Keeps Me Alive

It's been a while since I posted, but I haven't neglected my listening duties. Here's 15 blatherings on stuff I've heard and been thinking lately. Brevity is all I have in me these days, so it is what it is. Good to see you!

Young MC - Stone Cold Rhymin'

This is good clean fun, and dammit it's still funky as hell. I knew every word, even after all these years.

Michael Jackson

So Michael Jackson died. I'm indifferent. I didn't own his records at the time, don't own them now. A very strange man who changed pop music in a lot of ways is gone. Bummer. Next.

The Happiest News I've Heard In Ages!!

Carolyn Mark and NQ Arbuckle are releasing an album together on October 23, 2009!! It's called "Let's Just Stay Here," and it is sure to be phenomenal. Oh how I wish I could hear it all repeatedly and love it to pieces already!

Alexisonfire - Old Crows, Young Cardinals

This band always does it up right in energetic ways, and this record is no exception. Turn it up, these riffs will rock your socks off. Too bad the vocals never change.

Gin Blossoms - Up And Crumbling

Blew the dust off this and loved it yet again. This was a strong band who offered up consistently solid songs. Man, 1991. Imagine. I feel old.

Mars Volta - Octahedron

Holy Rush, Batman. This will either blow you away or bore you to tears, there is no middle ground. I fell largely into the former camp, happily. Requires constant attention, but very worth it.

Andrea Bocelli - The Best Of Vivere

Bocelli's vocals are very strong, yet like all singers in this arena he takes himself way too seriously. Still, excellent interpretations of a lot of classic tracks, and a good collection for theme night at your place.

Sophie Milman - Make Someone Happy

Fantastic jazzy vocals with backing music that made me believe the band was into it. You could play this in the background at a party and be pleased, but you're much better off paying closer attention.

Sophie Milman - Take Love Easy

Indistinguishable from the first record, but you know, that's not a problem. We don't have enough original music like this in our lives. She should tour with Diana Krall.

Missed The Hip

Posted here earlier, I admitted that I couldn't get past the idea of being in a hot, dusty field at an airport with 20,000 sweaty people moshing to beautiful poetry. Yes, I should have been there. As a big fan, I suppose it was my duty. But reports after the fact prove my instincts correct - the number of rules surrounding the gig were ludicrous, the venue ran out of food and water long before the Hip hit the stage, the lines for beer were impossible, and the porta-johns were at the far end of the runway (and overflowing somewhat, oh yes). By all reports it was a completely mis-planned debacle that would totally have killed whatever joy I'd have derived from yet again seeing one of my favourite bands perform live.

Chickenfoot - Chickenfoot

Supergroups almost never work. This one is passable, sure, but it sounds like just about everything else on modern rawk radio. Every song starts out promising and then trails off into template boredom. The guitars stood out the most, to me - those are some hefty riffs.

Paolo Nutini - These Streets

Slightly quirky, intelligent pop music. Just enough of an edge to keep me listening, though it's heavy on the acoustic folk schtick. Sadly, I can also imagine it getting played on the canned music station at work, and that kills what might have been soulful, to me.

Paolo Nutini - Sunny Side Up

Now that's better. It's bits of soul, ska, big band, folk/blues and everything else too, and surely not quite so formulaic (and dry) as was These Streets. His vocals are put to much better use, here. 'Ten Out Of Ten' actually made me smile.

Nashville Pussy - From Hell To Texas

I've always loved this band for the balls-out barroom music they long ago mastered. This record is no different than any other from them, though it does sound a bit too clean somehow (which isn't fitting at all), but whatever.

Hayden - In Field And Town

Oddball brilliant Canuck songwriter offers up a platter of delicious, mostly quiet musical treats that will stand the test of time with ease. If you know Hayden, this is surely up to his standard. If you don't, get with it already (yeesh).

First off, a note to let you know that I'm done with the haiku, for now. It was interesting, but it's time for another shift. So, be it a sentence, a paragraph or a full-page diatribe, it will be what it will be.

Ready? Go!

Tolan McNeil - Give 'Er

We offer our MASSIVE thanks to Andrew, formerly of Red Cat, for ensuring we got our sweaty little hands on the happy sounds of this long-sought record. Thanks heaps, Dude! We love Tolan, here at the KMA, and what a treat this record is. Completely brilliant guitar work all over the place, whip-smart thoughtful and funny lyrics, and a wry wink and a smile that comes naturally. This is the stuff of dreams, of talent displayed boldly, of music that ought to be heard by everybody everywhere. This country-tinged truckrawk rules!

Circus Devils - Gringo

Here we have wee-hours basement experimentation done slightly more quietly, so as not to wake up the house. Every Pollard record has a mood - here it's a brilliant, gentler breeze fuzz-rockin' us from the summer of love.

Anne Lindsay - News From Up The Street

If you can you get Anne Lindsay, Jason Fowler, Al Cross and Oliver Schroer (among many others) together, you just know the resulting record is going to be a blast. To me, it sounds simultaneously like being down east, and those Scottish bands that have been taking old standards and dressing them up in new clothes, and jazz torch song vocals and instrumentation and some 'world music' and... Wow!

Sarah Jane - Kind Of Day It's Been

We caught Sarah Johnston at this year's Knox Youth Showcase (may Knox R.I.P.), and here she offers up a tasty disc of Lisa Loeb-like acoustic folk pop songs mixed with a sense of the blues that feels great. Her vocals, in both English and French, are powerful and clear, and what she's saying needs to be heard. Yes, I liked this very much, indeed. Keep an ear open for her, folks. Hers is a name you should be hearing more shortly.

Corey Heuvel - Evers

Another performer to whom we were introduced at this year's Knox Youth Showcase (may Knox continue to R.I.P.), Corey's disc is a display of guitar and songwriting prowess that got multiple plays here in our house. My only complaint is that, as a 5 track EP, it's tasteful but I'm greedy and find it a bit short... A full album is anticipated, Corey!

Note: I will be posting some album reviews shortly, including Tolan McNeil! But the following things will have to hold you over for now...

The Kids Don't Get It

People who call themselves Hip fans have been slagging off the new record... in my presence. The temerity! They say it's sucky country rock and not worthy of the Hip. I've decided that these people are, at best, not real Hip fans or, at worst, total idiots. I believe I have recently met both.

These detractors say there aren't any big arena rawk tracks, there's no Courage or Little Bones-like tracks to get them all frothy so they can put their Molson hats on backwards and mindlessly, drunkenly mosh at the next concert. Instead, they claim, now the Hip wants to be Neil Young. Well, who wouldn't want to be Neil Young?! But clearly these are the same people who stopped listening years ago. The Hip has continued to challenge us, offering us disc after tasty disc of yummy treats that aren't just jock rock. If you're surprised by the sound of the new record at this stage of the game, I'm sorry sweetie, you lost the plot years ago. Please leave the rest of us alone. No, really, go away.

I've played We Are The Same many, many times now, and with each spin I love it more. If you think it hasn't got any balls, then you're clearly not listening. It's got balls galore. So it ain't another Fully Completely. Get over it and get with it or get lost.

Now The Men Are In On It

A while ago I ranted about a string of women "singers" who are sucking the life out of already terrible songs, and about how those "songs" were being played repeatedly on the sound system where I work. Well, it just got worse because now there's a bunch of men doing it too. Oh yes, it's true. In the past week I've been assaulted by mind-numbing, terrible and idiotic covers of Tom Petty's Free Fallin', Toto's Africa, Aha's Take On Me and Elton John's Rocket Man. Yes, you read that list correctly. So help me, it's yet another really great reason to quit that job, just to get away from that bloody pap radio.

Some Formative Records

I was feeling nostalgic the other day, and got to thinking about the music that I liked when I was a kid. I even put together a list of the 5 top repeat offenders in my boom box, circa mid-80's, for the general amusement of all of our most Loyal KMA Readers, all (maybe) one or two of you:

Gowan - Strange Animal
Bryan Adams - Reckless
Glass Tiger - The Thin Red Line
Huey Lewis And The News - Sports
ZZ Top - Eliminator

You know, there's a part of me that thinks this is hilarious. But another part of me would defend these as great formative records, a child's stepping-stones to all the other musical avenues I've traveled in the intervening 20 years. Sure they were mainstream pop... I was 10! You know, it was records like these that began my obsession with, and led to my unrelenting and ever-evolving and growing collection of, music.

I wonder what my son will like.

More Nostalgia, On Tour

So then I got to thinking about other early concerts I attended back in the mid-80's.

A huge one for me was seeing Gowan on his Strange Animal tour in Owen Sound (funny, I ended up living here 25 years later). My Dad packed up me and my winger Michael and away we went. We were so young we sat in the seats on the sidelines, never even went near the stage... we didn't know what to do at a show like that. I'd love to know who opened up for him, so if anyone happens across this and knows this ancient bit of lore, please leave a comment and let me know. Anyway, what fun! He played all the songs we'd heard on our worn-out copies of the album and I got the t-shirt that had no sleeves and a big picture of his face on the front. Good times.

Another time, my Mom took my sister and me to the Centre In The Square in Kitchener and we caught Glass Tiger on their Diamond Sun tour. We were way up in the balcony and it didn't matter. It was great. They played all the best songs from Thin Red Line and Diamond Sun and we both (again) got t-shirts and had a blast.

And somewhere within that few short years, my Dad packed up me and Michael again and away we went to the University of Guelph's athletic centre and saw Gowan again, this time on his Great Dirty World tour. Again we loved it, and something about that show has been stuck in my memory all these years, about that show being where they filmed the video for Awake The Giant. I could be very wrong about that, but who knows? Do you? Leave a comment and tell me, if you do! Anyway, it's cool to think we might have been in the crowd for it.

So, laugh all you want. I'll bet your first concert experiences were just like these and you shouldn't be too cool to admit it or embarrassed by it at all. I mean, who cares? And for all you KMA super-geeks who are into the trivia of the site (haha), you'll know that this is actually a much-belated follow-up to my post in these pages from ages ago about my first-ever rock concert experience of Frozen Ghost and Eight Seconds in Lucknow, ON. Oh yes. It happened! Man, I had me some TASTE!

Hallelujah, Indeed

Lifted from Geoff Berner's most recent newsletter...

"...But let's not have them sing "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen, please.  There are many foul things being done to that song in Europe these days.  It is a good-hearted song that never meant anyone any harm, but it has been worked a bit too hard lately and deserves a little quiet time at home."

Amen, brother, amen. There's only one good version of that song and it's when Leonard himself sings it. The rest of you might get points for trying, but you really can stop ruining this perfectly fine tune anytime, now. Thank you. And good on you, Geoff. I'm with you, man.

I told you recently that I had a plan for filling up my new MP3 player, Gordie. I just got round to it today. And what did I put on there? Oh baby...

Yessir, we've got all studio albums by the Tragically Hip, Sloan, Hawksley Workman, the Weakerthans, Immaculate Machine (including the French EP), Carolyn Mark (including Corn Sisters), as well as both of Gordon Downie's solo records, Eric's Trip's Love Tara, Rush's Chronicles AND Neil Young's Ragged Glory!!

Man, this is the coolest ever. 2GB rules! Imagine what I could do with more! It's endless, really. You could give me an iPod with 500GB and I could fill it with tunes. Easily. But anyway. This is a great start, and now I can't wait to have to drive somewhere in my car...

This was the show that nearly failed to happen. Twice. Back in February, I had a ticket to see Hawksley in Brandon, Manitoba. Brandon is about a four-hour drive (one way) from Regina and that's a bit much to see a guy who I've seen in concert probably ten times already. Plus, February is not the time when you really want a long drive on the Prairies. And true to form, work got really busy right before the show. Work cleared up on the day that I was supposed to leave, but that also turned out to be the day of our biggest blizzard of the year and I wasn't about to take a chance on the highways. No February Hawksley in Brandon for little James.

Oh well, four hours really is pretty far to drive for a concert, which is why it only made sense that I'd get tickets for a show in Winnipeg, which is an additional two hours beyond Brandon.

Really, I had no plans to go to this show, but when it was announced, I forwarded the information to Kristin, who lives in Winnipeg. Not sure why I bothered - I think she's on the same mailing list that I am - but it seemed like the thing to do. The night of the presale, she complained to me that Ticketmaster had already sold out. Nothing turns me into a sucker more quickly than artificially limiting the supply of something, so I went through Hawksley's website where some presale tickets were still available. Suddenly, I had a show to go to.

And again, it very nearly didn't happen. Usually, I know about my biggest work projects well in advance, but this most recent one came out of nowhere and was scheduled to end just as quickly - right when I was supposed to be gone. I decided I'd go anyway, no I wouldn't, yes I would, I wouldn't. Mika says this debate happens pretty much every weekend when I have something planned and she is exaggerating only slightly. Eventually, I came up with a plan whereby I'd bring my work laptop on the trip, find a hotel with internet access, and work on the most pressing projects after the show. I thought this was a brilliant (if less than ideal) plan up until a coworker called me at home on Sunday afternoon to let me know that our customer had pushed their due date back a week. And that is how the plan came together.

I left for Winnipeg on Monday morning with nothing more than a bag full of technology and a change of clothes. I didn't have a hotel booked and didn't have much of a plan. I was to pick Kristin up at her house, we were going for Ethiopian food and watching the show, and that was all I knew. If I had no reason to spend the night in Winnipeg, I'd consider heading home right after the concert. This would be seriously stupid, but a kind of stupid I am familiar with. I've done the Saskatoon-to-Regina, Regina-to-Minot, and Saskatoon-to-Edmonton one-day round trips in the past. Of course, some of these nearly killed me, but still.

The drive was uneventful, which is how I like it. I saw some baby geese, and I played "guess the gender of the person behind the till" at a small-town Dairy Queen. No idea if I won or lost that game. I hadn't made the drive to Winnipeg in over five years, and was waiting to be pleasantly surprised by the little things that I'd forgotten about. Still waiting. The whole thing felt very new to me. I don't think I saw anything that looked familiar until I made it to Winnipeg itself.

Kristin's new house was easy to find and the Ethiopian food was good - better, I dare say, than the Ethiopian place a block down from my apartment. It was good to spend some time with her, getting caught up. I will admit that I wasn't in her house for 30 seconds before I thought "man, I did not miss getting repeatedly punched in the balls by her dog." I thought age might dull said dog's hyperactivity but I thought wrong on that one. At least you can leave remote controls out in the open now, without fear of them getting eaten. Maybe.

The Hawksley show sold out quickly as it was the grand re-opening of Winnipeg's West End Cultural Centre. I had never been there before, so I can't judge the renovations. It looked a little bit unfinished in spots, and the evening's host (who looked kind of like Norm MacDonald's less successful younger brother) admitted as much on stage. Kristin seemed to like some of the design decisions and question some of the others. At least the bathrooms were no longer next to the stage. Hawksley later said "it's pretty much the same as it was except the toilets are in a smarter place now."

We got a chance to check out the stuff table before the show, but there wasn't much. CDs I already have, whatever t-shirts Hawksley had left from his previous tour, and the Treeful of Starling cards.

The opener was Greg MacPherson, a Winnipeg musician who I last saw in Regina at the 2004 Folk Festival. Hawksley doesn't always have opening acts so I was thrilled to find out that there not only was one, but it was someone I liked. According to Kristin, MacPherson had moved away to Toronto and she hadn't heard anything about him after that, but here he was and there was talk of a new album coming sometime this year. MacPherson's first-ever show had been at the WECC, so he seemed pretty excited to be there for the re-opening, even debuting a few songs he'd never performed live before. There were also some old favourites, including Slow Stroke which you can download for free from Greg's site.

A brief intermission and it was time for Hawksley Workman. I was curious about what Hawksley's show was going to be like. This wasn't part of a tour, just a one-night special performance - possibly because the WECC was the first building that Hawksley ever sold out in Canada. I assumed we wouldn't get the costume changes and full band that his last Regina show had. Indeed, it was just Hawksley on guitar (and briefly on harmonica) and Mr. Lonely on piano. No toy instruments, no jumpsuits - and no real surprises on the setlist. I had been listening to a Calgary radio interview with Hawksley on the drive up, where he mentioned that his shows tend to go all over the place, but the music is very familiar - he made a joke about having recorded 120 songs, but always pulling from the same 25 when populating his set lists. In that same interview, Hawksley said that when he went to shows as a kid, he didn't want to hear new stuff, and that seemed to be reflected in this evening's song choices. Apart from The City Is A Drag, I don't think there was anything from his two newest albums, and only two songs - Ice Age and You And The Candles - from Treeful of Starling. As for the rest, let's see... one song from Almost A Full Moon (A House Or Maybe A Boat) and a fine selection from his first three albums, including Smoke Baby, Bullets, Papershoes, Clever Not Beautiful, Your Beauty Must Be Rubbing Off, Tarantulove (which he claimed was a children's book), Jealous Of Your Cigarette, Anger As Beauty, and We Will Still Need A Song. No Striptease, I don't think, which I'm pretty sure is still his biggest hit. Maybe someone out there took notes and can correct me if any of this is wrong.

This seems like a good place to awkwardly jam in a link - I recorded a video of Hawksley singing Bullets, which you can find here.

After his first song, Safe And Sound, Hawksley started talking and said that he would be fine with talking all night long. Really, that's kind of what he did. Each song started with a story which may or may not have related to the song in any way. He claimed that he was inspired by comedians, which caused one audience member to laugh a lot; this, in turn, caused Hawksley to laugh a lot. Clever Not Beautiful was said to be inspired by Gary Larson. He thought We Will Still Need A Song was destined to be a huge hit, but the swearing held it back. You And The Candles was described as his one political song; he also said it was terrible. This got a good laugh, so he called it bad (in various ways) for several minutes - I think he just wanted to see how long he could drag the joke out for. He did the same thing later on when reflecting on the brand and contents of the bottled water he had, and again moments later when he used the word "Google" several thousand times in short, rapid-fire sentences.

The crowd seemed very much into everything and was contributing to the show. Smoke Baby went on forever because one dude in the crowd yelled "somewhere on the outside" louder than Hawksley was singing that part, so Hawksley made him do it over and over. At one point, Hawksley was trying to play his bottled water as an instrument by blowing on the bottle, but at the end of the song as he was about to do it again, someone in the crowd blew on their beer bottle, beating Hawksley to it, and he laaaaaaaaaaughed and laughed and laughed. "Well done," he said.

Between (and during) his songs, Hawksley switched in and out of a lot of old songs - not HIS old songs, just random old songs, including Riders On The Storm, Happy Together, Holding Out For A Hero, and Son Of A Preacher Man - whether or not he actually knew the words. I thought I knew the words to Holding Out For A Hero, but I didn't know the part that says "he's gotta play Scrabble real good." After struggling with the words to Happy Together, Hawksley walked off-mic to ask Lonely how the song went. As Lonely kept playing Happy Together, Hawksley returned to the mic, only to start singing The Logical Song.

Really, Mr. Lonely spent about two hours frantically trying to keep up with whatever Hawksley was doing. I have no idea how he does it. Great skill and ability, I guess. During Bullets, one of the few dancing fans complained that the venue had no dancefloor, so Mr. Lonely actually spoke - of course, all he said was "burn it down." Hawksley laughed and said that was "so Lonely" and played a bit of the Police song of the same name.

A one-song encore - which song it was completely escapes me - and we were on our way. The show was well worth the 12-hour round trip, even though we came up empty-handed in our post-show expedition to the 24-hour Shoppers Drug Mart in search of La Cocina tortilla chips (only available in Manitoba). I had to get Kristin to navigate because Winnipeg roads are designed solely to confuse. But even that nonsense worked out well - I turned my BlackBerry on as soon as the show ended, but found nothing apart from a text message reading - in its entirety - "ENOS!!!!!!!!" Don't ask. If I'd taken Kristin straight home, I might have just skipped town, but the extra time spent in search of chips and complaining about road signs meant that I was still in Winnipeg when I received an email from my buddy Mitch saying that he was free for lunch the next day, which was all the encouragement I needed to stick around.

The Travelodge just off St. Anne's was clean and comfortable, and more importantly, it was right next to a Safeway that was stacked to the gills with the good tortilla chips. Lunch was fun; I got caught up on gossip with Mitch and found out everything he's been up to, and I got to live out a longstanding dream of having a Salisbury House Cheese Nip Plate. This actually WAS a longstanding dream of mine, for reasons far too nerdy for me to admit in public. The drive back was sunny and went by very quickly, though I did have to stop at the Grenfell Esso to buy car wipes since I had been eating peanuts and managed to coat my entire dashboard in fine peanut dust. But that happens on all good road trips.