Tangmonkey is a music/culture site introduced to me by Sean, who happened to pass through the chromewaves sphere of influence. It’s a pretty cool site and Canadian, no less. Extra points for having ‘monkey’ in their name. Go visit and say hello. To Sean from Tangmonkey – your email address was getting bounced back to me as undeliverable.

I got my big stack ‘o Wheat EPs today. They’re an online exclusive at the Aware Records store, only $2 a piece. A nice deal till you factor in the $7 shipping to Canada. I won’t mention the fact that the postal meter on the package only said $2.55. I bought 3 for the purpose of spreading the Wheat gospel. Well, one is for Kyle, but the other one I’m saving for someone who needs to see the light. Or eBay, whichever. The EP, Too Much Time is an interesting listen. Wheat’s been essentially out of circulation for about three years now, since Hope & Adams came out on Sugar Free. The new album, Per Second Per Second Every Second has been ready for over a year, but hassles with their old label going belly up and then re-recording tracks for the new one have kept them from releasing it forever. It’s due out this Spring, finally, on Aware – home of John Mayer and Five For Fighting. Curious company for a band that used to have that trademark mid-fi indie pop sound. Operative words, ‘used to’.

The new stuff has a remarkable gloss to it – though the material on the EP is still Fridmann-produced, it’s slick. Like shellacked slick. My first reaction is some disappointment, I’ll admit, because I loved Hope & Adams so much, especially the sonics. By the same token, there’s a re-recorded version of “Don’t I Hold You” on the EP, with the same production as the new material, not to mention additional lyrics and rearrangement. Again, mixed feelings. I don’t like seeing perfection messed with. But – I will give Ricky and the boys the benefit of the doubt. I won’t be one of those who disown a band because they make a grab at that Total Request Live brass ring. The material is still strong, if a lot more ‘pop’. We will see if 2003 is the year of Wheat.

Had one of the best band practices ever tonight. Laura, freshly back from Amsterdam, came out and things really come together when she’s around. Besides the songs actually sounding the way we want with all the keyboard parts, it was good to have some of the raging testosterone of the rest of us diffused a little. Besides having a load of fun playing with the rap/DJ samples on the keyboard, we got a good deal of the arrangements worked out on some of the songs that had been giving us trouble in the past. A few more nights like this and we can seriously start thinking about booking shows.

np – Wheat / Medeiros

Paul Simonon has squelched all the speculation about who would replace Joe Strummer at the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremonies this month. The Clash are simply not going to perform. Gotta say, I think it’s for the best. Having them up there without Joe would just be wrong. And as we saw at the Grammies, there’s more than a few high-profile folks who’d be happy to step in for all of them. So instead of picking out dream team replacements for Joe, now the punters can replace all of them! Let’s hear some proposed Clash lineups…

np – Mojave 3 / Out Of Tune

Some movie watching going on today. First, Men With Brooms – a more Canadian film you’ll not find, either in concept (a comedy about curling?) or execution. Sure, it’s a fairly cliche-ridden sports comedy, the likes of which we’ve seen many times over, but the sincerety and enthusiasm of everyone involved in the film is strong enough that you don’t care. This was a fun movie, and a rare example of a domestic film that’s neither period piece nor ponderous psychological drama. Even when someone produces something that would qualify as a high-budget, high-profile film in this country, it still has that small-town feel. A pity about the DVD transfer, though – not only was it not letterboxed, but the print is cropped such that chunks of the credits appear off the screen. So very Canadian.

And at the opposite end of the spectrum, Lilo & Stitch. Though a little slighter than I’d expected (yes, I know it’s a cartoon… okay – I expected more Elvis), it was still riotously funny at times and good fun all around. And best of all, no horrid songs by Phil Collins, Elton John or Sting. Thank goodness for small miracles.

So The Biters are moving out of the rehearsal space come May 1. We’re going to have to find another band to take a couple nights a week and split the rent before then. Hopefully Brad or Seventeen can rustle up someone they know and trust, I’d prefer that to bringing in total strangers and giving them access to all our cool toys.

I don’t think I can play first-person shooters. After about an hour of No One Lives Forever, I feel nauseous. I need to go back to Tetris or something.

4AD is remastering and reissuing all the Pixies albums in May. About time, I say, since the current issues sound fine and are really easy to find. Uh…

np – Pixies / Doolittle

Went to the Endearing showcase at the Silver Dollar last night, part of CMW. Good lineup of bands I’d never heard.

First up – The Parkas. From various points around Ontario, they performed a solid if fairly generic set of country-tinged pop rock. Stellar harmonies, though.

Calgary’s Hot Little Rocket put on a very energetic show of angular post-punk rock. Kevin said they sounded just like Sparta. Having never heard Sparta, I’m in no position to debate. But full points for playing the opening of Television’s “Marquee Moon” for soundcheck.

Next up were Paper Moon from sunny Winnipeg. Formerly twee-poppers B’Ehl, Paper Moon offered up lots of sugary pop goodness with just enough grit to keep from getting a toothache.

By this point the cozy (read: small) Silver Dollar room was filling with scenesters eager to check out the Heavy Blinkers, Endearing’s latest signing from Halifax. If you’ve never been to the Silver Dollar, the stage is small. Smaller than the Horseshoe, which is not big. Well the Heavy Blinkers are a 10-piece band, and we’re not talking small pieces, like kazoos or tambourines. We’re talking keyboards, organs, pedal steels, horn sections… It was a Herculean feat. The Heavy Blinkers’ thing is full-on orch-pop. Bacharach may be an overused reference point, but it’s still an apt one. Really fun, sophisticated and impressive stuff.

By this point I was too bushed to stick around for Vancouver’s Radiogram, which is a shame because some good roots music would have been a good way to wash down the evening. Maybe next time.

I burned my first CD yesterday. I feel mighty. It was the second disc of the Wilco live in Philadelphia set – I had the first one courtesy of 517. It’s so quick and easy. Now I can get to work on making CDs for everyone who’s given me stuff over the years.

I don’t know what this is, but it looks cool. Apparently the shrimp car has kick-ass acceleration.

np – Billy Bragg & Wilco / Mermaid Avenue

Wayne Coyne is a genius. Having now witnessed Zaireeka in all its eight-channel majesty, I have no doubts about it. A brief primer for those who don’t know what this is – in 1997, The Flaming Lips released a four-disc box set. The four discs were meant to be played simultaneously, on four separate stereo systems, to achieve full effect. I’ve had a CD-R copy of the album for a few years now (burned because Warner Bros deleted the album not long after release… for which I don’t really blame them – I’m amazed they acquiesed to release it in the first place. It has, however, been reissued and is available at sorta reasonable prices) but never got to hear more than three discs at once, and only for one song. I’ve gotten two discs going a few times, but mostly I’ve listened to them individually.

On their own, each disc is sort of like listening to a dub mix of John Cage-produced session of Led Zeppelin sitting in with a drunken London Philharmonic. Since crucial parts of each song are distributed amongst the four discs, you only get bits and pieces of the whole. There are often extended periods of silence punctuated with a drum break or squall of strings and keyboards. Vocals fade in and drop out, and are heard only faintly in the distance or right up front. Most impressive is that despite the disjointed nature of each track, the skeleton of a song is still there, and if you’re in the proper mindset, each individual disc is pretty listenable. For each track, there is usually one disc that gets the bulk of the song structure, so over the course of the disc you will get at least one or two songs that still sound like recognizable songs.

Taken all at once though… man. Firstly, Zaireeka eschews much of the classic pop song structure that anchors the preceding and subsequent Lips albums. These are primarily experiments in sound. But what sound! From this day forward, I hereby declare ‘Bonham-esque’ to be an obselete adjective and submit ‘Drozd-like’ as its heir to the rock-crit lexicon. Steve Drozd is a monster behind the kit, and 8 channels of Fridmann-ized drum tracks? Dear Lord. It’s a maelstrom of percussion, surrounding you like fat men at a buffet. The keyboards are simultaneously soaring and crushing. Vocals plaintive and ghost-like. Heavily processed strings lend majesty and terror. Words fail. I should note that the listening last night was ridiculously loud, and what I’m describing as over-the-top sonic onslaught may have actually been the PA speakers crying out for mercy.

And therein lies the real genius of Zaireeka. It is fully listener-participatory art. You can’t just put it on and listen, you have to be part of it. You need four people (or well-trained monkeys) at four CD players operating in synchronicity, and try as you might, you’ll never get the exact same timing twice. It will never be the same aural experience – each time it’ll be slightly or significantly different from the last. And this isn’t even taking into consideration stereo system latency, speaker placement, listener placement, phase cancellation, acoustical room reflections… It’s never the same listening experience twice. Never the same song. Of course, it requires more considerably more work and setup to experience it properly, but I personally think that’s good. It makes the music an event, something to be experienced, something to be considered. It keeps it from being disposable, and true art should never be disposable.

Cheers to the Flaming Lips. (There’s another listener impression to the Zaireeka experience here.)

Some comments on the actual night itself – the organizers were pretty amazed that someone they didn’t know (namely me) heard about it and came out. They expected (and got) mostly their friends and acquaintances, so it was like a big house party for them. Nice enough guys, I chatted with them for a bit seeing as how I was something of a novelty in the room (“See that guy? No one knows who he is! Isn’t that great?”) but mostly there was sitting around and waiting. There were three ‘acts’ for the evening, Zaireeka being the last. The first was a DJ who, for what he was getting out of the speakers, seemed to be way too busy behind the decks. All I heard as one song fading into another, with a very bare minimum of scratching, while he looked like he was trying to stop a nuclear meltdown back there. Maybe I was missing something. The second was an ambient electronic band who utterly put me to sleep, though that may have been the intent. They’d start a canned drum track, then just start randomly making noises on keyboards and computers. Didn’t really seem like there was a lot of forethought or arrangement that went into it, but then I was asleep for most of it.

And as a final note, this going out and doing stuff by myself is getting real old.

np – Mogwai / Young Team