6/29/2005 05:36:00 AM|W|P|dan|W|P|HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! those images in full MINOR THREAT COMPLETE DISCOGRAPHY "NOTHING BUT RESPECT" also |W|P|111999098259537358|W|P|Washington 1, Niketown 0|W|P|danpawley@gmail.com6/27/2005 03:48:00 AM|W|P|dan|W|P|I was going to write a lengthy diatribe about just how Glastonbury is the most repellent of music festivals, but I've had a beer and the sun is shining, and I am seized by an unaccountable niceness so I won't. But just put on your TV and look at that odious sea of self-contented smugness and tell me you would like to go camping with just one of those horrible weekend hippies. Let alone 120,000 of them. Rock music as a lifestyle accessory for rich London trustfund kids and Dave from accounts? Ghastly. I am blogging to:NMA|W|P|111981190482552580|W|P|Bummer In The Summer|W|P|danpawley@gmail.com6/27/2005 08:21:00 PM|W|P| Marcus|W|P|So not at all jealous about not going then? ;)6/28/2005 04:45:00 AM|W|P| dan|W|P|no, just a miserable git.6/18/2005 04:33:00 AM|W|P|dan|W|P|I stole this from jukebox graduate. It says everything I'd like to but can't about one of my favourite bands. Email me and I'll burn you a CD. "So the whole point of this, actually, was to try to explain Marah to the rest of you, to share what I feel like is the biggest secret in the world. So many people have not even bothered or tried once or felt betrayed by a certain album's release (I swear, put a banjo on a record once and the insurgent country fans will never, ever let you live it down, ask Jeff Tweedy and Ryan Adams if you don't believe me). I talk to people in the industry about this band and I get a shrug or total disinterest. 'The record didn't do much for me,' they say. I urge them to check out the live show. 'Well, I saw them a year or two ago, it was acoustic, not very compelling.' I explain that it is not quite the same these days, that they've found their stride, that they are MISSING Something. And yet, these are the same people who are working themselves into a paroxysm over the likes of Franz Ferdinand and the Arcade Fire and Interpol and I don't get it. All of that is good music, sure, well-crafted and well-played, and in some cases even with personality and humor, but I am not finding heart and soul and that indefinable thing that makes you ache and yearn and fills the empty places inside, the way I do with Marah. Can I talk to you about 'Reservation Girl'? That might help. 'Reservation Girl' is, as of this writing, unrecorded, and frankly, I don't think it could ever be recorded, or at this point, ever should be recorded, because it's this amorphous energy being in and of itself, it takes on a life of its own every time they play it, it is never the same song or the same feeling and I'm not sure that the band know what's going to happen every time they play it. I know when I saw them play a show in September, just, you know, your garden variety Marah show, not a special event or anything, 'Reservation Girl' was so hard and so pure and so sharp that it made me cry, and when it finished I turned to the boyfriend and said, 'We have to go tomorrow night.' (They were playing two blocks from my apartment, but we had chosen to see another show that night, which was why we had driven to Philly for this one.) So, like I mentioned already, it's a show-closer. Of course, you're never quite sure what and when the end of the show is going to be, if Dave is going to follow the list or not (night two of the Marage Thanksgiving shows, he was disavowing all knowledge of the list, but at Sin-e on 9/11, him and Serge got into a fight because Serge had the wrong guitar on, and Dave pointed to the list in frustration). So out of nowhere, you'll hear the intro notes, kind of shimmering, played at varying speeds, anywhere from achingly slow, with a little bit of delay, to a little bit quicker and brighter, sometimes they go on a little while before Dave starts singing, sometimes they coincide – when they start prior to the vocals, it's like some kind of clarion call for everyone, the musicians to batten down the hatches, for the fans to take their places and gather their wits about them. So Dave sings the first verse, slowly, drawing each line out, with that intro melody line repeating itself: 'i got myself a girl... took a little ride.... into a desert night... i talk a little jive... Now Slo-Mo comes in, those soaring lap steel notes kind of drifting through the melody now, while Dave keeps singing: 'what's a man to do... what's a man to say... who says i'm a man.... anyway.... Okay, are you ready? Because you need to hang on, now the band comes in, BOOM: "got myself a girl took a little ride into a desert night talk a little jive got myself a love love i didn't need reservation girl girl i didn't need It's full band now, full ON band, Dave and Serge singing together, and it's not exactly singing, depending on the mood, it could be growling, scowling, crooning and some combination between Marvin Gaye, Jackie Wilson, Paul Westerberg and Greg Dulli. Now it's trancelike, the energy and momentum are building, getting higher and higher, more and more intense, the sweat is pouring off of both Dave and Serge by now. It's this energy-raising chant, almost, it's hypnotic, mantra-like, getting more and more feverish and fervent, sometimes desperate and yearning, sometimes wild and hard: So now is right about when all hell breaks loose, Dave will find the nearest bar, ledge, speaker stack, or drum riser to climb on, Serge is going to peel off searing guitar licks and at some point jump off the stage and head into the crowd, he can offer up his guitar as sacrifice for someone to play, he can lie down on the floor and play, he can run out and back again, he can lose himself in the crowd and let us hold him up, and then there is counterpoint between both of them, with Slo-Mo back there somewhere, and it's chaos and frenzy and sweat and heat and energy and breath and love and fury and anger and yearning, it's like being whipped around in a rock and roll Tilt-A-Whirl.... ...and then, at some point, it has to end. You don't want it to but it does, you're trying to find band members wherever they are, they are trying to get back onto the stage - not that anything could, really, possibly follow that and not be anticlimactic in the extreme. It is statement of intent, it is a declaration of war, it is their calling card, it is 6 or 7 minutes of Marah distilled like moonshine into solid form. And that, I guess, is Marah, or the best I can come to explaining what they are all about, what they are really like. Even though it doesn't, you know, it doesn't tell you about 'Point Breeze' (my favorite opening line - 'Headlight cars do battle down the boulevard') or 'Christian Street' (one of my favorites, and equally compelling acoustic or electric) or what 'Soul' is like live, how it's become almost the Marah theme song ('So turn off all your lights/It’s your favorite song tonight/If you need to spend a while/In the part of you/called Soul') or the covers, even, I haven't even gone NEAR the covers, because they're epic. Everything from 'Crush On You' to 'Bonzo Goes To Bitburg' to 'Baba O'Riley' to 'Little Bitty Pretty One' to a drunken version of 'Dead Flowers' that would've done Ryan Adams proud, and how 'Round Eye Blues' is one of the finest post-era Vietnam War songs, and 'Barstool Boys' makes me cry, and how they can transform 'It's Only Money, Tyrone' from Philly street ballad to countrified harmonized soul that makes the entire audience hush in awe. I don't feel like I'm doing the body of work justice, because it is so broad and deep and there is still so much left in them. They are everything you love and yet they are unmistakably themselves, and who they are is so pure and true and shining, even when they fall down there is a nobility to things, it's not if you fall it's how you do it - what matters most is how you walk through the fire, as Bukowski said. And Marah walk through the fire with strength and dignity, and an intent that overshadows many if not most. Dave and Serge will make music forever, until you pry the guitars out of their cold dead hands. That's a promise and a threat, a covenant and a statement, which is something that I'm hard pressed to find in many other places these days. And that's probably why I'm in it for the long haul, ridiculously obsessed, hopelessly in love with a rock band, once again." I swear, I read this, jumped up, put on my bootleg of Reservation Girl and leapt around the room playing air guitar in that special way that only 33 year old men who should know better can. Thanks.|W|P|111903720391685736|W|P|How To Fall In Love With A Rock'n'Roll Band|W|P|danpawley@gmail.com6/17/2005 05:02:00 AM|W|P|dan|W|P|Good news for Cornwall. Not so good was the death of Nick Darke earlier this week. I've don't think I've ever enjoyed a play in the theatre as much as I did The King Of Prussia. And somehow Andrew Lloyd Webber can still thrive. I am blogging to: The Jayhawks|W|P|111895292567187502|W|P|rydhsys rag Kernow lemmyn|W|P|danpawley@gmail.com6/17/2005 08:34:00 PM|W|P| Marcus|W|P|They'll be wanting their own Government next, and then we can cut the Ferry chains and Cornwall can float off into the Channel.


Not that I'm from Devon or anything ;)6/18/2005 03:17:00 AM|W|P| dan|W|P|or particularly good at geography. If Cornwall is going to drift anywhere, wouldn't be out into the Atlantic or the Irish Sea?6/18/2005 04:44:00 PM|W|P| Marcus|W|P|Well that's what you'd think but the Cornish want to go the other way, honest.

Or yes I got confused. :)6/05/2005 10:58:00 PM|W|P|dan|W|P|Full blog to come, but for now content yourself in knowing that our new Paris photos are up here I am blogging to:Noir Desir|W|P|111797998339017112|W|P|Back from the continent|W|P|danpawley@gmail.com