Month: September 2005

One Month Too Late

From the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s site, Ready.gov:

Click the graphic to find out more about National Preparedness Month.

Music

The Soundtrack from My Personal Coming-Of-Age Film, Part Deux

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date September 9, 2005
2 Comments on The Soundtrack from My Personal Coming-Of-Age Film, Part Deux

A couple of weeks ago, in an entry titled The Soundtrack to My Personal Coming-Of-Age Film, I lamented that the Billboard Top 100 wasn’t representative of the sort of stuff I listened to. I was a regular listener of CFNY (better known these days as 102.1 The Edge) back then. I looked around for some CFNY charts, which led me to the Spirit of Radio site, which publishes CFNY’s old charts.

Here’s the chart from the year I graduated from high school — 1987 — with the ones I particularly liked in bold, and the ones I particularly disliked in ~~strikeout text~~. Note how much this chart differs from the 1987 Billboard chart.

~~U2: The Joshua Tree~~
This was one of the instigators of that false notion a lot of late 80s musicians had: “slower” means “deeper”. This is similar to another false notion that got its start in the early 90s and still plagues indie rock today: “angry and bitter” means “honest and sincere”.
New Order: Substance
R.E.M.: Document
Depeche Mode: Music for the Masses
The Cult: Electric
The Smiths: Strangeways, Here We Come
Sting: Nothing But the Sun
The Cure: Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
The Cure went all over the stylistic map with this one and made an album packed with gems. It brings me back to dancing with the death-bunnies at Montreal’s “Thunderdome” club.
Echo and the Bunnymen: Echo and the Bunnymen
Blue Rodeo: Outskirts
Pink Floyd: A Momentary Lapse of Reason
My roommate Mark used to play this quite often, so hearing Learning to Fly always takes me back to hanging out in Crazy Go Nuts University’s Leonard Hall, room 313.
INXS: Kick
Pet Shop Boys: Actually
The Northern Pikes: Big Blue Sky
The Housemartins: The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death
Before he became Fatboy Slim, Norman Cook was in this happy Britpop band.
54.40: Show Me
Billy Idol: Vital Idol
Chalk Circle: Mending Wall
Level 42: Running in the Family
Various Artists: La Bamba Original Soundtrack
Suzanne Vega: Solitude Standing
Eurythmics: Savage
Robbie Robertson: Robbie Robertson
The Alarm: Eye of the Hurricane
David Bowie: Never Let me Down
Sinead O’Connor: The Lion and the Cobra
“Don’t call me sweetheart, just call me Joe…” Before she went bonkers, she made some pretty good music.
The Box: Closer Together
Men Without Hats: Pop Goes the World
ABC: Alphabet City
Icehouse: Man of Colours
Bryan Ferry: Bete Noire
Erasure: Circus
Prince: Sign O the Times
Love and Rockets: Earth-Sun-Moon
Yes: Big Generator
The Jesus and Mary Chain: Darklands
The Sisters of Mercy: Floodland
Want a good 80s goth collection? Get Fad Gadget’s Collapsing New People, some Bauhaus, Tones on Tail, a little Alien Sex Fiend, the Batastrophe EP by Specimen and of course, this album, which features the original pre-Ofra Haza version of “This Corrosion”.
Rock and Hyde: Under the Volcano
Gene Loves Jezebel: House of Dolls
Gowan: Great Dirty World
The Grapes of Wrath: Treehouse
“Now and Again” was by far the better Grapes of Wrath album.
FM: Tonight
Crowded House: Crowded House
The Smiths: Louder Than Bombs
Another must-have if you’re trying to put together a definitive 80s alt-rock collection.
George Harrison: Cloud Nine
The Silencers: A Letter from St. Paul
Grateful Dead: In the Dark
The Dead are forever associated in my mind with a lack of volition and hygiene.
Simply Red: Men and Women
I could never get into Simply Red, either.
That Petrol Emotion: Babble
One of the best eighties albums you never heard.
Rush: Hold Your Fire
Squeeze: Babylon and On
Much better than their previous attempt, Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti, but still no Argybargy.
10,000 Maniacs: In My Tribe
Roger Waters: Radio Kaos
Hoodoo Gurus: Blow Your Cool
Hugh Marsh: Shakin’ the Pumpkin
A violin player rocks out and gets interesting results. Notable track on this album: Rules Were Made to be Broken, a primer on Nazi Germany’s hatred of jazz. They called it “Judeo-Negroid music”.
Skinny Puppy: Cleanse, Fold and Manipulate
“This is stuff by a guy who used to be in Images in Vogue?” I asked when I first heard it.
The Style Council: The Cost of Loving
Flesh for Lulu: Long Live the New Flesh
Gino Vanelli: Big Dreamers Never Sleep
The Proclaimers: This is the Story
Public Image Limited: Happy
The Screaming Blue Messiahs: I Wanna Be a Flintstone (12″ Single)
Yello: One Second
“Ohhhhhhhhh yeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhh (chicka-chickahhhh!)” How many movie soundtracks did that song end up on, anyway?
Van Morrison: Poetic Champions Compose
The Nylons: Happy Together
The Psychedelic Furs: Midnight to Midnight
Swing Out Sister: It’s Better to Travel
Julian Cope: Saint Julian
David Sylvian: Secrets of the Beehive
Brian Eno for the Doc Martens and spiky-hair set!
The Cars: Door to Door
The Dead Milkmen: Bucky Fellini
The Mighty Lemon Drops: Out of Hand
Alison Moyet: Raindancing
M/A/R/R/S: Pump Up the Volume
George and I played this a lot back in Leonard Hall.
Hunters and Collectors: Living Daylight
The Blow Monkeys: She was Only a Grocer’s Daughter
Thrashing Doves: Bedrock Vice
I was seeing a rather wacky girl at the time and I associate the big single on this album, Beautiful Imbalance, along with the entire Singles: 45 and Under album by Squeeze with her.
Run DMC: Raisin’ Hell
Manteca: Fire Me Up
Various Artists: In Demand
~~Bruce Cockburn: Waiting for a Miracle~~
My friend Yann and I used to have this favourite Cockburn joke: If a tree fell on Bruce Cockburn, would anybody care? He’s just too damned earnest, even for me.
The Big Supreme: Don’t Walk
Wire: The Ideal Copy
Skid Roper and Mojo Nixon: Bo-day-shus!
Everybody remembers Elvis is Everywhere, but Don’t Want No Foo-Foo Haircut on My Head/cite> was also pretty good.
The BoDeans: Outside Looking In
The Dolphin Brothers: Catch the Fall
The Call: Into the Woods

Geek It Happened to Me

Marc Canter Sez: “Bring Accordion Boy!”

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date September 8, 2005
3 Comments on Marc Canter Sez: “Bring Accordion Boy!”

Photo: Marc Canter. Marc Canter, in a roundabout way, has played an important role in my career. He was behind the multimedia authoring tool Director, the first development tool I ever used after graduating from school.

Although my computer science degree and strong marks in my database courses meant that I could’ve landed a job at a bank or insurance firm, I wanted slightly more offbeat work. I ended up working for an interactive multimedia company, Mackerel Interactive Multimedia, where I used Director. Thanks to Director and Mackerel, I’ve been doing “road less travelled” techie work ever since.

(Cory Doctorow wrote a piece about Mackerel for Wired titled Burying the Fish. Although commissioned, it was never published.)

Canter’s in Accordion City this week, and sent Boss Ross some email inviting him for lunch. The most notable line in the email, which was cc’d to me:

OK dude - so how 'bout lunch on the 8th?

We’re staying at the Four Seasons – wanna do dim sum or something like that?

Bring Accordian Boy.

That’s Accordion MAN, dude!

Coming along with me and Boss Ross is Tucows’ new VP of Product Development, Alain Chesnais, who in former lives worked at ATI and Alias, partially because this is the sort of meetup that he should be attending and partially as a “welcome to the herd!” activity.

It should be a fun lunch — dim sum — and I’m sure photos and a blog entry will follow.

In the News

Great Quips from "The Daily Show"

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date September 8, 2005
1 Comment on Great Quips from "The Daily Show"

On pathetically incompetent FEMA director Michael’s former position as

commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association: “Most Bush appointees are beholden to Arabian people.”

On the administration’s new favourite talking point — “everyone is playing the blame game”: “Those who complain about the blame game? They’re usually to blame.”

A little perspective on the President and Sean Penn (who really is on the verge of turning into his puppet from Team America) “[Bush] took four days, and then he visited Trent Lott’s house, while [Penn] actually got in the sludge and rescued people.”

(I still think that Penn’s bringing along a photographer was a bit much.)

In the News