Liam Lacey at The Globe and Mail reviews the new Lemmy documentary -- titled, cleverly enough, Lemmy -- here. The trailer offers good entertainment value.
Lacey's review is unenthusiastic, but he does memorably liken a Motorhead concert to sounding like "a pack of Dobermans attacking an electric lawnmower." That's as apt a description of the band's particular appeal as you're likely to get. In other words: Lemmy! Lemmy! Lemmy!
If you don't already own No Remorse or Orgasmatron, you're simply a terrible, terrible person and I have nothing to say to you. The single "Killed By Death" captures Motorhead at their most ferocious, which is saying something. The original video offers the bonus pleasures of poufy Eighties hair and tiger-print tights. Essential.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
All We Have Is Four Minutes
Time was, Pylon's first album, Gyrate, used to turn up in the bargain bins. I think I bought it at a hole-in-the-wall record store out in the Beaches for about three bucks. Would have been '87 or '88.
Guitarist Randy Bewley died in February 2009. Singer Vanessa Hay, a mother and RN, records and performs with the band Supercluster. She has posted an account of Pylon's career here.
Gyrate and its follow-up, Chomp, have been re-released by James Murphy's DFA Records.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Mick Karn: 1958-2011
R.I.P. Mick Karn.
There are certain sounds that define the Eighties for me, and Karn's distinctive, rubbery bass is one of them. There's something defiantly un-rock about it, which fits perfectly with Japan's deliberate sexual ambiguity. It's all too easily dismissed now, but in its own way the New Romantic movement -- of which Japan was a prime exemplar -- stood as much in defiance of corporate cock-rock as the punk that predated it.
Karn's playing is showcased to admirable effect, along with some amusingly robotic stage moves, in this live recording of "Gentlemen Take Polaroids." John Taylor of Duran Duran offers a short but graceful tribute here.
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