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 #13: Bachelor Weekend: Now's the Time for the Listening Party!

Here's the deal:

My significant other heads down to Edmonton (capital of Alberta)this weekend. I can't make it due to day job scheduling, but - as it stands - I have the rest of the weekend off.

At the same time, I am in the process of sifting through some 200 or so CDR burns of various Japanese & German titles sent me via former pro wrestler and lead vocalist of the Hated Uncles, John Harvey. Since there's only so much domestic clean-up to be done, and since most of this material isn't exactly what you'd call "social listening", I figure this is an opportune time window to indulge in extreme aesthetics.

The sound system to be used for this task is an old RCA Home Theatre (5 speakers)w/a DVd player tracking the CDRs. You can play DVDs, CDs, CDRs, and MP3 comps on it & it has served me well.

For contrast, I will interject doses of the on-line radio show, "Bus of Real Country" which is about as far removed from this recorded material as one can get. Both of these exercises are "classic" affairs, but all comparisons end there, Herr, Frau und Fraulein listener.

As Harvey himself cryptically wrote in the note that came in the box: "Have fun"!

Round One:

Kluster - 1969 -1972 (ltd edition 6 LP Box set)



Not be confused with Cluster, Kluster was Conrad Schnitzler's baby. Yes, Schnitzler worked with Messrs Roedelius & Moebius, but this is a different fish altogether.

First off, Schnitzler does not - and never did - consider himself a "musician" per se. This is music made by musicians and non-musicians alike, which will p.o. any musicos reading this right off the get-go. As other writhers have remarked, this group - which had three "proper" studio releases in its lifetime - was the missing link between serious electronic/20th centrury composition (think Stockhausen) and the so-called Krautrock of the 70's. Lesser lights would make "industrial" music out of the same sound forms, but Kluster came first.
Violins are sawed and hit percussively, guitars are made to squawk, drums roll in and out ominously.There is no steady pulse, no mama heartbeat, no melody or harmony to fall back on Clearly, monsters or aliens are nearby. On their studio releases, Kluster used their vinyl space as a soapbox for social commentary - all recited in German - but there's Nunuvthat here! What you get here is 4 hours of well-heeled clink and clank. And that's not meant as as a put-down, either. All of it unreleased prior to 2005.
Read this brief manifesto by Schnitzler. It will help you understand, and then, finally, we may have world peace.

Rating (1-10 on the Shirley scale):
Seven Shirleys


Social Observation:

In Hamilton,Ontario there is a Tim Horton's coffee & doughnut joint every 500 yards or so. In Grande Prairie, Alberta, replace "Horton's" with "liquor store" in that last sentence's equation.

Now's the Time for the Fun, Fun, Fun:

For the benefit of both of my Toronto, Ontario readers: Edgar Breau, he of Simply Saucer infamy, plays Mitzi's Sister this Saturday, May 9th. Cover charge is a mere $5.



Left to right: Kevin Christoff,Peter A. Lacey, Edgar Breau, Jeff Bakalar (cruelly chopped off by Blogger)

Edgar is working on finally - FINALLY - finishing his second solo CD, "Patches Of Blue",this year. It will be issued and/or licenced out by Flying Inn Music. The two one hour sets will be comprised of solo and Saucer material (with original Saucer bass player Kevin Christoff for added verisimilitude).

Recently, Edgar & K.C. recounted their memoirs in the pages of Toronto writer Liz Worth's book, "Treat me Like Dirt" , the title of which is derived from the lyric tag line of "Bullet Proof Nothing". It's a history of the Southern Ontario punk scene of 77-78, and Saucer WAS there, playing to all of 30 or 40 people at David's & the Horseshoe Tavern. Steve Leckie of the Viletones remarked at the time that Saucer was "good, but not punk", and the band heartily concurs with this assessment. Having already blown the doors off - and been subsequently brushed off - 2 or 3 years earlier, they had already "been there, done that". They are the only people in the book who dissociate themselves from the whole punk shebang. They are also just about the only people in the book who weren't burned by Other People'a Music.

And, yes, there still is a Simply Saucer . Available for mod weddings and swinging bachelor parties! Write them for details at their Myspace...they WILL return your calls!

More to follow late Friday night...

WWW of Spin Turlock #5: "All of My Friends Were There"

I received my copy of Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk In Toronto & Beyond 1977 - 1981 right before Christmas (thanks Ralph!).
Liz Worth, the author of this surprisingly hefty tome - it clocks in at 373 pages - had been working on this for a couple of years now, talking to the handfull of people who made up the scene back then; most of whom I know and many of whom I count as friends.

Worth accurately captures their voices and juxtaposes them in a way that lets YOU be the judge of What Really went Down. In fact, her own voice rarely appears in the book: there's a brief intro, a list of characters, and the clips start rolling.
And that's dandy for those people who were involved, and fine for the fans of the form. I could see, say, people like John Armstrong or Lindsay Hutton eating this stuff up. They'd have an indoors field day with this, (especially true in Hutton's case: as Scotland is not equipped to deal with Canadian type winters. I digress...).If you own say, 5 - 6 singles from this time and place, it puts a face to the sound.

And if you're a resident of Hamilton, Ontario you might be sussed by the presence of of Teenage Head, Simply Saucer, & The Forgotten Rebels, the former two acts cast as important predecessors to the scene. My presemce in the book is minimal: by the time I became an active participant (80 -81), that scene was winding down. I heard about all this stuff while attending a rural high school, mainly through Peter Goddard's columns on the Toronto Star, but Queen Street in Kincardine is a looong way from Queen street Toronto.

Which leads me to the next point: I'm not sure how this would work for people who weren't involved. A couple of pages of historical context from the author, a discography and a time line might have helped.

I guess you could just read it for the anecdotes sake. There are lots of great stories, even if some of them are not substantiated. Steve Leckie's alledged demands for Kentucky Fried Chicken during a last-ditch attempt to get him the Big Recording Deal comes to mind, as does any story involving Crazy Harry.

Finally, I 've always wondered why people used to think I was in the Diodes. Thanks to the full-colour black & white photos in the book, I understand now....whew!

Photo: Paul Robinson, cleverly disguised as the author, kneeling with the Diodes