February
Wavelog
Ghostlight
By wavelength ~ Posted Friday, February 4th 2005Goddamn. If Greg Chambers, Lisa Nighswander, Minesh Mandoda, Adam Rosen and Dave Rodgers - collectively known as the Mean Red Spiders - haven't been haunting your musical erogenous zones since way before they played the first ever Wavelength back on Feb. 13, 2000, they have now gotten together with the very nifty Marco Landini and Brodie West to form Ghostlight, an improv collective that will scare the living bejeezus outta you! Wesley J Ramos tried his own form of electronic mail improv with the band and failed miserably.
OKAY GHOSTLIGHT, EXPLAIN YOURSELVES! WHO THE HELL ARE YOU PEOPLE? Dave Rodgers: We are carrying the torch for the excesses of 70s prog-rock. We are unapologetic about it, too! Adam Rosen: We are members of Mean Red Spiders moonlighting with some friends for the improvisational cause. Minesh Mandoda: Crawled into a slumber, upon seeing the light have transformed themselves into sound vessels, forms are no longer important but we still remain individuals.
YOUR LINE-UP CONSISTS OF AN ELITE BRETHREN OF TORONTO'S INDIE ROCK COMMUNITY. HOW DID YOU EVER GET DR. MARCO LANDINI TO GIVE UP HIS PROCTOLOGY PRACTICE AND RETURN TO MUSIC? DR: I showed him my hemorrhoids and fissures and he said that life is too short to continue in his line of work. I once saw a picture of someone born without a rectum - it was really strange. AR: A very tough sell. We promised Marco he could still work weekends. Marco Landini: My lawyer says no comment.
ALL THE BANDS THAT YOU GUYS PLAY IN TEND TO BE STEEPED IN A WIDE RANGE OF DYNAMICS AND FANTASTIC TEXTURES. EVERY SOUND AND IDEA IS MANIPULATED TO THE FULLEST, OFTEN PUSHING THE ENVELOPE OF EXPERIMENTATION. WITH THIS IN MIND, CAN YOU TELL ME WHO YOUR FAVOURITE MUPPET SHOW CHARACTERS ARE? AR: (the no-brainer) "Animal was my favourite drummer. I couldn't get this off my mind last summer." DR: The Swedish Chef (I am far too fond of poultry), Animal (I wonder if John Bonham was flattered to have a puppet based on him) and Beaker. ML: Beaker and Bunsen Honeydew.
ALL OF YOU HAVE BEEN KICKING AROUND THE TORONTO INDIE SCENE BEFORE WAVELENGTH STARTED FIVE YEARS AGO.TAKING INTO CONSIDERATION ALL THE CHANGES THE MUSIC SCENE HAS GONE THROUGH, GOOD OR BAD, WHO WOULD WIN IN A FIGHT: FLASH GORDON OR TARZAN? AR: Huh? (sorry...been practicing sleep-deprivation for impending parenthood) DR: Tarzan sucks. Children should not have to deal with such imperialist trash. MM: Can't we all be friendz? ML: What's wrong with these people, were they raised by wolves?
THE TORONTO INDIE MUSIC COMMUNITY HAS REALLY PROSPERED IN THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS, WITH THE INTERNATIONAL SUCCESS BY MANY OF OUR HOME-GROWN TALENTS. DID YOU KNOW THAT IN 1981, FOUR OUT OF FIVE AMERICAN TEENAGERS THOUGHT CHUCK BERRY WAS HOST OF THE GONG SHOW? HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN? AR: Roast Fish Collie Weed and Cornbread - this is how it happens, man. MM: With time, anything and everything is possible. ML: Watching The Gong Show for a number of years has forced me to take a long and hard look into butt-science. I really don't know what more you want me to say - talk to my lawyer. DR: Conversely, we are so old that bands we thought sucked in 1995 have influenced watered-down versions of themselves that suck even more. The recent No-Wave/Death Disco revivals (and revivals of pretty much anything else) are pretty funny to old people like us.
ANYTHING TO ADD? DR: Go to the source whenever possible! MM: Salt. ML: And yet again I have been advised by my lawyer, no comment. AR: Soon Over Babaluma, man.
BY WESLEY J RAMOS
Thanksgiving
By wavelength ~ Posted Friday, February 4th 2005Adrian Orange is a nice young man from Portland who has released an impressive amount of records under the name Thanksgiving. He's a protégé of Phil Elvrum (The Microphones/Mt. Eerie) and WL250 will mark his Toronto début. Shaunna Bednarek emailed him some questions and he was more than happy to answer.
HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU STARTED PLAYING MUSIC? WHAT WAS THE FIRST INSTRUMENT YOU LEARNED? HOW MANY DO YOU PLAY NOW? I was nine when my nanny and some of her friends encouraged me to start playing music. I decided on the guitar because that was what a lot of the people I admired played. I played all day long for a long time. I'm not sure why I was so excited about it. Maybe because I felt like it was something I loved that I could do well if I tried. I play the drums a lot now. I have sort of come to the conclusion that anything is an instrument and anyone can play any of the instruments. I am not very good at horns and woodwinds, though. I would like to learn them, and then I could play most all instruments that I know of in some way. And then it would be time to invent some that are impossible to play.
WHAT DO YOU WRITE ABOUT? I guess I just write about being alive. Life is very full of inspirations. I never feel limited or uninspired when I think about all of the peoples' lives and all the inanimate lives that are in the universe, and all the moments. I try be honest and simple in the way I say what I see and know and imagine as much as possible, in the hope that I can say something true without being able to know everything (since no one can). Being more and less general seems to help. I try to think about things much more than write about them.
IS THERE ANYTHING ABOUT PLAYING HERE YOU'RE LOOKING FORWARD TO, OR DREADING? I am looking forward to everything about playing there, except for the Airplane Ride and the Customs and Immigration. Some of my friends and I have a joke about "C.B.F." which stands for "Canadian Border Feeling" - the feeling of dread one gets when they have to go through the Canadian Border. It is the strictest border I have ever been through. Maybe some Canadians feel that way about the U.S. border.
ARE THERE ANY BANDS FROM TORONTO THAT YOU'RE EXCITED ABOUT? When I was spending some time in Vancouver I recorded some songs with Jon-Rae Fletcher at The Hive and played some shows with him and drank some beer in a park with him. Then he moved to Toronto, and I have not seen him since. But I guess I am playing with him at this festival and I am very excited to see him and hear him play and stuff. Very. Yes, he is a very awesome dude. I'm afraid I don't know much else about bands from Toronto, but hopefully I will find some through this festival.
WHO FROM PORTLAND SHOULD TORONTONIANS BE EXCITED ABOUT? Thank you for giving me this opportunity, Shaunna, to give what we sometimes call in this business "props". Dear Readers, please "Google search" and "Google image search" each and every one of these. BANDS: "WORLD" (Adam Forkner and Honey Owens), everyone on "Marriage Records", especially "YACHT", "A John Henry Memorial", "Brad Adkins", "Viking Moses", "Rob Walmart", "Kid Finish", "The Watery Graves of Portland" (I play drums in that band), "Mise En Abyme", "Andrew Kaffer", "White Rainbow", "Bobby Birdman" is here for a couple months, "The Blow", everyone involved with "Audio Dregs", "States Rights Records" and "Collective Jyrk", and those entities themselves, and "Rollerball", these are some friends of mine who have been playing very awesome music forever. POETS: "Tom Blood", "Curtis Knapp". PAINTERS: "Scott Rawls", "Maria Dixon", "David Coyne", "Davis Lee Hooker".
IF, ONE DAY, OUR COUNTRIES WERE FORCED TO CELEBRATE THANKSGIVING AT THE SAME TIME, WOULD YOU PREFER THAT THE CANADIANS MOVE IT TO NOVEMBER, OR THAT THE AMERICANS MOVE IT TO OCTOBER? October, so it would be closer to Halloween.
Shawn Hewitt
By wavelength ~ Posted Friday, February 4th 2005Shawn Hewitt's melding of sweet soul music and angular rock literally puts the shaking "ass" into "classy," which he certainly is. Making the scene and gaining praise for just over a couple of years now, Hewitt and his band The National Strike have been kicking the living shit out of a wide range of audiences all over North America, sharing the marquee with a range of artists such as K-OS, Saul Williams, The Dears and Peter Elkas. Wesley J Ramos briefly spoke with Hewitt to discuss the past two whirlwind years, soul, style and his new recording.
THIS IS THE MOST CLICHÉ QUESTION, BUT CONSIDERING THE COMPLEXITY OF YOUR WORK, WHAT DID YOU LISTEN TO AS A YOUNG PERSON AND WHO EXPOSED YOU TO YOUR MUSICAL ROOTS? Like many, my Mom and Dad played everything from Top 40 pop, classic R&B, Beatles, to Caribbean music and jazz. Things got interesting when I started finding out the influences of the artists/bands that I liked.
I FIRST HEARD OF YOU WAY BACK WHEN DWAYNE SLACK WAS STILL BOOKING SNEAKY DEE'S IN EARLY 2003 AND DWAYNE TOLD ME: "YOU MUST SEE THIS GUY..." SO I DID AND WAS BLOWN AWAY WITH YOUR MELDING OF STEVIE WONDER STYLE AND EASTERN EURO PROG-ROCK. DESCRIBE THAT TIME OF YOUR MUSICAL GROWTH AND WERE YOU SURE PEOPLE WOULD CATCH ON SO QUICKLY? Wow! Your words are humbling. Thank you. That time set an interesting stage. The number of people who set up microscopes to chart the harnessing of this sound swelled incredibly. I knew we had something special but also knew we were yet to hit our stride. I think we're dangerously close now.
SOUL HAS BEEN AN OVER USED TERM IN OUR MIDST. TO YOU, WHAT CONSTITUTES SOUL? It's a shame that many believe soul is the ability to allow vibrato convulsions that many do today in contemporary R&B and pop music. To me "soul" in music is when one can visualize lyrics in their most vivid form through the emotions of your voice.
HOW HAS THE INDIE ROCK COMMUNITY TREATED YOU IN TORONTO? The indie community has been very supportive. It's a fickle world out there and it always blows my mind when I sense excitement from what we do.
DOES ONE NEED SUBSTANCE TO HAVE STYLE? Hmmmmm (scratches head)... You need substance to earn the right to say the word "style".
WHEN CAN WE EXPECT YOUR NEW RECORD THE SOFT SOCIETY AND WHAT WILL IT SOUND LIKE? A hopeful spring release. It will sound like capturing the madness of the past couple of years complete with a preview of what's up these sleeves. Complete with mellotron, vibraphone, voodoo spirits and a climactic close. The future is bright!
SUNDAY -- WL250
By wavelength ~ Posted Friday, February 4th 2005
THE BACKTHEFUCKUPS
Sunday Feb. 13, 12am @ Sneaky Dee's
First played WL 225
TheBackTheFuckUps (Toronto's premier back-up band, featuring members of The Old Soul and The Dirty Hearts), with the "I'm Gonna Cut Your Face" horns and featured vocalists: Alex Lukashevsky (Deep Dark United), Jonny Dovercourt (Republic of Safety), Jessie Stein (S.S. Cardiacs), Dean Sterling (More Plastic), Kevin Drew (Broken Social Scene), The Pauls (The Pauls!), Steve Kado (Barcelona Pavilion, etc.), Katia Taylor and Justin Small (Lullabye Arkestra), Nick Taylor (Old Soul, Dirty Hearts, Lenin), Derek Westerholm (The Creeping Nobodies) and Jenny Mitchell (The Bar Mitzvah Brothers), will perform a revue of a short decade's worth of Toronto indie rock for your pleasure.
The BackTheFuckUps liked the following recently:
1. Delta Barn Dances
2. Dave Clark topless Stones tributes
3. Bocce and beer in the morning
4. Getting paid four figures to play Sabbath for the kids
5. Best espresso in town `round the corner from the studio
THE BLOW
Sunday Feb. 13, 11:20pm @ Sneaky Dee's
First played WL 194
www.krecs.com/TheBlow
We're thrilled as heck to have Khaela Maricich, a.k.a. K Records artist The Blow, back to visit us from Portland. She will rock you with her sexy, R&B-infected indie-pop. For this show, she'll be joined by new Blow band member, Jona Bechtolt, a.k.a. YACHT!
Top Five of The Khaela of The Blow:
1. Most amazing: listening to personalized songs on my answering machine
2. Most painful: erasing all the songs
3. Most terrifying: performing an opera in front of adults wearing heavy art style glasses
4. Most fucked up: singing in front of a guy getting his pants pulled off
5. Most beautiful: retelling the story of The Sound of Music, in tears, to my friend Amber, fully feeling the impact of when Mr. Von Trapp comes in and hears all of his children singing, even though music in forbidden in the house, and when they see him they all get a terrified look in their eyes and stop singing, but then stretches his arms out to the sides and begins to sing the song along with them, and then they all cry and hug him in a big circle. Writing it is even making me cry again, now.
THE TWO KOREAS
Sunday Feb. 13, 10:40pm @ Sneaky Dee's
First played WL 207
www.myspace.com/thetwokoreas
These guys have done all right for a bunch of critics. Toronto's über-music-nerds went and formed Toronto's best pseudo-Estonian "Neu-wave" drinking band of 2004, with songs about retarded architects and rock stars dying at age 54. Their first disc is set for a "soft release."
The Two Koreas' Top Five
1. Babies (e.g., Isobel and Hamish Grant)
2. Trucker hats for babies
3. Stuff (the general collection of ephemera, and the magazine)
4. NNNN
5. The reunification of the two Koreas
GHOSTLIGHT
Sunday Feb. 13, 10pm @ Sneaky Dee's
As Mean Red Spiders, first played WL 1, last played WL Zine Fundraiser 1.
www.meanredspider.com
See interview here.
Adam/Frozen/Moutray/Co-pilot (MRS/Ghostlight/Greige):
1. The music
2. The love
3. The bud
4. The lady
5. The babies!
DOC PICKLES
Sunday Feb. 13, 9:20pm @ Sneaky Dee's
First played WL 75, last played WL 227
Now freed from the corporate clutches of bourgeouis bohemia, Wavelength co-founder Doc Pickles returns to the role he was born to play: as our Sunday night MC! Tonight, he will treat us to some of his criminally unheard, four-track-driven indie-pop.
Doc Pickles' Top Five shows:
5. Do Make Say Think - it was the Wavelength after Sept. 11, 2001, and nobody was sure what to make of the cultural tidal wave that had just swept through every aspect of what used to be reality. This show was the first public gathering in the western hemisphere that spared the platitudes and ripped into delivering an unforgettable in-the-moment moment, while Sir Paul was still putting the finishing touches on his "let's all wallow together for a moment" anthem.
4. Whatever's going on next week at Wavelength.
3. GbV at the Phoenix in 1995, opening for Urge Overkill. Most of the audience left after Guided by Voices and were treated to encore presentation of Bob Pollard being thrown out. Bastards. I've never been back to the Phoenix since that show.
2. The Harmony Picnic, Cherry Beach, summer 1999.
1. Wavelength 50, breaking my ankle after night one, returning on a broomstick for night two. On the third day, I went to Toronto Western Hospital, where I was knocked out so they could reset my bone, and I still reported for duty on night three.
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