Obviously that headline is a complete fabrication, but it made you look, didn’t it? If you don’t already have this great little song stuck in your head for all of eternity, here’s your chance! The brand new video for “Bitter, Drunk and Cold” from the Far West.
Nice threads, guys!
Take a listen to this voice.
Cold Specks is gearing up to release their full-length debut, I Predict A Graceful Expulsion, on May 22, and it sounds like this will be an album worth keeping an eye and ear out for.
Here is Cold Specks performing “Old Stepstone” and “Lay Me Down” on Later… with Jools Holland.
Check out Cold Specks on tour.
March 13th-18th – SXSW – Austin, TX
March 21st – Co-operators Hall at River Run – Guelph, ON
March 22nd – The Music Gallery – Toronto, ON
May 1st – Lincoln Hall – Chicago, IL
May 2nd – High Noon Saloon – Madison, WI
May 3rd – Cedar Cultural Centre – Minneapolis, MN
May 4th – West End Cultural Centre – Winnipeg, MB
May 6th – McDougall United Church – Edmonton, AB
May 7th – Central United Church – Calgary, AB
May 8th – Southminster United Church – Lethbridge, AB
May 9th – The Royal – Nelson, BC
May 11th – The Commodore Ballroom – Vancouver, BC
May 12th – Alix Goolden Hall – Victoria, BC
May 13th – Tractor Tavern – Seattle, WA
May 14th – Doug Fir Lounge – Portland, OR
May 16th – The Independent – San Francisco, CA
May 18th – Troubadour – Los Angeles, CA
May 19th – The Compound Grilll – Phoenix, AZ
May 20th – Club Congress – Tucson, AZ
May 22nd – The Prophet Bar – Dallas, TX
May 23rd – Stubb’s BBQ (Indoor) – Austin, TX
May 24th – One Eyed Jacks – New Orleans, LA
May 25th – Variety Playhouse – Atlanta, GA
May 26th – Grey Eagle – Asheville, NC
May 27th – Rock and Roll Hotel – Washington, DC
May 28th – Johnny Brenda’s – Philadelphia, PA
May 30th – Bowery Ballroom – New York, NY
May 31st – Middle East Downstairs – Cambridge, MA
June 2nd – The Music Hall, Toronto, ON
I first heard “I Fought the Law” by the Crickets as I first heard many of the oldies: travelling in the car with my parents. Much of the foundation of my music education was laid while sitting in the back seat of the car as we drove to family gatherings, listening to the only radio station – WMJI Majic 105.7 – that my mother, father and I could agree on.
Sonny Curtis wrote the song and brought it with him when he joined the Crickets after Buddy Holly’s death, releasing it in 1965. The song was covered in 1966 by the Bobby Fuller Four and did well for them (though Fuller’s tremolo warble makes me want to punch him), but I’m going to take a wild guess that the majority of people reading this are most familiar with the Clash’s 1979 cover.
You’ll notice a couple of small lyrical changes from the Crickets’ original. For instance, the narrator of the original is robbing people with a zip gun, while, starting with the Bobby Fuller Four cover, he began robbing people with a six-gun. Though, of course, the biggest change implemented by the Clash took the narrator from merely missing his baby (or, as Fuller had it, leaving his baby) to killing her, making him much more of an outlaw than he started out. But, you know, at least he feels bad about it.
The lyrics of “I Fought the Law” seem to invite people to mess with them, and nobody messed with them more than Jello Biafra as he rewrote them to comment on the murders of San Francisco mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk for the Dead Kennedys’ 1980s re-working of the song.
This is a fabulously entertaining mini-documentary about Akron-native Chris Butler who has played with local legends 15 60 75 (The Numbers Band), Tin Huey (which was also the springboard for Mr. Ralph Carney), and was, of course, the creator of and guitarist for the Waitresses.
We started the week with a taste of my current fixation, Elbow, including a luscious duet from Guy Garvey and Richard Hawley, so let’s end it with some Hawley solo work.
Richard Hawley’s work is like something you’d hear as the soundtrack to a slightly garbled, scratched and dusty black-and-white film found at the back of an old drawer. I first heard Hawley when “The Ocean” was slipped into a mix sent to me.
I didn’t know what to make of it the first time I heard it. It sounded like an old lounge singer was trying to make another go at a career by using a new producer with shiny new gadgets, yet still using all the old musical tricks. You might construe from that description that I didn’t like it, but the song eased its way further and further under my skin until hearing it late at night while driving down city streets felt like serenity.
So, lean back, have an entirely too sweet cocktail, imagine waves lapping against a Mediterranean beach while a couple who look curiously like Astrud Gilberto and Marcello Mastroianni walk along the sandy shore, and enjoy a little more Richard Hawley.
“Coles Corner”
“Born Under a Bad Sign”
“Serious”
It’s almost that time again. Time to sit around on the couch in your underwear with a beer in your hand and your laptop overheating your legs. Okay, for some of you this is just known as “Thursday”, but come March 11th – and extending through the 18th – you’ll be able to do this while communing with your fellow poor and lazy people who won’t be attending South by Southwest and still get to witness one-of-a-kind performances from up-and-coming musicians
This is Couch by Couch West, where the beer is cheaper, and the only hipster is you. Run by a secret cabal, CXCW started last year as an alternative entertainment gathering for those uninterested in or unable to go to SXSW, and we are thrilled that it’s being brought back for a second year because it was a hell of a good time.
The virtual showcase takes place over two platforms, with sharing of beer recommendations, pictures of zonked-out pets, and, most importantly, couch session videos on the CXCW Tumblr shiny new main stage to be announced this weekend (follow on Twitter or Facebook for the premiere) shiny new main stage and lewd and drunken conversation happening on Twitter (follow @couchxcouchwest and hashtags #cxcw, #cxcw12 and #cxcw2012).
MUSICIANS! If you want to participate by taping a couch session, post the video of your session to YouTube or Vimeo, then e-mail your video link to cxcwest at gmail dot com. You can begin submitting now and keep submitting until the 18th. It’s a unique and fantastically fun way to gain a little exposure. (And if it’s good enough for Neko Case, well…)
Here are a few favorite couch sessions from last year (you can check out more at last year’s CXCW Tumblr)…
Conrad Plymouth – “Texas in a Drawer” (A Heidi Spencer Cover)
The Imperial Rooster – “God Has Left the Building”
Doc Dailey – “German Train”
The Ridges – “Not a Ghost”
Daniel Knox – CXCW – You Win Some, You Tie Some from Daniel Knox on Vimeo.
This is Eich Bein Ein Auslander from Dos Dedos Mis Amigos, first released in 1994, and the first PWEI song I ever heard.
It was in a club – I think it was the Electric Ballroom in London sometime in 1998, but I could be wrong – and what I remember is watching the people on the dance floor swaying and stomping to the thudding beat, all gracefully synchronized within their personal space bubbles and not smushed into each other, as I had experienced elsewhere.
It was mesmerizing, and I immediately wanted to join them.
Also very popular in clubs at the time was Def Con I, from This Is the Day…This Is the Hour…This Is This!, originally released in 1988.
Dos Dedos Mis Amigos was easily acquired, but all I could find from their earlier work was a kind of greatest hits compilation: the 1997 live album The Radio 1 Sessions 1986-87. YouTube is sadly deficient in my favorite tracks from that record (Demolition Girl and Illusion of Love) but here are some other ones that I like a whole lot:
First up is Evelyn, originally released on their first record “proper album” (cf. Axel, see comments for details) Box Frenzy in 1987. You will notice it is totally unlike both Eich Bein Ein Auslander and Def Con I in every way possible. I nonetheless love it very much:
http://youtu.be/kMlZMZKp_yw
This one is called Back Country Chainstore Massacre (not Chainsaw, as the video is labeled), from the Now for a Feast! compilation record in 1988:
http://youtu.be/PNc-DeKtW0I
Oh Grebo I Think I Love You is another one of my favorites:
Finally, one that I haven’t listened to as much but still love: Not Now James, We’re Busy, from from This Is the Day…This Is the Hour…This Is This!. Be sure to turn it up so you can feel the bass rattle your bones.
http://youtu.be/GHsBSVgPSJQ
Because we’ve all got that one, you know the one I mean: it never works but you always want to think it will. And they always know exactly when to call.
Sometimes it goes so, so well, for a while:
http://youtu.be/0peTfMOdDoo
Other times, you end up going all the way down the rabbit hole:
![Father John Misty - Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings [OFFICIAL VIDEO]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KtOToiIDNRA/0.jpg)
When it finally crashes and burns, you have to remember, you are still a rock star, with rock moves:
Though not everyone is so into all that DRAMA.
Though, okay, maybe a LITTLE bit of drama is fine:
Just enough to get your pulse going:
And maybe lead to shenanigans in public:
Especially if it ends happily ever after:
![Christina Perri - Arms [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/MeW0Sl0tNS8/0.jpg)
Because against all odds and in defiance of experience and good sense, I do believe in a thing called love:
![THE DARKNESS - I Believe In A Thing Called Love [Hammersmith. Nov 2011]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4t5aOdDIXJ4/0.jpg)
I sometimes forget that, even though I think a band is big shit, not everyone has heard of them. I was genuinely surprised when I made a post of various Mark Lanegan videos a little while back, and it helped people discover him for the first time.
In that vein, I’ve been listening to a lot of Elbow this weekend, and while I surmise that they are a decently big deal in the UK, they don’t seem to be as known as they deserve to be Stateside. They traffic in full, lush, sweeping arrangements set off by Guy Garvey’s gritty, wrought vocals (keeping his accent beautifully intact and not trying to sing like an American, thank you very much – I love Garvey’s voice to pieces, if you can’t tell). Their songs are tailor-made to be played with a full orchestra, and, hey, whaddya know? They’ve done just that. Here’s a selection from a concert Elbow played with the BBC Concert Orchestra and choral group Chantage.
“Starlings”
“Grounds for Divorce”
“An Audience with the Pope”
“The Fix” with Richard Hawley
“One Day Like This”
And, as a bonus, the song that introduced me to Elbow, a thoroughly delightful, off-kilter cover of Destiny’s Child’s “Independent Woman”.
I was 12, in 1987. I was also a dancer. A terrible one, it must be said, but I loved it. And I loved (still love) this song because it put the words to the daydreams I had about being a grown-up. Or even just going to high school.
I’ve been struggling since yesterday to put this into words, but I think what this song did was make being a grown-up and having serious relationships seem like both an attainable goal and something that might be fun.
There are other Whitney Houston songs I’m fond of (So Emotional, How Will I Know) and some that I’m not (Greatest Love Of All) but this one remains my favorite.
Rest in peace, good lady. We shall miss you very much.
