Video Of The Week: Cake

Cake.

With Soul Coughing, they're my favourite band that I always forget exists.

I wanted to add a few of their songs to my phone playlist this week - namely Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps, Never There, Sheep Go To Heaven, Cool Blue Reason, their cover of Black Sabbath's War Pigs, Satan Is My Motor, She'll Come Back To Me, Open Book and, of course, The Distance:

The 1990s were great about introducing us to acts that didn't all resemble each other, what with the boom in indie labels and the traveling festivals. All bands didn't have to be big at the same level, either; Cake had one extremely successful album - 1996's Fashion Nugget, with their cover of I Will Survive - but also enjoyed moderate success with 1994's Motorcade Of Generosity and 1998's Prolonging The Magic, building a fanbase that would remain loyal to them to this day. Like Pearl Jam, but on a much smaller scale.

In many ways, Cake was similar to Soul Coughing, both containing elements of deadpan-delivery spoken word, rock, humour, poetry, irony, sarcasm; the main difference was the flavouring: Cake was based on country (particularly clearer after the departure of guitarist Greg Brown and his distinctive tone) whereas Soul Coughing's love of jazz was the underlying essence behind the composition.

Video Of The Week: Leonard Cohen

We lost another great today, with the passing of legendary Montréal poet Leonard Cohen, who was inducted in the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.

Sure, Cohen was a Montrealer through-and-through, a Jew-turned-atheist-turned-Buddhist-turned-peacenik, a bohemian ladies' man, a quiet man who loved his routine (including freshly-squeezed orange juice to start his walk around the Mile End area on Sunday mornings)...

But he was also a New Yorker through-and through, having lived at the Chelsea Hotel alongside Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin (the story of their night together told through Chelsea Hotel No. 2), a friend of Lou Reed's, who partied with Saturday Night Live cast members and its producer, Lorne Michaels.

And yet he was also at home in Europe, drinking wine, eating well, and courting beautiful women at all times of night and day, muses for eternal songs to come.

And he spent his last years in the perfect California weather, perhaps extending his life by doing so, as you want to battle cancer in the most perfect setting possible.

Many of his songs are now seen as prophetic - and not just those from You Want It Darker, the record he released just weeks prior to his passing. Now, the final words from one of his best-known songs, Tower Of Song, ring as true as ever:

Now I bid you farewell, I don't know when I'll be back
They're moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone
I'll be speaking to you sweetly from a window in the Tower of Song

I don't know. As I sit here in tears writing this piece I find myself reflecting on my own life, most of it spent not just with no regard to my own future, but not even picturing myself in one; I've lived for the moment for so long - 20 of those years in the excesses of food and alcohol - that I never thought I'd outlive someone like Cohen.

Today, I choose to feature the video for Closing Time, from his 1992 record The Future, directed by Curtis Wehrfritz, featuring back-up singers Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen:


If you like the look he has in his eye, it's because his flame at the time, actress Rebecca De Mornay - who also co-produced the record - felt he needed to show more passion than he had in previous takes and opted to perform a mock striptease off-camera to seduce him.

Ever the Old World Romantic, Cohen then bent down and put De Mornay's shoes back on for her, on his knees.

Lou Reed. Hunter S. Thompson. Leonard Cohen. Most of my influences and idols have now passed.

Someone make sure Tom Waits, Renaud Séchan, Eric Clapton, Jean Leloup and Eddie Vedder still have a pulse.

What Colour Dressed Him Best?

Blue and black, or gold and white?

(yes, that's a dress joke).

But it leads me to Leonard Nimoy, who died today due to complications from COPD (chronic pulmonary disease, something that runs the gamut between severe asthma and lung cancer).

He was an actor, of course, but also a writer, poet, film director (including two of the Star Trek series and Three Men And A Baby), and an inspiration to many. He struggled with his Spock character for a long time, but seemed to come to terms with it in the 1990s, concluding decades of soul-searching with his second autobiography, 1995's I Am Spock (after 1975's I Am Not Spock).

I'll watch Galaxy Quest (in which Alan Rickman's character is a clear homage to Nimoy himself) tonight, to mix some laughs with my sadness.

Live Long And Prosper, concluded the 83-year-old man, in his final tweet earlier this week, publishing his last poem at the same time, for the whole world to ponder:

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.  LLAP
— Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) February 23, 2015

R.I.P. Maggie Estep

Her 1994 record No More Mr. Nice Girl still spins regularly in my ears and will keep doing so for a long while, but from now on, I'll be listening to Maggie Estep's poetry and reading her books as a former artist, since she passed away at the age of 50, two days after suffering a heart attack. She had had issues with heroin for a while, so her health may not have been tip top...

She had performed both on MTV Unplugged and Def (Poetry) Jam, toured with the likes of Henry Rollins and Jim Carroll, and covered Lou Reed's Vicious - and even got him to appear in her video of it.

Her last blog post was dated last Friday, and it's called Strippers, Sluts & Umlauts, and it talks about just that.

She will be missed.

Video Of The Week: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Sometimes, simple is better. So is playing to your strengths, something Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are experts at.

This song, Higgs Boson Blues, from their terrific (though not as catchy as previous releases) album Push The Sky Away is built around one simple groove, but layered and textured with multiple levels of restraint and taste captured brilliantly by directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, and cinematographer Lol Crawley.

The hirsute men comprising The Bad Seeds (currently Warren Ellis - not the comic book writer - Martin P. Casey, Conway Savage, Thomas Wylder and Jim Sclavunos) are capable of rocking out with the best of them - they are, in fact, among the best of them - but they are just as adept at holding back and letting Nick Cave unroll his storylines where they need to go.

In this case, from Robert Johnson's selling his soul to the Devil (for better guitar skills) through to current-day Geneva, home of CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research) where the so-called ''God-particle'' (Higgs-Boson) was discovered, he weaves a cautionary tale that the only certainty we have about the future is death, and we will get there anyhow, no matter the path taken, and that everything in between is at best a discovery, at worst trivial (death of a pop icon, hereby represented by Miley Cyrus, pre-VMAs/naked meltdown, ironically), and the middle just tragic (the fatal shooting of Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis).

All told through a golden voice meant to lure nubile young females into dark places.

Video Of The Week: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds were back in town this week, playing an hour and a half songs where the dark crooner once again mystified and hypnotized a sell-out crowd at Metropolis with an energetic performance, backed by one of the tightest bands in the world, which is why I decided to feature one of his live videos (though the sound is from the studio version) this week, Get Ready For Love, from Abattoir Blues (disc one of the Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus double album).

I prefer his Murder Ballads album, for sure, and his late-1980s stuff, but on any given record, there will be 5 songs I'll permanently add to my Eternal Playlist on all music devices, sometimes more. You just can't go wrong with this modern poet.

Video Of The Week: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

A little over 4 years ago, I treated myself to a very good Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds show at one of my favourite venues, Metropolis (in Montréal). Nick Cave's music has been a staple of most of my playlists (first on cassettes, then CDs, now in mp3 players) since the mid-nineties, as I got into him and his songwriting style in my teens; I'm not sure I would have liked his earlier band The Birthday Party when they were active and I was very young, but I do listen to them now as well.

Many of the things he touches turn to gold, although some of his artsier endeavours such as 2004's double-album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus seem a bit too gimmicky for me, and I don't turn to them unless I feel I specifically want to, unlike, say, this week's featured song, Red Right Hand, which I randomly insert in all of my playlists.

It's a song that's been overused, particularly in film (he could probably retire on the strength of this song's royalties alone), the version most people have heard in the movie Hellboy was actually performed by Pete Yorn; if you like cheese and odd covers, you might also enjoy Frank Bennett's version from Five O'Clock Shadow, which also contains a ridiculously overblown version of Pearl Jam's Betterman.

Without further ado...

Remembrance Day

November is a month in which we remember
Mankind's penchant for armed conflict and slaughter

From Guy Fawkes in London to WW2 trenches
To current-day Holy Wars that boggle the senses

You can't blame the soldiers who are merely doing their jobs
But you sure as fuck can blame governments who rule like they're gods
Sending young men to die for oil and territory
With the only reward of medals and glory
In exchange for lost limbs and lost lives of their comrades
In the name of NATO or other such NORADs

Yeah. Fuck Flanders Fields.

One quote I really like about wars is this one:

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.  

~George McGovern

New Year's Day

All is quiet on New Year's Day
The streets are empty
Even the snow's melting away
A new calendar won't erase old pains

But ring out the champagne
It's cause to celebrate
It's now or never
No reason to explain

R.I.P. Vaclav Havel

Vaclav Havel was a poet, playwright, writer and cultural leader in Czechoslovakia; eventually, as a respected and known dissident, he became a political figure as the regime changed. He was the tenth and last President of Czecholslovakia, during which time Slovakia seceded from the Czech Republic - a move he thoroughly opposed - and became, de facto, the first President of the Czech Republic.

He is vastly considered the leader of the Velvet Revolution, which turned Czechoslovakia from a U.S.S.R.-led-and-owned one-party Stalinist state to a multi-party democracy without the use of physical or military violence.

He died today, at age 75, in his sleep. His health had been an issue since the days where he had been imprisoned by the Communist Party for his writings and ideas, which spoke of a Czech identity, freedom and liberty, and the right to independence.

Absinthe: Nectar Of The Gods: Yahweh, Or No Way?

So on Friday, I was playing the Velvet Underground tribute show, Waiting For The Man, with new and old musician friends - and we had a blast. Most of the people there seemed to have a lot of fun as well, except maybe for the Alternate Lady Of The House, who doesn't like that style of music.

More importantly, though, was the fact that it was played at L'Absynthe, the bar named after the infamous drink 'absinthe', banned - under false pretense - in many countries between 1912 and 1915, usually because it cut into wine sales, and the wine distributors invented bullshit stories about absinthe giving epilepsy and tuberculosis when, in fact, it was used as a cure for malaria for a while by French soldiers in the 1840s, who brought their taste for it back home and inspired its popularity. The closest it got to the symptoms of epilepsy is that it has thujone in it from the wormwood, which can give spasms and lead to seizures in too high a quantity, but usually absinthe bottles contained far less of it than was first thought - although some modern brands have a relatively high 100mg of it.

In any event, it's legal nowadays, but barely imported and extremely expensive (think $12 for a small glass of a cheap brand) - and we couldn't pass up the opportunity to try it in the place that is named after it...

It tastes like black licorice, from the anise in it. That means it tastes kind of like Jägermeister, and pretty much like Ricard Pastis, both of which can be had at a third of the price, if you like that sort of thing. If you're ambivalent, it's too expensive for what it is. And if you hate it, you've just been punked out of enough money for 3 beers.

For my money, if you want to get fancy with a hint of anise, go the the Golden Elf - also  known as Liquid Cocaine, Nazi Zombie, Sledgehammer, Gestapo, Iron Curtain, TG Black & Gold, or, simply, Jägerschläger - half Jägermeister, half Goldschläger. That's heavenly.

Absinthe? Not quite. Come to think of it, not at all.