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.

creo ATE MY NEIGHBOURHOOD
I felt a bit forlorn this aft, so I drank a load of tea and went for a mailbox run down to creo. It was nice out, so I extended my walk down to Canada Way (looking for bus stops where I could catch a lift up to Burnaby Mountain when I start work on Tuesday) and up Willingdon back home. Lots of crows around these days, which is good because I like crows. Real Love is a crow on a telephone pole with something to say, as the song goes. Right now I’m quite taken with the way they walk. Of all the birds, crows are the best walkers. They fly down, land, then immediately start striding towards something only they can see. Other birds hop daintily about. Crows have a wide, solid Sumo stance that makes them look like they weigh about 80 pounds. I bet if they weren’t so busy with the daily grind of being a crow, they could size you up, start chasing you up the sidewalk, then take a little leap and sink that stout beak* into the tender flesh behind your knee. Then you’d know who’s boss. Crows are rad.

On the return leg up Willingdon I noticed that there’s new signage on the Dogwood Lodge, the long-term geriatric care home where Grandad lived in ’95/’96. Everything reads “creo” now. I decided to find out if the old folks were still around, so I walked up the access road to the patio by the entranceway, where the residents used to catch some rays on nice afternoons like this. There weren’t any seniors milling about, and the foyer inside was done up in creo colours. I could sense the receptionist inside glowering at me, so I casually walked away from the spot where I waved goodbye to Grandad for the last time.

*I unconsciously stole "stout beak" from David Zieroth, whose website the belter and I are working on these days.

********
I'm spending the day with my guitar and a bunch of old tapes, teaching myself some riffs to take to Edmonton with me on Saturday. Going to be jamming/recording with the Dead City Radios. I'm grateful for the helpful tips I sometimes give myself when I'm recording riffs, so I can figure them out later: "Uh, this is the Scary Ann chord moved up to the fifth fret--no, wait, the third fret. Then it goes to the A power chord on, um, the seventh fret." I'd be lost otherwise. The guitar is still very much a strange and exotic instrument to me.

Things are flying all over the place this week. I’m pining for the belter, who’s working towards literary greatness in Surrey all week. I’m bitter, besides, because I have band practice Thursday, and will miss her reading that night. Grr. My great achievement of the week will be plowing through “Roadhouse Blues” with Blueshammer on Friday night for the shirt-tucking crowd at a Kits pick-up joint. I’m so proud.

So while I contemplate vacating the Blueshammer drum stool, I’ll turn to the more pleasant subject of the difficult music I’m dealing with right now. I was cheered up during a trip to Chapters today by the appearance of a new Bill Martin book. Professor Bill authored the fine Listening to the Future a few years ago, and his latest tome, Avant Rock: Experimental Music from the Beatles to Bjork, deals with music in the same general neighbourhood…at least to my way of thinking (I seem to say this a lot). Whereas LttF had Tull on the cover, this one has Sonic Youth and the wee Icelandic one. Bill is pictured on the back, Rickenbacker four-string in his burly embrace. As a purchase, it was a no-brainer. I started reading this afternoon, and it did not disappoint—lots of philosophy, situationist politics and other things I don’t understand mixed in with solid musical appraisal. I’m interested to see what he makes of Merzbow, who I had much difficulty reviewing for U!

I also picked up a freebie at the belter’s office: an “encyclopedia of northwest music,” which equates to Washington State and Oregon for the purposes of this volume. The thing tries to do too much by including sections on jazz and classical (which seem like afterthoughts tacked onto the big rock section), but there’s some good-to-great bits within. Nice to read Dawn “Backlash” Anderson again, and the coverage of NW metal and hardcore is extensive. The Melvins entry had me listening to Stoner Witch tonight—the guide picked it as perhaps their most beautiful album, and I concur. I was even inspired to put a track from it on the belter’s tape. I would have welcomed an Engine Kid entry, but you can’t have everything.

Back to Melvins: after a couple bottles of Bass last night, I put on Houdini to fall asleep to. I’d forgotten how familiar I was with the album; I could anticipate the sequence of tracks pretty well. As sweet memories of Melvinian shows at the Town Pump congealed into a gloopy mass in my head, I passed out—a track or two before “Spread Eagle Beagle” as luck would have it.

Promo CD Hell Part II
I chipped away at the pile some more. Deadsoul Tribe features the ex-Psychotic Waltz singer (never heard them or him) and they’re being released on InsideOut America. It reminds me of Bruno rock, the nebulous metalgrunge we’d rock out to during the glorious, blurry all-nighters we used to pull. I’m thinking Warrior Soul and Nudeswirl. Smash, I will pass this on to you after I give it another spin. soundisciples didn’t look too promising. First, the album’s called Audio Manifesto, which is pretty gay. Second, the ginger-haired trio who are apparently the soundisciples are pictured on the back with black suits, sunglasses, and (in the middle guy’s grip) a handgun. Yawn. On the other hand, this is on Peaceville Records, who generally rule. And the music itself is passable techno-metal. So scrap the band photos and let the music do the talking. I also spun the new Vanden Plas album, Beyond Daylight. When I’m the mood to dislike prog metal, I really dislike it. I despised this release. There’s supposed to be a Kansas cover as a bonus track on the “real” version of the CD, but it was left off the promo. That really blows, because it would have been nice to have at least one listenable song on the album.

I've neglected this thing for far too long. There comes a point where the fat ass of guilt sits down so hard on me that I’ve no choice but to squeeze out a bunch of words. The writer as whoopee cushion, I suppose.

I’m terrible, because god, there’s no shortage of difficult music around to write about. Actually, I’ve reviewed a bunch of it for Unrestrained! magazine, writing between breaks in copyediting the thing. This is like the 12th issue I’ve done for them, and I’m always impressed by the way their writers can just crank it out…especially Bromley. On the other hand, there’s quite a price to be paid when you’re writing that much that quickly, but I don’t want to get into that here. Suffice it to say that we’d give most of these articles a really hard time in any of our workshops at Douglas.

So yeah, I’ve realized through this latest round of reviewing that the most difficult music of all is music that you didn’t really want in the first place. Though I did luck out with some of the stuff U! sent me (stuff I was actually curious about, like the stellar new Arcturus album and the “reunion” cash-grab by Swedish prog fossils Kaipa), the rest of it was nothing I’d invite into my house under any other circumstances. So writing about music I have no automatic love for is disconcerting, but I had fun with it. Fingers crossed that I don’t come across as an utter tosspot when (or if) my crap makes the hallowed pages of U!

I’m looking at a Purolator box full of promo CDs I’ve received over the last couple years as part-payment for my U! work. It’s piled high with grim, sixth-rate hobby bands that I have no interest in listening to…but I must. It’s the guilt again, its ample posterior packed into stretchy summer shorts, backing towards me, threatening to transform me into a crimson smudge on the office wall (or at least fart in my general direction) if I don’t give these vague semblances of near-art at least a perfunctory airing.

Second War In Heaven by Gonkulator (the band’s logo has pentagrams inside the “O”s) is by far the ugliest thing I’ve got in the pile. The comic art cover painting of an advancing satanic army is oddly sun faded (or perhaps it was rendered in pencil crayon), and the inner painting is equally as bad, featuring a bevy of impaled and bloodied female angels (naked of course) lying amidst the ruins of the gates of heaven. The belter says the band photo looks like it was taken with a pinhole camera…could be a pic from a TV screen too. Band member rundown:
1. Prat in corpse-paint and a Horgh-from-Immortal corset. A sword in each hand completes the ensemble.
2. Darkthrone/Satyricon guy with hair-obscured face wearing gloves that make his hands look skeletal. He brandishes a skull on the end of a stick. Alas! poor Yorick.
3. Female bass player…they’re not just an indie-rock mainstay. “Morbidia Kruel” is no Laura Ballance, however.
4. Short-haired guy with sunglasses and a Brujeria shirt (tucked in). Probably the only member of Gonkulator with a day job. Short-haired guys are a valuable component to any band, as Carcass and Enslaved have proven.

Now for a listen…intro with synthesizers, screams and infernal wheezing. Winds of hell are blowing. Somebody in the band owns a sequencer. Now it’s time to “Banish the Holy Trinity”! Or maybe not. Nice drumming—who taught you, Stephen Hawking? Nice whammy-bar dives, gaylord! Nice fadeouts on the songs. Couldn’t decide on endings during rehearsal? I guess they’ve had a “Volitile (sic) Response to Religious Brainwashing,” which has rendered them incapable of playing their instruments, writing songs and recording them the way God intended. That hasn’t stopped them from trying, though. I’m wondering if Gonkulator are satire-bent art fags (like Gwar), or if they’re a modern-day Shaggs, albeit more Venom-influenced. But I won’t ponder this eternal question for too long. My tea wants warming up.

Another winner from Fudgeworthy Records. Next!

SATANIC PANIC
I'm going to step back from the music-related stuff temporarily, although what I'm going to talk about does have a slight connection to rock 'n' roll. A few years ago I saw a movie at the Ridge that I'll never forget--Paradise Lost: the Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. This documentary chronicles the aftermath of a triple murder in West Memphis, Arkansas. Three 8-year-old boys were killed, their bodies dumped in a ditch. Three local teenagers were accused and convicted of the crime based on extremely flimsy evidence. It seems that, down Arkansas way, wearing black, listening to Metallica, and reading Stephen King is enough to get you sent away for a couple consecutive life sentences. One of the convicted boys, Damien Echols, received the death penalty and is still awaiting execution.

I borrowed the video from the library and watched it again this weekend. It's not all that far removed from Harmony Korine's legendary freak show, Gummo (another night I spent at the Ridge that provokes nervous nip-ups upon recollection) in that there's plenty of mobile-home squalor and malformed people on display. If you ever see Paradise Lost, pay attention to John Mark Byers, the father of one of the murdered boys. He gets scarier with each new revelation, and his head gets progressively more peanut shaped until at the end you're expecting it to erupt and expel a clump of God-fearing brain matter into his lap.

Anyway, here's the site for the Free the West Memphis Three campaign, where you can read the latest updates on the case, buy a t-shirt (as seen on Eddie Vedder) and contribute to the legal defense fund. Paradise Lost also has a sequel, Revelations: Paradise Lost 2, that I haven't come across yet, but I desperately want to see it.

KILLER ROCK: SUBMIT TO LEW SIFFER
It's true, Satan does have all the best tunes. Here is one band's story, and it's a sad one. I'm also intrigued to see that lyrics like "We're gonna Rock, Rock, Rock/Rock with the Rock!" apparently go over big with the kids.

Is that what's gonna happen to Stryper?

SLEAZE!
My friend Bruno pointed me to Metal Sludge, a site devoted to the more carnal side of rock 'n' roll. There's nastiness, innuendo, and mud-slinging aplenty. I like the site's unabashed attitude, but I don't really care for any of the personalities involved. Does anyone care about these people anymore? To my way of thinking, heavy metal isn't about sex (except for Led Zeppelin, but are they metal to begin with?). It's about wallowing in misery, catharsis, and craftsmanship. Still, this is a fun site, especially if you're interested in various rock stars' shameful pasts, and have prurient curiosities about certain guys' dimensions, in-bed performance, and predilections. So, enjoy. I'm washing my hands of the whole thing.

PRETTY PICTURES
Okay, this week’s installment moves us into the visual realm--album cover art. I’ve always been fascinated by the packaging of recorded music. The artwork really affects the way I think about a particular release. The mental picture I have when I recall a piece of music is usually some variation on the cover art. Led Zeppelin IV brings to mind grey skies and crumbling walls. Dark Side of the Moon conjures up the wavering trajectory of an electrocardiograph reading. Husker Du’s New Day Rising is suffused with sunlight smothered by river-silt brown, matching that album’s glorious waves of guitar fuzz and the locked-in-the-trunk vocals. Hemispheres, Rush’s 1978 masterpiece, elicits thoughts of planet-sized cerebellums and elegantly clenched male buttocks... Oh dear.

Lovely Floating Landscapes
Roger Dean’s art went hand in hand with the ascendancy of Yes as hugely popular prog-rockers in the mid-'70s. He was there for their breakthrough album, Fragile, and stayed with them until 1977’s Going For the One album, for which Hipgnosis supplied the artwork. (More on them later.) Dean set the standard for fantastical sleeve art and hard-to-discern band logos. The average punter would associate his imagery with Yes, but he’s also done covers for two of my faves, Uriah Heep and Budgie--two of the greatest no-hope outfits that ever existed.

Mad as a Hatter
I LOVE Paul Whitehead’s album covers for Genesis and Van der Graaf Generator circa ’70 to ’72. They’re sort of "John Tenniel meets the space age" in exactly the same way as those bands’ music was reaching back while looking forward. My favourite Whitehead covers are for Nursery Cryme (Genesis, 1971), Pawn Hearts (VdGG, 1971) and Fool’s Mate (Peter Hammill, 1971). 1971 was a good year, I guess. Anyway, Whitehead’s official site has many great examples of his work past and present, and it’s nice to see that he hasn’t lost his gift for trippy imagery in the least.

‘Ead-banging
Like Roger Dean, Derek Riggs is intimately linked with one band--in this case, Iron Maiden. Riggs has been with them right from day one, with a brief respite sometime in the ‘90s, I believe. He created their adorable mascot, Eddie, and his album sleeves have played a huge role in Maiden’s growing popularity throughout the ‘80s. It’s all about visual consistency. The kids couldn’t get enough of it. My favourite Riggs covers are Maiden’s first album (before Eddie became too cartoony--back then he was just creepy) and 1983’s Piece of Mind. What must have America’s moms and dads thought? Be sure to check out some of Riggs’s other work for bands like Gamma Ray and Stratovarius. And, if you’re an up-and-coming group, why not buy an original Derek Riggs for your wicked debut? Or if you’re an aspiring author with a first-draft novel you’re desperate to have published, you can buy a cover for your paperback masterpiece, particularly if your book has a rural setting and features half-clothed characters wandering through wheat fields, casting steely glares, and shagging.

MORE ART
Note: a few of these sites are heavy on the Flash and Shockwave, so if you’re visiting via a dial-up connection, be prepared to wait.

Storm Thorgerson
Formerly known as Hipgnosis (the design studio he formed with Aubrey Powell in 1968), he’s responsible for some of the greatest album art ever--Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Houses of the Holy, and on and on. His website is a total knockout, too. For background/technical info on some of the most iconic imagery in rock music, it’s a worthwhile visit.

Travis Smith
This guy must work his ass off, because he's popping up everywhere these days. He’s the artist of the moment in the heavy metal world. As you can see at his official site, much of his work has a really cool hazy, misty quality to it, but he’s not afraid of being garish either. Opeth and Devin Townsend are examples of the former approach. Demons and Wizards and Iced Earth get more of a D&D treatment.

H.R. Giger
This infamous Swiss artist's work has appeared on albums by artists as diverse as Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Celtic Frost, and Debbie Harry. And who can forget when The Dead Kennedys included a poster of his Penis Landscape with their Frankenchrist LP? Tipper Gore shat blood. Ah, those were the days.

ALL WASHED UP?
This week, I'm taking some inspiration from a few of my PRFU 340 classmates and diving into the seedy underworld of rockers who've seen their time in the spotlight come and go. Thank god they have the Internet, otherwise we'd forget about them completely.

The Whackmaster!
Ted Nugent. Wang dang, the Nuge sure had rock fans in a stranglehold during the free-for-all that was the '70s. He may have been distracted by chronic Cat Scratch Fever, but that didn't stop him from inflicting tinnitus on an entire generation of Camaro owners. Ted hasn't had a hit in a long while, but he's still active on the musical front. However, Ted's official site downplays the rockin' in favour of a fusillade of pro-hunting, wildlife-conservation, "America: love it or leave it" ethos. It looks like the Nuge has carved out a cottage industry based on his passion for the hunt. As a child of the suburbs who placates his carnivorous tendencies at Safeway, I can't really relate to all the killin' (I know I'm guilty of distancing myself from the realities of the slaughterhouse and the general nastiness and waste of commercial meat-packing, but it's one of those small hypocrisies I have to live with if I'm going to stay sane), but what can I say? Ted walks the walk.

Domo Arigato!
While cruising through Styx's official website (they're pretty active these days, with the surprisingly-popular-in-Eastern-Canada Lawrence "Larry" Gowan replacing Dennis DeYoung on keyboards/vocals) I found an article that talks about the phenomenon of aging rockers finding their original audiences again. It seems that older fans are rediscovering the bands they followed back when they--the fans and the bands--still had hair, flares, and drug habits. It's cool, and I approve, but it would be even better if, instead of following the same old bands, the average over-35 rock fan had the curiosity to check out groups like Spock's Beard, who are making music that's a helluva lot more vital than what most classic rockers are cranking out these days.

Born and Raised in South Detroit...
What can I say here? I thought I'd send you on a little A/V excursion. This kind of thing justifies the Internet's existence. Even though the song is as wimpy as a meal of tofu dogs, carrot sticks, and rice pudding, I just know that the Nuge would approve.

At the behest of my instructor, Gladys, my task this week is to find some music-related blogs, blogs that are worthy of mention on the almighty Difficult Music. Is anyone else engaged in a sad monologue about music that nobody else likes? Here are my findings:

musicrag
I found this one via the 2002 Bloggies (it was a nominee. The winner focuses on the chronically under-publicized U2). musicrag put itself in my good books almost immediately, with reviews of The Breeders (reunited and live in concert!) and a list of someone's top albums of 1993. Funny thing, I'd just been talking about the music of 1993 with a friend, and it really was a good year, what with the aforementioned Breeders' Last Splash album, Liz Phair's opening statement, Exile in Guyville, and Urge Overkill's tribute to '70s pop-metal, Saturation. Didn't Nirvana release the repellent and compelling In Utero that year, too? Ah, 1993. Back then, the songs had tunes you could hum, and every Sunday we gathered 'round the old Victrola with mugs of cocoa and buttered slices of fresh pumpernickel. We also called sandwiches flat freddies and you could buy six of them for a nickel. But really, they don't make years like that anymore.

But I digress. musicrag has a number of contributors--five (or possibly six) guys and one woman. The site also has a reviews section (with a scant two reviews so far--for shame!), interviews, feature articles, a "fivesongs" page where you can vote for five songs that relate to a given topic, and a store featuring musicrag merchandise. Yes, these folks have some big ideas for their site. The typeface is tiny, and the line length is a little excessive, but the writing's snappy and the Blogger-powered site looks sharp.

People Talk Too Loud
This is another 2002 Bloggies nominee, and another good-looking site (it's powered by Movable Type). They pretty much cover the same music that musicrag does--indie/alternative rock, the kind of stuff that carries on the spirit of '93. Like musicrag, PTTL has a reviews section. It's not huge, but at least the reviews number more than two. And one of the reviewers is a metal-head! Nice reviews of Emperor and Neurosis, dude!

I wanted to find out more about the contributors to this site, but the "about us" section was under construction.

21st Century Schizoid Man
I set myself a small challenge for this assignment: find a blog that mentions either Peter Hammill or Van der Graaf Generator. Hammill fronted VdGG in the '70s and continues as solo artist to this day, toiling, as ever, in obscurity. Both the man and the band are my favourite artists of all time, but that's a tale for another entry. Anyway, I wanted to see if there were any kindred spirits out there.

As I predicted, most blog entries that mentioned my heroes weren't in English. Zut alors! Hammill's always been most popular on the continent, where folks are more attuned to the classical tradition and to the dramatic delivery that Hammill deploys, especially in concert. Anyway, I found the above site, which gave a brief nod to VdGG in a description of another band's style: "Jade Warrior are so obscure, they make Van Der Graaf Generator look like Yes." Ha-ha, I hear you, man! I don't know who this guy is, but I'm linking to his blog just because he's obviously VERY FAR GONE! He's big on the prog rock, and does a lot of reading on the subject. He buys obscure stuff on eBay, checks out the latest Mojo magazine, makes "best releases of the year" lists--in short, all the right things. I wish he lived on my block, so I could drop by and listen to his Cressida albums. I'm still waiting for the one I ordered from Scratch Records to arrive.

Today’s music-industry vets are mad as hell, and they’re not taking it anymore… Besides, I like reading a good rant.

SIGNING YOUR LIFE AWAY
Ooh, the music industry is a dank, seedy place populated by sharks, snakes, and the odd weasel. For every chart-topping act, there are a thousand careers that never get off the ground. The delete bins are filled with broken dreams, squandered talent, bad advice, and debt. The allure of becoming a “major label” recording artist is too powerful to resist for most performers. Thankfully, there are other options nowadays, options that the Internet has opened up.

The Majors Get a Good Shellacking
First, here’s The Problem With Music, an excerpt from an article by Steve Albini. Albini is probably most noted for his recording and engineering skills—I don’t think he likes the term “producer”—and his work with Nirvana (In Utero), PJ Harvey (Rid of Me), and The Pixies (Surfer Rosa). He’s always railed against the accepted practices of the music industry. For example, instead of taking “points” on an album he works on (in effect taking a cut of the eventual sales), he prefers to be paid up front for his work. This article points out the economic realities inherent in a typical major label record contract. Watch out! In the end, says Albini, most bands would have been better off keeping their day jobs at the 7-Eleven.

Courtney Does the Math
Courtney Love isn’t shy about letting her feelings known. She’s used the net many a time to issue diatribes of one sort or another. When Napster exploded and Metallica (or, more specifically, main mouthpiece Lars Ulrich) hired some lawyers to recoup their losses*, Love weighed in with her take on the situation. But, hey, look at this: at the end of her little economic analysis, she says, “the band may as well be working at 7-Eleven.” Given that Albini’s rant dates back to 1994 (when Napster’s creators were probably still in, uh, nappies), can we say that Love has indulged in a little piracy of her own?

Love’s most valid point is that major labels aren’t doing their job. They control the distribution of music—or they desperately want to control its distribution—but they’re doing a half-assed job. They aren’t helping artists find audiences. Says Love, “The present system keeps artists from finding an audience because it has too many artificial scarcities: limited radio promotion, limited bin space in stores and a limited number of spots on the record company roster. The digital world has no scarcities. There are countless ways to reach an audience. Radio is no longer the only place to hear a new song. And tiny mall record stores aren't the only place to buy a new CD.”

* I think Metallica owes far more to the fans who, under the impression that they were going to hear some heavy metal, bought Load and Reload.

Some Much-Needed Discipline
Indeed, record stores aren’t the only place to buy CDs, and artists can find their audiences without the help of major labels. Case in point, Discipline Global Mobile, the record-label arm of Robert Fripp, King Crimson, and related musicians. Read DGM’s mission statement and get a sense of the alternatives that exist for musicians in the 21st century. Briefly, DGM's aim is "to be a model of ethical business in an industry founded on exploitation, oiled by deceit, riven with theft and fuelled by greed." Hurrah! I have a lot of respect for this approach, and I also like that DGM isn’t some hermetically sealed virtual society. They make an effort to reach out to the real world, getting their releases into stores and getting their artists out on tour. Whether a business can, "operate in the marketplace, while being free of the values of the marketplace" (as DGM intends to) in perpetuity, I hope they can prosper for a long time.

Most of today’s installment deals with that obsession of all nerdy music fans…

LISTS
Beautiful and Concise
Thanks to High Fidelity and other peeks under the mossy stone that conceals my subculture, list-making amongst music geeks has been exposed as the sad cliché that it is. But the practice still thrives, because the crux of the matter is that lists just say so much, so quickly, and so honestly. A dear friend of mine had a dream once where the phrase “information is beautiful and concise” popped out at her. We’ve spent a long time trying to decipher that statement, and now I think it was talking about lists.

Do You Like Dido?
I don’t think you can hide anything in a list. Every listed item is like a pair of gonch hanging from your clothesline. Show me your grocery list, and I’ll know your marital status, whether you have kids, if you need more fibre in your diet, and how much time you spend on the couch. Show me a list of 25 CDs in your collection, and I can tell if you’re a Dido fan or not. At least that’s the premise of this list from The Guardian. Are you in your thirties and clinging to the notion that you’re hip while still feeling rather threatened by today’s music? Check your CD collection against this list and see how you’re doing. (I’ll cop to owning The Joshua Tree, though I can’t find it in the house. I think my sister took it. Oh, and I've got that Oasis album, too.)

Best of 2001
I’m so chuffed—I’m getting my "Top 15 Albums of 2001" list printed in the new issue of Unrestrained! magazine. I know it’s not the most stunning literary achievement, but hey, the boys at U! seem to value my copyediting services, and they’re good sports about letting me in on their year-end roundup action. For the morbidly curious, here’s the list (artist, title, and record label):
1. Opeth – Blackwater Park (Music For Nations/Koch)
2. Katatonia – Last Fair Deal Gone Down (Peaceville)
3. Nick Cave – No More Shall We Part (Reprise)
4. Neurosis – A Sun That Never Sets (Relapse)
5. Bjork – Vespertine (Elektra)
6. Amorphis – Am Universum (Relapse)
7. Transatlantic – Bridge Across Forever (Metal Blade)
8. Devin Townsend – Terria (HevyDevy)
9. Porcupine Tree – Recordings (Snapper)
10. Mammoth Volume – A Single Book of Songs By… (The Music Cartel)
11. Anathema – A Fine Day to Exit (Music For Nations/Koch)
12. Miriodor – Mekano (Cuneiform)
13. Sigh – Imaginary Sonicscape (Century Media)
14. Solefald – Pills Against the Ageless Ills (Century Media)
15. Djam Karet – New Dark Age (Cuneiform)

But that’s just my list, and I’m a bit mental. For a better sense of what constituted good pop music in 2001, visit The Village Voice’s Pazz and Jop Poll. I think Nick Cave and Bjork are there, but as for the rest… Well, you’re as likely to see Sigh there (check out their official website, created by local lad Dennis Leong) as you are to see Michael Campbell at Blunt Bros. puffing on a big ’gar.

LOCAL MUSIC REVISITED
Roadbed…I Like
My local music installment of a couple weeks ago had a serious omission. I forgot to mention my friends Roadbed, and their official site by gforceCreative. Roadbed are a kind of jazz-pop-indie-rock trio who never fail to put on a top-notch show. Like all great bands, each member has a distinct personality. If you replaced any one of them, it would be a totally different band. On drums, you’ve got Two-Sticks—one suave MF with a feather-light touch that drives the ladies wild. On guitar, there’s Shockk—the embodiment of all things caffeinated and rocking, able to switch from Metheny to Slayer and back again in a click of a stomp-box. Finally, on bass and vocals, we have Super Robertson—man-mountain and mountain-man, poet, diarist, facial-hair experimenter and They Might Be Giants fan. They’re friends, we’ve collaborated in the past, and I’ve seen more of their gigs than I’ve had hot dinners (guess that makes me—gulp—a “Roadhead”). Go see ’em at a fine venue near you.

GETTING INTO DIFFICULTY

A brief survey of album review sites
Man, did I feel like a twit. I mean, I feel like a twit nearly every minute of every day, but in this case I clearly remember what sent my self-respect plummeting.

I was at the group interview prior to being accepted into Print Futures. Pat Witwicki was there, FX Sabanes was there. We were being poked and prodded (in a purely figurative sense, you understand) by Lorna McCallum and Diana Wegner. A question went around the table: "What kinds of things do you like to read?"

If I'd have known then what I know now, I'd have said, "Well, I enjoy reading an eclectic mixture of genres: annual reports, user manuals, brochures, press releases and media advisories, and, when I can't get my hands on those, I like to unwind with some Foucault, Derrida, and back issues of Harper's."

But instead, I thought for a second and said, "Well, I really like reading record reviews."

I felt a bit of a wally, but it was the truth. I do like reading record reviews. Plop a book full of reviews on my lap and I’ll happily while away the hours. I’ll probably even forget to eat. A good review (or reviewer) can make me think about a familiar piece of music in a whole new way, or introduce me to an artist or genre that I’d always been curious about but never had the courage (or finances) to check out myself.

While I’ll always prefer the feel and portability of an actual book—I’m thinking of my two Bibles, The Trouser Press Guide to ‘90s Rock, and The Collector’s Guide to Heavy Metal—there are a number of websites that have become invaluable sources of record reviews. They’ve pointed me in directions I couldn’t have predicted.

So this week’s blog entry is a quick tip o’ the hat to the sites that have shown me the future and uncovered the past, affirmed my worldview and torn up some of my long-held assumptions.

Last week’s entry had a link to John Chedsey’s Satan Stole My Teddybear. Sorry about the redundancy, but I wanted to give it another plug because I think so highly of it. It bills itself as “your online source for reviews on heavy metal, punk, industrial, progressive, ambient and other music guaranteed to upset your folks.” That’s a good description. John and his team of able reviewers cast their nets wide, and I heartily approve. You’ll find reviews of prog-crusties like Genesis and Gryphon (I was very happy to find a review of Red Queen to Gryphon Three there—“This album is so cool it should be illegal to dislike it”) plus a huge assortment of underground metal reviews.

Then there’s Prog-Net, which was a fabulous site of visitor-submitted reviews. I use the word “was” because, while the site remains online, it is no longer being updated. I’m still bummed about it, because I’d just started submitting to it last summer. Then one day I visited, and read this message from site founder Chris Dixon: “I hate to do this, but at this time I am going to stop the daily postings for Prog-Net. Without going into too much detail, I can only say that there continue to be abuses of this site that are beyond my control and often without my knowledge. For now, at least, I will leave up the archive. I want to thank EVERYONE who has put in the time to participate and contribute to this site. I hope that some day it will live again in some form, but for now, I think it just needs to come to a close. Keep on supporting prog!”
Major bummer. I think the site abuse took the form of a “review bombing” campaign by fans of a certain band. They took advantage of the site’s “all-comers” policy and ruined it for everybody else. I’d certainly like to see Prog-Net open and active once again. For now, its archive of reviews is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in progressive rock/metal and jazz.

Next up, we have musique [machine]. I have to thank my friend Bruno for pointing me to this good-looking site. The music they cover falls under the metal-ambient-experimental umbrella—cutting-edge stuff. I feel a bit out of my depth when I come face-to-face with reviews of artists such as Braaxtaal and Tactile Gemma, but exploring little-known corners of the musical universe is what I live for, so full marks to this site for opening up the nooks and crannies.

Last summer was a fairly shattering time for me. Various circumstances were forcing me to look at issues I had surrounding my self-confidence, my abilities, my ambitions, my desire to commute to Richmond on a daily basis… The War Against Silence shook me up pretty badly, too. This is ostensibly a music review site, but it’s much, much more. It’s the weekly diary of Glenn Robinson, a user-interface designer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Like me, Glenn buys a lot of music. Like me, his entire life is filtered through the music he listens to. Like me, he likes a lot of music that no one else pays much attention to. We even like a lot of the same bands: Marillion, IQ, Guided By Voices, amongst others. On the other hand, he likes a lot of stuff I find abhorrent: Ani Difranco, Roxette, Alanis Morissette. I like the fact that Glenn sits down once a week and pulls an all-nighter to write his column. I should have such a work ethic. I like Glenn’s writing. It’s convoluted and brainy. The man’s clearly brilliant. Here’s what he does in The War Against Silence: “I write about music, and about other things by way of music, because music transforms everything I contact, and maybe I can give you some tiny fraction of that by example. If you can't love Big Country or Tori Amos the way I do, maybe my explication of how and why I love them can help you love whomever you love better. I call these things music reviews because they try to answer the questions I think music should be construed as asking. Writing about music without writing about how it affects your life is, to me, an exercise in surreal opacity, like writing about sex or child-rearing without talking about love, or writing about food without eating.”

I think Glenn is a lot like me. Glenn does what I want to do so much better than I could ever do it. I don’t know if I like Glenn.

Here's a musical area that's caused me a whole lot of difficulty over the years:

LOCAL MUSIC

Too young for punk
The first local music that I became aware of was punk rock...and my friends and I hated it. We thought groups like the K-Tels (who later became The Young Canadians) were a joke. KISS or AC/DC could kick their asses. But what did we know? We were, like, 12.

It's too bad, because I lived through the heyday of Vancouver punk rock, and I have nothing to show for it. I was too young to go to shows, I'll grant you, but I could have scored some insanely collectible albums and singles if I'd been spending my allowance at the right record stores back then. (note: I don't subscribe to the "collector scum" mentality. I buy records for the music, not any imagined resale value, I swear.) Alas, my punk rock alter-ego hadn't quite been hatched yet. I liked Rush too much (and still do).

Despite my initial aversion to punk, I've always liked D.O.A. for their humour, their blend of hoseheaded hedonism and sincere activism, and "World War 3," the best punk single ever. Here's a link to their oral history at Joey Shithead's own Sudden Death Records website. It looks like a pain in the butt to read--the centre-aligned text is nasty--but it's bound to be a lively tale nevertheless. Joey's a good Burnaby boy, and probably the only person who's lived there longer than I have. In fact, his place is just up the street from mine.

NoMeansNo
Are they local? Does Victoria count? I think they all live in the Lower Mainland now anyway. Are they punk? Are they jazz? Are they art-damaged, Oedipal geeks who haven't made a bad recording in their 20 years of existence?

All of the above. Armed with a TEAC four-track, the Wright brothers joined forces in the basement, took their music to the world, and became my favourite local band of all time. I haven't the space or time to describe their stellar discography (I'll let John Chedsey of the equally stellar Satan Stole My Teddybear give you his critical appreciation instead), but I will say here that their music has always inspired, scared, informed, and disturbed me during the 15-plus years that I've been listening to it.

What about the metal and the prog, Rob?
Don't get me started on how the Vancouver media, especially The Sun and The Province, have been utterly hostile to heavy metal since the beginning of time. Same goes for their attitude towards progressive rock. Tom Harrison, Fiona McQuarrie, Vaughn Palmer (hard to believe that this lumpen politco once wrote concert reviews), John Mackie, Greg Potter--the list of evil hacks goes on and on. Their ignorance and hostility only fueled my loyalty to the music I loved.

Back when the metal underground was exploding in '85, I could follow the local scene via CITR's Powerchord show (where Metal Ron and the Rattlehead hold court to this day, God bless their fraying bullet belts). I got to hear bands like Sacred Blade (I can't believe these guys are still going), Karrion, Mission of Christ, Dioxin and Fratricide. Wish I'd scored demos from all of them, but I didn't get out much in those days.

On the progressive front...well, there was no progressive rock in Vancouver that I knew of. Recently though, I've been introduced to Mind Gallery (who do quite well internationally, but I've only seen one article about them in the local press) and Earthbound, a Yes tribute act who manage to scrape together shows now and then (they also feature the Douglas College music department's own Bob Caldwell on drums). Their website has disappeared, I'm afraid, but here's a live review. I've had a pretty hit-and-miss history when it comes to catching shows by either of these bands, but I do my best. Gotta support the prog.

Shameless self-promotion
I like to think I've done my bit to clutter up the local scene with my thoroughly average musical talents. Two bands I've played in currently have a presence on the web--Stoke and KLAGG (there should be an umlaut over that "A", but I can't do it on this computer).

I'll go with KLAGG first, because it's been around the longest. KLAGG (pronounced "clog"--name taken from an SCTV skit starring Harold Ramis as a Swedish cop with an attitude) began when my friend Ian (bass, mostly) and I (drums, mostly) invited our friend Alick (guitar, mostly) to jam with us back in '95 or so. Man, did we jam. And we rolled tape. And we jammed some more. And we taped some more. After a few years, we decided to go back to the tapes and write some real songs with all the good bits. Long story short--two CDs, a couple shows, a bunch of fun. Ian's partner Rob built us our official website. I was supposed to supply most of the content, but I'm a busy guy. It's not quite the promotional powerhouse it should be. We also have an MP3.com site, where the world can enjoy our painstaking craftsmanship.

Stoke came out of another jamming project where I teamed up with my friends Bruknow (bass) and Scum (guitar). It was kind of directionless (but still fun), and when Scum jumped ship, we drafted in Alick (of the aforementioned KLAGG). Alick, a master songsmith, gave us some direction, and before I knew it, we were in Vogville Recording Studios recording an eight-song CD. I had to leave the band because of my Print Futures workload, and they carried on to bigger and better things. Here's Stoke's MP3.com site, where Bruknow's done a bang-up job of keeping the fanbase up to date. As Nardwuar the Human Serviette said, "Wicked!!! ... a total 21st century blast of rawk!" (sic). The man speaks the truth.