There’s some days where you find inspiration hard to come by. For that, I turn to music and try to tune out the rest of the world. Going through the library, I settled on Swearing At Motorists[wiki]. I met these guys a few times and seen a handful of their shows. Another sample of my affinity for bands with just two guys.
At every single show I’ve been to, Dave Doughman always has problems with his guitar. I’m not sure if it’s all the thrashing around that he does or the amount of self-servicing he does to that thing. My favorite time was at SXSW in 2002(which is where the clip above was filmed as well). There was a short somewhere in his guitar, and he had to hold it at a perfect angle, damn near completely still. To know S@M, you know that Dave is everywhere on stage. So there he was, in the middle of a set, right in the middle of a song, standing on stage like a mannequin, and screams, “I’m trying so hard not to flip out!”
I got the idea to check out their website to see what’s the latest on them. Dave’s going to be a husband and father, if not already. However, living in Berlin now, making it back to the states is going to be tricky for them to tour. Aside from that news, I was also excited to hear about an album they put out last October on Secretly Canadian, “Exile On Gipsstrasse”. The making of the album has a fascinating story, and knowing what I do of the guy, I can’t say that it surprises me.
I started taking my guitar to the Ubahnhof – an underground train station – at the end of my street to busk. The first night I didn’t make much money, but was floored by the huge sound created in the tube by my unamplified acoustic guitar and voice. So the next night I returned with my tape machine and 2 microphones, set them up, got good levels, and just let the tape roll as I busked. I made a little more money that night, but upon returning home and giving the tape a listen, realized that the trains and passengers were too distracting from the overall recording. [secretlycanadian]
You can read the rest for yourself, but the story goes on to tell how he kept going to the station later and later to record, eventually trading all the studio tracks for that of the underground station. If you’re curious to hear what it sounds like, the whole album is currently available for free here.
Listening to it right now, there’s not much for percussion like previous stuff, but I’ve always been a fan of Dave’s vocal styling. You can even hear the sounds of train passengers passing by in some tracks. I have to say that this is the type of recording that I really respect, more so because he broke into station at one point for the sake of getting this record done.