January 2004

THE OLD SOUL
ANOTHER COUNTRY
SINGING SAW SHADOW SHOW
GOA!
SPITFIRES AND MAYFLOWERS
TEMPLE THREAT
THE IVY LEAGUE
THE PHONEMES

THE OLD SOUL

Purveyor of: dream expediting

The Old Soul a.k.a Luca Maoloni, multi- instrumentalist and frontman for dream rockers White Star Line, has gathered members of hoodlum rock outfits Wild Honey and More Plastic to perform the songs from The Old Soul debut recording, which he says will be ready to be heard this month. Luca and Wesley J Ramos recently discussed nostalgia, playing weddings, Pittsburgh and on-stage nudity.

Please introduce the band. The band is pretty much just me, trying to outdo myself. Kind of like masturbating while recording with Andy Magoffin, Dean Sterling or myself. (Not masturbating, but recording with those guys. Get your head out of your ass!) Although I have tried it a million times, it's super difficult to play drums, guitar, piano, bass, trumpet and sing all at the same time, so I asked my good friends Jay (and) Matt (from Wild Honey), Juri and Andrew (from More Plastic) to help me out and represent this live. I would really like to thank these kind folk for helping me out in such a short time. They overcame the Spector Gun flinging incident that I pulled a couple weeks ago. They have balls of steel!

How is the Old Soul different than the new soul? Is this some kind of retro thing? It could be a retro thing if that's what you wanna believe, it's your imagination. But the truth – and there is always the truth in life, some people obviously don't want to hear it – is that The Old Soul is the last 50 to 70 years of music. What I think I subconsciously did, or am doing, is adding my entire record collection, which is fucking enormous, and trying to make a single album from the last 70 years of music, minus reggae because I never dug reggae. You can't disagree with it. You might not like it, or you might say with a snarly voice: “This just sounds like the Flaming Lips!” But the truth is, (like I said there is always truth) take a little element from my entire record collection and you got The Old Soul. Were you asking about the name? If that's the case, in the span of one week sometime in the past year, four people said I have “an Old Soul that have never met.” So I like it. There!

Word has it that the creation of The Old Soul stemmed from a putrid, sweaty More Plastic/White Star Line hotel room during a heat wave near Pittsburgh. Can you elaborate? Well the word is absolutely wrong. WSL and More Plastic have shared beds, bottles, stages and wages for quite some time now. We are, and always have been, the little train that... But no, we stayed at a guy’s house in Pittsburgh and we got him stoned for the first time. He must have thought we were animals – grown men shot-gunning beers and sleeping on the floor with nothing on. That's not The Old Soul, that's the Old Socks.

I heard that The Old Soul would only perform at catered events like Bar Mitzvahs, weddings and Holy Communion parties...The reason I said that once was because, with WSL, we just started getting sick and tired of playing the same old clubs and shit. I wanted to try something new. The thought of playing the wedding of somebody you've never met and just destroying the stage is very intriguing. On the Ben Stiller Show, there was a skit where they parodied U2 playing a Bar Mitzvah...That's what I meant!

Considering you and Juri, and your propensity for disrobing during crucial moments of performances, will there be certain amounts of nudity at this Old Soul show? Alcohol does some stupid things, I tell ya. But no, no nudity with this. I am trying to make things a little more serious and less wacky. I think the only reason we would do that is to freak out ourselves, especially when somebody really fucks up a guitar part or something and there is a little bit of tension in the band. What better way to alleviate the tension than to turn around and see the sax player naked? When it’s done for shock value, I personally think it's stupid.

ANOTHER COUNTRY

WAVELENGTH 195 — Sunday Jan 11, 10pm

Purveyor of: A little bit Country, a little bit Rex Hotel

“It has a lot to do with the moment, more than anything else . . . and the people that you’re with. There’s gotta be like three or four factors that come together.”

For more than 20 years, Victor Bateman has been one of Toronto’s true bass masters, with musical endeavours ranging through all genres. With guitarist Justin Haynes and drummer Jean Martin, Victor has formed Another Country, a unique exploration into the country music he loves. Playing a variety of covers from through the ages, as well as some original material, Another Country come to Wavelength to pose the musical question: If a jazzer plays country music in a room full of indie-rock kids, does anybody hear? And the quote at the top of the page? That’s Victor’s thoughts on having a drink at a gig. Just imagine his approach to music.

How is your music in Another Country informed by your jazz playing? The improv thing plays an important part. We are playing the tunes but the way that we’re interpreting the tunes is pretty open-ended. I’m not telling people what they should be playing and I’m sort of hoping that everybody just goes with whatever happens in the moment. It’s kind of a hard one for me because I sort of feel like I’m not doing anything differently with the Another Country thing than I would with a jazz thing except that the language is a little different. The actual process—the thing that you’re doing when you’re playing—is basically the same thing. It’s just, instead of playing reds and blues you’re playing yellows and browns. It’s not a big deal . . . unless you don’t like yellow and brown. If jazz musicians could just learn to like yellow and brown, they’d be able to play country music.

Like ‘Way Out West’. No. Sonny Rollins? It’s total be-bop. It’s Sonny Rollins, man.

So, no? It’s not brown enough, man. There’s too many reds.

There’s a variety of covers and originals on the record—mostly covers . . . Covers . . . it’s like it’s huge. They’ve written a lot of country tunes.

Well, since there are so many country songs, and so many great country songs, how do you choose which ones you’re going to bother to arrange and perform? Well, I just have to want to sing the tune. At that point in time if I want to sing and play the tune then I’ll sing it and play it and everybody will fall in.

But how do you choose which ones you even take to the band? That’s what I do. If I want to sing a tune, I sing a tune. And they either know it or they don’t. If they do, then . . . actually it doesn’t matter much either way. Country music is not terribly complicated harmonically. It’s rhythmically a little odd because with the phrasing you end up with half-bars sometimes, and that can be difficult for people to grab on the fly . . . if you’re counting one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, you’re going to end up off because it actually doesn’t get through an entire bar at some point.

What is it about country music that you love? The sound more than anything, I guess. Telecaster guitar and . . . I don’t know. I like the feel. It’s fun. It’s kind of like saying ‘why do you like rock n’ roll?’ It’s fast, it’s loud, it’s very energetic. With country music, it’s like . . . it’s fun. Isn’t it?

What do you consider when you’re writing your own country song? I don’t really think about it. I’ve always thought that the idea is to have an idea and then you allow it to take it’s own path. However it chooses to develop, that’s what you end up writing out. So s ometimes you get an idea that is suited to a certain style, like country music, and sometimes you get an idea that there’s no way you can develop this in a country kind of way, ‘cause it’s not a country kind of idea.

SINGING SAW SHADOW SHOW

WAVELENGTH 196 — Sunday Jan 18, 11pm

Purveyor of: sawdomy and knickerbocker glory

“For This Exhilarating Event we will be Performing a Shadow Show of Monolithic Microtonal Proportions with Live Music Accompaniment by Singing Saws, which will be in turn accompanied by the rare and omnipresent Euphonium machine.”

Although small in size, our Shadow Show will guarantee to entice you, and at the possibility of failing to do that, we will give you a unique once-in-a-lifetime experience, and if failing to do even that, we play quiet enough to talk with loved (and hated) ones if you must.

A call was put out in the early spring days of 2003 to bring together pleasant folks and their friendly saws to start a symphony of saws that sang and cried, played in and out of tune randomly, but generally made people happy to hear the harmonies, melodies and atonalities in unison. “I will teach you to play if you’ll come join a group with me!” someone cried. Realising the symphony was a symphonette really, or rather an orchestrette more than an orchestra, but still an ensemble (not really knowing if there are ensemblettes in the world) these folks quietly agree to disregard that unimportant information and thus the Upper Canadian Saw Rebellion was born.

Motivations abound! But most of our players began because they were swooned and enchanted by the sounds of the saw. Tony Dekker and James Anderson had previous knowledge of convincing the saws to sing and began the journey of encouraging, suggesting, motivating and sometimes even commanding the others to form an everlasting bond with their saws.

One lucky player retorts (with a less pronounced voice) “I found you in a park and couldn’t ignore the painful howls of your studies but was enchanted by the idea, seeing the potential that such studies could be beneficial for all that witness it.” We kindly asked if Ian Russel would join our group and bring his unassuming enthusiasm with him. And he did.

But do they play only for the love and ambition of the no-longer-secret melodies of the saw? No. Two of us, Seesaw Chantel and Shayna Stevenson, when urged on by our interviewer, conceded for the first time that their sole motivation was to learn to play any instrument that would put them in a position to be begged to be in the World’s Most Wonderfully Amazing Band. Pending that invitation, they witnessed a saw player and were instantly inspired (that very saw was played by James, who placed the call out and served the group tea and bashful critiques on a weekly basis, neither of them knowing this until years after playing together).

To be truthful, James’s favourite word is euphonium. It is pure coincidence that the beautiful haunting call of the tenor tuba is at all appropriate when coinciding with the saws. He will always
convince those that ask that the search was a long and relentless process until the words reached the curious and patient ears of John Jowett.

Here we should insert a new tradition: On Halloween, the chamber version of the Saw Symphony assembled at group member Shahin Etemadzadeh’s house (his saw-bode). The four of them got together and when the trick-or-treaters started coming they sat out front and played the saw for all the kids. When asked if the kids fled for their lives when they realised they were being coaxed like Hansel and Gretel, Mike Stafford replies “There was a variety of reactions. There were some kids that would look, look away, and then run! Then there was one kid who sang along! Kind of like the Wolfman, he put back his head and howled 'awoooooooooo!'” Concealed under a stair-well and in shadows with saws does sound criminal but friends I assure you their intentions were innocent.

We have several people and ideas to thank for helping us join together. Mostly a very kind Mr. Julian Koster whose project The Music Tapes was an important impetus for igniting the idea that saw symphonies can and do exist, and trust us when we say that in Japan they are more common than partridgeberry jam.

GOA!

WAVELENGTH 196 — Sunday Jan 18, 10pm

Purveyor of: Mega-groove freakout!

Known as Goa Gajah when they first graced us with their presence, GOA!'s a Mtl. U.N.! of monstrous proportion. One of maybe-30-max mindblown audience members at their sadly under-attended first WL set, Craig Fraid caught up with fellow ex-Missile Command-er Alex Moskos (also of The Unireverse).

When GOA! last hit the Wavelength stage (a Toronto stage, period?), I remember there being at least two drummers onstage, as well as you and Jon Ascensio (Electronic Humans Guild) on synths backing up Philippe (Lambert, a.k.a. Monstre, vox/FX). Is the current incarnation of the band similarly pummeling? Lots has changed. Will Glass, who was one of those two drummers, left to go pursue the jazz life in New York City; he was probably the best drummer in the city, so without him it's obviously a bit different. Joel is still there and Will has been replaced by Felix (from Fly Pan Am and Et Sans?). They are both really great, steady drummers, but both really sparse. The sound has actually gone through numerous variations since we last played in Toronto. We went through a period of a kinda more African influence, where Will played a djembe and everyone else played toy instruments and flutes and stuff, but we're through that now and everyone's playing samplers, so go figure. The simple riffs and the strong repetitive nature of the music is similar and Philippe's vocal work is still very much the same; he's very focused on pop music so that comes out a bit more now.

Around the time that I met you in the late '90s, the indie/punk crowd, particularly, it seemed, in Toronto, was in the midst of a pretty amazing watershed period, as the whole 'post-rock' sensibility gave way to lot more interest in free jazz, modern classical music, and free improvisation. I bring this up because it seems as though there's been a healthy amount of crosstalk going on between all these worlds in Montreal as of late. What's your take on your town's current climate? For a time, the Mile End crowd was the only show in town, but in recent months there's been excellent stuff popping up all over the place, lots of kids getting really crazy, making really freaked music. Lots of stuff is starting to happen in lofts or dingy bars way up north or way out east or way southwest. The musicians are finally moving from this one stretch up St. Laurent Blvd. into farther-out neighbourhoods, which I think is gonna have a great effect on music here.

Given this band's name's strong ties to the sun and its worship, as well as Jon and Philippe's past collaborations in organizing the OUT! outdoor performances on Mont Royal, I've gotta ask: when are all the cool kids gonna realize that going outside is the new going out, what with Animal Collective and Jewelled Antler and No-Neck and all those godforsaken hippies on the cover of The Wire getting props lately. Heck, I even heard Black Dice gush about Pink Floyd's Live in Pompeii, fer chrissake! It's funny, because I'm the only guy in the band who is into those bands you mentioned! I'm a big No-Neck fan, and a big Animal Collective fan; I really like Sunburned Hand of the Man, too. Jon and Philippe are just into weird shit, generally. Philippe just bought the Live in Pompeii DVD, so i guess he's feeling the hippy vibes flow. Philippe has always been really into that sort of stuff; he and I kind of bonded over a love for more hippy-type shit—Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, whatever. There are more Pink Floyd fans in Montreal than anywhere else, but yeah, i think part of it is just the dawning realization that the subculture that we are all a part of has its roots in the 1960s and not the late 1970s like everybody thought. Especially now with the political climate the way it is, I think there is some sense that the revolutions of the late '60s were far more drastic than those of the punk '70s. No one realized it, which is funny because we're supposed to being living through an '80s revival right now,but that’s another bag entirely.

SPITFIRES AND MAYFLOWERS

Purveyor of: Modular pop fragments

Consisting of Jose Lourenco, Tim Oakley, Andy Lloyd and Henry Fletcher, local quartet Spitfires & Mayflowers have been charming the shit out of us with great harmonies and pop hooks since September 2002. Dakoda asked the questions.

Your site was dusty pink and now it's boyish blue. Are you trying to tell us something?

Henry: Andy once accused me of being a bad kisser.
Andy: The second try was spot on.
Tim: I've kissed Andy on several occasions, I live with the man. Jose?
Jose: The night we tried to trick someone into a threesome.

If we were pining away to bring a recording of Spitfires & Mayflowers home with us - how long would we have to wait? Where will you record? Do tell.

Andy: We have an EP.
Henry: I peed on a bee’s nest once to impress my friends. A lone bee buzzed out and stung me on my thingy.
Jose: We're recording a full length in February.
Tim: I can't believe the bee found his bird.
Sometimes I orchestrate pet projects where I try to get bands I love to open for other bands I love. Sometimes it happens and the dream was better than the reality. What band would you love to play with - that aesthetically might not make heaps of sense?
Tim: The first band we ever played with was called Manpower. They had popcorn string beards (!) and wore homemade yellow jumpsuits.
Andy: They were motocross suits.
Jose: And mopwigs.
Henry: [singing] "I've got scoliosis..." was my favourite.

I saw people dancing at your show. Why does everyone think indie rawkers don't dance? Discuss.

Jose: My brother James dances ballet.
Andy: That reminds me of the time I drunkenly told some girl at a Ryan Adams concert to stop dancing and she called me an asshole.
Henry: What were you doing at a Ryan Adams concert?
Tim: He was taking asshole notes.

Style & substance CAN co-exist. Discuss.

Henry: I once described Andy and Tim's style as mine and Jose's from grade 11.
Tim: Which is weird, because when I met Henry, he
was wearing my old, stretch-collared, oversized Hare Jordan T-shirt.
Jose: That shirt's the worst.
Andy: Short shorts.

What records are you listening to right now?

Andy: First album I ever bought was Use Your Illusion II.
Henry: Kriss Kross—Totally Krossed Out. On tape. Then tape single, then CD.
Jose: The first tape that my mom ever gave me was Paula Abdul—Forever Your Girl.
Tim: I used to tape Nintendo music off of the TV.

What do you like about playing in this band?

Andy: Jose's slightly off-key voice.
Henry: Andy's dirty hair.
Jose: In-fighting
Tim: Covers.

TEMPLE THREAT

WAVELENGTH 197 — Sunday Jan 25, 10pm

Purveyor of: Radio pop as chthonic nightmare

Temple Threat (a.k.a Kim Temple) is a world-weary, very assimilated half-vampire who croons about living for too long and trying to find love. Her six-song demo EP is a work-in-progress, ranging from barebones piano & voice to messing around with orchestration. Until Burt Bacharach and/or Paul Williams call her down to L.A. to record the songs in all their glory, she figures this'll just have to do. Her first show was last summer in Montreal at Casa del Popolo opening for the Lonesome Organist. Her second show was at the Barfly, again in Montreal. Her influences are anything you can think of – she is half vampire, after all. The incomparable Bob Wiseman will join her on stage for this Wavelength appearance. Apparently, if you like Brian de Palma films you should dig it. Our Jam Butty gets personal with Ms. Temple.
What religion are you? Drummer.

Have you ever questioned your faith? Only when I'm in
the desert.

Do you pray? Not in the conventionally accepted, organized drum circle way.

Are you a giver or a taker? I'm a pitcher not a catcher.

If you could be a Norse god, which one would you be? Sigdrifa, "the victory blizzard."

Have you ever played that game on the computer where you're god? Do you like that game? I like driving games and "dance dance revolution." Keepin' it real. Wouldn't want to fly too close to the sun!

Okay. Let's pretend God exists! Do you think he's mad at you? No, God's not mad at me...but he's gonna smite my b.f.

You've just been appointed curator of heaven. Describe your vision. "Heaven is a place, a place where nothing, nothing ever happens."

Are you related to Scott Weiland of the Kim Temple Pilots? He's my dad.

Let's pretend a famous shitty band asked you to retire from CITUS and play drums in their famous shitty band. What do you do? If CITUS would stop acting like G 'n' R and write some freakin' hit songs then I wouldn't be in this mess!

THE IVY LEAGUE

WAVELENGTH 198 — Sunday Feb 01, 11pm

Purveyor of: Dynamic post-emocore riffage

The Ivy League are: Yale University, Brown University, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Cornell University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, Jay Harris, Jay Bradley and Damian Valles.

Admissions: Over 135,000 students vie for admissions to the Ivy League Schools each year, but only about 22,000of those are accepted. Universities like Harvard, Princeton and Yale accept between 9% and 12% of the 15,000 - 20,000 students who apply to their respective schools. The Ivy League schools reject valedictorians, students with SAT I scores over 1500, top athletes and musicians, as well as applicants who are well connected.

Athletics: The Ivy League crowns champions in 33 sports and sponsors intercollegiate programs of national prominence for women and men. Lacrosse, ice hockey, fencing, soccer, rowing and squash are some of the sports in which the Ivies have been synonymous with national excellence during the league's recent history. On the average, Ivy members boast of 25 varsity teams per campus, well above the national norm.

Music: The local Toronto band has been kicking our collective ass with their sonic barrage for around three years now. They are very cool, to the point of being a little aloof – a lot like your older brother’s ex-girlfriend who used to wear tight designer jeans and a little Betty Boop T-shirt to the roller-skating rink on Saturday afternoons. Of course, you were too young to go roller-skating, so you stayed home and watched professional wrestling.

THE PHONEMES

WAVELENGTH 198 — Sunday Feb 01, 10pm

Purveyor of: Little bundles of joy

The Phonemes are Liz Forsberg, Magali Meagher and Matias Rozenberg. They’ve just released a self-titled EP on _____ (blocks recording club). It’s amazing, everyone should own a copy. Jam Butty talks with Magali about name-dropping, bread and forgetfulness.

How was your Christmas? Magali Meagher: I’ve been really busy, I’ve got a new job. It feels like I work 50 hours a week, it’s been busy. I took Bob (Wiseman) to Kingston, we went to mass. Wait a minute, isn’t this interview supposed to be about The Phonemes?

Okay, we can talk about that. How do you feel about your new record? They played it as mass in Kingston, in between communion and the recessional.

That’s crazy! No, I’m lying. They didn’t actually. That’s a lie.

Okay, what other lies do you have to tell me? How about, uh, that tour you’re doing opening for Buffy Ste. Marie? I love Buffy Ste. Marie! I would love to open for her! Only just to watch her every night!

You know, I heard from somebody that she actually made one of the first electronic folk albums, in like, 1971. Well, she had some really far out stuff. When I was a teenager, I saw her at Active Surplus and my friend and me got so freaked out. At that time, there was a gorilla outside. Do they still have that gorilla there?

No, they don’t. I was always scared of it, though. Why?

Um. Because, when my family and me took trips to Toronto, it was one of the things I remembered the most from Queen St. The scary gorilla. Well, it was just a nice landmark for me.

What would Buffy have bought? I don’t know! That’s a good question! Test tubes or something, urine sample bottles, or a flashlight, or a rubber stopper.

How do you write your songs? I hear that you have like a hundred of songs that you’ve totally forgotten how to play. I used to have this philosophy that everything was impermanent so it never really mattered. And it’s too bad, cuz I have such fond memories of those old songs! I’ve been recording more stuff lately on my computer. I have some tapes from really shitty tape recorders, from when I was a teenager on. I used to be in a band with my friends
Hannah and Nancy. It was called Moth. Hannah wrote the best fucking songs. “I’m running away / Never to be seen / The second I hit” *bang bang* “19!”.

That’s a great song. I know, it was so good. And it’s funny, it’s all really distorted.

Was this in Erin? No, that was before Erin, in Guelph. And we played once in Waterloo with Eric’s Trip. And actually, the drummer from Eric’s Trip has a videotape of the show we played and I really want a copy, it would be really hilarious.

You’ve been playing with Matias a long time, back when you guys were called The Pine Needle Players. Sandy Plotnikoff came up with that name.

That’s kind of name-dropping. Oops, that must’ve sounded silly.

Anyway, what do you feel Liz and Matias bring to your sound? It’s like I’m a loaf of bread, and Liz brings the poppy seeds, and Matias brings peanut butter.

Wow, you are from Guelph! What do you mean by that? Is that stupid?

No, it’s just very visual and sweet. If you asked most other people that question, they’d be talking about “intensity” and “three part harmonies”. But that’s boring. Well, I really like playing with those guys. Um, I feel like Liz plays in a simple, unconventional way, kind of like me. We don’t play the same way, but we sit.

That’s really nice! And Matias just kind of understands what’s going on.

Um, what are your plans for 2004? Well, we’re going to play lots of shows before mid-February. That’s when Liz has a baby.