andrewlucking.com

Tell me who will keep score for you
As we play everyday inside a
Deep karma canyon

Bob Mould’s (Hüsker Dü, Sugar) new album, Body of Song, which is due out in July has apparently been leaked on the internet. He’s been sharing some of his thoughts and reactions to it all on his blog:
http://modulate.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_modulate_archive.html#111685625676832228
http://modulate.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_modulate_archive.html#111689282301219915

A pretty level-headed response if you ask me. Especially considering he’s one of the artists that gets hurt the most by this kind of thing.

kevinsites.net has won the 2004 wired.com RAVE award for blogger of the year:
http://wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/rave.html?pg=8

Kevin Sites is a journalist who has covering the war in Iraq for NBC and CNN (among others?) and blogged about his experiences while doing so. You may recall Kevin as the journalist behind the camera that documented the shooting of a wounded and unarmed Iraqi prisoner by an American soldier in a mosque during the offensive in Fallujah a couple of months prior to the Iraqi elections.

I’ve mentioned Kevin Sites’ blog previously. There really is some amazing stuff in there and the firestorm he became the center of is just a part of it.

From boingboing.

We saw Riding Giants the other evening. It’s a great documentary looking at the history and evolution of big-wave surfing. Quite interesting and certainly worth watching even if (like me) you’re not a surfer. A word of warning though - if you’re fighting off any mid-winter what am I doing in this place (or job)… feelings this film will not help.

Sony’s website for the film is here:
http://www.sonyclassics.com/ridinggiants/

On a geek note. When documenting some of surfing’s early days the filmakers used an interesting special effect to add 3D like movement to a number of the still photos in the film. I scanned the making of piece that seems to be de rigueur with DVDs today and am pretty sure I heard them mention that they used Adobe After Effects to achieve this particular effect.

Crying for the music? I doubt you really care.
Lookin’ for an answer? You can find it anywhere.

Apparently the sub pop singles club ebay auction I mentioned last month went sour so the collection is back on the block. Chuck from chuckthewriter.com left a comment to let me know. Hurry and get your bid in (this one ends February 11th) or just head over to take a look and reminisce:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=4072069253

Best of luck this time around Chuck!

Some fella is selling his entire collection of the Sub Pop Singles Club (both version 1 and 2) with the exception of one Luna 7″ on ebay. The singles club was a brilliant publishing move that subpop began back in 1988 with a Nirvana 45. Brilliant ’cause it provided an opportunity to showcase bands like Nirvana without their having to get a full length album together and at the same time it was an way for music fans to take a chance on some unknown bands without risking a big chunk of their record buying budget.

Man, for the want of a decent turntable. Well, that and the $5000 plus it’ll take to win the auction.

I picked this up from boingboing.

I was lucky enough to be on the receiving end of one of those this year. You know the type of gift I’m talking about - the one that you never knew you wanted ’til you’ve had it for awhile. Well, this christmas my brother gave me a copy of Gillian Welch’s Soul Journey and I can’t listen to it enough. I’m certain I’d heard them on cbc radio before but I guess it never registered.

Its always difficult to label music and I’m not sure how to classify this album. I suppose you could call it country-rock-folk flavoured. Songwriting wise it occurred to me that they remind me of Woody Guthrie. Not necessarily in the content sense but very much so in the wordplay and imagery of the songs. Yes, I realize the effect of using that analogy - just give it a listen before jumping on me for saying it.

Anyhow, I think if you enjoy the likes of Lucinda Williams or Kathleen Edwards you’ll be a fan of Gillian Welch too. There’s a nice mix to this album from some sweet traditional arrangments for which Gillian has reworked / added lyrics (”Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor”) to “Wrecking Ball” the closing track which I imagine can turn into a real rocker at live shows.

If you’re looking for some press about Gillian Welch, Google turned up an article in The New Yorker that I found interesting: The Ghostly Ones by Alec Wilkinson.

Thanks Pete!

Wow, is wikipedia.org fast. I was grabbing a link to the wikipedia page on Pierre Berton, whose death was announced only a few hours ago, and noticed that it had already been updated to mention his passing.

peace.

Pierre Berton died today. I’ve read a few of his books and thought they were great - Klondike is a favourite. It was after reading My Times, one of his autobiographies, that I really developed a respect for the man and his values.

Just a few weeks ago I caught an episode of This Hour has 22 Minutes Monday Report on which he appeared. I think he did a sketch in which he shared his secrets for rolling a good joint. Hilarious.

peace.

Yankee Doodle went to town
Arriving on a Sunday
Found some peple living there
Killed them all by Monday

If you’re looking for a film that will start a conversation consider taking a look at
Control Room. Primarily a documentary about Al-Jazeera and it’s coverage of the war in Iraq, this film takes a hard-nosed look at the media in war.

Here’s another quote:

Truth ultimately finds its way to people’s eyes and ears and hearts.
- Donald Rumsfeld

Lately I’ve been spending my Sunday evenings listening to Steve Earle’s show on air america radio. Talk about someone who’s come through the other side with his head on straight. Oh Condalezza won’t you come out tonight, indeed.

Have you seen one of my heros? Bob Dylan, the man who started up where Woody Guthrie left off, has been disconcertingly silent lately when it comes to issues that it seems everyone is weighing in on. Not only that but in his recent autobiography he rejects the notion that he ever spoke for a generation of the time:

A few years earlier Ronnie Gilbert, one of The Weavers, had introduced me at one of the Newport Folk Festivals saying, “And here he is … take him, you know him, he’s yours.” I had failed to sense the ominous forebodings in the introduction. Elvis had never even been introduced like that. “Take him, he’s yours!” What a crazy thing to say! Screw that. As far as I knew, I didn’t belong to anybody then or now. I had a wife and children whom I loved more than anything else in the world. I was trying to provide for them, keep out of trouble, but the big bugs in the press kept promoting me as the mouthpiece, spokesman, or even conscience of a generation. That was funny. All I’d ever done was sing songs that were dead straight and expressed powerful new realities. I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of. I’d left my hometown only ten years earlier, wasn’t vociferating the opinions of anybody. My destiny lay down the road with whatever life invited, had nothing to do with representing any kind of civilization. Being true to yourself, that was the thing. I was more a cowpuncher than a Pied Piper.

People think that fame and riches translate into power, that it brings glory and honor and happiness. Maybe it does, but sometimes it doesn’t. I found myself stuck in Woodstock, vulnerable and with a family to protect. If you looked in the press, though, you saw me being portrayed as anything but that. It was surprising how thick the smoke had become. It seems like the world has always needed a scapegoat - someone to lead the charge against the Roman Empire. But America wasn’t the Roman Empire and someone else would have to step up and volunteer. I really was never any more than what I was a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze. Now it had blown up in my face and was hanging over me.

A few excerpts and an interview here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6099172/site/newsweek/

Crap. I think he just weighed in. Sounds to me like a bitter man in his twilight looking back and rejecting what he once stood for. Scratch Mr. Zimmerman off my relevant people list.