Rambling, improvising and eternally absurd actor/stand-up comedian Eddie Izzard certainly keeps himself busy these days, what between releasing his seventh DVD, searching for the perfect U.S. drama series to sink his teeth into and ushering a documentary film about his formative years into theaters. Not to mention offering up his own ringtones, a version of online "Tetrizz", quirky GPS directions and an interactive EddieIzzard.com "12 Days of Christmas" ("Six Cows in a Car, Five Spartan Sheep...") calendar. And that's only the very tip of the Izzberg. The Emmy-winning Izzard will perform his stand-up act at the Fabulous Fox Theatre on Saturday night.
Eddie Izzard performs his one-man show on Saturday night at the Fabulous Fox Theatre.
You're finishing your first U.K. tour in six years, where you added dates at the O2 and Wembley arenas, and you recently completed 43 marathons in 51 days with just five weeks of training for your Eddie Iz Running charity effort for Sport Relief.
Yeah, the math is kind of bizarre; it seems strange the more time goes on. At the time, I was happy I was doing them, but since I finished, I was quite surprised I did them. I've been playing arenas, and arena comedy is frowned upon by certain people in the U.K., and probably in the U.S. as well. In America I'm calling it the Big Intimacy tour. Rock & roll plays large venues and no one complains about that. The only way to get good at playing arenas is by playing arenas. Barack Obama showed that you can play to 100,000 people and make it intimate by the speeches he did. He trusted the screen and spoke the way he always speaks, except there were a hundred-thousand there. You just have to enjoy the fact that it's an arena. Getting standing ovations in Belfast and Dublin, which is very difficult to get, I'm very happy with where it is, and that's what I want to bring to America.
The mere existence of this documentary should send post-punk fans, synth dorks and music historians into spasms of ectasy. The BBC's Synth Britannia examines the rise of the UK's early '80s synthpop movement. More specifically, it's a 90-minute, thorough examination of the genre's roots, major players and nascent bands -- all placed into historical, economic and pop-culture context. Musicians and labels featured are first-rate: OMD, Fad Gadget, Visage, Mute Records, Throbbing Gristle, Human League, Kraftwerk, Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode...
Eight of the doc's nine parts are on YouTube. Below is part four, which features a small bit about the Silicon Teens, a fake band dreamed up by Mute founder Daniel Miller. The act's shtick was synthed-up versions of classic rock & roll songs, a roster of songs which included Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee." Check it below in the middle of the clip. (But keep watching: Right after this segment ends, Gary Numan gives make-up tips.) Hat tip to the awesome retro '80s blog Slicing Up Eyeballs for blogging about this.
I'm still trying to figure out what to say about the Radiohead show at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater last night -- but in the meantime, here are some snapshots. Click on each picture to get the full idea of the shot in higher resolution. A more formal slideshow will be up tomorrow. Entire Flickr set here. All snapshots by Annie Zaleski. Do not use without asking me first.
Far cry from the days when I would have to tape the Brit Awards because they were buried at 1 a.m....
Adorable gay icon Mika with Beth Ditto of the Gossip. She's a sex symbol in England, where the band is hugely popular.
Kylie still looks fierce, does Madonna better than Madonna. And she's battled breast cancer.
Marginally better than Rihanna's "duet" with Fall Out Boy at the MTV Video Music Awards last year, but still a little weak. Her voice just...wavers. It's a bit pitchy. The Klaxons sound great, though. And their "ella..ella...ella" vocals are super-cute.
Kaiser Chiefs, "Ruby." Not the greatest performance, but the Brits stage set-ups -- here a skyline of fake buildings springs up around the band -- trump ANYTHING U.S. awards shows do.
Tickets for Radiohead's May 14 St. Louis date at Riverportthe UMB Bank Pavilion Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre went on sale this morning. Who bought tickets? I know a fewpeoplegoingalready. Who else?
Relatedly: So, these shows in Maryland Heights are ripe for tailgating. What do you suppose a Radiohead tailgate entails? Sipping on wine and discussing Russian literature? I'm curious.
So, as anyone who's seen High Fidelity knows, offering to make a mix for someone is the ultimate romantic gesture -- if you're a certain type of music geek, that is. For the lovelorn or pining-after, placing a certain song at a certain juncture on a CD (or tape, or MP3 playlist, whatever) signifies hidden meanings and/or secret messages -- in hopes that your beloved (or crush) would magically hear and understand your deep feelings of looooove.
I don't have anyone to make a mix for this year (Gentlemen? Any takers?), but I did find this mix I made last year, for a DJ night. I have no idea why track 14 is on there, but the rest are pretty self-explanatory. And yes, I know some aren't romantic or love songs -- they're melancholy, "oh woe is me, love is gone and/or nonexistent!" songs. But I almost love those types of songs more. (What can I say? I grew up on the Smiths.)
What's your love/lust/lonely mix? Post in the comments.
1. Flock of Seagulls, "Space Age Love Song"
2. The Waterboys, "Fisherman's Blues"
3. Wilco featuring Billy Bragg, "California Stars"
4. R.E.M., "Near Wild Heaven"
5. Semisonic, "Singing In My Sleep"
6. Sloan, "Waterfalls" (Wings cover)
7. Matthew Sweet, "I've Been Waiting"
8. The Pipettes, "Your Kisses are Wasted on Me"
9. Jane Wiedlin, "Rush Hour"
10. Cyndi Lauper, "I Drove All Night"
11. Catherine Wheel, "I Want to Touch You"
12. The dB's, "Never Before and Never Again"
13. Keane, "Bend and Break"
14. The Knife, "Marble House"
Random excellent band of the day: The Whip, who hails from Manchester, England.
As expected, the co-ed band takes cues from New Order on the upcoming full-length, X Marks Destination -- especially in its turquoise-hued keyboard/throbbing bass interplay. But its songs contain more than a little hint of the Faint's squelchy goth-disco, Simian Mobile Disco's bubbly techno and tons of Gary Numan-style lost-in-space analog synths, while the vocals often resemble Spoon's Britt Daniel, especially on single "Sister Siam." Most important, the band makes sure to focus on songwriting on Destination, meaning that the Nintendo-electro and retro nods aren't kitschy, but complementary to solid pop hooks.
The video for this song is retro-fabulous, spoofing on Star Trek and cheesy '80s sci-fi special effects. It's also irresistible watching the band jam out to its own song.
The Whip, "Sister Siam":
File under: Danceable electro-pop beamed in from another planet, glowsticks in hand and ready to rave. The Whip is playing at SXSW, which should be good times all around.
On February 5, Hot Chip is releasing its third record, Made in the Dark. By far its finest work yet, the album manages to be danceable while appealing to those who don’t like dance music – mainly because of its nods to post-punk, British power-pop, cheesy top 40, old-school funk, new-school R&B, minimal techno, rave-y electro and more.
Hot Chip recorded Dark in various locations in its home base of London. The quintet self-produced/recorded tracks in guitarist/ percussionist Al Doyle and percussionist Felix Martin’s studio, holed up in vocalist/percussionist Joe Goddard’s bedroom (where it constructed much of 2006’s The Warning) -- and even entered a real studio with professional engineers, something it had never done before.
Vocalist/keyboardist/guitarist Alexis Taylor says the aim of this nomadic process was “not to let [Dark] sound like it’s all of one mood or of one acoustic space." Mission accomplished: The album works as a Friday-night warm-up, as fodder for a rock-music DJ and as something for funk/hip-hop DJs to slip into their sets.
Many of Dark's songs were already debuted at live shows -- which helped the recording process evolve.
"We wanted to make this album sound closer to our live sound," Taylor says. "[Usually] we write at the recording stage. With this album, we wanted to go against that, do something that would be unconventional for us – that actually is probably more conventional for most bands.”
Dark is unconventional for dance music, but distinctly Hot Chip, because it’s entirely thoughtful, from the carefully stitched-together music down to the emotional vocals.
Annie Zaleski:When you read about people who make music with keyboards and stuff, they don’t tend to use that word -- thoughtfulness. Alexis Taylor: Why would anyone want to make something that didn’t work for a long time – or maybe could be played in a very different context? Recently, we played a show in London, and two members of the band [Joe and Felix] weren’t around. We decided to play the show, and it wasn’t really about dancing at all. I was just speaking to someone last night who happened to be at that gig, and she was saying how she was really quite amazed by it. She was expecting one thing but got a completely different thing. I suppose that’s someone saying that the songs still stand up, even if they’re performed only with a keyboard or an electric guitar -- rather than a full band trying to make people throw their hands in the air or whatever.
As an artist, I bet it’s so gratifying. It’s like, “Oh right, totally. They get it!”
I’m not for a minute saying everyone gets it, but if people can see these different sides to us and appreciate that, then that’s the best thing really. If you’re trying to make music, you’d like people to be open-minded, and you’d like to be able to do very different things. If you’ve got anything of your own to say, it’s not like it could be a very narrow scope. That’s just how I feel anyway. I like to be able to make minimal, experimental music, and also make pop music, and also make music that’s hip-hop influenced and also make heavy-metal-influenced music. All different sounds are interesting to me. If you can get to the point where people still are interested in it – and they’re not just turning away as soon as you change your sound – it’s great.
The Batman-influenced video for Hot Chip, "Ready for the Floor":
Taylor says he was listening to a diverse selection of artists while making Dark – including Willie Nelson, Donnie Hathaway, Terry Riley and even R. Kelly. (The slow jam “Wrestlers” is a hilarious – and successful -- attempt at aping Kelly’s “I’m a Flirt.”)
How did these things influence your writing at all?
That’s just me talking about the things that come to mind for me; I’m sure for the others in the band, they were listening to completely different things. Joe is a big U.K. garage fan, and also [likes] house and techno music. We’re all interested in different polyrhythms and things and trying to set songs in an interesting context – not necessarily just leave them as they are when they’re first written. Sometimes a song is simpler in its original form, but we sort of take it and put it in a new context. I’ve listened to quite a lot of Black Sabbath over the last few years as well. Funkadelic -- the first Funkadelic album, I was going back to and listening a lot. I don’t think we were listening to these things and then consciously thinking about them. They’re just sort of in the background, you know? Listening to music for pleasure…
How did all the remixing influence the songwriting? Has it at all?
The remixing hasn’t directly influenced the songwriting, in my mind. But what has influenced it has been DJing. All of us put together this compilation album, DJ-Kicks [last year]. We did a lot of DJing around the release of that. Al and Felix found a particular area of dance music that they wanted to DJ, German minimal house and techno music, on the Traum label and Kompakt, things like that. There’s a lot of influence from those labels and that Cologne-based music scene coming into the rhythms on this record. Things like the track “Hold On” started out as a minimal-techno thing, but I guess by me singing over it, it kind of takes it into a slightly different place. And also, Joe was trying to make more of a disco groove, it’s kind of a battle between being disco and minimal house, and being a song with live distorted Fender Rhodes all over it as well. The DJing will have brought a minimal techno feel to the record in a way that we haven’t really explored before.
When people listen to the record, what do you want them to take from it?
I’d like them to be enthralled by it, and be confused by it, and disoriented by it, and be able to listen to what’s happening in the lyrics -- as well as how those are going against the music sometimes. I want people to find all the depth in it that we hope they’ll find in it, you know? I want them to have fun listening to it, but also there’s a lot to be found in the record, I think.
All MP3s are posted for sample purposes only, and always with permission from the artist or label. If you like what you hear, go out and support the band/musician by buying their record!
Write Comment
Email to Friend
