Forgotten Music #18: Minutes from Downtown - "Heaven Street" (1983)

Minutes from Downtown are a Canadian one-hit wonder that aren't very well known even for their one hit, "Heaven Street". Admittedly, I hadn't even heard of them until running into them on a compilation called Pure Canadian Retro 80s, and I pretty much champion every obscure Canadian band from the 80s there is. "Heaven Street" captivated me from the first time I heard it a few years ago, and I scoured around to find more information about the band, but not finding much about them on the web. Reaching out to my fellow Canadian new wave fans, my friend Gary Flanagan said he had found a place in the States that had a LP pressing of their one and only album, and he payed a pretty penny to get it. The original LP was out of print and I was unlikely to find it in any of my many digs through dusty record bins that I so love digging through.

Last year, during my bi-monthly search through pawn shops and second hand stores in Vancouver, I found it. But, I found a CD repressing of the album, that was pupulisted by Popguru Records back in 2009. I had no idea it had been released on CD and neither did Gary. Even better, it was still sealed in plastic. The second-hand store had no idea what they had, and doubtful too did the person who originally owned it know what it was. I bought it for $2.

To be honest, the full album is no great shakes. It's pretty standard 80s pop fare. "Heaven Street", however, is on a very different level. It's one of those rare pieces that perfectly captures the sound of the day in shimmering brilliance. It deserves to be celebrated with the best pop songs of the 80s, alongside Split Enz "I Got You", The Hoodoo Gurus' "I Want You Back" or ABC's "The Look of Love".

The compilation I originally heard it on is also pretty interesting. There's a lot of tunes you'd expect to see on a Canadian 80s comp (Men Without Hats' "Safety Dance", Martha and the Muffins' "Echo Beach", Glass Tiger's "Don't Forget Me When I'm Gone"), but there's a lot of more obscure acts that deserve their own post in Forgotten Music some day (The Jitters, Strange Advance, Bamboo, National Velvet, The Deserters)

Covers Courageous #7: Mudhoney - Hallowe'en

It seems strangely apropos that we find Mudhoney covering Sonic Youth here. Both bands were seminal bands of their time, but ended up being overshadowed by other, more commercially successful bands, only for both bands to gain notoriety later on in their careers.

Sonic Youth started in the heady early days of the New York City punk scene in the late 70s and early 80s. While The Ramones, Talking Heads, Television and Blondie were tearing up CBGB's and signing contracts to major labels, no-wave bands like Suicide, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA and Sonic Youth were twisting the post-punk sound into highly abrasive and unstructured noise. Sonic Youth toiled at their music for more than ten years, releasing albums on several obscure and defunct labels until the rise of grunge in the 90s saw them signing to the DGC label, alongside of bands like Nirvana and Beck. Their first unlikely mainstream success came soon after, with the albums Goo and Dirty getting rotation on MTV and alternative radio. After Sonic Youth's day in the sun, they slunk back into the underground for several excellent albums ranging from their traditional sludgy noise to more structured work with David Grubbs of Gastr del Sol, until they went on hiatus in 2011.

Mudhoney's story is similar. A groundbreaking band in the late 80s in the Seattle grunge scene, Mudhoney formed out of the ashes of early grunge band Green River (which also featured members of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Mother Love Bone). Mudhoney pioneered the grunge sound of fuzzed out, heavily distorted guitar rock, which other bands took to much greater success, like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. Like Sonic Youth before them, their more successful co-horts went onto major label contracts while Mudhoney stayed local with Sub Pop Records. Mudhoney eventually graduated up to the Warner label for a few years and had a few minor hits, like having theiir “Touch Me I'm Sick” song featured in the movie “Singles”, then headed back to their old Sub Pop home. The band still records and tours, seemingly outlasting the bands they inspired.

Mudhoney's cover of Sonic Youth's “Hallowe'en” comes from a split single released by Sub Pop in 1990, with Sonic Youth covering Mudhoney's “Touch Me I'm Sick” on the A-side and “Hallowe'en” on the B-Side. Theoriginal Sonic Youth tune is a creepy, creeping, minimalist noise-fest. Mudhoney turn it into a feedback-drenched wall of guitar noise.It also appears on the deluxe edition of Mudhoney's Superfuzz Bigmuff.

DNTTA Playlist for June 19, 2015

Artist - Song - Album (Label)* indicates Canadian Content 

Listen to Do Not Touch This Amp every Friday 8-9 PM Pacific at www.thex.ca 

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Modern Superstitions - Bandits* - Modern Superstitions (Last Gang)
Ornette Coleman and Pat Metheny - Video Games - Song X (Nonesuch)
Zebrina - Revolution of the Mind - Hamidbar Medaher (Independent)
Useless Eaters - American Cars - Singles: 2011-2014 (Slovenly)
The Blind Shake - Diamond Days - Fly Right (Slovenly)
Broken Water - Thread to Connect - Tempest (Hardly Art)
Teenage Head - Drivin' Wild* - Some Kinda Fun (Attic)
Crosss - Golden Hearth* - Lo (Telephone Explosion)
Heat - This Life* - Rooms (Kitsune)
Needs - The Only Good Condo is a Dead Condo* - Needs (File Under: Music)
Gateway Drugs - Friday's Are for Suckers - Magick Spells (Dine Alone)
Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld - In the Vespers* - Never Were the Way She Was (Constellation)

Latest Earshot Reviews June 2015

My latest reviews for Earshot. ttwwrrss is the definite standout here.

Wendy Atkinson - The Last Fret

Laila Biali - House of Many Rooms

San Fermin - Jackrabbit

ttwwrrss - ttwwrrss_2

DNTTA Playlist for June 12, 2015

Artist - Song - Album (Label)* indicates Canadian Content 

Listen to Do Not Touch This Amp every Friday 8-9 PM Pacific at www.thex.ca 

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DD/MM/YYYY - Inifnity Skull Cube* - Black Square (We Are Busy Bodies)
Old Kid - Yorkshire Lady* - This Echo (Maisonneuve)
The Acorn - Cumin* - Vieux Loup (Paper Bag)
Lene Lovich - Telepathy - Stateless (Stiff)
Suzanne Nuttall - Comme une trophee* - Trophy Wife EP (Independent)
Helium - Oh the Wind and Rain - The Dirt of Luck (Matador)
Venera 4 - Red Blooms - Eidolon (Independent)
Spring - To Accuse* - Celebration (Independent)
Ponctuation - Morts et Vivants* - La Realite Nous Suffit (Bonsound)
Kensico - Halifax Road* - White Swan (Independent)
Three Inches of Blood - Balls of Ice* - Battle Cry Under a Winter Sun (Teenage Rampage)

RIP Ornette Coleman

I haven't been blogging lately, but that I'm hoping to change very soon. And I haven't talked about avant-garde jazz in a while. With the death of one the style's originators, it's time to talk about it a bit.

Ornette Coleman died today (June 11) at the age of 85, from cardiac arrest. Coleman played the alto sax, which has become one of the more iconic instruments associated with avant-garde jazz, due to it's range and noisy wail, and no one could wail noisily like Coleman.

Coleman took up the alto sax at age 14. Interestingly, he played a more straight ahead style in his early career in the early 50s, but showed a drive to create his own, often radically different, music was usually met with derision from audiences. Once he began study in jazz at The Lenox School of Jazz in 1959, he met Don Cherry (not the hockey guy...) and they began a long collaborative friendship, often playing in each other's bands and opening for each other on tour.

1959 saw Coleman release The Shape of Jazz to Come, a landmark in experimental and free jazz. His albums were polarizing, some claiming they were genius, others calling him a fake. Nonetheless, the album set the jazz world on it's ear, and other improv and free-jazz players became to emerge, like Charlie Haden and John Coltrane.

The 70s saw Coleman form his Prime Time band, described as a "double quartet", featuring 2 guitarist, drummers and bassists. It also saw the landmark album, Song X, with Pat Metheny as collaborator.

Into the 90s and 2000s saw more released, and Coleman branching out into rock collaborations, playing with Joe Henry and Lou Reed. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for his album, Sound Grammar.

Coleman was a forward thinker, and an obtuse one too, seeing jazz as something more about personal and free expression. To many, his work was difficult, even impossible, to access, But his approach was the thing that drew me to his work, and to avant-garde jazz in general. Let's turn things sideways, take away the things we take as habit and see where things go. That's the essence of experimentation.

DNTTA Playlist for June 5, 2015

Artist - Song - Album (Label)* indicates Canadian Content 

Listen to Do Not Touch This Amp every Friday 8-9 PM Pacific at www.thex.ca 

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Johannes Welsch - Moon Dance* - Stunderthorm (Independent)
Konono No. 1 - Ungudi Wele Wele - Congotronics (Crammed Discs)
Baaba Maal - Demgalam - Wango (Stern's Africa)
Suuns and Jerusalem in My Heart - 2amoutu 17tirakan* - Suuns and Jerusalem in My Heart (Secret City)
Caetano Veloso and David Byrne - Voce e Linda - Live at Carnegie Hall (Nonesuch)
Os Mutantes - Ave, Lucifer - Everything is Possible (Luaka Bop)
Tony Succar - Billie Jean - Unity: A Tribute to Michael Jackson (Sony Masterworks)
Easy Star All-Stars - No Surprises - Radiodread (Easy Star)
Eric St.-Laurent - I Will Follow You* - Epoch (Independent)

DNTTA Playlist for May 29, 2015

Artist - Song - Album (Label)* indicates Canadian Content 

Listen to Do Not Touch This Amp every Friday 8-9 PM Pacific at www.thex.ca 

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Fond of Tigers - Let's Carve Forever Together* - Release the Saviours (Drip Audio)
Deep Listening Band - Section I: Invocation By Ione* - Dunrobin Sonic Gems (Independent)
Gray Matter - Footsteps* - Footsteps (Independent)
Matana Roberts - Dreamer of Dreams - Coin Coin Chapter III: River Run Thee (Constellation)
Robert Kusiolek - Qui Pro Quo: Act V - Qui Pro Quo (Multikulti)
Mark Wingfield - Mars Safrron - Proof of Light (Moonjune)
Jon Lundbom and Big Five Chord - Scratch Ankle - Jeremiah (Hot Cup)
Pugs and Crows - Like the Clouds*  - Fantastic Pictures (Independent)

The Problem with Record Store Day

I've usually been a big booster of Record Store Day. I always go to small record stores, used record stores and pawn shops when I look for music, and I know where all the decent stores when I go to other cities. Heck, I even bought a t-shirt back in 2010 from the Record Store Day website, and I'm wearing it as I write this article. But, since the rise of RSD and vinyl sales in general, I fear that the event is taking away the joy I feel from the event and killing the stores that the day was created to help.

The problems are many, and, while Record Store Day is still a great idea, the problems have come together to start to significantly affect the day itself. First, there's the glut of bad vinyl on the market. As vinyl has started to blow up in sales again, there's been a real explosion of dubious and overpriced records being released. Check out the release list for this past year's event.There's 7" singles from electronic bands, old science fiction movie soundtracks, coloured vinyl 7"s of long released singles, and a shocking amount of classic rock. There's even a lullaby album of Grateful Dead songs. All of this is often priced at 2-3 times what it would cost you normally, depending on where you are picking up the music. It's also all in limited edition, very small publishing runs of under a couple of thousand copies.

This, in turn, has led to rampant speculation on the records.Because the records are so rare, collectors who want them and are willing to pay for them will pay huge prices to get them. People bought up the records and started reselling them on eBay for trumped up prices. If you're an independent record store, you're likely getting only 1-2 copies of the promos, those will be priced normally (say $25-$35 bucks or more), buyers get them then resell them online for ten times that much. There was even reports of a store selling their material for high prices before they even had the records in hand!

There's the issue of the quality of the vinyl too. Neil Young recently commented about how vinyl is a fad and has become a fashion statement. He also said that the music on vinyl isn't any better than what's on CD, since the vinyl is just a copy of the CD audio. And since vinyl has a lower dynamic range than CDs, it sounds worse. I could go on and on about the difference between CD and vinyl, the loudness wars and such, but safe to say that CD audio on vinyl is always going to sound worse than the CD itself. I've also heard that coloured vinyl, which a lot of RSD releases are pressed as, sounds worse than normal black vinyl, though the debate is still going on. Also, Neil Young seems to be going a bit off his rocker lately with his Pono player, claims that the higher resolution of the files there will be appreciated more than standard digital files, despite science saying no human ear could tell the difference.

Then there's how the day pushes out the independent artists that really need the exposure, which is my biggest problem. When the CD came into vogue, record companies stopped making vinyl records. Vinyl pressing plants were closed and less vinyl was pressed. Now, with vinyl coming back onto the hipster radar, more is being pressed. But look at the release list again. Notice all the big older names on that list? That's what's being pressed: lots of Beatles, The Kinks, Grateful Dead, Rolling Stones, lots of bands who have already sold millions of records and don't really need to sell many more. Furthermore, most of the records being released are already in ample supply and in print, so the only real reason to own them is to say you have a picture disc or limited release vinyl version of them. They're collectors items, rarely sold for their value as music, but as items of interest, designed to be put into a tight vinyl sleeve, put into a box and stored away to accrue value. Due to this, time for small labels and independent artist to press their records is limited, and, in fact, is being pushed back for months. And these aren't limited releases like the RSD records, they're regular releases for these labels, which is how they make back their money. It lead to the closing of Mammoth Cave Records, one of Canada's most critically celebrated indy record labels. Because they couldn't get time into pressing plants, and they had no desire to release music digitally, they had to close up shop:

"Since we started, music fans went from 'collecting' to 'downloading' to 'streaming.' We are a record company, not a digital music servicing company," the label wrote. "We love records, we don't love playlists. And the nonsense about the 'return of vinyl' has come at the cost of the people who have been keeping it alive all these years." 

Sadly, Record Store Day is killing records.

This reminds me a lot of the comic book implosion of the 90s. Back in the early 90s, there was a big surge in printing small print runs of special covers, gimmick covers and other kinds of unusual comics. Some of these comics ended up being super valuable, like Superman #75 (which was the Death of Superman), which came packaged in a sealed bag with a poster and black arm band. A lot of folks bought these comics and stored them away, or resold them for twice the cover price or more. Series were relaunched with a #1 issue with special covers, or printed with multiple variant covers, or sealed in bags. There were shake-ups in the stories as well, shifting them in radical directions for the sake of increased sales through controversy. Older comics were also being sold at record prices. All this led to collectors running into the market, buying up comics, then storing them away hoping they would become valuable. But, the comics in the 50s and 60s had smaller print runs, weren't collected and often ending up forgotten in attics, to be discovered decades later. The comics of the 90s were abundant and everyone was collecting them in mint condition. After a couple of years of this, the comics were worthless to collectors and the medium had been destroyed for readers.

For me, music is about enjoying listening to it, not collecting it. Having the record in your hand, putting it on your turntable, listening to it and enjoying the pops, skips, warbles and wobbles is what music is all about. I've also much more enjoyed records on CD rather than vinyl due to the compact nature of it, while still having the artifact quality to it. You can still hold it in your hand, look at the artwork, read the liner notes. There's the satisfying feeling of "I own this" to it, that doesn't exist in a digital file on  your computer, phone or iPod. CDs also sound better to me as well. But, there's some music you just can't get on CD, which is where vintage record collecting comes in. I don't see much point of buying a new record for three times the price of the CD when I can have the CD. The thrill is digging through a box of records, going into the back of a used book store, and pulling out a long forgotten record that hasn't been heard in ages. And paying a few bucks for it to boot! And then putting it on your record player, not putting it in a box in a dust resistant sleeve never to be heard ever.

In my opinion, as with the 90s comic implosion, the quicker the record collector, the collector that does their collecting for financial gain, and especially ones who do it on the backs of music fans, the sooner this kind of collector leaves the hobby, the better. Record Store Day started with the best of intentions, but has turned into a lumbering marketing gimmick for major labels, and a cash cow for speculators. Records need to be put back into the hands of music fans, of small record labels and of independent bands, or the same thing will happen to vinyl that happened to comics in the 90s. As an interesting side effect to this, there's been a huge upswing in DIY labels and independent artists to begin releasing cassettes again, leading to an upswing in sales. Tapes are cheap, their plentiful and it's very easy to record onto a blank cassette and mass produce them.

Like William Gibson said, "The street finds it's own use for things."