February is Falco Month

He brought the glottal stop to pop music -- twenty five year before Regina Spektor. Austrian three hit wonder.


And don't forget to check the fabulous Falco staircase when you're in San Francisco.

Der Kommisar (3:54)

Rock Me Amadeus (3:25)

Assbike Song: Rockabilly Edition

Here's two rockabilly tunes for this week. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion released an album of their 7 inches from the 90s, and Sparkle Moore (pictured above) is one of the first and few female rockabilly singers.


Blues Explosion - Ghetto Mom (4.40 MB)

Sparkle Moore - Skull and Crossbones (3.67 MB)

Tay Zonday

I was doing the NOW crossword this week and one of the clues was "Chocolate Rain singer", and the letters were filling in, but it wasn't the name of any singer that I recognized.

And then I came across this :



Tay Zonday is maybe the first YouTube popstar and Chocolate Rain is the first YouTube hit, but I don't even think it's his best song.

Check out these two :

Internet Dream (5.73 MB)

Demons on the Dance Floor [Remix] (7.65 MB)

You Tube Round Up

The Gossip - Standing In The Way of Control



PJ Harvey - Big Exit



Amy Winehouse - Rehab

Assbike Song: Alfie

Lily Allen - Alfie (CSS Remix) (3:56)

Assbike Song: Grinderman

I mentioned Grinderman before and since then I got a chance to steal the whole album.

The sound is "raw", maybe like the Blues Explosion -- but less wacky. Here're my fave tracks :

Get it On (4.5 Mb)
Depth Charge Ethel (5.6 Mb)
Honey Bee (4.9 Mb)

I don't get out too see a lot of shows, but I will check out Grinderman if they come to town. Grinderman and the Jesus & Mary Chain, who have done a few reunion shows.



Grinderman: Better than that Tam Tam derived crap.

Douche Chill (with Instructions)

This is "Douche Chill" (It's a 2 second mp3):

Douche Chill(25 kb)

This is how you use "Douche Chill":

You cue up your playlist, then you add "Douche Chill" to it like ten or twelve times and hit shuffle.

As you groove to your tunes, you will get a happy and unexpected douche chill at random intervals.

Assbike Song: They Grew on Me

There are three songs I didn't really like the first time I heard them. But, I kept them in my rotation and they somehow grew on me. I don't know anything about these bands, but here they are:

First up is this tune. If I knew it wasn't I'd think it was a Bob Mould/Sugar tune. Power-pop, melodic/aggressive whatever you want to call it:

The Hold Steady Chips Ahoy (3:12)

At first I didn't like this downtempo tune with bored Indie vocals:

Hot Chip Just Like We (4:12)

This is kinda weird, with some creepy sounding singing and weird chanty stuff in the background.

The Knife We Share Our Mother's Health (4:02)

Getting there is all the fun

I spent almost a month sans assbike, since I had to retire the rapidly failing Tequila Sunrise Marinoni, but really it took only a few minutes to move the parts to the porn shop hybrid.



I love booting around on a snowy day. It's so fun I don't even feel wet or cold. The fun thing about riding a fixe, especially in the snow are the mind bending tricks you can do. Like Skidding ... which becomes really easy in the snow.

I've also been trying to learn to ride backwards (like the dude below). I still haven't figured it out yet.

Last night I assbiked down to Nathan Phillips Square, there was also some odd Cirque de Soleil type act and I picked up a pulled pork sandwich at one of the food vendors.


But the reason I went was to check out Sloan :



Sloan is a garage band at heart, but garage music never gets the credit it's due, when everyone is hyping the newest Brazillian Reggaeton or whatever. When the Vox AC30 amp was introduced in 1959 every piece was in place for all of music for all of eternity.

I can't get enough of that catchy lo-fi sound. Of all the music John Peel heard and played "Teenage Kicks" is known as his favorite song. The Beatles were a garage band. There's your testimonial there.

Here's two proto garage songs for yr dining and dancing pleasure.

? and the Mysterians with perhaps the first ever garage-rock song from 1962:

96 Tears (3:00)

and Gang of Four with

Natural's Not In It (3:07).

Ancestor to all the jerkey choppy art-school rockers like Talking Heads and Franz Ferdinand.

Five Tunes of 2006

Okaay, the last post was the best of 1990, so now here's five of my fave songs from 2006.

Ghostface Killah - The Champ (4:09)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Phenomena (4:10)

Everyone hate Lady Sovereign, that just makes me like her more ....

Lady Sovereign - Love Me or Hate me (3:40)

The lyrics of this song are soo juvenile, like they're written by a 12 yr old. but still ....

CSS - Art Bitch (3:09)

I always liked Nellie McKay - a smark-alek New Yorker - her new album doesn't have the cuteness of her first, but here she is, at least as a change of pace from the first four on this list.

Nellie McKay - There you are in Me (2:47)

The Best of .... 1990 ?

This is that time of year when everyone lists their top songs and music of the year.

That's all cool and all, but I came acros spiritofradio.ca, a CFNY fan page and lists ther year end charts going back to 1978. One the right there is the top 90 from 1990, the year of Madchester - funky basslines and pulsing organs. And those long forgotten names! Electronic ! Sugarcubes ! Bootsauce !

Here's the five Madchester tunes from the way back machine.

Stone Roses - Fool's Gold (9:55)

Happy Mondays - Step On (5:17)

Charlatans UK - The Only One I Know (3:56)

Soup Dragons - I'm Free (3:23)

Inspiral Carpets - Commercial Rain (4:40)


PS. That pic at the top is a close up of this house I spotted on one of my night rides. THe lat few years everyone seems to trying to out do each other on the Halloween and Christmas decorations.

Vice Guides

Too bad. The cynical and sarcastic hipster culture has been thwarted by poorly read emo-crybabies. But, Vice still occasionally comes up with some good ones, like this :

(Shit! I think Amanda Peet has the same bike!)

Also worth checking out is the Vice Guide to Travel. They do the extreme travelling so you don't have to.

This follows guides like the very useful Vice Guide to Everyting and the semi-useful Vice Guide to Toronto.

Watching the guide I realized I'd met one of the correspondents before at a Tangiers/Controller Controller show so here's some Tangiers - "old school" hipster music.

Tangiers - "Keep the Living Bodies Warm" (2:35 MP3)

Rockin' the Boat

After my despair about the current lameness of music I saw a couple bands yesteraday that made it all better. And all for $5 at The Boat.

The Boat is a strange Asian karaoke place in Kensington Market. That is because the inside is made to look like you are in a Boat. Some nights the Boat gets taken over for gigs.



Slave to the Squarewave (left) was the opening band, but the reason I decided to check out the show after listening to some of their stuff. Think 80s new wave and pimp funk. Talking Heads meets Parliament. They fuckin' put on a SHOW. There were maybe 20 people in the room for their set - which is mind blowing since Slave was one of the best live acts I've ever seen. These mofos should be huuuge.

I could only find a coupla samples of their work :


Heavy Bones (mp3 sample)

Gorilla Swing Disotheque (mp3 sample)

They also do some Spandau Ballet style ballads which I don't dig so much (and would've killed the energy of the live show) but you can check it all out at their myspace.

Unfortunatly in the year 2006, every douche thinks they're an artist or a writer or a performer, so we have to tolerate an endless stream of lamers and their grade 10 thoughts.



Thus the next two bands sucked. This gave me a chance to go grab some noodles and tripe in chinatown and have the ATM swallow my bank card, but I knew I had to catch the Primordials (right), with a name like that I knew they HAD to be a garage band.

I like a band that can not only play the songs, but also play the part, and the Primordials did that, with their hollow body guitars and tight black suits.

In that pic from last night you can not only see one the brass portals of the Boat, but also a very garagey Selmer amp with the green backlit logo.

Another good bet if you're into live music is the semi-regular feature on Wednesday nights called at Sneak's called "Cheap Beer/No Cover". I checked out +/- there last Wednesday. If you read the music blogs you'd get the impression this is a big up and coming band, but at this free show there were about 30 people. They were technicaly pretty good, thought they really sounded like the Killers, but otherwise pretty blah. Except the drummer. The drumming was awesome.

Assbike Song: Sonic Youth

what the fuck happened to music ?

this shitty music like james blunt or the decemberists is driving me nuts; the artless guitar strumming, the whiny grating vocals.

hoh, i ate the decemberists .... they are on tour and in town, and that is the band is on fire on every music blog.

i actually get convulsions when i hear a decemberists song. that fuckin' chuck klosterman-lookin' bitch.

i dunno what it is, but a band like that; the decemberists; seeem, weak and lame, lacking technical skill.

the violent femmes did awesome subversive folk-punk, the decemberists is grade 9 shit. the lyrics make me embarrassed; that a 30 yr old guy would write that.

maybe i'm just a grumpyole fart that doesn't like new music --- but i don't think so... anyways sonic youth is the best rock band.

maybe i just miss 1992. i miss a club or a bar ... all covered in band stickers, where you go out and hear sonic youth, drink cheap cheap beers, ... basically the 'dirty boots' video.

i would say 'daydream nation' is the best album ever. i had it in my tape deck all through my undergrad.

anyways, here's this week's assbike songs

candle (from Daydream Nation) and my friend goo (from Goo!) ....

Candle (4:59)
and
My Friend Goo (2:20)

Assbike Song: The Mooney Suzuki

The rock. They will bring it. The Mooney Suzuki.

Shake that Bush Again (4.1 Mb).

Assbike Song: Gone Biggie Gone

One the best "forgotten" bands from the 90s is The Violent Femmes. Hearing this reminded me of their genius.

Sound Advice mixes Biggie Smalls with Gnarls Barkley's Casio-tone cover of "Gone Daddy Gone".

Sound Advice: Gone Biggie Gone (4.7 megs).

Assbike Song: Phenomena

Back in the 80s everyone thought music in the future would sound like this glam-funk stomper.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Phenomena (6.5 MB).

Unfortunately the rest of the album sounds nothing like this.

Whddup

I saw this sign on the ground on my way home today. Found art ! Profound!

Last night I decided to go for an Assbike ride around town and check out a few places.



No better way to chill out than a death defying ride through the darkness on a bike with no brakes.

I am missing my stolen Pinnarello tho'. It was fast and easy to ride.

I saw some fixies outside the Rhino bar in Parkdale where some messenger-types were drinking and became jealous and have started making plans to replace the Pinn with a another snappy fixed gear bike.

On the way home I spotted my friend Kalen's bike outside Grossman's and stopped to have a drink with him. This on the left is the city's most disgusting vending machine -- in the can at Grossman's -- I think I caught a disease just looking at it.

For today's dose of cuteness here's Greta with her arms around Isbel :



And here's today's Assbike Song. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion -- Flavor :::

Ass Bike Song

Just whe you thought music was going into the toilet and little kids would have to grow up listening to the Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade, Lordi wins the Eurovision song contest



and a song so vulgar and immature becomes a major hit, parents are once again concerned about music. Crank it up : Ass Like That (4:25).

Thank god. Long live lurid and vulgar art.

Assbike Song: Soledad Bros.

I noticed the Soledad Bros. are playing at the Silver Dollar (in the smelley heart of bumtown Spadina & College) this month. I don't know much about these guys other than I really like this song: Teenage Hearattack (Soledad Bros.). Reminds me of the Violent Femmes.