For Those About To Love (show review)

With sure harmonies and assertive sonic dynamics For Those About To
Love offered transcendent neo-psychodelic power pop. A romantic
character conveyed by their interwoven vocal harmonies confirms an
elegant lyricism. The interplay of guitar/bass/drum aggression with
complex vocal arrangements and electronics culminated in an ecstatic
performance.

Valerie Jodoin-Keaton, the group's keyboardist, and lone female
vocalist notes the group's taste for Pink Floyd.

They will launch their new record at La Sala Rossa on October 27, 2009

http://www.myspace.com/forthoseabouttolove

I Feel So Good

Take Me to the River

Angel of Montgomery

Boppy pomo retro romantic

So I've been hearing this song, Carina, usually late at night, on CBC Radio Two. Mis-hearing it really. It comes from the oddly timeless music of James Hunter.

The name sounds longer when I'm drifting in and out of sleep.

Now baby tell me true
Do I stand a chance with you?
Oh______Corina
Now, don't make me wait too long

Ok, it's not post-rock in the sense of Trail of Dead, for example. But at first I thought it was an oldie, then after hearing it a few times, its anachronistic elements bring it into a post-modern context.

And its un-ironic romance appeals to me.

Swing: Experience, timing and knowledge

What is "swing" - that quality that makes music danceable?

Edward Willet discusses the question in his article "Why Jazz swings".  The "why" was a question studied by Swedish physicist and jazz pianist Anders Friberg.

 

Willet presents Friberg's research this way:

"The basic rhythmic unit in jazz is the quarter note. That’s usually what defines the "beat," what you tap your feet to. Melodies are superimposed over the beat, and are often made up of eighth notes, which, in classical music, are exactly one half as long as quarter notes. However, the jazz musician would play those notes alternately long and short, with the long note on the beat, and the short note off the beat...

Friburg found the ratio between the notes varied with the tempo. In slow pieces the long eighth notes were extremely long, and the short notes were clipped so short they were almost 16th notes. But at faster tempos the notes were practically even. Only at a medium-fast tempo of about 200 beats per minute did the drummers use the 2-to-1 ratio. (Of course, there were variations caused by the drummers’ styles and the group with whom they played, but the basic principle held true across the board.)...

Friburg found that, instead of synchronizing with each other on the beat, as classical musicians do, jazz musicians unconsciously synchronize on the off-beats, the short eighth notes of the swing pattern."- Edward Willet

Aside from providing an analysis that could suggest how to make electronic music more compelling, or to provide a yardstick as to why a given player or group's performance fails to excite it also suggests a case study for testing phenomenological methodologies. However, this technical analysis doesn't detract from the experience of hearing music 'swing'. Indeed, it confirms that the subjective experience is a legitimate epistemology based in aesthetic experience not mystical thus suggesting a pathology.

Folk Festival on the Canal

Last weekend, I went to the Terrace in back of the McAuslin Brewery to watch the Folk Festival on The Canal. It was a great day; good bands- a big Shout out to United Steel Workers of Montreal, Notre Dame de Grass and Rob Lutes. There were several other great bands that I didn't get to hear, because it was a hot, sunny day and you just can't leave a four year old outside from Noon to 10:30 PM.

The site was busy, with a lot of people just stopping by on the Canal to listen. Inside the paying customers were shoulder to shoulder. The organisers had thoughtfully provided a daycare crew to keep the little ones amused. The whole event felt like a really big barbeque organised by your cool, wealthy uncle- in this case Peter McAuslin.

This one of the many cultural events sponsored by McAuslin. Full disclosure, I have loved the beer since it first came on the market, and live 3 minutes walk from the Terrace. I'll try not to gush.

I had a chat with with Gern of USWM. He said it was the mellowest show they'd played in years. They must be the most raucous alt-blue grass band around then, because they added a rollicking set to a pretty energetic roster of performers. He said most of the group are local now to St.Henri and The Point. This makes them, although he's too modest to make the claim, legitimately part of the St.Henri cultural renaissance.

I'm looking forward to the second edition, next year.

Rob Lutes with Mike O'brien at the Black Sheep Inn

A big shout out to Rob Lutes who played a great set at the Black Sheep Inn in Wakefield, Québec last sunday. He's been playing with Rob MacDonald- a fine bandleader himself- for over ten years.
Macdonald says"It's almost like being married".

As musicians, they are almost like guitar Vishnu's- one super being with many hands playing together. This tightness helps propel Lute's songs, especially in a live setting, to an exceptionally passionate level.

Opening was Michael James "Mike" O'Brien a young Montréal-based singer songwriter. His deep baritone anchors his personality through the broad range of styles he embraces as a song writer. Highly recommended.

The Best of 2008- music that is...

so far this year...according to all Music Guide:

American Music Club - The Golden Age
Autechre - Quaristice
Autistic Daughters - Uneasy Flowers
Erykah Badu - New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War
Beach House - Devotion
The Black Crowes - Warpaint
Black Milk - Caltroit
Black Mountain - In the Future
Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?
Cadence Weapon - Afterparty Babies
Los Campesinos - Hold on Now, Youngster…
Chessie - Manifest
Counting Crows - Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings
Sheryl Crow - Detours
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
Ray Davies - Working Man’s Cafe
Destroyer - Trouble in Dreams
Raheem DeVaughn - Love Behind the Melody
DeVotchKa - A Mad and Faithful Telling
Drive-By Truckers - Brighter Than Creation’s Dark
Earth - The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull
Liam Finn - I’ll Be Lightning
The Five Blind Boys of Alabama - Down in New Orleans
The Fleshtones - Take a Good Look
Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple
Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree
The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia
Hot Chip - Made in the Dark
Howlin Rain - Magnificent Fiend
Alan Jackson - Good Time
Junior Boys - Body Language, Vol. 6
Kelley Polar - I Need You to Hold on While the Sky Is Falling
The Kills - Midnight Boom
Justus Köhncke - Safe and Sound
Charles Lloyd - Rabo de Nube
Shelby Lynne - Just a Little Lovin’
Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks - Real Emotional Trash
The Mars Volta - The Bedlam in Goliath
MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
Bob Mould - District Line
Nada Surf - Lucky
Neon Neon - Stainless Style
David “Fathead” Newman - Diamondhead
Panic at the Disco - Pretty. Odd
Connie Price & the Keystones - Tell Me Something
The Raconteurs - Consolers of the Lonely
The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust (US Bonus Tracks)
The Ruby Suns - Sea Lion
School of Language - Sea from Shore
Sons & Daughters - This Gift
Kelley Stoltz - Circular Sounds
Otis Taylor - Recapturing the Banjo
These New Puritans - Beat Pyramid
Times New Viking - Rip It Off
Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
Larry Willis - The Offering
Xiu Xiu - Women as Lovers
Yip-Yip - Two Kings of the Same Kingdom (CD/DVD)

I'lllet you know my read later...

Magical realism, indie rock and the automobile

I've noticed that car commercials on televison seem to increasingly use magical realism as a trope. The ad for the Nissan Versa features the vehicle magically bouncing over traffic. The theme to that commercial is "Quality of Armor" by mystical indie rockers Guided By Voices.

Oh yeah going to drive my car
Oh yeah going to go real far
Beyond a shadow of a doubt
Beyond the power of your clout

The rather stolid characteristics of personal vehicle as personal armor have featured in both the design and marketing of north american cars in the last few years.

the worst offense is intelligence
the best defense is belligerance

"Quality of armor" satirises these attitudes so it seems appropriate that it is helping introduce smaller and more sociable vehicles. But marketing these vehicles still seems to offer freedom and control.

Oh yeah going to drive my car
Oh yeah going to go real far
Beyond a shadow of a doubt
Beyond the power of your clout
Beyond the secrets of this world
beyond the Montezuma Halls

Still I like the crunchy rhythm of the song. And hope I can convince the wife to ditch the car.

"Quality of Armor" written by R.Pollard. from the album "Propellor"1992 http://www.gbv.com/music.html downloaded April 6, 2008

Again with the dinosaurs

A new alliance has sprung up to ostensibly protect creative types from copyright infringement. This assumes that these groups have copyrighted material folks would want to steal. Good Cop/Bon Cop never seems to appear on bittorrent- i wonder why?

New World Symphony and Discord

In the article New World Symphony and Discord Joseph Horowitz discusses the Czech composer Dvorak's discovery of 'black music' and how he became a proponent of it in the social and ethnic strata of the 'gilded age' of the USA.

A great story that made me want to play piano,again and think about how identity and expression is negotiated in our own age.

Building a home studio- an introduction

A few years back, I realised I was spending a small fortune renting rehearsal studios. The old shed/garage in back of my triplex offered a potential space for conversion into a practice and recording studio. The arrival of my son also meant that we needed our musical gear out of our flat to make room for the nursery. I spent about 18 months researching the project.
Budget, available space and requirements effected the process. An additional 2 feet in each direction would have been nice, as well as the budget to add acoustic rubber to all the surfaces beneath the drywall/sheet rock and vapour barrier. Oh well, next studio

(above, left)The studio had to be physically unconnected to the shed exterior to
prevent sound being transmitted in or out through the walls.


The structure was built out of 2 x 6 lumber, screwed in place(no nails), and acoustically insulated with 6" rock wool. The interior sheetrock was attached to the walls with z-channel strips. Power was supplied from an existing 25 Amp circuit and most of the outlets were quad(4 socket) boxes. It's foundation was comprised of six 8" cement pilings.

Note the vapour barrier between the z-channels
and the sheet rock(above, right). Vapour barrier
seams were taped with contruction tape.

It was very important the that the interior vapour barrier has NO HOLES. Any holes will drastically increase noise transmission, both in and out. Equally important, holes in a vapour barrier will let all the humidity from sweaty musicians accumulate in the walls, causing mold and all sorts of related problems both to health and to the structure itself, which will start to rot. The only holes should be the door systems(which is tricky) and a ventilation system, so the humidity inside is vented and fresh air gets in. Getting these two things balanced with the no holes rule is tricky, and the hardest part of the process. The screw holes made in attaching the sheet rock apparently self-seal.

The final result was a secure room 7 feet wide and 15 feet long. It cut sound well enough that I could record a folksinger without getting exterior noise, and the neighbours couldn't hear the speed metal drummer from 40 feet away(at ten feet, vibration was more noticeable than the snare hits).

You could use a similar process to build a good studio in a spare room or basement. In that case, you'd probably rest the structure on a series of thick rubber pads(hockey pucks?) to absorb sound vibrations.



Please remember, these articles are for information only. Use them at your own risk and peril. Consult your local officials as to building code restrictions, especially regarding electrical installation. Your mileage may vary, but it worked for me.

The social currency of Celine

“You could say that punk rock,” he writes, “is anger’s schmaltz.”
-Carl Wilson

I still don't care for Celine Dion's music, but this review of Carl Wilson's book about Celine Dion and the phenomena of taste is worth reading. He doesn't care for her either, but he makes an interesting assessment of her popularity as more democratic than attitudes the music snobs who dismiss her music.

And here is an equally positive review of the book in a cooler channel(Exclaim!).

This is not copyright...

nor protection of an industry. This new Canadian law is an attempt to legislate a particular industry group's right to stay in business in perpetuity, regardless of its cost to society at large. It is an attempt to save the dinosaurs by bureacratic fiat.

Contact Minister Prentice and ask him to stop this nonsense.

Hello Hello

Hello Hello is an instrumental piece.click here for music

Cheap memories in 4/4 time

Listening to Russ Ballard's "On the rebound" makes me think of tooling up the road to Chateauguay in my dad's old green Buick, on a steamy summer day in in 1980, the radio dimed, and hopeless thoughts of adolescent lust on my mind.

Damn me but life is better now. Still like some of those tunes, tho- The Cars, early Talking Heads and so on .

My second adolescence was much better, and consumed my 27th summer, along with the Pixies, Swervedriver, the Double Deuce, the Craigster, the Professor, Nance, Lynne, Bobcat and the Magnificent D-beast. Forgive me for being maudlin, but those people and places don't realise how important they where to me. They truly populate my "happy place" to this day.

Music, intangible value and the economics of meaning

In a previous post I argued that the diminution of production costs associated with recording and distribution would reduce the music distribution industry but not the calibre or breadth music production. My opinions seem to be supported by the unfolding events as described in the Time article "Behind the Battle for Madonna"

Records, it seems, have merely become advertising for live performers- and promoters are the new economic power.

"At a time when lagging CD sales and music piracy have made the album a mere accessory to touring, merchandising and licensing, it's no wonder that ailing record labels like Warner Music Group have been exploring ways to get a piece of that much more lucrative side of the business. So just imagine how they must feel now that Live Nation, the world's largest concert promoter, is close to stealing away pop music icon Madonna for a cool $120 million in cash and stock."

On a more theoretical level, at what point does a product( a record, film, book, t shirt) or a service (live performance, theatre) transcend it's role as itself and become advertising? I'd argue that from the time it leaves the sole awareness of its originator that it starts with it functions as advertising.

Advertising----> Social capital-----> hidden capital of education, law, social relations
The Secrets of Intangible Wealth- Reason Online

Two years ago the World Bank's environmental economics department set out to assess the relative contributions of various kinds of capital to economic development. Its study, "Where is the Wealth of Nations?: Measuring Capital for the 21st Century," began by defining natural capital as the sum of nonrenewable resources (including oil, natural gas, coal and mineral resources), cropland, pasture land, forested areas and protected areas. Produced, or built, capital is what many of us think of when we think of capital: the sum of machinery, equipment, and structures (including infrastructure) and urban land.

But once the value of all these are added up, the economists found something big was still missing: the vast majority of world's wealth! If one simply adds up the current value of a country's natural resources and produced, or built, capital, there's no way that can account for that country's level of income.

The rest is the result of "intangible" factors—such as the trust among people in a society, an efficient judicial system, clear property rights and effective government. All this intangible capital also boosts the productivity of labor and results in higher total wealth. In fact, the World Bank finds, "Human capital and the value of institutions (as measured by rule of law) constitute the largest share of wealth in virtually all countries."

Once one takes into account all of the world's natural resources and produced capital, 80% of the wealth of rich countries and 60% of the wealth of poor countries is of this intangible type. The bottom line: "Rich countries are largely rich because of the skills of their populations and the quality of the institutions supporting economic activity."

This idea of intangible wealth explains why file sharing and not copyright advances the economy- and why outmoded relationships rather than technology must fade away at the hands of a free market.

Whose digital rights?

The fight over intellectual property rights had another shot fired by Steve Jobs across the bow of the recording industry. Recounted in Stereophile Is This the End of Copy Protection? Jobs argues that DRM coding will ultimately fail, so the music industry should give up on it, and move on.

At this point, I wish people would stop conflating the record distribution industry with the music industry.

Musicians can now produce music more inexpensively than record labels could create advertising. I'd suggest that recorded music has become advertising for performers. Sadly, recording industry giants will wither away, as did steam locomotives and muskets. On the other hand, artists will have more control and about as much income as they did under the ancien regime.Those who fear for the folks in the recording industry should relax- the few good promoters will find employment promoting and organising shows, tours and
concurrent publicity.


A parallel is in the publishing industry, where publishers like Baen make their author's works available for free online. After several years with this experiment, Baen concluded it boosts sales, so they intend to continue.

Since I'm not an economist, I can only speculate that the efficiency of electronic distribution (I could write a book or record a song on this computer, upload it and make it available world-wide for pennies cost to me) off-sets the expensive of big publicity, printing and physical distribution systems that were necessary prior to the rise of the internet. The creator now can publish without requiring the huge distribution infrastruture that was required previously.


This means that you only need to offer premium experiences(paper books, high quality CD's) to those that really want to buy. As a result, the bureacracy, and large physical plant systems previously required to transmit intellectual work are increasingly obsolete. This obsolescence will disconcert those who make a living in the old ways. On the other hand, services, like live performances, and experiences, like reading physical books, cannot be duplicated, and that is where I speculate, the economy is going.

I-plodding

So i've finally figured out some of this podcasting stuff. Within the next week I hope to have some more audio available, but until then I've included a little ditty The Wife and I improvised some time ago.

There always seems to be a learning curve to these things, depite the recording stuff i've done over the years.

better late than never, I suppose...