F.A.K.U. (Freaks Acting Krazy United)
There are a lot of stupid band names.
That’s why when I watched season three of the hilarious show Letterkenny awhile back I realized much of the dialogue could be converted into rippin’ band names.
So I made a list of the best of these potential band names for A.Side.
To read the whole list click here.
Filed under Music, Shameless Promotion, Television
David Bowie and David Tennant
David Bowie likes to flash back into relevance once a decade. Like a passing TARDIS, he enters deep space to cobble together fresh art before swinging by earth once again, delivering shiny new singles.
“Where Are We Now,” the singer’s first release in 10 years is quite a curious tune. It represents a softer phase for a man who has put down the saxophones and the sex, and begun looking back.
Which is odd because there is no past for David Bowie. That is because he lives forever… or at least until his alien organs give out. You see, the Thin White Duke is a Time Lord.
What’s a Time Lord you ask? Well, it’s a humanoid creature from the planet Gallifrey made popular on the BBC show Doctor Who. We’re pretty sure Bowie has been trying to tell us this for about four decades now, so we went ahead and put together some striking evidence. There’s also some SPOILERS below, so if you haven’t seen the most recent season, don’t read this.
Let’s Dematerialize!
The Sound of Time Travel
“Then the loud sound did seem to fade/Came back like a slow voice on a wave of phase/That weren’t no DJ, that was hazy cosmic jive,” Bowie sings on 1972’s “Starman,” pretty much describing the very whooshing noise of the TARDIS.
Watch “Starman”
“This ain’t rock ‘n’ roll. This is genocide!”
The Doctor hates nothing more than when an entire race of aliens are blown to smithereens or killed by superior beings. He wouldn’t even wish total annihilation on his mortal enemies, the Daleks. Bowie’s intro to Diamond Dogs called “Future Legend” speaks of a distant dystopia, filled with “fleas the size of rats [sucking] on rats the size of cats.” He didn’t make it up. Bowie’s been there, and it’s called New New York.
Cosmic Connection to Billie Piper
Billie Piper
The greatest — and most tragic — love story in the Doctor Who canon is undoubtedly between “Number Ten” (David Tennant) and Rose Tyler, better known as pop singer and star of the lurid show Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Billie Piper. Thing is, 10 wasn’t the only one with a connection to Piper. Piper and Bowie share a heat as intense as a thousand Cybermen x-ray lasers.
Wibbly Wobbly, Timey Wimey
Changes & Regenerations
If ever there was a song that thinly disguised the existential angst of a Time Lord it would be “Changes” from David Bowie’s 1971 album Hunky Dory. Bowie’s chameleon-like shifts in appearance and personality are all summed up in four simple lines:
Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time
Indeed, you can’t trace time. In fact, another Time Lord confirmed that (see above video).
David Bowie in a scarf
Love of Scarves
If “Fourth Doctor” Tom Baker proved anything during his time in the TARDIS between 1974-81 it’s that Time Lords love scarves. The fourth Doctor had a signature extra long number that would drag on the ground and need constant adjusting. Not coincidentally, David Bowie loves scarves, too. He’s been photographed wearing an assortment of neck-cessories with a higher-than-normal frequency over the years.
“Still Not Ginger!”
David Bowie
Ginger-Obsessive
Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust era saw the spacey singer as a fiery redhead, a regeneration trait that many a Doctor has sought after, especially “Number Eleven.”
Back in Time With Bowie
The John Simm Connection
John Simm, the actor who played the Doctor’s arch nemesis the Master, also starred as Sam Tyler in BBC’s Life on Mars, a crime drama featuring a policeman who travels back in time. Bowie has a song called “Life on Mars.” And a sequel to the television series was called “Ashes to Ashes.” There’s a cosmic connection here that’s no accident.
This story was originally published January 9, 2013 on AOL Spinner and was co-written with Cameron Matthews.
Filed under Music, Recollections
Neil Young at Massey. (Copped this pic from Toronto Star.)
LIVE: Neil Young
May 10, 2011
Massey Hall
Toronto, Ontario
Neil Young’s sold out Tuesday night show at Toronto’s Massey Hall was billed as a solo performance, but there was another pair of invisible guiding hands at work as well — those of Ancaster-born, U2 king-maker/super-producer Daniel Lanois.
While Young fell short of recreating the dizzy loops, echoes and fades that make his Lanois-produced latest album Le Noise such intoxicating headphone fodder, there was a barely sublimated sonic adventurousness — a hint of musical mischief and menace — that elevated the evening’s set into something more than just Neil. On a stool. At Massey.
Young’s experiencing a bit of a next-gen renaissance thanks to Le Noise, so it wasn’t particularly surprising the 65-year-old grunge godfather leaned heavily on the new album. Six of the 17 songs Young played were from the new record, but it was just as often what he did to his “classic” songs that revealed what his goal for the set was.
House-warmers “My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue),” “Tell Me Why” and “Helpless” were played reasonably straight. The crowd — more sport-jacket and recently trimmed hair than hippie burnout (no doubt the result of a more evolved ability to navigate the minefield that is modern ticket purchasing) — was particularly moved by “Helpless,” going so far as to sing along to the chorus with about the same volume and self-consciousness as Leafs fans doing the first verse of “O Canada” at the ACC.
Rapt silence was the more appropriate response for Le Noise track “Peaceful Valley Boulevard.” A gauzy, sprawling number on record, it was equally haunting live and could fairly match melancholy Young masterpieces like “On The Beach” and “Expecting To Fly.”
The next two songs — Le Noise‘s confessional “Love And War,” and all-timer “Down By The River” — started to reveal the outline of the Lanois impact on Young’s performance. It wasn’t so much about Young copping signature Lanois sounds as it was about watching Young wandering across the stage, coaxing bits of feedback from his amps, or impishly turning the chorus of “Down By The River” into a five-second primer on My Bloody Valentine.
It was this casual tinkering while strolling about the various guitars, pianos and organs which was what making Le Noise must have looked like. Except instead of Young, guitar slung over his shoulder, all poking around Lanois’ house for an audience of one, here he was doing so in front of 2,800 people.
Young’s re-imagining of “Cortez The Killer” was a particularly good example. Its intro disguised by a brief squalling shock, Young eventually emerged from his soundcloud to lay down a version you just knew was exactly like one Lanois might have coaxed him to play while the two were defining the identity of the latest album.
That’s when it became clear what Young was doing. He wasn’t just rote recreating the sounds of Le Noise for the audience last night, he was trying to recreate “the vibe,” as he experienced it, of his own adventure in le noise.
And when he closed the show with the single encore “Walk With Me” and its opened-armed plea “I’m on this journey/I don’t want to walk alone,” he managed to bring a lot of people with him.
Neil Young setlist for May 10, 2011:
“My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)”
“Tell Me Why”
“Helpless”
“You Never Call”
“Peaceful Valley Boulevard”
“Love And War”
“Down By The River”
“Hitchhiker”
“Ohio”
“Sign Of Love”
“Leia”
“After The Goldrush”
“I Believe In You”
“Rumblin’”
“Cortez The Killer”
“Cinnamon Girl”
encore:
“Walk With Me”
This live review originally appeared in The Grid (RIP) in May 2011.
Polaris Podcast EP7 was live from Ottawa.
When the Polaris Music Prize released its ten album 2017 Short List it also enlisted CBC Music and a batch of jurors to talk about what made the list, and what didn’t.
The Polaris folks then turned the result of that conversation into episode eight of the Polaris Podcast.
The most helpful way people can listen to the podcast would be by subscribing to it in iTunes. But those craving convenience can listen to it below on Soundcloud.
Filed under Music, Shameless Promotion
Carly Rae Jepsen
Two months ago, Carly Rae Jepsen got a panicked call from her sister. “She was hysterically screaming into the phone ‘Justin Bieber just tweeted about your song!'” Jepsen tells AOL Music Blog. “I was like ‘What? Really? No way!’ And then I went to check it out and, in fact, he had.”
The pop idol had heard Jepsen’s insanely catchy new single “Call Me Maybe” on the radio and instantly fallen under its spell. Soon, both the Biebs and his lady friend Selena Gomez were both tweeting about their love for the song, gaining the Juno nominee and Canadian Idol alumus (she placed third in the show’s fifth season) instant international attention.
And that was only the start of Carly Rae’s whirlwind ride to almost overnight pop stardom.
“Not too long after that, we were informed by my label, 604, that [Justin] and his manager [Scooter Braun] had actually approached them and asked if we’d be interested in combining forces and spreading the music outside of Canada.”
Jepsen and her team were definitely interested, so she flew out to Los Angeles to meet with the pair and wound up signing with Braun and his Schoolboy Records label.
The ink was barely dry on the contracts before Jepsen discovered that her new label mate had another surprise in store for her. Back at home, she went on Facebook and watched a video she’d recently been tagged in. She thought the video, which featured a bunch of mustachioed fans dancing around and goofing off to “Call Me Maybe” was cute, but she didn’t really realize what was going on at first.
“It didn’t really register until halfway through. I was kind of looking at it and I was like ‘That looks a lot like Justin Bieber! That looks a lot like Selena Gomez!’ And then at the end of it, I was like ‘My goodness! This is insane!'” she laughs. “That was a total shock. A good shock, but definitely a shock.”
That video — which also features the likes of High School Musical/Hellcats star Ashley Tisdale and members of Big Time Rush — became a viral sensation, garnering over 20 million views on YouTube and rocketing “Call Me Maybe” to the top of the digital charts, the first song by a Canadian artist to do so since her new buddy Bieber accomplished it with “Baby” in 2010.
“It felt like a really welcoming gesture,” Jepsen says of the video. “We had just signed the documents not a day or two before and then they posted the video and I kind of realized how sincere they were about helping me.”
To thank him for the video tribute, Jepsen made a last-minute appearance at Justin’s 18th birthday party. “It was kind of something that was thrown my way at the last minute. Through the first verse, I’m not really aware that I’m there! And, like, halfway through the song I start to sing,” she admits. “It was a terrifying and exciting experience to be spontaneously thrown into!”
She’s also working on a duet with Bieber. “The first day I met him, he invited me to join in on a song that he had in mind for me, and we mapped it out that night. I was pleasantly surprised with just how passionate he is as a musician and how much I loved the song!” Jepsen enthuses. “I can’t even begin to explain how talented that guy is.”
She isn’t sure exactly when their track will be released, but the singer hopes it’s soon. “If I had my way, it would be out today! Yesterday!” she exclaims. “I can’t wait to share that one.”
In the meantime, she’s already back in the studio with her friend and “Call Me Maybe” co-writer Josh Ramsay of Mariana’s Trench fame, working on new pop-oriented material that she hopes will expand on the sound she discovered with her hit single. Even though her current album, Curiosity, just came out, she expects to have a new album ready for release by September. Then she’ll start planning a proper tour.
And somewhere, in all of this craziness, she might actually find a couple of minutes to catch her breath and enjoy the ride.
“There’s moments on plane rides where I’ll sit for a second and just take it all in. I’ll be looking at the clouds, thinking, ‘Life is nuts. This is so insane. I’m flying to Texas right now. I’m flying to L.A.!’ This is not something I thought would ever really be happening for me. So there’s definitely moments where I sit there and I can just feel overcome with gratitude.”
This story originally appeared May 12, 2012 on AOL Music Blog.
Filed under Music
I Overcame My Autism And All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder: A Memoir
Risky Fuel 