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Featured Stories
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One man's pre-dawn stumble down the hallowed music streets of New York
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From soul mamas to indie rockers, the far-reaching influence of "Isn't It a Pity"
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What Goes On, Who Covered It Best
Which version of Big Star's "Kangaroo" did we decide was the best?
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Members of the Go-Go's on life before, during, and after the band
What Goes On
Bandcamp Band of the Week: Ghost Pants
We at Crawdaddy! are big fans of Bandcamp.com, which allows independent bands and musicians to design their own webpage as a forum to expose and sell or give away their music. Each week, we dig through what Bandcamp has to offer to bring you some free tunes that we’re digging.“Ghost Pants do their hardest not to exist on any level other than a virtual one.” That’s what Last.fm has to say about the Glasgow musician, and I’m starting to believe it, as even the mighty Google generates little info on the elusive artist. What I do know is this:
1.) The name Ghost Pants is both awesome and hilarious… can’t help but feel envy and a serious chuckle every time I read it.
2.) The dude enjoys wearing upside-down flower pots on his head.
3.) Most importantly, he also makes some pretty spectacular slow burning, atmospheric jams that are all available for free. Sweet, right?For the most part, Ghost Pants relies heavily on his instrumentation and production, which I guess you’d expect from a guy whose only quote on his Myspace page is “reverb as a crutch.” Crutch? I’d have to say no… There’s some really good stuff here (and he certainly shouldn’t be scared to use his voice a little more).
“Light” jumps out with fuzzy drums and beach-y guitars. The vocals are pushed to the back, echoed and soft, but pleasantly seductive in the way they complete the mood and atmosphere. “Fortress”, which you can hear after the jump, calms the instrumentation a bit and lulls you into a comfortable and contemplative state with its guitar effects and layering coupled with the distant vocal play. Analogue Hearts (one of the two free Ghost Pants EPs available) is really a complete and cohesive sonic experiment, well worth your time.
Check Out the Latest Additions to Rock Art Rock
Fan of concert photography? Perhaps you’ve noticed those four little boxes on the right, mid part of our homepage. Those are just a small sampling of our Rock Art Rock gallery, where we feature some amazing rock concert photos by amateur and professional photographers from all over the world.
We’ve got some new additions for you to check out, and if you’re an aspiring rock photo-journalist, you can find out how to submit your work to the gallery by clicking on that link above. Our latest contribution comes from the talented Ben Jay. Have fun perusing.
Bachman and Turner: Still Taking Care of Business
Randy Bachman is waxing nostalgic as he looks at the stage of Winnipeg’s Pyramid Cabaret, a small rock club in his hometown. “This was ground zero for Bachman Turner Overdrive,” Bachman says, speed-talking with excitement. He was gearing up for his first gig with Fred Turner and their new Bachman & Turner project, which took place on May 31st. It was the first time he’d played live with Turner, in front of an audience, in almost 20 years and at the time of this interview, which took place just prior to that gig, he was brimming over with restless energy. “We started out here playing in cover bands like a lot of other guys, trying to sneak one or two of our own tunes into the set. If we were really lucky, one or two weeks later someone from the audience might come up to you and say, ‘What was that song you played between “Walk Don’t Run” and “She Loves You” last Thursday?’ We’d get to play it again, and when there was a good crowd reaction, it made us think that maybe, just maybe, there was a chance we could write more originals and start to make a living at this music thing.“Back in the ‘60s, this place was called the Jade Disco, then the Twilight Zone and a bunch of other names, but it’s always been a rock club, so to us this is hallowed ground, the heart of the rock scene in Winnipeg.”
Their tour kicked off at the Pyramid Cabaret on May 31st before they headed to, as Bachman put it, “a small place in Toronto, then the Relentless Garage, a 500-seaster in London” before hitting the Sweden Rock Festival “to perform in front of 35,000 people.”
Bachman said that he’d had an open invitation to play the Sweden Rock Festival for years, provided he could get Turner to sign on. “Fred said he didn’t want to go on the road as a nostalgia act. He told me he’d only go out if we wrote some new stuff that could stand up to the older tunes. It took a while, but that’s finally happened. We’ll be releasing our new album, called Bachman Turner, in September.
“The pieces started to fall into place a few years ago. I was working on a solo project and decided to invite a few people to guest on the album. I lined up Neil Young, Paul Rodgers, and Jeff Healey, who passed away after doing the tracks, and Fred. I sent [Fred] a song called ‘Rock n’ Roll is the Only Way Out’ and he sent it back to me with a couple of the new tunes he’d been writing. When I heard what his refrigerator-sized voice did to the song, I told him I’d scrap the solo album if he wanted to get together and make a record. And we did.
Bad Religion Put “The Devil In Stitches”
Bad Religion have released “The Devil in Stitches”, the first single from their forthcoming disc The Dissent of Man (due out 9/28), for your general listening pleasure. It’s a perfectly pleasant mid tempo rocker with no real payoff but plenty of that typical Bad Religion heart. At this point, what more could you ask from these guys? How many “We’re Only Gonna Dies” do you think they have left in them? Jesus, get off Greg Hetson’s back already! At least they made the cover of Dissent 3-D so all the damn wiener kids will like it.Notes from the London Underground: Brand New Memories Past
There’s something about sharing music with people. I might have heard a song a thousand times before and yet playing it for someone else always provides a chance to hear it with fresh ears. Such was the kind of musical rebirth I was greeted with this past weekend, after waving goodbye to my beloved city streets and making my way down south into the magic mist, rolling green hills, and abundant hoof prints of rural Devonshire for a long overdue visit with my grandparents.Sitting at the kitchen table of Penswell Cottage, my feet resting on wooden floorboards and my eyes perusing Norwegian wall hangings and other such artifacts of warm childhood memories, it was time for a good, long catch-up with my Grandfather and Mormor (as she is known to us Hunter-Dennis children). And, with literally years having passed since we last had a proper one, a music swap was an inevitable and completely necessary part of our afternoon.
Between them, these two have lives richly steeped in musical history, and within their record and CD collections, there is always a new discovery for me to make. My grandfather has the spirit of jazz and the soul of delta blues running deep within his veins, not to mention an affinity for Blondie and many a story of prowling London’s night clubs as a youth in search of some smooth saxophone or gritty guitar to bend an ear to. My grandmother loves the folk poets: Dylan, Guthrie, Donavan, Tweedy. And then there is the extended family tree from which they stem: A bunch that includes countless musicians and composers, and Mr. “Hall of the Mountain King” himself—Norwegian composer Edward Grieg—among them.
Needless to say, when the three of us are together, there is always much musically we find to connect on.
That being said, it’s unlikely I’ll ever get them to appreciate Nirvana.
Plastic Bertrand A Big Fat Phony
You know “Ca Plane Pour Moi”, that wacky punk song Chevy Chase and his family inched through the Louvre to in National Lampoon’s European Vacation? That tune’s been the calling card of one-man Euro New Wave act Plastic Bertrand for decades now, his ace in the hole if he ever got a parking ticket or met a cute young intern. Alas, “Ca Plane” is Plastic Bertrand’s ace no more—today the singer was forced to admit he Milli Vanilli’d that shizzle.It turns out record producer Lou Deprijck sang the version of “Ca Plane Pour Moi” we all know and love. Deptrijk began legal proceedings to get proper credit for the song in 2006; this week, a linguist ruled in court that certain inflections in “Ca Plane’s” original recording could only have been made by a person from France’s Picard region, i.e. not Mr. Bertrand (who hails from Brussels). This forced Plastic, real name Roger Jouret, to finally come clean today about his worldwide deception and disillusion to about a million aging New Wavers.
Of course, PB claims he only agreed to clam up about the whole thing for money and that he’s the real victim because he was “manipulated” by Deprijck, but how can we trust anything he ever says again? Et tu, Plastic? We didn’t tolerate this from Rob and Fab, and we sure ain’t gonna tolerate it from you!
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone Is Wrapping Up for Good
Owen Ashworth, the man behind the keyboards-and-vocals driven Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, has announced that he’s wrapping up the project for good after 13 years and five albums. That’s quite a timeline. But before he’s through, he’ll be rolling through the States and Europe for one final tour . Read more about the impetus behind his decision to dissolve the project, as well as a touching goodbye shout-out, on his Myspace page. Fear not though, fans, he’s far from done with music for good. Thanks for Prefix Mag for the tip!
Check out North American dates after the jump.
Neil Young Set to Release Four “Lost” Albums
Neil Young and crew are hard at work putting together a follow-up to last year’s monstrous Archives Vol. 1 (1963-1972). Young’s website discloses that part of Archives Vol. 2 will include the release of four “long buried” albums. Chrome Dreams, Homegrown, Oceanside-Countryside are three previously unreleased studio albums, while the fourth is the live recording from an Odeon-Budokan show with Crazy Horse.Homegrown is said to be “the darker side of Harvest” and was pushed aside in 1975 in favor of Tonight’s the Night, and similarly, Chrome Dreams was sidelined for 1977’s American Stars ‘n Bars. Also, as per Young’s advice, it’s time to dust off your record player, as the lost albums will first see the light of day specifically on vinyl. No word on a release date for the second installment of Arcives, but we’ll keep you posted.
Afternoon Mood Elevator: Jenny Lewis Get Happy With a Puppet
I love how the dude playing guitar (Jonathan Rice, her boyfriend that she’s putting a record out with soon) doesn’t crack a smile or play along with that creepy puppet even once.
More videos from this session at Paul’s Puppet Music Hall after the jump. read more
New Classics: Yo La Tengo, I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One
by: Andres Jauregui
I was denied (suffice to say) a ticket to see Yo La Tengo perform at a time when I probably could have benefited from seeing them. It was post-I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, but not too-far-post. I suppose I would have enjoyed the melodies, but I’m not sure I would have dug the noise, so berated in the liner notes to Painful (was it a joke?), that’s split ears every time I’ve seen Yo La Tengo live. In a packed room at Maxwell’s, it can be brutal. But I’m not going to deny that enduring and eventually enjoying Ira’s epic six-string abuse whetted my palate for the noise rock that I now indulge with near total impunity.
I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One employs noise to great effect, and thankfully, it’s not always a high decibel shriek that does the job. There’s smoldering feedback, crooked-note stabs, persistently held toy organ chords that pervade entire songs. Chronologically, they definitely weren’t the first rock band to do it, but for me, Yo La Tengo, and this album in particular, opened me to the realization that noise can be quite musical.
read more
by: Andres Jauregui
published: July 28, 2010
in column: New Classics, What Goes On
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