Shrine To Fast Goodbyes

All my life I wonder about music. Where it's coming from, and where it's taking me. And I worry about it; it's the most massive individual influence upon my life. I worry that what is to come is not going to be as good as what has already graced my life with beautiful sounds and words that move my soul and encourage my freedom to mean more and more with each passing day.

And then I listen to Emily Haines. And I listen to a song called 'Shrine To Fast Goodbyes.' I urge you to dig it out and add it to your music collections. Every so often, we are given true beauty - that precious, delicate tenderness that makes your heart shudder. You're left moved, and grateful.

There are maybe a handful of artists with her gift. The only others I can think of with such a gift for this kind of tenderness in their music are Neil Young, Jenny Lewis and Jenny Owen Youngs.

Emily Haines - she is a shrine of delicate musical beauty.

The Doors Part 1

For my friends, this is an old old topic of discussion. They've heard me talk about The Doors for over 10 years, but amazingly my blog has been up and running for a month or so now, with virtually no mention of them, aside from the two videos permanently fixed to the bottom of the page (and even those videos have no convential lead singer in them).

For those of you who don't know me in the real world, and have also been living in the crack of a hermit's ass, a hermit who has burrowed down really deep into some rocks in a cave on a distant planet on the other side of the universe since 1965, 15 years before I was even born, The Doors are a band. A music band. A psychadelic music band. Arguably the most famous psychadelic music band ever to exist on the face of this planet (The Beatles weren't psychadelic in the strictest sense - She Loves You proves it, so shut it you filthy scousers - and stop robbin' mi' mates - 30 miles from Liverpool is nowhere near far enough away for me - City Of Culture? Bollocks. City of thievery more like - the only good things to ever come out of that city were ironically The Beatles, and then John moved to New York - ha ha, The Zutons [oh how we'd love to suck on Abbey's sax!] and of course our erstwhile friend the M62).

At the core of The Doors was a young man named Jim Morrison. He was, and remains, one of Western culture's most misunderstood idols. In an age of celebrity and shallow recognitions of even shallowier people, Morrison the image has come to almost eclipse the real person who layed underneath all that.

If you want to get a handle on a poet who has variously been described as the last beatnik on one extreme to a sixth form standard writer on the other (surely a sign of something good is when it is loved and loathed in equal measure), then of course I would recommend listening to his music - the music of Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore. But also, Morrison produced several books of poetry. These writings are: 'The Lords & The New Creatures', 'An American Prayer', 'Wilderness: The Lost Writings Of Jim Morrison' and 'The American Night: The Writings Of Jim Morrison.'

Morrison's poetry is unusual. As a very late Beat poet, he had the benefit (and the burden) of a large body of work by other greats such as Ginsberg and McClure to reference against, and to compare with. But he managed in my opinion to strike upon new ground with his words, which for me, are still some of those most capable of creating true mental imagery that is uniquely dark, and foreboding upon the picture an individual has within his soul of the outside world.

I'm not saying at any point that I wholly agree with Morrison's interpretation of reality. These are different times, and frankly less positive ones, but even then, his vision is sometimes darker than my optimism can withstand. For instance:

"Fear the Lords who are secret among us.
The Lords are w/in us.
Born of sloth & cowardice."

...

"The artists of Hell
set up easels in parks,
the terrible landscape,
where citizens find anxious pleasure,
preyed upon by savage bands of youths."1

With words and visions as dark as these small samplings, I think we can see where The Doors want us to hear. It is against this backdrop that we can see where the darkness of The Doors is really coming from. The thing is, Morrison carried this darkness, this intellectually based, but nevertheless instinctive 'shadowed' outlook of his world, with him, throughout his life. It seems to stem in part from a military upbringing (The Doors' lead singer's father was the man who pretty much started the Vietnam War in a strictly military sense), an upbringing of travelling from town to town across an America that for him didn't consist of the America us other people see - the New Yorks, the L.A.'s, and the Chicago's. Jim represents a triumph of middle America in the 50's and 60's in a way. He lived in the Hicksvilles, the middle of nowhere towns, villages, forts and the like, that we don't really see in our cosy tourist minds when we envision the USA.

Out of this, the imagery of the great plains, the broke communities and suchlike comes a great big chunk of Morrison's vision, but also, his formative years as a student in Florida and L.A provide an equal contribution to that vision. This combination of isolation and being the great 'outsider' in his childhood, and then the excesses of his early youth before fame, the prostitution he witnessed and allegedly embraced on occasions, the time spent with hobos, homeless folks, the general 'down and outs' of American society; this is a potent combination for any young person to absorb, and I suspect if Morrison hadn't been picked up by the academic and musical community in California, then he was as likely to be a murderer as opposed to a musican and poet. I think the line between beauty and horror is a fine one and Jim Morrison straddled it with the grace that a young tightrope walker demonstrates at the fairground.

The Doors. Jim Morrison. To most people, those two names are as interchangeable as the morning star and the evening star. But there was far more to The Doors than Jim Morrison alone (by his own admission as well as mine). To understand The Doors, one has to understand more than Jim Morrison - as if that alone were easily possible! The other 3 Doors are in many ways excellent examples in their time with the band of typically middle class American boys with a shared vision that stretched beyond the football field and fucking the cheerleaders behind the water coolers.

The Doors Part 2

John Densmore is easily one of the best percussionists to ever grace popular music. A wide-ranging set of influences impose upon him a massive talent that overtakes the senses with such grace in The Doors' music. Densmore is the least happy by most account with the ongoing 'product' of his band's work. The sometimes stale message of excess for excess' sake that eminates from people who laughingly call themselves Doors fans while at the same exhibiting little better than a hooligan's social standards are surely one element of John's virtual abondonment of his time with the band. When he does speak or write of it, he's is hesitant, and occasionally condemning of his band's great leader. Understandably so to a degree; for what he is condemning is as much the misinterpretation of his band's message as opposed to his friend Jim's message.

For John, the creation of the myth is probably one of the most irksome elements of the whole thing. For the average fan like me, the myth is easily shaken off, knowing the truth as we do. For John though, whether he likes it or not, The Doors will always be the biggest, the best, the greatest thing he ever was involved in creating - it is certainly the most substantive, and to see it ripped to shreds by corporations and idiots in equal measure surely pains him greatly. You see, there are The Doors as sponsored by Warner Bros. in 2007 - a lurid horrid t-shirt logo with a big blank nothing behind it and there are The Doors in your mind, behind which Jim, Ray, Robby and John used to play (and still do, for generation after generation of new fans for whom the philosophy is as legitimate to us as it was to those who first embraced it and then abandoned it in the late 60's and early 70's).

Robby Krieger. I've met him. He's a lovely lovely person. A real bright spark; kind, sociable, funny and humble. And ironically, as the man who wrote Light My Fire, the one with the most right to be an arrogant son of a bitch! But he's a guy who holds no stock with arrogance and naval gasing. Robby, along with Ray, still continues to play the music of The Doors in a live setting, and he plays it and feels it with the same standards and passion that he did first time around. For me, Robby never did drop the batton of The Doors. He's always quietly believed in the beautiful side of the band's message. The idea of living your moments in life to their brilliant best and not letting the accounting process of your life interfere with the living of it. He is as a result, the only one of the band alive who hasn't yet put pen to paper to describe his life as a Door. He has jokingly said he wouldn't publish a biography in his own lifetime as it would be too much legal trouble! Robby is the spirit of The Doors as much as anyone. His happiness is the greatest way this band sells itself - there isn't a person alive that I know about who has anything bad to say of him and it's not because he's avoided controversy in his life. He is controversial, but not with words. His music has received radio bans more than most. His controversy is his guitar, his lyrics and as a lyricist, it is amazing that what he has written and achieved has merited only a fraction of the acclaim that the work of his comrade Morrison's has done.

Ray Manzarek. A man so controversial that half the time, there's an argument about what his name is, let alone what it stands for in the history of music! He is in full, both Raymond Daniel Manzarek and also Raymond Daniel Manzcarek or to his former drummer 'my Polish keyboard player'!!! To those of us who like him, he's just plain ol' Ray. He's been accused of being a liar, a fantasist, a fool and a clown, and they're some of the nicer insults thrown at him. But frankly, they're the insults thrown at him by idiots, who seek only to minimise the profound positive influence he had on Jim Morrison and the overarching message of The Doors. Ray Manzarek was, and still is The Doors. Jim said so himself. Morrison was once asked by a journalist: "So, you're The Doors, Mr. Morrison?" Morrison said "No." He pointed at Ray and said: "That man's The Doors". Never a truer few words spoken in my opinion. The Doors' music was crafted by all four members in equal degree. But the message, the voicebox, the loudspeaker that told the world to wake up and listen - that was (and still is) Ray.

I've met this guy too. He's not what you think you'll meet. Not in the least. He isn't loud, he isn't particularly sociable frankly. He's certainly not rude or anything, but he's quiet, maybe because he's tired of being shouted down by naysayers and insult-artists. It's a shame if that's the case. He has an unusually kind quality in his body language and his way of looking at you that belies his image as 'uber-uncle of hippies' the world over. The waters that ran deep through Jim Morrison run equally deeply in Ray. Despite his willingness to give interview after interview over the years, he has given little away about who he really is and what inspires him the most. What has inspired him for over 40 years however is his wife, Dorothy, who in The Doors time, influenced the band as much as anyone else. Without her, we would not have the best versions known of 'Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)' and 'Back Door Man.' She was the one who placed these songs in front of a young Jim Morrison and said to him 'try these out.' To understand Ray Manzarek, you have to try and understand that he has a duality in his life - he is both The Doors and the husband of Dorothy and father to their children, and grandfather too. He is a complex figure of a man, a genius most of all as an organist but also a genius of myth-creation.

I would speculate that John Densmore's legendary disliking of Ray Manzarek as a person stems as much from Ray's ability and willingness to spin the myth of Jim Morrison as much as Ray the personality. Ray's an eminantly likeable guy; there's no real way to call him a bad person on that level. It is the biggest criticism fans have of Ray - that he is as responsible for the creation of The Lizard King persona and mythology of Jim Morrison as anyone is. Maybe he is. But he wasn't the creator of the whole myth. Ray only helped create the part of that myth that referred to poetry, Dionysian excess as opposed to excess writ large, and song, the joys of women, and wine, and beauty in all its forms, no matter how philosophically terrible the end product might appear to others less willing to suspend disbelief and normal rules of reason and morality that hold us back from realising our true potential as existent creatures in an all too finite human experience. Manzarek didn't create 'Morrison the drunk' - Jim pulled that trick off by himself and no-mark hangers on sold the 5-buck tales to pay their bar and heroin tabs. If people want to lay blame for the misrepresentations of The Doors' philosophy and Morrison's message, then I tell you this, they're way wide of the mark when they lay that blame at the door of Casa Manzarek. Without Ray, The Doors would have been at best, a curious footnote in the history of California sub-culture.

Go take a look at this band. You'll be opening The Doors. But not just of your musical mind. Your whole perspective, the whole range of your experience has the potential to be bent and then shattered into new truths, not by some promise of salvation or peaceful resolution that other more foolish people have offered to those scared enough to want simple closed answers, but into a new realisation, a 'new-born awakening' if you will, of the world you live in. The Doors music had that effect on people in 1965, in 1971, in 1978, in 1991 and for me in 1996. It still continues to do the same for people in 2007, and will always do so. Its message is universal and eternal. It speaks truth to powers subtle, to old-held falsehoods, to new-found fads and to any aspect of your life that you dare apply it to. And if I haven't made it clear for you already, there is joy as well as fear in The Doors.

I hope it doesn't scare you too much...

Footnotes:

1 James Douglas Morrison: The Lords And The New Creatures (1969)

Barcelona for a weekend...like a million others

Many of you will know it well, others will never have been, but I thought bugger it, time to decamp to Barca for the weekend.



It was fun, it was interesting, I nearly got mugged. But I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Saw all the sights - the unfinished cathedral, loads of Gaudian stuff and ate a whole octapus!

Go visit, I'm sure you'll enjoy it...

Jenny Owen Youngs, Night & Day Café, Manchester, 11th December 2007

Hi,

Another week, another lovely gig. Last night's thoroughly entertaining offerings were from one of my cute and cuddly favourites, the one and only Miss Jenny Owen Youngs.

I stumbled across Jenny one night a while ago whilst dossing on MySpace, jumping from page to page. She really stuck out from a crowd of bland indie pop offerings; her voice is subtle, yet piercing right through to your heartstrings. She has a wonderful range, and most of all a real ability to write songs which are just plain beautiful. Her sense of humour shines through too (plus, and it's barely worth mentioning I suppose, but she is really hot!).

That humour was in evidence last night in a performance that was accomplished and utterly professional, working her way through technical problems with crappy leads and monitors with the grace and skill of a seasoned performer. She is also top class with her fans, talking to one and all after the show. We had a short, but intruigingly funny conversation about condoms, which was about the only comfortable conversation I've ever had with a woman on that particular topic. She was also nice enough to write me an entirely new ticket and sign it too...

Jenny Owen Youngs is someone we will hopefully see rise quickly in terms of fame and recognition. Although, a little bit of me hopes that she gets to play these small, intimate venues for many more years and that her small but growing band of loyal fans get to spend many more nights enjoying her company, her prodigious talents and her all-American charm that has already made many a young boy like me fall right in love with her.

Rock on Jenny...

Thanks yet again to Thunderfrogs for yet more top class footage of Manchester's finest concerts. And the venue for last night is worth a visit anytime - it's The Night & Day Café, on Oldham Street in central Manchester, England.

Under The Blacklight

Available now (click on the pic to buy it!):

Get this album or die with a hideously incomplete record collection...

Emily Haines

Emily Haines, simply a genius in a world where the word genius is overused to put the mundane up against the genuine article, like Emily is. Many will know her as the lead singer of Metric, the lucky and curious minority will of course know her as the creator of an amazing album called "Knives Don't Have Your Back". Listen to her, fall in love with her voice and her sweet, luscious playing of the piano and remember her when a moment in your life is in need of meaningful music...

www.emilyhaines.com

And I Bet You Thought I Was Just Being Paranoid Before...

Unbelievable...http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7125895.stm

This is what disgusts the average man with a brain; a bloke kindly donates sperm to allow a lesbian couple to have a child and how is he thanked? By being butt-frigged by the CSA for child maintenance payments!!! Yes, seriously, even donating sperm is now used by the feminist nutcases (and apparently the complete bleeding morons at the CSA) as a way to run the males of this country even further into the ground. As far that whine by the CSA about legislation not being partnership based, the CSA as a government authority has the choice of how to, or even if to, interpret and/or apply that legislation.

Damnit, when are they going to get it all over with by rounding up all 30 million men in this country, force us all to wank into a cup and then shoot us once we're finished? It's not far away, I promise you!

A Snapshot Of What I Do On A Dull Monday Night

Well, it's Monday (alright, sorry I mentioned that tragic fact), but it will soon be Tuesday, so dry those tears dearie. Here's what I end up doing on a Monday night - writing to friends who are off having more fun than me in places like East Anglia (which for the Jade Goody worshipping morons reading this, ISN'T in Germany - if it was, they'd just send it back to us in a neatly wrapped parcel).

Instead of filtering what I wrote into a bloggy type write-up, I'll just paste the whole damned e-mail here that I sent to the Supreme Leader of Thunderfrogs blogspot:

Hiya "Supreme Leader Of The Thunderfrogs",

Hope you haven't got too much sand in your shoes down there! Anyhow, while you're off galavinting on the East Coast, I'm up here working mi balls off to bring us the best new sounds which you and others will undoubtedly claim to have heard of 15 years ago (thinking of the man who's CC'd into this e-mail Mr. Martin, King of the 'I heard it first' one-liner!!! lol)...an indie guru's job is a thankless one! lol

Here are my recommendedids:

http://www.plugawards.com

Go here, make your way to the voting section and listen to everything by pressing the twee dinky play button to the left of the artists' names. My personal highlights, apart from the obvious - Emily Haines (2 nominations - woo-hoo and a hearty hurrah!) and The Arcade Fire (37.4 nominations I think and justly deserved) are:

http://www.batforlashes.com/default.htm - sound really great and are that thing that is as rare as water in a waterless non-watering zone (or shit in a sandstorm) a British independant band with talent and appeal at the same time (they're from Brighton - so even though they're British, they're probably so desperate not to be that they drove as far south as they could and then set up a band) Go to their site and just listen damn it!!! lol

http://www.thewhiterabbits.com - now these Yankee boys are very interesting; almost like an American Coral (as in the band The Coral, not the stuff under the sea next to Australia).

Hope you enjoy - say hi to the nice people I met yesterday! Hope I see them all again soon. Oh, the Micra's back - shiny new left hand side on it and running sweetly, so you get to come home in your favourite matchbox.

In a bit Comrade,

Daniel

This is the life - Monday night, dossing around on the Internet, and finding the artistes who will hopefully be gracing my 2008 gigging schedule...roll on truckers!

Rilo Kiley Live At Manchester Academy 2; 25th November 2007

Well, it's rather late in it's coming, but my write-up to one of the best gigs of the year is here. Mi mate wrote it, so:

http://thunderfrogs.blogspot.com/2007/11/rilo-kiley-in-manchester-241107.html

I will merely add a setlist and say: "Wot e' said". Feckin' loved it. Jenny, I'll have your babies!

Setlist - Rilo Kiley - Live At The Manchester Academy # 2 - 25th November 2007

1. Close Call

2. It's A Hit

3. Breakin' Up

4. Dreamworld

5. Moneymaker

6. The Execution Of All Things

7. Ripchord

8. Under The Blacklight

9. Silver Lining

10. I Never

11. Give A Little Love

12. Pictures Of Success

13. Smoke Detector

14. 15

16. Does He Love You?

17. I Love L.A.

18. Portions For Foxes

Easily the highlight for me was Jenny Lewis' stunning rendition of 'Under The Blacklight.' I haven't heard a voice so pure, so free, so perfect in a very very very long time. She possesses incredible talent and displays that talent with a fair share of sweet sincerity in her delivery and a humbleness that is at odds with her assured talents on stage. I must add also, lest this become yet another 'I love Jenny Lewis' blog, that Blake Sennett, Pierre de Reeder and Jason Boesel on lead guitar, bass and percussion respectively are three genia without whom I suspect Jenny would be emotionally rather lost. You can see in their live work as well as on their studio albums/eps/etc's, the respect, the fondess and the love each has for the others. They were really well complemented by their stellar support bands, Grand Ole Party and Orenda Fink who joined Rilo Kiley throughout an amazing 18 song set, providing vocal harmonies, trumpets saxphones and god only knows what else, turning an already fulfilling Rilo Kiley live experience into a veritable cornucopia of Rilo Kileyastenics.

I have a friend, Martin (who will probably never read this on the grounds of always wishing to avoid technology, electricity, fire and so on), whom I was oh so kindly driving home from work in Manchester last week (we live in Bolton - send money and culture urgently please) and anyway, he was berating the sheer number of American and Canadian bands currently inhabiting the British indie-scene (yes, I know 'indie' - generic word but I'll be fucked if I can think of a better word to describe the scene), and he was claiming (I think!) that these cross-Atlantic cousins of ours were effectively blocking British talent from coming through, in much the same way all them foreign footie players block all the young English players from failing upwards at winning for England. Well, I disagree. I say to the USA and to Canada and to Brazil for that matter for Cansei de Ser Sexy alone, THANK YOU - OH GOD THANK YOU!!! There really would be bugger all to listen to without Americana-indie washing up on our cold and barren musical coast at the moment. Bands like Rilo Kiley, Tilly & The Wall, The Yeah Yeah Yeah's, The Shins, The Polyphonic Spree, The White Stripes, the marvellous Emily Haines and of course her band, Metric, Thee Silver Mount Zion and so on etc. writ large are really helping keep the scene alive right now (oh I forgot The Dears, and by Christ, The Arcade Fire!). While British indie sleeps, the great Americo-Indie lion can roar. And I like the sound of that cat's whiskers...

Once again, we love you Jenny Lewis, your heart and soul is a joy to hear on the stage. Blake, Pierre and Jason (thank you for the partial drumskin once again!), you're the best damned thing to happen to my ears in quite some time.

The Continuing Denegration Of Fathers

If you have heard of Fathers4Justice, and are curious as to why they are so loud, and so angry as a protest group, you need go no further than the following BBC News report to find out why...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7109774.stm

This is the country we are living in, just about the only place in the world where the state officially sanctions the notion, the idea, the ideological belief that fathers are irrelevant to their children and have no rights, only responsibilities towards those children. There is no relationship anymore between case law regarding the rights of fathers and the natural law governing the rights (and of course, responsibilities) of fathers. I ask you, what have we become as a society, when we allow secret courts to make decisions about children and parents, and we allow open courts to inform the nation that fathers are meaningless entities, just cash machines for mothers?

Feel free to comment as always - this is one place where open debate is most welcome. But please, no insults and no abuse - i.e., keep it civilised please.

Rilo Kiley Live At The Cockpit - 20.11.2007

Onwards with my all-consuming musical theme, and onto one of my all-time favourite bands - Rilo Kiley...


Suffice to say, having seen this band 4 times now, and Jenny Lewis 6 times in total, I know what to expect. A Californian oddysey of indie-country-rock. They were as on fire as I've ever seen them, with Blake in particular really raising his game with some stunning solo work and all-round passion. Jenny was happier than I've ever seen her on a stage as well, laughing and having a lot of fun. Oh and thank you very much Blake's brother, Snowball, who kindly passed me one of Blake's guitar picks - a Dunlop .88mm. Cheers Snowball!!!

I won't bother with a 37 page dissemination of a gig that was great to the people who were there; I'll just say, if you weren't there, or you weren't at The New Pornographers in Manchester, then you're square. Square I tell you!!! Like this: 日 lol

I must also add that Rilo Kiley have one hell of a support band with them - Grand Ole Party who dazzled the bujeebers out of me!

Can't wait to see these guys in Manchester - Sunday night!!!

Finally - more photos to follow as I text them to Thunderfrogs very own Andy, who e-mails them to me! Sincere thanks to Andy and his teams of Indonesian midget slaves over at his place...

WE LOVE YOU JENNY LEWIS!!!

Great Bands Of The Here & Now, And The Yesteryear

Like millions of you around the world, I have an unflinching passion for real music. You know the kind of thing - The Arcade Fire (not The Spice Girls), The Decemberists (not Take That), The Doors (not Bananarama), and The Shins (not Generic Boy/Girl Band # 34). So, a sample of bands that I like (the band names and pictures link to videos):

The Great Bands Of The Here & Now

1. The Shins

2. The Decemberists

3. The Arcade Fire

The Great Bands Of Yesteryear

1. The Doors

2. Neil Young

3. Donovan

Welcome To Generic Blog # 34!

Hello, and welcome to Generic Blog # 34. Why Generic Blog # 34 as a name? Well, it had to do with alcohol (as all good things do), a recent night out at a gig in Manchester, and an ongoing competition between my friends to come up with an ever better band name for a band that doesn't exist yet. We were watching The Duke Spirit at the Night & Date Cafe on Thursday, 15th November 2007, and as is the norm at these things, there was a support band on. No-one remarkable, but they weren't crap either. Of course, no-one knew who the hell they were, so when my friend asked me who the band was, I sarcastically replied "Oh, it's Generic Band Number 34" and thus a legendary concept was born - the Generic Number 34. This is the first incarnation of it, and it seems appropriate to name it so as we are apparently being drowned by self-indulgant western imperialist pig-dogs like me, flooding the internet with self-indulgent mush like this. So welcome, and pardon my apathy. Leave your will to be weird at the front door, as I will need it later. Thanks!