Three's company, or With a science project this cool, the sun shines on you 24 hours a day.

And lo, the wooly, booly week did whitewash woesome words, whilst big pictures went down in small flames and precious gestures, and thus we offer this photogrifice on our fair electric altar. Stay tuned for more from your 5 Seconds Familyhood, and in the meantime dig these images below (compliments of Mr. Nick Cameron, both on Facebook and Flickr) and sounds (compliments of Mr. Corey Bonnevie and We Wives).

AUDIO: Wooden Wives - Subdural Hematoma

AUDIO: Wooden Wives - Fuckin' Up Love

Brace yourself for the next coming spectacle, The Fall of Five...

Three. Victory. Three.

Wooden Wives. Bedlam. Electric sweat.

Cop Shades. Sunglasses. At night.

The Wayouts. Bring. The party.

Scenemakers. Amy Ash. D'Arcy Wilson

Birthday Boy. Poster Girl. Where it's at.

Three. Victory. Three

I've given you a decision to make, things to lose, things to take. Just as she's about ready to cut it up, she says...

Gather round you children for a story about a brother and a sister and a tape, and dig this exclusive
audio compliments of your 5 Seconds Familyhood, featuring Adam Mowery and His Giants of Industry
piledriving through Violent Femmes' Add It Up. Audio by Corey Bonnevie. Photo by Nick Cameron.

AUDIO: Adam Mowery & His Giants of Industry - Add It Up 

He was a scoundrel merchant, I was heathenous clergy, or maybe it was the other way around. Regardless, it was Kinks at first sight. Ladies and gents, put your big hands together for your pal and mine, Mr. Adam Mowery;

Is there an album that sounds better when you’re 14 than the Violent Femmes’ self-titled debut? To me, there wasn’t.  I guess there musta been somethin’ in the air that summer in Wisconsin, 29 years ago, some kinda weird pent up youthful energy that the recordings capture beautifully, which makes Violent Femmes an enduring classic even today.  

The first copy of Violent Femmes I ever had was a tape that I swiped from my older sister at the age of 12. She woulda been about 16 at the time, which in my opinion is an ideal age for delving into the Femmes. As soon as I heard it, I knew I loved the sound of that Femmes record.  The reckless jangle of Gordan Gano’s acoustic guitar, Brian Ritchie’s sturdy, hook ladened acoustic bass lines, and the snap and crack of Victor DeLorenzo’s make shift drum-kit, comprised of garbage lids and other slim tin, do-dads. The band’s gear was trash. Literally. 

Groups on MuchMusic  at the time (mid-nineties), mostly sludgy alt-rock also-rans, dressed and acted like they just didn’t give a fuck, yet posed with big shit-eating grins next to shiny, expensive amps  in glossy guitar monthlies. One listen to “Kiss Off,” or “To the Kill,” and you can be sure the Femmes didn’t give a fuck, and when they recorded that album, they didn’t really have anything to lose. 

As for the songs, the lyrical content mostly consisted of snide, even confrontational, first-person rantings on loneliness, frustration, and the suffocation of family ties, all sung in an affected but youthful, nasally, scat-brat bluster. Like Lou Reed must have sounded in the summer before high school (and electro-shock therapy).  

Gano’s unsettling takes on familial relations, epitomized in songs like “Gone Daddy Gone,” “Kiss Off,” and “Add It Up” (the track covered here), dissect conventional domestic roles from the perspective of the angsty, attention craving, child. Part of the record’s effectiveness likely stems from the fact that the tracks were recorded when Gano had just turned 19, having written the songs years earlier and performed them hundreds of times by this point, busking with the Femmes in the streets of Milwaukee.  When my first group, the Port City All-stars, began gigging around Saint John acoustically on street corners and in Arts Centers, it was the Femmes who provided the palate or prototype, right down to the oversized acoustic bass.  

As soon as I heard it, I knew I loved the sound of that Femmes record.
The reckless jangle ... The band’s gear was trash. Literally.

2 years after I lifted that tape from my older sister, I borrowed a copy of the Femmes retrospective, Add It Up (1981-1993), from my friend’s older brother.  I quickly realized that the first copy of Violent Femmes I had was actually quite a bit slower that than it should have been. Who knows what happened exactly, but somewhere along the line of dubbing and cassette copying my sister’s version lost its tempo and punch. Now, hearing the tracks at proper speed, I realized the frantic energy of that debut album and became hooked for life.  Y’know its kinda funny that an album so harsh, and critical of conventional familial relations, has retained its appeal over the years mostly from being passed down and around by brothers and sisters. In fact, that’s the only way to explain how Violent Femmes went Platinum eight years after its initial release. 

Regardless, this cover of “Add It Up” with the Giants of Industry was a lot of fun to prepare and perform (as you can probably tell, I’m a bit of a Violent Femmes fan)! I hope you find the time to visit the 5 Seconds of Decision family, brothers and sisters armed with bright lights and big sounds, this Friday August 19 at Peppers on the Boardwalk. The excellent Cop Shades are performing and they have a new cassette out on the mighty Hamburger Tapes.  

Let me go on...

Adam Mowery

Rolling back home to the Golden Ball, drunk on a city Three Sisters tall, singin' one thousand songs...

AUDIO: Adam Mowery & His Giants of Industry - Three Sisters

We offer fleeting words today children to accompany two totems to our dwindling electric endgame. Firstly, feast your eyes on Mr. Geordan Moore's fowl is fair artist's variant on this Friday night's flight of fancy, featuring Wooden Wives, The Wayouts and the release of another tawdry Hamburger Tape, this time from Moncton's Cop Shades. Please visit Geordan's website WhoStoleMyBike.com, for more pulp and poster art, and watch for screen prints for sale at upcoming 5 Seconds and Third Space gallery events.

We also place upon the altar another exclusive recording from last month's serialized spectacular, compliments of Corey Bonnevie, this time featuring Adam Mowery and His Giants of Industry with local hit-with-a-bullet, Three Sisters, featuring the good Mr. Mowery on acoustic guitar, Pierre Cormier on drums and yours truly, Mr. Judson Crandall on the tip tapping trap.

Watch this space Wednesday morning for more (What?! More?! In a mere 24 hours? YES!!) live music from the inimitable Mr. Mowery, both a cover version and reflections from the man himself on a formative favourite of his own, the Violent Femmes.

I know we are not two ships passing in the night.

There's a riot goin' on and it’s all appropriately set to the tune of NS’s own Construction & Destruction,
featuring audio recorded by Mr. Corey Bonnevie at the recent instalment of our 5 Seconds Of Decision
series at Peppers Pub on July 23, 2011. Photo by Nick Cameron.

AUDIO: Construction & Destruction - Nine Houses

I suppose one might also call this posting Creative Violence Pt. 2, but I like the prescient sense of connectedness in that Construction & Destruction lyric myself. At any rate, for all intents and purposes there were two intimately entangled yet worlds apart riots taking place across England last week.

The popular kids' riot featured your friendly neighbourhood hooligan opportunists, puppeting themselves in a display of the worst social theatre, mainstream media coverage constructing and capitalizing on the banality of pillaging, practically encouraging them along. The now infamous Darcus Howe BBC interview is a perfect illustration of the systemic disregard that has only contributed to the fertilization of tensions. Watch that above link to the end; the juxtaposition of  the riots' effects on the world of sports is a nice patronizing touch Beebs.

 

Simultaneous to this and stemming from the genuine impetus for Tottenham's initial conflict, the murder by police of Mark Duggan during an arrest gone awry, these riots have an ancestry. Spreading quickly throughout Linton Kwesi Johnson’s Bitch Inglan following escalation from Saturday's peaceful local demonstration, the more potent purposes for these riots are not being completely lost in the knee-jerk villainizing. This is the latest offspring in a genealogy going back decades, to Notting Hill in ’76*, Tottenham itself in ‘85, demonstrations by and against the National Front, Inglan’s immigrant and marginalized communities continuing to be caught in the crossfire all that time.

Penny Red writes, "Riots are about power, and they are about catharsis." Both groups above are arguably exorcising the means of power and catharsis in their action, know it or not as Penny admits, however I would add a desperately important third qualifier to her position: purpose, principle. With great power comes great responsibility and all that**, and the public can wield a great and just power for seismic change when such times arise. The tragicomedy of public violence without purpose or principle might ignite the politics of a burning a nearly century-and-a-half old family business in the observant minds of some, but for most it will only validate the very caricature that such rioters themselves adopt in doing so.

Ensuring some principle in one's actions, some purpose to create something new and to spin some kind of social narrative, is imperative in justifying the severity of public violence. To leave this element of accountability out of the equation only undermines any constructive consequences such a destructive display of power and catharsis can bring about.

And whatta solid gold segue into Construction and Destruction, eh?

David Trenaman and the Big Bad Wolf,
compliments of Gillian Dykeman and
Shawna Waterall. Photo by Nick Cameron.

I have no extensive personal history with the dynamic duo from Port Greville to draw upon as I do with Mr. Chenier (although having met them I can say they're both real swell folk!), but I have enjoyed in recent years ongoing revelations of their strange performances and stranger records. Chugging, crawling, cascading, cradling, Colleen and Dave conscript musics from an impossible democracy of dirges designed for delicacy and/or dredging depths as desired.

I also just kinda really like how their songs swear pretty much any old time they fucking like.

But really kids, the music is just really rare junk and treasure, which I think you'll find right here with this live recording of Nine Houses. You got Colleen on drums and vocals, you got Dave on the axe, and you got a time, muscling up this already sinister number from 2009's Video et Taceo.

Stay tuned right here in mere days, not only for two - count 'em, two! - tracks, but also sage utterings from Mr. Adam Mowery himself, in the next exciting blogstallment, coming soon compliments of yer friendly neighbourhood 5 Seconds Familyhood.

*Before cannibalizing the band years later, Bernie Rhodes told The Clash to write what they know, so when the West Indies community's Notting Hill Carnival they were attending erupted in violence, they documented the event in the song White Riot, urging for a multiracial uprising with the same will to action they saw there. Photography from the riots is on display behind the band in the linked video, also having been used on the rear of their debut. Another is used for the cover of Black Market Clash. Police and Thieves was a contemporary, topical reggae single from Junior Murvin and Lee Perry which they hesitated to cover for fear of sounding 'naff', a term then applied to white blues singers, but they were well received. Strummer said it was as if they had brought their own records to the party.

** Geez Steve, ya drew the webs backwards.

Troy sings, "Follow me, baby," and the boys and girls all go, "Doo, doo doo, doo doo, doo doo doo..."

Troy Charles Chenier (2nd from right) and co. perform at Peppers Pub, July 23, 2011 as part of FOUR,
counting down our fair 5 Seconds of Decision. Audio recorded by Corey Bonnevie. Photo by Nick Cameron.

AUDIO: Troy Charles Chenier - Stoppin' In

So poor ol' Vincent Gallo is retiring his rather precious films from the public eye, if we are to believe the enigmatic auteur's recent declaration to this effect.

[Note: In light of rioting in the UK, this all seems painfully trite this morning, but celebrity certainly affords people the comfort to do aesthetically audacious yet relatively meaningless things with great safety. Rioting is a much more seismic and complex act already familiar to these pages, and is something we'll likely be discussing later this week...]

No doubt eliciting a range of responses amongst the filmic masses, from rolled eyes to gnashed teeth, the infamous director continues to baffle and entertain, even if arguably indulging in little more than a bout of temporary bathos. The greatest thing about this announcement however is his eagerness to not participate.

Now waitasecond, I thought all this 5 Seconds Familyhood business was all about participation? Well, yes, it is, but more importantly we are all about agency and the will to act. Announcements such as this, however you might interpret it within your own thinking, are if nothing else refreshing when placed alongside the conga line of shills and cuckolds of commercial oligarchy, especially within the hyper-magnified mis en scene of celebrity.

The devil director made me do it.

Too often, celebrity agency and authenticity are rare things to behold, apparently even requiring quasi-legal action to facilitate, as was the case recently when Julia Roberts' airbrushed maw was thankfully banned by watchdogs in the UK due to the inherent deceit of mass advertising, not to mention her own hubris. Personally, I jockey between stifling a laugh and holding back my lunch when I hear tell of celebs bemoaning their scrutinized lot on one hand, while enthusiastically pouting and posing for the camera on the other. The only thing that makes it all the more embarrassing is when such celeb fiction befalls the pups shamelessly nipping at the likes of Robert's heels (here's looking at you Courtney Taylor-Taylor*).

Sometimes it feels as if celebs are actually intentionally illustrating Marxist estrangement, but that would only make them somehow interesting. Hell, it even happens to folks right here at home, if you can imagine. It's like some kitchen sink Sisyphus, but instead of mythos it's just your trendy neighbour. How fucking sad is that, huh?

So it is with great pleasure that we share the above Soundcloud posting with you, the 5 Seconds Family Massives, the first recorded nectar of such agency, the morning dew precipitating a wellspring of audio liquid rushing soon to fill a pair of ears near and dear to you (yours, of course!), in this case celebrating one of my own local heroes (and I say that with the straightest of faces), Mr. Troy Charles Chenier.

From the glitchwerk desk of jeTprojecTlabs.

For as long as I can recall seriously playing music, Troy has proven himself nothing short of innovative, ingenious even. My first exposure to Troy being his anti-pop trio Jet, I soon learned that music was a subjective experience when filtered through the mind of Troy. Over the years, I watched Troy evolve through numerous personas and projects: the glitchwerk door-slamming-sampling of jeTprojecTlabs, the electro-shapelessness of The Weird Guy, the quiet campfire serenity of T. LeChe, the avant-stoner enormity of Stabby Dancers and, most recently, the improvisational narratives of The Way Down.

Even the posted track, Stoppin' In, a longtime dreamy refuge in Troy's repertoire, flared up at his sudden behest as this snappin' little toe-tapper.

Troy has always represented a bastion of agency and musical bravery in Saint John, ever pursuing some unknown muse, often to the utter confusion of those watching agape, but knowing it or not at the time, absolutely always to their benefit. I was terribly lucky to have the opportunity to perform with him at this show (playing a typewriter no less!), and from inception there was a clear need to feature him in this series. Please enjoy this track, also featuring local talents of Luc Gagnon, Anthony Debly and Matt Benoit, recorded live at Peppers Pub July 23 at FOUR, the most recent 5 Seconds of Decision event.

Look for more audio in the coming days and weeks with compliments to Mr. Corey Bonnevie, as we upload music from Construction & Destruction and Adam Mowery leading up to our next ever descending display of dynamic electric spectacle, at THREE this Friday, August 19, featuring Moncton's Cop Shades, locals The Wayouts and the return of yer erstwhile hosts, Wooden Wives.

*I will, without fail, eternally respect those who ritually sabotage themselves whilst maintaining some tragic sense of integrity, over those who overextend and out their corporate selves reaching for the low hanging fruit of success. For all its faults, the film DIG!, featuring the unfolding rivalry between Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols, is a grand if flawed exploration of such dichotomy.

And the shutter goes click...

Ladies and gents, in preparing a posting featuring the audio of Mr. Troy Charles Chenier from 5 Seconds installment FOUR, I realized we had not yet even shared the wonderful photography of Mr. Nick Cameron from the very night in question!

How uncouth! How morbidly long overdue! And yet, how much better late than never! Watch this space for audio from Troy, Construction & Destruction and Adam Mowery in the coming days, and in the meantime, find all of the below gems and more in Mr. Cameron's Facebook photo album...

Adam Mowery and His Giants of Industry.

Construction & Destruction.

Troy Charles Chenier.

Scene Maker Crew I: Zale Burley & Nick Cameron (aka, the photographer and therefore not pictured),
with 5 Seconds Family Sister Linda Minor looking on.

Scene Maker Crew II: Gillian Dykeman & Shawna Waterall.

The Host With The Most, Mr. Mike Landry.

Four: The End...