our soundtrack, so the songs will always remind me of that wonderful experience. I think song and memory is a classic theme in music writing because no matter what a person's taste, we all experience those moments of connection between past and present music makes for us.

Herman Dune - I Wish That I Could See You Soon

On democratic warfare

2007-02-23T09:11:00.000-08:00

In the last 40 years, the United States of America has been involved in two full-scale ground wars. They lost both times. America has the largest, most technologically advanced military in human history, but overwhelming size and fancy gadgetry proved ineffective in both Vietnam and Iraq. The Southeast Asian military escapade ended with a short civil war, an empowered China, and a disillusioned home front. We don’t yet know what the end result of this Middle East move will be, but there will likely be a long civil war, an empowered Iran, and a very disillusioned home front. In both cases, lots of American soldiers were killed and even more innocent (and not-so-innocent) civilians were shot and blown up.

With its superior firepower, troop numbers, training, discipline, and communications, the American military seems undefeatable. So why has it failed so miserably in Iraq? The problem, according to Edward N. Luttwak, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington D.C., isn’t that difficult assess. In a recent Harper’s Magazine essay, Luttwak argues that America loses because it does not kill enough civilians. (The essay is not available online.)

In Iraq, the U.S. military is dealing with an insurgency; similar in many aspects to the one it faced in Vietnam. The problem for the Americans is not a military one – that country’s armed forces are essentially unbeatable in conventional warfare – it’s a political one. “Unless insurgents confine their operations to thoroughly deserted areas where there is no one to observe them,” Luttwak writes, “they must have at least the passive cooperation of local inhabitants. Whether they fail to report the insurgents to the authorities out of sympathy for their cause or in terror of their vengeance in entirely irrelevant. In either case, the insurgents are in control of the population around them, and not the authorities. That essentially political advantage is enough to allow motivated insurgents to overcome all manner of tactical weaknesses in combat skills and weapons.”

The Iraqi police force and army, considered by many analysts to be the key in seeking out insurgents, is as unreliable as the civilian population, Luttwak argues, for exactly the same reasons as the ones above – they are either sympathetic to the insurgents and their cause, or too afraid for their lives and the lives of their family members to rise against them.

So how is an insurgency defeated? Simple: out-intimidate and out-terrorize the insurgents. Luttwak points to several historical examples to make this point: the Ottomans, Romans, and the Nazis all used terror and intimidation to maintain their vast, occupied empires. Despite some claims by those on the political left, the United States of America is not (yet) a fascist empire. If it were, it could simply raze the occasional Iraqi village known, or suspected, to be harboring insurgents. It is not even necessary to maintain a large ground troop presence to hold the peace. The occasional violent example would convince civilians that siding with the Americans is safer than siding with the insurgents.

It should be obvious why the Americans could never use such tactics. The mere whiff of any such actions would generate tremendous outrage on the home front and in allied nations - as they should. In the end, democracy and warmongering don't mix. The neocons, blinded by ideology, failed (and will probably continue to fail) to consider this elementary strategic concern.

Anyone who has played Sid Meier’s Civilization series knows how difficult it is to win a military campaign while running a democracy. The negative effects leveled onto to your cities when you have military units far from home outweigh the technological and economical advantages associated with an elected government and a free populace. Winning remains a possibility: the diplomatic, cultural and scientific victories are in fact best won through democratic government. But the only governing method guaranteed to earn you a military victory is fundamentalism. And despite the scary rise of the Christian Right, America isn’t there yet.

On pop, pure and simple

2007-02-21T11:30:00.000-08:00

The morning after attending a concert featuring Grizzly Bear, I grabbed a copy of The Stranger, one of Seattle's weekly alternative newspapers, and turned to a feature on the band. Describing the band's sound, the author writes, "Peel back all the postmodern bells and whistles and what you'll find is pop music, pure and simple." "What nonsense!" I thought to myself. (What? Oh. Fine. I admit "What nonsense" is an unlikely thought-phrase, but who can really remember the specifics of thought-phrases?)

My problem was not with the "bells and whistles" cliche (glockespiel and whistling (in harmony) were highlights of the previous night's performance), but with the far more problematic "pop, pure and simple" cliche. (The Stanger's web subhead for the piece reads, "Grizzly Bear's Wild, Hard-to-Tag Pop." The writer of the piece, however, seemed to have no problem placing an incorrect tag on it.) His mistake, beyond laziness, is conflating a cultural idea ("pop," apparently in its simplest and purest form) with musical ones (melody and harmony).

Now, I own an 800-page tome called The Faber Book of Pop, which attempts to create a somewhat definitive theory of pop by compiling essays and reporting from the last five decades. So definining "pop" isn't easy. But for our purposes, let's break it down to basics.

"Pop" derives from the word "popular." The meaning has changed somewhat in relation to music. In the early part of the 20th century, popular music meant music that was played on the radio. Eventually, rock music was played on the radio and became popular. Popular music featured simple, memorable melodies, short, repetitive musical phrases, conventional song strucutes (verse-chorus-bridge, for example), and rhythmic patterns with three or four beats per measure. (Yes, Pink Floyd's "Money" is in 7/4, but that's one of those "exceptions that prove the rule.") The Beatles, the most popular group of the last century, and The Beach Boys, the most overrated group of the last century, both incorporated vocal harmonies into their highly successful sounds, forever entrenching that element into the "pop" sound.

In today's music industry, not everything designed according to these principles of pop music makes it onto the radio, even if it's extremely catchy (for some indie-pop bands, radio play would be a hindrance to their credibility, but that is a subject for another time). Nevertheless, if a critic wishes to use the word "pop" to describe a band's sound (even though it is a probably far too general label to convey much meaning), then the music he is describing should contain the above elements.

Grizzly Bear make much use of melody and harmony in their music, along with orchestration from non-traditional rock instruments, which makes post-mustache Beatles and Brian Wilson-in-bed Beach Boys fair comparisons. It does not make them a pop act. Grizzly Bear's songs are often broken up into different sections, or movements, rather than traditional song structures. These movements often take place in unusal time signatures. And while their melodies are strong, they are often long-winded. All of this makes their music much more closely related to classical, or better yet, prog-rock.

Of course, prog-rock isn't very hip these days. On the other hand, music that is unapologetically pop, without actually being popular, is uber-credible. And the writer of The Stranger article obviously had an agenda to make Grizzly Bear appear hip and credible. Why else would he be writing an article promoting their concert?

This type of unthoughtful language usage is a plague in music writing today. It stems from judgements about music that have very little to do with notes and arrangements and everything to do with the cultural values of the young and cool. It's the reason why music being made today still gets labelled as "post-punk." (This makes even less sense than calling Grizzly Bear a pop act. In a sense, all music being made today is "post-punk," since punk arrived in the 1970s and we are now in the 2000s.) We need to get our facts straight, even when we're writing opinion. Pure and simple.

Grizzly Bear - Lullabye

Go Far, Go Far (Come On)

2007-02-06T11:17:00.000-08:00

The following mix is intended to be downloaded and played in its entirety.

1. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! - Satan Said Dance
2. Can - Vitamin C
3. Serena Maneesh - Drain Cosmetics
4. The Futureheads - Skip to the End
5. The Blue Van - Revelation of Love
6. 120 Days - Come Out (Come Down, Fade Out, Be Gone)
7. Caetano Veloso - Alfomega
8. The Arcade Fire - Keep The Car Running
9. Os Mutantes - Quem Tem Medo
10. The Ronettes - (The Best Part Of) Breaking Up
11. Loney, Dear - The City, The Airport
12. Loose Fur - Thou Shalt Wilt

On Penn & Teller: Bullshit

2007-02-01T07:34:00.000-08:00

My review of the show for PopMatters

On beards

2007-01-26T09:56:00.000-08:00

If you are a regular user of Facebook, you know that I am currently growing a beard. You also know that Carley, my girlfriend, disapproves of this, and has started a campaign, titled: "When bad beards happen to good boyfriends." If you are a personal friend of Carley and I, you will know that this is not the first time we have come head-to-head on the subject of facial hair.

I love beards. I have been fascinated by them since I was a child, when some my favourite activities included using my mother's mascara to experiment with goatees, soul patches, and scruff; applying the same mascara to my sisters to play games such as "The Who" and "The Beatles,"; and drawing pencil pictures of male faces, representative of my imaginary band, Sunny Rain (later Tidal Wave), and adding and subtracting hair to represent different phases of our career. I once drew a picture of Tidal Wave performing live with a three-piece horn section and percussionist, which became the cover photo of our highly regarded live album, Tidal Wave in Concert. Every band member sported some kind of facial hair. Song titles, writing and musician credits appeared on the back of the cover.

My love of beards is obviously connected to my love of rock and roll, and in particular, my fascination with The Beatles. As Andre Mayer points out in this clever article for CBC Arts Online, facial hair has come to represent artistic credibility in rock music, a trend that likely began when The Beatles appeared on the cover Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, their most conceptualized artistic statement, wearing funny little moustaches. And that was only the beginning: "The more deeply entrenched the Beatles became in the studio, the longer their beards got," Mayer writes. "Looking at the Beatles’ catalogue, we automatically slot their output into one of two eras: the clean-shaven period of lighthearted jangle-pop and the disheveled period that produced dark masterpieces like Abbey Road and The White Album."

My personal story of beard growth is a tale of struggle. I have yet to reach a point where my moustache connects with my beard, a common problem for men my age. This is particularly problematic for me, due to my Mediterranean features - I look like a Latino gangster. And yet, I will press on, hoping to one day look like Paul McCartney during the Let It Be era. A man can dream, can't he?

An offer you can easily refuse

2007-01-20T10:00:00.000-08:00

Musically, I feel stuck. I've sunk into the sad nostalgia of listening to mix CDs I made years ago, in a vein attempt to relive past sonic glories. Since this cannot continue, I'm making an offer to each and every Extended Drum Solo reader. Make me an MP3 mix of albums. In exchange, I will write a paragraph-length review of each album and post them here. I'll also make an MP3 mix for you. Deal?

On The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

2007-01-12T13:52:00.000-08:00

Television news generally does a terrible job of covering policy stories. Policy – government, foreign, and otherwise - is best discussed in journals, or at least, in magazines or newspapers, since the video footage necessary to make TV news work either distracts the viewer from the issues, or worse, subverts the meaning of the story. Even the best TV coverage of policy, the coverage that goes beyond eight-second sound bytes, the coverage with credible sources, the coverage with balanced interviews and helpful graphics, (the coverage on CBC), doesn’t compare to a well-structured, well-written print article. It’s simply the wrong medium for the message.

The same thing applies to blogging about a novel, especially a novel like Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. How can a medium best suited for short commentary and the occasional link ever give due attention to a book that is over six hundred pages long, a book that contains sentences loaded enough to base an entire graduate thesis on, a book that is at once funnier than classic Simspons, sadder than a lovelorn Wilco ballad, and closer to reality than anything on CNN? As you’ve probably guessed, it can’t.

The Corrections is the kind of artistic achievement that spawns new theories of American literature. It’s the kind of artistic achievement that allows reviewers to write things like “All who care about the direction of this world must read this book,” and get away with it. It’s the kind of artistic achievement that always overwhelms me. In the English classes I took at university, there were always books (White Noise, The Sun Also Rises, Anne of Green Gables) I loved so much that writing about them became impossible. It was as if I became so deeply involved with the text that I couldn’t dig my way out to explain it. And for those books, for those classes, I was allowed to write essays, with citations, and long quotes taken directly from the author. You don’t, you can't, write English essays on blogs.

According to the back cover of my paperback edition, “The Corrections quickly became one of the most talked-about books of the year” when it was published “to international acclaim.” If this is true (and when has the back cover of a novel ever been known to contain untruths?), then I’m certain a Google search will provide you with plenty of serious discussion about the book, should you be interested in it. Nevertheless, I have chosen to write about The Corrections by not writing about The Corrections at all. Because the blog is not the place for such discussion.

In other words, ban television news.

On David Beckham and the MLS

2007-01-11T18:19:00.000-08:00

David Beckham, husband of former Spice Girl Victoria Adams (now Victoria Beckham), has signed a £128m five-year deal with the Los Angeles Galaxy of the MLS. Toronto FC begin their inaugural season in the MLS in April. Matthew Chung and I have talked about going to some games. Here is a conversation that may very well take place between the two of us when Beckham and the Galaxy hit town.

MATT
You know, boy, some of the players you see tonight may make it to the big, European, leagues, one day.

MARCO
What? Aren’t we going to see any washed-up Europeans?

MATT
Sure, we get a nice mix here.

On the weather

2007-01-04T15:25:00.001-08:00

What, the fuck.

On James Brown

2007-01-03T07:47:00.000-08:00

The music publications are all doing the whole commemoration thing for the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. None of these write-ups, however, are as essential as the brilliant profile Jonathan Lethem did on James Brown for Rolling Stone a few months back.

Being James Brown

On some good albums from 2006

2006-12-25T09:26:00.000-08:00

Neil Young Living With War
Sometimes the most powerful political messages are the simplest and rock music doesn't get much simpler than the three-chord crunch Neil and his crazy horses punch out on this record. Neil's pen points directly at the George W. Bush administration, but the melodies and arrangments - loud, massive, charging - ring with hope (and feedback and that nice, deep fried distortion). This is proof that rock and roll relevancy isn't something that passes with age; after all, the elderly are some of the angriest people in this world. (That said, the new Dylan wasn't nearly as blowjob-worthy as all the critcs made it out to be. And the less said about the new Who album, the better.)

Neil Young - Let's Impeach the President

Mates of State Bring It Back
In a year where war and environmental disaster were at the top of the news agenda, we all needed more joyful and whimsical to escape to. This record was one of those places. It's a pop masterpiece, all exuberant boy-girl harmonies, melodies as addictive as meth, bouncy drumming, and pump-it-up organ. This is what it's like, on a fantasy.

Mates of State - For the Actor

Loose Fur Born Again in the USA
Jeff Tweedy continues to disguise his obvious prog-rock tendencies with his all-too-human singing voice and a dash of country anytime things get too Genesis. Collaborating with indie uber-producer Jim O'Rourke and Glenn Kotche, possibly the greatest rock drummer in existence today, Tweedy indulges his passion for time-fucks and obscurist lyrics about the Bible. It's Tweedy, though, and Tweedy is the new God.

Loose Fur - Apostolic

The Raconteurs Broken Boy Soldiers
Apparently a lot of indie hipster types hate these guys, which proves a lot of theories I have about indie hipster types. Firstly, they don't actually listen to the music they claim to hate. This record is as crafty and varied as anything those Modest Mouse fools have released. It's smart, funny, and well-performed. Secondly, they care more about cultural elitism than they do about quality sounds. The Raconteurs were well-marketed, they sold a lot of albums and had a hit single, which, according to indie hipster creed, means they must suck. This creed is as problematic as the Scott Stapp fronted penis band. Thirdly, indie hipster types are pussies and don't understand rock. Because this, this fucking rocks.

The Raconteurs - Hands

Brightblack Morning Light Brightblack Morning Light
When I first heard the opening three chords of "Everybody Daylight", chords drenched in that elusive thing we call Soul, I knew I'd discovered something special. If mise en scene can be applied to music theory, than this album had the finest mise en scene of any album this year, showing us nothing but boozy and weedy nighttime recording sessions in Memphis, campfires in the California desert, and long, wet walks in West Coast rainforests. But more than that, for me, this record became that rarest of things: a close friend. On those rainy walks to the bus stop at six in morning, Brightblack was there. Coming down after psilocybe adventures by the ocean, Brightblack was there. And as we layed in bed, sharing our thoughts about nothing and everything, Brightblack, was there. Easily the best of the year, definitely one of the best of the decade.

Brightblack Morning Light - Everybody Daylight

Merry Christmas, baby.

On Miles Davis

2006-12-17T23:34:00.000-08:00

When I first met Myles, he wouldn't speak to me. One of my co-workers told me that Myles was a "selective mute" - in other words, he only spoke to certain people. This condition didn't last long, as Myles was soon speaking with us all. He's still relatively quiet, but he's also one hell of chess player.

As I mentioned in the "On working with kids" posting, I often call the kids I work with by nicknames. Myles, of course, became "Miles Davis." Last week, Myles gently tapped my shoulder.
"I know who Miles Davis is," he said. "He's a musician."
"How do you know that?" I asked.
"I looked on the computer," he said.

Impressed and flattered, I asked him if he knew what instrument Miles played. He didn't, so I suggested he look it up that night.
"So, did you find out what instrument Miles Davis played?" I asked the next day.
I could see it in the kid's face that he had forgotten all about it, but, courageous to the end, Myles took a guess anyway. "Tuba?"

On fall music

2006-12-14T10:15:00.000-08:00

John Coltrane A Love Supreme
When I decided to get into jazz, I began with a Google search for "best jazz albums of all time." This album appeared at the top of near every list I came across, and after more than a dozen listens, I now understand why. Comprised of four distinct but related pieces of colourful composition and expressive improvisation,
A Love Supreme captures Coltrane at the height of his all-too-brief career. Exploring what was then a newfound spirituality, Coltrane pours showers of notes over stormy accompaniment from his three bandmates. If you don't like this, you don't like jazz. In fact, if you don't like this, you should probably rethink the whole listening to music thing altogether.

John Coltrane - Part 2: Resolution

Elvis Presley From Elvis in Memphis
In 1969, after series of kitchsy films and lacklustre LPs, the former King of Rock and Roll had become a washed-up parody of himself. Elvis was no longer vital. But a trip to down to Memphis, Tennessee, the birthplace of Presley's legendary fifties recordings, allowed the King a last moment in the sun. Backed by a band that's tighter than Brenda and Billy Chenowith (check out those mad basslines!), Elvis shouts and shimmys his way through these twelve rock, country, and R&B numbers with an unparalleled energy that would soon vanish forever.

Elvis Presley - Only the Strong Survive

Charles Mingus The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady
This is a massive piece of music. Composed as a four section ballet, it's really an in-depth self-examination of Charles Mingus by Charles Mingus (although the liner notes were infamously written by Mingus's psychologist). Although there are a number of blistering and beautiful solos, this is jazz as compositional music, rather than improvisational form, with Mingus developing a number of themes that recur in increasingly avant forms. The weaving and winding lines make this great head music while the dark and fragmented melodies fill your soul.

Charles Mingus - Solo Dancer

Captain Beefheart Clear Spot
Beefheart's music is not nearly as inaccessible as some reviews had led me to believe and this album, released in 1971, might be his most listener friendly. Although he's often written about in the same context as his good friend, the late Frank Zappa, Beefheart's music is less irony-laden than Zap's send-ups - he's far more focused on deconstructing and reconstructing the blues in a rock context. The weirdness of the whole thing makes it closer in spirit to the classic blues recordings of artists like John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson than to the cocky blooze rawk of Beefheart's sixties and seventies contemporaties.

Captain Beefheart - Crazy Little Thing

Miles Davis In A Silent Way
Whatever you might think of the fusion jazz movement that this record inspired (personally, I like where it took Davis and Herbie Hancock, but not the whole Weather Report thing), you can't deny that, in terms of exploring musical space, this is a masterpiece. Davis is one of those musicians whose sound is instantly recognizable, and his spare, melodic solos here are definitive examples of the massive impact he had on jazz. He takes the minimalist approach to its logical conclusion, while wholeheartedely experimenting with the of blending electronic instruments with traditional jazz. Shhh, peaceful.

Miles Davis - In A Silent Way/It's About That Time

On futility

2006-12-05T11:32:00.000-08:00

Defining rock and roll is an exercise in futility. So let’s be futile.

The worst place to start is the music. Early rock and roll songs had three-chords, a danceable 4/4 drumbeat and songs that lasted two minutes fifty seconds. That doesn’t mean much today. Flip on any classic rock radio station’s “Top One Hundred Songs Countdown” to discover that an eight-minute acoustic English folk ballad that includes an epic guitar solo and ends with crotch-grabbing screamfest is considered the greatest rock and roll song of all-time. Surely an artistic genre that classifies The Monkees and Animal Collective under the same banner has got a severe case of schizophrenia. Shit, a rock and roll song doesn’t even need an electric guitar anymore.

You’ll also run into trouble if you start talking about rock and roll as a cultural movement. Sure you have your John Lennons and your Rage Against the Machines who thought they could change the world by moving from C to G, what about your Black Sabbaths and your Darknesses, whose ideas about invoking social change mainly involved taking drugs to make music to take drugs to? At some point in history, there were people who thought rock and roll music was going to change the world. And they were right. There didn’t used to be Who songs in car commercials.

Calling rock and roll a state of mind, as the lead singer of Stillwater did in Almost Famous, sounds cool, but then you have to consider the state of mind of the young male at the Metallica concert versus the state of mind of the young female at a Joni Mitchell gig.

Rock and roll’s original definition had something to do with sex, but anyone caught fucking to a Jethro Tull record should be arrested.

So maybe rock and roll is a personal thing, something you feel (or, if we go by Boston’s definition, it’s “More Than a Feeling”) where each person’s interpretation is given equal weight. But now we’re into relativism territory, and we know how the relativists are about their territory (they will bomb you if you enter it).

“Rock and roll defies definition, and that’s what makes it rock and roll,” says the punk rock and roller. The punk rocker has obviously never heard of Lester Bangs or Robert Christgau, Rolling Stone or Pitchforkmedia, or, more likely, he has heard of them and chooses to ignore them. But like any art form, rock and roll begs to be classified and consumed, defined and debunked.

Defining rock and roll is an exercise in futility. So fuck futility.

On working with kids

2006-12-02T16:32:00.000-08:00

In September, I took a job as a children's leader at an after school care program. For the first three weeks, I worked with kids who were in kindergarten. (Unlike Ontario, there is no junior/senior kindergarten in British Columbia.) These kids amused and fascinated me. They are remarkably well-behaved and well-adjusted, especially when you consider that around seventy per cent of them come from broken families.

These kids will not remember me in the future, but I will remember them for a while ("a while" being an appropriately vague expression for discussing memory.) I had many nicknames for these kids, most of them created by replacing of the last letter of their name with the letter "O." Lily became "Lilo," Grace became "Grace-o," Qaseem became "Qaseem-o" (also "Q"). On several occasions, I noticed Anya ("Anyo") using these nicknames when addressing her classmates.

Anya was a bright girl who showed affection in unusual ways. She also had a zany and well-developed sense of humour. Early in the school year, she would draw pictures and, upon completion, hand them to me, saying, "for you." Sometimes, I noticed these pictures showed a deliberate lack of artistic effort. This wasn't an act of hostility - it just amused her to give me crummy pictures.

Liam (Limo) was every leader's pet child, and although I made a point of trying to treat all the children equally, I must admit that Liam's charms were hard to reist. He was the youngest child in the class and also the smallest, and his adorable face made it clear that there will be plenty of women (or men) in his future. Liam was prone to minor behavioural indiscretions (mainly not listening to instructions because he was busy playing with Lego), but he always apologized when in the wrong, and gave affectionate hugs at random moments.

On the first day of school, Liam approached me with tears in his eyes. He claimed that Matthew had stolen his button. The buttons on Matthew's shirt clearly indicated that the button was in fact his, but Liam insisted otherwise. After my many fruitless attempts to convince Liam that the button wasn't his, I figured out a solution. I told Liam that, when she came to pick him up, I would ask his mother whether or not the button belonged to him. I then put the button into my pocket and told the boys to run off and play. When Liam's mom came, I forgot to ask her about the button. Liam never mentioned it again. Matthew did ask for the button the next day but I'd left it at my apartment. Eventually, he forgot about it too.

The intro to a novel I never finished

2006-11-28T13:43:00.001-08:00

They say timing is everything, so I always wear a watch. I must have gone through about fifty watches in my lifetime and though I’d like to say I remember each and every one of them, I couldn’t even tell you the colour of the watch I’m wearing right now without looking at it. I snuck a peak. It’s black.

It was 4:35 p.m. (that’s right, 4:35 p.m.) on a Saturday when I realized I’d forgotten my wallet at home. I was riding my bike to work and just as I reached the end of my street, I got that feeling that I was missing something. I was. My wallet.

I was working at a second hand bookstore called Rereads. It didn’t have the worst job in the world, but on this particular Saturday I just didn’t feel like working. The thing about a working in a bookstore that makes it different from working at a record store or even a clothing store is that while music retailers get to spend their days jabbering on about how Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted is the greatest rock record ever made (they’re wrong, but that’s what they tend to jabber on about), I spend my days helping high school students find Coles Notes and directing 40-year-olds to the Harry Potter section.

I didn’t really need my wallet for work, but I’m one of those people who won’t go anywhere without it. As I rode home, dreading restocking the sci-fi section, I hit a bump in the road and fell hands first onto the pavement.

I look up and the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen is running up to me to ask if I’m OK.

I am temporarily knocked unconscious, and when I am finally awakened, I’m a knight doing battle in the Middle Ages.

I break my arm and when it heals, I discover a new talent for throwing a baseball and begin my career as the youngest major leaguer in history.

I look up and see the curb, a fire hydrant and my bike a few feet down the road. It’s broken.

I walk home with scratched hands, a tear in my right pant leg and a broken bike. I get my wallet. I clean up and take the bus to work.

If someone was writing a novel about me, this is the part of my life they’d skip over.

On "I Am the Walrus" by The Beatles

2006-11-14T09:48:00.001-08:00

In an interview with Playboy conducted three months before his assassination on December 8, 1980, John Lennon claimed he had written the first two lines of “I Am the Walrus” on separate acid trips. This surprised no one. By January 1981, when the interview was published, anyone reading the article knew all about The Beatles’s use of LSD (and other drugs) in the 1960s. “I Am the Walrus” was one of the druggiest songs the band ever released, complete with dizzying stereo pans, a distorted, swooping string arrangement, and voices from the BBC. The lyrics are filled with dark images about “yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog’s eye” and witty couplets such as “sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun/if the sun don’t come you get a tan from standing in the English rain.” Lennon delighted in confusing and confounding the fans and critics who would spend hours deciphering the reason why the Hare Krishna-singing penguins were kicking Edgar Allen Poe. “Let the fuckers figure that one out,” he reportedly said after finishing the lyrics. More than any of the intensely personal, confessional songs Lennon composed over the years (“In My Life,” “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” “Mother,” “Working Class Hero”), “I Am the Walrus” encapsulates John Lennon (both artistically and personally) because of its impenetrability.

John Lennon was not only the most difficult (and therefore most interesting) Beatle to figure out – he is rock ’n’ roll’s greatest enigma (even more so than Dylan). Lennon was the angry, violent young man, who became the most important celebrity protestor of the Vietnam War, the Beatle who was the most dismissive and defensive about the band’s catalogue, the tough, acid-tongued Teddy Boy who just wanted a mother to hold him. Lennon constantly evolved, both as an artist and as a human being, and this made it impossible for the press to pin him down. “You know I don’t believe in yesterday,” he told Playboy. “I am only interested in what I am doing now.”

The first line of “I Am the Walrus” alone is a strong enough example on which to rest my thesis. “I am he, as you are he, as you are he, as you are me, and we are all together,” Lennon sings in his most acerbic tone, and the listener is into the land of nothingness and everythingness. Lennon told Playboy that during the period of writing he was heavily inspired by Bob Dylan’s “trick of never saying what you mean but giving the impression of something more. Where more or less can be read into it. It’s a good game.” Nevertheless, we try and read the lyric. At first, it feels as if Lennon is making a hippie-esque statement along the lines of “we are all one,” something would not be out of place on song that was composed on LSD in 1967. But as a Wikipedia writer notes, the lyric clearly parodies the opening line of the song ‘Marching to Pretoria,’ by The Weavers: ‘I'm with you and you’re with me and we are all together.’” In other words, the fuckers have figured it out: it’s a joke.

The opening lyric’s “who is who” motif returns for the chorus, where the narrator tells us first that he is “the Eggman,” but soon changes his mind and tells us that, in fact, “they are the Eggmen,” before finally coming to a decision: “I am the Walrus.”

Earlier I mentioned the influence of Bob Dylan on Lennon. Let us reflect now on this chorus with a series of quotes from Lennon about Dylan:

I am the Eggman

ROLLING STONE 1968

LENNON: We’ve gone past those days when we wouldn’t have used words because they didn’t make sense, or what we thought was sense. But of course Dylan taught us a lot in this respect.

They are the Eggmen

ROLLING STONE 1975

Q: Is there anybody that you'd like to produce? For example, Dylan?

LENNON: Dylan would be interesting because I think he made a great album in Blood on the Tracks (1975) but I’m still not keen on the backings. I think I could produce him great.

I am the Walrus

PLAYBOY 1980

Q: Were you a Dylan fan?

LENNON: No, I stopped listening to Dylan with both ears after Highway 64 [sic] and Blonde on Blonde, and even then it was because George would sit me down and make me listen.

The musical construction of “I Am the Walrus” matches the lyrics in its bizarreness and restlessness. The musical intro begins with a slightly out of key electric piano and tambourine playing for one-and-a-half measures, just before George Martin’s hallucinogenic string arrangement enters and chops the second measure in half, a completely disorienting effect. The song’s home key is A major but the use of flats outside of the key make it difficult to discern, resulting in a sense of displacement. We are fooled again when Lennon follows the fifth verse ("Expert textpert choking smokers...") with yet another verse, rather than the chorus. The song ends in chaos, with a choir chanting “Everybody’s got one,” radio actors performing King Lear through radio speakers, and the music descending: A7, G7, F7, E7, D7, C7, and B7. When we think we’ve finally caught up with Lennon, just when the whole thing is beginning to make sense, he returns to the beginning of the sequence: feedback, cymbals crashing, and the sound of lazers being fired. The Walrus disappears.

Lennon may have claimed otherwise on “Glass Onion,” but there is no doubt that John was the Walrus and the Walrus was John.

The Beatles - I Am the Walrus

Way Down Underneath All She Had To Do Was Move Her Pretty Feet

2006-11-03T19:09:00.001-08:00

1. Lorraine Ellison - Stay With Me
2. Dr. John - Danse Fambeaux
3. Sly and the Family Stone - Space Cowboy
4. Nina Simone - Sinnerman
5. Brightblack Morning Light - Star Blanket River Child
6. Captain Beefheart - Low Yo Yo Stuff
7. Elvis Presley - I'm Movin' On
8. The Grateful Dead - Ripple
9. Willie Nelson - Shotgun Willie
10. Lou Reed - Street Hassle-Waltzing Matilda-Street Hassle-Slip Away
11. Laura Nyro - Eli's Comin'
12. Bobby Gentry - Ode to Billie Joe
13. Spiritualized - Stay With Me