Spin #43: Resurrecting in Edmonton, Alberta

 Hi, I'm back. Elvis says "hi!"

There is stuff that needs addressing...

First off, Figment Bee . It is the bandonym handle for Tim Butler, formerly of Green Ants Dream, The Garble Rays and Tim McCarroll-Butler. 

It's not the Psychedelic Furs guy, ergo the use of the bandonym. Kind of like why I'm Mole/Spin Turlock instead of Bruce Mowat.

Cicadas, the title of Mr Butler's first release in 15 + years, hints at an approaching apocalypse without hysterics (Luxury), offers domestic bliss without being cloying (Alyha), has a song about a park in my old Hamilton hood, (Beulah Park) and all the metaphysical musings you can eat (just about every other track), and set to some winsome tunes. The guy's still got it: the chord changes that sneak up on you, the essentialist forward movement (don't say minimal) of the drums n bass parts that recall Moe Tucker/Modern Lovers, and the genre smash n'mash approach that makes him equally not at home at folk AND rock festivals.

What's different this time around is a) this stuff is now available worldwide through the miracle of the Internet. and b) the jay-uzz touches, which come courtesy of his daughter, Naomi McCarroll-Butler, a serious player in her own right.

Listen to it and Buy it here

Some of you have been poking around the Back Spins. Good, because I've written about Iconoclast before.So click on this and catch up...

...got that?

So there's been a few Iconoclast releases since I last posted. The most recent one is Demolition Of Wisdom.

The salient point here is "chocolate ice cream tends to taste like chocolate ice cream the first - and the last time - you taste it" Iconoclast is consistency itself and this recording is just as great as the previous one, except for the first.

Everything I said about the duo in the past still applies..you have thrashing, shrieking, percussion mayhem galore, screamalongs, and faux drunken sentimental drinking songs. I can't play these recordings at home without using headphones because they drive Shirl crazy, but I enjoy the texture and consistency of each and everyone. Even more consistent than Bo Diddley (and the duo has been a going concern for 32+ years). Someone pointed out that this album has a blues feel. I would say in response that it's extra-terrestial blues influenced.

Given all of that, the song titles should be able to fill you in the rest of the context: Tour of the Wild Moons, Indulgence No. 505, When I Was Naughty,(and it's follow-up, When I Was Nice), and who could forget The Lurking Tumbleweed.

Like Ice Cream, baby. Chocolate ice cream. Go here

Other stuff I've listened to: Mdou Moctar, Khun Narin, Moonlight Benjamin, and The Shangs

I work for the latter group, true, but I still listen to their latest, Sonny Bono, Tear Down This Wall Of Sound

A lot of this recording germinated in the Saucer73 reunion recordings , which featured four out of the six members of the 1973, pre Cyborgs edition of Simply Saucer. That outfit was more into improvs-cum jams, and was collectively responsible for auto-generating the loudest sound heard in Hamilton since World War II.

So a lot of this will sound jarring to young ears. Especially the one-two punch of Betrayal and In the Shadow Of The Stars (part Two). Personally, these are my favourite bits...but only on the phones!

The more conventional song pieces are unconventional in their own right: you have tribal hippie anthems inspired by the Manson Family ("Eleven"), neo-bossa nova pieces caught in a head-on collision with Marty Rev ("Love Charade") and skewed b-movie soundtracks (The Secret of the Purple Reef)

I haven't been reading much about this on the web, except for this bit. I imagine people saying "too..": too noisy, too soft, too this, too that, the singer's voice is off. "

Too bad. Your loss

WWW of Spin Turlock #42: We Spin Your Mail!

People keep sending me music stuff in the mail. I admit, it’s kind of groovy getting a package delivered to the Middle of Nowhere here. It’s especially far out getting stuff from people you thought had fallen off the face of the earth.

 Iconoclast has spent the last 25 years or so consistently falling between the genre cracks of Western Music. Neither fish nor fowl, they do their own thing on a consistent basis. That enough people get what they do is a small miracle in itself. You can pick out bits of jazz, orchestral bits from the past three centuries, speed metal, kitsch exploitation soundtrack music, and all sorts of stuff in their musical make-up if you’re clever. Mainly though, they do inner film music: the sort of private soundtrack your head plays back to you when faced with certain adrenaline-charged situations – pro AND con - in life.

Don’t believe me? Read the titles of Naked Rapture, the group’s tenth – and latest recording: How Fast Is Evil?, Fragile Summer, No Time to feel Good, The Ruin of the Pure. Don’t deny it, I saw you in my mind’s eye, you were at those movies, wearing a trenchcoat. So was I…

The group works in a foreshortened duo format. Julie Joslyn plays saxophone, percussive violin, percussive percussion, and horror-inflected vocals. Sometimes she uses live electronics to doctor the results. Sometimes she just lets go pure, naked sound.

Leo Ciesa is the other half of the act. Imagine a hard-hitting, free-flowing “free jazz” drummer, unconstrained by the niceties of key and chorus structure. Then imagine said musico going all out PUNK on you. Rashied Ali, as raised by speedmetal wolves. He sings rubby chorus pieces occasionally and effectively, too: far more convincingly than Tom Waits ever did (does?). He also tinkles the keys when the occasion calls for it. This speaks well of him.

Both of them write their own material.

I first saw them in November of  1990 in a loft on the now-trendy James Street North strip. Hamilton Artist Inc. put on the show for all 15 of us gathered, and I was suitably impressed. They were a smart drink before the term existed and they had physical oomph, which set them apart  from the majority of the loft generation.

Naked Rapture is the name of their new recording, their tenth in more than 25 years. It has all those titles I mentioned before, plus 18 other big and small (the duo has a way with short - one minute and under - pieces) Iconoclast hits, plus their renditions of Night in Tunisia and The Revolutionary Etude. Neither Dizzy Gillespie or Chopin could be reached for comment, but I feel safe in saying the authors never imagined their work done up like that. Get it here

WWW of Spin Turlock #41: More Kendra Steiner/ The Programmatic Genius of Bill Shute

I always enjoy getting stuff from Kendra Steiner Editions. Small press, stapled chapbooks of poetry. Numbered edition CDRs of stuff with "no commercial potential". Mix tape CDRs culled from digitized flea market vinyl finds .

The last bunch I received was no exception. We start with the red herring first: "Polymorphous Urban poems for Lou Reed". I like the writing styles of ALL the participants involved (inc. the publisher Bill Shute) but I think ...it's the idea of Lou Reed celebrated here, rather than any specific thing Reed did per se. Meaning: don't buy a Reed/Metallica collaboration based on this, or any other, tome.

A more enjoyable work is Someplace on Anywhere Road , which ostensibly starts out w/Texas references, but , as the title states, ends up in anywhere. Which is a good place. Shute has a personable style, a tough thing to pull off when metaphysics is a major element in your work. If I had to recommend a starting point for novices, "Anywhere" is as good as it gets.

KSE also does music/poetry sound collaborations.#271 features Shute teaming up with Hamilton, ON.'s second or third greatest musical export, Fossils. The results are awesome, if not exactly easy listening fodder. Fossils has a knack for finding the correct amounts of skronk and whirrrrrr, and "plays well with others", as they used to say in our Kindergarten report cards. These things are music -related , but sound artists (hello, Victoria Fenner!) should find these sets interesting, too.

Finally, if you throw in a few extra books, maybe Bill will share some of those mix tape Thrift Store CDRS. Sample titles include: "One Sided Cumulous Cakeshop Kittens" , which included a Jowe Head re-work of Swell Maps "Cake Shop Girls" ...and I was just listening to the Swell ones,  "Jane From Occupied Europe"!.
 I haven't listened to the Massimo set yet, but I assume it's good. The link at the top of this article will take you there.
----

Shirley graduated from University . She is now Shirley B. Comm. I am still hawking TVs and hi-fis. Life is good in Northern Alberta. Thanks for asking.

WWW of Spin Turlock #40 : Read any books lately?

Gods Of the Hammer: The Teenage Head Story
Geoff Pevere
Coach House Press

My past keeps coming back to haunt me: you can take the guy out of the Hammer - Hamilton, ON. - but you can't take the Hammer out of the guy. Not without forceps, anyway...

Case in point: this wee book (136 pages) which landed in my distant outpost, tells the story of Hamilton's most notorious musical export to date. . Teenage Head was the most successful band to come out of the Toronto punk milieu of the late '70s, possibly because a) they were from Hamilton and b) there was more to it than "punk" per se. The Head mixed rockabilly, punk, garage-rock and pop sensibilities in a way that has never been successfully replicated. Moreover, they evangelized their efforts by touring across the country repeatedly over a period of 30+ years, until the death of lead singer, Francis Hannah Kerr, aka Frankie Venom, on Oct. 15th, 2008. With the addition of new singer, Pete MacAuley, they may very well continue for another 30 years.

The book is written from the vantage point of a fan, and objectivity be damned, Think of the book as a very big fanzine, comparable in heft to an old print issue of Next Big Thing. Which is not to say it's lacking in analysis: there is a very good breakdown of the Head process. Pevere, who is best known for his writing in The Globe & Mail, concentrates mainly on the Glory Years (roughly, 1977 to 1982). He does, however, articulate how, - in the band's infancy - the combination of the individual members musical and social backgrounds merged into one collective Head.  An advantage Hamilton, ON. had at that particular point in time was that it was NOT a major media centre: you could woodshed and hone your craft before getting distracted by Image and the neighbours. By the time the Head hit Toronto, it had the extra edge of said experience. These days, I don't think that would be possible: you would have to hail from, oh say, Grande Prairie, Alberta, to produce a similar sitch.

Conversely, Pevere does a good , if cursory, job of how and why the Head unraveled, and re-raveled (is that a word? It is now..) in the 1980's. You get an insider's take on the management woes, the car accident in 1980 that put the brakes on the band's momentum, and the internal dynamics that saw the band split into competing organisms and then recombine at the end of the 1980's, like some chemistry project gone awry. You also get a front-row seat to the group's most infamous performance: the June 2nd , 1980 Ontario Place show, which made front page news in Canadian newspapers when the fans who got turned away from the show started overturning cop cars and such.

Pevere gets points for giving the Head's long-suffering original manager, Paul "Kash" Kobak, his due in print. Points are deducted, however, for leaving out a mention of Brian Baird aka "Slash Booze" the band's "Inspiration”; name-checked on virtually every Teenage Head LP sleeve. Where does Slash fit in the book? Come in Ralph Alfonso Pg. 59: "Whoever was feeding Teenage Head...their choice of covers was brilliant;" That would be Slash...a paragraph or two would have sufficed.
Had it been my tome, I would've added an entire chapter about the gallery of misfits, colourful characters, and technicolourful hanger-ons surrounding the Head. Their lighting tech, Stewart Pollock, for example, runs a well-known Toronto art gallery now. Rob Sikora of Volume should've been in there: he did the original, hand-crafted picture sleeves for the Picture My Face 45 and has a whack of great photos from those early days. And yes, Virginia, there really was (and still is? she was last spotted in Caledonia, ON...) a "Lucy Potato".

I can't complain too much, though: it's a decent enough tome, and worthy of a few bucks.

The e-Mail Diaries: Letters From Hell
By “D” & “P”
Smashwords Press

The electronic age has brought us many mixed blessings. E-Publishing, for instance. The good news is anyone can now write and publish a book. The bad news is anyone can now write and publish a book. This e-book is a testimony to that two-edged sword of truth.
This is a longer book than the first book reviewed. Technically, it is 256 pages, but a few of those are pages with pictures and those epigrammatic pages ,you know,  like one paragraph for the whole page.
It reads like a barfly’s feckless rambling, unedited, unfettered correspondence to his buddy back home: a dive bar raconteur recalling his low-life exploits in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Mainland China. Brothels, bars, STDs, tropical diseases, Immigration woes, and gold-hued fecal matter play major roles here. Suffice to say, it's not for the squeamish.
. The ultimate objective here…who knows? For $1.68 – that’s less than a half-pint of suds in a Canuck dive bar – you get to share the authors advanced state of degeneracy and possible brain rot.

( P.S. I can’t find locate it anymore on the Smashwords site)

An aside: teenagehead.ca is NOT what you think it is....
Next issue: we review more good, good offerings from Bill Shute and Kendra Steiner Editions

WWW of Spin Turlock #39: "Bigfoot Popcorn Jubilee: the Best!"

"Bigfoot Popcorn Jubilee" is the best thing I've heard in weeks. What it is: Bill Shute took about $10 worth of thrift store (I'm guessing each item cost about 25 cents a piece TOPS)  vinyl record finds, an MP3 converter, and burned thematically-linked American pop, gospel, how-to recordings and whatever else struck his fancy. The results are sublime . Never mind "Americana", this is Ameritrashcana.

I don't know anything about the Party Boys , but We Gotta Party , both Parts One AND Two are swell no-brainer fun. As is Linda Laine & The Sinners "Low Grades And High Fever", and WHO could forget "Stella Got a Fella" by the Fireflies. I couldn't ,possibly because I never remembered in the first place.. I don't have to tell you anything about these presumably late fifties /early sixties dated sides, the titles say it all. The Ken Nordine flexi included is suitably creepy: an ad man pitch for the flexi disc media ("look what happened to Ronald Reagan") corporate Christmas giveaways.  You surely "get" the drift here...

I'll do a thing on the legit releases of Shute's Kendra Steiner Editions (Massimo Magee), but this comp shook me out of my stupor. The Spin is back!

WWW of Spin Turlock #38: No news is good news

Fighting cancer in a family unit requires the effort usually directed towards tertiary concerns, i.e. me and my dog's blog, to be redirected and focused elsewhere.

"It's been a long time since I've spoke to you. Has it been too long?"

Point is: we beat the cancer, got through the school term, got a promotion at work (i.e guaranteed hours, benefits etc) and just lived. In times between, I listened to about 40 CDs from the Harvey box, half of which ended up in the discard pile. Of those I liked enough to retain: The Misunderstood (featuring Glenn Ross Campbell), Hackamore Brick (likeable early 70's outfit that came off as a  B version of the Velvet Underground), The Parliaments (Funkadelic king George Clinton's soul/doo wop outfit) & Morgen (late 60's homemade heavy rock hysteria) stand out.

I got back onto Facebook. I use an alias, and only deal with those people I want to deal with. It's been good. They can have all the personal info of a person who does not exist. All the ding dong day...

Hamilton, ON., my old home town, is very much long ago and far away. Toronto is the same, except w/less rose tint on the bifocals. The Interior of British Columbia still calls out. Go where it's not happening. This seems to be where the universe is vibrating. In the words of an avatar: Spin Out!

WWW of Spin Turlock #37: Loose Cannon on the deck

As per last issue: Several things you need to know about the music-related output of Kendra Steiner.

1) Some times, the KS poets read their stuff on disc w/musical accompaniment e.g. Bill Shute & Anthony Guerra. The music plays more of a complimentary, rather than as a component, per se. This is not a bad thing.

2) Song format is generally absent e.g.Nick Hennies, ST 37...This is not a bad thing, either. It will help you to listen deeper. The Ernesto Diaz Infante CDR is especially good for depth charges. IMHO, as the kids say.

3) Do not be afraid of the teeny weeny lil' CDRs. They can fit on the spindle of your computer disc media player, no problem!

 4) Send money, cash, money order or PayPal. Tell them to 'surprise you'.

 For 30 years, I didn't watch regular TV programming. I had TV sets, per se, mainly as video monitors, but no cable/satellite per se. Thanks to Shirl, I indulge now: HGTV, Food Network, The Weather Network, Storage Wars, Anthony Bourdain's various concerns. Not as good as You Tube, but it's entertainment. Shirl has noted - with some concern - that I warble along w/the adverts. I think I'll be ok. "Get back, get back to normal, whoooah" McDonalds ads sound like indie pop did 10-15 years ago. To think: all those indie kids who rebelled against their parents musical hegemony have been reduced to Mere Product. And so QUICKLY too. Gosh.

Open-ended questions are always welcome. Send them here.

WWW of Spin Turlock #36: Deep In the Heart of Texas: the Kendra Steiner Editions

Poetry is the toughest nut to crack into computer code.
Part of the problem stems from the fact that poetry - in the best sense of the word - is a multi-sensory experience. You have to see it, hear it, and most importantly, feel it.
And I mean both in the emotional sense and the tactile sense: the feel, colour and texture of printed page adds more sub and abro text better than any shiny computer screen.

Enter Kendra Steiner Editions . In the Kindle generation, they come out with chapbooks made from rigid, coloured stock paper. They print the words in FULL font sizes. And the contenst of said poetry is about a million miles away from the prevailing American Zeitgist.

All of this is collectively a good thing in my - pardon the pun - book.

Bill Shute is the driving force behind KS editions. He fronts his own money to get these things out, usually in editions of  100 or less. Shute deals with metaphysics, that realm of interest that lies somewhere between God & Man, the scope of which encompasses everything from the psychology & economic LIFE metaphors involved in playing the ponies ( "Exacta Box" w/Brad Kohler), to socio-economic musings ("Florentine Dictations") to thumbnail sketches of the people you invariably have to deal with ("is it off--Is it on"). I will - I must - quote from the latter here:

she's the foremost
Civil War Artist
of our time

her stepson's band
spent $5000 to achieve
their signature lo-fi sound

& I pretend to an interest in
and have my brain picked for
both

Exactly..

Some of the other jockeys who make the KS grade includes Poznan, Poland native, A.J. Kaufman , whose "Love Lions of Paris" strikes me as being almost an exercise in modern Romantic. The modern part would be the form, the Romantic part being the rock n' roll influence. Kaufman pushes the sensory buttons & splashes the word colouring around. Google him to see what else he does (a MySpace page!)

I've known Bill for what, close to 30 years now. I think I sent him a copy of my rockuh fanzine, Mole #4, the one with the Troggs interview. He used to do hour-long guest cassette spots on my radio show. The spots were entitled "The Inner Mystique", which was also the name of his column for the Phfud/Black To Comm fanzine column. Shute's musical tastes are also "metaphysical" in scope: garage rock, psychedelia, free jazz, blues, country, improv. Music plays a big part in what he does: the latter two chapbooks are inspired -or to be accompanied - by specific pieces of music.

KS editions has taken the music aspect several steps further. I'll deal with that in the next issue. In the meantime, the snail mail addy:
14080 Nacogdoches Rd #350
San Antonio, Texas,
78247

On the web: http://kendrasteinereditions.wordpress.com
And yeah, they take Paypal

WWW of Spin Turlock #34: Sundry & Fury, Signifying Nothing

From the Desk of Spin Turlock, Sports Editor:

Here's a bit of freelance PR I did recently. I only do this for people I like, and I like fewer people these days. It turned up immediately on this blog, which I quite enjoy, btw: young Tim used to write for Now Weekly & used to get the hackles of readers up on a regular basis ..always a good thing, right?

What does this mean for Simply Saucer, now that Foster (and apparently drummer Joe Csontos,too, although this is "unconfirmed" at this point)is out?
Well, the two Original Members, (i.e. the guys who were responsible for Cyborgs) Edgar Breau & Kevin Christoff have quorum dibs on the name usage. Breau is pushing his new solo album, Patches of Blue, which is getting all sorts of virtual ink all over the blogosphere. Noted hep cat, Gary Topp compared parts of it to Caravan. The five other people who understood that last reference will be sussed, but for the rest of us, here's yer actual nibs:



I suspect Saucer will be put in mothballs, while Ed & KC promo the solo disc, & Dan updates the website. In the meantime, watch out for Sunnhouse, (or is that Sunnhaus..I can't tell: the cocktail napkin has stains on it) . Note to all, though: this is a LEGIT group and it features 3/5ths of the Saucer Half Human, Ha;f Live line-up, inc. the aforementioned Messrs Foster & Csontos. An album, tentatively titled either "Die Kinder sind überrascht" or "Teutonic Neurotic", . There's also talk of Foster joining those super-duper groups The Kewpies or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Doak. Again, these reports are unconfirmed.

And what better way to occupy copy space than to post an embedded video? Right Harv?



Spin Out!

WWW of Spin Turlock #33.3 Spin Picks the Hits!

Our guest columnist for this issue is well-known layabout, Spin Turlock. A raconteur, bon vivant, a Man of The World, if you will, Spin is perhaps best known for writing the insightful essay that graces the CD sleeve of Ted Hawkins, “Music For 2:47 A.M". (an excellent collection, by the way, of jay-uzz n' blooze interpretations, available whenever Ted plays out in public). He's also been linked to the Canadian micro-indie recording act, The Kewpies, but he has never publicly admitted this.
"That would be tantamount to admitting you wallow in your own vomit," quips the Spin-ster, and really, who could blame him?

The rest of the column is his story...

Reviews
People like reviews, because they are essentially opinions, which form the basis of a good argument. They can be educated, heartfelt, stirring or - more often than not - rewritten press releases passing for news copy, but they are still opinions. No more and no less.
My drinking buddy Glen Nott, a sport section writher and lay-out jockey @ The Hamilton Speculator, used to tell me: "make 'em mad, sad, or glad, kid." He told me this years ago, when I was a freelance advertorial writer there, writing descriptive copy for ladies undergarment ads. That was before the lightbulb turned on, and I realized a) there was more money to be made out in Beaverlodge, Alberta and b) "kid???!!"...he's younger than me fer chrissakes!
I digress..


We're going to review Don Pyle's "Trouble In The Camera Club" It's a book, a physical book, one with 297 printed pages that came into my possession. I don't know how that translates to Kindle-bytes, but hopefully people of all ages can appreciate the time I took to read this coffee-table sized tome.

If you're thinking of doing something similar in the future, may I offer some advice? First of all, pick a title with lots of pictures. It helps buffer all that print, which can get claustrophobic. As the title implies, there are many photos to be had here. Second of all, pick a topic that people have an interest in, but very little actual first-hand experi

ence with. The Toronto punk scene of 77/78 qualifies for that in spades. The number of that scene's participants could fit quite comfortably into a modest Latvian social Club- and only then if you counted the imports from Hamilton/London/et al.
Thing is, there's a rose-coloured mystique about that era and milieu – ‘scuse my French - that young people seem to enjoy reading - and writing - about.

Look at Liz Worth, for example. A seemingly bright, young person who has made a name for herself writing about the long-ago and far away exploits of middle-aged folk with saggy butts and expanding waistlines.
Thing is, she correctly sensed “Punk” was the source, the ground Zero of her generation's current DIY MO. It started there, and others built on it, albeit to the point where the current edifice bears little resemblance to the original foundation. That’s the way it goes

Pyle - who I think I may have met once or twice on the carny circuit - goes further with this book, though. He is perhaps best known as the drummist of the Toranna instrumental trio, Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet. As it turns out, he was also one of those few people who both actively participated AND documented his activities with sometimes grainy, sometimes blurred, but always accurate photographs of such Punk rock pioneers as the Ramones, Iggy Pop, The Viletones & Teenage Head.

The photos do the talking here, the first-person commentary provides the context, and there are some good stories told here. To use an example: if one ever wanted to know how punk rock "works" in a media vacuum, read how Freddie Pompeii of the Viletones initiated the sequence of events that led to the formation of Crash Kills Five which begat the Shadowy guys, and so on and so on and they told two friends. There's also personal slant offered up here: tales of cheap vinyl finds & hard contact lens use, both of which I can, like, relate to.
Full disclosure: Pyle is my age, separated by only one year. Whereas he was able to public transit it to gigs in Toranna, I could only wing it in Wingham some 200 klics away, or read about the thing second hand in the pages of the Toronto Star.( And lemme tell you, you got looks when you bought Ramones or Sex Pistols vinyl in a small-town furniture store "back in the day"...)
I'm digressing again.
The point I'm making here is the combo of words and pictures in the book brings it all home, even to young people. With any luck, they should walk away with a tangible sense of what those old farts actually accomplished & experienced before they started sagging - and staggering - toward Sheol.

Fug me, this is depressing. Let’s talk about living. I got this cassette tape (the cheap-o medium of the 20th century – ask your parents) in the mail from a Brantford, ON. outfit called Plant Magic, the bandonym of one Katie Iarocci.
She sings and plays an assortment of instruments seemingly selected, I swear, by the Ghost of Lewis Brian Hopkins Jones. We have harpsichords, sitars, and other period effects galore here (although I don’t think Jones ever got around to jamming on the bul bul taraang), that period being roughly defined as somewhere between the buttons of Baroque Stones and early progressive rock. That kind of thinking eventually led to the stylistic impasse the people described in Pyle’s book worked against, but here, in its most guile-less flowering, it works as an out-of-time, almost otherworldly, artefact. Part of the levitation effect comes from the neo-communal bliss invoked in the songs and part of it comes from the tea-cozy, homemade sound quality of the recordings.
And speaking of tea cozies, a word about the cassette packaging. The recording comes in a wee flour sack, much like the copy of King Biscuit Boy’s “Good Uns” LP. Since I don’t currently own a cassette playback machine, I resorted to downloading the MP3s. I guess I’m just a modern guy..
Plant Magic share a split release with Eiyn Sof, the bandonym of Melissa Boraski. ES has its own strange quirk-ness and charm: low-tech pop/rock with lyrics about The Big Hurt. Enjoyable, but I prefer the Magic side. Perhaps the suggestion of that great escape to the commune in Paris…Ontario is what’s working here. It’s just my opinion, man, but I would buy it. Straight from the source..

Well, that’s more than 1000 words, not counting the overlong intro by the editor, who owes me a bottle of Forty Creek’s finest.

WWW of Spin Turlock #32: A Few Words about Miss Christine Leakey's Modern Folk Exotica

See, I received a CD copy of Christine Leakey's new collection of songs, "Tapping Trees in A Trinket Box of Treasures".
And it's rare for me these days to receive anything in the mail. When I moved to Alberta two years ago, I deliberately cut myself off of mailing lists, social media lists, gig boards, i.e any ties to my former life. Which is not to say I stopped listening to music..I just stopped being part of the process.
Back in the day, the early 90's to be exact, I knew Ms Leakey from her garage-rock group, The Double Feature Creatures. I covered their antics in the pages of the Hamilton Spectator. During the final broadcast seasons of my radio show at CFMU-FM, she was a semi-regular on my show, I heard early versions of some of the tracks.

Nothing prepared me for this, though. Musically, this is a long way from garage, rock, or any current pop sound out there. There's a number of source thread materials running through here, all of which sound based somewhere between the West Coast, The Thousand Islands, & Aldebaran.

Mainly,though, I hear essentialist folk music, the kind of which is rarely programmed at folk festivals these days. (Which also neatly explains why I avoid said festivals.) More's the pity, because I also hear lounge, real &  faux ethnic musics, torch & just a touch of hippie, the latter in it's most idealistic, pleasant, and panty-less guise. I call it modern day exotica, a fleshier version of what such retro-essentialists as The Shangs do.

The choice of instrumentation re-inforces my genre tag: an authentic Chamberlin proto-synth turns up on a regular basis, as do the kalimba, & the kanun, & - note to Byron Coley - a lot of Bansuri flute bandied about here.At some point, I must give a shout out to the jay-uzz inflected drumming & exotique percussion work of the Great Bob Scott, who helps the songs scoot along quite nicely.


Track by track, it breaks down like this:

The Marching Song is exactly that: film music for an off-beat march of pink elephants. The instrumentation here is tape loop derived.

Lovely follows, and it is the best, most fully realized track on the CD. Leakey's voice runs through several octaves to great effect: from deep, throaty swells to high-end skylark trills. The song structure has the most development of anything on the disc, with a descending bridge pattern to offset the folk-cha verses. Harp string,alto sax and other non-rote samples are swirled about, and everybody goes home with flowers in their hair. Very nice. Is it ok to reference Minnie Ripperton AND Don Glen Vliet in the same song review? Sure.

Here I Stand is a modern torch ballad, with a simpler structure designed to hypnotize prospective listeners into her lair. Again, non-rote instrumentation and Leakey's alternately breathy and deep vocals give it the feel of something you'd find played at the Bachelor Den At The End of the Universe. or maybe in the unreleased soundtracks of David Lynch's sole stab at TV, Twin Peaks.

Be You is a folk derived meditative piece. Like a lot of Leakey's pieces. it's a template for her own brand of musical impressionism. The few, simple structural strokes, are frames to showcase the breathing arrangements and textures.

Tipsy is another of those miniature instrumentals, resplendent with the kind of sound collages suggested by the title.

The Man With The Golden Heart is a folk lament/celebration of Leakey's late uncle, John. Simple, direct, and completely unaffected.

Miss Betty Grable is a hypno-folk drone, kind of like the Velvet Underground's All Tomorrow's Parties, but with a torch delivery. The lyrics suggest a crime story: Colonel Mustard, in the drawing room, with a lead pipe. Dave Byers would get jealous if he heard this!

Shine My Tarnished Sheen sounds dreamy, wildly romantic and has unusual chord voicings. You would have to be a Nathaniel, someone with absolutely no guile to sing lines like "the Sun shines within my heart, so let me dance upon the meadow floor", and get away with it.

Lullabies & Apple Pies has some interesting twists and turns in the structure & makes the vital connection between food and romance. I like the way Leakey goes "mmmmmmm". One of my fave tracks on the disc

The Day My Flower Died sounds as it's spelled , with the help of a vintage Arp2600 synth. They really DON'T write things like this anymore
.
Tap Dancers & Gloom Chime are the two tracks on the disc that didn't do anything for me, possibly because the structures just weren't substantial enough to support the impressionist impulses behind them...even with Great Bob Scott hoofing it on the former! The one Francophone cover that follows it on the disc, Quand Tu Dors, however is essential. Claudine Longet need never perform again: there's no need for her anymore. Trinket, another winsome instrumental, rounds out the CD.

Overall, it's pretty good . I'd give it 3 stars *** and points for attractive and thoughtful packaging. The alluring illustration below has the contact deets:



I had a rare weekend off , and spent it w/Shirley. We watched - and enjoyed - such recent Hollywood escapist film fare as Rise of the Planet of The Apes & Cowboys & Aliens. And speaking of old radio regulars: Kelly Grrl was in town & visited us in Grande Prairie.

WWW of Spin Turlock #30: Assorted Thoughts of Varying Interest

I was going to diss some of the contents of the "Harvey Box", but nah, life is too short to wax mean on the collected works of Lindesfarne & The Ultimate Spinach.

And as far as the John Denver set goes, Shirley is very happy. The CD has ALL those 70's hits like "Country Roads", ""Back Home Again" (my dad's fave) & "Sunshine On My Shoulder". Shirley went as far as to purchase a Denver songbook for a whole 25 cents in an attempt to get me to play those songs on the gee-tar. Hang glider flying lessons, however, are not in the cards.

"He probably has his own demons to contend with. Do you know how many records he sells? Holy shit, it's amazing,"
Lou Reed, on the topic of John Denver, taken from a 1975 Rolling Stone interview


The main thing I want to talk about is quitting Facebook. I did it, and you can, too.
I got tired of it all, tired of the friend requests from bum bands, tired of the stupid apps (I don't care if you need a cow in Farmville, !@#$ off), and most of all battling the (lack of) privacy settings. I feel sorry for the 800 or so pals stranded, but there are other ways of getting a hold of me if I'm THAT important.

I have a feeling, though, a good chunk of those "friends" were only friendly in relation to my own datafriendbase. Add me, get a whole bunch of people as spam fodder yr bum band/demonstration/Tupperware party.

The role of Facebook may be replaced by something more efficient. We'll see..In the meantime, I still have regular e-mail, and loads of tunage to wade through.
Life is slow, but good here in Northern Alberta. Take care.

WWW of Spin Turlock #28: On the Monkman Trail

The Author, inside a coal shovel, in Tumbler Ridge B.C.

This is what I did on my sole long summer weekend with Shirley. I work weekends, see. That's when people shop for toys. I got this weekend off, though, and so we...took a trip!

To fully enjoy this article, click on this map

It will help you follow the narrative...

It is a mere 200 kilometres from Grande Prairie, Alberta to Tumblers Ridge, British Columbia. That is, if you're a crow, or more accurately, raven. Most people take the roundabout way via Dawson Creek. It adds an extra hour of driving, & yeah, there's a reason for that...

Shirley & I drove via the most direct route. As it turns out, we followed in the circa 1937-39 footsteps (and Model T tracks ) of Peace River pioneer, Alexander Monkman. He was looking for a quick access point to the BC Coast for the local farming population. His story can be found on the top link.I already told you about it...

So now that you've opened the link, browse the map. We started out at Point #1 (Grande Prairie, Alberta) skipped the side trips by travelling Highway 43 West ('To Alaska"), turned off onto county-cum-country roads,going from paved to to gravel range roads until we hit the Township Line 700, which is a forestry/oil rig route.
This pic was taken in Alberta, shortly before we hit the Range Road which led to the Township Line:


I can't really call it a road, but it does connect B.C. to A.B., and we drove a good 50+ klics on it. You kids at home: if you don't have a suitable truck, don't try this.

In the process, we saw a pack of bears. Bears do not generally travel in packs, and we didn't slow down to figure out why . There were more of them than us, so onwards.
It's true what they say about the B.C. /Alberta border: you go almost instantly from prairie to mountain terrain once you hit the border. Poplars get replaced by pines, and time goes backwards an hour...except for Shirley.

Once we hit the new, Heritage highway, we went from logging roads to attenuated gravel to pavement. We also experienced many changes in vertical elevation, with loads of dips, rises, and curves. Add to that a hefty dose of cross winds and Shirley's arms were pretty much pooched by the time we hit Tumbler Ridge.

(For the record, I offered to drive, but she said 'no way..')

Tumbler Ridge is a coal mining town of relatively recent, 1981 vintage. Population: 3,000. Population during Grizfest: double that. Aside from the mines, there's skiing..and not much else. Two ATMs in the entire town, one of which belongs to the local Credit Union. And @ 55 bucks per person per day, we weren't going to visit Kim Mitchell & April Wine, though we did catch members of the latter taking pics at the local Parade.

Our return trip was via #52 north to Dawson Creek, aka Mile Zero of the Alaska Highway, a road built during WWII to help secure the Wet Coast from a possible Japanese attack.
Highway 52 had its share of ups and downs and one washed out bridge, due to the unusually wet summer, but it was easier on Shirl. We ventured north of DC to the Peace River and headed back. The Peace lends its name to the region and its easy to see why: it's huge. Not quite St Lawrence river big, but BIG enough.
I'll show a picture of a cool, curved wooden bridge built on the original Alaska Highway. Shirley hates bridges but thinks this one is cool.




And how was YOUR summer?

Next issue,I review Ant Man Bee & Paul Collili's new discs. They came in the mail, so we're going to listen to them.

WWW of Spin Turlock #27: Imants Krumins: Last Car from Union Station

To people who hear music in the background, as opposed to the foreground, the name Imants Krumins won't mean a lot.

To the rest of us, Imants who passed away Thursday morning, June 9, 2011, was the consummate fan, the interstitial glue that bound us together, and someone I counted as a friend for more than 30 years.
He was also a walking paradox: a banker by day and a raving punk rock/ wrestling fan at night, defying any & all conventions on the right, left, & outside centre. A Sun TV commentator wouldn't be able to reconcile his on-going support of the arts (especially punk rock!) with his position, and neither could a Rabble writer. Both would be reduced to apoplectic fits in his presence.

His lifestyle of living at home with his parents while amassing enormous quantities of LPs, cassettes, CDs, and MP3s might have made him an easy target for criticism and condescending remarks. The next two statements ,however, should pop that cliché balloon to Kingdom Come:

1) Extended family units USED to be the norm before the competing ideologies ruined it on BOTH sides of left/right equation. Actually , it's YOU who are the sick being. And anyway, it's none of your business, so sod off.

WHOA, did I just channel his spirit? Imants had a way with words that was feisty, succinct and in Technicolour. You could take any number of Krumins catchphrases , string them together and come up with responses to any and all situations. And at this point, I'd like to blow the whistle on Gary "Pig" Gold for doing precisely that. Specifically, in the column "Imants on Romance" in his funzine, The Pig Paper. Imants would have the last laugh, though, by actually responding in kay-fab - to use wrasslin' ring parlance - to his own column.

He made me - and a whole lot of other people laugh heartily - which brings us to the next point:

2) Collecting/appreciating music doesn't necessarily indicate a retreat from normal human contact. The makers of the documentary, Vinyl, seemed to play up this stereotype in the film (not intentionally..see comments...)but said stereotype didn't - and doesn't - stick: the memorable shot is one of Krumins pulling out one of the more ahem, graphic pieces of the collection, to the presumed disapproval of tut-tutters everywhere.
"Rare"!

Yes, Imants made record collecting, enjoying live shows (a complete tour diary would fill a book...) and pro wrestling appreciation a social experience without subordinating his ah, ah, aesthetic to fashionistic social pandering.

He was born in Ol' Blighty on April 6th, 1952 to Latvian parents displaced by the Ribbentrop pact fall-out of World War II, moved to Canada in the late sixtease, and studied at McMaster University in the early seventease. We know this, because he retained an outrageous accent, knew every other Latvian person in the Hamilton , Ontario region, and his 50th birthday party was held at the Corktown Tavern in April 2002. That was an amazing gathering of the clans, but I digress...

We also know people who went to McMaster during his time there, people like Doug Foley of the Hamilton Spectator, who recalled that Imants "was one of the first people who was into Pink Floyd at the time". Presumably, the Syd Barrett version of the group...
He did a radio show at McMaster radio during those years, when said station was essentially two cans and a piece of string, in the basement of Wentworth House. I would say those shows were legendary, except all the stuff really DID happen: the pitchers of beer passed from the neighbouring pub, the death threats from pissed jocks upset with his decision to play a complete Captain Beefheart retrospective, and so on.

True fact: Imants was not always into vinyl. At one point, he was convinced cassette tapes were the wave of the future, After several of those unravelled on him, however, he became a believer in getting "hard" copies of material and the rest is history, as they say.

Mass produced items gave way to small, independently-produced issues sometime in the mid-70's with a few major exceptions (Ramones, ABBA). Trace the mailing lists of the early Do-It-Yourselfers and you will find Imants' name there, usually - and sagely -buying records in duplicate/triplicate, showing up (and paying for) gigs, & getting other people to show up, even if it meant wedging 12 of them in his sedan delivery service.

That doesn't sound like a lot: he was basically a pro-level aesthete who didn't "get" or give industry backwash. Multiply that effort over 35 + years, spread it over five, possibly six, continents (if you accept the party line about Gwar being from Antarctica..) and you're talking about one helluva community. Even if we limit our scope, to say, oh a relative cultural backwater like Hamilton, Ontario, Canada . the range of lives touched runs from the earliest days of Simply Saucer, thru Teenage Head's formative years, thru the Problem Children, thru the Dik Van Dykes, Wet Spots, and on down to the moderne day.

The common , unifying thread throughout the whole shebang was Imants. and now that thread is cut, and the world is a lot darker place. We have the Internet , with Facebook and Twitter to keep us together now, but I believe it was Gary Pig who said - and only half jokingly - that Imants WAS the internet back in the day. You can't put your arm around a memory and you can't share a pint with a laptop . Well. you can, but it's a pretty pathetic state of affairs when people do so in public.


All my memories of Imants are centred around the shows: the big ones like the annual Ramone treks; the Australian ABBA cover bands, any number of Shows presented by the Garys.  My best memories, however, stem from the treks into terra incognita: the Lazy Cowgirls (original line-up) in Buffalo (where we accounted for a good 10% of the audience along w/the ex Mrs Greg Shaw), the 'ardcore new year's eve bash outside of Nowhere (aka Welland) circa 1982 and ESPECIALLY those CFMU-FM radio shows where it was apparent there couldn't have been more than two listeners rubbed together...especially after that Nurse With Wound superset. But again, and aye there's the triumph: multiply that effort over 35 years and hundreds of people , and I can tell you Imants Krumins made a difference to a lot of people.

During the last ten years of life, Imants took to the Internet like a fish to H2O, building an impressive list of contacts, from the past and present alike. As other writers have noted, his impact transcends generational boundaries. At one point, some of us tried to draft him as a Hamilton Mayoralty candidate. He declined, and it's our loss; we could have had both good financial management AND a healthy arts community.

He was, and is, a true original, one of the architects of punk rock, and the likes of which we will never, ever see again. And I will miss him very, very much. "Cheers"

NOTE: There will be a memorial concert in Hamilton, July 8th . a fundraiser for the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada. Attendance is mandatory if you're in a 3000 km radius and have a pulse. Details, later, GEEK!

WWW of Spin Turlock #26: Harvey & Heavy Music

The endless series of music reviews continues...

Robbie Basho - Falconer's Arm I & II

Basho was an American guitarist who recorded between 1965 & 1986, before his untimely death...more on that later..
He's most often referred to in the context of such pickers as John Fahey & Leo Kotke, but his thing was somewhat different from said mooks. Basho incorporated eastern modal styles & other non-US sources BEFORE McGuinn, Harrison et al on the steel string guitar.
That approach yielded what we used to call a "mixed bag" of aesthetic results. On the one hand, there's a whole bunch of third-eye stimulus going on. On the other, a whole lotta "new age" snoozak would be generated as a result. And Basho would occasionally open his yap, as many contemporary observers would point out, to less than fab effect.
This particular outing is one of the better ones. The recording is primitive by modern day standards, but the power shines through: his paws must have had callouses on callouses. The third eye motion does not let up from start to finish, even when he's warbling.
Basho died during a visit to the chiropractor. There is a life lesson to be learned from this: only let loved ones rub your back.
Rating: ****

Photo courtesy of http://www.robbiebasho-archives.info/

Various artists: The Fonotone Records Story 1956-1969

Joe Bussard, whose swell comp of vintage blues, jazz, old-timey, and gospel 78s was praised in our last issue, was head of the Fonotone label back in the day. Most of these recording strived to emulate the feel of said 78s, and the musicians he recruited to do this were top drawer. Stefan Grossman, Mike Seeger, and John Fahey (under the pre-Blind Death handle of Blind Thomas) all show up here.
The problem with things of this nature is, after a certain while, you get the running standing still effect. All of the aforementioned players moved on, but this comp - while enjoyable - stands frozen. And after three hours, it wears on you.
Even the Chesterfield Kings run comparatively further, by comparison, working with the admittedly time-limited garage-rock genre.
Rating: ** 1/2

Various Artists:
Psychedelic States: Alabama in the 60's Vol.2

And speaking of limited, this is rare these days. Think of it as a pubescent, fuzz-box driven ode to Eddie Flowers primo childhood memories. All of it is completely derivative ,but so fuggin' what? Doofus inspiration abounds, including the lyrical inspiration of George Wallace Jr. Foreigners like myself eat this stuff up.
***

T Rex - Live 1977

Sad, but true: the end was near for head dino,Marc Bolan. Judging by this document, had he missed that tree in September '77, the entropy of the universe would surely have taken him down. This documents what creeping entropy sounds like in the advanced stages. I won't listen to it again...too depressing.
*

Bob Seger (w/the Last Heard & w/the Bob Seger System)

Thanks to You Tube, you can hear all those regional, Detroit hits, from 1966's East Side Story to 1972's Looking Back, most of which were reprised on the the first, Live Silver Bullet LP. That's how I first encountered this stuff: listening to "Rosalie" on Windsor's CKLW 800 AM (The Great Eight"), the only remotely rock station I could pick up in Kincardine, ON. in 1975. Bob grew a beard & got famous outside of the Windsor/Detroit area with Night Moves, and forsook the hard rock/soul mix for "mature" singer-songwriting. You, on the other hand, have a shaving razor and a high-speed connection. Use both judiciously. Dig these clips, and try to tell me they're anything less than great. I will surely scoff you down

WWW of Spin Turlock #25: The Harvey Box Reviews, Episode 237-3A

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The Harvey Box Reviews, Episode 237-3A

Continuing with the bazillion or so CDRs Harv sent me, this series of articles is expected to wrap up in the year 2060, which –by an amazing coincidence – is the year noted mathematician Isaac Newton expected the world as we know to end.

I’ll start off with some notes from my favourite recording artist, “Various”

Byron Coley & Mister Moore ponder the meaning of Pulsallama

Various – (Soul Jazz) New York Noise Vol. 2

This makes a nice companion to Messrs Coley & Moore’s No Wave: Post Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980. No Wave was a loose term applied to a number of NYC based acts in the late 70’s who took the punk ethos one step further by playing aggressive electric music which removed virtually all of rock music’s previous parameters and references. Ergo, most of this will sound like noise to rock audiences. Nice noise, though, to quote Ed Breau. The big names of the day are all here: Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, early Sonic Youth, & Mofungo, all of which have ties to earlier epochs of post-orchestral 20^th century avant-garde composers. There’s also a poppy thing from Pulsallama, which sounds ok to me, too. The Byrne/Eno cops/antecedents lose points, though

I don’t play this around Shirley... *** 1/2

Six Organs of Admittance – Dark Moontide

I missed “freak folk” when it came down the pike six, seven years ago. This outfit was one of the leaders of that pack, and there are some nice John Fahey-esque (he IS an adjective now!) guitar & drone bits. But the lack of song-craft discipline bothers me. I think I’ll get my haircut now..** 1/2

Hawkwind –Distant Horizons

Hawkwind was one of the groups associated with the space-rock tag. Best known for having incubated Lemmy from Motorhead, they have been recording releasing a steady stream of releases through the past two decades. In 1997, this meant pushing the electronics up & forward in the rhythm, presumably to attract rave attendees. I don’t think it worked as a career move (merely existing for 40 years works for them), but it’s not a bad disc per se, either. ***

Orange Bicycle –S/T

Twee British psych-pop from 1969, best known for siring artistes who would later clock in with some Andrew Loog Oldham string charts for the Verve. There’s a few pshit n’ giggle moments, but not enough to warrant taking 40 minutes out of my life. * 1/2

And again, from my fave artist, the pick of the bunch...

Various - Down In the Basement: Joe Bussard’s Treasure Trove of Vintage 78s

Easily the best thing I’ve heard from the Harv box to date. To say it’s a collection of old-timey 1926- 1933 78s doesn’t do it justice. There were loads of lame 78s back then. What Bussard has done is to take the shining oddities of that period from the folk genres of the day: blues, string-band, gospel, hot jazz combos etc and put them under an umbrella that makes contextual sense to the thoroughly modern listener. There is very little of that rare for rarity’s sake quality in the programming of this There IS a lot of hoopin and hollering and carrying on. Stack o Lee & the Garbageman await you here. Stick Out your can & buy this recording now! *****

WWW of Spin Turlock #24: March On, Metro!

Yeah, well March came in like a lamb here in Grande Prairie, Alberta. Specifically, the roast mutton sitting at the bottom of the freezer.
These are a few things that have made me perk up this winter...

John Harvey, noted poet, former wrassler & lead singer of the hardly-lamented Hated Uncles, sent me an enormous pile of recordings to plow through. Apparently, Harv is a believer in the "everything onto the hard drive" theory of music appreciation. Ergo, the cleanse out.

We're talkin' everything from latter day Hawkwind/Hawklords to Torch of the Mystics by the Sun City Girls (still one of my fave raves 20 some years later), to, um, a really comprehensive John Denver set. In the coming weeks, we'll plow through them. Highlights of the last group of mailings include that Sun Ra singles comp, John Cale Sun Blindness sets, and an early Miroslav Vitous thing (pre-ECM).
Harv is still blogging away in Haida Gwai (hey, that rhymes. I'm a poet/named Mowat), waiting for his big chance to escape the Queen Charlotte Islands; start a wrasslin/organic food commune in Nelson, B.C.. That last statement may not be totally accurate, but let's see him deny it...

Future issues of G-Mole will have at least 2 quickie type reviews from these boxes..

As some of you know, I moved to Grande Prairie to live with a grand lady named Shirley. However, I see some of you are still single. To help you cope, why not read Sofi Paparmarko's excellent blog, Sexy Typewriter *1
I met Sofi through - what else- my endless endeavours to plug Simply Saucer. At the time, she was one of the Three Wise Women of Toronto (her, Liz Worth, and Sara Saljoughi)doing the Rawk writhing thing. In recent years, her musings about relationships have earned her notice from the Globe & Mail, and a column spot on the Canoe site.

ST pulls no punches in dealing with the perils of modern dating & specifically, the pratfalls of the on-line scene. (Full disclosure: on-line meetings CAN work, that's how Shirley & I met. We were the only 40-plus people on the now-defunct site who could spell) Sofi's own experiences reads like a series of love train wrecks, and when she gets GUEST columnists on the blower, the horror escalates. You can't help but look, Ethel! And she's not afraid to take the piss out of TV-hyped dating sites & boorish people The former link should be made mandatory reading...Four stars. Roll over Ann Landers, tell Josey Vogels the news!

Finally an appeal: Help the MU in your neighbourhood. In the U.S., that would be WFMU-FM. American readers can go here to help...

In the parallel universe known as Canada, that would be CFMU-FM. Both of these stations provide the kind of programming you just can't get from commercial radio. And that includes Satellite stations. Don't be a dink, click on the link on the banner that sits atop the blog.


Well, gotta run. there's vacuuming to do and a humungous pile of CDs to take in...

*1 Note to young readers: a typewriter is what old geezers like us used to communicate with before the computer era.

WWW of Spin Turlock #23: Jandek - "Toronto Sunday"

This is a special recording for me, as there are a lot of personal friends involved with the creation of it.
Let's start with Toronto promoter Gary Topp. He did the considerable amount of legwork involved, including recruiting the band, choosing an unsuitably named suitable venue, and selling the show. The band, for foreign readers, consists of Nilan Perera (electric and acoustic guitars),Rob Clutton (double bass),& Nick Fraser (percussion). These gentlemen are Canada's top-drawer improv players, with credentials up the wazoo. They rocked, rock, & will presumably continue to rock open crania everywhere.

The venue was an old Vaudeville/circus rehearsal space called The Centre Of Gravity, a venue as far removed from the trendy Queen/Bloor/College strip of Toranna night clubs as Corwood Industries is removed from oh say, Vice Records. Which meant no tourists/club trash/dog humpers & that's a good thing.

The show consisted of two one-hour sets, linked thematically. Smarter minds than myself have already broken down the verbal content in print, and that's 3/4's of what Jandek, as personified by the Corwood Representative a/k/a "Rep" , is all about. As a side note: I think the Corwood guy should start crediting himself as "Rep" . The handle has a nice hep feel to it & it's catchy. He could start showing up at Jazz sessions! I digress...

For this concert, "Rep" wielded a Korg synthesizer, albeit one which apparently didn't have the exact sonic pre-sets he was looking for. At the time, it seemed awkward, but listening to it now, especially on headphones, it all makes sense. Some dweebs in the audience complained about the Rep not playing his trademark, lonesome acoustic guitar. Those people missed the point: there is no fixed point of reference in the Corwood catalogue, save for the ones you read into it. I refer to Heraclitus "Doctrine of Flux" here

I - and my travelling companions - enjoyed ourselves sooo much we broke the reverent chin-stroking ambience of the gig with several, well-placed hoots n'whoops . That's us you hear on the disc. Which means we are a part of Jandek, now, and of course the disc gets five stars, *****. "You Betcha!"

The show was recorded on Sept.17th , 2008 @ 7 p.m. ("because that's the best time"). A mere 19 hours earlier & a 45-minute drive away, Simply Saucer reunited on the stage of the Corktown Tavern in Hamilton, their first appearance in more than 29 years. It was the late-70's Sparky Parks line-up, with ex-Moon Cricket, Forgotten Rebel drummist Joe Csontos on the skins. One thing led to another, and a working group evolved to record a new CD, Half Human, Half Live, some 18 months later. And yes, you could invoke "Herc" Heraclitus here , too, but I would argue Saucer never really went anywhere near the water. Live shows were critiqued at the time as sounding too "bar band-ish", i.e rote. I would argue that having to re-learn, (and for 3/5ths of the line-up learn the first time) material not played in close to 30 years would make anyone sound tentative. We'll find out soon enough: Feb. 20th, 2011 @ The Garrison, Toronto. For Hamilton, ON. readers mark down February 26th @ This Ain't Hollywood.

Meanwhile, hear what happens when Saucer sheds the stinkin' weight of its collective catalogue and just wings it...


The Toronto show, too, will be a Sunday show. They're the best...

WWW of Spin Turlock #22: Brews In Review...Part Deux

...get the pun?

Grande Prairie, Alberta is a mere 90 minutes from the border of that weird, yet wonderful province known as British Columbia. And if you're looking to quaff non-generic beer, B.C. is crawling with micro/craft breweries. All that glacial melt has to go somewhere...

The Columbia Brewery in Creston can trace its history back over a century to The Fort Steele Brewery. It is an arm of Labatts, and said breweries main product, Kokanee, now resembles a Labatts product. Their Gold brand is sort of an ice lite lager. They are both acceptable, but only just.

What has been catching my fancy are places like The Tree Brewery > Their motto "Drink Real Ale Cause Bud Is Just For Smoking"! could have only referred to BC, and in light of recent Facebook postings, is needed "now. more than ever".

I picked out Hop Head to review. It's an Indian Pale Ale (that's IPA to you), and - as the name implies heavy on the hops. Hops give beer a slightly bitter edge, which may put off some maiistream swill swuggers..but not me!
See, when I was a kid, I had to take an asthma medication called Tedral, a truly bitter pill to swallow. Mom tasted one once to see why I was constantly grimacing during the administration of it. She promptly spat out the ill and dared Dad to taste it. He promptly bit into it, which impressed me at the time. In retrospect, it probably resembled the taste of concentrated hops, which explains why it was no big deal for him...
(On a related note: some hops are recommended by naturopaths for the treatment of asthma).
I quite liked the brew. It cuts through the thirst haze with a swathe and sits well with food, unlike some beers (fourth paragraph down...) /
Well, that's enough. The bread has become a large dough zeppelin in the breadmaker & I'm thirsty. Next issue: Jandek's Toronto Sunday recording reviewed.