Welcome to the 10th edition of Sunday Bloody Sunday! Looks like I’ve managed to stick it out for 2 and a half months and I’m still going strong! I’m back and secure in my mountain stronghold right smackdab in the middle of Calgary, safe from the lack of merge lanes that make up Scooterville.
The Junos were fun, for the most part, as was the rest of this week. Watched the Canucks game on Wednesday, and a concert on Thursday, a review of which should be up pretty soon here on 411. The NHL playoffs are here, which pretty much means we get to see hockey, hockey and MORE hockey EVERY night on TV for free! Great stuff if you’re as pitifully stereotypically Canadian like me.
This is a very special edition of SBS, as not only is this the tenth edition of this column, but the tenth edition of SBS also happens to fall on 411 Day! That’s right! Screw Easter, that Jesus guy and that stupid bunny that shits eggs. The REAL celebrating that ought to be done would be celebrating the namesake of this website!
So in honor of 411 Day, I encourage you to go out and chairshot some kid that’s searching for some Easter Eggs (keeping in mind that wrestling, that which MADE this site what it is today is FAKE, that is). I encourage you to go to and pay tribute to our MIA Minority Report member, and current 411 Music Zone CHAMPEEON, Aaron Cameron. I encourage you to make monetary donations to Ashish and Widro (and me, ha HA!). Go out to church and cut a promo against the priest in his pulpit saying that you worship a ‘higher power’. Start up a blog and write about how ‘BLACK’ things are! This is 411 Day! The possibilities are endless!
Woo! Okay, now that I’ve advocated violence against children (not that there isn’t anything WRONG with that…wait…you mean this ISN’T a good time to be PC….?), desecrating Christianity as a whole and lining the pockets of Internet Tycoons Widro and Ashish, I think it’s time to get down to covering…
Da News
– RIP: Paul Atkinson, guitarist for British rock group the Zombies. Dead at 58.
– Good ole Courtney is facing legal action. AGAIN. This time around, though, it looks as though someone is wanting to sue Ms. Love. Rich Shertenlieb, a radio producer, claims that he helped to co-write for the latest Love single ‘Hold Onto Me’. Apparently Mr. Shertenlieb has his bases covered, as he claims that not only does he possess recordings, but he also has access to witnesses and…DUM DA DA DUMMMMM, lawyers are going to be brought in.
Could this finally be the nail in the coffin that proves that Courtney Love is incapable of coming up with a creative thought entirely on her own? Seriously, how many more of these sorts of things need be made before people wake up and realize that Courtney is untalented and Hole, while decent enough, was wholly overrated for what they were. Of course, this results in e-mails like the following:
“you are either stupid, tone deaf, or a deaf-retarded-moron; possibly all of these things. this record is one of the most true to form rock records i’ve heard in a long time. In a time of pre-packaged garbage, this is the real thing…..how much do you wanna bet that if courtney love’s name wasn’t on this, and you heard it not knowing who it was, you’d be raving about it’s greatness……unless you are just a deaf-retarded-moron.” – xxxxxx@sbcglobal.net
This, coming about a month or so after my Courtney Love review was posted here on the website. I dunno. I’d venture to say that the only ‘morons’ out there are people who think that Courtney Love is capable of doing something actually worthwhile, but then I might just be grasping at straws.
– In news that should delight a specific someone out there, the Deftones are going to be hitting the studio in June to begin work on their follow up to last year’s self titled effort.
– Elvis Costello, who got a pimp a column or two back for a couple of books he’s going to be writing, will be putting out 2 new albums. Il Sogno, will be Costello’s first full length orchestral composition, which is working with him in conjunction with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with conducting duties being held by Michael Tilson-Thomas. A bonus disc of material from Costello’s upcoming show at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam, Holland is also being looked at for inclusion for this disc, and all in all should be an interesting listen. North, Costello’s disc that came out last year, was one of the albums that I thought was rather underrated for what it was and kind of slipped under everyone’s radar.
Costello’s other release will be a straight up rock album, which will feature support by his band, The Imposters.
– The Beastie Boys will be coming out with their first album in 6 years with To The 5 Boroughs. The disc will be politically charged, featuring the usual call to kick Bush out of office that alot of artists are beginning to trumpet these days. You know, I can’t say I’m a political pundit by any sense of the word, but if Bush doesn’t get voted out of office coming up in November, it’s going to leave a LOT of egg on everyone’s faces. I mean, seriously, EVERYONE is coming out and saying Bush should be ousted. Time will tell regarding this one, I suppose. The first single from the Beastie Boys will be ‘Ch-Check It Out’ and track listing would be:
“Ch-Check It Out”
“Right Right Now Now”
“The Hard Way”
“Time To Build”
“Rhyme the Rhyme Well”
“Triple Trouble”
“Hey Fuck You”
“Oh Word?”
“That It’s That All”
“All Life Styles”
“Shazam!”
“An Open Letter to NYC”
“Crawl Space”
“The Brouhaha”
“We Got The”
– Conor Obrest, also known as ‘that emo kid that doesn’t sleep’, has started up ANOTHER record label. Team Love records will be putting out a disc for Tilly & The Well, an Omaha based folkie act, and will be headed up by former Sony VP Nate Krenkel. Team Love will also be making artist’s material available for download on their website on the day of release, allowing fans to get a chance to feel out the group before they decide to go and purchase the album. Once again, it’d be awesome if more labels would follow this line of thinking instead of being so chickenshit regarding downloading. Yadda yadda, filesharing is bad, but good, I hate the RIAA, yadda yadda.
– Angelique Kidjo, an African artist that is really quite good, will be putting out a new album April 27th. ‘Oyaya!’ will be an interesting mix of tunes and covering a variety of genres. Only including Kidjo here so that I can give her a pimp, as I don’t think I’ll really get another chance to do so. If you’re looking for something ‘new’ or interesting to check out, I’d recommend trying to find some of her material and seeing if she’s ‘for you’. Her website should have some tunes available for sampling, if you’re interested.
– Ian MacKaye, that dude who fronted up Fugazi, is in a new band, and should have a new album coming out pretty soon. The Evens, which is the name of the new group that MacKaye is heading up, should have a new album coming out soon.
Yeah, this is a pretty weak week for news. My apologies.
– Some people took offense to me saying that the Junos are generally bland and not all that interesting. Ratings for the awards show would seem to agree with me, as viewership for this year’s Junos was down about 700,000 viewers, going from 2.2 million to 1.5 million. Not the kind of number movement you want for a good awards show.
Speaking of the Junos, Sam Roberts bashing of Nickelback was quite amusing. For those of you who weren’t watching, Nickelback ended up winning the best group award, and, upon taking the podium, essentially told the crowd that they weren’t going to waste anyone’s time talking about people no one cares about. Sam Roberts ended up winning right after him, went up and fired back and said that he was going to blather on about people that no one talks about, but since he CARES, he’s going to talk about them anyways. ME-OW! Could a possible Sam Roberts/Nickelback deathmatch be in the cards?
– A Maynard-less Tool has begun work on the forthcoming Tool album, which is slated for release sometime either late 2004 or early 2005. Knowing how Tool likes to take their time perfecting things and fine tuning things, expect this to come out probably 2006. Ha, ha ha.
Sorry, news SUCKS this week. Umm, check out Slipknot on Jay Leno of all places tomorrow night, if you’re into them, and…yeah…since I’ve mentioned Slipknot, that helps to move into our next section rather nicely.
Anti-Pop: Give Them Blood And They’ll Love You For It
Melchor talks about Fear Factory and Slipknot, and his misadventures with said groups. I gave him a pseudo-pimp last week, but his discourse regarding the Fear Factory interview, something which I helped him out with, makes for interesting reading. PLUS, it’s 411 Day, so the more 411 links, the merrier, right?!
Elliot makes another appearance and tears the roof off this mutha. Read up on the latest regarding the Scotsmanality invasion of 411 in Smilo’s latest.
Tom comes out and tells us why he’s such a Nirvana fanboy. No joke.
Mr. Biscuiti makes an appearance with one of his semi-regular columns, chiming in with some thoughts regarding Nirvana. While we’re at it, check out the Nirvana page for all of 411’s coverage regarding Nirvana, including an article regarding the murder/suicide theory written by yours truly!
Mr. YOU has someone subbing for him this week. See who has the nerve to try and fill Mr. YOU’s shoes by clicking the link.
Aaron’s not contributing this week, due to reasons outlined in last week’s column. The Master Of (The 411’s Music Zone) Universe gets a pass simply for being that damn good, though.
Lots of reviews this week, as well. Check out the reviews section for stuff from Mathan, Tom D’Errico, Jacob Ziegler and Tim Madden.
Anti-Pop: B-Sides
Quick note, I got 8 out of 10 of my Juno predictions nailed, and out of the 2 I didn’t get, I had picked 2 artists to be ‘likely candidates’ and the other artist that I didn’t end up picking ended up winning, so, go me. My Juno column also actually garnered me the most mail I’ve recieved for a column, which is pretty cool. Good to see my hard-on for all things Canadian isn’t unappreciated. However, some people have got a bone to pick with me…
“I just got through your latest Juno-bashing column, and it actually makes me a bit sad that you dedicated what I’m sure was quite a few hours of your life to something you apparently hate….Why not be proud of the fact that Canada has a decent music industry that produces music both interesting (Dears, etc..) and popular without being total crap (Nelly Furtado, etc..) which is hard to do in a relatively small country constantly swamped with foreign media? Mr. Winter
But then again, some people LIKE what I’m doing…
“…You bring that same quality of entertaining information to 411 music. The fact that you pimp obscure Canadian artists is an added bonus. Keep it up!” – Grunt (not to be confused with Grut!)
I guess that old saying applies, in that you can only please some of the people most of the time. Still, I’m getting REACTIONS from you kids, which is what I’m looking for, and is good to know that some of you out there are reading this. Anywho, enough toodling my own horn, let’s talk about something a little more vaguely interesting than MYSELF.
So I was over at a friend’s house the other day watching Muchmusic, and I have to say that goddamn, it looks like the record labels are viewing videos as being something FUN and useful and can be used as an extension of artistic vision and all that yadda-yadda. In about a half an hour span, I came across the following videos:
Brand New – ‘Sic Transit Gloria’
Okay, so I thought that this was going to be a really blase, generic video with the guys just standing around playing their instruments and the such. However, they decided to go the route of insane cheography and tell a little story inside their video, having this one guy possess control over a bar full of people. Good song, too, as is the rest of the Brand New album, for that matter.
D-12 – ‘My Band’
This one…I heard on the radio here in town and I didn’t really care all that much for the song. I mean, this is more or less all Eminem for this track and he doesn’t sound that, um, good. However, the video is hilarious. The 50 Cent bit with the treadmill was awesome, along with the mockery of the Nipple Incident. The end bit with Eminem dressed up as a matador had me in stitches, I dunno why… I think it was the moustache he had going on. I dunno, I found it to be bloody brillant.
A Perfect Circle – ‘The Outsider’
As for bloody brillant…this is probably the funniest, most un-Maynard/APC/Tool video out there. Bikini Bandits, featuring a cameo from Maynard in the most unlikely of spots. Seriously, for those of you who know what APC/Tool is ‘supposed’ to be like, you’ll laugh yourself stupid over this. Another one worthy of checking out, trust me on that. Ha ha ha.
Outkast – ‘Roses’
I mentioned this video awhile ago, talking about the whole concept of it. Alls I have to say is that the execution of the two rival gangs (The Speakerboxxxers and the Love Belowers) came off hella great, and Andre 3000 is pretty good at hamming it up.
Hilary Duff – Uh…
Well, 4 out of 5 ain’t bad.
As an aside, it’s interesting how many videos these days have little spoken word interludes. 3 out of the 5 videos I listed up there have a fair amount of ‘talking’ parts in them. Wonder if this is a trend that’s going to continue or just a weird co-winky-dink.
Sound Advice
There should be a live review coming up from me for a Hawksley Workman concert that I went to on Thursday. The opener was a young singer/songwriter by the name of Joel Kroeker. I happened to really like him, so he gets the SA slot for this week, and there ain’t a DAMN thing any of y’all can do about it. Mwahahah.
Kroeker is a Vancouver based guy whose latest release came out not too long ago. I listened to it at work a little bit, and if you happen to be a fan of guys like Pete Yorn, Jack Johnson, Ben Harper and the such, you’ll find that Kroeker’ll fit very nicely into your record collection. It’s quiet and relaxing music that happens to be quite good. I enjoy Kroeker’s voice, and the album’s not all that offensive, mwahahah.
I’m getting lazy this week, unfortunately, so, I’m gonna wrap things up pretty quick. Kroeker’s live act is pretty good, although I’d like to see him get some backing with a supporting band and see if his material could be expanded on a little. I’m not sure if it’s inexperience for Mr. Kroeker or what, but it seems like he’s a little unsure of himself onstage…a little timid, perhaps. He does do a pretty good reworking of ‘Hallelujah’ by Leonard Cohen, though and he’s able carry himself well enough on stage…although I wouldn’t give him a hearty 110% endorsement. Maybe once he’s gotten some touring under his belt, we can see…
Download ‘Goodbye Jane’ if you’re looking for a sample of Mr. Kroeker, or pick up his CD from his site, joelkroeker.com.
Other Artists Featured In Sound Advice: The Dears.
The End Is The Beginning Is The End
Not much blathering going on here from yours truly this week. I think I’ve gone on long enough elsewhere, so I will leave you with three simple words as to what you should do this forthcoming Tuesday:
Buy. Kill. Bill.
That’s it. Have yourselves a great weekend, and check out our post-411 Day wrap up with Melchor tomorrow!
