Polaris short list picks

Regular readers (all two of you) know that I dig the Canadian music. July 6 is the day when the short list for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize is announced. Last month, a 40-title long list was announced after tabulating votes from over 200 jurors. I already wrote about my unofficial ballot, which is limited to five full length Canadian albums released between June 1, 2010 and May 31, 2011. Of my five selections, only three made the long list. Wednesday at 2:00pm eastern time, they'll announce the ten finalists.

I've made some considerable effort, with great thanks to CBC Radio3, to familiarize myself with every record on the list. As is the case every year, there were some I'd never heard of before the long list. Some are not my style at all. There were some surprise omissions from the long list and some nice new favorites.

Anyway, I'll share the ten that I hope will make the short list, and the ten that I think will make the list. Each of the ten finalists will get a check for $2k and the grand prize winner will get $30k.

My picks, in alphabetical order:

Arcade Fire -- The Suburbs. There's not much I can say about this Montréal band that hasn't been said a million times, and more eloquently. After 2007's Neon Bible, which I hated, I was happy to see this one bounce back.
If you've been living in a cave, you can listen to full versions of their songs on their CBC3 page. I recommend buying the album from the Merge records website here

Austra -- Feel It Break. This was one of three "new to me" artists to make my shortlist. This is the debut record from the Toronto trio fronted by self-described "queer" Katie Stelmanis. It's a little new wave, a little goth, a little new age hippie bullshit. No matter what, I like it.
Check out their CBC3 page. Use this link to buy the album from the Paper Bag Records website. It's probably better if you don't hunt down any videos by this band. Trust me: you'll regret it.

Braids -- Native Speaker. These are just kids. The Montréal-via-Calgary group started as high school chums and stayed together when they moved east to go to college. I assume they're in their early-20s, and they've made a damn fine debut record. Of course there's a female front. Like the Austra record, it's got quite a bit of sythesized sounds. More than I usually dig, but it really works. There's a huge amount of layered vocals that, at times, are almost reminiscent of Liz Fraser from Cocteau Twins. Add to that, the album has a dark, brooding feel and you might mistakenly think that this record came out in the early 1980s. Before these kids were even born.
Here's the CBC3 page, and you can order the record from Flemish Eye Records (Canada only) or Kanine Records (rest of the world).

The Dears -- Degeneration Street. The Montréal six-piece is back with their fifth and arguably second-best record. Although I liked their previous stuff, I hated their fourth album and didn't give this new one a single thought until the long list came out. Turns out, I like it a lot. With the album title, you might think that this band is heavily influenced by The Cure, and that's not too far off, but you'd be wrong to say they "sound like" The Cure. Like The Cure, though, they have shuffled band members about a jillion times. The only constant members are frontman Murray Lightburn and his wife -- keyboard player Natalia Yanchak. They're hevily influenced by The Smiths, and earlier in their career, Lightburn was often described as a blacker, Canadian-er Morrissey. He's got his own style now. Despite the starkness of the cover art and the song titles, this isn't a particularly "dark" album. Pitchfork totally hated this album, giving it a score of 2.4 out of 10, but they hate a lot of things that I love and vice versa. This video of a live performance of the first song from the new album is worth a view:

Here's the CBC3 page, and you should order the album from Dangerbird Records site.

Jenn Grant -- Honeymoon Punch This folky singer-songwriter from Halifax, Nova Scotia released her third album this year. I'd never even heard of her until the long list came out, and I was taken immediately by the first song on the record. I don't quite know how to describe her music other than "fucking good". She sites her influences as Sigur Ros, Phoenix, Camera Obscura among others. I can't hear any Sigur Ros or Phoenix in her work, and I can sort of hear the Camera Obscura influence. I hear something more like Forest City Lovers(who didn't make the long list, but should have). Although it's terribly cliched, I'm surprised that she doesn't site Leslie Feist. Whoever directed her video for "Getcha Good" was crazily influenced by Patrick Daughters, who directed many of Feist's videos including "1,2,3,4" and "Mushaboom". Daughters also directed the crazily awesome video for Depeche Mode's "Wrong". This isn't about Patrick Daughters, though. This is about Jenn Grant. I'll admit that I'm a bit influenced by her looks. I'm quite partial to gingers, and she's very much ginger. That aside, I think she's made a damn fine record. Anyway, here's that video I was talking about:


Here's the CBC3 page and you should buy her record from Six Shooter Records.

Land of Talk -- Cloak and CipherReleased in August of 2010, the second full-length record from the Montréal three-piece was my seventh favorite Canadian record of 2010. The album features guest work by a who's who of Canadian indie-rock, but it's still all about Liz Powell. It's just pop music with an edge. She sites PJ Harvey as an influence, and I suppose I can hear a little of that. I don't know what else to say about this band that I didn't already say here. Listen to their music at the CBC3 page and buy the record from their Saddle Creek Records site.

The Luyas --Too Beautiful to Work. This is the second album by the Montréal quartet. Like the other Montréal bands on this list, they're English-speaking. They're the third of the three "new to me since the long list came out" bands. All I know about them is that the singer Jessie Stein is also in Miracle Fortress (who is also on the long list). She's been accused of sounding exactly like Broadcast singer Trish Keenan, who died in January. In fact, this album reminds me A LOT of the Broadcast album Haha Sound. Not just because of the singing, but also because of the music. It's a bit uncanny. The CBC3 page is here, and I'll recommend the song "Tiny Head". You should buy the record from Dead Oceans Records.

The Rural Alberta Advantage -- Departing. The second record from the Toronto three-piece. Yes, they're originally Albertans, but they moved east a long time ago. It's easy to say "think Neutral Milk Hotel" when describing this band, although more so on the first record than on this one. On this record (but not so much the first one) it's also fair to compare them to Canadian singer/songwriter extraordinaire Hayden. If you get a chance to see this band live, do it. The drummer is incredible. They don't have the best stage presence in the world, but it's still a really good show. On my ballot of five records, I got this one, the Arcade Fire and the Braids records right on the long list. I expect all three to advance to the short list. Listen to them on their CBC3 page and buy the record from the Paper Bag Records site

Stars -- The Five Ghosts. This is the Montréal five-piece's fourth proper album. It's pretty lush and pretty "big", but it's thematically pretty dark. A lot of death imagery. By far their darkest, most musically mature, and most well-produced record. It's a strange juxtaposition that everything from the production to the videos to their live shows is crazily bright while it should be darker, muddier to match the theme. Somehow, it works. I made them an "honorary mention" on my unofficial ballot of five bands. I also listed this as my fourth favorite Canadian album of 2010. Listen to their stuff at their CBC3 page. Buy the record directly from the band's website

Colin Stetson -- New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges. By far the most unique record on my list and probably the whole long list. Stetson, from (you guessed it) Montréal is a wizard on the bass saxophone and has now released two solo records of soundscapes made entirely by the saxophone. Although it sounds like there's a lot of studio production stuff going on, it's all recorded live. He's mastered the circular breathing technique which allows him to play prolonged sustained notes and to play whilst inhaling. He makes lots of percussion noises with the keys of the sax and he makes it sound like there's even more than one horn going, but it's just one dude, one horn and a lot of strategically placed microphones. And a little bit of weird spoken word stuff from Laurie Anderson. It really is an incredible record. Very bizarre, but breathtaking in its complexity. It's pretty creepy and sinister sounding. Hard to turn away from. His CBC3 page is here, and you can buy the album from Constellation Records.


Those are my sentimental picks. I think I might be off the mark with some of them. What I think the list actually will be is (in alphabetical order):
Arcade Fire -- The Suburbs
Braids -- Native Speaker
Destroyer -- Kaputt
Diamond Rings -- Special Affections
Dirty Beaches -- Badlands
Eternia & MoSS -- At Last
Malajube -- La Caverne
P.S. I Love You -- Meet Me at the Muster Station
The Rural Alberta Advantage -- Departing
The Weeknd -- House of Balloons

The list will be announced throughout the day on Wednesday, starting at 2:00 pm.

My unofficial 2011 Polaris Prize ballot

I'm not Canadian, but I play one on teevee. And I sure do love the Canadian indie rock. Everyone knows that. This week will be a fun one for lovers of independent Canadian music because the long list for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize will be announced.

The Polaris Prize, named for the North Star, is an award given annually (since 2006) for the best full-length Canadian album, based "solely on artistic merit, without regard to genre, sales history or label affiliation". For an album to be eligible, it must have been released (digitally or otherwise) between June 1 of the previous year and May 31 of the award year.

The grand prize this year is $30,000 cash. That's a bump from the previous grand prize of $20,000. In addition, the "short list" finalists will each get $2,000 cash.

This year's jury consists of 227 music fans who regularly review Canadian music. They're mostly bloggers and independent music journalists, with a few mainstream music journalists in there for good measure. They each nominate five records. From that, there's a compiled "long list" of 40 finalists. That list will be released on Thursday June 16. The same jury will cull that list down to 10, and that "short list" will be released on Wednesday July 6. There's a big gala on Monday September 19, at which all of the shortlisted bands will perform. At the end of it all, the winner gets a giant check for $30k.

I'll get to what my ballot would look like in a bit, but first, a little more about the jury. Here's the list of jurors this year. You can see that there's a wide range of accreditation, ranging from bloggers to MTV-types, commercial radio stations of varying format, and jurors from every province. By rule, these jurors cannot have any direct relation with a band or label on their ballot, but I've learned that at least one juror has nominated his own band.

I like that the list of jurors isn't kept secret. I also like that they're not prohibited from publishing their ballots to the public. Some of them have done just that.

Reading some of these official ballots and some "unofficial" ballots from other bloggers has been fun. I've been exposed to some stuff that I otherwise wouldn't have known. At least one went from "I've never heard of them" to "that's on my Polaris ballot if I'm a juror" with the blink of an eye.

Without further ado, and in no particular order, my five picks:

• 
  Kathryn Calder -- Are You My Mother?. (released digitally on June 29, 2010 and physically in August). The New Pornographer from Victoria, BC took time off from her two bands Immaculate Machine and the Pornos to work on this record, and she did well with it. I rated it my seventh favourite Canadian record of the calendar year 2010, and in retrospect, I was selling it short. Unlike some of the records on that 2010 retrospective, it took a while for me to get into that record. I said then, and I'll say the same thing now, that I like it more and more each time I listen to it. These songs are really well-crafted, honest songs by a woman who's too young to have already had such a prolific career. These days, I'm partial to the song "If You Only Knew", which could easily pass for one of The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs.
  I think this has a very good chance of making the long list, a slim chance of making the short list, and virtually no chance of winning the grand prize.
  
  
• 
  Rah Rah -- Breaking Hearts (released June 1, 2010) I have to admit that I had never heard of this band until I started to sniff around, looking for mentions of Polaris ballots. A few official and unofficial ballots mentioned them, so I thought I would check it out. More often than not, this sort of endeavor ends up bearing no palatable fruit, but I liked what I found in this case. This is the second record from the Regina, SK group which has at least six and possibly as many as eight members. They switch up their instruments a lot, which seems to be en vogue again, like it was in 1995. Because of this, and because they share the vocals, their songs don't all sound the same. On several tracks, particularly "Arrow" and "Ghosts", they remind me of a young Broken Social Scene. Remember what BSS was like when they still remembered that making records is fun? On "Henry", I'm reminded of Funeral-era Arcade Fire. That's probably just because of the backing vocals. On some other tracks, they remind me of The Rosebuds. On others, particularly "Parkade", they remind me of some cross between Sharon Van Etten and Wye Oak. These are just things that my unsophisticated ears hear. Other listeners might get different things entirely. No matter what, I've discovered that this band has fun. In this video for "Henry", the band members are on stage and they're also featured as patrons of the bar/piñata party.
  
  
  It might be the case that this is just a flavor o' the week, but right now I'm really digging it, so it's making the cut.
  
  It should make the long list with a great chance of making the short list. I don't see it as a serious contender for the grand prize.
  
  
• 
  Speaking of Arcade Fire, the Montréal band and their record, The Suburbs need no synopsis. It's really good, and it was released on August 2, 2010. It's already won the 2011 Juno Award, the 2011 Grammy for best album and a couple of other awards. This might make them "too big" for most jurors to comfortably vote for them; it's generally understood that the Polaris Prize is for the "little guys". Despite winning those big prizes, they're still "little guys". They're still on an independent record label. Although they are a headlining act on a bunch of festival shows, it's not like they're filling soccer stadiums on their own.
  I think some voters will have trepidation about voting for them, but I still think it's a lock for the short list and I think it has a very good chance of winning the grand prize.
  
  
• 
  The Rural Alberta Advantage -- Departing (released on March 1, 2011) This three-piece has been one of my favorite new bands of the past three years, ever since their debut record Hometowns put me on my ass in 2009. Originally from small towns in Alberta, they're presently situated in an artsy neighborhood of Toronto. They've earned comparisons to Neutral Milk Hotel, primarily because Nils Edenloff sings like Jeff Mangum. The core of the band is drummer Paul Banwatt, who plays busy, heavy, energetic, almost jazz/big band-like beats. I've heard somebody compare him to Gene Krupa, but I think that might be taking it too far. Anyway, it's a great record, and they put on a really good live show.
  This video for the song "Stamp" is a really good example of Banwatt's skill, but I'll also recommend the official video for the same song

  The Rural Alberta Advantage - Stamp from Saddle Creek on Vimeo.

  
  I'll be surprised if this album doesn't end up on the short list, and I'll only give it a small chance of winning the grand prize.
  
  
• 
  Braids -- Native Speaker (released on January 18,2011). This four-piece from Montréal originated from Calgary, where they were high school buds. There, they were called The Neighbourhood Council and they released an ep called Set Pieces. They achieved great success with that, then moved to T-dot so three of them could go to McGill University. This is a phenomenal record whose best classification might be "synth-dream-pop". When it first came out, I was instantly blown away, and I was quick to compare it to the Stridulum II album by Zola Jesus, which was one of my favorites from 2010. There's a lot of layering and looping and stuff like that, so there's going to be comparisons to Animal Collective. Either way, I like it a lot. Here they are, playing "Lemonade", one of my favorite songs on the seven-song record:
  

  Braids Live at Sonic Boom Records from NOW Magazine on Vimeo.

  
  I think this should easily make the short list, and has a realistic chance of winning the grand prize.

I'll give honourable mention to Carriage by Forest City Lovers (released June 22/29, 2010). I love this Toronto band, but it just didn't make the top five. Also, The Five Ghosts by Montréal's Stars (released June 21, 2010). Same thing. I love this album. Both it and Carriage made the cut on an earlier version of my unofficial ballot, but after much shuffling and hair-pulling, I had to leave them out. I won't be surprised to see them both on the long list, but I will be surprised (personal feelings aside) if either ends up on the short list.

If you've got an unofficial (or even an official) Polaris ballot of your own, I'd like to see it. Leave it in the comments or leave a link to your blog.

In which Bono becomes "the huggable hitchhiking dick" (as told by Dr Seuss)

I know some wickedly hilarious people, and this week they really showed their stuff.  I'm a part of an email music discussion group.  Mostly we write about the stuff that's playing in heavy rotation at our houses and why everyone else should be listening to our favorite records.  It's been really great.  I've learned about dozens of new bands that I would have never known about, but which I've grown to love.  Sometimes we write about other media, but it's mostly brand new music.  This story isn't about new music at all.  And like a lot of my recent posts, it requires a bit of backstory that you'll have to swim through.  Trust me.  The payoff is worth it. 

This email group is comprised of roughly 30 people, only four of whom I know in real life.  I've learned, though, that some of these people are pretty funny.

A few months ago, somebody started a thread titled "Bono is a dick".  That thread was inspired by a video over at the Onion's AV Club page, in which a panel of guys talk about Rockumentaries that make their subjects look like dicks.  Of course, they discuss Phil Joanou's "Rattle and Hum", which documented U2 during their tour in support of the The Joshua Tree album.  Indeed, the whole band come off like jackasses in the movie, and none more so than Bono.  Although our discussion went into other documentaries and rock-star dicks, it focused almost entirely on Bono.  At some point, the founder of our email club chimed in:

I still like the band just fine. But, yes, Bono is a dick. Such a lovable dick, though! I just want to hug him sometimes.

This was the genesis of the zinger : "Go hug a dick!", used whenever someone is being an asshole.  Also, since then, Bono been re-named "the Huggable Dick"

Just a couple of days ago, a strange story came out of Vancouver.   U2 were in Western Canada, and after a show in Winnipeg, they went on to Edmonton.  For some reason, they decided to set up camp in Vancouver.  It doesn't make any sense, but that's how the story goes.  Bono and his "assistant" went out for a walk and it started to rain.  The next part requires a good deal of suspension of disbelief...  Having no other option, Bono decided to hitchhike.  He didn't call The Edge.  He didn't call one of the thousands of tour workers.  He didn't seek shelter.  He decided to hitchhike.  According to the story, he was picked up by Edmonton Oilers star Gilbert Brule, who was driving to a park to take a walk with his dog and his girlfriend.  It was evidently raining too hard for Bono to take a walk, but not hard enough for Brule to cancel his.  Anyway, if you suspend the multiple layers of disbelief and accept the fact that Brule gave Bono a ride, we can move on.  I, myself, think the story is a little fishy.  That's a different story altogether, though.

Warm and dry inside Brule's truck, Bono pretended to know the first thing about hockey, pretended to love the city of Vancouver, and offered Brule and his gal tickets and backstage passes to the show in Edmonton.
We don't have pictures of Brule and Bono together, but there's a Youtube clip of Bono retelling the story to the Edmonton crowd.  He says that he's Brule,  Larry Mullin Jr is Mark Messier, Adam Clayton is Grant Fuhr and The Edge is Wayne Gretzky.  It's a little painful, as Bono very nearly goes into full-on Bono mode, but here's one of many videos of him talking about it on stage:


This made the rounds in my music discussion email group, and before too long, we started to riff on how the incident could be made into three different made-for-basic-cable movies, and then, for some bizarre reason, a porn-on-demand movie.  Some of these were hysterical:

Oxygen network version:
Bono and Gilbert are at first polite, but taciturn.  As the ride wears on, they both begin to open up, and they find deep communion (and a good cry) as they discuss their relationships with their fathers.

Lifetime network version:
Bono and Gilbert are at first polite, but taciturn.  As the ride wears on, they both begin to open up, and they realize that Gilbert is Bono's long-lost son!

Spike network version:
Bono and Gilbert call each other dickheads, but say little else.  As the ride wears on, a team of buxom assassins in tight t-shirts driving various souped-up cars roll onto the highway behind them, thus beginning a frenetically-edited chase and gun battle, interrupted by the assassins stopping to wash their cars in their tight t-shirts.  As the chase wears on, both Gilbert and Bono begin to open up, and they call each other dickheads, but with a catch in their throat.  They've achieved a kind of communion.

Hung Studs On-demand version:
Bono and Gilbert are at first polite, but their hands wander.  As the ride wears on, hot bareback positions of every conceivable, and a few inconceivable, nature are engaged.  They've achieved a kind of fluid-drenched communion.

Before too long, we started to invent Hollywood versions of the story.  As directed by David Lynch:

Brule and his girlfriend pick up Bono and his assistant on the side of the road.  They drive for hours talking about the smell of rain, oddities of local cuisine and Vishnu.  Much to their shock (and ours) when Brule and his girlfriend pull up to Bono’s hotel and turn around to say goodbye to their passengers they discover they were driving around talking to a potted geranium and shop vac the whole time.
Or were they?

I wrote a pretty long synopsis of how the story would be told by Joel and Ethan Coen.  Too long for this post (but I'll post it if anyone is dying to read it).  I thought it was pretty great.  Until Pat Angello (my one-time collaborator on a panel of hockey bloggers during the 2006 Stanley Cup playoffs ) brought the thunder with a Dr Seuss version.  This is well worth the price of admission, so grab your spouse and kids, gather around the warm glow of your computer screen and enjoy:

"It's a beautiful day!" The great Bono exclaimed.
"On a stroll I will go before it does rain."



So along with his tidy assistant in tow
The huggable dick donned his shades and said, "GO!"



They walked and they walked, for minutes that day,
Until they were far from the ol' Horseshoe Bay.



The clouds turned gray, the thunder then CrAcKeD!
Bono's lip quivered, "we can't make it back!



"The rain will come soon," he cried in a tizzy.
"And moisture will make my sweet locks go all frizzy!"



The assistant so wanted to calm the dick down
But hopeless and stranded, he only could frown.



Then off in the distance, a set of lights - they did come.
The great Bono thought fast, and he stuck out his thumb!



As the car halted, the dick, he did pray.
Then a voice from the car shouted, "need a lift, eh?"



The assistant and Bono jumped in the back seat
And were welcomed by a furry young pooch at their feet.



The driver asked, "Where ya headed to, guys?"
Then peered in the mirror deep in Bono's eyes.



"My stars, you are Bono - the huggable dick!
I'll take you wherever! Wherever, and quick!"



Bono said, "Thank you for saving my life.
And my hair, my hair thanks you. Thank you and your wife*!



"It's back to Horseshoe Bay we must go.
For tonight, I will perform a most glorious show!



"Tonight. Tonight. Will you come see me play?
You will, I say, you WILL see me play! TODAY!"



The driver said, "Sure, we can come without pup.
For I no longer chase the great Lord Stanley's Cup."



"My God," shouted Bono. "Pro hockey you play?"
"Why, yes. For the Oilers. I'm Gilbert Brule."



Both men were starstruck, as the bromance did brew.
Then Bono exclaimed, "I know what I'll do!



"I'll get you back stage. Back stage at my show.
There you can hang with me and my bro's.



"We'll talk about music and hockey and life.
And rain forests, slaughtered seals, whales cut open by knife.



"The starving Cambodians with their cute little pot bellies.
Then defiantly gorge on peanut butter and jellies!"



Brule was excited to go to the show.
"You bet we can go. We will go, dontchaknow."



The huggable dick was very pleased they accepted.
He doesn't do well whenever rejected.



Later that night, Bono interrupted the show.
To tell the great story, of his savior and bro.



Up on the stage, with a teary eyed swallow.
The band then broke into their hit, "I Will Follow."



The whole stadium danced and sang all the day.
As the huggable dick fought off thoughts that he's gay.




Feel free to read this to your kids tonight.

*"girlfriend" didn't rhyme or flow.

I wish I could take credit for that, but I can't. I only hope that people outside of that email circle enjoy the joke as much as I do.

In which I drive 750 miles to see Throwing Muses

Anyone who has known me for any length of time and has talked music with me knows that I'm a big big fan of Throwing Muses and everything that was born of them.  Kristin Hersh solo, 50 Foot Wave, Belly, Tanya Donelly solo.

I've seen the Muses a number of times, and this is about the most memorable of those experiences.  Saturday May 6, 2000  -- "The Gut Pageant".  This post is something I've been talking about for several weeks, and here it finally is.  Like most of these related posts, this isn't very much about the actual concert.  This is about the experience of getting there.  But just to make it interesting, here's somebody's video recording of "Counting Backwards" from that show:


After the release of their seventh record, Limbo In 1996, the Muses pretty much stopped touring.  Tanya had left the band a few albums ago, Kristin was busy with her solo career, and it looked like it was the end of the road for Throwing Muses.

At some point after the Muses split, I became friends with a guy named Kevin because of Throwing Muses.  Like me, he used to go to every show when they came through North Carolina.  Like me, he would be there early, would be at the front of the stage, and would linger around like a drooling sycophant after the show.  At some point in 1999, Kevin spotted me at a Mojave 3 show and had recognized me from all the Muses shows.  He sent a female friend of his to find out who I was, which made me think that the girl was into me.  Not quite.  As it turned out, Kevin and I lived about two miles away from each other and were into the exact same music, but we didn't know each other at all in Greensboro.   Over the next several years, we went to a lot of shows together, did a lot of stupid stuff together and it was like we were childhood friends.   I got to know his friend Neil, who like the two of us, was a big dork for the Muses.  The three of us didn't see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, but when it came to musical taste, we three were practically identical.

Kevin came to me with some earth-shattering news in the late winter of 2000.  The Muses were getting back together for one night only!  All the original members, all the people who were only in the band for one record.  Everybody.  One night in Cambridge Massachusetts.  May 6.  A Saturday.  We knew that we had to go, no matter what.  We bought five tickets (one for Neil's girlfriend and one for her friend, who incidentally was the one who was sent to investigate me) and planned our trip.  The girls flew up there and booked a really weird hotel room in Boston.  We boys were going to do it the right way: drive.

The show was early.   Something like 6pm on Saturday, which didn't seem like it would require any special planning, but it almost screwed us.

We had planned on leaving Greensboro at 9 in the morning, driving most of, if not all of the way to Boston, booking a hotel somewhere, and taking all of Saturday to be leisurely before going to the show.  Right out of the gates, though, there were problems.  Kevin had to loan some money to one of my neighbors (who I dated for about five weeks), but she wasn't where she was supposed to be when she was supposed to be.  Neil decided to take a half day instead of the whole day off.  We had to wait for him to meet us before we could get on the road, and it ended up being something like 3 pm before we left.

Still, though, there wasn't going to be a problem.  We would drive through the night until we couldn't drive any more.  We would be in NYC or somewhere close to that, we'd sleep for a few hours and our Saturday would still be as easy as pie.

Because we are idiots when the three of us get together, we decided to make the trip interesting by attempting to go the entire trip without saying a word to each other.  We took Kevin's car and he did most of the driving, so Neil and I could write notes to each other.  Kevin had to use some hand gestures or whatever to get his points across.  We did perfectly fine for the first hour because we were listening to music.  When our first cd ended, we made a group decision to listen to The Hot Rock by Sleater-Kinney.  Neil was doing a lot of pantomiming while Kevin and I nodded in agreement.  I'm not sure why I remember that detail.  That got us out of North Carolina, and soon enough we needed to stop for food.  If you're heading north on interstate 85, there aren't any chances to get food or gas between South Hill/Broadnax, Virginia (just north of the NC border and home to the legendary Red Barn) and Petersburg, an hour later.  Although it was a bit early for dinner, we decided to stop anyway, knowing that there wouldn't be another chance for a while.  We all had done an amazing job with our little game.  Nobody had said a word yet.  When we went into the Bojangles, Kevin and I each approached the counter and signaled with fingers that we wanted the #2 combo.  Neil ruined it by speaking aloud that he wanted the #2 combo.   We decided that since Neil broke the  silence, we may as well end the game.



We got back on the road, and we were still planning to go as far as New York before calling it a night.  Up 85 we went, up 95 we went.  Nothing particularly exciting happened in the car during this leg of the trip, but  a few hours later after we had gotten above DC, we were all getting ready for a break.  It was about 9 o'clock or a little after when we approached the exits for Baltimore.  We agreed to take a break there, find a place to grab a beer, stretch our legs a little, and get back on the road.   So we took one of the first downtown exits, which led directly to a parking garage.

Again, because we are idiots, we hatched a ridiculous plan before we got out of the car.  We decided that we would pretend to be English exchange students studying ornithology at NC State.  We would talk in fake British accents just to try to attract girls.  Even though none of us knows much about birds, we guessed correctly that nobody would question us about that if it came up.  After contemplating fake names like Nigel, Jeremy and Morris, we decided that our real names were just as good.  We elaborately decided that we didn't know each other in Britain but had become fast friends in America.  We were all from different towns, which we decided upon.  We were all supporters of different "football" teams, which we decided upon.  None of us knows anything about soccer, but we knew the names of some of the premier league teams, and we each picked one that wasn't Manchester United.  Kevin was for Arsenal, I was for Leeds and Neil was for West Ham.  There was a problem, though.  Kevin has a really good fake British accent.  I do not.  However, I have the vocabulary to make up for it.  Neil has a good fake accent, but not as good as Kevin's.

As we walked out of the garage, we were immediately in a sea of people in the streets.  They were all walking around with huge plastic cups of beer.  We had no idea what was going on for a couple of minutes, until one of us spotted a sign at one of the bars announcing that it was Cinco de Mayo.  It hadn't occurred to us.  At all.

Our plan to have "one beer" went by the wayside pretty quickly.  We had a few of the really ridiculously big beers, and we approached every woman we were attracted to.  It's not the style of any of us to do that, but we weren't Neil from Raleigh and Kevin and David from Greensboro.  We were Neil, Kevin and David from the UK.  The first time we came upon a group of girls, Kevin and I stuck to the script, but Neil got scared at the last second.  He told them that he was a geologist.  And in real life, he is a geologist.  Every girl we talked to said she was studying law at the University of Maryland.  Who knows how many of them actually were studying law and how many were playing a game with us, just as we were with them.

Eventually, we found a group of people who we ended up spending a few hours with.  A few girls and a few guys as well.  It was our dumb luck that the girls weren't really into us, but the dudes freaking loved us.  We went on and on about our "football" teams, and, in character, we started really bickering with each other.  Never mind that none of us could name a single player on the team that we allegedly supported.  We made stuff up, and it didn't matter.  These guys gobbled it up hook line and sinker.  While Kevin used his perfect fake accent, I used every opportunity to throw in some of the lingo.  It wasn't a soccer field.  It was "the pitch".  It wasn't raining heavily.  It was "a massive rain storm".  I found a way to talk about how I disliked aubergine (eggplant).  I told one of the guys that I "fancied" his little friend and couldn't remember her name.  I kept saying things like "Are you taking the piss, mate?" (are you kidding me?).  I wondered if they had "packets of crisps" (potato chips) behind the bar because I had only had a snack at "half six" (5:30) and was feeling peckish.   That kind of thing.  And it was working because as the night wore on, these kids loved us even more.  And one of the girls started taking a serious shine to Kevin.

At some point, we were tired of being in character and needed a break.  We told the girls that we'd been in the states long enough to have developed pretty good "fake American accents".  They asked us to show them off, and we talked in our real voices for a few minutes.  They said that they didn't buy our "fake American accents" because they were over-the-top.  Also, at some point, one of the girls challenged Neil.  It was fine that Kevin and I were ornithologists, but they didn't believe him.  Fortunately, as I said, he really is a geologist, so he was able to answer every question with more detail than she wanted.

As I said, one of the girls really took a shine to Kevin, and it was way beyond the point of continuing our road trip.  We were too drunk and too tired to drive anymore.  Despite a lot of objection, Kevin booked two hotel rooms at a swanky hotel.  One for himself and the girl.  One for me and Neil.  This is where our bickering went into top gear.  "Kevin, we're going to miss the fu'ing show"  "No, we're not going to miss the show".  And that went back and forth a bunch of times.  Anyway, Neil and I went to our room, where we were able to get out of character, but Kevin took the girl and had to stay in character.  All night long.

In the morning, Neil and I were ready to go and we went to get Kevin from his room.  We didn't even bother getting back into character when he answered the door.  "We need to leave now".  That was basically the end of that.  Later on in the trip, Kevin called the girl and confessed that none of us was English but that it was nice to meet her and all that.

The three of us were all hung over, we were all tired, we were all cranky.  This led to a near-brawl when we stopped to get breakfast on the road.  Cooler heads prevailed, and we can laugh about it now, but it wasn't much fun in the moment.

A few hours later, we realized that we were really pressed for time.  I don't remember if we had bothered to take showers in the morning, but we were all feeling pretty nasty.  I remember this because we had made some plan to stop somewhere to "freshen up" and brush our teeth and things like that.  We found out, though, that the gas stations (at least the ones we stopped at) didn't have public restrooms.  This kinda sucked, and it resulted in one of us using an empty gatorade bottle as a toilet while the car was in motion.  The piss bottle became a source of much comedy for the rest of the drive.  We got to Cambridge with about 45 minutes to spare.  We found a place to eat, and they had a public toilet, but no sink.   We couldn't brush our teeth and we couldn't wash our hands or faces.

And then I remembered the wet-naps.  It was a glorious revelation.  I had enough of them for the three of us to have two each.  We "washed" our hands and our faces.  We went back to the car and brushed our teeth without water.   I still can't remember why it was such a big deal, but like I said, I think we all went without showers and bathroom in the morning.

We rushed to the Middle East Club, found our way to the downstairs part and got in just a few minutes before the show started.  They had booked the show as a special engagement, and the opening act was a "secret special guest".  It turned out to be Bob Mould.  Kevin and Neil didn't care so much about that, but I was really excited.  I was a big fan of Sugar and the Bob Mould solo stuff.  Not so much Husker Du, to be honest.  He was great, but really, nobody was there to see Bob.

It was awesome to see the old band back together.  It had been almost ten years since Kristin and Tanya played publicly together, and it was like they had never been apart.  I didn't realize it at first, but Tanya was pregnant.  In fact, I remember commenting to Kevin, "Tanya doesn't look so great.  She's gotten chunky".  Then, she mentioned her pregnancy during the show, and it made much more sense.  As an aside, that baby's fetal heartbeat can be heart on the first track, "Life is But a Dream", on Tanya's second solo record -- beautysleep (2002).

The show was fantastic.  We were all in some part of heaven.  Since it was an early show, and we didn't know about the before and after festivities, we thought we'd try to go out in Cambridge or Boston.  Even though it wasn't even 10:00, none of the bars would let us in.  Really exclusive bars, I guess.  So we went to hang out with the girls at their hotel for a little bit, then we hit the road.

At some point, in that hotel, Neil made a hilarious joke about a fireman coming to the rescue of a burning elevator car, but it won't tell well in this format.

We boys got back on the road for a few hours, slept in one room of a cheap motel, then hit the road in the morning.  Nothing overly eventful on the drive home.  There were a lot of really offensive jokes of racist, sexist, ageist and religious nature.

We had to make an emergency stop on the shoulder of the Jersey Turnpike because one of us (me) thought he had sharted.  It was, for the record, a false alarm.

It was a really great trip.  Like the trip to see the Sundays, this was much more about the road trip than the concert.  That's not to take anything away from the concert itself.  It's just that the concert was only a few hours whereas the roadtrip was 28 hours round trip.  Lots of laughs.  Lots of tears.  Lots of foul odors.  And it's something that Kevin and I still talk about.

A couple of years later, there was another Gut Pageant, and Kevin went to that, but I couldn't go.  It was in San Francisco, and I didn't have the means to book airfare and take the necessary four days off.

Kristin is still super active.  She's got her solo stuff going full steam.  She's got 50 Foot Wave going full steam.  She's working on a new Muses record.  The first one in eight years.  It's just Kristin, Dave and Bernard these days, but that's been the core group ever since Tanya left anyway.   I would imagine that they'll tour, and I would imagine that I'll be going to see them.  I would count on it, in fact, if they come anywhere close by.

Two days of Sundays

I've recently started writing about some of my concert experiences that were most memorable for me, and it looks like this might turn out to be a series of many parts.  Although I had planned to write about something else, I've had a request to detail the events of February 19 and 20, 1993.  A crew of my buddies and I saw The SUNDAYS on consecutive nights and went on a pretty memorable road trip to make it all happen. 

We were all in school at Guilford College, all radio station geeks and all really into The Sundays (I never cared for that whole all-caps thing they had).  When we saw that they were coming to the Cat's Cradle on February 19, it was a no-brainer.  They were among our favorite bands.  It was a Friday.  We were college kids.  On that night, I think it was Tim, Christian, Reid and myself.

I think I was the only one of our lot who was into Luna, who was opening for the Sundays on that tour.  I was really familiar with their first record Lunapark, and of course their single from that record "Slash Your Tires".   Sadly, I did not know at that time that Luna frontman Dean Wareham had come out of Galaxie 500.  Nonetheless, I was into this show from start to finish.  Even though I was into both bands, the obvious highlight of the show wasn't those four dudes.  It was The Sundays.  More specifically, it was the privilege of seeing a goddess named Harriet Wheeler lead that band.

Luna played a great opening set, and I was especially impressed by their cover of the Beat Happening song "Indian Summer".  That was the last song of their set, and I think that the twenty minutes or so between their breakdown and when The Sundays finally took the stage felt like an eternity.  While we were all there certainly because we loved the music, every dude in the room was really excited about seeing Harriet.

And she was stunning.  As hot as twelve suns.  I remember at some point very early in the show -- maybe in the break between the first two songs -- somebody in the crowd shouted out:

         "Harriet, you're the spawn of Aphrodite!"


which is undeniably a hilarious thing to shout out at a concert.  She wore monitors in her ears and didn't even notice, but guitarist David Gavurin sure did.  He dropped his pick, chuckled a little bit and then they got back into the next song.

The set was absolutely incredible.  As stunningly beautiful as Harriet was, her band was equally amazing on stage.  Years later, I talked to other people who were at that show and they confessed to getting teary-eyed.  This show remains one of my all-time favorites.  I was unbelievably happy during and after the show.  It was also the precursor for a really amazing road trip and another show the next night. 

After the show, my lot decided that we wanted to hang around and meet the band.  Most bands, after a show, will hang around in the broom closet they call a "dressing room" at the Cradle, or in the hallway or whatever,  making themselves somewhat available to the audience.  The Sundays, however, went straight out the back door (which is now the front door (EDIT: April 2012 -- it's now exclusively the load-in/out door) and onto their bus.  My friends and I were told by their tour manager, who was this big lummox named Scott, that they weren't allowing anybody on the bus and that they weren't meeting any fans.  It's a mystery why I can still remember that guy's name after 18 years.  Slightly dejected, but still riding the high from the show, we headed back to school.

Sometime that night, somebody came up with what turned out to be one of the most brilliant ideas ever.  I have to assume that it was Reid who came up with it.  Reid has an uncle who was living in Norfolk Virginia, working for one of the big concert promotion companies.  Norfolk was the next stop on The Sundays' tour.  Not knowing for sure if any of the pieces would fit together, Reid called his uncle who said that yes, his company was promoting that show.  Yes, he could get us into the show.  And on top of that, he could get us backstage.  We hadn't even asked for that, but there it was!   We rallied our troops early in the morning and packed two cars full of guys for a trip to Norfolk.  I feel like I'm forgetting a major participant, but I  remember for sure that it was Reid, Christian, Alex, Tim and myself.  I'm sure that there was one more person or we wouldn't have taken two cars, but I can't remember that detail.  And yet I can remember Scott's name.    

After a fun-filled road trip, we got to Reid's uncle's house sometime in the early afternoon.  We played some basketball and drank some beer (none of us were of legal drinking age) and relaxed a bit.  The whole crew of us went out to dinner on Reid's uncle's dime, and he didn't know any of us from Adam.  We spent the night in his house, and all he knew about us was that we were friends of his nephew.  And of course we got guestlisted and backstage passes.  All for nothing.  It was amazing enough that it was happening, and even better that Reid's uncle did it all out of the kindness of his heart.

The dinner that we had, by the way, included freshly caught raw oysters.  That was the first time, and it remains the only time that I've ever eaten raw oysters.  Spotting my trepidation, Reid's uncle informed me that I haven't lived until I've eaten raw oysters.  I ate quite a few, and I did like them, but I have never eaten them again.

The show was a place called The Boathouse in Norfolk.  I think it might have shut down a few years ago.  I might be making this bit up, but something in my memory tells me that the club had a chain link fence right down the middle to separate the over- and under-21 folks.  I'm making that up, right?

The show was identical to the show the night before.  Amazing.  The set list might have even been exactly the same.  It didn't matter.   It was phenomenal.

After being pointed in the direction of the backstage area, we were told to wait for a little bit before going in.  A girl who couldn't have been more than 15 years old spotted our backstage passes and handed one of our lot a package and said that we had to deliver it to Dean Wareham.

This is where it gets weird.  

The "package" was a hand-written letter on loose-leaf notebook paper that was, for some reason, wrapped around a carrot and held together with a piece of string.  This was a really strange thing, but we decided to oblige.  Once we got in the room, we found Dean, explained the situation and handed him the package.  He opened the letter and started reading.  It was, I think, two pages, but Dean didn't even read ten percent of it.  It opened with "I listen to your music every night while I'm in bed.  Your songs come to me while I'm sleeping", at which point the carrot became a really nasty thing.   He dropped the carrot and didn't say anything else.

Although we were all radio geeks and we would later conduct dozens of interviews with bands, none of us had at that point.  We didn't know what we were supposed to do in the backstage area.  We didn't even know if other people would be there.  It turned out, there were a couple of girls who had traveled from England to follow the Sundays for at least the first bit of their North American tour.  There was a 12-year old boy who had won the ticket/backstage pass on a radio station contest.  He was learning to play the drums because he loved the Sundays.  His mother embarrassed him a little bit, but after a while, he was okay.

We didn't want to hassle the band, but we definitely wanted to meet them, so we were just hanging out by ourselves waiting for a good moment.  At some point, before any of us were ready, David Gavurin walked up to me and commented on the t-shirt I was wearing.  "Throwing Muses?!  Fucking brilliant!"   Right away, we were friends.  After that ice was broken, we all hung out for a couple of hours until the band called it a night.

At some point during the night, one of us asked David about the "Spawn of Aphrodite" incident, and this became a little joke for the rest of the night. 

I had the cd booklet of Blind signed by the band, and if you enlarge the photo on the right, you can see that David Gavurin signed it to: "David.  Spawn of Aphrodite" and from: "David (Venus)".  The other signatures are "Paul (Penus)" -- that's his misspelling, not mine, "Harriet (Anus) haha" and the simple "Patrick".

I took a bunch of pictures of the band, but none of me with the band.  We were actually told expressly that they would not allow any pictures to be taken of a fan alone with Harriet.  That was fair enough, and I respected that, but I took it too far by forgetting to get one of me with the whole band.  Or any of the guys with the whole band.

Up to then, that was probably the coolest thing that had ever happened to me.  I was floating on air for a couple of weeks, and I would often search for an excuse to tell and re-tell the story.  It's been a really long time since I've told it.  

The time I showed up a little early for Mogwai

I've mentioned before that I used to go to a lot of concerts and that I used to make a point to show up very early. This is about one of the times that I showed up crazily early. I guess I was pretty excited about going to see Mogwai.  Too excited.

I'm not able to pinpoint the exact date of the show, but I know that it was a Thursday. By my best recollection, it was the spring of 2000. I used to keep old Cat's Cradle schedules for this precise reason. I used to say that there would be a day, maybe eleven years down the road when I would need to know the exact date of a show I went to and who was opening and who played the nights before and after. Unfortunately, those schedules are long gone now, but I can say with about 91% certainty that it was spring 2000.

I had just gotten into Mogwai and got really pumped up about going to see them play. Maybe it's because I was going to a lot of shows back then (and had more opportunity to have my mind blown). Maybe I was more impressionable. Maybe the late nineties really were a "golden age" of indie rock and of live performance. I don't know, but it seems like a lot of the best shows I've ever been to came from a five- or six- year window just after I got out of college. I was hoping that this show was going to be one to add to that list.

I was looking forward to this show for months. I don't think I can possibly iterate the amount of anticipation I was feeling. So when Thursday rolled around, I did my normal routine of leaving town crazily early to ensure that I was the FIRST person in after they opened the doors. To this day, I still don't know why I thought it was so important to me to do that, but that was how I used to roll.

I arrived to the Cat's Cradle and they hadn't yet opened the door, so I stood around in the parking lot waiting. And waiting. As the minutes passed, other people started to show up in the parking lot and they didn't look like they were Mogwai fans. They were straight-up Rasta. Whatever, I thought. I guessed that Mogwai's appeal wasn't just to pasty white kids, and I didn't think much of it. Their numbers started to grow and I thought that it was strange that these guys were queueing up for Mogwai, but still didn't think a whole lot of it. Then some other Rasta fellows started to load some gear into the club. I thought that this was a really strange bill, with a reggae band opening for a post-rock band, but it wasn't my place to judge.

I'm not into reggae at all. For maybe about two weeks when I was in the eleventh grade, I thought that I was, but it didn't stick. Over the years, my tolerance threshold for reggae has gotten lower, and it wasn't really all that high back then, but I would have put up with 30 minutes or so from an opening act.

Then another reggae group started to load in their gear and I started to think that something was wrong. Too embarrassed to ask anyone, I casually strolled over to the front window of the club, whistling that tune that you whistle when you're trying to look like you're casually minding your own business. I pretended to be curious about the upcoming shows, but really I was making sure that I hadn't botched the date of the show. I didn't see a main calendar, so I just glanced over the placards. Oh look! Guided by Voices! I'll have to go to that. The Wedding Present? Count me in! Stereolab? Wouldn't miss it! And there was the poster for the Mogwai show. The show was on a Thursday, and there I was on Thursday.

A week early.

I was a little embarrassed and actually angry. Angry at myself for being a complete imbecile. Angry at the situation. Angry that I didn't like reggae.   A normal person would have shaken it off, gone to get some dinner and found some way to make the best of an undeniably funny situation. I could have called a friend or two and met them for drinks. I could have gone on my own for drinks. I could have found something -- anything -- to do in Chapel Hill. Instead, I stomped back to my car and drove straight to Greensboro.

I came back for the show on the correct date,  but with the wind already taken out of my sails.  After I had committed an error that led to anitclimax, I couldn't rebuild the anticipation.  I was already defeated, so I didn't get charged up.  Maybe it was my blasé attitude going into it, but  I can't say that I remember anything about the show. Except that I bought a cd copy of Ten Rapid from the merch desk.  It's fair to say that although I didn't have a lousy time, I didn't have my socks knocked off.  And now I remember my first (and only) Mogwai show not because of anything they did on stage but because of my own miscue.

To this day, whether it's a concert or a hockey game or an airplane trip or a play or what have you, I always check the tickets twice just before I leave the house. Once to make sure I've got them and once to make sure I've got the time and date right. And then I check them again. And then, later, I check them again.  And just before I enter the venue, I check them again. 

From Montreal, (or Alabama, or Wherever) with Love: Part II -- 03.08.2003

I recently told a story to a new circle of friends about my first exposure to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, how I came to love that band and how this eventually led to a bizarre trip to Athens, Georgia.  I've been urged by them to retell the story in greater detail, so it gives me the perfect excuse to be more active on this page.
The first part of the story, which I wrote here a couple of days ago, deals with the details of the very first time I ever heard GY!BE, which was when I blindly went to see them perform on my 28th birthday.

The second part of the story involves an internet romance, an epic ice storm, a massive power outage and my second and only other time seeing them perform.  Again, it isn't the concert, but rather the events surrounding it that make the story worth telling.   The date of the show was March 8, 2003, but there's quite a bit of backstory that has to be told, so I have to go back about a year.

In the spring of 2002, I decided to give internet dating a try, and I had a couple of first dates this way, but nothing special.  Sometime in the summer of that year, a girl named Jessica initiated contact with me through the dating service.  She was from Alabama, and I didn't think anything other than a friendship would come out of that.  Over the next several weeks, we exchanged a lot of emails and phone calls, and it was pretty cool.  Again, I didn't really think that anything was going on, but she suggested that we meet in person.  She pointed out that it was, after all, a dating site that brought us together and we should treat it as such.  We knew that we had very similar taste in music, and the best way would be to get together for a concert experience.

We finally decided that Jessica was going to drive up here in early December and we would hang out for a week, during which we would go to an Aimee Mann concert in Durham on December 4.  This was not, incidentally, the first time in my life that I'd convinced a young woman who I'd never met in person to travel a great distance to spend a week with me.  But that's another story.   

She arrived here on Tuesday the 3rd and was going to stay until the 11th.  Being the gentleman that I sometimes am, I offered her my bedroom while I slept on the couch.  For the first night anyway.  I had to work the next day, and she slept for most of the day.  We were supposed to go to the Aimee Mann show, but a snow and ice storm moved in pretty quickly and made travel impossible.  If I remember correctly, the interstate highways were shut down due to significant icing.  About three inches of snow fell and was topped by almost an inch of ice.  We didn't go to the show, and as it turned out, they didn't offer refunds.  We ended up getting a ride from my place to my friend Kari's, where we all played board games, ate dinner and had drinks until the wee hours.

Overnight Wednesday, as the accumulated ice caused tree limbs and power lines to fall, over a million North Carolnians lost power.  I was one of the hardest hit.  Although I have a gas furnace, it needs electricity to pump the heat, and that wasn't happening.  My water, but not my stove, is gas-powered, so we were able to have hot showers and that's about it.  The road conditions improved rapidly, and we were able to get around on Thursday, but my electricity wouldn't be restored for ten days.  That's what I mean when I say that I was one of the hardest hit.  It reminded me of Hurricane Hugo in September of 1989, when my family was without electricity for 14 days.  There's a big difference, though in being without power when it's 60 degrees outside and when it's 15 degrees.

On Thursday, we stayed at another friend's place so we could be warm, but we decided that we needed some ...um..  privacy, so we moved out in the morning.  Every hotel room in town was booked, so we had no choice but to go back to my place.  I had to go to work, and I'm not sure what Jessica did during the day, but we went to a Hurricanes game (a 2-0 shutout loss at the hands of Roberto Luongo and the Florida Panthers) that night, then came back to my icy apartment.

Saturday, by my memory, was a warmer day and again, the conditions improved.  This gave false hope that power would be restored, but it wasn't.  We went to a movie that afternoon.  She was an artist and wanted to see the Frida Kahlo biopic, so that was it.  After that, a bunch of driving around.  As luck had it, Matt Pond, PA was playing a in-store show here in Greensboro, so we went to that, then out for a few drinks, then back to my arctic apartment.

In the morning, Jessica feigned some family emergency and said that she had to cut her visit four days short.  I knew that the real reason was that it was just too damned cold in my icebox, but there's nothing I could do about that.  I felt awful that this was supposed to be a week of romance and good times, but the ice storm and the power outage weren't things that I could do anything about.  I sort of assumed that we would never see each other again.  We got along fairly well and there were some minor sparks, but with all the other factors, it was kind of a disaster.

We continued our telephone and email relationship and at some point, there was some talk of her moving here to go to graduate school in Greensboro.  Once she started talking about that, I started to think about our "relationship" as something a little more serious.

And now, we're finally to "the story".  Jessica and I planned to have another "date" at a neutral site.  We decided to go to see GY!BE play at the 40 Watt club in Athens, Georgia.  This meant a five-hour drive for me and about a two-hour drive for her.  Not knowing the town of Athens at all, I bought the tickets to the show and booked a hotel room at a brand-name hotel that was pretty close to the club.  As it turned out, the hotel was about two blocks away from the club and was probably the worst hotel in the national chain.  It was the kind of "hotel" where people live.  The kind of place where you have to check on your car about once every 15 minutes.  The type of place where the pizza guy won't deliver after the sun goes down.  I couldn't have known this when I booked the room.  I simply trusted the name brand, even if the brand wasn't top-tier.  I knew not to expect something like the Westin, but I was expecting it to be better than the crack motel that it was.

The show was on Saturday March 8, 2003, and we decided to get to Athens a day early.  She arrived a little before I did, and was sleeping when I got there.  I think it was spring break for UGA, because there weren't many kids out and about on that Friday night, but we bounced around from one bar to the next, finally ending up in some shady below-street bar where a bad local band was playing badly. 

Saturday afternoon, we walked around a lot and found it to be a cool little town.  One bizarre moment occurred when we were out at lunch and a girl approached me and named the place where I worked in Greensboro.  I had never seen the girl before, or at least I didn't recognize her, but she obviously knew me.  It made me feel really weird.

Jessica and I had both heard that the guys in GY!BE didn't like giving interviews and didn't like photography at their shows.  I think when I bought the tickets, the website said something about "no photography", but we sort of assumed that this meant "no professional photography".   Jessica, being a  photographer, had a pretty nice camera and tried to take it into the club with her.  She got it through the door, but there were signs posted all over the place indicating that the band was quite serious about not allowing photography.  She was asked to leave, or at least to get rid of the camera.  Since our hotel was just around the corner, we took the camera back and got back to the club in plenty of time for the show.

My memory isn't perfect, but I think that it was Black Dice who opened for GY!BE.  I didn't care for them then, and I haven't warmed up to them since then.  I didn't let it ruin our night, though.

While the show in Chapel Hill on my 28th birthday was sparsely attended, this one was packed.  We weren't able to get very close to the stage, and it was tough to get drinks, but we didn't let that ruin our night, either.  I was really jealous of Jessica, because she was getting to see them for the first time.  You don't get that thrill twice.  They were still really amazing the second time, but there's still something special about the first time.  And in my case, my first time seeing them was my first time hearing them, so it was even more amazing to me.  Again, according to setlist.fm, they played a six-song set and a one-song encore.  Included in this was two of the "new" songs from Yanqui U.X.O., which wouldn't be released until the autumn of that year.

I don't remember any weird goings-on on after the show on Saturday night, but I do remember a whole lot of awkwardness in the morning on Sunday.  I couldn't wait to get on the road and get back home.  I think both of us reached a point where it was just over between us.   

I never saw Jessica (or GY!BE) again.  For that matter, I never talked to her again.  A couple of weeks later, I found myself reunited with an old girlfriend and I had a good thing going there for a while until I managed to fuck that up a year later.

From Montreal, (or Alabama, or Wherever) with Love: Part I -- 10.03.1999

We all have a handful of events in our lives that stand out in our memories.  Of course there's the big stuff like weddings and births and deaths in our families.  September 11.  I'm not talking about those.  I'm talking about littler things.  Like the way we remember where we were and what we were doing the fist time we heard a certain record, or a certain band.  The first time we laid eyes on a person who would later become our spouse.  The person who introduced us to our favorite author and which book it was that they lent us.  That kind of thing.

This is about one of those moments.  This is about the first time I laid ears on Montréal post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor.  October 3, 1999.  Although I definitely would have heard about them eventually, this is about how I came upon them on my own, by chance, and how they would eventually become one of my favorite bands.  In part II, this is also about a crazy adventure involving an internet date, a huge ice storm, a shady motel and a road trip to see GYBE play.  Act one of this story isn't quite as cinematic, though. 

Back in the late 1990s,  I used to go to a lot of concerts regardless of the night of the week.  If there was a band that I was even remotely interested in, I would drive from Greensboro to Chapel Hill to see them, often getting there hours before the doors opened.  I'd be there at sound check, then I'd go mull around the town for a few hours before returning to the club to be the first one to secure a spot at the front of the stage.

I made an acquaintance who did the same thing as I did for the same shows. Dozens of shows, we'd both be there in the front row.  We'd both be there trying to snag the set list off the monitors after the show.  We never really became friends, but eventually, we started to trade stories about bands we'd seen.  Somehow, this guy convinced me to do something he'd been doing for years.  He told me that he always went to a show on his birthday, and that he often went, on his birthday, to see bands that he'd never heard of.  Sometimes it worked out well, but most times, he said, it didn't.  Still, it was a tradition that he'd been keeping for several years, and he urged me to try. 

It was 1999, and there was a show on my birthday at the Cat's Cradle.  It was a band I'd never heard of, but I was willing to give it a shot.  Just for something to do.  At the time, I knew absolutely nothing about Godspeed You! Black Emperor (GY!BE)  (or, as they were known back then, GYBE!) other than that they were not a reggae band.  I took a shot in the dark and bought a ticket.  Back in those days, you had to buy hard tickets to things, or phone in an order and get on the list.  So I picked up a hard ticket one time when I was in Chapel Hill for something else.  In those days, we didn't have the kinds of resources available to us that we have now, so it was a little more difficult to check out a band.  I didn't even own a computer back then.

Sure, I could have gone to the BBs record store (RIP) and previewed a copy of F♯ A♯ ∞, but I think there was something in me that wanted it to remain a mystery.  I wanted, for the thrill of it, to go in there completely blind.  It's a high risk-high reward proposition, but I was willing to go for it.

It turned out that my friends Steve and Amy were getting married to each other two days before that show, at the beautiful Grove Park Inn in Asheville NC.  Their wedding was on Friday night, and my birthday (and the GYBE show) was on Sunday.  It was perfect.  The wedding was beautiful, and I got to hang out with a bunch of my friends all together in one place for the first time since we all graduated college five years earlier.

If I'm honest, I don't remember much about Saturday.  I remember the lot of us (probably about 15 in all) going to some hippie breakfast place to eat some granola and whole grain pancakes.  In those days, it was impossible to find a piece of bacon or sausage links in Asheville,so I'm sure I also "enjoyed" some tofu or some shit like that.  I remember that there was some smelly hippie playing folk music on his acoustic guitar.  I guess it was "open mic morning" or something.  At some point, he asked if there were any requests from the "crowd", and my friend Doug, without missing a beat, uttered "How about the sound of silence?".  He wasn't requesting the Simon&Garfunkle song.  He wanted actual silence.  We all did, since we were a bit hung over.  That's what I remember about Saturday.  This isn't about Saturday, though.  This is about Sunday.

On Sunday morning, we all went our different ways.  In a pretty extreme fashion.  Most of us just went home.  The aforementioned Doug drove our friend Hans to International Falls, Minnesota.   This is technically quite a bit north of the actual headwaters of the Mississippi River, but this is the spot that Hans and other folks choose as the launching point for a kayak voyage on the mighty river.  Hans wanted to become the next person to kayak the entire length of the Mississippi River solo.   For the record, he didn't make it.   He switched to a bicycle somewhere near Winona Minnesota and planned to make the rest of the trip on two wheels.   For the record, that didn't work, either.

I hopped into my 1989 Honda Accord and drove back home for a few hours.  I think I did anyway. I think that I left Asheville in the mid-morning and went home for a few hours before going to Chapel Hill that night.  There's some slight possibility that I went straight from Asheville to Chapel Hill, but I'm pretty sure that I made a pit stop at the house first.  

As I said, I didn't know the first thing about GYBE, but I made sure to get there early.  I don't recall who was the opening act, and it really isn't important.  When Godspeed hit the stage with their film projectors and their eight (or so) band members, I was definitely intrigued.  It didn't take long for that sense of intrigue to turn into awe.  This is one of only a few concerts in my life when I have been absolutely gobsmacked.  This is a brilliant turn of speech that we don't use in the United States, but it means, essentially, "blown away".

My memory isn't perfect, and it was my very first exposure to the band, so I can't depend on my memory here.  According to setlist.fm, they opened with "Broken Windows, Locks of Love, part III", which is only one part of the first song from the first disc of Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennae to Heaven.  That record hadn't been released yet, so almost everyone in the crowd was hearing it for the first time.  However, I can safely say that I was absolutely and completely gobsmacked within the first minute, and I knew that I'd made an excellent choice to come see this band.  By the end of the nine minute song sequence, I could barely even breathe.  There have been maybe three concert experiences that put me into this state of mind and functionality.  It was, simply put, amazing.

When the show ended, some 90 minutes (or so) later, I was in a daze.  Again, I can only remember two other shows that have left me in a daze.  I've been impressed, even amazed by a bunch of live shows, but only a precious few have taken my breath away.  I marched over to the merch table and bought a cd of  F♯ A♯ ∞, and listened to that on the drive home.  And then probably about three times in a row that night.  I became a huge fan, immediately. Unlike dozens of bands over the years, this wasn't a "flavour of the moment".  They remain, to this day, a favorite band of mine.

I wouldn't learn until much later that the band valued its privacy the way that those hippies in Asheville value their patchouli.  It didn't matter to me on this night, but it would come into play the next time I saw them perform, three and a half years later. 

Part II of this will detail a crazy road trip to Athens, GA in March of 2003, where I saw Godspeed for the second time.  I haven't seen them since, and I can't imagine that I would be able to spin a fictional tale crazier than the one that actually happened.  Hopefully, I'll get it up and running on Thursday.  

Our favorite 15 Non-Canadian albums of 2010

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a list of my favorite 15 Canadian albums of 2010. I had a pool of about 23 new releases in my library to work from, so it wasn't too difficult to narrow it down to 15. The non-Canadian list was tougher I have about 40 in that pool of new releases. A couple were added to the pool at the very last minute, and one even snuck into the top 15 with a late entry. Some of the ones that didn't make the final cut will come as a surprise or even a shock, but it is what it is. This is the stuff that was playing in heavy rotation at my house in 2010.

Sometime in the very near future, I'll compile a composite top 15. I'll also do a quick write-up about some of the omissions (cough, cough, Sufjan Stevens, cough) from both lists.

So let's cut to the chase

15. Beach Fossils -- "Beach Fossils"
Not quite surf-rock. Not quite indie-pop. Not quite dream-pop. Not quite any of these, but close enough to draw comparisons to Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet. And with enough low-fi street cred to make Robert Pollard blush. I'm not sure what draws me so much to this Brooklyn band, but this is one of those records that grabbed me with the first 15 seconds of the first song on the album. Judging from the youtubes of these guys' live performances, nobody has told them that they're not from Manchester and it isn't 1991 anymore. Still, they're clocking in at #15. Here's "Sometimes", which is the first song from the album:


14. Glasser -- "Ring"
This isn't so much a band as it is one woman with a laptop, a drum machine and a bunch of synths. Cameron Mesirow is American and that's all I know about her. Because of the diversity of influence, one could just as easily classify this as "world music", "electronica", or any mashup of the words "dream", "synth", "goth", "pop" and "weird". This woman does some seriously amazing things with her voice, and that's what makes me like this more than I probably should. That and the fact that there's quite a bit of vibraphone on the record. Here's the video for "Mirrorage":


13. School of Seven Bells -- "Disconnect from Desire"
This is the second record from this NYC three-piece, and it was my introduction to them. It's unfortunate that people often describe them as "like My Bloody Valentine" because I don't get that at all. When I listened to this record all the way through the first time, I got the impression that it was heavily influenced by "Dopplegänger" by Curve. This band is fronted by identical twin sisters, and one of them cuts her hair like Hope Sandoval from Mazzy Star. She has apparently left the band and I don't know what their future holds. The standout tracks "Babelonia", "I L U" and "Windstorm" all come from what would be side A of the album, but the whole thing is really good. This video for "I L U" is really steamy:


12. Tamaryn -- "The Waves"

The recurring theme in this non-Canadian list, so far, is "it sounds like a new record that I loved in 1992", and this one is no different. In a lot of ways, this record reminds me of "Blow" by English dream-pop band Swallow. On paper, Tamaryn is pretty much a one-woman show, but has a full band on tour. She's New Zealender by birth and living in San Francisco by choice. This is her first record, and it's super-dreamy and super-awesome. The vocals are so washed out that it's almost impossible to tell what's going on lyrically, but it doesn't matter. There's a lot to like on this album, and one of my favorites is the song "Sandstone":


11. Peter Wolf Crier -- "Inter-Be"
This Minnesota two-piece is 2010's answer to Bon Iver. I don't have a parallel for this. Almost, though. In all the live videos I've seen, frontman Peter Pisano's voice sounds like Jeff Buckley's. And really, the music isn't that much different than what Buckley would have done. I'm not sure why the vocals are treated differently in production, but he doesn't sound like Buckley on the album.
Here's a pretty great live performance from South by Southwest. It's "You're So High", one of the standout tracks.


10. Sharon Van Etten -- "Epic"
This one snuck in the back door. I only got it on December 30, but it warranted multiple listenings right away and after it had time to percolate in my head, it muscled its way onto the big board. This is her second record, and it clocks in at a tidy 32 minutes and seven songs. By most standards, it barely qualifies it as an "album", but there's no reason to have a semantics debate about this extraordinary recording. She says that these songs, which are chiefly about some form of heartache, are written from experience, and were penned as if they were letters. She sounds a bit like Chan Marshall from Cat Power, and there's not much of a stylistic difference. This New Yorker, though, seems much more comfortable in her own skin. And she's okay with "sad".
Here's my favorite song on the record, "One Day", which is one of my very  favorite songs of the year.


9. Thrushes -- "Night Falls"
We're back to the 1992-ish theme with this one. These Baltimore shoe-gazers rocked my world with their first album a couple of years ago, and they got stronger with this, their second. This reminds me so much of Velocity Girl, with the heavily effected guitars and Phil Spector-esque production. Somehow, through the wall of sound, the vocals of Anna Conner take center stage. Here's the video for "Crystals".


8. Versus -- "On the Ones and Threes"
This one dropped on me like a bomb. I had no idea that, after a ten year break, this NYC indie rock juggernaut was putting out a new record. As the band members have entered their 40s and have families and all that stuff, they never quit making music. They just quit making it together. Until now. I didn't get to see them when they played in support of the album, and they weren't on the Unrest reunion show down here, but it's just great to know that they can still crank out great music. It's still all about the incendiary guitars and the great harmonies of Fontaine Toups and Richard Baluyut.
Sadly there aren't any decent quality videos of the new stuff, so here's a little interview they did for ABC News about the new record:


7. Bettie Serveert -- "Pharmacy of Love"
This is the seventh proper album in the Betties' discography and the first in six years for the Dutch indie-rock quartet. Not only was the wait worth it, but they made up for the previous LP, which was a mild disappointment. They've been making records for 18 years and they've had nine different drummers, but the core of Carol van Dyk, Peter Visser and Herman Bunskoeke has stayed intact. As much as I love this record, I love their live shows even more. I saw them again in the fall and I was completely awestruck. And as a nice bonus, the audience was entirely made up of people my age. The 9.5 minute "Calling" is my favorite song on the album, and while it takes a while to get off the ground, once it does, it's a dizzying song. The Betties don't "sound like" anybody. If you don't know them, you should. Here's another of the fantastic new songs "Deny All". For fun, look out for Peter rocking a Cat's Cradle tee-shirt in the video.


6. The Corin Tucker Band -- "1,000 Years"
The Sleater-Kinney frontwoman is out on her own (sort of), and made an amazing debut. She's had two babies and has described this band and the album as "middle aged mom music". Don't be fooled by that. This isn't for soccer moms. This is still very much punk rawk. Okay, if I'm honest, it's much more subdued than Corin has been in the past, and the songs are a bit more mature. She's not screaming for the sake of screaming anymore. Thankfully, she's still got that lovely tremolo in her voice. As a package, it's not as aggressive as some of the early S-K stuff, but it's still plenty of rock and roll fun. All that said, one of the highlights of the record is the closing song, which is just piano and singing. There's not a bad track on the album, and here's a video for "Riley"


5. Zola Jesus -- "Stridulum II"
In 2010, it was en vogue to compare a band to Siouxie and the Banshees, and this is one of those bands that got that. Really, it's just Nika Roza Danilova from Phoenix Arizona. With her thickly layered vocal tracks and the heavily effected guitars and the darkness of it all, it's easy to make that comparison. I heard a lot of buzz about this, got it and listened to it a few times and thought "that's quite nice". And then I listened to it on headphones and was breathtaken. This is a very good record that doesn't quite lend itself to classification other than "goth-y". It's big and dark and warm. And I love it.
Here's "Sea Talk"


4. The National -- "High Violet"
A rare appearance in the "favorite of 2010" list by a band fronted by a man. Not only is it all dudes, but this Ohio quintet is comprised of two sets of brothers. Evidently, they always dress well. Partly because they look damn sharp with their beards and their suits, and partly because they treat their band like a business. I get the sense that they don't joke around very much. It may not be very much rock and roll fun, but it sure is good. This record is on just about everybody's year-end list. A lot people are even picking "Bloodbuzz, Ohio" as their favorite song of the year. It's a great song, but it's my second favorite on the album. Here's a live performance of my favorite, "Anyone's Ghost":


3. Kristin Hersh -- "Crooked"

This album from the Throwing Muses frontwoman was released in a really unique way. You had to buy a book, which contained some really beautiful photography and a series of essays. Each of the essays correlates to a song on the album. Within the essays is a code, with which you downloaded the album from Kristin's website. Like most of her solo stuff, it's driven mostly by acoustic guitar, lush production and some pretty unusual time signature that I'm not smart enough to figure out. The last year or so has been really big for her. There was the death of her best friend Vic Chesnutt on Christmas Day 2009, the release of this, her eighth proper solo record, the publication of her memoirs, she moved twice, and she's been very hard at work on a new Muses record. The title track is one of the best songs in her oeuvre, "Glass" is another from the top drawer, and "Krait" is one her most densely layered songs with some haunting sting section instruments over her guitar. Like the stuff from "Hips and Makers" but with much much better production. "Mississippi Kite" is unbelievable, but I think it's more suited to be a Muses song. That said, here's "Mississippi Kite":



2. Frightened Rabbit -- "The Winter of Mixed Drinks"
This is the third album from the Scottish group, but I had never heard of them before 2010. It kept coming up in those RIYL suggestions on eMu and lastfm and stuff like that. The first dozen or so times, I ignored the recommendation, as I had ignored the recommendation of Bear in Heaven (it was a mistake to ignore that!), but I finally got the album, and just like I did with Bear in Heaven, I smacked myself for taking so long. The album may have been available in other parts of the world in late 2009, but not in the US until sometime in 2010, so it's good to go here. It's not particularly dark (although there's a lot of burial imagery throughout), it's not at all folky and there aren't any women in the band, so I'm not supposed to like it this much, but this record is just too darn good. The opening track, "Things", starts off with a nice warm shoe-gazy feel, and I was reeled in after that. Without being particularly awesome in any one way, every song has its own incredible hook. The song " Living in Colour" has a ridiculously infectious rhythm, and for some reason it makes me think of some stadium show where the crowd is just going nuts over the song. Like "Sit Down" by James. I absolutely lurve the song "Swim Until You Can't See Land", and the simple but brilliant video. It's just plain fun. Here it is:


1. Warpaint -- "The Fool"
People often want to compare these California gals to Mazzy Star or to Siouxie and the Banshees, but I'm not getting either one of those. Whatever it "sounds like", this record has been in uber-heavy rotation at my house since I first laid ears on it after a brilliant recommendation by a friend. I guess the Mazzy Star vibe comes from the slightly psychedelic feel to everything, but it's much too energetic and the sex appeal of the whole package is on a much more primitive level. This record was recommended to me in the same breath with the aforementioned Zola Jesus record, so I'll recommend them as a bundle. Pay particular attention to the drumming on this record, which I find to be quite nice. At one time, actress Shannyn Sossamon was the drummer for Warpaint, and her sister is still the bassist.
It's not a perfect album, and it's not for everybody, but it suits me just fine.
Here's their self-titled song:


So there it is. Those are the 15 new records that I liked the most in 2010. There are some big-name omissions, and I'll get to that at some point. Just remember that this is what it is, my tastes are what they are, and I'm no genius.

A less detailed composite list will come soon, and also a list of the biggest disappointments of 2010. Some of your #1 records will be on my "biggest disappointment" list, just as some of my favorite records will be in your "pile of crap" list.

I hope 2011 is as much fun musically as 2010 was for me. I've already got a small handful of records on my radar for the 2011 lists.