I'm so disaffected nowadays, my irony is boring. Even though I now know what my problem is, I've still buried myself in glacial dream pop; so very wintery, yet it's what I must retreat behind this summer. This calls for Hope Sandoval since she's perpetually standing behind my shoulder, blowing cold comfort into my ear like a Mentos commercial.

Mazzy Star - Into Dust

Adding Hope Sandoval to David Roback was like adding red wine to dramamine lows. I like Kendra Smith and all (mostly because The Dream Syndicate are largely forgetten), but had she not walked out on Opal, Mazzy Star may have never happened.

So here goes perhaps the saddest sounding song of all the 1990's. I can't help but listen to it over and over even still. I suspect it's been on The O.C., playing while some pleathery-skinned teen drinks too much Vex in the hot-tub and confesses something dire to the awkwardly sexy music geek with curly hair and a girlfriend back in Star's Hollow.

(fuck, it's actually HAS been on the O.C... I just checked.)

Regardless, I dare you to listen to this song and NOT come away driven to regrets somehow. This is the sort of song I figure would start playing ten minutes before I die, even if the clock radio can only receive shortwave.

Death In Vegas (feat. Hope Sandoval) - Killing Smile

Death In Vegas are orphans of the 1990s electronica boom. They seem good enough to earn a Gallagher brother and a BackToMine comp. along with Hope Sandoval who usurps both Elizabeth Fraser and Richard Ashcroft as the queen of providing vocals overtop cough-syrupy arrangements.

Chemical Brothers (feat. Hope Sandoval) - Asleep From Day

And then there's this, with which I share a complicated relationship anchored amongst green minds & crushes on girls upstairs and down; we always kind of figured this would be prom theme for poorly-planned formals on the moon.

So Hope Sandoval, you're my girlfriend tonight, and for the rest of what will be a sour, humid summer.

Buy Mazzy Star

-kam

I used to do my best to make it out to local shows; I’d pay my three bucks and watch five or six bands do their damndest to impress the fifteen people in attendance, especially trying to bowl over the 5 or six people that they didn’t bring with them.

After a spell (sorry, I’ve just been reading To Kill A Mockingbird, so I’m prone to say “after a spell” and “ain’tcha ‘fraid of hain’ts?”), I decided that pretty much every local band was terrible, including any of the ones I was involved in. Most bands would do something to give me a healthy dose of the “douche-shivers”, such as laying sheets of wood on the stage before their set, (as not to damage the stage when they trashed their instruments), or only jumping around during the cover song they were playing, displaying that, like the audience, they were also completely bored with their originals.

I’m glad I didn’t stop attending these local mistake pageants, because I began to discover one or two dynamic bands whose records ended up in my regular rotation.

The first of these bands were the Candidates. I saw them open for Die Cheerleader (then known as Cheerleader 666), and was mighty impressed with their banter, which included mocking a band made up of Jehovah’s Witnesses that failed to turn up for the show, and several boasty claims of rock n’ roll superiority. Theirs was the first local CD I bought from a band that a) didn’t go to my high school or b) my brother wasn’t in. After the ‘Dates broke up, two of the members “stole” my best friend out of my band to form the Machines, which was great because a) they're way better than my old band and b) they recorded a record superior to the records of the bands from whence they came, and I’m all for musical purification.

The Machines – Time

Another group I discovered was the Sourkeys. I was, admittedly, confused upon my first experience with the ‘Keys. That might be because, before the first time I saw them play, someone described them as “the Pixies crossed with Weezer”, basically causing me to expect...well...Weezer's cover of "Velouria". They were a little more involved than that, with their off kilter time shifts and intricate melodies. After a spell (gee!), I began to follow each song, and began to become accustomed to the sudden musical shifts. My friends and I delighted in creating interpretive dances to their songs outside of the bars in which they played. That’s a true story. I never get sick of their records, and their live shows are great even when they’re “bad”.

The Sourkeys - Locked & Loaded

So support your local artists, because you never know: there might be another artist there who’s better than them. That’s about as clear as I can get, huh?

Buy Music From My Friends Pt.1 (The Machines - After My Misspent Youth)
Buy Music From My Friends Pt.2 (The Sourkeys - The Spectacle)

- kevin

The Moody Blues - Nights In White Satin

"can the poems, it's ass whooping time!"

Lately, this song is following me everywhere, from the soundtrack to "Easy Rider", to the DVD menu for an episode of "The Sopranos", all the way back to AM oldies radio.

I've always loved the Moody Blues. Well, that's not true. Of my parents' record collection, this was the least offensive to my eleven year old ears on summer nights when my father and I played ping pong in the basement. He let me choose the music, and this was my favourite, after Bill Cosby. It was just him and I... my mom would be hard at work sewing us all summer clothes, and my brothers were out and about riding bikes or building forts. It was the age before the internet, afterall.

Nostalgia aside, I find them overwhelmingly average in the canon of late 60's pomp-rock. Nowadays they may be found playing casinos along-side the likes of Carrot Top, Hootie & The Blowfish and... Bob Dylan?

Whenever I get the chance, I play this song over and over again for whoever will hear it. I remember last summer it coming on one of those classic rock stations up north, driving back to our campsite from Wawa. "The Rock" or "The Moose" or "The Pinecone" or something. I could have nearly crashed the car, it put me in such a head-space... even though for most it draws imagery of a shirtless Fabio on the cover of a Harlequin or broken-hearted maidens jumping off of promontories against a gale.

But to the criticism I hear when I get in those urges, and play it over and over again... I just argue that this legitimately could be an album-closer for The Arcade Fire. And then, somehow, it would be bonafide brilliance by today's standards, whatever they are this week. It suffers because it's still in rotation on 106.7, The Wolf in North Bay... (boating advisories to follow...) but why should that matter?

Please watch the video. There is something oddly hypnotic about it. There is a home video of my brother and I performing "Unskinny Bop" that is more true to life than this. None of you will ever see it though.

Buy The Moody Blues. I spared you the full-length version with the poetry and the wankery... but only because I doubt your interest. All of you.

-kam