I’ve just started reading Sound of the Beast, Ian Christe’s new book on the history of heavy metal. The concept for such a book seems kind of facile, and in a lesser writer’s hands it might resort to a tedious band-to-band-to-band kind of structure. I don’t think this book will fall into that trap, however. The opening couple of chapters are mainly about Black Sabbath and their genre-defining Ozzy years. From there it’s zoomed through the seventies and into the NWOBHM without a letup in the narrative. At this pace I’d expect the book to be over in 30 more pages, but there’s about 350 left to go. I expect Christe will settle in and mine the eighties for all they’re worth.

It’s a pretty well-researched book. I can’t find much to question, except the contention that Sid Vicious died in jail. Can someone confirm that, please? Christe knows what he’s talking about, and he’s got quotes from people who’ll back him up. Tom Warrior’s on board, as is King Diamond, Jess Cox from Tygers of Pan Tang/Neat Records, and Brian Slagel of Metal Blade records.

In the chapter about the birth of Sabbath, Christe namechecks a raft of similarly heavy bands who were signed in '70-'71 and released a quickly deleted album or two. The trend for major labels back then was to create a subsidiary to release all their “heavy” albums on, in order to present a facade of underground counterculture and let the kids know that this wasn’t their dad’s stodgy old record company. Pye Records, for example, had Dawn (responsible for releasing First Utterance by Comus, one of the most flat-out insane albums I own), and EMI had their Harvest division (home of The Floyd and a ton of progressive folkies), and Philips had Vertigo, which released fine bands such as Cressida, Black Sabbath, and a band that Christe mentions alongside the Sabs, the “haunting” May Blitz.

(The Vertigo name survived well into the eighties. We all remember the $2.99 double LP Vertigo Sampler from 1985, a seminal release that introduced the Cult, Love and Rockets, Cocteau Twins, and many others to thousands of impressionable Canadians. Everyone I knew bought one of those. More recently, Mikael from Opeth can be spotted wearing a Vertigo shirt on the cover of the latest BW&BK.)

May Blitz were new to me, so I looked them up. Turns out they were a Hendrixian trio who released two albums in ’70 and ’71. I have no doubt that this is cool stuff, but what really intrigues me about them is that two of their members, James Black and Reid Hudson were Canadians—transplanted Victorians, in fact. Both of them apparently still live on the West Coast. I guess if I was Nardwuar, I’d begin stalking them now. But being me, I’d be happy just to hear one of the records.

I've been checking out various music blogs via Metafilter this morning and feeling guilty about the tangents I've been traversing lately. There's no shortage of music to write about, so why am I neglecting it?

Stay tuned for more rock.

Fancylady and I had a belting time at the island last weekend. It took us a while to get moving after we got off the ferry though. My late Grandad’s Volare, our means of transport from the ferry to our place at Bennett Bay, gave us some grief. It usually starts after a couple tries, but the battery had gone seriously flaccid. With darkness closing in, the brave belter snagged the last-remaining ferry terminal employee, who kindly drove her pickup over and tried to give us a jump start. That didn’t work, so we called the island cab. We only got their answering machine. After leaving a couple messages with them, I tried the car one last time. I guess a charge had settled into the battery or the engine unflooded itself, because it finally started up (and ran fine for the rest of the weekend).

Good old Volare. It may be the sketchiest roadworthy car on the island, and looks especially rad parked by the minivans, Mercedes SUVs and F150s at the Miner’s Bay Saturday market. I’ll miss it when it finally gives up. When that day comes, instead of having it towed off the island, we should do something useful with it. Maybe we could seal up the interior, cut a pipe hole in the side, and bury it in the backyard as a spare septic tank. I think Grandad would approve of that kind of thrift.

So, the first night was pretty action packed. After we dumped our stuff at the house we went down to the water. The stars were out. We watched a meteor shower for a while until some kind of weird hellcat creature ran out and spooked us. (Probably a river otter, my dad says.)

I had the first encounter with a huge black spider. There’s always one when you first arrive, usually in the sink or some other source of dripping water. This time he was hiding under the rim of the bog, so once I’d got over the initial shock (he’d been that close to the old fella), it was a simple matter to flush the bastard.

We took the canoe out on Saturday. Bennett Bay is quite lake-like, so it’s good for a non-boater like me. As long as you stay away from the tidal currents that run between the main shore and the small islands at each end of the bay, it’s fine. The big challenge with the canoe is getting it down to and back up from the water. It’s damn heavy, and the handholds fore and aft threaten to slice your fingers off. It’s a two-person canoe in the water, and a six-person canoe when you gotta get it up the hill.

We hiked up Mt. Parke on Sunday. The weather was pretty blustery, and at the ridge on the top, the hawks and eagles were swooping above and below us. Looked like fun. There’s a nice view of Saturna, Pender, and points beyond. We didn’t see anyone else on the trail up the hill, which was good. I hate having to say “hi” to strangers going the other way. I guess it’s the hiker’s code, but you know…I don’t like strangers. On the way back we played tourist info service for a large group who were wondering whether they should keep going to the top. We promised they’d see some birds of prey and left them to it.

Monday was cleanup day, but we also made time for a walk out to the point and a quick trip into Miner’s Bay for gas at the station that may or may not be self-serve. We packed up and drove to Village Bay, where we bumped into the lady who gave us the eventual jump start on Friday night. “All through with your car adventures?” she asked as the belter bought our tickets home. Yeah, we were. Wouldn’t mind staying for a few more, though.

I always like to have a book on the go, but I’m not reading anything at the moment. The last book I read was Universal Recipients by Dana Bath, who read last week at Milk (where the belter emceed and my friend Shockk provided b.g. music until he was beaten down by p.a. glitches). It wasn’t bad. The quality writing compensated for the fact that I didn’t love the narrator persona she often projected. One story featured a scene at the Hope Slide, which gave me a little thrill. The Hope Slide is one of my favourite things on earth.

I’m not reading anything right now because my eyes need a rest. Some weeks I have days where I get up, answer email, read for an hour on the bus/train, read and edit stuff all day at work, read for another hour on the bus/train home, then edit for a couple more hours at night. After a few days of this, I go temporarily blind.

My sight doesn’t fade to black, exactly, but I get quicksilver spots in my vision where I can’t focus on anything. I can’t read. I have to go for a walk or lie down with my eyes closed for a couple hours to make it go away. I think these might be migraines.

It’s not a tumor.

We hit the road unnaturally early on Saturday morning, en route to a Tim Horton's before heading out to Maple Ridge. We were listening to CBC Radio 1, partially because we didn't have any tapes, but also because we couldn't miss a second of their exciting Harry Potter book launch coverage. This one reporter was roaming a parking lot in Hatzic or somewheres, talking to the kids. "Oh my, you should really see this," she said. "There's kids dressed up in all kinds of costumes. There's some dressed as witches, and some look like little goblins..."

You could really tell she'd done her research.

Every day I see someone with one of those J.K. Rowling doorstops cracked open on their lap. My coworkers are reading it. So far I've managed to ignore the whole phenomenon, but with Cypress's ability to finish anything by Cleary in about 15 minutes, I'm intrigued with the possibility of handing her a 700-page book. I'm curious—with music, for every million-selling blockbuster artist or album, there are two dozen underground equivalents who are way better. You just have to dig a bit to find them. What about children's lit? Is Potter as good as it gets?

Smash and I showed up at the appointed time and place to jam yesterday. Unfortunately no one else did. We drove around South Burnaby, looking through windows and buzzing intercoms, trying to rouse the troops, but it wasn’t any use. Nobody home.

We ended up at Smash’s place, camped out in front of the stereo. I’d packed the promo stuff I’d got from Adrian earlier that week, so we previewed some of that, along with the new Himsa album that Smash picked up at the show last Thursday. It was a good afternoon, trading off tunes and making plans for different bands with different lineups of friends. Even if our ideas never amount to anything, it’s at least fun to speculate what might happen.

In the meantime, Smash has a Stoke album to finish, I have about half a dozen unfinished/unmixed nuggets of crap to work on, and JR has custody of some eight-year-old Café Flesh ADATS that he needs to extract some quality moments from. If everyone finds the time, this could be a productive summer for the SoBurn scene.

Credit goes to Asteroid Belt for this one.


Dude, you're Eddie Van Halen!!


Which Classic Van Halen Member are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Yesterday I went to a funeral for a friend’s father. The church was full, which shows how well this man was liked, and how many connections he made and maintained through his life. It was good to see. He had a lot in common with my dad—he talked loudly on the phone, he was a healthy measure more gregarious than his son, he was very content with himself and his life, he raised a family of good people, and he tied his son’s ties for him. He also chose a nice neighbourhood to live in.

It was a fine sendoff—laughter during and after the service, superb tributes from family members, lots of friends catching up over sandwiches and tea at the reception in the church basement. I mean, that’s what it’s all about. Not that sadness and mourning don’t have their function, but...

I’m a great believer in memory. Right now is just the tip of the iceberg, and the accumulated memories below the surface are what’s keeping the whole operation stable. I have to live life always remembering that I’ll never really die as long as someone remembers me (fondly, I hope).

I think I’m fighting the after-effects of seeing Waking Life again last week.

After the funeral my dad and I stopped by his place so I could pick up my mail. I’d been looking forward to something good in the post, but it turned out to be a bill from the Medical Services Plan, overdue, with threats of enforced collection. Christ. I drop 500 bucks a year into that bloody thing and I haven’t seen a doctor in nearly 20 years.

I paid up at the bank after work. If I don’t go for a checkup soon, the next time I’ll see a doctor is when the belter kicks my ass into the emergency ward.

We went Lougheed Mall-ward on Saturday night to hang out with JR and Rob. After dinner they took us on a tour of their building, which is one of a cluster of apartment towers next to the mall. I hadn’t had the tour for nearly 10 years, when JR first bought his place. Time flies. We checked out the laundry room (75 cents a load), the common areas done in weird '70s rustic style, the swimming pool, a tenant’s classic car collection on P2, and the view from the roof. Tower blocks have weird personas, like they’re ruled by unseen, dullwitted overlords with clipart fetishes and massive Reader’s Digest collections for the laundry room library. JR's building is very Arrowhead.

JR interrupted himself at one point with “I’ve got to show you what I want!” and then took us by someone’s parking level storage locker to view an old Maudite gift set box, which he coveted like a holy relic. We all agreed it was a handsome item.

The belter found salvation by the building’s pool, and while she sat on the edge with her feet in the water I contemplated buying a place. But I don’t know; it’s too scary an undertaking, what with maintenance fees, demented strata councils, plus the worry that the walls are rotting around you. I love where I am right now, except for the fact that the general public basically has free access to our hallways.

I almost got to hear the new Metallica, but the night got away from us. Had to give the Zeppelin DVD priority.

St. Curiosity
I’ve decided I need to hear the new Metallica album. It’s been so universally & variously condemned, defended, mocked, hailed, that I’ve got to step into the shitstorm of debate myself. The more “senior” critics out there—Don Kaye and Martin Popoff, for example—have made it sound like a genuinely original, interesting album. Meanwhile, the review at SSMT and the postings on Blabbermouth have equated the album to a crime against humanity. “It’s HORRIBLE,” Adrian Bromley told me on the phone the other night, each uppercase letter sizzling with contempt.

St. Anger’s misdemeanours include long, pointless songs, no solos, laughable lyrics, and, interestingly, a bad drum sound. I’m pretty forgiving of drum sounds. I prefer them natural and unprocessed, but I can put up with anything except 1985-style Defenders of the Faith electro-cannons. And I hate it when the drums are mixed too high—see South of Heaven and The Temple of Knowledge. I’m always curious about what others consider a bad drum sound, so that’s another reason I want to hear St. Anger.

I spent all day Saturday at a volunteer strategy session for my professional association, which was as exciting as it sounds. At least I was downtown, so I got out during the lunch break and browsed through A&B. Not much excitement to be found there. White-tagged stuff was 20% off, so I'd brought a short list with me. Unfortunately they didn’t have most of it. This happens more and more to me. Either A&B is narrowing the variety of stuff they order or my tastes are getting more obscure…it’s probably some of both.

I don’t think anything on Relapse Records is all that obscure, so I was disappointed not to find the new Dysrhythmia album. Guess I’ll go to Scrape for that one.

I walked out with a copy of Sad Days, Lonely Nights by Junior Kimbrough. I felt like some more Junior, having enjoyed his first, All Night Long, for the past year. After one listen, Sad Days… definitely has the goods. I also got the impression that there’s not much variety between songs, resulting in an album-length blues dirge more suited to autumn than the summer-like weather we’ve been sweating through recently. I’ll keep spinning it, though, knowing that its time is gonna come.

Which brings me to Led Zeppelin, a band for all seasons. I picked up How the West Was Won a couple weeks ago. Any Led Zeppelin release is a household necessity, and How the West… has installed itself in our apartment as permanently as the fridge, the mousetraps, and the belter’s bucket of nail polishes.

This new release features a less jaded Zeppelin than their other live album (or original motion picture soundtrack). They’re nevertheless prone to bloating the songs to prodigious length and girth. I think this album has more interesting epics than The Song Remains the Same. “Dazed and Confused,” for example, breaks into “The Crunge” (from the then-unreleased Houses of the Holy) at one point, while the 23 minutes of “Whole Lotta Love” features a more extensive blues/rock ’n’ roll medley than the version on TSRtS.

Other plusses: “Stairway to Heaven” hasn’t yet become Robert Plant’s personal musical albatross, and he performs it with fewer asides and minimal scatting. The acoustic set that closes disc one represents an aspect of the Zeppelin sound that TSRtS entirely neglected.

Possible minuses: No “No Quarter” or “The Rain Song,” so the album downplays Zeppelin’s more ethereal side somewhat. I’m not sure if there’s a stretch of music on here that can equal the panty-removing properties of TSRtS’s side three. And the packaging, as Steve Newton in the Straight pointed out, is pretty chintzy.

The sound is spectacular. John Paul Jones could always be louder in the mix, but that’s a personal preference. The whole band sounds great, and you can clearly hear what’s going on at all times.

To sum up, it’s the new Led Zeppelin album, and it’s a crusher. Don’t take it for granted. Bring it on home.

The Skytrain stopped between Rupert and Renfrew on the way home today. Hearing those emergency brakes grinding, I knew this wouldn’t be a short delay. We had a sketchy guy in the car: “This sucks. Fuckin’ sucks. Really, really sucks.” He wouldn’t sit down even though there were plenty of seats, which made me nervous.

After a couple of minutes mission control backed us into Rupert and opened the doors. An attendant came into our car and told us there’d been a track incursion at Renfrew and he didn’t know when we’d get going again. Nearly everyone got off and walked up to Broadway to catch the bus.

People started trading track incursion stories while they waited for the #9. There was that time at Stadium Station. Guy had a heart attack, fell on the tracks. What happened that time at Waterfont? Blind person walked between the cars. That’s sad—blind. Sad. I wonder if she had a dog? No, definitely not.

It was jeezly hot today. Crossing over the Grandview cut on the #9, I looked down into Commercial Drive station. A big crowd of people on the platform waited for Skytrain service to resume. They gathered under the shade, well away from the platform edge. They had the right idea.

Ozzy Osbourne, Finger Eleven and Voivod: June1, 2003, GM Place
My good friend Bob Sox came through with some comps for this show, charitably promoted by the Sun’s “Queue” section as a “white trash be-in.” This is in contrast, I presume, to the sophisticated events the Sun endorses, at which Malcolm Parry climbs a step stool and happily snaps away while the city’s intelligentsia mash their fake breasts together.

Anyway, after pre-show drinks at Dix (where Scum dropped a you-had-to-be-there reference to the blue Beatles double album), we headed to the rink. We had to be on time for this gig—no Trowering!—because Voivod were first on the bill.

Smash was hell bent on exchanging his comp ticket for a floor ticket, but the scalpers wouldn’t go for it, nor could he fool the folks inside GM Place giving out green wristband passes to people with floor tickets. Our seats turned out to be just fine—16 rows up on the left side of the stage.

When you’re facing a big unknown like a job interview or a major trip, you can mull it over for a long time, posit a scenario from all the variables and contingencies, and decide you’ve got a good handle on it. But oftentimes when the event arrives and you’re in the midst of it, you realize that you had no idea all along. This is what happened when the lights went down and Voivod came on stage.

Piggy struck up the crawling two-note intro to the Voivod theme song, the self-titled track that opened up their debut album—just like on Sabbath’s first record. “Ha-ha, a nice little teaser,” I thought. “Now they’ll go into something from the new album.” Snake played a little air violin for the crowd down front—the floor was about 1/3 full at this point, with a few hundred other people scattered around the lower tier of seats. Piggy finished the intro with a final note rising to full volume. Snake walked up to the mike…

“VOIVOD!”

Christ on a crutch! Away they went, thrashing like it was 1984, playing “Voivod” by Voivod in GM Place with an ex-member of Metallica on bass. Whoa. This wasn’t on the tickets or in the ads. There was no recent post on Blabbermouth saying, “Voivod to open set with ‘Voivod’”. I went a bit mental.

They didn’t peak with that molten oldie either. They maintained the mania through a stupendous seven-song set, which balanced the new—“Rebel Robot,” “We Are Not Alone,” “Gasmask Revival” and “We Carry On”—with the old, including a rock solid version of “Tribal Convictions,” the “hit single” (in South Burnaby or on Ganymede) from 1988’s Dimension Hatross (the tremolo guitar part near the end sounded huge in the hockey barn) and set closer “Astronomy Domine” where Piggy compensated for muffing up the solo by pulling out his toy laser gun for some spatial FX. A glorious half hour, which I’m still buzzing from.

After declaring a crushing victory for rock ’n’ roll, Smash took off for parts unknown while I waited for Finger Eleven to come on. When they did, F11 brought out the grumpy old man in me, with their overblown Percussion Institute of Technology-grad drummer and guitarists who thought they were in the Dillinger Escape Plan or Botch, spasming across the stage like electrified mice while playing F11’s heavily amplified campfire songs. The crowd didn’t take to it either, and started chanting, Ozzy, Ozzy… “He’ll be out here soon,” promised the singer, “but not soon enough, I guess.” I went for a walk after four songs.

Ozzy opened strong with “War Pigs” and paced himself through a nearly two-hour show. I’d been expecting an hour plus an encore at most. While I’m not a great fan of solo Ozzy, a lot of other people are, judging by the number of his tunes in Popoff’s top 500 book. The set list delivered the usual—“Mr. Crowley,” “Crazy Train,” “Suicide Solution,” “I Don’t Know,” “Flying High Again,” “Mama I’m Coming Home,” et cetera. To my relief, he busted out some excellent Sabbath surprises, like “The Wizard,” which kicked off a medley of “After Forever,” “Into the Void,” and “Fairies Wear Boots.” He also sang “NIB,” and sang it very well; better than he did in 1970, in fact (I have a videotape that can prove it!). He resorted to confused slurring at other points, especially the last part of “After Forever.”

As for the rest of the band, Jasonic was doing his best at being Geezer with a plectrum. I thought his tone suited Voivod better than it did Ozzy’s more bluesy material. Guitarist Zakk Wylde is like some genetically engineered, lab-tested rock star (yeah, and didn’t he play a rock star in Rock Star?), grimacing and sweating and soloing like a sumvabitch, and throwing in an excerpt from “Eruption” during his solo spot. When we compared notes after the show, Ken stated that he’s not a huge fan—“Zakk Wylde’s not a blues guy. I think Ozzy should hook up with Marino.”

Ozzy himself was quite low key, for Ozzy. Close-ups on the big screen showed his face screwed up in concentration while he sang, his gaze not connecting with anything except the teleprompter at his feet. He made an effort while away from the mike, attempting a few leapfrog jumps, getting the crowd to clap their hands, and throwing bucketfuls of water over the first few rows—don’t slip a disc there, Ozzy!

Near the end of the show, he abandoned his “go crazy!” and “I love you all!” mantras to give us an update on Sharon’s cancer (beaten) and Jack’s stay in rehab (going well), and a warning against drinking and driving on the way home. His current fame as a TV dad was reflected in the number of parents with kids in the audience. I won’t say much about the suitability of Ozzy on TV or in concert for impressionable 10-year-olds other than better Ozzy than Grand Theft Auto. I will say that I hope all the Billys in attendance got a wholesome dose of Voivod as well.

When the show was over, I waited for Smash to come back from the floor—he got down there using a wristband that Ken fashioned from excess green tape and dental floss—then we merged into the flow of people heading to the exits. We found Scum and Ken all right, but Sox never turned up. I didn’t get a chance to thank him for the ticket on the way home, so I’d like to do it here. Cheers, man. It was a great night.

I read the news today oh boy about parents using the Fraser Institute’s annual high school rankings to select the "best" schools for their kids. The Liberal government says parents are free to choose any school regardless of where they reside in the city. Choice is good, competition is good (the message goes), whether it's stereo equipment or your kid's education. Forget about your neighbourhood. The Fraser Institute says the school down the block sucks, so you might as well let it rot and join the queue of SUVs headed west every morning.

East Side high schools like John Oliver are below capacity, while West Side schools like Eric Hamber have to install portables to meet the demand for space. Stories like this make me want to smash stuff with a crowbar.

Lunch in the cafeteria at work still stresses me out. I had a good lunch yesterday, though, chatting about music and drumming with a few likeminded people. I think I managed to sell a couple more tickets to the Terry Bozzio clinic this Saturday, too.

I always seize up when someone asks me who my favourite drummers are. Yesterday my list included Billy Cobham, Tony Williams and, for Canadian content, NP. I forgot about Bill Bruford (you’ll be surprised to hear), as well as Phil Collins (who’ll I’ll always vouch for as a drummer), Ian Paice, John Bonham, and Bill Ward.

They’re all worthy, but lately I haven’t enjoyed a drummer as much as Ginger Baker on Sunrise on the Sufferbus. I should have mentioned him as well. I need to be more evangelical about that album when I have the chance.

Inspired by a raise at work and a 72-cent Canadian dollar, I went on a mail-order rampage earlier this month. Everything arrived intact and on time, so let’s inspect the ugliness:

JPT Scare Band – Sleeping Sickness (Monster Records)
I’ve mentioned this ’70s basement power trio here before. The album alternates between loose jams with endless soloing and shorter numbers that reside firmly in Robin Trower/Firebird territory. They manage to be many different things at once (depending, I guess, on your mood or perspective): grim/cheerful, lax/disciplined, hopeless/inspiring…

Manilla Road – Mark of the Beast (Monster Records)
I salute Monster Records for bringing stuff like this to light. This is burger-brained American progressive metal circa 1981, floundering without a template (save the remote and untouchable Rush and Priest), and hobbled like Script-era Marillion. Utterly doomed but ultimately interesting. This must be the missing link to something, and not just because of all the knuckle dragging on display.

Various – Sucking the 70s (Small Stone Records)
A good tribute album/novelty record here. This two-CD set has a bunch of bands covering hits and obscurities from the ’70s, respectfully for the most part, with good performances and tones from nearly everybody. Highlights: Clutch plowing through “Cross-Eyed Mary,” Throttlerod’s “Black Betty,” “Working Man” by Suplecs and a few others. Lowlights: Men of Porn butthole surfing through Neil Young’s “On the Weekend,” and The Glasspack covering “TV Eye”—an unimaginative choice of what is a tedious song in anyone but Iggy’s hands.

Acqua Fragile – S/T (Numero Uno/BMG)
Art rock bands sprouted up like giant hogweeds in mid-70s Italy, releasing a fanboy-friendly album or two before disappearing. This album dates from 76 and sounds a lot like Trespass-era Genesis, complete with a singer who yelps like Peter Gabriel (and a bit like Bryan Ferry). Too much to absorb after only a couple spins.

Museo Rosenbach – Zarathustra (BMG Italy)
As above, except much more evil. A bad trip from 1973. If listening to this didn’t make me feel like I should be cut off, then maybe it should have.

We rented FUBAR last weekend, a fine Canadian movie probably made for the price of one day’s catering on the Matrix Reloaded set. It’s got metal, pathos, plot twists, mass shotgunning of Styles, awesome stoner profundities, and some Gummo-style chair destruction. Big laughs throughout. At first I was wary of how the movie (which is presented as a mockumentary that strays into reality for a couple interesting scenes) regarded its lead characters—are the actors just a couple of classist thespians playing headbanger dressup? But as the movie progressed, the characters were fleshed out enough to see that yeah, the filmmakers actually understand and like their subjects.

It’s too bad that the mockumentary genre has only come of age lately. It would have been the perfect format for a McKenzie brothers movie. Instead we have Strange Brew, so we have to lump it. It has its moments, though.

We also saw Rock Star, with Mark Wahlberg as not-really-Ripper Owens. Phew. It had me at first—it seemed to be set in an alternate universe where rival local tribute bands rumble in parking lots and play in steel factories for hundreds of rabid fans, where heavy metal bands hold press conferences on live television, and where people at concerts can have heartfelt conversations without raising their voices. Just when I thought (and hoped) that this Farrelly-brothers-type absurdity would be the movie’s style, it tapered off and became all earnest, and then I didn’t know what to think. The last few minutes, though, featured a couple of plot cappers that were well worth the cheesy wait.

Tess and Casper down the hall once had a showing of this movie, which is a way better version of the Rock Star scenario. At least it knows what it wants to be, which is totally mental.

When I’m standing at the bus stop, I hate how people in cars look at me like I’m an animal at one of those drive-through wildlife safari parks. When I visited San Diego Zoo as a kid I saw a gorilla nail a guy with a clod of poo (highlight of the trip, maybe even my entire childhood). If only one of my fellow great apes at the bus stop could take similar action against one of those looky-loos.

There’s this really bad bus ad for Adidas SL footwear (which look like you’ve got casts on both feet or are wearing thick plastic socks). It’s got a picture of the shoe in the middle and it’s surrounded by fake notebook scrawl creepily obsessing about how great these shoes are and how the writer must buy them when they’re released on April 17—“When I wear them, people will worship me” “My life begins 04/17” and so on. It’s some ad exec’s idea of being down with the kids these days, when in reality they’re just associating the product with a shallow, pathetic personality type.

(Nothing against Adidas here. But I wear Stan Smiths relieved that they'll probably never be advertised that way, if they're ever advertised at all.)

As with the Creeps and Losers campaign, I’m glad I’m not the only who notices these things. Twice I’ve seen this Adidas ad defaced in a fairily clever way. In one case someone had stuck a “Hello, my name is SLAVE LABOR” sticker to it. Today I saw it with a sticker that read “these shoes are for posers.” This is what I like to see. Conversation.

With the belter at the Western Canadian Magazine Awards tonight, I had the place to myself. After she left, I looked out the peephole to make sure the coast was clear, then I locked the door. I turned on the TV, making sure the volume wasn’t too loud. Finally I kicked off my pants, flopped down on the chesterfield and watched a Queen concert on the CBC.

Well, it wasn’t really Queen—more like Roger Taylor and Brian May and Phil Collins out of Genesis and dozens of nobodies. It wasn’t really a concert either. It was some kind of outdoor fest adjacent to Buckingham Palace. They did four songs, then got off.

First up: “Radio Ga-Ga.” Not a good way to start. Roger Taylor sang this one. He wrote it, didn’t he? I wasn’t buying Queen albums when this came out, so I can’t check credits. The crowd did the obligatory Nuremberg rally hand-clap routine and that was that. If Roger had to do one of his songs, I would have preferred “Tenement Funster.”

“We Will Rock You” (May sang this one) and “We Are the Champions” followed. Someone named Will Young came on stage and took the mike for the latter tune. (I just had a look, and young Will actually battled Gareth Gates to take England’s Pop Idol competition.)

At some point during this double-shot, the stage was invaded by…what the hell was that? Some kind of mob swathed in torn denim and Danskin. The cast of Cats? Oh, right, it must be the cast of that Queen musical, the one Ben Elton ripped off the plotline of 2112 for.

Finally the money shot—“Bohemian Rhapsody.” I eyed the door nervously. What if the belter forgot her purse and came charging in? I picked up the remote, ready to change the channel at a split-second’s notice.

But what’s this? Some red-shirted weed from the Queen musical had the mike now, performing the song as a duet with a short blonde woman. This made no sense at all. Then, after the cast of dozens did the opera section, a black lady with a hairdo like the Heat Miser sang the heavy bit at the end. It was a far weirder scene than anything Freddie Mercury could have dreamt up.

“Anyway the wind blows…” As the final gong reverberated, so did the guilt and shame through my being.

The BC pulp and paper industry breathes a collective sigh of relief, one-industry towns rebound from years of recession, beleaguered workers vie for nightshift hours at the mill and start paying off their pickup trucks in droves. Our dour province brightens with the bracing economic domino effect.

Wha’ happen? Well, Martin Popoff has a new book out; another Farmer’s Almanac/Atlas Shrugged/Bible-sized treatise on heavy metal. Forests shudder in fear. The Top 500 Heavy Metal Songs of All Time is a workmanlike title for a workmanlike book, but Popoff’s knack for churning out the wordage has already blistered my fingertips from page flipping.

As the title says, this is a big MFing list of songs, each with a Popoff analysis and a quote by the artist in question from Martin’s archives. What really brings the book alive, though, is that this isn’t the author’s personal list. He has compiled (with some help from his dad) the top 500 from lists submitted by punters like you and me. I recall sending him my list—I can’t remember my final tally at all, but I’m positive it was a pretty hapless attempt to encapsulate everything metallically Mulish.

Luckily for the reader, Martin doesn’t necessarily approve of the results, and he expresses his dismay hilariously throughout (caveat: I’m only 1/3 of my way through the book, so maybe he calms down after a while…after all, it’s not really worth getting too worked up over #378). “Stairway to Heaven” (#35) “would have made a good b-side,” while (ugh) “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin'” (#29) is Judas Priest’s “Gene Simmons tribute, sweaty leathers, percussive retardation post-Peter Criss…” Heh-heh and amen.

Popoff punctuates the list at various points with top tens from musicians he’s talked to, which throw up the occasional surprise. Marty Friedman (ex-Megadeth) favours Cheap Trick, Mahogany Rush and The Donnas, while Paul Di’Anno gives credit to noted rivethead Gary Numan (“Cars”—didn’t Fear Factory cover this?) and Acmac’s former idoles Trust (“Antisocial”).

The quotes connected to the songs occasionally cough up some new behind-the-scenes info. I’d like to think Popoff has selected them with a keen sense of insight into exactly who his audience is. He knows we’ll get it when John Paul Jones says, “Robert, sometimes, just to get a song going, would use lyrics that he knew, and then he would change them; sometimes not.” He knows that we’ll roll our eyes at all the Metallica quotes, which seem to have been procured during the Load/Reload lean years, and which offer nothing but lame excuses as to why they’ll never pen anything as good as “Trapped Under Ice” ever again.

It’s adequately proofread—I’ve come across a few clunkers, and something goes very awry in the introduction. It’s one of Martin’s better-presented books once you get past the cover and dive into the guts of the thing.

Basically I’m having a riot reading it, and I have an overwhelming urge to get my records out and compile a 500-song CD-R of the tunes dissected within. If only I had some UFO albums, I’d be set.

If you'd like to know what number one is, you'd better buy the book.