Archives : all posts by Dan

The Dirty Nil - "Bruto Bloody Bruto"

New Wonders of World History. The Ancient Pyramidicus, where money is spawned like blood from marrow, and whoever stands atop has total persuasive power over everyone nearby. Victatorship Falls, where one boat every few days, when sent over the edge, is granted flight, but no telling which one. The Spit Cliffs and Catcher's Cove, Earth's mini wormhole, jump off one, come out the other. And my favourite, Militant Mile, the square mile to which all guns and weapons are pulled strong as gravity. Should call it Militant Mountain in a year or so.

The Dirty Nil - "Panzer"

Everybody's 5-year-future I can see, plain as day. Like, written on their face. I'll be walking down the street, and a kid in a stroller will look his legs hanging out, I can see the backpack and the early-onset glasses. My friends all look drunk-skinned or with strange clean-cut partners, or in a wheelchair or pregs. Some people just have different hair. I can't see mine, though, I look in the mirror, expecting to see it, the way you complete a word like s#!t, your brain just fills it it, but I never see anything when I look at my own face. And I'm starting to wonder if that's cause it's not there.

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The Dirty Nil have released a wonderful Summer Mix tape, a 4-song EP, perfect, hot, thunderous, beautiful. Get it right now, it's free, like summer.

(image source)

Mac DeMarco - "Rock and Roll Nightclub"

Water dress, a scuba cane, and reed heels. Aquarium mouth. This song is high fish fashion. Bubbles tickle on the dive, pebbles trickled on the floor. Go down to where light stops, get away from rays. Seek out that darkness, that cold, that ear-piercing pressure. Get to your lowest point, gust out the bottom feeders and rest your drugged-up head. Oh, and drink, drink all you can. But I don't need to tell you that, in this place you can't help it. [B-camp] (thanks, Roger)

Violent Bullshit - "Pot Friends"

This is Violent Bullshit's "Niggas in Paris". Live, they should play it 6 or 7 times in a row, it's built to be listened to again and again. Energy like this just gets stronger, it just gets better. [Buy] (thanks, Tom Scharpling)

Rolling Stones - "Moonlight Mile"

Although I know it seems unlikely, unreasonable, and pretty much impossible, I can tell you without any doubt in my mind, with total certainty and clarity of thought: prayers work, at least some of the time. And you should be careful what you do with that fact.

When I was 13 and living in Nippissing, I had two important people in my life: my new step-father, Andrew, who was ruining it, and Maggie, the freckle-faced first of my ex-soulmates, who was saving it.

Andrew had a 7:30 curfew, in June when 7:30 is still the afternoon, and to say he enforced it strictly wouldn't be adequate. I won't give too much detail, not looking for pity, but I'll say he steered every aspect of my life with his ham hock fists like he was steering a blind animal, by the scalp. Forcing me down whenever he pleased, or whenever he was upset with his own life, which was most days. He worked in a tin foil plant as a dayshift manager, and I often got the impression he was treating me the way he wished he could treat some of his employees; finally free of the constrictive mask of professionalism, he could really show his people skills.

And Maggie, the jean-shorted skateboarding smoker, who worked at Val's Ice Cream, with painted nails and who kissed with a smile. She was 14, but took after her older brother Kenneth, who was 19 and worked for Andrew at the tin foil plant. Kenneth had tattoos (a windmill and a perfect cube), a lisp like he learned English from a distorted guitar, and the first stretched ears I'd ever seen outside of National Geographic. Maggie didn't have anyone forcing her to do anything, she worked at Val's until after 11 most nights. And I just wanted more than anything to stay there, help her clean up, and walk her home cause it was summer and that would have been easy and what a normal kid would do. I wasn't looking to do anything bad, I just wanted to be around her; she glowed. So, justified, I prayed. I prayed for something bad to happen to Andrew. I prayed like I was squeezing all the energy out of my bedroom, like I was a swirling pillar of blue pray-power, commanding God to do me just one fucking favour one time.

A freak machine accident at the plant. Hit by a car in the parking lot. Cancer. Something. Anything.

And then partway into July, some morning that resembled every other morning, Maggie had an accident at the ice cream shop. When she hit the switch for the lights the night before, she'd also flipped the freezer switch; ice cream in pools on the floor. She texted Kenneth to help her before Val showed up for lunch. She couldn't replace the ice cream, but at least there'd be no mess. Val was a nice old lady and turned over the 'open' sign in the window and said, "Well, let's start making more."

But when Kenneth finally got to the plant, sweating, he was three hours late. Andrew could've fired him, could've sent him packing right then and there, but he didn't. Instead he chose to dress him down in front of the whole line. He made them stop production, and gave a speech about being a vital link in a chain, word-for-word from the training video they show you first day. It went on an on, or so I'm told, and his voice got higher and more up in his face. I imagine it was like all the kitchen spit he'd sling, finally come out in the open. All that wall-denting, chin-bleeding mindfuckery. It was so bad that Kenneth didn't know what to do, he started laughing. Of course this made Andrew even more mad. Eventually the union steward stepped in, said it was improper behaviour, and called a plant-wide 15. Andrew got his own dressing down, but behind glass and half-shut venetian blinds.

Andrew was switched to nights. Bunch of weirdos on that shift anyway, didn't matter if there was a psycho manager, no one had the energy to be crazy at that hour. And so for the rest of that summer the 7:30 curfew was a mere formality, Andrew was just finishing breakfast by then. It was night after glorious night down at Val's, and Maggie and I fell heedlessly and brainlessly in love.

[Buy Sticky Fingers] (image source)

The Flaming Lips - "You, Man Human (feat. Nick Cave)"

Apartment windows shoot out in beams like animated bar graphs, lives rocketed out in sideways gusts. Trinkets and clothes and life detritus (old Archie comics, bad DVDs, and chipped-paint night tables and IKEA dressers) are sprinkled on the streets like garage-sale barf. It's all snowglobe-messy and the shuffle is a personless, emotionless necessity. It's the building's that have had enough. The buildings are purging their parasites, gutting their rot, and rutting the lot. The buildings; they are library and dépanneur and concrete complex. They are two-storey and victorian and high-rise with a fountain. They are mansion and cabin and antique car museum. They are franchise and rep theatre and yoga studio. They can finally breathe, with empty lungs. "I've been too human for years."

[Buy]

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My very talented friend and roommate Jordan Canning has her film on CBC's Short Film Faceoff. Her film, Not Over Easy, has made it to the top 3, but needs your help to clinch the first-place win. Voting starts tomorrow, June 30, after the show airs on CBC television, and will go until Jul 1 at 11:59pm. Go to http://www.cbc.ca/shortfilmfaceoff/ to watch the film(s) and click "voting" tomorrow after the show. Thanks!

Dad Drives continues to roll out. Episode 5 up at daddrives.com, which a few commenters have called "the best one yet!" so decide for yourself.

And:

Tony Ho, in preparation and promotion for their upcoming Toronto Fringe Festival show, have released a new short film. I was lucky enough to guest star in it, and I'm so very proud of it.

Vitamin Pets - "Fried Eggs" (also the buy link)

A whale spends $9.50 on a carrot because of the cost of transporting it to the deep ocean. A deck of cards is worth its weight in gold, if placed in the right order. A painting buys a person with merely a look. If there were only two countries, trade tariffs would be infinitely high, but people would pay them. How much cash do aliens have? My picture is on all the money, but I posed pro bono for the photo, and haven't seen the royalties. If money were melons, it would be a shame to pay for cottage cheese. Half of all currency in the world is counterfeit, just like half of all height is platform soles and vertical stripes. I can't tell the difference between my bank and my bed bugs. Do you have my money, you hidden creatures? At what hours are you open for conducting business? Do you keep a balance online?

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Vitamin Pets have made a thousand-dollar song. Since music has been deemed, in some sense, worthless, I feel it's an appropriate price, if only for atonement. Plus, like all the songs we post here, for a myriad range of prices, it's a wicked track, squawky, cheeky, bang.

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and Jeff The Brotherhood put on a great show in Toronto. The fans: young, naive, a bit forceful with a weak pit. The music: never been tighter, brighter, it's many-legged, plenty loud. Prediction: this will be the last tour in small venues, the time to go is now. jeffthebrotherhood.com

A Tribe Called Red - "Electric PowWow Drum"

The trees spiked into the ground like wooden rain, and the clouds gurgled up from the soil. The birds, tirelessly in-between, were there during that great exchange; they had nowhere to perch. When the Earth was flipping like a pancake, they had to keep flying, hovering, waiting, guessing. When the lake settled into its bed, and the stars reached their firework arc and paused, never to fall, the birds began to land, in the darkness, in the night. They were very tired and slept right on the ground. The dogs, the bears, the raccoons, the other animals that would usually eat the birds, were also tired. Some buried, some stuck through with trees. So the birds were safe that night, and when day came, the Earth did not feel them on its skin. The Earth was paused, waiting for the birds to land, not seeing that they already had. The Earth was still, more still than it's ever been. The clouds lay in the sky like pudding. And the birds looked at each other and seemed to know. They rose into the air and said collectively, down to the world and its weakness, "Let's land again." [PWYC]

(A Tribe Called Red are an Ottawa-based dance force to be reckoned with. Recently added to the Polaris long list, they're playing a big show tonight in Ottawa with Native comedian Ryan McMahon: info)

Jeff the Brotherhood - "Extra Good"

I'm a Rubick's Cube. I'm every colour. I'm a million combinations. I'm all mixed up. Spin me, rip me apart, smash me into the sidewalk, do whatever it takes to make this into some kind of order. I will, of course, stay the way you leave me until the next time you get bored. [pre-order Hypnotic Nights]

(Jeff the Brotherhood are playing Toronto tomorrow at Wrongbar in Parkdale. Come get sweaty. show info)

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Elsewhere:

• Very talented gramofriend Jenna Wright makes music video with Liane Balaban, Seth Owen, and fun buds.

• Pitchfork have made a highly-nerdy documentary about Modest Mouse's The Lonesome Crowded West. As this was the very album that made me say "Yep, music for life," I quite enjoyed the film, but probably more because of how it felt so acutely tuned to my interests, and not because it offered much in the way of relevant insight. It does frame the creation of a great work as simply the capturing of continued hard work and nothing like luck or magic, which was an attractive notion. And it did make me want to see Calvin Johnson as an actor.

Other projects: For anyone interested in seeing me perform, today's a good day to take advantage.
1) At 6:30pm at the Carlton Cinemas in Toronto, a film called Beat Down, in which I play a Duckie-esque unrequited love interest to the totally delightful Marthe Bernard, will be screening as part of the Female Eye Film Festival.
2) At 10:30pm at Comedy Bar I will be rap battling against one of my oldest and dearest friends in the world, Roger Bainbridge. It will be epic.
3) And, at your leisure, the web series I created in the spring, Dad Drives, continues to roll out. Episode 4 is below, the rest are at http://daddrives.com

http://www.worldwidevexations.com/

Today, until midnight, there are 10 vibraphonists from around the world performing sections, which will be strung together, into an 18-hour performance of Vexations by Erik Satie. The piece is a small theme played 840 times in succession.

on this process, Satie said: "In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence with serious immobilities"

http://www.worldwidevexations.com/