Record Review: Awakening Stick – s/t (Indie 2004)

My initial reaction when listening to “Define Reality” off of the self-titled debut by Awakening Stick was of early R.E.M. if Peter Buck had plugged into a pair of Marshall Stacks and a distortion pedal instead of his little Vox AC30. But as I made my way through the CD I started thinking more of somebody like the Stooges and the great garage bands of the ‘60s like the Standells and the Haunted.

Raw but tuneful, loud but well produced. These are the hallmarks of this CD and it was nice to spend some time amongst the raunch and roll of songs like “Revelations From the Porcelain Altar” (we’ve all been there!), the very cool “Jetway Honey” (click to listen) and the excellent “Stonehenge” (no relation to the Spinal Tap classic).

With a cover of the Hellacopters “Like No Other Man” thrown in for shits and giggles, Awakening Stick certainly understand the primitive urge underlying truly great rock and roll. A fine addition to your CD collection and a great CD to pump out loud at a party once the first keg has bit the dust. Great fun.

Later.

Mark

Sam the Record Man is Closing in Toronto – Another Sign of the Times

I read with a heavy heart that the legendary Sam the Record Man located on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto is closing after 70 years in business. It is somewhat ironic that the news of the closure comes at the same time as I read an article in the New York Times called Plunge in CD Sales Shakes Up Big Labels  (registration required) in which the major labels are desperately scrambling to expand beyond CD releases to generate other sources of income to make up for the drop in their CD sales.

I know that I am repeating myself but the major labels have nobody to blame but themselves for the predicament that they are currently in. After essentially trying to criminalize their customers by suing them or burdening their online experience to the point where it was just easier to illegally download their music, these major labels have realized too late that music in this Web 2.0 world is distributed in a multitude of ways and in a multitude of formats. A MySpace site here. A video uploaded to YouTube there. Letting a company like CD Baby take care of the distribution of the physical CD and digital download of your music while you busily update your blog and MySpace page while submitting your podsafe music to a couple of cool podcasts and MP3 blogs. These are the realities of the music biz in 2007. But the thing that got to me in the article, the real kicker was the quote:

Even as the industry tries to branch out, though, there is no promise of an answer to a potentially more profound predicament: a creative drought and a corresponding lack of artists who ignite consumers’ interest in buying music. Sales of rap, which had provided the industry with a lifeboat in recent years, fell far more than the overall market last year with a drop of almost 21 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan. (And the marquee star 50 Cent just delayed his forthcoming album, “Curtis.”)

In other genres the picture is not much brighter. Fans do still turn out (at least initially) for artists that have managed to build loyal followings. The biggest debut of the year came just last week from the rock band Linkin Park, whose third studio album, “Minutes to Midnight,” sold an estimated 623,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan data.

This “drought” is because the major labels have dropped the ball in going out and finding fresh, new and exciting talent. Because they are more concerned with the “biz” part of “music biz” and less with the music, they have left the true music fan with no alternative to go to the hundreds of indie record labels, the Internet and services like Last.FM for their musical fix. By clinging to this outdated mode of generating profits and then waiting too long to react to the new playing field, they have potentially written their demise without ever really fighting the good fight. EMI seems to be the only label attempting to adapt with their recent DRM-free stance but even then, with new owners in the wings, we shall see what part of the music/biz split survives.

As for Sam the Record Man, it is indeed sad that they are closing up shop. The unfortunate part of this Web 2.0 world is that it has no sense of history, no nostalgia. I can remember the Boxing Day specials at the Sam’s in Montreal and the sheer thrill of rummaging through the racks buying everything that I could. Nowadays, I buy my music either at the local indie record store or online and the thought of going to any chain store strikes me as both old fashioned and dehumanizing. But the reality is that the Internet has forced us all to adapt or die. Either you embrace the new technology, show your fans that you are taking their interests to heart and working with the artists as a true partner or you will slowly fade away, another corpse on the digital landscape.

Sorry to see you go Sam. It was fun while it lasted.

Later.

Mark

Monterey Pop 40th Anniversary Screening in New York

Further to the whole 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love theme there will be a screening of D.A. Pennebaker’s landmark documentary Monterey Pop at the IFC Center on June 5th at 7:30 PM in New York City. You can get more info at the excellent Cinema Retro.

Later.

Mark

Trailer for “Girls Rock – The Movie”

Here is the trailer for the upcoming Girls Rock – The Movie. Don’t believe for a minute girls that you can’t rock with the guys. If you roam around this very site you will see plenty of examples from Joan Jett to the Dollyrots to the Atomic Swindlers to Leigh Silver of women who not only rock, they rock with attitude. Don’t give up the good fight!

Later.

Mark

Playlist for the 3 Amigos on the Drastic Plastic Program on CKUT FM for May 28, 2007

Well we had another fun time on the old radio last night as myself, Doug Ford and Armitage Shanks gathered for our weekly 3 Amigos radio spectacular (tongue firmly in cheek) on the Drastic Plastic Program on CKUT FM.

Veering from songs about running your girlfriend over to UK gems that didn’t get their due to screaming Japanes rawk that threatened to melt the mixing board at the station, we once again managed to laugh our way through another hour of great live radio. If you want to know what we played, here is the playlist:

Song- Album – Artist

• “Kick ‘Em and Smile” – Edge of Sunrise – Kill Van Kull
• “I Need a Vacation” – Get Real – Altered State
• “I Hope Somebody Runs You Over” – On An Empty Stomach – The Apple Bros
• “You’re a Drag When Your High” – Electric Satisfaction – Crash Kelly
• “Animal Nitrate” – Suede – Suede
• Richard III” – In It For The Money – Supergrass
• “Alternative Ulster” – Tom Dunn’s Best 30 Irish Hits – Stiff Little Fingers
• “Old Town” – Phil Lynott
• “Smokin’ Billy” – Gear Blues – Thee Michelle Gun Elephant
• “Fujiyama Attack” – Jet Generation – Guitar Wolf
• “Booga Rock” – Fake To Fame - Gasoline
• “I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield” – 5,6,7,8’s

You can download a podcast of the show for one week from the date of broadcast. After that you will have to stream it from the CKUT website.

drastic plastic 128kbps Podcast

Finally, here is the June 2007  schedule for the Drastic Plastic Program:

• June 4 – Doug Ford
• June 11 – Armitage Shanks
• June 18 – Rock and Roll Report Radio with yours truly
• June 25 – 3 Amigos 

Later.

Mark

Cover Story – “Dark Side of the Moon” by Hipgnosis

By Michael Goldstein

Subject: Dark Side of the Moon – an illustration produced by Hipgnosis (Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, producers, with design by Storm Thorgerson and illustration by George Hardie) for the cover of Pink Floyd’s 1973 Harvest/Capitol Records release titled “Dark Side of the Moon”.

This album is Pink Floyd’s commercial-meets-conceptual equinox. No.1 on the Billboard album charts in March of 1973, this recording went on to achieve a record 741 weeks (or 14 whole years) on the ‘Top 200 Albums’ chart. It is the longest-charting album ever (beating its nearest rival by five years), with well over forty million copies sold to date (one of the top-five best-selling LPs ever).

The album has been re-released a number of times on CD and in collector’s edition vinyl record packages. The 1992 remaster was sold as the “20th Anniversary” box set and then, in 2002, a 5.1 channel Dolby Surround version – mixed from the original studio tapes – was released as the “30th Anniversary” edition. In 2003, a collector’s vinyl version of the 30th Anniversary package was released which included reprints of the original poster, stickers, and Storm Thorgerson’s new 30th Anniversary artwork.

In the words of Storm Thorgerson –

“The idea itself was cunningly cobbled from a standard physics textbook, which illustrated light passing through a prism. Of significance was the simple, elegant layout against black – standard textbook illustrations did not do this. Also important to the art direction, was the fortuitous decision to listen to Rick Wright, who suggested we do something clean, elegant and graphic, not photographic – not a figurative picture. And then to connect this idea to their live show, which was famous for its lighting, and subsequently to connect this to ambition and madness, themes Roger was exploring in the lyrics… hence the prism, the triangle and the pyramids.

Of minor significance was the complete appropriateness of the artwork to the record. The design is simply a mechanical tint lay, which means we drew outline shapes, black on white, and indicated what colours were to appear when printed. The prisms were airbrushed black on white and reversed by the printer.

The refracting glass prism referred to Floyd light shows – consummate use of light in the concert setting. Its outline is triangular and triangles are symbols of ambition, and are redolent of pyramids, both cosmic and mad in equal measure, all these ideas touching on themes in the lyrics. The joining of the spectrum extending round the back cover and across the gatefold inside was seamless like the segueing tracks on the album, whilst the opening heartbeat was represented by a repeating blip in one of the colours.

Pink Floyd. in their infinite wisdom, perused our 7 complex detailed roughs for this cover in a drab basement room at Abbey Road – submissions over which we at Hipgnosis had toiled for weeks – but managed to decide within 3 minutes which one they liked. No amount of cajoling would get them to consider any other contender, nor endure further explanation of the prism, or how exactly it might look. ‘That’s it’, they said in unison, ‘we’ve got to get back to real work’, and returned forthwith to the studio upstairs.

‘It all connects, somehow, somewhere.’. says Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, ‘We knew that the package – the record and the cover and everything together – was going to be far, far stronger than anything we had done before.’

To look back now and reflect upon how the actual artwork itself had no colour, being just a tint lay, and how the spectrum was missing a colour anyway, and how the whole design was only cobbled from a standard physics textbook diagram (albeit cunningly), and how there was another album called “Dark Side Of The Moon” (released in 1972 by British blues-rock band Medicine Head, which didn’t sell well at all! – MG) only a year previously, all of this just goes to show how such matters pale if a design feels ‘appropriate’. How fitting it is to be fitting!”

– Storm Thorgerson (via MediaBitch, his PR firm – thanks to Robin Headlee for her help in gathering materials for this Cover Story)

The “other” ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, just for fun…

About Storm Thorgerson (again, in his own words, in the third-person) –

“Born, if that’s the word, in Potter’s Bar Middlesex, in 1944. BA – Honors in English and Philosophy from Leicester University (63 – 66) and finally an MA in film and TV from the Royal College of Art, London (66 – 69). Formed Hipgnosis in 1968 with Aubrey Powell (Po), a graphic design studio specializing in creative photography and working mainly in the music business designing album covers for many rock ‘n’ roll bands including Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, 10cc, Yes, Peter Gabriel, Black Sabbath, Paul McCartney, Syd Barrett and Styx, amongst others. Started a series of books on album cover art with Roger Dean called “Album Cover Album’ and, with Hipgnosis, wrote and designed ‘Walk Away Rene’ in 1978 and ‘The Goodbye Look’ in 1982, about their own stuff.

In 1983 Storm, along with Po and Peter Christopherson, formed Green Back Films and embarked on producing numerous rock videos including material for Paul Young, Yes, Nik Kershaw, Robert Plant, Interferon, Nona Hendryx, Big Country and many others and also long forms for Barry Gibb (Voyager), Yumi Matsutoya (Train of Thought), and Channel Q – a heavy metal compilation for Polygram Records. Green Back and its partners went up in smoke in 1985.

Storm went solo (because he had to) and continued making videos (“Learning To Fly” for Pink Floyd won “best director” at Billboard), and tried his hand at commercials (Tennant’s ‘One Great Thing’ won Golden Rose in Scotland). He continued designing album covers for Pink Floyd, Catherine Wheel, Alan Parsons, Anthrax, amongst others, and branched out into documentaries, making “Art Of Tripping” for Ch 4 in 1993, a two part exploration of the connections between drugs and artists. In 1994 Storm directed six short films for Pink Floyd which were screened at concerts during their world tour, and also an hour long science documentary on the Hubble Constant for Equinox called “The Rubber Universe”. In 1997 he compiled a book of his images for Pink Floyd called ‘Mind Over Matter’ published by Sanctuary Books. And in 97/98 he wrote and directed an hour long documentary for Discovery channel about the (non) existence of Aliens subtitled “Are We Alone?” (Or was it We Are Alone).

Storm continues to design album covers (Phish, Ian Dury, Cranberries, Pink Floyd, Catherine Wheel, Alan Parsons, Ween etc etc), to execute assorted graphics for DVDs, websites, programs, T-shirts and so on, and to direct the occasional film. He has written and designed several books including “100 Best Album Covers” (Dorling Kindersley) and “Eye Of The Storm” (Sanctuary Books).

To see all of the Storm Thorgerson-related items in the RockPoP Gallery collection, please click here:

To see all of the Pink Floyd-related items in the RockPoP Gallery collection, please click on the following link:

http://rockpopgallery.easystorecreator.com/items/pink-floyd/list.htm?1=1

About “Cover Stories” –

Our weekly series will give you, the music and art fan, a look at “the making of” the illustrations, photographs and designs of many of the most-recognized and influential images that have served to package and promote your all-time-favorite recordings.

Every Friday, you’ll meet the artists, designers and photographers who produced these works of art and learn what motivated them, what processes they used, how they collaborated (or fought) with the musical acts, their management, their labels, etc. – all of the things that influenced the final product you saw then and still see today.

We hope that you enjoy these looks behind the scenes of the music-related art business and that you’ll share your stories with us and fellow fans about what role these works of art – and the music they covered – played in your lives.

40 Albums that Rolling Stone Got Wrong

Rolling Stone magazine certainly does not have the authority that it once had as the arbiter of rock and roll cool and I am sure we all take their reviews with a large grain of salt in this Web 2.0 age but Shoutmouth published an excellent piece recently (something that I wanted to do. Damn that NeutralMilk!) called 40 Albums that Rolling Stone Got Wrong. While it is definitely one man’s opinion, it is a perfect antidote for the self-important hype the magazine is shoving down our throats with their 40th anniversary. A good read.

Later.

Mark

Cue up the Pan Flutes! The 40th Anniversary of the “Summer of Love” is Here

Well I see that ’60s “Summer of Love” icon Wavy Gravy will be heading up the Wavy Gravy Summer of Love Revival on June 2, 2007 at the San Geronimo Valley Cultural Center. This will not be the only event celebrating that pivotal summer but the irony is that for the people who were actually there, in a lot of ways the “Summer of Love” did not in fact occur in the summer of1967. No, the San Francisco scene that was so nurturing for some many creative people for the most part was ending in 1967 when the mass media discovered the burgeoning counter-culture bohemian community centered around the Haight-Ashbury district of that city by the bay. For a lot of people, 1966 was indeed the pivotal year on which a revolution seemed to be occurring that would change everything.

The problem I have always had with the whole “Summer of Love” myth is that the media and by extension the history books have put the emphasis on the wrong parts of that whole ’60s experiment. While thousands of stoned out youths proclaimed peace and love to all and sundry there were very real attempts to create a true alternative culture but those who actually tried to work at it are sadly forgotten. We hear all about the music and the free love and drugs (which are in a lot of respects the true legacy of the whole hippie experience with unwanted pregnancies and sad drug addicted youths the primary result) but we don’t often hear about people like the Thelin brothers.

Ron and Jay Thelin were true believers in “the dream.” As original members of the Diggers and owners of the Psychedellic Shoppe, they both believed in building a true alternative community, but the difference between them and so many others that staggered around the streets of the “Hashbury” is that they actually worked at creating something as opposed to leaching off of others. So to did people like Big Tom Donahue when he took radio stations KMPX and later KSAN and turned them into purveyors of avant-garde rock and roll audio or Greg Shaw with his groundbreaking Mojo-Navigator Rock & Roll News or Chet Helms who, despite an obvious lack of business acumen built of the Family Dog into something memorable. All of these people (and you can toss in Bill Graham and Jann Wenner for good measure) knew that in order to create something you had to work at it. And sometimes that involved making hard decision but if you wanted your community to thrive you had to make them to make things work.

What always drives me crazy when people look back at this era is they tend to either focus on the completely negative (drugs anyone?) or they go to the other extreme and declare that San Fran in 1967 was some sort of utopia which it assuredly was not! Aside from the music, which was great mainly because of the sense of adventure that permeated the scene, the cadre of people who truly believed in what they were trying to create was slowly coming to the realization that maybe it was a lot harder to drop out completely and that there may have been some aspects of straight society that might come in handy regardless of the values you held. Things like commitment, loyalty and integrity. There were a multitude of people operating in the background and on the periphery of the “Summer of Love” that made the whole thing tick. Unfortunately, unless you really dig down deep into your ’60s history book, you tend not to hear so much about them. Although it was a late ’90s slogan for Apple Computer, a lot of these people tended to “think different” and there is a lesson in there for all of us if we stop getting side-tracked by the love burger and “hippie hop” aspect of the era. Building something that is an alternative to today is no easy task. But giving up in striving to do so is something we should never do. And that should be the ultimate lesson we take from the Summer of Love.

That being said, I have been having a blast going through some incredible documentaries, films and TV shows from the era courtesy of The Video Beat so expect my very own look at The Summer of Love this June. This should be fun!

Later.

Mark

The Donnas Can Dance if They Want To

I saw this on Shoutmouth. I am a huge fan of The Donnas so when I heard that they have recorded a cover of “Safety Dance” by Montreal’s own Men Without Hats I thought “shit, what a weird choice of covers!” Of course, that is what makes covers so fun, when they are done in the spirit of adventure and damn the torpedoes attitude.

Does it work? Well, it doesn’t stray too far from the original but it is a fun romp through the ’80s closet just the same. Have a listen here.

Later.

Mark

The 3 Amigos are back on CKUT FM on May 28, 2007

The 3 Amigos hit the airwaves once again on CKUT 90.3 FM in Montreal on May 28, 2007 from 10:00 – 11:00 PM. I am not sure what the other Amigos are up to but I will be playing a couple of tunes dedicated to the pissed off, the depressed and the “I don’t give a shit anymore” crowd.

Tune in and enjoy that happy show!

Later.

Mark

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