Sometime back in the 1800s (actually, it was March of 2014), I posted a column which I had hoped to update on a regular basis. I had titled it Down Under Down Under: Band Picks By My Favorite Aussie Musicians and it consisted of Australians choosing Australians in a musical landscape of sorts.
One down, two to go… Angharad Drake, as far as I know (I mean, I wasn’t there, Nanaimo being a lo-o-ong walk from Oregon), finished her one gig on Vancouver Island and is set to play two more in Vancouver before leaving for her homeland, Australia. Those will happen (barring God and Act of Congress— and we have seen how Congress has been acting lately) on Friday and Saturday, June 23rd and 24th. On Friday, she will play Trees Organic Coffee and Roasting House and on Saturday, The Heatley. Here is a sample for your listening enjoyment.
Tomorrow night, Nanaimo, it all goes down. The very first Canadian performance of Australia’s folk-rockin’ Angharad Drake, and boy do I wish I could be there. Drake has been bending ears down in Oz for the past few years and is slowly developing a following as loyal as anywhere on the musical scene. No SXSWs or Bonnaroos for her. She is working her way up from unknown, but those will be part of her circuit next time around.
The past week I have been revisiting some of my earlier DBAWIS columns and am shocked at how few people (as far as I can tell) know about them, even now. When I write about musicians, it is usually personal, both the person or people and the music, and I feel that sometimes they are more water under the bridge than anything. No one sends notes asking about someone I wrote about in 2012 unless something has happened since and there are so many truly talented people who deserve recognition. So this week, I am going to point toward artists you may have missed whom I think are above the norm in terms of talent and/or personality. And maybe I owe a few of them money, but that is neither here nor there.
There are musicians who are outstanding and there are musicians who are unique but seldom do you find one who is both. I have found maybe a small bucketful during my lifetime who rise to the fly (as fly fisherman are wont to say) and most of those would be under your radar but they are there, regardless of cynics’ belief that music is dead. My problem is that when they do come along, I am so like Chicken Little that few believe it. Most take my loud cries of ecstasy as another of my many elaborate hoaxes, though I wonder how they know because they haven’t heeded my advice anyway. You want to know what discouragement is? Discouragement is posting a video or audio track, getting 17 “likes” but only three more views or listens than when you posted it. I guess it is most times easier to click a button than to actually listen.
And I don’t mean the band Journey recently inducted into the supposed Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. God knows what those clowns think when they make their choices but when I look at the possible choices they could have made besides those guys… well, I won’t go there. Let me just say that I understand when people are upset when I make such statements because they have a soundtrack to their lives as well, but this isn’t their column, is it? I look at it this way— Journey had hits, yes, and made CBS one hell of a lot of money, but they didn’t have an original bone in all of their collective bodies and you will never change my mind. Hall of Fame? Not even close. Not while the hundreds more deserving are locked out. Change that to thousands.
My yardstick for music is a simple one. If everyone likes it, it can’t be worth a shit. Think Hitler as a rock star. He, too, had a following, though few would own up to being part of it after the finale. What is it that makes everyone so enamored with this musician as opposed to this other musician who is playing practically the same thing? Hell if I know. How does one become a hit overnight? Hell if I know. Why are people attracted to certain artists, en masse? You guessed it. Hell if I know. But I can goddamn guarantee you that while you are talking about the Lady Gaga halftime show, and my guess is that most of you talking about music are, you’re missing a few thousand musicians worth hearing, some of them playing music way outside the formulaic box the Gaga has built for herself. Taylor Swift? I love some of her songs but there are songs as good as that out there if you take the time to listen.
Nothing says Christmas like a curmudgeon and nobody is more of one than Jaimie Vernon which makes me wish I knew some of the stories behind his long career in music and, also, in life. Regaling you with tales of chicken wire and whoopee cushions would make this a lot easier to write— nothing like fart jokes to liven up your reading— but it is Christmas season and I must put aside the slings and arrows, as humorous as they might be.
Some things just will not let go. Seven years ago I discovered the Research Turtles. For the last two, I had hoped for a reunion. I now know it will not happen. Even if they got back together, they would be a different band. They have grown as individuals and probably matured musically beyond that band and could never capture what they once had, but for five years I envisioned success and that period gave me hope in a world pretty much without hope, the music business morphing into something beyond my recognition, the Eks and the Westergrens of the world using what I consider stolen music to build huge bank accounts for themselves and others off of the labor of musicians. That Research Turtles do not today exist is not surprising, for who would want to hand their creations to someone else for a pittance while they made millions.
Lots of good stuff happening out there and it’s time we plugged in to some of it if only to counter the “real” musical happenings being covered by all of the sites who think that Kanye West canceling (or postponing) a show is news. I get it. No fun finding out your wife is being held at gunpoint. Just not headline news in my part of the world.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 