Ghost Cousin Wiki Page

Ghost Cousin is an independent Edmonton based impressionist pop ensemble. The group’s first song “Big Dig” was written in 2008 and their first group performance was in January of 2010.  They are currently remastering their debut EP ”Landscape of Animals”.

Biography

All members of the four-piece band were born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. David and Mathew Letersky are brothers. Matthew Gooding and Shane are childhood friends of the brothers. All four members attended the University of Alberta. David and Matthew have undergraduate degrees in English and Computer Science, respectively. Shane is currently enrolled in an economics major and Mathew is studying music. Shane and Mathew were in a band in high school that disbanded due to artistic differences. Following this the four guys joined forces to form the group Gone Savage. Gone Savage was self-described as a rock band with no particular musical style. In order to facilitate a fresh start the members changed their name, Ghost Cousin, and subsequently their sound.The three main influences, as described by the band, are Steely Dan, Midlake, and Grizzly Bear. The stylistic influences of Radiohead and Sergeant Pepper-era Beatles can also be heard in their music. In fact, the song “I Wanna Hold Your Otter Hand” was titled after the group viewed a Beatles documentary, a direct reference to The Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”. The band chooses not to limit themselves to any one particular style, but instead try to find the balance between their music being interesting to listen to, fun to play, and energetic. The band toured throughout July 2010 encompassing fifteen shows stretching Vancouver to Halifax. The tour was internally known as the “Profit and Pleasure Tour”. While they struggled with lack of exposure, the band considers the tour a period of growth despite its ambiguous reception. The band’s live performances are notable for their unique stage arrangement that feature the drums at the front of the stage. This is largely due to the fact that Mathew is both the drummer and the lead vocalist. Currently, the band is remastering their previously released EP ”Landscape of Animals”.

Band Members
Mathew Letersky – drums/vocals

David Letersky – keyboard/vocals

Shane Hauser – guitar

Matthew Gooding – bass

Discography

EPs:

Landscape of Animals

Associated Acts

National Security Council, Scrapbooker, Consilience

External Links

http://www.myspace.com/ghostcousin

http://www.facebook.com/ghostcousin?sk=info

http://ghostcousin.bandcamp.com/track/landscape-of-animals

http://ghostcousin.bandcamp.com/

- Becky Smith-Mandin, Tasreen Hudson, Logan Cooper, Kylie Burton, Max Lebeuf, Konrad Blikowski

Count Yourself In

One of my co-workers is the drummer from the local band Ten Second Epic. I decided to recite the chorus of his band’s late single “Count Yourself In” to him. My approach for this blog assignment was unique due to the plain fact that I wanted to see how someone would react to being randomly confronted with their own work. I didn’t decide on using him/his band for this blog assignment until I spotted him at work. I quickly decided on the idea, looked up the lyrics on my phone and off I went…

“’Cause we don’t care enough. (We don’t care enough)

So don’t hold it off.

You’re what gets me off (gets me off)

And gets me through long and sober days.

You don’t deserve to be unnoticed.

You don’t deserve to be treated like that.

We’ve gone too far to be unnoticed”

I recited the lyrics in a voice greatly lacking emotion so initially, he assumed that I was mocking him and his band’s work, although masking his feeling by an awkward, confused smile. I waited with glowing eyes and a look of mischief in silence for his reaction. All I managed to get out of him was a lack luster… “Thanks, that was great.” As he walked away I explained the reasoning for what just transpired and he remarked, still slightly perplexed, “Hah, I thought you were making fun of me.”

-Konrad Blikowski

Strange?

I chose to recite a lyric to, naturally, my charming mythology professor. Interestingly enough it ties in to Tuesday’s lecture as to why nobody is writing about politics or war anymore. Written in 2003, here’s Metric’s chorus for the song “IOU”

“Every ten year old enemy soldier think falling bombs are shooting stars sometimes,

But she doesn’t make wishes on them,

When she wishes, she wishes for less ways to wish for,

More ways to work toward it,

Ten year old enemy soldier,

Our falling bombs are her shooting stars.”

I found this lyric to be extremely relevant for the time, although I wasn’t old enough to really appreciate it or know what it was about until a few years later. I chose it because I thought it would spark up a conversation, but the response I got from a confused looking professor was “That was strange.” He went on to say that the part of his mind that thinks about war doesn’t associate with the part for popular music. I was surprised to hear this to say the least. Has popular music culture drifted so far from politics and social issues that the associations are no longer made? I’d like to think not, and while there are a few musicians who write about serious issues, the absence is overwhelming.

Arcade Fire is pushing this boundary now, especially with “The Suburbs”, and they have made their way into the ‘mainstream’. Most of today’s youth doesn’t like to hear about war, they want something fun to dance to, as long as it has a beat and they can sing along. The media knows this, and as an industry, it thrives on giving the youth, their target audience, what they want. There are always exceptions, but if this leads to an uneducated generation, something is going wrong. We need to have some involvement, with the media being our main influence, I believe we need more artists like Metric and Arcade Fire.

-Tasy

The Feeling That I Found…

“Squeeze the tubes and empty bottles / And take a bow take a bow take a bow / It’s what you feel now / What you ought to what you ought to.”

I catch my dad on his way downstairs. I read him the lyrics. He obviously has no idea what I’m on about. No need, though.
With a joking look on his face, he replies:
“Words to live by. Words to live by. Who said that?”
“Radiohead.”
Still in jest, he nods knowingly and walks on.

Disappointment. Not because the lyric didn’t resonate with him: out of the context of “Faust Arp” the line isn’t particularly memorable. No, it was the speed of his dismissal. There was never a moment to take me seriously, to try and grasp what I was communicating, why I was communicating it. I’m sure most people can relate to what I felt: that wave of frustration when someone just doesn’t understand that you are trying to share a part of yourself with them.

Determined to have a meaningful exchange with someone, I tried out various lyrics on different friends. It didn’t matter if I quoted Cohen or the Weakerthans, they all followed the same pattern: I would awkwardly blurt out lyrics (sometimes forgetting them, which was especially humiliating), and my friends would give me an amused look before moving on with the conversation. Nothing, it seems, could make the process anything other than laughable. I resigned myself to this fact.

Then I went out for tea with an old friend who has been having a difficult time lately. She had been away, so it was the first time I’d seen her in many months. While our initial reunion was emotional, our conversation soon turned to school and friends: things that seemed to be unimportant when there was so much going on just under the surface. Still, I knew she would tell me if and when she felt ready.

Walking home there was a lull in our conversation. I didn’t know what else to talk about, so I did what is second nature: I began to sing. Specifically, I began to sing The National’s “England,” which I’d been listening to earlier.

“Someone send a runner through the weather that I’m under / For the feeling that I lost today. / Someone send a runner for the feeling that I lost today.”

The atmosphere immediately changed. Maybe it was that the intimate act of singing affirmed our closeness, or that the song itself that evoked certain emotions. Maybe it was just that I’d broken the silence. In any case, my friend began to tell me about her experiences. I listened, and we began an honest and emotional conversation. Later on this process repeated itself: in another moment of quiet I began to sing, and once again it felt easier to address difficult topics. It wasn’t until after we’d said goodbye that I realized the potential connection between the singing and how we were communicating.

So in the end, I didn’t have any significant exchanges after intentionally reciting lyrics to people. Instead, it was the one time that I instinctively used music to express myself that I found real meaning. And so it should be. Music is ultimately a spiritual experience: something that can’t (or shouldn’t) be forced. And, as I realized with my friend, when it’s genuine it can have an unexplainable power to build and reaffirm bonds between people.

-Becky Smith-Mandin

Bury Me a G

I chose to recite Bury Me a G by Young Jeezy to my friend Cam, I picked this song because I knew he liked it and I wanted to see how pumped he got. We always listen to the song driving and all my friends know the words to it, but I’ve never thought to ask how anyone actually feels about the song. So at Deweys I started randomly singing it and Cam instantly joined in. After we finished our little back and forth of verses I asked him how he felt about the song.

This is the verse I started with:

“Pour out a little liquor, bury me in some Evisu jeans
A USDA top and a throw-away glock
Bury me a G, nothin more nothin less
When I get where I’m goin, I just gotta be fresh”

and this is Cam’s reaction:

“It makes me feel like nothing else in the world matters, just living in the moment. The song just get’s my adrenaline pumping and I just go with the vibe. It makes me wish I was as G’d as Young Jeezy”.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

 

Pub(l)ic Humiliation

Originally I intended to explore the reactions I would garner by playing a slightly crass ukulele song in the University train station. The song itself is a tongue and cheek ode to pubic hair and the choice a woman should have in her maintenance of said area. It’s certainly not prolific, it is not a song I praise for its musical or lyrical brilliance. It is simple and it is in your face. But it does start a dialogue that I think is important: a dialogue about personal choice. The song is Amanda Palmer’s Map of Tasmania.

Here is a Map of Tasmania so you can all be

in on the joke (hint: it is shaped very much like a vagina!):

Now, my problem here in lies: I figured that a song with lyrics like “tits” “ass” and “if it gets too bushy you can trim” would garner at least some response from a group of people with nothing to do but wait for a train and listen to me. But it didn’t. Which caused me to change my point of focus. Why does Amanda Palmer get such a vastly different reaction on her first playing, not overly eloquently executed, certainly imperfect, while I only get awkward stares and avoidant glares? And would I find different results if I asked an audience to listen to me? So this is what I did. After my embarrassing Map of Tasmania Train Experiment failure, I opted to try experiment number two: The Map of Tasmania Classroom Experiment. I asked a group of people from my Women’s Studies class if I could perform a song for them. The results? I will show you.

First, here is Amanda Palmer’s first ever performance of Map of Tasmania:

Now, Amanda Palmer is playing this song in Tasmania for a Tasmanian audience who are a) in on the joke and b) overjoyed at a song written specifically for them. As well, anybody attending an Amanda Palmer show would likely know her stance on the beauty standard and her love for challenging norms. She gets cheers throughout, laughs, and ecstatic clapping at the end. Hint: you will not see this in my renditions.

Here is my attempt at playing this in the University train station. Two disclaimers: this is not the typical musical or lyrical style I write/play in, nor am I as proficient on the ukulele as one might hope. The second, after gathering the courage to play this song I realized the cold had warped the tuning on the ukulele, for fear of losing my audience I continued to play. I now realize this was a mistake. It sounds terrible. My apologies.

My favourite part is certainly when the man in front of me takes out his earphones long enough to hear what’s going on and then promptly inserts them again. It could be the out of tune ukulele making people avoidant or the uncomfortable nature of what I am singing or the fact that there is a video process involved. Or simply that a strange female has busted out a ukulele in a freezing cold station and is singing about pubic hair. But I certainly did not get the reaction I thought I would. I figured at least one person would be offended enough to say something to me or think it was interesting enough to respond in some way. Not the case. People simply avoided me or watched awkwardly from afar. Thoroughly unimpressed with this (and wanting redemption for my terrible out of tune playing) I sought my classmates.

A special thanks to Julisse who agreed to be in a video on youtube for a strange classmate and to Stephanie for wandering around recording me. After asking for an audience I get some obligatory clapping (great for the ego) and more participation in the song, real engagement with the lyrics. People laugh at the parts that are supposed to be funny and keep their focus on me during my playing. Still, it is interesting to note that most people, when asked for a direct response to the song, seem to make face value comments. In this case, often, “It’s funny”. It is, certainly. But it is also more than that. It’s an important dialogue about the beauty standard and personal choice.  I certainly can’t get away with turning this song into this the way that Amanda Palmer can. She has a legion of followers who listen to her opinions and, as fans of her, many tend to be in the same mindset. My strangers in the station and classroom are merely people going about their day being stopped by an unusual tune that they didn’t pay money for and aren’t fans of. But that’s okay too.

For interest’s sake, here is the song that Amanda Palmer wrote Map of Tasmania as a response to. It is an ad for a razor. And certainly brings light to exactly why I think Map of Tasmania, with its simplicity, obscenity, and imperfections, is important.

And also, where the song, two years later, has ended up. Here it is with a “phat beat” and a video:

Next time, I think I’ll play my own songs.

- Kylie

Something worth sharing

I came across this video and couldn’t resist sharing it. It’s hilarious. This guy really knows how to entertain an audience!