Great Albums - Rattlesnakes, by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions

(Originally posted January 6, 2008 on Consolation Champs)

I’d met Goldie through my friend Colin around 1983, I think. With his thinning hair and permanent scowl, he looked like a perennially pissed off old man. We shared a love for punk, even though he was somehow affiliated with the strange evangelical subculture I’d recently become part of. I remember him bringing us Dead Boys records when Colin and I were in residence at Bible College. We’d play those and Colin’s Zapp funk records as loud as we could, enjoying…

Compilation Champs

Welcome to the sixth edition of the Compilation Champs South by Southwest CD.

It was great to be with you this year in Austin. Some of you are old friends by now, and some I've just met. But I hope that you enjoy at least some of these songs, all of which have meant something to me in the past year. Canadian content is marked with a maple leaf. Feel free to get in touch with your comments (jamesATconsolationchampsDOTcom).

Disgusteen (1980, from Frantic City)

Teenage Head were one of my favourite bands as a teenager growing up…

(Originally posted October 4, 2005 on Consolation Champs)

I'm beginning a new and hopefully recurring feature on Consolation Champs. It's called Great Albums. Does anyone remember what an album was? Do they still call a music "release" an album anymore? Well, back in 1980, when a band released an album, you bought an album, a piece of vinyl inside a paper sleeve slipped into a cardboard sleeve. I think I might have paid about $8 for this record when it came out in 1980. I was 15 years old. A bit of background may be in order.

My family came…

(Originally posted October 13, 2005 at Consolation Champs)

Another great album from my misspent youth. I hope you'll forgive my detours into autobiography, but most music that resonates with us also connects with what was going on in our lives at the time. This album will forever be associated with a period in my life when I was first discovering beer and girls. Though it came out in the spring of 1978, my memories are probably from the year after that. This was definitely an album that we were playing a year later. It had classic written all over it,…

(Originally posted December 15, 2005 at Consolation Champs)

Last night, my best friend Brent and I revisited a pillar of our more than 15 year-long friendship. Let me begin at the beginning. I met Brent in 1989. At the time, I was a suave and sophisticated 24-year old who'd travelled in Europe and was beginning my second degree. Brent was a gawky and sometimes abrasive 19-year old know-it-all. Of course, we hit it off right away. When one of my roommates moved out, Brent decided to move in, and for the next three years, we struggled to make ends meet…

I've always been much more of a music fan than any of my friends. By that I mean that I both consumed more music and was more adventurous in my tastes. The first album I bought on my own (other than K-Tel compilation albums) was Led Zeppelin's first record, with the black and white zeppelin artwork. I bought it at Halliday's TV shop in the Parkway Mall in Scarborough in 1975. My thoughts at the time were that the band were good, but that the singer couldn't sing at all.

I remember getting really into punk and new wave, and…

Rheostatics (maybe 15 times since 1993 or so)
Spoon (every show they've ever played in Toronto, starting in 1998)
Queen (my first concert, in 1978. I was 13)
The Rolling Stones (2000, I think)
U2 (1985 and 1997)
The Kinks (1980, my second rock concert)
Pixies (1990, in a club)
Sigur Rós (2005, "like seeing God")
Cranberries (1999, with my girlfriend/now-wife)
Chris DeBurgh (1999, ditto - what did you think?!)
Teenage Head (1980-1981)
Lone Justice (1985, opening for U2)
Calexico (2005, with Iron and Wine)
Pernice Brothers (2005)
Iron and Wine (2005, with Calexico)
Apples in Stereo (2002-2003?)
Ted Leo…

Britt Daniel - Let The Distance Keep Us Together (2002, from HOME: Volume IV, split EP with Bright Eyes)

"It's so easy to say you don't care, it's so easy to say you don't need it"

I love the way Britt Daniel's songs are getting warmer and warmer. Spoon's early stuff is kind of angular and distant, but as he gets older, he seems to be embracing his audience in a new way. Spoon have a new album coming in May and I can't wait. Maybe they'll actually come back to my town.

Toots and the Maytals - Funky Kingston…

Children from Dublin's Inner City - Give Up Yer Aul Sins (c. 1962, from Give Up Yer Aul Sins): I discovered this wonderful part of my heritage a couple of years ago when an animated short film of the same title was nominated for an Academy Award. Recordings had been made many years ago of Dublin schoolchildren telling stories from the Bible. The only bad thing about this version (which is from a recent CD release) is the incredibly chirpy and annoying narrator.

Iggy Pop - I Got A Right (1973, from the sessions for Raw Power): A poor quality…

Max Webster - The Party (1978, from Mutiny Up My Sleeve)/Toronto Tontos (1976, from Max Webster): This Toronto band flourished from the mid-70s to the early 80s, playing a sort of arty prog-rock that was always amusing lyrically. Frontman Kim Mitchell went on to a fairly successful solo career, at least in Canada. After cutting my teeth on this eccentric Canadian rock, it was easy to become a Rheostatics fan a decade later.

Robert Gordon - Rock Billy Boogie (1979, from Rock Billy Boogie): I just love the stiffness of his delivery, and Robert Gordon was definitely in the forefront…