If it sticks, its done...

Wednesday, November 26

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.

Sunday, November 16

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...