Day 7 – a song that reminds you of a certain event
Bob Dylan: “Not Dark Yet”
A million years ago, I went to Parksville BC to visit a close friend. She lived in the bush practically and a long drive to anywhere. We went to a concert a friend organized in Nanaimo and on the drive back she put the soundtrack to the movie The Wonder Boys into the CD player and this was the song that started playing.
It was the perfect soundtrack to driving down the highway with nothing but trees and the dark surrounding us. The song wasn’t over when we arrived back at her house so we sat in the car and quietly listened to it finish. It was a perfect moment.
I just happened to be listening to this when I was told by a colleague at work that the owner of one of our Mexico-based vendors died earlier that week as a result of gun violence in Mexico City.
I hardly knew the guy, having worked with him only a couple of times but it was still jarring news to receive and upsetting to see co-workers who did know him well having to cope with such unnecessary tragedy.
This song has imprinted itself on me with the memory of that day, and when I hear it I always think of Wenceslau and remark to myself that he didn’t deserve what happened to him.
I could go on for hours about the glorious intensity of Outside Love, the Pink Mountaintops record from where this song was taken. But I will only say that while the rest of that record is not exactly sweetness and light, “While We Were Dreaming” is the emotional turning point of the record, with its swirling guitar and lyrics displaying unresolvable inner conflict sung by a narrator who is sadly no longer naive and innocent. The effect is stunning and when I first heard it made me very, very sad.
It may be predictable, too, but that’s also proof of how good it is. Mr Cash took Nine Inch Nails’ song about a person’s deteriorating relationships due to addiction and made it more immediately personal, with his well-documented problems with drugs and alcohol. It became a reflective piece of a man knowing his time is almost up and acknowledging the effect his behaviour has had on others.
The video builds on this theme. It is the perfect punctuation to his career: a celebration of a great man, warts and all, and the most Johnny-Cash-like way to say good bye that one could ever imagine:
I don’t know if I have a song that I consider my favourite. If there was one, it would have to be one that transcended different periods in my life, so it would have to be an old one. Go back to high school? No, I don’t listen to much music from back then. My 20s? Possibly. My 30s? No, too recent.
Actually, I do know.
It’s not so much my favourite song but rather is one of a collection that opened my eyes to many different types of music when I was 12 or 13 and helped me make connections to different genres and the different forms it can take.
I give you “Heaven On Their Minds” from Jesus Christ Superstar.
This version features the incomparable Carl Anderson from the movie version.
This is part of a series of posts I had planned but didn’t get around to finishing on Bad Religion’s 30th Anniversary. Here is the first one.
From the free live album they made available through Myspace, to Germs of Perfection — a tribute to the band performed by such diverse artists like Tegan and Sara, Frank Turner, and Guttermouth; to their new album The Dissent of Man, to a series of sold-out anniversary shows in their native California, not to mention singer Greg Graffin’s new book Anarchy Revolution, Bad Religion are sure going all-out celebrating their 30th anniversary.
And, although I get grief from friends who have since moved on or outgrown the band (and admittedly I felt like a friggen grandfather at their recent show at Metropolis) I’m still a fan, and was happy to watch them celebrate this significant milestone in their career.
30 Years Live At first blush, you could say that a new live Bad Religion is unnecessary (and even having one is kinda pushing it). Listening to their live recordings is proof that as much as Graffin likes to insist that their songs can be played on acoustic guitars and lose none of their power, you could argue that much of their power comes from the care they put into their studio recordings.
Having said that, what I like about their live sound is that it’s much looser that the tightly controlled arrangements on their records.
I figure the reason for this release was to document and preserve their 30th Anniversary shows, and the fact that they gave it away makes it all the more special.
While anyone can quibble with the song selection, they do book-end songs from How Could Hell Be Any Worse? to New Maps of Hell and they make it sound seamless.
For me, it was an excuse to revisit some music that once was a daily part of my life; those songs still hold a tremendous amount of magic for me; they are complete songs musically, lyrically and thematically.
5. Pennywise / Riverboat Gamblers and others – Metropolis, Montreal
I’ve already written about this. The only thing I have to add is that I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with on their next record. As mentioned, new singer Zoltán Téglás has a serious set of pipes on him and he could do some real damage on a Pennywise record.
4. GBH - Foufounes Electriques, Montreal
They never disappoint. Played all the classics and a bunch from their new one.
3. Public Image Ltd – L’Olympia, Montreal
John Lydon said on his website that this was the best PiL show he ever played (Scroll about halfway down the page). What he managed to do with the current incarnation of PiL is fuse the different sounds they worked with over the years (disco, pop, commercial pop) and made it flow evenly from one song to the next.
Clocking in at three-hours, they covered all the best of their catalogue, from “Flowers of Romance” to “Death Disco” to “Rise” to “This is Not a Love Song” leaving no-one able to say PiL didn’t satisfy.
Here is them playing “Flowers of Romance” and other songs at this gig:
2. The New Pornographers – Higher Ground, Burlington VT
I didn’t take a vacation last summer and really needed to get out of town for a day or so, So when I saw the announcement that the New Pornographers were playing only a couple of hours away (on a Friday night, no less) there was no way I could not go as I missed them when they played in Montreal earlier in the summer.
While I was disappointed at first that Neko Case couldn’t make it, that was an extremely small part of what was an excellent show. Part of it was that South Burlington is a nice quiet town that reminds of some of the small towns on Vancouver Island.
The people at the show were really friendly and the New Pornos played a set that concentrated on their new record Together, yes, but also went back to “Body Says No” from 2000s Mass Romantic. Good vibes all around. I had an awesome time.
And proving that there is nothing you can’t find on YouTube, here is them playing “Crash Years” at this show:
1. Asexuals – Cabaret Juste Pour Rire, Montreal
I jokingly told some co-workers that I had waited 25 years to see this show. And in some ways that’s true. Sure, I have seen the Asexuals play a few times back in the day, even interviewed them a couple of times, but to me it was the “other” Asexuals, the more straightforward alternative rock band a la the Replacements then the speedy yet progressive hardcore band when John Kastner was singing.
The band concentrated on their first two records. Storming out as expected to the title track from Be What You Want, and then jumped right in to “Contra Rebel”. I was happy that I finally got to hear songs like “Where Were You?” and “Contemporary World” in their proper live setting.
Finishing their set with a cover of “Young Man in Transit” by the Nils was a nice touch. It seemed like a tribute to one of their contemporaries in the early Montreal hardcore scene, who will unfortunately never have their own moment the way the Asexuals did on that night.
Here is a video of them playing “Ego Trip” at this show.
Honorable Mentions: Ripcordz at the Katacombs, Grinderman at Metropolis, The Soft Pack at NXNE, NQ Arbuckle at the Horseshoe.
