Wild Bill Ketelhut provides the "blog" to this anti-blog
He has a radio program on WXOU out of Oakland University
Wild At Heart
FREE TICKETS & INTERVIEW:
He has a radio program on WXOU out of Oakland University
Wild At Heart
FREE TICKETS & INTERVIEW:
The Cult. OK, now that I have your attention, more later on the free tickets on this site, but I had the pleasure of interviewing the Cult’s lead singer Ian Astbury last Friday.
I have seen Ian Astbury perform twice in my life. The first time was in 2002 when he spent a brief stint as the lead singer of The Doors of the 21st Century due to his resemblance of Jim Morrison. The concert was at Pine Knob and had the openers Vanilla Fudge (all original line up), the Yardbirds and Steppenwolf which are all favorite rock N rollers of mine. I was also a Doors fan but I’m always worried when a pivotal member of a band is replaced, but due to the openers, along with the fact that Robby Krieger and Ray Manzarek (arguably the brains behind the Doors sound) were there, made this a must see show. Winning tickets for the Black Sabbath/Iron Maiden Ozzfest prior to going into the venue just sweetened the deal. What surprised me most was just how Ian seemed to have become Jim with his off the cuff remarks and swagger on stage. Ian calls his time with this tour as a “profound experience” which he was very “self conscious” of as it took him about 30 shows to truly become familiar with the subtext of the music. He also remarked how brilliant he thought Robby and Ray were since “they were the ones who pushed (the group) musically” and Ian felt that as great a frontman was for the group, that Jim wouldn’t have been successful on his own.
Flash forward a few more years and Ian reformed the Cult and went on tour again when I saw him in 2007 at the Fillmore. The band put on a great show though a lot of the nuance that I saw in the Doors venture was still there, just different. The cult is currently putting out what is called Capsule 2 which is a response by Ian to get away from the more commercial aspects of the music business and get back to a DIY landscape. He looks at the band Crass as an example of a group that was “politically and artistically a great influence” and Ian finds himself possibly looking back at his life and trying to recapture that aspect of his music.
Born in England, Ian’s father moved him to Hamilton, ON where he (his father) worked in the steel industry. Ian grew up with a wave of immigrants which colored his life. He was hanging out with kids from Chin, India and Turkey as well as Native Americans due to the fact that despite being white, he was considered an immigrant himself. He just found himself hanging out with these kids and saw first hand the ideas of racism and became a target for bullies. But this ostracism also got him in touch with the cultures of his friends, esp two Mohawk kids where he “explored the music of Bowie and read up on the metaphysical nature of Indians, esp their ceremonies”. At 12 years old, he was reading up on the 6 Nations which had a big effect on him as well as the new punk movement where groups like the Sex Pistols spoke his language.
This Native culture also influenced the name of the band as they were called the Southern Death Cult which was named after the Native American Southeastern Ceremonial Complex in the Mississippi area of the US. This was a big trade center made up of a number of different tribes which appealed to Ian. Songs like “Dreamtime” and “Horse Nation” to name a few were about different aspects of this culture. It is this type of culture that Ian would like us to hearken back to when American was a true “land of opportunity” which seems broken today. Ian relates to the lyrics of Neil Young’s song Alabama with the lines “Your Cadillac has got a wheel in the ditch and a wheel on the track” that shows we are losing are way with our commercialism. Ian says that both the US and Europe are in a bad shape and that the idea of the US “as a land of milk and honey” doesn’t fully exist anymore.
When we talked, he was calling from Buffalo, NY which is about an hour from where I am and he says “it looks depressing” as he is “looking at an area all boarded up”. He will be coming to Detroit soon and says that he remembers Detroit being the same and he is looking at a boarded up building that says “American Made”. He makes the point of seeing mines closed and small communities that are the heart of the US and Europe hurting in these troubled times. All this has influenced him to get away from the “career entertainment circuit” and reconnecting with both his punk rock and working class roots. And that is what he has done with the new marketing of the Cults latest release.
Entitled “Capsule 2: New Blood Deep Cuts”, due out Nov 16th, features the new songs “Embers” and “Until The Light Takes Us” and includes live recordings of some of the band’s big hits as well as an intimate look into The Cult's rehearsal space, with a never before seen warm-up performance of “Black Angel”. With this release, the band is stepping away from the traditional method of releasing a long form CD and turning to a more multimedia outlet. The Capsules span multiple media formats including vinyl, digital, USB, CD and DVD and can be purchased at: http://cultcapsulestore.com. There is a bit of reluctance since Ian feels that “the ability to cannibalize a record takes away from the integrity of the work” though admits that some records have only a few good songs. The future of the industry may be digital but Ian seems to feel a connection to the old way of doing things.
Ian was a pleasure to talk to and I recommend seeing the Cult live if you have the chance to catch them on 11/17 in Grand Rapids, MI @ The Orbit Room, 11/18 in South Bend, IN @ Club Fever or 11/19 in Detroit @ Fillmore. This tour consists of Ian Astbury (vocals), Billy Duffy (guitar), Chris Wyse (bass), John Tempesta (drums) and Mike Dimkich (rhythm guitar), who worked with producer Chris Goss (Queens of the Stone Age, Unkle) to bring the new capsule recordings to life.
I have seen Ian Astbury perform twice in my life. The first time was in 2002 when he spent a brief stint as the lead singer of The Doors of the 21st Century due to his resemblance of Jim Morrison. The concert was at Pine Knob and had the openers Vanilla Fudge (all original line up), the Yardbirds and Steppenwolf which are all favorite rock N rollers of mine. I was also a Doors fan but I’m always worried when a pivotal member of a band is replaced, but due to the openers, along with the fact that Robby Krieger and Ray Manzarek (arguably the brains behind the Doors sound) were there, made this a must see show. Winning tickets for the Black Sabbath/Iron Maiden Ozzfest prior to going into the venue just sweetened the deal. What surprised me most was just how Ian seemed to have become Jim with his off the cuff remarks and swagger on stage. Ian calls his time with this tour as a “profound experience” which he was very “self conscious” of as it took him about 30 shows to truly become familiar with the subtext of the music. He also remarked how brilliant he thought Robby and Ray were since “they were the ones who pushed (the group) musically” and Ian felt that as great a frontman was for the group, that Jim wouldn’t have been successful on his own.
Flash forward a few more years and Ian reformed the Cult and went on tour again when I saw him in 2007 at the Fillmore. The band put on a great show though a lot of the nuance that I saw in the Doors venture was still there, just different. The cult is currently putting out what is called Capsule 2 which is a response by Ian to get away from the more commercial aspects of the music business and get back to a DIY landscape. He looks at the band Crass as an example of a group that was “politically and artistically a great influence” and Ian finds himself possibly looking back at his life and trying to recapture that aspect of his music.
Born in England, Ian’s father moved him to Hamilton, ON where he (his father) worked in the steel industry. Ian grew up with a wave of immigrants which colored his life. He was hanging out with kids from Chin, India and Turkey as well as Native Americans due to the fact that despite being white, he was considered an immigrant himself. He just found himself hanging out with these kids and saw first hand the ideas of racism and became a target for bullies. But this ostracism also got him in touch with the cultures of his friends, esp two Mohawk kids where he “explored the music of Bowie and read up on the metaphysical nature of Indians, esp their ceremonies”. At 12 years old, he was reading up on the 6 Nations which had a big effect on him as well as the new punk movement where groups like the Sex Pistols spoke his language.
This Native culture also influenced the name of the band as they were called the Southern Death Cult which was named after the Native American Southeastern Ceremonial Complex in the Mississippi area of the US. This was a big trade center made up of a number of different tribes which appealed to Ian. Songs like “Dreamtime” and “Horse Nation” to name a few were about different aspects of this culture. It is this type of culture that Ian would like us to hearken back to when American was a true “land of opportunity” which seems broken today. Ian relates to the lyrics of Neil Young’s song Alabama with the lines “Your Cadillac has got a wheel in the ditch and a wheel on the track” that shows we are losing are way with our commercialism. Ian says that both the US and Europe are in a bad shape and that the idea of the US “as a land of milk and honey” doesn’t fully exist anymore.
When we talked, he was calling from Buffalo, NY which is about an hour from where I am and he says “it looks depressing” as he is “looking at an area all boarded up”. He will be coming to Detroit soon and says that he remembers Detroit being the same and he is looking at a boarded up building that says “American Made”. He makes the point of seeing mines closed and small communities that are the heart of the US and Europe hurting in these troubled times. All this has influenced him to get away from the “career entertainment circuit” and reconnecting with both his punk rock and working class roots. And that is what he has done with the new marketing of the Cults latest release.
Entitled “Capsule 2: New Blood Deep Cuts”, due out Nov 16th, features the new songs “Embers” and “Until The Light Takes Us” and includes live recordings of some of the band’s big hits as well as an intimate look into The Cult's rehearsal space, with a never before seen warm-up performance of “Black Angel”. With this release, the band is stepping away from the traditional method of releasing a long form CD and turning to a more multimedia outlet. The Capsules span multiple media formats including vinyl, digital, USB, CD and DVD and can be purchased at: http://cultcapsulestore.com
Ian was a pleasure to talk to and I recommend seeing the Cult live if you have the chance to catch them on 11/17 in Grand Rapids, MI @ The Orbit Room, 11/18 in South Bend, IN @ Club Fever or 11/19 in Detroit @ Fillmore. This tour consists of Ian Astbury (vocals), Billy Duffy (guitar), Chris Wyse (bass), John Tempesta (drums) and Mike Dimkich (rhythm guitar), who worked with producer Chris Goss (Queens of the Stone Age, Unkle) to bring the new capsule recordings to life.
for your chance to win a pair of tickets to the upcoming
Fillmore Detroit show on 11/19
I also had the brief opportunity to meet Leigh Rubin, the cartoonist who draws “Rubes”, one of the better “Far Side” contemporaries which is celebrating its anniversary today as it first appeared on Nov 1st, 1984 in the Antelope Valley Press. He says he started out at a young age when in Kindergarten he did his first gag strip, a simple 2 panel of a giant with his body in one panel and his head looking down from the second. He says he takes well to attention and flattery which was given to him by the teacher and his parents for this strip and thus a career is born. He started out with his father’s print business but eventually was doing art at street fairs selling pictures at $5 a pop and eventually did a book based on them. It “took (him) six months to sell out” though admitted his parents, who he was living with at the time, didn’t take too kindly to the boxes of books throughout the house. This also happened when he was working
on doing greeting cards so everyone was glad when his first strip was bought and he was able to entertain the idea of being a full fledged cartoonist.
As to getting good ideas, uses a lot of examples giving to him by watching his three kids as well as life in general. An idea for a crow dropping a nut cracker (the German kind) to open a nut came when he saw crows dropping nuts on the pavement and the idea worked itself from there. When the ideas do come, he “carries around a tape recorder to put down ideas when he commutes” though admits one should remember to take the recorder off the car roof as he has lost a few to such a fate (it also provided a cartoon with a Jetson’s car with a coffee mug on top as the drivers speeds away). He admits to enjoying the work on “Zits”, “Pearls Before Swine” and “Dilbert” and of course the work of “Peanuts”. Lastly, when asked about taboo topics, he admits there are a few early works he wouldn’t think of doing now but says that terrorism is taboo right now and he had issues with a airplane crash a while back. He sends his material in a few weeks at a time and one of his cartoons depicting a crashed airplane ended up running the day after a major crash. Despite having been written weeks before, he got a lot of hate mail due to the timing and got dropped by a few papers. So happy anniversary “Rubes” and keep us laughing.
There are only a few shows of note this week and they are:
Tuesday (11/02) – Richard Thompson @ the Michigan Theatre
Wednesday (11/03) – the Stranglers Hugh Cornwell @ Corktown Tavern
Saturday (11/06) – Ben Folds @ Michigan Theatre, Lights @ Eagle Theatre, Citizen Smile CD release party @ Pike Room
Sunday (11/07) – jam band Railroad Earth @ the Ark, local favs Electric Fire Babies and Outrageous Cherry @ Crofoot
Have a great week and hope you survived Halloween.
I also had the brief opportunity to meet Leigh Rubin, the cartoonist who draws “Rubes”, one of the better “Far Side” contemporaries which is celebrating its anniversary today as it first appeared on Nov 1st, 1984 in the Antelope Valley Press. He says he started out at a young age when in Kindergarten he did his first gag strip, a simple 2 panel of a giant with his body in one panel and his head looking down from the second. He says he takes well to attention and flattery which was given to him by the teacher and his parents for this strip and thus a career is born. He started out with his father’s print business but eventually was doing art at street fairs selling pictures at $5 a pop and eventually did a book based on them. It “took (him) six months to sell out” though admitted his parents, who he was living with at the time, didn’t take too kindly to the boxes of books throughout the house. This also happened when he was working
on doing greeting cards so everyone was glad when his first strip was bought and he was able to entertain the idea of being a full fledged cartoonist.
As to getting good ideas, uses a lot of examples giving to him by watching his three kids as well as life in general. An idea for a crow dropping a nut cracker (the German kind) to open a nut came when he saw crows dropping nuts on the pavement and the idea worked itself from there. When the ideas do come, he “carries around a tape recorder to put down ideas when he commutes” though admits one should remember to take the recorder off the car roof as he has lost a few to such a fate (it also provided a cartoon with a Jetson’s car with a coffee mug on top as the drivers speeds away). He admits to enjoying the work on “Zits”, “Pearls Before Swine” and “Dilbert” and of course the work of “Peanuts”. Lastly, when asked about taboo topics, he admits there are a few early works he wouldn’t think of doing now but says that terrorism is taboo right now and he had issues with a airplane crash a while back. He sends his material in a few weeks at a time and one of his cartoons depicting a crashed airplane ended up running the day after a major crash. Despite having been written weeks before, he got a lot of hate mail due to the timing and got dropped by a few papers. So happy anniversary “Rubes” and keep us laughing.
There are only a few shows of note this week and they are:
Tuesday (11/02) – Richard Thompson @ the Michigan Theatre
Wednesday (11/03) – the Stranglers Hugh Cornwell @ Corktown Tavern
Saturday (11/06) – Ben Folds @ Michigan Theatre, Lights @ Eagle Theatre, Citizen Smile CD release party @ Pike Room
Sunday (11/07) – jam band Railroad Earth @ the Ark, local favs Electric Fire Babies and Outrageous Cherry @ Crofoot
Have a great week and hope you survived Halloween.