I like to write about music that random visitors to the site might actually buy and hear for themselves, but I have to make an exception for this. Something really nice happened to me last week and writing something about it should help explain the idiot grin I’ve been sporting recently.

For the last two years a couple of my friends (Greg Pohl and Smash) have been secretly working on an album of cover songs... covers of my songs, as it turns out. Don’t ask me why; maybe they thought the music had some potential in the hands of competent musicians—I think my songs, with their basic musicianship, are sort of blank canvases. Greg and Smash solicited contributions from other friends in bands, assembled some odds & ends from old tapes, and ended up with 17 tracks worth of stuff. Smash even managed to trick me into giving him a new tune. I really had no idea until Smash sat me down at his place last Tuesday before the Tool/Isis show, poured us each a measure of The Balvenie (a recent gift from Willingdon Black), and fired up this disc.

For those who don’t know me, a bit of musical history. I’ve been playing drums since I was 12, though you wouldn’t know this if you saw or heard me. Good drummers are athletes, and I haven’t got a jock bone in my body. After playing in neighbourhood bands, always with my friend Willingdon Black, I realized that being a gigging musician was not for me, and I dropped out for the first time around age 22. I was into music more than ever, though, and needed an outlet more true to my introverted self. Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth and Peter Hammill provided the songwriting lessons, pawnshops provided the guitars, my oft-vacationing parents supplied the recording space, and I got to work with my new Tascam 424. I was into the idea of creating artifacts—tapes with my own songs and packaging. Trade ‘em with your friends! I got the recording bug, and started living for those few minutes when I’d finish tracking a song, give it a quick mixdown, then blast the result through the living room. Sometimes I’d laugh my head off—I liked those songs the best. It’s like what Stuart Ross said about his writing: “…I’ll look at what I’ve written and say, ‘That’s some weird shit I write.’ And that’s what writing poetry is all about.” That’s what my songs are all about. They’re just me being weird, and having something to show for the insane amounts of leisure time with which I've been blessed during my lifetime.

Fortunately my friends are just as weird. Look at this track listing! The Shockker (ex-Roadbed, currently of punk kings Mongoose) gives “Fort” a good thrashing, coerces Mongoose frontman RC to help turn my song fragment “Alison Reynolds” into a breezy little pop tune, then crashes a 21 Tandem Repeats rehearsal, reforms Roadbed with Two-Sticks and Super Robertson, and blows through an insanely great version of “Grandad’s Volare,” which always needed a full-band treatment. There’s no better combo than Roadbed to do it. Greg Pohl takes control for a Red House Painterly treatment of “TDK SA90” and a sped-up Cure-like take on “Dead Meat Cindy,” a song I’d completely forgotten about. Willingdon Black as Snake Island Salvage faithfully recreates “No One New” with additional ultra-tasty guitar/bass/drums arrangements. Nice! As always, his guitar orchestrations are magnificent. Maia Azur really rocked me back on my heels with her smokin’ recasting of “Toyah” as a smouldering PJ Harvey-esque piano ballad. Finally, Tarkake, my Sunday afternoon band, working in secret with Smash and Sox’s girlfriend alongside, further mangle the already malformed party-pooper that is “Waiting for my Skeleton to Grow” with new lyrics to boot. Upsetting in the best possible sense.

These tunes are just the headliners. Interspersed are a seldom-heard bunch of vault-raiding live, rehearsal, and one-off lo-fi jam selections from the same cast in different configurations: The Beggars, Stoke, Logan Sox, In Spite, illuminaut v.x, Electric Religion, and Proctor, Mueller & Byrne. Smash also collected the extensive liner notes with contributions from WB, SR, Smash, Greg, and the mic-shy little belter fancylady. My friends are the best. Thanks to everyone for listening to my crap and for kicking my ass with your talent. Now I stagger off to find an ice pack for my swollen ego.

Just mulling over the relationship between music and comedy tonight as I try to write something spiritually wise about Brian Posehn's Live In: Nerd Rage album (which I like very much) for the mag.

As Dave Chappelle points out in Block Party, every comedian wants to be a musician, and every musician thinks he's funny.

Both professions demand that you be both ballsy and screwed-up if you're to survive and prosper. Both professions invite rejection and disdain from an undiscerning public on the way up the ladder of fame, and once success is achieved, losing your vital “edge” is inevitable as you start to depend on that undiscerning public to put bread on your table. In that sense, Metallica are the Robin Williams of heavy metal.

Full day of rock! That was last Thursday. I booked a half day off work so that Smash and I could meet up at 1:00 for Sounds of the Underground at the PNE Forum. Now, the Forum is a grim old barn with bloody awful sound, and this year's SOTU lineup was nowhere near as appealing as last year's excellent bill (incl. Opeth, Strapping Young Lad, High on Fire, and Clutch), but SOTU is a really well-run event that avoids tedium by keeping to a tight schedule with lots of bands playing short sets. As well, the day was abbreviated via the cancellation of Trivium and possibly The Chariot (who might have played in the first half hour that we missed).

Through the Eyes of the Dead were at it when we arrived. The sound was like a wind tunnel, but their drummer impressed by being audible and having some killer kick drum chops. Evergreen Terrace's music sounded very poppy in comparison. They were fronted by a funny kid who was all limbs and blond hair. I don't think they went over too well. We skipped out to get some lunch. Behemoth were on next, and they've got a killer act—black metal with spikes and corpsepaint and choreographed hair twirling. Even the drummer was windmilling away. The sound had improved by this time, so their musical might was in full force. The Black Dahlia Murder impressed as well, although their grindy material didn't translate very well in the big room. In a small club these guys would slay. No such problem with Terror, though. I've said before that I don't normally like this kind of bully rock hardcore, but Terror are so damn good at it that I can't help but embrace what they do. Given the festival circumstances, the usual Terror speeches about scene unity took a back seat to commands for the crowd to "get on top of each other" and similar gym class shenanigans. Still, they ruled! 3 Inches of Blood went down really well, but I've never cottoned on to them. Cannibal Corpse will forever be tainted by the time we endured them (and some racist asshole fans) at the Starfish Room many years ago. From a distance at the Forum, bludgeoning through a brief set, they were still just okay. With our plan to skip out on headliners As I Lay Dying in place, In Flames closed off the event for us. Unrestrained! magazine did a rather daft cover story a few issues back with the headline "Why does everyone hate In Flames?" It probably should have said "Why do jaded, elitist metal writers hate In Flames?" because everyone doesn't hate In Flames. A Forum full of people bloody loved them, especially those big hits with the big choruses and sequenced keyboard parts that the drummer has to play behind using a click track. Whatever. In Flames have the material and staging to headline big gigs like this. I don't think I've seen a better light show since Genesis on the "Mama" tour in '83, back when Vari-lites were the big new thing.

Smash and I split to go home for a couple hours, then we met up again to go to the Commodore for The Eagles of Death Metal and Peaches. I didn't know that they were alternating headline slots during the tour, so I was surprised that TEoDM were going strong when we entered the club. It was a love-fest between band and crowd. The whole gig was an unknown quantity for me, not being too familiar with either act. The Eagles of Death Metal played pop-punk with poise and panache, sort of like the Ramones crossed with Roxy Music. They dropped a couple covers into their set—"Brown Sugar" and "Beat on the Brat"—then for their grand finale, invited ladies up on stage with them until there was barely any room for the band to move. Crazy. Peaches had her work cut out to top that. She opened her set over by one of the side bars, her face shrouded by a glitzy silver cape with cowl. After the opening number she cut through the crowd to the stage for the rest of the show. There's something gormless and endearing about Peaches, even when she's stripped down to her skivvies and telling us to "fuck the pain away." Maybe it's the way she balances awkwardly atop the drum kit or attempts to strike a pose on top of the PA stack, or the fact that her band (which included JD Samson of Le Tigre) made heavy use of the keytar. Anyway, I should just leave it at that. Fancylady wanted to go but I couldn't score an extra ticket, and she responds with a dreadful silence whenever I try to mention anything about this show. God forbid she should read this.

I'm working on my Voivod story for Unrestrained! at the moment, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to post something I've had to cut from the piece.

I got to see Voivod five times between 1990 and their final tour in 2003, and each gig holds some special memories. I think my favourite Voivod moment, though, was at their last show in Vancouver, opening for Ozzy Osbourne and (cough) Finger Eleven. It was the first show I'd seen with their new bassist Jason Newsted and the returning Snake on vocals. Even though they were playing early to a partially filled arena, they came out and killed, playing "Voivod" as their first number (the best bands have a s/t theme song—Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Motörhead...um...). Anyway, their playing that power-drill thrasher was the one of the most defiant, joyous things I've ever witnessed at a concert.

When I got the chance to talk to Newsted last March at the Katorz listening party, I had to ask him about that moment, and why they opened their set with that particular song. It turned out there were some very good practical reasons behind playing it.

"That’s how it was supposed to be," he said. "That’s how they did it for so long. It's just bringing it out—we’re here! That was one of the things as a band that always charmed me about them. No matter how many times you’d see them they’d either open with it or close with it. You were going to get crushed one way or the other. And especially in a situation on an Ozzfest or a thing where you’re playing with three bands like on that particular tour, you’ve got to put a song out there as the first four minutes for your mixing guy to make sure all the mikes are working and everything’s happening. We all sing on that song and all the instruments are full on and it’s got a change, the swells and everything, that gives the mixing guy a chance to go find the lower volumes, and then it crushes full on, as full volume as we’re going to go all night, so he gets to dial that in before the set starts. It’s such a racous type of song that it doesn’t really matter how shitty the sound system is, it’s still a fucking cool song because of how basic it is. So that’s really what it is. It can be in your face and raw as possible, and that’s even a better thing. Whereas if you come out with 'Astronomy Domine' [Voivod's minor-hit Pink Floyd cover] or one of your very delicate, very finessed-type songs it’ll take the mixing guy till the fourth song to get your shit together. So, that’s kind of a tactical manouver at the same time as it is this slap in the face."

I wanted to say farewell to this old chum—my faithful JVC CD player. The first album it played was U2's The Joshua Tree, and the last disc its laser caressed was Duke Ellington's Piano in the Foreground. The LED display burned out several years ago, but I only gave up on it after the tray stopped sliding out last week. This anomaly negatively affected the user experience.

So meet the new boss—our Panasonic DVD/CD player, so generously donated by Mel and Adam down the hall a couple Christmases ago. After a trip to The Source at Kingsgate Mall for extra cables (no, I don't think I will buy the extended three-year warranty) I was back enjoying the tinny, overcompressed sounds of the world's latest obsolete media format.

Six Organs of Admittance, July 30, The Media Club
Openers The Christa Min didn’t smile, acknowledge the audience or appear to enjoy their own music. I don’t have any patience for that whole “I’d rather be napping” schtick. Musically speaking, the sextet’s songs are okay, if a little predictable once you grasp the formula most of them follow. Their last song did have some drama and power. I remember it from the last time I saw them at Mesa Luna, and I have the main riff stuck in my head right now.

I’m new to Six Organs of Admittance—thanks to that relentless kid at Outer Space Gamelan and Unrestrained! Adam for alerting me. I’ve been enjoying their new album The Sun Awakens (Drag City) for a few weeks now. Singer/guitarist Ben Chasny, who has connections to Comets on Fire and Current 93, makes music that’s difficult to categorize. I’ll go with psychedelic folk and leave it at that. While their music is bleak and ethereal on record, it takes on a more explosive quality on stage. Chasny wields a potent Telecaster in front of drummer Noel Von Harmonson and third member Steve Quenell playing a mysterious tone generator (which on closer inspection comprised a vintage radio unit, some effects pedals and a small mixing board). They opened with a shorter yet more abstract version of “River of Transfiguration,” the side-long piece from The Sun Awakens. Chasny set off bursts of noise like Neil Young in his Arc days and the drummer sprayed snare shots and pounded a gong. We were getting into Wolf Eyes and SUNN O))) territory for a while, what with the drones and the random elements, until things settled down for the rest of the 45-minute set. I recognized “Bless Your Blood,” “Black Wall,” and a jam based around “Torn By Wolves” and ”Wolves’ Pup,” the two instrumental tracks that bookend side one of the album. The arrangements of the songs I knew were sufficiently different from the album that I imagine a Six Organs… live recording would be well worth hearing. The main thing is, the trio were right into it through the whole show, with Chasny lurching around the stage, conducting the band by swinging his guitar neck around, and the other two responding in kind. That's all I ask for—musicianship and passion.

British MPs reveal favourite albums in today's Guardian Unlimited...in which they're outed as a pretty righteous crop of politicos. Despite attempts like that sorry list of top conservative rock songs, true rock does not observe party lines. I couldn't help noticing, though, that the sickos who namechecked Tarkus and Atom Heart Mother were on the Labour side of the fence. Comrades in prog, unite.

I doubt a survey of Canadian MPs would produce such an interesting list, although I'm sure the Bloc MPs would do themselves proud.

I continue to labour for the Voivod cause. Tonight I watched a chunk of Rock Pig: Karaoke, withstanding Nirvana cover versions (would everyone leave poor headless Kurt alone?) and the sight of Dave Navarro's ambisexual cyborg face to check up on our lad Jason. There he was, loud 'n' proud in a Voivod shirt (not as shown left) just as he promised in Montreal back in March. So what if he was playing "White Rabbit" instead of "Black City"? He was logging some serious screen time in that thing.

Writing’s become really hard again. All I do is worry and procrastinate. When I finally sit down I end up stringing clichés together. This scares me, because I have a buttload of writing to do over the next few weeks.

NoMeansNo played the Vancouver Int’l Jazz Fest on June 29. Trust me to attend probably the least jazz-like gig of the entire festival. Though it was a satisfying combination of bands, none of them swung particularly hard. Italian trio Zu were already playing when we walked into the Commodore. The guy on baritone sax wore a Slayer Reign in Blood shirt, which indicated what kind of destructive sensibility they wielded—relentless bass/drums/sax chaos in the style of Ruins. Very enjoyable, especially up close, where you could feel and see the full force of their ragged-edge musicianship. Smash was impressed by the bassist’s Traynor Monoblock, which was a variant he hadn’t seen often.

Norway’s Wibutee were a damn sight more chilled-out; equipped with a brace of iBooks along with standard rock band instrumentation. They reminded me of Radiohead or Sigur Ros with flute and saxophone leads—kind of like a post-millennium Weather Report, to introduce some kind of jazz touchstone. Definitely a tight outfit, though their propensity to play against sequenced backing tracks quashed any chance of them actually catching fire. Thanks to the Norwegian government for bringing them out here!

Time for Nomeansno. “I guess it’s now official: we’re jazz-punk,” Rob Wright said before they’d played a note. In true sketchy punk rock fashion, Tom Holliston's guitar rig immediately died and the Wright brothers had to struggle through most of the first song as a duo. There were rumours that this would be the last-ever NMN show. This is silly talk, as their website confirms:

"On June 29th, 2006, NoMeansNo will be playing their final show ever at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver, Washington British Columbia. The quartet, made up of Rob Wright on drums, John Wright on guitar, and Ernie Hawkins on bass and vocals, have felt that after twenty-seven albums and fourteen years of existence, the time has come to announce their farewell to the music world with one final two hour bash, where they will play their entire musical back catalogue, including hits from their masterpiece Something Better Change, from 2003. The performance will include appearances from past, present and future NoMeansNo members, such as Jello Biafra, Greg Ginn, Robo and Chavo. Ticket prices have jumped from $19.50 to $99.50, as the band belatedly realized this is the very last chance they'll have to exploit their fanbase for beer money and the rider demanding a package of trail mix and two bottles of Old Crow bourbon. The band wishes to express their deepest appreciation for the last twenty-seven years of making music before their retirement from the music industry forever on June 29th.

Be sure to see the band in Tofino on June 30th, Lund on July 1st and Denman Island on July 2nd."

No, NoMeansNo will outlast us all. They will be teaming up with the cockroaches to release split 7-inches after Armageddon.

I’m buggered if I can remember much of the set list—with 20+ years’ worth of songs to pick from, plenty of hoary old classics got an airing. Now that I think about it, they did play “The Tower,” “No Fucking” (which dates way back to the Mama tape), and “Rags and Bones,” as well as some new songs from All Roads Lead to Ausfahrt (out August 22, though they did toss a few advance copies into the crowd). For an encore, they did their gritty version of "Bitches Brew," with the sax guy from Zu supplying some additional parping.

I catch myself taking music for granted way too often. The fact that NoMeansNo are one of my favourite bands and they're local means I haven't caught every show they've performed in Vancouver recently, including a gig about three blocks away from my place the week before the Jazz Fest gig. Pure foolishness. It was sure good to check in with them again at the Commodore.

Just writing from the spanking-new and airy Grimsby Public Library. I'm watching a huge summer thunderstorm through the computer area's huge floor-to-ceiling windows. We don't get weather like this at home. I've got 27 minutes left on this internet session, so I hope the rain eases up before I have to head out to the car. I'm here for a few days to help fancylady with a family emergency. The worst of that particular storm is over, but there's still a lot of work to do at her dad's house. Sit tight; the music will be back soon.

PS...
SQ on TOTP.

I felt like having a whinge about the demise of Top of the Pops, but I'd just be putting on airs. I've only ever seen one episode in my life—this one [YouTube], which tweaked my 11-year-old mind, no doubt. I can't claim that I grew up with it. Still, its cancellation is a sign of something else, something definitely worth a whinge.

It's a given that fewer people care about music anymore. Music is just data, stripped of mystique, to be copied, experienced, and deleted. Anyone who does give a damn what goes in their ears can pursue their interests to the narrowest of any possible niche. A Slipknot fan of average intelligence and resources can work backwards through Slayer, Maiden, and Sabbath and back again through The Dillinger Escape Plan, Melt Banana, SUNN O))) and, having plowed through history and dismissed everything as "old hat," end up amassing an exhaustive collection of Sri Lankan Tamilcore jazz-grind...all in a couple of months. The notion of a single forum for exposing all "pop" music, such as TOTP, is outdated. Not even a whole television channel presenting the breadth of popular music can keep viewers. MuchMusic and MTV mainly air reality shows, because we're all celebrities now. Everyone's a pop star, and we can all buy products that the stars enjoy and join their world of make believe.

People are more interested in gadgetry these days. The corporations have better control over that stuff. People can't just make their own iPods or flatscreen TVs the same way they can rip and burn the new Keane CD. Hardware has cachet. That's why A&B Sound downtown has cleared out all the music from their main floor and replaced it with flash gear for the home. If you're after that new Tool album with the 3D glasses (can't download those!), you'll have to wade through the TVs and digital cameras, round the corner, and take the escalator upstairs. That's where you'll find the art...out of sight, out of mind.

Status Quo Beat Me Up!
On Coronation Street last Sunday, Chesney came running up to Les: "Les, it's the Quo!" Les's favourite band were a mere few doors down, quaffing pints in the Rovers (under the eye of their road manager Ralph Brown, nearly reprising his role as Danny in Withnail & I). Les wasn't having any of it. He wouldn't believe it even when Chesney took off with Les's jean jacket and returned it marked with Francis Rossi's and Rick Parfitt's autographs. Eventually Les got with the plot—too late—as the band got in their van to leave. Our ginger-haired hero gathered up his Status Quo LPs and took chase, catching up and yelling at them through the van window. He couldn't keep up, though, and the van rounded the corner and disappeared...only to circle the block and stop in front of Les. His elation at seeing his heroes return was short-lived, as Rossi and Parfitt jumped out of the van and beat the snot out their biggest fan. Seems that sometime in the '80s, Les jumped on stage at a Quo gig and accosted Rossi with enough gusto to put the guitarist in a permanent neck brace. "This is for 20 years of pain!" Rossi yelled, fist connecting with Les's face.

So yeah—best episode of Coronation Street ever.

When I'd recovered sufficiently I took a walk up to Neptoon Records to flip through their bargain bin. They've always got something worth having for $2.00. I found a copy of On the Level, an album that got a lot of screen time that morning, sitting atop Les's pile of vinyl. And it's great. You can't not like Status Quo. They're friendlier than Nazareth, not as self-obsessed and macho as Thin Lizzy while rocking just as hard as either. On the Level has some real stompers, like "Little Lady," "Down Down" (#1 in the UK), and a roaring version of Chuck Berry's "Bye Bye Johnny." Full-tilt Brit-boogie at its finest.

The aftermath of the Les-battering incident saw Les and Cilla plotting to sue the band for assault and injury, so I'm predicting more Quo on Corrie very soon, probably in some kind of settlement scenario where the band play a free gig and plug their new greatest hits collection. Wahey!

Today The Guardian pokes at death metal's purulent underbelly and discovers an artform that both sexes can enjoy. It's true—everyone looks good in a Dying Fetus shirt.

It got me thinking that it's been a while since I was blown away by an unadulterated death metal album. I wanted to like the new Decapitated record, but the constant ultra-triggered double kick drums pretty much ruined it for me. Augury's Concealed really impressed me, although I haven't had many opportunities to spin it since picking it up at their show a couple months ago. Before that I'd have to go back to last year and Bolt Thrower's magnificently crustified comeback Those Once Loyal and the mindblowing Atheist reissues for some old-school death metal satisfaction.

Anyone got any new-school recommendations that are gonna make me forget about Pierced From Within or Here in After?

So it seems that Norway's Borknagar, cosmic black metallers of some renown, have an acoustic album in the works. Sounds like a good idea to me, and I'm looking forward to hearing their swirling compositions presented in a less bombastic format. Besides, their last couple releases, Empiricism and Epic, were quite samey, and giving their sound an experimental overhaul could be exactly what they need.

Going acoustic sometimes seems like a desperate gambit for a creatively spent band, but I'm sure Borknagar aren't aiming to simply remake some "hits," giving them a radio-friendly sheen for the 18-to-35 drivetime audience. The few one-off "major departure" releases from their heavy metal peers have been credible. I thought Opeth's toned-down prog move, Damnation, was a spectacular success, while Green Carnation's The Acoustic Verses from earlier this year was a very enjoyable release.

Green Carnation are probably best known for their 60-minute concept song/album, Light of Day, Day of Darkness, an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink production that hit a number of a moods while never losing its flow or sounding anything less than grandiose. After that album, they retreated to shorter, more rocking material on Blessing In Disguise and The Quiet Offspring, before unplugging for their latest album, a project to celebrate Green Carnation's 15th year of existence. I talked to guitarist Tchort (who's been involved with Emperor, Carpathian Forest, and the ultra-heavy Blood Red Throne over the years) for Unrestrained! #30. Here's some stuff I had to whittle out of the finished article.

Do you think you'll perform any of these songs from The Acoustic Verses in electric versions? Do you think they'll change in the coming years?

I think Kjetil [Nordhus, vocals] mentioned that his song "Maybe?" was a song he originally wrote that for the full band, but then he made a different version for this album. So that one maybe will be presented later on as a full band version. But I can easily see us doing these songs during a full band live set, maybe in the middle of the set, take everything down and play some acoustic songs before continuing. We’ve been thinking a lot about how to do this in the future because we started doing a lot of acoustic shows as well. We did a couple acoustic shows in Finland with really, really good response as well. A lot of the other material like Blessing in Disguise and also stuff from The Quiet Offspring works really well in acoustic form. So it’s possible to do both separate, but it’s also possible for us to do it combined. You never know.

Do you still think about The Quiet Offspring? Will you be still going on the road to promote it?

We do play a lot from The Quiet Offspring, and we never played as many shows as we do right now. We never set up a tour for The Quiet Offspring. We did a European tour for Blessing in Disguise and that was the first tour we ever did. We were supposed to do a European tour in January and early February, but it seems our keyboard player has double booked himself with another band. I think it’s going to be split up to do long weekend shows in different countries. We do promote both The Quiet Offspring and the EP [The Burden is Mine...Alone]and the new album in every forthcoming show. We have four albums and a back catalogue that we need to promote. For example, Light of Day, Day of Darkness, people don’t want to hear a small portion of it, they want to hear the whole thing and then you end up having a three-hour setlist. That’s not always easy to work out either, so...

That's almost a special event kind of thing, isn't it?

It is. It requires a lot of equipment and so on and it’s always a big problem to bring on flights. The keyboard for this Canadian trip [to Toronto's Day of the Equinox Festival last October, where they played the entire Light of Day...] weighed 60 kilos that was 70% more than the maximum weight that Air Canada would allow, and that was just for one piece. So it was a big problem fighting at the airport just to bring it into Canada or get it out of Norway and bring it back again.

This is the first album you’ve done with your new production company, Sublife Productions. Why did you form Sublife?

Because I think that I will have different goals within the next few years. In previous years it’s been touring especially with Carpathian Forest, whom I also play with, and then there’s Blood Red Throne, whom I also tour with, and then there’s Green Carnation, whom I also tour with. I have a son at home and it’s not that easy anymore to go on the road and have 200 travel days a year, so basically I’m trying to see a little ahead, and I see myself cutting down on touring. I need to do something at home that still can be possible to combine with touring, and having a regular job doesn’t let you combine that. So I decided to form this company together with Kjetil our vocalist and basically do what I’ve been doing for the last five years, and that’s working as a booking agent/management/recording label for my other bands. Kjetil's also in Trail of Tears and another band called Chain Collector. So it’s basically doing the same thing we’ve been doing these past years but now under a specific name and just making it an official company.

Is it a way of controlling your career instead of leaving it in other people's hands?

Not really, because I don’t have problems…I have been working with a lot of great labels like The End Records, so I don’t have any problems leaving some of that responsibility with others. But it’s basically just having something to go back to when you don’t go on the road as much as you used to.

What other kinds of acts are you interested in working with and possibly signing?

We decided to go with a very local aim, meaning that we feel that bands from our area [Kristiansand] have great quality and a lot of potential, but it’s usually bands from Bergen or Oslo that people abroad know about. All the bands that you hear about in foreign magazines are Oslo bands or sometimes Bergen-located bands, but we feel that the bands where we come from have just as much potential and maybe even a greater quality to them, and we decided to focus on our own bands and tried to push some of the local bands. So you’ll be hearing from some local bands in the future and I think they have a great potential to get somewhere, of course depending a lot on the work that we do.

I had planned to go see Nomeansno and Removal on Saturday night, but I learned once again that there's a crucial difference between "have plans" and "have tickets." The show had sold out by the time I tried to score some on Saturday morning. Oh well. I made the rounds of the stores downtown and bought the new Celtic Frost album, along with PJ Harvey's Please Leave Quietly DVD.

With the show a no-go, I stayed in and watched Blue Velvet for the first time in years. David Lynch loves music and odd sounds in general, which is one of the reasons I like his movies. From a musical angle, Blue Velvet's an important movie because it was the first time Lynch worked with Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise (who got involved because Lynch wanted a song with a similar atmosphere to This Mortal Coil's "Song to the Siren," to which he couldn't get the rights).

It's cool how he'll bring a film to a halt so one of the characters can sing an entire song. Blue Velvet seems almost entirely driven by music. Isabella Rosellini sings the title track and Dean Stockwell lip-synchs "In Dreams". In Wild at Heart, Nicholas Cage/Sailor hijacks a Powermad gig to croon "Love Me" for Laura Dern. Eraserhead has "Heaven (the Lady in the Radiator song)" and Twin Peaks has my all-time favourite Lynch musical moment—I think I've written about it here before—James, Maddy, and Donna's home-fi session in episode 9.

Watching that Wild at Heart scene with Powermad again, it's funny to notice that Sailor's Elvis-style martial arts dancefloor moves match exactly what I've seen in the pit at all-ages hardcore shows over the last few years.

If you don't like puppets and puppetry, you might be dead inside. Come on—the Muppets? Thunderbirds? Casey and Finnegan? Meet the Feebles? There's even a Mule puppet, a sock augmented with frizzy hair and a miniature jeansuit that Super Robertson made for skits at the Supper Show. When it's off-duty, resting at home, Super's daughter likes to gnaw on its eyes, so it's clear I'm a hit with the kids.

A few weeks ago, fancylady came back from Happy Bats with this movie called Strings. I think we intended to get Capote or Walk the Line, but Truman and Johnny would have to wait. There were puppets to watch. Above all else, Strings is beautiful to look at. The sets are unbelievable, and the puppets are incredibly expressive, especially considering their faces are static except for moving eyelids. They have a universal, timeless quality. The storyline is serviceable, with the most inspired element being the self-awareness of the puppets. They know they are animated by strings, and this is the foundation of their spirituality/mythology. The movie also carries a nice message about the interconnectedness of all living things, which, set against the plot's wartime backdrop, says a lot about the times we're a-livin' in. Insert your allegorical interpretation here.

In November 1969, puppets walked on the moon...sort of. I've been reading Destination Moon—The Apollo Missions in the Astronauts' Own Words, a book I got from the bargain table at Crapters a couple weeks ago. During their first EVA, the Apollo 12 astronauts were supposed to set up a fancy new colour TV camera. Unfortunately it caught a bright reflection off the Lunar Module (or directly from the sun, by some accounts), and burned out while Alan Bean was setting it up. With no pictures available, the TV networks rushed to find other visuals to convey the astronauts' activities on the lunar surface. According to the book, NBC "had contracted a puppeteer to create Apollo marionettes for simulations. They had a small lunar surface mockup, and soon two tiny puppets, strings clearly visible, were bouncing their way across the lunar surface." They say if you can remember the '60s you weren't really there...but who could ever forget that?

This week Metal: A Headbanger's Journey came out on DVD after a well-received theatrical run. I enjoyed this movie immensely, and I interviewed producer/director/narrator Sam Dunn for Unrestrained! Here's some material I had to cut from the article. I asked Dunn about his experience in Norway, where he filmed a segment on arson and murder-riddled Norwegian black metal scene in the early '90s, and about the fact that another film company has plans to film a docu-drama feature about those events. While the fact that Adam Parfrey (of Feral House Press, publishers of Lords of Chaos, about the rise of the satanic black metal underground) is on board as screenwriter lends some credibility to the project, metal fans will regard the movie with a lot of suspicions and cynicism.

I understand they’re filming sort of a docu-drama about the events in Norway. What do you think about that?

DUNN: "Well, I have mixed feelings about how it's going to portray what happened. I don’t know if it’s going to be purposely set in Norway, or how much they’re going to base it on real events. Who knows? We’ll see. I think it was a captivating story in a lot of ways. It’s hard for a lot of people to believe that it happened. That’s why we felt we needed to do this extra documentary [a DVD bonus segment exclusively about Norwegian black metal]. There was so much more to say than what we could say in the film. It is a part of the history of metal and certainly the anti-Christian sentiment in metal was something we wanted to cover. If we spent more than 10 or 15 minutes in Norway [in the movie proper], it would feel a little bit indulgent or unbalanced. As far as the feature film goes, we’ll see what happens. Maybe the metal community will be up in arms about it. That wouldn’t totally surprise me."

Certainly leading up to it there’s going to be a lot of cynicism.

"Absolutely, and you know what? We experienced the same thing with our film, and we still do. When we post something about the film on Blabbermouth we tend to get responses like, 'Oh my god, it’s got Slipknot and Rob Zombie in it,' and calling me a sellout. It’s amazing. You get that regardless. But thankfully people who have seen the film are chiming in and saying, 'Well, no. You know what? This film is really interesting and it’s respectful and it captures the history of this music' and stuff like that. So thank god some people are coming to our defence. (laughs)"

People are just very protective of their scene, I think.

"I think metalheads are inherently skeptical and fickle. It’s kind of part of the culture because it’s such a part of people’s identity and a part of their lives. I mean, all subcultures are kind of like that, right? It’s like a survival instinct that people have. The only way to keep it your own is to protect its boundaries, you know? (laughs)"

So now that you’ve sampled a few different lives—you’ve got your band [Burn to Black], you’re a filmmaker, you’re an anthropologist—what’s the closest thing to your heart?

"I think that I’m obsessively eclectic, so I want it all. I’m a megalomaniac in that sense. For me, I guess it's two things: we do plan to make a second film about metal that’s going to be looking at the globalization of metal and focusing on how metal has spread to very diverse countries and looking at how different religions and different cultures are affecting the music and vice versa—what this music means and how it is impacting kids in very different environments. Indonesia, Morocco, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, these kinds of countries are very diverse but all have very vibrant or budding metal scenes. I’m certainly interested in doing that, so for now another documentary on metal certainly piques my interest. For the long term I am interested in documentary filmmaking and I would like to pursue it, but I’m also applying to do my PhD starting in September. The idea is to tie that in with the next film, actually. We did feel that with Headbanger’s Journey we really only scratched the surface in terms of all the different places where metal thrives. We only went to Europe and North America, so we feel that we may have been complicit somewhat in painting the picture of metal as being a predominantly white Western phenomenon, whereas in fact it’s much broader than that. I’m really just fascinated in exploring what this music means to kids. I think it has a much more explicitly political slant in many of these countries because many of them are living in very repressive political systems and that kind of thing. Sepultura, for example, is the best known example of that."

Right after I wrapped up work on Unrestrained! I took off to Mayne Island with fancylady for a week. We called it a "working holiday," but our main aim was just to soak up the quiet, sleep in the dark (no streetlights outside our window), and get out for walks. We did take a few hours each day to work on our separate projects—fancy on her book and me on some music.

Smash kindly leant me his Zoom PS-02 "Palmtop Studio," which is basically a three-track recorder with built-in drum-and-chord sequencer. Very cool little device, maybe not ideally suited to the Mule method of recording, but perfect for capturing ideas quickly and with great scope for tweaking sounds with its 60 user-adjustable presets. When I had a firm idea of a given song's structure, I could assemble a decent demo in no time at all. When I only had a single riff to explore and build on, it lacked a few features I needed. For example, when punching in to fix a decent but flawed take, you can only monitor the track that you're punching in on and whatever drum/chord pattern you've programmed. When the piece I was recording had no drum/chord backing, I got completely lost whenever I had to punch in on a track (I learned that setting up a basic metronome track was a good idea for everything I recorded, even if there would be no rhythm track in the final mix.)

I came home with four or five short pieces finished. Because the PS-02 also appears to lack a fast forward function, it helped to keep those songs brief. I was constantly returning to the start when recording a new track, adjusting the drum/chord backing, or setting a punch-in point.

I'm close to having a new Mule album assembled, but I've been saying that for about three years now. I'm stuck with not having any lyrics/vocals for several songs that need them. Lyrics are a big problem for me since I abandoned the whole self-deprecating/low self-esteem B.S. I ran into the ground during my more productive recording years. Sometimes I'd rather just record instrumentals, but I feel that that's a copout too. I'm getting tired of the riff sandwich approach. Where's the craft in that? I get a lot of satisfaction out of making up vocal melody lines; I just wish I had something to say.

THE GATHERING
Home (The End)
It doesn’t start well. The sultry come-hither vocal melody that anchors “Shortest Day” contains more than a dash of saccharine, making one wonder if The Gathering have taken their sound too far into the realm of Cranberries-flavoured commercial pop. Happily, it’s a false alarm, as the band expertly steers the rest of the album through a brace of stellar songs interspersed with some interesting diversions. The sly melody and familiar chorus-time surge of “In Between” signal that all is well—if not better than ever—with The Gathering. By the third track, “Alone,” we hear the full potential of the band’s current direction unleashed—fluid, ingeniously arranged, and even a little menacing. Especially impressive is how they both employ and subvert verse/chorus/verse conventions by creating constant, nearly imperceptible momentum during the course of a song. The album’s highlight arrives with the fourth track, “Waking Hour,” itself highlighted by Anneke’s spine-tingling mid-song vocal excursion against a spare piano backdrop. Her voice is in full flight here, singing with a grace and control only hinted at when she belted out the tunes on Mandylion over ten years ago. The album gradually settles down via the abstract deep-space strangeness of “Fatigue,” the downcast beauty of “A Noise Severe,” and the tender “Forgotten,” only to rise to another peak with the title track, which strings the listener along with some compelling atmospheric guitar work before resolving itself in yet another standout chorus. Having lost track of The Gathering since 2000’s if_then_else, it’s great to rediscover the band working in such a confident, comfortable way. Home is the perfect place for them to be right now.

Unrestrained! has taken over my life right now. I'll come up for air and post more often when I'm done in a couple weeks.

This post starts with The Office, the American version of which has won me over. It's about the only U.S. network TV series with interesting-looking people on it. Steve Carell is fantastic as Michael Scott, a walking, talking hangnail of a human. I find the series doesn't centre on his constant humiliation the way the British series did, probably because that sort of humour would be hard to sustain (and tolerate) over 20-plus episodes a season or however many they're producing. The utter destruction visited upon David Brent (Scott's British counterpart) just wouldn't work over a long U.S. network season.

The American series also lacks the poetry of Gervais & Merchant's version. I'm thinking specifically of John Betjeman's "Slough" and how it informed every moment of the original 12 episodes of The Office. I need to read more of his work.

I first saw Betjeman's name mentioned in some Charisma Records "historical notes" inside my copy of Genesis's Nursery Cryme. Charisma founder Tony Stratton-Smith (RIP) writes, "We maintained too, a certain eccentricity: the comic invention of Monty Python (like Genssis, with Charisma for almost a decade) was laid beside the quintessentially english recordings of Sir John Betjeman..." Aha.

I've never actually seen a John Betjeman record—I'm sure they were deleted pretty quickly if they reached these shores at all—but I'm on the lookout now. According to this article in The Guardian, Sir John's hipper than ever. Anyone who treated guests to Scotch and shortbread—never mind wrote something scathing as "Slough" and was labelmates with Peter Hammill—is all right by me.