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texturemagazine-blog · 10 years ago

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DJ Garbage Body's Buddies :: Jesse Locke

Hello, pretties. How are you? In the winter, does your mood fluctuate like the weather forecast? Do you feel that all the garbage quietly hibernates in the stark bins of your city? Don't let the darkness in, my lovely ones. To help unleash the wild, untamed, crisp winter garbage blowing in the harsh wind I present one of my favourite entries thus far, taking you places deep around the worldcore. Garbage buds, direct from the waste, slip into the bins of the illustrious Mr. Jesse Locke himself! ROAD TRIPPPPPPPP WILDDDDDDDDD FUNNNNNNN CRAY CRAYYYYY HOLY FUCCKKKKK CHECK THESE OUT! LOCKE AND LOAD!

DJ Garbage Body

Nihilist Spasm Band on Tamori’s World of Music

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This video has definitely made the rounds over the years, but it remains one of my absolute favourite things on YouTube, and I’m including it here for anyone who might not have seen it. On their first tour of Japan in 1996, London, Ontario’s godfathers of noise the Nihilist Spasm Band appeared on the Tokyo variety show Tamori’s World of Music. Like a moment straight out of Lost In Translation, the demonstration of their modified instruments caused the sunglass-clad host to exclaim “Anarchy!”

Mainliner on Chic-A-Go-Go

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The second greatest TV appearance of all time flips the script with Japan’s Mainliner guesting on the amazing children’s program Chic-A-Go-Go. Watching kids and parents expressively flail to the band’s heavy psych maelstrom is a singular joy. For more of this kind of fun, check out the excellent Experimental Music on Children’s TV.

Lena Platonos - “Witches”

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Greek electronic artist Lena Platonos is largely unknown on this side of the pond, yet her chilly synths coupled with lyrics of techno-phobia (gathered from translations posted in YT comments) deserve to be mentioned alongside other trailblazers. Platonos’ 1980s albums are the sound of sparse, wavering dreams with spoken word vocals in the style of a proto-Femminielli. This clip for “Witches” — archived in all of its VHS warbled glory — is a sight to behold.

The Third Kind - “Vekki”

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For anyone who’s wondered what the members of Simply Saucer got up to during the ’80s, this home video footage provides a glimpse at Edgar Breau, Kevin Christoff and David Byers’ little known follow-up project, The Third Kind. The name comes from Close Encounters of..., extending their theme of the outerstellar. The music is 12-string jangling à la The Byrds, Moby Grape or a hosed Beau Brummels, no longer lost to the sands of time.

Gareth Williams and Mary Currie - “Breast Stroke”

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On a similar tip, Gareth Williams and Mary Currie’s Flaming Tunes provides the gentle pop coda to the abrasive out-rock of his previous group, This Heat. There’s something immediately lulling about the sing-song melody, swooning strings and hopscotch electronics of “Breast Stroke”, while the kitchen sink video provides a perfect accompaniment.

Harry Pussy - Live 1997

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Over to the opposite end of the spectrum, this might be the most intense live footage on YT. Firing back at a crowd of assholes like Neil Hamburger before people got the joke, drummer/singer Adris Hoyos and guitarist Bill Orcutt shred with a vengeance.

Caroliner at the Dionysus Disco

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Speaking of Gregg Turkington… greatest band of all time?

Cybotron - “Colossus”

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Worlds apart from Juan Atkins’ proto-techno duo (not to mention the scorched off-brand cover of “Cosmic Cars” by Toronto’s Ken Lewis), this pair of Australian cosmonauts beamed up their own Cybotron. Like a low-rent redux of Pink Floyd at Pompeii, their daylight blastoff found the duo vamping to no one but the cameras. Steve Maxwell Von Braund would later take off to the outer realms of the Moog, but here his spin on progressive comes complete with suave sax and a sequined bootful of glam rock. Shame the video cuts off after only three minutes...

Carlyle Williams - “Power”

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This video is a portal into the eternal art and music of Carlyle Williams. Throughout seven minutes of disorienting groove, flashes of the Montreal mainstay’s paintings and sculptures jam up against shots of parades, a dog pulling a kid on a skateboard, and a kid-band performance in the hallowed tradition of Bobb Trimble.

Arthur Russell - Some Imaginary Far Away Type Things AKA Lost in the Meshes

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The only possible way to follow Carlyle? This 30-minute tone koan from Arthur Russell filmed in intimate close-ups by thee almighty Phil Niblock. Get lost in the meshes...

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texturemagazine-blog · 10 years ago

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DJ GARBAGE BODY's Psychic Tubescope: 2014 highlights and things to watch out for/explore in 2015

Happy New Year, my pretties! Let's look back on some favourite tubescopes of the last 12 months and get a little deeper for 2015. I predict and am excited for more diy programmers doing futuristic video game style music videos. Is vaporwave taking on new forms? We'll just have to continue exploring deep within our creative loins and see what happens.

- - -

1. Doc Dunn & The Cosmic Range - 'Excerpt I' (12.16.14, Grasshopper Records, Toronto)

2. Dan'l Boone - 'Excerpt II' (10.6.14, Double Double Land, Toronto)

3. Healing Light Comfort Zone TV ~ feat. Iasos, JD Emmanuel, Kat Epple, and more

I predict more tv stations of this nature in 2015... hi Toronto...?

4. Learning Curve #7: Iasos

5. The Comes Live in 1982

I want to see a new punk movement...

6. The Square of Two is Irrational (for Ted Kaczynski) - Excerpt

Listen to the sounds, soak in the math...

7. Bizzarh - POSH PIZZA PIZZA SNEAK PEEK

I wanna see where this goes in 2015...

8. Life of a Craphead - MC CUP: Just Another CUP

These Double Double Land solids have been making a movie called Bugs for years and are soon unveiling it in Vancouver. I hope there will be a big Toronto premiere sometime in the near future. PLEASE!

9. Das Rad - 'Tooth Fairy' (Feast in the East 22 @ Polyhaus, Toronto ON, Feb 2 2013)

Underrated venue, worth going to whatever location.

10. Harvey's Dance Party (10 Minute Version)

Crazy cable access show from the 1990s. Just because...

A bientôt,

DJ GARBAGE BODY

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texturemagazine-blog · 11 years ago

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STRANGE DAYS / 2014 REWIND

Words: Kevin Hainey

NEW RELEASES

Dan'l Boone "Dan'l Boone" LP

Freddie Gibbs & Madlib "Pinata" LP

Madlib "Rock Konducta Pt. 1 & 2" 2xCD, "The Beats - Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton Original Soundtrack" 10"

Aphex Twin "Syro" 3xLP

Orphan Fairytale "My Favorite Fairytale" 2xLP

Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides "Aulos' Second Reed" LP

Matt Krefting "Lymph Est" LP, "Recitals" CDR

Fleshtone Aura "Soliloquy for Lieven" LP, "AREA" CDR

Fleshtone Aura / Dylan Nyoukis "Split" LP

Man Made Hill "Lotsa Thoughts" CASS

The Pink Noise "Wave" CASS

Doc Dunn "All Is" LP

squad ROM / Anunnaki Jugglers "Shit Magic / Ancient Astronauts Don't Dance" CASS

Lil Ugly Mane "On Doing an Evil Deed Blues" 7"

Dean Blunt "Black Metal" 2xLP

Inga Copeland "Because I'm Worth It" LP

Body/Head "The Show Is Over" 7"

Total Abuse "Looking for Love" 7"

Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt "Square Cunts / Live at Various" CASS

The Dead C "The Twelfth Spectacle" 4xLP

Fourth World Magazine Vol. II "Presents Pinhead In Fantasia" LP/BOOK/DVDR

H.R. Giger's Studiolo "H.R. Giger's Studiolo" 2xCASS

William Ashley Cooper "The Collected Works" 2xLP

Ignatz & De Stervende Honden "Teenage Boys" LP

Jake Meginsky "L'appel Du Vide" 12" EP

United Waters "Sunburner" LP

Jason Lescalleet "Much To My Demise" LP

Heather Leigh "Me-Ba" CASS [Dec. 2013]

Alvarius B. "What One Man Do With an Acoustic Guitar, Surely Another Can Do With His Hands Around the Neck of God" LP, "Chin Spirits" CASS

Kemialliset Ystavat "Alas Rattoisaa Virtaa" LP

REISSUES

Alien Brains "It's All History Now 1979-1985" 4xLP

Nord "NG Tapes" LP

Code III "Planet of Man" LP

Brigitte Fontaine "Brigitte Fontaine" (1972) LP

Peter Jefferies "Electricity" 2xLP

Mar-Vista "Visions of Sodal Ye" LP

Alien City "Alien City" LP

Sun Ra "Church Organ 1948" EP

Sun Ra & His Astro-Infinity Arkestra "Other Strange Worlds" LP

Konrad Schnitzler "Grün", "Gelb" LPs

Joel van Droogenbroeck "Biomechanoid", "Meditations Vol. 1", "Meditations Vol. 2" LPs

...and so many more... in the ways of small formats, Inyrdisk, Toronto, Montréal, reissues, 7 inches and tapes, tapes, tapes...

...some more Canadian heavies worth warming your ears and eyes up to in 2015: Soupcans, Surinam, Wolfcow, Deliluh, YlangYlang, Alexander Moskos, Brian Ruryk, Solar Coffin, Tired, New Fries, Isla Craig, Michelle McAdorey, Buffalo MRI, Father Dust, Blake Hargreaves... new sounds go on forever...

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texturemagazine-blog · 11 years ago

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An Intensely Biased Guide To The 5 Best (And Worst) Songs Of The Year (2014)

Words: Anthony Hansen

The relentlessly grim Gazelle Twin.

Yeah, I know. I talk more about the bad stuff than the good stuff. What can I say? Good music speaks for itself. Bad music warrants an explanation. With that in mind, let's get to it.

THE BEST:

5. You’ll Never Get To Heaven - By This River

As a slavish art-rock fanboy, I admire anyone who has the audacity to cover Brian Eno. I was already ready to give this cover a pass due to its dreamy, Cocteau Twins-ish ambience but it wasn’t until the gorgeous string part kicked in at the one-and-a-half-minute mark that I realized this was more than just a respectful tribute. Seemingly out of nowhere, a humble dream-pop duo from London, Ontario beat the master at his own game.

(Their original material is pretty great too.)

4. Big KRIT - Mt. Olympus

I knew it as soon as I heard it. Two minutes and eighteen seconds in. Verse of the year. Go. Listen. Now.

3-2. Against Me! - Drinking With The Jocks / Mitski - Drunk Walk Home

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://mitski.bandcamp.com/album/bury-me-at-makeout-creek" data-mce-href="http://mitski.bandcamp.com/album/bury-me-at-makeout-creek"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;bury me at makeout creek by Mitski&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

It just so happens that two of my favourite songs from my two favourite rock albums of the year are about drinking. In both cases, though, the tone is one of deep disgust and alienation, drunkenness evoked as a coping mechanism. Mitski seethes “I’m starting to learn I may never be free” before ferociously howling out the words “FUCK YOU AND YOUR MONEY!” while Laura Jane Grace screams “there will always be a difference between me and you” at the sexist assholes she once tried desperately to fit in with. It's not exactly bar-band rock --- if anything, these would be the ideal soundtrack to setting a bar on fire.

1. Gazelle Twin - Premonition

Premonition by Gazelle Twin on Grooveshark

It’s hard to pick a “highlight” from Gazelle Twin’s album Unflesh, partly because it’s so consistent, but mainly because the whole album is so relentlessly scary and grim. Musically, the haunting ballad Premonition provides a welcome bit of relief from the album’s onslaught of frantic drum loops and harsh industrial noises, but then you hear the lyrics and... um, yikes. Though this can be taken as much as a warning as a recommendation, no single piece of art from this year challenged me more or disturbed me quite as deeply as this. Put another way: this gets the honourary Scott Walker Award for most unsettling song of the year, and that's in a year that actually gave us a Scott Walker album.

Honourable Mention: FKA Twigs - Lights On

I mean, I’ve got to mention FKA Twigs, right? Though there’s nothing on LP1 that bowled me over to quite the degree that How’s That and Water Me did, it’s still one of the year’s standout releases and Lights On is far and away the clear highlight. Think the musical equivalent of a come-hither look, all nervous energy and tentative exhilaration electrifying the air. The disarming intimacy and aching vulnerability of it is such that calling it “sexy” feels weirdly dismissive, but I would definitely put this as my make-out jam of the year if thinking about that without getting weirded out was a thing that I did.

THE WORST:

5. Neil Cicierega - Orgonon Gurlz

Okay, I know this is cheating because this song was clearly designed to piss people off, but this is the musical equivalent of a war crime. Why would Neil Cicierega do this? To Kate Bush? To us? To anyone? No joke, hearing Katy Perry breathily coo “sex on the beach” over the backing track from one of the most heartbreaking of heartbreaking Kate Bush songs actually made me shudder violently the first time I heard it.

Why would anyone do this?

4. Sun Kil Moon - Dogs

Okay. A lot of people whose opinions I respect think Benji is a great album so maybe talking about this song can give some insight into why I don’t like it at all (aside from the fact that Mark Kozelek’s singing voice sounds like a rusty box spring mattress trying to complain about being farted on). Four tracks into an album whose central theme seems to everything bad that has ever happened, Mark Kozelek details his early sexual experiences in graphic, agonizing detail all while using the actual names of the people involved. As is typical of the lazily solipsistic writing on Benji, we are given absolutely no insight into these women apart from how good they were in bed, how much Mark Kozelek was into them, and how much it sucked when they stopped being into Mark Kozelek. The ultimate conclusion?

“Nobody’s right and nobody’s wrong... it’s a complicated place, this planet we’re on.”

Yes! At long last, the indie-folk equivalent of To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before! That the album follows this up with a song about the Newtown shooting is an especially unfortunate bit of sequencing, though not quite as unfortunate as the fact that he chose to write a song about the Newtown shooting in the first place (I’ll admit I could have easily written about that song instead, but I figured Pray For Newtown’s smug self-righteousness is sort of to be expected while Dogs is just exceptionally icky).

I guess what I’m getting at here is that if you’re looking for a confessional singer-songwriter album from someone who has clearly learned nothing from his time on this planet, I’ve got some great news for you.

3. Foo Fighters - Something From Nothing

I kind of hate the Foo Fighters. Not as a band, you understand, but I dunno... as a concept, I guess? I singled out Mitski and Against Me! as having put out the best and most relevant rock records of 2014 (and you can add Swans’ To Be Kind to that list too), but the fact is that the genre as a whole has been sliding into irrelevance ever since Dave Grohl’s OTHER band imploded. Think about that, that’s... like... 20 years that rock music has just been hanging around, getting in the way of everything? I wouldn’t say bands like Foo Fighters are to blame, per se, but they’re definitely part of the problem.

You see, somewhere in the past five years, the friendly, lovable Dave Grohl we all knew gave way to a smug, curmudgeonly motherfucker who tries to shoehorn has-been '70s rockers back into relevance, rants about the superiority of analog equipment you can’t afford and generally seems to be positing the music he likes as some kind of “authentic” alternative to whatever non-guitar-based music is actually relevant right now. This kind of attachment to rock’s past would be fine if any other major rock bands were using their still-considerable cultural clout to move the genre forward, but it feels like all mainstream rock bands ever seem to want to do is follow Dave’s lead and whine about how no one’s paying attention to them anymore (hi, U2). Essentially, rock music in the 21st century is the musical equivalent of that bloated, sexist creep at the end of the bar whining about how girls were so much easier in high school. It’s pathetic, but anyway I should probably talk about this song now. Do I have anything to say about this song? I dunno. It’s a Foo Fighters song. You can imagine what a Foo Fighters song sounds like, right? That, but slightly worse.

2. Maroon 5 - Animals

Behold the mating call of the Predatory American Male, heard here in his natural habitat, top 40 radio.

1. Barry Manilow - What A Wonderful World/What A Wonderful Life

Barry Manilow’s My Dream Duets is one of the worst ideas ever made into an actual thing, ranking somewhere between the sequel to Easy Rider and the invention of the hydrogen bomb. If you didn’t already know, this is the album where Barry Manilow sings duets with the deceased, isolating the vocal tracks from some of their most well-known hits and grafting them awkwardly on to chintzy new backing tracks so he can sing along. The results are every bit as tasteless and ghoulish as you might expect, but the absolute nadir comes right at the very end, where Manilow shoehorns Louis Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World into an original(?) composition called It’s A Wonderful Life. The song climaxes with him singing his new lyrics on top of Louis Armstrong’s lyrics, their woefully mismatched voices combining like urine and virtually anything you would not expect to be combined with urine. I can only hope that Neil Cicierega will someday release a mashup of this and Kenny G’s own desecration of the iconic tune, because I’m pretty sure that’ll mark the point where we can all just give up on this whole civilization thing and start eating each other.

Dishonourable Mention: Weezer - Back To The Shack

In 2014, Weezer announced that they were going to start writing better songs in the form of a generic Weezer song, thus breaking new ground in narcissistic non-apologies. The album it was promoting actually turned out to be pretty alright, but I still maintain that using “disco sucks” as a way of explaining away your descent into shitty songwriting is like nailing a dartboard to your face and calling it a makeover.

Also, yes, Avril Lavigne did technically put out the worst song of the year (you know the one) but given that she’s been alluding to having some fairly serious health issues in the media recently, I... I can’t do it. Someone far braver and far crueler than I can field that one if they really want to, but I can’t bring myself to rag on someone who’s already going through a rough time. I dunno. I hope she gets well. Happy holidays, everybody.

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texturemagazine-blog · 11 years ago

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From the desk of Certified Internet Surfer Tom Whalen:

Sitting in the foyer of my hilltop mansion, I cover the floors with every newspaper printed in this wondrous year of 2014. With great care I begin to climb the Olympic-style diving board situated near the rolltop desk. From the ceiling the newspapers make out a murky ocean of grey; rough uncharted waters with little rhyme or reason. I dived in with expert precision and when I surfaced I was clutching these articles in my hand:

SQUARE DANCE AT PALMS PROMENADE

A megaton compendium from the jet-set motley crew who brought us Spider's Pee-Paw 1 and 2. Ben Mendelewicz and Char Esme's work are hazy Photoshopped dreams that seem like they were made by costume store employees after hours. A heavy feast for the eyes!! Get into the Skunk Trunk before it's too late.

JORDAN SPEER - CAUTIOUS V

Artists working beyond the carefully deliniated boundaries of GAME and COMIC are very dear to me. Work in a variety of formats (like installation, video game, zine) vividly illustrates the artists vision without being confined to just one canvas. Cautious V shifts the isometric 3D melt of Speer's visual work into a first-person adventure game with dazzling results. The gameplay reminds me of so much, from Sega's ambulance racers to the full-on absurdist characters of Ninja Baseball Bat Man.

THE MUSIC OF 'WETFACE'

The Original Badboy of Keyboard Culture aka Freak of Freaks has yet to release his music in physical form, but that doesn't stop him from writing the most beautiful love songs of all time. I'm talkin Two Plonx, New Love, The Face hits the spot every time. May be a kindred spirit of Man Made Hill.

PATRICK CRUZ - BITE THE DOG THAT FEEDS YOU

This guy is so wildly productive. Now located in Guelph, Patrick always manages to create work in a variety of disciplines that amazes me. Bite The Dog That Feeds You is a wonderful mesh, layered canvas becoming an encompassing installation. The closest thing this reminds me of is Caroliner and much like them Patrick makes extensive use of music to lure as many senses into the work as possible.

STEFFANIE LING - A HAVEN OF EVENTFULNESS

Finally someone dares to articulate the delicate dance of the ring, in an art publication no less. When I was young I thought wrestling was for lunkheads but after reading Mick Foley's book Mankind: Have a Nice Day! over the summer, it has revealed itself to me as an ever-evolving soap opera replete with backstabbings, upsets and ressurections. Steff cites The World of Wrestling by Roland Barthes as a stepping stone into the psychoanalysis of the sport, and her deep understanding of the character arcs at play illustrate her passion for this ever-evolving performance.

KARISSA SAKUMOTO - CHICKEN LOVER

Karissa's drawings are maddening toontown hallucinations and I wouldn't change a thing about them. Chicken Lover and Live Fast Die You are wondrous voyages into worlds where after-school specials teach you nothing about drugs and hateful sitcom dads are hunted down by Wolfmobiles. A+

BARRY DOUPÉ - LIFE AND PEOPLE

After working within the domain of computer animation, Doupé changes course with this series of live-action sketches played out with deadpan feeling. Much like his CG work where he use a text-to-speech program to produce dialogue, the actors in this piece deliver their lines in a similar unfeeling manner. They remind me of ESL training videos, where enunciation is prioritized over emotional delivery. What we're left with is a collection of abstract conversations with unclear power dynamics and limited props; the everyday statements become absurd and unrecognizable.

THE ONGOING WORK OF CICADA MARIONETTE AKA 'LILITH'

Lilith always seems to find a way to subvert a video game cliche and turn it into something interesting. You are Hero Mouse. Venture North and collect Item. Collect every Item. By flipping these ideas back on themselves, Lilith's games become a parody of its legacy and open a new paradigm for self-aware games. I've already gushed about Lilith's game Crypt Worlds but she has a myriad of others (Oneric Gardens, Symbol, Apartment) and a Patreon you can contribute to for subscriber-exclusive work.

RELAX WITH GRUNGE

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Relax-with-Grunge/176917792328871

ART AND FASHION'S COMPLETE IGNORANCE OF THE REST OF THE WORLD

As cops continue to kill with extreme prejudice, keep an eye out for the terrible vampires who not only remain ignorant to hate crimes, but also seek to appropriate as much culture as possible from the oppressed.

http://jezebel.com/the-problem-with-baby-hairs-urban-and-the-fashion-indu-1635947700

http://hyperallergic.com/166361/blacklivesmatter-vs-artbasel/

http://www.playboy.com/articles/mykki-blanco-art-world-racism

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texturemagazine-blog · 11 years ago

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TRANSPORTATION IN TIME :: An interview with Chandra Oppenheim (part 2)

The Chandra Dimension - 1982.

Chandra Oppenheim's musical legacy will always begin with Transportation, the madcap mutant disco vehicle she commandeered from the ages of 10-12. However, throughout the ensuing decades, the pre-teen post-punk has continued to concentrate her creative energies into shapeshifting sonic personalities. In the second half of our conversation, we transport through Chandra's adolescent backing band of the early 1980s, lesser known projects of the '90s and aughts, a children's album, her contribution to the film Teenage, and on to her upcoming opus, A Slightly Better Idea.

Julie Reich (JR): Let’s talk about the transition into the Chandra Dimension. In the second incarnation of the band, there were some teenagers that joined you. Who were the other members?

C: My childhood friend Evie Teploff was the keyboard player. She goes by Evelyn now and lives in Japan, but we’re still in touch a little bit. The drummer was Les Horowitz, and the bass player was Marina Sally. They were a little bit older than I was, so we didn’t really connect, besides Evie who was my good friend. We weren’t together for that long. I mean, it could have been a year, maybe?

JR: Why did this transition happen in the first place?

I suspect it was because The Dance didn’t want to do the kid thing anymore. That’s the story I’m coming up with, but I don’t know, I’d have to find out from Eugenie and Steve. They assembled the band, and I thought it sounded like a good idea. Maybe that was their idea all along… they just needed some time to put it together.

Jesse Locke (JL): How did it change the dynamic once you had this different band playing with you?

C: Well, looking back on it, The Dance was a much better band [laughs]. I think there was something nice about us all being young people, but I don’t know, it never quite felt as solid to me.

JR: Did the Chandra Dimension play live a lot? And what was the second recording session like?

I guess we played more shows with the first band, but I don’t remember how many. I remember doing more interviews and photoshoots with the second band, but not as much performing. In terms of the second recording, I actually don’t think any of the younger members played on it. I don’t recall if they were in the studio. I believe it was only Eugenie, Steve, and me.

JL: Interesting! So then you just decided to just shelve those four songs?

I’m not sure why they didn’t come out. Maybe it was because the band didn’t exist anymore, or because it didn’t make sense to put money into releasing it if we weren’t going to be out promoting it. These are all just guesses. I think the band dissolved partially because I was feeling drawn to school demands.

I mean, that’s how it was told to me, and it seemed that I didn’t have the time and focus to put into the band. It’s hard for me to believe that because I loved the music so much, but it is possible that I felt school was more important… which I TOTALLY do not agree with now [everyone laughs]. Of course, at the same time, I appreciate that I was able to go to top-notch schools. But at this point for my daughter, I’m very much into this movement in education called “unschooling,” because I like the idea of living life according to your passions, and that life itself is education.

JL: What did you go on to study after your time with the band?

Well, I was still in grade school, but I took it very seriously [laughs]. Ultimately, I went on to study Anthropology at Barnard, the women’s college of Columbia University.

JL: Before jumping ahead, we were curious what happened throughout the rest of the ’80s. Were you still working on music?

I tried to get back into it. Even after that shelved second recording, I kept working with Eugenie and Steve on songwriting. I had a keyboard and I was writing stuff but I don’t know… It had just fizzled and never came back in terms of our collaboration

JR: Did you record any of that stuff that you were working on at that time?

Probably on a cassette tape somewhere in my attic, maybe, but never beyond that.

JL: The actual long-lost Chandra recordings!

Hmmm, yeah, there were a lot of those throughout the years. One of my favorite songs never got recorded. It’s called “Explosions” One of the things I liked was that I wrote the song and then my dad made a piece called Explosions as well. I always liked that I had done something that inspired him.

JR: Moving on to the Transportation reissue from Cantor Records, Aaron Levin’s label - how did you two connect?

C: I think it was through my dad, because he was easier to find. That’s how I remember it happening. That’s how people usually find me [laughs]. Then we just started emailing, and it developed into doing the re-release with the second record that had never been released.

JL: How did it feel in 2008 when that music was coming out and being rediscovered by a whole new audience? Was it exciting for you?

Well, it was very gratifying because I always thought it was the best stuff I had done, and I was glad that people liked it! To do something so many years ago as a child and have people like it… I mean, whenever ANYBODY likes your music at all, it’s nice. We do it because we love to do it of course, so it’s an extra nice thing when someone likes it. The re-release was sort of like a time machine in a sense because there was this long period when it was dormant and then it came back. I don’t know the word to describe it other than very…

JR: Flattering?

Yeah, also uplifting and gratifying.

JL: It’s almost like TRANSPORTATION IN TIME.

JR: Good one! [everyone laughs]

Chandra Oppenheim - Studio City (A Slightly Better Idea)

JL: Can you tell us a bit about your new musical project?

My new record is called A Slightly Better Idea. I started working on it almost 10 years ago with a musician and film composer friend of mine named Paul Brill. We came up with the idea to do these sessions where he would improvise music on the computer and then I would come in with my lyrics sheets and essentially improvise these spoken word things. I couldn’t sing because I didn’t know what was coming next, melodically. I ended up speaking everything. We created five roughly 30-minute recordings.

Shortly after that, my daughter was born, and I left the project for five years. When I came back to it, Paul’s career had taken off and he wasn’t available to continue working on it. Also, I was living in Maine and he was living in New York, so I needed to find somebody who was going to do this massive editing project with me. I wanted to edit it into the story that I had always envisioned. Paul’s versions are very abstract. The story itself is already abstract, so I wanted to create a sort of conceptual map.

Now I’m working with a producer and composer, Noah Cole, and we’ve been working closely together on this for almost three years now. We’ve completely re-vamped it using all of my original vocal recordings, plus some of Paul’s music, but then Noah and I have redone it. We’ve turned it into, essentially, what I’ve always thought it could be. I wanted to put out a dance record, danceable music. So it is that, just with spoken vocals. I’m basically telling a story with these dance vignettes separated by interludes, creating 40 minutes of continuous music.

JL: What is the story about?

Basically, it’s about someone going through devastating heartbreak, a breakup, and her journey through it. The thing is when I talk about this, there are so many things I could say about it, but it’s also important for it to be left pretty open for the listener’s interpretation. I can say that it is about heartbreak and traveling through that. There is a dreamlike element, so it’s allowed to travel to places where it wouldn’t make sense to go physically. In a dream-state, one can move around easily.

JR: Do you plan to perform it live?

Not only are we performing it live, it’s turned into a multi-media performance art piece. I’ve come full circle!

We are working with a New York-based production designer, Charlotte Royer. She and photographer Jessica Verry worked with me to create the photos that will be projected on three screens. She’s also going to co-direct the live show because we will have some staging. I’m going to have a couch on stage, and I’ll have a wireless mic, so I’ll be moving around doing things. It’s going to be a 10-piece band with horns and strings. It’s a big production - lights and fog and all that stuff.

JL: Very cool! It sounds super theatrical.

It’s going to be, yeah! I wasn’t expecting that. I thought we were just going to be a band performing the record, but it developed into this.

JL: So, your new album and the reissue of Transportation will be coming out around the same time. We’re really looking forward to you coming to Toronto for the tribute / release show with Julie’s band covering your songs.

If my daughter were just a few years older, she’d be perfect for a tribute show. She looks just like me… pretty freaky! But yeah, I’m excited to be a part of it.

JL: There are a few other projects we wanted to ask you about. First off, can you tell us about The What Goes On Show?

That was put together by a friend of mine named Lee Chabowski. He had a bunch of friends who were musicians and wanted to put us together in kind of an old school variety show. My song was about a serial killer. The idea was that it seemed like a love song, and it is, but it’s a love song from a serial killer written to his victim. It talks about the blonde hair thing, which goes all the way back to “Kate.” The serial killer basically scalps her and then wears her hair. There’s a bridge in the song that spells it all out very clearly, but I sometimes do it with the bridge and sometimes without the bridge.

JL: That’s pretty dark. Was it your first time performing live in quite some time?

Well, that was just a recorded thing. There was no audience or anything for that.

JL: Oh OK, it was just the first performance footage I had seen of you for a while.

Yeah, well that’s true. But in the early ’90s I had a band with my former husband, now a film composer, Charles Graef, called Huperdaughtersons. I appreciate those songs for their melodic complexity and the unexpected twists and turns they take.

After that, in the late ’90s, I had an alt. rock band. For a while, looking back on it, I was not so happy with it. But I’m developing a newfound appreciation for it. My collaborator Tom Shad and I were very committed to the project and put a lot into it. I’m glad I did it, but if I compare it to the stuff I did when I was a kid, I just don’t think it even comes close. That said, I recently listened to it again and there are some aspects that I now appreciate, like the use of dissonant harmonies that carry over from my early songs.

JL: What was the name of that band?

Casanova. I don’t think you’ll find anything about it. There were some interesting things I wrote songs about though. For example, I read an interview with the director Robert Rodriguez about how he raised money for his first film, El Mariachi. He signed up to be one of those people that they run experiments on, so he could have time to write the screenplay, while making money to produce it. I was really inspired by that, so I wrote a song based on his recollections of the experience. He told some sad stories of people gambling away all of the money they were making, so that after a month of being experimented on, they had nothing left. The doctors would call his assigned name over the loud speaker, wake him up in the middle of the night to draw blood, take samples of this and that… just all this gruesome stuff. The name he was given was Red 11, and that’s the name of my song.

There was another weird one I wrote about my in which I demand that he take me to the petting zoo, which was a little disturbing [laughs]. Where did that come from? I don’t like the connotation of that.

JR: Just take the word ‘petting’ out and call it the zoo [laughs].

It was about a little girl, you know, “Dad, take me to the zoo.” I should take a closer listen to these songs – there’s probably some cool stuff in there.

After that I was in an original bossa nova band in the early 2000s, which we sort of had a name for - White Ape Offers the Grape. Unfortunately it didn’t really take off. We worked hard, did some recordings, and rehearsed for a couple of years but we didn’t really perform much. I loved that band though, and I love what we came up with.

Then there was actually ANOTHER band I had called Chandraplexi. It was very short-lived, but we had some fun songs. One of them was called “Radioactive Bats.” That was inspired by a party that my dad had. His girlfriend wrote on the invitation. “Radioactive Bats on Hand.” I guess he had a piece called Radioactive Bats and they were going to give out some bats at the party… or something. I wrote a song about it.

JL: So Chandraplexi would have been in the 2000s as well?

Yeah, that would have been in the mid-2000s. It was wild! I was in my 30s, and the other people involved were 10 years younger than I was. They were living at my house, and we had this band. It was a fun time. I felt more like I was a teenager even though I was 35.

More recently, inspired by Iwan Rheon the Welsh actor and songwriter, I developed a Welsh character named Eira Lewpart. “She” wrote several songs, performed around Portland a little, and played at the great open mic they have at Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg. Eira is on hiatus while I’m finishing up A Slightly Better Idea, but she’ll be back. It’s fun to play around with having an alter ego, and to run the social anthropological experiment of seeing how people react differently towards me as someone from Wales.

Chandra as Eira Lewpart.

JL: We also wanted to ask about the inspiration behind your children’s music album, All Around Town.

That’s the first thing I did after my daughter was born. It’s based on a sign language class where people teach their infants sign language so they can communicate before they are able to speak. It’s an amazing thing for parents and children. I took a class like that with my daughter, and when I moved to Maine I developed a class of my own with my good friend, Delilah Poupore. We released a record comprised of the songs we wrote for the class. I have a tendency to be dark in my songwriting, so I had to make sure to lighten it up for the 0-3 crowd!

JL: It’s a really cool continuation to make music as a child and then, so many years later, make music FOR children.

I never saw that coming [laughs]! But that’s how I was able to get back into it. Not that I feel like I ever really left, but if I did stop with music, it was during the years when I was so focused on my daughter. It wasn’t even five years because I did that kids’ album in there, but I was so immersed in that world of being a parent. It was such a creative project that I didn’t have any juice left. I was sleep deprived for two years [laughs].

JL: Does your daughter have any creative aspirations?

She’s amazing. I teach songwriting at her school, a small place called Forest School. That’s turning into this thing where I’m able to pass it on. Someone came to me when I was 10 years old and said “Do you want to write songs?” Now I’m basically offering that invitation to children from age 5 to 10. Working with them inspired me to start a record label to release these songs. It’s called Rain Boots Records. I’ll release my records on the label as well as the songs by the Forest School students. The label will also put out music by bands I know personally who I believe have something special and who I want to support.

But back to my daughter - she wrote a song, and I love it! It’s a collaboration between us, an Appalachian-inspired song called “Little Chickadee.” With the students, I don’t teach songwriting, I facilitate it. It’s just like what Eugenie and Steve did with me. And it’s a little more hands on because they’re younger. Five is the youngest, but basically they’re providing the material and I’m shaping it. That’s what I did with my daughter’s song, and it’s amazing. She sings, and has great pitch!

[L-R] Chandra, Phyllis Jalbert (mother) and Kate (from the song) - Hot Club, Philadelphia, 1980.

JR: I’m curious - is your mom an artist?

My mom is not an artist. She would be the first person to say that [laughs]. My mom is an amazing person, and she’s a million other things. She created a successful real estate business in New York with my stepfather. She used to fly airplanes. She’s a registered Maine guide, and guides canoe trips. She grew up in Northern Maine, so she has these cabins that her great grandfather built on the Allagash and now she runs those. She’s a philanthropist. She’s on a gazillion boards, including our public radio station board. She’s involved in a human rights and Holocaust centre, and had a building constructed for that. She’s on a U.S. biathlon team, and on and on. She’s very busy.

JL: Every article and interview seems to mention your dad, so we wanted to hear a little bit about your mom too!

My mom will appreciate that, because although she understands that the focus goes to him because of my father’s celebrity, she wishes that she would be acknowledged too. My mom raised me. I mean, my dad was around and I would go see him and hang around with him, but my mom was my parent. She’s still my parent!

JR: She sounds like a good influence. It’s cool you had the artistic side from your dad and this very grounded side from your mom.

Yeah, thank goodness! I lucked out.

JL: What about Eugenie and Steve? Are you still in contact with them today?

When the 2008 re-release happened, we got back in touch. Since then we’ve been in touch loosely whenever different things happen. For example, there’s this movie, Teenage. I don’t know if you heard about that.

JL: Yes, we saw “Kate” was included in the soundtrack.

Teenage is a documentary by Matt Wolf that came out last year. It was doing the festival circuit, and I went to see it at the Tribeca film festival. I was sitting there engrossed in this great movie and then this song comes on, and I was like “Hmmm, that’s familiar.” I was so engrossed in the movie, and forgot I was there to hear my song!

JL: That’s great to know it’s a good movie too.

Oh yeah, I was so happy with it. The other kind of cool thing is that “Kate” is the only non-original piece in the film, so it really stands out.

JR: Looking back on everything, I guess your experiences have all been pretty positive. If you could go back, would you do it the same way? Do you have any regrets?

You never know what road you’re going to take, and where it’s going to take you. I do wish that I had stuck with it consistently back then because I had something that I didn’t realize I had. I had something very valuable. I had people’s attention; people were listening, they were interested, there was press, and people wanted to come see us play.

JR: That’s just like being a child. It’s very precious, because when you grow up, you can’t be a child ever again.

I loved doing what I was doing, and didn’t know that I was kind of giving away something. There was an opportunity to continue with music if I had stuck on that road instead of being drawn to my Latin homework [everyone laughs]. It wasn’t until I was a bit older that I realized I already had something and had given it away.

What I do believe is that everyone finds their own path through life. Things happen, and you might go into a dark place for a while, but then hopefully you can find your way back. One of the things I would tell myself is that I could have gotten into some bad things if I had continued. You hear about child stars and all the things that could happen in terms of fame, drugs, and all of that. I had a very calm, nurturing childhood and I’m a stable happy person. If I had gone down that road, I might have run into some difficulties. But there’s just no way to know.

I feel like I said that to myself for years just to make myself feel better [laughs]. Really, being up on the stage is my favorite place to be, and it seems like ever since then, I’ve been trying to get back there.

Transportation is now available from Cantor Records and Rain Boots Records. On Friday, October 17 at Double Double Land (Toronto), Chandra will share the stage with Bile Sister for a performance of songs from Transportation, along with opening sets from Sexy Merlin, New Chance and the Invisible City DJs. Advance tickets can be purchased at Soundscapes and Rotate This. More information here.

#A Slightly Better Idea #Cantor Records #Chandra #Rain Boots Records #Teenage #Transportation

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texturemagazine-blog · 11 years ago

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When Bile Sister Met Chandra

Words: Julie Reich

Hunting for the next obscure musical discovery tends to render short-lived satisfaction, since one find leads to the next, and so forth. Back in the day record shelves would sag, but now the tabs just add up until my computer freezes, and I have to plan to devote another day to scouring through a new bookmarked folder. The Internet has enabled a compulsive yet exciting need to quench a never-ending thirst. Sometimes in rare cases, however, the satisfaction from such discoveries can be long lasting and continually evolving. I’m about to share a story that will exemplify such a statement, as it pertains to me.

One day I stumbled upon an artist named Chandra and a four-song EP entitled Transportation. I was blown away – especially after I found out she was only 12 years old when her music was recorded! At the time, my searches chiefly focused on female artists making minimal synth or post-punk between 1980 and 1983 (don’t ask me why, that’s a whole other story). At the time, I had been posting a lot of my youtube finds on facebook, since it provided a forum to store, organize and share some of these amazing songs (this was before Jesse Locke gave me a video column as DJ Garbage Body for Texture Magazine). Naturally, I posted Chandra’s music on my facebook wall.

Little did I know, the Canadian label Cantor Records, run by the one and only Aaron Levin, reissued the Transportation EP in 2008 along with four more unreleased songs from her teenage band, The Chandra Dimension. I knew Aaron through the musical grapevine because of his connection to Weird Canada, a non-profit organization that helps promote creativity among Canadian artists. He and his partner Marie LeBlanc Flanagan run Weird Canada from their Ontario homebase, where I also live. What a small world!

Many people reacted to the Chandra post, including my friend Valentine. Following a heated discussion on facebook about children’s autonomy in relation to remarks about the album’s authenticity based on its influences from adults, my friend Victoria Cheong (co-founder of Healing Power Records) and I were inspired. We discussed the fact that young people have a voice and are capable of independently expressing themselves as autonomous, self-aware beings. We deliberated the notion that under fostering circumstances, young people are able to produce works that are just as credible, if not more credible, than adults!

Ultimately, kids should get more credit, and Chandra is a role model. We were inspired to extend a dialogue beyond facebook. Victoria asked if I would make a special playlist devoted to rad obscure songs by women. This mix would also serve as a means to introduce my music project, Bile Sister, prior to Healing Power's release of my album, Faucet. Ergo, the Chandra 4 Lyfe mix was born.

Of course, discovering Chandra led to something far bigger than feeding an unquenchable thirst for personal musical discovery: it led to a connection. Little did I know at the time how this connection would continue to extend beyond the mix.

It doesn't take much for Jesse and I to excitedly geek out about our shared love for Chandra. Jesse was also the first person to reveal the connection between Transportation and Aaron Levin, who he works with at Weird Canada. One night at a Tanya Tagaq show in Toronto (where Victoria also performed alongside Tagaq and a strew of fellow lady musician peers), Jesse casually suggested that I should contact Chandra and inquire about interviewing her for Offerings (an underground Toronto / Montreal-run music paper of which I am a contributor). Jesse sure has cojones! After giving this idea some thought, I followed up with him – I was down. Sure, why not? Doesn’t hurt to try, right?

I figured if Chandra actually responded positively with a willingness to be interviewed, Jesse should be a part of it. After all, his suggestion and supportive vibe encouraged me to go for it! Since he also runs Texture Magazine (does it surprise you that his dabblings run deep? Is he bionic?!?), it was therefore fitting to propose a Texture home for the interview.

Jesse was down. He connected Aaron and I in a three-way convo. Aaron not only responded positively and provided Chandra’s contact info (facilitating this process in many ways throughout), but also mentioned that she wanted to do a second pressing of the reissue (co-released by Cantor Records and Chandra's new label Rain Boots Records). Aaron inquired whether we could help see this through!! Holy cow!!

So, I reached out nervously to Chandra with Jesse’s guidance - and trust me, I needed it! I was relieved to find that she was super receptive and personable. After much planning, Jesse and I conducted a phone interview with her. On top of the origins of Transportation, we found out about her upcoming album and multi-media performance, A Slightly Better Idea , among many other things.

During our talk, Chandra not only agreed to come to Toronto to see Bile Sister perform some of her songs from Transportation, but also agreed to join us onstage! These ideas seemed to organically take shape, and naturally, it made sense that the show would be a great opportunity for the reissue release party (which is going down Oct. 17 at Double Double Land). Woah!

After the interview, we proceeded to have the reissue pressed and packaged. Now, I have 75 copies of the 2014 edition of Transportation sitting in my living room awaiting their next destination!

The icing on the cake was that Chandra sent a personalized letter in the mail with a DVD of her rarely seen music video for the song “Concentration”, filmed in 1980 by the director of Madonna’s first music video. Bam! Jesse and I had to ruminate on press release stuff, and I learned quite a bit from this experience. The video ultimately ended up having its online premiere on AUX TV. Who would have thought?

What an inspiring story, eh?! You never know where things will lead. In this case, a music discovery led to sharing, which led to connecting with friends and peers, which led to making new things. Making new things led back to connecting with the ‘source’ (for lack of a better word) for an interview via the ‘Aaron Levin Link’. This association transported further development of a positive working relation with Jesse, while helping Chandra have this masterpiece of an album re-pressed. Now, I have not only gotten to know Chandra, but we will be performing some of these amazing songs together, and who knows what from there! All thanks to my wonderful supportive friends, and to the ballsy ideas of Jesse, the Bionic Locke!

Ultimately, you never really know what will happen when you say ‘yes’ to the unknown, but it is worth finding out. Search and discovery is satisfying and ongoing. I hope it never ends...

#Bile Sister #Cantor Records #Chandra #Rain Boots Records #Transportation

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texturemagazine-blog · 11 years ago

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TRANSPORTATION IN TIME :: An interview with Chandra Oppenheim (part 1)

Chandra Oppenheim wrote the songs for Transportation at age 10, cut them in the studio at 11, and become an underground art star before her 12th birthday. Backed up by members of The Dance - disco-not-disco staples of the CBGB circuit - her 1980 recording sessions and live shows were an unshackled explosion of pre-teen post-punk poetry in motion. However, as the daughter of eminent conceptual artist Dennis Oppenheim, Chandra had been encouraged to let her freak flag fly throughout her formative years, whether writing and starring in surprisingly weighty performance pieces, or taking part in her father's equally off-kilter art projects from an even earlier age.

Chandra's music remained a well-kept secret until 2008, when Cantor Records repackaged the Transportation EP with four unreleased songs by The Chandra Dimension, a later-period live band made up of teenagers. Like all good things in limited quantities, that album's pressing is long gone. Now, in conjunction with Chandra's own imprint, Rain Boots Records, the mutant disco monster is available on vinyl once again. It also bears noting that Chandra is hard at work on an upcoming album and multi-media performance entitled A Slightly Better Idea, set for release in 2015.

The following interview is a three-way conversation between myself, Julie Reich (a.k.a. Bile Sister) and Chandra, leading up to the reissue's release. Throughout our hour-long chat connected long-distance by the magic of Skype, we discussed Chandra's wonderfully weird childhood, the lyrical inspirations of Transportation, early onstage experiences, and so much more. Rev up your engines for a time-traveling trip. - Jesse Locke

Jesse (JL): I wanted to start off by mentioning an interesting connection. Your dad’s sculpture Device To Root Out Evil is currently based in Calgary, which is my hometown. I’ve been a fan of that piece for a long time, but never made the link until we started doing some research.

Chandra: I love that piece too! I don’t have much of his art unfortunately, but I do have a print of that one.

JL: What was it like growing up with a conceptual artist for a dad? Do you have many early memories of his off-kilter activities?

I definitely do, because I participated in his work from a very young age. Of course I’m glad that I was a part of it, but in the moment it wasn’t always the most fun. There were some things I really didn’t want to do. As an artist myself now, I understand there are certain timeframes when things are required, but he wasn’t always able to do what I needed him to do and get his work done.

An example of that is one of my favorite pieces called Ground Gel where he span us around underneath an aerial shot for around 80 photos. Eventually, we disappeared into the ground. This took place at a baseball diamond where there were some boys playing and I had to strip, taking everything off. I was not happy about that. So there’s the great piece that resulted, and the circumstances that were really not fun for me.

He had another series of projects that involved me playing dead. One time I had to lie down on this photo paper, and there were a bunch of bugs collecting because of the bright lights. My dad said someone was going to shoot me, as in take my photo, but I had heard about a guy who actually shot himself with a gun as part of an art project. I thought someone was going to do that to me. I was four years old, so I took it very literally. I can laugh at it now, but also understand my misunderstanding!

Another project involved me holding a puppet of him with a knife in his heart. If you look at that image, it seems kind of intense, but the experience of that one was actually really fun. I was playing with my dad while we were taking photos. My biggest memory is that my dad had to keep reminding me not to smile.

Chandra and Dennis Oppenheim, 1976. Photo Shunk-Kender. Courtesy Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.

JL: That sounds like it would have been challenging, but also inspiring. Did you feel a lot of encouragement to express yourself in ways that weren’t really typical?

Yes, exactly. I was very much encouraged to do that. When I was seven, I was writing, directing and acting in performance art pieces. He was mentoring me in that process. I look back on that now, because my daughter is seven, and realize that it was pretty amazing. We were both very focused and serious about my projects, which gave me a lot of confidence to do what was naturally coming out of me. It made me feel confident that I was on the right track.

As I got closer to the age when we recorded the album, I felt more like a peer of my father’s. He wasn’t really much of a paternal figure, but he was a good buddy. We had a lot of mutual respect, and it felt like a peer relationship. That was unusual, but it gave me a lot of self-esteem.

Julie (JR): Were your friends or other kids in your school doing the same kinds of things?

No, not at all. Jennifer Connelly went to my school, so there were a few people like her who were acting or modeling, but it was still very different. They weren’t creating things for themselves.

JL: There’s another interview where you mention that your early life was full of “crazy people and crazy situations.” Can you elaborate on that?

It’s true! My dad would have these wild parties where everyone was on drugs, and I’d be trying to sleep because I had to get to school in the morning. I was like the grumpy neighbor who would come out and tell them to turn it down.

JR: Did you still have time for school and regular kid stuff?

I was always on top of my homework, and was a quote unquote good girl. I wanted to do well, so that was never an issue.

JL: That’s the only way you could rebel against an artist parent!

[Laughs] Well yeah, but I had both sides. My mom was also very stable, so I had that model as well. My parents were never married, and while it’s not like I did it too early, I did get married… and then divorced. That was something I felt was a bit of a rebellion.

Chandra at the Mudd Clubb, 1980.

JR: When did you start getting interested in music?

The performance art pieces segued into writing songs, which I really started doing when I was nine. There was something special about that because of my environment, because of my age, and because I wasn’t self-conscious.

JL: We read that you first started performing skits and songs at your dad’s parties. Do you have any memories of that?

I don’t really remember that, but I do know it developed into doing shows at performance art spaces like the Kitchen and Franklin Furnace. Those shows were with another friend of mine who was the same age, and it was essentially four skits. One that stands out in my memory was when she played a detective, and I came in needing her help solving a murder mystery. It turned out that I was the murderer and had multiple personalities. I started off as a man and became a woman. The other one I remember had two garbage cans on opposite sides of the stage. We would pass by each other carrying something and then toss it in the trash. It started off with a hot dog wrapper, growing to things of more value like a camera. The very last things were babies that we threw in the garbage.

JL: Wow! That’s pretty advanced material for a seven-year-old.

[Laughs] I know! It’s dark, and definitely shows my father’s influence. That was two years before the band started, but I was already doing it in front of adult audiences.

JR: Did this friend of yours end up making music with you as well?

No. That all started with Eugenie Diserio and Steve Alexander, who had a band called Model Citizens. They knew my father through the art world, and were students at Columbia. They approached him and told him they were hoping to start a musical project with a child, and asked him if I would be interested. They may have even seen one of my performances before that, but I’m not really sure. My role was that I wrote the lyrics, came up with the melodies, and did all of the singing.

JR: Do you have any memories of rehearsing or recording for the first EP?

I was 10 when we started the rehearsals, which was a nice experience. My mom, Eugenie and Steve were all there, and they took really good care of me. This was still the 1970s in New York, and it was pretty gritty. We were in the area called Hell’s Kitchen, which is in the 40s on the west side. That’s near Times Square, where all of the X-rated movie theatres used to be. We had this really funky rehearsal building with a freight elevator. We would get together in the summer, and it was sweltering. My mom bought a little fan for the rehearsal room. It was really bare bones, and not safe, but definitely an adventure for me. Since I felt safe, it was fine and it was interesting. I remember doing my homework when we would take five [laughs].

JL: That’s hilarious that you remained so studious.

One of the guys in the band was always doing yoga, and I had never seen that before. Now yoga is everywhere, but I didn’t understand what he was doing at the time, rolled over with his legs behind his head right next to the drum kit. He was a percussionist who played things like bells and pots and pans. He had a whole rig of found objects.

JL: Did any of that pots and pans percussion make it into the recordings?

No, because that band didn’t end up doing the session. Fred Maher played drums on the first EP.

JL: At that point, the Model Citizens had become The Dance, right?

Yes, they had morphed into The Dance. I remember Louis [Watterson] the bass player as well. These were young adults, so the fact that they interacted with a child is pretty impressive. The original drummer and percussionist barely spoke to me, but Louis was probably the friendliest person aside from Eugenie and Steve. They were almost like my surrogate parents when I was alone with them. Louis was very cool too, though. He looked so big to me with a giant afro, and was such a great bass player. He was nice and cool at the same time, which is a hard combination to find.

JL: I’ve looked up songs by The Dance on YouTube and Louis is often posting comments and interacting with people. It seems like he’s still pretty outgoing.

Oh yeah, he is! He played a little bit on my upcoming record as well, so it was nice to reconnect with him.

Another interesting thing is that Madonna rehearsed in the same building, and I remember seeing her in the elevator. Of course I only learned about her afterwards because she wasn’t well known then. I do remember seeing her though, because she was the person closest to my age [laughs].

JL: I’ve read so much about Hell’s Kitchen from that time because it was the stomping grounds of some of the No Wave bands as well.

Oh yeah, we were in the thick of it.

JR: Was that kind of music influential on what you were going for? Were you aware of the emerging styles of the times?

When I walked in there, I needed some guidance, but it was essentially going to be based around me. At our very first rehearsal, I didn’t have any pre-conceived styles or influences. I’m sure the other members had some ideas, but they didn’t articulate them to me. We just started playing.

Eugenie started things off with the first song. I had never sung into a mic before, so she showed me what we were going to do by basically improvising. The band started playing something, while she sang about the shah of Iran and what he was going to eat [laughs]. It was so funny. She did a few lines, and then I just started singing along. I’m not sure what our first song was after that. Maybe “Subways.”

JR: Since we’re including the video for your song “Concentration”, we wanted to ask about the inspiration behind it. What are those lyrics about?

That one is based on the children’s clapping song, which is really more of a game. A lot of the words are taken directly from that. I took it in another direction though, and related it to mind control or someone taking you over. It was inspired by brainwashing and espionage.

JR: Is that what the line “be tough but give up” is based on?

The narrator in that song is playing two characters, which is something I do a lot. There, she’s the brainwasher and the brainwashee. She wanted to be tough, but also be taken over. My dad talked a lot about the mind becoming distorted, and his work shows a lot of that. It’s very un-PC now, but he joked around that I would be taken to the insane asylum, or that he would be.

This is something that I had a lot of fun with as a 10 -12 year old --- adding little twists, putting in the unexpected. And come to think of it, I have always had fun with that and continue to have fun with it to this day.

In "Kate", I start out saying "it's not fair" for me (the girls with brown hair), but by the end of the song the focus has changed to "it's not fair" FOR Kate (the girls with blonde hair), herself, that everyone stares at her.

In "Stranger", this is just a little twist, but people would assume the stranger is a man. In the end, I reveal that it's a woman.

"Tish Le Dire" is about speaking up to parents/authority, to the point of trying to threaten them with one's own suicide, only to conclude that they are paying attention, that they do understand what's going on, and who knows, darn it, they may even know what's best.

There's a similar theme in "Something" listing all of the things we need, with a question of why we need these things or just a general "well why?" The answer is that we "need someone to listen to, that's why." So, this thing we're resisting, being told what to do, is actually something we crave, and feel that we ourselves need.

JL: We heard a heartwarming story about the real Kate. Can you share anything about the real-life inspirations behind that song?

She was one of my classmates and was very popular. She was pretty and all of the boys liked her, so I was really envious. I’m sure everyone has experienced some version of that, regardless of their sexual preference or orientation.

JR: Kids can be cruel sometimes, especially girls.

Yes, and of course there’s the thing with blondes in our culture as well. That appeal of blonde hair over brown hair goes back to Marilyn Monroe, and that found its way into the song too. I wrote another song 15 years later where the same theme came up again, and hadn't even realized it at first.

JL: It must be buried pretty deep in your subconscious.

Oh yeah. Another element of “Kate” is the whole idea of a mean girl clique, that yucky thing. I was in it at first and then got kicked out because I didn’t buy them fancy enough Christmas gifts. When I sang the words “We don’t want you / we can’t use you,” that was me speaking from the voices of the girls in the clique.

JR: Another dialogue.

Yes, exactly!

JL: So what happened when the real Kate heard that song?

We were still pretty young then, around 11 or 12. I felt that I was able to convince her that it was all about how much I liked her, which was true! I wanted to be like her, and get the same kind of attention that she did. What I didn’t share with her was the darker part of the song, where I was so envious, that I didn’t really like her. I’m sure she probably had a gut feeling, but it didn’t get in the way somehow. We stopped being in touch once we went off to college, but we were friends throughout high school. She’s in the photo on the back of the record as well!

JR: It was pretty brave of you to say how you felt too. Sometimes girls that age don’t have the guts to express themselves.

Thank you [laughs]. By that age it was really part of my life to say what I wanted to say. I didn’t have an adult sense of self-censorship in place, which allowed that stuff to fly free.

JL: Most adults probably wouldn’t call someone out by name in a song.

It’s true. I was going to do the same thing with another song when I was in my 20s, but ended up shying away and not doing it. That goes to show you the difference in the way people act when they become adults.

JR: Do you have any memories of the work that went into GO GO Records releasing the album?

That’s an example of the kind of thing I wasn’t involved in. There’s so much that I didn’t do, and I’m still learning what it takes to put a record out. My understanding is that was Eugenie and Steve’s record label, and that part was all done for me.

JL: I don’t think you should have had to worry about the business end of things anyway.

That’s true. It wouldn’t have been a good idea to put those things in my hands.

JL: We were also curious about your experiences performing in legendary New York spots like the Mudd Club and the Danceteria, as well as out of town gigs. What were those early shows like?

I’ve had some good things happen in my life, but in a certain sense, that was the most fun I’ve ever had. I do remember feeling very nervous, not for every show, but definitely for our first one at the Mudd Club. I’ve heard performers talk about this, and after I had one or two songs down, I remember feeling like I was in the best place in the world. It was my favourite place to be, once I got over those initial nerves. I didn’t really go around the clubs much. I was mostly backstage or on stage, which felt right because it was pretty crazy. I would sometimes have to go home and take a nap after sound check, then get up at 10 pm to hit the stage.

JL: What other bands did you play with back then? I’ve heard you say that the B-52s were a big inspiration, and they played those venues around that time.

I learned about the B-52s after Transportation was released, so they were more of an after-inspiration. I would say the Talking Heads were the biggest thing for me. I liked Lou Reed, Blondie and Patti Smith as well. I had access to their music through my dad’s record collection, but didn’t see them or play with them because I was too young.

JR: What about touring? We read that it wasn't always easy.

It was all pretty easy for me, because everything was taken care of. Usually when we would go somewhere, I would do an interview with someone, which I always enjoyed. Then I’d get to stay in a fun hotel with my mom and go do the show. There was one venue in DC that had a really low stage. People kept flooding on, and I may have been a little scared, but not really. Steve was reprimanding them, and saying things like “If you don’t get back, we’ll have to stop the show.”

Another one that stands out was the night we played Maxwell’s in Hoboken. Nobody really showed up because we were going to open up for the Bongos, but they cancelled at the last minute. There was one woman in the audience wearing flowing fabrics, and she was twirling around. She got up on the stage, bumped me away from my keyboard, and started playing it herself! That was crazy.

There was another time we played the Peppermint Lounge, which was a huge venue that had multiple levels. That was one where I invited a bunch of friends, and I remember running around with my friends. It was like an adventure land. Other than that, I just remember the amazing feeling of being on stage and wanting to be there as much as possible.

#Cantor Records #Chandra #Dennis Oppenheim #Rain Boots Records #The Dance #Transportation

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Poster by thee almighty Alexandra Mackenzie !

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DJ Garbage Body's Buddies :: Alicia Nauta

Alicia Nauta is a super rad Toronto lady. She has sweet records and is a joy to hang with. I am proud to call Alicia a Garbage Buddy. Here are her picks for this edition of DJ Garbage Body's Buddies. Enjoy, lovelies! xo DJ GB

Casina777 - I Don't Want My Pizza Burning

This person makes animated videos that are especially funny and strange. I follow her youtube channel, Casina777. She and her sister used to sing the Rolling Stones' "Beast of Burden" with the lyrics “I don’t want my pizza burning” and decided to make a video homage. This is very relatable for me and for most people, I’m sure. When you’re a kid (and an adult) it's easy to hear song lyrics incorrectly and not find out until much, much later (maybe in an embarrassing way).

НОМ - Нина

This Soviet band (whose name translates to Scientific Research Institute of Cosmetics) started in 1984 in a cellar in the Moscow underground. During the ’80s their group was operating illegally, since all musical groups in the Soviet Union were supposed to be registered with the government. Amazing and weird video!

Superstar & Star - CD's I Ain't Missing You

My friend Jesjit Gill showed me Superstar & Star years ago. This guy is from some suburb in Omaha, Nebraska and makes the coolest music videos. In most of his videos he uses a security camera so the screen is split in four sections with him dancing or riding a lawnmower in different parts of his house, yard and driveway. This is one of my favourite songs of his but it’s very difficult to pick, as he is extremely prolific. His costumes are also incredible. Here is Superstar appearing on public access television (I think?). Check that single sequined sleeve.

Isla Craig - Dreamland

I love Isla’s cover of this 1976 Bunny Wailer song. The footage is of her at around the tender age of 13 or 14, I am guessing? Exploding Motor Car have made so many music videos that it’s hard to pick a favourite, but I love this video and song!

Mustapha Skandrani - Paris 1988

Mustapha Skandrani was an incredible Algerian pianist. This video starts with a cheesy animation with a book blowing open and some candle. It’s pretty dumb, but one of the best things about youtube is that anyone can make any kind of video for any kind of song. The video then goes to a live performance where he looks like an uptight grandfather playing in church, but it’s a beautiful, intuitive, weaving piece of music that flows like a little stream over pebbles.

Dog Leather - Bad Poets Society

I went to Baltimore once and I got to be in this video! I give a very brief thumbs up in it. This is basically what I want all music videos to be. I’m pretty sure they edited it with a VCR and video camera. Check out the alien mask, dance moves, drumming with no drums, and that paper mache weird man sculpture.

Ciccone Youth - Addicted To Love

Most likely to be sung in the shower or get stuck in my head for many days in a row. According to the comment section, Kim Gordon made it in a Make Your Own Music Video maker in a Macy’s. This is almost a karaoke version of a kinda shit song but Kim Gordon’s voice is really so good and makes it 1000% better! Ultimate getting ready to go out for the night song.

The Space Lady - Major Tom (Coming Home)

I love The Space Lady. She started playing in the ’70s during the Vietnam War. Her husband was a draft dodger and they made their money selling art on the street, but once she started busking she was able to support her family (they also had a baby, so her husband would stay home with their daughter). She began with an accordion and switched over to a little Casio, added a phase shifter and echo on her voice, plus that silver helmet with a blinking red light. She still performs in Santa Fe! Here she is, Christmas Eve 2012, wearing a sequined Christmas vest. I can only hope to be this cool when I’m older.

Alicia's Klassic Kool Shoppe pt. 2

This isn't quite a music video but more of a weird commercial for Alicia's Klassic Kool Shoppe. My friend and very talented video artist Joële Walinga and I made this together and just finished it a day ago! It's made up of footage from Toronto Island, my backyard and the alleyway behind my house.

Alicia Nauta is a Toronto-based artist and CEO of Alicia's Klassic Kool Shoppe, a one-woman operation of screenprinting, collage, installations, wallpaper, art books and growing collection of small weird things.

#dj garbage body #alicia nauta

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DJ Garbage Body's Buddies :: Valentine Gurfinkel

My name is Valentine. I've been on the internets since 1994. Some of you may know me as Kursty. Others as Kursty666. And a few of you as Allmale. My first webpage was a Duckman fan page. I made it in Word. FortuneCity hosted it. I like formalism. I know GarbageBaby personally but not intimately. And yes, I blog.

This is how I cruise.

Meredith Monk - Turtle Dreams

This is the vid that got me this gig. Meredith Monk, the bastard child of great jazz pianist Thelonius Monk, or so the rumors go, is what you may call a "New York artist." The kind New York doesn't make anymore. She does theatre, film, vocal performances. All kinda abstract sh(-wo!-)many-like, and all with great levity. Just click on Turtle Dreams and see for yourself. Oh, and I find the female TV station announcer's voice at the start really sexy. And that countdown!!

Conrad Schnitzler - Collection A #5 Take Off

Con's the Sun Ra of electro. He started a bunch of kraut groups in the early '70s before going all DIY solo because all of his bandmates thought he was too crazy. He'd walk around Berlin performing as a high-contrast robot with a black speaker horn sticking out of his head. Later in life he released all his stuff on CD-R himself directly through his site. Every CD would come with a piece of Con's hair. You'd be expected to bury the hair wherever you lived and spread the Con seed all over the world.

Sun Ra Arkestra - Face the Music / Space is the Place

Speaking of Sun Ra, here he is telling you to face the music. Live on NBC (that's before Friends came on). The Pixies opened.

Paperrad - My Webpage

Did I mention I've been on the web since '94? Still got my F25 key. It's right next to my dancing Bart gif. Paperrad invented neon, I'm convinced.

Malibu - Goin' Cruisin'

I recently got my license, and I'm really into cruisin' these days. The mastermind behind this is Bobby Orlando. Legend has it he gave up a full ride at Juilliard to start a glam rock band in the early '70s. In the '80s he became a Hi-NRG disco producer with 'acts' like The Flirts, Romeo, DJ Kimberly, and songs like "My Boyfriend is a Communist", "Falling in Love with Myself" and "Oriental Boy." I say 'acts' cause they were all basically puppets for his theatrics. A Phill Spector for the dance floor.

L-Vira - Talkin' Bout Rambo

Remember Rambo? Need I say more?

#dj garbage body

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DJ Garbage Body's Buddies :: Tom Whalen

Tom Whalen has changed his name on a social media website so many times he's not allowed to change it again, ever. Although he's extremely prolific, his solo art, music, writing and comedy output is scattered across many differently titled projects. He's been known as GR8-2000, New Vaders, Space Bros, Cadillac Spring, Gary Gak and the Geeks, Culture Beast, Chex Maniac, Ape World, Rappin Dad and many more (like Pizza Puke, Millenniumstar Windermere, Dr. Dad's Sound Lab and Ha Ha Hut) that have been lost to time and cyberspace. He has a rare and specialized talent for surveying the internet and curating only the very best, weirdest, most obscure, bizarre and wonderful media as well as synthesizing it and contributing to it in extremely special ways. - Jessica Delisle

I met Tom at the Village, Ketamines, Jay Holy and Jay Arner show recently at the Cavern in Toronto. He played with Jay Arner and he is a pal of Jesse Locke's (extra presh dude who runs this blog). When Tom asked me that night if he could contribute to 'DJ Garbage Body's Buddies', I thought and said something along the lines of: "fuccccckkk yeah!" An extra cool lad w/ a very impressive surf! Trusted through the Locke chain. Really, he's DJ Garbage Body's buddy's buddy, and in the circle of friends 4lyfe! Now lovelies, huddle with your buddies. Represent. Ding. xo. - DJ Garbage Body

Peor Impossible - El Mutante

In the late '70s after Franco died, Spain became a democracy and suddenly there was little to no censorship in the media, in art, or in music. Punk and electronic music hit it off in a big way, homosexuality became legal, and everything repressed came out all at once. It was called La Movida Madrileña. Check it out.

Alaska y Los Pegamoides - Bailando

More post-Franco Spanish music. This is so surreal and wonderful. The horn section is straight out of a dream.

Cooking with Pat

Patrick Niesink had a show with his bored friends on Winnipeg public access in the mid-80s called 7 Items or Less. The segments are so perfectly disjointed and represent that special feeling of teenage ennui mixed with deliberate weirdness. Crypt Worlds: Your Darkest Desires, Come True

Lilith AKA Cicada Marionette has crafted the oddest pastiche of PS1 dungeon crawling, agriculture sim and piss-based mechanics. You need to want to have to play it. Braco at the United Nation's Tillman Chapel

This guy is amazing. He's a Croatian man who tours the globe gazing at people. He went to the United Nations to look at people. I read somewhere that if you encounter Braco you can say hello but refrain from engaging him in conversation. Can you enrage Braco? Can you catch a wild Braco and fight with it against Brock to receive a Boulder Badge? Cave Bears 12/18/09 Gonzo Comix/Paper City Studios

What other band could lay claim to staging an impromptu performance of Ferris Bueller's Day Off with members of the audience? Sometimes they would tell campfire stories. Sometimes they would make a list. Good music. Alioni - Samzoblos Tsa

You want obscure?! How about Georgian teens playing jazz fusion in the late '80s?! These kids are very cool and rock a lot. The Piano Choir - Jaboobie's March

What I'd like is a game where you run around a huge marble palace with this song on repeat. Moses - Revolution (We Just)

Here's my dream concert.

Nacht und Nebel - Ready to Dance

This is the best kind of music video. You have a good man dancing in a wave pool, a bass player sponsored by Canon, and everyone enjoying themselves.

#dj garbage body

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DJ Garbage Body’s Buddies :: Nyles Miszczyk

DJ Garbage Body’s Buddies is a new series featuring guest posts from fellow ’Tube cruisers. First up is Toronto musician, producer and modest gearhead Nyles Miszczyk. He is among the breed always on the hunt for obscure sounds and visions, with a vast repertoire of diamonds discovered in the ruff. He plays with Jay Holy and spunks out more music at Radio Nyles.

Butch Willis & The Rocks - The Garden's Outside/The Girl's On My Mind (Live on Forestville Rocks)

You are you. Watching this. But what is this? Is it Mr. Rock and Roll? Is it Butch Willis? His outfit? The way he is shaking? His voice? Could it be throat guitarist, Al Bryon? Is it the music? Who knows? Meanwhile, a distant smoke machine bellows a dense fog of emotion. A haze that will tear the band apart at the seams.

Maher Shalal Hash Baz - This Is Our Music

You have a crush on a potter named Tori Kudo. You play the horn in his band. You aren't very good at your instrument. But you play with heart. That's all that counts. After rehearsal one day, Tori takes you to his pottery studio. He wants to show you something. He takes out a photo of you. In the photo you are looking out a window. Your shoulders are bare and silhouetted by the sun. Then Tori shows you the vase he fired in his kiln that day. The shoulders of the vase share exactly the same line as your shoulders in the photo. You are in love with a potter named Tori Kudo.

Winston Zimmerman - Tangentially Yours

You were in The Wind. But not anymore. At this moment you are in a karaoke bar. You are waiting for your turn to sing. The karaoke jockey thinks you'll be singing the Beatles' Nowhere Man. He is mistaken. The KJ calls for Lane to come to the stage. You stand up and approach the microphone. But tonight you are not Lane Steinberg. Tonight you are Winston Zimmerman. You are Bob Dylan AND the Beatles. And everyone else can suck it.

Chair - I'm Fat And Nobody Likes Me

You're fat. Nobody likes you. Things are as tough at home as they are at school. You crave attention. You are a sensitive individual. You have an emotional maturity that no one sees. No one except your one and only friend. He is your rock. Your confidant. Your lead guitarist. Together you pour your heart and soul into song. You name your band Chair after a chair you sat on and broke. You think it's funny. You think it's poetic. Eventually you grow up. You go off to college. Berklee. You have to leave your best friend behind. You start a progressive rock band. It's fun. But it's just not the same as it was. When you were young. With your best friend. When you were fat. And nobody liked you.

The Truth Is...

You are Courtney Love.

#dj garbage body

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Sled Island 2014!

Words: Jeremy Curry // Photos courtesy of Sled Island

The author in his natural habitat. [photo: Arif Ansari]

Summer is here, and with that, a whole mess of festivals have popped up around the world. The most notable fest in Western Canada might just be Sled Island, a large party barge of music/art/comedy/film held in my hometown of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. When I was growing up here, it was always hard to find any kind of independent music scene, except for small pockets of activity at places like the Multicultural Center or the Night Gallery. Now, Sled Island showcases bands and comedians at many different venues in and around the downtown core, including Olympic Plaza, which is right next to city hall. It makes Calgary seem a lot less like the cowboy hick town it was known as when I was younger.

This year’s festivities were great, although very exhausting. Over the span of five days, you can get a little tired of zipping around town trying to catch as many artists as humanly possible. There were also some bumps in the system, as a few of the acts had to cancel their shows due to circumstances beyond their control. Sorry, Kyle Kinane! Other than that, it was another success.

WEDNESDAY was the start of my Sled Island experience, as I managed to catch the end of Jom Comyn’s set at the Palomino. It’s unfortunate that it was ending, because the man has a great baritone voice, and some excellent pop songs with a sound that was sometimes reminiscent of a ’50s crooner. It was fantastic. There are a lot of great bands coming out of Edmonton right now, so add him to that list.

Waiting For Ambassador X [photo: Crystal Sujata]

Over at the #1 Legion, there was a collaborative art show between Sasha Foster and Nicole Brunel called Waiting For Ambassador X. Brunel and Foster managed to combine the poolroom area upstairs with sculpture and found artifacts into a neon wonderland. It felt like a mix of Beetlejuice, a David Lynch film, and Pee Wee Herman all in one.

Burro started off the evening at the Legion with a set of hypnotic guitar and rampaging drum blasts. It was wild as hell, but could also put you into a meditative state. Burro is one of the more interesting bands in the city, at the centre of a swelling avant-garde scene. It was a nice feeling to be inside during a rainstorm, hearing roars of guitar instead of thunder.

William Tyler [photo: Elyse Bouvier]

Despite the storm, it was important to make it over to the Ironwood to watch guitarist William Tyler tell stories and strum. Each guitar piece tells a story, and most of them are about travelling on tour. His solo playing is reminiscent of some of the older Americana guitarists such as Robbie Basho or John Fahey, although at some points, more atmospheric and surprising. He was well worth the walk in the wind and rain.

On the way home, I popped my head into Broken City to see PS I Love You. All I could see/hear was a guy bobbing his head extremely fast, while telling his girlfriend that she should “really get into this stuff!” She wasn’t having any of it, and slowly moved away from him. I backed away from the both of them, as I was too tired to deal with anything more.

THURSDAY was an exciting one. Sarah Davachi was the first performance of the night at the Central United Church. Her minimal analog electronic performance was one of the highlights of the festival. It rumbled the church, and kept each audience member on their toes with each subtle change. The experience worked best with eyes closed, and came to a point where I felt like a complete blob in my seat.

Sarah Davachi [photo: Crystal Sujata]

Oneohtrix Point Never followed her set with something I doubt I will ever experience again. I was seeing shapes and hearing sounds that don’t exist anywhere else. It was hard to describe what was going on, and still is. I remember at one point the rumble of the bass was shaking my gut at a crazy pace. It was a pretty cool show, to say the least.

Following that was something on the opposite end of rumbling: Chelsea Wolfe at the Commonwealth. It was another great show. Wolfe kept it feeling pretty dark and gothic, but was distracted by all of the noisy assholes talking at the bar. She plays a quiet, (mostly) acoustic set, and many people had the nerve to talk above the music. It was a very embarrassing audience. Wolfe powered through it, and still pulled out a nice performance. If you go see a band, please shut the fuck up while they’re playing!

Chelsea Wolfe [photo: Elyse Bouvier]

FRIDAY started off in the afternoon, with the Mint Records showcase. Man, what a fun label. The party included some delicious (free) tacos and nacho chips, and it made for a pretty relaxing afternoon. Oh yeah, and there were some bands that managed to play as well. I caught the pop master Renny Wilson, who can croon along with the rest of those hairy-chested yacht rockin’ Miami Vice dudes. Yacht rock is a pretty specific genre. Not a lot of people own yachts, but I guess Renny’s music might be played on one.

Tough Age blazed through a pretty powerful and fun set of garage rock jams that I would have danced to if I weren’t feeling so wonky from the day before. Jay Arner finished off the showcase with some of the best pop songs around. They are perfect for singing in the shower, or in the car, or anywhere, really. I sing them on my walk to work sometimes. Anyway! It was a great way to start the day.

Tough Age [photo: Arif Ansari]

Neko Case was supposed to play that evening at Olympic Plaza, but unfortunately she had to cancel. Fortunately (for some), Joel Plaskett headlined instead, and the show was free! Very nice of Mr. Plaskett to do that and for the Sled Island people to make that a free show. I had to work that night ,so I missed a Dan Deacon set that was also supposed to be great. But that’s another person’s review!

SATURDAY is the day when most people don’t come crawling out until the late afternoon due to hangovers, mistakes they made, or both. I rolled out of bed to see another great band called the Lad Mags at Local 510. They are four ladies and a gentleman from Edmonton who play some pretty nice garage pop. It was perfect for those hangovers to endure, although there was some crazy feedback going on. I’m assuming it had to do with so much gear on a tiny stage. Put those people on the larger stage next time, please! Otherwise, the harmonies are really nice to hear, and some of that stuff can really get stuck in your head. Anyone who has listened to the Girls in the Garage comps should enjoy them.

The Lad Mags [photo: Sandra Markieta]

I had to take another break because it felt like I’d been crushed on the head by an elephant, but by the time I came to, I was at the Olympic Plaza for the end of White Lung’s set. I’m not very familiar with this band, but from the Olympic Plaza speakers it mostly sounded like a scream, some “dun dun dun” guitars, followed by another painful scream. I think it was a sound issue. People were into it, but maybe I was standing somewhere weird? Well, it didn’t sound anything like what I’ve heard from them before.

White Lung [photo: Chris Tait]

The Blind Shake followed them with a decent set, but again, it wasn’t so exciting. They’ve played here before and have put on a fantastic show, but I think the outdoor atmosphere on such a massive stage makes bands a little dull, even when they try their hardest. The outdoor stage is good if you want to cram a lot of people into an area, but the sound sucks and the weather can be horrible. There are so many factors that deter me from attending these shows.

Rocket From the Crypt came on next, which made a little more sense because they're such a large band. Unfortunately I had to sit through everyone around me having intense, loud conversations that made it hard to concentrate, and well, the sound was still bad.

Spiritualized [photo: Caitlind Brown]

Then Spiritualized came on. I had been waiting the whole day for this band and… it wasn’t all that great. It seemed like they were just plowing through the songs to get a paycheque, and I couldn’t really hear it over almost EVERYBODY around me having a conversation. Why were they here? Why was I even there? I was hoping for something bigger, better, and an audience that gave a shit. I should have been at the Ironwood for something nice and quiet like Julianna Barwick. Well, at least the fireworks at the end of the show were a nice touch. People paid attention to them.

I went down to the Tubby Dog to see Jay Arner one last time and went to bed. It was a great end to the night.

SUNDAY marked the final day of the festival with the annual pig roast and bands at Republik! U.S. Girls played an amazing set with some pretty blown-out beats and wobbly tape samples. Her vocals are cool and soulful, with a tinge of spookiness. It was excellent, even though she claimed her voice was shot from partying too hard. The Blind Shake got to play a GREAT set at the end on a stage that was more appropriate, with better sound. Those guys play rock and roll with such intensity that I think their eyeballs are going to pop out of their skulls.

Karaoke at Broken City followed. I went to bed.

U.S. Girls [photo: David Kenney]

Overall, the shows were great and most of the bands seemed happy to be here playing the festival. The volunteers were helpful and friendly, and the staff looked busy as hell, but still had time to talk about what was going on. Everyone involved did a great job as usual.

Sloan has that lyric “It’s not the band I hate, it’s the fans”. Maybe it’s not the fans at these shows, but people who just need somewhere to be, who decide to come on down and chat with their friends or talk/text on their phone. It not only annoys me, but it’s a distraction to the bands as well. Maybe I’m out of the loop about socializing and social media these days, but it just seems plain rude. It would be nice for everybody if people who needed to do that kind of thing would move to the back or go outside. There were multiple occasions where me or my friends would have to tell people to quiet down, and one occasion that almost became a fight. It’s kind of dumb to even write about this, but it was a major distraction during the festival.

Otherwise, Sled Island was a very nice time, and it didn’t flood again, which was great.

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Sled Island 2014 Picks

Words: Jeremy Curry // Photos courtesy of Sled Island

A lot of music fans in the city of Calgary weren’t really sure if Sled Island was coming back after last year’s flood, but thankfully, here it comes! It’s a good thing for the city, and for anyone with any sort of musical taste. You are bound to find something you like at such an eclectic festival. There are many genres to explore, as well as artists, films and comedians who come down to show off their work. Here are a few of my personal recommendations. These lists are not really my favourite thing to put together, as they are mostly subjective, but sometimes they are helpful. So here we go!

Oneohtrix Point Never

This may be one of the highlights of the festival, as Oneohtrix Point Never released one of the best electronic records in 2013. It’s not easy to describe his sound. It’s some sort of strange hybrid of minimalist sampling with maximalist results. It’s music that keeps you on your toes, but also makes you feel like a melting blob. It's the anti-ambient. Like the sound of a waterfall, interrupted by a bird squawking. You would never expect where a track will take you. It’s a constant surprise, and that is a good thing.

Chelsea Wolfe

Whenever anyone describes the music of Chelsea Wolfe, it sounds like they're talking about that movie The Craft. Almost like some Hollywood Gothic tale. Maybe it is a little dark, but it’s so much more personal and interesting than that. Wolfe's music is mostly bare bones, as far as instrumentation is concerned. Her voice is pretty incredible, and does well without any other distractions. There aren’t many musicians like her that can pull off such an interesting and honest sound without sounding tacky.

Hot Mess DJs

People need to dance, and it’s hard to shake that butt when there are a bunch of people trying to stand and watch a band. Luckily, the Hot Mess DJs are a good option for those who want to shake it. Sean Stewart and Blake Spence host a (straight-friendly) gay dance party every month at a bar called Local 522, but they will be spinning at the Republik with Bob Mould this time around. It’s not your run-of-the-mill club tunes (although Beyonce does appear often), and these guys usually keep the audience happy. It should be a pretty wild dance party, as every other Hot Mess night has been insane.

Julianna Barwick

A few years ago, there were a lot of “experimental” musicians taking that lo-fi route, and getting into that murky reverb-heavy delay delay delay zone. It was cool at first, but seemed lazy and boring after about a year of the same thing. Barwick seems to experiment with vocals in a way that is much more complicated and intriguing. Most of the time no actual words are coming out of her mouth. Just sound. Sometimes that can be refreshing. You might have just come from a terrible slam poetry jam, and want everyone to shut the hell up. Well, I think her set would be right up your alley if you were in that particular situation.

Ayoo Angie

For a city that isn’t known for its rap performances (outside of an embarrassing ode by someone named Transit), it’s a breath of fresh air to see Ayoo Angie. Her style is aggressive and in your face, without boasting any of that phony gangster stuff. Her flow is reminiscent of Lil’ Kim at times, but of course she has her own unique style, and that is great.

HexRay

Another great local act, this four-piece band play squiggly slob rock that will take you through time remembering those old Pavement tapes you used to listen to. Fun, breezy, cool tunes that get a little wonky, but we all need a little wonk in our lives, right?

Mission of Burma

These guys were playing wild jams during the original post-punk era, and are considered to be some of the pioneers of that genre. They play very loud music, and post-punk is actually a pretty goofy term to use for this band. Mission of Burma had a resurgence in 2004, and are still capable of putting out some pretty gnarly albums. When most bands put out new records after many years, it seems a little contrived and lacklustre, but these guys know how to craft great songs that are pleasant to the ears, while still being loud as hell.

Killer Mike

Last summer, Killer Mike came to town with El-P and put on one of the best shows I had seen in a while. He's one of the most talented rappers on the planet, and watching his show was mesmerizing. I danced around like a complete buffoon, but it was such a positive, fun experience that I didn’t care. I hope everyone feels that way this year.

There are many other bands that I would recommend, but it’s more fun discovering that stuff yourself. Enjoy the festival!

#Sled Island #Ayoo Angie #Chelsea Wolfe #HexRay #Hot Mess DJS #Juliana Barwick #Killer Mike #Mission of Burma #Oneohtrix Point Never

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