Trick or COW?

October's episode of my award-eligible podcast, Chas' Crusty Old Wave, is now available either via the website or directly from iTunes. This marks almost exactly two years since the first podcast version of the show, and it's an opportunity to thank iTunes for their participation.

This particular episode is a very old one, the oldest we've put up so far, from September 1991. Back then the show was a mix of 80s music along with contemporary college/indie hits, which as it turns out wasn't a bad idea, since the early 90s was a pretty good time for college music. It's also the longest episode we've ever posted -- three and half hours (edited down from the original four hours).

Enjoy.

New Video From the Trash Can Sinatras

Earlier this year I wrote about this not-widely-heard-outside-Scotland-but-wonderful little pop band and their new album, In The Music. Now there’s a video to go with the second single “People,” which although not my favourite song on the album is nonetheless as lovely as a sunny autumn day, which as it happens is exactly when the bulk of the video was filmed (just a week ago as I write this!). Have a look at see if you don’t feel better for having watched it:

Ladies and Gentlemen, Tony Bennett

(edit: I substituted the original image that was here with one taken from the actual performance we attended, courtesy of Victoria Times-Colonist photographyer Bruce Stotesbury)

My charmed life has been rearing its charming head a lot of late, and the capper has got to have been winning tickets to see Tony Bennett perform live at the Royal Theatre here in Victoria last night. As a former DJ myself I have given away hundreds if not a thousand such passes myself, but I don’t recall ever actually winning radio station tickets before. The station, an AM world music out of Camosun College called Village 900 (you can listen to them on the internet from that link) not only got us in, but got us extremely good seats: five rows back, right in the middle.

I have always liked the “Italian crooning” style of singing that was so popular in the 1950s; I wouldn’t call myself a “fan” of Tony Bennett in the traditional sense but I was very aware of his career and the songs he made famous, and admired him more and more as he continued to maintain a public presence long after his “heyday” of charting activity, even staging a very impressive comeback in the early 90s with an appearance on “MTV Unplugged” that my friend Liz and I found extremely impressive and romantic.

Bennett’s style is reminiscent of other “Mafia favourites” like Dean Martin, Jerry Vale, Frankie Laine, Al Martino, Vic Damone et al, along with of course the Chairman, Frank Sinatra, and even at 83, Bennett still has pretty good pipes, particularly for belting. I found myself thinking repeatedly that had he done operatic training he’d have been just as big a star as he became anyway.

You pretty much know what you’re going to get going to such a concert, but it’s very interesting anyway, particularly at Bennett’s age (83). He worked without a lyric cheat sheet, which I found impressive; keep in mind that most of his songs are barely three minutes long, meaning he has time to do about 25 of them in a 90 minute show. His voice was pretty good, though his sotto voce has definitely got rust spots on it, and of course by now he knows how to work the mic. His particular manner is still highly charming and his in-between-song stories are short but funny. He makes sure the band members are spotlighted (repeatedly, in fact) and can still bounce around the stage pretty spryly, showing off his genuine love for the playing and style of music. If he’s actually sick of singing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” he keeps it well hidden. He even did a number without the mic, something I’ve very rarely seen vocalists do -- and this was near the end of the show!

The Royal Theatre is not the most beautiful of its ilk of concert hall (built in 1913, it's only slightly older than Bennett is!), but the acoustics were pretty good and its still a good solid example of a just-post-Victorian classic theatre. Thus it was doubly jarring that some in the audience chose to ignore the rules and take pictures (with flash) or record cell-phone video early on (they were quickly identified and shamed by ushers). Indeed, I too wanted a picture or a bit of video, as this is very likely the last time Bennett will get out this way, and the show had some feel of a historic event rather than just a concert, but I refrained until the show was over (and discovered the iPhone is spectacularly bad at getting any decent video/images of a stage show!).

Bennett is more than just a singer my parents liked or a performer who’s had a remarkable run -- for me, he’s also a link to the past, a world so very different from the way it is now, a New York City-centred universe where Dino and his Rat Pack compadres were living large in Vegas, Jewish comedians ruled the Catskills and Woody Allen was busy being Broadway Danny Rose. Sure, the standards Bennett sings still resonate with his aging followers -- but every so often he transcends all that and recreates those days and the world which made him. Not bad for a poor kid from Astoria.

Speaking of Bowie ...

A pretty cool find has turned up on YouTube ... footage from an unreleased video for “Sense of Doubt” from Heroes. What th-??

(Confidential to Jim D.: I’ll put this up against OUR videos any day!)




(h/t to Jim Ivy for pointing me to this)

One of My “Heroes” Keeping a “Low” Profile These Days ...

Periodically, I have the terrible fear that something is amiss in the universe. Normally I’d hop into my TARDIS and investigate, but round about this point I remember that Doctor Who is a fictional character and that I’m not him, so bang goes that plan. Instead, I often turn to the series-of-tubes and Google randomly (using The Google) till I identify the gnawing feeling and find a remedy.

Recently, what was eating away at my soul like h.pylori in the stomach was the long “radio” silence of one Mr. David Bowie. Now, you know, he’s the father of a young daughter, and had some heart trouble a while back, but apart from some very occasional cameos here and there we haven’t heard or seen all that much of him in the last half-decade. As Brock Sampson says, “It’s quiet ... too quiet.”

Now he’s perfectly entitled to a break (or even permanent retirement) if he wants, but it would be nice if he’d just say something definitive. Bowienet is a dead man walking, with seemingly no further involvement from The Man since about 2005. Eternal rumours of him turning up at Coachella or Glastonbury or some such are either shot down or proven false. I’ve not even seen any news of him doing movie roles, and you know how much he likes doing that. There were also some rather worrying photos of him in years past where he looked distinctly unhealthy -- if it is possible for a man who was unnaturally thin and beautiful his whole life to do so -- ironically looking rather the opposite of modern-day Steve Jobs. Again, Bowie can throw out his girdle and gain a few pounds if he wants to, he’s earned it, and he can finally begin aging like the rest of us and that’s fine too. But there’s a difference between old and healthy and old and unhealthy.

So, finally, I turned to the Magic Mirror that is the internet and tried to find something, anything, that proved The Frail White Duke alive and well in 2009. This would probably have ended in frustration if not for the good luck of his son, Duncan Jones, in having a art-house/sci-fi/cult hit with his first full-length feature Moon. Nothing to get your pop out of the study like winning a prize at a major film fest or three, eh wot?

So behold, a photo of Mr and Mrs Iman at the Tribeca Film Fest in New York, this past April 30th. It's one of the most recent I could find, and yes, it does look like he’s morphing into Christopher Walken, and yes that’s a bit creepy, but you know what? He looks pretty good to me. I’d still kiss him.

(Picture of Bowie with Duncan Jones further down, keep scrolling)

So, a collective “whew” from RadioChas and a renewal of the patience needed to wait till his next record. Let’s just hope he doesn’t go all Lene Lovich on us, we’re no spring chickens ourselves these days ...

(ps. Duncan clearly has his dad’s nose, teeth and chin, don’t you think?)

Free Song From "The Lovemakers"

The Lovemakers are an Oakland CA band with an interesting twist: they broke up romantically just as the first album was being written, but decided to carry on as a band anyway. This sort of thing rarely happens (and even more rarely works) in “real life,” but the rules are apparently different in the rock-music world (Chris Stein/Debbie Harry, Exene Cervenka/John Doe, there are lots of examples).

The Lovemakers are, in my own humble estimation, a pretty okay pop band. That is to say, I’m not sure I would buy the whole album, but the song presented here (courtesy of iTunes’ Free Single of the Week) is fine, and pretty representative of their style. Duos are apparently taking over what’s left of rock music, and there are quite a few good ones out there (Mates of State, The Submarines, Pet Shop Boys, Bad Lieutenant just to name a few).

Click here for the free single (DRM-free MP4 file; must have iTunes of course).

The August -- Oh Wait -- The End of Summer COW Now Available!

The August episode of Crusty Old Wave is up and available from either COW Central or directly from iTunes (where you can subscribe for free if you haven't already, and thus get every new episode automatically!).

We’re celebrating the show’s 18th anniversary by replaying the show’s 18-month anniversary back in 1993. This one -- even more so than usual -- hit the "obscure" bin extra hard and pulled forth a bevy of beauties if I do say so myself. Some of these songs I haven’t heard since those days, and I could kick myself for that!

Of course we also thrown in a helping of well-known 80s songs, the occasional “new” (circa 1993) thing and one or two curveballs, along with nostalgia features like the concert calendars of the day as well as your government-issue Public Service Announcements. I wish the last 1/4 of the tape had better audio quality, but you know, when you’re listening to great New Wave music, it’s all good.