I went solo to the record sale at the Croatian Cultural Centre on Sunday. Sox wasn’t in the market for anything (ensuring more ELO LPs for everyone else), and neither was Scum… Even the Pantleg Guy skipped this one, I think. I wasn’t in a big buying mood but I had two or three really specific items I was looking for. I couldn’t find any of them. I overheard lots of kids asking for Iron Maiden albums. What’s up with that? Granted, Maiden are a quality outfit, but I’d think they had limited cross-generational appeal aside from possible irony/humour value. Maybe it’s because Sum 41 are always namechecking metal bands (these kids looked too hip to be Sum 41 fans, though) or maybe the twin-lead action of bands like Converge is inspiring youngsters to check out the forefathers.

I also overheard some amusing prog conversations. I could have jumped in if my need for anonymity didn’t override everything else. I also fear my own kind. I wasn’t there to make friends. One guy came up beside me at a table and asked the dealer, “Do you have any European prog? I’m looking for a Belgian band—they used to be Univers Zero, but now they’re called Present.” Now Present happen to be a favourite of mine, and a band that I’d never let a loved one hear in a million years. To have a stranger mention them within earshot was a little unnerving. I had to slowly back away.

At another table a guy started telling his dealer friend about the Baja Prog Festival. PFM were there and so were Focus, but Thijs Van Leer couldn’t play flute because his face was all paralyzed from a stroke, which was a drag. Apparently Ange, from France, blew everyone away and sold mass merch. Man, it’s painful enough reading about these fests on mailing lists and newsgroups, but to hear about it in person? I clenched my jaw and kept rifling through the bins. The other option was to yell “bastard!” and brain him with the nearest Bruce Springsteen live box set.

I left with a copy of The Toyko Tapes (Scorpions with Uli!), an old Alice Cooper album, and a severe acute case of album finger.

Traffic up Main Street picks up after the hockey games. Tonight drivers are honking their horns and shouting a bit. Spirits are high. Apparently somebody let the dogs out.

Mike Watt at the Pic, April 5, 2003
I can never get comfortable at the Pic. The people who look comfortable at the Pic make me uncomfortable. The place is narrow, there’s seating room for about 12 people (and if you’ve got a seat, then you probably can’t see the stage), you’re always standing in someone’s way, and you can’t find anywhere to hide. At least they give you in/out privileges, which can save your bacon during a three-band bill like Smash and I saw last Saturday night.

First band was Esperanto, who alternated between brief instrumentals and acoustic-guitar-led rap numbers. I liked how their singer just sat off to the side during the instrumentals. The highlight of their set came at the end, when their guitarist led the crowd in a call-and-response rap tribute to the Career of Watt. “I say Minute, you say Men… I say Fire, you say Hose…” et cetera. It was cool, not to mention well-researched.

Next band up was The DT's, a three-piece (drums, guitar, keyboards) plus singer from Bellingham. Very impressive trad-kinda-MC5 rock with wailing female vocals. The keyboards drifted in and out of the mix, but the drummer was extremely killer and the guitarist had impressive chops in both the playing and the facial hair sense. Their effort to “stretch things out a bit” caused their last number to outstay its welcome, but a good showing all in all.

Mike Watt slept out in the van while all this was going on. Smash. Smash, who braved the rain to greet the groggy indie veteran, reports that Watt was pretty slow getting to his feet. Apparently his illness, an illness that’s both sapped his energy and fuelled his new material, has returned, and he was this close to calling off the tour. He certainly looked tired as he pushed through the crowd, got on stage, and unpacked his bass. When the gig started he gave it 100% instrumentally and vocally, but when he talked between songs, he sounded exhausted. He played with a drummer (another good drummer! Just once I’d like to see a drummer who totally sucks. It would make me feel better) and a guy on Hammond organ. Apparently they’re both from Pedro. I’m not sure how to describe the band’s sound…maybe ropey and muscular? The lyrics seemed to deal with assorted medical horrors: piss bags and catheters and so on. The off-kilter music occasionally induced as much discomfort as the subject matter. The songs got more streamlined as the set progressed, until by the end they were tearing through “The Red and the Black” (the BOC song that figures prominently in Watt/D Boon folklore) and “Sister Ray.” It was a good show, but I was left wondering whether Mike Watt can keep this up for much longer.

Greg Howard at the Jazz Cellar April 2, 2003
Smash and I went to the Jazz Cellar last Wednesday night. Chapman Stick maestro Greg Howard was in town for a one-off gig en route to a Stick workshop/retreat on Saltspring Island. A number of the workshoppers (from California, Chicago and elsewhere) were also there to see their guru in action. These kinds of freak scenes don’t happen every day, so Smash and I had to take full advantage. Dave, Hannah, Toshi, and Melissa braved it out, too.

The Cellar, whose colour scheme matches the Difficult Music template, was still filling up when Howard started his first set. As a Stick player he was impressive enough—I spent the first few minutes trying to work out where the backing tapes were coming from before deciding that, oh, it’s just one guy playing all those parts—but the drummer he was playing with took the show over the top.

The drummer’s name was Kyle. He was a big dozer in a slablike shortsleeved black shirt with a ninja motif. He looked like a drink-bubba-keg-then-paint-face-for-the-hockey game kind of kid. Well, maybe that’s what he gets up to when he’s not practicing, but he’s also the best drummer ever. From what we gathered, he was just some local guy the organizers floated in for the show, which made his playing even more impressive. A couple bare-bones charts, a few head cues and count-ins from Howard, and he was good to go.

The set list featured a handful of Latiny, fusiony originals, some jazz standards and some pop tunes. Howard covered a lot of ground. He devoted a fair bit of the first set to The Beatles: First, a nice arrangement of “Here There and Everywhere,” then a “Tomorrow Never Knows/Norwegian Wood” medley. I was liking it. The second set summoned Mingus (“Goodbye Porkpie Hat”), Herbie Hancock, and Dylan by way of Hendrix (“All Along the Watchtower”).

If it all sounds kinda lite and safe, at various points he switched on a digital delay and ventured into the world of loops and space rock. I definitely felt the room levitate a few times, which is a desirable effect. When you’re playing the high-tech musical instrument of The Future, there’s little point in using it to simply rehash old hippie shit. You should go nuts with the thing.

The Saltspring Stick workshop people were at a table behind me. I couldn’t spy on them or eavesdrop effectively, although I met one of them, Smash’s email buddy Winston from California, during the intermission. On our way out after the show, Smash wished him well for the rest of the weekend. We shook Mr. Howard’s hand and thanked him for the music, and had much to discuss on the way home.

Both Bruno and David noted separately that Stick players and D&D types have a lot in common. It’s an insular nerd culture—music for nerds played on a nerd instrument for other nerds. I guess we were honourary nerds by being there. That’s the kind of guilt by association I can happily accept.

Letting some web site autogenerate my blog entry was a resounding flop. Let’s see if I can do any better.

“Eighties music.” I bristle whenever I hear some ponytailed, puff-jacketed whelp use the phrase. “It’s got cheesy synthesizers, like eighties music.” The cadence of the phrase, with the accent on the first syllable—“EIGHTies music.” God, I want to start swinging a machete.

I’m a little disturbed by how intensely it grates me. I’m also perplexed. Because I know what music they’re referring to, and I don’t like it either. I didn’t like it when it was brand new, when I was the target audience. The synthesizers were cheesy, the production values grotesque, the hair styles…structurally unsound. Everything on the radio made me cranky. I latched onto anything I could find, from metal to the abortive progressive revival of '82–'83, to avoid it.

So why am I now stung when I hear kids implying that Glass Tiger, Kajagoogoo, et al are the quaintest thing ever? Why do I feel compelled to defend Platinum Blonde from the gentle mocking of Daryns and Vanessas? I guess it’s because I have a small slice of ownership in that decade by dint of alive and aware at the time. I don’t like it when people tar whole decades with the same brush. They always get it wrong.

I just finished a superb book about eighties music, Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life. The book profiles 13 influential bands from the eighties, from Black Flag to Beat Happening—the bands who basically did the grunt work that enabled Nirvana to break big in 1991.

The book doesn’t advertise this fact, but almost every band profile is accompanied by the story of a record label, a subplot that I found as appealing as the main narrative. Bands and labels helped strengthen each other’s identities, strained each other’s loyalties, bickered and became estranged from each other with the same regularity as the individuals within the bands themselves. The Black Flag story is also the story of SST Records, The Replacements had Twin Tone, Minor Threat and Fugazi were synonymous with Dischord, Big Black and the Butthole Surfers kept Touch & Go afloat. Nearly every chapter ends with the band’s defection to the majors and their “inevitable” artistic decline.

I laughed out loud through the entire thing. Azerrad gets some priceless stuff from his subjects. There’s debauchery: several eyewitnesses gleefully recall Gibby Haynes’ drunken, violent (and naked) rampage at a Dutch Festival. There’s introversion: the Dinosaur Jr chapter is a hilarious litany of passive aggression, pettiness and insecurity. Even Henry “Garfield” Rollins and Ian MacKaye raise an eyebrow with their confessions of an arena rockin’ youth—“We would read about the Nuge and the thing that really rubbed off on us was the fact that he didn’t drink or smoke or do drugs… We thought that was so impressive.”

I admit I wasn’t a fan of most of these bands when they were around. I now wish I had been one of the eight other people in the club during one of their early tours. Most of these bands played Vancouver regularly. I found out about them too late, when they had already finished, or were within an album or two of breaking up. Maybe I was too busy hating stuff in the eighties to find out anything good (and truly contemporary) for myself. Maybe I wasn’t cool enough.

It’s easy to decide how good something was after it’s run its course. It’s often harder to objectively assess something in the present, to take a stand and decide what you like, really like, now. I think that’s what bugs me about the kids and their “eighties music.” It takes very little effort to deride the past, just as it’s very easy for them to glibly accept what TV and radio spoonfeeds them in 2003. You own your present. I owned the eighties when I was teenaged, somewhat sentient, and looking for cultural sustenance, but I was too chickenshit to try to improve the situation. I just hated it. Those kids own today. They’re the audience, they’re as responsible for all the mainstream crap we have to endure as anyone else. If people used their imagination and looked at what they have today with the perspective they’ll have five years from now, I’d hope to see riots in the street. But that’s just misguided old me, expecting people to care.

Maybe tomorrow
Pretty much nothing notable going on today. Pfft. I've basically been doing nothing worth mentioning. My mind is like a void, but that's how it is. Today was a loss. I haven't gotten much done these days.

Current Mood: dispassionate

Some strange happenings at the Guggenheim Museum next week: blast beats, blimps, sidecars, and the Isle of Man TT. These are a few of my favourite things. I recall Jones writing something about this, but I can't find it in her archive.

King Crimson 23/03/03
I knew I was in for it as soon as I joined the lineup to get into the Commodore. A guy in green rugby pants was getting way too excited, actually vibrating as he made a prog-related point to someone beside him. When I heard the word “clinical” I knew I had already heard too much. Commodore staffers patrolled the lineup, telling us that the band wanted no smoking, no recording, and no photographs. No problem. I would have preferred “thanks for coming!” but never mind.

Up the stairs, through the mandatory bloody coat check, and we were in. Lots of people there already—fancy people, hippies, nerds, kids in Rage Against the Machine hoodies. It looked like all seats were taken, so we hung out on the floor by the mixing desk. I think Smash remarked that he enjoyed talking and people watching more than the average opening act. It’s true. Despite the coat check, despite the goons with headsets, despite the non-bouncy floor, I still like being inside the Commodore.

The lights went down and the onslaught began. I had to hang on to my beer glass for dear life. To my left, looking like a ’60s test pilot, Trey Gunn tapped his Warr guitar…sometimes two of them at once. At the back, a bearish and grimacing Pat Mastelotto smacked his drum kit. On stage right, obscured in blue light, Robert Fripp sat, played, and presided. And up front, looking like Martin Short’s impression of Pierre Trudeau, Adrian Belew tossed off freaky leads on his Stratocaster, sang and smiled a lot.

The set drew mostly from the new album, which I don’t own as yet. I didn’t recognize any songs until they played “ProzaKc Blues” from the ConstruKction of Light. They aired a handful of other numbers from that album during the evening. The tour for that album never came here, so it was good to finally hear those songs live. Some people tried to groove along to the polyrhythmic weirdness of KC, successfully for the most part. It’s not easy to do, but if you stay with the beat you’ll come back on the “one” eventually.

The concert wasn’t filled with “hits”—no “21st Century Schizoid Man” or “Indiscipline” or “Sleepless.” I heard an extremely delusional person yell out for “The Court of the Crimson King.” Towards the end they did play a couple toe-tappers in the form of the Beatles-esque “Dinosaur” and “Red” from the highly regarded Wetton/Fripp/Bruford years. After two encores, the house PA came on, but the crowd wouldn’t simmer down. The band eventually filed out again and played some kind of mutant blues number that may have been a work in progress.

I remember ACM’s comment about a Concrete Blonde show to the effect of “the audience seemed starved for this kind of thing.” I’ll apply it to Sunday’s show as well. I had the feeling that these weren’t people who normally went downtown on a Sunday night, but they came, they had fun, and they saw some great musicians play some great music. The band, I think, sensed that the audience were determined to wring maximum enjoyment from the event and responded in kind.

As for me, I’d had a day that varied between extreme fun (starting in the morning with the belter and continuing with Smash and various friends) and extreme dismay about the ugly state of the world. The whole evening steered me well away from the latter feeling for a few hours, so I’m grateful for that.

I hate to say it, but I’m feeling marginalized right now. I hate to say it because (a) “marginalized” is such a touchy-feely new-speak kind of word and (b) I can’t think of a better term.

How about two words: “pissed off”? Yeah, that’ll do. You see, on page 86 of this week’s Georgia Straight, there’s an ad for the Chevrolet Cavalier. It’s a huge ad, about 7/8 of the page. The main picture is a city bus coming towards us on a dark rainy day. The destination sign above the front windshield reads “CREEPS & WEIRDOS.” Below that there’s an inset with the tag line “Luckily, there’s an affordable alternative,” along with a picture of the four-wheeled piece of shit in question and the fine print which the dealer will use to anally violate you when you close the deal.

“Creeps and weirdos.” That’s who rides Vancouver buses. Not regular folks who just want to get to work. No, people on transit are all weirdos who don’t drive cars; they’re all creeps who like to sit next to strangers because it probably gets them off. People who use public transit in other cities must all be perverts too. The fast, efficient mass transit in Toronto, Montreal, London, and New York must exist merely to serve the retarded, the schizophrenic, the gropers, the droolers, the frottage enthusiasts, and the smelly. It’s a wonder anyone uses it.

In the bottom left-hand corner of the ad there’s a little 2010 Community Contributor insignia. I’m so glad to see that the Chevrolet/Oldsmobile Dealers of BC are presenting our world-class city in the best possible light. I bet the citizens of Salzburg think their buses are just fine.

This one's for ACM: Space Ace, revisited and reconsidered.

I believe "Rip It Out" was the first song we ever performed in front of an audience.

I’m looking forward to seeing King Crimson at the Commodore this weekend. I’m amused by the fact that I’m going with about five other people. How did that happen? I remember the days when I didn’t have anyone to go to shows with. I’d pass up bills like Metallica/Exodus/Metal Church at the New York Theatre because none of my friends liked what I liked. Eventually I got up the nerve to go to shows by myself, but it was never any fun. After walking out of a particularly depressing Pixies gig I decided the solo thing wasn’t for me, although I’ve had a couple relapses since then.

I've never had a problem with going to movies by myself. Once the lights go out, everyone's alone, I guess.

I’ve seen KC before, as well as gigs by related projects and personnel. Here are my predictions for the show:
1. Robert Fripp will play sitting down.
2. Someone will say that they found the concert boring because of this.
3. At various points I’ll have no idea which instrument is producing what sound.
4. I’ll get a good whiff of someone’s B.O.
5. A guy in a sheepskin vest will go bonkers when they play anything pre-’74.
6. I’ll overhear conversations about music that I’ve only had in my head before.
7. After the show lets out, we'll laugh nervously whenever it is mentioned again.
8. No lineup for the ladies’ room.

I wonder if I can grow an eggy beard (^tm Glitzy Cape) in time for the gig?

Every weekend needs at least one big, satisfying, stomach-walloping dinner. Last Saturday we hit the Windjammer for fish and chips. The place has it all—model ships and pictures of olde English villages hanging overhead, fish-shaped glass plates, beer, HNIC on the TV… I think I prefer the tea towels and seventies soccer posters theme of the Pennyfarthing (not to mention the Caffrey’s on tap), but sometimes you just wanna stay in the neighbourhood. When you’re done eating, you’ve only got a couple blocks to stagger home.

Note to Francophobic Americans: “chips” works better than “freedom fries.”

Concrete proof that the mullet thing is over. It's totally been co-opted by The Man.

This album earns a point for featuring "Black Betty," though. The belter and I tuned in to KISM while driving to the airport Friday night to pick up her mom, and we heard these exact same songs.

Cheers to Cy "Didn't know your name was Ciaran" Meeks for his letter in this week's Georgia Straight. The letter basically upbraids Mike Usinger and the Straight for their ignorant-yet-disdainful attitude towards metal. I'm glad the editors published it in the Letters section and not in Payback Time, which is the most worthless, mean-spirited 20 square inches of newsprint I've ever had the displeasure of compulsively reading week in, week out. So good going, Cy. I miss his letters in Metal Maniacs, so I'm glad he's still getting his licks in when he sees an opportunity. He's a Print Futures grad, you know.

The other night I listened to The Shadowthrone, the second album by Norwegian Grammy winners Satyricon. It’s really primitive, but it hasn’t aged that badly. It manages to take black metal’s penchant for “grimness of sound” and make it very listenable. The drums ring out naturally (though Frost’s playing has improved immeasurably since then) and the guitars have a nice buzz to them. A lot of the material sounds like the Storm album, a Satyricon side project where they added powerchords to a bunch of old Norse folk tunes. I think both albums were recorded around the same time, so it figures.

Where are they now? Like I said, they won a Norwegian Grammy for their last album and they’ve made a fancy video co-starring a naked booby lady and a snake—available for download on the Web site. I always thought Satyricon was a two-man project—just Satyr Wongraven and Frost—so I don’t know who all those other guys are (oh, the site says they’re Steinar Gundersen - Lead Guitar, Lars Norberg – Bass, and A.O Gronbech - Rhythm Guitar). The song, "Fuel For Hatred," is catchy as hell, so watch out. For black metal, it’s quite a toe tapper.

I’d say last weekend was pretty amusing. On Friday the belter and I went to the Pearls launch at Douglas College. The vibe was a little different this year because they moved it up to the fourth floor art gallery, where we had our portfolio show last April. I guess the highlight, aside from Calvin Wharton’s fine emceeing style, was when our man Adam Honsinger received the Maurice Hodgson Memorial Award for Creative Writing. He’d kept it a secret, the cad, so it was an excellent surprise.

Saturday, with the high-rollin’ belter down south, I went to Kevin’s birthday party in PoCo with Smash, Mai and Christian Scum (who I hadn’t seen in way too long). Wow, did they ever lay on a spread. We ate ourselves silly and had a nice relaxing time. I’ll confess I have two major regrets—that I didn’t go back for seconds and that I didn’t stay long enough for cake…I’m sure there must have been cake.

A quick blast across the Lower Mainland and we arrived in time for the second half of the Carl Fatman show, which was taping in the art gallery/party room at Super Robertson’s building. We caught most of the Motorcycle Man’s set, which consisted of the usual stream of babble interrupted by one-man heavy metal songlets. My best moment came when he spotted me during his audience poll of favourite metal bands. I got to say “Celtic Frost!” from the back of a crowded room, which was very satisfying. Judging by their reactions, some people thought I was joking.

My tasks for Sunday were to write a review of the stellar OSI album and to monitor the belter’s whereabouts in case she needed a lift in from Maple Ridge. When everything appeared to be sorted out, I took off up the street to visit Neptoon Records’ new location. Their racks of $2 LPs contained a few gems (well, gems to me), so I picked up some things. I also got the first Hatfield and the North LP, which made the Neptoon guy pretty excited because, as he told me, their keyboardist was Dave Stewart (not Annie Lennox’s partner) who played on Bruford’s One of a Kind, which also featured Allan Holdsworth, who played with Bruford on the first UK album, who became a trio with Terry Bozzio on drums after Bruford and Holdsworth left to make One of a Kind, which was going to be the second UK album… Heh-heh. I walked home in a good mood.

”You are what you think about”
I’m reading Devil’s Knot, which covers the same material as the HBO documentary “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills.” It goes into much more detail than the movie did, and as a result it’s that much more frightening. It’s the scariest book I’ve read since Linda McQuaig’s All You Can Eat. Devil’s Knot makes it even more clear how biased the trial’s judge was, how shoddy the police work was, how clearly Mark Byers should have been the prime suspect, and how little evidence it takes to convict someone of murder and send them to death row. It looks like the last third of the book is what happened after the convictions, so I’m looking forward to it. Because I haven’t seen the sequel to the movie, this should all be new information to me.

If listening to Metallica and wearing black can get you the death penalty, what would happen if the cops found your Akercocke albums? I’d better watch myself.

At one point in the book the author inaccurately transcribes the title of a Metallica album as Injustice For All. With the twang in Damien’s voice, that’s how it probably sounded when he testified. Mistake or not, it’s a pretty excellent title for an album. It would have been appropriate for Load.

I know it’s not good for me, but at work I like to sit by myself at lunch. I like to read The Sun, or read the writin’ under the pitchers in The Province, or read another chapter in whatever book I’ve got going. Sometimes I’ll sit at a table with people I’ve talked to before. More often than not it goes okay. I get in a couple audible comments and people acknowledge them. Yippee. As someone whose job it is to pry information out of people, I need to talk to them more. But I’d rather do it for the job, not socially. Anyway, today I sat down with a couple folks who, I realized too late, were already deep into a conversation about spirituality and living and doing and being and loving and all that jazz. One of them is drawing up tables and diagrams on a piece of paper. “Look at this straight line. What does that mean to you?” “Let’s divide life into positives and negatives.” They’re talking about human beings as meaning-making machines, and Landmark Education (which Neal Morse of Spock’s Beard was into, the God-fearing freak) and The Four Agreements. I just sat there gnawing on my giant oatmeal-raisin cookie and listened, hoping they would not acknowledge my presence and not ask me what I thought that straight line meant. I made it back to my desk unscathed.

Around the house
I rearranged the LPs last week, taking the significant step of integrating the belter’s records with mine. I liked the results—Sleater Kinney is now sandwiched between Slayer and Slint, Janis Joplin mingles with Jethro Tull and Joy Division. It’s a healthy situation.

Last night I borrowed a drill and put up shelves, which we bought Sunday at Ikea with the help of the invaluable Tess. By the way, here’s a tip for you Ikea shoppers. If you’d like cheerful service, don’t walk up to one of the yellow-and-blue garbed floor staff and ask, “Do you work here?”

Anyway, I got the shelves up without drilling into any major wiring conduits, so I was pleased. They’re actually level, too. I’m like friggin’ Schneider.

I’ve always enjoyed a little black humour in the wake of a major tragedy, but I’m hesitant to joke about the Great White thing. I’ve been grossed out by it. I mean, you go to the local club to rock out to some has-been band, and suddenly you’re incinerated. That could have been me. And I think about what future awaits those club owners and old Jack Russell, and I get an anxiety attack. They’re just fucked. Occasionally I’m tempted to sign the Stoke guestbook and advise them to lay off the pyro, but that’s lame and in bad taste. I can’t laugh about any aspect of the situation.

Until today.

Freddie, four-tracking, and free food
Jetbot noted recently how much she hates that car commercial where people sing along to the Barenaked Ladies. Well, I always want to hide behind the couch whenever the “We Are the Champions” Viagra commercial comes on. As a Queen fan who’s been embarrassed by that song ever since it became a sports arena anthem, hearing it as the soundtrack to a Viagra ad doesn’t exactly give me a boner. I honestly hope that the estate of Freddie Mercury is donating all that dirty pharmaceutical company cash to a worthy cause. If Roger Taylor’s getting a cut to buy a new carburetor for his Ferrari, I’ll be pissed.

I should inquire about licensing “Another One Bites the Dust” for my mouse-trapping services. Except that song sucks, too.

I was back in the basement for some more four tracking on Saturday. I’m still floundering around for quality ideas, so I decided to rerecord a Jackass Has Haybreath song from scratch.

I started with drums. I didn’t mess around with getting good sounds. I just took my two PZMs, hung one high, hung another low. That setup always makes the drums sound brittle and small, but still very listenable. I like it. However, I wasn’t sure it would cut through the din of overdubs to come, so I stuck my SM57 on the snare. Voila—the kit sounded killer.

I tore everything down after the first complete take and moved on to bass. Again, I wasn’t too fussy about sounds. I tuned up, plugged in, dialled in the SansAmp and hit “record.” Boom—three tracks of sketchy Odometer rock for future reduction, with no blisters, no knocks on the door from Flanders, some lunch, and a shower. I’d call that a good afternoon’s Muling.

After that, the belter and I took off to Maple Ridge for a private Catholic school fundraising trivia night. I tell ya, the Catholics can put on a show. The school gym was packed with over 300 people, there was free smokies, potato salad, dessert, beer (not free), a silent auction…all kinds of wholesome charitable whatnots. A friend recruited us to be on her team, so we did what we could. The belter nearly won the True or False round, while I contributed the correct answer to our final Jeopardy question (we’d wagered our entire point total, so I was shitting bricks about that one). We still were only good enough to finish eighth (out of 30 teams). I think that the “Sunday School” category was our undoing. We’ll get some Bible tutoring and kick ass next year.

Boys and their stuff.
The belter and I had a nice dinner at JR and Rob’s last night. They’ve been busy acquiring a lot of nice things—a space-age mountain bike, an IMAX-sized computer monitor, a sleek grey cat (Gypsy, named for the Fleetwood Mac song, natch), 8 gazillion DVDs… While I pondered where I could possibly sit down, I was happy to see the ever-present domino stack of new vinyl creeping across the floor at the foot of the stereo cabinet.

I also remarked that the flashing red LED on the spine of Pink Floyd’s Pulse live CD was still going after all these years…since ’95, in fact. Impressive longevity for what must have been a small, disposable battery. Then JR admitted he’d been feeding it fresh AAs every once in a while, so as not to lose the “pulse.” Wow, that’s dedication. JR, you’re a freak and I love you.

(Christ on a crutch, he’s not alone.)

Drippy Hippy

The latest issue of Mojo contains a nice profile of Kate Bush. It really says something about the musical climate of the late seventies that Kate was considered a lightweight when she first hit the scene. “[The press] mocked her as a drippy-hippy purveyor of ‘wow’ and ‘amazing’” says the article. I also have a Not the Nine O’Clock News record from 1980 that features a Kate Bush parody song called “England My Leotard” (sample lyrics: “People buy my latest hits/because they like my latex tits”). I suppose a mixture of sexism and musical snobbery was at play. She took a nice photograph, and she didn’t downplay the whole soft-focus, raven-haired, ruby-lipped schtick at the time. For the highminded and skeptical, it must have looked like wank fodder for schoolboys. But everyone knew she wrote her own songs, and had been for a long time (she composed “The Man With The Child In His Eyes” when she was 13). She also, the article reveals, called all the creative shots behind the scenes, picking singles and collaborators from her first album onwards.

And I expect the flights of fancy and romantic yearning that her songs evoked clashed with the post-punk, spartan sensibilities of the day. It's interesting to note that one of her earliest champions was David Gilmour of the Pink Floyd. By the turn of the decade the world had loosened up enough to accept her subject matter on its own terms, having become used to the psycho/political mini-dramas of Peter Gabriel and the earnest stylings of the New Romantics in the meantime. Mainstream pop branched off in some strange directions in those days.

If a young Kate Bush emerged today, might her handlers quickly shuffle her off to that “serious” female artist ghetto, and pigeonhole her as Bjork and Tori's polite English cousin? The parodists these days have their hands more than full with Christina, Shakira, B****y, et cetera. She’d be the merest blip on the cultural radar, and I doubt she’d make the cover of Mojo or its equivalent in 20 years.

But I'm just saying. I need a copy of Hounds of Love now.

The Tastebot's Top 30
The little droid that monitors my activity on Amazon recommended the following 30 titles. Am I 50 years old? Am I 25? Am I, as Acmac once put it, singular yet catholic? I already own the titles in bold, so you can see how accurately they've profiled my musical "taste." Crazy. Is this my future?

National Health: Complete
Blue Cheer: Outsideinside
Transatlantic: Bridge Across Forever
Happy the Man: Happy the Man
Captain Beyond: Sufficiently Breathless
Happy the Man: Crafty Hands
Fu Manchu: California Crossing
Moby Grape: High Sign
The Brought Low: s/t
White Stripes: de Stihl
United by Fate: Rival Schools
The Soft Machine: Fourth/Fifth
…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead: Source Tags and Codes
Spock’s Beard: Snow
Cactus: Cactology—the Cactus Collection
Blue Cheer: Megaforce Years
Atomic Rooster: Death Walks Behind You
Vanilla Fudge: s/t
Porcupine Tree: In Absentia
Montrose: Montrose (early Sammy Hagar!)
Cactus: s/t
Leaves: Leaves are Happening!
The Flower Kings: Stardust We Are
Budgie: In For the Kill
Nick Gravenites and Mike Bloomfield: My Labors and More
Savoy Brown: Hellbound Train
Shadows of Night: Oh Yeah (best of)
Steve Hillage: Fish Rising
Gentle Giant: In a Glass House
Hawkwind: Hall of the Mountain Grill

Stop it. Put that down.
I spent Saturday afternoon in my parents’ basement, hunched over the long-dormant four-track. I thought I’d ease myself back into recording by doing some overdubs on a couple things I’ve had laying around for a while. I dork-fingered my way through them, re-establishing my status as king of the punch-ins. Actually, I was pretty happy with the addition I made to one song, a horrible blob I’ve built from the drums up, with no idea what might come next. I stuck some piano on there, and I think it might really become something soon.

Before I left for Burnaby on Saturday morning, I searched through my old tapes for some ideas I could work on that day. I found a thing I’d totally forgotten about—The Doomtown Overture, an instrumental I wrote and hastily recorded four years ago. I’d intended it for Doom Town, a Jack Chick/King Diamond-inspired rock opera that Smash and I were going to write. The patented (and interminable) Mule one-finger guitar solo (complete with thin direct-injection sound) mars it somewhat, but I think I’ll keep it as is. It made me laugh, and that’s my main test for whether one of my songs is worthy.

If I do some homework this week, I might be more productive when I return to the basement next weekend. I can already tell lyrics will be a problem. I have nothing to say for myself right now.

He’d probably give me a slap upside the head for thinking this, but I want to take some cues from Super Robertson. He sent me a couple new solo tracks a few days ago. The man’s spontaneity and productivity have always inspired me. With my recording time these days coming in short bursts, I need to adopt his methods. Before I can do that, I need to learn to play guitar well enough to get through an entire song without disaster striking. By the way, I’ll be distributing unauthorized two-song SR CD-Rs at the next Roadbed gig.

The belter and I went downtown on Sunday. Highlights included some gross people dry-humping in the video section of Chapters, learning about the “click factor” so carefully engineered by leading lipstick manufacturers, thumbing through an awesome Kiss book at Virgin, and picking up an Opeth 7-inch at Scratch (one new song from Damnation and one remake, both with a heavy Nick Drake vibe). I wanted to get the new Dirty Three album, too, but I can’t buy everything. I should just listen to Ocean Songs some more.

Weapons of Musical Destruction
Being cable-free hostages of the CBC, we sometimes see unfortunate things on television. One weekend we caught Steve Burgess’s opening monologue on The End. We reacted as if the couch had been electrified—we sprung up and started pacing around the apartment. “What the fuck was that?” “Were those jokes?” “I think they were supposed to be.” “The hell?” “Did that just happen?” Having just seen a man die on television, we couldn’t sit back down. Our night was done.

Yesterday we saw a few minutes of The Great Canadian Music Dream, which plunged our home into madness and despair once again. First of all, that Moxy Fruvous guy hosts it. Hasn’t he already got a show on the CBC? For that matter, doesn’t he have a band? Maybe he should get back together with them and write wacky love songs about Ann Medina or something. Since the Barenaked Ladies went serious, there’s a novelty tune market niche to fill. And he can take solace in knowing that nobody will devote more airtime to his new material than the CBC.

Then there’s the eerily still, not-about-to-rock audience—I didn’t see any close-ups, so I suspect they could just be cardboard cutouts.

Then there’s the acts. I’ve got nothing against homegrown talent. Probably a good quarter of my all-time favourite bands are Canadian. Still, I’d like to say something to all the young musicians out there: Stop it. Put that down. Take a break, go to school, get a trade. Make yourself useful. There’s way too much music out there in the world already. It’s all I think about, and I can’t keep up with it. While I respect your need to spread your “message,” please keep it to yourself. I know it’s fun strumming that guitar you bought last year, I know it makes you happy to sing that song about your funny friends, but believe me, the enjoyment of your mediocre outpourings begins and ends with you. Can’t that be enough?

I won’t discuss my feelings about musicians competing against each other. I’ll get into a digression about Shindig and start crying.

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!"