The Re-mains

I hate the fucking Eagles. Hate. Fingernails on a chalk board, a fork being dragged across a plate hate. There's a moment in The Big Lebowski when The Dude gets thrown out of a cab for saying he hates the fucking Eagles, and its my favourite scene in all of filmdom. With their vapid, dead fish-eye Southern California stares and their ability to make James Taylor sound like the Minutemen by comparison, the fucking Eagles represent everything that makes me crazy and frustrated and angst-ridden about modern mainstream country. The crap that country radio has been pumping out for the last thirty years plus has been nothing more than one long extended version of Hotel California. As Mojo Nixon once said, "Don Henley is the anti-Elvis".

Now, picture a world where the fucking Eagles never found each other, never made music for elevators and grocery stores, never defamed country rock by taking both the country and the rock out of music. Nice, isn't it.

The Re-mains are from that alternate world. It's a world where Dead Flowers by The Rolling Stones was a mainstream hit, where Townes Van Zandt is a household name, where Uncle Tupelo never split but Son Volt and Wilco still play and record. An alternate universe where every time you turn on the radio you can hear Kris Kristofferson and Corb Lund and John Prine and The Poor Choices and Elliott Brood and Cuff The Duke and Blackie & The Rodeo Kings. Willie P. Bennett is given a state funeral and The Perpetrators are given The Order Of Canada. I will call that world Austin World and I will live there very happily, thank you very much.

The Re-Mains are the bastard children of Keith Richards and Wanda Jackson, of Jeff Tweedy and Bob Dylan. They are the war orphans left behind by Nick Cave's murder ballads, by Johnny Cash's evil seed. They are Willie Nelson's outlaw country taken home and given a cold bath and a warm beer. They are the promise fulfilled by the union of Jack White and Loretta Lynn.

And they are Australian. Of course they're from Australia. A country populated by folk who left Africa 50,000 years ago and hiked halfway around the world in only a couple of generations. A country colonized by criminals and outlaws. A country whose extremes make our extremes look like suburban fantasies provided by Sears. If kick-you-in-the-ass country rock is going to be perfected anywhere, it should be in the land of vegemite and the southern cross.

Rolling Stone Magazine, which gave The Re-Mains' Love's Last Stand four stars, describes them as "Northern NSW country rock & roll hellraisers... combining a rootsy twang with inner-city smarts and genuine affection for rollicking, tumbling hillbilly sounds." Someone else said "Think the Eels after a 10-day binge." I say The Re-Mains will kick you in the ass and leave you wanting more.

Six reasons to line-up to see The Re-Mains:

1) Ballad Of A Wrong 'un - an amazing murder song, violent and mean. With the great line "He always wanted to be a star football player/But the poor guy had a build like Leo Sayer..."

2) The Dirt Farmer's Gavotte. Its just brilliant. Fred Eaglesmith should write a song this good.

3) Othello's P76. "If everybody sang like Pavarotti then we'd all sound just the same/But everybody does their best, beats their chest, and tries and tries again..." Yeah.

4) Days In The Sun. 'cause it is a piece of heaven.

5) They once killed a man. Really. They played for some shearers in the Australian bush who had been a three-day speed and booze powered bender. When The Re-Mains finished their set, the crowd wanted more. And so they kicked into "A Whole Lot Of Rosie" and one of the shearers dropped dead of a heart attack. He was in his mid-twenties.

6) "Imagine a 70's Holden, which has been fanged, hooned, thrashed and cruised from one end of the country to the other, mainly on bad roads, never breaking down but continually having parts replaced as the long distances take their toll." ABC Radio had that to say about The Re-Mains and I don't really know what some of the words mean (it's like the Australians speak in code to keep the rest of the world guessing), but I think a Holden is a car.

And so it goes.

I hate the fucking Eagles. I love The Re-mains.

Octoberman

Two of my favourite authors of ever and forever are Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson. And two of my favourite books of ever and forever are Kerouac's On The Road and Thompson's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. Both are travelogues, both are stories of the road, the getting to and what happened when they got there. Both had their threatening and dangerous and quite possibly insane travel partners, Jack had Neal Cassaday, Hunter had Oscar Acosta. Both are tales of hurtling towards the edge and hitting the brakes just as you come to the cliff. But, where Hunter's Dr. Gonzo always seemed to know the score, to know who was holding the good cards, seemed always to be in control, Kerouac's Sal Paradise never has that omniscient gift. He travels across America with the mad ones, never quite knowing what the deal is until after, when he has learned some truth.

There's a song by Octoberman's Marc Morrissette called Run From Safety that's got me thinking of On The Road and why, even though it is the obvious template Hunter used for Vegas, it is so different. Why it stands out as The Book for everyone who stumbles and staggers over a copy. And, I think, what makes On The Road so very special, is that Sal isn't full of wisdom and knowledge, he never quite seems to know what the hell is going on. And Marc Morrissette doesn't know what the answers are, or if he does, he's still trying to figure out what the lessons mean. And, I think, that is what makes Run From Safety by Octoberman so very, very special.



Marc Morrissette has written a song that sums up the feeling, for me, of On The Road. With just a few words and only five minutes to do it in, Marc took me back to my own attempt to relive On The Road. He took me back to a Greyhound bus pulling into Cheyenne, Wyoming late at night during Rodeo Days and having lunch at a truck stop in Bliss, Idaho and having to ask the homeless guy where I was and finding out I was in Louisville, Kentucky. With the line "Won't you come back home? Why can't you come back home. I don't think so," he has captured that mad sense of freedom that comes with Kerouac's rushing frantically back and forth across the continent. That thing that Johnny Cash meant when he said once that when he is woken at night by the sound of a train he wished he could go a little crazy one more time. "As long as we run from safety, we'll find our way out here, maybe."

For me Run From Safety is Tennessee Williams' prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages.

Check out octoberman.ca for just about the best band website ever. And check out the Octoberman on MySpace and on CBC Radio 3. And listen to Run From Safety and Elbow Room and Cisco Kid and Chasing Ambulances and be very happy to be alive.

Andrea Ramolo

This is Andrea Ramolo. The photo was taken by Kylah McGlade. And this is what I wrote about Ms Ramolo for Loplops...

Andrea Ramolo has a voice like Lucinda Williams, like Emmy Lou Harris, like Martha Wainwright. She has a voice that climbs deep down inside and sets up camp inside your soul. Her voice makes everything right with the world. Her voice is big, full of energy, but still warm, the kind of voice you want to snuggle with on a cold November night. She has a voice that sounds like it knows the answers to life's mysteries. Andrea Ramolo has the kind of voice Roy Orbison would have written songs about.

Her songs are powerful, so powerful they'll break your heart. Thank You For The Ride is one of those songs, like Octoberman's Run From Safety or Jason Collett's Hangover Days or Elliott Broods' The Bridge or Royal City's Bring My Father A Gift, that I can never get enough of, can never hype enough, that make me feel so freakin inspired about the state of music right now that I want to shout it from a rooftop. Recently, I read an interview with Henry Rollins and he was asked about the state of music today and Hank said that, in his opinion, it has never been better. And I have to agree with him. In my forty something years on this planet, the music has never been better. And Thank You For The Ride is one of the songs I'll hold up in front of Judge Wapner to prove it.

Go, now, to her MySpace. Listen to her version of Hank Williams' Lovesick Blues. She doesn't just sing it, she wears it, rides it, owns it. Listen to Thank You For The Ride and be very happy it exists.

Here is another photo of Andrea taken by Kylah McGlade...



Yeah...

Thank You, America

Hey, Get Off Of My Lawn...

Check this out - I'm going to start posting things again on this piece of real estate.

I've been writing stuff for Lopticulations, a paper-newsleter-thing for LopLops. So, what I'm going to do now is put up a few of the ones I kinda liked and a few of the ones for banks I liked even if my writing at the time sucks, sucks, sucks...

Enjoy.

First up...

The Impossible And The Implausible, The Art Of Li Wei



Li Wei is a photographer and performance artist. He likes to put himself into gravity-defying poses. He seeks to intentionally surprise and shock his viewer. Says Li Wei, "The first reaction is astonishment. Some people think they are full of sense of humour. They are curious about how I did this. Sometimes I am in real danger; I have to hang myself high with steel wires and people do get a little worried for me, but I am fine."



I discovered his photographs via The Wooster Collective, one of the best non-porn web sites ever, ever, ever. Through them I stumbled onto the series, "The Impossible Art Of Li Wei." Like many blogger and internet folk have commented, Photoshop trickery has turned pretty well all of us into cynics and disbelievers when it comes to photography. Which makes these photographs all the more exciting, they are non-digitalized. Except to erase wires and harnesses and scaffolding, they are not computer montages.



His self-portaits are part performance art, part photo essay. They are created using mirrors, wires, scaffolding and acrobatics. His body, stuck headfirst into a windshield, ramrod straight, feet to the sky, as if he has just plummeted to Earth from some great height. His head, sans body, is caressed by a woman, floats around her body, is stepped on. He is kicked off the roof a 25-storey building, a look of shock, disbelief on his face, captured at the moment he begins to fall. He falls horizontally out of an office building, outstretched hands trying to catch him. Li Wei again, "I am fascinated by the unstable and dangerous sides of art and I hope my work reflects these aspects."






He worked in oil until 1999, when he realized that "only performance art offers a chance to experience an action's message through one's own body." He has said that much of his work "involves the symbolic balancing act between personal freedom and emotional security, such as that of family." Much of his work is about change: "there is a feeling of losing grip on things, an uncertainty about tomorrow. It's a feeling in the air, of having nothing firm under the feet."

Blank Generation

"Punk rock should be appalling, disgraceful, totally berserk..." Captain Sensible

Punk rock was born in a fire, in a blood and feces stained bathroom stall, in a riot, at an orgy, at a high school prom, at a knife fight, in a little girl's bedroom, at a suicide. A mutant birth brought into being when Garage Rock raped Rockabilly and left her crying and ashamed and bruised and so angry she will kill. Punk rock was the kid in the back of the classroom no-one ever talked to. Punk rock was the kid too poor to take the bus. Punk rock was the kid with broken glass in his knuckles and spit in his eye.

Punk rock is ugly and mean and dumb. It is threatening and misery and death. It is basic primal energy. It is harder, faster, louder than anything that came before it or after it.

Punk rock is a high school dropout, an art school graduate, an MBA, an acne-scarred kid, and a grey haired hipster.

Punk rock is Old School, Hardcore, New Wave, Post-Punk, Oi!, Anarcho-Punk, Pop Punk, Alternative Rock, Emo, Scremo, Queercore, and Riot Grrrl.

Punk rock is shopping at the Salvation Army Thrift Store, at Hot Topic, at West 49. Punk rock is shoplifting food and investing in mutual funds and RRSP's.

I first heard Punk rock in my parents' living room in fall of '76. It was on the CBC, a news report about an ugly, ugly, ugly trend in London. Safety pins and torn clothing and hair standing at right-angles. Violent and smeared in dripping black eyeliner, the crowd at the bar in the news piece threw themselves up and down, up and down. The disembodied voice of the reporter spoke of riots and gang attacks and anarchy. The band was frightening, amateurish, clowns with a six-string guitar and drums, the lead singer droned "No future, no future..." I was ten and this was my Saul on his way to Damascus moment. I was blinded, yet I could see clearly.

"Here's a shocker: Hilly Kristal turns out to have been a millionaire. Just weeks after the legendary former CBGB owner passed away, his heirs - who thought Kristal was broke - are finding out that the old punk impresario was worth a surprising $3.7 million." The Village Voice, September 18, 2007

"What in the name of all that is holy was that?" Me, 1993 after seeing a Subaru Impreza commercial that claimed the car was like Punk rock

Punk has always been about the underground and the underdog. Anti-commerical, anti-mainstream, anti-establishment, anti-authority, anti-anti. Punk has also always been about selling out to the highest bidder, commercial success, mainstream acceptance, radio playlists, and chart positions. The mainstream acceptance of Punk was not forced down a mohawk tattooed throat. The Sex Pistols did not have to give their pictures for Dutch bubble-gum cards. Nirvana did not have pose for the cover of Rolling Stone. The Clash did not have to sell their songs to car companies. Green Day did not have to give their videos to MTV for airplay. Punk rock looks better than ever. It scored the prom queen and an investment portfolio.

"Punk is musical freedom. It's saying, doing, and playing what you want." Kurt Cobain

Punk rock loves to define itself. Punk rock is loud, violent and three minutes long. Punk rock is Hardcore. Punk rock is shouting over a jackhammer. Punk rock is Never Mind The Bollocks. Punk rock is the first Clash record. Its Mommy's Little Monster. Its Black Flag before Hank. Its Black Flag with Hank. Punk rock is what American Hardcore, Punk's Not Dead, Punk: Attitude or any of another dozen documentaries that try to define Punk rock say it is. Punk rock is not. It is not about boundaries or fences or secret handshakes or cult meetings. Or what I just found on Dictionary.com: A type of rock-'n'-roll, reaching its peak in the late 1970s and characterized by loud, insistent music and abusive or violent protest lyrics, and whose performers and followers are distinguished by extremes of dress and socially defiant behavior. It is not. It is also Mike Ness' and Eddie Spaghetti's country records. It is also Devo, The Talking Heads, Blondie, and The Boomtown Rats. It is what Cobain said. Musical freedom. As someone much wiser than me said, if your heart is in the right place, the surface material doesn't really matter.

Punk rock is dying and is alive and well and is no-code and is having heart palpitations and just got some hair plugs and is cute and is ripped and is pretty damn hot. Punk rock is eating its young to stay alive, is cannibalizing its neighbors, is denying and is shouting proudly from the rooftops.

Punk rock is complicated.

Art Ramblings

Mark Jenkins is an American artist.

Go to his website. It is here. He also has a Tape Sculpture Tutorial site. Click here. You should also check out the street art blog The Wooster Collective.



Mark Jenkins works mostly in packing tape.



His stuff and things have popped up in cities all over the world, from D.C. to Rio. It has also appeared in nature.



The nature setting seems to be a statement against the idiots who leave garbage on hiking trails. One time, I was on the side of a mountain in Alberta, keeping an eye out for grizzlies, miles from civilization, above the tree-line, when I stepped on a Coke can. Another time, I found an abandoned Yukon Jack t-shirt. I like Mr. Jenkins' art.



I like that it's playful. And fun. And a little disturbing at times. It works to knock people out of their zombie stupor.



Read an interview with Mr. Jenkins in the Washington Post





This is from YouTube. Mark Jenkins has posted several videos of people reacting to his installations. This is from New York City.



This is from Rio. It is called All You Can Eat.



There are more. Lots more. Go to YouTube and search. They are worth the hunt.

Some of my favorite art is street art. Its like guerilla war against boredom.

Strange Rumblings

Fidel has retired. And Raul is the new boss.



"Beans are more important than cannon." Raul said that. "After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba's economic benefactor, it was Raul who persuaded Fidel to permit private agricultural markets and open the island to foreign investment in sectors like tourism, now a $2 billion-a-year industry in Cuba." Tim Padgett of Time said that. And Oswaldo Paya, Cuba's leading dissident, has come to view the U.S. embargo as unhelpful.

Strange rumblings, indeed.



This is a picture of Fidel and Che playing some golf. I like it. Put that on a t-shirt, bitches. Fuck t-shirt socialism.

Sorry - listening to N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton. When I first heard N.W.A., I felt fear for my pimply white ass. The revolution had arrived and it was being broadcast on MuchMusic. Easy E and Ice Cube and Dr. Dre were coming to my home to whack me and my white-guilt. Oh, fuckshit, the threat could not be exaggerated. Chuck D and Public Enemy were Malcolm X and N.W.A. were the Panthers, very scary, very organized. They made Bobby Seale look like a pacifist. Shitdamn. And then Easy E died of AIDS. And Dr. Dre, well Dre's living a nice suburban life. He has wife and kids. And now Ice Cube stars in movies for Disney.



Fuck The Police, indeed.

Oh, my man, the world is odd and strange and confusing and bewildering and hurts the eye at times.

How, how, how, how are we to make sense of a world where in one decade a man is straight outta Compton, a crazy mutherfucker named Ice Cube... And in another decade poses with L.A.'s finest at a meet and greet at Tower Records?

Cube posing with L.A. cops. Fidel and Che playing a round of golf.



The contrast between what we assume we know, Fidel the peasant hero, against what we don't know, Fidel the son a wealthy landowner and the family maid. Fidel the proletariat, Fidel the bourgeois golf player. Che the bourgeois golf player, Che the martyr for Latin America freedom.



The contrast between what we assume we know and what we don't know. That's the stuff to ponder, to dwell on, to dig into. "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." Mark Twain said that. It's the stuff you don't see coming, like a dark Cadillac with the lights off in a deep moonless night careening towards you as you step off the curb on your way to the all night store to buy some cigarettes and some porn. It's the suicide of Hunter S. Thompson. Nixon going to China. Brian Mulroney leading the international pressure to end apartheid. Its when what you are sure you know comes into a violent conflict with what you don't know.

What we are sure we know: George W. Bush, the President of the United States, is rotten to the core. His failures, his arrogance, his bullying and his bullying and inability to master the English language. "Bush is a natural-born loser with a filthy-rich daddy who pimped his son out to rich oil-mongers. He hates music, football and sex, in no particular order, and he is no fun at all." Hunter S. Thompson said that. "Bush has rocked America's core idea of itself and most of the world's idea of America. He may not be forgiven, and he certainly won't be forgotten for this." Bob Geldof said this. What we are sure we know is Iraq, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, waterboarding.



At one point I suggest that he will never be given credit for good policies, like those here in Africa, because many people view him "as a walking crime against humanity." He looks very hurt by that. And I'm sorry I said it, because he's a very likable fellow. Bob Geldof wrote that.

And this what we don't know.

One woman tells how six months previously, she was bitten by a cobra and rushed to hospital. As she was passing out, she tells the President, "that little voice whispered to me, 'You'll be all right,' and I was." She pauses, and says meaningfully to him: "You know that little voice, I think?" "Not really," Bush says drily. "I've never been bitten by a cobra."

And this what we don't know.

"U.S. solutions should not be imposed on African leaders." George W. Bush said that.

"When we see hunger we feed them. Not to spread our influence, but because they're hungry." George W. Bush said that.

"Stop coming to Africa feeling guilty. Come with love and feeling confident for its future." George W. Bush said that.

George W. Bush initiated the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) with cross-party support led by John Kerry and Bill Frist. $15 billion over 5 years, it is the largest investment to fight a single disease in history. Bush wants to extend it for 5 more years, spending $30 billion.

In 2003, only 50,000 Africans were on HIV antiretroviral drugs and they had to pay for their own medicine. Today, 1.3 million are receiving medicines free. The Americans contribute one-third of the money to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which treats another 1.5 million. 50% of all food aid. A $350 million fund for other neglected tropical diseases that can be easily eradicated. A program to distribute 5.2 million mosquito nets to kids in Tanzania. Contracts worth @ $1.2 billion in Tanzania and Ghana from the Millennium Challenge Account. With other leading industrialized nations has granted $34 billion in debt relief for African nations in the past 18 months.

"Human suffering should preempt commercial interest." George W. Bush said that.

This what we don't know.

Bush, the "natural-born loser with a filthy-rich daddy", the incompetent, the arrogant. Bush, Cheney's puppet, the yes-man for oil, the guy with the bin Laden family connections. Bush, Michael Moore's fave-o-rite punching bag. Bush, evil incarnate. Bush is also the best friend Africa has ever had in the White House. He has done for more for Africa than any other president ever. Period.

"This is the triumph of American policy really. It was probably unexpected of the man. It was expected of the nation, but not of the man, but both rose to the occasion." Bob Geldof said that.



Read Bob Geldof's article in Time. I recommend it. Its a shot to the gut.

Strange rumblings, indeed.

John Simon Ritchie