February Gems: RPM 09 finds Part 4

I continue my hand picking of the bountiful 2009 St. John's RPM harvest with "Varelse or Raman?" by Bobby Young, a total unknown to me here in town. Apparently the music was inspired by the classic young adult sci-fi novel "Enders Game" but I haven't examined the lyrics closely enough to comment on that, plus I haven't read Enders Game in 15 years and ain't nobody paying me to do research for these reviews so I'll leave it up to you the reader to tell what relates to what and I'll get back to talking about what this album sounds like. "Varelse or Raman?" is a gentle loop based collection of mostly acoustic based instrumentals that move and change through the building up of layers and layers of more loops and their eventual release. I get a lo-fi Beirut meets Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells kinda vibe from it thats very pleasant and engaging for the casual listener. Choirs of hushed voices sneak up on you while layers of strummed ukulele and accordion breath in and out in sunny summer day atmospheres. It's a refreshing and untaxing listening experience that also rewards close scrutiny if your feeling in the mood for that.


The 6 Fort Waldegrave (a musical collective that lives at 6 Fort Waldegrave street I assume) have the best concept out of any concept album I've heard in this years RPM. On their RPM album "Long Night on Camp Blood" All the songs are directly inspired by the classic slasher movie "Friday the 13th" some songs are direct references to scenes from the movie and some are meant to by played over certain scenes as a sort of alternative soundtrack. Written and recorded in about two weeks it has the trademark shambolic off the cuff feeling you would normally associate with RPM participates, but this one is recorded well and just oozes good times and the sounds of a group of friends having a blast making ridiculous songs all off the cuff. I especially like the stand out rocker "Kevin Bacon Gets an Arrow Through his Neck" and slightly atonal choir of album closer "Chick Gets an Axe In The Face", They have a knack for song titles that SUPERGOD! appreciates.

Pilot to Bombardier is quite a tasty but subdued offering from Byran Power of the Subtitles fame. The delicate sparse arrangements are very reminiscent of Smog or Red House Painters with the added close double tracked vocals sort of like Elliot Smith or Sam Beam. His voice is warm and understated and gives off a easy going but world weary charm. The production is very delicate and nuanced, highlighting the quiet mood of each song perfectly. I especially like the nod to the theme of "Chariots of Fire" in the vibraphone solo in "Out of Tune" with it's chorus of "I spent hours matching your Harmony, Yet it was all out of tune". This maybe my favorite of the rpm albums I've heard so far just for it's consistency and the perfection in establishing a mood. It is a rich offering that qualifies itself as a perfect Sunday evening disc, it's like a warm blanket and a cup of chai tea on a cold day. That's the most womanly sentence I've ever written, just forget I said that. It's a good album.


Jack Betty is the latest stage name of Boobie Browne or Darren Browne (another bloody Subtitler) as he is actually named. Under Jack Betty Darren has put out "Soundtrack for a Western" which is not a very creative album title, but regardless is a fine lo-fi collection of mostly instrumentals (I'll do him a favor and not bring up the quality his spanish singing on "Mamacita") all of a blue grass or americana variety. The songs are fairly simple but still carry some of that Ennio Moricone epic scope and dusty dessert atmosphere. Darren or Jack or whatever you wanna call him carries some fine picking chops in them hands and while the recordings are unpolished and leave clear traces of room and surroundings they were recorded, this does nothing to distract from the fine playing present on the album and in fact greatly helps capture the personalities of the players give the disc a homey and very human feeling to it (whatever that means). Anyway, it's a fine picking affair to be had.

Fuck the Fucking Tribute Shows for Fuck's Sake!!!

Man, bloody tribute shows! this town is crazy for fucking tribute shows!First it was Leonard Cohen, which was fine and all, you know I love Leonard and he is Canadian and has played here a couple of times at least, so I didn't mind the occasional tribute to Cohen. But then it became a yearly phenomenon and got really tired. Really really tired..
Then came the Johnny Cash tribute show, and everyone knows I love Johnny, so I was like "Sure whatever, not really an original idea, but Johnny's cool".
Then a week or two later the Bob Dylan tribute came around. And Bob Dylan can go fuck himself, being the untalented egotistical hack that he is. He can go somewhere dark and smother himself in his huge sack of smarmy tuneless banality for all I care. Lord knows I wasn't going to attend that thing.
Then it was the fucking "Bruce Fucking Springsteen's fucking tribute show at the fucking Ship". Good God! Why?!. Miserable frigging Bruce Springsteen? who the frig would go and spend 10 dollars (or was it $15?) of there hard earned money to see friggin locals (many of whom are waaay better songwriters then Bruce Friggin' Springsteen) pay tribute to his phony guttural mewling and obnoxious cheese orchestra?...
Apparently many many people. The tribute ran three bloody consecutive nights and was sold out and less then a year later they did it again!
Since then we've had more Bob Dylan tributes, Fleetwood Mac tributes, Iron Maiden, Lucinda Williams, Sarah Mclaughlin (Bleech!), and now a Townes Van Zant's tribute?. Is the state of the music scene really so bad and so uninspired that we must rely on these obvious money grabs to get people out to shows? Is the St. John's audience really that wary of original acts with original material that the only way to guarantee a large attendance is to put on some showcase where some shitty top 40 icons of the past are praised up by a collection of local talent who could be doing something much better with there time?
Don't bother answering, I already know, I already know.

Hello! this my new blog and this is it's first rant!

Greetings and Salutations immediate audience!
Welcome at my attempt at Music Journalism and "Blogging". I'm a musician and lapsed visual artist situated here in the far east isolation of St. John's Newfoundland. We sorta have a reputation of having a large number of musicians per capita and being generally pretty awesome. There are a lot of musicians and bands in this city that I really enjoy and for the most part I don't regret moving here back in 2003 (or was it 2004? I can't remember..). I've made a lot of friends and I enjoy taking part in the music scene out here, but there are several ugly truths a creative person has to face up to while living and doing things here.
For one; St John's is a small city with a very limited audience that can only support a handfull of artists at a given time. If you are lucky enough to find yourself with a decent sized audience at start after a few months (even if you are totally amazing live) that audience will get smaller and smaller because those people have seen you allready and there is literally no one left in town who would be interested. You'll find that even with the most popular bands in town the total number of their active audience tops out at around a couple hundred people who will follow what the band does and take an extra effort to make it out to your shows every once in awhile. It takes a cross country tour with some actual mainstream media coverage to drag some fresh blood to your gigs at that point.

Which takes you to the next problem with the St. John's scene; It costs a lot of money in travel costs to leave this province and there is very little opportunity to actually make cold hard cash at music in this town. Most musicians around here start off hopeful and excited and gradually over time with gradually receding audience attendance, lack of recognition, lack of money and the growing realization that they have to save up their money and leave this shithole city if they want to chase after their rock and roll dreams; they become disillusioned, despondent and depressive. Also in this city there are none more lazy and brutally nihilistic then the music journalist. The music journalist who long ago gave up going to the bars where they actually play original music, and instead will write some lazy paragraph about whatever band emailed them their myspace page that week or whatever dipshit band from out of town happens to happen through this month. The only local bands that get any type of regular press coverage, any type of regular radio airplay, or any funding from grant giving organizations are the ones that focus all their energy at unrelenting self-promotion. So the equation for musician quality in this town is thus: the awesomeness of the music is inversely proportional to the amount of press it's received (if someone knows how type that as a mathematic equation please tell me). With this here blog I mean to help promote all the bands in town I enjoy that are either inexplicably ignored for some reason or who long ago gave up on the pantomime of show promotion and just put on shows for shits and giggles or the appreciation of their small group of followers.
Anyway, for hypocracy's sake I will make my first posting of my new blog my own music video I produced for my own song "Crutches" off my latest album "Sex Lives of the Paralyzed"
This video is an approximation of my average work week (with added Special Effects!)


"Crutches" - Song by Patrick Canning from Patrick Canning on Vimeo.

I have nothing against self-promotion and you will see me doing a lot of it on this blog. I just feel that in a town as small as St. John's, for a band to spend 90% of it's energy promoting the shit out of themselves instead of, you know, writing good material, and then get celebrated for it, is kinda sickening.
Hopefully my future posts won't be so long winded and whiny. But it's my blog and I do what I want to!
Cheers!