An email sent to the Music Programming department in regards to French modern rockers Phoenix and their song “1901.”
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—–Original Message—–
From: SCOTT *** [mailto:***@hotmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 2:52 PM
To: inbox@thezone.fm
Subject: The song by Phoenix
Not gonna lie mate, it blows. Not tryin to offend anyone. It sounds exactly
like all the other “Glam” Rock stuff you guys are playin way to much of
lately. I thought you guys were supposed to be modern rock? So where’s the
ROCK!!! Anyways, love your station, but please, enough with these songs that
should be played in the gay bars of Soho in London. Maybe a little Pearl Jam
or Tool to win me over again?? Ciao for now. Scotty
Sent on the TELUS Mobility network with BlackBerry
and George Orwell’s bleak future was upon us. The Oil beat the Isle in 5 to win the cup. Trudeau mania made way for… Turner mania??? (I know I was maniacal for Turner, Canada’s magical 17th Prime Minster… or 3 month John as he was affectionately called ’round the Baker Homestead). And Michael Stipe had hair.
My ears hurt after some loud metal, they need sonic medicine. Cue up…
And because everything refers to everything else… where does Explosions in the Sky steal their title for one of their greatest songs? If you guessed East of Eden, award yourself two scenester points.
“I remember that the Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation, so that you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother. They were beckoning mountains with a brown grass love. The Santa Lucias stood up against the sky to the west and kept the valley from the open sea, and they were dark and brooding-unfriendly and dangerous. I always found in myself a dread of west and a love of east. Where I ever got such an idea I cannot say, unless it could be that the morning came over the peaks of the Gabilans and the night drifted back from the ridges of the Santa Lucias. It may be that the birth and death of the day had some part in my feeling about the two ranges of mountains.”
I got home from visiting Madrona Farm. Farmer Nathalie took me out on the boat to sail the pond with no name and hear the frogs. I brought the recorder machine to capture some of the sounds for the first episode of the Madrona podcast (coming soon). Looks like the first episode will be about frogs.
Thinking about the music that I will use to tie it all together, and I am sure Explosions in the Sky will factor into the soundtrack. I am liking the idea of Carpenter’s “Best Place” as the theme song… but what else?
So far, the first episode has me heading out to the farm to meet Nathalie at some bizarre hour after the heart pounding Canucks’ game. She meets me at the gate and we wander across the fallow fields up towards one of the ponds. It is dark and I bumble along. At the edge of the pond there is a boat with one oar. Nathalie hands me a life jacket designed for a tween and assures me that the pond may be small, but no mortal has ever found the bottom. We heft the boat into the dark water and “paddle” to the center. There we sit, and we wait. Silence, and then…. slowly at first, the croak of a frog. Then two, then four… then a crescendo of amphibian noise.
It was spectacular to be in this boat in the middle of the pond and to hear all this wonderful noise. I have not heard the playback yet, but I pray that it sounds as good recorded as it did tonight.
After the frogs, I hopped in the Jeep and bee lined for Evo to see the Zone Band of the month, Oh Snap! Al Ford from Sonic is in town and it was good to see him again. He was the old PD for the Zone and the man who hired me many moons ago.
After a couple songs from Oh Snap, I was on the road again to the Cambie for a 24 Hour Relay fundraiser. The sound of the day was metal. I arrived just in time to see Archon Legion. You’ll know and love Archon Legion from CRC 51. I think Captain Rhaye told me that we made another $400 for Easter Seals. Not bad… drip drip drip and hopefully we’ll get near our goal of $10,000!
Oh…. I got a good band to help soundtrack the Madrona Farm podcast.
I wanted to have a show called Music NERD! that talked about the weird shit that goes on in music or at least dive into my favourite bands in a sickly dorky way.
“The problem with getting bigger is that getting bigger costs you. Not just in time and money, but in focus and standards and principles. Moving your way to the biggest part of the curve means appealing to an ever broader audience, becoming (by definition) more average.”
whoa right. That little paragraph hurts my head just thinking about it. You know what else hurts my head, Jars of Clay. What were people thinking… post grunge Radio circa 1995 was not a pretty time in rock and roll.
When I was a younger lad, we used to call those guys Jars of Gay… get it? cuz gay rhymes with clay. Not very PC but it was 1995, and as you can tell from popular modern rock, no one was really using their brain.
Time to pour a bath and tuck into “East of Eden.” That book makes me want to invent a time machine and travel back to the olden days… before post grunge. Live in a shack in the hills and drill water wells and have like 800 kids and wear overalls and say ma’am.
I am only a handful of chapters deep into the lives of the Trasks and Hamiltons but it is an amazing read. Author John Steinbeck says of his own work: “”It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years (…) I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this.”
The Morning After 