Music – Page 6 – Consolation Champs

Vicarious Road Trip

I’m barely 40 pages into Chuck Klosterman’s Killing Yourself to Live and I’m already feeling jealous. Not of his talent for comic writing, though he has plenty of that. I’m feeling strangely jealous that I’ve never been able to go on a solo road trip with 600 CDs like he’s doing. You see, I’ve never had a driver’s licence. 99% of the time, it’s no big deal at all. Well, more like 80% of the time. When my wife and I do occasionally need to drive, we either rent a car or borrow my Dad’s or her Mum’s, and Brooke does the driving. I know she resents it a bit (okay, maybe a lot), but at this stage I really think it might be too late for me to learn.

I did know how, once. Just like every other kid, I signed up for the driver education classes at my high school and did perfectly well. Except for one thing. It was probably at my very last lesson when my driving instructor advised me not to book my test appointment until I practiced my parallel parking. A lot. At this point in the story, my memory gets a bit foggy (this is, after all, now more than 25 years ago). I did NOT practice my parallel parking. In fact, I got a bit annoyed with his advice. And when it came down to it, I guess I just didn’t care enough. All of my friends were getting licences, and some of them were even buying cars. I was happy, like Iggy, to be the Passenger. Until now.

It’s not that Klosterman has made me crave the experience of actually driving thousands of miles. The physical and mental effort of keeping the car safely between the lines and away from the cars in front and behind strikes me as exhausting. But there’s just something about the particular kind of solitude with musical accompaniment a “road trip” offers that a bus journey with an iPod just can’t match.

Even if I were to practice my parallel parking, after all this time, and successfully obtain my driving licence, I doubt very much whether I’d be able to take off on my own with a trunk full of music. I suspect that there would be some marital payback which would involve me doing every single bit of driving for the next ten years, and beyond. And as a much older new driver, I could never build up the self-confidence that would let me roll down the window and rest one arm on the doorframe. Instead of the freedom that I have in mind, more likely I’d be squinting at highway exit signs, nervously changing lanes and trying not to fall asleep behind the wheel.

If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll get back to my vicarious road trip now. At least when I start to get sleepy, I can just put the book down and go to bed.

Great Albums: Rattlesnakes

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions – Rattlesnakes (1984)

I’d met Goldie through my friend Colin around 1983, I think. With his thinning hair and permanent scowl, he looked like a perennially pissed off old man. We shared a love for punk, even though he was somehow affiliated with the strange evangelical subculture I’d recently become part of. I remember him bringing us Dead Boys records when Colin and I were in residence at Bible College. We’d play those and Colin’s Zapp funk records as loud as we could, enjoying the vicarious thrill of swearing and talking sexy. I remember Goldie and I commandeering the lounge television one night when Rock ‘n’ Roll High School was on. So we shared a taste in music and a slightly skeptical attitude toward the world around us.

Around 1984, our tastes were broadening. Goldie was the first one to tip me off to The Style Council, a new direction from The Jam‘s Paul Weller. So it was no surprise when he showed up one afternoon with a home-recorded tape that he wanted me to hear. Side A was Eden by Everything But The Girl, well before their dance music days. Though I enjoyed Tracey Thorn’s soulful vocals, I was much more interested in Side B, which Goldie hadn’t even mentioned.

Lloyd Cole’s anguished voice and whipsmart lyrics drew me in. Here was a guy who seemed impossibly sophisticated and world-weary at the same time. Every song was tinged with regret but filled with literary barbs and wry humour. One of my favourite lines is from Four Flights Up: “Must you tell me all your secrets when it’s hard enough to love you knowing nothing?” The songs had a sophistication that screamed Europe but the album title sounded American. And Lloyd seemed worldly enough to know New York, London and Paris equally well. This guy was flat out cool, like an upper class and definitely more hetero Morrissey.

In the same vicarious way that I listened to Zapp and the Dead Boys, I absorbed the heartbreak and romantic adventures of Lloyd Cole. I didn’t have anywhere near that sort of experience (and still don’t), but when on the final track Lloyd sang “Are You Ready to be Heartbroken?” I wanted to jump up and scream out “Yes!”

Track Listing

Perfect Skin
Speedboat
Rattlesnakes
Down on Mission Street
Forest Fire
Charlotte Street
2cv
Four Flights Up
Patience
Are You Ready to be Heartbroken?

Lloyd Cole’s weblog
“Perfect Skin” video on YouTube
“Forest Fire” video on YouTube

Great Albums is an occasional feature on Consolation Champs where I relate some personal stories about life-changing music in lieu of any proper music criticism. You’ll probably learn more about me than about music, so consider that fair warning. For more, click the Great Albums category tag.

Best Music of 2007

I’m not a music blogger, but in the spirit of all the year-end lists that are popping up on proper music blogs, I thought I’d make my own. My criteria were simple. The disc had to come out sometime in 2007, and I had to actually care enough to buy it. I don’t buy that much music anymore, so my list of potential picks was mercifully small. Ranking was difficult, but I decided that if something was pleasantly surprising, it ranked higher than something that was just dependably good. So, here, without any real commentary, are my top 10 from 2007.

Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Okkervil River – The Stage Names
The Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova – Music from the film “Once”
Apples In Stereo – New Magnetic Wonder
Modest Mouse – We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
St. Vincent – Marry Me
Interpol – Our Love to Admire

Outside the top ten:

The New Pornographers – Challengers
The Shins – Wincing the Night Away
Radiohead – In Rainbows
Stars – In Our Bedroom After the War
Peter Bjorn and John – Writer’s Block

Other great albums that I just haven’t got around to buying yet:

The National – Boxer
Beirut – The Flying Club Cup

How about you? What were some of your favourites?

Ga Ga For Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

I’ve been listening to Spoon’s new album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga for the past few weeks, “unofficially.” Today in the mail I was delighted to receive my pre-order of the new CD from the nifty guys at Merge Records. Because I was among the first 200 geeks to order, I got a signed 7″ (you know, a 45rpm record!) with two non-album tracks. Problem is, I no longer have a turntable. I also have a rare 7″ of “Anticipation” that I can’t play, either, but who’s counting. Anyway, I want to beseech you to go out and buy this CD. It sort of crept up on me, but the Aha! moment came last weekend when I played it LOUD on the stereo in my bedroom and crawled back under the covers. At that moment, it was the perfect record for me. And I think it’s stronger than their last two albums, which makes it well-nigh perfect.

There are at least three perfect singles that should launch Spoon to superstardom (although I think I say that about every album they release, and it hasn’t happened yet.) Find and listen to “Don’t Make Me A Target,” “The Underdog,” and especially “Finer Feelings” and then buy this CD. Really.

And the boys are playing in Toronto on October 15th, after a gap of just about two years. You’ll want to be there, too. Here are some other shows.

The Rheostatics’ Last Waltz

Rheostatics, circa 2006

I feel incredibly fortunate to have been a witness last night to my beloved Rheostatics‘ last concert. After more than twenty years together, they’ve decided to call it quits as a band, although all of the members will continue to make music.

The event was held at the fittingly historic Massey Hall, a large and yet intimate space that has been the venue for some of my most memorable evenings of music. Last night was no different. Unfortunately, my favourite Rheo Martin Tielli had voice problems that prevented him from unleashing his trademark falsetto as well as some technical issues with his guitar, but it didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment. One of the band’s trademarks has been their shambolic and sometimes uneven live shows, and last night seemed to be a summary of their career. They played over three hours, and seemed reluctant to call it a night, coming back for a second encore where they sat huddled on the edge of the stage around Dave Bidini’s acoustic guitar and singing without mikes.

The set covered the range of their long career, but was understandably weighted toward their two greatest albums, Melville (1991) and Whale Music (1992). After hearing these songs for maybe the hundredth time (and maybe 20 times live), I’m still convinced that two finer albums have not emerged from this country.

Their music was impossible to categorize, with three and sometimes four songwriters in the band, but somehow these guys from Etobicoke, Ontario seemed to resonate with Canadians all across the country, especially in smaller places where “cooler” bands didn’t play live. The crowd at their shows always seemed incredibly diverse, with young and old fans side by side, and there was something incredibly sincere about them, whether they were performing stinging political songs, spacey art-rock, or irony-free covers of Canadian standards by Gordon Lightfoot or Stompin’ Tom Connors. No band that I’m aware of has had such an ambitious reach, from making a children’s record, scoring a film, and accepting a commission from the National Gallery of Canada to create a piece of music celebrating Canadian painters The Group of Seven. The Rheostatics did all of this and more, and despite a lack of commercial success, cultivated a small but devoted following right across the country.

I found myself choking up a few times during the show, especially between songs when, amid shouted song requests, people could be heard yelling “Thank you” and “We’re going to miss you.” I’ve never been part of anything like that before, and it made me feel happy, sad, and old all at the same time. I was at the show with my wife Brooke, and in the row in front of us were my friend Brent and his girlfriend Kim. Brent introduced me to the band way back in 1992 while we were sharing an apartment, and it’s sobering to think of how long we’ve been friends, and fans. But even though it was a bittersweet feeling, there was nowhere else on God’s green earth that I wanted to be last night.