Best books I read this year...

1. Novel Without a Name by Duong Thu Huong

2. The Falcon by John Tanner.

3. The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang

4. The Best Women's Travel Writing 2008

5. Awaydays by Kevin Sampson

6. Tapping the Source by Kem Nunn

7. Borderlands by Brian McGilloway

May You be the Road

I've seen Bedouin Soundclash live three times. The first time they opened for Flogging Molly, the second time they opened for Hot Hot Heat (though I was there just for BSC and got to meet their former drummer Pat Pengelly--super nice guy, he took the picture of us cuz i was shaking too much!), and the third time they were headliners. They're coming back to town in a few weeks and I am going to find a way to be there.

Anyways, the thing about BSC is how they mix genres and pop culture with history. Gyasi Went Home is about the colonial history of Guyana, where the bassist Eon is from.

When Raleigh washed up he found gold all in his hands. There was a woman who gave all her pearls/ the ocean rolling, rolled them from the new world/ and in the morning Rebel you call/ but you know, you're only breaking the law.

There's nods to other colonial conflicts in other songs and the struggles of people to find freedom ("Nothing to Say" "Mandrake Root" "Bells of 59") This is interesting because BSC are from Canada. Most people go, Canada?? Really?? and laugh it off as some kind of ploy or device the band uses just to think they're cool. But no, BSC are the real deal. Their sound is genuine and full of subtlety and emotion. They take some of their ideology from the Clash I think.

Besides their interest in Colonialism, they also have a thing for the old west. Jay Malinowski, the lead singer, has an obsession with the film "Pursued" starring Robert Mitchum as Jeb Rand--the namesake of one of BSC's songs. The movie, though i haven't been able to get my hands on it yet, is a psychological noir western thriller...did you get that? The blurring of genre lines fits Bedouin well and this unofficial (but official too) video showcases the blend with scenes of Pursued intertwined with communist propaganda-like wanted posters of the band members:

"The road we walk is glitter and gold/ some may be a friend and some be the foe/ If I come in from the cold/ will you be my road?"

Hang me Up to Dry

I remember the first time I heard Cold War Kids very clearly. I was at school, sitting in my dorm room, bored out of my mind as usual (typical when you go to a school in a small town with nothing but farmland and bars for miles)and i was flipping channels (yes, all twenty four of them). We get like five different MTVs there (and no Food Network, crazy right?) and i passed MTV University. COld War Kids' "Hospital Beds" was playing and because it was MTV U, i naturally changed the channel after a split second. But then i did I double take. I went back to that channel. i sat. I watched. I listened. The music video for that song takes place from the forties into the fifties. Two friends are growing up and find they like the same girl. Well of course only one can get the girl and this causes a major rift between the two. Fate brings them back together in the boxing ring where fate deals them an extra heavy blow and the guy who didn't get the girl accidentally kills the married one--in front of the wife and daughter no less. IF the cinametography of the video didn't suck you in, well, the sound would. Nathan Willet can croon like no one else (I've read comments on songmeaning.com or whatever saying Willet has more soul than even some soul singers). His voice is a smooth desperate one which is unlike my typical like of the hoarse, throaty voices (such as Brian Fallon's from the Gaslight Anthem) but it's not smooth in a pop singer sort of way. You can picture Willet in some 1930's revival singing from a pulpit or in some American Bar overseas belting into a bottle of Budweiser.

"I've got one friend laying across from me / I did not choose him / he did not choose me / we got no chance of recovery / sharing hospital / joy and misery."



My favorite song by these guys is "Passing the Hat" which tells the tale of a man who steals from the offering hat in church to fund his escape from America back to his homeland near the Baltic Sea.

"If there was a worthy cause for to give to / may I be so bold as to say / the givers not knowing where their money's going / is as sinful as throwing away."

got to admit he has a point.


"Hang Me Up to Dry" was recently used in a Burn Notice commercial which i thought fit pretty well.

"We Used to Vacation" is one of my other favorites, telling the tale of an alcoholic father who tries to quit but in the end can't, despite narrowly avoiding death in what we can assume was a car accident.

"I promised to my Wife and Children / I'd never touch another drink as long as i live / but even then / it sounds so soothing / to mix a drink and sink into oblivion."

And finally, there's "Saint John." This one stories a young black man who accidentally kills a white college kid who was trying to rough up his sister. Now, I was reading in that songmeaning site that people thought this had rings of old-school hip hop, but what i hear is something much older. This is a prison song, obviously, by the lyrics alone--but look one step further and it's a chain gang song. I picture prisoners on the line with hammers busting up rocks on the side of the road crooning about how they ended up there. The percussion for this song it what really gets me thinking, I mean, it even sounds like metal hitting rock.


hear what i mean?

they have a newer album out but i haven't listened to it much. I haven't gotten over the first one yet and from what i have heard, they've lost a bit of their old-fashioned flair. Still, they are worth a listen and i highly suggest the album these songs come from, "Robbers and Cowards". Apt title for the stories contained in the verses.

Local Band departed too soon.

I can't remember how I first heard of Thunder in the Valley. It must have been on 89.3 the Current, but I really can't be sure. The first song I heard of theirs was "Altar," a song about why not to get married as told by a bitter old widower in a bar the band members were drinking at.

"It's a long long walk down to the altar/ vowing your love in a tender embrace/ a Short short walk til you're back at the chapel/ laying your flowers at the foot of a grave"

More songs of love gone wrong followed. And perhaps the saddest of them all occurred in 2008 when the band decided to ditch the increasingly successful Thunder in the Valley for pastures anew. One of the best bands to come out of the local scene, could have been the best if they stuck around (to be truthful, they are still around, at least some of the members are in another band).

Check them ou on Myspace where they're tag line says it all "Goodnight, we're dead.":
Myspace


or at their defunct yet still cool website:
Band Website

High top sneakers and sailor tattoos

The first time I heard Gaslight Anthem's single "The '59 Sound" I could barely contain myself. I had to hear it again. For two nights I played the youtube video over and over again probably to the annoyance of my housemates. The lyrics are simple but profound, just the way I like them.

"Did you hear the 59 sound/ Coming through on grandmama's radio/ did you hear the rattling chains/ in the hospital walls?/ did you hear the old gospel choir/ when they came to carry you over?/ did you hear your favorite song/ one last time?"

It doesn't take a million thesaurus found words to make an impact and this song, along with all the rest of the songs i've heard so far from this band, bring me to tears. The images that spring to mind come from the dangerous decades in American history where no one knew if the world would end tomorrow. There's a modern swing to all the songs of course, these guys are punk rockers, and I think that might be why it inspires so much in me. Musicians these days have the freedom to express what those who lived through those dangerous times did not and the driving guitars and desperate voices of punk rockers express the broken dreams and insecurities regular people felt. I'll say this more and more often the more you read this blog because just as important as lyrics are the tone of voice they're told in. Society used to--and still does--love flying voices with angelic pitch singing of perfect romance, but dig a little deeper and you find the voices that haunt the pubs, the bars, the back alleys, the basement apartments, the fields, the docks, the factories the places where souls are lost and found.

Maybe I'm getting off topic here, but i hope you grasp what i'm trying to get at. Some people have said there's no new music left to make, but i think that's not true. Bands like Gaslight Anthem, though their sound may not be so different than bands we've heard before, have something new to say. History. Not the history we find in textbooks or those lofty novels, but the history passed down through photographs, police records, and oral tradition.

"We came to dance with the girls with the stars in their eyes"

To sweeten the pot, Gaslight Anthem are signed to what has to be the most epic record label of the 21st Century, SideOneDummy Records. One day i hope the Warped Tour collapses and SideOneDummy puts on their own touring show. I would pay big money to see that show.


"I'm broke and I'm hungry, I'm hard up and I'm lonely / I been dancing on this killing floor for years / And of the few things I am certain / I'm the captain of my burden / I'm sorry doll, I could never stop the rain"