If you’ve never made that trek, especially you Californyuns, what are you waiting for? It’s extraordinary. And please do stop just north of San Simeon if you can. You’ll hit the Elephant Seal view spots up there. I stopped, thinking that it’d be cool to see a few of the beasts. After all, I like looking at beasts. Zoos are my favorite places (though I always find myself wishing I could be a little more behind the scenes and not hanging on the metal railing with all the grade school kids.) I was expecting a few dozen of the seals, but there were more than that. There were a few thousand of them, littering the beach like driftwood as far up the beach as I could see.

I think the reason I was so taken with them is because, these days, that’s me. Or at least it feels like me… washed up on the beach, blubbery, molting, exhausted and prone to making large, guttural noises. Right? We all feel that way sometimes. Right now, that’s me.

I gotta respect Sara. A few years ago she decided to pick up the bass as a way, I think, of keeping herself busy and sane. She took some lessons and was soon playing for the Black Tales. Now she’s got regular gigs with the Bitchfits (yeah, a distaff Misfits) and, light years away from that, Healamonster & Tarsier. Good for her.

Anyway, I’d have some excellent pics of the show, but they wouldn’t let me bring in my camera without permission from the booking agent, so here’s a craptastic iPhone snap of Sara onstage:

It was good to see both bands do their thing, and especially cool to see Amoebites old and current, Rachel, Andrew, Katy, Mo, Lance Rock, Jen, & AJ. It was like I never left.

Thanks to Will (the other one) I got clued in to Ryan Zeinert’s mix-tape madness, so I thought I’d jump in on the action. Couple quick notes: What I created was not actually a tape. But then I don’t think anyone expected that. I’ve made more than my share of actual tapes, but I finally ditched my Aiwa dual cassette deck a couple years ago because after more than a decade of solid use, it was giving up the proverbial ghost.

Also, though I’m happy with the initial effort, if I did it again in a week, it would no doubt be something completely different. Moods change, ideas evolve, that sort of thing.

Anyway, that’s that. Here are the tracks, annotated in a fit of exhaustion, after the jump:

1) Quiet Village – “Victoria’s Secret” : Oh, man, I’m cheating already. Not so much a cover, but a re-appopriation of an old Chi-Lites tune. But it’s short, and serves a current obsession with the band and it works as a nice, lush intro to the collection.

2) Kraak & Smaak – “Man Of Constant Sorrow” : Still possibly running roughshod over the rules, here I’m wandering dangerously close to “remix” territory, it’s nonetheless a new casting of the old tune into something with a Middle-Eastern flavor.

3) Petra Haden & Bill Frisell – “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” : One of my favorite covers. Haden turns the Ramones/Waits rant into a drifting lullaby.

4) Smashing Pumpkins – “Landslide” : A bit obvious, isn’t it? I suppose if I’d had more time, I could have come up with lots that was more interesting. I got lazy.

5) Luna – “Bonnie & Clyde” : I was torn on this one. I love this version of the Serge Gainsbourg tune, but Mick Harvey also puts out a fine version as well. I went for the one in French.

6) Siouxsie & The Banshees – “Dear Prudence” : I actually overheard some girl comment on the Beatles’ original version of this tune and wonder why they bothered to remake the Siouxsie tune. Why, indeed?

7) Talking Heads – “Take Me To The River” : Was an Al Green tune. Yes, it was. But the Heads made it completely their own.

8) Kristin Hersh – “Trouble” : One of my all time fave covers. I love the original Cat Stevens, especially in the context of Harold & Maude, but this re-working of it blows me the hell away.

9) & 10) The Bangles – “Hazy Shade Of Winter” : Surprisingly decent remake of the Simon & Garfunkel tune by the Bangles, brought in on a bit of Thomas Newman’s score for Less Than Zero. Natch.

11) Paul Anka – “Smells Like Teen Spirit” : I like this version because I can understand what he’s saying. Other than that, I can’t tell the difference. This is the obligatory ironic cover tune.

12) Placebo – “Running Up That Hill” : Another example of what makes a good cover. Molko and company preserve the haunting qualities of the Kate Bush original and show us something completely new.

13) Nouvelle Vague – “Melt With You” : This might qualify as ironic, too, if these cats weren’t so damned sincere. But in truth, the reason this is a good song is because the original was so great.

14) Nine Inch Nails – “(Let’s Get) Physical” : This quintessential Reznor, just the way I like him. I don’t recall a tune of his that has a more massive, towering sound. Perhaps it’s saying something that he’s covering Adam Ant this time around. I dunno. But I love it.

15) St. Vincent – “These Days” : Written by Jackson Browne for Nico, then recorded by Greg Allman (my favorite version) and then by Browne himself, here it gets Nico-esque treatment from my favorite artist of last year, Miss Annie Clark, and finishes off the collection with a dulcet flourish.

There you have it. It’s short, sweet and sequenced rather well. If you ask nicely and if I can get my CD burner working, I might send you a copy.

Mostly, these are Sparky’s concerns, though I share them. Carter isn’t good with the cinematic stuff. It’s kinda like George Lucas and his directing. He’s best when he doesn’t actually do it himself. Remember the last movie? He had a chance to introduce us to Scully and Mulder in the grandest of fashions, with big-screen flair and hair-raising drama. Instead, when they make their first silver screen appearance, they’re … brace yourself … chatting on the cell phone. It was one of the biggest wasted opportunities in film history (this also determined through diligent polling.)

Still, though I expect more of the same, this X-Phile will be at the first available screening, legs kicked up, ready for action. Let’s hope Carter’s matured a bit in the ten years (ten!) since the last flick.

‘D’y'ever do something once and have such a vivid experience doing it that you do it again? And then again and again until it becomes a sort of ritual? I’m not talking about something big, like surviving a plane crash in the Andes and then meeting with your fellow survivors once a year for happy hour at Chili’s. Nothing like that. I’m talking about small, nonsensical, peculiar, the kind of ritual that only you, yourself in this wide, overpopulated planet ever do, the kind that seeks to reclaim, without ever succeeding, something of the magic that befell you the first time you did it?

I thought so, but I bet yours doesn’t involve The Fixx and a PSA jet.

Here’s mine. Every time I fly, whether it’s from LAX to Sydney or Denver to DC or down to the Whole Foods on the corner, I have to listen to “Woman On A Train” by The Fixx. That’s right. Man on a plane listening to “Woman On A Train.” Yeah, I said I was unique. Here’s the song:

The Fixx – “Woman On A Train”

It all goes back to a trip my brother and I took way back when I was fourteen. We boarded a plane bound from New Mexico to California to visit friends, and we did it alone, without parents. Not our first orphan flight, but the first for me since making it into a roiling adolescence, and since discovering the raw, sexy, seductive allure of music.

As the plane pushed off from the gate I had my Walkman in my hand–not an official Sony model; it was a Panasonic, I think–and a tape-recording on a Maxell C-45 of Phantoms by The Fixx scrolling insde on continuous auto-reverse infini-play. As the plane lifted off the ground, the song in question kicked in with its meticulous percussion, oleaginous synth pulse, ethereal guitars and deep, rolled-back bass. Synapses connected with a crackle of ozone.

The song has since reminded me of airports and flight and Mr. Pibb in very small plastic cups and the wonder and fear and amazement at the mystery of onrushing adulthood, whose harbingers were giddiness, confusion and the soul-crushing grip of first love.

Lyrics after the jump.

And by the way, the first word in this post is pronounced “JEV-er” (Did You Ever?)

On the web:
buy the song on iTunes (not this version, which is inexplicably unavailable)
official site
tour schedule (they’re coming to LA, folks)
Erlewine’s take on the album

Woman On A Train

Pictures chase across the ceiling
As I try to sleep at night
There’s a voice inside my darkness
Laughing at the life I’ve lost
She’s no girl on pills in limbo
She’s a woman on a train
With her senses sharpened by the warning cold
She brings me to memory
She flashes her lights, her mission bites
She flashes her lights
Across my desert mind (still no change in me)
(She’s) no girl on pills in limbo
She’s a woman on a train
She’s here…
The woman on a train…
And I will speak no words but the truth for her to hear
Hold her close… but never dare
(She’s) no girl on pills in limbo
She’s a woman on a train
She’s here
The woman on a train…
She will speak for us both
She will speak for us all
Till I learn to care…
She’ll override my best intention
Attack my weak deception
A friend for life and after
I’ll never catch her off her guard

Back in 1987 and thereabouts we didn’t have the internet. We didn’t have Allmusic or Pitchfork or Sixsquare. We just had the local record store. We’d go there every week and dig through the bins, see what was written on the board, flip through our favorite bands to see if by some chance Billy Squier had released something new that afternoon.

Usually, he hadn’t.

I kinda feel that way about the wait for something new from Siobhan Donaghy. I want something new, but aside from her well-publicized turn in Rent, the Intarwebs are notably quiet on her whereabouts. I’ve taken to popping round her official site on occasion, which, for all intents and purposes, is like dropping by the music store on a Tuesday afternoon.

I was tipped off to her stuff last year by some music blog or other (I’d thought it was Scissorkick, but I can’t find the post) and I checked it out with more than a little skepticism. Donaghy had been a Sugababe after all. On first listen, I liked the collection. It had a musky, hi-tech swirl to it that was different than I’d expected. But I only liked it. I didn’t love it.

Months later, I took it with me to Australia. High over the Pacific Ocean, the album began to reveal some more of its secrets, and I found that it gravitated towards the top of my playlists more and more. And there it has remained since, especially its opening cut and the three that close the album. There’s a dark majesty about Donaghy’s work. It’s pop with a dark side. It’s clever articulation of pop ideas that doesn’t insult the intelligence and, somehow, results in a clutch of tunes that stand up to repeated play.

It’s easiest to demonstrate this by offering up the album’s title track. “Ghosts,” is the final cut on the album, and for good reason. It’s a peculiar beast. The lyrics are indecipherable. The melody, intricate. The production, layered and dense. Yet there’s something fascinating about it. Check out the song in its entirety first:

Siobhan Donaghy – “Ghosts”

Yeah, yeah, I know. Those lyrics aren’t in English. Not forward English, anyway. So let’s drop it on the turntable and listen to some of it backwards:

excerpt: “Ghosts” in reverse

same excerpt, forwards

“She’s [doing something] to dresses. She can’t carry on. But her nimble fingers. Still feel the cold.”

I can’t discern what Little Dorrit’s doing to those dresses, but who cares? And though this line is, in fact, reversed in this excerpt, elsewhere in the track she pronounces the lyric in reverse. It’s all so David Lynch. And live? Well, she just sings it outright, all the way through: link to one blogger’s tongue-in-cheek attempt at lyric-spotting, and another link to a low-key live performance, which, in spite of her awkward stage presence and the distorted sound, still manages to kick ass.

All this fun from a single offbeat cut? And not even the strongest on the album, at that?

I’m ready for more please, Miss Donaghy. I just wanna see what’s next. No pressure. Take your time. But hurry. Seriously, I’m patient. I can wait.

Quick, K?

It’s too late in the game to bloviate about the film and its merits and/or flaws. I’m late to that particular party, and I’m certain I don’t get along with many of its guests. But since I gravitate to all things musical, I thought I’d share a bit of the score, which was once again put together by Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek, the kids responsible for Lola’s musical pulse. And in this film’s peculiar and oddly moving climax, their music is what, for me, keeps the film from tipping into an failed sort of lunacy.

Heil, Klimek and Tykwer – “The Perfume”

on the web: ebert’s praise for the film, Radar article on the composers

I’ve had help from Great Northern. This is one of those albums that I’ve had sitting around for months, knowing I had to give it a spin and see what the fuss was about. Since giving it a try at last, it’s become the “default disc,” that thing I put in when I don’t want to think about choosing music, but I want something excellent. And the hours, they are filled.

I’m not surprised that I find their brand of lush melancholia appealing. They have close ties with Earlimart, having actually intermingled with Espinoza and Co. in the way of membership (central band member Solon Bixler once played in that band.) I find that anything with close ties to Earlimart tends to have this gauzy aura of worshipfulness about it, like those foil Jesus paintings that heliotrope when you walk by. Maybe that’s just the effect of Rachel Stolte’s vocals, but whatever the case, I find “Trading Twilight For Daylight” lovely.

Great Northern – “Our Bleeding Hearts”

On The Web: allmusic, itunes, official site, myspace