A Year In Shows

Your Year in Review 2011

2012-01-25T18:52:00.000-08:00

For those who were holding their breath waiting for this, you can now exhale (hi Mum!). Here's a random collection of overshare, loosely based around my top 10 songs of the year.

10. Never Look Back - Slow Club
Slow Club's 2010 debut album "Yeah, So" should really be my album of the year as it spent more time playing this year than any other record else I own, but rules are rules, and it doesn't qualify for this annual parade of indulgence. But this year's "Paradise" is pretty goddamn special too - filled with plenty of boy/girl angst, and a healthy dollop of ukelele picking.

This particular cut starts slow, but sweeps into a full orchestral chorus - and I think I also like the fact that it mentions a marching band, joining the lofty pantheon of other songs that are awesome that mention marching bands (American Pie, that Death Cab one).

They're coming through Vancouver in early March playing a 50 person venue, and I'm looking forward to being woefully awkward trying to talk to them.

9. Weekend - Smith Westerns
Despite being roughly 11, the Smith Westerns have spent more time digging through crates of old T-Rex records than I have (not an elementary achievement), but they have mined 70s glam-rock for its best riffs, basslines and swagger. "Weekend is essentially just a single guitar riff, but its so good it doesn't even matter"

8. I Might - Wilco
To an aging hipster such as myself, there's nothing more stereotypically appropriate than dropping a Wilco song into each year's year-end list. Sure, they're my dad's age, and their new record sounds like their last one, and the one before that, but they just keep writing fantastic songs, and putting on fantastic live shows full of musical mastery.

"I Might" was on repeat for weeks on end and is a perfect slice of Dad-rock.

7. How the West Was One - Kyprios

9 year-old me would think it was pretty awesome that 31 year-old me featured a rap about sports in his year-end list, but everyone else in the universe just thinks its lame. But for three months this year, pretty much all I did was watch the Vancouver Canucks play in the Stanley Cup playoffs. At a time where there wasn't too much other good news floating around, the playoffs were a wild ride, featuring a lot of mid-week drinking, a lot of nervously chewed fingernails, and ultimately, no parade at the end of it (we did muster a pretty sweet riot at the end of it). It was an amazing time to be in and around the city, and this tune from Vancouver's favourite hipster rapper (who has one hell of a live show) does a nice job of capturing the moment.

6. Kaputt - Destroyer
Mostly because the cover photo is taken at the place I play pitch and putt golf 10 blocks from my house. But also largely because it features the sleaziest synths since the pinnacle of 80s porn, as well as an 80s porn themed video.

This is hands-down the most accessible Destroyer record, but still has more than it's share of weirdness.

5. Every Defeat A Divorce - Los Campesinos
For the 5th year in succession, Los Camps! make this list - they're still my favourite band, and North America's favourite soundtrack for Budweiser commercials, and I flew across a continent to spend 24 hours in DC and see them play (and to earn enough airmiles to get access to the Air Canada lounge for a year - but that's a story for another time). This particular song seems to be about watching England get knocked out of the World Cup, which doesn't make it as cheery as something like "World in Motion", but it also doesn't feature John Barnes rapping, which makes it a win in my book. Like the rest of their last record, it's dark, churning, original, and compelling, and I'm still a mega-LosCamps! nerd. Go see them live this February, North America.

4. Need You Now - Cut Copy

I remember seeing Cut Copy when I was a precocious little shit of a 27 year-old and claiming they were just a shit Australian New Order (it might even be somewhere in the blog archives if you're feeling adventurous), but then I spent more and more time with In Ghost Colours, and was forced to quickly revise my hastily informed opinion.

I dunno if Zonoscope is as good as that first record, but it still has its fair share of hits, and Cut Copy and I spent a lovely autumn evening on an island in the middle of San Francisco Bay.

3. An Argument With Myself - Jens Lekman

This pretty much only makes the list because halfway through the song Jens Lekman actually has an argument with himself, which might be the most endearingly retarded thing I've ever heard in a pop-song.

2. Heart In Your Heartbreak - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The chorus "she was the heart in your heartache, she was the miss in your mistake" and I really like it when bands drop out the bass and drums for a verse. See, that's all you need to do to make this list - bands of the world, pay attention.

1. Revelations - Devon Williams
I picked up this Devon Williams record after I read the most ridiculously emphatic staff recommendation blurb in Zulu records (as seen in the woefully underrated Jason Lee/Julia Stiles romantic comedy "A Guy Thing"). I think I bought it just so I could be smugly superior next time I went back in there, but I got it home, hit play, and was presented with this as a first track. Like a one-man Polyphonic Spree, the "bom-bom-bom" refrain, the strings, and the pure explosions of joy through this song send it straight to the top of this list.

my year in lists - 2010

2010-12-19T18:24:00.001-08:00

If I had a dollar for every blog that started with a sentiment something along the lines of "Long Time, No Blog", I'd have $7.63 million (thanks, google), so I'm going to ignore the fact that I haven't posted on this blog in nearly 2 years, and just jump straight into the annual festival of self-indulgence that is the year end list.

One rule - each band is only allowed one entry overall, just to keep this list from becoming a Hold Steady and Arcade Fire love-fest.

Favourite Songs...

5. Younger Us - Japandroids

I can count the number of times I moshed at a show this year on two fingers, and during this song was one of them (for those keeping score, the other time was about four songs later, during Young Hearts Spark Fire). But this three minute nugget of distortion revels in nostalgia for the recent past, in which two 27 year old kids wistfully rock on their porch swing and remember their golden youth, the high point of which seems to be "that time you were already in bed and said "fuck it" and got up to drink with me instead". If I wrote the song, I'm sure I'd remember something a little more lofty, like "do you remember that time we were on the snuggie pub crawl of silicon valley and we got kicked off the caltrain for being a suicide risk". But I guess it doesn't roll of the tongue the same way.

4. Write About Love - Belle and Sebastian

I'm a sucker for Belle and Sebastian. I believe my entire year-end list of 2004 was merely an essay about how Belle and Sebastian were awesome because liking them made girls like me. I'm apparently much older, and wiser, now, but album and poster imagery featuring beautiful, pale-faced scottish girls gazing wistfully into the middle distance, and a song featuring a couple of lines extolling the virtues of being intellectual, some boy-girl call and response, and a Stevie Jackson surf guitar solo. and they're romping right back into 2010's year end list. (In other news, I saw them live for the first time in San Francisco, and they were charmingly awesome, and got cute girls (and Surfer Blood) up on stage to dance with them.)

3. Lingering Still - She and Him

Sure, the second She and Him record sounds a lot like the first She and Him record, but they're still fantastic, and M. Ward still has the shiniest guitar known to man. You can see that thing from space. This sugary pop-nugget wedges its way into my subconscious for months at a time, becoming the soundtrack to bus rides, showers, and marathon Angry-Birds playing sessions.

2. We Used To Wait - The Arcade Fire

Apparently its the year 2010 right now, so it is somewhat appropriate that at least one song on this list is based on a web experience - namely this amazing film here: (best viewed in Chrome) wherein a young man in a hoodie runs through deepest, darkest, Bucklands Beach, New Zealand, before arriving at my parent's house, only to be presented with a postcard from his older self, telling him that in the Sixth Sense, Bruce Willis is actually a ghost.

But in all seriousness, it was a good year for me and the Arcade Fire - "Suburbs" is a fantastic record, their Vancouver show this year was so epic I had a 50-year old asian man crowdsurf over me, and every time I hear Rebellion (Lies), I think its the olympics again, and I start to cry.

1. Tightrope - Janelle Monae

Again, another web-sourced piece of genius, but I'm glad I found it. Janelle Monae's performance on Letterman should a blueprint for how to perform on television. I see this song has made its way to a car commercial already, but if there's any justice, it should be propping up dancefloors the world over for the next 40 years. Doo Wop Motown Pop recast with an art-school aesthetic, and catchy as all hell. Plus, its from a record that seems to be about Robots.

Favourite Albums...

5. This is Happening - LCD Soundsystem

I think I've bought every LCD Soundsystem record to this point, and I can't honestly say I've ever sat down and listened all the way through any of them. For every fantastic slice of brilliance (daft punk is playing at my house, all my friends) they always seemed to be a couple of tracks that seem to be there solely to act as source material for amateur DJs to mash up. Hands up if you've ever made it all the way through the full 9 minute version of "Yeah" - nobody? I thought as much.

This is Happening seems like more of a pop record than a dance music record, and is filled with bullets, from the opening quiet, quiet, quiet, car-speaker blowing loud of "Dance Yourself Clean", through the best 4-song run of the year - "I can change", "All I Want", "You Wanted a Hit" and "Pow Pow".

If it really is the last LCD record, its a fitting bookend to their particular narrative arc. But if the amount of fun they were having the two times I saw them live this year is any indication, there's a good chance it won't be.

4. Astro Coast - Surfer Blood

These kids look like they're 12, but I suspect they're closer to 21 (and the singer looks like a tubby Kevin Arnold from the Wonder Years), but at either age they're still far too young to be this talented. The record is full of big, nuggety riffs drenched in distortion, and hooks thatsounds instantly familiar, and cause me to ask "what is this" every time I get in the car and it's playing.

3. Romance is Boring - Los Campesinos!

Disclaimer: I'm a Los Campesinos! nerd. I may have just signed up for their new zine subscription service, I may have driven to Seattle to see them play this year, and I may also be currently drinking tea out of a Los Campesinos! coffee mug. However, I still listened to this record more than any other this year, and there are redeeming features that should be appreciated by even non-fanboys.

Herewith:

a) Romance is Boring, the band's second proper "record", and third full-length, shows them shelving the all-out wall of sound that characterized the first two, and making use of space and lush instrumentation, best captured in "The Sea is a Good Place to Think of Future", linked below.

b) One song details a plan to move to Malta, get citizenship, and then get picked for the national football team, therefore being able to play England, France, Spain etc in World Cup qualifiers. This is notable, because I had the same plan, and would often discuss it with my co-conspirators, Messrs Dave Pearce and Christopher Burton. This is the part where you appreciate the irony of 3 people, who weren't even on the best team at their suburban football club, in a nation of 4 million people who aren't really very good at football, thinking that they could up sticks and head to Europe and waltz onto a national team.

c) Another song features the line "I think we need more post-coital and less post-rock", a sentiment we should all take to heart.

d) When you see them live, it is perfectly acceptable to shout "Can't we all please just calm the fuck down" over and over again.

2. Chant Master - Lawrence Arabia

The trainspotters reading this will note, quite accurately, that this record came out in 2009. However, I'm using the fact that this soundtracked my 2010, as well as the fact that it didn't get a North American release until this year, and the fact that I make the goddamn rules around here, ok, to sneak it under the bar into this years list.

It's somewhat gratifying to see someone who you've seen play in such luminary venues as the masonic, Edens (which still has the distinction of being the best club I've ever been to that was under a strip club) and that crappy flat party in Kingsland, show up in your transplanted home town playing a grand old theater, opening up for Crowded House. And then join you for a beer at the library square afterwards, where we tried to explain L&P to canadians.

The record is a magnificently listenable, totally unclassifiable, and stunningly unique. And James maintains one of the greatest twitter accounts ever, especially if you like cricket, or current events.

1. The New Pornographers - Together

The best New Pornographers record yet, it has all the elements of power-pop magic, but it sounds like an album of a proper band, instead of a disparate set of songs from a group of separate songwriters. Silver Jenny Dollar, Your Hands (Together) and If You Can't See My Mirrors are fantastic highlights, and showcase the individual talents of the group at large.Their show at the gorge during Sasquatch is the first time I've seen them play live with both Neko Case and Dan Bejar, and everything sounded fantastic, even if I did get myself in trouble in a rather unfortunate popcorn incident.

Best Shows... (Vancouver, unless otherwise specified)

7. Zeus/Jason Collett - The Biltmore

The first time I saw Zeus, in Victoria late last year, I thought they sounded like the Beatles. The second time I saw them, they still sounded like the Beatles, but at this show at the Biltmore they had some assistance, with Jason Collett, of Broken Social Scene affiliation, and Bahamas. Zeus apparently were Jason Collett's backing band for a while, before striking out to create their own pop gems. At this show at the wonderfully cosy, low ceilinged Biltmore nominally had three bands playing, but mostly had the same 10 musicians on stage throughout all three sets. Zeus were a particular highlight - the band constantly change instruments and lead vocals, and even threw in a Genesis cover for good measure.

6. Wilco - The Olympics

I could write any number of posts about the awesomeness that was the olympics. Put aside the corporate sponsorship and non-stop TV coverage that you get from afar, when you're in the host city, your olympic experience becomes a 2 week party, where every non-working hour was spent strolling the streets, pavilions, and licensed establishments of the city, trying to absorb a constant onrush of cultural experience, from watching curling at the Saskatchewan House, to a 2am Cadence Weapon show (at which the curling team was present, I believe) at Alberta House, to high-fiving cops while drinking beer on a streetcorner after the hockey final, it was amazing madness

One particular highlight on day one of the olympics was the city-run livesite, which featured international-caliber bands playing live for free less than a kilometer from my house, and the opening act on the first day was none other than Wilco. It was rainy, and nobody really knew how busy the shows were going to be, so we showed up at 2pm for a 7pm show, and got good and wet through, but within 30 seconds of Wilco stepping on stage, it was instantly worth it. The joy of the Wilco live experience has been extensively catalogued elsewhere in these pages, but their sound is always brilliant, they are incredibly talented musicians, Nels Cline plays guitar like a retard getting electrocuted, and Jeff Tweedy seemed comfortable in the spotlight, cracking jokes, making fun of Canadians, and totally revelling in the fact that playing a show at the olympics is kinda weird.
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5. Matt and Kim - The Rickshaw

If you've not had the pleasure of experiencing Matt and Kim live, and they come to your town, and you don't go, you lose.

The played a mid-october show at the Rickshaw, an old movie theater in the downtown eastside with the first half of the seats ripped out, and while the sound isn't too fancy, the beer is cheap and accessible, and it feels like a good earthy place to

Matt and Kim are a boy-girl, drums-keys combo, with unbelievable energy, and within 5 minutes of them coming out on stage the air was filled with balloons, and the kids were going nuts.

The played their feelgood hits, Yea Yeah and Daylight, and I think I sweated out most of my bodily fluid. But that didn't stop Matt coming out after the show to give out hugs to anyone who wanted one. We got ours, and he was still giving them out half an hour later. It took two days to wipe the smile off my face.

4. Phoenix - The Orpheum

This show should have been an early indication of how awesome the Olympics were going to be - it was about a month before they kicked off, and this show was part of the "cultural olympiad", whatever that is. Regardless, it brought Phoenix to a grand old theater downtown, which normally hosts opera, orchestra, and the occasional adult contemporary reunion tour. The show was kicked off by local dance-poppers You Say Party!, who were great despite nobody being there (the joy of a 6pm show).

Phoenix came on stage, looking as stylish and french as possible, and played a solid set that spanned all three of their records, dipped into Air's Playground Love, and all was well, apart from the fact that most of the crowd was still sitting down.

Then they come out for their encore, and one kid jumped up on stage and danced around. He was expecting security to come out and turn him away, but nobody did. It appears they forgot to hire security for the show. Within seconds there were thousands of people on stage -I know for a fact that I stood on some of the guitarists gear, yet after initially looking terrified, the band played on, even playing 1901 while being completely surrounded by crowd. Excuse the sound in the video below, but otherwise its tres awesome.

3. Die Antwoord - Treasure Island Music Festival, San Francisco

I'm not much into Zef-Rap, but Die Antwoords live show is quite something else. It all starts off with them wearing boilersuits detailed with cartoon characters (one of which seems to be a caricature of the male singer holding his dick - which also seems to be tattooed on his arm)

There was much fist pumping, hip thrusting in inappropriate trousers, and ass flashing, but it was a train wreck I couldn't look away from. Couple that with the fact that I could look to the left and see alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, and San Francisco downtown, and it was a pretty satisfying afternoon.

2. The Hold Steady - The Showbox, Seattle

If you know anyone that doesn't believe in the beauty of rock and roll in its purest form, you need to take them to a Hold Steady show to convert them. These are 5 guys who love the simple action of standing in front of a crowd of people, and playing songs to them, and it shows in the grin on the face of the lead singer.

This show was one of those happy accidents - I was away on a work trip, and my plans changed last minute, leaving me in Seattle with nothing to do. A quick scan of the local street paper revealed a Hold Steady show, so within 4 hours of finishing work I had a ticket, and a couple of beers under my belt.

And I'm so glad I did - a Hold Steady show is a wonderfully awesome place to be - Craig Finn says things that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, like "Tonight we're going to have a lot of fun", and through his literate stories of teenage characters ("you're a beautiful girl, and a pretty good waitress" from Hurricane J), and his knack for getting people to chant unlikely things (the word "sequestered" doesn't feature often in rock choruses, but it does here).

Somewhere towards the end he said something along the lines of "all any of us ever need is this room, you people, and a whole lot of good times" and it made a lot of sense. Until I went outside and realized I'd forgotten where I was staying.

1. Pavement - Central Park, New York

I'm a nerd. And I'm proud of that fact. And myself, and a fair number of my peers made their way to Central Park in New York for the centerpiece of Pavement's reunion tour on a sunny September afternoon.

In order to get tickets for these shows, you had to purchase them nearly a year in advance, with only a day's notice between them being announced, and them being sold out. It takes a certain kind of person who is willing to take that sort of leap of faith, and it was evident when looking around the crowd.

I've been a Pavement fan as long as I can remember (i think I stole Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain off my then 12 year old sister), yet I'd never seen them live. I changed that three times this year, but the New York show was the best. The crowd was the nerdiest group of music snobs I've ever seen, but they saw no shame in belting out every lyric to every song Pavement played, whether it be MTV video hit, or unreleased b-side, and it was utterly fantastic.

The other two times I saw them, there was obvious tension on stage, but in New York, I think they could see the end of the road, and were just happy to bathe in the admiration.

For extra points, see if you can figure out how the song linked below is the inspiration for my blog/twitter name.

My Year In Lists

2009-01-19T21:12:00.000-08:00

So its 19 day's late, and much more than a dollar short, but I wouldn't be an annoying idiot with a penchant for overwrought analysis of popular culture if I didn't put out a year-end list.

and songsmith can only entertain me for so long

So here it is - My Year In Lists

Song of the Year

1. My Year In Lists - Los Campesinos. You see what I did there? Just sit back and appreciate the irony of naming a song about not wanting to compile a new year list at the top of a new year list.

But happy coincidence aside, in 1 minute and 42 seconds, 7 precociously talented whippersnappers from Cardiff cram in enough great lyrics for Belle and Sebastian to build a career from, more glockenspeil taps than a Brunettes record, and the best boy/girl harmony since Ike and Tina or Lee and Nancy.

"I declined because I decided I do not believe in the new year any more"

Indeed.

2. Keep Me in Mind, Sweetheart - Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell

Mark Lanegan's gravelly baritone is a bit much on its lonesome, but on this highlight from his second collabaration with ex-Belle and Sebastian Yoko Isobel Campbell, it balances perfectly. There's a simplicity to it that brings to mind classic Johnny and June Cash, and proves that sometimes all you need is a melody, an acoustic guitar, and a couple of different voices.

Honorable mention to some of the stuff that Mark did with Greg Dulli, formerly of the Afghan Whigs as the Gutter Twins - which is also worth a look.

3. The Hold Steady - Sequestered in Memphis

The genius of Craig Finn and the Hold Steady is that he can write barnstorming festival- and dive bar-rocking anthems, without failing to be literate, obscure, and unfailingly witty. The sight of a sun-drenched field of college-aged hipsters chanting "Subpoenaed in Texas - Sequestered in Memphis" was one of the most gratifying things I saw this year.

4. Look at Me While I Rock Wichoo - Black Kids

At their live show in Vancouver, Reggie Youngblood prefaced this number with the statement - "This is gonna be one of your mad jamz, yo", and he was pretty goddamn close to the truth. It stomps, stamps and doowops, totally unhindered by the silliest couplet of the year, and really hits its straps when it breaks down and the twin female vocalists take center stage and play the song out. I'm not sure if it's just because of the memory of watching them grin, sparkle and shimmy their way through a live show, but it always makes me feel good.

5. I Know Your Girlfriend Hates Me - Annie.

Some may call it tokenism, and to a degree it is, but you can't fail but appreciate genius pop music. And in a year when Justin et al did nothing of note, the best pop song of the year came out of Norway.

It's marginally less sugary than 2004 year-end favourite "Chewing Gum", but it still is classic Richard X production pop, that reminds of those heady days in the early 2000 when that ruled the airwaves. Rachel Stevens, anyone?

She's the norwegian Kylie, don't you know? and the wikipedia entry for this song says it is inspired by Prince's Kiss, which should be the inspiration for much more stuff.

6. Knots - Pete and the Pirates.

The bastard child of a C-86 Sarah Records twee pop band and the Clash, Pete and the Pirates are one-part charming, and two-parts energetic. Everything about this song is dead simple, but it rollicks through and is good enough to force me to stick an extra song onto my top 5.

Albums of the Year

1. Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, Silver Jews

2. The Luxury of Hysteria, Tim Rogers

3. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend

4. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes

5. We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed, Los Campesinos

Shows of the Year

1. Cadence Weapon, Vancouver

2. Jarvis Cocker, Pitchfork Festival, Chicago

3. Jonathan Richman, Vancouver

4. The Blakes, San Francisco

5. The Decemberists and Barack Obama, Portland

Five pieces of random culture that have re-entered my sphere of influence this year

1. The Thrills' So Much For The City

2. Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde

3. The Wombats' Let's Dance to Joy Division

4. Pavement's Brighten the Corners

5. Superchunk

Five other things that are rattling my dags

1. Songsmith

2. Physics raps

3. XKCD

4. The New York Times Crossword on Sundays

5. Entourage

more detail to follow...because I won't rest until this is at least 10,000 words

Los Campesinos, You Say Party! We Say Die!, The Parenthetical Girls, The Plaza, Vancouver, June 1, 2008

2008-06-03T20:34:00.001-07:00

Things are getting kinda ridiculous - it's been exactly a month since I updated this blog, and I've got a backlog of 11 shows to write about, all of which I have incredibly charming and wonderful things to write about (or not - does anyone really wanna read a clumsily assembled argument about why baseball is better than basketball, and therefore, rocknroll is better than dance music?).

But because I've run out of excuses, and because I've already seen the episode of Beauty and the Geek that I'm currently sitting in front of (and that is a show I could totally excel on), I should probably get the feet wet again. And you'll be pleased to know that democracy is, in fact dead, because despite asking for submissions on which show review to write first, I've gone with something completely different entirely.

Sunday night began with an excursion to see my favourite band of the past 9 months, Los Campesinos!. I've had a little bit of a Los Camps! problem since someone pointed my to their Myspace page in January 2007, and while I can see how you could find the male singer's voice annoying, and the glockenspiel-fueled wall of noise is a matter of personal taste, their boy/girl charm, lyrical wit, punctuational appropriateness and Pavement-referencing awesomeness had me hooked from the first, well, hook.

The attraction soon turned into an obsession, which this year saw me purchase two copies of their debut LP, Hold On Now, Youngster, one downloaded from iTunes, and another physical copy, just because I wanted the artwork (downloaded music is so aesthetically unsatisfying, even with the fancy graphics on my iPod). The record has been keeping me in oh-so-witty facebook statuses for the last 3 months (example - "G-there were conversations about which Breakfast Club you'd be - I'd be the one that dies A- no one dies G- well then what's the point?.”) and accompanying me on late night walks home, much to the chagrin of the unfortunate folk who live close enough to the granville street bridge to hear me singing as I walk across it at 4 in the morning.

So, like a 14-year old girl going to a Fall Out Boy show, I was lined up outside the Plaza just a tick after 7pm, with the other 14-year old girls, who probably also like Fall Out Boy (on that point I'm guessing, but the two bands aren't that far apart). Being an all ages show, I'd come prepared, by getting drunk much much earlier in the afternoon, which was a worthwhile endeavour, as there was nary a drink to be had in the Plaza (surely they could open the upstairs bar and just keep the kids out - not that I want to seem like a crotchety old drunk).

Supporting this evening, and on the rest of the tour (and who I suspect were unceremoniously bumped to a ridiculous 7.30pm time slot by the other support band) were The Parenthetical Girls, out of Portland, Or. Featuring a lead singer that resembled the guy from Criminal Minds that dresses nerdy on the show, but that you know is probably a male model in real life (IMDB check - turns out I was right), a moustachioed gentleman in a vaudevillian striped jacket, and a pretty wee thing playing keyboard, they kicked off with the singer wending his way through the crowd to sing the opening number. Like a less dancy Of Montreal (the comparison could possibly attributed to the singer's effeminate stage presence), they shimmied through a series of tunes, that I wish I'd been paying more attention to (there seemed to be an outstanding amount of instrument swapping), and had the audacity to claim that this was "the most punctuationally outstanding bill they'd been on", but I was slightly distracted by the fact that Gareth Campesinos was standing in front of me.

Like the aforementioned 14 year old girl, I was desperately wracking my brain for something, witty, charming, and knowledgeable to drop in to casual conversation, eliciting an invitation to come backstage and drink their contraband alcohol (part of me wanted to meet the band, but most of me was just getting really thirsty by this point). So, after 3 songs of such deliberation, the Parenthetical Girls finished, and it was my time. So I stepped up, and delivered my line:

"So, what time do you guys go on?"
"About 9.30"
"Thanks".

After which he gave me a look that said "I pity you for being a clumsy fan-boy, but I also understand, because I've done that too".

After that, it was time to drink, so we nipped across the road for a quick pint, stopping first to purchase a t-shirt from the drummer, and then do a complete about face as I walked outside and the bassist was standing out there alone smoking. Did I stop, and invite her across the road for a drink, or say something witty? Nope. Instead I decided to stare at her for a couple of seconds, before turning around again to continue crossing the road.

After the interlude, we returned to the second headliner, You Say Party! We Say Die!, who are a Vancouver live staple, that I'm yet to have the pleasure of experiencing.

They began with a quick warm up stretch, and a quick bout of call and response (you say! we say!) and launched into a multi-instrument, high energy spree of pop songs. The dude with the emo haircut danced angularly, and I found myself shaking along, but I again found myself distracted. For the rest of Los Campesinos! had decided that next to me would be a great place to stand and watch the band. LC! and YSP!WSD! toured Europe together last year, and the two bands obviously hit it off, as the kids from Los Campesinos! had set up shop not far from the front of stage. Also, they had alcohol, although they weren't sharing. I stood on Aleksandra Campesinos' toe at one point, during a bout of overenthusiastic shimmying, and she apologized to me, which I thought was a nice touch.

Los Camps! were invited up on stage to play and sing along during one of YSP!'s final numbers, and between the two bands, there were about 12 people on stage, clapping hands and singing songs, and it looked and sounded pretty good. Next time I see You Say Party! We Say Die!, I'm going to have to make a point of paying more attention.

Los Campesinos! proper hit the stage next, and by this point I'd worked myself into a fairly feverish fit of anticipation. The drummer, who looks like a 16 year old child, stripped off his shirt within 15 seconds of being on stage, to reveal a 16 year old's body (not that I'm in any position to be casting aspersions on others' pectoral physique), and the other 6 members assumed their positions.They kicked off with the shouted 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 intro to "Broken Heartbeats Sound Like Breakbeats", and a sizeable portion (which in vancouver, translates to roughly 30%) of the crowd start jiggling and pogoing in time. The primary strengths of the LC! sound are all quite nicely encapsulated in this one tune - from the off-key shout-singing of Gareth's verses, the sugary cooing of Aleksandra's choruses, and the wall of guitar/glockenspiel/violin sound in betwee, coupled with some wtf lyrics that sound much too intelligent for a 3 minute dance pop song ("Singing I see songs in shapes and colours/Like nuclear physics or pottery ovens").

After a few songs it became apparent that things weren't going too well on the sound front - half the stage couldn't hear anything through their monitors, which means they were pretty much playing blind, and there were a couple of mis-steps that were probably due to this. The singer quipped "when you go home and blog about this, make sure you mention that we couldn't hear ourselves". Consider it done.
Otherwise, pretty much every song on "Hold On Now, Youngster", got a showing, along with the International Tweexcore Underground. Their outstanding rendition of Pavement's Frontwards was prefaced with "hi we're Los Campesinos!, and this next song isn't one of ours, which is probably a good thing - it's by a band called Pavement". I wanted to grab the 14 year old kids by their collars and shout "Pavement are the best band in the universe, look them up, appreciate them, and then appreciate the fact that LC! took a middling EP b-side and turned it into an anthemic call to arms. So much style that it's wasted, indeed.

The main set finished up with a stirring rendition of "You Throw Parties! We Throw Knives!", featuring another on stage appearance from You Say Party! We Say Die!, before disappearing backstage. They got called back for an encore, and I thought they were going to rise to the occasion and forgo the obligatory, but they popped back for the bonus track off the record, "2007, the year punk rock broke my heart", which ends in a satisfying fortress of noise, which was an appopriate way to go out.
And then I was turfed onto the street, to find it was only 10pm, and I could still get home and to bed at a reasonable hour. Maybe all ages shows aren't that bad, after all.

I'm heading to Music Waste tomorrow, and I'm excited. I actually ended up at the opening night at Fake Jazz at the Cobalt, "Vancouver's Hardcore Bar". It was the weekly Fake Jazz, which is an experimental music showcase, and while Ejaculation Death Rattle is an outstanding name, detuned saxophones, violins, and miscellaneous knob twiddling from a dude in a cop moustache is not my cup of tea, at least not on a wednesday. At least there was a full house, and I knocked out a high score on the PacMan machine (crushing the hopes and dreams of the young man who highscored before me, who was pretty happy with his performance).

something much more exciting than the democratic nomation race

2008-05-27T21:52:00.000-07:00

So, life gets in the way of blog sometimes, and there's a live show backlog that would put Chinese Democracy to shame. In order to organize the trickle of these items into a meaningful order, I'm leaving it up to you, my faithful readers (yes, both of you) to request what you want first. Here's your options:

Daniel Johnston
Stephen Malkmus
The Kills
The Cure
The Decemberists (w/ Barack Obama)
Simian Mobile Disco
Queens of the Stone Age
Mars Volta
The Dirtbombs
The Von Bondies
Los Campesinos
Islands

Votes on the back of the postcard to the usual address (or for those of you who are into this new-fangled world-wide-internetweb, you can use the comments thread).

adieu

Mobius Band, Black Kids, Cut Copy, Richards on Richards, Vancouver, April 29, 2008

2008-05-03T16:21:00.001-07:00

Things have been kinda crazy of late, and there's a blog backlog of unprecedented proportions. I've been to a bunch of shows of late that I'm yet to write about, but sometimes necessity prevents doing things in chronological order. So with deep apologies to Daniel Johnston, Simian Mobile Disco, Stephen Malkmus and the Queens of the Stone Age, I hereby present a stirring account of my night out at the Black Kids et al.

To say I was excited about the show this evening would be an understatement. I still remember the first time I played a Black Kids song (which is not that much of a nostalgic stretch, given that it was less than 9 months ago), but I remember finding it somewhere on the internet while mid-conversation with a young lady. The title caught my attention to begin, but within a dozen bars the conversation had ceased due to my distraction and the sheer catchiness pumping out of the stereo. I don't believe the young lady in question was happy, but I didn't even notice.

Within a week or so I'd downloaded their Internet-only Wizard of Aaahs EP, and those 4 songs soon came to soundtrack my weekend. Hurricane Jane became my Friday afternoon, driving home from work, blow out, Not Gonna Teach was my pre-night-out anthem, and Underestimated my Charm was a Sunday morning hangover cure of the finest calibre.

News that they were to be playing as part of the post-Coachella caravan of quality music up the west coast was greated with great anticipation, so I was pretty excited to be rolling in to Richards at a gig-appropriate time on a Tuesday night.

First up were Brooklyn's the Mobius Band. Apart from the outstanding name, they're notable for a drummer with outstanding painfully contorted facial expressions (and it has already been noted in these very pages that this is an essential element of any successful live show), some interesting drum effects boxes, dual singers, one of which looked a little like a guy i used to know, and some laid back country/electronic Lucksmiths-esque pop songs of a relatively high standard. It didn't send me rushing for the merch table, but it could be worth investigating further. But to be honest, my affections were promised to another.

The Black Kids were up next, and they strolled out to a packed house and some cheers. The lead singer, Reggie, sports an impressive mop of curly hair, which probably doesn't suit his face shape, but looks goddamn impressive when shaken in time to a pop song. The two girls manning the keys/organ/electronic shimmy and shake while hunched over their instruments, while cooing Supremes-esque backing vocals into the mix, and the drummer and bassist are ice-cold, barely breaking a sweat as they hold down the bottom end.

It's always a risk going to see a band play when their recorded output amounts to 6 songs (of which one is a Sophie B. Hawkins cover), but the Black Kids weren't wanting for material. All 5 non-Sophie B tracks (alas, Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover didn't make an appearance this evening) were featured, and elicited head nods, mis-steps, and over-enthusiastic air-punching in the "DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE" crescendo of "Not gonna teach" (or maybe that was just me).

Reggie has a cultured arrogance about him on stage, which is something I admire in all my pop-rock heroes, but the stars of the show are the two girls on the keys, who bop, hunched over their instruments, all the while grinning from ear to ear, as if they've just realized that they get to spend the rest of their summer, and possibly much further, playing upbeat pop songs to packed houses the continent (and world) over.

There were a bunch of new songs, that I've seen bootlegged on blogs across the 'web, but the most memorable was one called "I Wanna Be Your Limousine", which was introduced with the lead in "this is gonna be one of your monster jamz, yo", and shimmies all over with Prince-baiting glory.

So, the sound was rubbish, but I was still pretty stoked with my Black Kids experience. And I left with a most fetching "I'm not gonna teach your boyfriend how to dance with you t-shirt".

After that, I was in excitement hangover, so I moved to the back of the room for Cut Copy. It pains the music perfectionist in me that I spent many years of my life being subjected to Australian music by default (and to be honest, enjoying most of it a great deal), but I'd never really heard of Cut Copy. I'm familiar with the school of Australian indie dance music, and I must admit I was expecting something a little different than what I got.

Which was New Order. I don't know if it's because most of the bands I see live have north american accents, and I've forgotten what a good antipodean singing voice sounds like, but all the rattling hi-hats, the nasal vocals, and the crazy kids jumping and bopping around made me feel like I was in Manchester in the mid-80s. Or at a rugby league stadium in the early 2000s, which was the last time I saw New Order.

I don't mean the comparison as a bad thing, and while certain elements may sound a little like them, their songs are completely different. Apparently Duran Duran were also playing that evening, and the band thanked us for choosing them over Simon leBon et al (although I'm told Duran Duran did a pretty impressive Kraftwerk tribute/takeoff).

Unfortunately, I'm a little short on Cut Copy details, but I do know that they finished the set off with kids dancing on the pillars at the front of the stage, and with my favourite rock and roll set closing move, which was the singer and keyboard player grabbing a spare drumstick and pounding away on the cymbals while the drummer kept time. I think the best example I've scene of this was at the Franz Ferdinand secret show in 2005, but this one comes a close second.

Righto, Daniel Johnston, Simian Mobile Disco, Queens of the Stone Age, Stephen Malkmus and hopefully Dirtbombs reviews to follow. Watch this space.

King Cannons, the Rebelles, Atsushi and the Moisties: The Thirsty Dog, Auckland: April 12, 2008

2008-04-28T02:13:00.000-07:00

Shamefully, this was my first time at the Thirsty Dog. It won't be my last: anywhere with live music yet carpets this plush deserves a second visit. Squares that we are, we were a little early - I'm getting awfully confused in my old age about whether a rock gig that says it starts at 9:00 starts at 9:00 or at 11:45, and I've been burned a few times recently. Anyhow, there were cosy benches, a stereo with various Clash and Mescaleroes records on shuffle and a handy system where my coloured bits of paper can be exchanged for their bottles of cold beer, so passing the time was easy.

Atsushi and the Moisties have a memorably awful name and a handy brass section who like to dance when not musically employed. Atsushi himself wears a cow costume and plays a mean guitar; it was unclear whether the gentleman in the front row in a similar outfit was a Moisties associate or just a particularly dedicated fan. I've never quite decided how I feel about ska: I'm pretty confident there's only been one ska song ever written, and every ska band plays it eleven times each night (I'd wager the name Rudy in the title somewhere), but it's a pretty decent tune to hear a few times on a saturday night after a few beverages. Given the dancing horn section and the multiple bovines, vocals would have been one gimmick too many, but if you're after an instrumental ska band to open your night, you won't go too wrong with the Moisties.

I'd seen the Rebelles once before, as the post-game entertainment at a roller derby, which was about as perfect a venue for their three girl, one boy ramalama as you could get. Here, they blitzed through about 15 songs in around 20 minutes and still found time to incite a human pyramid in the front rows. Their singer's Kat Bjelland / Poly Styrene-styled voice is a powerful thing, and carrying on singing without missing a beat even when being tackled to the ground by your fans is pretty impressive. I'm not sure how the Rebelles would fare as headliners, given the brevity of the tunes and the intensity with which they are played, but if a short, sharp statement is what you want, they do a fine job.

The King Cannons sound is reggae bottom end with a punk sensibility, buttoned-up Ben Sherman style. The band is new to me, but they've been round long enough to have a record for sale behind the bar, and long enough to know just how to work a friendly crowd such as this. I'm trying awfully hard not to use the word skanking, but even someone as allergic to reggae as me was getting into the rhythm, and the Cannons' stage presence is undeniable. Faithfully covering "White Man in Hammersmith Palais" is a pretty decent way to get the non-believers on board too...

Taking advantage of free tickets (thanks, job) to the unfortunately deserted *mantis show at Rising Sun was a nice way to finish off the evening: following up a punk reggae act with a hip hop gig was almost too unusual for my poor little brain, but some comfortably familiar squid rings at the Burgerie, just like after every rock show ever, sorted me out just fine. Take note, indie kids - if you're worried you're expanding your musical horizons a little too much, greasy takeaways do a pretty good take-two-aspirins-and-call-me-in-the-morning job

Joe's Garage, The Roxy, April 12, 2008

2008-04-21T21:42:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer - the post that follows has nothing to do with music or anything interesting. It's also woefully out of date, but I didn't want to push the excellent Wilco review below the fold.
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In these uncertain times, it can be difficult to know which way is up, and which way is down (especially when you move to the other side of the world and find that the water in the toilet doesn't actually flush in the opposite direction - if I had a dollar for everyone I've tried to explain the coriolis effect to, and who hasn't been convinced until I took them to the bathroom and proved that I could make the water go down in different directions based on whether I used the hot or cold tap to fill the basin.)

So, in order to make sense of life, and to give myself a basis to construct my ideological framework around, there are 3 facts that I know irrefutably to be true, that I can fall back on in times of self-doubt and crisis. They are:

1. Pearl Jam suck more cock than you do.
2. Bacon improves any food it is combined with.
3. If you play Prince in any social situation that includes a dancefloor, that dancefloor will fill with people.

Or so I thought.

But Saturday night, at the Roxy, I saw the opposite of #3 occur, where Let's Go Crazy sent them running for the bar, the toilets, the smoking area, and the exits. As my entire DJ career was based around the fact that even after I'd bore people into submission with obscure Norwegian pop-tarts, I could still fill the floor with the Purple one, and it pained me to see the exodus.

It was at this point that I stopped, and thought, how did I get here?

Well, I have a little bit of a drinking problem. Mainly the problem is that I quite enjoy it, and I'm remarkably good at it. But sometimes it leads me to say and do things that I end up cringing about the next day. For example, I vaguely remember telling a random stranger on Friday night that, when you strip it down to its base elements, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is essentially no different than "The Macarena" (and no, I'm not going to link to it - nobody needs to endure that). No matter that it was part of an elaborately constructed argument about how a classic pop song is nothing more than a couple of melodic hooks, it was an entirely inappropriate conversational subject for a chance meeting with a random stranger, and a remarkably stupid thing to say. And who do I have to blame? Well, mostly myself, but Mr Alcohol also needs to take some responsibility.

This same problem saw me lined up outside the Roxy on Saturday night. The Roxy represents different things to different people, but among my circle of acquaintances it is the very epitome of the trainwreck that is most of the bars in the Granville Street corridor in downtown Vancouver. There's always a line outside, that never seems to move anywhere, and the people in that lineup always look like bridge-and-tunnel kids. Having said all that, I've never actually been inside. So, when the chance came up head out for a few drinks with a friend, and he mentioned that he had some other friends heading to the Roxy, I was initially apprehensive, but eventually curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to tag along.

The Roxy was much bigger than I'd imagined, and the stage was filled with an assortment of gentlemen that looked like their best years were behind them. The lead singer looked a little like the lead singer of the woefully underrated band Auckland band of the late 90's, Pash. (who in turn looks like the guy in the Something About Mary duo that's not Jonathan Richman).

They were halfway through a Cars cover (sadly, not My Best Friend's Girl) as we walked in. While it was kinda empty as we showed up (were it not for the swift action of a friend of a friend, we would have been stuck at the back of a remarkably long line, which is just wrong for 8.40pm on a Saturday night), it soon filled with a crowd that seemed to be entirely comprised either with single women in their late twenties to early thirties without any imagination, who couldn't think of anywhere else to go on their one night out this month, and kids from the burbs who were there to prey on the others.

The band were unashamedly competent, as most covers bands are, and probably better paid than 90% of all bands I normally see (with the possible exception of Radiohead - I heard a rumour they're getting paid $600,000 to pay the Outside Lands festival in San Fran this summer), but the members looked like they were once contemporaries with the bands they were covering (and that they hadn't changed their wardrobes since the mid 80s). They also have the worst band name I've ever heard.

The keyboardist did China Girl with the third-best Bowie voice I'd ever heard live (after Mr Christopher Burton, and the man himself, in that order), but I suspect he was grotesquely ugly, as they made him stand behind a pillar. Occasionally they dipped into regions of the classic rock playbook that I'm not a huge fan of airing (for some reason, I never got the attraction of Journey), but for the most part, it was most enjoyable (although this is coming from someone whose standing orders for his tombstone are "Here Lies Glenn, he knew how to dance to classic rock" - although "Here Lies Glenn, who was tragically murdered by pirates" is running a close second).

The portions of the night where the band took a break were less enjoyable, and were the scene of the aforementioned Prince abomination. Luckily by that time my attention had been distracted by copious amounts of alcohol, and an empty ice bucket, so it didn't really matter.

PS - I've got a backup of show reviews that's nearly 3 posts long - I'll try and get one a night out through this week, now that I'm no longer working 12 hour days (and drinking for a good portion of the other 12 hours in the day). Not that anyone cares.

PPS - the overall air of smug superiority that invariably weaves its way through this post, is more a quirk of my particular writing style, and not really how I feel about people that go to the Roxy, and bars just like it (every town has one) the world over. I just can't help the way I write.

Wilco; Opera House, Wellington, NZ; Easter Monday

2008-04-16T03:58:00.000-07:00

While the metal hordes who had descended upon Wellington like a late 80s coked-up Ozzy to a line of ants (just read The Dirt whydoncha) were so very conspicuous, it would have been hard to guess that Wilco were playing if you were unlucky enough not to have a ticket. No posters up around town, not even at the venue, and the stylishly nerdy crowd of Tweedy enthusiasts beating their way to the Opera House blended in pretty nicely with Monday night Welly. Check shirts, quality pullovers, sensible footwear and trendy specs are part of the uniform in NZ's best, smartest city, and staying under the radar isn't too tough after a weekend where leather vests and studded codpieces seemed strangely appropriate.

Miriam Clancy was first up: Doc Matrens, pregnant tum and a big voice that comfortably filled the hushed, seated venue. The Opera House was an excellent choice of venue: like the Ryan Adams shows last year, the choice of an all-seater seemed to be well-received by an audience who were more than happy to sit down, shut up and listen from the moment the curtain opened. A loud, solo voice in a quiet room always makes the hairs on my neck stand up, and "Girl About Town" and "The Game" were powerfully performed: the latter's unfaithful lover / game of cards metaphors come close to being overplayed, but when cheerfully dedicated to a chap in the audience, the "You cheated on me" chorus packs some punch.

I latched on to Wilco quite late in the piece. Friends dug them, but at the time of their early 00s Big Day Out appearance, I opted to see the D4 for the umpteenth time on the other stage (and lost both shoes in the process, but that's a very different story). I finally cottoned on though, and hungrily tucked into the back catalogue. I'd never seen them live however - I even lived in their home town of Chicago for a while and still couldn't swing it: they played the day I arrived, the day after I left and a couple of times when I was out of town. So this was big news in my world: I was pretty excited about KISS, Alice and what was once Ozzy, but this was something else again...

It began with a lot of cheering, some shy waves and "Sunken Treasure". That Tweedy-centric opener was a bit of a curveball: for the first forty five minutes or so it was the Nels Cline show. He was on seated slide duties for the first song, but soon became the dominant presence on stage. Six-foot-lots in blood red jeans, looking for all the world like Britt Daniel’s crazy European uncle, he jerkily punished his guitar, throwing angular shapes over cracking versions of “You Are My Face” and “Company in My Back”. After six or seven songs we hadn’t even got a hello from the singer, but this never seemed standoffish or rude, just a man happy to forget the niceties and keep playing songs with the best set of musicians he’s ever been involved with. By reputation he can be prickly and curt on-stage, but when the greetings finally came, it was clear this was a relaxed and confident Jeff Tweedy. A few off-hand jokes about the weekend’s metal shows followed, and later he would even stop “Red Eyed and Blue” mid-song for a pretty sharp Ozzy impression.

Sometimes bands who enjoy changing direction on record struggle to put together a coherent live set, with stylistic changes from disparate albums jarring when mixed together live. I had wondered (until Kicking Television at least) whether this would be the case with Wilco, given the various tangents their albums have taken. Like the live album though, this set came together seamlessly – with the pop heart of the more experimental album tracks like “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” exposed, and the straighter tunes like “A Shot in the Arm” given a Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-style roughing up.

Prior to this show, I didn’t rate a number of the Sky Blue Sky tracks as highly as others in the back catalogue, but tunes like “Impossible Germany” and “Side With the Seeds” were made for this kind of setting, their lengthy instrumental parts showcasing the brilliant musicianship of the current line-up. Glenn Kotche’s drumming is a key part of the latter-day Wilco sound, but it looks fantastic too, all jazzy flicks and fencing with the ride. Bassist John Stirratt’s impeccable backing vocals were also prominent, but it was hard not to focus on Cline, his lanky, jerky style belying an incredible dexterity. Cline’s skills were easy to contrast with the public guitar solo-off or Zakk Wylde’s lone shredfest at Rock2Wgtn – here, the solos made absolute sense with the song, rather than being just an aimless pissing contest. The fingers may not have moved quite as supersonically over the frets as those in the Cake Tin, and he probably can’t play behind his head or with his teeth, but I know who I’d rather be on Guitar Hero, and he ain’t the guy with the black and white circles on his guitar.

It wasn’t all layers, textures and dueling guitars – the likes of “Reservations”, “How to Fight Loneliness” and a gorgeous version of Mermaid Avenue's “California Stars” helped keep the light and shade balance. Encore one brought us back to Being There, and the straight-ahead country rock of “Monday” and “I Got You” sounded almost crude in comparison to what had come before – great, potent songs, but easy to see why they are kept separate from the main set. Encore two, never in doubt for a crowd who had long since given up on the idea of a seated gig (and kudos to you, lady who started the dancing), had to be “Kidsmoke”, and we piled out into the night, deaf and grinning.

We walked home past the last few hangers on in souvenir metal tees, and I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for them: even without pyro or a dragon, they’d just missed easily the best show of the weekend. Maybe I just needed a bit more sleep, a bit less of a holiday diet and a couple of nights without a rock gig but a killer plan hit me: give Tweedy some fake blood and a flying fox to the back row and they’d be utterly unstoppable…

Black Mountain, Ladyhawk, The Commodore, Vancouver, April 5

2008-04-06T18:02:00.001-07:00

If there's one topic I'm not at all qualified to write about, it's local Vancouver bands. I've been in this town for less than 2 years, and for reasons beyond my control, I've only been gig-active for about a year. Having said that, the fact that so many touring bands come through town means I only occasionally end up seeing local bands in small venues.

In good old Auckland town, local bands are pretty much the only option you have, and luckily there's a bunch of good ones to see. In any given weekend you've got a choice of 4 or 5 excellent bands, that you listen to on the radio all week. The other perk is that there's about 100 people that go to shows and clubnights regularly, many of whom are in bands themselves, so you become intimately familiar with the love lives, habitual substance abuse, and tendencies for self-harm of the members of all your favourite bands.

It took me seven or eight years of gig attendance to obtain that level of familiarity with the scene and it's key players, and in Vancouver, I just don't possess the knowledge of the history of the scene to write with any real authority on the subject, when others cover it so much better than I can. Having said that, because I'm an obstinate ass, I'm going to try, regardless.

So after a most enjoyable art opening, where I got to see some fine people, some fine art, a couple of tasty beverages, and some parking lot frustration, we got to the Commodore just as Ladyhawk were kicking off their set.

When I first got to Vancouver, I was quite enamoured with the Commodore, it's a great space, and when you're as tall as I am, you can get a great view from anywhere. I've got friends that don't like it that much, and while it's not as intimate as somewhere like Richards, for a larger venue, it still has a great feel, and it's got 4 (count 'em) bars, which speaks to me in a way that few other venue features do.

As we walked in, the sold-out Commodore was pretty full. Since I last saw Ladyhawk I've been dabbling with some of their stuff, and I'm quite taken with it. I was reading a story in the local free streetmag on them while waiting for my burger this evening, and the story made much of their Neil Young grungey tendencies, which are certainly prevalent, but like the godfather of flannel, their songs also have the same melodic backbone that is such a feature of Young's material.

The band's set was snappy and sharp, and the bassist unleashed a waterfall of hair with such ferocity that I wager he was nursing a remarkably sore neck the next morning.

Right now is where I admit that I've never listened to a Black Mountain song all the way through before. While I like to listen to as much music as I can, I'm also (especially at this point in time) an impatient listener with the attention span of a gnat. If I haven't heard a pop hook in the first 90 seconds, I'll normally give up on it. As most Black Mountain embody the very definition of "slow-burning", that's normally where I tap out. I also like to go to shows where I'm not familiar with the band with an open mind - if I'm going to hear their stuff for the first time, I'd rather hear it live at the show, than indulge in a pre-show cram session to try and force myself to become familiar beforehand.

However, I appreciate that Black Mountain and their assorted offshoots/side projects have a long and storied history in the Vancouver musical landscape, and while I have assimilated an idea of what I was in store for from conversations with friends and magazines. Also, there was idle chatter (and it was incredibly idle) with a filmmaking friend about filming a Black Mountain video in my orange, sponge-painted kitchen.

So as Black Mountain walked out to a psychadelic light show and a wall of smoke (most of which seemed to be British Columbia's finest and generated by the crowd), I was a picture of curiosity. Black Mountain consist of a bearded guitarist with a penchant for Zeppelin licks, a keyboardist, who stands in a console surrounded by a keyboard, an organ, and a Moog, a drummer, and a cute female singer with a maracas, a floppy fringe, and a cute dress (and yes, I realize I used the "c" word twice in that sentence).

They specialise in dense, loud, dark jam rock that inspires communal synchronised head-nodding, and for the forty minutes or so of the band's set, I was having a pretty good time (although not nearly as good the guy who pumped his fists, enthusiastically through the entire show - I don't think there was a single beat that wasn't marked with a shake of this man's forearm). The crowd was incredibly stylish, the wall of tall people in front of me was proving my tall-person/musical taste hypothesis true, and the other outlandish claim I'd made earlier in the day was also proving true (which will remain undefined).

So, in short, Black Mountain were enjoyable, if a little prog for my taste. That was, until the encore. After a blissfully short pre-encore break, the band picked up tools again, and launched into a 12 minute bass jam, which was at least 11 minutes too long. When the singer in the band starts looking bored, and most of the audience is looking around for something else to do, you know it's probably time to start playing another instrument, or drop into a chorus of some fashion.

However, all told, my first Black Mountain experience was a good one, I think I'll just quietly slip out pre-encore next time. Which also has the advantage of making the coat-check line so much easier.

So I went home, and listened to a series of sub-2 minute pop songs, just to recalibrate, and I went to sleep satisfied with my weekend's activities.

PS - In pre-set conversation a friend and I were unable to name the 4th character in the village people lineup - we had the indian, the construction worker, and the policeman, but the fourth was eluding us. After asking the internet, it turns out there's six of them, and we missed the moustachioed motorcyclist, the GI and the cowboy.

The Satellite Nation, Whitfield, The Bourbon, Vancouver, April 4, 2008

2008-04-06T16:55:00.000-07:00

I told myself I wasn't going to post about Friday night - both the band and the venue have been covered at length previously, and I didn't really feel like I had anything of note to add.

But then I sat down Sunday evening to put together a 3 hour presentation about the joys of Finite Element Analysis for evaluating stress in structures and products, which I'm giving in ten days time and still haven't really started, and decided that pretty much anything is an improvement on doing that. It seems like every time I'm under serious pressure to get anything done (exam times, during work crunch), I find ways of procrastinating and doing something completely different. For example, my house was never cleaner than it was during exam time, and during one particularly stressful period, I decided I'd take a day and a half out to teach myself how to do cryptic crosswords.

Anyway, Friday night it was back to the Bourbon for a second peek this year at The Satellite Nation, Vancouver's finest transplanted Australian modern rock band. We walked in to the final strains of the support, Whitfield, who were plodding their way through a number that sounded like Pablo Honey-era Radiohead. Turned out that it might have been just that, as their closing song was a Muse cover. Whitfield were notable for two things:

1. Their bassist played a Thunderbird. Regular readers of this blog will remember that I'm in love with said piece of machinery, so after seeing one in the hands of a mediocre local band, I thought that I may be able to get one for myself, just to keep on a stand in the corner of the room (all I know how to play on the bass is a series of Pavement songs, and the riff from Gigantic, and it doesn't seem right to play Pavement songs on that). However, after researching the cost, I realized that the bassist from Whitfield either has a) more money than sense, or b) a copy.

2. They employed one of the best set-closing manouvres I've seen for a little while. The singer finished the last verse, and walked off stage. The band continued to play another couple of bars, before the lead guitarist rang out a note, put his guitar down, and walked off, followed a couple of bars later by the bassist, and finally the drummer. It's obviously a move they stole from The Alpha Males international pop hit "Taken" (83 plays in 2 years, and counting) and it was great. However, the effect was diminished somewhat by the fact that they rushed back on stage to pack up their gear about 15 seconds after the drummer had walked off, while the sustain was still ringing out.

I bumped into the guitarist for The Satellite Nation before they went on stage, and found that it was his birthday, and that he'd been celebrating appropriately. The mark of a true rock star is the ability to play competent rockandroll despite being fall-down drunk, and the young man in question confirmed that he is part of that lofty pantheon already. The band were as tight as ever, and still look like they suit a much bigger stage. It says something both about the type and quality of their songs that the person standing next to me said to me "I've seen these guys 3 times, but I know most of the words to their songs". The songs follow a fairly set formula, but they don't skimp on the pop hooks, which makes it pretty fun to watch. These guys also do their best to look good on stage, and it makes a big difference, I'll never forget how underwhelmed I was when I saw a band in Vancouver wearing flannel shirts and sweatpants.

Again, post-show there was an appearance by the world's weirdest DJ (my favourite 3 song stretch went Justice>Beatles>Justin Timberlake), and dance floor silliness ensued. I vaguely remember trying to teach someone how to emulate my not-graceful-at-all spin, and also picking up an australian and jumping up and down, but that might be my imagination. It was that kind of night.

Rock2Wgtn festival: Ozzy Osbourne, KISS, Alice Cooper, Poison, Whitesnake, Lordi: Cake Tin, Wellington, NZ: Easter weekend

2008-03-30T02:17:00.000-07:00

Metal, eh? We've all loved it at some point in our lives: some passionately in teenage bedrooms feeling that no-one understands me better than these gloomy chaps in black; some fist-pumpingly in the car with the windows down and the stereo on full; some slurringly in drunken singalongs in skody bars with their new best mates; some ironically for the rich vein of so-bad-it's-good fashion and imagery. For many it's a vaguely embarassingly reminder of past musical taste, or a guilty pleasure to be revisited only on Singstar or Guitar Hero. For others though it's still what they live and breathe, and an awful lot of the Newzuld chapter were in Wellington over Easter for what was billed as the biggest ever concert in the shaky isles: two nights of metal mayhem in the Cake Tin (Westpac Stadium to its mum), with added special effects from Weta Workshops of Lord of the Rings fame.

Metal got it's claws into me at late primary school: Open Up and Say Aah!, Appetite for Destruction and New Jersey were the tapes to be swapping in the playground in late 80s Howick. It didn't last, however: though some of my friends made it past the Sunset Stripper sound and into Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer, I veered off into grunge, then Britpop and then classic rock radio. This introduced me to Led Zep, Sabbath and KISS: I was already starting to develop a sense of snobbery towards anyone with a Master of Puppets t-shirt, but tapping into the source material seemed ok, and legitimised rocking out once in a while when no-one was looking. When I told workmates I was heading down to Wellington for the shows, I got a few quizzical comments: "I didn't know you were a bogan". The classic rock defence was an easy counter: these guys are part of rock history and they won't be round much longer. That wasn't the full story though: I was more than a little excited to get my horns out for "Detroit Rock City" and started making a list of Sabbath tunes I hoped Ozzy might throw in (my kingdom for “A National Acrobat”...)

Pretty quickly though, I felt like a bit of a tourist. On the plane down and wandering up Cuba Street, it was readily apparent who was in town for the show and who wasn't. I thought a pair of black jeans and an admittedly non-band black tee might get me in costume, but I was looking markedly Poindexter next to the sea of faded and ripped Blizzard of Ozz shirts, Symphony of Destruction patches sewn onto jackets, Zeppelin hoodies, Doc Martens and KISS face paint. Lock up your daughters, metal was in town.

The Cake Tin itself is probably the country's best sports ground: newer and with less history and character than other stadia, but a shining example of how to design, locate and build a bloody good rugby park. Even the most ardent supporter of Eden Park, the Basin or the 'Brook warms to the Cake Tin once they realise they can get a beer or go for a pee without queuing for an hour, and the concoursed walk to the ground builds up a cracking atmosphere. It was pretty cold in windy Welly but most of the crowd had only a black tee and a skinful of bourbon and coke to keep them warm. The t-shirt parade was great: about seven different KISS farewell tours; a surprising number of death and black metal shirts (surprising given that, stage shows and posturing aside, the songs of KISS, Alice Cooper and Lordi are about as heavy as the token rock track on a Pink album; the fact that three of the six bands are involved in grandma-friendly reality TV and another won the not very high cred Eurovision song contest doesn’t seem to faze the Entombed fans either); and a few fantastically obscure numbers (Yngwie Malmsteen, solo Sebastian Bach and the Jeff frickin' Healey Band). I'm pretty sure every second person went straight to the merch stand once they got in too: ticket sales were below expectations, but if the promoter was getting a cut of t-shirt sales he would have been doing just fine. Before the show proper was a radio contest public guitar solo-off: we didn't learn much other than that guitar soloing outside of a song is really, really dull. The chap who tried to do a Hendrix on the Newzuld national anthem got a few cheers, as did the dude playing behind his head, but far and away the biggest cheer was for the guy who dropped in the intro to "Thunderstruck" - at a metal show, in case of emergency break out the AC/DC.

Lordi were first up, and were pretty awful - it must have been a real slow year at Eurovision. The costumes were elaborate: stupid, but impressively so. The Dom Post reviewer rightly saw the resemblance between the drummer and a Gamorrean guard from Return of the Jedi, and the chubster vocalist was rocking the Fraggle Rock trash-heap with bonus wolf-head look. The tunes were terrible, but the crowd didn't seemed to mind, especially the bone-heads who couldn't wait for something better than lame klingon-metal to slam-dance too.

The between-band show was a little disappointing - the Weta Workshops dragon was pretty cool at first, all grand scale puppetry and laser beams (enough to make the slam-dancers start a "Holy shit! Holy shit!" chant), but was starting to wear a little thin by night two after its sixth identical outing. There were some fire dancers and zombie cheerleaders way off in the distance, and a few token local bands (the Valves, Symphony of Screams and Sonic Altar), who all tried hard to widespread indifference. Admirable effort to fill in the gaps between acts, but if there's a next year, then getting a few bigger Kiwi acts might be a better plan: Shihad or the Datsuns, or how about a reformed HLAH?

After Lordi's "Our songs are crap but hey, I'm wearing a monster outfit" shtick, it was up to Alice Cooper to show how them how putting on a show should be done. Decent tunes are pretty important: when you can bang out "No More Mister Nice Guy", "Under My Wheels" and "I'm Eighteen" up front, with your voice sounding even better than your golf game and a slick as hell backing band you've got a good start, but the crowd were here for the full package. And Alice jazzed it up with simple props (his cane, a stack of US dollar bills and strings of pearls to throw to the crowd) or much more elaborate ones. "Welcome to My Nightmare" kick-started a mini stage play, with Alice joined by ghoulish bride and monstrous baby: cue a couple of murders, a straitjacket and a public hanging. This was more like it, although the guy next to me was getting a little too into it. Just prior to Alice offing his bride he chanted "Kill the bitch! Kill the bitch!", and just before the vampire baby was dispatched he yelled "Kill the baby! Kill the baby!": he'd either seen this show before and wanted everyone to know, or was just a homicidal maniac. The real crowdpleaser, though, was "Poison". I was pretty fond of this tune when it came out, but I thought this was just because it sounded pretty badass to a ten year old. Seems like every else here was pretty keen on it too: cue one of the bigger mass singalongs of the weekend. They finished it up with "Elected", supported by his backup actors holding "Alice for President" placards: a cheesy but fitting end to a great set. No boa constrictor, no guillotine, alas, but we’ll still vote for you, Alice.

In between sets, the Jumbotron scanned around the various KISS costumes amongst the crowd. As you'd expect, there were plenty of Simmons and Stanley faces, but a surprising number of kids with Peter Criss facepaint, including solo gig-goers: if you're going with three mates and you draw the short straw, fair enough, but you guys chose to be the crappy one? I bet you think "Beth" isn't a stinker, either. The single best outfit was a rotund fella in full Simmons regalia, including a winged cape and a dangerous looking studded codpiece - where the heck do you buy one of those from in this day and age, and did they let him take it on the plane?

There are quite a few reasons to dislike KISS: they blueprinted the merch-heavy, business-first corporate rock that now dominates our airwaves, and without Gene Simmons there could never have been a Fred Durst. There are many more reasons to like them, though - particularly that KISS RULE! Alice Cooper was a tough act to follow, and in all honesty they didn't quite match him, but anyone who doesn't think cracking stage dressing, slick pyro, six inch platform heels, Paul Stanley flying on a wire over the crowd, Gene spitting blood and a hydraulic drum riser that blasts off upwards isn't cool should probably take themselves less seriously. Where Lordi's costumes and antics seemed a fairly transparent cover for a lack of decent songs, KISS have the tunes to support the fluff, plus they pretty much invented this gimmickry. But do they mean it? The great Tim Rogers has a tune on his second solo record called "Letter to Gene", where a younger Tim writes to the man whose moves he's practised countless times with a tennis racket in front of the mirror and asks: "Tell me Gene, is it just about the money?". You're right, Tim, it is, but I'm not sure that bothers me as much as you. The souvenir KISS t-shirts point out that it's 35 years since these boys started playing, and they must have played "Black Diamond" thousands of times, almost every one with the same cheery, cheesy "You're the best crowd we've ever played to" banter. It's clearly just about the money these days, and it probably always was. That doesn't stop "Detroit Rock City" being freaking awesome though (not even Stanley's worst-of-a-bad-bunch banter can stop it: "Wellington, you've been a great rock city. And here's a song about another rock city - it's called Detroit! Rock! City!"). So even though they are the original soulless money-grubbing corporate rock whores, KISS are choice. The rock snob in me shouldn't be having such a bloody great time, but maybe that's why metal has such enduring popularity: it's nice and easy to turn your brain off, punch your fist and sing along. As the lights go up and the PA blares "God Gave Rock and Roll to You" as we kick through the PET beer bottles to the exit, I almost start having warm and fuzzy thoughts about how nice a community this metal thing builds. At least until the skinhead dude walks past sporting a charming "Christian Scum Die Bleeding" shirt. Happy Easter to you too, bro.

Interlude: we spend Sunday at Te Papa, New Zealand's national museum and general centrepiece of Kiwi culture and learning. And it's packed to the gunnels with metalheads. Every second person seems to have an Iron Maiden patch sewn onto their stonewash denim jacket; there's a guy who looks like Lemmy studying the diorama on global fault lines; someone in a Reign in Blood tee is engrossed in the seabirds of the Pacific display. It's like we're in a strange parallel universe where bogan is the norm, and it's kinda cool...

Day two started with Poison, and if I were them, I’d have been more than a little miffed to be on the bill behind Whitesnake. They didn’t seem to mind though: indeed, the overwhelming vibe was that they were really grateful to be here. As Bret Michaels kept saying, in between thousands of thank yous and Happy Easters, they’re pretty stoked to have been allowed to do this for 20+ years. My gig buddies and I were talking pre-show about some of our favourite one-hit wonder metal songs, and “Cherry Pie” by Warrant came up. Apparently, Mr Warrant absolutely loathes that song – it was the moment they sold out, lost all relevance and became those “Cherry Pie” guys. Contrast that with Bret Michaels, who played “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” with a kind of reverence, recognizing it as the three and a half minutes that has paid for him to party round the world for two decades. He doesn’t care if that’s what they’re remembered for – it bought him a lot of expensive drinks and cheap women. Michaels’ enthusiasm was rather endearing, and his band’s easy-going, goofy stripper-metal was a lot more fun than I expected. Although they’ve ditched the poodle perms, mascara and frills, it’s pretty easy to see why they sold a lot of records to Middle America in the late 80s. It’s very different to the standard perception of metal as outsider music, somehow threatening, though: these are jock-friendly riffs for barbecues after football practice, songs about back seats and drive thrus, about as mainstream as it gets. As the spraytan-orange CC DeVille wailed the solo from “Every Rose”, and the dude in front of us in the leather vest with no shirt underneath hoisted his lighter, it may as well has been Iowa in 1989, and that felt alright. Thank you, Poison, and Happy Easter.

Whitesnake were utterly devoid of merit. Think of everything bad that the term cock rock suggests, and then take away the tunes. David Coverdale strutted about doing his fourth rate Percy Plant impression (little wonder Hammer of the Gods calls him David Coverversion) while a band dressed like the 1983 Slavia Prague third XI out on the town pounded out slick versions of cruddy hard rock that all seemed to have the word love in the title, in front of a banner that very cleverly had a white snake on it. “Here I Go Again” is an admittedly decent song, and inspired another mass singalong, but it just as a reminder of how completely execrable the rest of it was. Poison should have been even more pissed that they were on before these guys after watching an hour of that crap, but I expect they were either knee deep in whisky or politely thanking some groupies by this point.

I hoped Ozzy would be great, and lean heavily on the Sabb, but if I were a betting man it would have been a fiver on it being a total car crash. I didn’t expect a skit show though, so when the video screen played five minutes of clips from famous movies and TV shows with Ozzy spliced in being “hilarious”, it was a strange start. But then there he was, still doddering about like an old man but looking a bit more compos mentis than expected. He’s definitely no longer the Prince of Darkness though: when you see him lumbering around the stage in ill-advised trousers that suggest he may have the saggiest bottom in all of Los Angeles, doing above the head handclaps with a shit-eating grin, it seems rather unlikely that he’d be able to bite the head off a gingerbread man let alone a live bat. The crowd are going bananas, although not bananas enough for Mr Osbourne, who constantly told us we weren’t fucking loud enough. I must confess to not being that familiar with Ozzy’s solo stuff, although familiar enough to know that he was a fair way out of time and key on “Bark At the Moon”. In the main though, his voice wasn’t too bad, and he started hitting his stride on “Mr Crowley” and an amped up version of “War Pigs", complete with wild-eyed Ozzy on the Jumbotron. Then, just as we were getting warmed up, we were treated to a fifteen minute Zakk Wylde solo set (while Ozzy presumably went offstage to have his blood changed or something), which was more proficient but even less interesting than the radio contest from the day before – he should have thrown a few bars of "Back in Black" in to liven things up. The rest of the Cake Tin seemed pretty keen though, and were whipped into a fever by the encore versions of “Mama I’m Coming Home” and a slightly sketchy “Paranoid”. I was glad I’d seen Ozzy before his brain turns completely into soup, but unlike Alice Cooper, KISS and Poison, I think I was about 20 years too late to catch a great performance.

Wilco review to follow…

(reposted at http://www.undertheradar.co.nz/utr/liveReview/CID/7/N/Rock2wgtn.utr and NZ musician magazine)

Vampire Weekend, YACHT, Richards on Richards, Vancouver, March 27

2008-03-29T17:32:00.000-07:00

To say I was excited about the show tonight would be an understatement. Firstly, I'm a big YACHT fan, not so much because of his music (which is admittedly fun), but because of his positivity, energy and enthusiasm. It's almost like he's the Andrew WK of indiepop dance music (and you could totally imagine him stopping halfway through to tell the crowd that they're each awesome individuals, and that they can do anything they want, just like AWK. Incidentally, should you ever get the chance to see one of Andrew WK's motivational lectures, you should. They're awesome (and he uses that particular adjective about 10,000 times in an hour).

And I was curious about Vampire Weekend. If you own a computer, you've probably been able to chart the 3 month long narrative arc from obscure college band, through critically blog-acclaimed next-big-thing, to the inevitable backlash (made worse by the fact that they're good-looking, educated, upper west-side-living young men). All that notwithstanding, they've got a batch of crackingly interesting songs, but I'm always curious to see how newer bands that might not have too much experience playing lots of big live shows adapt to the shift in paradigm.

The show sold out tonight, and I was surprised at how quickly it did - when it was announced Vampire Weekend still hadn't released a record, but still tickets vanished within about 3 weeks - for notoriously apathetic Vancouver that's pretty quick - and I was wondering what sort of folk were going along. More on that later.

I also took my camera, so this post may be a little more visual than usual. I'm remarkably lazy when it comes to taking things with me when I go out - I hate having to carry things all night, so I'd rather freeze my ass off and walk to a show in the snow in a t-shirt than carry a jacket, and a camera is nearly always a bridge too far. I also take photos in a weird way - if I hold the button down on my camera it takes a photo every second, so I end up coming home with about about 400 photos, which if you view them fast enough represent a kind of stop motion account of the entire evening (although without sound), but mostly end up being out of frame, blurry, and too dark. Sometimes, I can pass them off as being intentionally arty (example below) but normally they just suck, like the one that leads this post.

Richards was starting to fill up as YACHT came on - I last saw Jona supporting Architecture in Helsinki last summer, and since then he's added his girlfriend to the live show - she sings and dances just as maniacally as he does.

The central premise of a YACHT show is that his songs are all lined up on his macbook - he hits play, and then sings and dances his way through them.

Luckily the kid can dance, which makes the whole escapade a lot more exciting. Having said that, he's got three moves that he relies a little too heavily on:
a) sweeping his fringe dramatically from over his eyes (sadly, not captured on film),

b) gesturing with the microphone in time with the melody, as if playing a giant, aerial xylophone,

and c) a big sliding side-step to the right, sometimes preceded by a jump, for added effect (captured mid-slide to the right.

Jona's partner, and collaborator, Claire, looked like she was having a ball up there, and there was a nice little moment where he asked the crowd to thank her, not just for being fun on stage, but also for being a great person. They also ran a neat little skit where Claire told the story of how she met Jona at a club, complete with an R&B slow jam as a backing track. 'twas genius. (incidentally, my favourite part of the photo at the right is that you can see just how close the people on the upper level are to the band - it literally hovers out over the back left part of the stage).

Sadly, there was no mid-set question and answer session like last time, but he made up for it by jumping in to the crowd and dancing right where I was standing -twice!(is it wrong to become excited by a dude in a flannel shirt rubbing himself against you) - and once they finished up I was left looking around the crowd a little bewildered, in a mild state of post-excitement shock.

But what I saw was a little alarming (and be warned, it's gonna be nothing but unadulterated rock snobbery from this point forward). While I hadn't been looking, the crowd (or at least a sizeable swathe of the crowd near the front) had metamorphasised into a collection of ball-cap wearing, beer swilling, frat boys, and the female equivalent thereof (whatever that is called). There was nary a cardigan, plaid shirt or a pair of black-framed spectacles in sight. Don't get me wrong, I like beer and ballcaps as much as the next guy, but these looked like the kind of people that don't understand irony. I'm betting that some of them even comment on youtube videos.

It appears that these were the individuals that bought all those tickets 3 months ago. I dunno whether they got a special bus organized to ship them in from the 'burbs, but they were here in force tonight, and intent on having a big night.

The excellent from blown speakers compared Vampire Weekend to The Strokes - and there are a bunch of parallels, from their appearance of privilege, their snappy trousers, and the rapidity of their rise to fame. But there's also similarities in their mixed fan base. When the first Strokes record came out, they were immediately embraced by hipsters everywhere (and this was before my earnest acceptance of the internet - I still remember huddling around the television watching them with my flatmates on UK Top Of The Pops, reading the air-freighted (not surface freighted) NME, and getting a friend who was in the UK on vacation to bring me back a copy of the Modern Age EP), but afterwards they seemed to attract an extended crowd, that bought the record en masse about 9 months later. Where that process took nearly a year back in 2001, it looks like the entire process takes about 6 weeks in 2008.

(Incidentally, while I'm ranting about the Strokes, whichever record company executive decided that this abomination (which is only made partially cooler by the fact that it appeals to the particle physicist in me) -
-is better than this wonderful, Spinal Tap-referencing piece of pop cultural genius. Smell the Glove (fast forward to 4.00) indeed.
But anyway, rant over. Oh, apart from the fact that taking New York City Cops off the american version is equally retarded.

The final parallel between Vampire Weekend and the Strokes, that is pertinent to getting me back on track with this post, is that their songs are fantastic. Vampire Weekend were tight as all hell, and it's easy to get distracted by the internet hype, but at their core, they have a set of fantastic pop songs, with unique elements that give them a sound that's instantly identifiable as theirs (I know a lot is made of the african influence on their record, often by the band themselves, but I don't see it so much).

They ambled out full of smiles and preppy goodness - the lead singer Ezra wore a fetching v-neck sweater, that he didn't remove, despite the fact that it got pretty hot, and others in the band were visibly sweating (maybe he is some sort of genetic freak, he didn't appear to have ever needed to shave, either). They kicked off with the lead track off the record, Mansard Roof, and followed that up with a run through of the majority of the rest of the record (a recorded output that barely stretches to ten songs doesn't make for a whole lot of selection when putting a setlist together). They did play one new song, that didn't really suggest any bold new direction, as it fit the VW-template quite nicely.

Righto, this is far too long, and most people will have long since given up, or just skipped to the photos, so I'm going to finish this up in bullet point format.

During their second or third song (Walcott, maybe?) I was shocked to hear the crowd heartily singing along with the chorus, with a gusto I imagine they normally reserve for "Living on a Prayer". When the band did try and get some organized call-and-response happening during "One", the crowd were way ahead of him, shouting back the correct response before he'd even told him what it was).
There were people moshing. Somehow it didn't seem appropriate, but then again I've always been a bigger fan of dancing than flinging myself at my over-testosteroned friends (actually, that's totally a lie, I love moshing. I just think there's a time and a place) and the band looked a little weirded out. Luckily I'd moved to the back to be among the other old people, but I know a couple of my friends were lodged further forward, and didn't enjoy it so much.
The band announced that the next song was a little bit slower, and within seconds, three lighters were held aloft, completely without irony. I was waiting for someone to yell out for Free Bird, but nobody did (admittedly, there was a point in my life where I thought yelling "Free Bird" at indie pop shows was pretty much the wittiest thing possible)

Ezra has a fairly unique guitar playing posture, he looks something like a hunch-backed rabbit, caught wide-eyed in the headlights. He also only seems to play the bottom three strings on his guitar, but something I only really realized live was that he uses his voice in fairly unique ways, such as in "Oxford Comma", where the end of each line in the chorus features an abrupt increase in pitch.

My friend informed me she had a crush on the bassist, which I didn't quite get. I mean, he's not classically attractive, and he was standing 3 feet to the left of a floppy-fringed cutie, but then Wikipedia tells me that he's Scott Baio's nephew, so maybe there's a little bit of Charles in Charge that shines through.

But for all my whining and elitism, it was a pretty fun show. I guess one good thing about going to a show where the majority of the audience doesn't go to many shows, is just that it seems to be a bigger deal for everyone involved, and there's a lot more enthusiasm in the room. The band seemed genuinely excited to be there, although they need to hold back on the banter that panders to the home crowd - I think if they'd mentioned that the beach was beautiful one more time, I was going to bottle them.

The band went off for the obligatory pre-encore break, but at least had the decency to keep it brief, and crack a joke about it when they got back (sorry guys, we just had to grab some magazines from out the back). The campaign for an end to encores starts here. The encore was actually pretty special - Vampire Weekend are coming back to the area for a corporate behemoth of a festival in July, which also features Tom Petty, Jay-Z and Coldplay, and Ezra spoke about this, before claiming that Tom Petty was a huge influence on the band (at least 3 people around me asked if he was being serious - he wasn't), before dropping into the opening riff of American Girl. The rest of the band looked dumbfounded - this clearly wasn't rehearsed, but after their frontman told them what was what, they manfully ploughed their way through a verse and a chorus before seguing into Oxford Comma to round up. It was a nice, playful way to finish a good night.

So, my conscience is probably not gonna allow me to make it up to Pemberton for that festival (actually my conscience is making me feel bad because the Flaming Lips are playing within 200 miles of my location, and I'm not planning to go), but luckily I get to see Vampire Weekend the weekend before in a little city called Chicago (maybe you've heard of it?) where they're sharing a bill with a rather attractive gentleman called Jarvis Cocker (apparently he used to be in some band from the UK).

And one more photo to finish, because I can.

Born Ruffians, Said The Whale, The Media Club, Vancouver, March 26, 2008

2008-03-27T17:06:00.000-07:00

It feels kinda weird to be writing about the show I went to last night, when all I can think about is the awesomeness that is going to be the YACHT show tonight. Last time I saw him was before Architecture, and it was outstanding - from the simple fact that all he does is hit play on his tape player and dance and sing, to the fact that he stopped the show halfway through for a Q and A session, it was a barrel of joy. Luckily, I don't believe my employers read this, because large swathes of my afternoon have been spent trying to dream up the perfect question to ask, should he do it again tonight.

But alas, I've got two hours to kill before dodgeball, so I should reflect upon the awesomeness that was the Born Ruffians last night.

In what seemed like a carbon copy of Monday night, I rolled into the Media Club at a gig-appropriate time, after force-feeding myself a couple more cans of Colt 45 (and while it still tastes like armpit, it does run at 8% alcohol, which eases the pain, and I now only have one can left, which makes me feel even better), and prepared myself to watch a shambling country rock band from Eastern Canada.

Kicking off proceedings were a band by the name of Said the Whale. For some reason I thought the name seemed familiar, but I figured it was just a consequence of seeing it on gig posters and concert listings around town. It was only halfway through that I realized that they'd spammed me on Myspace, and in a rare bout of charity, I'd accepted their friend request. I'm incredibly demanding when I scrutinize unsolicited friend requests, if your page layout is cluttered, for example, you're automatically out. But after a quick check of the internet on the iPod to confirm that they were in fact my myspace friends (how I settled arguments before the advent of mobile internet, I'll never know), I realized this was the first time I was seeing a band that had sent me an unsolicited friend request in real life, which kinda reinforces just how useful that particular marketing tactic is (and speaking of marketing - check this piece of capitalist genius). And not that anyone uses Myspace any more. Poor Tom.

The band themselves were actually pretty goddamn good - simple upbeat guitar pop, reminiscent of the good bits of Weezer songs, that warmed up the building crowd quite capably, even if the bassist did look a little too clean-cut to be in an indie pop band. But then again, they do come from Vancouver, where clean-cut is the rule.

The last time I saw Born Ruffians was as a warmup for a particularly dull Caribou show, and they were far and away the greatest element of that particular evening. I was impressed enough to buy their record on the way out, which never happens now that I'm old and cynical. and after listening to it at home, I was even inspired to purchase another copy to give to my sister for christmas - and if you realized the esteem I hold for my sister's musical taste you'd appreciate that this is high praise indeed.

In conversation with someone before the show, I mentioned that I was heading down, and they commented that they really liked the song with the yelping - which didn't really help me much. See, one of the key components of the Born Ruffians experience is the way that all three members join together in a staccato hey-hey-hey-ha-ha-ha yelping as both the central focus of many of the choruses and as backing vocals for the verses - think of the annoying shouty songs on Modest Mouse records that you end up skipping, but then imagine it being awesome. The only downside to this characteristic sound is that as it becomes the central focus of each song, they can take on a little bit of a sameness, especially in a live setting.

They're a 3 piece, guitar-drums-bass (and it broke my heart when the bassist broke a string two songs in on a gorgeous thunderbird bass, only to switch to a crappy old replacement rather than repair the string (which admittedly is always a pain for a bass), and the drummer sets down a swampy rock and roll stomp which sets off the rest of the band quite neatly.

For a band that specialise in 3 minute bursts of energy, they played for a generously long time, and it was nearly 12.30 before I ended up hitting the streets. If you're out and about, I'd highly recommend you pick up their record on Warp (?!), or do as I did, and fork out a tenner on their self titled EP, and you won't be sorry.

righto - the Jona Bechtolt excitement train leaves from here - talk soon.

Plants and Animals, The Media Club, Vancouver

2008-03-25T21:06:00.000-07:00

This blog has been a little neglected of late (though not as comprehensively neglected as my two other blogs, ayearinsex.blogspot.com and ayearinnutritiousbreakfasts.blogspot.com (and you can keep your idle speculation about which one of those gets updated most often to yourself, thankyou very much), mostly due to a nasty case of the end-of-winter lurgy. If it weren't for antipodean folk going to outstanding shows, this would be a paltry exercise in web-publishing (and don't think I don't expect a review of the Kiss/Alice Cooper/Wilco weekender - you know who you are).

So, in between watching Caddyshack (awesome), Caddyshack 2 (stick to the original) and the Breakfast Club (and practising my Emilio Estevez dance), and groaning on my deathbed, I've been nurturing the seeds of a desperate yearning to get out of the house and see some shows. And it's weeks like this one that make Vancouver a fantastic place to be - there's 5 shows I could conceivably see myself at over the next four nights, and I think I'll end up at least 3 of them for sure (and I'm so very very excited for YACHT on Thursday night - and the so-called-"Buzz" band he's playing with).

But all that enthusiasm was very nearly rent asunder by my first can of Colt 45. While I may have waxed lyrical in these very pages about the joys of said beverage previously, my initial excitement was tempered by the immediate realization that it is nigh on undrinkable. Even the faintest taste makes me gag, and I'm beginning to realize why the last time I drank it, they were giving it away for free in a Chicago nightclub (in other news, somehow I'm on Colt 45's mailing list, and they keep sending me mail asking me to submit stories of nights I've been retarded on their product, to be turned into comic format, a la this. I've definitely got a couple for them.). So after two cans (I could throw it away, but I'm yet to sink to the level where I can happily throw away alcohol), I was feeling sick to the stomach, but I washed it down with some whiskey, and merrily stepped out to the Media Club.

Support for the night was billed as No Gold, although I'm not sure if the band that showed up actually were - I swear I heard them introduce themselves as something else involving an acronym. I could have misheard, as the young man delivering the banter was mumbling, and while I got the impression that what he was saying was quite witty, and he'd been working on it for weeks, but I couldn't understand a word. Enunciate, young sir, enunciate. Anyway, what I can tell you about the mystery possibly-no-gold is that they sported at least one cardigan (my father called me (in an international toll-call, no less) to tell me there'd been a feature on the NZ national news about cardigans are hip again, only to hang up. My mother then called back ten minutes later to tell me that they'd actually won the lottery, and that my father was supposed to relate that information, but he was too excited about the cardigan thing, and forgot), engaged in plenty of instrument swapping, and belted out six or seven country-tinged shambling rock and roll numbers of varying degrees of quality. They employed one of my top 5 stage moves, of having the singer grab a drumstick and lock down a beat on the splash cymbal while the drummer played, so points need to be awarded there, but they also let some of the rhythm section wigouts play out a little too long, which saw those same points being removed.

I'll admit, as I often do, that I wasn't paying much attention to the support, as I was belting out conversational gold/previous untold levels of obnoxiousness. There's something about the media club that leads me to crystalline perception of the human condition, which I then relate to the unfortunate folk in my immediate vicinity. I decided this evening that the reason that tall men have much better taste in music than short men (I was one of the shorter folk at the MC, and I'm well above the national average - compared with being at the Bourbon a couple of weeks prior, where I stood head and shoulders above the other gentlemen (if you can call them that) in attendance) is that the short man's desire for acceptedness sees him jumping on any bandwagon that comes past, while the tall man's greater confidence means he has more inclination to go out on a limb and enjoy something a little riskier, but eventually more fulfilling. Or something like that.

I also decided that dying at 27 could be my ticket to rocknroll superstardom, a piece of news that any short folk reading this will be applauding heartily. Having said that, I do need to finish the two songs that may or may not become as universal as I Wanna Hold Your Hand, but I've got six months left to work that out. Incidentally, any ladies out there who have been holding yourselves back, you may also have only six months, so I'd go for it if I were you.

So after probably unknowingly making a dozen conversational faux-pas, as Plants and Animals came out, I was mentally sharpening my literary knives. I've been waiting to see a band that I definitively hate, or at the very least have bad facial hair, so I can rip them mercilessly to shreds. Everyone knows it's a thousand times more fun to write a rippingly bad review than a good one - for instance, this is still the best record review of all time.

And things were looking good for me. The band sport the kind of patchy facial hair beloved of French-Canadians everywhere, and the lead singer's plaintive Kings of Leon-esque wail had me eagerly thumbing my thesaurus for synonyms for 'apocryphal'.

But alas, my enthusiasm was short lived. As I was prepared to write them off as yet another country-rock MOR 3-piece, these Montreal natives showed me up. The KOL wail softened into a soulful tenor, and was joined in charming 3-part harmony by the other two members of the band. Some of the rowdier songs dispensed with the bass entirely, running a guitar-guitar-drums lineup to great effect, and at times the sheer noise being produced belies the limited lineup - at times it sounded like the Polyphonic Spree were up there, but the softer songs were executed with tenderness, thoughfulness and care, and provided both a neat contrast and a chance for a breather.

The encore came and went, and was enthusiastically requested, and they finished up with Bye Bye Bye, a song so good it deserves repeated listens from everyone reading this. The live version posted above differs considerably from the recorded version I've heard previously, which can get a little too Coldplay in parts. Firstly there's no piano, everything runs a little bit faster, and the harmonies are more shouted than sung. It sounds like a bastard child of the Beatles, the Kinks, and the Beach Boys, only to break down halfway through into Exile-era Stones, with the Flying Burrito Brothers loitering somewhere in the background. Seriously, it's that good, and everyone in the crowd left into the wintry (1 degree in March? are you serious?) night with a spring in the step. Good work, young sirs.

The Datsuns, The Dirtbombs, The Bellrays: The King's Arms, Auckland, New Zealand, 11/03/08

2008-03-12T03:54:00.000-07:00

Holy Antipodes, Batman! A Year In Shows has just gone multicity, multinational, multihempishere. Your New Zealand correspondent is awfully glad to be here, and really likes that thing you’ve done with your hair.

++++

Tuesday morning started with breakfast TV and radio lamenting the NZ High Court decision to overturn a Youth Court ruling to make the family of a teenage crime enthusiast pay his victims back, sparking all sorts of hell/handbasket commentary and tender eulogies for dear old common sense. By Tuesday night, it seemed to me that the freshly buried hand of Mr Sense, Snr had thrust itself back through the soil next to its headstone, and was ready to bust out the Thriller dance. For I was at the King’s Arms in Newton, Auckland, and the marvellous garden bar recently rhapsodised over in these very pages as a great place for an al fresco Lion Red pre-, between and post-bands had a whopping great stage in it. The KA has been around for a long time (their website says 1880 and who’d lie about something online?), but in the last few years has fallen foul of the residents of newly built apartment blocks in the nearby streets, who really wanted to live in the city so they could be part of the crackling atmosphere, but can you please turn the band down at the pub that created that atmosphere and long pre-dates my poxy leaky home? So to placate the council, who evidently decided the apartment grinches held right of way, the KA stuck a couple of shipping containers in their carpark to deaden the noise, and a year or two later replaced them with a hefty second wall. Given that the shows that caused the complaints were inside, it seemed to me that a garage rock (I can’t remember what Pitchfork wants me to call it these days) triple bill on a school night in the garden bar might be asking for trouble. But tonight Zombie Common Sense, with maggots crawling out of the holes in his sensible shoes, was lurching about groaning for brains, and if the best rnr venue in town wanted to put three loud bands on in its garden bar, then consequences and torpedoes would be damned.

When the Bellrays hit the stage at the very civilised time of 8pm, another possibility emerged. Maybe Mr & Mrs John Q Apartment couldn’t get a ticket, and had given the KA a heads-up that they didn’t want to miss the fun. Sometimes you come across a concept that seems so obviously a good idea it’s just amazing that no-one’s done it before, or at least that no-one does it more often. A couple of these hit at once: outdoor gigs on late summer evenings are a bloody good idea; and a singer with a juggernaut soul voice and a mighty afro fronting a tight, white nerdy rock band isn’t far behind in the simple genius stakes. It was 10 out of 10 until the sun set around 6 songs in, and too many slower numbers almost derailed things, but a few old chestnuts from Soul Revue 101 got hammered home again before the end: if in doubt, wear black; stage presence is table stakes; the more time your drummer’s mouth is grotesquely contorted, the better he is; and if there’s not a hummable hook, don’t bother. Sometimes we all need reminding.

The Dirtbombs were last here about four years ago, and while the word incendiary is fairly high up on the Words That Make You Look Like A Dick When Writing About Music list, they may well have been the reason Mr Apartment first got on the blower to his MP. In the same why-didn’t-we-think-of-that-before vein as outdoor gigs and the Bellrays, doubling up your bottom end is hardly rocket science, but four-ish years is long enough to forget just how cool two drum kits look side by side. And while saying so may amount to sacrilege on a site named after a Brighten the Corners lyric, if you’ve got two drummers, the second one oughta do a little more on stage than make toast. Like pound them really hard, just like the dude next door, while two basses, one clean and one running through the devil’s own effects pedal, get a fair old hammering. Four years is also long enough to forget what a hulking big guy Mick Collins seems on stage, more like Man of the Year Jerry Collins, even if his stature is slightly exaggerated by placement next to the fun-size hell-fuzz player. Mr Collins is also lucky enough to be one of the approximately 32 people on the planet who can wear dark glasses at night without looking like an idiot, and takes good advantage of this fact. If you’ve found you’re way to this blog, and you’re still reading, chances are you’re either a) really, really bored at work, b) my mum, or c) someone who doesn’t need me to tell them how excellent the Dirtbombs are live. And they were, although not quite as great as I remembered or expected: maybe it was the nagging feeling that they’re only at their very best as a covers band (albeit arguably the finest one around); or maybe I was just having a little sulk that they didn’t play “Cedar Point ‘76”.

The Datsuns have had a funny old life: from smallish town outsider obscurity in Cambridge to minor league student radio success in NZ; to all sorts of glorious, and gloriously ridiculous, hyperbole in the NME; to a critically panned sophomore slump (that’s actually pretty darn good in the main); to the low-key release of a mixed bag third record and relocation to the less fickle rock scene in Germany; then back to headline a high class triple bill at a great, but in the scheme of things, pretty small, venue back home. Full disclosure: I really rather like the Datsuns. I can’t claim to have been there from the very start, but I saw them play a fair few times in my varsity years, before the British press hailed them as Ritchie Blackmore’s illegitimate heirs and it all went a bit crazy. Along with the much-missed D4, they soundtracked some of the best bits of a really fun part of my life, and I have several crystal clear memories: the first time I saw them live, a bunch of Waikato longhairs throwing nutbar guitar solo shapes on top of picnic tables in the quad; buying the 7” “MF From Hell”/”Lady” from the band after a Shadows show and being highly stoked by the free badge; playing said record to my mum, prompting her to bring out Deep Purple in Rock for the first time in umpteen years; a horribly hungover (mine, not theirs) bFM Summer Series show in Albert Park where “Hong Kong Fury” did what two Panadol could not; and a few years later, making a three hour round trip in the dark and rain to see a Datsuns/D4 double header in Whangamata. You’ll have a band like this in your past too: insert “I saw them back before they were…” story above. So much for objective journalism, but I was pretty keen to hear how the Smoke and Mirrors tracks held up live, and the presence of newbies from the latest European recordings was strongly rumoured. First impressions weren’t great: namely, turn it up; get rid of the stupid beard, Dolf, you look like Jared Leto; and the filler tracks from the third record aren’t much better in 3D. As with all good friends who’ve been away for a while though, sometimes you just need time to get used to each other again. “Harmonic Generator” helped, as did its weird militant cousin “System Overload”. “Waiting For Your Time to Come”, fairly leaden Zeppelin on record, made a lot more sense in person, while “Stuck Here for Days”, another tune that fairly obviously fell off the back of a truck called LZIII, was given a life of its own by Christian Datsun’s Ginsu-2000 slide lines. Anyone left reading will be pleased to note that the noobs turned out well too: a couple of ragged, pacy numbers; a keyboard-driven oddity called “Paranoid People”; the clearly Guitar Hero Aotearoa-bound “Your Bones”; and best of all a big doomy Sabbath-covering-The Verve style number right at the end. To be honest though, nothing sounded as good as the early songs, even if “Maximum Heartbreak” does a pretty close approximation. Putting “MF From Hell” after Smoke and Mirrors’ average “Emperor’s New Clothes” is a bit like following The Ladykillers with No Country for Old Men: when you remind people how much you rule, your C+s don’t stand the comparison too well.

The night ended with a gentle reminder to Zombie Common Sense (you know, that guy I introduced about eight million words of waffle ago) that there are a few people lurking about with the zombie equivalents of silver bullets, wooden stakes and garlic (horrible duets with Paul McCartney made worse by Will.I.Am perhaps?). Dolf had promised one more oldie to close the night, but the band got the nod that curfew was up and they had to down tools. There were still forty minutes before the zombie became a pumpkin, but when you’ve had three solid performances by three great bands under a cloudless, starlit sky, even the undead know that sometimes you should just quit while you’re ahead.

(Reposted at http://www.undertheradar.co.nz/utr/liveReview/CID/8/N/The_Datsuns,_The_Dirtbombs,_The_Bellrays:_The_King's_Arms,_Auckland,_New_Zealand,_11/03/08.utr)

2008 pitchfork lineup

2008-03-10T13:14:00.000-07:00

ok, so it's not strictly a live review, but it was the best thing I did last year, and pitchfork don't even have the lineup on their site yet, so I thought I'd post this.

I'd highly recommend getting yourself to Chicago between the 18th and 20th of July for:

Friday

Pitchfork Music Festival and All Tomorrow's Parties Present: "Don't Look Back" - featuring Public Enemy performing "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back"

Saturday

Animal Collective, !!!, Vampire Weekend, Dizzee Rascal, No Age, Atlas Sound, Fleet Foxes

Sunday

Spiritualized, M. Ward, Boris, Extra Golden, El Guincho

and some of the most fun you'll ever have at a festival. Hipster basketball, anyone? and the three days will cost you less than $70. genius.

Finding Friday, The Bourbon, Vancouver

2008-03-08T13:43:00.000-08:00

I had bold plans to have a quiet night in tonight, curled up with some text commentary of test cricket (my dream job is to write wry, funny, and charming text commentary of cricket matches, much like the folk on cricinfo do), my copy of the new LC! record
(which proves that if you drown pretty much anything in enough glockenspiel, you can make it sound wonderful - and it's got enough snappy one liners to keep me in facebook statuses for a month), and hunting the internet for news of a Pavement reunion (an enterprise that is always positive - even if you don't find any concrete news, you can take solace in the fact that everyone involved realizes that it would probably be an unmitigated disaster (I mean, they kinda sucked live while they were together orginally), and probably shouldn't happen). So I dropped in to the record store on the way home, picked up their last Dirtbombs ticket (and thus begins the countdown to the greatest live garage rock band in the universe), and a sixer of Colt 45 (8% and still only $11 a six pack? how do they stay in business), and went home to settle in on the couch.

But then I get home, and my boss IMs me to tell me to go get drunk, and expense it, and because I have the willpower and spine of a sea cucumber, I find myself at the Bourbon in Gastown, watching Finding Friday.

When I used to spend a lot of time in suburban pubs, I'd be amazed at the musicianship of the covers bands that played there. They could snap out note-perfect renditions of remarkably mundane MOR rock and roll songs (there was one that had a singer that looked a lot like the guy from Creed, and even seemed to cut his hair at roughly the same time as the Creed guy - I think this covers band also used to employ a front-of-stage rotating fan to blow the singer's hair back while he sang), and I always wondered why you'd spend all that time getting that good at your instruments only to waste it by playing junky songs to a shitty crowd. As soon as I was good enough not to be totally embarrassed playing in public (and whether I've actually reached that level is still up for debate), I wanted to get out there and play our own stuff, hoping that one day we'd put together a pop-gem that was even a small fraction as good as I wanna hold your hand. Admittedly, in a covers band I imagine you get paid, people actually come to watch, and I imagine there's a certain type of suburban girl that finds that attractive, all three of which didn't really happen for my band. But at least I got to dream.

Having said that, Finding Friday aren't a covers band. But I think if they decided to go that way, they'd make a damn good one. There was probably more musical talent on stage than at the last 5 indie shows I went to put together, the singer has a great soulful voice, and the rest of the band is tight, sharp, and not unattractive. Their songs are standard fare, but not without hooks, even if the rhythm section does occasionally get a little bit of a RHCP funk thing happening, and there was one point where something about the wahwah pedal made me think I could have sworn I was listening to the Doobie Brothers. This is not a good thing. And if I were them, I'd shelve the midset banter about their new lighting rig, and the constant requests to buy their t-shirts - Matchbox 20 tried the corporate thing, and look where it got them - playing second fiddle to Alanis Morrissette.

Regardless, they're not going to change the world (but then again, neither is Bono), or teach you how to talk to the girl in the stripes, but once I got over my rockandroll snobbery, I had a cracking time. There's worse ways to spend a Friday night than dancing to a competent rock and roll band in the company of an appreciative crowd with some good friends.

Post-show the DJ started off by announcing that he was going to play a mixture of stuff, which normally means he'll play both "progressive" and "commercial" house music, but this dude was bananas. Everything from the Stones, to Daft Punk, to C and C Music Factory (it's always good to dust off my running man, it was getting a little rusty). The enjoyment level was aided by the fact that I was talking to and dancing with the cutest blond girl I've seen in Vancouver (albeit without fruition - any other short girls in black dresses with librarian glasses can post their phone numbers in the comments thread), and I finally got back home to resume my quiet night in at around 3 in the morning (although I walked home just so I could listen to the LC! record again on my ipod - if anyone lives under or near granville bridge, and heard someone shouting "nothing says I miss you like poetry cut in your door with a stanley knife", "every sentence began and ended with ellipsis" or "when the smaller picture's the same as the bigger picture, you know that you're fucked", that was just me. Sorry.)

And luv, I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna teach your boyfriend how to dance with you.

Holy Fuck, A Place To Bury Strangers, The Clips, Richards on Richards, Vancouver, February 25

2008-02-26T19:51:00.000-08:00

Everything was coming up 'me' on Monday. For some reason I was in an unfathomably good mood, I had a relatively gentle day at work, and I'd newly discovered the joys of hypemachine (thanks for the assist, sis), which lets me listen to new Stephen Malkmus songs in a neverending loop, and around lunchtime the Sasquatch lineup was posted, and it was of supreme quality (The Cure, the Malk, Destroyer, Flight of the Conchords and Christmas on Mars, the most eagerly awaited piece of bad cinema this side of the next Rocky or Rambo remake).

Actually, I'm gonna digress here. If I was ever asked to compete on the television quiz show Mastermind, I think my area of specialist knowledge would probably be "Charming anecdotes about how nuts the Flaming Lips are" (that or "Jarvis Cocker's haircuts"). And one of my favourite Lips moments is from the Fearless Freaks movie, where they admit they had to halt scriptwriting for the film because they weren't sure if Stephen Drozd was going to kill himself with his heroin addiction or not - and as he played the lead character, that would have been a problem.

My other favourite thing about the Flaming Lips is that at special shows, they have a goddamn UFO, and they're bringing said UFO to Sasquatch. Given that the last time they played out there it was the most surreal experience of my life (doing a karaoke singalong of "War Pigs" at 2 in the morning after a torrential hailstorm while pouring fake blood on yourself is exactly why I wish Wayne Coyne was my dad (I don't really mean that, dad)).

But anyway, enough digression. It should be relatively clear that I was in a pretty good mood. So I returned home from work, and was contemplating my evening, when I decided on the spur of the moment that I was gonna go to the Holy Fuck/A Place to Bury Strangers show that I'd been loosely contemplating. And I'm remarkably glad I did.

I was surprised to note that I haven't actually been to Richards yet this year, which is a shame, because it's my favourite venue in town, and I normally end up sneaking along there about once every two weeks. It's got a pretty sweet upstairs area, where if you're early enough and smart enough, you can stand behind and above the band, and I've never waited more than 3 minutes for a drink at the little bar tucked in the back corner. It is a happy place.

I rolled in at 9.30ish to a surprisingly full Richards - I'm not hyperfamiliar with either of the headliners, but the venue was a good 2/3 full. I walked in to a band playing, so I ended up playing the good old-fashioned guessing game to deduce how far through the bill they were (tips for new players - see how many drum kits are still stored at the back of stage). In this case, there were two, which meant that I was watching the last half of the set by the Clips, who seemed a competent little shoegazey/stomp-pop - the one song that sticks in the memory had a neat little ooey-ooey-oo refrain. As I normally do during support bands (and lets face it, during headliners as well) I started scanning the faces of those around me - and noticed two things - that they were undeniably attentive (for a support band) and almost exclusively male, and in their late 20s or early 30s. I made a mental note to suggest that shows by art-noise bands were awesome places to meet your future husband, until I moved across the room, and found that the other side of the room was predominantly female. I don't really know where this anecdote is going, but for some reason (i.e. alcohol) I thought it was a fascinating point last night).

A Place To Bury Strangers (henceforth aPtBs - I love bands that you can acronymise) were not nearly as much like Joy Division as I had prepared myself for- all the stuff I've heard from them thus far has been characterized by the singers deep voice and clipped delivery, a la Mr Curtis (and possibly the fact that nearly everyone in the world seems to have a Joy Division obsession right about now). They sounded a little more like a more interesting, faster Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (and note that I'm a child of the mainstream (as much as I don't like to admit it), so while I imagine there's a bunch of bands that are much better comparisons, I'm gonna have to stick with what I know).

I believe there was dancing, and plenty of toe-tapping, the bassist had one of the prettiest Thunderbird basses I've seen in a while (actually, is there such a thing as a non-pretty thunderbird bass? It could quite possibly be one of the most aesthetically pleasing pieces of machinery ever) and aPtBS were a whole bunch of fun. But they had nothing on Holy Fuck, who are from Toronto and play instrumental electronic music, but there's nary a computer in sight. There was a sizeable delay while one of their mixers caught fire, and was replaced with a different one. The band were most apologetic, but once they got started, it was worth the wait.

With a stage setup that features a keyboard set up across from a mixing desk, with a drummer and bassist in the middle, the band play off each other right throughout, and they're obviously pretty excited to be up there playing, the smile doesn't leave their faces. There's a rotating cast of quirky assorted noisemaking devices, from a child's microphone, which delivered some incredibly distorted vocals reminiscent of the otherworldly squeaks in that Battles single that gets posted everywhere, to one of those keyboards with a tube that you blow into to generate the noise (which I last saw in the Los Campesinos! video for the International Tweexcore Underground.

All this enthusiasm and quirkiness can obscure the fact that they play hip, danceable, electronic music, and after a couple of tracks the toe-tapping metamorphosed into full scale dancing - unheard of for Vancouver on a Monday night. For a moment, it felt like a Girl Talk show without the frat boys and retro samples. So after an hour of this, a dig at how bad their Calgary show was the previous evening (the second best way to endear yourself to a Vancouver crowd, is to tell them they're better than the crowd in Calgary - the best way? - compare it to Toronto) a delightfully brief, and enthustiastically filled pre-encore break, and you had one fucking good time. Nice work, sirs.

show of the year thus far. But they'll face some stiff competition from the Lips in May)

I had about a thousand things I wanted to add to this in my head last night, but I'm pretty sure that the drunk fairy came and took all my original thoughts away, and didn't even have the decency to leave me a quarter in return. bitch.

Cassette, Ned Collette, Bachelorette, February 14, Whammy Bar, Auckland

2008-02-21T19:09:00.000-08:00

This post was supposed to be a stirring account of the grand return of Auckland's least favourite hung-over country rock band, a 2-drummer/drunk-singer extravaganza of enthusiasm failing to overtake a complete and utter lack of talent.

Alas, it wasn't to be, and the Alpha Males weren't to be playing this evening. There was a show tentatively booked, but it fell through, and attempts to wrangle a second show at show notice were also unsuccessful. Which was a shame, because it may have also featured the international debut of the Nested Ifs, although, having never practised, I'm not sure if that would have been a good thing.

Incidentally, the reason the original show fell through was because it was booked for Valentines Day, and those organizing the show figured, albeit correctly, that most of our friends, who are generally coupled, would choose to have a romantic dinner somewhere and not come to our show. However, I think an opportunity was missed to get a whole bunch of single girls to come along and be charmed by our sonic prowess, because everyone knows that there's a certain type of girl to whom spending Valentines Day alone is the equivalent of hell on earth, and you know that if a girl does turn up to your show alone, that her boyfriend is either a) lazy or b) imaginary. We could have been the skinny, underfed, pasty indie rock equivalent of Manpower. or not - last time I stripped on stage it wasn't received well.

But instead, I found myself at Whammy Bar in St Kevin's Arcade watching Cassette et al. Admittedly, there's several things that Cassette have that Alpha Males don't - namely talent, good looks, good songs, fans, a hit EP and witty stage banter, so I'll have to concede that I wasn't too upset to be in the audience rather than on stage this evening. Tonight was my first trip to the Whammy Bar, when I was last in Auckland it was home to an exclusive dance club (which was actually kinda cool, for a dance club), which I know I've been to, but I must have been messed up last time I went there, as I remembered nothing about the interior). It's apparently affiliated with the excellent Wine Cellar, further down St Kevin's Arcade, where I spent an outstanding Tuesday evening at the Eavesdrop Listening Party (here's a concept someone needs to export to North America - you pay 4 dollars to the knowledgeable gentleman at the door, who hands you a pamphlet, which has reviews of 10-15 albums coming out in the recent past or the near future, and throughout the evening you listen to a selection of songs off those records, while lounging on couches and sipping outstanding wine, while being periodically given chances to win said records).

Anyway, the bar is a cosy little underground nook, with a small step of a stage, but plenty of seating and a neat little atmosphere. The standard assortment of rocknroll illuminati was in attendance, (the singer from the Reduction Agents and the bassist from TransAm were standing in my sphere of view) and at one point my sister pointed out Liam Finn's girlfriend. I was tempted to attempt to cut his lunch, just for being a precociously talented little goofball, but then I remembered that every time I've met him he's been lovely, and that the poor girl was far too intelligent to be fooled in to going for a guy like me.

and the female turnout was a little low-key - there was one lonely looking girl over in the corner, but I wasn't feeling particularly attractive with a spectacularly burnt and peeling nose, so I decided that pretending I wasn't interested was preferable to a extravagant crash and burn, so I thought I'd concentrate instead on the music.

Which, incidentally, was first rate. Opening was Bachelorette, who I thought were a jangly little 3 piece all girl outfit, but turned out to be one girl, some loops and electronica, and a couple of keyboards (I have no idea who the jangly 3 piece were), and she was entertaining, although mid-show banter isn't her strong point.

Ned Collette was a pointy-shoed, pointy-sideburned australian, but I'm not going to hold either of those three things against him. He played some gentle acoustic songs, that sounded a little like quiet, introspective Tim Rogers songs (I'm thinking the slow parts of "What Rhymes with Cars and Girls" or "The Luxury of Hysteria", and some countrified rocknroll stomp reminiscent of countrified Tim Rogers "Spit Polish", or "Dirty Ron". That's possibly a little oversimplistic as a description, but Ned had some snappy songs, a great laid-back stage presence, and sounded better with a backing band than on his own (but it's a rare performer that doesn't).

Cassette too have their laid back stage presence down. The band was formed around a couple of guys who played with some seminal Wellington rock/metal bands, (the letterbox lambs, and head like a hole, the latter of which you may be familiar with, and if you're not, you should be, for their cover of "summer nights" alone (which incidentally I sang at a school assembly when I was 15).

The stage show mostly consists of the drummer and the guitarist lofting verbal barbs at each other (more on that later), but Cassette specialise in low key dreamy pop songs. They released a six song EP called emo (they were emo before it even existed) a long long time ago, (2001, apparently) and put out a debut record last year. In between they've been living in Melbourne, and obviously playing a lot of shows, because they're super-comfortable passing the time live on stage. Their best songs, "nothing to do", "don't let anyone" and the new single that they play on the b (the greatest radio station in the universe) that I haven't caught the name of yet, were all in the offing tonight, and they were perfect for a small, low-key midweek gathering. The late hour (it was nearly 12.30 before they went on) made it seem even more appropriate, like a country balladeer playing in a southern honkytown long after all the respectable folk had gone home, and everyone was lying drunk in the corners.

The onstage banter was of the highest calibre, with most inter-song moments filled with some sort of anecdote. I'm a little regretful that I waited a week to write about this, as I've forgotten most of the best bits. one story involved their night in Taupo the night before, where a young local said "you guys dress like homos", to which they replied "i think the word you are looking for is "dandys". The crowning glory was after the last song, when there was some genuine cheering for an encore, and the drummer said "instead of a encore, how about we play that last one again, but a little bit faster". He then asked for a show of hands, and those who wanted the last song again narrowly outvoted those who wanted a different song, so they played it again, a little bit faster. it was genius.

Alright, you must excuse me, I need to go search the internet obsessively for a way to get hold of the new Los Campesinos album " Hold on now, youngster" (complete with the requisite comma) before its north america release date in a ridiculously 2 months time. The pitchfork review featured this line, if they weren't already my favourite band, they would be more so after this "they document it with an emotional vividness that should have Pete Wentz friending them in no time. (Even though he probably won't get most of their jokes.)" genius.

(reposted at http://www.undertheradar.co.nz/utr/liveReview/CID/9/N/Cassette,_Ned_Collette,_Bachelorette,_February_14,_Whammy_Bar,_Auckland.utr)

The Ruby Suns, Kill Surf City, The Nudie Suits, The Kings Arms, Auckland, 8 Feb 2008

2008-02-17T20:45:00.000-08:00

I no longer live in Auckland, New Zealand, a fact that frequently pains me. Especially when I come home to visit in the midst of a relatively bleak Vancouver winter, into a golden summer of sunshine, beaches, cricket and meat pies (all of which I'd experienced within 36 hours of touching down on NZ soil). I spent a great week catching up with old friends, but it wasn't until Friday night that I got to check in on another old chestnut, the Kings Arms.

The Kings Arms goes pretty close to being my favourite venue in the universe, not just because it is normally the best place in Auckland to see everything from local up and comers, to touring international bands that you'd actually want to see, but also because of its unique layout and antipodean charm.

Right at the front of the dancefloor, immediately to the right of the stage are a couple of glass doors which open out into an enormous, sprawling garden bar, with picnic tables and stools spread around a sumptuous lawn. There's nothing better than to wander out there between bands or before the show starts and enjoy a couple of drinks on a warm summer's evening. If you play your cards right, and undertake the correct pre-show maneouvering, you can snare a table where you can still see the stage (as long as nobody stands in front of you), which is a rare treat indeed.

The other neat thing about the Kings Arms is that the "backstage" area pretty much consists of a couple of office partition walls set up in a corner of the garden bar, but this less-than-resplendent green room means that bands often opt to just stand in the crowd and visit the bar with the regular folk during the support bands and after the show. New Zealand seems to have a weird attitude towards celebrity where any action that acknowledges fame is frowned upon. So Julian Casablancas from the Strokes could be standing at the bar next to you and all that anyone will do to recognize this fact is a barely impercetible nod in his direction (although there was the time when my good friend approached Meg White as she was leaving the bathroom to ask if she'd like to accompany him back to his place to watch Dazed and Confused - she politely indicated that while she respected it as a piece of cinema, she had other plans for the evening, and couldn't partake - she's a classy lady, that Meg.)

But anyway, I rolled up lateish on Friday night to catch the recently re-staffed (and pitchfork reviewed) Ruby Suns, and was impressed to see much of the Lil' Chief artistic roster at the front of the audience watching the Nudie Suits, which was a pleasant surprise, as I hadn't seen them billed for this show anywhere. Lil' Chief Records is an Auckland label that puts out releases from a number of local bands that specialize in a particular brand of sunny pop music, with bands like the Brunettes and the Reduction Agents the star attractions. They're a little DIY label that are doing some big things now, and there's almost an incestuous level of member sharing between the various bands, even though each group retains a unique sound and attitude. But everyone was there tonight, a quick head count revealed at least three Brunettes, a Tokey Tone, and a Reduction Agent.

The Nudie Suits, who opened tonight, are a great little 50s themed country rock band, fronted by Mark on guitar and Dionne on Hawaiian Steel guitar (and her sister, whose name I regrettably forget, on violin). They always look the part (but having encountered them at Foodtown Mt Eden (the rockandroll supermarket) I realised they always dress like that), and write witty charming country pop songs about suburban life and black comedians (a topic always close to my heart). Every Nudie Suits show is a good show, and this one was as charming and low key as ever.

The second band were Kill Surf City, who I haven't seen before (at least not that I remember), and I'll have to do them a disservice and admit that I ran in to an old friend in the garden bar between sets, and didn't end up catching too much of them. They seemed to play some perfectly serviceable laid back guitar rock, but I can't remember any particular high points or elements of interest, so I'll need to move along.

However, there are several points of interest about the Ruby Suns that are worth addressing. Like most of the New Zealand population, Ryan McPhun, (the singer and principal songwriter of the Ruby Suns) used to be the drummer in the Brunettes, and after leaving he put together a sunny eponymously-titled pop record, which had at least three pretty fancy songs on it, that used to remind of sunny summer evenings, until I used the CD as a coaster for a candle, and wrecked it. Last time I saw them, they were a six or seven piece multi-instrumental affair, but they always seemed a little bland live. This time, I was a little surprised to see that they'd stripped down to a three piece - Ryan plays the drums and the guitar, with backing guitars, bass and keys shared between the other two members. The guitar/drums combination is an interesting one that seems to be gaining some traction in NZ indie circles, I see Liam Finn (Son of Neil of Split Enz and Crowded House fame) runs a similar setup live (and I don't want to start any inter-band name calling by suggesting who started doing it first). Generally they'll start off on the drums and lay down the beat, and then loop that up using an effects pedal, and play the guitar over the top of it. It makes for some great visual chemistry, especially when they come back to the drums at various points in the song to add different elements to the loop, and I've decided that I've become a big fan of people playing the drums standing up.

Songs off the Ruby Suns new record, Sea Lion, (edit - which was recently Best New Music'd!) seem to have more of a tribal african/polynesian atmosphere to them (or it could have been the singers kaftan (and I realise that kaftan is possibly the wrong word, but it's far as my vocabulary extends, and I don't know if many of the reading audience will know what a muumuu is). The songs also sound a little more focused (at least in a live setting) and it turned out to be a pretty goddamn fun night, which was finished up with their current radio hit "Tane Mahuta", which is sung in Maori, and is about a large tree, of which I am acquainted. I was impressed to see that as soon as the band finished, someone put a record on, and the dancing started (I've been there on nights where people stand tapping their feet waiting for the bands to finish so that the real party can get started), but alas, I had commitments the next day that prevented me from partaking with the gusto I wished to.

I was also a little sad that those commitments prevented me coming back the next night to see James Milne (also ex-Brunette) play in three different bands (The Reduction Agents, Lawrence of Arabia, and Auckland's finest Paul McCartney and Wings covers band, The Disciples of Macca)
and I'm even sadder that I'll be back in Canada by the time the Datsuns and Dirtbombs play a show together. Imagine that - Cambridge's finest, who bleed garage rock when you cut them, and the Detroit collective that feature two bassists, two drummers, and a cross between Marvin Gaye and Iggy Pop on lead vocals. The afterparty for that one will go long into the wee hours, I'm sure.

Speaking of the wee hours, it was awfully refreshing to find myself still dancing to "Teenage Kicks" at 5am the next night, without being forced unceremoniously onto the streets, but that, I believe, is a story for another time.

EDIT - I just remembered a story from Saturday night that is tenuously relevant. While walking outside the casino, we ran in to a young man who looked suspiciously like Luke from the Phoenix Foundation (North American listeners may be familiar with them from the Eagle Vs Shark Soundtrack). So we asked him to wax my colleagues upper thigh, and he graciously obliged. Those New Zealand musicians are always happy to help out their fellow man.

The Cave Singers, Fanshaw, The Media Club, Vancouver

2008-02-02T15:14:00.000-08:00

This is exactly the sort of show where writing this sort of thing isn't the best idea in the universe. Don't get me wrong, it's not like The Cave Singers were bad - in fact - far from it. It's just that it was just a perfectly serviceable indie rock show at a club that I go to ten or twenty times a year. There's just nothing particularly interesting to construct a decent narrative about - nothing noteworthy happened, and there were no on-stage shenanigans worthy of conversion to web-sludge.

But then I find myself with 6 idle hours in the hell-hole of humanity that is LAX, and a cute blond girl in a dress sits down across the lounge from me, and tapping this out is the closest I get to this:

XKCD Journal

Although, maybe that's not the best idea in the world, because there's also this:

http://www.xkcd.com/377/

We'll see what happens. And my desire to talk to her has diminished now that she's pulled out a copy of Us magazine and is reading it as intently as if it's a Dostoyevsky novel.

Anyway, enough digression. Thursday night it was back to the Media Club to see the Cave Singers, upon the hearty recommendation of my sister, who promised to make my life hell if I didn't partake (and as I'm actually seeing her this week, she can actually make good on that threat this time).

I strolled in at what I thought was a reasonable time (9pm - I'll never figure out what time to get to shows in this town - I've turned up at 9pm before to be greeted by crowds of people leaving, talking about how good Magnolia Electric Co were.) to find that I was pretty much the only one there - apart from the band, who stuck out as they were the ones peering intently at the currency trying to figure out what denomination they were holding (when you're from Seattle, which is less than 2 hours from the border, shouldn't you know what it looks like? - I get enough crap when I'm in the states for having to read the denominations on the notes, and there, it's all the same colour). But luckily, I wasn't too early, as the room packed out within minutes, and my premature arrival meant I got a table.

Support for the evening was a band called Fanshaw. I'm reliably informed that they feature ex-members of various other Vancouver collectives (to paraphrase Karen "the bassist is in EVERYTHING") and they played a split show - the first half was a boy/girl guitar/voice Gram and Emmy-Lou-type thing (and you're gonna have to take my word for it when I tell you that I was planning to use that analogy before they dropped in to Love Hurts), and the second half featured a full band, playing some laid back country rock. I'd offer more, but apparently I've turned in to one of those people that talk all the way through shows, because I don't really remember actually watching too much of them. I hate myself right now.

Drat, blond girl just left, but another girl just sat down next to me with a copy of the national enquirer, which I can kinda see. On the negative side, she can also see this screen, so I probably shouldn't be writing this.

Anyway, the Cave Singers are a three piece, but I can't tell you what three pieces, and I'm resisting the temptation to look up on the internet to find out, because I was too far back to see on Thursday. However, I did notice that they play dreamy country pop, that was most engaging, and I can totally see why my sister is so into them. They're a little bit Grizzly Bear-ish, they have a genial stage presence (even if some of the banter fell flat, but sometimes, that's the best thing about banter) and they finished up with a good old-fashioned foot stomper, that sent everyone home on a positive note.

I bought a shirt off one of them afterwards (if someone (namely, me) was ever going to devise a mathematical formula to determine how much I might potentially like a band, selling your own merch would definitely need to be worth a lot of points) and they seemed like good dudes. There were a couple of people trying to get some dancing happening after the show (they're obviously new in town, because it won't happen in Vancouver - although I am 24 hours from Auckland, where the show itself is just something that has to be endured before the post-show dancing starts) and I was accosted by a drunk girl who berated me for my lack of knowledge about the violently fashionable record label advertised by my t-shirt, only to turn out to be wrong. (and I wikipediaed the second I got home just to prove to myself that Final Fantasy wasn't on Secretly Canadian, just so I could go to bed secure in the knowledge that I was, in fact, right)

right, I'm gonna go now - only 3 hours of airport hell to go. but I'm gonna pretend to write this a little longer, so I can finish the story I've been reading vicarously about how Jared from the subway ads' wife left him because "celebrity drove a wedge through their relationship". Awesome.

The Satellite Nation, Media Club, Vancouver

2008-01-28T23:47:00.000-08:00

So, Saturday didn't quite turn out like it was supposed to. My sole task for the day was to get from Mountain View, California, back to Vancouver, and by 11am, things were looking rosy. I'd managed to shake off the effects of a tough night playing Rock Band (the gravelly voice, the ache in the calf muscles and forearms, the sense of edgy excitement - it was like I'd just got back from a big night out on the town and/or a live show, but really I'd just stayed up late playing video games with workmates - and don't be surprised if people stop forming real bands and just sit around living rooms playing this - it really is that much fun), and get myself to San Jose airport. Flight number one to Portland was a little tense, I was sitting next to a scared flier, which is always a nerve-wracking experience, especially when my casual nonchalance towards flying intensified her agitation even more.

But in Portland, things went south, with weather and mechanical problems turning a 40 minute layover into a 8 hour ordeal, of which the only saving grace is the fact that in PDX airport you can get a microbrewed pint of beer for less than $4 dollars. And then they have the gall to run a happy hour from 3 to 6, where the price dropped even further. And there's no sales tax. I don't know how other states stay in business, because everyone in their right mind should move to Oregon.

So let's just say that by the time I got to The Media Club in Vancouver, at around 10.30, I was in quite a state. and it didn't help my mood at all when the first thing I saw was a Dustin Diamond lookalike (what is it with people looking like him? there was a guy playing second drums for Menomena last time I saw them who looked like him as well) draped in an Australian flag. And behind the stage was another incredibly large, red, white and blue monstrosity (the best thing about the australian flag? if you're a little bit drunk, and you squint your eyes just right, you can convince yourself it's the New Zealand one). Things were not going to turn out well.

Now, I like Australians as much as the next guy. Sure, they've generally got an smug air of superiority about them (the Flight of the Conchords episode where the Australian character brags about Ayers Rock - "It's a bloody big rock, mate" - is pretty much spot on), and they can lay it on a bit thick with the sheep jokes, but when you're on the wrong side of the world, you generally find yourself relating to their way of thinking more so than you do than with any other nationality. And plus, it's someone to talk about cricket with.

However, as soon as you get a large number of australians in one place, and make any sort of mention of nationalism, patriotism, or sporting events, pretty soon you're ready to strangle anyone who dares shout "Aussie, aussie, aussie, oi, oi, oi" for the ten thousandth time (Also - Dear North America, It's pronounced "ozzy", like the lead singer of Black Sabbath, not Oss Si, as you seem to be intent on pronouncing it. It's their nickname, learn how to say it properly. Regards,). I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers of TVs smashed in New Zealand during the Sydney Olympics skyrocketed to unprecedented levels - every time there was a crowd shot or the local colour reporter was mingling with the populace, there'd be a parade of green and gold-clad buffoonery as far as the eye could see.

But you see, when walking in to the Media Club on Saturday night, I realized what I'd done. I'd gone to see an Australian band on Australia Day, which is pretty close to hell to someone of my geographic persuasion.

Luckily, it all turned out pretty goddamn well. For all the doom and naysaying to this point, the kids in Satellite Nation know what they're doing. In the interests of full disclosure, I should probably mention that I have, on occasion, spent time with the members of said band, and enjoyed their company. But they're still a whole bunch of fun.

Now, their particular brand of pop/emo/rock is not really my cup of tea (and I realize how much of a knob it makes me while sitting on my couch watching Vampire Weekend videos on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlgNFwoApec&feature=related - PS - anyone wanna teach me how to embed videos?) and making holier than thou comments like that) but sometimes people like me just need to get over themselves and enjoy a night out for what it is - a group of enthusiastic and talented (and it must be said, not unattractive) young men play cracking pop songs to a captive audience. Which, also means that they've got the Alpha Males beat on at least two of those three points (I'll leave it up to you to deduce which ones).

The lads left the australio-centric histrionics to a minimum and let the music do the talking, belting through 8 or 9 songs (it could have been more, I was long gone by this point) of good quality, sandwiching their radio hit somewhere in the middle. From what I understand, they were relatively popular in Australia, doing national tours supporting some high level bands, and have come up to North America to try their luck here. They've got a nice clean live show, and I've seen them blow local bands off the stage on more than one occasion. It sounds like they're getting some play on one of the local rock stations, which will do them well. and the video's pretty fancy too (and looks like it's racked up nearly 3,000 hits on youtube in the last two months, which currently is roughly 2920 more hits than the last song I wrote that got posted on the internet, but who's counting? (and again, in the interests of full disclosure, I should again note that at least 40 of those hits on my song were probably from me))

As always the Media Club was it's divealicious self, as per standard the bathroom had been repeatedly soiled by 11pm, and by about 12.30, I was pretty close to soiling it myself, so I beat a hasty retreat to my icy apartment. Thank the lord my winter is being temporarily interrupted for a two-week burst of temperatures in the mid 20s. And did I mention Interpol, Sonic Youth, Rufus Wainwright, and enough summery pop from people who spent too much time listening to Pet Sounds to sink a battleship. God bless the southern hemisphere.

The Blakes, The Blacks, Bottom Of The Hill, San Francisco

2008-01-18T20:38:00.000-08:00

Apparently there's only two things enjoy about shows. Well, there's more than two, but the two best are banter, and good haircuts. And there was plenty of both in the offing at the Bottom of the Hill tonight at the Blakes, who are a bit of a buzz band out of Seattle. But first, some entirely unnecessary background.

I've been having a pretty entertaining half week in Silicon Valley, roaming the streets of Mountain View, CA, looking to make smug google nerds feel bad about their lack of social skills. We also planned a trip out to Cupertino to harass Apple kids for free software updates for my ipod, but alas, we didn't make it.

But all the free public wifi in the world can't make up for the fact that this place is pretty much a cultural wasteland (even if those I've had in my company for the last few days have been first-rate), so Friday night I decided to jet up to San Francisco proper for a show (although the thought of the 50 minute each-way drive, and the fact that Ghostbusters 2 was on TV, made me nearly consider curling up and staying in).

Side note - When my friends' new math-rock band, the Nested Ifs (whose current poster tag-line should be "We're so new, we don't even have a myspace page") finally lets me join (apparently there's a 13,000 mile geographical issue), we should definitely do a week-long tour of the valley - Redwood City, Palo Alto, Mountain View, San Jose, Cupertino etc. These freaks (and I mean this in the nicest possible way) lap up Excel jokes like they're going out of fashion.

I've been to San Francisco something like 6 times in the last 18 months, but until now, I've yet to get to a show. I tried to go to Yo La Tengo in August, but ended up at Japanese-language karaoke instead, and I once saw a Soft Cell tribute band at an 80s club night, but I don't think that counts (can anyone name another Soft Cell song that's not Tainted Love? - that's ok, because neither could the Soft Cell tribute band).

So, upon the recommendation of a colleague, I got in my convertible Chrysler Sebring (there was a mix-up at the rental car agency, and I'm stuck driving the world's dorkiest car. I came this close to making a bumper sticker that read "My other car is a 92 Chevrolet Corsica" just so people wouldn't think I was the kind of tosser that would buy one of these) and set out on the 101, and rolled in to the surprisingly easy-to-find venue.

Apparently the place has a reputation for being one of the best places to see a show in the city, and I can see why; it's the quintessential small rock club, low ceilings, a little too hot, easy access to the bar - in short, pretty much my spiritual home. It also has a nice air of non-pretension about it, the bar staff are middle aged, instead of young and hip, and the bands set up and pack down all their own shit, with only a ten minute break between bands - none of the keeping the audience waiting bullshit. The only weird thing about it was that it was all ages - but there was no segregation between the minors and the bar. Maybe it's a California thing, and I'm just used to living in places where they're anal about alcohol, but it's still a little disconcerting to see a 15 year old kid standing next you while you're pounding back a beer.

I wanted to say that the place was kinda like the bar in a scene of "10 Things I Hate About You" where Julia Stiles goes to see a girl punk band (part of me wants to think the bar is called "The Cat's Meow"), but that comparison would be plainly inapt. I just really wanted to use that reference.

The appetizer this evening was a band called the Blacks (with my accent, asking strangers in the crowd what the support band was called produced some interesting confusion -

Random Stranger "They're called The Blacks"
Me "No they're not, I can see the Blakes over there. They're playing next. What are these guys called?"
RS - "The Blacks"
M - "I know, but who are these guys"
RS - Thinking (probably) "This guy is retarded. and he keeps looking at my girlfriend. I'm going to the bar."

Anyway, they're a guitar/drums/tambourine combo with a boy/girl singer, and they're kinda new wavey patti smith/blondie ish. It sounded pretty good, and I'd claim that the enthusiastic tambourine player had taken his cues from the tambourinist from the Brian Jonestown Massacre had I: a) ever seen them play, or b)seen the movie "DIG". However, I've heard enough about both anecdotally to know that this is the gold-standard for enthusiastic tambourine playing.

The Blakes were playing tonight, which worked out pretty well, because I've been wanting to see them for a little while now. I listen to a lot of KEXP through the day, and they play a lot of them, as they're from Seattle, and play pop-rock that's straightforward enough to be radio-friendly, but interesting enough to not bore the tits off a bull. I'm sure they've been playing at at least 4 festivals that I've been to in Washington, but I have an unfortunately habit of having atrocious border luck when I drive to festivals, and always end up missing the first bands I want to see (and if the border gods are particularly against me, I miss all the bands I want to see, and get there in time for Fergie. Awesome.)

But the Blakes had exceptional haircuts (that wouldn't have looked out of place on Rusty Hopkinson (incidentally, some quick wikipediaing just taught me that Rusty's cat is called Chairman Meow - I'm using that some day) circa 1996), and a refreshing enthusiasm and excitement to be playing. They bantered well (they started with "I think we've got the wrong place, there's too many people here") and someone bought the band a round of shots, only for the bassist to pound them all, along with a follow up shot for good measure. and these were good, 3 ounce, american shots, too. By the end of the show he was trolleyed, it was outstanding. but they looked and sounded good, and write and perform snappy garage pop songs that wouldn't have gone amiss in the 3 weeks in 2004 when Auckland was the garage rock capital of the universe. Everything's infused with a strong sense of melody, and the lyrics are delivered with a good, old-fashioned, pack-a-day, gravelly wail.

Something about them reminded me of Jet. And then I immediately resisted this sentiment, before catching myself - there was nothing wrong with Jet. Like Jeff Tweedy once said to a reporter who cracked a disparaging joke about his son being in a Jet covers band "You mean, you don't like rock and roll?"

Methinks that next time they play a festival in Washington, I'll make a point of getting there in time to see them, but I'm guessing they'll be playing later in the day - I think their days of early afternoon sets are numbered.

and if I can figure out how to attach a link here, check this out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwzciBNHU9I&feature=related

So, after that, there was another band, but the thought of the long drive at 1am, with a 7am wake up call saturday was too much to bear. And I'd had enough fun to feel satisfied for my $10 outlay... maybe I'll see the Magic Bullets another time. As it is, the sentences aren't really flowing like they're supposed to.

Righto, you'll have to excuse me, I'm flying to San Diego early tomorrow to stalk Ryan Adams, and to get him to teach me how to seduce young, vulnerable starlets, and then write critically acclaimed albums about them.

Bison, January 12, the Astoria, Vancouver

2008-01-13T23:34:00.000-08:00

It's a little sad that show number 1 of 2008 didn't arrive until 12 days in to the month, but for some reason winter turns Vancouver into a musical backwater. So it was with some excitement that I opened my account for the year by trooping to a metal show in the Downtown Eastside.

I've written at length elsewhere about how the DTES is a weird paradox of a place, and a fair proportion of the people who may eventually read this are already familiar with the concept, but it's a part of town that is a haven for the indigent, addicted, mentally unstable, and unhealthy. The poorest postal district in Canada, it's a place where it's probably easier to get crack than a can of coke, but lately it also seems to be home to a bevy of hipster bars, rock shows, and general awesomeness (rock and roll in a japanese restaurant where the audience sings karaoke hits in the breaks between bands, anyone?). And when I say "lately" I mean "in the two years since I've been in Vancouver" - any time the Vancouver Sun does a profile on the "new" trend of kids hanging in the 'hood, you can pretty much guarantee it's been going on for a considerable period of time.

So we rolled up to the Astoria, and it was packed - for possibly the first time in the bar's long and storied history, there was a line outside. I've not been to this particular establishment before, so I can't comment on it's normal level of patronage for a Saturday night, but it's obvious they were expecting big things - they'd set up supplementary alcohol stations at alternative locations around the room in order to sate the audience's thirst for cut-price beer (it's the closest I've seen to a crowd drinking a bar dry since the Alpha Males Bastille Day Extravaganza at Rick's Pool Bar, where we even finished the Turkish beer right at the back of the fridge).

Anyway, Bison are a local metal band, who came heartily endorsed by my friend Karen, who had seen them previously (I believe she called them "hard-driving", whatever that means). I can't remember the last metal show I went to (or if I've ever been to a metal show), but I did kinda see Mastodon in Chicago last summer (and by kinda, I mean I walked past, stopped momentarily to admire the amount of hair on stage, and then kept on walking to get another slice of deep dish pizza and to watch skinny kids in plaid shirts try and play basketball), so I'm familiar with this particular genre of metal.

Standing in the crowd, nursing a locally mass-produced beer (no product endorsement here, kids) I was reminded of a conversation I'd had earlier in the week, about whether hipster and scenester were complimentary or derogatory terms. I've always used hipster to describe a certain aesthetic (e.g, you can drink hipster beer, or go to a hipster bar), but I generally use it in a positive context, whereas I'll use scenester to describe the bandwagon-jumper in the corner, who read in GQ magazine that cardigans, beards, and slumming it at downtrodden bars was in this season. So, it turned out that my fellow conversationalist had fairly similar definitions for the same words, but they were directly reversed. Which is all apropos of nothing, except to say that the crowd for the most part fell into the first category, whatever that might be called.

I felt remarkably clean cut. Admittedly I have had a haircut in the last 3 months, which is good for me, and I'd shaved sometime in the previous 48 hours, but I was overwhelmed with a desire to go sit in a dark corner and concentrate on growing some facial hair. And you have no idea how much I wished my hair was long enough to shake around - having your fringe flop foppishly onto your forehead might gain you kudos at a Smith's covers band, but it is nothing compared to the waterfalls of unwashed man-mane that fly about at a metal show.

and the astoria is a weird venue. the sound set up looks about as reliable as the Vancouver weather (screamcore skate-metal bands lose something of their visceral power when the mike and several of the amps cut in and out during the course of a song), it has a strange medieval theme inside (arched panels line the walls) and it looked like someone set up a coloured disco ball (and those traffic lights that flash in time with the music) in 1976 and forgot to take it down.

The support for the evening was the aforementioned screamcore skate-metal band, Jaws, (highlights include the drummer stripping down to his underwear, the banter "this song's about skateboarding. Actually, all our songs are about skateboarding", and when the bassist's phone rang, and he went to answer it, saying "It's one of my bass buddies"), and Ladyhawk, of whom I didn't know what to expect. I have a friend who is in love with them, and we've been planned to get to their shows on 6 or 7 occasions, only to have our plans derailed by travel, apathy, or forces of nature. I have another friend who said she saw them supporting Mates of State, and that they were so out of place and bad, that she drunkenly heckled them for the duration of the show. Turns out that the band she saw and heckled wasn't Ladyhawk, because seconds after they came on stage, she sheepishly had to admit that they were someone completely different. Anyway, Ladyhawk were impressive - sharp, well-structured and solidly performed songs, that I wouldn't mind seeing again (and I'm betting I will, they seem to be relatively prolific about town).

and the headliners? Well, I don't really remember actually listening to them, I certainly remember being jostled (although I don't want this to be read as complaining - going to a metal show, standing within ten feet of the stage and complaining about being bumped into by a succession of over-enthusiastic gentleman is like going to the opera and complaining that some fat woman sang all the way through, ruining an otherwise enjoyable night out.) and I remember checking to see where my next beer was coming from, and looking about the room to see if any of the attractive women in attendance were looking at me (they weren't) - but everyone else seemed to enjoy it, and I'm pretty sure I'd go again, especially if it's at the Astoria.

PS - extra points go to the drummer in Bison who wore an improvised hat designed to look like a Buffalo. But let it be noted that points were removed when he took it off after one song. I realize it's hot up there, but you've got to suffer for your aesthetic.

PPS - anyone who was with me who may have said some of the things above that I have shamelessly copied and attributed to myself, I'm sorry. But get used to it. It will happen again.

preamble

2008-01-13T22:31:00.000-08:00

Ladies and gentlemen (although I'd be surprised if anyone reading this legitimately fits into either category),

When it all comes down to it, I don't actually do a hell of a lot. Most of my days consist of waking up late, having an express shower, dashing out the door without even a momentary consideration of breakfast, and arriving at work at least 15 minutes late (but most likely 20-40 minutes late). Then follows a 9 hour blast through the emotional rollercoaster that is work - from getting irritated with annoying customers, being terrified at large-scale public speaking, to the elation of solving a tricky problem or nailing a demo - I often sit back in my chair after what feels like 3 hours of work to find that it's 4pm already.

Once that's done, I'm into my-so-called leisure time, which on the average evening either involves a trip to the supermarket to buy something wholesome for dinner (P=0.1) or a trip to the holy triumvirate of broadway and granville fast food (Vera's burgers, the pizza joint, and the chinese takeaway) (P=0.9) and a jaunt to the liquor store for a sixer of PBR or a bottle of Canadian Club (or often, both), all of which is consumed and washed down with some televised sport (preferably a Canucks game or a football game, but let's face it, the actual content is irrelevant - I've spent many an evening enthralled by poker, strongman competitions or woodchopping) . From there, I'll either do some more work, or more likely get dragged into either a youtube or wikipedia time-suck, whereby I'll look at the clock and find it's 11 o'clock, and that I have no idea how i got to reading a wikipedia article on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge

You'll notice the total lack of exercise, social interaction, or charitable deeds in the above. And while I'm tailoring the actual description to suit the particular narrative thread I'm clumsily attempting to weave (for example, I also do laundry and housework, but I haven't mentioned that), there's not much in the day-to-day existence that qualifies as an achievement.

Except for one thing.

I go to a lot of shows. And I like to think I go to some pretty goddamn good ones. In fact, I go to so many, that I start to forget which ones I've been to, and I find myself in conversation with strangers unable to remember how many times I've seen the Flaming Lips, (3, apparently) and where on earth I saw them (Auckland, Vancouver, and in a hailstorm in upstate Washington). So to counter the memory-deadening and disorienting effects of alcohol, loud music and the relentless march of time, I've started this blog as a self-indulgent tool to capture this. I hereby present a list of every show I attend in 2008, wherever they may be.

Until now, I've been incredibly resistant to write about concerts I go to, for the most part because live reviews as a genre are generally incredibly dull. The majority of mainstream shows feature a band plodding through several of the songs on their latest record, tossing in a couple of earlier hits, leaving the stage for the obligatary 2 minutes, 45 seconds, before interpreting the bored muttering of the crowd at large as a request for the default encore, and return to play the one hit that they clearly and obviously hadn't played yet. A blow-by-blow account of that stirs up about as much literary passion as a brisk scan through the pages of the Canadian Journal of Dental Hygiene

However, there are a couple of redeeming features that I hope will rescue this particular enterprise.

1. I generally go to pretty fun shows. For the most part, you can tell when a band might do something special in a live setting, and know when to stay away when I know all I'm gonna get is a formulaic run-through of the live show playbook. But then again, sometimes we're surprised, and that's part of what keeps me coming back. But from Jarvis Cocker's endearing rant about self-pleasure, to Tim Rogers from You Am I's drunken belligerent challenge to the thief of Davie's guitar, to Eddie from Art Brut getting the crowd to chant "Put records in record stores" cool stuff always happens at shows I'm at.

2. I go to a bunch of different places. It seem like I'm never at home, and most of the time when I travel, it's to see a band or go to a festival. And it's incredible how the aura and ambience of a show changes depending where you are, what the venue is like - even in the Pacific Northwest, a Vancouver show is markedly different to a Seattle show, which in turn is worlds apart from a Portland show (and god bless Portland shows, because they're fantastic).

3. I have an unfortunate habit (as you may have noticed - there was never any intent for this preamble to consist of 500+ words) of getting off topic. In true Klostermanian fashion (Chuck Klosterman once wrote a book called "Killing Yourself to Live" which was ostensibly an investigation into why the untimely death of musicians can lead to popularity well beyond that which they would have enjoyed had they stayed alive. This was a noble, and valid, premise, but it was derailed slightly by the fact that nearly the entire book was about several of his ex-girlfriends, (and if these ex-girlfriends were harbouring any desires to re-acquaint with Mr Klosterman, I suspect any such feelings of reconciliation were quickly dispelled once they had read the book). And the book was a thousand times better for this lengthy and involved diversion - and is well reviewed here.) this blog is going to be less "about shows" as it is about life (or my life, to be precise). Think of the narrative structure as the dressmaker's model upon which the fabric of the rest of the narrative is draped. Or not.

And to end this lengthy dissertation, a disclaimer, and a plea. I reserve the right to get bored of this entire enterprise within a month. And should anyone be reading this who has any pull in the publishing, recording, or moviemaking industries, or is just interested in random acts of philanthropy, feel free to contact me if you're interested in paying me large sums of money to either:

a) travel the world and go to shows for a living
b) fly my band to Vancouver to make a chart-topping nerd-rock record
c) let me make a film chronicling the controversial, career-changing and dramatic 1993-1994 New Zealand cricket tour of South Africa. But only if we can get Jake Gyllenhaal to play a young, fresh-faced Stephen "Flaming" Fleming, Mark Ruffalo as Dion "Smoke the Hash" Nash, and that irritating scamp Russell Crowe to play Danny "the narc" Morrison. Oh, and we'll need to write a role in for Ellen Page, too.
d) let me design a in-car turntable system.