Zacharius Knight Galifianakis is one funny f*cker... We've all seen The Hangover - actually, one of my friends told me the other day she didn't like The Hangover - she didn't get it... What? Seriously? What's to get? There's the one man wolf pack speech, the naked Asian guy, Mike Tyson singing Phil Collins... I could go on... ok, there's the baby with the sunglasses, the cop car on the sidewalk scene, the 'why aren't roofies called floories' bit...
Right, so you can't credit Zach Galifianakis for all of that hilarity, but I mean look at him - he's awesome:
You may be a little confused at this point - and I don't blame you... this is a pretty disjointed post, but I am headed somewhere with this...
You've heard of Funny Or Die? Yes, good, well there's a series of short videos on there called Between Two Ferns (hahahahaha) where Zach Galifianakis interviews other movie stars and celebrities in a typically Zach Galifianakis manner... Awesome is really the only word to describe these... The Steve Carell one is great, the Ben Stiller one is pretty funny, the Michael Cera one is classic - but the best one has got to be the Natalie Portman one... OMG! You will pee yourself a little bit guaranteed... V is for what now?
Why is it that every time I take my clothes out of the dryer, all my t-shirts are inside out? I mean, I understand that my socks will likely be inside-out - cuz they're inside-out when the go in the wash... but not my shirts... I don't get it, and it frustrates me cuz I hate folding laundry to begin with, and the whole inside-out t-shirt thing adds at least five minutes to my folding of the whites load and seven minutes to the darks load...
On a completely unrelated note, I mentioned the Beastie Boys a few weeks back in the blog - great 'driving through a screaming thunderstorm' music - though I doubt that's what they have in mind when they're sitting around the studio writing lyrics and producing loops.
The Beasties are an interesting act, because for people of my generation who remember License To Ill and Paul's Boutique, we've been able to hear the band mature before our very ears. And I'm not talking about a weak-ass foray into disco and then back again a la U2, but a real growing up of content and presentation.
I understand the Beastie Boys are not for everyone; they are loud, obnoxious, opinionated and do still carry that frat boy tag with them (cultivated from the above mentioned albums). It is worth mentioning however, that they are one of the few white hip-hop groups in the history of the genre that are respected by audiences, critics and other hip-hop artists alike.
I suppose - like folding laundry - I find it frustrating that Beasties never seem to get the respect they deserve. They altered a genre that had been heading down a pretty mainstream and pretty boy road in the mid 80's, and along with groups like Public Enemy and Run DMC made hip-hop both cool and culturally significant for an entire generation (whether the state of hip-hop today is a worthy legacy of that rap renaissance is an argument for another day.)
Today's RAD song(s) are two remixes of two of my favourite Beastie Boys songs. The first is by Alex Metric, a UK producer and DJ whose playful approach to his remixes always make me giggle (if not bop my head), and the second is by Yellus, a Swede who I don't know much about but have liked all I've heard from him. Both of these tunes are likely to pack the dance floor - and slip easily into high rotation on your ipod, even if you've never been a huge fan... enjoy.
Some say the touring summer music festival experiment has run its course. I would agree with this assertion in regards to the touring behemoths we've seen in recent years; Warped Tour is really the only one of any importance or significance that is still going strong - and though I may not attend annually anymore, I still value it's place in the summer entertainment schedule.
Music festivals in general however, are still cool. The big ones in the US including Sasquatch, Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits and Coachella are more cultural experiences than simply music festivals, and are all well worth the price and and effort to get there. But if you're on a tight budget, I'm positive there's a local music festival that while maybe not as lucrative on the big headliner end of things, can still provide an awesome musical adventure. For a comprehensive list of festivals in your area check out the following links:
Yesterday was Day 1 of Folk Fest, and a great first day it was... Co-headliners Stars and The Avett Brothers both put on amazing sets, and Regina, SK's Library Voices did a serviceable job in warming up the late afternoon crowd. We've talked a lot about Stars and the Avetts here at the the Fanclub, so I won't gush too much more about those acts - both current favorites of mine. But there are three days left in the festival, so you might be wondering what else might be worth seeing (considering there's about 50 more bands playing and no matter how organized you may be, you won't be able to catch them all.)
Here is a playlist of bands/artists you should check out if yer heading down to Folk Fest this weekend... you can find a schedule of when the acts are playing here.
Delhi 2 Dublin
This is a band I first saw in a tiny little bar in Brandon, Manitoba (of all places) last October. I didn't have any expectations, but was completely blown away by the frenetic energy and unapologetic uniqueness they offered. They mix Celtic, Bollywood (Indian) and Dub sounds into a wall of sound that you just have to hear to believe:
DJ Logic
Legendary Bronx turntablist fluent in any and all genres of music. Soul-jazz and hip hop abound in his solo work, and this guy is one of the giants in the DJ world - don't miss your chance to check him out.
MAN MAN
Um... this band from Philly is weird... but cool... but weird. What do they sound like? Their website says 'experimental rock, viking-vaudeville, and maniac Gypsy Jazz.' Sure, let's go with that...
Dan Mangan
I posted Dan's song Robots about a month ago. Dan is awesome, a rare talent and a cool dude - drop by and say hello to him after his set and see that I'm not lying
St. Vincent
Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens alum Annie Clark is ethereal, spacious and haunting - well, her music is anyways... a great pick for this kind of festival that will leave fans enthralled and newbies wanting more.
The Swell Season
Famous for their 2008 Academy Award winning song 'Falling Slowly', Irish troubadour Glen Hansard and classically-trained Czech pianist/vocalist Marketa Irglova are the real deal - hoping to turn lightening in a bottle into a bulb you'll never want to turn off
Ohbijou
Orchestral pop, a genre that Canadians excel at, is performed with perfection by this act - so cute, you just wanna pinch their cheeks
Hill Country Revue
Featuring members of the North Mississippi Allstars, these Southern rock n' blues hipsters bring the best of the genre to a town that could stand to inject a little soul into its twang.
Ghostkeeper
Local boy makes good... the great staccato vocal delivery works with the proto-punk-folk arrangements. You'll like it - trust me.
The Burning Hell
I've worked with these cats a couple of times, and thoroughly enjoyed the challenge. It's eclectic, it's campy cabaret, it's got damn near every instrument under the sun... it's an adventure - which is what music should be.
It's been a few days since the last post, I know; I've been trying to reintegrate myself into the daily routine of real life - with mixed results to be honest...
My last few days on the road were relatively uneventful - but, in truth, the best parts of the trip were those where time and space were abundant, giving a guy the opportunity to get lost in his thoughts with little chance of interruption - a concept not often possible in our fast paced everyday lives.
Wyoming is a great place to get lost in one's thoughts. It is the least populous state in the union (just over 500,000 people call it home), and 48% of the land in Wyoming is owned by the US government - with most of that being national forests, national grasslands and national parks - which means man-made intrusions are kept to a bear minimum.
For the vast majority of American's distrust in big government, they are in fact very proud of their national parks and monuments systems. I've had the opportunity to spend time in a few of these places over the years and can honestly say they are second to none in terms of conservation, service and natural beauty. Wyoming is the king of of the national park - with two of the US's most famous lying within its borders - Grand Teton and, of course, Yellowstone National Park.
I didn't venture quite that far west in the state this time out, but made it a point of seeing one of the state's most unique and bewildering national monuments - Devil's Tower.
Have you ever seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind? You should - one of the best UFO/alien movies Hollywood has ever produced (E.T., Fire In The Sky and District 9 should also be on your list of must see alien encounter movies). Anyway, in the movie the aliens send a signal to earth that is eventually recognized by scientists as a set of geographical coordinates pointing to Devil's Tower (characters in the movie also inexplicably receive visions of the monument without knowing what it is or what it means). Being such a fan of the movie, I felt compelled (although not in quite the same way as Richard Dreyfuss) to check it out.
Devil's Tower is honestly one of the most bizarre and incredible things I have ever seen. Even geologists can not entirely agree on what created the formation, but it is widely known today as a volcanic neck (essentially a land form created when magma hardens within a vent of an active volcano - overtime the volcano mountain rock erodes leaving the hardened magma rock inside intact). It rises dramatically 1,267 feet above the surrounding countryside and you just have to see it to believe it:
Crazy! I hiked the approximate one and a half mile trail around its base, got a blister and a sore neck, ate a hamburger at the visitor centre and headed north into Montana (in the car, not on foot).
Montana is a nice place. It looks a lot like Alberta - actually it looks almost exactly like Alberta - as anyone whose seen Legends of the Fall can attest. As long as you steer clear of the crazy (and famed) militia type folks in the hills, you'll enjoy your drive through it en route to where ever it is you're going.
Being mountainous in the west and bald prairie in the central and eastern parts of the state, Montana is known for it's wild weather in the summer months. As fate would have it, one of my last memories of this trip will be of barreling headfirst into one of the craziest prairie thunderstorms I've ever encountered.
Montana is one of those places that you can see weather coming your way for two hours before it arrives. And knowing what I was up against, needles to say I way a little nervous. But it's at moments like this where you can either pull over and wait it out (and lose an hour or two in driving time) or, crank the Beastie Boys and giv'r hell. I chose the latter... obviously.
At one point in the height of the chaos - I heard a crackling come through my iPod (which was hooked up to the radio via a receiver). I paused the tunes just in time to hear: "from the weather center in Great Falls... this is a very dangerous storm... If you are in this storm's path, take immediate action to protect life and property... covers the following counties:... Custer, McCone, Garfield..." I couldn't be one hundred percent sure, cuz of the low visibility, but I was pretty sure that the sign I had passed about ten minutes before read "Welcome to beautiful Custer County."
Perfect. This is exactly where I want to be.
Well, everything worked out in the end. There was a convoy of about four or five cars that limped along through it, following just close enough to see the taillights of the car ahead - and though my steering wheel has permanent fingernail marks in it now - we all made it through unscathed.
I have always been a huge fan of that moment right after a storm passes that you can still feel the electricity in the air, the wind cold and crisp on your face and the ground begins to steam as the sun pokes through the clouds. It is absolutely beautiful - and it's at moments like that that you understand why people believe in God - it feels divine and otherworldly. I sat on the side of the road for a little while, smoked a cigarette, drank a beer and just watched the rainbows come and go as the storm disappeared in the distance. It was a neat moment:
And with that, it was all over... I stopped for the night in Great Falls, hit the local Albertson's before leaving town (to get Cherry Coke and breakfast cereal, of course), and before I knew it I was explaining the the border guard why I had driven all the way to Nashville if I wasn't even a musician.
I will need a bit more time to process it all, and we'll come back to moments and stories over the course of the coming months I'm sure. But, it was an amazing trip - I saw tons of amazing things, met tons of amazing people and I'll be glad to return to it all - someday.
For now, I'll leave you with a clip of a guy whose also really impressed with what he's seen and experienced... ('it's so intense'... lol... I need some of whatever he's on)... talk soon - y'all.
A funny thing happens when you stay in a different hotel every night... it's kind of like playing Russian Roulette when you make it back to the room: is it 210? Or was that last night... 624 maybe? Shit... On more than one occasion on this trip I've been met with the red blinking light after swiping my key card and been forced to march the walk of shame down to the front desk to ask what room I am staying in.
Tonight was one of those nights... there's not much to do in Deadwood, South Dakota except drink and gamble - so that's what I did... it worked out well for the most part, but alas, I did forget what room I was staying in (but at least I remembered which hotel!)
I stopped for breakfast this morning in Chadron, Nebraska. Breakfast itself was not terribly notable, but the brief stop in at the local Walmart afterward was hysterical. Why was I at Walmart you might ask? Good question... Because I figured it was easier to stop and buy new underwear and t-shirts than it was to find a laundromat somewhere and spend an hour ignoring the guy in the corner with mental health issues talking to his socks.
Walmart in middle-America is awesome. Not because of the deals on unmentionables (though those are good too) but because the people watching is fantastic! I saw at least a half-dozen people that looked exactly like the people featured on this website - just awesome... it's the only way to describe it... honestly.
I was headed for Mount Rushmore in south-western South Dakota - and wow - this part of the country is stunning:
Prairie gave way to rolling hills, lush green forests and sparkling lakes as I got a little further into SD; it was a beautiful drive that I hadn't been anticipating, and I tried to just sit back and take it all in.
The first stop was at the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills area of the state. This is really cool; it is a monument built to honour Crazy Horse, an OglalaLakota warrior being carved out of Thunderhead Mountain's smooth, fine-grained granite (the same rock that Mount Rushmore - 13 miles up the road - is carved from).
The carving was begun in 1948, and the face was finished and unveiled in 1998. The larger-than-life rock sculpture has no fixed completion date, and based on how long it's taken them to get this far, it will be quite a long time before it's done. For more info on what the finished sculpture will look like, and more info on the memorial, the Indian Museum of North America, and the Native American Cultural Center click here (the white marks in the photo above indicate where the head of the warriors horse will be carved - eventually).
From there it's a short drive through the Black Hills to Mount Rushmore. Mount Rushmore - as I'm sure you're aware - is another sculpture carved into the mountainside of the heads of four famous US presidents: (from left to right) George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.
Mount Rushmore is also cool (sort of); it rises some 5700 feet above sea level and was the brainchild of sculptor Gutzon Borglum. Construction on the sculpture began in 1927 and was completed in 1941 (though it wasn't officially dedicated until 1991 by then President George H. W. Bush) without a sugle worker casualty. The crowds can be crushing in the summer - as I found out - and I was amazed by the vast array of trinkets and trash that bear the monument's likeness available for purchase in the gift shop. It was interesting to see such an iconic piece of popular American culture up close, but unless you're really into art history or American pop-patriotism, you can probably skip it.
And this is what brought me to Deadwood. The town is the final resting place of Wild Bill Hickok and it is a National Historic Landmark for this reason - I suppose. It is a town of roughly 2000 people and just as many casinos, saloons, gift shops and ice cream parlours. It's not that bad to be honest - the slots are loose and the women - well, actually I have no idea, so let's skip that. Originally it was a mining town, and subsequently a railroad and manufacturing center, and naturally it then morphed into a tourist trap based on a history that may actually be as fabricated as it is widely believed.
But none of that matters now - Kevin Costner owns a casino here - that's neat. And the bikers on their way either to or from Sturgis seem to like it - so let them have their fun... after all, the hotels need fillin' - no matter who's staying in which room.
Today's CLASSIC clip is my favourite scene from the movie Rushmore. It has nothing to do with anything I saw today (other than sharing a name with a mountain) but it is hilarious - almost as hilarious as those people at the Walmart back in Nebraska.
I hesitated weighing in on this, and I'm sure that some of you will breeze through this post waiting with bated breath for my next update from the road (yes, there will be one later on tonight).
But... I have long contended that the NBA represents everything that is wrong with professional sports - and the events that have taken place over the last week have reinforced that assertion. And, please - before you say it - this has absolutely nothing with black guys shooting a ball into a hoop vs. white guys shooting a puck into a net.
It was fascinating being in Chicago as the world began to assume that the Bulls would be the logical choice for James. People down here in the US have watched with rapt attention as this played out - basketball is a huge deal in the inner city playgrounds and suburban gyms alike. But, I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime as a sports fan.
On Thursday, James was the focal point of an hour long special - disguised as a promo for his charitable foundations - and it was pathetic to watch... not one heartfelt shout-out to the people of Cleavland for the support they've given him over the last five or so years. Not one real statement that would given us any inkling of what was going through his head as this unfolded.
AND THEN, I'm sitting in my hotel room in Deadwood, South Dakota tonight watching the Miami Heat unveil the newly anointed 'Three Kings' in a ridiculously over-the-top media circus introduction at the American Airline Arena in Miami.
This proves to me that the NBA is purely about spectacle, ego and hype. It has little to do with substance - though I suppose time will tell on that - and I worry about the future of professional sport. Why? Because I think this marks a turning point for all the pro sports leagues: the players are now in complete control - they dictate the terms, they call the shots, the make the rules. Previously this has been a fine balance of all stakeholders involved (including the fans), but those days are now gone I fear.
The worm has turned, kids. It's the new world order, and though I'll still cheer for my favourite pro teams - I just lost a little bit more respect for the whole freakin' set-up this week.
Bill Simmons from ESPN.com has once again hit the nail on the head with this one - if you care, please take a minute to get his take on the whole LeBocle (his term, not mine).
(This is part two of a double post today... if you haven't read part one - you should, it's pretty funny.)
... The Good Life.
That's what the sign says as you enter Nebraska. Kool-Aid was invented in Nebraska and Warren Buffet - the world's second wealthiest man - makes his home here, so based on those two things alone, it's hard to argue with the sentiment.
Nebraska has always existed in a realm of near-mythology for me - I know that's weird, and I'm not 100% certain why I feel that way. It might have something to with the whole middle-American heartland fascination that I've spent the last three weeks trying to quell. It might also be that it represents a somewhat more exotic version of the countryside I spent some of my childhood in (that countryside being my grandparents farm in west-central Saskatchewan). Or, it could be that the state of Nebraska was the inspiration (more or less) for two of my all-time favourite albums.
As with everything in life, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
Everything you've ever heard about Nebraska (and I'm sure that's not a lot) is true: it's flat, it's full of farm and pasture land, it's sparsely populated and it's right smack-dab in the middle of America's bible belt. For some of you, this might not sound so attractive, but it's vast, simple and somber here: it has a beauty to it that's difficult to explain - but if you've ever driven down a dirt road at sunset listening to Bruce Springsteen you're on the right track.
Springsteen's 1982 album, Nebraska, is an unquestionable masterpiece. It wasn't initially intended to be released as it was recorded - at his home with 4-track cassette recorder - but the demos proved so haunting and 'real' that to imagine the songs existing in any other context was absurd. Tracks such as the title track, 'Mansion on the Hill', and 'Reason To Believe' capture vividly the honesty and the tragedy of the working class existence - a theme that the Boss does better than anyone.
The album is, like it's namesake, also vast, simple and somber - it's not an album to play at dinner parties. It is an album to be listened to in either a dim room half-filled with cigarette smoke, or in a car winding down a country road with the windows wide open and the wind providing the orchestra parts.
I love this album...
Mansion on the Hill by Bruce Springsteen
In 2001, The Cash Brothers (Andrew and Peter - the latter of Skydiggers fame), a little known Camadian folk-rock duo released an incredibly well-written collection of songs called How Was Tomorrow. I've loved this album from the first listen too - it has the same kinds of wide-open space and simple textures that the best of Springsteen's albums have; haunting harmony is rampant, and simple three-chord folk tunes have never felt so alive.
A track entitled 'Nebraska' is the standout on this album for me. It is an homage of sorts to the Springsteen album, but uses it as a backdrop for a beautiful heartbreak story. There's a line in it that is so perfect, and so timely that it bears singling out here... I couldn't find a video of the track, but I did find an mp3 link and - truth be told - I think that listening to it with your eyes closed is probably the way it was intended to be heard anyway...
"I've got nothing on my mind, and nothing to do... I'm just driving 'round listening to Nebraska."
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