From: owner-canadian-music-digest@smoe.org (canadian-music-digest) To: canadian-music-digest@smoe.org Subject: canadian-music-digest V3 #54 Reply-To: canadian-music@smoe.org Sender: owner-canadian-music-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-canadian-music-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk canadian-music-digest Monday, June 12 2000 Volume 03 : Number 054 Today's Subjects: ----------------- RE: NXNE notes (NEC) ["Julian C. Dunn" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 01:57:25 -0400 (EDT) From: "Julian C. Dunn" Subject: RE: NXNE notes (NEC) On 10-Jun-2000 Julian C. Dunn wrote: > I'm just off to take a quick nap now and then I'm heading down to see Simon > Wilcox at C'est What, followed by Alla Kadysh at Oasis again. If I feel up to > it I'll head back to C'est What at 12 to catch Mia Sheard. So I'm back from seeing these shows and my nap has caused me to be wide awake - -- as a result you get immediate, one-off reviews! :-) (or, I could be doing the dishes from dinner right now, but hmm, what's more entertaining?) Started the night off at C'est What with Simon Wilcox. I ran into Tabassum and James (hmm, that kinda sounds like "McMaster and James" ... sorry kids :) ) and their friends. Simon was extraordinarily funny; she joked that she could always fall back on doing comedy if she failed at music. I would say that her songs are vocally rich, instrumentally sparse; she doesn't use her guitar to carry tunes but instead relies on her wonderful voice. This point was driven home by the fact that she did a great acapella number. Often when singers do acapella material I cringe slightly because it is VERY difficult to pull off, and many appear openly self-conscious about it. Not Simon -- this is probably one of the best acapella songs I've heard from anyone. It didn't feel like it was missing any instrumentation, either, like it was MEANT to be an acapella number. Needless to say I was quite impressed. Next I moved on to Oasis to hear Alla Kadysh. I've had her CD, "Perichole's Sincerity Theory", for a while, and it's very cool. Picture, if you will, a typical Latino band. Now imagine all the songs are sung in Russian or French (she does have some English material too). That might be approaching a rough description of Alla's music. One also imagines influences from Eastern European folk music thrown in there for good measure. In any case, it is very compelling, and Alla has a wonderfully sultry voice that's suited for the music. It's perfect music for a cozy venue like Oasis. Since I had an hour to kill before Mia Sheard, I headed over to Ted's to see this band called Mr. Brown. I have never heard of them and the only reason I went over there is because the NXNE program listed them as being from Melbourne, so I figured that I can tell my Australian friend Alana that I've seen a band from her city :-) They totally rocked out; they were loud, excited, and had great tunes. It was really funny to see the frontman dressed in a two piece suit with his shirt collar buttoned right up to the top, with a necktie; it seemed wholly inappropriate attire for the temperature in Ted's, which must have been at least forty degrees. It didn't seem to faze him that he was sweating buckets, since he got increasingly more animated as their set wore on. I'd describe the songs as catchy and very melodic; I don't think the lyrics mean much :-) I finished off the evening by rushing back to C'est What to catch Mia Sheard's set. It was a good thing I took a taxi because she only played a half-hour set, and I got there right as she was starting. Let me say, she sounds a hell of a lot better with a band. The last few times I've seen her (opening for Sarah Slean et. al.) she has played solo, and her songs can be, to put it lightly, somewhat depressing if unaccompanied. She's also got this kind of bohemian look (I don't know if I'm using the word right, but I can't find my farking dictionary right now) about her that evokes (rather stereotypical) notions of the starving singer-songwriter who has had all kinds of other things go bad in their lives, which only compounds the melancholy of seeing her play /without/ a band. So it was a pleasant change to hear familiar songs done with different arrangements -- and believe me, the arrangements were very unique and obviously not just cobbled together. The only distraction was that I sat beside the SAME yahoo who was taking a thousand pictures with a flashbulb at her last show. Only this time he wasn't equipped with a camera, but a package of cigarettes that he insisted on chain-smoking and letting the smoke burn off in the direction of my EYES. I could kill these people, I swear to God :-) (and his wife/girlfriend almost burned my knee with a cigarette, neither of whom apologized for the accident) Anyway, I guess that means I have to do the dishes now :-( Hope that all of you who went to NXNE had a good time -- Rannie it sounds like you kids had quite the day! -- and I'm looking forward to next year's edition! - - Julian [ Julian C. Dunn - jdunn@aquezada.com WWW: http://www.aquezada.com/ ] [ FuE exfe94 a+++ Ifte/slc lonca r- ps++ bs+ t++/*t C+++$/C! w+++ p7 LF+++ ] [N++/N! cd350 pr++ g+++ S-/S *x++ Fa+++/Fa$/Fa! m1 b+ fc+++/ E>+ rl-- *d s!] [ "i sold my computer for a used acoustic guitar" -- the nields ] ------------------------------ End of canadian-music-digest V3 #54 ***********************************