Eric saves the blog

I am presently in the midst of revising (FTYPAH: "studying") for exams, so blogging has fallen way down the priority list -- still above housecleaning but well below watching "I'd Do Anything" (a). So, I was all set to let the blog go into its usual other-things-are-happening languishing state, but now Eric has given me something to post.

Here are a few videos from a recent performance of the Secondhand Ska Kings at Minneapolis' Fine Line. It's a group of people in their 30s pretending they are still in college. But they are betrayed by the fact that they are in tune:


On this one you get to hear funky, funky Eric sing. An interesting thing to note is that Eric is always like this. Watch his mannerisms and this is pretty much how he acts all the time. No, really. Go to his house and you'll see him acting like this while he's watching TV, making food, etc. Actually, don't go to his house. His wife would not appreciate my sending a load of people over to visit.


Apparently, the fellas have taken on Markéta Irglová. What's with the chick on keyboards? Who is that? Do I know her?

One of my favourite things about Secondhand Ska Kings is that I know most of the members. Eric has been my best friend for 20 years; Matt (the guitarist who hides to the left of the screen) used to live next door to me in Ballard Hall (b); Bryce (the trumpet player) used to live across the hall from me and Matt; Scott (the other trombone player and singer on two of the songs) is the guy who always riles me up by suggesting that Welsh is really Klingon. I am hoping that I do, in fact, know the female keyboardist and that I have shagged her.


(a) Yes, I realise that every time I admit to watching these shows I fall a little further in the eyes of Chris and Jenny. By now they almost certainly regret ever having let me stay in their home.

(b) Note that this is an all-male residence hall. Trust me, it's even worse than it sounds.

You say "France," and I'll whistle

While visiting Donal and Isobel last week I was delighted to be able to introduce them to the tale of Van Morrison's famous contractual obligation album for Bang Records.

You might have heard about this. The exact details of the album aren't very clear. I can't find any reliable tales behind the recording beyond the fact that it was cynically made in 1967 to satisfy Van's contract with Bang. The contract strangely required him to come up with 36 original songs within the space of a year. In a badass move that almost makes up for the time he collaborated with Cliff Richard, Van came into the studio and made up 31 crap songs in a single session.

I have on my iPod a copy of the "best" of these tracks, "Ring Worm;" but today dug around and found a blog that posted all 31 of the tracks back in 2005. As of today, at least, all of the songs are still available.

It's probably not worth sitting and listening to 31 (short) intentionally bad pieces of music. The novelty wears off rather quickly. So, I'll tell you the five most amusing tracks:
- "Ring Worm"
- "You Say 'France' I Whistle"
- "Want a Danish?"
- "Dum Dum George"
- "Chicken Coo"

In and of themselves the tracks are funny and odd (every time I hear the tiny little half whistle in "You Say 'France' I Whistle" it makes me giggle like a hyena), but they also have a number of amusing elements.

First off, they contain more dialogue from Van Morrison than you'll hear anywhere else. He's famously unchatty. I've seen him live in concert twice and the man simply does not speak between songs. Even more unlikely is any display of emotion beyond grumpiness, which makes his burst of laughter in the middle of "Chicken Coo" extremely rare.

There is also the epic of George, played out in the songs "Hold On George," "Here Comes Dumb George," "Goodbye George" and "Dum Dum George." Clearly Van has an obsession with this George person because later, in Astral Weeks he spends 9:46 singing about "Madame George."

And get off my lawn, you damn kids

Here's a random thing that really annoys the hell out of me: When an artist releases a track or record, and music writers use the word "drop" where "release" belongs.

e.g.: "Jason Mraz has decided to drop this year's summer anthem early."

That's an actual sentence I read today. That "drop" is used in context with Jason Mraz makes it particularly lame. Mraz doesn't really strike me as an artist that drops tracks. That's more of a hip-hop thing. But even then it sounds stupid.

I am waiting for music writers to start using other inappropriate verbs: "Van Morrison expectorated his latest album, 'Keep It Simple,' on March 11."

Oh, we were cool

A quote from me, age 12:

"Yeah, but I liked Metallica better when Jimi Hendrix was their lead guitarist."

I can't ever decide which I like more about that quote: that Eric bought it; or that I didn't know I was totally full of shit in saying it.

Displaying an unsettling abundance of useless knowledge

In barber shop Wednesday, with Red Dragon FM playing in the background:

Woman Cutting My Hair: This is tha' ... wha's 'er name? Lil Kim, innit? The one wha' died, i'n she?
Me: It's Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopez. But you're right that she died. In a car crash.
WCMH: Tha's the one. Only, she died in a plane crash, though.
Me: No, it was a car crash. Aaliyah died in a plane crash.
WCMH: Oh, tha's right, love. You're good at this stuff. You should go on one 'em shows on the telly, like.
Me: A quiz show on the tragic deaths of celebrities. Not sure how that would go over.
WCMH: Ha, don' make me laugh, love. Got a razor in me han'.

Me and Jim

Lead singer of Metallica James Hetfield wants to sing you a song.

Is America ready for the Secondhand Ska Kings?

The other day I saw Suggs advertising fish fingers ("fish sticks" for those of you playing along at home) on television, which elicited a howling response from myself and a sort of roll of the eyes from the child bride. She did this because she knew that no matter what she did, I was going to insist on telling her who Suggs was.

My head is a Rwandan minefield of useless pop culture references -- it is almost impossible to hold a two-minute conversation with me without my working in a joke about some person or band you've never heard of. I don't really have a good reason for doing this. When you think about it, it's a stupid way to hold a conversation. What's the point of a wacky reference to Phyllis Diller (a) if it is no more relevant to the listener than a reference to Valerie Bell (b)? But I can't help myself.

"Dude! Suggs!" I shouted, when I first saw the 2 Tone icon on screen.

After a bit of giggling to myself in such a way as to convey that I was thoroughly amused, but not so thoroughly that I would refuse to field questions about the source of my amusement, I decided that perhaps my wife hadn't heard me, despite her sitting three feet from me.

"I can't believe Suggs is shilling fish fingers," I said, being sure to annunciate.

The child bride knows that I pride myself on retaining useless crap information and I live to share it with other people. After a long pause and an exasperated sigh, she asked: "Who's Suggs?"

"Cultural icon," I said, happily, knowingly. "I suppose you could blame him for Gwen Stefani."

And that's pretty much ska in a nutshell, isn't it? Suggs and Madness took the Jamaican sound, Anglicised it, made it poppy and sold a load of records in the UK. The 2 Tone sound carried over to the United States a few years later and fuelled the early 90s ska revival that gave us No Doubt.

Now Suggs is selling fish fingers and Stefani is No. 4 on my List Of Women I'd Like To Keep In A Shed For Personal Use. Funny how life works.

But the point of this post is that sound: ska. These days it is all too often the sound of concrete basements and cheap beer; the sound of Welsh-language activists who are too untalented to master or develop their own folk music. But occasionally it will show up in an Amy Winehouse or Lily Allen cover and I'll grow all wistful.

Whereas interest in ska had ebbed elsewhere by the late 90s, it was the sound de rigeur of Midwestern college bands. It was easy to play and easy to dance to. The quirky/catchy Midwestern brand of 2 Tone was the soundtrack to my Moorhead years. And whereas I suggest that most modern purveyors of ska are crap, the ska I was listening to in those days was great. It was great because everything is great when it's in the past and because most of my friends were in ska bands. And as we all know, people who are in bands are cool; if you have friends who are in bands, you, too, are cool. So, I was great. Everything was great in Moorhead and I never wanted to leave.

Not really. But the music was good. Long-time friends of the blog will remember my tome to 3 Minute Hero, one of the bands of the time.

Anyway, a few years ago, guys from 3 Minute Hero and Suspect Bill and The Smoking Jackets decided to relive the good old days, when they could jump around on stage all night and not wake up the next morning with aching backs. They formed Secondhand Ska Kings and started playing gigs mostly to their ever-suffering girlfriends and wives.

Things have moved on a bit and these days they occasionally play to crowds of people with whom they have more than one degree of separation. Sometimes these people even give them money to play. As evidence of this big-time success, the band has released an album, Ale to the Kings (iTunes), and I think you should buy it. Here's why:

1) The music is actually good. What they've done for this album is something that's a bit different from what a lot of ska bands do -- they've practiced. You can spot this in the lack of chipped notes.
2) Four of the guys in this band have bought me beer. If you buy this album, they will probably buy me beer again.
3) The guitarist, Matt, once nursed me back to health when I got the flu. If you buy this album, you will be supporting the idea of my being alive. If you are one of my ex-girlfriends, you should buy the album anyway.
4) Trombonist Eric has been my best friend for almost 20 years, is a frequent commenter on my blog, and is the guy that everyone loved in the documentary about me. If you buy this album, you get to hear him implore a woman to "take that, take that skirt off."
5) The cover art is cool.

For the low-low price of $9.99 (less than the cost of a pint in many London pubs), you get 44 minutes of the good-time sound that was in part popularised by a man who now sells fish fingers.

Perhaps one day a strangely impossible-not-to-look-at beautiful girl will be inspired by the Secondhand Ska Kings and will produce music that is at once brilliant and insufferable. It's not that far off an idea. Matt's first band, Ten Cent Fun, is mentioned in the liner notes of one of No Doubt's first albums.

(a) Female stand-up comic whose career peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s
(b) Girl I had a crush on in kindergarten.

I got love for you if you were born in the 80s

And suddenly Hilary Duff is my favourite manufactured pop songstress ever.

I know there are one or two gay guys who read my blog, so I won't have to tell them, but it's possible that some of you will not have heard of Hilary Duff, erstwhile star of the Disney-manufactured "Lizzie McGuire."

Like previous Disney spawn, our gal Hilary has broken free of her clean-cut image, developed an eating disorder and is now churning out simple pop songs designed to make it sound like she's not churning out simple pop songs.

None of that matters to me, though, thanks to her latest track, "Danger." Well, I assume it's her latest -- how the hell would I know? It is, at least, the most recent (and only) Hilary Duff track that I've heard.

I've gone to the trouble to upload the track*. Take a quick listen to it and see if you can guess what appeals to me about the song:



Yes. It's that first line: "Were you born in '74?"

As an individual born in 1976 -- and especially an individual born in 1976 who attends university with a load of people born in 1988 -- I wholeheartedly approve of Ms. Duff's decision to sing a song about someone 13 years her elder.

Hilary Duff, you naughty, naughty, lovely young thing you!

*But I will remove it as soon as possible if anyone representing Duff or her record label asks.

Simultaneously the best and worst thing you'll hear today

100 mp3s of music inspired by the Tijuana Brass sound. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hurt deep inside, and then you'll laugh again.

Reminder

For those of you living in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, remember that the mighty 3 Minute Hero will be performing tonight (Friday) at Bunkers and Saturday at Fine Line. If you don't go see their show the terrorists win.

Europe's Dirty Little Secret

In all the fun of having a TV programme about me (you can now catch it online, and it will run again with English subtitles at 21:15 on Saturday), a major European event went unnoticed on this blog.

Fortunately, I have made up for this by writing about it in my latest column.

A message to songwriters...

This video basically expounds upon a comment I made a few months ago:

I'm down with the kids, you yo

Dear God, why do I like Hootie and the Blowfish so much? I can't stop listening to their albums. It's like some kind of horrible porn addiction -- I know it's wrong, but I can't stop. I feel so dirty, so American Heartland.

I try listening to Arctic Monkeys, or something else that all the kids are listening to, but it's just that darn "Baby I'm Yours" song, and then I'm back to listening to the Musical Chairs album.

Damn it. Can't stop. Can't. Break. Addiction to. Hootie.

The superiority of British pop

I'm not sure how much longer they will be available, but I highly recommend listening* to all the songs here. There are 13 tracks from a live Amy Winehouse performance earlier this year in Amsterdam that serve to eliminate any doubt I may have had as to her musical skillz.

Not a pretty lady is Miss Winehouse, but she's got that voice. Seriously, where the hell does that sound come from? You've got this wilty little English-Jewish heroin addict and out comes a voice that threatens to bitch slap Aretha Franklin. And Aretha never sang, "What kind of fuckery is this? You made me miss the Slick Rick gig."

From all the things one reads about Winehouse, you've got to think she's not particularly long for this world. Unless she finds Jesus or some such thing, she'll likely end up dead in a hotel room in the next few years. But while she's alive, she's putting out some quality music.

It speaks to my observation that there seem to be more genuinely good pop music acts in Britain than in the United States. Remove Justin Timberlake from the equation and what have you got? Some guy named Bucky and a load of substandard R&B/hip-hop acts who have abandoned the English language ("Buy U a Drank"?! What kind of fuckery is that?).

*And just listen to them; don't download them, because downloading free music is bad.

Are you as cool as you believe?

I seem to have gone into power-saving mode over the last fortnight. When my computer is on power-saving mode that means it is on but doing fuck all, which is a pretty accurate description of me these days.

For the most part I find myself interested in two things: the child bride and my new iPod. Being interested in one's wife of almost eight years is all well and good, but Rachel goes to work during the day, which leaves me spending eight hours staring at a little shiny thing that has no moving parts.

The iPod is a gift from my parents, who were in town for the week before Easter. Having my parents visit was a bit like going on a game show, in the sense that I walked away from the experience with cash and prizes. Sadly a lifetime supply of Rice-A-Roni was not among the prizes.

The contestants on "The Price Is Right" (the U.S. version) are always sent home with a lifetime supply of Rice-A-Roni. How in the hell do they determine what a "lifetime supply" is? As someone who has, in fact, never consumed a single Rice-A-Roni product, I'd reckon two boxes would equal a lifetime supply for me. But presumably there are people who could eat a whole mess of Rice-A-Roni, people who could eat nothing but for the rest of their lives. One can only hope, for fairness' sake, that these are the people going on "The Price Is Right."

But as I say, I got an iPod; which means I can now get hearing damage and participate in iPod blog memes, like all the cool kids.

I realise a blog post about iPods is ridiculously outdated, but that's how I roll, bitches. The rest of you no doubt spotted this back when Des'ree was popular, but an interesting side-effect of the iPod's shuffle feature is that you find yourself listening to music you had no idea existed in your library.

Sheena Easton's "For Your Eyes Only;" how the hell did that get in there? And, of course, I will sit there and listen to it because I am too paranoid to pull my iPod from my pocket and skip ahead. I do that sneaky earbuds-up-through-the-shirt thing that you see everyone doing on the train (for those of you playing along back in the United States, a "train" is a big sort of box thing that people take to work. It's a bit like an airplane but it goes on the ground and is more environmentally sensible), as if that is going to somehow thwart chav thieves: "Oh, I say. That chap's earbuds are coming out of his shirt. One is left to conclude that his iPod is implanted in his chest. Let's not muck with him. Stealing his iPod would be messy and waste valuable energy, forcing us to spend another seven hours hanging out behind the Somerfield eating giant Cadbury eggs."

I have a lot of really bad music in my library. This is down to two main factors: 1) I refuse to accept reality; 2) I refuse to throw away music.

Many moons ago, when buffalo roamed the plain, before white man came to steal my land, I had a university radio show that no one listened to. But I had shagged the station manager, so she sent a tape of my show off to the Student Radio Association awards and I came runner-up in the best male presenter category. Since then I have had visions of grandeur that refuse to accept the reality that I am neither on radio nor making any attempt to be on radio. As a side effect, I find myself collecting various bits of comedy audio, like this. Would you put that on your iPod? Of course not. But I did. Because I see myself one day using a clip of it in my radio show that doesn't exist.

Then I make it worse by refusing to throw anything away. Shortly after high school, I sold my CD collection to maintain my girlfriend habit, and I have regretted the decision ever since. Because sometimes, damn it, I really want listen to Frente!'s "Labour of Love,"* but I have too much self-respect to buy the CD all over again. So, now I keep everything, because I have no idea when or if I will ever want to listen to "The Lions and the Cucumber" by the Vampire Sound Incorporation, but I don't want to be left wanting. The only thing worse than listening to Frente!'s "Labour of Love" is wanting to listen to Frente!'s "Labour of Love." For several days.

My parents bought me an 80GB iPod, which makes me the coolest of all the cool kids. Irish comic Dara O'Briain does a bit in which he claims that his 80GB iPod is taunting him by having so much memory, which I find myself suddenly able to relate to. The 80GB limit feels like a challenge, especially with the bulk of my CDs still sitting in boxes in Minnesota. A smart man would have converted all those CDs into mp3 files before leaving -- thus eliminating the need to transport physical items that cost hundreds of dollars to ship -- but I am not a smart man.

*Blimey, how minimalist is that video? I suspect it took only slightly longer than the song itself to shoot.

I say spider, you say monkey

Sometimes the world is not fair. We all know that, but sometimes it is more glaringly obvious. Sometimes the unfairness of this life looks you square in the eye and doesn't even flinch when it stabs you in the gut.

Such is the case that 3 Minute Hero never became famous.

They were good. I mean really, really good. Originally formed as yet another ska band, their horn section was just too powerful for such staid musical confines. In its prime (1997-2000), the horn section was fronted by two trombones -- instruments that, when played right, produce a brutal sound; a sound that punches and leaves you standing dumb like Peter Manfredo Jr. against Joe Calzaghe. This was supported by trumpet and sax and keys that swirled around the jabs and pulled you in. The whole thing fell together so perfectly that you found yourself not really hearing the different instruments, just this immense, immense sound. It was a sound that you could feel in your chest, a sound that felt too large for your head.

Fuelling the immensity was the sort of if-Animal-were-real-and-angry-and-100-feet-tall drumming you would expect from a guy who taught himself to play by listening to Kiss records. Atop it all was a larger-than-life frontman who stood as ringmaster, wailing and bellowing through the songs.

Obviously, with such a dynamic sound they were difficult to categorize. They were sort of a cross between stadium rock, Barenaked Ladies, Mighty Mighty Bosstones (circa Let's Face It), Parliament, and the first time a girl let you put your hand up her shirt. The lyrics were rapid-fire funny and brilliant, the music was incredible, and their shows were explosive in energy. They remain my favourite band of all time.

OK, true, I went to high school with three of the band members, one of whom has been my best friend for 19 years*, and I wrote the lyrics to one of their songs. I am biased. Even in the face of this they were good. In my mind, they had everything they needed to be big and I very seriously believed that one day everything would drop into gear and they would be touring around the world.

That never happened, of course. They played in bars in forgettable towns in forgettable states, bounded across North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin in an old school bus that they had won in a battle of the bands competition, until growing up became inevitable. The band split in 2000 and the members became husbands, fathers, home owners, teachers. A few of them joined other bands and achieved equal levels of success (most notably Jack Brass Band, where the two-trombones-kicking-your-ass-with-sound format was again used), but the 3MH experience remains wholly unique in my eyes.

The story of 3 Minute Hero is an almost bittersweet tale; evidence that incredible talent can exist and go unnoticed. It forces you to realise that there are authors more brilliant than Shakespeare who will never be published, songs being sung that would fill your soul but that you will never hear. It's unfair.

But there is hope: They're back, bitches!

Well at least for two performances. One will be in St. Peter, Minn., which became a sort of spiritual home for the band, and the other will be at Minneapolis' Fine Line. Their meteoric rise to fame will still probably never occur but at least a few more people will get a chance to finally hear the greatest band they never knew existed.

3 Minute Hero's Fine Line show is June 9, so you can expect to see me going on about this for a while. I am very serious that when I got the e-mail from Eric today I spent about half an hour trying to figure out if it would be at all possible for me to fly back to the U.S. to see the show (sadly, ignoring the $1,500 cost of a flight, I still have exams at that time).

There are a goodly number of Upper Midwesterners who read this blog, though, and I would encourage them to make the trip. No, really. This is a band worth driving several hours to see. Tickets are only $11, so you should have some extra money to buy Eric a beer.

*19 years, Eric. We are old.

It's called 'Yakety Sax,' bitches

Every once in a while I get a huge page view hit from people seaching the phrase "Benny Hill Show polka." I'm assuming these people are searching for the chase-sequence theme tune to Benny Hill; why my blog shows up near the top of such a search, I have no idea.

If people really are searching for the Benny Hill theme tune:
1) It's called "Yakety Sax," by Boots Randolph.
2) It's not a polka.

One time at band camp...

If you are at work, you'll probably be best served by not clicking any of the links provided below. Well, at work in the United States, at least. One of the great things about life in the UK is that the boundary of what is acceptable viewing is a fair distance from that found in the God Blessed United States of America.

When I've got nothing to do on campus, I usually wander over to the graduate centre (the graduate centre because I am old and busted and because they have a cafe area where you can sit and do nothing for several hours) where they have a 9-foot-high projection-screen television that airs music videos most of the time.

It seems that at least once a day I see this video of Alex Gaudino's "Destination Calabria." The really amazing thing about this video is that its makers have somehow taken every thought I had in high school, condensed them to 3 minutes 12 seconds, and put the whole thing to music.

Also on rotation is the much-better-sounding but slightly less catering-to-Chris'-sick-sick-mind video for Fedde Le Grande's "The Creeps" (The girl who bites her finger at 1:10. What's that about? Does it matter?).

De Souza's "Guilty" is also shown seemingly twice an hour, but it just doesn't have the same transfixing quality. You have to give it points, though, for the scenes featuring a bloke off the Village People hitting a prisoner with a phallic pink "nightstick." Nothing says "Sexay!" like police brutality.

Still my favourite lyrics

"They can bug my phone, peep around my home, they'll only see you and me making love inside."

Prince. Weirder than a monkey ballet is that dude, but I can't help but like him.

Girl, we couldn't get much better

The other day I was listening* to "This Ain't A Scene" by the insufferable Fall Out Boy and I was struck by how much of a prude I am. Beyond its cookie-cutter nature and bubble-gum-angst lyrics the thing that bothers me most about the song is the fact that they shout "Goddamn" over and over and over.

Hey, I'm as big a fan of blasphemy as any other, but, I can't help thinking: "Cripes, is this appropriate for daytime radio?"

It's clear I'm getting old that I find myself thinking about the possibility of there being some mother out there, taking their child to school and scrambling to hit the "scan" button when that song comes on. Who needs that? No one wants to discuss the third commandment with a child that early in the morning. Suddenly, painfully, the necessity of Radio Disney becomes clear. Goddamn you, Fall Out Boy, for making Radio Disney seem like a good idea.

I've always been this way, though. This morning Radio 1 was randomly playing "500 Miles" by the Proclaimers** and I flashed back to high school, when our flag corps (we had a flag corps; you know we were bad-ass) performed a routine to that song. Keep in mind that I am not that old but that I lived in the Midwest, so it took several years for the Proclaimers to reach us.

The first time they performed the routine, I found myself listening to the song's lyrics and thinking: "Oh, golly. Is it appropriate that high school girls should be dancing to songs that mention excessive alcohol intake?"

*Please note that I listened to the song only because I was doing the washing up, so my hands were wet and I didn't want to just kick the radio across the room, as perhaps I should have.

**Is it just me, or is Frankie Boyle one of the Proclaimers?