1000 Songs: Colin Medley

1000 Songs: Colin Medley

I have now posted one thousand songs from my live recordings to this blog. My introductory thoughts on that landmark can be found here, but long story short: I asked some folks to pick some of their favourites to help me celebrate.

Colin Medley has been chronicling the underground music scene in Southern Ontario for the last ten years though photographs, writings, recordings and videos. He regularly posts on his websites colinmedley.com, morningnoonnight.ca and on twitter: @vid_kid.

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$100 - Positive Hex

This is a song $100 played during the years 2009-2010. I was expecting it to turn up on their second album but it never appeared. Heck, at this rate it might never get released, so I'm glad Joe got a great recording of it. Love the way Ian and Simone sing over top of each other at the end.

Constantines - Justice

The Constantines were just the best band to see live, but I'll admit I took 'em for granted near the end. I caught almost all their local shows from Shine A Light-era onwards, probably close to 20 times. However, when I heard they were playing Wavelength's 10^th Anniversary at the Polish Combatants Hall, I decided to sit it out. After all, I’d just seen them play four times a month earlier at their own 10^th anniversary celebrations. Of course, what I didn’t know at the time is the Wavelength show would turn out to be the Cons final Toronto show, where they performed their first album in its entirety. Would have been nice to see.

Jon-Rae Fletcher - Big Talker

This is just a great recording of this song. Another show I wish I’d been at. Hope he makes another album one day. I feel like he should be better known. What an amazing songwriter… and that voice! Damn.

Sean Nicholas Savage - Grandson

One of my favourite musical moments of 2011 was seeing Sean Nichols Savage at SXSW. I know a lot of folks who have been digging what he’s been dishing for a couple years now, but I never got around to checking him out myself. So when he hopped on stage at the POP Montreal showcase, dancing and singing to his iPod-powered backing tracks, I was instantly enraptured and have been a fan ever since. He’s always putting out new records (three in the last year!) and I’ve yet to hear a bad song.

Braids - In Kind

I picked this one because it’s a new, unreleased song by Braids. I heard them perform it at the Polaris gala in September and had it stuck in my head for several weeks. I don’t know what else to say. I respect how much this band tours and I look forward to their next LP.

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You can always click on the tags below to read more about the shows these songs came from. Have there been four or five songs posted here that made an impact on you? If you'd like to get in on the action and make a list, feel free to send me an email: mechanicalforestsound@gmail.com.

Sunday Playlist #8

Sunday Playlist #8: Just a restless feeling by my side

Amy Millan - Bury This

Vetiver - Wishing Well

Jon-Rae Fletcher - Big Talker

Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love

Casey Mecija - Barking At Your Door

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You can always click the tags below to see what I originally wrote about the shows these songs came from.

Gig: Jon-Rae Fletcher

Jon Rae Fletcher / Ryan Driver

Imperial Pub (back room). Friday, July 24, 2009.

How has Jon-Rae Fletcher changed in the past couple years? Consider these lines from "Best of My Time":

I've heard some people say

forty bucks is too much to pay

when you're out drinking the night away

Back in the days when he was backed by the rollicking River, he'd lean into the final line: "But I say it ainnnnnnnnnnnnnn't". Now, the song's a little less rambunctious, and on this night, hitting that same line, he says, with an implied chuckle, "Well it kinda is."

I tend to think we kind of like to create little narratives for our pop heroes, and a little switch like this is grist for the mill in the tale of Jon-Rae Fletcher's own mythopoetical tale of recklessness and redemption, a prodigal son of the scene returning as a visitor to dispatch the wisdom of lessons learned.¹

Playing again in the cozy back room of the Imperial Pub — site of another Jon-Rae gig thirteen months ago when he was bringing his new songs to the old town — there was a bit of a smaller crowd this time, about a couple dozen, all told. I was out with R., a friend from the Old Days, who came out based only on my recommendation. Honoring the vibe of the place, I was unironically drinkin' bottles of 50 and generally enjoying the surroundings. "The white piano haunts my dreams," R. lamented as we settled into the back room, looking at the low-slung stage and the old stand-up piano flanking it. There's usually a clear demarcation between the Imperial's regulars and folks coming out for a show like this. The regulars, for one thing, are given the respect of place that they can head outside through the door behind the stage and go for a smoke.² One such guy — scruffy beard, Tiger Cats jacket — ducked out and came back in during Ryan Driver's opening set. Sitting down beside that piano for a minute, he seemed to be taking it all in as he pulled what looked like a small piccolo from his pocket and looked, for one queasy second, like he was going to start playing along, before heading back into the main area of the bar.

I was mostly familiar with Ryan Driver for his role in some of the Rat-Drifting bands. That's as good a sign-post as any to give some indication of what he was up to, a sort of fractured folk sound. Playing solo acoustic in a variety of tunings, mostly involving a high string or two being flattened enough to give the guitar a bit of a banjo-y sound. Driver has a pleasing voice (shades of, say, Sandro Perri and Bob Wiseman) and could hit the high notes cleanly when he wanted to — though sometimes, for effect, he'd mess with those those as well. Musically, his songs got by without a strong melodic sense, eschewing easy hooks for a trickier internal logic, dodging traditional structure to the extent that most of the time the ending of the song came as a sudden and unexpected stop. Sometimes, music like this turns me off, but Driver kept each song going with enough momentum that I was carried along. It helps that he's clearly got the chops to pull this off. Mighta just been the 50 speaking, but I dug this.

I'd come in expecting that Jon-Rae's set would be solo acoustic, so it was a pleasant and interesting surprise to see that this was going to be a bit more expansive, with Crystal Dee Denham's bass and Denver Rawson's trombone reproducing their fine work on the recent Oh, Maria album. Also somewhat unexpected was Jon-Rae's re-embrace of his own back catalog, as he split the set between the new album and his older stuff, something that he has pretty rigourously avoided in the past year. So besides solid runthroughs of "The Big Talker" and "Downtown", we were treated to an Old Songs one-two of "Time and Effort" and "Two Hands" as well as later River-era standards such as "Best of My Time" and "Fuck Me". The trips to the past even stretched back to "Fourteen Years", a song Jon-Rae said he wrote, in fact, fourteen years ago, his first country song after being in a "terrible teen band". The set ended with an excellent solo take of "Fire", which Jon-Rae would have left on to go out on a high note had he not been called back for a couple more, including "Come Back to Me", not heard in these parts for quite some time.

A very encouraging set. Jon-Rae comes across as being more comfortable in his own skin than he was a year ago, far less tentative, and reconciled to his own past good work.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ Which is to say, of course, that I have no notion as to what's a biographical clue and what's just a good line, just that it is pretty irresistible to try and wrap all of this up into a little story where the art and the artist blend into each other.

² I've also wondered if there's any interesting byplay at that back door between the Imperial's patrons and the non-overlapping group of guys hanging out at the discount sneaker place right beside there. Take note, prospective documentarians, slice-of-life observers or aspiring odd-couple sitcom writers.

Recording: Jon-Rae Fletcher

Artist: Jon-Rae Fletcher

Song: Best of My Time

Recorded at the Imperial Pub's back room, July 24, 2009.

Jon-Rae Fletcher - Best of My Time

My notes for this gig can be found here.

Album: Jon-Rae Fletcher / Oh, Maria

Artist: Jon-Rae Fletcher

Album: Oh, Maria

Speaking about his hands, this may well be Jon-Rae's first album where his reach doesn't exceed his grasp. But that might indicate that the former has receded more than the latter has expanded.

To put that another way: in the past, the definitive versions of his songs always seemed to come on stage, but here the recorded versions seem to be the equal of the live presentations I've seen — but this time round, the songs might not be as good. A casual song cycle of love and murder, Oh, Maria has the feel of an author shifting from autobiography to genre fiction.¹ Or, at least, we can hope that the doomed love story is more allegorical, an oblique way of reflecting on whatever darkness Jon-Rae has gone through.

Regardless, we do have some well-written tunes here, dealing with love and darkness.² Putting The River behind him³, it's a bit spare musically, but special notice must be made of Denver Rawson's trombone, which adds just enough to keep things from sounding too lean.

This disc is a welcome return for Fletcher, but I'm left with the impression that he isn't reaching as far as he could as a songwriter. Hopefully this'll be received warmly enough to encourage him to keep soldering on.

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¹ I'm aware here of the sort of tension in thinking that every "I" in a song up to this point has been an 'authentic' first-person report. But there remains a felt closeness in a song like "Fire", where it does feel like the product of an actual experience.

² Of the latter, "Downtown" takes its place in the noble subgenre of oblivion-seeking songs like Danny Whitten's "Come on Baby Let's Go Downtown" and Jimmie Dale Gilmore's "Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown"

³This shift has caused me some slight consternation when it came to filing this disc. Hitherto, his discs had been alphabetized under "J", for "Jon-Rae and The River", but this one clearly should go under "F". Does one break up the set, or file them all together?

Gig: CMW (Saturday)

CMW: Jon-Rae Fletcher / Young Galaxy / Les Handclaps / The Hoa-Hoa's / The Beekeepers / The Disraelis

Lee's Palace / The Horseshoe / Rancho Relaxo / The Silver Dollar. Saturday, March 14, 2009.

My normal approach to these sorts of things usually involves pre-planning/ arriving early/ staying put. But with nothing seriously top-to-bottom compelling me, I decided, for a change, to wing it and use my wristband to its full advantage, with just a copy of eye to give me some idea where I was heading.

9 P.M.: Jon-Rae Fletcher @ Lee's Palace

His in-store performance rekindling my interest, decided I'd better not miss his full band set. So got into Lee's a few minutes before nine.¹ There were a respectable number of people inside for that early in the night, and it certainly looked like there were a few number of people who came early to get seats and were settled in for the evening. The band actually came on before the top of the hour and launched right into a set again dominated by Oh, Maria. Jon-Rae was backed by a three-piece unit, travelling, I guess, without the keyb and trombone that added a bit of extra texture to the recording. The backing was generally decent — although the guit player missed a couple notes, he had the right vibe. Playing to a room mostly there for other bands, there was reasonable applause for the numbers, plus a small cadre whooping out and shouting requests clearly there to hear Jon-Rae. Honouring that bunch, the band left for a few solo numbers from the back catalogue, including "Fire" again, and a partial take on "Just One More" where the spirit was willing, but memory of the lyrics was weak. It was a fine performance, and my hope now is that Jon-Rae can reconcile with some more of his old songs and mix up his setlist a bit.²

The place had filled in even more during the set, and as I made my way out, I was taken aback by the length of the line stretching down the sidewalk outside the club. Was everyone out to see Elliott Brood and Cuff the Duke, or was it going to be like this everywhere?

10:10 P.M.: Young Galaxy @ The Horseshoe

As it turned out, I had no problem getting into the 'Shoe, which was well-filled, but not packed. Just had time to grab a drink and head towards the stage as Young Galaxy came on. I had liked their album okey, but I had been truly sold on them in these same digs in the fall of '07, where in a smeary wall of guitars and smoke-machine haze, they totally blew headliners Besnard Lakes off the stage. I was hoping for some of that same live spark, as well as some new material, which is exactly what I got. The band, in fact, played only a couple songs from the debut album, giving the bulk of the set over new stuff. It was all good, and some of it (especially a trio of songs led by Catherine McCandless' vox) were a cut above that. One in particular (possibly called "Burning Heart") was jaw-droppingly excellent, a sort of shoegazing slow-dance number. Plus, some style points for frontman Stephan Ramsay, who thoughtfully despoited his guitar on the overhead pipes before leaving the stage. The new stuff seemed pretty warmly received and it certainly whetted my appetite for their forthcoming album, going a long way towards ensuring that I'll be seeing them again when they hit town for a full show.³

11 P.M.: Les Handclaps @ Rancho Relaxo

I knew I was aiming to make the Silver Dollar my ultimate destination for the night, but the blurb for the eleven o'clock band wasn't compelling, so I decided to take a random detour to check out Rancho Relaxo. As I walked up the stairs and into the room I noted that the floor was covered with shiny confetti, and I was briefly worried that Peachcake, who had been first on the bill there that night, had somehow imploded, leaving only a residue of sparkling glitter.⁴ As I flashed my wristband, my mind was struggling with two things: a) is that, in fact, "Pump Up the Jam"? and b) hey, is that Mitsou?

The answers were "yes", and "not quite". I had walked into a room of people dancing to a Technotronic cover. This was Les Handclaps, who turned out to be a sort of electro-rappin' yé-yé combo, backing tracks augmented by dudes on keyb and guit, and fronted by Lorraine Muller, who indeed looked not unlike Mitsou's older sister clad in fetish gear. Their music, mostly en français, was a sexy dancin' good time, and the mostly-younger crowd were really into it. Of all the random acts I could have wandered into, this was a pretty good result, the sort of thing I might not go out of my way for in my usual manner of things, but greatly energizing fun to take in.

12:30 A.M.: The Hoa Hoa's @ Silver Dollar

Thusly pumped up, I headed 'round the corner and into the Silver Dollar in time to catch a song and a half by Picturesound, enough to make me feel sure I'd been right to give them a miss. Nothing particularly wrong with them (though the singer seemed a little weak), but their Madchester-styled choons seemed like a rehash I wasn't looking for.

A bit of a wait, then, but fortunately the club was much less packed than it'd been twenty-four hour previously⁵, and I was able to find a seat and relax until The Hoa Hoa's⁶ came on, which turned out to be quite a treat. They managed to press the exact buttons to excite me, playing songs that sounded like Nuggets singles played at 33 1/3, with the chorus cut out and the instrumental break occupying the bulk of the real estate. Which is to say the focus wasn't so much on the songs (which featured the vox pretty low in the mix, as one more sonic element rather than a featured attraction) but on the rhythmic interplay — though not in a "jamming" kind of way: more like the musical equivalent of watching someone working out a logic puzzle, resolving how the psych leanings bump up against something more austere and exacting. Very exciting, and I am on the lookout now for their disc and another chance to see if they sound like that all the time.

1:30 A.M.: The Beekeepers

Apparently fulfilling some sort of quota, The Beekeepers occupied the same "cute collective" slot occupied by The Ghost is Dancing the night before, to not much better results. Again the constant shuffling around between instruments, again the props.⁷ And songs that weren't particularly interesting, all dressed up and overarranged. Not for me.

2:30 A.M.: The Disraelis

Waiting through The Beekeepers turned out to be worth it, though. A trio sharing a drummer with The Hoa Hoa's, The Disraelis had a more stripped-down and shoegazing sound, with the guitar textures playing up against briskly-played bass. Not quite as mesmerizing, but I did like their sound quite a bit. Well worth seeing, and a good way to end to the night and the festival.⁸

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¹ Though I still like seeing a show at Lee's, the rigmarole at the door, staffed by oft-surly bouncers, is getting off-putting. To get in, everyone had to queue up, show I.D. and get a bag check — none of which happened anywhere else I went for CMW.

² Even an Annie Lennox cover would be appreciated.

³ Random note: as I was leaving, Jeff Cohen (with whom I am apparently becoming weirdly fascinated) was working the front door, monitoring capacity. He paused in counting patrons off to quickly remark, "Hey, Anti-Flag! Cool shirt!" to the guy in front of me.

⁴ It's also possible that they travel by teleportation, and this was some sort of by-product of their departure.

⁵ Though still well-populated by loud, drunk, spastically-dancing types. Dag.

⁶ Pronounced "wah wahs".

⁷ In this case: a bubble-blowing machine, and a mannequin torso mounted on a turntable. Whimsical! (Or, possibly, evoking some sort of cultural commentary that I'm missing out on.)

⁸ I heard later from K., who I nodded at on the way out (chatting up a conference-badge-wearing fellow) that the subsequent band's performance involved a mosh pit. I feel fine for having missed that.

In-store: Jon-Rae Fletcher / Hollerado @ Criminal Records

Jon-Rae Fletcher / Hollerado

Criminal Records. Saturday, March 14, 2009.

After the Trash Palace gig ended, had time to stretch my legs with the walk up to Queen Street, caffeinate myself, and wander leisurely over to Criminal Records. Any worries I had about having to fight through the crowds were dissolved by the rather meager turnout to see Jon-Rae Fletcher's solo set, which was about a dozen people, bandmembers included. Sporting a new, pomade-enabled quiff¹, Jon-Rae treated us to a half-dozen songs, leading off with the excellent "Fire" (from '07's Knows What You Need) but otherwise sticking with songs from the new Oh, Maria disc. It was a highly pleasing intimate performance, and a good reminder of the strength of his compositions, making me realize that I'd be a fool to skip his evening set in favour of something else.

With no pressing engagements, I figured I'd check out the evening's other in-store, despite never having heard of the band. With a half-hour to kill, I walked over to Pages for a quick browse, and when I got back at just after seven, Hollerado was already playing. To my surprise, there was a respectable crowd in front of the band, bopping merrily away. The band's key demographic appeared to be about sixteen years old, which is perhaps why they were not on my radar. They played spiky, catchy rock-pop — nothing groundbreaking, but at least managing to avoid some of the contemporary mersh clichés and remaining upbeat throughout. They were fully proficient but managed to be fairly self-deprecating, and despite being a known quantity (they clearly had a "hit" that the kids were anticipating and cheering for) they didn't put themselves above their fans, inviting people up to whistle a hook on one song and sing background vox on another. Nothing I'd go out of my way for, but it was pleasant, and the kids are alright² and could do worse than listen to this kind of stuff, I guess.

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¹ Could a Brylcreem endorsement be in the offing?

² Except possibly the one young lad dressed in a Sgt Pepper marching band jacket. A red one, no less, making him George, which is questionable in the "cool" department. Or possibly the epitome of cool these days, I suppose. What do I know?