features

Ambient

/ Fiona McQuarrie / 1 Comment

A few months ago, I had never heard of William Basinski, and had never heard any of his music. But lately I’ve been getting into ambient music, because I like listening to it at work – it’s calming but it also helps me be productive. I wanted to explore the genre beyond its best known artists, i.e. Brian Eno and his collaborators, so I looked online for recommendations of other ambient albums. A Reddit thread on the topic of “best ambient album ever” had more than a few mentions of Basinski’s Disintegration Loops albums, so I found those on YouTube and started playing them.

The Disintegration Loops are astounding. The title is literal; Basinski took old analog tapes that he recorded decades ago, looped them into a reel-to-reel tape machine, and played them until the tapes physically fell apart. It sounds bizarre, but it’s fascinating to listen to, as the sounds on the loops gradually devolve and deconstruct.

Since this is not exactly mainstream commercial music, imagine my surprise when this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival program was released, and one of the scheduled events was a live performance by Basinski. From not even being aware of him to suddenly encountering his work and being enraptured by it, and now he was coming to play live in my city? I know when the universe is trying to tell me something. So I bought a ticket, and went to the show this week.

Being something of a newbie to this whole ambient scene, I had no idea whether there would be lots of people at the show, or embarrassingly few (which has happened at a few VIFF events I’ve attended). When I got to the theatre, Continue reading →

Love You ‘Til The Day I Die

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Recently I came across a question on social media: “which musical act have you seen play live the most times”? I can answer that question very easily: Crowded House. In reading the responses to that question, it struck me that I should write something about all the Crowded House shows I’ve seen.

I first became aware of Crowded House when I saw them doing a live interview on the MuchMusic TV channel. I knew about Split Enz, the band that Neil Finn was previously part of – I actually interviewed them in 1980, when their single “Six Months In A Leaky Boat” was a big hit in Canada, and they played a show in Vancouver. The interview was at their hotel (the Holiday Inn on Broadway, for trivia fans) and I spent most of the time talking to Eddie Rayner, the keyboard player, because as soon as I arrived at their hotel suite, the rest of the band members seemed to disappear.  I remember them all being kind of shy and sweet, and somewhat overwhelmed by the publicity that was suddenly whirling around them. So when I saw Crowded House on MuchMusic, I clearly remember saying to my husband, “Oh, look, Neil Finn has a new band.”

Crowded House’s music hits me in a way that I really can’t explain. The songs are brilliant in and of themselves, but it just seems like so many of them spoke to whatever I was feeling or doing at the time I first heard them. I can’t imagine my world without that music.

It’s funny, though, that in thinking back on these shows, I don’t remember a lot of details, like specific songs that were played. That may be because every show has been incredible. There’s not a single show on this list that was boring, or a shameless money grab, or not worth the price of the ticket. Not too many bands can be that consistently excellent for nearly 40 years.

So here’s the stories of the shows I’ve seen, including a few extra ones. To shorten this very lengthy narrative somewhat, I’ll refer to Crowded House as “CH” throughout. And if this post is too long for you, don’t TL:DR me – read as much or as little as you want, it’s all good. Continue reading →

Ship of Fools

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As some of this blog’s followers will know – especially those that follow my other blog – I have two careers: one in academia, and one in music writing. The two don’t often intersect, and that’s partly because I try to keep them separate. Having a Ph.D. and being a university professor doesn’t mean a lot in the music writing world, and being a music writer doesn’t mean a lot in the academic world. There might be some overlap if my degree was in a subject related to music, but although my area of study is very useful in helping me to understand how the music industry works, it’s not explicitly music-related.

This week marks the anniversary of the day I defended my doctoral dissertation – March 17, 1995. The defense comes after you’ve written your dissertation, which is an original piece of research, and your academic supervisor (supervisors, in my case) have signed off on it. You verbally present your research and your findings to a panel of professors, including an external assessor from another university. The panel members ask you questions about what you’ve done, and then you wait outside the room while the panel decides whether you’ve passed.

The defense is extremely nerve-wracking – you’re defending several years’ worth of work to a panel that has the power to say “no, not good enough, go back and try again”. However, I was exceptionally nervous about my defense. At an earlier step in my doctoral program, the progress of my dissertation was suddenly derailed because Continue reading →

Nick Lowe’s Christmas Show

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Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets were on the CBS Saturday Morning TV show today, playing three songs from Nick’s classic holiday album Quality Street (here’s their performance of ‘Christmas at the Airport’). Quality Street is now 10 years old, and it will forever remind me of the Nick Lowe show I saw at Vancouver’s Vogue Theatre on December 19, 2015.

This was a memorable show for many reasons, not least of which was the excellent and exuberant music. It was also memorable because of the audience. This was my first time seeing Nick as a solo act – I had seen him in Vancouver in 1980, as part of Rockpile – but everyone I knew who had seen him on his own assured me that he was terrific. When my husband and I got to the venue and found our seats, it turned out Continue reading →

“Record Collector” Specials

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Over the last few months I’ve had the opportunity to contribute to two special issues published by Record Collector magazine.

For the Elton John special, I wrote an article about Elton’s 1975 album Rock Of The Westies. This was a particularly interesting assignment, since I still have the vinyl copy of the album that I bought when it came out! You can buy the issue here, and it’s also available on newsstands in the UK.

Record Collector presents… Elton John

For the Paul McCartney special, I wrote about Wings’ 1971 debut album Wild Life, and also took a look at McCartney’s books, music, and films for kids. You can buy the issue here, and it will be on UK newsstands as of December 7.

Record Collector presents… Paul McCartney

 

 

The Night I Didn’t Meet David Bowie

/ Fiona McQuarrie / 1 Comment

During the first part of my music writing career, which lasted from the late ‘70s to the mid-‘80s, I worked at two different daily newspapers, and wrote a lot of concert reviews on deadline. This usually meant writing the review the same night as the show, sometimes while I was still at the concert venue, and getting the review to the newspaper’s editorial offices so it could go into the next day’s newspaper.

At that time, there were no cellphones and no portable computers, which meant that filing a concert review from outside the office was always an adventure. To illustrate what this was like, I would like to share with you a story of one such adventure: the night I didn’t meet David Bowie.

To set the scene for this story, Continue reading →

Shining On: Linda Hoover

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[originally appeared in Shindig! issue #129)

When Linda Hoover entered New York’s Advantage Sound Studios in 1970, she was an excited 19-year-old who had never been in a studio before. Little did she know the album she made, I Mean To Shine, would never be released. But the album became legendary as the first album to feature songs by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who were soon to become the linchpins of Steely Dan – songs that never appeared anywhere else. Not only that, but Becker and Fagen also played on the album, along with guitarists Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter and Denny Dias who also became part of the Dan. Now, after 52 years, I Mean To Shine is finally seeing the light of day.

The catalyst for the album Continue reading →

Cry Cry Cry: ’96 Tears’

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[originally appeared in Shindig! issue #127]

Saginaw, Michigan, is an industrial city about two hours northwest of Detroit. In the mid-20th century, migrant Mexican-American farm labourers in the region, seeking greater economic security and stability, settled in Saginaw to work at its auto manufacturing plants. Mexican-American kids in Saginaw in the late 1950s and early 1960s grew up with the Mexican music that their parents loved and performed – mostly the Tejano style, with its rollicking accordion and guitars – but they also listened to Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, and other pioneering American rock and rollers. Those diverse influences fueled ? and the Mysterians’ ‘96 Tears’ – which, since its 1966 release, has gone on to be recorded by more than 50 other artists, and has become a modern-day classic.

Speaking from his home in Saginaw, Mysterians guitarist Bobby Balderrama tells Shindig! that the group  – which took its name from a Japanese sci-fi movie they saw on TV –  started as an instrumental combo, “playing the Ventures, Duane Eddy, all the guitar stuff.” He and fellow guitarist Larry Borjes, along with drummer Robert Martinez, honed their craft in his parents’ garage. “It was a two-car garage, so my dad parked the car on one side, and we practiced on the other side. We had our equipment set up there all the time.” However, when they played gigs, Continue reading →

“Her Country”: An Interview with Author Marissa Moss

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Women have always been an integral part of country music, starting with pioneers such as the Carter Family and Patsy Montana. Yet country music has also marginalized women musicians – even more so in the last decade. In 2015, a country radio consultant publicly stated that songs by women were “not the lettuce in our salad…[they are] the tomatoes“.  In 2019, women artists represented only 10 percent of the music played on US country radio stations that year.

Music journalist Marissa Moss,  who’s based in Nashville, saw women in country music making great music at the same time that the industry was focusing on “bro country“, and saw women trying to be successful their own way in an industry that wanted them to conform to very narrow stereotypes. Her new book Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be tells the stories of three female country musicians – Maren Morris, Mickey Guyton, and Kasey Musgraves. Through unpacking their experiences, it touches on racism, sexism, corporatization, politics, and oppression, and how all of those shape  performers’ careers and the music we listen to. The book is ultimately hopeful, but it also pulls no punches in describing how badly the country music industry can treat women.

I found Her Country to be an extremely thought-provoking and rewarding read, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to interview Marissa about it.

Fiona McQuarrie (FM): What motivated you to write the book?

Marissa Moss (MM): I had been covering this beat in Nashville, at the time I started writing the book, for about eight years, and it just felt Continue reading →

Deep Waters: ‘Wade in the Water’

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[originally appeared in Shindig! issue 115]

The graceful, emotional ‘Wade on the Water’ has been a stirring musical expression of faith and hope for more than a century. However, the oppression described in its lyrics is not just an artifact from the past. While this article was being written, two US state governments passed laws that will affect minority communities’ ability to exercise their right to vote, and a white US police officer is on trial for charges related to the murder of a Black man. ‘Wade in the Water’ is important not only as a classic piece of music, but as a representation of historical injustices whose effects still have not disappeared.

‘Wade in the Water’ originated in the southern US in the mid-1800s, as a spiritual sung by enslaved African-Americans. In those communities, spirituals were more than just expressions of religious devotion. Some spirituals would be sung to alert freedom-seekers when it was safest to escape, without slaveholders (“masters”) knowing that information was being communicated.  The lyrics of ‘Wade in the Water’ reference the Biblical story of the Israelites crossing the river Jordan, but the lyrics Continue reading →