Monday, May 28, 2007

Back to the 'Gaz

Awfu' quiet 'round these parts. I've been busy writing blurbs (Oops, not supposed to call them blurbs) for the Calgary Folk Music Festival program guide, and making electrical things go boom, and being a human snot factory, and chopping wood, and gearing up for the next Quarterly Report CD (if you haven't downloaded the current one, get it while you can). How 'bout you?

So anyhow, I've been driving a vehicle with a CD player, so my new-music-listening-ability has been on the slimmer side. That said, I've been able to dig out a few older gems that deserve a second glance. Take Fugazi's 1998 album, End Hits, for example. Not something I paid a lot of attention to at the time, and not something I think to pull out every day. But whotta mind-whacking slab o' crunchy goodness!

•Fugazi: Floating Boy (via RapidShare)
•Fugazi: Arpeggiator (via RapidShare)

Fugazi's entire catalogue available through eMusic — 25 free MP3s for free, no strings attached!

30 live Fugazi shows

Thursday, May 17, 2007

A Love Supreme (court)

From contactmusic.com (via the XTC Forum):

MIKE LOVE's latest feud with former BEACH BOYS bandmate BRIAN WILSON has been thrown out of court over a disputed partnership arrangement. The singer alleged a 2004 promotional CD of re-recorded Beach Boys songs - given away as part of a promotion in Britain's Mail On Sunday newspaper - cost him millions of dollars, damaged the reputation of The Beach Boys and violated their "partnership." But U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins poured scorn on Love's lawsuit last week (11May07), claiming the partnership he speaks of never existed and pointing out the plaintiff has repeatedly done the very same thing he accuses his cousin and former bandmate of doing. In a 17-page decision, obtained by Rolling Stone magazine, Collins rebukes Love and states he and Wilson never had a business partnership to begin with and any partnership they ever had stopped in the 1960s and was merely creative in nature. She also points out, "Plaintiff also admits that he re-recorded some of the co-authored songs several times between 1996 and 1998 without first informing (Wilson)." Love has sued Wilson numerous times in the past and prior to this has always been successful.

Proof positive that Mr. Love is a twat of twatular proportions:
Heroes and Villains (Rehearsal 1967) (via RapidShare)

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Find: Revenant Records downloads

Hey, here's a nice little grotto of legit free downloads for the more adventurous among you. The late John Fahey's Revenant Records has long been known for judiciously releasing a very few albums and boxed sets — some so lavishly packaged that they're not just collector's items or fetish objects: they qualify as real estate. The music is similarly for fetishists: deep diggers of the "Old Weird America" of Harry Smith and the darker corners of Nick Tosches. One is tempted to say that Revenant has rescued these tracks from obscurity, but they remain (and will always remain) necessarily obscure; better say they've rescued them from oblivion.

The Revenant website has a generous selection of free downloads, a few from each release, which will give the discerning (read: insane) listener a taste of what the label has to offer: what Revenant describes as "raw music of all stripes." Indeed, the tracks are raw, ranging from the blind punk blues of the Bassholes to the delicate, crackly beauty of Blind Mamie Forehand's sublime "Honey in the Rock." You know when the Captain Beefheart tracks are the most commercial-sounding, you're in deeply strange territory. But every note is worth a listen, if you have the cojones, pachuco.

Catch the trove here.

The Albert Ayler tracks (a must for jazzbos and other fans of the tenor sax) are, rather perversely, housed here.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Mein Humpf

Alright, everyone seen Alanis Morissette's version of the Black Eyed Pees' "My Humps"? Good. Now check out the original.

No, the real original. Think 1830s...



(This vid brought to you by Andrew Struthers, author of some fine books and annoyer of all Tofino natives.)