Yesterday someone sent me the only Internet ‘quiz’ I’ve ever genuinely liked, What Obsolete Skill Are You? My result was “French,” which I interpreted to mean not so much French the language (”Latin” is another one of the possible answers) as being French, a skill that if not obsolete before the past few weeks certainly seems more so now. (I think it’s the hedonism/obscurantism dyad that got me there.)

Today I re-took the test trying to answer in the persona of John Cale, based on last night’s concert at the Lula Lounge. His answer? “You are Regularly Metric Verse: You appreciate the beautiful things in life –the joy of music, the color of leaves falling, the rhythm of a heartbeat. You see life itself as a series of little poems. The result (or is it the cause?) is that you are pensive and often melancholy…

That’s Cale in his general glorious obsolescence, but last night - while still seeming like a man out of time - metric verse put on its leather pants and came out to rock, as befits the throwback grooves of his new blackAcetate record, which is reminiscent (in an older, wiser, better-humoured way) of Cale’s hockey-mask-wearing, live-chicken-hatcheting days, with a band of studio aces to give the music an almost comic slickness - comic, that is, with Cale’s knowingly twisted, stentorian Welsh drone at its centre, in that “so wrong it’s right,” smell-of-old-fur sense that lands a blow to a sweet spot in my inner aesthetic baby-skull, in a way Lou Reed solo never really did. Switching between electric and acoustic guitar and keyboards, he kept reminding us that nothing musical is alien to him, and certainly bearing out the impression that the last few years have given the 63-year-old ex-VU magus a second (third, fourth, sixth, eleventh?) wind. I’ve only seen him play solo piano in the past (which I do adore, Fragments of a Rainy Season being my Cale of choice), so the addition of a band certainly freshened up my perspective, but I think the show was quite objectively high-calibre. No Venus in Furs on this second night of his three-night stand - the most “classic” moment probably came with the encore of Pablo Picasso (a Modern Lovers song Cale produced as well as covered in the 70s, though he seemed, for the first time all night, to be having a bit of trouble with the words…?). The bits of the set I remember, probably only about half: Helen of Troy, Leaving it up to you, Things, Guts, Over her head, Magritte, Hush, new single Perfect (charting in the UK, I hear?!), In a Flood and the most extraordinary reinterpretation of Gun in which the band and Cale’s voice alike all sounded as if they were being played backwards on vinyl. That mind-mojo was worth the candle on its own. Rush out to see his final Lula Lounge show tonight or in Hamilton (11/16/05), Waterloo (11/17/05), Montreal (11/20/05), Boston (11/22/05) or San Francisco (11/25-26/05).

(This recent BBC interview with Cale merits your time. And other obsolete skills I know that show up from the quiz, by the way, include “Growing One’s Own Food,” “Programming in QBasic,” “Juggling,” and “Gregg Shorthand.”)

PS to the poetrynerds aka my homies before you speak up: Of course in no technical sense does Cale have much to do with regular metric verse; much less so than most songwriters in fact. But the image suits his musty bookishness (the man has written songs about John Milton, Macbeth and Helen of Troy!) and his in-control manner of being out-of-step, no?

They’re back!

My weekend was a little productive, a little debauched: A Friday-night birthday party at a Veterans’ Hall that became a series of parties, stretching into the miniscule hours. The soundtrack at the party proper was the standard rotation of 80s revivalism that plagues my people (the gen formerly known as X), though it perked up a bit when it shaded back to early-60s rock’n'roll, which at least is somebody else’s retro. But at my next party, it’s all Shakira all the time. (”I’m just a consequence of the great musical momentum and the great changes we are going through in the world,” she says, shortly after discussing the Renaissance iconography and psychoanalytic implications of the cover of her new album Oral Fixation Vol. 2. Yow.)

Saturday night brought me to the Tranzac Club, where I hosted the final show in the three-night 416 Festival. My end of things was a little chaotic (organizer Glen Hall was benched by a migraine, leaving the organizational side a bit untucked) but the music was strong, beginning with a wide-ranging CCMC set (very different in flavour than last Tuesday’s, with trombonist Scott Thomson more than ably filling his guest chair), followed by by far the strongest set I’ve ever seen by Ken Aldcroft’s Convergence Ensemble - I used to find the composition-based group a bit stilted, but this weekend they were energetic and fluent, a terrific leap ahead. Last came the Fake New Age Music Band, with Ryan Driver, Sandro Perri and Justin Haynes on electronics, thumb reeds (meaning pieces of balloon rubber that Driver plays between his thumbs, which I’ve never heard sound as good as they do in this setting), guitar, CDs and toys - a mesmerizing sound that actually created the meditative ambience that “real” new-age music drenches in goop and crystal healing hoohah. Hope there’s a recording.

Before the gig there was the first general meeting of AIMT (the Association of Improvising Musicians of Toronto) which I’m told yielded a lot of useful feedback. And it’s already had at least one practical outcome: This new MySpace site.

Sunday, brunch and watching Les Revenants - a very French zombie movie, in which masses of people rising from the dead represents primarily a bureaucratic dilemma. The ending, in which the “returnees” change the terms with a move that includes a burning car or two, deals quite presciently (and pessimistically) with the consequences of treating “integration problems” in said French manner. It’s a gas, and genuinely creepy, and follows its conceit just short of too far, which may mean just short of far enough. (I’m still torn about whether its focus on white middle-class zombies was a cop out or a clever subterfuge.)

Finally, went to Mammalian Diving Reflex’s Diplomatic Immunities, the second installment of a developing “social acupuncture” project whose mode is the interrogative - the actors asking questions of their subjects, the subjects interviewing the actors, the actors interviewing one another, and the audience, and vice-versa. This workshop was based on a day spent with a Grade 5/6 class in Parkdale (some of whom were in the audience, and eventually on stage). One of the questions they asked the kids: “What song should we sing?” Meaning, in the show. The 10- and 11-year-olds heatedly debated whether it should be 50 Cent’s G Unit, with a posse of boys saying YES WAY and the rest of the class standing firm on NO WAY. A favourite quote, one pigtailed black girl saying, “Some of us aren’t mature enough to listen to that, and other people just think they’re mature enough.” A pretty articulate statement, though enjoyably complicated by the fact that she kept wavering along the way over whether the word should be “mature” or “immature,” which seemed a poetic slip coming from an 11-year old, who perches exactly on that edge of that distinction. There were votes for several Green Day songs (American Idiot at no. 1) but in the end they chose a song they all knew, which none of the adults, me included, had ever heard: It’s called Lonely, based on a Bobby Vinton sample sped up to Chipmunks speed, by Senegal-born rapper Akon. As you can see from the dawg-turned-loverman R&B lyrics, it manages to balance exactly on that same border: It at once sounds like a kids’ song, with its 1950s chord changes, and verges on the inappropriate, but only verges. (Uh, just what it is that he put the girl through?) Those preadolescents, they know what they need. And it was readymade for theatrical singalongs too.

So that was the weekend (from the folks who brought you the minimum wage). And tonight it’s John Cale at the Lula Lounge - I’ll report back.

Bonus round: Strangest misestimation of the economic value of indie rock of the week.

A robot-translated version of a post about this past Wednesday’s Just Ace of Spades metal marathon from a German messageboard (via Stillepost)

Normally we can no Charity meeting be escaped; we climb for pandas on the CN Tower, move for Amyotrophe Lateralsklerose, take us off for the cancer research, run backwards against cancer of the breast or invent which completely different crazy. There are simply otherwise hardly Events, which radiate as much friendliness and public spirit that one can direct the world hate nearly free of charge into new, bizarre, never for courses possible held. Suddenly one hates also obstructed and small nice skin animals, determines any important sociological phenomenon, which is for the advancement of mankind from great importance. But then a new dimension escaped us nevertheless yesterday in the Charity Saga, because in the Boat club in Toronto, in order to collect money for the red cross, long “Ace OF Spades” played six hours of Motoerhead, without break, no Coverversionen, 768mal “Ace OF Spades” in consequence. We assume that one becomes afterwards the embittered Heavy Metal critic, perhaps one finally times the old Black Sabbath plates will backwards play, and “Headless CROSS” for to hold, which it is, i.e. the deeply unchristian, soul-hostile work, but to occupy we cannot do that unfortunately.

That effort is just so superior to mine - “a new dimension escaped us”! Altho they totally copped the “umlaut-a-thon” heading from me.

John Cale: See second half of this entry.

A belated (but expanded) edition of the usual Thursday Reading this week; things have been hectic.

Catching up eagerly on the L.A. n/Oulipo conference, courtesy of Harlequinknights‘ reports (parts 1, 2, 3 and 4). Wish I had been able to witness Stephanie Young and Juliana Spahr’s “FOULIPO” talk, a meditation on the (dis)connections between the Oulipo writers and 1970s feminist body/performance art - which then itself became a piece of semi-Oulipian body/performance art; the written text seems a poor substitute (and not just because of the “nudelipo” aspect). Speaking of 1970s body art, here’s the worst display copy in the Toronto press this week: “Vito Acconci really into himself.” Insulting and misleading. On the other hand, my colleague Sarah Milroy’s interview with Acconci was my most pleasant surprise on paper this week. I was sorry to miss his talk at Harbourfront.

Unlike (it seems?) Franklin, though, I do think Johanna Drucker is on to something about the problem of academic/literary/formalist oppositionalism, though I’m not certain what, at least till I read her new book. It has to do with class and clique, and the impotence of spectacular protest in a spectacular society, in which not only art but most intellectual discourse tends to devolve to a condition of spectacle. That said, one should disavow blaming artists/intellectuals for their own marginalization, as we so often do. Obviously there needs to be a third vantage point found to triangulate these questions (closely related to the ones Jane and friends have been debating). And, as Drucker apparently said, to make such a critique of critical thought is by no means to abandon critical thinking.

(Perhaps my permanent favourite Destroyer verse: For someone so beautifully scarred/ I imagine it must be hard/ To stay away from a life of public relations./ But try! Girl, you’ve got to try./ You’ve got to stay critical or die./ Stay critical or die.) (Btw, coming soon: the promised post on Destroyer’s Rubies.)

On a Torontocentric tip, the bit about Christian Bˆk on the same panel was, and I say this with a great deal of respect and affection, hilarious. (”I saw nothing gendered about my presentation,” he said in response to an audience criticism of the square-jawed guydom of his stuff. “I was simply reading a straight academic paper in accord with the traditions of the discipline.”) C-Bˆk is in exile in Calgary these days. We miss you, Sister Christian, won’t you please come home? Find an audio excerpt from Christian’s work-in-progress The Cyborg Opera - an attempt, as I understand it, to breed techno music and poetry - here.

Returning to the usual suspects, the main fare in Toronto music pages this week is John Cale features, all detailing how his groove-laden new album Black Acetate was inspired by Drop It Like It’s Hot, though none of them spend much energy contextualizing it with the electro of previous album Hobosapiens. The best, unusually, is Tim Perlich’s interview in NOW: “”There’s another song that Pharrell did where he uses a spray can as a rhythmic device. That was the first one that pinned my ears back. As I listened to it, I thought, ‘This is more than just a single, it’s a comment on the whole millieu, a cultural statement as well.’ ” But eye’s Mike Doherty (scroll down) and The Star’s Greg Quill also cover the Cale-dogg beat. (See also Exclaim’s Cale chronology.) (Cale begins a three-night stand at the Lula Lounge in Toronto on Sunday.)

Elsewhere in the weeklies, Dave Morris gets off a well-earned herpes joke over the Sony “rootkit” scandal. (Coming soon to a California courtroom.) Eye also does the Arcade Fire chamber squad Bell Orchestre (two sets tonight at the Music Gallery) while NOW fills its violindie quota with Andrew Bird in a fine piece by Sarah Liss. (I especially like the bits about the purity of whistling and his suggestively “strange ambidextrous tongue” … though Miz Liss deflated any Twin Peaks fantasies.)

Pet peeve: Terms of critical theory getting misappropriated to arts journalism in literal readings that shred their specific referents. The classic case is “deconstruction,” which has become so pervasive that I’m sure I’ve used it colloquially myself, but there’s a prime example in Eye’s film section this week, in Adam Nayman’s review of Bee Season, which he calls “hopelessly de-centered.” Does Nayman mean that Bee Season has (apparently in despair) dethroned the Cartesian unified ego-subject and now conceputalizes itself as composed of contradictory fragmented identities, a historically produced contingent self dependent on its discursive positioning? Or does he mean that the movie lacks focus? That it’s uncentred, perhaps?

The Globe today covers the wonderful Meredith Monk, who’s in Vancouver this weekend, with excessive attention to her newfound friendship with Bjork, at the expense of exploring Monk’s own long career (subhed, nearly as bad as the Acconci one: “Me and my pal Bjork,” sigh); as well as Bell Orchestre.

Down south, Sasha is sharp as usual on Houston hip-hop in the unlikely precincts of The New Yorker; and Jody and Jane tear David Brooks yet another pair of assholes [edit: oh, and an extra-wide from Jace Clayton] for his fuckwad take on the gangsta face of the French riots. (On which subject, btw, I recommend to you Doug Saunders’ column in the Focus section of tomorrow’s Globe. Also tomorrow, I begin a biweekly column that will be a roundup of news and amuse-gueules from academia and related parts; it’s a little anchoring feature on the Focus “Ideas” page, which I edit. I hope it will be entertaining, but it will also be a clip-job from academic journals and blogs, etc. I probably won’t post about it here very often, but thought I’d let you know.)

Hmm, am I crazy enough to go to Austin for the Veronica Marsathon?

One of the few pics of CCMC on the internets. Why for?

NNCK was middling last night - it felt like a couple of members of the ensemble had their synapses juiced but others fell too predictably into modern-primitivist rote patterns whose power got depleted long ago. There were a few stretches that tranced me out, but others that had me shifting impatiently in my Music Gallery pew. The band had a surprise guest in tow, UK folk guitarist Michael Chapman who was apparently a satellite of the Steeleye Span cosmos in the early 1970s; it was a bit confusing at first what he was doing there, as he came on stage unannounced and opened with a merely pleasant open-tuned pastoral piece, but his second (and final) instrumental built to a torrent of extended technique, slappings and string bendings and raga-influenced riffs. Local openers Disguises were promisingly dynamic but a little too much in the minimalist-influenced post-rock pocket for my tastes.

But, frankly, Music Gallery founding group CCMC blew them all away with the best set I’ve seen from them in years. Which felt like a triumph of the sexagenarians’ steadfast giving-all-for-art, in-the-moment, radically serious playfulness over what sometimes felt like too much slack-cool from the younger bands. Not every member of the younger bands, but the overall vibe. Sound poet/vocal improvisor Paul Dutton launched into CCMC’s set with the most vitality, jumping between comic monologue, clicks, squelchy kisses and Tuvan-style overtone singing. And since CCMC’s secret motor is the fierce competitive spirit of its members, John Oswald and especially Michael Snow were soon matching and then outstripping him. The set ended with a piano solo by Snow, a perpetually underrated musician - his eminence as an artist always misleads people to think he’s just dabbling (in fact he’s been a musician as long as he’s been doing anything), but if they heard him on nights such as last night, that misconception would keel over. It was as intense a performance as you’d hear from any free-jazz keyboardist short of Cecil.

To hear more of CCMC, you could (blatant plug warning) come to the Tranzac on Saturday night, where I’ll be hosting the final evening of the 416 Creative Improvisors festival, with a set by CCMC with new-generation trombonist Scott Thompson (who plays in the Joust duo with Oswald - and played with him in one of the most exciting jazz sets I’ve seen all year, the group with Marshall Allen from the Sun Ra Arkestra at the Guelph Jazz Fest). Also on the bill: Nick Fraser and Justin Haynes (”Are Faking It”), Ken Aldcroft’s Convergence Ensemble and Ryan Driver’s Fake New Age Music Band.

In related news, I’ve got a guest post coming up over at Said the Gramophone about Eric Chenaux, who’ll be playing with The Draperies in Thursday’s opening night of the 416. I’m honoured to contribute to StG, the granddaddy of Canadian MP3 blogs, offering not just ace tracks but fine reflective prose, day after day. I’ll holler at you when it’s up. (For more on Mr. Chenaux also see the interview by Jonny Dovercourt in the current issue of Musicworks.)

Pardon the self-promo there. It’s been a busy day, and I did want to let you know about those things. Less self-centric bloggery tomorrow, um, soon. Meanwhile, enjoy this counterfeit cover of Louis Armstrong doing Oops, I Did It Again. I disagree with Matos (who pointed me there) that it’s as good as Richard Thompson’s version (hear it here); the ersatz-Armstrong performance is too ersatz, so stilted compared to the real thing, though the trumpet sound’s pretty good. While my reaction to the Thompson cover has always been, “That’s a fantastic Richard Thompson song.” Still, Supermasterpiece makes an implicit (or perhaps inadvertent) point about the century-long continuity of pop music that snobs need to hear and folks like Jody and John (a big yeah to the Mills Bros.!) should richly appreciate.

I’m back. You might notice we’ve spruced the place up. (We being me and code sherpa Bill Kennedy, not some smarmy blogger’s ‘we’.) Besides the warm pumpkiny colours, there are a couple of functional changes that I think should improve your Zoilusian experience. Look to your left, and you’ll see that the confusing categorical headings in the sidebar have vanished, replaced by links to the different pages in the site, a changing list of favourite sites (above and beyond the big links page), some current reading and listening (on line and off), the archives, and - of local interest - some picks of the week in Toronto shows.

For those who don’t use RSS feeds, there’s a fancy new Notify List where you can sign up to be emailed when the site is updated. And we’ve moved the Toronto Gig Guide to its own designated page for easier use and navigation.

Speaking of which if you’re in town and reading this before 8 pm on Tuesday, I urge you to take the plunge on tonight’s No Neck Blues Band show. New York free-freak-improv collective NNCK (as they nickname themselves) has its strengths and weaknesses, but within the enchanted walls of the Music Gallery, I suspect they’ll be at their most inspired. For a taste of what to expect, check out this video. Hope to see you there.

Just a note to let you know that posting is likely to be light the rest of this week, while the Code Sherpa and I finish up the reupholstering of ye olde site. Funky fall colours and more will greet you early next week. If I have anything urgent to say in the interim, I’ll pop in, and the Toronto Gig Guide will be kept up to date. Meanwhile the rest of the internet will be happy to serve you. I hear there’s a special on Britney baby photos in Aisle 3.