The term “stoner rock” is pretty lame, but it’ll have to do. I’m pretty stoked on stoner rock not because of its “bong-rattling grooves” and the whole pot angle (boring) but because of its stubborn adherence to old-fashioned musical and production values. Just plug in your guitar and play, man. Unfortunately this scene has produced a lot of cookie cutter bands content to set their sights no higher than producing barely passable facsimiles of Kyuss, early Monster Magnet, or even the mediocre Fu Manchu. There’s a lot of slop clogging up the trough (or resin gumming up the screen).

I keep coming back for more though. Don’t ask me how I ended up with two Electric Wizard albums. I’m not even sure I like them—they’re sloppy, incoherent, and their riffs are completely retarded. They clearly don’t give a fuck, and that’s kind of what keeps me listening, hoping that one day I’ll believe. Plus they’re British, which counts for something with me. They’re the sound of ruination…abysmal in the true sense of the word. Remember Trainspotting, when McGregor tries to retrieve his suppositories down the worst toilet in Scotland? That’s what listening to Electric Wizard reminds me of.

Sweden’s Mammoth Volume are the complete opposite. They can sing, they can play, they’ve got songs that twist and turn, eat their own tails, send out tendrils into your brain. They’re like Yes and Purple and Santana, maybe even the Beatles. If you consider Half Man, Spiritual Beggars, Grand Magus, Abramis Brama and The Quill (the latter two I have yet to check out beyond some MP3s), then it’s apparent that Sweden is mecca for hard rockers worldwide. Mammoth Volume! Rule!

The States sometimes coughs up some interesting bands. I’ve gone on about fuzzular circlenauts Dead Meadow before. Suffice to say I want to be in a band that sounds just like them. I picked up Graveyard Poetry by Abdullah on the weekend, after seeing their name on various year-end lists and hearing the awesome “Black Helicopters.” I have to give them credit for standing out from the crowd, too. Their massed powerchords remind me of Sheavy, but I like Abdullah’s vocalist (Jeff Shirilla, who also writes the majority of the material) better. Sure, they take some cues from Sabbath, but they also incorporate a distinct NWOBHM vibe. Bands like Witchfinder General, Holocaust and Diamond Head come to mind throughout the album. In fact, one song, “Strange Benedictions,” sounds exactly like the latter band’s “Sucking My Love.” I also admire the album for shaking things up tempo-wise, avoiding the sludge-rut that most stoner bands fall into. “Deprogrammed” speeds along like early Metallica before hitting its mid-tempo stride, while the album ends with the punkish “They, The Tyrants.” A fine release from the folks at Meteor City.

I covered a lot of ground on Saturday. I got my hair cut, dropped by to say hi/bye to my folks (packing up to leave for Cuba), picked up King Crimson tickets, had a cup of coffee with Smash, tried to keep Cypress amused, and went to the video store. We bombarded ourselves with videos this weekend—About a Boy (okay, but the bits where it deviated from the book were dodgy, and it suffered from voiceover overkill), Kiki’s Delivery Service (which Cypress watched on Saturday morning), The Crocodile Hunter movie (whatever it was called—I thought they did a good job of constructing a movie around that lunatic), and Top Secret! (hadn’t seen it in a long time—it’s still solid gold).

We went to Chinatown on Sunday. Cypress bought some pretty things with her Christmas money, while we bought a stainless steel flipper at Ming Wo and fantasized about owning a kitchen scale. Turns out that weed stores aren’t the only places that stock precision-weighing devices.

We had a late lunch at the Waterfront Centre food court before delivering Cypress to the good folks at Harbour Air. Whenever I’m at a food court nowadays I feel like a sleazy businessman in a red light district (not that I really know what that feels like, but, uh…). I made the rounds to survey what’s on offer—all those glistening, steaming entrees beaming from backlit signage. The people behind each counter were all so eager to catch my eye and secure my custom. When did food courts become such competitive places? Every time I'm at one it seems really cutthroat. I nodded nonchalantly as I zeroed in on my choice.

I ended up having a hot date with a chicken souvlaki. It did the trick.

The belter could derail a lecture with a single remark. She’d see an opening, label that fucker and let it fly. Boom—bottom corner, stick-hand side. Class would resume after the laughter dissipated.

She also liked the first Roxy Music album.

So she’s quick witted and cool, and I’m deliberate and somewhat embarrassed to exist. I decided to show no fear.

An early encounter went like this: I was talking with classmates in the Douglas College atrium. The belter approached our circle and started pestering me, like a wasp investigating a picnicker’s sandwich. She was obviously overcaffeinated and giddy. I turned around and said in my best vice-principal’s tone, “This is neither the time, nor the place.” I shut her down pretty good, she told me much later.

We eventually found the time and the place—the night of September 6, 2001 on a bench by the upper pond in Central Park. It took a little patience, bravery, and imagination, but there we were.

And here we are. Happy Valentine’s Day, sweetie.

The Supertramp revival begins here. I even heard "Fool's Overture" coming out of someone's Walkman on the SkyTrain yesterday. I remember discovering FM radio back in the late Cretaceous Period and being frightened by that song. I wasn't creeped out as much as when I first heard Dark Side of the Moon, but it was spooky enough to leave an impression. Believe you me.

I recently saw a Classic Albums show about the making of Deep Purple's Machine Head. Besides the good stuff you usually get in a typical CA episode (washed-out old film footage, band members listening to the master tapes and marvelling at how good they used to be), you also got Ritchie Blackmore in full Three Musketeers mode being interviewed in some kind of medieval grotto, complete with candelabra and suits of armor in the background. Gillan, Paice, Glover and Lord were more down to earth. Glover sported a balding rocker bandana, Lord seemed quite the country gentleman, and Gillan and Paice looked like they’d come in from a backyard barbecue.

The band as a whole were remarkably soft spoken. They had a few good stories about the perilous circumstances surrounding the recording of Machine Head, but I got the impression that they directed most of their attention towards the music back in the day. (I expect they enjoyed a drink or twelve as well.)

Roger Glover delivered what I thought was the best quote of the show, while discussing "Pictures of Home": "We never had a formula, but it's always good to have a shuffle on an album." I totally agree.

Actually, Machine Head features two shuffles. They didn't talk about "Lazy" on the show, and that's the shufflingest shuffle of all possible shuffles.

Machine Head always takes me back to our late-summer visits to the Sarrell family home in Oliver, B.C. The Sarrells were teacher friends of my parents. We’d drive out there in the VW van and load up on fruit. Their son Michael was the epitome of cool to me. He had the big seventies afro (what my hair will become if I don’t get it cut NOW), the sketchy peach-fuzz moustache, and the first collection of serious rock music I’d ever checked out—he had all the Kiss, Purple, and Heep albums. Mike was also a budding naturalist, so his room was full of dead things that he’d found out on the Okanagan bluffs—sheep skulls and snake skins, very large bugs. When he was out, I’d sneak in there and just be in awe. Anyway, it was through him that I first heard “Highway Star,” “Maybe I’m a Leo,” and “Lazy” (not to mention “Detroit Rock City”).

I think Michael now works as a wildlife biologist in the area. He pops up in the media occasionally whenever some strange faunal phenomena occurs. I remember him being interviewed on CBC radio when a massive colony of bats was discovered in a church attic.

After returning from one of those trips to Oliver, I joined forces with the men of Huxley Ave. They had also seen the light, and my life was set.

We were talking last night about Karen Black and how her wonky eye alignment drives some men wild. This led the belter to speculate that small deformities in women can be attractive. For example, look at the Web sites out there that cater to men’s predilection for women in casts and bandages. I mentioned my well-known fondness for women in glasses. Perhaps that was the same sort of thing.

No, said the belter, that’s different. That's making a fetish out of the object or accessory, not the actual medical condition. If someone was simply nearsighted, I wouldn’t give them a second look. I wouldn’t necessarily regard a woman with cataracts as sexy.

She was right. But a woman with cataracts might be more likely to find me sexy.

I read an article in the Sun today about the fights at the monster truck Motor Spectacular last weekend (which sounded like a ton of fun anyway—check it out here and here). Around 200 (The Courier sez it was 75) people were ejected from BC Place during this "family event," and fights spilled out onto the plaza surrounding the venue. Apparently Vancouver is the only city on the monster truck circuit where this happens, and stadium officials aren't sure they want the show to return next year.

Fighting at a monster truck show seems strange. I've been to dozens of motorsports events, and the sights and sounds of powerful vehicles have never made me want to sock someone. "Wow, 1200 horsepower!"—boof! Maybe it's just me.

So, how do we explain this? "Vancouver doesn't have many public events," said one official, citing the cancellation of First Night, the Sea Festival, et cetera. "So people don't know how to behave at them."

Which came first—the chicken or the egg?

I need to commend Coronation Street for its use of music. It doesn’t use canned background music like American soap operas do. String sections don’t swell during the romantic bits, synthesizers don’t sustain low pedal notes while the villain plans his next move.

The only music on Coronation Street is music that the characters can hear themselves, in real space and real time. It comes out of the radio while Sally fixes breakfast for the gurls, it’s playing on a boom box while SarahLou2 and Candeeeece bemoan their lot in life, it’s danced to at Steve and Karen’s flatwarming party. Music is an important part of life on the Street, and an integral component of many characters’ histories and personalities.

Rita, for example, once enjoyed a career as a nightclub singer. While her air of tragic glamour is subsumed by her daily grind at the Kabin, on very special occasions she’ll take mic in hand and serenade some lucky patrons at the Rovers. Then there was the time she disappeared after Alan Bradley terrorized her into psychosis. Alec Gilroy found her in Blackpool, where she had returned to her old life as an entertainer. For Rita, music ties her to the past, her youth, and another life. The same could be said for many of us.

Then there’s Les, with his fondness for all things denim and leather. Music for him is a good time, part of a weekend afternoon out in the sun with a few cans. If someone wants to join him, all the better. Even through his tastes make everyone on the Street cringe, he’s always eager to share. When someone’s throwing a shindig, he’ll plump for being the DJ. Les gets more excited about music than any other character on the show. I always picture a milk crate stuffed with well-worn and well-loved vinyl on the floor of the Battersby abode. He probably doesn’t have many records, but he’ll lug the ones he does have around with him until his pasty, ginger-furred legs give out. Les’s past is the present, his youth is but a Quo song away. I can relate.

In a way, I started watching Corrie in earnest because of music. It was 1986, and a young Martin Platt was going out with Jenny Bradley (daughter of the aforementioned baddie Alan). One episode featured a scene where they were getting hot and heavy on Rita’s couch to the strains of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush singing “Don’t Give Up.” Wow. I’d always had certain yearnings, and that scene captured a kind of romantic ideal for me—a girl, some nice music, some grappling. It flipped a breaker in my head, and I was hooked on the show from then on. (That particular plotline unfurled in gripping fashion—a car crash, Martin in a coma, lies and deceit…)

The musical aspect of Coronation Street sometimes spills over into the real world. Actors from the show have recorded singles and albums, and toured internationally. You’d sometimes see ads for Bill “Jack Duckworth” Tarmey albums during Corrie commercial breaks. Kevin Kennedy (Curly Watts) once played in a band with the pre-Smiths Johnny Marr and Andy Rourke. I can remember the British contingent on Usenet’s rec.arts.television.uk.coronation.street (RATUCS) falling about themselves with mirth when both Adam Rickett (Nick Tilsley) and Tracy Shaw (Maxine Heavey/Peacock) took to the airwaves with “hit” singles. But so far no Corrie thespian has managed to escape the novelty act ghetto and seriously challenge Kylie, the queen of singing soap stars.

One episode last week provided the perfect example of how Coronation Street weaves music into the fabric of the plot (blargh). Peter Barlow’s army buddy Ciaran installed himself at Peter’s place. Ciaran took note of Peter’s living arrangements. “Pete and Shelley,” he said. “Pete Shelley!” Shelley didn’t see what the joke was, so Ciaran pointed it out. “You know--The Buzzcocks?” Later in the episode, the Buzzcocks’ hit “Ever Fallen in Love?” served as the soundtrack to sexual tension, playing in the background as Ciaran watched a pre-coital Peter and Shelley disappear into the bedroom. Cut to Maria, crying on the sofa, having just learned that Nick had a girlfriend in Vancouver. The Buzzcocks are still playing, and the effect is still taunting and ironic. Continuing the music across two different scenes bent the “real space/real time” rule I described above, but it worked well. Mike Plowman, I found out today, felt the same way.

When you mention Coronation Street and music, most people will probably think of Eric Spear’s theme song. It’s probably one of the most famous pieces of music in the world. Even non-CS fans must recognize that loping horn melody. As far as I know, the theme song--the recording, the arrangement--has never changed. ITV has never commissioned a Fatboy Slim remix or any such nonsense (although an unreleased version by Stock/Aitken apparently exists). Even if the producers have remastered it for the digital age, its nostalgic essence has remained intact. No one dares mess with it. The endurance of the Coronation Street theme reflects the show’s approach to music as a whole. The writers and producers recognize music’s allure, its power to evoke feelings and memories, and they give it the respect it deserves.

It was nice to hang out for a couple hours in front of Smash’s stereo yesterday.
Playlist
Sheavy – Celestial HiFi
Anathema – A Fine Day to Exit
Clutch – Jam Room
Wicked Innocence – Worship
Klagg – This is Klagg
Voivod – Voivod
Tendonitis – s/t
Joe Satriani – Strange Beautiful Music
Bozzio Levin Stevens – Situation Dangerous
Herbie Hancock – Thrust (best album cover ever…sorry it’s so small here)
Ruins – Tzomborgha
Masters of Reality – Live at the Viper Room
Garaj Mahal – Live at the Backstage Lounge

I finally finished my SYL article this morning. I was surprised by how much interview material I had to leave out. I’d been planning a sidebar containing Mr. Townsend’s thoughts about the Vancouver metal scene (yawn), but the main body of the article reached the word count by itself. It’s not a great loss. Maybe I can spin this extra material into a shorter article for some other mag.

I emailed the thing to the Energizer this morning. He’s pleased with it, so I’m pleased with it. Not the greatest thing I’ve done, but it’ll suffice. Frank Zappa once said that music journalists are people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk for people who can’t read. I don’t agree with him, but in Unrestrained’s case it often holds true.

“One In Their Pride” (for the astronauts)

Come to Grief
Not a good day today. The details about my contract renewal at work came through, and they're lame. A whole three months' extension, with no pay increase. It's not what my immediate supervisor was saying I'd probably get.

The company didn't have a good year last year, and held a two-hour pep rally (complete with PowerPoint presentation on a 20 x 20 screen and snacks during intermission) yesterday to announce this fact. I also learned that if the product I'm currently documenting hadn't tanked so spectacularly on its initial release, we'd all be swimming in money. The whole event was a tiresome little preview of the massive bumming-out I'd suffer today.

If the company has a good first quarter this year, they might offer me a better deal. The other project I'm working on is going until July, so keeping me on would be to their advantage.

This new Grief album I got today is sounding good.

From Christmas to Valentine’s Day to Halloween, the belter’s mom marks the occasion by buying holiday-themed junk, packing it in boxes, and sending it out west to her daughter and granddaughter. The size and punctuality of these deliveries leads me to believe that doing this makes old Barb very happy. Maybe a little too happy. I think she sees sending stuff to Jenni and Cypress as her main purpose in life. She’s quite a lonely woman—lonely but not alone, as they say. Giving gifts keeps her connected.

The Valentine’s Day stuff—four boxes worth—arrived Monday and Tuesday. Everything inside is either heart-shaped or pink, except for my present, which was one of those mini R/C cars (pretty cool, really). I’m practicing my driving so I’ll be able to run over mice with it.

Barb’s big on toys. Sometimes in these boxes Cypress gets little plastic wind-up animals that walk along and drop lumps of “poo” (actually jelly beans) out of their spring-loaded butts. I got one last Christmas, too. I’m glad we’re spared these on Valentine’s Day.

There’s always one or two items that make us go “what the hell?” with their randomness. They send us into analytical overdrive as we try to trace Barb’s line of thought while she purchased, packed and sent them to us. What did Jenn say to her last month? What did Barb say to Jenn? Was this on sale? Is this a joke?

This time the randomness prize went to a pink ceramic pitcher in the shape of a pig—a sitting pig, with neck outstretched and mouth agape. Your beverage of choice comes streaming from its maw into your glass. That mouth…it was disturbing and flared. It looked more like a receptacle than a spigot. My first thought was to place the pig by the bedside in case I needed to take a leak at night. The belter ended up putting a flower in its mouth and taking it down to the “free stuff” table by the mailboxes in our building—“Look, everybody—novelty vase!” Miraculously, it was gone the next morning.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because sometimes Jenni’s mom sends us nice stuff. The box of assorted cheddar we got was nice, as were the brownies. The cutting boards that Uncle Gord made are great. Anything we can eat or store conveniently is welcome.

Same goes for the set of dishes we got a couple months ago. They belonged to Jenn’s grandmother, and they’re almost too good for sketchies like us. You’d expect to see them on the Antiques Roadshow—good Staffordshire quality, with an olde English country scene motif that reminds me of an early Genesis album cover. Hey, Supper’s Ready!

But the nice thoughts generated by those gifts quickly go away when the next onslaught arrives, and we have to borrow hand carts, friends, and vehicles to bring the boxes home, and our living room floor disappears under drifts of bubble wrap, wadded newspaper, and stryrofoam peanuts, and we resign ourselves to throwing away 90 per cent of the junk we’ve unwrapped. That’s when I have to agree with the belter: “she must be stopped.”

A Pretty Boy's Vancouver
Because of Nick Tilsley's remarks on Coronation Street last week, people around the world now believe that if you live in Vancouver you can scuba dive in the morning and ski in the afternoon, that the beach at Spanish Banks has golden sand that stretches for miles and miles, and that we Vancouverites enjoy nothing better than a mess o' waffles for lunch.

He might as well have claimed we'd be an ideal host city for the Winter Olympics, too.

On Friday night the belter and I went to the Montmartre Café to see Marcello Di Cintio read from his new book, Harmattan: Wind Across West Africa. Also in attendance were John Vigna (Print Futures Class of ’01), his girlfriend Anne-Marie, and Carla Elm. John, Carla and the belter know Marcello from the Otherwords literary festival, where they attended workshops, readings, and generally wallowed in each other’s wonderfully chosen words for a few days.

During the reading I was once again struck by how many parallels there are between the publishing world and the music industry, especially at the independent level. The perils for the fledgling artist are similar.

The Montmartre was another stop on Marcello’s cross-country tour to promote his new book—one more gig, if you will. He had little advance publicity. The Georgia Straight listed the reading (a listing arranged, I presume, by his publisher, Insomniac Press), but there were no posters at the venue. Marcello’s reading the night before at a travel bookstore had gone badly. The staff generally ignored him, and they closed half the store before he started. Unfortunately, this was the half with the cash register, which meant that no one who liked what they heard could buy a book.

So, on to the Montmartre for Friday night. Here’s Marcello, who’s traveled in pretty scary parts of the world, worked his ass off to record what he’s experienced, gotten a publishing deal, put out the book, gone across Canada with a box of copies to sell, and the only people who show up are his friends.

There's one important difference between a book tour and touring with a band, however. Authors don't sell t-shirts. (I think they should. When the belter goes out for her book, she should offer a complete selection of long sleeves, tees, baby-tees, panties, headbands, stick pins and belt buckles for her public to lap up.)

When Marcello finished, we congratulated him and settled down to some dessert crepes while a jazz trio (who turned out to be really good) set up their gear. Anne-Marie, the belter, and I discussed Quebec metal bands: Voivod, Obliveon, Grimskunk. I’d forgotten I’d seen the last band once—Smash and I in a Starfish Room full of homesick Quebecers. Were we there to see the smalls? I can’t remember.

Here's a story about Westwood, where I spent many weekends as a kid. It's gone now. Minivans now ply the plowed-under pit lane, and we have to make do with the unloved, soulless, and miserably named Molson Indy.

Ain't Love Grand?
From an interview with Herr Morbid of Forgotten Tomb:
"Every day I wake up and I feel shame because I’m forced to live my existence between these fucking mindless beings that represent the plague called humanity… Fortunately I feel quite un-human so I can survive and feel better, vomiting all my scorn and hate towards people through my music and my words. And I feel good when I see that there are intelligent people that understand my philosophy. I hate friendship and I have very few reliable friends, because to be a friend of mine you have to be really un-human… I saw a lot of old friends starting as true un-human guys and then slowly falling towards a classic shameful human existence; it’s really sad in my eyes. Sometimes you feel really lonely when you decide to live this way. Fortunately I’m married with a wonderful and un-human girl, and she’s the only person I can actually consider unique on this fucking planet."

We had a nice, low-key bowling night on Friday. The whole place was empty when we arrived, and stayed that way through most of our first game. When we started the second game, about half the lanes were busy. Nice to see Billy Idol a couple lanes away…or was it Jim Jarmusch, or possibly Johnny Slash from Square Pegs? Friday’s definitely a good night to go to the Grandview Lanes.

Our lane was pretty stingy with the strikes, though. I think someone must have spilled a Coke right where they set up the pins. Something was definitely making them stick. You’d bowl what looked to be a strike, only to be rewarded with the dreaded “goal posts.” Lane 13 is a harsh mistress.

I also got a swell birthday present in beer form from Mel and Adam. Laying the cans side-by-side, I can almost recreate the fondly remembered “Famous Ales of Britain” box, a delicious array of beverages that saw Acmac and me through recording the Huxley album.

Stopped in at Scrape Records today. JJ, who by now knows all too well what I like, thrust the Repertoire Records catalogue at me and put on a CD he’d ordered from it simply because of the cover. Man. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Birth Control, a band with a discography unparalleled for its sheer visual assault. Shark Sandwich and Brain Hammer have nothing on these. The music is equally as splendid, I’m happy to report.

Yesterday was all craziness and running around, nervousness and confusion, buses and trains. To accommodate my interview with Mr. Townsend, I worked a split shift--two hours in the morning and four in the afternoon, with the interview, some lunch and a surprise visit from the belter in between. I didn't like the feeling of being out and about in the middle of a weekday. It was too much like being in school again. The interview with Devin went well. He called at the appointed time, and we talked for half an hour. It was a new experience for me, but old hat for "the Dev" (he actually referred to himself in the third person at one point). I'm not a great interviewer, so I hope that I can pull a story together out of the things we discussed. I gag a bit at the thought of becoming a rock journalist, but I've learned not to ignore opportunities when they're dropped on my head.

By the way, the new Strapping Young Lad album is great. It's almost Canada's answer to Slaughter of the Soul.

Adapt and Survive
After the show at the Cottage Bistro Friday night, Super Robertson gave me a lengthy explanation as to why The Beggars hadn’t put “SarahLou2” in the set. Maybe he thought that he had curtailed some Mule ego trip. The explanation wasn’t necessary. I didn’t care that they hadn’t played it. I’d had a good time, and the non-Jackass Beggars songs were already slotting themselves into my mental jukebox. “I am a failure and I know it” was a common refrain around the place all weekend.

Smash recently pointed me in the direction of Super’s 21 Tandem Repeats album, a release I’ve neglected terribly. The Beggars have adapted a handful of songs from it for their set, whipping them into stage-ready form. The original recording is nicely layered, sometimes wispy and ethereal, courtesy of a mix by the Shockker. Played live by a three-piece rock band, the songs become loose and friendly three-chord toe-tappers. I really enjoy it when bands can adapt their music to different group configurations, venues and the like.

Stoke, the headliners on Friday, have done the same thing to a certain extent. They played a revised version of “Paulina” (from the Huxley album) that I hadn’t heard before. It was always a great song, and I’m glad Alick’s reworked it for the black ‘n’ blues format. As far as I could tell, the revisions excised most of the Scorpions-like stuff from the original (“You’re my Warsaw woman,” etc.), and rejigged the bridge or middle 8 or something.

When Stoke play it’s interesting to hear how their drummer plays some of the parts I recorded originally. I like what he does with Klagg’s “Orange Cat.” It’s funkified in a manner I couldn’t muster when Ian first came up with the riff. I thought his treatment of “Spider in a Jar” on Friday night wasn’t as sympathetic to the needs of the song, however. I remember working on those parts (in consultation with Alick) for quite a while before we recorded it. I always thought of the song as a little epic, with each verse/chorus building on the next, restrained at first, then introducing new elements with each section, then a final release for the concluding solo. You could say the new approach is groovier. It’s certainly not enough of a deviation to ruin the song.

Unfortunately he didn’t heed the unwritten law of the Bistro and make another vital adjustment to his playing—he was too loud. Or maybe I’m too old.

Today is my birthday. I was born beleventeen-seven years ago in Boston, Lincolnshire. Before she was taken into the delivery room, my mum insisted on watching all of Top of the Pops. The Rolling Stones were big that year. She hasn't been much of a one for pop music since.

I had a decent entry all ready to go, but I forgot to email it to myself when I left work today. Damn.

Another thing I like to do at work is read (or is that "decode"?) the Robertson Chronicles. He appears to have started a "Chronicles II," deleting the old chronicles in the process. My attempt to piece together Robertson's biography (pyromaniac, scientist, tree planter, musician, mailman, hockey player—but in what order?) has been thwarted!

Spent part of today trying to set up an interview with Devin Townsend. The Energizer wants me to talk to him about the new Strapping Young Lad album. I hope it works out okay.

During the post-game interview last night on HNIC, we heard Scott Russell actually use the phrase "It's a beauty way to go." Gee, did someone just get the Bob and Doug album for Christmas? It would have been sweet if Geddy Lee had walked into the shot to show Scott how it's supposed to be done.

What struck me about karaoke last night was how everyone twists the format to their own ends. The hipsters get to be ironic and wacky, the Shannons and Garies get to be all in earnest, and the gay guys get to be Donna Summer. It was an interesting mix of people.

Those who just want to be themselves have difficulties in such establishments.

Except for maybe Nanaimo bars, music is my favourite thing to gorge on over the holidays. I can’t get over how well it all works out—people ask me what I’d like for Christmas, I list off a bunch of albums, then I get them a week or two later! So excellent.

People were good to me this year. My sister got me Keith Jarrett’s Always Let Me Go, a live set recorded in Tokyo. Keith and band are free and easy on this recording, quite unlike the gig that the belter and I attended in October 2001 (one of the more stellar nights of my life), where they performed extended versions of jazz standards. Here they’re left to their own improvisatory devices, stretching 8 tunes over two discs.

My parents got me Chick Corea & Gary Burton’s Crystal Silence. I once borrowed this from my friend Chris Scum after he got it for two bucks at a swap meet and subsequently raved to me about it. I hadn’t been able to find it on CD or vinyl, but Sally hit the motherlode at The Magic Flute. The music is vibes and piano, sometimes laid back, sometimes laying down a holocaust. At their jauntier moments, I half expect them to launch into the Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood theme.

It was an ECM kind of Christmas.

My good man Smash gave me a tape with Masters of Reality Sunrise on the Sufferbus on one side, and Bad Brains on the other. That Masters album is a hoedown/meltdown proposition, sheer Beatles ‘n’ Cream goodness featuring Ginger Baker with a bellyful of tea and a brainpan bubbling over with grooves, laying lumber to the trap set. Haven’t listened to the Brains side yet.

JR, flyin’ the flannel, summoned the spirit of ’93 with a Pumpkins vid and a CDR of Nirvana rarities. Headless Kurt couldn’t keep himself away this year, in tandem with fellow dead celebs Elvis and Michael Jackson. Stay dead already!

Gary K came through with Shut Up You Fucking Baby!, 2 CDs of David Cross doing standup. It’s not music, but it still rocks. I saw him at a GBV show once.

Happy new year to all the Difficult Musicians out there!

These are the geniuses (genii?) behind the human cloning scandal. It's clearly a slow week for news.

I make note of this for two reasons. One, "Rael" was the hero of Genesis's The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. The movement's headquarters is in Quebec, which was the first North American territory to embrace the eccentric British quintet. Two, our "friend with a smile radiating with harmony" looks a lot like Geoff Tate of Queensryche!

The Five Days of Christmas
I worked on Christmas Eve. Everyone started taking off after lunch, and by 2:00 the whole floor was deserted. I went home to wrap presents. That night, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…because it had been crushed by one of our traps! Such killing isn’t in the spirit of the season, but our battle against the Wenonah rodents can’t take a holiday. I managed to dispose of the carcass before Cypress saw it.

Christmas Day was hectic but good. Cypress was up around 8 and immediately found Moff outside on the kitchen window sill. Moff was a dollar store reindeer we left beside the eggnog and cookies for Santa to find, the idea being that Claus would need an extra deer at some point on Christmas Eve. Donner, Blitzen and the others aren’t getting any younger. The old Santa magic would transform Moff’s hollow plastic form into a full-size flying reindeer. And once the toy delivery was done, Santa would drop Moff back at our place. Which is what happened. Unfortunately Moff’s hide took a beating overnight and sloughed off a bit. Cypress had a dodgy moment when she noticed that. We saved her from the dead mouse, but we didn’t anticipate Moff’s fur-retention deficiencies. The belter saved the day by pointing out the giant stuffed dog under the tree. Close one.

On Boxing Day, with Cypress off with her dad for round four of her gift deluge (round one: us; round two: Mel and Adam’s; round three: mom and dad’s), we went to the Sox house for the annual booze-up. Mighty sketchy as always—sitting around in the hallway with Doug’s girlfriend Hilda offering ’round tequila out of jam jars. I allowed Ken to rope me into jamming for a bit, which was okay. Smash and I held things together. A typical Boxing Day for me, except for the lack of shopping. Just as well. I’m not into it that much anymore.

The 27th…what did I do on the 27th? Oh, yeah, I went to JR’s place to pick up my gift. Bumped into him outside his apartment and went to the post office in Lougheed Mall with him. Heard about the latest episode with his dad. JR’s gift was the only present-related mishap of the season. I already owned half of what was inside the box (Bjork: Live at Shepherd’s Bush video). No big deal! Later that night I hooked up with Willingdon Black and visited the Shockk Centre for the first time in a long time. Jammed for a bit, double-drumming with Shockk, who always cracks me up with the fills he attempts—he makes me quite jealous, actually, because he pulls off stuff I can’t get my head around at all. I also scored a copy of the Mongoose CD, which I’ve got to sit down and listen to shortly. (It’s on right now, and it rips! Let’s All Go to the Restaurant!)

I finally did some shopping on the 28th. The belter and I exchanged the gift we’d gotten Mel & Adam and got a load of on-sale stuff for them. We hit A&B, and I got an Alice Coltrane CD and a Goblin compilation, while the belter got the latest Dolly Parton, the one with “Stairway to Heaven” on it (which is a wicked version…I heard it this morning). I also went to Scratch. I wanted to get a Bad Wizard album, but I settled for the new Godspeed You Black Emperor.

Now I have to go back to work tomorrow. I’ve had a nice break, but it hasn’t been long enough to settle into a routine of non-routine, you know?

Next time out, I’ll do a roundup of all the great music I got from all the great people I know.

Point Form is All the Rage
Highlights of the week so far:

Monday
*Found a copy of the Courier on the bus up to SFU and read the belter’s story again. That was nice. What’s not nice is the illustration that accompanies the story. It’s bad on so many levels that it makes my brain hurt. Not to mention my eyes.
*Listened to two guys on the Millennium line discuss SkyTrain fatalities. Apparently last Friday some Darwin Awards nominee found himself on the wrong platform at Nanaimo Station, saw his train coming, and decided to cross the tracks to try to make it to the other side. Too late. Splat. This was the jumping off point (har har) for their conversation. One of them saw this guy commit suicide at Broadway Station. “You might think there’d be lots of blood, but there wasn’t. The wheels of the train sealed the body parts off. Cauterized ’em, man.” Then the other guy started talking about how he once rescued someone who wandered onto the tracks. Nobody else on the platform would step forward to save this suicidal soul, but our hero was the take-charge sort: “I had too much love in my heart to let it happen.” Followed by a discussion of society’s indifference, apathy, etc.

Tuesday
*Read a lovely story called “Peter Shelley” by Patrick Marber. It packed a lot into a short space—punk rock, British grottiness, teenagers losing their virginity. I did a bit of research and learned that Marber is not only a playwright, actor, and comedian, he also co-created Alan Partridge and appeared on Knowing Me Knowing You. I hate him.
*Risotto! Kitchen improv by the belter based on a J. Oliver recipe. It’s pure goodness; absolute “hits the spot, sticks to the ribs” eating satisfaction. It’s Kraft Dinner for the classy. We watched Mr. Bean (having missed the Grinch) and ate ourselves into oblivion. And I got leftovers for lunch…a bit putty-like on the second day, but still so cheesy and salty and good.

Wednesday
*Learned of Smash’s plan to convert everyone he meets into fans of either Firebird or Masters of Reality. I’ve volunteered some time and resources for the cause. “We’ll be doing good work. Maybe even saving lives,” he says. The spirit of the season is alight in Smash’s heart.

Blessed Be the Listmakers
I’d just put my "Best of 2001" CD behind me when the Energizer requested a top 15 of 2002 list from me for the next issue of U!

This is what I came up with. Bear in mind that it's all U!-approved stuff, and doesn't include artists like Young and Sexy, Japancakes, Radiogram, and Sonic Youth, all of whom would have made my "real" top 15:
1. Porcupine Tree – In Absentia (Lava/Atlantic)
2. Opeth – Deliverance (Music For Nations/Koch)
3. Half Man – Red Herring (Beard of Stars Records)
4. Arcturus – The Sham Mirrors (The End)
5. Agalloch – The Mantle (The End)
6. Dead Meadow – Howls From the Hills (Tolotta)
7. Flower Kings – Unfold the Future (InsideOut)
8. Isis – Celestial (Ipecac)
9. Boards of Canada – Geogaddi (Warp)
10. Queens of the Stone Age – Songs For the Deaf (Interscope)
11. Soilwork – Natural Born Chaos (Nuclear Blast)
12. Spock’s Beard – Snow (Metal Blade)
13. Electric Wizard – Let Us Prey (The Music Cartel)
14. Deus ex Machina – Cinque (Cuneiform)
15. Threshold – Critical Mass (InsideOut)

Compiling it made me realize that I didn’t have much time to listen to music this year. I've probably only listened to #1 three or four times all the way through. It’s all relative though. I’d have music on 16 hours a day if I could. It’s a drag I can’t use my commuting time to listen to stuff. If I had a Discman that actually worked on the bus, that didn’t skip at the slightest tremor, I’d still suffer from headphone paranoia. I like to leave my ears open when I’m out in the world. I need my hearing for survival. One minute I’d be enjoying, say, the stark beauty of Neurosis; the next I’d be run over by some sketchoid riding his bike on the sidewalk. I find it impossible to relax when I can’t hear what’s going on around me.

I also worry about headphone leakage, that trebly mewling that cuts through all Translink ambience. When I hear it emanating from someone a few seats away I like to play “Name That Tune.” I used to be quite good at it, but I can’t tell what the kids listen to anymore. Sometimes, though, I’ll hear a youngster listening to something ancient like AC/DC, and it’ll make my day.

If some fellow travelers clued into what I was listening to, they’d either laugh at me or beat me up.

One of our ex-classmates likes to use the class email list as a pulpit from which to lecture us about how we should vote, what sports teams we should cheer for, what dodgy writers’ festivals we should attend, and so on. Yesterday he went off about the Olympic referendum (or is it a plebiscite?) and how we’d become the laughing stock of the world if Vancouver voters turned down the chance of hosting the Winter Games.

The thing is, Vancouver isn’t a wintery city. A snowfall that stays on the ground for more than a couple days is an anomaly. Maybe if the Winter Olympics included events based on what you can do with slush (Figure Sliding, Slush Dancing, Cross-Country Slipping, Slushball Face-Washing Battles), then Vancouverites might relate more to the concept of hosting the games.

You could argue that Vancouver’s a winter city only because some of its citizens have the leisure time and the money to travel every weekend to places that have real snow. The majority of us haven’t been to Whistler and wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves if we went there. People who live in cities where they skate hand-in-hand on the river, where children enjoy sweet, snow-cooled maple sugar treats, and bonhommes de neige enchant passers-by on every thoroughfare could probably get their heads around hosting the Olympics. The Games would meld nicely with other civic activities. But in Vancouver—my Vancouver? Nah.

So, with an Olympics potentially in my backyard, I’m keeping an eye on the weather. Last night seemed downright warm. After I got home from the STC Christmas Party I collected the belter from her office and we walked up to the Cottage Bistro to see The Beggars (Super, Shockk and Smash) and the Neins.

We caught the end of the Beggars’ set. They were pretty fun. They drew a little from Jackass Has Haybreath (but damn, I missed “SarahLou2”), some Represented, and a bit of what I assume was the Super Robertson back catalogue. Shockk rocked the kit, Smash made bass faces, and SR pivoted and postured in that slow-motion manner of his—like Neil Armstrong stepping away from the LEM.

The Neins are kind of cute. M/F vocals lead the charge. The girl with gauchos on sang with her hand at her right ear through the whole show, and I don’t know why. The guy with the guitar has a plain sort of voice, but does well with it. When he says “Thanks, guys” after every song I detect a British accent. This was the second time I’ve seen them, and I recognized a number of the songs. They’ve got a handful of good ones (which is a handful more than most bands) in a ’60s Kinks vein. If The Neins had existed back then, their local paper would’ve dubbed them a “beat group.”

After the show, Smash and I had a laugh about one of the funnier bits of the new Opeth album—this insane syncopated pattern that dominates the second half of the title track. Good old Smash; kindred spirit to the end. The belter and I walked home with CT and Super, ladies in front, men behind. Super started talking about the Sons of Freedom and singing “Fuck the System,” and that's when the length of my day and the late hour finally caught up to me. It took all of my resources to say goodnight to them properly when it was time for Jenn and me to cross the street to our place.

“What’s new?” I hear no one ask. I’ve been heeding the call to make stuff. On Monday night we started our Christmas card production line. We’re using the usual junk you find in the bins at Urban Source—stickers, rough-milled paper, colour tag, glitter, cord, ribbon. Sounds very thrifty, but I figure our homespun seasonal greetings came out to $8.75 per unit…not including labour. Damn you, Martha Stewart, and your quaint holiday suggestions.

I think they’ve turned out great, I must say. I get the same feeling I get when I make a homemade CD. It's very satisfying to stack them all up and feel the weight of them, to think "those didn't exist a couple days ago." And I was very careful to not cut off my fingertips with the X-acto blade (though I did prick my thumb with the friggin' thing). That counts for something, too. There aren’t many cards to go around, so If you get one, rejoice in our sketchy craftiness.

I realize this doesn’t sound very rock ‘n’ roll. I realize I’m slowly turning into Norris Cole. (That rhymes!) I tried to keep the faith. I really tried. While we worked I put on Sounds Like Christmas by The December People. After getting it as a promo from Unrestrained! last year, I hoped I could make this a Mule holiday favourite. Because, as I wrote in my Other Press review, the gift of laughter is the greatest gift of all, right? Well, this tradition in the making got off to a slow start. Christ on a crutch, it’s an awful record.

I had an epiphany on Monday night. Just as Christmas isn’t sexy (I won’t get into that here), Christmas does not rock.

Grand Funk Railway
Stoke brought the amps, Roadbed supplied the kit, and the Railway Club provided the venue for Thursday night’s pre-Christmas rock extravaganza.

I spent some quality time with Shockk before the show. He was quite shockked up about a recent purchase—none other than Into the Pandemonium! 15 years old and still ahead of its time, you know. As the creepy Deadhead girl in the final episode of Freaks and Geeks said, “I wish I never heard it, just so I could hear it again for the first time.”

Smash slipped me the new Flower Kings album. Bleedin’ hell, another double CD in the house. You might think that today’s prog bands have to work twice as hard as their forefathers in order to put out a double album. Even most single CDs are the length of a typical double album back in the day. But I reckon the musicians must enjoy rising to the challenge—after all, they get to solo for twice as long as they used to, and they needn’t worry about the logistics of cutting 28-minute album sides. So away they go, producing the likes of Flower Power and Unfold the Future, which make Tales from Topographic Oceans seem like a Ramones 45. Well, not really.

Stoke played lots of new material, and I think this rattled Willingdon Black a bit. I’m not a big fan of debuting new material myself, so I could relate. He got stronger as the set progressed, and the applause he got for the “Bad Tattoo” solo did my heart good.

I think I’ve reached the point where I’m not too freaked out about attending Stoke shows. A nice buffer of time has developed. I can enjoy the songs as a casual audience member without getting all wrapped up in it. And I can enjoy the fact that it’s them, not me, up on stage.

They played “Anneka” last. The true hilarity of this song hit me hard. I remember when we were bandying about the idea of making it about Ms. Di Lorenzo. “You’ve got to say something about ‘based on a concept by Gore Vidal’ in there,” I said. That was my single contribution to this song (and, in fact, to the Stoke catalog). I’m pretty sure now, though, that Caligula’s credits read “Based on a screenplay by Gore Vidal.” Oh well, it’s done, it’s recorded, it’s out there and loved by all who hear it. Fact-checking Mule thwarted again.

Shockk gave me his band beer tickets, so I grabbed a pint between sets. The prick behind the bar made a big song and dance about it. “Oh, everybody but the band is drinkin’ free tonight!” I tipped him and didn’t return. Fuck him. 1/3 of the band has the straight edge—boo-hoo for the Railway Club. Despite this, my IPA had no bitter aftertaste.

Roadbed were enjoyably…different this evening. Super’s new bass was super twangy, introducing Geddy Lee/Rob Wright tonalities to the traditional Roadbed sound. His preference for playing with a pick down toward the bridge exacerbated this. To be honest, it was a bit distracting until Smash stepped in with some new settings for the bass amp.

Before the amp-tweaking occurred however, Roadbed delivered the highlight of the evening in the form of a new instrumental that was by far the craziest thing they’ve ever done. It sounded like friggin’ Watchtower or Cynic! I had a big idiot grin on my face through the whole number. This wasn’t the old Roadbed. They didn’t scrape off their makeshift “jazzy indie-rock” label as much as take a blowtorch to it then spit upon the ashes. Maybe Shockk’s ELP(owell) shirt was a forewarning of the hypercomplex holocaust they smacked me in the gob with…or maybe it was to blame.

Shortly after that insane exursion, they busted out with another new number. I don’t know what it was called, but I’m pretty sure you spell it D-O-O-M. I can’t wait to hear it again. They claimed they got it off Ian Curtis right before he offed himself. Well, Chuck Eddy thinks Joy Division are a heavy metal band, and judging by this new song, Roadbed have made the connection too.

The rest of the set exploited the rockin’ side of the Roadbed sound. “Late for Work” and “Jazz Pack” were performed at warp speed, strings threatening to break and fingertips to melt. “Time to Shockk” suffered a bit from Robertson grappling with a still-unfamiliar fretboard. “Scarb Jacket,” that glorious Max Websterian Canrock classic, was solid as ever. They encored with a 10-minute “Gibbering Fool,” a tune that seems as old as time itself. I remember walking into the Cottage Bistro 23 years ago and watching them play this song. When they hit the pre-chorus, I thought, “These guys must like They Might Be Giants.” We’ve gotten along swimmingly ever since. I don’t know how many of their shows I’ve attended (15? 20? 25?), but I’ve enjoyed every one. Thursday night was a little bit special, though.

Who won the quiz? Did anyone beat Smash? Did he donate his prize to charity?

Things I’d like to be able to do:
Master the bezier tool.
Get a proper double-stroke roll happening.
Get a good kick drum/snare sound.
Make art that’s not me just trying to be weird.
Write something without shitting bricks beforehand.

All Milk, No Duds
The joint subTerrain/Prism launch last night was low key but successful. The venue, Milk, was a good choice. I like how they executed the milk motif in the bar—bas-relief milk bottles on the wall, milk-bottle lights dangling from the ceiling, milk crates piled in the corner, posters of milk bubbles in extreme closeup on the wall. That nasty, mucus-forming beverage was everywhere.

The taps behind the bar dispensed beer, however. Whew.

I noticed that even gay bars aren’t immune from the modern-day plague of TVs beaming down from every corner. Luckily there wasn’t much on last night. Hmm, should I direct my attention towards the poet on stage or to the episode of North of 60 I closed captioned eight years ago?

The bartender looked like Steve Buscemi and I saw me one of them drag queens.

Four people read their stuff. One woman read a lengthy poem from the latest Prism that connected the Voyager I and II missions with the mysterious octopus (which, I learned, can squeeze through any hole bigger than its eye). Funny, because just a couple weeks ago I took a refresher course on the Voyagers for my Best of 2001 CD packaging.

The belter went on third, and was the class of the field as always. She’s such a good reader—she gets into it and acts it out, but not to an annoying “performance poet” extent. The combination of those high-school drama classes and storytime with the stinker have turned her into a rock-solid live performer. I’m glad I’m in another line of work so that I don’t have to share a bill with her.

Bam Balam!
This fine cover tune [mp3] (courtesy of StonerRock.com) got our corner of the building rocking pretty hard this morning. The perfect soundtrack to black coffee and oatmeal. I needed that.

J: "That Stoner Rock lady's totally your girlfriend."
R: "Shut up, she is not!"

The belter and I walked and walked and walked today. We walked west on Broadway to London Drugs. We walked to the bank. We walked to Toys R BOW MAC Us, where I saw the fancified modern Big Wheel of my dreams. We also checked out some slot car sets, but none of them were as good as the Aurora AFX "Watkins Glen" track I had when I was 12.

The Barbie aisle featured some kind of sunbathing Barbie with her bikini painted directly on her chest like a Mardi Gras reveller. Aside from all the sartorial harlotry ("Barbie is a virgin, just like Britney Spears," sez the belter), the Barbie train and Barbie plane were pretty cool. On the box for the latter, Barbie's in the cockpit while "flight attendant" Ken doles out the roasted almonds and diet Coke. Heh.

We ended up in Kits, where the belter raided the thrift store and bought more clothes with $25 than I'd thought possible. I had hopes of scoring a sweater, but everything on the racks was misshapen or hideous or had an embroidered golfer prominently displayed on the front. The wardrobe department of The Cosby Show had more tasteful sweaters than this place.

The belter gets so much joy out of thrifting that I want to share some of it with her. I want to score something really nice for 5 bucks, too, but it's hard because I haven't developed an eye for thrifting yet. Also, to generalize a bit, it's more difficult as a guy to find decent clothing in a thrift store. A lot of women rotate their wardrobes as styles shift and as their bodies change over the years. That skirt doesn't fit anymore—off it goes to the thrift store.

I guess men don't do that as much. They just find clothes they like and wear them till till they're worn out. The clothes I saw on Saturday had been dumped in the thrift store because someone had decided they were not suitable to be worn in public. These clothes had never been worn with pride. They were birthday presents from colour-blind aunties.

I spend every day at work writing about the virtues of properly grounding your equipment, then I get a shock off the doorknob when I leave in the evening. Never fails.

The roads that ring Burnaby Mountain are nice. I like their curves and the way they’re cut into the hillsides. On my way home, I walk to a bus stop near a downhill S-bend. There’s a grass bank on the outside of the curve with one of those homemade roadside memorials atop it. It’s a very humble memorial—just a couple tattered fabric violets and a small wooden plaque that reads “OMAR 1982–2000.”

I don’t know who Omar was. He might have been a kid with a fast car; he might have been an old alsatian that crossed the road at the wrong moment. I only know that a life ended on that corner.

I think Omar was a person because of the speed bumps at the entrance and exit of the S-bend. Maybe a SFU roadworks crew put them there in response to the accident a couple years ago. They wouldn't do that if only a dog was killed.

The speed bumps are broad and shallow, though, and the cars barely slow down.

NP: Opeth Deliverance (godly)

Because I’m a big nerd, I’ve been making “best of the year” compilations for around 10 years now. I’m not sure if it’s a reflection of how busy my life’s gotten over the past few years, but I seem to complete the comps later and later every year. Maybe I’m becoming blasé about the whole process. No, wash your mouth out, Hughes. I become tumescent at the mere thought of the ritual—the piles of CDs, auditioning tracks, choosing the running order. I’m such a High Fidelity-type cliché I should be shot. I hate people like me.

I’ve just finished the 2001 compilation, and thanks to the eMac, it’s on CD for the first time. I know cassette fundamentalists like Shockk will be dismayed, but we’ve all got to move forward, you know.

My philosophy with these things is to capture a representative cross-section of the music I acquired over the year—as much music as will fit on my chosen medium. This year I’ve got 70 minutes worth of stuff.

I have a few rules:
1) Everything must come from an album released that year. For proof, the year must be printed somewhere on the CD.
2) Only new material qualifies—no greatest hits or live tracks (unless the album is one of those rare, precious entities—the live album with new material!)
3) All formats are fair game. Tracks can come from vinyl, CD, tape, anything. It pains me to report that I could only work with CDs this year, however.
4) I prefer short songs so I can fit as many artists on the compilation as I can. Considering my tastes tend towards the epic, this can be difficult. However much it pains me, I can’t include any 25-minute songs.

I actually listen to these yearly compilations on a regular basis. I might drive around for a weekend with, say, 1993’s tape in the deck. I especially like it when I can’t recognize a certain song for a minute or two—usually something by a forgotten entity like Rodan, Bailter Space or Truman’s Water. I have too many records.

So, here’s a rundown of 2001.
Solefald: “Hate Yourself” I like to start with a signature tune for the given year. This punk-riffed five minutes of insanity gave me more musical thrills than anything else in 2001. Nothing like some Norwegian philosophy student hollering “Hate yourself like Kate Moss!” for a fun time under the headphones.
Amorphis: “Forever More” After what I thought was a duff release in ’99, the Finns returned with Am Universam, a totally enjoyable, warm sort of record, with wah-wah pedals, groaning Hammond, and a bit of sax. And it’s metal.
Air: “The Vagabond” Beck steps in to save Air from their achilles’ heel—their vocales robotique. Never been a Beck fan, but he does good here.
Neurosis: “Crawl Back In” Didn’t like this album as much as Times of Grace, but it’s Neurosis…it’s quality. You know they shit blood putting this thing out, so respect is due.
Monster Magnet: “Heads Explode” The comedy portion of the 2001 compilation. I think Dave Wyndorf is using his super powers for evil rather than good. Listen to that ridiculously computer-enhanced production. It’s clear that Monster Magnet are now at home in both the boardroom and the dope room. Hilarity ensues.
Djam Karet: “No Man’s Land” These guys make a kind of inoffensive instrumental progrock, suitable for background music at the planetarium before Laser Floyd. Their aptitude for creating interesting guitar textures is very impressive, though.
Sigh: “Ecstatic Transformation” Wherein these strange Japs try their hand at boogie rock and end up sounding like Cathedral on Prozac. As usual, they attempt to derail the song with a Moody Blues-style interlude, but only make it even more wonderful.
Guided By Voices: “Skills Like This” I could have chosen any one of half a dozen songs off Isolation Drills. I went with this one, which recalls early Who, it rocks that hard.
Opeth: “Harvest” I always end up putting the ballad from an Opeth album on the compilation. Two reasons: the ballad is usually the shortest song on the album (see above), and the ballad is usually a damn fine tune. “Harvest” is their best yet. Is that a nod to Maiden’s “Prodigal Son” in the run up to the first verse?
Bjork: “It’s Not Up To You” As with GBV, I could have chosen any number of songs from Vespertine. The most beautiful, soothing album ever.
Katatonia: “Sweet Nurse” This band really does it for me. Katatonia and Amorphis are creating vital, accessible rock music entirely below mainstream radar, and I find it fascinating. This song, about a dying patient’s final plea, is typical of these suicidal Swedes.
Marillion: “Separated Out” This band and I go way back. We’ve had a torrid, on-and-off sort of affair. I gave in and bought their new one last year. There’s a couple widdly-widdly keyboard breaks in this song that made me smile, and some Tod Browning samples for added interest.
My Dying Bride: “Black Heart Romance” MDB do what they do year after year, and they do doom. I’m not sure if I’m going to be on board for much longer if they don’t start building on their sound again (they’ve regressed since 1998’s 34.788% Complete), but I can always use a good dooming.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: “Sweetheart Come” Just like 2001 itself, this record couldn’t have been any better. I fell in love with it, and I fell in love to it.

I’ve burned a few copies, so if you’d like one (and live in Vancouver or Sherwood Park, Alberta), drop me a line.

I haven't had much time to update lately. My writing time on Sunday got eaten up by my STC newsletter column. I took advantage of the "ass on chair" time to listen to the new Opeth album properly. Deliverance sounds like a worthy successor to the mighty Blackwater Park, but I'm sure its true nature will emerge after a few more airings. Opeth are always tweaking their sound ever so slightly, never straying from the "progressive death" style they found on their debut. They haven't made that great leap sideways that many Eurometal bands make after their fourth or fifth albums. I'm hoping that Damnation, the mellow album due in March, will be that departure point.

NP: SY—Experimental Jet Set etc.

Holy crap. I now have my very own Telus horror story to tell my grandchildren. I spent 2 1/2 hours on the phone last night trying to set things right. And they're still not right! My email now works fine, but it looks like the belter (whose email account was deleted without our knowledge by some knob in customer service) is incommunicado for another "24 to 48 hours." Jeezus.

See, JR takes some time off work and the whole place goes to hell.

I went to Metafilter and all I got was this lousy blog entry
Top 100 albums of the '80s, courtesy of pitchforkmedia. The list is heavy on critically acceptables like The Mekons and Mission of Burma, and bereft of any Maiden or Mercyful Fate. Not even Master of Puppets, usually the token hipster acknowledgement of metal's existence, makes it on there.

Numbers 7–4 are a rich vein of fine music, though.

Weird timing on pichfork's part. Didn't we see a lot of these lists around, oh, 1990?

Saturday was sure a long day. The belter and I worked at a polling station in Kerrisdale for the civic election. We signed people in, gave them ballots and some instructions, and sent them to the polling booth. The voters in this neighbourhood were, for the most part, elderly. During my 12-hour shift I think I saw every type of assistive device available—walkers, crutches, wheelchairs, hearing aids, wrist braces.

Nobody whizzed up to our table in one of those four-wheel scooters, though. I'm not a big fan of those things, those supercharged golf-cart/bumper-car hybrids. Not only are they a menace 2 sidewalk safety, they also give me the impression that their drivers are simply too lazy to get up and walk. The scooter pilots don't seem that old—maybe 50, 55. What went wrong? Did they just give up?

But whatever. Nobody got flattened by a throttle-happy diabetic. There were hazards, though. My registration book got drooled on twice. Some people walked away in the middle of my how-to-vote spiel, which I made an effort to keep brief. These were inevitably the same people who'd walk back to our table with ballots they'd spoiled because they didn't listen to us. The great majority of the people, especially those who got up bright and early to vote within the first couple hours, were as pleasant as could be.

We had a good crew working alongside us, fetching us tea and coffee and pizza throughout the day. Considering we had only 40 spoiled ballots at the end (out of over 1100 ballots), I think we did an excellent job. With Acmac presiding over the whole operation, how could things go wrong?
***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Get well soon, JR!

Well, the belter's gone and done it again. Remember her new story that I mentioned a few weeks ago? (I can't find the exact entry because I don't think it's archived yet. Blogger is...quirky.) She's only won The Vancouver Courier fiction contest with it. My girlfriend's a genius. Yay for Jenni and the words that come out of her amazing brain.

We're working at a polling station for the civic election tomorrow. It's way out of our neighbourhood—Kerrisdale, in fact. We'll be informing the jewelry rattlers about proper voting procedures, crossing names off lists, etc. I had a chat with Libby Davies on Wednesday, and she reassured me that we'd be able to vote there after I'd reassured her that we'd be voting for the correct candidates. I'd better bring a list with me, 'cause I'm so bloody well informed.

NP: Anathema—Alternative 4

Who gets on the 99B last night but Carl Newman. I thought, "Okay, fair play to him. There's room on this enormous public transit vehicle for both of us. He may write catchy songs that attract international attention but he's still got to get down Broadway same as me." The bus pulled out into traffic, and I resumed reading my book.

Not five minutes later I'm startled to hear someone bashing away on a guitar down the aisle and disturbing the people. It's Newman! He's only taken out his guitar and begun penning another hit tune on his way home. I can't return to my book. He's ruined my concentration. I shouted, "Oi! Newman! No! You cannot use this bus as a venue for composing your unique brand of hook-laden three-minute pop songs! You may garner accolades from The Village Voice, but I will not allow you to disturb my peaceful evening commute. There are people trying to read John Grisham novels around you. At the next stop, will you kindly push the bar to open the rear doors and hop it!"

Last time I ever ride a bus with Newman on it. Tosser!

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The belter and I went to the Blinding Light! on Sunday night to see Werner Herzog's Fata Morgana with live music by the Eye of Newt Collective. I've wanted to check out one of these EoN shows for a long time. Live music and a film by my favourite German freak was too tempting a combination to ignore.

EoN (on that night) were four musicians—clarinet, double bass, viola, and muted trumpet. All of them were equipped with various rattles, scrap metal, and other noisemakers to add some chaos to the performance. They arranged themselves in two pairs on either side of the screen. I wondered how they would communicate in the dark, but there was enough light to see what was going on.

Fata Morgana was about the desert, if it was about anything. Herzog always seems to make films in and about harsh environments. I'm sure he and his crew lived like animals through the whole process, and that he loved every minute of it. The film had no story, and consisted mainly of long panning or tracking shots of sand. The sand was doing stuff, mind you—swallowing up buildings, piling in drifts around abandoned cars and downed planes. Sometimes people entered the frame, walking through their strange desert villages (did George Lucas pattern Tatooine after these places?), or standing still, bewildered and at a safe distance from the camera.

Of course, every desert has its share of dead things—in this case, many many bloated and desiccated animal carcasses, which Herzog's camera lingered on at great length. "Look! Dead things in the cruel desert!" It was like "Germany's Most Disturbing Home Videos" on Sprockets—both gorgeous and obscene.

Eye of Newt were quite good. I couldn't tell how much of their performance had been worked out beforehand, but it was clear that they were familiar with the pace and content of the movie. There were times I would have preferred to hear the film's original soundtrack, especially in "The Golden Age," the title of the last third of the movie (the first and second parts were "Creation" and "Paradise"), which had the most people in it, including a guy who had been studying desert lizards for 16 years (his dialogue was subtitled), and the world's strangest band, a piano-and-drums duo that I can attempt to describe here.

The band were set up in a small alcove indoors. No context for their setting was provided, so we don't know where in the desert this building might have been located. A stout older woman with a grim expression played an upright piano. The drummer was a younger guy in a buttoned-up shirt and scarf ensemble, topped off with silver aviator's goggles. He leaned over sometimes and sang into a microphone. His drumming style was spectacular for its lack of movement. His entire body was still except for his right arm, which pivoted horizontally between the ride cymbal and snare drum, touching each ever so lightly. He looked animatronic. His bass drum featured the word "Rojo." Perhaps that was their name.

Why were they in the movie? I have no idea, except to provide the sideshow/freakshow element that I've seen before in Herzog movies, like the dancing chicken in Stroszek, the movie that Ian Curtis supposedly watched before he committed suicide (as seen in 24 Hour Party People).

Though Eye of Newt provided some amusing music during these scenes and the audience (a decent-sized house for a Sunday night) had a chuckle, I wonder what this Grandma/Sky Pilot band actually sounded like.

The movie left them behind after a while and returned to the desert. A distant car appeared in a mirage, looking like it was driving across water. It came towards us out of the mirage, back on solid ground, then the movie ended.

I floated around all weekend inside a bubble of immense relief. On Friday, Diana and I did our presentation at the STC conference. I wasn't expecting much of a turnout, so I got a bit wobbly when around 30 people showed up. My nerves didn't get any calmer after Jerome, the man who instigated all this back in March, saw us rearranging our Powerpoint slides at the last minute and had a good chuckle. We plowed through our spiel, blinded our audience with rhetoric, and got a decent response at the end. Jerome shook my hand and told me I did a good job.

After the conference I dropped off our laptop at the college AV desk and met the belter for dinner at the Pennyfarthing. I hadn't eaten a decent meal in 48 hours. It was ridiculously good. I could have ordered the Family Pack (9 pieces!) and polished it off with no problem.

Next up was Bruno and Mai's party. We played foosball, looked at slides, drank, talked...I doubt even Tom Fun could have extracted more fun from the event than I did.

I spent all Saturday afternoon back at the conference. Despite the hangover, I managed to retain some info from the three sessions I attended. I chatted with some PF first-years, the omnipresent and sterling John Vigna, my boss Elizabeth, and a few others. The conference seemed to go really well. Especially fine was the tote bag full of random stuff that all registrants received. It was a tasteful black IKEA thing (code name "SET"), filled with bits of useless paper for the most part, though there was a copy of Coupland's City of Glass in there...a well-intentioned memento for all the out-of-towners there.

When I went to play my 50-cent Quo album tonight, a receipt fell out of the sleeve. "A-ha," I thought. "A valuable artifact from the original Quo fan!"

Here's the rundown:
18 Nov 74
$04.88
$04.88
$03.78
$03.68
$17.22 subtotal
$00.86 TAX
$18.08 total

On the back of the receipt, the Quo fan wrote some further details in red ink:
Band on the Run
Quo
Rampant
ODDS + Sods

I can't identify the store or the city where the Quo fan purchased this awesome cross-section of '70s rock. Wherever he or she might be, I salute the Quo fan. He/she must have rocked out in a big way once the shrink wrap got torn off that lot, 28 years ago, just as I rocked out tonight. I wonder if Rampant ended up in the basement of the Sally Ann too?

Keep Them Mowing Blades Sharp
Hooray! The prog revival/revolution has sprung from the bosom of the LA Times. The gang's all here: Porcupine Tree, the Beard and (holy crap) Maudlin of the Well.

You must see the movie of the angel shark on the Maudlin site. Gulp!

This is pop (yeah, yeah)
I recently found an old videotape with excerpts from a Britpop special on it. The show (Britpop Now! was the title, I think) was hosted by Damon out of Blur, and featured a bunch of bands playing their one good song live in the studio. I remember the tone of Damon's 'tween-song patter was all Cool Britannia, "our pop's better than your pop" kinda stuff.

He was right, I suppose. But what was the competition at the time? Green Day and Silverchair?

PJ Harvey was on the show, belting out "Meet Ze Monsta" and looking alarmingly skeletal. I remember Elastica were on it, but I missed recording their bit. The Manics and Supergrass got lost too. For some reason I kept songs by Echobelly and Menswe@r on the tape. Whatever happened to them? Were they banished from the British Isles for being irredeemably chirpy and poptastic?

For that matter, what happened to the Primitives, the Darling Buds, and all those other NME cover stars from years gone by? No one can bang out an immortal pop single and then disappear off the face of the earth like those Brits.

I like a lot of that stuff, but the "here today, gone tomorrow" aspect of it doesn't fit with my musical worldview. Forcing my ethos on that kind of disposable pop music (i.e. trying to convince myself and anyone who'll listen that no good music is disposable, even if popular taste consigns it to the cultural scrapheap) seems odd when I consider how the rest of the world sees it.

Ultimately I don't care. It works for me. And if that means I deserve a good kicking for thinking that Bandwagonesque and The Eight-Legged Groove Machine are still pretty cool, then so be it.

Yesterday while waiting for the bus up to SFU, I was amused to see a woman all made up and dressed like Tammy Bakker. I saw the same woman again this morning and realized, whoops, that wasn't a halloween costume.

The trick-or-treaters last night were uniformly lame. We had a total of five kids, and none of them had a decent costume. Sorry, putting on your ski jacket and a hood and claiming you're Osama Bin Laden's hired assassin just isn't on. Not only is it not interesting or clever, it also leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The last couple tykes were sorta cute, but they were just wearing their pyjamas or something. Eh? Maybe the kids with the good costumes didn't bother trudging up our dark, isolated street. Our block only has houses on the south side, so it's not a very productive trick-or-treating area.

I was happy to have the belter with me. Answering the front door is not my favourite task in the world. I'm not as paranoid as Ma and Pa Sox are, though. For the past few years, they've been working on the honour system. They simply put the bowl of candy outside, then lock and bar the front door for the night.

That's where we went after giving up on the trick-or-treaters. It was a good visit. We hung out by the freezer, listened to Candlemass and Fates Warning, went outside for a while to frolic with sparklers and blow stuff up, and topped it all off with tastings of the fabled Corsendonk. I sure needed that, considering my long, academically imposed sabbatical from the Sox house.

Except for some flecks of green silly string still stuck to my sweater this morning, no harm done.

Sabbath, Sabbath Everywhere
After The Osbournes last night (highlighted by the spectacular boaking, as they say in Alan Warner novels, of Jack's bulldog) we saw some snippets of a show about Ozzy fanatics on MuchMoreMusic. The fans were a sad and deluded bunch. "I wanna thank Ozzy for inspiring me to become a tattoo artist." "I think if I got to hang out with Ozzy, we'd become best friends." "Ozzy's never ever let me down." And so on. The best bits of the show were the live clips of Ozzy with the reunited Sabbath. The footage was regrettably Ozzy-centric, though. I could see Geezer back there directing traffic, and I caught a glimpse of Bill Ward's bass drums once or twice, but otherwise it was all Ozzy all the time, interspersed with shots of ham-headed bully rockers down "in the pit."

That was okay, because I got a good dose of Sabbath on the weekend—gluesticking mauve polka dots to our bedroom wall to the strains of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. It was a testicle-retention gambit.

Those mid-period Sabbath albums used to daunt me as a kid. I didn't know anyone who was into that stuff. Acmac had Paranoid, which I borrowed and taped some choice cuts from. "Iron Man" and the title track—yes. "Rat Salad," hoo-boy! "Hand of Doom"? Nah. My infrequent friend Glenn had Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, but I never got to listen to it, and Glenn was well on his way to becoming a dirtbag anyhow. It just bolstered my suspicion that getting too deeply into Sabbath would cause one to plunge into waywardness and become Addicted to Drugs.

It's dangerous fucking music, that Volume 4/SBS/Sabotage trilogy. The process of understanding its genius would have taken too much of a toll on my teenage self. At 15 I was one short, sharp shock away from being put on life support (such was my lack of wherewithal and worldliness), so I think if I'd clicked with, say, "A National Acrobat" or "Megalomania" my sense of self-preservation would have stopped me from ever leaving my room again.

I can't say for sure, though. I could hack the likes of Close to the Edge, Brain Salad Surgery, and other musics clearly composed off-planet. The difference between that music and Sabbath, besides the fact that it's bleedin' poncy bollocks, lies in what Prof. Bill Martin identifies as prog rock's optimistic, utopian nature. That was me to a T back then. Sabbath is anything but utopian, and I realize now that that's what disturbed me about their music. Ozzy was wearing a "Kill Hippies" shirt last night, so the Sabbath ethos is alive and well!

I'm glad I was more or less a fully formed adult when I entered the church of Sabbath, which, incidentally, is located in the vicinity of Gilley and Patrick in South Burnaby. There I found guidance and solace as I peered into the Iommi-riffed abyss. I soon took sticks in hand and worked up to performing a credible version of "Cornucopia" with my benevolent mentors. Acting like Black Sabbath, it turns out, is lots of fun.

I'm gagging to do a decent entry, but this will have to suffice. I got a start on my "music I'm too scared to play" list, so I'll get that up soon. In the meantime I'd like to invite you all over to admire the giant paper orb ceiling light in our living room and the "voice of fire jr." tapestry above the chesterfield, and the polka-dotted wall in our bedroom. It was like frickin' Changing Rooms/Trading Spaces around here last weekend.

Did anyone see Henry Rollins co-hosting that Full Metal Challenge show a few weeks back? Man, every time I have a bad self-esteem moment, I think about that and start to feel much better.

Visual evidence of my short-lived career as a bluesman, courtesy of badbatz.xkeken.com. It was all a blur.

The Blues Ain’t Nothing But a Botheration On My Mind
Now that I’ve played my final show with Blueshammer, it’s time to move on to something else. I would have stayed with them, but if I’m going to play in a blues cover band, I want to play material that’s way sicker than what we had been playing. After all, what can you do to a Colin James tune except emulate its shiny Caucasian faux-blues façade, working to produce a facsimile of a facsimile of a facsimile until there’s no detail, no discernable craft, no beauty left.

I remember explaining Blueshammer to Diana Wegner, the scarily intelligent Print Futures instructor I’m working with on a presentation for the STC conference. She asked me what kind of blues we played.

“I guess it’s mainstream blues, like Colin James and Stevie Ray Vaughn and stuff.”

“Oh,” she said. “I like the blues, but I don’t like it with too much, um, ‘white man’ in it.”

I had to agree with her. My concept of “real” blues isn’t a very well informed one. I keep coming back to Deep Blues, a documentary I saw on Bravo! a few years ago. It featured Eurythmic Dave Stewart and Rolling Stone writer Robert Palmer visiting the Deep South to investigate the current state of the blues. RL Burnside starred in one segment. A couple years later he hit the mainstream with albums on Matador and Epitaph.

Another segment of the film featured Junior Kimbrough and his band playing in some juke joint. They blew me away. They sounded truly unearthly. The drummer played with sticks—not drumsticks, but sticks he must have pulled off a tree. The top joint of his crash cymbal stand collapsed after his first hit, and he kept whacking the cymbal through the rest of the song anyway. Junior played sitting down, well-weathered and sixtysomething, and sang along with his guitar riffs. He sounded pained and haunted to a degree I can barely imagine, let alone ever express in song. That’s the blues.

But let’s give the white man his due. I recently acquired Red Herring, the latest album from Half Man, a band that expertly straddles the line between blues and heavy rock. They’re Swedish; that’s how white they are. They’re sick, though. They play songs like John-Lee Hooker’s “Sugar Mama”: nine minutes of a three-note progression that not many bands would have the guts to attempt, but Half Man pull it off with soul aplenty. They follow that up with “Departed Souls,” a menacing instrumental with a creeping bass line, tremolo guitar and off-kilter drums that lull the listener for a while before the song ventures into all manner of freakout sections. On their previous album, The Complete Field Guide for Cynics, they had the good taste to cover PJ Harvey (who, for a pasty white woman, definitely has the blues). On Red Herring they cover Frank Zappa’s “Willy the Pimp,” real slow and dirty-like. Occasionally Half Man fall back on too-familiar riff constructions—“Grass Stains” reconfigures Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein” riff ever so slightly—but their style is so well-cultivated that I can forgive such small crimes. Half Man is the kind of blues band I want be in.

So I haven’t given up on the blues. As a white boy, though, I recognize my limitations. I know what I like, and I’m happy to enjoy it from the sidelines for now.

Hold Thy Tongue
Mom, Dad, Queen, Country, and Power Trios—I pledge allegiance to them all. I saw a fine example of the latter last night at the Silvertone Tavern.

Removal don’t just play their songs. They also put on a show, which I appreciate. They take being an instrumental trio seriously. This means they have no vocal mikes whatsoever. They’ve got slides (who doesn’t like a slide show?), they’ve got samples to dress up their material and provide segues between tunes. The slides let them communicate the equivalent of “How you all doing tonight?” in text form—hey, closed captioning!—and allow for the display of interesting backdrops. I wonder how we’re supposed to interpret the images. Is this song about crashed cars? Is this song about flowers? Is this song about a little kid holding gun to his head? I don’t think Removal are that literal. Their songs seem to be simply about rocking hard. It’s not like a Neurosis show, where the A/V element prods us into contemplating our animal origins and the basic human need for ritual, scaring the crap out of us in the process.

Removal run a tight ship. I don’t think we got an opportunity to clap until the fourth song. The rest of the set was a mixture of rock fury delectation and “how do they do that?” bafflement. Their drummer appeared to be the busiest of the trio, triggering samples and changing slides, often in mid-song. He smiled through the whole show, so being in Removal is apparently a lot of fun. The last number before the encore was The Winter Group’s “Frankenstein.” They pulled it off well despite the lack of sax and, most sadly, cowbell. They did that song the last time I saw them, so I suppose it’s their signature piece-cum-favourite party trick.

I’ve attended a number of excellent instrumental rock shows over the years, many of which have left me with an appropriate loss for words—Don Caballero, Saul Duck, The Dirty Three, Projekct Four. I think I’ll add Removal to the list.

PS: I forgot to mention the sample that introduced the show—Pat Benatar, a cappella and classic! "We're running with the shadows of the night..." Nice touch.

I spent tonight trying to write a review of the new Porcupine Tree album. It's wicked, but do you think I can just say that and be done with it? No, I can't. Anyway, I heart the Tree even though I have some reservations about the leadoff single/video. I dread turning on "Loud" sometime and seeing them sandwiched between POD and Disturbed. Argh, major labeldom is a scary thing.

I've also been leafing through Unrestrained! #20. It's hot off the presses and smelling great. I'm bummed that my one measly review didn't make it in. Am I being made to suffer for slagging too much stuff last time out? Have I been blacklisted, as threatened by the Nuclear Blast lady? Nah, my life should be so interesting.

I hereby pledge to write 250 words about every single sound I hear for the next three months and increase my chances of getting my shit into the next U!. "The busker at Commercial Drive station had a real infectious groove going on. His version of 'Greensleeves' was truly face-melting. Watch your step, commuters, or your flesh will be stripped from your bones, and your bones will then be crushed by this awesome display of heaviness." That kinda thing.

An Idea to Entertain
I walked around all day yesterday with my sweater on backwards. That’s the kind of week I’ve had.

I’ve also been unable to distinguish between pasta sauce and salsa, so I’ve eaten a couple of strange lunches along the way.

I got behind the kit again for the Blueshammer charity show at the Bistro last night. I was still very coughy and phlegmy, but I played like the showbiz trooper I am. Our first set was shaky, our second set was more solid, and our third set, true to tradition, was severely cut back. LDB people made up the crowd, and they started filing out around 10:30—gotta go to work in the morning.

Top man Smash did our sound, and Acmac hung out for a while, too. ACM’s become quite the motivational speaker. He’s almost convinced me that putting on a Mule show would be a good idea, and he’s given me a deadline of before Dec. 31. He says I don’t have to sing the stuff, and that drafting people in for the Mule Band would be a snap. I can picture myself playing some drums or strumming a guitar in the background, but I don’t think fronting a band is a viable prospect. Maybe I could stand at a podium and conduct.

One problem with the concept is that everyone who might want to see a Mule show would be on stage with me.

We’d have to do it at the Bistro. ACM suggested Studebaker’s (so that we could play the loud Mule songs), but frankly I’m appalled at the idea. Although…maybe we could open for Dio.

Sick Day
I got the okay to take the day off, which I totally needed. I had to pull an STC presentation out of my ass because Diana and I were to run through it today in front of some Print Futures students. I got up early, disposed of trapped mouse—my "corridor of death" did the trick overnight—and started going through my data. I was aiming for 15–20 minutes of material, and it came together pretty quickly. Then I had to crank out about 30 Power Point slides... The belter pitched in for some of them, bless her. It was hell, though.

I left for the college about 4, met Diana about 5, made a few edits to the slides, got a quick LCD projector lesson, and piled into 1808. The presentation went quite well. I nearly lost my place a few times, and I would have liked a glass o' water, but I survived. They were a soft crowd, too. We'd better shape up for the STC crowd on the 8th.

On the way home we stopped at McDonald's and I drank the best Coke I've had all year.

While I worked today, I finally got to listen to that Yakuza album that the Energizer floated me during the editing of U! #20 (when's that issue coming out, anyway?). It's actually really cool, if metalcore done in a sweepy Jane's Addiction style with saxophone is your thing. The album ends with a 43-minute Bitches Brew/In a Silent Way-style jam. Nice and floaty. You can hear a bit of it in the flash intro of their Web site.

I missed The Osbournes last night because I was on the phone with Diana plotting rhetorical strategies. Feces.

Skippy Slaughter
We've got mice in our building. They usually visit our place at night while we're watching TV. Little black shapes running across our floor into the kitchen. It's impossible to focus on anything else once we've seen one.

These mice are brazen. They used to have parties on top of Mel and Adam's fridge. They've chewed on dirty laundry. They've eaten Christmas presents we lovingly placed under the tree. They have no manners and can't be rehabilitated, so I'm afraid they have to die.

Jenni and I had great luck last year with mousetraps baited with peanut butter. We crushed quite a few mice within a couple days. I think they got the message. When the mice returned this autumn, we got one right away. We haven't had any luck since.

I loaded up a couple traps last night, and placed them in a "V" formation in a known mouse loitering area. This morning I found that the mice had licked the traps clean of all peanut butter without setting them off. Even the bait that I'd packed under the hook of the trigger was gone. These are some painstaking rodents. They have a surgeon's touch. I salute their deftness of tongue and their bravery.

These mice are clearly too svelte. They're not heavy enough to set off the traps. But that's okay. Time is on my side. I've re-armed the traps and placed them in the same spot as last night. They're going to consume a lot of peanut butter in the coming weeks and bulk up. Then there'll be some killin'.

The Boy In the Plastic Bubble
The belter and I have been sick all weekend. Our pestilent apartment echoes with coughing, horking, sneezing, and nose blowing. Used Kleenex piled up like snowdrifts in every corner. I got the disease for real on Saturday night, and spent the whole of Sunday inside. This morning I'm feeling better, but this thing is still not out of my system.

I was late for The Carl Fatman Show on Saturday because of some over-ambitious errand running. In my zeal to get Everything Done Now, I nearly killed the poor belter, and I think in the process I weakened myself enough to let the disease take hold. I got to the venue around 9, had a helluva time getting in, and eventually buzzed Carl right in the middle of an interview (watch for it when the episode is uploaded). I stayed for a couple hours, had a bite to eat, and watched the show, which featured various friends performing, then being interviewed by the Fatman himself. Bruno and Mai did a song. It does my heart good to see those two giving 'er Sonny and Cher style. Stoke played a brief set of "Bad Tattoo," "Orange Cat," and a new one I don't know the title of--is it "Blunt"? There was to be jamming afterwards, but I had to head back home. My throat was killing me.

MVPs this weekend: Red Zinger, Neo Citran, afternoon naps, Father Ted and Mr. Show, Staticbeats Chill, and baked apples.