April 17, 2009

Pop Music

Leah and I saw Damien Jurado in one of my favourite venues 2 nights ago. There were maybe 25 people there, though the place can hold a couple hundred probably. You could have heard a pin drop when he was performing. There was no backing band, and I was glad. For me it was a little bit of a sacred moment. I'd gotten a bit drunk beforehand and it seemed appropriate to be feeling the click when Mr. Jurado lumbered on-stage.

The last time I'd been in the venue it was for The Handsome Furs two weeks ago when it had been packed with sweating twenty-somethings. That time I felt like I was in the middle of something that was happening right now. There was such a tremendous, heaving energy.

With Damien Jurado I felt like I was participating in something that's not happening now so much as it's always been happening and always will.

I also like this song a lot:


And Moby's got a great new track that David Lynch made a video for.

9 comments:

joel said...

Good Moby song, Lynch is a god.

Jon Coutts said...

"That time I felt like I was in the middle of something that was happening right now. There was such a tremendous, heaving energy.

With Damien Jurado I felt like I was participating in something that's not happening now so much as it's always been happening and always will."

That is pure gold.

Anonymous said...

In Film class yesterday I decided to stay late to watch a screening of a classmate's film. I decided to stay because you are a film student, and I liked yours. The one I saw was terrible. I was annoyed the whole time it was playing.

I get what you are saying about the bands. We had the same experience of the right now thing with Women. I saw this guy Chuck Brodsky play baseball ballads a few years ago and it was one of those "Always" things.

s$s said...

Jon: thanks.

Forrest: Yeah, I just got back from a screening of all the films made by first year students at my school (it's a small school), and they were mostly pretty bad. Some really bad. Some half-decent. Some were popular with the crowd but I hated them. So, film students... mmmhmmm.

dave M said...

It seems that with artists like Jurado or even Bonnie Prince Billy, that critics are getting tired of them. They get mediocre reviews all the time now. Didn't people realize that they were going to keep playing this kind of music for the rest of their lives? I admire performers that hold up a tradition that way.

s$s said...

Me too.

I remember hearing Emily Haines from Metric say in an interview that she was really bored of singer/songwriters.

I thought, "that's like saying you're bored with novels, or 90 minute films, or paintings." It's dumb. It's confusing form with content.

I'm bored with BAD singer/songwriters, not with singer/songwrit-ing.

Dave M said...

Jason Mraz and Jack Johnson need to take themselves and all their pseudo-funky friends on a long vacation and never come back.

Anonymous said...

come on dave. they arent even *trying* to do the same thing as other songwriters.

ps. Matt:

we heard a singer/songwriter sing this line :

"Your love is like a battery - it just keeps going and going and going..."

p.s. Eyes closed, face to the heavens, sitting playing a keyboard. oh yeah. (he was a nice guy though)

s$s said...

Love like a battery? Jeez.

There are too many nice guy singers in the world.

"I'm not anti-mainstream, I just think it's lame." -Bob Dylan.

That about sums it up for me regarding Jack Johnson and the like.