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Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Magic number: 31450
Magic word: spinny
Rock Gods #320: Adventures in Our Little Music Scene
It’s always fun to watch the faces of an audience when a band they’ve never heard of turns out to be a classical ensemble. We’ve witnessed this phenomenon several times, and while the reaction’s visceral, it’s not what you might think.
It’s expectant, not exasperated. Nobody’s expecting to be bored. Nobody thinks the band lost their way to the concert hall cross town. (How do you get to Symphony Hall? Practice!)
There is an air of anticipation, though, truthfully, there are really just two ways this will play out: the ensemble will either do an elaborate, classically tinged cover of a familiar hard rock song, or it will do a crazed, quasi-cacophonic new-music piece.
The Clown Classical did something different at the Bullfinch Sunday afternoon at the open mic, something that nearly got kicked out of the place. Rather than assuming the usual classical-in-a-club posture of groveling for acceptance, they showed off. They studied the four acts that came on before them, then improvised a medley of those prior songs. Only one of the adapted tunes was a well-known cover. The others were originals, which the Clowns had already processed and memorized and mentally arranged so they could recreate them virtuosically.
The quartet was extremely proud of itself when it finished its brief, beyond-impressive set. But they made the inexcusable error of appearing smug. They did nothing to acknowledge the composers of their impromptu concert. They didn’t say anything at all. They overdid the bows. They left right away, too soon even to see some of the more sensitive punks in the rooms reaching for their proverbial pitchforks.
More is to be heard from The Clown Classical. Maybe they thought they were doing a clever classical hit-and-run routine. But they’re too clever by half. Go to the back of the class.
Tonight: Barry Blatz, back with a new name and pick-up band, at the Bullfinch… Feature Creature at Hamilton’s, a ghoul-rock tribute… One Long Song at D’ollaire’s…
Bought an Olive Hat
Bought an olive hat
at a hat shop
that’s part of a national chain.
The salesman rolled it
—the very hat I was buying—
to show me it was
“crushable.”
“Uh, don’t do that,”
I murmured.
“Don’t crush my hat.”
Melted Plastic Bertrand
Ca Plane Pour Moi is an all-purpose tame punk anthem. I’ve heard it used in TV shows and in theater plays. Last summer I saw a street performer at Faneuil Hall in Boston do yoyo tricks to it.
The current issue (#38) of Ugly Things, a non-academic scholarly journal chronicling “wild sounds from past dimensions,” has a five-page article about the band Elton Motello. The band was built around the duo of Alan Ward and Mike Butcher, who released “Ca Plane Pour Moi” under its original English title, “Jet Boy Jet Girl,” in Belgium in 1977. Plastic Bertrand (a project of Lou Deprijck) changed the lyrics but retained the same backing musical track. Yvan Lacomblez is credited as the song’s composer, but several aspects of the record’s creation are under dispute. Ugly Things gives Ward & Butcher’s side of the story, and they claim “Ca Plane Pour Moi” and its flip side “Pogo Pogo” were basically developed in the studio as demos, based on a vague concept of Deprijck’s.
The song was later covered by Captain Sensible of The Damned, with The Softies backing him.
I have great memories of Ca Plane Pour Moi. I was a junior in high school when it came out in the U.S. I was on the high school radio station and had been given a copy of the single at a CMJ convention. We had exchange students from France in our school around that time, and that one record formed a real bond between one of those visitors and us radio station punks. (We kept trying to get him to translate the Plastic Bertrand lyrics, but he would tell us that there were too many slang phrases which he couldn’t convey—including the title, which means something like “that’s OK by me.”
When I noticed the Elton Motello and Captain Sensible versions in the import shops in Harvard Square, I naturally grabbed them, and experienced the schoolboy giddiness of the naughty lyrics “he gives me head.” At the time, I convinced myself that these British acts had purposefully sullied the French lyrics with boundary-pushing content in the current punk fashion. I didn’t know that these were the original lyrics in their original language. The English lyrics both intrigued and repulsed me, as good punk songs should.
While t”Jet Boy Jet Girl” is seldom heard these days (those lyrics weren’t just arch, they contained non-PC sentiments such as “I’m gonna make you be a girl), “Ca Plane Pour Moi” has become the acceptable face of wild boyish ‘80s punk and its soon-to-be-born sibling New Wave. It’s used to shorthand the frantic pace of life in the neon-spraypainted ‘80s. I was watching Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street on Netflix the other night, and there it was. Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh. Ca plane pour moi.
In a Craft Shop in Harvard Square
In a craft shop
in Harvard Square
I saw a sign
That I thought said
“Reading Glasses”
But I wasn’t wearing my reading glasses
And the sign really said
“Beading Classes.”
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Magic number: 74326
Magic word: fringe
Rock Gods #315: Adventures in Our Little Music Scene
Matthew, Mark, Luke & Bink—the local supergroup made up of members of The Subcharge and Porchlight Marauders, distinguish themselves from their rockier main projects by writing issue-laden folk-rock anthems. The songs aren’t acoustic, but they do have harmonies. They also have old-fashioned sing-along choruses. Not shouty modern-day mosh chants but multisyllabic messages such as “No eruption of corruption” or “Traction for Environmental Action.”
“We start with those choruses, says Lou Stackridge (“Luke” in the title line-up) “and build the rest of the songs from there. It’s like a term paper or something. The chorus is the thesis. The rest of the lyrics are arguing that thesis.
“We could just do shouting songs—commandments, I call them—but that’s too easy. We like the songs to contain the reasoning behind the protest that’s implicit in the song.”
Bandmate Bink (Ben Kleinman, aka Cliff Clitsnit from the Subcharge) is more succinct: “Lou does all that. I don’t know what he’s talking about. I play drums.”
Thesis/protest slogan: Follow your own beat.
Tonight: Evolution of Horse Teeth at the Bullfinch. The bar is offering free wings… Allegheny Spurge at Hamilton’s (more folk rock)… The Bourgets and Zoofest at D’ollaires. Behold! Some actual contemporary bands at the recently retro-happy club!…
For Tomorrow We May Die: Diary of a College Chum #263
Resolution: gracious living from now on, with better stuff.
Songs of the Year
ABBA, “Happy New Year.”
Zager & Evans, “In the Year 2525.”
David Bowie, “Golden Years.”
Paul Simon, “Still Crazy After All These Years.”
The Yardbirds, “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.”
Conway Twitty, “Fifteen Years Ago.”
The Rolling Stones, “100 Years Ago.”
George Harrison, “All Those Years Ago.”
Cheap Trick, “All Those Years.”
Led Zeppelin, “Ten Years Gone.”
Elton John, “Sixty Years On.”
Five for Fighting, “100 Years.”
Sting, “A Thousand Years.”
Kiss, “100,000 Years.”
The Grass Roots, “I’d Wait a Million Years.”
The Faceless, “Ten Billion Years.”
David Bowie, “Five Years.”
Guns N’ Roses, “14 Years.”
Taylor Swift, “Fifteen.”
The Griswolds, “Sixteen Years.”
Ratatat, “Seventeen Years.”
Tori Amos, “Pretty Good Year.”
Elvis Costello, “A Good Year for the Roses.”
Diana Ross, “Best Years of My Life.”
The Zombies, “This Will Be Our Year.”
Al Stewart, “Year of the Cat.”
Primus, “Year of the Parrot.”