EASTER LIKE MITCH
My second favorite holiday after Xmas…it’s all about rabbits, newborn chicks, eggs…mating season! The spring rut! Ah, and it has been assigned the task of representing the death of the messiah. So, the feast days, when the sun returns, have been given by the Church to represent death—remember what has been given up by one so that you can enjoy this present time. And in the lean months, at the ebb of light in winter’s darkest hours, a birth story. But, the placement of these holidays underscores that we are always subject to the same planetary rhythms—at least 50% of us at any one time—the 50% of us on the opposite side of the equator experience the same but in reverse polarity—so for Australians, many Africans, most South Americans, Christmas would be a festival that heralds the arrival of summer, and Easter would be autumn’s last hurrah. If you think that the southern region is only tropical…remember this zone includes the blustery Cape of Good Hope, Tierra Del Fuego and the southern island of New Zealand.
I used the week to my advantage, since we didn’t have the Copenhagen show, I was able to catch up on mixing the Brian Olson project, a friend of mine from Seattle, who has a band, and sent me some songs to mix—there was no deadline, but the stuff has been sitting around for awhile waiting for me to have time to get to it. So, I got to got to it! I had fun with the stuff, re-editing the song structure, re-amping guitars, drums, vocals, and adding my own keyboard/percussion/vocal parts.
REM was in town, promoting their new album
Accelerate. I met Bill Rieflin, Scott McCaughey and Mike Mills for an epic dinner in the 8eme, with Dom. It was great to see everyone, and really, we picked up the good humor, good company, and warmth right where we left it. It had been three years since I’d seen Michael or Peter, or Scott for that matter!
The next day I was suffering a little—I’m out of practice on my high-end wine consumption! But I managed to get to my voice lesson, and continue my mixing work. That night I went to see the
Wombats, the current NME all-the-rage, and they were excellent. Lots of energy, in a kind of Superchunk way, with a chunky, mop-headed singer who has a Robert Smith-like whine, and some singalong moments straight outta Weezer—but, in a weird way, they’re more scrappy and punky than those groups. The show was at La Trabendo (erh, it’s kind of long haul from anywhere in Paris) and it was sold out. Bravo to the lads.
On Friday Dom, Aden & I (with help from Aden’s rockstar babysitter Laytitia) trucked out to the Canal+ studios, outside of Paris, to see REM tape a live set for broadcast this weekend. I thought the band sounded fantastic—Dom asked me if I felt strange watching them, but it was quite the opposite. I felt like I was rooting for friends of mine, and they were nailing it. If they’d sounded lacking because I wasn’t there, I would have felt bad. But, they sounded great, and I was happy to be there. We had dinner afterwards, and spent more quality time together. Everybody marveled at Aden, who, by their last account, had been small, bald, neckless and drooling.
Listened to this week, and can recommend:
Man Ray Sky—from the UK, they sent me just under an album’s worth of material. Superb indie rock! The name itself an REM reference??
Wild Mountain Nation, by
Blitzen Trapper. Funky country junk (not to be confused with Junkie Funk Country).
And the EP preceeding the
Posies tribute album—including Dominique’s version of ‘Will You Ever Ease Your Mind’ and Jim Protectors’ freak-take of ‘Coming Right Along’. I will register that I myself thought the artwork for the tribute was maybe too literal to the title, and could have been more Posie-ish, but, the tracks…wow! Every track on this EP is a novel, extremely well thought out and great sounding take on a Posies song, from ‘Dream All Day’ (by an LA band called the Meadows, but with 3 current or former Posies contributing) to ‘I Guess You’re Right’ (by some New Yorkers of some stripe. You can buy the EP for $7, so, same price as Itunes, and you get CD quality audio. One of the partners in making the Posies tribute is Steve Turnidge, who I have to say is an extremely talented mastering engineer, so the sonic quality of the tracks makes the physical disk worth having. Dom’s and Jim Protector’s tracks are exclusive to the EP.
The 3-CD Posies tribute album itself will be released at the Posies 20th Anniversary show at Neumo’s in Seattle, May 17. We will have lots of special guests at the show, and sharing the bill with us is Scott Kanberg (aka Spiral Stairs of Pavement) ‘s band Preston School of Industry—in which Posies Matt Harris (whose birthday was Monday) and Darius Minwalla play.
In Disciplines news, we announced that we will play the
Metropolis Festival in Rotterdam this summer, which is a great, free festival for new bands. We agreed on the track listing and running order for the Norwegian version of our album, and have been working steadily on the cover artwork.
And, now, I will help Aden’s chocolate rabbit o.d.—we will head to Place des Vosges and stash some eggs around. The sun is out—we have had torrential rain, blazing sun, and pea-sized hail this weekend, often in 15-minute shifts!
Love
KS
Paris
