No, Martin McCarrick is what they call a “really fucking cool musician”.

(He’s also an artist and a music teacher. As an aside, can you imagine saying: “Yeah, my instructor was in Siouxsie & The Banshees“? Well, okay, the YOOF OF TODAY probably don’t give a toss, but it would blow my tiny Existential-angst mind if I were learning to play.)

But anyway. How’s this for a goth/rock CV?  London-based McCarrick was in Siouxsie & The Banshees for eight years (around Rapture, Peepshow and Superstition), Irish noisenik band Therapy? doing time on guitar and electric cello for seven, played cello on Robert Smith and Steve Severin’s The Glove album, and has played, toured with or collaborated with Kristin Hersh, This Mortal Coil, Dead Can Dance, Skunk Anansie, Sinead O’Connor, Gary Numan, Marianne Faithful and more.

Today, Martin comprises 50% of a wonderful thing: The McCarricks. Along with his exceedingly sexy and classically trained violinist wife, Kimberlee, the McCarricks’ musical soundscapes blend violin, cello, piano, keys and otherworldly sounds and perform in front of short films created by international filmmakers and friends.

Hanging out with the McCarricks (the BSR’s best friends in London) will often include some sort of debauchery, some cool blue-haired friends, and you may end up getting drunk next to Jon Klein from The Banshees or puke all night after a visit to the underground crypt bar Garlic & Shots (see left). In other words, they are not only musicians extraordinaire, they are a bloody good laugh too.

As for their latest project, it is also one for the BIG BLACK BOOK OF GOTH.

The McCarricks were recently commissioned to rescore  F.W. Murnau’s Der Letzte Mann. Murnau, if you’re not up on your German expressionist filmmakers, made the original 1922 silent vampire film Nosferatu. This is exceptionally exciting news: it means that Martin & Kim will hopefully tour and bring the film overseas to those of us not currently living in Londonium. Have a look/hear:

For more insanely beautiful and eerie music, go to MySpace or check out their latest videos on YouTube, including “Drifter”. Visit www.houseofmccarrick.com to buy a reissue of their first disc ‘3′ and for other news.

PS, Happy birthday, brother.

But for now, summer’s about finding a long lawn upon which to play bocci. Enter Sex With Strangers and Guilty About Girls.

See, these Vancouverite robot rockers have been making a habit of getting their balls out after a rehearsal. And this time, the BackstageRider was invited. There were green balls and red balls. Two teams: 4M (Mark-Mark-Mikala-Mike) and DoubleDanBobCor (Dan-Dan-Bobby-Cory). Otherwise known as Hatch Benedict, Mark Henning from Guilty About Girls/Combine The Victorious, The BackstageRider and Magnus Magnum) vs. Dallas Archangel, Non-Band Dan, Isabelle “Bobby” Dunlop and Wedge Beavers. You know…them.

Here’s what transpired:

First, everybody gots to get a drink. The default drink of the summer in the UK is Pimm’s, so why not in Vancouver? It seems fitting if you’re gonna be chucking miniature deathstars around a lawn. Wedge (in red) insists that one’s throwing improves if one holds a drink in the other hand. Not sure.

Hatch throws out the first ball. He’s a champion first-ball thrower. Anyone can see that.

Note the elegance and the positioning as Wedge takes his shot. It’s a beaut. A BEAUT! It comes close to the others, but who’s closest? Quick! Despatch Bobby to determine who’s in the lead!

Bobby has a habit, it seems, of estimating that her team’s balls are always closest. This won’t do.

There are jeers and arguments. Wedge, several Pimm’s to the wind, is insistant that his BocciMate is correct in her highly scientific estimation. We yell louder. (And actually play better and win!)

THREE CHEERS FOR 4M!

Happy summer, y’all.

Oh and by the way, Sex With Strangers are currently recording some demos to the follow-up of the fabulous album Tokyo Steel. Apparently the first seven tracks have been labelled “Death Funk”. Check out theirs and Guilty About Girls’ MySpace pages (linked above) for gigs and news. \m/

Do you have fingers? Can you do the devil’s horns? Well, then, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WAITING FOR? BackstageRider wants to build the world’s largest collection of devil’s horns… and a girl’s gotta start somewhere. And this one already has THE FAMOUSish in it.

Here’s how you get on the gallery and get all the glory (and one day, maybe even prizes – y’hear that, kind sponsors?!):

Send a pic (through your phone or all proper-stylee), your name and your city to me via:

• Twitter: @backstagerider
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/backstagerider
• Email: mikala@backstagerider.com

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The pic has to be of you and/or your mates and not something you found elsewhere on the Interwebs. And I’d prefer to see faces. But hey. This is CUSTOM, people. Rock on! \m/

I started out as a fan. That’s me with the band, above, in 1990. Cute, no?

Then I became a friend. There was the time when drummer Chris Hooper and I got drunk together at the 1990 Much Music Video Awards. There was the time when I sat in a bar at Ontario Place in Toronto with Chris, his brother/bassist Tom Hooper, singer/guitarist Kevin Kane and friends, after a huge gig, singing “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown” by Jim Croce as we polished off pitchers and cried with laughter. There was the time when I smuggled Chris – my closest friend to this day – past the waiting girl gaggle into Massey Hall in Toronto after we’d done some post-soundcheck, pre-gig drinking at McVeigh’s Irish pub down the street. There was the time we sang “Corn Circles” by the Waterboys and songs by Pansy Division in the back of a van. There were times at bars, hotels, clubs and backstage.

There were so many times with the Grapes of Wrath.

For me, and for probably a lot of people of my generation in Canada, the 1990s belonged to these Kelowna, BC boys. It belonged to their Beatles-y songs, their impeccable harmonies and guitar rock, and their amazingly curly hair. It belonged to tracks Peace of Mind, Backward Town, I Am Here and All The Things I Wasn’t.

But in 1999 the band more or less dis-banded and after a fight about the name, continued on as Ginger, minus Kevin Kane. It’s been about 11 years since the original trio played together. But they’ve buried the bullshit. On July 17 in Surrey (a Vancouver suburb), Hooper-Hooper-Kane reformed for a summer festival.

15 songs. And for a lot of us, so many memories. Click on each photo to embiggen. And scroll down for the set list. For more information on the Grapes of Wrath or to get in contact and book them for a giant, well-paying show, visit their Facebook page.\m/

July 17 Set List:

• Peace of Mind
• Stay
• Backward Town
• The Time is Here
• Traveling
• Away
• A Dream About You
• Misunderstanding
• You May Be Right
• All The Things I Wasn’t
• What Was Going Through My Head
• O Lucky Man
• Do You Want to Tell Me
• I am Here
• Lucifer Sam (Pink Floyd cover)

To anyone who was following me on  Twitter on the night of Monday, July 12, into the drugged-up, painful hours of Tuesday, you’d know that I’d been admitted to hospital. I’ll spare ye the details but it’s a recurring thing that this time came on with the full weight of Jabba The Hut wrapped in pure evil. So I did what any sick person on morphine would do, I tweeted. Mainly to pass the time, also to avoid freaking out.

Anyway, I’ve been off work for a week, still reeling with pain and a massive dose of the feeling-sorry-for-myselfs. (Had to cancel going to two gigs!). The one thing that was cool about all this is I had friends, family and Twitter and FB (relative) strangers offering concern, help, company. Okay, that wasn’t the only cool thing: Jason Hill from Louis XIV cheered me immensely when he shared with me some stonking demos he’s been working on and not really played to anyone else. So yay for humans!

So what’s a bored sicko gonna do? Well, soon as I could get off the couch, I hunched over the computer. Thought I’d put together a quintessentially depressing/kinda fun/sorta loud/totally bonkers “SICK OF BEING SICK PLAYLIST” inspired by all the muck in my head and which seems to sum up how I’ve felt this past week. If you’ve ever had a bad flu or been sick with anything else for longer than a you can say “Bikram’s”, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Thanks to the Twitterers who helped contribute to this video/songlist.

Errrr, enjoy?

And take your vitamins, goddamnit!

THE EXTRA SPECIAL BACKSTAGERIDER SICK OF BEING SICK PLAYLIST:

1. Miss Misery – Elliott Smith
2. Hospital Beds – Cold War Kids
3. Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors – Editors
4. In the Hospital – Friendly Fires
5. You’re Not Very Well – Charlatans
6. Looking At The World From the Bottom of a Well – Mike Doughty (alt: Lord, Lord Help Me To Rock Rock On – also Mike Doughty)
7. Weighty Ghost – Wintersleep
8. In Chemicals – Postdata
9. Death Take Your Fiddle – Spiritualized
10. The Drugs Don’t Work – The Verve
11. The Hurting – Tears for Fears
12. The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn – The Pogues (thanks @wilhelmus)
13. Sick of Being Sick – The Damned
14. I Wanna Be Sedated – Ramones (thanks @pacificbird)
15. I’m Bored – Iggy Pop
16. Sick, Sick, Sick – Queens of the Stone Age
17. So Hard Done By – Tragically Hip
18. Feeling Oblivion – Turin Brakes
19. Kettering – The Antlers (thanks @gregg_mc – man, that’s some depressing sh*t)
20. Sleeping Sickness – City and Color (thanks @Razim, not my fave band but I dig the lyrics)
21. Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd
22. Smothered Hope – Skinny Puppy
23. The Poison – Prodigy (thanks @bionicbadass)
24. Insomnia – Faithless
25. …and for something positive to end on… This Too Shall Pass – OKgo

PS, the eyeball on the homepage? Mine. At 3am. After morphine shot number 2. Wanted to see what my pupils looked like. Of course.

PPS, Did I miss any? Have your say in the commenty things below.

]]> http://backstagerider.com/2010/07/15/sick-sick-playlist-backstageriders-house-pain/feed/ 3 http://backstagerider.com/2010/07/15/exclusive-jason-hill-louis-xiv/ http://backstagerider.com/2010/07/15/exclusive-jason-hill-louis-xiv/#comments Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:40:27 +0000 Mikala http://backstagerider.com/?p=1700 The reply to the “Happy New Year and hey-guess-what-I-started-a-music-site” note I sent to Jason Hill just after New Year’s, came a little late.

Like, July 8 sort of late.

Jason Hill – Jay to his friends, eyelinered-waist-coated-dapper-often-beardy singer in LouisXIV to his fans – had been off the grid for nearly a year.

San Diego rockers Louis XIV had decided to put the band on ice precisely at the time when their currency was increasing. They’d been opening up to thousands on a world tour with The Killers, gaining some critical attention for their last album Slick Dogs and Ponies (one of BSR’s most played) and gaining a new fanbase.

Then it all went tits up.

The band – which included longtime friends Brian Karscig and Hill – split. Karscig immediately poured himself into a new venture, The Nervous Wreckords, which he’d recorded bits and pieces of with Anthony from Cornershop and Mark from the Killers. The Nervous Wreckords are now a four-piece and they tour. Do videos. Proper catchy songs, too. The debut full-lengther, Valuminium, drops on August 31.

But Jay?

He seemed….quiet. Which was strange for someone so prolific and driven. He was on Facebook, well, sorta, but wouldn’t reply to people. His photo hasn’t changed for about a year. There was no sign of gigs, or new music. No SoundCloud or BandCamp or MySpace. There was no sign of Jay, really.

Then, just this month, came a flurry of photos. Of a new studio he’d built, out the back of his new, reclusive hideaway. He called the studio “Ulysses” because that was the name that came to him when he walked in to the stone room. Suddenly, Jason Hill was back. And to be honest, the Backstage Rider is a little f*cking excited about this fact.

But where was he?

In his own words and based on a conversation between us over a few days last week, HERE’S WHAT JASON HILL DID NEXT:

“It’s been an amazing year for me, actually. I’ve spent all my life since I was 14 being in a band with the exception of a month or two when I was 19, so I was in need of not having to travel or think in a pack. I was in a dark place before we went on our last tour and then just after. Not so much because of the band, but now I’m actually doing quite good.

A dark place? In what way?
“Just feeling a bit claustrophobic and trapped from my life. I guess, the band, some business associates we were having issues with, and my girlfriend of several years and I had just broken up in Spain. The last tour we did was about two-and-a-half months in Europe and Australia, and although it was a great and huge tour, playing to enormous crowds of 15-25,000 people a night, I just wanted to step away and stop having to run in a pack.

There was a darkness around and I wanted to leave it in the shadows.

It’s very liberating being able to completely wake up and have absolutely nothing planned for the rest of your life. Being able to be my own man for the first time since I was 14, because it was the first time I didn’t really have a band. I didn’t have to make decisions about where I lived…or anything really.

I also wanted to work with other people, Brian, Mark (Maigaard), Jimmy (Armbrust) and I had been playing with each other a long time and we were all just in need of some time apart. It was getting to that point of not really helping each other bring about new music, not working together, we were really only recording separately at that point, and not really leaving room for each other. It was just time.

So I split town.

I moved to Laurel Canyon in Tinsletown, built a studio out of this 100-year-old house tucked high into the canyon, and been writing with people and producing for their albums. Really busy but it’s been a wonderful time mostly. Been writing and recording like crazy, my own stuff as well. A number of songs with the old bass player of Jamiroquai, Nick Fyffe, and Alex Carapetis who played with Phoenix but now plays with The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas. But mostly just been producing. It’s been nice to just be in the studio creating music.

Ah yes, Ulysses. Tell us more about the studio.
I have this wonderful old Spanish house in the hills originally built in 1916. It’s very isolated and a place where I see deer several times a week on my deck. Yet it’s just about a half-mile from Sunset, so I don’t get too bored.

First night I moved up here I found myself sleeping on a wood floor in front of a roaring old fireplace after having dinner with Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran, Matt Bellamy from Muse and Mark from The Killers and it’s been pretty much eventful ever since.

Woah. Rewind. Nick Rhodes?
We had a mutual friend, and he actually asked all of us for dinner. Only Mark and I knew each other at the table. Pete Katsis is a big manager who manages lots of big acts like Jane’s Addiction and Korn and many others were there as well. I actually hang with him a lot. Nick was really cool, very funny guy. We were laughing a lot. I remember a big discussion on how once any great artist gets a beard, they stop making good music, at least while they have the beard. This was mostly funny because Mark and I both had the makings of beards at that moment…which was a bit of the joke. Nick referenced Bowie with a beard in Tin Machine.

Okay, back to the studio.
So I built a studio out of the old house and immediately just starting to get all sorts of requests to produce other people’s records. The Virgins, Sky Ferriera, Mark Stoermer from the Killers, all sorts.

Seemed like it would be fun and I needed a change. I just wrote and produced a song with a boyfriend and girlfriend from Seattle called Thomas and Lonnie that I absolutely love. Been asked to write for and with a lot of people, and that sort of thing.

What about the LouisXIV lads? Are you in touch?
I do keep up with Brian, Mark as well, we send messages back and forth a lot lately. We decided to do a show in October with our band prior to Louis XIV called Convoy, mostly to get the other guitar player Robbie Dodds back on a stage – he’s an incredible player, it will be good to play with him again. We all thought it would be fun to do all the early stuff of that band. We all weren’t very happy with our last record, similar to how we felt in some ways to our last Louis XIV record, so we wanted to sort of get back to those basics. Just for a laugh really.

When will see you play live again?
I’ve gotten to that point where I’m thinking of playing live again. It’s been a year and some months since I’ve been on a stage and I’m starting to get the itch to play. I can feel the twitch in my legs creeping in, my fingers getting a little jittery, my walk gets a little more upright and swaggered, it’s like a magnet to a refrigerator.

So how is your own music sounding? What shape are the songs forming?
Songs have just been pouring out, all sorts. Hard to explain what they sound like. Just very different, I think, unlike anyone else I can think of. Some are very dancey, some of the ones with Nick Fyffe are sounding like nothing anyone else has heard from me. Some very  ‘70s French disco sounding and others are very stripped down rock numbers with saxes and Serge Gainsbourg Melody Nelson-era string sections. Some just a vocal and a horn. All over the place, really, I’m now at the point of assembling the year of recording.

Not sure exactly yet what I’m going to do with all them, what will make a record and what not. Been just trying to get my head around that at the moment. But it’s been amazing to listen to music again. For a while I was feeling very isolated and wasn’t listening. When a musician stops listening, it’s like a runner wearing cement shoes. Right now I feel more like I’m wearing clouds for socks. \m/

Every once and a while, the BackstageRider likes to crawl out from under the piles of  twitchy and dirty alt-somethin’-somethin’ music and swat at the light.

And while the interior of the Snow Patrol-early U2-Editors triangularium isn’t a place in which we typically dwell for too long, sometimes it’s good to get clean. Factor in swoony vocals, earnest love songs and anthemy choruses rooted somewhere near the good parts of the late 1980s, and you’ve got July’s Rockands heroes: introducing The Republic of Letters.

Made out of bits of Chris Venti (lovely vocals),  brother Nick Venti (drummer and chap with excellent chain below), Martin Niwinski (bass guitar) and Adrian Thorstensen (guitar), Republic of Letters are derived from San Diego, CA. Their first full-lengther is due out this autumn, produced by good friend to BSR, Louis XIV/Nervous Wreckords’ Brian Karscig. For a taster now, however, they’ve got an EP called Painted Hour (also the name of the best song on there). Have a listen to them on MySpace. They might be pretty, but they’re also cheeky devils’ (horns). \m/

Pretending to hail from a tiny (non-existent) town in South West England called “Noid” (No. I.D. – geddit?), The Heavy have a heavy following, even though you’ve probably never heard of ‘em.

So, introducing…. THE HEAVY, yo. Word.

They’re P-Funk/James Brown/Junior Murvin/Fishbone-y indie rock. The kind of funkrock soup that is the appetizer before the moving feet, lit spliffs and waving hands main course.

They opened for Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings and held their own. SXSWers raved about them. SPIN loves them. Kid Koala could not stop talking about them at a recent Vancouver show, during his own set. Which made sense – they actually blew him out of the water on June 29t at the Commodore Ballroom.

Not to mention the fact that the ever-reliable Wiki tells a tale of Letterman asking them to perform their song TWICE on his show, the first time ever Dave did so with a band. People just kinda wanna jump about and lose their shit with them. And whenever the new singer Kelvin Swaby jumps or sweats anywhere near you? Awww, yeah, you just wanna smile with the Heavy. (Though it’d be nice guitarist Dan Taylor did – he looked a right old misery in Van).

Put them on last on in a set, they are a hard act to follow.

Have a listen to The Heavy. Their new album is called The House That Dirt Built.

Thanks to Brittney Kwasney from brightphoto.ca and Timbre Productions Concerts

Barlow’s currently wrapping up an NorfUhMerican tour for his latest bit of musical goodness, Goodnight Unknown. He’s out on tour with his buddies The Missingmen (Tom Watson and Raul Morales of Mike Watt fame) and The Backstage Rider went along for the ride – well, at least to Seattle and the most excellent Tractor Tavern. Best way to spend the first day of summer, really.

Here’s what we got up to…

Afternoon soundcheck at the Tractor Tavern. “I’m sounding muddy,” Lou said from the stage. “I really wished I’d thought of this eight years ago when I recorded the songs. You know, sing higher.”

What do you mean “this picture requires some explanation?” It’s pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it?  On the left is Liz, a friend of Jason Loewenstein of Sebadoh. Liz and her husband Carlos graciously invited Lou (and I) over for dinner at their place in Ballard. Carlos is doing a book project on lo-fi cassettes, which Lou used to record all the time. The little dude in front is the product of what happens when a two-year old superhero makes his own chocolate milk out of edamame and a half-bottle of Hershey’s chocolate syrup, then runs to the sofa, puts on “Thomas the Tank Engine” on the TV…and well, sorta passes out. We took the opp to commemorate the moment.

Hanging backstage, Lou was enormously pleased to return from dinner to find this merch poster that his bandmates had created for him. “Look at the fucking cat,” he said. “He looks terrified.” WOULDN’T YOU BE?

Live, Lou Barlow and the Missingmen are acoustic, then loud, then acoustic, then loud, then ukelele. Included in this package was “Natural One” by Folk Implosion, Sebadoh’s “The Freed Pig” “Soul and Fire” and “On Fire” plus all the newer solo stuff, including the legendary “Legendary”, a driving “Goodnight Unknown” and quite a bit more. Also on the bill: Lou singing about why you should buy his t-shirts to the tune of “Too Much Freedom”.

Lou got the wristband thingie in Texas. He liked it so he kept it on. The turquoise guitar was equally kinda wonderful. At this point I was tucking into Pint #47 I think. I believe several were Fat Tire and Mac & Jack’s African Amber. This is also around the point where local blogger Mike Johnston tweeted: “Lou is laying down some straight up badass right now.”

Guess which one’s Lou and which one’s me? I smile a lot when I am IN THE ROCK…

…apparently so does Lou and Raul (left). I would give my least-useful finger to remember what was said to bring forth this life-affirming laughter. But I am so ridiculously witty that it hardly matters. #joke

And finally, to end the night. The gift of rockhands. From Lou to the BackstageRider to you. Straight up and direct. Delivered by The King of Lo-fi. It came wrapped in some dubious brown wrapping paper. \m/

For more information on the one, the only, the most prolific lo-fi-indie-bass-rock-god, visit www.loobiecore.com