Last Friday night I sat in the back room of the Railway Club having a drink and waiting for the music to start. I was there to see Bells Clanging; a show that I hoped would cleanse my headspace as last week was the beginning of Christmas carol onslaught 2008. The first week of many to be top-heavy with glossy pop retreads of lousy 50’s era seasonal jingles, with the occasional original version thrown in to remind you that they were almost uniformly awful to begin with. For me, Christmas music (Vince Guilardi’s ‘It’s Christmas Charlie Brown’ theme music aside) is something that can only be enjoyed by people desperate to reinforce the appearance of holiday cheer. People who have never worked a retail job where you can’t escape any of these horrible tunes no matter how hard you try.
Bells Clanging have a surprising and delicate sound composed of high, brittle melodies. It’s hypnotic and shifty pop, textured and spare. The first time I saw them play the band had a human rhythm section that has since departed; it’s more of a one man show now. Jason Starnes’ vocals accompanied by his own guitar, keyboard and an array of programmed beats.
There’s a Radiohead comparison to be made to Bells Clanging, but that’s probably just a lazy reaction to the sound of Mr. Starnes’ voice. I love Radiohead, but he tone of Bells’ songs and the nature of the melodies lack the sense of anxiety and doom that shroud Radiohead’s music. It’s emotive without digressing into vocal wankery, ambitious without being pretentious, joyous without being sappy.
I was humming the brilliant “Even Stars Burn Out” by B.C. as I headed to the men's room and was greeted by the sight of a wad of blood stained toilet paper rotating anti-clockwise in a toilet bowl constantly trying to refill itself. I love the Railway Club on a Friday night.
I returned to the back room, four men sat close by reaching the end of a loud aggressive drunkening. As they got up and prepared to walk out into the frigid arms of the evening one stood out as extra annoying. His skin was badly mottled with drink; a pork pie hat was pushed back over his broad greasy forehead. He wavered a short distance across the room where his much slimmer, more attractive Australian friend had found himself pulled into conversation with two women.
Loud boy pushed himself into their midst and heard his friend utter the word "virgin". He was clearly not going to let a little thing like a total lack of conversational context keep him from shoehorning his excess of charm into their lives. He pointed a sausage-like finger at his friend for emphasis as his beer breath washed over them like a toxic cloud.
“Virgin?” he shouted. “So what you’re trying to say here is that you’re a virgin?”
His friend squirmed visibly, tried desperately to acknowledge his friend and somehow maintain eye contact with the women as their orbs rotated disgustedly to the left.
“Yep. I, I guess that must be what I’m saying.” He said.
The question was repeated a few more times at greater volume and got the same response. Loud boy seemed frustrated that the ribs of his audience weren’t shattering under onslaught of convulsive laughter. He had become the anti-wingman but couldn’t see it. Another of his table mates collected him and guided him out with surprising and totally unearned gentleness. You could see the same word twisting its way out of everyone left in their wake. A potent phrase for annoying dude-bro motherfuckers like him, a word whose passage you can taste. We dubbed him Douchebag.
When you see a man like this in a bar, a man who no less than three times punctuated his drunken jackassery by throwing an imaginary woman across the table to mime fucking her roughly while slapping her invisible ass, there is no word that springs to mind faster. But I don’t think it’s all that fitting a description. Actual douchebags serve a purpose in the world and honestly, unlike a douchebag, when I looked at that guy I found it really hard to believe he'd be inserted into a woman, ever.
I eventually left the back room of the Railway and pushed myself near the front of the stage for the set. Bells’ songs start more gently now without the drum kit banging away. The songs don’t have the incessant energy that live drums can provide, but rather draw you in with how simply, heartbreakingly pretty they are. The show had the immeasurable benefit of the great Kris Hooper on second guitar providing a restrained tone of mixed chime and bite and Leanne Coughlin playing keys and providing a lovely harmonic counterpoint. Choreography was provided by the hypnotic blinking of LED lights racing back and forth across the drum machines.
Their music made all the douchebag pain go far, far away. I’d like to see them play several more times as the holiday approaches, if for no other reason than to provide actual beautiful sound to wash away the taste of Christmas’ musical NutraSweet.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Slowly My Poor Brain Engages
Slight delay over the last few weeks, basically because I’m lazy. I’m trying to finish something off to post here and it’s not quite coming together. In the meantime, here’s a little light music.
Tremble before the awesome power of the Hex Dispensers.
Tremble before the awesome power of the Hex Dispensers.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
There's No Time To Lose
Well, that’s a relief.
At one point while they were still counting the votes the TV news coverage cut to a split screen of the Obama and McCain crowds waiting for the results to come in. The Obama crowd milled about, tense and hopeful, the McCain footage didn’t show the crowd, just some Nashville wonk strumming his way through a plaintive country ballad. It was the perfect soundtrack for a generation of sociopathic neo-cons weeping and counting what remains of their money before they ooze off in disgrace.
For once it appears voting for hope and change trumps hate and fear. Toby Keith's Album Sales Are Going to Plummet.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Don't Make Me a Target
The #19 bus journey serves up the same sights and sounds every day. There's a rustle of bad commuter papers that make up for their total lack of news merit with brevity. Commuters send cold glares at each other or quickly avert their eyes from elderly people looking for reassuring conversations, or pipeheads looking for someone to bark at for awhile. Shoulder to shoulder we bounce off each other as the bad transmission of the cheap eco friendly electric bus lurches through every intersection switch. There’s a tinny symphony of cranked MP3s in the air this morning; dull thudding bass and overwrought shrieks from miscellaneous pop divas.
I’m disgorged into the street, into the cold snap of too-early-in-the-morning air. It’s lightly scented with financial district musk: expensive cologne, perfume, Italian coffee, baked goods, diesel exhaust, and the greasy funk of bike courier body odour. One Quebecois courier waits at an intersection pounding on the hood of a car that’s nearly killed her, cursing its terrified carpoolers in thickly accented English. She flips them off, winks at me and takes off a fraction of a second after the light changes.
Two terrifying things await me at my desk. One, an advisory that something called “Scary Bingo” is going to begin circulating to assist in ramming this month’s enforced fun agenda down our throats. I’m afraid to ask what Scary Bingo is. Certainly the dauber stained people standing outside Planet Bingo in my neighborhood are certainly scary enough some days, but I don’t think this is what’s meant.
Scary thing number two is a Happy Halloween card that’s been sent to us by one of our low function sex offenders who’s taken to incessantly calling us. He is the world’s worst mascot. It looks like it was drawn by an eager to please six year-old. It has the same obvious determination to stay inside the lines hidden in the black and orange strokes of pencil crayon. One dimensional black bat on the front says “boo”. A bedsheet ghost next to it smiles happily.
Good morning downtown.
I’m disgorged into the street, into the cold snap of too-early-in-the-morning air. It’s lightly scented with financial district musk: expensive cologne, perfume, Italian coffee, baked goods, diesel exhaust, and the greasy funk of bike courier body odour. One Quebecois courier waits at an intersection pounding on the hood of a car that’s nearly killed her, cursing its terrified carpoolers in thickly accented English. She flips them off, winks at me and takes off a fraction of a second after the light changes.
Two terrifying things await me at my desk. One, an advisory that something called “Scary Bingo” is going to begin circulating to assist in ramming this month’s enforced fun agenda down our throats. I’m afraid to ask what Scary Bingo is. Certainly the dauber stained people standing outside Planet Bingo in my neighborhood are certainly scary enough some days, but I don’t think this is what’s meant.
Scary thing number two is a Happy Halloween card that’s been sent to us by one of our low function sex offenders who’s taken to incessantly calling us. He is the world’s worst mascot. It looks like it was drawn by an eager to please six year-old. It has the same obvious determination to stay inside the lines hidden in the black and orange strokes of pencil crayon. One dimensional black bat on the front says “boo”. A bedsheet ghost next to it smiles happily.
Good morning downtown.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
That’s When I Reach For My Revolver
Friday morning the sky was full of hazy clouds slowly beginning to thicken and obscure the sun. I had a perfect vantage point to slowly watch everything turn grey. There was one last gasp of incredibly bright sunlight that washed over the building across from me. A huge reflection of gold on the obsidian black windowpanes of the financial district before the clouds closed in fully and the sky started to look like the inside of a smoker’s lung.
True Vancouver October at last. The air turns cold and the wind slowly leeches away the last of the summer heat stored in the pavement and in the building stones. The rain starts in earnest and rinses away the last lingering scents of piss and rotting garbage that haunt the alleyways all summer long. That’s the real signal for the beginning of fall. By mid-October I’ll be shivering outside in the gusty damp trying to keep a cigarette lit while the rain undoes any plans I have to stay even half dry by coming at me sideways.
Mission of Burma played a brilliant show this week. It’s a rare treat to see a band reform and not only play incredibly well, but to clearly be having a really great time while doing it. Hell of a loud set too. Roger Miller doesn’t wear the industrial headgear he used to use to combat his tinnitus anymore. I guess the last tour allowed them to spring for fancy, nearly invisible earpieces. Sadly the ringing in my own ears after the show was not sufficient to drown out the three-way hippie drum circle that broke out on the bus on the way home.
Picture a Tim Buckley circa 1970 looking tye dyed alpha male, arm slung around peasant skirt wearing earth mother with a drum clutched between her matronly thighs. Third wheel dirty sidekick in a camouflage baseball cap (what kind of self respecting hippie wears a camouflage cap anyway) cackling like a madman throughout the rhythmic frenzy. All of them proudly flying the freak flag, 40 years too late.
Perhaps they were celebrating the coming of fall, or the fact that Phish reformed, or some such thing. A common sight in Vancouver during the summer months. Watered down, fourth generation counter cultural bullshit sadly mistaking annoying all and sundry with “blowing our minds”.
The trip with them was mercifully brief, and this behavior is one that is also seen less and less once the fall rains start; I guess all the damp in the air makes hippie drum-skins too flaccid to help them freak out the squares. Welcome back October. I've missed you.
True Vancouver October at last. The air turns cold and the wind slowly leeches away the last of the summer heat stored in the pavement and in the building stones. The rain starts in earnest and rinses away the last lingering scents of piss and rotting garbage that haunt the alleyways all summer long. That’s the real signal for the beginning of fall. By mid-October I’ll be shivering outside in the gusty damp trying to keep a cigarette lit while the rain undoes any plans I have to stay even half dry by coming at me sideways.
Mission of Burma played a brilliant show this week. It’s a rare treat to see a band reform and not only play incredibly well, but to clearly be having a really great time while doing it. Hell of a loud set too. Roger Miller doesn’t wear the industrial headgear he used to use to combat his tinnitus anymore. I guess the last tour allowed them to spring for fancy, nearly invisible earpieces. Sadly the ringing in my own ears after the show was not sufficient to drown out the three-way hippie drum circle that broke out on the bus on the way home.
Picture a Tim Buckley circa 1970 looking tye dyed alpha male, arm slung around peasant skirt wearing earth mother with a drum clutched between her matronly thighs. Third wheel dirty sidekick in a camouflage baseball cap (what kind of self respecting hippie wears a camouflage cap anyway) cackling like a madman throughout the rhythmic frenzy. All of them proudly flying the freak flag, 40 years too late.
Perhaps they were celebrating the coming of fall, or the fact that Phish reformed, or some such thing. A common sight in Vancouver during the summer months. Watered down, fourth generation counter cultural bullshit sadly mistaking annoying all and sundry with “blowing our minds”.
The trip with them was mercifully brief, and this behavior is one that is also seen less and less once the fall rains start; I guess all the damp in the air makes hippie drum-skins too flaccid to help them freak out the squares. Welcome back October. I've missed you.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
"We're all heroes here....twat"
What the 21st century needs most is a tv show about superheroes that drink. I give you...No Heroics.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Dream me oh dreamer, Down to the floor
I was on my way home last week and saw posters up all along Pender Street advertising an upcoming show from a Motley Crue “tribute” band. You don’t pay tribute to a band like Motley Crue; they appear in your town like the first sore before a major herpes outbreak and infect other innocent bands. The World Health Organization should follow them on tour. They were here a couple of months ago on another cash-in tour of sad, predictable Disneysleaze and two months later here comes a poster advising me that “rock n’ roll ain’t dead”. What a relief.
I don’t want to come across like some effete indie fan who sits at home listening to The Decemberists or Belle and Sebastian albums, cataloging my cardigans and bursting into tears every time I get an erection. But I also don’t need a washed-up cock rock band touring around perpetuating the myth that if you don’t wake up next to some strange silicone and peroxide casualty every morning while coughing up cigarette tar onto a pile of money and cocaine somehow you’re a less authentic rock band. Yep, rock and roll is all about sex and there are tons of awesome sleazy bands that rock out with their cock out but clinging to that faded rock star fantasy is a tired move. The 80’s were a dark time that is currently in vogue, we don’t need any more reminders than we already have.
So, in the interests of reminding myself that there’s more to rock and roll than the “we like to score” ethic I decided to get me a scalped ticket to TV on the Radio last night. I wanted a good show to cap off the summer and TVOTR seemed like a safe bet as they’re a transcendent live band, and one that I’ve got a mad love on for.
I hit the street early and ended up waiting some time for the scalpers to show up while sitting drinking cheap beer on the patio of a café next to the Commodore Ballroom. It wasn’t a pleasant wait.
Granville Street is a weird place to hang around these days. The entire street has a nasty “brought to you by Jagermeister” vibe. Crowds of people wander around drunk, coming up with increasingly annoying ways to let passers-by know what a good time they’re having. Three douchebags had set up shop next to me with pitchers of beer and an Mp3 player and proceeded to serenade everyone with bad renditions of popular rock hits. One of the three didn’t even sing, he just screeched out phonetic recreations of all the guitar solos.
Bad karaoke like this is the dark by-product of games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. There was a horrible moment when they started to sing and I realized that they were practicing for another marathon gaming session. Don't they have homes to go to? Girlfriends to neglect? I had to sit through not one, but two renditions of Say it Ain’t So. They went on for at least an hour and a half and finally wandered off singing We are the Champions. I had rich, detailed fantasies of beating them to death with my chair. I should have moved, but the patio had an excellent view of the street and as I said the beer was cheap. In a way I was a little bonded to them by the end. Some kind of weird Stockholm syndrome thing. After they left I missed hating them so much I kind of wished they’d come back.
Eventually I sidled up and bought a ticket. I ended up paying more than I would have if I'd gotten off my ass earlier and bought it through regular channels, but I consider the extra cash paid to be a sloth tax. The show was worth every penny.
TV on the Radio played brilliantly. There's no point in breaking it down to "they played this song, they played that song" commentary. The band don't waste a lot of time with banter, they just wander out on stage and get right down to business. They take songs that on their albums are interconnected sheets of noise and adapt them into epic rock songs that are free of irony, free of cliche. Each song is totally reborn from the way you're used to hearing it every time they play. Well worth wading through a sea of douchebags to listen to.
I feel more like smiling these days than I have for some time and they made the perfect soundtrack. One last burst of summer enthusiasm to carry along with me as the nights get longer and colder and wetter.
I don’t want to come across like some effete indie fan who sits at home listening to The Decemberists or Belle and Sebastian albums, cataloging my cardigans and bursting into tears every time I get an erection. But I also don’t need a washed-up cock rock band touring around perpetuating the myth that if you don’t wake up next to some strange silicone and peroxide casualty every morning while coughing up cigarette tar onto a pile of money and cocaine somehow you’re a less authentic rock band. Yep, rock and roll is all about sex and there are tons of awesome sleazy bands that rock out with their cock out but clinging to that faded rock star fantasy is a tired move. The 80’s were a dark time that is currently in vogue, we don’t need any more reminders than we already have.
So, in the interests of reminding myself that there’s more to rock and roll than the “we like to score” ethic I decided to get me a scalped ticket to TV on the Radio last night. I wanted a good show to cap off the summer and TVOTR seemed like a safe bet as they’re a transcendent live band, and one that I’ve got a mad love on for.
I hit the street early and ended up waiting some time for the scalpers to show up while sitting drinking cheap beer on the patio of a café next to the Commodore Ballroom. It wasn’t a pleasant wait.
Granville Street is a weird place to hang around these days. The entire street has a nasty “brought to you by Jagermeister” vibe. Crowds of people wander around drunk, coming up with increasingly annoying ways to let passers-by know what a good time they’re having. Three douchebags had set up shop next to me with pitchers of beer and an Mp3 player and proceeded to serenade everyone with bad renditions of popular rock hits. One of the three didn’t even sing, he just screeched out phonetic recreations of all the guitar solos.
Bad karaoke like this is the dark by-product of games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. There was a horrible moment when they started to sing and I realized that they were practicing for another marathon gaming session. Don't they have homes to go to? Girlfriends to neglect? I had to sit through not one, but two renditions of Say it Ain’t So. They went on for at least an hour and a half and finally wandered off singing We are the Champions. I had rich, detailed fantasies of beating them to death with my chair. I should have moved, but the patio had an excellent view of the street and as I said the beer was cheap. In a way I was a little bonded to them by the end. Some kind of weird Stockholm syndrome thing. After they left I missed hating them so much I kind of wished they’d come back.
Eventually I sidled up and bought a ticket. I ended up paying more than I would have if I'd gotten off my ass earlier and bought it through regular channels, but I consider the extra cash paid to be a sloth tax. The show was worth every penny.
TV on the Radio played brilliantly. There's no point in breaking it down to "they played this song, they played that song" commentary. The band don't waste a lot of time with banter, they just wander out on stage and get right down to business. They take songs that on their albums are interconnected sheets of noise and adapt them into epic rock songs that are free of irony, free of cliche. Each song is totally reborn from the way you're used to hearing it every time they play. Well worth wading through a sea of douchebags to listen to.
I feel more like smiling these days than I have for some time and they made the perfect soundtrack. One last burst of summer enthusiasm to carry along with me as the nights get longer and colder and wetter.
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