Jonathan Richman "Abdul & Cleopatra"

I love pretty much all of Jonathan Richman's work from with the Modern Lovers, sing-songwirter era, Spanish songs to his country albums.

There is a good chance you have heard his work and not known it.
He was in "There's something about mary" playing songs about Ben Stiller during the scene breaks.

The Sex Pistols also covered his song "Roadrunner" on their greatest hits compilation.

Here is an awesome clip of him performing "Abdul and Cleopatra" on French TV:


And here is "Roadrunner" from the first Modern Lovers album:



Jordan
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Five Minutes for Fighting

Where's Bill Grundy Now?

Here is the scene:
Bill Grundy, British TV host at the last minute gets the Sex Pistols to replace Queen in an interview on his dinner time show.
The rest really writes itself.


The aftermath concludes with the British population being outraged and Bill Grundy loses his job and his career is ruined.

Jordan
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Clinic - Come Into Our Room

Liverpool's Clinic are usually tagged as a garagey version of Radiohead.
I think that is an inaccurate and lazy comparison.
A lot of their music has this hypnotic-underwater feeling that sort of struts the line between really organic sounding lo-fi take on electronica and garage pop.

Here is come into our room from their album Walking with thee:



Jordan
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Julie Dorion

Here is the excellent song Darkhorse by Julie Dorion from her album I woke myself up, directed by Rick White.
I've always had a soft spot for Julie, Eric's trip is and has been one my favourite groups.


Jordan
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The Seeds - Pushin' too Hard

I love garage rock.
Here are the Seeds from a tv perfomance in 1967.


RIP Skye Saxon

Dig that teardrop bass!

Jordan
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Television Personalities

The Television Personalities are one of the groups of the British punk explosion that are sorta forgotten to a degree.
Most people familiar with the genre will at least know the song "part time punks".
But they have a lot of depth to their music that a lot of people seem to forget.
They should at least get the same accolades that the fall get.
Most of their videos are impossible to find on youtube for some reason. But here is the recording for Silly Girl, one of my favourite songs of theirs.



Jordan
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The Raveonettes - Dead Sound

Here is a really cool performance of The Raveonettes on live daily.
They strip away all the distortion and reverb and show all the beautiful melody underneath.


Jordan
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Mother of all Funk Chords

This was posted on Reddit today.
Pretty interesting idea:
The creator of this song made this by stitching together the audio and video from clips of other people performing songs on you tube to produce a different song completely.



You can see more of their remixes on the kutiman youtube channel.

Jordan
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John Lydon on Judge Judy

I almost forgot to post this.
Johnny Rotten and Judge Judy
Enjoy!


Jordan
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John Lydon

Next to Morissey and Anton Newcombe by favourite person to watch in interviews is John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten.

He comes off as a complete dick to pretty much anyone that attempts to give him an interview.

Here is one of my favourites from the early PIL era with Tom Synder:



Part 2:


"We're not a band. We are a company. Nothing to do with Rock n Roll. Do Da."

Jordan
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Anton Newcombe

Brianjonestown Massacre is one of my favourite bands of all time.
During the 90's their output was unmatched by anyone, well except for guided by voices.
The band has had a revolving door line up with only main songwriter Anton Newcombe remaining with the band.
If you have ever seen the movie Dig! then you know exactly what to expect from BJM and Anton Newcombe. If you haven't seen the film get on that. It's an amazing document of BJM and the "rivalry" with the Dandy Warhols.

Here is the trailer for the movie:


For most of the 00s Anton didn't release too many albums. He came back with their most solid effort in years in 2008 with the release of "My bloody Underground".

Anton has mellowed over the years, but he is still up to his old tricks in interviews. Here are three relatively new ones.

In this clip Anton speaks with a fake Scandinavian accent and talks about his childhood European pen pals:



Here the band is about to play Glastonbury and he goes on to discuss things about Ireland and "Bongo" from U2:


A somewhat more serious interview. Anton talks about recording the new album in Iceland and how he puts up all of his own songs and videos for free on the Internet:


Anton Newcombe is still king in my books.

Jordan
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Fujiya & Miyagi

This is too cool not to share.

Here is Fujiya & Miyagi's super clever video for Knickerbocker from their album Light bulbs.



Why can't all videos be this cool?

Jordan
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Depeche Mode on the tube

Early 80's Depeche Mode > Depeche Mode 90's to present.

Here is a clip of them playing "See You" on the tube



Jordan
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Haircut 100

I came across an old clip of Haircut 100's video for Favourite Shirts (boy meets girl) and something really struck me about their sound.



This analogy may be a bit off but they kinda have a Vampire Weekend sound about them. They both employ similar guitar rhythms and make extensive use of afro styled beats from the 70's.
They both also seem to have an affinity for sweaters.

This song was also one of the first pop songs to employ rap in their sound. Well them and Blondie's rapture.

Jordan
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Echo and the Bunnymen on the Tube

When I was 13 Muchmusic used to show reruns from a very cool British music program called the tube.

The tube was a live show intended for contemporary bands to play new music. The show launched the careers of Jools Holland(of Squeeze fame)and Paula Yates(who was involved in a love triangle with Bob Geldof and Michael Hutchence).

This show was responsible for getting me into such bands as The Smiths, Aztec Camera, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Iggy Pop and Echo and the Bunnymen, at a very young impressionable age.

Check out Echo and the Bunnymen's performance of Killing Moon. It's pretty ace.



I'll be putting up more performances from this iconic show as I go along.

Jordan
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By Divine Right

By Divine Right were one of my favourite Canadian indie bands of the late 90's and early 00's.

If you need a refresher:


Pretty trippy video.
Did you notice anyone familiar in this band?
Leslie Feist of the huge apple influenced hit "1-2-3-4" and Brendan Canning of
Broken Social Scene.
By Divine Right have had a revolving line up that is centered around José Miguel Contreras.
Other notable former members of the band include members of such bands including: Meligrove band, wintersleep, rusty, wooden stars and now features a member from holy fuck.

By Divine Right have just released their new album "Mutant Message" which is the first album in 5 years.

Check it out

- Jordan
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Another Reason to Love/Hate Morrissey.

Morrissey is one of those figures you either love or love to hate, there is no grey area at all.
In our clip Morrissey and Johnny Marr of the Smiths show up at Manchester school to answers questions like: why do you hold flowers? Why are you called the Smiths?



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Michael Cera trips out to the islands

Brampton, Ontario's favourite son Michael Cera stars in the video for Island's no you don't. Basically he spends the whole video either buying drugs, tripping out or both.




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Diamond Rings

Diamond Rings is the side project of John O of the D'Ubervilles. Where the D'urbs tend to avoid regular pop conventions, such as verse, chorus, verse song structures; Diamond Rings embraces the notion of pop music in sound and performance. In Diamond Rings, John O takes the girl group style from the early 60's and spins it with modern textures and a hint of Ziggy Stardust era Bowie.
It seems the folks at Pitchfork are already heads over heals in love with Diamond Rings, giving the 7" spilt with P.S. I love you, a glowing review and the best new music tag.

Here is the video for the song "All Yr Songs" from the 7":



Here is a stripped down version of the same song:


I missed the chance to see him play locally just before Christmas. Hopefully I'll get a chance this year if a full length release comes out.

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Ticketmaster, oh how I hate thee

I woke up this morning thinking about one of the most awesome shows I have seen in along time, Mew with Toronto's the D'Ubervilles at the mod club on December 6. The show was for sure a memorable one. The D'Ubervilles set the stage with their post-punk, dance-able, less is more sound. Mew proceeded to blow away the audience with psychedelic sounds, songs from all three of their albums and amazing visuals that were played on a screen behind them. I had a friend that was so choked up by Mew's performance that he shed a few tears(according to his girl friend).

I'm looking back at the ticket now when I noticed something:



A $10.25 Convenience charge?
How does Ticketmaster have the balls to charge 50% of the original ticket price.
The answer is simple: People are willing to pay for it.

My main reason for using Ticketmaster is that their isn't a better alternative. If I lived in Toronto I would simply go down to rotate this! and buy the tickets there. But that isn't an option.

Ticketmaster knows that the average person can't buy tickets anywhere else. According to Wikipedia this is how they do it:

"Ticketmaster frequently obtains agreements to become the sole provider of tickets for large venues, in keeping with a business strategy it has used since the 1980s when it consolidated regional ticketing services into a single entity. In many cases, acquiring this exclusivity requires Ticketmaster to pay substantial "signing bonuses" to venues, sometimes millions of dollars. Although this practice can significantly reduce the profitability to Ticketmaster of these exclusive relationships, to date using these bonuses has enabled them to maintain venue exclusivity as a competitive strategy, though the future viability of this strategy is unclear as the Internet as the primary sales channel for tickets makes exclusivity a less attractive option for venues."

Well it seems like Ticketmaster is already dealing with that "exclusivity" part by merging with LiveNation.

Does anybody out there have any solutions or alternatives to dealing with ticketmaster?

In the meantime here is some Mew and The D'Ubervilles.





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The xx

There is no doubt that The xx were one of the most hyped indie bands of 2009. But beyond all the hype and the "too cool for school" posturing there lies a lot of substance. All of the arrangements employ airy guitars, whispered vocals and a drum machine that pulse along to give a dream pop like atmosphere to the songs.
Their influences are a little difficult to discern. They list The Cure and The Pixies along with Aaliyah and Rihanna as main influences on their sound. To truly understand their sound you need to watch the video of their first single "Crystalized".




Their self titled debut was released in UK in July of '09 and in the US the following month.

They are opening for hot chip in North America in the spring of 2010.
I hope I get the chance to see them in Toronto at the Kool Haus in April.

myspace.com/thexx
thexx.info/

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