There's a short article over at Chartattack.com about the new El Torpedo record. It includes the prospective release date (July 8) and the track listing. Which, for anyone who's been to a show over the past year or two and heard some of the newer material, is here:

* "Building A Boat"
* "Digital Eyes"
* "Tall Trees"
* "Rock Ranger Record"
* "Terminal Romance"
* "Shining Eyes"
* "Northern Belle"
* "Stand And Deliver"
* "Laser Guided Love"
* "The Hunter, The Hunted"
* "Long Since Gone"

Not that I have heard it. But Adam, from Gloryhound, is playing keys (and various other instruments) with El Torpedo at the moment, and he was telling me a bit about what to expect. I'd already seen an interview with Matt where he said they wanted this record to sound more "produced" than the eponymous one. Not so much that he was no longer happy with the first record, just that he was into each record having its own individual sound, and besides you'd expect the band to change some just with the passage of time and some changes in membership. (Jarrett leaving and Jay coming on board means the band now has, in effect, two lead guitarists, and the shift in dynamic is already evident even when they play the older material.) And of course since the first record came out they had an extended period with Rob replacing Brad, and now Adam in the keyboard seat. (Any resemblance to the Grateful Dead and their keyboard problem is purely coincidental. As far as I know Brad and Rob are both still alive!)

Anyway, it seems the upcoming record, Terminal Romance, is going to be much tighter than the previous one, which will be reflected onstage as well, and it's a bit more of a pop sound. Which might have alarmed me eighteen months ago, but after When the Angels Make Contact I confess I would have been disappointed if the new El Torpedo record had ended up being a retread of the old El Torpedo record. I remarked to Adam that given Matt's songwriting, I wasn't concerned about not liking the new one. Adam then told me that the next record is going to be the "songwriter record"--apparently Matt has them planned out in his head the way novelists contemplating a series do with future books.

Which frankly makes me feel even more confident about the whole enterprise. I've said this before but one of the things that makes Matt such an interesting artist to follow is that sense that he's following an actual artistic vision, rather than just trying to figure out how to sell a whole bunch of records. Like, I'm pretty sure he would be pleased if he went ahead and did sell a whole bunch of records, but that never seems to be the primary thing on his mind.

Anyway, sounds exciting. Particularly, of course, for Adam!

...whether Matt Mays & El Torpedo would ever play the Marquee again, or whether they've outgrown it.

I just got my answer: they're scheduled to preview their upcoming new album there, on June 6th.

Well yes, of course I bought a ticket immediately. What do you take me for?

Ask me if I'm excited!

Back during NaNoWriMo 2005 I decided I was finally going to write a story with a band in it. I had a plot, I had some characters, I figured it was time to try it. I liked the results enough that I eventually decided to turn it into a "real story" and have been at it ever since.

I've written, since then, a few posts about the decisions I made in creating the central band, Kowalski. An important and early decision was that the band would be more interesting and relatable if they were young, broke, and basically nice people. Most of the rock band stories I have ever read are about characters so rich and glamourous that I have a hard time giving a crap about them.

Since nobody but me has read the whole story (except for the original NaNo draft in the Memories section--a couple of people read that one for me faithfully) I haven't yet gotten any stick over whether rock musicians are, by their very nature, prone to be assholes. Since writing the first draft I have done enough shall we say field research among young Haligonian musicians to be confident that Kowalski is plausible.

But I was still amused when I visited a local message board yesterday and spotted a thread about Matt Mays, who regular readers of this journal will know is a local musician of some renown. The thread, apparently started by someone who was drunk at the time, is titled "Matt Mays is a nice fuckin' guy." I checked it a minute ago and it was six pages long. And nobody has yet challenged the basic premise--there's been some off-topic activity but for the most part the thread consists of people agreeing that Matt (along with various other musicians of local renown) is a nice fuckin' guy.

It's heartwarming, really.

And fuckin' nice to know.

In that entry on the Trews' listening party I mentioned that my friend and I chatted with Sean the drummer (I either have to drop the modifier or hyphenate next time) about the importance of the running order of a record. At the time I was both interested and also spinning out the conversation a little so my friend could find a spot to jump in and I think I said something about my desire, occasionally, to alter the order of some records because I was getting a different story.

Which was a psycho remark, but it's true. My first copy of Appetite For Destruction was actually a cassette a friend made for me from her vinyl. She accidentally taped the second side first, so my copy began with "My Michelle," which just felt wrong. I mean, I knew "Welcome to the Jungle" should have been the album opener even before I actually knew it. However, it also meant that my copy ended with "Paradise City," which I have always felt was a much stronger statement to end the record with. I like "Rocket Queen" fine but it feels more like a middle-of-the-record song. One of these days I'm going to make myself a new copy of that CD with my own hinky running order.

(No, I didn't tell Sean all of this!)

However, a much better example of the power of running order is my reaction when I got a CD version of Marty Robbins' Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, which remains one of my all-time favourite records. The Wikipedia entry I've linked to actually gives the running order of both the LP and the CD. While I understand putting the three additional tracks at the end of the CD, I don't understand why the other songs were resequenced, and in fact I've owned this CD for about five years now and I still haven't gotten used to the standard tracks not ending with "Utah Carol." The new order doesn't tell me the same story.

I often put CDs on shuffle in the car to keep me alert, and I have my Shuffle on... shuffle... but it's a fact that certain CDs really work best in their proper order. (A lot of the older music I have came from compilations so there's no real order anyway, so my Johnny and Kris and The Band stuff is not part of this discussion.) For instance, When the Angels Make Contact, as a "soundtrack," really does tell the story. And Matt Mays & El Torpedo has a running order that works well, particularly the leadoff track "Stand Down At Sundown." The opening chords sound like a mission statement. As an album opener, it seems to be telling you everything you need to know about the band right there in the first few bars. (It's also a great opening track for their show, because even on the CD you can imagine how they'd play that opening riff two or three extra times to increase the build and then come crashing into the first verse.)

Anyway. Running order. I just thought of the Marty Robbins thing the morning after the party and thought I'd mention it. I guess it's my Tea For the Tillerman.

When he played "Free Fallin'" I had my usual flash of nostalgia for the horse care program I attended in PEI, because that song was all over the radio as we worked in the barn.

I also remembered the rather delightful story Matt Mays told Stan Carew on CBC radio a couple of years ago, about how he first got into music. Apparently his sister played piano, which he thought was cool so he taught himself to play the theme to MacGyver. And then the sister started seeing a guy who played guitar, and that was even cooler (it's totally his sister's fault he's a musician!) And their uncle gave Matt a guitar and taught him to play "Free Fallin'."

Matt: "And I played it over and over and over, for weeks, until my uncle asked my sister, 'Is he still playing that one song?' And she said 'yes,' and he was like, 'Tell him to learn something else!' And I was like, 'I'd love to!'" small helpless voice ""How?""

Yeah, the next step is the killer.

Apparently the next step rather rapidly involved a book of Bob Dylan songs, which led to the discovery that most songs involve only about three chords--although obviously Dylan had a lot more chords "in his head"--and that led to Matt writing "bad, terrible, awful songs--tons of them!" for quite some time. The current output... is not terrible.

Anyway. Ahem. "Free Fallin'."

...so here is a video to tide us over:



(Okay--tigereyed24 mentioned that Matt Mays & El Torpedo were supposed to play a short set at the Cunard Centre as part of the Olympic torch relay event on Tuesday. I ended up missing it because I was on the reference desk, but I did wonder what they were going to do about a keyboard player. I actually walked down after work in case anything was still happening--and it wasn't--but the stage was still partly set up and the keys were there. With a cozy wrapped around them. Which leads me to the conclusion that perhaps Adam may have been involved in the set, and if so, that must have been fun.)

Anyways. Someone who knows Matt told me the new record is due in June, and the CHLA conference is happening the last week in May, and I have too much to do in the meantime to be going "hurry up!" so I can't say I'm wishing the days away until June... but as soon as the conference is safely over I will.

In the meantime:



(The song is from When the Angels Make Contact and has been exported to El Torpedo's repertoire. The video was taken at the Rustler's show last October--the same one where this video was taken--and in fact since the videographer was standing right behind me, this was even my perspective.)

That'll hold us. For now.

I think, if you have the more complicated iPod, you can probably program in rules for it. Like, "play more country" or whatever.

I don't know exactly how it's happened, but my little purple Shuffle seems to have taught itself one rule, which it follows diligently: "Play Matt Mays frequently."

Like, about three times out of every ten songs.

I love my little purple Shuffle!

Video from the Rustler's show in Truro:



Gloryhound & the Skyhawks join Matt Mays & El Torpedo for the encore.

No, not the cats--this is another writing post. I am usually highly skeptical of writers who use the analogy of stories being like children. This is only because I've had a few online encounters--and been pointed to some pretty funny online discussions--with aspiring writers who cannot possibly change a single word of their creation, because "My stories are like my children!" and "They are perfect as I conceive them, and they cannot be changed!"

I haven't run into that one in a while, but it's not the sort of thing you forget. For one thing, it makes me wonder about the writer's actual human children (if any.) Like, how are their table manners?

And then there's Matt Mays (who I actually ran into again last night and had a chat with, and all I have to say about that is it's nice when you're already a fan of someone's music to discover he's a really likable guy as well.)

Ahem. Matt Mays has posted several messages on his band's MySpace wall over the past few weeks, talking about the progress of the latest record. And in the very last one he busted out the parental metaphor. But what I found interesting is that he took what is often a pretty lazy metaphor, as well as an excuse for sloppy writing, and made it work.

Quote:

It's like being a parent In a way. You start by conceiving a child, then you feed it, and teach it what's right, and what's wrong. You then try to give it a good understanding of manners. They grow rapidly before your peepers to have their own personality. A personality that you eventually can't control, but you can trust when you're not around. This completely original vibe comes out of nowhere, a little independent being is right there...and then one day...POOF! After all this work, and effort to make a good human, you have to go out and get them some new ninja turtle sweat pants, pack'em in the voyager drive to the bus stop. You put them on a school bus with 40 strange kids with the flu. Then you gotta stand there, and watch on the curb as he/her drives away to school. Away from you for the first time EVER.

Your creation is off to be tested, judged, made fun of, loved, hated, jabbed with pencils, or maybe kissed under the coat racks, with dangling mitts like marionettes tied to yarn strings overhead. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm about to buy my record some new sweat pants here, and I'm freakin out about it.

Okay, he was obviously writing in a hurry and he'd already mentioned there has been a great deal of NyQuil in his life over the last few days, but I do like the idea that an artistic creation is more than an inspired moment--it's a lot of work. And it takes on a life and a personality of its own and to a certain extent you have to let it, because there is only so much you can do.

And then when you send it out into the world, other people are going to react to it and it's going to mean different things to different people and there is not one thing you can do about it. You can't tell listeners (or readers) what reaction they're supposed to have to it--their reaction is none of your business, it's strictly between them and the work of art that may mean something completely different to you.

I kind of love that.

And then I remember poor Kurt Cobain, who I recall complaining that some people who liked his band's music would have hated him in high school. In the first place, not fair, since he had not actually met every one of those "jocks." And secondly, as Kirk Hammett (a big Nirvana fan) commented at the time, if you want to control who gets to like your stuff, don't release it commercially. Keep the tapes or manuscript and share it with your friends. You are not allowed to say who is allowed to like your stuff. It's between the reader/listener, and the stuff. I don't know if that was part of the reason he was so unhappy, but trying to control things that are out of your control is not good for you.

So what you do is, you do your best to create the book or record or whatever that was in your head or your heart or both, and then you have to take a step back and let it be.

And yes, I guess I probably like this whole image partly because I like Matt Mays, but the reverse is also true: I like Matt as an artist because he thinks like this. Despite the anxiety in the quote above, there's a kind of fearlessness about it, too, and an essential ability to trust what he does and how he does it. It's led to an interesting career progression so far and is looks likely to continue doing so.

I just hope he really does get the Torpedo to cover Stan Roger's "Bluenose," because that would be beyond awesome.


The song plays over this video. It's gorgeous--now picture a rock version.

Heh. I love Facebook. I just found a band profile for Matt Mays & El Torpedo and added myself to their fan listing. And the update thingie popped up with the message, "You are now a fan of Matt Mays & El Torpedo."

Thank you, Captain Obvious. And also, "Finally!"

Heh.

Matt Mays & El Torpedo listening to a guitar track in the studio.



Apparently things are going well. According to their MySpace updates, Matt's playing on the keyboard tracks, Tim the drummer has gone home because he and his wife are expecting a baby very shortly, Jay the guitar player and Andy the bassist have gone insane, and owing to the isolation (enclosed studio-with-bunkhouse--sounds like summer camp but Matt refers to it now as Rock Prison) Matt has developed an imaginary romance with Summer from The OC courtesy of reruns on BBC2. (Well, if you're going to have an imaginary romance with anybody on The OC, I would certainly recommend Summer.)

How I love the Internet...

Over on El Torpedo's MySpace page, Matt Mays describes the appearance of a band mate with a bad hangover:

"I looked over at Jay in the middle of recording the song today, and he was kind of a whitish bluey green, a spit out Aquafresh vibe, or something."

That's how you can tell someone is a songwriter, I guess--always with the vivid word pictures.

Heh. If I ever get the chance to steal that one, you know I'm going to!!

Here's Matt and El Torpedo playing "Cocaine Cowgirl."


And here is a piece of "On the Hood," with Gloryhound & the Skyhawks joining in!

Whew. In my last post I mentioned that I was looking at a pretty full weekend (in a good way) and last night certainly kicked it off with a bang. The mini Maritime tour involving Matt Mays & El Torpedo, accompanied by Gloryhound & the Skyhawks, came to an end last night at the Cunard Centre in Halifax. Just so we're all clear here, the Cunard Centre has a capacity of 4000 people for concerts (I just looked it up) so we are probably safe in saying it was one of the bigger shows Gloryhound has ever played.

( Once again, long and illustrated, so here is the cut. )

And yes, that was the beginning of my weekend. Can the rest possibly live up to it? Tune in Monday to find out.

I arrived at work an hour later than usual (I generally come in early to do my Internets stuff and be available if a student arrives early with questions--AND THEY DO!!) this morning. Matt Mays was on Breakfast Television on CTV between 7:00 and 7:30. He talked a little bit about the upcoming record--they're going to England, to record with Chris Tsangarides who produced Fully Completely for the Tragically Hip, among others. Apparently he has a residential studio ("sort of a converted Scout Camp") in Dover, and you can see the lights from France at night.

Matt also talked a bit about living in New York City, he's moved from Jersey City to Brooklyn and likes it a lot now that he's learned his way around and made some friends. (And according to another interview he's been writing like crazy, so there are a lot of songs pretty much ready for the record.) Also, "if you're desperate" you can apparently take the Blue Line subway to the end of the line at Rockaway Beach, where the waves are good but the water is filthy.

The interviewer didn't ask about the two gigs this weekend, although they were obviously mentioned in the intro and... outro. And Matt played bits of "City of Lakes" and "Spoonful Of Sugar."

So, pretty good start to the morning!

I finally got all the pictures from Friday night uploaded to Photobucket.

Here's Gloryhound & the Skyhawks, opening the show.

Matt Mays & El Torpedo play the headlining set.

And they all ended up back onstage for the encore.

That should be enough dirty rock'n'roll for anyone on a Monday morning...

Okay, so Matt Mays & El Torpedo played at Rustler's Cabaret in Truro last night, with Gloryhound & the Skyhawks opening for them. This was not my first trip to Rustler's. Nor was it the first time I've seen Gloryhound open for El Torpedo. And hopefully not the last, in either case.

( And because this is going to be a long, illustrated post, suppose we put the cut right here. )

When the set finally ended I said goodnight to the folks I'd been standing with, and looked around very briefly in case anyone I knew was around to say goodnight to. It was probably best that there wasn't, because I probably would have grabbed them by the shoulders and screamed "THAT WAS AWESOME!!" in their faces or something equally embarrassing. Instead, I went out and found my car, got lost on the way to the highway but luckily it's hard to be lost for long in a place the size of Truro--eventually you just run out of Truro--so I found my way to the highway just after 2:00 AM and was home shortly after three.

That was great. Let's do it again sometime. Say, next Friday night?