Junkies, Thieves and Crazies Need Not Apply

Stage Banter Primer

2009-07-16T23:21:00.007-04:00

Or, How To Talk To The Audience From Someone In The Audience

Lou Reed, Caroline Says I, Rock and Roll Animal. "Shaddup." Lou said it all, really. At one point in his career, he had elevated stage banter to a fine art. He didn't need to fuck around. He didn't need to tell stories or make off-hand remarks. He knew what he needed to say and he said it. All other stage banter must be judged against this slighty slurry, snotty, one word demand. In other moments of astounding genius, Lou extended it to two words: "Fuck you." Was there anything else he needed to say? Note: This only works if you're Lou Reed.

The Heartbreakers, Chinese Rocks, Max's Kansas City. "Johnny's vacationing in Detroit these days... you can tell by how healthy he looks." Walter was throwing down the commentary, and good thing, too, because I've never seen anyone take so long to get a guitar strap on their guitar. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dTq3HG1jwg Note: This will only work if you are in one of the most awesome bands ever, you can pull off wearing a zebra stripe jacket with a plaid shirt and a tie of some kind, your lead singer/guitarist is capable of being both wasted and better than anyone else, and you're about to play "Chinese Rocks".

The Cramps, The Way I Walk, Napa State Hospital. "And somebody told me you people are crazy... but I'm not so sure about that. You seem alright to me." Don't you love it when everything aligns, when the right thing happens at the right moment, with the right people at the right place, and the world is briefly as brilliant and wonderful as you knew it could be? As if The Cramps playing at a mental hospital wasn't perfect enough, Lux uttered what might be the best intro, hands down. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2i-g8ZycNU Note: This will only work if you are fucking cool and weird and are playing to mental patients.

The Ramones, I Don't Want To Go Down To The Basement. "Hey, hey, quick, let's go. Lively." And various comments as they debate which song to play. Most band conversations are excruciatingly boring; you know they are. "Yeah, so, do you think we'll have enough time to load the gear back in?" The crowd doesn't want to hear your band conversation, trust me. Unless it's a funny one. Like, the drummer wants to play one song, but the bass player really wants to play this one. Really! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK2Ntk6Zb6g Note: This will only work if you all have funny New York accents and attitudes and both the songs are loud and under two minutes, just like all your other loud, under two minute songs. If your singer can do a kind of ungaingly sort of danceish thing, that doesn't hurt either.

Antony and the Johnsons, Cripple and the Starfish, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. "I'd be like, 'Well, maybe you should hit me.' And then I was like, 'Oh, better go to college.'." I was so there! Which makes this special! Most of the modern bands I like eschew stage banter, so it was nice to actually hear from a performer. It was a good balance. He played a bunch of really depressing songs and then broke it up with a funny story about how his high school boyfriend wouldn't touch him and he felt really lost and depressed. Okay, so that isn't funny at all, but he makes it funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJMwZ1EJbvU and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3Tz_X8uNnU Note: If you aren't witty, have no clue how teenage girls feel, did not learn the fine art of performing from drag queens and aren't extremely talented, this won't work.

-NV

Correspondence 1: John Donne & Johnny Thunders

2009-07-10T14:46:00.008-04:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Neddal Ayad < >
Date: Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 3:54 PM
Subject: You know how they call gin "panty remover"?
To: "Nicole V." < >

Hey,
So is the poetry of John Donne.

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/jetring.php

(But maybe not this one...)

Talk soon,
-N

- On Fri, 7/10/09, N.A. < > wrote:
From: N.A. Subject: Bodychoke
To: NV
Received: Friday, July 10, 2009, 1:33 PM

Hey,
Conversation w/Dave:
Dave: Man there's this band I think you'll dug they're called Bodychoke...
Me: Oh yeah?
Dave: Yeah, they were this old band that Released a few records in the
late '90's and came and went. It sounds like Penthouse, B-day Party
and AmRep stuff. The lyrics are really misogynist. You'll dig it.
Me: Like noisy?
Dave: Yeah...w/misogynist lyrics...
Me: What bands were the guys in?
Dave: I dunno, Whitehouse, and some other bands that I never heard of...
Me: Oh

http://shop.relapse.com/store/product.aspx?ProductID=31071

http://shinygreymonotone.blogspot.com/2008/11/bodychoke-cold-river-songs.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: NV < >
Date: Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 10:57 PM
Subject: Lou Shares!
To: Neddal Ayad < >

His pre-VU tunes!
http://www.loureed.com/new/features/features_prevulou.html

I was actually trying to get to the Lou's Views part of the site, but it's a monster.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: NV < >
Date: Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 4:35 PM
Subject: Furries are gross
To: Neddal Ayad < >

Jesus, what's wrong with people? Can they not get a grip? I think most furries are stuck around the age of five, an age when most people are watching cartoons that feature all anthropomorphized animal casts. But most us get over that and develop crushes on our classmates, neighbors, human celebrities, or just plain human anything.

http://community.livejournal.com/theinferior4/504437.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: NV < >
Date: Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 1:24 PM
Subject: I find that shocking too
To: Neddal Ayad < >

This came up when I tried looking for Little Bit of Whore. Tony Wilson interviewing Johnny and Walter Lure, who make him look like an idiot, but in that gentle kind of way where they let him hang himself. Near the end, Wilson comments that he finds the drummer's drinking "shocking" and Johnny says, "I find that shocking, too."

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nicole Votta < >
Date: Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 4:39 PM
Subject: "I Like Girls"
To: Neddal Ayad < >

Check out the pictures of Sparks. http://www.drkrm.com/zone5.html

Are you more disturbed than you were before? Because that button and shorts are nothing if not disturbingly ambiguous.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: NV < >
Date: Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 1:03 PM
Subject: Re: Inspiration
To: Neddal Ayad < >

Anthropology of evil - so, is that why you took anthropology? And you were super disappointed when it was just pottery shards and carbon dating?

I have to admit, the Shakira/Danzig thing is pretty awesome.

--- On Sun, 6/28/09, Neddal Ayad wrote:

From: Neddal Ayad < >
Subject: Inspiration
To: "Nicole V." < >,
Received: Sunday, June 28, 2009, 7:00 AM

Hey,
Danzig on books:
http://soundopinions.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=18056

Danzig and Shakira -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHv3qO_Y8kk

And...

Yeah.

Talk soon,
-N

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: NV < >
Date: Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 3:08 AM
Subject: Things That Don't Go Together
To: Neddal Ayad < >

The Cramps on Beverly Hills 90210. Yes. That Beverly Hills 90210. I think my head just exploded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=squwjCN9RTI

I'm Done W/Classic Rock

2008-09-07T14:28:00.004-04:00

I've heard so much classic rock over the past 10 days or so that I can't even write about it. That or I need more distance. In the meantime, a mini-mix:

or click on this link.

----------------------

-N/A

Words of Wisdom, Version Two

2008-09-07T13:25:00.001-04:00

"Because they're boys, and boys are lazy."
-Anonymouse mother to her daughter

-N. Votta

Nadja - Desire in Uneasiness

2008-09-02T21:45:00.002-04:00

Brian Eno said that ambient music should be ‘as ignorable and as it is interesting’. When I say that Nadja have achieved that with Desire in Uneasiness where so many others have failed, it’s not a putdown. By treating the tropes and riffs of doom metal like parts of a soundscape they’ve created an insidious, rocking type of atmospheric noise. They have more in common with Grails, who they’ve toured with, than the obligatory name-drop, Sunn 0))).

It is loud and heavy, prickling with feedback and reverb. Live, it might actually flatten you. On CD, the buzzing and sub-sonic vibrations are smoothed into a wall of sound, an effect that makes it subliminal, part of the atmosphere. You’re barely aware that ‘Affective Fields’ ends when the rising crescendo of ‘Uneasy Desire’ creeps up on you, chthonic and droney and a bit psychedelic. The subconscious asserting itself.

They’ve struck a balance between the heavy and hypnagogic. You could probably headbang to it, if you really wanted to, or you could read de Nerval. It’s the fact that Adrian Baker and Leah Buckareff are probably doing ‘ambient’ better than most ambient bands out there that fascinates me.

-N. Votta

Method listening (aka Oh fuck, I really am listening to nothing but classic rock...)

2008-08-31T15:31:00.010-04:00

I've suspected this for a while, and I'm sure various co-bloggers and bandmates will vouch for this: When it comes to music and music-related endeavors I'm a bit of a masochist. I will listen to music I hate to see why it works e.g. Katie Perry's I Kissed A Girl. It's like neurolinguistic programming, that song. Put the words "curious", "kissed a girl", "taste", "cherry", "I liked it", "not what good girls do", "it felt so wrong", "so right" in a song, make the singer a hit chick dolled up like a 50's pin-up, and boom, instant Top-10. That and the song sounds like a mash-up of Tainted Love - which always makes for a good hook, see Rhianna's S.O.S., that Pink song w/the textspeak title, and an outtake from NIN's Broken e.p. Which makes it electro/house enough for the hipsters to dig ironically. Never mind that the production is bloody awful. I get it, you made out w/a girl. Stop shouting at me. Read Nick Southall's article on the abuse of compression then listen to the song and you'll see what I mean. As a complete aside to this aside, eventually I'm going to track down the paper mentioned in this blog post re: manufactured celebrities. (Unfortunately the links in the post itself are dead.)

And, of course, that whole bit above has nothing to do w/what I originally intended to write about. To get back on track. Last week my bandmate Carol and I were talking about new does songs, etc..., etc... A while back the goslings had mentioned something about collaborating on a cover of Bad Company's "Feel Like Makin' Love." That never worked out, but I liked the idea. Then I got to thinking about classic rock, covers, and how a good 90% of what most people listen to is either classic rock, or sounds a lot like classic rock. I suggested that instead of doing a cover we just write a song that sounded like a classic rock song, just really fucked up. (Yeah, yeah, Pussy Galore did it, they covered ALL of Exile on Main St., whatever, blow me.) Carol was down. Then last Wednesday. I figured we should take it a step further, and before we start writing, listen to nothing but classic rock for a week. The cut off date is 1983. Although I could have went later, they play Pearl Jam and Nirvana on classic rock radio now. We're about mid-way through, and I gotta say, I'm looking forward to Wednesday. I don't own a lot of "classic" records, not the stuff I consider classic rock anyway, i.e. Skynyrd, ZZ Top, Foghat, so it's been classic rock radio for me. Some observations, from the past four days (Carol's been blogging on behalf of herself and Alex here):

AC/DC rock. Period. I can see why they seem to be the only rock band Keith Richards has anything good to say about. And since they're "classic", K-Rock here in St. John's has been playing their new song. It's way better than it has any right to be. The production could be better, but fucking hell, Malcolm just cranks out those riffs.

Those Lynyrd Skynyrd ballads (Freebird, Simple Man), are depressing as hell. They make you want to smoke Marlboros and drink whiskey. The someone yells out, "Play Freebird!" at a show, I just might.

I've gained new respect for Neil Young. I especially like that the best riff in Cinnamon Girl is played once or twice at the end of the song. He's Neil Young, he can throw that shit out at you.

I loathe Rush. The guys in QOTSA must really dig on Tom Sawyer though. Make the lyrics about a girl instead of Objectivist nonsense and add some Zep drums and boom. Tom Sawyer could be a Queens song.

Thin Lizzy = Led Zeppelin divided by AC/DC = Brilliant.

Why do people even mention Jeff Beck in the same sentence as Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, yeah they were all in the Yardbirds, but Beck is ten times the guitar player than either of them.

ZZ Top were good before the drum machines. The drum machines fucked up a good thing. Cheap Sunglasses man.

Any 70's (and even late 80's) Aerosmith song is worth listening to just to hear the guitar solo. And while the stuff they play on the radio is good (Deuces Are Wild, Walk This Way, ...), it ain't no Chip Away At The Stone.

I've vastly underestimated Free. Really.

Led Zeppelin sound huge.

I have no idea how anyone can listen to early 'Stones aside from Paint It Black and Under My Thumb. Jagger could have been a brilliant lyricist had he not hit the coke so hard and got with the social climbing.

The Beatles confuse me. I've tried. They do absolutely nothing for me and I don't quite get what they do for other people.

Fuck the Eagles.

Fuck Bruce Springsteen. I'm sure he's a nice guy, but fuck him.

Fuck Elton John and his lame Ziggy rips. Rocket Man? Yeah? They should only play Tiny Dancer. And not very often.

Heart are underrated.

Queen are...what can you say about a song like Killer Queen? What can you say about Queen? In their way they out-weirded Bowie, but no one knew at the time.

70's Bowie = The good stuff. (No pun intended.)

I loathe Pink Floyd. Maybe not Pink Floyd, I loathe Roger Waters. Fuck. "His lyrics are brilliant." Yeah, in the same way that Marilyn Manson is "intelligent". Compared to say...Rod Stewart, anyone's lyrics are gonna seem brilliant.

Golden Earring are not only hilarious, Radar Love is a great song.

I'm completely ambivalent about Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

If the Doors had a Keith Richards-type to counter Morrison and toughen up the sound, they could have been the best rock band of the past 40 years.

...and I still have three days to go.

Because Nothing Says 'You Rocked' Like Vandalism and Theft

2008-07-04T00:37:00.003-04:00

Apparently, some first class knobs stole Ian Curtis' headstone. I sincerely hope they catch them quickly and the headstone can be returned.

-N. Votta

Art

2008-06-29T16:12:00.003-04:00

We here at junkiesthievesandcrazies... endorse and support the art of Timothy Renner. We encourage our readers to hit his ebay store and purchase one of his paintings.

Ipso Facto Single Review - Harmonise/Balderdash

2008-06-25T20:03:00.003-04:00

It’s remarkable how something once mocked so mercilessly can gain a kind of avant-garde respectability. Ipso Facto are part of that particular set of British bands cribbing feverishly from the great goth acts of yore, and getting away with it in the full, indulgently approving view of the NME. How does this happen? How does one generation dismiss it as a silly obsession with coffins and snakebite and the next embrace it as… a delightful obsession with coffins and snakebite? Mystified, but pleasantly surprised, I can’t find it in my heart to complain.

‘Harmonise’, their first single, is decent stuff. It’s sparse and angular, but too melodic to be dissonant. Best of all it has some neat horror show keyboards. But singer Rosalie Cunningham sounds so much like Siouxsie Sioux that it’s distracting. Cunningham does an admirable job of mimicking her delivery and typical vocal melodies. However, it mostly serves to point out the fact that she lacks Siouxsie’s range, daring and attitude. It made me want to listen to ‘Night Shift’, not another Ipso Facto song. It’s both amusing and sad that they opened for several of Siouxsie’s recent UK dates. Was our inimitable doyenne oblivious to the similarities, or was Siouxsie just trying to prove how much better she is? She needn’t go to such lengths.

B-side ‘Balderdash’ fares better. It’s a nice, fast paced little slab of this updated, hybridized garage surf/goth business. And Cunningham doesn’t seem to be trying so hard to sound like someone else.

It’s a good effort, not perfect or mind-blowing, but somehow engagingly gawky. I’m curious to see how this little movement evolves. There’s room for growth and improvement, but that’s a good thing. It means they’re worth watching.

-N. Votta

Three of the many, many reasons why the Harper Conservatives need to go...

2008-06-23T13:53:00.007-04:00

If pressed, I would say that a good 85% percent of those in office are greedy, corrupt, petty, hypocritical, patrician, cowardly motherfuckers. This goes double for the Conservative Party of Canada under Stephen Harper and his posse of delusional neocons.* Here are three of the many reasons why they need be booted out of office:

Bill C-61
and why.

Bill C-10
and why.

Bill C-51
and why.

*The all about the money, fiscal "small c" conservatives annoy me marginally less, they're much less prone to interfering w/one's private life.

Demotivation (aka The Pissed Jeans Rant aka a lot of things suck but some things suck harder than everything else)

2008-06-17T10:44:00.008-04:00

This is a slightly more thought out version of something my bandmate Carol mentioned here.

It all comes down to Pissed Jeans. The band, on Sub Pop. A slightly compressed version of the story:

Band practice. Working on a new song. The song was being contrary. I was completely frustrated and in a bad mood. We took a break and I said something like, "Fuck this, it's not working. It might as well be Pissed Jeans." Carol (the singer) and Alex (the drummer) gave me a weird look. They often give me weird looks during practice. I explained, "Pissed Jeans. They're this band on Sub Pop. They're supposed to be the new Jesus Lizard, or at least JL gets tipped a lot in the reviews, etc... And they are kind of like the Jesus Lizard, if you took away the songwriting, the musical ability, you know, the talent. Their disc makes Blue* sound like Liar. Carol looked skeptical, so I played a Pissed Jeans song. I can't remember the name. It's the one w/the shitty noise guitar and the guy yelling over the bass and drums. I suspect that's most of them. After listening for a couple of minutes, Carol broke in, "Does it keep going like this?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
So I shut it off. I don't quite remember how the rest of the conversation went but essentially I said something like: If this is what's cutting it as 'rock' then what's the point? I mean, PJ are a perfectly ok band. But that's the problem. They're ok. And that's it. What annoys me about them is that this is the state of semi-underground rock. (And no some noise guy doing 20 copies of his 'rawk' project doesn't count.) They're not some major label play-to-the-aging-Gen Xers (see Heritage Rock) like Nickelback, Foo Fighters, or The Bravery kind of thing. They're not even fake indie a la Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's or The Kills, who can at least write songs. They're not even the Black Keys (Hey man, cut the bullshit white boys from the middle of nowhere thing, yr. dad played in Tom Waits' band...) or Black Mountain. And this what's depressing. Pissed Jeans don't do anything. Music is supposed to push you, to engage you, to move you. When it doesn't, what's the point? I mean even that Scarlett Johannson album is compelling in a, "How did this happen?" way.

But Pissed Jeans? Which brings me back to the question. Is this really what people are going for? The A+R people at Sub Pop must dig 'em. The bloggers seem to dig 'em. (That's not saying much though, look at nu-rave...fuck...) And if so, where does that leave the rest of us? If the Jesus Lizard or Laughing Hyenas came along now, would anyone pay attention? (c.f. Federation X, a kick-ass band and probably the closest thing to the JL, in spirit if not in sound going right now.) 'Course it really doesn't matter either way. To put things in perspective, the entire time I've been writing this I've been humming The Time Warp. Why? 'Cause a busker in the subway was rockin' it on an accordion the other day and blew everyone w/in earshot away. And really how can you compete w/that?

*I should note that Blue, while not the best Jesus Lizard disc by a long shot, is still a pretty good album, comparatively.

----------
Also, tangentially related and on a much more positive note: The way out of print Boss Hog Am Rep stuff has been posted over at Xhol Desert. Get it.

--------------------
*Addendum to the Pissed Jeans thing...*
Fucking hell. After all that I hear this. Yep, U R My Fucking Sunshine U Cunt. What else can I say?

Tea Time in Heaven: Random Observations

2008-06-10T22:25:00.006-04:00

I've been avoiding any and all Lollapalooza press. Love and Rockets are playing, and fate will fit them in on the 2nd, my birthday, thus compounding the agony of not seeing them. Today, however, I caved and checked out the L&R page on the Lollapalooza site.

Certain people find it totally appalling that I would still drink tea out of Daniel Ash's cup, but whatever. I would also like to draw attention to the fact that the festival's PR people brazenly referred to L&R as 'shoegaze' in the blurb that runs next to this picture. I think this particular shot speaks more their well developed taste for absurdism than any maudlin tendancies or any affliation to that 'g word'. Those of us with a long memory will recall Ash's rather catty remarks on the dreaded label, which earned him a rebuke from Marc Almond.

Ian Sullivan Cant makes good zines. I have one next to me, Bela Lugosi Is Speaking, that is easily one of the more interesting zines I've had the pleasure of reading in a long time. He also creates zines in Morse code. Quite frankly, I think that's brilliant. It's conceptual without being specious or pretencious; it's experiemental yet anchored by legitimate talent. Cant is a top-notch artist, as the examples on The Unkindess of Ravens blog demonstrate. Several of his pieces remind me strongly of Aubrey Beardsley, in particular the images posted on the 6th, 16th and 19th of May: the handling of the lines, the breathtaking sense of dynamic balance and the use of large areas of solid white or black. I think it's quite lovely and very fresh, not at all derivative. If I was in the mood I'd scan a few illustrations from Brian Reade's Aubrey Beardsley, but quite honestly I'm not in the mood. You'll just have to trust me.

-N. Votta

To Wield the Raygun and Boa of Talent

2008-06-09T23:11:00.005-04:00

I watched Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars tonight. No, I had not seen it before, just bits and pieces, like the clip of 'Ziggy Stardust' that's on the Best of Bowie DVD.

God, it's things like this that make it so damn hard to deal with all these two-bit bands. Even across the distance of 30+ years and celluloid to digital the sheer, crackling charisma of Bowie and the Spiders is palpable. They are all damn good musicians and consummate performers. They had style, they had flair, they had everything everyone wanted. When Bowie does that mime bit during ‘The Width of a Circle’ I clapped and exclaimed that it was the most awesome thing I'd ever seen; Neddal, rather wryly I'd say, said that it was probably the first time someone had ever called miming 'awesome'. But all those girls in front in '73 sure seemed to think it was awesome.

And the music sounded real. It's always good to hear music that has had nothing to do with a Macbook.

I remember how... pallid Nine Inch Nails seemed at the Molson Ampitheatre in 2006 when they went on after Bauhaus. Peter and Co. are like that too; they have presence and everyone else is going to look quite small and completely human next to them. That kind of presence doesn't even have to be theatrical or fancy. The Cure don’t have costume changes and The Gutter Twins didn't make Mark Lanegan sing while hanging by his ankles, and they both have that presence. I don't know if it's confidence, or conviction in their music, or some inner quality that makes people sit up and pay attention to just them. Whatever it is, so few bands have ever had that.

I wonder if that doesn't make me ill-suited to review music. Everything can't be amazing and beautiful. There's only one Joy Division or Cure, and there is most assuredly only one Bowie (one Ziggy, one Thin White Duke... etc). I don't expect anyone else to measure up, but I like it when people at least try. There are some bands I've heard that I think have the right idea, maybe have some notion of how to put on an actual show and not a bleedin live action CD. I like that. I know it's possible.

I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm officially sick and tired of ironic hipsters and their shitty, shitty, shitty ironic hipster music. I'm sick of joke metal. I'm sick of ironic folk. I'm sick of ironic disco and blog house. If it sounds good for a couple listens on your iPod and then you find some other song to play a few times, it sucks. In fact, I'm going to go one step further.

Let's all stop listening to stuff on mp3 players all the time. Let's all stop this bullshit of expecting music to come in itty bitty super compressed formats. Get those damn earbuds out of your head and interact with the world. Put the damn music on something with speakers that you can't fit in your ears. Piss the neighbors off with it. Invite your friends over and get drunk and dance while it plays. And then, god help you, see how it sounds live, see if there's actually some substance to it. Because when people start writing, playing and mixing music so it sounds good in a highly compressed file playing through shitty earbuds then we're all fucked. Then we're stuck in a world where The Teenagers and Justice can get away with being called 'good'.

-N. Votta

Words of Wisdom, Version One

2008-06-02T23:37:00.004-04:00

"Don't let the hand you hold, hold you down."
-Anonymous, Union Station ladies room

"MIA would be really hot if she dressed like a normal person."
-N. Ayad

-N. Votta

Bits and Pieces

2008-06-01T13:46:00.008-04:00

Links to things....

Anna Sommer's art is funny and disturbing. Mostly disturbing, e.g.

...and speaking of smoking animals. For some reason I find old footage (from the 50's) of apes and monkeys smoking hilarious. More recent footage is really not that cool, of course it would come from Fox News.

I recently finished reading Elaine Feinstein's biography of Ted Hughes, Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet

It's a fairly balanced account, but he does not come off well. (...and Feinstein was a friend of his.) Though it's fairly clear that however much of a bastard he was, he was not a murderer. He was a surprisingly slick womanizer. I'm not quite sure how he kept it up as at one point he had a wife, whom he lived with on weekends, a mistress with whom he lived during the week, and another woman on the side who in the beginning at least didn't know the score. The most depressing part of the book, and this is one fucking depressing book, deals with Assia Wevill, the woman for whom he left Sylvia Plath.
---
To (sort of) completely swing things around:
Trees are heavy, very heavy.

Joe Carducci, music crank, has a new book called Enter Naomi: SST, L.A. And All That... It's available from Redoubt Press. There's a review here.

Keeping w/the SST/punker thing: If you want to see pics of old punks when they were young punks, this is the place to go.

And there's a "horror" play called Minotaur running here in Toronto. While I'm down w/the idea of a "horror" play. Is it just me or does it sound like the playwrights lifted a lot from Danielewski's House of Leaves?

--------
An addition: Make yr. own Cthulhu

LOLZ T. pallidum pallidum

2008-05-29T16:12:00.003-04:00

-N. Votta

Half-Hearted Applause: The Military Goes Green

2008-05-27T13:51:00.003-04:00

Scientists in Germany have developed a bomb that is not only more powerful than traditional carbon-based explosives, such as TNT and RDX, it is also less harmful to the environment. The new explosives, G2ZT and HBT, are based on tetrazoles. They're less apt to spontaneously combust than TNT. And did we mention that they're totally green? TNT and RDX release toxic chemicals, and even if the charge fails to detonate the the chemicals are released into the ground and water. The tetrazole bombs do produce hydrogen cyanide, but whip some oxidizers in there and you prevent that and make the explosion bigger!

I can see the press conference. Killing twice the people, now with 90% fewer carbon emissions!

-N. Votta

Special Edition: Things We Endorse

2008-05-18T23:55:00.005-04:00

Brought to you by The Cure

The Cure at the Air Canada Centre, May 15, 2008.
The Cure opening with 'Open'.
Three encores.
The Cure playing for three hours.
Shadow animals during 'A Forest'.
The bass solo in 'A Forest'.
Singing along to 'The Lovecats'.
Robert Smith knowing when to play 'One Hundred Years'.
Simon Gallup's ass.
The Cure finally releasing a new single.
Hearing 'Hot Hot Hot' live.
'From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea'.
Robert Smith dancing.
The Cure still being together, making new music and playing live shows.

-N. Votta

The Old Haunts - Poisonous Times

2008-05-05T17:12:00.004-04:00

I can see most reviews of The Old Haunts Poisonous Times touching on one or more of the following: A) The writer will tip the Gun Club and say something about vocalist/guitarist Craig Extine channeling Jeffrey Lee Pierce. B) The writer will make a big stretch and make some kind of witless White Stripes analogy based on Extine's voice. C) They'll tip drummer Tobi Vail's old band (Bikini Kill), then mention the Gun Club and the White Stripes. Me? I'm gonna say that it's a safe bet that Extine owns a couple of Gun Club discs and maybe some X albums, and yeah I could see the White Stripes thing...kinda, sorta...but that I hear more of that Johnny Thunders, You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory slur in songs like Hurricane Eyes and In Revolt. That and almost all the songs, while not sounding like Elliot Smith, have that dark, melancholy yet strangely hopeful vibe that I associate with his stuff. A good thing I think.

The Old Haunts @ MySpace

Thomas Ligotti knows sad songs

2008-05-05T17:05:00.003-04:00

Thomas Ligotti is one of horror fiction's top stylists. For anyone not familiar w/his work, he writes profoundly unsettling stories that sit at the point where Poe, Lovecraft, et al. run headlong into Nabokov and Burroughs. He's also a sucker for a sad song. Here are 11 of his favourites:

Nico--Fairest of the Seasons

Lou Reed--Sad Song

Carpenters--Goodbye to Love

Cocteau Twins--Heaven

The Vogues--Turn Around

Bee Gees--I Started a Joke

The Poni-Tails--Born Too Late

Moby Grape--8:05

Mott the Hoople--Foxy, Foxy

Sweeney Todd (Broadway production not the movie), George Hearn and
others--Johanna

Julee Cruise/Angleo Badalamenti--Falling

Links!

2008-05-05T16:57:00.005-04:00

Chas Ray Krider has a blog

J.G. Ballard is London's 28th most erotic writer.

Wine, Women, and Song is a very good music blog.

Our friend and ally Rachel Kendall was interviewed by a very cool zine called dogmatika.

Random Things We Endorse Vol. I

2008-04-23T06:55:00.004-04:00

Alexandra Maria Lara

Nerds (the candy)

The Dirtbombs @ The Horseshoe Tavern, T.O. 16/04/2008

The Old Haunts' Poisonous Times

Iggy Pop's Brick By Brick

Travel writing about Latin America

"Come Up + See Me" - Steve Harley + The Cockney Rebels

The Man Who Fell To Earth

Not watching the films of Lars Von Trier

Sad Songs

2008-04-18T15:20:00.008-04:00

A sad song is an intensely personal thing. There is, despite all those ‘Top 10 Saddest Songs of All Times’ lists, no song that can mean the same thing to everyone. It must be personal, it must speak to your history, your pain and the particular losses and fears you have weathered.

That said, we’ve decided to throw our two cents in. We make no claims to have created universal lists; we didn’t collaborate, didn’t ask for input. The songs speak for themselves far better than I could speak for them; further introduction would be unnecessary. Over the next few months we’ll be asking other people to contribute lists of their sad songs. We have people like Thomas Ligotti lined up, so keep your eyes open, it should be interesting.

NA:
Ry Cooder, Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski – I Knew These People
Not a song as such, this bit of narrative by HDS and NK with backing by Ry Cooder lays out in heart-rending detail just how wrong relationships can go. That it segues into Cooder’s version of "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" almost makes it too much to take.

Nick Cave – Long Time Man
It’s a fairly typical murder ballad until you get these lines, “She looked up at me and began to smile/She said, ‘Baby, I love you’/Then she closed her baby blue eyes”, and you can almost feel sorry for the wife-killing protagonist. Almost.

Johnny Cash and June Carter - If I Were A Carpenter
Because when they sang this song they meant it. Absolutely and completely

John Parrish and PJ Harvey – That Was My Veil
“Was she a pretty girl/Did she have pretty hair/Was she soft spoken/Was there a love there?” And you go, “Polly, what are you doing to me?”

Mark Lanegan Band – Wedding Dress
“Would you put on that long white gown/And burn like there's no more tomorrows?/Will you walk with me underground/And forgive all my sicknesses and my sorrows?/Will you be shamed if I shake like I'm dying/When I fall to my knees and I'm crying/Will you visit me where my body rests/Will you put on that long white dress?” …and everyone knows she won’t. That the backing vox are done by Lanegan’s ex-wife, well…

Radiohead – Lucky
The odd one out on my list. I don’t particularly like Radiohead, but I can get behind this song. “It’s going to be a glorious day,” everyone knows it’s not.

Tindersticks – Traveling Light
Almost any Tindersticks song would work here. They don’t call them miserablists for nothing.

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NV:
Hope There’s Someone – Antony and the Johnsons
There’s nothing sadder than hope. Hoping that you don’t have to sleep, or die, alone takes it beyond simple melancholy to a kind of visceral, transcendent sorrow.

Faith – The Cure
Propelled only by a relentless bass, the song wallows in hopeless isolation. Everything about it is subdued, resigned to that stark, gray place where there’s nothing left… but faith.

Heroes – David Bowie
We all know there’s no hope for Bowie’s star-crossed lovers. Even if they can beat them for one day, there’s no question how it’ll end up; nothing will keep them together.

Fade Into You – Mazzy Star
Perhaps the penultimate exquisitely forlorn song, the kind of gentle ache that you can get lost in forever.

Atmosphere – Joy Division
Bleak and beautiful in that particular way only Joy Division could do. Over the restrained cascade of the melody, Ian Curtis implores, admonishes: don’t walk away in silence.

The Band Played Waltzing Mathilda – The Pogues
So sad that I can’t actually listen to it. The horrific cost of war, the Battle of Gallipoli in this case, is presented in a wholly human context; there are no grandstanding political condemnations here, only tragedy and waste.

Untitled – The Cure
A wistful, pretty melody married to some of Robert Smith’s bleakest lyrics: “I’ll never lose this pain/Never dream of you again”.

Download the podcast here, bitches.
Podcast tracklisting:
Ry Cooder, Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski- I Knew These People, Paris, Texas OST
Joy Division- Atmosphere, Substance
Radiohead- Lucky, OK Computer
David Bowie- "Heroes", "Heroes"
The Cure- Untitled, Disintegration
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds- Long Time Man, Your Funeral, My Trial
Mark Lanegan Band- Wedding Dress, Bubblegum
Tindersticks- Travelling Light, Tindersticks II
Antony and the Johnsons- Hope There's Someone, I Am a Bird Now
The Pogues- The Band Played Waltzing Mathilda, Rum, Sodomy and the Lash

-N. Votta