Yearly Archives: 2017

Looking for a Song

Posted on by
Reply

song writing

Recently I’ve been thinking about my creative output.  I mean, yeah, I write novels and all that, but that’s over at my other blog.  I’m talking about my music and my artwork.

I’ve been focusing on my writing for ages — mainly due to the Great Trilogy Completion and Edit Project Wot Took FAR Too Long — that my love of drawing and playing music fell by the wayside.  Ages ago I used to draw maps in my spare time, and I used to write songs for the few bands I’d started.  I even added both of them to my whiteboard schedule some years back.  But somewhere down the line I chose to focus solely on my writing, ultimately to get better at it and make something of it.

But now that the Trilogy is done and released, and now that I’m working on much smaller projects that aren’t eating up all my time, I find myself itching to return to those two loves.  I’ve been wanting to do so for a while (yes, I know I’ve blogged about it before), and now I have the time and the inclination.

So how do I go about it?

Well, I’m thinking that I should do the same thing that I’ve been doing for my writing: open up a playground for it somewhere.

For my writing, I use the 750 Words site to write outtakes and come up with new ideas.  I call it my word playground for that purpose; it’s there for me to hit a simple word count goal and try out a few things.  So I started thinking: maybe it’s time I do that for the music and the artwork again.  Select a few days a week, and dedicate some time — say, a half hour or so — to do nothing but draw or practice on one of my guitars.  And as an extra incentive, I can use the mp3 recorder app on my phone to record some of the song demos.  [For those playing along: it’s the Hi-Q mp3 recorder app available at the Google store.  The free version records up to 10 minutes, and the sound quality is pretty good considering.]  The aim is to either finish a completed song or piece of art, or make headway on a possible future project.

It’s not much to ask, and it’ll get me back into the habit of working on such things with more frequency, which is the whole point.

Legacy

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been thinking lately about the legacy of some of my favorite bands.  I’ve recently started following Art of Noise on Instagram, who are currently at the planning and prepping stages of an upcoming tour.  The other week I downloaded the new album by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.

This year we’ve seen new releases by The Godfathers, Daniel Ash, The Feelies, Wesley Stace (aka John Wesley Harding), Peter Murphy, Depeche Mode, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Wire, Clan of Xymox, Robyn Hitchcock, Slowdive, Blondie, Erasure, The Charlatans UK, Alison Moyet, Ride, Cheap Trick, Public Enemy, KMFDM, Sparks, The Waterboys and Living Colour.  And there’s still three-plus months to go in the year, with more new releases by classic bands coming up.

It occurred to me that many of these bands are from the first generation of 70s and 80s rock and its multitudes of subgenres, or their slightly younger siblings.  We still have some musicians from the original rock wave of the 50s and 60s — Ringo Starr has a new album coming soon, and Paul McCartney is still on tour, for instance, and recently-passed Chuck Berry had a new album out as well.  One has to remember that rock music as we know it really is a young genre compared to other popular and fringe music out there.  We’re still seeing it grow and evolve.  We’re also still seeing some of the old vanguard putting out albums.

My fascination here isn’t just that many of these bands were my favorites when I was in high school thirty years ago, and that I’m just reliving my youth in my own pathetic way.  I’m also fascinated that these bands are still going strong, still providing their signature sounds, still touring, still releasing.  Some of them may have taken an extended hiatus for various reasons (Ride’s last album was in 1996, for example, and they split almost at the same time it came out), but upon their return, fans both old and new rejoiced.

I’m fascinated by the legacies of these bands, because I’m living during their tenure.  I’m watching and listening to their history as it happens.  It’s that ‘I was there’ moment — it’s my own Woodstock remembrance, in a way — and I love that I’m a part of it in my own way, as a listener and as an owner of their recordings.

Finest Worksongs: REM

Posted on by
Reply

Thirty years ago this month, REM released their album Document.  It’s the one that contains their two hits that still get consistent plays on the radio to this day (one of them for somewhat trollish reasons, I’m guessing!), “The One I Love” and “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)”.  It’s also the first REM album I actually bought, if you can believe that.

Of course, I’d known REM quite early on.  I remember MTV playing “Radio Free Europe” in its early days.  I remember “So. Central Rain” and “Pretty Persuasion” getting a lot of airplay on WAAF and WAQY.  Even “Driver 8” and “Can’t Get There from Here” got minor play.  And “Fall On Me” was a big college radio hit as well as a staple on the early days of 120 Minutes.

Document was, to date, their most commercial sounding album, and the last for the indie label IRS Records.  They’d release one final record, the singles/rarities album Eponymous, before signing to Warner Bros Records and releasing Green in late 1988.

Interestingly, Document is also the first place I’d heard a Wire song, “Strange”, which was from that band’s seminal Pink Flag album.  REM’s Michael Stipe was one of many musicians in the punk and college rock genre that sang the praises of Wire.  By the end of 1989, I’d have nearly all the Wire albums to date in my own collection, declaring them one of my top five favorite bands.  In early 1989 I and a few of my friends went to see REM at the Worcester Centrum, with a relatively new folk duo called Indigo Girls as the opener.  Suffice it to say, I also became a huge fan of that band.

For a short time in the late 80s, I was obsessed by REM.  I was definitely a fan of their early years, especially once I dubbed my the first four albums from my friends.  I was a mad fan of Green as well — still am, to be honest — even while others complained that they’d sold out and become ‘rockstars’.  They definitely epitomized that Athens GA sound that’s not quite country, not quite folk, not quite rock, but everything in between.  And not a day would go by where I wouldn’t hear one of their songs on a college radio station.

I was a passing fan of 1991’s Out of Time, but by then their sound had evolved to a point where the songs didn’t quite gel with me anymore.  I’d still follow them and pick up their albums, but after 1992’s Automatic for the People I was more of a song fan than an album fan of theirs.  It wasn’t until their last few albums, 2008’s Accelerate and 2011’s Collapse into Now that I became an album fan again.

I do come back to them occasionally, especially if they’re played on the radio or if I see one of the band members surfacing here and there.  [Michael Stipe, now wearing a full-on white Jethro beard, pops up in the news now and again, and Mike Mills is frequently spotted on Twitter.]   They’re part of a fond memory of that era of late 80s college rock and close friendship for me, but they’re also amazing musicians as well.

Meanwhile, 40 years ago…

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday afternoon, A and I headed to the Alamo Drafthouse to see the 40th Anniversary of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I barely remember going to see it the first time out, considering I was six years old (I either saw it at the drive-in or in Gardner, the same place I saw Star Wars), though I do remember bits of it when watching it on TV in later years.

Of course, this made me think of all the music that I’d heard about that time, mostly on the little crackly radio that was in the kitchen for years. I remember the above ‘disco version’ of the Close Encounters theme, as we owned the album and the single.

So let’s see…what other songs do I remember from that era? [This obviously doesn’t include the classic punk from that era, which was way off my radar for quite a few more years.] A lot of these were singles my sisters bought, or tunes that we’d hear on the radio. This of course was back when AM was still the preferred listening band, so most of these I associate with either listening on my cheapo record player or on the car radio whenever we went for a ride. [Or in some cases, the jukebox at Bellinger’s!]

…hey, what can I say? I was six years old. I loved this stuff. :p

Recent Purchases, August Edition

Posted on by
Reply

The further we go along in 2017, the more this year seems to be that everyone is putting out an album!  Not that I’m complaining. There’s not just favorite bands releasing new stuff, I’m also finding new bands to obsess over. Here’s some of my favorites for August:

Life On Venus, Encounters, released 4 August. Dreamy, reverby shoegaze from Moscow? Sure, why not? Very Slowdive-y, in a really good way.

Black Grape, Pop Voodoo, released 4 August. Shaun Ryder once again proving he can’t hit a note to save his life, his poppier, dancier group returning after far too long with a new album.

Dan Wilson, Re-Covered, released 4 August. Known more for his songwriting and production now than his tenure in Semisonic, Wilson records some of his most well-known tracks that were recorded by other artists.

Frankie Rose, Cage Tropical, released 11 August. AllMusic described this album as sounding remarkably like a pop album from 1985, and they weren’t wrong. I most likely would have bought this at Strawberries back then.

Emily Saliers, Murmuration Nation, released 11 August. The other half of Indigo Girls finally releases her own solo album, and it’s a fun, poppy, maybe even a little electronic record worth checking out.

The Districts, Popular Manipulations, 11 August. A band that’s new to me, but won me over on the first track above. They kind of remind me of the Killers vocally but Beach Slang musically.

Paul Draper, Spooky Action, released 11 August. Draper has lost none of his quirky songwriting chops since leaving Mansun oh so many years ago. Definitely a welcome return!

Gold Class, Drum, released 18 August. It took me a few listens to realize they remind me a lot of The Cult, but without the overwhelming pomp and less Ian Astbury wail. I’m quite liking this one.

KMFDM, HELL YEAH, released 18 August. I really need to get back into Belgian industrial. I loved it way back in the day but could never find any of it (and when I did, I was usually too broke to buy it). Great to hear this band is still going strong.

Rainer Maria, S/T, released 18 August. I have been playing the hell out of this album. Over a decade since their last album, this is one hell of an excellent return. One of my favorites of the year.

UNKLE, The Road, Part I, released 18 August. Another band on the “I will buy anything they put out” list. They’ve come a long way from their more electronic sound, but James Lavelle still knows how to create a creepy ambience with his music.

Steven Wilson, To the Bone, released 18 August. It is kind of weird to see the Porcupine Tree front man playing alternapop here (and smiling in the video!), but it’s a great new record, apparently inspired by his favorite UK pop bands from the 80s.

PVRIS, All We Know of Heaven, All We Need of Hell, released 25 August. Bonus points for one of my favorite album titles of the year! A group that was getting a lot of publicity that I just had to check out, and I wasn’t let down. And they’re from MA! Yay!

Cymbals, Light in Your Mind, released 25 August. Another record suggested by a music blog I read that I warmed right up to. Laid back but not blissed out, I find them quite pleasing to play during my writing sessions.

More to come…our September shopping list is going to be quite epic!

For What It’s Worth

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been a busy weekend here in the Bay Area.

We weren’t part of the marches or the protests here, though. Had the one in Crissy Field not been cancelled by the Patriot Prayer group on Saturday, we most likely would have made our way through the Presidio to head down there. So instead we drove down to Half Moon Bay, stopped at the Main Street Grill for brunch, did a bit of shopping at the deli there, and then headed back. We spent the afternoon watching various episodes of Time Team and other things. As it happens, the PP guys’ plans fizzled spectacularly, ending up with an online chat and a pathetic appearance at Crissy Field after all (with the reporters and cameras outnumbering them). The rest of the city, on the other hand, turned it into a party and a love fest.

As for Sunday, we knew better than to head over to the East Bay. They’re a bit more hardcore when it comes to protests, and there’s always that small group of outsiders who stop by just to stir shit up and make the more peaceful protesters look bad. The mood is usually much more tense when there are protests there.

Meanwhile, we kept our eyes out for our friends down in Texas. One of A’s friends was actually not in Houston but elsewhere at a wedding, leaving her husband to hold the fort. They’re both doing okay last I heard. They’re on the outskirts of the city on higher ground. The city itself turned into its own Vienna with streets turning into creeks and rivers. Downtown Houston is quite nice, from what I remember of it, having visited there a few years ago when Worldcon was in San Antonio. It was hot as hell, but I really liked the city.

And during all that, The Fuckwit tweeted about Missouri, a book he really liked, that goddamn wall he’s so obsessed about, and hating NAFTA because Canada and Mexico are being mean to him. He may have tweeted about Houston at some point, but as far as I could tell, it was little more than ‘wow that doesn’t look good’ and went on to the next shiny object.

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound, everybody look what’s going down.

Retro: 1981

Posted on by
Reply

A while back I was visiting a music blog I enjoy but haven’t checked out in some time called Musicophilia.  Sometime in April they had an entry regarding an incredibly huge mix they’d built sometime last decade (and recently updated to twice its original size!), the entire collection containing post-punk songs from 1981.

That’s one hell of a fantastic mix, even by my standards.  I’ve been listening to it off and on, and the first thing that hits me is how similar a lot of this stuff is to the indie music out there now.  It’s pure college rock in a sense — the non-commercial stuff you’d hear on your favorite college radio station back in the day, even further afield than the Big Names we all know and remember now.  You may think of Depeche Mode and the Cure and The Replacements and so on, and those bands definitely have their own spot in this mix, but you’ll also see tracks from Crispy Ambulance, The Swimming Pool Qs, Pere Ubu, Flux of Pink Indians, and so on.  Bands you know of and most likely don’t have in your collection, but you remember that station playing those tracks late at night while doing your homework.

To be honest, it kind of makes me think that I’m not even close to doing justice to my own retrospective mixes or delving deep enough into the sounds of the past.  Who knows, maybe I’ll do one of my own versions of this megamix one of these days.

[I’m not sure if the mix is still available, but go ahead and follow Musicophilia anyway, they do post some great streaming mixes as well that’ll really open your ears to some deep cuts and forgotten gems.  [And I do mean forgotten — not the ‘oh yeah, that Cure single I used to hear all the time in 1992 and they’re now playing again for a brief time’.  I’m talking tunes I haven’t heard since maybe 1987 or so.]

Jonc’s Britpop Meme

Posted on by
Reply

Okay, this is something I’ve posted on Twitter and elsewhere, but thought I’d collect some of my favorites here. These are pictures from our trips to London over the past couple of years…it’s kind of amusing, because A goes for the worldly historical sites and museums, and I’m all about visiting a city that’s ridiculously rich in rock music history. Whenever I could, I took a few snaps of places and images that reference some of my favorite songs out of the UK.

IMG_20170808_151523

The man who drives many cabs down in Old Compton…
[from Belle & Sebastian’s “The Boy with the Arab Strap”]
We walked down Old Compton Street on our way to a lovely little tea shop on a side street.  It’s a hip and divey little street full of bars and questionable people, right off Cambridge Circus.

IMG_20170806_143618

It depends how you’re wired when the night’s on fire, under the westway…
[from Blur’s “Under the Westway”]

This was the Westway bridge near the north end of Portobello Road.  Portobello is a wonderfully wacky street that’s got really nice row houses of bright pastel colors on one end (think the London version of SF’s Painted Ladies) and a lot of antique stores down the other end.  It’s hipster, it’s grungy, and it’s always a lot of fun.

IMG_20170805_123209

She said ‘eh, I know you and you cannot sing’, I said ‘That’s nothing, you should hear me play pianer’
[from The Smiths’ “The Queen Is Dead”]
A rare Jonc sighting on his own blog!  Whodathunkit?  Heh.  Me standing in front of Buckingham Palace.  The Queen was elsewhere that week, so unfortunately the above conversation did not actually take place.

IMG_20170805_114112

Oh, hairdresser on fire, all around Sloane Square…
[from Morrissey’s “Hairdresser On Fire”]

Really, Moz and the Smiths do namedrop a lot of London locations.  Sloane Square is on the far west side of Chelsea at the end of King’s Road and the area is Quite Posh.  Lots of high end boutique stores and bakeries.  And hairdressers.

 

DSC06454

I told you about the swans that they live in the park…
[from Cream’s “Badge”]

There are indeed a lot of swans (and geese, and ducks, and pigeons…) that live in Kensington Gardens and hang out at Round Pond, just outside Kensington Palace.  They’re fearless and will either ignore you if you’re just taking pictures, follow you around if you’re feeding them bread, or honk at you if you get too close.

IMG_20170803_192004

Dance on moonbeams, slide on rainbows, in furs or blue jeans, you know what I mean, Do the Strand…
[from Roxy Music’s “Do the Strand”]

The Strand is an upscale street just off Trafalgar Square where a lot of the big name hotels and theatres are.  It’s an incredibly busy street for both traffic and pedestrian, so yeah, you could say it’s a place to see and be seen…

DSC06566

I got married to the widow next door, she’s been married seven times before…
[from Herman’s Hermits’ “I’m Henry the 8th I Am”]

Did this song pop into my head when we visited Hampton Court Palace, one of Henry VIII’s favorite digs?  Of course it did.  Because I’m a goober like that.  Seriously, though, it’s a lovely place to visit.  Amazing gardens as well.

IMG_20170805_150031

Give me one last kiss, before I walk out of this…
[from The La’s “Way Out”]

The Underground has some really great signage.  The older stops, like the above (I think this was from the Piccadilly Line at Earl’s Court station, if I’m not mistaken) have their signs inlaid or painted onto the tile.  They use “way out” instead of “exit” on their transportation signage so that La’s track would pop into my head every single time.

IMG_20170804_195241So why do you smile when you think about Earl’s Court?
[from Morrissey’s “Piccadilly Palare”]

You could consider this our home base during our trip.  This is the entrance to the Earl’s Court Underground station, servicing the Piccadilly and District Lines.  [It’s also a straight shot to Heathrow, which means no train changes at all when heading in and out.]  The places we’ve stayed are up one of the side streets, so it’s super easy for us to jump on the Tube when we want to head anywhere.  Earl’s Court Road is a busy one-way street (I think a lot of people use it to head from Cromwell Road down to King’s Road) that’s filled with pubs, restaurants and convenience stores, not to mention a launderette, which came in handy!  Oh — it also has its own TARDIS!  It’s mostly obscured in this picture, but it’s next to that news kiosk, with the top of it peeking out over that red car to the left.

I have a few more from a few years back that I’ll post a little later, but for now, here you go!  Thanks for waiting!

 

 

Fly-by: N do I need apostrophe T need this torture

Posted on by
Reply

Remember when I said that various systems at my Day Job usually go all kerflooey when I go away on vacation? Well, surprisingly enough none did.

But as of yesterday, our email server has decided to flush all the many and intertwining sorting rules down the loo so everything, from requests to reports to auto-replies and everything else lands in our main Inbox.

Which means that my particular job, which happens to be quite email-heavy, is currently now twice as slow and twice as much of a pain in the ass. Which means I’ve been working straight out all day long.

So this means a fly-by. I happen to be listening to a bunch of albums from 1986 at the moment (currently playing as I write this: The Mighty Lemon Drops’ Happy Head) and of course the most excellent debut from They Might Be Giants was part of this listening experience. The video above sold me on them from the start and I’ve been a big fan since.

Hopefully I’ll have something of more substance next week. Sorry about that!