Selina Martin by Tom Meienburg
Okay, so - there is a gig on Sunday you should go to. The headliner is Selina Martin, an Ontario musician based in France; her closest associates in this part of the world are Ford Pier (whom she shared stage with last time she was in town, at the Lido), Tom Holliston (whom she has toured with) and John Wright (she sings co-lead on Dead Bob's cover of Nomeansno's "Life Like;" so far I only have Ford and John's signature on that album, so that alone is a good excuse to go to the show).
...But none of that is very relevant to her solo output (nor is her superb cover of everyone's favourite Rush song, "The Spirit of Radio," but it's also a nice entry point if you don't know her stuff -- it's a great song, but I don't actually care for the sound of Rush much, so I'm very grateful for it).
Enough about other musicians, though: let's talk about Martin's song "Tangier," the debut song on her 2022 album, Time Spent Swimming. It's multi-layered, technologically-enhanced music that -- unlike her more rock-oriented Disaster Fantasies, more on which later -- brings to mind people like Laurie Anderson, while sounding nothing much like her (Anderson's music is often detached, quirky, and cerebral, but Martin's music is grounded in more powerful emotions and more concrete observations). Martin explained in a past interview with me that she
lived in Tangier for one month. Exactly four weeks. And the only reason I went there was that I was on the verge of being an illegal alien in Europe and I had to exit the continent [...] It was quite last minute. My brother has a friend who has a friend in Tangier who had a little riad/ hotel and that's where I stayed for my first few days until I found another place. I was floating. It felt like I was just floating in France anyway, I had no apartment and was living out of a tiny suitcase and so instead of going back to Canada I decided to float further, and to see what inspiration or education or information I could gather in North Africa.
Martin explains further on her bandcamp that she found it "almost impossible to rent a guitar" in Tangier -- it's not a thing, there, apparently. But though the guitar she finally acquired was "very used," she began to work on music, part of which involved listening to the city. ("Being in a new place brings new sounds to your ears. I am always captivated by new sounds. I recorded some of them and used them as samples for this song"). There are also a few guitar riffs that bring Northern African music to mind -- listen to "Tangier," if you haven't, then come back...
Continuing the conversation about Tangier, I asked Martin: The lyrics for that song seem very concrete and possibly autobiographical - roosters crowing all day, the peeling of apricots... Is the line about being a "wayward astronaut" a riff on the title of your first album? The line about being mapless reminds me of the title of Life Drawing Without Instruction, as well... are you a wanderer by nature, or do you have a practical side that you are in revolt against, or..?
A lot of those specifics in "Tangier" are based on things that happened. The roosters, yes. The collared doves, yes, all day long. (and I tried to mimic the song of the collared dove in the way I delivered that line). I did sort of fall in love/lust with a Moroccan guy who peeled the apricots while I told him all my thoughts. It was ridiculous. He spoke no English nor French and I spoke no Arabic. But I talked to him anyway. And we sort of understood each other, but only sort of. I decided to use him as a metaphor for his city. It was like a lover I wanted but couldn't have, nor could I even grasp/ touch, as the culture is quite different and I didn't know the rules.
There is no deliberate connection of wayward astronaut and mapless pioneer to my earlier albums, but perhaps you've touched on something that has been hiding in my subconscious.
So that's all really interesting as a story. If you've read The Sheltering Sky, or Naked Lunch, or listened to Ornette Coleman jam with the Master Musicians of Joujouka, or if your favourite member of the Rolling Stones is Brian Jones (who popularized said Master Musicians), or... no, wait, I'm doing it again, I'm trying to drum up excitement for Martin's output by reference to externals. Cut that out, Al: direct them to the OTHER side of Martin's music -- her more driven, Pixies-like rock. Try "Public Safety Management," for starters ("About the erosion of personal freedoms and rights, esp. during times of crisis").
With references to face masks and untrustworthy politicians, you'd be forgiven for thinking the song COVID-inspired, but it's actually from 2010, and has more in common with speculative rock fictions like the Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime." Which is consciously alluded to in the title of another song on that album, "Rape During Wartime," featuring Martin Tielli, formerly of the Rheostatics. The singer explains on her bandcamp that "It's a song about violence against women. Or about violence against anyone." Told mostly from the point of view of a rapey soldier (or other authority figure, "born with a gun/ concealed withmy pants on") on the hunt for a victim (who presumably is speaking her trauma in the chorus, "I fall down/ I'm still awake"), the song is both catchy and disturbing, which is true of many of the "disaster fantasies" alluded to in the title. Musically, it's a bit less technologically-layered than Time Spent Swimming, and maybe thus a bit easier to deliver, live, but it's still extremely satisfying popcraft (do not neglect buying this album if it pops up on the merch table; I learned that lesson last time -- you won't get many chances to acquire it).
Martin is only one of three artists performing on Sunday. The opener is Al Mader (the Minimalist Jug Band), pictured above, who I interviewed at some length last year about his connections to (late local fuck band impresario) Jack Keating, John Cooper Clarke and John Otway; he does have some history with Martin, having seen her in Vancouver "probably a couple of decades ago, maybe playing with Bob Wiseman [of Blue Rodeo; he's mentioned in Martin's artist bio]. It was so long ago, but we did kind of hang out. It's all kind of vague, but I've seen her play and thought, she's someone to watch."
Mader has also done a show with Slowpoke and the Smoke, "but I don't think there's anything newsworthy about it," he tells me from his used bookstore gig -- this would have been a somewhat goofier incarnation of the band, known mostly for costumed performances highlighting quirky originals and doo-wop covers (including the odd Frank Zappa tune). The new album features a song leader Tony Bardach wrote for the Pointed Sticks' self-titled album from 2015, "Tin Foil Hat," which, he explains in a recent video interview I did with him, connects less to an interest in conspiracy theory and more to his desire to practice French and his habit of strolling around Gibsons, singing to his animals, who are featured in this charming video (for the Pointed Sticks version of the song; Slowpoke and the Smoke's is here).
There's lots else in that interview, but much of it focuses on a theme of bodily harm and indignity, somewhat relevant to my own life in recent years, as my friends will understand, but which also appears to have been relevant to Tony (check out "Bumped my Noggin" or the reggae-inflected "Bit of Blood"). There is, as he notes, quite a cinematic quality to the album -- a sense that there is a through line to be drawn, perhaps an underlying narrative...).
But focusing on "Bumped My Noggin," Bardach explains -- at about the 19 minute mark of said video interview -- that "There's a lot of truth in that song, but at the same time, the truth makes the fiction. There's no Ruth if there's no Richard, as Robert Wyatt might have said." (Some of Tony's references, and indeed some of his jokes, sail smoothly over my head, but he's talking about Wyatt's album Ruth is Stranger Than Richard, here).
In fact, the truth underlying Bardach's images is "more insane" than the actual song, he tells me: at a party, circa 2009, "I fainted, and on the way down, I thought, 'fuck, this is it,' and I hit my head on a coffee table so hard that I blacked out for some time. And then I got up, and everybody looked pretty concerned; I was kind of spinning, seeing birds and stuff. And after I felt like I kind of had my bearings, I split the party. I walked out the front door, and there was my truck parked across the street. Except it was no longer where I had left it; it was up on the sidewalk. Someone had smashed into the driver's side front quarter panel so hard that they knocked it up onto the sidewalk; here was my truck, smashed up, un-drivable, up on the sidewalk. I totally forgot that I was on the way to drive the truck to the hospital..."
All of this is directly alluded to in the lyrics for "Bumped My Noggin," though without the explanation, the song makes it sound like Bardach maybe had bumped his head in the process of smashing up his own truck -- like he'd been in a car accident, say. Knowing the relationship to reality greatly enriches the song (which also contains some paranoid fictions NOT grounded in reality, but I'll refer you to the video interview for more on that, at about the 23 minute mark).
Bardach continues that after seeing what had happened, "I forgot that I'd bumped my head, and just dealt with getting the truck dealt with, and eventually got home. It was some time before I realized that I had hit my head; a few of my friends told me. And I also realized that I hadn't been the same since. Something had changed; not necessarily in a bad way, but I had kinda become softer, easier to get along with. And it really hasn't changed, I don't think, y'know. But eventually, about six months later, they said my head was fine."
We talk a bit about brain trauma -- I share a story with Tony that I might not have, had I realized Tony would give me the go-ahead to put the clip on Youtube! (Luckily I named no names). But I'm also very happy to see that Tony seems okay!
"I'm lucky," Bardach responds. "And I watch those shows, sometimes, where people redevelop somebody's house, and they'll get the owner to smash everything up inside, and there they'll be with eye protection and a huge sledgehammer, taking out a brick wall, but no helmet! That's a brick wall, with bricks flying all over the place!"
So there's one positive takeaway for readers: if you are ever in a circumstance where chunks of brick are flying, wear a helmet. The next is to go see the Minimalist Jug Band, Tony Bardach's newest iteration of Slowpoke and the Smoke (with the same members, Eric Napier and Bradford Lambert of the Ford Pier Vengeance Trio, but a slightly different, less fuck-bandy, approach to the music) and Selina Martin, who you're less likely to see back this way for awhile, unless you make it to one of her other shows around BC. She's in Roberts Creek tomorrow night!
Don't forget your Dead Bob record!
March 21 - Roberts Creek, BC - The Little Legion with SFH
Mar 24 - Vancouver, BC - Green Auto with Slowpoke and The Smoke and The Minimalist Jug Band. doors 7pm TICKETS HERE
March 29-31 - Penticton, BC - Ignite the Arts Festival
Apr 4 - Duncan, BC - house concert - andrew@barelynorth.com
Apr 5 - Powell River, BC - Cranberry Hall with the Womens Punk Rock Choir.
Apr 6 - Campbell River, BC - private concert
Apr 7 - Victoria, BC - Wheelies with Hush Hush Noise
Vancouver show event page here.
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