Tag: 2000s

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2001: #10 Black Rebel Motorcycle Club “Love burns”

<< #11    |    #9 >>

At some point during my second or third year in Ottawa, my youngest brother Michael came up to visit for a weekend. I’m pretty sure it was at the suggestion and financing of my mother, who had already been moved up to the NWT for a few years. Him and I were ten years apart in age, which meant by the time he was just reaching his teen years, I had already moved away from home to go to university. I didn’t really know him, though it never occurred to me at the time.

Michael came up by Greyhound bus. If I remember correctly, he caught the bus in Oshawa, a milk run route that wends its way through Peterborough and a host of other towns on the 7, a longer, more arduous trip than the express run between Ottawa and Toronto, one that Victoria and I were already sick of taking. He slept on the couch during his stay with us in that one bedroom basement apartment in Vanier but on the plus side was able to sample some of Victoria’s already fine cooking. I took him to see all the pertinent sights of our fair capital (at least, as I knew them at the time): parliament hill, the Byward market, the Rideau canal, Sparks street, the original D’arcy McGee’s pub, and of course, the Elgin Street Diner for poutine.

One of things I always remember about that visit is that his backpack was packed with more CDs than clothing and I remember thinking on that if we lived closer, we’d probably get along just fine. During the final night of his stay, we played each other selections from our CD collections, taking turns swapping them in and out of my five disc carousel. I don’t remember everything he played for me that night but a few have stuck with me: Oasis’s “Stop crying your eyes out” single, OK Go’s self-titled debut and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s debut “B.R.M.C.” (You knew I’d get here eventually, right?)

Not exactly the minute he put on the opening track, “Love burns”, but the moment the miasmic intro faded and the raunchy strumming started, the drum flourish, and ultra cool vocals, I said to my brother: “This sounds like The Jesus and Mary Chain.” Yes, indeed. Give it a listen and I’m sure you won’t disagree. It’s noisy and aggressive, it’s leather jackets and sunglasses, it’s edgy and raw. And it’s this last that fit it right in with the garage rock movement that was taking off at the time. I loved it and went out shortly afterwards to get myself a copy of the album. Check it out.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2001 list, click here.

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2001: #11 The Lowest of the Low “New Westminster taxi squad”

<< #12    |    #10 >>

The Lowest of the Low were one of my favourite bands in the early 90s. A friend of mine loaned me a copy of their debut album, “Shakespeare my butt”, on cassette tape, which I dubbed and with which I promptly became obsessed. Their sophomore album came out in 1994 and though I was initially put off by “Hallucigenia”‘s harder rock edge, grew to love it as well. Like on the debut, the Toronto-based independent alternative rock band wrote literate, punk-informed songs that referenced places and things that people who knew Toronto would appreciate. In a short handful of years, they had made a huge fan of me and amassed a cult following in Southern Ontario and in communities in neighbouring parts of the US, like Buffalo. Then, they broke up, at Cafe Diplimatico (as the story goes), while preparing to record their third album and before I got the chance to see them live.

Meanwhile, their debut album kept selling copies and their legend grew. So much so that, in 2000, when all four original members decided to reform and do a string of club shows, they sold out in short order. It was so successful they decided to do more, a “world tour”, really just a handful of shows around Toronto and Buffalo, that culminated in a headline slot at Molson Amphitheater (which is a large outdoor concert venue, for those not from Toronto) on a night that included storied openers The Weakerthans and Billy Bragg. It was a great night of good cheer and singing along to every word. I can attest to this first hand because this was the night that I, along with my friend Zed, finally got to see The Lowest of the Low live.

A few months later, the band released “Nothing short of a bullet”: a live album put together from recordings of the original string of sold out reunion shows. At 18 tracks, it features selections from the first two albums and includes a couple of previously unrecorded, yet fan favourite tunes, like “The unbearable lightness of Jean”. But that is just the first disc. Yes, my friends, there was a second disc and as good as the live material was, it was this that was real gem for me: the first new material from one of my favourite bands in seven years. It was three tracks: one was a Bad Religion cover and the other two were split between the two principal songwriters: Stephen Stanley and Ron Hawkins.

It is from this bonus disc that song number eleven on my best tunes of 2001 comes. (I know. It took me a while to get here.) On the first two albums, I typically preferred the songs penned by Hawkins over those by Stanley but it was not the case here. Stanley’s “New Westminster Taxi Squad” is a rocker and a riot. It’s got energy and jump and you can almost picture the man first pumping, in full on punk pose, while Hawkins jumps around him with the other guitar, à la Mick Jones.

“Oh say, Oh my God
You’re going to pay for a ride
With the New Wesminster taxi squad
Oh say, I can see
You’ve got the weight of the world
On your shoulder and it’s killing me”

That’s right. Sing it, Steve.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2001 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2001: #12 Elbow “Red”

<< #13    |    #11 >>

Manchester’s Elbow had been around a long time before they released their debut album in 2001. Its members started playing together in a band in 1990 when they were but teenagers, though their name changed a few times before settling on the moniker by which they are now known. They were signed to Island in the late 90s and recorded a debut album, but as luck would have it, it never saw the light. The band was dropped from the roster when Island was acquired by a bigger fish. Such is life, I guess.

I picked up on “Asleep in the back” a few months after its release, around the same time as I did Doves’ “The last broadcast”. I will forever connect these two albums, not just because they came to me at the same time, but because I saw similarities in their sounds. Both are atmospheric and many-layered, music for getting lost in with a set of earphones, but where Doves was geared more towards rave-ups and dance floors, Elbow was more introspective and cerebral. It is just beautiful music to listen to and as trite as that may sound, it is the best way I can describe it.

“Red” was the first single released off “Asleep in the back” and is one of six tracks that had originally been recorded for the aforementioned aborted album and redone here. Like much of “Asleep in the back”, “Red” is big in sound, the tap-tap of the drums are quickly joined by a relentless flailing line of keys. There’s a sliding bass and warming strings. There’s guitars that jump and dither, in and out. And there’s Guy Harvey’s vocals, Peter Gabriel all over again, and he’s singing a warning to anyone out there living too fast and too hard, a “tragedy starting to happen”. The “red” is both a stop light and a spatter of blood, and neither, but the foreboding can be felt in every lovely layer. And it all bleeds together when you close eyes and press play.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2001 list, click here.