Classic Albums #2

Slint—Spiderland
The choice of Spiderland, Slint's second album, as one of those "lost classics" has become a total music-nerd cliche. The album deserves the acclaim, however. I got it a couple years after it was released, when its legend had already started to grow. A lot of the records I was buying at the time bore distinct traces of Spiderland's influence, and when I started making my own music, it was hard not to lapse into lame imitation of its stylistic template. It opened up so many possibilities that it was nearly impossible to leave well enough alone.

Even ten years later, it's probably still a risky business to get onstage and do anything Slint-like within earshot of anyone who's ever visited Spiderland. They'd nail you but quick.

There have been so many oh-so-descriptive words spilled in honour of this album that I won't add to the adjectival slag heap here. You can read this instead.

That rock 'n' roll can go from "Maybellene" to Spiderland in the space of a couple generations is an idea that thrills me.

NP: "Cortez the Killer" Slint, live in Chicago, 1989

Don’t Annoy Us Further!
The Rush Concert, Book II

Early in the concert, Gary “Geddy” Lee joked that they had 6,000 songs to play that night. Well, it wasn’t quite that many, but they must have knocked out a couple dozen. Even though this tour was billed as “an evening with Rush” and the band had about three hours to kill, picking the set list still must have been a chore.

The Rush back catalogue has piled up like sediment over the decades, and they managed to stick a trowel into nearly every layer during the show. They didn’t prise any nuggets from the Caress of Steel LP (despised by the band, but a favourite of Rush curmudgeons like Sox and myself), but gems from nearly every other release were unearthed. I guess the problem is that some layers of the catalogue are richer than others. So while 1980’s Permanent Waves yielded “The Spirit of Radio,” “Freewill,” and “Natural Science”—all strident, “progressive” numbers that the audience received warmly—1990’s Presto yielded only “The Pass,” an earnest-but-lethargic tune that provided the first pee break for dozens of concertgoers.

As a musician I can sympathize with Rush’s plight. It’s always more fun to play newer stuff. But as a fan I’ll admit that I want some nostalgia tweaked, especially in the case of Rush, who saw me through four crucial and formative years of my life. I’ll never disown any of that music because, as my mantra goes, I’m loyal to the things and people I love. And although I’ve got no right to ask for such a thing from an artist, I do want my loyalty reciprocated—I’d like them to go back and play the stuff that gave me a thrill back in the days when my ears were hungry for cosmic bombast (now that I think of it, when haven’t they been?) and my head was reeling with new possibilities. I treasure those songs, so it’d be nice to know they’re still fond of them too.

My problem with present-day Rush music stems from the fact that I’ve grown and they’ve grown, but I don’t think we’ve grown together. I’ve wanted them to abstract their music, to use their instrumental prowess to venture into realms beyond the rock song. Instead they’ve veered off into a comparatively conservative approach to music and songcraft. During their epic heydays, besides the proliferation of hairpin-turn virtuosity and scary narrator voices on nearly every album, there was a sense that they were forcing lyrics and music together into songs, and that’s what gave them character. So what if the words didn’t always rhyme or the occasional line didn’t scan? So what if Geddy just sang along with the riff instead of creating a counter-melody to sing over top? The material wasn’t any less memorable for it.

For the last decade and a half they’ve streamlined their songs, trimming away those endearing rough edges. There’s always 10 to a dozen songs on each new album, all four or five minutes long, always a single for the radio. Verse-chorus-verse. You might say they’re less “progressive” than they were in the late seventies, but I’m not going to touch that issue for now—I’m in deep enough as it is. Maybe Rush aren’t the mad scientist/pot-smoking geniuses I took them for when I was 14. Maybe their music in 1977 sounded as conservative to seasoned 36-year-old music nerds then as their current stuff sounds to me now. All I can say is when I compare tepid offerings like Test for Echo and Roll the Bones, to records like King Crimson’s bracing and raucous The Construkction of Light, I find myself wondering why Lee, Lifeson and Peart haven’t made a similar leap into the great beyond.

But there I go, being an ungrateful sod. My aforementioned loyalty was reciprocated on Sunday night. Absolutely. Bearing in mind Rush’s long career arc, I couldn’t have realistically asked for a better bunch of songs. Like I said, they played “Natural Science,” which surprised me because it’s one of their more outlandish, ungainly songs, and one of their last great epics. It’s probably still in the set because it’s just a fun song to play. It also affords Geddy the opportunity to sing the lines “Each microcosmic planet/A complete society,” which may not be rock ’n’ roll, but I like it.

The set also featured several instrumentals, a much-loved variety of song that Rush can never write enough of, as far as I’m concerned. They trotted out “La Villa Strangiato” (featuring an odd Lifeson rap during the “Monsters!” section that had his partners exchanging bemused glances), “Leave That Thing Alone,” and “YYZ,” which is perhaps their most successful instrumental—exciting yet restrained, concise but very satisfying. People lapped it up, getting as “into it” as one can get at a Rush show.

There was no moshing, of course. You’re fairly safe from most concert-related injuries at a prog show. You might get a cuff in the head from an air drummer flicking out a hand to hit an imaginary splash cymbal, but that’s pretty rare. Or, if you were my friend Malty, you could get bounced by GM Place goons for too much headbanging during “Cygnus X-1.” One second, he was up front, hair flailing around in 11/8 time, the next, he had disappeared. Too bad, because if he’d caught “Working Man,” he would have really gone off.

I guess the staff were concerned for the safety of the child. Somebody in the second or third row saw fit to bring their six-year-old daughter to a Rush concert. Watching this kid perched on an adult guardian’s shoulders during “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” (“Square for battle/Let the fray begin!”) was cause for concern, and no doubt a lifetime of therapy awaits the traumatized tot.

Everyone I’ve spoken to about the concert has been quite moved by it. Whether their judgment is coloured by knowledge of recent Rush history, I don’t know. I’d prefer to think they were just awed by a spectacular rock concert. It’s sure nice to go to one of those now and again, and it was great to hear all those songs. Thanks, Sox.

Becoming Les Battersby
One of the highlights of the weekend was when the belter led me down to the basement of my local Salvation Army Thrift Store. I felt like a young monk being shown the Secrets of the Brotherhood. A torch, some cobwebs, bats, and mossy earthen walls would have completed the picture. Instead there was only a sign warning us that any abusive behaviour or language was grounds for immediate ejection from the premises. And instead of ancient scrolls and consecrated skeletal remains there was a massive tray of assorted cutlery, husks of obsolete computers, barrels full of golf clubs…the detritus of western civilization!

There were also records! We had no time to rifle through even a small portion of them, but I still managed to make a score: Quo by Status Quo. From 1974, the year rock attained perfection. I paid 54 cents for it, went home and rocked out.

I was mildly creeped out by the Sally Ann’s basement, and the sheer volume of junk down there. It looked like evidence of forced relocation, like the piles of shoes, clothing and jewellery heaped up in WW II concentration camps. Maybe the SA can twist The Bay’s slogan to its own purposes: Shopping Is Morbid. Works for me.

Went black light bowling with Mel and Adam and the belter last night. We played three games, and had the whole place to ourselves for the last two. The pins were falling strangely, and we think there was something wrong with the lane. There were lots of "goalposts," "the three amigos," and let's not forget "the lonesome dove." I think maybe too many people have been ignoring the "do not loft balls" sign and our lane had somehow become warped from the constant pounding over the years.

I won the first game through sheer luck/karma/divine intervention, and the fact that everyone else was getting warmed up. Later, as the pounding rhythms of "Tragedy" by the Bee Gees simultaneously inspired my companions and sapped my lifeblood, my game went to pieces and the Adam/Mel juggernaut quickly had the scoreboard sparkling with "X"s (which mean strike, you know) and "srares" (a curious typo for "spare" that appeared once and only once. Next time we go, I really hope to get a srare, too).

But it's not all about winning. It's about finding your optimum zone of bowling finesse and relaxation through drinking beer. I love playing sports.

I sure like tea. I drank a lot of it as little Robbie Hughes. I took my tea like any other youngster would—super-saturated with milk and sugar. So sweet and delicious. When I’d finished the tea there would be a slurry of semi-dissolved sugar at the bottom of the cup. That was the best part. I’d tilt the cup back and wait for the sugar to hit my lips. It oozed like wet concrete down a chute. When it reached my mouth, it was pure goodness…a total rush.

Despite all the tea, the Captain Crunch, the Coke floats, and the brownies, I was a pretty calm kid. I did ride my bike around a hell of a lot, though.

I’m reading A Head Full of Blue, an alcoholic’s autobiography, right now. Can’t you tell?

Back to the tea… I’m very well-catered for at work. There’s like 10 varieties to choose from, and they’re all one brand (except for a small crate of industrial-strength Red Rose). It cracks me up that the packaging for the caffeinated teas features a Ted McGinley male-model type, while the herbal/berry/lemony tea boxes show a wan Paltrow lookalike. In the afternoon sometimes I’ll have a cup of “lady tea” just for kicks. Perhaps I'm sensing the hysterical/sympathetic onset of “Bowser’s Curse.” In any case, hardly anyone else drinks the stuff, and I feel sorry for the Gwyneth tea.

Another thing—there’s no teapot at work. And tea made in the cup, especially the Red Rose, tastes like ass. Doesn’t stop me from drinking it, though. Would the coffee drinkers tolerate the same treatment?

I wrote a buttload more about Rush today. I got carried away, and my breezy concert summary has become a meditation on all things Rush-like. It's quite stupid, and you can expect it later this week.

Spent tonight copyediting 37 pages of album reviews for Unrestrained!, so my eyes and mind are burnt. However, I learned about new albums by Isis (check it out, they're on Ipecac now) and Napalm Death (I could sure do with going to a Napalm show in the next few months), and got further reassurance that I should buy the new Agalloch album. The Energizer's expecting some reviews from me tonight, but I haven't written them yet. The stuff he sent me wasn't too inspiring, though it was diverse--a bit of prog metal (urgh, it's Threshold), some Polish crap (Aion, who fail to gain any mystique by naming themselves after a Dead Can Dance album), and some useful hardcore in the form of Samadhi.

I'm going to have a bath and mull things over.

Flamin' Heck
Stoke now have their own weblog, and they're posting like mad. More fine work from Smash and Mr. Acmacblack. Join them on their, um, rock 'n' roll jihad.

Laughed At By Time
Much to my surprise, I found myself at a Rush concert Sunday night. My friend Bob Sox scored a fistful of comps from the radio station he works at, and distributed them amongst the D Room crowd. God bless the Sox!

The turnout was impressive for the pre-show gathering at Dix. Must have been the $2.50 draft. Mr. Black was there, as were the be-touqued Mr. and Mrs. Smash. Sox, Malty, Gregarious and Scum made the scene. Even the Shockker showed up for some caffeination. Gerald the Rattlehead (in a Dream Theater shirt, natch) was holding court in the corner.

We took off for GM Place around 7:00. Gig time was 7:30, and we had the feeling it would s tart on schedule—this is Rush we’re talking about, after all.

Scum and I had seats along the side, five rows up from the floor. Soon after I sat down, JR caught my attention. He and Rob were a couple sections over. I began to think that everyone I’d ever known was here. Perhaps that was my aunt Agnes over by the lighting board, chatting with Mr. Jameson, my grade six P.E. teacher. Maybe I’d bump into me old rhythm section partner Mike Schmidt by the merchandise stand (t-shirts—$35; Rush wallet—$20; Neil Peart’s new book—$30; being at a rock concert where they sell cotton candy—priceless).

The pre-show music was the usual interesting mix. I’ve always wondered if the band programs this themselves. I remember reading something back in the days of the “new wave” about them playing Talking Heads and suchlike in an effort to open the ears of their fans. And at one of the first Rush shows I attended I recall “Battlescar” (that majestic Max Webster/Rush collaboration) roaring out of the P.A., with an attendant cheer from the crowd that was nearly as loud as the start of the concert proper. A truly Canadian moment from the early ’80s. On Sunday we were primed with “Locomotive Breath” and the Chili Peppers’ version of “Higher Ground.”

Then the lights went down and Rush played “Tom Sawyer.”

At intermission I hung out in the concourse with some of our entourage and watched the people. Who goes to Rush concerts nowadays? The same people who went in 1978, basically. Plus their kids. There were also lots of rocker ladies, and more malformed people than I’d seen since my last evening at Studebaker’s. As I’d predicted, a sizable lineup for the men’s toilet formed quite quickly, while the ladies could walk right into theirs. Heh.

Next time: 6,000 Rush songs, air drumming, and who brought the tot?

Looks at Books
I’m reading Rick Moody’s Garden State right now. It was his first novel, and in the foreword of this edition, he’s semi-apologetic about this fact. I can see why the belter had problems with the book; it’s not up to the standard of, say, Purple America. For the first time in my experience, the author seems mortal. He hasn’t found his style yet—where are the italics with which Mr. Moody shares a small joke with the reader?*—and I’m not finding any of the characters very interesting or likable. They’re sulky and they think they’re so cool, but they’re not cool because it’s like 1989 and nothing was very cool in 1989. They’re probably listening to Skid Row when they could be listening to Bleach.

The novel follows a close-knit group of twentysomethings who play in bands, have parties, and listen to speed metal. They have unsatisfying sex and do drugs and drive around aimlessly. While I’m reading I keep seeing an over-earnest Gen-X movie in my head, maybe starring Shue or Leigh or Fonda, and I think I’ve seen that movie too many times before.

I’m not giving up on the book, though, because I’m heading into the last third of it and there are a couple mysteries I want cleared up. All will be revealed soon, I hope.

*His use of italics functions as much more than that—it also asserts his narrative authority, I suppose—but that’s the best way I can describe it at the moment. I don’t got all day.

Twenty Per Cent Off
I ventured down to A&B on the weekend and bought a couple things. I was actually looking for the new Spock’s Beard, but I was denied. Probably just as well because it’s a double album, and those can be a chore to get through even when they’re by a band as light and frothy as the Beard. I probably wouldn’t be able to listen to it straight through before the Christmas holidays.

Instead I got the first Caravan album, which is a true museum piece. Recorded in ’68, it sounds like a semi-botched attempt at getting a state-of-the-art “trippy” atmosphere—drenched in reverb, reedy organ swirling around, and drums struggling to punch through the murk. The songs have the naïve melodicism of The Pink Floyd garnished with occasional psycho-terror vocalizations à la Comus. I’m liking it.

I also picked up Shleep, that Robert Wyatt album I heard at Super Robertson’s party a while back. I listened to it in the background last night while I was copyediting, but a quick leaf through the hefty CD booklet made me pledge to give it proper listen (and read) soon.

Shleep… It’s been a while since I went to sleep with music on, mainly due to the change in my living arrangements. I used to do it nearly every weekend after a night out. Have one last drink of damnation, slap something scary into the blaster and drift off. I don’t dream after I’ve had alcohol, so maybe I was trying to provoke nightmares. I favoured Present, Univers Zero, and anything Italian. Darkthrone, too, very quietly, to provide soothing white noise. I’d only last a song or two; the rest of the album would play out while I slept. Sometimes I’d wake up to silence and the green LED glow of the blaster at 4 a.m. I’d sit up, reach over to turn the power off and quickly pass out again. Other times I’d sleep in properly, wake up, and notice that the blaster was still on…little hangover indication lights at the foot of my bed.

Here’s a top tip for all you budding interior designers: If you’re stuck for a satisfactory living room furniture arrangement, just take all your stuff and push it up against every available wall. This pleasing “perimeter effect” opens up a lot of floor space for exercise, slot-car racing, or eating risotto. If you’re not satisfied with your first attempt, try aiming for symmetry—BILLY bookcases flanking the TV, or twin cabinets on either side of the chesterfield. If you’ve only got one of everything, you’re SOL, I guess. But if you went to the same two-for-one sales as us, a beautiful apartment can be yours as well.

The Youth of Today Have Their Thing
I feel like smacking my temple with the heel of my hand and muttering, “what was that?” It was one of those weekends.

I’ll just talk about the Sonic Youth portion of it right now. Greg, the belter, and I arrived at the Vogue well after the doors had opened on Saturday night. JR saved us some seats, though—really good seats next to the soundboard. Top man. We had about 20 minutes to acclimatize before the opening act, Quixotic, came on.

They were a trio—women on guitar and drums, and a guy on bass. Their grasp of their instruments was pretty rudimentary, something I found off-putting at first, but as the set progressed I realized that their material suited their instrumental capabilities. The songs mixed primitive blues with an old-time spiritual feel. It was clearly a case of some white kids taking inspiration from “negro music,” but I didn’t mind it too much, unlike my three companions. Anyway, I liked that when the drummer (who sang about half the songs) announced a song called “I Am the Light of This World,” the audience shared an ironic chuckle, then fell silent during the song itself (it had a simple dignity), and gave the performance a healthy round of applause afterward. They ended the set with a bass-and-drums version of Black Sabbath's "Lord of This World.” As opening acts go, Quixotic were all right, but I’m very a generous listener, I suppose.

Sonic Youth! They were great! The best I’ve seen them since they turned Crazy Horse’s stage into an equipment-strewn mess back in ’91! SY were in full rock-band mode, playing hit after hit after hit, as well as the whole of “Murray Street,” which didn’t drag down the set at all. In fact, most of the evening’s best moments came from that album. My concept of SY as progressive rockers was fully reinforced by this show. The new stuff has lots of King Crimson parts, lots of Hawkwind drones…even a couple “Xanadu” moments. But never mind my boring old fartiness. I should keep such thoughts to myself. So…There were rock show lights and video projections and tunes like “Candle”, “Kissability,” “Schizophrenia.” The belter swooned at “Skip Tracer” and I swooned at “Shadow of a Doubt.” “100%” false started, but ruled once it got going. Thurston told a story about scamming his and Coco’s way into the IMAX Bears movie at Science World, which was pure comedy. They encored first with a new one and a very old one (“Making the Nature Scene”), then came back for a final tear through “Kool Thing,” complete with audience participation call-and-response and a Kim rap about the troubled career of “Sister Mariah.” Yep.

Oh, and this was my first experience of the new five-piece Sonic Youth. Jim O’Rourke is a valuable asset, taking on six and four-string duties, padding out the sound, and freeing up Kim and Thurston. I think he contributed a lot to the whole “rock” aspect of the show, especially when he and Steve Shelley were the rhythm section. For at least one song on Saturday, Sonic Youth had a bassist who plays with his fingers.

The entry below contains an untruth. I've seen Bruknow play before in a band I wasn't in. This was back when he was the Dis Doctor in A Posse of One. I believe I only saw the Carpenter's Hall gig. It was a good show. Sox was wearing a dress that concealed a pair of exploding tits. At the end of the set, he got naked (his bare ass exiting stage right), and someone dropped a mike, which earned them a Severe Talking To from the sound guy in the alleyway. The Posse were a magnificent disaster every time out. Was that like 10 years ago? Jesus.

Outtakes

Started writing something earlier this week, but got bogged down.

Wednesday: Blueshammer wants to reconvene, and I'm not sure I want to join them when they do. I learned a lot about stamina and feel playing with them, and I liked being The Drummer (the same way I liked being The Goalkeeper in my pee-wee soccer days), but in the end it came down to playing songs I didn’t like in places I didn’t like to people I definitely didn’t like. My creative self-esteem is very low at the moment. Everyone's doing better than I am. I feel like Pete Best, or John Rutsey. I also suspect that I can't write worth a damn (I’ll get a good belting for that remark, I know). I have no time, I have no space, I have no tools. I know these three things will all come together in short order, but it's been hard the last couple weeks.

I don't want to bail on Blueshammer because I know that part of me will regret it, the same way a part of me regrets leaving Stoke. Even though I hated the scrutiny of the recording studio, even though I can't listen to the CD without wincing at my performance, even though I had no musical goals, even though the thought of a career in music makes me ill, even though playing live fills me with dread (before the gig), embarrassment (during) and regret (afterwards), even though I had no time to devote to them, I still regret that I chose to walk away. When I left Stoke, I knew I'd be susceptible to certain esteem-damaging emotions, so I did my best to steer clear of situations that might generate them. I never went to see the band play for the longest time. When I did, I felt okay about it. I'd never seen Alick and Bruknow playing in a group that I wasn't in. It was kind of liberating just to sit back and watch the show. But now, with the longer they go on and the more they do, I'm getting the feeling that I most feared when I decided I'd have to leave: that they're better off without me.

Today: Whoa-oh-oh-oh. Self pity. I feel better now. There’s a chesterfield in the apartment (thanks to excellent friends Smash, JR, Acmac, and The Closer), there’s an ingot of fig neutrons wrapped in Cut-Rite inside my lunch bag, there’s a Sonic Youth show this weekend, there’s fresh air and promise all around. The melody of a song I started writing six months ago came into my head this morning. It’s not quite there yet, but the fact that I can remember it is an encouraging sign.

After I claimed to have the finest friends in the world yesterday, Smash and I had a brief debate over the ownership of such a claim. He said that he had the finest friends in the world, while I would have to settle for a close second. Because I estimate that we share 90% of the same friends, this is indeed a close-run thing. I’ll vouch for my exclusive 10%, and I’m sure he’ll extol the virtues of his. I’m sure a third-party observer would call it a draw.

In other news: Thanks to a certain jetbot, the belter now has a diary she’s proud to show the world. Look out.

I guess this will be the last week that I’ll be taking the 99 all the way out to Lougheed Mall every morning. With the new SkyTrain line going into operation after this weekend, the 99 is only going as far as Broadway Stn., where we’ll have to get off and take the Millennium Line.

I liked the 99 for the novelty of riding a bus that didn’t stop twice on every block. It was speedy and double-jointed, and made a strange hawk-squawk under acceleration. You also had your pick of the seats after the Brentwood stop, so you didn’t have to sit in the accordion part in the middle if you didn’t want to. Damn bumpy in there.

The Express nature of the 99’s route also had a dark side. Nearly every morning, someone found themselves on a bus that was racing into practically another time zone when they were expecting to get off near Sperling, perhaps. They’d walk over and talk to the driver (for the last month our driver has been an imposing woman with a therapeutic brace on her forearm), who would not let them off until the next official stop, which was miles and miles down the highway, just before Lougheed Mall. Sometimes the passenger would sit back down, bewildered and resigned. Sometimes they would get angry and spit “Fuck you!” at the driver when they were finally let off. But in any case, someone’s day would be ruined. It would kind of ruin my day a bit, too. My worst nightmare is being on a bus, looking up from my book, and discovering I’m not where I expected to be. I could sympathize. I’d probably die if I was stuck on a bus that would not let me off, not just because of the time I’d waste getting back to where I wanted to go, but from the embarrassment of all the other passengers watching what was happening to me, the shame of being the dumb guy who didn't know the route.

The drivers I had on the 99 never once stood up at Brentwood and said, “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. This bus is not making another stop until it reaches the outskirts of Thunder Bay. If you want to get off anywhere in this climatic region, you’d best get off and take another bus.” That would have helped a few people, I bet.

Which Wesley?
I was intrigued to read on roadbedonline that the Shockker was scheduled to open for that enormous retarded guy novelty act Wesley Willis. Someone has made corrections though, and it now reads "Wesley Wet." Aw. I hafta catch the Shockker's Interior Design thing sometime. He's been doing it for a while now, and I'm starting to feel bad about my shoddy attendance record.

My Boyfriend…

Sid V: Hello, Fred. Still bringing ballet to the masses?
Freddie M: Ah, Mr. Ferocious. How lovely to meet you.
–quoted in Classic Rock magazine.

Another version. And another. And another.

While nozin’ aroun’ Julian Cope’s site I found this review of Over, a Peter Hammill album I’ve long avoided writing about. It made me think of a friend who’s having a hard time right now. I suspect that he takes more sustenance from his own music than from the work of others (to quote myself, he’s more of a Man than a Fan), but sometimes things like this are all I’ve got to share. Which is a bit shameful.

When I switched on the computer yesterday I had a good laugh. The belter had installed new wallpaper on the desktop—a shot of PH in full keyboard frenzy. Even without the Mac-generated post-it note that read “Rob’s boyfriend. True love 4 ever” written in pink Sand (that most spermatic of typefaces) she had intended to attach, it was a wonder to behold.

I’ll get my own back someday.

Well, Blow Me Down...
Julian Cope weighs in on an album I semi-slagged in Unrestrained! #19. I'm glad he's getting something out of it. Every time I see the thing, priced at $25, on the wall at JJ's, I feel slightly ill at the thought of someone buying such slop. Takes all kinds, and that's what makes life such a sweet fruit, eh?

Moving has thrown me off my grilled cheese game. I’m forced to work with a new frying pan, and, like an F1 test driver working out the kinks in a new chassis, I’m struggling to produce acceptable results. Twice now I’ve pre-heated my instrument to what I thought was a good grilled-cheese temperature, only to reduce the sandwiches to carbon. It’s a great dishonour to the love and care I put into crafting the raw materials—the bread, so evenly buttered; the cheese, precision trimmed to cover the surface of the bottom slice, like cheddar floor tiling. Uncooked, they are beautiful. All I want is to apply a gentle, even heat to transform that beauty into a pure, crisp deliciousness.

I end up taking a butter knife to them and scraping layers of charcoal into the sink. But no matter how thoroughly I scrape, I will never exfoliate my incompetence and shame.

Despite the routine of life, every week is unique. This was a week of extremes, you could say. I phoned my parents’ house to check the messages (they’re away for a bit) and found out that a cousin in Australia had died suddenly. She was just a few years older than me—way too young to go. We weren’t close, but the rest of my immediate family did know her well. I feel terrible for her parents, who have to deal with all this, phoning around, breaking the news to people in distant countries. It seems like they just finished dealing with the death of my cousin’s husband a few years ago. It’s awful when tragedies link together like that.

The nice thing that happened this week was Mel and Adam’s engagement. They’ve been the belter’s roommates for a long time, and they’re both cool and nice. They also kick our asses at (Super) Mario Party every time out. But I don’t mind. Without them there’d be no bowling, no Mitchell, no The Kingdom, and no brachiosaurus on the train tracks. Hooray for the nerds!

This week I also found out that risotto is pretty damn tasty.

Busted out some Hawkwind last night while assembling a cabinet and ripping seven shades of poo out of my hands in the process. The box should have warned me that I’d need to repeatedly bore through sheets of solid metal with a small screwdriver. Not fun, especially considering I have another cabinet to do tonight, but I sure enjoyed the space rock.

The Closer directed me here the other morning. We’ve always laughed at the same things, and this was no exception. I find his sense of humour to be funny in itself, if that’s possible.

Classic Albums #1
Peter Hammill: Nadir’s Big Chance
After the implosion of Van der Graaf Generator and the three harrowing solo albums that followed, Peter Hammill went back to basics for Nadir’s Big Chance. Recorded over four days in December ’74, Nadir is a loose concept record in the Sgt. Pepper’s tradition—a series of unrelated songs performed by a fictional persona. In this instance, Hammill, obviously feeling constrained by his reputation as “Dr. Doom,” adopted the character of Rikki Nadir, a perpetual teenager, predictably unpredictable, vaccilating between self-righteousness and self-pity with every song. The songs themselves are short and blunt; the production (by Hammill himself) is spare and dry, and because of the lack of production gloss, I feel that the album has dated very well. It’s the lovable black sheep of the vast PH/VdGG catalogue.

Nadir’s main claim to fame is the Johnny Rotten connection. The Sex Pistols frontman brought along the album when a British radio station invited him down to spin some of his favourite records on the air. This was a peculiar kind of exposure for Hammill during the heyday of punk. If he was regarded at all, it was most likely as an old progger. And by 1977, Van der Graaf were making a final push to gain an audience beyond the anorak-and-beard set, but were playing many of the same venues as the Pistols. Both bands were grassroots franchises, but guess who got more press? Nadir’s Johnny Rotten stamp of approval is often noted when Hammill garners a writeup in a mainstream publication—The Trouser Press Record Guide, for example—but it wasn’t enough to lift both the artist and this album out of obscurity for long. As Julian Cope wrote in Repossessed, “only me, Johnny Rotten and Fish out of Marillion were fans.”

What the two performers, Hammill and Lydon, shared was a vocal approach, a snarling, mad abandon that often channeled Shakespeare’s Richard III (as separately noted in The Filth and the Fury and Mojo’s VdGG retrospective). They arrived at their theatrical styles from very different origins, however: Hammill was the embittered choirboy, Rotten, the feral gutterpunk. Hammill got down in the dirt to uncover old bones with brushes and dental tools, while Rotten lined up his targets and obliterated them with slogans that still have an impact 25 years later.

Hammill clearly had a few targets of his own in mind when he conceived Nadir’s Big Chance. The album opens with the title track, and the lines “I’ve been hanging around, waiting for my chance/to tell you what I think about the music that’s gone down/to which you madly danced—frankly you know that it stinks!” Nadir then lays down the law, mocking his contemporaries “in their tinsel glitter suits, pansying around” and generally promising to deliver the real deal over the course of the next two sides.

The backing band—the Van der Graaf team of Banton/Evans/Jackson—do their best to keep up with their rambunctious leader. They take a few bars to get up to speed after Nadir’s count-in, but when they lock into the eighth note groove they pump away like John Holmes working for scale (who did I steal that from, acmac, and what was the exact quote?).

The song ends with a defining moment in proto-punk, and a call to arms for those who heard it: “We’re more than mere morons, perpetually conned/So come on, everybody, smash the system with the song.”

As Nadir’s final cry fades away, the album segues into the next track, “The Institute of Mental Health, Burning,” a decidedly odd song written by Hammill’s old bandmate Chris Judge Smith (latterly of Curly’s Airships “fame”). Nadir takes it back a notch to deliver this tale of the ultimate case of sick building syndrome (disregarding Hammill’s old favourite, “The Fall of the House of Usher” for the moment). His restrained, somewhat detatched approach isn’t far removed from David Bowie’s, and I’ve always imagined the Thin White Duke covering this song.

Judge supplies another song later on the album, the classic weeper “Been Alone So Long.” It’s one of Judge’s finest tunes, and Hammill championed it by performing it live for years and years. It’s a simple ballad, led by acoustic guitar, with an elegant bridge between chorus and verse that Jackson’s sax imbues with sadness, mirroring the regret and longing of the lyrics. On Nadir, the simplicity of both the song and the production merge into a satisfying whole, making this track an album highlight.

The remainder of Nadir’s Big Chance is, like its youthful protagonist, all about contrasts. The songs range from the vicious—the near-metal “Nobody’s Business”—to the emotionally fragile—“Airport” and “Shingle Song” are the lovelorn laments of an earnest young man—to the comic—the lust-crazed “Birthday Special” and a more sober remake of Van Der Graaf’s utterly bizarre debut single, “People You Were Going To.”

Despite the slagging of glitter suits in the opening track, the album isn’t that far removed from the glam stylings of early Roxy Music—rock ’n’ roll that deftly blends panache and primitivism. The Van der Graaf boys do quite well at playing things straight for once. Guy Evans hits the drums hard and Hugh Banton does well on bass and his customary keyboards—though he’s no Jon Lord, as his solo on “Open Your Eyes” demonstrates! Star of the show is David Jackson, who sounds extremely happy to just rock out for once. There aren’t many strange time signatures, nor are there many excursions into improv and free sound. The album sounds like it would have been fun to make.

This departure from the multi-layered aesthetic of VdGG and Hammill’s solo albums (with the exception of his first, Fool’s Mate) is possibly the result of Hammill’s desire to cut the crap and clean house. Despite the fact that 1974 was the year that rock achieved perfection (quoth Homer Simpson), perhaps Hammill was becoming aware of the same thing that the punks were waking up to. The starry-eyed first wave of progressive rock was bogging down, and creative stagnation was in the air. Record companies were becoming complacent and bloated, as Hammill documents in “Two or Three Spectres,” the closing track on Nadir’s Big Chance:

“‘Sod the music,’ said the man in the suit, ‘I understand profit and without that, it’s no use.
Why don't you go away and write commercial songs; come back in three years, that shouldn’t be too long...’
He's a joker and an acrobat, a record exec. in a Mayfair flat with Altec speakers wall to wall,
a Radford and a Revox and through it all he plays strictly nowhere Muzak.”

Nadir could be taken as a wakeup call for misunderstood prog rockers and young punks alike.

By cleaning house, I’m referring to the origins of many of the songs on this album, which date back to the very early VdGG days. Nadir was Hammill's last solo album before the reformation of VdGG and a return to epic musical landscapes. Recording these songs at this point in his career was, in effect, a cleansing of the palate for Hammill, his band, and his fans, a street-level rave-up before the blastoff.

I find it revealing that on Godbluff, the VdGG album that arrived a few months later, the first words are “Here at the glass—all the usual problems, all the habitual farce.” They’re prophetic lyrics. The reunited Van der Graaf rocketed on for another 2 ½, 3 years, hitting many artistic apexes along the way. But as Hammill writes in the cover notes of Big Chance, “There’s always room for another Nadir.” The band’s big break never came, and Hammill returned to his solo work, which, apart from the occasional epic, stayed pretty close to the less-is-more ethos he pursued on this album. After he got his big chance, the spirit of Rikki Nadir lived on.

Productivity
Yesterday evening was a busy one. I took a deep breath and unpacked the monolith of particle board that was the GOLIAT computer desk. Like David with an allen key for a sling, I vanquished the giant Swede, not by toppling him, but by piecing him together into an attractive, multilevel workstation with simulated beech veneer.

(Side note: my pseudo-carpentry was inspired by Cheap Trick’s Dream Police, as selected by the belter. I think it’s as solid an album as Cheap Trick produced (despite some of these reviews), and a fitting climax to the winning streak that was their first five albums (including Budokan). Every track has some outstanding feature, whether it’s the disco string section on “Gonna Raise Hell,” the backing vocal rounds of “The Way of the World” or the epic buildup in the latter half of “Need Your Love.” The Trick’s combination of songcraft and wit has always appealed to me. They’re one of the best examples of how to mix humour and music without it turning into fuckin’ Moxy Fruvous. As a kid, a lot of their funniest stuff went right over my head. Take “I Know What I Want” (vocal by Tom Petersson) for example. The verses are all lovey-dovey “feelings in my heart”-type sentiment, then the chorus roars forth with “I know what I want, and I know how to get it…from you!” The humour functions as a spanner in the works instead of a cloying nudge-nudge/wink-wink. It was cracking me up last night. I want to go home and listen to Heaven Tonight right now!)

(Another side note: Rick Neilsen often uses an evil genius songwriting trick that I can’t get enough of—starting the song with the chorus. I guess it’s a tip of the cap to the Fab Four, to whom he owes a lot.)

After I put the GOLIAT’s final shelf in place, we headed downtown to the Granville Book Company to do some promotional window dressing for the three-day novel contest. To be more accurate, the belter and Kaufman dressed the window while I drank beer and browsed. I remember I used to buy a lot of Arthur C. Clarke paperbacks there when it was called the Mall Book Bazaar. We were there till about quarter to one. The window looks good—a few final touches and it’ll be perfect. I was thrilled to learn that we’d used one of the mannequins from the infamous Michael Slade window display that upset a few people about 10 years ago. The poor thing looked like she’d been through the ringer, which was kind of appropriate for the three-day novel display. She’d get to spill her guts all over again, this time onto the page. It’s a painful process either way.

SPF 0: Painfully Waiting to Peel
I have a bad sunburn. I get burned at least once every summer. This one is quite nasty—my nose and neck got it worst; my legs are a bit singed, too. My whole body is reacting to it. My head’s fuzzy, my eyes are irritated (probably sunburned themselves), and I need to take a nap. The tag in my shirt collar feels like a thorn.

We were at the Under the Volcano Festival yesterday. It was a glorious sunny day, with a nice breeze coming in off the water. The breeze always gives a false sense of security. Its coolness makes you forget that the sun is boring billions of radioactive needles into your epidermis. (Nice sentence, wanker.) We sat down on the grass to watch a band for 20 minutes, and that was it. In the hours afterward, walking around looking at the hippies, I could feel the heat spreading across my body. Something was definitely up. The belter and I checked each other over by pressing fingers into skin and observing the white ovals that slowly faded into the crimson expanses of our necks and backs. Yeah, we’d been thoroughly sizzled.

I remember the worst sunburn of my life. I got it one summer at Alick’s place on Gabriola. I was probably 13 or 14. It might have been the summer that Live Killers came out. We’d spent most of the day exploring Taylor Bay in inflatable dinghies. I’d been wearing shorts and no shirt—a look I haven’t sported since—and, once again, no sunblock. Though the planet still had an ozone layer circa 1980, we both got horribly burned and spent a week in our beds up in that cool little loft. His mother brought us various salves and ointments to reduce the agony. They helped slightly, but they couldn't stop the pain from going right into my bones.

It’s funny—I’ll never forget that pain, but I can’t quite remember how we spent the days while we waited for our sunburns to fade away. We most likely listened to CFOX and mock-interviewed each other into a tape recorder…planning careers that, I hoped, wouldn’t include playing outdoor summer festivals.

I can't wait to see this movie. I was interested to read that Frank Cottrell Boyce wrote the script. I think he wrote for Coronation Street a few years ago. And if it's anything like the Manchester-shot Queer As Folk, a few ex-Street actors are bound to show up on screen.

I’m intrigued by Super Robertson’s appropriation of my screed for his own online forums. I won’t deny that it’s an honour to have my outpourings appear on roadbedonline from time to time, but I’m pretty sure that netiquette (blargh!) dictates that the original author be asked first. Perhaps I deserve it for letting my jackass go slack. I never did get around to penning “My Ride on the Roadbed Bandwagon” for the Robertson Chronicles. Through his undoubtedly well-intentioned copying and pasting, at least Robertson is forcing me to contribute to the “scene.” It’s not as if I’d turn him down if he asked. Maybe I should request some recording time at the Shockcentre as recompense. I hope this doesn’t launch a potentially detenous feud…

Items Left In Closets by Former Tenants of Our Apartment

Paint cans
A rainbow of pigments ranging from beige to white.

Wooden wheel block with rope handle
Way at the back of the “master” closet. Jenni thought it was A HUMAN HEAD at first.

Carpet scraps
Boring.

Yarmulke
A classic in black satin. On one hand, it’s cool that we can re-enact scenes from Yentl (Guy Caballero’s favourite) when the mood strikes us, but on the other hand, I have a sudden reluctance to eat bacon in our new home.

Our refrigerator’s broke, so I starve until lunchtime every day, when I can head down to the Xantrex cafeteria for a hot meal made from perishable ingredients I can’t keep at home.

The move has gone well, except for an episode where I went to a Roadbed show by mistake. The belter has installed all her stuff, and I’m almost set as well—forgetting for a moment the thousand-plus pieces of recorded music I’ve yet to truck over. I can't wait till everything's working and we're settled in. I can sense the potential for a very pleasant life ahead. Unfortunately furnishings are pretty sketchy right now. I’m working up the nerve to ask a few of my best and burliest friends to help move a couch that I’m not even sure will fit in the back of Clive’s truck.

If it doesn’t, should I risk another trip to IKEA? We were there Monday, and it was a chilling experience. Like a museum for caucasian/asians without the gilded ropes to keep you in bounds, showcasing not an extinct past, but an imminent, comfortable future you can heave into the back of your minivan. Dozens and dozens of 7/8 sized dioramas depicted possible lifestyles, all identical save for the details and surfaces. Will that be wood grain or white enamel? Futon or metal frame bed? The belter said she’d happily move into her favouritest diorama for a few hundred bucks/month, and I was getting a total BJØNER over stereo stands made from sheets of perforated metal, chrome tubing and chunky casters. We were sucked in and loving it.

Our Print Futures class has dispersed pretty thoroughly, but I do hear from a few fellow students now and again. My buddy Dave FX Sabanes dropped me a line yesterday, fresh from celebrating his 23rd birthday last week. The guy’s got more on the ball than I did at his age. I should have been placed on life support from age 13 to 24—tube down throat, catheter, maybe an iron lung—for all the vitality and wherewithal I had back then. So hail to thee, FX, and your muscle-bound, lady-killin’ ways. (Ever drop by the IKEA? Swedes aplenty!) Trade you a jar of creatine for some couch-shifting, dude.

The Roadbed Quiz at the Railway Club last night was a close-run affair. When all the exams were completed, there was a three-way tie for first between myself, CC Sitdown and Hey Kristian. We each scored 18/25. What to do? Towards the end of the set, the band settled into a quiet groove. Super and Shockk pondered the alternatives. Super decided that crowd response would decide the winner. CC had the biggest cheering section. The Mule only had himself and the stalwart Mr. Black. It seemed the (rather disturbing) ape pencil sharpener would go to CC. But Shockk intervened and called all three finalists to the front of the stage. On the count of three (or maybe four, in my case), we drew—one or two fingers, and the odd man out would win. I decided before the count that I would show two fingers. And I won. I celebrated my victory heartily, but inside I felt bad for CC, whom I’ve always respected. Watching him at the Cottage Bistro several years ago trying to play “Never Talking To You Again” with SR’s disruptive drumming was one of the more moving displays of onstage survival I’ve witnessed. And Hey Kristian, whose brother’s band laid down a thoroughly enjoyable set of jazz fusion earlier in the evening, was also a worthy competitor. Hails to all of them! The pencil sharpener will be placed on a pedestal beneath the chandelier to become the focal point of the new apartment.

I picked up the parentals at the airport last night. Their plane was full of Catholic youth returning from Popefest. God showed his approval with a thunderstorm that forced them to wait out on the tarmac in Toronto for two hours. Anyway, it’s nice to have Clive and Sally back. Soon as he got back from his walk this morning, Dad was on the phone to the municipality, asking them to pick up four old tires someone had dumped along Huxley Ave. (“Rob, how long have those tires been there?” “Can’t say I noticed them, Dad.”) He’s always “on,” that guy.

Breakfast soundtrack today was Gong, Angel’s Egg. I went straight for “Oily Way” midway through the album, which was a mistake. Now suffering from endless-loop-in-head effect. I should turn Super Robertson onto this album, if he hasn’t already been. I have to remember that he was a tree planter.

I’m going to eat my words at some point, but I’m enjoying the bus ride these days—thanks to the magic of reading. I’m tearing through books at a great rate. Thanks to Tweek for lending me a couple massive things when I was in Edmonton. I read Head-on and Repossessed by Julian Cope first (two books in one handy volume). I know nothing of the Teardrop Explodes’ music, but Jesus Christ, this was a hilarious book. I’d like to come back to it again and again here on Difficult Music, because I can’t really do it justice in one go. If you’re interested in the birth of (English) punk rock, the music industry, drugs, or toy collecting, I give it my highest recommendation.

I moved on to Dave Bidini’s Tropic of Hockey next. When I was a kid I was really only a true hockey fan for a few years. My fetish for stats got transferred to auto racing pretty quickly. But hockey’s never really left my life entirely. I’ll watch a few games during the regular season (more out of happenstance than by choice), follow the playoffs up to a point, play some street hockey. I even had a character-building foray into intramural floor hockey earlier this year. Dave approaches his book from the POV of a lapsed hockey fan, which I could relate to. He moves back and forth between travel writing and rants about the state of the NHL and Canadian hockey in general, never staying in one place for too long. I could identify with Bidini’s attempts to reconcile his love of the game with the fact that it’s a sport for assholes. I live with that kind of dissonance every minute of every day. So, yeah, I enjoyed the book. And I’ll never see Jim Cuddy in the same way again.

Tweek also lent me Have Not Been the Same: the CanRock Renaissance, a 750-page doorstop that I started last week. I was scared, but lo and behold, it’s killer. Lots of great stories within. The early chapters are going city by city, and I’m on the Montreal chapter right now. Sad story of wasted potential with the Nils. I remember them from the Decline of the English Murder days, when I tried to keep an eye on what was going on. I heard them a lot on BNW and liked what they were Husker Du’ing. I’m now a few pages away from the Voivod section, so my lunch break can’t come fast enough today.

Random Notes
Weird thing I saw on TV tonight: a SportsNet promo piece with background music by Peter Tagtgren's Pain. The piece cut between the promo material (an interview with Don King[!]) and the video for the song. There was Peter in all his cadaverous glory. Before the helpful SportsNet caption identified the tune, I thought it might have been Sentenced. That would have been even more unlikely, I suppose. Next up: Amorphis rejigs the Friends theme.

If you're curious, check out some freelancing the Belter and I recently completed. David Zieroth is a marvellous writer, poet, and a nice guy to boot. Help his site move up the Google rankings!

Looks like I'm moving out of the house this weekend, an event that coincides with the inaugural game of the Hades Hockey League.

L’Homme du Sport
On Saturday, during a break in culling the tons of Print Futures-generated paper I’ve accumulated (my bedroom now has a floor!), I checked out what was happening in Alan Partridge’s life. Quite a lot, it turns out—a new BBC Web site, and a new series airing in the autumn. I’m very excited, and a bit anxious. What if it doesn’t air over here? What if does air, but only on BBC Canada? Does anyone subscribe to that, or even know someone who does? If so, I’ll trade you a superficially damaged chocolate orange for some VCR time. The belter and I pondered whether we should take some holidays in the UK when it airs. It might be worth it, because I’m Alan Partridge was one of the greatest works of televisual art ever produced, and Steve Coogan is a frigging genius. Alan manages to be a complete shit and compelling at the same time. I want to follow the guy 24 hours a day. He’s completely oblivious to the effects he has on people. I think he embodies the worst fears I have about myself, so that while I might be laughing at him, I’m practically climbing out the window with dread over my very existence. The new series can only probe deeper into the tormented Partridge psyche, and imagining the tortures ahead for poor Alan fills me with a very blackened kind of joy.

I Wanna Be in (The) Pink Floyd
It's been a long time since I've been handed some "secret tapes." Smash surreptitiously slipped me a couple C90s during the latter stages of a very pleasant, very welcome listening party at his and Mai's new "pad" on Saturday night. The tapes came from someone at Smash's work, and are packed solid with early The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett solo stuff. Wow, I'm all over that.

I had a listen to the first side of the first tape, and here is my report: the tape begins with a couple tracks straight off The Madcap Laughs--"Golden Hair" (an adaptation of a James Joyce poem) and "Terrapin" (one of my all-time favourite songs). From there, we move to a very early (pre-Piper at the Gates of Dawn) CBC Radio interview with the Floyd. "In a frenetic haze of sound and sight, a new concept of music has begun to penetrate the senses of Britain's already hopped-up beat fans," intones the female interviewer, and we get to hear Syd and Roger talk about the racket they make and the lights they flash, and how they moved from 16-bar structures into sort of 17 1/2-bar structures and so on. Then it's back to Syd, barely keeping it together through "Milky Way." This sounds like a bootleg recording, but both it and a couple other tracks on this tape--"Wouldn't You Miss Me (Dark Globe)," "Opel" and "Word Song"--were released on the outtakes collectionOpel back in '88 or so. For all you Voivod fans, there's a storming version of "The Nile Song" on here as well. Not sure where this is taken from. It could be from a Peel Session. "Scream Thy Last Scream," the whacked-out and wonderful "Vegetable Man" and a Syd song I couldn't identify take us to the end of a fun evening of Floydspotting.

On to side two. I hope "The Gnome" is on there somewhere.

Still grumpy about the pictures thing. Either I’m a moron or Blogger is screwing up. There’s a lot of “Fuck you, Blogger!” sentiment on other folks’ sites right now, with references to template troubles, so I guess I’m not alone. I wouldn’t be having these problems if I was clever enough to create my own template .

I had a nice phone call from the belter last night around dinnertime, which did much to cheer me up. She and her mom had a good shop yesterday. I hope the rest of her week in Ont. is as pleasant. Looks like she’ll be in Toronto Thursday for a visit with the legendary Joan. Still, I want her back home, so we can get on with the rest of our summer. Exciting developments await.

Robbie’s Holiday Camp
Meanwhile, back in Harrison…

The gig was in Harrison Holiday Park, a mile or two away from our rendezvous point at the Crossroads Motel. Roger and I arrived at the venue first and, after locating someone with the keys to the place, started unloading our gear. The hall we were to play in was an average-size banquet room with a large, low stage. The place reeked of cedar. The back wall, right behind where I set up the drums, featured a big stone fireplace. I had flashbacks to The Fishin’ Musician on SCTV. Maybe The Tubes would turn up.

As Phil likes to point out, I am no ordinary drummer. I can set up my kit in no time flat. My alacrity left me with a lot of time to kill, however. I sat down on the steps at the side of the stage and had a sulk because I didn’t want to be in Harrison with Blueshammer and I didn’t want to play another gig. I wasn’t looking forward to a two-hour drive home in the dead of night, either.

After everyone else got their stuff wired up, we did a quick soundcheck. The PA was horribly loud, so we rolled it back a couple notches, and we were good to go. I need some fresh, less cedar-infused air, so I took a walk through the Holiday Park. Quaint little road/paths, RVs packed side-by-side, playgrounds, drifting barbeque smoke. An excerpt from Tommy played in my head—“The holiday’s forev-ahhhhhh!” I stopped at a picnic table adjacent to the hall. Murray and Carolyn joined me and began discussing the latest developments at the WCB and the LDB. I watched a young couple playing catch and tried not to slip into a coma.

Dinnertime arrived. We went back into the hall and chose a band table. Roger introduced us to several of the guests, my favourite of whom was a certain “Baron,” the brother of the bride. He was gay as all-get-out. He said he worked at an Aveda counter, and I could tell that he’d be really good at the job (excursions with the belter have been a crash course in the cosmetics realm). Roger seemed very fond of the guy—he did have charisma, that Baron.

Dinner was excellent, a festival of prime rib + taters + salad. The roast potatoes were a bit underdone, but you didn’t hear me complaining. With a couple glasses of red wine as final catalyst, I began to cheer up. Chemistry.

So, on to the first set. As happened at the Cottage Bistro earlier in the month, we were way too loud from the get-go. The people were into it, though, and the dancing started immediately. The blues overtook them, you might say. Baron was grabbing all the old ladies and taking them for a whirl. I settled into our opening number and tried to enjoy my surroundings. The wall on the left side of the stage had a window with a view of the Holiday Park swimming pool. It was still daylight out. The scene on the deck was more John Waters than Aaron Spelling, which wasn’t a bad thing.

Mark, the bride’s other brother, joined us on guitar and vocals for the second set. He was a seasoned vet of the cover band circuit, and had hundreds of screaming licks at his disposal. I have to give the guy credit for learning the tunes quickly, but his sound was a little too metallic. Still, it gave Murray a break to have him sit in with us.

The third set…ah, the third set. Why do we need a third set? I don’t know. Every audience we’ve ever played for has been well blueshammered by the time we reach the third set, and this crowd was no exception. After the second set, the canned music took over, and the people seemed happy with the situation. I was all for packing up and hitting the highway, but instead I had to wait while we decided if we were going to play again. During this interval, I witnessed something that no should have to witness.

There was a group of women on the dance floor grooving to the hits of the sixties and seventies. I know Smash doesn’t like it when I harp on appearances, but can I point out that all these ladies had big perms? Okay. “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” came on, and the youngest perm rushed over to the stereo. “Great,” I thought, “she’s turning it off so we can get this last set over with.” But I was so wrong. Up went the volume, and crazy went the ladies. One woman, the queen of the perms, took up a stance and play acted her way through Meatloaf's mini-epic, throwing her head from side to side and fiercely mouthing the words. Oh god, I was so glad the belter hadn’t come with me. There would have been a bloodbath. “Paradise…” is perhaps her most-loathed song…besides “Bohemian Rhapsody” (we haven’t had to seek counselling about this yet).

We did play a very short third set to a depleted audience. If you’ve been to a Blueshammer show, you can picture the scene. We quit after about four songs, and I packed up and hit the road around midnight. Murray left at the same time, and he led me through Agassiz to Hwy. 1, which was a much quicker route home than the #7 would have been. I floored it all the way home, and I thought about what Jochen Mass said after a demon lap at the Nurburgring in ’75: “If I’d have left the road, I’d never have stopped travelling.”

That’s it for Blueshammer for the rest of the summer. I’ve told everyone outside the band that I don’t want to continue with them. Every gig we’ve done this year has fallen on a date where I wanted desperately to do something else, attend another event. I don’t think I’m in love enough with playing live to keep doing it, and I’m definitely not in love with the music we play. This break will be good. I’ve got too much going on with work, volunteer stuff, and with people outside of the band that I care about. I’ve picked up the guitar again. I haven’t written anything in over a year, and I’m very curious as to what my next song will sound like.

We were paid a nice sum for that Saturday night in Harrison. I got my cut from Roger in the mail yesterday. Dinner's on me when the belter gets back.

Dammit, I want nothing more than to post pictures here. Do you think I've been able to do it? No, I haven't, and it's ruining my day. I wasted all last night on the endeavour, too. I got the stupid GeoCities site to store the pictures, I've uploaded them, I've linked to them from here, but nothing. No pictures, no joy. Grr.

Random
I realize that I haven’t finished my Harrison saga yet. When I have some time I’ll sit down and polish it off. There’s not too much to tell, really, but once I start writing I might find a few digressions that I’ll want to explore.

I’m reeling from the fanciness today. The summer’s good, eh? I was never a big fan of summer, especially after I joined the working world back in the late ’40s, but I’m liking it these days. I’m not sure why. I used to resent all the summertime fun people, blocking the Gastown sidewalks that I needed to use to get home from the office. But they’re no longer my enemies. I’ve found my own scene. I’ve overcome my fear of wearing shorts in public. I wear tinted lenses to protect my eyes; sometimes a hat to cool my head. Plus I don’t have to go anywhere near Gastown anymore.

As the 133 merged onto the highway this morning, I saw a test train going into Brentwood Station, which produced a mild excitement. Once the new line is operating I expect getting to and from Xantrex will be less torturous.

There’s a derelict on-ramp at Gaglardi Way that’s totally giving me a boner. I want to drive out there one weekend morning and take some pictures. Scatter tabloid clippings of Jayne Mansfield, Princesses Grace and Diana, James Dean and Lisa Lopes on the weed-ruptured asphalt.

I get about 15–20 minutes every morning to listen to music. I look forward to this time. Morning music, when I get to choose it, is the best. Today was Boards of Canada, Geogaddi, an album that is growing on me a lot. I bought it on musique machine’s recommendation, and it was pretty much what I expected it to be—I don’t really know how to classify it. You’re better off hunting down the original review if you’re curious. The catchiness and complexity of their music is gradually revealing itself, though, and I imagine that if I listened to nothing else for an entire month I’d gain a full appreciation of what they’re doing. It made a nice soundtrack for spoonfuls of slightly milk-damp Raisin Bran this morning. It’s been a belting week thus far.

One-handed Reading
No, this is not about those couple pages near the back of Bust magazine. You're dirty.

I had to stand on the bus this morning, which was a drag. Before you start sawing away at the World's Tiniest Violin, let me explain that I'm reaching the end of a really good book: Purple America by Rick Moody (lent to me by the belter, who hasn't steered me wrong yet). It's hard to turn pages while holding on and trying to stand up on the 133 SFU as it barrels down Hwy 1.

There's more brilliance in one paragraph of Purple America than I could muster in a lifetime of wordsmithery. I guess Moody is most famous for writing The Ice Storm. I haven't read it, but I thought the movie was the feel-good hit of the year. Purple America casts a similar glow in its dissection of the well-heeled and uneven keeled. Its shifts in voice and tone are brilliant and Moody strikes me as one of those guys who's scarily intelligent. He certainly knows a lot about power grids, utilities and suchlike. I wonder what he did in his previous work life. Perhaps there'll be a job opening for him at Xantrex once he's done with the writing thing.

At least I know I'll have seat on the milk run going home—an interminable journey on the 144 that winds its way down Burnaby Mtn., across Kensington, into the loop at Bby Municipal Hall (tantalizingly close to home, but too far to walk and save any time), through Heritage Village for god's sake, and concludes at glamorous Metrotown. I'll get to finish the book off then.

CORRECTION
As per the guestbook entry from Super "Marlon Perkins" Robertson, please read "heron" for "crane" in the previous entry. I thought about going in and changing it myself, but I didn't want to pull a Sharon Osbourne and wantonly taint the artistic achievements of the past.

CANADA DAY EVE
On the last night of our long weekend on Mayne Island, the belter and I walked out to the point after dinner. For the last 48 hours the island had been teeming with people, but when we reached the end of the trail I was relieved to see that the point was free of visitors.

The only inhabitant was a crane standing down by the water. It noticed us and took off, flying a short distance to the rocks in the middle of the channel between the point and Georgeson Island. It resumed scanning the ocean for any fish-related activity. We found a rock to sit on and began scanning for any seal-related activity.

Apart from a few distant splashes, the seals weren't putting on much of a show. We stuck around anyway. It was one of those nice summer nights when it gets dark very very slowly. "When you're down here, something always happens. All you have to do is wait," said the belter.

The crane was being very patient, just changing position once in a while, pivoting around on its twiggy legs. I looked away and watched the ferries heading back and forth between Active Pass and the Mainland. When I turned to look at the crane again, something small and black was wriggling in its beak—it had caught a fish! Hooray for the crane! I thought.

I was about to point this out to the belter when something very big and very dark swooped over our heads. A bloody great bastard eagle was flying directly towards our crane. The crane had just enough time to choke back its fish and take off, with the eagle in close pursuit. The dogfight was on. They arced above us, and I thought for sure the eagle would grab the crane, bring it down and most likely rip open its neck to extract that fish. But the combination of a larger wingspan and (probably) sheer panic enabled the crane to get away. Phew.

The thwarted eagle took over the crane's spot down on the rocks. It stood there for a while, looking stupid, then flew off to a treetop perch on Georgeson.

We decided on the walk back home that eagles are the assholes of the air.

Two-Lane Blacktop part II—Lindbergh or Earhart?

Strike the last sentence of the previous entry from the record. Priest was not actually on my musical menu that afternoon.

I decided to take the Lougheed Highway (#7) out to Harrison. It looked like the most direct route on the map. As I later found out, it wasn’t the most efficient way there, but I’m glad I took it anyway. The scenery and backcountry ambience made up for its comparative slowness.

I hadn’t intended to travel alone, but Murray’s cancellation forced me to go solo. I wasn’t happy about this. Once I’m east of Gaglardi Way, I start feeling like an untethered spacewalker. I like having someone else to talk to during these times, a companion to help me watch the road. Besides dying at the wheel, getting lost is one of my biggest fears.

Going through the burbs was start-stop-start-stop all the way. I was playing the new Melvins album, Hostile Ambient Takeover. It’s a heavy one; more The Maggot than The Bootlicker, more Stoner Witch than Stag. The tape ran out as I went through Haney. The traffic dissipated and the road opened up. I put on Howls From the Hills by Dead Meadow. Their shambling, rustic BigMuff humfuzz filled the cab. I could picture myself late at night, walking down the backroads just off this highway and hearing the band jamming in a distant cabin.

Mount Baker loomed, twice as big as it appears on a clear day in Burnaby. It’s a fine-looking mountain, such a proper volcano, so gracefully sloped and snowy. I really want it to spew magma at some point during my lifetime. Just a little eruption—nobody has to get hurt.

The #7 is mostly two lanes, 80 km/h all the way out. I’d rather have been a passenger, but I tried to take in as many of the sights as I could while still keeping the car on the road. Other drivers evidently weren’t so intent on scenic pleasures. Tom Slick in his Benz was picking his way through our convoy one car at a time. He made it to the front of the queue with no mishaps and quickly disappeared in the curves ahead. Oh, well, it was his loss. Maybe he drives this road every week.

Stuff I saw: fruit stands gearing up for the season. Kids selling roses by the side of the highway. On the lake to my left, a water-skier did a faceplant, perishing in an explosion of spray. I passed a nudist campground, wondering if I should stop by for a quick game of volleyball. Signs pointed me to stock car circuits and drag boat racing. So much weekend exotica out here in smalltown B.C.

The tape deck’s auto reverse kicked in, and Wino and his Spirit Caravan arrived for my trip into Harrison. I accidentally drove past the motel where I was supposed to hook up with Roger, and ended up driving right into Harrison itself. When I reached the lake, I knew I had come too far. It was an adolescent frenzy—hordes of today’s beef-hormone-enhanced SuperTeens milling about in not too much clothing. I escaped to the tourist info booth, where I got directions back to the Crossroads Motel.

Roger met me outside and directed me into the motel bar, where his son Adam, daughter Cathy and her boyfriend Jason were shooting pool. The air conditioning was in full effect. I opened my Coke, but all that time in the truck had made it warmer than the current room temperature. No refreshment properties whatsoever. Yuck. I drank the impotent beverage anyway and waited for the others to arrive.

A power ballad by Boston was playing on the radio—“I’m gonna take you by surprise and make you realize, Amanda.” I’d forgotten about that song, and I didn’t particularly need to be reminded of it then.

Before I get going here, I advise you to read Alick Macaulay’s Blacknblues sometime. You’ll find a growing collection of carefully considered and crafted essays by a man blessed with enough analytical power to add two plus two and come up with 8,000 every time. Genius. He’s making me look real bad.

Two-Lane Blacktop
I’ve done a lot of things in my life as a “musician,” but touring’s not one of them. I’ve never envied those dedicated enough to pile into the Econoline and head out for months of bad food, dodgy clubs, highway breakdowns and no bathing. I've seen the misery of the experience reflected in the faces of musicians at gigs I've attended over the years. Dale Crover, on tour as Nirvana’s substitute drummer, setting up his pedals on a crowded, dusty sidewalk outside the New York Theatre. The For Carnation moping through a set at the Starfish, still managing to summon a kind of lackadaisical glory. Seam gritting their teeth onstage at the Lunatic Fringe, with its ludicrously high drum riser and sword & sorcery murals on the walls. I'm grateful that these bands go out on the road, and even more grateful that they cross the border to play our dingy little town and sell me a t-shirt, but I've read Get In the Van, and that's enough for me.

Last Saturday’s day trip to Harrison was the furthest I’ve travelled to play a gig. Blueshammond guy Roger had arranged for us to provide music at a post-wedding party for a friend’s daughter and her new husband. They had got hitched in Australia earlier in the year, and this was to be their Canadian coming-out do. I embraced the idea of doing this gig when it was originally proposed (because it fit in with our “weddings, parties, anything” mentality, which has seen me playing on boats, illegal party spaces in North Van, and U-Brew establishments), but I grew less and less keen on it as Saturday approached and the reality of the drive set in.

I had a couple hours between getting home from the belter’s and having to load the truck and depart, so I ate some lunch and dubbed a couple tapes for the road. Unfortunately, I forgot my “Big Lebowski”-inspired pledge to make a Creedence tape from the three-LP set that JR gave me for Christmas one year—among my gift-exchanging friends, his presents are unrivalled for their sheer vinyl heft—and selected some newish stuff that I thought would provide some righteous road rock.

I was supposed to have guitarist Murray along for the ride, but he never called, and I gave up on him. I heard from him right as I was leaving. He apologized for not being in touch, and said he would make his way to Harrison by himself in about an hour.

So, with a handful of tapes, a can of Coke, and my drum kit in the back of Clive's Ford Ranger, I hit Huxley Ave. about 1:45 p.m. and headed out to the highway. Cue Point of Entry, side one.

Next time: Rendezvous With Roger.

I've Had Enough of the Blues...
But the blues ain't had enough of me. Stay tuned for a report on my Blueshammer road trip to Harrison. Probably mid-week.

"The Mule is accustomed to the unordinary"
-Super Robertson

Robert Wyatt. That floaty, amorphous music drifting out of Super Robertson’s stereo last Saturday night sure sounded like a Robert Wyatt album. No, it couldn’t be. But it definitely sounded like Rock Bottom, an album I’d been living with for a few years and shared with no one but the belter—a peculiar, accidental-sounding record that was surely the result of a random combination of time, place and circumstance. I had convinced myself that nothing else in the world could sound like Rock Bottom.

I thought for a moment about asking what this music was. I liked it a lot—almost as much as the feast that Super and Cristina had laid out. But I decided to keep quiet to prevent a potentially awkward social moment. What if I piped up and got some blank stares in reply? I didn’t want to have to explain too much.

Someone else’s conversation tackled the subject. Rumours started circulating. It was Robert Wyatt. Super passed the jewel case around. Shleep. He’d heard some of it on the CBC one night. I said something about Super being my soul mate. Super said something about having been aware of that fact for a while now.

Later in the evening he danced like Ian Curtis for us, and I recalled that we’d discussed forming a Joy Division cover band a long time ago. I want to spend every Saturday night at Super Robertson’s.

IF THE SHIRT FITS…
At Metrotown on Saturday I saw a guy with an acoustic guitar busking in the walkway between the mall and the SkyTrain station. Not so extraordinary in itself, but the young troubadour was wearing a Dark Funeral shirt! I never give to buskers (I should, at least when they don't suck), but that guy definitely deserved some coinage.

When I got on the train, I sat across from a walkman-clad bully rocker. He sure looked grouchy…maybe he was unhappy about that Mudvayne shirt he had on! Shit, dude, my mom's gotten me some lame birthday presents, too.
*******************************************************

I like Tool, but I’m not mad about them. I don't like them as much as Rudimentary Peni, but there's a certain craft and quality to their work that I have to salute. Their true genius, though, lies in the t-shirt arena. All those tuff guys walking around with the label "Tool" on their chests…too rich.

I bet 7,500 other writers have expressed that exact same thought. I dunno; I haven't read Spin for about seven years.

HATE MYSELF
I was really bummed out by my Hate Yourself entry of a few days ago. It left a bad taste in my mouth—the taste I get whenever I don't trust the validity of what I want to say and end up writing something horribly compromised.

I should have written this: I love "Hate Yourself," but I'm appalled by it as well. I don't like that I like it. The lyrics are ESL-awkward, and their phrasing is sometimes forced. It wallows in negativity and pretentious sentiment. "Hate yourself with a touch of glamour"? Marilyn Manson could have written that. And there's enough empty anger passing itself off as entertainment these days.

But there was a day early last April when I was going crazy from the pressures of school and watching classmates implode around me. All I wanted to do was hold everyone together for just a couple more weeks, but at the same time I wanted to scream, "just relax for fuck's sake, step outside yourself, take a break, get some sleep, have a drink, jerk off, do whatever you need to do to stop annoying everyone else and have them end up hating you for all eternity." I sent an email to a few friends wherein I let off some steam in an un-Rob Hugheslike manner, and the response I got a couple hours later from one friend was so awesomely positive and affirming that I immediately put on "Hate Yourself" and started leaping around the room like the floor was electrified. When it ended I was vibrating with joy. I then sat down and resumed my work.

That's why I love the song. That's why I love how Peter Hammill screams "One more haggard drowned man!" on "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" or "total ANNIHILATION!" (stretching the last word out for about 25 seconds) on "After the Flood." That's why I love "1/4 Dead" by Rudimentary Peni (who might be my favourite band ever if I didn't already have 324 Favourite Bands Ever), whose libretto primarily consists of "3/4 of the world is starving/The rest are deeeaaad!" There is enough catharsis in the blood-death-and-drug-saturated expanse of my music collection to last me the rest of my days. I can survive anything.

OLD SCHOOL AND TOO UNCOOL
Went shopping for shoes of the sports/casual variety, and I made a major score. Walked out of Foot Locker (where they still apparently only hire referees) with two pairs of leisure footwear.

My shoe of choice this time around was the Adidas Stan Smith. Certain members of my readership may be smiling right now. Indeed, when I showed off my purchase to my family before Sunday dinner, a huge collective groan, tinged with fond exasperation, went up. But hey, so what if those were the only shoes I wore for the better part of a decade? The selection out there these days is pretty limited. My Etnies were shot, and the belter had semi-seriously forbidden me to replace them with brand-new duplicates. She’s a woman of firm convictions when it comes to fashion. These convictions sometimes seem odd to me, but then again, I’m just a boy. I looked at other skater-type shoes, but they weren’t doing it for me. And your regular track/running shoes are looking so gay these days. They’re veinous and grotesque, embedded with air bladders and springs—they’re like penile implants. And you have to wear them on your feet, look down, and contemplate these cruel badges of impotence all day. No thanks.

I also bought a pair of Converse All-Stars. Haven’t had a pair of those in yonks either. I’m wearing my Stan Smiths right now, though, because they need to be broken in immediately. Gotta get that toe-hinge happening, and dull their alarming whiteness with some scuffing.

The referee who helped me yesterday seemed pretty stoned. He was having a helluva time lacing my freshly unboxed shoes, and he couldn’t work the price scanner. His officiating was very poor, all told. If I wasn’t so happy with my purchase I’d report him to the Shopping Mall Referees’ Association or something.

Oh, nothing about music in this entry. I bought a bunch of CDs on Sunday, and I'll get to those sometime soon.

With the belter off writing mock exams today and tomorrow, sacrificing her weekend for the greater good of the EAC, I’m left to my own devices. As usual, I’ve got a song stuck in my head. Be afraid.

HATE YOURSELF
Two guys from Norway wrote my favourite song of last year. “Hate Yourself” by Solefald is a punk-metal anthem that arrives four tracks into Pills Against the Ageless Ills. It has several movements, working through variations of the opening riff. Lyrics are repeated against the evolving musical backdrop—the same words with different phrasing. “Hate Yourself” is a turbocharged tilt-a-whirl of a song. It’s totally mental. Self-loathing never sounded so good.

Hate yourself and I will make you happy
Pills… is a concept album about two brothers—Cain, a pornographer, and Fuck, a philosopher. There’s a rather flimsy plot involving Cain’s murder of Kurt Cobain and Fuck’s subsequent exile and soul-searching, but it can safely be disregarded. “Hate Yourself” is described thusly: “When Cain confessed to Fuck’s answering machine that he was Kurt Cobain’s murderer, Fuck sent this storm of messages to his brother’s mobile phone.” So there you have it. Probably the first metal song ever written about playing phone tag.

Hate yourself like Kate Moss
I’m not sure if they’ll ever surpass “Coco Chanel, welcome to hell” from Neonism, their previous album, but Pills… definitely has its share of fine couplets. “Out of the seven classic arts/Rhetoric rises to bust the charts.” “My apartment works fine, no need for locations/it’s spacious enough for a camera and some Asians.”

Hate yourself with a touch of glamour
I was reading about Thomas Homer-Dixon (The Ingenuity Gap) in yesterday’s paper, and what he had to say made total sense. I’m quite taken with the “Capitalist Trilemma” he describes. (1—The global economy is producing too many goods and services too many people can’t afford. In other words, the rich/poor gap is widening. 2—Population growth and economic expansion are outstripping the Earth’s ability to sustain us. 3—The problems facing the world are becoming too complex, and solving them in any comprehensive way is beyond our intellectual capacity.) There’s some serious trouble ahead, and we need more people like him to draw attention to the obvious. Not a day passes when I don’t give thanks to the random cosmic/universal forces that I was born when I was and that I live where I do. And I hope I’m outta here before the shit hits the fan.

Hate yourself continents are starving
I was depressed to read that the world’s population has quadrupled in the last century. Nothing can slow down now. You can call attention to the obvious, but when it's too late to change anything, should you even bother?

Hate yourself like I do. No way to improve. No way to do it better. Just suffer suffer suffer!

Sometimes I think there's a conspiracy to erase heavy metal from the cultural/historical record. In a Globe & Mail article about The Osbournes this morning, Ozzy was described as an "aging goth rocker." Hmm, I guess I had forgotten about his Bark at the Moon demos, where he worked with an embryonic Sisters of Mercy. What about the time he took the stage at a Cure gig and sang "Boys Don't Cry" with Fat Bob? Dead good, that. And remember the uproar when he bit off the heads of all of Balaam and the Angel?

Never mind "Hole In the Sky," "Into the Void," and "Hand of Doom." Really, his heart wasn't in it.

Words of wisdom from Professor Bill Martin
"Cyberanarchists are fond of saying that 'information wants to be free.' Systems for downloading music online such as Napster and other forms of what essentially amounts to bootlegging may not yet spell the end of the bourgeoisie, not only because the media corporations will fight desperately to enforce their ownership 'rights,' but also because there is something not yet sufficiently transformational about young people who have the disposable income for their iMacs or whatever (mine is lime) supposedly not having the scratch for the latest Matchbox 20 album."

I’m looking at a ragged pile of 21 CDs that were released last year, with the aim of taking one song from each and compiling a tape. I do this every year. It makes me happy, though it does wake me up to the fact that I don’t give this music the attention it deserves. I feel guilty about it. I worry about getting my money’s worth out of each album. I worry about wringing every bit of appreciation I can from them. I worry about all that agonizing in the studio by people far more talented and brave than myself, only to have schmucks like me listen to their work, like, twice.

I think I did pretty well by them this year, though. Blackwater Park? I had that in rotation during my commutes to Wenco, and I reviewed it for the OP. Massive airtime. No More Shall We Part? Well, that’s the Mayne Island soundtrack. I should play it more at home, but I got all weepy the last time I did. Vespertine? That one’s kind of reserved for special occasions. New Dark Age? Empiricism? Mekano? Prometheus—the Discipline of Fire and Demise? Okay, now I feel guilty. Time to start listening again.

Blueshammer Redeemed?
I only want to play gigs at the Cottage Bistro from now on. I was running late for my engagement with Blueshammer there on Saturday night—whether I was justifiably delayed or displaying some passive-aggressive tardiness, I won’t speculate. I was able to park right outside the door. That was a good sign. I lugged my gear inside, then sat down at the band table. Roger grabbed a pitcher and poured me a pint of Tree IPA. I kicked back to enjoy the hop picnic and watch our opening act do their golden oldies “Wake Up, Little Suzy” thing.

The Bistro stage is tiny. Once my kit is set up, there’s only a couple feet of clearance around it. So we move the mike stands out of the way, Roger sets up station on the floor, Carolyn bops around over by the door, nearly out of my line of sight. Murray stands in front of me, his elbows brushing against my cymbals now and again. It’s intimate, cramped, and fun. We were supposed to start quietly, but I don’t think we succeeded. The amps on either side of me seemed awfully loud. Murray’s combo was spitting out quite the raunch, but his volume knob was at 0.75. I gave it some welly with my splintering Lightning Rods™ and generally tried to make myself audible.

It was hot in there, so after the first set, I took a walk down Main. I stopped outside the Montmartre for a few minutes and watched the onstage action. A couple guys were belting out “Locomotive Breath” to fairly full house. I’ve had fantasies about Blueshammer doing some Tull for ages, but after throwing a couple song titles at them (“Teacher” and “New Day Yesterday”), we decided it was beyond our scope and went back to the Colin James tunes.

I gave the Tullsters a hand and went over to Cinephile to check out their Altman section. I’ve been wanting to see Three Women for ages… I saw it on Bravo when I was between jobs or on holiday or something. Shelley and Sissy shredded my heart like so much bocconcini. The clerk recommended Ghost World to a couple indecisives while I searched the shelves. They didn’t have Three Women, but they did have Paradise Lost 2. I’ll have to come back for that.

The Shockker came in while I was there, so we had a chat. He had seen me walk by from inside the Starry Dynamo, where he was watching a friend play. I’ve made him do enough hard time at Blueshammer gigs in the past, so I hadn’t told him about Saturday’s show. I invited him to swing by later and pick up a DCR CD, which he did.

That’s the kind of night it was—a succession of small, nice events. The crowd at the Bistro thinned out steadily, but I couldn’t take any offense. By 11:30 about half a dozen remained, including the honourable Mr. Black. We pared back our last set and were out of there shortly after midnight.

The belter and I were kept awake the next morning by a garrulous pigeon on the window ledge, amazingly audible through glass and venetian blinds. Flicking the blinds would fix the situation temporarily, but he’d quickly resume his assault on the world’s record for loudest sustained cooing. We gave up when Littlebelt decided she wanted feeding.

Sunday was packed with dangerous levels of tomfoolery. Before I had to go, the belter and I walked around the neighbourhood, drawing on poppies, roses, ball-chasing dogs, cats and shade to regain our equilibrium.

I ate more pancakes this weekend than I have in the last three years.

Just wanted to make note of a couple new additions to the catalogue.

PR-019CD
I was well chuffed to take home a pile of the new Dead City Radio release, Dead City Roadway, from Edmonton last weekend. Most of it was recorded during my last visit, in March of '99. It's a concept album, a soundtrack to an imaginary road movie and, whaddya know, it really works as such. I'm liking it more and more with every listen. Tweek went nuts with the e-bow. It snakes through nearly every track. I'm hearing a Goblin vibe on certain songs, too. Maybe we should try a soundtrack to an imaginary zombie movie next time out. Maybe I should record one myself...

Smash, JR, Mr. Black, Robertson, Shockk, step forward and claim your copies.

MULE 15
My first foray into the print medium. It's a tribute to the belter, and none of you get to read it.

More travelogue than discography today. I’ve been on the road, man.

TANKED
Capped off an unsatisfying week with a dire Blueshammer gig in Kits on Friday night. A few friends showed up, but nobody else wanted us there. My spirit was crushed during our first number, watching a table full of people get up and leave. So much for that nice chat they were having. During the break between sets, Jeff, a drunken gel-monkey birthday boy, took to my drum kit for a solo while his shooter-fortified pals cheered. Picturing him the next day, hung over during his morning shift at Future Shop, was scant consolation.

MINIMUM EQUIPMENT LIST
On Saturday, I got on the 7 a.m. flight to Edmonton. I was running on three hours sleep, but things were okay; there would be music, hospitality, fields, and flat, empty roads on the other end. But we sat in the plane for about 2 hours with a disabled anti-lock braking system awaiting an all-clear from WestJet Maintenance HQ in T.O. I hunkered down with Prof. Bill’s book and tuned out the complaints in seats D, E, & F behind me.

Two things about flying that always alarm me:
1) I like accelerating down the runway and the steady, comforting g-pull of takeoff, but there’s always a couple moments as the plane climbs when that pull disappears and I’m light in the seat for a couple moments, long enough for me to imagine the plane stalling and powering full throttle into the ground. I pored over a diagram explaining wind shear in Time magazine many years ago, and I’ve been a bit jumpy ever since.
2) One minute I’m looking down on the city, picking out the belter’s house, Central Park, and other landmarks, then a minute later all I can see are mountaintops. The Lower Mainland’s sprawl is just a sliver of habitability. From the ground the mountains on the North Shore loom all benevolent and noble, but from above, when you’re high enough to see behind that façade, they look incredibly hostile.

WOODFROGGERY
Tweek neglected to call ahead, so I’m afraid he was waiting for me at YEG while I had yet to take off in Vancouver. The Tape Creep was there, too, and was the first to spot me at the baggage claim. We hopped in our respective vehicles (Tweek and me/Mazda, Tape Creep/white Malibu) and headed for the outskirts, slowing only once to marvel at the latest breed of badass pickup truck being marketed to the phallically challenged in Klein country.

The Tweek estate is woodsy, lacking the blasted tundra feel of his old place (which I loved, and where I spent a surprising amount of time by myself, blasting Codeine, contemplating the lake from the living room and getting all wistful). The backyard is an acre or so, with narrow trails between whippy branches of hazelnut and chokecherry. There’s also abundant birch trees (speaking of Codeine), frogs, and a creepy abandoned swing set and kids’ playhouse back there. I teased Tweek about AJ and Colin using all that space for teenage bush parties--after all, that’s what he did on Windermere Drive back in the day.

Tweek was on to a good thing with Meadow Vole Studio, so his new jam space has a nearly identical layout. If anything, it’s even more comfy. Knowing we didn’t have much time together, we picked up instruments and rolled tape with due haste. I did a lot of “session work,” playing along with a “click track” to “overdub” drums for some previously recorded tunes. We spent the rest of the weekend hammering out new stuff, by ourselves, or with Tweek’s bro Wes (a steady bloke and a fine musician), who joined us on Sunday. We ended up with a couple tapes full of usable material awaiting lyrics, touchups and general sound fascism.

I’m looking for a way I can work the expression “fussy as a lesbian drummer” into the vernacular. It’s no “peuncy,” but it’s all I have right now.