Since zed equals zee’s inception, about a year ago, I’ve gotten a decent number of CDs from promoters. Some of them I want to keep, but most of them aren’t worth the storage space, always a premium in my urban environment. I know that someone likes these bands, and I’d really like it if the CDs got listened to. And the easiest way to find those people is through the miracle of capitalism – I want to take the discs down to my local secondhand CD store, or put them on eBay. But many of them are stamped, “Promotional use only – not for resale.” So I was stuck – I didn’t want to have to store them, I certainly didn’t want to landfill them, I don’t personally know people to give them to, and it looked like I couldn’t sell them.
Fortunately, that last turns out not to be (legally) the case. The Legality, an online law review based out of the University of Oregon School of Law, has a useful and accessible article on the “First Sale Doctrine” and CDs. Basically, once you’ve bought the CD, you can do what you want with it – you can sell it, you can regift it to your Uncle Alfred, you can microwave it, whatever. This principle was recently affirmed for promo CDs, warning sticker or no. Universal Music filed suit against an enterprising individual who was scouting secondhand CD stores for rare promos and reselling them to collectors. The California courts ruled that, once the record companies hand them out, that’s the equivalent to selling them – they lose control of what happens.
Of course, with everything going on in the music industry today, it’s hard to imagine that bringing suit over the disposition of the physical objects is really worth the effort.
I don’t listen to a lot of country, or even alt-country (unless you count M. Ward, or Band of Horses), but I think the Maldives are drawing me in. Jason Dodson, the principal, settled in Seattle but was raised in Virginia, and their music definitely sounds like it hails south of the Mason-Dixon line. Since I don’t usually seek out country music, all I ever really hear is bits of radio-ready, ultra-mainstream singers, which has little appeal to me. But listening to the Maldives makes me realize why people like country music: it has warmth, emotion, and narrative, while being evocative of a different place and time (that is, one that is not a rainy Seattle evening at the dawn of the 21st century). The band came to my attention through a friend of mine, who tells me that they are phenomenal live. They’re playing at Neumo’s tonight, and they have a steady slate of local gigs lined up over the next couple of months – check out their website or Myspace page for details.
I got a press release today, heralding the theme song for the upcoming Electronic Arts videogame “Mirror’s Edge.” It’s sung by Lisa Miskovsky, and Nettwerk is releasing an EP of remixes, including big names like Paul van Dyk. The song is called “Still Alive.” Wait a minute, I think, isn’t that the name of the song Jonathan Coulton did for Portal? Yes. Are the games related? No. (I suspect that asking the question reveals the depth of my gaming ignorance.) I mean, seriously – it’s been barely a year since Portal came out – didn’t anyone at EA realize that the world might not want two videogame themes with the same title?
I’m sorry to have to relate that the Miskovsky song, at least the baseline version, is a little generic-sounding; I streamed it while working at my desk and realized I wasn’t even listening to it. On the other hand the Coulton version, like pretty much everything he does, is anything but generic. If you’re spoilerphobic and haven’t yet played the game, you might want to pass on listening to the song; if you’ve completed the game or don’t care about spoilers, you can get full details of the song process and lyrics from JoCo’s blog. Also, if you have issues with vocoders and/or sopranos (it’s sung by Ellen McLain, who did the character’s voice in the game), you might prefer a version that Coulton sings himself.
According to today’s NME, Radiohead report that the three months of pay-what-you-will In Rainbows downloads brought in as much cash as 2003’s Hail to the Thief, although they aren’t reporting the average price. On top of that, they sold around 100 000 of the box sets, which included a couple of extra tracks (as well as the pretty packaging, of course). Looks like a pretty solid financial outcome to a good experiment.
zed equals zee is a site about indie music. I focus on local music, mostly in Boston and Seattle (about). Occasionally, it gets a little scholarly, sometimes it’s historical, and sometimes it’s just plain fun. Scroll down for some recent additions.
If you haven’t been spending any time in your local comic book store recently, you might not have heard of this series of comic books (or graphic novels, if you must), written and drawn by Bryan Lee O’Malley. They follow the adventures of twenty-something bassist Scott Pilgrim, who’s trying to figure out his life. Enter Ramona, a sexy courier who has access to shortcuts through space and time, closely followed by her ‘seven evil exes’, whom Scott must defeat in battle. The books follow Scott as he deals with the quotidian (getting a job, finding a place to live), the fun (his band Sex Bob-Omb’s rehearsals and live shows, hanging out with Ramona), and the surreally action-packed (fighting the evil exes, who draw on an arsenal of mind-bending weaponry). The books draw from anime, from videogames, and from the great tradition of indie comics about slackers. They’re amazingly well-written, and great fun. I also get an enormous kick out of the fact that they’re set in my native Toronto – it’s fun to see my old stomping grounds translated into comic-book form. There’s also (unsurprisingly) a movie in progress, and it looks at least somewhat promising – Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) is set to direct, and Michael Cera (Juno, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) is in the lead role.
Four volumes are out, and the fifth one is scheduled for a February 2009 release (six are planned). Go check them out.
Last year I wrote about Holy Fuck doing a split 7″ with their tourmates Celebration – each of them covered a song by the other band. They handed out the vinyl at the concerts, and also made the songs available for digital download. They must have been pretty happy about it, because they are doing it again, this time on their UK tour with Oxford math-rockers Foals(above). Holy Fuck covered Foals’ “Balloons” and Foals covered Holy Fuck’s amazing “Super Inuit.” The 12″ vinyl is available for purchase (limited edition of 250), or you can download both MP3s here.
Woo! The Mountain Goats (and by ‘Mountain Goats,’ we mean ‘John Darnielle’) just recorded a four-song EP, Satanic Messiah. It’s available for download here; donations via PayPal or Google Checkout are encouraged ($3 for the ‘congregant’ level, $6.66 for the ‘disciple’ level, and $10 for the ‘acolyte’ level). Despite the title and Darnielle’s well-known obsession with black metal, it’s classic Mountain Goats with acoustic guitar, piano and vocals (albeit somewhat darker themes than the usual). It’ll also be available as a double 7″, but in an edition strictly limited to 665 (the 666th copy will be Darnielle’s own, of course).
Rock music, and especially indie music, is still mostly a man’s game. But only mostly, and Kate Bush is one of the reasons why women have any traction at all. Her first single, “Wuthering Heights” was the first UK number one single that was not just sung by a woman, but self-written as well. The depressing part was that it wasn’t until 1978, but the impressive part was that Bush was only 19 at the time. In the thirty or so years that she’s been in the music business, she’s had a string of critically and commercially successful albums, with hit singles including “The Man With the Child in His Eyes,” “Running Up That Hill,” and “Don’t Give Up,” a duet with Peter Gabriel. She has a well-deserved reputation for following her own path – she dropped out of music for nearly twelve years to give her young son a ‘normal’ childhood, returning in 2005 with the double album “Aerial.” No one could describe it as a commercial album, featuring as it does the song “π” (pi) in which Bush sings its digits. Nevertheless, it was both a critical and UK hit. Nice to know that a pioneering artist like Kate Bush stiill has what it takes.
Sir Ben Kingsley (that’s him on the left) plays Minor Threat frontman Ian Mackaye(on the right) in a video of the band’s eponymous song. Produced by Mean Magazine, it’s elicited a collective ‘WTF?’ from the Internet. But I don’t know – the guy who played Gandhi playing the founder of the straight edge movement kind of works for me. Vimeo isn’t playing nice with WordPress, but here’s a link to the video.
It’s been a couple of months since zed equals zee relocated, and we’re now heading into our first Seattle winter – perpetually overcast skies, cold drizzle, and steadily shortening days. Fellow Seattle-ites Grand Archives must understand this, as their music is the perfect warm, comforting, laid-back antidote to the weather. Principal Mat Brooke left Band of Horses, which he co-founded, to get Grand Archives going. Their demo got some notice, including a review on Pitchfork; they subsequently signed to Sub Pop and released their first, self-titled album earlier this year. I’m really sorry I couldn’t go to their show here in Seattle on Saturday night; I’m hoping that they’ll do another hometown show soon.
I just watched Trainspotting again, for the first time in many years. It’s still a fantastic movie – somehow, it manages to be despairing and cynical while still being, well, fun (in contrast to, say, Requiem for a Dream, which is most emphatically not fun). But the other remarkable thing about the film is its soundtrack – not only are the songs great in and of themselves, but they are also perfectly deployed in the film – Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” plays while the lead character OD’s on heroin, another character sings an a capella snippet of New Order’s “Temptation.” Do yourself a favour – get your hands on the DVD and watch (and listen) to it again.
[embedded YouTube link; if you can’t see it, click here]
Hailing from the small Ontario town of Manotick, but now based in Montreal, Hollerado have just released a great single, “Americanarama” (from their Demo in a Bag 5 EP). Its video is a hilarious spoof of American Apparel, complete with Dave Foley doing a spot-on parody of the company’s notably sleazy founder (and fellow Montrealer), Dov Charney, in over-the-top mustache and lavender Y-fronts. Of course, the nice thing about making a video that indicts the hypersexualized imagery of American Apparel is that you can fill it with women in skintight, metallic leggings, in t-shirts and panties, and the like. To be fair, the band members don’t spare themselves – they also appear in just their skivvies. Make sure you check out the behind-the-scenes video too, to watch the band drink booze out of coffee cups while director George Vale zooms around on rollerblades.
NPR has a lovely little music feature on music to have an office romance by – a five-song soundtrack for what is “sometimes, under a select set of circumstances,…not even a horrible, career-demolishingly tragic mistake.” Even (maybe especially) if you aren’t contemplating or embroiled in a torrid relationship with a co-worker, the set is great, including Belle and Sebastian‘s “Step Into My Office, Baby” and the Damnwell‘s “Kiss Catastrophe.”
One of my oldest friends just moved from New York City to Antwerp, its polar opposite in almost every way – quiet, clean, sleepy – and it seemed fitting to pull out LCD Soundsystem‘s “North American Scum.” It’s off their brilliant album Sound of Silver and is a tongue-in-cheek look at the differences between Europe and the US, as well as yet another homage to James Murphy’s beloved New York (that’s him, above, looking quite, well, European). And remember, ‘don’t blame the Canadians!’
In keeping with this week’s de factocelebration of Canadianmusic, here’s a Johnny Cash cover of Gordon Lightfoot‘s 1970 hit, “If You Could Read My Mind.” If you’ve never heard the song before, and part of it sounds familiar, you might be familiar with Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All.” Lightfoot sued its songwriter, Michael Masser, alleging that Masser lifted part of the melody (“I don’t where we went wrong, but the feeling’s gone, and I just can’t get it back” in the Lightfoot song lines up with “I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone’s shadow” in the Houston version). They settled out of court and Masser publicly apologized.
Needless to say, the Johnny Cash version (and even the Lightfoot original) blows the Whitney Houston song out of the water.
I’ve been fairly obsessed with the Freezepop song “Melon Ball Bounce,” a cover version of the 1963 Sprite jingle by electronic music artist Raymond Scott. And after a childhood watching Doctor Who, I still think that its theme music, created by Delia Derbyshire (pictured above), remains the coolest, creepiest musical intro ever. It turns out that I’m not alone. A recent article in the Guardian discussed the resurgence of interest in ‘library music’ – early electronic music experiments, in the service of advertising and TV soundtracks, from the 1960s and ’70s. Most of this music was never intended for release to the public, and it’s accordingly quite rare. However, the Glo Spot label has begun to reissue some releases (they are still pretty hard to get, it looks like – they seem to be sold out everywhere).
Speaking of the Weakerthans and awards, they just won the Verge Award for artist of the year. Verge is XM Radio’s Canadian alternative/indie station, and this is a fan-based award (something like 45 000 people voted for their favourites of the bands ‘in regular rotation’ on the channel). Like the Polaris Music Prize, the glory comes with a nice chunk of change – in this case, CDN$25 000. I’m not sure if Natalie Yanchak (of the Dears, who were also nominated in this category) considers the prediction in her rather catty blog post to be negated or fulfilled: “It’s gonna be a free for all, and some totally corporate band who hired a bunch of kids to vote everyday for them is going to win. And that’s what some bands want, which is great.” (despite her dismissal of the idea, she was nevertheless thoughtful enough to provide a direct link to the voting page for her readers).
I can, however, guess how Weakerthans’ frontman John K Samson’s former bandmates in Propagandhi might feel, given their account of Samson’s departure:
For the next 3 years, we rode the tail-end of the punk-rock explosion. When the smoke cleared and we were putting together Less Talk More Rock, it was becoming evident that Jordy and I, the rural metal-heads, were cut from an entirely different cloth than little John-John, the urbane poet. He just didn’t seem to enjoy getting attacked by nazi-skinheads or sleeping on piss-soaked mattresses in lice-infested italian squats anymore. Go figure.
So shortly after we recorded LTMR, we shook hands, performed a mutual culling of the herd and like all good revolutionary anti-capitalists, got into an argument about money. Eventually, we worked out our differences and helped John into his proverbial Golden Parachute, which he has apparently, thus far, rolled into $80,000 worth of pennies with which to buy gourmet peanut butter and bread made of gold. Weird!
Personally, I’m happy to see the Weakerthans get the recognition I think they deserve.
EDIT: Natalie of the Dears stopped by in the comments to say that she was ‘happy with the results.’ All’s right with the world.
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