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February 22, 2006

Ghostly; Grant

Sam Valenti at Ghostly International / Spectral Sound is wondrous. He provides a label for exciting, mostly electronic based bands like Solvent and Mobius Band and Dykehouse and Twine and Midwest Product. Recently he sent me the unabashedly techno Suckfish by Audion, and I've been listening to that a lot this week to jostle my mind after hours & hours of end-of-book writing and revising. If you're a fan of Richie Hawtin aka Plastikman, you'll love it.

Ghostly is based out of the US, but the other stuff I've been listening to lately is from all over the place--the dreamy Canadian band Below the Sea, Norwegians Serena Maneesh, the German shoegaze band Monoland, those always-entertaining Scots Belle & Sebastian (whose new record I really love, even if lots of their diehard fans are bitching about it), and Sing Sing (the band formed by Emma Anderson after the end of Lush).

My other cool music news from this past week: one of my closest pals, John Grant from The Czars, John recently moved from Denver to NYC, and he's currently touring the US to support Goodbye (which has been out in the UK for months but is only now available domestically). John and I became friends about a year ago and he's really a wonderful person, one of my favorite people on earth. If you haven't heard his amazing, beautiful voice, I recommend you check out their songs on iTunes or elsewhere.

Also check your local club listings to see if The Czars are playing nearby--John's voice is even more stellar in a live setting. I went to hear him play in Providence last Thursday, and then in Cambridge on Sunday, and he stayed with us at the Cape with his friends Jesse and Mustafa (who, by the way, is an excellent photographer, and whom I may ask to take my We Disappear author photo. You can view some of his work here).

So yeah, obviously I recommend all this stuff. What new things are you lot listening to?? I have a pretty wide ranging musical taste, and suggestions are always welcome. And oh: the next time you hear from me, I swear I'm going to be done with We Disappear.

Posted by scottheim at 05:37 PM | Comments (5)

Geniuses, vol. 4: HULA

More from the "music nerd" department... I just discovered that two of my all-time favorite electronic bands of the 80s, Cabaret Voltaire and Hula, have their stuff on iTunes. Most of CV's catalog is there, as is virtually ALL of Hula's until-now-only-on-vinyl amazing albums (with the exception of the "Walk On Stalks of Shattered Glass" ep, which I always thought was a terrific title). I'm REALLY excited about this, especially in the case of the far more obscure Hula, a band my college friend Coby Ellison introduced me to in college. I totally worshipped them. My first band in college (me on drums; Coby, bass; and Marc Tweed, guitar) even used one of their song titles, "Hot House," for a name, briefly. Hula sounds just as heavy and complex and strange and loud and paranoid and sweaty and innovative now as they did back then. They're pretty much uncategorizable (funk? industrial? electronic? none of the above?); they have one of the most amazing rhythm sections ever, and were doing weird shit with cut-up sounds and tape loops and samples long before tons of other bands. Their album MURMUR was my favorite. 1000 HOURS was half live, one-quarter funky, and one-quarter creep-out instrumental stuff I used to listen to back in 1987-88, before I'd fall asleep, in my college dorm room.

Anyway, there isn't much on the internet about the band, but I did find this smallish fan site, as well as a myspace page. If you're interested, listen to the 30-second iTunes snippets of "Ghost Rattle" or "Black Wall Blue" or "Big Heat" or the genuinely scary "Cold Kiss." Or better yet, the amazing club mix of "Freeze Out." Or even songs from their final album, the much more commercial but still groovy VOICE. Anyway, this little discovery has made me happy tonight. Next thing you know, Clock DVA and Chris & Cosey will be on iTunes... then I'll be even happier.

Posted by scottheim at 12:36 AM | Comments (1)

February 19, 2006

Today's TIMES Magazine-- J.G.L.

There's a cool photo feature in today's New York Times Magazine about "great performers" in 2005 films, and one of the portraits shows none other than a shirtless Joseph Gordon-Levitt from Mysterious Skin (and also the very-soon-forthcoming Brick, which you all should rush and see when it's released, as it's really, really terrific). Cool, cool, cool. If you want to read the article & see the pictures, go here and click on the "slideshow" option.

Posted by scottheim at 12:31 AM | Comments (1)

February 12, 2006

Geniuses, vol. 3: ANDREA MARTIN & CATHERINE O'HARA

A few weeks ago, I blathered about TWIN PEAKS and how much I loved it. Well, I have another all-time favorite TV show. Without a doubt it was SCTV, the late-night Canadian comedy program that ran from 1976 through 1981.

I could go on and on and on and on about some of my favorite characters and favorite sketches--Martin Short's Jackie Rogers Jr.; Eugene Levy as cockeyed midget Sid Dithers; John Candy as Divine doing Peter Pan--but now, after watching the old stuff over and over on the recently released DVD sets, I have to say that my absolute favorite cast members remain the two women, Andrea Martin and Catherine O'Hara. Lord, they're amazing. Really. If you didn't spend a big part of your preteen and teenage years staying up, as I did, to watch SCTV, or if you've never seen it at all, I highly recommend buying or Netflixing the discs.

I bet if you asked some of the funniest women on TV right now--ie, Amy Sedaris; Rachel Dratch on SNL; Mo Collins, ex of MadTV--they'd cite these two as major influences. Above and below are some photos of both Andrea and Catherine on the show. (Above: Catherine & Andrea as Lola Heatherton and Mother Theresa; Catherine as sex-crazed cabaret star Dusty Towne; Andrea as Edna Boil, advertising her Curio Emporium; and Andrea as Beverly Sills with her painting of Catherine as Dame Joan Sutherland. Below: Catherine as Tammy Faye Bakker; Andrea & Catherine as Anne Murray and Rita Coolidge; Andrea as confused foreigner Pirini Schleroso; and Andrea as kids' TV host Mrs. Falbo.) If you're a fan like me, you practically die laughing just looking at these pictures.

Posted by scottheim at 11:26 AM | Comments (7)

February 10, 2006

Olympics

I'm obsessed with the Olympics, both summer and winter. So, thanks to the Torino games of the next two weeks, I'll be doubly busy--I'll not only be glued to the TiVo, but also to the computer, as I think I'm going to finish the book sometime during this period. I'm also just starting on the massive DAVID COPPERFIELD, one of the many classic novels I still haven't read. So, when the predicted Cape Cod blizzard hits tomorrow, I'll hopefully be preoccupied.

Have a good week, everyone--leave me a comment or email and let me know what's happening, and I'll return soon, hopefully with We Disappear ready to send to my editor.

Posted by scottheim at 11:36 PM | Comments (9)

February 05, 2006

Geniuses, vol. 2: MAJID MAJIDI

I've recently become utterly obsessed with the genius of Majid Majidi, an Iranian director who's made haunting, important, and unbelievably moving films like Children of Heaven, The Color of Paradise, and Baran.

His films are mythic and visionary, and gorgeously photographed. They offer an amazing insight into Iran and its people, which seems especially important during a time when the country is overshadowed by its government's policies, during a time when its whole population is narrowed and summarized--by our good-old-boy, god-fearing president and his cronies--as an "axis of evil" that very possibly could be next for his schedule of bombing.

Majidi pays special attention to detail and individual day-to-day frailties of his characters--a nice altruistic counterpoint to the overgeneralized media depictions we usually get of Iranian people. We get to empathize with a country's individual souls, not just see its totalitarian government. And there are many single scenes, single images, from his movies that cannot leave my head--that's something I certainly can't say about 99% of the movies I see. Pictured above are four shots from "Children of Heaven," and below, four from my favorite (well, so far--I have yet to see all his films), "The Color of Paradise," which is so simultaneously lovely and heartbreaking that I can hardly write the title without tearing up.

Posted by scottheim at 03:00 PM | Comments (2)

February 03, 2006

Geniuses, vol. 1: FELT

One of my all-time favorite bands is FELT. Between 1981 and 1989, they released a string of unbelievable singles and albums--ten EPs and ten albums in ten years, a strategic plan from the beginning, according to the band's eccentric leader Lawrence--some of which are pictured below.

Felt gained a smidgeon of awareness in the US when MTV's "120 Minutes" played their video for "Primitive Painters," a song that featured the godlike Elizabeth Fraser on vocals and was produced by the equally godlike Robin Guthrie. Other than that, they've basically existed as a cult group over here.

When Felt started, they were primarily Lawrence and the amazing classically trained guitarist Maurice Deebank, who left after a few years. Their early music is mostly jangly, sparkly guitar pop with sarcastic and remote lyrics, sung like an updated Lou Reed or Tom Verlaine or Dylan, with fascinations for sixties culture (ie, "Penelope Tree"; their cover of the Beach Boys' "Be Still"). They later recorded stuff like Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads to Death (ten gorgeous, way-too-short instrumentals) and Train Above the City (a record with only vibes and piano and brushed snaredrum, and no appearance of Lawrence at all, although he later said it was his favorite Felt record). When Felt split, Lawrence went on to form the goofy 70s throwback band Denim and equally strange Go-Kart Mozart, and their excellent keyboardist Martin Duffy joined Primal Scream.

It's hard to imagine where certain contemporary bands would be without them-- bands like The Pastels and The Aluminum Group and especially Belle & Sebastian (who even wrote about Felt in the liner notes of their Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant album).

(Above: an old photo of the band--seems they were never very keen on posing for cameras--and a more current one of Lawrence.) Oh, and here's a pretty cool Felt tribute site.

And oh yeah, the titles of their albums and songs are often tiny strokes of genius. Recurring themes are (a) gauzy or sparkly things, and (b) death. Some of my favorites: I Will Die With My Head In Flames; Stained-Glass Windows In the Sky; All The People I Like Are Those That Are Dead; Dismantled King Is Off the Throne; The World Is As Soft As Lace; Trails of Colour Dissolve; Don't Die On My Doorstep; Rain of Crystal Spires.

If you haven't heard Felt, I suggest going to iTunes or somewhere and checking out a song like "Fortune" or "Primitive Painters." I'd love to know what you think.

Posted by scottheim at 02:44 PM | Comments (2)