Last night I moved from my longtime rehearsal space (dubbed The Holodeck) into a more proper, amazing studio a floor above. Finally, we actually have both a live room and a control room, with pretty good isolation. We're getting an amazing deal on it. Now that I have the space, the key thing is for me to actually make some music. It'll happen. I can feel it.
It's also next door to the nicest space in the whole building, which is generally rented out by touring musicians to rehearse in temporarily. In the past, it's seen Billy Corgan, The Black Crowes, and Sting, among others. And you know who my next-door-neighbor for the next few weeks is going to be? R.
Kelly.
Here are a few crappy pictures of the closet I will be trapped in. They don't really give a very good sense of what it's like, and please excuse the terrible no-name drumset that's in there right now, but here it is:
Jay Bennett, the incredibly talented multi-instrumentalist / songwriter / producer and former member of my favorite band, Wilco, passed away yesterday in Urbana, where his studio Pieholden Suites was located. He was Jeff Tweedy's main collaborator in the band until he was famously fired in 2001 shortly after finishing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, as documented in Sam Jones's film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. He was in the news recently for suing Tweedy, which at first seemed like a bitter swipe at his former band's success, but soon looked instead like a move of desperation to pay for the hip replacement surgery he needed to have but couldn't afford due to lack of health insurance.
A lot of people are under the opinion that the band went to shit after Jay left. I don't totally agree, as I really love the dense, layered guitar-based turn they've taken with the incredible Nels Cline in the band now. But I think Jay Bennett can take a lot of the credit of elevating Wilco from a pretty good alt-country band to one of the most innovative bands of the last fifteen years. He was a brilliant instrumentalist and was responsible for the blissful Brian Wilson-esque pop sound of Summerteeth and its noisier followup YHF, which for my money stands alongside Pet Sounds as the most perfect record ever committed to tape.
I re-watched I Am Trying to Break Your Heart last night, and it's not particularly kind to Bennett. He comes across as passive-aggressive, arrogant, and at times even delusional. But I looked at him much more sympathetically on this viewing, perhaps because I saw so much of myself in him. In the infamous argument shown between him and Tweedy about the mixing of "Heavy Metal Drummer," his frustration at not being able to verbalize his thoughts, his resistance to an approach other than the one he had planned, his desperate desire to have his argument be understood and accepted as rational — it all feels so very familiar. While of course I'd love to have the lyrical ability of Jeff Tweedy, musically it's Jay Bennett's pop wizardry I most want to achieve.
Here are a couple of songs Bennett and Tweedy collaborated on during the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sessions which were never officially released on a Wilco record. I remember spending a long time as a 15-year-old trying to transcribe the lovely Jay Bennett chord progressions of "Venus Stop the Train":
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The Uke Cabaret here in Chicago is always the highlight of my month when it comes around. On May 9 was the latest installment — titled Uke Zoologica, this time around all of the songs had to be animal themed. There were some really great acts, as always. Cabaret organizers Mike, Heather, and Tony tore it up with renditions of "Bungle in the Jungle," "Apeman," and "Barracuda." There were also some nice uke covers of David Bowie, Neko Case, Nick Cave, Duran Duran, and more.
Unfortunately, Melanie wasn't able to make it to Chicago because she had to finish up her schoolwork, as she finally graduated yesterday(!). Without her around, I had to rethink what I could do at the Cabaret. I seriously considered gathering a huge band with a choir and devoting my entire set to a full-length version of Meat Loaf's "Bat Out Of Hell," but alas, it was not to be.
But even though we were halved, The Heavy Boxes went on, with help from Kimberly and Stuart. Thanks to Alan for the videos of our set:
"Somewhere Out There" from An American Tail
"Simon Smith & the Amazing Dancing Bear" by Randy Newman
Monica sends me this censored-for-television version of the most famous line of 21st century cinema:
Though it's not even three years old, I'm already gripped with nostalgia for Snakes on a Plane. More accurately, it's not the actual film that I think fondly of so much as the anticipation that led to it. It had all the makings of one of the greatest feel-good stories of movie fandom. Seizing on the total absurdity of the plot and its perfectly straightforward title, it became a cult sensation before a trailer was even out. It was all set to be the finest example of fan influence on filmmaking to date. The (uncensored) line from the above video was not originally in the film, but when online fans demanded that Samuel L. Jackson say it, the filmmakers actually went back after the movie had already wrapped to shoot additional footage, including that line. According to legend, when the producers were about to rename the movie, Samuel L. Jackson balked, claiming the title was the only reason he had agreed to do the movie.
As you recall, after months of hype, the actual release of the movie was a total dud at the box office. So what went wrong? Well, New Line Cinema made two fatal errors. The first mistake was not moving up the release date to capitalize on the hype, instead waiting till everyone was already sick of hearing about it. The second, far graver error was in not putting my song on the soundtrack.
You see, the studio sponsored a song contest where fans were invited to write snake-related songs and submit them to be voted on online. The top ten vote-getters would be sent to the producers and director who would ultimately choose one to go on the soundtrack.
The song I wrote, "Two Snakes on a Plane," ended up getting the most votes of them all. My lyrics were quoted in an AP article that was reprinted, among other places, in the Redeye. I saw various bloggers refer to the song as the song they wanted to hear at their wedding. Oh, to be a D-list internet celeb again!
Ultimately, though, the filmmakers chose a song by Captain Ahab, a legit duo from LA, crushing my dreams of having the jam of the summer. I still have hopes that in the future, SoaP will be rediscovered and have a long life on the midnight circuit, at which point a Restored Version will be released with the proper soundtrack.
The song itself was written and recorded within a couple days. I wrote the lyrics—which alternate between disgusting and just nonsensical—about half an hour before we recorded the vocals. And then we literally only had time to record one take of the vocals before the singers had to rush off to Bloomington. I listen back now and hear so many imperfections I wish I could fix. Among other things, it's probably about 45 seconds too long. But still, it is what it is, and people seem to enjoy it enough to ask me about it about once a month, so here it is.
The musicians on the recording are credited as The Guesstimates and include Stuart Seale and Nola Richardson on vocals, Bart Pappas and Nicholas Krause on guitar, Paul Kusper on drums, and myself on bass, Rhodes, synth, and Vocoder.
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Van Dyke Parks - "Number Nine" - from Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 "Chorale" [mp3]
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The Free Design - "Kije's Ouija" - from Prokofiev's "Suite From Lieutenant Kijé," Op. 60 [mp3]
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The Toys - "A Lover's Concerto" - from Bach's "Minuet in G Major," BWV Anh. 114 [mp3]
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Allan Sherman - "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" - from Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" from La Gioconda, Op. 9 [mp3]
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The Mindbenders - "A Groovy Kind of Love" - from Clementi's "Sonatina in G Major," Op. 36 No. 5 [mp3]
a-t: i have never seen a man rock the mock turtleneck the way that one does
The always excellent If Charlie Parker Was A Gunslinger, There'd Be A Whole Lot of Dead Copycats features this lovely portrait of Van Dyke Parks in the studio circa 1968. Parks seems to be in vogue again these days, following his lyrical contributions to Brian Wilson's finally released Smile, his incredible orchestration of Joanna Newsom's Ys, as well as the Paul Thomas Anderson-fueled rediscovery of Harry Nilsson's Popeye soundtrack, which he did arrangements for. I got into him early on in high school, before I even started obsessing about The Beach Boys. The ingredients in his music added up to a perfect Evan recipe: whimsical, surreal lyrics; Stephen Foster-inspired Americana; Tin Pan Alley wit and melody; delicate, shifting chamber orchestrations; concept albums based on Uncle Remus stories, etc. He also served as my introduction to my absolute fave, Randy Newman, as Parks's masterpiece debut album Song Cycle from 1968 opens with a stunning arrangement of Newman's "Vine Street" (which Nilsson would also use as the leadoff track of his best album).
Here is "Come To The Sunshine," a single Van Dyke Parks released in 1967. The same year, Harpers Bizarre would also feature a cover of it on their first album.
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A vague early childhood memory is coming back to me - and it's only an indirect memory at that.
I was born as an American expat in a bustling city which was then a British colony (three guesses?). We moved back and forth between there and the States for a while, before finally settling down permanently in Illinois when I was in 4th grade. I was enrolled in an American-style school while I was there, but the company my family kept, largely from the Anglican church we attended, tended to be primarily British. During our first stint overseas, my brother did attend a British school, though I was too young for school at the time.
I remember a series of primers (that's pronounced primm-er, folks) assigned to him to teach him how to read. They featured characters identified by the colors of their hats: Roger Red Hat, Percy Green Hat, Billy Blue Hat, Johnny and Jennifer Yellow Hat. A Google search reveals to me that these books were called One Two Three and Away...but little else, other than a few people on message boards struggling to recall these books.
I think Percy Green Hat would make a great band name. I've been thinking about how I need a moniker to use for solo recording projects (and there's one in the works!) when Melanie's not involved in them. Percy Green Hat seems like a good choice, though I worry about the confusion caused by recording under a first name that is not your own (see: Hootie & the Blowfish). It also maybe pigeonholes me as twee '60s Lewis Carroll-inspired faux-Victorian English popsike:
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One of my favorite local bands, Chin Up Chin Up, just announced their breakup on their myspace:
So I am writing this to announce that chin up chin up will be playing our final show, at the empty bottle in chicago on may 15th. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we really had intentions to keep making music together for an infinite amount of time, but just as this band began in a natural way it is naturally coming to an end. Thank you to the hundreds of people who have helped us along the way, we have been truly lucky, and as cliché as it may sound, we could not have done any of this without you. Much love- Jeremy
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Chin Up Chin Up - "Why Is My Sleeping Bag a Ghetto Muppet?"
