Feist co-conspirator-collaborator-producer Gonzales is playing tonight at the Jane Mallet Theatre in Toronto. This is a rare performance by the criminal mastermind O.G. (Original Gonzales)—a man known as much for his slight of hand—as (soon) his album Soft Power. This record, at long last, makes Feist and Gonzales label-mates on Arts and Crafts.
Gonzo co-produced Feist's last two-albums and sprinkles his dust around a great gang of other musical minds. You will find this out when you read this article.
This video for his first single, Working Together, is amazing. When you're done, search and rescue his last album Solo Piano from the past, that time before you carried it always, hither and nigh.
And then, and then, if you're in Toronto tonight (and somehow if you're not), come see Gonzales, at the Jane Mallett Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre for the Performing Arts {27 Front Street East}. Doors are at 7:00; Tickets available at the door.
Here is an excerpt from the article linked to above, to tease you:
"Audiences in France have grown accustomed to Gonzales’s prankish humour: in concert, he is apt to cover Phil Collins and Philip Bailey’s Easy Lover or perform in white gloves with his hands projected on a screen above the stage. But even there, fans aren’t sure how to take his provocations."
Feist will be tick-talking with George Stroumboulopoulos on the Canadian programme The Hour on Monday, May 12 at 11:00 pm (CBC-TV, Canada). This story is developing...
Let's make this year a little crazier. We shall, shall we?
Feist is joining Billy Joel, James Taylor, Sting, Brian Wilson and many other men (and women too) on stage at Carnegie Hall tonight.
The event is not pretend, it is a real evening, and T-minus-a-few-hours marks the 15th year for Trudie Styler and Sting's Rainforest Foundation Fund concert.
The cause is a good one. An excerpt from their site:
"The Rainforest Foundation was one of the first organizations to focus on the vital link between preserving rainforests and supporting the rights of indigenous and traditional peoples who call the rainforests home...Our staff works with partner organizations in the rainforest to help indigenous communities to gain fundamental human rights, map their territories and file claims for land title, lobby for enforcement of laws and policy reforms, develop local sustainable development initiatives and monitor and manage natural resources."
The plan is to plant some footage here tomorrow. Come back, will you? We will.
Hayden tours with Feist across Canada; The Weakerthans punctuate this exclamation mark in Vancouver.
Check out the tour dates here.
The Hayden dates include:
the East Coast, Montreal, Toronto, London, Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton and Calgary. The Weakerthans join the show in Vancouver only. The Weakerthans always have beautiful album art, often teaming up with Winnipeg artists like Marcel Dzama (wiki). Visit Hayden's site here.
Just a little reminder that Feist, Ms. Feist, Leslie is appearing on the Conan O'Brien show tonight. The other guests include Hell's Kitchen chef-man Gordon Ramsay and comedio-actor (I made that up) Rob Corddry. Have you ever wondered about his unusual last name—Rob Corddry's—while still in the mind-set of making things up? I just did a little search and found his explanation on the New York Times website:
"My great-grandfather changed the name from Cordery to Corddry around the turn of the last century because his wife said it looked better on his lumber company’s sign."
It seems possible that Cordery/Corddry is a Scottish name, could be Irish, but let's continue smashing ideas together, and now consider the Scots. Gordon Ramsay is from the land of Scots and, since we now know more about the Corddrys, it seems only fair to shake more fruit from the tree of search engine to learn a bit about Gordon's history. I had heard that the Scots invented modern day Capitalism, and while I'm not sure if this is true, they apparently inaugurated the notion of branch banking. Scots comprise less than one-half of 1 percent of the world’s population, and yet 11 percent of Nobel prizes have been awarded to these Scotch drinkers. 15% of Canadians are of Scottish descent and 61% of American Presidents are of Scots or Scots-Irish descent. If you're wondering if a rogue Scottish hacker invaded this site, nae, you are mistaken mukker.
Feist is a German word, by the way. More on this after too many coffees another day.
The Feist-Colbert confab has been a long time coming. It is particularly charming how they dress like one another, and in a way one could only understand by watching the complete interview and attendant performance. Here is an excerpt from the talking part:
COLBERT: Do I call you Feist, Ms. Feist or Leslie?
FEIST: As long as you call me Stephen Colbert, you can call me anything you want.
The complete tête à tête is here.
A few commercials on, Colbert introduces Feist in a hot little number; she then sings a song, but not the one the blue jumpsuit might quickly summon.
Inset photo by Andrew Matheson.
Alexis Petridis wrote a substantial (tip top, blue ribbon, top drawer) article about Feist in a recent edition of The Guardian. She does a great job covering the last many years—touching on the Olympics, her parents, bad jobs and past bands—all the while titularly nodding to the calendar ahead. The only thing she doesn't mention was the bowling alley and the party times which danced in the background for much of the interview. Perhaps some scores just weren't fit to print?
I've posted an excerpt from the story next paragraph; follow this leader to a link below for the unabridged edition.
"Tonight, Feist stands silhouetted behind a paper screen, singing unaccompanied into a microphone, then crouches down to fiddle with an electronic device, looping her voice until it forms a gorgeous, ethereal chorus. She makes up an impromptu song about St Louis' landmarks - no mean feat given that the area isn't exactly overburdened with places of interest - and gets the audience to sing in harmony, assigning a different note to each of the theatre's tiers. She then sings 1-2-3-4, the single that has made her a star in America, thanks in no small part to its inclusion on an advert for the iPod Nano: even stripped of its startling video, featuring Feist in blue sequins leading a vast troupe of dancers through a complicated and slightly shambolic Busby Berkeley-ish routine, its nursery-rhyme simplicity is about as captivating as pop music can get. Alone on stage with an electric guitar, she then does a jagged, sad, slightly disturbing song called Fucked Up Kid, which plunges the venue into rapt silence. Even will-you-marry-me guy gives it a rest.
I saw Feist do something similar a year ago in a Brighton club a fraction of the Pageant's size: in Britain, thanks to her music's ubiquity on TV ads - where it has been used to sell perfume, mattresses and mobile phones - she's currently an artist more heard than heard of, a state of affairs that you can't imagine is going to last much longer. The audience was heavy on hipsters, presumably lured by Feist's long-standing associations with a succession of achingly trendy cult artists - she has sung with sprawling Canadian art-rock collective Broken Social Scene and ironic white rappers Peaches and Gonzales. There was an almost tangible air of come-on-impress-us about the audience, their cynicism perhaps compounded by the ads. But Feist was witty, charismatic and so obviously laden down with fantastic songs that they were utterly disarmed. By the end, they were virtually rolling on their backs and asking her to tickle their bellies: clapping along and happily acceding when she asked them to hum a note to which she could tune her guitar..."
Read more of Alexis' interview with Feist here.
Feist is joining Mr. Colbert (April 28th) and later Mr. Conan (April 30th) for two separate and wholly unrelated guest appearances. That's Monday and then Wednesday. Monday, Wednesday. Everybody dance now, especially Stephen in (we hope) the blue sparkling jumpsuit.
If you read any of the post-Juno articles, you likely noticed that the Muppets and Sesame Street came up a lot. Although Feist was (super) grateful to win the five Junos, she couldn't help but announce that the best day of her life happened recently, when she filmed 1 2 3 4 with the Muppets on Sesame Street.
There have been some amazing guests over the years. Phillip Glass! Okay, he didn't actually show up on screen, but the animation is worth watching. Actually, it looks and sounds like the kind of thing that might best be enjoyed before the sobriety of parenthood, before early mornings. Click here. Yo Yo Ma and the Honkers is amazing. Johnny Cash didn't bring his Ones to Town here, and more recently this hilarious triangle song (you'll see who is singing the song once you hit the link).
The show isn't airing for a few months, but as they say, stay tuned.
