The Letter Q

In this series I spotlight five bands and/or artists whose names begin with the same letter. I try to feature active (or recently active... it's hard to keep current with all the break-ups) performers so as to reflect who I'm listening to and enjoying at the moment.

Q

Gordy Quist
Gordy is a Texas-based singer-songwriter (and if you're going to do the countryfolk thing then you best either be from Austin or Nashville) whose musical output is actually fairly diverse. He'll rock your socks with some honkytonk, or he'll still your soul with a gothy bluesy ballad. Quist is also a member of the group Band of Heathens, but I'm not interested in them right now because their name doesn't start with Q. If you go to Quist's official website you can actually stream 7/11ths of his latest album, Here Comes the Flood, released last year. Listen to "Judas 'Scariot Blues".
Also listen to this demo of "Green and Blue".

Queens of the Stone Age
You know who these guys are by now, and by now you either love or hate 'em. Launch that music player! Pirate lightbulbs!

Quo Vadis
Montreal metal, though sadly they don't sing in French (as if you'd be able to tell anyway). But they are all about the metal brutality, and they're FAST. If you think it's all just studio tricks, listen to their songs from the Live in Montreal album. The band's drummer is fairly well known in the Canadian death metal scene as he's been featured on the cover of several drumming magazines. He's also a physicist, for whatever that's worth. Quo Vadis has been around since the mid-90s so they've had lots of time to practice their precise chaos, and they probably know the exact chord progressions necessary to make your head explode.
Lots of .mp3s on their official website.
Lots of streamies on their unofficial Myspace page.

Quasi
Also making music since the mid-90s is the trio named Quasi. For a long time they were a duo, the husband and wife sort. The husband and wife part didn't work out, but even as divorcees the band lived on. I have no idea how their new third member (officially inducted into Quasi in 2007) fits in relationshiply. ANYWAY, the music is unique (poppy indierock, yet very experimental) and incorporates various un-rock'n'roll instruments like the rocksichord, synths made to sound like rocksichords, and classical stringed instruments. You can find them on Touch and Go Records, and I suspect they're due for a new album soon.
Quasi on Myspace.

Sara Quin (feat. Kaki King)
Cheating, I know, but Q's are hard. Here we have Sara Quin of Tegan & Sara fame doing an REM cover with Kaki King. This song is from Stereogum's tribute to Automatic for the People, and the rest of the covers can be found HERE.
As for this tune, it sounds like Tegan & Sara high on Nyquil.
"Sweetness Follows" .mp3.

Thoughts on DCFC's new single

I love Death Cab For Cutie.
I love Death Cab For Cutie.
I LOVE Death Cab For Cutie.

BUT

"I Will Posses Your Heart" sucks really bad.

The eight-and-a-half minute album version is up on Myspace. I dig the four minute intro. I don't dig the parts where Ben Gibbard sings (which is unusual as I normally find his voice soothing and his lyrics clever-ish).
The radio single axes the huge intro, so if the song pops up on your local rock 'n' roll music station all you're left with is four minutes of crap.

Listen for yourself.
Or don't.

I fear for the rest of the album.

1974

The year 1974 was a peculiar post-hippy pre-disco time in music when funk was just gettin' its groove on, arena rock was big and loud, prog rock found an audience, glam rock was making people uncomfortable, and punk rock was still only protopunk (as if they could know). I'm not going to discuss any of these genres. Instead we're going to check out some folkish and soft-rocky gems. Why? Because in an era when music and music's image was so brash and obtuse, the introspective and low-key tunes get kind of overlooked. But don't worry; none of the following songs are too schmaltzy.


Al Stewart - Nostradamus
Past, Present, and Future was released in the UK in '73, but was released in the US the following year, SO IT COUNTS. Though this song is a bit proggish, Stewart had yet to shed his folk influences as the song (nearly ten minutes long... you better set aside a block of listening time) is carried by acoustic guitars and some manner of bongo. Lyrically we have a odd history lesson about the things Nostradamus saw years before they happened. In pseudo-poetic language he sings verses like this:

From Castile does Franco come and the Government driven out shall be
An English king seeks divorce, and from his throne cast down is he
One named Hister shall become a captain of Greater Germanie
No law does this man observe and bloody his rise and fall shall be

If this sort of wordaging drives you crazy I understand, but the tune is a catchy one, and those guitars sound really good, and if you're patient you'll get to enjoy the fun claptrack three-and-a-half minutes in.
I will admit that the chorus makes me really paranoid:

Man, man, your time is sand, your ways are leaves upon the sea
I am the eyes of Nostradamus, all your ways are known to me

Nostradamus, just sitting there knowing all your stuff. Creepy.
Anyway, that's a pretty cool album cover, isn't it? Doctor Strange, travelling through time or something. The previous year's UK cover is a much more drab one of an urbane Stewart hanging out next to a mantle.


Harry Chapin - W*O*L*D
Most songs about radio are pretty lame. This one is the opposite of lame. Rather than just encouraging the listener to crank up the volume, Chapin tells the story of a radio DJ who's been a part of the ups and downs of the biz, who's loved and lossed and still pines, who's aged yet still yearns for the good ol' days. It's actually a pretty sad story and makes me want to reconsider this Broadcasting degree I've got hanging on the wall.
What intrigues me as much as the story are all the subtle odes to golden age and early jock radio. Harmonious background singers, when they sing "W-O-L-D", sound like they're crooning the call letters to some long-forgotten station. Chapin calls himself a daddy-o, and later a doo-wop bass nudges in a great 1950's "yeeeah". And he's "feeling all of forty-five", y'know, like his age or like the vinyl singles they would spin.
This is a bittersweet song, to say the least. But DJs are like the truck drivers of the music industry, so it fits very well.


Leonard Cohen - Who By Fire
I suppose this could be considered a duo as Janis Ian backs Cohen up word-for-word. Anyway, I like how initially this appears to be a very simple song (sparse instrumentation, each line begins with "who...") and yet there are deep spiritual implications found within the lyrics. Inspired by a Jewish prayer (where the first line is taken) the song explores various ways a person might pass from this earth, and yet all the same nobody is beyond God's scope, and each person will be righteously judged. It's like a moodier "Gotta Serve Somebody" (which was released five years later).


Tom Waits - (Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night
Before he got all weird and his voice went to gravel, Waits wrote sweet little lounge ditties about women named Martha or, like this one, havin' yourself a good ol' Saturday night. Waits sings this like he's singing about YOU, and goes so far as to kick the song off with car sounds before singing about you driving your car. As you listen you become Joe Everyman, blowin' your fresh paycheck on beer and pool. You're a working man, of course, so you're living for the weekend and moments like these. But maybe this is a paltry existance for you to live, and you consider it as there's a "melancholy tear in your eye."

Makes it kind of quiver down in the core
'Cause you're dreamin' of them Saturdays that came before
And now you're stumblin'
You're stumblin' onto the heart of Saturday night

And maybe the heart of Saturday night can't be found cruisin' the strip with your "sweet one" or flirting with the waitress. But you'll take it because this is all you've got to look forward to.
Now I'm all bummed out, but I'll meet you next week.


Chicago - Wishing You Were Here
While beginning a song with car noises might be innovative, beginning a song with crashing waves is not. However this song is completely and wholly redemed by the melting harmonies done by (and never done better) three members of the Beach Boys. Lead vocalist Terry Kath, in a very subdued manner, does a call-and-response thing with the BBs until unexpectedly Peter Cetera blasts in with the bridge. The bridge is short and ends before you realize what an odd thing it is considering the rest of the song's context.
Thematically this song is about life on the road. Peter Cetera's got a job to do, and doggone it, he does it well. But that doesn't prevent Chicagoans and Beach Boys alike from pining for their far away loves.
I suppose bittersweetness is today's theme.

il Buono, il Brutto, il AlbumArto: Gordon Lightfoot

il Buono, il Brutto, il AlbumArto
Take a band. Take its album cover highlights. Take its album cover lowlights.
Swish it all around in your mouth. Comment.

Gordon Lightfoot
This is the cover to Gordon Lightfoot's debut album, enthusiastically titled Lightfoot!, released in 1966. I like this one for a number of reasons. First, he looks like James Dean from the movie "Giant". Second, it's simple and casual and gives you a good idea of what the music sounds like. Third, Gordon Lightfoot doesn't even need to look at his fingers when he plays the guitar. Obviously I would change the goofy turquoise font, but this is still my favorite Lightfoot(!) cover.


I'm apologizing for the foul quality of this picture. I couldn't find a higher-rez one, so I had to do some image stretching. Even so, Mr. Lightfoot looks quite dorky here. Interestingly enough, despite being such an unintentionally silly album cover, Sundown (released in 1974) was his most commercially successful original album. It contains such classics as "Sundown" and "Carefree Highway", and possibly other tracks about hairy be-sandalled men sitting in hay. Although a clearer image would probably reveal more, I have no idea what that stuff is behind his Gibson. Lightfoot himself appears as though he's about to say something, possibly "It smells like poo and the hay is itchy. Do I have to sit like this? Are you sure I look awesome?"

Continuing with the blue shirt/blue pants/guitar theme, here we have the follow-up to Sundown titled Cold on the Shoulder, released in 1975. You can see that the album designer and/or photographer tried to incorporate the title into the imagery. See? The woman, in his shadow, looking down on him, over his shoulder... see? The image itself appears to have been developed on some sort of fabric, possibly even denim. Gordie loves his denim. Anyway, aside from making the picture appear as though it was taken during a hard indoor rainstorm, the end result is intensely moody. How dark, man.