joel phelps is a dude that makes me feel genuinely starstruck when i see him. and i see him pretty much every day. joel was in silkworm (which everybody knows is the best band ever) up until their 1994 album libertine, after which he left and started releasing music on his own and with the downer trio. his 1999 album blackbird is easily one of the best rock albums of the last 10 years. it's so fucking good. i dream of making an album this raw and awesome. too bad barely anybody has heard it and it's super hard to find. bla bla bla i love joel phelps. anyway, i guess he's lived in vancouver for a bunch of years and i guess he lives in my neighborhood, because i see him ALL THE FUCKING TIME. he's always sitting in this place called zigg's 2 blocks from my house drinking beer. every time i walk by i look in the window to see if he's in there and if he is i get all "oh my god, it's joel phelps!" and kinda have to fan myself and walk away quickly before i faint. one time i was in line at the grocery store and he was 2 people in front of me. i almost died! thing is, he's all weird and shy and i think he wouldn't be stoked if i ever tried to say anything to him like "you are the greatest human being ever and i love you". he ain't bad looking either... a girl i know tried talking to him once about how amazing his music is and he got really awkward and kinda couldn't say anything or make eye contact. which is cool. i guess who wouldn't get weird about something like that? he barely ever plays live, but when he does next you'll be sure to see the members of ladyhawk standing at the very front and alternately screaming, sobbing, tearing at their clothes and scribbling furiously in their journals.
2008 was a real motherfucker. i mean, not really, but kind of. our album came out (a full year after it was recorded) and we went on tour. a lot. we worked really hard this year and all we have to show for it is massive debt (both band and personal), mental instability, shattered relationships and the overall disdain of everyone we work with. but i'm not bitter. i'm more like an olive- kind of briny, pickle-ish... but tasty. if this all sounds super whiny, it is. it's what i do. i whine. and look, i realize our album is kinda crappy, people have been telling us that from the start, but that's just the way we made it and that's the way we like it. if people don't like it, they should go listen to something better- like bon iver. or bon scott era ac/dc. as the great robert wyatt once wrote: "you may notice some technical inadequacies in some of my performances- a hesitant beat here, a dodgy note there- these are of course entirely deliberate and reproduced as evidence of my almost painful sincerity." totally, dude.
anyway, because it's that time of the year, i thought i'd do a couple year end top ten lists myself. and sticking with the theme of whining, here's:
TOP 10 MOST ANNOYING BAND RELATED THINGS OF 2008:
1. ladyhawke related shit- yes, we know that there's another ladyhawk(e). no, we don't care. why do you? is this ACTUALLY confusing to people? do we have to change our fucking band name?
2. guys who talk about beards- this applies to both music writers and guys (and it's ALWAYS guys) on the street or at shows. dudes are always saying shit to me like "hey, sweet beard, man" or they just want to talk about my beard. i NEVER do that to other guys with beards. honestly, what the fuck is up with that? some dudes even want to touch it. music writers always think they're being super clever and use the fucking dumb made up term "beardos" when they talk about us- like weirdos, but with an extra beard reference thrown in all sneaky! GET IT?? why do people always mention the fact that we have facial hair? if i was writing about a band i wouldn't mention the fact that certain members have boobs or perms or whatever. i just really fucking hate shaving.
3. alcohol references (sorry, another one aimed at music writers)- look, i realize we did this one to ourselves. fully. we deserve it. but it's still annoying to constantly hear yourself refered to as "booze-soaked" when you really don't drink THAT much. i mean, i don't drink that much, the other guys are DRUNKS!
4. stupid, boring interview questions- i also realize it's lame to complain about doing interviews, like "oooh, poor me, people are interested in what i think about things...", but does anyone honestly care about shit like "where did you get your band name?" or "how did your band start?"? NOBODY cares about that shit! and nobody really cares what i think about things and they shouldn't.
5. sound guys- hey dude, i think your ponytail's too tight. these guys take their job pretty seriously, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but after hearing the same lecture about stage volume and turning down literally hundreds of times, WE FUCKING GET IT! that doesn't mean we're going to turn down. i'm sure anybody that plays in a guitar-based rock band can feel me on this. i also love it when sound guys "join the band" and feel they can just throw all kinds of shitty digital reverb and delay all over the vocals. it cracks me up every time.
6. being broke- we make NOOOO money. thing is, i still have to pay rent for all those months i'm away on tour and i can't work when i'm not around, so there's not really any money coming in most of the time. it's also pretty hard to find a job that's cool with you leaving all the time. it's rad to borrow money from your parents when you're 30 because you play in a band and can't buy groceries.
7. drink tickets- its also lame to complain about getting free drinks, but when you're trying to survive on a $10 per diem, tipping the bartender kind of stings. we usually only get 3 tickets per band member, so it's also pretty difficult to cultivate that "booze-soaked" image we're known for.
8. my amp- no comment. anybody want to buy an amp?
9. "club night"- i understand that bars need to make money and that they can make more money if they double book the night, rushing everyone, including the bands, out early so dj's can set up and all new people can come in and get drunk. it makes sense, but fuck off.
10. sketchy promoters trying to rip off bands- it happens all the time and it sucks.
bla bla bla... god, complain much? yeesh!
here's my top ten albums of 2008 (in no particular order):
david bowie- young americans some of this sounds a bit too g.e. smith and the saturday night live band, but the song "win" kills me every time.
yaz- upstairs at eric's i've been obsessed with vince clarke all year. he also did all the music on depeche mode's (pre heroin) debut album that's been ruling me as well.
the grateful dead- s/t it's no secret that i love the dead. lately i've really been jamming their first album, it makes me want to do a shit-load of speed next time we record.
laid back- keep smiling best. album. ever. best. cover. ever.
fleetwood mac- tusk this is what millions of dollars, 2 years of studio time and mountains of cocaine can get you- a sprawling monster double album/difficult artistic statement that alienates almost all of your fans, but actually deeply rules. i've cried listening to this more than once. totally emo.
no kids- come into my house nick krgovich is a genius.
tommy james and the shondells- the best of tommy james and the shondells come on... crimson and clover? i think we're alone now? forget about it. i just want to make music that sounds like this.
double negative- the wonderful and frightening world of double negative the last time we played in chapel hill, these guys were the only people at our show. for some reason they like our band. anyway, after the show one of the dudes gave me a copy of this album and it totally fucking kills.
crass- stations of the crass i'll admit, i rarely make it all the way through this album in one go. let's just say it's a little... preachy. but it's got some jams.
guided by voices- alien lanes 28 short songs that are really more like one long song. this has probably been in my top 10 since it came out.
honerable mention: anything by the dwight twilley band.
hey, wait a minute! only one of those albums came out in 2008! turns out we weren't the only ones releasing crappy albums this year, so was EVERYONE ELSE! just kidding, there were probably lots of good albums released in 2008, i just have no interest in hearing them. that's just me.
AND there's no better way to celebrate christmas than by listening to grim, satanic black metal! so here's my top 10 all-time favorite black metal albums (also in no particular order)...
bathory- the return pretty much the first "actual" black metal album and kind of the best. i listened to this once on a faulty record player that kept slowing down and speeding up and got thoroughly creeped out.
ulver- nattens madrigal there's a legend that this was recorded in the forest under the full moon. obviously bullshit. the guitar sound on this album is insane. ulver means wolves in norwegian, pretty badass.
mayhem- live in leipzig apparently the only surviving recording of the legendary line-up featuring dead, euronymous and varg vikarnes. if you don't know the dirt on these dudes, look it up. this recording is so shitty, but completely ripping and includes between song banter in "grim" voice.
emperor- anthems to the welkin at dusk emperor gets props for being ambitious, even if their "symphonic" elements are just kind of cheesy synth lines. the overall effect is one of swirling, buzzing, chaotic noise, everything is lost in an almost ambient haze. kind of the my bloody valentine of black metal (that's a joke. is it just me or is my bloody valentine the most overly name-checked band EVER? i mean, i love my bloody valentine, EVERYBODY loves my bloody valentine. let's all just shut the fuck up about it!)
black witchery/conqueror- hellstorm of evil vengeance (split) i'm not so much into the conqueror stuff (but it's technically more "war metal" anyway), but the black witchery songs are easily the shittiest, fastest, most brutal shit around. nothing but straight blast beats all the way. also, great title, guys.
xasthur- the funeral of being this shit is totally emo.
gorgoroth- under the sign of hell gorgoroth is ACTUALLY scary. they make most other black metal bands look like bon iver. you should really check out vbs.tv's excellent documentary about gorgoroth's main guy gaahl. totally insane. http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=3009727001
darkthrone- a blaze in the northern sky this just sounds like a crusty, lo-fi version of shitty early 90's hardcore and it truly doesn't get much better than that.
burzum- aske e.p. i can't really look past some of the shittier aspects of varg vikarnes character (murderer, white supremecist..), but nobody has a better black metal howl than him.
immortal- battles in the north these guys are kind of like the savage garden of black metal.
p.s. if you ever get bored just youtube "funny metallica moments"... remember when those guys were actually "booze-soaked"?
see you in the new year! and if not, see you in hell!
why are people so fucking stupid? ok, so you know how there's another ladyhawk? well there is and actually she is a lot more popular than we will ever be, so it should actually be her asking "so you know there's another ladyhawk?" and you responding "no." she spells her name with an e at the end just like the movie that we are not named after. she's cool, it's dance music, mostly for girls. we've been corresponding through myspace for years, like "hey ladyhawke, what's up?" and she's like "hey ladyhawk, not much. you?". it's friendly. neither of us care about the fact that we have similar names, we are obviously no threat to her popularity and nobody is going to go to one of her shows expecting to see us. however, it seems to be a bit more of a problem on our end. it only started to come up when we were in europe and mainly the u.k., where every bit of press we did was more about her and how we had the same name (it's not the fucking same, it's similar. i know it's nit-picky, but if your name was becky and i spelled it beckee, you'd be like "that's not me", right?). anyway, people would turn up at the shows and seem pretty confused or bummed out when they saw us get on stage, which is actually a pretty common response at most of our shows, so we never really thought anything of it. well, the other night we played in london (that's london, ONTARIO, mind you. swinging london...) and some pretty awesome shit went down. these two drunk frat boy type dudes were standing at the very front of the stage as we were setting up, kinda talking to darcy and saying things like "man, we are so excited to see her" and "we listened to (her song) back of the van all the way here" and "where is she?" and "when is she coming out?" and so on. by this point i was laughing, because i honestly thought these fucking clowns were JOKING. so we did our classic "she's just in the bathroom" line and started playing. well, halfway through the first song, the dudes yell "FUCK YOU!" and "YOU GUYS ARE FUCKING ASSHOLES!" whilst fingering darcy (not that way) before storming away. BUT WAIT! it get's better! the first thing these guys did when they got to the show was go directly to the merch table and buy fucking records and t-shirts WITH OUR FUCKING FACES ON THEM! yup, that's right. anyway, these guys march directly back to the table and the one guy frisbees his record at the esteemed fred squire (who was working merch for us) and leave the bar, cursing and spitting. they dropped like 50 bucks on merch for the wrong fucking band! i can't feel bad about that shit, it's just too fucking priceless. as i always say, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke! the joke in this case being my life and my art. p.s. sorry if this story is a bit rambling and disjointed, i am so fucking nyquil-ed out i can barely see and my hands feel like rubber spatulas. p.p.s. i love you toronto.
maybe i'm just stoned, but... what the fuck? there are tons of taco time commercials on youtube, all with the same woman. weird stuff. check it out! it made me curious about other commercials out there, maybe some real canadian classics like:
not really a commercial, i guess, but amazing none the less. and that's really my actual mom and dad! anyway, one of the best things about touring across canada is driving for 8-12 hours every day and getting to sample the wonderful and wide variety of roadside fast food franchises, such as the above mentioned taco time. another great thing is experiencing that 8-12 hour drive with an excruciating case of diarhea. brutal. sorry if that's too much info. fuck taco time. i am currently sitting in a motel room in thunder bay on our "atumnal tour 2008" (sic) with attack in black and shotgun jimmie, along with bonus hangers-on will kidman and the esteemed fred squire. if you want to check out a tour video blog that jimmie has been doing go to:
myspace.com/autumnaltour2008
it's some pretty funny stuff. shotgun jimmie is a hero in canada. speaking of canada, just gorgeous this time of year! and:
pee-wee gets real! problem is: that shit is just so fucking gooood... love ya!
so, ladyhawk recently went to europe. while i was there i did a little tour diary for inexplicable long-time ladyhawk fans the fader. if you want to check it out along with various other ladyhawk related things that the fader has published, go here: http://www.thefader.com/tag/ladyhawk
i wrote a 5th tour diary entry, but never sent it. too dark and depressing. maybe i'll get into it here someday. by the way, i've been meaning to update this page more often (more for my own sake than anything), but i have neither a computer or internet access at my house (i know.) and using the computer at the laundromat seems too depressing to me, so...
hi, it's me again. yes i know i haven't updated this in a while. i've been outside at the beach trying to enjoy my life and what little summer we get in vancouver, not sitting in front of a fucking computer writing inane bullshit that nobody will read. anyway, have you heard the news? gnomes are real! ya, and they are taking over a small town in argentina. no shit! a couple weeks ago, darcy bumped into a dude that used to sing for a pretty sweet vancouver band who was really excited about these "gnomes" and told him all about how "real" they are and stuff... needless to say, i was intrigued. here, check it out for yourself:
pretty crazy stuff! that gnome can shimmy! there's more of that shit out there if you're interested (or just bored like me). don't even get me started about the chupacabra!
so, we played at fuck yeah fest in l.a. on the labor day weekend... pretty fun, got to see some awesome bands... like NEGATIVE FUCKING APPROACH! i mean, come on!
for a bunch of 2000 year old dudes they still blew fucked up off the stage (no offense to those guys). i also saw a band called the monotonix from isreal, who had easily the most straight up insane set i've ever seen in my life. at some points the entire band was crowd surfing at the same time (including the drummer and his drums) while playing. i know it's all a shtick, but amazing none the less. our own set went down pretty ok, i think we played well, but as usual people weren't really feeling it. no surprise there, i guess. i did however get to try out my new thing of doing 10 minutes of impromtu stand up comedy before our set, which is maybe why the crowd was less than stoked by our actual music. i guess everbody just blew their collective load roaring with laughter at my hilarious banter...oh well, fuck them if they can't take a joke. in fact, fuck anybody who can't take a joke! fuck all y'all! ok, sorry. did you hear about the particle accelerator they built in switzerland? pretty crazy. just google it. a guy at my work was so convinced that the whole world was going to be sucked into a black hole when they fired that thing up this morning that he went out and got totally shit faced last night and wasn't going to come in to work today(i mean, he wouldn't have to if there was no more world to work in, right?). anyway, he finally made it in at around 11, hungover as fuck... and still the world turns.
we are currently on tour with the best band in canada (formerly the hardest working band in canada) THE CONSTANTINES. in the spirit of excess, we are doing it on a bus. that's right, a tour bus. pretty sweet. i am at this moment sitting on said bus in beautiful san francisco, basking in the recirculating odors of 10 grown men who haven't showered in a couple days. i call the flavor "dude gumbo". anyway, we started off our day yesterday (a day off) in mt. shasta at a local swimming hole, then big bry webb grilled us up a couple slabs of ribs while we drunkenly played an epic bocce ball tournament (tournament of farts. ha ha, get it? like their album, but... get it?). the evening ended with more drinking (surprise, surprise) and with me giving several home job tattoos. good times indeed. the only bummer is that steve "baby eagle" lambke (featured above) broke his hand playing frisbee (seriously) in victoria the other day and has been hanging out there getting surgery. fucked up, right? this is why you should never do anything... anyway, he should be hooking back up with us in the next few days. godspeed, steve! feel free to send good vibes his way. here's the new cons video:
dear seattle, i'm sorry. no, i really am. i know i apologized from the stage several times (which is super lame), but i am truly, madly, deeply sorry. last night i played the worst show i have ever played. it was fucked. it was worse than that show at la sala rosa in montreal last year (which was hellishly awful). i felt like a 14 year old playing for the first time in front of people. fuck that. i felt like a thirty year old playing songs that i've played literally hundreds of times as if i'd never heard them before, or ever played a guitar before. i wasn't even drunk. last night after i went to bed i had nightmares about the show, it just went on and on and on and i couldn't get off the stage. it was a bummer. if you were at the show last night, i promise you we are not the shittiest band in the world. we are probably the fourth or fifth shittiest band in the world. i'm just embarrassed about the whole thing. totally my fault, not the other dudes, and i apologize to them as well. it seems like we always have a hard time in seattle, not sure why, but we do. at least i do. anyway, no use crying over spilt milk, right? it's all in the past... now, if i can just go ahead with my life and never show my face in seattle ever again, we should be all good.
yes my last entry was depressing. sorry. things got dark. things would have gotten dark for me even if every show on that tour had been awesome. it was 6 weeks, which for me is a long time to be sitting in a van. we had fun, don't think we didn't, but it all just starts to close in on you after a while. whining and complaining about everything is just how i make sense of the world. that's just me. but we made it. home again, home again jiggity-jig. tomorrow we leave again for 3 and a half weeks and i'm actually looking forward to it. go figure. anyway, i'm not throwing in the towel yet. there will be another ladyhawk album, and it will probably suck just as hard as this one...BUT IN A DIFFERENT WAY! just kidding, it will suck in the same way. one great thing about this last tour was getting to know NEVA DINOVA. we did all six weeks with those lecherous nebraskan corn-guzzlers and they are truly great. jacob bellows writes songs that girls like and then bring their boyfriends to the show and then they like the songs too. beautiful songs. AND he's fucking funny. and tough. don't fuck with him. or this kid. props to petey "kingpin" klein. one love.
so here i am, chilling in oklahoma city with my man brad wittle, watching a townes van zandt dvd... i tried to do a post in the middle of last week, but i deleted it. nobody wants to read the rantings of a man deep in the darkest fathoms of depression (i mean, nobody WOULD read it, but...), talking about how the world is ending and how nobody cares about anything and how everything is utterly meaningless and pointless. sounds great, dude. i then went into a detailed recounting of my life-long struggle with depression and how i used to take pills and how now i just medicate myself with drugs and alcohol. i don't know, i just got bummed out. i think it's taken me this long to realize exactly who i am, where i am and where i'm going. i got some perspective on my life. the writhing adolescent punk in me looked up for a minute and saw the horizon, saw that the end of the road is closer than when he last looked. is it a bad thing in life to hold onto your fantasies when reality is so fucked up? i guess not. it's really hard for me not to view everything in the context of what i feel to be the "big picture", which is that everything is ultimately, utterly pointless and meaningless while at the same time being full of secret meaning and significance. this is the essential conflict. i generally view things from the dark side. i've realized that very few people will care about the music i make, but some people will care a lot. what's better?: a lot of people kind of caring about your songs (and probably just one song they heard online) for a minute or a couple people feeling deeply affected by something you've done. at pretty much every show on this tour there's been one or two people who REALLY love our band. thank you. you rule and you make me want to keep going. unfortunately, it's hard not to feel like you're drowning in a sea of indifference and snide hostility. people don't know who we are and if they do, they ain't feeling it. that's cool, i get it. everyone's a critic. a lot of people think our record is shit, and maybe it is, but it's my shit and it's the best shit that i can shit, you know? i'm just trying to make something good and maybe i'll never get close, but at least i'm trying and at least i'm putting it out there... right?
"...you tell me that i make no difference, but at least i'm fucking trying! what the fuck have you done?"
i love rock and roll and i know that it will never die.
a few weeks ago, i was driving the delivery van for my work along east cordova street in vancouver when i see this guy with crazy hair walking on the sidewalk carrying an electric guitar by the neck. i think to myself, "hey, that bum has a pretty sweet guitar."... it was dan bejar. i actually get a bit starstruck when i see dan, i feel like a blushing teenage girl. not only is he pretty much the best guy at writing songs around, he's also devastatingly handsome. i've been known to rant about how amazing destroyer is, i mean, RUBIES...pffft! forget about it. i feel like i'm just now starting to really understand what some of the songs are about on albums like thief and streethawk: a seduction and i've listened to them for years! his lyrics are so fast and dense and full of sly inferences and dry humour, there's layers to that shit...like a god damn onion! okay... i'm getting excited. we played in st. louis the other night and destroyer was playing across town, so we booked it out of our show and over there in time to catch a couple songs. great stuff. i managed to play it cool and keep it together when we were all hanging out after. thank god. the other great thing was that our friend scott august was touring with them selling their merch. scott is responsible for the monkey faces in the insert of our new album, which were these scary animatronic characters that would groan to life and "perform" songs like "ramblin' man" at monkey time pizza in the local mini-golf course/arcade when we were teenagers. they were getting pretty ragged and jolty by the time they were finally retired a few years ago. i'm not sure what took their place. anyway, scott is an amazing artist. you should google him and read about his art and look at some examples of the shit he's up to these days. be sure you put in "scott august kelowna" or you'll get a lot of stuff about a guy who does native american inspired new age music, which could also be cool or at least relaxing.
dear united states of america, why is this weird to you? what is gross about a pile of fries topped with cheese curds and smothered in gravy? you guys like to eat shit that's really bad for you, so this should be right up your alley, right? seriously, it's delicious. AND it's great when you're hungover. although this is a french thing, it's available all across canada. you can get poutine in your combo at most fast food chains across the country. poutine is single-handedly responsible for bringing about peace between anglos and francophones here, everyone can agree on poutine... god's perfect food. maybe by embracing poutine, america could abandon it's primitive war-mongering ways and move towards a state of true peaceful enlightenment. maybe not. for a while, sean was obsessed with poutine. i mean, who hasn't been, but this was weird... he was eating it upwards of four times a week. it was getting excessive and we were all becoming concerned for his physical and mental health. it started to take over his personality. his girlfriend was complaining that he was starting to smell weird. the last straw came when he tried to climb in the bathtub with her while eating a large tray of dairy queen poutine. i shit you not. she laid down the law and the spell was broken, but for how long... to this day he gets a strange far away look in his eyes at the mention of it, like he's come in from a long day at battle to a banquet table piled high with crisp, golden french fries with cascading piles of the choicest cheese curds and lusty wenches ladeling thick brown gravy over it all from a great steaming cauldren. anyway, we're in montreal (the cradle of poutine) chilling out for a couple days in the midst of our massive (and massively unsuccessful) american tour. the "bury the hate in 2008" tour. i'm just pushin' it down, storing it up... nice. also,
ryan comes from rutland, which is an area in kelowna, b.c. that has been a skid stronghold since the 80's. in the 90's those skids' younger brothers kinda took over the scene, bringing on the era of the skomies (skid-homies). we found this shit last night and it kind of made us nostalgic for the old home turf.
first off: though these guys are not skids per se, laying patches has long been a popular skid past-time. the camaros of yesteryear have been replaced by the low-rider pick up trucks of today. these guys have nothing to do but get drunk and do this, as evidenced by the length of this "greatest patches" clip. enjoy!
then, after a long day of drinking and laying patches, these guys like to get together and spit mad street truth. this one is looooong, but...rewarding?
