<<<<< The Golden Dogs >>>>>

[zero]

Some people are asking in multiple threads here's the repeat:

To answer what their music is like would be tricky. It is very good on record but better live. It is a raucous live sound that echoes aspects of the New Wave, particularly the Police and Talking Heads at points. That should be qualified by saying that in a fashion not unlike the Strokes say they reference 70’s music while completely reinventing it for themselves. I think a layman hears something else. It is at very least not clear to the passing eye how thought out, meticulous, composed and frankly brilliant this music truly is. They do things like play a bar and a half on one tangent, turn on a dime, play some other tangential riff, skid back into place, go off on an actual improvisation and on and on. The music is so fiercely rendered live it has to be seen to be believed. The front men are basically Dave and Jessica who plays an upright keyboard (some odd percussion too) and is very animated (kind of cute but only if you’re a guy. The rhythm section is sicker than dirt. Sicker than dirt. I came up with a way of describing them as the deep lake water cooling servicing Dave and Jessica’s twin towers (the sexual connotation is totally your addition pervo- okay I said servicing ha ha very funny). The drummer Beau is on fire in a Joules Scott Key Metric kind of way (looks like Jay Cleary oddly enough). The bass player Micah is a monster as is Michael the rhythm guitarist and sound engineer. They are all very laid back but very very potent musicians. To explain one song, incidentally they did a killer rave up of Men Without Hats Safety Dance at the end of the set, they did Helpless as an encore. So Dave is playing a tiny guitar with nylon strings that had the effect of being reminiscent of a George Harrison number. Jessica was playing a paper bag for percussion, the band had left the stage. Dave mentions having just been up north (they’re from Sudbury and Thunder Bay) and starts coaxing out Helpless. I thought I was dreaming. The indy scenesters wagged their chins, I wagged the dog. So not only are they playing a killer acoustic Helpless (extremely fitting) but the band comes out and starts to fu©king PULVERIZE THE sh!t OUT OF IT. I am talking Wilco or Sonic Youth style massive floods of distortion. I was right next to the speaker and could feel the big floods of bass pounding out. It was just that intense and anybody who didn’t get that they have never and will never hear that song done that way again is as I mentioned a first rate tool. So get the to the Golden Dogs and when you don’t understand what all the hype is about just pretend you can see the Emperor’s New Clothes. The emperor may be naked from time to time but let’s leave the outing of avant garde musicians as frauds to the pros. When the going gets weird the weird turn pro.

[guigsy]

i picked up the album on the way home from work tonite, partly because this was the theme of the day, and partly because i've been curious as sh!t since phil took a boot between the eyes... but, yeah.. he's not wrong.. this band is really fu©king good... im fu©king loving it... BASTARDS!

[zero]

Heed the kung!

[skelter]

This band is in the top 3 of the best bands I've seen this year. Grand Theft Bus and King Sunshine claim the other two spots

[Dr. J]

this band is really fu©king good...

No doubt about it. A group of us saw them in kingston and were absolutely blown away. I enjoy the CD, but must say they are one of those bands that you really must experience live. The Cd doesn't totally do them justice.

[guigsy]

then i really gotta see a show, cuz i think the disc is brilliant on its own.

[AdamH]

Best band I saw at Hillside hands down.

By contrast, and sorry for a partial hijack, we were listening to Controller Controller the other day and boy do they blow hard!

[ersh]

so after you told me all about this band last night Luke, I checked their site and realized I've seen them - at the Festival of Friends in Hamilton, they played after a Steve Murphy show I did. Thought I recognized a few guys from Thunder Bay and wondered who the band was... I remember their drummer had a real Keith Moon style... pretty explosive. But I left before I got their name. Too funny.

[Booche]

" I remember their drummer had a real Keith Moon style... pretty explosive."

Sold

[paisley]

someone should silkscreen a heady phil collin's shirt with a boot print across phil's noggin for Golden Dogs tour merch

[Mr. Musicface]

Hey so here's a question for zero (or whoever else wants to take it on) apropos to a previous popular thread:

What "label" would you give Golden Dogs? Are they an "indie" band as mentioned in the "indie vs. jam" thread? Or does it not matter?

Peace,

Mr. M.

[zero]

I would have to refuse the label altogether. There are deeper philosophical points to be made here, on the nature of conflict on the clinging to a sense of nationalism as the source of war etc. This indy versus jam thing is not an insignificant issue. Written large it really gets at a good deal of the strife in the world. It goes well beyond patchwork pants and tortoise shell fashion frames. The Golden Dogs kick serious ass though.

[Esau]

Listened to their samples on their website.Hopefully the live show is better then the studio stuff.

Anywhere I can score a live track or even better a live show to listen to before I make any comments.

[Mr. Musicface]

Okay zero, you lost me there. I think whatever the "deeper philosophical points" are in this conversation, and I'm not sure I much care in context of this particular conversation. If you want to start an actual thread on "clinging to a sense of nationalism as the source of war etc." I'd be happy to join you there.

Here's my real question: Golden Dogs may indeed kick-ass, I've listened to some downloads and I'm certainly interested to hear more. But I'm curious where in your opinion they fit on the continuum that we discussed in the indie vs. jam thread (which as you say "is not an insignificant issue".)

Or do you just want to say "wrong war, wrong time, wrong place" over and over 'til people start to believe it? Seems to be a popular technique these days.

- M.

[zero]

To your last point what exactly do I get out of being in this community? More often than not it is grief and it is grief in the 'real world' not up in here. There are a handful, a small handful, of individuals who give me support and guidance particularly in the back channels but that's about it. Do you really think that I contribute here just to aggrandize my own ego, I mean it's a worthwhile thesis but doesn't have a lot of legs.

My point about nationalism, conformity and group identity is quite valid here and I will expound. This is taken from a talk with Jiddu Krishnamurti from Brockwood Park, 8 September 1970:

K: To preserve the group, to have security, to be safe. That’s why we conform. Does that conformity lead to security? We say it does, but does it? I mean, to call oneself and American, an Indian, a Japanese, or an Indonesian does seem to give a sense of security. To identify oneself wit ha particular community appears to give security. But does it? When you call yourself a German and I call myself a Jew or an Englishman, this very division is one of the major causes of war, which means no security. Where there is division that comes about through identification with a particular community, hoping that community will give security, it is the very beginning of the destruction of security. This is so clear.

Q: Then you feel that the idea of any community is one that would detract from…

K: No, sir, no sir. We are saying the desire to confrom, the urge, the instinct to confor, comes about through the hope of security, wanting to be secure, safe, certain physically. Is that a fact? History- not that I am a historian- has shown that when you call yourself a Catholic and I call myself a Protestant, we have murdered each other in the name of God and all the rest of it. So the mind seeking security through conformity destroys that very security. That’s clear isn’t it? So when that’s clear, we have finished with identification with a community through which we hope to be secure. That thinking, looking at it that way, is finished. Once you see the poisonous nature of this division between communities an of your identifying with a community in the hope of security, when you see that very clearly, the truth of it, you no longer want security through a community, through nationality, through identification with a particular group.

Q: Is there not a nother point, the feeling of belonging?

K: Yes, sir. I belong to a particular group. It gives me satisfaction; it makes me feel warm inside; it makes me feel safe. That is the same thing.

[Mr. Musicface]

Do you really think that I contribute here just to aggrandize my own ego, I mean it's a worthwhile thesis but doesn't have a lot of legs.

Actually I do think we all contribute to aggrandize our egos to some extent - if I didn't think what I said was worth YOU hearing, I wouldn't say it. That's a thesis that has serious legs, but I don't really want to go there at the moment.

But mainly, I think contribute do it 'cus you have certain principles and goals about what you think other people should think about music and the music scene. You're a critical thinker, and the critical thinker wants to make his thoughts known. Hey, nothing wrong with that, if there weren't critics in the world arguably nothing would ever get better.

I was just calling you on the labelling thing more out of curiosity than anything about how you see this particular group, whom you've made a point of singling out, fit into your previously outlined paradigm of indie bands, jam bands, etc. You didn't have a problem with labelling in those earlier discussions and frankly I thought there was some value in your points. I was just curious how you think those labels would/could be applied in this context. I was never trying to make a grand political point or anything, at least not here. No ulterior motives, just a serious question to someone who's opinion I take seriously. Usually.

Peace man,

- M.

[guigsy]

after listening to the disc i think they fall into the stereotype of an indie band, but really, they're a pop band who i think draws from a lot of rock based influences.

[zero]

Well I am not going to get offended, a samurai never takes offense, now an internet samurai is a different story. I think with your life experience and capacity for critical thinking yourself MusicFace you will realize that my intentions are most often good and that in all likelihood I do take more sh!t than I should given the sincerity of my intentions. Enough of that.

Really read that exchange with Krishnamurti, incidentally Krishnamurti was a very enlightened man that was chosen by the Theosophist society as the coming 'world teacher' the quote comes from a collection of addresses called On Conflict. To put this in terms of the Golden Dogs I think the chin wagging indy rock kids really were off putting it was inconsistent with the music coming from the stage. Had it been a bunch of ragers dancing it up it might have been a different story. The conflict of communities, of conforming styles of dress and action, is then close to the point. I don't know what you'd call their music or community and I don't much care. I refuse it. Increasingly you will see me refusing these distinctions. In part this is my adoption of Tom Walsh's belief that labels are largely 'archival' terms- they are used to put records in bins and sell product. In part it is a broader paradigm shift for me that some of the true creative destroyers of our generation (see The Slip) eschew labels for a reason.

[Mr. Musicface]

Oh and thanks for the Krishnamurti quote. I guess we're all "trying to find truth through the mirror of relationship(s)". Another reason I believe you, I and many others contribute here.

- M.

[AdamH]

Wow. J.Krishnamurti quotes? Never thought I'd see that here.

The Golden Dogs are an indie/pop sort of thing. These are mountains and molehills better reserved for other threads IMO. I'm trying to become less analytical!

Wow, they're opening for the Libertines in T.O. on the 15th and it's already sold out. Ba da ba ba baa.....

[Mr. Musicface]

Ah okay, now we're getting somewhere, thank you! That's the zero we know and love.

In part this is my adoption of Tom Walsh's belief that labels are largely 'archival' terms- they are used to put records in bins and sell product. In part it is a broader paradigm shift for me that some of the true creative destroyers of our generation (see The Slip) eschew labels for a reason.

Are labels a necessary evil? Would you hate SCI so much if there was no such term as "jam bands" to describe them and connect them to a bunch of behaviour that you believe they and their fans typify? Or really, although you might still hate them specifically, would you bother to criticise them the way you do if you didn't think they represented the "bad side of jam band culture" or whatever you want to call it? Doesn't that in itself show you have some vested interest in the "good side" of that culture?

The Slip are an interesting case, as I think are a band like nero. Both have become connected with jamband culture and probably have preconceptions hoisted upon them as a result. I brought a friend of mine to see nero a while back, and he said "hey, it's like if Dream Theatre smoked dope!" A lot of jambands folks wouldn't even get this reference, and probably wouldn't go to see a band based on that description. On the other hand, I know a lot of metal and prog heads who would, and they'd frankly probably totally dig what nero do. I dunno, I don't really have any answers here. Certainly labels are around and all of us here on a jambands board are perpetuating them to some extent. I'm not really sure how you break these down, or if it's even a good idea.

- M.