I’m trying to work on a new song for the band, something to expand our sound somewhat; the song is, I’m thinking, going to be a kind of warped version of the story of Bodhi-Dharma, the famed and highly mythologized Indian monk who went abroad and reputedly spread Buddhism across Asia. So, of course, I have a nice musical sample of what I’m going for. Lately I’ve been gravitating toward older and older styles, such as the road-country of Spiritwood as I intend it to be sung, and while I flirted for a while with a somewhat warped blues form, …
Category: REVIEWS
The Snow Country – Yasunari Kawabata (…and my musings on Western and Japanese modes of reconciling civilized life with human emotions…)
(I should begin this by saying I don’t know a damned thing about Japan. I know a few books, a few movies, and I’ve known a few people, but my knowledge of Japan relies solely on this. Therefore what I am writing about here involves a lot of what I imagine or induce from the literature and art I know about. It could be grossly erroneous. As always, if you think so, please do comment and tell me what else I should see, read, listen to, or look at. That said…) I have just, a few minutes ago, finished reading …
Mark Twain Scrapbook
Over at Second Story Publications I found a link to a beautiful project called the Mark Twain Scrapbook. This is an exquisite and interesting digital scrapbook bio of Mark Twain. Nice-eu, as is said in Konglish.
Matrix 2, Animatrix…
Over the last couple of months I have not seen a lot of movies. I have been busy enough to actually miss, in the theater, several movies that I was actually interested in seeing. Perhaps the only movie I have managed to see in the theater in the last couple of months is the new Matrix: Reloaded sequel. However, one of my friends here has become a sort of movie dealer to me… he feeds me CD-ROMs with downloaded films on them, and I watch them. Among the many films he has thus made available to me was the Animatrix …
Dabang Band – Bbang Club Show
Dabang Band is playing at Bbang Club in Seoul on Saturday Night. As usual I don’t know exact times, but I think you’ll want or need to be at the club by 8pm to see us play. Here’s a page about clubs in Shinchon. There’s a map on this page though I don’t know how useful it is. There’s also a phone number for the club, if you can call and speak in Korean: (82-2)-362-1089. Of course in Seoul you only need to dial the last part, and in the rest of Korea only the “-2-” prefix. If you have …
Shivaji and the Ecstasy of Butter and Fire
26 March 2003/ Dabang – Shivaji and the Ecstasy of Butter and Fire This track is a bit of an oddity, perhaps the heaviest track on the band’s CD which is titled Pig Over Seoul. It features a poem I’d recently gotten published in Matrix Magazine in Montreal, and which Myoung asked me to read at the studio to fill out the track. I had a horrible cold at the time, which made my voice sound downright evil. I’m happy with the effect. We’re currently trying to figure out how to get someone to perform this poem during some of …
Live Rock Clubs in Sinchon
I’m posting this link for my own use, but anyone else who is curious should also follow it: it’s a page about live clubs in the Sinchon area of Seoul. I need that to get to our gig at Club Bbang (Bread Club) this Saturday.
Apocrypha Live ’98 excerpt
Right now I only have one music download for you of my own. It’s from Apocrypha Live ’98, by Apocrypha, the last band I played (semi-)regularly with in Saskatoon; one of our last live shows (in summer ’98) at a rave hosted by my friend Mike (aka DJ Dekoze) was recorded and actually mastered, produced, la la la. Some of it is bad, some is good. It’s kind of a mix of ambient music, free jazz, and spoken word. Accordingly, some bits sound like the Bladerunner soundtrack and some of my soprano sax work reminds me of Jan Garbarek. The …
My Musical Background
Music’s been a big part of my life since the middle of seventh grade, when I decided that if my sisters could play the flute (and get a lot of attention that way) then I could bloody well do as well on some instrument. My mother rejected my first instrument choices (drums, electric guitar, bagpipes) and finally, after hearing the horn player in INXS, I settled on saxophone. I wanted to be a rock’n’roll sax player because damn, I was sure that women were crazy about that guyÖ
Independent vs. Mainstream Film
Independent vs. Mainstream Film and My Picks for Indie Films Here’s something I almost posted about a couple of days ago, except of course that the Hand of Fate wiped it out somewhere in the data transfer. So I lost the preamble to it, which was about how I’d been teaching my students on Wednesday last about complaining. It was fun, because it wasn’t anything to do with grammar, it was all about tone of voice and delivery and a wee bit of acting. Deadpan complaint just doesn’t work, it sounds like statement of fact, so we worked on that …